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fangirl-dot-com · 4 months ago

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🎉The Eras Tour - 3k Special

Note: Thank you all so much for being so patient with me as I've been going through some writers block. I hope this is all you've been waiting for! It's time to say hello to an old friend ☺️

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“What are you doing?”

Arthur jumped and slammed his laptop shut when a voice sounded right next to his ear. He placed a hand on his heart as he turned to look behind him. He rolled his eyes once he saw who it was.

“Did you have to scare me like that? Mon Dieu.”

Max crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The Monegasque narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing in my brother’s house?”

Max blinked. “You changed the subject.”

Arthur huffed, knowing that he wouldn’t be getting a straight answer anytime soon. “If you have to know, I am looking for a birthday present for my girlfriend.”

The Dutchman’s eyes widened. “Her birthday isn’t for another few months though, right?”

Arthur nodded his head. “Oui. But it lands on a race weekend again. I didn’t get to spend much time with her last year, so I wanted to make this year special. I don’t think she’ll mind if we do something early.”

Max reached over and grabbed a chair. The chair dragged on the tile as he brought it closer to the table. He sat down and leaned his elbows on his knees, leaning forward to see the computer better.

“What are you doing?”

Max looked up at Arthur. “I’m going to help. I already have my idea for her birthday, but maybe we can conjoin them?”

“Are we talking about gosse’s birthday?”

Arthur let out a groan. “Yes Charles. I was looking for a present for my girlfriend.”

Charles, who was eating a bowl of cereal, walked closer to the desk. “I think I was just going to go with another gift card. She has too many pairs of Crocs.”

Max snorted. “And whose fault is that?”

The Ferrari driver scoffed. “How was I supposed to know that everyone else got her the exact same pair.”

The younger Monegasque rubbed his eyes. “Can we please get back to the subject, or I’m never going to find the right gift. Max, what did you get her?”

The Dutchman pulled out his phone from his pocket and opened an image. “Porsche came out with a Lightning McQueen styled car. I was going to rent it for her or see if I could get it on a loan.”

Arthur’s head thumped on the desk with a whine. “How can I top that?”

Max felt a bit bad at the dejected man. “I’m sure you can come up with something. What are her interests?”

A sigh came out of Arthur’s lips. “Cars, Formula 1, Top Gear, Texas, Cars 2.”

Charles snorted. “Maybe let’s go away from the cars and her day job.”

Max thought for a moment. “What about a spa day? Girls like spas, right?”

Charles made a face. “Gosse isn’t like that though. What if we all went karting with Sebastian.”

“But you said no to job and car related things. She has her own karting place inside her house, Charlie.”

“What if we went to a movie theater. What is showing these days? She mentioned that one actor that she liked.”

“Oh, Glen Powel in Twisters?”

“That’s the one.”

“But it doesn’t come out for another two months.”

“I don’t see you giving any good ideas, Max.”

“What about a dog?”

“She barely takes care of herself. How would a dog work when she’s gone almost the full the year?”

Arthur’s head suddenly shot up, making Max and Charles jump at the abruptness. His hands flew to his laptop, opening the screen. He typed a few things before yelling.

“That’s it!”

Max peered at the screen. “Taylor Swift tickets?”

“Why are you three talking about Taylor Swift?”

The three men’s heads turned around quickly. Alex walked into the small office, holding Leo to her chest. The little sausage puppy was contently sleeping in her arms.

Arthur turned back around to start looking. “Y/n’s birthday is coming up and I needed to get her a gift. And these two,” he pointed to Max and Charles, “are no help.”

Alex stepped forward and handed Leo to Charles, who immediately started kissing his head. She leaned down next the Arthur’s chair and looked over the screen.

“Charles, Kika, Pierre, and I are going to the Milan show if you want to join us.”

“He is?”

“I am?”

She rolled her eyes. “I told you this last month.”

The man with the dog shrugged. “I have learned to just say yes to anything you say, mon amor.”

Alex straightened and took out her phone. “I can ask for you and Y/n to join us? It shouldn’t be a problem.”

Arthur looked up at her. “Thank you so so much, Alex.”

She gave a soft smile. “Anything for my future sister-in-law.”

Arthur immediately turned away with a blush while Max and Charles squawked behind her.

“They’re just babies! They can’t get married! They’re not even engaged!”

“Nuh-uh, kid is not getting married until she is 35. No way.”

The only response was the clicking of Arthur’s computer. Both older drivers peered at him.

Max pressed a finger to Arthur’s shoulder. “You’re not getting married anytime soon, right?”

The Monegasque felt trapped under the stares of both drivers. His mind immediately went to the small velvet box in the bottom of one of his shoes back at your shared flat. So, he did what any sane person would do. He stood up quickly, grabbed his laptop, and made his way to the door.

“That is a great question, Max. But I really have to go, uh, walk my fish and vacuum the front lawn! Alex, can you text me the details for the concert? Thank you so much!”

The slam of the door told the three that the younger was long gone.

Charles, who was still holding a now squirming Leo, had a confused look on his face. “They don’t have a fish.”

“And they don’t have a front lawn.”

“You two are idiots,” Alex mentioned as she made her way out of the office.

Arthur sighed when he got in his car. A ping from his phone made him look at it. He smiled at his lockscreen, which was a picture of the two of you from your first win in Monza last year. His thumb swiped his phone open to see the text was details from Alex.

After replying, he put the car into drive and headed back to your apartment. He knew that you were probably asleep, so he quietly opened the door to your apartment. When he reached the bedroom, he was correct about you sleeping when he got there.

He kicked off his shoes and gently climbed into bed behind you. When he wrapped his arms around your middle, you gently rolled over into the embrace.

“Hi,” you murmured sleepily.

Arthur placed a kiss to your forehead. “Hello, mon ange. Did you have a nice nap?”

You nodded against his chest. “Very warm and snuggly. Where were you?”

“At Charles’s. Max was there.”

You hummed. “Of course he was. What were you doing there?”

The Monegasque sighed against your hair. “We might have been talking about your birthday.”

A whine escaped your lips as you finally opened your eyes to look at him. Your eyebrows furrowed as you went over the math.

“But my birthday isn’t until a few months.”

Arthur nodded his head. “I know. But it’s a race weekend again. I wanted to do something a bit more special than just sing to you in the garage.”

You closed your eyes once more, still a bit sleepy. “I would have been fine with that. As long as Charles doesn’t get me another pair of Crocs, I think I’m fine.”

A smirk formed on the Monegasque’s face. “So, you’d be fine without a present.”

You nodded against his chest. “As long as I have you, I’ll be content.”

“So, you want me to tell Alex that you don’t want to go see Taylor Swift.”

Now, Arthur should have been prepared for you to bolt up. However, he didn’t expect the sheer force of the top of your head to hit his nose on the way up. The two of you yelped at the contact. Arthur held his nose while you held your head.

“Shut up, you did not!” you squealed.

Arthur winced, pulling his hand back to see if his nose was bleeding. “I did. Ouch chérie, that hurt.”

You gasped and threw yourself at him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

He smiled as he held you tightly in a hug. Arthur knew that you had wanted to go to a concert, but also knew that you wouldn’t buy the tickets for yourself. You always claimed that other people deserved it more than you since you had met Taylor multiple times.

“We’re going with Alex, Charles, Pierre, and Kika.”

“Perfect.”

“And it’s next weekend.”

He was ready for the headbutt this time. You looked at him with wide eyes.

“What are we waiting for? I need to start planning outfits and make friendship bracelets!”

You quickly unraveled yourself from his arms and ran out of the bedroom door. What you missed was the fond smile on Arthur’s face as he watched you go. If he knew this would make you so happy, he would have taken you to a concert earlier.

“Arthur! Get your ass in here! We need to go shopping!”

The man rolled his eyes lovingly as he got off the bed. “Yes, chérie. I’m coming.”

The Leclerc brothers were down bad for their girlfriends.

After a full week of going through Pinterest for ideas, bracelets, and outfits, you finally deemed Arthur and yourself concert ready.

“Bebe, the car is here!”

You brushed your mascara over your eyelashes one last time before answering, “Coming!”

You carefully walked down the hallway of the rental flat in your heels. Arthur’s eyes lit up at the sight of your outfit.

The dark blue made your blond hair and tan skin pop. Was it a bit out there for his taste? He’d have to say yes, because he didn’t want anyone else ogling you at the show. He gave a low whistle, making you blush. You lightly hit him on the shoulder when you reached him.

“We’re going to be late.”

You looked over his outfit one last time, making sure that the white stars stayed stuck on the navy suitcoat.

Arthur leaned in cheekily. “And whose fault would that be, mon ange?”

“Yours.”

He gawked as you walked right past him out the front door. Arthur blinked a few times before he grabbed your bag that you had left behind. Looking around the room, he made sure that you weren’t forgetting anything else. It was only when the car honked that he made his way outside.

Now, his brother was one for theatrics, but he wasn’t expecting a limo to be outside the flat. He lovingly rolled his eyes as he clamored down the steps. He opened his door and wasn’t surprised to see you and Alex already next to each other. Arthur sat down to Charles, who was staring at his phone.

Once the door was closed, the limo took off. You and Alex were in a world of your own, which gave Arthur some time to talk to Charles.

“Did Max text you?” he murmured.

Charles nodded. “Oui. He said the car will be parked outside near a back entrance so that fans won’t see it. You two are leaving early? Alex and I are leaving to sit with Joris for the last few songs.”

“Perfect. We will just leave with you then.”

“What are you two talking about?” you asked with innocent eyes.

Charles smacked Arthur’s thigh. “He is just telling me that you wanted another pair of Crocs for your birthday.”

“No, I did not!”

You snorted as you rolled your eyes. “Sure, babe, sure.”

Arthur glared at his brother, who was sitting with a smirk on his face. Thankfully, the rest of the short drive was bearable. You stayed cuddled up to Alex, as the two of you were texting Kika as well.

When the limo stopped, the four of you were led through a different entrance to keep things a bit calmer. But as you as you sat in the little pop-up chair talking to Arthur, a few people had started to notice Charles, and then Alex, and then you and Arthur.

You giggled as you watched Charles wave his hand around as he tried to direct Pierre and Kika to the seats.

Your chair creaked as you leaned over to Arthur. “And we have been spotted.”

Arthur’s eyes flicked around and landed on multiple phones pointed in their direction. He wanted to sigh internally, but this was yours and his life: forever to be sought out and filmed. The Monegasque wanted to reply but you were already out of your seat and leaning over the barriers to take some friendship bracelets. He melted at your excited smile as you handed them some of the ones you made off your arm.

A few of the girls pointed to him, letting him know that a few of those would end up on his arms by the end of the night. Once you were done, you skipped back to Arthur, wide smile on your face.

“How do I look?”

He wanted to snort as you pulled a funny pose, yet he was distracted by how happy you looked. You were close to glowing from your joy.

He went to answer, but the lights started to dim, making you squeal and turn around. Arthur knew it was time for the concert to start, so he got off his chair to walk to closer to the barrier of the VIP section. His arms wrapped around your middle, and your arms came to rest on his.

It was about halfway through the concert when you and Arthur went back to the chairs. Before he sat down, he went over to the worker who was on the other side of the little gate.

“Would you be able to get us some water?”

The employee quickly shook his head before leaving momentarily. He came back with two bottle of water that were cold with condensation.

“Merci!” Arthur said as he took the bottles from the man. On his way back to you, he cracked open the lid for easy drinking. He also didn’t want your nails to accidentally chip halfway through the night.

You smiled brightly as he held the bottle out to you.

“You’re the best. You know that right?”

The cool water was refreshing in your mouth after singing for so long. You wiped your mouth, making sure that no water had dripped down on accident. Arthur had pulled out his phone to message Max to make sure that the car would be there, when Taylor rejoined the stage.

The singer immediately walked up to a bench where a guitar rested against it and sat down. She readjusted her mic before speaking.

“Hello, Milan!”

The crowds roared at the greeting, making you giggle. You and Arthur had ventured back to the railing, still holding each other like earlier.

Taylor laughed, making the crowds quiet down as they waited for her to speak again, anxiously waiting for the surprise song of the night.

“I heard that one of my friends was here tonight, and I wanted to play something special for her and her boyfriend.”

You turned around in Arthur’s arms to look at him. He was already grinning wickedly.

“You did not.”

He quickly shushed you and spun you back around. His head came down and rested against your forehead, lips dangerously close to your ear. Taylor’s guitar began to play, and Arthur sang next to your ear with Taylor in the background. From above, confetti began to softly fall, almost like snow.

“Green was the color of the grass, where I used to read at Centennial Park…”

Your eyes welled up in tears as the mood turned into a quiet and somber atmosphere as the guitar played out what you had dubbed Arthur’s and your song. The tears in your eyes began to stream down your face as Arthur swayed the two of you to the music.

“And isn’t it just so pretty to think all along there was some invisible string tying you to me?”

While you two were wrapped in each other, Alex lightly elbowed Charles. The driver had looked at her with confused eyes before he gazed in your direction. He watched as Arthur gave you a kiss on your forehead, and how your hands tightened around his arms on your middle. His eyes softened at the delicate moment.

Alex stepped closer to Charles, who wrapped his arm around her shoulder, bringing her into his side.

She hummed lightly. “Arthur needed her.”

Charles took one more look at the duo, who had changed positions to where you were now tucked into Arthur’s side.

“They needed each other.”

When the song ended, you had to take a second to calm yourself down. Arthur walked you back to the seats where your water bottle sat. You immediately opened it and too giant sips. When you were done, Arthur’s hands came up to your face. His fingers rubbed a bit under your eyes, making you furrow your eyebrows.

“You had a bit of mascara under your eyes. Wouldn’t want you to look like a raccoon.”

Your giggles filled the little space between you and him. Once they subsided, you took the chance to really look at Arthur, the man who loved you more than you could ever dream.

“Thank you for taking me here. It was a nice surprise.”

You watched as the soft smile on his face grew into a smirk.

“What do you have planned?”

“Are you ready to leave?” he shot back.

You were confused but looked around. Charles and Alex were jumping up and down to the now upbeat song. Pierre and Kika were currently trading bracelets with a few more fans. You then looked back at Arthur and shrugged.

“We can leave.”

His face lit up as he grabbed your arm. You thought he would say goodbye to his brother, but he just dragged you out of the section and to the exit. He was laughing as he pulled you along, almost jogging by this point.

You laughed behind him. “Bebe, my heels can’t keep up with you! And I need to post this really fast!”

Thankfully, he slowed down enough for you to comfortably walk next to him and finish your Instagram post.

y/n.89 has posted

liked by maxverstappen1, y/n.nation, swiftontrack, and 104,983 others

y/n.89 And isn't it just so pretty to think all along there was some invisible string tying you to me? Thank you Arthur for the best early birthday present a girl could wish for! J'taime bebe!

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box_box_express that's my f1 point leader!!

y/n&co oh my gosh, I didn't know I needed y/n at the eras tour until now!

swiftontrack my two worlds are colliding 😭

maxverstappen1 has he showed you the surprise yet?

charlesleclerc MAX THEY JUST LEFT!

maxverstappen1 HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW????

formula_delulu THEY PLAYED THEIR SONG I CRIED BECAUSE I THOUGHT OF THEM

y/n.nation the dress EATS ⭐️💙

168133isfamily now I need Oscar at the eras tour now!!

Before you got to the exit, he stopped suddenly and turned around.

“Are you ready?”

You were gasping for air just a bit after the fast-paced walking. “I’m always ready for anything with you.”

Arthur would have gotten down on one knee right then and there if he had the ring. However, Ollie would kill him, along with Lando who wanted to take the engagement pictures. And Max would too, since he technically hasn’t asked for permission, even though Christian gave him the go ahead.

He took a breath before opening the exit door. You had still been looking at Arthur when your eyes turned away and landed on the red and yellow car. Your hair spun as you whipped back to your boyfriend.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything chérie.”

“Shut up!”

You took a few more steps to the sleek red car and whistled low. You stooped to run your hands over the bright yellow decals.

“Did you do this?”

Arthur looked a bit guilty. “This is Max’s present, so you’ll have to thank him.”

Your eyes widened for a moment before you smiled brightly. “What are we waiting for? I’ll drive.”

Arthur shook his head. “This is your present, I will drive so you can enjoy it.”

“Arthur?”

“Yes, mon ange?”

“I’m driving.”

“Yes, chérie.”

athur_leclerc has posted

liked by maxverstappen1, porche. Disney, and 194,295 others

arthur_leclerc safe to say that she is taking this home with her. thank you to maxverstappen1 for making this happen. she says and I quote, "I love you max, never change"

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y/n.nation yeah porsche isn't getting that back

redbullracing I'm guessing we need to do a Lightning McQueen livery now?

liamlawson30 YES PLEASE AND I WANT FREE PRACTICE WHEN IT HAPPENS PLS I BEG 😭😭

maxverstappen1 tell her that I say you're welcome and that I will overtake her in the championship

arthur_leclerc I told her and she responded "no you won't" 😌

maxverstappen1 she made that exact face, didn't she?

athur_leclerc yep.

box_box_express this is so freaking funny 😂

porsche tell her she can keep it! happy birthday to our favorite Red Bull driver!

arthur_leclerc she just screamed

sebastianvettel I AM RIGHT HERE?? I DRIVE FOR YOU??

porsche she's the people's princess? 🤨

sebastianvettel you're right, carry on

y/n&co no one is going to be able to beat max for this present

end note: are you glad I brought kid back? I've missed her a lot, so this was so much fun to write! once again, thank you for being patient!

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tealmussel · 1 year ago

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[TF2] Let's Do This Texas Style!

Howdy howdy, let's get rowdy.

I'm madly in love with the Engineer. Anyway, here's the reference pic.

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hardlyinteresting · 1 month ago

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On The Beach

Jake Seresin x Reader

“Jake Seresin! You better not be doing what I think you’re doing!” Shirtless he backs towards the ocean continuing to remove his shoes, socks and pants, “And what do you think I’m doing, Sugar?”

Warnings: The reader is referred to as she/her, with no physical description, nudity, idiots in love, (please let me know if you'd like me to tag anything please),I grew up in an Army household so some of my Navy knowledge may be slightly off base (no pun intended)

This one-shot will exist in the same universe as other one-shots I have planned. But, they can all be read entirely independently.

Word count: 2K Masterlist | talk to me about Jake and Tyler

July had been unforgiving with heat; sweltering days, broken up by occasional rains that cooled the air but left behind intolerable humidity. August was built up as a promise of relief but instead, she steamrolled the record-setting temperatures of July with her own.

95°F felt like some kind of cruel trick already, but the air conditioning at The Hard Deck cutting out halfway through a shift was a new kind of torture entirely.

She’d been quick to help Penny to open up all the doors and windows to all the mild relief of the ocean breeze blowing through, bringing in a flood of daylight so uncommonly seen inside the cozy bar.

The ice machine set to work overtime, fresh kegs of beer ready to pour by the time the usual crowd of regulars began to pile in. Stripped down to a tank top and shorts she ties her hair up to keep it off the back of her neck, desperate to get through this shift in one piece. With just the two of them behind the bar, she does her best to keep up with the seemingly endless pile of orders, reminding the pilots and veterans to take a glass of ice water as well.

“Hey Sugar,” Hangman flirts leaning against the counter. It’s not fair that he looks so cool and collected, his khaki uniform still perfectly pressed, his hair neatly styled while she thinks she might be melting with the feeling of sweat on her back. She’s sure she looks a mess, but Hangman doesn’t take his eyes off of her as he waits for her to take his order.

Jake is certain that despite the shower he took on base, he still smells like jet fuel. The hottest day of the year might not have been so bad under the shade of a big tree back home, a soft breeeze blowing through the branches of sweet-olive trees. He'd spent enough summers in Texas to know how to muck through the dog days. But on base, the heat radiates up from the black top tarmac, threatening to melt the soles of their issued boots. Up in the air, the glass canopy of the cockpit feels like a magnifying glass; doubling both the discomfort of intense flight training, and the intensity of the sun's contributions to the torrid day.

Stripping off his flight suit and stepping into a cold shower had been a relief, matched only by the promise of a beer at The Hard Deck to end the week.

The doors and windows were open when he arrived, a wall of humid and stagnant heat rolling from inside the establishment nearly had him turning around to head home before he spotted her. Sugar, with her hair pulled back, sweat gathering across her collarbone and chest, white tank top clinging to her in ways he previously could only imagine. She's a sight for sore eyes, and now leaning against the bar he has no intention of going anywhere else tonight.

“Beer?” she asks him.

He nods his confirmation, “bottle please,” he adds. “It’s hot in here today”.

“AC broke,” she sighs, “Mav is up on the roof trying to fix it now”.

“I’m not sure there’s much he can’t do,” he shrugs, “Drink some water. I can’t have you passing out, Sugar”.

She does her best to ignore the flirtatious wink he throws her way. She knows he's a relentless philanderer, she's seen how quickly he can manage to find a date for the night. He's handsome beyond a doubt, and by far one of the kindest patrons she has, but she's not looking to be heartbroken. And friendship has suited the two of them just fine for the last few months, no reason to mess with a good thing.

After two weeks of working at The Hard Deck, she'd finally given in to The Dagger Squad’s insistence that she join them at the pool table after her shift. Hangman had been a surprisingly gracious loser when she ran him out of 50 bucks. A few weeks later Jake and Bradley had thrown a drunk guy out of the bar when he'd given her a hard time and refused to pay his own tab let alone the rounds ordered at the sound of the bell.

She had tried to thank him but he'd only given her a curt nod, “Nothing to thank me for, Sugar”.

So she smiles back at his teasing grins, laughs at his jokes, and blows kisses and he playfully pretends they knock him over. It’s easy, it’s fun. “I know you’re just trying to keep your heart in one piece,” Penny tells her, “but don’t break his either”.

No one sticks around too long, too tired, and far too warm to take up their usual challenges at the pool table. The sun has gone down by the time Mav comes in to let Penny know he had no luck fixing the AC unit before stopping by the table Bob, Coyote, and Hangman have settled at. Hangman has stripped down to his white undershirt, the T-shirt clinging to his chest and back, the sleeves drawing her attention to his arms that she's caught herself staring at too often to count.

“Heading out?” She asks when Hangman comes up to the bar, getting ready to close out his tab, “You only had one beer tonight”.

He nods, “Well, it'd be irresponsible for me to have more. I'm giving you a drive home”.

She grins, slipping the bill across the counter, “I don't remember you asking me”.

“Mav’s orders,” he answers easily, with a seriousness that makes her think he really isn't just joking with her.

“Penny's actually, I was just the messenger,” Maverick holds up his hands in innocence.

Penny calls last call early, before dismissing her for the night, “cool off. Go home,” she instructs leaving no room for argument.

