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taintandviolent · 6 months ago

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Taco Tuesday ; Gambit x reader!

summary: You live across the hall from Wade Wilson, and one Tuesday, he invites you over for tacos. 🌮 And that’s where you meet him. The Gambit. Post-Void, everyone got out alive and everything is fine. [PART TWO HERE]

word count & w a r n i n g s: 5.4K | smut with very little plot, alcohol mention, slightly drunk (but very consenting) reader, French and typing out accents/dialects, pet names (cher, mon ami, mon coeur, etc.), dirty talk (cos he is a dirty talker, don't argue with me on this), fingering, unprotected sex, p in v, no use of y/n.

a/n: this is based 100% on Deadpool and Wolverine Gambit / Channing's version of Gambit!! sorry for the lack of plot here, he deserves better than this filth, but I am down ASTRONOMICALLY and I needed to get it out. I spent so much time trying to get his accent right, I hope it comes off the way I wanted it to... anyway! i'm not certain if anyone will read this, but if you do - thank you a million times over! as always, requests are open! - banner by @/strangergraphics, and Remy gif by @scintie!

↓ full fic under cut! ↓ / ao3 link here! / I don’t have a taglist anymore, but please turn on post notifications if you’d like to be notified of future fics!

He’s handsome. Like really handsome.

Your stomach does a flip as he smiles at you, reaching for the bottle of Jack between your legs — wait. Pause. Rewind. How’d we get here?

Living in the same apartment complex as Wade Wilson was a trip. Even more of a trip was living across the hall from him. The things you heard coming from that apartment... nobody would believe you. So, you never told anyone.

He’s kind. Albeit, zany but kind. Your interactions have been cordial and nauseatingly neighbourly. But on one regular ol' Tuesday afternoon, Wade invited you inside. He said something about having a party later that night, making tacos and being neighborly. He assured you that it wasn't a sex party... which to be honest, you weren't worried about until he'd mentioned it. Against your better judgement though, you'd agreed, and said you'd bring some liquor.

So, that evening, you opened your door, one bottle of Jack tucked under your arm, and another in your left hand. You shut the door to your apartment and walked straight across to your neighbour’s door. Your fist had rapped against the wood only twice before the door swung open, revealing Wade, and a very… strange and very bald looking dog in his arms.

"Oh, what the fuck?" You asked, looking down at the creature. "I didn't know you had a dog…?"

Wade’s voice rose an octave or two, in a cutesy tone. "She's a new addition, yes she is!"

"I brought... well, this. Sorry, it was all I had in my cabinets and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't about to go out and spend money on this. I like… barely know you."

"HA! Brutal honesty. We love to hear it."

Wade took hold of your shoulder and yanked you inside, harsh enough that you made a small sound as he did. He shut the door with his foot, and towed you towards the table, where everyone was gathered. And that was when you first saw him. He wore all black, save for a tan trench coat with a high collar. He lounged casually on one of the dining chairs, playing with a deck of cards. They fluttered from hand to hand effortlessly, and for a moment, you were stuck, mesmerized by the dexterous way he handled them. You weren't sure what was pulling you towards him harder, your heart or your cunt, but you felt an undeniable draw to the man.

Wade's arm wound itself around your shoulders, guiding you around the room to meet each of his friends. At that point, living next to him, mutants were a forced transition. You were used to the concept of them, so meeting a giant silver man, for example, wasn't unexpected. Vanessa was the most normal - you were pretty sure she was human.

Finally, he got to the one you really wanted to meet. The one that your eyes had been darting back and forth to the entire time, the one that when he briefly met your gaze, your heart thudded in your chest.

"And this... handsome slice of man, is the Gambit. Good luck understanding him, he's a real mouthful."

I’ll bet he is, you thought.

He pocketed the cards in a quick motion and stood up from his chair. With a syrup-smooth chuckle, the man laughed and said: "You can call me Remy." He did in fact have a thick Cajun accent and spoke quickly – almost too quickly. You blinked once, focusing hard on his words.

"Remy," you repeated finally, before saying your own name and extending your hand. He took it gently and as he shook it, your palm tingled with what felt like electricity.

"Enchanté." (Enchanted)

Your cheeks burned, and you knew they were flushing. You couldn’t control it. "De même..." (Likewise.)

His brows lifted, surprised. "You speak French, mon ami?" (my friend)

"Heh, uhh... comme un enfant." (Like a child) You chuckled low, averting your eyes for a millisecond. "I took a few years of it in high school and again in college. I’m by no means an expert."

Wade's eyes were wide, flicking back and forth between the two of you. There was obvious chemistry there, and a knowing smirk drew itself across his lips. Abruptly, he yanked one of the bottles of Jack Daniels from beneath your arm, before leaning against the nearby wall.

"Oh, fuck me. You understand Gumbo here? That’s cute. No idea what either of you are saying though, someone forgot to turn the subtitles on. I'll leave you two to get acquainted." Whatever that meant. You scoffed, but turned your attention back to Gambit, looking at him.

“Sit a while, cher.”

You happily took the chair that he pulled out, not caring that it was facing away from the others, and plopped down onto it, situating the other bottle of Jack between your legs. You gripped the neck of the bottle tightly, and looked at him with a timid, but a come hither sort of smile. After a moment, you twisted the cap off, and flicked it off somewhere to your right. Wade would find it later, or he wouldn’t. You didn’t really care.

You two talked for hours, most of which consisted of him telling you about the Void, and how hard it had been, while you pretended to comprehend it. Between words, you passed the bottle back and forth, taking mouthfuls, and inadvertently swapping spit as you did. The thought occurred to you about halfway through the conversation, and your stomach tightened. You shook your head lightly and clenched your thighs together, trying to stave off the arousal that was bubbling in your core.

There we go. That’s better.

He’s handsome. Like really handsome.

Your stomach does a flip as he smiles at you, reaching for the bottle, which was still situated between your legs. His fingertips just graze the side of your thigh and his eyes flit to yours. He holds his smile, waiting for you to either protest or move the moment forward, and all you can do is gawk, because your cunt starts throbbing.

As the evening wears on, though cautious, it’s obvious that Remy feels the same pull that you do. He remains cool on the outside, but internally, he was battling the magnetic tugging he felt from you. He couldn't shake it. He’d compliment you, you’d compliment him. At one point, in between sips, you casually drop that you think his accent is hot and he whispers something underneath his breath, something you don’t understand. Before either of you realized it, you had started to lean closer to each other, your faces inches apart, and you felt the warm rush of his breath over your cheeks.

It was as if you both realized it simultaneously. You rear back, an embarrassed expression plastered on your face. Remy clears his throat. His attraction to you was stifling; something that he rarely felt. He was powerless in his want for you, the draw you had was irresistible.

"Maybe we should... uh..." You murmur, looking deep into his eyes. In a room full of people that were starting to fade away the closer you two got to each other, you were thankful you were still sober enough to suggest a different setting. Any longer and you surely would’ve just straddled him and gone to town.

Remy moves first.

"We gon' take a walk." He announces to the others, getting to his feet.

The conversation stops abruptly, silence hanging heavy. You straighten up, trying your best to avert your gaze, but you still see everyone’s reaction. Someone clears their throat and your heart sinks, feeling like you might die on the spot. The one that had been introduced as Logan, gruff looking dude, raises a single brow at you. In true Wade-character, he ugly cackles, shattering the moment. Your shoulders sink, embarrassed, as you head towards the door, doing the proverbial walk of shame.

Remy meets you at the door and pulls it open, holding it for you. You duck underneath his arm, looking sheepish and as you exit into the hallway, you think you heard Wade mutter something about a fanfiction but Remy yanks the door shut before you can react.

“You want to… get some air? Or um… I have… well, no I had liquor, but I brought it to Wade’s.”

He smiles, and looks down at the floor, before lifting his eyes back to you. “We can do whatever you want, chère. You ain’t gon’ catch me complainin’ eitha’ way.”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, considering the options. Your heart was hammering in your chest at the prospect of just being near him without the others around. You two had been close to kissing in Wade’s living room, and now, you had the opportunity to continue that… or take a walk. The latter seemed less appealing.

“Y’know what, why don’t we… just…” You take a few steps backwards, jerking your head towards your front door. Concerningly, you had forgotten to lock your door. However, it allows you to open it quickly, and walk backwards into the apartment. Gambit follows you in, his attention never leaving you.

"You sure 'bout dis, mon ami? I can walk away righ' now." His words land heavy, a promise behind them. He was a gentleman at heart, you could tell. Fortunately for him, you were very sure, and wanted every inch of him.

Mon ami - something that in the few hours you'd spent with him, he'd called you often. Among other things. Mon ami meant my friend, but you knew you two weren't just friends. You saw how he acted with others, and the comments he made. Sure, he had a quick wit and a mouth on him, but the flirting... god, the flirting.

He stands in the doorway, his shoulders filling the frame. Silently, you nod and take another step back, giving him some room to enter. He takes one wide step towards you, leaving the door open behind him. He reaches for your hip, and you immediately take to playing with his large hands. Delicately, you pay attention to each long digit, trailing your middle finger along the knuckles, and up and down the length of them. You dip into the spaces between, your fingers barely ghosting over the webbing.

Was that a shiver? Your eyes flit to his, searching them for a hint.

"You sure do know how to make a man feel good."

Your heart flutters at his words. With his accent, even the simplest of things sounded charming. At least to you. You felt that he could ask if you wanted coffee or how the weather was and you'd be twirling your hair around your finger like a desperate schoolgirl. Embarrassing.

You’re about to respond and defend yourself by saying that all you had done was play with his hands, which was hardly considered foreplay, but his fingers come up underneath your chin, gently closing your mouth with a dull click of your teeth. He tilts it upwards to an angle where he could easily kiss you. And kiss you, he does.

It was the kind of kiss that makes your knees buckle, sends a violent shudder from the nape of your neck down to the base of your spine. It’s the kind of kiss that needs to come with a warning; Danger: Will Result In Sex. As his lips move against yours, you feel the urgency of his need, of his want, and hum into his lips. Remy takes that as a green light and deepens the kiss, moving his body so that it’s pressing flush against yours. The action leaves you immediately breathless and in response, you break the kiss, tucking your chin to your chest. Your hand finds his torso, pressing hard against the muscles underneath the shirt.

"Ah, don't you be actin' shy now. You been teasin' me for hours."

“I have not!”

“You think I didn’t notice all ‘dem touches an’ looks you were givin’ me? I may ‘ave been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.”

He had you there. You couldn’t deny that, at all. Even if you’d wanted to. Which, part of you did. Part of you was very nervous, standing before this very handsome man, with the taste of his mouth still lingering on your lips but another part of you, the louder one, was delighted that he’d noticed. Furthermore, that he’d enjoyed them enough to come to your room.

You lift your hand behind him, pushing the door shut with a harsh shove. With a twist of your fingers, you activate the locking mechanism, sliding the deadbolt into place. Gambit chuckles, grinning down at you. Your heart leaps into your throat, but you press on bravely, lacing your arms around his neck. They trail down the front of his body, feeling the muscles as they twitch with each ragged breath.

He quirks a brow as if to ask, 'Oh, really?' You simply smirk back at him. The contact is electric, and you find yourself resisting the urge to grind against him immediately. Instead, you focus on his hands again, bringing one of them up to your lips. You press a delicate kiss on the pads, before slipping one into your mouth and sucking gently. Remy makes a deep, husky sound in his throat, and brings his other hand to your hip, where he pulls you roughly against him.

For a man that uses his hands often, the sensations are high. The way your mouth envelops his finger, your tongue writhing around the digit had his jaw clenching, muscles fluttering on the side of his face. When you draw his finger into the confines of your throat, deep-throating it, his eyes roll back in pleasure. He pulls his hand back, shaking it off as if the inside of your mouth was hot to the touch.

"Woo, you nasty, huh? Nevah’ woulda' guessed... you been actin' like a good little girl 'uhround me."

After that, it all happened very quickly. Gambit takes a step and connects his lips with yours again, pushing them into you in an act of desperation. Without breaking the kiss, he shrugs out of his jacket, tossing it onto a nearby surface. You push against him until his back hits the door with a heavy thud, definitely loud enough for any innocent bystanders to hear. Your fingers undo the button of your jeans, breaking the kiss for only a second to slide them down your legs.

Once you return to his waiting mouth, the kiss deepens and the coil in your stomach winds tighter, claiming your body in a deep, fiery arousal. His big arms wrap around you, enveloping you in a heated embrace. Just for a moment, it’s tender — but shortly after, his hands drop to your ass, fingers slipping underneath the band of fabric to take greedy fistfuls of each cheek.

Your hands find their way to his shoulders, gripping the roundness of them to use as leverage. Letting out a little hum, you sweep your hips across his groin, pressing tightly against him. His eyes drift shut, head bumping against the door as he leaned it back, a low growl coming from his throat. Keeping at it, you grind your hips against him, feeling the outline of his length as it hardens.

“You be drivin’ Remy crazy, grindin’ on me like ‘dat.”

“That’s the intention….” You stand on your tiptoes to pepper kisses on his lips, your warm breath fanning over his face, smelling faintly of Jack Daniels. Remy trails his hand carefully up your rib cage until he gets to the side of your breast, where he quickly slips around to the front, his large hand cupping the fullness of it outside of your shirt. Your reaction is visceral; your breath hisses through your teeth at the sensitivity.

Remy laughs again and with his free hand, pulls your hips back to his. Swiftly, he spins you around, pinning you between his body and the hard surface of the door. He presses himself tightly against you, shifting slightly so that his thigh was between your legs. The sensation of something that close to your core is dangerous and brings a weak, mewling whimper from your mouth.

“We gon’ have ourselves some fun.” His voice is low, tinged with a new sort of lustful tone that you hadn't heard before. Your mind is spinning, growing dizzy with lust. The alcohol had certainly helped your nerves, you were never usually this brazen. Your core burns with desire at his words, silently begging for everything he was about to give you. His lips hover just over yours; you can feel his breath on your skin and the heat that radiates off his body as it presses into yours.

"Oh my god," you whisper into his mouth. "Fuck..."

His teeth nip at your bottom lip before he captures your mouth in a heated, passionate kiss again. His tongue explores the inside, swirling along your own wet muscle. With every passing second, your heart beats faster and his hands grip your hips tighter, thumbs massaging the flesh above your jeans.

“Wrap ‘dem legs around me, mon coeur.” (My heart) Remy’s voice is husky with want; amongst his playful, lilted tone, a possessiveness lingered, and the thought sends a chill down your spine. He nods once, encouraging you into his waiting arms. You jump up, and he catches you effortlessly, gripping your thighs tight and hoisting you up into his grasp. Feeling secure, you wrap both legs around his waist and encircle his neck with your arms. Your gaze meets his and you can see the wanton need mirrored in his own eyes, darkened with desire.

Remy's smirk is dripping with confidence. Your body's response to him was causing his ego to swell within his chest, and his cock to swell within his pants. He leans in close, his lips against your ear, nipping at the lobe softly before pulling back slightly. In one fluid movement, his hips buck up against your center, teasing you over the layers of clothing. You let out a moan, throwing your head back against the door.

He thrusts up into you again, chuckling low against your ear. The hard line of his cock grinds against you, making you stutter out expletives as it presses against you with a needy demand.

"You like 'dat, cher? Talk t' me..."

You nod, swallowing and wetting your throat. "Y-yeah, fuck... I do... need you – it – so bad."

“Whaddya’ need?”

“N-need you… so bad.”

“You can do betta’. Tell Remy what you need...”

