#Pre-Competition Routine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ghstzzn · 3 months ago

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helping hand

pairing: bsf!lee heeseung x fem!reader

synopsis: heeseung had an unusual ritual before every competition as a professional league of legends player. one that his ex-girlfriend could no longer fulfill for him, leaving him desperate enough to ask for your help as his best friend.

tags/warnings: SMUT! MDNI! barely proofread lol, heeseungs a professional gamer… idk shit about that tho, you’re his best friend, league of legend mention, oral (m. rec), face fucking, deepthroating obv, praise? heeseung whimpers and whines here and there, name calling bc he calls her a perv hehe, reader touches herself and orgasms bc of his whimpering, cum swallowing, first time writing JUST a blowjob & ball fondling hehe and more probably! [3.3k words]

🖤: im so scared this was only supposed to be like 1k words but i cant shut the fuck up ever.

MINORS & AGELESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT!

it’s been awhile since you’ve had heeseung linger around your apartment for hours or even days like this. between his time spent with his now ex girlfriend and his professional gaming career, you had rarely seen him. only relying on occasional short lunch meetings or quick coffee runs.

it’s not that his ex disliked you, but more so disliked that you and heeseung happened to be an extremely attractive pair of friends and hated that people would confuse you both as a couple rather than heeseung and her.

you missed your best friend, and it comforted you that he returned those feelings.

before heeseung had stepped foot into a relationship with his ex, he would spend half of his time at your apartment. especially when he had a competition that was near.

“are you nervous?” you ask him, watching as he packs little things he left at your apartment into a small suitcase for the gaming league. it was only one city away but these sorts of things take an entire weekend.

heeseung hums, “i’m confident.” you know he’s not lying either. there’s not much you know about gaming, or specifically, league of legends—but according to your mutual friends, heeseung seems to be a god at the game. yet, he seemed so antsy about something.

“so what are you gonna do about your little pre-competition ritual,” you hope to lighten his mood, easing him of whatever that was on his mind.

“what ritual?”

you clear your throat, “oh, um. your blowjob ritual..?”

the question was asked in a light hearted way, but heeseung didn’t react in such a way at all. the ritual, as you called it, was something heeseung accidentally created a few years ago when he had first gone pro. his situationship at the time gave him head right before he left as a sexy goodluck and a reminder of what he had waiting for him when he got back, but that day he had carried and won the competition for his entire team.

the next year after that he had gotten with his girlfriend and had shyly asked her to suck him off, to which she agreed and it had officially become a routine for every competition, including smaller, less meaningful ones.

“you okay, hee?”

“can i ask you something?” he suddenly speaks up, voice way louder than he intended, causing the both of you to cringe at the volume. “s-sorry.. i just need to ask you something.”

you nod slowly, “yeah, anything. is everything okay?”

heeseung thinks for a few moments before speaking again, “it’s a little personal and it’s okay if you are uncomfortable with this and you absolutely do not have to say yes but i need to at least ask you.”

“heeseung just say it.”

“can you give me a blowjob before my competition this weekend?”

your reaction comes in three stages. the both of you stare at each other in silence for about three minutes before you burst out in laughter, which also lasts about three more minutes. but when you see heeseungs panicked expression, you go silent again.

“wait… seriously?”

heeseung swallows before shaking his head timidly. he debated laughing along with you and passing it off as a complete joke but he felt the need to follow through. the room is silent again. your fingers subconsciously play with the zipper on his suitcase as you think about the question he just proposed to you.

your best friend, whom you’ve experienced half your life with, just asked you if you could give him head before one of his league of legends competitions.

what was the right answer here?

“you.. you don't have to,” heeseungs heart feels like it’s about to fall out of his chest. why on earth would he ask such a thing to his only female friend? no less, his best friend.

it was a joke. yeah, a joke! oh my god, why would i ask that, you pervert! you should’ve seen your face! you guys joke like this all the time, this is no different. he could totally play this off coolly.

“it’s fucking stupid, i know. but it seriously helps me and you know she would do it for me everytime.” he begins rambling without even realizing it. the air is so thick you would have to take a chainsaw to it. “y-you aren’t her, yeah, but i don’t know—it genuinely gets me through the competitions.”

heeseung lets out a shaky breath, “just forget it. ignore what i said.”

“well, no heeseung,” you cut him off, “i can’t just forget that you seriously asked me something like that.”

“please don’t make this awkward. you can say no and we can forget this happened.”

you could tell heeseung wanted to rip his tongue out, and to see your best friend this distressed over something so silly made you want to drop everything and get rid of those feelings for him.

“i mean, i never said no, did i..?”

heeseung looks up, meeting your gaze with a shocked expression, “what?”

“yeah,” you nod, “it doesn’t hurt to think about it, right? it’s not like you’re asking me to completely fuck you—a blowjob wouldn’t hurt us right? especially if it’s going to help you.”

he blinks. heeseung might think you’re going insane, and he’s the one that asked you for the blowjob. no way you were actually considering this for him.

what did he do in his past life to gain such a supportive, pretty best friend.

“so… you’ll think about it?” your best friend's voice is quiet when he asks, like he’s scared to speak up any louder. “like, seriously?”

“yeah,” nodding your head, you flash him a reassuring smile. agreeing to suck off your friend before his professional video game competition, a totally normal request.

when heeseung leaves your apartment, you immediately cuss yourself out. why the fuck would you practically agree to that?

but when you think about telling the boy no, your heart cracks. why? you don’t know. but what you do know is that you would rather die than look at his big sad brown eyes when you tell him you can't give him a special blowjob for his special day.

you were no pro at sucking dick, but you were dedicated to this friendship.

heeseung bounced his leg with nervousness and anticipation. you texted him that you were on the way to his hotel, which would’ve been normal and completely fine considering you attend all of his comps, but today was different.

you never answered his question.

he wonders if maybe you forgot about it. he also hopes you didn’t forget. ever since he asked you the big question, heeseung couldn’t get you out of his mind.

every night leading up to today, he’d lie awake staring at his ceiling trying to push every image of you sitting pretty between his legs out of his mind. the feeling of his cock hardening to the thought of you made him want to dive out of the nearest window.

it’s not like he didn’t think you were hot or that the idea of being intimate with you disgusted him, but it’s the fact that he promised to never be like every other guy.

the two of you were very close. from cuddling while watching movies to holding hands in a crowded area to heeseung beating up creepy men at dive bars for you—you both had a tight knit friendship. and he always promised that he would never cross that line. he might be a total loser but he liked to consider himself a gentleman at the same time.

that day, he did. yet you were still attending something that meant the world to him when you could’ve told him to fuck off and die.

four knocks at the door rips heeseung away from his thoughts.

with sweaty hands and knees that felt like jelly, heeseung grips the door knob and opens it, plastering the fakest smile he could muster up. “hey.” did his voice crack? fuck my life.

“hi!” you hold up two bags filled with a variety of snacks with a large smile on your face, “i brought some stuff for this weekend.”

he clears his throat and steps to the side, letting you enter his hotel room. heeseung averts his gaze to the ceiling as you walk by him, afraid of letting his eyes stay on you–what if he accidentally looks at your ass?

“what time does it start today?” you ask, completely unaware of the emotional distress your male best friend was going through. so nonchalant and unmoving. maybe you did forget afterall.

heeseung takes a seat at the desk in his hotel room, where he had a temporary p.c. set up in case he needed a practice game. “uhh, it’s at six this time.”

“jeez… you guys won't be leaving until late then.” you glance at the clock and back to him. he has to leave very soon. how do you casually start giving your best friend a blowjob within the next fifteen minutes.

“yeah, you know of all people that these things can go for hours. you’re gonna be there for the last few rounds right?”

you nod, wondering if heeseung could notice the way you’re practically gawking at him. was he always this hot? it’s stupid question when you’re fully aware of how attractive heeseung was and currently is. maybe it was the way he was dressed up for his competition tonight, or the way he leaned back on his hands and spread his legs comfortably.

the baggy black hoodie that you knew he was wearing by itself with nothing underneath paired with his baggy jeans that sat so perfectly on his hips. you were fully aware that you were checking out your best friend. he’s fucking hot, why else would you agree to do any of this?

you wonder if he’s thought about this as much as you have. is he nervous? is he vocal? how long does it take for him to get hard and how big is he?

“hey,” you don’t know where the confidence is coming from, but you find yourself kneeling in front of him with your hands on his knees, “you’re gonna do great and win this. like you always do. i’ll make sure of it.”

heeseung almost chokes on his own spit when you suddenly slip between his legs, “wha- what are you doing..?”

“did you not want my help? or did you forget?” you ask him, genuine confusion. “i-if you already-”

“no!” heeseung cuts you off, grabbing your hand with his. “i mean, i still do. i just didn’t think you were down.”

you rub your other hand up his thigh, fingers mere centimeters away from his crotch area. so close to where he needs you, yet so far. “of course i am. what good are best friends if they can’t help each other out?”

heeseungs breath hitches when your hand grazes the zipper of his jeans. he lets go of your other hand and you take it as a cue to keep going.

“just let me take care of you, hee.”

and for the first time ever, that nickname made his cock twitch.

just the view he had of you sitting pretty between his thighs, hesitant but still full of confidence as you softly palmed him through his jeans was enough for him to be leaking.

“can i…” you ask quietly, fingers on the button of his jeans. he nods once and gulps as you immediately pop the button open and move to the zipper. it feels like hours before you’re finally pulling his jeans down below his hips.

you can’t lie and say the bulge of his hardening cock, covered by his calvin kleins, wasn’t making your mouth water. you push his hoodie up slightly, the way your cold fingertips hit his lower stomach as you grab the waistband of his boxers has his stomach tensing under your touch. you let out a small gasp when his cock almost springs out of his boxers.

your best friend is packing.

heeseung almost chuckles when he catches your reaction.

“don’t laugh.”

“i’m not.”

“i can see it!” you argue back.

heeseung rolls his eyes, “please just continue.”

“i won't if you keep up that attitude. you know we have less than fifteen minutes.” you retort after hearing him scoff.

“i can miss rehearsals.”

“heeseu-”

“god, please let me just fuck your mouth.”

oh my god? were you supposed to be turned on? you bite your lip and look down in his lap, taking his cock in your hand with a soft but firm grip. you lean forward and let spit slowly drip from your mouth as you start pumping him.

heeseung lets out a quiet groan and you look up at him—wide eyes that are practically asking, is this good? you continue to gently fist his cock, getting him nice and hard before you start using your mouth on his.

“i hope you win.” is all you say before you kiss his tip and sink your mouth onto him.

the boy is practically seeing stars. you just started and he’s already moaning like a bitch. it felt so good, he can’t rip his gaze from you, watching the way your lips wrap around him tightly and your cheeks hollow out as you literally suck him in.

“fuck, like that…” his hand finds sanctuary wrapped around your hair, not yet pushing you down on his cock completely, but more so as guidance.

you let go out his cock with a pop and continue pumping him with your fist, licking the underside of his base as you make direct eye contact. he lets out a groan and lets his head fall back.

“you don’t have to hold back heeseung,” you mumble, but the lust was evident in your tone. “don’t be gentle, this is for you.”

“holy fuck, don’t say that.” you giggle at his response and smile against his tip before taking him back into your mouth. heeseung grips your hair tighter and pushes you further down his cock per your request. he can hear you inhale deeply through your nose as you attempt to take all of him. but of course you can’t.

you stroke what you can’t fit and let heeseungs hand guide you up and down his cock. he uses all self control to not thrust into your mouth. heeseung hisses through his teeth every time your lips tighten around the tip of his dick, feeling somewhat more sensitive than he usually is.

a guttural moan rips from his throat when your hand comes up to squeeze his balls, offering a helping hand in making him cum soon. time was ticking. but heeseung did not care whatsoever, especially after that move.

he almost wishes he knew how fucking good you were at giving head before all of this. your mouth was so warm, wet and tight around his cock–he was in heaven. heeseung genuinely thinks this is one of the best blowjobs he’s ever gotten. his hips buck, suddenly pushing his cock deep inside of your mouth and hitting the back of your throat. you cough around his cock in surprise but it only spurs your best friend on.

maybe it was the fact that you’re his best friend. sure, it’s not taboo by any means, but there are lines that are never to be crossed in these sorts of relationships–holy shit, heeseung was on cloud 9.

“oh my god,” he whines, “you’re so good at this. fuck–god, don’t stop.”

his words, his moans, his whines–they all send tingles down your spine and straight to your core. you can’t deny the throb in your cunt though.

you continue to squeeze and fondle his balls as you let heeseung completely guide your head deeper onto his cock, thrusting his hips upwards and meeting your mouth halfway. your other hand grips his thigh, keeping you stable and relaxed as he abuses your throat with the head of his cock.

the groan that leaves your mouth when he tugs your hair tighter is accidental, you look up at heeseung. he looks beautiful like this. a pink blush across his cheeks, damp forehead, and hazy eyes. you were surely dripping through your panties now.

“yeah? you like t-this too, huh?” heeseung spits out. now you’re almost jealous of every woman he’s managed to pull, because fuck did that just turn you on even more. “want me to use your mouth however i want?”

you moan in response, nodding your head. heeseung lets out a long exhale as he shoves your head down his cock again. tears line your eyes and threaten to spill over, trying to relax your throat to take him completely.

“y-you’re taking me so good, y’know that? so good, baby.”

immediately, your hand that was once on heeseungs thigh is making its way down and into your shorts. you were soaked.

heeseung lets out another choked moan when he notices your hand in your shorts, circling your clit as you let him fuck your throat. how badly he also wishes you would just take those stupid shorts off and let him see exactly what you’re doing, he yearns to see you play with yourself one day.

“playing with yourself while you let me use this pretty mouth…” heeseung groans, lifting your head for a mere second before pushing you down his cock again. your hand tightens around his balls and he almost whimpers at the sensation. “you like this just as much, fucking pervert.”

you let out a whine, tears falling down your cheeks, you were already so close.

heeseung gets rougher, guiding your head much faster than before. your lips were burning and there was spit completely covering your other hand. but still, you continue to suck and lick at his cock as if it were your last meal, letting him force his way down your throat.

“‘m so close. so fucking close.” now you're both whimpering. “fuckfuckfuck, gonna cum soon, baby. keep going, please, hah–you feel so fucking good.”

his words were enough for you to hit your peak, an orgasm washing through your body immediately. you’re squirming and whining, sending vibrations down heeseungs cock.

“ah, fuck,” he continues to let words fall out of his mouth in the form of broken moans, “y-yeah, ‘ts so good. feels so good.” heeseung suddenly pushes your head all the way down, your nose making contact with the soft hair as the base of his cock, and he cums.

thick, hot ropes of cum covering the back of your throat. you’re gagging and choking at the full feeling, wanting to pull back so badly, but he doesn’t stop–not until he’s milked dry.

after what feels like an eternity, he lets go and you pull back, gasping and coughing but swallowing most of his cum in the process. your hands fly to your neck as you massage it and catch your breath.

heeseung on the other hand was breathing heavily. that was the best orgasm he’s ever had.

“holy fuck.”

you look up at the male, who seemed like he was about to pass out, “hee, you have to go.” your voice is raspy and weak.

“i can’t.” he responds, out of breath. “that was amazing. i can’t move.”

you stand up and pull him up with you, balancing him when he stumbles forward. “seriously, you have to go now.” now you’re putting his cock away for him, he hisses loudly at the feeling but you ignore it and zip up his jeans. “now.”

heeseung sighs and looks down at you, “did you.. get off like that?”

you tighten your lips and nod hesitantly.

“god. god, you’re amazing.” he breathes out, wanting nothing more than to throw you down on the bed and fuck you until he physically cannot. “please, please be here when i get back, i’m literally begging you.”

you nod at him, reassuring him that you’ll be here when he’s done as you usher him out of the hotel room. “i will, hee. just go.” you suppose this is what best friends are for after all.

“and do not show up to the comp tonight or i will be hard the entire fucking time.”

#enhypen x reader #enhypen smut #enhypen fanfiction #enhypen hard thoughts #heeseung hard thoughts #heeseung x reader #heeseung fanfic #heeseung smut #lee heeseung smut #lee heeseung x reader #lee heeseung fanfic #kpop smut #kpop fanfic #kpop fanfiction #enhypen fanfic

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landoughnut · 28 days ago

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Green Light, Red Flag

♡ masterlist - request

♡ pairing - max verstappen x fem!reader

♡ summary - max likes you, but it takes the strong feeling of jealousy to admit it

♡ warnings - jealous max, angry-ish love confession, fluff

♡ w/c & a/n - 1.1k | du du du du

"To Super Max!"

The cheer echoes through the private room of the Monaco nightclub as champagne flows freely. Another win, another celebration, and you can't help but smile as you watch Max try (and fail) to dodge the shower of bubbles from his teammates.

"Honestly, you'd think they'd be tired of spraying champagne after the podium," you mutter to your friend, Hannah, who's watching the chaos with amusement.

"Bold of you to assume they ever get tired of it," she laughs.

You've been part of the Red Bull team's PR department long enough to know she's right. Your eyes drift back to Max, who's now arguing with Checo about something, gesturing wildly with his hands the way he does when he's excited. His face is flushed from the champagne and victory, hair still messed up from his helmet, and you ignore the familiar flutter in your stomach when he catches your eye across the room.

"Oi!" He calls out, making his way over. "Why aren't you celebrating properly?"

You raise your barely-touched glass. "Some of us have to work tomorrow, Verstappen."

"Tomorrow's problem," he says, dropping into the seat next to you. His shoulder brushes yours, and you pretend not to notice. "Today we celebrate."

"You mean you celebrate. I just watch you lot make fools of yourselves."

He clutches his chest in mock offense. "I'm wounded. Here I am, trying to include you in my moment of glory—"

"Your fifteenth moment of glory this season," you correct.

"—and you're just standing here judging me." But he's grinning, that competitive spark in his eyes that you've come to know so well.

"Someone has to keep your ego in check."

"That's what I keep you around for," he says, and something in his tone makes you look at him sharply, but he's already being called away by Christian for photos.

You watch him go, trying to ignore Hannah's knowing look. "Don't start," you warn her.

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were thinking it very loudly."

The night progresses in a blur of music and laughter. You're in the middle of a conversation with GP when you feel someone tap your shoulder.

"Excuse me," says a voice you don't recognize. You turn to find a rather handsome man in an expensive suit. "I couldn't help but notice you from across the room. I'm James."

"Oh, um, hi," you manage, caught off guard by his forward approach.

"I'm with the Mercedes hospitality team," he continues smoothly. "Would you like to dance?"

Before you can respond, you feel a presence behind you – familiar, solid, radiating tension.

"She's busy," Max says flatly.

James raises an eyebrow. "I believe the lady can speak for herself?"

You turn to give Max an exasperated look, but the words die in your throat. You've seen every version of his competitive face – the focused pre-race stare, the triumphant victory grin, the frustrated post-DNF scowl. But this? This is new. His jaw is set, eyes dark with something that looks suspiciously like jealousy.

"Max," you say carefully, "I can handle this."

"Can you?" he snaps, then immediately looks like he regrets it.

James glances between you two, understanding dawning on his face. "Ah, I see. My apologies, I didn't realize—"

"There's nothing to realize," you say quickly, at the same time Max growls, "Yeah, you should apologize."

"I'm just going to..." James gestures vaguely and makes a tactical retreat that would make Toto proud.

You round on Max. "What the hell was that?"

"What was what?" He's doing that thing where he pretends to be completely oblivious, which might work on journalists but has never worked on you.

"That whole caveman routine! Since when do you care who I dance with?"

"I don't," he says, but he won't meet your eyes. "I just... don't trust that guy."

"Right, because clearly I can't make that judgment for myself?"

"That's not what I—" He runs a hand through his hair in frustration. "Can we not do this here?"

You glance around, suddenly aware that several people are trying very hard to pretend they're not watching this exchange. "Fine. Outside. Now."

The Monaco night air is cool against your skin as you step onto the club's terrace. The city glitters below, the same streets Max was racing through just hours ago. He's standing at the railing, knuckles white where he grips it.

"Max," you say softly, "what's really going on?"

He's quiet for so long you think he might not answer. Then: "I don't like seeing you with other guys."

Your heart stutters. "Why?"

"Because!" He turns to face you, and there's that intensity again, the one that makes him such a force on track. "Because every time some guy looks at you like that, I want to... I don't know. Put up a safety car or something."

A laugh bubbles up despite yourself. "Did you just make a racing analogy about your feelings?"

"Shut up," but there's a smile tugging at his lips. "I'm trying to be serious here."

"Sorry, sorry." You step closer. "Please, continue with your vehicular emotions."

He groans. "This is why I never said anything. You make everything into a joke."

"Says the king of deflection." You're close enough now to see the flecks of gold in his eyes. "But if you're being serious... I don't like seeing you with other people either."

His breath catches. "No?"

"No." You reach up to straighten his collar, letting your hand linger. "Kind of ruins my plans to eventually marry you and steal all your trophies."

The tension breaks as he laughs, real and warm, his hands finding your waist. "That's your master plan? Bit obvious, isn't it?"

"Well, I was going to be subtle about it, but then you had to go and get all jealous and dramatic—"

He cuts you off with a kiss, and oh – this is nothing like the Max the world sees. This is soft and sweet and just a little desperate, like he's been holding back for as long as you have. You melt into it, fingers curling into his shirt.

When you break apart, he rests his forehead against yours. "Just so we're clear," he murmurs, "this means you're not dancing with anyone else tonight."

"Possessive much?"

"You like it."

"Maybe." You steal another quick kiss. "But only because you're cute when you're jealous."

"I wasn't jealous," he protests automatically.

"Sure, and you also 'don't care' about breaking Seb's record."

He pinches your side playfully. "You're impossible."

"Yeah," you agree, sliding your arms around his neck. "But I'm your impossible."

His smile – soft and real and just for you – is better than any podium celebration. "Deal."

When you eventually return to the party, hand in hand, no one looks surprised. Checo hands Hannah what looks suspiciously like betting money, GP just rolls his eyes fondly, and Christian mutters something that sounds like "finally" into his drink.

Max doesn't leave your side for the rest of the night, and if he holds you a little closer when James walks past, well – you're not complaining. After all, some victories are worth celebrating more than others.

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bueckets · 4 months ago

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The Prophecy | Part 1

Pairing: Paige Bueckers x Reader

Parts: Part One (you're here) | Two

Description: They call her The Prophecy—basketball’s impossible phenomenon, rewriting what it means to be perfect on the court. With a near-flawless shooting record and a mind just as sharp in aerospace engineering as it is in breaking down defenses, her name sparks awe, envy, and relentless scrutiny. But perfection has its cost.

But even legends have weak spots. When a high-stakes matchup against LSU draws the attention of Paige Bueckers—the golden face of college basketball—The Prophecy’s flawless world starts to crack. On the court, they’re rivals, locked in a battle for supremacy. Off the court, late-night texts and shared moments blur the lines between competition and something much harder to define.

WC: 11.9k

Authors Notes: Slow Burn, Competitors to Lovers, SLOW, I'm heavy into world building so expect a lot of story, SMUT in next chapter. I've like proof read 70% there's already 40k words written and I've changed shit up like 40 times by now lol

They say there are two kinds of impossibilities in basketball: the ones you laugh at, and the ones that make you hold your breath. Your entire career has been about the second kind.

The numbers shouldn't exist: 847 shots attempted in college. Two misses. A percentage that makes statisticians check their math and then check it again. The first miss was a seventy-footer your freshman year that hit the rim so perfectly the sound echoed through the arena like a bell. The second? Sophomore year, caught an elbow to the face that had blood streaming down your jersey—the shot still almost went in.

Two misses in three years. They call you The Prophecy because watching you miss is like seeing a meteor strike, so rare that people mark their calendars by it.

Every sports network has tried to explain you. ESPN did a special called "The Prophecy: Breaking Down Basketball's Perfect Player." Sports Illustrated put you on the cover: "The Future Came Early." The New York Times ran a feature: "Harvard's Double Threat: Engineering the Perfect Game." They all tried to capture what makes you different. None quite managed it.

