#all of these free amazon romances

[rubyjones]

Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.

[Edit:] this is getting well outside this account's usual reach and a few people in the notes are making not so great comments about the fact I write weird erotica. So, for full disclosure: yes, I am an erotica writer. And the book covers include those for tentacle erotica and robot erotic romance. But you cannot see anything NSFW. All of these covers were approved by Amazon. Frankly, the cover of the most NSFW story, Oviposition, is downright tame! And to those complaining about the word 'Oviposition', that is a scientific word for a naturally occurring phenomenon - it's only naughty if you know the content of the story, which is only alluded to as 'sexy'.

I also do not believe that shirtless men require a warning, but yeah, two of the covers have shirtless men. The cover with a tasteful nude drawing (showing a bum, but not a weenor) has already been censored.

I can't do anything about the version of this post that got rb'd by a popular person, but for those who are concerned, consider this your content warning.

[chlorinecake]

Rabbit Hole | S.JY

▹ PAIRING: ex fling ! classmate ! jake x f. reader

▹ GENRE: smut, scandalous, college au

▹ SYNOPSIS: In an attempt to escape your past life by running off to a new university, you end up encountering a former lover—one that you never thought you’d see again, and one that you’d soon realize was bad news all along…

▹ WARNINGS: KINKTOBER SPECIAL, foul language, humiliation kink, kinda dubcon because I need therapy, mentions of anal play, ft. other idols, mild bullying, switch!jake x switch!reader, lots of dialogue, degrading kink, impact play, light bondage, oral sex (m. r), unprotected sex (not for you), hair pulling

▹ WORD COUNT: 5.9k — DAY 7

Monday

Today, your current university was hosting its annual day of orientation for newcomers and recently transferred students.

You found yourself here after being promptly expelled from your previous university, a victim of being framed after someone planted hard drugs in your gym bag—an incident that still leaves you unsure regarding who set you up in the first place…

Fortunately, however, the transition to this new college was seemingly smooth, as many of your closest friends were also attending this institution, speaking in your honor and defense to the enrollment officials countless times.

And so, as a freshly admitted student at a prestigious college located more than 100 miles from your former campus, you were eager to leave your old life and watch it burn behind you.

Though, as your cousin would often quote from one of those shitty Max Payne games he played all the time, You can't run from your past. You will end up running in circles until you fall back down into the same hole you were trying to escape from, only the hole's grown deeper.

Orientation had just ended about forty minutes ago, and like several other students, you decided to treat yourself to a nice coffee at the campus café.

However, you never anticipated running into someone you met along that gruesome 100-mile journey—someone with whom you shared a fleeting romance that you never thought you’d see again.

A fling, you might add, that you met during one of the darkest times of your life.

It was a reckless and foolish decision on your part, honestly… after all, being drunk and horny simultaneously was a combination that rarely ended well—

“I offered to pay you for sex and you said you’d do it for free!” The man shouted back at you with his frustrated brown eyes flickering behind his glasses.

And by now, everyone in the cafeteria was staring at you two—

“No the fuck I didn’t, I don’t even recognize your lying little face!” You clapped back, standing up from your table now as you angrily started shoving all your belongings back into your backpack.

A couple of pencils awkwardly clattered to the floor, but you didn’t bother to retrieve them. They were from Amazon and made your notes from orientation look terrible anyways… cheap fucking ink—

“You were a kinky bitch, too… wanted me to call you mommy while I fingered your asshole in doggystyle and everything.”

“Oh, your pervy little imagination is really running wild today, isn’t it?”

“You keep saying calling me ‘little’ when you could rarely even take me without being prepped!”

“I’m calling you ‘little’ because I don’t even know your fucking name for crying out loud!”

“It’s Jake, and you know that already, so quit playing dumb… you also told me your name when we hooked up in August, but it was probably a fake one since you thought I’d be stupid enough to not remember your face…”

Zipping your last backpack compartment, you sighed at his words, “I’m sorry to hear you’ve mistaken me with someone else, Mr. Jake, but you have to stop with these false claims… I’m not the girl you slept with…”

“Seriously?” he scoffed, shaking his head at you in disappointment as his gaze roamed over your entire frame… “You’re even wearing the same bra…”

His voice trailed off, and you stared at him with wide eyes as if he had just plunged a rusty knife into your miserable gut.

He was right. He was honest… and there was no escaping him now that he had figured you all out.

“I’ll see you in class this week,“ he sighed sullenly before walking off, looking back at you once before fully exiting the shop.

You made a mental note to never let him humiliate you again… even if you couldn’t physically prevent it, you planned to avoid it at all costs…

Tuesday

“He said all of that in public?” Your friend Ningning asked.

“Yes, and in the middle of me ordering my coffee, too…”

“He’s so disrespectful,” Minji added.

“Despicable… he was even shouting it all at the top of his fucking lungs…”

“No one kicked his crazy ass out?”

“No… and I guess that’s a good thing because we both looked fucking insane in that moment…”

“You still haven’t told us why he said all of that to you though,” Juria went on.

“I figured it was probably posted all over the internet by now…”

And you retelling them would only make you relive the incident all over again…

“Well let’s hope not, because a video like that could really ruin your academic standing… even his…”

“I seriously can’t risk that happening again, you guys… there’d be enough proof for them to accuse me this time, too… probably speculating that I was higher than a cloud in that café…”

“Noooo, let’s not even think like that, okay baby?” Juria soothed you with a comforting hand to your back.

“She’s right, everything’s gonna be alright… this’ll just blow over like every other video online,” Minji added with a smile.

“Oh my God…” your friend Ningning exclaimed while looking at her phone.

“What? What is it?”

“You said his name is Jake, right? I just found his Instagram, and his bio has our uni’s initials in it.”

“Yea, I forgot to tell you that part, too… I’ll apparently be seeing him again in English class on Thursday… and every week after that…”

“You need to look into getting transferred to a course with a different professor ASAP,” Minji suggested.

“She can’t. Deadlines already closed for class registration,” Juria added with a pout that mirrored yours.

Though at this point, Ningning was the only one smiling.

“What now, Ning?”

“I mean… y’all are just gonna have to hear me out on this one, but why’s he highkey hella attractive?”

“Give me that,” Minji said while snatching the phone from her, only for her mouth to create an O shape at one of his pictures.

“Relax Ji, you can’t slurp his soul through the screen,” you joked, which only egged them in even further.

“You should give him a second chanceeee,” Minji continued.

“After you just agreed that he’s a disrespectful little cunt?” Juria asked sarcastically.

“Look, I’m just tired of us being the single and hot friend group. It’s not a good match.”

“Mhm… we need a beau to chauffeur us around… buy us designer bags and take us to dinner…” Ningning added.

“Yessss. I’m tired of hookup culture, I need somebody reliable… you should ask him if he has any other hot friends!”

“Ooo, or a brother!”

“You guys are insane,” you chuckle, sitting back in your chair now as you know you only have a few more minutes before class starts.

You didn’t wanna tell your friends what really happened because you didn’t want them to judge you. And although you had a good feeling they wouldn’t, you were still too ashamed to confess… to admit that you had lied to the poor guy, and needlessly to as he wasn’t even trying to get anything from you.

He probably only stopped by to say “Hi” to a familiar face, but you panicked when the truth started to come out…

Wednesday

You were so close to calling in sick and just skipping class for the whole day, simply to avoid bumping into Jake.

But you knew that was a cowardly idea that would only negatively affect your attendance in the long run.

So, after some careful consideration, you came up with your own solution; you planned to wear the most provocative outfit you could find, just to get revenge by teasing him all day.

You wanted him to experience the embarrassment he had put you through when he exposed you in the café… you craved the feeling of being in control of him again.

Though, you knew it wouldn’t be easy because part of you still had a soft spot for him…

He was so caring on all those nights, prioritizing your pleasure while still achieving his own… and then right after, he would ask you about your life, to which you foolishly responded with complete honesty every single time…

You told him about what happened at your old school, about how you were transferring to a new institution, and even details about your family life…

So, when you unexpectedly ran into him on campus that Tuesday, it wasn’t entirely shocking… he had even followed you on Instagram that same day, tagging you and other students under a post entailing his excitement about “finally starting his academic journey on the right track.”

Jake was clearly keeping tabs on you, and you couldn’t fathom what he could possibly want, but you knew it had to be something, and you weren’t gonna sulk over his nice guy act any longer.

Sure, you recall him mentioning his plans to pursue personal projects, but those ambitions have to include you in some way, otherwise, why the fuck would he even be here?

The past version of you would allow such uncertainties to intimidate her, but the new you was ready to stand firm. You had to; it was the only way to change the dynamics of your relationship with him.

Thursday

Straightaway upon reaching the classroom after running up and down the halls for what felt like a second lifetime, you finally made it in.

It didn’t take long for you to spot Jake either, as he was sitting in one of the closest seats he could probably grab.

Nerd, you thought to yourself, making your way towards him with your lace-up Mary Jane heels clicking behind you.

The desks were two-seaters in this class, so you’re lucky enough to have snatched a spot with Jake before some other whore did—

“So you’re not disgusted by my lying little face anymore?” He asked almost immediately after you got settled in the chair, slowly meeting your eyes as if to shame you. Intimidate you.

“Oh I definitely still am,” you corrected, crossing your legs beneath the desk, “I’m simply just sitting next to you…”

“Right… and are you still going by that fake name these days?… What was it again… Raychel with a Y?”

“My real name is ____, alright? Not like you didn’t know that already after stalking me down online—”

He let out a breath through his nose, “I didn’t stalk you, ____—”

“Don’t call me that,” you interrupted, making him look down at his desk for a moment before snickering to himself at your tone.

Your adorably stern voice…

He always found it cute whenever you tried acting like the one who held dominance out of the two of you—

“What shall I call you then?” He asked while smirking, and you resented the way it made your insides flutter.

“Pretty,” you said plainly, and he quirks a brow at you.

“P-pretty?”

“What, do you disagree with that?”

“No,” he clarified, eyes shamelessly checking out your outfit now, “not at all…”

You were wearing a tight white button-up that exposed all your cleavage with a high-pleated skirt and heels.

And if anyone looking didn’t know any better, they’d probably think you were either trying to seduce the professor or get away with wearing borderline lingerie in public—

“There has to be a reason you approached me on orientation,” you began again, reaching in your backpack to pull out your notebooks and stationary, “why?”

“Well,” he started while clearing his throat slightly, “you can’t blame me for wanting to reconnect with an old lover, right?”

“Friend, Jake… we were just friends…”

“Okay, okay, whatever you wanna call it, but,” he whispered, leaning closer to you now as he spoke right below your ear, “wasn’t the sex just amazing… Pretty?”

You angrily swatted his hand from your thigh, to which he snickered at you.

Again.

“Listen, I’m an entirely different woman from the broken one you met two months ago… what we had was nothing,” you whisper-yelled, eyes filled with frustration.

“It certainly doesn’t seem like it was nothing,” Jake said, but his expression had lost its luster as his resting face became blank, and you’re just now realizing that your hand was gripped around his neck tie.

Click click.

The sound of the classrooms front door sounded, craning open with a loud creak to reveal the long-awaited English professor, the bustling classroom gracing her with their full attention.

“Good morning, my bright and wonderful students,” the heavy-set woman announced with glee as she walked up to the chalkboard, “anybody miss me?… No? Just my puppies at home? Okay, let’s get started then… You youngsters can call me Ms. Thompson, by the way!”

God—you sighed within yourself at her attempt to be likable despite her egregious sense of humor—Thursdays were going to be a lot longer than you anticipated…

“Uhm, Britney Spears, why don’t you come up to the board for me real quick,” the teacher said about thirty minutes into the session, and you were so lost in your head, you hadn’t even realized.

“It’s ____, ma’am,” you corrected her, not wanting to have a permanent nickname on the first day of college.

“Could’ve fooled me… anyhow, let’s make our topic of arguments a little more personal now… is there anyone in this room who you’d like to envision as your target offender?”

A smile creeped upon your face at this opportunity, “Yes, actually.”

Your eyes went straight to Jake, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know exactly who you were looking at, especially with the way his face looked now.

“Great! Come on up, Misterrrr…”

“Sim,” he said shyly, standing right beside you at the front of the class.

“Now, state your stance on the following argument, Ms. ____. Today’s topic issss,” her voice trailed off as she fished through her pile of notecards, “The Relevance of the Past in Shaping Identity!”

The classroom air grew thick with anticipation, as mostly everyone in the class had seen they way you two were acting earlier, and the café video that went viral earlier that week.

Though, given your outfit, you were already in the mood for attention today, so this was the perfect topic choice for you to spark a heated debate.

“I just think the past should be left in the past. We shouldn’t let it define who we are today.”

“Could you be more descriptive?” Ms. Thompson urged.

“Well… my view is that we shouldn’t associate any sort of relevance to our past selves and experiences, as we only limit what our future selves can achieve,” you clarified, trying your best to sound confident.

The professor nodded at your words, and you nearly giggled at the look on Jake’s face now.

“Any students in favor of ____’s stance?”

You noticed a little less than half of the classroom raised their hand, with one student in particular extending her hand above everyone elses.

“Yes, Ms. Castillo?”

“I agree with ____’s stance as I believe that humans should treat their lives as the butterfly by means of metamorphosis, where we reflect on our past, reject it, and eventually transform into something more beautiful.”

“This is especially true for victims or survivors, as they might view their past as a hinderance to their growth and finding new identity,” another boy added.

Crossing your arms, you watched as Jake cleared his throat like he always did, right before saying the most annoying shit imaginable.

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, class. The past is crucial to our character development. You can’t just pretend you’re from a different walk of life or… I don’t know, change your hair a little bit and call it an identity swap…”

A murmur of agreement and disagreement rippled through the class up until a voice from the back spoke up.

It was Alex, a student known for their liberal insights. “Um… sorry to interrupt you Jake, that’s offensive to queer and transitioning people. Please use more inclusive language.”

A few students behind Alex snorted at their words, but Jake’s face flushed with realization, and he nodded respectfully.

“You’re 100% right, Alex. I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I just think that our experiences are relevant in shaping who we are, and that no amount of ‘make-believe’ can erase the impact of the past on both our present and future lives…”

Jake is handling this much better than you thought he would’ve, even though he was picking at his nail bed like a madman.

Ms. Thompson is quick to sense the growing tension though, and steps in before the debate lasts the entire class duration.

“Alright, everyone. Let’s remember that we’re here to learn and respect each other’s opinions. ____ and Jake, you both have valid points. The past can be both a burden and a guide, however, it’s ultimately up to each individual to decide how they let it influence their present and future.”

The class fell silent, reflecting on the professor’s words while scribbling copious notes down in their notebooks.

You flashed Jake a glance, one that he couldn’t read at first, but it still made him feel uneasy.

“So uhhh… that’s how you have an opinionated argument, everyone!” The teacher chirped awkwardly, “you may return to your seats, Mr. Sim and Ms. ____… thank you to everyone who participated in this portion… now, as we turn to page 13, we find that…”

Friday

At the end of class yesterday, Ms. Thompson assigned you and Jake to produce a group PowerPoint presentation by the following week, and you weren’t dreading it as much as you could have.

Your little tough and mean girl act seemed to have successfully scared Jake into some submission towards you… plus, you were having way too much fun teasing him everyday to turn down an opportunity to hang with him one on one.

You both were currently sitting in the campus’s private library to do research on your topic. It was relatively late in the day, so no one was there except you two.

By now, you had already punked Jake into bringing you coffee from the café that was literally a 20 minute walk away, and into agreeing that he’d produce most of the project on his own, but your fun with him hadn’t ended just yet.

Sad as it sounds, he just looked too cute while reading to himself in the grand brown chair across from you… you wouldn’t dare leave him there to study in peace, not while you were in the mood for chaos.

“Jakeyyy~” your voice sang with a cloyingly sweet melody, making his face flush with embarrassment behind his thick-framed glasses at the nickname.

Closing the book he was reading, Jake walked over to where you sat with your foot extended before him, a messy cluster of shoe strings dangling at your ankles.

“A little help here?” You continued, subtly squishing your breasts together with your arms while looking into his eyes.

“Sure,” is all he says as a small smile overtakes his feature. Kneeling down obediently before you, he took your ankle into his grasp, getting to work at re-tying the shoelace for you.

“Thanks,” you say, leaning forward to ruffle his hair as he taps your other foot, signaling for you to lift it so he can re-tie the lace there it as well.

“I didn’t just call you over here to tie my shoes though, Jake,” you whisper, drawing his gaze from your shoes and up to your eyes.

He holds back a sigh, and his chest expands because of it, “What else is it that you want then, ____—“

“Pretty,” you corrected him, moving your foot from his grasp only to let your leg fall, gently pressing the weight of your foot into his bulge, “we talked about this yesterday, Jake… you will never address me by my first name, understood?… Or is that too much to ask?”

Jake felt his whole stomach tense up at the feeling of your foot pressing into his groin, and he tried his best to get a solid answer out, knowing that prolonged silence would only bother you further.

“N-no,” he breathes out shakily, barely meeting your gaze now as the temperature in his face became hotter and hotter, with a mix of his own arousal, embarrassment, and anger, “I u-understand, Pretty…”

You let yourself smile at his compliance, releasing the pressure from your foot in his lap.

“So pathetic,” you announced, watching as he caught his breath on the ground, “I can get you to do anything for me, can’t I Jake?…”

He’s silent for a moment, making you feel impatient now that he was resisting all of a sudden.

“Jakey, I asked you a question—”

“And you really shouldn’t talk to me like that unless you want some sense fucked into you,” he retorted, making your eyes widen with genuine shock at his sudden boldness.

“Excuse me?” You asked with a scoff, but your voice gets lost in the sound of him getting up from the floor, standing over you, caging you beneath his frame in a way that intimidates you.

Jake had been swallowing his pride with you for long enough, and wasn’t gonna let another day pass without putting you in your place.

“I’ve been getting real sick of you treating me like this, y’know that ____?”

But before you can even think to answer, he’s reaching for the cup of coffee he fetched for you earlier and bringing it to your mouth, a ring of condensation glistening on the desk.

Trying to maintain your dominance, you let out a feigned laugh of amusement that Jake is quick to cut off with his stern words.

“Jake, what is this, huh?” You asked, giving him a fed up look even though your heartbeat was beating faster than the speed of light below his dark gaze.

“Drink it, ____….” He orders with a deep voice, eyes becoming so dark now that you can’t even bring yourself to refuse.

And you’re impossibly annoyed, too… by the way he’s very intentionally using your real name while simultaneously making you feel as feeble as a fairy.

Hesitantly bringing the cup to your mouth, it doesn’t take long before Jake smacks the coffee out of your hand, leaving the cold liquid to spill all over you.

“Jake, what the fuck?!” You shouted, shivering as the caramel-colored liquid trickled into all the intimate crevices of your body.

“How embarrassing,” he said, shaking his head, “making such a mess of yourself in front of me…”

Balling your fists, you look him dead in the eyes as you shout, “That was all you’re doing, you stupid fucking clutz- JAKE, s-stop that!” Your voice cracked at the feeling of his hand smacking you across the face now, surely leaving a cut in your lip as he soon went to squish your lips together into an odd shape, maintaining a painful grip.

“If only your brain was as big as your tits,” he clicked his teeth, wearing a somewhat neutral facial expression at first until a smirk started tugging at the corner of his lips…

“And now you’re crying?” He scoffs, almost as if both annoyed and amused by the moisture forming at the beds of your eyes.

During all this though, your mind was in a complete haze, not being able to wrap your head around how innocent he still looked while talking to you like this…

Hell, even his cheeks were still blushing, and you could tell he was getting harder behind his pants.

Jake caught onto your staring though, swallowing the urge to just fuck you right then and there.

“Take off your top,” he demanded, releasing your face from his grip and taking a few steps back, “I can’t believe you even want to be called ‘pretty’ while wearing such a filthy thing…”

“Who cares? You still got hard just from looking at me,” you jabbed back through a wobbly voice given your tears.

That’s when a feeling of chills ran up and down your skin, and it’s hard to keep up the tough girl act once Jake started unbuckling the belt he wore, keeping an intense eye contact with you the entire time.

“Just like old times,” he said, making your organs irk at how easily you found yourself falling down the same rabbit hole with him, but things were far too gone to turn back now. You complied with his words, sliding your top over your head and exposing yourself now, the swell of your breasts looking so delightful while cupped in the lace of your bra.

“You’re making this too easy for me,” he grinned, tossing his belt to the floor with a clink before closing the space between you both, still standing up as he slides his fingers against your scalp, gently gripping the hair.

But it feels so good that you almost purr at the contact, even though his behavior was a bit unsettling to you.

That’s when he landed another smack to your face, snickering at how loud you winced given the sudden shock of sensations.

“God, what the hell is wrong with you?” You yell at him, trying to escape his daunting frame but you have no chance against his strength, especially not while sitting down in a chair… “You’re a freak, Jake!”

You kept wrestling beneath him, provoking him to yank your arm harshly and pull you out of the chair and onto the floor, your bare knees hitting the floor with a thud.

“And you’re a little bitch,” he bit back, handling your body with ease as he situates you before him on your knees, taking your spot in the chair and spreading his legs.

And his belt isn’t too far from him now either, compelling him to reach down for it and use it to secure one of your wrists to the chair before finally shimmying his pants down.

So lost in your thoughts, you watch with a mix of fear, disgust, and anticipation at the erectness hiding behind his boxers, just as his taunting voice resounds again.

“C’mon, ____… it’s about time you make good use of that big mouth of yours…”

With teary eyes, you watch as his full length slips out, smacking against his abdomen as the burning in your restrained wrist feels worse now.

Everything feels worse now… you had never felt so humiliated in your entire life.

He tapped the tip of his cock against your lips, using a thumb at your jaw to pry your mouth open and push himself in.

And as much as you didn’t wanna admit it, you were enjoying this a lot more than expected…

You had always preferred men who were more on the submissive side, and Jake, being a nerdy introvert, was no exception to that craving.

However, you didn’t mind him getting a little rough with you either, and perhaps that’s why you felt ashamed for it… you felt vulnerable with the idea of admitting you liked being someone else’s play thing…

“Stroke me like you used to, ____… ‘atta girl,” he groaned, watching with pleasure as you let your free hand find his shaft, stroking the bass as he kept your mouth secured around the tip.

And as embarrassing as it sounds, you felt yourself getting wet just from sucking him off, the sounds of your own throat gurgling around his length being a turn on for the both of you.

“I bet you still haven’t even told your friends about what really happened between me and you, huh? Imagine if they knew your lips liked sucking my cock just as much as they liked lying…” he slithered, keeping your head angled back just enough for him to get a full look at your face while you took him in your mouth.

Jake soon catches onto the way you’re closing your thighs together as tears continue to well in your eyes, and he lets himself snicker at how needy and pathetic you looked before him...

“What is it, Pretty? Hm? Don’t want your friends to find out about how much of a raging cock-slut you are?”

You moaned softly as he gently pulled your head from around him, and a string of your own saliva and his precum keeps you two connected as he finally loosens the belt around your wrist.

“When’d you get so mean, Jake?” You asked weakly, voice a bit raspy now after taking him in your mouth.

He almost couldn’t look you straight in the eye after asking that, but he had to keep his act going… he had to put you in your place—

“I only get this way when I have to,” he practically whispered, and part of you couldn’t even get annoyed with him for it.

You felt the same just a few moments ago, and you’re just now realizing how much you and Jake really have in common—

“Get up,” he ordered, and you listened, standing on shaky legs as he pulled your panties down, letting them rest at your ankles as he stood up to meet you.

Without speaking, he simply pointed at the chair he was just sitting in, and you’re given the opportunity to choose the position.

You decide to get back on your knees, bend over the chair, and stick your bare ass out for him, and he snickered at the sight, kneeling down himself now.

He ran a hand over the curve of your hip before landing a hard smack there, his own cock twitching every time you winced.

After this, he wastes no time in gliding his cock between your folds, right before plunging his tip into your sloppy cunt and groaning at the feeling.

“Fuck~,” he cursed under his breath, trying to adjust himself inside you, “has it really been so long that even your pussy’s gotten tighter?”

“Well your tiny cock definitely didn’t get any bigger- nghh~…,” you whined through a bitten lip, trying to suppress your moaning as he started to bottom out, over and over again.

“And here I was thinking you’d actually shut up for once,” he sighed, but his voice was clearly being affected by the way you felt around him.

He had been missing this… all of it, and not even just the sex. Jake wanted more to come out of your relationship with him, but if this is how you wanted to play, so be it—he still got something good out of it.

You can’t remember what you were going to say, but your thoughts were harshly cut by the feeling of his hand pulling you up by your throat and holding you close to his body.

“Let’s see… do you still squirm while having your tits touched? Do you still squirt just from the sound of my voice?” He whispered, and your breath was so restricted that all you could do was pant pathetically.

His released his grip pretty quickly though, only for his hands to find your breasts and fondle with them as he picked up the pace of his thrusts.

“J-Jake,” your voice bobbled, given the strong impact of his hips behind you, “d-don’t you fucking dare…”

“What do you mean, Pretty?” He asked, snickering now at the way your thighs trembled briefly, “you’re a flashy little bitch, but that doesn’t mean I can read your mind…”

You groaned at his words, feeling lightheaded now that his tip was brushing up against your cervix.

“Don’t… fuckkk~… don’t tell anyone about this…”

“Which part of this, hm?” He asked knowingly, “the part where I made you cry or the part where I finish inside you?”

“N-not any of it, just- please…” your words slurred, and your heart started to ache just as much as your core with a mix of worry and desperation.

Of course, you were enjoying every part of this, but you didn’t wanna face the embarrassment that’d come with it if anyone found out…

Just imagine it… how down bad must you be to (1) let a guy hit it after treating you like shit, and (2) in the middle of the campus library of all places?

He’s slamming into you so hard and fast that you lost track of your thoughts again, and the squelching sounds coming from the two of you only adds to the warmth growing in your faces—

“That’s really what you want? Huh?” Jake asked with a low growl to his voice, and all you can reply with is a string of whiny yes’s.

“Beg for it louder,” he demanded, “beg for me to keep fucking you like a good little slut…”

And you did, letting your hips bounce to a rythme with his thrusts as your high drew closer and closer to approaching.

“P-please, Jake! I’ll do anything! I’ll be a g-good cock-slut just for you if that’s what you want… I-I’ll even let you cum in me,” you stammered, only for your pleading lips to trail off as a symphony of moans ripped through your body, his harsh hand smacking your ass one more before holding you in place by a handful of your hair.

“Yea, Pretty? Want me to fill your juicy pussy up with my cum? Gonna let me fuck it back into you nice and slow? Yea?” He rambled breathlessly, panting in place of groaning so he could get his words out better.

Crying out another yes, Jake’s hip plummeted into you as hard as they could, your breasts rocking back and forth with the force until you finally felt it; your walls pulling him in as his first spurt made you shiver, and then his second spurt made you climax.

“Awww, fuck!” You whimpered, shaking beneath him as he rode out his high inside you.

It didn’t take long for him to stand up, though, and just in time to pull up his pants and readjust your panties before the library doors creaked open as a new soul joined the space.

It was a girl. You could tell me the gentle hums that bumped from her throat, echoing off of the shelves of books.

“____! Minji said I might find you studying here, so I came to check since you’ve been hiding from us… And don’t even think about scolding me for yelling in here!” The voice called out, and you immediately knew it was Juria from her accent.

She had just came back from class to return a few books that she borrowed earlier, and your heart never pumped as fast as it did when Jake landed a harsh smack to your clothed cunt while holding you in place, even though you tried squirming away.

Everything in you was fighting to avoid being caught like this, and even more so because Juria was literally 30ft away from you two.

When she finally made her way over, though, the poor girl nearly dropped the stack of books she was holding, delicate eyebrows furrowing behind her silky bangs as her lips asked the words, “What on earth happened over here?”

You were sitting beside a now standing Jake with your cold ass right against the tile floor as you lazily slumped over the reading chair, being too fucked out to bother moving.

Your hair was a mess atop your head and your outfit was totally disarrayed, foggy mascara smudged beneath your swollen eyes and your whole body reeking of bittersweet aromas.

Juria couldn’t put a finger on it, but she knew something had happened. Something off…

“She spilled coffee all over herself…” Jake eventually answered, an aura of emptiness being present in both his expression and tone… an eeriness that made both you and Juria tremble in the knees…

From that moment, he simply walked past you both, looking back only once before leaving… he glanced at you first before looking Juria straight in the eye, his expression only now softening as one last line escaped his venomous lips…

“Such a silly girl, isn’t she?…”

���♱✮ Thank you to everyone who made it to the end of this fic, which actually concludes DAY 7 of my Kinktober Event !! If you're interested in reading more works like this, feel free to check out my main enhypen masterlist or my kinktober masterlist by clicking one of these links !!

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[physalian]

What No one Tells You about Writing Fantasy, #2!

I did this list about 7 annoyances about fantasy, but I write in this genre for a reason! Fantasy knows no bounds, it can encompass all other genres within it. You can write a fantastical murder mystery, fantasy horror, fantasy romance, political drama, slice-of-life, comedy, whatever you’d like!

Whether it’s urban or high fantasy, supernatural or scientific, here’s seven great benefits of writing in this genre:

1. No modern means of communication

Unless you’re writing a world with phones or phone-adjacent devices. Phones and instant communication seriously inhibits the plausibility of dramatic irony and tension when you have to keep coming up with reasons to keep your characters from calling or texting each other everything they know. It’s exhausting, I tell you, and such a relief when phones aren’t a factor.

With that said, without phones, you have complete freedom to design your own magical channels of supernatural FaceTime, as weird and zany as you want. But without instant connections? Your character who knew too much can’t pass on the intel before they die. Your hero team can’t call for backup in their darkest hour. Otherwise easily preventable tragedies and deadly miscommunications are now very real.

2. The Monster Allegory

Fantasy and sci-fi tend to overlap more than they’re set apart, and in that overlap sits the monster allegory. Everything from werewolves to vampires to witches, reapers, demons, angels, goblins, trolls, wraiths, fairies, mermaids, ghosts, to Eldritch horrors and your classic Hollywood cast of mummies, creatures from the black lagoon, and Frankenstein.

Most of the time, the monsters aren’t just monsters, they represent a monstrous aspect of society the author wants to challenge and caricaturize in a fun and entertaining way. Or, the monsters are the good guys and the humans are the real terrors. Or, you’ve got two kinds of monsters to allegory two human sides. Sometimes they represent metaphorical demons, like vampires often representing addiction and werewolves repressed identities.

What all of this boils down to is the hyperbolic nature of science fantasy that allows you to go over-the-top with your metaphor and allegory in a way that a book grounded in reality just can’t.

3. Magic Systems!

Do you love world building? Do you love filling pages upon pages with your cool and unique set of superpowers you want your characters to have? Do you dream about your fight scenes and dramatic slow-mo shots?

Then Fantasy is for you!

There are zero limits to how you want to define your magic system. You can go classic with the familiar archetypes of elemental magic, wizards, sorcerers, and witches. Or you can step off the beaten path and design a whole new funky system of power sets. Best part? Your readers will have an awesome time imagining themselves with those powers, and debating endlessly about how it works.

4. Real-World Politics, who?

Amazon’s Rings of Power was twice-doomed when they only got the rights to adapt the appendices of The Silmarillion and when they decided to inject current political problems into a timeless story written purposefully to be divorced from those politics. You *can* write about human politics, but in fantasy, you don’t have to. You *can* interpret Lord of the Rings to be an allegory about the World Wars, but no matter how hard you argue, it wasn’t written with that intent.

Which means: Even if your story is set in the reality-adjacent fantasy version of 1543, you are free from the following: Racism, homophobia, sexism, religious bigotry, mental health bigotry, gender norms, anti-feminism, toxic masculinity, and more. “But that’s how it was-”

Nope. This is fantasy. You built this world, you decided to keep in the discrimination. Or… You can fill your fantasy world with a rainbow of gays, POCs in power, women in power, men unafraid to be compassionate and caring, a religion that doesn’t foster hate and division, the list goes on. You. Are. Free.

5. Nothing is too “unrealistic”

Both that you will always have people whining about how X would never happen so write the book you want to read, but also because fantasy is fake. Fairies aren’t real. Mermaids aren’t real. There are no rules for how they must be written and that’s how we have so much variety with so much room for interpretation by so many creators. Twilight made how much money writing about vampires that sparkle like diamonds in sunlight and crack like marble?

This is fantasy, it’s supposed to be unrealistic. Yes, your plot should make sense, but don’t be afraid to get weird. Write at least some of your story dependant on those fantasy elements. Write a story that can’t just be told in the real world minus the spectacle. Don’t be afraid to be sincerely fantastical and weird. People love weird. People love loving weird.

6. You are in complete control

But you do still need to research, unfortunately. Unless this is urban fantasy that depends at least a little on the human world, yours is completely your own to govern like a god tweezing weeds from their garden. You get to design your own geography and weather patterns and seasons. Your own countries and kingdoms and politicians. Your epic pre-canon fantasy war and the stakes that it was fought over. Your species, races, and ethnicities.

It’s a shame that a movie like Avatar (2009) set out to be this wholly unique take on aliens with music completely divorced from earthly bonds, new languages and a visually and culturally distinct alien species… and ended up a largely generic blue Pocahontas in space. It forgot that it was fantasy and didn’t go weird enough. They have horses, monkeys, wolves, rhinos, and deer just re-skinned with some extra limbs and colors. It’s pretty but it’s so, so shallow.

