#and I won’t even get much of a Winter break to enjoy considering next semester classes start RIGHT at the beginning of January oh hate that

[hplonesomeart]

Decided to doodle these two because I can’t keep being openly biased towards Puzzles without at least attempting to draw other SMG4 characters lol. Especially the girls like come on now we need to start showing some female solidarity support /j

Now that my personal requirement has been fulfilled WELP WE CAN SAFELY GO BACK TO PUZZLES ART NOW MWAHAHA

[alfredosauce50]

You’re gonna go far, kid [Punk! England x reader]

Synopsis: Ever since coming to England to study, you haven’t had the time to do what made you come in the first place--tourism! The only friend you have is an exchange student from Russia, Ivan, so why not kill two birds with one stone? He schedules a little playdate with Arthur, a local, so he can show you around the hottest spots in London. You two immediately hit it off. Ivan is quick to notice his interest in you, so he starts teasing the poor man and making things hard for him. Camden is the last destination, and there’s no saying when he’ll ever see you again. Will he be able to get over himself and ask you out before the night ends?  Note: Attractions are italicized and have a link to a picture. Wordcount: 4,641 The reader is referred to as she/her.

This was the day you had been dreading, and yet, looking forward to. The first part was easy to explain. Picking up your hot latte, you set it down after a quick sip. You didn’t even have time to enjoy it. Not when you were typing away at your keyboard like a speed demon. You promised your friend you would finish your assignment before today’s meet-up, but your procrastination habits were a bitch. Nevertheless, you were eager to uphold your side of the deal, even if it meant stressing your hair out to get it done. 

So long as he didn’t show up before you were done, right? 

After burning your tongue for the second time that morning, you let out a small groan at the sting you felt but gasped at what you saw outside the window. It was a sound made from genuine terror--rather than the quiet streets of London at seven AM, you spotted a man pressing his face right up to the glass. And he was staring at you, menacingly. 

Anybody would’ve been creeped out by the sight, but you knew the guy. “Aha--Ivan! Hey! Morning?” You began rather awkwardly. 

He waved in response, and his glower melted away in exchange for a childlike smile. “Dobroye utro, (F/N)! I hope that’s not your assignment you’re doing.” He hummed, placing two hands on the glass to peer at your screen from outside. Oh shit. Glancing briefly at said screen, you turned it away before clicking the upload button. 

“Of course not.” You grinned, shutting your laptop immediately after. “I was just... Surfing the net. Checking Instagram. You know?”

“Is that so? I’m gonna check.” He made his way inside. And in no time, he was looming over your shoulder to start browsing through your internet history. You, on the other hand, were sweating balls. 

“You’re so funny, (F/N). Who checks Instagram on their computer?”

It seemed like only yesterday he was the oblivious exchange student from Russia who had no concept of social media. He had been a country bumpkin through and through, but a few semesters after befriending you, your influence rubbed off on him. Even you had no idea what went through your head when decided to talk to him, the intimidating new kid who spoke broken English, but there was no turning back now. He was attached to you by the hip and picked up on your habits faster than you could deal. 

He only became more of a menace when he discovered Twitter.

A displeased expression contorted at his expression when he saw that there was no evidence of you ‘surfing the net’. Google Docs couldn’t possibly count, after all.  “... Hm... Apparently, not you. Why didn’t you finish this yesterday, sunflower? Remember our promise?” 

You sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I passed out last night. But hey, I technically finished it before you came, didn’t I?” 

He craned his head from side to side in thought. “Maybe. But if you hadn’t, you know what that means.” Ivan coiled his arms around your neck and a sickeningly sweet smile curled up at his lips. 

“You will come with me to Moscow for Christmas!” 

A chill ran down your spine at the thought. Going to Russia was bad enough. But during Winter? You were never good with the cold. If you could barely handle London, Moscow was out of the question. “Oh God, please no.” He nodded giddily. “I’m never going to Russia. Maybe I’d consider it during Summer, but--anyway, that’s not the point here! I didn’t break any promises so I won’t be turning into a popsicle this year. Got that?” 

He pouted. “Aw...” 

“You damn sadist.” 

“Hehe.” 

“I wonder how you even became friends with him. Arthur, was it? Poor dude.” You mumbled, but he didn’t look all too offended. 

He tapped his chin and hummed. “Now that you mention it.” Then, he let out a short laugh. “It’s a long story. Let’s just say it was a happy little accident.”

“Unfortunate.” 

“But don’t worry! I don’t plan on bothering you as much as him today.” Ivan clarified, earning a slow nod from you. Phew. The clock was inching closer to eight and you weren’t much of a morning person, so hearing that was like music to your ears. “That’s why I wanted you to finish your work yesterday. I want him to be the only one making mistakes! It’s interesting to see him mess up and get embarrassed.” 

You had to wonder if he was using ‘interesting’ as a synonym for fun because he was clapping. “... Ivan, you really are a sadist.” 

The two of you stayed in that café for another hour or so, ordering some breakfast during your stay. Once the table was cleared and the bill was paid, you and he caught a bus to the London eye. You could marvel at the iconic ferris wheel for a few minutes as you walked up to the London aquarium next to it, your first stop. The building was huge to start with, and it didn’t look like they’d be storing fish in there considering how fancy it was. But wasn’t everything in England fancy? 

“He should be waiting in the front. Look for a short grouchy man with a bad taste in fashion.” You shot him a weird look, beckoning him to elaborate. 

“... And blonde hair.”

“Alright. I guess I’ll try my best.” Glancing around the sea of people filled with tourists, couples, and families, you skimmed the crowd for someone who fitted the description--but to no avail. It was only when they walked up to you both did you find the guy. He had short and choppy blonde hair that framed a heart-shaped face, and under his fringe was a pair of lime green eyes staring on with a neutral expression. And did Ivan say he had bad taste?

