#Made me think of them as people who had experienced such horrors that they’d do anything to remove them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

marezablr · 7 months

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5 for the fic asks, good loser of course

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [good loser]? Answer it now!

i just want someone to talk to me about that fic, and find out if they noticed some of the things i put into it? i put a lot of care into it, a lot of little details and choices. i did detailed outlining, so when i got reasonably far in, i was able to go back and revise my outline to try to make threads of continuity that built over the story. and i just want to talk about them, haha.

a sampling of just some of the concepts and subcurrents i put into this fic:

seventeen bending the rules

Four hours. It isn’t that long. Seventeen breaks Gohan’s watch during their basketball match, and Gohan keeps forgetting to get a new one.

“‘Four hours.’ You’re so full of shit,” Eighteen says.

17 was not ever truly sticking to the deal he made. gohan broke his watch. he frequently experienced dissociation, which means he couldn't keep a strong internal measure of time. worse, they frequently met indoors, so gohan was deprived of a major advantage (his skill in measuring time by the movement of the sun). 17 played with the time limit to test if gohan would notice and speak up about it.

18 knew, and she was furious about it. the whole situation was already triggering to her, and 18 (eng dub) likes people keeping their word. so 17 testing the boundaries there upset her.

he also at one point was like "i mean, you CAN still kill people. we can just hide that it's us. like a jack the ripper kind of thing." 17 never did (gohan was amusing enough for as long as the fight lasted) but he didn't have problems messing with the rules. to him, it was very funny that gohan was so devoted to keeping his part of the deal.

eighteen's problem with the deal

“I’ll sweeten the game. You like protecting these humans, right? I’ll promise not to kill anyone for a few days.” / Eighteen is suddenly right beside her partner. “What. You’re kidding.”

Eighteen’s lip curled. “You don’t even fight back.”

“You’re not even any fun like this. I don’t get what he’s thinking. And you’re so pathetic, you just let him do it.”

“You’re pathetic. This is happening because of you.”

“Stop! You're my brother. You’re not supposed to be like those men!”

i hope this one became clear by the end, but gohan was never able to have access to this information (by the time it came out, he was tipping into a dissociative rage), so i couldn't make it explicit.

i tried as best as i could to show that 18 was triggered because she had (in her forgotten prior life) dealt with threats of sexual abuse. that's why she didn't get truly mad until 17 offered not to kill humans (making it coercive). but because her brother is the only person she really has in the world, she turned around and decided to blame gohan for 'letting' it happen. all her anger and disgust towards gohan was displaced horror at 17 for becoming the kind of perpetrator who had, in memories she can't fully recall, hurt her.

bulma and consent

“Huh,” Bulma says. “So, can I look?” / He can’t resist a small grin. “Would anything stop you?”

Gohan is the oldest of only two part-human, part-Saiyan hybrids in the world. Data on his health and development, Bulma told him the first time she tried to get him to have a physical, could be a guide for Trunks’s future. If there are any risks or predispositions arising from their unique heritage, better to find it in Gohan so they’d have advanced warning for Trunks. / Well. He couldn’t say no when she put it like that.

She catches him for haircuts, sometimes. He’ll be by to help with one errand or another, and she’ll complain about the disaster of a hairstyle he’s created for himself. Then she’ll make him sit down and let her work.

“Please, Bulma,” Gohan says. “Don’t read it. Not until—unless Trunks is the only one left to fight. Let me have that.” / Her lips part for a question. Her brows shadow her eyes. If she asks, he can’t refuse, not with the weight he is asking her to take on for him. / Bulma withdraws her thumb. The folder closes. / “Okay,” she says. “Okay, Gohan. I promise.”

bulma functions as both mirror and contrast for 17. through gohan's interactions with bulma, we see how gohan has given up bodily autonomy in a lot of places in his life, not just through combat and agreeing to 17's game. he lets bulma give him physicals he doesn't really want and agrees to haircuts because she wants them. (you see a similar incident in when gohan doesn't want to be given fabric for free, but lets it happen because the shopkeeper insists, before slipping the money over anyway.)

this is a symptom of the way gohan has had a lot of his sense of ownership of his body and well-being eroded. it's not really his body. it's a body, and he's in it, and he uses it to serve others. that is what he has been taught since he was a child. this is how he can be "good." it is why refusing 17's deal is unacceptable to gohan. gohan doesn't believe he has a right to feel comfortable and safe in his body if, by sacrificing that comfort and safety, he can protect someone else.

so the interactions with bulma draw that parallel out. but the difference is that when the chips are down, bulma does take "no" for an answer. when gohan does advocate for himself—when he asserts the desire to not have what happened to him disclosed until he's ready for it—bulma listens.

imagery/motifs

there are a couple images/motifs that repeat in the story

muscle/sinew/blood/bone

gohan's internal narration evokes these at several points, most significantly in the opening passage about being good at losing. The quartet of words reduces gohan's body to an assemblage of parts. instead of his body being him, his body is an abstract tool that he uses to serve others. he often evokes those three images when he is trying to remind himself that it's just a body, so it's fine if he sacrifices it for others. the most particular use of it is the end of chapter four:

Later, staring up at a cracked mirrorball that no longer spins, Gohan tries to imagine what it would feel like to have your body and mind taken apart and remade to someone else’s design. To be normal one day, and something else the next, and to never be able to go back. He feels only the sinew and muscle stretched across his own bones, the blood running through them to the rhythm of his still-beating heart. All this body’s familiar aches.

here, gohan gets close to but fails to recognize that what happened to 17 also happened to him. his body and mind were taken apart and remade. he was normal one day, and something else the next, and he could never go back. the quartet of words, which have already been used to evoke how gohan uses his body as a tool, are meant to answer the question without gohan knowing he's answering it.

super saiyan/ki words vs android/energy words

toriyama handed me this one on a platter.

super saiyan is consistently evoked with fire, which is both a danger and protection against the cold. using fire for super saiyan is supposed to set up the 'lightning' imagery of gohan getting close to but never quite hitting ssj2. it also combines with evoking the oozaru/great ape, which gohan does at several points for himself and trunks. the great ape is specifically an evocation of saiyan culture, which gohan is disconnected from and cannot pass down to trunks. these both tie into the description of ki as being like a flame—they're all images around vibrancy and life.

the androids have blue eyes and no detectable ki. gohan refers to himself as using ki blasts, but he talks about the androids as using energy blasts. their eyes are always cold, and their bodies are always evoking an absence of heat. it is what makes the actual heat of their bodies so jarring to gohan: it's heat where his spiritual senses tell him there shouldn't be. it also lets their coldness juxtapose the flame that gohan was given by the people he loved (the anger from their deaths) that he then gives to trunks.

it stands as a final contrast to bulma's eyes, which are also blue, but they're a depth (the ocean) instead of a cold, cruel absence.

there are some other motifs that show up, but those are the big ticket ones!

gohan's use of language

harsh vs ornate language

Gohan clenches his fists until he feels blood. /vs/ Gohan stands in shattered concrete, still wreathed in the rage that Vegeta once believed would be the salvation of his people.

Faster than Gohan can react, Seventeen is in Gohan’s face and has his arm in hand. In a flare of gold, Gohan yanks out of Seventeen’s grip and away from him. /vs/ Super Saiyan catches on the rising wave of his ki and sears right through him, the beacon-bright apotheosis of a dead race.

gohan has read a lot of fancy books in his life, but most of the prose doesn't show that. in a lot of the scenes, especially the ones with the androids, gohan uses a lot of really direct, blunt language in his narration. but then these little flourishes of formality and poetry slip out.

i was interested in how gohan uses "ore" in future timeline but not in main timeline. i thought it would be interesting to understand it as gohan emulating the mannerisms of his dead heroes (most of the z-warriors are "ore" users) to try to keep them alive by embodying them. he's also just worn down, so even his internal narration is pretty worn down and to-the-point. but he still has this appreciation for life and beauty, and it comes out of him, especially for things he finds sacred (nature, the gift of super saiyan).

2. blunt, truncated vs flowing speech

“I don’t know,” Gohan says. “Maybe. I don’t keep track.” & “I’m not going to talk about this.” /vs/ “It’s good to be informed, Bulma. Weren’t you the one who said you wanted to see Frieza before he blew the planet up?”

similarly, gohan talks very differently to the androids vs anyone else. gohan's quite blunt, aggressive, and truncated with the androids. this is not his most natural speech pattern. when he talks to bulma, trunks, or even just other non-androids, he uses longer and more flowing sentences, because he is more at ease and in himself.

3. sparse sensory awareness in urban spaces/combat situations vs embodied sensory experience in natural spaces

He stays lying back on the sticky fake leather of the abandoned booth, muted lights above him and his cut up shirt on the ground at his side. /vs/ Then, Gohan inhales the wasteland winds, cool and clean and familiar. Then, his eyes set on the sapphire horizon and his bruised skin takes warmth from the morning sun. Birds call out for each other, for warning, for the pleasure of the song, and a wolf joins its howls to the chorus.

similarly, he is significantly more at ease and in his own body in the natural world vs the urban world. 17 and gohan both have "territories" in this fic: 17 will be a park ranger in another life, but growing up, he was a delinquent city boy. cities are his domain. gohan is a country boy and feels most at home in nature.

when gohan is with 17 and in urban spaces, gohan picks up on fewer sensory elements. he's less present in his body except as something to fight with and has much less appreciation for any beauty in the world around him. his sensory experience is pared down to whatever he has to take in to handle the active threat; any other details are extraneous distractions that could get him killed.

but when gohan is in nature, in his home territory, he allows in more sensory details. nature is where he feels most comfortable and at home, and it's a source of rejuvenation and strength for him, so he pays significantly more attention to what's happening in it. it's part of what makes chapter 4 so unique: it's the only time he meets 17 on his home turf.

the ghost quartet

while all the dead z fighters are "the sacred dead" to gohan, people whose deaths have an almost religious significance in his understanding of himself and his role in the world, gohan has four major ghosts that he evokes: piccolo, vegeta, krillin, and goku. each of them has a specific function.

gohan needs ghosts. gohan is someone very driven by his value system, and his value is very relational. he wants to be a good son, a good friend, a good student—in another timeline, a good brother, husband, father. being good in relation to others is extremely important to him. it's why he's so respectful to the elder he meets on the bus, and it's why he makes a point of bowing to 18 as his sparring partner, even though he doesn't respect her as a person. this is what keeps him in integrity with himself.

but in this timeline, most of the people he wants to be good in relation to are dead. all of the people he models himself after for heroism and bravery are gone. so he summons them up as ghosts, and all of them work differently.

piccolo: mentorship

Gohan recites a litany of dead friends, doesn’t let his fighting stance falter. Piccolo would never tolerate a lapse.

Piccolo would have never put up with him walking into enemy territory outmatched and uncertain without even having a contingency.

He puts his hands back in ready position, just like Piccolo taught him, to catch or deflect any strike.

Piccolo would have snapped at Gohan for the defiance, or maybe hit him with his eye lasers. Not that it ever stopped Gohan.

piccolo, as gohan's only active teacher (he learned from others but not directly in this timeline), is the person gohan calls on when reminding himself how he's supposed to act in a fight. piccolo tells him not to lower his guard, to stay strong and watch his back. gohan also evokes piccolo when he is trying to understand how he should act as a mentor to trunks. he evokes piccolo's memory to help himself stay sharp and so he can try to emulate the practicality and intelligence that piccolo modelled.

But it’s food. He shouldn’t be a spoiled brat about food.

Spoiled brat. You can still fight. Get up.

gohan also uses piccolo against himself subconsciously. without being aware of it, gohan uses piccolo calling him a "spoiled brat" to shame himself into doing things he doesn't want to.

2. krillin: compassion

He bends down to their level and smiles like his father and Krillin used to smile at him, like how Gohan used to wish all adults would.

Just hold on, Gohan, Krillin said to him. We can make it through this.

Placing his palms together, Gohan bows like Krillin taught him to on that long trip to Namek.

in this timeline, gohan has fought beside krillin more than anyone else. in both the saiyan and namek sagas, krillin looked out for gohan, including following him into every fight, even though krillin didn't want to join the battle. krillin never let gohan be alone and always showed courage in the face of horror.

gohan summons krillin's ghost much more rarely than vegeta and piccolo because while gohan uses vegeta and piccolo to scold himself into doing what he has to, krillin is a voice of compassion. when you are in a terrible situation and you can't leave, compassion can be agonizing, because it invites you to become in touch with your feelings. that means you have to feel the pain you're experiencing instead of shoving it aside.

but compassion also gives you the courage to keep going. and krillin's compassion is a virtue that gohan wants to show to others. it is a major value he holds onto.

3. vegeta: understanding

Ties are a weakness, Vegeta once told him, and Gohan should better guard himself against the danger they pose in battle. Gohan had disagreed with him then, vehemently. He still does, in most ways. / But these days, Gohan thinks he understands what Vegeta meant.

You’re too soft. How many times did Vegeta tell him that? Give your enemies even a hint of what they might use against you, and they will see you pay for it.

Once, Vegeta scolded him for not seeking outlets. You are Saiyan. Your blood needs battle as your stomach needs food.

Vegeta would call him pathetic right now. The idea is a comfort he takes with him as he cuts his thoughts adrift.

vegeta is a particularly strange case, because vegeta is someone gohan has fought beside, but he's also someone gohan has fought against. at several points, gohan evokes vegeta's ghost to argue with it: vegeta's ideology is something he can oppose to affirm his own values to himself.

but gohan is also experiencing a very strange kind of understanding of vegeta. early on, gohan calls up the memory of watching vegeta be tortured by frieza. gohan witnessed that, and he saw how frieza talked to vegeta. of all the ghosts gohan calls on, vegeta is the only one who understands what it’s like to be kept alive on the faux-affectionate whims of a monster you want so badly to beat—and you keep telling yourself you will, you keep saying you'll end it one day—but you are badly outclassed by them.

so even as vegeta is someone to argue against, vegeta is also the only person gohan can bear to think about in his deepest moments of shame. when gohan is sitting in the horror of the night club, the worst of the assaults, the one where 17 pushed the point so far that gohan could no longer pretend to himself that he was a contender and had to sit in the truth of being a victim—gohan could not bear to think of piccolo or krillin or goku. it would feel too shameful to imagine them seeing him like that.

but vegeta? vegeta knows what it's like. gohan doesn't experience shame when it comes to vegeta. he wants, so badly, for piccolo and goku and krillin to think well of him, but it's fine if vegeta sees his most shameful parts. so at that lowest moment, when he imagines vegeta calling him pathetic, he takes strength from it. one of his ghosts knows how this feels. and gohan has always seen the best in people, so he can imagine vegeta calling him pathetic when he lies down and gives up as proof that vegeta believes he is capable of keeping the fight going.

4. goku: the unreachable

“I think you’re taller than your dad now.” / “Not likely. My father was a giant.”

Three more days with his father would have meant everything.

And his father would have kept his word. Even if it was to a monster.

Then his father promised he would handle the rest.

His father walked him home.

It’s alright. He is Piccolo’s student. He is his father’s son.

Super Saiyan burns through him with a reckless heat that Piccolo would never have tolerated, that Krillin would have warned him about, Vegeta alone would have understood—and his father?—but it doesn’t matter: an android is a well of gravity, and not even Saiyan rage can escape its pull.

They killed them, and they don’t care, never have, and Gohan knows the real reason he’s the last one standing—it’d be boring, if they had no one left to play with—if he were stronger, he could have ended it, like his father would have, but there's only him left—

Gohan breathes like he saw Piccolo breathe. Like he used to put himself to sleep matching his breathing to the rise and fall of his father’s chest.

goku is the most sacred of all the sacred dead. he is three types of unreachability:

first, he is the unreachable ideal. gohan wears goku's clothing to try to take on his heroism. he repeatedly evokes goku's model of heroism, strength, and compassion as something he must strive towards. gohan strives to equal goku, but feels he falls short.

second, he is lost safety. as long as gohan's father was there, gohan knew he'd be safe. he is the safety of home and childhood, and he's the safety of a hero coming to save the day. in moments when gohan lets his guard down, he yearns for the safety he used to feel when goku was there.

finally, he is an inaccessible understanding. because goku is an unreachable ideal, there are things about his father he doesn't know. this gap leaves an ache.

Gohan stops, and he knows he does, knows it’s weak and open, that he should hide it—always the coward freezing when he needs to act—he just thought he could keep private at least that—

Gohan is a coward and a spoiled brat, and this is the best he has ever done protecting them.

What are you, a coward? Are you going to let all those people die for nothing? Get up!

but goku, like piccolo, also left a wound. in a moment of extreme desperation, goku called his son a coward to provoke him into fighting. he told him that if he didn't fight, it meant that everyone died for nothing.

like "spoiled brat," gohan calls up that wound from his father to shame himself into pushing through.

so yeah! those are a few things i put into the story. i could talk also about gohan as a bad teacher (he is doing his best, but he is modelling himself after piccolo, so he does things like starting trunks off with far too much time to try to meditate) or how gohan and 17 both enabled each other to not look at the assault for what it is (they both want to see him as a "contender," 17 because he doesn't understand what he's doing, gohan because he doesn't want to see himself as a victim), or probably lots of other things. i just... put a lot into this, and i love talking about it and seeing what people saw themselves! i tried to make it a story that would reward careful rereading.

#asks #peridotite #writing posts

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aurumacadicus · 2 years

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The goal is something new, right? Have you ever done arriving in an afterlife? Maybe with Marvelous Warbirds.

Uuuuuuh I don't think I have! If I have I don't remember <3 I think I would like to explore the horror of Captain Marvel’s powers a little bit 🤔

Anyway obviously TW: Character Death, the afterlife exists off the mortal coil.

Carol had been alone for a long time.

James had been the first to go. While he’d healed from his spinal injuries to the best extent he could, and he’d helped remarkably with research on quadriplegic and paraplegic rehabilitation in Stark Industry’s medical division, it didn’t change the fact that that research hadn’t been for his benefit. It was for those who came after him. He’d passed away quietly, between one day and the next, and Carol had had to fly to space to scream out her pain so she wouldn’t damage anything when she realized he was gone.

She still regretted it to this day, that she’d left Maria alone to deal with it. As if Maria hadn’t also been full of sadness and rage and pain. ‘I’ve been through this once before,’ she’d tried to assure Carol later, but that hadn’t made it right. They were partners. They’d lost someone precious to them. She shouldn’t have gotten the privilege to leave until she could get a handle on herself when Maria hadn’t gotten the same opportunity.

His funeral had been beautiful. Mrs. Potts had bought the flowers. ‘Tony and Jim had an agreement they would pay for each others’ florists,’ she’d said, eyes bright with tears that didn’t detract from the beauty of her sad smile. ‘Tony left a piece of his estate behind specifically for it. He wanted rhododendrons.’

Carol had felt strange, standing beside his casket, looking down at his peaceful face. She hadn’t experienced this, not really, not yet. Not a death that hadn’t been at the hands of a battle. She couldn’t fight old age. Couldn’t blame anyone but human frailty. The church was so packed. Jim was so loved.

She hadn’t gotten to love him as long as she’d wanted.

She’d gotten more time with Maria, but it still didn’t feel like enough. ‘Maybe part of the reason Jim’s loss hurt so much, was because we didn’t get a chance to tell him we loved him one last time,’ Maria said, wrinkled hand trembling in Carol’s smooth one.

‘Maybe,’ Carol had replied, and then asked, ‘Why do you bring that up?’

‘He’s come to get me,’ Maria had said, and she’d passed that very same night.

Monica had helped her plan her mom’s funeral, because she hadn’t been very involved in Jim’s, couldn’t wrap her head around some of the stuff needing taking care of. It was good practice, because she’d realized years before that she wasn’t aging the same as her friends. Her skin hadn’t wrinkled like Maria’s had, her hair hadn’t grayed, her vision hadn’t blurred.

She’d gotten good at planning funerals. So good that she couldn’t stand it anymore. So she’d said her regretful goodbyes to Maria’s great-grandchildren, told them she probably wouldn’t be coming back, and they’d looked at her with the same eyes Maria had had and wished her well.

Carol didn’t know what year it was anymore. She’d been exploring the galaxies. She’d checked in with Talos’s family, but she’d realized that they aged faster than her too. She didn’t know how their funerals worked, and she wasn’t keen to learn. She kept moving, never staying in one place too long, never letting anyone get too close. She was tired of missing people. But, if she wasn’t going to age, she could at least be helpful in battle. She was more careful this time, doing research, learning about the conflicts because she stepped into them. She’d learned patience. She wanted to help instead of hurt.

So she was very shocked to wake up from being slammed into the surface of a planet to find Jim and Maria waiting for her to wake up. “Am I hallucinating?”

“No,” Maria told her gently.

“You’re dead,” Jim added, more blunt.

Carol stared at them, stunned. Jim looked... young. Younger than she remembered him the last time she saw him. He was wearing his dress uniform. He only wore that to important things. Maria looked like she had when Carol had come back to Earth in the nineties, eyes as mischievous as they’d always been.

“...No,” Carol said after a moment. “I can’t be. I was--I’m still--”

“Even if you were still young, you can’t expect to always survive direct attacks from spaceships,” Maria cut in.

Jim waved at the ground. “And you’re not exactly a spring chicken anymore.”

“Huh?” Carol said, and then turned.

There was a woman lying on the red dirt of the planet’s surface. She looked... old. She... reminded Carol of Dr. Lawson, sort of, wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, a sort of exhaustion that clung to her like a shroud.

There was blue blood coming from her nose and visible ear.

“That’s me,” Carol breathed. “I aged.”

“It’s been a long time,” Jim agreed.

“Longer than you probably think,” Maria added. She held her hand out to her. “It’s time to go, Carol. It’s your turn to rest.”

Carol turned and looked at her hand, unable to help sniffling. “I don’t know if I can.”

Maria opened her mouth, but she was cut off by Jim scoffing and rolling his eyes. “With the parties Tony throws, we’ll see how much you actually get to rest. He’s managed to get three Norse gods, two super soldiers, the spider kid, and a sentient rock drunk. He’s very excited with the prospect of doing the same to you. Pepper promised not to stop him.”

Carol stared at him, struck speechless. As she stared, his dress uniform faded, replaced by a garish Hawaiian print shirt, slacks, and sandals. If nothing else convinced her she was dead, that would have. “You still have that ugly shirt Monica bought you for Father’s Day?”

“Monica likes when I wear it,” Jim sniffed.

Maria laughed, shaking her head, and the formal dress she’d been wearing faded into the denim romper Carol remembered her favoring. She held her hand out again. “We missed you,” she said gently.

Carol looked down at it. Swallowed thickly. Reached out a shaking hand. Stopped just before she reached it.

Jim seized her wrist and yanked her forward, stepping closer himself to draw both Maria and Carol into his arms for a squeeze. “C’mere.”

Carol let out a sob, burying her face in his shoulder. She’d forgotten how he smelled. “I didn’t get to tell you goodbye.”

“I was in so much pain, it was a relief to go,” Jim murmured, and Carol couldn’t help the way her shoulders relaxed. She’d always sort of felt she should have at least sensed something was wrong, that she could have done something to prolong his life. If he’d been relieved to go, she decided she wouldn’t blame herself anymore. “I’ll tell you more about it later, once you’ve grasped what’s going on.”

“I missed you both so much,” Carol whispered, clinging to them.

“We missed you too. But it’s time to go,” Jim said, pressing their foreheads together, then turned, leaving an arm wrapped around both of them.

Maria leaned forward to smile at her. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Carol choked out around the lump in her throat. “Yeah, I think I am.”

“Then here we go,” Jim said. “Hold on tight.”

“I’m never going to let go,” Carol promised.

#aurumacadicus answers #ask meme #new trope/plot meme #marvelous warbirds #tony gets carol SO DRUNK and you know hangovers shouldn't be possible after you're dead but if anyone can manage it it's tony

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fanficshiddles · 2 years

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Out Of The Darkness, Chapter 1

Summary: Grace had been captive of Kilgrave for seven years. She’s finally out, thanks to Jessica Jones. Who sends her to stay with The Avengers at their base, so they can protect her from Kilgrave. Loki takes a liking to her instantly, finding some common ground. He goes out of his way to make her feel safe and like life is worth living again. But can they keep Kilgrave away?

WARNINGS FOR FIC: mind control, violence, PTSD, anxiety, talk of rape and kidnapping.

Loki was heading out on a mission with Thor and Bruce, as they were heading down the corridor Natasha and Wanda were heading towards them, with a new face. A young woman, but she was wearing a large hoodie with the hood up.

Though when they passed by, she looked up and Loki caught a glimpse of her face. Her eyes were full of terror, of so much pain and sadness.

‘Who’s that?’ Loki asked Thor and Bruce as the women kept walking.

‘Not sure. But I know Jessica Jones was here earlier with someone.’ Bruce shrugged.

‘Let’s focus on the mission, we can find out when we return.’ Thor said.

‘Mmm.’ Loki hummed and nodded.

But he struggled to focus on the mission entirely, though luckily it was relatively easy. He kept thinking about that woman he’d seen. What had she been through? Who was she? Where did she come from?

When they got back home to base, Natasha had called for a team meeting straight away. Loki lurked in the back, as he usually did. Normally just rolling his eyes during the team meetings. But this one, this one was different.

‘Some of you might have noticed we have a new guest.’ Natasha started. ‘Her name is Grace, and she’s here for protection.’

‘Protection from what?’ Loki asked.

Natasha looked at him and narrowed her eyes. ‘Let me finish and I’ll tell you.’

Loki folded his arms over his chest and tried to keep his mouth shut and not retaliate.

‘She’s here for protection, from a dangerous man. Called Kilgrave. He has mind control powers, whatever he says, people do. If he tells someone to put a bullet in their skull, they do it. No hesitation. If he tells someone to dig a hole with their bare hands through concrete, they try and do it until their hands are bleeding raw. If he tells someone to shut up, they shut up and don’t say a word. They physically can’t. It’s terrifying what this man can do and has done.’

‘You’re joking, right?’ Tony said in disbelief. ‘No way some average guy can have powers like that.’

‘I’ve seen the proof.’ Natasha snapped at him. ‘I believe Jones, she wouldn’t have a reason to lie to us. She’s been under his control before, too. But she got lucky. She wants us to keep Grace here, until she has taken Kilgrave down… Grace has been through hell and back, multiple times. I’m not going to tell you what he’s made her do, it’s not my place to tell.’

Stark ran a hand down his face. ‘So, we are keeping some girl here because apparently, she’s been under control by a guy that has made her do, what, exactly?’

‘As I said, that’s not my story to tell.’

‘You’ve taken her in here and we have no idea what she’s capable of, or done, that could be questionable?’ Tony continued to argue.

Natasha was about to answer back but Loki butted in again. ‘Haven’t we all done questionable things in the past, Stark?’ He hissed at him.

‘Yeah, you especially.’ Tony grumbled.

‘I have and we all know that. But we all know that each and every one of us, has a past. I believe her, I saw it in her eyes.’ Loki continued.

‘Saw what?’ Steve asked him.

‘The pain and horrors of not being in control of your own mind.’ Loki sighed.

The team looked around one another. They’d all experienced having their mind played with, but none of them had ever done anything quite as bad as Loki… And now, Grace.

‘I doubt she will make an appearance for a while, she doesn’t trust, for obvious reasons. She’s been stuck with Kilgrave only pretty much, for a long time.’

‘How long was she with him for?’ Thor asked.

‘Seven years.’

Loki’s eyes widened. ‘What? She looks young, she must have just been a kid when he took her?’

‘She’s twenty-six. She was still a kid when he took her, more or less.’ Natasha nodded.

‘Jesus. At that age, she’s missed out on so much.’ Bruce said.

‘Exactly. So we need to try and make her feel welcome here, and while we need to protect her we need to try and help her get her life back.’

Everyone looked between each other, nodding in agreement. Even Tony reluctantly agreed.

‘He will be looking for her.’ Steve said.

Natasha nodded. ‘I’d say so. Jessica said that he would be pissed at finding her gone, especially after such a long time. But she is going to try and get his spotlight back onto her, to get it off Grace. But we need to be prepared in-case he does come this way.’

‘That asshole won’t get anywhere near her again.’ Clint said firmly.

That was something everyone agreed on.

Grace had been pacing back and fore for the past hour, it was the day after she’d arrived at the Avengers base. Part of her was scared to leave her room, but another part of her was even more scared at remaining in there on her own.

It left her alone with her thoughts, thoughts she didn’t want to have. Memories she didn’t want to think about. She was worried about what she might do if she stayed on her own.

Natasha had said to her when she was ready to just take a look around, that she would introduce her to the team.

Even though she was shaking, a complete bag of nerves, she made her way out of her room and headed down the corridor. She didn’t really know where she was going, but she vaguely remembered Natasha telling her a rough direction of where to go. But her mind was so clouded she ended up going the wrong way.

But she came to a huge window that looked out to the back of the base. There was a massive walled garden, hedging inside that sectioned off different sections of it, including a decent size green house and poly tunnel. The whole place was overgrown and obviously hadn’t been looked after in a few years.

It was completely different to the front of the place, where the lawn was immaculate and the drive all neat.

‘It’s a disaster zone out there, isn’t it?’ Came a smooth voice from behind Grace, making her jump.

She spun around, eyes wide like saucers. She had to crane her neck to look up at who was speaking to her, he was really tall. She realised quickly it must be Loki, one of the Gods. She knew of Thor from the myths, but he had blonde hair whereas this one had black hair. So she deduced it was his brother.

