#I’m not ready for this series to be over

[amoscontorta]

Wine time with Sylus | ao3 | other stories in this 'series'

Summary: Sylus invites himself over, helps himself to your first aid kit and your kitchen, manipulates you into tasting wine with him, discusses his latest business venture, and gifts you more than one present before he's good and ready to finally leave.

Notes: Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, second person pov, no use of y/n

This story contains: fluff, banter, angst, mc with obvious self esteem issues, grief, self-destructive behavior, profanity, alcohol use, criminal activity, allusions to violence, sleepy kissing, biting, inappropriate thoughts regarding kitchen tools, the mental gymnastics mc engages in to avoid acknowledging or recognizing feelings on either side should come with their own warning to be honest, one very thirsty mc whose thoughts are NSFW. This part ends with a misunderstanding that you can bet Sylus will not put up with for long.

In the days following Sylus’s latest little… visit, you’re called out more frequently than usual to counter wanderer attacks. You’re barely home, and the few times you stumble home late into the night, you peel your sweat and sometimes blood-stained hunter’s uniform off right in the entryway, promise yourself you’ll do laundry soon, and drag your aching body to the shower. Then you usually spend what little night you have left lying there with your eyes closed, carefully keeping your mind blank as sleep remains elusive. You have to admit to yourself that the few times Sylus kept you company overnight, you slept like the dead, but you refuse to go so far as admitting that you wouldn’t mind if it were more frequent. If you were to admit it to yourself, which you will not,  you only yearn for it strictly for the sake of your sleep schedule, and absolutely not because you’ve come to crave his warm, comforting bulk against your body.

Tonight is no different, but you’re both looking forward to and dreading the next few days, as Captain Jenna has ordered you to take some time off to rest and recover from the brutal schedule you’ve been keeping for months now, capped off by the recent spate of increased attacks. All of your wheedling to let you keep going, that you’re fine, that the people of Linkon need you, that you need the constant distraction, has proven useless. Apparently the frequency with which you are getting injured remains acceptable, but she is finally at the end of her patience reading your barely coherent, misspelled reports with unfinished sentences that you only manage to submit before Association mandated deadlines by the skin of your teeth.

“Go home, get your head on straight, and come back rested … and literate again, please.” She looks back down at the tablet on her desk, trying to dismiss you, but you stubbornly remain at attention at her desk.

“That’s discrimination, Captain. I can be a perfectly functional hunter without being able to read or write,” you protest, while Xavier winces behind you. “I mean, obviously I can read and write, I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Still able to destroy wanderers!”

Jenna’s already formidable expression begins to darken, but you’re not cowed. You open your mouth to helpfully point out that wanderers don’t care about how well you can spell, when you feel Xavier’s gentle hand on your arm. “Come on, why don’t we go together to get some snacks on the way home? I think they’ve started re-issuing that wasabi flavored chocolate bar we tried at the beginning of the year,” he says softly, and Jenna shoots him an appreciative look before proceeding to ignore you both.

You glumly follow Xavier out into the early evening. Rush hour is over, but the sidewalks are still bustling with life. You weave through the mass of humanity, resisting the urge to drop-kick anyone who cuts you off or brushes against you accidentally. I am a role model for the Hunter’s Association, even when I’m off the clock, I am not allowed to arrest someone for bumping into me…. I am not allowed to arrest someone for…

Xavier tries to distract you from your obvious frustration by describing the plot of the latest manga series he’s reading that he thinks you’ll like as you two make your way  home. You listen absently, feeling slightly calmed by his soothing voice, despite its graphic descriptions of violence in the manga that you are pretty sure you’re going to really like.

“Are there any hot guys in it?” you ask as the mass of people begins to thin the closer you get to your building.

“Hot… guys?” he blinks in confusion, his impossibly blue eyes flashing in the streetlamps that have just turned on.

“Yeah. Like that other one we read, Help, I, a lowly office worker, went to sleep and woke up as the Queen’s assassin in the book I fell asleep reading. The main guy in that was super hot.”

“Well, it is by the same mangaka, so you’d probably like the way they draw the main character in this one too,” he says uncertainly, but with a strange expression on his face, like he suddenly doesn’t want you to read it with him anymore.

“Okay, I’ll give it a try. Have you finished the first volume yet? Can I borrow it?”

You’ve reached your building, the trees surrounding the courtyard rustling in the soft end-of-summer breeze.

“…Great,” he says after a brief hesitation. He holds open one of the entrance's doors for you to enter the your building’s foyer. Your boots and his echo on the polished floor as you make your way into the lift. “I’ll be finished by tomorrow. How about we go the bookstore and afterwards you can come over and read since we have the day off? You can start volume one, and I’ll start volume 2. Does that sound good? We can make fancy ramen,” he says, his normally sleepy energy spiking with the idea of adding a boiled egg and some frozen vegetables to the normally plain ramen the two of you consume more often than not while on the go. Xavier’s idea of fancy has always been adorable to you.

The idea of not just sitting in your apartment alone on the first day of your forced leave is a welcome one, and you agree that he can come find you when he’s woken up, so that you don’t risk waking him up. He likes this plan, because obviously, you’re hardly sleeping at all, and he sleeps longer than you ever would have imagined possible for humans until you met him. As the elevator approaches your floor and the doors slide open, you’re about to step out when Xavier’s soft voice behind you has you turning to look back at his pretty face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmurs, eyes searching yours. “I know you feel like you’ve lost everything right now, and that the pain seems unbearable.”

You quickly turn your head—you were not expecting this sneak attack of sympathy and kindness from him. You nod jerkily, trying not to let his warmth sink into you, or else you might start crying.

“It sounds cliché, but with time, even this pain will fade. And you have so much time ahead of you. I can promise you that. One day you’ll wake up, and it will be slightly less unbearable. That doesn’t mean you forget about what you’ve lost. But you can think of it without… without feeling like you’re destroyed again, every time.” He’s looking at you, but you also have the feeling that he’s looking at something else, from a great distance. Knowing how secretive he is, it’s unlikely you’ll ever know what it is he’s seeing.

You nod again, and whatever he sees in you profile seems to satisfy him as he offers you a soft ‘Goodnight,’ and you scurry from the lift to your front door. You tuck away his words, and push them down deep. You know they’re well intended. But you can’t handle crying right now. Not yet. Not yet. So you focus on possible plans for the days stretching ahead of you.

There is a part of you that’s looking forward to possibly being able to rest, it’s true. But the stretch of empty days, without work and battle and the social interaction of colleagues, had been filling you with anxiety before your plans with Xavier were made. But even after tomorrow, you’ll try to make the best of it. You can… try to remember what hobbies you had, before your life blew up. Maybe you can take up a new hobby! Within the span of a few days. Yeah, you can teach yourself to crochet,or make stained glass art, in a day, right? Online videos are super helpful. Maybe you’ll even deep clean your apartment, and go grocery shopping, properly, for the first time in weeks. You’ll buy vegetables that have to be prepped instead of the hottest insta-ramen you can find and slurping packets of applesauce while telling yourself that it counts as fiber, right? You can cook, and bake! You just haven’t in… a really long time. Maybe you’ll bake an entire cake, and then eat the entire cake. Yeah. You have plans, you think to yourself, pressing your fingerprint to the scanner under your flat’s door handle and pushing the door open when it beeps.

As soon as the door closes with a soft whump, you carefully hang up your blades and pistol holsters on your wall-mounted weapon rack, and then you’re furiously undoing the laces on your knee high leather boots, hopping from one foot to the other as you try to kick them off without actually having to sit down and pull them off. You yank off your socks, then shimmy out of your pants, which you also kick off unceremoniously. You’re going to be positive about this little holiday! You’re so close to being comfortable and staying that way for days. You almost rip your buttons in your haste to remove your shirt, and just as you’ve gotten the last one undone, you finally notice the dark, looming figure in the shadows at the end of your foyer.

You’re in your fucking underpants, barefoot, and your weapons are out of reach due to your current strangulation by your own shirt sleeves.

Heart racing, you throw yourself backward against the door, prepared to make a strategic retreat and escape into the building’s hallway to buy yourself some time to free yourself from your shirt, no matter the cost to your pride at being caught out in your underwear, when familiar scarlet-ink tendrils of energy gently wrap themselves around your waist and softly lift you in the air. You find yourself kicking and squirming like a kitten picked up by the scruff of its neck.

“The fuck, Sylus?” you choke out.

“Why are you still struggling, when you can clearly see that it’s me? Cease, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Why are you using your evol on me without my consent?” you retort, wriggling some more for good measure simply because he told you to stop.

“To prevent you from giving your neighbors the show of their lives without even charging admission,” he responds languidly, eyes the color of sunlight filtering through a glass of wine drifting from your probably red, sweaty face down your barely clothed body.

“Oh, they don’t get a free show, but you do?” you sneer, continuing to struggle to no effect.

“Look at yourself,” Sylus commands, and turns his head as if bored. You note absently that he’s wearing a ruby stud earring in his ear... the one that matches the earring in your own ear. So you never bothered to take it out. That doesn’t mean anything—you’re just lazy. You refuse to think about it anymore deeply than that, and then notice that Sylus not only looks bored, but also looks almost… offended? You do as he asks, and see that his evol is wrapping itself around your body in such a way that its bright-dark tendrils are covering all of your exposed, sensitive areas like a fluid robe.

“Oh,” is all you can think to say.

“Oh, indeed.” He continues to look away from you, aggressively bored, but his evol gently lowers you enough so that your bare feet rest on the ground, and then it loosens, but remains swirling around you.

“Then I’ll… just go get dressed.” You begin making your past him, but stop when you see him nonchalantly hold up a large, elegant shopping bag. It’s black, with some brand name you don’t recognize written in flowy silver script. “What is this?” You look from the bag to his face. He deigns to look at you again. Your eyes drift to his other ear, and you see that where it is pierced is empty.

“Wardrobe options,” is all he says, jerking you out of trying to puzzle out this opaque maniac’s intentions. You take the bag from him and quickly walk to your bathroom. No way you’re going to put on new clothes while feeling filthy from a long day and night of annihilating wanderers. His evol dissipates the moment your bathroom door shuts behind you.

It’s becoming a pattern. Thinking the worst of him, only to be proven wrong. But you don’t know how to overcome the cognitive dissonance of Sylus from your first meeting, and this Sylus who seems intent on taking care of you better than you take care of yourself.

You rinse off as quickly as you can in the shower, towel yourself dry, and take a peek in the bag that he gave you. The first thing you see is a black…? You lift it out of the bag, and it unfolds into a very large sweater. It’s thick, the fabric obviously of high quality. You touch it gently, running your hands along a sleeve—is it cashmere? It’s unbelievably soft. It’s probably a nightmare to wash. On impulse, you lift it to your nose, and take a deep breath.

Your suspicion is confirmed. It smells like him. This isn’t a brand new piece of clothing. This is one of Sylus’s own sweaters that he has worn before. The scent of his clean skin, the sharp tang of gunmetal, the bright burst of citrus, probably from some ridiculously expensive shampoo or body wash. The mix sends a thrill through your entire body: after only a few encounters, you already have bone-deep associations with the way Sylus smells. Fear and adrenaline, yes, but also anticipation—and bizarrely, safety. Instead of feeling terrified, you feel the way you would before riding a roller coaster. Yes, you’ll be screaming and holding on for dear life the whole ride, but you are also inexplicably convinced that in the end, you’ll have your feet firmly planted on the ground, safe again. A part of you whispers that it’s safer to avoid the roller coaster altogether—bolts come loose, wheels pull free from the track, tragic accidents happen all the time. But standing here in your humid bathroom, bone-weary from the day behind you, sniffing Sylus’s unwashed sweater makes you feel more alive than you’ve felt in a very long time.

You pull his sweater over your head, and you’re basically swimming it, it’s so big. The collar is big enough that it threatens to fall off one shoulder. But it’s so soft. And cozy. You hug yourself, and peek into the bag again. There are a few more sweaters, each dark with varying degrees of dramatic flair. This is part of Sylus’s wardrobe, after all. But there are also little sleep shorts, like the ones you were wearing the last time he invaded your home. You pick up a pair—no way would they fit on his big ass. You try, so, so, so very hard not to picture his thick cake stuffed into these tiny shorts.

You fail.

Your brain short circuits for a few seconds.

When it comes back online, you lift out a pair, and the fabric glides silkily along your skin. You’re pretty sure these are silk. They’re black, because of course, but they also have little red … happy pomegranates? Dotted along the hems. They’re adorable. You pull them on over your own bare ass and the sweater-shorts combo is probably the softest thing you’ve ever had on your body. The sweater swallows the shorts and makes it look like you’re wandering around without bottoms on.

You look at yourself in the mirror, silently telling yourself that you shouldn’t get on this particular ride. You don’t know where the track leads, and it scares you. What if it ends over a cliff, and the last thing you ever see is Sylus’s triumphant, cruel face looking down at you as you fall? There are other, less risky rides, certainly ones without wanted posters, right? Right? On second thought, you don’t even have to go the amusement park at all. You’re just fine with trying to get some fucking sleep, with continuing to hone your combat skills, with just trying to be a good person despite really liking knives and being an enthusiastic hunter.

But maybe you can just. Be friends with the roller coaster? Like, you don’t have to ride him. IT. THE ROLLER COASTER. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO RIDE THE ROLLER COASTER. You can just, watch it from a safe distance. You might indulge in little fantasies about what it’s like to ride… the roller coaster. And honestly, fantasies are almost always a hell of a lot better than the reality ever turns out to be. Not to mention! Sylus has never directly expressed any desire to ride … your roller coaster. Sure, he shows up unannounced and cares for you in ways that no one ever has, and he touches you a lot for someone who has no physical interest in you, but physical isn’t necessarily sexual, right? Maybe it’s an evol thing, and the way he touches you has to do with why you both find yourself inexplicably connected for periods of time. Like charging a battery. The point is! There will be no tickets to either ride, thank you, you aren’t open for business and he definitely does not have the proper safety inspection certificates in order, so. No.

You nod firmly to yourself in the mirror. This should be fine. You can be friends with Sylus. You don’t have to let him drag you over a cliff. Maybe you can learn a thing or two from him—he seems to be pretty competent at a lot of things that might be useful for certain aspects of your job. Like intimidating people. And exploding people with a thought and twitch of his fingers. And convincing them to do things they don’t want to do by sheer force of obnoxiousness.

Having sufficiently deluded yourself into believing that your plan of action has a chance of success, you slip out of the bathroom and find Sylus in the kitchen, next to a pretty wine glass that you certainly do not recall owning on the kitchen island.

He’s slicing strawberries with a very sharp knife that you do recall owning, because you do spend quite a lot of time sharpening the set it belongs to. They’re not kitchen knives, per se; you actually have them for work and they are really nice to throw. You already had so many knives before you moved into this place that you didn’t see the necessity of spending more money on probably inferior kitchen knives. But the large, really nice butcher block-style cutting board that he’s chopping the fruit on is not yours. And neither are the delicately arranged variety of cheeses, thinly sliced meat, and savory tarts set in puff pastry that fill up most of the cutting board. And lastly, you do not recall purchasing two bottles of what look like red wine sitting next to the wine glass, nor cleaning your kitchen so thoroughly that Zayne could probably perform surgery in here without worrying about risk of infection.

Despite your presence standing at the island before him now, he continues to serenely slice the ever-growing pile of fruit.

“Sylus?”

“Have a seat,” he says, not looking up.

“Oh, why thank you for offering such hospitality to me, in my own home,” you mutter, pulling out one of the wooden bar stools at the kitchen island. You’re about to sit down when you realize that the repetitive chop of the knife has stopped, and you look up to find Sylus frozen with the knife mid-slice in a fat strawberry. His eyes drift from your neck and exposed shoulder, down the soft expanse of sweater, to your bare legs, and then back again. You’re suddenly self-conscious—he’s the one who gave you these clothes. And now he’s staring at you like a wanderer is about to burst out of your chest.

“Did I misunderstand the assignment or something?” you ask, plopping down on the bar stool in the hopes of breaking him out of whatever weird trance he’s apparently glitching in. He swallows, flicks a final look at your shoulder, and then goes back to slicing.

“I’m simply shocked that you actually did as you were told, for once,” he responds, seemingly unruffled again. “You should also put one of the sweaters in your go bag as a backup in the event that your uniform gets destroyed, again, which it does at an alarming rate these days. The Association’s overheads for keeping you clothed must be in the stratosphere.”

“Mm, yes I’m sure you’re very concerned about the costs of doing business for the Association.” You rest your head in your hand, propped up by your elbow on the counter. The two of you sit in companionable silence for a while, with only the snick of the knife filling the space between you. The lights underneath your cabinets are on, emitting a soft warm glow from below, but you notice that he hasn’t put on the harsher, brighter overhead lights. The city’s skyline blinks serenely like an endless fleet of starships in the dark expanse of space through your windows, and a cool breeze wafts in from time to time.

Finally, Sylus is done, and he carefully rinses the knife in the sink and sets it on the counter. He turns back to you.

“No interrogation regarding why I’m here this time?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s wearing a light sweater in a deep grey, of a style quite similar to the one you’re now wearing. He looks domestic, and delicious, and you tell yourself sternly that he is friend shaped, you will not ride the Sylus roller coaster, you will not ride the Sylus roller coaster—

You have to say something. “Oh, are you missing my very effective questioning techniques? Sadly, I left my handcuffs at the office,” you lift your shoulders in a what can you do? gesture, and his eyes follow your bare shoulder again.

“Handcuffs aren’t the only means of restraint available to a truly resourceful hunter,” he says, shaking his head as if disappointed.  “Your lack of imagination is boring.”

“Okay, Sylus. But only because you’re basically begging for it: why are you here?”  You lift a puff pastry and brandish it at him like a knife. “Answer honestly, or you’ll really get it this time!” You take a big, aggressive bite as if to illustrate what he’s got coming to him in case of his non-compliance, and then moan because what the fuck, this is so good, is it goat cheese and honey? And suddenly you’re devouring it, licking your fingers clean when you’re done because you can’t get enough.

“This definitely counts as an enhanced interrogation technique.” His voice is low, and has a rough quality to it that normally isn’t there. You glance up from slobbering all over your fingers and find that he’s staring at you in what is probably disgust.

“Ha, yes, and I’ll keep subjecting you to it until you tell me what you’re doing in my home, again. And how did you even get in? I never got you a key.” You finish licking yourself like an animal and reach for a strawberry. If he’s going to play chef in your kitchen, who are you to refuse to enjoy the literal fruits of his labor? You just live here and pay the damn rent.

He holds up the index finger of his right hand, which is sporting a band-aid that you recognize as one of the same kind you have in your first-aid kit. They’re super cute, with a design of sad little cartoon mushrooms. “I was at my accountant’s, which happens to be in this neighborhood, and I got a paper cut while signing some documents.”

You pause before biting into the berry. “You… came to my flat. With extra clothing, wine, wine glasses, and various appetizers, in order to get a band-aid for your paper cut. Is this a correct summary of events?” You decide you’re not going to wait for him to answer, and take a big bite of the strawberry, feeling some juice drip down your chin. You catch it with your index finger, and then suck the juice off after you’re done chewing.

There is a long pause, and you look up to find him staring intently at your finger. You widen your eyes and wave your hand in the universal gesture of hurry the fuck up, get on with it already? He closes his eyes for a moment and breathes deeply. Apparently you’re so horrifying to witness eating that he needs to seek some zen before he can answer. It’s not your fault that he brought you half of his wardrobe and wine glasses but didn’t think to bring any napkins. “Yes, that is a correct summary of events,” is all he offers.

You look at him.

He looks back at you, occasionally flicking his gaze down to your mouth and back to your eyes. You consider baring your teeth at him just in case he wants an eyeful of the strawberry undoubtedly stuck in them, but refrain because you’re polite.

“Okay. Do you care to explain the motivation behind these events?” you ask slowly, thinking that maybe you will brandish a real knife at him to hurry up this so-called interrogation so you can straight up devour the rest of this charcuterie board that this wanted criminal has inexplicably prepared in your kitchen.

Fortunately, you don’t have to go for the knife, because he begins to speak. “There was a wine merchant that looked rather appealing on the way to your place. Since you revealed a deplorable lack of discernment when it comes to selecting a good bottle of wine the last time you hosted me, I thought I’d do my civic duty for the week and educate the less fortunate on how to choose, and enjoy, a decent bottle of wine.”

“I see.” You nod slowly. “That’s very civic-minded of you. You’re truly a model citizen. And the food?”

“It’s not wise to have a wine tasting without something to eat. Otherwise, you might find yourself making questionable decisions. We wouldn’t want that, would we, sweetie?” he seems to have recovered from his nausea at watching you wolf down food, because he says this with a playful lift of a silver eyebrow.

“Because letting a man whose baggage includes a wanted poster into my home whenever he wants could hardly be considered a good decision, and I made that one while sober,” you sigh. “I see your point.”

“Exactly. Just imagine what kind of trouble you could get into after a bottle of wine on an empty stomach?” He tilts his head to the side, and runs a middle finger slowly over his brow.

You shudder, because his big hands. You can’t pursue this line of thought.

“And the clothes?”

“Now you won’t need to borrow your partner’s clothes in case of an emergency. And I’ll have something to wear at my safe house in case you decide to assault me with beverages again.”

“That was one time. And if you don’t show up, then there’s no chance you’ll be assaulted. Therefore, no need for a change of clothes. And, pardon me, but your safe house? I think you meant, my flat. But what you’re telling me is that the whole reason you were coming to my flat in the first place was to put a band-aid on your boo-boo.”

He lowers his hand and begins running his thumb along his lower lip. “Even a small cut can turn life-threatening if not treated properly. And I wouldn’t want a scar, now would I? It’s not much of a safe house if I can’t make use of it when in danger of lasting bodily harm.”

“Mmm yes, what with your evol that renders scarring impossible for you, we wouldn’t want your paper cut to cause you lasting bodily harm. And you couldn’t acquire a band-aid at a pharmacy, perhaps like at the one next to the wine merchant I’m pretty sure you’re referring to?” You refuse to look at his big thumb pressing into his thick, soft-looking lower lip. You stare up at the ceiling, and consider cataloguing wanderers in your head to stem the sudden urge to vault over the island counter separating him from you and pulling that damn thumb into your own mouth.

“They didn’t have a box containing such cute little designs. I never knew I wanted anthropomorphized fungus to decorate a bandage intended to protect an open wound until I saw your own box.”

It takes you a second to remember what the hell the two of your were discussing when you realize he’s talking about your adorable little mushroom band-aids.

“A wine snob, and a band-aid snob.”

“I prefer the term cultured, but yes, I’ve told you before. Life is too short to waste on the inferior. Your sad little champignons surpass all others.”

He’s done it again. He has hardly even moved this entire time, and has managed to exhaust you to the point of blissful indifference. He shows up unannounced, rifles through your first aid kit, decides what you’re going to wear both this evening and in the future when you need a spare change of clothes, and has prepared an hors d’oeuvre spread worthy of at least a mid-ranged restaurant for you to eat while offering you a wine tasting? Fine. “Okay,” you say, reaching for another one of those puff pastries.

He watches you steadily for a few moments, as if trying to sense a trap. “That’s it?”

You shrug. “Sure. I told you that you could use my house if you needed it. I’ve just learned my lesson: next time I’ll be very careful in drafting the conditions of any deal we make, since your interpretation of certain terms appears to vary wildly from any reasonable person’s.”

“I think I’m quite reasonable,” he examines his nails. “I come bearing gifts, and this is how you show your gratitude? By insinuating that I'm unreasonable?”

Another thought occurs to you. “How did you even get in, Sylus?”

“Ah,” he says, squinting and looking out the window, as if contemplating a very deep philosophical question. “While you were sleeping last time… I took the liberty of adding my fingerprint to your door’s fingerprint scanner.”

What. The. Fuck. “What. The. Fuck.”

“Again, it’s not much of a safe house if I can’t access it without your presence. I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s not like I can’t just use my evol to teleport into your place anyway, but I thought you’d appreciate me coming through the front door. Fewer feathers. You didn’t seem to like cleaning those up the last time I teleported out of your place.”

You just stare at him. How would he even know that you cursed him, loudly, as you were mopping up the mess of blood and feathers he generously left in your entryway after being shot? And then it comes to you. Mephisto. Of course. You pinch the bridge of your nose, and visualize violently shaking that bird until his circuits are rewired.

Sylus continues, ignoring your mounting rage. “Come to think of it, we should probably upgrade your locks, kitten. It was laughably easy to override the system and add my print as authorized for entry.”

Forget riding the Sylus coaster—you think that maybe he isn’t even friend shaped after all. He might just have slid right back to enemy shaped. Frenemy shaped? Where does a frenemy lie on the spectrum of “fuck his brains out” to “polite, but distant acquaintances?” But then you remember that it’s not a linear spectrum, and fucking his brains out is not mutually exclusively to being mortal enemies. You’ve read enough enemies-to-lovers romances to know that perfectly well, so even if he is enemy shaped… you shudder. Why are you like this? You redirect your self-disgust and deflect, like a true emotionally well-adjusted adult:

“Why can’t you be normal? Like, do you do anything like a normal person?”