It could have become a cult classic like many a positively *weird* 80s off-beat fantasies, and now it just… exists. It makes a whole lot of money but its impact on the cultural zeitgeist is negligible. I’m the only person I know that can name every major character in the movie, and I’m no Avatar obsessor. They had complete creative control, and this is what they did with it. Don’t be Avatar. Take your creative freedom and run.

7. Even if it has been done before, do it again

You can say this about any genre, particularly romance, but fantasy and sci-fi, by the gatekeep-y nature of their fans, can be a lot less forgiving when it comes to claims of “unoriginality”. No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans. Fans of these genres can get… concerningly attached to their favorite stories (mostly because the people who like them had only their fictional heroes to protect them from very real bullies).

But Game of Thrones exists because the author likes Lord of the Rings and went “yes, but what if it was an R-rated parade of misery?” Dungeons and Dragons exists because people wanted to roleplay in an LotR-esque world. Legolas and Gimli single-handedly defined what a badass elf and dwarf looks like in high fantasy. And people still gobble up media ripping shamelessly, or even good-naturedly, from this one story.

So on my other list, I argued that the sum of your parts is still original, even if the components aren’t. On this list, I implore you this: It’s not stealing or appropriating to write another Legolas if you love Legolas. Everyone loves Legolas. How many generic buff action heroes do we have and love? How many Hallmark romances tread the same predictable path? Who gives a damn if it’s unoriginal? Just make it entertaining and have something fresh to say in the end (or don’t, that’s fine too), and people will read it.

And when people say “Oh, you mean like Legolas”, take it as a compliment, not an insult. Yes, exactly like Legolas. Here’s my new elf because I adore this other book, now watch him go on a new adventure that I wrote for him.

[uluthrek]

inheritance cycle modern au in which all of the dragons are horses which makes eragon the underdog horse girl, saphira the underdog girl horse and brom the disgruntled and disillusioned horse trainer who doesn’t believe in the validity of this sport until he sees the ✨bond✨ eragon has with his horse saphira who is still as blue as she is in canon (don’t ask that‘s just how it works, if you question this, i‘ll track your ip).

and galbatorix is the aggressively eastern european horse girl dad who had some sort of hip injury that brought his eventing career to an abrupt end and now he must vicariously live through his protégé, murtagh, lest he kills himself. and thorn is the very expensive horse galbatorix bought for wish fulfillment purposes and murtagh and thorn are so horribly traumatized by all the stress and pressure of defeating little kids at the pony finals that they ✨bond✨.

oromis and glaedr are their direct opponents and galbatorix nancy kerrigan‘s them (oromis dies like he does canonically because honestly, hunters be like that) so murtagh can get his ribbon. and then there‘s the big final competition and eragon, underdog wonder magic horse girl, goes toe to toe with murtagh, tortured champion to be, and they have this epic horse battle (an 80cm clear round but the atmosphere is very intense) and eragon loses. but then brom delivers this epic speech about idk man like success and passion and whatnot and then he dies which gives eragon the final push to defeat murtagh but OH NO, thorn is HURT from being OVERWORKED and murtagh has an epic horse peril breakdown and tearfully tells galbatorix he‘ll withdraw.

so galbatorix goes „fuck the kid“ and gets shruikan (the very bad very big black warmblood stallion that shows up in every horse girl movie) to best eragon HIMSELF (but not before locking nasuada, the animal rights activist that murtagh has struck up a tentative romance with, in a porta-potty). and then him and eragon compete and it‘s INTENSE (meanwhile, roran and katrina have a sub plot about capturing a flock of runaway ducks that is constantly being cut to during that climactic scene) and shit is looking DISMAL for poor eragon until a vision of brom and also his dead mother, because this is a proper horse girl movie and not some bibi und tina bullshit, and that gives him the strength to defeat galbatorix.

and then he wins and thorn doesn’t die and someone frees nasuada from the porta-potty and she gets to punch galbatorix in the face. and fírnen (who is a horse but also still green) emerges during the post credit scene and meets arya and sets up a cash grabby amazon prime spinoff series and roran and katrina successfully capture the ducks and everyone is happy and there is no more horse peril.

the whole thing takes place in exactly one horse show afternoon. it makes such perfect sense actually you can fit everyone in. nar garzvog‘s at the grill and makes hot dogs. islanzadi does nothing but drink cheap wine and bitch from the sidelines. angela mans the beverage stall and tells everyone who wants to listen (or doesn’t) that toads don’t exist. solembum is the raccoon on her shoulder who violates all fda guidelines by simply existing. orrin is nasuada‘s bitter ex boyfriend who pretended to be vegan for years so she‘d like him only to be dumped for murtagh and his emo swagger in a heartbeat. orik is a shetland pony.

[deliciousangelfestival]

bucky barned x depressed reader?!!!!!! ☕️🍪

Of course dear. This request is a perfect match for this continuation. I hope you like it.

Only The Lonely - Rain and Umbrella

Summary: After being saved by Bucky and freed from the debt collectors, you finally managed to get a job with normal working hours. You thought you’d lost your late-night train buddy, but Bucky still visits your place whenever he can.

Everything seemed fine—until you ran into someone from your past. Suddenly, all the feelings you had been holding back came flooding out.

Character: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader

Genre: Romance, Action, Comedy, Slice Of Life

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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By the way I publish my book Arrogant Ex Husband in Kindle. 👉 Now available on e-Kindle Amazon! << here's the link.

Thank you to everyone who has read this chapter. Leave a comment and Reblog, please. I'd love to hear your thoughts. ❤️

“Giving what you can, even when you don’t have much, makes you the richest person,” your grandfather would always say. On his birthday, instead of celebrating, he spent the day handing out free food to the homeless. It was his way of teaching you that kindness ripples back in unexpected ways.

That lesson became your compass, even when life pushed you into the shadows. For three long years, you had been hiding—avoiding the gang that chased you, ducking into smaller, quieter corners of existence. Yet, even when you struggled, you gave. Like the day you paid for a mother’s milk at the store with the last of your cash, and somehow, you landed a cashier job at a car workshop that very evening.

And now, giving extra food—a small, unthinking act of kindness—had saved your life. Who would have thought your train buddy was capable of something like this?

After Bucky untied you from the ropes, you stumbled forward, your muscles sore and stiff. His strong hands caught your arm and steadied you without a word. The cold air outside the warehouse hit you hard, but you welcomed it—it was freedom. Around you, the gang members lay crumpled—some groaning, others fainted in various awkward positions.

You turned to Bucky, your breath visible in the freezing air. “How… how can I repay this?” you stammered, still processing everything.

Bucky looked around at the chaos, then back at you, expression unreadable. “You’ve already paid me.”

“What?” you whispered, confused.

He raised a gloved hand and pointed. “Monkey bread—for him,” he said, nodding toward a man sprawled against a crate.

Your eyes widened.

“Beef Wellington,” he continued, motioning to another unconscious man slumped against the hood of a car.

“And Fish and Chips—for him,” Bucky finished, nodding toward a guy dangling limply from a chain.

You blinked, processing his words. Then it hit you—your cooking. That’s what this was about. “Wait… you mean the meals I gave you at the shelter?” you asked incredulously.

Bucky didn’t respond, but the faintest flicker of amusement passed through his blue eyes.

The surreal realization was too much; you let out a soft, shaky laugh, half disbelieving. “So… that’s what you were doing when the lights went out?”

Bucky didn’t answer. Instead, he shrugged off his leather jacket and draped it over your shoulders. You flinched at the weight of it, stunned at the unexpected warmth—both from the jacket and from him.

“Let’s go home,” he said softly, his voice as gentle as the night air.

Since that night, something shifted between you and Bucky. The quiet man who barely spoke a word became a constant presence in your life. You didn’t know how he’d taken down the gang—single-handedly, no less—but he had ended the nightmare that stole your freedom.

Days passed, and slowly, you found pieces of your old life returning. The hotel manager—the one you used to gossip about with Bucky—tracked you down one afternoon. When he saw you, his expression softened, his tone low and warm.

“Life’s been hard on you,” he said, a quiet statement that felt like a hand on your shoulder.

You swallowed hard, your chest tight as you struggled to hold back tears.

He offered you a lifeline: “I have a friend who owns a small café. They’re looking for a barista. I know you’re good with coffee—you’re overqualified, honestly.”

Your breath hitched. A job. A normal job. No more vampire hours. No more hiding.

You smiled weakly, trying to speak past the lump in your throat. “Thank you,” you whispered, barely audible.

But relief came with a bittersweet edge. A job with regular hours—9 a.m. to 4 p.m.—meant no more morning train rides with Bucky. Those quiet, unspoken moments had become a comfort, and losing them stung more than you expected.

When Bucky heard you suggest a visit to your café, he didn’t hesitate. “I’ll stop by after I wake up.”

You paused, curiosity tugging at you. “Wait... what time do you usually sleep?”

“Sleep?” Bucky’s voice trailed off, his expression unreadable. Silence followed as he stared off at nothing. For him, sleep wasn’t a comfort. Resting for three long months in a coma had left its mark—it was enough sleep for a lifetime. Being idle, trapped in a body that couldn’t move, was unbearable. The thought of sleep brought back those suffocating memories, and he avoided it whenever he could.

Instead, Bucky spent his nights on late trains. The rhythmic clatter of wheels on tracks calmed him in a way nothing else did. The hum of motion, the gentle swaying, the faint, distant sound of announcements—it was constant, predictable, alive. Trains were his solace. There, in the quiet hum of machinery, Bucky didn’t feel alone.

“Well, aside from that,” you said, snapping him from his thoughts. “Visit my café, and I’ll give you the best sandwich you’ve ever had.” You paused, then remembered his preference. “Oh—come around 2 or 3 p.m. It’s quieter then. Fewer people.”

Bucky nodded, his usual silent agreement. “Alright.”

Since that day, Bucky stopped by your café whenever he could. Most weeks, he visited twice. Your co-workers noticed him immediately, his tall figure and striking demeanor impossible to miss. But none dared to approach him. Bucky had an aura—one that screamed, “Don’t talk to me.”

It had been a few months now, and the rainy season had settled in. One afternoon, the skies opened up. Rain pounded against the café windows, blurring the view outside. Bucky walked in, his clothes slightly damp, as if he’d miscalculated the storm. After finishing his sandwich, he stood to leave, glancing out at the relentless downpour.

“Wait!” You grabbed the bright yellow umbrella sitting near the counter and held it out to him.

Bucky frowned. “Do you have another color?”

You shook your head. “No. Take it.”

He stared at the umbrella, reluctant, almost as if offended by the bright hue. But after a moment, he sighed, his shoulders relaxing slightly. He took it.

“Bye!” you called as he left, your voice light with amusement.

☕☕☕☕

The next day started like any other. The café was warm and bustling as you worked behind the counter. The hum of the espresso machine, the hiss of steamed milk, and the soft murmur of conversations filled the air. You greeted customers with a smile, moved quickly between orders, and wiped down counters when the rush slowed.

Then you heard your name—spoken softly, yet somehow sharp enough to pierce through the noise.

You looked up, and your stomach dropped. Toby.

Your ex-boyfriend stood there. His face betrayed his shock. “It’s… wow. How? I don’t even know what to say. You’re… you’re here?”

Clearing your throat, you straightened, forcing calm into your voice. “I’m fine. Everything’s been taken care of. What do you want to order?”

Toby blinked, regaining focus. “Just… a regular hot Americano, please.”

“One hot Americano,” you repeated, turning to the machine. He followed your movements, lingering on the other side of the counter.

“You look good,” he said suddenly. His voice was soft, genuine. “I’m glad you’re okay now.”

You glanced at him, just for a moment. And then you saw it. The silver ring glinting on his left hand—fourth finger.

Before you could react, a deafening crack of thunder shook the café. Everyone flinched, covering their ears instinctively. Even Toby winced.

“That’s loud,” he muttered, forcing a smile. “I’m glad I brought an umbrella—just in case.”

“Yes,” you replied stiffly, handing him his coffee. “It’s always smart to prepare for the rain.”

Toby paused, his eyes lingering on you longer than they should have. “It’s good to see you,” he said softly. “And knowing you’re okay… it means a lot.”

You nodded slowly, your throat tight. “Goodbye, Toby.”

He left, the café door swinging shut behind him, the bell jangling softly.

The moment he was gone, everything around you felt distant, unreal. You went numb. Your hands moved on their own—wiping counters, refilling the sugar dispenser—but it was like your body was acting without you.

“I need to step out for a bit,” you mumbled to your coworker.

“Under this heavy rain? Are you serious?” she called, but you didn’t hear her. You were already out the door.

The rain hit you instantly, cold and heavy, soaking through your clothes in seconds. You squinted through the downpour, but you could still see him—Toby—his figure fading as he walked farther away.

Your feet hesitated at first, uncertainty freezing you in place. Should you follow him? But then he turned a corner, disappearing from sight, and something inside you broke.

You ran.

The rain blurred everything—your vision, your surroundings—but you didn’t stop. Water sloshed into your shoes, weighing you down, but you pushed forward. Your heart pounded, a warning deep in your chest. And then you saw him again.

He walked into a small gift shop. You slowed, panting, your chest heaving. Through the rain-slicked windows, you saw her—a woman—walking up to Toby with a smile. She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

CRACK. Another thunderclap shook the sky, louder this time. It felt like the thunder was mocking you.

☕☕☕☕

Back at the café, Bucky stepped inside, shaking water from the yellow umbrella you’d given him. His eyes swept the room quickly. “Where is she?” he asked your coworker.

“She went out. Said she needed to chase something. She didn’t take an umbrella or a jacket.”

Bucky didn’t wait to hear more. He turned and ran back into the rain, the yellow umbrella forgotten in his grip.

The rain was relentless. Bucky scanned the streets, his sharp gaze darting from one figure to the next. He moved quickly, following his instincts. Then he saw you.

You were walking slowly now, soaked to the bone, your shoulders slumped as if the weight of the world had settled there.

Bucky approached you quietly, matching your pace. When he reached you, he didn’t say a word. He simply opened the yellow umbrella above your head, shielding you from the rain.

You blinked, startled. The absence of cold raindrops pulled you from your thoughts, and you looked up. Bucky stood beside you, his face calm but unreadable, the umbrella angled to keep you dry.

For a moment, you just stared at him. His blue eyes searched yours, patient, steady—waiting.

“Bucky…” you whispered, your voice trembling.

He didn’t respond, but the look in his eyes said enough: I’m here.

The rain fell relentlessly, soaking through your clothes, clinging to your skin, but you welcomed it. You wanted the coldness to freeze your thoughts, the heaviness of the downpour to wash away the tears streaming down your cheeks. Maybe, just maybe, the rain could hide how much you were crying. But no amount of cold could numb the ache inside you.

Why did I go after him? you thought bitterly, scolding yourself. Deep down, you knew—you felt—that you shouldn’t have followed him. Your instincts had warned you, whispered that you wouldn’t like what you saw, that you’d be disappointed.

It’s not that you still loved him or had any lingering feelings for him. It was the memories—the life you had before all of this—that you missed. Memories have a cruel way of hurting you, a constant reminder of what’s lost, especially when you know you can’t turn back time or rewrite the past.

The breakup wasn’t filled with anger or betrayal. It had been mutual—an agreement you both made, though it shattered your heart. Toby had been kind, too kind. When the debt collectors started chasing you, hounding your brother’s unpaid loans, Toby had offered to pay it all. But you couldn’t let him. It wasn’t his burden to carry.

The debt collectors—the gangsters—ruined everything. They made your life unbearable, calling Toby’s parents, threatening him and anyone close to you. That’s when you decided it was enough. You ended the relationship to protect him, to free him. Then you ran. You moved across the country, hiding, surviving. You cut ties with friends because even they weren’t safe.

And now, seeing him… seeing him happy with someone else…

You pressed a hand to your chest, as if trying to hold the pieces of your heart together. If my brother had never taken that loan… I wouldn’t have to run. I wouldn’t have to hide. I wouldn’t have to live in constant fear.

The years of silent suffering weighed on you, and the truth surfaced: you’d been depressed all this time. You pushed it down, locked it away, told yourself you were fine because you had no choice but to keep going. But right now, in the middle of the rain, all of those feelings clawed their way to the surface.

Then you heard his voice.

“What can I do to help you?” Bucky’s voice was soft yet steady, cutting through the storm like a lifeline.

You froze. The words hit you harder than you expected. You blinked up at him, rainwater still running down your face like invisible tears.

Those words. That was what you wanted to hear. That was what you had needed for so long. Without thinking, you closed the distance between you, your arms wrapping tightly around Bucky’s torso.

“Nothing,” you whispered into his chest, your voice shaking. “Just stay.”

The dam broke. Your tears finally came—hot, unrelenting sobs wracking your body. You cried for everything you’d lost, for the years you spent pretending you were okay, for the regrets and burdens you had carried alone.

Bucky stood stiffly at first, his arms slightly raised as if unsure what to do. He was caught off guard. You’d fooled him. He thought you were okay after he’d taken care of the debt collectors—the men who had chased you, terrorized you. He thought his help had freed you. But it hadn’t.

She’s been hiding it, Bucky realized, his jaw tightening. Depressed people were like that—they hid their pain so well that even someone like him couldn’t see it.

Slowly, his arms came down around you, one hand resting lightly on your back, the other shielding your head from the rain. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He just held you as you cried, letting you break down in the safety of his presence.

Bucky brought you back to his place—a small, unassuming apartment that was surprisingly warm. He let you take a hot shower, the steam and heat finally driving the cold from your bones. When you emerged, you were wrapped in one of Bucky’s sweatshirts—soft, oversized, and smelling faintly like leather and soap.

You sat on his couch, knees drawn up, still sniffling quietly. Bucky handed you a small bar of chocolate.

“Mint chocolate?” you asked, the hint of a smile tugging at your lips despite yourself.

“Everyone likes chocolate,” Bucky replied, sitting across from you. He watched you carefully, his gaze softer now.

A long pause settled between you, broken only by the sound of rain tapping on the window. Then Bucky spoke, his tone even, but with an edge of seriousness.

“Do you want me to handle your brother?”

You looked up, confused. “Handle him?”

Bucky’s expression darkened slightly. “He’s the reason you’re living like this. In my line of work, people take responsibility for what they’ve caused. He’s the one responsible. He should pay for it.”

You stared at him, the weight of his words sinking in. “Thank you, but…” You hesitated, staring at your hands. “I’ve been looking for him for the past three years. I can’t find him.”

Bucky leaned back, arms crossing over his chest. His voice was calm but firm. “Don’t worry. I’ll find him.”

Your lips parted slightly, taken aback by the certainty in his words. “Jeez, Bucky… how could I ever repay you for all of this?”

Bucky shrugged, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips. “The coffee, the sandwiches, and that umbrella are enough.”

You huffed a small, tired laugh, shaking your head. For the first time in years, you felt a little lighter.

Bucky sat back, watching you. He didn’t need to say it, but you understood: you weren’t alone.

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[hanahanumana]

From AnaMaria Abramovic on Fb

Paste magazine has done an article about Michael and how underrated he is in Good Omens and I found a transcript since it's behind a paywall. Here's the link if anyone wants to subscribe. 💙

https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/amazon-prime-video/good-omens-michael-sheen-underrated-performance-explained-streaming

There’s so much to love about Prime Video’s Good Omens. A delightful adaptation of the popular Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novel of the same name, the series is romantic, thoughtful, hilarious, and heartfelt by turns. The story of the almost-apocalypse and what comes afterward, it wrestles with big concepts like destiny, free will, and forgiveness, all framed through the lens of an unorthodox relationship between an angel and a demon whose love for one another is a key to saving the world.

As anyone who has watched Good Omens already knows, nothing about this series works without the pair of lead performances at its center. Stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen—who play the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale, respectively—have the kind of lighting-in-a-bottle chemistry that’s the stuff of legend, and their characters’ every interaction conveys both their deep affection for one another and the Earth they’ve made their home. Their romance is the emotional linchpin around which most of the series turns, and their heartbreaking separation in the Season 2 finale is so devastating precisely because we’ve seen how necessary the two are to each other’s lives.

But it’s Sheen’s performance in that final scene that really twists the knife. As Aziraphale’s face crumples following his and Crowley’s long-awaited kiss, the actor manages to convey what feels like every possible human emotion in the span of less than thirty seconds as the angel realizes what he has both had and just lost. The moment is emotionally brutal to watch, particularly after sitting through five and a half episodes of Aziraphale looking as lovestruck as the lead in any rom-com. Sheen makes it all look effortless, shifting from giddy joy to devastated longing and everything in between, and we really don’t talk enough about how powerful and underrated his work in this series truly is.

Though he’s half of the central duo that makes Good Omens tick, Sheen’s role often tends to get overshadowed by his co-star’s. It’s not difficult to see why, given that Tennant gets to spend most of the show swanning around in tight trousers looking like the Platonic ideal of the charming bad boy, complete with flaming red hair and dramatic eyewear. Tennant also benefits from Crowley’s much more sympathetic emotional arc. I mean, it’s hard not to love a cynical demon with a heart of gold who’s been pining after his angelic best friend for literal millennia even after being cast out from Heaven. Of course, viewers are drawn to that—likely a lot more easily than the story of an angel who’s simply trying the best he can to do the right thing as he wrestles with his role in God’s Ineffable Plan. Plus, let’s be real, Tennant’s sizeable Doctor Who fanbase certainly doesn’t hurt his character’s popularity.

As a performer, Sheen has a long history of playing both real people (Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough) and offbeat villains (Prodigal Son’s Martin Whitly, Underworld’s Lucian, the Twilight Saga’s Aro). In some ways, the role of a fussy, bookish angel is playing more than a bit against type for him—Gaiman himself has said he originally intended for Sheen to be Crowley—but in his capable hands, Aziraphale becomes something much more than a simple avatar for the forces of Good (or even of God, for that matter). With a soft demeanor and a positively blinding smile, Sheen’s take on the character consistently radiates warmth and goodness, even as it contains surprisingly hidden depths. The former guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden who gifted a fleeing Adam and Eve his flaming sword and befriended the Serpent who caused their Fall, Azirphale isn’t a particularly conventional angel. He enjoys all-too-human indulgences like food and wine, runs a Hoarders-esque bookshop that never seems to sell anything, and spends most of his time making heart eyes at the being that’s meant to be his hereditary adversary.

Given the much more difficult task of playing the literal angel to Tennant’s charming devil, Sheen must find a way to make ideas like goodness and forgiveness as interesting and fun to watch as their darker counterparts. It’s a generally thankless task, but one that Sheen tackles with gusto, particularly in the series’ second season, as Good Omens explores Aziraphale’s slowly evolving idea of what he can and cannot accept in terms of being a soldier of Heaven. His growing understanding that the truth of creation is colored in shades of grey and compromise is often conveyed through little more than Sheen’s deftly shifting expressions and body language.

Our pop culture consistently struggles to portray the idea of goodness as something compelling or worth watching. Explicitly “good” characters, particularly those who are religiously coded, are frequently treated as the butt of some sort of unspoken joke they aren’t in on, used to underline the idea that faith is a form of naivety or that kindness is somehow a weakness. For a lot of people, the entire concept of turning the other cheek is a sucker’s bet, and believing in something greater than oneself, be it a higher power or a sense of purpose, is a waste of time. But Good Omens is a story grounded in the idea that faith, hope, and love—for one another, God, and the entire world—are active verbs. And nowhere is that more apparent than in Sheen’s characterization of the soft angel whose old-fashioned waistcoats mask a spine of steel and who refuses to give up—on Crowley, on humanity, or on the idea that Heaven is still something that can be saved.

Though he and Tennant have pretty much become a matched set at this point (both on and off-screen), Sheen’s performance has rarely gotten the critical accolades it deserves. (Tennant alone was nominated for a BAFTA for Season 2, and Sheen was categorized as a supporting actor when the series’ competed in the 2019 Saturn Awards.) But it is his quiet strength that holds up so much of the rest of the show around him, and Sheen deserves to be more frequently recognized for it. That he makes it look so easy is just another sign of how good his performance really is.

[ham-st4r]

𝑨𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒍𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 - 𝑳. 𝑯𝒆𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒖𝒏𝒈

𓆩♡𓆪pairing: heeseung + female reader!

𓆩♡𓆪warnings: smut, unprotected sex, oral male receiving, cum eating, amazon position, angst, fluff, heartbreak, break up, crying, cursing, sub heeseung! Jake playing match maker, heeseung is a big momma’s boy and a lil jungkook slander cause why not? lol I think that’s it.

𓆩♡𓆪summary: with your reputation of being a heartbreaker and a player, you find yourself finally breaking away from the terrible title after years, but what happens when the lonely nerd at your school catches your eye? Will he be your next unsuspecting victim, or will he be your last stop?

𓆩♡𓆪genre: smut, mature content read at your discretion, romance, tear jerker, inspired by Miley Cyrus - angels like you.

Number of words: 18,811k

Find your way around!

Message at the end contains spoilers, so please read the story before proceeding to the end.

“Okay, hear me out,” you say to your best friend Jake, whose currently sitting in front of you, stuffing his face with the god-awful food they serve in the cafeteria.

“NO,” he says after taking a drink of his water.

“But -“

“I said NO,” Jake repeated and gave you a look, one that said (Don’t start your bullshit again.)

It had been a while since your last victim, and since then, you swore that you were done with your old ways of being a heartbreaker. You even promised Jake you wouldn’t do it anymore cause you knew how much time you two spent apart whenever you went on one of your man-eating sprees, and you knew just how much he hated it.

But how could you resist the temptation of the boy sitting in the corner sipping on his apple juice while looking out the window?

You had your eye on him for a while now, but you never told Jake that, of course, and as much as you tried not to, you just couldn’t help but be attracted to the boy.

Only visually, of course. You haven’t been seriously interested in anyone since your ex.

Said attraction was named lee heeseung, and he fit your criteria perfectly from head to toe.

You watched his big round curious eyes, looking at all the friend groups throughout the cafeteria. After a while of envying them, he looked down and played with his fingers sighing to himself.

He looked so lonely sitting there all by himself, so why not give him some company?

Without saying anything, you stood up from your chair walking over to his table.

“If you talk to him, we’re done being friends,” Jake threatens you, but you know it’s all talk, and he’d be up texting you late at night like he always did, talking about his latest developments with his crush.

You just ignored him and continued to walk towards the wide-eyed confused-looking gentleman in the corner of the cafeteria. You pulled out an empty chair and sat next to him as he scooted further into the corner. “Hi, I’m y/n,” you say in the softest voice you could possibly muster.

He sat there frozen. You noticed his chest rising and falling rapidly and the nervous tapping of his foot as he looked around the cafeteria, wondering why, out of all the free seats, you decided to sit with him.

No one had ever sat with him before, not even in preschool. He was an outcast everywhere he went. He was like a walking people repellent.

So why, out of all the years of him seemingly being the world's most hated person, you decided to break that cycle by sitting next to him?

Before he got too lost in thought more than he already was, he certainly recognized your face, and it didn’t take long for him to connect the dots with you and your very, very poor reputation, and he didn’t want to be linked to a person like you at all.

He quickly got up from his seat, nearly knocking it over in the process while running out from the cafeteria, leaving you somewhat surprised but not really. You figured he probably knew what you were about from all the rumors people spread about you that all happened to be true, but you didn’t care, and neither did all the other unsuspecting boys you hooked up with cared well, until you broke their hearts, but this one seemed a little different.

You glanced over to your friend, and you couldn’t help but smile when you saw him laughing hysterically at your failure. You walked back over to Jake, sitting in your original seat. “Finally, someone that doesn’t want you.”

“Oh, he does. Just give me some time,” you replied, taking his apple from his tray, and he didn’t even bother stopping you from your daily routine.

“That confidence would be admirable, but right now, it’s just revolting,” he fake gagged. Hearing this from him didn’t surprise you one bit. In your many years of friendship, Jake always told you the truth, one of the many reasons you two became such good friends, and he was the only one that saw through all your bullshit, including how you did a complete 180 after your first relationship had ended.

Which ended bad, hell, bad was an understatement.

Jake remembers seeing you at your lowest point, crying your heart out cause the man you thought loved you had broken up with you for the “new popular girl” and told you he was only ever into you for your looks.

Of course, that made you feel like shit. It made you feel like you were just a piece of eye candy, and you never meant anything to him, and you’d never mean anything to anyone else, either.

It was hard not to believe that wasn’t the truth when you did everything for him, yet he still broke up with you.

So from then on, you decided to use the one thing your ex told you you did have, which was your looks. You used it to your sick advantage picking, unsuspecting men to lay with and ditch them in the morning ever since your ex-boyfriend you swore off relationships and decided from here on out you were going to make it your goal to break the hearts of many men making all the guys out there suffer because of what your boyfriend did to you.

All men were the same anyway, no different from your ex, and before they broke your heart, you’d break theirs just for revenge and maybe a sprinkle of your own enjoyment.

Jake was literally the only guy you got close to cause he was your childhood friend, but any other guys were ripe for your picking.

“Thanks, Jake,” your voice was laced with sarcasm as you bit into your (his) apple.

So the first attempt was a complete fail, you admit, but that didn’t stop you from making several.

The school halls had emptied out, and you knew heeseung was always last to leave to avoid the crowd being the awkward boy he was. You noticed this cause you always did the same exact thing, which you were mentally patting yourself on the back for cause it gave you this golden opportunity to stalk your prey.

He was humming a familiar tune while you silently watched him placing his books inside his locker until you made him jump in his place at the startling sound of your voice. “Hey”

He quickly turned around, gasping in shock at how close you were, which resulted in him accidentally dropping all his books to the ground.

You were quick to pick them up, and so was he. He bent down with you as you helped him pick them up one by one, you giggled when you spotted a romance novel amongst many other books. He silently prayed you wouldn’t see it, but he knew that was impossible cause it was on top of the other books you had neatly stacked and handed to him after rising to his shoulder level.

He hugged the books to his chest, pushing up the bridge of his glasses and awkwardly thanking you for helping him even though you were the cause of the accident.

He tried to walk past you, completely forgetting about putting his books away and shutting his locker door, but you stood in front of him, blocking his path.

A shaky sigh passed his lips as he looked down at you.

You always knew he was a cutie, but you had never seen him this close. He looked breath taking, and you couldn’t help but notice the adorable dangly earrings he was wearing. “What are you doing after school?” You asked, smiling up at him.

He faltered a bit from the queasy feeling he felt rising in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to say something stupid to you or embarrass himself, so he kept his answer short and to the point. “Study,” a cold tone accompanied the word, and his eyes widened in panic. He didn’t intend for it to come out sounding so rude.

Leave it to him to make a fool of himself with just one word. He was just trying to sound confident, but obviously, he failed. “I usually study for an hour when I get home,” he added softly, hoping you’d understand that he wasn’t trying to sound mean in the first place.

“Same,” you replied, contrary to the rumors of you not paying attention in class. You were actually quite smart, and you loved to learn. You just didn’t listen to your stupid boring teacher and his dumb way of teaching. If it wasn’t for getting a degree, you would have never even attended school.

“Really?!” He asked enthusiastically, surprising himself and you, but when it came to studying and school, it didn’t take much to get him excited.

You nodded with a small smile.

He looked down slightly. He didn’t know what else to say now to keep the conversation going, if you even wanted to call it that.

Unfortunately, this had always been a big problem for him. He was happy to answer any questions, which is probably the reason he’s always the first one raising his hand in class, confidently stating the answer and going into way more detail than he needed to, which pleased all his teachers but not the other students that were groaning in boredom every time he did so.

But right now, for the first time in his life, he was actually happy to have been at a loss for words cause he realized that, in all actuality, he shouldn’t be getting close to someone like you, so with a tiny shake of his head he turned back to his locker and placed his books inside before locking it he was about to walk away, but you stopped him once again, and he let out a little panicked squeak.

“Maybe we could study together sometime?” you innocently tilted your head to the side, waiting for his response to your offer.

He gulped as his eyes trailed down to your lips, that held a tiny smile. He couldn’t lie.

The offer sounded great. Who wouldn’t want to be accompanied by someone while doing their most favorite thing in the world and on top of that, you were so so pretty, and that’s what made him realize you were far too pretty for him, to put it simply, he was a loser so why would a smart, beautiful girl like you even give him the time of day and him being the smart boy he is instantly formulated the correct answer.

He heard all about you, knowing that any guy you talked to only ended up with a shattered heart and broken ego, and he was smart enough not to be like the rest, so he politely declined your offer once more. “I don’t think we should” his whole body shook with nerves. This was the first time he ever really stood his ground on something.

You fake pouted, trying to use your looks to make him give in, but you could tell he wasn’t going to, at least not yet. “Why?” You said in a sad tone.

He hated how weak his knees felt at the cute expression your face held, but he knew it was all just bait, and he wasn’t about to take it. “I’m just really busy so…” he trailed off as the air surrounding you both began to feel stuffy.

“So you can’t make time for me?” You ghosted your finger up his necktie, looking at him with puppy eyes.

His eyes darted to your fingers playing with his tie, and by now, he was sweaty due to how nervous you were making him. The last time he talked to a girl this long was the lunch date he took his mom out on last week.

He used every muscle in his body to pull himself out of this trance you had him in and moved his tie away from you. “P-please just let me by,” he stuttered helplessly, staring down at you with an uneasy expression on his face.

You moved aside and decided to let him go for now. You didn’t want to scare him off. You knew he’d come around sooner or later, but you figured with him, it’d most definitely be later.