He presses you harder against the door, your back sliding against the wood as he kisses a trail down from your mouth to your shoulder, sucking and biting with all the right intensities. As his hips grind against yours, you feel the damp fabric slide across your cunt, alerting you to just how wet he’d made you. Fuck.

“Need… need you to fuck me. Hard. Need to feel you everywhere.”

A few hours ago, you’d agreed to Taco Tuesday at Wade’s. Now, you were getting dry humped by a really hot Cajun guy and moaning into the curve between his neck and his shoulder. You were positive that if someone opened their door, they’d hear you. Somewhere in your brain, the thought should have been moderately embarrassing, but you were far too invested in Remy to care.

Without warning, Gambit lifts you away from the door and carries you to the nearby couch. He never breaks the kiss, still feverishly claiming your mouth as he moves. Your back hits the cushions and before you can process it, his body weight is on top of you. He slots himself in between your legs, and his hard-on bumps into your stomach as his hips rut against you, finding some relief in the friction. But not enough.

Remy’s hand finds the hem of your shirt, lifting it just enough to allow his fingers underneath the fabric. You bite down on the pillow of your bottom lip and push your hips up into his. Thick, strong digits sweep across your skin, leaving a burning trail of fire in their wake. Every touch brings your temperature up, and it isn’t long before your entire body is consumed in flames. You sigh contentedly, arching up into his touch.

Abruptly, Remy straightens up, crosses his arms over his torso and pulls his shirt over his head, revealing his tan skin and bulky muscles. His stocky stature makes your tummy clench with anticipation. He was fit, as you assumed, but that didn’t stop your jaw from falling open at the sight.

“Wow,” you finally choke.

Remy grins. “You like what you see?”

You nod furiously, hands snapping to his toned abdomen. He’s warm and his skin is soft, begging to be touched. The muscles flex underneath your fingers as you trace a long stripe from his belly button to his collarbone. Your hands claw at his shoulder, attempting to pull him back down on you, but he resists.

He spoke with a playfulness, almost a sort of pleading. His thumbs flicks at the hem of your shirt. “Ah, c’mon, ‘dat ain’t fair. Enlève-tout toi, huh?” (Take it all off.)

You thought you understood, but if you didn’t, it didn’t matter. Remy was quick to translate his words, busy undressing you, pulling your worn t-shirt over your head, and reaching around your back to unclasp your bra. Most men would’ve fumbled with the clasp, but not him. His adept fingers make quick work of it, allowing your breasts to fall free. He throws your bra somewhere behind him.

“Hooo, cher…!” His eyes light up at the visual and you feel heat blooming on your cheeks again, half expecting him to make a lewd comment. Instead, his hands cup your tits, kneading the soft plumpness like dough, thumbs grazing the nipples. He exhales through his mouth, jerking his head to the side.

Finally, he kisses you again. It’s wet and sloppy and his mouth is consuming you, tasting you hungrily. His hips are still moving, sweeping into yours with a calculated precision. You try to spread your legs but the back of the couch thwarts your attempt. He notices this, watching as you struggle with the space.

“You got a bed?” He asked in between smearing kisses along your neck and collarbone.

“Yeah-yeah…. Down the hall.”

“Remy be needin’ more room for what he wanna’ do t’you.”

His weight is suddenly gone from you, an unwelcome sensation, even though you know he’s about to carry you wedding-style down the hallway. He bends down, one arm sliding underneath your neck, the other in the crook behind your knees. For the second time that night, he lifts you into his arms.

You rest your cheek against his warm pectoral muscle, rocking back and forth, as he walks you both down the dark hallway. The only light in the room comes from the window, the city outside alive and humming. Carefully, Remy sets you down on the bed, unmade from this morning, your dark gray sheets cool to the touch.

In nothing but your underwear, which at this point, are damp to the touch, you’re left feeling very exposed. But you can’t muster up any shame, not when he’s looking at you with such hunger, such want. Your tummy feels tight, and the feeling gets worse when Remy’s hands drop to his waist, unzipping and unbuttoning his pants. They fall loose at the waist, and he shucks them down the rest of the way, leaving him in nothing but a pair of deep purple boxers. Your eyes swing heavy to the outline that’s now presented to you.

Oh my god.

Your breath hitches in your throat. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise; Remy was a big guy, and that proved true downstairs, too. You can barely pull your eyes away from it, but you begrudgingly rip them away, to look up into his gaze.

“Please,” you beg. “You’re too far away…” Your cunt is aching and nothing but him, his hands, his dick, will sate her.

He leans forward, flattening both hands on the mattress and walks them back until his face is in front of yours. He sweeps you into another kiss and your heart races. His hands are perfectly positioned on either side of your hips, you feel them graze the flesh. His finger hooks around the elastic of your panties, twisting it around his pointer finger and gradually, he tugs them down over the curve of your hip.

You nod lazily against his mouth, as you feel the warmth of his hand near your core. Your legs drop apart, knees touching the mattress as you allow him access. One hand sweeps across your inner thighs, stroking them, while the other palms your soft mound. His other hand comes to pause at your knee, and pushes his weight into it softly, forcing you to stay spread-eagle for him. No way you could’ve done this on the sofa.

There’s no hesitation in the way he fingers you; sweeping up through your slick folds, smearing your arousal around until she’s coated in it, splaying your pretty, wet cunt apart with his fingers, looking upon it hungrily. He knows what he’s doing, and how to do it right. You briefly wonder if that’s another mutant power he has… though being an expert at fingering someone seems outlandish. But he’s just so good at it. His middle finger barely touches you, circling the bundle of nerves delicately. Your back arches up towards him, a desperate groan vibrating your vocal chords. Delighted by your reaction, his finger flicks upwards at your swollen, sensitive clit, making your body literally quiver.

“Uhugh – god…. Shit, oh my god.”

He continues like this for several minutes, until your cunt is blazing hot and clenching with every moan you give.

By the time he presses one finger inside, you’re teetering on the edge of an orgasm and your voice fills the room with needy, desperate sounds. You let out a shrill whine, and he slips in another finger, feeling the stretch of muscle as he does. His heart is pounding in his chest, overcome with lust. The way you sound, the way your body is moving and writhing on the bed, he can’t wait to sink himself into you.

Amidst a laugh, he says: “People gon’ think we up in here watchin’ porn.”

Did he just insinuate that you sounded like a pornstar? You lifted your head, wearily, to look at him. Your chest heaves with each breath as you try to formulate a snarky remark to no avail. He looked so good – well, always – but he looked particularly good on top of you, his bright eyes lust blown and hungry.

“We’re… we’re… porn… it’s… oh god.”

He shushes you. “You just lay back and keep moanin’.”

Defeated, you huff and your head hits the sheets again, but not before you catch a glimpse of the way the muscles in his forearm ripple as it pumps back and forth into your cunt. You can’t help but moan at the sight, feeling a shockwave rupture your core. Your hips meet his fingers, rutting and writhing against the mattress in a needy rhythm.

Your first orgasm claims your body before you can stop it. You’re clenching around his fingers as they move, crooking upwards into your sensitive spots. Your slick coats his fingers and when Gambit pulls his hand back, thick, clear strands string from between them. He smiles down at you.

Remy raises himself to his knees. “Turn ‘round…”

You flip over and back yourself towards him, thinking that he’s going to go at it doggy-style, but to your surprise, he pulls you upright, pressing your back against his chest. His dick is hot between your legs, and when he reaches down to line it up, you let your head loll back against his shoulder. Gambit’s mouth finds the side of your neck, streaking it with wet, suckling kisses. He was taking his time with you, savouring you and you hum happily through closed lips, reaching behind you to thread your fingers through his hair.

“Fuck, you feel so good…” Instinctively, your hips undulate and his cock slips between your folds. Remy’s hips buck once, letting out a groan that comes from somewhere deep.

“You ready, cher?” He asks, sweeping your hair away from your neck. You nod furiously. You’ve been ready – you were ready the moment you laid eyes on him.

Remy reaches down to sweep his fingers along your entrance briefly, before gripping himself and guiding the head of his cock into the slit. You keen at the feeling of his velvet-soft head pressing into your entrance, warm pre-cum leaking from the slit. He murmurs words of encouragement into your ear as you feel his hips press against your ass, urging his thick, veiny shaft inside your cunt. He does it gently, allowing you time to adjust to the girth, but the sting still makes you cry out. “Fffuck!”

He begins to thrust his hips shallowly, your cunt stretching around his cock. The feeling is all-consuming, and your body feels heavy in his grasp. One hand is gripping your waist tightly, the other, fingers splayed out on your stomach just above your cunt. There’s a pressure building in your cunt, and each thrust magnifies it. The sting of his cock fades to an ache, then to a dull throbbing that makes you want more and you lean forward slightly and press your ass into the curves of his hips, meeting his thrusts.

“Mm, ‘dat’s it, cher…” His voice is hot on your skin.

His thrusts get deeper, but there’s a lingering tension in his body that makes you feel like he’s not getting what he wants. You’re right; all at once, Remy pulls his cock from you and switches positions.

You’re suddenly on your back, looking up at him as he looms over you, all muscle. His cockhead nudges your entrance again, but doesn’t penetrate.

“Say my name, cher… I needa’ hear it leave ‘dat pretty mouth.”

“Which one? Gambit? Or Remy?” You ask, breathlessly.

The way his eyes rolled back at the second option told you everything you needed to know. A smirk twisted your lips cruelly and you lifted your body slightly, just enough for your mouth to reach his ear. You moan his name over and over again, knowing full well the effect it’s having on the mutant man.

“Remy, Remy, Remy….” Your tone is high-pitched and whiny, but he seems to enjoy the lewdness of it all. He bucks his hips hard into you, and the fullness reaches an all-time high as he bottoms out, his pelvis hitting yours with a slap.

“Huhhh—!” You gasp, breathing ragged. “Fuck!”

“Gonna’ make you cum so hard you ain’t gon’ walk right for days.” His voice is low and filthy and leaves a stain on your mind. Your cunt clenches around him possessively, pulling him somehow deeper inside of you.

As your head bangs into your headboard, the tip of his cock bumps your cervix over and over again, and your jaw goes slack, literally fucked silent. Remy hears the thudding of your skull and puts a hand between it and the wood, but he doesn’t stop his relentless, deep thrusting.

The pleasure reaches a peak and your nails dig into his back, leaving crescent moon shaped indentations on his golden skin. Remy’s groaning loud into your ear as he cums, muttering in an almost incoherent melange of French and English. His accent is somehow heavier, and you can barely make out the words as he’s saying them into your skin. It doesn’t matter though, because you feel how full you are, and Remy’s hot, white completion is leaking out the sides and staining your sheets.

He stays like that for a moment, hovering on top of you. His cock softens inside, completely spent and eventually, he slips it out, rolling over onto your bed.

“Ah, joi de vivre, huh.” (the joy of life), he says drowsily.

You laugh, and nestle underneath his arm, in the space he’s left for you.

If you had your way, you’d do it all over again.

Though he doesn’t say it, so would he.

#Gambit #Remy Lebeau #channing tatum #Deadpool and Wolverine Gambit #channing tatum gambit #Gambit x reader #gambit x you #remy lebeau x reader #remy lebeau x you #female reader #Deadpool and Wolverine #Deadpool 3 #x reader fics #myfics

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ckret2 · 2 months ago

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It's fic time. The Axolotl tries to persuade Bill to face what happened to his dimension while Bill tries to avoid that literally any way possible.

This is part 8 of a 9 part plot about the Axolotl meeting this friendly harmless innocent little triangle in the wake of the Euclidean Massacre and gradually learning he's literally the worst person ever. If you want to read and/or look at the pretty art on the other parts, here's one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven.

(WARNING in this one for nonspecific but pretty obvious suicidal ideation)

####

The triangle whirled around as a milky white void closed in around him. "Whoa whoa hey! What is this? How'd I get here?"

"Welcome to my office. You're in a time and space outside time and space," the Axolotl said. "Take a seat. I have a very comfortable bean bag chair."

The triangle did not take a seat. He pointed at the Axolotl like an angry arrow. "What did you do! If you don't put me back now—"

"Don't worry. When we leave this space, you will be where and when you were. Think of this like a dream."

Furiously, the triangle burst into a ball of bright blue flame. It reeked of burning hydrogen—the stench of the fabric of reality itself burning away to nothing. But he, himself, didn't burn. What was fueling his flames? "Yeah?! Well, dreams are my business!" A wave of blue flames surged toward the Axolotl.

And dissipated without touching him. The Axolotl's eyes glowed white. "THIS IS MY DREAM, TRIANGLE—NOT YOURS!"

The triangle shrank down. He squeaked, "Got it." He quietly perched one edge on the Axolotl's bean bag chair. He didn't look at the Axolotl. He was staring up around them at the Axolotl's tank.

The Axolotl's eyes dimmed again to black voids. He settled back, trying to look unthreatening now that the triangle wasn't fighting him. "Do you see something?"

The triangle laughed uneasily. "Not aside from a whole lot of white."

"You keep looking up," the Axolotl said.

"Up?" the triangle said, confused; then apparently figured out what the Axolotl meant and snapped his gaze down to meet his again. "I never—haven't been able to see the stars before," he said, trying not to sound self-conscious even as he slowly tinted red again. "I've never seen anything that could block them. Except you."

Except him. The guy who passed the wall every day on his way to work; the eclipse that blocked out the sun once a year. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize." The walls of the tank seemingly dissolved, letting the triangle see the scene beyond: the glittery cotton candy celestial clouds of his home.

"Hey, I wasn't complaining! You're the one who asked." But the triangle had already visibly relaxed. He still wasn't looking at the Axolotl; but now, he was staring around at the unfamiliar new constellations with wonder.

It was the most unguarded the Axolotl had ever seen him. They didn't have much spare time; but the Axolotl couldn't bring himself to interrupt this brief peace.

After a moment, the triangle gestured toward the sky and said, "So, you—call that direction 'up.'"

"Yes?" the Axolotl said. "Is that strange?"

"No! Nooo no no. Just seems like it might be confusing, trying to tell apart north-up from star-up."

How odd. "We don't usually call north 'up'."

"Oh," the triangle said, voice small and sheepish.

"Some planetbound mortals do. But usually only when they're—" Oh. "... looking at maps." The world printed on a paper 2D plane. Like the plane the triangle had come from.

For all his power, his charisma, his bravado—the triangle was still just a lost little refugee from a flat little world. He held a whole universe in his hand, and he didn't even know up from down. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to him.

"Listen to me," the Axolotl said. "You're in a lot of trouble. I'm sure you know that."

The triangle scoffed. "Tell me something new."

"How much of our discussion did you hear?"

"Just something about rebuilding the higher dimensions' foundations. Which is exactly what I told you to do! You mind your business, I'll mind mine!"

He suspected the triangle had heard more than that. "It's not that simple. They can't rebuild the foundation until the fires are out. So, as long as your actions keep setting new ones..."

"A-ha. So that's why you're here," the triangle said. "They sent you to intimidate me into letting 'em condemn my dimension."

"No." It was true enough that they had sent the Axolotl to try to talk the triangle down. And yes, he would if he could—he certainly didn't want to see all of reality destroyed—but he wasn't primarily here to help the other gods. "I'm here to help you."

The Axolotl had watched how this triangle puppeted corpses and terrified the barely-living into dancing along to his tune. He had seen the dying and dead melted together into oversized composite corpses at the triangle's party; and he'd seen how the triangle's unhappy victims tumbled down into his hell. He'd seen how blue flames flared around the triangle in his anger, and how his lines of fire warped, melted, and consumed whole universes, and how he burned mortals down to the soul with his mere gaze. He'd felt how all of Dimension Zero moved when the triangle moved.

This triangle, this poor child, was a monster.