“Why would I pretend to be normal when I’m so obviously extraordinary?” he scoffs, looking at you like you’re the unhinged one in this little situationship.

 “Sylus.”

“Yes, my heart’s delight?”

You stare at him, and he gazes back at you, leaning leisurely back against your counter, arms folded and long fingers slowly tapping out a rhythm on one bulky bicep. You know that if you remove his authorization on your locks that he will just teleport himself right into your place, and you’ll be endlessly cleaning up feathers. And you also really don’t want your neighbors to wonder who the hell the creep is loitering around your door at all hours of the night and then start asking questions if he actually honors your request not to simply appear in your place on a whim. You did previously offer him a key. Which he declined. Apparently because he was already planning this. You run your hand along the back of your neck in an effort to relieve some tension. “You can’t just let yourself into my place anytime you want. There need to be rules.”

“Fair enough. Provided that they’re not moronic, I can follow your rules.”

“And who decides whether they’re moronic or not?” you ask, knowing the answer.

He just smiles at you, radiating satisfaction.

“Okay. Rule number one—” you begin, only to be interrupted as he lifts a finger.

“I’ll follow your rules, if you promise to taste the wine I brought with me tonight.”

Even though you had already resigned yourself to whatever he had in store for you tonight, you can’t help arguing at this little added condition. “No, the deal is, you can use my flat, with your fingerprint, when you need it, if you follow the rules,” you huff.

He starts shaking his head. “I’m afraid not, kitten. You should have set rules at the beginning of our deal. You can’t just impose new conditions halfway through. A deal’s a deal. I suggest keeping that in mind the next time you have to deal with anyone else less… generous, than myself,” he intones, as if you’re a somewhat lacking student in need of instruction.

“So you’ll follow the rules if I promise to… taste wine tonight?” you ask, hoping that you can catch him out on a technicality and beat him at his own game. He considers for a moment, but must see something in your expression, because his eyes narrow and his smile widens to reveal his sharp canines.

“I’ll follow your reasonable, and not moronic, rules if you promise to taste the wine I brought tonight, with me,” he says.

You need to work on your poker face. You need to get Sylus to teach you how to improve it. Ugh.

“Fine.” If this means more food can happen soon, and honestly, yeah, a glass of wine, you’ll accept anything at this point.

He straightens from the counter and claps his hands once, looking more eager than you think you’ve ever seen him. “Excellent, let’s begin.”

“You didn’t even wait to hear what the rules are,” you protest, watching him fish out a wine corkscrew from his trouser pocket. It looks heavy, with a handsome wooden handle, and the stainless steel flashes under the soft lights.

“Send them in a text, I’ll redline them and return them to you, you can counter, and so on and so forth until we have an agreement. Like any proper contract negotiation. For now, it’s wine time.”

And with that, he sets to work opening the wine, humming a little tune so off-key that you have no idea what melody it’s supposed to be. It occurs to you that you’ve never used a corkscrew as a weapon, but as Sylus uses the small blade to slice through the foil covering the neck of the bottle, and then unfolds the lethal-looking twisted screw and begins expertly driving it into the cork, you realize that it could come in really handy in a fight. And there’s something else that’s really appealing to you—the combination of the contained savagery of the corkscrew, the assured movements of Sylus’s hands, the penetration of the cork—you feel a warmth spreading through you that has nothing to do with the sweater you’re wearing.

“See something you like, kitten?” Sylus’s smoky voice drifts into your thoughts, and you look up, realizing you’ve been unabashedly staring at his beautiful hands, again, and the corkscrew, with undivided focus for the past few moments, and he has noticed.

You clear your throat, and then gesture weakly at the corkscrew. “That’s uh, a very nice looking wine opener.” You nod to emphasize your very normal approval of this very normal household item, because you are not thinking any thoughts about Sylus’s huge hands or screwing or penetration. None.

“Good eye. I’m rather fond of this model. I’ll have one delivered to you,” he says as he firmly pulls the cork from the bottle with a soft pop. He sets it on the counter, and picks up the other bottle.

“Oh, that’s not necessary. I’m sure it didn’t escape your notice that the kind of wine I drink tends to come with a screw cap instead of a cork,” you decline, shaking your head. You can buy your own damn self a corkscrew for tucking into your pocket if you ever find yourself at a wine bar that doesn’t allow patrons to be armed, but you anticipate needing some kind of weapon.

“Refuse me all you want,” he murmurs, and you feel like there’s an implied part of that sentence that he’s just not saying out loud. But then he’s repeating the opening process with the second bottle, and you suddenly find the night view outside your window immensely fascinating, because whatever is continuing to happen in front of you is just. Boring. Utterly sleep-inducing. You can’t look or else you might just pass out from the tedium of it before you even get to taste the wine. And a deal’s a deal, as Sylus is fond of repeating ad nauseum.

After hearing the soft pop of the other bottle, you sigh and turn back to find Sylus holding the wine glass and pouring the first bottle’s wine along the inside of the glass until it reaches the widest part of the bowl. For the first time, you notice that there’s only one glass on the counter. But before you can comment, Sylus begins to lecture.

“Now, if this were an ideal tasting, I’d have brought a decanter to let the wine breathe properly for an appropriate period of time before pouring. We'd also be using a container for spitting each mouthful out in between tastes, to avoid the intoxication and poor decisions I mentioned earlier and interfering with our judge of taste. But since we only have two bottles to try, and it’s just you and me here, I took the gamble that you wouldn’t mind if we were a little less formal.”  

You wait to see if he has any other fun facts to share, but he’s looking at you to confirm that indeed, you can live with not waiting even longer to taste this wine that better have gold leaf flakes in it or something to justify this amount of ceremony and can also live with not… spitting out said wonder wine after tasting it.

But you recognize that Sylus appears to be truly passionate about this, and he’s looking at you so earnestly—you do not have the heart to meet his sincerity with sarcasm, when he's so sweetly trying to teach you something new.

“Your gamble paid off. I don’t mind at all,”  you say, meaning it. He perks up and gives you one of his almost smiles, with just the corners of his generous mouth lifted. He then proceeds to explain, in great detail, what type of wine this is, where the grapes for it are grown, its signature characteristics, what year it was bottled, and how it was received by the international wine community. It’s all actually quite interesting, except once again, right now you’re at the end of a long day, you’ve run the gauntlet of interacting with this unpredictable force of nature walking around in the body of an extremely attractive man, and you feel like you should be taking notes to actually retain any of this information.

After he seems to have informed you to his satisfaction and is looking at you expectantly, you nod. “That is… very fascinating. So how do we go about actually tasting it?” You might be an uncultured heathen, but even before Sylus’s lecture, you knew there are rules when it comes to tasting wine. You just always had other things you needed to learn first, like the weakest spots on a wanderer or human body. Or the best method of sharpening knives for the sharpest edge. Or how to clean guns to prevent jamming. How to affix a scope on a sniper rifle and measure the effect of wind speed and direction on a bullet’s trajectory. Or whether you should use baking soda or baking powder as leavener when baking certain kinds of cake. You have priorities. But tonight, it seems, is the night for you to learn about wine.

Before he answers, he moves around the kitchen island to where you’re still seated on the bar stool and leans down, gently spinning your stool so that you’re facing him instead of the counter. He then pushes the one next to you closer and seats himself. Even sitting, you have to look up into his face. You suddenly realize that the way he has positioned the stools puts him so close to you that his long legs don’t have anywhere to go—he just spreads them so that one is stretched out on one side of you, and the other is between your own, his knee incredibly close to your lap. If you shift forward even a little, you could grind on him.

Why is he doing this to you? What does he want? But then it occurs to you that Sylus has never seemed to either recognize or respect boundaries like a normal person—maybe this is just how he interacts with his friends. Constant, small touches, no sense of personal space. You wonder if he and the twins huddle together on the couch, sharing a blanket, while watching something on television.

So maybe you’re the freak, imagining riding this poor guy’s meaty thigh when he’s only just trying to share his appreciation of a sophisticated beverage with you. You close your eyes. It doesn’t matter whether he’s playing this little game on purpose or not. You refuse to let him see how much his proximity is affecting you, because then he wins. You don’t know what he wins exactly, but you will beat him before you let him have it. You try to think about his big hand choking you, but instead of having the intended effect of reminding you why you should never even consider buying tickets to the safety hazard now wedged between your thighs, it has … unforeseen consequences instead. What has this man done to you?!

You open your eyes, reach across the counter and grab a handful of carefully cut pieces of cheese, and then promptly stuff them all into your mouth at once. When in crisis, cheese is always a good solution. Except for maybe the blue cheese you accidentally mixed in with the Manchego or whatever-the-fancy-fuck he brought with him. Aaaand now you’re going to smell like blue cheese for the rest of the night.

You stare at him defiantly as you chew with puffed cheeks, and brace yourself for whatever is coming next. He side eyes you, face impassive.

You’re expecting some biting comment, but “Well, that’s one way to make sure you’ve eaten enough to absorb the alcohol,” is all he says. He slowly slides the glass with two fingers along the base across the counter until it’s sitting between the two of you. “Whenever you manage to finish inhaling all that dairy, we’ll be sure that we’ve given the wine enough time to breathe.” He pauses. “It occurs to me now that while I was preparing the food, I didn’t think to ask if you’re lactose intolerant.”

You deliberately chew as slowly as you can, making him wait as a punishment for making you feel things that you should not be feeling. When you’ve swallowed, you shake your head. “Fortunately, not one of my many flaws.”

“It’s not a flaw.” He shrugs. “How can anything you can’t control about your body be a flaw? And Luke and Kieran are lactose intolerant, so I always have lactase enzyme tablets on me to avoid… unwanted consequences when they decide to have a cheese tasting contest.”

You cock your head. “A what now?”

 He rubs his middle finger between his eyebrows. “Yeah, they can’t help themselves from making a competition out of every single human activity, so on the nights the chef prepares a cheese board with dinner, they try to outmatch each other regarding who can identify the most flavors of cheeses without cheating by asking the chef or querying Mephisto or searching online. Or asking me, because I’m undefeated.”

You stare at him, and think if there’s ever any universe in which you voluntarily return to the base where Sylus kept you captive for days and touched you like he owned you, hand violently clasped in his, where you were terrified for your life, exhausted and confused… and if you ever have a friendly enough relationship with the chaos twins, you’re going to practice your ass off so that if you’re ever invited to such a competition, you can wipe the floor with them. Their cheese-off sounds fun.

Your train of thought is derailed as it registers how smug the last thing he said was. “You’re undefeated,” you repeat, giving him a chance to redeem himself. “At identifying cheeses by taste.”

“And smell, yes. So I’m not allowed to play anymore. My palate is too refined, and they know they don’t stand a chance.”

Oh, you’re definitely going to start sampling cheese every week. You cannot let this smugness stand.

“Ah yes, his royal snobness and his impeachable palate,” you roll your eyes. “Now, will his grace the Duke of Gouda please get on with the wine instruction?” You would give him a little mock bow, but that would put your face right in his formidable cleavage and you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from motorboating his unfairly huge pecs. Ugh.

He snorts. “Finally, you’re showing me some long-overdue respect.”

You nod gravely, thankful that the aether core in his eye is not currently delving the depths of your depravity. It’s time to focus. On wine.

“So why do you have to let wine breathe before drinking it?” you ask, because you’re focused.

He looks pleased that you’re interested enough to ask a question. “Much like people, it’s good to expose a greater surface area of the wine to fresh air for a while—it allows undesirable scents and flavors to dissipate, so that it tastes better when you do take a sip than if you drink it straight after opening.”

“Well aren’t you wise, philosophizing about wine and people,” you smile. You find yourself being surprised again and again tonight—at his presence, his bearing gifts, his surprisingly sweet attempt to teach you something, his kind takes on lactose intolerance and what people need to be healthy.

“Did you think I only consist of feathers and spite?” He lifts the wine glass by the stem with one hand, and your hand in his other. He gently wraps your fingers around his own.

“Let’s not forget hubris and violence.” You watch as he gently swirls the wine in the glass held between you. His hand is so warm compared to your own.

“If that’s all, then you still have a lot to learn about me,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t seem offended. Almost as if he’s simply determined. To do what, you’re not sure. “I’d tell you that you should always hold a wine glass by the stem so that the heat from your hand doesn’t affect the temperature of the wine through the glass itself. But your hands are so cold—I don’t think that would be a problem for you. But if you want people to think you’re a connoisseur, you should anyway if you’re ever on an undercover mission. Now, before you take a sip, inhale the scent we’ve just released by swirling the wine.”

You do as you’re told, and lean over, hovering just over the edge of the glass and taking a deep breath. The scent of the wine, warm and deep, fills your senses.

You look up at him and smile again. “It smells really good.”

“Of course,” he lifts the bottom of the glass with his free hand so that you can straighten, and guides your other hand to support the glass while slipping his own from around the stem and allowing you to hold it by yourself. Your hand immediately feels cold again. He leans one elbow on the counter, “I chose it for you. I’m not going to let you drink plonk.”

“Plonk?” What a cute word.

“Shit wine.”

“Mmm, not allowing me to drink shit wine, you’re truly a knight in shining armor.”

“I don’t need armor, kitten. Now that you’ve established that the wine hasn’t gone off by smelling it, you can take a sip.”

You’re about to lift the glass to your lips, when he reaches up and runs his fingertips along your wrist to stop you. “As you do, don’t swallow immediately. Roll the wine with your tongue in your mouth, and try to really think about what flavors you can taste: can you detect the oak from the barrels, earth, tannin, fruit or spices? Is it sweet or dry?”

You nod, mouth suddenly dry. But you follow his instructions and take a slow sip, rolling the rich liquid around in your mouth, and then slowly swallow. A familiar warmth spreads from your stomach, radiating out through your body. His blood bright eyes follow the movement of your lips, your throat. “I taste… fruit.” You pause, trying to appear very serious about finding the perfect description of flavor. You take another sip, close your eyes. “Yes, very fruity notes. Grapes, in particular.”

You open your eyes to find him scowling at you.

“Aren’t you the comedian?” he growls. “I’m going to revoke your wine privileges if you don’t take this seriously. How are you going to feel confident if you ever need this knowledge on a mission? Or on a date?”

You just laugh at him and try to turn a little on the stool, lifting your arm to keep the glass out of his reach, but his knee between your legs prevents you from moving, and he easily leans forward, fingers drifting up the length of your arm to then wrap around your own hand on the stem. He carefully pulls it back between the two of you. Your hand feels warm again. Safely wrapped in his.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned my needing to know how to pass as a wine snob on a mission. What kind of missions do you think I’m regularly going on?” You gently lift the glass again, pulling his hand with you, and take another sip. It really does taste so good. You can’t tell if it’s wildly different than the wine you normally get, but you know it doesn’t taste like it’ll leave you with a headache in the morning.

He shrugs. “If we didn’t have to bring the place down when we were at the auction, people would have been watching you at the dinner banquet. What would you have done if people started to notice that you were clutching the wine and swigging it like a drunken toddler and started to suspect that your behavior wasn't matching your cover identity?”

You gasp. “Excuse me, you don’t know how I normally drink my wine!” Who does this bastard think he is? And here you were, thinking he was sweet, sincerely trying to share one of his interests with you. “I don’t need you patronizing me regarding how I’d manage at a formal event or on a date! I’ve been on plenty of dates where I was able to drink wine without driving off my partner.” You try to pull away from him, and the wine sloshes dangerously with your movement.

“Sit still,” he commands, holding your hand tight with his and placing one large palm on your bare thigh. You immediately freeze. “I watched you gulp wine from a mug the last time I was here,” he retorts.

“So you think that just because I don’t care what you think, I can’t read the room and act according to the demands of the situation?” The indignation coursing through you is amplified by the wine spreading through you.

“Then is it fair to say that you didn’t feel the need for any pretense between us last time because you’re so comfortable with me, and not because you’re as civilized as a cactus?” he asks, running his thumb gently back and forth along your inner thigh.

Your brain is being scrambled by his thumb, how close he is to you, his clavicle exposed by the V of his sweater’s neckline, the scent of his warm, clean skin, the wine going to your head after a long exhausting day.

“I’m saying I don’t feel the need to impress you in my own home when you show up uninvited and demand beverages and band aids,” you finally manage. You’re warm. Too warm. “And what’s wrong with being a cactus?”

“Did I say there was something wrong with it? Cacti can survive the harshest conditions on earth and still produce the most beautiful flowers. And they hurt when they stab you.” He smiles like the thought pleases him immensely.

You can’t process this. He says shit like this so easily—he can’t possibly mean it in the way you are trying so hard to deny that you want him to mean it. You refuse to be lured in, only to see the cruel lines of his face when he realizes you have pathetic feelings for him. The man who could as easily rip your spine from your ribcage as offer you a glass of wine, if you lose your usefulness to him. A usefulness you still don’t know the nature of.

You’re suddenly viciously aware of how close he is to you, how he is watching your face with an intensity that makes you feel like the use of his aether core is unnecessary: you’re afraid that he can see everything you’re feeling, and you hate it. You need space. “What are we even doing, Sylus?”

His eyes drift from your eyes to your mouth, and you try very hard to steel your expression, to conceal how utterly raw and exposed he’s making you feel. You can’t tell if you’re successful, when he finally lifts his hand from your thigh and runs the back of his knuckles with such softness along your cheek that it makes you ache. You resist the urge to turn your face and nuzzle his palm.

“We’re tasting wine, sweetheart.” He leans back, pulling the glass of wine you’re still holding with him. He inhales deeply, and then takes a sip, eyes glittering over the rim, watching you. “It is a good vintage. But it’s not the only one I brought.” He guides your joined hands to set the glass on the counter, and then gets up, rounding the counter to rummage in a bag on the floor on the other side. When he stands up, he’s holding another wine glass.

You do a double take. “You brought two glasses?”

He looks from you to the glass in his hand, then back to the glass still on the counter, and then lifts his eyebrows. “Is this a trick question?”

“Why haven’t we been drinking about of separate glasses then?” you demand.

He shrugs. “That glass is for that bottle,” he nods to the glass sitting next to you. “This glass is for this bottle.” He gestures at the other, untasted bottle sitting on the counter. “No need to rinse our glasses in between tastes.”

You want to laugh, and cry. You’re so fucking done with thinking for tonight.

“Okay, Sylus. Whatever you say,” you sigh.

“Oh, I quite like the sound of that,” he smiles, one canine peeking over his lip. “Then you’re going to enjoy the sorbet I brought for us as a palate cleanser.”

He proceeds to go to your freezer, scoop out some of the aforementioned sorbet that has apparently been in there all evening into a bowl, and takes the stool next to you again. This time, he situates one long leg on either side of you, caging you in. He takes a spoonful and offers it to you. “This will help rinse your palate so that you can taste the next bottle without any lingering effects of the other.”

You look from his seemingly guileless face to the spoonful of sorbet. Yup, you’re really done thinking for tonight. You lean forward and open your lips. He slips the lemon sorbet into your mouth. His eyes remain on your lips as he pulls the spoon away, dips it back into the sorbet, and brings it to his own mouth.

After he continues to trade spoonfuls with you until the sorbet is gone, he pours the second glass of wine, and you both take turns sipping it in companionable silence.

“Now tell me. Which one is your favorite?” he asks after you’ve finished the second glass, and return to the first to finish it as well.

“I like them both,” you shrug. “Sorry for not having a more sophisticated answer.” You’re feeling drowsy and loose. He can walk off a tall building for all you care if he doesn’t like your answer.

“They’re both excellent wines. Each one is suited for multiple situations or meal combinations. They’re versatile, just like you are. And I don’t require any particular answer, except your honest one. I think you already know that you don’t need to put on an act for me, ever.”

You rest your elbow on the counter, mirroring his position, and rest your head in your hand. “Why would I pretend with you, if you can just force the truth out of me?”

“I will never do that to you.”

You look away. “You’ve already done it to me once before. What else is there to hide, when you’ve seen the ugliest parts of me?”

“I will not do it again. Not unless you ask me to,” he says so solemnly that you’re tempted to be a fool and believe him. “And is that what you think? That what I saw was ugly?”

You sit up, take the glass from him and knock back the rest of the wine in one gulp. You can't do this right now. You can't think about the the violent hunger, the savage thirst, that his eye brought from the depths of your soul when he forced his way into your deepest, darkest desires the night you met. The extent of how much you wanted to kill him, and make it hurt, when you thought he had killed Caleb and your grandmother. How you still feel that hunger and rage, with every wanderer you kill, every time you hope some dealer in modified protocores resists arrest so you can put them down, with prejudice.

“I’m tired, Sylus. Thank you for the lesson. Now I can successfully fool rich assholes at upscale dens of corruption and unsuspecting dates into believing that I’m a sophisticated connoisseur of overpriced beverages, and swindle them all. And I’ll never horrify you again by swigging wine out of a mug like a drunken toddler. You should invoice the Association for your services. In the meantime, I’m going to try to get some sleep.”

“I see. You’re still on guard, and defensive, when you're drunk too. How fascinating.” He narrows his eyes, not seeming to get the hint that you want him to leave now.

“I’m not drunk. I’m maybe tipsy, and I’m fucking tired. I’m going to bed.”

“All right,” he says easily. He stands and begins tidying up the counter.

“All right,” you repeat, feeling a little dizzy, a little empty. “You know where the door is.”

“As you say,” he says serenely, pulling out food storage containers you also didn’t realize you own and packing the food away.

“Thanks again,” you say, because you are polite, dammit. You make your way into the bathroom and begin getting ready for bed. When you emerge, your flat is dark. The kitchen looks pristine in the streetlight drifting in through the windows. You stare for a moment longer, wondering if maybe he’s finally given up on whatever his agenda with you is after your little emotional display tonight, and he’ll stop coming by now. You’re fine with that. Maybe this is what you’ve needed to do all along. Get drunk and sloppy. Guarded, defensive, he called you. What an asshole.

You pad into the bedroom, yawning, pulling up your phone to look at it as you walk. Maybe you should try listening to audiobooks to try to help with the insomnia. Like, boring ones with deep, sexy voiced narrators who can bore you to sleep like Sylus did the other night. You crawl onto the bed, and then—

“The fuck, Sylus?”

He’s sitting in the middle of your bed, sweater off and replaced by… nothing. Just the expanse of his big, creamy chest. And he’s wearing a pair of silky looking loose, black pyjama pants. An impossibly soft looking line of silver hair drifts from his tight navel, disappearing under his waistband. His gold-rimmed glasses are perched on his nose, like last time, and he’s scrolling through something on his tablet. He glances up at you, but then goes back to his… spreadsheets?

“Haven’t we already been through that little routine tonight?” he asks, and yawns. “I’m getting déjà vu.”

“What. Are. You. Doing?” you seethe.

“Going over the financials from the meeting with my accountant today.”

“Why?” You just sit there on your knees, on your bed, gaping at him like an idiot.

“To ensure that my next acquisition is suited to purpose.”

“What?”

His gaze flicks to you, and he pushes the glasses further up his nose. “Well, I made a promise that I wouldn’t change a thing about my latest business venture, so now I need to ensure that the next chain of businesses I acquire can serve one of the functions I had intended for the arcades.”

“What function is that?” you ask, curious now, despite yourself.

“Well, one of two primary functions,” he amends, tapping his temple thoughtfully with a finger.

“Okay,” you say slowly, inviting him to continue.

“Money laundering.”

You shake your head. “Come again?”

“Oh, I’ll be happy to. Thank you for the invitation. I wasn’t sure I’d ever receive one again, what with your heavily implied dismissal earlier.”

“Sylus!”

“Yes, my most precious gem?”

“What do you mean you intended to use the arcades for money laundering?” You want to cry even thinking about it.

“To be fair, after you asked me so sweetly not to change a thing, I immediately agreed. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“But that’s why you wanted to buy them?” How many times can a heart hurt in one night?

“I said that was one of the two primary reasons I wanted those arcades,” he says, reaching out with one hand and softly stroking your knee.

You look down, watching his calloused fingers drifting so sweetly across your skin. How can this man be so cruel and so gentle at the same time?

“What was the other reason, then?”

“Guess.”

“I’m done playing games with you tonight, Sylus.”

“When was I playing a game tonight?”

“Fine, don’t tell me. Just promise again that you won’t change anything about my favorite arcade.”

He sets the tablet on his lap, and reaches over to grasp your hand. He links your pinkie with his, and lifts it to his lips. “I already promised. And I promise again.” He seals the promise with a brush of his lips, and then rests both of your hands on the bed between you.

You don’t know why, and you will probably never know why, but you believe him right now. It’s clear that no matter what you do, he will not be leaving tonight without great violence on your part, and once again, you’re just too tired to fight him anymore. He reads your body like a damn book, because he silently hands you the glass of water that was sitting next to him on the nightstand. "Even if you're not drunk, but only maybe just a little tipsy," he says, doing an awful imitation of your voice. "You should still drink some water so you don't feel terrible in the morning."