‘Apologies, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.’ Loki said quickly. ‘I’m Loki.’ He held his hand out towards her.

Grace eyed up his hand suspiciously, but didn’t take it. ‘I… I’m Grace.’ She whispered.

Loki retracted his hand and nodded. ‘Nice to meet you, Grace.’ He stepped towards the window next to her, but didn’t get too close to her, respecting her space. ‘Stark fired the gardeners that tended to all that a few years ago, he never got round to hiring more. A shame really, we used to get some nice fresh vegetables from there.’

Grace was wary, though she wasn’t sure why. She knew that she was safe surrounded by superheroes. Jessica told her about all their powers, what they could do. Wanda had mind manipulating powers, so did Loki. But not in the same way as Kilgrave.

But it was going to take her time to trust again. If she could even trust herself. She felt so, weird and empty.

‘I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to see you out and about so soon.’ Loki said after a moments silence between them.

‘I don’t know if I’m more scared being on my own or with strangers.’ She admitted.

Loki nodded. ‘It will take time, if you weren’t in control for so many years, it will be strange at first. But you’ll get there.’

Grace turned towards him, getting a moment of bravery to look up at him directly. ‘How do you know?’ She asked, her voice shaky.

Loki gave her a soft smile. ‘Because I’ve been there… well, similar. And if I can pull through it and get out of the darkness, so can you. You’re a strong one, I can tell.’

She actually felt like crying from how kind he seemed to be.

‘I… I’m not so sure about that.’

‘You’ll be doubting everything. Was what you did your own doing, or was it really from someone else? Your own inner demons are the hardest fight, but keep holding on. Take it one step at a time, you will get there. You will beat this guy.’

Grace looked back out the window, she really didn’t know what to say. How did this God have so much confidence in her when she didn’t have any in herself, and he didn’t even know her. She wasn’t sure whether she should be suspicious of him or not. But then, that’s what Kilgrave would want her to think of other men. To think that no one else out there would be nice and help her.

He really had isolated her from everyone.

‘Do you want to come and meet the bumbling idiots that people call The Avengers?’ Loki offered.

Grace nodded. ‘Yeah… ok.’

The Avengers were shocked when they saw Loki walk into the common room with Grace. Out of everyone, they didn’t expect Loki to actually be nice and polite towards her.

Natasha introduced her to them all. She awkwardly said hi to them.

‘Thank you… for letting me stay here.’ She said quietly.

‘It’s no problem. We will make sure you’re safe here.’ Clint smiled at her.

‘I’ll give you the code and access app to download onto your phone, so you can access the main doors whenever you need.’ Tony said, pulling out his phone.

‘Oh… I uhm… I don’t… I don’t have a phone.’ Grace said, rubbing the back of her head. ‘I don’t have much of anything, actually.’ She looked down. ‘He took my belongings off me… a long time ago.’

The team fell silent.

‘No need to worry. I’ll get you a laminate to keep on yourself.’ Tony said.

‘Thanks.’ Grace said.

‘Bruce is cooking up his famous fajitas for lunch. Join us!’ Thor beamed happily, then realised what he said. ‘I mean, only if you want to. You don’t have to…’

Loki rolled his eyes and face palmed.

‘You don’t need to watch what you say… I know… I know that you don’t mean it in the way he would… Though it will take some time for me to get used to, too.’ Grace gave Thor a small smile, knowing he didn’t mean any harm at all.

‘I uhm, I think I’ll just take something back to my room to eat, if that’s ok?’ She looked around everyone.

‘Of course it is. You don’t need to ask, you do what you want to do.’ Steve said.

Grace nodded. She waited there with the others for ten minutes while Bruce finished making fajitas, then he dished some up for her.

‘Thank you…’ Grace turned to leave the room, but she stopped. ‘Uhm… I can’t… I can’t remember which way to go.’ She said sheepishly.

‘I’ll walk you back.’ Loki offered before anyone else could, heading over towards her.

As they made their way down the corridor, Loki noticed her hands were shaking as she carried her plate. The more she tried to focus on her hands to stop, the worse they became.

‘What’s your favourite kind of food?’ Loki asked, looking ahead instead of at her, not wanting to make her feel more awkward.

‘I’m not too fussy.’ Grace shrugged. ‘I… I had to eat whatever was put on front of me, really… But pasta dishes are my favourite.’

Loki felt sad for her. He couldn’t imagine being told to eat whatever was put down on front of you, with no say in that matter, for seven years.

‘Thanks for taking me back to my room… Hopefully tomorrow I won’t get so lost.’ Grace said awkwardly when they reached her room.

‘My pleasure.’ Loki smiled and bowed his head slightly. ‘If you need anything at all, someone is usually around, so just call out.’

‘Thanks.’ Grace nodded and headed into her room, taking a big deep breath once she got in there.

‘You need to watch what you say.’ Clint said to Thor as they all sat down for dinner.

‘I didn’t mean’ Thor started but was cut off by Loki.

‘Tip toeing around our words will only make her feel more awkward. She wants to get back to normal, which includes people flippantly saying things that they don’t mean as an order, as it would if Kilgrave had said it.’

‘I hate to say it, but Loki’s right.’ Wanda said.

Loki smirked as the team all grumbled, reluctantly agreeing.

‘How are we going to be prepared if Kilgrave comes looking for her?’ Steve asked.

‘I’ll speak to Jessica again, see if she has eyes on him. We need to understand how his powers work, so we can contain him if necessary.’ Natasha said.

‘Or we just kill him before he gets a chance to open his mouth.’ Loki snarled.

‘I’m with Loki, it sounds like this man doesn’t deserve to live.’ Thor said with a mouthful of food.

‘That’s not for us to decide.’ Steve said. ‘We can’t become as bad as him, if he comes here, we trap and imprison him. Then we hand him over to Jones to do with as she sees fit.’

Everyone went quiet and just continued to eat. They clearly weren’t going to agree on a way of dealing with Kilgrave if he did come looking.

#Out Of The Darkness #Tom Hiddleston #Loki #fan fiction #Loki x OFC #fluff #protective Loki #sweet Loki

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luveline · 3 years

Text

a special friend, part two [Fred Weasley, George Weasley x reader]

tags: reader-insert, platonic relationships, friendship, can be read as romantic for either or both, hurt/comfort, mental health issues, implied/referenced self-harm, dissociation, quiet reader, shy reader, sad reader

relationships: fred weasley x reader, george weasley x reader

wordcount: 3.2k

read part one here

The common room was always so clean. The house-elves must work themselves half to death with effort, as you never saw a hair or speck of dust where there ought not to be one. The small refreshment table filled and refilled through every new day and the fireplace was always roaring on cold winter nights. It was especially cold that evening, and so the members of Gryffindor house benefited from a crackling fire and hot chocolate coming out of the ears.

You basked in the warmth of the flame, sitting cross-legged before it. A cup of hot chocolate cooled in between your hands, which were both laden with bandaids and germolene. Fred and George’s orders, of course. You were not to scratch, bite or mess in any detrimental way with your hands, arms or skin. If you did, you were to report to them for immediate bandaging.

At first, they’d simply been spelling each wound away. This had an opposite effect, as the freshly healed skin was perfect for picking whenever your mood turned - which was often. You found yourself blinded and basked in the light of being cared for by others, and although you may have preferred complete autonomy over your own body, you couldn’t say you minded the attentiveness of the twins. They’d made it their personal mission to prevent any self-harm, accidental or purposeful. You weren’t sure you even knew the difference half the time.

A quiet had settled over the room. It seemed as though each red and gold student was content to breathe in the smell of chestnut and pine in peaceful, companionable silence. You found yourself smiling kindly at each person who looked your way. You couldn’t imagine having done that before you had become acquainted with the twins.

Acquainted was a word you used to protect yourself. Friendly was too confident, too firm. You sometimes dreamt of horror stories where you, confident and comfortable, admitted how much you cared for them. In these dreams, they laughed in your face. Poked fun at your hope.

Of course, Fred and George weren’t cruel. If they felt that way, they certainly wouldn’t rub it in your face or make you feel embarrassed about it. But some shame never went away, and you carried it like an ever-burning torch.

Despite the pleasant warmth of the room, chills racked your spine at the thought. You pushed it from your head, attempting to think of anything else. You traced a pattern through the braided strands of the rug you were lazing upon, first the flames of a bonfire towering ten feet tall, then a mirror of the powdered sugar landscape outside.

Two warm bodies settled in the carpet on either side of you. A long arm wrapped around your shoulders confidently. The floral scent of your perfume mingled with the strong scent of burning caramel and something woody, the signature fragrance of the Weasley twins.

George moved first, plonking a stuffed toy into your lap. He positioned the neck carefully so that the teddy bear was sat as comfortable as you were.

“For you,” said Fred.

“An early Christmas gift,” George added.

The bear was spotted unusually like some sort of hybrid creature. You wondered where they could possibly have acquired such an artefact.

“We saw him and thought of you,” they said together.

That was rich. And maybe correct. After all, it was a weird looking plushie and you weren’t exactly renowned for your normality. You didn’t say much, simply handing off your cold drink to George without so much as a sideways glance and brought the bear to your face. You grazed your nose against its brown stomach and inhaled, breathing in its clean scent.

Both twins were used to the general quietness that came with your presence and didn’t pressure any response. You knew you should’ve said thank you, or even smiled gratefully, but you just couldn’t make your mouth move the way you wanted. You placed your hand on each brothers leg and applied the barest amount of pressure, hoping it showed gratitude.

“Well, I’m starving.”

“I’m so glad you said so, my brother.”

“Yes, I’m craving something savory, Gred.”

“Something juicy, Forge.”

“Such as?”

You looked between them like a muggle attending a tennis match, back and forth and back and forth. They ran circles around you for their own enjoyment, you assumed, but maybe also to make you feel more included.

“Y/N, fancy a trek to the kitchens?”

Before you could say no, or yes, or make up your mind and decide what it was you wanted to do, your stomach growled. Fred grinned wickedly.

They ushered you out of the portrait hole and down the stairs without preamble, flanking your sides like bodyguards. You didn’t mind, taking time to smile at the castle ghosts and portraits as you went.

The twins shot each other looks when they thought you couldn’t see. One said, how do you think she is? Another said, I think she’s however you think she is. Both said, she seems okay today.

It would feel a little patronizing if it weren’t so foreign - to have people care about your well-being so deeply they made changes to their day to see you and went out of their way to make you feel good; you’d find it condescending if it wasn’t so delightful.

That is to say, you felt conflicted. Happy that somebody cared, ashamed that they also felt concerned. They worried over everything these days, what you ate and what classes you had and oh, ghostie, do you need help with that? Y/N, sweetheart, let me carry that for you, lest your arms grow too tired.

It was… nice. It was nice, even if it was painful. Sometimes, it reminded you why you didn’t allow yourself the pleasure of friendship in the first place.

You hummed to yourself. Making sound had become a little easier. You weren’t inclined to say a whole lot, but allowing yourself to be louder, to take up space, had come easier the longer you spent with them. Neither Fred nor George minded if you huffed after too many stairs or if you clicked gobstones together at the foot of their beds.

The song was one of those cheesy Christmas numbers you’d heard on the radio. It was warm and comforting, bringing tears to your eyes if you thought about it too much. George slipped into song with you easily, humming much more loudly and obnoxiously. Fred just grinned to himself, keeping dutiful watch of the corridors.

You bubbled like a shaken can of coke by the time you arrived at the painting that enclosed the kitchen doorway, feeling too happy for your own good. Despite feeling very hungry, not a lick of fatigue or unhappiness tinged your mood, though the fuzzy numbness of every day threatened your well-being if you stopped to think too long.

The door swung open obediently after your half-hearted tickle insisted upon by the boys.

“What do you feel like, Y/N, sweet or savoury? There’s bound to be something you’ll fancy,” George said.

You held in a grimace. There were lots of things you wanted to try, the kitchens smelled like so many amazing things. The cloying smells of jam and treacle and custard, the hearty scents of gravy and roast dinner. It was too bad, then, that most everything you ate tasted stale. For years, your tastebuds had been slacking. During your worst days, food held no taste at all, resulting in your decreased appetite.

A tingling began in your fingers. You didn’t know what to say, or how to say it, how to convey that you didn’t really feel up to anything at all. You knew they would protest as they always did when you didn’t eat.

“Bread,” you managed. Bread was a safe choice. Dense enough to feel filling, easy to keep down, and bland to begin with.

Both boys were frowning but trying not to at your choice.

George moved forward, catching the attention of a harrowed looking house elf. They conversed with familiarity and soon you were being beckoned to a table that was relatively clear. Within minutes you were surrounded by bread, crusty rolls and sliced sourdough.

George casually nudged a bowl of tomato soup in your direction.

The surface shined with grease. It even had a swirl of cream and a sprig of basil afloat.

He looked at you, eyes pleading.

“You too,” you said.

This appeased him. The boys sat across from you with their own bowls, eating in the horrific way that teenage boys do. By the time they’d finished, you’d managed half of your own meal and two slices of bread. The nausea you experienced from just existing was starting to build, accompanied by the disappointment of your bland meal. You’d hoped an improved mood would help your appetite, but you still felt unsatisfied.

The boys grabbed a passing plate of tarts and ice cream.

Your good mood was wearing thin. You bit down on the tip of your thumb and stared at the grain of the table.

You bit down harder.

“Hey. Hey! Don’t do that,” Fred said, reaching forward as if to grab your hand. You pushed it under the table.

George pushed the plate of confectionary closer to you. “Chew on one of these instead, hm?”

You took it all back - this was patronising. Lovely and thoughtful and very, excruciatingly patronising.

You didn’t want to say no, or push it away, or eat anything else or even laugh it off. You wanted to do nothing. You lay your head down on the table, closing your eyes. You caught a murmur or two between them, though you couldn’t make out the words with your ear pressed so hard against the wood and the other covered by your falling hair. The table was smooth and cool under your skin.

A chair scraped against the floor. Footsteps. A broad hand against your back.

“You’re like a steam train running out of coal sometimes.”

You knew he was hoping for a response, a joke, a sign you’d been cheered up.

Through slow blinks, you could make out his face. Endlessly amused and a little sad, framed by the candlelight. He was beautiful, you thought absently. They were both beautiful.

“You okay?” he said quietly.

“Mm,”

“Mm? Is mm a yes or a no?”

“Mm,”

“Alright,” he said, rubbing a soothing path up between your shoulder blades and down again. It would’ve been dizzying if you could think straight, it made the numbness a little woozy. You preened beneath his touch like a pleased cat, feeling the unhappiness melt just a little.

It was crazy how affection could make you feel better, even if it didn’t always solve the problem.

Embarrassed, you mumbled, “you’re going to kill me.”

Fred smiled. “How so?”

“You’re fattening me up like a lamb to slaughter.”

He didn’t quite laugh, huffing through his nose. He really was very handsome up close. His hair was curling at just below his ears, a lush auburn colour that complemented his pale, freckle adorned skin. His eyes were a heart-melting brown so that his pupils were lost. The look he gave you was searing like he knew exactly what you were thinking about him. Your ears were tinged with heat, cheeks filling with colour.

He retracted his hand.

“Wrap some of those up, Georgie. Ghostie needs her bed.”

“It shall be done, brother mine!”

You smiled despite yourself.

For your birthday, the twins had gifted you a simple necklace. The chain was silver, reaching to just below your collar bone. It had no charm or jewel. It was perfect.

It helped you sometimes when you felt out of it to run it between two fingers or tug it gently from left to right, feeling the chain links rolling behind your neck.

You’d tried that, among every other coping mechanism drilled into your head by George and Fred over the past few weeks. You drew circles were you wanted to scratch, put plasters over fingertips you wanted to pick at. You took big breaths and did the stretches George insisted on. You even tried getting a full night’s sleep - nothing worked.

It filled you with guilt. You felt as though you were letting them both down by struggling.

You stared out the window of the dormitory at the sky, moonlight spilling onto your skin and staining your clothes a gauzy silver. You’d read once that sometimes when the planets were in rotation, you could see them as though they were as close as the moon.

This didn’t seem right to you. How could Mars seem so close? It was an optical illusion. The planets revolved around the sun, but humans had once thought they revolved around Earth instead.

It must’ve been a very strange experience to realise you weren’t as important as you thought. The Earth was just the Earth, spinning and wobbling its path through space.

You shook your head, feeling lost. It was ridiculous to project your feelings on the solar system. But still, you couldn’t help but feel like, despite its inhabitants and its systems, the Earth was so lonely.

Your necklace began to grow cold until it was almost like ice against your skin. One of the twins, or maybe both, had charmed it to change temperature. Cold usually meant, ‘Ghostie, you awake?’

You cringed against the sensation. Why couldn’t they booty call you like normal young men, throwing stones at your window with a boom box? Or, for merlin’s sake, an owl?

You grumbled to yourself, throwing the fleece blanket from your body. You were hardly dressed for company in knickers and a tank top, so you threw on a grey zip-up jacket and a pair of pyjama shorts that were hardly any better than the knickers. Luckily the jacket hung past the shorts. You wanted to care that you were dressed scantily, really, but the boys wouldn’t care and you didn’t have it in you to find something else.

You trekked down the stairs, your trainer socks slippery against the well-worn wood. Fred stretched languidly in front of the fireplace, a pack of exploding snap cards and a mountain of chocolate frogs beside him whilst George was sitting much more straight-backed on the sofa.

“I’m cold,” you said, announcing your arrival. The redheads turned to look at you over their shoulders. Fred rolled his eyes at you and flicked his wand. The necklace slowly heated until it was pleasantly warm against your collarbones.

You clambered over the back of the sofa with little grace, folding your knees underneath you and leaning heavily against George’s arm. He wrapped his arm around your shoulder.

“If I were a lesser man, I’d ask where your bottoms were, Y/L/N,” said Fred, shuffling the cards dexterously.

You raised your jacket wordlessly, exposing your bottoms.

“Wouldn’t you know, they were there the whole time.”

“You assumed the same as me, George.”

George didn’t reply, though his expression said he was similarly embarrassed.

“And do you always let girls you presume to be half-naked climb all over you?” you asked.

“So talkative,” George chastened.

“Don’t change the subject! I’m interested in the answer,” said Fred.

“Oh shove off! You insufferable tyrants.”

Ah, so he knows how it feels now, you thought. You looked up into his face, the line of his jaw.

You looked down at your legs, feeling fatigued. Smooth stretches of skin and fine hair interrupted only by thin white lines. The low light made them almost impossible to see. They shined like silver when you moved, caught by the light of a nearby candle. They felt a lifetime away now when a young you had used pins and quills and little carving knives to punish yourself for bad behaviour.

You traced a slightly thicker one with a pointed fingernail. You pushed it nastily into the scar, but it didn’t hurt.

You sighed.

Fred and George were half arguing about something you didn’t catch, Fred through a mouthful of chocolate.

It was hard, always being miserable. People often criticized the moody for ruining the mood, but it wasn’t as if you could choose how to be. You wanted to wake each day and be happy and entertaining and absurdly good-natured, like the twins. It was an abject cruelty, then, that every day you woke up and felt the immeasurable dread of continuing on another day. Not even magic could help you with that.

You rejected Fred’s offer to play, happy to sit and watch the boys play. You let yourself slide into the space George had vacated, curling into a tight ball. Your stomach hurt.

Godric, there was always something fucking wrong with you.

You were frustrated. The boys could tell. Their game of snap was stretched thin, and you knew it was your fault. You wrinkled your nose at the smell of singed hair, restless. You squirmed against the warm leather under your skin, feeling sticky and out of sorts.

You closed your eyes against the aching and slept.

You woke up crying.

Fred shifted in his sleep. He was leaning against your legs, his hair and face smushed into the leather beneath you. George was facedown in the carpet. You pressed a hand to your mouth to muffle any sound.

The clock on the wall read 4 minutes past 4 o’clock in the morning. You’d only managed an hour and a half of sleep.

You couldn’t remember what you’d been dreaming. Maybe somewhere familiar. Faces you recognized. It didn’t matter, only the feeling of being crushed by the air. You reached out without thinking, grabbing Fred’s shoulder.

He roused gracelessly, blinking through squinted eyes at you. A hard sob rocked you to the core, the feeling of breathlessness sinking deep into your chest.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurting?”

You couldn’t answer. You grasped for his arm, begging him to do something, to save you. You felt as though you were going to run out of air.

“Hey, you’re alright. You’re okay. Let’s breathe, should we? Breathe with me.” He grabbed the hand you’d pushed over your mouth and brought it to his chest. You could feel him take a huge inhale and you tried your best to replicate it.

“Good! That’s good. You’re doing so well.” Another big breath, a long exhale.

“You feel that? The leather under you.” He grabbed your free hand and put it on the seat. “Feels weird, huh? Dimples and wrinkles.” He dragged your hand over the texture repeatedly.

A big breath.

Eventually, your breathing returned. The crying stayed.

“Don’t cry, ghost.”

You frowned. It was odd to be looking down at Fred instead of up. He pressed your hand tighter to his chest.

“Bad dream?”

“Don’t remember,” you whispered.

“It was just a dream. You’re okay. I promise.”

George snored. Fred rolled his eyes. You laughed through the tears, blinking the last of them away.

“Go back to sleep. I’ll be here.”

You knew he was telling the truth.

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

Text

Partner

Ethan Winters (Resident Evil Biohazard) x Reader (Gender Neutral)

Warnings: Spoilers for Resident Evil 8:Village, Swearing, Mentions of injury

Genre: Angsty Fluff, Comfort

Summary: Following the final battle in the Dimitrescu Castle, Ethan is surprised to stumble upon a person who witnessed the whole debacle, offering him a safe place to patch up his wounds and rest for a little while.

Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Thank you so much for your request! So sorry you’ve had to wait so long but here it finally is! Hope you come across it and enjoy reading it! Love, Vy ❤

“That was...something else.“ Ethan Winters mutters to himself as he limps his way out of the Dimitrescu Castle which is now vacant in terms of residence - his doing. He killed Alcina Dimitrescu and her daughters, all arguably in self defense and with little guilt to follow. However, plenty of trauma’s definitely attached to him following the horrific events he had to go through and the things he had to see between the walls of those luxurious rooms hiding dark secrets of the vampires who took pleasure in torturing people, and wreaking havoc over the villagers who feared them.

“At least they won’t hurt anyone any longer.“ He tells himself, giving the monster of a structure one final look before he continues back towards the center of the village where he’s gonna rethink what he’s got to do next, gather his bearings, take a breath and keep going. He has no other option but to keep going, he won’t allow himself to quit no matter what danger he faces. In his mind, he’s convinced himself that he’s already seen the worst, it’s easier on him that way, it suppresses the fear he’d feel otherwise. The last thing he wants is to think what’s in store for him ahead, he’d rather focus on what’s up to him to do next.

“And we can’t thank you enough.“

The sudden presence of an unfamiliar voice startles him, causing him to whip out his gun and point it in the direction it came from. However, he quickly finds his deadly tight grip loosening ever so slightly because he realizes he’s pointing the barrel at a very human-looking and seemingly harmless person.

“Who are you? Who’s ‘we’?“ Ethan still refuses to let his guard down though, just cause it may not be a life or death situation, doesn’t mean this person won’t bring him trouble and Lord knows that’s the last thing he needs right now.

On instinct, the person takes a step back, “I speak on the behalf of all the remaining villagers. I mean, it was only a matter of time before we too became victims in the Dimitrescu Castle basement. I was next, actually, but the commotion you created allowed for me to escape. I owe you my life, foreigner.“ The speak hurriedly and in a hushed tone, as if the fear of their torturers overhearing them still lives within them despite the monsters being deceased.

“Glad I could help you.“ He nods curtly, remaining at the distance of seven feet between them, “My name’s Ethan Winters by the way.“

They give him the tiniest of smiles, “Y/N L/N, pleased to meet you.” Their gaze gives him a quick onceover, assessing the damage the horrors of the castle have inflicted on him. Their eyes widen in shock at the many bleeding wounds all over his body but what appears to rattle them most is the severe injury that’s causing his limp as well as the missing finger - a poorly wrapped would that has surprisingly not started getting infected yet. “Look, I know you don’t trust me, but I don’t trust you to take care of yourself either. I live in that windmill over there in the outskirts, come with me, I’ll help you with...well, with all that. You seem rather hopeless at medical care.”

While he could refuse their offer, he wouldn’t be able to deny the fact that they’re right - he knows the basics of first aid, but his injuries are far too gone for simple first aid, especially when taken into account that he doesn’t even have any supplies. How he’s not died from blood loss is a surprise to him as much as it is to them.

“What’s my guarantee you won’t turn on me?“ He finally asks after a decent amount of time contemplating it.

They shrug, “You have none. But, you have the guarantee that if I turn on you, you’ll be the one coming out of that altercation alive.” Their gaze sizes up the guns he’s got on him, emphasizing their point.

Suddenly, Ethan feels sorta ridiculous - after all, guns or no guns, he could probably take on them easily with just his knife. Regardless, no one can blame him for being cautious. “Fine.“ He mutters, “But please don’t turn on me, I’ve already had one hell of a day.“

Y/N nods, motioning for him to follow them, “I promise I won’t.”

* * *

“Wow, what a back-stabber! Some friends you have, Winters.“ Y/N comments as they set down a cup of tea on the small wooden table in front of the freshly patched up Ethan.

Turns out, he made the right move by trusting them - they used to be the village’s main nurse until it all went to hell and they went to hide in the shadows of their windmill where they, as evidenced, still are today. That being said, not only did they have all the necessary equipment to fix him up, but they also had the skills and knowledge needed to use that equipment.

“There are those friends who borrow money from you and never pay you back and there are those who shoot your wife randomly while you two are trying to have dinner. Two types of friends out there really.“ He sighs, his tired, a thousand yard stare following the path of the steam levitating from the cup that’s been placed in front of him. “I have no time to dwell on that right now though. My daughter is in grave danger and I have no idea where I should even start looking for her.“

Y/N sits down on a chair opposite his, “Well, you’ve already defeated one of the village Lords looking for Rose, process of elimination should reveal where she is - wherever she is, it has to be one of the Lords’ residence. Mother Miranda trusted Lady Dimitrescu most so it’s a wonder why she wasn’t there, but then again, Heisenberg’s factory is damn near impenetrable, one cannot enter unless he wants them to so she could have entrusted her precious cargo to him.”

“How do I get to that fucker?“ Ethan tightens his hand into a fist, squeezing so tightly his knuckles turn white. There’s so much within him, so much that’s happened to him, so much in such a short amount of time and he’s had no time to deal with any of it. He’s a volcano waiting to erupt, but he has to do so at the right time - in front of the right danger to show he’s not hopeless or weak as his opponent may think. “Where do I find him?“

“He’s in the outskirts too just on the other side of the village.“ They sigh, regretting every word they are saying since they know they are just feeding him information on how to get himself in the worst kind of danger he’s probably ever been in. “That key you have, it’s not complete to access his quarters yet. By the looks of it...“ they observe the key Ethan has placed on the table, “You can only get to Lord Donna Beneviento’s estate, and I wouldn’t suggest heading there before you heal at least a bit more. Her and her dolls are a real nightmare. Of course, I haven’t experienced it for myself, but the stories are enough to get an idea.“

“So you’re telling me I have to waste my time with the little fish before I can finally get to Rose? You know how long that’ll take? You know how long she’ll have to be at the mercy of a fucking lunatic until I can finally save her?!“ Ethan snaps, banging his fist against the table, bad idea considering his hand’s been just patched up. The impact sends a jolt of pain up his arm that makes him hiss.

“I get it, I understand, Ethan. But you are a lot less likely to get to your daughter if you’re dead, you know.“ Y/N cautiously explains, their eyes narrowing a bit as they wait for the pearl white bandages to soak crimson, sighing in relief when they don’t. “Speaking of how likely you may or may not be to get to her on time, I’d also have to mention your odds would be significantly higher if you were to receive help from someone else. You’d need someone to have your back throughout all the shit you’re about to go through, especially Heisenberg’s factory where two eyes are not enough to track each and every threat that might pounce at you.“

Calmer now, Ethan gives them a puzzled look, “What are you suggesting?“

“I’m suggesting - well, I’m offering you my partnership.“ They explain, watching his expression change to one of knowing and understanding. “Of course, you’d have to give up one of those guns and hand it down to me, but I think that’s a small price to pay in exchange for an extra pair of eyes and limbs to guard and help you.“

Ethan’s first instinct is to decline. He can’t afford to see another person dying around him or because of him, he wouldn’t be able to stand it. But then again, just like he had no guarantee they wouldn’t turn on him, he has none that they’ll die. Of course, he’ll do everything in his power to keep them and himself alive and they don’t seem like they are in it to half-ass it either. Quite the contrary, they seem perfectly determined and ready to face the same shit he’s about to.

“What do you get in return?“ He asks, his gaze suspiciously measuring each line on their face to gauge their true intentions. He’s a complete stranger to them, they’d have no reason to be this selfless for him, it’s obvious they are aiming at something bigger.

Y/N scoffs, leaning back in their chair with a small bitter smile on their face, their gaze resting on the tabletop and avoiding his, “You really wanna know? I want my revenge - revenge for what they did to this village, to me, to so many people I cared about and to those I didn’t even know. But...” they trail off, pausing to sigh out a heavy sigh before continuing, “But I also wanna redeem myself. I knew I should’ve done all in my power to stop them when their havoc was still on the rise, I knew I should’ve done more, but I didn’t. And now I’ll die trying.”

