#after he manages to get up and numbly clean off the hair he goes back to bed shivering so badly that his teeth chatter.

[leaflingsound]

thinking about genderfluid/trans fem steve again (happens at least once every six months for the past seven years, now) and how much I need him to have a total breakdown pre-realization where he just absolutely fucks up his hair. I'm talkin dull scissors in the shower at 3am levels of fucking it up. and then he sits there on the cold tile floor in his big empty house with wet tufts of hair clinging to his skin and cries for 45 minutes straight like a little kid who wants their parents, because he can't tell which way is up anymore and doesn't know what to do.

[biggest-stupidhead]

Hi! I love your Levi imagines, and I saw that your requests were open, so here goes: Can you write a Levi x female!reader story where his s/o is pregnant and goes into labor when Hange is off on a research expedition, so Levi has to deliver the baby with only his squad for assistance? Bonus points if someone on Levi Squad faints in the process!

Heyyyy anon, this idea is so precious and I will definitely do a lil imagine for this scenario! <3

Summary: You go into labor without your designated delivery nurse. 

Word Count: 1.9K

Warnings: childbirth, nothing too graphic. 

__

In the early months of your pregnancy, you and Levi had both been ecstatic. But once the last two or so months had creeped up on you, the two of you began to get anxious. Hange had originally agreed to deliver the baby, seeing that she was the only person that Levi trusted to go near you besides himself. You felt ready to pop as you sat out in the courtyard with Mikasa, she was watching you like a hawk, grey eyes alert and tracking every muscle twitch. It had been strange, as soon as you began to suspect that you were pregnant, Mikasa had began clinging to you. It was as if she sensed the change, eventually you gave up on trying to figure out how she had known, and chalked it up to her Ackerman DNA. 

Eren and Jean were running around, Connie desperately trying to keep up with them as they passed a deflated ball back and forth, obviously keeping it out of Connie’s grasp. You smiled fondly as Sasha leapt into the air and snatched the ancient ball from them, passing it to Connie, who ran in the opposite direction. Armin and Annie were laying on a blanket looking up at the sky, Annie’s hand was pointing at a cloud, you could see her lips moving, followed by Armin’s soft laugh. 

You hadn’t wanted kids. Not really, that hole had been filled by these fools, but once you all had overcome the issues in Marley, those feelings began to ebb away. Especially once you and Levi began seeing each other. He had been reluctant, but Hange had stayed consistent in pushing him to pursue you. Low and behold two years later, you were married with a bundle of joy on the way. You had felt nauseous all morning, crampy, and sore in your lower abdomen. It wasn’t until the afternoon, about two hours prior that you had felt the first contraction. They were closer now and you weren’t really able to hide them anymore. So Mikasa noticed when you flinched for the second time in twenty minutes. She turned and placed a firm hand to your shoulder. 

“What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?” She asked, those coal grey eyes scanning your face for an answer. 

“I...have been having contractions.” You admitted guiltily as you rubbed your swollen stomach to ease yourself. 

“Uh oh...” Mikasa’s expression dropped, skin paling as the realization struck her. Hange had left only days prior, for an important meeting alongside Erwin and the other high up military personnel. 

“It’s fine, I’m fine. It isn’t quite time yet, just maybe help me get back inside?” You were beginning to sweat as the contractions began to become more intense. She nodded and helped you to your feet, the others all noticed the movement and followed like little ducks. You only managed to stumble into the parlor and fall onto one of the sofas there, the teens all towering over you. 

“What do you need?” Annie was standing at your side, the back of her hand pressed to your forehead. 

“I’ll go get Levi!” Jean offered before taking off and up the stairs, sprinting up them two at a time. 

“I’ll go get snacks!” Sasha sprinted towards the kitchen, Connie chasing after her. Armin was standing frozen as he watched Mikasa and Annie both take your hands. Eren was just as bad as Armin, those jade green eyes wide and focused on the space between your legs. 

“Uhhhh (Y/n)....I think that-” Eren’s face was beet red as he stumbled over his words. 

“Your water broke!” Armin informed you as you tried to meet their eyes over your stomach. 

“No, I could have sworn that my contractions were-” 

“What in god’s name is-” Levi froze, Jean panting alongside him as they all stared at the fluid dripping down your legs, soiling the couch and your cotton dress. 

“(Y/n)...” Levi’s face was pale and his eyes were wide as he rushed to close the space between you. You eagerly gripped his hand as another contraction he let out a shaky breath along with you as the contraction ended. 

“What are we supposed to do?” Eren said numbly as he stared at Mikasa who was propping your up. 

“We...need to get her a better bed or, something.” Mikasa spoke slowly, Annie nodded in agreement, her icy eyes scanning the room. 

“Move those chairs, then go get a mattress from one of the rooms down the hall.” Annie ordered, Eren and Armin darted off to complete the mattress task, while Jean began shoving the chairs out of the way. Connie and Sasha returned, with rags and towels along with an apple shoved in Sasha’s mouth. In mere minutes the room had been transformed into a makeshift delivery room, basins of clean water and mountains of towels. Mikasa and Levi helped you down onto the stripped mattress, Mikasa settled behind you, allowing you to recline back into her. You were shocked by how calming it was to just feel her heartbeat. Levi started by your side, his hand gripping yours. That was until Annie cleared her throat and looked down at your knees. 

“Someone...needs to check...” Annie trailed off as everyone shared uneasy glances. Connie shook his head violently, Jean looked green along the gills, Sasha crunched on the apple. Armin swallowed loudly. 

“I can...coach someone but I don’t think that I’m comfortable actually...” He flushed as he spoke and you let out a low groan. 

“Look I don’t give a shit who does it, but someone needs to see how dilated I am.” Your breathing was deep and somewhat controlled as the room once more fell silent. 

“I’ll do it.” Levi said finally as he placed a kiss to your knuckles before shuffling to the end of the mattress. Armin joined Levi, but his eyes were glued to the ceiling. 

“O-Okay you need to take your fingers and line them up at the erm...you know.” Armin’s cheeks were so red. Annie huffed, unamused as she joined them at the foot of the mattress. 

“Sit down, you’re making me nervous.” You said breathily to Jean, Eren, and Connie who all quickly came to rest on the floor near your head. You grimaced at the feeling of Levi’s fingers against you. 

“Uh...what am I looking for?” Levi’s voice was unusually high as he clutched your calf nervously. 

“Four fingers!” You groaned, leaning back into Mikasa as you felt yet another contraction. 

“That’s two in five minutes, it’s nearly time.” Armin informed, eyes still on the stone ceiling. 

“Four? Then...it is time.” Levi said breathlessly as he lifted his head to meet your eyes. 

“Great okay, start your breathing like Hange taught you (Y/n).” Mikasa spoke surprisingly calmly as she rubbed your shoulders. You began to pant, shutting your eyes tightly as the lower half of your body felt like it was being torn in two. You let out another moan, you vaguely noticed that Connie and Sasha had both gotten up and were rummaging through the bookshelf. 

“-It says in this book that...the baby’s tail should fall off in no more than three days?” 

“Are baby’s born with tails?”

“No...at least my siblings weren’t..” 

You let out a bark of laughter at the pair as they debated the contents of the book. 

“Shut the fuck up you two and get those towels ready.” Eren ordered, his face pale and voice high with panic. 

“Yeah what he said.” Jean agreed, his hand covering his eyes as he held your free hand tightly. 

“Okay but this book says-” 

“For the love of god just-” Eren made it half way through his sentence before you let out a low groan as you pushed for the first time. Armin nodded in approval, Annie as holding your dress up as Levi narrowed his eyes in concentration. 

“That’s it, take your time.” Annie encouraged as she reached into her boot for her dagger. You felt your baby slide down, and into the birth canal. 

“I...can see the head!” Levi announced as he held his hands out for the baby as you prepared for another good push. 

“Good, only a few more (Y/n)!” Armin assured you as he blindly reached out and braced himself on Levi’s shoulder. You moaned, throwing your head back into Mikasa’s shoulder as Eren dabbed your neck with a damp towel. 

“So close, you can do it.” Mikasa encouraged as you let out a choked sob, your pelvis felt as if it was about to rip in half as you felt the head crowning. 

“Okay Levi, you need to guide the head out, twist so that the shoulders can come out.” Annie informed calmly as she watched Levi gently rotate the baby’s head, allowing the baby to slip free. He let out a shaky gasp as he held the newborn in his hands while Annie sliced the umbilical cord. Armin finally looked as Connie wrapped the baby in a fresh towel. 

“I’ll clean-” He pushed the towel aside and beamed at you and Levi. 

“-her. I’ll clean her up.” He said as he and Sasha rushed to the nearest basin to wash the baby. Mikasa rubbed your arms as Armin began guiding Levi on the steps to delivering the placenta. 

No more than five minutes later, you had your baby girl against your chest. Her head was amazingly full of black silky hair. Her eyes were shut, but you had a feeling that when they opened that they would be a charcoal grey. Levi shuffled up next to you, pressing a kiss you your temple, his lip trembling as he looked down at your daughter. 

“You did it.” You said breathlessly as you smiled up at Levi. 

“No...you did it.” He said as he gently placed his hand over your daughter’s back, which was rising and falling steadily. Mikasa shifted as she tried to worm away from you, Levi gladly taking her place. 

“What will you call her?” Eren asked as he wrapped an arm over Mikasa’s shoulders. You swallowed thickly and looked back up at Levi who was still busy staring at your baby. 

“Kuchel.” You said without hesitation, Levi seemed startled when he heard the name, and then his eyebrows furrowed as he fought to keep his face free of emotion. 

“Yeah, that’s-” His voice cracked and he buried his face in the crook of your neck. 

“-that’s perfect.” he finished his sentence and the kids all mumbled their agreements as they watched you push your dress aside to feed your baby, who was cooing and gripping at the seams of your dress. 

“Kuchel.” You hummed as Levi stroked her back, her eyes cracked open for the first time, and you choked back a sob at the sight. 

Her eyes were not grey, but a familiar (e/c), she had your eyes. 

“Oh-” Jean choked back his own sob, biting his knuckles as he turned on his heel and buried his own face in Sasha’s shoulder as he cried. 

“Jeanboy” Connie said teasingly, despite the thick emotion in his own voice. 

“Let’s get out of here everybody.” Annie advised as she watched Levi thread his finger through his daughter’s as she began to suckle on your breast. 

“Congratulations.” they all murmured as they took their leave. You relaxed back into Levi, finally able to be alone for the first time with your little family. 

__

Lol I loved this, I used to want to be a labor and delivery nurse. But that was before I realized that Chem is NOT my friend. Anyway, sorry I couldn’t squeeze in someone fainting, but if you care I think that Jean would be most likely to. Only because he’s an only child and doesn’t know what child birth is like. 

But seeing as how much they have been through in the canon universe I doubt that childbirth would be the most disturbing sight lol. Hope that you enjoy this! Requests are still open so send me stuff :) 

[its-deputy-caleb]

hello! can i have some touch starved micah with a gentle and caring fem or gn reader?? thank you :))

omg yess anon, u can have touch starved micah any day! now ngl its like 3AM and i decided to write these after such a long day so this probs makes no sense and i didn't like the way they turned out at all so i might fix it up later

but still please enjoy this mess and a friendly reminder to anyone that reads this that my rdr requests are still open (but dw there's still more to come) i'm just really enjoying getting back into red dead!!

------------------------------------------

It had been a relatively long night for Micah, or so you’d noticed as you watched him leaning against a tree for almost the entire afternoon and long into the night, just sharpening his knife and mumbling under his breath.

You knew something was bothering him and apart of you couldn’t help but be a little worried and it wasn’t because of the robbery you have with him the next day. No, deep down you had a soft spot for him.

But Micah Bell had his walls up high even around someone like you who is one of the few people he considers a friend. Talking to him, little alone approaching him is more of a challenge than a bet in five finger fillet and you had an inkling that he’d appreciate being alone.

So with a heavy sigh you stood from your place at the campfire, bid the last few remaining members a goodnight and headed towards your tent— there needed to be one of you with at least four hours of sleep, otherwise you’d never be able to pull off this robbery.

As you turned around to close the flaps in your tent, you couldn’t help but notice Micah’s gaze directed at you and it had been since you stood to leave. When your eyes met his own and you gave a soft smile he immediately turned his attention back to the knife and whetstone in his hand, hiding how flustered he was under the brim of his hat.

You waved goodnight to him but of course he didn’t see it, he wouldn’t dare look your way until he knew for certain that you wouldn’t catch him doing so. In all the time you’ve gotten to know Micah, you’ve seen him argue, fight, yell and even flirt with the gang members and total strangers but you’ve never seen him flustered or nervous quite like the way he is with you.

The thought makes you giggle as you settle into bed, you could only guess that he likes you but to say that you hate the idea would be a lie.

-

The next morning you were walking through camp with a cup of coffee in your hand as you went to find Micah and prepare for the coach that was coming in from Annesburg. It wasn’t difficult to find him since he was still leaning against the tree, the only real point of difference was his slightly slumped posture and obvious bags under his eyes.

“Here, I thought you might want this after last night.”

He stares numbly at the cup of coffee you’re holding out for him to take. He seems almost startled out of his thoughts at the first person that’s actually approached him in hours.

“I don’t like coffee.”

“—Half of its filled with whiskey.”

One of Micah’s typical sly smirks comes to rest on his face, one that’s laced with over confidence so that he can put his walls up higher and keep everyone thinking that he’s not trying to downplay whatever’s bothering him.

“You know me too well, sweetheart.”

However, you’re not just anyone and happen to see straight through his charms. When you place the cup in his hand you instantly notice the way he seems to tense up when your hand lightly brushes his. You couldn’t help but think the soft sound that left him was, for lack of a better word...cute.

His hand instinctively reaches forward into you more before pulling away to fiddle with the cup.

“Common now, I need you feeling sharp for this robbery and its a long ride to Annesburg from here.”

The tension leaves him when he realises you’re not going to push for answers or make a scene and he’s clearly comforted by the small smile you’re giving him.

-

The robbery as a whole goes fairly smooth. The coach guards were easy to take down with there being only three of them plus a driver. The issue arrived when the law showed up and there was a hell of a lot more than three.

The coach had been flipped at this point, the horses well and truely bolted but it offered the cover you needed in order to take out the flock of lawman.

Standing beside you, you can’t help notice how Micah seems completely out of it. You’ve seen him at his best, just how well he can shoot during a gunfight. Hell at Blackwater you saw him take out at least twenty pinkertons before you all even made it off the boat. No, the Micah standing beside you could barely even aim straight.

Eventually, the coast is clear— it took a while but the shooting finally stopped and left only silence as Micah went over to crack open the safe containing the payroll.

“Oh shit—“

Before you know what you’re doing, you take three quick steps forward and push Micah as hard as you can against his side. He hits the ground with a loud thud but you don’t stop to think about it as you fire your revolver at the lawman who’d managed to sneak up on you.

You don’t take your finger off the trigger until there’s no more bullets left in the chamber and the lawman is well and truly on the floor. You holster your revolver before turning around and offering an arm out for Micah to take, who is still sitting in the dirt with a stunned look on his face.

“Are you alright?”

You gently hoist him up and squeeze at his hand in hopes that he’ll understand just how worried you are about him right now.

Micah doesn’t give you a verbal response, instead choosing to groan but you didn’t mind, you suspect that his ego took more bullets than the lawman had. That didn’t mean you didn’t miss the way his hand squeezed yours back tightly.

“Oh Jesus, you’re bleeding!”

It seems Micah himself hadn’t even noticed the vibrant red stain of blood on his already dirty white pants.

“It’s just a graze, ain’t nothing to worry about.”

Unfortunately you don’t have time to argue with him about as he’s already loading up the cash onto Baylock before saddling up himself.

“Fine, but yer letting me patch you up when he get back to camp.”

-

To your surprise Micah actually follows you to your tent so you can at least bandage and disinfect the wound but that doesn’t mean he isn’t gonna put up a fuss. It takes you a good ten minutes just to get his pants off so you could clean it and it takes you even longer to place your hands anywhere near him.

“I can wrap my own damned bullet wound!”

You stare at him with an eyebrow raised, watching as he has an internal battle with himself on whether to push you away like he does everyone else, or to cave and let you in.

“Alright then, I’ll leave you to it.”

You decide to call his bluff, placing the bandages on the crate beside your bed before dusting yourself off and standing to leave the tent, only to be stopped by a hand on your wrist. Finally, you see something snap inside him and he sighs, almost defeatedly.

“Please stay…”

You pick the bandages and the old rag back up and sit back down on the edge of the cot. He jumps slightly when your hand is placed on the outside of his upper thigh, just under where the graze has torn the skin.

“Relax Micah, it’s okay.”

Micah is staring up at you with hopeful eyes as he leans on his elbows on the cot. You give him a reassuring smile but he only starts to really relax when your hand moves in slow circles against his thigh.

After the old rag has been drenched in whiskey you, offer him an apology before placing it over the wound to disinfect it. Micah hisses through his teeth and falls flat against the cot, trying not to bite his tongue off at the sharp burning feeling that’s travelling up his leg.

-

When his wound has been properly cleaned and bandaged, you lean forward and take his chin in your hand and guide him to look at you.

“Now was that so bad?”

Your eyes stare into his icy blue ones and you notice just how tired he seems. You decide to make a decision before second guessing yourself and lay down next to him on the cot that’s too small for the two of you to really fit on it.

Nevertheless your arms come to wrap around him in a tight hug. He tenses again but only for a moment before melting into you, exhausting clearly winning out.

Your hand comes to tangle in his hair and gently massage his scalp before placing a soft kiss to his forehead.

“Is this why you’ve been acting so off recently?”

Micah nods into your shoulder, more relaxed than ever now that he’s receiving the affection and intimacy he’s been craving for months now. He’ll probably beat himself up later over a bottle of whiskey for being so needy, but right now he couldn’t care less.

“Micah, when was the last time you had a hug?”

Your question is soft, non judgemental as you gently detangle his hair from where there are small knots. This time, there’s no answer and he only sinks further into your arms around him, as if he’s trying to literally avoid the question.

It doesn’t take a genius however to guess how long its been.

“Hey its alright, it doesn’t have to be like that anymore.”

His head comes up from your shoulder instantly, a desperate and hopeful look in his eyes. Your noses are almost touching and you can feel his slightly shaky breathe as he attempts to calm his nerves.

You lean forward slowly and place a soft kiss to lips, feeling him smile against you. His moustache manages to tickle his top lip and you can’t help but giggle which only makes the two of you smile more.

-

That night, Micah finally gets a good night’s rest with his head resting upon your shoulder. He’s lulled off by your hand rubbing slow circles into the back of his neck and soft but frequent forehead kisses.

He’s just about to doze off into a peaceful sleep when he feels you whisper against his skin,

“I love you Micah, just relax and get some sleep now”

The next morning he’ll wake up from one of the best sleeps he’s had in a long time knowing you held him all night.

[sexbirthdeaths]

her hollows, her unholy son

summary: because this - this isn’t hotch's job. his job is to make sure they don’t get killed out on the field, to make sure they do their job and that they finish all their paperwork, not give his agents haircuts in his office,

warnings: emetophobia (vomiting), panic attacks, implications of depression and anxiety, mentions of spencer’s dad

words: 2500

The walls feel like they’re collapsing in on him as he stumbles numbly to sit down, lean against the cool tile and just desperately attempt to breathe. He can feel his heartbeat thrumming through him, head to toe, down his fingers like an invisible thread strung along them. Leaning his head down onto his knees, he feels himself curl in on his body, wraps his arms around himself.

Scrunching his eyes tight at the thought, he pulls his legs in a bit closer. You're an idiot, he thinks, can't do shit without freaking out.

He wishes he didn't live alone.

Everything is spiralling around him, water whirlpooling down a drain and he’s trapped right in its eye. All he can do is wait it out, he figures, try to force himself to breathe steadily. But god, it’s so hard, like there’s a boot on his chest pressing down further and further, crushing him under cruel rubber.

There’s this sickening sensation in his stomach, like a rock at the bottom that’s pulling him down further and further, churning as it sends waves of nausea through him. Forcing himself up, he fumbles for the toilet and collapses in front of it, emptying the contents of his stomach. So much for dinner, he thinks bitterly, dizzy and vision blurred.