Because how do you explain someone who turned down every basketball powerhouse in the country—UConn, Stanford, South Carolina—to study Aerospace Engineering at Harvard? How do you rationalize someone who spends mornings in advanced fluid dynamics classes and afternoons making impossible shots look like a simple routine?

Your teammates get it, though. They've nicknamed you "Rocket”— partly for your major, partly for how you launch yourself through defenses. You're the heart of a Harvard team that's won three straight championships, turning the Ivy League school into a basketball dynasty that no one saw coming.

But that legacy isn't built on game days alone. It’s forged in moments like these: the hum of anticipation, the camaraderie, the banter that cuts through the tension as the team gets ready to take the court.

They say the silence before a storm is the loudest. But whoever said that never sat in Harvard's women's basketball locker room before a big game.

"I swear to god, if you try to explain zone defense using thermodynamics one more time—" Sierra launches a rolled-up sock across the room that you catch without looking up from your pre-game ritual: left shoe, right shoe, double-knot both, check laces twice.

"That was ONE time," you protest, but Maria's already cackling.

"One time? Girl, last week you tried to break down UNC's press using some dynamic—“

"And it WORKED, didn't it?"

The locker room erupts in laughter, the kind of easy joy that only comes from three years of championships, late-night practices, and inside jokes that no one else would understand. Taylor's already started your pregame handshake sequence; each title has added new moves until it's practically a full choreographed dance.

"Speaking of Carolina," Jasmine pipes up while adjusting her headband, "did y'all see their point guard tried to claim she's almost as accurate as you?”

"How'd that work out for her?" Sierra grins.

"Shot 3-for-15 against Duke." Taylor shakes her head. "Meanwhile, our girl over here—"

"845 for 847," the team chants in unison, then breaks into laughter again.

You roll your eyes but can't hide your smile.

"Yo, check this out though," Sierra's scrolling through her phone. "LSU's talking mad shit on Twitter. Their center says she's gonna 'expose the myth’ tonight."

Tonight's game against LSU has been circled on calendars since the schedule dropped. Defending national champions versus the team that's rewriting what's possible in college basketball.

The banter continues as everyone goes through their pregame routines. Maria's got her headphones in, mouthing the same Drake lyrics she's been using since freshman year. Taylor's meticulously re-taping her ankles for the third time. Jasmine's practicing her crossover in front of her locker, adding a little extra flair each time.

That's when Coach Matthews steps in, game face already set. The room doesn't exactly go quiet- this team's never been good at that, but the energy shifts— focuses.

"Ladies," she begins, but Sierra can't help herself.

"We know, we know, sold out crowd, national TV, time to show them why they call us the best team in the country."

The locker room buzzes with the easy confidence of a team that knows what they're capable of. You've all been together three years, grown from underdogs to unstoppable.

Coach tries to look stern but fails. "I see three rings have made you cocky."

"Nah, Coach," Jasmine grins. "We were cocky before the rings. Now we’ve just proven that we were right all along.”

The team cracks up again, but you catch something in Coach's expression, a mix of pride and concern. Her eyes find yours across the room. You know what she's thinking: LSU's not here just to play basketball. They're here to make a statement. To prove that Harvard's dynasty, your perfect record, all of it, is just smoke and mirrors.

You peek out at the arena as you head to warm-ups. Every seat filled, signs everywhere:

"The Prophecy Has Spoken: Harvard by 20"

"845/847 ≈ Perfection"

"Future WNBA GOAT"

"Rocket Science + Basketball = 🐐"

The student section erupts with enough thunder that you’d think there was an earthquake outside as you step onto the court. Three years, and the roar still hits different every time. Your teammates spread out for warm-ups, but you can feel every eye in the arena tracking your movement.

"Remember freshman year?" Sierra bumps your shoulder as you start stretching. "When you were still trying to convince everyone you were just 'pretty good' at basketball?"

You laugh, remembering that first practice. You'd shown up in glasses and a Harvard Engineering t-shirt, trying to downplay the high school highlights that had ESPN calling you the next Sue Bird. Then you went 50-for-50 in shooting drills.

"Pretty good," Taylor mimics, feeding you the ball. "Meanwhile Sports Center had a ticker counting your made shots."

The ball feels alive in your hands as you start your warm-up routine. Crossover, behind the back, step-back three. Swish. The Harvard crowd counts each made shot, a tradition that started your freshman year. They're at "thirty-seven" when a murmur ripples through the stands like a shift in the air pressure.

That's when you see them.

The entire UConn women's team, filing into their seats behind your bench. Their presence is magnetic, commanding, like the world has suddenly shifted to center on them. Your breath catches for just a moment, but you keep moving. Eyes forward, muscles loose. Don’t look. Don’t look.

Your gaze flickers up, and that’s when it happens. Paige Bueckers—UConn’s golden child, the face of their dynasty—locks eyes with you. The briefest of seconds, but it feels like a spotlight on your skin. She's not just watching; she's studying. Calculating.

Without breaking stride, you add a little extra spin to your next move. A crossover that’s sharp enough to slice, a step-back three so effortless it’s almost insulting. Swish.

"Showing off for UConn?" Maria teases, but her voice feels distant, barely cutting through the thrum in your chest. You don’t answer. The crowd is at "forty-two" now, and so is Paige. You can feel her counting.

"Please," you roll your eyes, draining another three. "They're the ones who showed up to our house."

The arena's practically vibrating now. LSU's warming up on the other end, trying to look unbothered. Their coach keeps glancing your way, everyone knows their game plan will revolve around stopping you. Good luck with that.

"Rocket!" Jasmine calls out. "Give them the space shot!"

It's another team tradition. End of warm-ups, you launch one from near half-court, high enough to clear the International Space Station. The crowd holds its breath as the ball arcs through the air—

Bucket.

The place goes absolutely nuclear. Even some LSU players stop to watch the replay on the jumbotron. You don't celebrate, just turn and jog back to the bench, but you catch Paige Bueckers leaning forward in her seat. Yeah, she felt that one, too.

In the huddle, Coach Matthews keeps it simple. "They're going to try to get physical. They're going to try to get in your heads. But what do we do?"

"Let the scoreboard talk!" the team responds in unison.

You look around the circle—these girls who've become family. Sierra, who's never met a defensive assignment she couldn't lock down. Maria, whose no-look passes seem telepathic. Taylor, who crashes boards like gravity's just a suggestion. Jasmine, whose trash talk is almost as legendary as her three-point shooting.

The starting lineups are announced. LSU's players get scattered applause, but when they call your name, the sound is deafening. "At guard, a junior from Boston, Massachusetts, averaging 32.5 points per game, shooting 99.8% from the field—The Prophecy!"

You high-five down the bench, each teammate adding their own flourish to the routine. The crowd's chanting now:

"M-V-P! M-V-P!"

But you're already in game mode, that familiar calm settling over you. You can feel Uconn’s members watching from the stands, feel the weight of every expectation, every camera, every scout with an NBA team's future in their hands.

The referee holds the ball at center court. LSU's center—all six-foot-five of her—tries to stare you down.

You just smile. They have no idea what's coming.

The game opens exactly how LSU planned: double-team before you even touch the ball. Their guard and forward shadow your every move, leaving gaps all over the court. Rookie mistake.

You catch Maria's eye, give her the smallest nod. She drives right, drawing attention, while you slip backdoor. The defender realizes too late—you're already airborne, catching the lob one-handed. The rim's still shaking as you get back on defense.

"That's my point guard!" you shout, giving Maria her props. The crowd's already going wild, and you're only thirty seconds in.

LSU tries to establish their post game, but Sierra's having none of it. She strips their center clean, and suddenly you're off to the races. The ball finds you at the three-point line. One defender recovers, rushing at you with a hand up.

Time slows. You see every option: the drive, the pass, the shot. But there's something poetic about making the hardest choice look easy. You rise up, release. The defender's hand grazes your wrist—doesn't matter. Swish.

"And The Prophecy strikes first! Two possessions, two baskets!" The announcer can barely contain himself. "She's making this look like a shoot-around!"

Your teammates are feeding off the energy. Taylor's owning the glass, Jasmine's picking pockets, and Maria's threading passes through impossible angles. By the six-minute mark, you're up 18-7, and LSU calls their first timeout.

"They can't guard you for shit!" Sierra laughs as you huddle up. She's right—they've tried three different defensive schemes already.

Coach Matthews keeps it tactical. "They're getting frustrated. Gonna start trying to bump you off your spots. Stay composed."

You nod, taking a quick swig of water. Your eyes drift to the UConn section. KK Arnold shoots you a smile which you return. Sierra’s shown you enough of her Tik Tok’s for you to recognize the Freshman.

Back on court, LSU switches to a box-and-one. Four players in a zone, one dedicated to face-guarding you. Cupcake stuff compared to what you see in practice.

You set up on the wing, let them think they've got you contained. The defender's playing so tight you can smell her shampoo. Maria starts her drive, draws the zone's attention. You wait... wait...

Then it happens. Quick as thought, you plant your back foot, cut hard to the corner. The defender's still turning when you catch and release in one motion. The ball hasn't even hit the net before you're heading back on defense.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" The announcer's losing it. "The Prophecy with another! She's 5-for-5 to start the game!"

The Harvard student section's going ballistic. Even your teammates are shaking their heads—three years, and you still find ways to surprise them.

LSU's getting chippy now. Their forwards are throwing elbows on screens, talking under their breath. You've seen it before: when skill isn't enough, they try to get physical.

"Yo Rocket," Taylor mutters after a particularly hard screen. "They're hunting."

You just nod. Let them hunt. You didn't get here by backing down.

With two minutes left in the first quarter, they try to trap you at half-court. Two defenders, both bigger, trying to muscle you into a mistake. You hit them with a crossover so nasty the crowd gasps. Split the double-team, euro-step around the help defense, and finish with a finger roll that looks like it defies gravity.

The LSU coach is screaming now, face turning purple. Nothing's working. Every scheme, every adjustment, every physical play, you've got an answer for all of it.

Ten seconds left. You let the clock drain, waving off the screen from Taylor. Your defender's in perfect position, textbook stance. Doesn't matter.

You rise up from NBA range, the defender's hand right in your face. The ball arcs high, the crowd holding its breath—

Swish. At the buzzer.

Harvard's bench explodes. Your teammates mob you as you head to the sideline, perfect quarter in the books. 15 points, 6-for-6 shooting, 3 assists. Just another day at the office.

"Show off," Sierra teases as you sit down.

"Actually," you grin, slipping into your best professor voice, "according to my calculations, that was just the warm-up."

The team cracks up. This is what the cameras miss, what the stats can't show. The joy of playing the game you love, with people you love, at a level few have ever reached.

But LSU's huddle looks different now. There's an edge to their expressions, a darkness in their eyes. They're not just losing—they're being embarrassed on national TV.

You've seen that look before. It usually means someone's about to do something stupid.

Second quarter opens with LSU trying something new: they're running a full-court press, getting extra physical on every possession. Their coach has clearly given them the green light to push boundaries.

"They big mad now," Jasmine laughs as she inbounds the ball to you.

You weave through the press like it's a morning jog, finding Maria with a no-look pass that has the crowd buzzing. She drains the three, and you make sure to flex for the LSU bench on the way back. Their coach calls for a substitution, sending in Williams—their enforcer, known for walking the line between aggressive and dirty.

"Heads up," Taylor mutters as she runs past you. "Number 32's got that look."

You've seen players like Williams before. They show up in every big game, thinking they'll be the one to throw you off your rhythm. They usually learn.

The next possession, Williams tries to bump you off your cut. You absorb the contact, spin away like water, and catch the ball in perfect position. She's still recovering when you rise up for three. Nothing but net.

"That's 20 for The Prophecy!" The announcer's voice carries over the roar. "Still perfect from the field!"

The Harvard student section starts a new chant: "YOU CAN'T GUARD HER!"

You spot some NBA scouts courtside, furiously taking notes. There's already talk about you leaving early, being a top pick. But that's future stuff. Right now, there's just this game, this moment, this next possession.

Williams is getting frustrated. Each bump gets a little harder, each screen a little later. The refs are letting them play physical, and LSU's taking full advantage.

"Yo Rocket," Sierra says during a free throw. "Want me to accidentally trip her?"

You shake your head, smiling. "Nah. I got something better planned."

Next play down, you call for a clear-out. Everyone knows what's coming, your teammates, the crowd, even the UConn section leans forward. Williams squares up, trying to look tough.

The move is pure poetry: crossover so quick it looks like the ball's on a string, between the legs, behind the back. Williams lunges, trying to stay in front. That's when you hit her with the step-back, creating just enough space to rise up.

The shot is perfect before it leaves your hands. Williams can only watch as it drops through, pure silk. The crowd absolutely loses it.

"SOMEBODY CALL AN AMBULANCE!" Jasmine screams, running past Williams, tongue out in mockery. "But not for her!"

Even some of the LSU players are trying not to smile. What else can you do when you're watching someone operate on a different level?

That's when you notice Paige Bueckers isn't just watching anymore—she's studying. Taking in every move, every counter, like she's downloading your game for future reference. You catch her eye for a split second and there's something there: not just respect, but recognition. Game recognizing game.

The half continues like a highlight reel. You're seeing everything in slow motion: every cut, every screen, every defensive rotation. It's like playing basketball in IMAX, everything crystal clear, every possibility visible.

With three minutes left in the half, Harvard's up 45-28. The game's starting to feel less like competition and more like an exhibition. That's usually when things get dangerous.

You see it coming in slow motion: Sierra bringing the ball up court, Williams setting up for what looks like a normal defensive position. But there's something in her stance, something in her eyes.

Williams launches herself at Sierra, sending her crashing into the scorer's table with a sickening crack. The crowd gasps as Sierra crumples, blood already streaming from her nose.

The arena goes dead silent.

Then everything happens at once. Your teammates rush to Sierra. Jasmine gets in Williams' face. The refs are blowing whistles. But you, you're standing perfectly still, a different kind of calculation running through your mind.

Three years of friendship. Three championships. Countless late-night study sessions where Sierra helped you with orbital mechanics homework while you ice your knees. All those moments flash through your mind in an instant.

You start walking toward Williams, and something in your expression makes everyone—teammates, refs, even the crowd—go quiet.

The silence in Lavietes Pavilion is deafening. Blood drips from Sierra's nose onto the hardwood—each drop echoing like thunder in your ears. Your teammates are surrounding her, but your focus is laser-locked on Williams, who's still trying to act tough, shoving Jasmine.

"Get the fuck out my face," Williams snarls, pushing your teammate back.

You cross the court in long, measured strides. Your teammates part like the Red Sea, something in your expression making them step aside. Williams turns just as you reach her, and for the first time tonight, you see fear flicker across her face.

The crowd holds its breath. Every phone is up, every camera pointed at this moment. Even the refs seem frozen, waiting to see what happens next.

You step right into her space, close enough that only she can hear you. Your voice comes out low, deadly calm. "Touch my teammate again," you say, each word precise as a scalpel, "and I promise you'll regret ever stepping foot in this fucking gym."

Williams tries to maintain her tough act, stepping forward. "Oh yeah? What you gonna—"

"Try me one more time," you cut her off, voice even quieter now, "and when I catch you outside this gym I’ll make sure you don’t get back up.”

The refs finally restore order, whistles blaring. Technical fouls all around. As you check on Sierra—her nose definitely broken but she's insisting she can play—you hear the murmur rippling through the crowd. Nobody's ever seen you like this. The Prophecy's always been about grace under pressure, about making the impossible look easy.

This is something else entirely.

Coach sends you to the bench to cool off. You end up near the Harvard section, your teammates who aren't on the court surrounding you like a protective wall. Behind them, the UConn section hasn't made a sound, but you can feel their attention like a physical weight.

"I've never seen you like that," Taylor whispers, a mix of awe and concern in her voice.

"Nobody touches our people," you say simply, eyes locked on the court where LSU is shooting their free throws.

Sierra's getting patched up beside you, tissues stuffed up her nose. "You know I've taken worse hits in practice," she tries to joke.

“That’s beside the point." Your voice is still deadly quiet. "They came into our house thinking they could punk us. Thinking what—because we're Harvard we're soft? They can suck my dick.”

The energy in the arena has shifted. Your teammates are fired up, talking amongst themselves. The crowd's still buzzing, cameras alternating between you and Williams. But you're not playing for them anymore. This isn't about highlights or SportsCenter or draft stock.

When the buzzer sounds for you to return, your teammates stand as one. "Light them the fuck up," Sierra says through her swollen nose, and the team erupts in agreement.

You step back onto the court, and the ball finds its way to your hands like it's meant to be there. Williams tries to meet your eyes, but she flinches when she does. She knows what's coming.

They all do.

The ball leaves your hands before their defense can set. Swish. 34 points.

Maria screens Williams hard—legally, but with extra emphasis. You curl around it, catch, release. Swish. 37.

"The Prophecy is taking no prisoners now," the announcer's voice carries over the chaos. "This isn't just basketball anymore, folks. This is personal."

Each possession is a message. No more fancy moves, no more style. Just pure, devastating efficiency. Catch and shoot. Drive and score. Again and again until the numbers blur together and the only sound in the arena is the whisper of the net.

Williams tries to guard you on a switch. You look her dead in the eye as you rise up. She knows it's good before you even release. 45 points.

The fourth quarter becomes a massacre. Not just because of your scoring, but the way your whole team moves now—like sharks that have tasted blood. Every screen is a statement. Every cut is a challenge. Harvard basketball isn't just winning anymore; they're sending a message.

With thirty seconds left, Harvard up by 35, Coach tries to sub you out. You wave her off. There's one more thing to do.

You catch the ball at the opposite baseline—ninety-four feet from your basket. The crowd realizes what you're about to attempt and rises as one. Williams is still trying to guard you, bless her heart.

You don't even look at the basket as you launch it, eyes locked on hers the whole way. The ball soars through the air, high enough to scrape the rafters. Time seems to stop as 4,000 people hold their breath.

Swish. As pure as a layup.

The arena explodes. Your teammates storm the court as you take off on a victory lap, tongue out, arms spread wide. The Harvard band is playing, the student section is losing their minds, and somewhere in the chaos, you catch Paige Bueckers standing up, shaking her head in amazement.

December hits Boston like a cold slap to the face. Three months since the LSU game, and Harvard's still undefeated, 12-0, ranked #2 in the country. Tonight's the game everyone's been circling: #1 UConn at Harvard. The Game of the Year, ESPN's calling it. Every headline is the same story in different words: you versus Paige, like the rest of the teams are just here to watch.

You haven't spoken to any of the UConn players since that night in your locker room. Sure, you see the occasional Instagram story when Jasmine reshares KK's posts (they're dating now, apparently, something that started with DMs and turned into weekend visits), but, that's about it. You don't even follow Paige Bueckers on social media. Why would you?

"Earth to ____,” Sierra waves a hand in front of your face during warmups. "You good?"

"Yeah," you snap back to reality, draining another three. "Just locked in."

The arena's packed to the rafters, twice as loud as the LSU game. During layup lines, you catch glimpses of the UConn players, especially Paige, who moves with that same fluid confidence you remember. She's got that look in her eyes, the one you recognize in your own reflection: the quiet certainty of someone who's never doubted their greatness.

Your pregame outfit, fitted black turtleneck under your warmups, gold chain catching the light, has already made its rounds on social media. “She looks SO good!!” is trending on Twitter, complete with fire emojis. Not that you care about that stuff. (But okay, maybe you spent an extra minute on your appearance today. Professional reasons only.)

The game starts like a prize fight, both teams trading blows, neither willing to blink first. Paige opens with a three; you answer with a step-back jumper. She hits a floater; you counter with a drive that leaves her defender spinning. It's not personal, you tell yourself. Just basketball.

By the first TV timeout, you've both got 8 points and the crowd's already losing it. The energy's different from the LSU game, no cheap shots or trash talk, just pure, elite basketball. Almost like you're speaking the same language, even if you're on different teams.

"Yo," Maria whispers during a free throw, "is it just me or is Bueckers playing extra hard when she's guarding you?"

"Everyone plays hard against me," you shrug, but you've noticed it too. The way she locks in, the extra intensity in her defense. Like she's got something to prove.

The second quarter is where you start to take over. UConn tries everything, double teams, box-and-one, even a triangle-and-two. Nothing works. You're seeing the game in slow motion again, every passing lane, every defensive rotation crystal clear. By halftime, you've got 24 points on perfect shooting, and Harvard's up 48-39.

In the tunnel heading back out, you pass Paige. There's a moment— brief but loaded— where your eyes meet. She gives you this little nod, competitor to competitor. Nothing more. (But why does it feel like something more?)

The second half is a masterclass. You're not just scoring anymore; you're conducting an orchestra. No-look passes to Sierra for corner threes. Behind-the-back feeds to Taylor for breakaway layups. And when UConn makes their inevitable run in the fourth, you shut the door with a sequence of moves so filthy they'll probably end up on SportsCenter's top 10.

Final score: Harvard 89, UConn 78. Your stat line: 38 points, 9 assists, still haven't missed a shot this season. The handshake line is respectful, none of that LSU energy, and when you reach Paige, her grip is firm, professional.

"Good game," she says simply.

"You too," you respond, and mean it.

After the media obligations, your phone buzzes. It's Jasmine: 'Bar. Tonight. Both teams. No excuses.'

You consider begging off, you do have that Thermodynamics problem set due Monday, but something makes you change your mind. Professional courtesy, you tell yourself. Networking.

The bar is one of those trendy spots where the grad students pretend they're not drowning in student debt. You show up fashionably late in black jeans, a cream-colored silk shirt, and boots that add an extra inch you definitely don't need. The teams are separate at first, Harvard at one end, UConn at the other. Only Jasmine and KK bridge the gap, wrapped up in their own world.

You stick with your teammates initially, nursing a Moscow Mule and trying not to notice how Paige looks in a baggy jeans and a button up when she arrives with some of her teammates. The groups slowly start to mix as the night goes on, pulled together by Jasmine and KK's gravitational field.

"So," UConn's shooting guard, Emma, ends up next to you at the bar. "You always play like that, or were you just showing off?”

You arch an eyebrow, a light smile tugs at the corner of your lip. "Just playing my game."

"Right," she smirks, ordering another drink.

You change the subject, asking about their upcoming schedule. Basketball is safe. Basketball makes sense.

The night continues, groups shifting and reforming. You end up in a conversation with some UConn players about the WNBA draft, carefully maintaining your distance when Paige joins the discussion. But you can't help noticing things: how she commands attention without trying, the way her laugh carries over the bar noise, how she seems to know exactly where you are in the room at all times.

Or maybe that's just in your head. Maybe, you’re just down bad.

"Paige is single, you know," KK says later, appearing at your elbow with the subtlety of a brick through a window.

"Good for her," you say neutrally, even as something flutters in your chest.

"Good for you, you mean," KK mutters, dodging the half-hearted shove you send her way before melting back into the crowd.

The night winds down, groups splitting off for Ubers, some players already making plans for late-night food. You're standing near the door, tugging your coat tighter around you against the Boston chill seeping in, when you hear your name.

You turn, and there she is, bathed in the hazy glow of the bar's neon sign, her hands shoved into her coat pockets. For the first time all night, it's just the two of you, the noise of the bar fading into a distant hum.

"Good game tonight," she says, and it’s almost funny how understated it sounds after the week of media buildup and ESPN countdowns.

"Thanks." You pause, letting the silence stretch. "You too."

Her smile tilts, like she knows exactly what you’re doing. "You don’t have to play it cool all the time, you know."

"Who says I’m playing?" you counter, but the corner of your mouth betrays you, quirking up just enough to give her the edge.

Paige steps closer, the space between you shrinking but still electric. "You’re good, Rocket. Even better than the headlines give you credit for."

"Don’t tell me you came out here just to boost my already inflated ego," you say, leaning back just enough to keep the balance of power from tipping entirely her way.

"Maybe," she says lightly, though the way she holds your gaze feels heavier than that. "Or maybe I just wanted to see for myself what all the hype’s about."

"And?"

Her smile deepens, slow and deliberate. "I wasn’t disappointed."

The air between you crackles, her words lingering in a way that feels deliberate, intentional. But before you can decide what to say—or if you should say anything at all—one of her teammates calls her name from the curb.