You couldn’t agree. Yes, his charcoal pants were ripped and he had a bandana tied around his neck with a Union Jack on it. But he still had a kind of style you liked. Under his black leather jacket was a gray shirt, and combined with the piercings in his right ear, you couldn’t help admiring him for a second. 

“Arthur! I was wondering if you were trampled because we couldn’t find you.” Ivan began, causing the said man to furrow his brows. And boy, were they thick. 

“You just arrived, so don’t start now you twat.” He grumbled. Ivan never teased you for your height, even when you were a little shorter than the Brit. He always found it cute, but you figured it was only because you didn’t care. The Russian always found amusement in poking fun at others, after all. “Anywho, I’m glad I won’t be spending the whole day alone with you.” 

Turning to you with a soft smile this time, he held out a hand for you to shake. “Kirkland. Arthur Kirkland.” 

You shook it, but not without a laugh. It hadn’t even been a minute since meeting him, and his personality seemed to clash violently with his appearance. He sounded so prim and proper, but his outfit screamed punk rock. 

“(L/N). (F/N) (L/N).” 

He released you from his grip. Placing his hands on his hips with an accusing stare, he felt a grin upturn his lips. “Are you copying me, (F/N)?” 

“I don’t know. Do all British people introduce themselves like James Bond?” 

Arthur clicked his tongue. “... Not all of them. Just a force of habit.” 

“Mhm. Right, right. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Arthur. I’m a student here too and I could only imagine how busy it gets for you--so thanks for coming out today!” He didn’t respond to those comments and simply nodded. 

Ivan stayed quiet in the back, but he was probably reading the atmosphere like he always did when he didn’t speak. 

“It’s nice to meet you too.” The blonde turned on his heel and closed his eyes. “As much as I’d like to stay out here and chat, we can do that in the aquarium. Wouldn’t wanna waste our tickets, do we?” 

While the group of three wandered slowly through the establishment, Ivan lingered in the background while you walked in the front with the Brit. For the first ten minutes, you’d look at him expectantly, gesturing for him to join in the conversation. As the mutual, wasn’t he supposed to be the icebreaker? He’d shake his head every time, offering you a smile as if to say, go and make some friends. But soon, this brief spell of irritation morphed into gratitude.

“I’ve been here probably a hundred times, so don’t take it personally when I don’t seem as excited as you.” Turning to him to watch his face as he spoke--which was filtered through a bluish tinge from the Antarctic setting-- you only caught a brief glimpse of it before he turned away. Huh. Maybe it was just you not paying enough attention. 

Either way, what came out of your mouth next would surely grab his. 

“Don’t worry about it. But hey, this is the first time you’ve been here with me, so look alive, won’t you?” It happened to be a slip of the tongue, something bold and improvised, but luckily, he reacted fairly quickly before the regret set in.

“Oi, you better not be flirting with me already,” Arthur grumbled, feeling another smile come as he heard you chuckle. Since when was he this expressive? He pinned it on the fact that he was starting to have a little fun himself. 

“Couldn’t imagine it.” Before he could add anything else, you hopped in front of the penguins and started waving your friend over with great gusto. “Ivan, c’mere. Arthur, mind taking a photo of us?” Once he joined your side, the two of you held up peace signs for the Brit to snap a photo. 

“Ivan, change your pose. We can’t have both of you doing the same thing.” 

The said man moved his peace sign to the back of your head so he could stick two fingers over it. “Is that better?”

“... Better.” Trailing his emerald eyes to you, he felt his cheeks heat up a touch at the sight of you grinning ear to ear. What the fuck, Arthur. Just take the damn photo. And that was exactly what he did, showing you both right after. Whatever just happened, he boiled it down to him idealizing a stranger. That was right. He had yet to get to know you, so his perception of you couldn’t be any better at this stage. 

But there was one thing he couldn’t deny.

“Damn, I look really ugly in this. You two better not post this anywhere.” You settled a hand over the screen to lower it with a nervous laugh. Then, you looked away, and what was that? You looked a little flustered. 

You were cute.

Hanging his head to look at the photo, he knitted his brows together. You? Ugly? He couldn’t imagine it. 

“... I bet I could take an even uglier one of you.”

Spinning back to him, you folded your arms. “What did you say?” 

“Nothing.” He shook his head slowly, and the amusement in his voice made it blatantly obvious he was lying. 

“That’s what I thought.” 

Walking off at that, Ivan followed. Because he was behind him, he could brush his shoulders against his. Arthur looked up at that, but almost wished he didn’t. Ivan was smiling down at him so shrewdly, it was threatening. Then, he raised a hand to his mouth so he could laugh softly. “Huhu. You like (F/N)~” 

His eyes flew open and blood rushed up to his face. “What the hell gave you that impression? I literally just met them!” As adamant as he sounded, he knew deep inside he liked you, but only platonically. Your personality was refreshing, and talking to you was as easy as breathing. Even if it wasn’t platonic attraction, he was endlessly frustrated the other figured it out earlier than he could. 

Whatever it was, he was certainly more sociable than usual, even to the point of being a tease. And not to mention the rosy cheeks. Maybe he should’ve just kept his trap shut--otherwise, his huge outburst let Ivan milk the obvious. Fuck. He even started to giggle like a schoolchild. 

Giving him a rough shove, he muttered a string of curses under his breath.  “I bloody hate your arse, you know that?” He hissed, his face now redder than a tomato. God, why he did have to be born so pale? Every slight change to his complexion was jarring, and it was embarrassing. 

“Don’t hate me because I’m right,” Ivan hummed, joining his side as your back came into view. “Once you realize, it’ll be too late. I’m not letting you have (F/N). I will always be (F/N)’s number one.” Lighting up at that, he skipped off to you in the front. “Wait for me, sunflower! Don’t leave me alone with Arthur!”