Scrunching his eyes tightly closed, Spencer moves to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand, not even caring anymore. The taste of bile and now-regurgiated takeout sits sour on his tongue, but he can’t will himself to stand and wash it from his mouth. Too much energy, energy he doesn’t have right now.

This is a panic attack - he’s never had one before, he's read enough about them to know what triggers them, to know how to help himself. Five things you can see, he recalls as the first step, but he can’t will himself to open his eyes. Four things you can hear is the next step -

One. The sound of his panicked breath as it racks through his body in quick, shallow waves.

Two. The humming of the light above him, too loud.

Three. The air con that's sending a cool breeze around him, chills him to the bone.

Four. Fuck- fuck- what’s four? The sound of blood in his ears, heart thudding in his chest.

That’s four, that’s four, why doesn’t he feel any better?

Another wave of nausea overcomes Spencer, forcing him over the toilet bowl again. His hair falls past his ears, over his face as he retches, tears streaming down his face at the sensation in his throat and stomach. It’s more bile than food this time, he supposes he really hadn’t eaten that much. It’s hard to have an appetite these days

His hair is bile-soaked now. His stupid goddamn hair, he’s wanted to cut it off for years but he can't find the energy to get up, go to a barber's. Just the thought sends a rush of panic through him.

Though his chest still heaves, Spencer's breathing has fallen back into a steadier rhythm, he feels less like he’s suffocating. With weak knees, he pushes himself up from the toilet, wipes his mouth again. And he faces himself in the mirror.

Pale and clammy, his skin has taken on a ghostly sheen that’d only worsened by the unflattering warmth of the bathroom lights. The contours of his face are more prominent under the harsh glare, the hollows of his cheeks and deep violet valleys beneath his eyes. His dark hair is a mess, clumped together with vomit at the front. You’re supposed to be better than this, he thinks bitterly, you’re an FBI agent, not some weak child who can’t handle being alone.

The person in the mirror isn’t him. It looks like him, sure, it walks and talks like him but it- it isn’t him. He wants to just throw a sheet over it, cover it, out of sight out of mind, and it takes everything in him not to shatter the glass then and there. He feels sick, he feels sick, sick in a way that’s bone-deep, something needs to change and it needs to change now. He feels like he might die if it doesn’t.

So Spencer rummages through the medicine drawer, finds a pair of craft scissors they only keep in there for opening stubborn packaging, brandishes them with certainty. He’s been dreaming of this moment for months now. Of chopping off chunks of hair, pulling it by the fistful, dowsing his scalp in gasoline to watch it all burn, anything if it means it’s gone.

When he was a kid, his dad had used the word 'defiant' a lot. Defiant, as in going against orders, as in questioning his judgement, defiant as in refusing to go down easy. Where has this new you come from? he would keep asking, expecting some sort of concrete answer - what has changed? What part of you have I failed to control, allowed to become so overgrown that it the ivy has swallowed up everything good?

But pruning is a means of growth, he thinks, and he lifts the scissors to his head.

There’s a chunk of hair in his hand. A few inches, maybe, what’s left on his head just curling past his ears. He drops it, watches it fall into the sink, bright and dry and gone. The scissors are shitty, and they don’t cut through hair evenly or easily, but they’re better than nothing.

He’s crying again before he even knows it, and he isn’t quite sure why, but the tears are rolling down his cheeks as he keeps cutting, throwing fistfuls of hair down into the sink, the stench of vomit still in his nose and the taste of spite on his tongue. He’s crying, but maybe they’re happy tears. It’s oddly cathartic, all of this.

It takes a long while to cut it all, get it even semi-even, but he manages. The street lamps outside his apartment have turned on by the time he creeps out of the bathroom, hair shaggy and shorter, and it gives him this rush. Taking control, finally reclaiming this part of himself. It tastes of rebirth, revival, a life that arises from rain-soaked earth, of becoming new again.

He goes to sleep with a smile on his face. It's the first time in years.

When he gets up for work in the morning, the house is empty. It's never not empty, he thinks as he eats breakfast alone, he doesn't know why he hasn't gotten used to the quiet after all these years. He wears a hat on the subway, knowing the haircut isn’t the cleanest, but atleast he doesn’t get those looks anymore. Having no eyes on you makes you feel so… light, he realises.

Stepping into the elevator, there’s a peaceful quiet to the building this early in the mornings, only a few people in sight. There's a peaceful quiet, one more comforting than the silence that suffocates his apartment. He likes to get to work earlier than the others, so it's no surprise he's the only one there - besides Hotch, of course.

Stepping into the communal area, Spencer is met with the sight of Hotch and Rossi, talking quietly by the coffee machine. From their stiff body language, it’s probably just business - some business higher up, likely Strauss. Hotch's eyes meet his from across the floor but quickly drifts to his hair instead.

“Excuse me, Rossi,” he says to the older agent, who takes his queue to leave. He gives Spencer a knowing look as he departs, stalking off to his own office to spend the rest of the morning until the day officially begins.

Hotch hums, peers down at him with a steely glance.

“You cut your hair.”

“Yes, sir,” Spencer nods, unable to hide his smile. He combs his fingers through it. Hotch chuckles shortly, raises an eyebrow.

“You didn’t do that bad, honestly. But I can fix it for you - come on,”

So he guides Spencer away from the coffee machine, down the halls and into Hotch's office, somewhere a little more private. The shutters are drawn, door locked, and Spencer looks guiltily at the floor - what if someone needs Hotch? And he's busy, here, giving his subordinate a haircut?

Hotch pulls up a chair and sits Spencer down on it, facing the window where he can see the streets of DC, the thick morning fog of early spring.

“It won’t be long,” the agent promises as he drapes an old dress shirt over Spencer's shoulders, “I’m no barber, but I can atleast even it out.”

There’s a strange feeling in Spencer's chest, but it isn’t the same as last night. It doesn’t feel crushed tight, like his lungs are bound to collapse in any moment - if anything, he just feels light. He feels appreciated, he thinks, hearing Hotch's search for a pair of scissors in the drawers. When was the last time someone had done something like this for him? Something beyond obligation, because they just wanted to help?

“You didn’t have to do this,” he murmurs as he feels Hotch get closer behind him, run a hand through his hair, “It isn’t your job to take care of me like this.”

Hotch starts cutting, the sound of the metal scissors slicing through his hair ringing in his ears. The only other sound is the clock ticking in the background, steady and echoing in the loud, silent room.

“No,” the man agrees, “It isn’t. But I’m curious as to why you did it.”

“I needed a change.” It’s the rain that washes the slate clean - gives him a chance to start over, beginning the path of reclaiming himself bit-by-bit. He's felt so helpless all of his life, taking the backseat and watching it all unfold. And one day - likely, soon, given the dangers of this job - he'll die and he’ll die young, with no agency over his life, too scared to try and take it. He’s done being scared.

The clock ticks, filling the silence as Hotch seems to contemplate. He’s moved from the right side of Spencer's head to the left, and the boy can feel chunks of hair fall onto the shirt on his shoulders.

"Do you think the others will like it?"

"I hope," Spencer admits, "I hope."

Hotch tilts his head down, touch unusually gentle for the typically stoic, blunt man. He can see strands of dark hair on his clothes, a tangible recognition of the new control he has over his life. It’s the best high he could ever experience, one he’ll be riding for months.

“I always thought you liked having long hair, I kind of figured if you didn’t you’d cut it,”

“My mom likes my long hair. She always wanted a girl,” Spencer mumbles absentmindedly. "I've just never had the energy to change it." Hotch hums in thought.

“You know,” he starts, “You’re stretching so far you’ve lost sight of where you started.”

He tilts Spencer's head again, leans to cut the hair short by his ear - it’s difficult to get it close to the skin without clippers, but he can make do. He bites his tongue between his teeth as he tries to avoid clipping Spencer's ear.

“Maybe you don’t hate your hair, or yourself for that matter - you hate what it proves.”

“It doesn’t prove anything.” Spencer huffs indignantly, brushes hair from his lap absentmindedly.

“It proves that you don't have control. Something's holding your life over your head. This is your act of reclamation, Reid, and I have to commend you for it.”

There’s a long silence as Spencer mulls his words over. He can hear more and more of his colleagues arriving in the bullpen, laughing as they talk. He can hear JJ, who’d been the first to notice how long his hair was getting. And yeah - he’ll admit, having long hair was fun at times, but not when it was unkempt and dirty because he couldn't muster up the energy to wash it.

Hotch brushes the rest of his hair off of the towel and onto the floor, runs a hand through Spencer's trimmed hair.

“I’m done, Reid, you can stand up."

He doesn’t know how to say thank you in a way that sounds genuine. Because this - this isn’t Hotch's job. His job is to make sure they don’t get killed out on the field, to make sure they do their job and that they finish all their paperwork, not give his agents haircuts in his office, not treat them with the same love and attention as a son.

He wants to cry.

But instead, Spencer swallows down the lump in his throat, fights the tears, and just smiles.

“Thank you,” he says, and prays that Hotch understands what he isn’t able to say.

[xaandiir]

Last Stop to Nowhere - Chapter Two

AO3 Link | FF.net Link

First | Previous | Next

Summary: Ryan and Min got off the train, but spending several months away from home while dealing with a very traumatic experience on an interdimensional judgment train. Recovery is not instantaneous and one good band session does not mean that everything is solved. It’s going to take more work, more talking, and being honest. However, it’s very hard to have an absolutely honest conversation in the 1980s, especially with everything that both boys are withholding.

Warnings: Implied homophobia, micro-aggressions

Word Count: 2036

A/N: The chapters will typically go back and forth between each boy’s perspective, so we’re back to Min-Gi this chapter.

———————————————————————

Min wakes up in an actual bed. He is back in his room. It felt familiar, yet foreign. The sheets smell musty after several months of the room not being occupied. It is hauntingly quiet. Min realizes that it's late morning and not only had he forgotten to set a morning alarm, but his parents hadn't come to wake him up when he didn't arrive for breakfast. It was a kind of quiet morning with lack of responsibility that he hadn't had since he was a child.

When he gets out of bed, Min runs himself through his usual routine pre-train. He changes into his clothes for the morning. It feels great being able to dress in a new outfit rather than the one outfit he'd recycled during his stay on the train. He combs his hair, pushing it back so it doesn't fall out of his eyes. He brushes his teeth and his mouth feels clean for the first time in ages. The minty taste is almost comforting.

It's after Min picks up his phone from his bedside table that his mini-synth catches his eye. He had discarded it that night before bed, feeling too exhausted to put it in its proper place, so it sits on the edge of his dresser. Min picks it up, holding it firmly in one hand. He smiles and uses the pen to click on the keys, listening to the quiet tune. 

His hands slow, hesitating before playing another note. He sighs and sets the synth down again. Min tears himself away and moves down the stairs.

"There you are, Min," his mother says. She's preparing lunch already. She goes over and gives him another hug and kisses his cheek. "Did you sleep well?"

Min nods and kisses her cheek back. "It was a great night's sleep. Thank you for letting me sleep in."

"You need your rest after coming all the way from New York," she says. "Lunch is almost ready. Go get your father, will you? He's in his study."

"Of course," Min says.

He walks down the hallway to his father's study. He knocks on the door and pokes his head inside. "Hi Dad," he says. "Mom says that lunch is almost ready."

His father looks up from his laptop and smiles. "Of course. I'm finishing up a report." He points to the other chair at the desk with his pen. "Join me for a moment?"

Min obediently takes a seat. He clasps his hands in his lap. A long silent moment is spent between them. His father types away at his laptop and Min's gaze wanders around the room. He looks at the books on the shelves, some written in Korean and some written in English. His father had to take to learning English more than his mother, since his father worked with a lot of American businesses. Min never learned any Korean while he was growing up. It just never stuck with him.

"How was New York?" his father finally asks. "I know that you were taken there against your will, but, I hope that it was at least a good learning experience."

"Oh." Min hesitates. "Yeah it was...It was really nice actually, Dad."

His father glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "So Ryan really didn't let you call us for months, hmm?"

Min rubs the back of his neck. "It wasn't exactly his fault," Min says carefully. "He...There...It was an issue with our phones. I couldn't get a call out to you-"

"Min-Gi. It's alright," his father says. "Your mother and I understand that Ryan put you in a very difficult position. It wasn't fair that he forced you there and I know he probably did everything he could to keep you from reaching out to us. He knew that we would have taken the next flight out to New York to get you."

"Dad, it's really not as bad as it sounds," Min says. "it was a good thing I went, I think."

His father doesn't seem to really hear what he's saying. "I thought that he was a bad influence on you. Even when you were a child. He always seemed to have this..." He gestures vaguely. "You were really applying yourself before he whisked you away to New York." He sighs and shakes his head. "Ryan didn't even seem to understand the kinds of things he was taking away from you. You'll be lucky if you can get your job at Dumpty's back. Not to mention that you've lost this entire school year as an opportunity to move to college and get started on your higher education."

"I can always go next year," Min replies. He plays with the lower button on his jacket. "Dad, Ryan asked me if I could join the band, and-"

"Absolutely not," his father laughs. "After the stunt he pulled?"

"Dad-"

"You have so much you have to catch up on. And I'm sure you've had plenty of your fill of Ryan. Several months with him? You two spent a lot of time together but you never stayed over at his house for longer than a night. You always had to come home and get your quiet." He shakes his head. "It's better that you didn't stay there long either. I didn't want him getting any ideas." That makes him pause and he looks at Min. "He didn't try to tempt you at all, did he?"

Min blinks a few times. "Dad, no. He. Ryan took good care of me."

"Good care of you?" His father scoffs. "That boy is not someone that you want taking care of you. He can't even look after himself. I'm sure that's why he came to drag you off with him."

Something boils over inside of Min. "Dad, just listen to me."

His father pauses and looks at him fully. "...yes?"

Like a fire that has just been smothered, the words that had danced on Min's tongue suddenly dissipate. "...I'm sorry that I worried you and Mom," he manages to say.

His father smiles. He squeezes Min's shoulder. "We know that it wasn't your fault, Min. We aren't upset with you." He lets go and gets to his feet. "You said that lunch was almost ready, right? We don't want to leave her waiting." He chuckles and moves to wards the door.

Min struggles for his words, but they don't return to him. He can only follow obediently after his father, sticking his hands into his pockets.

The table is set for them when they arrive. Min's mother is just serving up the food onto plates and bringing them to the table.

"Looks delicious, Mom," Min says as he sits at the table. His mother smiles and pats his head before she takes her own seat.

"He slept very late today," she says to her husband. "Got his good rest. He'll be up for any challenge now." She laughs warmly.

"Good. We need you well-rested," Min's father says, giving Min a smile.

Min looks down shyly at his food and moves it around with his fork. He's hungry, but he can't bring himself to actually eat.

It is quiet at the table for several long minutes before his mother wipes her mouth with her napkin. "Min-Gi...Your father and I have been worried. Of course. When you were with Ryan--nothing...happened, did it?"

Min glances up from his plate. "Nothing like...what?"

His parents share a silent look. His mother clears her throat. "You know that we would support you through anything."

"And we would never blame you for something that wasn't your fault," his father continues. "He may have--gotten you drunk or gotten you confused, or forced-"

"Stop, stop!" Min cries, waving his hands. "Ryan never did anything to me. He was great he--we had a nice time in New York. Nothing like--that ever happened."

Min sees his parents visibly relax at the assurance. A sick feeling pokes in Min's stomach and he looks back at the plate.

"We know that you'll need time to readjust being back home," Min's father says. "But I think it would be a good idea to reapply to university soon."

"Reapply?" Min asks numbly.

"You disappeared for months. You were accepted, but then you didn't show up. You'll have to apply again," his father explains. "It's important that you get your education, Min. If this trip was as nice as you say, then I'm happy for you. But your education can't be put off any longer."

Min chews on his lip for a minute. He sets down the fork. "I don't know if I want to go into finance."

Min's mother laughs. "See? I told you he'd rather to go to law school. Not everyone can have a knack for business."

"I don't know if I want to be a lawyer either," Min sighs.

"A mathematician?" his father offers. "Oh! A surgeon!"

This was getting out of hand already. Min looks at his parents and crumbles his napkin in his hand. "I want to do music."

His parents' eyes go wide. It's the longest pause they've had in a conversation in along time. It makes Min's palms go sweaty and he can't help but let his gaze drop.

"Min-Gi," his mother finally says. "The--The viola is a wonderful instrument, but-"

"No, not..." Min's cheeks glow with shame. "Ryan, he-"

"You will not join that boy's band," his father says firmly. "Min-Gi. He kidnapped you for several months. You cannot then just go with him, with no job security, no education! He practically dropped out of high school just so he could escape in that van."

Min rubs his thumb over the fork. "He never got close to flunking any of his classes. He just really loves music."

"It's not a good idea," his father insists. "I will not allow it. You have a plan. You're going to reapply, go to college, get your degree, and then move onto a stable career and starting a family."

"But--But that won't-!" Min's lip trembles. It won't make him happy. He doesn't know how to say that without sounding like a child on the verge of a tantrum.

His mother reaches across the table and puts her hand over his. "Min-Gi. You really think you're going to live on the road? Eat all this fast food and performing in front of people who will judge you based on something you never even properly learned?"

"I--I..." The very thought makes Min's mouth grow dry. If he thinks about getting on stage for too long, he feels the blood draining from his face.

"You're pale at the thought," Min's father points out. "It wouldn't be good for you."

"You deserve to go to university," his mother says gently. "It's a very respectable thing, Min-Gi. Not everyone needs to go out on the road chasing some useless artistic dream. You need stability."

His father sighs and shakes his head. "Ryan really has been a bad influence on you."

"No...No, he's...I've learned a lot from him," Min weakly protests.

"We can talk about this another time," his father says. "Right now, you need to eat. And then you need to reapply to college. We can talk about this music nonsense after you've settled more. Okay?"

Min wants to say more, but his words fail him. He can't seem to form any sentences in his mouth. He just nods. The food looks even less appetizing than it did earlier and his stomach recoils as he brings a forkful to his mouth. But he keeps eating, knowing that his parents will want him to keep his energy up and eat properly. His parents seem satisfied with his silence and the relief on their faces make Min feel even more guilty. They're right. He has a plan. He can't just up and abandon that plan because of--because of what? An absolutely wild experience on a train? He learned things, sure, but that doesn't mean that everything can just suddenly change. He needs to put more thought into this. He can't just decide. He can stay in place and think on it for a bit.

[lambourngb]

“It was supposed to be a regular, boring morning shower”

First line tag

A million years ago, an anon sent me this ask for the first line meme. I woke up possessed and wrote “stuck in gravity, clawing for some bravery” in 10 days.  This story is complete, 23,000 words. I put the first two chapters up on AO3 early in honor of the news of our show coming back. The rest goes up tomorrow.

beta thanks to the wonderful @tasyfa

Pairing: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Alex Manes/Forrest Long, Michael Guerin/Maria Deluca (past) Kyle Valenti/Maria Deluca (implied/mentioned)

Tags: Starts Forlex ends in Malex, Getting back together, Nebulous Season 3, Angst,  Pining, Alien Soulmate Bullshit, Emotional Infidelity, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comforot,  Explicit Sexual Content, Dirty Talk , Telepathy, Handprint Sex

Summary: A year after Crashcon, Michael knows three things for certain. 

1. He loves Alex and he probably definitely always will.

2. Having Alex as his best friend makes everything in his life better.

3. Knowing, thanks to his bullshit alien biology, that Alex still fantasizes about his body regularly while dating someone else for a year, well, that is a little more difficult to navigate. 

It’s fine. It is all just fine. 

Author Notes: This content is probably not appropriate for review by a college writing class on tumblr, just saying but you’re welcome to leave a kudo if you like it. 

*****

It was supposed to be a regular, boring morning shower for Michael. 

His first Sunday off in over three months deserved a little self-care, he had decided. The summer had brought an abrupt uptick in work at the garage with increased summertime driving leading to more careless accidents and stranded motorists to tow to safety. While Walt would deny it to the end, Michael couldn’t help but notice the old man had slowed down in his work. Between doing his best to keep Sanders’ in business and taking shifts at the Crashdown to fill in for the still-absent Liz so Arturo and Rosa could have their own break, taking the time for more than a perfunctory late night wash down felt luxurious to Michael.