She glances back, then at you again.

"Don’t overthink your game plan," you say.

"And you don’t underestimate mine," she calls over her shoulder, her voice light but the glance she throws you anything but.

You stay there a moment longer, the cold biting at your skin but your chest feeling oddly warm. As you finally step outside, something about the night feels unfinished—like a play halfway through its best scene.

As you slide into the car, you realize your heart's racing—and it has nothing to do with the cold.

Maybe KK was right. Maybe this is good for you.

Later that night, lying in bed, you find yourself replaying moments from the game. Just the game, you tell yourself. The way she moves on court, like water finding its path. Her defensive intensity. Her competitiveness that mirrors your own.

Your phone buzzes: a follow request on Instagram from Paige Bueckers on your private Instagram.

You stare at it for a long moment, thumb hovering over the screen. Finally, you press accept. No big deal. Just professional courtesy.

But you can't help smiling as you set your phone down.

March suddenly feels very far away.

That night, sleep feels impossible. The win keeps looping in your mind—every play, every shot, every moment after the final buzzer. You’re still riding the high, but it's the interactions off the court that keep replaying, too. The way Paige’s eyes locked on yours during the game, that quiet intensity between you two. It was almost like there was something unspoken, an invisible thread pulling you together.

You try to shake it off as you lay in bed, scrolling aimlessly through your phone. Eventually, you post a late-night story: just you in your Harvard champion sweatshirt, hair a little messy, looking tired but satisfied. Caption: “some nights hit different 🏀✨"

You're not thinking about anyone in particular when you post it. Really. No, seriously.

But a couple of minutes later, your phone lights up with a notification: "paigebueckers viewed your story."

You freeze. Your heart does that annoying skip, the one you wish you could ignore. You try to play it cool, but the small smile on your face gives it away.

Before you can stop overthinking it, another story pops up from Paige. It’s her on the team bus, the weariness on her face somehow just makes her look even more perfect. Caption: “good games make you better. great games change you. 📈"

You stare at the story longer than you should. Three times, maybe four. Then you catch yourself. No, you're not doing this. You’re being professional. Totally. You swipe past it, but not before watching it once more—just for, you know, "research purposes."

Wednesday practice, you’re on the floor with Sierra, trying to explain orbital mechanics while stretching out your legs. The routine’s familiar, your voice calm and focused, like you’re explaining a simple layup. "So basically, if you account for gravitational force and initial velocity—"

"Rocket," Sierra interrupts, "you've been checking your phone every thirty seconds."

You look at her, feigning confusion. "Have not," you protest, but your fingers are already reaching for your phone, like they’re on autopilot. You can’t help it. Paige posted a drill video this morning, just pure basketball content—nothing that special, just her hitting a perfect jumper, maybe some footwork drills, nothing groundbreaking. You dropped an eyes emoji in response. Professional admiration only. That's it. Nothing to see here.

"Right," Sierra raises an eyebrow, not buying it for a second. "And I'm sure you've watched every other point guard's practice clips fifteen times too."

You give her a deadpan look. "I have no idea what you're talking about," you say, reaching for your foam roller and throwing it at her.

Thursday afternoon finds you in Advanced Fluid Dynamics, usually your favorite class. The equations and concepts feel like second nature to you, but today, your thoughts keep drifting elsewhere. You keep finding yourself thinking about basketball — about how certain players move like water, finding the path of least resistance, flowing through defenses with a grace you can’t help but admire.

You’re not sure if it’s the subject of the class or the strange pull you’re feeling, but your mind is elsewhere.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket, pulling you out of your thoughts. You glance down discreetly. It's a notification from Instagram: Paige has liked your last three posts.

Including one from six months ago.

You blink. The screen feels like it’s glowing too brightly in your hand. You immediately glance around, making sure no one saw you checking, before quickly hiding your smile behind your textbook.

Because yeah, you definitely didn’t mean to feel this giddy. But here you are.

Friday night, you're in bed scrolling through film when you get the notification. Paige posted a new story: her at the gym, late night shooting session. Caption: “late-night grind. gotta stay sharp for what’s ahead. 😤"

Before you can overthink it, you reply: "living rent free in that head huh? 😌"

Three dots appear immediately. Your heart rate picks up.

just practicing for march 😘

You stare at that emoji for a solid minute. Professional rivals don't use kiss emojis. Right?

Saturday morning practice rolls around before you can even process what happened last night. Your mind’s still buzzing, trying to dissect the interaction with Paige, but you push it aside. Focus. You can think about that later.

As you’re stretching before drills, you feel your phone buzz in your pocket. When Coach catches you grinning at it, she narrows her eyes.

"Whatever’s got you distracted better help us win games."

You quickly stuff your phone back in your bag, fighting to keep a neutral expression. "It’s just a text. No big deal."

"Sure, sure." Coach raises an eyebrow, unconvinced.

You try to shake off the grin still tugging at your lips. Definitely not in the middle of a debate with Paige about whether Kobe or Jordan had the better footwork. No. Definitely not.

Sunday night in the library, you're supposedly working on your Thermodynamics problem set. But your eyes keep flicking back to UConn's schedule page, calculating when they’ll be back in the northeast. You try to focus, but you find your thoughts drifting back to Paige.

A message pops up: "Shouldn't you be solving rocket equations or something?"

You bite back a smile, tapping out your reply: “shouldn't you be working on your left hand? Saw that weak drive yesterday 😴"

A few seconds pass. The dots appear, then disappear. You try not to let your heart race.

Finally, the response comes: “wow. and here i was about to say your last IG fit was 🔥"

You stare at your screen, biting your lip. The banter is easy, but there's something else there—something electric. Your pulse thuds louder than usual as you hesitate, fingers hovering over the keys. It feels like there's more hanging between you than just jokes. Did she feel it too? You quickly swipe back to your notes, trying to shake the feeling

Something that makes your skin buzz.

Tuesday, 2AM. You can’t sleep. Again. But this time, it’s different. The nervous energy swirling in your stomach isn’t from the game. It’s... something else.

Your phone lights up with a message:

you up?

Your breath catches in your throat. Two words. That’s all it takes.

You hesitate for just a second, fingers poised over the screen, and finally reply: “depends who’s asking 👀”

A beat. Three dots.

just your future march matchup.

You feel a grin tug at your lips, even as you try to keep your response cool.

bold of you to assume you’ll make it that far.

guess you’ll have to wait and see.

You can’t help the quiet laugh that slips out. There’s something about these late-night exchanges that feels different.

You roll over, pulling your blanket tighter, trying to convince yourself it’s just another game, just another rival. But when your phone buzzes again, you’re already looking forward to her next message.

A month after the game, your phone buzzes again as you’re reviewing game film late at night. You glance at the time—1:47 AM. Too late to be analyzing, but you can't help it. The game keeps replaying in your head. Then another message appears:

you always study film this late?

You glance at the reflection of your laptop in the dark screen of your phone. It’s like she knows. You smirk, replying.

how'd you know i was watching film?

saw your laptop reflection in your glasses in that last story

Something warm settles in your chest. You didn't think anyone had noticed those details.

stalker much? 🤨

just scouting the competition 😌

You're about to reply when three dots appear again.

want company? i'm looking at our clemson tape

Your heart skips a beat. You weren't expecting this. You pause before responding, a nervous twinge running through you. "facetime?"

Seconds later, the call comes through. You almost hesitate, but there’s something about it that pulls you in. You accept, suddenly hyper-aware that you're in your oversized Harvard hoodie, glasses perched on your nose, hair tossed into a messy bun.

When her face appears on the screen, you’re momentarily struck. She’s wearing a UConn sweatshirt, hair tied back, no makeup. She’s raw, real—like you’ve caught her in an unguarded moment, and for some reason, that makes your breath catch in your throat.

"So," she starts, then seems to lose her train of thought. "Um. Basketball?"

You laugh, some of the tension breaking. “Uh-huh.”

"Listen," she grins, "I'm better at talking with a ball in my hands."

The conversation shifts easily into basketball, the two of you sharing screens and breaking down film together. She catches things you miss, and you point out nuances she hasn’t noticed. The back-and-forth flows—something about it feels natural. Like you’ve been doing this for years.

Hours pass without you even realizing it, and suddenly you’re talking about other things: favorite movies, worst recruiting stories, childhood dreams.

"Wait," she's saying through laughter, "you really wanted to be an astronaut AND a basketball player?"

"Still do," You shrug, trying to play it cool, even as something inside you aches with the lightness of the moment. "Who says I can't be the first WNBA player in space?"

Her expression goes soft for a moment. "You know what? If anyone could do it..."

There's something in her voice that makes your skin tingle. You clear your throat. "Anyway, uh, it's late."

"Yeah," she says quietly. "This was... this was nice."

"Yeah," you agree, not quite meeting her eyes through the screen. "Maybe we could do it again sometime y’know?”

"I'd like that."

Neither of you moves to hang up. The silence stretches, full of things unsaid.

Finally, she breaks it: “Well, goodnight, Rocket."

The nickname hits different in her voice at 4AM.

"Night, Paige."

You end the call, staring at your screen for a moment before you finally fall back onto your bed. The silence is deafening, but your mind is racing. You force yourself to calm down, to let your heart slow to a normal pace.

Then your phone buzzes again:

sweet dreams 🌙

You definitely don’t replay the entire call in your head. Definitely not.

And you certainly don’t dream about the way she looked when she laughed at your space joke.

Definitely not.

You’re sprawled on the couch in the apartment you share with Jasmine and Sierra, supposedly reading your Aerospace Engineering textbook. Actually, you're doing everything you can to avoid looking like you're grinning at your phone. The cursor keeps blinking in the reply box, like it’s daring you to type something stupid.

"earth surface temps are literally insane rn"

"why are you even awake?"

"says the girl who's also awake 🤨"

"homework doesn't count"

"nerd 🤓"

"bet you won't say that to my face"

"bet i will. next time i see you"

"when's that gonna be? 👀"

A part of you knows you should be focused on the problem set in front of you. But instead, your thoughts keep drifting back to the screen, to her messages. You bite your lip, your fingers hovering over the keyboard. There's something different about this—about her—that you can't quite put into words. Something that makes your heart beat a little too fast for it to just be casual.

"Oh my GOD," Jasmine’s voice startles you, making you jolt and nearly drop your phone. She's leaning over the back of the couch, eyes twinkling with that grin that’s a little too knowing for comfort. "You're texting Paige!"

"What? No, I'm—" you fumble your phone, nearly dropping it. "I'm doing homework."

"Mmhmm." Jasmine vaults over the couch to land beside you. "That's why you're making the same face I make when KK texts."

"I do not make a face."

"You literally look like this—" Jasmine demonstrates an exaggerated dreamy expression that makes you throw a pillow at her.

"I'm going to KK's this weekend," she says after dodging the pillow. Her voice is deliberately casual. "UConn has a home game Friday. You should come."

Your heart does a little flip. "I have that Physics midterm Monday..."

"Right, because you definitely weren't just texting about wanting to see her."

"I wasn't—" you start, but your phone buzzes again, Paige’s name lighting up the screen in a way that makes it impossible to ignore.

"Girl," Jasmine says, softer now. "It's okay, you know? To want something besides basketball."

You stare at your phone, fingers hovering again over the keys as those three dots show up. Paige is typing, and your chest tightens. Your heart’s racing now, too fast for this to just be some rivalry. You’ve never felt this way about an opponent before.

"It's complicated," you finally manage, your voice coming out quieter than you intended.

"When is it not?" Jasmine squeezes your shoulder as she gets up. "Think about it, okay? KK says the whole team's been asking about you anyway."

Later that night, Sierra finds you on the roof of your building. It’s your thinking spot—the place where you go to clear your head when the world feels too loud or when the equations refuse to make sense. Tonight, though, the equations have nothing to do with physics.

"Spill," Sierra says, sliding down to sit beside you.

"What?"

"You've been different lately. Good different, but different." She bumps your shoulder. "And I saw you smile at your phone six times during practice today."

You let out a long breath. The city lights blur below you, and somehow it feels easier to talk without making eye contact.

"I think... I think I like her," you say finally. The words feel huge in the quiet night air. "Paige, I mean."

"No shit," Sierra laughs softly. "I figured that out when you watched her coffee story four times."

You blink, feeling caught. "You saw that?"

"Girl, everyone saw that." She pauses. "The question is, what are you gonna do about it?"

You lean back against the roof, your gaze on the stars that are barely visible through the light pollution of the city. "I don’t know. It’s complicated," you say, the words slipping out before you can stop them. "We’re rivals, and we’ll probably face each other in March. If the media got wind of us, it’d be a circus. Not to mention—" You cut yourself off, because it sounds even worse when you say it out loud.

"Okay, forget all that for a second." Sierra interrupts, her voice quieter now. She turns to face you, her eyes soft. "How does she make you feel?"

Your breath catches in your chest. How does Paige make you feel? You think about those late-night video calls that always start with film study but end with laughing over something stupid. About how she remembers little details about your life—like your favorite late-night snack, your favorite places on campus, or how you sometimes still get nervous before big games.

"Like I can be both," you say finally, the words tumbling out before you even realize their weight. "Like I can be The Prophecy, but also just... me."

Sierra's quiet for a long moment. Then: "You know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think you've spent three years being perfect. Maybe it's time to be happy instead."

You stare at the stars, trying to find your footing in this new reality that feels both foreign and exciting. "I don’t know if I’m ready for that."

Sierra nudges you, her tone playful again. "Then at least try. You deserve it."

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and for a moment, you forget about everything else. You pull it out, heart skipping when you see the name on the screen: Paige. The message.

miss watching film with you

Sierra leans over to peek at the text, a grin spreading across her face. "Smooth," she says, barely suppressing a laugh.

"Shut up," you laugh.

"Is that why Jasmine invited you to Connecticut this weekend?" Sierra asks, an eyebrow raised.

You groan, burying your face in your hands. "She told you?"

"Girl, I’m not blind," Sierra says, standing up. "Please. She’s been planning this whole setup for days. And you know what? You should go."

You look up, your gaze meeting hers. "I don’t know. The physics exam is coming up, and—"

"Physics will still be there when you get back," she interrupts, her voice light but serious. "But this? This might not be here forever."

You chew on that for a moment, the weight of it settling in.

"She’s waiting for you to say something," Sierra says quietly, her gaze flicking between you and the screen.

You hesitate, then smile softly to yourself. This is your chance.

You type back: "guess you'll have to come study in person sometime."

Sierra gives you a teasing look. "Oh, it’s on now."

Your phone buzzes again, and this time, Paige’s response comes quickly: "is that an invitation?"

Your fingers hover over the keys for a moment, and then, with a deep breath, you reply: "maybe. you gonna show me around campus?"

The message comes back almost immediately: "only the important spots. like where i practice my weak left hand drives 😏"

You can’t help it. You burst into laughter, your heart light and carefree for the first time in what feels like forever. Sierra shakes her head, smiling fondly at you.

"You’re totally down bad, huh?"

"Shut up," you laugh, feeling the warmth of it rush through you. But even as you tease her, you feel it too—this rush of excitement, the anticipation of something new, something that could change everything.

Sierra heads for the roof door, pausing just before she goes inside. "Hey Rocket?"

"Yeah?"

"Just... be careful, okay? Not because of basketball or rankings or any of that stuff. Just... because your heart's on the line too."

You nod, your chest tight as the weight of her words settles in. "I will."

She gives you one last look before disappearing inside, leaving you alone with your thoughts, your phone, and the lighthearted texts you’ve been sending all night.

Another buzz from Paige lights up your phone: "but seriously. come this weekend? i want to see you."

Her response makes your whole body warm: "can't wait 💫"

You stay on the roof a while longer, letting the night air cool your flushed cheeks. March feels both too far away and too close, but right now, in this moment, you let yourself focus on a different kind of countdown:

Three days until Connecticut.

The minute you step onto UConn's campus, you remember why being The Prophecy is complicated.

"Oh my god," you hear someone whisper. "Is that—"

"Holy shit, that's really her—"

"The Prophecy is here—"

You pull your hoodie up, hoping for some anonymity, but it’s futile. Jasmine’s already ditched you to find KK, leaving you standing in the middle of the chaos, awkwardly clutching your duffel bag. You check your phone, hoping for a distraction, when you see a text from Paige.

how’s campus so far? are you surviving the hype? 😂

You type back quickly, trying to act casual.

surviving. But UConn is like a zoo. 🙄

Before you can put the phone down, a text buzzes again.

i’m in the quad, come meet me? i’ve got your escape route ready 🏃‍♀️

You smile at her message, your nerves a little lighter now, but that doesn't make the reality of the situation any less surreal.

"Should I just text her when I get there?" you mutter to yourself, typing out a quick reply:

on my way. see you soon.

The crowd's whispers grow louder, and as you move through the sea of students, your phone buzzes again, this time with a message that makes your heart skip a beat.

turn around

You turn, and there's Paige, looking unfairly good in joggers and a UConn hoodie. For a second, you both just stare at each other, all those late-night texts and video calls suddenly feeling very different in person.

"Hi," you manage, hyper-aware of the growing crowd pretending not to watch. "Um. Nice campus."

"Thanks, I—" she starts, just as you say, "Should we—"

You both stop. Laugh nervously. God, where did all your game go?

"Yo, Paige!" some guy calls out. "Is that The Prophecy? Can we get a picture?"

Before either of you can respond, the crowd swarms in like a tidal wave. Students materialize from every direction, phones out, voices overlapping, and it’s all happening too fast. You’re caught in the whirlwind of questions and flashes.

"Can you sign my jersey?"

"Is it true you haven't missed a shot since high school?"

"Are you really majoring in rocket science?"

"Can you do the space shot right now?"

It’s nothing new. You've done this a thousand times, but today, it feels different. You're hyper-aware of Paige standing there, watching, her gaze unreadable. Her eyes flick from the crowd to you, amusement playing at the corners of her lips, but there’s something else there too.

You keep your composure—signing autographs, taking selfies, answering questions—but it’s harder when she’s so close. You try not to look over at her too much, but you catch her looking at you once. And her smile? It makes the whole world feel lighter, even in the chaos.

Then someone from the crowd asks, “Yo, did you come to see Paige?”

You freeze. All eyes are suddenly on you, the crowd waiting for your response.

“Just checking out the competition,” you say smoothly, though your heart skips a beat. But then you catch the subtle curve of Paige’s lips as she tries to hide her smile.

“She's already kicked our ass once,” Paige adds, her voice playful. “Maybe I’m trying to learn her secrets.”

The crowd laughs, and the tension in the air eases. You finally manage to break free from the swarm, and Paige leads you out of the madness, pulling you toward a quieter part of campus. She glances over at you as if to gauge how you’re holding up, and then says, “Sorry about that. I probably should’ve warned you… You’re kind of a big deal here.”

“Here?” You raise an eyebrow. “Not just at Harvard?”

She rolls her eyes with that charming little smirk of hers. “Please, you know what I mean.”

She bumps your shoulder lightly, and for a second, you’re both frozen in that little moment, and then—quickly—she steps away, as though surprised by the contact. She rubs the back of her neck awkwardly before continuing, “The perfect record? The space shot? Your major? You’re like basketball mythology at this point.”

The words settle over you, like a weight that makes you stand a little straighter. It's odd, but you can't deny the truth in what she’s saying. You pass a group of girls, and they absolutely squeal when they spot you. One of them is wearing a t-shirt with your number and "The Prophecy" written on the back, and it's like you’ve stepped into some weird alternate reality.

"That's..." you start.

"Weird?" Paige offers.

"I was gonna say flattering, but yeah, weird works too."

She chuckles, a little breathless, as you continue walking. You can’t help but notice how she looks at you—like she’s caught between admiration and something else.

By the time you reach the athletics center, the crowd starts to thin, but there's still a palpable buzz in the air. Students part for you like you're some kind of celebrity, whispering as they pass.

"—never misses, like ever—"

"—turned down every WNBA scout—"

"—heard she's already got a NASA job lined up—"

"—next GOAT for sure—"

You can’t hear it all, but enough of it sticks to your skin. You make eye contact with a few of the UConn players as you pass, and they do double-takes. The whispers don’t stop. The world still hasn't figured out how to react to you, and you’re still trying to wrap your head around it yourself.

When you get inside the locker room, you spot KK, draped over Jasmine on a bench. She sits up as soon as she sees you, and a wide grin spreads across her face.

“The Prophecy graces us with her presence!” KK announces, her voice carrying through the room.

You and Paige both turn to each other, saying “Shut up” at the same time. You exchange a glance, and immediately, you both look away, your cheeks heating up.

“Oh my god,” KK stage-whispers to Jasmine, her voice dripping with mischief. “They’re actually awkward. This is adorable.”

“I will literally murder you,” Paige threatens, but her face is flushed, the playful tone in her voice not matching her serious words.

You drop your bag, trying to act casual despite your racing heart. "So, this is where the magic happens?"

"Something like that," Paige responds, her voice quieter now. Then, her tone shifts, just a little, as she adds, “Want to see where I practice those trash left-hand drives?”

Her smile is nervous but hopeful, and something in your chest flutters in response. You swallow the lump in your throat, your eyes meeting hers.

"Lead the way, Bueckers."

The gym is quiet, empty this late—just the two of you and the space stretching out around you like a vast, hollow echo. The squeak of your sneakers against the court floor seems louder than usual, and the rhythm of the ball bouncing between you is a steady heartbeat in the silence.

You grab a ball, the motion automatic, instinctual. Some habits don’t break just because your heart’s doing backflips.

"So..." you start, dribbling slow, almost hesitant. Your palms feel too hot on the ball, like everything about this moment is too much, too close, but you can’t pull away.

"So..." she echoes, her voice low, mirroring your movements with a fluid ease that makes your pulse pick up a little faster.

"This is..." you trail off, looking for the right word. Something that fits the electric tension hanging in the air.

"Weird?"

She raises an eyebrow, a teasing glint in her eye. "I was gonna say nice," you add, voice a little softer, but still trying to brush it off, to keep control. "But yeah, weird too."

She laughs—just a soft sound, but it breaks something between you. You feel your shoulders loosen, and the tightness in your chest starts to ease. "Want to play? Or are you scared I'll ruin your perfect record?" Her words are light, playful, but there’s an edge of something else there. Something beneath the surface.

"Please," you scoff, but the words come out softer than you expected, a little breathless. "You couldn’t guard me with a restraining order."

Her smile widens, but her eyes stay locked on yours, sharp, like she can see right through you. "Big talk from someone who's been stalking my coffee stories."

You nearly drop the ball at that. "I— that’s not—" You choke on your words, heat rushing to your cheeks, the sudden shift in conversation throwing you off-balance.

"Four views," she grins. "I counted."

"Professional research," you manage, trying to ignore how your face is burning.

"Right." She steps closer, her body moving fluidly, effortlessly, still dribbling the ball with that same steady rhythm. "And all those late-night texts?"

"Scouting reports," you shoot back, but your voice cracks, betraying the lie.

"The two-hour video calls?"

"Film study," you mutter, voice barely a whisper.

"And coming to Connecticut?" Her tone shifts—lighter, but with a question in it now. A challenge in her eyes, daring you to say something.

You swallow hard, your heart pounding against your chest. "Would you believe advanced aerospace research?"

She's too close now. You can smell the faint scent of her perfume, feel the heat radiating off her as she steps forward just enough to close the space between you. The ball’s still bouncing, the rhythm matching your heartbeats, and you can hear the beat of her pulse too—steady.

"Try again." Her voice is soft, but the challenge in it is unmistakable.

You take a breath, the air thick with something unspoken. "Maybe... I just wanted to see you."

The ball stops bouncing. It’s almost like everything around you freezes for a second. The echo of the gym fades out, and all you can hear is the steady thrum of your heartbeat, racing now, too fast, too loud.

Her eyes search yours, the gold flecks in them catching the light, and for a split second, everything feels suspended. She doesn’t move. You don’t either. There’s a moment between you, raw and exposed, like you’re both just standing there, waiting for something to happen.

Then, her phone buzzes, breaking the stillness—KK, asking where you both disappeared to. The moment shatters, and you both step back, like you’ve both just been jolted awake.