Arthur stopped in his tracks and clenched his fists. How annoying. If he was going to continue being a little tyke, then he figured he’d up his game as well. He didn’t know what that exactly entailed yet, but he’d do it. Ivan didn’t even sound like he wanted anything more than friendship, so what was with that? Pointing a finger at him as he walked off with you, his face scrunched up. 

“What did you even call me out for then, you idiot? I’m supposed to be guiding you both!” Picking up his pace at that, he slotted himself between you and him. Flashing you a brief smile, he gave Ivan another push without breaking eye contact. “It’s a tight fit for three, so he’ll stay in the back.” 

“Hey, no fair!” 

By the time the whole aquarium was toured, you and Arthur were laughing to yourselves while leaving through the exit. 

But the joyful atmosphere was short-lived. 

The Ferris wheel just outside was the next stop, and the Brit offered to splurge a little to have a carriage without strangers. That way, you could run around as much as you wanted, even if that meant leaving the two men to sit in their lonesome. While Ivan was sitting on the bench in the centre out of his own volition, the same couldn’t be said for him. 

Sitting back to back to the other, he pressed his legs firmly together and leaned over in a hunch. Then, he dug his hands through his hair, all while keeping his round eyes fixated on the ground. His heart couldn’t stop pounding, and his head was spinning like a carousel. What was he thinking, taking you here? That was right. This was an iconic destination you couldn’t miss, that was why. He was initially planning on staying back there on the ground, but you were so excited, he couldn’t help but hop on with you. 

Fuck. Maybe Ivan was right about him. But he wouldn’t let him know it. Speaking of the guy, he didn’t know if he was sitting there by choice, or just rubbing it in. While he was incapacitated by fear so he couldn’t even stand, he was sitting there because he wanted to. 

“You should’ve stayed on the ground if this was going to happen.” 

Arthur screwed his eyes shut and tightened his arms around his stomach. “... Shut up.” 

“I was just saying.” Ivan murmured, looking at him over his shoulder. Poor guy. He really was down bad, wasn’t he? Down bad for you, that was. Too bad Arthur was hoping he wasn’t convinced--but it was too obvious. So all Ivan wanted was to prove his point, and later on, keep you away from him. But maybe he’d save it until after the ride was over. “... This ride is thirty minutes long. You’ll live.” 

He heard the other groan. “Thirty minutes? How long has it been?” 

“Mm... Ten.” 

“Fuck me.” 

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be long before you would pull away from the railing and return to the company of the two. Arthur had been praying that somehow, you’d leave him alone sitting there, pathetically, but he couldn’t expect something so cold from you. So while he hung his head, he wasn’t surprised to feel your hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey, you okay?” He heard you ask, but he never looked up. 

“... Yeah. Just give me a minute.” 

“I have. Ten, actually.” Taking a seat beside him, you leaned down to peer at his face, which was a few shades paler than normal. He didn’t even have the energy to respond, and kept his eyes fixed to the ground. Concern immediately contorted at your features, especially when he looked so shaken. “Arthur, you look a little sick. What’s wrong? Can you talk?” 

He shook his head slowly before managing a weak smile at you. “Sorry, love.” It didn’t even faze him he just called you that. He was far too uncomfortable to feel the embarrassment from a nickname he should’ve saved until a little later. 

“I’m not... Too good with heights. Never have been... I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” His voice was slow and faint, and you were beginning to suspect he was having a panic attack. “... Sorry if I seem a little lame.” 

“No, of course not.” You frowned. “Things like this happen. Just breathe with me, okay? You can do it. Just count to ten.” 

Arthur took a deep inhale. “... Okay.” 

Around ten minutes later of these exchanges, he calmed down some, especially when you kept on reminding him that the carriage was finally descending. Once the ride was over, you had to help him up and walk him out. Now that he had his two feet planted firmly on the ground, it didn’t take long for him to recover. Even then, you remained rather cautious and stuck with him on your journey to Soho. By the time everyone took their seats in Circolo Popolare, a beautiful Italian restaurant Arthur so kindly booked, you were still looking out for him.

Leaning over to rest your head on the table, you glanced up at his face with a soft smile. “... You okay now?” 

A light blush dusted his cheeks and he nodded. You didn’t need to be this observant with him considering he was well now, but he loved your attentiveness. It wasn’t something he was used to. “Yeah, I’m fine now. Thank you. Now quit worrying about me, alright?” Rubbing the nape of his neck at that, you couldn’t help lingering on his body language for a moment.

It didn’t matter what he dressed like, or what his personality was. He could be endearing when it came to it, and a total softie too. And the thought made you smile even wider. If he thought you were cute, then you thought he was adorable. “Fine. I’ll leave you alone.” You slowly turned to Ivan, the action making Arthur tense up a little. 

Reaching out to your hand, he took it. “I didn’t mean it like that.” 

The feeling of his warm fingers around yours made your heart skip a beat. Did he just? Your thoughts manifested into your look of shock, and you darted your eyes over his neutral expression to try and decipher it. Before you could come up with anything, there was a phone in your face, followed by a flash. 

“Wha--?” 

He turned the screen to you to reveal a photo of you, and in your opinion, it was the least flattering picture anybody had ever taken of you. “I said I’d take an uglier photo of you, didn’t I?” Arthur grinned, the words acting like a cold splash of water to bring you back to reality. 

“... You sneaky little shit.” You growled. “Delete that right now!” 

“How about no?” 

“I’ll never forgive you for this, Arthur.” 

“I think you already have, love. You’re smiling right now.” 

You stared at him wordlessly for a few seconds. Then, out of nowhere, you reached out to snatch his phone right out of his hands. Tapping furiously on the screen to get rid of it, you heard his chair scrape back violently as he tried to retrieve it. “Why, you--” 

But it was too late. Gone forever. Lost in the abyss of cyberspace. And so, he immediately channelled his frustration by jabbing his fingers into your sides. “If I can’t have that photo of you, at least let me do this!” You burst into a fit of laughter so loud, nearby patrons turned their heads. Only then did he pull away, leaving you to recover through breathless wheezing. 