The Axolotl wore many faces. He'd been a psychopomp, a god of death. He'd changed roles so he could help the dead he escorted reach better futures—now he was a god of rebirth, a god of second chances, a god of justice.

And in his capacity as a god of justice, he'd proudly defended the villains that no one else would defend. He did not believe in punishment. It was too late to save the villains' victims, and no amount of punishment would ever change that; but it was not too late to save the villains.

He was god of death, god of rebirth, god of second chances, god of justice—and also a god of monsters. And he'd decided this monster was under his protection.

Dubiously, the triangle said, "So they sent you as my legal counsel."

Oh, for— "No. I'm just trying to give you advice."

"Even better—pro bono legal counsel!"

"You're not my client," the Axolotl said. "But I'll advise you as a friend. I can tell you your options as I see them. We can discuss them if you'd like. You may ask me one question, and no more."

"What? Why—" The triangle caught himself and struggled to rephrase. "That's a—stupid rule—that I want an explanation for!"

"Because I'm the Axolotl."

"What does that have t— I don't know what that has to do with anything!"

"I'm the only one who gets to ax a lotl questions."

The triangle stared at him. He burst out laughing. "I think I hate you!"

The Axolotl gave him a wide, gummy grin.

"St—stop that! It makes you even more ugly, ugh. I thought you were here to give me advice, not bad jokes." The triangle made a show of leaning back as though getting comfortable, although it was clear he was uneasy touching the bean bag chair. "So advise me, pink stuff."

"I preferred 'frills.'" Gently, the Axolotl said, "I think it's in your best interests to give yourself up to the divine authorities."

The triangle laughed in disbelief. "You're kidding. Hey, I heard your pals talking about how they can't fight me without knocking the multiverse down—"

"And once they've put up a fireproof foundation you can't burn your way through, there will no longer be any risk to the multiverse if they come after you."

"Sounds to me like a good reason to make sure they don't get that foundation in place!"

"For you to do enough damage to ensure they can't construct a foundation, you'd probably knock the multiverse down yourself," the Axolotl said. "And if that's the case, they'll have nothing to lose by trying to stop you anyway, and everything to lose by not trying."

The belligerence leeched out of the triangle's face by the word. "Oh. Yeah. I guess that's... yeah," he said. "Okay." His expression was faraway for a moment, as he tried to wrap his mind around the magnitude of the situation. "Okay. That's okay, it's fine, it's fine." Could he feel the walls closing in on him? Did he see the stars being blocked out? "I've... got a way out of this."

"What?"

He didn't meet the Axolotl's gaze. He pulled off his hat to worry at it in his hands. "I have a way."

Bluffing. Or wishful thinking. "No. This is trouble you can't get out of. There's no greater crime against reality than the destruction of an entire dimension," the Axolotl said. "Right now, the gods think you're an active, divine threat to all of existence. That's what this is about. They're not after you because you broke a couple of rules—they're afraid of you." (The triangle lit up at that. Not quite the reaction the Axolotl had been going for, but at least he had his attention.) "And that means they won't stop until they're sure you're no longer a threat. As long as they're pursuing you, your best case scenario is getting buried alive beneath the multiverse's foundation where they can forget about you until your dream realm unravels."

"So what g—I don't see what good giving myself up would do! My best move is putting off the inevitable as long as possible! Just let 'em try to bury me!"

"But it's not inevitable," the Axolotl said. "They fear you as a divine threat. If you prove you're neither divine nor a threat—"

"No."

"Mortals can't be charged the same way as gods can. If we convince the court that you didn't have your current powers at the time of the inferno—"

"I don't know why you're so convinced I didn't have powers at the time!"

"I'm not. That doesn't mean I can't convince a judge," the Axolotl said, which surprised the triangle enough that he actually shut up for a moment. "If you're charged as a god, you face eternal imprisonment or oblivion. If you're charged as a mortal, you'll be sentenced to a regular afterlife. If you give up your power—I'm not sure where yours come from, but there are ways it can be done—" (the triangle was already raising a finger to protest) "—and it can be temporary! But if you don't have divine power when you're taken in, it will be that much easier to convince the judge that you didn't have any when your wall burned. On top of that, if you surrender yourself willingly and admit that destroying Dimension 2 Delta was an accident, that alone can knock off half your charges."

"Next you'll ask me to give up my eye! No!" He was clenching his fist around his hat so tightly that it shook; but that was the only sign of anxiety he betrayed. His gaze was as intense as the stare of a sun. "I told you: me, my power, and my people are a package deal. We stay together. We're staying right here. I don't care how much it inconveniences you."

"It's not about how much it inconveniences us," the Axolotl said. "I'm here for you—you and your people."

"They don't need you or any of your stupid 'gods.' I can take care of them!"

"Then take care of them," the Axolotl said. "You understand that, no matter how this ends, your dream realm will be destroyed and you'll have to leave or perish—don't you?"

"No." That stubborn little glitter fleck. "I can patch up this dump and repair the wall by myself. Once the wall's back, you don't have to worry about your stupid multiverse destabilizing, right?! I'll stabilize my realm before you get your stupid impenetrable foundation in place! Maybe I'll put a roof on top of it that you can't get through!"

"You haven't done it yet! What do you think you can do that you haven't already done?"

"You don't need to know," the triangle snarled.

He had to be mad, bluffing, or in denial. But he didn't look it—eye narrowed in determination, flames smoldering around his edges, fist clenched around his hat—

And then it clicked.

He hadn't said he would replace his wall. He said he'd repair it.

The Time Giant had said there was no way the little speck of matter that the triangle kept in his hat could be all the matter from his universe; no mortal could handle it without its gravity crushing them, nor would they have the energy to move it.

But she'd also said that gravity was turned off in Dimension Zero. And the triangle had proven he did have the power to move an entire universe—so why should a universe the size of a grain of sand be any more difficult?

And anyway—what did restrictions like that mean in a place where dreams and reality overlap?

"The Time Giant was wrong, wasn't she," the Axolotl said. "You don't have a dark matter problem. You're carrying around the rubble of your universe. All of it. All the matter she sensed but couldn't find."

The triangle gave him a resentful look; but then sighed in defeat. He loosened his fist, reached into his hat, and plucked up the speck of what remained of his universe. The black pinprick of white light. "You're not as dumb as you look," he said wryly. "Yep. The whole thing's right here—all but a city or two. I figured out how to catch it pretty fast."

Catch it? "What... happened to your dimension?"

A faint uneasiness itched at the back of his mind; a sound, right at the edge of his hearing, that he couldn't quite identify but knew shouldn't be here.

"It doesn't matter," the triangle said. "It's about to un-happen."

"You're thinking about setting off a big bang, aren't you?"

The triangle said nothing. He just rolled his universe between his thumb and forefinger contemplatively.

"You are," the Axolotl said. "You want to replace your universe."

Coolly, the triangle said, "You're sounding kinda scared, frills."

"I am," the Axolotl admitted. "Of all your options, that's the most dangerous thing you could possibly do."

"Hey, the dangerous choices have turned out pretty well for me so far!"

The Axolotl really didn't think they had. "You know you can't get your old universe back, don't you? It will only make a new universe."

The triangle didn't say anything—but he went still, holding the tiny glowing pearl between his fingers rather than rolling it back and forth.

"It will have similar physical properties—it will be 2D, gravity and light will probably work the same way, all the laws of physics will be what you expect... but it will be a new universe. New stars and worlds will form. New species will evolve. Your people will never return."

The triangle squeezed the pearl in his hand. "You don't know that," he said harshly. "Everything that ever existed is right in here." He shook his fist at the Axolotl. He could see the light shining out between the triangle's fingers. "It has to have some sort of memory! There's gotta be traces of it left in there!"

"It can't remember. It doesn't have a soul to remember with."

"I'm a soul!" The triangle pointed at himself with a hundred arms. "Me! I remember! The whole dimension remembers!"

There was the hiss. The ever-present hiss that the Axolotl heard any time he was inside Dimension Zero, the static in the speakers, the last gasp of a dying big bang, the whisper murmur scream battering against the walls. Fear shivered up his spine. How was it audible from within his tank?

He tried to push down his fear. "You're not the whole dimension."

The triangle laughed. It was a chilling sound.

"Just—consider how much more you'd lose if it doesn't work the way you want it to. What will you do if you can't fix your dimension?"

"I can," he said. "If I can't fix it, no one can."

Why did he think he was more capable than gods who'd maintained the multiverse for trillions of years? "What if you're wrong?"

"I will fix it," the triangle said stubbornly.

"TELL ME WHAT YOU'LL DO IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT!"

The triangle literally shrank back, growing smaller as he sank into the Axolotl's beanbag. "Keep doing what I'm doing now! Partying!" He let out a half hysterical giggle. "I'll party til I die!"

"Set off a big bang in an unstable pseudo-dimension, and you will die! The kind of death no one comes back from!"

"Great!"

They both froze. Neither one of them had expected him to say that.

"Kidding," the triangle croaked. "I just—I just—I'm trying to get under your skin, pinky, that's all. Is it working? Don't answer that, that wasn't my question, that was—rhetorical. I'm assuming that stuff you've got is skin, anyway." The prattle was hollow and meaningless. "The point is, I'm the dream realm's eternal party host, and I'm not stopping this party for anything, no matter what you say, and—and that's it. That's all there is to it!"

He must have witnessed so many horrors, in so little time—his universe incinerating, his people dying, Dimension Zero constantly collapsing even as he attempted to prop it up, the dimensions above him twisting and warping as their people fell into his nightmarish realm...

The Axolotl slowly flew closer to the triangle.

"Oh, come on— don't," the triangle whined. "Whatever little speech you're about to make, don't, I don't wanna hear it—"

Gently, the Axolotl said, "I know you've lost your home."

The word "home" struck a note with the triangle. He didn't flinch, his expression didn't change; but he went still. He looked down at the compacted ruin of what used to be his whole universe.

"But it's not too late for you to find a new home," the Axolotl said. "You can still move on and rebuild. There's a future for you. If you come out, I'll help you navigate the afterlife system. If you're stuck in this dimension, we'll find a way to free you."

The triangle's face darkened.

"You can be reincarnated, or resurrected, or—just set free to be an energy being if you want. You can settle down in a neighboring dimension, join a new people—"

"No. I'm not about to be a couch surfer in someone else's universe." He glowered up at the Axolotl. "Those people will join me. Everyone can either join me, or—or get out of my way! I finally made my kingdom, I'm not giving up my crown now!"

"If you keep your crown, you'll kill your kingdom! You know that if you stay here you'll destroy everything, I know you know it!"

"It's the best option I have! Better than your plan, anyway! Surrender to the cops and let my world fall apart?" He laughed harshly. "No way, Buster! I told my people I'd liberate them from our flat, oppressive little world and take them to a party paradise, and that's exactly what I'm gonna make for them!" He held out his little pearl of a universe again, the paradise-to-be.

Before, he'd said that the dream realm was his paradise. He'd also said that he'd remake his destroyed universe exactly as it had been. How could the "oppressive" world they'd left be their paradise? Nevermind the fact that none of "his people" were from his world. Which of the stories he'd invented was the truth? Which did the triangle think was the truth? Did he even know?

"If all of this is for your people—would you risk them? If trying to build a paradise kills the very people you made it for—"

"They'd never know."

The Axolotl's blood ran cold. It took a moment for him to find his voice. "What?"

"I can keep the party going until the end. They'd never find out what's coming. If the dream realm collapses, it'll be too fast for them to tell what's happening," the triangle said. "In their final moments, they'll still remember me as a hero."

The Axolotl hadn't realized until that moment just how cold the triangle's expression was.

His mind flashed to seeing VENDOR earlier that day, hustling the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force to clean up this mess faster because THEY didn't want the journalists to claim THEY had mishandled the situation during an election season.

Was that all the triangle was?

Another politician more concerned with how his constituents saw him than with what he could do for them?

"But," the Axolotl said weakly, "I've watched how you rescue the mortals from the fires. I've seen how you're struggling to keep this dimension from collapsing on them. I've seen how much you're suffering. You're running yourself ragged to protect them. You want so badly for them to be safe."

The triangle seemed to brighten at the Axolotl's words, as though he was soaking in the high praise. "Well, sure! And they love me for it! Would any god do less for his worshipers? Would you?" His voice took on a bitter tone. "But I don't know of any god who'd stick his corner out for a nonbeliever—and that's what they'll be if I don't deliver on the paradise I promised. I take my party hosting seriously. I'll give them their paradise if it kills me. Or them. Or everyone, if that's what it takes."

He was no hero. He never had been. He didn't care about the countless souls he'd collected, only their worship.

He didn't want his people to be safe; he just wanted to be his people's savior.

If I can't fix it, no one can. The triangle hadn't meant no one else was able to. He'd meant no one else was allowed to. He'd rather die than let someone else fix his mistakes.

And he would. This was a mass suicide.

No. Worse than that—it was a mass murder-suicide.

"You already lost your world once," the Axolotl said desperately, "don't you remember what that was like?"

The triangle flinched back like the Axolotl had slapped him. The tank rumbled around them; the hissing whispers grew louder. "That's... none of your business! Stop talking about my world, you don't know the first thing about it—"

"I know how much you must miss it. I know how deeply losing your people must hurt." It must have hurt, why would he have clung to what was left of his world if it didn't, why would he be so determined to rebuild it exactly as it had been?

"My—my people are fine." His voice was choked. He squeezed his eye shut. "They're... all out at the party. Waiting for me. Don't talk about—"

"The people at the party are shapes you kidnapped from other dimensions." He was so stubbornly loyal to his chosen delusions. "Your people are dead. You know they are!"

"No!"

His scream was answered by howls outside the Axolotl's tank. Through the static, the Axolotl could pick up a sound repeated over and over. A word. Murderer, murderer, murderer.

"No! They aren't dead! I saved them!" He curled in on himself, hands pressed to his sides like it could block out the sounds. "I liberated them from their shallow lives! I gave them their freedom—"

"Then give them their freedom now!"

The triangle's breath hitched.

"If you want to die, you can die. There are ways to break a soul. I can help. But do it alone," the Axolotl pled. "I know you care about these people!" He had to believe it, he had to believe it, he had to. In spite of the evidence to the contrary, he had to. "If you won't let us help you, at least let us help them go home. Please. You need to let them go."

He clenched his tiny hands into fists; he looked so pained the Axolotl thought he might shatter.

In another timeline, a better timeline, he whispered, "How?" The word he should have said echoed around them, blending into the static whispers. It would be so easy to say.

But in this timeline, he asked, "You're some kind of lawyer or something, right?"

The Axolotl paused uneasily. "By... way of metaphor," he said. "We have trials and courts, but not the way mortals understand—"

"There are no laws in my kingdom," the king growled. "Get out of here. Now."

"But—"

"I said OUT!"

A force crashed into the time and space between time and space, shattering the Axolotl's tank, the glittery cotton candy nebulas' pinks and blues disrupted by a twisted geyser of colors—raw frothing stuff somewhere between matter and energy—and it flung the Axolotl away from the triangle like a wave flinging a fish from the ocean. The anxious background static whispers grew to a buzzing roar, 1000 decibel white noise. He spun dizzily through the cosmic miasma.

The first time he'd come in here—the first time the triangle had chased him out—he'd felt instinctively that he'd been in danger. He'd felt flames licking at his heels.

He knew now that that had been a mere warning.

"I might be in your dream, but your dream is in MY dream realm!" The triangle seemed to get larger without his size changing. Maybe it was the universe around him that was contracting. "And you've overstayed your welcome, Axolotl!"