There was a point to staying busy, with filling every hour inside an engine or on a different project around the junkyard with his trailer and that point was distraction. Distraction from the awareness that everyone was thriving. Max and his new-found ‘cousin’ Jones were reconstructing the history of their people’s language and literature together. Isobel had recently celebrated her three-month anniversary with Monica, an artist who shared the same studio space as Rosa. Maria had made exploring her alien-rooted abilities the focus of her life outside of the bar, combining her knowledge of yoga and meditation to crack the ability of moving forward in time. With that success, she had managed to bring back the answer to saving her brain from damage from the future. Her work with Kyle in developing the treatment for her and Mimi had led a new romance there. Then there was Alex, the true focus of Michael’s need for distraction, marking a one-year anniversary with Forrest. 

It was fine. All Michael had ever wanted was for Alex to be happy. The distractions he had filled his life with helped soothe the edges of knowing who was at the root of Alex’s new-found peace.

In the last year, Michael had built a permanent wooden deck out in front of his Airstream, transforming his fire pit into an outdoor brick barbecue oven, before moving on to recycle discarded auto glass into window panes for a small greenhouse complete with a rainwater cistern off the rear of the trailer. The actual interior boasted its own changes, an expanded shower stall and more of a kitchen set up than a hotplate and kettle with a small split-level stove and expanded countertop. The next task was building a canopy to shield the deck from the elements. At some point, Michael had acknowledged to himself that each piece he had worked on had turned his portable, transient can-go-anywhere Airstream into a stable fixture at Sanders’. 

A home with roots. 

A home without Alex and he had accepted that, respecting Alex’s choice of partner. They were the right people for each other, but were always meeting at the wrong time. For a while, he had waited patiently for things to end with Forrest. He had been happy enough to work on being Alex’s friend in the meantime. Then, once they were truly friends sharing every stupid moment of their days via a text message or over a beer at his trailer, he had felt the betrayal of his selfish thoughts keenly. What kind of friend would root for a break-up? What kind of friend would wish heartbreak on the other?

The asshole kind, he had concluded. 

As the hot water from the shower head poured over his head though, the acceptance he had about Alex moving on was just a little farther from his reach because Alex was currently thinking about him. They weren’t platonic friend-thoughts either.

A ghost sensation of a hand skirted down Michael’s body, lingering over his chest hair, and fuck, Alex had really loved to card his fingers through it. His mind was awash with impulses not his own, hot anticipation and the thrill of pleasure dropped down his body like the free-falling crest of a rollercoaster. Michael closed his eyes, soaking in the feelings. A gasp escaped his mouth, heard by no one in his trailer. Good God, Alex was really ready, waking with morning wood or to someone — Wrapping his own hand around his hardening cock, Michael stroked himself in time with Alex’s thoughts, pushing aside his own. It was best to just give into temptation and enjoy the moment. 

It was something he had learned to embrace with varying degrees of eagerness over the last few years. 

The connection with Alex had formed apparently sometime after the shed, but it had taken him over ten years and Alex moving back to Roswell to realize what was going on between them. The summer they had turned eighteen, they had barely been able to keep their hands off each other in the desert, and when Michael was alone, all he could think about back then, was Alex. His head had been a complex swirl of emotion, slingshotting him from the highs of seeing Alex to the lows of facing his own aborted future. There was the longing for Alex, the sadness that he knew their time was limited because Alex was going to go places, and he was stuck in Roswell watching over Isobel, but in the background, of what he thought was a relic from Jesse’s attack, was always a sense of sick fear, of being caught. Again.

Then over the last ten years, Michael would experience this awareness, and suddenly all he could think about was Alex. How it felt to touch him, the wickedness of his mouth, the burn and the stretch to accept Alex’s cock as he took him inside with a bitten lip- Michael thought it was just his mind, giving him a touchstone to happiness and the remembrance of being loved briefly by Alex. Nostalgia. Afterwards as he caught his breath, with his chest splattered with come, the sadness would seep in again, stealing whatever light that was made by those memories.

It wasn’t until after the drive-in, when Alex had spent almost two months avoiding him in person, that Michael had realized that those moments, late at night or early in the morning, were tied to Alex. It took falling into his bed one night, after visiting Isobel in her pod to finally piece it together. His face had hurt from crying on the drive home and the urge to sleep and never wake up again had been so incredibly strong that it took a moment for him to realize he was thinking about Alex. His cock hadn’t even been on his radar, but suddenly all he could think about was getting sucked off. 

Fuck, he hadn’t wanted it then, too sad and scared about Isobel to feel much connection to his body for the purposes of pleasure, but the sensations and feelings that had overtaken Michael were too intense to fight that night. Later as he panted, open-mouthed and staring at the ceiling of his Airstream with distant thoughts of cleaning up, his phone rang once. Only the once. Then a ding of a text.

Alex -is home: Sorry pocket dialed.

The rush of self-loathing that hit Michael as he read the message had been so strong he had dropped the phone on the floor of the trailer. That’s when he knew it wasn’t his feelings in his head because in all the years of knowing Alex, of loving Alex, he had never once felt disgust toward himself for his feelings for Alex. From the moment across a borrowed guitar, Michael had accepted the tilt of his axis toward Alex Manes as a fundamental fact, like force equalling mass times acceleration.

Alex hadn’t shared that comfort, and the more Michael tuned into what was going on in Alex’s head, the more his heart broke. Two things became clear to Michael over time; the occurrences were sporadic enough for him to know that he only felt them when Alex was specifically thinking about Michael when he jerked off, and the post-orgasm feelings of disgust and self-loathing were not isolated incidents for Alex to feel afterwards.

“Sometimes things end in a whimper, Guerin-” and Michael had numbly accepted that as proof that while Alex might enjoy thinking about his body, about the ways he had pleasured Alex in the past, Alex had no desire for anything more from Michael. The sex was epic, fodder for a late night fantasy, but Michael himself? He was not someone that Alex wanted to want. 

He had changed Alex’s name in his phone from “Alex -is home” to “Alex -is a bad idea” after that and then cursed himself for the trick of alien biology, doomed to be forever aware that he was an example of backsliding to Alex. When Maria had reached for him that night in Texas, he had welcomed her because she seemed at least self-aware of the fact she didn’t want to want him. There was zero chance of a misunderstanding between them that night, even as he kicked himself for still following after people who swore to him that it would never happen again.

For a long time after Caulfield, he had thought perhaps the grief of losing his mother had broken the link with Alex, setting them both free in the wreckage and dust of the prison. The dying psychic screams of his people had rolled over him, scorching his thoughts into cinders as that last connection to love and hope burned out in his mind, his mother’s life extinguishing under the thunder of Semtex and C-4. Then one night shortly after moving his trailer to the Wild Pony, it had happened again. The same overwhelming feeling of need, of longing, but this time the self-loathing afterwards had been accompanied by a crippling feeling of guilt. He had laid there in the twilight of the Wild Pony’s loft, having silently come into his palm while the sound of Maria’s breathing brushed against his ear. For the first time, he had joined Alex in that feeling of self-hatred. 

It was past the time for him to flip the switch from ‘tortured lust’ to some semblance of friendship with Alex, if he could and so tentatively, he agreed to work on uncovering his mother’s past together with him. He updated his phone again with that decision in mind to “Alex -sup bro”.

After Maria had learned the truth about Rosa and sent him away with betrayed eyes, he experienced a moment of weakness for Alex after the visit they had made to the Long Farm. There had been a lightness in how Alex had moved that day, his steps had been considered but committed as they had explored the last place his mother had felt at home on earth. Inside of Michael’s heart, he had been able to feel the pieces moving together while he had stood in a place where Nora had had a family, next to a man who had always represented that promise to Michael. The openness of Alex’s smile as they had waited for Forrest Long to reappear had had Michael thinking dangerous thoughts again about a future with him.

What if.  What if Alex were ready to take a step toward him without the weight of the past? 

That tenuous hope had lasted until the night after Alex had given him the piece of the ship’s console. Standing in his bunker near two am, he had been examining the new piece of his ship, of his past, puzzling over why it wasn’t bonding with the rest of the console when he had felt the awareness of Alex creep into his cells, into his DNA. Eagerly he had opened his jeans with both hands and had fisted his cock, letting himself go with the pull of Alex’s desire. In the aftermath, he had found himself on the floor of the bunker, with come dripping off a fallen drawing of a ship’s engine, but near tears with the knowledge that nothing had changed for Alex. It had still been the same fear flooding his veins, still the same anchor of tortured longing and deep shame weighing his limbs down even as he had been left wrecked by how good his body had felt.

It had been madness for Michael the next few months as he had fallen in deeper with Maria, while the connection with Alex had kept tugging at his soul. There had been little rhyme or reason to when it had happened. Weeks would pass where he apparently hadn’t crossed Alex’s mind once, and then there had been a week when every night Michael had been hit with the same mix of love, lust and bottomless need. Thankfully it had matched with the week-long retreat Maria and Mimi had taken together, saving Michael the work of explaining to her why he was wearing out the washing machines at the Fluff N Fold with his dirty sheets.

The self-torment Alex had felt about him had slowly lifted, to the point when Michael had found out the truth about Walt Sanders, he had called Alex without hesitation. The contact in his phone had changed to ‘Alex- best bro’. If he had finally become a measure of comfort for Alex to remember in his most personal moments, then perhaps Alex could also become a comfort to him, without the mire of their trauma holding them frozen in place. 

He had been fooling himself completely in the aftermath of Alex’s abduction that friendship would ever be enough for him. The wounds from his breakup with Maria had still been bleeding below his skin when he had stepped into the Wild Pony to hear Alex singing about him. About them. Then he had been hit with the connection, blossoming open for the first time ever in Alex’s actual presence under the spell of his song. 

There had still been a ghost of darkness in Alex’s feelings for him, as he had sung about fighting battles but for the first time in a long time, Michael had felt that there was hope that Alex was finally finding peace with Jesse dead. Despite Isobel’s prodding him to stay and make a move, he had known that it wasn’t their time yet. There had been too much grief and regret swirling in his head, and not just from Alex, but he could be patient for them both for the right moment. The connection had never felt more alive between them that night on the promise of a future.

At least that was what he had thought, until time had kept passing yet here he was, standing in his shower with his hand on his dick a year later, while Alex was across town in someone else’s bed but clearly thinking about him.

Michael watched as his seed dripped down the fiberglass walls, the shower spray sending it down the drain in an eddy of his own frustrated longing. His body was calm, at least, and his mind was buzzing with happiness from Alex. He concentrated on the euphoria floating between them in particular. Alex had soaked up pleasure this morning, pursuing it with a greed that Michael couldn’t help but admire, and then he had let himself go without any hint of shame. God, it felt good to know that Alex had finally found that comfort with himself.

He breathed in and out, counting the seconds down until the connection faded. Once it was over, he gave himself five more minutes under the hot spray, letting whatever was welling in his eyes, slip unseen down his face. He cursed his stupid alien biology in the same breath that he clung to it for giving him Alex again, if only briefly. 

After he was dressed for his brunch plans with everyone, he checked his phone before he left, to find a text from Alex. The contact had been updated one more time, six months after the Crashcon, from “Alex -best bro” to “Alex -bf”. Isobel had been way too excited to see that notation, until Michael had patiently explained it had stood for ‘best friend’. Maybe in another universe it was ‘boyfriend’, just not this one.

This wasn’t crumbs, he had argued to her, Alex was still a feast for him in whatever way he could have him. He read the text with his mind still working to box up the feelings that lingered for Alex, “Tell everyone we will be late- overslept”. The ‘we’ was what puzzled Michael the most about the whole situation over the last year. Why was Alex still thinking about Michael the way he did while he was with someone else?

AO3 link for more

[uswnt-owns-this-homo]

Let a Bitch Hit You- Julie Ertz x Reader

     AN:  Here’s my attempt at a protective JJ, hope I did it justice!

TW: Homophobia, mentions of drugs/alcohol, cursing of course, homophobic slurs and language

You take a deep breath as the ref blows the starting whistle, the Courage kicking the ball back to their defense, signalling the start of the game. You try to follow the ball as much as possible, taking care to stay in position and wait for opportunities and passes to come your way. You can’t help but to think of the circumstances as your teammate, and long term girlfriend, Julie Johnson, gets the ball, and passes it quickly, opening up space and helping the Red Star’s attack. 

      The significance of the game is not lost on you, your first one against your prior team. Jaelene Hinkle, one of the most openly homophobic people in the league, had pushed you towards your transfer, though you and Julie were already discussing a request at a later time. After her and Ashlyn’s epic twitter battle, Jaelene had lashed out slightly, demanding that you, as the “resident queer on the team’’, get dressed for games and practices in a different area, so that she “could change without being leered at”. 

      The rest of the team, minus your national teammates, had just let her go along with it, not defending you or telling her she was wrong. This, along with direct statements to you about your sexuality, including, but not limited to: constantly telling you you’re going to hell and sinning, pelting balls at you during practice, and, during team bonding events, conveniently forgetting to invite you, leaving you disconnected with the rest of the team, had led to the situation at hand.

      Your former teammates, bar the national team members, attack you mercilessly. They go for cheap moves, like holding your jersey during corner kicks, and performing late slide tackles, obviously targeting your notoriously weak ankles and knees. Throughout the game, Julie’s frown has become more prominent, her play more sharp, focused on getting the win over the people, or more accurately, the person, who contributed to her girlfriend's small fall down the rabbit hole.

       Instead of discussing the transfer, and the events behind it, with a professional, you had turned to alcohol, and over the counter medications, drinking booze and then taking benadryl, or cough syrup, and sleeping for days. You had kept up your facade of your usual happy, energized, rival to Sonnett in memes personality, up until you had moved in with Julie in Chicago. She had quickly noticed your actions, taking count of the vodka and medicine bottles, and had pushed you to see a therapist, resulting in your sobriety of now 4 months. 

      Hinkle makes the mistake of going in for a late slide tackle, clipping your already sore ankle. You turn to her and she sneers, winking at you. You slowly get up, rolling your eyes as the ref allows play to continue.

      Julie has been slightly more aggressive when facing Hinkle, and some people have noticed, mainly you, and of course the target herself, especially after a particularly hard run in was made for the ball.

“Hey, Johnson, how about you clean up your play? This is the third time you’ve shoved me, getting sloppy there, homo?”

      The look on your girlfriend’s face says it all, and all you can do is run to put a hand on her shoulder, trying to keep her from retaliating.

“Aw, look, dyke is trying to stop big bad Julie from starting something she can’t finish. How’s the cough syrup binge going, Y/N? Still sober, or have you fucked that up as well?”

      You just blankly stare at her, feeling old urges resurface, trying to stay in the present, as well as keep Julie from getting carded.

“You know, I think you transferred because you know I’m right, and you can’t face the fact that you sin everyday, and don’t like that your sickness is brought to light, isn’t that right, Y/N?”

      Julie shakes you off, stomping forward and shoving Hinkle, causing you to follow, holding her back slightly, your team, and the opposition coming together in a large huddle, Alyssa grabbing Julie and holding her back..

“Alyssa, please. No, Y/N, she can’t talk to you like that! I mean, the league has done jack shit to her for harassing you, or for poor sportsmanship, or any of the other numerous things she’s done. Jesus, you tried to kill yourself! And what does she get? Absolutely nothing!”

Jaelene seems to falter for a moment, before her face turns in a sneer.

“Poor Y/N, can’t take any criticism, what’d you do, try to get away from it?”

      Julie finally breaks out of your and Alyasa’s grip, lunging at Hinkle, landing a solid punch to her jaw. The ref comes running, putting her hands on both players. Julie is still attempting to reach Hinkle, and laughs at the red card she’s shown.

“Oh yeah, fucking let the one who’s caused severe emotional and mental harm to my girlfriend get off scott free!”

Coach calls her over and she rolls her eyes, giving you a quick kiss on the forehead, glaring at Hinkle when she fake gags. 

You’ve had enough, officially snapped, gone off the metaphorical rails of tolerance of douchbaggery.

“You know, you can insult me, make me want to cease living, but you have no right to be disgusted. Any god I know would be appalled at how you’ve treated my community, and I know you don’t go to heaven just on the merit of being a homophobic christian. Ash was right, you have no place on the national team… You wouldn’t fit,”

      You shove her backwards, taking your yellow card with a grin. Play resumes relatively quickly, and your whole team goes forward into the second half with a renewed passion, compensating for Julie’s red. You lose yourself in the game, giving it your absolute all, and laying yourself out on every possible play.  You manage to score 3 goals, one which could have been defended by Hinkle. 

      The whistle blows and your team rushes you, picking you up, hugging you, and cheering. You all head back to the locker room and you spot Julie, staring at her phone, a blank stare on her face. You sit beside her, putting your arm around her shoulders and pulling her into a hug.

“Thank you, so much. For defending me, for fighting for me, even though I really missed my favorite ball feeder,”

Julie cracks a smile and shrugs.

      You pull her in for a short kiss, trying to  convey all of your love for her. You all walk out of the locker room, bags and bus buddies in tow. Julie holds your hand as you walk to the bus, rubbing a thumb over it as you stare blankly ahead of you, thinking back on your whole experience with Jaelene. Julie wraps her arms around you as you both get onto the bus, finding your usual seat beside Alyssa, who smiles worriedly at you. You take a deep breath and look at Julie.

“I just, I thought transferring would give me peace, but she’s still there, the thoughts, they’re still there. Just. Why is it such a big deal to her? I’m just living my life, trying to be happy, and she constantly made me feel, hell, sometimes still makes me feel, worthless, and I know therapy helped, but still, sometimes, like tonight’s game, brings it all back,”

      Julie gets a look on her face, as does Uncle Naeher. They look at each other and nod slightly, brows furrowed.

“Come on Alyssa, Y/N, sit here, we’ll be back in a second,”

You curl up in the seat, listening to Julie talk to Alyssa’s seat mate, and one of your friends on the team, Sam Kerr.

“Look, me and Alyssa have to go do something, we’ll catch an Uber to our place afterwards, could you do me a huge solid, look after Y/N for me? Make sure she stays talking, doesn’t zone out too much?”

Sam nods and Julie sighs, turns to you, and kisses you on the forehead.

Okay, love, I’m gonna go, sort things out.  I’ll be back in a bit, before you go to bed, okay?”

You numbly nod, heart racing.

      She quickly turns to Sam, nods, and goes to get off the not yet started bus. Coach looks at her and Alyssa, and they talk for a few seconds before he waves them on, glancing back at you. Sam moves to sit beside you, and you curl up to her side, silently wishing it was Julie.

      You’ve made it back to the hotel, eyes red from your crying on the way back. You carry your bag to your room, Sam walking you to it and giving you a hug as you walk inside. You put your things down, taking care to organize it so you don’t have to deal with it later. You turn the coffee maker on, set it to hot water, and start to run it, putting a tea bag in and leaving it to brew while you shower. You get your sweats and long sleeve t-shirt, taking out your toiletries and turning the water on cold, hoping the chill will help pull you out of your funk. You hop in and sit under the water, shivering slightly, but unwilling to turn it warmer. 

      You must sit there for an hour, slowly numbing even more from the cold water. You vaguely hear the room’s door open, Julie setting down her bag and putting her keys on the desk.

“Y/N? Babe?”

      You want to turn your head, say something, go lay and curl up in your girlfriend’s arms, let her reassure you, but the motivation doesn’t come. So, you sit and numbly watch, shivering and lips turning blue, as Julie comes in the bathroom, looks to you, and immediately rushes into the shower, clothes on and forehead cut, eye black.

“I’m so sorry. I should’ve been here, stayed with you, I just. She did this to you, without really trying, I couldn’t just let that happen,”

      You just shrug and hug her, trying to get warm, regretting your tactic for pulling yourself out of your mind.

“Okay, we need to get you warm. I saw your tea, you can have that, and then we can lay down and watch that documentary you heard about from Rose?”

      You nod, watching her turn water to warm, and strip, leaving her soaked clothes on the bathroom floor. Julie slowly washes your hair, conditions it, and takes a cloth to your slowly warming body, every touch and prod gentle and full of love. She keeps you under the warm spray for a while, holding you and rocking slightly.

“Okay, now which one of my hoodies do you want? We have the Santa Clara U or the Red Stars one, and some sweats, and some fuzzy socks are in your near future,”

You smile.

“You wore the Red Stars one more recently, so that one,”

A small blush runs across her cheeks, her usual confident demeanour gone.