“You won’t die.“ He says sharply, barely a second after the last word left their lips, “I won’t allow it.“ He adds, taking a bit of the edge off his voice.

Their eyes come up to meet his, searching for what he means, “Does that mean...“

“It sure does, partner.“ Within the blink of an eye, his pistol is on the table, fully loaded and free for their taking, “You just give a green light and we’re off.“

Y/N lets out a sound between a laugh and a gasp as their hands quickly wrap around the gun, looking at it in disbelief before whispering a quick ‘thank you’. Ethan allows them to marvel at it for a bit longer but they don’t wait another second. “Get your ass up, Winters. We have monsters to kill.”

He needn’t be told twice

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ocpdzim · 2 years

Note

Hey buddy, we understand that things can get confusing with so many differing opinions, but roleplay accounts are much more popular nowadays, and there are many people willing to help with any possible harassment you'd get.

Claiming endogenous origins can at first seem to help against hidden trauma, as coping with that knowledge can be very scary, but we promise that there are ways to help you with it so that you don't have to feel alone.

However trying to claim genuine endogenous origins can be very harmful as by definition, it's not possible. Systems have been trying to fight against stigmatized ideas ever since science uncovered them, and claiming that just anyone can "be" an endogenic system is incredibly offensive as, just like you, we've gone through genuine horrors that forced us to this point just to survive.

I’m going to do my best to respond to this politely, but fair warning, if I get another ask like this I am not likely to be this polite again.

First of all, it is extremely insulting for you to start this out with ~I know things can be confusing.~ I am not confused, and perhaps if you think everyone who disagrees with you must simply be confused, you aren’t cut out for this sort of discussion.

I didn’t go into this in detail in the post because frankly it was besides the point - my personal experience with these things is not the reason we should be treating others with respect and dignity - but when I was first engaging with the system community I had repressed trauma I was not aware of. Over the years, I have figured it out and come to terms with it and am generally doing fine now, but at the time, when I wasn’t aware of the trauma, it was still pretty obvious that I had a system and it was people like you who made me feel unwelcome in my own community, further worsened my already disastrously bad mental health, and further discouraged me from seeking any kind of help (although, in all fairness on that last point, my past experience with psychiatry was already plenty discouraging on its own). Although I never declared endogenous origin, behavior like yours caused me to feel unsafe and constantly on edge that some asshole might come into my inbox and interrogate me about whether I had enough trauma to justify my own existence. I highly doubt my experience there is unique. Now, here you are with your incredibly condescending ask that can only really be addressed by either ignoring it, telling you to fuck off, or providing personal background that not everyone is as comfortable with sharing as I am. It’s baffling to me that anyone familiar with the online climate surrounding this discussion couldn’t recognize this as a harmful and invasive pattern.

Endogenous systems, on the other hand, have never once made me feel unwelcome or hurt or invalidated. On the contrary, they’ve provided friendship, support, and spearheaded efforts to get accommodations and understanding for systems in groups I’ve been in. I’ve also seen how behavior like yours has hurt friends of mine who are endogenous systems, and to put it bluntly, if they’d been faking then there is no way they wouldn’t have abandoned the grift by now due to the sheer quantity of cruelty they’ve experienced about it and the complete lack of any personal gain. Is it any wonder that I’d rather throw my lot in with them than with the psychiatric system that caused me so much pain and trauma or with a group of bizarrely self-important people online who believe they are entitled to know and be arbiter of other people’s mental health, with no concern for the damage done?

Your experience is not universal and neither is mine. I’m sorry that you experienced trauma, I know firsthand how bad that sucks. However, other systems existing without having experienced trauma - or having experienced trauma but not considering that the source of their system’s existence - is not your business, does not meaningfully affect you, and does not stigmatize us. If anything, it helps destigmatize systems, although there’s still a long way to go on that.

Finally, I would not trust the psychiatric establishment as an authority on what is or isn’t possible. It’s worth noting that even if you DO want to place your complete faith in the bloodstained system that has in the past considered homosexuality a disease and autistic people subhuman, the system which to this day is so rife with abuse that there is a psychiatry survivors movement, it’s easy to google the subject and discover that when speaking about trauma causing systems to form, psychiatric sources tend to use language like “usually” and “almost always” instead of “exclusively,” but frankly I place people’s direct accounts of their own experience far above anything the psychiatric establishment has to say on the matter anyway.

If you can bring me a concrete, real example of how endogenous systems supposedly cause harm to the community - as in, not “It makes me feel invalidated to see systems that are different from me” or “I met an endogenous system who was an asshole once” or “They’re in the way of my respectability politics” or “I just don’t think they exist and somehow that’s my business” or “I’ve never actually seen it happen but here’s a harm I think is maybe possible in theory,” we may continue this discussion. However, I will not be holding my breath for that, because in 7 years I have never once seen any argument against endogenous systems aside from those. Begone from my inbox until and unless you have something actually insightful to say.

#posting from mobile #swearing -#ableism -#medical abuse mention -#homophobia mention -#i know you syscourse types don’t like being called sysmeds but like.#if you’d like people to stop calling you sysmeds you ought to get some arguments that aren’t just transmed bs with a few words swapped out #jfc.#maybe examine why the existence of systems who’ve suffered less than you makes you so uncomfortable #also none of this is even going into how common it is for developmentally disabled people to face trauma that is never recognized as such #either by professionals or themselves #there’s studies out there about autistic trauma that show its common for autistic people to be traumatized by things like loud noise #but it is NOT easy to get a diagnosis of trauma if your trauma was caused by the school fire drill being too loud #and culturally it’s very hard to personally recognize that as trauma #if you want to play trauma police developmentally disabled people will be disproportionately impacted #that ALONE ought to be reason enough to knock it off

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asmo-ds · 4 years

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I've seen alot of headcanons about Simeon turning into a demon, but how would everyone react if Luke managed to turn himself into a demon 🤔 Like maybe he didn't amount up to Celestial Standards (I headcanon the Celestial realm is kinda weird due to the events of the anelic event) and then he made some type of minor violation and they kicked him out of heaven to avoid the possibility of him growing up to be undesirable in the Celestial Realm

When a Child Falls

Luke-centric ANGST & FLUFF

Warnings: Pain, falling from heaven, Luke hurting :(

Summary: After failing to live up to the standards of his superiors Luke is kicked out of the Celestial Realm and becomes a demon. Luckily for him the exchange program had given him so many new and old friends who wanted nothing but to help the poor child despite any bitter past they may have had with him

a/n: i was gonna do headcanons but then i was like what if i make a whole one shot about him falling and everyone helping him adjust to his new life and uh yea <3

Also this didn’t come out as angsty as I wanted it to but demon brothers comforting a fallen Luke >>>>>>>

He tugged on his own arm, begging for the elder angel to release him and give him a second chance, his once hopeful blue eyes filled with tears and terror.

“Stop, I swear I just need more time, PLEASE!” Luke cried, punching the elder’s arm and attempting to pry his wrinkly hands from Luke’s small forearm. The elder yanked Luke’s arm harder, resulting in a distressed cry from the short blond.

Luke tried to steady his breathing as they approached the boundaries of the Celestial realm, where he was to be pushed off for his failure to earn his wings in a timely manner. The Celestial realm saw him as useless and decided they would be better off discarding a weak angel like himself.

“LET HIM GO, PLEASE! DON’T DO THIS!” Luke could hear Simeon’s breaking voice screaming at the elders who held him back from Luke to prevent any interference, “JUST LET ME SAY GOODBYE PLEASE,” he begged to which the elder finally agreed and the two embraced tightly. “Luke you listen to me, you get to the Devildom you go STRAIGHT to Lucifer, he helped his brothers and himself through his fall he can help you, please, trust him with at least getting you through the transition then you can hate them again or whatever you want, pl-”

“I get it, Simeon, I promise I won’t let you down,” Luke interrupted, tears falling from his eyes onto Simeon’s broad shoulders.

“Times up. Luke come to the edge, stand here,” an elder guides him into position.

Luke’s hearing starts ringing as his adrenaline kicks in, the fear of death and disappearing from existing overwhelming him. His breathing grew fast, and before he knew it, he felt a push and wind pounding against his skin as he fell, and fell, and fell, until he saw the Devildom soil and he tensed, preparing for the worst.

Instead of hitting the ground he hears a fwoosh and finds himself caught in strong arms.

“Luke! What happened, where is Simeon? A young angel like you shouldn’t be down here all al-” Lucifer starts questioning the angel, concerned to see the small boy falling from so high. He was interrupted by a cry of agony, Luke pushed away from Lucifer, doubling over and screaming as the pain began to set in.

Lucifer recognized the transition immediately and how badly it hurt his brothers, so he gently approached the young boy, who glared at him with teary pained eyes, and he murmured a spell, before darkness washed over Luke.

His innocent blue eyes fluttered open, not recognizing his surroundings, he sat up quickly, wincing and hissing as his back was suddenly filled with unbearable pain.

Oh that’s right, I fell. They pushed me and now…His eyes snap open, remembering the feeling of falling, but nothing that happened afterward.

“I have… to find… Lucifer..” Luke spoke to himself, taking short breaks between every few words to take a painful breath, feeling his ribcage expand and contract as his wheezing continued.

“I’ve already found you, Luke, you’re in one of the bedrooms of the Demon Lord’s Castle. Please lay back and take off your shirt, your back is bound to be in a lot of pain, this serum will help.” The blond flinches as Lucifer rises from a chair next to the bed where he laid.

Luke raises his arms and let Lucifer take off the shirt before laying on his stomach.

He hears Lucifer’s breath catch in his throat as he stares in horror at Luke’s back, where wings were starting to form, dark and mangled with feathers tangled and in need of a cleaning.

So like that, Lucifer kept Luke safe and took care of him whilst the other brothers prepared a room at the House of Lamentation for him to stay.

“Luke, I’ve brought you some tea and cake,” Barbatos walks into the bedroom carrying some snacks and drinks for the injured boy.

“Thank you Barbatos, I missed your cooking,” Luke smiles slightly before taking a big bite of cake and groaning. “Like, I really missed it-”

“Yes, Barbatos makes splendid food, which is why I keep him around!” Diavolo winks, nudging Barbatos with his elbow a bit.

“Actually sir, you only keep me around because no other demon has been able to keep up with your antics-”

“ANYWAY, Luke your wings look like they’re growing in nicely, and so do your horns,” Diavolo walks over to examine Luke’s new form. “You’ll probably be in a lot of pain for at least a few more days, but if you want to get situated into your new home we can let you go and just check in on you everyday.”

“Uh… I don’t want to intrude at the House of Lamentation, if it’s going to be any sort of burden to them-”

“Nonsense, my brothers and I are glad to take care of you and take you in, you experienced the same fate as us, albeit for different reasons, but still, we know your pain and we want to guide you so please, Luke, let us help you,” Lucifer places a reassuring hand on Luke’s shoulder as he says this.

“...Okay, BUT no calling me a chihuahua- GOT IT?!” Luke pokes Lucifer’s chest aggressively and earns a hearty chuckle from him.

“I agree not to call you a dog anymore,” Lucifer laughs out, “though I cannot speak for my brothers.”

“I can’t believe the chihuahua of all people got kicked out…” Mammon says, still in shock that the angel who had been so determined to make people smile just a year before during the exchange program had somehow managed to get himself thrown out of heaven.

“I remember when I almost didn’t earn my wings in time,” Asmodeus shudders at the memories of being threatened with exile and constantly pushing himself way too hard, “I got so many wrinkles from the stress.”

“Luke makes good food, I’m glad he’s staying with us.” Beel’s mouth was watering as he and Mammon moved a dresser, finally finishing getting Luke’s new room in order.

“Oi, try to be sympathetic when he gets here Beel. He may be a little annoying kid but he’s going through what we went through,” Mammon scolded his younger brother, an uncomfortable silence taking over the room as each and every one of them remembers the pain they were in as their bodies morphed into those of demons.

“God is such an asshole…” Belphegor mutters, getting extremely angry the more he thinks about it.

Luke had done nothing wrong, Lilith had done nothing wrong, so why? Why would he keep getting rid of the most determined of his angels over such insignificant things?

Suddenly all their phones go off with a text from Lucifer saying he and the boy would be arriving soon. They all gathered in the entrance hall, waiting for Luke to arrive. The front door creaked open, all of the brothers standing up straighter and nervous as Lucifer stepped through the entrance with Luke just behind him.

The brothers all gasped quietly in shock at the state of Luke. He was pale and thin and the look of complete and utter despair in his formerly innocent eyes filling the room with a depressing atmosphere.

“H-hey there Fido- I mean- Luke, how’re you feeling?” Mammon tries to start up a welcoming conversation, getting a nasty look from Lucifer, who Luke was clinging to for dear life.

“Luke! As soon as you’re feeling able to, what do you say we bake something together?” Beel smiles sweetly, most of them getting nothing but nervous looks from Luke in response to their questions.

“I’m just going to help him get settled in. Satan you’re in charge of everything else around the house while I take care of Luke and my own paperwork.” Lucifer guides Luke up the stairs.

Satan rolls his eyes but mutters a small “fine,” before the two head upstairs to the attic, where they’d set up the room to look just like the dorm he stayed in at Purgatory Hall.

“Oh wow, it feels like I’m back in the exchange program,” Luke chuckles a little, clearly faking any sort of joy.

“Luke,” Lucifer kneels down, “you are one of my brothers now, you have nothing to fear, and Simeon will be able to visit at some point-” His attempt to ease Luke’s worries is interrupted by a loud sob.

“Don’t you get it?! Michael and Simeon will never look at me the same, ever again!” Luke wails, using his sleeves to wipe the tears that streamed down his face. “All I ever wanted was to impress them! To impress God and make humans happy and protect them! But now my natural instinct to hurt humans ruins any chance of me becoming the person I’d always thought I’d be!” Luke falls to his knees, sobbing and wheezing, his vision becoming blurry as a panic attack hits him like a truck. He can barely hear anything except for Lucifer calling out a name, and all he could make out was that it wasn’t his own name. A dark figure walks into the room and Luke hears muffled voices for a minute before he is suddenly extremely calm, his eyelids growing a bit heavy and he feels exhausted.

He then realizes someone was holding him and murmuring some sort of spell, causing him to panic once more, but this time he was perfectly aware and just jumped up ready to fight.

“Hey you dirty demon! Don’t use your dark magic on me or else I’ll-”

“Pfft hahaha,” Belphegor laughs hard, tears threatening to spill from his eyes, “you still look like a chihuahua when you get annoyed!” Belphie teases and Luke blushes, before running at Belphie and tackling him, leading to a wrestling match on the floor as Lucifer stands by and watches the two of them closely, to ensure nobody got hurt under his watch.

Dinner was the worst, to be honest. Luke had asked Lucifer if he could cook to say thanks for taking him in, but now he sat awkwardly and all of the brothers remained quiet, watching his every move and watching him like he was an injured little puppy.

“I-is the food not good?” Luke questions looking around nervously.

“AH- no its great Fido- LUKE, ah jeez I’m getting a headache this is so hard to adjust to,” Mammon slams his head on the table, earning a glare from Asmo and Satan who he sat between.

“Anyways, I know you’ve been to the Devildom before and don’t really need a tour BUT you’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, there are so many more places to go!” Asmo smiles widely at Luke, “So let’s go together soon, okay?”

“Okay!”

“Ooooh Luke, you have to tell me what Celestial Realm video games are like, GAH I wish we had waited to start a war until after the invention of video games. Anyway I got a new one so I can show you a Devildom game and-”

“Shut yer trap Levi,” Mammon leans over the table to attempt to cover Levi’s mouth.

“But let the GREAT Mammon show ya all the best spots in town~”

“NO-no do not take the child Gambling, Mammon,” Asmo smacks him.

“Asmo for all we know you’re gonna scar him and take him to a strip club,” Belphegor smirks, knowing he just started a war.

“I WOULD NEVER, COME HERE YOU BRAT,” both of them in demon forms chasing each other around the house and screaming.

Suddenly everyone hears a child’s laughter and looks at the blond who had barely even smiled since arriving.

“We can try to do everything you guys want to show me,” Luke smiles. Everyone lets out a sigh of relief seeing that Luke was feeling more comfortable around them. “Um, question though… how do I go in and out of my… demon form?”

“HAH that’s easy, just relax and let the GREAT Mammon teach ya!”

“Mammon, not yet. Luke, I will teach you, but we need to wait a bit longer or else the pain of transforming will be unbearable for you,” Lucifer looked down at the disappointed boy.

“Oh, ok.”

“Don’t look so gloomy Fid-LUKE JEEZ LOUISE- there's a lot the GREAT Mammon can teach ya in the mean time!” Mammon stands up with a cocky smile, hands on his hips. “Think of me as ya new master and you are my apprentice!”

“NO do not think of him like that he will make you do his dirty work,” Satan says, hitting Mammon in the stomach.

“Thank you,” Luke looks at Lucifer, “thank you for taking me in, I-I know we don’t have the best past and I was super rude towards demons during the exchange program but-but I’m trying to change for you guys! Thank you!” Luke bows his head, tears falling down his cheeks. The knowledge that he can never go back to the way he was bringing on more tears, but they didn’t mind. They’d been through the same process. So silently they all comforted him and welcomed him into their home with open arms.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me luke #obey me angst #obey me angst hc #obey me angels #om luke #om! swd #om! luke #obey me angst oneshot #obey me fluff #obey me fluff hc #obey me one master to rule them all #obey me oneshot #obey me imagines #sad obey me imagines #obey me imagine

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typical-simplelove · 3 years

Text

Since We Were Three (J. Oleksiak)

Summary: What happens when you go work for the Dallas Stars and your childhood enemy plays for them, too?

A/n: Here is a fun enemies to lovers I wrote. This is the first time I've ever written for that trope, but I want to write more so buckle up! Enjoy this!!

Warnings: people doing things enemies do (sorry, that's really vague), mentions of sex, breaking/spraining ankles

Word Count: 12.1k

You didn’t expect to move to Dallas; it wasn’t even on your radar. All you really remember is sitting at your parents' house back home and you got an email from your Linkedin saying that there was a position open for something you were qualified for. You didn’t even bother to look at where it was; you opened the application, read the prerequisites, and filled it out. You were desperate to get a job, so it didn’t matter. Only after you emailed your application did you realize where it was - Dallas. It didn’t even register in your mind at the time that your former neighbor and lifelong enemy lives in Dallas or plays for the Dallas Stars, the organization you just sent an application for. They were looking for someone to work in their marketing department. If you knew that your former neighbor and lifetime enemy was working for the Dallas Stars, then you’d probably not have submitted the application. You decided, however, that the pros greatly outweighed the cons, and you doubted that you’d ever need to interact with the players unless they had a marketing issue. You doubt they would, right?

You got an email three days later asking for an interview. You emailed them back saying that you lived in Canada and weren’t sure if you could make it down for an interview. Thankfully, they said that they’d be willing to have a virtual interview; however, you’d have to be willing to move to Dallas for the job. You knew for a fact that you’d be more than willing to move to Dallas. That wasn’t the problem. So, you and the Dallas Stars’ representative set a time for your virtual meeting. You had the interview, and it seemed like they liked you. You got an email three days later that you got the job; you moved to Dallas three days after that and started four days later.

You completely forgot about the fact that your enemy slash former neighbor was in Dallas until your mother brought it up.

“Hey, yn, you know, you don’t not know anyone in Dallas.” You were confused. You literally moved to a country in which you knew no one.

“Mom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Jamie, remember him? Jamie Oleksiak. You hated him growing up. Well, remember, he plays for the Dallas Stars. You should contact him.”

The normal warmth in your face immediately drained. Yeah, now you remember. The only reason you had the slightest inkling as to what Jamie was up to was because your mother and his mother were good friends. You don’t care for him at all.

You knew that you couldn’t just outright and tell your mother “no”, so you pivoted. “Maybe,” you said and your mother seemed to think that meant that you’d be reaching out to Jamie. You weren’t. You were going to do everything in your power to try to avoid him. There was no way that someone who worked in marketing would ever come in contact with any of the players, right? You didn’t work in media that was in constant contact with the team, and you didn’t work in anything to do with the contracts or paychecks. As long as you keep a quiet profile, you expect you should be fine, right?

This worked for your first season working with Stars. You were new and a few years out of college, so your more experienced colleagues made sure to observe what you were doing. You were happy with this. Before working in Dallas, you only worked for one small company and you were one of two people in the marketing department. The reason you were looking for a new job was that this company went bankrupt. Yeah, you were grateful for the oversight you received. You made it one year without seeing, hearing, talking to, or being around Jamie. The fact that the two of you were in the same city made your blood boil. You hated Jamie Oleksiak with your entire being, and you hoped to avoid him as much as possible.

You went into the second season thinking that you’d have the ability to remain anonymous to the team and stay in your lane. This, unfortunately, did not work. You went to work on the morning that training camp started. You sat at your desk and noticed that everyone was quite angsty. You turned to a friend and asked what was going on. She told you that someone from management was coming to find people to work for the GM, specifically, someone in marketing. You knew that you’d be the last one selected considering your lack of experience. You were wrong.

The minute the representative from the GM’s offices walked in and saw your application, you were swept up and taken to their offices. Happy with the new promotion, you didn’t realize that you’d be closer to Jamie.

The notion hit you nine days after you were promoted when Tyler Seguin walked into the office and walked over to you.

“Yn, right?” he says and you nod. “We need someone to fill in with media personnel and they asked for you.”

“Oh!” you say; you had experience in media but not that much to get a recommendation.

“Yeah, they said to be there at 1:30pm.”

“Thanks,” you tell Tyler; he smiles at you and waves.

So you were going to be getting closer to the team than you thought.

. . .

As you walked down the hall towards the locker room, you ran right into the wall. Except it wasn’t a wall.

“Oh, you’re not a wall,” you say mostly to yourself. It was a very hard and firm person.

“So, you’re telling me you would have walked into me also if I were a wall?” You look up and see none other than Jamie Oleksiak looking back at you.

His beautiful eyes made you want to throw up. There was no word to express how much you hated him. Literally just staring at him for a second made you want to run away and scream.

“I, no, I just thought I had more time before I had to turn the corner.”

“Sure,” he says in a voice that makes you want to punch him; however, looking at him, you know it wouldn’t hurt at all and do the damage you wanted. Since when did he get so big? “Hey, Yn. I heard you started working for the Stars organization. Welcome to Dallas.”

“Yeah, no, you’re not my welcome party. And I’ve been in Dallas for almost a year.” You immediately back up but trip over your feet. Jamie instantly reaches out and helps you balance. You feel your face suddenly grow warm. Why did Jamie’s enormously large hands have this effect on you?

“You always were quite clumsy growing up. Tripping and falling for me, I mean in front of me.” Jamie’s joke didn’t go past you. It infuriated you. He liked to think that you were in love with him. You weren’t.

“You know, the only reason I kept on falling was because you kept tripping me. It’s your fault.” You storm away angrily and head to where you need to be.

Jamie smiles after you. “That’s the feistiness that I remember.”

You turn around and glare at him. Yeah, this wasn’t going to be fun.

. . .

You’ve hated Jamie Oleksiak since he tripped you in daycare when you were three years old. The first three years of your life, you didn’t mind Jamie. Your mothers were best friends, and you were both neighbors. Your parents were both ER surgeons and sometimes they had to go in for emergency surgery. This was one of those days. Your father was already working and your mother was called in for emergency surgery, so Jamie’s mother was going to pick you up from preschool. You put on your small, sparkly light purple backpack and followed Jamie and his mother out the door. The minute you were about to cross the parking lot, Jamie stuck his foot out and you tripped and fell on your face. You didn’t immediately feel the pain until Jamie’s mother helped you up and mentioned that your face was bleeding. You touched your face and began to cry. Jamie tripped you purposefully and now your face was bleeding. From that day forward, you hated Jamie Oleksiak with your entire being. How could someone who was supposed to be your friend and care for you purposefully hurt you? Where was the logic in that? Why could Jamie purposefully hurt you unless he didn’t like you? He must hate you to want to hurt you.

It wasn’t just because he tripped you; Jamie began to make your life miserable. From taunting you on the playground to tripping you all the time. It continued into kindergarten and elementary school. Middle school was terrible. He taunted you and made fun of you. He always found ways to make anything you were enthusiastic about a reason to taunt you. He joined clubs because you were in them and so he could bring his stupid with him who would the experience unenjoyable for you. You remember your parents telling you to ignore him and Jamie probably had a crush on you. He didn’t. He just out of nowhere opted to make your life miserable.

It only got worse in high school. As his popularity grew in high school as a result of hockey, he only became more cocky and unbearable. He always found a way to make you miserable. Whenever you had any remote crush or boyfriend, Jamie always swept in and ruined it for you. By the time you graduated and went to college, you were ready to leave the horrors that Jamie brought on to you. You were quite proud of the fact that despite your mothers being friends, you had no idea about anything to do with Jamie’s life. You went to college and built a life that was the exact opposite of the misery that Jamie brought into your life.

. . .

You walk into the locker room and Carrie, one of the other media execs, greets you. “Yn, right?”

You nod. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“We need you to fill in for a few weeks with our media team because one of the media personnel had to leave for a family emergency. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure how good I’ll be at it, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

Carrie laughs. “It’s not too hard. You just have to take photos and videos of the team during warmups, practices, and stuff like that. If you know how to use Instagram, then you should be great.”

“Well, then, I think I should be good.”

“We’re going to give you a separate phone to use that you can just keep at your desk in the GM’s offices.”

“Perfect, that sounds great.” You and Carrie continue to talk and work out the little details about your new temporary position. You walked back to your desk in the GM’s offices with a smile on your face. You were happy to have this new position. At first, I didn’t recall to you that you’d have to be in contact with the team. When you heard Jamie’s voice echoing through the halls, your blood began to boil. You definitely weren’t looking forward to having to have to work with him.

. . .

The day after you got the word that you were filling in with the Media Department, you started right away. You were told to sit in the practice arena ready to take photos and videos of the team. As the practice was ending, Carrie asked you to head to the locker room and take one-minute interviews with the players. She gave you the list of players: Tyler Seguin, John Klingberg, Esa Lindell, Roope Hintz, and, much to your disappointment, Jamie Oleksiak. You sighed. You really didn’t want to have to talk to him, but you were going to be professional and try not to let him get to you.

You walk towards the locker room and Carrie tells you to wait a moment; the players aren’t ready. After fifteen minutes of small talk, you and Carrie walk into the locker room. The players that you and Carrie were going to interview were sitting on the bench waiting. You glance around the room and Jamie is looking at you with a curious eye.

“This is yn; she’s filling in for a few weeks as media personnel whilst Tristain is out with a family emergency,” Carrie explains. “Be nice to her please.”

Jamie meets your eye again and smirks. You roll your eyes and some of the players notice with confusion.

“Yn, why don’t you start with Tyler and I’ll start with John and we’ll work our way around?” Carrie explains.

You nod. You glance around the room and take note of who you’d be interviewing. You were going to be interviewing Jamie Oleksiak much to your disappointment. You get through the interview with Tyler, but he stops you before you can move on.

“What’s with you and Big Rig?” Tyler asks.

You smile at him trying to hide your disdain for your former friend. “Nothing, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

Tyler laughs. “If you say so.”

You move on and interview Roope next. His interview made you giggle like a maniac behind the camera, and you didn’t notice the glares that Jamie gave his teammate and you.

You finish your interview with Roope and get ready to interview Jamie.

“Hi Jamie, ready for your interview?” you ask professionally.

“Yeah, I am,” he says in a tone that you can’t quite decipher but it’s already got your blood boiling. This wasn’t going to be fun.

“So, Jamie, tell me, what’s been the best part of the start of the new season?”

He puts a smirk on his face and you know exactly what he’s thinking - you’re not going to get an answer you like. “Uh, I’ve liked that I’ve been able to rekindle our companionship.”

You roll your eyes. “That’s not what this is, and you have to give me a different answer.”

Jamie’s answer didn’t go unnoticed by his teammates and they were begging, no yearning, to ask more.

“Fine,” Jamie pauses briefly to think of another question. “I would say just being back with the team and skating with everyone again is probably the best part about the start of the new season.”

You nod and glance down at your list of questions. “What do you hope to get out of this new season?”

“Hopefully a Stanley Cup?” he says and quirks his eyebrows in a way that sends warmth to your face but also infuriates you. You nod in a sign of acknowledgment and Jamie can’t pass up the opportunity to get a rise out of you. “Maybe you, too.”

You instantly drop your notepad and glare up at him. What was his problem? Why was he like this? Jamie should know you hate him, so why does he suddenly think that you two were going to fix the hatred that’s been building for years? Your reaction doesn’t go unnoticed by everyone in the room. “Can you please stop? Just so you know, I hate you, so whatever fantasy you’re playing out in your mind? It’s not happening, Jamie. Can you please stop making it harder for me to do my job?”

Jamie smirks. He knows he should stop, but he won’t. “I always liked watching you get frustrated at me.”

“Jamie! Just cut it out!”

“Is everything okay over here?” Carrie says, trying to calm the situation.

“Yeah, we’re fine. Jamie’s just rehashing things from our childhoods.” You explain.

“Wait, you two know each other?” John asks comically.

Jamie nods. “Know is not quite it, but yes.”

“What does that mean?” John asks

“That means that Yn hates me.”