The night air feels lighter, though not as refreshing as expected, the breeze cooling the tack of sweat against her balmy skin. The sound of the ocean meeting the beachside echoes in the uncharacteristic quiet. She breathes out a sigh her head tilted back and arms out trying to make the best of the gust of wind blowing by.

“C’mon,” Jake laughs, “I'll crank the AC for you”.

She pouts a little in return. The glow from the fluorescent light inside the bar floods out across the deck patio, casting shadows out in front of them. He’s standing a good five feet behind her, but his bedimmed counterpart stretches out next to her own, overlapping as he steps closer. The moonlight shines brightly over the white sand below and it strikes her that despite working beachside all summer, she’s yet to step foot on the beach. Jake smirks, his head tilted towards the beach that's captured her attention. “Let’s go cool off,” his words a playful mimicry of Penny’s instructions.

Without protest, she follows him. His grin grows impossibly bigger, clearly pleased with himself as he watches her shuffle out of her socks and shoes, her footsteps so much smaller than his own, she struggles to keep up, but he never lets her fall too far behind. He moves quickly in the dark, the sand still warm underfoot. Nearing the water's edge he slows his pace. She’s gorgeous in the moonlight. She’s always pretty. His usual coquetry shrinks on the tip of his tongue; lost to thoughts and curiosities about her favourite bands, and what might make her laugh. He’s found himself growing somewhat softer as he thinks back to the night he met her, watching her glide through the room oblivious to the attention she’d managed to capture. Her smile lit up the room as she danced with her friends. Her laughter was loud and uproarious, very near infectious.

His white shirt hits the sand in an unceremonious pile by her feet.

“Jake Seresin! You better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”

Shirtless he backs towards the ocean continuing to remove his shoes, socks and pants, “And what do you think I’m doing, Sugar?” “I think you're trying to get me to go skinny dipping with you!” He laughs, “I ain't trying. I'm succeeding”.

There's not an ounce of shame, nor an ounce of clothing on him as he wades into the water, not turning around to look at her again until his in up past his waist. “C’mon,” he calls to her, “the waters lovely!”

She's always considered herself to be pretty easy going. But the idea of stripping naked to join Hangman on this oceanic side quest leaves her stomach tied in knots. She's seen enough of him playing football with the squad that she's not shocked by his broad shoulders, nor the expanse of his chest. She knows that standing on the beach, in a tank top a shorts that cling to her the way they do, she has little to hide her own form. But joining Jake in the water will surely only add to the tension they've allowed to build between them. How different is the ocean from an expanse of bedsheets when you're standing naked with Jake Seresin?

“You have to promise you won't look!” She calls to him, pulling her top up over her head.

“I promise,” he says, “scouts honour !”

“Boy scouts? I'm sure you sold a lot of cookies with all that charm of yours”.

She shimmies out of her shorts, hesitating in her bra and underwear. Jake stands with his back to her holding up his end of the deal.

“Cookies are the Girl Scouts, Sugar,” he corrects, but she can practically hear him grinning, “but I did earn my fundraising activity badge selling tins of popcorn”.

Bare, she makes a mad dash into the water, splashing as she works to cover as much of herself as possible.

“So,” she smiles, “you come here often?”

Her voice is quiet as she hopes that the joke lands, her knees bent to keep her top half under the cover of the unlit water. She tries to play cool. Jake, to his credit, plays along without missing a beat. “I can't say I do, Sugar. The dress code is too loose for my taste”.

“Ah, yes, of course. I forgot you're known for being a prude, Hangman”.

A gentle, yet unexpected wave pushes into the shoreline, knocking her sideways. Jake is quick to wrap his hand around her upper arm, not letting her get too far. This close, it’s impossible to hide from the gaze of his warm green eyes. He smells like cedar and amber. Warm and clean. Beneath it, the smell of jet fuel lingers. She knows how hard he must try to scrub it from himself at the end of each day, and she wonders if it might just be in his blood at this point. Another wave pushes them closer together once more.

He clears his throat, trying hard not to think about how close circumstance has brought them; he weighs the validity of fate but pushes it down deep inside certain that one day these unlabelled feelings might just explode in his chest. For now, he startles when a sudden splash of water is directed towards his face. Sugar feigns innocence, but starts to paddle away from him as he blinks away the water from his eyes.

“Sugar,” he warns, “don’t start something you don’t want to finish”. His own hands, larger than hers cup more of the ocean's surface propelling it in her direction with a great slosh, the sound echoing on the empty beach.

Up on the deck, Penny and Maverick watch the two distant figures throwing water, their laughter audible even when their words aren’t.

“Do you think they know there are sharks in that water?”

Penny shrugs, “Do you think they know they’re half in love with each other yet?”

#jake seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin #jake seresin #hangman x reader #top gun hangman #top gun maverick #pour me another drink

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literaryvein-reblogs · 2 months ago

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Writing Notes: Character Development

Rick Riordan's Writing Tips

Rick Riordan:

Character development is paramount for me. I firmly believe that plot and character development must occur simultaneously. Plot cannot be left to chance. Neither can characters be automatons who carry out actions envisioned in the author's master plan. Below are some things I try to keep in mind when developing my characters:

RICK RIORDAN'S TOP 5 TIPS ON CHARACTER

Define a character first through action, second through dialog and description, never through explanation.

A character should be primarily defined by the choices he makes, and the actions he takes.

How does he respond to violence?

How does he respond to love?

Secondly, a character must be vividly but deftly describe through his speech, and through the initial view you give the reader.

Never stop to explain who a character is when we can watch him in action and decide for ourselves.

Be impressionist rather than realistic.

Describe characters as Dickens did – with a single deft stroke.

A laundry list of physical traits is realistic, but it is neither memorable nor compelling.

A jarring metaphor for the character, or a focus on one mannerism or physical trait, can be very compelling.

Example: She was a human tornado.

Do not be afraid to use real people as models, but do not be constricted by your models.

It is very natural to use parts of ourselves or the people we know when creating characters.

Do not be afraid to do this because someone might get mad at you.

At the same time, let your character develop.

Do not force them to do what the real-life model would do.

Characters seldom end up exactly like the real people they are based on.

The reader does not have to be told everything you know about the character.

It may be critically important to you that your character has blue eyes, or went to Texas A&M.

But if these details have no part in the story, the reader will not care.

Leave them in your subconscious.

If you are having trouble figuring out a character, fill out a character profile, or do some journaling in that character's voice.

Your character must act, not simply be acted upon.

We care about characters because we are interested in the choices they make.

We want to boo the villain, cheer the hero, and cry with frustration when the tragic figure makes the wrong move.

A character who does not act, but simply receives information and is acted upon by outside forces, is not a character who will compel the reader.

Remember, plot is what the characters do next.

If the characters do not create the plot, the plot is hollow.

Here's a character profile worksheet I sometimes fill out if I'm having trouble understanding a particular character I've created:

Character Profile

Name:

Height:

Age in story:

Birthplace:

Hair color, length, style:

Race/nationality:

Regional influences:

Accent: (include voice, style of speech, slang, signature phrases or words)

Religion:

Marital status:

Scars or other notable physical attributes:

Handicaps: (emotional, physical, mental)

Athletic? Inactive? Overall health?

Style of dress:

Favorite colors:

How does the character feel about his/her appearance?

Brothers/sisters:

Relationship with parents:

Memories about childhood:

Educational background: (street smart? Formal? Does he/she read?)

Work experience:

Occupation:

Where does the character live now? Describe home (emotional atmosphere as well as physical)

Neat or messy?

Sexual preferences/morals/activities:

Women friends/men friends:

Pets?

Enemies? Why?

Basic nature:

Personality traits (shy, outgoing, domineering, doormat, honest, kind, sense of humor):

Strongest trait:

Weakest trait:

What does the character fear?

What is the character proud of?

What is the character ashamed of?

Outlook on life (optimistic, pessimistic, cynic, idealist)

Ambitions:

Politics:

How does the character see himself/herself?

How is the character seen by others?

Do you like this person? Why or why not?

Will readers like or dislike?

Most important thing to know about this character:

Present problem:

How it will get worse:

What is the character's goal in the story?

What traits will help/hurt the character in achieving this goal?

What makes the character different from similar characters?

Why will readers remember this character vividly?

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

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imaginespazzi · 3 months ago

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Part 5: The Answers We Wait For

Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11

I'd go back in time and change it (but I can't)

(In which a writer's busy schedule somehow still had time for her favorite obsession)

Pairing: Paige Bueckers X Azzi Fudd

Themes: Angst, Pining

Words: 7.0K (it's very on-brand that my busiest week would produce the longest chapter)

TW: Swearing (I think that's it?)

A/N: Happy Monday lovelies :) How I managed to pull this off is between me and God at this point but here we are. I know it's been an interesting day to say the least, so I'm hoping me living up to my promises can be a silver lining. Quick note that I already fucked up the timeline at some point and Paige Olivia have actually been divorced for almost 3 years. I'll change that eventually. I actually didn't even try to really edit this chapter and in the choice between editing tomorrow and giving it to y'all today, I chose the latter. So please help a girl out and point out my typos/mistakes if you spot them and I will also eventually go back and edit. As always, let me know what you liked, what you disliked and anything you'd like to see going forwards. Have a lovely week my loves <3

December 2027

Marriage and weddings had never been at the forefront of Paige’s mind. To be completely honest, for most of her life, there wasn’t much occupying her brain other than the court under her feet and the basketball in her hands. But the couple of times she had let herself picture it, she’d always thought that she’d have a Fall wedding, probably in Minnesota, maybe even on a basketball court. An indoor winter wedding in Texas had never once crossed her mind. She’d imagined vibrant fun bouquets made of pink lilies and purple hydrangeas, not the elegant red and white roses arrangements that were currently being placed along a far too heavily decorated aisle. Instead of vintage wines and carefully constructed fancy cocktails, she’d thought it would be nice to have spiked shirley temples and maybe even blue and white jello shots. She had expected to have a quiet ceremony followed by a vivacious gathering of everyone she loved. It had never even occurred to her that her wedding would become a public spectacle with People's magazine in attendance. She’d pictured a party, not an event.

Most of all she’d dreamt of getting married to a girl with dark eyes that could see all of Paige’s flaws and a soft smile that promised she’d love Paige despite them all.

But the thing about dreams is that they’re fleeting trains that travel through the tracks of your mind when you’re asleep, and when you wake up, reality is nothing but a devastating train crash.

Paige sighs, forcing herself out of her own head, as she stares at her reflection in the mirror. She looks pretty. Brittany had found her a nice white wedding suit -fitted to perfection- matching it with dainty silver jewelry. Paige normally liked her outfits a little looser but Olivia loved it and Paige likes that Olivia loves it. Her hair is styled in a bun, with two straightened strands to highlight her face. She thinks she might have preferred to have them curled in the front but Olivia had sweetly insisted on them being straight because hers would be curly and they had to complement, not match. Paige doesn’t really understand the difference or the importance but she thinks if Olivia wants it like that then she's fine with it. She thinks the bold red lipstick heavily coating her mouth makes her look a little bit like a vampire out of a badly directed 90’s horror movie but Olivia had said it was necessary so that the lights and cameras didn’t wash her face out.

Paige looks pretty. She just doesn’t really look like Paige.

“What do you think Drewski?” she asks, twirling to face her stone-faced brother who’s sitting on the couch, with a bout of enthusiasm that rings hollow to her own ears, “do I look gorgeous or what?”

“You look weird,” Drews says stiffly and Paige sighs.

“Dr-” Paige is cut off by her younger brother sauntering over. A confused expression spreads over her features as Drew takes her hand and places it on his forehead, “uh- what are you doing?”

“Paigey, doesn't my forehead feel hot? I feel so sick,” the little boy whines, letting out a series of overzealous dramatized coughs.

“Your forehead feels fine,” Paige says, slowly removing her hand.

“Well of course you’d think that. You’re not a doctor who knows how to feel foreheads correctly. I think we need to go to the hospital to see a real doctor. Like right now,” Drew pulls at Paige’s hand as she begins to catch onto what he’s trying to make happen.

“You’re fine Drew.”

“I’m NOT. I’m very, very, very sick. So we have to leave right now. I could be contagious. I could be a danger to all these people,” Drew’s animated hands start to fly everywhere, “you can’t get married when your little brother’s sick. It’s- it’s just wrong. Bad juju or something like that. Everybody will understand that you just had to call off the wedding. For family reasons.”

“Drew-” Paige tries again, a hard pit settling in her stomach.

“Are you worried cause you didn’t bring your car? That’s okay I’m sure Ice or KK will drive us but you can’t get married today Paigey. You just can’t,” his bottom lip trembles as the façade of illness slips and Paige feels her own eyes start to get glossy, “it’s not right Paigey. This is all wrong. She’s all wrong.”

“It’s not like that Drew. You just haven’t gotten to know-”

“I don’t want to know her,” Drew yells, “you don’t even know her. How can you get married to someone you’ve barely dated for a year. How can you do this to Az-”

“That’s enough,” Paige’s voice is eerily calm, as she digs her fingernails into her palm, “watch how you talk to me-”

“You’re being stup-”

“Drew Thomas I am not going to repeat myself again. Behave yourself. You’re not nearly old enough to be questioning what I do with my life,” it takes every inch of self-control Paige has to not let her voice shake.

Her younger brother’s words feel like acid rain pelting against her already wounded skin. They slip into the gashes, mixing into her bloodstreams to create an army with the battalion of her own thoughts that have been hacking away at her heart for god knows how long. Paige wonders how long it’ll be before she finally bleeds out.

“Please don’t get married Paigey,” Drew pleads, gripping his sister’s hand, “please.”

There’s nothing but silence as Paige opens and closes her mouth. And she doesn’t know if she’s trying to get words out or breathe air in; all she knows is that Drew might be squeezing her hands, but it feels like someone is strangling her lungs.

She’s saved from having to say anything by a hesitant knock on the door. As Drew begrudgingly goes to open it, Paige scrambles to put herself back together. She closes her eyes, taking in three deep breaths before-

Drew gasps and Paige’s eyes fly open. With her back turned to the door, she can’t see who it is and something like hope starts to bloom in her chest, vines of maybe it’s her weaving through her ribcage. And as she turns around, they turn to dust; dust that floats up to her eyes and makes them tear up again as she stares dumbfoundedly at the two people standing somewhat awkwardly in her doorway.

Paige had grown up an independent child. It wasn’t that her parents were neglectful or that they hadn’t loved her enough because they had. But at first it was the constant fighting and then it was the nurturing of a brand new family with new children and Paige had slipped through the cracks of oh she’s so mature we don’t need to worry about her. She had always had her parents as cheerleaders in the stands; no one was prouder of Paige than they were. But no one had bothered to force her to drink terrible tasting immunity boosters. No had patiently dyed her hair purple and pinky promised to like it even if it turned out terrible. No one had yelled at her for being in the gym till one a.m or woken her up at an ungodly hour to run drills. Not until she’d met a girl at 15 and that girl’s parents had decided that Paige was just as much theirs as their own daughter.

And suddenly there were more people added to her cheering squad for her wins. But that’s not when Paige fell in love with Tim and Katie Fudd. It was when she lost and there was a nagging finger followed by a full breakdown of what she could do better next time and finally, a bear hug promising they’d help her do it. They’d been there every step and she’d sent the invitation, scared they wouldn’t show up, that they wouldn’t be there for this step, a step that inadvertently took her further away from them. But here they are anyway.

“Hi sweetheart,” Katie says softly, her own eyes moist as she takes in the sight of the bride, “you look- you look absolutely stunning Paige.”

“You came,” Paige whispers, “I didn’t- I didn’t know if you would.”

“Of course we came,” Tim exclaims but his normal boisterous voice doesn’t feel nearly as enthusiastic, “always told you we’d be front and center at your wedding.”

Because I was supposed to marry your daughter; I was supposed to become your daughter, officially.

“I’m really glad you guys came,” Paige says, letting Katie wrap her into a warm hug. She only gets a second to let herself enjoy it before Drew’s asking a question that makes her stiffen.

“Where’s Azzi?”

It’s like there’s lightning wrapped in that one syllable and it strikes right through Paige’s heart, setting every inch of it ablaze with the flames of a name that used to feel like cotton candy on her tongue; now it feels like lava.

“She couldn’t make it,” Tim says slowly and Paige knows she shouldn’t be surprised, let along disappointed that her ex wasn’t coming but there’s a string that snaps anyways.

“Why not?” Drew asks petulantly.

“The baby’s due next month,” Tim tells him gently, “she can’t fly.”

The air feels suffocating at the mention of the baby. She’d been scrolling mindlessly through her tiktok feed when the announcement had popped up. She still has it memorized.

Golden State Valkyries superstar shooting guard Azzi Fudd announces pregnancy on Instagram; she’ll miss the upcoming WNBA season.

For a moment the world had stopped as Paige had hurriedly switched apps to instagram. And there it was. A smiling picture of Azzi holding a sonogram. Paige doesn’t know how long she’d stared at the picture but she remembers that it was set against a white background and she remembers that Azzi was wearing a green top. And as she’d typed out a congrats! that blended in seamlessly with all the other felicitating comments on the post, Paige had wondered if Azzi had felt it too. She’d wondered if, when Azzi had left a similar congratulations <3 post on Paige’s engagement announcement, she’d felt something unravel too. She’d wondered if Azzi had felt this hollowness of and i guess this is us signing off on never getting forever with each other.

“So Azzi’s not going to stop this wedding?” Drew’s voice is dangerously even as he rounds on Paige, “and you’re really going through with this?”

“Drew please” Paige says tiredly as Katie runs a soothing hand down her back.

“You’re stupid. And she’s stupid. You’re all so freaking stupid,” Drew bursts out, stomping past the adults in the doorway, his anger palpable in every single word.

“I got it,” Tim says, wrapping a wrist around Paige’s hand as she moves to follow her younger brother. He squeezes gently, a half-hearted smile on his face, “it’s gonna be okay kid. It always is.”

Paige wishes she could just believe him, turn off the voices in her head and just be a kid who could take an adult’s word as gospel. But Paige is the adult now and believing no longer comes so naturally.

“Hey,” Katie says after Tim runs after Drew, pulling Paige to sit with her on the couch, “I have a little wedding gift for you.

“Katie you don’t have-” Paige begins, watching as the older woman pulls out a velvet box from her bag, placing her phone on the table next to her.

“Oh hush. I told you I’d give this to you,” Katie chides as she hands the velvet box. Paige’s eyes glisten as she opens it to find a familiar purple amethyst necklace. She’s flooded with the vivid image of her and Azzi on a random day in lockdown helping Katie organize her minimal jewelry. Paige had fallen in love with this necklace and Azzi had her eyes set on a pink topaz. It was fitting to say the least and Katie had promised them, with a glint in her eyes, that she’d give it to them as their something old on their wedding day. They’d been in between something and everything but Paige and Azzi had shared a shy smile over it anyways.

“I can’t accept this,” Paige shakes her head trying to hand the box back but Katie dodges it expertly.

“Yes you can. It’s basically a family heirloom and you, Paige Bueckers, are family,” Katie says firmly.

“Katie-”

The older woman presses a kiss to Paige’s forehead as she starts to head out, “you’re always gonna be family Paige. Always.”

Katie’s words act like a band-aid but they’re not enough- maybe nothing will be enough- to fully heal the wound of today i was supposed to officially become a Fudd.

A ringing noise interrupts Paige’s pity party and she starts half-heartedly digging around for her phone. She’s confused when she finds it because no one’s calling her and the room is still vibrating with noise. Crinkling her eyebrows, Paige’s eyes finally land on the couch side table, where Katie’s phone, clearly forgotten, is buzzing.

Azzi’s CallerID flashes on the screen.

Paige stares at the phone, rooted in place. She knows she shouldn’t pick it up, knows she should go return it. Still without a decision, Paige slowly starts to reach for it. And then it stops ringing and Paige goes still again, unsure if she’s relieved or disappointed. Swallowing, she takes another step. The phone rings again. A myriad of thoughts dance through Paige’s mind, opposing thoughts clashing with each other and making her head hurt. She lies to herself that it’s out of concern; that Azzi’s pregnant and this could be important. She lies to herself as she hits the green answer button that it’s not because she’s desperate to hear Azzi’s voice.

“Mom?” Azzi sounds distraught when she picks up but Paige thinks it’s still her favorite sound any way, “Mom? I think I did something wrong. I can’t do this Mom. You’ve been gone a day and I’ve already fucked up. I don’t know what and I don’t know when but I think I fucked up. Maybe I ate something I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe it’s because I lay on my back instead of my side but Mom she hasn’t kicked all day and I can’t get Dr. Myers on the phone and I-”

“It’s a girl?” Paige breathes out. And suddenly she’s 22, sitting in a UConn apartment living room, grinning foolishly as Jana points out an AI picture that looks like the perfect mixture of her and Azzi. Azzi, who’s having a daughter.

The woman in question is quiet and for a second Paige thinks that Azzi might hang up.

“It’s a girl Paige,” Azzi says finally.

“Are you- are you okay?” Paige asks slowly, trying not to dwell on how much she’s missed the way Azzi says her name. It’s been Bueckers every time they’ve seen each other this year and she’s never hated the sound of her last name more.

“Yeah, I just-” Azzi sighs, her voice still a little frazzled, “I’m just being paranoid cause my Mom’s not here and my doctor’s not answering and the stupid baby hasn’t kicked all day,” she pauses, “sorry. I-I don’t mean to dump on you. Not today at least.”

“Az-”

“Where’s my Mom?”

“She- she’s probably outside. Think she left her phone here by accident. I can go find her but can I-” Paige hesitates, chewing at her lips in a way she knows Olivia hates, “can I help?”

“I don’t think-”

Paige shocks herself with her next words, “put the phone to your stomach.”

“What? Paige, did you hit your head in the last two seconds or something?”

“Just- just trust me,” she’s not really sure what she’s saying but now that she’s said, might as well commit to the bit, “I’mma talk sense into her. I saw it in a movie.”

“You saw it in a-” Azzi sighs and Paige can practically picture her rolling her eyes. “I don’t know who’s more insane. You for coming up with the idea or me because I’mma follow through it,” there’s a bunch of static noise on the other side as Azzi adjusts herself, putting the phone on speaker and pressing it to her belly, “alright Dr. Bueckers work your magic.”

Paige is nervous as she speaks, “hey there little bean. I’m your-” she stops because what is she, “I’m your Paige,” she decides softly, “and I think- I think you should stop stressing your Mama out. She’s a bit of an overthinker so if you could just help her out, I think she’d really appreciate it. Because if- if you don’t she isn’t gonna be able to sleep tonight and you don’t know this yet but when your Mama doesn’t get sleep, she’s kind of a bi-”

“Paige,” Azzi hisses.

“Big baby,” Paige corrects, “she’s a big baby. And then she cries and it’s not a pretty sight-”

“Hey!”