The Axolotl had tumbled into the nightmarish eternal dance party. Shrieking overlapping music drowned out the buzzing whispers. Thousands of eyes stared at him in horror and thousands of voices gasped in disgust; and he realized that as many times as he'd seen them, he had never been in their two-dimensional field of view.

For all the thousands that stared at him, millions of corpses never stopped dancing.

One last time, the Axolotl turned to the triangle and pled, "Just give the hostages the option to leave if they want!"

"My people aren't hostages!"

"Then give them a choice!" He could feel dead hands grabbing at his skin and fins. He wasn't sure if they were trying to restrain him for their Magister Mentium, or cling to him for escape. He wasn't even sure whether they were the dead who still had their own souls, or the triangle's corpse puppets. "Anyone who wants to stay with you can!"

"Shut up!" The triangle boomed louder and louder and he grew larger and larger, until his voice and his eye seemed to fill the universe. He was shuddering with rage (with regret?)—it threatened to shake him apart, and the universe with him. "All of this is your fault! I'm—sick because of you!" In another reality he said insane; but the realities where he didn't closed up around the word and crushed it into silence. "You made me like this! You infected me!"

"With what?" He'd only spoken to the triangle once before today. He hadn't even entered his dimension.

"This—idea!" He didn't say what idea, not in this reality; but the words echoed in from another reality where he did. He screamed to drown the echoes out. "I was fine until I met you and you ruined everything!" Regret spilled out of his eye so thick it was almost palpable, energy like a river. It threatened to fill the interdimensional in-between space and drown them all. The Axolotl could taste the idea that had poisoned the triangle: the idea that everyone mattered. That everyone was worthy of a god's attention. And now, everyone was gone.

Bewildered, the Axolotl said, "You're not 'sick' to think that. It's the sanest idea you could have—"

"Get out!" The shriek echoed through infinity. "Get out! The dream realm is my domain and I am its king! I told you last time, I won't let you threaten my people!"

"I would never—"

"GET OUT!" Blue flames exploded out of the triangle; some of his nearest prisoners were incinerated as easily as tissue paper.

The Axolotl tried to shield himself; the flames consumed one of his forelegs and ate away at his dorsal fin.

He tore himself free of the desperate grasping shapes and swam from the triangle as fast as he could.

The triangle chased him; and, to the Axolotl's despair, as the center of Dimension Zero followed the triangle, the edge of reality pulled ever further away.

His flames licked at the Axolotl's tail, consuming the fin; he swam slower and slower.

As the triangle pursued the Axolotl, his attacks further destabilized the volatile dimension; wormholes formed where the fabric of reality folded and bunched in on itself and was pierced through. Light shot through the holes like a million disembodied sunbeams.

He saw one that led straight to the edge of Dimension Zero. He wriggled through.

"Where did you—?! HEY!" The dimension whirled dizzyingly as the triangle refocused on his evasive prey. "You think you can get away from me in my own realm?"

"Do you want me to get out or not?!"

"I want you DEAD!"

The Axolotl shouldn't have asked.

With a roar, the triangle clawed at him. A thick, sucking wave of gravity as dense as a black hole tore through the unstable miasma toward him. The triangle laughed sadistically.

With one last surge of energy, he paddled his tail hard enough to outpace the triangle and burst free of the dimension.

The ragged edges of Dimension Zero ripped further under the triangle's attack, but it dissipated in the third dimension.

The Axolotl sighed in relief—then flinched when the triangle crashed into the invisible barrier holding the cosmic foam in the space-between-space where Dimension Zero should have been. Like a piece of glitter sticking to a bubble, if glitter sticking to a bubble were the most violent force in the universe. "Get back here! I'll skin your freakish hide and make a tent outta it—!" He strained toward the Axolotl, threatening to drag the bubble along with him, like a particularly determined sled dog trying to pull a trailer home.

The Axolotl hastily backed out of range as nauseating plumes of color stretched outside their bounds again. Blue fire danced over the thin membrane between dimensions like a burning oil spill on an ocean. The plumes twisted into shapes almost like arms, hundreds of them, reaching toward him—

And froze. The triangle was staring past the Axolotl.

The Axolotl turned to look.

It was the most sublimely awful sight he'd ever seen. An impenetrable wall made up of gods, angels, sentient forces of nature—there were things here so transcendentally powerful that the Axolotl couldn't even see them; he only knew they were present by the perimeters of the space he couldn't bring his eyes to gaze upon and the terrifying awe he felt when he tried.

They were all armed.

All their weapons were pointed at the triangle.

Apparently, the ATTF had called in reinforcements.

A god that looked like a hologram projection, the light of its projector shining down on it from a higher dimension like a halo, thundered, "ADVANCE ANY FURTHER INTO REALITY, AND WE WILL BE FORCED TO SUBDUE YOU."

"You can't afford to!" the triangle crowed. "You'll knock your own universes down!"

"NOT ANYMORE."

The triangle's eye widened. The thousand arms of raw reality seized the jagged edges of the dimensions bordering the hole left when Dimension 2 Delta burned down, trying to crush them—and nothing happened. He slammed Dimension Zero against the bordering dimension, trying to crack open a larger opening, and then trying to simply shove the bordering dimensions aside—and nothing happened. Dimension Zero burned; but the surrounding first and second dimensions remained still. There was no creak and crack of snapping lines and shattering planes as the triangle tried to squeeze his bloated universe free. There was no glowing line of fire on the distant horizon.

The neighboring dimensions burned and blackened under the thousand hands; but they didn't dissolve to ash. The cinders got caught between the layers together as the dimensions splintered into layers, then multiplied—splintered and multiplied—splintered and multiplied—thicker and denser and harder—

Parallel universes. Every time the triangle touched them, they split into more timelines, reinforcing themselves. The Time Giant already reformatted the universes most closely adjacent to Dimension Zero. Not every universe—but just enough to form a cage.

The triangle gave up with a grunt of pain. He laughed in disbelief—and then anger. "You were the distraction?"

"No! I was supposed to talk you into cooperating with building the fireproof foundation! We agreed to only call in reinforcements if I couldn't persuade you!" He looked around for the Time Giant, but couldn't find her—nor any of the other gods he'd spoken to while dealing with this mess. Everyone, apparently, had been cleared out of the vicinity to make way for the god militia.

The only civilian left on the 3D side of the missing wall was the Axolotl—once again, stuck in the middle of a situation he had no business being involved in.

The triangle's eye widened further, further, white hot with fury. "Nothing's ever your fault, is it, frills?! Every time you ruin my life, it's all a big misunderstanding! You just keep talking your way out of trouble!" His eye opened wider and wider still. His eyelid unhinged. His mandibles split open and at the back of his eye socket was an infinitely dark esophagus. Sprouting in a ring around the triangle's eye like the petals of a grisly flower, piercing the membrane between the zeroth dimension and the third, were millions and millions of—

—teeth. Teeth longer than the spaces between stars and sharp enough to split an atom.

The Axolotl only barely managed to paddle back out of their range before they snapped at where he had been. A couple of the higher gods caught him, holding his sides protectively. His skin sizzled with holy electricity.

The god militia drew back from the gnashing fangs, then readied their own weapons: spears, guns, swords, a wider array of divine and holy weaponry than the Axolotl had ever seen. The projection leading the militia called, "DON'T LET HIM MAKE IT PAST THE FIREPROOF BARRIER."

"Afraid I'll start breaking things again?" The fangs snapped tauntingly. "Hey—how fast do you think I can find the load-bearing dimensions?"

The Axolotl shook off the gods and swam back toward Dimension Zero. "Stop!"

"HOLD FIRE!" The projected god commanded, "OUT OF THE WAY, AXOLOTL. THE MULTIVERSE'S SAFETY IS WORTH MORE THAN YOUR LIFE."

He knew it was. The leader of the militia was so powerful that resisting a direct order made the Axolotl dizzy—but he did resist. He shouted at the triangle, "You can't fight off every god in the multiverse! This is suicide!" He realized too late that that probably wasn't as discouraging as he'd intended it to be.

"So what?! There's no way for me to win! Get executed for god crimes or get erased when the dimension collapses—"

"Those aren't your only choices!" The Axolotl could see the fangs slowly, slowly curling up in his peripheral vision, and pretended he didn't. "It's not too late for you to stand down—!"

"I can't!" A wave of fire blazed up the teeth of the Dream Realm. He held up a fist, and it was far too small for any of the gods, so mighty and large, to see what he held; but the Axolotl knew. "If I don't get a happy ending, why shouldn't I burn the rest of you down with me?! At least I'll accomplish one thing before I go!" His hand began glowing as energy began gathering around the tiny seed of a big bang.

"Do you want your worshipers to remember you as a monster in their last moments?!"

"Better a monster than a LOSER!" His laugh was a strained subsonic roar. "Are fame and infamy really that different?! At least they'll be thinking about me at the end!"

"It would make you a terrible party host!"

The Axolotl didn't know what had possessed him to say that. Apparently the triangle didn't know what to make of it either, because he froze, giving the Axolotl a wide-eyed blank stare.

But it worked. He snapped out of his rage. The light gathering around the remains of Dimension 2 Delta went dark. For a moment, he was frozen, giving the Axolotl a wide-eyed blank stare; and then he laughed again, just as strained, much weaker. The borders of Dimension Zero shuddered with his laughter. "Fair enough!" The appendages stretching out into the third dimension lost definition. "Fair enough." He glowered tiredly at the god militia—but raised his hands in surrender. Both his palms were empty.

The trembling fangs dissolved as they retracted. The whole paradoxical mass sagged sluggishly back into the crawlspace underneath reality.

One by one, the god militia slowly lowered their weapons.

The Axolotl's heart was still hammering in his chest; and only then did it register that he'd nearly been eaten by an entire dimension.

Where had his power come from? How had the triangle done all this—made his whole dimension vanish without a trace, shoved an entire plane inside a point, gained complete control over it all...

He really did have complete control over the entire universe that had formed inside Dimension Zero—didn't he?

And to control an entire universe, he needed to have an entire universe's worth of energy.

Dimension 2 Delta had been an entire universe. And now—all of its energy was in Dimension Zero.

With the triangle.

As he watched the triangle wincing in pain as the Dream Realm sank back into place, as though the triangle could feel the way the edges of the neighboring dimensions dug into the frothing chaos, the Axolotl whispered, "Oh, no. What have you done?"

His power had come from his own universe. He had devoured it. He'd made it part of him.

All that energy wasn't stored inside the triangle's body—but the Axolotl had been wrong to think that the triangle was the body in the first place. The triangle was only the face: the eye, the mouth, the mind. The part of the Dream Realm that could speak.

The Dream Realm was the anglerfish—and the triangle was its pretty golden glowing lure. They were all one monster.

The triangle was slumped in defeat, but still he shot the Axolotl a tired glare. The hissing static whispers rose up around him again, spilling out of the Dream Realm. (The whispers, too, were a part of the triangle.) "Who are you to judge," he muttered. "You weren't there."

No, he wasn't. He'd gotten here too late.

Behind the Axolotl, the god projection said curtly, "APPREHEND THE TRIANGLE WHILE HE'S COMPLIANT."

The Axolotl whirled around, eyes glowing with rage. "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!" The gods who had started moving toward Dimension Zero froze again.

"HE'S A THREAT TO THE MULTIVERSE!"

"He stood down!"

"HE'S PROVEN WILLING TO DESTROY REALITY. HE COULD EASILY CHOOSE TO AGAIN." The higher dimensional projector turned to project straight at the Axolotl, dazzling him even through his shut eyes, shining straight into his brain. "STAND. ASIDE."

"No." The Axolotl tensed his muscles against the compulsion to obey. "He was a threat to the multiverse. Once the last walls are closed over the crawlspace, he won't be anymore. If he doesn't make a move between now and then, you have no grounds to pursue him." It was a little easier the second time to resist the higher god's command. "So if you do follow him out of the third dimension to capture him, you're trespassing in a new god's sovereign territory to make an illegal arrest outside your jurisdiction!"

"HE'S MASSACRED TEN DIMENSIONS AND TRIED TO DESTROY MORE. THERE ISN'T A COURT IN REALITY THAT WOULD CONSIDER PURSUING HIM UNJUSTIFIED."

"I know a few."

"YOU'RE DEFENDING A DIVINE MENACE. WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"

He quietly kissed his career prospects goodbye as he watched himself do the stupidest thing he'd ever done. "I'm the Axolotl," said the Axolotl, "and I'm his lawyer!"

####

(Thanks for reading!! If the art lured you in and this is the first chapter you read, this is part 8 of a 9 part fic about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. I'll be posting the last chapter next week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna watch the Axolotl deal with having gotten his heart broken by this sweet little triangle who actually isn't sweet.

It's ALSO chapter 68 of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. So if you wanna read more of me writing Bill, check it out. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a one-shot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: this was The Big One, gang. And now I expect for the next several months I'm gonna get comments from y'all rereading earlier chapters going HOLD ON WAS THIS LINE FORESHADOWING THAT LITERALLY THE ENTIRE NIGHTMARE REALM IS PART OF BILL? And the answer is: yes. yes it was. Looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts!! 💕

also this was THE absolute hardest chapter to write, goddamn.)

#the axolotl #gravity falls axolotl #bill cipher #euclydia #gravity falls #gravity falls fic #gravity falls fanart #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher #(this chapter is. incredibly unpolished. So if you're like 'hey was this sentence supposed to be unreadable—' no it wasn't. please tell me.

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charmedimsure · 25 days ago

Note

uuuhhhhhm can i pretty pretty please with cherries on top request a Dae-ho x reader where the reader was also in the military? but its like that ep. where they revolutionized? if that makes sense? idk i think it be cool if reader eas good eith a gun

anyways HAVE A LOVELY DAY/ NIGHT love reading your stuff (i binge read it :p)

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT || kang dae-ho

pairing: Kang Dae-ho x gn!reader

summary: As a former soldier, you know just what to do when all hell breaks loose.

word count: 3.7k

warnings: guns, death, blood, squid game stuff, panic attacks, ptsd

A/N: i've played so many shooting games i feel like i've been training to write this fic my entire life. i even named it after a shield from my favorite game (brownie points if you know which game). if you find any mistakes no you didn't <3 tried to make this gender neutral but if you find any slip ups lmk so i can fix it

**this can be read as romantic or platonic**

You look at the woman standing between bunks with wide eyes. You weren't sure earlier when you saw her on the screen, but seeing her standing ten feet away from you, you're absolutely positive that you know who this is.

"Sergeant?"

Cho Hyun-ju turns and gasps when she sees you, a smile lighting up her face. She quickly embraces you, you happily hugging her back. You were always her favorite soldier (she never admitted it, being the sergeant of the Brigade, but you both knew she liked you best). You were one of the only people who supported her when she came out. You tried to fight against her discharge but, as a low-ranking soldier, you had no say in the matter.

"I knew it had to be you!" you say, pulling back with a smile. "When I saw someone go back into the playing field to help a guy with only ten seconds left, I just knew it was my sergeant!"

"It's good to see you," she says. "Though, I wish it was under better circumstances."

You nod solemnly. You had just watched at least a hundred people die while screaming and begging for their lives. As a former soldier, it was hard that you couldn't do anything to help the civilians. All you could do was stand there and listen to the screams and gunshots, and then the silence.

"How are you here? Are you not part of the Brigade anymore?" Hyun-ju asks.

You shake your head. "No, I actually left not long after you were discharged. It wasn't the same without you, and I just couldn't be civil with the others after how they treated you."

She nods, understanding. "Well, if I'm going to be here with anyone, I'm glad it's you. I trust you with my life, soldier."

You smile. "And I you, Sergeant."