“You hate me too, Jamie; don’t just put this on me. You’ve only ever made my life more difficult throughout every part of it.”

“Yn, why don’t you interview Esa, and I’ll finish with Jamie, that good?” Carrie suggests

“Yes, that works,” you walk over to Esa and breathe out a sigh of relief. Yeah, you knew that this was exactly what was going to happen.

You finished your interview with Esa, and you and Carrie walked out of the locker room to prep the videos to be posted.

“Dude, what did you do to make her so angry at you?” Esa asks. “It seems like your mere presence pisses her off.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it does,” Jamie admits. “I can’t remember why; all I remember is that one day we started hating each other.”

“I’d hate to be in your shoes,” Tyler tells his teammate. “A pretty girl hates you, and you very obviously like her.”

Jamie pales. He didn’t think it was that obvious to anyone, ever. “What?”

Everyone laughs.

“It’s obvious,” Roope agrees. “You like her. Just the way you looked at her and acted around her. You’ve got it bad.”

“No, I don’t,” Jamie grumbles.

“Dude, you were staring at her the entire time she was interviewing Roope. All the giggling made you jealous, didn’t it?” Esa states.

“I’m not jealous, and I don’t care. There is nothing but hate between us.” Jamie tries to defend himself. It’s useless; Jamie knows for a fact that he was jealous that Roope got to be on the receiving end of your giggles.

“Whatever, this is going to be fun,” John says.

It truly will be.

. . .

When you got home from work that day, you immediately called your best friend, Lisa, to tell her all about your day with Jamie.

“You know?” you being. “He’s just as infuriating as when we were children. He had the audacity to believe that we could possibly be friends. I mean, come on, the antipathy and rancor between us can be felt for miles and miles. He drives me crazy so much.”

Lisa was glad that you weren’t doing a video call because the smile on her face was wide. Deep down, she knows that there are other feelings besides this hate between you and Jamie; she just wasn’t sure if it would ever come out. “Maybe he wants to be nice again.”

“No, that’s not what this is. If he wanted to be nice and try to be friends again, then he wouldn’t have done exactly what he knew would drive me insane. It’s probably like caffeine to him; driving me insane is the coffee that wakes him up in the morning. You know, now, probably, he wakes up and hatches a plan to try to drive me insane.”

Lisa laughs. “Aren’t you taking this a bit far?”

“Absolutely not, I think I’m acting appropriately. You didn’t see his smirk; I wanted to punch him in the face so badly. Obviously, it wouldn’t have done anything to hurt him as he’s huge now.”

“Oh? Down there too?”

Your face warms suddenly, and you’re glad Lisa can’t see your face. “That’s not what I meant. He’s giant and super muscular. I guess you could assume that he’s packing quite a bit.”

“You know, yn, maybe this is just pent-up sexual tension and frustration. Maybe you just need to get laid and get laid by someone in particular.”

“You’re telling me that when we were seven when Jamie broke my ankle, that was pent-up sexual frustration?”

Lisa laughs. “Okay, maybe not your entire relationship was pent-up sexual tension. Maybe just now and parts of high school? You have to admit, Jamie is quite hot, now, right? Maybe the past few years of hate has led to the dire need to just sleep with each other.”

“Thank you for your take, but these past few days is the first time I’ve spoken to Jamie in almost five years. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Just talk to him. Maybe tell him that you want this to be as professional as possible and try to move past the hate. Yn, before you argue, just think of what working for the Dallas Stars could do to your career. That’s a high-profile job. Maybe if you try to be professional and polite, then maybe he will too?”

You wanted to contradict everything Lisa said, but you knew she was right. For your job to go smoothly, it was important for you to keep a professional attitude and any hate you have for Jamie on the backburner. “You’re right; however, I’m not promising that it’s going to work. I’ll try my best to be professional, but if he starts to aggravate me, I’m not sure if I can keep up that facade.”

“That’s why you talk to him. Maybe set up a time to meet up or something and just discuss what you have to say.”

“That would require me to unblock him on literally everything, even Facebook.”

“Does he still even have that?”

“He does; it’s not even his real name. It’s an alias. He only made it to try to talk to me and bother me. I doubt he uses it and it may be deactivated now.”

“This is besides the point. Yn, Jamie is obviously not going to try to be professional with you, so it’s up to you to make that clear.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

The only lingering thought you had was whether or not this would work. Surely, Jamie could be a decent human being to you, right?

. . .

The next day, you went and sat in the practice arena ready to take the photos that your job required you to take. Today, you decided was going to be the day that you had that all too important conversation with Jamie. You really didn’t want to have that conversation, but you knew that it was important in having a not chaotic working environment for everyone, not just you and Jamie.

When practice was over, you waited outside the locker room for Jamie. He walked out on his own and smirked when he saw you waiting. He didn’t know for sure you were waiting for him; however, when he saw that your phone was off, he assumed you weren’t there for work.

“Hey, ynn,” Jamie says to you and your blood instantly begins to boil. Jamie knew that you never gave him the jurisdiction to call you that, yet he still used it. You wanted to call him out on it but thought better of it. You were here to try to be professional and rehashing this would contradict your objective.

“Hey, Jamie, can we talk? It’s about something important.”

Jamie’s smirk instantly left his face and worry washed over his face. You didn’t know that Jamie could be sympathetic towards anything you said. “Yeah, is everything okay?”

His response shocked you and it took you a moment to regroup. “Oh, yeah. I just want to talk about our relationship, well, lack thereof of one. I think that when we’re here at work, we should be professional. We should put any hate that we have for each other on the side while here so that we can have a better working environment.”

Jamie laughs. “This is what you wanted to talk about? This couldn’t have been a text? You had me so worried, yn.”

“It’s important to me, Jamie,” you protest. You didn’t want to get angry at him, so you calmed yourself down. “I think it’s better for both of us if we can just keep our history and past behind us while we are doing anything to do with the Dallas Stars.”

“If I were to take you out on a date, then we could hate each other as normal?”

“What?” you falter.

“You heard me, yn. You never had a hard time hearing what I had to say.”

“No, absolutely not. You will not be taking me out on a date, ever.”

“Come on, really?”

“Jamie, this is beside the point. I’m trying to move on from our pasts and you aren’t really making this any easier. Isn’t this what you said the other day? You were hoping for a rekindling? Well, this is the first part. Trying to put behind us any hate.” You were raising your voice now. “I’m trying to make my job easier, but you’re making it incredibly difficult. Jamie, all I want is to come to work and not have to worry about whether or not an outburst I make at you will cost me my job.”

Jamie doesn’t have anything to say. “Yn.”

“No, don’t do that. You know, the reason we hate each other is your fault, so you should be the one fixing things, not me.”

“What?”

“You tripped me purposefully when we were three and laughed at me.”

“Wait, this is what this is about?”

“No, that’s the first time you treated me terribly. It was the start of you belittling me and making me feel terrible. I hated going to school because I was always worried about you and your stupid antics.” Tears are forming at the corners of your eyes, and you try to will them away.

Jamie feels terrible now. “I’m sorry, ynn. I didn’t know.”

“Firstly, don’t call me ynn; you don’t get to do that. Secondly, seriously? You’re telling me that you didn’t know you were being a total ass to me? No, I don’t believe that because I know for a fact that your mother talked to you. Do you want to know how I know that? Because she apologized to me time and time again for what you did to me. Don’t you dare say that you had no idea.”

Jamie looks down at you and extends his left leg so it’s jutting out. “You’re right. I was a total ass.”

“Only took you twenty-plus years to finally admit that.”

“Come on, ynn,” Jamie says and you glare at him. “Yn, I’m trying here, and you’re not making it any easier.”

“Oh my goodness, Jamie. Literally, that’s what I’ve been trying to do! You not willing to accept my proposition is the whole reason we’re rehashing this stuff.”

“Yn, I’m sorry. What can I do?”

You look at him and are shocked to see that he has remorse in his eyes. “Nothing, just let me be.” You take a step to the right and begin to walk away. Unfortunately, because Jamie extended his leg, you tripped over it and went crashing to the floor hurting your ankle in the process. You screamed out in pain; you always had weak ankles after breaking them in elementary school. Your cry out in pain brought some people out of the locker room.

Jamie’s eyes go wide in fear. “Yn! Are you okay?”

“Does it look like I’m okay? Jamie, did you really have to trip me?”

“Really? I didn’t mean to! My leg was just there, and you tripped.”

“It doesn’t matter; let me just get up.” You put your hands flat on the ground to help yourself up. The minute your leg is stable enough to be stood up on, you get up but fall immediately. You cry out in pain again.

“You might have sprained your ankle,” Roope says. He was one of the people who rushed out of the locker room when you first fell.

“No, I don’t think so. I just have very weak ankles after Jamie broke, I mean, I broke my ankles in elementary school.” Your correction of Jamie breaking your ankles does not go unnoticed by him. He wants to ask why but feels it’s not the right moment.

“Here, let me help you,” Jamie reaches for your arms and you move them away. “Really, yn? Just let me help you.”

Jamie and Roope help you up and put you on the bench in the locker room, and Roope goes to find a trainer to check on your ankle.

“I’m sorry, yn, really,” Jamie says with a soft voice. You begin to put your foot on the ground but Jamie stops you gently. “Put it on the bench. It’s important to keep it elevated.”

“It’s cold, though,” you pout.

Jamie laughs. “Here, put it on my lap then, okay?”

You look at Jamie hesitantly.

“This isn’t a trick, yn. I think I’ve hurt you enough over the years. Just put your leg on my lap.”

You do as he says and Jamie rests his hands on top of your ankle. Your face grows warm at the touch and you suddenly don’t hate Jamie. “So, you’re finally admitting that you made me miserable?”

“I don’t think I made you miserable,” Jamie says and you scoff. “Wait, let me finish. I think I didn’t make your life any easier. I’m not relenting any more than that, babe.”

You flinch at the pet name, but your face grows warm. Do you address it?

Jamie makes the decision for you. “Yn, I have a question for you.”

You nod, signaling him to continue.

“You were saying something about how you have weak ankles and then said something about me. This isn’t me trying to be self-centered or whatever. I just genuinely want to know. I don’t remember what happened.”

“Well, we were in elementary school and you once, I’m pretty sure it was accidental, put your hand out and it hit me while I was walking down the stairs and I fell. I landed weirdly on my ankle and broke it.”

“So you blame me?”

“Yes, absolutely. Do you blame me? You had a way of hurting me and making it seem like an accident.”

Jamie laughs and you giggle along; he’s about to comment when a trainer walks in.

“Let’s see what’s the matter here,” he says. You are suddenly extremely aware that your leg is sitting on Jamie’s lap and his hands are on your lap. The trainer examines your ankle. “It’s nothing too terrible; just a small sprain. I think if you keep it elevated as much as possible then it should be healed in a few days. Can you try walking on it?”

You nod and put your foot on the ground gently. Jamie puts his hands on your waist as you try to stand, and your skin is burning beneath his touch. “I think I’m good to get back to work.”

“You sure?” Jamie asks, concerned.

You nod. “Yeah, I think so,” you walk away from Jamie’s embrace. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Just ice it and keep it elevated once you get home tonight,” the trainer tells you. You nod and walk out of the locker room.

“What did you do to her?” Roope asks Jamie.

“Too much damage to ever fix,” Jamie says with a sigh. There was no way that your relationship with Jamie would ever go past professional acquaintances after what you revealed to him today. If Jamie knew one thing about you it was that you were strong and steadfast with your opinions and rarely changed them, especially when it came to people. Jamie doubted that he’d be an exception considering all of the past history there.

. . .

The days that followed your fall, you avoided Jamie as much as possible. You could proudly say that you didn’t hate him anymore. That’s not true. You still hated Jamie; however, when you heard his name, you didn’t immediately roll your eyes and get angry. Sometimes, you’d smile and other times you’d have no reaction. This shocked everyone because they all knew about the hatred you had for the Dallas Stars hockey player.

Shortly after, you were taken off of the media job and went back to your marketing job. The night of the home opener, however, Carrie comes up to your office with a request. “Tristain can be back at work but not for games at the moment. Do you think that you could fill in tonight? We had her on the schedule and no one else can be there.”

You hesitate; the only thing holding you back was the fact that you’d be seeing Jamie again.

“Sure, of course!”

You sort out the details with Carrie and are set to be available as part of the media team tonight for the home opener.

Later that day, you’re standing outside of the locker room filming the boys get ready for warmups. Once the video was taken and posted, you put the phone in your pocket and begin to head to the place you were supposed to be. However, someone grabs onto your arm gently and stops you.

“How’s your ankle?” Jamie asks softly.

This should infuriate you; however, his concern has you touched. You don’t show it though. “Better. I think I’d be better, though, if I didn’t have to worry about my ankles but oh well.”

Jamie shakes his head; he wasn’t sure why he was expecting anything else from you.

“I have to go, good luck tonight, Jamie,” you tell him and walk away. You’ll admit, your comment was quite snarky and unneeded. You feel bad for what you said, and Jamie was only trying to be nice. You had to keep up familiarities, right? You hated Jamie Oleksiak for the majority of your life, so why did you suddenly feel bad for what you said to him?

. . .

“Are you coming out with us tonight, Yn?” Denis asks. The team won and wanted to go out and celebrate.

You shake your head. “No, thanks for the invite though.”

“Oh, come on, why not, Ynn?” Jamie asks. Why was he asking you that? Did he not remember that the two of you have hated each other since birth? “Don’t not go because of me.”

“Funny. You think that I care about what you do or think. I just have a few things I have to do.” you lied; you weren’t going to admit that Jamie was the reason you weren’t going out.

Jamie smirks. “Fine, if you say so, but I will continue to think in my head that the reason you’re not coming out with us is because of me and the animosity we have for each other.”

“Well, look at you. Did you finally begin to remember the vocabulary we learned in high school?”

Jamie’s face turns red. Yes, he asked his sister to send photos of his old stuff from high school to try to impress you. He wasn’t going to admit it, however. Ever since that heart to heart in the locker room, Jamie wanted nothing more than to impress you. You went back to bantering and driving each other crazy; however, this was a lighter teasing and driving each other crazy. Some would even call it flirting. Would Jamie say he was flirting with you? Yes, absolutely. Would Jamie say you were flirting back with him? No, absolutely not. You hated him, so Jamie knew that whatever he thought you felt was obviously in his head.

“No,” he grumbles and some of his teammates laugh at him. The one thing that was sticking out to Jamie was that you didn’t correct him when he called you by your nickname. You went along with it. Was there some progress being made? “Enjoy whatever you have to do tonight, yn.”

You smile at him softly that has Jamie’s heart beating fast and walk away.

“Dude, you’re in deep with her,” someone says as they clap Jamie on the back. He didn’t have the energy to determine who was talking to him or contradict what they were saying. They were right; Jamie was in deep and he had no idea what to do about it.

After taking the video you needed for the Stars Instagram of the boys playing soccer at the next home game, you wave goodbye and head to the media offices; you once again had to fill in for the media team. You take five steps and hear a loud “ow!” from the one voice you despised. You turn around to see Jamie rubbing his head and staring down at his teammates. You can’t help but smile.

“Stop staring at her, you idiot,” Roope calls out and this gets a laugh out of all the boys. “Just ask her out instead of staring,” someone else yells. A deep red blush overtakes Jamie’s face and you can’t help but smile. You walk away with a giant smile on your face. You immediately shake it off. Why was Jamie getting flustered making you smile? You hated Oleksiak, right?

. . .

When you got home from work after a long day, all you wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep. You had a minor sinus infection and the day was exhausting. You had a massive headache and felt nauseous all day. There was nothing more you wanted to do was take a hot shower, curl up in warm clothing, and call it a night. You weren’t expecting to come home and see a DoorDash bag sitting outside your door. You knew for a fact that you didn’t order anything. You picked up the bag and noticed there was a note attached.

Yn,

I heard that you were feeling sick, so I bought you some soup.

Enjoy,

Jamie

Jamie bought you soup? Jamie was asking about you? Where did this come from? Why would Jamie extend any kindness towards you? Isn’t he supposed to hate you? Isn’t Jamie supposed to be making your life miserable? You’ll admit, after the incident where you sprained your ankle slightly, you and Jamie have been cordial. Whenever you both talked to each other, mean words were being passed around. However, it was more of a teasing and flirting meanness. Does this mean that you and Jamie were friends now? No, right?

You walk into your apartment and open the bag - it was Italian Wedding Soup, your favorite. Your heart warmed at the fact that Jamie remembered your favorite soup. Growing up, your grandmother always made this for you when you were sick. Sometimes, she’d bring some over to the Oleksiak house if anyone was sick there, too. You grabbed a bowl and ladle and put some soup in a bowl. The minute you took the first bite, you sighed in content. It wasn’t quite like home, but it was close. You started to immediately feel better. How did Jamie know this was exactly what you needed? You wanted to text him to thank him; however, you didn’t have his phone number and didn’t feel comfortable sending him a text through Instagram quite yet. You opted to write him and note and were going to leave it in his stall the next morning.

You finished the soup and began to feel better. You were happy and thankful for the soup, but you had one lingering thought. Why would Jamie do something like this for you?

The next morning, when Jamie got to his stall, he noticed that there was a gift bag sitting on the bench. He looked around to see if maybe one of his teammates left it there. It wasn't his birthday and there was no big milestone coming up. What was the message behind it, then?

“It was here when I got here,” John tells Jamie.

“He wanted to open it, but we told him that it wouldn’t be nice,” Roope says.

“I didn’t want to open it; I wanted to see who it was from. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever, Jamie, just open it.”

Jamie grabs the bag and looks for a card or maybe a note. He removes a piece of tissue paper and sees a note. He smiles as he sees your familiar handwriting that always got Jamie’s heart racing back in high school.

Jamie,

Thank you so much for the soup last night. How did you know it was my favorite? I didn’t have your phone number, so I am leaving this for you. Enjoy a small treat from home! Again, thank you.

Jamie smiles and peers into the bag. Inside, Jamie finds a bag of snacks that are endemic to the Toronto area. Only, you would know what his favorites were. “It’s from Yn,” Jamie tells his curious teammates.

This gets a few raised eyebrows and snickers from the people that were currently in the locker room.

“Why did she leave you a gift?” Roope asks.

“I bought her some soup and had it delivered to her house yesterday because I heard she was sick. This is her thank you.” Jamie blushes with these words and can’t meet anyone’s eye.

“You got her soup?” John asks curiously. What did this mean? “Are you trying to date her?”

Jamie pales. “What? No. She just wasn’t feeling well, so I tried to make her feel better.”

John smirks. “How did you know exactly what she would want?”

Jamie, not realizing that his teammates were setting him up, answered obliviously. “It was always her favorite growing up.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Because I loved her, still do.”

This was not the answer that everyone was expecting. “What?” someone asks.

“What?” Jamie looks up from the note to see everyone staring at him.

“You love Yn? The girl who hates you? The girl who you treated like absolute shit your entire life?” Roope confirms.

“I, yeah, I loved her. In middle school and elementary school, I just messed with her because she was a girl and, you know when you have a crush on a girl that young, you tease her.”

“No, you don’t,” Miro says.

Jamie glares at his teammate. “Whatever, not the point. I thought I was being obvious, and then in high school, I realized I was in love with her.”

“You wanted to treat her right, but you knew she’d find it suspicious.”

“I forgot about my feelings when she went to college and my career picked up, but when I saw her that first time I, just,” Jamie stops talking because he isn’t sure how to continue.

“Realized your feelings.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe just talk to her? Tell her how you feel?” John suggests.

“That probably won’t work. How do I tell her that I’ve been in love with her since we were three and I treated her terribly because I was scared of my feelings? Oh, and I ruined any possibility of her dating anyone in high school because I was a jealous idiot who couldn’t figure anything out.”

Jamie’s words get a few pitiful glances, “that sucks”, and pats on the shoulder. No one knows what to say or do. Jamie was in love with the one person who might never love him back.

. . .

Walking into the ballroom, you were trying to find your boss so that you could tell her that you were here. Tonight was the annual Casino Night and you were working behind the scenes to make sure the night went smoothly. This was the first time you were attending because last year, the marketing team didn’t need you to work it, and you also caught a cold right before.

“Oh, hey, yn’s here,” Carrie calls out and crosses your name off the list. “Perfect, you’re going to be sitting at the table in the front welcoming guests and stuff. You are going to ask for their name, ID, and ticket. Once you do that, you’ll tell them their table number and give them a gift bag. A few of the players will be serving as ushers tonight, so they’ll bring the guests to their tables.”

You nod. You want to ask who the players are, but you don’t want to sound eager.

“The organization assigned Roope Hintz, Denis Gurianov, and Jason Dickinson as ushers. They also put Jamie Oleksiak. I know the two of you have some hardcore animosity between you two, so if you don’t want him there, then we can get someone else.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be okay,” you tell Carrie. For the first time in your life, you were serious. Things between you and Jamie were cordial and professional. You still hated him like crazy but significantly less than when you were growing up. You weren’t even sure that you and Jamie would be at this point, but here you two both were.”

“Okay, great, why don’t I bring you to your station and show you how the software works,” Carrie says and leads you to the entrance of the ballroom. The next ten minutes pass, and you think you’ve got the software and system figured out pretty well that you should be okay. Carrie told you to organize the table in any way that’s fitting to your needs, so you begin to reorganize based on how you think you’ll be able to work more efficiently.

Walking to the front entrance from the back entrance are the ushers. Leading the pack is Jamie and Roope. They were walking and talking casually when Jamie suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“Keep walking,” Jason says and smacks Jamie over the head.

“What are you staring at - oh,” Roope follows Jamie’s eye line and spots you organizing the table.

“She’s so beautiful,” Jamie says with heart eyes. You were wearing a dark green dress that fell just above your knees and matching green stilettos. Your hair was done in the way that you knew looked best. Jamie recognized it as the same way you did your hair for Senior Prom and graduation.

“You know, maybe tonight you should tell her?” Denis suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Jamie says with reluctance. “I know she doesn’t feel the same.”

“Then try not to stare or gape too much, then.”

Jamie nods. “We should head to where we need to be, right?”

The four boys continue walking to where you were. “Hey, yn,” Roope greets you.

You look up and smile. “Hi, well, you guys clean up nicely.”

“As do you,” Jamie tells you, and the heat rushes to your face. So, Jamie was complimenting you now.

“Um, so, I’ll be greeting guests and taking their ticket information,” you explain. “Your job, which you've probably been briefed on, is to escort them to their table numbers.”

“‘Briefed on’?” Jason begins. “Are we in some kind of spy or FBI movie?”

“Very funny,” you say sarcastically. “Not the point, but that’s it basically. I think Ryan from marketing will be here to help me with the tickets. Carrie told me that two of you will be on my side of the table and two on Ryan’s side.”

Ryan suddenly appears and greets you with a hug. “You look nice, yn.”

“Thanks, Ryan, you clean up well, too,” you say back to him. You don’t catch the glare that Jamie was giving to Ryan. “I was just explaining what we’re going to be doing tonight to the boys. Two will be working with you and two with me.”

“Perfect, thanks for briefing them; you four can talk amongst yourselves as to who you’re going to be working with. I don’t care either way.”

“See?” you look pointedly at Jason. “Ryan used ‘brief’, too. Oh, I also don’t care. Actually, I’m going to head to the washroom quickly before people start to arrive.”

You get up and walk away, but you don’t notice Jamie watching you leave. He was incredibly captivated with you and wants nothing more than to sweep you up and kiss you. He wants to profess his love to you and love you forever. Sadly, you would never feel the same way as a result of how he treated you growing up. Jamie is drawn out of his thoughts by Jason smacking his arm.

“Dude, you have to stop staring,” Jason says.

“Oh, you like her?” Ryan asks. “She’s quite a catch.”

“Oh, no, I don’t,” Jamie denies. He gets stares from his teammates. Jamie isn’t sure why he denied having feelings for you. You weren’t even here to hear them anyways.

“Good, I like her, and I think I’m going to ask her out. I wasn’t going to say anything if you liked her, but since you don’t, I should be okay to do so.”

Jamie nods but locks his jaw. “Excuse me, I have to go to the washroom, too.” Jamie walks to the bathroom angrily. Of course, Ryan likes you, who wouldn’t? Why couldn’t Jamie just tell Ryan he likes you? That way, Ryan won’t be asking you out. Too entranced in his thoughts, he runs right into you, again.

“Oof, wow, hi Jamie,” you say to him giggly after regaining your composure. “I should stop doing this, you know, running into you. Are you okay?”

“Um, yeah, why?”

“You look really angry and pissed off.”

“Oh, well, I’m not, so, don’t worry,” Jamie says in a voice that doesn’t express what he just said.

You laugh softly.

“What?” Jamie asks.

“You say you’re not angry, but your tone says anything but,” you explain with an amused smile. You look up to meet Jamie’s eyes, and you see the fury going on in his head. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Jamie brushes you off and walks away toward the washroom.

You want to yell after him, but you don’t feel it’s your place to do so.

“Oh good, you’re back,” Ryan says to you. “Jamie and Jason are going to be your ushers and Roope and Denis will be mine.”

You nod and sit down. So, Jamie was going to be closer to you than you thought. “Perfect.”

When Jamie gets back from the washroom and sees you talking to Ryan in a much too friendly manner for his liking, Jamie sulks again. This was going to be a long night.

Somehow, despite his anger and frustration, Jamie was able to put that all aside as he was working as an usher for the Casino Night. Just being near you and around you was enough to calm him down. Watching you interact with the guests made Jamie’s heart warm. He always knew that you were incredibly caring to everyone you met; he just didn’t know that your actions would make him melt and fall more in love with you. After about an hour and a half of welcoming guests, Carrie walks over and says that one group can go and get something to eat. She walks away and the six of you talk amongst yourselves as to who should go. The decision is made for you when two guests walk up to you and begin pulling out their IDs. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch Ryan, Roope, and Denis head into the ballroom to have dinner. After welcoming them in, Denis ushers the guests to their table. You take a breath of releasing exhaustion and Jamie smiles at you.

“Tired?” he asks.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of people to talk to; when I took this job, I thought it would just be marketing, not the rest of this, too,” you tell him. “It’s a very versatile job.”

“Well, if it weren’t versatile, then we wouldn’t have ever come into contact with each other, right?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet.”

Jamie looks you in the eye. “Well, I think it’s a good thing. A very good thing.”

You raise your eyebrows at him. “Oh yeah?” you say to Jamie, and he nods. “I’ll take that into consideration as I make my decision.”

Jamie chuckles deeply, and you feel the shivers go up your spine.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” you ask Jamie.

“Sure,” he tells you.

“Why were you, actually never mind,” you stop asking, seeing Denis walking back to the table.

Jamie was about to question why, but he sees Denis and another guest approaching. He takes this as the reason that you stopped talking. You put on a bright smile and begin talking to the guests and welcoming them. Jamie ushers them into the ballroom after you talk and gives you a wink. You feel the warmth reach your face; you see Denis shaking his head and you question him.

“Just give him a chance,” he replies to you.

“What?” you ask confused.

“I’m serious, just give him a chance.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You will, just give him a chance when you realize you know what I’m talking about.”

You nod. What in the world could he be talking about?

Three hours after the event starts, Carrie comes over to the six of you and tells her that you were all relieved of your duties and were free to enjoy the event. You weren’t sure what to do now.

“Where are you headed?” Jamie asks.

“I’m not sure, you?”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“I’ve never been to one of these before, and most of my friends are working or have their own dates. I don’t have a table to sit at and don’t want to intrude.”

Jamie nods. He extends his arm for you, and you look at him skeptically.

“What?” you ask.

“Dance with me,” he tells you.

You want to tell him he’s crazy and that there was no way in hell that you were going to dance with him. However, you wanted to. You wanted to dance with Jamie, so you loop your arm through his and he leads you into the ballroom. The two of you find a spot on the dance floor and maneuver yourselves into a dancing position. Jamie rests his two hands on your waist and you reach up to wrap your arms around his neck. You giggle softly; your hands don’t reach because Jamie is too tall.

“What?” he asks.

“You’re too tall; I can’t get my arms to go around your neck,” you tell him.

“Oh,” Jamie says. His eyes suddenly light up. He removes one of his hands from your waist and takes your hand. “Now, you put one of your hands on my back. This work?”

You do as he says and nods. “Yeah, and now we dance!”

“That we do.”

You and Jamie begin swaying with the music. You remember that you had a question you wanted to ask Jamie, so you decide to prompt him with it now. “Hey, Jamie?”

“Yes, ynn?”

“Why were you so upset earlier?” you ask.

Jamie suddenly stiffens, and you begin tracing patterns on his back with your hand to try to calm him down. “No reason.”

“So, you mean to tell me that you just get angry for no apparent reason?”

“No, I did get angry for a certain reason.”

“Care to share? A penny for your thoughts?”

What about a kiss for my thoughts. “It’s stupid. Ryan just said something I didn’t like, so I got angry.”

“Oh, okay.”

Jamie smiles at you, and you both continue to dance to the song. When the song ends, you begin to release your grasp of Jamie, but he doesn’t do the same.

“Jamie, the song's over.”

“I know, one more?” he asks. You want to say yes, but you aren’t sure why you don’t want to. You aren’t sure what this shift in your relationship is, but you need some time to figure it out on your own.

“I’m sorry, my feet hurt, I think I’m going to head to the back with staff and just rest, okay?” you pivot.

Jamie nods and releases his hold on you. “I probably have to do some sucking up to the donors and stuff.”

“Oh yeah, probably,” you tease. “See you later?”