Perhaps because of your easy compliance with his reasonable advice by simply taking the water and drinking it, he seems to deem it safe to pull you into his side. You go down, resting your head on his thick shoulder, and let your gaze wander over his tablet.

“So what are you thinking of buying this time?” you ask, yawning.

 He shifts, lifting your head so that he can wrap his arm around you, repositioning you so that you’re tucked a little closer under his chin, cheek resting against his chest. “A chain of casinos.”

“Casinos?” you laugh softly. “That’s on brand, I guess.”

“Mmhmm.” He runs his fingertips absently along your arm, from wrist to elbow and back again. “Lots of money changing hands. Ideal for functioning as a washing machine for the dirty proceeds from the weapons business, which comes out clean in the pockets of lucky winners.”

“You make your living profiting off the worst in people, you know that?” you ask sleepily, the numbers on the screen blurring.

“They’ll continue being terrible, with or without my involvement. I don’t make them take the bet, or pull the trigger. And if I don't, someone else will put the chip or gun in their hands. Might as well be me collecting the paycheck.”

“Maybe, through the power of friendship, I can change your mind,” you murmur. You don’t think you’ll need that audiobook to fall asleep tonight.

“Friendship, huh?” Sylus asks, but when he looks down at you, he sees that you’ve already fallen asleep. He traces the long sweep of your eyelashes across your cheeks with his eyes, feels your measured, calm breath drifting across his skin. He gently touches one finger to the ruby earring you haven’t taken out yet. The thrill of satisfaction he felt when you answered the door still wearing it would sustain him for weeks. He is absolutely certain that it won’t be the power of friendship that’s going to change him.

He pulls you a little closer into his chest, snorts when he feels you begin to drool onto his pec, and continues scrolling through his tablet.

That night, you dream. You’re walking through your childhood home—but not your childhood home from before your memories, because you will never know what that home looked like. This one, the home from your earliest memories, with its wood panelling on the walls, old-fashioned lace curtains in the windows that you can’t see out of, because it’s pitch black beyond the glass. Hallways lengthening at the same pace as you can walk down them, boots echoing on the polished hardwood floor. You walk and walk, and you can never reach the end. Doors that won’t open, but you know Caleb might be behind them, because in your dream logic, his bedroom is behind every door you pass. You turn the handles, but they remain locked. Sometimes you think you can hear the sound of someone biting into an apple, crisp flesh giving way to sharp teeth, but the door won’t open no matter how hard you throw yourself against it. You hear your grandmother speaking, just around every corner, but you can’t understand what she’s saying. You follow the sound, and every time you think that she’s just around the next turn in the hall, the corridor stretches in front of you again, empty.

You have been in this empty house for years now, and you’re afraid that you’ll never be able to get out. But you’re more afraid that once you get out, you’ll never hear them making these particular sounds again, this slim proof of their existence echoing through the empty hallways.

Slowly, you wake up, and in that endless moment caught between your dream and reality, it’s just peaceful and black—you are coming from somewhere so far away toward something you know will hurt, and you’re not ready to feel that yet. But then a feeling of suffocation is overwhelming you, and you open your eyes to realize you’re literally being smothered by a very big, very warm body.

The relief you feel, the gratitude, that Sylus is still here, that you aren’t waking up alone, again, from the nightmare in your sleep to the reality that the nightmare is real, and you’ll never be able to see your family again, is more overwhelming than your current need for oxygen. Sylus is still here, and the yawning emptiness you were carrying with you for what felt like years during that long dream dissipates in the warmth of his body against yours. You can’t help yourself. Your throw your arm that isn’t being crushed by him over his torso and hug him tightly to you, giving in to the urge to nuzzle his chest and just listen to his steady heartbeat.

You lie like that for awhile, blissfully listening to his soft breathing, when suddenly you realize that pressed so close to him, you can feel every contour of his body, from your chest against his abdomen, his muscular, silk-covered thigh wedged between your legs, and his apparently very, very big dick pressing into your hip.

You freeze, feeling like the creep you have accused him several times of being. He’s just sleeping, and you’ve plastered yourself against him like a vacuum sealed burrito. You have absolutely no business being utterly thrilled that this part of him matches the rest of him in terms of size and intimidation. You will not be taking this joy stick for a test drive. You can get out of this. You’re a very good hunter, and you can evade detection and make a tactical retreat when necessary. And it’s very necessary right now, because you do not want him to wake up and find you attached to him like a love-sick leech.

Slowly, sooo slowly, you slide your arm from where it is slung over his waist, and begin to incrementally scooch backwards, his leg slipping from between both of yours, freezing when he seems to shift a little, and then continuing the slow slide away when he settles again.

You’ve managed to extricate all of your limbs from him, except the one that is currently numb and squashed underneath him. You slowly roll onto your back and contemplate how you’re going to get it out from under him without waking him, when suddenly his arm flops over your waist. You jerk in surprise, eyes flying to his face, but his are still closed. His hand slides from your waist to your hip, and then snakes around to take a big handful of your ass. He makes a little happy noise and then pulls your body into his again. In the process, he has managed to jam his thigh back between your legs. You stare at his face, trying desperately to see if he’s starting to wake yet—how did you even end up in this situation? Then he pulls you even closer, causing his thigh to press deliciously against you. You suppress a whine, because it has been so long since someone has touched you liked this. But of course the person who is touching you is a maniac and is doing so while still asleep. You reach up and pat his cheek to wake him up, simultaneously trying to to pull away from him, but tightens his arms around you again, dipping his head to your shoulder still exposed by his too-big sweater.  You freeze in shock as he inhales deeply and hums, and soft kisses trail from your neck down, and before you can push him away he bites into the meat of your shoulder. The pain, pressure, and warmth of his mouth on your skin have you trying to arch away and into him—you do whine this time, loudly, because it hurts but you want.

Suddenly, his whole body seems to tense. The pressure on your shoulder eases, and he sighs, his breath cool drifting along your over-heated skin.

“Good morning.”

You open your eyes, realizing you’d been squeezing them shut through the last few moments, and meet his sleepy gaze.

"Were you awake?” you demand, terrified of the answer. Because if he was, then what the hell was he thinking, pretending to be asleep? And if he wasn't, was he just dreaming? Was it you in his dream, or was he dreaming of someone else? You don't want to know. You have to know.

“Your rather loud response to my love bite woke me up, I think,” he smiles softly. "I didn't realize that I was... dreaming until then."

“So you didn’t mean to—” you start to pull away.

He tightens his arm around your waist. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Sylus, let go. I’m sorry for not waking you fast enough. I was just—I was just shocked. I know you wouldn’t have done that otherwise.” You struggle, but his arm is a steel bar holding you in place.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t have,” he agrees, and you feel whatever fragile, tender root that had been growing in the cracks of your broken heart wither, the dry husk drifting away in an autumn breeze. Replacing that faint feeling of hope, you're livid that you do not share the same teleportation ability that Xavier and Sylus have. If you could, you'd teleport in a poof of glittering light or melodramatic feathers. To anywhere else but here.

You nod, and nod, and nod, because he’s not letting you move but you have to do something or else he’ll see it right on your stupid, open face, and you’d rather he slit your throat than see the pain his rejection is inflicting on you. You had lied to him earlier, about not having anything to hide, about always being honest with him. You've been lying to yourself, and to him, ever since you met him.

“What I mean—” he’s looking at you intently, and you want to cover his eyes with your hands, because as always they’re seeing too much, but suddenly, the doorbell rings through your flat.

You both turn your heads to look at the bedroom door at the same time.

Oh. Fuck.

Xavier.

Sylus turns to look back at you, so close that his nose brushes yours. “Expecting company, kitten?”

“It’s Xavier. Shit.” You try to roll away, and this time he lets you. You grab your phone off the nightstand and see that Xavier has already texted you a few times to see if you’re ready to head to the bookstore yet. The texts grow increasingly concerned the longer you don’t respond. The doorbell rings again. “You have to go. Now.”

You turn to Sylus, who is now lying leisurely on his side, head propped up in his hand, silky silver hair cascading across his forehead, occupying the bed like an imperialist force annexing a weaker neighbor’s territory, with no intention of leaving.

“And what are you going to do?” he asks, eyes drifting from your face, to your shoulder, down to your bare legs.

“I need to answer the door and tell Xavier that I’m running late.”

“Late for what?”

“Sylus, I don’t have time for this. You can’t be here. Xavier helped me get into the N109 zone, he spends a lot of time there—he’s smart enough that if he finds out what you look like, he might eventually be able to figure out who you are. You can’t be here,” you repeat, starting to panic. Sylus may not have any feelings for you beyond friendship or a predator toying with its food, but you still don’t want him to get caught because of you.

“You’re not working today. What plans do you have with him?” he asks, completely ignoring your distress.

“We’re going to the bookstore. We were going to spend our first day free just reading manga and eating junk food,” you rush out impatiently.

Sylus just looks at you for a few beats, the picture of lazy boredom on a weekend morning.

“Okay? Are you satisfied? Can you please leave now?” This is good. You can avoid the inevitable, It was a mistake, thought you were someone else, was dreaming about a giant amorous anthropomorphized ruby, you’re not exactly my type, because my type is someone who has their shit together, can identify what fucking region a certain grape was grown in and its exact soil acidity based on the year of the vintage, my type is someone else, anyone else—you reach down and hit yourself hard in the side of your thigh with a fist to get your head on straight, and start heading to your closet, intent on throwing on a robe or longer shorts so that you don't answer the door looking like you're not wearing any pants.

Sylus's irritated voice follows you. “Satisfied? No, I'm not feeling satisfied. But I would advise against answering the door wearing that.”

You jerk to a halt. “Excuse me?” You turn to find him scowling at you.

He waves a dismissive finger at the sweater and silk shirts you’re still wearing. “I think you should change before you answer the door.”

“I look that bad, huh? Thanks for the advice. You need to be gone when I get back.” You turn, hating everything and everyone, and make your way to the front door.

You throw it open, just as Xavier is lifting his hand to ring your bell again. His sky blue eyes, usually so calm and sleepy, widen when he takes in the dumpster fire that you are today.

“Hi, yeah, sorry. I overslept,” you rush out, hoping you can skip this part and go straight to the moving on with your day and your entire life part. “I just need like, fifteen minutes, and then I’ll be ready.”

“Did you get in a fight with a wanderer last night after we go home?” he asks, hand lifting again, this time toward you, as if he wants to touch you, but then thinks better of it and drops it back to his side. He’s wearing the white hoodie that Sylus stole from him. What even is your life right now?

“What? No, I just had some wine and was really tired.” He’s staring at you, brow furrowed now, and it takes a minute to realize that he’s staring at the sweater hanging off your shoulder. You suddenly get a really, really bad feeling. “Why?”

He lifts his hand again, and points, but in a kind of timid way, like a little kid who knows that it’s rude to point but can’t help himself anyway so just points a little so that his mom won’t get mad at him. “It looks like a wanderer bit you.”

You lift your own hand and touch your shoulder, and feel the too-warm skin there, the ache spreading deep into the muscle.

“Oooh, yeah. Yes.” You decide that you need to take acting classes. That is what you will do as your new hobby, on your few days off. You’re going to win the best actor award if it kills you, because if it doesn’t kill you, the embarrassment will kill you instead. And you’d rather die convincing everyone that everything is normal and you’re fine, and not from the embarrassment of the fact that your not-boyfriend, not-fuck-buddy, not-interested-at-all, probably not even your friend anymore Sylus accidentally bit you while fucking asleep and left evidence of it for all the world to see. “I did respond to a really minor alert in the neighborhood last night. It was only one wanderer. Hiding in a trash can of all places,” you laugh, not at all sounding unhinged. Convincing. “Bit me pretty good, but it really was nothing, I had completely forgotten about it. So, still on for the bookstore?” you ask, chipper, eager, well-adjusted!

Xavier stares at your shoulder for a few seconds longer, and then just nods. “Yeah, just text me when you’re ready.”

Bless him. You’ve almost put him back to sleep with your absolutely stellar performance. “Okay, great! See you soon.” You back into your flat again and let the door shut with a heavy click.

Xavier stands outside your door for several moments after you’ve scurried back inside. He thinks about how sharp his light blade is. He thinks about how he’s going to use it on whatever motherfucker thinks that he has the right to mark Xavier’s partner like an animal. And then he yawns, and meanders back to his own flat to wait for your text because he has all the time in the world, and the patience to match it. Xavier is your partner, and he’s not going anywhere, anytime soon. If he murders whatever asshole was in your flat last night right now, that might interfere with your bookstore plans with him.

You stand on the other side of the door for a moment, just trying to collect yourself. You lean against the cool surface, look up at your ceiling. Breathe in the smell of shoe leather, oiled metal. Absently you lift your hand to your shoulder. Why didn’t Sylus warn you before you went to open the door? He even admitted that he wouldn’t have … done that to you if he hadn’t been asleep. Why would he just… and then it hits you. He did tell you to change clothes before you answered the door. The asshole just didn’t tell you why. But he would know by now that you’d actually do the opposite of whatever he says, because he’s not the boss of you. He played you like one of his fucking records.

But why the fuck would he want Xavier to see what happened between the two of you? Does he enjoy your humiliation that much?

You have no idea if you’ll ever have the chance to figure him out, especially if he got the hint that you don’t want to see him anytime soon. You shake your head. Even though you should be exhausted after staying up so late and ending up on the human embodiment of a roller coaster with its wheels coming off despite all of your promises to yourself last night, you feel well-rested. You will survive this. You can survive anything.

You head back to your bedroom to confirm that Sylus is actually gone, because last night proved that whether he actually listens when you tell him to leave depends entirely on his own whims. As you enter, the late morning sunlight spills into the room. He really left. The room is empty. The books and various weapons on your nightstands have been stacked neatly and lined up just so. The clothes that had been left haphazardly hanging off your chest of drawer handles or strewn over the floor are nowhere to be seen. It would be the tidiest your bedroom has been in weeks, if not for the fact that your entire bed is covered in a thick layer of black feathers.

“This bitch,” you breathe.

It’s going to take at least two full size trash bags to clean this mess up.

You decide then and there that Sylus doesn’t have a choice about whether he’s going to see you again. You’re going to bag up these feathers and then tar and feather him with them the next time you see his gorgeous, petty fucking face.

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 7,252 (oof, this one got long!) Pairing: Negan Smith x Reader Reader pronouns: largely unspecified (but Negan does refer to reader as doll and darling which could be considered more feminine terms of endearment) Warnings: language haha, frightening scenarios, references to past violence Summary: Months have now passed since Y/N began taking on Negan as a "project" and the reader suggests an even longer run outside the walls. A/N: This is part of a series! Find all the parts on the Negan Master List. Previous Part here! “It’s been months,” you said. “There hasn’t been a single time that I’ve felt unsafe, and both of you know I never let my guard down.”

Daryl was leaning up against the wall beside the door, his arms crossed over his chest. His expression was serious but largely unreadable. Michonne leaned forward on the table, considering your words.

“We need to think long-term here. Are we just going to keep him locked up forever? Or is there some version of this where he gets out and either integrates as much as possible or—or goes on his way?”

Michonne sighed and shook her head. “I’m not sure any of us have the answer to that yet,” she said.

“I know. I still don’t,” you said. “I’m not sure what the future looks like for him, but I know we have to do more than just letting him out to pick tomatoes every once in a while. So, that’s what I’m doing. And with you two stuck here dealing with the wall and the kids—and the pantry and medical supplies starting to run low, well… let’s kill two birds with one stone.”

Daryl sighed and straightened up. “I ain’t gonna say I like it, but I trust ya and I’ve seen your judgment play out too many times to doubt it. If ya think it’ll be alrigh’, then—well, ‘m good with it. But ya gotta show us exactly where you’ll be and when to expect ya back in case we need to come lookin’.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll mark it all on the map. We should be able to make it out and back in a single long day. Leave early. Get back late.”

“And no weapons for him unless it’s an absolute emergency,” Michonne emphasized.

“Of course,” you agreed.

“Alright,” Michonne nodded. “When will you go?”

“Tomorrow,” you said. “I’ll get everything ready today.”

“I’ll walk ya out,” Daryl drawled, watching as you grabbed your bag and shouldered it. “Listen—” he started.

You looked over at him and smiled, already knowing you were about to get a worried Daryl Dixon lecture. “Mhm?” you prompted him.

“The hell are ya smirkin’ about?” he growled, his brow furrowing.

“Nothing,” you laughed. “Go ahead.”

“Well—if somethin’ happens out there… if it comes down to you or him…” he trailed off.

Your brow furrowed deeply now to match his. “It won’t,” you said seriously.

He shifted anxiously. “But if it does…”

“Daryl. It’s not going to,” you insisted.

He relented and nodded, chewing on his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Okay. C’mere.” He pulled you into a hug and you smiled as he folded you up against him. “I just want ya to be safe, is all.” “I know. I will,” you agreed.

He nodded, pulling back. “Wish I could go with ya… I’d feel better about it.”

“I know. But it’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

“You’re shitting me, right?” Negan said, his breakfast still in his hand, not a single bite taken.

You stared at him and then let out a dry laugh. “That’s not exactly the reaction I was expecting,” you said.

“Well, shit. I mean… a real scavenging trip? That’s what you’re saying?” Negan said. He ran a hand back through his hair and stood, pacing a tight circle in his cell. “Who else is going?”

You cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why? Someone specific you want me to invite? Want me to ask your old pal Gabriel? Or wait—Eugene?”

He laughed but looked vaguely shocked. “Well, I’m sorry but I’m just—a little fuckin’ surprised, doll.” You’d eased some on scolding Negan for the pet names over the last few weeks and generally just ignored them now unless it was something really egregious. (You’d nearly hit him for calling you ‘princess’ one day, so he had at least not tried that again.) He seemed to enjoy taking full advantage of you turning a deaf ear to them now. “Just you and me? Out there?” he clarified.

“You and I have already been out there alone how many times, hmm? I don’t see why this should be any different,” you said, digging around in your pack.

“Well, it’s farther. I mean, farther for you to get help if—”

You straightened up and fixed a skeptical gaze on him. “If what? If you suddenly decide to attempt to murder me? Attack me? Steal the car and leave me out there? I’ll still be armed and you won’t. Besides, I’ve been through more shit out there than—”

He laughed again. “I was just gonna say in case any number of bad fuckin’ things happens out there. And we both know that they do.”

“Yeah. You used to be one of those bad things, remember?” you shot back quickly. He sighed at your deflection and you couldn’t help but laughing. “I am having to sell this harder to you than I did to Michonne and Daryl. What is going on? What are you worried about?”

“I’m not worried! Although, it would be fuckin’ nice to have something to defend myself with in case of the dead or unexpected assholes…”

“ ‘Unexpected Assholes’?” you repeated. “What is that, your one man play?” you quipped. “Let me guess—you’ll be playing yourself.”

Negan couldn’t resist a hearty laugh at that, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s good. You’re fuckin’ hilarious as usual, doll.” But he looked serious again the next moment. “Anyway, about me having some way to defend myself…”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” you said lazily. “I’ll let you have, like, a stick if you want,” you smirked. He only stared back at you. “I told you that I’ll protect you! You think I’m just gonna let a walker wander up and bite you?” There was a thick silence for a moment where he just stared back at you.

“I’m not worried about one walker. I’m worried about all the random, rogue shit that can happen out there.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to trust me! Do you not want to go or what?” you pressed him, perplexed at his reaction.

He paused, drew in a deep breath, and let it out. Then that damn smirk showed back up on his face, sending his hazel eyes sparkling. “Are you asking if I want to go spend some quality time alone with you? Just the two of us? No one to interrupt… Completely at your mercy for whatever you may decide to do with me… or to me…”

You rolled your eyes, catching onto his tone immediately. “That could include killing you,” you cautioned him, eliciting a low laugh from him. You hated that the deep gravel of it gave you goosebumps. You did your best to ignore it.

“I don’t know… I’m starting to think this is just a ploy to get away with me where nobody can easily interrupt us,” Negan said. “I mean, shit. No need hide your true intentions from me,” he grinned. “I am absolutely 110% on board with that. Use me all you want, doll,” he grinned, now gripping the bars of his cell door. “God, I’d love to be fuckin’ used by you.”

You crossed your arms and fixed a stern look on him, hoping that your face wasn’t flushing bright red. You cleared your throat. “Sounds more like wishful thinking on your part. It’s a scavenging run, Negan, not a fucking romantic getaway,” you said.

“Are you sure you said that right? I think you meant romantic fucking getaway. Emphasis on the—”

“Negan! Stop! I will cancel this whole thing! Jesus Christ!”

That shit-eating grin was still on his face and he laughed again, thoroughly pleased with himself. “Alright, alright. I’m done. I think…”

You pinched the bridge of your nose and sighed. “Scavenging. Run.” you repeated.

“Yeah, we’ll see, doll. We’ll see. So, where are we going exactly?”

You forged ahead, ignoring his last comments in favor of moving on. “There are some old houses and other structures we’ve only ever done a cursory search of. Probably not going to make a huge score but there’s always something left behind, something hidden. But who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky,” you said.

“Fuck me, I’d love to get lucky…” he laughed again.

“Negan!” you exclaimed again.

“Alright! I’m sorry,” he chuckled.

“So, are you in?” you asked, slightly exasperated.

The two of you were separated by only the iron bars and a small buffer of space, hardly a foot. He was still smiling at you and you hated that the thought that he was handsome flickered through your mind. It wasn’t the first time you’d thought it—but the thought always surprised you, like it came from somewhere outside of yourself, not by your conjuration alone. “Fuck yes, I’m in,” he answered, interrupting your thoughts.

“You promise to listen to everything I say? If I tell you to run, if I tell you to hide—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I promise,” he said, smiling. “If I don’t, you’ll shoot me in the fuckin’ knee or some shit. Can we skip the pep talk?”

You gave him a stern look but unlocked his cell and tossed him the spare pack you’d brought. You dug into your own bag and handed him some supplies, including some outerwear. He tucked them into his bag and looked up at you expectantly. “Where to, warden?”

You rolled your eyes again but couldn’t help the tiniest smirk. “Car is right outside. Let’s get going. The sun is starting to come up and it could be a long day.”

“Great. Can I drive?” he quipped, shouldering his bag. You only shot him a look that made him laugh again, but he saw the slight curve at the corners of your mouth.

The drive to the crumbling ruins of the neighborhood was slow, but uneventful. The sun was up and filtering through the trees overhead as you and Negan climbed out and started toward the buildings. You were quiet, focused, and Negan couldn’t help admiring your efficiency and care as you went about your mission.

The two of you stopped at the edge of the crumbling street, concealed in some taller brush. The street was overgrown with weeds and lined with dilapidated houses. It was almost eerily quiet.

“Alright,” you breathed quietly. “We’ll go building by building, down one side and back up the other. Pay attention to signs of walkers or people,” you said softly, gripping the straps of your pack. “Follow my lead and stay close.”

“You got it,” Negan replied, slipping his hands into his pockets as he followed alongside you toward the first house. “I gotta say, it is really uncomfortable being out here without a damn weapon. More so here than in the woods,” he commented, his eyes shifting around to study the other buildings, scrutinizing for a sign of movement. “I feel like I’m naked,” he said.

“I guarantee—” You paused to tap on the wall of the house the two of you were standing beside, listening for anything inside. “You’re not. If you were naked, I would not be this fuckin’ calm, Negan,” you said, half-distracted.

He chuckled and licked his bottom lip, smirking.

“What?” you asked, cocking an eyebrow at you.

“I don’t think that sounded how you meant it to sound,” he laughed.

Your cheeks flushed. “Oh, shut up. You know what I meant!”

“Your brain is saying one thing but your lips are sayin’ another, darlin’,” he teased you.

You rolled your eyes and pulled the front door open, stepping cautiously inside. The smell was of mildew and stagnant air as you stepped inside. A heavy layer of dust and dirt coated everything; overturned furniture, books standing or tipped over on shelves, a stately chair still positioned in front of the fireplace. Somewhere deeper in the house, water was dripping. You had your gun out and started clearing the lower floors. Negan ghosted behind you.

You made for the staircase to check the upstairs when there was a soft thump overhead. Your eyes and Negan’s went to the ceiling.

“Alright… maybe someone is home after all,” he commented, giving you a concerned look.

“It’s gotta be a walker,” you said. “Maybe an animal.” You proceeded cautiously toward the staircase.

“Hey,” Negan said softly. “Be careful.”

You turned and looked at him for a long moment before you started up the stairs. He seemed genuinely on edge, worried. He stayed right on your heels as you climbed the steps, the muscle in his jaw tensed as his teeth clenched together.

You cleared two bedrooms and finally came to a closed door at the end of the hall. As the floor creaked under your boots, there was the sound of more movement behind the door. You reached for the door knob, gun ready in your other hand. You took a deep breath and quickly turned it shoving the door open and aiming the muzzle of your pistol inside.