“Fuck you, Arthur.” You whispered, but it was on an affectionate note more than anything. As you glowered at him from your seat, you never noticed Ivan doing the same thing, but he was glaring at the Brit for an entirely different reason. Arthur had to be the most self-aware person out there, and to make a scene in a restaurant like this? He really fell for you, didn’t he? 

When he realized Ivan’s scorching gaze burning into him, he froze. 

Not just out of how intimidated he was, but the epiphany that he was right all along. Why else was he acting so out of character? The only explanation was this--in the short time of being with you, he may or may not have developed a little crush. But that was no problem, right? 

All he needed to do was to ask you out. 

But that would prove a task easier said than done, especially when Ivan decided to attach himself to you by the hip after that stunt. That cunning bastard knew what he was doing. After a little window shopping around Bond street and Mayfair, he stuck to you like a tattoo, and kept it up until night fell. While the group walked around Camden, Ivan kept you by his side with a firm grip on your hand. 

When you asked why he was suddenly so clingy, he simply justified it with, “It’s dangerous for small people like you to wander around at night!” 

But Arthur called bullshit. Especially when the other went ahead and smirked at him right after saying it. Maybe he liked you too, but was refusing to admit it. How hypocritical. If not, then he probably didn’t want you making friends when you were the only friend he had. Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to back down so easily. Camden may be the last destination for the night, and perhaps, the last time he’d see you again for God knows how long, but it was his trump card.

If this didn’t sweep you off your feet enough to get you to pull away from Ivan, nothing would. 

As a town famous for its thriving nightlife and punk culture, it encompassed everything he was passionate about, and he’d give anything to show it to you. So he included a visit to the bar here on the agenda today, one that hosted live music. While you and Ivan got comfortable in your seats, Arthur never made a move to sit down. 

It was already dim inside, so you never noticed him leave. The next time you saw him, it was a few minutes later when he was on stage with a few other musicians. Leaning forward with surprise, you watched him strap on a bright red electric guitar. Walking up to the microphone, he adjusted that. No way. 

You were still trying to process him being a professional performer, but a lead singer as well? 

The second he strummed the strings to start a guitar riff, he opened his mouth to start singing.

Play this while you read

Show me how to lie, you're getting better all the time

And turning all against the one is an art that's hard to teach

His fingers never stopped moving as he belted out note after note. His voice was so different to how he talked, you had to do a double take. He sounded a little more rasp, a little more punk. To say you were impressed was an understatement. 

Now dance, fucker, dance, man, he never had a chance

And no one even knew it was really only you

While he jammed out on stage, he was electric. The energy in the bar exploded, and he had everyone singing along. You could almost see the confidence in him shoot up from the excitable crowd, because he was smirking. 

Nice work, you did. 

You’re gonna go far, kid! 

Turning his head to you as he sung that line, you raised a hand to your mouth. Whether he did that on purpose or not was a mystery. But no words could describe how attractive it was. Hell, it even made you mind blank for a few moments. This was Arthur? He was like an entirely different person! Needless to say, you were completely star struck. 

You couldn’t even make out what Ivan was telling you when the music was blaring in your ears. But you didn’t care. Arthur had you caught in a trance with his voice and guitar all until the end. When the song finally ended, the band bowed graciously and threw up hand signs as the audience erupted in applause and cheers. 

When he stepped off the stage, you didn’t hesitate to run up to him. There, you practically pounced on him for a tight embrace. “Oh my god, you were amazing! I didn’t know you could play so well! And sing, too! Why didn’t you tell me!?” You exasperated, pulling away to be met with his dazzling smile. It was the first time you’ve seen him so energetic, as if performing sparked a fire inside him that burned with youthful intensity. 

“I was dying to show you all day. I wanted it to be a surprise, and I had to save the best til’ last, didn’t I?” He grinned, feeling his heart swell up with warmth as he watched you light up. 

“Well, good on you! I loved it!” Squeezing him again, you felt his chest shake under his laughs. When you pulled away, you reached up to cup his face. But it felt so natural in the spur of the moment, even he didn’t seem to care. 

“Thanks again for today, Arthur. I really appreciate you taking us out today. You completely blew me away.”

The way how you phrased it reminded him of why he was here in the first place. That was right. He still had to ask you out. And with Ivan watching on from afar, this was his chance. The thought reddened his cheeks, but while you had his face in your hands, he couldn’t feel more comfortable. “Is that so? If that’s the case, how about I take you out again?” His expression grew serious. “A proper date, I mean.” 

It was your turn to blush, but you managed a quick answer. 

“No need to look so serious, love. Of course I’ll go on a date with you.” 

He chuckled and leaned in to peck your lips. “Stealing my vocabulary now, are we?” 

“Stealing kisses now, are we?” 

“Touché.” 

Now a third wheel of the group, he breathed out a soft sigh and rested his cheek on his hand. “I guess my job here is done.” It didn’t really look like it, but he had been trying to play the wingman all along. Arthur was always one to go a little crazy when he wanted something, and only more so when he was desperate. So all he gave him was a little push in the right direction. 

Maybe he would thank him later, but for now, he’d leave you two be. 

This is a request. Thank you for requesting.

[kevindayscrown]

The one where Kevin Day falls in love with an ice hockey player.

Extra Content Part 1

Anything included in this head canon takes place the semester after the Foxes won the championship against the Ravens.

Head over to the directory to find the main parts.

Words in italics are spoken in Mandarin by the characters.

This is sort of extra content, it’s not a main part and no, I promise it won’t be as bad as Nora’s extra content is.

Eric liked to believe he was a pretty chill guy. There were very few things that could really affect him emotionally, he rarely got angry, and he raised his voice even less.

But somehow, Kevin Day had the ability to turn it all upside down.