"We should..." she starts.

"Yeah," you agree quickly, maybe a little too quickly. "Team dinner, right?"

"Right." The word comes out like a sigh, a soft release, but neither of you move for a beat.

You both head back toward the locker room, but it feels like the distance between you has doubled, despite being only a few feet apart. You’re careful to maintain some space, but the air around you still crackles with the memory of the moment.

Just before you reach the door, you feel the lightest touch on your wrist. It’s a shock to the system, warm and soft, and you freeze.

"Hey."

You turn to face her, heart still thundering in your chest, your breath caught in your throat.

"I'm glad you came," she says softly, her voice barely above a whisper. The words hang in the air between you, heavier than anything she’s said so far.

You open your mouth, but no words come out, your mind a blur, trying to make sense of the shift in the air between you. Before you can speak, though, she’s through the door, vanishing into the locker room, leaving you standing there, breathless.

You stand there for a moment, your heart still racing, trying to collect yourself. The touch of her fingers on your wrist is still warm on your skin, like an electric spark that lingers long after the contact ends. You can still feel the weight of her gaze on you, the way she looked at you just before she left—open, vulnerable, and for a second, everything in you just... paused.

You’re so fucking screwed.

Inside, KK takes one look at your face and starts laughing immediately. "Oh yeah," she says to Jasmine, her voice full of knowing. "March is gonna be interesting."

You throw a towel at her, but you can't help smiling. Because yeah, March is going to be complicated. But right now, watching Paige try not to look at you while she gets ready for dinner, you can't bring yourself to care.

Some things are worth the complication.

The team’s already piled into the upscale Italian place, the kind of restaurant where the hostess gives your group a double-take, eyes wide as she tries to figure out if you’re all really who she thinks you are. Emma starts giggling beside you, and you can’t help but let a laugh slip too. The entire UConn starting five, plus you, Jasmine, and a couple of bench players, fill up the space like a small parade. The table’s enormous, but somehow, fate—or possibly KK—decides that you should sit next to Paige. You know it's not her doing, but the thought of it makes your stomach do flips. Definitely not subtle.

Your knees brush under the table, and you both jerk away so fast it feels like a live wire just zapped both of you. It’s... a weird moment, but it’s over quickly.

"So," Caroline leans in, practically smirking with that devious look of hers. "We finally get to hear how The Prophecy got her name."

"Oh god," you groan, sinking back in your seat, hoping to disappear into the padded booth. But Paige perks up next to you, eyes lighting with interest.

"Wait," she says, "I don’t know this story."

You shoot Emma a glare, but she’s already opening her mouth, ready to spill the beans.

"Nobody tells it," you warn, but Emma's already launching in.

"Freshman year," Emma begins, her voice a little too loud in the suddenly quiet room, "first practice. Coach put her through this insane shooting drill—"

"It wasn't insane," you protest.

"Hundred shots from five spots," Emma continues, undeterred. "Most freshmen hit, like, sixty percent if they’re lucky. She goes perfect. Coach thinks it’s a fluke, makes her do it again. Perfect again."

You can feel Paige’s eyes on you, her attention sharp and focused. You don’t know how to feel about it, but you try not to squirm under her gaze.

"Third time," Emma's building to it now, "Coach says 'What are you, some kind of prophecy?' And right as she says it, this girl—" she points at you, "—sinks a half-court shot backward without looking."

"I was stretching!" you defend, but the table's already losing it.

"The name stuck," Caroline finishes. "Even before the no-miss streak."

"Speaking of," Tessa jumps in, her voice suddenly a lot more serious, "how do you actually do that? The never-missing thing?"

The entire table quiets down, all eyes suddenly fixed on you. Even the waitress, hovering nearby, pretends not to listen, but you catch her glancing over every few seconds.

You swallow hard, feeling the weight of everyone’s attention on you, but the pressure isn’t all bad. You glance over at Paige—she’s still watching you, her expression unreadable, but there’s something in her eyes that makes it hard to focus. She shifts slightly closer, and it makes your heart race.

"I just..." You pause, unsure of how to explain the weird, inexplicable thing that happens when you’re on the court. "I guess I see it differently. Like, you know how some people have perfect pitch in music? They hear things that other people can’t even pick up on?"

Nods around the table.

"I see angles that way," you continue, trying to sound more confident, but you’re still not used to talking about it. "Trajectories, force vectors... like physics and the feel of it—they just... merge in my head, I guess?"

Jasmine, who’s been watching you this whole time, cuts in with a smirk. "She’s being modest. Yesterday, I watched her solve a quantum mechanics problem while sinking thirty straight threes."

You roll your eyes. "Multitasking," you mumble, but Paige’s knee brushes against yours again. This time, neither of you pulls away, and your concentration goes from laser focus to absolute mush. You feel heat rising in your chest, but you try to keep your voice steady.

The conversation shifts, but you’re barely listening anymore. Every little movement from Paige, every time her hand brushes your arm as she reaches for her water, every time she leans in a little closer to hear you speak—your mind is barely keeping up. Her perfume is subtle but intoxicating, making it impossible to think straight.

"Y'all should see her in class," Jasmine's saying. "Professors literally use her as an example in physics."

"One time!"

"Three times," Jasmine corrects. "Remember when Dr. Peterson used your jump shot to explain projectile motion?"

KK, who’s been silently watching you both like this is her personal reality TV show, grins. "No wonder half the team has a crush on you."

You nearly choke on your water. Paige freezes next to you, and you can feel the shift in the air.

"I mean," Caroline chimes in, clearly trying to smooth over the tension, but only making it worse, "who wouldn’t? Best player in the country, genius-level IQ, and look at her—"

"Okay!" Paige cuts her off, a bit too loudly. "Who wants dessert?"

The change in pace is enough to shake everyone out of the sudden tension. But as dessert menus are passed around and people start laughing again, your mind is still racing.

Later, as the group walks back toward campus, you notice how easily the team starts to scatter. KK and Jasmine vanish into the distance almost immediately, making some excuse about practice. The rest of the team drifts off to their own plans—study groups, dorms, whatever—but you and Paige end up walking together, side by side in the cool night air, the sound of your footsteps the only thing breaking the silence.

"So," Paige says, her voice soft but a little uncertain, "the hotel’s that way."

You glance at her. "Yeah."

Neither of you turns toward it.

"I have, um," she starts, then stops. Takes a breath. "I have a single. In my dorm. If you wanted to watch a movie or something."

Your heart goes into overdrive, doing flips and twists like it might just leap out of your chest. The words feel stuck in your throat, but your mind is running wild.

"Or something?"

Even in the dim streetlight, you can see her blush. "I didn't mean— I just thought—"

"I'd like that," you cut off her rambling, and the smile she gives you makes your knees weak.

Her room is exactly what you'd expect - basketball posters, team photos, neat desk with game notes spread out. What you don't expect is how intimate it feels, being in this space that's so completely hers.

"Make yourself comfortable," she gestures to her bed, then immediately looks panicked. "I mean, you can sit— I'll take the chair—"

"Paige?"

"Yeah?"

"Breathe."

She laughs, some tension breaking. You sit on her bed, back against the wall, and after a moment she joins you, careful to leave space between you.

"So," you say.

"So," she echoes.

"Half the team has a crush on me, huh?"

She groans, covering her face. "KK has the biggest mouth—"

"Just half though?" You're pushing it, you know you are, but something about the way she's blushing makes you brave.

She lowers her hands, looks at you directly for the first time since dinner. "You know exactly how many people have a crush on you."

"Do I?"

Her eyes drop to your lips for a fraction of a second. "You must."

The air feels thick, charged. Your hand is on the comforter between you, and slowly, so slowly, her pinky finger hooks over yours.

Just that small point of contact sets your whole body on fire.

"Paige?"

"Hmm?"

"I didn't come to Connecticut for film study."

She turns her hand, letting her fingers intertwine with yours properly. Your breath hitches.

"I know," she says softly.

You sit there for what feels like hours, neither moving except for her thumb brushing slowly across your knuckles. The touch is so light, so careful, but it feels like the most intense thing you've ever experienced.

"I should..." you start reluctantly.

"Stay," she says quickly, then blushes harder. "I mean, it's late, and the hotel's far, and—"

"Okay."

She blinks. "Okay?"

You squeeze her hand gently. "Okay."

Later, lying in her bed (she insisted, taking the floor despite your protests), you stare at the ceiling in the dark. Your hand still tingles where she touched it.

"Rocket?" her voice comes softly from below.

"Yeah?"

A pause. Then: "I'm really glad you're here."

You close your eyes, smiling into the darkness. "Me too."

Neither of you mentions March. Neither of you talks about rankings or rivalries or what any of this means. For now, there's just this: her steady breathing in the quiet room, the lingering warmth of her touch, and the feeling that something huge is beginning.

Just before you drift off, you hear her whisper something that might be "perfect." But you're already falling asleep, wrapped in her blankets that smell like her, dreaming of basketball and physics and the way her hand felt in yours.

Some equations, you think hazily, don't need solving.

Continue to part two.

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harrysfolklore · 11 months ago

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home hero - charles x reader

gif by @princemick <33

MASTERLIST | MY PATREON

Monaco is Charles' home. Growing up, he had watched the Grand Prix from the balconies and rooftops, dreaming of the day he would stand atop the podium. Each year, the pressure mounted as he came so close, only to have victory slip through his fingers.

Today felt different. There was a determined glint in his eye this morning as he kissed you goodbye and headed to the track. You could tell he was ready, more focused than ever before. You had to believe this was his year.

"Are you nervous?" you asked, leaning against the kitchen counter asyou watched him get everything he needed before heading out.

"More than usual," he admitted, flashing you a quick smile,"But I feel good. I have a good feeling about today."

"You’ve got this, Charles. I believe in you," you walked over to him, wrapping your arms around his waist.

"Thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you," he hugged you tightly, resting his chin on top of your head.

"You'd still be amazing," you said, looking up at him,"But I'm glad I get to be here with you."

You arrived at the circuit, the familiar roar of engines filling your ears as you made your way to the paddock. You found your usual spot in the Ferrari garage, the team bustling around with last-minute preparations. You exchanged nervous smiles with the crew, all of you hoping for the same outcome.

You watched as Charles went through his pre-race routine, meticulously checking everything himself even though he trusted his team completely. He looked up at you and smiled, his nervous eyes softening the moment they landed on you.

"Hey, come here," he called softly, waving you over.

You walked over, taking his gloved hand in yours. "You’re going to do great, you know that, right?"

"I just," he sighed, "Really want that win, you know? Not just for me, but for my family, my friends, for us," you smiled fondly at his words, "This is my home and everyone believes in me, I don't want to keep letting them down."

"Charles, you've never let anyone down," you squeezed his hand, "You've given everything you have, every time and that's why everyone believes in you. No matter what happens today, you're already a champion in our eyes."

"You're too sweet," he teased with a small smile, pecking your lips quickly, "I need to go. I'll see you after the race."

"Be safe out there," you said, giving him one last lingering kiss.

You watched as he made his way to the car, taking a deep breath before climbing in. The race was about to begin, and the anticipation was palpable. You found your seat in the garage, eyes glued to the screen, heart pounding with every lap.

As the race progressed, it was clear that Charles was driving with everything he had. Lap after lap, he maintained his position and defended his lead against the competition.

With only a few laps to go, the tension in the garage was at an all-time high. You could barely breathe, every fiber of your being focused on Charles and the car.

And then, it happened. Charles crossed the finish line and the checkered flag was waved, securing his first win at the Monaco Grand Prix. The garage erupted in cheers, and you felt tears of joy streaming down your face.

He did it. He actually did it.

Before you even knew what was happening, you ran to the pit wall, heart soaring with pride as you watched Charles climb out of the car, his face a mixture of disbelief and pure elation. He waved to the crowd, taking in the moment before making his way over to the barrier, his eyes searching for you.

You pushed through the crowd, your heart racing as you made your way to him. When he finally saw you, his face lit up with the brightest smile you'd ever seen.

"Charles!" you called out, your voice cracking with emotion.

"We did it!" he shouted, pulling you into his arms and hugging you tightly, his voice full of joy and relief.

"You did it," you corrected, laughing through your tears. "I'm so proud of you!"

"I couldn't have done it without you," he said, pressing his forehead against yours. "Fuck! I can't believe this is real."

You kissed him, a sweet and lingering kiss that held all the words you couldn't say in that moment. When you pulled back, you saw the love and gratitude in his eyes, and it made your heart swell with even more pride.

"Now go stand on top of the podium, you deserve it."

The celebrations were in full swing as it was time for the podium. Charles was greeted with cheers and applause from the team, his family, and the fans who had supported him through thick and thin. The Monegasque flag waving proudly above him.

The national anthem played, and you watched as tears of pride and joy rolled down Charles' cheeks. This was the moment he had dreamed of, the moment he worked so hard for. And now, it was finally here.

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gaia-prime · 8 months ago

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PARIS, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Afghan female athlete Manizha Talash, a member of the refugee Olympic team at the Paris Games, displayed the words "Free Afghan Women" on her cape during her breaking routine in the competition's pre-qualifiers on Friday.

Political slogans and statements are banned on the field of play and on podiums at the Olympics, meaning Talash could face a potential sanction.

source

#olympics #paris 2024 #women’s athletics #Manizha Talash #feminism

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

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The cod-Marxism of personalized pricing

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The social function of the economics profession is to explain, over and over again, that your boss is actually right and that you don't really want the things you want, and you're secretly happy to be abused by the system. If that wasn't true, why would your "choose" commercial surveillance, abusive workplaces and other depredations?

In other words, economics is the "look what you made me do" stick that capitalism uses to beat us with. We wouldn't spy on you, rip you off or steal your wages if you didn't choose to use the internet, shop with monopolists, or work for a shitty giant company. The technical name for this ideology is "public choice theory":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Of all the terrible things that economists say we all secretly love, one of the worst is "price discrimination." This is the idea that different customers get charged different amounts based on the merchant's estimation of their ability to pay. Economists insist that this is "efficient" and makes us all better off. After all, the marginal cost of filling the last empty seat on the plane is negligible, so why not sell that seat for peanuts to a flier who doesn't mind the uncertainty of knowing whether they'll get a seat at all? That way, the airline gets extra profits, and they split those profits with their customers by lowering prices for everyone. What's not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out. With only four giant airlines who've carved up the country so they rarely compete on most routes, why would an airline use their extra profits to lower prices, rather than, say, increasing their dividends and executive bonuses?

For decades, the airline industry was the standard-bearer for price discrimination. It was basically impossible to know how much a plane ticket would cost before booking it. But even so, airlines were stuck with comparatively crude heuristics to adjust their prices, like raising the price of a ticket that didn't include a Saturday stay, on the assumption that this was a business flyer whose employer was footing the bill:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/07/drip-drip-drip/#drip-off

With digitization and mass commercial surveillance, we've gone from pricing based on context (e.g. are you buying your ticket well in advance, or at the last minute?) to pricing based on spying. Digital back-ends allow vendors to ingest massive troves of commercial surveillance data from the unregulated data-broker industry to calculate how desperate you are, and how much money you have. Then, digital front-ends – like websites and apps – allow vendors to adjust prices in realtime based on that data, repricing goods for every buyer.

As digital front-ends move into the real world (say, with digital e-ink shelf-tags in grocery stores), vendors can use surveillance data to reprice goods for ever-larger groups of customers and types of merchandise. Grocers with e-ink shelf tags reprice their goods thousands of times, every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

Here's where an economist will tell you that actually, your boss is right. Many groceries are perishable, after all, and e-ink shelf tags allow grocers to reprice their goods every minute or two, so yesterday's lettuce can be discounted every fifteen minutes through the day. Some customers will happily accept a lettuce that's a little gross and liztruss if it means a discount. Those customers get a discount, the lettuce isn't thrown out at the end of the day, and everyone wins, right?

Well, sure, if. If the grocer isn't part of a heavily consolidated industry where competition is a distant memory and where grocers routinely collude to fix prices. If the grocer doesn't have to worry about competitors, why would they use e-ink tags to lower prices, rather than to gouge on prices when demand surges, or based on time of day (e.g. making frozen pizzas 10% more expensive from 6-8PM)?

And unfortunately, groceries are one of the most consolidated sectors in the modern world. What's more, grocers keep getting busted for colluding to fix prices and rip off shoppers:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settlement-1.7274820

Surveillance pricing is especially pernicious when it comes to apps, which allow vendors to reprice goods based not just on commercially available data, but also on data collected by your pocket distraction rectangle, which you carry everywhere, do everything with, and make privy to all your secrets. Worse, since apps are a closed platform, app makers can invoke IP law to criminalize anyone who reverse-engineers them to figure out how they're ripping you off. Removing the encryption from an app is a potential felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine (an app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to install a privacy blocker on it):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig

Large vendors love to sell you shit via their apps. With an app, a merchant can undetectably change its prices every few seconds, based on its estimation of your desperation. Uber pioneered this when they tweaked the app to raise the price of a taxi journey for customers whose batteries were almost dead. Today, everyone's getting in on the act. McDonald's has invested in a company called Plexure that pitches merchants on the use case of raising the cost of your normal breakfast burrito by a dollar on the day you get paid:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Surveillance pricing isn't just a matter of ripping off customers, it's also a way to rip off workers. Gig work platforms use surveillance pricing to titrate their wage offers based on data they buy from data brokers and scoop up with their apps. Veena Dubal calls this "algorithmic wage discrimination":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Take nurses: increasingly, American hospitals are firing their waged nurses and replacing them with gig nurses who are booked in via an app. There's plenty of ways that these apps abuse nurses, but the most ghastly is in how they price nurses' wages. These apps buy nurses' financial data from data-brokers so they can offer lower wages to nurses with lots of credit card debt, on the grounds that crushing debt makes nurses desperate enough to accept a lower wage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

This week, the excellent Lately podcast has an episode on price discrimination, in which cohost Vass Bednar valiantly tries to give economists their due by presenting the strongest possible case for charging different prices to different customers:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-end-of-the-fixed-price/

Bednar really tries, but – as she later agrees – this just isn't a very good argument. In fact, the only way charging different prices to different customers – or offering different wages to different workers – makes sense is if you're living in a socialist utopia.

After all, a core tenet of Marxism is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." In a just society, people who need more get more, and people who have less, pay less:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs

Price discrimination, then, is a Bizarro-world flavor of cod-Marxism. Rather than having a democratically accountable state that sets wages and prices based on need and ability, price discrimination gives this authority to large firms with pricing power, no regulatory constraints, and unlimited access to surveillance data. You couldn't ask for a neater example of the maxim that "What matters isn't what technology does. What matters is who it does it for; and who it does it to."

Neoclassical economists say that all of this can be taken care of by the self-correcting nature of markets. Just give consumers and workers "perfect information" about all the offers being made for their labor or their business, and things will sort themselves out. In the idealized models of perfectly spherical cows of uniform density moving about on a frictionless surface, this does work out very well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

But while large companies can buy the most intimate information imaginable about your life and finances, IP law lets them capture the state and use it to shut down any attempts you make to discover how they operate. When an app called Para offered Doordash workers the ability to preview the total wage offered for a job before they accepted it, Doordash threatened them with eye-watering legal penalties, then threw dozens of full-time engineers at them, changing the app several times per day to shut out Para:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#boss-app

And when an Austrian hacker called Mario Zechner built a tool to scrape online grocery store prices – discovering clear evidence of price-fixing conspiracies in the process – he was attacked by the grocery cartel for violating their "IP rights":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

This is Wilhoit's Law in action:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit#Wilhoit's_law

Of course, there wouldn't be any surveillance pricing without surveillance. When it comes to consumer privacy, America is a no-man's land. The last time Congress passed a new consumer privacy law was in 1988, when they enacted the Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video-store clerks from revealing which VHS cassettes you take home. Congress has not addressed a single consumer privacy threat since Die Hard was still playing in theaters.

Corporate bullies adore a regulatory vacuum. The sleazy data-broker industry that has festered and thrived in the absence of a modern federal consumer privacy law is absolutely shameless. For example, every time an app shows you an ad, your location is revealed to dozens of data-brokers who pretend to be bidding for the right to show you an ad. They store these location data-points and combine them with other data about you, which they sell to anyone with a credit card, including stalkers, corporate spies, foreign governments, and anyone hoping to reprice their offerings on the basis of your desperation:

https://www.404media.co/candy-crush-tinder-myfitnesspal-see-the-thousands-of-apps-hijacked-to-spy-on-your-location/

Under Biden, the outgoing FTC did incredible work to fill this gap, using its authority under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (which outlaws "unfair and deceptive" practices) to plug some of the worst gaps in consumer privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

And Biden's CFPB promulgated a rule that basically bans data brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

But now the burden of enforcing these rules falls to Trump's FTC, whose new chairman has vowed to end the former FTC's "war on business." What America desperately needs is a new privacy law, one that has a private right of action (so that individuals and activist groups can sue without waiting for a public enforcer to take up their causes) and no "pre-emption" (so that states can pass even stronger privacy laws):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/federal-preemption-state-privacy-law-hurts-everyone

How will we get that law? Through a coalition. After all, surveillance pricing is just one of the many horrors that Americans have to put up with thanks to America's privacy law gap. The "privacy first" theory goes like this: if you're worried about social media's impact on teens, or women, or old people, you should start by demanding a privacy law. If you're worried about deepfake porn, you should start by demanding a privacy law. If you're worried about algorithmic discrimination in hiring, lending, or housing, you should start by demanding a privacy law. If you're worried about surveillance pricing, you should start by demanding a privacy law. Privacy law won't entirely solve all these problems, but none of them would be nearly as bad if Congress would just get off its ass and catch up with the privacy threats of the 21st century. What's more, the coalition of everyone who's worried about all the harms that arise from commercial surveillance is so large and powerful that we can get Congress to act:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Economists, meanwhile, will line up to say that this is all unnecessary. After all, you "sold" your privacy when you clicked "I agree" or walked under a sign warning you that facial recognition was in use in this store. The market has figured out what you value privacy at, and it turns out, that value is nothing. Any kind of privacy law is just a paternalistic incursion on your "freedom to contract" and decide to sell your personal information. It is "market distorting."

In other words, your boss is right.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Ser Amantio di Nicolao (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Safeway_supermarket_interior,_Fairfax_County,_Virginia.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #personalized pricing #surveillance pricing #ad-tech #realtime bidding #rtb #404media #price discrimination #economics #neoclassical economics #efficiency #predatory pricing #surveillance #privacy #wage theft #algorithmic wage discrimination #veena dubal #privacy first

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mercvry-glow · 19 hours ago

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Friendly competition

parings. frank langdon x wife!reader

summary. the langdons believe believe in basic professionalism. but either way a kiss or two behind a set of closed curtains wouldn't hurt anyone, right?

warnings. princess pea brain and dr. dickwad strike again, frank has only been married to reader, they are similar in age though not mentioned, no mentions of drug use (in terms of frank), dog parents, let me know if there's anything else!

notes. local boy dad truther didn't hop on this certified boy dad just yet, but here's a silly/flirty one between frank and his wife who is another doctor! as always please enjoy and any feedback is appropriated!

wc. 1400+

Frank Langdon was a simple man.

Wake up at 5 a.m., shower and brush his teeth, feed Nico your chocolate lab, text you since you were always out the door before sunrise, drink a cup of pre-made coldbrew for breakfast in his car, and roll into the Pitt by 7 a.m.

Routine. Reliable. Not as glamorous as your four-a.m.-scrub-call lifestyle, but it worked for him.

He tapped out a quick text before pulling out of the driveway:

FRANKY

How many brains have you terrorized already?

BABY

Two aneurysms, one awake craniotomy. Stay on your toes today, trauma boy.

He smirked at the screen. God, he loved you.

And God, you were the most competitive human alive.

Frank still remembered your first date, where you questioned his anatomy knowledge over sushi and then challenged him to a game of darts at a bar down the street—one you won, barely, after he’d been too distracted by your smile to aim properly.

Since then, everything had been a game: who could fold laundry faster, who got paged more often, who could make Nico sit the longest with a treat on his nose (Frank held that record at 20 seconds).