“Absolutely, yes,” Jamie says to you, and the two of you go your separate ways. You head to the back to find Carrie, and Jamie heads to his teammates.

“So, did you finally tell her?” Denis asks excitedly.

“No,” Jamie says glumly.

The team gathered at this certain location all shook their heads in annoyance. When will the two of you finally realize these things?

You’re sitting in the back kitchen with a piece of chocolate cake as the event wraps up. Carrie told you that you could just sit in the back if you didn’t want to go out. Yeah, that’s what you did. You didn’t want to see Jamie again because you didn’t know what the shift in your guys’ relationship was. You needed to talk to Lisa as soon as you could before you saw Jamie again. Sadly, the universe didn’t care that much about what you felt.

“Is this the pity party?” Jamie asks as he sits across from you. He grabs the fork in your hand and takes a bite out of your cake.

“Hey!” you jokingly scold. “And no, this isn’t a pity party. I just don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“You could have come and found me, you know.”

You open your mouth to say something but close it right away.

“What?” Jamie asks with his mouth full of cake.

“Stop eating my cake,” you tell him and take your fork out of his hand. “Should you really be eating this anyway?”

“It’s cake.”

“Yeah, and you’re a professional athlete.”

“I don’t follow.”

You sigh. “Aren’t you supposed to be eating only healthy things?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“But you’re eating cake.”

“Oh, now I get what you're saying,” Jamie says to you. “Just don’t tell the nutrition staff.”

“Then maybe you should wipe that chocolate icing off your face,” you joke.

“Oops, my bad,” Jamie begins wiping the icing off his face but misses.

“Here, let me,” you say and scoot your chair closer to him. You use your thumb and wipe the icing off your face. “Better.”

“Thank you,” Jamie says to you, and his face gets closer to yours so close that your foreheads are touching. “Yn, can I tell you something?”

“Of course,” you say to him, realizing how close your face is to his.

“You know how you asked me earlier today about why I was mad?” Jamie asks, and you nod. “Well, I wasn’t entirely telling you the truth. Yes, Ryan said something I didn’t like. When you walked to the washroom, I was staring at you because you were so beautiful. One of the guys told me to stop staring at you, and Ryan asked if I liked you. I don’t know why, but I told him no even though I’m so in love with you. Ryan then said that he was going to ask you out, and I got mad. I got mad because I want to be the one to love you, and I think Ryan might be the one to get that first.”

You pull back slightly, shocked. “What?”

“I’m in love with you; I always was.”

There’s no way you feel the same way. Where did that come from? “What? No, Jamie. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve treated me like shit our entire life. There is no way you’re in love with me. No, you’re not. I’m sorry, I have to go.” You get up abruptly and walk out of the kitchen.

You walk to go find Carrie, so you could tell her you were going to head home. You were going to tell her you feel sick, which you do. You find Carrie and tell her you’re going to head home. She says it’s fine, and you head to the exit.

“Yn, wait, don’t leave because of me,” Jamie says to you as you’re about to leave. Somehow, he found you and was following you.

“No, Jamie, if you didn’t want me to leave, you shouldn’t have said those things to me. Why? Do you hate me that much that you want to mess with me so badly?”

“What? No, of course not. I don’t hate you, yn!”

“That’s rich; I’m leaving. Goodnight, Jamie.”

You don’t see the fallen look on Jamie’s face as you walk away, but his teammates do. Jamie goes back to his table but doesn’t say anything. Why did he think you’d ever feel the same way? Because he was nice for a few months? No, he should have known better. This was his fault, and he had to live what he did.

You held in your tears until you got to your car. The minute your door closed, you broke down. How dare he do this to you? How dare Jamie say something like that to mess with you? What was his problem? Why would he do that?

You and Jamie both went home miserable that night. Jamie went home heartbroken, and you went home angry and annoyed. What happens next?

. . .

You called in sick the Monday after Casino Night. You weren’t ready to face Jamie even though you knew that you’d probably not see him. You weren’t sure what to think. Jamie was always someone that you knew would be in your life. However, you always thought he’d be there as your lifelong enemy who you happened to still be in semi-contact with because your parents were friends. As of late, though, you’ve been seeing Jamie as a friend. You weren’t going to lie, you found Jamie ridiculously attractive, and ever since the accident you had where you and Jamie finally talked, you began to see him in a different light. Instead of your first thought being how much you hated him, you thought about the good things he had to himself. You saw how friendly he was to everyone, and he always asked how you were. He had a selflessness to himself that you were starting to love about him.

“Why are you telling me all this, yn?” Lisa asks you exasperated. “I always thought that the two of you were perfect for each other, even in high school. Don’t lie, you thought about it, too.”

You pause for a moment carefully thinking about what you were going to say. “I guess you’re right. I did have a small crush on him in high school because, for almost six months, he was mostly nice to me.”

“And what about now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“Yes, please, Lisa.”

“I think you’re in love with him, too. I think you always have been; I think he’s one of those people that is always going to be in your life whether or not you like it. At first, everyone thought you two were going to be the best of friends and take over the world. That all changed when he tripped you and the rest is history, but I think it’s different now. This time around, you both are mature adults who, I think, subconsciously realized that the way they dealt with the crushes they had on each other was by absolutely hating each other. You both didn’t know what to do, so you’re coping mechanism? Hate each other senselessly because you didn’t know what else. Now, Jamie realized how he feels and wants that with you. He said it first, right? Maybe he wants to show you he’s changed and truly loves you now.”

“I guess you’re kind of right,” you tell Lisa. “I just, I don’t know how I feel.”

“Do you find him attractive?”

“Yes, of course, he’s gorgeous.”

“Did you always think that?”

“Yes, because he’s always been gorgeous.”

“Was one of the reasons you hated him because he was so gorgeous?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure where you’re going with this, Lisa,” you tell your best friend skeptically.

“My point is that if you truly hated him, you wouldn’t have called him gorgeous so quickly. I think you would have just denied finding him attractive and that’s that. Now that you know what nice and kind Jamie is like, I think you want more. You want to have more with him because you’ve seen what a great person Jamie is. Because you’ve seen the goodness, you want more and all of it. Can you say that you currently hate Jamie Oleksiak with your entire being?”

“No, I cannot say that I hate Jamie Oleksiak with my entire being.”

“Your first reaction to him telling you how he feels was not to punch him or to hurt him, was it?”

“No, I guess it wasn’t,” you say calmly.

“What was it then, yn?”

“In my head, and I don’t know why I said it, but it was ‘there’s no way you feel the same way', and I was surprised those words even formed in my head.”

“Don’t you see, yn? You feel the same way! You just didn’t know it! Your head and heart have been trying to tell you how you feel by spreading warmth to your face, making you feel shy, or just wanting to be around him. Yn, you’re in love with Jamie Oleksiak.”

“Holy shit, I’m in love with Jamie Oleksiak.”

“You’re in love with Jamie Oleksiak, yn.”

“Oh dear goodness, what do I do now, Lisa?”

“Apologize and tell him.”

You take a deep breath. “Yeah, I can do that, right?”

“If you want to be with him, then yeah.”

“Okay, I can do that, it shouldn’t be too hard, right? What could possibly go wrong?”

. . .

Believe it or not, a lot. The next day, you were set to go back to work, but you woke up with a massive migraine, an aching cough, and a debilitating stomach ache. You couldn’t go to work feeling like this, so you called in sick for real this time. You finally had the courage to go see a doctor, and they told you it was just a bug. They gave you some antibiotics, and you were back to work in three days.

On the Saturday after Casino Night, Carrie asked if you could fill in for the media team, and you agreed enthusiastically. Maybe you’d finally be able to see Jamie and talk to him?

Unfortunately, that was not the case. You weren’t outright trying to talk to Jamie or get his attention, but you weren’t not doing that. You tried to act normal, but Jamie wouldn’t even acknowledge you. You were able to catch him alone after the game, but when you called out to him, he didn’t respond. You went home that night crying thinking you ruined something great without knowing you had something great at the tip of your fingers.

The following Monday, you were sitting in the GM’s offices when Jamie walked in looking for one of the team managers. You were the one of two sitting in the room, and Jamie walked to the other person who was on the far side of the room to ask if the manager was there. You’ll admit, that hurt.

You saw Jamie a few days later on your way to the locker room to give some paperwork to the coaching staff. You were about to turn the corner when your foot got stuck in a loose floorboard, and you went tumbling to the ground.

“Are you okay?” someone asks you as you try to get up.

“I mean, considering I just fell to the ground, no, but thanks for asking,” you answer and lookup. “Jamie.”

“Yn,” he replies back to you. “I’m going to go.”

“Jamie, wait, please.”

“What, yn? Are you going to reject me again because I don’t want to have that conversation with you, then.”

“When we both aren’t at work and in a public place, can we please talk?”

“Why should I agree to that, yn? Because, for your information, you’re breaking my heart. I can’t do this if you’re just going to make me feel terrible.”

You falter slightly when Jamie tells you that you’re breaking his heart. “I’m really sorry, can we just please pick a time and place to talk?”

“Sure, right here, right now.”

“Jamie, that’s not what I --”

“No, if you want to talk, then right here. I don’t want to have this conversation later if you’re going to reject me again.”

You’re getting kind of sick and tired of Jamie insisting that you’re going to reject him again because you’re not. “Jamie! I’m not going to reject you again! Do you think I’m some kind of heartless monster who loves to see you suffer? Guess what, I don’t! I hate that my words made you hurt and put you in a terrible mood. I apologize for that. You know you got to speak your mind, isn’t it time for me to be able to speak mine?”

Jamie is about to say something, but you stop him.

“No, I’m not going to break your heart, I promise. Just listen, okay?”

Jamie nods and takes one step towards you.

“Casino Night? You caught me off guard. My entire life, I hated you and that was all I knew. Wake up? Hate Jamie. Go to bed? Hate Jamie. You have to admit, though, you didn’t make it hard, but that’s beside the point. When I literally ran into you all those months ago, I picked up where we left off because that was all I knew. Then, come to find out, I didn’t like that. When I tripped over your foot and we talked? That was the shift inside of me. I didn’t know what I was feeling. The next few things I’m going to say I didn’t makeup on my own, Lisa helped me with it. She told me that I got to experience nice and kind Jamie, and I loved it. I did, I loved being on the receiving end of it. She was saying how I wanted more, all of the love and kindness you have to offer. She’s not wrong. I want everything you have to offer because I’m in love with you.”

“What?”

“Casino Night? I didn’t know what I was feeling. If you gave me a bit more time, on my own, then I think I would have realized it soon. I’m not sure if you know this, but in sophomore year of high school, I had a crush on you because, for once, you were quite nice to me. I like nice Jamie because he makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Jamie Oleksiak, I’m in love with you even though I spent almost twenty years hating you. And, that’s all I have to say, so I’m going to go now.”

You begin to turn around, but Jamie’s next words leave you stunned. “I’ve had a crush on you since we were three.”

“What?”

“When we were three years old, I realized I had a crush on you. I wouldn’t have called it a crush, but I always saw how in love my parents were and one day wanted that with you. You know how children get ‘married’? Well, I wanted to marry you. I didn’t know how to process how I felt so I treated you like shit and for that, I’m sorry. I realized I was in love with you in high school, but at that point, too much damage was created for me to go back and change things. When I saw you again a few months back, I realized that I never really got over you, and I wanted more with you.”

You take a step forward. “So.”

“So?”

“So, we’re two idiots who are in love with each other, then?”

“So we are,” Jamie says to you with a smile.

“Now what do we do?” you ask.

“Well, I’d like to take you out for dinner and maybe kiss you? Then, take you out for dinner again and call you my girlfriend. What do you think?”

“I think you should kiss me now and we can just jump to the ‘I’m your girlfriend’ part.”

“That’s a deal,” Jamie says and leans down to kiss you. He places a gentle kiss on your lips before leaning back to take a breath. He leans in again, and you both deepen the kiss he places on your lips. All of five seconds pass when you hear cheering behind you. “I guess this is why you wanted to talk in private, right?”

You laugh. “Yeah, it was. Maybe you should listen to me more often.”

“Well, now that you’re my girlfriend, I guess I have more of a reason to.”

“And why’s that?”

“So I get to keep you and love you forever?”

You smile and say, “that I can do.” You perch upon your tippy-toes and kiss Jamie again. Who knew that two childhood enemies could one day learn to love each other?

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jawllines · 4 years

Text

He’s too far in thought, he realizes, when Ellie comes and waves her hand in his face, “Are you okay?” She asks quietly, eyes wide as saucers, “Maisey said you look like her aunt when she zones out and she’s depressed.”

Harry huffs out a laugh, one that expels the air from his lungs as he nods, “Yes, Ellie, I’m okay. What’ve you painted, hm? Can I see it?” She grins, her cheeks pudgy and rosy as she runs back to her seat and picks up the canvas she’d been working on. It’s a sun and a moon, both with rather cryptic looking faces on them, and Harry had never so perfectly had to manage his poker face, “Whoa!”

“I think that might just be the coolest thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” Y/N appears behind him, Oliver more or less clung to her pant leg as she’s reaching over his body to set a box of juice down on the oak table for him to disperse among his campers, while holding her hand out for the canvas, “May I see it, Miss. Ellie Bellie?”

Ellie smiles shyly at her — she always got so shy around Y/N, but never in the way where you would think she’s nervous. No, she gets shy the way you might when meeting an older sibling’s friend and wanting to desperately try to impress them. Harry knew as much, considering he would attempt to perform for each and every single one of his sister’s friends growing up (and each time, Gemma would make a few colorful threats to deter him). No matter how quiet Ellie gets with her though, she’s always the first to ask if they got to play with Y/N that day.

Harry still doesn’t like the other camp counsellors but Y/N’s an exception

part 1

(tw: mentions of suicide)

ii.

Psst.

Harry was typically a heavy sleeper. When he was younger his mum used to joke that he could sleep through an earthquake-induced tsunami if someone allowed him to. An alarm would have to be pretty loud to stir him from his slumber, and unless he was on edge, a mere call of his name would not drag him from whatever dreamland he’d submerged himself within.

Psst.

There had only been two things before that could notably wake him. His mum, who was the sweetest person on this planet yet managed to be the cruelest being on earth when he needed to be up for something, and his childhood cat Molly, who sits on his chest and makes it hard to breathe (which, from what he’s learned, encourages his brain to panic and wake him up so he could fix it). Other than that, he was blissfully unaware of the world for hours at a time.

Yet, there was something stirring him now. A low sound that puzzles him as he toes the line between consciousness and his dreams, aware of the blankets that cover him but still dancing on a stage with his limbs thrashing wildly and people shouting his name.

Psst.

Was it an insect? Maybe he was performing outside then -- a crowd of thousands in an outdoor field to see him for... .what was it that he did again?

Psst.

Oh, he’s dreaming, isn’t he? How deep in his dream is he? He thinks this is the first time he’s ever been asleep and realized that he was asleep...he could probably conjure something up, right? Manifest something that he’s always wanted, try his hand in lucid dreaming. If only he could focus apart from the insect zipping past his eardrum.

Harry, please wake up, we’re being haunted -- or murdered, or something.

Harry’s eyelids flutter like swallowtail wings, his gaze blurry and unfocused as he comes to. He’s confused, piecing together the puzzle that always presents to him when he’s just woken up and has to readjust to the world around him. The whole process of it took nothing more than 10 seconds, maybe 15 if he’s really out of it, but that’s only because thoughts run through his mind at a hundred miles a minute.

What time is it? The room around him his pitch-black apart from a very small amount of light illuminating beneath the curtain covering the window he’s beneath, so it couldn’t be morning. Potentially early morning, but he would say that would be 3-4 AM. Did he need to be up? He didn’t think so, actually, because there’s no alarm buzzing him awake and as far as he’s concerned, he hadn’t signed up for any early morning shifts at the bookstore as of late. The last time he went in at 5 to open up shop while the owner was on vacation and Harry was more or less ran down by a mother raccoon when he’d stumbled upon her babies after getting out of his car -- Harry had been reluctant to go before sunrise since.

Where was he? He knows he’s not at home, that’s for sure. The sheets smell like him but not him enough to be at his own place -- and the bedding isn’t as soft either. He knows he hasn’t passed out at someone’s house because he only does that if the person is close enough to him that he would recognize their scent, or if he was too drunk to get home, but that was usually accompanied by a wicked headache and a sour stomach. No, where he was smelled like wood and generic fabric softener. There was an air conditioning unit that rattled and rumbled from where it was fixed to the wall, he felt a tension in his neck that he only experienced at one place and, yeah, he was at the camp.

He was at camp, in a cabin with Y/N, who slept with the lamp on because she hated the dark, was the owner of the voice that had woken him up in the inky black room.

“Hm?” He hums, brows pinching as he lets his eyes shut again, only to open them a few seconds later, “Wha’s wrong? Why is your light off?”

“I don’t know,” her voice is still just a bit over a whisper, and Harry wonders why she doesn’t just speak up now that she knows he’s awake, “I woke up a little bit ago and thought maybe there was a storm that knocked the power out or something, but I checked the weather and it’s been clear skies all night. I think our power line was cut which is like -- straight out of a horror film.”

Harry sighs, a bit of him regretting the number of horror movies they’ve been watching once they finally got to watch Midsommar (in three days, they’d sifted through six different movies -- two movies a night and each one managed to horrify Y/N more than the last). He begins to press himself from the bed, his eyes adjusting to the dark around them, making out slivers of shadows, “I’ll go check --”

“No! Are you crazy?” He hears her bed frameshift with her as she moves, “That’s just asking for a maniac to come for us. Plus I keep hearing noises and I can’t tell if it’s like...like little raccoon feet or a one-armed hook man.”

“Alright, then go back to bed.” Harry begins to lower back down to the mattress but a sharp whine leaves her throat, “It’s dark when you close your eyes.” It’s silent for a moment, but then Harry feels a bead of guilt dribble through his body. He sighs, reaching up and wiping his hand down his face, “What do you want to do, yeah? If you don’t want me to go out there. Do you want to stay up?”

She’s quiet, Harry is straying further and further from the state he would’ve been in to fall right back into his dreams but he tries to wipe away the irritation the best he could. What he reminds himself is that four days prior, Y/N had trekked out in the forest toward a lake despite her unremitting distaste for the woods in the dark and slapped Jack clean across the face because he was being rude to him. And he was going to ignore her? Fall asleep while she’s frightened? Harry could be a prick, but he wasn’t the bleeding antichrist.

“I...um, well, I don’t want us to stay up, no, we’ll be so cranky tomorrow,” she shuffles in the sheets, “I dunno’, I’m sorry, you can go back to bed, I’ll be okay.”

Harry isn’t sure what to do but in his half-awake state, the next few words that leave his mouth seem like just the temporary fix necessary for them to get the last few hours of sleep that they can, “Do you want me to read you a story or summat?”

She giggles quietly, “No, it’s okay, really, go back to sleep, okay?”

What Harry could have said was I can’t now, knowing that you’re awake and scared, but instead he utters a simple, “No.” He sits back up, patting blindly for his phone in his sheets, slipping his fingers around it, and tapping it awake. His screen blinds him with its brightness, so he lowers it before finding the flashlight. It lights up the floor at his feet and subsequently at its edges, he can make out Y/N’s shadowy figure. She’s sat up, curled in her blanket, wrapped around her head, and giving her a pseudo-nun appearance. She waves at him lamely and he struggles not to roll his eyes, “Maniac be damned, I’m gonna go out there and look for the breaker. Maybe the arseholes broke their vow of integrity.”

He wouldn’t be surprised if Jack or one of the others came around and switched the breaker off, just to be inconvenient for the morning. They’d left them alone for four days sure, but Harry figures that it’s not so much four days of silent reflection and questioning why they feel the need to be such pricks to him, and more so four days for their anger to fester and brew. If not for the fact that Y/N slapped him then made him find laundry detergent and commanded the others to go get his clothes, then for the way she acted like nothing had happened the day prior. Jack’s cheek was still a stingy, red splotch, Oliver and Brandon were straight-faced looking irritated, and Y/N -- well, Y/N had never been more content with her day. She was having a blast with her kids playing bean bag toss, they did their little dance when one of them got it in the hole of the board, and when they were all getting drinks, Y/N offered to grab Harry his. He watched as she went to the cooler around the same time Jack did, they both reached for the last Dr. Pepper, and Y/N plucked it up and handed it to him before grabbing both her, Harry, and Mitch’s lemonades.

He thinks it’s the sincerity that she holds, that would aggravate him had he been in their shoes. Y/N was completely unbothered by the night prior and Harry could tell, just like when he doesn’t reciprocate their maleficent tendencies towards them -- it was digging under their skin.

(She makes Harry laugh when she comes back with their lemonades, handing him one and uttering, “I let the prick have the last Dr. Pepper, and I’m regretting it.”)

And while he’s hoping that they haven’t turned their target to her out of spite, he wouldn’t change what had happened for the world. It had made the two of them that much closer, and in the following day’s Harry had poked and prodded Y/N’s brain a bit more. Especially after what he’d seen on her page, he was intrigued by her. Intrigued by how she saw life, why she came at things the way she did, what built her up to be the person that she was in these very moments that he’s speaking to her. Harry hasn’t asked her about her old college roommate and he doesn’t plan on it either -- he doesn’t feel like he could, or he should.

Harry has lost people before and he thinks the worst thing someone could do was to bring it up unprompted. He knows that it’s probably always on her mind but even then, maybe it isn’t at the forefront of it. Maybe she’s just trying to have a good few weeks, separate herself from the real world for a while, and he would be cruel to dig up something that she may not be ready to just up and chat about. No matter how curious he is about the whole situation, and no matter how much he wonders if she treats him the way she does because of what happened. If the topic was brought up by her he would openly and freely discuss it as long as she was comfortable, but he wouldn’t give her the third degree.

So he minds his business and focuses on trying to get to know her better instead.

He can’t say that it doesn’t change how he treats her a bit though. Harry is much. . .gentler, than he had been. He tries to be less critical of her unwavering optimism and seeks to understand where it was coming from instead. If he’s in the right mood he’ll attempt to match it, which makes for a good day with their groups, who he finds -- despite the small age gap -- have begun to kindle very close friendships. Mrs. Graham had even commented on it one of the days after they had a riveting game of balloon tennis.

“You two make a good team -- putting all these other counselors to shame. And to think you were pouty about having to share a cabin.”

It was true, they did make a good team. Harry thinks that them sparking a friendship had made the whole experience much more enjoyable for everyone involved.

All of this together gives insight into why Harry is willing to stuff on his shoes at 3 AM and go out in the dark, muggy night to check and potentially fix a breaker. And no matter the number of times he assures her she does not have to come out there with him, she keeps hold of her ‘no man left behind’ mentality, pulls on a pair of flip flops, and pads out after him.

Had they been in any other cabin, finding the breaker would have been much easier. They’re typically on the backside in the upper right corner, surrounded by a little cage with a lock similar to that of an animal crate. The struggle with their cabin was that the backside was basically in the woods, so he had to dodge low hanging branches and tangles of ivy to get even remotely near it. He hands Y/N his phone and she shines the light over the metal box, her hand steady despite how she looks back and forth and all around them like she’s making sure there are no red eyes glowing at them. The world around them is silent apart from the chirp and groan of insects, the scutter of an animal somewhere in the far distance makes Y/N huff a weary sigh but otherwise, nothing comes out to attack them. Harry restarts the breaker, they go back inside, and the lamp on its dimmest setting is switched on how they had fallen asleep with it.

They both breath out in relief, Y/N dives back into her bed and Harry flops down atop of his covers, giving himself a second to feel the cool air from the conditioner fan over him.

“Theoretically,” Y/N begins as Harry lets his eyes fall shut, “If there were some creature in the forest --”

“There’s no creature in the forest.”

“I know, but theoretically --” She continues again, but Harry is quick to cut her off once more.

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he tells her, “Go to sleep.”

Once more, Y/N falls silent, but a quiet, “Thank you,” was the only thing to leave her mouth.

. . .

A summer thunderstorm wasn’t abnormal during camp, which is why the recreation center and the art building are beneficial. It keeps everyone preoccupied and entertained with well-insulated walls to mute whatever carnage is taking place outside, which makes for less frightened children and an easier time for everyone involved. Harry liked being active and running around with his campers, sure, but he also really enjoyed a nice, calm, relaxing day trying his hand at DIY projects and abstract paintings. Plus it gave him the chance to wear the camp hoodie that he had spent a pretty penny purchasing, which was made of the softest fabric he’s ever felt and was far more comfortable than the t-shirts that they normally wear.

Y/N had also bought the hoodie, Harry saw as she stepped out in it after her shower this morning, and she seemed to be drowning in it but in the best way. The fabric pools off of her, but she looks cozy, and well-rested despite them waking in the middle of the night. He thinks she looks pretty cute, but he kept the thought to himself and instead asked her if she wanted his extra granola bar for breakfast.

They alternate throughout the day, between the rec center and art building, and on the schedule, it appears that most the day he would be with Y/N’s group (which he prefers) and a few times he’s even with Mitch as well, which is nice. Mitch doesn’t grow to like many people, but he liked Y/N well enough -- he thought she was oddly entertaining (or so he’s told, Harry) and good for a chat. The only times he and Y/N were not with each other were when the activities were age-specific, but even then, it wasn’t like anyone was in a different room. They were all just at different stations within a big room in the art building and the recreation center was more or less free for all.

Harry wondered when he started basing whether or not a day was going to be good by whether or not he and Y/N were able to be around each other, but he decided not to think about it too much. Lately, he’d been a little more on edge with whether they were together, simply because of Jack and the others. He didn’t want them fucking with her, and even though she’d proven that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, he still worried, especially knowing he would be the cause of it.

Y/N doesn’t seem the least bit distressed about it, or as far as she was letting on -- she’d not expressed any thoughts or concerns that they would be spiteful towards her. Hell, the only thing she had told him the night after was that she hoped she didn’t make things worse for him. For him. Why was she so willing to defend him? What did she get out of being so kind?

“I especially like how multidimensional it is — purple and pink stars? Beautiful, I love those two colors together,” she places her hand on Oliver’s head, and it’s then that Harry notices he’s holding something, “Harry, Oliver here wanted you to see the flower he drew because I told him how much you like lilies.” As bashful as he always is, he holds out the paper toward Harry. It was cute — a singular, yellow lily and he could tell that Y/N helped him draw it, but the paint and crayon marks all over the page suggested she left the color duties up to him.

“Oh my goodness,” Harry gasps, looking at the painting, flipping it to Oliver and pointing at it, “You did this?” Oliver nodded excitedly, “It’s gorgeous.”

“I think our groups are the best artists,” Y/N motions to her table, only a meter away from them all working diligently on their projects, “Charlotte is over there doing an artistic interpretation of the both of us, we are not allowed to see it until she’s finished. Mikey is doing his own rendition of Disney world, I see Maisey is creating a beautiful tree -- Noah is that a cowboy you’re drawing?”

Noah barely looks up from his paper, very carefully dragging the tip of the marker in a circle, “Yes.”

“And Noah is drawing a cowboy! Modern-day Van Gogh’s, all of them.” Harry smiles as Y/N drags a stool up beside him, positioning it in a way so that she could watch both her kids and speak with him, “I heard they’re having one of them party things tonight, I didn’t know if you wanted to go or not.”

“Hm, I dunno,” his brows knit together as he lightly scratches a mosquito bite on the inside of his forearm, “Do you feel comfortable with going after what happened last time?”

She suckles her bottom lip into her mouth, gnawing on it as she nods her head, “Mhm,” she looks around them for a second, making sure that none of the kids are paying attention to them before she lowers her voice, “Mitch said that you used to go to all of them last year, and would like -- have a good time. I hope that I’m not ruining that for you.”

“How would you be ruining it for me?” It’s true, Harry hasn’t gone to any of the parties that they’ve been doing since the very first one he’d escorted Y/N away from. Not for any other reason apart from he was just spending time and hanging out with Y/N, or he’d be too knackered to even think about leaving the nice, cool setting of their cabin to be in the muggy heat with drunk college students. He had much more fun not attending, and other nights Mitch would come around and chill with them too. . .he had all he needed then. Didn’t need the booze for a good time.

“I don’t know, I just didn’t know if you weren’t going ‘cos of what happened the first time and you felt like you couldn’t leave me out or. . or something like that.”

Harry shook his head, “No,” he answers, “We can go tonight if you would like, but it’s unnecessary for me. I’m good either way.”

Although Y/N appears unconvinced, they have little time to go further into the topic because Charlotte is running up to them, a big grin on her face, “I finished!”

“Well give it here,” Harry holds out his hand, waving her over, “Let’s see it.”

On the paper are stick figure versions of he and Y/N, with big grins and 12 other little stick figures surrounding them. Above Harry’s stick figure, there’s a pink arrow and a very five-year-old esque writing of HUSBAD (Harry presumes it’s supposed to be husband), and above Y/N’s in the same fashion, she’s written WYFE. It’s then Harry realizes that Y/N’s figure has a veil on and Harry’s has a bowtie, “This is for you twos wedding! So thens when they take pictures you can has this one.” Charlotte chirps brightly and Y/N and Harry both cast each other a disbelieving glance.

“Whoaaaaa,” Y/N is the first to break their silence, a smile pulling at her lips, “This is really good Charlotte! I didn’t know Harry and I were getting married, though.”

Charlotte nods quickly, still grinning at them, her bottom canine missing as she gleams, “Me n’ Mikey thinks you should!”