“I’ll see what I can do, charmer. Ready to get out, get bundled, and get cuddled?”

She goes about shutting off the water, looking down to nod at you, and then stands up, you still cradled to her chest. You have a moment of realization.

��If I ask nicely, will you avoid putting clothing on?”

She sputters and turns tomato red.

“I- what? No, clothes are going on so I can properly warm you up, no more sly passes! I’m trying to take care of you, short stuff,”

You glower, sigh, and wrap your arms around her neck, waiting for her to put you down.

“Okay, look, tonight may have gotten to me, just a bit, but even all wacked out, I know somethings wrong. What happened to your face, and where’s Uncle?”

She sighs and starts to towel you off.

“Fine, The Giant and I went to have a chat with Hinkle, and I had her record it. I simply started talking with Hinkle, trying to reason and help her to understand things a little better, and then she hit me, and I didn’t hit back, and then she hit me some more,so now we’re hoping that we can send this to the big people in charge and maybe she’ll get suspended or in trouble or something. Alyssa is back with Sammy trying to stay away from conflict for the rest of her life. She did tell me to tell you to come down tomorrow if you needed some tips for dealing with the whole situation. Honestly think it’s the most she’s spoken this season,”

      You hug her and wrap the towel around her shoulders before smacking her gently in the leg.

“No more inciting violence in the hopes that you fuck with people who have ‘wronged me’ or whatever it is you said that one time, got it? Also, you need ice, but I will say I love a girl with a black eye,”

      You walk off into the main part of the room, ruffling through Julie’s bag to find her sweatshirt, lifting it over your head with a triumphant croon.

“Aw yeah, the epic girlfriend hoodie, let’s go!”

      Julie chuckles and walks out, coming up behind you and grabbing her SCU hoodie, pulling it on and winking.

“So that next time you want a sweatshirt, you can have a freshly me scented one,”

      You roll your eyes and grab a pair of training shorts, pulling them on and grabbing your tea, laying back carefully on the bed.

“Okay, coral documentary, snuggles, and then sleep,”

      Julie nods and gets in bed, pulling you close and grabbing the laptop beside the bed and opening up Netflix.

“Sounds like a pretty amazing night to me, shorty, let’s watch us some ocean stuff,”

     Needless to say you’re crying by the end of the documentary. Julie jerks awake, her soft snoring abruptly ceasing.

“What? What happened, who hurt you, I’ll let em’ punch me, get their ass suuspeendedd,”

      You chuckle, still crying slightly.

“Nobody, babe, just, he loves coral! And it’s disappearing, and he’s sad and all emotional and now I’m all emotional!”

      You sniff a few times and shut the computer, quickly putting it on the bedside table.

“Please don’t let anyone hit you again, Juls, pretty please,”

      She sleepily grunts and mumbles.

“Man, sometimes you just let a bitch hit you, ya’ know. Gotta get the w somehow, cause I sure didn’t get it during the game,”

      You laugh and wrap her arms tighter around you, knowing it’s going to be a bit of a long road ahead, but certain that the whole situation will pan out, and that you have Julie by your side through all of it.

[writemywaytoyourheart]

Onsra- Chapter 4: Run Girl, Run

pairing: vampire!jungkook x female reader

genre: angst, drama, romance

warnings for this chapter: none beetch

word count: 1.3k

Onsra ML → prologue → one → two → three

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ga-In sees your expression when you look outside, she turns her head and her shoulders slump over. "Great, just great." She mutters and stands up to hold her hand out to Seungwook, "Well, it was nice to meet you, but we really have to go now. Come on, y/n."

She doesn't have to tell you twice. You immediately stand up and shake your new friend's hand, "Nice to meet you, Seungwook. Maybe we'll all see each other on campus." Seungwook smiles and stands up while shaking your hand. He bows politely and walks over to his table to collect his things before turning back to the both of you, "It was a pleasure, ladies. Thank you for keeping me company! I hope to see you around." You nod and smile, collecting your laundry and signaling to Ga-In that you're ready to go. She nods and heaves the bags she brought that are now full of clean clothes over her shoulders.

She really is stronger than she looks.

You grab your basket and wave once more to the handsome young man who's collecting his load before nodding to the desk lady and pushing the door open with your hip, letting Ga-In walk out before you follow her.

The night is chilly and you shiver. 

To be honest, you're not sure if it's the October air or the fact that the two of you are out and about in the dark when you vowed you wouldn't that's making the goosebumps raise on your arms.

Curse dirty laundry.

Ga-In starts to hum some silly song she heard on TikTok, and you roll your eyes and smile.

"Innie! You know I'm sick of you singing that!" You smile bigger when she starts to giggle at your protest, "I'm sorry! I can't help the fact that it's stuck in my head twenty-four seven."

Relieved that the tension is now broken and the pair of you are fairly close to home, you breath in the fresh crisp air and sigh.

"Innie?"

"Hm?"

"What are we gonna do for Halloween?"

"I don't know about you, but I vote we don't go trick or treating."

You burst into laughter and she smiles.

Suddenly you hear the small sound of a twig snap and you both freeze.

You want to whip your head around and look for the source of the sound, but your heart is seized with terror, which makes your body completely seize up too. It's only when you hear Ga-In gasp the word 'run' sharply, that your legs move, and you take off running as fast as you can manage what with the heavy basket bouncing up and down in your arms.

You don't think you've ever run this fast in your entire life. Your lungs are burning and spasming and you can feel an asthma attack of your own coming on.

Yet, Ga-In is still ahead of you, her hair flying like a kite in the wind.

She's like a freaking gazelle leaping across a meadow.

Well, a tall gazelle wearing a skirt and carrying a laundry bag over each shoulder as she hightails it back home, leaving her supposed best friend to be eaten by the lion.

What a brat.

She seems to hear your thoughts as she suddenly slows down and looks behind her, seeing you hike the basket up farther to get a better grip as your sore legs push themselves to the limit. 

You feel like someone is right behind you when your back tenses up, and when Ga-In's eyes grow ten times larger as she looks behind your shoulder, you let out a blood-curdling scream and chuck your laundry basket to the side.

You couldn't care less about that stupid laundry.

Your arms pump wildly on either side of you as you run with a newfound speed after throwing away the extra weight, zipping past Ga-In and hurling yourself toward your apartment stairs. You practically throw yourself up two steps at a time and slam against the door, punching in the key to your lock and throwing the door open.

Ga-In shrieks and runs in next to you before you slam the door shut, miraculously still alive.

You take huge gulps of air and collapse on the ground in a dramatic heap.

You're going to throw up.

It's going to happen.

It really is.

You dry heave and pound your chest, thinking maybe that will do something to make the air go in faster. After a minute of gagging and almost crying your head off, you are curled in a ball on the floor, staring at Ga-In's nude flats. 

You hear her clear her throat and look up at her, "Dang, y/n. I never knew you could run that fast." You glare at her and push yourself up to a sitting position much like the one she's in. 

"Are you trying to be funny you fool? We almost died!" 

"It could've just been a rabbit."

"A rab- a WHAT?" 

"A rabbit-"

"Ga-In! Did you not see something behind me that made you look absolutely mortified? Are you forgetting that?"

"I didn't see anything."

"I- what did you just say?" You stare at her in disbelief and she tries to smother a grin. 

Ohhhhh she better be joking right now.

"I thought I saw something, but it was just a mailbox."

Say what now? You lost almost half the clothes you own because she saw a motherfreaking mailbox?

A MAILBOX?!?!

"WHAT?" She flinches when you shout and then scrunches her eyebrows, "Stop yelling, at least we're alive."

Your brain is so shot from the fear and adrenaline pumping through you that you just stare into space and nod numbly. 

"Yes, yes ok. I'm going to bed." You stand up and walk to the back, almost like a robot. It honestly feels like today has lasted a million years. 

How many times have you been running? How many times have you fallen? Gotten frightened and humiliated? It's just never ending today. 

~

You wake up with a splitting headache, a groan slipping past your lips as you pull up the covers to hide from the light. The next second your alarm goes off and you growl at it, chucking it across the room and flinching when it makes contact with the far wall. 

A timid knock sounds at the door and you whine in protest when your worst enemy walks through the door quietly. 

Ga-In tiptoes to your bed and pulls the covers back gently, sliding in next to you and wrapping her arms around your waist. You pout at her cute actions, knowing she wants you to forgive her ASAP. 

Well, darn.

You turn and hug her back, cuddling into her chest and speaking sleepily, "I'm still mad at you." She chuckles and you feel her nod, "I know, but you should've seen the look on your face when you were running." 

"Ga-In!" 

"I'm sorry, y/n. It's just too funny. Your eyes have never been so big and your legs were practically invisible with how fast you were going."

"Obviously I was running like never before,  I had to keep up with you, you brat. Leaving me in the dust with your gazelle legs. Stupid."

"My what?"

"Nothing."

She chuckles and stretches her long limbs out, "well, at least I have a funny story to tell your future boyfriend."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, wouldn't I?" 

Maybe she'd forget. 

She forgets things a lot.

You sit up and rub your eyes, at least you didn't have math today and you didn't sleep in either. Maybe today could be a good day. Yesterday was miserable. But, nothing could ever happen to top that misery. From now on, you two would be happy and safe. No more worries over a bad day. You'd make sure of that. 

Can't get much worse, right?

Oh.

How very, very wrong you were. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a/n: whooooooooop whoooop. hope this made you laugh at least! be patient and don't kill me that JK hasn't arrived yet pls. It’ll be worth the wait I promise.

[mysweetestcreature]

Tomorrow Never Knows (President!Harry) Chapter 10: Not a Bad Thing

(Banner by the wonderful noblewomankat!)

***

Monday November 24, 2008

It’s been days since they’ve had a normal conversation...or any decent form of communication for the matter. This past week had consisted of multiple attempts (on her part) to talk to him, but each time he’d make up some excuse to cut all dialogue short. “My mum’s waiting for me outside, maybe next time?” or “I’m actually late for practice, but I’ll catch up with you later,” but of course he never did. Beyond her comprehension is how she had managed to mess everything up so badly in so little time. 

Eleven minutes. 

Harry had arrived eleven minutes after she had accepted Jasper’s invitation. There’s nothing she can say that can justify why she’d done it because even she isn’t so sure. Maybe she was scared. She’d been so hopeful about where this friendship with him would lead them once before, and it had costed her the first heartbreak of her life. The biggest part of her wanted so badly to wait for Harry to ask her, but a small yet seemingly influential nerve had let her insecurities take over. 

She wishes she hadn’t cared so much about what other people had thought, and instead used her own judgement. She hadn’t realized just how difficult it would be for their roles to be reversed, and she only has herself to blame for it.

“I wish you’d stop stressing,” Cici tells her as they do their warmup stretches. “I doubt he’ll be able to stay mad at you for much longer.”  

“You might be wrong for once,” she smiles sadly, facing down to stare numbly ahead as she reaches for her toes. 

Once she and Harry had parted (or more accurately, when Harry had left her standing ashamed in the hallway), Cici had found her sitting on the floor beside her locker, a somber expression painted all over her face.  

“I messed up,” is all she had mustered up in that moment of fragility, dejected eyes having fallen into her lap. And Cici –– who had already passed an equally, if not more, crestfallen boy on her way to find Y/n –– was readily equipped with her words of enthusiasm, even if she was quite disappointed in the turnout of the day. “You made one mistake –– it doesn’t make you a bad person.” Doesn’t it, though? 

Cici scoffs as she tightens her ponytail. “I am many things, but I am never wrong,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone –– almost arrogantly, if you ask Y/n –– before standing up and brushing the wrinkles from her skirt. “It’s not in my vocabulary.”

“But it’s in mine, apparently,” her lips curve down. 

“I didn’t mean it like–”

“I know.” She rises to her feet. “It was a stupid decision and I wish I could redo it, but I can’t now. He can barely stand to be in the same room as me for more than a class period. He hasn’t dropped by the Home Ec. Room in who knows how long, and I haven’t been able to make a decent pumpkin pie since. Me? Screw up a pie? That doesn’t happen! This weekend I typed out twenty-seven texts that I never sent. Twenty-seven, Cici! Who does something like that?! All saying the same thing, that I like him so much that it makes my heart go crazy, and how it hurts that he might think otherwise because I’m going to this stupid dance with someone who’s not Harry and it fucking sucks!”

It leaves her chest to heave heavily, and her lungs to feel completely depleted of any oxygen. With an outburst like that, she’s managed to surprise herself. And while conversations amongst the other cheerleaders continue, it feels like she’s once again in the spotlight as the heat creeps up her neck and settles on her forehead and the apples of her cheeks. 

Cici stands in front of her, eyes rounded in astonishment and mouth hung open wide. Her eyes quickly dart down at her arm. 

“You’ve never cussed before, I literally just got chills!”

A smile slowly reemerges. “It felt good,” she admits, and she breathes out in relief as her shoulders feel lifted from at least a portion of the weight that had been set upon them. “I’ve been holding that one in.”

“No, that was totally clear.”

A restful silence falls upon them, and Y/n makes it an opportunity to reflect on the upcoming days. She needs to fix this and salvage whatever she can before they permanently fall apart. Hating to sound dramatic, but she has a strong feeling that if they can’t recover from this, then it could be over for good. 

And that’s just not in the cards.

“I’m going to tell him.”

***

Tuesday November 25, 2008

“Got any plans for Thanksgiving?” Maxxie asks him.

Harry lets out a heavy sigh, staring down at his jumbled pile of flashcards on his desk. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about it constantly because it had been toying with his mind for the better part of the weekend. “You could say that, I guess.”

The answer, in all its vague glory brings about an amused grin from the boy across from him. Maxxie leans over the table and goes as far to lift his hips off the chair just invade his personal space. “What was that tone?” he gawks, wiping the cards off the surface of the table.

“Well...” he starts off timidly (a bit of annoyance mixed in because he’s going to have to clean up the mess later), and a small burp erupts from the back of his throat as a sign of his mild discomfort. “I was sort of...maybe...actually invited to...” but the tail of the sentence is nearly undecipherable to the human ear. 

Maxxie squints his blue eyes across from him. “What was that? I didn’t quite catch all of it.”

Blowing out the air from his lungs, Harry’s head falls back so all he has to focus on are the dull cracks in the ceiling. Part of him still doesn’t believe it, or rather hadn’t thought it an admissible option given the recent events. He pokes his inner cheek outwards before letting out a tired groan. “We’re spending it with Y/n’s family, okay? There, I said it.”

“You’re bluffing!” 

Harry whistles out a breath. “Not today, mate,” he chortles, rubbing the base of his palm against his left eye. “Jeremy literally asked my mum the day after...well, you know.”

“Are you going to be able to manage it?” there’s a weariness in Maxxie’s voice.

But honestly, Harry doesn’t know. Yes, he’s still broken up about the whole thing. Yet, the hardest part is being next to her and feeling as though he’s missed every chance that he’s had at being hers. Because he’s sure it’ll take him a long time before he’s over her, and that’s what hurts the most.

***

On Day 6, Pattern D finds itself at ten in the morning, the third class of the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break. To Y/n it’ll be the first class she has with Harry, meaning another chance to get things straightened out between them. Now that their positions are reversed, she feels even worse about having treated him so harshly the month before when there had been a hefty cloak of uncertainty to keep things understandably complicated. 

Just as Mr. Daughtry’s door comes into sight, her path is intercepted by a body suddenly appearing before her.   

“Hey, you!” Jasper greets her with a bright grin. There’s a moment of clumsiness when she predicts his fluid movements based on how his arm extends and fingers point in her direction as they rise to the height of her shoulder. In a slight panic, she twists arounds, pretending to fish for a pencil from the side pouch of her backpack. Luckily (for him) he’s able to stop himself from proceeding, and he shrugs the action off as he stretches that same arm over his head. With a skittish laugh he continues. “I feel like I haven’t seen much of you this week.”

“I’ve just been busy,” she mumbles, hugging her grey math notebook close to her chin. She can’t help but wonder if he isn’t late to some class, or club meeting, or some discussion about hair accessories (the latter causes her to snigger to herself). 

Jasper simply nods, pulling slightly on the knot of his tie. “So, I told my mom about the formal and she’s super stoked that we’re going together,” he blushes. “I mean, I’m really happy you said yes.”

Meanwhile, the metallic taste of blood starts to fill her mouth the longer she keeps her tongue trapped between her teeth. “Yeah...” she struggles to find her voice. The right thing to do would be to come clean, to be straightforward with him and give him the honest answer he had deserved from the beginning. 

Blowing the air from her nostrils, she parts her lips as they wrap around the words. “Jasper, I actually need to talk to you about that...”

“Karan! What’s up, man?” 

She forces an unbothered appearance in front of Jasper’s friend –– Karan –– as they start a whole conversation of their own. 

This is something she’s found to dislike very much, how Jasper always seems to forget that his friends aren’t her friends...well, at least none that she particularly like enough to call by such an intimate name. It bothers her because she doesn’t know if she can walk away or if this boy has any intention of including her or even continuing with what they’d started only minutes before. 

She taps her foot contempt, not even caring if either find her actions to be tactless. All Jasper does is shoot half a smile before carrying on talking about the latest scandal to hit the tenth grade. 

“I should really get to class,” she meddles in the momentary pause between speakers. “See you around.” 

Before Jasper can send her off with a proper goodbye, she turns around and keeps en route for the classroom. As soon as she’s about to cross under the arch, she collides with another body, notebook falling from her hands and falling open-faced on the floor. 

“’m sorry,” the other rushes out, his voice all too recognizable to her ears. Harry quickly picks up the notebook and holds it out for her to take, but all she notices is how his eyes remain low and unwilling to look at her. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. He gives her a nod in response before signaling for her to go enter ahead of him. But she stays in glued in place. “Do you think we can...”

“There might be a pop quiz, I heard,” he interrupts, his hand finding the small of her back to gently prod her into the room. Despite it being nothing more than a graze of his fingers over her sweater, she still feels jolts of electricity run up her spine and tickle the back of neck. 

With their arrival being just a minute or so before roll call, the only available seats are towards the very rear, two desks grouped together and pushed in the far-right corner of the room. His hand falls back to his side, the absence of his touch leaving her colder than she had just been. It makes her frown, and as they make their way to the back, the space between them only grows. 

For her, this has to be the most difficult consequence to deal with. 

“Alright, since everyone is settled in,” Mr. Daughtry starts, uncapping a blue dry erase marker. “Let’s go over last night’s homework.” And he ponders down at the reference notes on the podium, before the shrill squeaks of the marker against the whiteboard slowly begin to reveal an equation. 

Beside her, Harry opens up his notebook, each homework problem neatly organized (this includes all the work he’d done to solve them) over two pages. She looks straight ahead, slightly squinting so she can decipher the correct answers on the board. “How is it 43?” she asks under her breath, staring down at problem #5.

“It was a negative two, not positive...which would mean b becomes positive in the expression,” he answers. He orients his notes towards her. “Right there,” he points to it with tip of his pencil. He leans in a little closer, elbow coming to rest on the table as his head tilts in her direction. Her heart goes crazy as he goes on to explain the steps of the equation. It’s the first time in days he’s willingly talked to her, even if it is about schoolwork. But she forces herself to shake off the feeling for the time being, if only to prevent herself from messing this up. 

“How’d I even...” And she cross checks with his work, brows curling inward. “Oh, I’m such dummy. I didn’t even notice that!” she shakes her head and rubs her eraser over the page. 

He looks at her for the first time today with a prelude of the softest smile. “You’re not.” 

She offers him a toothy grin as she settles back down. Every now and again will she sneak an admiring gaze. 

***

“Harry!” she calls after him. In the short period of time she’d taken to pack her things, he had already fled the room by the time she looked up. It took squeezing her way through two bulky juniors from their class to quickly find his mop of brown curls in the crowded corridor. 

At the sound of his name, he begrudgingly comes to a stop. He sighs and scratches the back of his head, his internal monologue arguing that he should continue forward. The decision is to be outweighed by a greater influence. 

“Hi,” Y/n says in a bit of a wheeze. 

“Hi,” he returns, nodding. He watches as those around them disperse in their difference directions, until the hallway soon becomes barren during this first lunch period. “What’s going on?” he asks simply. 

She absentmindedly goes to mess with a loose strand of hair. “I was just...” she snivels (allergy season can be a real nuisance). “Wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to Thursday.” 