You kissed like you argued—passionately and deep.

All teeth and laughter and stubborn pride.

And yet, somehow, you made it work.

He parked in his usual spot and thought about your smug little face telling him, “Don’t forget who finished med school top of her class.”

Frank grinned to himself, he was gonna make today his bitch.

FRANKY

Reminder that I once splinted a femur with duct tape and a clipboard during a blackout, sweetheart.

BABY

Reminder that I once drilled through a man’s skull with no power, on the sidewalk. Try again.

God help him, he’d never loved anyone more.

After walking in and setting his stuff in his locker, he wandered around taking note of everyone who was on shift today.

Frank didn’t expect to see you so early though.

Neurosurgery lived in a whole different stratosphere most days—your floor, your ORs, your rules. You usually lived in scrubs that had been through hell and back and a ponytail that was more “get out of my way” than “good morning.” But today, as he stepped into the trauma lounge for another quick pre-round coffee, there you were. Leaning against the counter, arms crossed over your navy scrub top, sipping from a mug that very clearly had his name on it.

“Hey, babe,” you said, not even bothering to look up. “Nice of you to show up.”

Frank blinked. “Is that… my mug?”

“I earned it,” you replied. “Three surgeries before sunrise. I deserve all the caffeine this hospital has.”

He moved toward the cabinet, pulled out the backup mug—one that said ‘Trust me, I’m a real doctor’ in terrible Comic Sans—and narrowed his eyes at you over the rim.

“Is this your way of declaring war?”

You gave him a sweet, yet tired, unbothered smile. “No, Langdon. I declared war the day you said you could intubate faster than me.”

“That was four years ago.”

“And you were wrong.”

He chuckled, stepping closer, brushing your elbow with his on the way to the sugar. “You know, most people start their day with a kiss, not an insult.”

You leaned over, kissed his cheek quickly. “That was for being cute. Not for being right.”

He watched you walk away—confident, collected, the same sharp fire in your step you had on your first day in residency. You had charts under your arm and blood on your shoe and a smirk that said you’d already won whatever game he didn’t even know you were playing yet.

You were a smug, brilliant menace.

Especially because of that.

Frank took a long sip of coffee and looked at his pager. It was already buzzing with the first trauma of the day—multiple rollovers on the interstate.

He tapped out a message before heading out.

FRANKY

Bet I beat you on the case board today.

Your reply came five seconds later.

BABY

Already signed off on number 5. Better luck next time, husband. 🧠❤️

A bit later in the day a page came through just as you were wrapping up rounds: NEUROSTAT - TRAUMA BAY 1 - HEAD INJURY / MULTISYSTEM TRAUMA

You barely blinked. Tucked your tablet under your arm and turned on your heel. By the time you got down to the trauma floor, the hallway was already buzzing. Nurses shouted vitals, techs wheeled carts past with barely a glance, and a familiar voice cut through the noise like clockwork.

“Get me a line and open up the central tray—let’s move, people!”

You stepped into the trauma bay right as Frank looked up from the gurney, gloved hands bloody to the wrists, and—despite the chaos—his mouth twitched into a grin.

“Took you long enough.”

“I rushed down four flights of stairs and dodge two ortho residents arguing about tibial screws,” you fired back, snapping on your gloves. “Do you want me or not?”

Frank stepped aside just enough to give you a view of the patient—a mid-30s male, unconscious, intubated, with a deep laceration to the scalp and unequal pupils. His GCS was tanking.

“Blunt head trauma. Vitals are tanking. Pupils blew ten minutes ago. I need your magic fingers,” Frank said, handing over the head CT on a tablet.

You scanned it in seconds. “We’ve got a left-sided subdural, midline shift. He’s herniating. I need him rushed to an OR, now.”

He nodded once and spun toward the nurse’s station. “Page the rest of the neurosurg team, get an OR ready—she’s taking him up.”

“You coming with?” you asked without looking at him, already examining the patient’s vitals.

Frank glanced at the blood pooling around the patient's flank, the numbers on the monitor, then at you. “He needs decompression more than he needs a chest tube right now. I’ve got other patients after him too.”

You locked eyes for a second, both of you moving like pieces on a board already set in motion. No need to explain. No ego. Just you, him, and the patient.

“I’ll be with the team that brings him up after I stabilize the bleed,” he said, voice low as he stepped closer.

“Don’t be late,” you replied, almost a challenge.

Frank smirked, brushing his gloved knuckles briefly against your arm before turning back to the trauma team. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

You didn’t even catch how much time had passed since you had entered the OR. The surgery had gone well. As well as emergency cranial decompressions ever went, anyway. You were peeling off your gloves in the scrub room, sweat still clinging to your neck, your shoulders aching like hell from hunching over the table for hours.

The door creaked behind you.

You didn’t even turn around. “Took you long enough, Dr. Dickwad.”

Frank chuckled, slow and low, the sound bouncing off the tile. “Nice to see you too, Princess Pea Brain.”

You glanced at him through the mirror, catching the way he leaned casually against the doorframe—a surgical cap on his head, scrubs spotted with various fluids, that usual post-trauma glint in his eye.

“You missed the best part,” you said, pulling your hair free from its bun. “His brain practically thanked me for relieving the pressure.”

Frank snorted. “Right. I’m sure it whispered ‘thank you, brilliant goddess of neurosurgery,’ as you were drilling into his skull with a jackhammer”

You turned to face him now, arms crossed. “Hey. At least I didn’t almost forget to clamp the bleeder.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t forget. I was strategically stalling.”

“Oh, is that what we’re calling panic now?”

Frank was grinning. That easy, post-shift, we-just-saved-a-life kind of grin that only came after the adrenaline settled and the reality hit you: you won.

Not against each other. Against the clock. Against chaos.

“Come here,” he said finally, stepping closer.

You raised a brow. “Why?”

“So I can do this,” he replied, sliding an arm around your waist and tugging you into him with zero warning.

You yelped, half-laughing, half-scolding. “Frank Langdon, we’re in a sterile environment!”

“We’re outside the OR,” he murmured against your hair. “And I haven’t kissed my wife since before the subdural.”

You softened a little at that. Just a little.

“You’re sweaty,” you muttered.

“You smell like iron,” he said fondly.

Still, you leaned into him, forehead against his chest, letting yourself exhale. He held you there, steady and warm, the weight of the shift slowly slipped from your shoulders.

After a few long moments, you mumbled, “You’re still a dickwad.”

“Yeah,” he whispered into your hair, kissing the top of your head. “But I’m your dickwad, princess.”

mercrvy-glow 2025

#the pitt #the pitt max #the pitt x reader #Frank Lagdon x reader #Dr. Frank Langdon x reader #Frank Langdon #Dr. Frank Langdon #the pitt x you #Frank Langdon x you #Dr. Frank Langdon x you #patrick ball #Frank Langdon.<3

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aeth-eris · 4 months ago

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★ majors/higher education | signs in the 9th house ★

★ book a reading ★ ★ masterlist 1 ★ ★ masterlist 2 ★

★ aries in the 9th house ★

majors tied to action, leadership, and bold thinking—aries energy thrives in fields that require initiative and innovation. think degrees in law (debate, litigation), sports science (coaching, performance training), or military science (strategy, defense). you might also pursue something competitive like entrepreneurship or pre-med, where you’re constantly challenged to stay ahead. aries’ restless energy makes hands-on, fast-paced majors appealing, so engineering or mechanics could also fit. their love of adventure means international relations or global studies might appeal, especially if you want to explore different cultures or engage in diplomatic work. creative fields like film production or performing arts (theater, dance) might call to you, as aries loves self-expression and commanding attention. expect a major that keeps you moving and doesn’t confine you to routine; aries doesn’t do well in stagnant or overly theoretical environments. you might also gravitate toward activism-based studies, like political science or criminal justice, where you can champion causes and fight for change. your education could take unexpected turns, as aries energy often thrives in challenges and chaos—possibly leading you to switch majors mid-way when something more exciting catches your attention.

★ taurus in the 9th house ★

majors rooted in stability, beauty, and value-driven work. taurus energy is practical yet artistic, so degrees in interior design, architecture, or fine arts (sculpture, painting) align well with their aesthetic sensibilities. you might also find satisfaction in agricultural sciences or environmental studies, connecting with the earth and sustainable practices. taurus’ practical mindset leans toward finance, economics, or business—majors that ensure long-term security and tangible rewards. culinary arts or nutrition could appeal, especially if you enjoy creating or nurturing through food. degrees in real estate or hospitality management might align with taurus’ love of comfort and luxury, allowing you to curate beautiful spaces or experiences for others. taurus in the 9th craves knowledge they can use practically, so hands-on fields with clear career paths are key. psychology or social work might also resonate, especially if you’re drawn to steady, nurturing roles that help others build better lives. you could lean toward something like cultural studies or anthropology if there’s a focus on the sensory aspects of different traditions (food, art, craftsmanship). whatever you choose, it’ll likely be a slow, deliberate decision, as taurus takes their time to find what truly aligns with their values.

★ gemini in the 9th house ★

majors focused on communication, ideas, and variety—gemini thrives in fields that stimulate the mind and offer flexibility. journalism, creative writing, or media studies are strong fits, as gemini excels in storytelling and connecting with others. degrees in education (teaching, curriculum development) might appeal, especially if you’re drawn to sharing knowledge in dynamic environments. gemini’s curiosity could also pull you toward marketing, public relations, or advertising—majors that let you craft messages and explore trends. linguistics, foreign languages, or international studies might resonate, allowing you to learn and communicate across cultures. gemini’s love of tech and information could lead to fields like computer science, digital media, or data analysis. their versatility means you might combine seemingly unrelated interests, like a double major in psychology and graphic design or sociology and creative writing. gemini doesn’t thrive in rigid or overly specialized fields; they need variety, collaboration, and intellectual stimulation. philosophy or political science could also align, especially if you enjoy debating and exploring complex ideas. gemini in the 9th house often means your education will involve constant learning and adapting—expect internships, networking, and possibly changing majors to keep things fresh.

★ cancer in the 9th house ★

majors that center around nurturing, emotional connection, and building safe spaces for others. cancer energy thrives in fields like psychology, counseling, or social work—anything where you can provide care and emotional support. education might also appeal, particularly in early childhood development or special education, as cancer loves nurturing young minds. degrees in nursing, midwifery, or healthcare align with cancer’s caregiving nature, especially if you’re drawn to maternal health or pediatrics. cancer’s connection to home and history could lead to majors like interior design (creating comforting spaces) or history and anthropology, focusing on family lineage or cultural traditions. culinary arts or hospitality management could also resonate, especially if you love bringing people together through food or creating warm, inviting environments. cancer in the 9th might draw you toward majors that focus on healing or personal growth, like alternative medicine, holistic therapy, or even spiritual studies. film and media studies could appeal if you’re interested in storytelling with emotional depth. whatever you choose, it’s likely tied to themes of care, protection, and emotional resonance. you might also feel pulled toward studying abroad in places that feel familiar or tied to ancestral roots, seeking deeper connections with your personal history.

★ leo in the 9th house ★

majors centered around creativity, leadership, and self-expression. leo thrives in fields where they can shine, so performing arts (theater, dance, or music) might be at the top of your list. film studies or directing could appeal if you want to create bold, visual stories that captivate an audience. degrees in business, entrepreneurship, or leadership studies might also resonate, as leo loves being in charge and inspiring others. if you’re drawn to communication, public relations or marketing with a focus on branding and storytelling could fit. leo’s dramatic flair might pull you toward law—especially areas like courtroom litigation where your charisma and presence can shine. education, particularly as a professor or in roles that allow for mentorship, could also appeal, as leo loves to teach and lead. graphic design or fashion might be your calling if you’re drawn to creating visually impactful work. majors involving performance, creativity, or roles where you can stand out will feel most fulfilling. study abroad programs in culturally vibrant or artistic cities might inspire your studies. whatever you choose, it’ll likely be something where your natural talent for commanding attention and creating joy takes center stage.

★ virgo in the 9th house ★

majors grounded in precision, practicality, and service. virgo excels in detail-oriented fields, so degrees in healthcare (nursing, medical technology, public health) or environmental science could be strong fits. you might also thrive in majors like biology, chemistry, or nutrition, especially if you’re drawn to solving real-world problems. virgo’s analytical nature makes them well-suited to data-heavy fields like statistics, economics, or information systems. education is another natural fit, particularly in curriculum design or teaching science and math subjects. virgo’s focus on improvement could lead to degrees in psychology, especially counseling or behavioral analysis, where you help others refine and improve their lives. technical writing, editing, or publishing might appeal if you’re drawn to language and its meticulous application. environmental studies, agricultural science, or urban planning align with virgo’s interest in sustainable systems. virgo in the 9th house often seeks practical applications for higher learning, so your education might focus on how to create order and efficiency in the world. internships or research opportunities are likely to play a key role, as virgo thrives on hands-on experience. you’re also likely to be drawn to majors where you can serve others and create meaningful, measurable change.

★ libra in the 9th house ★

majors tied to beauty, harmony, and interpersonal connection. libra thrives in fields like art history, design, or fashion, where aesthetics and balance play a central role. degrees in law, especially focused on mediation or human rights, align with libra’s natural sense of fairness and justice. if you’re drawn to communication, public relations or marketing might appeal, particularly in industries like luxury goods or entertainment. libra’s love of people and relationships could also pull you toward psychology or sociology, exploring how humans connect and interact. education, especially in arts or humanities, is another natural fit—teaching subjects like literature, philosophy, or visual arts could fulfill your love for beauty and intellectual stimulation. majors like international relations or cultural studies align with libra’s global perspective and interest in diplomacy. libra in the 9th house also points to a strong desire for study abroad experiences, especially in culturally refined cities like paris, florence, or tokyo. you might also be drawn to interior design, event planning, or hospitality management—fields where you create harmonious and beautiful spaces. whatever you choose, it will likely involve collaboration, creativity, and a focus on creating balance in the world around you.

★ scorpio in the 9th house ★

majors steeped in intensity, mystery, and transformation. scorpio’s fascination with the unseen might lead you toward psychology, especially fields like forensic psychology, trauma therapy, or psychoanalysis. criminology, law enforcement, or investigative journalism are also natural fits, as scorpio thrives in uncovering hidden truths. degrees in medicine or research, particularly in areas like oncology, genetics, or pathology, align with scorpio’s need to transform and heal. scorpio’s deep, transformative energy might also pull you toward majors like philosophy, theology, or occult studies, where you explore life’s profound questions. anthropology, archaeology, or history with a focus on ancient civilizations could appeal if you’re drawn to uncovering buried secrets. scorpio’s intensity lends itself to creative fields as well—screenwriting, film directing, or novel writing in genres like horror, thriller, or fantasy might resonate. scorpio in the 9th house might also gravitate toward environmental studies or activism, especially if there’s a focus on regeneration or fighting for underrepresented causes. your educational journey may feel transformative and even karmic, with pivotal experiences that challenge your worldview and deepen your understanding of life’s complexities. you’re drawn to majors that let you explore the depths and create profound change.

★ sagittarius in the 9th house ★

majors focused on exploration, freedom, and the pursuit of knowledge. sagittarius in the 9th house practically screams for degrees in international relations, global studies, or cultural anthropology—anything that allows you to explore different cultures and philosophies. you might also be drawn to majors in philosophy, religious studies, or political science, as sagittarius loves diving into big-picture questions about morality and society. education is another natural fit, particularly higher education, where you could thrive as a professor or academic researcher. travel and adventure are key themes, so tourism management, hospitality, or even adventure filmmaking could appeal if you want to combine movement and creativity. sagittarius’ connection to optimism and growth might also lead you to fields like motivational speaking, public relations, or even sports management. if you’re drawn to physicality, degrees in physical education, sports science, or outdoor recreation could align with your adventurous spirit. study abroad programs or internships in foreign countries might feel essential to your academic journey. whatever you choose, it’ll likely involve expanding your horizons, chasing new experiences, and finding ways to bring a sense of inspiration and adventure to your studies and career.

★ capricorn in the 9th house ★

majors rooted in structure, ambition, and long-term success. capricorn in the 9th house suggests a preference for fields that offer tangible career paths and clear rewards, such as law, business administration, or economics. you might also excel in architecture, engineering, or urban planning, as capricorn thrives on building systems and structures that last. degrees in political science, public policy, or governance could appeal if you’re drawn to leadership roles and creating societal impact. capricorn’s disciplined energy might also lead you toward accounting, finance, or real estate—fields that align with your pragmatic mindset and interest in material security. academia or teaching might also appeal, especially if you’re focused on rising to leadership positions, like becoming a dean or head of a department. capricorn in the 9th values practicality, so you may prioritize internships, certifications, or degrees with clear professional applications. environmental science or sustainability studies could resonate, especially if you’re drawn to creating lasting change in ecological systems. your educational journey will likely be marked by hard work, steady progress, and a focus on achieving long-term goals, with a major that reflects your ambition and desire for mastery.

★ aquarius in the 9th house ★

majors centered around innovation, social change, and intellectual freedom. aquarius thrives in unconventional fields, so degrees in computer science, information technology, or artificial intelligence are natural fits. if you’re drawn to the social sciences, majors like sociology, political science, or human rights might appeal, especially if there’s a focus on progressive or revolutionary ideas. aquarius’ love of innovation might also lead to engineering, especially aerospace or renewable energy, where you can create futuristic solutions. degrees in environmental studies or urban planning could resonate if you’re interested in designing sustainable communities. aquarius in the 9th house suggests a fascination with global movements and humanitarian efforts, so international relations or global health might align with your vision for creating change. you might also be drawn to fields like psychology or neuroscience, exploring how the mind works and how it shapes behavior. aquarius values intellectual freedom, so you could pursue interdisciplinary studies that allow you to combine multiple interests, like technology and ethics or science and art. your educational journey might involve unconventional paths, like online programs, self-directed learning, or studying abroad in innovative or forward-thinking countries.

★ pisces in the 9th house ★

majors infused with imagination, spirituality, and emotional depth. pisces in the 9th house suggests a pull toward fields like creative writing, fine arts, or film studies, where you can channel your dreams into storytelling or visual expression. degrees in psychology or counseling might appeal, especially if you’re drawn to helping others navigate their emotions or uncover deeper truths. pisces’ spiritual energy might also lead you toward religious studies, theology, or even alternative medicine, focusing on healing and connection to the divine. majors in marine biology or environmental sciences might resonate, especially if you feel called to protect and explore the natural world. pisces also thrives in fields like music, dance, or acting, where emotional expression takes center stage. humanitarian studies or social work could be a fit, particularly if you want to help underserved populations or work for global peace. pisces in the 9th house also points to a love for escapism and exploration, so degrees in tourism, hospitality, or cultural studies might align with your wanderlust. your educational journey may feel fluid and intuitive, with shifts in direction driven by inner callings rather than external expectations.

★ book a reading ★ ★ masterlist 1 ★ ★ masterlist 2 ★

#astrology #astrology observations #astrology aspects #astro observations #9th house

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love-that-we-were-in · 1 year ago

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betting on all three for us two

pairing: frat!luke castellan x reader summary: you think you like being a little more friendly and a little less competition with luke castellan this year. a sequel to this fic word count: 3.1k warnings: none

author's note: frat luke my dearly beloved loser son who studies pre-med this is for you you know who you are i love you

The fall semester comes at you faster than you’d like, this rapid change from a golden summer to the crisp air of being back on campus. You’re rooming with someone from an old anthropology elective you took, Silena finally moving into her sorority house. It should feel weirder, how everything has changed since spring break.

You take the opportunity to build new habits. Early runs, no caffeine after 2pm. Little things that make the day go a tiny bit faster, building blocks to fit around your class schedule. Silena schedules weekly lunches for the three of you and there’s this gravity to it all that you want to study.

It had been nice to be home for a few months. Your mom had missed having you there, being able to show you the new flowers she planted, how the lemon tree in the yard is twisting weirdly. Board games and family dinners and friends who never left your town. Being back home was resetting. Being back on campus was restarting.

Lee catches you as you leave the gym, offering to walk you to class if you’re heading in that direction. You smile, telling him that you have a late start and pretend he doesn’t frown when your phone buzzes. He mentions that he’s thinking of starting a study group for one of your classes and you tell him you’ll think about joining.

While he heads towards the main building, you make your way to the campus coffee shop - caught behind the early risers desperate for something to get them through their first lecture of the day.

“Can I get a flat white and an iced americano with caramel to go please?” You smile at the girl working the counter, stepping aside to glance at your watch.

You run through your schedule for today, ignoring the text that comes through. You know exactly what it says, the same thing every morning, and you don’t even bother to roll your eyes at this point.

“I can’t believe you ignored my text,” Luke says when you reach the courtyard between the library and the medical building. “Not even a flame emoji.”

You stop in front of him, drinking in the jeans and sweater combination he’s settled on today. It’s a really nice sweater, dark blue and a little baggy. You wonder how quickly he’d notice it going missing. Probably not as quickly as he’d notice the stupid hat he’s wearing go missing. His backpack leans against the bench, pristine.

“No one uses those except you,” you shake your head, handing him the iced drink. “What time does your lecture start?”

Luke tells you as if he really needs to. It’s this thing you’ve started doing since the semester began, acting like you don’t know his schedule as well as your own. As if the both of you haven’t fallen into this routine in just a few weeks. Like it’s not a highlight of your day.

Clarisse thinks it’s adorable. Chris thinks it’s hilarious. You think it’s nice to have someone to share your free time with, beyond whatever else you and Luke have. It had been a fear of yours, when Silena mentioned not sharing a dorm with you, that you would fall to the sidelines. That life would come with these new priorities for everyone and you would only be fourth or fifth on their lists, too cemented in the day-to-day that you’d be forgotten.

Morning coffee with Luke stops that fear.

“Did Silena tell you about the party on Friday?”

“I have a study group in the afternoon,” Luke says, swirling his plastic cup around so the ice clinks together. “If I do go, I’m showing up late.”

“Maybe I’ll keep my eye out for you there, Castellan.”

He laughs and it’s like summer again. There’s something insane about hearing Luke laugh like this, unbroken and loud, nothing like it had been over the phone while you were back home.

“You’ve got dinner with Silena and Clarisse tonight, right?” He asks, swinging his bag over one shoulder. You throw your empty cup into the trash can as you both start walking. “Is there any point in asking if you want to come round after?”

You knock his arm with your shoulder, laughing, and, instead of feigning hurt like usual, Luke just takes your hand in his, the skin a little colder than you expect. Gazing down at your linked hands, you bite your lip before sighing.

“If I’m home before eleven, I’ll consider it.”

Last year, when you first met him, you thought Luke only got that determined glint in his eyes when he was competing. That it was a sign of an unanticipated thrill. Since then, you’ve learnt that it’s not that at all. It’s this thing that ignites within him, determined and passionate and a little boyish.

You think it might be one of your favorite things about him.

“I will take that deal.”

You wish you could say you were a little drunk. At least that way you would have something to blame. As it stands, you’re stone cold sober, maybe a little tired from class but nothing that can really be blamed for the lack of weight your actions seem to have right now.

The only thing you can blame, and you will, is the boy next to you, completely engrossed in the movie playing. They’d been watching it when you arrived, all settled on the couches and you assume this is something they do regularly, and at any other time you might’ve called it cute.

Not tonight. Not when you walked in to the discovery that Luke wears glasses and you didn’t know about it. It was something you played off, making a joke and settling into the cushions beside him. In the time since, Chris has left for his date with Clarisse and Charlie has pulled out some work to go through in the corner of the room.

“What’s up?” Luke asks when he realizes you’ve hardly moved in ten minutes, barely even breathing. And it’s the worst possible thing he could do, glance down through the frames with that small smile you’ve gotten used to and curls loose.

“Nothing’s up,” you let your eyes trail back to the screen. “This is a very cute tradition you guys have going on.”

Charlie lets out a little laugh from across the room. You feel the way Luke exhales against the side of your face. You think you’re able to go back to pretending everything is normal, make a joke and enjoy the rest of the movie. The second you feel Luke’s fingertips on the skin of your knee, gentle and warm, you know you can’t.