Y/N turns toward him, nodding toward Charlotte, “Well, the god’s have spoken. Where’s my ring?”

Harry coughs on a laugh as he hands the paper back to Charlotte, “This is really good, Bug. Why don’t you and Oliver go help Josie finish her coloring pages, hm?”

The both of them head the short way back to their table, hiking up on the small stools and Harry makes sure they’re all settled before he turned back to face Y/N, who was biting down on a grin, “Don’t start --” he began but she’s already started, shaking her head.

“Listen, it’s okay to be in love with me, but you should really try to tone it down. . .the kids are starting to notice.”

Harry scoffs before he proceeds to tease her,, “How d’ya know they aren’t basing it off your actions, huh? Giving me love eyes every couple minutes like nobody would see.”

Y/N mocks offense to his words and he tries to keep up the facade, but his sheer delight for getting in a teasing match with her overcomes him and he can’t help his smile. Harry loved teasing people -- loved making them flustered or reducing them to a bashful mess by his words alone. Y/N, however, was much less into flustered gazes and sheepish tendencies, and more so ready and willing to give him it right back. He’d met his match -- if he teases her she’s teasing right back (if she hadn’t started it in the first place), and both of them found mutual pleasure in it.

“You can’t use my love eyes against me, I can’t help but give them to everyone I’ve ever met” she tells him, feigning sincerity before an additional anecdote, “You know my college roomie always told me they’d get me in trouble one day, and she had never been more right, ‘cos they did once at a party. She wouldn’t shut up about it weeks after it’d happened.”

Harry feels his body tense just a bit at the mention of her, and he tries not to let it show on his face that he’s surprised how she so casually brought her up, “Yeah? What’s the story?”

“The little ears around us suggest that I tell that story later,” she checks her watch, before looking back up at him, “Oi, we’ve got five minutes until we’re in the rec center. You get to pick what we all do since I picked the last rotation.”

. . .

This time when they’re on their way to the party, Harry lets Y/N walk in front of him as he directs where she was to go. Opposed to when they had first made this journey together, Harry feels far more protective of her than he originally had. Plus, he’d seen how clumsy she could be and after the earlier storm, the softened dirt and broken off tree branches from the billows of wind made for a much harder terrain to navigate, so he felt more comfortable being able to reach out to catch her if need be.

Harry was wary of going to the party tonight but Y/N had been borderline insistent that they attend, “Mitch says he misses you at these things and Niall told me he could only stand Shaun theorizing about the universe and us not being the only life form so many times before he snaps. I say we’re needed.” Harry never minded free drinks, and a potential fuck at the end of the night, so he wasn’t all too worried that he would be having a good time. He just hoped that the others would allow Y/N to have a good time. And he knows he’s being paranoid, because they hadn’t necessarily targeted her for anything prior to or after the lake incident, but he still worries. . .he can’t help but worry.

But he wouldn’t hover. Once they got to the clearing, he helped Y/N get her drink and she sought off after Niall while Harry went over to Mitch, the two of them promising to meet up again in a little bit. He didn’t hover, but he did watch semi-closely, eyeballing Jack and the others, making sure they were staying away from her. Apart from a few less than friendly looks thrown in his direction though, they seemed to be keeping to themselves which Harry was ultimately very thankful for.

The night goes by as these nights usually do -- he and Mitch drank, had a laugh, gabbed about music for a while, some of the drama going on around the camp (Y/N had an ear for gossip and eyes that could make anyone tell her anything, so Harry’s had a door to all the melodramatic events happening throughout the counsellors). It was a bit weird when Stacey -- one of the counsellors he’d only ever briefly spoken to -- had come up to them, and a little weirder when she borderline propositioned him for something more than a chat in the woods, but Harry politely declined. Told her that he was pretty exhausted after a long day and was probably just going to have a few more beers and retreat back to his cabin.

He passes it off as a fluke. . .maybe he’d been making eyes at her and hadn’t realized it. But then Mia makes her way toward him and Mitch, and this time Harry’s brows furrow when she starts chatting him up. This one he entertains for a little while before eventually ebbs away from the conversation, because he and Mia had a fling once, but Jack convinced her and the free world that he was a prick, so she called it off. He didn’t necessarily understand why she would want to start that up again, or what “little birdie” put a bug in her ear that he still thought about her (as she said one did).

It was after Cara had finally left after coming around to chat with him, that Mitch began to chuckle lowly at his side, shaking his head slowly, “Jesus Christ,” he tilts the nozzle of his beer against his mouth, and when he pulls it away, his lips are shiny from the liquid, “She really is working hard.”

“Huh?” Harry feels desperate for an explanation as to why three times he felt as if he were being propositioned for a romp in the woods when he was not actively pursuing one. He had a feeling that it was the others trying to get him alone so they could enact some sort of piss poor attempt at fucking with him without Y/N spotting and tearing them a new one over it, “Are you in on something that I’m not, ‘cos m’feeling pretty fucking lost here, man.”

Mitch nods his head, and Harry follows his gaze to Y/N, who is speaking with her brows dipped inward to Cara, “A few days ago she’d been asking me and Niall what you were like last year, and we told her just the same, jus’ a lot more ‘fornication’ is how Niall put it,” he smirks softly with a shake of his head, “And she seemed all concerned, asking us if we thought she was holdin’ you back or something. Personally, I told her if you wanted to sleep with someone you would have whether she were around or not but she didn’t seem very convinced.” A snort leaves him as he motions towards her again, still as amused by her ideas as he had been when she’d first explained them, “Guess she’s trying to set you up.”

“Oh fuck me,” he exhales so forcefully, it whips the delicate plumes of smoke from Mitch’s cigarette into a misshapen huff. Why was she so concerned with it? Harry hadn’t once expressed any avidity in needing to spend time with someone in that manner -- he could go without sex for three weeks. . .did she not think he could? Was he exuding nymphomaniac tendencies? He surely hadn’t thought he was -- a few quick handies in his nightly showers typically tide him over just nicely for a bit of a dry spell. And what was her business that he hadn’t slept with anyone since they’ve gotten here? Why was she speaking about him with the others what she could as easily ask him? What she had as easily spoken with him about, albeit leaving out a pretty large portion of it.

For the first time since they had begun getting along, Harry was irritated with her. He’d never been one to brood, however. He liked things to be up front and honest as soon as possible if the situation allowed for it, to stop his mind from taking an idea and running away with it. He held little interest in playing mind games with people.

Which is why he hands Mitch the rest of his drink, fixes his heavy cardigan around his shoulder, and sets off in her direction. He dodges many bodies, avoids an empty cup on the ground beside what he could only presume to be a sticky puddle of liquor, and narrowly makes it past a playful fight between Oliver and Brandon who were wrestling one another. Y/N doesn’t realize that he’s making his way to her until he’s just a meter or so away, when Niall catches a glimpse of him and attempts to be inconspicuous in the way he pinches her side. She gasps from the way his nails had accidentally bit into her skin, flinching from the pain before her gaze had settled on him, “Harry!” She cheered but his face doesn’t soften as it usually does when they see one another, which alerts her to his disapproving gaze, “Oh, what’s wrong?”

“Can I speak with you for a moment?” He inquires, motioning out past the trees. Enough trust had been built into the foundation of their friendship for her to not question him. Instead, she passes her drink off to Niall and follows Harry into the woods -- he wouldn’t go so far that they wouldn’t be able to see one another from beneath the curtain of leaves shielding away the moon, but just far enough that nobody would be eavesdropping. In any other situation he might wait to bring this up until they’ve made it back to the cabin, but Y/N’s intentions had been clear that the person he was taking home tonight wasn't supposed to be her.

She pauses with him at a particularly thick tree trunk, and places the arch of her foot against one of the jagged roots that carved its way through the earth, “Is everything okay?” She balances herself with a hand against the bark, wincing when it jabs into her skin, “I was keeping an eye on Jack n’ them I thought so they wouldn’t try messing with you, but did they say something?”

That does melt him some, Harry was strong enough to admit that. Just as he had been concerned with her wellbeing, she was just as much concerned for him, and he appreciated that. And while it does threaten to soften him down to his core, he still had questions that needed answers, and he wouldn’t let up until she responded to them.

“Why are you sending girls over to me?”

Her brows raise, but less in shock of learning the information, and more so with wonder how he’d found out she was the one sending them their way. The surprise dissolves into embarrassment quickly, her shoulders slump and she casts her gaze deeper into the forest, “Dammit,” she doesn’t hide her disappointment from being caught, or even feign confusion to try and pass the blame off coincidence that every girl who had come up to him had subsequently talked to her prior, “I was hoping you would be less observant.”

“Y/N.” He says her name sternly, and her shoulders drop dramatically further as she steps down from the tree root.

“Listen, in my defense I just felt awful!” She admits, waving her hand toward the party, “Jack had tried telling me a few times about how you just fuck people and leave them, blah, blah, blah, right? And I wasn’t paying any attention to him, but it made me curious to what you were like last year, so I asked Mitch and Niall. You came to these things all the time and you had fun -- then I come ‘round, ruin the first one, and you’ve been hanging out with me since. I just. . . I wanted you to be able to have fun and not feel like you have to worry about me, y’know?”

A ‘v’ sits between Harry’s brows, “What is it your business what I’m doing, hm?” He fixes his cardigan from where it slumps off his shoulder once more, “If I wanted to sleep with someone then I would. Do you think I can’t set something up myself?”

“No, of course not, I just thought --”

“You didn’t think,” he cuts her off, and Y/N’s arms curl over herself instinctively when a cold brush of air rolls past them, “You should have just came to speak with me about it, I could have told you that I didn’t need anything like that, and that would have been that. Don’t go behind my back trying to orchestrate things for me, okay?”

He wanted to say it -- he needed to say it, because Harry wasn’t some sex driven lecher that everyone at this camp tried to make him out as. He thought Y/N had known that too, but he guesses he was wrong.

But he wasn’t expecting her to look so fucking defeated by it. A guilt weighs on his being when she nods, tipping her head down, “Okay, yes, I won’t anymore. I’m sorry,” her fingers dig into her bicep, as she breathes out, a shiver rattles through her that she tries to be inconspicuous about it, “I wasn’t thinking -- I wasn’t thinking how it would look.”

Harry sighs, peeling his cardigan off of his arms, revealing his bare arms to the chill but he ignores it in favor of holding it out to her, “Put this on,” he wiggles it some, “I know you’re cold.” She takes it from him carefully, looking up, brows raised slightly as if to ask if he’s sure, “Go ahead.”

“I really am sorry,” she tells him, pulling the patchwork cardigan over her arms, it hangs off of her, and Harry swallowed thickly. She’s. . .cute -- Harry had always been able to admit that. Her face is sweet, her eyes exudes nothing but understanding, kindness, and such a soft glow that Harry couldn’t quite explain. He finds that those eyes give him great comfort and warmth, because now when they’re tinged with the contrition she feels and Harry feels cold.

“I know,” he murmurs, he holds out his hand for her, and very carefully Y/N slides her hand into his own, “Do you want to go get pudding?”

A small smile pulls at her mouth.

“Yes please.”

. . .

Niall lets them use the key after a few dozen promises to be careful with it. They trek the familiar way, mindless chatter fills the air around them until they get to the cafeteria and their voices quiet in case the security guard is looping around. Y/N reveals her hand from the shield of his cardigan sleeve, Harry watches as the fabric pools around her arm, toward her elbow, and produces the key (that Niall only trusted her with). They creeped into the kitchen, pulled open the large refrigerator door, and the pudding sat in rows on the bottom shelf.

They both choose vanilla this time, having tired themselves out on chocolate, and they sit at the spot they had last time, across from one another. He can tell, despite his peace offering, that Y/N still feels upset about what had happened earlier and it sullies his mood. She’s still chatting but not with as much heart as she typically has, and Harry couldn’t stand it. He just wanted her to giggle as she teases him again, without feeling like she’s tip toeing on eggshells around him.

“Hey,” Harry starts, dragging her attention towards him where it had previously been scooping the sides of her pudding container, “Would you stop being so. . .tense? Is this about earlier?”

Y/N clears her throat, opening her mouth and furrowing her brows like she was about to deny it, but she relents, shoulders dropping, “A little. I still feel bad about everything,” she shakes her head, dragging the edge of the spoon around the plastic, “About everything, not just that you aren’t able to sleep with someone. I came in late, ruined you having your own cabin, woke you up with my alarm, made you get out of bed ‘cos I’m afraid of the dark and -- I just feel like this massive burden. I feel like this massive burden on everyone.”

Harry is alarmed by this sudden confession, but his body ultimately rejects the notion that she could ever be a bother, “How are you a burden to anyone?” He inquires, shaking his head, “You’re such a ball of light that just swarms through rooms. The thought of you being a burden is akin to the thought of Satan being a saint. . .it doesn’t sound right.” Harry sets his pudding down, though he keeps his hands fixed around the cup and the spoon, “Don’t know what gave you that idea, but the last thing you are is a burden. Who gave you the impression that you were?”

She wipes tiredly at her eyes, “Nobody in particular, it's just,” she shakes her head, “Even now, I wanted to make your night good, and then I fucked it, and now you’re here with me instead of having fun at the party. I just feel silly.”

“Don’t.” Harry tells her simply, “I like to spend time with you, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”

The tension in her shoulder releases, “Thank you for this, I’m sorry m’just saying the same thing again and again. Back at home it feels like everyone is just. . .so hyper aware of me -- they’re always being so careful, or overly concerned and I always wonder if it feels like a heavy weight on their shoulders, like I’m forcing a piggyback ride.” She shrugs her own, reaching for the second pudding cup, “It’s just shit, so I overthink everything all the time to try not to be a burden, but I keep making it worse. Or at least that’s how it feels.”

Harry tilts his head to the side some. He’s not usually someone who pries and probes people for information, but he’s never been more curious about Y/N than in this moment. When he thinks of Y/N at home, he thinks of sunshine pooling in the hallways through casement windows, her spinning around the kitchen in a dainty floral dress that billows around her as she stirs homemade jam. Harry imagines her amongst woodland creatures who coax her to the forest with songs, escorting her there as she gambols freely.

He could not imagine her going home and feeling like a burden. Hell, he would have thought that she considered everyone else a burden -- that maybe it was draining to be the absolute light of everyone’s life. Yet here she stood, seeming worn, and broken.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why is everyone hyper aware of you at home? You don’t have to answer if you’re uncomfortable.” He says it delicately -- he means it. . .if she didn’t want to share this with him, then he wouldn’t force her, but he wants to open up the possibility. He wants her to know that he’s an open ear if she so chose to utilize him.

“Um,” her gaze does shift downward -- she suddenly appears so small, “Are you sure?”

Harry nods.

“I just -- it's not that I don’t like bringing it up, I just don’t want you to treat me any differently than you would knowing it, yeah? I think that’s what I hate the most.” She notes, “So do you promise that you won’t -- you won’t start tiptoeing around me?”

“You’ve got my word.” Harry vows, but he has a feeling he knows what she is to say.

The sleeve of his cardigan covers her hand as she brushes the hair from her face, “In freshman year of UNI, my roommate was Mrs. Graham’s daughter, Penelope.” She straightens out in her seat, “We didn’t like each other much at first but we had grown very close -- um, once she threw away my fruit snacks and so I dunked her toothbrush in the toilet, but I felt guilty and went out to buy her a new toothbrush,” a laugh leaves her at the memory, as she rolls her eyes at herself, “That was what we had going for a while, but a late night heart to heart kind of made us closer. She told me things that. . .she’d been through a lot that nobody should have to go through, you know? She was bullied a lot growing up—in high school it was bad, people used to always gang up on her over stupid shit.” Harry hums, encouraging her to continue, and she stirs the pudding around mindlessly, “And we were just close after that. We had a flat together sophomore year and most of junior year, she’s my best friend,” she swallows thickly, “I didn’t realize how sad she was. . .I didn’t realize what she was still holding onto, and she -- we went home for Christmas break, and she never came back.”

Harry feels his stomach sour as her eyes bead with unshed tears, “Oh, Y/N,”

“It’s alright. I’m okay, I’m fine as I can be -- I’ve -- I’m mourning and I miss her, but I’m trying to be strong. Most days I am, but everyone at home just expects me to be this fragile thing, y’know? The days I’m happy, and chatty, they think I’m faking it. And some days I do, yeah, but. . .it’s just disheartening when everyone pretends to know what’s going on in my head.” She plants the pudding directly in the center, leaving it there and retreating her hands to her lap, “Mrs. Graham told me she felt the same. That’s why I came in last minute -- I’ve got all my volunteer hours settled and everything but she said it might be nice to get away.” A slow, easy sigh leaves her lips as she blinks the tears away, not one drop trickled down her cheek, “It is nice, but I still worry that I’m a strain on people around me, even if not for the reason I am at home. And I’m sorry to like, info dump all this on you,” she laughs a little in spite of herself, “You can’t ask me things, unless you want an hour long explanation.”

Harry reaches out his hand for her, for the second time that night, and once again she slowly slips their fingers together, “Thank you for sharing that with me, I know it must have been hard,” he squeezes her hand, “But I understand you a bit more now. I’ll keep my promise, I won’t treat you any differently, but before that --” she blinks at him, waiting, “I think you might just be one of the kindest, strongest, most caring people that I have ever meant. I know you would never do anything to intentionally hurt me or add stress onto my life, so you don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to try with me. We can just exist together, yeah? We’ll exist without burdens and without worry.”

The look in her eyes, was one that Harry had never seen before. One that makes him melt in her touch.

“I would like that.”

. . .

“I can’t swim.”

Harry was crouched down to Maisey’s height, fixing purple mermaid floaties around her arms. The day was not unusually muggy, but there was an additional itch to jump belly first into the cool watered lake. He had woken with a revitalized need to pry a star from the morning sky as it shifted from an inky purple to an early, dusky morning blue -- and give it to Y/N. He had decided after their conversation last night -- after they’d gone to bed and Y/N fell asleep cuddled in his cardigan -- he had an overwhelming, and an all encompassing want to hold her.

Which made it hard to part ways this morning, but he managed. And maybe he played out an image in his head where he pressed a kiss to Y/N’s cheek before they went to wake their respective cabins, or maybe he didn’t (but if he did that’s his own problem). He is quick to convince himself it was because she’d shared a piece of herself with him that he doesn’t think she lets many people see, and Harry always develops a bit of a platonic crush on his friends at some point or another. He questioned whether or not he was in love with Mitch for a solid four days once. . .sometimes he just let his heart get carried away.

He had been enmeshed in these thoughts as he got his campers ready for their time in the lake. At first glance, a ton of children in the lake seemed like a horrible, and faulty idea, but they took precautions so that everyone was safe. Every child wore floaties and/or life jackets no matter how proficient their swimming abilities. There was netting about ten meters out so that the children and counsellors couldn’t float out toward the middle, and they worked it so that only three children could be in per counsellor at a time, so that they could keep an eye on everyone. Harry wasn’t so nervous because he was a strong swimmer, and his kids were a little older, but he could tell Y/N had been a little jittery about it. It’s why Harry told her that while she was out in the lake with her little ones to let him know, he would come out with her to bring her some additional comfort that even the floaties could not provide.

Harry had been pretty sure all of his kids were excited to go to the lake and he was grateful for that, until he looked up to see the nervous, large blue eyes of Jackson, downcast after he had spoken the words. The unprompted admittance confused him as he turned to face him, “That’s okay, buddy, we’ve got floaties for that.”

Jackson did not seem convinced, shaking his head fiercely, “No, I -- I can’t swim.”

“J.J. is afraid of the water,” Noah exposes the truth just as easy as he takes a sip from his juice box, equipped with his own blue arm floaties, “He didn’t want to say though ‘cos --”

“Noah!” Jackson cuts him off, betrayal laced within his features.

“--’cos he didn’t want to seem like a wimp, but he almost drowned when he was little.”

Jackson looked as if he could cry, and Harry shook his head quickly, “Hey, hey, hey, c’mere buddy,” he motions him over, and he comes easily, stepping before Harry who had not bothered to leave his already crouched position, “Explain to me what’s going on, yeah?”

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, a frown prevalent on his mouth, even as he speaks, “When I was little little, my big brother pushed me into the pool and I went under the water and my mom had to come in and get me because I can’t swim good.”

Harry pulls his lips back, reaching out to squeeze Jackson’s shoulder, “I’m sorry to hear that buddy. I won’t force you to get in the water if you don’t want to, but I do want to tell you that if you feel more comfortable, we could try a life jacket instead of the floaties? It’ll keep you more buoyant -- more bouncy in the water.”

“Aren’t those for little kids?” Jackson inquires, brows pinched, but Harry shakes his head and points toward Y/N, never more glad in that moment that she had the age group she did, along with her views on not making them do, wear, or say anything that she wouldn’t herself. She’s got the life jacket swung around her arm as she clips Oliver into his own.

“Y/N’s going to wear one too, and she’s not a little kid. I’ll wear one as well if you’d like.” He promised him. Albeit looking reserved, Jackson nods softly with his hands in little fists, worrying his lip between his teeth. The poor thing, Harry thinks -- he used to be afraid of water too. Nobody wants to conquer that fear suddenly, let alone with a group of people that may or may not poke fun because they’re kids and kids are jerks sometimes.

Harry finds him a life jacket -- a cute one with a shark on it, that he helps him clip on, and fits it to his body with the straps. Next, he needed to find one for himself, but he wasn’t entirely sure where they kept the counsellor life jackets, so he called for Y/N where she’d been a few meters away and she popped her head up from where she was like a meerkat. Her eyes softened when she realized who had called her, and a gentle smile pulled at her mouth, “Hey hubby,” she greets him, much to the delight of Charlotte, who claps giddily, “What d’ya need?”

“A life jacket, please. Where’d you get yours?” Harry tries to be decent -- tries desperately to keep his eyes to himself, but he finds that this is surprisingly difficult when Y/N is in her swimsuit. It wasn’t obscene in any sense of the word -- in the pamphlet they get when they sign up, it is very clear that speedos and bikinis were not appropriate, and therefore not allowed. If a child couldn’t wear it, then you shouldn’t bring it -- was the apothegm that they chose to live by in reference to dress code.

This, however, doesn’t mean that Y/N’s swimsuit didn’t suit her well. It was fitted in a way that wasn’t too tight, yet wasn’t too loose -- like it might have just been made with her in mind. A simple one piece of nylon and lycra colored a powder blue, that barely showed off that much more of what she wears to bed, and yet his mind still flutters elsewhere. To unwise places, that he drags himself from before clearing his throat and forcing himself to look around the lake so it appeared his eyes were just scanning everything.

“You’re in luck,” Y/N jogged the short way from where they stood, back to where her kids were all gathered, playing happily in the sand. Beneath what Harry had assumed was just a cluster of towels, another life jacket was hidden beneath the fabric. She hands it toward him with a triumphant grin, “This was the last one. I grabbed it for you in case you just wanted to float rather than keep your legs kicking -- you had a big lunch, didn’t want you to get a cramp.”

Harry hates how his heart balloons in his chest. There was no reason to be a melt because she had thought of him -- that she had him in mind, so she snatched the last life jacket, and hid it beneath towels so nobody else could have it. No reason to feel all mushy from the way that she unfolds it for him, a silent prompt that she’s going to help him pull it on. And there was certainly, absolutely no good reason for how stupidly affectionate he feels when she strokes her finger along the heart tattoo on his forearm mindlessly, before murmuring, “You make me wanna get covered in them. Maybe I’ll just go and get all of yours.” She looks down at the ground, “Maybe not the toe, my feet are ticklish -- think I would kick the artist.”

He recruits Y/N for the process of easing Jackson into the water -- Noah and Elinor are floating and bobbing about happily at their sides, while Charlotte and Mikey playfully kick and float close to their older counterparts (if not practically on top of them). There was a chill bite to the water when they had first stepped in, but as they walked out further and sunk a bit deeper, the cold eases up. The cool air soothes them from the sharp bite of the scorching sun, Jackson holds his hand so tightly Harry thinks his fingers may go numb, and he figures Y/N is feeling the same way, if her soft, “Loosen your grip up a bit, Sweetheart, you’re gonna take off my hand.”

Eventually, Jackson relaxes. He finally understands that the life jacket will keep him afloat and holding onto Y/N and Harry wasn’t a necessity. Once the idea of this settles in his brain, he is more willing to let go and enjoy himself. It feels wonderful to see that he’s having fun, and even better when he sees the smile on Y/N’s face from this small victory. Last year, he hadn’t felt this parental over the children last summer, but something had changed. . .something that made him feel like he was a bit of a parent.

It has to be Y/N. There was something about her that just oozes mother figure for these kids, even if she wasn’t intending to do so. She kissed the bandages over their wounds to take away the hurt, she praised the ground they walked on, picked them up if they asked, danced with them, encouraged them, treated every single child as if they were her own. Harry believes she’ll be a beautiful mother one day, if that’s what she’d like, and whoever the father or mother was she had chosen to spend her life with, they were unbelievably lucky. He just hoped they would understand that.

Y/N floats into his line of sight, “Are you okay? Ellie said you look like Maisey’s aunt again, whatever that means.”

Harry snorts, before nodding, “Yeah, I’m fine. A bit tired.”

An understanding gleam overtakes her, “Y’know, I did think you seemed a bit snoozy,” she reaches out for him, squeezing his shoulder softly, “D’ya want to have a sneaky nap? I could watch the kids.”

“But I like having you both,” Jackson whined, shaking his head quickly, finding their hands once more, reassuring that his grip was tight as ever, “Please stay.”

“Yeah,” Noah splashes over to them, sliding his arms around Harry’s neck, wetting his hair with the water clinging to his life jacket, “You two are fun together! We always have so much fun -- Brittany said her counsellor always yells at them when they ask her to play with them.”

Elinor was quick to add, “And Ro’s counsellor falls asleep during art days! He doesn’t even help them stay in the lines, and they’re little like Oli, and Charlotte.”

Y/N’s bottom lip juts out in the prettiest little pout -- Harry finds himself wanting to pluck it with the pad of his thumb, “That’s silly, isn’t it? I have so much fun with you guys, I couldn’t imagine not playing. Right Harry?”

Nodding his assent, he reaches up, settling his hands around Noah’s arms and bring him along with him as he kicks them closer to Y/N and the other three, “It is silly. Some people just aren’t as fun as Y/N and I, Bug, it’s proven fact. They did the scientific method and everything.”

Oliver gleefully pushes himself up on Y/N’s shoulders, flopping back into the water and bobbing, “I love yous!” He chirped brightly, “Yous guys are my favorites! I love yous.”

The sight is adorable, especially as Y/N wriggles around and holds her arms out so they could hug, which Oliver happily accepts, “I love yous too, button.”

They have fun -- for hours, as they switch out which kids are in the water, spend time on the beach with all of them, making sandcastles, burying one another, chatting and playing. It was very freeing; Harry could easily tell that he and the others were having far more fun than any of the other groups were -- Mitch and Niall had gravitated their groups closer to them when Y/N and the kids began to pour sand over the top of him. Even Cassidy came around with her kids after they had heard them all giggling and laughing and wanted to know what was going on. Harry was having fun, and maybe he was just mushy, but he credited it to the joy Y/N was exuding. It was hard not to be in a good mood when he was around her.

By the time the sun sat a little lower in the sky, casting the shadows of trees over the sand and cooling them to the point of chilling. The kids washed their feet and hands beneath the rush of water from a yard hydrant, wrapped up in towels, and headed toward the dining hall for their dinner. There was a taco bar today, and Harry found that Y/N and he had a mutual love of tacos as a whole. She showed him how she adds feta crumbles, even let him have a bite of hers to see if he would like it so he could decide whether or not to put it on his own (it was delicious, she was right).

Once dinner was finished, everyone was exhausted. They all gathered around the campfire, one of the counsellors strummed a song on his guitar, they all had s'mores and then they dispersed. Not even the rush of sugar from the chocolate and marshmallow gave any of the children an umph in their step; they were all so sluggish and slow, dragging their feet through the dirt on their way to their cabins. Harry’s group barely kept their eyes open as they stalked to the showers, washing off the lake water and sand that had been clinging to their bodies. After they brushed their teeth, they all but face planted in their beds and snores soon filled the quiet air of the cabin. They only made him realize how exhausted he was from the day spent baking in the sun, floating and kicking in the water.

He trudges back to his cabin, where he finds Y/N had already showered off. She was face down in her pillow, her back slowly rising and falling with each gentle breath she took. She hadn’t covered in her blankets -- no, instead she used his cardigan as a makeshift cover over her body, and Harry thinks it might just be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. The patchwork swallows a good portion of her body, the sleeve flopped limply by her head. . .he could imagine her crawling into bed. Could imagine her putting her knee up first, dragging the cardigan that had been lying limply over the post with her and just letting it drape over her body. She probably wasn’t thinking she would fall asleep. . .probably thought she would just lay there for a minute before gathering the strength to get beneath her covers.

It’s adorable -- Harry hates how adorable he finds it, actually. If he could crawl in beside her he would, but instead he ambles to the bathroom, starts up the shower, and climbs in.

The water his hot -- boiling drops pelt his skin, washing away the grime and sweat that felt as if it’d been caked onto his skin. It felt good; to cleanse and scrub himself free of the lake, massage shampoo into his scalp, soften his curls with the conditioner, and just allow himself to revel in the feeling. Showers feel wonderful - a renewal that he deemed necessary by the end of the day. And when he gets the temperature just right, it soothes the aches and soreness in his bones, turning his muscles to softened jello. By the time he slipped out of the shower, he was practically boneless and thought he’d be lucky if he made it to his bed before dropping to the floor and falling asleep.