“So, how about you?” You and Jake sat at the park bench. He had just finished telling you the details of how he scored a date with his crush next Friday, and you were happy for him. He’d been eyeing her for quite some time now, and you were happy that she reciprocated his feelings. “How’s it coming along?” He was currently asking you about your latest mission.

“He’s playing hard to get,” you scoffed and folded your arms.

“Or maybe he just doesn’t want to be got,” Jake says. “Everyone knows how you are.”

“He’s a nerd with zero friends, probably is a virgin, and literally has conversations with himself about astronomy stutters, and to top it all off, he keeps romantic novels in his fucking locker,” you deadpan. “He definitely wants to get got.”

“Ouch, imagine how he’d feel if he heard that” Jake empathized with the boy who he had never even spoken to a day of his life.

“He’d probably tell his mom and cry about it. That’s how much of a fucking loser he is,” you say with absolutely zero emotion.

You didn’t notice the concern written on your friend's face. This definitely wasn’t the y/n he knew back then. You never cursed, let alone made fun of people for being slightly different than others. Sometimes Jake would question his friendship with you after everything that happened with your ex, and so would others. He’d get weird stares from the whole school just by being seen with you, but that's not why he questioned it.

He questioned it for who you’ve become. He wonders how he even stayed beside you this whole time, especially after you cut him off for a whole year and then came back as an emotionless man-eater.

But he soon figured out why he stuck around. He knows deep down you’re still that sweet innocent person he met in grade school. He knows you’re still the y/n he became best friends with. He just hopes one day you’ll see your worth and not let that bastard of an ex-boyfriend still control you even after being out of your life for years.

Jake really had hoped that one of the guys you hooked up with would somehow be the one someone who could repair your broken heart. Of course, he never told you that, but even now, as you made fun of whoever this heeseung guy is, he still had this hope that maybe just maybe, he could sweep you off your feet and save you from this never-ending state of hurt and pure denial that you were in every since your ex broke up with you.

You were too lost in thought you didn’t even notice that Jake had stopped talking to you long ago.

Just then, you saw heeseung walking out of school, fingers clutching onto his backpack as he looked to be heading home for the day. “Gotta run” You left Jake behind and fastened your pace to catch up with your prey.

“Go get ‘em,” Jake sighed and watched you disappear in the distance. "There she goes."

“Hello again,” you chimed after catching up to heeseung.

“H-hi,” he gripped his bag tighter and moved away from you slightly. He didn’t want to be rude, so he greeted you as politely as he could despite his better judgment to just run to the other side of the road.

“Sorry about yesterday” You apologize for your actions towards him even though not an ounce of it was sincere. “And the day before that,” you added with an airy laugh.

He was pleasantly surprised that you were actually apologizing, and it had him rethinking about your personality. Maybe you weren’t as bad as the rumors made you out to be. “It’s okay,” he assured you.

“I guess I can be overbearing at times,” you nodded to yourself.

He felt bad that you felt the need to apologize because of him. You weren’t overbearing. It’s just he didn’t know how to handle you approaching him so suddenly, and he also didn’t know how to communicate that to you either. “You’re good,” he replied in a whisper.

You smiled at that cause you knew you were already making progress. “I think I maybe know why you’re hesitant to,” you said slowly, referring to him not wanting to study with you. “You’ve heard things.”

He was quick to stop you from your assumption, even if it was true. He didn’t want to make you feel bad about it. It was your life, and you were old enough to make your decisions and own up to your actions. “It’s not that.” He quickly denied.

You laughed quietly. “No, I get it. I wouldn’t want to be seen with me either, but I’m not all bad.”

He figured you couldn’t be, not with such an innocent smile. He heard the rumors, but it couldn’t be that bad, could it? Plus, he’d keep his guard up. It was only studying what could go wrong. And it would be nice to finally have some company every now and then and end this drought of being alone all his life. “What time?” He asked suddenly.

You were shocked that he was already letting his guard down so easily after putting up such a fight in the beginning. “You pick” You smiled brightly at him, and he awkwardly returned it.

“Maybe tomorrow after school. I know you and your friend hang out all the time, so I don’t want to interrupt” At some point during the walk home, he found himself being able to talk to you a little bit more freely, which was very, very uncharacteristic of him but he couldn’t miss his shot.

Long before you got a boyfriend, heeseung was quite fond of you. He stole quick little glances in your direction. He thought you were absolutely breathtaking, and he wanted to talk to you so badly he remembers many times he was so close to just saying you only live once and introducing himself to you.

But before he grew the balls to do so, you apparently had gotten a boyfriend, and he completely backed off. He didn’t want to disrespect you or your relationship, so he gave up on the idea of getting to know you entirely and judging by the way your new boyfriend looked, heeseung figured he never had a chance with you to begin with he was basically the opposite of your boyfriend in every way.

But one day, he overheard talk about your sudden breakup, and that only made him think about making a move on you again, but a new turn of events happened and a few months later, he heard some pretty harsh rumors circulating about you. Word got around his school like wildfire, and just like before, he was going in your opposite direction, knowing he shouldn’t get involved with someone like you, especially with his fragile heart.

But now that he finally got the chance to get to know you a little better and talk to you, he wasn’t going to let this golden opportunity slip away to hell with rumors, and even if you did try to chew him up and spit him out like all the others he was going to be cautious enough for that not to happen to him.

“After school is fine,” you quickly agreed.

“Okay,” he breathed out, and once again, he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but luckily his mom was calling him just in time to avoid the awkward silence that would have ensued. “Sorry,” he apologized to you and laughed awkwardly. You smiled softly while telling him it was alright. “Hi, Mom,” he smiled while taking the call. “Oh, that’s tomorrow?” His smile faded, and he bit his lip at the realization of accidentally making plans without thinking of his schedule first. “Okay…. No, it’s fine, I’ll be home by then… okay, bye, Mom, I love you!” his ears burned from embarrassment after he realized you had been next to him this whole time overhearing his conversation. “I uhh, I actually can’t meet you tomorrow. I promised my mom I’d take her shopping, sorry” he felt slightly guilty for standing you up just a few minutes after making plans, but nothing ever came before his mom.

You discreetly rolled your eyes, so he was the type to go home and cry to his mom. Pathetic, you thought, but you continued to put on your ever-so-convincing show. “No worries. How about Monday?” You say with such an alluring tone, a tone that nearly swept him right off his own two feet.

“Yeah,” he agreed instantly.

“Okay, see you then” You smiled and patted him on his shoulder. He looked at your hand, and you swore you saw him blushing.

“Yeah,” he replied in a daze-like state, still looking at where you had touched him. He’s never been touched by a girl ever, and just the small contact made his stomach do a flip.

“Bye, heeseung,” you waved with a convincing smile.

“Bye, y/n,” he waved back.

Once you turned around, your smile instantly faded. “So gullible,” you said to yourself.

The study date was rolling around, and normally, you probably would have stopped the chase by now and moved on cause he was boring and not worth your time. He was cute, but his personality was vomit-inducing, but as you slowly broke down his walls brick by brick, the anticipation was building, and you knew by the time you finished with him, there’d be nothing left which would give you the ultimate satisfaction.

You didn’t just want to break him. You wanted to bring him to his knees.

Heeseung was as nervous as all get up since he’d be meeting with you today. Even though you chatted briefly throughout the week, he couldn’t seem to calm himself down around you.

“Look at you all dressed up,” heeseung’s mom cooed, watching her son fixing a few loose strands of hair in the living room mirror.

He just blushed and the comment and smiled bashfully.

He didn’t think he was too dressed up, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t try a little harder than usual on his appearance. After all, today was the day he’d be studying with his crush.

His mom came closer and fixed the loose knot on his tie, getting a strong whiff of his father's cologne and smiling at his blushing face. “Who is she?” She said teasingly.

He pushed up the bridge of his glasses. There was no point in denying it. His mom could always see right through him anyway. “Her name is y/n. She's from one of my classes,” he explains nervously, fidgeting with his fingers.

His mom nods in understanding and doesn’t ask too many questions. She knew it’d only make him even more fidgety. “Don’t be nervous, pumpkin. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you,” she reassures him kissing his cheek and sending him off with his lunchbox and his favorite apple juice.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll see you later” he smiled and headed off to school.

Today is the day you thought.

Your place of business was at the school library, where your target unsuspectingly sat in the corner reading a huge textbook with his round frames perched atop his pointy nose.

You approached him slowly, and he noticed you in the corner of his eye. He quickly stood up once he noticed your presence and pulled out the chair next to him, gesturing for you to take a seat. “Hi, y/n,” he mustered up the courage to greet you first after you sat down.

“Hey, heeseung,” you said his name sweetly, and you could definitely see the blush on his face. You couldn’t help but wonder how just, within a few days, he had gotten more comfortable and completely let his guard down while he was around you.

Truth be told, after your apology for your earlier interactions with him, he felt a little more comfortable around you and figured people just liked to exaggerate when it came to spreading misinformation about you.

So far, from what he could see, none of those rumors had even been true, and you were a perfectly nice person.

“So what w-would you like to start off with?” He cleared his throat and lowered his head, feeling ashamed that he could barely even talk to you without stuttering.

“How about your favorite subject?” as soon as the words left your lips, he smiled brightly, maybe even a little too brightly.

“I’m so glad you asked!” He giddily rummaged through his bag, taking out loads of books and showing them to you excitedly, one by one, reading each of the titles to you out loud.

You smiled faintly. You’ve never seen someone so excited to study, not even Jake.

This was going to be interesting.

Three whole hours passed by, and to your surprise, you were actually having a really nice time. He patiently explained the things to you that you didn’t understand. His voice was soft and delicate as he took his own sweet time reading through paragraph after paragraph with perfect punctuation.

“Have you ever thought about being a teacher?” You asked genuinely curious cause he was scarily good at it. You learned more in these three hours with him than you had in all your other classes combined.

He blushed slightly and looked up at you. “M-me?” He pointed his index finger to his chest, and you nodded softly. “No, no, I could never,” he chuckled and shrunk back in his seat.

“Why’s that? You’re literally better than all my teachers, especially Jeon Jung, stupid kook” You rolled your eyes, causing heeseung to chuckle.

“He’s my least favorite too. He has such an odd way of explaining things. He makes everything more complicated than it really is,” you laughed along with him.

He looked at you, getting distracted by your pretty smile before he cleared his throat and answered your original question. “I don’t know. I just don’t think I could be. I’m sure, as you can see, not a lot of people like me, so…” he looked away from you, and you took note of the sadness in his eyes.

Instead of comforting him, you took his act of vulnerability and used it to your advantage. If this was years ago, you would have never even thought about doing something so evil but the new you didn’t care. “I like you” You put your hand on his thigh and rubbed it softly.

His breath hitched at your movement, and he looked down at your hand, swallowing thickly. “Y-you do?” He questioned, his tone slightly higher than before.

“How wouldn’t I?” you leaned into him closer, so close that your thigh was touching his, as you whispered to him. “You’re smart. You’re tall and handsome” You looked into his eyes and inched your hand up his thigh higher, dangerously high to be in such a public setting.

He looked at your eyes with his glazed-over ones completely transfixed by you. “You really think so?” You could smell the faint mint on his breath. That’s just how close you had gotten to him.

His eyes flickered to your lips as you reduced the space between the both of you to just a tiny little gap.

“I know so, who wouldn’t want someone as perfect as you?” You could tell he wanted to kiss you from the desperate look in his eyes. As he looked down at your inviting lips, you ghosted your lips over his, and he flinched from the contact.

To say he was nervous would be an understatement he could feel his entire body shaking as he clutched onto the side of his chair, squeezing it for dear life as he tried to press his lip’s against yours, only his glasses somehow slid down his nose at some point and got in the way slightly bumping your nose before your lips could fully meet. “S-sorry,” he quickly apologized with a tiny voice, heart nearly flying out from his rib cage, and as if things couldn’t get any worse, he hiccupped out of nowhere and startled you slightly. “Oh god, sorry, I’m so sorry” his eyes widened in fear as he looked down and held his head in his hands, completely horrified by what just happened. He had finally gotten his chance with you after all these years, and within seconds, he had just ruined it.

You unknowingly smile at his antics. It wasn’t that serious, but he was acting like it was the end of the world, you were thoroughly enjoying how nervous you were making him.

“I’m such an idiot,” he mumbled and started gathering his things, getting ready to leave. “I should go. I’m really sorry” You held his wrist and stopped him from getting up.

“Wait, would you like to try again?” You asked softly. You don’t know why, but you kinda felt bad, and you didn’t want him to go home and be embarrassed over something that there was nothing to even be embarrassed about.

“You w-want to? With me?” He had no idea how you could still even want anything to do with him after that public display of embarrassment.

“Of course, you silly. Who else?” You smiled while taking his glasses off and putting your hand behind his neck, bringing his face closer so you could kiss him properly this time.

He was timid about it at first, but he soon closed his eyes and firmly pressed his lip’s against yours for about three seconds. He leaned back and searched your face for any reaction.

You fluttered your eyes open, smiling at him, and that’s all it took to calm some of his nerves. He closed his eyes and did it again, surprising you with his slight assertiveness, but you gladly accepted his kiss and tugged softly on his hair. He breathed through his mouth, silently inviting you inside. He moaned into your mouth when he felt your tongue swirling around his, and maybe he wasn’t a virgin like you had initially thought cause he was a really good kisser.

He, unfortunately, broke the kiss first, but he had to. He was getting too overwhelmed by the taste of your sweet lips, and if he wasn’t careful enough, then he would have gotten fully hard in the school library. If that happened, he’d never be able to live it down. “Was that good?” He asked, looking at you with wide eyes, curiously waiting for your approval.

You didn’t even answer. You went back in for another kiss squeezing his thigh, and he moaned softly. “Is this okay?” You asked with your lips still on his, inching your hand higher and higher to the tent in his pants.

“Uhh,” he backed away slightly, and you figured you were a bit too eager, so you pulled back some.

“It’s okay. We don’t have to” You lowered your hand, but he quickly grabbed it and placed it over his bulge, groaning when you added slight pressure to the hyper-sensitive area.

“I want to,” he whispers. He knew full well it was way too soon to be engaging in such acts with you, but what could he say? He’s a twenty-one-year-old virgin with hormones that he can’t control.

You were surprised by how hard he was just from kissing you. You continued to palm over his clothed cock, and even through the thick material of his jeans, you could feel that he was big.

You started to have second thoughts about this. You didn’t want this to happen in public, let alone at the school you attended with him nearly every day. You were low, but this would be an all-time low even for you.

You removed your hand from between his legs, but he grabbed your wrist and placed your hand back over his crotch, only for you to move it again. “Why?” He whined.

“Not here, baby. Wanna come to my place?” You rushed out, the make-out session had you quite worked up as well, but in your defense, it had been a while since your last time.

“Yeah, I wanna,” He replied excitedly, packing up the rest of his stuff as quickly as possible.

You led the way to your apartment, impatiently fidgeting with your keys at the door.

You practically dragged him inside and took him to your bedroom right away. You pushed him back on your bed before he could even register what was happening.

He gasped in pure shock as he watched you quickly getting undressed. His eyes were glued to your body until you unclipped your bra, he hastily covered his eyes before he saw anything.

You giggled at his reaction and walked towards him to move his hands away from his face. The poor baby had gotten so red at just the mere sight of your bare tits, and you’re not sure how he’s gonna be able to handle you with nothing on. “You like?” You asked teasingly, he bit his lip while nodding his head, now shamelessly staring at your boobs and smiling like a complete dork.

You guided his hands to your breast so he could fondle them. He nervously cupped them in his large hands, squeezing on the soft flesh, you sighed in pleasure at the feeling of his warm palms rubbing all over your chest. “Further on the bed for me,” you instructed him after a few minutes while you worked on taking your bottoms off.

He did as you told him and rested his back against your headboard.

Even though he lacked experience, he didn’t need to be told what to do in a moment like this. Admittedly he had watched enough sex scenes in his life to know.

But still, that didn’t stop him from being a total nervous wreck.

He undressed himself along with you, whimpering softly when the material of his boxers brushed against his shaft. His cock rested on his tummy as pre cum pooled at the tip.

He sighed in relief after freeing himself from the tight restrictive material.

You finished taking your clothes off and when you looked up and saw him fully naked, lying down on your bed, you nearly drooled at the sight of his massive size.

Once he saw you staring a little too long, he shrunk back and slowly covered himself with his discarded boxers. He knew you’d probably been with other guys and that you were more than likely comparing his size to the men you were with before, which deflated whatever little self-esteem he had.

Insecurities and jealousy made its way into his system, and he was starting to rethink all of this.

You, on the other hand, were not rethinking anything at all, especially when you saw how good he looked, all laid out and ready for you. You couldn’t wait to feel him inside you cause you just knew he’d fill you up so well.

He tried to cover up, but you didn’t miss the way his cock twitched under his boxers, and you slowly peeled the material back so you could get a better look at his huge cock while you straddled his waist. “You’re so hard,” you whisper in amazement, running your fingers over his thick veiny shaft.

He shuddered from your touch, and he felt like he could pass out just from the overwhelming feeling of you sitting on top of him. He looked down between his legs, and you were not wrong. He was so hard that his tip was a deep red, and it was almost starting to feel painful from being like this for so long.

He blushed slightly from your comment, and his dick twitched again. You smiled and took him inside your palm, wrapping your fingers around his cock and jerking him off slowly. “Mmmh,” he moans, gripping at your bedsheets while tilting his head back in pleasure.

You giggle at his reaction and continue to pump his length. “Y/n, wait” he quickly gripped your wrist, stopping you from moving. “Please tell me you’re not just playing with me,” he breathed out, and he prayed that you wouldn’t get upset at his insinuation, but he just needed to know that you actually wanted him and this wasn’t all just a game for you.

“I’m not playing with you, baby,” you said emotionlessly as you lined yourself up with his tip, and just when you were about to sink down on him, his stupid phone rang.

“Oh no,” he looked at you with fear in his eyes as he realized he had lost track of time. He was supposed to be home at least an hour ago.

“Just forget it” You kissed his cheek.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, it’s my mom” he looked at you apologetically.

You leaned back and sighed, letting him take his stupid phone call.

He reached over to his pants pocket and pulled out his phone. “Hi, Mom!” he chirped.

You trailed kisses on his neck, and you could hear his moms' voice asking what time he’d be home. You smirked against his skin, wondering what his mom would think, knowing that you had her precious son lying under you in your bed minutes away from defiling him.

He squirmed as you were kissing him, trying his hardest not to make any suspicious sounds while he was on his phone.

“Are you still with y/n?” You stopped kissing him and froze at the mention of your name.

You couldn’t believe he told his mom about you.

He was thankful you had stopped kissing him cause now he could answer his mom properly. He took a deep breath to compose himself before he replied.

“Y-yeah, I’m sorry, Mom. I guess I just lost track of time. I’ll be home soon,” he informed her while trying to calm his beating heart, hoping he wasn’t in too much trouble for being out so late.

“Oh no, dear, it’s fine. It’s already so late. Maybe she’ll let you spend the night” By now, you were full-on listening to the conversation, and you nodded your head right away, letting him know he could spend the night.

His face lit up, and he looked genuinely happy. You zoned out the rest of the conversation while he was talking with his mom, and you were starting to have second thoughts about all of this. His mom literally trusted you enough with him to spend the night, and here you were just seconds away from crushing him, but you shook off those ridiculous thoughts. You were so close to completing your mission you couldn’t stop now.

He shyly thanked you for letting him stay the night after he ended the call. “My pleasure,” you say as you lean down to kiss his neck, licking and sucking under his earlobe earning whimpers from the trembling boy under you.

You noticed he was just kinda laying there, and when you looked up, you saw the hesitation in his eyes. “You can touch me. I don’t mind” You guided his hands to your waist, and he lightly rested them on your hips. You chuckled slightly. This was definitely a first for you. Normally, the guys you were with made the first move but with him, it was the complete opposite, and you couldn’t lie. You kinda liked it better this way. “Sweetheart, you’re not going to hurt me” You moved your hands from his pecs to cup his cheeks and peck him on the lips softly.

He laughed and loosened up a tiny bit, trailing his shaky hands up and down your curvy waist. “Okay, not gonna hurt you,” he told himself as he breathed out, looking everywhere except your chest, that was literally inches from his face.

You definitely knew there was something else that was making him hesitant, and it didn’t take long to figure out what it was.

“Is this your first time?” You asked cautiously, running your fingers through his hair to get him to relax a little.

“Yes,” he whispered as his eyes fluttered shut. Just when he thought you’d kick him out or make fun of him, you said something that made his heart feel at ease. “We’ll take it slow. I promise” You rubbed his cheek with the pad of your thumb. “If you ever want to stop, just grab my hand, okay?”

You waited a few more seconds, and he opened his eyes, nodding softly. “Okay”

You kissed his forehead and sat on top of him properly this time. He moaned out loud when he felt your core throbbing on top of his dick.

He squeezed your hips, whimpering softly as your slick coated his shaft.

You peppered his face with kisses giving him some more time to get used to the feeling before you started moving back and forth on him slowly. “Y/n… I don’t know” he closed his eyes tightly, trying to compose himself and settle his erratic heartbeat. “I don’t know if I can d-do this” Everything felt so sensitive and foreign, and it was all starting to become too overwhelming for him.

“Shh, sweetheart, I know you can just relax,” you reassured him while rolling your hips and feeling his thick length slipping through your wet slippery folds.

There wasn’t a word to describe what he was feeling right now. Everything was just too much. His heart was pounding in his chest, his body was trembling with anticipation, and all he could focus on was how beautiful you looked sitting on top of him. “You’re so beautiful” he looked at you with a shy smile as he sighed softly and nuzzled his face into your touch.

You felt something you haven’t felt in forever. For the first time in years, you were feeling butterflies from his simple words of endearment.

You ignored it, though. You just chalked it up to nerves since you hadn’t been with someone for a while. “Are you ready for me?” You asked quietly.

He just nodded, but you needed verbal confirmation, you were evil, but the last thing you wanted to do was pressure him into something he didn’t want to do. “Yes,” he whispered.

You didn’t want to just rush into it for his first time, but the ache between your legs was unbearable. You had never been this wet and impatient before.

You grabbed his length, aligning it with your entrance. You lifted yourself up slightly and sunk down on him with a little less ease than you had initially expected due to his sheer width.

He moaned as soon as his tip went in. He couldn’t control it. You felt so warm and tight around him. “Y/n I- you- oh god,” he whimpers in pleasure while looking up at you with his blown pupils. “It feels s-so good,” he panted.

“I know. Feels so good for me, too, sweetheart” he held your thighs for support as you slowly rocked your hips. “You’re so big, heeseung.” You moan his name lewdly.

“T-thank you” he blushed at your comment, his neck and chest turning a bright shade of red from your compliment.

You leaned back, putting your palms onto his thighs to hold yourself up while grinding on his cock. You moaned from the feeling of his tip reaching so deep inside you. Your head was already spinning from the overwhelming sensation you’d never felt anyone as deep as you felt him.

The sight in front of him was magical. Your body was literally perfect to him. The way your tits bounced up and down while you threw your head back, moaning his name in pleasure as you rode him, was utterly mesmerizing.

Don’t get him wrong, he was loving every last little bit of this, but he felt as if something was missing. He just couldn’t place his finger on it.

You noticed how he was less vocal than before, and you sat up from your position sitting on top of him once again. “You okay?” He just nodded his head slightly, but you could tell something was off about his behavior. He was very expressive, so he wasn’t a hard guy to read. “Just tell me, baby, it’s okay, I promise” You don’t even know why but ever since you found out he was a virgin, you felt this odd sense of responsibility to take care of him and make his first time memorable.

“I want to kiss you, but you’re too far away,” he mumbled with a pout on his face.

Adora- never mind.

You nodded and lifted yourself off of him gently so you could switch to a position that might be more comfortable for him. “Lay down” he laid flat on his back, resting his head on your pillows, giving you a quizzical look while doing so.

You lay between his legs and held onto his thighs, signaling for him to lift them up slightly. You leaned down and kissed him. You could feel him smiling into the kiss, and so were you.

He spread his legs open at your sides, loosely wrapping them around your lower body. “Can I?” He asks you timidly while grabbing his length between your bodies and rubbing himself through your folds to get wet enough to push back inside of you comfortably.

“Please do” he messily pushed his tip in and bucked his hips upwards, filling you up again. “Mmm, so good,” you breathed out. You’ve never felt so full before. He was definitely the best you’ve ever had by far.

He moved his hand back up to your waist once he was nestled deep inside of you, and confidently strummed his fingertips along your bare sides.

You began thrusting yourself on his cock, loving how the new angle gave you even more control over him. “Better?” You questioned with your now swollen lips above his.

“Yes,” he whimpers at the feeling of your walls dragging against his cock so perfectly it hadn’t even been a minute, and he was already so close. “Y/n” Just after he said your name, he was moaning loudly into your mouth as he came inside you without any warning whatsoever.

You rested your forehead on his while he was panting and moaning. You could feel him twitching and pulsating as he shot his hot seed into you, and you’ve never felt a better feeling. You bit your lip in pure ecstasy while listening to his moans as his warmth invaded your insides and slowly started seeping out of you.

Once he was finished, he opened his eyes painfully slow, feeling upset with himself for cumming first. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to” his lip wobbled, and you swore it made your heart ache to see him beating himself up over something he really had no control over.

“No baby, don’t be. It’s normal for your first time” Your reassurance helped him feel a little bit more at ease, but he still felt disappointed with himself. He was silent for a few moments. You gave him some time to calm down a bit as you stroked his cheek lovingly. You didn’t even realize the longer you spent in bed with him, the more you were starting to fall for him. “Please don’t be upset, sweetheart, it’s okay” Your heart has never felt this heavy in years, and you’re not even sure why you felt such a strong need to cheer him up and make him feel better about himself, but you did.

Once he saw the concern written on your face, he was filled with worry and instantly hugged you out of nowhere, hugs always made him feel better, so he thought maybe that would work for you too. You melted into his embrace and kissed him reassuringly. “Is it okay if we try again? I won’t mess up this time,” he whispered in your ear, causing a shiver to run down your spine.

“You didn’t mess up, baby. You did so good, but if you want, we can still try” You kissed his shoulder.

“Let’s try.” He said determined.

You slowly lifted yourself up off his chest, pecking him on the lips as you gently rocked against him. He had already gotten hard again within seconds.

You maintained intense eye contact with him, sensually bucking your hips into him in your dimly lit bedroom.

“Slower, please,” he whines with furrowed eyebrows gritting his teeth from the stimulation. “I just don’t want it to end,” he confesses.

“Me neither, hee, you’re making me feel so good” his heart rate increased by a thousand at the nickname you had just absentmindedly given him.

Unfortunately, now it was you who was on edge. Your clit brushing against his abdomen was making your toes curl in pleasure, and you couldn’t take much more.

The wetness of his previous orgasm made it easier for you to penetrate yourself on his cock as you thrust back and forth on him with ease.

He blushed at the lewd sticky sounds of arousal biting on his lower lip the louder they got with each one of your sensual thrusts.

You ran your fingers up his slim thighs tickling his sweaty flesh as he arched his back off the bed, unintentionally thrusting into you, making you both gasp and moan in pleasure.

“Kiss me again, please,” he begged in a soft voice as he wrapped his arms around you, hugging you close to his chest.

You instantly gave into his wishes and lowered yourself on your elbows, connecting your lips with his.

Halfway through the make-out session, your orgasm was approaching quickly, and he tightened his legs around you when you involuntarily clenched down on him.

He was twitching inside you again, and you could tell he was close, especially from how his mouth was hung open and he was moaning desperately into the kiss.

You couldn’t hang on anymore. You let go allowing your orgasm to finally wash over you. “Oh heeseung,” you cried out his name so soft and vulnerable.

You clenched around him so tight that he couldn’t resist the strong urge to cum, but he still tried. “Y/n I-“

“It’s okay. Let Go. It’s okay,” you repeated over and over again, guiding him through his high as you felt him squirting his warm cum inside you for the second time tonight, and you were already hooked on the feeling.

He whimpers in your ear when you rest your head beside him, breathing heavily while you ride out your orgasms together.

“Breathe, baby” You could feel his heart beating against your chest and his body shaking under you. You ran your fingers through his sweaty hair to soothe him as he hummed into your neck, taking deep breaths and inhaling your scent.

You lay like that for a few minutes until his breathing steadied out a bit. “Did you like it?” You ask nervously for some reason, maybe because deep in the back of your mind, you were scared you weren’t able to give him a good first-time experience.

This was so uncharacteristic of you. Normally your clothes would have been on, and you would have kicked him out the door, but you couldn’t even think about doing something so harsh to him, and on top of that, the warmth of his embrace felt too good to let go of him any time soon.

“I umm,” he stumbles over his words going back to his shy self once he is able to calm down a bit more.

Your heart skipped a beat. What if he didn’t enjoy it? An unnerving feeling settled in the pit of your stomach at the thought.

He was nervously searching for the right answer good would be an understatement, but there was no word to describe the pleasure you just had given to him, but he still tried to. “It was perfect,” he finally said, and you felt a sense of relief wash over you. “How was it for you?” He asks timidly, feeling the same emotions you had felt. He just prayed that it felt as good for you as it did for him.

“It was amazing” You leaned back to see the giddy smile on his face, and you felt your heart melt.

You.

Were.

Fucked.

It had been a day since then, and apparently, heeseung had plans, so you didn’t see him today, which was actually great for you cause you needed time to think about what the hell you had gotten yourself into.

“What are you thinking about?” Jake gave you a good minute before speaking again when you didn’t answer him the first time around. “Earth to y/n,” he waved his hand back and forth.

You snapped out of your daydream and looked at your friend. “Hmm?”

“I said what are you thinking about? You’ve been spaced the heck out this whole time.”

“I'm thinking,” you reply and take his apple off his lunch tray.

“Oh, you don’t say,” he glared at you.

“Fine, me and heeseung had sex” You rushed out and looked at Jake with wide eyes at the realization of what you just spilled out.

“And?” He looks at you, confused. This was nothing new for you.

“And I think I fucking like him” You reached across the table and grabbed jakes collar looking at him with crazy eyes.

“Oh,” is all he says.

“Oh? That’s all you have to say is fucking oh!” You shouted and drew the attention of the whole cafeteria.

“I c-can barely b-breathe,” you notice the red hue on his face and let him go apologetically.

“Oops,” you giggled. "sorry."

Jake took a deep inhale, trying to process what you were saying. “You what now?�� His voice was hoarse, and he took a sip of water before loosening his tie.

“Ok, so the other day, we studied for like three hours, and one thing led to another, so I took him back to my place,” you explained.

“So that’s why you didn’t answer my calls” Jake taps his chin. “Now it makes sense.”

You looked at him with an unamused expression. “Are you fucking serious?” You can’t believe he was paying more attention to the fact you missed his calls than the fact you might actually like someone since your ex.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he chuckled awkwardly and cleared his throat. “Continue”

“We were about to do it, but his mom called, but then she let him spend the night 'cause he told her I was a friend, and then we fucked” you sighed. “Very slow and sensually, passionately even, and then we cuddled and kissed for like another hour before going to sleep, and I think I like him” (you definitely weren’t going to tell him you went two more rounds in said hour he didn’t need to know all that) you went through every emotion right before your best friends eyes, and you felt like you were going to go crazy.

“Woah, that’s heavy” he took another deep inhale.

You just pouted and slouched in your chair.

“Hey, it’s okay” Jake was quick to sit next to you and pat your shoulder comfortingly.

You looked at him, and it didn’t take long for him to recognize that look. He knew you were just seconds away from crying. “Oh, come here, you poor thing,” he side-hugged you, and you rested your head on his shoulder while he stroked your back.

“I’m scared, Jakey,” you admitted.

“Why?” He whispers, ignoring the people staring at you two in the cafeteria.

“Cause I don’t think I can take being hurt again,” you sniffled.

“Y/n, not everyone is like him,” he says, referring to your ex. You both swore never to say his name again. “I’m sure heeseung is not that guy. I mean, as you said, he talks to himself about astronomy. He can’t be a bad guy,” Jake added, making you giggle.

That’s true. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was literally a sweetheart. No matter how much you tried to ignore it, everything about him attracted you, even his stupid little romance novels he tried to hide from you. You liked how passionate he was about what he liked. You love how awkward yet caring he was, and somehow even after hearing all those things about you, he still trusted you with his body, his feelings, and, most importantly, his heart.

After doing a little more thinking, you might have even liked him since the very beginning. As much as you tried to deny it by telling yourself you didn’t like his personality, in reality, it was a lie.

It was you trying to suppress feelings that you promised yourself you’d never feel again, but how could you not like him? He was adorable, and the little conversations he had with his mom made your heart swell. You had only spent a short time with him, but it was enough for you to fall for him.

And now that you have come to that realization, you know he was too good for you. He deserved someone equally as great as him, and you were far from that. You were the opposite, and after what you’ve done to so many others, you didn’t deserve to love, and you definitely didn’t deserve to be loved.

“I know you’re thinking hard about it, and I just want you to know that I’m here for you no matter what, okay?” He kissed the top of your head gently.

“Thank you, Jake,” you whispered.

“Anything for my little sister”

You had already texted heeseung the very next day to come over to your place so you could end this.

You couldn’t string him along longer than you already had. You were going to end it now. If you could go back in time and erase all this, then you surely would have.

Cause he, out of all people, didn’t deserve to get his heart broken.