“You’re swerving,” he whispers, throwing a quick glance at Charlie to see if he can hear but the other boy is engrossed in his work. “Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing,” you bite the inside of your cheek when he nods encouragingly, incredibly aware of the patterns he’s tracing on your skin. “I just think it’s interesting that you’d choose to wear a hat all the time when the glasses are right there.”

“What?”

His hand stills and you wait. You wait and you stare at the shape of his jaw and you chuckle when it finally clicks, his adam’s apple shifting as he swallows the conclusion down. “Are you saying you like my glasses?”

You don’t like how uneven this all feels. Whenever you’ve been with Luke so far, there’s been this mutual balance that you’ve grown used to. Even before now, back when you were locked in silly competitions, you did it on even footing, the expectation that everything meant nothing and you wouldn’t be affected.

This, the way Luke grins around the realization, hand moving to rest on your thigh, is different. It’s heavier. It’s a loss after a winning streak and you’re kind of obsessed with the way it could drag you down.

“I just think that hat is stupid.”

“Yeah, okay,” Luke nods and you know, even if he doesn’t do it outright, he’s laughing. He’s categorizing the information you’ve just given him, placing it where it belongs in his mind, and it’s going to bite you in the ass. “Tell me more.”

“Luke,” you mutter, gritting your teeth. His fingertips brush against the hem of your shorts and, when you glare at him for it, he just shrugs. You throw a glance over in Charlie’s direction. Still nothing. “Are you insane?”

He tilts his head like he’s considering the question carefully. If Charlie were to look over, you know he’d assume you were locked in a debate about something silly - a staple of you and Luke - and it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t know for a second that you were holding onto Luke’s wrist, his hand itching to move just a little to the left.

You sigh and the boy beside you raises an eyebrow. You both know that you’ve lost this round.

When you press your lips to his bicep as the film credits roll, warm even through the fabric of his shirt, you mumble, “I really like your glasses.”

You aren’t used to watching things from a crowd. You’re used to focusing on yourself, on your team - not watching from a distance, surrounded by people who are there purely for enjoyment. There’s no winning from the stands.

Luke doesn’t know you’re here. You’d sent him a text that morning wishing him luck, arranging to meet him when his debate was over. You hadn’t bothered to message him when your afternoon class got canceled, choosing instead to race across campus and find a seat in the dim auditorium they’re using.

There isn’t the crackle of energy you get from swimming, or from watching Luke during track sessions. It’s less intense, for sure, a balance between the fire you know exists within him when he’s competing and the confidence he has in his own intelligence. You’ve argued with Luke, stupid things that neither of you care to take too seriously, and this is just the next stage of that.

He’s got his glasses on, you note, when the debate gets underway. He’s wearing his lucky green polo, even if he’d never personally call it that, and he’s switched his smartwatch out for an analogue one. The cheap biro you’re used to seeing him use has been replaced by a fancy silver pen that he still taps against his thigh while thinking. He’s sitting straighter than usual, shoulders back.

It’s almost like meeting him for the first time, focused and confident and sharp at the edges.

You’re kind of obsessed with it.

An hour and a winning handshake later, you make your way through the small crowd leaving to find Luke in conversation with one of his teammates. She smiles as you wrap an arm around his waist from behind, the slight tension still lingering in his bones melting away when he realizes it’s you.

“What are you doing here?” He says, turning enough that he’s actually facing you now. The girl waves you both goodbye. “I thought you had class.”

“Professor Chase had to cancel. His daughter got sent home from school with a fever.”

Luke nods, pressing his lips to the top of your head quickly. “You didn’t have to come to my debate.”

In the few months you’ve known Luke, you’ve learnt more about him than you expected to. You know from summer that Connecticut means looking after his sick mother, that he’s hoping to introduce some new charity events to ksig, that he used to go to a summer camp growing up. You know that his dad never showed up for anything and that he sits in the stands of all of your swim meets regardless of whether it cuts into his study time or not.

More than all of that, you know that the way he’s gazing at you now, a cross between awe and something deeper, is going to drive you crazy one day. You hope he can read the same expression on your face.

“Thank you for coming,” he says when everyone is finally dismissed, an arm thrown across your shoulders as you make your way out of the building. You loop a finger around one of his, just because you want to. “It means a lot.”

“I told you I would,” and you had, months ago, staring at Luke’s bedroom ceiling, back when you were still caught in the casualness of it all. When Luke was just someone you pretended you weren’t trying to bump into at parties. You’d told him that you would show up for him if you ever got the chance. He’d rolled his eyes, throwing a blanket over you both and told you to go to sleep. He’d drifted off with his nose pressed against your neck. “I keep my word, Castellan.”

“I know.”

In the evening light of campus, you think it might mean something more. Buried under the timing and the bitter wind until it’s a promise only you and Luke could translate. Asking him about where he wants to go for dinner, you like that no one else could understand the depth of it.

+1.

Silena catches your attention as you enter the kitchen, grinning wildly and explaining her concept for tonight. Drew gave her permission to throw this week’s party, something themed and fun and it’s something she’s so proud of that you can’t help but grin back at her energy.

“Even Charlie came,” she tells you excitedly, handing you a drink. “I feel like tonight is going to be it.”

In all the years you’ve known her, she’s been counting down to it. You don’t exactly understand the fundamentals of what it is, if it’s a real thing or something she can just sense intrinsically. There have been moments where she’s thought of it before, mentioned it offhandedly before shaking her head - as if knowing she was wrong.

“What even is it?” You ask and, for the first time, she breathes deeply instead of shrugging it off.

“The beginning of the end,” she says and that doesn’t exactly explain anything. “Everything is about to change.”

You still don’t really get it, but she’s as confident in this as she is about her clothes, so you nod like you understand. She sends you away not long after that, turning her attention to the new group that’s just walked through the doorway, mentioning that you need to be in the basement in about an hour and you just accept your fate, moving into the next room and falling into conversation with Rachel.

Luke slips into the basement just as Silena starts yelling for everyone to do so, catching your eye across the room and waving. When you’re all instructed to sit down in a circle, you wonder exactly what Silena has planned for tonight. When she places a near empty bottle down in the center of you all, you laugh.

“Are we actually playing spin the bottle?” Chris asks, prompting a murmured chorus of agreement from everyone else in the room. Silena frowns at him.

“Wanna bet he ends up getting the most into it?” Luke whispers in your ear and you raise an eyebrow at him. “Loser has to buy the coffee tomorrow morning.”

“You’re on,” you bump your fist to his to seal the deal. “I think he’s gonna get bored by round 3.”

“Only boring people get bored of this game. It’s about drive.”

“It’s about power?” Luke lets out a laugh and Silena turns her glare to you. “Sorry.”

She starts to explain the rules of the game, as if you’re all twelve again, and you bite your lip harder with every comment Luke makes under his breath. It’s a little mean, a little stupid, and you wish you were fifteen again, playing a proper game of spin the bottle for the first time.

Nothing much happens for the first few rounds, Chris starting to grumble the longer the game goes on. Luke clicks his tongue when you point it out, cursing his best friend like this was the worst thing that could’ve happened to him.

Lee spins and it’s like cosmic interference when the bottle stops between you and Luke, the two of you glancing at each other and then back towards Lee.

“Should I spin it again?” Lee asks when no one says anything. Silena shakes her head and says, “You can choose or we can vote if that makes you more comfortable.”

“Please let us vote,” Chris shouts, animated and you narrow your eyes at him, ignoring the smug smile Luke gives you. “I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.”

Lee glances between you both again, at where your knee rests against Luke’s thigh and the beer you’ve been sharing for the past twenty minutes sits between you. “It might be better to vote.”

“Sure,” Silena smiles before silencing you all. “Everyone that wants Lee to kiss Luke, raise your hands.”

You raise your hand and Luke mumbles beside you, flicking your leg and you poke him in return. Anything to avoid kissing Lee Fletcher after two years of avoiding it.

“That is an overwhelming majority,” Silena says and you know, just by the way her eyes slide over to you, that she didn’t even bother to actually count. “Lee, you may now kiss Luke.”

There’s this moment where you think Lee is going to just leave but instead he stares at the boy next to you, the relaxed set to his jaw, the annoying baseball cap on his head, how he’s so unbothered by it all. You watch as something clicks in his mind, you really want to know what it is.

Whatever it was, it makes him grab the bottle again, ignoring Silena’s protests. It lands on the girl from Luke’s debate team and she straightens her back ever so slightly.

“Silena,” Lee says as he leans towards the girl. “I’m not going to kiss Luke or his girlfriend.”

“Damn straight,” Luke mumbles, grabbing your hand from your lap and holding it in his instead. It’s stupid and it really doesn’t matter to either of you, you know that, but there’s this way he says it - almost like it’s the worst thing he could’ve imagined - and it settles in your gut with the beer you’ve been drinking. “Me or my girlfriend.”

“I’d really like to meet her,” you say, laughing when he huffs and pulls his hat down on your head. When you push the visor up to see him properly, all rosy cheeks and compacted curls, you think you might have found it. Whatever it is.

Based on the way Luke’s nose scrunches and his eyes crinkle, you think he understands that too.

#luke castellan #luke castellan x reader #percy jackson and the olympians #pjo #luke castellan x you

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artificialroux · 2 months ago

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maddie swallowed hard, staring at the blood on her hands. if this was survival, then why did it feel like they were already dead?

notes and lore about my yellowjackets oc, she's still currently in development as i wait for s3 to be finished. post layout heavily inspired by @puppybutcher.

MADELINE "MADDIE" SHEPHERD ( lamb drawn to the slaughter. )

played by olivia scott welch

PRE-CRASH

born madeline annabelle shepard, first name derived from the greek name magdalenē, which is associated with mary magdalene, a disciple of jesus who came from magdala.

maddie grew up in wiskayok, in a busy but loving household as the middle child of three sisters, constantly overshadowed by their academic and athletic achievements.

she was raised surrounded by faith. church on sundays, whispered prayers before bed, the quiet presence of religious symbols in her childhood home. it was something her parents believed in fiercely even if they weren't at church every day of the week. something that was supposed to make sense, supposed to make her feel safe, but for maddie faith was never simple.

she wanted to believe—really, truly believe—but it never settled into her bones the way it did for others. she tried. god knows, she tried. she went through the motions, clasped her hands together in prayer, recited the words with everyone else. but deep down, she always had questions. what if god wasn’t really listening? what if he was, and he just didn’t care? what if there was nothing at all? doubt crept into the quiet spaces of her mind, but she never spoke it aloud. because faith was supposed to be unshakable. and maddie? she was always shaking.

at age 12 maddie was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, right as she was entering middle school. it had been building up for years—stomachaches before big events, trouble sleeping, overthinking every little mistake—but it wasn’t until she started having more frequent panic attacks and struggling to focus in class that her parents took her to a doctor.

the diagnosis made sense to her, but it didn’t necessarily make things easier. she wasn’t the type to talk about it much, not wanting to be seen as fragile or difficult. she learned to manage it in her own ways—through routines, distractions, and throwing herself into hobbies—but it was always there, a quiet weight she carried.

spirit in her step, fire in her smile—wiskayok’s heartbeat on the sidelines.

from a young age, maddie was drawn to cheerleading. she loved the way it made her feel—like she belonged to something bigger than herself. she wasn’t the loudest or most outgoing cheerleader, but she had a natural talent for movement and rhythm, and she worked hard to perfect her routines. her sisters would sometimes help her practice, holding her steady as she tried out new stunts or braiding her hair before competitions.

on game days, she especially loved cheering for the girls' soccer team, the energy of the field fueling her own as she called out chants and pushed herself to keep up with the intensity of the game.

the weight of representing wiskayok was pressing on her shoulders—but even then, she never imagined it would be the last time cheerleading truly felt like her world.

maddie hadn’t expected to go to nationals. only a few of the senior cheerleaders were chosen to accompany the soccer team, and with so many girls ahead of her, she figured she’d be cheering from home. but when the final list was announced, her name was there. it felt unreal—one last big trip with the team before graduation, a chance to prove herself on a bigger stage.

she was nervous, excited, ready. boarding that plane, all she could think about was the game, the routine, the thrill of it all. she never imagined none of it would matter.

WILDERNESS

i don't belong here.

the first thing maddie registers is the heat. it rolls over her in waves, thick with smoke, stinging her eyes before she even opens them. something heavy is pressing into her chest, making it hard to breathe. the air smells like burnt plastic and fuel—and blood, and she hears muffled screams all around her. she blinks, vision swimming. everything is sideways. the world has tilted. the seatbelt digs into her ribs, keeping her suspended at an unnatural angle. maddie chokes back a sob, throat tightening with panic.

the screaming is getting louder. she has to move. her hands fumble with the seatbelt, fingers numb and shaking. the buckle won’t—fucking—budge. her breath comes too fast, too shallow, she can’t breathe, she can’t—then it snaps open. she falls forward, catching herself against the seat in front of her. her limbs feel like they belong to someone else, unsteady and sluggish as she stumbles into the aisle. bodies. so many bodies. some still, some barely moving, some missing parts that should be there.

after the crash, most of the few cheer members were killed on impact because they were sitting towards the front of the plane, either from the plane breaking apart, being thrown from their seats, or being crushed under wreckage. maddie stands frozen in shock after running out from the plane—she now was completely alone in a group that wasn’t hers to begin with.

she saw reminders of the other cheerleaders in the wreckage—a stray pompom, a crushed megaphone, a jacket that belonged to one of them—and it made her queasy. this makes her relationships with the soccer girls more complicated. she has no one who truly understands her old world, so she either has to integrate with them or be left behind. it pushes her toward lottie’s influence later on—looking for purpose in all the senseless loss.

maddie clung to scraps of warmth as the wilderness unraveled her.

maddie becomes closest to lottie in the wilderness. while she connects with others, lottie is the one who soothes her anxieties in a way no one else does, offering a strange but undeniable sense of comfort. their bond deepens during doomcoming when lottie quietly braids some strands of maddie’s hair—just like her sisters used to do for her. it’s a small but intimate gesture, one that makes maddie feel seen in a way she hasn’t since the crash.

after the crash, her faith became something else entirely. at first, she prayed like never before. desperate. hollow. raw. she begged for a rescue, for warmth, for safety, late at night when no one could hear. she prayed for the souls of the ones they lost, even the ones they had to eat. but the more time passed, the more survival demanded of them, the more god felt like silence. she watched as lottie’s influence grew, filling the void where faith had once lived.

maddie wanted to resist, wanted to hold onto what little she had left of the faith she grew up with. but she was tired. she was hungry. and she was afraid that if she let go, she’d have nothing left. so she followed. not blindly—not like the others—but because she needed something to hold onto. maybe lottie was right. maybe there was something in the wilderness watching over them. maybe faith wasn’t about god at all. maybe it was about survival.

but even then, doubt never fully left her. it was always there, lingering beneath the surface. a quiet, gnawing thing in the back of her mind. because if there really was something out there—if something was listening—then why did it demand so much from them? and if it wasn’t god, then what the hell was it?

the lamb wasn't ready, but the wilderness was.

after weeks of winter, food runs dangerously low, and the group begins to truly fear starvation. the tension has been building for weeks, whispers of sacrifice hanging in the cold air. maddie, already weighed down by guilt and a growing sense of detachment, starts to believe she is meant to be the one to go. she tells herself it would be easier this way—that if she gives herself up, maybe the others will survive, maybe the wilderness will be satisfied. she offers herself to be eaten instead of participating in the hunt. the guilt of survival, the desperation, and lottie’s growing influence all collide in that moment—she truly believes it’s the only way to atone.

but when the others refuse, when even lottie hesitates, she’s forced to keep living, to reconcile with the fact that she’s not ready to die. because now, she isn’t just surviving—she’s waiting. for what, she isn’t sure. but the wilderness isn’t finished with her yet. this changes her, deepens the conflict within her—between faith and fear, between surrender and survival.

ADULT TIMELINE

played by victoria pedretti

she tried to outrun the wilderness, but in the end, it was always waiting to take her back.

maddie had spent years convincing herself she’d left the wilderness behind. she built a life that was quiet, structured—something she could control. a career helping children, a marriage she thought was love, a world where the past couldn’t reach her. she had been young when she married him, blinded by devotion, desperate for something safe, something certain. but love turned to control, affection to manipulation, and soon she found herself trapped in a life that felt just as suffocating as the wilderness.

by the time the yellowjackets returned to her life, so had the unraveling of everything she had tried to build. the divorce was already in motion, a bitter, drawn-out fight that left her feeling hollow. but that emptiness was nothing compared to what came next. the hunt. the blood. the whispers of the forest that had never really let her go.

at first, she tried to hold on, to remind herself that she wasn’t that girl anymore. but the more the past unraveled around her, the more she felt it creeping back in. the fear. the hunger. the aching knowledge that some things were never meant to stay buried.

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holyblonded · 12 days ago

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just some hcs of estrella and ale being like so so similar, similar movements, phrases, actions, personality traits that kinda things and olga is just there like “like mother, like daughter” shaking her head in amusement

— olga swears she’s living in a constant state of déjà vu. estrella and ale move the same, talk the same, react the same, it’s like watching a younger, more chaotic version of alexia walking around the house.

— the first time olga really notices it is when estrella scores a goal and does that little half-smirk, half-nod that ale does before pointing to the stands. olga literally blinks because she’s seen that exact expression a thousand times before, just on a different face.

— they both have the same ultra-competitive streak. whether it’s football, a casual game of uno, or who can reach the car first, neither of them backs down from a challenge. olga has had to physically separate them during board games because neither will accept losing.

— their pre-game rituals are pratically identical. estrella started copying ale’s routine, and now they both do the same stretching sequence, tie their cleats the same way, and tap their shin guards three times before stepping onto the pitch.

— they both have the same instinct to touch their noses when they’re thinking, the same way of crossing their arms when they’re annoyed, the same unimpressed stare when someone says something dumb. olga has been on the receiving end of that look from both of them at the same time, and it’s terrifying.

— estrella starts pacing when she’s stressed, hands on her hips, muttering under her breath—exactly like ale does. olga points it out once, and estrella immediately stops and glares at her, but then ale walks into the room and does the exact same thing, and olga just shakes her head, muttering, “like mother, like daughter.”

— they even have the same weirdly specific habits, like peeling fruit a certain way or always picking the same seat in the car. estrella will be sitting in a restaurant, tearing apart a piece of bread the exact same way ale does, and olga will just sigh because there’s no escaping it.

— the worst is when they team up against olga. whether it’s ganging up on her in arguments (always playfully, but still unfair), making fun of her accent, or just both deciding to be stubborn at the same time, olga has learned to pick her battles.

— estrella doesn’t like to admit it, but deep down, she loves being compared to ale. and ale pretends not to care, but every time olga says “she’s just like you,” there’s a little glimmer of pride in her eyes.

#answered asks 💌#woso community #⋆｡˚ stargirl: asks

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mrcrawly · 3 months ago

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Jayvik headcanons

hello jayvik nation im dumping these here bc im almost done with the second chapter of my fic and these have been stewing a while

Viktor

has the most beautiful curly calligraphy handwriting ever but it's so curly and fancy you genuinely can't read it

Ibuprofen allergy. source: my twisted mind

fidgeting with stuff all the time. paperclips, pencils, clips, rubber bands, the buttons on his vest

bonus to that one: he messes with his vest buttons so much that Jayce is constantly having to sew them back on when they come off

chronic nail biter

big sweet tooth

great cook but a shitty baker

"get even" kind of person; probably holds grudges from the second grade

doesn't cry very often but can be sensitive in the sense that he cares very much how his closest friends view him and internalizes their opinions

love languages are words of affirmation and acts of service

likes to be touched but not held (autism)

hates winter because it makes his joints hurt, summer is unbearably hot and he can't stand it, he has spring allergies; default fall enjoyer

animals really like him and strays tend to show up at the lab or follow him around

children like Viktor. Viktor doesn't like children back

kids will sometimes randomly talk to him and tell him things in public and he doesn't have the heart to be mean to them or ignore them so he just sits there like "mhm ☺️" while they talk until their parents apologize and walk off

probably has a pet reptile (a turtle or some kind of lizard methinks)

cold natured and wears seven hundred billion blankets to bed every night no matter the season

identifies as male in the sense that he was born a man and just never bothered to think much about it but doesn't fully grasp the concept or purpose of gender. could tell you what makes a man a man or what makes a woman a woman but doesn't understand why nor care

interested in jayce from the beginning but never felt as if he was in competition with Mel

sorry they can pry the JayMelVik love triangle out of my cold dead hands ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

not very affectionate because he doesn't know how to discuss his own feelings but very good at soothing other people

Jayce

dysgraphia (i think that's the term?) – not many issues with reading but not the best with writing

viktor is hyperlexic so it works out alright

AMAZING at drawing. like if he didn't have the passion for science he would be an artist. he draws out all their diagrams and blueprints and Viktor labels them

can cook pretty well but doesn't like to do it; if he stays at Viktor's place then Viktor always cooks for him

likes baking because he controls every single thing that goes in and it's very exact

both he and Viktor have chronic pain in their hands (carpal tunnel) from spending all their time taking notes and working with small delicate parts

he doesn't complain about his even when it bothers him because it feels silly knowing how bad Viktor's pain is every day 💔💔💔💔

10,000 step haircare routine but Viktor's looks better anyway

used to be prone to acne as a teen (if accutane existed in arcane he would have been an accutane kid)

(i was an accutane kid and im projecting)

shaved regularly pre-hexcore because his father had facial hair and he looks a lot like his dad anyway; he was always a little worried if he grew it out it would remind Ximena too much of his dad and make her sad

took entire days off of work and pushed deadlines back when Viktor got bad just so he could stay with him when Viktor was in too much pain to do practically anything

used to deliberately sleep in the lab because Viktor would stay late and he didn't want Viktor to be alone in case he passed out or something happened

love languages are physical touch, gift giving, and quality time

money doesn't exist to him when he's buying other people things. can't do secret santas at Christmas bc he constantly exceeds the budget

simultaneously one of those people who legitimately cannot accept gifts and feels bad when people give him things

was genuinely so in love with Mel; used to have dreams about marrying her and living somewhere quiet with her

most definitely forgave her for manipulating him on the council and understood her but it was just never the same

bottom. argue with the wall

OUGHHHH my shayla 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

guess my favorite character challenge level impossible (it's so unbelievably obvious)

#arcane jayce #i love arcane it definitely didn't ruin my life #arcane league of legends #jayvik #jayce talis #jayce x viktor #viktor arcane #viktor league of legends #jayce league of legends #arcane #arcane s2 spoilers #mel medarda #mel league of legends #my favorite character is jayce btw #it was definitely obvious #viktor nation

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bueckersworld · 15 days ago

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SYNOPSIS: headcannons for kk and her cheerleader girlfriend, some of which are during game days, others in their downtime.

WARNING(S): none, just fluff!

info. masterlist. taglist.

────୨ৎ────

❊. - sideline high fives: kk always looks to the sidelines after hitting a clutch shot, and her girlfriend will be there waiting for a quick, energetic high-five, no matter how intense the game gets.

❊ - lazy sundays: on their days off, they’ll have lazy sundays, staying in pajamas, binge-watching netflix, and ordering their favorite takeout. they’ll joke around and tease each other about random things, always keeping it lighthearted.

❊ - powerful motivation: before every game, kk’s girlfriend gives her a small handwritten note or a charm for good luck. it’s a small gesture, but it always helps boost kk’s confidence before stepping onto the court.

❊ - cooking together: they love cooking dinner together after a tough practice or game. kk is surprisingly good at baking, while her girlfriend excels in making healthy snacks that they can both enjoy.

❊ - victory hug: after a win, kk and her girlfriend have a tradition of running into each other’s arms for a quick, victorious hug. it’s their way of celebrating together, no matter how big or small the victory is.

❊ - late-night drives: after a big game, win or lose, kk and her girlfriend enjoy late-night drives with no destination in mind. it’s their time to relax, talk about anything, and just enjoy each other’s company.

❊ - cheerleader’s secret signals: kk’s girlfriend has a subtle routine she performs whenever kk is about to make an important play. whether it’s a slight wink or a raised fist, it’s her way of telling kk, “i believe in you.”