He could remember the first time they’d met very vividly. Back then, he’d thought that Kevin was nothing more than a stuck-up celebrity, who apparently didn’t have time for those he considered inferior.

However, Eric found that he enjoyed riling Kevin up.

And secretly, he also enjoyed when Kevin himself wouldn’t go down without a fight.

When they started spending more time together, Eric couldn’t help but want to find out more about him. It was clear there was a lot more behind that cold façade.

From the yakuza story, the pretend dating, that kiss in the attic and eventually, the ‘break up’, Eric was not sure what to think anymore.

He knew he felt something for Kevin.

Correction.

He knew he very much wanted to take the ‘pretending’ out of the ‘dating’.

Despite everything, Kevin didn’t seem to have the same idea. Eric knew he’d been through a lot, but there was only so much he could tolerate. Perhaps when the two of them would eventually cool down, they’d be able to at least stay friends.

“Perhaps this was a waste of our time after all.”

That’s what he’d said before rushing out of the restroom, leaving the striker behind. He’d figured that both of them needed space and time to think things through.

Neil Josten hadn’t been very willing to give Eric his space, though.

The short red head followed Eric outside, saying nothing at first. Eventually, Eric stopped and turned to look at him.

“Is there a particular reason you followed me outside?”

Neil shrugged and then pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pockets. He held it out to Eric first, who shook his head, before taking one from inside and lighting it up.

“Let me guess-,” he started and took a drag, letting the smoke out before he spoke again, “- Kevin is being an idiot again.”

Eric ran his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, not sure how to respond to that. Kevin hadn’t been an idiot. He’d just been incredibly blind and stubborn.

“You’ll get used to it. He’s like that. It takes him some time,” Neil said and blew out more smoke.

Eric didn’t at all doubt that. It was clear Kevin’s mind worked in patterns that were hard to break. But was Eric willing to sacrifice his own sanity in trying to help Kevin?

“I figured. I’m not sure if I’m the one suitable to be there for him.”

Neil’s snort caused some smoke to blow out through his nose.

“I’ve never seen Kevin like that. Lying to Andrew and skipping Exy practice to go to the rink at night with you? Even going there willingly in the first place? Trust me, whatever it is you’re doing is working wonders already.”

Eric wasn’t so sure about that, since he had just left Kevin alone in a restroom after he had literally returned Kevin’s words against him, telling him he’d been a waste of time.

“What do I do?” Eric asked, almost desperately. He didn’t want to mess this up. He definitely did not want to become another reason why Kevin was cold and closed off.

“Give it some time. We’ll handle it. I’m sure you’ve seen what the foxes can do if they get too stubborn.”

Oh, Eric had. The Exy team of the Palmetto State Foxes had risen from the bottom of the ranks and won the championship, in an impressive way to say the least.

“Fine.” Eric wasn’t sure if he liked how this gave him hope, but he decided to hold onto it regardless. He was already too deep into this to be able to back out. He didn’t want to give up on Kevin, but he couldn’t be the only one doing most of the work.

“Where are you planning on going? Not the hotel I suppose,” Neil said and then threw the cigarette down, stepping on it.

The last thing Eric wanted was to spend a whole awkward night sharing the same bed with Kevin. In any other case, it might have been something to look forward to, seeing how he had imagined that scenario many times. But not like that. Not with the two of them barely exchanging any words.

“No. I’m leaving. Figured I should give us both some space. A lot has happened these past months. Maybe the winter break is all we need,” he said with a shrug and then shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll head back to my parents’ place. Was already planning on it. I’ll just show up earlier.”

Eric wanted to give Kevin time and space, wanted to believe Neil. He generally wasn’t the pessimistic kind of person so it was easy for him to cling on the hope that Kevin and him could have something more. Something real.

Going home, he thought, would help him forget and clear his head for a couple of weeks.

Except, it didn’t.

His childhood best friend, Riley Pierce, wasn’t exactly keen on letting Eric forget about Kevin. Mostly because Riley had been obsessed with Kevin growing up. They weren’t a sports person, but they were an Exy fanatic.

And there was no chance they would let Eric forget that he’d started dating national champion Kevin Day without telling them anything.

Two days prior to leaving his home town in Atlanta for the start of the new semester, Riley still wouldn’t drop the subject.

“I can’t believe you went on dates with him. What is he like? I mean, I know you hate him, but really, you went on dates with Kevin Day.”

They were gliding across the ice of their neighborhood rink, a regular hang out spot for the two of them. Riley’s smaller frame and hate for physical violence led them down the path of figure skating instead of playing ice hockey with Eric.

“It was fine,” Eric mumbled, though his mind went straight to the nights spend in the attic. “He is-,” he stopped, knowing he couldn’t start talking about Kevin without Riley figuring out the truth. He had tried to avoid it throughout the holidays, but now it was just the two of them and Eric had no idea how to change the subject.

“Wait-,”

Too late.

Riley halted and made Eric do the same, watching him and studying him the way no one else could. Growing up next to each other was the cause for that.

“You actually like him. It wasn’t just fake dating for you, was it?”

Eric sighed and eventually gave in, nodding slowly. “He is... not used to this. We had a fall out and I figured out that giving him some time might help clear things out.”

Riley’s expression softened. They smiled and then crushed Eric in a hug that almost had them both tripping over the ice.

“If anyone can figure it out, it’s you. Even if sometimes you are a bit thick in the head. I’m telling you; ice hockey isn’t good for you.”

That had Eric laughing, lifting his spirits a bit. Riley pulled back and patted his shoulder.

“Look, Kevin Day or not, at the end of the day, you should do what makes you happy. If you want to be with him and think it’s going to work out, I know you can do it. If not then, well, you have my shoulder to cry on. Or you can tell Kevin I’m very much available.”

They grinned and Eric rolled his eyes but smiled fondly.

“Thanks, Riley.”

