#It's 1 am on a school day I am TIRED so sorry for any potential mistakes in the text

[scarletdreamers]

Hannibal & Fashion I

How to dress like: Hannibal Lecter (but feminine) > An explanation to the essentials and character of his iconic style.

We all know that Hannibal is nothing short of an absolute fashion icon. His outfits are always perfect, down to the details. He knows how to blend shape, colour and patterns in an old-fashioned yet innovative way like no other. Which is, for many, very refreshing in a world of hoodies and light wash jeans.

For Hannibal's style there are a few key characteristics I had to keep in mind. If I had to describe his style in a few words, I would say it's elegant, sharp, formal, expressive and aristocratic.

All his suits, shirts, trousers, are perfectly tailored. He pays a lot of attention to silhouette and the way his clothes accentuate the lines of his body. His suits have a sharp and intimidating yet smooth and refined shape. The shoulders, trouser-legs and ratio of his ties, waistcoats and lapels are geometric. They are razor-sharp, while around his waist and thighs the suits are much softer. They draw attention to his body. Hannibal is a proud man who isn't afraid to show his good qualities off. His body is one of those and isn't afraid to get his clothes perfectly fitted, so that they reveal everything and nothing at the same time.

Hannibal isn't afraid to incorporate feminine touches into his outfits, so I imagine if it were to be the other way around, there would have to be traditionally masculine touches like suits, overcoats and old school uniform-ish aspects.

Inspo:

So, if you want to copy his silhouette, it's important to work with the ABAB ratio, as I like to call it. Wide at the shoulders, tight at the waist, wide at the hips and slim from legs down. The contrast between a refined waist and a top that's big, pointy or puffy around the shoulders is perfect.

Hannibal's look is all about elegance and generational wealth and standard (he is a count, after all). In his day-to-day outfits we often see him incorporate traditional, royal details in his outfits. He wears all kinds of top quality fabrics (loads of great wool, linen, silk/satin for his ties, velvet and even leather). Texture is very important in his style. And so is detail. At operas, fancy dinner parties and other elite gatherings we often see him wear cufflinks, which are beautiful pieces of jewelry that still have a masculine feel and can be worn even by men who usually don't wear accessories. At one dinner party Hannibal wears an ASCOT TIE! (second picture above) Which is really revolutionary, because even though they were very common with the aristocracy and other high society in the late 19th century, almost no one wears them anymore, let alone styles them right. Hannibal however takes these pieces and makes them WORK.

Inspo:

If you translate this to key aspects for your style, at first looking for high quality fabrics is important. They are more expensive (most of us are not anywhere near Hannibal's budget range), but they are worth it because they make you more conscious of what you buy and will still be good pieces after years. As I mentioned, go looking for wool, silk, linen, etc.

Also, what would a Hannibal Lecter inspired wardrobe be without patterns? My top picks would be: pinstripe, monochrome plaid, subtle houndstooth, and of course classic floral patterns or even paisley like his ties! Anything that looks like a Victorian era wallpaper will work, to be honest. (Our king of classy patterns)

Inspo:

The cufflinks and dramatic ties made me come to the conclusion that a more feminine variant of that would be elegant and noticeable yet fitting jewelry. A statement bracelet or necklace, for example. The same goes for bows and neck scarves. A bow or a neck scarf could be a good solution if you're not a fan of ties. (Neck scarves are amazing, I own multiple in different patterns and they can make the most plain outfits interesting!)

Hannibal wears a lot of very formally appropriate clothing, even in his casual outfits. Despite his style being 'exotic' and noticeable, it still is very neat and modest. He wears suits and nice long sleeve shirts always buttoned to an appropriate point even during summer. You would never catch him in shorts. Some people compare the way S3 Alana dresses to the way they imagine Hannibal would dress if he was a woman, however, I think that Alana dresses too bold for Hannibal. Her colour palette is too bright and she wears a lot of lacey, almost lingerie-ish tops. Hannibal's palette contains more muted colours. A lot of different colours and patterns, yes, but they are always in muted/darker shades. Even the whites and light browns he wears aren't really ''light''. The only thing really vibrant I remember him wearing are his beloved, spotless white shirts.

Inspo:

So, personally I'd go with longer skirts or straight leg/slim trousers. Not too wide. Suit jackets that don't reveal too much and slim and notable but appropriate shirts. Maybe a turtleneck here and there. Nothing Hannibal wears is really ''baggy''. When he is wearing a looser shirt he pairs it with well fitted pants (the cooking scenes). There's always balance.

Don't wear obvious logos! Yes, Hannibal wears loads of luxury brands, but you would never catch him buying a Gucci tie that actually has the Gucci logo on it. Brands can cheapen the look of a product, despite popular beliefs. And plus, with Hannibal it's all about the piece of clothing itself, not about the tag it comes with.

There's a few small and specific things that you should 100 percent incorporate in your wardrobe if you want to dress like him, which are:

A pair of nice leather gloves

A white button-up

Leather shoes (oxfords, loafers, anything with a classic academic and italian feel to it. There's plenty of beautiful loafer heels on the market, I own a vintage italian pair and they're the most comfortable heels to ever walk in)

A good knit sweater for casual wear! Brandless, though Ralph Lauren has some that really fit the vibe

A classy watch with a slight vintage yet modern feel

And a transparent murder suit of course, but I suggest you are a little more careful buying that ;)

Colours are also quite interesting. Go with a lot of deep, jewel-toned colours. Loads of greys, browns and whites, but not too much black. Try to stick to deep greens, royal blues, burgundy & wine. A lighter pop of colour such as light blue, coral or purple are also appreciated, as long as precise thought has been put into the colour palette. Colour theory works in clothes, too!

Before we round it all up, I would like to talk about his truly formal looks, as well. I'm talking opera and such.

It's nothing other than social etiquette for a man to wear a tuxedo to a black/white tie event. Opera and high-class parties often automatically classify as one of those. Hannibal is a man of etiquette, he wears his tux. However, it's the details that make him stand out. When everyone else wears black, he wears deep blue or green velvet. He wears mother-of-pearl cufflinks on french cuffs and patterns on his (bow)ties. His truly formal style is minimal, but still special because of the fabrics and details he choses. He makes sure there's always these little elements that make him stand out from the crowd.

Inspo:

So, if you were to imagine this in the form of dresses, you should go for dresses that are minimal in details, but classy and a little vintage in shape. Maybe a jewel as detail here and there, but it's mainly about the fabric and the shape. About an asymmetrical neckline, an unusual way of draping, gloves, just something extra. Don't go for anything too sexy or revealing. Instead go for chic and sleek, maybe bare shoulders and no straps. This draws attention to the collarbones instead of the breasts. Look for dresses that expose, for example, your neck or your arm. It makes an outfit classy and mysterious.

No matter how good his clothes look on him, Hannibal's style will never not feel a little out of place in modern society. Because honestly, who (except for Parisians and New Yorkers) wear such formal three piece suits to get groceries? Hannibal's style feels a little too vintage, a little too royal, and a little too pretentious to not be noticed on the street, but then again, Hannibal likes standing out. He isn't a trend follower, he's a trend setter. He has his own personal style and what he wears only makes him more charming of a personality. He's a fashion muse, certainly in his circle of highly cultured friends. So, don't be afraid to draw attention! I like to think that Hannibal and Oscar Wilde share the same opinion on overdressing: which is that you can never be too overdressed or overeducated. One of the most important aspects of Hannibal's style is that he doesn't follow the mass. He wears what he feels best in, and his clothes reflect the confidence and power that comes with that.

So, dress stately! Dress elegant, dress like you're a member of the royal family, take that button-up you reserve for special occasions and make it a daily statement! The most important thing when dressing like Hannibal is confidence. Your clothes are a way to show off your style, intellect and originality to the world, because we all know Hannibal is far less intimidating in his prison jumpsuit than his own clothes ;)

Should I make this into a series? Is there any interest in other characters?

Anyway, thank you for reading <3

[beomieluvs]

♡ highschool sweetheart !!

— a junrae au

# chapter 1

synopsis: he’s the charming genius, meanwhile he’s famously known as the troublemaker. how could they even intersect and be close to each other?

word count: 616

note: junhyeon and taerae are the same age in this universe <3 and sorry for the grammar mistakes, english isn’t my first language :(

content warnings: fluff, bxb, junhyeon x taerae, ooc, just highschoolers being silly

“Kum Junhyeon, famously known as the school’s troublemaker. He’s been called to the school counselor a few times- I mean COUNTLESS times. from messing up his grades to making graffiti in the school gym.. why do you need to know about him anyway?” Park Hanbin asked as he closed the new senior locker.

“Nothing.” Taerae shrugged calmly.

“Wait, don’t tell me that you’re interested in him?”

Taerae nervously spoke and answered “To be honest, I don’t know. My heart skips a beat whenever I see him. He’s just- unique.”

“If you say so then, but it’s definitely a crushhhh” Hanbin chuckled and teased him.

He’s just really unique to him. The way he smiles everything off, his brown colored hair, The way he hums to nirvana on the way to class, and eventually falls asleep during them.

Meanwhile Kim Taerae, he’s the star student. He does everything perfectly, from his grades to his handsome charm. No wonder tons of girls- even guys are head over heels for him.

Now, it’s currently the first day of senior year. That means tons of exams and events.. it’ll be very much tiring for the students.

Everyone starts to check on the school board to see the class arrangements. Taerae looked closely to find his name. Good for him, he’s still in the same class as Junhyeon. This time, he wants to make the first move on him.

The bell suddenly rang, and everyone rushed into their classes. The distance was far, so he ran to the class.

After 2 minutes, he arrived at the new class. It was rather the same design as the previous one, with the same marbled floors and grey walls.

And there he is, Kum Junhyeon. He’s sitting lazily with his legs on the table while reading a manga.

Taerae caught a glimpse of him. “He’s so handsome.. wait why am I even attracted to him??” He mumbled. Then he sits in his designated chair, not far from Junhyeon.

The class starts, and Taerae writes down some notes for the class so he can study them later. The opposite of him, Junhyeon is barely paying attention to the whiteboard while chewing some gum.

“Are you paying attention Junhyeon?” The teacher spoke in a rather irritated to a serious tone.

Then, Junhyeon answered lazily while waking up from his slumber “Yes- yes I am miss!!”

“If you say so. Let’s continue with the class, everyone.” The teacher scoffs.

A few hours later, the bell rang. That means the students will have a break. A lot of students are running to the cafeteria and some of them are sitting in class while playing with their phones, or studying. Both Junhyeon and Taerae decided to just stay in the classroom.

Suddenly, a girl peeks into the classroom and said “Kum Junhyeon! Kim Taerae! You both are called to the counseling room!”

“Huh? That’s just.. weird. I’ve never been called to the counseling room before. I didn’t get into any trouble did I?” Taerae spoke confusedly and scared.

For Junhyeon, It was just like a daily routine. He doesn’t care anyway, neither does his parents.

Then, they arrived at the counseling room. Taerae seemed nervous meanwhile Junhyeon is relaxed with his hands on the back of his hand.

“Sit here. Both of you.” The counselor said.

Taerae and Junhyeon sat next to each other. Sitting across from the counselor.

The counselor starts to say the news and said “Look, the school has come to an agreement, and it’s best for taerae to tutor junhyeon. He has so much potential but he’s just too lazy for that. I hope you can somehow push and motivate him to be better in his studies, especially it’s currently senior year for you both.

[thewriterthatghostedyou]

Through Your Eyes

Chapter 1

Happy Weekend! I hope you guys enjoy the first chapter of Through Your Eyes! So far I’m having a lot of fun writing this and I hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I know NOTHING about being a barista or making coffee so bear with me 😆

Please let me know what you think of the story so far and potential things you’d want to see from the series!

Banner made by maysdigitalarts

Ever since a young age, you had loved reading. You had tried to write once, to be like the author’s whose books you devoured, but it wasn’t the same as curling up in a comfortable spot with a good book. Not much else compared.

The morning light shone through the windows of your shop as you unlocked the door to start your day. You flipped the closed sign over with a smile as the clock struck 7 and headed back to behind your counter. Breathing in deeply, you smiled as you looked over your store. Since you loved reading and baking more than anything else in the world, it made sense to open your own cafe that sold books. Times like this were always your favorite. The muffins and flaky pastries that you had put in the oven earlier began to rise and their sugary scents floated around the store.

Since no one had come inside in the four seconds you had opened, you started to tidy up your kitchen and closed your trusty cookbook, causing flour to fly off of the counter. Guess you’d have to sweep that after you wiped everything down. You had grabbed a broom when the front bell rang.

“Hello Damon.” You stooped down and began to sweep up the spilled flour.

“I am so so sorry.” The teen said quickly. “I had a late class last night and completely forgot to set my alarm.” He flipped open your counter doors and hurried behind the counter. “I swear my organic chem professor hates me.”

“That’s odd, last semester it was your Intro to Microbiology professor.” You gave him an easy smile. “I have an extra muffin and cappuccino over there if you’re hungry.” You waved at the register where there was a steaming cup of coffee you had made for him. You had known Damon since he was 16 and still in high school, perhaps that’s why you had such a soft spot for the kid. You knew that he practically raised his siblings after his mother’s death and still managed to get a large scholarship to Brooklyn college, so you always let him take odd hours and have time to study when the cafe wasn’t too busy.

“Yes! You know college students don’t turn down free food Miss y/l/n!” He leaned on the counter and wrapped open the decorative paper that held the muffin. “Blueberry? Fuck yeah!”

You shook your head with a laugh as he dove into the warm treat. “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Y/n? I’m 28, not 50!” Your knees creaked as you got up from the floor with your dustpan. Apparently your joints disagreed with you.

“Dunno, probably a few more times.” Damon grabbed a napkin from a nearby dispenser and wiped his face with a smile as he tossed the crumpled up paper into the trash.

Before you could tease him about being late again, your bell sounded again and Mr. Jones came in.

“How’re ya doin’ Y/n? Damon?” He gave the two of you his cheery smile as he walked over to the register.

“Been busy,” Damon said as he began to ring the man up. “You want your usual?”

“Of course, the kid kept me up all night. God I miss sleep.” Elijah Jones had lived in the city for his whole life, and you had remembered when he met his wife a few months after you had opened your cafe.

“Two tired parent specials coming up.” You had already been preparing his drinks as he talked to Damon. “You got any new pics of Lucy?”

He chuckled. “Of course! Ann got her this bright pink blanket that she absolutely refuses to let go of.”

The three of you chatted as you prepared his drinks and Damon grabbed two croissants for them. After you had gushed over the absolutely adorable 6 month old, he had left quickly, not wanting to leave Ann to take care of the small child alone. By then the store had started to pick up and you and Damon only had chances to toss the orders back and forth to the other as whoever ran the register quickly took orders.

“One caffe macchiato with caramel drizzled over the foam.” Damon said, sliding an empty cup over to you before turning back to the customer. “That’ll be $6, if you still want the blondie bar with that.”

The rest of the morning was spent tending to your customers and by 11 it had started to slow down and you had to throw another batch of coffee cakes into the oven. Since there were only a few people milling around, you had told Damon that he could study at the counter while you tended to the stragglers.

You had just cleaned up a table when you heard the bell jingle and turned around. “Hello! What can I get you today?” You chirped before only blinking at the man who had come in.

He wore a clean white hoodie that he had pulled over his head and some black jeans that fit him like a glove, but what got your attention were the scars on his face.

He seemed to shrink in on himself as you looked at him and reluctantly took off his dark sunglasses. His hair was closely buzzed to his scalp and he had some small stubble around his chin, but his face was lined with several jagged scars. Even though they covered his face, you couldn’t help but notice that he was gorgeous. His dark black eyes seemed to bore into you as he slowly looked you up and down.

Not waiting for him to answer, you decided to break the silence. “We have some coffee cake that I’m about to pull out of the oven if you’d like.” You were sure that he could smell the sugary cake from the oven, but didn’t know what else to say.

“Uh yeah I’ll have one of those.” He mumbled, shoving his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “And you got any normal black coffee?” His eyes looked at his feet and he refused to look at you. “I mean of course you do, this is a coffee shop, um but I’ll uh take it just black.”

“Sure thing!” You said, grabbing a white ceramic mug off of a nearby shelf. “Would you like any cream or sugar?”

He only shook his head and moved to sit down in the corner near the classical books shelf. As he sat down you gave him a bright smile. “It’ll be out in a sec and I can bring you the coffee cake when it’s done.”

You quickly busied yourself with his coffee and as soon as the cup was full, you walked over to his table and sat it down. To your surprise, he had already pulled down a few books and was staring intently at a copy of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.

“I’ve heard that’s a good book.” You craned your neck to look at the stack he had gathered. “I haven’t read it myself but I’ve wanted to.”

He gave you a small smile and nodded. “Yeah I uh read it on deployment, brings back good memories.”

“Where were you deployed?” You couldn’t help but ask. “If you’re comfortable with talking about it of course.” You added at the last second.

He paused for a second, and considered you before continuing. “Kandahar.” He said softly. “Was a marine.” It was obvious that he didn’t want to elaborate, so you dropped the subject and ran your fingers over the shelved books next to you.

You gave him another smile before turning to scan the shelves and added another book to the pile he had stacked. “Well then I’d like to thank you for your service. After you finish that book I’d recommend trying ‘And then there were none’ by Agatha Christie. I’m not much for classics besides Pride and Prejudice, but I’ve heard lots of good things about it.” You shuffled away from the table. “Let me know if you need anything else!”

As you walked away, you saw him replace the book in his hand with the one you recommended and blushed as he flipped open the cover and started reading it. You couldn’t explain it, but talking to the man had caused heat to rush to your cheeks.

Even though you tried not to think about it, your mind wandered to his face. It was obvious that before whatever had happened, that he was even more beautiful than he was now. Did something go wrong overseas? What could have happened to cause so much damage to him? You tried to ignore those thoughts, realizing that he probably was asked these questions more often than he’d like. You couldn’t imagine random people coming up to you and immediately asking about the one thing you hated most about yourself.

You distracted yourself from the stranger as your second wave of customers filtered in and you and Damon busied yourselves with preparing more orders. It was a nice repetitive type of work, since most people enjoyed frappuccinos or other drinks, you could set the teas aside to steep as you worked on other drinks.

By the time you had a chance to even look for the stranger, his table was empty. You tried to fight a frown at his disappearance, but noticed that he had put all of the books away and even left a small tip under his cup. You rubbed the paper between your fingers and smiled at the $5 bill. As you finished your day, you couldn’t help but wonder if you’d see the mysterious man again.

[raisinghellonstarbug]

I posted 248 times in 2022

27 posts created (11%)

221 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@spneveryseason

@rilannon

@filmgifs

@mysteryofloveforevermore

@ruinedsam

I tagged 179 of my posts in 2022

Only 28% of my posts had no tags

#sam winchester - 27 posts

#supernatural - 20 posts

#sastiel - 15 posts

#dean winchester - 14 posts

#red dwarf - 12 posts

#samdean - 11 posts

#samcas - 11 posts

#james acaster - 11 posts

#classic spn - 10 posts

#midam - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 104 characters

#i am tired of finding fics that are not solely midam fics but insist having destiel in the storyline too

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

So who knew a teen TV show about two boys who go to the same school, become best friends and then realise they both like each other and wanna be boyfriends would be the reason I finally acknowledge my bi disaster self just like Nick does but instead I discover this when I'm 26 and in a fully and happily committed relationship with a man 😅😅

"Why are we like this?"

No, why am I like this?

12 notes - Posted September 2, 2022

#4

Can someone please write a Midam fic that doesn't involve Destiel.. like at all?? Kfanksbye

13 notes - Posted February 19, 2022

#3

Can you please reblog/like this post if you're still interested in reading more chapters of my Sastiel fanfic, Electric Indigo?

It's not a finished story yet and I wanna make sure that I'm not continuing it for no reason except for my own benefit. I mean, I wanna finish it but I also wanna make sure I still have readers!

Because let's face it - What's a story without the reader, eh?

If I have solid encouragement to continue it then that would be great because the smutty chapter I'm writing (chapter 14 the next one that is) is really hard to finish and well, I don't know if I'm any good at writing smut so you're going to need to tell me when it's finally completed! ;)

cheers guys,

Luna x

p.s the link to the fic is below:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27330559?view_full_work=true

19 notes - Posted January 9, 2022

#2

Necessary Warmth In Winter

A Midam fluffy and soft domestic life AU one-shot fanfic

Plot: Adam and Michael go on a little winter trip and stay at a cabin. Adam is desperate to keep warm and Michael decides that he's adamant that Adam will be comfortable no matter what it takes.

Rating: T

Additional tags: friends to lovers, fluff, au human, unrequited but not really unrequited love, winter, cuddles and snuggling, hot chocolate, first kiss

Link on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36340774

24 notes - Posted January 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Hey guys so my first text post of 2022!

This is a bit later than I intended, but here we go...

So, 2021 while stressful due to obvious pandemic reasons, was also a weirdly decent year for me. It's a year that I discovered more of who I am and how good life could be now that I have finally begun to move on from past traumatic experiences and mental health problems, these problems I was still dealing with regardless of a pandemic or not. They had been lingering years before the worst shit happened to the whole world and I am grateful that I have worked them out, whether covid affected that or not. I can't say if it did to be honest. But anyway.

My point is that while yes, my mental health could always potentially get bad again, it seems that for the time being, I'm actually and honestly doing well. So there is that.

Life has also got pretty busy lately, so that would be why I don't use tumblr that often these days, but in spite of this, there have been some great peeps on here that I'm glad to have gotten to know in the last year or two on a semi regular basis, perhaps only spoken to a little or even just mutually followed.

So said peeps, I would like to give a special mention to. These peeps are just plain awesome and lovely (and I hope I don't forget anyone - sorry in advance if I did!!) are as follows:

@omnishambolichologram @posingasme @rodiniaorzetalthepenquin @jazzforthecaptain @postpunkphantomthief @ampelmensch @sastiel-daily @trippin-over-my-fandoms @rilannon @laurabeech @by-the-primes @purplepadawolf @sam-spirit-winchester @samwinchcster @hanabi-09 @avalonsilver @moonie-lunie @thequeenofsastiel @fyremagik @sastielsfandom @mygallimaufry @four-am-fanfiction @jtownraindancer @youcandalekmyballs @wendibird @awesomesusiebstuff @irishangelniall @purplecyphers @hxilstorm @loverofdemoncorns ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Basically, I just wanna wish you all an amazing and prosperous 2022. It's been a harrowing couple of years for us all but let's just go into it without much expectations. Let's just hope it's an easier one!

Also, if anyone that I tagged or anyone who follows me wants to reach out and send a DM for any particular reason, then I am happily open to that! Especially if you're struggling. I like to help where I can if at all possible. And I genuinely mean that. Mental health is important!

Anyway, see you guys on the flip side yo (i'm such a dork).

Cheers,

Luna x

32 notes - Posted January 3, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

This really goes to show that I have been using tumblr a lot less which I do deeply regret.

2022 has been a busier year than previous years and life got in the way from my creativity so I guess that's why!

Will try to come to this more often again because I have missed it

[danganronpa-21]

General Warnings: N/A

Fandoms: Danganronpa

Relationships: Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto

Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, Family Life, Kisses, Post-Danganronpa 3 Hope Arc

Chapter Word Count: 2,191 words

Summary: Makoto hits snooze on his alarm at just the wrong time, and now he's late for work. He's almost out the door when, all of a sudden, he realizes that he's forgotten the most important thing of all!

It’s never pleasant to begin your day with a string of swear words.

 It’s particularly unpleasant if your name is Makoto Naegi and you are unaccustomed to cursing in any great capacity, because when you are cursing in any great capacity, it usually means one of two things:

1.      You have seriously broken or injured some part of your body, and you are probably in somewhat dire need of medical attention.