An opossum let out an angry hiss and then scrambled up and out of a broken window. It had been rooting around in some debris on the floor. A huge sigh of relief escaped you and Negan watched your shoulders sag. You laughed a little as you turned to look back at Negan. He gave you a relieved look.

“I gotta be honest,” he said. “I fuckin’ hate this shit. I feel completely helpless without something to use if something bad happens. What am I supposed to do if you need help?”

You gave him a somewhat sympathetic look, thinking about how it would feel to be in his place—the unknown behind every locked door with no knife, no gun… completely vulnerable and reliant on someone who was essentially his jailor. “Well,” you said. “I have a feeling if something really did go wrong, you’d figure something out.”

He considered your words for a moment. “Yeah. I hope so.” He thought about what he would do. What if they ran into some bad men? Bad people? What would he really do if you were in danger? He didn’t have to think hard to know the answer. Anything. He’d do anything he needed to. The thought seemed to dig deep into the center of his chest and sit there, heavy. “So, now what? House is clear.”

You holstered your gun again. “Now, we search. See if there’s anything left. A lot of people hid things, right after. There’s always something left behind. You take the upstairs. I’ll go through the downstairs.”

Negan nodded his agreement and turned back to the trashed bathroom, the sound of your steps fading away down the staircase. He searched every room, every cabinet, every closet, under beds, under loose floorboards, but came away with nothing of interest except for half a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He headed downstairs where he could hear you rummaging around in the living room. “Hey,” he greeted you, stepping over the threshold. You were standing completely frozen now at the shelves, looking down at something. “Y/N?” he said again. You still didn’t seem to have heard him. He wandered closer. “Find something?”

You startled a little and turned to look at him, a picture frame in your hand. “Oh. No, not really. You?”

“Half a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I stuck it in my pack.” He nodded toward the frame. “What’s that?”

You looked down at it again. “It’s nothing. It’s just this—this family portrait. I wonder if they lived here—” you said thoughtfully. Your voice seemed to drift away a little. “Or what happened to them, you know? Did they make it? Were they ever safe again after the outbreak?”

Negan looked on with a thoughtful expression, his dark brows furrowed over his eyes. He nodded and moved closer to get a better view of the photo behind the cracked glass. He smiled at it, chuckling a little. “Hmm. Mom, Dad, and three kids. A perfect nuclear family,” he said.

“Looks like the 90s,” you laughed. “Check out the clothes.”

“Yeah, they probably went down to JCPenney to take advantage of the fancy photography studio,” Negan remarked. “Dad looks like an accountant, doesn’t he?”

“Mmm, I’m getting more of a bank manager vibe. Mom probably stayed at home when the kids were little and then goes back to work as a teacher once the youngest is in kindergarten,” you replied, now smiling a little too.

Negan ran a hand back through his hair thoughtfully and cocked his head. “You know—I was a teacher,” he said suddenly. “I’ve never really told anyone that since things went to shit. Kind of lessens the mystique,” he laughed dryly.

Your eyes snapped over to his face, one of your eyebrows arching gracefully with the question on your face. He laughed again. “Yeah, I know… hard to believe, right? How could such an asshole be a teacher?” he said.

A slight wince flickered across your face for a brief second at his words, as if you didn’t like the way he’d talked about himself. But that couldn’t be right… “What did you teach?”

“I was a high school P.E. teacher,” he said. “Coached some of the school teams too. Basketball. Football.”

“P.E.?” you repeated. “And you’re not even going to make a ‘physical education’ joke?” you teased him. “Wow. Are you feeling okay?”

He laughed lightly. “You beat me to it,” he said. He glanced back at the picture and sighed. “Should we get going? Lots of buildings to search,” he said.

You nodded and stared down at the picture for another moment.

“What’re you doing?” Negan asked, watching you take the back off the picture frame. You fumbled with the backing and then removed the family photo from the damaged frame.

“I just—feel like someone should remember them, you know?”

Negan’s gaze was fixed on you, flickering over your face. There was something so soft in it at that moment that you felt slightly unbalanced. You distracted yourself by bending to slip the photo into your pack. “You’re somethin’ else, you know that?” he said gently.

You deflected, laughing as you shouldered your pack again. “Oh, you’ve got no idea,” you said sarcastically, again ignoring the heat in your face. “Come on.”

The two of you went on, searching each home and several stores, working your way down the block and partway up the next. You’d managed some good finds, including a hidden cellar that clearly had belonged to a survivalist type (who had apparently “opted out” and his corpse still watched over the hidden entrance). You’d have to make a few trips to the car in order to get all the supplies and gear back, or otherwise figure out a way to get the car in through the overgrown side road. The two of you piled the finds in a safe place in one of the rooms on the main floor, stacking Rubbermaid tubs full of helpful items in neat piles.

“Fuck me,” Negan sighed, setting the last one on top. “Well, when you’re right, you’re fuckin’ right, doll. There’s always somethin’ left behind.”

You wiped at the sweat near your hairline. “Yeah,” you sighed. “Not bad.” You had a satisfied smile on your face. It felt good to do something concrete that would help people back home. You glanced out the window, assessing the light outside. It’d taken quite some time to get things moved up from the cellar and you wondered if you should keep searching the rest of the houses or call it a day. “I think it’s starting to get late,” you said, remarking mainly on the way the light already seemed like it was fading.

“Mmm,” Negan hummed, going to the front bay window and looking out. His eyes had been searching the street all day, vigilant, as if waiting for some psychos to suddenly burst out of one of the houses. But the only signs of inhabitation or squatting you’d found were clearly from long before, now covered in dust and debris or otherwise moldering in damp corners or on top of filthy mattresses. Now, as you were busy drinking from your canteen, Negan’s shifting suddenly stopped. “Hey, doll—I’m no meteorologist, but those clouds look like bad fuckin’ news.” It had been overcast all day, but you could tell by the tone of his voice that this was something else.

You capped your canteen and went to the front door, your brow now furrowed heavily to match his. You pulled the door open and peered at the sky. Ominous didn’t even begin to cover it. There was not a sniff of wind at the moment and the air seemed to hum with electricity. Negan appeared next to you in the doorway, squinting at the low and heavy sky.

“I’m pretty sure when the sky turns fuckin’ green, there’s some bad shit coming,” he said. He glanced over at you.

“Shit,” you swore under your breath. “Yeah. Yeah, green sky is… tornado weather. Fuck,” you muttered, glancing back at the pile of supplies.

“What do you want to do?” Negan asked.

You sighed, pushing a hand back through your hair. “Even if we head back to the car now, we probably can’t outrun that… the old highway is FUBAR in some places. It’s not like we can drive 60 mph all the way back to Alexandria. And that would mean leaving all these supplies here.” As if on cue, the complete stillness in the air broke as a rushing wind approached like a tidal wave, creaking and cracking in the trees and swirling dust and dried leaves across the open ground until it reached the two of you standing on the porch. Your hair lifted and blew back from your face.

“I’ll ask you again,” Negan said, speaking louder now over the roar of the wind, “what do you want to do?”

You hesitated, glancing from him back to the quickly approaching menacing clouds. The little light left was fading fast. “Fuck,” you muttered again. “I—I think we’re better off weathering it here than in a car out there,” you said.

“I definitely agree with that,” Negan said.

“Once the storm clears, maybe then we can try to get the car in here and load up the supplies and get home. We’ll be delayed a bit longer than expected but—I think it’s the best move. Hopefully, we’re just stuck a couple more hours.”

Negan nodded. “Alright. Where are we holing up? Because this shit is about to kick the fuck off,” he said, surveying the street again.

“Here is as good a place as any,” you said. “There’s a basement and almost all the windows are intact or boarded up. Come on. Let’s get inside.”

Negan followed you in and shut the door on the wind. Your eyes were already on him when he turned around again. He was trying to decode your expression but it was largely unreadable. He unshouldered his pack and set it on the floor, taking a seat on the stairs across from where you were now leaning up against the wall. The ambient light from outside was quickly waning and before long you could hear raindrops start to pound the roof. They increased in size and then seemed to be blowing across the roof in waves of water.

You could hear the huge cottonwood trees creaking and cracking in the wind. You tried to peer out through the boarded slats over the window to see if they were dropping branches but it was too dark. Behind you, Negan pulled out a flashlight from his pack and clicked it on. It had grown extremely dark with the heavy storm clouds gathering and unleashing the torrents of rain. You were still standing right by the window, looking out, when he spoke again.

“Hey, maybe we should move away from the windows, doll,” Negan said, worried. He didn’t like how close you were standing to all that glass, even if it was mostly boarded over. His voice was deep and resonant in the space between you with just the raging background noise outside.

“Yeah. Maybe,” you said. You bent to grab your pack when you suddenly heard a loud thud against the side of the house. You straightened up, your eyes widening. Negan had heard it too, his eyes were narrowed, ears strained, listening. It was difficult to hear anything over the storm.

“What was that?” you asked, your voice breathy. “Some debris blowing against the house?” you asked.

Negan shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, standing from his place on the steps and going to the doorway of the room the sound had seemed to come from. The roaring storm seemed to reach new extremes. The wind sounded like a train bearing down on the little dilapidated structure the two of you were sheltering in. Rain and hail lashed the siding and the roof. There was another thud from outside, this time on the window.

“There. Again,” you said, anxiously pacing toward Negan to stare into the room. His flashlight was still on. Another thud, and then another. You squinted, trying to distinguish anything through the boarded windows but it was too dark. Then, a flash of lightning shot the sky outside with blinding white and you couldn’t help the soft gasp that left you at what it illuminated.

“What?” Negan asked urgently.

You couldn’t speak. You just reached for the flashlight. Negan looked down as your hand landed on top of his. He could feel you trembling slightly and for a moment he was so shocked by your touch that he didn’t understand what you were doing. With your gentle grip, you directed the yellow beam of the light slowly to the window. As it came to rest between two of the boards and shone through the glass, Negan registered that there were walkers clawing to get in, rotting faces pressed to the glass, bloody fingertips, snapping teeth. Dozens. “Ho-ly fuck!” he exclaimed, jerking the flashlight off the window and quickly shutting it off. You and Negan stood in the dark for a moment, neither of you moving, now keenly aware of the pounding noise and dull thuds on the exterior of the house, cutting through the wind and rain. Were you imagining it or was the pounding increasing, getting louder? More frequent? Negan could hear your breath beside him in the dark. “Well, that shit was straight out of a fuckin’ horror movie,” he remarked in a low voice.

“Yeah,” you whispered back. “Where the fuck did they come from? It sounds like we’re surrounded.”

“I don’t fuckin’ know. Seems like they rolled in with the storm.”

“Maybe they can feel the barometric pressure changes or something. It’s almost like a migration,” you commented, feeling your heart rate and breathing finally start to slow down after the shock of discovering the herd.

Negan chuckled beside you and you heard him shift. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Eugene?”

You let out a dry laugh. “Okay… so, now we just have the storm of the century and a fucking herd to deal with. Great. Okay… let’s think…”

Negan finally clicked his flashlight on again but kept it pointed at the floor. “This place seems sturdy but maybe we should barricade ourselves better.”

You glanced toward the basement where you’d discovered the hidden cellar. Your eyes next drifted toward the stack of supplies. “Basement is pretty much ready to barricade thanks to that dead survivalist guy, but if they do break in we could be trapped down there for fuck-knows how long.”

“Not sure we have any better options. We don’t want to be upstairs either. We’re sure as shit not going out on the roof in this if they get in and if there is a fucking tornado and we're on the top floor—” Negan broke off.

“Yeah,” you agreed, nodding. You dug into your own pack and pulled out a headlamp, quickly turning it on dimly. “Grab some of these. They have food and medical supplies, some other gear and odds and ends,” you said, grabbing one of the many Rubbermaid containers and heading toward the stairs down to the basement.

“Man, I’m so glad we carried all this shit up here,” Negan joked, picking up a stack of two big containers.

“Sorry. Next time I’ll consult my crystal ball,” you quipped, but right then there was the sound of shattering glass and the storm and the growling got slightly louder. One of the windows in the next room had broken. Negan could see hands and fingers reaching in around the boards.

“Let’s go. Downstairs,” he urged you, his voice intense and thick with concern.

You started down, but shot back at him over your shoulder. “Aren’t I the one in charge here?”

“I don’t see you disagreeing with that idea,” Negan said, setting his containers down beside yours. “Stay here. I’ll go grab a couple more boxes,” he said.

“Whoa. Me stay here? What is this? You don’t even have a weapon!” you argued.

He gave you an exasperated look. “Fine. Then by all means, come with me, darlin’!” He turned and rushed back up the stairs and you had to hurry after him, one hand on your knife in its sheath.

“Negan,” you snapped at him in a low voice as you rounded the doorway back onto the main floor. But he wasn’t by the supplies. You glanced around and could see the dim glow of his light in the next room, the one where the walkers had broken a window. Rain and the occasional hailstone were puddling under the window among the shards of glass. “What the fuck?” You nearly collided with each other when he turned around and started back toward the door. “What are you doing?! Put that down!” you growled.

He had an iron fireplace poker in his hand. That’s what he’d been doing in this room, grabbing it from the set of fireplace tools. “Don’t you think this qualifies as kind of a capital “E” emergency?” he argued.

You stared at him, intense, your chest heaving, and to your annoyance, he smiled at you.

“Goddamn. You look fuckin’ hot as shit when you’re pissed off! I mean, you’re always hot but ho-ly shit! I'm scared and suddenly all tingly downtown!”

Your hand went purposefully to your knife again and you stared him down. “I said. Put it. The fuck. Down.”

“Doll, just hear me out—”

“Negan.”

Another crack and the sound of shattering glass behind him and you saw more arms reaching through between the boards of another window. “Okay, we don’t have time for this right now. You can stab me or whatever downstairs,” he said. He breezed past you and grabbed a couple more boxes of supplies. You had no choice but to begrudgingly follow after him.

He turned, straightening up as he heard your boots hitting the bottom steps, and he opened his mouth to say something, but you were already on him before he could get even a syllable out.

You kicked him hard on the inside of one of his thighs and he dropped sideways onto his knee. The poker dropped from his hand and rang out on the cement floor. You kicked it away and it slid into the far wall with a harsh scraping sound. Your knife was unsheathed and pointed at the base of his throat before he knew what was happening. To your amazement, once he recovered from his pained grimaces, he fucking smiled again.

“Do you know what you’re doing to me right now?” he asked in a low, gruff voice.

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me. When I brought you out here, you said you would listen to every fucking thing I told you to do. This is your one single second chance. Next time you fuck up, it’ll be my knife going into your thigh instead of my boot. Got it?”

He gulped, still on one knee at the point of your knife and still, to your annoyance, vaguely smiling. “Oh, I got it,” he responded, his eyebrows lifting.

“Good,” you said, backing off and letting him stand up. “Now, go pick up the fucking poker. I’m gonna lock up the door…”

“Wait‚ what?” Negan laughed, still rubbing at his leg where you’d kicked him. “After all that, you’re letting me have it?”

“Yes,” you said. “This does roughly qualify as an emergency. Or at least, the border of one. But those kinds of decisions? They’re not yours to make, Negan. You’re not the one in charge here.”

He looked both stunned and amused. “That is becoming more and more clear every fuckin’ day,” he said softly, looking at you with some expression you couldn’t completely discern.

You gave him a perplexed look and then headed up the stairs to seal up the door. There were heavy brackets on the back of the reinforced door (thank you, dead survivalist man) and you spotted a thick board leaning up against the railing. Once you’d closed and locked it, you heaved up the heavy wooden slat and dropped it into place in the brackets, adding extra security in case the walkers did get inside and try to push through. As you removed your hand hastily to head back downstairs, a jagged corner on one of the metal brackets sliced into your palm. You jerked it back and stared as a long crimson gash began to leak fat drops of blood onto the steps below you. You pulled in a hiss of breath through your teeth. “Great,” you sighed, cradling it in the other hand and trotting back down. Overhead, you could hear the storm still raging, but as a low hum now.

Negan stood up from his seat on one of the containers of supplies as soon as he saw you. A concerning amount of shockingly red blood was dripping off your hand and onto the floor. “What happened?” he asked, moving closer as you attempted to dig into your pack with your other hand, blood now running down your forearm. “Jesus, let me help you!” He grabbed your pack away and dug around inside until he found a small kit with spare bits of cloth for bandaging, some gauze pads, and a few other assorted odds and ends for first aid. “Wait, I’ve got that alcohol in my pack. We should clean it up first.”

“It’ll be fine,” you argued, pulling off your headlamp and watching as Negan clicked on a lantern he’d found in one of the boxes.

“Would you let me help you with this at least? Can I? Please? I’m asking permission now,” he joked, shooting you a goading expression.

You cocked your head at him and tried to look annoyed, but you conceded, taking a seat on a plastic container across from him.

Negan dug out the alcohol and poured a generous amount out onto your palm. You gritted your teeth together at the burn and winced. “Sorry,” he said, pressing a gauze pad down over it, holding it gently on his own hand now. “But better than an infection, right?”

“Mhm,” you hummed, feeling strangely on edge with your hand in his.

Negan used some of the long, clean strips of cloth to bandage it up and hold the gauze in place, tying it securely but gently before relinquishing his hold on you. “Should have the doc take a look at that when we get back,” he said. “Pretty deep. Might need some stitches on that one.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” you said, finally sighing as you suddenly realized how tired you were. Now that you felt more secure and safe, a strange thing with Negan sitting a mere foot away from you with no dividing bars between, the adrenaline had run out. Exhaustion was starting to set in. You took stock of the space. Your eyes wandered from the door into the hidden cellar where you’d found most of the supplies, back to the corpse of the survivalist in the far corner, over to the boxes next to Negan.

He was putting the first aid stuff back into your pack when his fingers nudged something and he paused; a thick stack of glossy photos. He pulled them out, curious. On top was the first one, the one in the very first house that the two of you had talked about, but there were more along with it now—many more. He flipped through a couple until you noticed and shifted where you were sitting. His hazel eyes lifted up to your face. “These are all from today?” he asked.

You nodded and tried to clear the sudden lump in your throat.

“You kept them? All of them?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He sighed, shaking his head vaguely, and thumbed through more; families on vacations, some guy holding a big fish, a young couple smiling in front of the Statue of Liberty, babies and kids and dogs and cats, an elderly couple posing in front of a studio background.

Your voice suddenly cut into him. “Did you ever stop to think that every person you put under your bat, they probably had photos like this? Were in photos like this?” you said suddenly. A particularly loud rumble of thunder boomed and rolled, as if on cue. Your eyes, clear and steady and striking even in the low glow of the lantern, felt like they were seeing straight into his core.

He frowned. The lines on his face seemed to become more pronounced, and he almost cringed. “No,” he answered honestly, the gravel in his voice heavy and gritty. “I didn’t think about it at all, most of the time. I think that was a lot of what I was doing. Not thinking. I know that's a shit fuckin' excuse. It's not an excuse... but I didn’t—want to think about the hard stuff.”

You were curious, interested, and felt that same vulnerability he seemed to be giving you more and more rolling off him in waves. “Like what?”

He gave you a sad smile. You could hear the wind whistling above you and the pounding of the rain. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

But now you were the one to back away, ducking your head, avoiding his eyes. Negan saw that there was hurt there, deep hurt. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” you murmured, fiddling with the bandage on your palm. “I mean, I’m not…”

“Hey, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Negan replied, “you don’t owe me a damn thing. But can I tell you somethin’, doll?” He hesitated for a moment. “I—I like you. You kicked the shit out of me and held a knife to my throat about ten minutes ago and I still really like you. Genuinely. As a person, as a badass, as a—”

“Negan—” you interrupted him.

“If I had to be trapped in a basement with a corpse, a tornado and herd outside, I can’t think of another person I’d rather be stuck with,” he said.

“Negan—” you tried again.

“No, listen to me. I’m trying to tell you—”

“You don’t like me, okay? You just feel that way because I’m the only person who really talks to you, who spends time with you, who brings you your meals, and looks after some fraction of your well-being. It’s like—it’s like trauma bonding, okay? That’s all it is.”

“No. It’s not just that. See Gabe was doin’ all that same shit and I still didn’t fuckin’ like him… I mean, not as much as I like you.”

As usual, when what you were feeling was becoming overwhelming, too many thoughts, too many emotions, you deflected with humor. “I’m cuter than Gabriel.”

Negan laughed and this time the sound was warm and almost comforting. “Yeah. No argument there…”

You allowed yourself a half-smile and then sighed, rubbing your hands over your face. “Fuck, I’m tired. What a long fucking day…”

“There are those sleeping bags in one of these boxes I think,” Negan said, starting to pull at the lids.

You laughed. “I can’t sleep,” you said.

“Why not?”

“Besides the insane storm outside and the horde? Uhh… I don’t know, you?” you offered, your tone a little sardonic.

But Negan’s face was perfectly serious. “The storm and the horde—can’t do shit about those companions and I agree that they are crappy house guests, but they’re not fuckin’ goin’ anywhere soon from what I can hear. That’s not changing whether you’re asleep or awake. As for me—” he tilted his head and gave you an appraising look, “I do not want to hurt you. And I won’t. And I’m not running away with the dickhole party outside so, you may as well catch some shut-eye. I’ll keep watch.”

You considered him for a long moment but finally shook your head. “No. No, I can’t sleep now…”

Negan sighed and rested the fireplace poker across his knees. “Well, then I’d say it’s going to be a long night… Got any ideas about how to pass the time?”

The mischievous sparkle came back into his eyes and you shot him a stern look that was apparently not enough of a deterrent. “Don’t—”

“We still do have those sleeping bags. I can think of some activities for a makeshift bed that don’t involve actual sleep.”

“Negan, there’s literally a corpse in the corner and a horde outside and that’s where your mind goes?”

He laughed. “Can you blame me? I’ve been in jail for, how long now? Five, six years? And trust me, Gabey Baby wasn’t giving me any action.” He paused at the look on your face, laughing again. “Come on, doll. I’m just kidding. Though it would help pass the time, you deserve far better than a sleeping bag on a dirty basement floor.”

“With a dead guy watching,” you added.

“With a dead guy watching,” he repeated, scratching absently at the stubble on his face. “That is pretty fuckin’ metal though,” he smirked.

“Negan, saying that I deserve better than that is really saying nothing. Anyone deserves better than that,” you sighed, standing up and pacing. “So yeah. I’d say it’s going to be a long night.”

[msschemmenti]

sing with me please

emily prentiss x singer!reader

prompt: reader and emily are dating and she’s a rising artist on her first small tour. she’s been gone for weeks but is back in dc for a show. obviously emily is there and reader begs for emily to come on stage and sing their song with her to close out the show.

a/n: au inspired by this picture of paget and this series i’ve been writing for myself about a singing reader/oc. also this is not proofread at all. let me know what you think— and if you’re interested in more stuff like this :)

song featured : juna - clairo

“God, i can’t wait to see you.” y/n breathed down the phone quietly.

“Oh trust me, I’m right there with you. I’m starting to think I should’ve just taken the time off and gone with you.” Emily groaned into the phone from her desk.

“Oh I don’t want to hear it, I tried everything I could to get you to come along. And I mean everything. But you’re married to the job.” y/n replied with a tease.

“Aw, come on. I feel like I haven’t been here long enough to take three months off to follow my pop star girlfriend on her first-ever tour. Plus, it’s not like the world knows who you write all those love songs about anyway. And stop saying I’m married to the job, you know I hate that.” Emily all but whined.

“Right right right. Well, none of that matters now, because in just a few hours you’ll be front-row being serenaded for a good two hours.”

Emily grinned at the thought of having her girlfriend’s attention in a room full of fans. “Having my favorite singer’s attention in a room full of her adoring fans, sounds like a dream come true. What time should I get there?”

“Looks like this shoot is going to run over, so I might not be able to see you before the show. Either way, DeeDee has your name on the list already so you’ll be taken to your seat as soon as you’re there. Are you bringing anyone with you? I can give DeeDee their names too.” y/n rambled in thought.

Emily eyed the bullpen curiously, she hadn’t exactly thought to ask if anyone wanted to go with her. It felt a little too personal and after all this time on the team, she feared Garcia’s reaction to her having a serious girlfriend without her knowledge. “No, it’ll just be me. I’m sure everyone has plans. It is Friday after all.”

y/n chuckled softly at her girlfriend’s words, “Okay, make sure you text me when you get to the venue so I can let everyone know.”

“Yes ma’am. And after the show?” Emily asked hopefully. She really missed having her girlfriend home.

“I’m DC based for the next three months.” y/n grinned.

“Oh thank God.” Emily sighed in relief causing y/n to giggle softly.

“You can thank DeeDee for convincing the label to let me write and record here.”

“Well DeeDee has a very expensive bottle of wine with her name on it.”

There was a bit of shuffling on the other end of the phone and Emily knew the signs all too well, “Listen Em, I’ve got to go. They’re ready for the next outfit. Remember to text me.”