“Oh,” his mouth forms an o with his lips. He glances to the floor and wriggles his feet as though pebbles were buried in his shoes. “Yeah, I think my mum’s bringing trifle or some kind of dessert.” 

“That’s sweet of her,” she affirms. “Are you excited?” 

Harry looks up, noticing the hope embedded in her eyes. “It could be fun,” he says evenly. “Your dad seems pretty keen on watching the Packers game together. Mason, too, I guess.”

“Mason hasn’t stopped talking about it,” she admits shyly, but can’t help but giggle at the thought of her brother. “You know, he told his teacher that you were his best friend.”

It’s Harry’s turn to laugh. “Really?” Y/n nods enthusiastically. “He’s a cool kid. Tell him I’m honored.” 

“You can always tell him on Thursday.” 

Harry smiles. “I will.” 

***

Thursday November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving Day has never been more stressful for Y/n. Not only has she been baking since last night (did someone say four different flavors of pie and three fall-themed cookies, and a carrot cake bigger than her dad’s head?) but she must have changed her outfit at least nine times in the last half hour. The Styles’ are expected to arrive at around 5pm, which means she only has another forty-five minutes to come up with the perfect ensemble. Earlier in the afternoon, it had just occurred to her that she hasn’t met Anne nor Gemma, and she’d be dishonest if she said she wasn’t ultra-nervous about it.

Gosh, how her stomach feels so full of air.

She wishes she could be as carefree as Mason because all he’s been fretting over is which boardgame to play with Harry after dinner and which Disney movie he’s going to have running on the laptop whilst Jeremy slaves away to the television at approximately 8pm. 

“Do you think Harry likes Monopoly or Connect Four?” the little boy asks. She tears her attention from her cookie display to look down at her brother who’s holding two boxes up for her to examine.

“But, Mase,” she giggles, wiping her hands on her apron. “You don’t know how to play Monopoly.”

Mason looks at the box in his right hand and eyes it carefully. He gives her a signal of understanding before trotting off back into the living room to set up. Shaking her head, she continues setting up the cookies along the three-tier server. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to impress their guests. “It’ll be fine,” she tells herself.

***

The doorbell rings, and almost instantly does it cause alarm within Y/n. 

“Oh my god!” she panics, running around the kitchen to quadruple check that everything is exactly as it should be. “Dad! Dad! Did you–”

“Yes.”

“How about the–”

“Yes.”

“Okay but what about–”

“Y/n,” Jeremy says sternly from the foyer. She closes her eyes as she listens to the bottom rim of the door brush along the mat. “Welcome! Nice to see you again, Anne. Harry, ready for that Packers game? Oh, hello! I don’t think I’ve met you yet?”

Her eyes widen, he must be talking to Gemma! Harry had told her stories about how close they are since Anne’s job requires a lot of traveling. Oh gosh, she must hate her for having done what she did to her brother. She knows this because she would absolutely despise anyone who would ever dare to hurt Mason. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she breathes unevenly and braces herself over the counter. 

“Not to validate anything your father says,” Olivia sneaks up from behind, “but you really do need to relax.” She takes a good look at her daughter. “Weren’t you wearing the brown sweater?”

But before Y/n has the chance to answer, three new faces enter from the side, her heart skipping over multiple beats as she becomes tightlipped. 

“Hello!” Olivia greets them. “We’re so happy to have you join us! I’m Olivia, by the way.”

Harry’s sister nudges him from behind. “Oh, um...” he looks behind him. “This is my mum Anne, and my sister Gemma.” 

“So nice to meet you,” Anne smiles, and she extends a hand to Olivia, Gemma does the same. “You have such beautiful home. Are those chrysanths you have along the walkway? They’re absolutely stunning!” 

Olivia covers a hand over her heart. “I like you already,” she sobs playfully. “Finally, someone who gets it! Two kids and neither of them share a love for gardening.” 

“You can say that again,” Anne returns. The two share a laugh, and Olivia leads them into the dining room to continue on with their chat. 

It leaves Y/n with Harry and Gemma, and she isn’t even sure where Jeremy might have wandered off to now. Harry whispers something into Gemma’s ear, and she rolls her eyes before shoving her elbow into his side. Y/n can’t help but wonder what he’s saying. Is it about her? Has he found something wrong? Stop this! She reaches behind her and pinches herself. Relax.

Taking a bold step forward, she strikes up conversation. “Hi, I’m Y/n.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Gemma replies, a warm aura radiating from her being.  

Y/n tilts her head.  “Good things, I hope.”

“Well,” the older girl starts, sending a smirk at her brother and sniggering when his eyes widen in realization. “This one never stops talking about you.”

Harry gasps, “Now wait just a minute.” But as soon as he’s about to come up with a rebuttal, he’s immediately attacked from behind with a hug. Short arms lock his legs together, and if it weren’t for his sister standing there for support, he would have most definitely fallen over. “There he is!” 

“Harry!” Mason giggles, reaching his arms above his head, a notorious signal for Harry to lift him up. “Did you miss me?”

“Duh!” Harry teases. “How can I not miss my bestest mate?” 

***

Dinner goes better than either she or Harry can expect. Their families seem to have taken well with one another, Anne and Olivia having already formed that instant bond over maternal care and green thumbs. Jeremy is shocked to hear that Gemma is interested in programming herself, and he’s even more impressed to learn that she’s in the process of building her own website. As for Mason, well...it’s a little hard not to fall in love this boy when all he pours out into the world is happiness, and maybe a little bit of cupcake frosting. 

A seating arrangement had predetermined their positions at the table (thanks to Olivia and her brilliant mind). As it had happened, Y/n and Harry are seated beside each other, their chairs closer than usual with the extra chair on his other side. Although, it became apparent throughout dinner of the gap –– while not visible to the human eye –– that remains between them. 

Y/n doesn’t understand why that is, especially since they’d seemed to be on better terms on Tuesday. While they hadn’t eaten lunch together, he did sit next to her during Spanish class so they could work on the conjugation exercise together. Sure, it hadn’t been the most romantic thing they could have done, but it was a start, right? But now she feels bothered that the extent of their communication today has been polite smiles and requests to pass whatever dish the other is closest to. 

Deciding she’s had enough of this, she turns to him. “I’m really glad you’re here,” she whispers to him. 

“It is the holidays, so...” he keeps his answer elusively.

She has to play it back in her mind to determine if there’s any underlying meaning behind it. Pushing around the remains of her pumpkin pie she speaks up again. “Are you still mad at me?” 

He takes his time before answering, mulling over the words carefully. Yet, there’s no intelligible way to organize them to make it sound any better. “It’s not that simple.”

And that manages to stir something within her. “It’s either yes or no.”

“Y/n,” he warns, not wanting to cause a scene in front of their families. “Now’s just not the time to talk about it.”

She scoffs, shaking her head and willing herself not to cry. “It’s never the time with you.” And she excuses herself from the table. 

***

Giving himself one last glance in the mirror, he wraps his hand around the copper knob. He takes a long breath as he prepares himself to rejoin everyone and pretend that he doesn’t wish he could be anywhere else today. For majority of the day, he had thought he’d moved on from the rejection. However, the more time he spends with her, the more those feelings regress him back to those open wounds. Despite how much he likes watching football with Jeremy and playing Connect Four with Mason, he can’t help but get distracted whenever she comes over and asks thoughtful questions about the game. And that distraction causes him to remember how difficult it’s been to keep up this charade. 

When he opens the door, he’s immediately met with her figure looking up at him with doe-like eyes. His jaw clenches as he tries to ignore how the pout on her plump lips makes a part of him go a little crazy. What’s worse is that he shouldn’t feel this way, not right now at least. Not when he’s trying to stay mad for a little while longer. 

“Please,” she starts off faintly, looking all too small as she stands before him. His expression softens only the smallest amount that she isn’t sure if maybe it was just a twitch. “Can we just talk?” She can see it in his eyes, the answer that’s about to roll off his tongue so blatantly obvious. And before he has a chance to decline, she latches onto his hand and starts to walk him towards the stairs. They’re careful not to draw attention to themselves as they practically tiptoe through the dining area where Anne and Olivia continue to share embarrassing stories from when both Harry and Y/n were much younger. 

The grip she has on him while she leads him up the steps surprises him. Her soft hand squeezes his so tightly that his palms start to sweat from the sheer pressure (and maybe from a bubbling sense of nervousness that’s brewing inside). “Is this really necessary...” he hears himself muttering out loud, even though he’s expecting no answer in return. Although, he may have just felt just the smallest bit of added compression around his fingers as they round the corner. 

Once they’re in her room, she’s sure to close the door this time around. If she’s learned anything from the numerous times they’ve been interrupted, it’s that one can never be too sure around her family –– or anyone really. She debates whether to take it all the way with caution, standing frozen as she stares down at the lock with hesitancy.

“Are you planning on keeping me hostage or something?” he chuckles lightly, plopping down on her bed, having already accepted his defeat. He combs his fingers through his hair a couple times before allowing himself the chance to relax.

She exhales fully and closes her eyes. “If that’s what it takes.” With the lock pinched securely between her fingers, the faintest sound erupts within the space. Click. “Then, yes.” Rotating on her heel, she presses her back up against the door, hand still loosely grasping the handle as she tilts her head back. She keeps her eyes low at first, but as seconds on the clock begin to outnumber them, she has no choice but to have them ascend. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” she says shakily, whatever confidence she had absorbed seems to have fizzled out. But she can’t back down now, not when the opportunity is right in front of her. “I knew you were going to ask me, and I swear I was going to wait but then Jasper completely caught me off guard and then everyone was watching and I just...I just didn’t...I just didn’t think. It was stupid and I know that’s not an excuse, but I just want things to go back to normal.” She crosses her arms over her chest, a twinge of embarrassment filling her as her own words repeat through her ears. 

He shifts uncomfortably. All the feelings he’d been trying to avoid are being unlocked, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. It’s not even that he’s mad (he’s found it impossible to harvest any ill-feelings for the girl in front him), it’s more that he’s dreading whatever might come out of her mouth because he isn’t sure he can handle another rejection. “We don’t have to talk about it, really. We’re fine,” he says as neutrally as he can. 

“No, Harry. We’re not. And you know it.” 

He knows she’s right, no matter how much he wants to deny it for the sake of saving his own heart. But now that she’s locked him in, he has no choice but to confront the issue. “Look, whatever might have been between us, I’ll get over it, okay? I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to feel–”

“No!” she almost screams, and she marches right to where his knees bend off the side of the mattress with her lips pursed in a newfound determination. “That’s the complete opposite of what I want to happen.” 

His green eyes are fixed on her. “What do you mean?” he whispers. But she shakes her head, as though regretting the words to come out of her mouth. Because now they implicate her of the thing she’s been dying to say, and there’s no coming back once it’s said.

Not even thinking, he places his hands on her waist to bring her closer. She still refuses to look at him, her arms further wrapping around her vulnerable self. There’s something in the way her bottom lip moves in the slightest matter that intrigues him. And now he just needs to know. “Hey, look at me,” and he gently cups her cheek to encourage her. “What?”

She stays quiet as she tries to get her breathing back to a normal pace, but the feeling of his stare causes a sweat to form down her back. “I don’t want you to be over us.”

With that, she finally looks forward. 

It’s about time one of them be brave.

“I don’t want you to be over me,” she says in the most delicate manner. “I don’t want you to get over me because...” She uncrosses her arms, only to have them wrap around his neck as she settles between his open legs. “Because I don’t want to have to get over you.”

Their eyes meet, and she lets her forehead fall against his. The tips of their noses nudge against each other. A sigh of pure bliss fights its way out of him. He pulls her even closer, thumbs rubbing small circles into the plush of her hips. Her heart beats erratically, as does his as they bask in the echo of a declaration. Two pairs of lips pull up into benevolent smiles before finally coming together.    

Eight letters.

There are eight letters to be remained unsaid (until another time).

***

[movieexpert1978]

Rich and Famous

anon:  What about another Hans Landa story? I love how you write with him (and all your writin). Maybe something where the reader works for him (housekeeper or something like that), maybe with some slow burn sexual tension? Sorry if that's too vague haha

This kinda turned more into angst/ friendship with hints of romance. 

Hans landa is not my character 

It really sucked being a maid sometimes. Most of the clients didn’t pay you any mind but if they saw one speck of dust in the house they would blame it on you. It was hard being around the rich and famous all the time, knowing that you worked your ass off for a decent wage while they just inherited money. It also sucked to be the maid of Nazis, but not just any Nazis…a certain Colonel Hans Landa, Nazis to be precise. Landa was one of the most feared colonel’s in the war at the moment. As much as she wanted to turn down the job, he paid very well and despite him being a rich, Nazis snob, he never mocked and or undermined her work. In fact he was quiet the gentleman when she came to clean his flat. He gave her a nice extra tip when she cleaned up after one of his parties, particularly ones where someone couldn’t hold their drink. She wanted to hate him, but in all honesty she looked forward to cleaning his flat. Most of the time, he was in his office looking over paperwork and minding his own business. Today was a little different as she knocked at the door.

A woman answered it.

“Oh…who are you?” She asked unamused. Her silky robe barely was hiding the fact that she was practically naked at the front door. Elisa looked at her un-phased. There were a few other instances where women answered the door and it was always a different woman. Hans used the incredible and devious charm of his to get them into bed, but most of the time he didn’t even have to do that.

“My name is Elisa Prime. I have an appointment with the Colonel as I am his house maid.” Elisa stated. The woman let out this horrible mocking laugh that didn’t bother Elisa at all as she knew what was coming, but before the woman could tell her to go away someone else spoke.

“Ahhh, yes Elisa come in!” Hans said eagerly, waving her in. The woman frowned and all but glared at her as she came inside.

“Good morning, Herr Colonel.” Elisa said politely. Thankfully, he wasn’t in a robe, but definitely more casual with a button-up shirt and long pants with his suspenders on his shoulders. Elisa can’t help but wonder if she interrupted something.

“Don’t mind my lovely lady here Elisa. I need to call a cab for her soon anyway.” He says.

“But Hans!” The woman whines.

“Go get dressed. I have things to do.” He says firmly. She huffs as she practically stomps away to change. Elisa can tell he doesn’t like her. She figured he might be a one-night stand guy, but she could understand his distaste for this one. She was far too preppy and snobby for him. Hans could be a snob when he wanted to, but it wasn’t a permeant part of his personality. “I’m very sorry about that my dear.” Hans says sincerely when the woman is out of ear shot. “Would you like a cup of coffee by any chance? I did manage to make a pot before she woke up.” He offers kindly.

“No thank you Herr Colonel. May I ask…is the bathroom a terrible mess?” She asks.

“No, thankfully not this time. I managed to herd my guests out before they got too wild.” He chuckles. “Could you by any chance start with the den then?” He asks.

“Yes sir.” She nods.

“Elisa, you know you don’t have to be so formal. It is a Sunday after all.” He teases.

“Just a habit Herr Colonel.” She says without looking back at him. He smirks softly and heads off to call his other guest a cab as Elisa cleans away. She sprays plenty of perfume to do her best to get rid of the cigarette smell as she works. She keeps quiet as Hans herds the woman away, more than happy to get rid of her. Elisa still can’t help but feel a touch of jealousy since she got to spend the night with him. Elisa shakes her head to get rid of those thoughts as Hans goes into the kitchen to get himself some more coffee. He watches Elisa work every now and then in silence. She was recommended to him and she was well worth it. By early afternoon she had completed her cleaning. Hans handed her the money along with an extra tip.

“I was worried she would smack you.” Hans teases.

“I’ve been through worse.” Elisa shrugs.

“Really? What do you mean by that?” He asks curiously.

“Nothing Herr Colonel.” She says glancing towards the door.

“Did someone hit you?” He asks.

“Every now and then. I’ve grown used to it.” She says quietly.

“Well you shouldn’t. If it ever happens again you tell me and I’ll take care of it.” He says firmly.

“Thank you Herr Colonel. You have a good afternoon.” She says before she is out the door.

Xxxxxxx

       She wasn’t having a good week. For some reason they were all more cruel than usual lately. They made sure to remind her of her place more often than not this week. She left three houses nearly in tears and barely managed to keep it under control as she worked her second job as a waitress at a café. She nearly smacked a solider when he pinched her behind with a smirk. Luckily one of her coworkers saw and took over the table for her, knowing backlash would lead to all kinds of trouble and a possible disappearance of her in the middle of the night as she was dragged away to prison…or worse…a camp. Another Sunday came and even though she usually enjoyed cleaning the colonel’s house, today she was dreading it after her long week. She just wanted to clean, go home, and stay in bed for the rest of the day until work on Monday. She knocked on the door and waited with her cleaning supplies, half expecting another woman to answer the door. Instead, Hans answered.

“Ahhh Elisa come in, come in.” He says happily.

“Good morning Herr Colonel.” She says in usual routine. Hans can’t help but chuckle at her formality. It was hard to come by with people now these days. Hans looks her over and she seems to be more tired than usual.

“Would you like something to eat?” He asks kindly.

“No thank you sir. Shall I start in the den again?” She asks quickly.

“Yes…” Hans nods watching her. She seems upset. He tries not to look over her too much, but he wants to check in case she has bruises. So far her make-up is holding up well so he doesn’t notice for the moment. However, he doesn’t fail to notice that her hands fumble every now and then and she gets more and more frustrated as time goes on. When she gets to the bathroom she closes the door and Hans can hear her sniffling as she cries. He waits patiently, until she is nearly finished before he knocks. “Elisa…are you alright?”

“Yes Hans, almost done…sorry sir.” She says quickly as she finishes up. She gets out of the bathroom and finds him staring at her.

“Elisa, did something happen?” He asks gently.

“No sir.”

“You seem upset. Are you sure?” He asks again.

“Yes sir.”

“…alright…” He nods. She heads off to finish the other rooms. Hans watches her carefully when he spots the bruise on her cheek. “Elisa what happened?” He asks, firmly this time.

“Nothing Hans.” She says avoiding his gaze.

“Your make-up faded. I can see the bruise on your cheek.” He says. She freezes for a moment before she looks at him.

“Yeah…well…well…what do you care!?” She snaps at him angrily. He nearly jumps in surprise at her tone. He’s never heard her yell before.

“Elisa, you’re my friend. I concerned.” He says truthfully.

“Why? So you can just take me to your bed like all the other women?” She snaps. “You people are all the same!” She says bitterly.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He states. Now he’s getting angry but she doesn’t care anymore.

“Oh what are you going to do? Make me disappear…please you’d be doing me a favor.” She spats as tears run down her face. She gathers her supplies and heads for the front door.

“We’re not done here.” Hans says grabbing her arm.

“No! I’m done!” She snaps back yanking herself free. She slams her basket of cleaning supplies on the floor and the bottles rattle loudly. “I’m so sick of you people!” She shouts as she starts crying. “Every day I work and I work and I work and I have nothing to show for it, while you…you…you just flaunt all your money like it’s no big deal! It’s not fair!” She screams. “I work so hard and I have nothing! You do nothing and you have everything and I’m tired of it! I can’t do this anymore.” She says and crumbles to the ground, slumping against the wall as she sobs into her hands. Hans stares at her in shock as he processes her words. He swallows and takes a deep breath before he kneels. She doesn’t protest as he carefully pulls her into his arms and holds her as she sobs. He feels for the poor girl. He truly does. He remembers being like her, working his ass off before the wars and envying all the others. War made him prosper and he wasn’t exactly proud of that fact either.

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry Elisa.” He whispers to her every now and then as he gently kisses the top of her head. She cries for a long time and it breaks his heart as he feels her tears wet his shirt. He picks her up and carries her to the sofa where she can be comfortable as he holds her. It’s a long time before she finally manages to calm down and look at him.

“I’m so sorry sir…please…please forgive me…” She begs fearfully.

“Shhhhh…there’s nothing to forgive. I understand your frustration. I truly do.” He rasps, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ears. “I was like you once. Just trying to make ends meet…I’ve forgotten that in…privilege.” He admits. She looks at him numbly, her eyes still very wet with tears. “You need a break…you need rest.” He says. “Please…let me help you.” He nearly begs.

“Ok…ok Herr-Hans…” She whispers, correcting herself. He smiles at her, trying to cheer her up. She gives him a weak smile.