“Sshhh Azzi I’m working my magic,” Paige scolds, “where was I? Oh yeah. She cries and it’s not a pretty sight because,’ her voice softens, “seeing your Mama cry is the worst thing in the world. I hate it and I know- I know you’re gonna hate it too because when you finally come out little bean, the first thing you’re gonna see is your Mama’s smile. And you’re gonna think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Just like I do,” a sob escapes on the other end of the line and Paige feels tears start to cascade down her own cheeks, “come on little bean, give us a little kick. Make your Mama smile.”

Time ticks by slowly and Paige closes her eyes, thinking maybe her desperate attempt to keep Azzi on the line had failed miserably. And then Azzi gasps, “she kicked. Oh my god Paige she kicked.”

Paige’s grin stretches her whole face and for a second it almost feels like she’s right there with Azzi, that instead of her ear being pressed to a phone, it’s pressed to Azzi’s belly. For a second she almost feels like she can feel the baby kicking. And then she opens her eyes.

“Did it make you smile?”

“Yeah, yeah it did,” Azzi admits and Paige can hear the relief in her voice.

“I’m glad- I’m glad you have something that makes you smile.”

“Do you?” Azzi sucks in a sharp breath, “do you have someone that makes you smile?”

“Yeah, yeah I do,” and it’s not a complete lie. Olivia does make Paige smile. And maybe it’s not quite as big or bright or real but at least Olivia’s here to try.

“Good. I-I’m also really glad you have that.”

“You are?”

“Of course I am Paige,” Azzi says quietly, “I want you to smile. I just- I just want you to be happy. Are you happy Paige?”

“I’m getting married today,” Paige says in lieu of an answer and she can hear Azzi’s breath hitch.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is. It’s a yes or no question,” Azzi presses.

“Then you answer it Azzi,” Paige bites out, “are you happy?”

“I”m-,” the younger girl lets out a sigh, “I’m content.”

Her answer makes Paige’s skin itch with irritation and she can’t stop it from seeping into her next question, “so you have no regrets then?”

“I didn’t say that,” there’s a warning edge to Azzi’s voice.

“Do you or do you not regret saying no to marrying me Azzi?” Paige asks, unable to hold it in any longer.

“Paige-”

“What? You gonna say it’s not that simple? It’s a yes or no question Azzi,” Paige mocks.

“That’s not it-”

“Then what is?”

“You’re getting married Paige,” Azzi yells, “you’re getting married,” she repeats again, softer this time, “to someone else. And so it doesn’t matter how I feel. It isn’t fair of you to ask and it wouldn’t- it wouldn’t be fair of me to answer. Not today. Maybe one day- one day it'll be the right time but not today.”

“And what if it’s never the right time?”

“Then maybe it’s a question you were never meant to know the answer to.”

There’s something final in the quietness that follows, like they’re having a moment of silence at a funeral for what never even got to be.

It’s Azzi who speaks first.

“You’re gonna be a wonderful wife P.”

“You’re gonna be an amazing mom Az.”

They let it left unsaid that they were supposed to be wives to each other, that they were supposed to be moms together.

***

March 2033

Paige doesn’t know how long she stands outside, staring down the winding road that had taken Stephie and Azzi away from her. The neighborhood is slowly waking up and if the woman across the street opens her curtains and thinks it’s a little strange that her new neighbor is standing like a statue on her front porch, she only raises a slight eyebrow before going back to her day. It takes almost twenty minutes before her head finally convinces her heart that no matter how much she stands outside, they’re not coming back.

There’s a part of her that can admit that maybe Azzi had a point and maybe she shouldn’t have asked her to stay over last night. But Paige has never been known for her common sense, especially not when it comes to Azzi. Because truth be told, asking Azzi to stay the night was perhaps the least ridiculous of the thoughts that had invaded her mind last night. It was easy- too easy- to fall right back into whatever with Azzi. She’d done a good job pretending that the nightly facetime calls had been for Stephie’s benefit but the truth is that they had become just as much a necessity for Paige. She’d fallen asleep with a smile on her face every night and the temptation to have that in person last night had been too hard to resist. And so she hadn’t.

She makes it about three steps up the stairs, when the fort still set up in the living room catches her eye. And that’s when the first tear falls, and then the second and then the third until she thinks if she tried to swim in them, she’d probably drown. Paige abandons the idea of going up to her room and crawls back into the tent made of blankets. And she must be going insane because she swears she can still smell the faint scent of a toddler and Azzi’s lavender perfume on the pillow she cradles to her chest. It’s ridiculous to be so attached already. She knows that. Stephie isn’t hers but it feels like the little girl has crept underneath her skin, burrowing herself in a part of Paige’s heart that the blond didn’t even know was there. And Azzi- well no matter how long it’s been, no matter how much resentment Paige has held, the truth is that there’s a little patch of Paige’s soul that will always belong to the younger woman.

Paige barely registers herself falling asleep until there’s abrupt knocking on her door and she realizes she’s been cocooned in the fort for almost three hours. She hesitantly lets go of the pillow, groggily walking towards the door. It’s useless to pretend that she isn’t hoping it’s Azzi and Stephie on the other side, isn’t hoping that Azzi had realized her mistake, isn’t hoping to scoop both of them into her arms and fill the hollowness that’s been thrumming against her ribcage. God Paige has barely survived a month -a day if she’s completely honest- she doesn’t know how she’s going to survive this whole season.

She crosses her fingers behind her back as she opens the door.

“Hey,” Katie’s smiling face looks back at her, holding up a tray of coffee and a bag of something, “figured you haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”

Paige blinks stupidly as Katie lets herself in, moving through Paige’s house with ease and immediately locating the kitchen. She hands Paige a cup of coffee before ransacking through the bag and pulling out a glazed donut, “eat. I know you haven’t.”

“Does Azzi know you’re here?” Paige asks slowly before taking a bite out of her donut.

Katie gives her pointed look, “who do you think gave me your address?”

“Is she- is she okay?”

“You two are something you know,” Katie shakes her head, “you’re asking me if she’s okay and she sent me over here to make sure that you were okay.”

Paige feels her heart swell with after all this time, “she sent you?”

“I have breakfast with Azzi and Stephie every Sunday morning. Now imagine my surprise when I get there today and my oh so sweet and wonderful granddaughter isn’t talking to her mother. And so I forced the story out of Azzi and I barely understood a word she was saying through her tears-”

“She was crying?” Paige feels her lungs constrict.

Katie shoots her an unimpressed look, “can I finish the story?”

“I don’t like this story. It has Azzi crying.”

“Yeah well the two of you seem to enjoy doing that to each other,” Katie cocks an unamused eyebrow and Paige flinches at the truth of it, “anyways I didn’t understand much of it but she was clear by the end. Seemed to think you needed someone, needed me and so here I am Paige.”

“Why is your daughter like this?” Paige demands, “how is she gonna make me cry and then send somebody else to wipe my tears.”

“Well I can leave-”

“Why couldn’t she just have stayed?” the blonde questions, “why does she always have to overthink things and make it more complicated? Why can’t she just listen to her heart once in her fucking life? Why can’t she just let herself live? Why is it always no with her and never just yes?”

Katie gives Paige a sad smile, reaching for her hand, “that’s why.”

“Please don’t speak in riddles. It’s 10 a.m and I’m sad,” Paige whines. She might be in her early thirties but there’s something about Katie Fudd that makes Paige feel like it’s okay to be a bit of a child.

“Why is it always no with her and never yes?” Katie repeats, “c’mon Paige you know that’s not about last night.”

“It is,” Paige argues stubbornly.

“It’s not,” Katie says, gently squeezing Paige’s hand, “it’s about her saying no 8 years ago.”

“I’m ov-” Paige stops, withering under Katie’s glare, “okay maybe it’s a little bit about her saying no 8 years ago. But I’m allowed to still be upset about it. She broke my heart. I wanted forever and she walked away. I’m allowed to be mad about that.”

“Of course you’re allowed to be mad Paige but that’s exactly why Azzi had to go this morning. And it’s exactly why you shouldn’t have asked her to stay last night. You guys can’t just pretend none of it happened because it did. You’re still hurt Paige and ignoring that is gonna get you guys nowhere. Especially with Stephie involved.”

“So what are you saying? You’re saying me and Azzi should just be teammates? You’re saying I should just never see Stephie again,” even the thought of it makes Paige feel like she is laying down on a bed of thorns.

“You’re so goddamn dramatic Bueckers,” Katie rolls her eyes, “I’m not saying any of that. I’m saying maybe you just need to take it slower, with both of them, instead of having a goddamn sleepover the literal first night you’re in the same city. Besides,” Katie gives her a knowing smirk, “my granddaughter is obsessed with her Miss Buecks. Pretty sure she’d find a way to see you again no matter what.”

“Good,” Paige lets out her first smile of the day, “because I’d find a way to see her again too. She just- she’s kinda great isn’t she? Azzi did a good job with that one. She’s- she’s perfect,” she looks at Katie who’s regarding Paige with a thoughtful expression, “what? Do I have donut glaze on my face?”

“No, no it just- I’ve seen that expression before.”

“What expression?”

“The one you just had on your face while talking about Stephie,” Katie laughs to herself, “it’s the same one Tim had when he first met Azzi.”

***

“Oh my god. It’s Paige Bueckers. Can I have your autograph?” Steph Curry winks at Paige as she walks into his office. The Golden State legend had started an after-school basketball camp for kids in the Bay Area and as soon as he’d heard the news of Paige coming over to the Valkyries, he’d messaged her if she’d be interested in helping him out in the off-season. Paige had been more than willing to be a part of it, always invested in giving back to her community. If she’d been excited by the idea before though, today, after the worst sleep of her night as she tossed and turned to the hopeless depression of not having spoken to Stephie and Azzi for far too long, Paige really needed this distraction.

“Don’t think you can afford my autograph,” Paige smirks lazily as she basically droops into the seat opposite him.

Steph laughs goodnaturedly, “welcome to the Bay Area kid.”

“I’m a little old to be called a kid don’t you think? I’m nearly 25,” Paige grins, wiggling her eyebrows..

Steph shakes his head, “nah you’re always gonna be a kid to me. You and Azzi both,” he chuckles to himself, “even though Azzi’s got her own kid now. Have you met her?”

Well that distraction lasted 30 seconds, Paige thinks to herself as she forces a smile onto her face, “yeah. I’ve seen her around.”

“She’s cute as hell right? And she knows it. Little miss bossy pants has everyone wrapped around her fingers. Kinda reminds me of Riley,” there’s a goofy expression as Steph thinks of his daughter and Paige wonders if the same one is reflected on her face as she thinks about Stephie, “and she’s a natural at basketball. Only five and her shot’s already pretty good. You’ll see it today when she comes to camp. And she’s pretty good at defense-”

“I’m sorry what?” Paige blinks rapidly.

“I know. What defense can a 5 year old play but it’s just the way she moves you know?” Steph tries to explain and Paige shakes her head.

“Not that. Stephie- Stephie’s coming to camp?”

Steph grins large and proud, “of course she is. She was the first camper I signed.”

“Right,” Paige nods, giving the man in front of her a tight smile, “can you- can you excuse me for one second.”

As soon as Paige is outside of Steph’s earshot, she’s calling Katie; Katie who had sat at her kitchen counter yesterday and listened with a smile as Paige told her all about Steph’s camp. Katie who hadn’t said one word about Stephie being a part of said camp. Katie who was maybe grinning just a little too hard at the idea.

“Did you know Stephie goes to Curry Camp?” Paige asks as soon as the line connects.

“Hi Katie. Hi Paige. How was your day? Oh mine was good Paige, thanks for asking, how was yours?” Katie replies sarcastically.

“Katie,” Paige groans.

“Did I know that my granddaughter goes to her godfather’s special camp for the sport that her mother plays and she’s obsessed with?” Katie says slowly and Paige can tell she’s holding back a laugh, “nope, didn’t have a clue.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“And ruin the surprise?”

“What happened to telling me to take things slow?” Paige hisses.

“Well if I left the two of you two to your own devices y’all wouldn’t go slow, you wouldn’t even move at all,” Katie defends.

“So you’re meddling?”

“I am not,” Katie protests, “you were always gonna help with the camp and Stephie’s already been going to the camp. I just didn’t let you stress out about it. Really you should be thanking me.”

“Thank you Katie,” Paige bites out mockingly.

“You’re so very welcome Paige,” Katie sing-songs, “by the way, come over for dinner soon okay sweetheart. Love you honey. See you later darling.”

She hangs up before Paige can say anything and the blonde saunters back into Steph’s office, trying to corral her facial expression into something more neutral.

“All good?” Steph asks.

“Just peachy,” Paige hums in response, “we gonna head over to the court soon? It’s almost 4.”

Steph nods, “yeah they’ll be done setting up for us. Azzi usually brings Stephie to say hi to me right before cause no favoritism in front of the other kids you know? But maybe she’s running la- oh no wait there they are!”

Paige freezes, heartbeat erratic, as Steph walks to the door in anticipation.

“UNCLE TWIN,” Stephie screams and something in Paige’s heart starts to fix itself at the sound of the younger girl’s voice. She’s scared to turn around, unsure if she’s more scared to realize it’s a dream or find out that it’s reality.

“TWIN NIECE,” Steph yells back with equal vigor and Paige can hear Azzi’s laugh now too, each giggle acting like a needle, stitching up the parts of Paige that had felt broken since yesterday morning. She turns around deliberately slowly. Stephie is cradled in Steph’s arms and Azzi’s watching them with a fond smile. And it’s ridiculous to be jealous of a happily married man who’s practically Azzi’s brother if not her uncle, but the sense of that should be me, weighs heavily on Paige’s lungs anyways.

It’s Azzi who sees her first, smile slowly fading as dark brown eyes clash with light blue ones.

“Paige,” she whispers softly and there’s a multitude of undecipherable emotions wrapped in that one syllable and Paige thinks she could spend forever just trying to uncover them.

Stephie’s ear perks up at the mention of Paige’s name as her own little eyes finally land on the blonde, shuffling her feet nervously in the corner. Her bottom lip trembles, eyes watering as she forces herself down from Steph’s lap, racing to Paige. It’s instinct the way Paige falls to her knees, ready to catch the bundle of limps that practically falls into her waiting arms.

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie whimpers, “I missed you so much.”

Paige’s own eyes water as she buries her face in Stephie’s hair, “me too sweetheart. I missed you so, so, so much.”

In front of them, Steph looks beyond confused as to what's happening and Azzi’s determinedly looking away, even if there’s a lone tear waterfalling down her left cheek.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Stephie confesses, voice choked up as she tightens her grip on Paige’s neck, “and I begged and I begged Mama to let me call you but she said you were busy. And then I yelled at Mama and it made Mama cry too and I hate making Mama cry.”

“I know. I know sweetheart,” Paige soothes softly, running her hands down Stephie’s back as the little girl continues to babble. They stay like that for a long time and Paige thinks if she could ask the world for one thing that doesn’t belong to her, she’d ask for Stephie.

Finally Steph coughs, looking apprehensively between the three girls in the room, “so um- I take it you’ve more than just seen Stephie around then Paige?”

Paige lets out a watery laugh, finally letting Stephie go and turning around but still keeping a hand on Stephie’s shoulder, “yeah I guess that’s true.”

“What are you doing here Miss Buecks,” Stephie asks, looking up at Paige.

“I’m uh- well Mr. Steph-”

“Uncle Twin,” Stephie corrects immediately and Paige can’t help but grin at the nickname.

“Right. Uncle Twin asked me to be a coach at his camp and I agreed,” Paige explains, trying to catch Azzi’s eyes but the shooting guard seems determined to focus on a picture of Steph and Ayesha on the wall instead.

“You’re gonna be my coach,” Stephie squeals, turning around to hug Paige’s knees, “this is the best news of my life.”

Paige feels her heart soar into a sky of you’re the best new of my life Stephie as she bends down to kiss Stephie forehead, “let’s see if you say that when I make you run laps after you miss a shot.”

“You wouldn’t?” Stephie says, looking horrified at the idea.

“I totally would,” Paige teases.

Stephie is quiet for a second before a proud smirk blooms on her lips, “that’s okay ‘cause I don’t miss. I’m Azzi Fudd’s daughter. Right Mama?”

“Right baby,” Azzi says, finally letting herself meet Paige’s gaze.

“Well Miss-I-Don’t-Miss, how about you walk over to the court and show us how you don’t miss,” Steph teases.

Stephie waddles out of Paige’s grip and holds her arms up at Steph, a saccharine smile on her face,“I can’t be tired if I don’t wanna miss Uncle Twin, so can you please carry me over there?”

Steph rolls his eyes but it doesn’t stop him from hoisting Stephie onto his shoulders, “alright your highness, let’s go.”

Stephie’s giggles echoe down the hall as Steph runs towards the courts and Paige can’t help the fond laugh that escapes her.

“She gets that from you, you know,” Paige says softly to Azzi.

“Gets what?”

“Being a princess who gets everything she wants.”

“Not everything,” Azzi says wistfully, “not everything I want.”

She moves to start following but Paige wraps a hand around her wrist, “I didn’t know Stephie was a part of Curry Camp. I swear I- I didn’t do this on purpose.”

Azzi sighs, “I know. I know you wouldn’t Paige.”

“And I- I wanted to thank you for sending your Mom yesterday. I really- I really did need it even if I didn’t know it,” Paige’s thumb subconsciously rubs against Azzi’s skin, “but you- you always seem to know what I need.”

Azzi rips her hand out from Paige's grip, “you’re doing it again.”

“I’m not-”

“Yes you are. You keep saying things like that- things you shouldn’t say- things I can’t just listen to and be okay,” Azzi brushes her hand against her face, “I know the way I left yesterday was wrong and maybe I was projecting,” she admits in a whisper, “but you just- you make me feel too fucking much. And it's too quick and it’s scares me.”

“Scares you?” Paige scoffs, “I’m not the one who broke your heart Azzi.”

“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I’ve lived with that guilt for the last 8 years? Jesus fucking christ Paige. I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of me,” tears stream down Azzi’s face as she paces the room, “I have never heard Stephie cry so fucking much in my life Paige. And you know who did that to her? Me, I did that. Apparently I’m really fucking good at making people cry but I don’t want to. I don’t want to break her heart, I don’t want to break your heart and I don’t want to break my own heart. Not again.”

“Azzi-”

“And so I’m stopping it before it happens. Before I ruin it again.”

Azzi tries to leave again but Paige is faster, wrapping her arms around the younger woman’s waist and pulling her flush against her chest so she can’t escape. It’s a terrible idea because now all of her senses are consumed by Azzi as they both become acutely aware of how close they are now.

“Paige,” Azzi whispers weakly, one hand pressed right against Paige’s heart, “let me go.”

“I think today’s the right time,” Paige says softly, hands grazing Azzi’s waist, “I asked you a question once and you said one day, when the time was right, you’d give me an answer. It’s the right time.”

“I don’t think so-”

“Azzi please,” Paige begs, “do you regret saying no?”

“Paige let me go,” Azzi wriggles against her grip but it only makes Paige tighten her hold.

“It’s a simple yes or no question.’

“Stephie’s probably wondering where we are-”

“Then answer the damn question and we can go to her-”

“Paige please.”

“Answer the fucking question Azzi.”

“What do you want me to say?” Azzi bursts out finally, “you want me to say that I’ve never regretted anything more in my life? You want me to say the minute I said no, I wanted to rip out my tongue? You want me to say that I almost called you several times in the last decade to tell you how stupid I was? You want me to say that I flew to Dallas once to tell you that I fucked up but then I saw you with Olivia and decided you deserved better than me-”

“What?” Paige feels the air being snatched from her lungs.

“The answer to your stupid fucking question,” Azzi’s voice breaks, “is yes. Yes I regret saying no to you Paige. But it doesn’t matter. Because I said no and you found someone else who’d say yes and now it’s too late.”

And Paige thinks that Katie was probably right, that she should probably take things slow. But when it comes to Azzi Fudd, Paige Bueckers has never been one to do what she should.

“It’s never too late for us,” Paige whispers before crashing her lips against the woman, who’s always been the reason for her biggest, brightest, most real smile.

#pazzi #paige bueckers #azzi fudd #wcbb

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schlattslonghairytoes · 10 days ago

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can i come over?

when schlatt moves to texas an unexpected storm leaves him with no where to go, will you offer up a room to your friend?

streamer reader x streamer schlatt

you had lived in texas since you attended college at texas a and m

orginally you went to ithica college, but you transfered during your sophmore year

you now had your own apartment as you were out of college

you knew a couple of other content creators who lived in the area, but not many

your closest friend, ted nivison, lived in los angeles, but you went to visit him every now and again

your phone rang, "gangnum style" blasting in your ears and groaned, you reached for your phone, only to be met with a picture of you and theodore from college freshman year

"i need your help guppie." teds face filled the screen and his dopey smile made you laugh

"you woke me up mr grouper." your nicknames came from the first time you got high together and decided to watch bubble guppies

"wakey wakey! does this fit look ok?" he set the camera down and walked away from the camera, he did a little spin before grabbing his phone again

"yes you look very fashionable theo. can i go back to sleep now?" ne nodded but very quickly realized he had something else to tell you

"wait really quick, remember schlatt? you met him during the lunch club era" you scanned your sleepy memory trying to remember this guy you probably met once.

"um, tall right? good looking?" ted nodded and laughed, sitting down at his desk

"glad to hear thats what you remember. anyways, im pretty sure hes moving out to Austin in the coming months, so you guys should talk cause he only knows a handfull of people out there." ted said

"cool. can i please sleep now." your tired brain did not care for this random man barely remember.

"yes, reach out to him ok?" he smiled at the camera

"yes theodore kennedy nivison junior. love you. byeeeee" and with that you ended the call.

you didnt really think about teds call all that much, untill around 3 months later you recieved a text from an unknown number

even though schlatt then tried ghosting you, ted finally convinced him to man up and keep talking to one of the few people living where he was soon moving

over the span of a month you two had been constantly talking, to the point where you were starting to consider him as one of your closest friends

you would facetime atleast once a day, text everyday, and you even streamed twice together on your account

you were getting very excited to have a new friend so close by

then came the storm.

you lived alone with your dog, and you knew your house would not be ready for this shit.

you stalked up on food, blankets, flashlights

basically anything you could get your hands on

and you bunkered down at your house with your dog, getting ready to thug the next few days out

you were scrolling on your phone, on the first night of the storm, power already out, house fucking freezing, and you see schlatt had posted on his snap story

you open it to find a video of him yelling outside of a completely dark marriot

screaming about how thats where he is supposed to be staying

and you were getting very worried, like your new friend who youve never met in person, might deadass freeze to death.

so you did what any caring soul like yourself would do

you swipe up on his story with your address and a follow up message saying "pull up to mi casa papi 🍆 "

and hope he would hurry so you could go to bed

around twenty minutes later you layed cuddled with your dog bundled in over ten blankets

when felt your house fucking shake with how hard schlatt was banging on your door

you walked downstairs, and opened the door, to a giant, shivering, and covered in snow schlatt, who you immediatly wrapped in a hug and dragged upstairs

"c'mon lets get you nice and warm." you brought him to your room where you turned your bed into a nice warm spot for him "i have some clothes for you, they were my brothers so they should fit" you smiled up at him

he hadnt said much yet and you could see the stress seeping through his face, he dropped his stuff and kinda just hugged you.