���I'll put you down slow. Love you, goodbye♫

If there was a bright side to this, though, it would be cutting him out of your life now so he didn’t waste any more of his precious time on an undeserving person like you.

He immediately agreed to meet at your place after school. He was feeling so nervous, but he was also so excited to see you again.

When he saw your text earlier, he blushed, thinking back to when he spent the night at your place.

He remembered it like it was yesterday. Well, technically, it had only been like two days, but still.

He couldn’t stop smiling on his way to see you, and before he could make it out the door, his mom was teasing him. “Date night already?” She noticed his attire just like before he had made it a point to dress up for you.

“Mom!” He whined and stomped his foot like a little kid.

“I’m only teasing you. You look handsome as always” She couldn’t help but smile at how bright and lively her son looked.

“Thanks, Mom,” he chuckled and headed to the door. “Hey, mom?” He calls her a little hesitantly.

“Yes, pumpkin?” She answers him with her usual sweet tone.

“Can I come home an hour later?” He asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t that kinda late?” His curfew was already eight, and nine would really be pushing it.

“I know, Mom, but just this one time, please? I’ll even clean the house for a whole week” She saw the pleading look in his eyes, and how could she say no to such an adorable little face?

“Okay, fine, but no later than nine, young man” he rushes over to her and quickly pecks her on the cheek.

“I love you, mom, no later than nine, I promise!”

She watched him giddily running out the door with a huge smile on his face.

She remembers before when heeseung used to be a baby and had absolutely zero friends at school.

Those times were the hardest.

He was always so quiet when he came home from school she automatically took notice of how being an outcast was affecting him and took it upon herself to be his playmate.

She built Legos with him and even took him to the park with his dad to play basketball. Over the years, she quickly became his best friend and, sadly, his only friend.

Her heart ached for him, but at least he was happier after she started hanging out with him. She just wished someone would notice him. Sure, he was shy and reserved, but he was a sweet person. If anyone just took the time to see past his cute round frames and nerdy little exterior, they’d grow to love him in no time.

And apparently, you were that person that saw through it all.

Heeseung was always happy no matter what, but she could see the glow literally radiating off him after meeting you. She had no problem being there for heeseung, but a boy his age needed friends and to live a school life, not take her out to brunch every Sunday. She enjoyed all the time she spent with him, but she just really wanted to see him happy with someone else that wasn’t her or his father.

And she knew you must really be a special girl to have him acting like this. He was more outgoing and less shy about expressing himself. He spoke with so much more confidence, and she was forever grateful for you. Now her baby had someone to hang out with and something to laugh and talk about during dinner time, and maybe she’d just have to meet this one and only y/n someday.

You heard the soft knock on your door. It pained you so much to do this, but you had to. He didn’t deserve to hang around someone like you longer than he already had.

You could barely get your door open before heeseung was holding you close to his body and pressing his lip’s against yours. You didn’t have the power to even pull away cause his kisses were too addicting.

He stumbled into your apartment, and you shut the door behind him, messily pulling on his hair and deepening the kiss as he stuck his tongue inside your mouth, kissing you feverishly, kissing you like he hadn’t kissed you for years, yet it's only been two days he breathed heavily against your mouth as his nose brushed against yours every now and then.

He finally pulled away to give you a breather. “Sorry, I just missed you” his warm breath fanned across your face. “A lot,” he smiled sheepishly.

“Me too” You put your hands on his waist, and you heard him whimper slightly when you turned him around and backed him up against the couch. He fell back softly, and you straddled him, never disconnecting your lips from his for even a second.

He put his hands on your waist just like the other night bringing your body closer to his.

Once you felt his lips on yours, you completely forgot what you even called him over for, just his presence alone made you forget about everything else in the world except you and him.

He abruptly cut off the kiss. “Do you want to study?” Yes, it was random, he knew that, but the last thing he wanted was for you to think he only wanted to come over and have sex again. Sure, that would be a major plus, but he’d go home happy after just spending a few hours of quality time with you.

You laughed softly, and you thought only he could change the mood so quickly from a lust-filled kiss to a sweet innocent request for you to be his study Buddy, but that’s one of the many things that attracted you to him no matter what he was always so genuine and even if he was uncomfortable he’d still say what’s on his mind.

You pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “Sure,” you smiled and pecked his little cupid's bow.

Heeseung was a little hesitant to speak about this topic with you so soon, but he knew he could trust you. “My mom said she likes you” he broke the silence while writing down notes.

“You talk to your mom about me?” You asked, a little shocked, but you should have already known by the way he talked to her over the phone.

He shrunk back a little at the sound of your voice, mistaking your shocked tone for an angry one, and maybe this was a bad topic to bring up after all. “N-nevermind,” you noticed the sad look on his face and quickly cleared up what you meant.

“Sweetheart, I’m just shocked, that’s all,” you reassured him by placing your palm on his cheek and kissing him softly. You visibly watched him relax under your gentle touch.

“Maybe you two could meet sometime?” He said feeling hopeful.

“I don’t know, baby,” you say reluctantly.

“I-it’s fine. It's just I never brought anyone home before” he paused before speaking again. “My mom is just excited that I’m finally talking to someone, and I know it’d make her so happy if you came over, but yeah, just forget I said anything,” he fake laughed, trying to act like he wasn’t hurt but you could still see the frown on his face.

You hated seeing him down like that, so like a dumbass, you were setting up a date to meet his mom even though you knew you’d never actually go. You just wanted to see him happy again. “Actually, I'll check my schedule” You ruffled his hair, and just like that, he was smiling that beautiful smile once again.

“Really?” He said excitedly. “I know she’ll fall in love with you right away.”

The guilt was slowly building inside you at this point, and you’re not sure if you've ever felt this bad in your whole entire life.

How were you going to break up whatever this was that you and him had after this?

“And maybe I could meet your friend too?” He was tilting his head curiously while asking you.

You just smiled and nodded. He went back to writing down notes with a smile on his face while kicking his feet cause he couldn’t contain his excitement.

Yeah, you definitely never felt this bad.

Heeseung was walking to your and jakes table in the cafeteria with a nervous smile on his face, and it didn’t leave even after he sat down.

Jake was looking between the two of you, doing his best to contain his smile at how awkward you both were. He decided to help you both out a bit. “You must be the infamous heeseung,” Jake says.

“Y-yes,” heeseung mutters and offers a smile, still not being able to meet your friend's gaze.

“I’m Jake. It’s nice to finally meet you y/n told me about you.” Heeseung wiped his palm on his slacks and shook Jake's hand timidly.

The boy had gone red at the thought of you talking about him to your best friend. “Nice to m-meet you” he glanced up at Jake, who was smiling brightly at him, which made him feel just a bit more comfortable.

“I can see why y/n likes you” Jake chuckles and looks at you. “He’s adorable,” he mouthed to you while heeseung was still looking down. You smiled a little happy that Jake was approving of him so far. “I don’t see how you like her, though” Jake laughed, and you glared at him playfully.

Heeseung looked at you, and he didn’t know if Jake was joking or not, so he stayed silent.

Jake cleared his throat once he saw the older boy’s indifferent expression. “I’m only joking!” he patted Heeseung on the back, and he laughed awkwardly. “You looked like you were going to beat me up.” He joked.

Heeseung’s eyes widened in fear he’d never lay a finger on anyone in a harmful manner. “Again, I’m only joking” Jake could definitely see the boy's uneasiness, so he backed off and changed the topic. “So y/n told me you hung out the other day. What did you two study?”

Heeseung was full-on blushing, remembering that studying definitely wasn’t all you two did that night.

Jake looked at you, and you weren’t any better off. Neither of you were giving him much to work with to avoid any more awkward situations. “Physics is my favorite subject,” he adds, hoping to get either of you to say anything at this point.

Heeseung’s ears perked up at the mention of physics. “Mine too!” You rolled your eyes playfully at these two nerds in front of you. Of course, they would bond over school.

As they talked on and on about different school subjects, you tuned them out, just watching heeseung’s face light up as he held a proper conversation. You were happy that he wasn’t on the outside looking in anymore. Now he was a part of his own little circle, and you were thankful that your best friend was nice enough to give heeseung a chance cause you know not many would.

Heeseung’s phone rang, and you were knocked from your little trance. “Oh, that’s my mom. Sorry I have to go now, but I’ll see you Tomorrow?” He asked Jake as he was packing up his bag.

“I’ll be here,” Jake replied and gave heeseung a tiny wave.

Heeseung gave you a soft peck on your cheek before leaving. “Bye,” he waved to you both with a blush on his face, and just like that, he was out of sight.

♫Everyone says I look happy When it feels right♫

“You look happy,” Jake teased, and you just blushed, not bothering to address his playful comment. “If you get rid of him, I’ll kill you,” Jake said, and for once, you couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

You saluted and chuckled. “Yes, captain”

You tiredly dragged yourself out of bed. You couldn’t get any sleep after thinking about heeseung all night.

You had no idea what to do, especially after he met Jake. How were you going to tell your best friend about breaking things off with heeseung after he told you he liked him?

You shook it off and did your daily routine. You’d find a way around it somehow.

Your phone was ringing loudly from your bedroom, and you shuffled back to your bed, clearing your throat to get rid of your morning voice before answering. “Hi, y/n” You heard his sweet, honey-like voice across the line, and you swore your heart skipped a bit.

“Hey, sweetheart,” you replied back just as sweetly as you took a seat on your bed.

“Do you want to come over? I-I mean, My parents took a mini vacation, and they won’t be home for a while, so I was wondering if you maybe wanted to keep me company?” He rushed out, anxious to hear what you had to say.

♫Before you let go, just one more time♫

“Sure, what time, baby?” It couldn’t hurt to see him. You were already in a fucked up position, so spending one more day with him wouldn’t make a difference. Right?.

“Can you come over now?” He whined cutely.

“Of course,” you smiled even though he couldn’t see you.

“Okay, I’ll send you the address. See you soon!”

“Bye, baby,” you chuckled. He had already hung up before you could even reply. Just as you were about to get up, your phone rang again. “Hello?” You said with a tiny giggle.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hang up. I guess I was too excited to send the address” Without even being able to see him, you could tell he was fidgeting with that cute little nervous look on his face.

God, he was so adorable. “It’s okay, baby” You smiled at his thoughtfulness. “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out. Just the sound of your voice was giving him butterflies. “Bye, baby”

Now you were feeling butterflies. Did he just call you baby? This boy was going to be the death of you. “Bye, hee”

You plopped face down on your pillows, screaming into the soft material and kicking your feet like a love-struck teenager. “What’s happening to me?” You rolled over on your back and stared up at the ceiling clutching your racing heart.

♫Flowers in hand, waiting for me♫

Once you arrived, heeseung greeted you at the door immediately. “Hey, baby,” he blushed as he extended his hands out to you with a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

“Hi!” You smiled brightly and wrapped your hands around his waist as he welcomed your hug. “You smell good,” you giggled.

“Thank you” he whispered.

You pulled back from the hug, taking the flowers from him to smell them, and they were absolutely lovely. “They’re beautiful, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He closed the door behind you and awkwardly scratched his nape.

“You’re so cute” You couldn’t contain your smile. Everything he did was just too adorable.

Lee heeseung, why do you have to be so lovable?

“T-thank you,” he blushed while taking your hand in his leading you to his bedroom.

It didn’t take you long to get comfortable on his bed in his room. He was currently resting his head on your lap, telling you about his plans for the week while he had the house all to himself. You ran your fingers through his soft hair, and the boy couldn’t help but get distracted by your touch.

His eyes fell shut, and he let out a soft breath. He didn’t mean to, but he was getting just a little bit excited below the belt, and he moaned quietly when your fingertips brushed past his ear.

You looked at him and smiled slightly. He looked so good with his dusty blonde hair. He swallowed thickly when you stroked his cheek, and your eyes darted to his prominent Adam’s apple. You unknowingly licked your lips at the sight, your eyes raking over the rest of his body that was sprawled out on his bed, and you didn’t miss the bulge that his khaki pants did absolutely nothing to hide.

He looks up at you with a desperate expression on his face hoping you’d get the hint.

You didn’t need him to say anything to know what he needed. “Sit back for me, sweetheart” You loved how he did anything you said without even asking questions cause that’s how much he trusted you, but at the same time, you felt so guilty.

You lay between his legs leveling your face with his crotch, lightly kissing over the bulge in his pants. “O-oh,” he gripped at his bed sheets, and you looked up at him, watching the way his muscles flexed thanks to the lack of sleeves on his white tank top.

Slowly you ran your palm over his hard cock, feeling it twitch under your hand. “Up” You tapped his thigh, and he lifted his hips up, allowing you to easily remove his bottoms, revealing his delicious cock. “So pretty," you said to yourself, but he heard it somehow, and of course, like any other compliment you gave him, it made him blush.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Gosh, he was literally the cutest.

You kissed all the way up his shaft until you reached the tip, tasting the first bead of precum that pooled at his slit.

His body was already on fire, and every touch was making him feel little sparks on every inch of his body. “Ah~” his mouth fell open, and he moaned from the feeling of your tongue tracing over the veins on his hard cock.

You opened wide and took him halfway inside your mouth, sucking him off slowly. You moaned around his cock, satisfied with the little sounds he was making just for you.

♫ Won't call me by name, only baby♫

“Baby…” he looked at you, sitting between his legs. He let out a low groan, and he refused to believe that he was anywhere but heaven right now.

You lowered your hands from his thighs so you could fondle his full balls. You caressed them softly while hallowing your cheeks to take him deeper down your throat.

His sounds were driving you absolutely wild, and the way his cock rested heavily on your tongue felt nothing short of amazing. “Y/n?” He grabbed your hand so you would stop, and you immediately pulled off of him.

“What’s wrong?” You ask him with worry stroking his hand with your thumb while he squeezes yours lightly.

“Nothing, it’s just I didn’t want to, you know…” he trailed off shyly, and you knew what he was getting at.

“Baby, don’t worry, just enjoy yourself” You winked at him playfully, and just like that, your pretty plump lips were wrapped around him as you started sucking on his dick once again.

As soon as your lips made contact again, he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. “Oh god, I think I’m gonna- so- so close,” he warned you. He tried to push you back cause he didn’t want to cum in your mouth without your permission, but you moved his hand away, and not even a second later, he came down your throat with loud, broken moans. His sounds only increased in volume when you gently squeezed his balls and sucked him through his high.

You closed your eyes, focusing on the way he tasted. It was salty with a hint of sweetness, and you could have sworn you never had anything better inside your mouth than his warm cum.

After you felt the faint pulsating of his cock disappear, you pulled off him with a quiet pop licking the corners of your lips.

♫Take off your clothes, pretend that it's fine. A little more hurt won't kill you♫

He had his hands outstretched to you, silently asking you to come closer. You stood up momentarily and undressed. He used the opportunity to quickly pull off his tank top, leaving him completely naked you smiled and climbed back on top of him. “Was tha-" he cut you off by pressing his lips on yours, kissing you in a way he hadn’t before. It was sloppy wet messy, and rushed. You could feel how eager he was to kiss you by the way he was gripping tightly onto your waist.

He wanted to tell you so much, but he just couldn’t stop kissing you long enough to convey just how strong his feelings were for you.

He didn’t even give you space to breathe. He just held you closer, tighter, and kissed you rougher.

You willfully gave in and didn’t even try to resist anymore. He groaned when he tasted himself on your tongue as he dug his nails into your sides while unknowingly bucking his hips into your core.

He couldn’t help but moan out loud when you met him halfway, rutting yourself against his growing cock.

He didn’t know what came over him, but he suddenly flipped you over, and now he was on top of you for the first time ever. He clasped your hands with his while grinding his crotch into you.

The kiss was a complete mess drool was leaking at the corners of both of your lips. His breathing was rapid and unstable, but neither of you cared at this moment. Every single thing you did to each other felt perfect. “I need you s-so bad,” he panted.

“Take me. I’m all yours” he looked down at you with eyes full of need, and it only occurred to him that he was suddenly in the dominant position, and a nervous feeling began settling in his stomach.

You immediately noticed his unsure expression, and he was so thankful when you flipped him over and got back on top, taking charge of him once again. “Good?”

“Good,” he agreed with a tiny smile on his face. You were both in the same position when it was his first time, he grabbed his base and angled his tip at your entrance, pushing it in slowly, You were so wet that he easily slipped inside you with little to no resistance, filling you up just the way you needed.

Neither of you uttered a word. You only stared deeply into each other's eyes with your mouths parted in pleasure.

You rocked back and forth on him slowly at first, but you quickly got used to the feeling of his thick cock stretching you open and you rolled your hips faster.

His face was so precious, all twisted in pleasure, eyes deeply focused on you as you rode him.

He coyly moved his hands around your body, kneading your bottom with his large hands. He bit his lip softly, groaning as your walls contracted around him.

Usually, it took a while for you to cum with others, but with him, it was nothing. It had only been minutes, but that knot in your stomach was all too telling of the orgasm that was soon to come.

You moved your hand from his shoulder and gripped his wrist, guiding his hand to your clit. You threw your head back in pleasure. As soon as his warm fingers brushed over your nub he felt you squeezing around him tightly.

You picked up the pace, and he instinctively circled your clit faster and faster. You knew he was a quick learner, but not that quick. “Is that okay?” He asked, making sure you were feeling good too.

“Yes, baby,” you cupped his cheek, kissing him roughly as you felt your legs starting to give out due to your high coming in hot. “Don’t stop, hee. Please, I’m so close.”

He twitched at the sound of your voice when you called him baby. He absolutely loved it when you called him that.

He wasn’t thinking about stopping after hearing your moans of pleasure. He rubbed your clit even faster, and that sent you over the edge immediately. You clenched around him, triggering his own orgasm right after yours. “I’m cumming” he whispered breathlessly while filling you up with his seed, the convulsions of your pussy milking him until you were filled to the absolute brim with his sweet release.

“Heeseung,” you tiredly choked out his name through your sounds of ecstasy. You have never felt such a strong orgasm before. You couldn’t stop convulsing around him even if you tried.

“Baby,” he moaned while drawing out your nickname, you heard him sobbing quietly from the overwhelming orgasm.

You could feel him shaking with pleasure as his cum flowed into you like a never-ending stream. He painted your walls with spurt after spurt of his hot white release, making you feel warm inside and out.

You collapsed on his chest, your body still trembling with pleasure.

His bedroom fell silent only heavy breaths could be heard as you gently caressed each other's sweat-covered bodies.

About ten minutes later, you gained enough energy to get from on top of him, not worrying about the mess you both made on his sheets. After he pulled out of you, you both lay beside each other, and he covered you with the blankets holding you close to his side as he looked at you with a huge grin on his face. “I was scared of you for no reason” he carefully stroked your cheek with his thumb as he spoke softly. “You’re not a bad person at all.” He giggled.

You smiled at that, but boy, was he so wrong about you.

“You’re an angel,” he continued letting all his feelings pour out like an endless waterfall. “How did I get so lucky to have someone like you?”

His words were just a reminder of what you were slowly working up the courage to do, and you felt sick as tears welled in your eyes, but you fought them back. Instead of giving him an answer, you leaned in and pecked his lips, and his face instantly lit up like a christmas tree.

“D-do you umm… want to take a bath with me?” He asked tiredly, still stroking your cheek with his thumb as a blush dusted his cheeks.

“Sure” he got up and reached for your hand, helping you up out of his bed.

“Hee!” You squealed when he picked you up and walked you to his bathroom.

His loud laugh echoed in the tiled restroom as he set you down carefully. He kissed your cheek before running the warm water for you both.

You caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, and your smile instantly faded. You turned away, too ashamed of the reflection that stared back at you in your attempt to cut him out of your life. You had only got closer to him, and now you didn’t know how you’d be able to stay away from him, especially when he was smiling so sweetly at you and offering you his hand to help you inside the tub with him.

As you lay pressed against his warm chest feeling his gentle heartbeat on your back and the soft touches he left all over your body, all you could think was that you could stay like this forever.

Weeks had gone by since that night, and so many events had taken place heeseung had taken you on a date and worked up the courage to ask you to be his girlfriend, and you couldn’t find it in your heart to tell him no cause you knew it would crush his little heart.

It’s funny, isn’t it?

The reason you even talked to him in the first place was to destroy him break him down til there was nothing left, and now you were doing everything in your power just to make sure he had a smile on his face at all times you had even met his mom, and she was the sweetest lady ever. You knew exactly where heeseung got his kindness from. They were both literally angels.

♫ Baby, angels like you can't fly down here with me♫

And here you were, the devil in disguise.

You still haven’t told Jake about anything, at least not yet, anyways.

You were all currently sitting on the living room floor in a circle playing go fish at your place. Jake and heeseung had also grown closer over the months, and it warmed your heart to see they acted like real brothers.

You remember after heeseung first met Jake. He was nervously asking you. “Do you think Jake likes me?” He twiddled his fingers, hoping for a good response. “I hope he does,” he mumbles.

You just giggled at your boyfriend’s cuteness and pinched his cheeks. “He wouldn’t stop asking when you’re gonna have lunch with us again” heeseung smiled brightly after hearing that. “So yes, I think he likes you,” you added with a smile.

There was no one happier in the world than lee heeseung. After befriending you and Jake, not only did you like him, but so did your best friend. He finally felt like he belonged after all this time. He finally found people that he liked, loved even and people that he could trust.

Finally, for once in his life, he didn’t feel like an outcast. He finally felt acknowledged, and that’s all he’s ever longed for.

“No peaking,” Jake giggled and held his cards to his chest.

“Do you have a…….” You drew out the question, wondering which card you could ask for, not that it really mattered. Your hand was literally full of cards. “A nine?”

“You’re in luck” Jake passed you his nine, and you got rid of just one of the many cards in your hand, leaving Jake with two cards.

Heeseung had one card left, and he needed just one more pair to empty his hand and win. “Okay, does anyone have a” He looked back and forth between you and Jake, building the suspense for absolutely no reason other than to tease you both like he always had. You were both on the edge of your invisible seats, waiting for him to say which card he needed. “Wait, I have to go to the restroom” You and Jake both let out exaggerated sighs and groans, and heeseung just giggled. “No cheating, I trust you guys” he left his last card on the carpet, trusting you guys not to look at it or even change it, for that matter.

You sighed and picked at the carpet, waiting for your boyfriend to get back, and Jake noticed the uneasy look on your face right away. “I know that look, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you lied literally everything was wrong.

“Come on, y/n, you know you can talk to me” he was right. If anyone could keep a secret, it was Jake, but he was the one you were keeping the secret from, but it was time for you to come clean about everything.

“Please don’t kill me when I tell you this” Jake was searching your face waiting for you to laugh, but you never did. He just nodded his head and let you continue. “So you know how I was deciding if I was going to continue to see heeseung, right?” Jake nodded again, and you sighed. “I’m going to break up with him soon,” you said dreadfully, knowing full well your friend’s reaction wouldn’t be good at all.

“What the fuck, y/n?” You quickly shushed him, and he lowered his voice. “I thought you were done with that shit. You said you liked him. What the hell happened?” Jake whisper, shouted in anger.

♫I know that you're wrong for me♫

“I know, I know, and I do like him, but he deserves better,” you groaned and held your head in your hand while sighing as a painful expression made its way to your features at just the mention of breaking up with him.

Jake's expression softens at your reason for wanting to break up, and his heart never ached for anyone more than you right now. He couldn't imagine how you were feeling. “Y/n,” he sighs. “Don’t go so hard on yourself, okay?” You nodded your head, but your mind was already made up.

“It’ll be better for all of us this way” You smiled sadly. If Jake knew anything about you, he knew that whenever you said something, you meant it, but that doesn’t mean he always agreed with it, especially right now.

Jake just sighed and put his hand on your shoulder, squeezing it lightly. “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay” he was sure going to miss the hell out of that kid and the late-night gaming/studying session he had with him, but you were his best friend. He had to stand by you no matter what happened. “When are you going to break up with him?”

Heeseung was just coming back from the restroom. He had taken a bit longer than usual to keep adding to the suspense of the outcome of the game, knowing how easily it ruffled both of your feathers.

Just before he turned the corner, he heard you and Jake whispering about something, and he didn’t know why, but he stopped to listen, and he almost wished he hadn’t. “Break up with who?” He whispered, revealing himself from behind the door.

Your stomach dropped when you saw him standing there with a confused look on his face.

Jake froze in place, not having the courage to even look at heeseung.

“Who are you guys talking about?” Heeseung’s lip trembled as he tried his hardest to fight back his tears, praying that this wasn’t what he thought it was. “Baby, answer me” Your heart shattered at the sound of his pained voice.

When you didn’t answer him, he looked to Jake instead. “Jakey?” Tell me you guys are joking. Please tell me this is a game,” Heeseung muttered.

Jake wanted to say something so bad, but for the first time in his life, he just didn’t have the right words to say.

“Baby, please just liste-” You looked at him, tears pooling in your eyes and blurring your vision, but you could still see the distraught look on his face, and it broke you.

The pet name he had once loved hearing from you was now making him feel disgusted. “D-don’t call me that. Just tell me what you two were talking about,” he says weakly. “Were you planning on breaking up with me?”

“Yes, but-"

“I can’t believe you. I trusted you!” He shouted and looked over at Jake, who still had his head down. “And you, you knew, didn’t you?” He asked Jake.

“Hee, I’m sorr-" Jake tried to speak up, but heeseung was quick to cut him off.

“Just stop! I don’t want to fucking hear from either of you ever again!” you flinched at his tone. You’d never heard him cuss like that before. “I should have never trusted you. I should have listened to the rumors and stayed away” tears spilled from his eyes as he yelled in frustration. “I should have known somebody like you was incapable of having real emotions” he laughed pathetically at himself and wiped his tears. “I’m such an idiot! This is what you do. You use people up until you don’t want them anymore, and you throw them away.”

♫I'm everything they said I would be♫

It was the truth. Everything he said was the truth, and you couldn’t even fight back.

“Don’t say that. You know nothing about her!” Jake shouted back. He wasn’t just going to sit there and listen to heeseung talk about you that way.

“You know, you’re right. I thought I did, but I don’t, and I thought I knew you too turns out I don’t know either of you. You were like the brother I never had. I shared everything with you, but I guess it all meant nothing to you cause the whole time, all you did was talk behind my back."

♫It's not your fault I ruin everything♫

The room had gone completely silent. You were in a state of utter shock. You ruined your relationship. You ruined Jake and Heeseung’s friendship everything was destroyed all because of you.

“I believed that you had changed, I really did,” heeseung’s voice cracked as he directed his words at you. “I gave you my heart” he paused for a moment to composes his thoughts before continuing. “I trusted you with my body,” he gritted through his teeth, and you could hear the pure disgust in his tone. It broke your heart to hear him say such things to you. “I-I loved you” his voice sounded so weak and broken with the last words he spoke.

♫And it's not your fault I can't be what you need♫

You couldn’t fight back the tears anymore. You dropped your head as the first of many tears fell to the carpet.

He swallowed thickly, a fresh stream of warm tears rolling down his cheeks. “And I can’t even count how many times I wanted to tell you that, but I’m so glad I never did,” he spat, voice laced with venom as he walked past the both of you, grabbing his jacket and running home with tears in his eyes.

♫Gonna wish we never met on the day I leave♫

“Y/n, I’m sorry,” Jake whispers, feeling like this was all his fault, but it wasn’t. This was going to happen sooner or later, maybe not with this outcome, but the hurt that it caused was inevitable.

You stood up and ran to your room, bawling your eyes out as you heard Jake calling for you.

You’ve never felt so much pain in your whole entire life, not even when your ex told you he never loved you. It hurt so bad, and you felt so sick to the point you thought you might even throw up.

You couldn’t believe what you had done. If you had of just broken up with heeseung sooner, this could have all been avoided. You could have kept Jake out of your drama, but instead, you decided to be selfish, and because of that, now everyone was hurting all because of you.

♫Cause they say that misery loves company♫

The memory of his hurt face and teared stained cheeks gnawed at your guilty conscious.

You clutched your chest tightly, feeling like the air was slowly being sucked out of your lungs as you sobbed harder and harder. “I’m so sorry, baby,” you repeated over and over again while hugging yourself.

Even after hours had gone by, you still hadn’t moved an inch. You couldn’t stop crying, but this is what you deserved. You imagined this is how all your hookups felt after you used them up and threw them away like yesterday’s garbage.

Maybe somehow, this was their revenge and a catastrophic reminder that no matter what happens, you'll always reap what you sow.

♫Tonight, Mother says, "You don't look happy."♫

Heeseung went home and slammed the front door shut.

“You don’t look happy, pumpkin. What’s wrong?” He didn’t want to just ignore his mom like that, but he knew it’d break her heart if she saw him like this, so he locked himself in his room and cried all alone.

He sat down on his bed, but he couldn’t even get comfortable. He couldn’t stand knowing that this was the same bed you once laid in with him, the same bed where he cuddled you so lovingly and gave you every last drop of his love.

All the memories he had with you flashed before his teary eyes from the first day he saw you to just a few moments ago.

He couldn’t believe that you lied. Everything felt so real to him, the way you’d kiss him, the way you’d make love to him, and just knowing it was all an act made everything hurt ten times worse.

And the more he thinks about it, the worse it gets. He could see you wanting to play games with him but Jake too? What was in it for him? Why did he have to lie? Was it all just some sick game to the both of you? Was he just that naive and easy to fool?

The absolute worst part of all is that you came to his house and met his most beloved people in the world and lied to them straight to their faces like it was easy, like it was fun.

He knew he should have gone with his gut feeling and stayed away from you, but he was never one to judge a book by its cover, but this time he wished he had of cause. You know what they say.

The evilest girls have the prettiest face.

He curled himself up into a little ball in the corner of his room, hugging his knees tightly and slowly rocking back and forth. “Why does it hurt so bad?” He choked out. His breathing started to get uneven, and before he could even register what was happening, he started to hyperventilate, and his eyelids slowly fluttered shut while everything else around him went black.

You woke up to hundreds of texts from Jake asking you if you were alright, and you were beyond thankful for his concern, but you just didn’t have the strength to reply.

Instead, you went to your old texts with heeseung. By this time, he would have already texted you with a cute little message.

Good morning baby! flowers for you! 💐

That’s the text he’d always send to you every morning, and to see absolutely nothing from him, it broke your heart.

You tried to call him, but after several rings, it went to his voicemail. You sent more texts than you could count, hoping he’d respond, but he never did.

For the rest of the day, you stayed curled up in a ball on your bed, not even thinking of going to school today.

I’m sorry for last night. Can we talk?

Heeseung opened his phone and looked at the message Jake had sent him. He instantly blocked jakes number without a second thought.

He opened your messages next, and he teared up right away. He read through a few of them, and every single one made his heart hurt.

Baby

I miss you

I’m so sorry

Please let me explain

He didn’t bother reading anymore. He blocked your number along with Jake. There was no point in letting you explain last night was enough of an explanation for him.

He curled on his bed and sobbed quietly into his pillow, trying to ignore the agonizing pain he felt in his chest.

“Pumpkin?” He heard his mom's voice call from behind his bedroom door. She frowned when she didn’t hear his voice on the other end. “Heeseung?” She twisted the knob and saw him all bundled up beneath his blankets, and she heard his quiet sniffles. “Oh no, my sweet boy, what happened?” She sat down on his bed and stroked his hair.

He pulled his covers back and wrapped his arms around his mother, wetting her shirt with his teary cheeks. “Y/n, broke up with me,” he said in between labored breaths.

Her heart instantly dropped at the news. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it.

How could you have done such a thing to her precious baby, especially when you always looked at him so fondly whenever you came over for dinner.

How could you possibly even fathom breaking up with him after you professed such love, and how could you break up with him after you told her straight to her face that you’d love him unconditionally and take care of him no matter what? “Mom, can I stay home? I don’t feel like going to school today.” He mumbled.

“Of course, you can stay home, sweetie” She smoothed her hands over his back gently. “You can talk to me whenever you’re ready,” she whispered softly and waited for him to open up.

By the time he finished telling her everything and crying his poor little heart out, it was nearing midnight, and he still didn’t look like he’d be done crying anytime soon.

“Shh,” she patted his back, trying to calm him down. After a few moments, his breathing evened out a bit, and shaky breaths left his quivering lips.

She let go of him and allowed him to lie back into his pillows. “I know it’s hard, but try to get some rest, okay, sweetie” he nodded weakly and wiped his tears.

“Okay,” he whispered shakily and closed his swollen eyes. She placed one kiss on his forehead before shutting off his light. “Goodnight, baby,” she tucked him in, and she could already hear his breath becoming more stable. She quietly left his room and shut the door behind her.

She rested her back against the door, and tears welled in her eyes. She felt like it was all her fault for trusting you with her son to begin with.

It had been officially one week since your and Heeseung’s unofficial breakup, and you were just laid up in bed pining over him, but you quickly realized you had to do something. You had to get your baby back. You couldn’t just sit there and let someone like him get away so easily.

You called Jake, and he picked up right away. He had been waiting by his phone for your call all day. “Y/n? Are you okay? What can I do?”

You smiled at hearing your friend's concern for you. “Well, Jake, I’m as okay as a person can be after losing the love of their life,” you let out an airy laugh.

“Y/n…..” you heard him sigh. “I’m sorry,” he apologized even though it wasn’t his fault.

“Jake, don’t apologize. It’s not your fault, and if anything, I should be sorry to you because I ruined everything,” your voice cracked.