2.      You are running late when you have somewhere very important to be.

 This time around, there can be no doubt that the scenario is the latter, and the very important place he’s supposed to be is school. Not just as a student, either, but as a headmaster. It might not have seemed like much to be late to some, but not everybody would understand that the name Hope’s Peak has something in its making. For whatever reason, no matter how Makoto changes the school’s policies, there remains a simple problem: the students are full of potential, yet also full of chaos. Just missing a few hours could mean leaving Byakuya in charge of a large disaster, likely something with a flooded hallway and paper clips, and that just wasn’t fair to his friend. It wasn’t his fault that Makoto has a bad habit of hitting snooze even when he shouldn’t.

 Honestly, apart from the whole hitting snooze thing, his wife doesn’t seem to think it’s his fault, either. In fact, she’s quick to blame herself for not realizing what time it became, as if she has not been on maternity leave for the past three months and is not positively exhausted from baby care.

 “I’m sorry, Makoto, I should have said something.”

 She is talking to him, but her half-lidded eyes are fixed on the baby monitor in her hands. Between the two of them, she is definitely the more paranoid parent – every time she wakes up, she has to pick it up to make sure that Hope is still sleeping safely. With the lives the two of them have lived, he can’t say he blames her. He knows that even if she isn’t locked directly onto him and his problems, she is listening and she genuinely is sorry, which breaks his heart a little. She’s so sweet to want to help him.

 “Not your fault.” he mutters as he untangles himself from the sheets. They seem reluctant to release him from their grasp, like a monster swirling its tongue around his leg. “You’re as tired as I am with Hope around. Maybe even more, considering I can’t breastfeed.”

 Any other time, she might have chuckled at the comment. Now, however, she is silent.

“If only I had awoken sooner.”

 Oh, how he longs to climb over to her side of the bed and squeeze her in a hug and kiss her head. There is no reason for her to blame herself for something that was an accident – an accident on his part alone, no less – but he’s so lacking in time that he can’t even stop to tell her that properly. All he can do is offer some words of comfort as he rifles through his drawers, looking for a clean button-down and tie.

 “You were due to get a full three hours of sleep, Kyoko. It was your turn last time, so don’t even worry about it. How were you supposed to know that your husband is a doofus who likes to hit snooze a little too much?”

 Though he does not see the change in her face, he can hear the amused exhale through her nose. It’s not enough to fix her guilt, he knows, but the sound is some small solace.

 “I should know this because this is not the first time that you’ve done it. Not even close to being the fifth or the eighth time you’ve done it, either.”

 He shrugs his shoulders, forcing out a laugh. Even if this situation is leaning towards not being the best, the least he can do is try to comfort Kyoko about it. That’s one thing he will never tire of doing for her. Just giving off an aura of amusement, no matter how sincere, can make a world of difference. That’s something he’s learned with time.

 As he yanks out his shirt and tie, he’s quick to wander to the closet next, snatching up the nearest available suit… Only to realize that the nearest available suit is Kyoko’s, and that he’s not prepared to make a fashion statement today. He eagerly puts it back on the rack and keeps sifting with rapid swipes of the fingers, until finally he settles on a navy-blue suit. Good enough, he thinks, even if it is a lot of blue when paired with his robin’s egg tie. It works for now.

 “Is there anything I can do to help you get ready, Makoto?” Kyoko asks sweetly, flipping the covers off her body, “Maybe I could make you some breakfast?”

 Oh, god no. Kyoko Kirigiri is undoubtedly the love of Makoto’s life, and he would do anything for her, but her cooking tastes is prone to tasting a bit like a mix of a dirt and ashes. She overcooks everything and mixes strange spices, and there has been more than one occasion where the smell alone had been enough to make him pass on it. The offer makes his heart melt, but the idea of her cooking has his mind screaming no thanks.

 “I-I’m thinking I’ll skip breakfast, a-actually!” he says as his throws his clothes down on the bed. “If you could check in on Hope while I have a shower, though, t-that would be great!”

 Kyoko’s lips press together in annoyance, knowing exactly what he’s trying to avoid, but she is kind enough to keep from saying anything. Instead, she simply nods and leaves him to go about his business… but not without sticking her tongue out at him mockingly first. They are both able to snicker at how much he probably deserves that.

__________________________________________

   Speaking of what he deserves, Makoto might deserve a world record for the fastest shower ever taken by anyone after today.

 Seriously. Apart of him is wondering if he even is clean after how quickly he washed. Does it really matter now? The point is that he got it done. Now he just has to focus on making a lunch, grabbing something quick to fill his stomach on the walk/run over, and maybe calling Byakuya to tell him to just keep holding out until he can get there. Thankfully, he made it easier on himself last night by not having a second helping of dinner. At least he’s left himself some leftovers to pile into a bento box.

 Still, guilt swirls within him as he hears Hope fussing in the other room. Sometime during his shower she woke up from her sleep, and ever since had been loudly and angrily demanding something. What that something is, he doesn’t know, but his lateness has forced poor Kyoko to try and figure it out. He feels a bit like a rotten husband, not helping out more. Some men are proud to say they never handle the baby stuff, but not Makoto. If he had it his way, he honestly might stay home with his girls instead. Alas, however, Hope’s Peak needed him, and he isn’t the type of man who is willing to turn his back on his students, either.

 “Are you okay in there, Kyoko?” he calls as he shovels omurice into one of the compartments, quickly moving to squirt ketchup in the other so he doesn’t forget. “Do you need me to do anything?”

 Hope wails louder, as if to tell her father that she is being horrendously tortured in there. She’s not, and Makoto knows she’s not, but it’s still hard to listen to his baby cry. If anything, she’s probably just hungry and has not appreciated the attempts at cuddles and diaper changes. There are only so many times that they can get her requests right on the first try. As much as he relishes these years where she’s small and cute, he’s sure it will be much easier on him and Kyoko when she is able to use her words to tell them what she wants.

 “I’m fine, just worry about yourself,” she shoots back, her typically smooth quivering with frustration as she shuffles around in there to do something he can’t quite make out, “I’m just trying to see if Hope will latch.”

 Hm. It’s a bit early for her to be hungry, but he supposes that he shouldn’t question it too much. Though they as parents have a rigid schedule in mind for when they should be feeding her, Hope might think completely differently. Maybe she burned through all of her milk from before already. She is a sponge for information after all, just as all babies are. It is entirely possible that she may have used it as more fuel for growth than they anticipated.

 “Good call.” He reaches for another container of leftovers, this time prying open the Tupperware for a go at the vegetables. As headmaster, he has to have vegetables. Healthy lunches are expected to set an example for the students. “Thanks for taking care of her. You’re such a good mom to her.”

 Though Hope chooses this moment to squawk, possibly defiantly, he decides to believe that she is actually agreeing with him. She’s just too busy complaining that she’s hungry to notice that her mother is trying to fulfilled her need. If it perturbs Kyoko to be complimented while her child is wriggling and fussing, she does not show it in her reply. Instead, he can hear the amusement in her voice as she replies: “How about you just focus on getting yourself ready for work, instead of going out of your way to be kind?”

 Makoto can’t help but laugh as he finishes piling in the vegetables, snapping his box closed. It’s not the most original lunch, but it will satisfy. That’s all he needs it to do, especially with his decision to skip breakfast… he almost feels bad for telling Kyoko that she couldn’t feed him.

 “Alright, but I just want to remind you that it’s true,” he snickers, “And I want you to keep that in mind before I go running off to work. I’m really grateful for you!”

 “Just get ready, Makoto!” she laughs. There’s no way of telling, but Makoto likes to think that her parents’ ease is what makes Hope finally settle and start to suckle.

 Throwing his lunchbox into his bag and sweeping one last pile of paperwork into his briefcase, Makoto finds himself at the door of the house lacing up his dress shoes. With the complaining of their daughter now settled into the occasional happy chirp as she eats, the house feels almost peaceful. If he stops for a moment, he can almost forget that he is running dangerously late for school. Then he sees just a bit too much sun streaming in through the window, and remembers that he has got places to be. With one last tightening of his laces and a slinging of his bag over his shoulder, he calls out to Kyoko:

 “Alright, honey, I’m off. Have a good day, I love you!”

 “Thank you, I hope you have a good day and good luck! I love you as well!”

 Makoto lets out one final sigh as he pries the door open, struck by the sunlight and the warm spring breeze the second it meets his skin. It’s another one of those times where, if the situation permitted, he might have taken the time to enjoy his walk to school. However, it was not, and so he is forced to press forth with as much speed as he can muster. The door is almost fully closed behind him when suddenly, his stomach drops.

 How could he manage to forget the most important thing of all?

 Forget lateness! There’s no excuse for this!

 The door can’t even find the time to click closed before he whips it open again, tossing his briefcase down on the bench in the foyer. Kyoko’s voice rings through the room as he re-enters, but he can’t quite make out what she’s saying. He can only make out her expression, brows furrowed and lips pressed into a straight line, as he speed-walks towards her.

 “Forgot to kiss you good-bye,” he explains, leaning down to offer him her lips.

 Kyoko can do little else but laugh at him and accept. The kiss is soft and warm, but quick, and Makoto has to fight to avoid going back for more. Timing-wise, he probably shouldn’t, but if he had the time, he absolutely would.

 “Kiss your daughter before you go, too,” Kyoko reminds him as he pulls back, and smiles as she notices that he is already dipping his head down again to plant one on the babe’s fuzzy little head.

 “Of course. Both my girls need to know how much I love them.”

 She shakes her head, still smiling. “We do, believe me. We do.”

[bubsthebee]

Can’t Say It.

Aizawa x Reader

Word Count: 3,541

A/N: Fluff, dragged out but it’s a happy ending. One shot. Age difference (9 years) Reader is 22 while Aizawa is 31. Mentions of alcohol.  

Reader is a young teacher at UA who has a unique relationship with Pro Hero and coworker Eraserhead. After a while of getting to know each other, will they realize their feelings? OR will they let self doubt get in the way. 

CHARACTER REPORT

Position: UA SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION 

Job Description: Quirk Analysis and Evaluation Processing. 

Name: (L/N), (F/N)                Power: 2/5 D    Intelligence: 4/5 B

Birthday: (5/10)                     Speed: 2/5 B    Cooperativeness: 5/5 A

Age: 22                                 Technique: 5/5 S

Sex: Female (She/Her)

Quirk: Analysis 

-(Y/N) is able to instantly analyze a person and their abilities after observing them, familiarizing themselves with their qurik. This also includes evaluating/predicting situations with higher than average accuracy. With this ability, she can use this information with or against a subject. She can keep up to three peoples' worth of information perfectly memorized at a time. Anymore, her analysis starts to create more errors and her accuracy decreases. 

--

Ever since (y/n) started working at UA, everyone knew that Aizawa’s single streak was in danger. 

While the scruff chined 1-A homeroom teacher taught his bustling young hero course, she supported the admin staff! Specifically falling under processing and evaluating every student's quirk and how to help progress their potential. This means every homeroom teacher ran their notes and evaluations about their students through her every quarter, possibly more depending on how active and intense their training has been. She and her small team are a key to the school’s successful hero and support course. No matter how a quirk was used, they would find the best way to help them improve it. 

Classroom 1-A currently holds the record for most updates and changes to analysis (surprise). With an increase in updates, (y/n) has spent more sleepless nights making sure her work was perfect than she originally thought she was going to. Not that she minded of course! She was young, and found that it helped drive her to improve her passions and skill. Besides her administrative work, she also works as a substitute teacher for English, and Hero Strategy lessons twice a semester. If needed she is more than happy to help with summer lessons. 

Aizawa has had more than his fair share of interaction with the young lady, more than others if one was keeping track. After the hero noticed (y/n)’s sleepless nights because of his students, he offered to stay and bring her coffee. When (y/n) noticed extra heavy bags under his eyes, there would be a nicely wrapped lunch on his desk with a cute thank you note in return. 

Over time a unique relationship developed between the two that anyone looking in could clearly see. Including the students. 

“Mr Aizawa! Your lady friend left ya another lunch, you’re so LUCKY.” Denki and Mineta whined without hesitation. 

“Why don’t we get cute lunches made by cute girls?” 

“Shut up! That’s Ms. (L/n) you’re talking about, not some side chick you dumbos. I think it’s really sweet.” Mina cooed alongside some of the other girls. 

Their homeroom teacher could only sigh, carefully tucking away the lunch box into his work desk as he partially ignored their scattered comments. “Lucky or not, you all should have your notes out and study. Your test scores from  last week clearly tell me I haven’t given enough in class work time. Do I have to cut down on our outside training hours?” The instant shuffling of paper and pencils brought a small smirk to his face. Nothing got his students off his back faster than less training hours. As he took attendance and organized his schedule, the small peeks at the lunch box reminded him about his last encounter with his….coworker. 

--

“Midoriya is such a strange boy you know? I’m surprised his quirk doesn't instantly tear his body apart every time he uses it. I’m glad he’s getting a handle on it, I hated seeing him hurt himself so often.”  You were sat cross legged in your office chair, typing away at your laptop underneath a bright desk lamp. 

“I agree, he needs to learn how to use his body with his quirk.” 

“Exactly!- Well, it looks like his rate of injuries compared to training has decreased. Based off of Recovery Girls records, his quirk usage deteriorated his arm muscle effectiveness. This means he’s got to either limit his usage on his arms, or learn how to use the rest of his body to compensate.” Rubbing your eyes shifted your reading glasses off of your face, exposing the bags that were starting to grow underneath them. 

“You shouldn’t be getting such heavy bags under your eyes like that, you’re too young for those (L/n).” He always notices them, no matter how well hidden. 

“Ya, okay GRAMPS. You’re not that much older than me and YOUR eyes are just as bad, if not worse. And call me (y/n), we’re friends aren't we?” 

Rolling his eyes, Aizawa gets up with a huff to pour some coffee from the nearby coffee pot. “Midoriya is your last report tonight right? Go home, you’ve got Hero Strategy classes tomorrow.” as if on cue, he hands you the cup of warm coffee while you reach out for it with a quiet “Thank you”. 

The way you hold the cup in your hands and let the warm steam brush against your face leaves him staring at you with a soft look. 

“I guess I could leave a little earlier than I thought....” blowing cool air onto the coffee, you slowly take a sip of the warm beverage. Every time you see that look on his face, you can’t help but wonder what he’s feeling. 

After a short while, you both clean up and close the office up. It’s 1 AM and both of you are more than ready to get at least a few hours of sleep in. Like usual, he walks you halfway to your home before bidding his own goodbye. 

“Goodnight (L/n).” As Aizawa turns to walk away, he feels a small tug at his sleeve. 

“I uh-” Turning to look around, he sees you with pinker cheeks underneath a streetlight. How do you always look so...nice? No matter the light you always look nice. 

You slowly slid your hand down his arm to gently hold onto his hand. It was so soft, not just the hold but your skin. You couldn't even look at him but your voice was clear as day. 

“Thank you, for staying with me. I know how tired you must be too….so I feel honored that you decide to spend your important time with me- er, to help me. You’re a great teacher and man Aizawa. Good night.” Just as quick as the moment had started, your touch was gone and you made your way home. 

He was alone, yet he could still feel your touch on his skin. Aizawa stood there for minutes, looking at his hand in awe and strange curiosity. His coworkers and friends told him multiple times, “You two aren’t a thing?”, “It’s obvious that you fancy her Shouta.”, 

“She has to feel the same, you don’t see how she looks at you when you aren’t paying attention.” 

--

         The school bell alerting the start of their first class was what pulled Aizawa out of his mind, looking up to see (y/n) walk into the class with your information tablet. ‘Ah, right. Hero Strategy.’          “Good Morning class! Great to see you all again.” She was chipper as always, her makeup easily covering her endeavors from the night before. The young teacher wore simple black tights with her training sweat jacket, everyone murmured in excitement because this meant that there would be out of class training and demonstrations          Rubbing his exhaustion from his face, the black haired male stands up to go stand near (y/n). “You all have ten minuets to change and get to the field. Any longer and you’ll be stuck in cleaning duty for the week.”

         Iida is quick to stand and grab his fellow classmates attention. “Quickly but in order, please gather your things and head to the gym! No RUNNING!” As valiant as his efforts were, everyone rushed out of the class in fear of being put into the cleaning crew while it was out of their turn. 

         The small smile he saw on your face was sobering, calmly following behind you as you made your way to the gym. 

         Usually, Aizawa would sneak into his sleeping back and nap during other teachers' lessons. These ones were different for him. He would sit off to the side and observe how you worked with the kids.

 While some students could take simple suggestions and immediately apply them, others needed physical examples. You were more than happy to adapt to all their needs as they all trained with their new plans and teachers notes. While Tokoyami nodded and talked with Dark Shadow about your observations, Uraraka carefully mimicked your moves as you slowly countered her attacks explaining how they affected her opponent's momentum even more. 

         He knew you were a natural when it came to children and hero work. The obvious proof was right in front of him. That and he was nine years older than you, yet you both were doing almost the exact same job. That's where everything starts to blur for him. 

         After a quick practice round with Shoji, a rundown with Bakugo about his quirk usage along with Midoriya and the rest of the class, their first class of the day was over. 

         The rest of the day went normal, and (Y/n) left to finish the rest of her lessons while Aizawa did the same. 

 --

         After a long week, you were more than happy to have the weekend to yourself, or so you thought. 

Incoming Call: Keigo <(‘v’)> 

“Keigo?”

 “Hey tiny, sorry to bother but I felt like I should call in and see how you were doing.” 

 “I’m fine, just getting ready to watch some movies and order take in. Had a long week. You?” 

 “Gonna be heading out to an event soon! Glad to hear you're doing good. Any luck with your crush on the office grandpa?”

 You roll your eyes as you wiggle yourself into more blankets, clicking through the different documentaries you could find on YouTube.

  “I don’t have a crush on Aizawa, and even IF I did he is NOT a grandpa. He would probably want someone closer to his age anyway. The whole life experience gap and everything.” 

 “Yeah okay, whatever. Don't get mad at me when you realize I’m right and you're missing out on not being single anymore.” 

 “You’ll be the first person I call when you’re actually right. ” “Ouch-” 

 “Pfft, talk to you later Kei. I have an hour long video about the origin of heroes and it’s calling my name.” 

 “Bye bye!” 

-

         No matter how relaxed you were or how interesting the documentary was, you couldn't get you know who out of your mind. Could you have a crush on Aizawa Shouta? Silver Fox hero of the night? Grumpy man who likes taking naps in the middle of the day? You couldn’t lie, he was attractive and his personality was more than pleasant to you at least. It always felt like something was there between you two..between late night talks and having lunch together sometimes. It felt like there was a connection, and the only thing keeping you two from connecting was a waterfall of hesitation and doubt. 

 “Whatever…”

--

         “WoooOO! Staff Party, this is gonna be a blast Listeners! Present Mic here to keep your evening thrilling with an amazing music selection!” 

         Upbeat music with minimal words played through the old speakers of a rented out ballroom. It was the end of the first semester staff party, everyone was dressed semi formal with their hair done nicely and makeup to match. The decorations were nice, and tables were laid out with food, drinks and chairs to relax and chat. 

         Aizawa was one of the first to show up since he and Yamada came together like usual. Although he socialized with other teachers as they passed by, he stayed closer to the walls and talked with Kayama most of the time. He was dressed fairly well, a simple fitted dark g suit coat with normal slacks. The usually wild and wavy mess of locks was neatly tied back into a very clean half knot that showed off his handsome face. 

         “No date Shouta? I was sure that pretty young thing would be with you tonight. (L/n) Right, she’s such a lovely girl.” Kayama’s hair was curled beautifully around her, a long fitted dress with a deep V cut showing off her lovely charm. Aizawa only rolled his eyes, sipping on his Champaign class to avoid talking even if it was just for a second more. 

         “It would make more sense for her to come in with someone closer to her age or with a friend. She is the youngest person on staff you know.” 

         “Age this age that blah blah BLAH. I know love when I see it-” 

         “Not love, this isn’t some romance film Nemuri.” 

         With a small and understanding smile, Nemuri reaches out to gently pat her dear friend's shoulder. “Someday, you’re going to realize that the things that are holding you back are nothing but a reflection of your own worries. I know you’ll figure it out. You both will. Now try to have fun-” Her attention was stolen away for a moment, a glint of excitement in her eyes clear as day. “If you’re worried about how she feels and how she’s doing, why don't you go show her around and make sure she feels welcomed?” 

         Turning around, the first thing Aizawa see’s is you. A cheesy thing to say, but he almost feels his heart skip a bit.  

         You wore a black turtleneck underneath a midnight blue spaghetti strap dress that fit you just right. Knitted knee high socks and stylish black heel boots finished off your look along with a beautiful pearl pendant necklace. Your hair looked soft and styled in a way he had never seen it before. Your eyes were done up just enough in a way that made them shine even more than they usually do.

         He’s trapped, and he is slowly realizing that he never wants to be set free. 

         When your eyes scan the room for anything familiar, they finally land on a set of eyes that are looking right back at you. You have to stop yourself from visibly gasping, why did his eyes feel so intense? What was he thinking as he made his way across the room to you. 

         Like Moses and the sea, everyone carefully parted to let you both have your moment. They all knew the chemistry between you too, and were more than happy to leave you  alone as they carried on with their conversations and laughter. 

         “You look beautiful.” His voice was low, and held a sense of hesitant tenderness even he was unsure of. You knew he meant it. 

         “And you look very handsome, you even shaved for the party.” With a small laugh you gently ran the back of your fingers across his shaved cheek. This wasn't new, you had done this exact touch multiple times before when you made fun of his stubble yet- it felt more intimate than it ever had before. Aizawa knew he didn't mind it. 

         Carefully sliding his hand into yours, he lifts it up to press a soft and long kiss to your knuckles. “It is a special occasion. Would you like to join me tonight?” He was never a man who cushioned his words, straight to the point and expressing just how he felt was never an issue. You were different. 

         Accepting his offer, you move to accept his offered arm. The night starts slow as you both walk around and chat with other faculty members you work with. With Aizawas help you were confident that you were able to make some new friends, maybe going to this party wasn't so bad after all.

         Everything else almost felt like a breeze. Laughs were shared, drinks were drank- and barriers were being broken down. You and Aizawa found yourselves slowly standing closer and closer together, close enough to where your fingers would brush against each other when one of you moved. All of Pro Hero Eraserhead’s friends could only watch with warm and excited smiles for him. 

         Like always, nights must always come to an end. 

         While some people left to retire for the night, others stayed longer to help clean or help more than drunk coworkers make it home safe. “I’m helping Nemuri make it home Sho! You gonna be okay making it back tonight?” Yamada had Nemuri balancing into his side, laughing as she drunkenly waved some of the others goodbye. “Oh! You all can head back home together if you’d like. I’m just helping clean a bit before I head back home.” you politely cut into their little chat, holding a medium sized black trash bag in your hands. 

         Taking a moment, Aizawa starts to shrug off his coat as he takes the garbage away from you. “I’ll stay behind to help clean. If you’re alright with it I can walk you home.” with wide eyes, the younger teacher could only nod before she turned away to hide her reddening cheeks to pick up more trash and plates. 

         “No worries, now get em TIGEr. RaaArW-” As Kayama tried to cheer her friend on, Yamada tugged her away with an amused laugh of his own. 

          Not even an hour later, everyone was out and the sky was as dark and it could be. The only stars you could see were the large ones as the light pollution shrouded out the smaller and weaker stars. 

         This time around, Aizawa's coat was wrapped around (y/n) shoulders, her head resting on him as they linked arms on the walk back to her house. Instead of splitting off halfway, he walks her all the way up to her front door. It was silent for a moment, the events from tonight silently washing over them. 