❊ - personal playlist: kk makes her girlfriend a personalized playlist with all their favorite songs, and they’ll listen to it while getting ready for the day, helping them feel energized and close.

❊ - on-court focus: kk can always count on seeing her girlfriend cheering loudly in the crowd. no matter what’s happening, just hearing her cheer will center kk, helping her refocus during intense moments of the game.

❊ - cheer routine practice: even in their downtime, they’ll practice their respective skills. kk will work on her basketball moves while her girlfriend practices cheerleading stunts and choreography, occasionally offering each other tips and laughs.

❊ - pre-game ritual: right before the game starts, kk and her girlfriend exchange quick words of encouragement, even if it’s just a soft “you’ve got this” from her girlfriend as kk heads out onto the court.

❊ - diy projects: kk and her girlfriend love working on diy projects together. whether it’s painting a mural in their room, making matching friendship bracelets, or customizing their sports gear, they enjoy getting creative and making things together.

❊ - celebrating with a dance: after a big win or a standout play, kk pulls her girlfriend onto the court for a spontaneous dance. it’s usually something goofy, but they both love it, and it’s a secret tradition between them.

❊ - stargazing: on clear nights, they’ll drive out to a quiet spot, lay on the hood of the car, and stargaze. they’ll talk about their dreams and laugh at the constellations they “invent,” enjoying peaceful, intimate moments.

❊ - nervous pre-game routines: when kk feels nervous before a game, her girlfriend knows exactly what to do—she’ll step onto the court during warm-ups and do a small cheer for kk to calm her down and remind her to have fun.

❊ - board game tournaments: on rainy days, they’ll have board game tournaments, with kk often teasing her girlfriend about being a “gracious loser” when she doesn’t win. they get super competitive, but always end with a hug and a laugh, no matter the result.

❊ - cheering at the sidelines: while kk plays, her girlfriend is constantly cheering, but it’s not just for the team—kk can always hear her girlfriend’s voice cutting through the crowd, hyping her up with every move.

❊ - personalized workout sessions: to unwind, they’ll create personalized workout routines based on their favorite sports. kk might teach her girlfriend a few basketball drills, while her girlfriend shows kk some cheerleading stretches or stunts, blending their athletic worlds.

❊ - basketball & cheerleading mix: sometimes after a big game, kk and her girlfriend will come up with creative ways to combine their sports, like practicing cool moves that merge basketball dribbling and cheerleading stunts.

❊ - cafe dates: they love going to their favorite local café, grabbing their favorite drinks, and people-watching. sometimes they’ll grab a notebook and sketch or jot down ideas for their next big adventure, enjoying the simple joy of each other’s company.

𝑤𝑖𝑡𝘩 𝘩𝑢𝑔𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑘𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠٫ 𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑎..

#ᥫ᭡ — 𝜝𝑈𝐸𝐶𝐾𝐸𝑅𝑆𝑊𝛰𝑅𝐿𝐷 #— 𝐾𝐾 𝐴𝑅𝑁𝛰𝐿𝐷 𝑀𝐴𝑆𝑇𝐸𝑅𝐿𝐼𝑆𝑇 #୭ 𝑘𝑘..#kamorea arnold #kk arnold uconn #kk arnold fic #kk arnold smut #kk arnold #kk arnold head cannons #uconn wbb #uconn women’s basketball #uconn huskies #uconn x reader #kk arnold x reader #kk arnold x fem!reader #lesbian #wlw

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samkerrworshipper · 2 years ago

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Medication - Leah Williamson

fluff, little bit of angst, anxiety attacks, mentions of depression, 3500 words

balled my eyes out to black fridays by tom odell and then this was birthed.

blurb:

your a rookie on the lionesses squad, who suffers from anxiety and when you stop taking your meds after learning you are starting a game in the euros everything goes downhill for you.

i am so sorry for how vague this was lol i’m writing this and publishing at 2:30 in the morning

I’d never liked gamedays. Everything felt different, all the feelings and emotions heightened. The pressure was insurmountable, especially when you are playing for your nation. Especially when you are one of the youngest, one of the least experienced, one of the youngsters. Today, we were playing Norway, my first game as a Lioness where I was a part of the starting line-up. It was a must win game, the stakes were high for us to win these Euro’s, especially considering it was a home euro’s for us. If we wanted to progress to the finals we couldn’t lose, the pressure was on.

I’d understood that as soon as I’d been notified that I was to start the match, understood that everything changed as soon as you were actually on the pitch. Our one point win over Austria had been great, but we were all hungrier for more, hungrier for the points that we needed to get us ahead in the competition. Sarina knew that there was an expectation for us to win, we all knew that.

I’d been feeling it all week, feeling the anxiety thrumming through my veins as we practised and went about our normal routine for the week. Something was different, it was my first year as a senior Lioness and I’d never been named as a starter. That was a big deal, a really big deal. That was all I could think about. What if I fucked it up? What if I messed up and they told me that I wasn’t going to be welcome back. What if Sarina saw me on the pitch and thought that I was worthless, useless, bad. That was all I could think about as we were standing in the tunnel getting ready to walk out. I was sandwiched in between Lucy and Beth. My hands shaking in my pockets and my breath quickening subconsciously. If I wasn’t aware of it then apparently the defender behind me was, because just as we were about to walk out I felt one of her hands fall to my shoulder, pulling me back into her just enough for her to be able to press her mouth to my ear and whisper,

“You’ve got this amore, you’re going to do perfectly fine,” Lucy’s voice was so strong, but so comforting. She was like an older sister to me, and had been since my first day at training camp. She had been the first person to believe in me besides my Arsenal teammates, the first person to really advocate for my future. She was also the first person on the Lionesses team besides Leah to learn about my struggles with anxiety, adhd and depression. She’d been a light in my life, texted me to make sure I was keeping up with my medication, or just to check in.

In the wake of the Euro’s I’d stopped taking my anxiety meds. I took Lorazepam, which worked really well for me, but it also tended to make me really drowsy and fatigued. Things that are not ideal when you are training and playing almost everyday for your country. It had positive effects, I definitely found it a lot easier to train and play my hardest, but there were a lot of negatives. Like how I was feeling right now. Like my heart was going to beat out of my chest, my hands getting clammy with sweat and shaking non stop like I’d just shot up on steroids. The sound of the crowd at Brighton didn’t help either as we walked out onto the pitch. I struggled to get through the national anthem and the pre game pleasantries, my chest and body hurting from the anxiety that was building up inside of my body.

I was grateful but also not to step out on the pitch properly. It felt like I was on a different planet, my senses overly heightened and my brain short circuiting almost everything.

I could feel Leah’s gaze on me as we all lined up to start the game, she worried about me, a lot. I was also her Arsenal teammate and she’d taken me under her wing beyond football, we’d become very close in our time spent together. I ignored her sidewards glances though, tasking myself with showing our nation that I deserved to be where I was and some jitters weren’t going to affect that.

My first half was rocky, normally with the mixture of adrenaline and endorphins my anxiety subsided when I started playing but this time I must have been too far gone, too much pent up anxiety built up for it to just fade away. It reflected in how I was playing, but our forwards had been flawless, slotting in six goals which put us in a lead that was pretty much untouchable. Clambering into the rooms at halftime was a charade. Everyone besides myself seemed ecstatic and hyped about our lead, I was on the inside but I was also wrapped up in my own bubble. I took a seat on the floor of the change rooms, taking in Serena’s speech about keeping our heads and just continuing what we were doing. I allowed Lucy to pass me a drink bottle, obliging her request for me to hydrate myself. She could tell something was up, she’d been hovering around me on the pitch, covering me. When one of the Norwegian girls had taken my feet out from under me she had immediately been at my side, pulling me up and then yelling at the umpire about how it had clearly been a foul if not a yellow. Leah had to pull her away just to ensure Lucy wouldn’t get carded herself, all whilst I stood there absolutely helpless as result of the amount of effort I was having to put into not collapsing from the amount of pain in my chest.

Leah kept it pretty brief after Serena, sticking to what she’d said and putting an emphasis on a few things before we headed back out. She managed to snag a grip on my jersey though as I trailed with the girls at the back of the group.

“Are you okay?” There was a little bit of captain in it, but it was mostly gentle, her voice a little bit rugged from the amount of yelling she’d done on the field.

“I’m fine.” Her facial expression was enough to tell me she didn’t believe a word I was saying.

“I’m telling Serena to sub you off, you clearly don’t look well enough to be playing.”

“I told you I feel fine Cap, I can play out the rest of the 90, please let me play it out.”

Leah looked conflicted, conflicted with what to do and how to react to my plea. I wasn’t one who begged very often, I didn’t see the point in it.

“Fine but y/n, as soon as anything happens out there, you put yourself in danger or someone else in danger you are going off, understood?”

I didn’t have any other option but to nod at Leah.

“Yes, captain.”

My voice had held some sarcasm as I tore her hand from the bottom of my jersey and started jogging back up the tunnel to catch up with girls that I’d previously been chatting to.

The last ten minutes of the second half was when bad transitioned to really not good. My body began to catch up with my over exertion and every second on the field became a battle. It was a blessing that the ball wasn’t really travelling down my end, Less and Toony had both been substituted in and were having a field day in our forward half kicking it back and forth to run the clock down. The Norwegian girls were giving it their best but you could tell they knew it was over. As the minutes passed though and we went into extra time I could feel my body really starting to get heavier, you could blame it on the lack of hydration and the english heat that we were playing in but I knew it was my body betraying me. I’d been denying my body for too long and it was catching up with me. I didn’t even know how many minutes of extra time we had, my vision was slowly blurring, my steps becoming wobbly and the pain in my chest becoming overbearing.

I could hear my opponent, I think it was Maren, or was it Guro? Asking me if I felt alright. I didn’t really comprehend it though, I couldn’t hear anything properly, it felt like I was underwater, my ears ringing out and my vision blacking over as I fell face first into the turf. Maren managed to catch me before I fully face planted into the grass, helping my limp form down to the ground before starting to yell out for help. It was then of course that the whistles blew and the match ended. I could make out the sounds of the crowd going nuts, maybe even my teammates on the sidelines yelling in triumph. I couldn’t open my eyes though and I definitely couldn’t make out the voice of Maren on the ground beside me trying to ask me questions and attract the attention of a medic. It was all mellowed out as my body succumbed to a coma like state that I’d forced myself into.

Leah and Lucy were the first two from my own team to locate me, passed out on the ground with Maren trying to provide as much privacy for me as possible whilst also pressing her hand to my throat to make sure that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong. It was Maren, Guro had been subbed off at the 84’ minute mark. I remembered that because I’d silently been wishing at the time that Serena would do the same, but she’d made her final changes and taking me off apparently hadn't been one of them.

“Y/n, can you open your eyes for me? Or squeeze my hand?”

I could feel Leah’s own hand fall into mine and I squeezed it as best as I could, it was enough for me to tell her that I was conscious enough to make out what she was saying to me.

“Good y/n/n, the medics are about to be here, can you try and open your eyes and talk for me?”

I tried my hardest to crack my eyes open, when I did finally muster up the will to open one of them I was met with the brightness of the stadium lights. I groaned almost immediately, being forced to take in my surroundings. I was surrounded by our trainers, who were draping different towels over my body in an attempt to cool me down and cover me. My cleats had been removed from my feet and someone was soaking my socks in cold water, something that I was not pleased to be awakened by.

“Good sweetheart, stay focused on me yeah, eyes on me.”

My eyes snapped back up to Leah, who was crouched above my head, Serena and Lucy’s heads were beside her own, staring down at me.

“The medics are going to come look at you and you are going to let them, okay?”

I almost immediately shook my head at Leah but she kept her jaw clenched and her stern face up.

“I’m not asking y/n, you just passed out on the field, you need to be assessed.”

I shook my head again and Leah rolled her eyes at me.

“An-n-xiety.”

I could hardly make out my own words in the stadium full of noise and the words themselves made me realise how much I was struggling to regulate my own breaths.

Leah nodded knowingly, suddenly everything seemed to come into perspective for her.

“You stopped taking your medication, didn’t you?”

I gulped and nodded at her, trying to block out all of the distractions that were happening around me. She looked annoyed at me, I cowered a little bit with the glare that she was giving me. After the last time I went on a sabbatical from my medication I swore to Leah I would never do it again.

As the medics crouched down next to me I shut my eyes again, it all becoming too much for my head. I let the medics fuss over me, I blacked out somewhere in between them putting me on a stretcher and getting me off the pitch.

I reawakened with sweat dripping down my body, all of the oxygen depleting from my body and my chest aching like it never had before. I choked a little bit as I sat up from my spot, gasping for air to enter my lungs. It took me a few seconds to recognise where I was, sitting inside the makeshift medical room at Brighton. My head was pounding and my whole body was aching.

“Y/n, look at me, you're having an anxiety attack, deep breaths.”

“Wh-what.” The words came out in a gasp as I struggled to take in any air, looking at Leah for guidance.

“We’re at Brighton, we just played Norway, you had an anxiety episode on the pitch. You’re having an attack right now, I need you to take deep breaths, follow me, in and out.”

I watched Leah as she exaggerated some deep breaths, if it hadn't been for the circumstance I probably would have laughed at her.

As I slowly started to take in more air she tried a different tactic.

“Good y/n/n, your doing so well my good girl. Can you tell me five things you can see?”

It was deflection, something that Leah had picked up on from her therapist.

“Serena, you, the light, Lucy and a drink bottle.”

Leah nodded at me encouragingly, rubbing slowly up my back as she continued.

“Good, you’re doing so well, how about four things you can feel?”

“Your breath, the scratchy blanket, my wet socks and I don’t know.”

My words were still choken as I used up whatever oxygen I was taking in to get the words out.

“That’s okay, that’s good, you are doing so well for me angel, how about three things you can hear?”

I tried to focus fully on Leah, on her words, her rubbing my back, her breath against my neck.

“Serena tapping her shoe, the heart monitor and the music from the changeroom.”

It was faint but if you focused in enough you could just hear the sound of my teammates in the change rooms, getting up to god knows that with the absence of their captain and manager.

“Perfect, you are doing absolutely perfectly. How about two things you can smell?”

“Antiseptic and your perfume.”

“Good, last one, one thing you can taste.”

I could feel my breath and body evening itself out, it felt like I was a piece of linen that was slowly but surely being ironed out, all of the crinkles and creases leaving my body.

“I don’t know.”

“Last one y/n, I know you can do it.”

“Metal, the iron taste from blood.”

Leah nodded at me, plastering a kiss on my forehead. Her words and actions being enough to bring me back down to earth fully. I very slowly took in my surroundings properly, Serena, Lucy and Keira were all sitting at the end of my bed, watching as Leah did her thing. I was hooked up to a few different things, cords and wires poking out of my extremities. A saline drip, heart monitor and another machine that I wasn’t sure the purpose of.

“Hey my girl, you back here with us now?”

I pushed my head into Leah’s chest, trying to hide from the world that I was now a participating member of.

“No hiding, not here,”

I groaned as Leah pushed me out of her chest, annoyed by the loss of contact and the confrontation of having to be put in front of some of the people I respected most.

“You gave us a fright back there, I think you came close to killing Maren.”

I gulped nervously, hanging onto every word that left Serena’s mouth, just bobbing my head in agreement because what else was I supposed to do.

“M’ sorry, didn’t mean to, just wanted to prove that I deserved to be here.”

Serena’s face held a kind of understanding, like she’d seen girls before me who had been the same, willing to die to prove their worth to the dutchwoman who we all regarded so highly.

“You wouldn’t be here in the first place if you didn’t deserve to be. It’s one thing to push yourself but to the point where you black out on the field is another thing. If it ever happens again y/n y/l/n then I can swear to you now that you will be benched, am I understood.” I nodded meekly at Serena,

“Yes ma’am.”

She nodded at me, she’d gotten her point across.

“Leah tells me this happened as a result of you not taking your medication?”

I pushed my head back into Leah’s chest, grunting at her when she pushed me out of it. I couldn’t do much else but nod at Serena.

“I get side effects ma’am, it makes me drowsy and sleepy, I didn’t want it to affect my game.”

Serena was very quick to fire back at me,

“You take medication to ensure that you feel well, there is no shame in that. If you are having a problem with side effects then you are to bring it up with one of our doctors, not boycott your medication entirely. From now on I am going to be responsible for your medication, you will come to me everyday to take it so I can ensure that you are receiving the correct doses so something like this does not occur again, is that understood?”

I gulped and nodded at Serena. She smiled at me knowingly in return.

“You are an elite athlete y/n, it is imperative that you care for your body. Or something like this happens, something with such magnitude that it can’t be overlooked. Your health and wellbeing comes first, always.”

I nodded at Serena once again, allowing her to give me a hug before leaving the room to give us some privacy. As soon as the door closed behind her I shed a few tears, I hated confrontation, it was one of my biggest fears.

“She’s right y’know, this could have been a lot worse, what if you’d put yourself in a really dangerous position because you were in a bad headspace and ended up seriously injured, you can’t just stop taking your medication randomly y/n, it’s not safe.”

Leah’s voice was murmured against my forehead, her lips staying plastered to the oily and cold skin.

“No one else on the team relies on medication to function, I thought I would be fine, I feel so stupid always being the one having to rely on shit to get through the day.”

I could feel Leah rolling her eyes from above me.

“No one else on the team struggles with intense anxiety and depression like you do, we are all different, we all function differently. There is no shame in needing medication y/n/n, Lucy uses an asthma puffer, does that make her stupid?”

I looked over at Lucy, it was different.

“No but it’s different.”

“How?”

Leah’s answer was fired back at me and I struggled slightly to recover from her sudden reply,

“Lucy has a physical problem, mine’s just in my head.”

“What you went through today seemed pretty physical to me.”

I was stumped by that answer, looking across at Kiera and Lucy who nodded along with what Leah was saying.

“You struggle with your mental health, there is no shame in that. You rely on medication. So what? Good for you for listening to your body and acknowledging that you need that to help you make it through the day. Y/n, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using medication to help you. If I felt sick, with the flu, and I needed antibiotics or whatever, would you think that I was weak for using them?”

I shook my head at Leah almost immediately, the question was a no brainer for me,

“Exactly, because I’d be taking the medication needed to keep me well and functioning. All you are doing is the same thing y/n, keeping yourself alive and well.”

#leah williamson #lionesses #woso #leah williamson x reader #serena wiegman #lucy bronze #fluff #anxiety attacks #medication #angst #i love leah williamson #golden retriever leah vibes #supportive moms #england lionesses x reader #lionesses x reader

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stardustrebels · 2 months ago

Text

More of You- Chapter 9

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader WC: 6.6k Rating: E / 18+ MDNI Series Masterlist | Blog Masterlist Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Tags: No outbreak!AU, fluff, romance, Joel-typical pet names (darlin’, sugar, sweetheart, baby), soft!Joel, fingering, protected PIV, no use of Y/N, minimal descriptions of reader. She has hair long enough to tie back, wears dresses and heels and wears makeup.

A/N: Who has two thumbs, was going to post this on Valentine’s day and then decided to re-write the entire thing at the last second? This guy! So apologies if you’ve been waiting for it, but it’s finally here and I so hope it was worth the wait! The slow part of the burn is officially over by the end of this chapter. Also, I’ll be honest with you, I’m a little blown away by the response to the Joel Miller one shot fics I posted pre- V day, and I’m so, so happy that people are enjoying them. It’s giving me the motivation to write more, challenge myself and take little steps outside my comfort zone. I’ve only been publishing my fanfic since December 2024, and I’m just so grateful to have been welcomed by such an amazing community of people who love these characters as much as I do. You’re all so wonderful and deserve all the love <3 Now, without further ado, I hope you enjoy!

The weather that morning earned an involuntary noise of disgust when you pulled back the curtains; big grey clouds and heavy rain. You dressed and shuffled through to the kitchen before the temptation to climb back in to bed won you over.

Your laptop was on the table, still open after a late night of playing catch-up on projects with deadlines looming, the backlog since your trip almost cleared. The only thing left in your diary for the week was a momentous client meeting scheduled for Friday morning. Seeing the calendar entry staring back at you from the screen made your stomach swoop.

It was the kind of opportunity you would have given your left arm for six months ago, when you had thrown all caution to the wind in a moment of madness and quit your job to become a freelancer, armed only with a handful of loyal clients and sheer, grief-ridden determination. The kind of opportunity that had stayed present in your mind’s eye when the late nights had started to become all too much but you still took on new work to add to your portfolio, desperate to scratch out a place for yourself amidst a horrendously competitive industry. If you were being honest, you knew that it was a better opportunity than you would have ever had with the firm you left in New York, and it felt like everything that you’d poured in to your career over the last ten or so years had led to this.

You exhaled, closing the laptop with a quiet click. No pressure.

The remaining few pieces of work could wait until the afternoon. Spending the last couple of mornings with Joel had thrown off your self-imposed work routine, forcing you to work later than you usually did, but you didn’t mind.

The buzz of your phone ringing knocked you out of any daydream you were about to have about Joel. Your stomach lurched at the thought of a call at such an unsocial hour, but you huffed a laugh when you checked the screen, panic dissipating as soon as you answered.

“Please tell me this is not you phoning before you go to bed,” you said, balancing the phone between your chin and shoulder while you reached up to pull a cereal box out of the cupboard.

Summer groaned down the phone at you. “I wish!”

Her usual bright voice was dulled with tiredness as she told you she was on her way to a job interview and had forgotten her coffee, and that it was now your job to keep her awake while she drove there. You couldn’t help but giggle at her uncharacteristic malaise as you pulled a bowl from the cabinet.

“You’re a different person this early in the morning, Summer,” you said, sniffing the milk before you poured it over your cereal. You switched your phone to speaker to save her the noise of up-close crunching.

“And you’re somehow happier this early in the morning than you are the rest of the time,” She retorted. You were glad she couldn’t see the burning blush on your face when you admitted that you were meeting Joel that morning, and that it might have been adding to your good mood. After she’d let out a squeal, Summer seemed a lot more awake, demanding all of the details. You told her between mouthfuls of cereal vague details about New York, about how you finally got his number, about your walk with him in the park, finding out about his kid, holding hands and then finally, that he’d kissed you.

“Oh, this is all so cute, I can’t handle it!” Summer squeaked.

“It is kinda cute,” you admitted, swiping through your phone to look at the picture of the invitation Joel had sent over the day before, accompanied by a message telling you he’d made a dinner reservation, signed off with a couple of x’s, which had made your stomach squiggly. “We’re going on a date tomorrow night. He’s taking me to dinner and then an art gallery opening.”

“Oh my god,” Summer said with a laugh, “And to think you needed a push to actually talk to this guy. You’re welcome, by the way.” “Yes, alright, thank you,” you said dryly, shaking your head as you scrolled back up through Joel’s messages, smiling fondly down at your screen. “He is pretty great, Summer. I’m just not-”

“You’re just not nothin’!” She said, cutting through a yawn, “You’re having a good time and that’s all that matters.”

“I think you just want to live vicariously through me,” you said with a grin.

“Obviously,” she said, “I need to know every detail about this date. I’m talking everything- what you wear, what he wears, what you order, how you stare at each other over a candlelit dinner, how he won’t be able to keep his hands off you, how you’re totally going to invite him back to your place afterwards and-”

“Jesus, Sum,” you muttered, pulling on your shoes, hoping she didn’t hear the excitement laced through your half-hearted rebuke.

“Oh come on,” she whined. “He’s taking you to see art. You can’t tell me that man doesn’t have you weak in the knees already.”

She wasn’t wrong.

As you’d fallen asleep last night it had struck you that no one had ever looked at you like Joel did- the deep admiration present in those beautiful brown eyes was so intense that it stole your breath and sent tingles down to your fingertips. Spending time with him filled you with a funny feeling- like someone had shaken a bee hive and shoved it right in your chest cavity- the relentless buzz only increased the closer you were to seeing him again. It wasn’t just your knees that were weak, but you weren’t going to admit that to anyone.

“You still there?”

You cleared your throat, “Yeah, I’m here. Listen, are you sure you should be focussing on my love life instead of your interview?”