“I’m going to make you some breakfast…and then you’ll stay the night, my guest bedroom is very comfortable.” He says. She wants to protest but breakfast and a nice bed sounds like a heaven.

“Thank you Hans…again…I’m sorry about what I said. I wasn’t mad at you.” She says lowering her head.

“I know. It’s alright.” He says sincerely. He can’t help but gently kiss her temple in comfort. “Everything will work out…I promise

[kurokoros]

Baby Daddy || Chapter 1 (SPxOC)

Title: Baby Daddy

Rated: T

Words: 1851

Pairing: Sweet Pea x OC

Summary: ““Surprise?” Natalia manages to choke out, shrugging and sending him a wobbly smile. 

Sweet Pea only blinks at her, pupils blown wide as the realization seems to settle in. His arms fall slack at his sides, his jaw dropping open slightly like the new information has actually broken him. And Natalia is about to ask if he’s okay, but then the next coherent thing out of his mouth is, “Shit, did we do something?” 

Natalia rips the nearest test off the counter and throws it at Sweet Pea, the plastic stick whacking him in the center of his forehead before falling uselessly to the floor.”

AN: For @sweetfogarty who listened to me ramble about this for like three days. Ask to be included in the tag list and be sure to reblog if you like it!

The two pink little lines are practically mocking her, Natalia hoping that if she stares at them long and hard enough they might change or disappear entirely. But they don’t. None of them do. All three sets of tests sitting on her bathroom counter are exactly the same. Cheap white plastic with a little screen telling her the exact same thing.

Pregnant.

She’s fucking pregnant.

How the hell did that happen? Natalia groans, dropping her head into her hands before fisting them in her hair, tugging at the wavy brunette strands until it almost hurts. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, panic welling in her throat and making it hard to breathe.

Logically, she knows exactly how this happened, but that doesn’t make the situation any better. It really doesn’t make the situation better, considering she knows exactly who the father is and wants him nowhere near her. But that little mistake is resulting in her camped out in her bathroom, an absolute mess with her frizzy hair and baggy sweatshirt that she must have stolen from one of the boys at some point.

This can’t be happening to her right now. Not when she’s eighteen and barely out of high school, still stuck in Riverdale where everyone knows everyone else’s business and living with her best friend in an old trailer, surrounded by Serpents and Ghoulies and fucking Jingle Jangle. And what kind of a name is Jingle Jangle anyway, she’s never understood why they call it that and it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard like—

Natalia takes a slow breath through her nose, squeezing her eyes shut tightly as she tries to think of calming things. Like beaches and cute animals and anything that isn’t the fucking pregnancy tests sitting to her right like they aren’t the thing making her want to rip her hair out.

Needless to say, the calming thing doesn’t work and Natalia bursts into tears.

She doesn’t know how long she sits in there crying about the fact that she’s fucking pregnant and followed closely by staring numbly at the blank wall across from her, but apparently it’s long enough for Toni, who’s out of town with her girlfriend Cheryl, to get worried enough about Natalia ignoring her phone blowing up on the counter to call for reinforcements.

It’s apparent who Toni called even before Natalia sees him. The front door of the trailer she shares with Toni crashes open and a set of heavy footsteps pound against the floor. “Natalia?” Sweet Pea calls out, his familiar voice filling up every inch of space in the trailer, seeking her out. Her giant of a best friend wanders farther into the trailer, his footsteps telling her exactly where he is as he heads first to her room and then the bathroom upon finding it empty, knowing there aren’t many places for her to hide in the small home.

He knocks on the door and the sound makes her jump slightly, the sound jarring after the silence she’s been in for what feels like hours. “Natalia?” he repeats, voice low and throaty and edged with a lick of concern that not many people get to hear. “Sweetness, you okay in there?” he continues when she doesn’t respond, not trusting her voice to not betray her. “Toni called me, said she was worried about you.” Natalia bites her bottom lip, trying to swallow back the emotion welling in her throat. Fucking hormones. “Tali?” Sweet Pea tries again. “Hey, talk to me, Doll. Are you hurt? Is there someone I need to beat the shit out of? Because if there is, you’ve gotta tell me.”

It’s enough to startle a surprised, watery laugh from her, which chokes off into a sob, but it’s apparently enough for Sweet Pea. His sigh is audible, even with the door shut between them, and Sweet Pea shifts outside the door, restless now that he knows she’s in there but he can’t see her.

“Talia, you gotta open the door, okay?” She only sits there, frozen in place sitting crisscross on the toilet seat with the pregnancy tests lined up neatly on the table beside her, perfectly incriminating. It’s like she can’t move, rooted in place as her entire chest goes tight and cold, a chilly hand wrapping around her heart and squeezing it. Her silence is met with an edge of desperation this time. “Sweetheart, either you open the door or I’m coming in.” Sweet Pea has never been known for his patience on the Southside, better known for his short fuse and intimidating as all hell personality, and his patience with Natalia is clearly wearing thin, especially with her continuing to blatantly ignore him.

“Fuck, Tali,” he groans from the other side of the door. “You better not be naked,” Sweet Pea warns her a second before the doorknob starts to turn.

Natalia lunges to her feet, trying mootly to look like she hasn’t just been bawling her eyes out as Sweet Pea opens the door with the finesse of a caveman.

The bathroom door is shoved open roughly, banging against the wall so hard that she’s afraid he might have dented the plaster. Shit, Toni will actually kill her if Sweet Pea causes any more damages to the beloved old trailer. Especially after that time he and Fangs set the couch on fire when they high off their asses on the pot brownies Joaquin scammed them into trying.

That hadn’t been a fun night for any of them, with Toni and Natalia being awoken at three in the morning to their dumbass friends lighting shit on fire, all while Jughead watched with an entirely glazed expression on his face, too out of it to stop the other boys. Toni nearly killed them that night, and it was only because she and Natalia wouldn’t be able to hide the bodies alone that a murder wasn’t committed that night.

Sweet Pea’s intense gaze locks with Natalia’s immediately after he throws open the door, heedless of the fact that she could, in fact, be naked at the moment. His dark eyes latch onto hers, pinning her in place for a long second before they scan the rest of her, checking to make sure she’s okay physically before anything else. Living on the Southside of Riverdale, they’ve both had to clean each other up a few times, Sweet Pea less than her, but this isn’t something he can just beat up to make the problem go away.

His eyes jump back to hers after looking her over, narrowing when they latch back onto her pale green eyes, red-rimmed from crying and her entire face a bit puffy. Sweet Pea’s teeth clench together so tightly that a muscle in his jaw jumps at the pressure. He’s never been great with feelings and emotional talks, and they both know it, but Natalia also knows that if she’s upset about something he’ll try to help, even if he has to flounder through it.

Natalia tries to send him a smile, but it falls flat on her face, feeling more like a grimace than anything else, and it only makes Sweet Pea’s frown deepen. She’s entirely too aware of the three pregnancy tests sitting on the counter just two feet away from her very concerned, very volatile best friend. At best, Sweet Pea will be too concerned with her to even notice them, and at worst she might have to distract him a little, because she’s definitely not stable enough emotionally to have that conversation right now.

“Hey, Doll,” he starts slowly, giving her another once-over as he takes a step closer to her, minimizing the distance between him and her and the pregnancy tests in between. “You okay?”

“I—” she cuts off just as quickly as she starts, stomach twisting into sick knots as she tries to figure out how to get herself out of this one. She can’t very well say she’s fine. Sweet Pea has a low tolerance for bullshit, and her being fine is the biggest bullshit at the moment. More than that, she’s never liked lying to Sweet Pea. It’s always left a bad taste in her mouth, even when it was her lying about not planning a surprise party for his eighteenth birthday.

No matter what she does, he’s going to see right through her, and somehow that makes her feel even worse.

“It’s nothing, Sweets,” she promises, sending him another smile when the concern in his eyes only grows, more palpable. Natalia curls her arms around herself, cradling her stomach and the little bump hidden away beneath her sweatshirt. “Just a bad day.” Among other things. It’s not exactly a lie, but it might as well be with the way Sweet Pea stares at her in obvious disbelief.

She’s always hated how easily he can read her, like he can tap right into her head and just know things. It’s been like that since they were kids, living right next door to one another and growing up knowing each other inside and out. At this point he’s seen her at her best and worst, but she thinks this might be on a whole different level.

Sweet Pea opens his mouth, probably to call her out on her bullshit, and steps closer to her, the tests just to the left of his elbow, and Natalia can’t help it when her panicked gaze jumps to them still sitting innocently there on the counter, as if they haven’t fucked up her day enough.

Natalia realizes that was a mistake even before her eyes snap back to Sweet Pea’s, but it’s already too late. His dark gaze follows hers, the concern in his dark eyes melting into something closer to confusion as he blinks down at the little pieces of plastic with their pink lines for a second before his eyes jump back up to meet hers.

He glances back down at the tests, picking one up before taking a step back. “What the fuck is—” he cuts off, looking back up at Natalia and then back at the test in his hand. “Is somebody pregnant?” It takes a second before his brain catches up with his mouth, but a moment later Sweet Pea’s eyes widen. His jaw drops slightly and his gaze rips away from the test and zeroes in on her stomach as if he can see the little bump hidden beneath her sweatshirt.

“Surprise?” Natalia manages to choke out, shrugging and sending him a wobbly smile.

Sweet Pea only blinks at her, pupils blown wide as the realization seems to settle in. His arms fall slack at his sides, his jaw dropping open slightly like the new information has actually broken him. And Natalia is about to ask if he’s okay, but then the next coherent thing out of his mouth is, “Shit, did we do something?”

Natalia rips the nearest test off the counter and throws it at Sweet Pea, the plastic stick whacking him in the center of his forehead before falling uselessly to the floor.

[connoisseuroffineart]

Ghost of You Chapter 1

Enjoy the first chapter my lovelies!

-----------------------------

The taxi slowly pulls into the driveway as I pick up my two large duffel bags and my mother hugs me one last time, wiping loose strands of hair out of my face.

“Have fun in Darwin and stay safe.” She says, her voice snobbish and raspy as I pull out of her embrace and nod at her, my heart pounding wildly in my chest as I turn away from the home I’ve known for the past four years and into the great unknown.

The admittance letter in the back pocket of my black jeans feels like it’s burning holes with the guilt I feel for leaving my mother, but I manage to turn away from her and walk numbly to the awaiting taxi. The driver kindly smiles at me and offers to take my bag but when I calmly turn him down, he just shrugs his shoulders and opens the boot of the car to which I carefully place my bags down. The driver slams it shut before walking back around to his side of the car.

I glance at my mother briefly and smile weakly before climbing into the passenger seat of the car and closing the door after me when my phone begins vibrating in the pocket of my black leather jacket.

I pull out the viciously vibrating phone and take it off silent as I answer the awaiting call with a vague, “Hello?”

“Hi there, my name is Candy. I’m the assistant to the dean of the Scintilla Music Academy, Hannah Ustamu, and I was just wondering if this is the phone number belonging to Shayla Holmes?” A chirpy voice says down the line.

The taxi pulls out of the driveway as I wave one last time at my mum before replying, “It is. What can I do for you Miss Higkin?” “I just need to know if you’ll be attending the opening ceremony this afternoon for all students? I’m currently doing the rounds and just ensuring everyone gets the message.” She squeaks in answer, as I huff out a sigh and turn to my driver with a playfully bored face.

“How long will this drive take sir?” I ask, my hand covering the mic on my phone. “Approximately two hours to Melbourne miss.” He replies, his eyes keenly watching his surroundings as we drive out of my quiet suburban street and on to the main road that will lead me out of this rowdy town.

I pull my hand away from my phone and ask, “When is the service?” “At 2pm this afternoon. The new comers' tour begins at 12 though and I believe you come under that category.” She replies immediately, her voice still bouncy and cheery.

I sigh loudly and reply, “I’ll be there hopefully. It takes a couple of hours to get there.”

She goes on about being prompt to these sorts of assemblies, so I just go along with her and agree to her terms as the drive rolls along and the chirpy assistant continues on talking to me about new student procedures and different rules for different situations. Eventually, she hangs up the call and I begin to watch the trees roll by.

--------------------------------------

I only have three minutes to spare as we approach the turn off that leads into the Academy’s grounds.

“She seemed like quite the talker that one.” The driver chuckles from the driver’s seat. I groan in agitation and mumble in agreement, “That’s Mum for you.”

I look ahead once more as the elaborately modern school gates open in front of us.

I can’t help but stare in awe as a few students mill about underneath great trees and sit down on crazily designed benches made of different materials.

The taxi pulls up in the drop off section in front of a seemingly double storied building that is made entirely of concrete with panels of windows that dress the walls in long zig-zag patterns, protruding from the exterior in rugged ways.

The driver pops the boot once more and places my bags on the ground beside the car as I open up my door and step out into the summer breeze that brushes its way through the loose bun on my head. I smile at the driver and pass him a fifty dollar note before picking up my bag and walking into the building where I find a small litter of students waiting nervously in the corner of entryway, listening to a lady dressed in a black long-sleeved dress that seemed so casual it was stylish. She had matched it with a tight up-do with cropped bangs, showing off the heart-shaped earrings that dangled from her earlobes, as well as a black cross body bag with golden chain and matching black boots with golden buttons on them.

The group looks my way as I begin walking towards them, keenly aware that the lady was in the middle of speaking when she abruptly stops and addresses me directly, “Miss Holmes. How nice of you to finally join us.”

I smile awkwardly and say, “My taxi just dropped me off. I apologize for intruding.”

She nods and turns to face me with a warm smile. “That’s absolutely fine. I had just started to give out dormitory numbers. It seems you were next on my list.”

I nod slightly as she reads out ‘18’ and hands me a key before giving me brief directions to the juniors dormitory building on the other side of the campus. I thank her for the kindness before leaving, a few students also beginning to follow suit as we make our way to our designated rooms.

We get lost a few times but other students that walk past gladly give us directions which help our walk through the enigmatically designed school all the more strenuous. But, we eventually reach our destination and clamber our way up the stairwell that runs down the side of the building.

I’m told I’m on the top floor which takes me a while to drag my now heavy bags up the nine flights of stairs, before I collapse on the landing at the top in a sweaty and tired mess.

I hear a chuckle echo from down the hall and find another girl standing there in a pastel pink jumper with matching cat ears and a pair of white jeans. It’s so brightly coloured, I swear it almost burnt my eyes.

“You must be Shayla.” She says brightly.

Great, another bright and bouncy person.

“Yes, I am.” I moan from my position on the floor. She chuckles at me and skips over to me where she leans over the top and looks down upon me with keen interest.

“Do you need help?” She asks, her heavily died galaxy hair drooping down in front of her eyes as I shake my head and stand up with a huff. I pick up my heavy bags once again and carry them to my room across the hall from little miss pastel where I find the door open wide and the room completely void of colour or decoration.

“My name’s Caroline but everyone calls me Carly by the way. I guess we’re going to be floor mates.” She says with a gleaming smile.

I throw my bags down on my double bed and walk over to the curtains by the window and pull them open to find a great view of the lake bordering the school grounds. I sigh heavily and turn to Carly with a small smile.

“Shayla, but I assume you already knew that.” I reply as I stick out my hand politely for a handshake. Carly’s grin widens as she pushes my hand aside and throws her arms around me and embraces me tightly.

I squeak briefly as Carly then releases me and squeals, “We’re going to be good friends. I can feel it in my knees.” “Your knees? Don’t you mean fingers?” I ask with a curious smile.

She shakes her head with a little giggle and says, “Think of it like Karen in Mean Girls, how she feels it in her boobs. On another note though, right now we gotta get to the administration building again. We have our newbies tour that starts in fifteen minutes.”

I shake my head and gesture for her to lead the way to which she grabs my wrist and drags me out of my room to which I slam the door shut after me, hearing the lock click in place before we dash back down the stairs.

“Are we going to have to keep taking the stairs for the rest of the year?” I ask tiredly as we walk out of the clean dormitory building and back on to the paved brick paths of the campus.

She shakes her head once more and explains that the elevator is out of order due to some student party last night. She described how some people decided to graffiti all the walls and fill it with shaving cream, toilet paper and soft drink bottles filled with urine. I cringed the whole way through the story but find myself laughing by the end due to her funny facial expressions to match the different scents that filled the whole elevator bay.

We reach the admin building in the nick of time and find the same lady from this morning waiting there patiently for everyone to arrive, her eyes now hidden behind thick black framed glasses as she reads over a whole heap of papers in front of her.

People begin to slowly flock in and eventually, our guide looks up from her documents and begins to lead us through the school grounds, describing its extremely modern history in extreme depth and explaining where our main classes will be for the duration of our stay.

“This year, you all applied to join this course and out of the three thousand people that applied, only you eighteen were chosen,” She explains with a wide grin, her hazel eyes shimmering brightly as she speaks. “You know what you all signed up for and you know that only two of you will end up graduating by the end of this year and moving on to your senior years where you will possibly sign on to a label.”

I can’t help but shiver at her words and look around nervously as I hear a few snickers and sly comments fly through the group.

However, she looks at each of us with a smirk that could start wars and says with a voice like silk, “But, on that sour note, let me introduce you to your new best friend. The auditorium.”

[sabbywrites]

strange intimacy

Fandom: Pokémon

Pairing: Reader/Original Male Character

Rating: Explicit

Content Warnings: Explicit Sexual Content, Coerced Sex, Sexual Manipulation, DubCon (not really? but I’m tagging just in case), Unprotected Sex, Non-Consensual Photography, Unhealthy Relationships, Choking

A/N: Uh, hi. So this started as a joke for an OC I have-- Matt, the Pokémart employee. He looks the exact same as the other Pokémart employees, but he’s a sociopath who commits tax fraud and arson in his spare time while also just being a general menace to society. This was originally written for my discord server, but I didn’t mind how it turned out so I’m posting it here-- it’s been a while since I’ve posted explicit content. Read after the cut, or on Ao3.

The sky rains down on you like a bucket of water upturned over your head; merciless, endless sheets of water that plaster every garment you own to your skin, flattening your hair and making your Pokédex crackle a little dangerously. You hunch over it as you all but barrel into the doors of the pokémon center, drenching the linoleum floor immediately with the amount of liquid dripping from your skirt. The Nurse Joy stationed there exclaims immediately upon your arrival.

“Oh my! Here, let me take your pokémon!”

You let her, numbly thankful for her help given the fact that it’s easily three in the morning at this point, though your vision is too water-blurred for a moment for you to make out the time on the center’s lone clock. There’s nobody in the lobby, at least, which tells you all you really need to know; any sane trainer has gone to bed at this point, or at least taken shelter from the vicious storm. Thunder rumbles overhead, muffled by the ceiling well enough.

There’s a strange electricity in the room that isn’t born from lightning. You have a vague clue as to what it is, though hold off on confirming your suspicions until you rub at your eyes to clear your vision. You can feel your mascara flake and clump under your skin, but the aching in your legs and spine take up all the care you could’ve used towards your appearance.

When you pull your hands down, you see him.

It’s not a surprise, nor does it cause your heart to clench or flip or butterflies to erupt in your stomach— but it does raise the hairs on your arms slightly, despite the heavy dousing of water that had plastered them down. The goosebumps on your calves are not born from the cold as you squint your eyes, sparing what you hope is an unimpressed look at the Pokémart employee currently looking at you with his chin propped in his hand, supported by the counter. He looks smug, but you’ve rarely seen him greet you without some sort of unearned superiority.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. You wring your hair out, not even sparing a glance to the clearly displeased Nurse Joy as she places your pokémon onto the platform. Satisfied that you look slightly less hopeless than you did a moment ago, you drag your aching body over to the counter.

“Nice tits,” is what you’re greeted with, his eyes zeroed in on the way your white shirt clings to you. If it had been anyone else, you might’ve been slightly disgusted at the comment.

“Working on a Saturday night, huh?” You say, keeping your tone as bored as possible. One of his eyebrows immediately twitches. “Looks like you have a booming social life.”

The smug expression drops. Of course. You can almost hear his teeth grit together.

“Some of us have actual jobs, instead of chasing preteen dreams. You finally manage to beat a trial yet?” He says. Ouch. That one stings a little, but you don’t let it show. He’s a shark, sniffing out pricks of insecurity like a drop of blood in the ocean.

“I’ll take thirty hyper potions.” You say instead. Your legs ache a little more than they did a moment ago, and you turn over your shoulder as Matt stoops down to grab a box of potions with an irritated gumble. “You have any empty rooms available?”