         “Thank you Aizawa, this...was a really nice night. I don't think it would have been as enjoyable as it was without you.” (y/n) broke the silence, turning to face and look up at the man she knew she would never look at the same again. Rubbing his mouth in thought, his eyes flicker between the young woman standing in front of him and the road. 

         “I want to thank you as well. I-.” He paused for a moment. 

         “I would like to kiss you, but I understand if you wouldn't. I think after tonight you know what my feelings are for you. I didn't even know about them fully until tonight. Kayama- Midnight was right. I was letting my worries hold me back when I should have been forward like I always am-”  

         Time freezes when he feels your hands pull down his face, your lips eagerly pressing into a kiss with such raw love and desperation. Instantly his arms move around to gently lift you up into him. One minute, two..three. You both only break apart for air and your warm breaths mingle against each other. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now I think. My friend was right haha...maybe I do have a crush on you. I was just worried because I had no idea if you would even be interested in a relationship, let alone with someone as...young as me. I feel like a high schooler again haha.” 

         The fact that you were able to laugh the way you did and still hold him in your arms brought flutters to his chest. He knew now that he more than just saw you as a coworker or a close friend. He wants to be more. “I know what you mean. Who would want to be with someone as old as me? I would never want to make you feel like I was holding you back.” He would never admit it, but he felt like a young adult experiencing love for the first time...it was a bit embarrassing (in a good way.) 

         “You make me feel so helpless sometimes you know that?” pulling his head down again, (y/n) presses another soft kiss to Aizawa’s forehead. “What am I gonna do with you Aizawa?” 

         “Shouta.”

         “Huh?”

         “Shouta, call me Shouta if you want.” Thankful that it was dark out, he could feel himself heat up at the intimate suggestion. 

         With the way your eyes sparkled while you said his name, he knew he was hooked. There is no going back.          “What am I gonna do with you, Shouta?” 

         “You’ll figure it out eventually. I’ll help you along the way as long as you’ll help me too.” The shared silence was an unbroken promise to do the best you both can. 

         After sharing your final kiss good night, you watch Shouta walk down the street and out of view before returning into the comfort of your home. The jacket around your shoulders smelt strongly of the stoic man you now called yours. Enjoying the warmth and comfort his coat brought you, kicking off your boots you hop over your couch and settle into a comfortable position. 

 Calling: Keigo <(‘V’)>

 “WHY are you calling me at….2 in the MORNING. You gave me a damn heart attack-” 

 “You were right.” your voice was soft and held no regrets. 

 “Right? Right about what?” 

 “You were right, I did have feelings for Shouta. I said you would be the first person to call if you were right. And well, you were right.”          The next hour was spent catching your best friend up on everything that happened tonight. 

-

         On the other side of the story, Aizawa finally made it home and had no problem finding sleep that night. He felt as ease knowing that things weren't going to turn out as bad as he thought it originally was going to be. 

         He can't say it, not yet. 

         But he is in love. 

         And so are you.

[moon-light-jukebox]

“If you want me to, I will.” [Hotch x Reader]

masterlist

Summary: Reader has worked for Aaron Hotchner for the past 6 months as the babysitter to his son, Jack.

Pairing: Hotch x (Female) Reader

Word Count: 7.4k – she thicc

Category: Smut/Fluff…and some angst because of who I am as a person.

Content Warning:

A/n: We all know that Hotch’s favorite album is the Beatles "White Album." And I have odd choices for songs that I use as lullabies. This idea came into my head and never left. This video of Billie Eillish singing part of the song is the closest to the structure of how I imagined it. Okay, okay, look, I know Roy wasn’t diagnosed until season 10. But I am taking creative liberties because I needed Jack to be younger.

Meaning this would be set around season 7. Hotch would be about 41, Jack is around 7; so, I made Reader around 26, giving them a 15-year age gap. Please don’t check my math. 😌

y/n = your name. y/l/n = your last name. italicized texts are Reader’s thoughts.

-- If you want me to, I will. --

I was disoriented when I woke up. This isn’t my bed, I thought groggily. Wait…this isn’t even my house.

“Y/n,” a deep voice rumbled beside me.

I jackknifed up into a sitting position, eyes wide and my face flushed with embarrassment. “Mr. Hotchner!” I quickly brought my hand up to my cheek to make sure I hadn’t drooled in my sleep. Because that would really be the cherry on top of my embarrassment. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to fall asleep. This is so embarrassing.”

Mr. Hotchner had been crouched down, putting himself level with his living room couch; the same couch he came home and found me sleeping on. In all the months I’d worked for the Hotchner/Brooks family, I’d never seen Mr. Hotchner smile anytime he wasn’t talking to his son, Jack. He always looked incredibly serious and sometimes incredibly sad; but the normal scowl was missing from his face as he looked at me, I noticed, watching him rise to a standing position.

“It’s fine, y/n. It’s after 1 o’clock in the morning.” He shifted, turning to go open the gun safe he kept in the part of the living room where his desk sat. Mr. Hotchner, or Hotch, as he kept telling me to call him, was the Unit Chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit with the FBI. Which was just a very fancy way of saying he was a profiler that was in charge of all the other profilers. Some people just look like the jobs they have; Mr. Hotchner was one of those people. “Thank you for staying late, I didn’t think things were going to run this long. I didn’t even know you were here until I called Jessica a few hours ago.”

“Oh, right,” I mumbled as I began to gather my things from the coffee table and put them into my bag. “She called me a little after 4; something happened with her dad, I think.” I zipped my bag shut, standing up quickly. “I didn’t mind helping out, Mr. Hotchner.”

He made a sound that was almost a chuckle. “You don’t have to call me Mr. Hotchner, y/n. I know I’m a lot older than you, but that makes me feel ancient.”

“You’re not that much older than me,” I protested.

He looked incredulous. “Y/n, you’re still in college.”

Well, that stings a bit. “I’m in graduate school,” I said, my voice dampening a little bit. “I’m almost 27.”

Mr. Hotchner blinked at me. “Really? I thought you were younger than that…”

“My age didn’t come up in the numerous background checks you did on me?” I scoffed, immediately wincing as the words flew out of my mouth. “Oh my god, I just keep making this worse.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hotchner. For falling asleep on your couch…and for every moment after that. I’ll just go now.”

"Y/n," he called. "hang on, it's really late, and…I still need to pay you."

Jesus. “It is late, Mr. Hotchner, that’s why I need to head home.” I forced an awkward laugh. “I have class at 9 am.”

He pushed his hands into his pockets, regarding me in a way that made me squirm. I wasn’t used to a person paying attention to me the way Mr. Hotchner did. It didn’t make me uneasy; I just felt like I couldn’t hide anything from him…which made me uneasy. “What classes are you taking this semester?”

I don’t know why it stung so much that he knew virtually nothing about me. I’d worked for him for 6 months; he wasn’t obligated to know anything about me other than how I took care of his son. “I’m actually done with my course work this semester,” I mumbled. “I’m a TA…in a class that starts at 9 am.” It doesn’t matter, you’re just tired. “You-you can just pay me for tonight the next time I’m over. It’s not like you’re gonna stiff me.” I walked over to the door and threw a very quick “goodnight, Mr. Hotchner” over my shoulder before I scurried out.

I missed the quiet “Aaron. You can call me Aaron.”

--

The entire drive home, my thoughts were on Aaron Hotchner. None of this was what I expected when I took this job. I had been in graduate school for 2 years now. I had already gotten my master’s degree and had been accepted into the Ph.D. program. There are many branches of psychology, but I had always been fascinated with cognitive psychology; it seemed only natural that that is what I would pursue in graduate school. Once it became time to focus my interest in preparation for my dissertation, I decided to study the cognitive decay in Alzheimer's patients. We knew that they lost memories, but I wanted to explore how their basic cognitive functions were affected in certain settings.

As part of my program, I was a TA in an intro psych class, and I conducted my research at the hospital connected to the university. That’s where I first met Jessica Brooks. Despite getting a stipend for my teaching assistant work, I had been taking odd jobs to help make ends meet; D.C. wasn't cheap. When I mentioned that I had experience with kids, Jessica had immediately told me that she was needing help caring for her nephew in the wake of her father, Roy's diagnosis. She wanted to keep him at home, which was both admirable and time-consuming.

I wasn’t prepared for the gigantic background check that I was subjected to. I very quickly learned that my potential employer had some power at the FBI. Jessica had raved to him about me, so he agreed to meet with me. When Jessica told me he worked for the FBI, I was expecting a bureaucrat, kind of short, receding hairline, soft from sitting behind a desk all day.

Aaron Hotchner was none of those things. He was a total cliché; he was tall, dark, and handsome. His eyes were such a deep brown they were almost black, his hair was black, and he towered over me. His hand was firm when he shook mine. I initially thought he didn’t like me because of the scowl he wore on his face; now I knew that was just his default expression. I’m pretty sure he invented Resting Bitch Face. I think it was my meeting with Jack that sealed the deal. We had clicked right away. The 7-year-old was impressed by my knowledge of both DC and Marvel comics. I could still remember our first meeting so clearly; when in a move that I now know is so much like his father, he had asked me an interview question of his own.

“What is Spiderman’s middle name?” the boy had asked with a suspicious squint of his eyes.

This kid is poser checking me, I had thought with amusement. “That would depend on which Spiderman you’re referring to. Assuming it’s Peter Parker, his middle name is Benjamin.”

We were best friends after that.

I loved Jack; I really did. And I was paid well enough that he was the only child I babysat for, the rest of my time spent working on my research and plotting my dissertation. It was clear that Aaron Hotchner loved his son, and he felt guilty for not being around more. He was fierce and intimidating any other time, but once he was with his son, his entire face would transform. His smiles came easier, his eyes twinkled, and he didn’t seem so scary anymore.

None of that is why he made me nervous, though. What made me so nervous is the fear that one day I was going to spend enough time with him for him to see the feelings I had so stupidly developed for him.  

--

The very next night, I was hiding in the kitchen floor in Aaron Hotchner’s apartment.

“Ready or not, here I come!” the little voice called out before his feet started stomping loudly across the floor.

From my position behind the kitchen counter, I tried very hard to remain silent, despite my amusement. Jack Hotchner was many wonderful, wonderful things. Sneaky was not one of them. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when I heard his little feet hurry towards me, and I didn’t lose my balance when he turned the corner and launched himself at me. “Oomph!” was the only reasonable sound to make when a tiny human slammed into you.

Jack was delighted. “I FOUND YOU!”

My response was cut off by the sound of the front door opening. Jack was off me in a flash, barreling towards the living room. “Daddy!”

Mr. Hotchner made a similar “oomph” noise when Jack jumped on him, confirming my theory. I rose to my feet quickly, smoothing down my clothes.

“We were playing hide and seek, Daddy!” Jack informed his father. “I found y/n every time! She never found me once!” His chest puffed out with pride, making my face break into a smile.

“You’re just an excellent hider, Jack-attack.”

Mr. Hotchner’s eyes settled on my face then, for just a moment I saw something so sad in those eyes that the breath seized in my lungs.

He cleared his throat, seeming to shake off whatever he was thinking before smiling at his son. “I’m glad you had a good time with, y/n, buddy.”

Jack nodded vigorously. “I helped make dinner!”

“You did?” He questioned in fake astonishment. “When did you make dinner?”

“Tonight!”

Mr. Hotchner looked at me quizzically. “Oh, um, I wasn’t actually supposed to watch Jack tonight…but Jessica called and asked if I could. It was really last minute, and she’d already bought some stuff to make dinner…” I trailed off. “I hope that’s okay. Jesus Christ, y/n. You’re a 26-year-old woman, get it together.

His attention moved from me to his son. "Jack, go get changed into your pj's. It's almost bedtime." When Jack's mouth opened to protest this great injustice, his father went on. "You can tell y/n bye when you're done."

So much for a speedy escape, I thought. Instead, I just smiled at him. "Yep, I'll be right here, little man." Satisfied with this, Jack jumped out of his father's arms and ran towards his room.

“Why did Jessica need you to come over? Did something happen with Roy?” He looked genuinely worried, walking into the kitchen to stand near me.

I reached out and put a hand on his arm without thinking. "Oh, oh god no, nothing like that." Realizing I was touching him, I snatched my hand back like he'd burned me. "Sorry. She…she-um had a date."

His eyebrows rose so high they almost hit his hairline. “A date?” he asked, disbelief dripping from his words.

I chuckled. “That’s what she told me.”

He walked back into the living room then, leaning back against the couch, crossing his arms over his chest as he focused his dark gaze on me. “What about you?”

“…What about me what?”

“Does Jessica ever have to cover for you when you have dates?”

If Aaron Hotchner hadn’t made me so nervous, I might have picked up on how he phrased that question. As it happens, all I could do was fidget under his gaze. “Oh,” I chuckled nervously. “Ah, no. She doesn’t have to do that. I don’t really date.”

That had one of his eyebrows rising, his arms crossing across his chest. "Why?"

Because I want you to crack my back like a glowstick. “Um…you know, it’s hard to find the time.”

Thankfully Jack chose that moment to come barreling out of his room, charging full force at me. “You’re still here!” he exclaimed.

I smiled down at him when his arms wrapped around my hips. I put one hand on the back of his head, the other on his back, giving him a squeeze. “Of course I am! I couldn’t leave without telling you goodbye.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he mumbled.

My throat worked as a sudden wave of emotion hit me. "Oh, Jack," my voice was thicker than usual when I spoke. "I don't like leaving you either, but you'll see me before you know it. I promise."

Once we had finally pried Jack off me, Mr. Hotchner went to take him to bed. He turned to me when he scooped Jack up in his arms. “Thank you for today.”

“It’s no problem, Mr. Hotchner.”

“You know you don’t have to call me that,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Most people call me Hotch. Or you could call me Aaron.”

I didn't know what to say to that; all I could do was give him an awkward smile. I was gone before he came back into the living room. I didn't want to leave, I never did, but I couldn't risk being alone with…Aaron.

--

The following Thursday night, my phone started ringing just after 11:30. Glancing at it, I saw it was Jessica. “Hey,” I said in greeting.

“Hey, y/n,” she said, sounding frazzled. “I have a huge favor to ask. Dad’s home health nurse had to leave early tonight.” “Is something wrong with Melinda?” I hope not. She’s the sweetest.

“No, I don’t think so. But she needs to go home and there’s no one to sit with Jack. But Aaron isn’t home yet…”

“I’ll be there in 20.”

Which is why I was now in Aaron Hotchner’s apartment after midnight in a pair of shorts that were so short I only ever wore them at home and a t-shirt that I had had for forever. Jessica had sounded so upset when she called, I hadn't even thought to change. She had promised to be back as quick as she could; she said that Mr. Hotchner was flying back from a case, and she didn’t expect him until 5 a.m. at the earliest.

When I first arrived, I had tried to watch TV, my mind too wired to sleep, even though I had class at 9 am in the morning. Sighing, I glanced over at the clock to see it was just after 1:45 in the morning.

“Fuuuuuuck,” I whined out loud. I have to go to sleep; even if it’s just a little nap. I remembered Jessica had left some chamomile tea here for the nights she stayed over to watch Jack. Finding the kettle and the tea itself was no problem; the problem presented itself when I had to get a mug to put the tea in.

I had never considered myself a particularly short person; sure, I had to stretch to get things from time to time, but everybody did that. Looking up into the upper cabinets in the Hotchner house had me reconsidering that. The mugs were on the very top shelf and try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to reach them; my fingers kept grazing over the ceramic.

“Goddamnit,” I mumbled in a huff. What is the point to put mugs way the fuck up there? Some of us are a perfectly normal height…but noooo I have to work for giants. I braced my hands on the countertop as I heaved myself up on to said countertop. Once my knees were in place, I got the offending cup without further problems.

I blame how focused I was on my task for my not hearing the front door open, or the footsteps that followed. Which is why I had a mild heart attack when I heard a voice that sounded highly amused say from behind me, “What are you doing?”

Several things happened all at once, and very quickly. I let out the most embarrassing squeak in all of history, I lost my balance on the counter and the cup fell from my hand. The cup crashed to the floor and shattered. My fate might have been the same but two large hands caught me, gripping my hips from behind. I looked down to see his long fingers wrapping around my waist, gripping me tightly; my difficulty breathing then had nothing to do with how scared I was.  

“I’m sorry,” Aaron said softly, still not releasing me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, I get it,” I said lightly, attempting to act like I wasn’t going into cardiac arrest because he was touching me. “You’re a very stealthy FBI agent. It was bound to happen.”

He chuckled before his hands pushed my hips so I was twisting around, my legs shifting until I was sitting on the countertop, staring into the same dark eyes I thought about far too often. They weren’t as harsh as they usually were; tonight, they were soft and warm, and they made my pulse race a bit faster.

I moved to get off the counter when the hands that were still on my hips stopped me. “Hang on, let me clean this up first. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Fantastic, I thought, hiding my face in my hands. It seems I was incapable of not making a fool out of myself in front of this man.

He worked quickly while I debated changing my name and fleeing the country; in the next moment, he was standing in front of me again. "What's wrong?"

“Oh, nothing,” I said, not moving my hands. “Just dying of embarrassment.”

Aaron actually laughed at that, moving closer to stand between my thighs, his hands coming to rest on the countertop on either side of my hips. “Why are you embarrassed?”

I dropped my hands then. “Because this is becoming a pattern! First, I fell asleep on your couch, then I almost fell off your counter and cracked my head like an egg.” I bit my lip, shifting under his gaze. “I’m sorry and thank you for catching me.”

“I didn’t mind,” he said softly.

He still had that soft look on his face, but he was smiling too like he was enjoying my embarrassment. He probably is. I had never been this close to him before. I didn’t know his eyes weren’t just one flat color of brown, but that lighter shades of brown whirled throughout. I had never felt the heat of his body before, but now I was so close I could smell him. Why does he have to smell good? I whined internally. If he just stunk, I could get over this.

This was exactly why I tried very hard to stay as far away from him as possible because I lost the ability to think clearly whenever I was with him. I couldn't stop my eyes from moving down to his lips. I was eye level with him from my position on the counter; all I had to do to brush my lips across his was lean forward, so that’s exactly what I did. His body stiffened slightly at the first touch of my lips to his. I pulled back, ready to apologize when his hand wrapped around the back of my head and pulled me back to him. There was nothing soft about this kiss. His free hand gripped my thigh, my hands held on to his shirt, trying to pull him closer. My tongue brushed against his mouth before he sucked on the tip of it, causing me to shudder. He took a step forward as his tongue twirled around mine. I could feel him when he settled against me; he was hard, and I found myself shifting my hips to rub against him.

The shrill ringing of his phone broke us apart suddenly. He was panting, his cheeks were slightly flushed. I thought I heard him let out a “fuck” under his breath as he reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone.

“Hey Jessica,” he answered.

Now that our moment was broken, I felt very self-conscious. What the fuck did I just do?! He is my boss. He is Jack’s dad. Aaron took a step back and I slid off the counter. This turned out to be a very bad idea on my part; my body brushed down the front of his, causing me to bite my lip to silence the moan that threatened to escape.

“Yeah, I landed a little while ago,” he said as I left the kitchen.

WhatthefuckWhatthefuck. I heard him end the call with Jessica before he quickly walked into the living room. A look of relief washed over his face when he saw me. “I thought you’d try to slip away.”

“I thought about it,” I told him honestly.

“Listen, y/n, about that in the kitchen,” he began.

I held up my hands. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Hotchner. I don’t know why I did that; I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” I was giving him an out because I couldn’t handle hearing the rejection I knew was coming. “I just…I guess we got caught up in the moment? And you’re really tired, I’m sure. I’m so sorry.” I was rambling now. “If you don’t want me to watch Jack anymore-“

“Y/n, no,” he interrupted. “No, this…you’re right, it was just a heat of the moment thing. It happens. I’m sorry I lost myself for a moment.” He cleared his throat, his face still set in softness. “Jack loves you. He doesn’t need to suffer for any more of my mistakes.”

Mistakes. The word hollowed me out and left me cold. I just nodded. “Right,” I said in what I hoped was an even tone. “Just a mistake. I should get going. It’s really late.”

Which is how I found myself driving home at almost 3 in the morning with tears running down my cheeks. A mistake.

--

Things went back to normal after that night. I continued to avoid Aaron Hotchner at all costs and he…did whatever he did. I tried to hide the hurt whenever I did happen to see him, but it was so hard when I could still feel the tingle from his lips on mine.

A few days after the “mistake,” I was babysitting Jack again. He’d went to bed at his normal 8:30 and all was quiet. I decided to do some TA work while I waited for Mr. Hotchner to come home. I was halfway through grading an essay when I heard the first noise come from Jack’s room. Lifting my fingers from the keys of my computer, I waited to see if I heard another sound. I didn’t have to wait long; not even a minute passed before I heard a strained cry. Jumping up, I hurried down the hall to Jack’s bedroom.

Cracking the door open I called, “Jack-attack? Are you okay, little man?” I didn’t see him right away; he had hidden under his covers and curled up into a little ball. “Hey, Jack. It’s just y/n.” I sat down on the edge of his bed. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

I saw the lump under the blankets start to move hesitantly before I saw his brown hair peak out of the blanket near his pillow. His eyes were wide and with the light shining in from the hall, I could see tears gleam in them. “Oh, buddy,” I cooed. “Did you have a bad dream?”

The boy nodded. “Yeah…there was a bad man…and my daddy didn’t come save me.”

I felt my breath seize in my chest. Jessica had told me a brief version of what happened to Jack's mother a few years ago. "Jack, you know your dad would always do whatever he had to do to come to save you." I shifted my position on the bed until I was sitting beside him. "He'd never let anything bad happen to you." Jack started inching closer to me. I held out my arms and smiled when he lunged for me; I wrapped him in a tight hug, rubbing circles on his back.

“My dad just isn’t home a lot anymore. He has a lot of work to do,” he mumbled into my shirt.  

“Your dad would be home if he could, Jack.” I couldn’t quite keep the sadness out of my voice. It wasn’t fair to either Jack or his dad that he had to be away so much.

“I know,” the little boy whispered. “I just miss him sometimes.”

“Do you want to call him?” I offered. “I don’t think he’d mind.”

Jack just shook his head. “No, it’s okay.” He turned his face up to look at me. “Will you stay with me?”

I moved so he lay beside me with my left arm still squeezed around him. “Of course, bud.” I scooted down the bed so I was reclining instead of sitting straight up, pulling the cover-up over him again. "Do you want me to read you another story?"  

He just shuffled under his covers, looking at me with the bashful innocence of childhood. “Can you sing to me until I fall asleep?”

I wasn’t the biggest fan of singing in front of people, but how could I turn this little face down? I just nodded. “Do you have any requests?”

“Nope,” he answered with a little grin on his face.

Unfortunately, at that moment every single lullaby I had ever know left my head. I couldn’t think of a single traditional lullaby. So, I decided to improvise. I started singing slower songs I knew, some of them might not have been appropriate for a 7-year-old’s lullaby, but I don’t think Jack cared that much.

He was almost out, drifting on the edge between deep sleep and awake. My arm was still around his shoulder, he was still snuggled to my side. I decided one more song would be enough, which meant I pulled out my second Beatles song of the night.

“Who knows how long I’ve loved you?

You know I love you still.

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?

If you want me to, I will.

For if I ever saw-“

I glanced up, immediately sensing there was someone else in the room. To my horror, Jack’s father was standing in the doorway, staring at me with an unreadable expression on his face. I swallowed nervously, then I turned to press a kiss against Jack’s soft forehead before I gently detangled myself from him. I straightened my clothes that to my further embarrassment had shifted around because I was laying with a wiggly child, then, attempting to keep my face impassive, I walked to the door, moving around his father as I exited.