Eric knew he had his family, his team and his best friend whom he could count on. He couldn’t help, however, to worry about Kevin and how he spent the winter break. Sure, he had his team, he had people surrounding him, but was he still punishing himself?

Riley eventually suggested they go back for dinner at Eric’s place. They gathered their stuff after they got off the rink and then started heading back.

“Mom?” Eric called as they walked inside the house.

“Eric?” His mother asked as she looked at them from the living room, immediately walking over to them to welcome them. “You are back! Good. Someone very special is here to see you.”

The smile on her face had something mischievous about it that instantly got Eric’s attention.

Eric heard Riley squeal even before he spotted Kevin Day, sitting on the couch, watching him with bright emerald eyes.

[uomo-accattivante]

I recently came across a bunch of press articles and photos about Oscar Isaac that are so old, they appear to be out-of-print and pre-date social media. Considering they were probably never digitally transcribed for internet access, I’m guessing that the majority of current fans have never seen this stuff.

Even though a lot of these digital scans are challenging to read because they are the original fuzzy news print, I think there some gems worth sharing with you guys. Over the next several weeks, I will transcribe and share those gems on this page. Hope you enjoy them!

Let’s start with this fantastic 2001 profile piece done before Oscar was accepted into Juilliard:

South Florida’s rising star isn’t just acting the part

By Christine Dolen - cdolen@herald.com

February 4, 2001

As fifth-graders at Westminster Christian School in Miami, Oscar Isaac and his classmates were asked to write a story as if they were animals on Noah’s Ark. Oscar turned in a seven-page play – with original music – from the perspective of a platypus. Then he starred in the production his teacher directed.

He hasn’t stopped expressing himself creatively since. Today, Isaac is one of South Florida’s busiest young theater actors, and certainly its hottest. And not just because he’s a slender five-feet nine-inches tall with an expressively handsome face and glistening brown eyes.

Since making his professional debut as a Cuban hustler in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage in July 1999, he has played an explosive Vietnam vet in Private Wars for Horizons Repertory, a pot-smoking slacker in This Is Our Youth at GableStage, another Cuban on the make in Praying With the Enemy at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the entrancing narrator of Side Man at GableStage, a Havana-based writer in Arrivals and Departures for the new Oye Rep and, most recently, a young Fidel Castro in When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba at New York’s Cherry Lane Theater.

Beginning Wednesday, he’ll be juggling five roles in City Theatre’s annual Winter Shorts festival, first at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach, then at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. But that is not all: During the two weeks he is doing Winter Shorts, he’ll also be playing dates with the punk-ska band The Blinking Underdogs (www.blinkingunderdogs.com), which features him as lead singer, guitarist and songwriter.

Oh, and he just got back from auditioning for New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Drama.

All this for a guy a month shy of his 22nd birthday.

Sure, you could hate a guy who’s that talented, that charismatic, that transparently ambitious. But the people who have worked with Oscar Isaac don’t. On the contrary, they’re all sure he has it – that magical, can’t-be-taught thing that transforms an actor into a star.

Playwright Eduardo Machado, who put in a good word for Isaac at Juilliard, says “he does have that star quality that makes your eyes go to him. It’s great that someone with that talent still wants to train.”

“He has a star quality that’s rare in a young actor,” adds Joseph Adler, who directed him in Side Man and This Is Our Youth. “Without a doubt I expect to be hearing great things from him.”

‘I JUST LOVE CREATING’

Isaac, who also makes short films, can’t say exactly why he was attracted to acting. He just knows it makes him happier than anything, that it’s what he was meant to do. And he’s been doing it since he was a 4-year-old putting on plays in his family’s backyard with his sister Nicole.

“I just love creating, whether it’s music or films or a character on a stage. I love taking people for a ride,” he says. “In Side Man, every night I would love being that close to the audience. I felt like I was talking to 80 of my closest friends.

“I could feel what the audience was feeling.”

His powerful, mournful-yet-loving monologue near the end of the play, he said, “worked every night. I knew it would get them. I’d hear sniffles.

“But it had less to do with me than with the atmosphere [created by the playwright and director].”

You could understand if Isaac, surrounded as he is by praise and possibility, had an ego as burgeoning as his career. Instead, he channels the positive reinforcement into confidence about his work.

“He has such a charm and an ease onstage, but he’s very modest,” says New York-based actress Judith Delgado, who shared the stage with Isaac in Side Man. “He’s hungry. He’s got moxie. I was blown away by him.

“He saved me a couple of times. I went up [forgot a line] and that baby boy of mine came through. He’s a joy.”

FORGING HIS OWN PATH

The son of a Cuban-American father and a Guatemalan mother, Isaac was never a stellar student. But he found ways of turning routine assignments – like the Noah’s Ark story – into creative challenges.

His science reports were inevitably video documentaries underscored with punk music. He acted through middle and high school, though he had a falling out with his drama teacher at Santaluces Community High in Lantana over his misgivings about a character. When she refused to cast him in anything else, he got his English teacher to let him play the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors his senior year.

His skepticism about authority and love of playing the devil’s advocate have long made him resist doing things the usual way. His post-high school “training” consisted of one semester at Miami-Dade Community College’s South Campus (where he met his girlfriend, Maria Miranda), touring schools playing an abusive character in the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s Breaking the Cycle, and working as a transporter of bodies at Baptist Hospital, where he absorbed the drama of people in emotionally intense situations.

“It was the most magnificent dramatic institute I could’ve attended,” Isaac said. “I was able to observe the entire spectrum of human emotion, people under the most extreme duress. I was mesmerized watching the way people interacted with each other in such heightened situations.

“I learned everything about the human condition, and it was real and harsh and brutally honest.”

Yet even given his propensity for forging his own path, something nudged him another direction while he was in New York making his Off-Broadway debut in December. Walking by Juilliard one day, he impulsively went in to ask for an application. Though the application deadline had passed, Isaac persuaded Juilliard to accept his, noting in his application essay that most of the exceptional actors he admires had acquired “a brutally efficient technique” to enhance their talent by studying at places like Juilliard.