The nurse jumps a little at your question, then presses her lips together and shakes her head. “N-no, unfortunately, but the center on Route three—”

“I got a bed you can sleep in.” Matt cuts her off without a care in the world. He stands back up, tall as all fuck, slamming the box of potions down on the counter and ripping open one side so he can start to count them.

You tilt your head. “You do?”

“Yeah. Some of us pick professions that allow us to own houses.” He says, another jab at your failed trainer dream. You don’t even bother standing up for your decisions. “I live on route nine, ain’t a far walk.”

You look at him for a long moment. The blue of his eyes matches his apron perfectly.

“What’s the catch?”

“Well,” he says, scanning the potions and bagging them with a peculiar viciousness, “you’ll have to fuck me for it.”

You raise a brow. “That’s prostitution, and it’s illegal in Alola.”

“Does it look like I give a shit about what’s legal or not?”

“Not particularly,” you begin, “but you haven’t been this overt in a long time. Not since high school.”

“What can I say?” He laughs once, humorlessly, and it sounds more like a hiss through his still-gritted teeth than anything else, “I’ve had a shit week and I’m horny. At least suck my dick or sleep on the lobby floor. I couldn’t care less if you have a bed to sleep on or not.”

It’s hard to call bluffs, with him. You learned that the hard way when he almost threw you off the cliffs overlooking the Melemele sea for deleting the creepshots he’d taken of you off his phone. That’d been a while ago, though, back when he’d had acne and you hadn’t even caught your first pokemon yet. His face has cleared up pretty well, over the years, and if he weren’t so obviously zubatshit insane he’d probably have a flock of Nurse Joys at his beck and call. You’d thought about pity fucking him once or twice when you were both in school, mostly to get him to shut up about wanting to sniff your underwear, but you weren’t sure then if you could handle the damnation of your reputation. Now that you’re over twenty and can hardly even throw a pokéball without making yourself look like an ass, the prospect looks more appealing.

“Alright, yeah.” You say, and the gasp behind you tells you that the Nurse Joy has, in fact, been listening to your conversation.

“Wait!” She says, as Matt begins bagging another group of potions. He shoots her a filthy look, and her voice is quieter when she speaks again, “we might be able to squeeze you in with another trainer, if you don’t mind sh—”

“Fuck off.” Matt says, and you almost snort at how scandalized she looks. She must be new— you can’t really tell. They all look the same.

“But,” she seems to steel her nerves, “that young lady is right— it’s illegal, I’ll have to report you—”

“I’ll eat your goddamn trachea.” Matt snarls, slamming the second bag down on the counter. His shirt looks nice, around his arms. There’s a little bit of muscle there that wasn’t as defined a few weeks ago, when you’d last run into him on route two. You wonder if he’ll laugh at how soft your stomach is, then remember the picture of you that used to hang in his school locker. There’s no way. His bite is bad, but he’s all bark with you. The nurse goes silent, walking over hesitantly a few moments later to hand you your pokémon back.

And so it’s settled.

It’s really not a far walk to Matt’s place. Fifteen minutes, tops, on a nice day. Since it’s still pouring rain when Matt clocks himself out— three hours before his shift is supposed to over, the nurse meekly calls, but another threat to her internal organs shuts her up— it takes a little longer.

“I’m surprised,” you say, looking up at him as he walks under his umbrella. He hadn’t offered for you to come under it, but you feel like that’s less of a slight against you and more of a tactic to make sure your shirt still sticks to you, if the way his eyes linger on your tits is any indication, “that you still wanna fuck me. High school was a while ago.”

“I’m always gonna want to fuck you,” he says, without a trace of tenderness in his voice. The lit cigarette between his lips wobbles as he speaks, and he uses his free hand to pull it away as he exhales. The smoke curls up under the umbrella, then vanishes into the rain. “Might knock you down a few pegs, getting a couple loads in you.”

Your brows pinch together. “You’re not cumming inside me.”

“We’ll see.” He says flippantly, flicking his cigarette butt onto the ground. After a second, he turns away from you and spits into the grass. You grimace.

“Gross.”

“Shut up. You’re about to have a lot grosser done to you.” He says, jutting his chin out to gesture to a little cottage between the trees. The statement doesn’t make you uncomfortable, but it does remind you, rather suddenly, that for as long as you’ve known Matt you’ve never actually been privy to his sexual tendencies. There were all the times he tried to shove his hand down your skirt in high school, you suppose, or the time he “returned” your stolen gym uniform a little more stiff than usual, but he’d never really touched you.

Not for lack of trying. But since you’d hit your twenties, he’d gotten a little more bitter and aggressive with you. You have a feeling that it’s due to multiple things, but you’ve never been interested enough to explore the reasons. Matt will always be Matt, no matter what goes on around him. Even in the rain, he has the energy of a walking bonfire.

His cottage is nice. Not as nice as some of the other people you’ve bunked with— that weird-ass artist on route fifteen had a coffee table worth more than your life— but it’s clean. Perhaps too clean. It reeks of disinfectant, of chemicals, of—

“Nice,” you say, touching the corkboard in the entrance with a few pictures of you tacked to it. More creepshots.

“Shut up,” he says, voice muted slightly by the intensity of the rain on his roof. “Get naked or get out.”

You pause for a moment, still staring at the pictures. One was taken when you were on a date with that trial captain— Kiawe. He’s been cut out of the picture rather viciously, if the jagged edges are anything to go by. The image is barely over a year old.

Matt grabs the collar of your wet shirt and yanks you away from the entrance as he kicks the door shut with his foot, paying not a single concern towards your indignant yelp.

“I’m fucking done playing with you.” He says, and the way his voice hisses out makes you think he’d noticed your focus on that specific image. You scramble to get away from him the moment he releases your shirt, noting with a little bit of dryness that the bed he’d offered to you was his. It’s big, comfortable looking, with dark blue sheets. You’d been an idiot to think he’d have a guest room for you.

You seem to be motionless a little too long for his liking. “What the fuck did I just say?”

“Yeah, yeah.” You snap, lifting your shirt over your head, dripping water onto the floor like you had at the Pokécenter. You make sure to toss the shirt onto the small area rug he has spread out, receiving a displeased grunt in response. Before you can turn to ask him if he’d rather you keep them on, he’s behind you, hands pressing into your sides. They’re startlingly warm, accompanied by the scent of cigarette smoke as his mouth dips down to nip at the top of your ear.

“Good girl,” he says, voice a little less aggressive, and you shoot him a sour look that he laughs at. Again, humorless. You stare at him blankly, just for a fraction of a moment, wondering when the full-bellied, manic laugh you’d kind of sort of liked in high school had disappeared. You’re snapped back to reality when one of his hands comes up and squeezes at your damp bra.

“Patience is a virtue.” You snort. He tuts.

“I’m not a virtuous person. You of all people should know.” He quips back, abandoning your breast momentarily to unclip your bra in the back. You let him, staring blankly at his wall and wondering why you’re not resisting more. This feels less like an admission of defeat at his hands and more like a pot boiling over, and for a second your breathing hitches in your throat when you realize you really don’t mind being touched by him.

It’s been a while, you remind yourself, thinking of that weird artist again and how he’d immediately rejected your advances. It’s been a while, you press, trying in vain to bury the memory of the relief you’d felt when Kiawe had dumped you. It’s been a while, you think desperately as Matt presses a kiss to the crook of your neck and although it’s not tender, it’s careful. Measured. He knows you’re having an internal crisis.

He knows you. Well.

“I hate you,” you seethe suddenly, though you remain rooted in the spot. Your bra falls to the ground.

“Yeah?” Matt says, and both of his hands go under your arms so that they can grope at your breasts, a little wet from the rain but warming up under his touch. You shudder as his chest presses against you, the canvas of his stupid fucking apron rough on your spine. The plastic of his name tag is cold. His hands feel good.

“I can’t get laid because of you,” you seethe, surprised at the way frustration makes your voice feel thick in your throat. A chuckle rumbles against your skin.

“Oh, I know.” He says. “You’ve been too stubborn. It’s your fault.”

You continue to scowl as he pulls away for a second, the rustle of fabric telling you that his apron has been discarded somewhere. His shirt comes next, and when he steps closer to you again you feel his bare skin against yours. You’re freezing.

“What, you’re mad?” He snickers into your ear, and you’d be furious if you weren’t so disgustingly relieved to hear an echo of his old laugh in his tone. Now that he’s got the upper hand, Matt is a little harder to anger. “Kiawe agreed to dump you pretty fuckin’ fast, when I asked. Not a guy worth having around, don’t ya think?”

You know he’s omitting the part where he undoubtedly threatened the captain’s life.

“Come on. Get it over with.” You say, nudging him a little with your elbow. He steps back again and this time you turn, more than ready to tell him to piss or get off the pot, but the moment you do he pushes you forward so that your legs hit the edge of his bed.

“You’re not really in a place to be talking that way to me.” He says, leering down at your tits as if he hadn’t peeked in on you enough in the locker room to see them dozens of times before. He raises a hand to pinch your nipple, lightly, and pull at it a little. You fight down a reaction as best you can.

“You had to force me to fuck you. I wouldn’t sound so smug,” you say, but your voice isn’t as harsh as it should be and his mouth curls into that absolutely treacherous grin.

“Oh, right.” He says, and it dawns on you a little too late that you’ve always underestimated his observation skills for whatever reason, “if you didn’t want to be here, you wouldn’t be. You’re not nice enough to pity fuck a guy either, no matter how nicely he asks.”

He nips at your ear again. You think about senior prom. Matt had begged you for thirty minutes to leave with him. You thought about his eager expression while you fucked your date later that night.

With your silence as his answer, Matt brings his lips from your ear to your mouth, slotting them over yours. He’s tall, stupidly tall, you hate how tall he is—

It isn’t the first time you’ve kissed him— he cornered you way too many times in high school for you to get away from his intimacy-hungry lips— but it’s the first time in a while. It feels nice. His tongue tastes like tobacco and he smells a little bit like gasoline when you’re this close but he has a lot a freckles on his face that you like. There aren’t any visible acne scars. He’s really not bad to look at in the slightest, but he keeps his eyes open when he kisses you as if trying to remind you how much of a sociopath he is.

Your skirt comes off pretty easily. He yanks your underwear down for good measure, fingers immediately ghosting over your clit as you step out of them, before he has both hands on your shoulders and shoves you down to your knees. You scowl up at him.

“Do it, or I’m tossing you out in the rain.” He says, “and keeping the clothes.”

You hold out only for a second before you’re fumbling with his belt, pulling it from the loops and popping the top button of his pants. There’s an impressive tent that you have to be careful of as you drag the zipper down, and you know without even looking at it that he’s also been blessed with a massive cock. It’s almost unfair, you think as you yank his pants down just enough to also pull his boxers away, and then his dick is there, jutting out from his body and you know you definitely won’t be able to fit it all in your mouth. He grins down at you, and you don’t bother waiting for whatever remark he’s thinking of, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the underside of his shaft and delighting a little in the way he sucks in a breath.

You spit into your dominant hand and curl it around the base of his cock, smoothing the lubrication into his skin as you open your mouth and take the tip in. He’s meticulous in the shower, it seems. The taste of him isn’t bad, and you almost groan when you flick your tongue against his slit and find a bead of precum gathered there.

“Fuck.” He mutters, one of his hands clawing into your hair, blunt nails scraping your scalp. He pulls, gently, and holds your head firmly in place as he begins to rock his hips. You don’t bother crying out in surprise, not when his cock nearly jams itself against your uvula. The way you choke around it seems to thrill him, his pupils constricting suddenly as he peers down at you. The material of his pants whispers against your chin as he begins to fuck your face.

“Look at you,” he sneers, seeming more than willing to take advantage of the fact that you’re unable to talk, “you’re not even struggling. You wanted this.”

You attempt to glare up at him. He laughs, kinda like that manic laugh that you like, the one that always got you going a little bit in school, and you can’t keep yourself from using your unoccupied hand to touch at your cunt.

“Shit,” he curses, and his pace picks up without any warning. This time, you can’t help but make a noise of shock as his cock jams itself against the back of your throat. Your eyes sting with tears as your fingers rub clumsy circles against your clit, and his grin drops immediately into something more focused, more serious. Your cunt clenches around nothing when he grabs your head with both hands, waiting for the hand around the base of his shaft to drop away before he slowly eases himself into your mouth again. This time, he goes much deeper, almost down your throat, and you gag, tears spilling from the corner of your eyes and saliva dribbling down your chin. He curses again, a little too low for you to make out over the rain, and your lips burn ever so slightly with the burden of wrapping around his shaft as he face-fucks you.

You don’t even bother to try and steady yourself; instead, you breathe raggedly out of your nose as he continues forcing himself into your throat, his hoarse groans almost nice enough for you to forget your shortage of air for a few moments. You slip a finger inside of yourself and you know he sees you do it, because his breathing becomes quick and suddenly his hands are trembling a little—

He pulls himself out of your mouth suddenly and you cough, saliva mixed with his precum dribbling out of your mouth. Your eyebrows knit together. “Wh—”

He stoops down for a second to grab you under both arms, lifting you and shoving you almost carelessly onto the bed. You cough again, watching with wide eyes as he steps out of his pants and boxers completely, cock shining with your saliva as he crawls on top of you.

“If you think,” he pants as he slides his lubricated cock against your clit just to watch you shudder, “that I’m gonna come down your throat like some idiot and not fuck your pussy, then you’re even dumber than I thought.”

Your retort is lost as he brings his hips back slightly and lines himself up with your cunt. Your reminder of “condom!” is cut off rather abruptly once he begins to sink himself into you, yanking you closer to his body while he splits you open on his cock.

He’s the biggest you’ve ever been with. It’s maddening, almost insanity-inducing, that you’re delighting in the burn of him inside of you. He’s curved a little, only slightly, and the head of his cock drags against your walls like he’s really trying to stab you. You can’t do anything but groan, back arching to press your chest into his, and you think for a moment that he’s going to kiss you again until one of his hands curls around your throat and shoves you back down against the bed.

He doesn’t say anything as he presses down. His hand is big, his fingers long, and your startled yelp is overtaken by a clap of thunder outside. His hips work against yours tirelessly, his eyes glazed over and manic with a sloppy grin to match—

Black spots flicker around the edges of your vision like a swarm of beedrill, and for a second all you can see is the white of his teeth as he grins down at you— then he removes his hand, just enough so that you can take in a ragged breath.

He’s a lot stronger than you thought he’d be, even with the slight muscle you’d spotted earlier. If it weren’t for the measured, calculating glint in his eyes, you’d almost be afraid of him accidentally choking you to death.

“Oh, you like that, don’t you?” He sneers as you try and drag in more oxygen. You nod dumbly as his hand squeezes your throat again, whining as his cock continues to jackknife in and out of you. “You’re so fucking tight— I bet you’ll look so good with my cum dripping out of you—”

You keen, back arching again even as his hand keeps you pinned, and once he stablizies himself enough his free hand comes upwards, pressing down on your clit none too gently as he rubs figure eights into it. Your legs wrap around his waist instinctively as he bears down on you, choking you over and over until he sees the sign of danger in your eyes, only allowing you just a moment to breathe between presses. It’s rare that he takes his gaze from your dumbstruck face, but when he does it’s to leer at your bouncing tits.

“God, I fucking love you.” He snarls, cock slamming you as his fingers become sloppy with their movements, rubbing at you just for the sake of doing it, “I’m gonna fill you up. I’m gonna make you mine.”

“Please,” you rasp, the second his hand leaves your throat to fist the sheets next to your head, “I’m so close, please—”

“Beg for it,” he grits out, obviously not far off from your current state. “Beg me to cum inside you.”

You inhale sharply, not even giving it a second thought. “Please! Please, Matt, cum inside me!”

He laughs, manic, full-bellied, the laugh that used to haunt the edges of your thoughts when you got yourself off in high school, “you have to do better than that!”

“Please!” You nearly shriek as he rubs at your clit furiously, the sound of his hips clapping against yours almost deafening, “Please, cum inside me! Make me yours! Don’t stop, don’t ever stop, I want you to fill me up—!”

Your pleas crumble into incoherency as you orgasm, clenching down on his cock like you’re trying to crush it, and he lets out his loudest groan of the night as you soak him with your release. The glide of him inside you gets smoother, marginally, the slick sound of his cock penetrating you again and again the only thing you can hear over the blood rushing in your ears. He proclaims his love for you again, and again, and again, until his voice pitches upwards and you mewl in delight, feeling him finish inside of you with a satisfied groan rumbling in his chest.

The cottage descends into silence. Only the pattering of rain, slightly lessened than before, accompanies Matt’s ragged breathing.

“Fucking hell.” He groans after a minute, slowly pulling out of you. You wince at the feeling of his cum dripping out from between your thighs, but before you can untangle them from his waist, he uses one hand to keep them open.

“Don’t.” He says simply, and the even, plain tone of his voice shocks you enough into submission. He crawls towards his nightstand, flicking on the lamp and opening the second drawer to retrieve something.

A disposable camera.

“Wait a second—” You start, beginning to wriggle away from him despite the shakiness of your limbs, “you can’t—”

“Shut up.” He says again in that weirdly conversational tone. You watch, a little numb, as he spreads your legs again, bringing the camera to his eye as he uses his thumb and forefinger to spread your cunt wide open. His cum slides out a little faster as you hear the camera click.

“Perfect,” he mutters. You gape at him.

“You’re so fucked in the head.” You whisper. He shrugs, returning the camera to its drawer and flicking the light back off.

“Whatever. Shut up.” He says, as if he can’t choose between the two. He flops back onto the bed and yanks you close, pinning you to his chest and pressing a kiss to the top of your head. The strange intimacy makes you wriggle.

“Gross,” you snap, detesting the feeling of his sweat under your palms. He gives you a firm smack on the back.

“Stop being difficult. We’ll shower tomorrow.” He says in a tone that you know doesn’t invite banter. If he chokes you again, he might be a little more vicious without the sexual edge.

“I’m not gonna be here when you wake up.” You say, doing your best to at least turn away from him. He allows it, but you aren’t able to put much more distance between you two— especially when you know your previous statement is a lie.

[redinkofshame]

Da’vhenan

I’m too sleepy to proofread this but here’s another installment of the Isla!au.

@dadrunkwriting​

Des stepped in to the breakroom. It felt weird, coming into work around lunchtime, the cafeteria already filled with students and her coworkers half done with their day. She felt a dozen and one eyes on her as she walked past the aged, second-hand furniture to the seat by the window where Solas always sat.

"You're tardy, Ms. Lavellan," he teased. "Do you have a note from your parents?"

"I could text Gram-Gram if you'd like."

He set aside his sandwich. He always did that sort of thing, as if to show people they had his full attention. She usually didn't even look up from her phone unless it was serious. Which this was, but he didn't know that. "Did you have another appointment already?"

"Yeah. I can tell you about it later if you want to come by after school."

His eyebrows knit together at her failed attempt to sound casual. "What's wrong."

"The baby is doing okay," she assured him, resting a hand on hero abdomen. "But I need to go over some stuff with you, okay?"

"I'm in the PTA meeting this afternoon..."

"Oh, right--"

"But I can call out. Should I?"

"No, no, it's fine."

"Are you certain?" He moved as if to get up. "I'll go tell Leliana..."