"you ok?" you laugh as he pulls away from the hug. he smiles sadly before sitting down on your bed

"ive been better ill be honest" he laughed quietly.

"some first day here huh?" you pat him on the back, trying to comfort him.

"you could say that. holy shit i thought that was a stuffed animal" he says looking at your dog

"go change dumbass, bathrooms on the right" you watch as schlatt takes the clothes and walks to your bathroom, you think you even hearhim flick on the light switch.

"do you want a flashlight?" you yell out to him, to which you get a small "please" back in return, you laugh and leave a flashlight infront of the door

you get comfy in the small sofa in your room, as schlatt was not going to fit on it, and your other bedroom was turned into your office. but you didnt mind him taking the bed

he came out of the bathroom minutes later and quietly shut the door behind him when he turned around he was looking at you kinda funny

you began to ask what was wrong before he cut you off "absolutely not, im not kicking you off your bed, get up" he towered over you on the sofa

"schlatt shut the fuck up, your not fitting on this thing, i barely do."

"you have a king size bed, were sharing, me you and that oddly stuffed animal looking dog c'mon get a move on" he got into the bed and waited for you and your dof to follow him

you laughed and made your way over, your dog following closely behind. you flop down onto the bed and look at the man laying next to you

"crazy this is the first time we're meeting" he says getting comfy

you lay another blanket on the both of you as your dog jumps up on the bed and lays between the two of you "im glad ted introduced us" you take a moment to inspect him

you two had called on discord many times and FaceTimed, but nothing lived up to the real thing.

"im really happy he introduced us too."

guys i kinda hate how this turned out

sorry 😣 😥 😦 😧 😨 😪 😢 😞 😰 😿 🫤 ❤️‍🩹 ☹️ 😐

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dnickels · 11 months ago

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In district court, the case was assigned to David Hittner, a Reagan appointee in his eighties. One of the main points of contention was whether drag constitutes artistic expression, and is therefore deserving of First Amendment protection. On the stand, the state’s attorney repeatedly questioned Montez about twerking. “He finally said, ‘Well, can you demonstrate for us what twerking is?’ ” Montez recalled. It seemed to him that the attorney was trying to needle him to admit that the dance style was obscene. “I looked at my attorney, and she didn’t object,” Montez said. “And I looked at the judge, and he said, ‘Well, you haven’t heard me say you can’t.’ So I got off the stand, and I did it, in my suit and tie.” (Afterward, friends told him that he’d probably made history as the first person to twerk in federal court.) Montez told me that the moment was galvanizing. After he came out, at age thirty, he had vowed never to let himself be silenced again. “It really was one of those moments where I felt like I took back my power,” Montez said. “Because I wasn’t embarrassed. I wasn’t shy. And then I got right back on the stand and kept answering just as good as I was before. It didn’t throw me off at all. And I would do it again.” The moment seemed to have impressed the judge. “Darn it, it was interesting,” Hittner said, at the trial’s conclusion. “That’s one thing why the job never gets tiring: you learn about different things and different folks and different science every day.”

#an eighty year old Reaganite judge saying I'll Allow It to an impromptu display of twerking #followed up with an Aw Shucks Gee Whiz Fellas summation #is somehow the most Texas thing that's ever happened

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xcziel · 3 months ago

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Are You Sure thoughts (i'm certain there will be more)

JIMIN'S THIGHS

jk ultra competent "let's get it. let's go" vibes

jimin rolls his shorts over at the waist when he wants them shorter just like the sorority girls in college

the BICKERING

jk hostess twinkie sponsorship when???

also boy do they like avocado

jimin water baby confirmed

they drove about equally? not on the bike but otherwise they shared

yoongi sleepy voice "what?" 😂

jk hanging up after 30 seconds what even

chef jk!!!

MMA joke explained!

also very possible reason for them being given lots of room for subsequent sleeping

hiking in slides???? i was afraid he was gonna fall off that log and hurt himself

jm needs mosquito repellant sponsorship actually

every time i wanted their lonely leftover fries so bad

jk coughing 🥺🥺 poor baby

both of them*very* conscious of the audience and addressing the camera

jk is so organized! but impulsive in the moment - SUPER relatable

the film quality!!! every place looked amazing! even the store parking lots lol. connecticut about to have the best tourist season ever

jk looked SO HAPPY on the bike

both of them thrilled to be out in the open air/nature

when they play fight jk serious about boxing form and jm resorting to wrestling and leg holds (which- with his leg strength...)

i am envying jk's suitcase packing like .. damn that is perfect folding

we really did get a bit of a mukbang - SO. MUCH. EATING.

DOMESTICITY OFF THE CHARTS

jm just constantly doing bits and making up little songs and weird sounds

BOTH of them just "yes and"-ing each other until they crack up

i am american and just the familiarity of the places and people with jikook dropped in the middle was mind-blowing. when they get out if they start this up again (which sounds like the intention) i have to beg for them to come to texas

impromptu forest seven mv! jm parking lot dance moves! (with the wet asphalt stripes even!)

saying he's gonna starve himself after 🥺 like i sincerely think these trips are the only reason he didn't waste away he was so busy tired and then sick too

jm so much like my mom, like turning on the seat heater in the 86F car?

but then jk kept getting wet and then going in air-conditioned places? y'all. i'm glad they ate outside so much in that case hah

jimin's fluffy *hair* 😍 (the bed hair! lol)

jk music critique and advice hour! and he is RIGHT jm *should* growl more

feeding the staff! they are the sweetest 🥰

also i appreciated the explanation about what each is trying to do with their music

jk: i want to showcase my voice and singing talent in a variety of styles

jm: i like writing songs but it takes longer for me

#jikook #bts #are you sure spoilers #not really spoilers but i know some people don't want to see *anything* until they watch

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princessmaybank · 11 months ago

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Ride The Cowboy

Pairings: JJ x BestFriend!Fem!reader

Warnings: MDNI, riding, creampie

Summary: JJ got a new cowboy hat and reader has no idea about the rule.

Authors Note: I had a smut written for a request. It was JJ and reader with the cowboy hat rule but it got deleted! It was anonymous so I hope whoever requested this sees it and enjoys!!!

(Edit: I changed the gif bc he's got a cowboy hat on 🤭 idk who these belong to but they aren't mine so credit to whoever made these!)

JJ found this random black cowboy hat at one of our shops in town. I didn't think he was serious when he said he wanted to buy it because it's not even his style.

Anyway he's been wearing it for a fucking week, trying to act all country and it's so fucking annoying. He has started using a country accent trying to be funny, but it was just so, so lame.

We were at the boneyard having the time of our lives. JJ and I were dancing together, giggling and having some normal fun, until he started talking like he was from Texas.

I was so fed up. I reached for his hat and threw it onto my head. "Look at me, I'm JJ, all I ever do is talk with an accent and twirl around in my cowboy hat!!" I said, very annoyed with a terrible attempt at a country accent.

JJ was staring at me in awe, which got the attention of our friend Pope, whose jaw went slack as well. Pope walked over and rested his arm on JJ's shoulder. "She doesn't know does she?" Pope looked at JJ with the most dead serious look I've ever seen. What the hell was he talking about???

"I don't think she does." He grinned and started laughing. His cheeks flushed red as he looked at his feet then back to Pope. "What are you talking about?!" I asked frantically. "Have fun cowboy." Pope said patting JJ's back while walking away. I give JJ a questioning look.

He got extremely close to my body, yet he was still towering over me. Damn this boy was tall. JJ took my hands in his. "You don't know the cowboy hat rule?" He asked smirking down at me. "These things have fucking rules too???" He giggled. "Yes but this one is probably the most important." Somehow he got closer, which was surprisingly not as uncomfortable as I thought. "What is it??" I asked getting annoyed because he was playing games at this point.

"Wear the hat, ride the cowboy."

His face never changed from that smug little smirk, but my eyes got wide. I hit his chest, he was my best friend. "No way Maybank, that's probably something you made up to get you laid." He grinned. "It's not I swear, if you don't believe me look it up."

Unfortunately I did, and he was right. It was some kind of sick joke. "Well I didn't know so it doesn't count!" I crossed my arms. "Hey, rules are rules baby." He was holding my hips now. Why were butterflies filling my stomach? I've never thought of JJ this way. It would be so wrong. "So is no pogue on pogue macking!" I say trying my hardest to find a way out of this, but of course he's ready for whatever I say. "First of all, John B and Sarah are right over there, basically eating each other's faces. Second of all, it's not macking, it's riding baby." He smiled to himself because he knew he won.

JJ walked us to the Twinkie, where we wouldn't be bothered. "You just want an excuse to fuck your best friend!" I say fighting the best I could. "I could say the same about you! I didn't tell you to steal my hat! And you're still wearing it!" He laughs so hard after he gets his sentence out. I was blushing when I quickly took his hat off and threw it at him.

I was hovering over him, very anxious. He had a huge grip on my hips. "We do not have to do this if you don't want to." He says while holding me up. "JJ, I'm already naked. Plus you said it, rules are rules." Before I could change his mind or my own, I started easing myself down onto his dick. JJ let out a slight hissing sound as I went lower. Not gonna lie, I did need to get fucked. It was probably why I found him so annoying this week.

JJ helped me move at a pace that made us both feel good. "Come here." He pulled me in with a motion of his finger. "Might as well break a rule while we're at it." He smirked before attaching his lips to mine. JJ sat up and put his back against the seat, never pulling out. I pulled his hands away from my hips and to my tits, making him squeeze them as I bounced on his dick all by myself. I couldn't believe I was riding my best friend.

"Fuck Y/N/N don't stop." Woah. JJ called me by my nickname while I was bouncing on his huge cock. How fucking hot. Can't believe I'm saying this but I think I'm catching feelings in the middle of all of this. "Fuck I'm cumming!" I yell as my body starts spasming, I feel his dick shoot his hot liquid into me after I was done. JJ pushed my hips up and down, helping us ride out our orgasms.

He started spooning me after I put my clothes back on and laid down. "JJ I don't wan-" Before I could finish he interrupted me. "Y/N, I can't handle it anymore. I need to be with you, especially now. Now that I've had a little taste of you, I don't think I could let you go and just continue being just your best friend." He was hovering over me now. "I was thinking the same thing." That made us both smile.

We popped up when we heard the side door slam open. "I'm assuming she followed the rules?" Pope giggled staring at JJ, making him giggle as well. They high fived as I rolled over to hide in JJ's chest.

#help me find who asked anon #jj maybank #outer banks #obx fic #rudy pankow smut #rudy pankow x reader #jj maybank smut #obx x reader #outer banks smut #jj maybank imagine #cowboy hat rule

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glossdebut · 3 months ago

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Take a Bite Ch. 1

✧ PAIRING: yoongi x fem!reader

✧ SUMMARY: Your fledgling career as a music journalist is finally going in some kind of direction that must be on the path to success. Your coworkers like you enough to invite you out on Fridays, your boss is starting to think you’re competent enough to let you score a few bylines, and you're finally getting the hang of InDesign. All of your hard work, late nights, and complete lack of a social life are starting to pay off... Even if it all came at the expense of the longest relationship of your life. Fine. You've accepted the fact that romance isn't for you, under any circumstances. You won't risk your career for anybody. Not even Min Yoongi.

✧ TAGS: slow burn, eventual smut, eventual romance, producer yoongi, music journalist reader, neighbors to friends to lovers? you'll see, reader is bad at feelings, reader is post-break up

✧ WARNINGS: social drinking, mechanical bull-related injuries lol

✧ WORDCOUNT: 2.7k so far

✧ STATUS: complete

✧ AUTHOR'S NOTE: hi! i'm aqua and this is my first ever fic so please be nice!! i will be crossposting this work and all future works on my ao3 of the same name. i'm figuring out how this works as i go, so please be patient with me. tags are subject to change with every update. i won't have a posting schedule for this one, but i have the first few chapters pre-written, so expect an update sometime next week!

Chapter 1: Lay Your Cards Down, Down, Down, Down

Although this is the furthest thing from your scene, you can’t help but think to yourself that you should invest in some cowboy boots. You could make them work, you’re sure of it.

Even if you know you would never pull the trigger on purchasing any, too far out of the comfort zone of your normal style, the thought is the only thing keeping you sane—that, and the sound of Cowboy Carter blasting through the speakers of the bar, a welcome reprieve from the drawling, boring country anthems you’d been suffering through for the past hour or so.

You pride yourself on seeing the merit in all genres of music, you do. You were always the type of person who puffed up her chest when you told people ‘I listen to everything,’ uncaring of how pretentious it may sound. You mean it. It’s an asset in your line of work, and as far as you’re concerned, a little bit of pretentiousness is a small price to pay for the, quite frankly, baller route your fledgling career is heading in.

But a Western bar? Not the kind of place you’d spend a precious Friday night willingly. Another hazard of the job.

After months of skillfully avoiding the weekly Friday nights out with the other rookie reporters at the magazine, you’d run out of excuses not to join them. If four years studying communications taught you anything, it was that connections are everything in the journalism business. Even more so where the music industry is concerned.

So here you are, at your fourth stop of your night of bar hopping with your extroverted and extremely drunk coworkers, nursing warm beer and observing from the least populated corner you managed to scout upon entry. All things considered, you had been a good sport at the three previous stops. You just draw the line at square dancing with the people you work with. College may have beaten your fear of impromptu phone calls and talking to strangers out of you, but your social battery can only take so much.

Your phone battery, too, you think bitterly as you stare down at the low battery warning on your screen. Okay, so you’ll finish your shitty beer (because you’re not quite successful enough yet to afford wasting alcohol that you’re paying for) and then use your phone’s remaining juice to catch an Uber home. No biggie.

You’re in the middle of turning off your phone with full intent to work out the kinks of your exit strategy when you realize, with irritation, that your chosen corner is about to be invaded.

Your eyes land on a pair of black Jordans ( in a Western bar? your mind supplies, as if you have any room to judge in your Docs) and travel up, past torn black jeans and a black shirt, and just when you’re sensing a theme with this guy, your eyes reach a head of (regrettably, very nice) black hair and a pair of the darkest eyes you’ve ever seen. Anish Kapoor would wail at the sight of these eyes, you think.

As if sensing your apprehension, your corner-thief raises his free hand (the other clutching a plastic cup of his own) palm out, as if to say ‘I come in peace’ and stops in his tracks.

“I can find another spot,” corner-thief says, the low rumbling of his voice barely audible above Texas Hold ‘Em. “I’m just waiting for one of my friends to get bored or injured so I can leave.”

“Injured,” you repeat, despite your better judgment to take him up on his offer and let him be on his way. But your phone is dead and you’re a little bit drunk, bored, and even for an unwanted partner in social evasion, this guy is nicer to look at than the frat guys playing beer pong you’ve been observing for the better part of an hour.

Corner-thief grins a stupidly charming gummy smile, leaning just the slightest bit closer to be heard better but still keeping a respectful distance. As if he’s still wary that you’ll lunge at him if he encroaches on your space any further. Good man.

“There’s a mechanical bull upstairs,” he says, using his index finger on the hand holding his cup to point at the ceiling above you both.

Of course there is. With your luck, you’ll also have to peel someone off of the floor later after going head-to-head with the bull.

“Not your thing?” you guess, glancing pointedly at his Jordans, and he shakes his head, huffing through his nose in what you can only guess is a laugh.

“No, I wouldn’t say so.”

He pauses, shifting from foot to foot for a moment before speaking again. “So, will you share your wall? I can look around again but this place is more packed than I would’ve pegged it for.”

You nod and he smiles again thankfully, taking the spot on the wall next to you. That should be it. Two strangers who don’t want to be here standing in companiable silence next to each other while they wait for their friends–or coworkers, in your case–to put them out of their misery and let them go home.

But… You consider your options, your phone taking its dying breath in your pocket, and you sigh, turning to him.

“Y/N,” you say, holding out your hand for him to shake.

He takes it with his free hand, giving you an amused look. “Yoongi.”

“What’s that look for?”

He laughs again, a little bit more this time, and your heart does a stupid, funny thing. “I don’t think I’ve ever been greeted by a pretty girl in a bar with a handshake,” he says, causing you to flush and pull your hand away as if it’d been burned, your shoulders tensing as you take a sip of your beer.

A western bar certainly isn’t your scene, but admittedly, neither are bars or clubs in general. You got all of that out of your system in college where everyone was awkward as fuck or too drunk to care that you were, and ever since you got your degree you have lived and breathed your work. Your social skills were never quite up to par, but you didn’t realize you were this fucking embarrassing.

“I came out with coworkers right after we got off, so I think I’m still kind of in work mode,” you lie, and as if sensing that you feel slightly made fun of, Yoongi shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing, swear,” he says, tilting his head at you. Dark eyes considering you. “Honestly, I’m thankful you’re putting up with me at all. I don’t think I’d be so kind if the roles were reversed. I know firsthand how hard it is to find a spot to breathe in places like this.”

You feel your shoulder muscles relax just the slightest bit. “I thought about sending you away, but I couldn’t help it. My heart aches when I see an introvert in need of a hiding spot,” you attempt to joke.

“At least I’m out with friends,” he says sympathetically. “I’ve done the coworker thing before. It’s a drag.”

“It’s weird ,” you correct. “I mean, I sit in meetings with these people. I avoid answering their emails all day. Why is it considered rude to not want to see them piss drunk?”

Yoongi hums in agreement, nodding his head. “What do you do, anyway?”

“I work for Look Here Magazine,” you reply, straightening up a bit in pride when Yoongi’s eyes flash with recognition, his body turning so his shoulder is against the wall now. You turn as well, facing him. “I write for the music section.”

“No shit? I’ve probably read your stuff, then,” Yoongi says, grinning.

He’s cute. Hot. You can’t help but notice, no matter how hard you’re trying not to. The way that he seems to carry himself in particular, you think, might end up driving you crazy if you’re exposed to it for too long. Maybe you’ve been living under a rock, but you’ve never met a fellow wallflower that still exuded such confidence. He wears it insanely well.

“Look Here covers a lot of big artists,” you hear him continue. “I’m a little surprised you’re hugging the wall, honestly. This place is nothing compared to music industry parties.”

“Ah, I only started a few months ago,” you admit, looking down into your cup. “Not a lot of bylines yet. I haven’t made it into a room with an artist that big yet.”

“But you want to,” Yoongi guesses, and you nod, looking up to meet his eyes. He looks impressed, impressed by you , and that… does something to you. Huh. “Shit, that’s… That’s really cool.”

“Thanks,” you say. You can feel your cheeks heating up again, and you’re suddenly very eager to turn the attention away from yourself. “What about you? What do you do?”

“Ah,” Yoongi says, fixing his eyes to his cup just as you had a moment ago. “I’m a music producer, actually.”

You perk up at that. So that’s why he reads Look Here, why he seemed so interested when you told him what you do.

“Anything I’ve heard?” you ask, leaning in like he’s about to tell you a secret. Networking never stops.

He watches as you lean, his mouth turning up at the corners in a smirk. “Probably.”

You wait for more, but it doesn’t come. Shithead. So much for that.

“You’ve gotta give me more than that,” you say, and god, you can hear the pout in your own voice. Are you that drunk? Flirting for a lead in a story?

“I don’t,” Yoongi says simply, his smirk in full force now. Mean and annoying and hot. He hasn’t leaned away from you yet. “I want to know more about you, actually. Journalism is hard work. I’m surprised you have time to go out like this.”

“Like I said, I was forced.”

“Still. Spending time with your friends or family or partner or whatever must take priority when it comes to your free time.”

Why is he so interested? You scrunch your nose, trying to figure out what he could be fishing for here. You don’t make it a habit to divulge the details of your sad excuse for a personal life to strangers, but the alcohol has loosened your lips. Maybe you need to talk about it. It’s not like you’ll ever see him again, anyway.

“My family is back home. My best friend is this insanely talented playwright. She’s constantly traveling. I see her when she can get some time to fly out.” You take a quick sip of your drink, ignoring the pang in your chest. Sometimes it sneaks up on you, how lonely you are. “Other than her, it’s just me, really. The dating thing… Nobody really seems to get how demanding my job can be, and it always ends in hurt feelings.”

There’s a long pause, and you’re worried you’ve shared too much. You’re enjoying talking to Yoongi. You know it doesn’t matter, that you’ll likely never see him again, but it would really, really suck if his permanent mental image of you ends up being ‘lonely weird drunk girl,’ even if that’s what you are. You force yourself to look up at him. The look in his eyes makes your heart flip stupidly again.

“I get that,” he says, and his voice is soft, barely audible over the music filling the space. You’re reading his lips more than anything, honestly, and you don’t let yourself look at them for too long. He may be pretty—unbearably so, you’re realizing—but he’s a stranger. A mean, annoying, hot, pretty stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. Every guy says he gets it. This needs to stay what it is, you think. Momentary companionship between introverts who would rather die than square dance.

You don’t get much time to agonize over it. Whatever is going on between you and Yoongi is intercepted quickly by his phone buzzing in his pocket and his responding grimace when he pulls it out to check it.

“Namjoon fell off of the mechanical bull,” he says, like he’s completely unsurprised by that news. He downs the rest of his drink and pockets his phone again, pushing off of the wall. “I’ve gotta deal with that.”

You nod, pulling what you hope is a sympathetic face. “Good luck.”

His bottom lip catches between his teeth, and you hold your breath. He looks like he wants to say something, torn between rushing upstairs to save his friend and staying, just for a moment.

You think you know what he wants to say, think foolishly that maybe he wants to ask for your number, and you honestly don’t know if you’d give it to him if he did. You’re so used to saying no.

He runs his fingers through his hair, opens his mouth to speak, and then he looks down like his phone is buzzing again. When he looks back up, it seems like he’s thought better of it.

“Thanks for sharing your wall,” he settles on, smiling congenially. You smile back, and then he’s heading towards the stairs.

Good, you think. You know better. If he really gets it, he does too.

★ ★ ★

You’re dragged out to one more bar before you finally make it home, your interaction with Yoongi having knocked you off-kilter enough to agree to a few more drinks.

It does wonders for your social status at work, you’re sure, but by the time you’re dropped off you’re dizzy-drunk, fighting to stay upright in the elevator of your apartment building.

You’re fumbling and failing at getting your key into the lock of your front door, tongue poking out of the corner of your mouth in concentration, when a voice calling your name a few feet to your right almost makes you jump out of your skin.