Mr. Hotchner walked into the room and checked on his son, while I moved into the living room to gather my things. I wonder if he just left the money by the door, I mused. If he did, I could just make a dash for the door. I mean, if he didn’t, he could always just pay me next time. Sadly, my plans were escape were foiled yet again by the man in question entering the room.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I know he was up past his bedtime. I put him down at 8, but he had a nightmare." I was babbling, not meeting his eyes, my gaze very intently focused on my bag. "He asked me to stay with him until he fell asleep…" I finally looked up, shrugged, and said, "He's very hard to say no to."

“You don’t have to apologize for being nice to my son, y/n,” he said softly. “That’s one of my favorite songs on the White Album, you know.”

I hadn’t known that. “Mr. Hotch-“

He took a step towards me before I finished speaking. “Y/n, please, I can barely handle this as it is. Please call me Aaron.”

I just blinked up at him. “So, ‘Hotch’ is off the table now?”

That had a soft smile curving his lips upward. "That was a limited-time deal. You should have been quicker." I saw his hand rise up slowly, so slowly that I would have had time to move away…but I just couldn’t. He brushed my hair back from my face, his eyes were two pools of black in the dim light, they were swirling with something that made my stomach flutter.

“Aaron,” I breathed, having no idea what I was going to say.

He let out a soft sigh, turning his eyes upwards. When he brought them back down to mine, his hand slid from its place near my ear to cradle the back of my head. His eyes searched mine for a moment before his shoulders dropped slightly. “Fuck it,” he muttered before he leaned down and sealed his lips over mine.

I might have thought this kiss would be questioning or unsure, but there was nothing unsure about it. Aaron kissed me like he was starving for me. His teeth caught my bottom lip and tugged as he pulled away. “It wasn’t a mistake,” he breathed before bringing his lips more firmly against mine.

My hands began to move over his body; one of my hands grabbed his tie and used it to pull him closer to me, the other reached up to brush against the short, soft hair on the back of his neck. “It wasn’t?” I questioned when we broke away for air.

Aaron’s lips moved across my cheek, leaving soft kisses until he reached my ear. “No, sweet girl, it wasn’t.” His mouth moved down to my neck; his kisses turning into bites that were sure to become brushes. I didn’t care, I needed him. My hands moved to his shirt, quickly trying to undo all the buttons.

His hands moved down to the waist of my jeans, deftly flicking the button open before sliding the zipper down. “Is this what you want?” he asked as his hand touched my lower stomach, his fingers brushing over the elastic band of my panties.

“Yes,” I said, still working to free him from his shirt. “I want this so much.”

The fingers of his free hand rose up to tap my chin, forcing my eyes up until I met his gaze. "I want to hear you say my name again." His other hand lifted from my stomach to slide over the flair of my hip until he was gripping my ass. "Whenever I laid in bed that night after I had you pressed against me in my kitchen when I stroked my cock, I thought about you moaning my name.” The hand that was on my chin pulled away, skimming down my body until he was grabbing the other side of my ass. “So, say it. Tell me what you want.”

“I want you, Aaron.” So, so much.

His hands moved to the backs of my thighs, then he lifted me up his body, startling me. Jesus Christ, how strong is this guy? I threw my arms around his neck as he started walking us down towards his bedroom. A giggle escaped my lips. “I could have walked, you know.”

We had already entered his room; he tossed me gently on the bed before he turned to close and lock the door. He walked to stand at the side of his bed, his eyes devouring me. “I couldn’t give you a chance to sneak away again, sweet girl.” Aaron pulled off his tie before he finished unbuttoning his shirt, shedding it on the floor.

Fuck. Fuck, he’s hot. I pulled my own shirt over my head, and his body was on top of me before it even left my hands. Aaron's mouth moved down to my collarbones, his hand slipped behind my back to unhook my bra. Once the straps were down my arms, Aaron lifted himself up on his arms to toss it away, his eyes running over my body. "You're so beautiful," he said softly like it wasn't the sweetest compliment I'd ever been paid. He leaned over again, his lips skimming down to my chest before he wrapped his lips around one of my nipples.

“Fuck, Aaron,” I moaned.

He gave my nipple a flick with his tongue before he lifted his head. “Ssh, sweet girl. You have to be quiet. Can you do that?” He kissed his way over to my other breast. “I can’t do this if you won’t be quiet.”

“I can be quiet,” I whispered right before I bit my lip to smother my moan at the feeling of his mouth on me. “Maybe.”

His breath puffed against my skin when he laughed at me. My hands threaded through his hair when he brought his face back up to mine. My mouth opened eagerly for him, my tongue slicking over his while I tried to grind my body against him. Aaron was smiling when he broke the kiss, shifting up onto his knees. “Well, I appreciate you trying to be quiet at any rate,” he teased.

My response died in my throat when his fingers yanked my jeans off my legs, bringing my panties with them. I was totally bare in front of him. His eyes raked down my body in a way that would make me self-conscious with anyone else. How could I ever be self-conscious with a man who looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world?

But when he started to kiss further down my body, I grabbed his arm, attempting to pull him back up to kiss me. “Aaron,” I whispered.

He pressed a soft kiss to my collarbone. “What’s wrong, beautiful?”

“You don’t…you don’t have to do…that,” I mumbled, feeling my face heat up.

Aaron braced himself on his arms and stared down at me. Enlightenment dawned on his face a second later. He leaned down to kiss me softly. “Do you not want me to?”

I bit my lip, feeling more flustered. “It’s just…I’ve never…and I know that guys don’t really like-.“ My words were cut off when he placed another kiss to my lips, still incredibly soft, but with more force than before.

"If it makes you uncomfortable, I won't," he said quietly. "But I can assure you, I can't think of anything more I'd rather do than lick your pussy until you cum all over my face." He skimmed his lips over my cheek to my ear. "And once you've come down, I want to slide my cock inside you and feel how soft and wet you are." His kisses moved down to my neck, his mouth sucking on my pulse point. "Then I want to fuck you until you're whimpering against my lips to make you cum again.”

I felt my core throb at his words. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. He lifted his gaze when he got back to my breast, flicking my nipple with his tongue. “Is that what you want too, sweet girl?”

I have never wanted anything more, I thought; but I was so far gone that all I could do was nod.

He gave me a soft smile, moving down the bed further to settle between my thighs, pulling them further apart. I felt a kiss pressed to one thigh, then the other. His hot breath washed over the part of me that was already so wet for him. “You’re beautiful here too,” he murmured before he pressed a kiss to my clit. I lifted my hips at the sensation, causing him to chuckle and move his hands to wrap around my thighs, his arms anchoring me in place. A second later I understood why he braced my hips. The second he flattened his tongue and licked the length of my pussy, my hips started moving involuntarily and my fingers tangled in his hair.

I felt a puff of air against me when he laughed again, and it made me smile. I didn’t expect Aaron Hotchner to be fun…or dirty in bed. All thought immediately left my head when he parted me with his tongue, dipping into my entrance before spearing his tongue into me. I felt the vibration when he moaned against me. "You taste so fucking good, y/n," he said, his voice still hushed. Giving my entrance one last lick, he moved up to my clit.

He spent time moving his tongue around me, learning what made me squirm. When he started fluttering his tongue quickly over my clit my hands started tugging on his hair and my thighs tried to snap together.

“Aaron,” I whined, attempting to rock my hips against his mouth.

I think he understood what I needed better than I did. His left hand released my thigh and moved down to my heat, just below his mouth. I felt his fingers brush over me before he pushed on inside me, causing my back to arch off the bed. “Aaron, Aaron, fuck.” He added a second finger, pumping them in a rhythm that complimented the movements of his mouth.

I wasn't prepared for when his lips closed around my clit, sucking lightly, while his fingers started to curl inside of me. “Oh my God," I moaned out, louder than I should have. "Aaron, I'm going to cum." I started pulling on his hair so hard it must have hurt, but he just moaned against me, never slowing his pace. "Aaron, fuck, please. I think…I-I-“

My words broke off as the band inside of me snapped, my pussy clamping down on his fingers and my back arching off of the bed, my mouth hanging open in a silent scream.

Aaron slowed his motions, slowly bringing me through the orgasm and back down to Earth. With one final kiss to my thigh, he rose and moved up my body until his face was hovering over mine. His lips were shiny with my arousal, they also looked a little swollen, but more importantly, they were smirking at me.

I’ll give him that one. Reaching up I cradled his jaw in my hands, bringing his mouth down to mine. I tasted myself on his lips and tongue when he licked into my mouth. Despite the powerful orgasm he had just given me, I was still desperate for him. I broke away from his mouth. “Aaron, I need you.”

He pressed another kiss to my lips before he lifted up and stood at the side of the bed, undoing the buckle of his belt. My eyes were fixed on his movements, watching as he unbuttoned his slacks and slid them down his legs. His cock was a thick pipe outlined in his underwear. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband before he spoke again. "I'll give you everything you need, greedy girl." Aaron pushed his underwear down, his cock springing free before he climbed back on the bed.

He was so much thicker than I expected he would be. I moved my hand down to wrap my fingers around him, pumping his length. He let out a groan and lowered his forehead to mine. “Baby,” he muttered. “I…fuck. I have to get a condom.”

“Aaron,” I whined. “I want to feel you inside me. I’m on birth control. Please?” The thought of anything separating me from this man was abhorrent to me in that moment.

I saw his willpower crumble. “Are you sure?”

So sure. “Please,” I begged lifting my head to kiss him. “I want you to fuck me.”

With a groan that I will remember for the rest of my life, he shifted his hips forwarded, allowing my hands to guide him to my entrance. Aaron kissed me then, slowly and deeply has he started to push inside me. My hand flew away from his cock, both my arms wrapping around his body to pull him closer to me. I felt my nails digging into his back.

Aaron broke our kiss with another soft moan that sounded like my name. “I knew you’d feel like this,” he whispered, pressing deeper inside me. “I knew your pussy would be this fucking tight, this fucking hot, and so fucking soft." He started moving in and out of my pussy, going in a little further each time. “You still have to be quiet, sweet girl.”

“I’m trying,” I moaned, my pussy already starting to flutter around him when he finally pushed all the way inside of me. “Aaron, fucking Christ.” I felt him everywhere, and I somehow still craved more.

He grabbed my thigh, pulling if further up his side, allowing himself to sink deeper inside of me. “I know, sweet girl. I know.” He started a slow pace, pulling almost all the way out of me before slamming back inside me.

My head was thrashing against the pillows, my teeth digging into my bottom lip. “Aaron, I need you to fuck me harder. Please.”

He groaned at my words, placing a sloppy kiss to my mouth before pulling back. He pulled one of my legs up until it was over his shoulder, the other still wrapped around his waist, and then he started to move faster inside of me.

I braced one hand against the headboard as he pounded into me. “Oh my god, Aaron,” my voice was a low whimper as I looked down to see his cock sliding in and out of me. “You feel so fucking good.”

“Baby, I want you to reach down and rub your clit for me while I fuck your tight little pussy.” His pace started to speed up as he spoke. “Can you do that for me?” He groaned when I complied, the stimulation to my clit causing my pussy to flutter around him. “Good girl.”

My fingers began to work frantically. “Don’t stop, Aaron. Don’t stop,” I begged. “I’m so close.”

“I know, sweet girl, I can feel you. Your pussy feels so good squeezing around my cock. You’re going to make me cum.” His thrusts were starting to get choppier, one of his hands braced on the top of the headboard while the other held my leg on his shoulder. “Do you want me to cum inside your pretty pussy, sweet girl?” He groaned loudly when my walls clenched around him. “It feels like you like the idea of that, don’t you baby?”

My fingers continued their pace, my head thrashing, my body trembling. “Yes. Fuck, Aaron. Please cum inside of me. Please.”

Aaron felt it first and acted quickly; his hand moved from my leg to cover my mouth. “That’s it, cum for me, baby.”

I thought my orgasm earlier tonight was powerful. It was nothing compared to how I felt when I came around his cock, only to feel him find his own release a moment after.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, y/n,” he breathed, giving a last few jerks inside of my body, pushing against the fluttering aftershocks of my orgasm. He rolled off me, careful not to drop all of his weight on top of me. To my relief, he quickly gathered me in his arm, pulling me against his body, pressing a soft kiss to my sweaty forehead.

My ear was pressed against his chest, allowing me to hear his heartbeat slowdown from its frantic pace and his breathing even out. I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his chest while his hand continued to stroke my back.

“That…that was amazing,” I said, looking up at him. “If I knew you had that in you, I wouldn’t have run out of the room every time I was alone with you.”

He laughed softly, his eyes sparkling. “Well, at least you’ll know for next time.”

My thoughts sobered at his words. Next time

“Hey,” he said, his hand cupping the side of my face. “No, don’t go away. I just got you.” He kissed my forehead again, then the tip of my nose, then both of my eyelids, before he tilted my face up further so he could press a kiss to my lips. “We’ll figure this out. We have to. I care too much about you to let you go.”

“I care about you too,” I replied, snuggling against his chest, my eyes suddenly feeling heavy.

I was almost asleep when I heard his voice rumble again. “Will you sing Beatles songs to me when I can’t sleep too?” His voice was sleepy and teasing.

I smiled into the darkness, not bothering to open my eyes. “If you want me to, I will.”

--

Permanent Taglist: @rachelxwayne​ @pinkdiamond1016​ @sickeninglyshoujo @justagirllookingforherplace​ @nanocoool​

[cosmicpines]

code july day 1 - future

au where jeremie's anti-xana program didn't work, taking place half a year after.

“Do’ya think we should start future-proofing our whole situation?” Odd was the first one to speak out loud in at least a half an hour, his voice echoing around the computer lab.

It was late. Not just “it’s a school night, we should turn off the Playstation” late, but “sunrise is in an hour” late. Ulrich, Jeremie, and Aelita were crowded on the couch – a fairly new addition to the lab that William and Odd had dragged over a mile to the factory after finding it on the street, a several-hour long affair that left them both sore for a week – blearily staring at chunky school-loaned laptop screens with piles of overdue library books on the floor in front of them. Odd and William were across the room, hunched over an oversized posterboard, surrounded by an accoutrement of Odd’s art supplies and printed out sheets of paper. What was keeping them up was potentially world-ending, but not in the usual way; instead of an evil AI, it was a history project due at 10 AM.

It wasn’t entirely their fault they didn’t start earlier – saving the world was a full-time job, afterall – but it’s not like they could give an excuse to Mr. Fumet that he would have believed. As the clock ticked over to 4, the prospect of having to pull the trigger on a return trip to finish loomed over them. They had already done it once, blearily uploading PowerPoint slides to the supercomputer to save them, giving Yumi an apologetic phone call in the morning. She was used to the disorienting resets at this point, having done them for half a year after graduating and moving across the country, but they usually texted ahead of time to warn her. She was sympathetic over the phone – she always was – but she was definitely irritated about having to retake an exam. They didn’t want to put her through that again and, besides, they couldn’t exactly keep the poster board from getting erased to time.

“Future-proofing the fact half of us might fail history?” Ulrich grumbled in response from across the room, leaning against the armrest of the couch. His eyes were glazed over in a stupor as he clicked idly around on the screen.

“Ulrich, are you done with your slides yet?” Aelita spat at him, now that the silent spell was broken, “I want to start stitching them together.”

“Uh… no.” Ulrich glanced at her, subtly turning his screen away from her piercing gaze, “Gimme ten more minutes? I’m almost there.”

Aelita clicked her tongue, probably remembering the last promise of the slides “in ten minutes.” She turned to her left and nudged Jeremie, “How about you – oh my god, Jeremie, can you focus?”

“Huh?” He looked up, and guiltly alt-tabbed back to a blank PowerPoint slide. “Sorry, I was just… I had a breakthrough about the bug in the Skid and I was…” He trailed off under her glare, “Sorry.”

Aelita clutched the side of her head, groaning. “Is it too late to go back to living on Lyoko where I don’t have to care about World War I and don’t need sleep?”

“Me too, thanks.” William muttered at Odd’s side, aggressively erasing a sentence on the poster, “Being XANA’s slave was less painful than this.”

He let out a bitter laugh, then raised his head, half smirk fading at the frozen-in-terror looks on his friend’s faces, “Sorry. Too soon?”

Odd, as he so often did, interrupted the awkward silence before people could make it worse, “Future-proofing us, is what I meant. Thanks for asking!” Nobody humored him as the typing across the room started back up and William started writing again, “Look, I’m just saying; we’re not getting any younger.” He brandished a red marker, filling in bubble letters on the top of the poster, “Yumi graduated. We’ve only got a semester left at Kadic –,”

“Could just all repeat a year like I did.” William grimaced. “And might again.”

Ulrich snorted, “Odd and I are probably on track for that.”

“Cheers,” William said, raising his pencil like a glass, without looking up, “Join the failure club.”

“BUT,” Odd interrupted, “Assuming we don’t! Because this presentation is going to be incredible,” That one earned a snort from everyone in the room (which was fair), “We’ll need someone who can do our jobs if we have to leave the good fight. Lyoko Warriors, the Next Generation! Kadic’s Next Top Lyoko Warriors!” He chuckled at himself, standing up, “We should put an ad in the paper: ‘Want a challenging, world-altering job? Come down to the abandoned factory!’” He hummed to himself, tapping his chin, “Our criteria would have to be strict. Can you imagine getting someone like, I dunno, Johnny? So, Johnny. Please, tell me: what’s your greatest fear? Giant crabs, you say? Why yes, that’s both oddly specific and also a dealbreaker. Next!”

Odd looked up, laughing, waiting for his friends to join in – Ulrich telling him he was being dumb, Aelita offering some other students and joking with him about their interviews, William making a snide remark about how he didn’t get an interview, a silent, but appreciative smirk from Jeremie – but got nothing. Jeremie’s head was buried in his laptop, and Aelita was – Aelita was glaring at him?

“What?” He asked her, but she said nothing, just raised an eyebrow in a you know what’s wrong look. Odd clearly didn’t, and turned to Ulrich for a clue, but Ulrich wasn’t giving him anything; he was just back to sulking, staring at his laptop. Odd ran through what he said again in his head, trying to find the offending phrase, when William punched him in the leg. “Hey –,” Odd started, ready to give a snappy retort, before seeing William was urgently tapping at the poster, where he’d just written something. Odd crouched down to read it.

you’re upsetting jeremie.

Odd glanced back at Einstein across the room, whose face was impassive, just typing away. Looking closer, though, he could see Jeremie had all the appearances of someone trying valiantly to pretend they weren’t upset – hunched shoulders, scrunched up face, not a single glance away from the screen. Aelita had stopped glaring to put a hand on Jeremie’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

Ugh. Odd sighed, wondering if he would have to apologize for just trying to lighten the mood. How was anything he said upsetting to Jeremie? He reached over for a pencil to respond to William, scribbling down on the poster.

Can’t he take a joke?

idk. Guess he thinks you’re blaming him.

Blaming him?? For what???? bro when did I even say anything like that??

you didn’t. don’t bro me bro. not my fault

Odd underlined his first bro, giving William a smile. William rolled his eyes before rubbing out their conversation with an eraser. Odd turned back to his coloring job and took a breath, surprised to see it come in shaky. It’s not your fault he’s upset, he thought to himself, pulling the cap off his marker. It’s fine. He leaned over to finish his coloring before noticing his hands were shaking. He clenched them, angrily. It wasn’t his fault Jeremie was upset. He was fine. Not his fault if Jeremie wanted to over-react. He’ll get over it and… where were the scissors?

He dug around their supplies for them, then, picking up a pile of pictures of historic figures, streaked from the bad library printer, took a pair of trembling scissors to extracting them. They were nearly done. One more section and they’d be done. One more and they could go to bed and Jeremie would get over whatever he was upset about and it was fine and it would all go away and it was fine it wasn’t his fault and –

“I’m working as hard as I can,” Odd felt a bit in his stomach open up as Jeremie spoke in a quiet, bitter voice. Odd stared pointedly down at the poster, blinking rapidly to try and assuage the pressure building behind his eyes, “I know we screwed up by not finishing before Yumi graduated, okay? I’m just… It’s a lot to figure out and I’m trying?! Is that not enough for – No. No, I know it’s not enough – I know I’m keeping us from having a normal life and it’s my fault William had to repeat a year and… and I –,” Jeremie’s breath caught, and Odd finally dared to turn his eyes to him, seeing his friend aggressively rubbing his eyes under his glasses, “I – I don’t mean to – look! It’s hard, alright?! It’s hard and I – I’m just so tired all the time and I’m sorry that we’re still awake for this too and that I –,” His voice finally broke as he started crying in earnest, his fist coming down on the side of the couch. Odd wanted to turn back to his work and brush it off, but the guilt clenching his stomach wasn’t letting go.

Hesitantly, Aelita put her hand on his shoulder again, “Jeremie…” but he shook it off again, turning away from her. She persisted. “It’s not your fault. We know you’re working –,”

“And it’s not enough! I’ve been working at this for years and I just I can’t come up with anything to defeat XANA –,”

“You had a lot of other things you needed to do first.”

He didn’t mean to, Odd was sure, but Ulrich’s eyes flickered to William for just a moment, and William’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, are we doing this now?” William grumbled, dropping his pencil. “Jeremie, you’re fine. Look, I’m sorry. Again. You don’t think I don’t regret every moment that I didn’t listen like a fucking idiot –” Jeremie, despite being wracked with tears, winced at the swear, earning a brief hint of a smile from Odd, “ – and got myself captured? Who then was a thorn in your asses for months? No. I get it. You’d probably be rid of XANA already if it wasn’t for me; you’ve made that crystal clear.”

“That’s not what I –,” Aelita glared at him, “You of all people should understand that I would never blame you for being trapped on Lyoko.”

“It’s not you that is. It’s him.” He jerked his thumb at Ulrich, who glared back at him.

“I’m not,” Ulrich muttered, “Cut it out.”

“Oh yeah? What did that look mean then, huh?”

“I didn’t –,”

“You blame me, and we all know it. You’re just butt-hurt over Yumi still, even though you had plenty of chances –,”

“Okay, that’s it.” Ulrich sat up straighter, “Maybe you’re still using Yumi as a scapegoat in all our arguments, but I’m done with that. Maybe I was an ass to you before because of her, but I don’t blame you for XANA, William. I never have. I was over it before you even joined,” He scowled at the ground, Jeremie’s crying filling the brief silence. “It was probably my fault you got captured in the first place. I wasn’t there because I had to talk to my stupid Dad and it was my job to tell Odd and I didn’t make sure – hell, even before that! Who was it that couldn’t protect Aelita back when XANA escaped from the supercomputer in the first place? If she hadn’t been alone, the Scyphozoa wouldn’t have gotten her, and XANA wouldn’t have escaped, and we would have been done.”

“Come on,” Aelita crossed her arms, turning away from Jeremie to the boy on her other side, “You’re being ridiculous. Half of that isn’t your fault.”

Odd wanted to chime in that it was Sam’s fault she didn’t listen to Ulrich, but his voice was still missing in action, his throat tight and unresponsive.

“I should have been able to protect myself,” Aelita continued, “It wasn’t your responsibility –,”

Jeremie laughed suddenly, hurt and bitter, “Protect yourself how? You couldn’t protect yourself because I was dragging my feet on giving you a proper weapon –,”

“We’ve talked about this!” She said, “We agreed it was more worth your time to work on an antivirus!”

“For a virus that didn’t exist! If I had just double checked –,”

“Double checked what? The faulty data you were being fed? There was nothing you could have done! If you want to blame anyone, blame me. Maybe it – maybe helping me made sense at first, when things were able to be stopped at a moment’s notice. But then even when you got me to Earth it wasn’t over, and things got worse, things got more dangerous – when we realized XANA could escape? That we couldn’t just turn it off with a switch? That – that should have been it.” Her voice dropped as she took a shaky breath, “You should have just let me turn the supercomputer off.”