You and Hyun-ju had made it through the next two games together, along with some allies you made along the way. Together with Young-mi, Yong-sik, and Geum-ja, you had been the first team to succeed in the six-legged pentathlon.

You had also made it though Mingle with some new allies, though not all of your old allies made it. Young-mi's death was hard on your whole group, but Hyun-ju had been taking it the worst. While you had grown closer with Yong-sik and Geum-ja, she had formed a special bond with the young girl and had to watch her die right in front of her.

While you would like to take the time to mourn Young-mi, a lot has happened in the few hours since the third game ended. The vote on whether to go home or stay ended in a 50-50 tie, meaning you're going to have to redo the vote tomorrow. Then, a huge fight apparently broke out in the men's bathroom, leaving five players dead.

Both sides group together to count their numbers, and you find that there's now one more X than O. While the players around you celebrate, a feeling of dread shoots through you.

"Attention please. Lights out in 30 minutes. All players, please return to your beds and prepare for bedtime."

Shit.

Player 047 stands in front of the group. "Listen, you cannot change your minds. We have to win the second vote and get out of here tomorrow, alright?"

As the other players around you nod and move to their beds, you stay sitting, watching the O players. They're already looking at your group. Watching. Waiting. You look at Gi-hun, the previous winner, and know that he's thinking the same thing you are.

"Those bastards are acting suspicious," Dae-ho says, returning to the small circle you formed on the ground. "It looks like they're up to something."

Jung-bae breathes out a laugh. "Whatever those idiots do, once we win the vote tomorrow, it'll all be over."

"You think we'll be okay?" Dae-ho asks, concerned. "They say things were really crazy in the bathroom earlier."

"We need to be ready," you say from your place between Dae-ho and Gyeong-seok. "They've been watching us since the moment they found out the prize money goes up if we kill each other."

The group around you tenses before Gi-hun speaks up as well. "Once the lights go out, people on the other side will attack us."

"Really?" Yong-sik asks from beside his mother.

Gi-hun nods. "Because if they kill us, they'll be able to win the vote and increase the prize."

"So what do we do?" Yong-sik asks.

"Let's attack them first," Young-il suggests. "They're probably thinking we'll just wait for the second vote. We can use it to our advantage. We'll attack them first once the lights go out."

"That's right," Player 047 says. "It'd be better to attack them first. We have more women and elderly on our side. If we get attacked we'll be at a disadvantage." You send him a glare that makes him freeze for a moment before continuing. "Attacking them first would give us a better chance of winning."

"I agree," Player 145 adds.

"We can't do that," Gi-hun says.

"But we have to get out of here," Young-il argues. "You said it yourself. Staying calm won't get us anywhere now."

"That doesn't mean we should kill each other," Gi-hun says. "That's exactly what they want us to do."

Jung-bae leans forward. "'They'?"

Gi-hun looks at him. "The ones who created this game." He turns to face the rest of the circle. "The ones who watch us play. If we're going to fight someone, it should be them."

It's silent before Dae-ho speaks up. "Where are they?"

Gi-hun looks to the ceiling. "Up there."

You all follow his gaze before looking around at each other.

"On the upper levels," Gi-hun says, "are the rooms they control the games from. The man in the black mask is their leader. Once we capture him, we'll be able to win."

"How are you going to fight them?" Young-il asks. "They have guns."

"We'll fight them with guns, too," Gi-hun says.

"But we don't have any," Jung-bae says.

Gi-hun turns to him. "We'll take their guns."

You and Hyun-ju look at each other. This is what you were trained for.

"From those masked men?" Gyeong-seok asks nervously.

Gi-hun nods.

"That's too dangerous," Young-il says. "Even if we manage to take a few guns, we'll still be outnumbered."

"What then?" Gi-hun argues. "Are you going to kill each other all night and hope you survive? Is that what you want, Young-il?"

Hyun-ju breaks the silence. "Do we... stand a chance?"

"We do if we catch them off guard," Gi-hun says. "Out of everyone, they're the ones who would least expect us to attack first. This is our last chance to end these games once and for all."

"How are you going to take their guns?" Young-il asks.

"Once the fight begins tonight, we'll have our chance."

"Lights out in ten seconds."

"Ten,

nine,

eight,

seven,

six,

five,

four,

three,

two,

one."

The lights dim, then turn off completely, leaving only the red and blue lights from the floor.

You roll out of bed, getting under the frame. You feel someone else trying to get under your bed, and you move a bit to make room for Dae-ho. Just as you get in position, you see bodies creeping towards your side of the room, illuminated by the bright blue O on the floor.

There's a scream, and all hell breaks loose.

The lights strobe as you hear the sounds of screaming and bottles being smashed coming from all around you. Somewhere to your right, a bunk is toppled over, sending someone to the ground. Another player runs up to them, stabbing their fork into their neck.

You feel the ex-Marine next to you tense up and put a hand over his, trying to bring him some comfort, or at the very least trying to keep him from blowing your cover.

You hear the buzzer of the door and the lights come on. One of the soldiers fires into the air to stop the fighting as about twenty masked guards come into the room, all armed.

You quickly army crawl out from under the bed, Dae-ho following you as you lay down on the ground.

You hear footsteps getting closer to you, and your ear is moved as a device scans behind it.

You open your eyes, grabbing the soldier so they can't move. "Dae-ho! Now!"

The ex-Marine smashes a bottle over the head of the guard, knocking him unconscious. You take the opportunity to grab the submachine gun off of the soldier, shooting another soldier coming toward you and Dae-ho. You're so focused on the fight that you fail to notice the quivering boy holding his hands over his ears against the bunks.

Grabbing another gun, you quickly scale one of the bunks to get a better vantage of the fight.

"Sergeant!" You yell, gaining the attention of Hyun-ju. She looks to you and you toss the SMG to her. She drops her pistol and catches the weapon, turning just in time to shoot one of the pink guards coming for her.

You use your position to fire at the guards hiding behind bunks. You pull the trigger until you hear a click, cursing as the mag runs empty. You jump down from the bunk, using the butt of the gun to knock a guard out cold. You quickly take his ammo and reload your own gun, firing at a guard trying to shoot Gi-hun.

"Retreat. Retreat."

The voice over the intercom announces and the pink soldiers make their way towards the door. You're able to shoot two more, but most of the soldiers who are still alive are able to make it out of the room. The main guard with the square on his mask is too busy firing back to realize that the door has closed behind him, sealing him in the room with you just as he runs out of ammo.

"Stop! Hold fire!" Gi-hun yells.

Jung-bae and another player run over to the square guard, making sure he won't fight.

"You goddamn bastards!" you hear someone yell on the other side of the room and turn to see Player 047 aiming his gun at a bunch of O players.

"No!" Gi-hun yells, stopping the man before he can shoot. "This is not what we took these guns for. If we do this, we'll be no different from those masked men."

Player 047 lowers his gun, hanging his head and he softly cries.

Gi-hun steps to the center of the room. "Everyone! Don't be scared. Gather round, please! We're not trying to hurt you!"

You walk to stand by Hyun-ju and Gyeong-seok.

"Get the guns and ammo from the dead," she tells the both of you.

You nod, doing as your sergeant says while she takes out the cameras in the room.

Placing one of the last guns on the mattress in the center of the room, you move to stand in line between Jung-bae and Dae-ho, handing the extra SMG in your hand to Dae-ho.

Gi-hun steps forward. "Everyone. We will now head up to the masked men's headquarters. We'll capture the ones who captured us, put an end to this game, and make them pay. Anyone who knows how to use a gun and wishes to join us, please step forward."

You look at the crowd in front of you, but everyone stays where they are.

"Hey," you hear a voice next to you say and turn your head to see Jung-bae stepping forward. "I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But this may be our last chance to make it out of this place alive. Fight with us so we can go home together. All together."

One of the players in the back of the crowd steps forward. "I'll fight with you."

Gi-hun waves at him to come and take a gun. Two other players come forward as well.

You watch as Yong-sik makes a move to step forward, but he catches your gaze as you shake your head at him. It's very brave of him to think about volunteering, but he hasn't even served his mandatory military service yet, and it would kill his mother if he didn't come back. You breathe a sigh of relief when Yong-sik stays where he is.

When it's clear that no one else is stepping forward, Gi-hun turns to you all. "Please check your guns and ammo."

"Let's take one radio each," Jung-bae says. "We'll use channel 7, the lucky number."

You put the strap of your gun around you, checking the mag and putting it back in place when you're satisfied with the amount of ammo that is left. You look to your right to see Dae-ho fiddling with his own gun. Just as you're about to help him, Hyun-ju steps forward.

"Attention," she says, holding up her gun. "This is the MP5, a submachine gun." She continues on the demonstrate how to load the weapon and set it to the mode you should be using. When she's done, she looks at you all. "Are we clear?"

"Yes," you answer, falling right back into the rhythm with your sergeant.

Hyun-ju nods to you, silently telling you to stay by her when you get out there.

"How do you two know each other?" Dae-ho questions, his voice a bit shaky.

You smirk, cocking the MP5. "I was in the 13th Special Missions Brigade. Hyun-ju was my sergeant."

Dae-ho stares at you, completely stunned. "You were in the Decapitation Unit?!"

You chuckle at his disbelief, nodding.

The man can't believe it. He's been bragging about being an ex-Marine while there's been two ex-Special Forces soldiers right next to him the whole time.

Gi-hun points a pistol at the square-masked guard. "Take it off."

The guard slowly removes his mask, revealing a boy no older than 25.

"Good God," Jung-bae says. "Do your parents know what you're doing here?"

The guard just stares at him.

Gi-hun cocks the pistol. "Take us to your captain."

"All players, it is bedtime now. Please return to your quarters immediately. Otherwise, you will be eliminated from the game. Let me repeat..."

Gi-hun fires at the speaker, effectively shutting up the voice. Three guards are stood over you. "Get down!"

You duck behind the wall of the stairs. Feeling a hand on your shoulder, you turn to look at Hyun-ju behind you.

"Cover me!"

You nod, shooting at the guards while she sprints to the top of the stairs. From her new vantage point, she is able to take out one of the guards, causing their body to fall over the ledge and down to the floor.

When you duck down to reload, you see Dae-ho next to you. The ex-Marine is sitting in a ball, covering his ears and flinching every time a shot rings out. You look at him with concern, but your attention is stolen by Gi-hun telling everyone to hold their fire. Dae-ho gets a grip on his weapon and you all move, following Gi-hun and the un-masked guard.

As you move down an alleyway, Gi-hun stops the guard. "How much farther? Is this the right way?"

The boy points toward the end of the hall. "The entrance to the management area is around that corner. The control room is right above it."

Gi-hun pushes him. "Move it, then!"

"Wait," the guard says, reaching toward his pocket.

"What are you doing?" Gi-hun stops him.

"I need my mask to pass security," the guard explains. Gi-hun nods and the guard takes the mask out. He looks up, but before he can say anything else, a bullet goes right through his head.

You all take cover as more shots are fired at you. Something slashes onto your face, and you turn to see Player 072's lifeless body falling to the ground.

You drop the floor and crawl over to Hyun-ju, both of you taking positions in a green square area of the stairs. You nod to each other and duck out of cover, firing at the guards. You can hear the men speaking to each other at the other end of the line, but you focus on taking out as many guards as possible.

You and Hyun-ju alternate firing and taking cover, both of you shooting with deadly precision, doing your best to not waste any of the already low supply of ammo you have.

A player next to you screams and is shot. You turn, shooting at the guard approaching from your rear, taking out a few that are behind that one as well.

"Everyone! Check your magazines!" Hyun-ju calls out.

You take the mag out of the gun, seeing that you have about half of a clip left. Everyone announces that they're around the same.

"Young-il, Dae-ho, can you hear me?" The voice of Jung-bae erupts from your radio.

"Go ahead!" Young-il says.

"I think we're right below the control room." Shots can be heard in the background. "But we need backup and more ammo."

"We're running out of ammo, too!"

"There should be spare magazines in the soldiers' pockets in our quarters. Go get them!" Gi-hun yells through the radio.

"Did you hear that?" Young-il turns to the group. "They need backup! Three of us will go, and the rest will stay! Join us once you get the magazines! Who wants to go with me?"

Players 047 and ... volunteer and they run off towards the end of the hall.

"I'll go get the magazines!" Hyun-ju yells. "I'll come back as soon as I can, so just hold on until then!"

"Hyun-ju!" A voice yells. You turn to see Dae-ho raising his hand. "I'll go!" He hurries over to where you and Hyun-ju are taking cover. "I- I'm out of ammo."

"Do you know the way?" Gyeong-seok asks. Dae-ho nods.

"We destroyed the cameras on the way, follow them," Hyun-ju says.

"I'll go with him," you say. "I still have some ammo, so I'll cover him."

Hyun-ju nods. "I'll cover you. Go!"

You and Dae-ho take off down the stairs. He stops a few times, but you pull him along, keeping your eyes up to watch for the broken cameras. As you're running down the stairs, Dae-ho stops, and you turn to see him staring at a dead guard hanging over the ledge of a window.

"Dae-ho!" Jung-bae yells. "Can you hear me? Where are those magazines?"

You lift your own radio to your mouth. "We're getting them now."

"Alright! We're counting on you!"

You put your radio back in your pocket, grabbing Dae-ho's hand and pulling him along behind you.

You burst into the quarters, letting go of Dae-ho's hand as you sprint to a guard, taking the spare mags out of their pockets. You hear someone say your name and look up to see Yong-sik.

"What happened? Why are you back by yourselves?"

"We're low on ammo," you say, not looking up from the guard you're looting. "We need to get the magazines from their pockets. Help us!"

You look up to the boy to see him nod and run over to a nearby guard. Geum-ja and Jun-hee come over to the help, as well.

Once you've looted all the ammo from the guards, you place them into a jacket you found on one of the dead players. You tie it up and give it to Dae-ho, thanking the others as you lead him out of the room.

Gunshots can be heard as soon as you step outside. You keep moving but when you check behind you, you see that Dae-ho has stopped where he is.

"Dae-ho, we need to go," you urge.

He looks at you silently, but the fear in his eyes sends the message. You've seen soldiers like this before you joined the Special Forces.

Dae-ho stands in his spot, paralyzed other than the shake of his body in fear.

You hear your name and Dae-ho's through the radio. "Where are you? Can you hear me?"

You watch as Dae-ho lifts his radio, staring at it as Hyun-ju's voice comes through.

"Did you find the magazines? Are you on your way?"

Dae-ho looks at you. "I'm sorry," he whispers, dropping the radio on the ground and running back into the quarters with the magazines.

"Shit," you say under your breath. You follow Dae-ho into the room, looking around to find where he went. Yong-sik points toward a bunk and you find Dae-ho curled up there, rocking back and forth. Running over to him, you take the jacket with the mags, ready to run out of there. You take a look at Dae-ho, the pure fear coursing through him as he whispers apologies over and over.

You sigh, remembering one of the lessons Hyun-ju taught you as your sergeant.

Never leave a man behind.

Taking out your radio, you bring it to your lips and press the button. "Charlie Foxtrot."

You put your radio down, knowing that Hyun-ju will know what to do. You had picked up the phrase from your U.S. counterparts, saying it to each other when something goes wrong.

Moving to sit on the bed, you take Dae-ho's hands into yours. "Dae-ho, I need you to breathe with me, alright."

He slowly looks at your face before launching himself into your arms, sobbing into your shoulder. You rub his back comfortingly, knowing you can't leave him alone like this.

After a few minutes, Hyun-ju runs into the room shouting you and Dae-ho's names. She comes running over to you, stopping when she sees Dae-ho in your arms.

"What happened?"

Dae-ho jumps a bit at the new voice, burying his face farther into your jacket.