“Don’t be hard on yourself, y/n. You’ve been through enough” he paused before asking you a question that’s been on his mind since yesterday. “Did you try contacting him? I tried texting, but I think he might have blocked me.”

“I tried, but he didn’t answer” You sighed deeply, and you couldn’t hold back your quiet sobs.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, don’t cry. We’re gonna explain everything, and we’re gonna get him back. I promise you hear me” he heard your silence over the line and continued. “Besides, he owes us a rematch of go fish,” he chuckled to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, you’re right” You laughed a little, before you finished the call with Jake. You both made a plan to go to heeseung’s house and apologize to him.

Cause no matter what, you were going to get him back.

You and Jake met up later that day, and you were both currently standing outside heeseung's door. “Take a deep breath. You got this” You half smiled at Jake and knocked on heeseung’s door quietly.

His mom came to the door after a few seconds. “Hel- oh,” her face dropped a little once she saw you and Jake, and it took everything in her not to just slam the door right in your guys' faces.

You smiled sadly, and you assumed she must have already gotten the news about what happened between you and heeseung. “Hi, Ms lee,” you muttered. Jake just smiled awkwardly behind you.

“Well, it was nice seeing you both, but I have work to do” She closed the door halfway, and you spoke up before she could shut it.

“Wait, I-is heeseung here?” You asked timidly.

“Mom, wh-“ heeseung stopped midway on the staircase when he saw you and Jake standing at the door. He made eye contact with you, and he quickly turned around and went back upstairs.

You parted your mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“Have a good day,” ms lee said with a stern look and closed the door.

You turned to Jake, and your lip quivered. “Jake,” you broke down into tears, and Jake immediately wrapped you in his arms, frowning when he heard your sniffles.

You both stood outside the door for a solid three minutes before you decided to leave. “Come on,” Jake whispered while patting your back and carefully walking you down the steps.

Heeseung peeked out of his blinds, and when he saw you and Jake getting further away from his house, a tear rolled down his cheek.

He sat down on his bed and stared blankly at the floor, fiddling with his fingers. “Are you okay?” His mom asks when she went to check on him.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he gave his mom a half smile. “Its just gonna take some time,” he sighed while she nodded her head in understanding. “What did they want?” He asked curiously.

“Well, if I’m being honest, dear, I was too angry to let them explain,” she told him truthfully. “But I’m sure it’s nothing to concern yourself with” She patted his head softly.

“Yeah,” he agreed. There’s nothing that you or Jake needed to explain. He got played by you, just like the rumors said. He thought he was smart enough not to let that happen to himself but look what that way of thinking got him.

Nothing but a broken heart.

“Come down for dinner soon, okay?”

“Okay, Mom” She left him alone for a little while and gave him some time to himself.

He caught sight of his phone, and he knew he shouldn’t, but he unlocked it anyways and scrolled through the many pictures you had taken together. The more he scrolled, the more it hurt, and when he came across the selfie you all took the night he overheard you talking about breaking up with him, he relived that moment all over again.

He quickly shut off his phone and tossed it to the side before wiping his tears with his shirt and going downstairs.

“Y/n, we just have to try again, that’s all,” Jake explained to you while watching you bawl your eyes out on the couch in your living room.

“Can’t you see he wants nothing to do with me? He saw me, and he walked away” You sobbed loudly and buried your head in your hands.

Jake never thought he’d ever see you this hurt. Even when your ex broke up with you, you didn’t take it this hard. “Come on, we barely even tried. We can’t just give up that easy,” he patted your shoulder. “I know you’re not trying your hardest cause you think you’re no good for him, but you have to see past that, okay? He still loves you. I know he does. I’m sure if you just explain, he’ll understand, and I mean, come on, it’ll be something straight out of those romance novels he’s so in love with,” Jake giggled.

Jake was right, and you knew it. You just had to get over yourself long enough to believe that you deserved an angel like heeseung. It would be challenging, but you promised yourself you’d change so you could make things work between you and him. “Thank you, Jake,” you cried on his shoulder and released a deep breath. You really don’t know what you’d do or where you’d be without him.

“I told you anything for my little sister” he hugged you back and comforted you for the rest of the night.

♫Every word in poetry♫

So the plan was to act out a scene in a romance novel, his favorite scene, as cliche as it was, you would stand outside his window with big, bold letter lights that said “I love you, and I’m sorry.”

If the plan went as well as it did in the novel, then by the end of the night, heeseung would be yours again.

You and Jake waited till nightfall to set everything up cause you’d probably get caught if you did it in broad daylight.

The letters were absolutely huge, and they nearly lit up the whole freaking neighborhood cause of the big bulbs that were in them. You sprinkled rose petals on the ground, and you searched for tiny pebbles to throw at his window to wake him up.

“Okay, I think that’s everything” Jake stood up and dusted his hands off. “You got this!” He gave you a thumbs up and hid behind some bushes a couple of feet away.

You took a deep breath and tossed the first pebble at his window, completely missing your target.

You shook the nerves off a bit and threw another, this time hitting your target right down the middle.

You waited a few seconds before throwing some more, and eventually, it woke him up.

Heeseung stirred in his bed at the foreign noise against his window, after a moment the strange sound had woken him up. He peeled his covers back as he made his way out of bed to see what was happening. “Y/n?” He mumbled tiredly and rubbed his eyes before opening the window.

“Hi!” you waved when you saw him peeking out the window.

He gasped once his eyes adjusted, and he realized that it was actually you standing outside his window, he nearly teared up when he saw your elaborate apology. This was the absolute last thing he was expecting, but he loved each and every last second of it. He put his glasses and his robe on before running downstairs and going out to his backyard.

You lowered your head in defeat when he left from the window. You had no idea why you even thought that this would wor-

“Y/n!” Heeseung said your name way too loud for it to be past midnight, but he couldn’t care less. All he cared about was the fact that you were standing before him once again and apologizing for your past mistakes. “Hi,” he said breathlessly while squeezing you in a tight hug.

You broke down in tears the instant you saw him running to you, and when you felt him in your arms again, everything felt so complete. “I’m so sorry, baby,” you apologized to him over and over again.

Him being the sweet boy he is, forgave you instantly as he stroked your back with his palms enjoying the feeling of being in your arms once more. “Baby. I’m sorry for not letting you explain” he leaned back and stared into your teary eyes. “I love you,” he confessed as his eyes watered.

“I love you too. I love you so much, and I’m so sorry for breaking up with you. It’s just I felt like I was wrong for you and that you deserved someone bett-"

It’s been way too long since he last kissed you, and whatever nonsense you were spewing out could wait til later.

He pressed his lip’s against yours softly, and you both melted into each other instantaneously. Your lips molded perfectly together with his, and even if his goofy little glasses were in the way, it was still the best kiss you both ever shared.

“Ahem!” Jake came from behind the tree when you and heeseung started to get a little handsy. “Hey there,” Jake waved to Heeseung timidly and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Heeseung's face lit up. He couldn’t believe he had both of his favorite people standing in front of him, going through all this trouble to apologize just for him. No matter what happened in the past, he didn’t care. All he cared about was the fact that you were all finally together again.

“Group hug!” You cheered as Jake joined your tiny little circle, and you celebrated the small reunion.

“I love you guys” You were about to keel over from his cuteness as you kissed his cheek. He was thankful it was dark. Otherwise, you would have seen his red cheeks.

Jake ruffled heeseung’s hair as he smiled at you both. It felt great to have you both back. He looked at you, and he recognized that smile from anywhere. It was that same smile as the day he first met you, and he knew the y/n he became best friends with back in grade school was finally back, all thanks to a nerdy guy named lee heeseung, who read romance novels and talked to himself about astronomy. “You owe us a rematch,” Jake said once you guys broke the hug, he pulled out a box of playing cards from his pocket.

“Deal!” Heeseung said excitedly while you all walked to his house and upstairs to his room.

Once you all got into his room, you sat in a circled and set up the card game heeseung had two cards, and you had one, while Jake had five.

You just needed one more match to end the game and win. “Does anyone have a queen?” You squinted your eyes, hoping that someone had your matching card.

“I do!” Heeseung shouted happily, even though that meant he lost to you, and Jake giggled at his excitement. “And she’s right here” he put his arm around your waist and kissed your cheek while giving you his second-to-last card.

The beginning was rocky, the middle was terrible, but the future was every bit of bright.

And now that you think back at it, you weren’t everything they said you would be.

FIN.

Thank you for reading. Please reblog and leave feedback. - 🐹

Taglist 🔖 @whoslai @beomibeom @anonant @loviseamms @ice-dandan20 @alienqbrain @djdjjdjfjf @en-may-z @weyukinluv @heeseungsim @kimochiloveshee @yumispky @prestineaugstine @heej43 (bold can’t be tagged :/)

So quick little note even though I don’t normally make these, I wanted to explain a bit of this story. Obviously, this story was made with inspiration from angels like you by Miley Cyrus. Maybe I interpreted the song wrong, but I feel like it was a sad song. I thought about making an ending where they did not get back together, but I figured most of the audience would not really be happy with a sad ending, and neither would I, so I decided to make this one happy anyways. I chose the whole player plot for y/n cause I think it fits the lyrics well. When it says, “I know that you’re wrong for me,” it’s almost like y/n realizing that hee was too good for her, and even though he loves her, she doesn’t feel like she deserves his love after everything she’s done. I feel like this story is pretty self-explanatory. I know the whole story doesn’t replicate the entire song, but I feel like I put a different little spice to it that I hope you guys enjoyed. But yeah, let me know how you liked it, and also, would you guys like more of these little explanations at the end?

[whenyoufellfromheaven]

WHEN YOU FELL FROM HEAVEN

by Alyson Greaves

Expand this post to read the first three chapters for free, right here!

How to Fly, book one of When You Fell from Heaven, which comprises the first ten chapters of the story, is available:

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Or you can read all current chapters on my Patreon! Subscribing to my Patreon at the $5 tier will get you all fifteen chapters (so far) of When You Fell from Heaven. You will also get access to my ongoing stories The Catch, a forced-fem riff on Fifty Shades with illustrations by Emory Ahlberg, and Kimmy, a horrifying take on the Halloween costume that won’t let you out. And you’ll get the full epub of the revised version of Show Girl, my egg-cracking trans romance, and access to chapters of The Sisters of Dorley two weeks early!

One

THE BOY WITH THE RUBBER BAND IN HIS HAIR

He thought there would be more palm trees.

The car bounces off a pothole and wakes him from a restless sleep, and Max’s first thought, when he pushes himself up in the back seat and stares out the window, is that California doesn’t look like California. His whole life, California’s been a near-mythical paradise, drenched in sun, scattered with palm trees and populated entirely by beautiful people. But all he sees is just more America. More of the same suburbs they’ve seen, on and off, for the five days of their journey. It looks almost exactly like Rock Falls, the nowhere town in the middle of the country they spent a whole day walking around because Dad needed a break from driving. The same strip malls, the same absurdly wide streets, the same endless sky.

It’s just brighter here. More painful to look at.

After everything that happened, Max never expected to miss New York, but for the whole drive across the country he’s been feeling increasingly like an animal bred in captivity let suddenly out into the wild. Where’s the density? Where are the people?

All in their fucking cars, apparently. Same as him.

Screw this. He needs music.

His headphones must have slipped off while he was sleeping, because Clay’s holding them out for him. Max takes them, smiles at his brother in silent thanks, and thumbs blindly at his Discman until the first track starts again. The throaty rumble of someone seriously abusing a bass guitar immediately shuts out the rattle of the trailer and the hum of tires on asphalt, and Max turns back to the window to watch building after bleached building glide slowly by as they head for their new home, for his new life.

He doesn’t exactly have high hopes.

* * *

Taking the stairs two at a time—but sometimes jumping back up one just because she can—Taylor revels in her first Saturday alone in the house. Her parents are away all week! And that means she can do whatever she wants! Sure, she normally does whatever she wants anyway, but now she can do it without her mom complaining about the noise.

She sticks the landing in the front hall, bounces right into the living room, and collects the remote from its little holster on the side of Dad’s armchair without slowing down. The CD changer opens for her, prompting the whole stereo setup to light up like a space shuttle control board, and Taylor gets to work dumping out all of Mom and Dad’s boring old crap so she can listen to something good down here for a change. She’s got a handful of favorites on her, but she’s also got something that came out almost a month ago that she still hasn’t gotten to listen to on anything better than the crappy little portable stereo in her room. And as the speakers shake with the opening bars of Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, Taylor readies the remote like a microphone and prepares to strut.

Holy shizz, she loves this song. She turns it up until the floor hums along.

Gordo should have been the one to get her this CD. She was excited about it for, like, ever, and he knows she loves Destiny’s Child, but did he remember? Nope with a big fat N, O, P and E. So she got it for herself a week late.

Freaking Gordo! He was supposed to come over today, help her take advantage of the parentals being away, but he’s flaked, which is more and more like him lately. Five texts on her Sidekick when she woke up, and not one of them was an apology! He’s preparing for college; he has football camp coming up; she wouldn’t understand.

Taylor scowls. It’s a sore point: no cheer camp this year. But Mom and Dad had the vacation booked anyway, and Garrett barely inhabits any part of the house that isn’t his room, the couch or the kitchen, so at least she has some time to relax.

Time in which she should stop thinking about her disappointing boyfriend.

Leaning into the beat, Taylor lets it lift her mood again, and when the final chorus comes around, she times her, “Yeah!” with a precise kick to the latch on the patio doors, opening the house to the summer breeze. As she dances out into the backyard, she points the remote back into the house and ups the volume another couple of notches.

Taylor lets the album play as she does some of her warm-up stretches. She’s not planning to go through her whole routine right now, but she can’t start the day without moving just a bit, and today she gets to do so to some loud music.

There’s a reason she always practices to music. Nothing gets her going like a beat and lyrics she can yell. And under any other circumstances, she might be a bit embarrassed, because her singing voice isn’t exactly great and it’s worse when she’s stretching a leg up over her head, but their neighbors on the right can’t get out into their backyard anymore without help from their grandchildren, and the house on the left’s been empty since—

Wait. It got sold, right? Isn’t someone moving in soon? Really soon? Like, today, maybe?

Shoot!

Given Taylor’s luck, they probably already moved in yesterday, and right now, cute boys are watching her out of their upstairs windows and laughing at how she almost fell flat on her face when she tried to do a handstand and sing Naughty Girl at the same time.

She shuts off the music, throws the remote down into the grass, and runs to the fence. There won’t be anybody there, she’s sure, but paranoia requires that she check.

Every house on this street is the same—on the outside, at least—and that means Taylor’s house has the same row of stubby trees against the privacy fence as their (potential) new neighbors. They’re staggered, so no tree interferes with any other, but together they provide enough cover that Taylor can stand on a lawn chair and peer over the fence and be pretty sure she can’t be seen.

Nobody in the rooms upstairs. And nobody in the backyard. Except now she’s switched off the music, she can hear noises from the front of the neighboring house, faint but growing louder: the growl of a large engine (a truck? or a regular car, towing a trailer?) and raised, bickering voices (boys?).

Then there’s movement inside the house. Curtains being swept aside, doors being propped open. People milling around. Taylor’s pretty sure she just saw someone dad-sized and -shaped staggering along with a huge box.

The back door opens, and Taylor lowers her head a little. Her blonde hair doesn’t exactly help with the whole camouflage thing, but what are the chances anybody’ll glance over at this exact section of fence? The backyards here are the size of football fields!

A figure emerges. Gotta be the mom. Looks like a mom, standard model, Italian-American variant: kinda tall, kinda middle-aged stocky, and her hair is incredible! She’s got it pinned but the volume! It’s straining to be set free, like a caged tiger, if a tiger was jet black and sort of lurked.

More like a caged panther, maybe.

The mom yells something back into the house—a New York accent! cool!—and the dad of the family comes out to meet her, and whoa. He’s not super tall, maybe an inch or two taller than his wife, but he is wide. Like if you took two people, trimmed off all the excess limbs, and smooshed them together. He’s like if puberty didn’t stop until you’re forty, and you just kept getting stockier and more hairy.

They talk a little, pointing out different things in the yard—none of them Taylor—and then they kiss, except they don’t just kiss, he dips her!

“Oh my goodness,” Taylor whispers. She can’t help herself; that was just so romantic! Married with kids and they still do that!

She remembers them now: they came looking around the neighborhood right at the start of the holidays. Mom offered them iced tea and they asked for regular coffee, and Taylor saw them for approximately three seconds, on her way through the kitchen to the front door. On second inspection, she likes them.

What was their name again? Something Italian, something with a G… Giordano, that was it! She remembers clearly now: when Taylor got back that night, Mom was going on about finally getting some ‘Italian flavor’ in the neighborhood, and Dad asked her what that meant, and she said something about tomatoes. Garrett, who was having one of his rare moments of consciousness, told them their heads would explode if they ever saw any actual diversity, and Taylor told him he smelled like weed again.

Another fun night in the Scott household.

Mom Giordano kisses Dad Giordano again and they both set off for the house. When they get to the door, Mom Giordano sticks her head inside and yells, “Boys! Stop messing around and unpack! We’ve been in California five minutes and you’re already driving me crazy!” She shrugs at her husband, and they both vanish into what Taylor assumes is the kitchen.

Then there’s nothing for a bit. Shame, because this is the most exciting thing to happen in Vista Primavera in years. She’s about to step down from her lawn chair and get back to her routine when someone new comes out the same door, and he’s… yum. Like his dad, he’s not exactly tall, maybe five-ten, five-eleven, but he’s built. He’s wearing a sleeveless shirt and jeans, and Taylor can see enough of him to know that there’s a good shape under all that. And he’s not shaped like a bodybuilder, either; nor is he shaped like her boyfriend, like a football player. He’s shaped like a guy who works for a living. He’s got the family black hair, cut short and kinda curly, and thick eyebrows and a mess of stubble, and if it weren’t for her stupid boyfriend and also for the fact that he’s probably at least twenty-one, she’d hop the fence right now and ask very politely if she could eat him up with a spoon and maybe some non-fat ice cream on the side.

Guys like that look good on her.

“Hey!” he yells back into the house. “Max! Come check this out! You can see a mountain from the backyard!”

Taylor doesn’t laugh, though she kinda wants to. That’s not a mountain! Not like the real ones; you have to go north for those. Here in Vista Primavera they have, well, they have hills, hills with delusions of grandeur, and they look kinda blasted and scrappy most of the time, except for two months in the spring. She makes a mental note to really admire them when they get green again. To genuinely try to appreciate them, because people in other parts of the country don’t have crappy hills to look at.

And then the last member of the Giordano clan steps out of the kitchen door. Max. And he’s nothing like his dad or his brother. He’s closer to Taylor’s height, maybe five-eight, definitely a good couple inches shorter than his jacked brother. His features are similar, though, just softer, like if his brother is maybe twenty-five percent through the family forty-year puberty, Max is at five percent. Maybe ten; he does have a little dark hair on his upper lip. He wears his black hair long and a little greasy, tied in a messy ponytail with what looks like a rubber band! Ick! She shudders to think what it’s like to get that mess straight in the morning. Maybe there are brushes still lost in there!

Maybe he doesn’t brush it, like, at all.

Max is clearly the younger brother, but he’s not young, he’s just kind of… hard to place. He’s wearing board shorts and a shirt with a band she’s never heard of on it, both of which are too big for him, and— Hmm. He is sort of toned, actually. He’s not covered in muscles, not like his brother or like Gordo, but they’re there, lurking in his slender limbs. He’s built like a swimmer. A swimmer on a starvation diet, maybe, whose hair hasn’t known the cleansing kiss of water in far too long, but a swimmer nonetheless.

And then Max high fives his brother, sways his arms, steps into a ready stance, and performs the most perfect sequences of handsprings, somersaults and flips Taylor’s ever seen. The form! The confidence! The sheer height he achieves! He finishes with a double full, and he’s barely panting at all!

Not built like a swimmer, then. Built like a gymnast.

Interesting…

“Show off!” his brother shouts.

“I’m just stiff!” Max yells back at him. “From the drive! I needed to stretch my legs!”

“Whatever.” His brother grins at him. “Just come help me unpack the kitchen stuff before Mom goes ballistic, okay?”

“Fine.”

His brother goes inside, but Max apparently can’t resist one more tumble, even more elaborate than before, and although Taylor’s inner cheerleader wants to scold him for not stretching properly and for just going for it on a lawn he’s never even seen before, which could have hidden rocks or loose stones or unexpected divots, she can’t help applauding.

Because he’s amazing. She’s only seen moves like that at the Olympics! And at, well, at the annual cheerleading competition. The one she’s been wanting the squad to at least try to qualify for. The one she always has to settle for watching on TV.

Oh.

Oh no!

He’s seen her.

Well, obviously he has: she’s still clapping like an idiot. Like a performing seal. He’s frowning in her direction, but before she can wave and say hi and maybe apologize, he takes off, running back to the house with impressive speed.

He glances at her one more time, and then he slams the kitchen door.

Shoot.

* * *

Max drops onto his brand-new bed, too tired and too annoyed to unpack his own shit. He helped with the kitchen stuff, he helped with the living room stuff, he even helped Clay put together those stupid ‘couch in a box’ things and almost got his fingers trapped, and none of it was strenuous enough to forget the fact that he’s been in California just a few hours and already he’s humiliated himself in front of a pretty girl.

A pretty girl who is his neighbor. And it’s not something she’s likely to forget. In a year, when they graduate, she’ll still be telling the story of the loner boy who moved in next door and immediately started prancing around the backyard like a—

Careful, Max. You hate it when they say it; why use it on yourself?

Ugh. It was supposed to be different here. Stupid thing to let himself think. It was always going to be exactly the same.

And why California, anyway? Everything’s too damn big here.

His bed included. He’s stretching to his fullest extent—he’s still sore from the car—and he can’t reach all four corners of the bed at once. Not like in his old bed. No, back home in Queens, when he and Avery lay in bed, talking, it would sometimes be a challenge not to knock each other off. But the money Mom and Dad got for the old place bought a fucking mansion here; he and Avery could probably host three other people on this monster-sized mattress before it got awkward.

At least the yard is super-sized, too. A genuine California bonus. One that he instantly wrecked, of course; he can’t go out there now. The neighbor girl might see him.

His phone buzzes again. He’s been ignoring it the last hour or so, but he can’t keep pretending the outside world doesn’t exist. After all, there’s so much of it here.

Max flicks open the pocket of his board shorts and digs around in the fluff until he finds his phone. Last year’s model, but when Clay upgrades again next year, he’ll have this year’s model, and until then, he’s fine with his Nokia 3410. It’s not like phones are any different year on year, anyway; they get a bit smaller and a bit rounder, and sometimes you don’t get Snake.

Avery’s been texting him. So far, he hasn’t wanted to respond. Too final. He doesn’t want to acknowledge how little they’re going to be in each other’s lives from now on.

Avery: Maxxy! Have fun in sunny California! Don’t forget about me! Avery: You’ve forgotten about me, haven’t you Avery: Crying real tears right now Avery: Max, you’re supposed to reply when someone texts you. That’s how it works. It’s called Textiquette. I read it in a magazine at the dentist. Avery: WHAT STATE ARE YOU EVEN IN RIGHT NOW? DID YOU MAKE IT TO SO-CAL? OR ARE YOU STUCK IN FLYOVER HELL? Avery: Sorry for caps Avery: I’m so bored Avery: Maxxxxxxxxxy

Unfair that he had to leave her behind. Unfair that he had to leave at all, but he couldn’t very well tell Dad he wanted to stay in Queens, not after everything. When your whole family sacrifices everything they’ve ever known and moves across the country just for you—even if they don’t say it—it’s bad form to bitch too hard about it.

Avery, though. An impossible goodbye. She cried a lot; he tried really hard to join in. But maybe it’s for the best. Maybe she’s better off with him out of her life, attached to him by only the thinnest and lengthiest of threads. She’s going places, after all; to the Olympics, almost definitely. He was never as good as her, even before he quit.

So she can get over him. Make other friends. Start her senior year without the baggage he brings unavoidably with him wherever he goes.

Avery: Max Max Max Max Max Max Max

He should probably reply before she texts again.

Max: Hey Avery: Max! Get on AIM nowwwwwwww Max: How do you even have the energy to hit the 9 key that many times Avery: Because I do my warm ups Max Avery: Unlike some of us Avery: Now get on AIM I’m booooooored Max: I can’t, sorry. I don’t think we have internet yet Avery: Not even dial up? Max: I saw the phone line when I was helping Dad unpack downstairs. Is it supposed to have a bunch of bare wires coming out of it? Avery: Boooo Avery: I don’t have infinite texts Max Max: You could have fooled me Avery: So I’m going to wish you a happy California and a very get on AIM as soon as you have ANY kind of internet Max: I will. Miss you Avery: You BETTER

Max drops his phone onto the nightstand and allows the low battery indicator to motivate him into doing something useful. He rolls out of bed—he has to roll twice to actually accomplish this—and starts rummaging through boxes, looking for his charger. Once he has it, he looks around for an outlet and plugs it in.

There. Now he has a bed and a phone charger! The place looks more like home already. And now that he’s out of bed again, he might as well have a shower and wash off the gunk from traveling all night. He digs around until he finds the box marked Max’s Bathroom and just takes the whole damn thing in with him.

Another California bonus: he doesn’t have to share a bathroom with three other people anymore.

* * *

Garrett’s finally crawled out of his room and slugged his way down the stairs to take up residence on the couch. Ick. Just three hours ago, this would have been bad because he would have made Taylor turn down her music or beg her to go to the store for more Doritos or something, and that would have been annoying enough. But now she’s on a mission, and the thing about being on a mission is that your goal is greatly hampered by anyone knowing what it is or having reason to guess.

So she’s trying to make smoothies as subtly as she can, and maybe he won’t get up from his cartoons and ask—

“Hey, Tay, whatya doing?”

Taylor stamps a foot in irritation. “None of your beeswax, Gar‑rat.”

“Okay, okay,” he mumbles, rolling off from his precarious position against the dividing wall and returning to the living room. Moments later, he turns up the volume on the TV.

Well! That went okay. Obviously he’s still too wasted to have more than two consecutive coherent thoughts, and that suits Taylor just fine. He can waste away the day in front of his cartoons if he wants to. She checks interact civilly with my gross brother off her mental list and throws the rest of the ingredients into the blender.

They really should have grown out of the sibling thing, the way the other girls she knows with older brothers mostly have. But it’s absence that makes the heart grow fonder, and he’s always around! Worse, he’ll always be around! Mom and Dad won’t kick him out, not after he paid them rent on his room for the next five years, which means she’s stuck with him.

When the blender gets done, she pours the contents into two metal cups and screws on the lids, throwing them both into a plastic bag. In the mirror by the side door, she gives herself a final check, and she looks perfect: pink cargo pants, pink crop top, and a white shirt thrown over the top, for modesty. She looks sporty but fashionable; exactly the impression she wants to give to the new boy next door. She even left her hair up!

As she steps into her white sneakers she throws a final glare through the kitchen wall at Garrett. He won’t see it, but he might feel it, and it might spoil his cartoons by like one percent.

She has to admit, they’d probably also get along better if he wasn’t such a tech prodigy. And without even trying! It’s bullcrap. Computers are supposed to be Taylor’s backup, in the very likely event that cheerleading isn’t enough to take her to college, but she’ll always have to live in the shadow of her older brother, who started a dot-com when he was fifteen and sold it for literal millions when he was barely older than Taylor is now. So even if she does go to college for computer science, she’ll always be the cheerleader little sister to the guy who created Munchie Portal, the Portal for Munchies.

It has a new name now that Yahoo! owns it, but everyone still calls it that.

Ick. Forget Garrett. She’s here for one reason, and she squares it in her mind as she skips the short distance between the houses and knocks on the Giordanos’ door. A few seconds later, Mom Giordano opens it and smiles down at her.

“Well, hello!” she says. “Who do we have here? Wait, don’t tell me; you’re the neighbor girl, aren’t you!”

Taylor puts on her most dazzling smile. “Guilty!”

“Well, do come in. And what do you have there?”

Hefting her bag, Taylor says, “Actually, these are for Max. Or one of them is, anyway.”

Mom Giordano’s welcoming smile contorts somewhat. “You know Max?”

“I don’t know him,” Taylor says quickly, sensing she might already have stepped on some hidden motherly landmine, “but I think I sort of embarrassed him earlier? I saw him practicing out in the yard and I thought he was really good, so I clapped, and then I didn’t have a chance to tell him it was a sincere clap and not, like, a sarcastic clap, so—” she lifts one of the cups out of the bag, “—I brought an apology present.”

“Aren’t you a sweet girl?” And then Mom Giordano does the classic mom move, which New York Italian moms apparently do just as well as WASPy Californian moms: it’s when they lean back, away from the teen in front of them, and yell at the top of their voice up the stairs. Taylor’s never known why any of them do this, because the extra foot or so of distance doesn’t moderate the extreme volume even slightly. “Maxwell! You got a visitor!” When there’s no answer, she looks back at Taylor. “Why don’t you go on up? Third door on the right.”

“Thanks, Mrs Giordano!” Taylor says in her peppiest voice. She starts up the stairs.

As she ascends, she hears Mom Giordano say to her husband, “Well, look at that! She even remembers our names. And that outfit! This one might not be so bad…”

Taylor slows as she reaches the top of the stairs, and counts doors, quickly identifying Max’s as the half-open one on the end. There’s another mirror up here—just a little one hanging on the wall, filling one of the many preinstalled picture hooks, most of which are still empty—and she checks herself again: not a hair out of place, and her outfit still looks good. She could have worn her cheer uniform, since it tends to make a good impression on guys and parents alike, but she knows the reputation cheerleaders have at some schools; he might have cheer-TSD.

She knocks on his door, and though there’s no answer, the door swings all the way open at her touch, so she takes a half-step inside.

And immediately she sees a door on the other side of the room open up.

Before Taylor can react, Maxwell Giordano, loosely robed, with long wet hair draped over half his face down to his shoulders, and with a slice of his toned but almost skeletally thin body on display through the open top half of the robe… steps out of his bathroom and meets her eyes.

“Fuck!” he yells, and immediately turns around and slams the bathroom door behind him.

Shoot!

* * *

“I’ll be outside!” the Peeping Tom neighbor girl yells, and it has to be her, because, yeah, he didn’t get a good look at her before, but the girl hanging over the fence was blonde like her and—more pertinently—she clapped at him like a perky idiot, and only a perky idiot would walk into the bedroom of someone she doesn’t know, uninvited, so, yeah, it’s her. “I’ll let you get dressed! I’ll just… I’m sorry! I’ll be outside.”

He probably can’t wait her out, then. Not unless he gets lucky and the sun explodes before she gets bored, or Mom comes up to yell at him for being rude.

The first thing Max does when he leaves the bathroom again is check to make sure that Peeping Tom neighbor girl did, in fact, close his bedroom door; she did. Thank fuck. He leaves her out there while he sorts through boxes, trying to put together something presentable, eventually ending up with three options.

They all suck.

Whatever! None of his shit actually fits him, but that’s not exactly a new problem, and if the neighbor girl doesn’t like it, she should learn not to show up unexpectedly in people’s rooms. Shit, what even is the protocol in this situation? Should he make her a coffee or something? What do Californians drink? Orange juice? No, that’s Floridians. Iced tea? Pulped palm trees? That would explain why there aren’t as many around as he expected.

If only Avery were here. She might not know what to do either, but at least she’d be funny about it, and at least having another girl around might stop things getting awkward.

Fuck it. He’s eighteen. He can do what he wants. Including embarrass himself in front of local girls. What can she do, make his life worse?

He picks the least awful set of clothes, throws it on, and stuffs the others back into the nearest box. A quick glance in the closet mirror is enough to confirm that he looks adequate, so he ties up his hair in a rubber band and opens the door. On the other side, the neighbor girl smiles sheepishly at him.

“Sorry,” she says. “Twice. Sorry for that, and sorry for earlier, in the yard. Can I come in?” She holds up a plastic bag. “I have a peace offering.”

She might be intrusive and forward, but she’s also gorgeous. California blonde and dressed for a run, just like any number of other girls he saw out of the car window this morning, and there’s enough individuality to her face to make her attractive, not merely pretty. Like, very attractive. To him. Personally. And her cheeks are flushed with embarrassment and her eyes are apologetic so he can’t be all that mad at her. She reminds him of Avery, a bit; she couldn’t look more different, but the expression on her face is uncannily like when Avery came rushing over at six in the morning to tell him she finally kissed Rebecca and that it was just as magical as she always hoped.

And it’s a cute expression. On both of them.

“Sure,” he says. “Come in.”

“Wow,” she says, craning her neck, making a show of looking around. “Nice room! Lots of boxes! And… a guitar! You play?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, but I don’t do anything with it. I just kinda pick it up and put it down again.”

“Still. Pretty cool.” Then she shakes her head and pulls out of her plastic bag a metal cup with a straw poking through its lid. “Behold: my custom smoothies. No fat, plenty of protein, and a hundred percent delicious!”

“No fat, huh,” he says, a smile riding unbidden on his lips.

“I promise. Athlete to athlete.”

She’s still holding it out, so he takes it from her and tries a sip and, yeah, okay, it’s actually good. In fact, it’s excellent. It’s better than the smoothies Coach used to hand out back home, a long, long time ago.

Best not to think about that.

“Wow,” he says.

“Can I cook, or can I cook?”

“Yes. You can cook.”

He steps backward and drops onto his bed, still holding the smoothie. She takes it as an invitation and sits cross-legged on the floor, sucking on her own cup and looking around again.