“You were ALWAYS worth the risk, Aelita!” Odd finally snapped, terror shooting through his heart at the broken look on her face, the implications of her words, “You… you matter to us more than anything! Look, I’m sorry for bringing this all up, alright? I thought we could just joke around about running Lyoko Warrior interviews! I didn’t mean to get everyone upset. And speaking of! Jeez! All of you are such downers on yourselves! There’s like, a billion different things that could have happened!” He held out a hand, ticking them off, “Maybe William might not have gotten captured and instead XANA got Yumi or anyone else! Maybe, I dunno, Ulrich saved Aelita temporarily but then XANA tossed him in the digital sea! Maybe Jeremie could have noticed that Aelita didn’t have a virus sooner, and XANA just made a move sooner! Maybe – maybe – maybe if you had just let Kiwi be virtualized normally and not fuse with me he would have been a great Lyoko Warrior and would have bit the Scyphozoa and killed XANA! We don’t know, alright? I’m just trying to say that – ugh, forget it! Sorry! Jeez!”

Odd rubbed at his eyes, surrendering to the frustrated and exhausted stream of tears that leaked out of them. All of them, all of this – he kept trying to play superhero, to pretend that everything was going to be alright like in the movies, but in his heart he had to admit that this was starting to feel futile. Aelita’s virus, XANA’s escape from the supercomputer, William’s capture, Jeremie’s first botched attempt at his anti-XANA program, Franz Hopper’s sacrifice, Yumi’s graduation, their failure to stop space station from falling, Jeremie’s second anti-XANA program getting stolen by the AI, and now the looming threat of their own graduation… he wanted to be joking about needing to interview new Lyoko Warriors, really, but if graduation took them away from the factory… away from each other…

A hand landed on his shoulder, he realized he didn’t need to know who it was to press his own on top of it, to squeeze it and feel loved, as more hands, more friends, found their way to his other shoulder, to his back.

“I’m sorry, Jeremie,” he said, “And everyone else. I didn’t mean to –,”

“Don’t,” came a muttered reply from Jeremie, “We’re all acting tired and stupid. I shouldn’t have yelled. I knew you didn’t mean it.”

Odd let out an exhausted laugh, rubbing his eyes of the last of the tears, looking up and seeing his friends around him, “How late is it?”

“Too late,” Ulrich replied, pulling his phone out of his pocket, “We’ve got… three hours until classes start.”

A collective groan broke the spell over the room. Odd looked under his feet to the almost-finished-poster. Silently, all of them returned to their working positions. Odd kneeled down to finish gluing down the last of the faces to the poster. As the lull of busy work started taking over his mind, William nudged him.

“Sorry, I, uh…” William looked uncharacteristically bewildered, “This must have happened while I was – did you say Kiwi fused with you?”

[mah-gah-lee]

be stuck with you - owen patrick joyner x (reader)

Word Count: 2303

Request: YES, from that sweet @idontcare011​, hope you’ll like it ! 

Summary:  you were late and a random boy comes into the elevator at the last minute. By some incredible force of fate (or pretty crappy weather) you find yourself stuck with the young man in this narrow cabin.

Warnings: panic attack and i think it’s all

disclaimer: I don't know Owen personally or what his life is like. All you will read in this "x reader" is from my imagination. My point is not to invade Owen's privacy. I don't want to offend him or offend anybody else in his life (family, potential girlfriend…I heard maybe he has one, so I don’t know but I don’t want to offend her).  All of this is not the reality

Tagged: @asdfghjkl-fanfics​ @standingtalllove​ @lukeys-giggle​ 

---

Thanks God, the quarantine was over and everyone could travel again. However, this stupid virus was not completely gone. Since the health crisis, you have adopted new habits, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator. But today, you were in a hurry, so you entered the cabin eagerly. The conference you were due to attend was starting in no less than twenty minutes, and your itinerary had said it would take you 15 to get to your planned location. But with the weather conditions creeping in out there, you were sure you would need a lot longer than advertised. The automatic door was closing when a hand stepped in the way. A young blond man appeared and slipped into the elevator. You grumbled at the action, making you fall a few more seconds behind.

 "Sorry" the boy said through his mask.

 But you didn't answer.

 You had almost ten floors to go down together. You looked in your bag for a while to make sure you had your recorder when you felt an uncontrolled jerk. Your body no longer held you in balance but you caught yourself on a side of the elevator as the young man accompanying you tended to stabilize you. The lights flashed for a while and then went out. Your eyes widened as your heart pounded.

 "oh no no no no no no no. Anything except that, please!" you said, frantically pressing a random button.

 “I think we stuck…”

  "Oh yeah, what makes you think that?" The fact that we weren't moving or that the lights went out? "

 The boy threw up his hands in defense, eyes wide with so much animosity.

 "Hey, I'm in the same situation. You don't have to be aggressive."

You groaned before leaning against one of the elevator walls, peering into the face of your elevator failure companion. He had blond hair; his tips reached the base of his neck. But his expressive blue eyes - seeming constantly anxious - reminded you of someone, but you didn't know who. You have pushed the alarm button to warn the staff that there was someone in the lift.

 “Sorry, it’s seems to be a bad day. I’m late and now I’m stuck in an elevator with a perfect stranger”

 “I’m Owen…Not a stranger anymore”

 “I’m y/n, but yes, you still are”

 Owen laughed at your outspokenness and you gave him a polite smile before you were silent for several minutes.

 After what seemed like forever - when it was only ten minutes - you looked at your phone. No networks. For no obvious reason, when everything seemed to be going well, your heart started to beat faster. The thought of being stuck here forever crossed your mind and ached in your chest. The boy in front of you seemed so calm, which made you even more anxious.

 "How the hell can you stay so calm"

 "Oh ... I'm dying inside, just trying to play it cool"

 You can help with giving him an amused smile, he had been so frank. But this little interaction did not bring you back down from your state. You were breathing harder and harder, your chest was heaving quickly, it was nearly out of control. Owen seemed to notice that and give you a concerned look.

 "Panic attack?"

 You nodded briskly and Owen approached you cautiously. You saw his hands move towards you and your gaze expressed fear but you were paralyzed to do anything.

 "I'm going to take that damn mask off you already."

 Gently, he grabbed the fabric mask and pulled a little on it to lower it, he reproduced the gesture with his own mask.

 "Look at me, just me. There's nothing around us. Take a deep breath. I'll count to 3 and then you'll breathe out. Okay?"

 you nodded and when he shook his to urge you to breathe you took a deep breath, like he told you to.

 "1..2..3"

 You sighed, keeping your gaze on him. You started once more and when the blonde asked you if it was better, you were shaking your head negatively.

 "We're starting over but… take my hands and squeeze them as much as you need. Don't worry about grinding them."

 You grabbed his hands and restarted each step over, crushing his hands. But the contact with matter, your breath and Owen's comforting eyes, help you gently. A soothing silence has settled between you. Owen had helped you through this panic attack when you didn't even know each other. But you could feel deep inside that this man was good. Things seemed to calm down for you and you thanked Owen with a genuine smile.

 “You know how to deal with it ... Thanks for that.”

 “I also suffer from anxiety and panic attack. But the elevator is big enough here that it doesn't cause me one. Although I am a little anxious ...”

 “hey, breathe Owen.” You replied with a smirk

 Owen laughed and shook his head as if to say "that's a good one!" You look at the young man again, staring at him intently. It was very rude but you couldn't put a name on his face anymore. You were sure you knew him. Was he a distant cousin? A neighbor? A guy you knew in high school? Or just a guy you saw in an ad? Maybe the ad for these new cereals!

 “Excuse me but ... I've seen you somewhere before, haven't I?”

 “In an elevator, yeah!” he joked

 You laughed he was funny

 “No, I mean ... I feel like I've seen you before but I really can't remember where.”

 he sighed, as if a little tired of the question. You were surprised at his reaction but Owen answers you anyway

 “Yeah, I don't usually talk about that when I first meet a girl, especially when I'm stuck in an elevator with her but ... I'm an actor. I played some stuff on Nickelodeon and now I'm supposed to shoot season two of Julie and the phantoms, it's a Netflix series.”

 You watched him chattering, you nodded then wide your eyes. This is where you saw it! You had been relentlessly browsing the Netflix catalog and seeing the trailer for the series he told you about, but you had avoided it, the show seemed too childish for you. You first reaction was to make fun of him

 "Again, don't forget to breath Owen. But the way, I didn’t want to bother you with that question."

 He laughed lightly then smiled politely at you. You didn't seem to be a hysteric or a weird person. He had a deep feeling that you were a good person, which is why Owen seemed to relax.

 "It's just ... for a while, I thought you were a fan and I didn't want things to be weird all suddenly "

 "Oh don't worry I haven't seen any of your shows.” you said nonchalantly

 Owen burst into laughter. Once again, it was bafflingly sincere and he was really starting to enjoy being stuck in an elevator with you. You smiled, the energy in the cabin was positive that you almost forgot you were stuck with this young man for almost half an hour. You didn't know when you were going to be able to get out of here but you didn't really care anymore for the sole reason that you wanted to get to know this man. You tilted your head back, resting it against the elevator wall before sighing loudly. Seconds later, your gaze turned to Owen again.

 “So tell me about this series that you’re filming. What is it about?”

 "It's a pretty cool show actually. It's directed by Kenny Ortega, I don't know if you see who he is."

 "Hell yeah ... he's the choreographer of Dirty Dancing"

 "Himself ... So what about the storyboard ... It's about ..."

 And then, you listened to him to tell you about the series. Something like a '90s band dying of food poisoning from a bad hotdog and returning twenty-five years later as ghosts to help a super talented young girl to make music after her mom passed away. It made you laugh; it was probably the dumbest death on TV after Marion Cotillard's in Batman. He couldn't even stop anymore so that he sometimes swapped over a few anecdotes from the set. You even got a little exclusive on season two before Owen stopped in the middle of a sentence.

 "Sorry, I got a little carried away. But when you like your job, it's pretty easy to talk about it."

 You smiled at him and Owen started asking you questions, about your work, your life, your passions and you were giving him back. The conversation was fluid, natural You learned that he was German, that his mother tongue was German until he was about four years old, that he had a sister and had lived with his parents until that year when he moved into his own apartment. Getting to know Owen was really nice and you could feel your stomach twist every time he smiled. He was a boy full of humor but also sarcasm.

 You've been stuck with Owen for an hour and a half now. You ended up sitting on the floor of the elevator. Boredom was really starting to take hold of you. You rummaged through your bag for something, anything. An idea crossed your mind when you saw the small block of post-it notes.

 "Owen"

 "hmm?"

 "How would you like to play a game?"

 "What kind of game do you want to play here?"

 "Who am I?"

 "Obviously you are y/n" he tells you with a smirk.

 You laughed before pulling out your notepad and a pencil to show it to the blonde. He claimed to have understood your intention, which made you smile even more. Of course, Owen knew the game you wanted to play. He nodded, and you'd write a celebrity's name on a sticky note before sticking it on your new friend's forehead. He did the same for you. Fortunately, your two post-its are well stuck. Owen spoke

 "I start: am I a man?"

 "Obviously" you say with a smirk, responding to the blonde's previous joke.

 Owen laughed, catching the tone of your voice.

 “But how funny she is! Is my character a man?” He continued.

 You did several parts. You even teased him when he made you guess Julie and the phantoms, because the game didn't stop only with characters, celebrities but also series, movies, musicals. You were laughing when there was another shake, stronger than the first, the lights came back on and you couldn't help but be disappointed. You looked at Owen and he seemed to have the same gaze as yours. The doors barely opened and you found the hotel staff, patiently waiting to ask if you needed medical assistance, while also offering you a bottle of water. You left the elevator car, hurriedly stuffing the many post-its into your bag. You didn't really know how to act with the blond guy next to you. You had formed a little bubble in that enclosed space and now it seemed to have burst. For some strange reason, it made you sad. Now is the time to part ways with your new friend.

 “well, good-goodbye, it was nice to meet you.”

 you rushed into the hotel lobby a little more, but Owen seemed to catch up with you, his long legs only having to take a few strides.

 "wait, y/n!"

 You turned to him, you could see the embarrassment on his cheeks, asking with a frown what was the cause.

 "I think you let that go"

 "No, I don't"

 You looked at the crumpled white paper. It even looked like a piece of chewing gum. And at first glance, Owen's perfectly white teeth were chewing one.

 "I think you did."

 He handed you the paper with a determination that convinces you. You bite your lip as you look at the series of numbers on the packaging: a phone number. His telephone number. Owen swallowed hard as he looked at you. His eyes never leaving your lips.

 "It's pretty spontaneous of me but ... I won't start filming until next week. I hope you're still here the day after tomorrow ... because I would really like to ask you to come have a drink with me ... "

 Your cheeks turned red, did he really just ask you for a date? You did not know what to answer. The urge to say yes was so present but you were afraid to rush. Perhaps humor was your only defense

 "it depends"

 "about what?"

 "Does this appointment include a blocking session in an elevator? This is the only way it works"

 Owen laughed before giving you a genuine smile, showing his perfectly aligned white teeth. God, what a beautiful man.

 "I can try to fix this and find a faulty elevator."

 "So expect a text from me"

 You smiled back at him and gave him a wink before turning on your heels. Owen's heart skipped a beat and he when he arrived several hours late in the hairdressing section of the set, Charlie laughed at him saying that he had never seen him so happy to have a haircut. hair. But in reality, the blond was only waiting for one thing, and that was to receive a message from you, which arrived in a second.

 (y/n) text : "After being stuck in an elevator, here I am stuck in traffic ... Are you sure you want a date with me, you might just end up stuck with me?"

 Owen couldn't help but smile broadly.

 Owen text : "I'm sure. I'd love to even be stuck with you (again).”

(y/n) text : “Fine, ghost boy. See you soon”

[rizumary]

Like A Soda Pop (part.2)

This was the highest peak of Hajime Iwaizumi’s delicate springtime of life—according to Tooru, who definitely didn’t have any say in Hajime’s love life. At all. (Or, the one where Iwaizumi got overwhelmed by a kouhai’s not-entirely-unwelcomed romantic advances and Oikawa did have any say in his love life, after all.) [Iwaizumi/OC; confession fic]

Writer: nutteu | AO3 version [part 1] ー [part 2]

There were days that felt like Akeno; soft, airy cotton candy days filled with wondering eyes and quick-silver heartbeats. Where his hands trembled with the confusion of wanting to hold Akeno’s hand or to punch the wall because he was too overwhelmed by her.

But, there were also days when Hajime felt like he ached so deep within his marrow. The cramp from their latest bout of harsh practices, the looming threat of competitions, the painful anxiety of losing, of not being able to play a little bit longer—just a little bit more—

For people like Tobio, like Ushijima, even Tooru, the ache must have been filled to the brim with growth and potentials. But for Hajime, it felt like bone deep weariness and fear. That it wasn’t enough, that he didn’t try hard enough, that eventually, he wouldn’t be able to catch up no matter how hard he worked for it. He was neither the gifted nor the talented. All he had was his love for volleyballs, and the stubborn, unmoving desire of reaching the pinnacle of championships with his team.

On those days, he smiled less, hit the balls harder than ever, took every cramp and ache in his muscles. He came early, went home the last. On those days, there was nothing he would like to do but scream, and practice until his legs give out; nothing but staying away from everyone and curl up and cry. The juxtaposing needs made him tired, so tired.

Tooru knew, of course he knew. On those days, he gave as good as he could; teased less, and pacified the other members when they were worried about Hajime’s unusual walls he erected around him. They all got used to it, in the end, letting him vent out his frustrations instead of coddling him. Joked around and acted like he didn’t run himself to the ground just the day before. They didn’t ask, because there were certain things that couldn’t be shared unless they were awake in the middle of the night, or too tired to pay attention properly after a rigorous training camp.

Akeno Hana brought a change to that—abruptly, with her brand of awkwardness and earnest intention.

When everyone else had left, she waited in the gym for him, sitting on the polished floor with a terrifying focus on her delicate face. Hajime almost jumped in surprise when he realized that he wasn’t alone. The irritation was fast to catch up to him. Tooru really needed something to gag his stupidly big mouth. A fist, preferably.

As if reading the hard lines on his face, Hana shook her head and talked first to soother his fraying nerves. “No one told me, they wouldn’t. No one sells you out, Iwaizumi-senpai. Although, they’re as worried as I am. I just—“ she hesitated, and Hajime let out a long sigh. It wouldn’t do anything to snap at her just because she was on the wrong place, at the wrong time.

He reached for his bottle of water and towel, and sat next to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t mad at you. Things are just… difficult for me sometimes,” he said. He didn’t know why he bothered explaining this to her. He never did, not even to Tooru; not even to his mom, though she probably understood anyway. Maybe it was the way Hana just showed to him that she perceived and paid attention more than anyone thought, maybe it was the patience he saw in her eyes, maybe it was because—

Oh, God, he thought, heaving a deep sigh that suspiciously wavered at the end. He was tired, he was so tired. Worrying about his passion, the continuation of his education, his career path—it all built up inside his chest, and in days like these, he couldn’t rationalize it, couldn’t clear his head enough to control his mind and emotions.

Hana nodded, and took the box of something that he assumed was a bento. She unwrapped the cloth covering, and he noticed, out of his will, that her hands was delicate, pretty. Acutely in contrast with his calloused, blistered hands. He wanted to try holding her hands, he thought, and shook his head to banish the thought away. Hana didn’t seem to notice, thankfully.

“I, uh, I made this,” she started, sounding shy and proud. “I remembered that you mentioned you like these, and—and you made me chicken karaage too when I was sad. I wanted to help you too, senpai. But I don’t know if I can do something that actually counts, so I thought—maybe at least I can cheer you up with these?”

Hajime looked over, and was stunned to silence. On the red bento box, alongside the regular assortments, were agedashi tofu that glazed so beautifully Hajime was reminded of his hunger. But above the dish, and the fact that he hadn’t eaten since lunch, the fact that she remembered, that she cared enough to try to cheer him up with this—Hajime swallowed, his throat felt dry all of the sudden. He forgot how to speak, for a moment.

“I—“ he croaked out, and was startled to realize that his eyes were watering. She must have been puzzled as to why he looked like he was about to cry right now, because she suddenly rambled in frantic manner, gesticulating with her hands as her small face scrunched up in worry and panic.

“Of course you don’t have to eat these if you don’t want to, senpai!” she hurried to explain. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to intrude or to patronize! I swear, I just—“ she bit her lip, and looked at him with pale, pleading eyes. “I just wanted to help. Please, let me help, Iwaizumi-senpai.”

He managed a small smile, and took the bento from her hands; felt an electric current ran through his fingers when they brushed against hers. “No, this is more than enough, Akeno. Really,” he said, when Hana still looked unconvinced, “you’ve helped a lot by just being here.”

And that might be too honest, contained more implications than what Hajime would be willing to admit right now, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it back or play it off as something mundane when Hana flashed him the most brilliant smile, happiness etched into the creases around her eyes. He smiled back, stronger, more sincere this time. They were silent after that, but it didn’t feel stifling. Just a comfortable silence to fill in the scant inches of distance between them.

On days like these, Hajime usually wore himself out until he couldn’t think, couldn’t stay awake long enough to let the fear consumed him. But this, he thought as he looked over to Hana’s still smiling face, it felt nice, too.

Hana confessed, out of the blue. Or not so much out of the blue for literally everyone.

It seemed like, Akeno still had one last surprise for him. The biggest, most unexpected surprise that actually felt like a massive, enormous bang in Hajime’s heart: a confession.

(Or maybe, just maybe, Hajime was too busy being conflicted with himself, too busy being enamored by Akeno Hana’s soft, sunny, enveloping charm, to notice that once again, Tooru was right. Hajime really was too dense about romance.)

At first it was like any other day. Of course, it wasn’t any other day. In his defense, Hajime rarely ever got the chance to marvel and enjoy the full extent of Valentine’s Day. Mostly because Valentine had no business at all in the volleyball court. It didn’t matter whether the whole school was in tizzy from the hormone buzz, if coach said lapped until they collapsed, then they’d lapped until they collapsed—Valentine’s Day or not.

Which was probably why Hajime didn’t suspected anything when Akeno walked alongside him, wrapped in her winter uniform and a pink scarf. It suited her, he thought, glancing down at the top of her head. She seemed… nervous. Or maybe she was just cold. She insisted on coming with him to the club, and it was pretty early in the morning. Maybe he could offer her his jacket, too? Yeah, he could do that.

When he opened his mouth to offer, however, Akeno ran ahead of him, before stopping, and extending something on both hands. For a moment, the world stopped. Hajime lost the words forming on his lips as he stared, open-mouthed, at the small, blue box in her gloved hand. She was bowing, her hair falling into curtains and hid the majority of her face, her voice though was as clear as the sun after a rainy day.

“I like you, Iwaizumi-senpai!”

For a heart-stopping second, there was nothing but the faint sound of the students in the distance; the echo of Akeno’s confession ringing in his mind; his accelerating heartbeat beating drums in his ears. He stood there, stock still, too shocked to wrap his head around the situation. Did Akeno… just say that she liked him? Like, the girl who had been charming him left and right and leaving him feeling warm and fuzzy, was actually here, offering him a box of chocolate, and confessing to him? What?

Unfortunately, his mouth only caught up with the last part. “Uh,” he croaked out, hesitant, bewildered, overwhelmed. “What?”

Akeno looked up then, and Hajime suddenly had the epiphany that her reddened face since they met this morning wasn’t just from cold. But because she was holding this in. She looked—afraid, but determined.

“I fell in love with you since the first time we met, senpai,” she said, her voice wavering for a little bit, before strengthening. “I have heard things about you from Kyoutani, but the first time we met, I was immediately taken by your charm. You were so kind even when I was embarrassing myself, you were patient with me, you helped me a lot, you paid attention to me, and you—“ she stopped to take in a breath, and powered through, as though if she didn’t get this out right here, right now, she wouldn’t be able to let out everything in her chest. Her eyes were bright with affection and determination and shyness, but her next words carried on without a hitch.

“You made me feel welcomed. You made me feel accepted and protected, cared for and cherished. I’m so happy when you asked me about things I like, when you mean it, when you hold me as I tripped, when we played together in the arcade. Every day we ate our lunch together, I felt the happiest because I could sit by your side and get to know you more. I’m thankful, that you let me know you in return, and that you trust me enough to open up to me.” There was a small smile playing on the curve of her lips, almost shy, full of happiness as she recalled her memories of them together. “I—I know that there are other girls who you like better than me, but senpai, I, too, wanted to shine in your eyes because in mine, you are the only one I’ve ever had the eyes for.”

Their breaths puffed out in small rush of fog, eyes wide as they stared at each other. Hajime, every so slowly, took the box of chocolate from her hands, and stared at it in amazement. Akeno’s previous words played in continuous repeat inside his head. He was—surprised, extremely so. But his chest felt so warm, despite the weather. It was just that he didn’t know what to say, didn’t trust himself enough to talk properly.

Akeno must have translated his silence into objection, because she seemed even more flustered than before, and her words started to jumble together. “And! I just thought—I thought, I wanted senpai to know about my feelings. Because they feel like they’re about to burst from my chest. Like—like a soda pop! I just wanted you to know, that I like you, senpai! And that you are very precious to me, and I’m thankful for all your helps as well, and that you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. So—so um—oh my god, what am I doing—“ she squeaked at herself, and looked up at Hajime with pleading eyes. “so—I just want to say—I like you so much, Iwaizumi-senpai.”