He expects Y/N to still be asleep when he leaves the bathroom, but he’s surprised to find her sat up in her bed, his cardigan pooled around her body and a deep frown on her face.

“Oh!” He’s started some -- he really thought she was out for the night, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“It’s morning?” Her face further turns to that of distress and Harry bites down hard on a chuckle.

“No,” he responds, “It’s not morning. Only about 10PM, so you’ve got plenty of time to rest still.” She looks around groggily, rubbing at her cheek with one hand while she fisted his cardigan in the other, pulling it closer around her body, “Why don’t you get beneath the covers, Babe?” He asks her, and she’s quiet for a little while. The only inkling Harry receives that she even heard him was how she tries to shuffle and wriggle the covers down with her still stretched out on the bed, stuffing her legs into the blankets first, then sliding the rest of the way smoothly. All the while she clings to the cardigan, holding it tightly, resting her cheek on it. Harry doesn’t know if Y/N’s just far more affectionate than he had even thought prior, or if she was just half awake and doing things she wouldn’t do if she was fully conscious. Vaguely does he remember her saying something about typically cuddling with a teddy at night -- how she stuffs her face against it because it always smells like her fabric softener.

He wonders if that’s why she snuggles with it -- he wonders if she likes the smell of him, so she buries her nose in the fabric and breathes it in as she rests.

Harry hates this. He hates how inconceivably soft he’s been feeling, but he can’t help it. Y/N had found him worthy enough to poke inside her brain -- she opened up to him in a way she expressed she’d not been opening up to many people about. It made him feel closer to her.

But he told her he wouldn’t treat her any differently after finding out. And if he suddenly started expressing more affection, he fears she would think he was only doing it because of what she told him. He just wants to be. . .he just wants to be gentle with her. Doesn’t want her to ever think that she’s a burden to him, because the anecdote had made him question and second guess how he’d been treating her their entire time here. Of course, he was never intentionally cruel, but some of the situations he thinks about the two of them in, and how he responded, makes him cringe.

He switches off the overhead light, her dimmed bedside lamp and muscle memory guide him to his bed. Harry climbs in, shivers as he adjusts to the warmth beneath his covers, and breathes a soft sigh of relief to have finished with the day.

“Harry?” Y/N’s voice startles his eyes open, which he’d not been aware he’d closed.

“Hm?” He hums -- he had thought she’d fallen back asleep already.

“You’re okay?”

A soft smile plays at his mouth -- she asks him every night before bed, he’s noticed.

“Yes, I’m okay. Are you okay?”

She nods, “You did really good today,” her voice is muffled from her cheek mushed against his cardigan, “The kids had a lot of fun, they were telling me. I had a lot of fun too.”

“Yeah? Me too,” he reaches to thumb the hairs of his eyebrow down, “And thank you. You always do really well with the kids.”

She’s quiet for a minute, and once more, Harry thinks she must have fallen asleep, but the shift of the mattress tells him she’s changing position and Harry notices once more that his eyes have closed, “I’m glad you’re my roomie.”

Harry utters the words, that two weeks ago he thinks he would have spit at.

“Yeah, I’m glad you’re my roomie too.”

. . .

Harry was drunk.

Typically, he didn’t allow himself to get very drunk at these little parties. He trusted the others so little, he had no doubt in his mind that any moment he was slightly impaired in some way they would take it upon themselves to prey on his weakness. This means he only ever gets mildly tipsy -- drinks enough to feel good but caps himself when he thinks he might start stumbling.

But he just didn’t cap himself today. Not for any reason in particular -- their day hadn’t been difficult. They helped their kids through a mildly strenuous obstacle course throughout the morning, cooled down with them drinking juice boxes and eating popsicles and by 2PM they were inside doing little DIY projects. Harry burned his finger with some hot glue, but otherwise it was a pretty easy smooth kind of day that they didn’t get often. He and Y/N hadn’t gotten to spend much time together, which he wouldn’t admit loudly was a disappointment, but he and his kids had all agreed that they missed her.

(And when they had seen her and her group walking into the art room, the lot of them had erupted in cheers, Noah, Eli, Maisey being the loudest of them.)

They had a pasta dinner that was surprisingly filling, they told “spooky” campfire stories and ate s’mores, he got his kids ready for bed and he went off to the cabin. He and Y/N were going to one of the parties tonight, not because they had such spectacular luck with a good time before, but because they were coming up on some of their last nights here at camp. It was a bittersweet feeling -- Harry remembered being more than ready to flee last year, counting down each day, each hour dragging on longer than the last. This time, it felt like it was coming too quick. He would miss the kids, he would miss the busy days some. . .and sure, he was happy to go home and take a shower that stays hot longer than five minutes and rest on his soft, cozy bed, but he would miss not having Y/N right across from him.

That was what he was having the most trouble coming to terms with, he thinks. The idea of them not having to spend every moment of every day with one another after doing it for three weeks almost sounds wrong. It's the same feeling he gets when he knew he and Mitch wouldn’t have such easy access to one another once they went back home. Being at this camp sort of felt like being stuck in a time loop where the outside world doesn’t exist, so it’s very easy to forget that they all have lives outside of here. They all go to class, go to work, go home, study, eat and sleep.

He and Y/N live relatively close to one another -- only about a ten minute drive up the street with only one turn and it's into her apartment building -- but he wonders if they’ll utilize it. He wonders if their friendship is tied to this camp and if that’s where it will remain, or if she even wants to be friendly with him after. Harry hadn’t considered that maybe she was only putting up with him because they had to live together and she didn’t want it to be miserable. Had he questioned if he was even enjoyable to be around? How does he ask her that without sounding entirely too desperate or needy?

So partially, he drinks to ease some of the worry in his mind. Harry doesn’t think he would “break down” or something like it if they weren’t able to continue being friends -- like a forgotten summer love that he might think about throughout the fall, and message her to see how she was doing -- but he certainly wouldn’t be delighted if that’s how it ended up. Harry thinks there’s so much more to Y/N that he would like to see, and know, and hear. Three weeks isn’t enough time, Harry decided, but in the same breath he wondered if she had thought it was more than enough.

Harry knows she cares for him, at least a little bit. He knows that he cares for her and her wellbeing; he was fond of her. From what he knew of who she was fundamentally, down to her core, Harry knew she was selfless and kind -- it was hard to find people like that, who were that, without it being cakey or clouded by something else. She was transparent in who she was and her feelings regarding most things, and Harry valued her honesty.

And she was just so damn fun. Every moment with her he spent, the air filled with laughter; she brought a slice of sun in her pocket wherever she went and Harry was consistently being warmed beneath it.

The fact of the matter is, Harry doesn’t know how he could meet someone like Y/N, and get used to the idea of her not being in his life after three weeks. If he could refuse it he would, but what was he going to do? Kidnap her and take her home with him?

He’s sat on the tree root, opposed to standing beside it like he usually is, with his back pressed against the bark of the tree and he ignores the jagged, uneven trunk against his skin. Mitch was beside him, leaning lower than he was with his jacket bundled up and stuffed behind his head, his legs kicked out as far as they would go and because of this, his foot rested against Niall’s lap. Niall was pleasantly gone himself, a bit louder than normal but also zoning out every so often.

He was a good guy, Niall -- he had good opinions, and he chatted him and Mitch up about guitars often (he was typically the camp’s go to for an acoustic guy if they ever wanted campfire songs). Harry thinks they could probably be really good friends, if not for the fact that Niall was so barefaced in his crush on Y/N.

It was obvious, Harry thought. He’d thought it was obvious from the first moment he spent a prolonged period of time with both he and Y/N -- his cheeks got rosy when she touched him, he stuttered over his gratitude if she complimented him, and if she went out of her way to do something (like when she’d stuffed her hand into a thorn-bush for his guitar pick that had flung from his fingers, and subsequently got all scratched up), he would look at her how someone might stargaze.

Harry doesn’t know why he doesn’t just ask her out, if he likes her so much. It almost irritates him how skittish Niall seems to get at the prospect of it; to run away from those warm, nice feelings that she provides is silly. It reminds him entirely too much of himself and he loathes it.

Tonight had been no different, only Y/N was dancing back and forth between them and a few other counsellors (Harry only recognized one of them , who was called Rosie and had been in his first year maths). Harry watched her most of the night, in the least obnoxious and creepy way he could, just because. . .well, she was nice to look at. He liked how her body animated as she spoke, or how she nodded her head as someone was speaking to her -- it was an encouraging nod, and her eyes locked onto theirs like they might be telling her where the fountain of youth might be located, or the secrets to the universe.

She was cozy today -- it was cooler out than most of the nights that they had experienced, with a chill breeze that had even stirred goosebumps on Harry’s arms (and he was all but swaddled in his hoodie). Y/N had a light fitted sweater that she sometimes slept in -- not heavy enough to shield her from the icy terrain that winter would provide, but enough to fight past the harsh summer night breeze that threatened to help a storm roll in within the next few hours. Loosely, he let the images of her cuddled close to him invade his brain. What it might feel like, how the knit would brush against his skin, if she would hide her face in his neck or spider around him as the big spoon and burrow against his hair. Y/N struck him as someone who liked to do more of the cuddling than being cuddled herself.

He would miss her when they had to leave. Harry worried who would just exist with her, like they had been doing. He worried about her going back to a place where she felt like a burden -- he would be around, wouldn’t he? If she allowed him to, he could be there for her, but he doesn’t want to seem pushy. By all definitions, they had really just met -- Harry had known Y/N for approximately 17 days, but it felt like so much longer. He wonders if he had known her in a past life, or if it was the fact that they spent almost every day all day with one another for at least 15 of those 17 day -- he finally understands how everyone in the Love Island villa always goes on about how a day in the outside world feels like a week where they are.

It’s not like he’s professing his love to her, for fuck sake. He just likes her -- whether it be platonic or not, Harry thinks Y/N is just delightful.

“Your little girlfriend’s not with you?”

Harry had forgotten how Jack’s voice sounded how grating nails against iron pipes might make someone feel, mostly because they hadn’t spoken in quite a while. After Y/N had slapped him, he had kept to himself, resorting more to disgruntled glares and probably pissy comments he was murmuring to his mates about him. If someone asked Harry, he would say that him and his friends were afraid of Y/N -- she posed a good threat to them. Sure, they hadn’t understood the extent of her words that night (like how and why she knew Miss. Graham), but they were enough to rattle them. No matter being in university, or within the range of 20-23 years old, nobody wanted to be scolded by a woman in her 40s, nor did they want to be kicked out of a camp counsellor position, or to have their volunteer hours revoked.

So they had left him alone, which Harry thinks may have been such a strain for them he would be surprised if they hadn’t popped a blood vessel. Even if they wanted to, he was always with Y/N -- they never really had the chance, and if they did, they didn’t really take it.

Which is why he is both surprised and incredibly annoyed with Jack’s sudden appearance.

“Piss off.” Harry responds, nursing his beer bottle closer to him.

“You’re always so ill-tempered,” Jack leans up against the tree, “Just wanted to have a chat. Like why Cassidy suddenly wants to break things off after chatting with you and Y/N. Got any ideas?”

Harry’s brows dipped in confusion, “What? What are you on about?”

“Don’t act like you don’t fucking know,” Jack rolls his eyes, “Cassidy and I are doing just fucking fine for six months, but we come here, she starts chatting with you and now all the sudden she’s ready to break up. What the fuck did you say, hm?” He nudged Harry’s side with his foot, “Fucking Y/N wasn’t enough, you had to fuck Cassidy too?” He kicked him this time, harder than before.

Harry, who did not take too kindly to being kicked, rolled his eyes and pushed himself to a stand, “Dunno why you’re so fucking insecure that you think me being around has anything to do with Cassidy finally seeing what a prick you are, but this needs to stop,” he handed his bottle to Mitch who took it wordlessly, “I’m not fucking Cassidy, I’ve never fucked Cassidy, so if you could just grow the fuck up and recognize that maybe she broke up with you, because you’re awful to be around, that would be great.”

Jack, which Harry had expected, took more of a physical approach, giving a shove to Harry’s shoulders, and Harry’s back slams against the tree behind him, “Fuck you,” he spit, “You all holier than thou ‘cos you’re dipping your dick in Miss. Rainbow Bright? What do you know about me, hm? You’re just a dumb fuck who has to be here because you’re a no good druggy fuck with anger issues. How does it feel knowing you’ll amount to nothing after UNI?”

There isn’t a lot that could get under Harry’s skin. A lot of people could say a lot of shit that he brushes off and lets go, but there are two things that he really just can’t. One of them is when people try to speak poorly of his mum, and the other, was when someone pretends to know his situation when they don’t have a fucking clue. Who was this trust fund bastard to tell him he was a druggy fuck? That he would amount to nothing after UNI? Harry worked two jobs to set himself through school and keep himself fed, with a roof over his head, just so that he could live the life he wanted to after university.

Maybe it was silly to punch him, but it felt good to. Harry reared back his fist and it collided with his jaw, making Jack stumble backward, his hand flying to his face, “You fucking --” he swung in return, only he catches Harry’s shoulder because Harry moved out of the way in anticipation. Niall narrowly dodged being caught in the crossfire as he rolled out of the way.

The fight didn’t get too far, however, because when Jack was gearing up to swing again, Y/N appeared and easily wormed her way in between them, “Are you serious right now?” Her brows were furrowed -- she looked legitimately pissed off, and, well. . .it made Harry take a step back at least, “Thought we had a chat about this, hm? You were going to leave him the fuck alone -- no, look at me, not him,” she grabbed at his collar, giving a sharp tug when his angry gaze had flittered back toward Harry, “I’m not an angry person, Jack, I don’t like being mean, or cruel like you seem to be so fond of, but I can and will be if I need to and I promise you that. Don’t you ever speak to someone like that again, yeah? What you were saying was just awful.” She lets go of his collar, taking a step back and sighing in a sharp huff, “I can’t speak for Cassidy, but if I had to guess she probably cut things off because you’re a jealous bastard who questions every interaction with another person and try this alpha male persona to scare other people away. It must be exhausting.”

Jack shook his head, “We were fine --”

“You thought you were fine. Things aren’t always what they look like, alright? The sooner you understand that, the easier your life will be.” She nods toward the center of the clearing they were in, “Go get some ice from the cooler, and go the hell back to your cabin. You’re not a fun drunk.”

Albeit reluctantly, Jack follows her orders and slinks his way to the cooler. The others around them had grown quiet as they had watched the confrontation unfold, but they soon all lost interest once they realized nothing more would happen. Y/N turned to face Harry, the anger on her face immediately dissolving, as she shakes her head, “What a dick. I’m so sorry he spoke to you like that,” she takes ahold of his wrist, the hand that he had punched Jack with, running her thumbs over his reddened knuckles, “I told him -- after the lake, I told him that he needed to leave you alone or I’d do something about it. Dunno what I was gonna do, but I was going to do something -- I will --”

“Hey, hey,” he cuts her off, “It’s okay -- it’s okay, come on, let’s. . .let’s go to the cabin, yeah? Should we go back to the cabin?”

Y/N looks at him like he was batty, “No shit we’re going back to the cabin! I’ve got to give you like a full medical look over. He slammed you into the tree, and honestly, you bruise like a peach.”

They make the trek back to the cabin, relatively quiet, Harry still attempting to process what had happened and what Y/N had said. Had she really spoken to Jack after the fact and threatened him if he messed with Harry again? The softest, probably sweetest person he knows, had taken Jack off to the side and told him if he didn’t leave Harry alone she was going to do something about it. Not only that, she grabbed him by his collar and told him off in front of everyone. It made his heart race, the thought of it, and his cock twitches in his pants at the moment on repeat in his mind.

Once they get back to the cabin, Y/N has him take his hoodie off with her in the bathroom so she could visualize his back and shoulder. Jack may be short-tempered and smaller than Harry, but his punches still packed a great deal, so a nice, reddening bruise was forming quickly around his shoulder. On his back there were scrapes from the tree bark, Y/N tells him, and a ton of little bruises that had begun to form as well. She makes him stay still as she retrieves the first aid kit from their medicine cabinet.

“Y/N,” he started, and she hummed to encourage him to continue, “When did you speak with Jack privately?”

She clears her throat, plopping the first aid kit down on the sink counter and unclipping it open, “The morning after the lake,” she answers without hesitation, “I wasn’t trying to like, fight your battles or anything, but I needed him to know I wasn’t bluffing when I told them I would rat them out, and worse if the situation allowed it. I hate bullies,” she pulls out a small tube of bacitracin, tutting her tongue as she squeezes it out on the tip of her finger, “And I hate how they treat you. I’m sorry if I overstepped.”

“You didn’t at all,” Harry remarks softly, jolting when her fingers very carefully graze over one of the tender areas on his back, “Thank you, actually, for sticking up for me again.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I think I’m pretty scrappy when I need to be,” she giggles to herself, “Like, if need be, I would take on the Queen for you. Might be an uneven match though, she’s pushing 100.”

Harry spins around to face her though, “Y/N, I mean it,” he tells her seriously, their gazes locking, “Thank you for everything. For dealing with my attitude, for sticking up for me, for helping with the kids, for making this experience bearable, for being such a positive light,” he sighs, “You’re amazing, you deserve amazing things.”

Y/N looks taken by his words -- he wonders if she’s as lost in his eyes as he is in hers. Her mouth falls open gently, like she may be searching for what to say back to him but can’t come up with anything. He worries that he’d said too much -- that he freaked her out or something. He wasn’t trying to, he was just so grateful for her, he didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to express it.

He is about to apologize for being too forward, when Y/N pushes the short distance and connects their lips together.

Harry’s confused for a moment as his brain registers what’s happening, but when he feels that she might pull away, his body finally seems to wake up. His hands find her face, cradling her jaw in his hands as he reaffirms the kiss and lets the butterflies in his body take over in hoards. He’d given thought to kissing Y/N, sure, but he’d never thought it would happen. Not only that, he’d never thought it would feel this nice. She tastes like the pineapple wine coolers she’d been sipping on that night, her lips still a bit sticky from the residue of the alcohol on her soft lips.

She’s gentle in how she kisses, like Harry would have guessed -- careful too, and cautious with how her lips parted from him only to fix back together. A pool of heat had formed in Harry’s lower belly and rose to his chest, stirring his heart in flutters when her tongue slid into his mouth and met her own. Harry hadn’t realized just how badly he wanted to kiss her until their tongues are sliding against one another, and his hands are slipping down from her jaw, caressing the delicate skin of her throat, skating down her chest to her hips. He squeezes her sides and pulls her closer to him, feeling the knit of her top rub against his bare torso. It was as soft as he’d imagined it’d be.

Had she been wanting to kiss him for as long as he wanted to kiss her? Normally, Harry could tell how badly someone wanted to kiss him by the act alone, but with Y/N he was so caught up he couldn’t focus. She was calm and soft, but the longer they kissed, the more ardent she became. It was the tiny moan that had left from her mouth into his own, that made him lightheaded. He had to pull away to breathe but his forehead pressed against hers as he breathed in, “Harry?” Her voice is low, she says his name like a secret, “Was that okay?”

His response is to press their lips back together, but this time only for a moment, before he withdraws. Harry loops his fingers around her wrist and brings her with him back into the main room, flopping onto her bed since it was the closest and urging her to climb into his lap. She straddles him, and just as soon as she’s within reach, he slides his fingers at the nape of her neck and pulls her back to his mouth.

It was good -- it felt so fucking good, Harry couldn’t begin to describe it. He held her close, and tried as he might to stave off his cock from ruining the moment, the longer they kissed the harder he got. How she was positioned at first made it so she couldn’t really feel him, but when she tried to get closer to him, she scooted her hips forward and rubbed up right against him. A gasp leaves her as she parts from him, looking down, having lifted her hips, “I’m sorry,” she apologizes and Harry gives a startled laugh.

“I’ve got a stiffy, and you’re apologizing?” He chuckles with a shake of his head, “I’m sorry, Sweetheart. I’ve got a pretty girl in my lap kissing me, s’kind of hard not to get hard. We can stop if you want.”

“I don’t want to stop,” she answers with no delay nor doubt, as she lowers back down, resting her front on his prick and with this she gives an experimental roll of her hips. Harry hisses in a breath as she does it again, her own little moan slipping from her mouth. She was only in a thin little pair of shorts, and Harry had chosen sweatpants for the night, so there was little fabric truly separating them. Harry was thankful for it as she continued to roll her hips against him, sponging kisses from his mouth, down his jawline, to the curve of his throat. She fixed her lips there, lulling her tongue over the skin before she started suckling at him and Harry’s hands danced along her back, stroking up and down it, feeling her, holding her closer. Each roll of her hips made him harder, and he was desperate to know if she was wet. If he pushed his fingers into her shorts, would they come back slick from her arousal? Would she watch him as he slid them into his mouth to taste her? Would she let him split her thighs and lick straight from the source.

His mind was overcome with filth, smutty images entangle once innocent thoughts as she brought the blood to the surface of his skin. When one of his hands left where it had latched onto her hip and slowly maneuvered around to her front, she paused, but left her face dipped in his throat, “Are you wet for me?” He asks her quietly and she nods through a little shiver, “Yeah? Bet you soaked through your little panties,” he murmurs as he slides his fingers past the elastic bands of her shorts and underwear, but left his fingers just past them, “Answer me.”

“Yes,” her voice trembles, she swallows thickly and the muscles in her abdomen contract beneath his fingers.

Harry hums low, slipping his fingers down further and he dips between her slick folds, “Oh, Sweetheart,” he presses a chaste kiss to the side of her head, “Is this your first time getting wet for me?” She shakes her head, “Hm, really? So you’re like this often? Do you take care of it?”

“I -- yeah,” she stutters over a moan as the pads of his fingers roll over her swollen clit slowly, feeling it flick beneath them, “At night, sometimes I will in the shower if I can’t. . .if I can’t wait anymore.”

He feigns a gasp, “Oh my goodness,” he speeds up the slow lull of his fingers, “Your showers are always so fast, doll, you’re really that quick to cum?”

Harry may not be able to see her face, but he can hear the pout clear in her voice, “It usually isn’t that fast! Just with you, it is -- when I think of you, it’s always quick.”

He thought it would be impossible for his cock to be harder than it already was, but her words make pre-cum bubble at the tip, and when he dips his fingers back into her slick little hole, he gets even harder. Gliding his fingers from her panties, he draws them up to his mouth and presses them past his lips as he’d wanted to. Y/N has withdrawn from his throat, watching him do it with glassy eyes, her hands resting on his shoulders, digging her fingers into grape sized dents at the muscle. Her mouth falls open as he sucks her juices away, his eyes fluttering and a groan torn from his throat.

“Get on the bed,” he instructed and Y/N followed without question, crawling from his lap and lying her head on her pillow as Harry stood, and repositioned himself. He takes a hold of shorts and drags them down her legs, wriggling them off her ankle and tossing them elsewhere. His lips finds her ankle first, before he’s peppering and sponging kisses down her leg, the parts that he had tended to throw over his shoulder. When he gets to her thighs, he makes the kisses slower, softer -- he suckles and nips at the supple skin until he’s right before her center, only to switch to her other thigh and push kisses up and down the length of it.

Y/N’s whole body trembles with each shaky breath she gives. She’d spoken no words until he was positioned right in front of her core, looping his fingers in the waistband of the little cotton pair she had on, pulling them up toward her hips so the fabric stretched out over her. He could see her pussy beneath it, made out the outline of her swollen lips and engorged clit -- it made his mouth water.

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want,” she tells him, and his gaze is pulled back up to her -- she looks apprehensive.

“What?”

She shrugs, “I know some guys don’t really like to so --”

“Do you want me to eat your pussy?” Harry asks her bluntly, and he revels in the way her eyes widen, and how bashful her face turns as she looks away, “It’s a yes or no question, honey, if you don’t want me to, I can come back up and kiss you while I make you feel good with my fingers. If you do want me to, I’m g’na pull those panties to the side and make you cum on my tongue -- either I’m good with.”

“I -- yes,” she answers, her voice meek, “Yes I want you to.”

Harry smiles softly, “Poor thing, How many stupid boys were refusing to eat this sweet little peach?” He runs his thumb up and down her slit, visualizing where the wet spot had grown and soaked her panties so that the fabric thinned. Leaning in, he nosed at her clit and she inhales, “God, I’m so excited — you’re okay with this? You’re okay with me eating this little pussy out? Need you to let me know because once I start sweet girl, I’ll be in heaven.”

“Yes, please, please lick me.”

“So polite,” he suckles a kiss at the very innermost part of her thigh, before licking one, long stripe up her center through the fabric. She moans, pushing her hips down toward his mouth as he drags his tongue over it again, and again, and again. He soaks it with his spit, teasing her — he wanted to pull her panties to the side and suckle and slurp between her lips until she came — but he wants her to beg for him. Wants to hear that she wants him just as much as he wants her.

He smiles against her as he hears her getting impatient, little huffs between each moan. She whines, her hips bucking up against his tongue — he looks up to her, watching as her chest rises and falls quickly. The fingers of one hand are dug into the sheets beside her, while the others rest between her teeth. Her brows were tilted, lips pouted, whimpers come more frequently the longer he suckles and laps on the fabric, drenching it.

“Harry,” she finally works out, shivering when he pauses just over her clit and flickers his tongue over the top of it, “Oh, please just -- please.”

“Hm?” He hums against her, jolts, inhaling sharply, “What is it, baby? You’ve got to use your words.”

“Please stop teasing me,” she tells him, “Please take them off.”

And Harry may love to tease, but he wasn’t cruel. Wasn’t a bloody monster, was he? So he slides his index and middle finger in between the fabric and her core and tugs them over to the side -- he didn’t want to waste any time wiggling them down her legs. No, instead he dips his tongue in between her lips and slides it flat and straight up to her swollen clit. The groan that leaves her is sinful -- it makes his cock twitch in his pants, his heart slamming against his sternum as he suckles and her fingers find his curls. She digs her fingers within the strands, rocking her hips up to meet his mouth, and for a moment, Harry just leaves his tongue out and flat for her to grind against. Harry thinks, if he could spend the day just strapped to Y/N’s bed, willing, ready, and waiting for her to come use his mouth how she pleased -- he would be inconceivable happy.

Eventually he wiggles his face back into her, sliding his tongue back and forth before he latches his lips back around her silky folds. The swollen little button crying desperately for his attention was where he spent most of his time, lapping, or lulling his tongue in circles around it. She keens, her heel digs into the mattress and begins to slide down but Harry grabs a hold of her thighs and pushes both of them up, so her knees are to her chest. The new position makes her cry out his name raggedly, and Harry was teeming with carnal desire, and so horny he thinks he would barely have to hump against the mattress to cum.

“I’m close,” she warns him, mewling, “I’m g’na cum, I’m -- oh, please don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

Harry doesn’t think he’d stop if he was paid to do it. He doubles his efforts, sucking harder, sliding down to tongue at her hole while his fingers wrapped around and spun little circles into her clit. His other hand he reaches up with and slides his thumb into her mouth and she accepts it graciously, as it muted her moans that grew louder and louder the closer she got.

When she cums, it’s beautiful -- Harry wishes he would be able to see it on repeat, how her back arched upward and her hips bucked loosely as she pulsated around his tongue. Her mouth hangs open around his thumb, her eyes squeezed shut, the fingers in his hair tighten and her other hand wraps around his wrists and holds him tightly. The initial lurch of it subsides and she melts into the mattress, trying to catch her breath, her chest heaving beneath her sweater.

After he thoroughly cleans her (until she’s twitching and jumping away from his tongue), he crawls up her body, pushing her sweater up over her breasts, “Can I fuck you, Darling?” He asks her, a small smile on his mouth when she leans her chest closer to him so he can reach behind her and unclip her bra. Tugging the cups away, he grabs them carefully, thumbing over her nipple, “If you don’t want to, that’s okay, don’t feel bad about it, just let me know.”

“I want you to,” she rushes to tell him, nodding, “Do you have a condom?”

He dips his head against her chest, breathing out a sigh, “Fuck me,” he utters, shaking his head, “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

He usually does -- Harry always keeps a few on him, but he remembers very vividly he and Y/N had blown his last one up just a few nights prior and drawn a face on it. For a moment he feels hopeless, a sad pit forming in his stomach because the thought of fucking Y/N sounded like paradise and he only brought one bloody condom that he wasted.

“It’s okay, we’ll do it next time then,” she tells him, and Harry feels a joyful spike in his overall demeanor. Next time -- she wanted there to be a next time? And if she wanted there to be a next time, then they would have to see each other after the camp. . .they would spend time together, Harry could learn what she was like in her normal day to day. He was eager and delighted, and not even just at the prospect of pushing into her (which he was also pretty damn excited for), “I mean, if you wanted to do this again, then, yeah -- right? We’ll hang out after camp is through?”

A smile threatens to split his cheeks, “Of course we will,” he tells her, nosing at her jawline, “And not just ‘cos you promised to let me fuck you. I was hoping we would see each other still but was worried that you might be sick of me.”

Her brows pinch, “Sick of you? Dummy, I thought you would be sick of me!” She shakes her head, rolling her eyes at the both of them, “We’re so stupid, we ought’a communicate better.” Y/N presses at his abdomen, “C’mon then, I’ll spin around and you can fuck between my thighs. I did it once with a boy -- I just shaved in the shower last night too so it should be soft.”