“I think your house is the same as mine inside,” she says thoughtfully. “Like, I was pretty sure it would be? Since all the places on this street are kinda the same. But I’ve never been inside another one before. This? This is actually my room. Just—” she crosses her arms at the wrist, “—flipped.”

“Oh,” Max says, grinning. “Sorry for imposing.”

“Forgiven.”

“So, you’re an athlete?”

She perks up. “I am!”

“Um, this would be the point where you tell me what kind of athlete.”

“Cheerleader,” she says with a slight wince, like she’s expecting him to laugh. And that would be a dick move, so he doesn’t, but he is a little offended that she would compare what he does to what she does.

Still a dick move, Max, even in your own head. At least she’s probably still active. Probably doesn’t neglect her stretches, either.

“That’s cool!” he says, injecting the proper enthusiasm.

“It is cool,” she says, very seriously.

“Okay, neighbor girl, what’s your name? I can’t keep thinking of you as ‘the Peeping Tom girl’ forever.”

She giggles. “Sorry about that. I really did think you were good, though. That’s why I clapped. And I’m Taylor. Taylor Scott.”

She’s holding out a hand, so he takes it and they shake. He doesn’t linger on it, pulling his hand away immediately. It’s always a little embarrassing to shake hands with people: with men, they want to do that insane test-of-strength thing—Max tends to think of it as a Business Armwrestle—and he’s terrible at it; with women, he finds they both just sort of limply clutch each other for a moment.

At least with girls, his hands don’t get lost inside theirs. His brother’s hands are huge, multiple glove sizes above Max’s, though to Clay’s credit, he hasn’t teased him about it. He’s just promised Max that his growth spurt is coming, and that if he starts, like, actually eating again, he’ll soon be as big as the rest of the Giordano men. And Max is ambivalent about that, because as much as it would be nice to no longer be so scrawny, if he becomes suddenly Clay-sized, his gymnastic career—his primary passion since he was a kid—is definitely over, not just probably over as it is now. He’d have to relearn everything: how to move, how to jump, where his center of gravity is, all of it. And after the way things ended before, he’s not sure he can take instruction again.

He might finally have an impressive handshake, though.

“Hey, Max?” Taylor says. “You okay? You zoned out a bit.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He shakes his head and rubs at the back of his neck, where he’s the most sore. “I’m tired. I slept in the car but not well, you know?”

She nods, then looks around again and giggles. “Max,” she says, scandalized, “the door’s closed!”

So it is. Must have springs on the hinges or something. “Yeah?”

“Your parents aren’t going to yell at you?”

“Oh,” he says, laughing a little, “no, probably not. I had a friend back in New York— That’s where I’m from, by the way.”

“I guessed.”

“My accent?”

“Your mom’s actually. And you do look kinda… New York-ish.”

“I do? Huh. Anyway, me and my friend were in and out of each other’s rooms all the time. I liked hers better, actually; mine was always too hot in the summer. Our parents got used to it. They didn’t have much of a choice.”

Her eyes wide, Taylor says, “But a guy and a girl in a bedroom together? My mom and dad would not be happy about that.”

“Avery’s gay,” Max says, shrugging. “And even before she came out, I think her parents knew. And mine guessed. So they knew we weren’t going to do anything.”

“You’ve got a lesbian best friend?” Taylor says, almost shrieking. “That is so cool.”

“I’ll make sure and tell her you said that.”

“And you really never did anything together?”

“Well…” He can feel himself start to blush.

God damn Avery. Around guys—even around his brother these days—he keeps himself locked tight for his own good, but Avery never put up with that when he tried it with her. He kept closing himself off and she kept jamming that crowbar back in. Thanks to her, he’s used to letting his guard down around girls his age. And now Taylor, who’s been in his life for all of ten minutes, is able to open him up like a clam.

“Go on…” she says, leaning in with a smile and touching his hand, a maneuver that demolishes any chance he might have had at defending against her.

“We practiced kissing,” he says into his shirt. “Quite a few times. First she wanted to know what it was like and then she wanted to get good for this girl she liked, so I’d, um…” Helplessly he mimes something, his fingers vaguely grasping at each other.

“Right.”

“Yeah.”

“She was your first?” Taylor guesses.

His cheeks are burning now. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

“It wasn’t obvious until you lit up like a Christmas tree!” she says, delighted. “You blush worse than I do. You really didn’t have a girl back in New York? A non-lesbian girl, I mean.”

He shrugs again. “Guys on the gymnastics team come in two types,” he starts, and then he hesitates, and Taylor takes over.

“Right,” she says. “Big built guys like your brother, and slim quick ones like you. And it’s the big ones who get the girls. And the slim ones...”

She doesn’t have to finish the thought. They both know what everybody at school thinks of the little guys on the gymnastics team. But she doesn’t seem to be judging. It’s just like before, when she saw him messing around in the backyard: she could have mocked him, and she didn’t. And it’s all right there for her to pick up and use against him! In his experience, nobody leaves an opening like that alone around him.

Nobody except Avery.

Huh. Maybe Taylor can be a friend. Like Avery.

“Hey,” he says, remembering how they got onto this topic, “do your parents know you came over to see a boy?”

“Oh, they’re on a trip,” she says, waving a hand. “And I’m eighteen in, like, a month, so what can they do?”

“What can they do?”

She sags. “They’d yell. A lot. But what they don’t know can't hurt me, right?”

He returns her grin. “Right.”

* * *

Taylor practically skips out of Max’s house. Wow, she’s almost high! For some reason, when Max spoke, it felt like every word he said was the most important thing in the world. And he’s so cool! He’s from New York, he plays guitar, and on this morning’s evidence, he’s also the best gymnast she’s ever met. He just might be the answer to all her prayers.

And he has the prettiest brown eyes…

It took some doing, but she managed to persuade him to come over tomorrow morning to spot her while she runs through her routines. He was nice enough not to say it, or even show it, but he almost definitely thinks cheerleading isn’t as challenging as what he’s used to; she’s going to show him how wrong he is. And she confirmed that he’s her age—eighteen, actually, so older, but only by like a month; his mom must have held him back at preschool or something—and he’s going to Vista Primavera High for senior year, same as her. So all she has to do, once she’s shown him how awesome cheerleading can be, is ask him to join the squad.

Ick, and then talk the other girls into accepting another guy on the squad. That might be the tricky part; it’s not that guys on the squad are a problem, but all the guys they have are, well, big. And they have to be, since they anchor and they catch a lot. Max, who is barely an inch taller than her—she checked when they said goodbye—doesn’t fit in there.

Whatever! She’ll work it out. She’ll make the squad see what he can do, and they’ll have to accept him. And then they might finally have a shot at regionals!

And that means she gets to spend a lot more time with Max Giordano.

She swings the plastic bag with the metal cups in her hand as she opens the front door, and she’s about to go straight to the kitchen to wash them when Garrett yells out from the couch, “Hey! Tay! Gordo’s here!”

And, rising from the other couch, where he’s been watching cartoons with her loser older brother, is her boyfriend.

Oh yeah. She has a boyfriend. Shoot.

Two

I CAN FIX HIM

Max can’t remember the last time he spent so long in the shower. Usually he just kinda jumps in, soaps up everywhere he can reach and jumps out again, but today he’s making an effort. He even snuck into the main bathroom, the one that has pride of place at the center of the upstairs hallway—the one nobody’s ever going to use, because every bedroom bar the guest room in this insanely massive house has a bathroom of its own—and stole the fancy shampoo, conditioner and body wash. He’s got no idea why Mom put that stuff out; it’s not like they’re expecting guests on their second day in Vista Primavera. But he’s got the matching blue bottles lined up on the side and he’s working his way through them, one by one. In a surge of diligence, he’s even been reading the instructions on the bottles for the first time in his life.

Apparently you’re supposed to leave the conditioner in! For several minutes! Does everyone know that? Is that why his hair’s always gotten so tangled? Because nobody ever told him?

He lathers up and cleans almost every other part of his body twice—skipping over the burn scars on his ribs, same as always—and then washes out the conditioner, running his hands through his locks as he does so. His hair parts cleanly between his fingers and doesn’t even clump up when he squeezes the water out of it. It feels kind of amazing, actually.

But yeah. He’s trying. This morning, he’s really trying. Sue him.

There’s no point to it, really. Taylor’s a cheerleader, and cheerleaders never go for guys like him, and she’s probably got a quarterback boyfriend or something. But Avery was always trying to get him to take more care of himself, like he used to, so what the hell, right? New city, new state; new Max. Mostly the same as the old Max, but cleaner and with detangled hair.

Besides, Taylor’s nice. And a nice cheerleader is so far out of Max’s experience that there’s no way he can’t take advantage of the opportunity she represents. To see how the other half lives: the popular half, the half that wears bright colors and has pep.

He should take notes. For posterity. There might be a book in it.

Opening the door between his bathroom and bedroom, he checks to make sure the drapes are still shut—of course they are; he hasn’t opened them since he got here—and follows the misty air out into his room, toweling his hair and dripping on the carpet. When he’s more or less dry, he throws his towel onto the bed and starts looking through his closet. Last night, in another uncharacteristic burst of diligence, he actually put all his clothes away. Hung up his shirts and pants and balled up his socks and shit. While he looks, he slaps at his CD player, and fills the room with music from whatever the last CD he had loaded was.

Knowledge by Operation Ivy. Cool.

Catching himself in the mirror as he walks around, his eyes flicker, as they always do, to the triad of scars on his right-side ribs. His fingers brush momentarily over them, from the base of his pectoral to the top of his belly, feeling the bumps and the distressed skin, reading his burns like a relief map.

They’re dry. And kinda rough to the touch.

Shit, he’s been neglecting himself in every possible way, hasn’t he? Habitually forgetting the dermatologist’s instructions is just another symptom.

Well. New state, better habits.

He remembers dumping the aloe moisturizer his mom’s been buying him in the same box as all his other bathroom crap, back when they packed everything up, so that means it must be… ah! Bathroom cabinet.

Still not used to having his own bathroom.

He spreads the moisturizer over the scars, and then over the rest of his torso and along his arms, because it smells nice, all the while looking through his clothes. In the end, he picks basically at random; he’s making an effort, sure, but he has no idea what Taylor likes. More to the point, he has no idea what kind of guy she likes, except what he assumes: massive, hung like a horse, and with a football instead of a brain that bounces around inside his head like a DVD screensaver. And he can’t ever be that, not unless the long-delayed growth spurt Clay’s been promising decides to show up, so why not just pick whatever? All that matters is whether he can move in it, since she invited him over this morning explicitly to work out with her or to help her practice her cheer routines or something. She wasn’t entirely clear about it.

Maybe she was and he just wasn’t paying attention. Too distracted by those bright blue eyes.

Anyway.

An old band shirt.

A pair of board shorts.

Mismatched socks.

And a belt. In which he already poked an extra hole. Because, yeah, shit, he lost weight, and a lot of it. Turns out, if you don’t really eat for over a year and you continue—halfheartedly—to exercise, you lose mass, and a lot of it. All his jeans look like cargo pants now, and his cargo pants are basically unwearable.

Today’s shirt—one of the many he inherited from Clay when he cleared out his closet—is baggy as hell, but it covers his scars and it hides how thin he’s gotten, and the belt holds up his board shorts, and that’s enough. He can exercise in this. He can stand on his hands in this. Hell, he can do cartwheels and somersaults and basically anything you ask of him in this, and he can do the fucking splits, too.

A quick look in the mirror. Yeah, there’s Max. Same as the old Max, the one from New York. But moisturized, and with nicer hair.

It’s fine.

Let’s go see the cheerleader.

* * *

Taylor never wears makeup to work out. Some of the other cheerleaders do, but some of the other cheerleaders are silly bee-yotches who’ve spent the last several years meticulously blocking every pore, and now they have no choice but to slap on the foundation half a tube at a time, lest anyone get a look at their real skin! Taylor, meanwhile, wears it light and only when appropriate, and she cleanses every morning, every evening and after practice, and that’s why she still has the skin of an angel while Meredith looks like the dark side of the moon.

So she doesn’t know why she’s doing her face this morning, except that maybe she still feels gross from last night and wants to look her best. Pretty face, empty mind, like Robyn, her old cheer captain, used to say.

Last night…

Last night!

Ick.

Taylor reaches over and yanks up the volume on her little CD player until J.Lo’s Love Don’t Cost a Thing starts to crackle and distort.

Stupid Gordo! He tried to get her to touch it again, and she’s beyond fed up with telling him she’s waiting until she’s eighteen. And that’s, like, only a month away! She doesn’t know why he’s being so impatient; she’s clearly relayed her parents’ rules around sex, which are that Garrett can do whatever he wants, because he’s an adult—legally, if not mentally—and Taylor cannot, because she is still a child. Also, and this comes specifically from her mom, because nobody wants to have to fight through the anti-choice weirdos outside the family planning clinic. And because good girls are not sluts.

And, no, Gordo, she doesn’t care that the other girls have all done it, because a) if Meredith’s done it, Taylor’ll eat her own pompoms and b) if the other cheerleaders jumped off a cliff, she’d only follow them if they’d managed to form a pyramid at the bottom, and would catch her.

But still he insisted! Ick! It’s like he wants her to get disowned by her parents and have to live under a bridge selling cheers for money, or something.

He insisted and he made her feel gross and she told him to leave and now she’s putting on lipstick, because if he can’t see her, then she’s going to look extra pretty.

It makes sense. Sort of. If you tilt your head and squint. Anyway, he’s off to football camp this week, so she doesn’t have to deal with him again for a while. Maybe he’ll find someone there to touch his thingie, some girl football player who shares his interests. Maybe she can make him come, and he can yell ‘Hut! Hut! Hut!’ at the moment of climax.

The song ends and she stabs irritably at the pause button before the next one starts. This morning’s gone wrong already, and it’s all because she’s sitting here, staring at herself, applying and reapplying lipstick until by rights her lips ought to stick out several miles from her face, and thinking about her stupid boyfriend and the stupid things he wants her to do and—

Reset.

Taylor closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly. Opens her eyes again.

It’s a new day. Gordo’s a part of yesterday, and she doesn’t have to see him for a week. A new friend is coming over and she’s going to get to show him what she can do and find out what makes him tick.

She blots most of the lipstick onto a tissue, ties her hair in a practical ponytail, and skips out of her room. Same room as Max, she remembers, though not precisely. Their houses are identical but mirrored; their bedrooms even face each other! What sucks, though, is that even if they become friends, they won’t be able to do the teen movie thing of talking to each other through their windows; they’re kinda far apart. If Max ever opens his drapes, though, they ought to be able to wave to each other. And maybe yell.

She checks: his drapes are still closed. No wonder he’s so pale.

No, wait; he’s from New York. Don’t they have like five days of sun per year? Obviously he’s just not used to it. Well, that’s job one, then, isn’t it? Get Max used to the Southern California sun! The whole Southern California lifestyle!

He’s going to love it here, she’s certain.

* * *

Christ, even the mornings here are too hot. Good thing he covered himself in deodorant before he left the house, even if it did mean getting gently ribbed by his brother about the effort he’s obviously putting in for this Taylor girl.

He’s not putting in any effort, not really. Not for her specifically. He’s just stopped neglecting himself.

Yeah. That’s it exactly.

He rings the bell, and when the door opens, he’s presented with a face he doesn’t expect. Taylor didn’t talk about her brother much yesterday, except to say he’s a stoner and the most annoying man in the world, but here’s a clean-cut guy with a toothy grin and slicked-back blond hair. If not for his shorts and logo shirt, he could be an office worker, though from what he’s seen, casualwear is de rigueur enough around here that maybe people do go to work in shorts.

But then he comes close enough for Max to see his bloodshot eyes, and it all makes sense.

“Hey,” Garrett says. “You’re the, uh, the, uh, the dude from next door, aren’t you?”

“I’m Max. Garrett, yeah?”

Getting Garrett’s name right seems to delight him. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s me!” He leans down to whisper in Max’s ear, flooding Max’s senses with the smell of stale weed and cool ranch chips. “You’re not fucking my sister, are you? Because if you are… Be careful, dude. Big boyfriend. Big.”

“No plans, dude,” Max says. Yeah. She’s got a boyfriend. Obviously.

“That’s a ‘maybe’, then. Cool. Cool. Cool.” Garrett folds his arms, satisfied that he’s relayed his oh-so-important message. “So come on in! Mi casa es su casa. Mi… sister es su sister.”

Alright. Kinda gross.

Taylor appears from behind Garrett, whacking him with the flat of her hand. “Oh my gosh, Garrett, you slime!” she yells, whacking him again. “Don’t say things like that! And move. Move! Ick!”

She keeps slapping him on the shoulder until Garrett finally catches on, and with a roll of his eyes at Max, he steps aside and walks slowly over to a split square of couches in the living room. He falls into one and stops moving.

“Hi, Max,” Taylor says, huffing a displaced strand of hair out of her face. “I see you’ve met my brother.”

She grabs Max by the wrist and leads him inside, but Max is distracted: Garrett still isn’t moving.

“Is he… okay?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Taylor says without looking, dragging Max into the kitchen.

“He looks dead.”

“Yeah, he does! Unfortunately, it never lasts. Check it out: I made you a smoothie!”

Max’s view of Taylor’s allegedly alive brother is cut off as he enters the kitchen, so he turns his attention to her and finds her posing in front of the open fridge like a game show assistant. Two more of the same metal cups from yesterday are waiting in the door, and now that she has his attention, she pulls one out and hands it to him. He takes it from her, but she doesn’t pull away; instead, she squints at him, leans closer, steadies herself on his shoulder, and bats at his ponytail.

“Max?” she says slowly. “Why is your hair in a rubber band? Correction—” she raises an impertinent first finger right in front of him, “—why is your hair in a rubber band again?”

“Because I don’t want it in my face? And what do you mean, again?”

She snatches the smoothie back from him, re-fridges it, and beckons him. “C’mon,” she says, walking back around the dividing wall. “We’re fixing it.”

* * *

He comments on the way up the stairs that, oh yeah, their houses are the same, just flipped, and Taylor’s about to agree with him—and talk about the extra rooms that were built over the garages that he won’t have at home—before she realizes that, shoot, she just invited Max up to her room! She invited him up to her room and he’s a guy! A guy who isn’t Gordo!

Isn’t that, like, adultery or something?

Eh. Maybe in Utah.

She pauses, her hand on the doorknob, and thinks quickly, thinks like she’s about to be thrown and she’s just realized it’s Meredith who’s going to catch her:

It’s different, right? It’s not like Max is a guy like Gordo, right? He doesn’t seem the type to put his hand on the back of a not-quite-eighteen-year-old’s head and push her down toward his pants.

Because he’s nice. Okay, so they didn’t talk for all that long yesterday, but he is nice, right? A little sad, a little snarky, and a bit of a fixer-upper, but he’s nice. And does she even know any nice guys? Any guys who haven’t openly lusted after her since she joined the squad? Correction: does she know any nice guys who aren’t already (sort of but not really) dating her best friend?

Well, now she knows Max.

And they do share an interest, don’t they?

So there’s no harm, she decides, and lets him into her room.

“Wow,” he says, following her inside, “pink.”

“It’s not that pink,” she says, wondering why she instantly feels defensive about it. She points to the accent wall, the one her computer desk is pushed up against, which she had Dad paint pastel blue because she read that blue is conducive to memory retention. Plus, she’s wanted a skylight ever since she saw one in a movie. Something about looking up at those California-blue skies every morning being super romantic. Unfortunately, because of the attic and all, she had to make do with a not-very-big window and a very blue wall. “See?”

“I stand corrected,” Max says, holding up his hands in surrender. Gosh, he has a sweet smile. Teeth are a little faded looking, though. Don’t they have whitener in New York?

She can fix that. She can fix everything! And that starts with the way his smile fades too quickly, like he can’t have a positive emotion without something in his brain showing up and reminding him, hey, dude, you’re supposed to be miserable. Must be why he likes all those punk bands he was telling her about.

Anyway. She can fix him. Make him happy. Whiten his teeth. Get him to stop tangling up his hair with rubber bands. Get him a girlfriend.

At that last thought, it’s like she borrows Max’s sadness demon. Ick! Shoo! She chases it away and bobs up to him, confirming once again how close in height they are, and then puts a hand on each shoulder and turns him round. He doesn’t resist. Gently, she hooks a finger inside the first ring of the looped rubber band and starts to tease out the hair.

“I can’t believe you use this,” she says as she works and, gosh, his hair is so silky! Yesterday, when he first got here, it was really greasy, like, greasy enough that she could tell from halfway down the backyard—understandable, though, after driving the entire width of the continental United States!—and after his shower it was still only, like, passably clean. Did he wash it especially for her?

She’s not sure she’s allowed the level of excitement that thought generates in her. Kills the sadness demon right off, though.

“What’s wrong with a rubber band?” he says, speaking slowly like he’s in a trance, and it takes Taylor a second to guess why. When she does, she’s glad she’s behind him, or he’d see the huge, adulterous smile that temporarily takes over her whole face. She’s got her hands in his hair. And she is, no need to be modest, super pretty. What guy wouldn’t enjoy it?

Gordo. Gordo wouldn’t enjoy it. He just wants her to touch it.

Ick.

She returns to the task at hand, carefully extracting layer after layer of soft, sweet-smelling jet-black hair from its rubber band prison. To distract herself, because she’s enjoying this a bit too much, she concentrates on answering his question.

“Rubber bands are grippy, Max,” she says. “Your hair will get caught up in it and it’ll get stripped apart. It’ll completely destroy your hair.”

“Oh,” he says. It seems to be all he can manage, so before Taylor lets out the final loop, she gives herself a moment to smile again.

Why is she so loopy around him? He’s just another long-haired punk guy; she could throw a rock from the front room and hit a dozen of them as they drift lazily by on their stickered-up skateboards.

Whatever. A puzzle for later. She turns him round again and takes a step back to admire her handiwork. Smoothing out his locks, billowing them out around his face, she almost forgets to breathe. There really is something about him, something those other rando guys don’t have. Something she thinks Gordo would probably kill to avoid. And it’s more exciting to Taylor than a hundred sweaty football guys. It’s more exciting to her than the memory of Max’s own older brother, whose thick arms and tree-trunk waist had previously seemed so enticing.

In a way, it’s a shame that Clay is Max’s brother. If Clay’s anything to go by, Max is going to gain a good few inches, he’s going to thicken up, he’s going to be a man. And it’s going to happen soon.

So? So that makes this Max special, dummy! A firefly isn’t beautiful because it lasts forever.

“Taylor,” he says, “what’s up?”

Shoot! He noticed! And his hand’s halfway to hers, like he wants to comfort her but doesn’t want to cross a boundary. Which, again, her decision to let him up into her room: vindicated! She shakes her head, grins at him—wow, it’s easy to find a smile when he’s so close to her—and turns him ninety degrees, toward the mirror.

“Why do you tie your hair up, Max?” she asks. “It’s way too gorgeous to not show it off.”

He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror, not for more than a second. Instead he starts gathering up his hair, pulling it tight, away from his face. “It’s not supposed to be gorgeous,” he says. Huh; cryptic! “Do you have a hair tie for me?”

She turns around and quickly finds one on her nightstand. “Here,” she says, pressing it into his hand.

“Taylor,” he says, holding it up, “this is a scrunchie.”

“Yes,” she confirms.

“It’s a scrunchie.”

“And?”

“It’s— Taylor. It’s a scrunchie. A pink scrunchie. Those are for girls?”

“Don’t be a baby,” she says, taking it back. Before he can stop her, she steps behind him, gathers his hair up, and ties a ponytail for him. She twitches her nose in concentration as she adjusts it, making sure it’s dead center, and then taps him on the top of his head. “You can look now.”

“Wow,” he says, turning his head. “That is definitely a pink scrunchie in my hair. And isn’t it a little high?” He reaches up to adjust it, and she bats his hand away.

“Leave it!” she commands, leaning into her cheer captain voice. And, yeah, it is a little higher than he usually ties his hair, but high is better, right? For cheering?

Oh right! They’re supposed to be exercising!

* * *

The Scotts’ backyard is, unsurprisingly, exactly the same dimensions as the one behind Max’s house, except theirs has a pool close to the house and way more intentionality to the foliage. Dad’s already been complaining about the weekends he’s going to lose getting theirs into shape, and Clay wasn’t fast enough getting out of the room when he was looking for volunteers to help out.

It’s nice, though. It’s like a preview of what their place will look like when it’s done. Taylor’s entire house is, actually. Even her room, fully furnished as it is and not merely looming around a single desk and a corner with a guitar in it, is a preview of what his might be like once he’s lived here more than ten minutes. Minus the pink walls, obviously. And all the televisions. The very boxy, very beige televisions.

Huh.

“I just realized,” he says, as he stretches his arms over his head, “you have three computers in your room. Which seems excessive.”

“You just realized?” she replies. She’s got her feet on the grass and her head between them, and either she’s showing off and she’s going to feel that tomorrow, or she’s limber as hell. “We’ve been in the yard for like two minutes and you just realized.” She straightens up and, despite her critical tone, she’s grinning at him, so he doesn’t take it the wrong way.

“I thought they were TVs. I was trying to think if I’d seen a TV that exact shade of beige before.” He copies her move, just to show her he can, and she laughs at him.

Christ. She’s so cute.

“And?” she prompts.

“Yeah,” he says, “no. Which led me to the obvious conclusion: three computers.”

“Well,” she says, “for your information, I have four computers.” When he straightens, to stare incredulously at her, she starts listing them. “I’ve got my main PC and some older ones for testing. I also have a laptop; I wanted to mess with OSX so Dad got me an iBook for Christmas. Don’t give me that look! It’s not fancy. It’s just the base model.”

Max snorts. “That’s not what the look was for, Taylor.”

“It’s the twenty-first century, Max,” she says, sounding suddenly surprisingly pompous. “If you don’t know how to use a computer, you’re going to be left behind.”

“I know how to use a computer; I don’t know how to use four computers.”

“It’s not like it’s hard.”

“Oh my God,” Max exclaims in fake wonder. “Four computers. You’re a nerd!”

“I’m captain of the cheerleading squad. I can’t be a nerd. All I have are esoteric interests.”

“You’re a nerd,” he giggles.

The levity he feels around her! Avery’s the only other person who ever made him feel like this: understood and appreciated. But there’s more here, something he never felt before. Maybe it’s because Taylor’s straight, and therefore, despite her boyfriend, despite Garrett’s assessment of her boyfriend—big—some incredibly stupid part of his brain thinks he has a chance?

Doesn’t matter. He feels good! He’ll take the win.

“I like your shirt,” she says, when they’re done warming up. “Is that your band?”

He laughs, pulling at it to show it off fully. “Not my band,” he says. “This is Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. They’re, uh, well, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

Taylor bounces over, takes the hem of the shirt out of his hands and stretches it out all the way, so she can look at it more closely.

“Try me,” she says.

He can smell her perfume or her shampoo or her body lotion or something, and it’s intoxicating, and distracting as hell. Which might be why he babbles a bit.

“Okay, so they’re a punk rock supergroup, formed in San Francisco circa 1995 and still going today. They only do covers, and that’s because they all have their own projects outside the group, like, Chris Shiflett is also in No Use for a Name. Have you heard of him? You haven’t heard of him. Anyway, their first album was all songs from the sixties, seventies and eighties, stuff like Uptown Girl and Rocket Man, and their second album is all show tunes. They did Don’t Cry for Me Argentina from Evita and Science Fiction Double Feature from Rocky Horror, and… What?”

She’s looking at him with the most peculiar smirk on her face, and when he shuts up she broadens it into a delighted smile and says, “And you called me a nerd!”

Wow. Her smile is incredible.

“Uh…” he says, his retort dying on his lips, which he’s suddenly biting, for some reason. God, he’s losing control here.

“I think you were going to say something like, punk rockers can’t be nerds,” she says. “They just have esoteric interests. And then I was going to say something like, you just proved yourself wrong, you’re the biggest nerd that ever nerded, and then you were going to blush even harder than you are right now, and insist we start doing what we came here to do.”

In a daze, he says, “Which is…?”

She lets go of his shirt and prances backward, ultimately transforming her momentum into a perfect backflip and segueing into a full sequence.

“This!” she says, as she lands and spreads her arms out.

Holy shit.

She’s an actual athlete.

And she’s really good.

* * *

On their way back in, Taylor collects the smoothies she prepared for them both, and in her room she digs out her TV—her actual TV; she doesn’t know how Max could have mistaken her computer monitors for televisions since they’re so completely different-looking—from under a discarded pair of jeans and puts on the Disney Channel. Chores done, she flops onto the bed and starts sucking earnestly on her straw. Max, meanwhile…

Max looks adorably about the room for something he can sit on that isn’t her bed. Vindicated, vindicated, vindicated! She’s known him for a day and she’s never felt so safe with a guy. She points with her toe at one of her computer chairs and, moving slowly, he drags it over near to the bed and drops into it, cupping his smoothie with both hands and sipping from it, his eyes on the Boy Meets World rerun. As his exhaustion starts to fade, he makes himself more comfortable, dragging one leg up under his butt and propping the other high enough that he can rest his chin on his knee. Which, like, wow, flexible.

He’s still breathing heavily. But then, so is she.

What a workout! He challenged her like nobody on the squad ever has, like Coach Dale never has, like not even Robyn did, and she challenged him right back! She never knew she could move like that!

She never knew a guy could move like that. The guys on the squad, they’re talented and they work hard, but they’re all kinda bulky, whereas Max moves like…

Okay. So she can never say it to him, ever, because she knows what boys are like, but Max moves like a girl. He’s got grace and speed and just enough power to accomplish everything he needs to and not a drop more. And maybe that’s just what pro gymnasts are like, but Taylor watches every Olympics and she doesn’t think so. He’s just not built like those guys.

Except he will be one day.

Maybe, anyway. Thinking about it, she got a good look at Mom Giordano yesterday, and a decent glimpse at Dad Giordano and the older brother, Clay, and Max takes much more after his mom while Clay looks like a younger and less wide version of his dad. So maybe that means he won’t grow into something like Clay. Maybe that means he’ll stay just as he is. After all, he’s eighteen, and aren’t you basically done at eighteen? Like, sure, other stuff happens, like you lose your puppy fat, and if you’re a guy you start getting hair everywhere—ick—but at eighteen, you’re finished growing, right?

“How tall are you, Max?” she says without thinking.

“Five-eight,” he says automatically.

Well, that’s a lie. “Are you sure?” she asks, reaching out with her foot and rotating his chair to face her.

“I’m five-eight… if I go up on my toes a little,” he admits.

“I knew it!” she exclaims. “You can’t lie to me, Max. You’re an inch taller than me at most, and I’m five foot six and three-quarters.”

“Three-quarters?” he confirms weakly.

She nods at the door frame. “Check the marks.”

Humoring her, he stands, slightly stiffly, and carefully puts his cup on the floor. He walks over to her bedroom door and runs his finger over the notches in the frame. There’s a notch for every one of her first seventeen years, but she doesn’t expect to be making a new one on her next birthday in September, since she’s basically done, too. It’s kinda sad, really; always is, when a yearly ritual ends.

Following an impulse, she jumps up and joins him. She turns him around by the shoulders, the way she did in the backyard, until he’s facing her with his back to the door. She pushes him until he bumps against it, and then she prods at his feet with hers until he’s standing straight.

Without taking her eyes off him, she reaches for the craft knife on her chest of drawers, flicks out the blade, and places her hand on top of his head, to create a straight line to the door frame.

“You stick out your tongue when you’re concentrating, you know that?” he says. She shushes him and carves his notch into the frame.

She doesn’t know why she’s doing this. She barely knows him. They might not end up friends at all. They might not speak to each other after school starts. They might turn out to hate each other! But this feels important. And if there’s one thing she’s learned as a cheerleader, it’s that when something feels right, she should trust it.

“Step away,” she says, and he does so.

The craft knife goes back on the mess of junk, and she opens a drawer—her underwear drawer, which she’s curiously unembarrassed to open around Max—and pulls out her tailor’s tape measure. She unravels it, presses the end against the wall with her toe, and smooths it up the door frame until it reaches Max’s notch.

“There’s a Sharpie on my desk,” she says, keeping everything in place. “Can you get it for me?”

“Sure.”

Moments later, a Sharpie—uncapped; how thoughtful—drops into her waiting hand, and she writes Max, August 3, 2003 — 5 foot 7½ inches on the wall, just above Taylor, September 13, 2002 — 5 foot 6¾ inches.

“There,” she says. “Immortalized.”

She twists around to smile at him, expecting one of his shy smiles in return, but instead he’s retreated back to her desk, he’s got his fists clenched at his side, and he’s standing very still.

“Max?” she asks.

“Shit,” he says, turning away. A hand goes up to his face, as if he’s covering his eyes or something, and that’s just so confusing that she takes three whole steps toward him before she realizes he’s not one of her girlfriends and she can’t just manhandle him because she doesn’t know how he’ll react. And, oh yeah, he’s a guy, and he’s in her room, and he’s been careful not to even touch her so far, and as nice as he’s been, she doesn’t want to give him the wrong idea.

“Did I do something wrong?” she says. She’s making her voice small on purpose, which is a little manipulative, but it is appropriate to how she feels. Max is special, and she doesn’t want to lose him as a friend before she figures out why.

It gets him to turn around, at least. And his eyes aren’t red and his cheeks aren’t wet, so it can’t be that bad. “No,” he says, forcing a smile. “Sorry. It’s just… It’s a me thing.”