When Hajime still didn’t move, or say anything, Akeno visible gulped, and grinned stiffly. “Um, anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.” She laughed, awkward and very much still high on nervous energy. “Have a nice valentine!”

As she left him, he could faintly hear her murmur, “a nice valentine? Does that even make sense? Stupid Hana!” as she hit her head with her hand. Hajime took a long ass minute standing there, looking at her retreating back, and back to the box that he was pretty sure contained chocolates on his hand.

Everything was happening too fast for him to comprehend, and it almost felt like a dream. But it wasn’t. It didn’t feel so. Because the weight of the box was real, and Akeno’s swaying hair was still in his sight as she left, and the warmth that slowly spread inside him despite the coldness on his face was very much real. This wasn’t a dream. Akeno had actually confessed to him. As in, she liked him.

“Oh my Gods,” he whispered out brokenly after long minutes just staring at the spot where Akeno disappeared. “Oh my Gods she likes me too. Holy shit.”

The revelation, the sudden intensity of happiness, the giddiness that made him lost his breath. Hajime laughed, in disbelief and slightly hysteric because—he just couldn’t believe it. She liked him, as in liked him. . A romantic type of like, the one with fast heartbeats and the unbearable urge to hold their hands, or spend time with them, or smiling when they talked excitedly about their passion. The type of like that now had become one of the spotlights in his delicate springtime of life.

And then, he realized that for the entirety of the confession, he just stood there looking like a dead fish. “Oh my Gods,” he groaned, frustrated and panicked. He hoped Akeno didn’t make the wrong assumption. But then again, she might have. He didn’t even deign her with any answer whatsoever. Which, was fair. She didn’t ask him out or anything back there. So… so it was fine right? Right, it was fine that he didn’t answer because there was never a question to begin with. She just confessed her feelings, and then—and then Hajime could talk to her about his feelings too, and maybe then, he could ask her out. Yeah, sure, he could do that. He just needed to calm down first, and tried to wipe the giddy grin on his face.

(He didn’t meet Akeno for the rest of the day, but Tooru had seen the box of chocolate in his bag, and was so insufferably smug that Hajime had to punch him. He ate the chocolate at home. It was a tad bitter—she probably took the wrong type of chocolate—but it warmed his heart nonetheless.)

Akeno didn’t come to the club anymore after that. She avoided him in the hallways, didn’t come to their usual lunch time, didn’t reply to his messages, didn’t pick up his calls, even Kyoutani was at loss. Hajime was, to say the least, panicking. No, it wasn’t right, he was an absolute wreck.

He was worried about it to the point of considering just ambushing her after classes, but she would just squeak and run as she did these past few weeks. The other players had been asking about her, too. “Did you guys get into a fight?” they asked, or something like, “There’s finally a problem in the paradise, huh?” which would get a glare from Hajime, typically. He couldn’t exactly tell them that it wasn’t a fight; it was a confession, which was mutual, but they both were too dumb to deal with it properly.

It went on for about a month, before Hajime finally snapped, and turned to Tooru.

That motherfucker laughed. Of course he did. He spent his sweet ass time rolling on Hajime’s mattress, after eating Hajime’s cookies, laughing at Hajime’s misery. It hadn’t even been five minutes and Hajime had regretted this decision, very much so.

“So, in conclusion, she confessed to you, but was too nervous to ask you out and just hightailed it out of there?” Tooru asked, after calming down and wiping tears from his eyes.

“Yeah,” he replied curtly, frustrated and was five seconds away from throwing Tooru out of the window.

“And you were so shocked that you didn’t even say anything? And then you just stupidly thought she’d come around after that?”

He wanted to punch Tooru for that, but in the end, he just conceded with a defeated, “Yeah.”

Tooru exploded into another bout of obnoxious laughter. “Oh my Gods!” he wailed, “oh my Gods, Hajime, this is precious! I can’t believe it!” he dissolved into another giggle, as Hajime groaned and rubbed his face with both hands. He should have never asked Tooru, this just increased his blood pressure and made him consider murder.

Finally, though, Tooru took a pity on him, and said, “Iwa-chan, hana-chan is a simple girl, you know? She likes cute and cool things, she forgets anyone else is in the room when she talks to you, she cries eating your bentos, and she makes you handmade chocolate on valentine. You don’t need grand gestures, just give back what she gave to you—sincerity and clear affection.”

Hajime was stunned for a moment. He actually half-expected Tooru to joke about this and didn’t actually give a useful advice. But he was surprised yet again. He considered it for a moment, and Tooru left him to it after some more teasings.

Something simple, something she liked, and something he knew meant a lot to her. For the first time in weeks, Hajime might have a clue about what he should do. He just hoped that he was right, that it would be enough to win Akeno back.

It was almost six in the morning, and Hajime barely slept a wink last night. He stared at the ceiling in his room hard enough to make himself dizzy, as if he could drill a hole through it. After spending ungodly hours at the arcade yesterday, and quite possibly losing his pocket money for two weeks and several blood vessels from anger and frustration at the crane machine, he finally got the god forsaken thing that thought—wished—would help him and his ironically comedic, disastrous, wonderful crush on Akeno Hana.

He managed to sleep at ten, and then woke up at one am, thinking about ugly things that might transpire when he confessed. He tried to calm himself down, but the thoughts of what if she lost interest, what if she got heartbroken, what if she—kept him wide awake until 4 in the morning. Finally, the memories of spending time with her, the soft curve of her smile, the shine in her eyes when she talked about arts and her dream, the way she looked so sincere, so pretty on the day she confessed, calmed his nerves down. Enough to catch a little bit of sleep.

It didn’t last long, though. He was sleep deprived, was running on nervous energy, and his stomach felt like a knife had been twisted into it. When he finally couldn’t take it, he took his phone from the charging station, and, before he could lose the short burst of bravery, dialed Akeno’s numbers. He knew that girl had a habit of running late to school. This might the only time when she wouldn’t be aware enough to reject his call.

As he predicted, the call connected, and Akeno’s groggy voice greeted him from the other side. She sounded like a child abruptly woken up from a nap. It was cute, but Hajime wasn’t going to be distracted by cute things. Regardless if the said cute things came from the very person he liked. Whom he was going to confess to. Today. In just a moment. Oh Gods, he wanted to throw up.

Instead, he strengthened his resolve, and said, “Go get ready. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Akeno sounded more awake then, cautious. “But… why, senpai?”

Why indeed. But Hajime couldn’t just back off now. He didn’t want to. A month filled with uncertainty about their relationship and the abrupt absence of Akeno in his life, was enough to fill his courage. He didn’t want to go through that again. “I really need to see you, Akeno.”

There was a soft hitch of breath, and then Akeno’s trembling voice. “Y-yeah—uh, I mean, yes, I’ll get ready. Um, take care on your way here, senpai.”

Akeno was already waiting on the front porch when he got there. She looked nervous, but there was a hesitant happiness that peeked through her pale eyes. Her mom waved at him from the door jam, and he bowed, nervous and awkward all at once. They parted with a knowing look from her, and walked to the nearest bus stop that Akeno usually took.

They walked side by side in silence, the both of them too nervous to break the tension between them. It was as if they were waiting on the edge, and Hajime felt like throwing up again. Even playing in tournaments didn’t feel nerve-wracking, even if both the tournaments and Akeno Hana were just as important to him.

Akeno was the first to break the silence, however, by tripping on the side of the road, over nothing. Hajime’s quick reflexes prevented her from falling over and scraped her knees on the pavement, and she shot him a grateful smile. “Thank you, senpai.”

And maybe it was the familiarity, of holding her like this when she was about to fall, of the words he hadn’t heard in a month, of the smile he hadn’t seen much these days, that he just blurted out, “you’re so clumsy. If you got any clumsier than this, you might trip and lose your head, you know?”

Akeno, affronted, choked on air and replied, “Hey!”

He chuckled, and straightened her up. He started walking again, and Akeno followed his lead. Still looking ahead, he started pouring his heart out, so his gut could finally stop twisting, and his heart could finally calm itself down, and he could breathe once the truth was out.

“You’re so clumsy, and you easily got lost if someone didn’t hold your hand. You’re such a crybaby, and sometimes you’re either embarrassed too easily, or entirely too shameless. You look adorable either way.” Next to him, Akeno let out the trademark squeak of protest.

“You have no sense of personal space, and yet I like it when you’re close. Your eyes look the prettiest when you talk about your art; I just realized that you give your whole attention to me when I talk—and I like that as well. You always wake up late, you got these crazy eyes whenever you’re playing crane games, you cook well but you suck at making confectionaries. You are such a mess of genuine feeling and wonder, and I like you too much to even think about a proper confession.”

Next to him, Akeno had stopped walking completely, and instead was staring at him with wide, wide eyes. So he turned, and smiled, and said, “I’m sorry it took me so long to figure this out,” he pulled out the item from his pocket, and keeping his fist close around it, he offered it in front of her. “Happy white valentine,” he said. “I got this for you, and you better like it because I didn’t just spend my time torturing myself in that cursed machine, and not getting a wink of sleep because I was too nervous.”

“Too nervous for what?” Akeno finally spoke after being shocked still for so long.

“To ask you out, of course,” he said, and it felt so easy, sliding off his lips in light cadence. It felt alarmingly natural on his tongue, like it waited his whole life to reach this delicate springtime of life to finally say it. “Instead of, you know, running away after the confession.”

At that, Akeno finally snapped out of the trance and pouted at him. Even pouting like that she still looked unfairly cute. Hajime was indeed going insane. Simp, he faintly heard Tooru’s voice whispered viciously in his head, complete with the shit-eating grin.

“Hey! It’s not nice to embarrass people like that!” she yelled, high pitched and patting her cheeks to alleviate some heat. They looked appropriately reddened. “I was nervous, okay. You know I do stupid things when I’m nervous, senpai,” she whined, and he chuckled low.

He stepped closer to her, and slowly, carefully, brought his hands to where Akeno’s were and wrapped them around bunny plushy he had tried so hard to get, her soft smiles in mind every time he failed to get it. Hana’s eyes widened, pale irises recognizing the object in her hands immediately, and held back a sob as she realized that Hajime remembered. “So, how about it? Will you go out with me? I promise I’ll make you karaage any time you like, and I made really good confectionaries, and you can steal all my jackets as you like and we can get you all the bunny plushies in the world and—“

And Akeno was laughing, crying, taking the bunny plushy from his hands and rushed forward to envelope him in the tiniest, warmest hug he had ever received in his whole life. “Yes,” he heard her saying, then, more clearly than ever, like a ringing bell in the foggy morning, “yes, I’ll go out with you, Iwaizumi-senpai!”

And really, if people looked at them weird because they were hugging on the side of the road, crying and sniffling and giggling like middle school girls, Hajime could honestly give less than half a shit, because he was too busy wrapping his head around the unfathomable happiness that filled his heart to the brim. Oikawa was going to be insufferably smug, Hajime was too happy to even feel frustrated though.

Because they were shyly holding hands on their way to the bus stop, the bunny plushy safely strapped to Akeno’s bag, and her smile was bright enough to light the whole world. Hajime’s world, at least. And as he looked at her, smiling softly at the radiant joy on every line of her face, he felt his heart beat so loud he could hear it in his ears. Like his feelings and happiness and sheer force of affection for Hana was about to burst.

Like a soda pop.

[mldrgrl]

Broken Things 23/24

by: mldrgrl Rating: varies by chapter, rated R overall (THIS CHAPTER RATED R) See Chapter 1 for summary and notes

“Go on,” Melvin says to Mulder.  “Take care of your wife.  I’ve got the horses.”

Mulder holds Katherine close and takes her out of the stables.  She’s weeping, hiding her face in his neck and clutching at his shirt.  He can feel her tears against his skin and her trembling against his chest.  Her choked little cries are tearing him apart.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs to her, over and over again.  “You’re alright, I’ve got you.”

He brings her into the washroom and kicks the laundry washtub over so he can set her down on something.  He’s able to keep an arm around her as he lights the furnace and then shifts her from one side to the other so he can work the pump and fill the bathing tub.  He finds a bottle of bathing oil in the cabinet and pours a bit in.  The room suddenly smells of roses.  

“We’re gonna get you warm,” he tells her.  “And clean.”

“I’ll never be clean,” she whispers, and drops her head into her hands and cries harder.

“Yes, you will.”

When the bathing tub is full and the water is warm enough, he undoes the knot holding Katherine’s robe closed and pushes the ruined garment off her shoulders.  Her nightgown has a few stains on it and can probably be salvaged, but he’ll throw them both out anyway.  He’ll buy her a dozen new nightgowns and robes, ones that aren’t soiled or hold any terrible memories in them.

“My hair will get wet,” she says to him, when he tries to get her into the bathing tub.  He runs to their room and gets the box of hairpins for her.  He takes a cloth and wipes her hands clean and then she winds her braid up high on her head and even with no looking glass and shaking fingers, manages to pin it into place and off her neck.

“Okay?” he asks.

Katherine nods and then takes the hand that Mulder offers and climbs into the bathing tub.  She folds up almost immediately with her legs bent and her back hunched and her head resting on her knees.  Mulder takes up the rag, soaks it in the bathwater and then washes her back.

“I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me,” Katherine murmurs, her voice slightly muffled by her legs.

“I think the world of you,” he answers.  “That will never change.”

She turns her face towards him and rests her cheek on her knees.  He just keeps washing her back and shoulders, rubbing soft circles into her skin with the cloth.  She blinks slowly at him and in her eyes he can see the pain and exhaustion of a heavy burden she’s been carrying.

“I’ve loved you from the day I met you,” he says.  “And loved you even more every day since.  Whatever it is, Kate, I promise you without a shadow of a doubt that I’ll still love you even more tomorrow.”

She breathes deep, ribs contracting under his hand, and then exhales swiftly.  “My father is a Navy captain,” she says.  “He’s highly respected and very strict.  And my mother is very pious.  They’re both very set in their ways.  The only person I fear more than my father, or my mother, is God.”

“Mmhm.”

“I have an older brother named Bill.  Bill Jr.  And I have two younger sisters, Melissa and Charlotte.  I was very close with Melissa.  I miss her terribly.”

“Did something happen to them?”

“No.”  She blinks without really closing her eyes and her head sways slightly.  “My father didn’t believe much in education for girls, I think I’ve told you as much, but I begged him to stay in school.  He told me I could stay until I turned sixteen and then I would have to prepare to be married.  I agreed, even though I wanted so badly to be a doctor that I secretly applied to medical colleges, hoping that if one said yes, he would have to let me go.  Well, there was one college that accepted me, but my father still wouldn’t let me go.”

“You were accepted to medical college?”

Katherine nods and sniffles quietly.  “I told him that if he refused to let me go, then I would refuse to marry any man he tried to match me with.  He said that it was my duty to marry well and that if I refused to do so, he’d put me out on the street.  I said I would go happily if it meant I would no longer be under his tyrannical thumb.  It’s the only time I’ve ever defied my father and I did think then he would turn me out, but  instead he struck a compromise with me and said I was allowed to go to a nurse’s training school that was nearby, but that once I’d complete the training, I should have to find a husband.”

Katherine turns her face back into her knees and sighs heavily.  Mulder drops the cloth into the bathing tub and massages the back of her neck.  He waits for her to continue, wanting her to alleviate herself of this load, but not wanting to push her too far.  The balance between encouragement and pressure is delicate.

“There was a doctor there,” she says.  “Doctor Waterston.  Everyone revered him, including me.  Listening to him lecture, you knew right away he was brilliant.  When I had my placement interview, I told him that I hoped to be a doctor one day and he seemed to take an interest in helping me.  He allowed me to attend his surgeries and even permitted me to perform a few minor ones of my own, instructing me every step of the way.”

“You’ve performed surgeries?”

She turns to look at him again and nods a little.  “I’ve removed a bullet from a shoulder and closed the wound and amputated a foot.”

“Incredible.”

Katherine swallows and her body weaves slightly as she closes her eyes.  “Doctor Waterston invited me to dinner one night and told me he’d just received a new medical text that he thought I’d be interested in and took me to his personal office to look at it.  He told me he saw a lot of potential in me and knew I could be as brilliant of a doctor as he was, one day.”

A feeling of dread creeps up Mulder’s spine.  There is something about the monotone change in Katherine’s voice leads him to expect something sinister to come up.

“He…”  Her voice hitches slightly and pinches off.

“You don’t have to say it, Kate, if you can’t.”

“I need to.”  She shakes her head and takes a deep breath.  “He offered me a glass of brandy, which I did not accept, and then he offered me a glass of water and...and he sat beside me on the sofa as I tried to review the text.  I remember thinking that I felt a bit uncomfortable because he was sitting so close. And then...and then I couldn’t focus and I felt very tired and my limbs felt paralyzed.  I told him that I felt strange and he said it was nothing to worry about.  But...then he was holding me down and I did not know why and I told him he was hurting me and he got very angry and told me to stop talking and he put his hand over my mouth.  I remember that there was some kind of stain on the ceiling and I stared at it.  I don’t know how long I stared at it.”

Mulder feels like he’s going to vomit.  He breathes in and out through his nose and rubs Katherine’s back, but he thinks he might be coming out of his skin.  He would like to find this Doctor Waterston and rip him apart with his bare hands.

“I don’t remember getting home,” she says.  “I remember waking the next morning and feeling ill and...and very sore between my legs.  After that night, he behaved as though I was a stranger.  He didn’t call on me in class, didn’t offer to allow me to observe any surgeries, and didn’t seem to acknowledge I existed at all.  I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and I was sick over it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I must have let him believe he could touch me.”

“No, you didn’t.  You thought he was being kind and he took advantage of you.”

“My father had told me that no good would come of me going to school and he was right.  God has been punishing for my ambition.”

“I don’t believe that.  I don’t believe that at all.”

“I was so sick about the whole thing that I went to see a specialist about the constant nausea and body aches I was experiencing.  He told me I was with child and I told him I didn’t know how that was possible because I wasn’t married.  He must have thought I was so ignorant.  I was ignorant, though.  I’d...I’d read about pregnancy and childbirth in my medical texts, but nothing told me how it happened.  My mother told me only married women could have babies.  I know now how ill-informed I was.”

Katherine pauses there and then lifts her head.  She tilts her face up and Mulder can see the slow tears that run down her cheeks and drip from her chin.  He wipes them away, but they keep coming.

“I tried to tell Doctor Waterston about my condition, but he told me would publicly accuse me of blackmail and have me expelled from the program.  He said that no one would believe me if I said the baby was his and that the word of a respected doctor meant more than that of a fallen woman.  And then he gave me a five dollar note and the name of another doctor that he said would get rid of the problem.”

“Oh, Kate.”

“I didn’t.  I couldn’t.  That would be a sin.”  She shakes her head.  “I left school.  I told my mother what had happened and she was very upset with me.  She didn’t know how I could do such a vile and wicked thing and bring such shame to the family.  She didn’t know where she went wrong to raise such a common whore of a daughter and said the devil had to have taken hold of me and the best I could do now was repent for my sins and pray that He would forgive me.”

“You did not do anything wrong,” Mulder says, emphatically.  “I am sorry that your mother said those things to you, but you have to believe me when I tell you that none of that is true.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

Mulder does not know how to soothe her.  He was not raised religious and until now has held no real opinions on the church, but his blood is boiling.  He will forever hold malice in his heart for the ideology that would make the most wonderful woman he’s ever met feel so worthless and wicked.

“Believe me,” he says.  “Trust in me when I tell you that you are not sinful.”

Katherine sighs.  She sniffles and wipes a wet hand down her face.  “Then why was I punished so harshly?” she whispers.

His mouth goes dry and his heart feels like it drops into his gut.  Her sorrow pains him.  He remembers once that he happened upon his aunt in her study while she was reviewing correspondences and she seemed very angry over a letter she had received.  When he asked her what was wrong, she told him that women were always suffering for the whims of men.  And then she’d stared at him hard and told him to never, ever trifle with a lady unless he intended to be a husband or a father.  He was eight years old at the time, but he’d never forgotten it.  And he vowed then and there to never, ever have a whim, whatever that might be.

He looks at his wife and he knows she has suffered, more than he even first suspected.  He wishes he’d known her sooner.  Wishes he could have had occasion to bump into her one day before anything bad had happened to her.  Because he knows deep in his heart that he would have known right then and there that he would marry her, just as he knew a few months ago.  At the very least, maybe if he’d gotten to her first, she would not have married Jack Willis.  But, how did that happen?

“How did you come to marry Jack Willis?” he asks.

“My father knew of him and knew he had some sort of trouble with a debt.  He offered to pay the debt if he would marry me.  Jack agreed, but I don’t think that either of us knew that even though I now had a husband, my parents told me I had to leave and never to come back.  They said I was a bad influence over my sisters.  They said I could ruin their chances for a good marriage.  They thought that if anyone were to ever find out the truth about the baby...”

Katherine trails off and then turns her face up again.  Tears leak so constantly down her cheeks he’s afraid she may never stop crying, but she’s silent and her gaze becomes utterly vacant.

“Kate, what...what happened to the baby?”

“Jack had people in Kentucky and so he took me there.  A lot of that time is...I have a hard time remembering some of it.”  Katherine wrinkles her forehead and closes her eyes.  She touches her face with her fingertips like her head is aching.  “They weren’t very kind to me, or to Jack.  An Aunt or a cousin of his said she was a midwife and said she’d see to me when the time came.  It wasn’t that long before I started having pains one night and bleeding, but I had barely let out my skirts by then and I knew it was much too soon.  To answer your question, I don’t know what happened to the baby.  They wouldn’t let me see it.  I’d lost a lot of blood and was too weak to protest.  Jack said it was just as well since he didn’t want to raise a bastard anyhow.”

“That sonofabitch,” Mulder mutters, before he can stop himself.  He grits his teeth in anger.  Jack Willis is lucky he’s already dead.

“There were three more babies that came and went after that.  I think they must have known what kind of world they might be coming into and it was a blessing that they decided not to stay.  I wanted each one of them, I truly did, but I didn’t know how I would protect them when I couldn’t even protect myself.”

Kate breathes out a huge sigh after that and drops her head to her knees once more.  Her shoulders start to shake and Mulder feels his throat constrict and his eyes burn with his own tears.  He cries with her and for her, resting his head against the back of her shoulder as he wraps his arms around her.

↭

She’s never felt so exhausted in all her life.  She wants to lay down, curl up, and sleep for days.  Her eyes burn with four years worth of tears.  She’s cried herself dizzy and it takes her some time to realize that Mulder is crying as well.  She reaches up to run her fingers through his hair.  He turns his face and kisses her shoulder.

“I’ll understand if you want me to go,” she says.

“Not a chance in hell, honey.”  He lifts his head and cups her cheek.  “I knew you were strong, I knew you were brave, I just didn’t know how strong and how brave.”

“I don’t feel very strong.  Or brave.”

“You are.”

“I’m so tired.”

“Come on.  Let’s get you to bed.”

Mulder helps her out of the bathing tub and wraps her in a towel.  He lifts her easily and carries her to bed.  He gets her into fresh nightclothes and undresses down to his drawers and then climbs into bed with her and pulls her tight into his arms.  They’re face to face, nearly nose to nose.

“I am terribly sorry that I lied to you,” she says.

“You never lied, you just needed time.”

“I was just so afraid that...I didn’t want you to know how low I really was.”

“It never would have mattered to me.  It doesn’t matter to me now.”

“I believe that you mean that.”

“I do.”  He shifts and holds her cheek, stroking her brow with his thumb.  “There’s something that I should tell you too.  Something about my family as well.”

“Alright.”

“Are you familiar with Fawkes Publishing House?”

“I think so.  Maybe.”

“Do you know the writer, E. M. Abbott?”