“Okay, I will. I’ll see you later.” Emily smiled.

“Yes, see you later. Love you.” y/n whispered before ending the call and handing her phone back to her manager.

-

“Hi DC.” y/n spoke into the microphone with a bright smile. The room filled with cheers almost instantly as she spoke and her cheeks grew red under the praise. “Oh you all are too sweet. How are we feeling tonight?”

y/n scanned the audience waving happily until her eyes fell on the VIP area she’d requested for Emily. Her eyes lighting up instantly as she caught Emily with her hands cupped around her mouth cheering with the other fans in the room. Sending a wink in her direction y/n spoke in the mic, “You all look so beautiful tonight. Thank you so much for coming out to my final show on my first tour. It’s been so fun meeting and talking to everyone but I’m very happy to be home. With that being said, let make this the best show yet!”

-

Emily was on cloud nine. She was absolutely beaming with pride and she couldn’t think of any place she’d rather be. When y/n said she’d be serenading her all night, she really hadn’t been kidding. As much as she could without making it too obvious, she practically spent the last two hours gazing lovingly into Emily’s eyes. And Emily felt mighty special. Her favorite voice, just for her.

“DC you’ve been so amazing tonight. I don’t think I’ve felt this happy in a long time. My favorite city, in a room full of my favorite people. It’s so so good to be home.” y/n spoke as the band set up for the last song of the night. “As you all know, we’re on our very last song and as much as I hate to end this night– I’m so excited to sleep in my own bed.”

y/n sat on the stool center stage and shuffled some papers on her music stand with a smile. She looked over to Emily with a mischievous smile that had her heart trying to beat out of her chest.

“This last one is very very special to me. It’s my biggest song and the reason I’m even on this tour. But more importantly, it’s about the most important person in my life. My love, my light, my muse.” y/n spoke eyes trained on Emily the entire time. The room awed and cheered happily at the mention of their favorite artist’s secret girlfriend. “I’m lucky to have her here with me tonight and I know she’s going to hate me for this but I wanna do something a lil different for my last show. Em, will you sing with me?”

Emily’s face was beyond red. She was staring at her girlfriend in shock and awe. Not only had she just told this room of people she was the muse for most of her discography but now she wanted her to get up on the stage to sing with her. She was shaking her head in disbelief and fear before she could even think about it. And she looked at her girlfriend like she’d grown a second head.

This only made y/n smile more, “Please Em. You’re my favorite duet partner and I’ve missed singing with you more than anything.”

Emily was cracking. Between y/n’s words and the adorable pout she was sporting there was only so much more she could take from the woman she loved before giving in.

“Everyone, let’s give her some encouragement. Can we chant ‘Emily!’? y/n asked the audience and like the loyal fans they are, their screams filled the room. And there was really nothing Emily could do at that point. Throwing her hands up in surrender, she walked toward the stage looking extremely nervous as the room cheered.

y/n moved to help Emily up the stairs and onto the stage with a blinding smile. “I can’t believe you just did that.” Emily grumbled softly as she rested her forehead against her girlfriend’s.

“Kinda surprised you came up.” y/n grinned so hard her cheeks hurt.

“Well, you unfortunately know that i will do anything for you baby. and you sure know how to milk it.” Emily replied and smiled as y/n pulled her toward the stool. She sat Emily down and turned toward the crowd.

“Alright everybody, this is the last one. If you know it sing along.” y/n placed the microphone on the mic stand. She could practically feel Emily’s nerves radiating off of her but knew once this moment would live with them for as long as they lived. y/n stood between her legs and placed a kiss on her nose lovingly before cueing the band to start the song. “Just you and me, like at home.” She coaxed before she started singing the opening line of the song.

“Come to me slowly. It's when you talk close enough that I feel it on my skin, breathe it in.”

The room buzzed in anticipation when y/n nudged Emily softly and stroked her cheek in encouragement. Emily was nervous but she truly felt like she could do anything with her girlfriend’s eyes trained on her. “Most of these days I don’t get too intimate. Why would I let you in? But I think again.”

y/n smiled instantly, throwing in some of the background vocals while Emily sang. She started timidly but with the love shining in y/n’s eyes, she grew more confident with the words. Plus the cheers from the audience helped quite a bit. They joined together sweetly, Emily taking the melody and y/n harmonizing with her as they went. “I don’t even try. I don’t have to think. With you, there’s no pretending.”

When they got to the chorus y/n smiled and turned her head to the crowd, “Come on everyone, You know me, you know me. And I just might know you too.”

The smiles on both women’s faces were permanent as y/n pulled Emily up to dance with her across the stage. In a room surrounded by people who loved her girlfriend, she knew without a doubt that none of them could compete with her. They finished the song with the help of the crowd and when the music came to an end, everyone screamed their appreciation. y/n grabbed Emily’s hand and pulled her into center stage with a laugh.

“DC, give it up for the love of my life!” And despite y/n’s hand on the small of her back, Emily timidly tried to hide from the praise. The applause died down a bit and they wished everyone a farewell before heading backstage.

Finally in the quiet of her dressing room, y/n pulled Emily into a bruising kiss. Pulling away was not a priority, but when it became a necessity their foreheads rested together.

“DC give it up for the love of my life?” Emily teased.

“Yeah. That’s you.” y/n shrugged with a smile.

“Mmhmm, is that so?” Emily asked, squeezing her waist.

“It better be so. I’m sure it’s all over the internet by now babe.”

Emily groaned, “Of course it is. You are so lucky I love you.”

y/n shrugged with a smile and reached up to pinch Emily’s cheek, “Oh I know baby, and I wake up every morning so grateful. And lucky me, I get to wake up in your arms for the next three months.”

Emily sighed happily, pulling the singer into a hug. She mentally prayed for the serial killers of the world to chill out for the foreseeable future and kissed y/n’s head. “Welcome home my love.”

-

y/n

liked by prentissemily, and 9,000 others

dc, i love you. but not as much as i love em.

thank you for an amazing first tour. my heart is so full and i can’t wait for the next one. y/n 2 loading…

ps. whoever took that second picture— i owe you my LIFE

pennythegreat @prentissemily — rue when was this?

prentissemily literally what does this mean?

prentissemily my superstar xx

y/n my muse xx

[604to647]

Sniffles

1.5K / Detective Tim Rockford x fem!reader

A/N: Inspired by @bebsjo’s ask about Tim wanting to take care of Shutterbug when she’s sick. I answered it but couldn’t get the thought out of my brain; thank you for the ask, love - please consider this a more complete answer! 💕

This is our The Rockford Portfolio couple but as always with their stories, can be read as standalone (though there is a relationship milestone in this one 😊).

Summary: You’re sick and you don’t want to give Tim your germs.

Warnings: None! Fluff. Snot. Soft!Tim, established relationship, nicknames as usual (Shutterbug, baby, gorgeous).

Dividers by @saradika-graphics 💕 / Series Masterlist

Tim is just putting the finishing touches on the arrest report for a pair of mid-level Pie henchmen when his cellphone starts to buzz with an incoming call.  He picks up upon seeing from the caller ID that it’s you, “Hey Shutterbug.”

“Hey baby,” you croak.

“What’s wrong?  Where are you? Baby, are you okay?” Tim stands up, ready to sprint out of his office to get to you.

Laughing at your sweet boyfriend’s reaction to a simple cold, you try to talk him down from the ledge in a soothing, albeit scratchy, tone of voice, “Don’t worry, Detective - it’s just a cold!  But I left work early so I wouldn’t spread my germs around.  I took some medication and I’m just getting into a bed with a hot cup of tea right now.”

“Can you FaceTime?  Need to see you, gorgeous.”  Not that he doesn’t believe you, Tim would just feel a lot better getting visual confirmation that you’re all tucked into bed, getting the rest that you need.

Your tired but still cheery face lights up Tim’s phone screen, and he exhales a little sigh of relief to see you already in your pajamas even though it’s still early afternoon, “Do you have everything you need?  Soup?  Drugs?  Tissues?  Throat lozenges?”

“I do, Tim – thank you, but baby,” the you on his screen chews your bottom lip and looks at him apologetically, “I don’t think you should come over tonight.”

Tim tilts his head, confused, “What do you mean?  Who’s going to take care of you?”

You start to laugh but it immediately devolves into a coughing fit, “I’ll be fine, Detective!  It’s just a cold – I’ll take drugs, I’ll sleep, I’ll get better.  I don’t know how contagious I am, but I don’t want to get you sick, Tim.  I know you.  You’ll insist on going to work even when under the weather and you’ll be miserable.  While I’m sick you should stay at your place, just to be safe.”

“But-”

“No buts, Detective.  It’s not my first cold!  I’ll be fine, I promise.”

Tim is about to respond when his Captain peeks her head into his office and gestures with her hand for Tim to follow. 

“I gotta go, Shutterbug, but text me if you need anything and I’ll bring it over, okay?  Feel better soon, baby.  I love you.”

“I love you too, Detective Rockford.  Be safe!”

Four days.

You’ve been sick for four days.  Tim takes some solace in knowing that you’ve taken the time off work to properly recover, but still… it’s been four days.

After the first night back at his house, Tim takes to sleeping on the couch in his office.  Even though the mattress in his master bedroom is indisputably less lumpy, the couch is less depressing.  At least his office is something: it’s work.  His house constantly reminds Tim of what it is not: it’s not his home. It’s not with you. 

Every time you and him talk on FaceTime, you’re decidedly still sick (are you actually getting worse?!) and the tiny bit of hope Tim harbours that he’ll be able to come home to you soon evaporates.  He decides not to tell you where he’s been sleeping - you’ll just worry for his back, and then he would have to explain how miserable he is without you and make you feel bad.

Instead, Tim listens as you tell him you took yourself to the doctor to learn that you have the flu, not the cold, and listens at your wheezing laugh at how ironic it is that you had your flu shot scheduled for next week.  Tim nods approvingly when you confirm that you’re having groceries and meals delivered and bites his tongue from saying that he could - wants to - do all that for you.  He watches as you trudge to the kitchen in your bathrobe with your runny nose and messy hair to make food, and he tells you you’re the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen - because you are.  You tell him he’s silly but still give him the biggest smile you can manage in your exhausted and achy state.

You fall asleep every night while still on the phone with Tim as he tells you all about his work day and his current case, lulled to sleep by his soothing baritone voice.  Even after you’ve nodded off, Tim doesn’t hang up right away – partially to make sure your breathing doesn't get too laboured through your stuffed up nose, but mainly so he can look upon your peaceful visage for a little while longer.  He misses you so much.

By night five of sleeping without you pressed up against his chest, Tim has had enough.  After work he makes stops at the grocery store and pharmacy before heading to your place.  Laden down with bags full of soup and frozen lasagna, cold medication, ice packs, a new hot water bottle, cough drops, plus one plushie (something called a "Squishmallow"? Its "bio" on the tag says she’s a nurse) among other supplies, Tim turns his key in the lock of your apartment for the first time in nearly a week.  Immediately, he’s hit with the familiar scent of your perfume and the peppermint of the tea you’re currently making; he knows you're in the kitchen just from the soft shuffling and sniffles he hears - all of it a comfort to his senses.

Now all he has to do is see you and hold you and he can finally feel complete.

At first you think you’re hallucinating when your big, burly detective appears in the doorway of the kitchen.  You must be sicker than you thought - or maybe you accidentally took an extra dose of flu medication?  But the strong, thick arms that wrap around you feel real.  And the rough hands that cradle and massage your head feel soothing.  You melt right into that hard but cushiony chest despite not being 100% sure it isn’t a figment of your fever addled imagination.

“Whhhharrhwudoongnhrrrrtm?” you mumble.

Petting your hair indulgently, Tim chuckles, “Want to say that again, Shutterbug?”

You tilt your head back to look sleepily at your handsome boyfriend, “What are you doing here, Tim?”

“I’m here to take care of you, baby,” Tim says matter-of-factly, “You’re not getting well fast enough for my liking – I’m missing you too much.”

You melt a little at Tim’s puppy dog look, but sigh, “Baby, I miss you so much, too.  But if you’re here, you could get sick.”

Tim presses a soft kiss to your hot forehead, “Shutterbug, when we live together, we won’t be able to escape the other person when one of us is sick.”

Your gasp transitions into a cough and you have to wait until your throat clears before you ask, astounded, “You want to live with me?  Even with all this snot?”

Tim nods as if to say, even with all this snot, adding, “Only if you want, Shutterbug.”

You wonder how long he’s been thinking about this, “When were you thinking would be the right time for you to move in?”

Very aware that you haven’t actually agreed to live with him, Tim answers with truthful, but carefully chosen words, “I’m ready whenever, if ever, you’re ready, baby.”

You look up at Tim wide-eyed, trying to make sure that he means it - that he’s serious about taking this next step in your relationship; when you see nothing but eagerness in the softness of his eyes and the steadiness in his bright, reassuring smile, you throw your arms around Tim’s neck, germs be damned, “I’m ready, Detective!! As soon as I’m better, please move all your stuff in!”

Tim hugs you back tighter than he probably should - absolutely over the moon that he’s never going to have to leave your side again, that he and the woman he loves are going to make a home together.  So lost in his own reverie, he’s jolted back when you let out a whimper of pain, “Oh fuck, Shutterbug, did I hurt you?”

Shaking your head, you’re still beaming at your considerate boyfriend, “No, I’m just achy all over, all the time.  You could never hurt me, Tim.”  You genuinely believe this with all your heart.

“How about I run you a bath with these bath salts I bought and you have a nice warm soak while the lasagna heats up?” offers Tim.

“Will you sit with me while I’m in the bath, Detective?”

“Of course, gorgeous.”

“And we can make plans for the big move in?” You grin, eyes twinkling - you haven’t felt this energized in days.

“Nothing I would like more, baby,” Tim smiles as he hands you the plushie cat he bought you, grinning even wider when you squeal with excitement and crush the stuffed animal to your chest in elation.

You titter with happiness, grabbing Tim’s hand to lead him towards the bedroom. But when he doesn’t come readily, you turn back and to your confusion, you see Tim wincing, the hand not in yours reaching behind to press against his lower back as he arches in a painful stretch.

Eyes narrowing, you place the hand that’s still clutching Cassie the Nurse on your hip and tilt your head suspiciously, “Timothy. Where have you been sleeping?”

Btw this is Cassie the Nurse:

[arcadia-of-pluto]

Twist of Fate; Eighteen

Pairings; LADS OT4 x reader

Word count; 2,239

Themes; isekai, slow burn (eventual smut), canon divergence

Rating; 18+ for swearing and mature themes

Notes; Finally it's Friday! I swear, all of my notes for ToF practically look the same, at this point. Anyway, this is Rafayel's last chapter, I swear! His myth ends next chappy, we get some real world time with Sylus, and then we're onto the next myth– which is Zayne.

Also, if Sylus's myth set comes out soon, you best believe I will write it here if it fits the story! Annnnd also, the main story branches. To add on to that, Zayne's up-coming free 5 star on the 30th of this month will possibly be added if I can work it into the story. I know I definitely want to add a tiny sprinkle of Dawnbreaker to this story– and make him happy. Everyone gets a happy ending in this story!!

prev || next

Masterlist

Also, make sure you check out the summary (and poll) for a new series called Divisa! I'm excited with what I've got so far and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

“Are you upset I was distracted?”

A small laugh slips from your lips as you head back over to Rafayel, who had his arms crossed over his chest and a small pout on his pretty lips. “Don’t be angry! I returned, didn’t I? I even brought back some pomegranate wine. We can take it back for Algie and Konche–”

“I’m not upset, but…” Though Rafayel is cut off by the sound of arguing behind us.

“Someone stole the pearl eyes from the Sea God statue in the temple. You must be the thief!” You hear a guard say to the storyteller.

“You must be mistaken. The person who gave these to me is…over there! I would never dare to touch the Sea God’s treasures,” The storyteller yells and points at…you and Rafayel.

 That mother fu—

“There! Seize them!” The guard yells and you groan, clearly annoyed. “Will they imprison us?” Rafayel asks, nonchalantly before adding,“Ah, well...We should start running.”

“We were careless,” You sigh, running a hand through your hair, “Commoners would use coins to pay. Not pearls from the deep sea!” 

“I just found them in the sand before we– ouch!” You grab Rafayel’s hand in a panic, probably too tightly, as you both take off. You drag him into a deserted alleyway. “We’re no longer safe here. We need to find a way back,” You sigh, peering around the corner. 

“Don’t you want to stay?” Rafayel asks, almost sounding a bit melancholic.

“Huh?”

 “If that’s your wish, I can distract them for you,” He says as he rolls his shoulder, getting ready for a fight. “In the Tome of the Sea God, it states I must never go against your wishes. If I did, it would mean we cannot be bound.” He looks down and lightly kicks a pebble.

“I need only one follower, it doesn’t have to be you.”

Ouch...That somehow didn’t feel right to you. The thought of someone else being by his side, romantically or not, didn’t sit well with you. 

“Aren’t…you afraid of me telling others about Lemuria?” You ask, softly as you wrap your arms around yourself and look down at the ground.

“...but you always wanted to live on the surface world, right?” He talks with his hands and you can’t help but sigh.

You shake your head and grab his hand since he seemed a bit confused. “I don’t have a wish…besides this celebration isn’t about me.”

 Rafayel is startled for a moment but then, under the realistic statues of the sea god, he smiles, “This event has nothing to do with me either.”

“The thieves are over here! Capture them!”  You both can hear the guards moving closer, the sound of boots thumping against the pavement. “Damn it– They found us—”

 As you panic on what your next move is, Rafayel pushes you into the shadows and walks out into the street. “Do you all want eyes from the God of the Sea?” He asks, his voice filled with authority. “I have tons. Have at it.” With a flick of his wrist, countless pearls of various sizes soar through the air and cascade onto the ground. The surrounding merchants are stunned before they start to fight one another, picking up as many pearls as they can.

Then the guards start yelling at the pearls are for the emissaries.

“Sir…I don’t want the Sea God’s eyes, but can I have the Sea God puppet instead?” The little girl from earlier is back once more as she looks up at Rafayel who chuckles, “Sure but make sure you keep them together.” He hands her the two puppets before he takes your hand and pulls you into the night.

After this, the guards start closing off the city. You and Rafayel make it out, but now you stand at a cliff side, the ocean churning down below.

“Jump.”

Huh– What?

Sharp, jagged coral and rock lie at the bottom. A single mistake would be disastrous.

“Surely…You jest, right? If we jump, we’ll di— Ah!” You let out a shout as Rafayel kicked you off the cliff. 

“Not with me here.” He chuckles to himself and you hit the water with a loud splash. Rushing water separates you from Rafayel and the horror of drowning washes over you once more. You flail your arms, helpless, desperate to reach the surface. “Rafayel..!”

Beneath the surging waves, you can barely see. In your mind, you had returned to that fateful day when you were tossed overboard. Maybe you had trauma that you didn’t even know you had. Either way, you were full on floundering– almost to the point of having a panic attack.

Maybe your destiny is to die in the ocean and Lemuria was but a mirage– a dream made to cope in your final moments because you still clung to a sliver of hope that you’d make it out alive. 

Frigid, briny water floods your throat, the salt burning your lungs. No matter how many gods are in this world, whether legendary or figments of imagination, you couldn’t place your faith in them.

Even if they are real, why have your prayers gone unanswered? 

Even now, as you edge closer and closer to death’s door…You are alone.

“Breathe and hold on tight.” A voice speaks beside your ear. You open your firmly shut eyes and see a familiar, yet blurry figure. He tightly holds your hand and uses all of his strength. “Rafayel..” You murmur. 

Now, you remember.

Although you hoped for gods to exist, someone has already answered you. Though, he says nothing. His warm hands cup your cheeks as his head moves closer. His lips gently press against yours, a clear contrast to the way you kissed him on the first day you both met.

 “You..! I..!”

“You… you should’ve at least said something before that..!” You hold a hand over your mouth as your whole face turns blood red, your heart beating faster than it was in your earlier panic. 

“If I did…Your last kiss would’ve been given to this generation’s Sea God...Also, watch what your arms and legs are doing.” Only then did you notice that you were in Rafayel’s embrace, like a hermit crab who’s found a new shell. Your legs around his waist and your arms on his shoulder to stay afloat in the water. 

You notice a few scratches on his shoulder and you sigh, “I’m sorry..I left marks on your arms again.”

“I don’t mind,” He says as you unwrap your legs from his waist, “Give me your hand.” He tosses your mask into the ocean, takes your hand, and helps you stand. Your body suddenly felt light, your feet landing on the water’s rippling surface.

You were…standing on the ocean, as steady as you would on land!

As you make your way further out to sea and over the horizon, Rafayel makes a motion with his hand. Waves bloom under your feet, sea foam appearing with your every step. Countless species of fish swim by and seagulls circle overhead and sing as they land on your shoulder.

You’re in awe, your hand being gently held by Rafayel as you can’t even begin to say anything. You couldn’t say anything– or else you’d probably cry.

“We went through a lot of effort to see the sunrise. Why are you so quiet?” He asks, glancing toward you as you turn your head to look up at him.

“No…It’s– I’ve never seen anything this beautiful in my life,” You say, almost breathlessly. You motion for Rafayel to sit down next to you on the ocean’s surface, your feet touching the lapping waves as fish circle around under you both curiously. He raises an eyebrow and pokes a fish that leapt out of the water.

“As a young boy, my life was no different from yours.” Rafayel says and you can’t help but turn to look at him, surprised he’s willing to talk about his past with you. “The prophecy stated that Lemuria was to only have one God of the Sea left. My predecessor passed away and they found me years later, bathed in the flames under the union of dusk and dawn. The deep sea is dangerous…Only the strong survive. ‘Tis why I can only go as far as the surface of the sea.”

“Were you…happy? Have you ever thought about traveling to another place?” You ask, keeping your voice soft to match his low timbre. Your fingers lightly brush against one another as your gaze meets his.

“Who do you think made that hole you swam through in the past?” Rafayel crosses his arms over his chest with a raised eyebrow and a small chuckle.

“Oh– The sun’s rising!” The sun breaks through layers and layers of clouds and Rafayel looks up, observing the glittering sea under its rays. “So it is.”

And like that, many moons have passed since your last rendezvous on the surface. You honestly almost forgot you were in a memory since you could act more freely than in the past. You couldn’t say anything too detrimental, but you could at least change the phrasing of your words.

But with the reminder that you were in a memory in your dreams, you realize the ending has to be coming eventually. Whether it was a good or a bad ending, you can’t tell just yet.

On the night before the Sea God’s ceremony with everyone else asleep, Rafayel takes you to the temple. Pulsating in a steady rhythm behind you, the flame on the pedestal burns.

“When the fire goes out tomorrow, a new lemurian prophecy will appear in the Tome of the Sea God,” Rafayel says as he looks off to the side, turning his body to rest his arms on the stone railing on the second floor. “And when the fire is reignited, the ceremony will end.” 

You tap his shoulder to get his attention and he looks at you out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, describe to me what’s done in the real Sea God’s ceremony.” You prop your elbow up on the railing and rest your cheek on your hand as you look at him. 

Rafayel sets his chin on his hand as he thinks of what to say before he speaks, “We sit on my divine throne adorned with shells and pearls. A hundred golden crab will carry us on a journey to every part of the deep sea.” As he finishes his sentence, he stands up straight to look over at you with a smile.

“That sounds lovely, but wouldn’t everyone be annoyed?” You ask, your head cocking to the side and the purple-haired Lemurian nods his head, “Indeed. I’ll skip the first part of the ceremony. ‘Twas only make-believe nonsense.” 

You go silent for a moment, looking around at the scenery of the temple before Rafayel lifts his hand up and runs it down your hair, fingers lightly gliding down your cheek.

“I don’t know the details of the ceremony,” He says as his hand cups your cheek, “but it won’t be anything like the celebration on the surface world. Every participant will be blessed by the ocean.”

“Will...I receive your blessing?” You ask, meeting his gaze as you lean your face against his palm– almost nuzzling into it. Rafayel pauses, moving his hand as if to grab something from behind your ear. 

When he pulls his hand back, the familiar blue fish swirls around in his palm. 

“Tomorrow’s blessing will be for everyone but ‘tis only yours at this moment.” He closes his hand around the fish and when he reopens it, the same scale you saw before hovers in his palm. “‘Tis a true emissary of the god of the sea. With it in your company, you need not be afraid of the danger that lies ahead.” 

As he says this, he flips his hand over and suddenly the scale is now a necklace. He dangles it in-between his fingers for a moment, before he moves closer to clasp the necklace behind your neck.

He smiles down at you, fingertips dancing along the skin of your neck before he tilts his chin up, “I also have a question. ‘Tis a very, very important one.” He leans his face closer and keeps eye contact with you as he asks, “Are you willing to be my follower?” 

“Hmm...Desiring the sincerest worship of mortals…Thou must offer an irreplaceable object,” You tease, a smile tugging at the corner of your lips.