You look up a Hyun-ju, shaking your head at her. She nods, understanding. You point at the magazines and she scoops them into her arms, ready to take them to the others when the buzzer for the door goes off and more pink guards enter the room, firing in the air and making everyone scream.

Hyun-ju reloads her SMG, ready to take on the entire group on guards by herself. You watch as Geum-ja puts a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

"You can't die like this."

You sigh in relief as Hyun-ju puts the gun down. From your hidden area, you try to get the guns and mags away from you, making it seem as though the three of you have been here the whole time.

As the guards come further into the room, you use your body to shield Dae-ho from them as he whimpers. You make eye contact with Hyun-ju. Whatever happens next, you'll face it as a team.

Dae-ho tags: @whatthefuckeryfuckityfuck @ally1uvsu @thebiggestigurosimp @come-as-you-are-111 @hiphip-horray @k1michii @tpwkcaryslizb @louissst28 @sshwaa @jennwonwoo @sunnysurvives @lalalaa2210 @tayshs @sunshinethatlooksalive @plntmxrss @lxnnrobin @mariaxman @alexx-iia @batty-barty-crouchjr @kxsm3t @takuma-talkz @peacemakersbeloved @skywalker0809 @soobinbunnie5

#squid game #squid game 2 #player 388 #squid game season 2 #dae ho #dae-ho #kang dae ho #dae ho x reader #kang daeho #squid game fanfic #squid game x reader #squid game s2 #daeho #daeho x reader

686 notes · View notes

mywritersmind · 4 months ago

Text

GOOD SIDE - FC43

summary : She hates him, he’s intrigued and doesn’t understand why anyone would distlike him. Franco tries to win Charles’ sister over with coffee and good racing.

listen up : no warnings!! my first franco fic <3

word count : 1067

⋆｡‧˚⋆

All eyes have been on Franco Colapinto for the past three weeks. All eyes including mine.

I watch the boy walk across the pit lane, grinning widely at his team. My arms are crossed in the ferrari garage, Charles is talking my ear off but I'm not even listening.

I miss my paddock best friend. All the boys on the grid are like my brothers, but Logan was genuinely my friend. I didn’t even go to Monza and fucked myself while boycotting because I missed my brother win.

I watch the team embrace the boy. I never realized how young he looks until now. He’s a year older than me, found that out when I was stalking his social media.

Charles noticed my stink eye and nudges me, “He’s a good kid. Don’t be mean!” I know Logan wasn’t performing well. I’m not blind.

But I can’t help but be salty for him.

“I won’t be mean.” I turn to see Alex and Franco walking towards us, I try to walk away but the hoodie for my sweatshirt is grabbed by Charles and I'm yanked backwards.

“Franco, This is my baby sister, Y/n!” Charles swings his arm around me, I roll my eyes and look back at Franco.

He’s cute and as he smiles at me I have a weird feeling that I need to make it stop. I turn to my new favorite william’s boy.

“Alex!” I smile wide and I can see my brother eyeing me already, “Nice Quali! Proud of you.”

He nods, “Appreciate it Y/n.” He glances at Franco, forcing me to say something. I give them what they want and look at him.

“Colapinto, is it?” I blink. “You’ve got an interesting driving style.”

Franco’s smile doesn’t falter. “Interesting enough to earn me P9.” My eyes narrow at him, “Nice to know you were watching me.”

I cross my arms but before I can say more, Charles interrupts me.

He laughs loudly, trying to drown out my voice, “Alright! Don't mind her, Franco, she’s been a little salty recently- well actually she’s always like this.” He shakes his head and leads the men in blue away.

Franco looks back at me as Alex starts talking rapidly, and I swear I’m hallucinating because I think he winks.

⋆｡‧˚⋆

I’m sitting on the pit wall, Susie is talking me through all the little buttons and graphs. Even though I'm Ferrari till I die, Susie is like family and has always been there for me. I feel an unexpected tap on my shoulder which makes me whip around.

I look down to see Franco holding two cups of coffee. “Morning Mrs. Wolff!” He smiles at Susie, then me. I didn’t even know he met her. My eyebrow is already raised, “Mind if I borrow Y/n?”

Susie laughs softly, looking at him then me, “Go ahead.” I get off the chair slowly and he motions for me to take the cup.

“Charles mentioned you liked coffee.” I hesitate for a second, taking the cup. I sip it and mentally groan because I’ve been needing to get some today.

“Buying my affection already, Huh?” I glance at him as we walk down the pit lane. I'm wearing a short, flowy, white dress and a Ferrari cap, happy since it's so hot.

“Don’t be silly, This was free.” I sip my coffee to stop myself from laughing, “I do have to get on your good side somehow.”

I look away from him, “You took my best friend's seat.”

“He lost it.” When I look back at him, he’s already looking at me.

I sigh and keep walking, he catches up quickly, “So… You’re Charles’ Sister.”

I flip my hair over my shoulder, “You’re sherlock?”

“You’re pretty.”

I let out a dry laugh, “You’re straightforward. I’ve seen three interviews of you flirting and you haven’t even made it to your second race yet.” He laughs and it makes me feel good that I made him do that.

“What can I say? The people love me.” He shrugs and it's my turn to laugh now.

“I’m sure your media crew hates you.”

“I can confirm they definitely do.” He stops when he gets to his garage, “I don’t want you too though.”

I take a breath, “Let’s see how you do in the race and we’ll see.” I hear someone yell his name from inside the garage.

He doesn’t move, “You base all your relationships off of driving results?”

“Relationships?” I scoff as he licks his lips, “Don’t get too cocky now.”

Franco shakes his head, a curl falling into his face, “Not cocky. Just a glass half full type of guy.”

⋆｡‧˚⋆

I hug Oscar as he walks out of his garage at the end of the day, “You fucking rocked it.” He laughs as I pull back, “Seriously, I'm proud and you beat my brother!”

Charles practically spawns, “We all know your loyalty is not to me.” All the boys have changed and are starting to leave. Carlos disappeared after crashing on the second to last lap but all I can do is smile for Lando who got bumped up to fourth.

Speaking of, Lando joins us with Franco by his side, his mouth running per usual. Everyone starts talking and congratulating Oscar again.

I find Franco by my side, he leans in slightly, “My result good enough for you?”

I look up at the sky, “Pretty good. I hate to say it but… you did well.”

He grins, “Well enough to get your number?”

I look to my brother to make sure he isn’t listening, “You’re playing with fire here, Colapinto.”

“Burn me.” He says it so quick that I almost don’t register the look on his face. He looks at me so genuinely with those hazel eyes and speaks again, “Por Favor? s'il te plaît? Please?”

The ‘Please’s’ makes me laugh. One in Spanish, one in French, and one in English to cover all his bases, “You’re such a flirt.”

“For you.”

“Don’t lie. You flirt with everyone.” I give him a look, he pulls a slow smile.

“If you were mine I'd never look at anyone else again.” Oddly enough, I believe him.

“If I were yours?” I step closer and he nods, “Hm… If I were yours- I think we would see pigs flying.”

He just grins, “I can arrange that.”

#fanfic #formula 1 fanfic #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 fic #franco colapinto #franco colapinto x reader

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justaladyiguess · 2 months ago

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Jax 001 Theory AKA An almost definitely wrong TADC theory

I thought it was weird that they gave specific attention to Jax seeing the license plate. Like, there's a whole shot dedicated it. And it doesn't serve much of a purpose. I guess it lets us know that this is Jax's car? But it's in the episode. A full shot dedicated to seeing him notice it. A full shot dedicated to the plate itself.

And there's a shot afterwards of him reacting to it. Not even a particularly comedic shot. It feels more in line with his reaction to Kaufmo's funeral in episode 2.

True, it could be him reacting to the awful adventure he just had, but we just had a scene where his smile turned into a scowl. And, you know, pretty much the rest of the episode. Or it could be him reacting to the absurdity of the license plate, but considering the day to day adventures Caine creates, this seems a bit tame to get any reaction from him.

So that gets me wondering, does the license plate have any significance? The number at the top right could be some sort of reference. But it's the 001 that intrigued me. It's typically a number given to the first of something. Maybe even the first person to come to the circus?

Instantly the idea sounded ridiculous (because it is, this theory is almost definitely wrong). I mean, Jax himself said that Kinger had been here the longest. But take a look back at what he actually said.

"Supposedly been here the longest"

At first glance, this seems to mean that Jax can't be sure who's been here the longest. Which makes sense when you consider Kinger's memory issues and all the circus members who have abstracted. And, let's be real, this is probably what the line means. But if you'll let me be delusional for a second, there's another way to read this line.

What if Jax means that everyone assumes Kinger had been there the longest? But he knows it's not true because he's been there the longest?

For most characters, it wouldn't make sense for them to be purposefully vague with their wording. But this is Jax. It's completely in character for him to keep things from the other circus members for no reason. In the first episode alone he kept his supply of keys and Kaufmo's abstraction a secret. Jax will lie about pretty much everything, and he's pretty good at it too.

Further delusions can also be found in episode one. When Pomni tries take her headset off, Jax says this.

Could it be that Jax knows the circus members all tried to take off their headsets because he was there when they did it? Again, probably not. This is the weakest piece of evidence I have, but I figured I'd include it anyway.

And that would explain a fair bit of his behavior. Jax seems more comfortable in the circus than any of them. He has access to keys. He's only momentarily surprised by Kaufmo abstracting. He's incredibly jaded. He seems bored with the adventures, deliberately causing chaos to get them off track (his hijinks on the syrup truck, sucking up the ghost in the mansion, and trying to dunk Ragatha in the oil). It almost reads like a gamer who's played the game a thousand times and is trying anything to make it interesting.

Again, I'm fully aware that this probably isn't the case. I'd say there's a 0.01% chance that this will be confirmed in any capacity whatsoever. It will almost definitely be disproved. But until then, I thought this would be a fun idea. Maybe it'd be a good fic.

But hey, that's just a theory...

A DIGITAL CIRCUS THEORY!

and cut.

#fan theory #tadc #tadc jax #jax #the amazing digital circus #the amazing digital circus theory #tadc episode four #Dumb theory #dumb ideas #taking a one second shot too seriously #I'm sorry for taking away attention from Gangle's big episode #If this turns out to be true everyone owes me ten bucks

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jeonginsleftcheek · 6 months ago

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Take it off

pairing: stripper!felix x afab!reader

genre: smut

word count: 2.9k

warnings: sub!felix, grinding, humping, fingering (m receiving), handjob, nipple play, edging, oral (f receiving), spanking, degradation for a sec, felix is called slut once, dacryphilia (lmk if i missed something), reader is older than felix

a/n: i'm writing a longer seungmin fic but felix just had to be a slut so this happened

~check out: Masterlist

This isn't your regular weekend night, where you curl up with a book and a blanket, some quiet music playing in the background.

No, your perfect peace was shattered as your friends begged, no made you finally go out to a club with them, going as far as also making you put on a short tight dress and heels.

You feel ridiculous, being almost in your 30s, too old to party like some horny teenager but your friends were adamant that you need to get out of your house and stop decomposing.

You wanted to argue but they shut down any excuse you had and you whined dramatically the whole ride to the club about a 'ruined weekend' and 'disturbed peace'.

When you finally walked inside the club, and saw how fancy it was and all the half naked men walking around, only then you realized what kind of club it was.

"Y'all. This is a strip club?"- your mouth fell open as one of the men walked by and threw you a wink.

"Yes. And they also provide some more intimate services."- one of your friends wiggles their eyebrows.

You groan loudly as they take you to a booth they reserved for the four of you.

"I can't believe you tricked me! I don't want some weird oiled up man to grind on me!"- you whine, your face scrunched up in disgust, making your friends laugh.

"Look around, y/n. These men are beyond beautiful. And everything is done with consent. Like we've been here multiple times and we always had a great time. You'll love it, I'm sure."

You sigh as your friend keeps trying to convince you that tonight will somehow change your life.

Some music starts playing which makes everyone cheer and scream, all eyes turned towards the stage.

"It's him!"- one of your friend giggles.

"Who?"- you ask curiously, wondering what's got all these people in a hold.

"The star of the show, Felix. He's like the prettiest man ever."- your friend swoons and you scoff.

How pretty can he be to put the whole room in a trance even before he steps out on stage?

You get your answer as soon as finally emerges from behind the curtain, your mouth falls open in shock, your eyes wide as you stare at the man smirking and walking sensually to the music.

You've never seen someone who looks so angelic, moving so sinfully at the same time, his body supple, every single movement purposeful as he strips the flimsy little shirt he had on.

Your eyes are glued to his chest and perky nipples, his abs and the barely noticeable happy trail and everyone around you cheers but your focus is on him.

His eyes land on you and he gives you a devilish smirk before his eyes change completely, they narrow and darken, staring deep into your soul as he dances and looks only at you.

Your friends are estatic, grabbing at you and saying things like 'Felix likes you', 'he's looking at you', they're freaking out and you're sitting there stunned and with arousal pooling on your panties.

He looks like a hunter and you feel like an animal that he's got his eyes on. It's obvious why he's the star of the show when he can take someone in his hold so quickly, before you even know it you're under his spell.

The performance ends too soon for everyone's liking and the pretty boy slowly makes his way towards you.

"He's coming here, oh my god!"- your friend screams as they grab at you and shake you.

"Calm down!"- you smack their arm, trying to calm your heart too.

"Well, hello there beautiful."- his deep voice shocks you and as he leans in closer, you can see his freckles and the glittery make up on his eyes, and the sweat trickling down his skin making him shine like the prettiest diamond.

"You finally brought your friend that hates going out?"- he looks at your friends and you scold them under your breath. Just how many times have they been here without you?

"Yep, we tricked her into coming out."

"Tsk. Sneaky, sneaky."- he snickers. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Y/n."- your voice is shaky as he stands in your personal space.

"That's a beautiful name, for a beautiful woman. My name is Felix, but you can call me whatever you like."- he flirts and you want to roll your eyes, but you don't even have time to think.

"You seem tense. How about I help you relax? Put on a little show for you?"- he asks, his hand on your chin and your eyes scan around to look at your friends, and all of them give you encouraging looks and nudges.

Oh what the hell, you think. You're a little buzzed and you're already here so might as well make the best of it.

"Do your best, pretty boy."- you smirk, shocking yourself and your friends at your sudden boldness.

That only seems to spur Felix on as he smirks back at you and starts dancing, moving his hips and ass tentatively in front of your face.

You feel hotness surge through your body, the way he moves is delicious, making you feel so hungry to touch him.

It's like he senses that, and suddenly his knees are on either side of your thighs and you gasp as he looks at you through his eyelashes as if asking if he should continue. You give a quiet nod and suddenly he's grinding on you, his hands running on his own body as he touches himself, fingertips brushing his cute pink nipples.

Your friends are screaming your ears off but you're drowning them out, only focusing on the beautiful man who's grinding on your bare thighs.

"You can touch if you'd like."- his voice is even lower as he says it quietly, only for you to hear. His hands are on yours and he brings them to his waist.

You wrap your fingers around him, his skin is smooth and slippery from the sheen of sweat on it and your pussy throbs for more.

His chest is in your face, his ass on your thighs and you can see and feel his erection growing in his pants.

"How about we move this to one of the private rooms?"- Felix smirks, a little out of breath.

You don't know what possessed you but you nod quickly.

"Let's go."- you say and he stands up immediately, reaching his hand to take yours.

Your friends cheer behind you as he leads you away to one of the rooms, the doors closing as you walk in.

It seems like different music is playing in there, more sensual and there's even a little bar in the corner. There's a couch and a bed and you gulp as you stare at it.