You yell, clutching your chest, and when you turn to face the owner of the voice that almost made you lose the contents of your stomach on your doormat, you’re greeted by none other than corner-thief-mean-annoying-hot-pretty Yoongi himself, leaning against the door to the apartment two doors down.

“What the fuck,” you blurt out dumbly, and he laughs. At you! How dare he stand there, lean there, all hot and annoying and in your apartment building for some fucking reason and laugh at you.

“I was going to ask if you needed help,” he says, and oh, fuck. You were safe from just how deep his voice was under the thrum of the music at the bar, but in the quiet of your apartment building this late, you can hear it just fine. Feel it, even. Feel it in places you do not want to humor right now. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say you do.”

It’s obvious that Yoongi is faring much better than you are, although his night clearly didn’t end after the mechanical bull incident. Faster than you can react, he’s right in front of you, gently taking your key from your hands and turning it in the lock, like it’s easy.

“Gonna make it in okay?” he asks, looking down at you. You force your brain to make words.

“I’ll be okay,” you assure him, your tongue heavy in your mouth. “Are you stalking me?”

He huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “I think we’re neighbors.”

“Oh.” Oh. Okay. That’s fine. Just because he’s your neighbor doesn’t mean you have to do something stupid, like see him ever again.

“Give me your number,” he says softly. Oh.

You blink at him, and he grins. Gummy smile. You feel like you’re going to vomit all over his Jordans.

“In case you ever can’t use your keys again,” he clarifies. “I told you, those music industry parties are killer.”

And really, you’re powerless to resist. You give him your number, using all of your remaining brain power to remember the order of the digits. Seemingly satisfied, Yoongi pockets his phone and steps back, heading back to his front door.

“Goodnight, neighbor,” he says, unlocking his door with ease. “Sleep on your side.”

You swallow thickly and nod, slipping inside your own apartment as quickly as you can manage.

Once you’re in, you sink onto the floor, your back pressed against the door behind you. Your cat, perched on your coffee pot, stares at you in your drunk, flustered state, unimpressed. Offended, even, judging by the way she licks her paw.

You’re so fucked.

✧ shoot me a reply or an ask if you enjoyed this chapter! feedback is always appreciated <3 join my taglist if you want to be tagged in future chapters!

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#ugh i hope the formatting on this isn't trash i tried so hard #take a bite #min yoongi x reader #min yoongi x you #min yoongi x oc #yoongi x reader #yoongi x y/n #yoongi x oc #min yoongi x y/n #min yoongi fic #yoongi fic #bts fic #bts fanfiction #min yoongi fanfiction #yoongi fanfiction #minors dni #glossdebut #Spotify

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jesncin · 11 months ago

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A Failure of Asian Lois Lane: Pt 2: My Adventures with Superman, an honest discussion

If I had to pinpoint the fundamental problem with My Adventures with Superman's depiction of Asian Lois Lane it's in their attempt to subvert the classic two person love triangle: Lois loves Superman but is indifferent to Clark Kent. In MAWS, Lois insta-crushes on Clark Kent and hates Superman. In the show's attempt to make sense of this dynamic, Lois' Asian identity becomes at odds with a story meant to touch on xenophobia and immigrant themes.

Let's have an honest discussion about a show that made fandom cheer as an Asian character removed the one thing that made her most visibly Asian.

Disclaimer: While I am of East Asian descent, I am not Korean. I'll be discussing general Asian diasporic experiences but the specifics of Korean culture are outside of my knowledge (as usual I can't and don't speak for every Asian person ever, I am 1 opinion). Secondly, I'll be pulling from my personal experiences every now and then particularly pertaining to being a butch Asian person watching this show. It'll be a mix of formal analysis and personal anecdotes. Thirdly, this isn't an exhaustive analysis of MAWS Lois' character. We'll be sticking to what I consider is relevant to themes of Asian identity and immigration. Lastly once more, I do not believe the MAWS crew had malicious intent in any (of what I consider) poor writing decisions. We're here to analyze and challenge these writing decisions.

Please read Pt 1 of Asian Lois analysis that covers the comics, as it provides the groundwork for the ideas expanded on in this essay.

We need to talk about Lois' design. In the follow up to MAWS' release, people have been speculating on Lois' ethnicity. CBR writes that the show has "some fans believing that she's at least part Asian" and other articles have the show crew confirm Lois Korean heritage via her hanbok outfit in episode 4. The existence of these articles, my own anecdotal experience of streaming MAWS with Asian friends, and comments I receive from people asserting Lois' Asian identity was never explored in the show ("you'd only know she was Asian if you searched up articles about it"), tells me we have a case of an ambiguously designed Asian woman. Tangentially many people had no idea Livewire, the white haired and blue eyed woman, was meant to be South Asian.

There's a lot to be said about art styles that don't properly stylize ethnic features, but for the purposes of our analysis that means the writing has to deliver the heavy lifting where the design fails. This is the opposite case of American Alien: a comic that relied on the art to portray Asian Lois.

Let's start at episode 3. In it, Lois finally manages to conduct a private interview with the elusive Superman. When she asks where Superman comes from, how his powers work, etc- Superman comes up empty. In this version, Superman can't talk to his Kryptonian father (Jor-El)'s hologram because of a language barrier, so he knows very little about his alien heritage. He leaves Lois, assuring her he's here to help the people of Metropolis. When Clark Kent congratulates her for interviewing Superman, Lois rebuffs him. "Oh, he's [Superman's] a liar." smirking as she says it. This is the start of the Lois Hates Superman For Being a Liar arc.

I'd like you to consider the optics of an Asian American woman interviewing an alien immigrant who honestly told her he doesn't know where he comes from and is still figuring out who he is, only for her to think he's lying. Because she didn't get the answers she wanted. I can't help but think about my own experiences, where I was asked "but where do you really come from?" or "okay but what's your real name?" I think of my Asian American peers who would honestly say they're from Texas or Atlanta and get a vindictive "you're lying" as a response. People want to hear you're from China. They want their biases confirmed. I think about how I honestly can't tell you where my elders hailed from, because of cultural genocide and language barriers. This scene makes me uncomfortable, but let's press on.

Episode 4 is where Lois is most visibly Korean. In this episode the trio of Lois, Clark, and Jimmy are tasked with interviewing rich techbro Prof. Ivo of Amazo tech at an investor event. It's a prom episode. Lois wears a "hanbok inspired gala outfit" designed by Dou Hong and Jane Bak in a deliberate move to showcase Lois' Korean heritage. Bak comments "I remember feeling strongly about wanting to inject some aspect of her Korean heritage without disrupting her characteristic as a spunky and resourceful intern/reporter." while the wording poorly implies that Korean heritage is at odds with Lois' spunky personality- I do want to challenge a couple of the decisions that went into this design.

I want to acknowledge as an Asian butch that there are many ways to sport traditional garments and it's okay to mix and match to figure out what reclaiming culture (and your comfort) mean to you. However we're talking about the opportunity to showcase culture in an episode of a fictional animated show. I also encourage cultural gender expression that thinks outside of western white people's idea of gender (in both fiction and real life).

Whenever artists try to do a non-conforming spin on a cultural outfit, I always have to ask: "what standard of masculinity are we basing this on?" It's clear that MAWS is pushing for a "tomboy" Lois, and this gala outfit is an extension of that. But what's the standards of masculinity in a Korean lens? Men wear hanbok too, so why can't Lois imitate how Korean men wear hanbok, by traditionally accompanying her look with baji (baggy and loose pants)? This design notably has tight pants that hug the form, instead. I know the hanbok look has been modernized in and out of Korea in many ways, but in a show where you have the opportunity to showcase cultural non-conformity, I feel more thought should be put into the outfit outside of a potentially western lens- or the idea that cultural heritage of any sort "disrupts" a character's personality.

Now that we've discussed the design of the outfit, let's look into the narrative role it plays in episode 4. While we can celebrate cultural representation in media, I consider it important to ask "what is this media's relationship with the cultures it represents?" and the answer for Lois' hanbok in this episode is: nothing! It's an aesthetic acknowledgement of culture. "Hanbok" or "Korea" are not terms explicitly mentioned in the show. When Prof Ivo offers beautiful women as compensation for Clark to keep quiet about his company's corruption, Ivo looks over to Lois- who spills food on her clothes, and remarks that she's unclassy. She's not judged for wearing othering cultural clothes- which would have tied nicely into Clark choosing to be silent on issues of Ivo displacing a neighborhood, making Clark realize his complacency actively hurts marginalized people. Despite wearing cultural outfits being a political statement in America, nobody reacts to it. It's clear what the actual goal of this scene is: Clark looks cool for defending his "tomboy" crush.

In a scene blatantly made for fanservice, Lois offers to sew up Clark's ripped tuxedo by undressing her hanbok so she can reach her little sewing kit. Lois never wears her hanbok again afterwards. This scene haunts me. It's a scene that tells you that fanservice is more important than cultural representation. It's a scene meant to set up that Clark gives his tuxedo to Lois later on for warmth. Lois removing her hanbok is meant for not one, but two fanservice scenes.

Lois talks to Clark at the stairwell. She opens up about her estranged relationship with her father, how her mom has passed away, and how she's been an intern at the Daily Planet for a year with no sign of being hired. This makes the narrative decision for Lois to lose her hanbok far more tragic. Lois being a diasporic child with so few familial ties to her culture would mean garments like her hanbok would hold a lot of sentimental value! It's hard enough finding a cultural outfit that fits with your butchess (many of my cultural outfits are hand made to fit my form and gender expression), and yet Lois unceremoniously loses her hanbok. You would think in Lois opening up about being distant from her parents that Clark would be able to culturally relate with the distance he has with his Kryptonian parents. But the narrative opportunity to link their immigrant experiences is not taken, because the show simply doesn't recognize the parallel between the two.

Instead MAWS pushes for the Lois Thinks Superman is A Liar thing again. A far less narratively substantial and fundamentally flawed arc. This episode starts with Lois calling Superman a liar and has Lois ranting about him "dodging her questions" (remember, he was honest with her about not knowing his heritage) thereby rendering her interview unpublishable. She resorts to conspiracy tabloids giddily provided by Jimmy for information. She rather cruelly says "nobody normal believes in aliens". We are uncomfortably seeing the build up of Lois being allegorically xenophobic towards alien immigrants- a Lois on a quest to out an alien before he's ready. This is their justification for flipping the love triangle. Lois loves cuteboy Clark from work, and hates Superman for not confirming her biases that would help her publish an interview that would promote her at work. What a love story.

To wrap this episode up: Prof Ivo ends up challenging Superman to a fight so he can flex his Parasite suit to investors, only for it to backfire, destroy his reputation, and greatly damage the Amazo building (remember this it'll come back later). The episode ends with Lois discovering Superman is Clark Kent. Anecdotally, I was so frustrated with the treatment of Lois' hanbok in this episode, that I went online to search if anyone else felt similarly. All I was met with was fandom thirsting over the stairwell scene where Clark and Lois were undressing. Consider the optics of an Asian character who removed the most visible signifier of her heritage (the outfit far more culturally specific where her character design was racially ambiguous) and how people cheered because that meant they could see her in her undergarments. They can happily thirst over the body they desired now that the othering cultural garment was out of the way. It's just clothes after all. Diversity clothes. This show continues to be very uncomfortable, and a little too real.

In episode 5 Lois is passive aggressive to Clark and Superman, trying to get Clark to admit he's Superman and vice versa. She eventually confronts Clark by jumping off the roof of the Daily Planet, causing Clark to fly down and save her. She proclaims she doesn't want to be friends with him anymore for "lying" to her. This episode caused a huge ruckus online as people were divisive over Lois' actions. Some defended Lois, saying that "women should be messy" and "it's not Lois Lane if she doesn't do something crazy for journalism!". Ignoring that opinion's very flandarized view of Lois' character for a second, let's thoroughly discuss how this relates to themes of immigration and Asian identity.

By this episode, Lois had known Clark for 5 days. In that time she's entitled and angry to the point of friend-breaking-up with him because he wouldn't disclose his marginalized identity to her within less than a week. "A secret is another type of lie!" Lois says, regardless of her lying on sight to both Jimmy and Clark upon meeting them at work, and continued to lie in episode 3 (after promising not to in ep 1) about her intentions to interview Superman. Only Lois gets to lie in this relationship. The hypocrisy of her character is never recognized. Clark calls out Lois for having previously admitted to him that she wanted to dox Superman and "publish all his secrets. MY secrets!". Keep in mind that when Clark brings up Superman feeling uncomfortable about his secrets being published by Lois in episode 3, Lois' response was "yeah, but HE doesn't know that's my plan!". She explicitly admits that she would publish private information about Superman without his permission. But when she's confronted by Clark in episode 5 about that, her response is "I would never do that to you, I didn't know it was you until after the gala. How could you think that?" It's only through conflict of interest that Lois spares Superman of being doxed. He's supposed to magically know this. Extremely cool of Asian American Lois to be entitled to an alien immigrant's identity within four business days.

Episode 6 wraps up the Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc, so let's quickly summarize what happens. Lois and Clark set aside their fight to find Jimmy in an abandoned scientific facility (he's being cared for by Mallah and the Brain). Jimmy admits (very smugly) to having known Clark was Superman all along because he kept breaking stuff. As the trio are chased by killer robots, they emotionally confront Clark for not trusting them with his alien secret- despite neither Lois or Jimmy creating a safe environment for Clark to come out to either of them (Jimmy outed Superman as an alien on his video channel). The moral of the story is Clark should have trusted his friends anyway, because lying is bad. Not once does the narrative hold Jimmy or Lois accountable.

We have Black Jimmy Olsen and Asian American Lois Lane being entitled to their white passing friend Clark Kent's marginalized alien identity. A joke is made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry, and Lois clearly doesn't understand why an immigrant wouldn't be forthcoming about his identity to his hostile friends at work. This is how that arc ends.

I'd like to quickly compare this Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc to my favorite scene in Superman Smashes the Klan. In this story, Superman debuts as a strongman superhero instead of an alien, suppressing his more othering powers to pass as human. He jumps instead of flying. Roberta, the Chinese American girl targeted by the Klan, calls Superman out for not using his full abilities to save people who could've gotten hurt. Yet, as she's calling him out, Roberta understands Superman's fear of not wanting to be othered. She sees the way her father dresses up to pass as an accomplished scientist, how he tells her mom to speak in English, how her brother makes racist jokes at their family's expense to fit in. She's not mad at Superman, she's mad at the world that would be scared of Superman if he flew.

"I wish it were okay for you to fly!" Roberta yells. This is a beautifully empathetic scene that shows a marginalized person frustrated at a systemic problem, instead of blaming the marginalized for being marginalized. It's the empathy and perspective we're missing from MAWS.

Episode 7 is a metatextual episode where MAWS addresses how their Lois isn't like the other Loises you've seen before. Lois and Jimmy are brought on to a team of alternate dimension Loises to find interdimensional troublemaker Mxy. In seeing the other more accomplished Loises in the multiverses, Lois ends up feeling inadequate about her self worth...in connection to being Superman's girlfriend, of course. Because Superman only loves Lois Lane after she wins a couple of Pulitzers, right?

I'm open to a version of Lois Lane that isn't as accomplished as she's historically known to be. I can like a Lois that's young and idealistic, like in Girl Taking Over. It's hard not to compare this episode to 2022's Everything Everywhere All At Once, another multiverse story about an Asian American woman who is the "greatest failure" version of all the parallel iterations of herself. But while that movie talks in depth about themes of generational trauma, expectations, and self potential within Asian immigrant families, MAWS uses the multiverse to say that while their Lois is less accomplished, she's still a good girlfriend to Superman! Why should I bother giving grace to a different take on Lois only to get such a superficial story out of it. This is metatextual-ly frustrating.

Why is it, the minute we get an adaptation of an Asian Lois in something as prominent as an animated show, we get "the worst Lois in the multiverse"? Lois is historically depicted as excelling in her field. She's an award winning journalist, jaded and mean from having to work her way to the top. She owns her sexuality, she's the experienced city girl. Instead of taking the opportunity to inform Lois' jadedness and excellence with her Asian American identity like in Girl Taking Over, instead we have an Asian Lois that's simply incompetent at her job. Why are we now adapting historically accomplished women into adorkable quirky screw ups? She went from being sexually confident to being insecure over sending a text to Clark. Is it more relateable to see an Asian woman that way? Is it too intimidating to see a butch Asian woman who excels at her job? Who's romantically confident? This is what MAWS would rather do than humanize her excellence or her failures.

Are you tired of an ambiguously designed Asian American woman reporter being xenophobic to Superman in MAWS? Well too bad because episode 8 introduces us to Vicki Vale, voiced by Andromeda Dunker (an Asian actress), with explicit notes in leaked concept art to design this character as "Indian American or Asian American" (as if those are mutually exclusive...) inspired off of real Asian reporter Connie Chung. Vicki wants to write a hit piece on Superman and interviews Prof Ivo's assistant, Alex, for a negative biased opinion on Superman (to Lois and Jimmy's dismay).

This episode is where it's abundantly clear the writers don't know how to talk about xenophobia. They'll make nods to xenophobic rhetoric, but they don't know what the rhetoric means. In response to Alex's derisive opinion on Superman destroying Amazo tower thereby bankrupting the company and putting "thousands out of work", Vicki responds "Superman wiped out good American jobs". This is a misplaced nod to Replacement Theory: the fear white people have over people of color, but particularly immigrants, coming to "their" country to "steal" jobs they're entitled to, ultimately becoming demographically replaced by non-white cultures and people. This rhetoric is also commonly applied to Jewish people.

The problem is, that's not what Superman did in the show. Amazo tech was going to go bankrupt because of Prof Ivo's poor business decisions. Prof Ivo made the mistake of antagonizing Superman and ruining his own image. Superman damaging the building came from his fight with Prof Ivo, not a deliberate attempt to get hired (if anything don't the building repair people have new jobs now?). No one's job is tangibly being taken by Superman. None of this is called out by Lois or Jimmy, who know the full story and were even the ones to attack Alex for helping Prof Ivo (let's be real the writers forgot this happened). In fact, Lois and Jimmy don't react to Vicki's Replacement Theory remark at all! It's like they don't even recognize she said something with racist implications!

Jimmy and Lois meet up with Superman who learns the people of Metropolis are becoming scared of him (from causing some recent property damage in an attempt to hunt a criminal down) and writing mean comments on social media. A user writes "he should go back to where he came from." This is a transparently xenophobic comment. It doesn't work in the context of the show because of a huge plot hole: Superman never publicly came out as an alien to Metropolis. No verified newspaper has explicitly made this fact known. The only source that mentions this is Jimmy's conspiracy channel, which the citizens of Metropolis are apparently treating as fact- therefore (if we're to believe this is how people knew) this means Jimmy absolutely outed Superman as an alien without Clark's consent.

So how does Asian American Lois respond to seeing her alien boyfriend go through xenophobia? She says "Take a break from being Superman and just try being normal." To be fair, the narrative does portray Lois saying the word "normal" as charged (only here at least, not in episode 4), and when she tells Superman to "take a break" it's because he had been overworking himself after suddenly unlocking the ability to hear when someone's in trouble. But was this really the response Asian American Lois thought to say? To her boyfriend going through such explicit xenophobia? At this point it's abundantly clear that racism doesn't exist in the world of MAWS. Being "normal" is to be human. And to be marginalized- or as the show likes to call it "different" is only reserved for white passing alien man Clark (along with gorilla and robot that was once a white man). Any hope of an immigrant parallel between Asian American Lois and Superman should be fully discarded at this point.

After the events of the previous episode where Superman is kidnapped by Task Force X, in episode 9 Lois regrets being allegorically xenophobic to Clark. At least I think that's what's happening. I often describe MAWS as a show that's extremely squeamish with getting political- and I believe the vagueness of Lois' Dark Night of the Soul moment reflects that. "I said awful things to Clark. I doubted him when he needed us most. I was wrong and now he's gone..." Lois says as she cries to Jimmy. Is this dialogue implying she shouldn't have told a sleep deprived Superman to take a break? What did she doubt about him? This dialogue is purposefully vague about Lois being xenophobic. They've universalized Clark's immigrant identity to such a point that they can't keep their argument consistent. Was Lois in the wrong for telling her overworked superhero boyfriend to take a break? Or was she being xenophobic for telling him to lay low for a while? Or is she regretful for hating Superman for Being A Liar? How is that possible when the narrative sided with her and Jimmy in episode 6? It's woefully non-committal. Regardless, the intent of this scene is to pay off in the climax of the episode.

In the end Superman has a showdown with Prof Ivo Parasite, who has grown into a large godzilla-esque kaiju creature. In typical MAWS fashion, the show is more interested in a surface level nod to Asian media instead of engaging with the specific themes of nature and post-war trauma kaijus and godzilla serve in Japanese culture. I digress. Using Jimmy's massive social media platform, Lois delivers a hope speech that instantly heals Metropolis of its xenophobia towards Superman.

Lois says to the people of Metropolis.: "People have told you to fear Superman because he's different from us. But we humans are capable of causing hurt and pain too. [...] Because we want to punish those who don't look or act like us." I mean this in the most polite way possible, but who on Earth thought this line was a good idea for Asian American Lois Lane to deliver when talking about white passing man Superman?? Why did the writers feel the need to specify Superman not looking like us. I simply don't understand how nobody considered the terrible optics of this.

After Superman defeats Parasite, episode 10 is about Clark, Lois, and Jimmy celebrating Thanksgiving at the Kents' house. At the Daily Planet, the trio of interns are promoted to finally being reporters. It only took Clark and Jimmy a few weeks while it took Lois a whole year! Now feels like a good time to remind you that Lois as a character was historically frustrated at sexism in the industry and despised how men were treated better than her (including Clark Kent). Well in MAWS episode 4, Lois has no idea why she isn't getting picked up to be a reporter. According to the narrative, and Perry White's dialogue ("you're terrible interns, so the only thing to do was to make you reporters")- she simply didn't break enough rules yet! Thank goodness she had the help of two men to show her how it's done! This is a pretty clear case of character regression. Keep in mind that in American Alien, at the very least that Asian Lois still underwent sexism, and I gave it the grace that the story could eventually expand to talking about both sexism and racism if it were to continue. But in MAWS? I don't think even sexism exists, let alone racism. Somehow Thanksgiving does, though.

Half the final episode is spent on Thanksgiving shenanigans where everyone's trying to be polite but they dislike Lois' stoic dad (Sam Lane)- who Clark recognizes as the Asian American xenophobic man who tortured him in Task Force X's government bunkers. A parallel is pulled between Sam and Jor-El, two fathers with different ideals when it comes to protecting their kids. There's a huge missed opportunity to have Lois and Sam speak in Korean with each other, to create a parallel in the language barrier between Clark and Jor-El. Maybe Lois isn't as fluent in Korean as Sam is depending on how culturally connected she is. Oh, but the existence of non-English human languages would imply some sort of minority, who would be marginalized, and we can't have anyone outside of aliens and a gorilla be marginalized in MAWS. Non-English languages in America are political, after all. Oh, but they also got a Filipino actor to voice Sam. Generously Lois could be Filipino-Korean but if we're being truly honest it's clear the MAWS crew think Asians are interchangeable.