“It’s just a stupid mark,” Taylor says. “I can fill it in if you want. I know where Dad keeps the filler.”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “I like it. If you don’t mind it there… I like it.”

Okay. Okay. He has an issue about this. But as much as she wants to probe it, as much as she wants to know everything, she refrains. If there’s one thing she’s learned as a cheerleader, it’s when to give a girl her space. Still applies here, even though Max isn’t a girl.

“Let’s keep it, then,” she says, matching his smile. It has the effect she hoped for, which is that his smile becomes warmer and more genuine, and she has to fight very hard not to just bounce forward and hug him. “Hey, Max,” she adds, “you wanna go out? We could go to the mall or something.” She pulls playfully at the hem of his shirt again. “We could even buy you some clothes that aren’t black and don’t have bands on them. And that are maybe your size?”

He laughs, and it seems almost real. “No thanks,” he says. “I’m tired out. Maybe I’ll just go home.”

“Oh, no you don’t, mister,” she says, mom-voicing him hard enough that he steps back. “I have nothing to do today, so you’re going to keep me company. Deal?”

He surrenders instantly. “Deal.”

“So. You smoke weed?”

Darn; she should have waited until he had a drink or something, because the look on his face is absolutely priceless, and she definitely could have gotten him to spray water if she timed it right.

“Uh,” he says, floundering. “Uh. Yeah? I guess so?”

She bounces on her toes. Flustering him is fun. “You wanna smoke weed and get takeout?”

“Sure?”

It’ll be good for him. He needs to talk, get whatever this is off his chest, and Taylor, she needs to listen. And maybe look at him a bit. Maybe look at him a lot. And if there’s one thing she’s learned as a cheerleader, it’s when to stay sober and when to get high.

“Wait one second,” she says, holding up a finger. Then she skips over to her door, yanks it open, leans out, and yells down the stairs, “GARRETT! I’M TAKING SOME OF YOUR WEED! IF YOU TELL MOM I’LL RIP YOUR BALLS OFF AND DROP THEM IN YOUR FISH TANK!”

She turns back to Max, grinning and waggling her eyebrows at him, her hand cupped around her ear for the rejoinder.

“I WON’T TELL MOM IF YOU BRING ME ANOTHER BAG OF DORITOS!” Garrett yells back, probably from the same dumb couch they left him on. “See?” Taylor says to Max. “Told you he wasn’t dead.”

Three

LEGIT AIR

“Look at that,” Taylor’s pointing at the screen. “Look at the air they’re getting! It’s good, right? It’s legit.”

Max nods. It’s not been enough to admit to Taylor that, yes, she’s an incredible athlete and, yes, cheerleading’s legit, and, wow, no shit, captain of the squad, that’s really impressive; she wants to show him, and beyond summoning the rest of the squad and running through their routines right in front of him, the best way to do that turns out to be to drag him over to her computer desk and call up video after video of competitive cheerleading.

The trouble is, he’s having trouble concentrating. It’s not that the weed’s hit him all that hard, because it hasn’t, but between it, the takeout, the exercises this morning and the lingering fatigue from spending almost a week, on and off, in Dad’s cramped car, a portion of his brain keeps insisting it would rather just fall face-first into bed, and resents having to squint at a sequence of blocky videos recorded off of ESPN2.

He’s aware enough, though, to be seriously impressed by what he’s seeing. The shit the girls—and guys; a lot of the squads are mixed—are pulling off is downright incredible.

“It’s legit,” he says, passing the joint.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Taylor says, taking it from him and taking a lengthy drag. “Last one, I promise. See these guys?” She cues up another video. “Their routine is amazing. Just wait until you see the throws at the end!”

On the screen, a squad in green uniforms performs a tightly choreographed routine, and the more he watches them, the more he can’t believe they’re a high-school-age cheerleader squad.

“Tay,” he says, “this shit is ridiculous!”

She beams at him. He’s noticed she likes it when he calls her Tay. Almost makes him want an even shorter version of his name, so they can trade. But only his grandparents call him Maxwell—and his mom when she’s pissed.

“This is from two or three years ago,” she says, grinding the end of the joint into dust in the ashtray. “It was a huge controversy: another squad turned out to’ve been stealing their routines for, like, years, and winning trophies with them. Winning this trophy!” The video shows them being announced as the winners of the tournament, and Taylor stabs emphatically at the screen. “They just never had the money to compete for themselves. But they got the money together, they went all in, and they won. It’s like something out of a movie!”

“That’s… actually cool.”

“Right? It’s inspirational!”

“Yeah.”

“C’mon,” she says, abruptly switching off the monitor. Then she puts both feet on the seat of Max’s chair and pushes him away with enough force that the casters trip on the rug, tipping him right off onto the bed. Judging by the glee on her face, she planned it exactly that way, and it came off perfectly. “Max!” she exclaims, forming her mouth into a perfect O of shock. “I thought you were a gymnast! But there you go, falling off of chairs…”

“I would have been fine—” he starts to protest, but he has to cut himself off when Taylor launches herself at the bed. She lands next to him, bounces a couple of times, and comes to rest leaning on her elbow, grinning at him. “I would have been fine,” he tries again, “if I wasn’t so tired.”

“Jet-lagged?” she says. “No, wait; car-lagged?”

“I hate cars,” he says, counting on his fingers, “I hate motels, I hate small towns in the middle of the country, I hate my dad’s music, I hate how Clay takes up all the space in the back seat…”

“How come you didn’t fly? There are people who can move boxes across the country for you.”

“Money. Cheaper to do it ourselves than pay movers, or so Dad said. Hey, um, Taylor…” He shuffles away from her a little. “Should I be on your bed with you like this? Is this really okay?”

“Why?” she asks, pretending to be afraid. “Are you going to molest me, Max Giordano?”

“What? No!” He recoils even farther just at the thought of it, but she reaches out and rolls him over, bringing him closer again.

“So, chill,” she says. She leans over him—Max tries to compress himself into the mattress so she doesn’t actually touch him—and retrieves the remote for her CD player. She switches it on and dumps the remote on the floor. Something by Alanis Morissette comes on, but he’s only heard that one album of hers, the one that got really big; he doesn’t know this one. Next to him, facing up and with her hands clasped on her belly, Taylor sighs contentedly. “You want to smoke another?” she asks after a short while.

“Sure.”

She nods, sits up just enough to retrieve the baggie of pre-rolled joints she stole from Garrett’s room, and lights one up. She passes it to Max, who takes a deep drag, and when he looks again, she’s gotten another ashtray out from somewhere and placed it between them.

“How many of those do you have?”

“Enough,” she says, and accepts the joint from him. “Mom never cleans in here because I do it myself, and she can’t smell it in here because Garrett’s room always stinks of it, so…” She shrugs.

“Weird to be smoking weed with a cheerleader,” Max says, feeling sufficiently loosened up—by the weed, by his exhaustion, by Taylor’s apparent belief that he’s not the kind of guy who might try to hurt her—to just say shit. “I always thought you guys lived on mineral water and pep and calling all the other girls sluts.”

“Max,” Taylor says, passing back, “I’m going to say something very rude now, and you’ve got to promise me it won’t leave this room. I have a reputation to upkeep.”

Max crosses his heart. “Promise.”

“Your New York cheerleaders sound like stuck-up bee-yotches.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, they kinda were.”

“What about your friend? Avery?”

He laughs. “Yeah, she thinks New York cheerleaders are stuck-up bee-yotches, too.”

“I mean,” she says, giggling, “what kind of girl is she?”

“Gymnast. Lesbian. Oh, and she’s a huge nerd, too.”

“Like you, then,” Taylor says.

“Like you,” Max counters.

A little while later, when the second joint is done and they’re lying on their backs together, looking up at the star stickers on her ceiling, and when Max is feeling more relaxed than he has at any point in at least the last year, Taylor goes and ruins it all—or complicates it all, anyway—by asking the question he’d been hoping she wouldn’t.

“Hey, Max? Where did you get those scars?”

“You saw those, huh?”

Of course she did. You can’t throw yourself around the way he did this morning without your shirt flying all over the place, especially when it’s too big for you by several sizes. He ought to take a leaf out of her book and wear a tight crop top or something. The thought of it, of his belly sticking out of one of Taylor’s pink gym tops, is almost funny enough to make him laugh.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says. “Really, you don’t.”

He shrugs. He ought to lie, or claim it’s a secret, or otherwise keep it from her, because it isn’t exactly the kind of story you tell to make yourself seem cool in front of a pretty girl, but if she’s going to be his friend, she should know. And if she laughs or thinks less of him, then it’s better to know now, right? Better to be rejected by someone you just met than by someone you’ve known for a long time.

“It was last year,” he says, settling his head into the pillow. He might be telling the story, but he doesn’t want to look at her while he does. He wants to get her reaction all at once, when he’s done. In case it’s bad. Rip off the Band-Aid, etc. “End of the spring semester. I’d never been that popular, but I was never unpopular, either, you know? I was just another kid. And I’d been dabbling in gymnastics a long time already, but high school was where I started really getting into it. Coach thought I had real promise. I wasn’t as good as Avery—she started before me—but I was good. And Coach said I could be great. And I’d never been great at anything before, so I let her talk me into taking private classes. Mom was against it but Dad, in a fit of unexpected parental involvement, persuaded her. And then that was it. School, home, life, it was all about gymnastics. Me and Avery and gymnastics. It was everything to us. Anyway, Coach was right: I was great.”

“I’ve seen it,” Taylor says quietly. “You are.”

“And you’ve seen me after a year of doing nothing more than backyard stuff,” he says. “And we didn’t even have a big yard back home. Since then, since what happened, I’ve lost weight, I’ve lost muscle. I don’t have the stamina I used to. Compared to back then, I’m— Ugh. Sorry. Hard to lose something like that, you know?”

“What happened to you, Max?”

“It was inevitable, really. At school, I wasn’t just some kid anymore. I was a gym fag. I had my special fag gym clothes and I walked like a gym fag and— Well, you know what people are like. Shit written on my locker, guys bumping into me on the stairs and trying to get me to trip and fall. You’ve seen it, I bet.”

“Yeah,” she says. “There are a-holes like that in every school.”

“So, it’s the end of the spring semester last year,” he says briskly, moving the story along as quickly as he can, “and three guys corner me. I thought they were just going to beat the shit out of me, which would have been an escalation, but still, something I could deal with.” His voice is shaking. Huh. “No. Christ, I wish they had. What actually happened was that two of them grabbed me and held me down on the ground and the third, he had this beat-up old Volvo, and he got the cigarette lighter—”

“Oh no,” Taylor breathes.

“Yeah. Pushed it into me three times. And he wasn’t quick, either. He held it there each time. If you’re wondering: incredibly painful.”

“What did you do?”

He can’t help it. He sits up, earlier than he planned, unable to wait for her judgment, but she’s just lying there, watching him, no cruelty or satisfaction evident on her face. She feels for him. It’s obvious. And if it weren’t, the hand that reaches for his would make it pretty clear.

Still, he’s not done with the story yet.

“I didn’t do anything. At first it was because I was in pain, like, monumental amounts of pain, and then I just didn’t want to get up. They didn’t stick around. Just kicked me a bit, taunted me, and ran off. They left me there and ran off. And lying there, Tay, I think I already knew they’d broken me. I think I knew that was it, you know?” He shakes his head. Too much. “Anyway, I didn’t tell the cops or the principal or anything because I still had to go to school for another two years with those assholes and they could have made it even worse for me. So I just… went home. Swallowed Tylenol like candy and wrapped my chest in gauze. Mom eventually saw the burns and freaked and took me to, like, a gajillion doctors, but the best they could do by that point was just tell me to use lotion on them.”

“Does it help?”

“No. Not really.”

Taylor pushes up on her elbows, bringing herself closer, and she lets go of his hand and reaches for the hem of his shirt. “May I?” she asks, and waits for his nod.

It’s light and airy in Taylor’s room, and a breeze ripples over his chest as Taylor lifts up his shirt. He expects her to pull it up only enough to see, but she raises it higher and shoots him a questioning glance, which he interprets—correctly—as a request to raise his arms. She slides his shirt all the way off and drops it on the bed.

“I know,” he says, “I’m skinny.”

Taylor smiles sadly. “No skinnier than me,” she says, which is generous of her. “And I’d say ‘toned’, anyway. Um. Do they hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

He knows how they look in the light; three angry, deep-red scars burned into his chest. Three concentric circles, the skin at its worst where they join. Each one is a memory, a humiliation.

Taylor doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. Caught with one hand halfway to his chest and another halfway to her mouth, she’s frozen in place, her eyes searching him for the answer to a question she seems scared to ask. He nods again, and she touches him. Gently, almost nervously. She traces the outline of the scars.

And then he’s too self-conscious. Not just because of the scars, but because his skin is sallow after so long without sun; because whatever she says about how toned he is, he can see his weakness in her eyes. So he snatches up his shirt and slips it back on.

It breaks the spell.

“I’m so sorry, Max,” she says.

He struggles to regather his usual emotional state, to find again the ol’ reliable ‘Max’ persona, the guy who doesn’t care too much about anything, not the burn scars on his ribs or the friends he’s lost or the fact that his one remaining real friend is now thousands of miles away.

“We used to know each other,” he says, casually tossing it at her like it’s a factoid his mom just read in the Style section of the newspaper. “The guy who burned me. Grew up together.” He knows he sounds flippant, but better that than bare himself again. And she seems to understand. A guy needs his emotional space. “We used to be close. Like kids are, I mean. Back in New York, there’s a room with both of our heights marked on the wall, just like that. Him and me. It was him and me, and then we drifted apart, and when he came back, he did this to me.”

“Oh,” Taylor says, eyes wide. “Oh! That’s why you, uh, when we marked your height, uh…”

“Yeah,” he says, his cheeks reddening. So much for ol’ reliable, emotionless Max. “That’s why it hit me so hard. Kinda brought him back, you know?” He laughs. “I thought I was better at hiding my shit than that. Turns out, I’m really not.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I see everything, anyway. So you’re just going to have to get used to that.”

* * *

Those burns are vicious. And that level of bullying is something else! Vista Primavera High has its problems, yes, but the worst she’s heard of lately is just normal bullcrap like freshmen getting dumped in the trash or having their lockers vandalized. And that it was done by someone he used to be friends with…

Max Giordano is going to need good friends from now on. Of that, Taylor is absolutely certain.

It hurt him so much to tell her, too. She saw him clam up after. And that’s so accurate, actually! He opened up, just a little bit, just enough for her to see, and then he snapped shut! It took her almost an hour to restore the innocent, fun, almost flirty attitude he had out in the yard, and she wonders if the weed was a bad idea; Max seems like one of those people who get melancholy when they’re high.

It was probably just because she made him relive the memories, though.

He’s also moved farther away from her on the bed. He’s practically falling off! Inevitable, probably. Honestly, you get a guy to admit to having one (1) emotion, and they immediately stop talking at all!

No, actually. That’s unfair. That’s not Max she’s thinking of, that’s Gordo, a teenage boy who can’t wait to be a man, who already considers himself to be what a man ought to be, and Taylor’s not in a rush to spend time socially with people who remind her of her father, thank you very much! She’s tried to tell him, over and over, to just talk to her like he used to. If he did, maybe she’d even get to the bottom of his obsession with sex!

No, wait; that’s also because Gordo is a teenage boy. In a way Max, somehow, is not.

“Hey,” she says, “talk to me, Max.”

“I’m okay,” he insists. He’s regained a little of the slight swagger he had before, the sense that he knows who he is, what he wants. Yes, it’s a lie, or at best a coping mechanism, but it’s a comforting one, for Taylor. There’s a real Max under the front he puts up, and she got to see it.

“Are you sure?” she says.

“Yeah. It’s just… I think you’re the only person I’ve talked to about what happened. Apart from my family. And doctors. And Avery, obviously. You’re the first person since her I’ve chosen to talk to about it. Which is kinda confusing, because I’ve known you for, what, twenty-nine hours?”

“More like thirty-one,” Taylor says, and she bounces on the mattress to bring herself closer. “Avery. You miss her, huh?”

He smiles, and that’s good, right? That’s a genuine smile on his face! Not one of the fake ones he puts on when he knows he ought to be smiling at something.

“I do. She’s been bugging me to talk to her online, but we don’t have internet yet, so—”

“Oh!” Well, there’s a good deed she can do! “I have internet. You want to talk to her right now? I can set it up! It’ll be really quick. Will she be at home on a Sunday afternoon?”

“Um, yeah, I think so,” he says, recoiling a little. Taylor reels herself in a bit. Too much enthusiasm for someone who just finished being a huge downer.

“Come on, then,” she says, bouncing the rest of the way over to his side of the bed—her thigh momentarily grazing his; just an accident!—and hopping off onto the floor. She rolls his chair back over to the computer desk and boots up her main PC again. The fans whirr gently into life—she spent a whole afternoon making sure her computer doesn’t sound like a jet engine, unlike Garrett’s—and by the time Max joins her, she’s looking at the desktop again. “Which client?”

“Which, uh…?”

“AIM, MSN, ICQ…?”

“Oh. AIM.”

Taylor opens AIM, logs herself out, and wheels herself away so Max can sit in front of the keyboard. When he maneuvers himself into position, she swings her chair around behind his and rests her forearms on its back, with her chin atop them. She can see the screen over his shoulder.

It must be a slow Sunday over in New York—three hours ahead, she remembers; Avery’s probably going to be called for dinner in the not-too-distant future—because the AIM window lights up almost instantly with a response.

Maximillion: Hey Avery A-Very-Nice-Person: Holy shit you got internet A-Very-Nice-Person: Did you get cable? Is it fast? A-Very-Nice-Person: We’re stuck on DSL and it’s not fucking dial up at least but I hate it A-Very-Nice-Person: Dad says we can’t get cable again until we pay our cable bill A-Very-Nice-Person: And he is ideologically opposed to paying cable bills as you know A-Very-Nice-Person: Anyway it’s so cool you’re back online I was DYING without you to talk to A-Very-Nice-Person: Max? Are you there? Maximillion: I’m here Maximillion: You just type really fast Maximillion: Chill A-Very-Nice-Person: I refuse A-Very-Nice-Person: ONE of us has to talk

“I like her already,” Taylor says.

“Why does that not surprise me?” Max replies.

Maximillion: Anyway I don’t have internet yet Maximillion: I’m at a friend’s house A-Very-Nice-Person: You made a friend already! That rules A-Very-Nice-Person: Can I embarrass you in front of him yet or are you still in the delicate getting to know you phase A-Very-Nice-Person: Circling the cave and grunting at each other until you establish a firm enough masculine bond to roast and eat a dead stag without trying to kill each other A-Very-Nice-Person: I think that’s how it works with boys anyway Maximillion: When have I ever grunted? A-Very-Nice-Person: I think you could grunt A-Very-Nice-Person: I’m not saying it wouldn’t be under duress A-Very-Nice-Person: But I AM saying it would be adorable Maximillion: Well Avery Maximillion: You’ll be happy to know you’ve already embarrassed me in front of HER A-Very-Nice-Person: ROFL A-Very-Nice-Person: Sorry Max’s friend if you can see this A-Very-Nice-Person: But I’m about to get even worse A-Very-Nice-Person: Deep breath A-Very-Nice-Person: What’s her name is she pretty is she prettier THAN ME and if she is does she like girls and is she open to a long distance relationship Maximillion: You have a girlfriend Avery A-Very-Nice-Person: SHE doesn’t know that

Taylor leans over Max’s shoulder and borrows the keyboard.

Maximillion: Hi! Max’s friend here, Avery, and I’m sorry, but I very much do know that now. Maximillion: Ya blew it. Maximillion: Sorreeeeeeee!!!!! A-Very-Nice-Person: Hey look Max your friend likes punctuation Maximillion: I’ll have you know I have a 4.3 average. Maximillion: I love punctuation. A-Very-Nice-Person: Holy shit Max a 4.3, hitch your wagon to this girl A-Very-Nice-Person: She’ll take you places Maximillion: Okay it’s me again, and I’m doing fine thank you Avery Maximillion: I’ll keep my wagon where it belongs.

“You’re a menace,” Max tells Taylor. She beams at him, and then twists around to get out of her chair.

“I’ll give you two a minute,” she says. “You want something to drink? We have iced tea or water or—”

“Iced tea is fine, unless you have anything like Dr Pepper.”

“I think we might actually have Dr Pepper. You want? Okay! Be right ba-aaack!”

She sings the last word as she skips out of the room, and then she’s down the stairs in a flash. She can’t resist putting a little flourish into it as she rounds the bend from the bottom of the stairs into the living room, because Garrett’s probably still in there, and it annoys him to see her expending so much excess energy. Or moving fast, like, at all.

And there he is, wasting whole days away on the couch. As usual. She sticks her tongue out at him; he gives her the finger. She escapes to look for sodas, but by the time she’s dug them out of the fridge, he’s leaning against the arch that separates the kitchen from the rest of the rooms downstairs.

“Make sure you put the baggie back in my room,” he says.

“Yeah,” she says. “Duh.”

“Make sure you reseal it.”

“Obviously.”

“And make sure you air out your room and—”

“I know, Garrett!”

“Okay! Jesus! I’m just trying to help.”

“You’re starting to get cranky,” she says, maneuvering around him as she exits the kitchen, a Diet Dr Pepper in each hand. “Maybe you should smoke some more.” On her way back up the stairs, she turns and yells, “And then maybe you’ll get turbo cancer and die!”

“I’m your big brother, Taylor!” he shouts after her. “I’m looking out for you!”

“You’re a big pain in my ass!” she shouts back, leaning over the railing so her voice echoes properly. She swoops back into her room, ignoring the grumbling from downstairs, and as she closes the door with her butt, she’s delighted to see Max laughing at something on the screen.

Well, mostly delighted. It would have been nice if it had been her who made him laugh, not this Avery girl, but it’s still good to see.

“Drink up,” she says, placing the can in front of him.

“Diet,” he observes, before opening it and taking a swig.

“I’m an athlete!” She opens hers and presses the cold can against his bare forearm, making him wince and pull away. “And so are you!”

“Thanks, Tay,” he says, grinning at her.

“So? How’s she doing?”

“Avery? She’s good. Same as normal.” He points to the screen, and Taylor swings her chair around behind again, so she can look properly. As she drinks, Max goes back to typing.

A-Very-Nice-Person: It’s going to be weird going back to school without you A-Very-Nice-Person: I’m going to have to get a new best friend Maximillion: At least you won’t have to have the locker next to the one that always has FAG on it anymore A-Very-Nice-Person: What if I befriend a new fag A-Very-Nice-Person: Oh shit am I allowed to say that Maximillion: No but neither am I

Taylor hides her smile behind her Diet Dr Pepper. Definitely not gay, then. Just checking!

A-Very-Nice-Person: Have you seen your new school yet Maximillion: No but I figure any school is like any other school right? Maximillion: Different color metal detectors maybe A-Very-Nice-Person: ROFL depressing A-Very-Nice-Person: Rolling on the floor sobbing my eyes out A-Very-Nice-Person: Leave New York and see the sights in sunny California! A-Very-Nice-Person: Get violated by entirely new rentacops!

“It’s not too bad, actually,” Taylor says, having drained her Dr Pepper already. “We’ve got a couple security guys, but no metal detectors. They keep saying they’re going to beef up security, but so far…” She crosses her fingers.

Maximillion: Taylor says no metal detectors

Taylor borrows the keyboard again.

Maximillion: Taylor here, AND our security guys have cute little name tags and they get fired if they get too handsy. Which HAS happened, so that’s not great, but at least they got fired. A-Very-Nice-Person: You’re leading the nation A-Very-Nice-Person: Also hi Taylor! A-Very-Nice-Person: Max won’t say if you’re prettier than me Maximillion: Just a second, Avery. I can solve that conundrum.

Taylor surrenders the keyboard to Max, but before he can type anything else, she claims the mouse and loads the webcam application. The little camera is still positioned on top of the monitor, pointing down at them, covering what Taylor’s always considered her most flattering angle. “Say cheese,” she says, and puts on a peppy smile, pressing her cheek against Max’s.

In the preview, he looks adorably startled and she looks great, so she saves the picture and drags it into the AIM window.

A-Very-Nice-Person: Oh shit she IS prettier than me A-Very-Nice-Person: How depressing A-Very-Nice-Person: You see it right Max A-Very-Nice-Person: You see how she’s prettier than me Maximillion: Avery Maximillion: You realize I’m stuck now don’t you? Maximillion: I can’t say you’re prettier than Taylor because she’s right here Maximillion: And I can’t say the opposite either Maximillion: Whatever I say I’m doomed

“Duh,” Taylor says, giggling. “You say we’re both beautiful.”

A-Very-Nice-Person: Repeat after me, Maxxy: “You’re both pretty.”

“She makes a good point,” Taylor says.

Maximillion: There’s an echo in here. Maximillion: Taylor said the exact same thing you did. A-Very-Nice-Person: Well yeah A-Very-Nice-Person: All of us are taught this as children A-Very-Nice-Person: We get secret classes A-Very-Nice-Person: How to make boys uncomfortable is like the first lesson A-Very-Nice-Person: It’s our main weapon in the battle of the sexes A-Very-Nice-Person: That and mace

“I have some Mace,” Taylor whispers, “if you ever need some. I have spare, I mean.”

“Why would I need Mace?”

“Don’t know. But just in case. I’ll bring some over.”

“Don’t bring me Mace, Taylor.”

“Just in case!”

* * *

Max isn’t exactly late for dinner, but he needs to shower to get rid of the weed stink, and since it’s also his turn to set the table, he’s going to be cutting it really close. So he barges in through the front door at full speed, yells out that he’s here, that he’ll be down in a minute, that he just needs a shower, and he makes it to the stairs without either of his parents getting a chance to intercept him and yell at him about timekeeping, about the watch his Aunt Gabriele got him, about how it keeps perfect time, about how he should wear it more, and about how he knows when dinner is and when to be home for it.

See? He doesn’t even need to be yelled at; he’s got the script memorized.

He doesn’t make it to his bedroom entirely unscathed, though. Clay’s in his room with his door open, and he calls out as Max passes. Panting, Max stops in the doorway, leaning on the frame with both hands.

“Yeah?” Max says.

“Nice girl, is she?”

“Yeah.”

“Girlfriend?”

“What? No. Clay, we’ve been here a day.”

“You moved on Avery pretty quick back home.”

“We weren’t— Never mind. I need a shower.”

“Good idea.” Clay wafts a hand in front of his nose. “And wash those clothes yourself.”

“Uh, yeah, I will.”

As Max turns to leave, Clay says, “Nice scrunchie, Max.”

“What? Oh. Shit.”

“You wearing it to dinner? So Mom and Dad can get a good look at it?”

“Uh. No. Definitely not.”

“Okay then.”

Max makes his escape.

It’s annoying to have to wash his hair twice in one day, but hair’s worse than clothes for retaining weed stink, and as much as he could pass it off as an unfortunate byproduct of existing in the presence of Taylor’s stoner brother, he doesn’t want to take the risk; Mom’d probably go over there to complain about Garrett’s corrupting influence. And the shower gives him the opportunity to think, too.

About Taylor.

He let her touch his scars. And something about that felt right. Felt like it demystified them somehow. Like Taylor claimed them, and in doing so, released their hold on him just a little. He’s not going to start going topless, but maybe by bringing them so completely into his new life, into a new friendship, she’s begun a process which might eventually sever their connection to his past.

Yeah. He kinda likes that.

He also likes that Taylor and Avery get along. They chatted for a while, switching the keyboard back and forth, until Avery had to go for dinner. She and Taylor exchanged details, and then it was just Max and Taylor again. Watching TV. Talking about nothing. Talking about everything.

She’s relaxing to be around. She’s a lot smarter than he originally assumed she would be, which is on him. Making assumptions. Like a girl can’t be bubbly and peppy and test well!

He smiles as he soaps himself up. Her words in her voice. Different to Avery’s—basically two exact opposite points of the female vocal range—but not shrill and whining like he always expects cheerleaders’ voices to be.

“Wow,” he says to himself, imitating Taylor. “Prejudiced much?”

They talked about birthdays. She has one coming up, and he is of course invited to her eighteenth on September 13. He told her he had a birthday recently, but that he didn’t really celebrate it, just hung out with Avery as usual. The confession brought the mood down again. It didn’t last, though, and to change the subject, she showed him her hand-annotated copy of the squad routine book and talked him through what cheerleaders do that gymnasts don’t. When it was finally time for him to go home for dinner, it was with the knowledge of what flyers, bases and spotters are, what they do, and how disastrous it can be when any of them fuck up.

In all, his second day in California could have gone a lot worse. Though it’s weird that Taylor hasn’t mentioned her boyfriend even once yet.

* * *

He’s so dumb! So adorably, annoyingly dumb! He wants to do gymnastics. He’s desperate to get back to it! She could see it in the way he hungrily watched the cheer routines she played for him, and in the rapt attention he paid when she was showing him the cheer book, but he won’t do anything about it! And, okay, Vista Primavera High doesn’t have a gymnastics team, so he can’t do it at school, but he can take classes or something! He can do it on his own time! But no, instead he’s just going to try to keep up with the basics in his backyard—or in hers—and leave it at that.

But he’s also not dumb, and she knows why. He doesn’t want to be the ‘gym eff ay gee’ at another school. He wants to keep his head down and graduate and go to college. And eventually, it went unsaid, he’ll become more like his brother—because he will, Taylor’s wishful thinking notwithstanding—and he’ll either have to learn everything again from scratch—and never again be as good as he was—or he’ll give it up forever.

It was itching on the tip of her tongue all afternoon: join the squad! She wanted so much to say it! And he’d be amazing! He’s better than her at the technical stuff, even if she’s fitter and can last longer, and the other stuff, the cheer-specific stuff, she could teach him, no trouble. Eddie could teach him the guys’ role in the squad. And he’d make them better in turn! They could learn so much from each other!

But she didn’t say it, because she can’t. Because he’s the wrong size and shape. Their routines—their very squad—assume a certain size and shape of guy. Eddie is six foot one and closer to Gordo than Max in physique, and the other guys on the squad are similar; there’s no role for Max there. And while in theory he could take up the same role as one of the girl bases, or even be a flyer if he starts working on his core again, since he can already land like a champ… he’d never agree to it. Being a guy doing girl stuff on the cheer squad is probably significantly worse than being a gym eff ay gee.

Shoot. She’s so close to a solution that helps them both, but there’s no way she can make it work!

Taylor shakes her head and jumps up from her bed, aiming to call for takeout before Garrett gets a chance to order the greasiest and most disgusting food he can find in the big pile of menus in the kitchen. On her way past the computer desk, the picture of her and Max, the one she took with her webcam and sent to Avery, catches her eye.

It makes her smile. Warms her stomach. Because they look like such good friends already!

But what’s weird is that with the low resolution of the webcam, with the fat pixels obscuring the finer details of his face, with the angle the picture was taken from, he looks kinda like a girl.

He looks kinda like a pretty girl.

Taylor stares.

Like a really pretty—

“Taylor!” Garrett calls from downstairs. “I’m ordering food!”

Shoot!

She shakes her head and runs to the door. “Oh no you don’t!” she yells, and starts down the stairs, flexing her fingers, preparing to rip the phone right out of his stupid stoner hands before he orders something with more oil by volume than an entire KFC, and kick him if that doesn’t seem like enough.

* * *

Monday goes by quickly. Max showers, dresses in loose clothing he can move in, and goes over to Taylor’s. They exercise together. Taylor shows him more of her cheerleader moves and tries to give him an idea of how they work with more than one person, but it’s difficult to imagine. She says she should get her friend Willa over, because she’s on the squad and can help Taylor show him, if he’s interested. He says he’s fine just imagining for now.

Then it’s back upstairs to chat and watch TV. She will take him shopping one day, she says, but she’s going to give him more time to get acclimated before she subjects him to the malls here. They hang out, they talk to Avery a little more together, Taylor still doesn’t mention that she has a boyfriend—he’s been noticing more and more how she doesn’t talk about him—and then it’s dinner time and he’s got to go home.

And just when he’s getting excited at the thought of doing it all over again tomorrow—and reveling in the feeling of actually looking forward to something for once—his mom drops the bombshell: on Tuesday, they’re having a family day. They’re going to go out together and look around the stores and have a nice lunch somewhere, so he needs to get his sunscreen and some nice clothes and be ready to go out at nine in the morning sharp.

As Taylor would say, ick!

They got the cable TV and internet connected while he was out, though, so after dinner he sets up his aging computer and messages Taylor on AIM to tell her he can’t come over tomorrow. She’s sad—and annoyed that it’s not going to be her who introduces him to the shopping here—but she gets over it, and they end up talking well into the night.

* * *

“Yeah, and he can’t come over today. His parents want a ‘family day’, which basically means they’ve kidnapped him and his enormous brother and they’re going to drive all over town and go shopping and eat out and because they’re from New York they’re probably all going to die of heatstroke on the steps of Spring View Mall twenty feet away from the air conditioning and I’m bored, Willa!”

“Whoa! Okay. Take it easy, Tay. Start again. Who is Max?”

Taylor winds the phone cord around her little finger. “He’s this boy—”

“No, no, I understood that part. I mean, why are you so into him?”

“I’m not into him! He’s just— He’s nice, Willa. He’s a nice guy. Do you know any nice guys? Apart from Eddie, I mean.”

“Apart from Eddie? No. I know plenty of only mildly offputting guys, if that helps.”