Y/N flips over, scooting her bum in the air for him as she cuddles a pillow to her face, her ankles locked in place and her thighs squeezed together. Harry wiggles out of his pants and boxers before he lets a glob of spit fall onto his stiff cock that had soundly slapped up against his stomach, slicking it up nice and wet so the glide between her thighs wouldn’t be too dry. One hand he lays palm flat to her bum, stroking the skin there with his thumb while the other hand navigates his prick, tipping it down and fitting it between her warm, soft thighs.

It felt good; Harry groans wantonly as he pulls out and sinks back in, watching himself disappear between them. She wiggles her bum at him and Harry playfully swats it, chuckling when she squeals and giggles, “You’re so fucking cute,” he coos before bending over, stretching himself over her so his chest was pressed to her back as he started steadily fucking in between her thighs. One hand he uses to cup her breast and tweak at her nipple while the other he slides down to her pussy, finding her swollen little button and rubbing it.

Harry’s skin prickles as she moans, her legs falling open just slightly but he tuts his tongue, “Keep them nice and tight for me, baby,” he murmurs, and she nods, tightening the channel for him once more. He won’t last long, he knows it -- he can feel that pool of heat crackling in his lower belly. His blood buzzes in his ears as he fucks his hips forward, their skin slapping together sound in their little cabin. Her breasts bounce with each thrust he gives, she’s beginning to cum again from the ministration of his fingers, and Harry’s nearing the end of his rope.

“You feel so fucking good,” he’s just a breath away from her ear, “You’re gonna make me cum.”

He nibbles at the shell of her ear and lets his eyes flutter closed, his senses on overload. All he can hear, and taste, and smell, and feel is her. Dizzy and overwhelmed, Harry feels as if he may burst at the seams.

“Cum,” she murmurs, “Please, I want you to feel good -- I want you to cum.”

That’s all it takes -- the little push of her words has his hips stuttering as he cums, spurting long stripes between her thighs, some catching her skin, some landing on her sheets below them. His world fizzles out, static splinters through his body as warmth rushes through his veins, and his toes curl hard enough to lock up. As he comes back to, he giggles, the last of his orgasm drooling from the tip as he pushes a kiss to the back of Y/N’s head, “Stay still, lemme go get us a rag.”

His legs feel like jelly when he stands, fleeing arse naked to the bathroom and returning moments later with warm, wet rags. He cleans her first, careful in how he works her underwear down her legs before he pats gently around her thighs and at her center. She’s sensitive, so a few times she twitches and flinches from him but eventually relaxes as she holds tightly to the pillow. He wipes himself off a bit haphazardly, more concerned with getting Y/N somewhere to lie down as he gently tugs on her arms, “C’mere, poor thing, I came all over your bed.”

“Yeah, you jerk,” she says puckishly, letting him guide her over to his bed, climbing in and immediately snuggling beneath his covers. Harry is not too far behind her, and at first she snuggles up close to him, she hisses and squeals before trying to shuffle away, “Why are your feet like ice?” She asks him, her words accusing, like he’d come in the bed with intent to freeze her.

Harry shrugs, “I dunno’ I usually wear socks to bed to keep them warm.”

“Socks? To sleep?” She slowly wiggles her way closer to him, despite the words that follow, “I don’t think we can share a bed, you’re batty.”

“Guess you’ll have to go sleep on the jizzy bed then.”

Y/N laughs, and Harry feels it vibrate through his body as he holds her close to his chest, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. They’re quiet for a moment, as they both settle, taking deep, slow breaths, allowing themselves to slip towards sleep.

Before Harry could get there, Y/N murmured his name.

“Thanks for being my camp ‘husbad’.”

Harry smiled to himself, and held her a little closer before he teased her.

“You can say thank you next time with an 18 carat diamond.”

#WRITING #WOOOOOOOOOOO #I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE IT #YAHTZEE :D #IT WAS FUN TO WRITE #IM GONNA DO A SMALL PART 3 TO TIE THINGS UP IN A LITTLE BOW #HAPPY READING #harry smut

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bakugohoex · 4 years

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looove your blog keep up the amazing work 😙✌🏽 anywho fic where people in UA still think shinsou's quirk is scary and they avoid him as much as possible bc they're scared he might activate it + that makes him sad but reader isn't scared of him at all !! and she always talks to him/hangs with him etc.. and he like low-key falls in love w her

”why aren’t you scared of me?”

pairing: hitoshi shinso x female reader

cw: language, slight angst, fluff, kissing

word count: 4000+

a/n: umm this is weird and i got rid of the joint traning arc and mina and momo are being bitches and it’s just me waffling at 00:30 so yeah have fun to the people awake reading this also thank you so much for the support

summary: in which shinso joins class 1a and whilst everybody seems to be scared of him out of fear he’ll use his quirk, you try to befriend the boy and he develops feelings as soon as you talk to him.

↞ back to my hero academia masterlist

His arrival into the class was shocking to say the least, the small whispers between your classmates and the fear that flushed through their eyes. Except you, you were intrigued by the boy, having seen his quirk at the sports festival you had seen how he used it against Midoriya. His soft violet hair looked a mess but a cute mess to say the least, his dull eyes and grey marks underneath his eyes melted your insides.

“You can sit behind Y/n.” You smiled to signify you were Y/n and he looked down walking past your classmates.

The whispers all in ear shot, you could see his eyes fall but didn’t say anything about it. Him, swiftly taking the seat right behind you, Aizawa had let the class talk among themselves and the fact nobody had come to talk to the boy. Hurt you a lot more than you wished, “y/n, we’re having that movie night next Sunday.”

“I can’t wait.” You turned around to meet the boy, “you’re invited as well.”

He gazed up catching your eyes, your knuckles were white due to the grip on the chair, and you stared with utter confidence. Mina having been the one to ask, she gave a side eye at what you had just said but didn’t bother making a remark.

Shinso answered with a, “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“No, it’s fine, I want you to come.” You had never been this confident but at how he had been ignored by the rest of the class it jolted something inside of you, “we can have lunch together as well.”

“Okay.” It was blunt and Momo this time had come up to you.

She stood in front of you, ignoring the boy, you could see how tense she was at the close proximity between them. She gestured for you to get up, but you ignored her action, “I’ll talk to you later.” You spoke continuing to ignore her pleas, was she really scared of him?

Were they all really that scared of him?

“You can go to your friends; you don’t need to be some sort of pity party.” Shinso muttered, stretching back and leaning against his chair.

Wide eyed, you tilted your head to be placed on the back of your hands, “I’m not a pity party, I want to be friends.”

“Friends, your class hates me.” He looked up and down, your skirt had ridden up and he could see a scar that you had probably gotten from someone’s quirk.

You roll you eyes giving the boy a smirk, “they don’t hate you.” .

“Really?” He gushes out knowing it’s the truth.

“Yes, stop worrying.” It was concerning how easy you two could converse, and your friends were ever so afraid. His gaze watching every one of your features, they assumed he was thinking of how to taint you, but all the saw was a tenderness comfort from you.

You noticed Ectoplasm come through the door ready to teach the hated maths lesson, “be warned if you get a question wrong, he will glare at you.” You gestured to the man and Shinso’s lip twitched upwards.

“Maybe it’s just because you get the questions wrong.” Shinso remarked back, urning a small slap on the arm to him.

His could feel the tip of his ears redden at how your hand had touched his arm, even though the fabric, your hand had lingered before hearing the sound of the lesson starting. You turned back around trying to look and concentrate on the board but all you could really think about was the boy. He was sweet, he understood your humour and he was nice, and you had no idea where there seemed to be an air of terror around the room.

Lunch had finally arrived just as you were getting your stuff, “Y/n, let’s go to next lunch.” This time it was Midoriya who had spoken, he had fought Shinso and knew everything about him. Seeing you be so friendly to someone who had a quirk like him, it made the green haired boy anxious.

“I’m having lunch with Shinso actually” You took your bag, standing up and allowing Shinso to have a full view of your frame, the loose tie around the white shirt, the thigh highs encasing your legs and making your thighs suffocate between the fabric.

He saw the way the class was looking at the scene and he became angry, maybe even upset. Did they really fear him this much, think he’d become some sort of villain and he’d taint you.

You started walking before waiting, “come on then.” It felt like being beckoned but he followed nevertheless, meeting your gaze and walking past the class with you.

“She’s too nice for her own good.” Mina spoke walking out with Momo.

Momo nodded watching how you stood close to the boy, “he might hurt her, we need to keep an eye on them.”

“What if he’s already in her mind?” Mina spoke callously, it was unknown for the two of them to act like this. But they had seen the festival, and they has seen the look on Midoriya’s eyes when he was being brainwashed. You were too nice, everybody knew that, but you had always been infatuated with his quirk from the first time you saw him use it. You hadn’t fought against him during the sports festival but had made it to the same stage he had.

He wouldn’t have paid attention to you, wouldn’t have looked and watched your fight, you weren’t anybody important. “I bet you’re happy you got moved into our class.” Both of you were rounding a corner and you had been telling him about the classmates, but all he could think about was the hate and disgust he had seen in their eyes.

“Yeah, too bad you’ll probably be my only friend.” He shrugs pulling at this tie to loosen due to feeling constricted.

“So we are friends?” He heard the sign of your chuckle and took a heavy breathe, it was soft and warm, filled with a tender kindness he had never experienced before.

He didn’t meet your gaze, “shut up.” He could almost feel your smile on him, turning to meet your gaze, he was going to be friends with you. He knew that, but was still fearful you’d leave him, leave and be afraid of his quirk.

“I shouldn’t have made you have lunch with me, you probably have your own friends from general studies.” You scratched the back of your head looking forward towards the main hall, you both walked towards the food a hunger taking over you.

He captures your eyes beginning to speak, “not really, I used them a lot in the festival and I guess they got pissed.”

He followed you to the empty seat, sitting opposite you as you picked at your food, “well what did you expect, dumbass.” He gave a low chuckle watching how your hair bounced in place and how you licked your lips after taking a bite of the rice.

“I remember seeing your fight, it was good, too bad you lost.” He taunted back; you rolled your eyes gently kicking his leg from underneath the table. Another flush had erupted from his face feeling your leg graze his own.

“It wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t touch her to use my quirk, she kept hitting me.” You whined, he smiled at the action, it was cute, but he was never going to admit that.

Instead raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms whilst leaning back he watched you, “okay then, what is this quirk of yours, I better be impressed.”

“Give me your hand.” He gave a wary look, “I’m not going to break your hand.”

He scoffed, putting his hand out, the rest of the class had arrived a couple minutes prior and had seen the two of you. “I don’t understand why you lot are scared of brainwashing kid, you’re all just pussy’s.” Bakugo stormed walking to another table with Kirishima, Sero and Denki.

All four had to admit his quirk was good, even Bakugo who would say it was shitty. They didn’t really care, and Denki could see him as the popular kid who’d he want to be friends with. The four hadn’t gone up to him due to seeing the glares that you had gotten and the glare of Mina’s that felt ice cold.

Most of them believed fear had caught up but how could they live in fear of the boy when he was in their class permanently. What could they do but see him try to integrate more into the class, Kirishima had even felt happy that you had invited him even after Mina and Momo’s look of horror.

Mina had gone to sit with the girls who seemed a lot more hatred to the boy, you understood Izuku’s anxiousness, but he’d get over it when he got more comfortable. You knew the class would be fine, after these months with them all, they’d be fine hopefully. The girls had watched him put his hand out and your fingers grazing his palms, they had no reason but fear that filled them, one of their close friends getting close with a boy with a quirk like his. It was a recipe for disaster.

“What is she doing?” Jirio asked, she didn’t have the same hatred as Momo, and Mina did. But that was only due to you being closer with the latter.

“Showing her quirk.” Hagakure spoke being able to see a lot more than the others by being the closest to the two of you.

Mina’s eyes widened, “why would she do that?”

The lack of response made it seem more like there was more fear from her than anybody else. Of course she would feel like this, she had seen you grow and been there for you and she didn’t want some stupid brainwashing boy to make you a villain. She hadn’t realised her thoughts, how inconsiderate she had been, he wasn’t a villain but why did she believe it so much. Having seen him control Midoriya it was frightening and now here you were sitting in front of him without acknowledging the fear.

“Basically if I touch any matter really, I can control it, so I touched your hand now…” You had stopped speaking letting your mind go blank as you thought for him to wave at you, “see.”

His eyes widened it was like his, it was something similar not exactly the same. But he felt his chest go heavy, he had fallen for you, from the way you spoke to having seen your fight and see you defeated. He had to admit he thought you were an arrogant weakling but now after you had so effortlessly become friends with him, he felt something a lot more for you.

“Shinso.” The sound of your voice saying his name, drove him wild and he couldn’t move, frozen at how you had spoke so smoothly, how his name on your lips was so effortless and seductive. He might sometimes be coy, but he was blunt but at this moment he couldn’t speak out of fear of losing something potential.

“Sorry.” It was a mutter and you shrugged it off taking him to where training would be.

Having changed into your hero costume you saw Shinso with the detachable mask around his mouth. He walked closer to you, but saw how your friends had come over quickly, he didn’t take a step forward standing still. Until Denki had seen him, “hey, I’m Kaminari.”

“Shinso.” The violet haired boy spoke.

Denki began gleefully talking to no end, “…I think your quirk is cool and you look one of those popular boys in Shojo manga.”

“You read Shojo manga.” Shinso spoke visibly confused but intrigued at the boy.

Denki began to save himself by acting cooler than usual, “what you don’t?”

“Nope.” It was another blunt statement; he had easily been able to not been blunt with you, but he was getting anxious at the motives of Denki’s.

“Come to my room tonight, I’ll show you so many.” Denki had easily said, Shinso nodded, he felt relieved that this mornings antics had all be swept away, even seeing Kirishima and Sero coming along dragging Bakugo beside him. They began to converse and Shinso felt relieved but occasionally looked at you, he found your hero costume beautiful, he understood for the lack of clothes due to it being easy to touch stuff with your any part of your body.

He zoned out looking at how your legs were exposed, the white leotard that encased your body and the long white cape that fell from around your neck, it looked moveable and he could see the material to be controllable for you to grab stuff. You looked like an ethereal angel and he if this really was a Shojo manga his nose would be bleeding right about now.

“We’re doing doubles, get into pairs and then join up with another pair.” Shinso noticed how he probably wouldn’t end up with you or one of the boys as they’d partner up together, but Denki had stayed close to him already an acknowledgement that the two were pairs and Sero had gone to pair up with Sato.

You had seen Denki go up to the boy and you knew your assumptions were right, being partnered with Mina would be hard at how she gave fearful remarks of not getting too close to the boy. You were against Momo and Ururaka, it was an ease using and controlling whatever Momo made but you weren’t fully in the fighting spirt. Your gaze on the fight between Kirishima and Bakugo against Shinso and Denki.

“Y/n, pay attention.” Mina chastised, you nodded continuing to stop Ururaka’s aim, it was easy to get close to them and with ease and Mina’s acid you were able to touch them and control them to stop.

It went on like this for a while, you were glad that with timing you didn’t have to go against Midoriya and Todoroki or Bakugo and Kirishima. They’re power was a lot and you really didn’t want to break any bones today, but fate still ended up hating you and the last fight was against Shinso and Denki.

You could almost feel the smirk through the mask, the capturing weapon surrounding his pretty little neck. “Ready to lose Y/n.” You didn’t speak, knowing exactly what he was going to do.

Denki had come full force at the two of you, you quickly with ease touched him as he swung for Mina who slyly escaped using her acid. You brought the boy up, whispering in his ears a few fatal words, before he stormed at Shinso with his quirk. “Using my teammate against me, so callous of you.”

You still hadn’t spoken, Mina hated how he toyed with you but still remained further away that you did.

“Shinso.” Denki shouted but that was Shinso’s cue to use his own quirk, it went on back and forth using Denki before he overexerted himself and stayed on the ground. Knowing you’d have to make this quick, you ran up to the boy ready to touch him.

But you felt the cool alloy wrap around your bones, Aizawa had seen the progress Shinso had made using them and he was impressed. He was still rough and needed a lot more practice, but he was able to hold onto you with confidence. You tried to get out, but he had made your cape wrap around your skin making his scarf able to not be controlled by you, you were all wrapped up for him in a pretty little present.

“Say the magic words.” He mocked out.

You huffed taking a sign before speaking, “let me out…please.”

He let you go and had begun controlling you, bringing you this time closer to his body. “You did good.” He stopped brainwashing you and you came out of your daze.

“Being under you brainwashing is creepily good, it’s like an out of body experience.” You spoke highly praising the boy before hearing Aizawa dismiss you all.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He laughs walking with you to the changing rooms.

You wanted to ask about his new friendships as it seemed to have been him become a lot more comfortable than you had expected, “you made friends with Denki and them lot.”

“Yeah, they seem okay, even that Bakugo he makes some good points, he’s still arrogant though.” You laughed cocking your head back at the remark.

“That describes him to the T.” You partnered ways getting changed and meeting each other outside to walk to the dorms

He spoke about Denki inviting him to read some Shojo manga, and you couldn’t wait to hear that story. He was even your neighbour which you were happy about, knowing that there was only a thin wall between the two of you.

The days continued on as usual, you spending more and more time with Shinso, the class becoming more comfortable with him, even Midoriya was friendly saying Hi’s in the mornings which Shinso would reply with. It seemed like everybody was growing on him, everybody except Mina and Momo, there was a sense of air that you were still infatuated with him.

They remember your exact words from the sports festival, “his quirk looks kind of scary, I’d rather die then fight him.” You had said it jokingly, but they took it literally and couldn’t understand why you were as scared as they were. They saw the look of evil in his eyes, but the class had moved past, and they seemed to be the only ones left. They were your friends, of course they were but the way they had been acting had made you distance yourself just for them to cool off.

Another fast long week had approached, and it was finally time for the movie night that was occurring, Shinso had walked down with you, the purple hoodie encased his frame with the grey joggers. He had been in awe when you came out of your room in shorts and a zip up hoodie seeing the peak of a tank top underneath. You really did look perfect in anything; it was the moment he knew that he had begun falling for you deeper.

“Denki showed me this Shojo manga, he said you’d read it.” You began to think of the manga’s you had read which happened to be a long list. “Kiss him, not me.”

“Oh yeah, it’s sappy, I love it though, we should watch the anime.” You hadn’t realised what you said but it was obviously an invitation into one another’s rooms to watch a romance anime.

Shinso tried to surpress his cheeks from flushing but continued on speaking, “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Of course.” You laughed meeting the class who had set up in front of the TV, you grabbed the hoodie sleeve of Shinso’s pushing him onto the end of the sofa as you sat beside him. “Now if I fall asleep, I won’t be embarrassed.”

The thought of you falling asleep on him, made his heart beat. He felt butterflies at how you were already partially leaning against him, he watched Mina and Momo glare from the other side, ignoring it though. The movie had started something Bakugo had chosen after winning rock paper scissors, it was disturbing to say the least and you knew you’d end up falling asleep through the second part of it.

Iida had paused the film for breaks being the efficient man he was, Shinso stayed put as you went to get a glass of water. Mina following, “Y/n, why have you been so distant with me?” She was worried for the friendship, had Shinso made you like this?

“Oh, have I, I didn’t realise.” You speak taking a long sip of the water.

“Yeah, you have, did Shinso do this to you? Are you like under his control?” It was unexpected and you choked on your water in shock.

You were trying to keep a lid on your anger, but you had given up, “Mina stop being a fucking bitch to the boy, he hasn’t done anything to me, everybody has warmed up to him except you and Momo and it’s driving me crazy to have to step on egg shells around you. He isn’t a villain okay.”

Her mouth was wide and at your shouting the class had gathered, even Shinso who had heard the last part. Denki put a reassuring arm on his friends shoulder before waiting for Mina’s reply, who hadn’t realised the presence of others.

“He’s probably controlling everybody Y/n, you told me and Momo you would never want to fight him, why would you say that and befriend him?” You thought back to those words you had said months ago.

“I can say I wouldn’t want to fight him because I’m glad he’s on our side.” You muttered, “he’s not controlling all of, stop acting like this.”

Mina tried to move closer to you, but you put your arm out to stop her, “can’t you see we’re all scared of him; he’s going to end up a villain.”

Shinso broke at those words, he coughed making Mina realise what she had said, the faces of 19 angry faces glaring at her. Shinso began to speak and Mina was scared shitless, “I’m going to head up early.”

“Shin…” He moved past everybody walking away, he wasn’t in the mood for confrontation and now all he could think about was you, why weren’t you scared of him, why were you so kind to him?

You barged past the girl, “don’t fucking talk to me until you apologise to him.” You ran to follow the boy who had already taken the elevator, you thought over the scene and he needed someone.

Walking towards his door, you knocked waiting for him to open it, he looked sad, upset even. You didn’t know what to say seeing his glum face, “she shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s the truth though, isn’t it, I’ll always be seen as a villain.” You went to reach for him, but he took a step backwards, “that’s the thing, I don’t understand though.”

“What, Shinso?” You questioned closing the door and leaning against it.

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” Your eyes widened.

“Why would I ever be scared of you?”

He came close to your smaller frame, his arms crossed above your head leaning down to meet your eyes. “My quirk its not very hero type now is it.”

“Shinso, I never cared about your quirk, yeah its cool but I saw you, for you not your quirk.” You rested your hands on his chest, hoping to bring comfort.

One of his hands, moved to your cheek, caressing it softly and slowly. “I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

“No, it’s fine, I want you to know that I like you for you.” You hadn’t meant for a confession of your crush to come out, but you stopped caring, you liked him, you really did, and you didn’t care if Mina and Momo didn’t. They would have to acknowledge it one way or another.

His other hand moved your hair away from your face, “you’re lucky then.” He moved his face closer to yours, you could smell the caramel popcorn fresh from his breathe.

“Why?” You tilted your head waiting for the gap to close.

Just as his lips skimmed yours, he spoke softly, “that I like you for you t…” He never finished his sentence, instead kissing you softly, your soft lips engulphed within his own. Your hands in his hair as he brought his hands to grip your waist. He felt every inch of you in that one kiss, hearing a soft moan which allowed his tongue to take the lead and make you own submit. It felt intoxicating and heavy, with teeth on teeth and his grip tightening against your waist. He wanted to feel you on him, he didn’t care what the two girls thought of him anymore because he had you and that was all he ever needed.

i’d really appreciate if you guys could leave a like, reblog or comment, thanks x

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drarrily-we-row-along · 3 years

Text

Day 20: Roller Coaster

Following the war, Hogwarts instated a new policy. Everyone (regardless of their upbringing) who attended the school would be required to take a Muggle Studies Course.

Muggle Studies was not terrible, much to Draco's surprise and relief. In fact, Draco found that he actually rather enjoyed it. Especially the classes on Fridays.

On Fridays the eighth years had no classes except for Muggle Studies in the afternoon and their Professor always took them somewhere fun. They'd been to a pub, a bowling alley, a movie theater (Draco had especially enjoyed that one), a fancy restaurant, a few cafes, art museums and history museums, they went to see parliament, and Big Ben, and even a place called a 'science center'.

Today they were going to a muggle amusement park.

Potter (his assigned partner since he'd been raised by muggles) found him in the crowd once they arrived. "Hey."

"Hey yourself," Draco replied, raising a hand to shade his eyes.

"Where should we start?" Potter asked, nodding to the expanse of oddities in front of them.

"Umm," Draco said, shading his eyes once more to look around, seeing only unfamiliar things.

"Come on," Potter said, apparently making the decision for them. "I think you need some sunglasses first."

(Read more below the cut)

Potter tugged him over to a stand off to the corner where they bickered about which sunglasses suited Draco best before finally agreeing on a pair of wayfarers with pink frames. The other boy's smile and encouragement were enough for Draco to slip them on.

"Very handsome," Potter said and Draco could feel his cheeks heat under the praise. Fortunately, Potter seemed not to notice as he turned to pay for the sunglasses.

After that they wandered around, Potter took him on a carousel, then down a giant slide that they had to climb into burlap sacks for, before dragging him over to the carnival games.

"Here," Potter said, paying the man at a booth and taking six ping pong balls from him. "You just have to sink them in the fish bowls and you win a prize."

"That hardly seems difficult," Draco replied.

The man behind the booth snorted, "Good luck, kid."

"Would you like to go first?" Harry offered.

Draco nodded and squared his shoulders before tossing the first ball. It pinged off multiple bowls before falling to the ground in between. "What?!"

"It's okay," Potter said, "try again. If you get two in, you still win a small prize."

"Right," Draco said, blowing out a breath and focusing. He tossed the ball more gently this time and it bounced once before sinking into one of the bowls. "Hah!" Draco shouted triumphantly.

"Good job," Potter replied, and there was a time when those words would have been tainted and sarcastic, but the two of them were long past that at this point. He knew the other boy was simply genuinely happy for him.

"Alright," Draco said, "Last chance little ball." He nodded once and tossed this one as well, it bounced once, twice, three times, before catching the rim of one of the bowls at an odd angle and flying off.

"Better luck next time," the man said. "You're up specs."

Potter nodded, let out a little huff of breath and tossed them right in a row; one and two sunk straight in, the third bounced once before sinking into a third fish bowl.

Draco's jaw dropped and he looked over to see that the man behind the booth looked equally stunned.

"Plushy unicorn or dragon?" Potter asked him.

"What?"

"Unicorn or Dragon?" he prompted.

"Dragon," Draco replied without real thought.

Potter nodded, "We'd like the blue dragon, please."

The man grabbed the dragon and handed it over to Potter, "That was well done."

"Thanks," Potter replied before turning and handing the dragon over to Draco. "For you."

"For me?"

Potter nodded and stuffed it into Draco's arms before walking off, "Come on," he called over his shoulder, "Roller coaster next."

It took Draco a moment to catch up with him, "Why did you give this to me?"

The other boy looked over at him and shoved his glasses up on his nose, "Do you not want it?" he asked, reaching for it.

"No," he said, turning away so he couldn't take her, "I want her."

"Alright then."

It wasn't really an answer but he didn't want Potter to take the delightfully soft and fluffy dragon from him so he kept quiet and mulled over the possible reasons. Pansy would say that Potter liked him, too, but Pansy was gay so he didn't trust what she had to say about boys.

Potter led him over to a tall, monstrous metal contraption and Draco watched with a small amount of horror as the muggles riding it were sent speeding off as they screamed bloody murder.

"Are you serious?" he asked.

Potter glanced over, "Yeah, it'll be fun. Like riding a broom," he added soft enough for only Draco to hear.

"Sure if someone else were in control of it!" Draco hissed.

"That's part of the appeal," Potter said as he stepped into line and tugged Draco after him. "Letting go, just flying without the work."

"You're insane."

"We'll see," Potter replied with a shrug and a secret little smile at the corner of his mouth that made his dimple show.

Draco waited, his heart pounding, palms sweating, as he got closer and closer to the front of the line. "Are you sure about this?"

"As sure as I am about anything," Potter replied with a sardonic grin.

They stepped up to the front of the line and the man told him, "You'll need to leave your dragon here."

"Might as well leave your sunglasses, too," Potter said, "wouldn't want those to go flying off," he added with a wink. A wink. And Draco was so off kilter that he did as Potter suggested before he climbed into the seat next to him.

The lap bar was pulled down and secured, "Potter," he started, sure that it wasn't healthy for your heart to beat this fast.

"It's okay," Potter assured. He'd taken his glasses off and folded them over the collar of his shirt.

"But-"

"Draco," the other boy said, turning to look at him and putting his hand over Draco's. "Seriously. No one has ever died from riding on this roller coaster."

"Are you sure?" Draco asked but it was too late, the roller coaster was already starting to pull them upwards.

"98%," Potter called.

"What?" he asked, trying to make sense of his words over the pounding in his ears and the rush of adrenaline he was experiencing.

"I'm 98% sure no one has ever died on this roller coaster."

It was not really the answer he'd wanted to hear. He opened his mouth to reply but the cart tipped over the top of the first hill and his words turned into a scream, one of his hand's clenching the lap bar, the other crushing Harry's.

He screamed as they were dropped and flipped, as the cart whipped around corners and he was knocked into Harry and Harry into him, all the while his heart racing. And Harry was right, it was a lot like flying but without the predictability.

As the roller coaster glided to a stop, Draco couldn't help but laugh; he felt lighter than air, freer than he could remember feeling in a long time. He turned grinning at Harry, "That was amazing."

"Yeah," Harry replied, giving his hand a little squeeze.

"Oh," Draco said, looking down at where he was still clenching the other boy's hand. "Sorry-"

"I'm not," Harry replied softly, a little shy.

"Please exit the cart, lovebirds," the man running the ride called. "We have other people waiting."

"Right, sorry," Harry apologized and he clambered out before holding out a hand for Draco to take.

Hand in hand, they made their way around to collect the dragon and Draco's sunglasses. "Where to next?" Draco asked, smiling so widely that it made his face hurt.

Harry swung their hands between them as he replied, "As long as it's with you, it doesn't matter."

Day 19: Ice Skating | Day 21: Scars

Thanks so much @gaygirldrarryblog for the prompt! I hope you enjoyed this little ficlet! <3

#100 drarry drabbles in 100 days #day 20: roller coaster #thanks for the prompt! <3 #drarry #drarry drabble #drarry ficlets #eighth year #fluffy #amusement park #enjoy!#my writing

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

Note

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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