“Of course.  I read all his books.  They call him the Charles Dickens of the Americas.”

“Mm.”  Mulder chuckles.  “E. M. Abbott is my aunt.”

“Your aunt?”  Katherine pulls back a bit from Mulder and opens her mouth, aghast.  “E. M. Abbott is your aunt?  The aunt that raised you?”

“Yes, great aunt Emeline.  My grandmother and Auntie were the daughters of William Fawkes, who started Fawkes Publishing House.  When my aunt began writing at a young age, her father told her no one would buy books written by women, but he still thought she was extraordinarily talented and of course he wasn’t going to pass on the opportunity.  He told her he would publish her works under a pseudonym.  Everyone called her Em since she was a young girl and she liked Abbott because it was the first name she could think of that came first, alphabetically.  And so Emeline Beatrice Fawkes became E. M. Abbott.”

“That’s extraordinary.”

“And a well-guarded secret in publishing.”

“How sad though, that she could never get the recognition she deserved.”

“Oh, Auntie actually enjoyed that she’d so thoroughly pulled the wool over the literary community’s eyes.  She took great delight in reviews that particularly focused on her unique perspective that was like ‘no other man.’  I would tend to get angry on her behalf though.  I found it very unfair, very unjust.”

“It is.”

Mulder nods.  “I have done my best to try to change things though.  Fawkes Publishing puts out more novels by women than any other major house out there.”

“What?”  Katherine raises her brow slightly.  “When you said that sometimes you conduct business in Boston, what did you mean by that?”

“I sit on a board representing the family’s remaining interests in the company.  We don’t necessarily handle any of the day-to-day anymore, but we own a significant share, which gives us, or me, rather, a fair amount of control.  Let me tell you, publishing women writers has proved to be profitable over the years.  Extremely profitable, actually.”

She ducks her head a little and snorts softly.  “I was a little worried at how freely you spent your money.”

“I can assure you that money is not something you’ll ever have to worry about.”

“I think you could have absolutely nothing and I would still love you.”

Mulder lifts his head from the pillow and leans up on his elbow.  “You love me?” he asks.

“I do.”

He smiles and then lays back down and pulls her against him with a sigh.  She tucks her head down under his chin and wraps her arm around his back.  A strip of moonlight shimmers on his arm and she gazes at it with heavy eyelids.  She must be very tired or her imagination is playing tricks on her, but his skin seems to radiate a brilliant blue hue mixed with a bit of red.

[cherishingstydia]

Potential Buddie 5+1? 🥺

Five times Eddie and Christopher (or just Eddie) are Buck’s safe haven + the one time he is theirs.

Only if you wanna though ❤️

Thank you for the idea! I hope you like it; and hope this is kind of like what you might have been thinking; it mostly just Buck and Eddie, but there is some Chris in there too🥰

1.

They’d lost someone on the job, Buck tried to save them, but it was too late. Everyone knew it wasn’t Bucks fault, well everyone but Buck.

Buck left work before Eddie could even talk to him. So if Buck won’t come to Eddie, Eddie will just have to go to Buck.

Buck sat alone in his apartment reliving every moment trying to figure out what he could have done differently.

The door opened, slightly startling Buck.

“That key is for emergencies.” Buck said.

“Yeah this is an emergency.”

“No it’s not.” Buck huffed.

“Yes it is. I can’t say I know how you’re feeling exactly, but I’ve all been there, I know what it’s like when you can’t save someone.”

“Eddie what if I could have done more? What if I could have saved him?” Buck said with tears welling his eyes.

Eddie moved closer and pulled Buck into a tight hug.

“It’s ok.” Eddie whispered.

Buck let out a small sigh already feeling more comforted in that moment.

“Buck I know you, and I know you do whatever it takes to save someone. You did everything you could, and as hard as it is sometimes there’s only so much we can do because we’re only human.” Eddie said rubbing his hand on Bucks back.

“I keep thinking of what I could have done differently, but nothing seems like it would work.”

“Buck he might have been breathing when we got there, but there was no saving him.”

“I know....thank you.” Buck said pulling away from the hug to look Eddie in the eyes.

“For what?”

“For saying exactly what I needed to hear.”

“Always.” Eddie said kissing Bucks temple.

2.

It’s not like a Buck had never had a home, he did he had the house he grew up in as well as several apartments of his own, but he never really knew what home felt like until Eddie and Chris. His apartment only felt like home when they were there the moment they were gone it just felt empty.

Buck came home to his apartment after spending the entire day with Diaz boys. This is when it really set in how lonely he felt. When he went from being with two of the most important people in his life to being alone at his apartment.

Bucks phone rang. It was Eddie.

“Hey.” Buck smiled.

“What are you doing.”

“Nothing much. I’ll probably go to bed early.”

“Well if you’re aren’t too tired I was thinking maybe you’d want to come back over. Honestly I miss you already, and Chris does too.”

“I miss you too. I’ll be there soon.”

Buck drove to Eddies with a smile plastered on his face.

When he got there Chris was waiting at the door.

“Hey buddy.” Buck smiled.

“Here I made you this.” Chris grinned handing Buck a card.

It said:

‘Will you move in with us?’

“Uh...” Buck paused looking at Eddie whim nodded in approval with a grin.

“I’d love to.” Buck said feeling even more at home than he had before. He’d never felt like a guest in Eddies house, but now he knew he never would be.

3.

Buck woke up in a panic, he had been having nightmares. He felt like they were stupid. He knew they weren’t realistic, but they were still kind of terrifying.

Eddies strong arms tightened around Buck.

“You’re ok. I’ve got you.” Eddie whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry?” Eddie asked with concern.

“I woke you.”

“I’m glad you did. I want to be here for you any time you need me.”

“It was just a stupid unrealistic dream.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be upsetting, and I want you to know no matter how stupid you think it is you can come to me anytime to talk...even if I’m asleep.”

“I love you.” Buck smiled.

“I love you too.” Eddie said placing a soft kiss to Bucks cheek.

4.

It wasn’t that Buck wasn’t over Abby he was, and had been for a long time. It was just seeing her brought up the memories of what it felt like to be left behind and it was only a matter of time until it happened again with Eddie.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie asked.

“Nothing.”

“Buck you need to remember that I know you better than I know myself, and I know somethings wrong.” Eddie said grabbing Bucks hand.

“I just I can’t help, but think about Abby and the way she left me. The way it felt.”

“Buck I think I know where you’re going and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to you that I am not leaving. You’re stuck with me.” Eddie smiled.

“Really.” Buck said with a half smile.

“Do you trust me?”

“More than anyone.”

“Ok then I hope you can trust me enough to believe me...even if you don’t believe me yet. I hope you can someday.”

“I’m starting to.” Buck said feeling like some of the weight had been lifted from his chest. Eddies words really meant a lot, and Buck trusted Eddie so he trusted he could believe him.

5.

Buck groaned as he hung up the phone with his mom. Eddie came up behind Buck to run his shoulders.

“I don’t wanna be like them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to be a good parent....I mean some day. I wanna be someone who’s there for their kids.”

“You already are.” Eddie smiled as Buck turned around. “We’ve basically been coparenting Chris basically since you met him, and you are a wonderful father.”

“I’m not his father you are.”

“Buck you can have more than one.” Eddie smiled.

“I don’t want to overstep.”

“Buck you never have to worry about that. Part of what made me fall I love with you was hom much you love my son. In fact once we get married I also think you should adopt him.”

“Married?”

“I mean I’d like to some day...if that’s ok with you.” Eddie smiled.

“Someday.” Buck smiled.

“Someday soon.” Eddie whispered before kissing Buck.

“Someday....real soon Buck smiled.”

+1

Buck went to Maddie and Chimneys to help put together some new furniture. Eddie was coming to help after dropping Chris off at school.

As time passed Buck was getting worried because even with traffic Eddie should be back by now.

Buck called Eddie, and no answer. He called a few more times and still no answer. Finally Eddie called.

“Sorry. Ok so don’t freak out. Chris and I are both fine, but I can’t come help today. There was an accident and he’s pretty shook up so he won’t be going to school.”

“What? Where are you?”

“We’re ok. You just help Maddie and I’ll see you later. The truck is still drivable so I’m going home.”

Buck hung up the phone and said goodbye to Maddie and Chimney. Nothing would keep him from being there for Eddie and Chris.

Eddie and Chris came in the front door.

“Hey you didn’t have to come home.” Eddie said.

“Yes I’d did. This is where I need to be.” Buck said scooping up a clearly shaken Chris. “It’s ok I’ve got you.”

“Thanks Buck.” Chris said snuggling up as they sat on the couch.”

“Anytime buddy.” Buck smiled.

Buck looked at Eddie motioning for him to sit on the other side of him. When Eddie did Buck wrapped his other arm around him.

“You’re ok.” Buck said looking Eddie right in the eyes, and he could see Eddie wasn’t ok like he was saying.

“Chris will you be ok for a minute? I need to talk to your dad.” Buck asked and Chris nodded.

Buck grabbed Eddies hand leading him to the kitchen.

“Eddie it’s ok.” Buck said reassuringly.

“Is it? I could have gotten Chris seriously hurt.”

“Eds it wasn’t you’re fault.”

“I should have been more careful.”

“Eddie I know I wasn’t there, but I know you were careful. You always are.” Buck said pulling Eddie in for a hug.

“Being in your arms is already making me feel better.”

“I feel the same way with you. Now let’s get back in there.” Buck said pulling Eddie back to the living room to the couch where he snuggled up with them both.

[mischas]

You should def do a top 20 or top 10 or top 5 episodes of the OC one day 👀 I said three different amounts because I don't know what you'd be willing or even have the time to do, but I would take whatever we can get while also not being able to deny that I would love to hear your 20 favs if you'd be down, but I know that's a lot. They don't necessarily have to be ranked, I'm fine either way! Some people hate ranking stuff which I understand, I don't mind it though. I'm assuming the Mall Episode and all of a few of the Chrismukkahs would be up there? A lot of season 1 eps? There's that one where Seth and Summer paint/reorganize Marissa's room and the core 4 end up cuddling on the bed together. I'm so curious! And full disclosure I only recently watched the OC for the first time this summer, and had never really heard of it before a friend recommended it to me after I had binged the original Gossip Girl. I was born in 96 and just completely missed its place in pop culture 😭 haven't seen OTH either, but maybe one day. We'll see lol. There's so much content these days and while I am in the mood for teen drama sometimes it's not my favorite genre. While I was watching the Mischa pieces dropped so that was interesting. Hate what they did to Marissa as a character. 100% team Mischa/Marissa. Getting through season 4 was ROUGH. Followed your blog right after I finished watching I think because I really wanted to know what other people thought of the show. Love hearing your thoughts. Sorry for rambling a bit x

Thanks for sending this in!

Haha, I can probably do a quick top 5 for ya:

1x27 The Ties That Bind

2x15 The Mallpisode

1x01 Pilot

1x07 The Escape

3x01 The Aftermath

And no I love ranking!! It's fun and helps me organize my thoughts! Tbh, I'm not a huge fan of any Chrismukkah ep, but 2x06 The Chrismukkah That Almost Wasn't is my fave. I feel like the Chrismukkah eps never position Marissa in a favorable light so they make me cringe but I love the drama of 2x06. I don't really get when people say they hate Lindsay since she's boring when her father is literally Caleb Nichol and Marissa's stepsister. I mean the show only touched on the awkwardness of Marissa/Lindsay in 2x09 but the potential is SO there for good tension. Maybe it's me living in those possibilities more than anything else.

1x24 The Proposal is a fave for sure. Definitely a top 10er! Aww it's okay! I was born in '95 and weirdly got into it in high school when it wasn't streaming anywhere and I had to watch on DVDs and SoapNet when I was sick. Oh, SoapNet. Those were the days. Eh, I could live without OTH. It's not as great as The OC even at its height, but s2 of their show is fantastic. I made the mistake of witnessing the Leyton vs. Brucas ship wars and they scarred me for life. No joke, if you got into that show during that era, you will never get over it.

I love some teen dramas but I'm not a huge afficiado or anything. If you're looking for some 90s/00s teen drama and a relationship that has you shook and subverts narrative expectations, Dawson's Creek is your fix. Their first two seasons are contentious IMO but oh my god in s3 you'll have an otp for life. But that show also struggles with female characterization.

Anyway, congrats on getting through s4 of this show! That's honestly an achievement. Actually, getting through s3 of this show is also an undertaking. That shit gets so tired but does pick up toward the end. Here on this blog I don't really acknowledge what happens in 3x25 because I firmly believe that Marissa sailed away to Greece and lived her best goddamn life. Thank you so much for stopping by on this blog! It's nice to feel like I'm not alone in my thoughts for this sort of niche show that ended so long ago. You're always welcome here for a chat and a read. And I'll get on those top 10 and 20 lists!

Right now we have these in the top 10 (out of order):

1x12 The Secret

1x22 The LA

1x24 The Proposal

2x24 The Dearly Beloved

And top 20:

1x02 The Model Home

1x11 The Homecoming

1x14 The Countdown

1x23 The Nana

2x09 The Ex-Factor

2x16 The Blaze of Glory

2x18 The Risky Business

3x03 The End of Innocence

3x25 The Graduates

Often I struggle with remembering if I love an episode or if I love it for a significant scene that happens in an otherwise unremarkable or just plain fine/good episode such as:

1x04 The Debut

1x08 The Rescue

1x10 The Perfect Couple

2x03 The New Kids on the Block

2x14 The Rainy Day Women

2x23 The O.Sea

3x02 The Shape of Things to Come

3x08 The Game Plan

Like, do I actually like these episodes enough to put them in a top anything list? Or do the episodes stand out because I adore one or more scenes in them? The s1 ones I do actually love more than the others since s1 is the bomb. Also 2x14 is an overrated episode I said what I said. The only really iconic thing is the final (incredible) Champagne Supernova coda which is the prime example of me thinking I love an ep while only remembering it for one thing. Anyway!!

[seaweedbrain404]

Wolfstar Au!: Hot and Cold (pt 2 of Parties and Morning Regrets)

@icitlali asked if there was a second part and um- yeah i wrote this, there may be more parts to come

pt 1

pt3

read it on ao3

Remus thought inviting Sirius up was the right thing to do which is the only reason he did. He dared to let himself hope but he didn’t really want to see Sirius. Still, Remus had manners and it was so cold outside that his own fingers were turning purple. Leaving Sirius out in the cold and making him probably walk home seemed too mean, even for Remus. Although, he thought Sirius definitely deserved it.

He followed Sirius up to the flat, Lily looked more than surprised when she saw Sirius come in and gave Remus another look. It was one of those looks that Remus didn’t like getting, the we’re-going-to-talk-about-this-later kind of look. He shrugged it off, too preoccupied with his bloody hip.

“Remus, did you really walk all the way here?” Lily crossed her arms over her chest as Remus closed the door behind them.

“Yeah, so what” He replied through gritted teeth. “I’m going for a shower to wash off the smell of stale alcohol”

“You’re going to be the death of me one day, Remus Lupin” Lily’s voice called to his retreating back. “Sirius, how are you?”

Remus heard vague small talk as he navigated his way to his bedroom. The pain in his hip wasn’t unbearable exactly. It was just bad enough for it to consume all his thoughts. All he needed was a warm bath, some painkillers and to limit his movements for the rest of the day. Easy. Unfortunately, the bath would have to wait until later though seeing as it would probably be rude to soak in the tub while having a guest over.

Showering after a night out was always a pleasant experience. He emerged from the shower just a couple minutes later with damp hair, a stolen pair of Lily’s yoga pants and a clean jumper.

“Ah, here’s the idiot who has no regard for his health” Lily smiled as Remus walked into the kitchen. “Are those mine?”

“Maybe, painkillers please?” He walked across the room and leaned his chin on Lily’s shoulder.

Sirius watched the interaction between the two with some hint of longing in his eyes. Remus wasn’t sure why, maybe it was because he had never been so casually touchy with anyone but now him and Lily were even closer than they were in school.

Lily wrapped an arm around his waist, rubbing circles on his hip. “Sirius, there’s a small pill bottle in the cupboard just there-“ she pointed to the right above her head “-would you mind grabbing it please?”

Sirius blinked for a moment, seemingly frozen at the sight of them. Then, he nodded. “Yeah- yeah, I got it”

He passed Lily the retrieved painkillers without looking at them. Lily hummed gratefully in return, easing Remus, who had hid his face in the crook of her neck, off her. He leaned back against the counter and Lily switched the kettle on.

“I promised Mrs Pettigrew from next door that I’d pick up her groceries today” Lily turned to Remus, glancing at Sirius, “and do a bit of cleaning for her since her grandson is out of town, do you think you’ll manage?”

“Yeah” Remus breathed out. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay”

Lily pursed her lips and looked to Sirius again. “Make sure he stays home, yeah?”

Remus made a noise of protest as Sirius nodded, “I doubt he’ll want to listen to me”

“Lily, I can take care of myself”

“Hardly, you’re in a right state after being without me for a few hours” She scolded, “If you strain yourself any more then you’re going to really fuck up your hip”

“I can’t fuck up something that’s already fucked, can I?”

“I mean it, take it easy and don’t be an idiot”

“Alright, fine”

“And I want to talk to you later”

Remus paled a little at that, despite fully seeing it coming. He made a noncommittal sound and Lily, satisfied with herself, left the room to layer up on clothes and help the nice old lady who lived across the hall.

There was a tense moment when she left. The kettle went off and Remus poured himself a cup, then paused. “Tea?”

“Sure”

Sirius seemed more relaxed now that Lily had gone. It was as if he had been on best behavior when she was there and now he didn’t have to be. Remus couldn’t really blame him, Lily could be very scary sometimes and she was always unreasonably overprotective of Remus. In all fairness, he felt the same way towards her.

So Remus poured two cups of tea and then added milk and sugar accordingly. He had assumed that Sirius took his tea the way he did back in school and he was only a little ashamed he still knew what the other man liked in his tea off the top of his head.

“Am I allowed to ask about the accident?” Sirius picked up his cup and took a sip.

“Why do you want to know?” Remus retorted, taking a painkiller.

“Lily wouldn’t tell me… and I’m…. worried” Sirius looked embarrassed to admit it but he did admit it which was good enough for Remus. It showed some sort of growth, some kind of potential.

“Depends on whether you’re going to pity me or not because frankly, I don’t care much for it”

“Jesus, you don’t have to be so snappy”

Remus scowled at him, not saying another word. He didn’t care about being snappy in that particular moment. His hip hurt like hell, he could feel his leg slowly going as well and whenever he told people anything about the accident they all treated him like a fragile porcelain doll.

Sirius cleared his throat before speaking again. “I won’t pity you, if you don’t want me to”

“What do you want to know?” Remus asked, disregarding what Sirius had said.

“What happened?”

“I worked at this publishing place, had a late night so I took a cab home” Remus began, even thinking about that night made his heart race and his eyes sting. “Someone was driving under the influence and hit us- the cab, I mean.. and it was really bad but they put these screws and plates all in my side, shoulder down to my shin”

Remus paused a moment, wiping his eyes on the back of his palm. Sirius made to touch him but he jerked away, a little too fast and hissed in pain. Sirius retreated his hand, looking crestfallen.

“Anyway, I had to quit the job cause it was too far to walk and I refused to get in any type of car or bus or really any type vehicle since then” Remus rushed the end of the story, his hands were shaking and his throat felt tight.

Sirius took a step forward and this time Remus allowed him to. He carefully opened his arms and slowly wrapped them around Remus, giving him more than enough time to move if he didn’t want this.

Remus, however, was just exhausted. He collapsed right into Sirius’ arms which tightened around him. The bad thing was, he was still shaking, his lungs refused to take in air and oh, there was the whole thing about just falling into his ex-boyfriend’s arms. Good thing was, he felt safe.

Then he started crying, his own arms wrapping around Sirius’ waist while his arms were around Remus’ back. He was pretty sure the only reason he still remained standing was Sirius’ strength forged by years of playing rugby. Remus wanted to kick himself, everything about this situation was just so pathetic and he hated it. He hated himself for it.

Sirius, meanwhile, said nothing and just rubbed circles on the taller man’s back. “I’m sorry, I’ve been horrible to you and now you’re literally comforting me, maybe I am the asshole”

“Nah, I kind of deserved it”

“Yeah you did”

“Hey! you’re not supposed to say that”

“But it’s the truth”

“Shut up”

Remus let himself laugh quietly. He was mortified by this display of vulnerability and dearly wished the ground would open and swallow him whole. Then he made a feeble attempt at pushing Sirius away, nearly toppling over himself. He had to grip the counter behind him to stop himself from hitting the floor. Sirius made to catch him but Remus swatted his hand away.

“I think you should go”

“But I promised Li-“

“I’m tired and she’ll be back soon”

Lie. Remus knew that Lily would be gone for at least two more hours, maybe more if Mrs Pettigrew offered biscuits.

“Then I’ll just stay till she comes back, she really worries about you” Sirius shrugged like it was final and Remus didn’t want to talk about it so he slowly hobbled to the living room.

“Do you-“

“No”

Sirius started asking but Remus snapped at him before he could finish his question.

“Sorry” Sirius mumbled, hands up in surrender. Remus could feel eyes on his back as he managed to get to the couch. He switched on the telly, laying on the side of his body that hurt the least.

Remus figured that if Sirius didn’t leave, then maybe he could ignore him to the point of leaving. Unfortunately it didn’t work because this was Sirius so instead of sitting on the chair near the couch or even on the floor, he stood at Remus’ head. Hands were gesturing for Remus to sit up but he ignored them.

“Remus, squish over a minute”

With a groan, he turned onto his back and sat up. Sirius slid into the open space and Remus turned so that his feet were at Sirius’ lap instead of his head. He wasn’t sure how his body would react if Sirius started gently twirling strands of his hair and admiring them as if they were made of gold.

Remus closed his eyes, feeling fingers tracing shapes on his exposed ankles.

Suddenly Sirius spoke. “You and Lily have gotten really close”

His eyes shot open, a little startled by the tone. He wasn’t sure how long he was out but he definitely slept at least twenty minutes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His voice was groggy with sleep, the side of his mouth damp from drool

“It’s weird, I’ve never seen you so much as hug anyone”

Remus wiped the side of his mouth. “People are allowed to change and Lily is my best friend”

“It’s just- you’ve changed so much and I’m struggling to keep up” Sirius’ tone was strange, the most un-Sirius thing Remus had ever experienced him do since they met.

Remus’ eyebrows knit together, a frown now playing on his face. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, y’know… besides, I don’t have to change according to your terms”

“I never said that” Sirius spat.

Remus sat up in response, leaning back on his elbows. “Then why are you constantly bitching about how much I’ve changed?”

“Because you have! It’s like you’re this whole new person and I don’t even know you”

“I haven’t spoken to you since we were 17, that was 6 years ago and you expect me not to change?” Remus ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I went to college, I got in a horrendous car accident Sirius, do you really expect me to be the same person I was when we were teenagers?”

“No- it’s just, I don’t like change”

“Fucking hell Sirius, the world doesn’t care and guess what? that’s constantly changing too”

“Yeah but not as drastically as you! You work in a bakery for Christ’s sake when I know you always wanted to be a writer”

“And I know you vowed to never work for your parents and here you are, doing daddy’s dirty work no doubt”

“Remus”

“What”

“You were never this cruel”

“No, I suppose not”

The two sat in silence, and it took all of Remus’ willpower not to kiss him.

“Can we just be friends or something” Sirius looked sincere enough, good natured enough for Remus to want it.

“Something? Something like wh-“

But Remus never got to finish his sentence because suddenly Sirius’ knees were straddling his hips and they were kissing.

What the fuck!