Though he won’t know whether he has been accepted until the end of this month, his audition last weekend went well, he says. He did monologues from Henry IV, Part I and Dancing at Lughnasa, adjusting his Shakespearean Hotspur to a more fiery temperature at the suggestion of Michael Kahn, head of Juilliard’s acting program – though not without arguing that Hotspur wouldn’t be speaking to the king that way.

Isaac, not surprisingly, loves a good debate.

Adler, GableStage’s artistic director and a man who is as liberal as Isaac once was conservative, savored the verbal jousting they did during rehearsals for Side Man.

“He knows exactly how to pull my chain,” Adler says with a laugh. “Intelligence is the cornerstone of all great actors, and he’s bright as hell.

“He has relentless ambition but with so much charm. He’s very hard to say no to. He has incredible raw talent and magnetism that is very rare in a young actor along with relentless energy, perseverance and ambition. I see his growth both onstage and off. He’s mature in both places.”

Part of his growth, of course, will necessarily involve dealing with the rejections that are part of any actor’s life. His career is still too new, his string of successes solid, so it’s anyone’s guess how failure will shape him. But director Michael John Garcés, who picked him for When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba after Isaac flew to New York at his own expense to compete with a pool of seasoned Manhattan actors for the role, believes his character will see him through.

“Oscar is realistic, but he’s so willing to go the whole nine yards,” Garcés says. “He didn’t go out when he was in the show here. His focus earned the respect of the other actors, some of whom have been working in New York for 30 years.

“He hasn’t had a lot of blows yet, when the career knocks the wind out of you. But he has talent, determination and focus, and if he has perseverance – my intuition is that he does have it – he could achieve a lot.”

FAMILY TIES

His father and namesake, Baptist Hospital intensive-care physician Oscar Isaac Hernandez, couldn’t be more proud. (Isaac doesn’t use the family surname in order to avoid, in his words, being “put in that Hispanic actor box.”)

“I’m ecstatic that he’s probably going to be going to the most prestigious drama school in the United States,” he says. “School will help him focus his energies and give him discipline. He’s got the raw material and the drive.”

Isaac’s mother, Maria, divorced from his father since 1992, is a kidney-transplant recipient who acknowledges that she’ll miss her son if he moves to New York. But, she adds, she wants him “to live out his dreams. He amazes me every day. He calls me every day. I’m very proud of him.”

Even the other guys in The Blinking Underdogs are fans of Isaac’s acting, though it could take him away from South Florida just as the band appears to be, Isaac says, on the brink of signing a recording deal (it has already put out its own CD, The Last Word, with songs, lead vocals and even cover photography by Isaac.

“Oscar’s the leader of the band, a great musician who amazes me and motivates us,” says sax player Keith Cooper. “I’ve been to see every one of his plays. He’s a phenomenal actor.

“I completely buy into his role in every play. As close as I am to him, I forget it’s Oscar.”

His South Florida theater colleagues credit that to Isaac’s insatiable desire to learn and grow.

Gail Garrisan, who is directing him in Donnie and One of the Great Ones for Winter Shorts, observes, “It’s not often that you find a young actor who is willing to listen and who doesn’t think he knows everything. He loves the work.

“He really brought the young man in Side Man to life. When I saw it in New York, it seemed to be the father’s play. When I saw it here, I felt it was his [Isaac’s] play.”

Oye Rep’s John Rodaz, whom Isaac calls “the best director I’ve ever worked with,” gave the actor his first important job in Sleepwalkers at Area Stage. They met when Isaac came to see Area’s production of Oleanna and the actor, knowing Rodaz ran the theater, introduced himself.

“He has so much energy and such a sparkling personality,” Rodaz says. “He knows how to move in the world. He seems to take advantage of every situation in a good way; he’s not a cold, calculating person who’ll stab you in the back.

“[But] he wants it so badly. Everything he does, he’s the leader. When I was 21, I was taking naps.”

Rodaz coached Isaac on his Juilliard monologues and found the experience energizing.

“I got chills just watching him. That happens so rarely. I was so exhilarated when I came home that I just had to go out and run. You just know he’s got all the tools.”

Christine Dolen is The Herald’s theater critic.

###

[backtothestart02]

Teacher’s Pet - 1/? | westallen fanfiction

A/N: Written for Mi on twitter. <3 Is there any new fic I won’t start and never update? *nervous laughter* Hopefully this will be updated soon. Hope you all enjoy. It’s the forbidden college teacher-student romance au you never knew you needed. Iris is much older than Barry and the rest of the chars (minus Scott). Just an fyi.

...

Synopsis:  AU - Fresh off a break-up, the last person Barry expects to fall for is his new English teacher.

...

Chapter 1 -

The university building loomed just ahead on the far side of the courtyard. It was menacing in its stature, for what it represented. A return to academics, sure, but that was something Barry had always enjoyed. No, this building was menacing because it thrust into his face the reality that he almost hadn’t passed any of his classes the previous semester. He had a long way to go to get back to the top of his class and to a place where his parents would be proud of him again. That was important to him.

He stepped out of his car and shut the door behind him, gulping as he looked up at the flag whipping in the wind in plain view of the building. It was cold outside. There was still snow on the ground. His boots crunched as he walked on the ground and around the car to pop open the trunk and grab the two duffel bags he’d taken home with him on winter break.

His phone started to buzz when he was halfway to the building. Reluctantly, he dropped his bags in the snow and answered it.

“Hey, Cisco.”

“Barry! Finally, you answered!”

Barry frowned.

“I just got back to school. You know I don’t pick up the phone when I’m driving.”

He could practically feel Cisco rolling his eyes on the other end.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Where are you at?”

Barry looked around.

“Right in front of our building,” he said. “Think you can come down and open the door for me? My hands are kinda full.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure thing.”