“It extremely does not.”

“Fair,” Willa says.

“Willa, he’s super sweet and you have to meet him! So what I was thinking is, he had his eighteenth like a week ago, just over, and he didn’t even do anything for it! So I thought about a surprise party—you know how much I love surprises—but he’s kinda gunshy. So then I thought, what about us? Like, the four of us? You and Eddie and me and Max. Tomorrow night. Over here. Garrett can get us drinks and we’ll have a little birthday party! For Max!”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you mean, ‘uh-huh’?”

“Me and my boyfriend and you and your…”

“Max, yes.”

“You and your Max.”

“No! Just me and Max. He’s not mine…” She probably shouldn’t sound so wistful.

“You have a boyfriend, Taylor! Remember Gordo? Big guy. Linebacker. Very straight nose.” Over the line, Willa giggles. “Very straight guy in general.”

“Max isn’t like that.”

“Didn’t you say he’s not gay?”

“He’s not! He said so!”

“He just, like, came out and said it?”

On her kitchen stool, Taylor squirms. “Not directly. But we were talking to his friend from New York and they were talking like he’s not gay. He even said he’s ‘not allowed’ to say the word; you know, um, eff, ay—”

“You don’t need to spell it, Tay.” Willa breathes heavily into the phone. “So. He’s not gay. And he’s not like Gordo. What is he like?”

“I don’t know, Willa! He’s… He’s sweet and he’s sensitive and he’s kinda… He’s Max, Willa. Max.”

“You’re saying his name like you think it’s helping your ‘not into him’ case.”

“Is it?”

“No.”

“No fair,” Taylor whines.

“You’re lusting, Tay.”

“Am not!”

“Does he know he’s got no chance?”

“…No? Yes? Maybe? But I don’t want that from him, Willa. I want a friend. I want him to be more like how you are with me, not like how Gordo is with me. I think. Shoot, I don’t know. Stop asking confusing questions.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“I’ll come to your party, Tay. I’ll wear something nice and I’ll bring Eddie and I’ll meet your new best friend and we can do the birthday thing. Just promise me it won’t be weird.”

“Zero weirdness. I promise. Willa, you’re the best.”

“I know. And—”

“Shoot! Doorbell! Gotta go!”

She could probably have made it to the front door without having to hang up, because the kitchen phone has a really long cord, but if she kept Willa on the line she was going to keep asking those uncomfortable questions, and they’re not anything Taylor wants to address right now. She’s on the fourth day of her friendship with Max and she still doesn’t know exactly what she wants from him, only that she wants something, and it’s definitely not what she wants from Gordo.

She’s still frowning at the thought of it when the doorbell goes again, reminding her why she hung up in the first place. Irritably she rushes to the front door and yanks it open.

Shoot.

“Gordo!”

“Hey, babe!”

He yanks her into an embrace she has no chance of getting out of unless she wants to get violent, so she waits for him to get done before she says anything else. And then he plants a kiss on her mouth as he releases her, so she has to wait that out, too.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, when finally she can. “I thought football camp was—”

“It’s not ‘football camp’, Tay, I keep telling you.” He starts taking the stairs two at a time, and Taylor has to admit that for all that he can be, well, annoying and persistent, he has a great body. And it’s a reactive body, too. He moves a muscle in his arm and it’s like a butterfly flapping its wings; somewhere on the other end of his body, another muscle moves with it. “It’s an intensive week-long training regimen overseen by—”

“If it’s so intensive,” she says, climbing the stairs after him, “then why are you here?”

“I missed you, Tay!”

He punctuates her name by swinging open the door to her room. She follows him inside, allows him to shut the door, and when he sits down on the end of her bed she chooses one of the computer chairs, rolling it into the center of the room.

“No, seriously,” she says. “Why are you here?”

“Coach gave us the afternoon off and it’s only sixty miles and I wanted to surprise you, Tay!”

She reaches forward to swat him on the knee. “Gordo! You know I hate surprises!”

“I know, I know,” he says, “you like everything to be organized and in its place—” he mimes typing on an invisible typewriter, which is seemingly how Gordo thinks you organize yourself, “—but you’re not doing anything today, are you?”

“No,” she admits.

“So?”

“Fine,” she says, stepping up from her chair and over to him. He rises to meet her, circles an arm around her waist and dips her, and the shiver that involuntarily passes through her isn’t entirely unwelcome. Enough that when she comes up, flushed, she’s ready for more. But she has to set the ground rules, first. “No sex stuff, though.” She holds a finger up to his face, which is tricky because of how close he’s holding her. “Okay?”

He kisses her again and releases her. “Yeah, Tay, I got it. I can wait a month. Hey, you wanna go out on your birthday, just the two of us, and celebrate?”

“I have a party on my birthday, Gordo. You know that!”

“Okay. Day after?”

“That’s a Sunday, and we have school the next day. We’ll do something the Friday after, okay?”

Gordo nods, grinning expansively. “Perfect, Tay, just perfect. I can’t wait. I mean, I can wait. And I will wait. But I can’t.”

“Understood, Gordo.”

“And— Oh, hey, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

And that’s when Taylor realizes she should have been so much more careful, that she shouldn’t have let Gordo come up here—not that she had much chance of stopping him—and that maybe she should start applying the same ruthless organization and forward planning she uses for school, cheerleading and Gordo to the rest of her personal life, because he’s over at the door, looking at the latest addition to the height marks carved into the frame.

“Tay,” he says slowly, “who’s Max? Is he a guy? Did you have a guy in your room?”

Strangely, he doesn’t sound mad. At least, he doesn’t sound like he usually sounds when he’s mad. His voice is too steady. Somehow that’s even scarier.

“No guys, Gordo,” she says quickly, because it’s what he needs to hear. “Promise.”

“So who is he?”

Looking quickly around her room for inspiration, Taylor’s eyes land briefly on the computer, and she remembers the webcam photo she took. How the low-quality camera basically erased the wispy dark hairs on Max’s upper lip and softened his features. Made him look different.

“Max is a girl,” she says. “Maxine. She’s a friend and she was visiting. We were just messing around.”

“I don’t know a Maxine,” Gordo says, still frowning.

Taylor quickly reaches for some facts she can use to anchor the lie. “She just moved here. She starts at our school in the fall. She’s nice, Gordo.”

“Cool,” he says, nodding. “Cool.” And then his grin returns as if it had never left. “Is she hot?”

“Yes,” Taylor says, “she’s hot, but you’re taken, you idiot!”

He holds up his hands in fake surrender and edges around the room, pretending to back away from her. “I get it, I get it, don’t attack me!”

Gordo’s still backing away, and he bumps into the computer desk, knocking the mouse and deactivating the screensaver, and Taylor wishes desperately for a do-over of the last few days, or at the very least, the last few minutes.

She left the webcam picture up on the screen. She had it up last night when they were talking—just to look at—and she never turned off her stupid computer because she was too tired, and she couldn’t even hear it when she woke up because it’s so freaking quiet, and now Gordo’s looking at Max, and—

“Oh, hey,” he says. “Is that Maxine? She is hot.”

How to Fly, book one of When You Fell from Heaven, which comprises the first ten chapters of the story, is available:

On Amazon, for Kindle and in Paperback.

As an ebook from these online stores.

Or from Itch.io.

Or you can read all current chapters on my Patreon! Subscribing to my Patreon at the $5 tier will get you all fifteen chapters (so far) of When You Fell from Heaven. You will also get access to my ongoing stories The Catch, a forced-fem riff on Fifty Shades with illustrations by Emory Ahlberg, and Kimmy, a horrifying take on the Halloween costume that won’t let you out. And you’ll get the full epub of the revised version of Show Girl, my egg-cracking trans romance, and access to chapters of The Sisters of Dorley two weeks early!

[princeloww]

DAVID TENNANT ROLES STARTERPACK

(Different roles, where to find them and what they're like!!!) (+ more that I didn't go into included at the end)

*disclaimer: this is sort of UK orientated, 'cos I don't know any American streaming services or where stuff is available in other countries, so PLEASE comment other places you can watch things!!!!

- Takin' Over the Asylum (CAMPBELL BAIN)

Follows a DJ and a group of patients trying to keep a radio station going in a mental hospital. David plays one of the main characters, Campbell Bain, a mostly upbeat and energetic young boy with lots of enthusiasm and spirit. Some angst!

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Blackpool (PETER CARLISLE)

A body is found in an arcade run by Ripley Holden, and him and his entire family are pulled into the murder investigation surrounding it. DI Peter Carlisle is working on the case, and highly suspicious of Ripley. He's a pretty major character and has a romantic plot - as well as a few funny musical numbers. Includes sex scenes.

☆ UKTV PLAY (free in UK), AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

- Casanova (GIACOMO CASANOVA)

The (mostly sexual) adventures of Giacomo Casanova, a charming and fraudulent man who falls in love very quickly and very dramatically with a lot of people, all while essentially bullshitting through life and jumping on every opportunity to make money. Includes sex scenes but also angst, such as illness, injuries, some violence, and general suffering.

☆ MYFLIXERX.TO (free), AMAZON

- Recovery (ALAN HAMILTON)

A man and his family coping with the recovery and rehabilitation process after he (Alan, David Tennant) suffers from brain damage. Angsty. Lots of crying, suicide references, head injury stuff.

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (BARTY CROUCH JR)

I recommend pirating this one so you're not supporting JK Rowling. DT plays Barty Crouch JR, an antagonist and the son of Barty Crouch. He's kind of a minor character, as he's not actually in a lot of scenes.

☆ Probably on most pirating sites (my go to is MYFLIXERX.TO)

- Learners (CHRISTOPHER ??)

Lighthearted movie about a woman trying to pass her driving test. David plays Chris, her driving instructor. He's a bit of a dork, very sweet and kind. Has a love plot, briefly fights a guy. No major angst.

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Hamlet (HAMLET)

Hamlet. Prince of Denmark wants vengeance after his father's death. I haven't actually watched this one yet but I assume it's got the same amount of angst and drama as Hamlet typically does.

☆ AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

- Single Father (DAVE TYLER)

After a fatal car accident, Dave Tyler (DT) is left to parent four children on his own. Still struggling through grief, Dave falls in love again and attempts to hide it. Has LOTS of crying, lots of kissing, sex scenes, DT being miserable and sobbing, etc.

☆ MYFLIXERX.TO (free)

- Rex Is Not Your Lawyer (REX ALEXANDER)

Unaired pilot. Only 40 minutes. Show wasn't picked up, but it is very good. Rex is a successful and skilled lawyer who is forced to stop practising when he starts having panic attacks every time he speaks in court. He decides instead to coach people who want to represent themselves. Lots of DT in very tight suits. American accent. Not MAJOR angst but he does has daddy issues and a panic disorder, so.

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Fright Night (PETER VINCENT)

A kid discovers that his neighbour is a vampire, and he seeks out a famous vampire slayer to help him. Peter Vincent (DT) does not live up to his name, and turns out to actually be sort of pathetic. No major angst, not a lot of clothes, no romance, but lots of eyeliner. He's very bisexual. Violence, vampire horror, creepy neighbour.

☆ DISNEY+, AMAZON PRIME

- The Decoy Bride (JAMES ARBER)

Celebrity Lara Tyler tries to get married to her author fiancé James Arber, but the paparazzi interrupts the wedding. Desperate to keep it private, she takes James to the island that he based his book on. Somehow, the paparazzi still find them, and they hire a decoy bride to pretend to be Lara. Romance, kissing, light hearted, minimal angst. David in a funny outfit. Fake dating trope?

☆ AMAZON PRIME

- Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger (Donald and Roderick Peterson)

Sequel to Nativity, but you don't need to watch the first one. Primary school teacher Donald Peterson (DT) is forced to take his class to Wales to participate in A Song For Christmas, a festive singing competition. Here he is put against his twin brother, who is a successful composer and with whom he has a strained relationship. Light angst - lots of daddy issues, but generally sweet.

☆ AMAZON, I think its on NOW TV???

- The Escape Artist (WILL BURTON)

A defence lawyer, Will Burton, gets a murderer off free, and very quickly grows to regret it, when his client comes after his family next. Lots of murder. Like three murders I think. Hot lawyer DT.

☆ AMAZON (I can't believe I forgot this one)

- What We Did On Our Holiday (DOUG MCLEOD)

A family go to Scotland for their grandfather's 70th birthday. Doug (DT) and his wife (Rosamund Pike) are getting a divorce, but are hiding it from the rest of the family. Movie is mostly focused on the kids and their grandad, but David has a few moments, and he's generally present throughout. Funny, slightly shocking at times, family film. No major angst. Character death.

☆ AMAZON PRIME

- Richard II (RICHARD II)

Shakespeare's Richard II. David plays the titular character, the extravagant, heartless and cold King of England, Richard II. We see his fall from grace as he is stripped of everything he owns and knows. Quite angsty. Long hair, androgynous David. Queer kiss scene (although they are cousins, soo...)

☆ you can find a link in a REDDIT comment if you search for it, AMAZON PRIME

- Broadchurch (ALEC HARDY)

An eleven-year-old boy is murdered in a small town, sending shock-waves through the community. Story follows both the family and communities response to the crime, as well as the investigation done by DI Alec Hardy (DT) and DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Coleman). Lots of angst from Alec. He is sick and hiding it. Injury, dizziness, panic attacks, that sort of thing - as well as a heart attack. He has a lot of trauma and daddy issues. Season three touches on topics of rape (warning).

- Mad To Be Normal (RD LIANG)

Biopic about RD Liang, a Scottish psychiatrist. Sex, misogyny, mental health topics, some self-harm (done by another character)

☆ AMAZON (sensing a pattern)

- Good Omens (CROWLEY)

An angel (Michael Sheen) and a demon work together to stop the end of the world. Queer romance (canon), some angst. Drama, comedy, LGBTQ+. David plays Crowley, the demon (who "sauntered vaguely downwards" rather than fell from heaven)

☆ AMAZON PRIME

- Staged (DAVID TENNANT)

A COVID lockdown comedy about David Tennant and Michael Sheen talking via Zoom during the lockdown. Actually quite sad at times? Mostly silly, though. Features Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg.

☆ BBC Iplayer (UK) (or VPN)

- Around The World in 80 Days (PHILEAS FOGG)

Phileas Fogg, a quiet and reserved man, decides to travel around the world in 80 days, after he receives an anonymous postcard calling him a coward. Cute found family, drama, angst (ex-lover stuff, internalised cowardice, illness, near death experience), some violence. There's a scene where Phileas gets flogged (whipped, essentially) quite violently, and it's somewhat graphic. Touches on themes of racism. Phileas is 100% neurodivergent.

☆ BBC Iplayer (UK) (or VPN)

- Inside Man (HARRY WATLING)

DT plays a vicar, Harry, who is involved in a murder after trying to protect his son - who was accused of having CP. Suicide themes, murder, self-harm - explores the idea that any person can murder, if they're pushed the right way. Includes topics to do with CP and pedophilia.

☆ NETFLIX, AMAZON

- Litvinenko (LITVINENKO)

Biopic about Alexander Litvinenko. A group of detectives investigate the poisoning of Litvinenko. David is bald in this show. (Scary)

☆ ITVX (UK) (or VPN)

- Doctor who (10TH AND 14TH DOCTORS)

Do I need to explain Doctor Who???? David Tennant plays the tenth and fourteenth regenerations of The Doctor, a Time Lord from outerspace. He travels around in the TARDIS with human companions.

☆ BBC Iplayer (UK)

I think I'm gonna leave it there, but there are a LOT that I have not touched on. This post is a very accurate and long list of everything on DT's filmography, so i recommend you check that out.

Other things I didn't mention (off the top of my head):

There She Goes, Bad Samaritan, Einstein and Eddington, Rab. C Nesbitt, Bright Young Things, LA Without a Map, Much Ado About Nothing, Duck Patrol, True Love, Gracepoint, Camping (US), Nan's Christmas Carol, Mary Queen of Scots, (You, Me and Him), Secret Smile, Deadwater Fell, Jessica Jones, Dramarama, Spies of Warsaw, AND A LOT MORE. (+ voice acting roles, and also his narrating work on Spy In The Wild (2017)

[winglesswriter]

In case anybody needs distraction in these hard times I made my book Built on Ruins free on Amazon (from November 8th to 15th).

It's a queer romance, but more importantly, it's a book about life after the end of the world. The story shows that there will always be hope, there will always be love and there will always be queer people. The world of the book is totally queer-normative with no homophobia.

If it helps one person to escape unhappy thoughts, if it makes one person smile, it will make me very happy.

If you're not from the US, go grab it too. We are all one community and we are all feeling down.

Built on Ruins on Amazon

[artificial-transmutations]

Novel News

Hey guys! A while back, I announced that I have released my novel, Dam Breakers.

Today, I have not one, but two pieces of moderately sized news for you (and a bonus)!

The promised discount

I did promise you a special thank you deal as a thank you for your continued support, and here it is!

Next weekend, between October 25th and 27th, there will be a -75% discount,

dropping the price to just 0,99$ for the ebook (the lowest Amazon would allow). As a caveat, due to limitations on Amazon, it's only available on the amazon.com marketplace.

I would be immensely happy if you could leave a rating and review if you liked it, because that helps me *a lot*.

As a side note, there is also a free short story at http://free-story.mikestruan.com that takes place in the universe of my next novel series. There's no transformation or romance in this short story, though there will be in the next novel series.

Paperback!

Also, if you like the feeling of paper in your hands, starting now, Dam Breakers is also available as paperback (in all international market places)!

So, be sure to check it out and claim your ebook discount this weekend!

Bonus

The picture above is inspired by one of the book characters. If you recognize the character and the part of the story I have tried to recreate with the AI, hit me up in a DM. I will raffle out a few juicy transformation short stories or captions to everyone who gets it right!

[abalonetea]

My recent poll made me realize that a lot of people haven't actually been around my blog since the Ol' Days. So, I thought it was about time that I did a little reintroduction!

I'm Katie! You can find me on Amazon as K. E. Koontz; it's right here! You should totally consider checking out my books! I have sea creatures, I've got werewolves, I've got demonic possessions and haunting ghost stories and characters like you wouldn't believe!

I've also got a mailing list, right here!

I'm a bit of a hot mess, but I'm trying! I used to raise and train showjumpers for a living, worked at an animal sanctuary, lost half my vision and switched gears to being a full-time writer!

I'm the primary source of income for my family, which includes my mother and my sister, and all of your support is greatly appreciated! Don't want to buy one of my books? No worries! Consider checking out my patreon, my kofi, or my wishlist!

Anyway, I write a lot of horror, I love werewolves, and I'm very much interested in creating characters that have a heavy, devotional cadence to them. You can also find crime thrillers and fantasy pieces in my collection!

Penny Posting is the tag I use for the romance pieces that will eventually go under my penname, so feel free to block or follow that as you see fit, and keep an eye on the 'my writing' tag for snippets and excerpts!

I just finished getting a full trilogy set-up for preorder and I am soooo exhausted now, but I do still have other projects in the works!

Shed

Devil Mine

Cryptid Hearts

They Looked Like People

How To Date A Werewolf

Gorehound: An Alaskan Horror Story

I host the @writeblrsummerfest every year, have been on writeblr for a very long time, am a professional ghostwriter and dev/con editor, and constantly tell myself 'next month, I'll get my act together.'

My big dream is to get to a point where I can start taking my mother traveling some, and if my username seems vaguely familiar, it may be from that one time I briefly went viral on Tumblr for pulling a litter of two day old kittens out of a very, very deep storm pipe (we still have one of them)!

Anyway, it's great to see you around!

[simply-ivanka]

If Taylor Swift Had Endorsed Donald Trump

Democrats would scorn her business savvy, cap her ticket prices, and fret over her huge carbon footprint.

Wall Street Journal

By Allysia Finley

Forbes estimates Taylor Swift’s net worth at $1.3 billion. Despite her liberal leanings, the singer-songwriter has amassed her wealth the old-fashioned way: through hard work, talent and business savvy. Her endorsement of Kamala Harris last week is rich considering she owes her success to the capitalist system the vice president wants to tear down.

“The way I see it, fans view music the way they view their relationships,” Ms. Swift wrote in a��2014 piece for the Journal. “Some music is just for fun, a passing fling. . . . Some songs and albums represent seasons of our lives, like relationships that we hold dear in our memories but had their time and place in the past. However, some artists will be like finding ‘the one.’ ” She has become “the one” for hundreds of millions of fans worldwide with lyrics that chronicle relationship woes women commonly experience.

Ms. Swift took advantage of her ardent fan base in 2014 by removing her catalog from Spotify in a bid for higher royalties. “Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” she explained. “My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet, . . . is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.”

She also criticized Apple Music for not paying artists during the streaming service’s free trial, prompting the company to change its policy. As she jeers in a hit song, “Who’s afraid of little old me?” Apparently, Big Tech companies.

Last year she reportedly raked in $200 million from streaming royalties on top of the estimated $15.8 million she grossed per performance during her recent “Eras” tour. Some fans have shelled out thousands of dollars on the resale market to see Ms. Swift perform. Americans have even traveled to Europe when they couldn’t get tickets in the U.S.

Her fan base may be more loyal and enthusiastic than Donald Trump’s. JD Vance scoffed at the idea that the star’s endorsement of Ms. Harris could influence the outcome of the election. The “billionaire celebrity,” he said, is “fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.” Maybe, but she certainly taps into the problems of young women.

Democrats hope to use Ms. Swift’s endorsement to drive them to the polls. But it isn’t difficult to imagine what the left would be saying about her had she endorsed the Republican antihero. It might go something like this:

The billionaire has gotten rich by ripping off fans, avoiding taxes and harming competitors. Time for the government to break her up. Unlike rival artists, Ms. Swift writes, performs and owns her compositions. This vertical integration allows her to charge exorbitant royalties and ticket prices.

Tickets for her “Eras” tour on average cost about $240. That’s merely the price for admission—not including food, drink or Swiftie swag. VIP passes that include memorabilia go for $899. How dare she make young women choose between paying for groceries or rent and going to a concert.

The Federal Trade Commission must cap Ms. Swift’s ticket prices at a reasonable price—say, $20—and ban her junk fees. Concertgoers shouldn’t have to pay $65 for an “I Love You It’s Ruining My Life” sweatshirt.

Her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce also unfairly boosts their star power, letting them charge more for endorsements. As Ms. Swift writes in one song, “two is better than one.” Mr. Kelce reportedly signed a $100 million podcast deal with Amazon’s Wonderly. By breaking up the couple, the government could reduce their royalties and ticket prices.

Ms. Swift, the self-described “mastermind,” also dodges taxes on her “full income,” which includes some $125 million in real estate and a music catalog worth an estimated $600 million. “They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true,” Ms. Swift acknowledges in her song “Florida!!!”

Under the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed billionaire’s tax, she would have to pay a 25% levy on the $1 billion increase in her fortune since 2017. But that isn’t enough. Ms. Swift should also have to pay taxes on the appreciating value of her “name, image and likeness,” which the Internal Revenue Service considers an asset.

How much is her brand worth? Easily billions. She might say, as she does in a song, that her “reputation has never been worse.” True, Miss Americana’s image took a hit after reports that her private-jet travel in 2022 emitted 576 times as much CO2 as the average American in a year. When Ms. Swift sings, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me,” she’s correct. She and her fat-cat friends are what’s wrong with America.

Appeared in the September 16, 2024, print edition as 'If Taylor Swift Had Endorsed Donald Trump'.

[ekdarnellbooks]

Available Books

Sci-Fi Alien Romance

Vrauma's Menagerie, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

why choose: 2 aliens x human FMC

tentacle smut

alien abduction

book 1 (sequel coming in 2025)

novella

Tumblr post: x

A Bond of Blood, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

bat-like alien MMC x human FMC

bloodplay

primal mating urges

size difference

book 1 (sequel coming in 2025)

novella

Braax's Bride, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

sexy dragon alien husband MMC x human FMC

CNC

aftercare king

instalust

standalone novella

Tumblr posts: x, x

The Perfect Ruby, preorder on Amazon

tentacled beastly alien MMC x alien MMC x shapeshifting alien FMC

oviposition and tentacles

augmented anatomy

crew of space rogues

found family

polyamory

novel, sequel to A Bond of Blood (though it can be read as a standalone, I would recommend reading A Bond of Blood as well)

Dark Sci-Fi Alien Romance

The Thyline's Mate, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

OTT wolf alien MMC x human FMC

noncon/dubcon

primal play

knotting

high spice, low plot

standalone novella

The Dalgur's Pet, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

"nice" alien MMC x mean alien MMC x human FMC

noncon/dubcon

alien abduction

oviposition/breeding

praise and degradation

Tumblr posts: x, x, x, x, x

Dark Alien Erotica

Deep Space Crimes Series (all content tags can be viewed in the Smashwords sample)

Bred by the Alien Monster, Smashwords

Gangbanged by the Alien Crew, preorder on Smashwords

Protected by the Alien Prisoner, Smashwords

Abducted by the Alien Collector, Smashwords

Cuckolded by the Alien Bull, Smashwords

Fantasy Romance

The Sorcerer of Shadowholde, Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

polyam romance with elves and half elves (MMF + and extended polycule)

morally gray vampire MMC

friends to lovers

magic is illegal

Baldur's Gate 3 x Dungeons and Dragons vibes

standalone novel

Freebies

Jury Duty (free ebook when you sign up for my newsletter, also available on Tumblr)

alien MMC x human FMC

tentacle smut

DVP, DP, all holes filled

a bit unhinged

everyone is morally gray (or worse)

standalone novelette

original Tumblr post: x

[mdhwrites]

"In the first episode, Luz brings wild animals and fireworks to school without permission or without any regard to safety."

Isn't that just a case of Early-Installment Weirdness?

Boy there are so many problems with accusing this of that. See, Early-Installment Weirdness IS a thing. In TOH, one of the best examples of that is how in the same episode that Amity goes "I've never seen a spell like that cast before" you also have the power glyph. A famous one from another cartoon is how Andrea of Molly McGee starts as an EXTREME bitch but quickly shifts to more so being unaware and selfish, rather than actively malicious. Hell, I know one of my own series has it where I have a transmuter in the first chapter change pancakes into a pot of flowers which I made WAY too casual for the amount of energy shifting to something living should take.

A common thread between all of these though are that they don't show back up. Andrea's characterization becomes consistent AFTER the shift to it and she never goes back to being as bad as she was in her first appearance. The power glyph is never mentioned again, MAYBE visually it's seen like once on the coven head but glyph magic is just Luz's. And yeah, my own story sticks to its power costs better afterwards. That is the biggest sign of Early-Installment Weirdness because in the long run you can see that these elements were dropped because they were incongruent with the actual goals of the show.

But do you know what does keep appearing? This characterization of Luz. S1 is filled with times when Luz will disregard other people's feelings, fuck something up because of it and then have to make amends. Episode fucking two reinforces the idea that she treats the world as fantasy. Yesterday's Lie actually HINGES on the idea that Luz is actually selfish and uncaring of those around her because she could not appreciate what she had and that she had to be special. This is what Vee calls her out on. It's also why, in the blog you're referencing with this, I bring up how in S3 she has a dilemma where a decision that she made on her own blew up in her face. In response to that, instead of thinking ANYONE else should comment on it, she makes a drastic, big deal decision... That also gets her out scott free from all consequences which is exactly what she did when she ran to the Isles. I'm not even exaggerating. In episode 1, Luz decides to stick to the Isles because otherwise she has to go to a camp she doesn't want to where she'll actually have to put in the effort to improve as a person and respect reality so she sticks to her fantasy world. In S3 Episode 1, she decides to abandon AN ENTIRE WORLD to their fate, that she believes is her fault, so that she can stay at home and live with her caring mother and new sister while she will also send her friends to ostensibly their deaths because of how big of a deal this is. And like in that blog, S3 E2 only reinforces the idea that Luz only cares about what is important to Luz when her goal on the Isles is not beating the Collector, she says that to everyone who doesn't know the truth, but instead to find Eda and King, make sure they're safe, and leave. She tells that to her mom, the only person who knows already she doesn't give a fuck about this place.

That's also without bringing up btw the signs that reference her early montage that appear in S3 E1, meaning the show wants you to remember it, especially when Luz sighs at the sign. It is NOT an element that is just one and done and a whoops on the writer's part. It is the first action in a long, LONG line of selfish, unthinking, uncaring actions for our 'protagonist'.

Our protagonist who is told that she has never, ever, done anything wrong. That's abhorrent. See you next tale.

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I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[skyfallscotland]

Some updates since the last summary post. I didn't go to the convention on Sunday, but @caitm1 did and she said the workers told her that Rebecca's wrist swelled up from the amount of signatures she was doing (already, one day in!) and she had it taped up.

Rebecca also mentioned last night (Monday) at the second event I attended that she'd had a vestibular migraine just before and couldn't walk in a straight line a few hours ago, so I mean, I felt like I wanted to mention that first because as a chronically ill girlie I know how fucking hard it must be and I don't think a lot of fans appreciate what she does for us and how much she puts her body through.

Her signings this weekend were free and even though we paid for a ticket on Monday night, if you bought the ticket with the pre-signed book, that was at cost. $20 for a signed paperback. So yeah, just...I know it's a business, but she does a lot, ok. Don't be unappreciative of the extra mile.

Now, I recorded both Saturday's panel and Monday night's, I'm trying to figure out how to post it, but no website wants to cooperate with such a big file, so stand by, or like...help if you know tech things 💀

If you haven't seen my post with what we learned from Saturday's, it's here. Below is a summary of what we've learnt since then.

Bombshell alert: @caitm1 tells me that on Sunday, Rebecca said one of her original ideas for the end of Iron Flame was for Violet to become venin and not Xaden. *crickets* let's just take a moment here together... 😨

Honestly, I'm all for it, I low key feel like I would have liked that better, it would have been so good, but alas, we have venin-Xaden now, so we have to deal 🥲

Now, about Monday. A lot of the questions asked and things spoken about were the same as Saturday. The host picked the fan questions she asked and didn't really pick much that was plot or character related. She didn't pick any of mine and yes, I'm still mad about it. WHAT ARE THEIR NAMES

Here's the quotes, questions and tidbits I found interesting:

• Her editor for Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, is the head of Red Tower, so she's the publisher. I did not know this. I don't think I've seen this in practice before? She's also involved with the Amazon series because of this.

• "I'm not afraid of hurting you." That we already knew. 💀

• "Because we knew what had the television series when I was in edits, so we had to write out a synopsis and when I first thought it would be five books, I immediately sent the synopsis to my editor, who, you know, we sent it to Amazon because we needed to tell them; this is the definitive vision for the story. I can tell you, in Onyx Storm, I've already deviated from like...who I thought would pass in that book, as opposed to...I've already deviated some from that."

Sorry, what? Who was meant to die? My money is, as always, on Rhi or Garrick. You know I have thoughts/feelings about that. Look, if I've learned anything this weekend it's that someone important is going to die, a lot of people are going to die, ok? She's very frank about death and the realities of war and if you're worried about your favourite side characters for the next few books, well...you should be.

• She loves writing Ridoc. @yanny-77 no chance to ask about bodoc, sorry! 😂

• On Xaden and people's perception of him: "It's always funny because I always hear...he gets compared to Rhysand a lot? Xaden's like twenty-two at the beginning of Fourth Wing; Rhysand's like what? Five hundred? Ok, twenty-two, so it's very much like—it is a college. It's a college romance and that first love."

• She was surprised at how much people loved Aaric, given how little he's on-page.

• She also defended Dain again 🥳💗 #DainApologistsClub

• She expanded a little more on Jack. So perhaps what she meant on Saturday about his reasons, was simply that his reason will be touched upon in OS, but it's clear. "Jack's motivations are clear-cut, which makes him so easy to write. He's such an example of the hunger for power and what happens when you aren't selected for the power you think you deserve, which is one of the themes of Fourth Wing. So Jack's an easy character, he's straight-on."

• Are there any easter eggs that you put in the first two books that you don't think were caught by fans? "Violet's second signet! I totally thought it was obvious. Um, I did, to the point where my editor was like 'hey, we should probably put a line in here' and I was like dude no, people will catch it." Y'all know my thoughts on that so I'll stay quite over here in my corner.

Someone asked "what is it then?" and she replied, "no, no, no, now we're having fun with this, now."

• The hardest scene for her to write in Fourth Wing was the battle scene, because it was her first fantasy and so her first one. She wrote it and her editor said no, it has to be a little longer than this.

"So that was really hard for me to write, especially because in the moment she loses Liam, she has to get up and go. And I'm used to being able to give my characters this moment to grieve, this moment to take the news, this moment to absorb it and really feel it. And it's hard to get the reader to really feel that emotion when death is coming straight for you. So that was really difficult. And I was crying."

ME TOO, TBH

• If she was to describe Onyx Storm in two Taylor Swift songs, it would be Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? & So It Goes.

• If Empyrean was written in interconnected stand alones, she would have already jumped to Rhi or Imogen.

• Her favourite sections are the epigraphs that she writes above the chapter headings. "It's my most valuable real estate, the fact that you guys skip over them sometimes, I'm like—I'm wicked funny in there, ok?"

• If Violet and Xaden visited Australia, what would they do for fun? "I'd say go visit places they can't catch on fire. I guess they could find a beach." @empyrean-thrones there you go, we're on point! 😂

And that's about it! Happy theorising! 💗

It was a wild weekend, but so worth it. I was in my feelings a lot. I hope you guys get a chance to meet her or hear her speak in person one day, too 🫶