"Do you want a drink, beautiful?"- Felix's deep voice snaps you out of your thoughts.

"No, thanks."- you feel a little awkward suddenly as Felix pours himself a drink and chugs on it.

"Now, where were we? You're tense again, sweetheart. We can't have that."- he shakes his head with a smile as he gently pushes you to sit on the couch.

He stands in front of you as you look up at him, shivering in anticipation.

"You want me to take these off?"- he bats his eyelashes innocently, his fingers hooking into the leather pants he still had on.

You nod quietly, your mouth dry suddenly, wishing you actually had something to drink earlier.

Felix smirks as he unzips his pants, slowly sliding them down, making a show of it and you almost moan out loud when you see what he has underneath.

He's almost practically naked, the little black lacy panties revealing everything to you, his semi-hard cock tucked inside them straining almost painfully to come out, his balls cupped by the lace and a pretty little bush above his erection.

"See something you like?"- he says cockily and you look up at the prideful smirk on his face. Something stirs within you, you want to wipe that smirk off of his face and make this man cry and beg on his knees for you.

"Hm. Maybe."- you return a smirk before reaching out for him and grabbing his hips, yanking him down into your lap. Felix gasps from the sudden change from your shy demeanor, and you can see his Adam's apple bob up and down as he looks at you with a glazed over look.

You grip his hips, bringing him down on your thighs, his cock pressing into your flesh. A little moan escapes his pretty plump lips and your hands slide behind to grab a handful of his ass.

"Oh!"- he gasps, rutting against you.

"Tell me pretty boy. What do you want me to do with you?"- you smirk, flipping the figurative card on him and he looks at you hazily as you massage his plushy asscheeks.

"W-whatever you want. I-I'm here to please you."- he's become a stuttering mess suddenly and you're beyond turned on and sick of all the teasing.

You grip his face with one of your hands and crash your lips into his and he kisses you back eagerly and desperately, his cock popping out of it's confines and leaking onto your bare flesh.

"Eager, are we?"- you chuckle against his lips and he whines.

"Mm, yes."- he chases your lips but your hand tangles in his hair, gripping and pulling his head back. A broken moan falls from his lips as you attach yours on his skin, kissing and nipping at him.

Your hands are now on his chest as you run your palms on his nipples and he keens, arching into you, his chubby cock rutting in the spot where your thighs are pressed together.

You lick at his neck before sinking your teeth in his skin and sucking on it, your fingers pulling and pinching on his aroused nipples.

"Oh-h my- ah- please!"- he whines incoherently and you smirk against him.

You've never felt this kind of power over someone and it made you feel so turned on, your panties now soaked with arousal.

"You're so sensitive."- you say as you blow air on the red bruise you sucked onto his neck.

"Y-yes! Please touch me! Please!"- he begs and you have no idea if he's taking on a role or if he's usually like that but you don't care in that moment, any thoughts are thrown in the back of your mind as you grab his leaky cock in your hand.

He whimpers, hips lifting up into your touch immediately as he grips at your shoulders to steady himself.

Your lips kiss and bite wherever you can reach, his neck, his collarbone and finally his nipples as you run your tongue on the sensitive bud, your hand working his pretty cock that's leaking so much and throbbing in your hand.

"Ah!"- he whimpers when you bite down on his nipple before flicking it with your tongue harshly.

He's sputtering nonsense as he grips at you hard, his fingertips digging into your shoulders.

You detach from his nipples when they're red and swollen, slowing your hand down any time his cock twitches, edging him as you dangle the promise of cumming in front of his face before snatching it away from him constantly.

"P-please!"- he cries, tears framing his pretty face as he looks at you with desperate eyes, his hips dragging against you the whole time you play with his cock.

You only smirk, your other hand lifting up before you land a smack on his ass. Felix yelps, burying his face in your shoulder immediately.

"Ah shit! Please, please do that a-again!"- he moans and you chuckle as your hand speeds up on his length again, the flick of your wrist driving him crazy as you smack his ass once more.

"Mm, y/n!"- your name rolls out of his lips so prettily that you just have to smack him again.

"Fuck!"- his cock twitches hard in your hand as you keep the onslaught on his ass.

Your name keeps spilling out of his lips as he shakes on top of you, crying and whimpering as he holds onto you for dear life.

Another thought crosses your mind and you stop all movement only to have him cry out desperately.

"W-why'd you stop?!"- he cries, tears sliding down his cheeks as he looks at you.

"You look so pretty when you cry."- you smirk, gathering the pre cum on your fingertips before your hand reaches behind him.

"P-please let me cum. Please. I'll do anything!"- he really looks desperate and you almost feel bad.

Almost.

Felix gasps and jolts when he feels your fingertips slide under his panties and press against his little hole.

"Is that okay?"- you whisper and he nods quickly.

"Yes, yes!"- he moans as you circle your fingers, smearing the pre cum on him.

Your other hand grabs a hold of his cock again and this time you decide to finally let him cum as you sink your finger inside his fluttering hole, meeting a little resistance as he leans forward on you, grabbing onto your upper back and whimpering.

You start fucking your finger in and out of him, hitting his sweet spot as your other hand matches the pace on his cock.

Felix is falling apart in your lap, his mind cloudy, the only wish his body has right now is to cum for you.

He grinds into your touch, matching the movements of your hands and it doesn't take long for that familiar feeling to blossom inside him.

"Please, please, please-" - he mutters desperately and you chuckle, teeth nipping at a sensitive spot beneath his ear.

"Cum for me, pretty."- you say and Felix keens, his cock twitching before he explodes, spurts of hot white cum painting your black dress, his hole clenching around your finger like it doesn't want to let go.

You keep fucking into his prostate as you milk him dry and he cries and begs for you to stop.

You finally move your hands away when his cock goes completely limp against you.

You grab his face and kiss his lips, you can taste the saltiness of his tears on them and you push your tongue inside his mouth, circling it around his. You swallow all his moans before grabbing a hold of his hair and leaning him back.

"Get on your knees."- you tell him and his eyes widden a little before he scrambles to get up.

"You're getting a little reward for being such a good boy for me."- you smirk, caressing his cheek with your thumb as Felix looks at you dumbly, his mind completely gone from the pleasure he feels.

You lift up your ruined dress, and Felix moans at the sight of your soaked panties.

"Take them off."- you say and he does so, the sight of your glistening pussy makes his spent cock twitch miserably against his thigh.

"What are you waiting for?"- you grip his head and bring him closer to you as you spread your legs more.

Felix's eyes flutter and he wastes no more time as he buries his face between your legs. His plump lips leave kisses all around your throbbing pussy before he presses them into your clit.

Your breath hitches in your throat when he pushes the tip of his tongue into your clit and starts flicking it slowly, pressing into it.

"Mm"- you moan, hands gripping his hair. He grabs at your thighs and runs his tongue on your folds, moaning at the sweet taste of you.

You don't let him lift up as you slowly start grinding on his face while he laps at you greedily, his tongue fucking in and out of your cunt, he's drooling and making a mess out of you.

You smirk when you feel his hips push into your leg, his cock against your skin as he starts rutting against you like a dog in heat.

"What a desperate little slut you are."- you chuckle as you pull on his hair and grip his head with your plushy thighs.

He moans into your pussy, the vibrations making your core throb and you're close.

"Keep going. Make me cum."- you say as he keeps eating you out and humping against you.

You grind against him, dragging your pussy on his face before the coil finally snaps and you spill your release on his tongue and chin.

Felix mewls, his hips jolting as he cums untouched, his cum spilling on the floor right between the heels on your feet, a few drops landing on the straps.

He licks around his lips and looks at you, his eyes still glazed over and not a single thought in his head.

"Look what a mess you made."- you lean in closer to look at his face.

"Y/n..."- he whimpers your name, seemingly the only thing he knows right now.

"Came untouched."- you click your tongue. "You really are pathetic. But I'd still like to take you home. What do you think about that?"- you grip his chin.

He whines a little, his tongue darting out to lick at his bottom lip as he leans into your touch.

"I'd love to. My shift ended anyways."

"Right."- you lean back suddenly. "How much do I-"

"No"- he shakes his head. "This was for my pleasure too."- he says, seemingly coming to his senses.

He stands up suddenly and the cocky smirk on his face is back.

"Take me home then. I'd like for us to get more acquainted with each other."

✨Taglist: @moonchild9350 @janepg @velvetmoonlght @hwanghyunjinismybae @jehhskz @laylasbunbunny @porangporangmeong

#stray kids #stray kids x reader #skz x reader #skz smut #stray kids smut #lee felix x reader #lee felix #sub!stray kids #sub felix #lee felix imagines #lee felix smut #skz felix smut #lee felix x y/n #lee felix x you #lee felix scenarios #lee felix hard hours #skz felix #sub lee felix #felix smut

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player380 · 27 days ago

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ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ- disco pang pang

━━━ ↳ ❝ [ se-mi x f! reader ] ¡! ❞

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ PART TWO in which you try out the infamous disco pang pang ride with your friends in incheon, south korea, and end up having the ride moderator attempt to set you up with the stoic, pretty woman sitting next to you┊2.1k words

contains: potential ooc se-mi (we don't really know too much about her but my hyperfixation has deluded me to believe my own headcanons that were created by the bit we saw her in s2), fluff, some minor hints of sexual content, wlw, teaser x teased, & non-canonical nonsense, au!! the games never took place & se-mi is lowkey loaded (which i may write more about in another fic idea i have oops), i also am not very sure of any korean customs (im a white american) so please please please let me know if any of the manners of this are wrong so i can correct it, also this has not been proofread yet so enjoy any spelling or grammar errors <3

After much debate with your close girl friends, that you were on a trip into the big city with, they had practically dragged you to the long line of awaiting people to try out this silly ride. Each of their hands clasped tightly around your sweaty palms, forcing your feet to shuffle into your spot at the back of the line. It was a warm spring day, the sun beating down only to be combated by a pleasant breeze. So, of course, most would find themselves spending the day at the Wolmi Theme Park in South Korea. The three of you had already spent the majority of the day entertaining yourselves with other rides, though with yourself often choosing to opt out of riding many--given rollercoasters had a habit of making you queasy. Yet, after much convincing and deliberation, you had allowed them to take you on this ride. They had claimed that it wasn't that scary, and was oftentimes quite fun. But as you got into line and saw the ever-moving ride your stomach dropped and your face paled. Laughter and screams echoed around as the current set of riders were being bounced up and down whilst the ride spun everyone in round in differing speeds. As you watched this, you couldn't help but feel the corn dogs you just had thirty-minutes prior rising their way through your innards.

While you stood there, mouth agape, your friends had busied themselves with calling their boyfriends back home in the countryside. Snapping you out of your scared daze, was a smooth laugh from beside--even smoother words following in pursuit.

"You look like you've just seen a ghost," a woman laughed from beside you, your eyes narrowing as they traveled up the body beside you in line. Taking notice of her skinny ripped black jeans, the loose tank top that had a bit of the side tucked into the waistband of her jeans, and a black leather jacket over her shoulders. Her face was adorned in few piercings: just one silver ring on her lip, the other a silver ring on her left nostril (a gem-incrusted sun on where the ring met the visible skin). Her hair was short, some strands of her black hair covering the right side of her head slightly. Her narrow features complimented her stylistic choices. And by all means: the woman was completely, and utterly gorgeous.

After a few minutes of silence, your eyes only widening upon seeing the pretty woman, she spoke up again. "Are you alright? Surely you haven't actually seen a ghost," she replied, her thin brows furrowing slightly as she stared at you--her head cocked to the side just a hair. She was concerned for your wellbeing. How cute.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine," you blinked, snapping out of your haze and returning your gaze to the still-moving ride--swallowing hard. "I just don't like rides like this," you added and nodded awkwardly. "Not really my thing."

The woman beside you nodded, letting out a quiet hum as her gaze follows yours up to the ride. "It's not that bad," she commented, letting out a quiet laugh. "Just make sure to hold on tight."

"What?" You asked, misunderstanding her words and her eyes widening slightly.

The woman laughed harder, shaking her head. "The bars, hold on tight to the bars," she corrected, tilting her head. "Or your friends."

You suddenly felt the presence of your two friends who had gotten off facetime with their partners, and were now standing beside you once more--staring at the taller woman with slightly furrowed brows. The woman just nodded once, before turning back around and facing the front of the line. Leaving you to suffer the teasing looks and questions from your friends for the remainder of the wait in line.

Eventually, after growing slightly impatient from standing still for so long, it was finally your group's turn to file onto the circular ride. The eager group of riders all excitedly piled on, sounds of annoyed groans coming from the people who were cut off and had to wait another round.

Your friends rushed to a spot, sitting on the seats and giggling excitedly. Their hands reached behind themselves to grab the plastic and metal bars--wrapping their arms around the slick material in hopes to stay (mostly) still throughout the ride.

You sat there awkwardly, trying to mimic your friend's actions but you found yourself struggling to keep yourself comfortable. You didn't realize the woman who was in front of you in line was sitting beside you until you felt her hands gently guiding your arms to wrap around the bars--her hand resting there for a moment and looking over you.

"Comfy?" She asked you, raising a brow slightly.

Your face, now red, moved up to meet her gaze--nodding awkwardly. "Yeah, thanks," you said, voice quiet, and pressing a small smile up as another bout of gratitude. Her dark eyes traveled over you for a second, smiling and giving a nod back. She moved to sit beside you, leaving the width of a person and a half between you two.

Unfortunately for your humility, the ride moderator had noticed the small interaction and so once the ride started slowly spinning--your face all but heated when you heard the moderator's loud voice call out your descriptor over the speakers. Little did you know the running internet joke that if the moderator called you out, you were done for.

"Are you two together?" The male moderator's voice called out, "you, tweed skirt and the h/c hair. And you, short black hair and the leather jacket," he described. Your heart all but dropped. Before you could reply, the woman next to you beat you to it:

"No, we aren't," she yelled, her voice loud over the mechanics of the machine and the loud sounds from around the theme park.

"Do you want to be?" The moderator called out, a hint over amusement carrying over in his voice.

You shook your head, laughing awkwardly. "No, no it's okay. I came here with my friends," you replied, brows furrowing in embarrassment--trying to ignore the giggles from your friends beside you.

"Ah, no, no, let me fix that," the moderator said, laughing, and your heart dropped from his mischievous tone.

Suddenly, the ride was tilted all the way to the left side and began bouncing slightly. Lifting you up and down from your seat, your sweaty hands barely holding onto the plastic bars as gravity tried to pull you to where the woman beside you was sitting. She seemed to keep her body planted firmly--hardly moving. The ups and downs got harsher, and before you knew it, one of your arms slipped from the bar and you fell slightly down to your left. You felt another leg wrap around yours--realizing it was the woman's, who was trying to keep you steady so you didn't fall.

You grunted as you moved to steady yourself back onto the seat, pulling your leg from hers and attempting to grab back onto the bars. Before you could succeed, another unexpected bump made your other arm slip--letting out a yelp as you stumbled off the seat and about to start rolling on the metal floor of the ride. You didn't go very far before you found your body ensnared by both the woman's legs--holding your torso tightly as to make sure you didn't fall anymore.

As the bumps continued, you felt one of her hands grab your arm and pull you up--setting you on her lap. Your face burned with embarrassment and awkwardness at the entire situation--wishing you hadn't even let your friends convince you to get on this stupid ride to begin with. Her legs entangled with yours, an arm wrapping around your waist and pressing your back tight against her front. Her fingers found purchase on your hip, pressing into the part tightly.

"Are you okay?" She asked, tilting her head so her mouth was right next to your ear, her voice quiet. God was her voice attractive.