Remus wanted to scream, he was tired and annoyed and now he didn’t know what to feel. He pushed Sirius away for a second time that day, both their breaths coming in uneven.

“No” Remus breathed out, shutting his eyes tightly.

“No?”

“Yes, no… I can’t… what were you thinking?”

Sirius looked both hurt and surprised but Remus wasn’t concerned about that, he was more confused than anything and also there was the almost unbearable pain in his hip.

“I- well you were being cruel and this is the only way I knew how to shut you up effectively”

Now it was Remus’ turn to look hurt, he pushed Sirius again with more force than before. He brought his head back down and refused to say another word.

“Remus”

Nothing.

“Remus”

He shut his eyes, willing himself to go to sleep again.

“I’m sorry”

“Remus, I’m really sorry”

“I know I shouldn’t have said that”

“I did want to kiss you, I also wanted you to stop being mean”

“Come on Moony”

Remus’ eyes shot open at the childhood nickname. “Leave me alone Sirius, I’m tired and sore”

“Are you cross?”

“With you?”

Sirius hummed in response.

“Yeah but mainly cause I’m tired”

“Oh, I’m sorry”

“Just stop talking”

Sirius did just that. Remus felt bad though, he very carefully and hesitantly moved again so that his head was on Sirius’ lap. “I’m sorry for being a dick” he whispered, eyes closing again.

“I’m sorry for not thinking before I speak” came Sirius’ soft reply.

Remus felt Sirius’ fingers move through his hair tentatively as if he was uncertain whether or not this was allowed. “No, I’m being a moody git, all hot and cold on you”

“I couldn’t blame you for it”

“Well you should”

Sirius didn’t reply and Remus remained on the side that didn’t hurt him, facing away from Sirius and towards the telly.

[apparitionism]

Why 3

Nearer and nearer this story creeps to its conclusion, and thus to that not-so-distant future day when @mysensitiveside will have received a complete present! Previously, in part 1 of this AU, a Myka Bering adopted a dog. That dog, unfortunately or fortunately, in fact already belonged to a Helena Wells. Myka and Helena, initially strangers to each other, have been walking the dog together, growing intermittently closer in the process, and they are at last, following the events of part 2, about to take a step toward something beyond the pedestrian. Let’s see how that goes.

Why 3

Later, in the parking lot, “You’re sure this is okay?” Myka asked as they began exchanging tangible, traceable information: numbers, addresses. They lived closer to each other than Myka had imagined, which made what Sam had done seem even more brazen... even more terrible. “I don’t want to make you feel like you—”

Helena looked up from her phone. “What exactly will convince you?”

“Convince me of what?” A stupid question; she knew it the minute she said the words.

But Helena again took pity on her. She put her phone in her pocket, and she moved close to Myka, then closer. “I’m not confused,” she said. Their coats were touching. “Are you?”

“Honestly? Yes.”

In response to that, Helena just looked. Did she blink? She leaned up still closer, a delicate, careful movement of body, accompanied by a turn of her head not quite against the collar of Myka’s coat.

Not a kiss, but the potential shiver of one... a “lean down and you’ll find out” feeling...

Myka was still high on the first kiss, not quite ready to dilute it with a second. “Tuesday?” she asked, and “Tuesday,” Helena affirmed, remaining near.

“I like this,” Myka said, and it might have been a warning—to herself and to Helena.

“I’m glad,” Helena said, a comfort against the caution.

I will see them three days from now, Myka told herself as Helena drove away, her dog buckled safely into his harness in the back seat. Myka had a similar harness, limp and empty, in the back seat of her own car.

I know what it’s like to see him without a week having passed. I have no idea what it’s like to see her.

How long could three days feel?

Long enough to make her tell herself, on Sunday, “You should cancel.” Because she hadn’t slept. Instead she spent open-eyed hours retreading her limited romantic past: college boyfriend, who lasted all of one semester; grad school girlfriend, who lasted longer, but only because they rarely saw each other, and when they did, they were too exhausted from long, long lab days and nights to do much of anything but share a cheap meal and go to bed. Nevertheless their breakup blindsided Myka, who expected reasons but received nothing more from her suddenly ex-girlfriend than “I was into it; now I’m not.”

Since then, the occasional night with another lonely chemist at a conference had been the extent of it. That was what Myka figured she would always be most comfortable with: no entanglements, no consequences. No nerve-wracking anticipations.

Tuesday was consequential, with accompanying nerve-wracking anticipation. Hence, “You should cancel.”

Entanglements. Leuko had been one, but he at least had been very clear. Food, walks, baths. Obviously Myka’s emotions had been involved, but it wasn’t as if Leuko was going to do anything to blindside her.

Except bark at someone.

In his defense, she conceded, he had a pretty compelling reason.

So what about cancelling? Myka knew why she wanted to. Why didn’t she want to?

I like walking with her in the park.

Everything she says about herself makes me want to know more.

She is physically more attractive than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life.

Kissing her one time made me wish I had keys to a castle, so I could give them to her.

On a parallel track, there was Leuko. Monty. The idea of interacting with him in his real home felt wrong—but the kind of wrong that could one day become right. Like seeing his leash in Helena’s hand.

Would I have been willing to keep walking in the park if she hadn’t been the one walking him?

Impossible to know. Traitorous to consider an answer of no.

And would I have felt that I could walk in a park with her in the absence of him?

Also impossible to know. Not traitorous to consider an answer of no, but surely cowardly.

So in the interest of at least a facsimile of courage, Myka spent some time pondering yet another question: What do you wear to watch a dog show with your ex-dog and his person, who might be your... well, who could say? Certainly not Myka. She landed on “clothes.” Just wear clothes. Because her ex-dog wouldn’t care, and if his person did—well, that would tell her something, wouldn’t it?

Knocking on a door on Tuesday night, clothed in clothes, she was a mixture of trepidation and, yes, hope.

“Come in!” Helena called, so Myka did. To her surprise, she was received into the house by Montgomery Clift. She’d found, over her days of thinking, that it was easier to call him that in her head; its length and formality kept her from slipping and thinking “Leuko.” Mr. Clift then escorted her down a hallway and into a large living space. “Are you a butler now?” she asked him.

He blinked. It meant either “Of course not” or “I am the most perfect butler who ever buttled,” and Myka said, “You’re right,” in answer to both.

Helena appeared a second later, and Myka held out the gifts she’d brought: wine in one hand, a paper bag in the other. They had cost her far less pondering-time than the clothes had, though she hadn’t realized that at the time, and that probably meant something, though Myka could not think it through now, not with Helena standing right there in front of her. Myka could barely think at all. Instead, she tried to explain: “I thought at first I should bring you something related to writing—a pretty pen?—but then I figured a writer wouldn’t be any less picky about equipment than a chemist, and I’d hate it if some well-meaning person gave me for example a pipettor I’d never use. Nobody would do that, because they’re insanely expensive, but that’s why you’re getting a boring bottle of wine. I brought this”—she extended the bag—“for Monty.”

Helena had gazed at her throughout that recitation, and Myka had in turn felt herself prolonging it, to keep those attentive eyes on her. Now Helena said, “You’ve gifted him...” She took the bag, looked in it. “Several corn tortillas?”

“Fresh ones. He likes them.”

“I didn’t know it.”

Which, Myka had to acknowledge, made her happy. But it was a selfish happiness, so she said, “I didn’t intend to know something you don’t. It was an accident: he was hungry, and that was what I had. And then when I bought fresh, they turned out to be his favorite.”

Helena said, to Montgomery Clift, “More favorite than cheese?”

He failed to respond, most likely due to his laser focus on the now-open tortilla bag. Myka offered, “Probably depends on the cheese.”

“It’s true he is discerning.” Helena paused. “So am I.”

Myka’s nerves, which had ebbed, returned—not fully, but as a vague itch of discomfort. “You don’t need to...” she started.

“What don’t I need to?”

“Try? Like that. Like any way at all.” For it was when Helena tried—as she had in the park, with her “so are you” about prettiness—that Myka lost her bearings.

“I don’t know where you are,” Helena said. Such a reasonable justification: of course she would try, if she wanted to move Myka to some particular place, some place she felt Myka was not.

“Here,” Myka said, but it was a yearn—to get closer to where Helena might have imagined she, and they, could be—rather than the truth. She needed to tell the truth, though: “Or at least I’m trying to be.”

“You don’t need to try either,” Helena said, her tone a balm. “Let’s start by getting to know each other better. I hope that’s what this evening is for.”

“I hope too.” Myka had never said anything more true. “I don’t like that I know your dog better than I know you. I regret it.” But, “Sorry,” she said to the soft butler-or-not who looked up at her, blinking wounded eyes. Or more likely, he was blinking tortilla-wanting eyes.

“We need to remedy that. Or rather, I want to remedy that, and I think you do as well. As I said, I’m not confused.”

“As I said, I am.” Important to be clear about that.

“Tell me why.”

Oh, the invitation. How could she respond? Weighing ideas of entanglements, consequences, anticipations...

Helena, blessedly, went on, “Because I feel that if I hadn’t told you I wasn’t, you wouldn’t be.”

That was indeed the entirety of it, so... “I like that you’re smart,” Myka said. “I like it so much.”

“I like that you are as well, chemist. Sit down. I have food to cook. On that topic, I regret I didn’t ask about allergies, so tell me now. I don’t want to inadvertently attempt to murder you.”

“You can’t. I’m basically insensitive.”

“Ridiculous. Monty knows better, and so do I.”

She delivered that perfectly, not trying, but rather as if she had a doctorate in quashing self-deprecation, and it made Myka smile. “If I were allergic to anything, leukotrienes would be involved,” she said.

“Do you want to explain them to me now?” Helena asked.

It was even more perfect, as an invitation, but Myka turned it down: “You’re busy. Food to cook. Can I help?”

“Sit. You look tired. Is that an awful thing to say? I don’t mean that you look in any way bad. You’ve most likely had a long day.” She stopped, her expression devolving into a sheepish wince. “I’m digging a hole.”

“It’s okay,” Myka said to banish that wince, charming as it was. “You’re right about the day.”

She hadn’t improved much on her Saturday sleep in the subsequent nights, but at least last night had been anticipatory rather than self-castigating. During the day, her concentration at work had been... not ideal. She broke some glass—dropped from nervous fingers—and Abigail asked her if she was intending to go on a rampage. She’d had to redo more than one assay. It really was a miracle she’d been able to get here on time.

So she sat, as instructed, and she found herself pondering various miracles: Helena was cooking food, and Myka, on the sofa, had Leuko—no, Montgomery Clift—beside her, as he used to be, and she wished she were a poet, so as to put into words what suffused her heart. “Does he sit like this with you?” she felt compelled to ask.

“He does,” Helena said. Weeks ago, Myka would have felt that as a knife.  Now it was confirmation of all-encompassing comfort. “With me,” Helena went on, “and now with you. I’ve never seen him do so with anyone else.”

“Have you, though?” Myka asked him.

Of course he blinked those dark, beautiful, secret eyes. “Did she teach you to do that?” Myka asked him, and she dared a glance at Helena.

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” Helena said. “All I personally taught him was that he should shake hands. And clearly that is not what is occurring.”

“Shake?” Myka suggested to him.

Montgomery Clift sat up immediately and held out his right front paw.

“Impressive,” Myka told him—told Helena—after a convivial shake had occurred. In all her time with him, she hadn’t thought to see whether he would do that. She hadn’t thought about training at all. He was so quiet and sweet. What else would she have wanted him to do? How often would they really have needed to shake hands? “How often?” she asked, softly, and she took his blink to mean “Not very.”

Helena said from the kitchen, “It’s starting in not very long, and I’d like to let Monty out. Will you watch him in the yard?”

“You’re going to watch me watch him, aren’t you?

Helena smiled. “Honestly, yes. But not for the reason you fear.”

“I’m not sure you have a true handle on the extent of my fears.”

“Educate me.”

“What do you write about? Or I guess I mean, what did you write about?” Myka asked. The question had come to her that instant, fully formed—not a fear, not as such, but rather a gray gap in her knowledge.

“Hm,” Helena said. “Let’s talk about that when you come back indoors.”

Montgomery Clift enjoyed his time in the yard. “Sorry we can’t walk,” she told him, but he was cavorting, sniffing, investigating, and didn’t seem to care. It made her sad that she’d had no space for him to do that, untethered.

They came back indoors, so: “So, writing,” Myka said. “I didn’t Google you. So I don’t know.”

“That is both slightly insulting and exceedingly considerate.”

Myka, flustered, said, “Point being I don’t know.”

“It begins with my having been a rather unusual sort of child.”

“That isn’t hard to believe,” Myka said, then cringed. “That’s probably also slightly insulting.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s exceedingly complimentary. Don’t we all want to be unusual? I do now, and did then... I would fix my attention on a thing that struck me as interesting, and I would not rest until I became expert in it. The smaller and stranger the better. An arcane slice of history, some esoteric gadgetry, a figure of obscure influence. As it happened, I could write about such things in a readable way.”

“Showing off what an expert you’d become?” Myka asked. She hoped that wasn’t insulting at all.

Helena smiled in affirmation. “It began like that, yes. One tried to become less insufferable when it was for wider publication. In any case, I sought such topics out for years—the rarities, the curiosities. I made a reasonable amount of money doing so, which is better than many can say.”

“So why stop?”

“I had it in my head to write a novel. Something with that same depth, but also breadth.”

“Do you still have it in your head?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Mainly in my head. Not on paper.”

“Should I not ask why?”

“Monty’s disappearance... derailed me.”

“Are you un-derailed now?”

“Not precisely.”

“Should I not ask why?”

“I’ve found myself distracted.”

“Should I not ask why?”

“You should know why.”

Was that trying again? It felt softer, not quite as discomfiting. “When does this dog show start, anyway?” Myka said.

“Very soon,” Helena said, and the way she spoke those very simple words reminded Myka, viscerally, of why she wanted to be here—Helena’s eyes were bright, her voice low but engaged. An edge of something like hunger crept around the periphery of Myka’s awareness.

The show itself was astounding. Myka had known she had very little knowledge of dogs as animals, certainly prior to her brief ownership experience. But she had not known that she had not known how vast the world of dogs, as rankable, judgeable animals, really was. An entire additional universe was folded into the one Myka thought she knew. The idea of breeds, okay, she got that. But groups? Handlers? Stacking?

“Can he do that?” Myka asked, about the stacking, that stance seemingly required for the judging of... dogness?

“Oh, watch. Monty, sit,” Helena said to the dog who was curled between them. She raised her hand as she said it, and just like that, up he sat. She pulled her hand forward then and said, “Stand.” He stood, his entire self on display, just like the dogs on the television. After a second, Helena said, “I should have cheese in my hand. Or one of your tortillas. He hates when there’s no reward. You see how the handlers hold the treats in their mouths, when they’re in the ring. Often they use liver.”

“In their mouths...” Myka shuddered.

Helena offered a sympathetic echo of the movement. “It’s apparently quite compelling as an incentive, and they can’t hold the brush or the lead that way. But it’s certainly among the many reasons I myself wouldn’t have been able to show him.”

“I don’t understand why being pretty doesn’t count,” Myka said.

“Shapes and sizes matter more than anything, and he’s slightly too small for a male.” Montgomery Clift turned away from her, seemingly intentionally. Helena laughed and told him, “You’re exquisite and you know it.”

“Why did you even want a Mittelspitz anyway?” Myka asked. “No offense, Montgomery Clift.” After trying it out loud, she realized it didn’t work nearly as well that way as it did in her head. “Monty,” she amended, and now he reoriented himself toward Myka, as if he were pleased. She was probably attributing far too much intentionality to him.

Helena said, “I didn’t want one.” Did Montgomery Clift turn even further toward Myka? “As I told you, there was a novel in my head, but I was too busy investigating those curiosities. Then I began to imagine that I might find time for it if I settled into a more routine everyday life.”

“So you got a dog?” Myka asked, recalling her own Leuko-routines.

“Accidentally. While looking into teaching positions, I was finishing up one of my last pieces, on the insular, sectarian cultures around rare breeds of dog. I met Monty’s breeder, and she happened to note that having a dog would certainly create routines... I scoffed, but then I met Monty himself, as a wee puppy, and there was no longer any question.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

Helena showed Myka several photos of that wee puppy.

“Oh my god,” Myka said. It was the only logical response.

“He didn’t seem real,” Helena affirmed.

And yet there the real Montgomery Clift was, clearly the grown-up version of those photos, blinking back and forth at both of them. A curiosity.

“You’re coming back tomorrow night?” Helena asked later, as Myka prepared to leave.

What a confounding question. “I... am I?” Myka staggered out.

“The show. It’s two nights. I thought you knew.”

That had probably been conveyed at some point, but Myka hadn’t paid sufficient attention. She had lost her purchase on the unfamiliar new dog-parade production-number world unfurling itself for her perusal on the television, as she was far more interested in the equally new world composed of one disconcerting woman and one unreal dog. What did it say that the latter outranked the former?

Right... as if that were a mystery. “I think if this evening has demonstrated anything, it’s that I know absolutely nothing,” she lied.

“Not nothing,” Helena said, mindreading. Then she read some more: “Surely you know that I want to kiss you goodnight.”

“I want to know it,” Myka told her.

“Then do.” She moved close to Myka, a sidle not dissimilar to her move in the parking lot, and this time Myka did lean down, did find out. It was not confusing at all, but rather like good clear water, bracing and inundating, roaring, silent, everything. If this was the first night, what would the second entail?

The next day in the lab, Myka allowed to Abigail, “Maybe she’s my girlfriend.” Tempting fate, probably, but fate was certainly doing some tempting of its own...

Abigail crossed her arms. Never a good sign. “Why do you always have to lie first?”

“Why... what?”

“You lie about having a dog,” Abigail said. “You lie about having a girlfriend. What’s next? Your side job for the CIA?”

“Very funny.”

“If you deny it, I’ll know it’s true.”

“Fine. My side job is CIA. What do you know about dog shows?”

“Are you going undercover at one?” Abigail countered.

“My maybe girlfriend knows a lot about them.”

“Then ask her, not me. People like to talk about what they know a lot about. Except you, but you’re weird like that.”

Valid advice, and an accurate description. Myka thanked Abigail for them both.

“And you’d lie anyway,” Abigail continued.

Myka didn’t thank her for that.

As she prepared to leave for Helena’s that evening, she found herself thinking on clarity. That she might at last have some.

Her phone buzzed—a text. She never got texts.

The text was from Helena.

It said: Don’t come.

TBC

P.S. Only a bit left to go, I swear. Poor Myka’s heart can’t take much more, anyway, and my goal in life, or rather in narrative, really isn’t to make her suffer.

[taiyakiiwrites]

If your requests are still open, can I have a matchup please (preferably with a male). I’m a Pisces and my personality type is INTP and I’m a lawful neutral. Im an ambivert. I have straight black hair and brown eyes and beige skin and 5”4. I have dark circulars around my eyes so I always look tired lol. I sorta look like Kusco from Emperors New Groove.

Personality wise I would say I’m a kind person who likes to joke around with my friends. I’m sarcastic and like to pull pranks/trick my friends occasionally but its always lighthearted and never mean, I don’t like hurting peoples feelings on purpose. I try to help people (mostly my friends) when I can. I nosy and I like eavesdropping into conversations and listening to drama. I worry quite a bit about life in general and contemplate the future a lot in my head but I never usually tell people any of my concerns since I sorta fear what they’ll say. I’m standoffish with assholes and sometimes mess with them behind their backs if they deserve it. I can be envious of people and annoying and clingy at times too but I try not to be. In friend groups I tend to be the least loyal friend so I occasionally feel insecure and upset.

School wise I’m a slacker but I’m still able to get good/decent grades. I procrastinate a lot due to laziness. My favourite subjects are history and geography and my least favourites are English, maths and PE. My handwriting is really messy and sometimes even I can’t read it.

My hobbies include watching Netflix/YouTube, listening to Marina (obsessed with her songs) drawing, writing and origami. I like taking Uquizzes and talking to my friends too. My favourite movie genres are mystery and comedy’s. I like baking but I’m really bad at it. I also like trying new things but I get annoyed when I’m not instantly good at it lol.

My dislikes are homework, waking up early and being told what to do. I also get annoyed when I have to clean and I hate extreme weather like heavy rain and heatwaves too.

If requests are closed please ignore this, if not thank you!

i match you up with… DENKI KAMINARI

notes: one thing i want to say is that i absolutely adore how you described yourself as kusco—anyways, hope you enjoy who i picked out! (also im actually loving the edit i did for the kaminari header—sorry just had to give myself that pat on the back)

⇉ requests are open!! || main masterlist || rules

definition of “prepare for trouble and make it double”

you guys are going to wreak havoc

and i am ready with the popcorn

lawful neutral x chaotic neutral: a very interesting combo

i’m getting (potentially childhood?) friends to lovers or you two met on the first day of school and just instantly hit it off

you two don’t like to do schoolwork, but seeing you get hella good grades without trying rlly just get’s kaminari all “excuse me tf 😀” and that’s how he decided that he needed to Get Good™️ because 1: to impress you and 2: he wouldn’t be able to keep up with you otherwise

even when you two start out as friends, it is basically impossible for someone to tear one away from the other

the bakusquad had gave up trying at this point

and you both mutually pined for each other, kaminari being extremely obvious, so no matter what amount of time it took for you two to get together, it was far too long

things they love about you

he 100% vibes with your more artsy side—the times you create and let your imagination flow. kaminari has good ideas, he just can’t flesh them out. you, on the other hand, can. and he loves that. sometimes, talking to you on end about story or illustration ideas and watching you create is all he needs to recover from a bad day

every single time he sees you stand up for yourself, him, or anyone, he just falls more in love with you. he only has moments where he doesn’t run away and you? you do it so easily. it’s more than admirable in his eyes

you’re fun! with you in his life, there’s never a dull moment. you guys set up elaborate pranks for your friends, go hunting for rumors and gossip and report to mina with your findings, and when you two are in a room together, you make the ultimate comedic duo. kaminari could wish for nothing less in a partner!

kaminari loves your hair. i mean, he is obsessed with it. don’t ask me why because i don’t really know

also i just need to say this again but you said you looked like kusco and i love that you chose that wording omg—

if kaminari heard you say that, he would lose it (in a good way, i promise)

relationship headcanons

you guys try to study together whenever you can as to not entirely fail

emphasis on try

whether you successfully study or you don’t, the sessions always end in you and him watching netflix in the comfort on his dorm room

he’s always trying to find new movies for you—almost every day he sends you a link to either one during school with an ironic “saw this and thought of you 😳🤪😍” and will then proceed to beg you not to watch it without him

the day kaminari isn’t by your side to ease your worries is the day he is dead—somehow he knows exactly what to say every single time you get too worked up about something, especially your insecurity of being disloyal. and i am going to talk about this in a seperate bullet because i find this very important:

kaminari has had trouble with people trusting him in the past as well. it was mostly because people saw him as dumb and unreliable. he believes that with even whatever faults you believe you have, you also have that “good” inside of you and if you left him, it was for a good reason. he puts his whole trust in you, even if you don’t

a good 60-70% of your dates include movie nights, video games, and trying desperately to bake something edible while avoiding bakugou’s judgmental glare from the common room’s couch

MARINA 👏 KA 👏 RA 👏 O 👏KE

JUST YOU TWO JAMMING OUT IN YOUR DORM WITH HAIRBRUSH MICROPHONES AND MARINA BLASING

you both have similar struggles but seeing each other dealing with it puts things into perspective. y’know the saying “take your own advice”? with each other, you’re able to do that and ultimately grow as both individuals and two halfs of a whole <333

songs that remind me of you two

sunkissed by khai dreams

share your address by ben platt

favorite poison by fuller

we fell in love in october by girl in red

beachboy by mccafferty