Let's talk about Sam. In terms of optics, it's already not great that the main villains who represent the face of America's secret government xenophobia are Amanda Waller and Sam Lane- a Black woman and an Asian man. What's doubly notable is that of the antagonistic villains, Sam and Vicki are the most xenophobic. When Sam tortures Superman, he shouts "When is the invasion? How many of your kind will come through this time?" without a hint of irony. Reminder that historically, Asian immigrants were (and still are) considered invaders in America. They are the perpetual foreigner. MAWS loves making nods to Superman being an immigrant allegory, and yet they can't fathom the human beings that allegory is inspired by.

It's not impossible to portray people of color or even Asian American characters specifically being xenophobic. In Superman Smashes the Klan, Dr. Lee is initially antagonistic towards Superman but we understand why. We see him trying desperately to assimilate into whiteness, to the point he rejects assistance from his Black neighbors who help put out a fire in their backyard (that the Klan started as a threat). We understand why he's a character who would turn on fellow people of color, or fellow immigrants, in order to fit in. For MAWS, if we had a flashback scene where Sam was serving in the military and fought against Asian soldiers, showcasing his loyalty to America over his own people- that would narratively explain why an Asian American character would be xenophobic. Writing bigotry from within marginalized communities requires specificity. Otherwise, you've just got a diverse villain. In the end, Lois defends her immigrant alien boyfriend from her xenophobic Asian American dad.

Whenever I bring up how MAWS fails its characters of color but especially Asian Lois, I'm met with people telling me that "hopefully they'll make Lois more Asian in S2" or "they'll just retcon the bad writing in S1" and I hope this thorough analysis on the treatment of Lois' Asian American identity can help enlighten why I personally think that's impossible. The entire concept is flawed from the very beginning. The story MAWS wants to tell is at odds with Lois' Asian identity. In trying to justify an Asian Lois that loves Clark but hates Superman, they never considered what it means to hate Superman. To hate the alien immigrant. The alien other. What it means for an Asian American character to do all that. MAWS is a show that wants to have its cake and eat it too, they want a diverse world without racism or sexism but still want to reap the clout of lightly portraying Superman as "different".

They'll make the most surface level nods to Lois' Korean heritage- but remove all of the cultural context from them. They can't be bothered to acknowledge the inherit political identity being a person of color means in America, they're too busy doing that with Clark. I'm told "MAWS didn't have the time to go over Lois' Asian identity, it's a 10-episode series that focuses on Clark's alienation", and to that I say the potential of an immigrant love story and time frame was there, they simply chose to go another direction.

When I bring up things like Superman Smashes the Klan, Girl Taking Over, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, it's not to say MAWS should have used those stories as reference when crafting their allegory. All of those specific media were released while MAWS was deep in production already. Girl Taking Over was released the same year MAWS premiered. What I am saying is that we, as the audience, should have higher standards. Because better media portraying Asian American characters already exist. Better media portraying Asian characters relating to Superman mythos already exists. What we're doing when we celebrate the breadcrumbs of representation that is MAWS, is allowing mediocrity to exist uncritically.

Shows like Wednesday are known in the discourse for their portrayal of Black characters as being functionally white, yet that kind of scrutiny doesn't seem known for MAWS. The diverse reimagining of Lois and Jimmy is so poorly handled in MAWS that it would honestly make more sense if Jimmy and Lois were white here. The joke made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry would be actually funny if it was calling out his white privilege. If, for whatever reason, the writers are compelled to write a xenophobic Lois that unlearns her bigotry and falls for Superman, I'd rather she be white for that kind of story. I wouldn't personally root for that kind of couple, but at least it'd make sense. It's a common joke among DCAU fans of color that we like to headcanon Lex Luthor as Black, or Lois Lane and Terry Mcginnis as Asian. It's a cruel irony that the one time we finally have a canonized Asian Lois in an animated show, she honestly feels and acts whiter than actual white Lois ever was.

I mentioned in Pt 1 of my essay that Asian Lois and Superman has the potential to be a definitive love story. One that considers both their backgrounds as immigrants, othered in different ways by American society. The story of a jaded but accomplished Asian city girl who finds hope to be herself again in an alien immigrant superhero. One where she gets the courage to wear traditional clothes again, to practice languages she once suppressed. The story of Superman, an alien immigrant, finding hope in someone with a painfully similar experience.

As of writing, we have yet to see this dynamic in any canon DC media. A second season of MAWS will not give us that story.

#ramblings #media criticism #jesncin talks maws #lois lane #warning LONG LONG POST #this is a 30 minute read for reference. read it in chunks if u like but this is a big lad fellas #as always please be kind!#jesncin dc meta

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cowgurrrl · 5 months ago

Text

I Don't Smoke

Pairing: Javier Peña x fem!reader

Author's note: this hatched as an idea for @tightjeansjavi 's june writing challenge but it doesn't end as I thought it would necessarily but I kinda lurv it so (ps thank you @egcdeath for your help 🫶)

Summary: "Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small quiet room." aka Javi makes a reappearance in your life [8.6k (she’s a whopper)]

Warnings: canonical type shit

It's a random Friday in April 1998 when you're walking down the hallway of FBI headquarters and hear a familiar voice call your name. Not just any voice but a voice you came to know as well as you would know your own. A voice you loved. A voice you haven't heard in four years. You freeze in your tracks and take two breaths before you actually turn around to see him.

He smiles big as he approaches you, and you struggle to find the same response. His hair is shorter and styled nicely, and he's wearing a bureaucratic suit, which you know he hates or used to hate. He's broader than you remember and seemingly more confident. You're still tense, but once he's close enough, muscle memory takes over, and you hug him.

His cologne is different. For some reason, that tugs at your heart.

"Hey, honey," he says into your hair, squeezing you a little harder. You hold him for another second before remembering you're at work and let him go. "Wasn't expectin' such a warm welcome."

"Well, that's what happens when you see an old friend for the first time in a long time." You say and Javi smirks, scratching at the stubble on his jaw.

"'Old friend.' Is that what they're calling it these days?"

"It is when I'm at work and have a reputation to uphold."

"Right," he says and puts his hands up in defense. "Didn't mean to insult Ms. FBI."

"What are you doing here? Last I heard, you resigned." You redirect, making him laugh even though you just gave away that you kept up with him even after you broke up.

"Stoddard asked me to teach a few classes to incoming DEA agents. Figured it was a good enough reason to get out of Texas," he says. You step to the side to let somebody go by in the hallway, and that ever-wandering eye falls down your body. "You look great."

"You too," you adjust some files against your chest, suddenly all too aware of how heavy his gaze is, and glance around. "How long are you in town for?"

"A week. We should get drinks or something. Catch up." He says, and you laugh at the absurdity of it all. You're talking like you went to college together, and you're gonna reminisce about the good ole days over a few drinks. You take a deep breath and nod.

"Sure, Javi. When are you free?"

"For you? Any time," he says so easily your heart squeezes. "But, I'm around tonight. I can meet you at the bar across from the Hill after work?"

"That works for me."

"Alright, then. I'll see you tonight." He smiles and looks you over again before swaggering down the hallway and into one of the classrooms like he used to walk to your desk or into your apartment. Nostalgia and something bigger bubbles in your throat, and you swallow it down.

You've often wondered about what it'd be like if you ever saw Javi again.

You never expected it would sting as much as it does.

You force yourself down the hallway into your office and let out a big sigh as you bury your head in your hands. Your engagement is cold against your skin.

You should be planning a wedding. You should be debating which version of white the napkins should be— eggshell or cream— or fighting with vendors on the phone. You should be doing a lot of things in the two months leading up to your wedding. Getting drinks with your ex is not one of them.

You worked at the United States Embassy in Bogotá during the hunt for Pablo Escobar in the early nineties. You were a fresh graduate from the DEA academy and got shipped off the day after you passed all your exams. They needed bodies in chairs and on the ground doing work to end the drug war, and you just happened to have a pulse and the qualification. Javier Peña happened to have those same things. Now, he's known as one of the men who took down the most dangerous crime syndicates in Latin America, but, at the time, he was just Javi.

He was a little older, a little more experienced, and, by all accounts, a little bit of a slut. He had a wandering eye and a bad habit of sleeping with newly minted Embassy employees who didn't know better. You were warned about Javi and his brown eyes and swagger, but you couldn't avoid him. He was your coworker, for Christ's sake. So all you could do was remind yourself you were there for a job and try to ignore him when possible. What they don't tell you about being thousands of miles away from home and dealing with nightmare-inducing horrors every single day is that you start looking for comfort wherever you can find it.

You made bad decisions like smoking cigarette after cigarette, sneaking just a little bit of whiskey in your coffee, or letting Javi bend you over his desk and leave bruises on your skin as he buried himself inside you. One time, you told yourself. You'll do this one time to get it out of your system, and then you'll both move on. As long as it didn't interfere with work, you thought it was okay to fuck him once, but either convenience or care kept you reaching for each other for the rest of your time in Colombia.

You spent most nights at his apartment because it was a little nicer and it felt like it would be too real if he entered your space. For all his sarcasm and hard edges, he was sweet with you. He'd make you breakfast and drive you to work under the guise of carpooling. Over time, you started to learn all his little quirks and tells, and you looked for him first when the smoke cleared and the gunfire ceased. He started stealing files off your pile of paperwork so you'd have less work to do, cook your favorite meals, and was ready with open arms when things got to be too much.

The love was like everything else that happened between you: quiet yet all-consuming.

As the months stretched on and you only grew to love him more and more, you started to imagine a life with him. You were naive and had too much faith in the world, but you couldn't stop yourself. The daydreams of a house with a big backyard, a dog, and maybe a few kids to fill it kept you alive when it felt like not even the weapon attached to your hip could. You wanted it so bad. You told him how much you wanted it, and he agreed despite how fucking crazy it sounded out loud. Love allows you to be delusional to avoid the possibility of rejection.

And you loved him so much that you let yourself believe once Escobar was dead or in prison that, you could go home together and live a somewhat normal life. That he could give it all up. That you could make it work.

So you threw yourself into the hunt. You didn't sleep. You barely ate. You went from smoking a few cigarettes a day to a pack as you got closer and closer. Javi wasn't much better off, and you definitely enabled each other's behavior, but you believed so hard in this future that you thought it would be worth it in the end.

He got snappy, and you argued a lot. You both shut down so much that it's a miracle you could find your way back to normalcy. He didn't even tell you when he got sent to D.C. for questioning. He just disappeared. When you and Steve stood over Escobar's body on a rooftop in Medellín, you couldn't focus on anything but the blood splatter on the shoes Javi got you as an early Christmas gift. At the end of the day, your only thought was, "It's over. We can go home. We can start over. We can make something of this."

Escobar wasn't even cold when Javi accepted a new position in Cali.

Everything he'd seen and done, the things you counseled each other through, the faces that kept him up at night didn't matter as much as that job. He broke the news to you as you were packing up your apartment. "There's an opportunity out there for you, too," he said, looking at you with those big eyes. You almost folded, drowning in affection for him, until you remembered how many times he'd almost died or disappeared without a word or struggled so much he buried his memories between your legs or at the bottom of a bottle.

How could he want to return to that? How could he want you to return to that?

That's when you broke.

You don't remember exactly what was said during the argument, but you know it was bad. There was a lot of yelling and tears. You said things you didn't mean, and he returned the favor. It went on for what seemed like hours, back and forth back and forth, until you were exhausted and done negotiating. You gave him an ultimatum: come to D.C. with you and start your lives, or go to Cali. He chose Cali. You chose D.C., and that was it.

That had to be it.

You didn't talk much in those final days, but you did a lot of crying. The horrors he helped keep at bay threatened to suffocate you. You were a shell of a person, but you couldn't reach for him again, knowing he didn't love you enough to stay with you. You had the tiniest shred of self-respect.

So, the day you left, you gave his stuff back, and he drove you to the airport in complete silence, even walking you all the way to the terminal without saying a word. His final act of care even when you'd told him you hated him forty-eight hours earlier. You waited until the very last second to get on the plane, hoping he'd change his mind or you'd change yours. You were both too stubborn and too broken, so you wished him luck and left. You didn't even hug him because you were so scared you'd never leave his arms if you did.

Things happened fast once you were stateside again. Within a week, you found a nice apartment in D.C., transferred to the FBI, adopted a cat named Astro, and swore off dating. With all your experience in Colombia, you got your pick of jobs and workload. You avoided field work for a while and got stuck pushing papers around at your desk, but you got bored three months in and asked to go back out. Your first case back in the field had you dealing with a serial arsonist who may or may not have had ties to a terrorist group. You were examining the rubble of yet another building when one of the firefighters called your name.

Harry was tall and charming and trying to explain something about accelerants, but all you could do was watch his scarred hands as they pointed. You remember thinking he was going to be a problem. It took three more fires for you to catch your guy, and Harry would later say it took those fires to build up the courage to ask you out. "You were much scarier than any fire," he told you. He had soot on his cheeks, and the flashing lights made his eyes sparkle. There was something about that stupid New York accent that just made you melt.

You thought one date couldn't hurt. You thought it would help you adjust to your new life. When he showed up in a nice shirt with a bouquet of flowers to pick you up for your first date, you knew you were fucked.

You went on a second date. And a third. And a fourth. He was patient with you as you struggled to open up to him about your time in the DEA and never pressured you to tell him anything you weren't ready to. That Christmas, you went home to New York with him and met his parents and all three of his sisters. By the next spring, you, Harry, and Astro moved into an apartment halfway between each of your jobs.

You got into the habit of bringing him cookies when he worked overnights at the station and smelling his shirt when he got home because, more often than not, it'd still smell like smoke. He'd surprise you with coffee or flowers at work "just because" and drag you away from your desk when you've been staring at the same words for however long. When a bullet grazed you in the middle of a chase, he made one of his EMT friends drive him to the hospital you were at in the ambulance with the lights on so he could get there as fast as possible. He made it in seven minutes and started crying the moment he saw you lying in the hospital bed, even though you were completely fine.

For something as unexpected as this relationship, you guys work really well. He cooks dinner, and you wash the dishes at the end of the night. He looks at big houses in nice neighborhoods and humors you even though there's no way you can afford it with two civil servant paychecks. But, when you see him playing with your nieces and nephews, something so deep inside you aches that you think the life-long debt would be worth it if it meant he got to be a dad. You take time off to visit his family, and even though he thinks it's the most badass thing about you, he doesn't say anything about your involvement with Escobar until you accidentally let something slip during a barbecue. When work gets too much, you hold each other, cry, and make promises to stay alive.

He proposes to you on the fourth anniversary of your first date. You knew he would because you'd looked at rings together, but you blub like a baby anyway and almost tackle him to the ground in Rock Creek Park. You're deliriously happy as you celebrate your engagement and even as you start to plan the wedding. It's like you blinked, and suddenly, it'd been four years since you left Colombia, and you're living the life you dreamt about, just with a new person. A person you love so fucking much, you still get butterflies when he walks in the room. The ring on your finger and the way he casually drops "my wife" into conversation when he means "fiancée" only adds to the giddiness.

You can't wait to spend the rest of your life with him. So, why the fuck did you agree to get drinks with Javi?

You pick your head up and dial the firehouse number before your brain can fully devolve into panic mode. They might be out dealing with a fire, but you figure it's worth a shot. On the second ring, Jack answers with his gruff "D.C. Fire Station 19."

"Hey, Jack."

"Oh, hey, darlin'! How're you doin'?" He asks, and you swear you can hear him smiling. Jack is one of Harry's best friends and groomsmen, and he absolutely adores you.

"I'm good. How're you?" You ask, already feeling the weight come off your shoulders just from talking to someone.

"You know, I can't complain. I mean, I could, but I won't," he says, and you laugh. "You callin' for your lover boy?"

"If he's not busy, yes."

"Nah, you're all good. Well, listen, it was nice talkin' to you, sweetheart. I'll get him now." He says before yelling Harry's name through the station so loud you wonder if the neighbors could hear him. There's some shuffling and a quick "'S your wife" as the phone changes hands. The identifier makes you laugh and it's the first thing Harry hears when he presses the phone to his ear.

"Oh, you have no idea how much I needed to hear that." He swoons, and you make a sympathetic noise.

"Rough day?"

"No, I just miss you."

"You're so cheesy," you say. "I miss you too. A lot."

"You okay? You sound off." He asks, and you chuckle. Of course, he caught the tiniest change in your voice.

"I'm okay. I bumped into somebody I worked with in Colombia today, so I just… feel weird," you say, rubbing your forehead. You hear him shuffle like he's trying to move to a more private place, but the cord on the phone isn't letting him get very far.

"Good weird or bad weird?"

"I don't know. Just weird. We're gonna get some drinks tonight and catch up."

"Maybe that'll help," he chirps. "I mean, as much as I like listening to your stories, it might make you feel better to talk to someone who was there. Maybe get some closure."

"Maybe." You say. It goes quiet on the line, but you know he's there because you can hear him breathing and hear the distant sounds of the firehouse. You don't feel pressured to say anything; just knowing he's there breaks up the tension in your chest. "Chief is gonna have your ass if he finds out you're running up the phone bill." You tease, and he laughs.

"I'll just tell him I'm talking to my wife, and if he doesn't want me on the phone, then he should stop making me work overnights."

"Which I'm sure he'll take well."

"You're his favorite. I'm almost positive he'd install a whole phone just for you," he says. It's true, but hearing it still makes you smile. It goes quiet again.

You watch people mill around the bullpen from your office window and chew the inside of your cheek. You should tell him it's Javi. He wouldn't discourage you from getting drinks with him, but he knows your history with him. He should be in the loop. He's going to be your husband, for God's sake. But you also don't need him worrying about this while in a burning building or doing CPR.

"You know I'm not technically your wife for another two months, right?" You change the subject, and he hums.

"Yeah, but it has a nice ring to it. My wife." Even the way he says it over the phone makes you giddy.

"I can't argue with that." You say. He takes a deep breath, and you copy him.

"You're gonna be okay. Go get drinks with your friend and try to have some fun. Maybe invite them to the wedding if you get drunk enough and decide it's a good idea," he suggests, and you laugh at the idea of Javi at your wedding. "I'll be home tomorrow afternoon, and we can talk about it or not talk about it if that's what you want, okay?"

"Okay." You resolve and twirl the phone cord in your fingers.

"I love you."

"I love you, too. Have a good day. Don't be a hero."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He says. You wait another second to have him nearby before hanging up and looking out over the bullpen again.

You could not show up. You could go home, cuddle with Astro, and put on Sex and the City or something else to take your mind off the day. You could go to bed early and take Harry breakfast in the morning. You know his hair will be messy and a little darker than normal, but he'll still smile and pull you into his lap even though the guys tease him all the time about your PDA.

But you're also too interested in what Javi could have to say to do that. You owe it to yourself to get closure or answers or whatever the fuck he has left to offer you.

And then you'll never think about him again.

Easy.

It's a slow day filled with paperwork and pencil-pushing at the FBI. No bombs or killers or threats. Just meetings and emails and the dread about meeting with Javi all day. You linger around the office a little longer than you need to until you're almost late, and only then do you start walking to the Hill.

It's bustling with tourists dying for a peek at the cherry blossoms scattered around D.C. and the Suits you usually see trying to get home. The April sun feels good on your skin, especially after being inside all day, and you take a moment to watch the sun dip lower and lower in the sky.

All things considered, if Javi was going to visit D.C., this would be the time to do it. Spring is in full bloom, and the last dredges of winter only show up at night or early in the morning when it's still cold. People are constantly out walking their dogs or taking their kids to the playgrounds. It feels like the city has come alive again after such a long winter. You come up with a list of recommendations of things for Javi to do while he's here, even though he probably won't do any of them. The least you could do is give him something to distract himself from work.

By the time you get to the bar, the sun has nearly set, and traffic is a waking nightmare. You push your anxiety away and duck into the bar, searching for Javi's familiar eyes amongst the exhausted interns and law students. He's in the corner, scanning the space just like you thought he would, and there's a glass waiting for you at the table. His eyes light up when he sees you, and your chest aches.

He gets up to greet you with a hug and pulls your chair out for you like a gentleman. "Don't know if your order's changed, but I figured I'd make a guess." He says, gesturing to your drink as you settle across from each other. You smile and hang your jacket on the back of your chair.

"Thank you. Next round is on me," you say as you raise your glass to his and take a sip. "How was teaching?"

"It was fine. Although I wish they'd actually listen instead of just staring at me like I have a second head." He says, and you laugh.

"You're a living legend to them. Escobar and the Godfathers of Cali? You might be the most experienced person they've come across."

"I think I'm the person professors warn students not to be in the field."

"There are much worse things to be than a Javier Peña or a Steve Murphy," you say. "Besides, I think the DEA has bigger problems than a few rogue agents."

He shrugs and glances up when the bell above the door chimes, checking out whoever just walked in. He did the same thing when you sat in bars in Colombia like he was always waiting for a fight. You used to tease him about it, but the fact that he still does it makes you smile.

"Steve sends his love, by the way." He says.

"How is he? How old is Olivia now?"

"She's gonna be five soon, and they're about to have another baby. A boy," he beams. "They're all doing good. Steve runs training courses for FBI agents now and sometimes goes back to Colombia to liaise with their government. Connie works at a hospital, and Olivia's in Pre-K."

"Sounds like you guys talk a lot." You're pleasantly surprised. They were good partners, but they could barely stand to look at each other when things got tense. Not to mention Steve leaving the DEA at the same time you did.

"Well, when Olivia started calling me Uncle Javi, it was pretty hard to ignore him," he says, and you 'aw' at the idea of her little hands reaching for him. Uncle Javi suits him. "She's a good kid."

He fills you in on his work in Texas and asks about your transfer. You tell him what you can about your job and the annoying bureaucrats you hate working with. He seems lighter than you've seen before, not just because of the drink in his hand. His shoulders are relaxed, and even though he still has the instincts of someone working in the field, he doesn't get trapped in them like he used to. It's a nice change.

You're almost done with your first drink when he digs a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offers you one. God, when was the last time you even bought a pack of cigarettes? It had to have been right after Harry came home from a particularly bad fire resulting from a stray cigarette. Three people died. After that, you couldn't pick up a cigarette without thinking about the seventeen-year-old who got stuck in the apartment. That must've been three years ago now.

"I quit," you say, and he raises his eyebrows at you.

"That's new." He says like your hair turned blue before his eyes, but pops one into his mouth anyway. You shrug.

"Sorry to disappoint."

"No, no, 'm not disappointed. Just surprised."