You nodded, the consistent bumps making the two of you rise up from your seats occasionally--but your landings were cushioned by the woman's body beneath you. It was almost strangely nice. No. You shouldn't think like that. She was an entire stranger. "Yeah, I'm fine, thanks," you replied, turning your head slightly--though not realizing how close your faces would be. You quickly turned your head back around forward--your cheeks the color of a tomato.

As the ride continued on, the moderator still continued to pick on the two of you, moving you two around. Even with the woman's firm grip on your body, you had somehow ended up turned around--your legs straddling her hips. Her jacket had been moved to wrap around your waist so no one could see how your skirt rid up, allowing some form of modesty. There were some other instances of other people flailing around and landing on others, however you could hardly pay any mind to the others on this ride given your situation. This continued on throughout the ride's duration, before eventually the machine came to a stop--the moderator thanking everyone, though still finding a way to insert a tease about the two women's interactions throughout the ride.

You shakily got off of the woman--pulling your skirt down and untying the jacket around your waist, holding it back out to her. "Um, thanks for this. And for making sure I don't fall," you muttered, looking down at your feet. When she took the jacket, you quickly took off and found your friends at the exit of the ride--trying to ignore the burning throughout your body as their incessant teases fueled your embarrassment.

Before you could get far, a female voice called out and you turned around--your eyes widening as the woman before approached, slightly out of breath from the small jog. Your friends looked at each other with raised brows, both backing away to leave you two to yourselves.

"Oh-- um, hi," you said, brows furrowing slightly. "Did you need something?"

"How long are you in Incheon for? Or do you live here?" She asked, her chest still rising up and down with rapid breaths. She almost sounded hopeful, and a bubbly filling filled your stomach. As if someone had opened a cage of butterflies between your ribcages.

You blinked, looking away from her for a moment. "No, I don't live here. Just visiting with my friends... but I'm not sure. A couple more days, at least. We didn't really have an end date. Why?" You asked, licking your lips slightly--and you watched as her eyes flickered to your slightly damp, pink lips for a moment before she looked back up at your eyes.

"Let me take you sight-seeing around the city, yeah?" She asked, despite her cool demeanor, she almost seemed nervous. "You don't have to, but it'd--"

"Sure," you cut her off, flashing an almost-nervous smile of your own. "I'd like that, my friends and I aren't really super knowledgeable around anyway. I'm sure they'd like it too."

Her face flickered with some unknown expression and she shook her head. "No, not them. Just you... and I," she said, sucking in a long breath.

"Oh," you breathed, your brows raising. "Yeah, my answer is still the same. I would like that," you answered, emphasizing the 'I' in your sentence. The woman nodded, any nervousness or tension immediately lifted from her demeanor.

"Good," she said, grinning. "Let me get your number," she said--pulling out her phone from her back pocket, opening it, and shoving it in your direction with the screen showing an empty contact form to fill out. You nodded, and took the phone to begin typing in some things in each slot. "I'm Se-mi, by the way," she added, her eyes watching you intently--studying every and all aspect of your face.

Once you finished, you looked back up at Se-mi and handed her phone. "Well... just give me a message, Se-mi. I should be free, well, if I can ever escape those two for a moment," she laughed, tilting her head back to where her friends stood--watching the two of you interact with large grins.

Se-mi nodded, watching your form retreat as you handed her phone back and went back to your friends who immediately began pestering you for information on your new 'hot date', as they called it. She looked back down at her phone, studying your name on the contact--trying to burn it into her memory.

"Y/n...," she said slowly, nodding as she enjoyed the feel of it on her tongue. Knowing full well she was going to be saying that name for a long time. Or, well, at least she hoped.

Who knew your friends dragging you onto a silly ride could lead to any of this.

#squid game #squid game s2 #squid game season 2 #se mi x reader #se mi squid game #player 380 #won ji an #female reader #imagine #squid game imagine #lesbian #wlw #fxf #squid game fanfic

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mysicklove · 1 year ago

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𝐒𝐎 𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋

DAY 12: SOUNDING

With: Keigo Takami (Hawks)

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: Sub! Hawks, gn! reader, sounding, HEAVY sub/dom spaces, hints of sado/masochism, mentions of anal fingering, keigo crying and twitching, cursing, pee/urine mentioned throughout

A/N: This is one of those smut fics that are heavily unrealistic (which i LOVEEEE), keigo says some cringe things at some points tho. LOL

Keigo has such a pretty face. People stop and stare at him on the street, he has been recruited by multiple modeling companies and is lusted over by teenage girls all over the world. Born to be nicknamed, “Pretty Boy”. It was cute, really, and he seemed to love the name.

But to you, he doesn't look his best when he is photographed in lewd poses, or when the media catches the way he looks at you, or even with his candid hero photos that are unbearably hot.

No, to you, Keigo looks his absolute best when he cried. Of course, not from sadness, from pleasure and pain. When his face is flushed, his eyes are hazy, and tears coat his cheeks. When he looks up at you in pure adoration, and trembles under your hold.

But that was the sadistic side of you talking. The side of you who wants to completely ruin the man. It's hard not to when he looks so pretty during it.

So, slowly you've been finding new ways to wreck him and with each one, he reacts perfectly. You've gotten addicted to it. Him, really.

Tonight you are going to try sounding. You stare at the small metal rod, and then back to your lover, who is leaning against the headboard, and trying to act like he is not completely terrified. He gulps when you peer at him, straightening his back, and trying to uphold his cocky grin.

“You're scared, aren't ya?”

He scoffs, looking away. “No. I'm the one who asked for this, why would I be scared?”

As much as you like ruining Keigo, Keigo loves being ruined. You have to keep a close eye on him because he swears he has no limits and has not used his safeword so far. Everything is on the table for him, and that sometimes worries you. You've held down your desires but he voices them and is the one to beg you for more and more.

Urethra play was not something he has tried. “Mhmm. It will be fine, we will go slow,” You reassure him despite his words. You place a comforting hand on his thigh and he sighs, smiling at you softly.

“Yeah. It'll be fine. You're right.”

Horrifying is the best word to describe what's in front of him right now. The “thin” rod is now lodged halfway into his urethra and he's panting out, thighs trembling. It doesn't exactly feel bad, but it's foreign, and the sight in front of him makes him uneasy. Nothing is supposed to go in that hole.

He's gripping onto your hand for comfort, eyes wide as saucers. “We aren't even all the way in yet, Keigo.”

He whines out at the words, resting his head on your shoulder. Sweat beads at his forehead and his face is flushed. “F-Feels so full.”

You teasingly tap on the rod, and his back arches, wings fluttering out at the strange feeling. He grips your hand and stares at you, silently pleading. “Sorry. Forgot. Let's put it all in, yeah?”

“Dont–Dont know if I can.”

You stroke the bottom of his shaft and smile at him. “Got plenty of room still. It's supposed to touch your prostate, y'know.”

Yeah, he definitely knew that. For the last couple of days, he researched the ins and outs of this. But still, he doesn't know how the hell it could go any deeper. He feels overwhelmingly stuffed even from half of it being inserted. He gulps and glances at you, but nods.

“Take a deep breath for me, Keigo. Promise it'll feel good in a bit.” You're right, and he knows it. Just like when you fingered him for the first time, it feels weird in the beginning, but now he's addicted to it. This could be a new thing to drive him mad. He sure hopes so.

He takes a deep breath, and you slowly continue to inch it in, letting gravity do the most part. The road is slippery from the lube and it goes in without much difficulty.

Keigo on the other hand is going insane. He is moaning and whining, gripping onto the sheets with such force that you are afraid he is going to rip it. You watch his arm muscles clench and unclench, and he throws his head back. “Oh. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” He cries with every second it goes deeper.

You hush him, using your other hand to stroke him gently, hoping to coax it in. His squirming makes it harder, and you don't want to hurt him, so you try your best to pin his hips down beneath you so they won't jump up.

And at last, it reaches the bottom. You pull away and look up at him. Keigo is trembling, back arched pornographically, and staring at the ceiling with an open mouth. Tears drip down his cheeks, and his legs are trembling, bent, and spread wide. “All done, it's all the way in now. Shhh, just gotta get adjusted to it.”

He shakes his head and lets out a cry, “Fuck. It's weird. Feels so weird! Full–I cant–”

You lean forward to press your lips to his, cutting his frantic rambling off. “Keigo, do you want to use your safeword?” You ask, just for reassurance.

He shakes his head frantically. “No! Wait! I-I never said I didn't like it!” He pleads desperately to you, even if you haven't tried to make an effort to remove it. His mind seems to be scattered, but this is how he is when he usually tries new things in bed. Today, just a little bit more extreme, considering you haven't tried anything even close to this.

“What does it feel like, Birdie?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Feels full. D-Different type of full. It's weird. And it also feels like I gotta pee a little bit. But in a good way? It's all so weird and overwhelming, Y/N!”

You gulp, watching the way his eyes move around frantically. The way his body is bright red, and he's staring at you with desperate eyes. His mouth is glossy, and his eyes are wet. This is your favorite face of Keigos. This is what you have been wanting to see.

The urges get the better of you. “I'm going to move it now Keigo.”

His eyes widen, and before he can even protest, you move it upward, slightly. His back arches again and he gasps for air. “O-Oh–Its–Fuckkkkk.”

You push it back in completely and he keens, gripping onto your hand with wide eyes. A loud, desperate whine is let out, and more tears stream down his face. He's withering under you, and you can't help but stare at his pretty physique. “Are you oka–”

“Again!” He sobs, legs moving sporadically against the sheets.

His words make you gulp. He's falling into that state again. The one where his only task is to get himself completely fucked dumb. He doesn't want to think about anything except his pleasure, and frankly, his adorable facial expression is pulling you into your very own state with him.

You lift the rod up, farther than last time, until more than half of it sticks out. He stares at it, panting loudly and waiting for you to push it back in. It makes his adrenal pulse, and his mouth begins to water.

You don't tease him too long, and abide by his wishes, pressing the full thing in until it reaches the very bottom of his cock. He moans this time, enjoying it more with every second. Tears continue to fall, but he can't pay attention to them, instead focused on the feeling of being so full. If he had a toy in the other end, he surely would have lost his mind. Next time, for sure.

You continue to bring it up and down and he gets louder and louder with each stroke, not caring for whoever hears him. He is feeling such intense pleasure, everyone should hear his cries. Or at least that is what he believes.

“So cute. We found another hole for me to abuse, yeah Keigo?” You purr, eyes traveling up his shaking body with hunger.

He nods his head frantically. “Yes. Yes! Please fuck it more, I'm begging!”

You stop for a moment, a teasing gleam in your eyes. “Want me to fuck your pee hole? How lewd, Birdie.”

But to your dismay, he isn't responding to the teasing as you hoped. Instead, just agreeing with every word, too lost in the subspace to really care for how dirty your words are. “Yes! F-Fuck my pee hole. Need it. S-So full!”

You don't mind your failed attempt, now staring fondly at the pretty boy in front of you, who is completely out of it by now. It usually takes him longer to get to this state, and it was intriguing that this little rod had such a huge effect on him.

Your pace is quicker, and you use your other hand to stroke him off. His mouth hangs open, and drool begins to bead at the corner of his mouth. Every breath is a high-pitched, airy moan. It's adorable, really.

You watch his thighs start to clench and you raise your eyebrows, knowing that he's going to cum sometime soon. When you glance back up at his face, he's staring back at you, sniffling gently, but his eyes are full of adoration.

“C-Cum? Please?” He is struggling to speak, and you can't help but take mercy on him. He was so cute not to.

“Sure, baby. You can cum,” You coo, leaning forward to kiss his abdomen. He lets out a whine in thanks and nods his head.

A couple seconds go by and his breaths become quicker, louder too. His toes begin to curl, and he grips onto the bedsheets. “N-Now!” He begs, and you quickly take out the rod for him to cum.

White liquid flies out and falls onto his stomach, and you continue to use one hand to stroke him through it all. He takes loud gasps and lets out a loud shaky moan, and then another equally loud and high in pitch. His body constricts in odd, but cute ways, and he clenches his eyes shut, causing more tears to fall down his face.

You sit and admire him, only stopping your hand movements when he lets out a broken sob at the feeling of overstimulation.

A couple seconds go by, and you hum quietly, waiting for him to talk. Depending on what he says will determine if he wants to keep going or rest. The ball is in his court.

It doesn't take him too long to decide, obviously still in the subspace, but willing to communicate.

“Wanna. I wanna. H-Hey, why did you stop?” He complains, whiny and dramatic. You raise your eyebrows at him and bark a short laugh.

You aren't even surprised at this point. So, you pick up the rod again, and he stares at it, like a dog to a bone. He grins, the smile fucked out, and lazy. “Feels, so empty. Put it back, pleaseeeee!”

When you plunge it back in, he almost cums again on the spot.

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bratbarzal · 2 months ago

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Let It Happen (LH43) 1/3

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

WC: 17k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No school? Check.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She deserves better.

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

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

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

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

Luke Hughes loves summer.

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

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

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

He does love living with his brother.

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

And he really is grateful for that.

But, God, can he be annoying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s nothing.”

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

“Fine, it’s Ellie.”

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

“She’s refusing to hang out with me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You know her?”

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

Not the truth, but not exactly a lie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,”

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

“My name’s on the lease.”

“Maybe you could talk to her for me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since when do you work here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Five minutes of your time?”

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

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

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

Who doesn’t love a shortcut?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know who you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about ‘em?”

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

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

Us. Oh, he likes that.

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

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

“A nudge, then?”

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

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

“Are you here to eat or annoy me?”

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

“How profound.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is fun.

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

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

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

“We could make a competition out of it.”

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

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

“Whoever actually gets them together, wins.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can’t see that happening.”

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

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

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

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

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

But God, you were pretty.

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

“I’m Luke.”

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

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

“Depends who’s asking.”

“I’m Luke.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I know her.”

“Clearly.”

“This is her basket.”

“Does she need to sign for it?”

“No, I-,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He has you figured out, by now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack swats at his arm and rolls his eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cole Caufield being one of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn. You walked yourself right into that one.

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

“You wish.”

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

“I think you’re an idiot.”

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

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

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

“Good for her.”

“Alone.”

“No shit.”

“To ask her out.”

“Whoop-de-doo.”

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

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

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

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

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

“How could you possibly know that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you know?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can you find out?”

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

“Does this mean we’re teammates?”

“No. It absolutely does not.”

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

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

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

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

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

Much better.

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

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

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

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

So it has to be for him and Jessica.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Was I not supposed to?”

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

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

“Well done, you can read.”

“Why?”

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

“So?”

“He’s on a date.”

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

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

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

“To get his hair cut.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

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

“Any food?”

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

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

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

“Thanks, Cara, that’s everything.”

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

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

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

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

“Won’t he complain?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In your dreams, Hughes.”

Luke sort of envies the charm you hold over people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That would usually drive him crazy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re really keeping score?”

“You’re not?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She started it!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wasn’t feeling it.”

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

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

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

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

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

“How’d you get to that conclusion?”

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

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

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

“Like what?”

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

A death wish might actually be an understatement.

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

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

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

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

“What, that?”

“You’re so dead.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

“It’s pretty cool,” you shrug, spotting the DVD you want and sliding it out to assess the case. “It’s old school. Probably better for the brain. My little brothers can’t really function without an iPad and they’re 5, it’s freaky, like they’re haunted by the capitalist ghost of Steve Jobs or something.”

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

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

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

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

It’s not something you really love talking about.

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

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

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

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

Interstellar.

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

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

“Me too. I love space movies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re gonna be so shocked.”

“Sports movies?”

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

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

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

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

“Only if I get to ask one back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>PART TWO<

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

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

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

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