Rafayel pouts for a moment before he grabs your hand to rest your palm flat against his chest. You feel the warmth of his bare skin beneath your hand, the beats coming from his heart.

“The Sea God’s heart, my heart. Dost thou want it?” His hand slightly squeezes around yours. 

Without another word, you both lean closer to each other, the flame flickers behind you and seemingly startles awake as your lips connect. 

Shadows on the wall tremble and shudder as you wrap your arms around his neck. Your head tilting to the side as the kiss deepens, the both of you seemingly unwilling to pull away. The flame on the pedestal burns brighter the longer the kiss goes on.

Sparkles flying both metaphorically and physically in the dimly lit room. 

Only when you felt Rafayel’s fingers brush against your chin and his tongue touch your lips, did you pull away and the flame returned back to normal.

In case you guys didn't see it on my last post, I wanted to thank you all for enjoying my writing! I'm not going anywhere, I just sincerely wanted to thank you all 🩷 especially with my drabbles, I really didn't think they'd kick off the way that they did, but I'm happy regardless!

I'm glad that something I decided to write in-between my ToF schedule is being enjoyed, and I'll continue to write them until I run out of ideas!

Also I haven't forgotten about the one-shot teasers I posted a little while ago! Last week I felt really out of it and didn't want to write anything, so I'm going to try to write in them a bit more this weekend alongside writing for my newer ideas.

let me add, HAVE YALL SEEN THE NEW FIVE STAR SERIES COMING OUT ON THE 23RD??? Rafayel's card has me in a chokehold AND new outfits for the male leads and MC?? I'm 14 away from a guaranteed 5 star, so you best hope I get rafayel because if I don't— I will cry. It was 100% expecting Sylus's myths to drop, but I don't mind because we're getting a spicy rafayel card! 🥺

Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist! 🩷

Taglist; @orphicmeliora , @yoongi-tunes , @mitzkooni , @hiqhkey, @tanspostsblog

[yopossum]

SURPRISE (to me, most of all!)

It’s something new!!! 🥰

Wash Day

A “Not Anyone Who Says” universe fluffy flashback ficlet with young dad Joel and toddler Sarah. Can be read as a standalone. No warnings.

(I intentionally write exclusively Black biracial Sarah. Photo of bb Nico)

Main Masterlist - Series Masterlist

————————————————————————

Joel spread the faded bath towel over the counter and gave it a pat. “Alright, babygirl, salon is open. C’mere!” With a whoosh he swept the giggling little girl from her place at his feet and laid her down on her back in the spot he’d just prepared.

“Want a towel roll for under your neck, baby?”

“Yes pwease!” squeaked the wriggling Sarah. Joel grabbed a dish towel from a drawer and rolled it up, tucking it around his daughter’s neck and shoulders.

“How’s that feelin’? Y’ cozy?”

“Yes Daddy! Fank you!” She grinned up at Joel with a wide, gummy smile. “My hair’s all yucky, Daddy?”

Joel smiled softly and shook his head reassuringly. “Not yucky, darlin’, never. Y’ got beautiful hair, don’t ever let somebody tell you different. You just did a lot of good playin’ and runnin’ round all week so I’m gonna get it nice and clean, get those tangles out.” He ran a thumb over her chubby cheek and she wrinkled her nose at him.

“I don’t wike the bwush, Daddy.” Her big brown eyes, a mirror of his own, went wide and wet with concern. He pressed a comforting kiss to her forehead.

“I know y’ don’t, princess, but it’s important to keep that lovely crown ‘a yours healthy. I promise I’ll be gentle as I can, jus’ like every week. How’s that sound?” Joel turned on the faucet to let the water warm, one hand rubbing his daughter’s shoulder.

Sarah breathed out an exceptionally heavy sigh for such a small girl. “Ooohkay, Daddy. And Uncle Tommy’s tenduh….tenduhhead…?”

Joel chuckled. “That’s right, babygirl. Uncle Tommy’s tender-headed, too. And you’re way tougher than him, aren’tcha?” She nodded seriously in agreement. He checked the water temperature, perfectly warm. “Ready, Sarah?” She nodded again and tilted her head back as Joel gathered her hair in his broad palms in the sink, watching with a contented grin when the tension in her little body melted away as the warm water saturated her curls.

He squeezed a generous amount of shampoo into the well of his palm and lathered it meticulously through the length of her hair, massaging at her scalp and teasing his fingers through the childhood trademark snarls. Dirt, sand, sunscreen, sweat, sticky popsicle remnants, and an errant oak leaf swirled down the drain in a sudsy stream. He rinsed until the water ran clear, then spun the handle to turn it off.

“Conditionin’ time, curly girly. Y’ ready?”

“Yes Daddy,” she said in as stern a voice as she could manage. “Pwomise you gonna be gentle?” she added cautiously.

“I promise, babygirl.”

Joel twisted off the lid of the jar and scooped out a pile of the thick custard before working it into Sarah’s dripping hair. He separated her locks out into sections and began to run the brush carefully through each, starting at the ends and working his way up. After half an hour or so, which was punctuated with the occasional whine of protest and several tickle breaks, his fingers slid easily through the sandy slippery coils. Joel turned the warm water back on and rinsed.

When he’d finished, he pressed his lips to the stretch of Sarah’s soft round tummy peeking out from under her purple butterfly pajama top and blew an enormous raspberry, eliciting a loud squeal.

“All done! Up we go, sweetheart,” Joel said with a clap of his hands. He helped his little girl to sit upright on the counter, shielding her head from the sharp corner of the upper cabinet. He grabbed the rolled up towel and wrapped it around Sarah’s hair, squeezing out the excess water gently to avoid fuzzing it.

“Now, what style are we thinkin’ for this week, hm?” He rested his hands on his hips and kicked out a lazy leg.

Sarah pursed her pouty pink lips in thought for a second before exclaiming, “BWAIDS!”

Joel let out a loud laugh. “Braids it is, then! How many, and which hair thingies y’ want?”

“I want fwee bwaids, cuz I’m fwee years old! Anddddd… wed fwowers! Wike Susie!” she cheered.

“That’s right, ain’t it. You are three! Lil’ Miss Susie Carmichael comin’ right up. Let me get the red flower ties from y’ bedroom, alright?” He turned and started down the hall.

“Kay! Fank you Daddy. Susie’s my favowite.” Joel looked back to see his baby beaming up at him, dimples deep and darling on her peachy golden cheeks.

“Don’t I know it, y’ little rugrat. And you know who my favorite is?”

Sarah wiggled in anticipation. She barely chirped out a “who?” before her father bent down and lifted her with his strong hands, tossing her up to the ceiling as she shrieked with glee.

“It’s you, babygirl,” Joel hummed happily, smooching her face and running his palm over her dampened back. “Sarah’s my favorite.”

💕

[cynicalrosebud]

Handle It (3): Overkill

Navigation

Series Masterlist

Chapter Summary: How far would a hybrid go to protect her handler? Alex and Y/n are about to find out.

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, you are responsible for your own media consumption.

Notes: Bit of a long chapter folks but I’m proud as fuck.

The briefing room was filled with the familiar hum of low chatter and the soft rustle of papers as soldiers and their hybrids gathered around. You padded along beside Alex, your senses picking up the subtle mix of scents and sounds—the sharp tang of cleaning supplies, the murmur of voices, and the unmistakable presence of other hybrids in the room.

Alex gave your head a quick scratch as you both approached the group. You immediately noticed Ghost standing off to the side, his broad figure impossible to miss, with Soap—his K9 hybrid—sitting alert at his feet. Soap’s ears twitched, eyes already scanning the room for anything interesting, but his expression turned mischievous the moment he spotted you.

“Well, if it isn’t the pup!” Soap teased, giving you a playful grin. His tail wagged slowly behind him, clearly in a mood to rile you up.

You shot him a look, one ear flicking in mock irritation. He always had something to say, but despite the teasing, there was something comforting in his presence. Even though Soap never missed a chance to make a smart comment, you knew he had your back. He was all bark when it came to his humor, but when things got serious, he was as dependable as they came.

“Enough, Soap,” Ghost’s voice rumbled, the mask hiding any hint of emotion, but his tone was enough to reel in the hybrid’s antics. Soap shot you a quick wink before sitting back down with a huff, clearly not done with his playful energy.

On the other side of the room, you spotted Price, his commanding presence filling the space without him having to say a word. At his side was Gaz, his K9 hybrid, who sat calmly, his gaze sharp and focused on the briefing material. Gaz had a reputation for being quick and calculated, never one to get distracted by the playful antics that often surrounded the others.

“Glad you could make it,” Price greeted as Alex stepped up, giving you a nod of acknowledgment. “Looks like we’ve got the whole crew here.”

Alex gave a half-smile, hand still resting on your neck. “Wouldn’t miss it. What’s the plan?”

Price glanced at the gathered hybrids and handlers, his voice low but commanding. “We’ve got intel coming in about a high-priority target moving through the outskirts of the city. We’re splitting into teams—each hybrid and their handler working in tandem. This mission’s going to require precision, so no one can afford to slack.”

You straightened up at the sound of the mission details, your instincts kicking in. Alex’s hand squeezed gently at the back of your neck, a subtle reminder that he trusted you completely.

Ghost stepped forward, his gaze meeting Price’s. “Soap and I will take the east side of the perimeter. We’ll cover the high ground and monitor for movement.”

Soap’s ears perked, his usual smirk fading as his focus shifted into the professional mode that made him such a skilled K9. “Got it, L.T.,” he murmured, tail stilling as his eyes sharpened.

Price nodded, turning to Alex. “You and Y/n will take the central route. It’s going to be tight, but we’ll need you to be fast. No room for error.”

Alex gave a nod, glancing down at you. “She’s ready.”

You felt the warmth of his trust in that moment, and you let out a quiet, affirming huff, tail swaying slightly. The tension in the room was palpable, but with Alex at your side, the unease was outweighed by your focus on the task ahead.

“I’ll be with Gaz on the west side,” Price added, his hand resting briefly on Gaz’s shoulder, who gave a silent nod in return.

Gaz’s calm energy was always a grounding presence, and you felt the slightest nudge of reassurance as you glanced over at him. He caught your gaze for a brief moment, offering a steadying look, a reminder that you were all in this together, no matter where the mission took you.

“Alright,” Price called, pulling everyone’s attention back to him. “We move in fifteen. Stay sharp, and stick to your handlers.”

With that, the room was filled with the quiet shuffle of movement as everyone started gearing up. You stood by Alex’s side, feeling the steady thrum of adrenaline building within you. The mission loomed ahead, but with the team assembled—their handlers by their sides—there was a sense of unshakable unity.

And no matter what was waiting out there, you knew you were ready to face it.

The mission had been running smoothly—almost too smoothly. The intel was solid, and the movements were precise. You and Alex had pushed through the central route, slipping through alleys and deserted streets like shadows. But it was always in the calm that danger lurked.

The crack of a gunshot rang out before you even had time to react.

Alex crumpled beside you with a sharp grunt, clutching his side as blood began to seep through his fingers. Your heart pounded in your chest, your vision narrowing as you turned, ears flattening against your head. The sound of boots on gravel filled the air—enemy combatants swarming from every direction. An ambush.

“Y/n... hold the line,” Alex rasped, struggling to catch his breath as he pressed a hand to his wound. His voice, usually so calm, now held an edge of pain.

You didn’t need his words to know what to do. Instinct took over, and you moved to stand in front of him, your body a barrier between Alex and the wave of enemies pouring in. Your teeth bared in a feral snarl, fur bristling as you lowered yourself into a defensive stance. This was your fight now, and no one was getting to him.

The first soldier came too close, raising his rifle. With a burst of speed, you lunged, taking him down with savage force, your claws sinking into fabric and flesh. His cry was cut short as he hit the ground. You turned, eyes flashing with fury, as another approached, swinging the butt of his gun. You ducked and lunged, knocking him to the dirt with a brutal efficiency that was second nature to you.

The bodies began to pile up, but they kept coming. Through it all, Alex was behind you, struggling to stay conscious as he pressed harder against his wound. “Hang on, babydoll,” he whispered, his voice a strained rasp. “Just a little longer…”

Your ears twitched at his words, your muscles burning from the constant fight, but you couldn’t afford to stop. Every combatant that fell was a step closer to protecting him, and that’s all that mattered. You heard the growls building deep in your throat, a warning to anyone who dared get too close.

One by one, they came at you, but you didn’t let up. You couldn’t. Alex needed you.

The ground around you was soaked with blood, the bodies strewn in a chaotic mess, but you didn’t leave your post. You stood over Alex, chest heaving, eyes scanning the area for any sign of movement. Your fur was matted with sweat and dirt, but you wouldn’t let your guard down. Not until you were sure he was safe.

It wasn’t until you heard the distant rumble of familiar voices that your body finally relaxed. Through the haze of blood and adrenaline, you picked up the faint sound of Ghost’s deep voice, the distinct cadence of Soap’s Scottish accent, and the steady commands of Price.

“Bloody hell…” Soap murmured as they came into view, his usual banter replaced with shock as he took in the sight of you standing protectively over Alex, surrounded by the bodies of enemy combatants. His eyes darted from the mess of carnage to you, a mix of respect and disbelief in his expression.

Ghost approached with measured steps, his eyes narrowing behind his mask as he surveyed the scene. “She tore through them,” he muttered, his voice low. It wasn’t a question—it was an observation. Ghost knew exactly what had happened. You had done what was necessary, and in his own way, he respected that.

Price knelt beside Alex, his eyes softening when he saw the state of him. “Keller, you hanging in there?”

Alex gave a weak grin, his eyes half-lidded as he glanced up at you, still standing guard over him. “Had the best protection… wouldn’t let anyone through.”

You stayed there, even as the rest of the team began to work on Alex, applying pressure to his wound, preparing for extraction. Your eyes never left the perimeter, your instincts still screaming at you to protect him. But slowly, as the adrenaline wore off, you allowed yourself a moment of relief.

He was safe.

And as Alex reached up, his hand brushing against your fur, you let out a soft huff, leaning into his touch. The fight was over, but your bond—your duty—was never-ending.

After the ambush, everything became a blur. The sounds of gunfire, shouting, and the smell of blood faded into a distant hum as Alex was rushed to medical. You followed as far as you could, but the medics had been clear—you couldn’t go with him.

You’d paced outside the doors, ears twitching at every sound, claws flexing into the ground. The separation gnawed at you, and the anxiety only worsened with each passing minute. Your handler—your Alex—was hurt, and now you had to wait, helpless.

Ghost had been the one to pull you away when it was clear Alex would be in surgery for a while. His presence was a steady one, firm yet calm as he guided you back toward the main area. "He’s in good hands, Y/n. They’ll patch him up," Ghost said, his voice deep but comforting in its own way. "But until then, you’re with me."

The weight of the ambush, the battle, and the sight of Alex injured started to crush down on you. You tried to stand tall, tried to be the fierce, focused hybrid you’d been in the field, but without Alex, it felt like a part of you had been severed.

Ghost took you to one of the quieter rooms where the rest of the team had gathered. Soap and Gaz were sitting around, having been debriefed after the attack, their eyes sharp but concerned the moment they saw you.

"How’s she doing?" Gaz asked, glancing from you to Ghost.

"She's under me until Alex is back. She’s hanging in there, but..." Ghost trailed off, his dark gaze unreadable behind his mask, but everyone knew how close you were to your handler. The bond between you and Alex ran deep, and this kind of separation was never easy, especially after a brutal fight like that.

Soap, always the one with boundless energy, stood up and made his way over to you with a soft, disarming smile. "C’mon, lass, no need to be all on edge." He crouched down, his eyes filled with an uncharacteristic gentleness as he ruffled the fur at your neck. "Yer did good. Real good. Alex’ll be right as rain soon enough."

But you didn’t move. Your muscles were still tense, ears flat against your head, tail barely flicking behind you. It was like the weight of everything was too much to process. You didn’t want comfort—you wanted Alex.

Gaz approached next, his steps cautious, as if understanding that too much at once might overwhelm you. "It’s okay, Y/n," he said softly, reaching out to pat your side. "We’re here. We’ve got you. We’ll look after you until Alex is back."

Soap exchanged a look with Gaz, and without another word, they both shifted closer. Gaz sat down beside you, his arm wrapping gently around your shoulder, offering silent reassurance, while Soap moved in front of you, resting his head on your lap as if trying to coax you into a more relaxed state.

"Yer like a big pup, aren’t ya?" Soap muttered with a teasing grin, though there was no bite to his words. "We can be a proper pack for now, eh?"

You let out a soft whine, your ears slowly lifting as you glanced down at Soap, who was now sprawled out across your legs, his tail giving lazy wags. The tension in your body slowly began to unwind, just a little. Gaz’s warmth at your side and Soap’s playful antics started to pull you out of your haze of worry.

Ghost, leaning against the doorway, watched quietly as the two hybrids piled on you, clearly intending to drown you in affection. He said nothing but gave a slight nod of approval, his way of showing that you were in good hands.

As the minutes passed, Soap and Gaz kept you surrounded, occasionally throwing in light-hearted jokes or stories about past missions, their voices familiar and calming. Gaz’s hand traced gentle patterns along your back, and Soap remained sprawled, always making sure he was physically close to you. It was a silent form of comfort—a reminder that you weren’t alone, not even for a second.

You finally leaned into them, the exhaustion catching up with you as your head rested against Gaz’s shoulder, Soap’s weight a comforting presence across your legs. They were doing everything they could to take your mind off Alex’s absence, and slowly but surely, it was working.

The three of you stayed like that, cuddled together, a temporary pack, until you could see Alex again. They weren’t him, but they were enough to ease the ache in your heart, at least for now.

The handler group chat was usually filled with mission updates, tactical discussions, and the occasional banter between the team. But tonight, something different lit up the screen—photos from the aftermath of the ambush.

Price was the first to see it, his phone buzzing as the notification popped up. When he opened it, a photo of you, Soap, and Gaz in a heap of fur and limbs filled the screen. Soap was draped across your legs like a giant, content pup, while Gaz was nestled beside you, his arm slung over your shoulder protectively. You looked utterly exhausted but finally calm, your head resting against Gaz's chest.

Price raised an eyebrow and let out a deep chuckle before typing into the chat:

Price: Well, I’ll be damned. Looks like we’ve got a proper puppy pile going on here.

A second later, Ghost’s message popped up, short and to the point:

Ghost: They needed it.

Alex, from his hospital bed, got the notification on his phone and smiled when he saw the picture. His chest still hurt from the injury, but the sight of you finally relaxing, surrounded by your temporary pack, eased the tension he had been feeling since the ambush.

Alex: Good to know my girl’s in good hands.

Then, unable to resist, he added:

Alex: Though it looks like she’s traded me for Soap.

Ghost's reply was instantaneous.

Ghost: She'd sooner trade Soap's head for a biscuit.

Alex grinned at the exchange, his heart lightened by the back-and-forth. Even if he couldn’t be there with you right now, he knew the team was looking out for you. And as he stared at the photo, he couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride. You had fought like hell to protect him, and now the rest of the team was doing their part to protect you—whether through banter or puppy-pile cuddles.

Price: If this keeps up, we might need to invest in bigger quarters for all these K9s. Got ourselves a whole pack now.

Alex chuckled and typed out a final response:

Alex: Yeah, but only one handler’s getting her back.

His message was accompanied by a winking emoji, and he leaned back against the hospital bed, waiting for the inevitable wave of teasing from the team. But for now, he was just grateful that, even with the chaos of the mission, there was a little bit of light and comfort waiting for both him and you.

The moment you were cleared to visit Alex, you didn't hesitate. The medics had barely finished telling you before you were sprinting down the hallway, your claws scraping against the floor as you made a beeline for his room.

When you pushed open the door, there he was, propped up in bed with a few bandages wrapped around his chest. His eyes brightened the moment he saw you, that soft, familiar smile tugging at his lips despite the exhaustion on his face.

"Hey, babydoll," Alex greeted, voice still a little rough from the pain meds, but warm.

Without a word, you jumped into the bed, careful not to jostle him too much but insistent on being as close to him as possible. You curled up right against his side, your head pressed against his shoulder, and let out a soft rumble of contentment. For the first time since the ambush, the tension in your body eased completely. Alex’s hand found its way to your hair, his fingers gently stroking through it as he murmured, "Missed you too, you know."

You nuzzled into his neck, your tail flicking slightly as you melted into his warmth. This was where you were supposed to be—right by his side.

Just as you were getting comfortable, the door creaked open, and the doctor stepped in for a routine check. The moment they approached, you let out a low growl, your ears flattening as you glared at them. No one was going to disturb your handler. Not now. Not after everything.

The doctor paused, clearly taken aback but trying to remain professional. "Just need to check his vitals," they said, raising their hands slightly in surrender.

Alex chuckled, his chest rumbling beneath you as he placed a calming hand on your back. "Easy, babydoll. They’re just doing their job."

You gave a half-hearted huff but stayed firmly in place, watching the doctor with narrowed eyes as they went about their checks. Alex’s hand never left your back, his touch grounding you as you let the doctor do what they needed to—albeit with a constant, warning growl whenever they got too close.

The doctor, clearly amused but trying to remain serious, gave Alex a quick nod when they finished. "She’s very protective."

Alex smiled, his fingers scratching behind your ear in that way that made you lean into him. "Yeah, she’s a good girl."

The doctor left with a small laugh, leaving you both alone again. As soon as the door clicked shut, you relaxed completely, your growls replaced by the soft purr of contentment. Alex shifted slightly, wrapping his arm more securely around you.

"You’re my fierce protector, huh?" he teased, pressing a soft kiss to your temple. "Didn’t let ‘em get too close."

You huffed but nuzzled closer, savoring the feel of his steady heartbeat under your cheek. Alex’s hand continued its soothing strokes through your hair, and in that moment, with him safe and in your arms, the world felt right again.

"Love you, babydoll," Alex whispered, his voice soft.

You looked up at him, eyes meeting his with unwavering devotion. No words were needed—he already knew.

[senditcolton]

hiiiiiii my beautiful friend!!! I’m sure I speak for a lot of us when I say that I would love a check in on we’re a bad idea matty—whatever that means for you and where you vision they are now! (request 1 of ???)

- @comphy-and-cozy

Who Are We to Fight the Alchemy?

a/n: i will gladly write anything for this universe because i love it so much and i will happily write anything for you @comphy-and-cozy. if you couldn't tell from the title, a Taylor Swift mashup inspired the final part of this series so it's only fitting that a Taylor Swift mashup inspired this fic.

Word Count: 3.7k Warnings: brother's teammate, references to alcohol consumption, but mostly just pure romantic fluff!!!

Things change.

It was a statement that brought pain and heartache. But it was also a statement that sometimes brought about such joy and happiness. You were thankful to say that in the past year, the latter was more applicable to your life.

The amount of change that you had experienced felt astronomical whenever you sat down and tried to quantify it. In just a few short months, you went from being miserable in Los Angeles, trying to get over a man that broke your heart and left you reeling to being happy back in New York City and coupled with that same man. A man who had changed even more than you could’ve ever imagined.

Matt Martin used to be a bad idea. Last summer, when the two of you reconnected, he was a surprise. Now, you could safely say that he was one of the best things in your life.

It was jarring at first. There was a part of you that was still distrustful, remembering who he used to be: someone who wanted you to himself but never wanted to claim you. But that summer night, he proved how much he had changed and how much he wanted you. Completely. And he had continued to prove it every day afterwards.

That wasn’t to say the transition was easy. There was a lot of bridges to cross: emotionally, physically, metaphorically. It took a while for you to believe that Matt meant what he said and what he did; that it wasn’t all just an overcorrection brought on by guilt or that it wasn’t just another elaborate ploy to get his hooks back into you. But the one thing that convinced you was how patient Matt was. He understood your reservations, took responsibility for how he treated you, and gave you as much space as you needed to process – even if that space was thousands of miles.

You went back to Los Angeles. Mostly for realistic reasons, like your job and your lease. But you would be lying if you didn’t think of it as a test for Matt; to see if he would wait for you, to see if he still wanted you.

And he did, in every single way.

That was enough for you to take the final leap, move back to New York, and fully commit to being his, the way he was ready to commit to being yours.

That was six months ago. Now, you were Matt Martin’s girl.

It was a massive mind-blowing change, one that you never expected. You had wished for it when you were younger, the massive crush you had on your brother’s teammate making you a fool. You desired it that winter you went to a bar with your brother and ended up leaving with Matt. You craved it every moment, during the stretch of hookups and illicit meetings after charity galas and nights out and engagement parties. You resigned that fantasy when you left for Los Angeles. You tried to banish the dream from your mind while you were underneath California’s sun.

But when you saw him again at Scotty and Emily’s wedding, the fantasy of being his resurfaced. Only this time, it wasn’t just something that you wanted. Matt wanted it just as much, if not more. And now, it was no longer a dream. It was your reality.

You were his. He was yours. Something that everyone in your life knew.