"Sit. It can wait until after dinner, Solas. Besides, Vivienne will blame me--I'm already on thin ice with her for not going when I'm supposed to. I'd never hear the end of it."

~~~~~

Solas arrived at her place only minutes after the PTA meeting usually ended. She thought it would feel weird, opening the door for him after so long-- like an ex-boyfriend, maybe-- but it felt oddly un-awkward. She didn't make an excuse or apologize for the state of her home, either; he know why it was a mess.

All her life she'd heard pregnant women complain about being tired, but she'd never really understood. It was different than 'tired' from a lack of sleep, or 'exhaustion' from physical exertion, or 'lethargy' that kept one from doing basic tasks. It was bone-deep and presumably unaffected by the caffeine she wasn't allowed to have anyway.

Now that she was in her second trimester it wasn't quite as bad, but she still couldn't bring herself to do even half the bare minimum chores. She ate only because the baby needed her to. Too bad the baby didn't care if she got her laundry done. She moved some of it aside to clear a spot on the couch to sit. It was already covered in cat hair.

"What did your OBGYN tell you?" he asked, getting right to the point. He managed to find a spot as well, gingerly setting her knitting needles and baby pink yarn aside. "We were just there last week."

"My appointment wasn't with my OB. It was with a cardiologist."

"Alright, what did your cardiologist say? Is the pregnancy too taxing?"

"It wasn't my cardiologist." She wasn't trying to be obstinate with him, for once. She just wanted to keep putting off saying the words. "It was Isla's."

He stilled. "Isla... has a pediatric cardiologist?"

She nodded, tears instantly brimming her eyes despite how hard she tried to remain calm. "They say she'll should probably be fine, but she has a hole in her heart!" she choked out. She wasn't sure he'd even heard what she said before his arms were around her, rocking her, shushing her. She needed to get it all out, though. "She'll probably grow out of it and live a normal life but only time will tell if it will get more serious than that. She might need surgery as an baby. Heart surgery, for the hole in Isla's heart..."

He pulled back without letting her go. "They said 'should probably be fine'?"

Des hesitated, trying to recall all they'd said while she had sat numbly in the hospital room, but that was more or less how they'd worded it. She nodded. "Yeah. Here." She reached over to the coffee table and flipped open the folder that had been waiting on the coffee table for him. The heading read 'VSD -- Ventricular septal defect'. "There's a bunch of info in here about it, and the notes I took. I guess it's fairly common. Once a week they'll bring me in for an NST and bimonthly ultrasounds, which is more common than usual, so they can keep an eye on it. And she'll need to be seen by the cardiologist the day she's born; he'll come to the hospital. And then we just go from there depending on how things look I guess."

"And you? How are you feeling?"

She hugged herself, huffing a sigh. "I'm fine. Sad. Scared."

He moved towards her, but she plopped the folder in his lap instead; she knew he would want to go through it, and didn't want him to feel forced to comfort her instead.

He kept a hand on her knee as he read, though, as if to keep her from moving. She allowed it only because she was feeling too lazy to get up, anyway. She settled for calling Perl over to her so she could pet her.

He was nodding when he closed the folder. "Well... It sounds like you're doing everything you can for now. There's only one copy of these, correct?"

Of course he'd want to take her paperwork home with him. "Uh, yeah, but I can bring it to work and make another..."

"No, it's okay. I can do my own research." He stood. "With any luck the hole will close before she's born."

"And without any she'll need surgery as soon as she's born..."

He caught her elbow to keep her from moving away. "It will not come to that," he said with his usual unwarranted confidence. "And... Thank you, for letting me know."

"Of course. I'm not going to keep something like that from her father."

"I know this is hard on you. You can come to me with anything you need, you know, Des. Not just with the baby."

"Sure." She starred at her feet as she led him to the front door.

She opened the door, then ended up leaning against it while he hesitated. Okay, now it was awkward.  What kind of asshole dragged their feet at a time like this?

He looked like he was thinking, and she waited for him to say something... and waited...

And gave up. He clearly needed more time. "Actually, since you mentioned it... I don't have enough energy to do laundry and make myself dinner tonight, and what kind of mother goes commando while pregnant? Do you... want to order us something? Delivery? I can pay for it."

He smiled. "It's on me."

He didn't hesitate making his way back into her living room, leaving her leaning at the door still.

"Can you also clean the catbox? Lace will only do it once a week..."

He laughed, a small snort escaping, and agreed.

[prongsno]

You’re my dream (please come true)

based on @meraudurs text post: lily running into james in diagon alley during the summer after sixth year and seeing him lift up a toddler and making funny faces at them and lily just being like ✓💯fcuk ✓💯 me ✓💯 up ✓💯✓💯✓💯

read on ao3 | 1685 words

The door to Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour bangs open as two kids, laughing giddily with a broomstick each in their hands, escape the scorching sun. The intense summer heat seems to have brought the entire wizarding community to Diagon Alley; there are witches, wizards, giants and goblins everywhere - all eager to taste the sun’s rays on their skin.

“Have you tried the sherbet lemon one?” Lily asks as she frowns at the vibrant yellow ice cream in front of her.

Mary shakes her head. “Dorcas got that one, remember? Her tongue turned yellow for six hours,” she laughs, and exchanges her ten sickles for a double scoop of honey-dew sorbet cone. She turns back to Lily, who’s still staring intensely at the counter.

“Just do Ip dip do,” Mary shrugs, dodging out of the way as two kids run towards the counter. They press their noses up against the glass, joining Lily as they gawk all wide-eyed at the different flavours in front of them.

“That’s scandalous, what if I get the flavour I don’t want?”

“Then I’ll eat it for you, and you can buy another?” Mary offers, grinning as Lily rolls her eyes.

“I’m stuck between pumpkin pasty or chocolate and raspberry,” Lily says at long last, pulling her purse out of her bag and jiggling it about in her hands.

Mary picks up one of her sickles and places it in her palm. “Heads or Tails?”

Lily narrows her eyes. “Heads.”

Mary flips the coin and it flies up in the air and falls before she can catch it.

“I got it!” she says as she bends down to grab at it. “It’s tails - pumpkin pasty.”

There’s silence between them, and one of the noisy kids orders a bubblegum cone with bertie botts beans scattered on top.

“I’m getting the chocolate and raspberry,” she decides and joins the small queue behind the little kid.

Mary moves out of the way, licking her cone. “You sure? Last chance.”

“One hundred percent,” she nods, giving the cashier her sickles and recites her order. “Oo, and some chopped nuts on top - please,” she says with a glance towards the topping section - where sprinkles and beans, nuts and fruit are only a few of the many options available.

It’s only a two minute wait before Lily holds the ice-cream in her hand, a decadent chocolate ganache on top of a juicy raspberry red that looks too delightful to even try.

Mary opens her mouth to speak, eyeing the ice-cream in awestruck wonder. “Can-”

“No,” Lily laughs as they leave the ice cream parlour, the bell jingling as the door comes to a close.

The hot, sticky humidity is a shock after being in the deeply air conditioned shop for some time, so their frozen snacks are a relief and refreshing to have in the heat.

Mary pulls a face. “Not even one, small, tiny lick?”

Lily shakes her head and makes a scene of slobbering over the top of the ice-cream, licking every inch of it so there isn’t one bit that’s been covered by her saliva.

“That’s so disgusting,” Mary grins, elbowing Lily in the side as they turn down the street.

It’s packed, children run up and down, parents and students converse and laugh as they drink frozen butter beers and pumpkin juice.

“Do you want to hold her? I think she likes you,” Lily manages to hear amidst the chaotic noise, and stretches her head to see what’s taking place.

Mary follows in her direction and does a double take.

“Is that,” Mary laughs, shocked. “Is that James Potter, with a baby?”

All Lily can do is sort of nod her head in response, since she’s far too dazed to actually speak.

Because, it is, indeed, James Potter with a baby.

He’s sitting on one of the outdoor chairs at the near cafe, bouncing said baby up and down on his knees. The baby giggles and gurgles at him, finding his silly faces and soft raspberries such a fantastic show that she claps her hands and pats his cheeks.

Lily’s frozen on the spot.

The mum and her friend are laughing, finding James and the baby girl amusing and adorable.

Lily gulps and, with shaky hands, pushes her hair out of her eyes and tucks it nervously behind her ear. She decides to ignore Mary’s evil-like grin, but elbows her in the side anyways when her friend starts to snigger.

“Don’t you even-” she starts, not being able to stop the intense blush that flies over her cheeks and up her ears.

“I didn’t say anything!” Mary shrugs, eating her ice cream as casually as she can.

“No,” Lily snorts. “But I know what you’re thinking and I don’t-”

“You cannot deny that that,” Mary says, pointing to James who’s now playing peek-a-boo, “isn’t adorable.”

Lily bites her lip. “Fine,” she scowls. “It’s cute - happy?”

James decides to look up at that moment, and they have no time to run. He catches them staring at him like he has seven heads, and looks slightly taken aback by his audience.

“Alright?” He asks them, not at all phased by the baby who currently grabs at his glasses and repeatedly takes them off and puts them back on his nose. Each time the baby cackles and James pulls a different silly face.

“We just got ice-cream,” Mary says, waving her melting cone at him as they both stagger towards him, ashamed to be caught.

“Enjoying it, Evans?”

She doesn’t even notice the question is aimed at her until Mary kicks her foot.

She’s too lost in his eyes, enthralled by how good he is with kids, and how different and… amazing he’s being. Mary kicks her again and that’s when she notices James is watching her, and looks incredibly amused.

“Sorry - what?” she asks, breathless.

He laughs and motions to his chin. “You’ve got a bit of - um.”

Mesmerised, she numbly lifts her hand and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. Chocolate ganache, all over her cheeks, chin and nose.

Mary’s trying her hardest not to laugh, and has to smother her mouth with her hand to stop herself. The mother of the baby smiles at Lily sweetly, pointing to the last bit of ganache that she didn’t manage to wipe off.

“Is Black here?” Mary asks James after a few moments of silence.

“He said he was going into Gambol and Japes and then Wiseacres,” he nods, passing the baby back to the mother.

Lily doesn’t have time to beg Mary to stay - she’s already saying goodbye and whizzing off to find Sirius Black, leaving her alone with none other than Freaking James Potter.

He says goodbye to the baby with an air kiss, thanks the mum and then begins to walk towards her. He looks a little apprehensive, but the moment passes in a flurry of seconds. They didn’t exactly part on the most friendliest terms during the last academic year.

“Having a good summer so far?” he asks politely, kicking at a small stone by his feet.

“It’s not bad,” she says, forcing her gaze to her ice-cream. It’s melting quickly in the heat, so she says a quick prayer that there won’t be any more chocolate ganache incidents and takes a few bites of it. “You?”

He nods. “It’s good, but I miss Hogwarts.”

“You mean the quidditch,” she smiles.

“Are you kidding,” he grins, “I’m practically counting down the days until McGonagall can give us homework again.”

“Twenty?”

“Eighteen actually,” he says with gleaming eyes and checks the watch on his wrist, “and four hours.”

“Someone’s eager.”

“Someone’s ready to study and work hard, Evans.”

They pass by Fortescue’s ice cream parlour again, heading in the direction that Sirius and Mary must have gone in. A wizard huffs as he hurries past them, knocking into her just as she’s eating more of the ice cream.

It goes up her nose and she can feel it dribbling down her chin as she stumbles. James is immediately taking hold of her arm to steady her, and angrily calls out ‘watch it!’, but the wizard is already half way down the street and knocking into other people and doesn’t hear at all.

“It’s gone everywhere, hasn’t it?” she groans, throwing the soggy cone into the nearest bin.

She can feel it in her hair and most likely all over her face, judging by the way James chuckles and takes out a tissue from his pocket and hands it to her sheepishly.

She murmurs out a thanks and wipes her hands first, hoping to rub away the stickiness of her fingers. He at least has the courtesy to look away as she mops her face clean, for that she’s thankful because she doesn’t know how long she can last under his intense gaze.

“Um, you missed a bit - may I?”

She can’t exactly tell him no (even if she wanted to), because his hand is already grabbing at a new tissue and flying towards her before she can even register it. He shuffles forwards, glasses sliding off his nose slightly as he leans in to dab gently at her lips.

He’s so close and a shiver runs down her spine, making her knees wobble and knock against each other as she stares into his eyes.

Something’s changed; she can almost taste it on her lips, feel it in the air around her.

“Sorry,” he says with wide eyes, taking a step back. “I didn’t mean to, like-”

“It’s okay,” she smiles, “you can wipe ice cream off me anytime.” Her mouth snaps shut, mortified, as James goes rigid next to her.

“Oh - okay, I’ll - err - keep that in mind.” He doesn’t seem too perturbed, and Lily breathes in a sigh of relief, scolding herself mentally.

He’s smiling, looking at the floor carefully as his mouth twitches. “Rendezvous in the Hogwarts kitchens with some ice cream in, say, nineteen days?”

Her heart skips a beat and she fiddles with the hem of her top.

But she can’t stop smiling.

“It’s a date,” she says.

[lovelylanden]

Freeze

Where Draco and Narcissa are on the run after the war and are left to fend for themselves. One night Harry saves Draco from drowning and after learning how rough the two have it, is determined to help them as much as he can. 

Note: This description really sucks but it’ll hit you in the feels I promise! This is totally different from anything I’ve written in the past and I hope you enjoy it. Much love x

Word count: 1.6k 

---

The wind whispered through the dark, empty trees like a warning in foreign language. Winter was coming, and with winter came famine. Draco had taken on the role of providing food to fill their growling stomachs and he grits his teeth, fighting against the bitter cold and holds his bow between stiff fingers. He had been out in the woods for hours and still nothing but he couldn’t come home empty handed. Not again. He didn’t think he could handle his mother’s disappointed expression. Although the two had always been thin and pointy with elegant frames, Draco and his mother had quickly lost weight after the war’s end. They had been forced from the Manor, their property destroyed not long after Voldemort’s downfall and took refuge in an abandoned cabin deep in the woods, concealed by thick couplings of trees. 

The cabin had done little for them apart from providing shelter. Food had been scarce when they raided the cupboards; half a dozen jars of preserved fruit and a small helping of dried venison. Whoever lives here last had been a hunter and Draco caught on quickly to using the bow and arrows he found stored in the bedroom closet along with a few throwing knives he had become quite accurate with. 

Living in the forest these past few months had taken a toll on the Malfoys’ bodies. Sharper cheekbones, sunken eye sockets, slim, boney fingers and hollow stomachs. Draco could deal with the unforgiving hunger but couldn’t bear with his mother spending another night starving. 

A rustle of trees and the snap of twigs causes Draco’s eyes to widen, senses sharpened and he readies his bow. After a few moments of surveillance, the blond finally catches sight of the fawn a few yards away. He takes an arrow from the sheath behind his back silently before steadying his bow, positioning the arrow which was heavy and lethal in his grasp and lets it fly. Draco’s accuracy causes the deer little pain and the Malfoy skins and guts the animal quickly before taking it home. When he finally arrives back to the cabin, Draco throws the carcass on the table in a heap and when he sees his mother standing at the entrance to the next room, Draco finds her expression to be proud and incredibly relieved. “Take care of that, will you? I’m going down to the river to wash up. I’ll bring the pail with to get more drinking water too,” Draco says after eyeing the nearly empty pail sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Of course, dear,” Narcissa says. 

Draco nods curtly before leaving the house again to make the trek back to the river. The deer’s blood had already began drying against his skin, embedded into the cracks of his hands and caked under his fingernails but Draco would rid the death from his skin soon enough. The cold still hadn’t let up and he shivers against a strong gust of wind but continues to walk, the metal pail clanking against his knee as he goes. He makes it to the river quickly although the walk was long and kneels on his haunches as he scrubs at his skin, watching the freezing water go pink with blood. He gasps with discomfort at the icy stream but continues cleaning until the water runs clear before cupping more into his hands, now reddened from the cold rather than blood and brings it up to his face, hoping to wash away the sins clinging to his features. Draco shudders, all former fatigue gone before picking up the pail with numb, trembling hands and dipping it into the river. The more it fills, the heavier and harder it gets to keep a steady grip on the metal. An owl hoots, startling him and Draco loses his balance as he flinches before plunging into the water, the river much deeper than he had thought. 

Draco had never felt a chill as cold as this. He lets off a scream that goes unheard, leaving only bubbles of air at the river’s surface, muscles frozen and lungs burning with lack of air. He quickly accepts that he would die here, glad that his mother would have enough food to last a week or so. He shuts his eyes, waiting for death to overcome him before feeling a tight grip on the collar of his shirt. He is pulled back to land, laying flat on his back, barely conscious as he coughs up water from his lungs. When he finally opens his eyes, Draco finds Harry standing above him and fear creeps into his chest. He had finally been found; surely Potter would turn him in. 

Draco’s heart beats fast in his chest as silver eyes meet green. He had finally met his fate. He coughs and sputters, lungs slowly getting used to the frigid air as Harry says, “What’re you doing here, Malfoy? The Aurors are coming. You’re going to get caught!” His voice comes out harsh and Draco’s muscles scream with protest as he sits up. 

“C-Cabin,” He stammers, teeth chattering as his jaw muscles seek warmth. 

“Is that where you’re hiding? I’ll take you there,” Draco nods numbly as he trembles and Harry helps him up, keeping hold of Malfoy’s forearm and says, “How far off is it?”

“A m-mile or two,” Draco whispers, leaning heavily on Harry, glad for the warmth his body brought. Harry nods sharply and with a harsh crack, the two are gone. Draco nearly falls to the ground when they make it in front of the cabin and he winces, knuckles whitening from his tight grip on Harry’s arm. “It’s unlocked,” He whispers and Harry doesn’t say a word as he steers them inside. 

When Narcissa catches sight of her son, her blood runs cold. “Draco,” She whispers with wide eyes, nearing closer to him and stops in her tracks. “Potter,” 

The name rings in the air for a few moments before Harry responds. “I found him in the river a few miles from here. He must’ve fallen in,” 

Narcissa scoops Draco’s trembling frame in her own, tears collecting in her eyes as she cards her fingers through his damp hair. “Oh sweetie I’m so sorry,” She murmurs and Draco merely whimpers, curling closer into her arms. 

Harry grabs a blanket off the ratty sofa and drapes it around Draco’s shoulders before leading him to sit down, Narcissa watching helplessly. “You don’t have wands?” He asks, thinking back to the pail he saw drifting down the river before finding Malfoy in it’s unforgiving water. 

“No,” Narcissa says. “A group of Snatchers caught us when we did. They snapped our wands and were going to turn us in to the Ministry before Draco and I managed to escape,” Her voice comes out hollow as she nears closer to her son, resting a hand over his which had turned a nasty blue. 

Harry takes his own wand from his pocket and relights the fireplace which embers flickered pathetically before turning back to them. “I won’t turn you in,” Harry says softly and Narcissa’s face nearly melts with relief. 

“Oh Harry, thank you,” She says softly. 

“Where’s Lucius?” Harry can’t help but ask after seeing no sign of the man. 

“He couldn’t escape the Snatchers,” Narcissa says with a small frown. “He told us to run. It’s just the two of us now,” Her frown deepens with each word and Harry surveys the room with a quick sweep before spotting the bow and throwing knives on the kitchen table. 

“You’ve been hunting,” He points out, a statement rather than a question. 

“Draco has,” Narcissa says, not willing to take the credit. “Thank you for bringing him back to me. He’s all I have,” 

Harry nods curtly and eyes the shivering blond with worry. “It’s not a problem,” He says, eyes never leaving Draco’s fragile frame. Harry takes his wand back out from his robes and holds it out to her. “Take it,” He says, pressing the worn wood into Narcissa’s unsuspecting palm. 

“Harry—“ 

“I can get another one. You can’t,” He points out and Narcissa nods hesitantly before taking the wand. She nears closer to Draco and quickly dries his clothes, casting warming charms around him to stifle his shivers. “I’ll cast a Fedelius Charm around the cabin so the Aurors won’t find you,” He tells her. 

“And you’ll be the Secret Keeper?” Narcissa asks with wide eyes as Harry nods. “You won’t give us up?” 

Harry opens his mouth to defend himself but Draco beats him to it, speaking for the first time since they got back. “He just gave you his wand and saved me from drowning. I’m sure we can trust him,” He croaks, eyes drugged with fatigue. Narcissa nods, looking slightly more relaxed and Draco asks, “Can you get me a fresh set of clothes?” He pulls at the shirt he was in which, although it was now dry, was rough and stiff from the spellwork. Narcissa nods, exiting the room quickly to grab Draco a new outfit and Harry shuffled awkwardly where he stood, unsure what to say. “Thank you,” Draco murmurs, glad they were alone. 

“No need to thank me,” 

Draco shakes his head quickly at Harry’s reply. “No,” He argues. “I should’ve thanked you a while ago,” Harry watches the blond stand from the couch and near closer to him, eyeing him with slight hesitation before kissing him gently. “So thanks again, Potter,” Narcissa returns moments later and Draco grins at Harry’s flushed cheeks. “Don’t be a stranger,” He continues into the shell of Potter’s ear. “Feel free to visit again. Maybe I’ll really show you how grateful I am,” He stands back to his full height with a wink before turning to his mother. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get changed. Have a good night, Harry,” He grins in Harry’s direction a final time before turning on his heel and disappears.