"Yeah, well," you sigh. "American cigarettes aren't as good as the Colombian ones."

"I guess that's true," he says as he flicks his lighter open and inhales until the end glows. Just as always, he politely blows smoke away from your face. "Alright, so you got a new job, a new apartment, a cat, and you quit smoking. What else has changed since I saw you last?" He asks, and your thumb immediately presses into the band of your engagement ring.

Well, it's now or never.

"I, uh... I'm getting married," you say, and his eyes fall to your ring. "In two months." He takes a big sip.

"Congratulations," he says. It might be the most unenthusiastic thing you've ever heard somebody say. "Who's the lucky guy?"

"His name is Harry. We've been together for a few years now."

"What's he do?" He asks in his interrogator's voice, and you give him a look.

"We don't have to do this." You say. Javi takes another drag of his cigarette and grinds his teeth.

"Do what?" He asks. "It shouldn't be hard to talk about if you love him."

"I do."

"Then, why don't you want to tell me about him?"

"Is that a serious question?" You scoff, and he shrugs. "Fine. What do you want to know?"

"I already asked you," he says. "What does he do for work?"

"He's a firefighter." You know it's a cliche: a cop and a firefighter, but you don't really care.

"How'd you meet?"

"First field case I had was an arsonist. He was one of the guys on site when I got there."

"Romantic," Javi muses, and you hum. You wait for him to continue bombarding you with questions, but the air gets thick, and suddenly, all you can do is take big gulps of your drink. You signal to the bartender for another, and Javi finishes his cigarette in silence. "Well, I'm happy for you," he says softly. He doesn't seem like he is, but you know better than to press him, so you just nod.

"Thank you," you say. The bartender drops two more drinks off at your table, and Javi raises his glass to you.

"Here's to you and Terry-"

"Harry," you correct, and he laughs, breaking up the tension that's settled. He took the news much better than you expected, but you're still waiting for the other shoe to drop. There always seems to be one waiting when Javi's around.

"To you and Harry and a lifetime of happiness." He says, tapping his glass against yours and taking a drink. "Now, tell me what you've been doing with the fuckin' FBI."

"Oh, you're gonna need to buy me a few more drinks before I start spilling government secrets, Peña." The name rolls off your tongue before you can stop it, and it brings you back to hot Colombian days and red yarn on a corkboard and his apartment. He raises his eyebrows like it's a challenge and smirks.

"Don't tempt me with a good time."

It's late and you're drunk. Drunker than you've been in a while. You didn't mean to. You just kept talking and drinking, and it felt so good talking to him after so long. Once you got through with the elephant in the room, it was so easy to fall back into the groove with him. You talked about Colombia and your lives outside of work. You even tell him the story of accidentally letting it slip that you used to work for the DEA after smoking a little bit of weed with Harry's sister, Caitlin.

You laughed together until last call and then argued over who would pay the tab. "Consider it my weddin' gift," he half-slurred, and you rolled your eyes and let him pay.

Now, you're strolling the empty National Mall, working off your buzz and elongating the time you have with him. You didn't realize how much you missed him until tonight. Despite everything that happened, you did have good days with him. Days filled with music and chain smoking and laughter. You'd like to get those back. You'd like that version of him back.

As you walk, you point out monuments to him and messily retell the stories the tour guide told you when Harry thought a walking tour of D.C. was a good second-date idea. You switch presidents and periods too much to make sense, but Javi listens anyway. Every so often, his warm hand will brush against yours, barely touching your skin but enough for you to notice when he does it. Neither of you say anything about it or break the flow of your conversation. Maybe it's for old-time's sake. Maybe it's because you don't know what there is to say. The night is clear and eerily quiet. The only sound besides your laughter and drunken stories is the chilly wind blowing through the trees and the clacking of heels from an exhausted-looking White House intern as she walks by.

Or, at least, it was until you stumbled across a busker by the Lincoln Memorial. The empty space echoes with the sound of his saxophone, and you smile as you get closer. There are a few other people milling around, and a few take turns throwing coins in his case. You've seen him playing here before, but you've never had the time to actually stop and listen. He's good. You wish you'd stopped sooner.

"You wanna dance?" Javi whispers in your ear, his breath fanning across your neck, and you furrow your eyebrows.

"Here?" You ask, and he shrugs.

"Why not?"

"Because nobody else is."

"C'mon," he tuts. "Live a little." He doesn't wait for you to say anything else. He just grabs your hand and pulls you a little closer to the musician. You sigh but let Javi hold one of your hands and rest the other on his shoulder. He smirks and you roll your eyes to hide the fact that you're shocked he wants to dance. With you. In public.

Sure, you had little moments where you danced in the kitchen, but never in public. Even then, it wouldn't have ever been his idea to dance. He's like a whole new person. You don't know how to feel about it.

What the fuck happened to him in Cali?

He spins you under his arm, and you do your best to follow his lead. You have two left feet as it is, something Harry has helped get out of your system, but the alcohol makes it even worse. You almost trip yourself but land against Javi's chest before you can hit the ground. He makes an oomph sound but doesn't do anything to push you away. You don't do anything to pull away.

The saxophonist continues playing, and the cicadas chirp nearby. If you listen hard enough, you can hear Javi's heartbeat. You think you'd know the sound anywhere. You memorized the rise and fall of his chest when you woke up from nightmares, and he was the one to calm you down. You used to count the contractions of the muscles in his heart until you fell back to sleep. It was often the first thing you heard when you woke up if bombs weren't going off somewhere in the city or your phone wasn't blaring with an emergency message from the Embassy.

And now, here it is again, unexpectedly thumping against you after four years, following the rhythm of the music surrounding you. Javi's warm as he tentatively rests his head against yours, and you feel his fingers flex around your hip. A mixture of his cologne and cigarettes invades your senses, and you can do nothing but ride the nostalgia wave until the song ends.

You pry yourself from Javi to turn and applaud the saxophonist, and he gives a gracious bow. Javi looks a little disappointed that the song is over but drops a ten-dollar bill in the saxophone case anyway.

"Didn't take you for a dancer." You say as you walk away from the Lincoln Memorial, and he shrugs.

"'M full of secrets now."

"I guess so," you say. You start walking toward your apartment, suddenly too cold and tired now that you're a little more sober. Javi follows, putting himself between you and the street and grazing your lower back whenever you cross the road. He's always been protective of you, even before you started dating. It makes sense he would still be, right? You're trying to make sense of the muddled mess in your head when Javi pulls his cigarettes out of his jacket, and you eye them. You must not be as discrete as you thought you were because he laughs at you.

"For someone who quit smoking, you look like you want a cigarette." He says, offering the pack to you, and you sigh. You take one from the middle and put it between your lips. Javi is quick with his lighter, and you lean into him just a little as you inhale. He watches your every movement like he's watching a miracle unfold before him.

You hate to admit how good the smoke feels in your lungs. After three years of not even looking at a cigarette, all it took was an offer and a quick puff, and you're back to the beginning. You'll start again tomorrow.

"Don't tell Harry." You say as you blow smoke away from him, and Javi laughs.

"What? He doesn't like you smoking?" He asks, looking for a reason not to like Harry, and you chuckle.

"It's not that. I've just heard one too many horror stories about a stray cigarette starting a fire." You say, and he hums.

"Is that why you quit?"

"Kinda. I also…" you start but then shake your head. "Never mind."

"What? Now you have to say it."

"You're not gonna like it."

"Try me." He says, and you inhale deeply, blowing smoke out of your nose. You think about telling him to leave it alone, but the alcohol and the pain in your chest tells you to say fuck it.

"I quit because it reminded me of you." You admit. He gets quiet. He takes a long drag of his cigarette and looks up at the stars as you silently spiral. You feel like you need two more cigarettes and a shot of tequila.

Javi has always had a special talent for making all your worst habits bubble to the surface.

"You're right, I don't like that." He says softly, and you nod. You walk a few blocks in silence. The only sounds are your shoes clicking against the pavement and the tiny crackling of your cigarette as you smoke. A siren blares somewhere in the city, and your stomach drops. It always does, but especially now.

Your fiancé is out there, putting his life on the line to save others because that's how good of a man he is, and you're getting drunk and slow-dancing with the man who broke your heart? You didn't even tell him it was Javi. What if something happens to him tonight, and you're out? What if you miss the phone call? Guilt gnaws at your throat like an angry dog, and you feel like throwing up. You swallow hard and stomp out your cigarette before it can get to the filter.

"I'm glad we did this," you say, trying to get things back on track. Javi gives you a weak smile. "I missed you."

"I missed you too."

"You know, Harry said there's a place for you at the wedding if you want it. I know you'll be back in Texas, but it could be fun. We'd love to have you," you say, and he shakes his head.

"I don't think that's a good idea." He says. You knew he'd say no, but it still stings.

"Just thought I'd ask." You say, and he nods. You're about two blocks away from your apartment, and you start fishing for your keys out of your purse when Javi stops. You keep walking, thinking he's going to finish his cigarette and pull out another one.

"Don't marry him." He says, just loud enough for you to hear, and ice floods your veins. Whatever alcohol left in your system seems to vanish, and you freeze.

"What?" You ask as you slowly turn around. Javi chews on his bottom lip and stares at you.

"Don't marry him," he says again. Something behind his eyes is familiar, and suddenly, you're the girl he couldn't leave Colombia for again. Tears prick in your eyes, and you shake your head. "You'll get bored in a few years, and you'll be stuck if you marry him."

"I love him."

"I love you."

"Stop," you mumble. He takes a step forward and cradles your face in his hands, tilting you up to look at him, and your jaw tightens. You wonder if he can feel it. "You don't love me."

"I do. I always have. I fucked up, and I'm so sorry for hurting you, but I'm here now. We can start over. I'll move to D.C.. I'll do whatever." He says in one breath like he's afraid he'll lose the courage to say the words out loud.

"It's too late." You say, and he shakes his head.

"No, it's not. We can go tonight. Anywhere you want. I-"

"You let me leave," you cut him off, years of frustration and heartbreak coming back up to the surface as you take his hands off your face. "I was drowning and you let me get on the fucking plane."

"I thought that's what you wanted."

"I wanted you to reject the position in Cali and come with me because I really thought you could at least try to love me more than your job."

"I couldn't just give the Cali position up." He says and you scoff and take a few steps away from him.

"But you could give me up," you say, throwing your arms up in defeat. "That's not love, Javi. That's having someone around to play with and throwing them out when you get bored."

"It wasn't like that."

"Enlighten me, then."

"Do you remember when Carillo died?" He asks and you take a deep breath before nodding.

Most of your memories of Colombia are muddled, but not that day. You were pissed Messina wouldn't let you go, but you were fine to let the Colombian police make the raid. Javi and Steve were anxious. You remember watching them stand next to the radio like guards and trying to guess what was going on in their heads. Javi's gaze lingered on you a few too many times to be an accident, and he smiled fondly at you. You joked about them paying for the drinks you'd have later to celebrate. Things felt stable enough for you to sit down next to Messina. You were halfway through a cigarette when the gunfire chattered over the radios.

It wasn't an ambush.

It was a fucking massacre.

They never stood a chance. The scene was horrendous. Hearing Messina call Mrs. Carillo to tell her what happened was worse. Steve, somehow, was able to go with Carillo, so he wasn't alone in transport back to Bogotá. You and Javi were the cowards who went back and drank until you stopped seeing the pile of bodies you felt responsible for.

Javi put his fist through the wall of his apartment when he got home that night. You wanted to cry but knew that if you started, you'd never stop and who were you to be crying? People had just lost their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers on your orders. You didn't deserve to cry. It was the beginning of the end for you and Javi, but you clung to your idea of the future so hard, it had claw marks on it when you finally let it go and got on the plane.

So, yeah, you remember. You remember it all.

"I couldn't let that happen to you or anyone else ever again. It would kill me," he says. You're about to tell him it's not his fault, and it never was. It was shitty intel. It was a trap. It was a lot of things, but it wasn't his fault. That might be the only thing you can say for sure about that tragedy. "So, I put everything that wasn't work out of my mind and made bad decisions, and that's on me, but I never stopped loving you or believing in our future."

"Then, why didn't you fight for us?"

"I didn't know how. You were so…" He searches for the right word. "Sure. You knew you didn't want to go to Cali, and I couldn't make you stay."

"I would've if you said the word," you say. "Even though I was miserable in Colombia, I would've come back if you asked me to because that's how much I loved you. Even if you'd just called me after I got here, we probably could've worked something out, but I'm marrying the love of my life in less than sixty days. And I've never had to beg him to stay with me or give him an ultimatum and question if he loves me because he wakes up every day and shows me how much he wants to be with me. I can't walk away from that."

"Does he know what you did down there?"

"Of course, he does." You say, annoyance buzzing in your molars, and you cross your arms over your chest.

"Does he know everything?"

"You mean, does he know I've killed people?" You ask. "Yeah, it was super fun trying to explain that to him. You want to hear about how I hyperventilated through the whole thing, or do you want to ask me another question to try to undermine my relationship?" He purses his lips and shakes his head.

"No," he says. "I just don't think you know what you're getting yourself into."

"Fuck you, Javier." You spit. You don't know the last time you used his full name like that. Something about it feels wrong and makes your skin crawl. "You left one girl at the altar over a decade ago, and you think you know about marriage?"

"That's not fair."

"No, what's not fair is you coming here and making me feel like the bad guy for moving on. I deserve to be happy. I've worked, and I've cried, and I've fucking killed for it, and the second I feel like things are going my way, you do this!" You yell.

"I love you." He says again, like it'll change anything. The pressure behind your eyes returns, and you turn away from him, but he catches your wrist before you can. "Listen to me. I love you. I love you. I love you." He repeats over and over again, but all you hear is, "I love you, but I can't come with you." "I love you, but I need this." "I love you. Isn't that enough?"

You rip out of his grasp and punch at his chest with tears slipping down your face. He takes it, still saying that he loves you, and for some reason that hurts more. You push him hard and watch him stumble back, his brown eyes tracking the tears down your face.

"If you really love me-"

"I do." He cuts you off and you take a stuttering breath.

"Then, let me be happy," you beg. "Let me go. Please. If you love me, you'll do that for me."

You feel pathetic, standing there crying like he shattered your heart all over again as he just stares at you and thinks. You want to go home. You want this to end. You want to never see him again.

Maybe in twenty years, you could stand to face him again. You'll be happily married, and you hope he'll be, too. You'll have a few kids, and you'll tell stories about them and Harry will pull pictures of them out of his wallet. You won't hurt anymore. Maybe when your daughter goes through her first heartbreak, you'll find the courage to tell her about Javi. Maybe all this grief will be worth something someday. You want it to.

But right now, you're just the girl he didn't love enough to leave Colombia for, and he's not the man you love enough to marry.

He clears his throat, his own tears glistening in his waterline, and nods.

"Okay," he mumbles. "I'll tell Stoddard I had a family emergency or something back home. Get the first flight back." Your eyes flutter shut at his words, and you try to keep yourself from crying more.

"Thank you." You say.

"I love you." He says again, and you open your eyes. He's grinding his teeth again, and his hands are in his pockets as if he's forcing himself not to reach for you. You give him a small smile and nod.

"I know," you say. "I'm sorry."

Just as you did at the airport all those years ago, you stand awkwardly far apart, unsure of what to do now. He waits for you to change your mind. You won't. He'll get on the plane, and that'll be it.

He nods to himself one more time before turning to walk away.

"You do deserve to be happy. I've never doubted that. I wish I could've given that to you." He says like he's trying to convince you he's a good person. You sniffle and spin your ring around your finger.

"You did for a while. It's just Harry's turn to do that now," you say. "Goodbye, Javi." He opens his mouth like he's going to say goodbye or something else, but you turn your back to him and start walking toward your apartment before he can.

You figure, after everything, it's only fair that you get the last word.

You didn't sleep. You knew you wouldn't. Astro seems to sense your anxiety and cuddles into your chest, purring loudly to try and drown out your thoughts. You reassure her you're okay and kiss her head as the inky blue sky is replaced by a stunning pink and purple morning.

A good omen, you hope.

You force yourself to get up and get ready for the day. It's Saturday and a fire station breakfast day. It's never anything fancy: donuts picked up from a nearby cafe, greasy fast food breakfast, sometimes cold pizza. Today, you walk to a nearby bodega and pick up his favorite breakfast sandwich with two steaming cups of coffee before walking to the fire station.

It's cold, and D.C. hasn't quite woken up yet. It'll be a few hours before life returns as people sleep off hangovers or long weeks. That's okay. This morning is just for you.

The garage door is wide open when you get to the station, and Harry is perched on the back bumper with the firehouse dog, Maisie, whispering things to her. He looks tired. You don't think you look any better, but he still lights up when he sees you, and Maisie even starts wagging her tail.

"Hey there, stranger," you greet him as he pulls you closer and smirks up at you. "You have a good night?"

"No, but it doesn't matter now that you're here." He says. You would normally roll your eyes at his cheesiness but your chest fills with warmth instead. You lean down and kiss him. He smells like smoke but tastes like the chapstick you make him wear because of the heat. Maisie sniffs at the bag in your hand, and you laugh against his lips when she licks your arm.

"I think she's jealous." You say, and he sucks his teeth as he looks at Maisie.

"You have breakfast, you little terrorist." He reminds her but he immediately folds when she gives him that innocent look. "She can have one piece of bacon, but that's it. We need you trim to get up in the trucks, right?"

You pull a piece of bacon off one of the breakfast sandwiches and make her sit and shake before you give it to her. She crunches on it happily, knowing she's absolutely spoiled rotten. She makes space for you to sit next to Harry on the truck and you rest your head on his shoulder. "You okay?" He asks as he kisses your hairline, and you nod.

"Just missed you," you say. "I couldn't sleep last night." He makes a sympathetic noise and wraps an arm around your shoulder to tuck you further into his side.

"Were you thinking about Colombia?" He asks and you hum. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not right now."

"Okay. You wanna hear about why our kids will never be allowed to buy candles ever? No matter how old they get or how much smarter they think they are than us?" He changes the subject easily, and you laugh despite the pain still radiating in your body. You know he'll be there when you're ready to tell him about last night, no matter how long it takes you, and you will tell him. Eventually.

"Hit me with it." You say as you unpack your breakfast sandwiches and pass him his coffee. Maisie wags her tail as you alternate between sneaking her treats and listening to Harry's story. He knows you're giving her extra snacks but won't ever stop you.

You sit there on the back of that dirty firetruck, talking and watching the sunrise together and debating on which version of white the napkins at your wedding should be— eggshell or cream— and know you'd do everything all over again if it meant this was the outcome. You love him with everything that you are and ever could be.

And as you eat your breakfast and soak up each other's presence, you find yourself hoping Javi could love someone like this someday. You believe he has it in him. You've seen it. Whoever ends up being the one to tie Javier Peña down will be lucky and loved.

It just wasn't meant to be you.

#tightjeansjavijunewritingchallenge #narcos fanfiction #narcos fic #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal cinematic universe #javier peña #javier pena narcos #javier pena x reader #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena fic #javier pena x you #javier pena imagine #javier pena one shot #javier pena angst #javi peña #javi p x reader #javi p fic #pedro pascal

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hauntedhowlett-writes · 1 year ago

Text

title: in a feud with her neighbor

bonus scenes now available

pairing: pre-outbreak!joel miller x female reader

rating: explicit (18+ MDNI)

word count: 5621

summary:

Five times you think Joel Miller is the worst neighbor ever, and the one time he isn’t.

author’s note: this is so self-indulgent. i hope you guys enjoy it! if you like this work, please consider reblogging or leaving a comment because they make my day 💕

special thanks to the angels who helped with ideas: @dreamingofdaddydin @jksprincess10 @mydailyhyperfixations @funnygirlthatgab

additional warnings/tags: explicit sexual content (18+ minors do not interact), explicit language, no use of y/n, story contains visual graphics, everyone pretend the 12 ft skeleton was available in 2003 and you could stream TV shows, no sarah, no outbreak, neighbor feuds, enemies to lovers, oral (explicit f receiving, non-explicit m receiving), semi-public sex, making out in a pool, reader is a menace and arguably the bad neighbor here, unprotected p in v, use of sex toys, praise kink, pet names, dirty talk. let me know if any are missing!

Joel Miller is the worst neighbor ever.

Your issues with him started on your first Halloween in the neighborhood. You had moved into your new home a few months prior, thrilled that you finally managed to escape the horrors of apartment living. You were now the proud owner of a little single story two bedroom craftsman style home, complete with fenced in backyard and a pool.

You loved your little house and the neighborhood was ideal, quiet but tight knit. The neighbor to your left, an elderly woman named Betty, had invited you over for tea and cookies and given you the lowdown on the neighborhood gossip.

The neighbor to your right, Joel Miller, she said, was a wonderful man. Polite, kind, and not too hard on the eyes either. You hadn’t met him yet, but with a glowing review like that, you couldn’t wait until you did.

She had also mentioned that the neighborhood goes all out for Halloween. They even hosted a contest for the best decorated house. Your mind already raced with the possibilities.

You loved Halloween. In Texas, the stifling heat finally eased around that time, dropping to a slightly more tolerable range in the 80s with cooler nights. You loved seeing all the displays in the stores and how abandoned storefronts would be overtaken by whole companies dedicated to Halloween. You watched all the horror movies you could and on the weekends you’d seek out local fall festivals because you’re a sucker for candy apples and funnel cake.

No one ever decorated at the apartment complex you previously lived in, so you were extra excited to decorate your house and yard. You bought fake tombstones and plastic skeletons for the yard, spider webs and little ghosts to hang in the trees. You carved two pumpkins to set on either side of the steps leading up to your front door and made little ghost statues out of tomato cages, foam balls, and white fabric. You even strung purple lights through your hedges.

You were totally going to win the decorating contest. You were confident that you would.

Until you woke up Halloween morning and Joel Miller had somehow decorated his entire home in the time that you had been sleeping, blissfully unaware.

The man had somehow managed to set up an entire army of skeletons, including a handmade wooden jail stuffed with ones trying to escape. There were some posed on the house itself, climbing up the sides and the roof. He had some coming out of the ground, red spotlights fixed on them for an eerie glow. But perhaps most impressive of all was the twelve foot skeleton with glowing red eyes that was posed near the makeshift jail, holding the door open like it was releasing the trapped undead soldiers.

Joel Miller had the motherfucking twelve foot skeleton. You wanted one of those so bad but it was always sold out. You checked every nearby Home Depot for months trying to find one and here Joel Miller has one, taunting you.

He won the decorating contest, sweeping the victory from right under your feet.

It may seem silly, but that was the moment you decided Joel Miller was the worst neighbor ever.

When you were buying your first home, you had been meticulous in calculating your finances in order to comfortably afford the purchase. You did not, however, account for having to repair your air conditioning system within less than a year of moving in. This made a significant dent in your savings, which led you to cut your expenses elsewhere.