You had told your brother Scotty and sister-in-law Emily shortly after the two of you became ‘official’ and were happily surprised when they seemed okay with it. You were sure that their reaction would’ve been much different if they knew the entire timeline of your relationship with Matt Martin (something you were unsure if you would ever tell them). Your friends from college knew, although they were more skeptical, having known part of the tryst you and Matt had shared. Eventually, the news spread to the whole of the New York Islanders, as well as their wives and girlfriends, who welcomed you into a whole new world, one that you never experienced when you were just Scotty’s sister.

But the person that knew before anyone else did was Mat Barzal; the person who knew the entire history of you and Matt Martin and the only person who had one foot in each of your worlds. He was the most supportive of the change, a fact that was slightly surprising but not at all that shocking when you thought about it. You even sometimes thanked him, for giving you both the necessary push that allowed you to reconnect.

While everyone in you and Matt’s personal circles knew, you hadn’t – quote unquote – gone public with your relationship. The gossip blogs had deduced that Matt Martin may have been taken off the market but there was nothing confirmed by you or Matt or anyone else. Whenever you went to Islanders games or appeared in pictures with the other WAGs, you were still known as Scotty’s sister. There was never an implication that you were something more.

And when the New York Islanders had clinched their spot in the playoffs and the discussion of the ever-important WAG jacket began, you told Matt and the girls that you weren’t going to wear his last name on your back; a boundary that Matt respected and the girls playfully ignored. Something that you realized when you were invited to the ‘jacket reveal’ party (out of principle, of course) and had a large package placed on your lap.

In the moment, you were a little annoyed at them for ignoring your wishes, even though you knew that they did it with the best intentions. But now, in the friends and family box at UBS Arena, the jacket wrapped around your frame and your hands clasped in Lyla and Emily’s, you were happy that they did.

It was game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals after all. And the New York Islanders were less than five minutes and one goal away from reaching the peak of the mountain.

Your gaze is glued to the ice, your knuckles turning almost as white as the surface that the Islanders and the Jets were zipping across. You felt as if your breathing stopped every time Winnipeg entered the zone, also vying for that single goal that would bring the Cup to Canada instead. You flinch as Mark Scheifele took a shot at the net, your muscles only slightly relaxing when Ilya made the save. The Jets manage to secure the puck and throw it to back to the point where Josh Morrisey waits. Morrisey attempts to pass to his teammate Vilardi, but a miscommunication causes the puck to bounce off his skate instead.

The black disc sits in the expanse ice until someone scoops it up. And you can’t stop the screams of his name that escape your mouth as Matt Martin skates down the ice, his focus on the net in front of him, a Vezina trophy winning goalie between him and the deciding goal.

The puck flies off his stick and you swear you can feel the entirety of UBS Arena holding its breath. Until the rising shot sails by Connor Hellebuyck’s blocker and hits the netting. Then the arena seems to explode.

The goal horn coupled with the cheers from seventeen thousand people is deafening. However, it all seems like background noise to the way you’re screaming, your pure excitement not even muffled by the pile of bodies that rush over to hug you. You swear you can feel tears in your eyes as the girls pull away, your gaze connecting with the giant screen hanging over the ice as you watch Matt skate by the benches, receiving aggressively excited fist bumps and helmet pats from his teammates.

The reality that there was still two minutes left in the game washes over everyone quickly, the seasoned fans realizing that while things change quickly in life, they can change even quicker in hockey. But as the clock counts down, the nervous energy slowly transforming into that of pure excitement, your eyes scan the arena to find the number 17.

You see him on the bench, his body almost draped over the side as the Islanders hold the puck against the boards, the seconds dwindling down.

Three. Two. One.

The sound of the final buzzer almost makes your knees drop out from under you, your body wanting to collapse in pure relief. You don’t have the opportunity to because before you can blink, Lyla is gripping your shoulders, shaking you with pure joy.

“They fucking did it!!!” she screams in your face and you can do nothing except pull her into a bear-hug as the excitement from the girls, the fans, the players, the coaches, everyone fills the arena. Your eyes flick up to the Jumbotron to see the mass of blue jerseys surrounding the net as the team embraces.

You watch content as the traditionally handshake line happens, your eyes forever glued to Matt as he skates around, occasionally being pummeled with hugs and cheers befitting the game-winning goal scorer. The Conn Smythe trophy is brought out and you hug Lyla tight, cheering almost as loudly as she did when Mathew is announced as the winner.

When the Stanley Cup is brought out, you think it’s a miracle that you can even hear the commissioner over the sound of cheering – a noise that only becomes louder when Anders lifts the trophy over his head.

The girls slowly start filtering out, bustling to get down to the ice but you wait until Matt gets the Cup handed off to him, not wanting to miss the moment he holds the greatest trophy in all of sports for the first time. If you thought there were tears in your eyes when he scored or when the final buzzer went off, there was no denying their presence now as you watch Matt skate around the ice with the silver chalice held proudly over his head.

You feel Emily gently tug at your hand, pulling your attention away from the celebration and pulling you into the hallway and down into the bowels of UBS Arena. The ice is almost blinding as you walk out onto it, your arm linked in Lyla’s. She quickly abandons you when she spies Barzy, running towards him and enveloping him in a massive loving embrace, leaving you to catch up.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Mr. Conn Smythe winner,” you tease as you walk up to him, his arm securely wrapped around Lyla’s waist. His grin is wide as he pulls you into a hug. “Congrats Barzy. You deserve it.”

“Thank you,” he mutters to you, letting you go as you step back. You watch his eyes glance over your frame, registering the material wrapped around your torso. “Nice jacket.”

You laugh, the joy in your eyes reflected in his – your insanely supportive best friend.

“Have you seen him yet?” Mat asks, his question causing your eyes to dart around the arena.

“Not yet, but I’m sure he’s getting interviewed or something. I’ll just congratulate Scotty while I wait.”

“Does he know? About this?” he says, gesturing to your body. You reply with a playful shake of your head and Barzy whistles. “This will surely be a night he’ll remember forever.”

You giggle, Mat’s statement not even close to an exaggeration, even without the innuendo that one could easily attach. You give him a quick wave as you wander away, taking a moment to spy Emily standing next to Scotty and your parents. You run up to him, head butting him in the chest in greeting – a ritual that started when you were younger that the two of you continued to this day. Scotty embraces you, smiling as he takes in the moment.

You are laughing with your family when you feel the weight of someone’s gaze attaching to your frame. It is a slow turn of your head until your eyes connect with the ocean blue irises of Matt. You can see his chest rising in heavy breaths, the adrenaline of the moment still buzzing through his body. But the thing that nearly stops your heart is his expression; a mixture of shock and wonder so clearly painted on his face.

You smile, your attention falling completely from your family as you drift away, walking slowly towards him. He coasts up to you and you’re still unsure if his disbelief is related to winning the Cup or to the sight of his last name on your back until he stops in front of you.

“What – ” he begins to say, his hands reaching out to trace down your arms, fingers gliding over the material. His almost hesitance makes you giggle, a smile pulling at his lips in response.

“Surprised?” you laugh, before twirling slowly, the weight of Matt’s gaze raking across your frame undeniable. “It looks good on me, don’t you think?”

The confirmation Matt gives isn’t verbal at first. Instead, he simply lifts you into his arms, your legs instinctively hook around his hips. One of his hands flies into your hair and tugs you forward until your lips press together. The energy and excitement that had been sparking around the arena seems to funnel directly into the kiss. The way your body was buzzing had nothing to do with the glasses of white wine that you had consumed in the past hour and everything to do with the feeling of Matt’s lips against yours.

He finally breaks the kiss and sets you down on the ice, keeping you wrapped in his arms as he stares at you with just as much reverence as he looked at the Stanley Cup.

“You look fucking fantastic,” he mutters and you can’t stop the laugh at the bluntness of his statement.

“I thought I should dress up for you,” you muse, your hand lifting to brush away a few of the sweat-soaked stands of hair from his forehead.

“Glad you did. I think you were my lucky charm.”

“If that’s so, then why didn’t you sweep every series?” you tease, the joke falling from your lips.

“Because the universe needed to know that you were mine.”

The seriousness of his words has you pausing, your eyes looking into his, seeing the sincerity and relief reflecting in his pupils. You realized the gravity of the situation. What you were wearing… it wasn’t just a jacket with his last name sewn between your shoulder blades. It was a confirmation to him, to the team, to the fans, to the world that you were his, even after everything that lead the two of you to this moment.

It was a symbol of your commitment, your trust, your love. It was a public declaration that you were his. Completely.

You could never resist the pull of him, even before this moment, and you certainly can’t stop it now as you lean in and press your lips against his again in a kiss that was just as – if not more – passionate as the last.

“I think I’ve been yours long before I put this jacket on,” you whisper to him, your quiet confession clearly heard as Matt pulls you impossibly tighter against his body.

“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he replies, a remark that he has made a dozen times before and one that you never tired of hearing. You step back, the playful smirk appearing on your lips.

“Even now? After you scored the goal that made you a Stanley Cup champion?”

“There’s absolutely no comparison,” he asserts, lifting your chin to kiss you again.

Things change, that much was true. They morph and transform, get created and destroyed. What you and Matt shared had shifted more than you could possibly imagine. But it had changed for the better. The connection you two shared was the purest form of alchemy; taking something sordid and turning it into pure gold.  

tagging the "we're a bad idea" babes: @texanstarslove @smileysvech @laurenairay @dissonannce @cowboybarzy @cellythefloshie @provokedgoalie @m00nlightdelights @tkachvkmatthew @cixrosie @alwaysclassyeagle @geospatialharmony

[simp2537]

heyyy I love ur writing and I was wondering if you could write femreader x darkling . Their already in an established relationship and haven’t seen eachother in a while bc alina keeps taking kirgans time with her training keeping him away from femreader . It’s gotten so bad they are driven crazy from the sexual frustration (emphasise on kirigans frustration ) can u please include dry humping and them getting walked in on later .

thank youuuu

Tension

a/n : Love all Aleksander requests, but I’m still new at smut so sorry if this isn’t the greatest. Hinting at some Zoya x reader but it’s just used to make to make Aleksander jealous. I’m also using my Tidemaker! Reader for this from my other oneshot, link below . It’s kinda a series but no real cohesive storyline yet.

Touch her and die

Warnings: dry humping, getting caught, soft dom! Aleksander, praise kink, degradation kink, bratty reader, jealousy, Alina hate

Aleksander Morozova x fem! Reader

Y/n wiped the sweat from her brow with a huff. Zoya laid on the ground before her panting and out of breath. She offered her hand to her friends and with her help Zoya pulled herself to her feet. Slowly Y/n began to look around for her lover, Aleksander but he was nowhere to be seen. Zoya smiled softly as she pat her friends back.

“He’s not here! Why isn’t he here!” Zoya sighed softly at her friends. Since the arrival of Alina Starkov, the general hadn’t had much time for her. Aleksander was meant to go riding with Y/n on this loving morning before the party later but Alina asked for his help.

“I haven’t spent anytime with him since she got here.” Y/n bitterly mumbled. Zoya rubbed her back, sore from being thrown in the ground moments before.

“Want help making him jealous?” Y/n raised a brow with a smirk. The pair slowly made their way into the little palace. Aleksander walked down the hallway catching Y/n’s eyes. Before he could reach her Alina and Genya appeared. Alina quickly taking his attention from Y/n, him sends her a sorrowful look.

Y/n bit her lip and shot the pair a nasty glare. She turned to Zoya a dangerous smile in her face. She slipped her arm in Zoya’s pulling her close to her body.

“Let’s go get ready.”

Y/n sipped her wine with a smirk, her arm lazily dropped over Zoya’s waist. The pair had matched their clothes for the nights party to each others. Zoya wore a teal dress with a skirt that flowed like the wind, while Y/n’s dress was a darker blue that fell like a raging waterfall.

Aleksander’s gaze was darkened in the pair as they laughed at whatever Fedyor had said. Alina had been at his side the entire night, unsure of what to do. Aleksander eyes rested on Y/n’s form as she spoke with some random noble man.

He watched as she lead towards Zoya, whispering softly in her ear. Never would he doubt his Tidemakers faith to him but the way her arm was around Zoya waist caused his blood to boil. He could see her bratty smirk, he watched as she slowly pull Zoya away towards the dance floor.

New music began to play, fast and sensual music. Y/n and Zoya slowly began to dance together, Aleksander swore Y/n was trying to kill him. Her hips swayed and her hands were firmly on Zoya’s curves.

That little mix- Aleksander thought as he made eyes contact with Y/n. She continued to dance to the music, her body moving in an erotic fashion. His first tightened around his glass as Ivan and Fedyor laughed softly at the pair.

Y/n continued to lead Zoya as the pair danced, the music only adding to Aleksander’s frustration. With each beat of the music Zoya moved her body against Y/n with a smirk. Y/n closed her eyes with a knowing look on her face.

As she moved she heard him, his boots against the dance floor. She felt Zoya move away and his firm hands on her moving hips. Her back was pulled against his chest and she opened her eyes.

“General.” Y/n greeted. Aleksander didn’t answer her, his face was tight. His dark irises pierced into her e/c one. He pulled her away rather quickly without any care for who could see.

As Aleksander pulled her, Y/n shot a look to Zoya. Zoya smirk and watched with sharp eyes as the pair disappeared.

……………

The door to Aleksander’s study slammed shut as he all but pushed Y/n inside. She could help but giggle as she leaned against his desk. His eyes were consumed with lust and desire.

“Do you find this amusing?” He towered her framed. The need in his eyes was enough to make her laugh.

“I must admit it does.” His hands slammed on both sides of her as he pushed her legs apart. He stood in between them, his bugle against his clothes heat.

“You have no idea how badly you’ve hurt me these past weeks. You’ve been pulled away from me at every chance that stupid girl has. You’ve left me alone for weeks and-

Before Y/n could continue her rant Aleksander was pulling her into a passionate kiss. His hands clutched at her face pulling her closer. His tongue invaded her mouth and she let him take over. When they finally pulled away Y/n gasped for air.

“My poor sweet tidemaker, I’ve left you alone too long have I?” The condescension was not lost on her but her cunt throbbed too much for her to care.

“I’m sorry milaya, let me take care of you.” His words went right to her core as he lifted her into his thigh. He pushed her dress away directing her core to run against his thigh. She whined softly as she dragged her hips long him thigh.

The sleek of her panties clung to her as she moaned softly. Aleksander’s lips trailed down her neck, kissing and sucking on all the exposed skin. His hands slowly trailed to her waist gripping at her flesh.

Her moans echoed through the hall as his plush lips sucked under her chin. Y/n’s hands clutched onto his kefta as he used his own hands to help her rub on his thigh.

“Such pretty noises you make.” His nose nudged against hers as he kissed her. “Are you close.”

She nodded her head as he pulled down the top of her dress. He sucked upon her exposed breast, dragging his teeth around her sensitive bud.

Y/n allowed her hooded eyes to drift to the slightly opened door. There she was, that stupid sun summoner. Alina’s eyes met her own as she panted. Alina’s eyes were wide, her cheek flush with jealousy and embarrassment. Y/n moaned loudly as Aleksander moved her hips against his knee.

Her head gently fell back as she cried out. The knot in her broken as pleasure rippled though her. Aleksander’s lips trail up her neck, biting softly in some places. Slowly he pulled away hosting Y/n on the table. He gently kissed her swollen lips, cradling her face in his hands.

“I apologize for neglecting you milaya.” He whispered softly. A giggle escaped Y/n’s lips as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his softly. All was well now. Alina saw that only she would ever be so close to Aleksander.

“I love you.” He chuckled softly, kissing under her jaw.

“And I love you most.”

[winchesterwild78]

A New Sheriff in Town pt 4

Master List

Characters: Beau Arlen x Reader, Reader’s daughter Lily, other Big Sky characters

Warnings: Fluff, angst, slight smut, surprises

A/N: This was an idea given to me by @cheekygirl2309. Just a short series featuring our favorite green eyes Sheriff. Reader is a single mom and Beau moves into town. Things start to develop and the reader's daughter finds it hard to pull herself away from Beau. 

This does not follow the Big Sky timeline and is not in any way associated with the show. All work is my own, please don’t take it. 

Minors DNI 18+

*Time Jump 7 months*

“Lily, come on, we have to get ready. Mommy has a doctor’s appointment, we can’t be late.” You yelled from the bedroom. “Coming mommy.” Your daughter yelled from her room. “Daddy Beau and Em will be here soon to go with us.”

In the past few months a lot has changed between you and Beau. About 6 months ago Beau moved in and Emily would bounce between her mom’s house and your house. Lily loved having both of them there. She told people Emily was her sister and Beau was her new daddy. 

About 7 months ago Beau had a particularly intense case, one that caused him to be injured, and you almost lost him. The pain of possibly losing another person who you had fallen in love with was too much. The day he was released from the hospital your emotions overwhelmed you, and the two of you got into a huge fight. 

*Flashback*

“Beau, I’m so glad you’re okay. You scared the hell out of me. You can’t do that. We can’t lose you.” Tears streamed down your face. Beau stood in your living room, face filled with concern and frustration, “It’s not like I went to work that day asking to be shot, Y/N. Jeez. Do you honestly think I wanted this?!” “No, but you chose to be a cop, so you know the risks. Damn Beau, you’ve got people who love you and need you!” 

“You don’t think I know that! You, Em and Lily are my life! “What do you want me to do, quit!?” You just looked at Beau, unable to speak. “I’m not going to do that, Y/N. I love my job, I won’t quit.” Your heart ached in your chest, you couldn’t lose him. “Beau, I can’t lose another man I love. I lost Aaron while he was doing his job, I can’t go through that again.”

“What are you saying, Y/N?” You took a shaky breath in, “I love you Beau, but I can’t lose you too. Not like that. If you won’t quit, then I can’t be with you anymore. I can’t lose you.” Beau’s eyes went wide and he gasped, “What? Y/N, please don’t do this.” He reached for your hand but you pulled away, “Please leave, Beau. I’m sorry, this (you motioned between the two of you) is over.” 

Beau tried to protest, but you stood firm. He stepped closer to you, placed a soft kiss on your forehead, “I love you, Y/N. Good bye.”

When Beau left you collapsed on the floor sobbing. Your heart shattered. You had fallen in love with Beau and had seen a future with him, children with him. The fear of losing him in the line of duty was just too overwhelming. 

You pulled out your phone and dialed Sarah’s number. “Hey girl, how’s it going?” You heard her cheerful voice on the other end. You sobbed. “I’m on my way honey.” She hung up and a few minutes later she was by your side. 

Sarah helped you up and walked you over to the couch, “Come on sweetie, tell me what happened. Where is Beau?” You finally calmed down enough to talk to her. You told her everything and how you made Beau leave.

“Oh Y/N, you have every right to be scared, but honey you can’t let the fear cost you the beautiful life you deserve. Aaron wouldn’t have wanted that for you or Lily. Beau is an incredible man, and he’s so good with Lily. No matter what job someone has there is always a chance they won’t come home from work. Sure Beau’s job has a high risk, but honey that man loves you and Lily so much. Don’t throw that away for fear.” 

You knew she was right. “Look, I’ll get Lily from school and take her to my house for a sleepover, you call Beau and the two of you work this out. I’m not going to let you throw away happiness. I love you, Y/N, now call Beau.” You nodded and pulled out your phone.

Beau’s voice was soft when he answered, “Hey darlin’.” “Hey Beau, I’m so sorry, can you come back so we can talk?” “I’m already here baby.” There was a knock on your door. 

You opened the door and saw Beau standing there with red, wet eyes. He’d been crying. Your heart sank, knowing you caused him the pain you saw reflected in his eyes. Sarah came out from Lily’s room with her bag. She hugged you and whispered ‘good luck.’ As she walked past Beau, she touched his shoulder and they nodded at each other. 

When Sarah left Beau stepped in the house. The two of you started to talk at the same time, Beau told you to go first. “Beau, I’m so sorry. I let the fear of losing you take over. I don’t want to lose you, but I don’t want you to go either. If you’ll have me I want to be yours again. I was a fool telling you to leave. I love you, Beau. I love our life together and I see a future with you.” Beau stepped closer, pulled you flush to his chest and placed a soft kiss on your lips. 

No more words were needed. You knew he had forgiven you. The kiss quickly turned into a deep need to be together. As Beau walked you to your bedroom your clothes started to come off, leaving a trail from the living room to the bedroom door. 

Once in the confines of your bedroom, you and Beau made love off and on all night long. The connection between the two of you deepened and was becoming stronger. As Beau held you that night you asked him to move in. “Beau, I want you and Em to move in here. I love you both and I want you two to be here with Lily and I.” “Really sweetheart? I’d love that.” You smiled and laid your head on his chest. 

*Present*

As you were grabbing your shoes Beau and Emily walked in the house. “Daddy! You’re back. Emmy I missed you.” Emily smiled and picked up Lily, “I missed you too, kiddo. Are you ready to go?” “Yep, mama said I get to know first.” Emily smiled and nodded.

You stood at the doorway looking at your little family and smiled. Beau walked up to you and placed a soft kiss on your lips, “Hey baby, you ready?” You smiled, “I can’t get my shoes on.” 

Beau laughed and helped you walk over to the couch. As you sat down your hand touched your growing belly. The night Beau came back you ended up getting pregnant. Today the four of you were going to find out the gender. 

When you found out you were pregnant you were shocked. The two of you had been having unprotected sex for a few months and you hadn’t ended up pregnant, then you were. You were excited and scared too. The idea of having another baby was a rollercoaster of emotions. Beau was an incredible father, but the fear of losing him kept creeping into your mind. Aaron died when Lily was so young, you were afraid it might happen again, and this time you’d have two children to care for, well three to love because you would never push Emily away. 

Beau helped you get your shoes on and the four of you got in the car. In the waiting room Lily was telling everyone she gets to know first, and they offered her a soft smile. When your name was called, Beau helped you up and Emily took Lily’s hand. The nurse smiled, “Looks like the whole family is here today. Lily, are you excited to find out if you’re going to have a little sister or a little brother?” Lily giggled and said yes. 

A few minutes later the doctor was in the room and did the exam. Everything was on target and looking good. Your iron was a little low, but not too bad. You cried a little when they took your weight. Beau assured you that you were stunning.

After the exam, the doctor wheeled in the ultrasound machine. “Okay everyone, are we ready to look at the little one?” Lily’s eyes lit up and she enthusiastically answered yes for everyone. The room filled with laughter. Lily told the doctor she got to know first. The doctor nodded. All eyes were glued to the screen as the baby appeared. You could hear their steady, strong heartbeat and your heart soared. 

“Okay, big sister Lily, come here and I’ll tell you.” She climbed out of Emily’s lap and walked over to the doctor. The doctor leaned down and whispered in Lily’s ear and her eyes went wide and sparkled. She giggled and climbed back in Emily’s lap. 

The three of you waited with baited breath to find out, but Lily was tight lipped. “Lily honey, are you going to tell us?” She shook her head no and giggled. “Lily, why don’t you want to tell us?” “Cause it’s a secret. Aunt Sarah told me I couldn’t tell anyone until I told her.” 

You and Beau exchanged a look and a smirk. “Oh I’m going to get her.” You said and laughed. The doctor laughed, “Well Mom, I want to see you back in about a week to check your iron again. I’ll get the pictures printed and you’ll be good to go.” You nodded and thanked her.

Emily told you and Beau she was going to take Lily out so you could get dressed. Beau thanked her and helped you up. 

Once you were dressed and had the pictures the four of you walked to the car. Lily was giggling the whole way. You kept shaking your head and smirking. Once in the car, Beau turned and looked at Lily, “Hey baby girl, should we go to the store and pick out some clothes for the baby? What do you think, some pink or some blue?” You laughed, “Beau, you’re terrible.” “I just want to know.” He laughed. 

You pulled out your phone and called Sarah, “Hey Sarah we are done. Um, and why is my child not telling us what the baby is?” She laughed hysterically, “I can’t believe she’s actually keeping it a secret.” “Well she is, she told us you told her she had to tell you first. What in the world do you have planned?” “You let me worry about that, and don’t try to spoil it. I’ll be over in a little bit to get her and Emily. Us girls have something planned.”

You looked over at Emily and smirked. She realized you knew she was in on it. She chuckled. When you hung up you looked at Beau, “Looks like both our girls were in on this little coup.” Beau’s eyes flicked up into the mirror, “Em, really? I thought we were closer than that.” He laughed. “Sorry dad, I couldn’t resist helping with this. Trust me, you’re going to love it.” 

A few hours later you and Beau were sitting in the living room together. The girls were still with Sarah and it was quiet in the house. The soft hum of the television played in the background. Beau had his hand placed on your belly feeling your baby kick and move. Your hand was placed on his. 