“Rude,” Summer said, and you could practically feel the playful swat to the arm she’d have dished out had she been there in person. “But fine. I’ll have you know I’m here anyway, so you’re off the hook.”

“Good luck,” you said, glancing at the the clock on your stove. You needed to get moving if you wanted to get to Harrison’s on time. “Let me know how it goes.”

“Thanks, I will. And hey- have fun with your man today!”

“He’s not my man,” you said, knowing you’d lost that argument before you even spoke.

“Mhm. Keep telling yourself that.”

With a final knowing giggle, Summer hung up.

The lingering heat and morning rain had left everything damp and heavy, including you. By the time you made it to Harrison’s, Joel was already at your usual table, looking just as soaked- but unfairly good - his shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and damp curls sticking out at odd angles. He stood to greet you with a kiss to your cheek, murmuring his usual “hey, darlin’” before you settled across from him, still catching your breath.

You mentioned you wouldn’t be able to meet the next morning, and Joel’s concern sent a pang of guilt through you. You explained it was for an exciting work opportunity and his worry softened in to relief and then in to a proud grin as he listened, squeezing your hand in reassurance.

“Ain’t no way you won’t do great, sugar,” he said, thumb grazing over your knuckles. “Then we’ll have another reason to celebrate tomorrow night.”

You tried prying for details about your dinner plans, but he only smirked.“You’ve got enough goin’ on tomorrow. All you gotta do is give me your address and be ready for six, everythin’ else is taken care of.”

You woke up two hours before your alarm on Friday morning, powerless to do anything other than stare at the ceiling as you tried to breath through the churning in your stomach. By the time you could have easily drifted off again it was time to get up. Typical.

Joel had sent messages for you to wake up to, wishing you good luck and reiterating that he couldn’t wait to take you out that night. You glanced at them periodically as you got ready for your meeting, and each time you did a pleasant fuzziness washed over you, sending a warmth rolling through your limbs, a calming sensation that you wished you could bottle.

Before you parted ways the day before, it had seemed that Joel had been unable to take his hands off of you for more than a minute, like if he let you go you’d float off in to the ether and never be seen again. And you had welcomed it every time. Each touch from him left you needing more, like a craving you would never quite be able to satisfy. When he’d kissed you on that corner again he’d seemed more reluctant than ever to leave you behind, pressing gentle lingering kisses to your lips, one hand grasping your hip and the fingers of the other cupping the nape of your neck, his calloused fingertips bushing over your skin with a tenderness that sent a slow, searing heat pulsing through you- twisting at the base of your spine and down your legs. Every time you’d thought about it since, the memory of it morphed in to a sensation within you that was utterly sinful.

You wanted him to know the effect he had on you, what his touch and kisses did to you and what they made you want to do to him. Instead you settled for texting back ‘Thank you, handsome. Can’t wait to see you later xx’. You wondered if he could sense that it was the understatement of the century. You just had to make it through the next couple of hours, and then Joel would have your undivided attention for the rest of the day.

The client meeting turned out to be a different beast than you’d expected. Of course you had joined the call prepared to discuss your work, processes and newly developed ideas for their branding, but almost immediately after introductions had been made it started to feel much more like a job interview and less like the semi-informal chat that you had anticipated. Their questions were pointed and detailed and you scrambled internally for what felt like an age to meet the tone whilst trying to keep a light and friendly attitude. It took a hot minute, but you adjusted and adapted, slipping in to a corporate headspace easier than you thought you could, as if the ability had been lying dormant all these months.

As the meeting went on and you began to share your portfolio with them, explaining past briefs and projects, some of the tension in your shoulders dissipated and you realised that you were more than holding your own. By the time the call ended, the knot in your stomach had loosened and been replaced with something unfamiliar but not unpleasant. You would hear at some point that afternoon whether the client had chosen to work with you, and you closed your laptop with an air of finality, knowing that whatever the outcome, you had done your best.

You could finally let yourself get excited about your date with Joel.

You had picked out what to wear for that evening on the same day as he had asked you out, and it had hung on the back of your bedroom door ever since; a simple black dress with thin spaghetti straps and a tiny embroidered detail around the hem that came to sit mid-thigh. You’d had to fish a pair of heels out of one of the unpacked boxes in your closet, and it took you longer to find your jewellery than it did for you to do your hair and makeup. When you were finally ready and looked at yourself in the mirror, there was a curious difference to you that you couldn’t name.

Your phone pinged, pulling you from your thoughts and you checked it with hands that were only trembling a little. You had to read the email three or four times before the words sank in: you’d landed the client.

By the time your buzzer sounded that evening, you had practically paced a hole in the floor. Joel arrived just before six, and you threw open the door to him as soon as he knocked.

The sight in front of you made your brain short-circuit for a beat before you remembered to smile. Joel didn’t seem to notice because it looked like he was having the same experience. He’d traded his usual worn flannel and faded denim for a smart tailored jacket atop a button down, dark wash jeans and shiny leather boots. His curls were pushed back, tamed and slick. You knew he cleaned up well, but you hadn’t expected this. He was clutching a bouquet of white roses and you saw the way his fingers gripped them tighter as his eyes fell over you.

You broke the silence first. “Looking sharp, Miller!”

He found his composure just long enough to chuckle and hold out a hand to gesture toward you. “And you-” he struggled for a moment to complete the sentence, shaking his head with wide eyes. “You look so beautiful, sweetheart.”

You stepped closer, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips, but even the briefest touch caused the cascade of a molten desire from your chest to the pit of your stomach. His breath hitched-just barely- but you felt it. The scent of his cologne, sweet and woodsy, hit you and made it difficult not to linger against him even longer in the hope that it might transfer on to your skin so you could smell him even when he wasn’t near you. When you pulled back, his fingers brushed over yours as he handed you the bouquet. You thanked him, voice softer now, invited him in and turned toward the kitchen to find a vase, acutely aware of the weight of his gaze following you.

As you arranged the roses you were struck with the realisation that Joel was the only person who’d stepped foot in your apartment that wasn’t you. You bit your lip as you watched him look around from your spot in the kitchen, a lopsided grin on his face as he took in your space with quiet consideration. You’d cleaned before he’d arrived so that it looked its best, but having someone else there, examining the artwork on the walls and the trinkets on your shelves pried open a sliver of vulnerability you hadn’t expected.

“I like your place.” Joel said, stepping toward you again, having done a reasonably thorough tour of the living space in a couple of strides.

You grinned up at him, placing the filled vase in the center of your kitchen table. “Thanks. It’s cozy, but it’s home.”

He tapped his knuckle against a small photo booth strip pinned near the corner of your fridge. “That your friend from the coffee shop?”

You glanced over at it- you and Summer from her birthday party- her grinning wide, you mid-laugh, heads tipped toward each other. “Yeah, that’s Summer.”

Joel hummed, mouth twitching in to a grin as he leaned against the counter. “You know the day she was there I’d finally worked up the nerve to talk to you,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Had it all planned out: was gonna come over and ask you somethin’ corny and lame. Right as I was about to…” he gestured toward the photo with a coy smile.

You laughed, shaking your head. “If it makes you feel any better, she spent the next ten minutes before you left that day trying to get me to go over and talk to you. She’s very invested in the development of the time we’ve been spending together.”

Joel’s eyebrows lifted at that. “Oh yeah?”

You caught yourself and a heat crept up the back of your neck. “Don’t we have a dinner reservation to make?” You said, plucking your bag from the back of a chair and heading for the door.

Joel stepped ahead of you to open the door to his truck for you to climb in. Being in a space that was so uniquely his felt more intimate than it should have. The truck suited him- an older model Chevy, immaculately kept. The interior was spotless save for a pack of gum and a couple of coins in the center console and it smelled like fresh linen. You absently wondered if he cleaned it especially for you or if it always looked like this.

When Joel climbed in a moment later and you asked him where you were headed to, he only winked at you. Laughter bubbled up in your chest before you could help it, and he set off looking rather pleased with himself.

The restaurant wasn’t far, and as soon as Joel pulled up outside, you realised you knew about it through a recommendation from Summer. It was nice. You grinned at him as he rounded the front of the truck to open the door for you again. His hand came to rest at the small of your back and the weight of it sent a lick of fire curling up your spine. You resisted the urge to fidget as you were shown to your table, loathe to lose the warmth seeping through the fabric of your dress from Joel’s palm.

As you waited for your food, you considered that you didn’t think you’d ever met someone as outwardly comforting as Joel- his presence was like a warm hug, even from across the table and he didn’t even seem aware of it. You were enjoying the opportunity to openly admire him. His resting facial expression leaned toward a frown, you’d learned. It accounted for the deep lines that appeared, etched in to his brow easily as he talked, an expression that was clearly familiar to his face. It was his eyes that really spoke to his true personality- warm and open when he looked at you, young and boyish when they glinted mischievously as they were now. You were drawn to it- the paradox of this man. You came to the conclusion that he’d probably spent years curating a stand-offish reputation, but had failed to realise that his aura couldn’t be altered.

The candlelight added hazy flickers of light across you both. It glimmered in Joel’s eyes as he listened to you tell him about the outcome of the client meeting that morning, your own joy reflected back at you by him- the beauty of it made the world slow and allowed you to really take in the sight of him, like a memory you were aware was being stored, a saved snippet of time that you already knew would be something fond to look back on. When he raised his glass to toast your success, it broke the magic of the moment, but you didn’t have a second to mourn it. The clink of the glasses was soft, but the look Joel gave you after, over his glass, held an intensity that made it hard to keep your eyes on his, the low light now accentuating a hunger within them that made your pulse spike.

For a second, you wondered if you could end the night right there, drag him back to your apartment and lose yourself in the heat curling against your insides when he looked at you like that. You pressed your thighs together and shifted in your seat, eyes unable to hold his gaze any longer. He cleared his throat and when you looked back at him, any hint of the hunger had been masked by sweetness again.

Dinner was over in the blink of an eye. The food was tasty, although you barely noticed what you were even eating- too focussed on Joel, searching his face for any sign of the hint of lust you’d seen from him before, but it didn’t show again. He insisted on settling the bill after a short not-quite-argument with you about splitting it. “My treat, sugar,” he’d said in a tone that made it obvious you were never going to change his mind.

The gallery wasn’t far, but Joel insisted on driving there to save you walking in your heels, and his consideration for you made the heat building inside you whip around like a wild thing, impossible to ignore.

The sun was beginning to set, and it bathed everything in a lovely orange glow that was doing nothing to dispel the dreamlike haze that had settled over your evening. You turned your face toward it and basked in its warmth while Joel drove the few blocks to the gallery.

The entrance was marked by red velvet ropes and a matching carpet that stretched up to tall glass doors, and Joel’s hand tensed in yours as you approached them.

“You alright?” You asked, stopping him with a gentle tug when he didn’t reply, eyes searching his for an answer.

His gaze flicked past you and over the well-dressed guests milling around the entrance. “I’m just- this ain’t exactly my scene.”

You squeezed his hand and offered him a lopsided grin. “Just look serious and nod, remember?”

He gave you a sidelong glance and a smirk. “That’s… what I usually do anyway.”

“Then you’re already a natural,” you teased, brushing your thumb over his knuckles and leading him toward the door.

The hum of conversation inside overlapped and bounced off the modern concrete interior in a way that was mildly overwhelming. You were greeted by a well-dressed man at a makeshift reception desk, who exchanged Joel’s invitation for a gallery guide, which was immediately passed over to you. You let go of his hand to flick through it, happily soaking up the atmosphere as you suggested what to look at first.

You led Joel through the crowd at the entrance to find a quieter spot. The art you passed to get there was stunning, and you made a note to come back and look at those later. You ambled around a smaller gallery and Joel’s eyes flicked over each piece as you read mumbled excerpts from the guide aloud and added your own thoughts. You weren’t quite sure if the furrow of his brow was deliberate or not.

“You okay if I get us a drink?” He murmured, resting a hand against your back as he leaned in.

You gave him a reassuring smile and a nod, “Yeah, go ahead. I’ll be here.”

You watched as he disappeared toward the bar, briefly admiring the fit of his jeans before you turned back to the artwork, allowing yourself the opportunity now to fully take it in. The contemporary pieces that lined the walls were bold and chaotic, all by the same artist. One particular piece caught your attention: a canvas streaked with jagged lines of charcoal against an expanse of pale grey. In the corner there was one tiny circle of orange, painted to look as if it was burning white hot, its rings of light radiating and mixing with the drab background. You took a step closer and tilted your head to examine it. The sensation that it pulled from you was not unlike a sense of hope.

You startled, breath catching when a hand clutching a champagne flute appeared in front of you and let out a breathy laugh when you realised it was Joel standing behind you. You took the glass from him and he leaned in close over your shoulder.

“Fascinating use of negative space.” He said, agonisingly close to your ear. You exhaled loudly what you hoped sounded like a laugh and not a barely contained moan.

Your eyelids fluttered shut briefly as you leaned in to him. His hand gripped your waist in response and held you steady, body pressing against yours in a way that stole the air from your lungs. Certain that he was about to pepper experimentally bold kisses against your neck, you shifted under his touch in a silent invitation.

The titter of polite laughter echoing from across the gallery interrupted the moment and brought you both back to your senses. Joel moved to stand by your side, but his hand stayed firmly on your waist as you continued your tour of the artwork. You glanced up at him and caught the tick of his jaw before he managed to hide it with a smile.

You made it to the third room before Joel was intercepted by someone he knew. You were introduced to the project management team that oversaw the work undertaken by Joel’s firm, and didn’t miss the way his fingers flexed by his side when one of the team paid you a compliment and leaned in to peck a kiss against your cheek, totally ignoring the hand you’d offered him to shake and leaving you with nothing left to do but meet him in an awkward half-hug. As soon as he’d stepped away, you inched closer to Joel as the conversation moved on, leaning against him gratefully when his hand found the small of your back again.

The team introduced you both to some of the artists and soon enough you were separated, pulled in to different conversations until you were at opposite ends of the room, sparing glances through the crowd until you lost sight of each other completely.

Taking advantage of a lull in conversation with a very enthusiastic art collector, you managed to pull away and head back to the first gallery you’d entered. You’d long-since lost your guidebook and your glass of wine, placed down on a cocktail table and left behind at some point over the course of your conversations, but you knew you wanted to look at one piece again before you started your search for Joel.

You crossed your arms this time as you viewed it, standing closer and then further away, eyes fixed on the tiny orange glow in the bottom corner. It’d be easy to miss if you weren’t examining the piece, lost in the void of grey and black jagged lines. You only realised when you changed your viewing angle, that they were formed with paint into raised craggy bumps. You bent down to inspect the glowing orange dot and realised that the burning white centre of it was actually a hole in the canvas, made deliberately and then worked around. You stood and walked back to the middle to view it in its entirety one last time before you moved on, but you were interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps walking toward you. You glanced round to see Joel, watching you with a tilt to his head and a grin on his face.

“Hey, darlin’. You alright?”

You nodded and reached for his hand when he was close enough.

“I think this one is my favourite,” you murmured. You leaned your head against his shoulder as you both viewed it. Joel stood quietly beside you, frowning at the painting as if he was really looking this time. He let out a low hum as he traced circles against the back of your hand.

“I think it suits you,” he said, voice rumbling through the top of your head.

You turned to glance up at him. “Oh yeah? How come?”

Joel fixed you with a look that was so warm you almost melted. “‘Cause you’re a little ray of sunshine, darlin’. You’re as bright as that dot there, and you don’t even seem to realise it.”

There wasn’t even time to take a breath before your lips were on his. He froze for a second before he exhaled sharply through his nose and kissed you back, smiling against your mouth. It drove you wild. You had never wanted anyone as much as you wanted him right now.

Cradling his face with both hands, you pulled back just enough to mumble, “You wanna get out of here, handsome?”

You don’t remember if Joel even said anything before you were walking out the door and back toward his truck.

By the time you made it back to your apartment, nothing could have stopped what was in motion. Joel had hardly taken his hands off of you since you left the gallery, apparently intent on driving you absolutely feral. He was starting to learn what types of touches affected you the most and was using his newfound knowledge to be an absolute menace. You’d barely made it in the door before his mouth was on yours again. His hands were everywhere, pressing you against him like he was starved and you were the only thing that would sate him. You pushed his jacket from his shoulders and started to fumble with the buttons on his shirt as his fingers mapped out your curves, like he was hell-bent on memorising every inch of you.

You pushed against him, gently guiding him backwards to your bedroom door and he let you take the lead. You kicked off your shoes, discarding them as your fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt, unwilling to let go of him for even a second. Your breathing quickened as the heat between you grew unbearable.

Joel backed up step by step until the back of his knees hit the edge of your bed. He paused, your face between his hands, his breathing matching pace with yours. When he spoke his voice was low, thick with restraint.

“You sure, darlin’?”

“Fuck yeah,” you breathed. “I’m sure.”

He lowered himself back on to the mattress with a grunt and his palms slid up your thighs instinctively as you climbed on to his lap. He began to press his kisses along the curve of your collarbone and up the column of your neck, dragging breathy gasps from you with each one.

His breath was hot, ghosting your neck as he murmured against your skin. “Wanted to do this all goddamn night.”

You barely managed to whine in response before his mouth was back on you, kissing over your jaw toward your lips. A shudder rolled through you and you rocked your hips, desperate for friction. He groaned against you and the sound poured gasoline on the fire that he had stoked since you left the gallery.

You wanted more. You needed more.

Your fingers rose to the zipper at the side of your dress and tugged it down. Joel’s hands stilled and his chest rose and fell with measured breaths, jaw tensing as you lifted the dress off over your head and unclasped your bra before throwing both pieces of clothing haphazardly across the room.

“Jesus,” he muttered, fingers twitching against your thighs as he drank you in.

You smiled, emboldened by his reaction and shifted your hips just enough to pull a groan from him when he didn’t move.

“You gonna just stare, Miller?”

Joel blinked twice before his lips parted with a groan. Your goading snapped him in to action and he flipped your positions in a blur of limbs, pressing you down in to the mattress with a kiss.

He stood and pulled his wallet from the pocket of his jeans, throwing it on to the edge of the bed. You watched him, biting your lip as he shrugged off his shirt, unbuckled his belt and pulled off his jeans and boxers, his hard length springing back up to hit the skin of his stomach. He knelt at the edge of the bed and traced his hands up your legs, ghosted past your thighs and curled his fingers round the waistband of your underwear, sliding them down with a reverence that made you whine.

He positioned himself back on top of you, retracing the movement with his fingers, inching toward your centre with maddening, teasing touches.

Your hands flailed around you for purchase in the sheets and your hips bucked up toward his hand. You whimpered- a plea for him to move his fingers where you wanted them most.

“It’s alright, darlin’,” he drawled, “You’ll get what you need.”

A moan broke from your throat with a jolt when he finally brushed his fingers gently through your folds.

He caught your lips in a kiss as he stroked up again and again, pressing featherlight touches to your clit with every one. A familiar tightness began to coil within you and your breaths quickened. Joel hummed in approval and brushed against your clit one last time before his fingers parted your folds and slid in to you. He curled them experimentally, pulling back to watch your face as he did.

“So fuckin’ beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes blown with lust as he took in your changing expressions at the pleasure building inside you. You clenched down and he pressed steadily against the same point with his fingers curled inside you. You were so close, and Joel knew it.

“Come on, baby,” he said, voice absolutely wrecked, “I’ve got you, come f’me.”

It was all it took to push you over the edge. Your release surged through you so fiercely that your entire body tensed before the flame curling against your spine sparked and sent molten hot tingles through your core and in to your limbs. A sharp gasp tore from your lips, followed by loud, unrestrained moans as you came undone for him. Your back arched as Joel continued, his fingers unrelenting as he guided you through every pulsing aftershock. You realised that he was speaking as your breaths returned to normal, murmuring praise against your temple, the sound his voice mingling with the thrum of your heartbeat.

You let out a soft groan as he traced slow circles over your clit with his thumb, stretching out the rolling pleasure of your orgasm until every last shuddering, breathless moan had been drawn from you. He finally slipped his fingers from you with one last pulse from your oversensitive nerves, and you whined in protest at the loss.

“You alright, darlin’?,” he asked, brushing his fingertips along your thigh. You offered him a hum in response, too dazed to string words together.

He smiled down at you, fingers tracing up your arm and along your collarbone before dancing light touches toward your nipple and you arched up in to his strokes with a breathy moan.

He shifted to kiss you, pressing his body against yours. His cock sat hard and heavy against your thigh and when you shifted against him he let out a sound so raw it made your stomach flip. You reached down, wrapping your fingers gently around his length.

“Fuck,” he gritted out, hips bucking in to your hand.

You stroked him slowly, and he tensed under your touch, flexing his hands against your hips with trembling fingers.

Joel reached for your wrist with a breathy chuckle, stilling your movements. “You keep that up, darlin’, and this’ll be over before we even get started.”

He pulled back to reach for his wallet and slid a condom from it. Mirroring your knowing smile with one of his own, he rolled it on with ease, and positioned himself at your entrance, waiting for a signal from you before going any further. You arched your body toward his in anticipation and after letting out a long, shaky breath. he slid in to you. Your moans mingled together as he filled you completely. Your nails dug in to his shoulders as the overwhelming fulness sparked a fresh flicker of heat low in your stomach.

“Christ, baby,” he murmured, shuddering above you. “You feel so fuckin’ good.”

You couldn’t muster the breath to respond, lost in the way he fit against you. Instead, you rolled your hips, coaxing a strangled moan from him.

That was all it took.

With a deep, throaty sound, Joel pulled back and thrust in to you again, dragging gasped moans from you with every grind of his hips. Slow and deep, he managed to hit a point within you with every thrust that sent white hot sparks flying through you. His breath came in uneven pants against your skin as he pressed closer, forearms braced on either side of your head.

“God, you’re so perfect. So fuckin’ perfect,” he growled, sliding a hand to the back of your head, threading his fingers through your hair and pressing his forehead to yours with care that would have made you sob had you been able to focus on anything. Each slow roll of his hips made you quiver, nudging you to the edge with every measured stroke. Joel hissed through gritted teeth at the sensation, his fingers tightening their grip in your hair.

“That’s my girl. That’s it, c’mon- let me feel it.”

His girl.

The words caused aching pleasure to crest over you like a tide, warm and all-consuming. You clung to him as it crashed against your core, almost taking everything inside you with it. The cry that broke from your throat was muffled by a high pitched ringing in your ears and for a second all you could see were bright white flashes, strobing over your vision so intensely you had to close your eyes against them.

You heard Joel’s groan, giving way to a string of hissed curses as he felt you tighten around him, his movements stuttering. He let out a choked cry as he dropped his head to your shoulder, the last of his control unravelling. His thrusts grew erratic and with a final shuddering breath, he followed you over the edge, his grip on you tightening as he let himself fall.

For a moment, neither of you moved. You didn’t know which way was up- you might as well have been catapulted off in to the stratosphere with how weightless your limbs felt. Joel’s lips brushed against your temple as he moved his hand to touch your cheek with slow, lazy movements. You opened your eyes to find his staring back at you and you let out a huff of disbelief before your face broke in to a wide smile.

“Holy shit,” you said as Joel let out a soft chuckle of his own in agreement.

You only moved when your limbs started to tingle with the threat of pins and needles. Joel disappeared momentarily to the bathroom before padding through and sliding back in to bed beside you. You curled in to him, peppering kisses over the freckles on his shoulder as he brushed lazy strokes up and down the curve of your waist.

“Will you stay the night?” You half-whispered against his skin. The words came out before you could really think about them, needier than you intended.

“‘Course I will, darlin’,” he breathed back. Even as he fought off sleep, his tone made you realise he hadn’t even considered the alternative.

The residual desire pulsing through you parted to make way for a curious sensation that swirled its way in to your chest. It dripped through the edge of your consciousness, building to a trickle, settling like a balm over the lingering pain there. Pain caused by the shards of your broken heart left to scrape away at your insides for months.

Joel pressed the gentlest of kisses to the top of your head and pulled you in to his chest. You sank in to him, listening as his breaths turned to tiny snores, and wondered as you drifted off alongside him whether he would ever know that he was the one who put the first tiny piece of your heart back together.

Next Chapter

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