One such expense was your internet. Why? Because it turns out Joel Miller, asshole neighbor, doesn’t password protect his router and you can just use his.

It’s not like he would notice.

_________________

Joel stares at his internet bill in confusion. This is the third month in a row that he’s been charged for going over his data allowance. That doesn’t even make sense. He’s the only person in his house and he only uses the internet on his phone to check the news and sometimes play Candy Crush. It’s why he got the lowest data plan in the first place.

He tries to think of what he could be doing differently, but comes up short. Hell, he’s not even home most of the day. He works long hours at different contracting jobs, so his free time is spent watching TV (cable, not connected to the internet), and sleeping.

But then it hits him. The overage charges never happened until you moved in.

Joel powers up his ancient laptop and has to Google search what a router is. Turns out, he doesn’t have a password set on his. Which means, if his hunch is correct, you’ve just had free access to his internet this whole time.

He learns how to set a password and, more importantly, he learns how to change the name of his router.

He needs to send a message, after all.

_________________

You’re about to start another episode of Grey’s Anatomy, courtesy of your friend generously sharing her Netflix password, when you receive an error message.

No internet connectivity. Try again?

The little WiFi connection icon is missing from your toolbar. You investigate further, opening the list of options and scanning them for Joel’s, conveniently titled Miller.

But instead you find a new name.

GetYourOwnWiFi. And it’s password protected.

“Son of a bitch,” you hiss.

Joel Miller’s tree is always dropping debris in your yard. The limbs have grown over your shared fence line and on windy days you have to deal with extra pool clean up on top of the usual mess it makes of your yard, twigs and leaves ruining your perfectly manicured backyard oasis.

You’ve asked him to trim the branches. Left him notes on his door and in his mailbox, but he still hasn’t done it.

Today you’re sending a new kind of message.

He’s going to wish he’d listened when you asked nicely.

_________________

“What the fuck,” Joel growls when he gets home just after sunset. There’s piles of leaves and twigs littering his front porch, almost to the point that he can’t see the concrete slab beneath.

There’s no way this just happened through the force of nature. It’s been a perfectly clear day in Austin and besides, there’s no trees at the front of his house for this kind of mess to fall from.

Which can only mean…

His eyes spot the bright pink Post-It note stuck to his door and he curses under his breath as he stomps up the porch steps and rips it down.

Here. Clean your own mess up for once.

xoxo

Joel crumbles the note in his fist, taking deep breaths as he heads for the garage to grab a broom and a trash bag.

He’ll get you back.

He always does.

You love animals, especially cats. Unfortunately, being allergic, you don’t have the option to have one of your own all the time.

When you spot the first neighborhood stray, your heart lights up with excitement. It’s a little black and white cat with bright green eyes that walks right up to you while you’re getting your mail, winding its lithe body between your legs and purring against you. You stoop to pet it, mentally reminding yourself to wash your hands before you touch your face, otherwise your eyes would be itchy for hours.

“Hello, little baby,” you murmur, rubbing a hand down the length of its back. “How are you?” The cat gives a strong meow in response. “Oh, are you hungry? Let’s go see if I have anything I can give you as a treat.”

Back inside your house, you locate a can of tuna and dump it into a small plastic bowl. The cat sits patiently on the porch, tail flicking in anticipation. It hops down and shoves its little face into the bowl as soon as it’s within reach.

“So cute,” you say, giving it one last pat on its back before returning inside.

_________________

There’s a cat sitting on Joel’s porch, watching him as he parks his truck. It’s the second time this week there’s been a cat lurking around his property. The first one he found out in the backyard, tearing up his flower beds.

The neighborhood had never had an issue with cats before, so he has a sneaking suspicion that you’re, once again, the root cause of his suffering.

His suspicions are confirmed when he sees you on the porch one day, laying out a row of plastic bowls filled with what he assumes is cat food. At first he’s annoyed that he’s right, it is you feeding the cats, which is why they’ve been terrorizing his yard, but then you turn around and he’s struck by how utterly gorgeous you are.

This is the first time Joel’s ever actually seen you. He’s usually out of the house before dawn and back after sunset, which must not coincide with your schedule since you’ve never run into each other. He remembers Betty, the older woman who lives to your left, telling him about meeting you.

“Gorgeous girl, that one. You two would probably hit it off,” she said as he hung a picture frame for her.

“Don’t go playin’ matchmaker, Betty,” he replied.

But damn, seeing you now in a pair of little shorts that hug your hips and ass just right and a tight white t-shirt that shows off the tiniest bit of skin above the waist of your shorts is making him think he should have taken Betty up on her word.

Joel’s so distracted that he almost misses the way the cat on his porch hits one of his planters with his paw, knocking the ceramic over and spilling dirt all over the ground.

“Fuck!”

_________________

There’s a note on your door the next morning, a torn piece of paper with a familiar scrawl of messy handwriting that could only belong to one person.

Stop feeding the cats or you owe me new plants.

-Joel

The note actually makes you giggle. Betty sees you on your porch and beckons you over to hers.

“What’s got you gigglin’ like a schoolgirl?” The older woman asks.

“What? Nothing,” you reply too quickly.

“Wouldn’t happen to be a note from a certain tall, strong, and handsome young neighbor of yours?”

“No, definitely not.”

She smirks at you. “You better quit terrorizin’ that poor man, honey.”

“Now, Betty, where would the fun be in that?” You say brightly as you head back to your house, the sound of her laughter following you through the door.

There’s a package on Joel’s porch when he gets home from work. He doesn’t remember ordering anything, but he wouldn’t put it past himself.

He brings it inside without thinking twice or checking the label, chucking it on the counter with the rest of his mail as he searches for a box cutter in his junk drawer.

Joel cuts through the packing tape, lifting the flaps and rifling through the packing paper to pull out the contents.

It’s another box, light pink with the image of a hot pink u-shaped device on the top. The text across the top reads REMOTE VIBRATOR in black script.

He nearly drops the box in surprise, fumbling it in his hands. He’s certain he didn’t order this.

Joel pulls the shipping box back towards him, keeping an eye on the vibrator like it might grow legs and run away. He flips the lid over to inspect the shipping label, his eyebrows rising as he reads your name and home address instead of his.

He looks at the toy again, mind whirling with images of you on your back, remote in hand as you bring yourself pleasure. He coughs, clearing his head and adjusts himself in his jeans.

He searches the junk drawer for a sheet of paper and a pen.

_________________

You’re staring at the delivery confirmation email from Lovelies, panic creeping down your spine. It says that your new toy has been delivered but there’s no package in your mailbox or on your porch. You’ve checked everywhere.

Which means it was either delivered to one of your neighbors or someone stole it.

If you’re being honest, you’d rather someone stole it than to have to go knock on Betty or, god forbid, Joel’s door to ask if they accidentally received your sex toy delivery. Your cheeks heat at even the thought of Joel knowing what you ordered. You head back inside empty handed.

Later, when you open your door to feed the cats, you’re surprised to find a box on your welcome mat. You set the bowls of food down and carry it inside, your excitement mounting.

But when you open the box, you’re mortified to find a torn piece of paper on top of the packing material, Joel Miller’s familiar handwriting on the sheet.

Interesting choice

-Joel

“Fucking asshole,” you mumble, crumbling the note and tossing it to the side. You pull your new toy from its box and turn it on. “Huh. Fully charged.”

Your jerk of a neighbor won’t ruin your night if this little gadget has anything to say about it.

It’s Joel’s one day to sleep in and you’ve been blasting your music all fucking morning. He’s already got his head shoved under his pillow but the sound still filters through, ruining his chances of any extra hours of sleep to make up for his lack of it during the week.

He rolls out of bed with a heavy sigh, scrubbing a hand across his beard. He heads downstairs to make coffee, the heavy beat of your music chasing him through the house. He can feel the beginnings of a headache pulsing behind his eyes.

Joel tries to tune it out. Really. He does. As much as the two of you butt heads, he doesn’t mean anything by it, not really. He doesn’t want to be an asshole, nor is he trying to be one.

But if you don’t turn your music down soon he’s going to lose his fucking mind.

He gives you another hour. He’s feeling generous. But when the music just keeps playing, he finally snaps.

Joel shoves his feet into the work boots beside the door, paying little mind to the fact that he’s not wearing socks. In fact, he’s still in his sleep pants and ratty old t-shirt but he’s too far gone to care.

Once he’s in front of your door, he bangs on the wood with his fists. He waits for a response and when he doesn’t get one, probably since you can’t fucking hear him, he bangs again. There’s movement from the corner of his eye and he turns his head to find Betty watching him, lips tilted in a smirk.

“You okay with this?” Joel asks, gesturing vaguely to your house to indicate the noise level inside.

“Don’t be such a party pooper,” she replies before shuffling inside. He turns back to the door to pummel it with his fists again but he’s surprised to find it open.

“Howdy, neighbor,” you say, eyebrow raised and arms crossed beneath your breasts.

Which were currently covered by the tiniest bikini top he’s ever seen. His eyes trail lower, over the expanse of your stomach to the matching bikini bottoms that peek out past the folded waist of your denim shorts.

“Uh,” he says, followed by a strained cough. “Hi.”

_________________

Joel Miller is standing on your porch dressed in a threadbare t-shirt and gray pajama bottoms that sit low on his hips, a strip of soft tan belly peeking out from above the waistband when he stretches an arm up to run his fingers through his dark, messy curls.

Christ, you think. The man is prettier than Betty gave him credit for.

“Can I help you?” You ask. His eyes snap from where they’d been lingering on your chest and you straighten your back just the slightest bit at the knowledge he’d been checking you out.

Joel clears his throat. “Your music is way too loud.”

You roll your eyes. “Does it hurt?”

“Does…what hurt?”

“Always having a stick up your ass.”

Betty barks a laugh from her porch and Joel’s head turns so fast you have whiplash just watching him. He throws his hands up.

“Who’s side are you on, Betty?!” He shouts.

You’re bent over, laughing so hard your stomach hurts and tears form at the corners of your eyes. When you finally catch your breath and return your attention to Joel, he’s got his hands on his hips and an impressive furrow between his brows.

“Listen, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I’m about to go out by the pool and have a drink. Wanna join?” You ask.

“I don’t have my suit with me.”

“Well good thing you’re just right next door, huh? Go get it. I’ll leave the door unlocked,” you tell him before shutting the door in his face.

_________________

Joel returns to your house thirty minutes later, showered and wearing his swim trunks and a new t-shirt. He wipes his sweaty hands against his chest, not entirely sure why he’s nervous. He’s just having a drink with his annoying neighbor to hash out all the issues. No big deal.

Your music is still playing when he enters your house, giving the door a courtesy knock before letting himself in. The front door opens directly into the main living space, a large sectional couch facing a TV mounted between two windows to his right and a dining nook to his left. Your kitchen is nestled in the corner, just past an opening to a hallway that he assumes leads to the bedrooms. Your place is bursting with colors and textures and patterns, from the floral blanket draped over your velvet couch to the leaf patterned wallpaper and natural stone backsplash in your kitchen. You have tea towels hanging from your stove that say “ANOTHER ONE BITES THE CRUST” with a picture of a pizza, and an impressive looking bar cart that houses a variety of liquor bottles and glassware.

There’s a splash from outside and Joel sees that the sliding glass door to your patio is open. He steps onto the concrete deck, surveying the backyard oasis you’ve created for yourself. The pool is on the smaller side but still, it’s a pool, and Joel’s a little jealous of it. You’ve got chaise loungers lined near the edge and matching chairs that surround a little fire pit further out in the yard. There’s string lights hung from the shade canopy that extends from your house.

You pop up from beneath the surface, your hair slicked back from your face and little droplets of water clinging to your skin. Joel stands there, unsure of what to do, until you swim to the ledge closest to him and drape your arms over it, regarding him with keen eyes.

“Hi,” you say. He swallows, the nerves returning as he tries desperately to not let his gaze fall below your neck.

“Hey,” he replies.

“There’s beer in the cooler. Grab me one?” You ask before ducking back beneath the surface. He can see you swim towards the edge of the pool that the loungers face. He grabs two beers as instructed, popping the tops with the bottle opener fixed to the lid of the cooler. You break the surface once more, swimming over to where he sits on the end of one loungers.

Joel passes you the beer and you tip it towards him in thanks before taking a deep pull, your lips wrapped around the lip of the bottle and distracting him monumentally.

“So, you’re the Joel Miller, huh?” You ask. “Tell me about yourself.”

The two of you talk for what feels like ages. He learns that you’re a software engineer and you work a typical 9-5 schedule, which is why he’s never caught you around the neighborhood before. You don’t like to be outdoors much, preferring reading and catching up on your Netflix shows. You have two brothers, both of whom are older than you and live on the opposite side of the country, but you visit them around Christmas. You love animals, but have major allergies so you settle for fleeting moments with the neighborhood strays and occasionally watching your best friend’s dog when she goes out of town.

He tells you about his work as a contractor, which he’s been doing since he was fresh out of high school and had no idea what to do with his life. He talks about his brother Tommy, how they work together on most projects and they want to start their own contracting business, but that’s a dream for another day. He mentions he’s more of a dog person than a cat person, especially because he has a grudge against the orange neighborhood cat that is still tearing up his flowerbeds.

Joel loves the way you laugh, bright and full bodied as you toss your head back and bring a hand to your chest each time. You talk with your hands a lot, which is funny because you keep letting go of the pool ledge and scrambling to grab it again when gravity pulls you down in the water. If he doesn’t give enough detail in an answer, you’re not shy about asking him for more information, like when he said his favorite color was blue.

“Okay, but what shade of blue?” You asked.

“Just…blue?” Joel asked, clearly not understanding your question.

You rolled your eyes. “Men. I like lavender. Not just purple. Purple is a range of shades.”

“I guess…navy?”

“Now you’re getting somewhere, big guy!”

The conversation lulls as you share your drinks in companionable silence. The Texas sun bears down on his back, his t-shirt sticking uncomfortably to his sweat slick skin. He bites the bullet and reaches behind his head to tug the damp fabric off, leaving him in just his swim trunks. He doesn’t miss the appreciative once-over you give him.

You extend a hand to him. “Help me out?””

Joel grasps your hand in his, marveling for a moment how small it is in his broad palm. He’s distracted enough that he doesn’t notice the michievous look on your face, or the way you plant your feet to the pool wall for leverage.

You give a sharp tug with both hands and he goes toppling into the pool with a surprised shout.

_________________

You’re laughing so hard you can barely catch your breath. The look on Joel’s face as you tugged him into the pool will be burned into your memory for years to come. You’d been waiting all afternoon for the man to take his shirt off, not only because you were admittedly dying to see what was hiding beneath the fabric, but also because you wanted exact a little neighborly revenge for stomping over to your house to tell you your music was too loud.

You’re feeling mighty accomplished, right up until you feel a hand wrap around your ankle and you get pulled beneath the surface with no warning.

You open your eyes, chlorine stinging them as you see Joel torpedo towards the shallow end of the pool. You give chase, breaking the surface with a gasp.

“You asshole–”

Joel cuts you off by wrapping an arm around your waist, tugging you close and tipping his head down to capture your lips with his. He kisses like a man starved and he tastes like sunshine and chlorine and the beer he’d been drinking as his tongue slides hungrily against yours. He uses his arm to press your body to his, but it’s not close enough.

You wrap your arms around his neck and lift your legs to circle his waist, your center grinding against his rapidly hardening length. Joel trails his hands up and down your back, stopping to grab rough handfuls of your ass as he groans against your mouth.

“Fuck,” he curses. “This little fuckin’ bikini has been torturin’ me all day.”

“Why don’t you just take it off then?” You offer. He pulls back to watch your face as his fingers find the strings of your bottoms beneath the water, giving both sides a quick tug until you feel the material fall away. His hand creeps up your back, pulling at the strings holding your top together around your back and neck until they, too, fall away.

Joel walks the two of you forward until your back collides with the rough stone of the pool wall. He presses a muscular thigh between your legs, boxing you in with his body. Your hips jerk at the sudden pressure and friction against your bare pussy, a moan slipping from your lips as Joel presses kisses to your jaw and neck, nipping the delicate skin with his teeth.

“You gotta be quiet, sweetheart,” he murmurs against your skin, the deep timbre of his voice making a shiver dance down your spine despite the Texas heat. “Those sounds are just for me, isn’t that right?”

You nod your head quickly and he rewards you with another toe curling kiss. Your hips rock against his thigh and he swallows every little whimper as his hands explore your body.

“Joel,” you whine. His fingers pinch and pull your nipples before he soothes them with sweet circles of his calloused thumb.

“What’s the matter, baby?” He asks. One of his hands slides across your thigh and your breath hitches as he brings it dangerously close to your pussy before trailing it back down. “You need somethin’?”

“Need you to touch me.”

“That right? You want me to take care of that pretty little pussy?”

“Mhm,” you hum. “Please.”

“So polite. Where’s all that attitude from earlier, hm?” Joel asks, sarcasm dripping from every word. You narrow your eyes at him.

“I can be rude, Miller. You want that instead?”

“Trust me, I know, but I think I like you better when you’re beggin’ for me,” he replies with a grin.

Joel’s hands grab onto your waist and he hoists you up onto the ledge. His broad shoulders press against the back of your thighs and his arms drape across your hips. He smiles at you, mouth tauntingly close to where you’re desperate for relief. You lean back on your elbows, the concrete warm against your bare skin and the sun washing over you.

“How about you show me those nice manners one more time?” He asks.

You grit your teeth. “Joel, I swear to god I will go inside and lock you out–”

Your threats are cut off by your startled moan as he licks through your folds, broad swipes of his tongue from your fluttering entrance to your aching clit. His sweet brown eyes are sinful as he looks up at you from between your thighs, devouring your pussy like his last meal. His nose rubs against your clit each time his tongue dips inside of you and you’re quickly reduced to a writhing mess.

You shift your weight to one arm and reach down with the other to tangle your fingers into his hair. He moans appreciatively against your cunt, the vibrations making you keen. When your hips start to fight against his hold, his lips wrap around your clit, sucking and rolling it with his tongue.

“Fuck, fuck, just like that,” you babble, trying to keep your voice down as you balance right on the edge of your orgasm. He hums again, tongue swirling over your clit until that final thread snaps and you free fall into oblivion, fingers curling tightly against his scalp and making him groan as he works you through your release.

Your limbs go boneless in the aftermath and you collapse against the ground, an arm over your eyes to block out the sun. You hear the sound of water sloshing before Joel lays beside you on his back, arms beneath his head. He turns to look at you, his bright smile making your heart flutter in your chest.

And when he extends an arm out for you to snuggle up against him, you can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, Joel Miller isn’t such a bad neighbor after all.

“What do you mean you thought I was the asshole?!” Joel asks indignantly as he leaves your bathroom. He’s got a towel held up around his waist and you’re finding it hard to concentrate on his words at this exact moment.

You’ve just finished showering together after your outdoor activities, where you returned his poolside favor with some attention of your own. Now, you’re laying on the bed in your own towel, tired from the sun and the sex.

You’ve also just admitted that you thought he was the worst neighbor. An asshole even. And now he’s looking at you like you’re insane.

“You stole my internet!” He exclaims.

“You can’t prove that,” you reply, maybe a bit too quickly. He raises an eyebrow at you, but you refuse to back down.

“Fine, but you put all those twigs and shit on my porch.”

“They were from your tree, I was simply…returning your property.”

“And the cats?” He crosses his arms. “Because of you, my flowerbeds look like shit and I’ve lost two planters.”

“Not my fault they can sense you’re the weak link. They’re asserting their dominance. Hiss at them or something,” you say with a shrug.

Joel gapes at you. “You can’t be serious.”

“Look, it’s water under the bridge now, right? What can I do to make it up to you?”

He’s silent for a moment before a mischievous grin spreads across his face.

“Where’s that toy you bought, sweetheart?”

_________________

Joel’s got you on your back, your wireless vibrator placed snugly inside of your and against your clit. You’re glaring at him because he’s stopped you from another orgasm. He’s quickly becoming obsessed with that fire in your eyes and the curl of your lip when you’re mad at him.

He presses a trail of kisses from your ankle to the inside of your thighs, nipping the sensitive skin close to your pussy just to hear you gasp. He continues across your abdomen and your breasts, stopping to lavish attention to each sensitive nipple, your back arching against him for more.

“Joel,” you whine, squirming beneath him. He stretches up to capture your lips in a kiss, your lips dragging across his in the most addicting way. His cock slides against the smooth skin of your hip, making him groan. With a flick of his thumb, he turns the toy back on. “Oh, fuck!”

“Want you to come for me this time, baby,” Joel tells you. “Then I want you to come all over my cock, okay?”

You nod, back bowing and muscles straining as your writhe against the vibrations. Joel sits back on his heels to watch you, the way your mouth is dropped open in a silent shout and how your eyes find his at the exact moment you start to come undone.

“Oh my god,” you pant as Joel swiftly removes the toy, the pink silicone shiny with your release. He tosses it to the side and presses his cock to your fluttering hole, sinking inside of you with a deep groan. Your walls are still clenching with the aftershocks of your orgasm as he begins to thrust, slow and deep.

“Fuck, baby, you feel so fuckin’ good,” he growls. He uses a hand to press one of your knees closer to your chest, his fingers wrapped tightly beneath your knee.

The change in angle gets him deeper and his pace grows faster in response to your moans. He can feel you start to pulse around him, each drag of his cock out of your cunt getting harder as your walls squeeze, desperately trying to keep him inside.

“Touch yourself,” Joel commands. “Wanna see you come for me again, pretty girl, come on.”

Your fingers find your clit, swirling through the mess of slick coating your folds. Your eyes are glued to him as you work yourself to the same rhythm of his thrusts. He knows you’re close when your eyes start to flutter, your head dropping back against the mattress and your thighs going tight against his hips.

“That’s it, good fuckin’ girl, just like that,” he growls as you come with a shout of his name. “Christ, you look so damn good.”

You blink at him, your eyes hazy and your smile languid as he chases his own release, using your sensitive cunt for his pleasure. When it gets to be too much, too close, he withdraws, fisting his cock with rough strokes until he comes in thick splashes against your belly.

He collapses on the bed beside you, both of your chests heaving with deep breaths. After a moment, he uses one of the towels to wipe you clean, tossing it to the floor. You glare at him.

“You better put that in the hamper later,” you admonish. He pulls you into his side.

“So, why exactly did you think I was an asshole neighbor?” He asks. To his surprise, you blush, mumbling something he can’t make out. “What?”

“I said because you beat me at the Halloween decorating contest.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. You have the twelve foot skeleton and I’m jealous.”

“I’ll get you as many skeletons as you want,” Joel laughs. You smile at him.

“Sounds good to me, big guy.”

_________________

The following Halloween, there are two twelve foot skeletons in the neighborhood, and they live right next door to each other.

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