“I can’t believe we are going to welcome this little one in a few months. Regardless of what they are, they are already so loved.” You smiled and nodded at Beau, “I know, I have to ask though, what are you hoping for Beau?” “Honestly, a boy. We already have two incredible girls, we need a boy now.” You smiled, “Yeah, I am too.” Beau kissed your lips, “As long as they are healthy I know I will be happy either way. Even though I’m hoping for a boy, if they are a girl, they will be loved just as much.” 

You smiled and nodded. “I love you Beau. Thank you for this incredible life we have.” “I love you too, Y/N. Thank you for this incredible life, and for having my baby.” He kissed your lips again. This time the kiss was full of need. 

Beau pulled you on his lap. You tried to protest, “Beau, no, I’m too heavy.” “No you’re not, you’re perfect.” Things started to heat up between you and Beau. He helped you remove your shirt, and your engorged breasts were poking over the top of your bra. Beau bit his lip, “God you’re beautiful, pregnant with my baby.” You blushed. 

His fingers went behind your back and unhooked your bra, letting your breasts spring free. He growled, cupping your breasts and kissing them. Your head leaned back as a moan escaped your lips. “Mmm yes Beau, please baby.” You could feel your arousal soaking your panties. 

“Tell me what you want, sweetheart.” Beau’s voice dripped with desire. “You, Beau, I want you. Take me please.”

Beau laid you back on the couch and stood up. He slid your pants and panties down. He smirked when he saw how wet you were. He started to unbuckle his pants, ready to take you right there. The shrill sound of your phone ringing stopped him. “Shit!” He murmured. He grabbed your phone and showed you the screen, it was Sarah. “Impeccable timing, Sarah.” Beau said as he answered. “Beau, wait, were you two, oh jeez. Can’t keep your hands off each other?” Beau smirked, “Nope, what’s up?” “Can you two head to the park please?” Beau sighed, “Yeah, give us a few minutes.” “Beau, you don’t have time to finish.” “I know, but helping a very pregnant woman get ready to leave the house takes a little longer. We will be there soon.” Sarah laughed and hung up.

“Looks like our presence is being requested at the park.” Beau said as he buckled his pants back. You poked your lip out, pouting, “So we don’t have time to finish?” Beau leaned down and kissed your lips, “Well, I can take care of you and later we can finish.” You bit your lip and gasped as Beau’s fingers pushed into your dripping core. He worked you closer to your release. It was coming faster since you were already so worked up. You grabbed the couch and bucked your hips into his fingers. “Oh god, Beau I’m going to cum.” He leaned over and kissed your lips, “Cum for me baby, cum on my hand.” You pushed into his hand one more time and you came hard. Moaning and panting.

Once you were done, Beau kissed you and helped you get cleaned up. “Beau, what about you?” “I told you, we will finish this later. I don’t need Sarah kicking my ass.” He laughed. You nodded. Once dressed the two of you headed towards the park.  

Getting out of the car at the park you noticed several people, your girls, Sarah and some of Beau’s colleagues. Sarah and Emily had decorated the shelter with pink and blue balloons. They had planned a gender reveal party. 

Sarah walked over and hugged you, “I know you’d always said if you got pregnant again you wanted a gender reveal where you didn’t know what the baby was. I’m sorry I had to be sneaky, but I hope this is a good surprise.” Tears pricked your eyes and you hugged her tight, “It’s perfect, thank you.”

The afternoon was perfect. Family and friends were gathered, enjoying food and laughter. Celebrating your growing family. The time came to reveal the gender. Sarah had cupcakes made for everyone. The two she handed you and Beau had the gender hidden inside. The frosting in the middle would either be blue or pink. 

You and Beau took a deep breath and bit your cupcakes. As the two of you pulled the cupcakes back from your mouth, tears fell from your eyes and Beau smiled. He pulled you in for a quick kiss. As he pulled away you both showed your cupcakes and revealed to your gathered family and friends blue frosting. You were having a boy.

Lily jumped up and down, “I’m having a brother!” She squealed. You smiled and bent down to hug your daughter, “Yes you are baby girl.” You placed your hand on your belly and felt him kick. Looking over at Beau, “We’re having a boy.” He pulled you into his embrace, “Thank you, Y/N.” Leaning down he placed a kiss on your belly, “I can’t wait to meet you little guy. You are already so loved.” 

Tags are open, if you want to be added, let me know.  

Tags: 

@nescaveckwriter @kr804573 

@k-slla @jackles010378 

@jawritter @xx-spooky-little-vampire-xx 

@roseblue373 @cheynovak 

@jassackles  @chriszgirl92

@suckitands33 @arcannaa 

@n-o-p-e-never @ladysparkles78 

@smoothdogsgirl @hobby27 

@manicjk @stoneyggirl2 

@deans-spinster-witch @snowayumi 

@shadowqueen1318 @shanimallina87

@muhahaha303 @fitxgrld

@nancymcl @baby19sthings

@cheekygirl2309 @oceean

@kindollss @foxyjwls007

@lmg14 @glenpowellheart 

[callsign-joyride]

Chasing The Wind | J.H.S. | Chapter One

Series summary: Katie Lantz is a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in San Diego, and she’s a storm chaser in her home state of Oklahoma. Her life gets turned upside down when she meets Jake “Hangman” Seresin and his friends at The Hard Deck. For the first time in a long time, Katie is excited about her love life, and Jake is excited about more than flying around.

Chapter summary: Katie meets the Dagger Squad at The Hard Deck and gets Jake’s number.

Content warnings: None

Buy me a coffee

“Oh yeah, this’ll work,” Katie Lantz said as she pulled into the parking lot of The Hard Deck. There was a storm rolling in from the west, and she had told her coworkers that she’d get a picture of it for the visitor’s center. It was hard to get pictures of storms like this since they usually happened at night. She put her sandals in her bag when she walked off of the gravel parking lot and started getting her camera ready while walking along the shore.

The air was humid as the storm clouds started to roll in, but it wasn’t until the first strike of lightning that she started taking pictures. Inside of the bar, Phoenix was watching what Katie was doing, along with Fanboy and Payback.

“What are you guys staring at?” Hangman asked as he walked over and jokingly put his arm around Phoenix’s shoulders. She shrugged him off and took a long sip of her beer before gesturing out the window to Katie.

“Someone should tell her that it’s about to storm. Hangman, you do it,” Fanboy said.

“Guys, I just got here.”

“And you were the last one to get here. Hell, you somehow managed to get here later than Bob and he has a kid.”

“Alright, I’ll go. But I want a Budweiser waiting for me.”

With her camera hanging from her neck, Katie started emailing the photos to her boss. She read some messages from the group chats as she felt the rain start to come down. Behind her, a man said something, and she almost hit him in the face with her camera as she turned around out of fear.

“Woah, I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Jake.”

”Katie. I take it you came from the bar?”

“What gave it away?” He asked as he chuckled and lightly shook his head. Katie tried not to giggle as she told him that not many people want to be on the beach during a storm, and they started to walk in the direction of the bar. He stopped by the steps of the deck and held her bag as she slid her sandals back on.

Coyote handed him his Budweiser and Jake introduced her before walking her over to the bar.

“Order whatever you want. I’ll put it on my tab,” he said as he handed the bartender his card. Katie ordered the house lager and looked around for a good place to put her bag. She wanted to hang out for a while, and she wasn’t planning on going out to her car until she was ready to leave.

”I can put that behind the bar for you,” the bartender said.

”Really? Thank you so much. I’m Katie, by the way.”

”I’m Penny. I’ve never seen you before. You new in town?”

”Oh, um, not really. I was taking pictures of the storm for my work. I live about twenty minutes away, I’m just never really in the area.”

They talked while Penny poured the beer, and Katie walked back over towards Jake and his group. She got introduced to everyone that time, and Phoenix was the first to ask about what she did for work. Katie briefly mentioned spending a few weeks each summer back home in Oklahoma, and it was mainly Fanboy and Rooster who were asking her questions about the weather.

”So, if it’s storming right now, does that mean we have to work tomorrow?”

”Probably. I know you’re all pilots, and this storm system is pretty quick moving and the radar should be clear by around two in the morning. That could change, though.”

They spent a few more minutes talking about the weather patterns before Katie decided to order another round. After her second beer, she was ready to head home and get to bed. Penny passed her bag over the counter and she started to walk to her car with Jake.

“I should get going. It was nice meeting you and your friends, though,” she said as she opened the driver's side door.

“Before you go, could I get your number? I'd like to talk more.”

She nodded and typed her number into his phone.

“I don't think you'll need it, though. I might come here more often.”

Jake hid his excitement until he was sure that Katie was out of sight. Back at her apartment, she texted the photos to her boss before climbing into bed in an oversized t-shirt. She looked at the Instagram account for The Hard Deck to see if they did any weekly events. She’d be busy until the weekend with dinners and meetings that would go past her usual hours, but she wanted to go back on Saturday. It was kind of perfect, since it looked like Saturdays were line dancing nights. After adding the event to her calendar, she quickly fell asleep, and woke up the next morning with a text from a previously unknown number.

Unknown number: Good morning! It’s Jake from The Hard Deck. I really enjoyed hanging out with you last night and I’d love to do it again.

Katie: Aw, thank you, Jake. I heard that Saturday is line dancing night so you might see me there.

He let out a giggle but quickly changed his expression when Javy looked at him with a smirk on his face.

“Is it that girl from last night?” Javy asked.

”Shut up, dude.”

Taglist:

@littlebadariell @cycbaby @luckyladycreator2 @idontcare-11 @blue-aconite @maverick-wingman @shawty-fenty @littlemisstopgun @rosiahills22 @katieshook02 @justanothermagicalsara @caitsymichelle13 @smoothdogsgirl @adoringsebstan @cherrycola27 @alexxavicry @mrsjaderogers @mak-32 @thefandomimagines @tallrock35 @caatheeriinee07 @bradshawseresinbabe @atarmychick007 @3sriracha @genius2050 @halstead-severide-fan @withakindheartx @Lolliepops2501 @avengersfan25 @genrockstar @kmc1989 @hiireadstuff

Taglist form (Google form, email is not asked)

[ducktoo]

Syncing Dream [Aespa x M!Reader]

5. Ramen Breakdown

Note: thanks for showing interested in the series guys! Enjoy the fluff!

It had become something of a tradition.

After a long day of rehearsals, performances, or just surviving the chaotic world of the entertainment industry, Y/n would whip up some ramen for aespa (especially the bougee ramen that Winter always loved).

It wasn’t anything fancy, but somehow, Y/n had developed a reputation for making *perfect* ramen—something the girls had come to crave after late nights at the dorm ever since. No smoke alarms, no burnt pots. Just good old-fashioned comfort food.

But tonight was different.

Y/n had come over as usual, ready to make their favourite midnight snack as requested. The girls were all lounging around the living room, exhausted but still in good spirits after wrapping up some last-minute practice for their next performance.

Giselle was scrolling through her phone, while Ningning and Winter were sprawled out on the couch, chatting about the latest drama they were binge-watching. Karina sat in the corner, quietly observing the scene, the usual tension between her and Y/n slightly less palpable these days.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly at first. Y/n pulled out the usual ingredients, boiling the water and preparing the ramen just as he always did. The girls continued their chatter, the atmosphere relaxed and comfortable. It felt like any other night.

Until it wasn’t.

-

"Ya pabo, are you sure about this?" Winter called out from the couch, her tone half-joking, half-serious.

"Of course I am," Y/n responded, stirring the noodles with a grin. "I’ve been doing this for you for ages now. You know I’m basically a ramen expert."

"Yeah, but something feels off tonight," Giselle chimed in, her eyes flicking up from her phone. "I don’t know, maybe it’s just the vibe."

"The vibe?" Y/n was genuinely confused. "It’s just ramen, girls. Nothing to worry about. You watched too much K-drama now."

But then, without warning, the pot of water began bubbling more aggressively than usual. Y/n furrowed his brow, confused. He hadn’t changed anything about the recipe, and yet the water seemed to be boiling faster than normal. The noodles began to overcook, turning mushy, and the smell of burnt soup base wafted into the air.

"Dafuq...?" Y/n muttered, turning the heat down and trying to salvage the situation.

The girls all perked up, sensing something was wrong.

"Is something burning?" Ningning asked, sitting up straight on the couch.

"Y/n, what’s going on?" Karina asked, her voice slightly more serious now as she stood up from her spot.

"I don’t know," Y/n replied, frantically stirring the pot. "This has never happened before. It’s like the stove’s acting up or something."

Just then, the pot began to hiss and steam poured out, signalling that something had gone horribly wrong. The ramen broth, once the highlight of Y/n’s midnight snacks, had turned into a thick, sludgy mess.

"Uh... okay, this is definitely not normal," Y/n admitted, stepping back from the stove with wide eyes.

Before he could react further, the smoke alarm blared to life once again. The loud, piercing sound echoed through the dorm, sending everyone into a frenzy.

"Oh shit!" Giselle exclaimed, leaping off the couch as Winter raced to open the windows.

"Oppa, what did you do this time?" Ningning shouted over the alarm, already laughing despite the chaos.

"I swear, I didn’t do anything different!" Y/n yelled back, grabbing a towel and waving it under the smoke detector to stop the blaring noise.

Karina, despite her usual composed demeanour, let out an exasperated sigh and joined in the effort to fan away the smoke. Giselle ran over to the stove, trying to help, but the pot of ramen had already turned into an unrecognisable disaster.

"It’s like you’re cursed today," Karina said, her voice tinged with disbelief. “You’re like Junpei from JJK.”

Y/n couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. "I think you might be right. Mahito is trolling with me today."

-

Eventually, the smoke cleared, and the alarm finally quieted down. The girls, though slightly frazzled, were still giggling uncontrollably as they surveyed the damage. The pot was beyond saving, the ramen reduced to a sad, burnt sludge at the bottom.

"Okay, what just happened?" Giselle asked, wiping away tears from laughing so hard. "You’re usually so good at this."

"I genuinely don’t know" Y/n threw his hands up in defeat. "I swear I followed the exact same steps as always. This doesn’t make any sense."

Winter came over, inspecting the charred remains of the ramen with a teasing grin. "I think you’ve lost your touch, idiot. Maybe you should retire from cooking."

"And let you cook? Helll no" Y/n said, playfully defensive. "It’s just a one-time fluke. I’ll get it right next time."

Ningning, still laughing, pulled out her phone. "I’m totally sending this to the group chat. Youngji and Yunjin will love this."

Y/n groaned but didn’t stop her. He was too busy trying to figure out what went wrong. "This has never happened before..."

"Maybe you just need a break,” Karina said, her tone surprisingly soft. She handed Y/n a glass of water and gave him a small, almost teasing smile. "Even ramen connoisseur have off days."

Y/n accepted the glass, grateful for the gesture. Despite the tension that had lingered between them for weeks, moments like this—when they could share a laugh over something as simple as ramen—made things feel a little lighter.

-

After the chaos of the ramen incident had settled and the group had resumed their usual banter, the atmosphere in the dorm was light and carefree again. Y/n lounged back on the couch, the failed ramen saga now just a funny memory that would definitely live in aespa’s dorm history. The girls, still buzzing with laughter, circled around him, offering their usual teasing remarks and grateful smiles.

However, just when Y/n thought the night couldn’t get any weirder, Winter suddenly blurted out something that caught everyone off guard.

"You know what?" she said, stretching her arms over her head. "We should ask the CEO if idiot can move in with us."

Y/n choked on his drink, nearly spitting it out as he sat up straight. "Wait, what?!"

Giselle burst out laughing, while Ningning’s eyes lit up like it was the best idea she’d ever heard. "Oh my god, yes! It would make everything so much easier," Ningning agreed, nodding enthusiastically. "He’s always here anyway, and he’s practically our fifth member already."

"And imagine how convenient it would be," Giselle added with a mischievous grin. "We’d have our very own sl- I mean, chef, and he could handle all of the stuff that happens around here. No more running back and forth to help us at weird hours."

Y/n shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. "Guys, I’m not moving in. That’s not how this works."

Winter, undeterred, leaned forward with an innocent look on her face. "Why not? You’re here almost every day anyway. It would just make sense.”

Karina, who had been quiet during the initial exchange, smirked from her corner of the room. "I’m pretty sure the company would say no, but it’s an interesting idea."

Y/n’s eyes darted to Karina, a mix of surprise and amusement on his face. "Even you think it’s interesting?"

She shrugged, a teasing glint in her eyes. "It would definitely keep things organised. Plus, I wouldn’t mind having someone else to share the responsibility of keeping everyone in check."

"Exactly!" Winter chimed in. "And we wouldn’t have to call him at three in the morning to come fix the Wi-Fi or handle random emergencies."

Y/n groaned, but he couldn’t help the small smile tugging at his lips. "You guys seriously don’t want me to have days off, do you?"

"Not when it comes to convenience," Ningning quipped, her grin widening. "But seriously, let’s ask the CEO tomorrow."

Y/n opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything, Winter pulled out her phone and began typing furiously. "I’m sending him a text right now."

"Wait, Minjeong, no—“

But it was too late. Winter hit send, and the room filled with the girls’ laughter as Y/n buried his face in his hands. "Oh god, I’m going to lose my job over this," he muttered, only half-joking.

"Relax," Winter said, patting him on the shoulder. "He’ll probably think it’s funny. Besides, it’s not like we’re really expecting him to say yes.”

"I hope not," Y/n sighed, still overwhelmed by the entire situation.

“I bet 100 bucks he will move in” Giselle challenged.

“Aeri….” Y/n sighed. “I bet a month I’ll personally cook ramen for y’all”

“Deal, mister.” And they shook hand, with the remaining members stood as witness.

-

A few weeks had passed since Winter’s wild suggestion to the CEO, and Y/n had almost forgotten about the whole ordeal. Between managing aespa’s hectic schedule and his usual barrage of tasks, he’d pushed the whole “moving in” idea to the back of his mind. Surely, the company wouldn’t allow something as outrageous as that, right?

But Y/n’s life was never that simple.

One day, as he was going over some documents in the practice room, his phone buzzed again—this time with an official company email. His eyes scanned the message, and his heart dropped as he read the first few lines.

“Dear Y/n,

we’re writing to inform you that, due to recent scheduling and logistical changes, your move into the aespa dorm has been approved. Your role as manager will now include living in close proximity to the group to ensure better coordination and efficiency…”

Y/n blinked, reading the words again to make sure his tired brain wasn’t messing with him.

“What the f-“

He quickly scrolled through the email, but there was no mistaking it. His move had been finalised. The company had approved it. He was really moving in with aespa.

For a long moment, Y/n just stared at his phone, his mind racing with a mix of shock, disbelief, and a bit of panic.

How did this even happen? Was it Winter’s persistence? Or maybe the CEO just had a weird sense of humour?

Whatever the reason, there was no going back now.

-

Later that day, Y/n found himself standing outside the aespa dorm with a few suitcases and boxes of his belongings. He had no idea how to feel about this new arrangement—part excitement, part dread—but before he could dwell on it, the dorm door flew open, and he was greeted by the beaming faces of the girls.

"Oppa!" Ningning called out, bounding over to him with enthusiasm. "You’re finally here! Welcome home!"

"It’s about time," Winter added with a grin, already grabbing one of his suitcases and dragging it inside as if it weighed nothing. "I told you it would happen."

"Yeah, yeah," Y/n muttered, still in disbelief. "I didn’t think they’d actually approve it, though."

"Well, we’re glad they did," Giselle said, flashing him a bright smile as she took one of the boxes from his hands. "Now we don’t have to call you at all hours of the night to come over."

"You guys really think this is going to make my life easier, huh?" Y/n said, shaking his head as he stepped into the dorm.

"Oh, definitely not," Karina’s voice chimed in from behind him. She was leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, a small smirk playing on her lips. "It’ll probably be way harder for you now.”

Y/n let out a groan as he set down his remaining box. "Jeez, thanks for the vote of confidence, Jimin."

Karina just shrugged, her smirk widening. "Just being honest."

With the girls’ help, it didn’t take long to get Y/n’s things inside. They bustled around him, arranging his boxes in the small guest room he’d be using. Ningning hummed a little tune as she helped unpack, while Winter darted in and out of the room, offering unsolicited advice about where things should go. Giselle, on the other hand, took the opportunity to remind her manager of the bet.

"Hey loser, remember the bet?" she asked, eyeing one of the boxes suspiciously.

"Ah shit, right. There's that." Y/n groaned, completely forgot about the deal.

"Well, I'll be looking forward to your meal, Chef." Giselle quipped. "We can’t have you slacking off just because you live here."

"It’s not slacking off," Y/n protested. "And it's gonna be a month anyway*"

"Eh…nah" Winter teased, plopping down on the bed and giving him a mock-serious look. "We did say a month, but it might go on for…."

"For?"

"…ever." Winter pouted, making the manager disgusted at his childhood friend's antics.

Y/n rolled his eyes, but deep down, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of comfort from their playful teasing. Despite the chaos and unpredictability of his new living arrangement, it wasn’t as awkward or uncomfortable as he’d feared.

In fact, it almost felt... natural.

As they finished unpacking, Y/n couldn’t help but notice Karina hanging back, watching the others with a thoughtful expression on her face. Their interactions had been better lately—less tense, more relaxed—but there was still something unsaid between them. It lingered, unspoken, beneath the surface.

Before he could think too much about it, Karina walked over and handed him a small bag. "Here," she said, her tone neutral but with a hint of something else. “I picked up some snacks earlier. Figured you might need a break after all this."

Y/n blinked, momentarily taken aback by the gesture. It wasn’t much, but it felt like an olive branch of sorts—an attempt to ease the tension between them. He offered her a small smile. "Thanks, Jimin."

She nodded, her usual confident demeanour softening just a little. "Don’t mention it."

The room was quiet for a brief moment, the weight of their previous awkwardness still lingering, but for the first time in a while, it didn’t feel so heavy. Maybe, just maybe, things were starting to shift between them.

Tl:dr - Y/n has been added to the dorm.

-

Y/n lay in bed, still processing the day’s events, staring up at the ceiling of his new room. Living with aespa, being a part of their daily routine, their ups and downs—it all felt surreal. He was still getting used to the idea of sharing a space with them, knowing that tomorrow morning, instead of showing up at their dorm with coffee or breakfast in hand, he’d be here—part of the group in a way that felt strange yet... right.

He was about to drift off into sleep when he heard the door creak open. Before he could fully register what was happening, Winter barged into the room, casually plopping herself down on the edge of his bed as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Yah, Y/n,” she said with a grin, pulling her knees up and making herself comfortable. “You thought you were safe in here?”

Y/n blinked, too tired and too caught off-guard to respond right away. “I... what? Minjeong, what the f-”

“Tomorrow. Breakfast. You better be ready to cook it,” Winter demanded, poking him on the forehead. “We’re not going to let you slack off just because you moved in with us. Actually, now that you’re here, we expect better ramen.”

Y/n groaned, rubbing his face. “I knew this was going to happen...”

“Of course it was going to happen,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “And trust me, we’re not going easy on you. Especially Karina. She’s still skeptical about your skills.”

“Karina? Skeptical? You’re the one who made me cook at midnight last time. And also every single time since we auditioned together.”

Winter laughed, leaning back on her elbows. “Yeah, but she’s the one who’s going to make sure it’s perfect.”

“Great,” Y/n muttered, half-joking. “First day in and I’m already a chef instead of a manager.”

Winter chuckled before giving him a more serious look. “But, hey... welcome to the dorm, Y/n. We’re glad you’re here.”

Y/n felt his heart warm a little at that. Despite all the teasing and chaos, there was a genuine sense of family that had been building between them. And also Winter look even more dazzling under the moonlight.

“Thanks, Jeong.”

She grinned, getting up to leave but pausing at the door. “Oh, and one more thing... you should check your face in the mirror before you go to bed. You might find something interesting.”

Y/n frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”

Winter just giggled and slipped out the door, leaving him baffled. He groaned again, pushing himself out of bed to check the bathroom mirror. As he flipped the light on, his eyes widened.

Drawn across his cheeks and forehead in colorful marker were doodles—smiley faces, stars, and a few other unidentifiable squiggles. His eyebrows had been drawn into exaggerated arches, and there was a tiny mustache inked above his upper lip.

2-0 towards Aespa girls. And Y/n definitely knew it was Winter's idea.

"KIM MINJEONG!!!"

[talesfromthebandgeekmafia]

Stayed up until 1:00am to finish the last two hours of Thud!

You’d think I’d be prepared after seven books for Vimes to do something in the last act that has me on the edge of my seat holding my breath, until against all odds, the universe blinks first and I’m bowled over again by the heights of integrity one brave old terrier from the gutter can rise to. Still, I am surprised every time.

[babyangelsky]

It was so extremely rude of WeTV to choose THIS as the promo photo of tomorrow’s episode. How dare they remind me I’m going to be seeing my baby boy sad and heartbroken 😭

@respectthepetty Only a few more hours until we see if we clowned correctly and Almond is innocent

[cryptic-and-machiavellian]

happy percy jackson eve

[iwantmygun]

I still haven’t finished Supernatural.

5 episodes from the end and I have no intention of watching them.