“Unless you’re too busy?”

“Mid-game actually.” Barry could hear video game noises in the background. They abruptly stopped. “But for you, I pause. I’ll be right there.”

“Great. Tha-”

But Cisco hung up before he could finish.

Barry shoved the phone back in his coat pocket and picked up his bags again. Then he trudged over to the building, stuffing the dread he’d felt on seeing the place again as far down as he could muster.

“There he is! Man of the hour!” Cisco declared, opening the door just as he arrived.

“Thanks, man.”

“It’s the least I could do. Personally, I was starting to wonder if you’d ever get here.”

Barry snorted.

“I don’t exactly live close by.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Here let me-”

But Barry held both bags out of reach.

“They’re heavy, Cisco. I put as much as I could into them before I left.”

“I remember. I was surprised the zipper didn’t break.”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” he drawled, shifting one bag over his shoulder. “Just lead the way.”

“Suit yourself. You may change your mind though.”

“What would make me do that?”

“The fact that the elevator is under construction for another month.”

Barry abruptly dropped one of the bags just shy of his foot.

“What, for real? I thought they were going to finish that over break.”

Cisco shrugged. “Guess not.”

Barry blew out a puff of air and reluctantly handed a bag over to his roommate.

“Shit, what do you got in here, bricks? Cement blocks? Oh, I know, pure gold.”

“Told you it was heavy.”

Barry moved past him towards the stairs.

“We still on the third floor?”

“Last time I checked.”

Barry nodded and took the stairs two at a time.

“Hey, Mr. Long Legs,” Cisco called out when he was only halfway up the stairs and Barry was turned the corner to the next staircase. “Slow up a bit, would ya?”

“Sorry.” Barry stopped. “But if I stop for too long, I’ll lose my energy and before you know it, I’ll be unpacking in the middle of the stairs.”

Heaving by the time he reached them, Cisco could only gesture for him to continue. Barry had to smile a bit to himself, but by the time they reached it to the final platform, he was due for some extra oxygen too.

“We should start working out.”

“On campus?” Cisco asked. “You know who’s always hogging the fitness center.”

Barry didn’t need a reminder.

“Wally West, yeah, I know.”

“He doesn’t exactly like you.”

“He stole my girlfriend.”

“To be fair, he’s been working out longer than you.”

“I don’t work out.”

“Case in point.”

“We could start walking.”

“In this weather?” Cisco visibly shivered. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“So, what, we just stay skinny and pale for the rest of our lives?”

“I’ll just stay skinny, thank you very much. And after what you went through last semester, maybe the last thing you should be focused on is buffing up for the ladies.”

Barry rolled his eyes. He didn’t need the reminder. He hadn’t been in love with Linda, so her breaking up with him for cocky jock Wally West bruised his ego more than his heart, but it still hurt. He liked her, and he thought after a year of dating, they had something real. Guess he was wrong.

Spending the tail end of the semester trying to win her back instead of focusing on his finals was probably the reason he’d nearly flunked out of every class he’d been taking. He wouldn’t be doing that again.

Abruptly, he realized Cisco was still talking.

“You know the real reason Wally bothers you so much isn’t just because of Linda.”

“No? What is it then, oh, wise one?”

Cisco turned the key in the door to their room and stepped inside, dropping Barry’s bag on the floor for him to pick up and carry across the room.

“It’s because he skates by in his classes too. He rarely shows up, rarely puts in an effort, and yet, because his sister teaches, she has an in with his records and sweet talks the other teachers to let him slide by.”

Barry straightened after shrugging out of his coat and kicking his boots off.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Surprise!” Cisco said animatedly.

Barry was not amused.

“I have her as my English teacher this semester.”

Cisco winced. “Yikes.”

Barry scowled.

“I hear she’s pretty though. Like, drop-dead gorgeous.”

“I’m not gonna date my teacher.”

“Who said anything about dating her? She’s just something nice to look at. Maybe she’ll be sweet on you.”

“Oh, yeah, the woman who’s cheating the system so her brother graduates will give me – the ex to her brother’s girl whose gpa has seriously tanked over the last months – a fair chance.”

Cisco shrugged.

“It’s only one class?”

Barry sighed.

“Yeah, I guess.” He shook his head. “I need a distraction from all this.”

Cisco snapped his fingers.

“Video games!”

Barry considered it.

“Yeah, I guess that might do it.”

“It will do it.” He picked up a controller and handed it to him. “Here. I’ll even delete all my progress so we can both play.”

Barry snorted.

“Thanks, man. You’re one in a million.”

“Better than Linda and Wally combined.”

“And Ms. West.”

“Professor West she likes to be called.”

Of course she does.

Barry rolled his eyes and reached over to Cisco’s controller to start the game and shut him up.

“Hey, what did y-”

“Play!”

Cisco shook his head and started to play, eventually forgetting his minor irritation and focusing wholeheartedly on the game and having his best friend back in his space again.

It would be a good semester. Despite all odds, Barry would excel. He had no doubt.

…

 Iris draped the fuzzy blanket over her legs and sank into her couch. After a tasty dinner for one and an exhilarating bath, here she was ready to enjoy a few chapters of her current favorite book for the night. Tomorrow classes would start up again, and she would have to be up at the crack of dawn to be in teacher mode. It had been a solid month and a half of relaxation and freedom – minus the small inconvenience of having Wally crash with her and frequently invite his new girlfriend over. But aside from that, it had been nice.

She enjoyed teaching though, always had. Running the school newspaper helped channel her passions for something more. And when she wasn’t worrying about whether or not she would be the only one in her family graduating college, she could enjoy being a flirt to just about every man on staff. The other women envied her. She didn’t care. She didn’t sleep around. It was all in good fun. And it would all resume tomorrow morning, bright and early.

A sudden loud noise interrupted her thoughts. She looked toward the door and found to her great annoyance that it was her brother, whose lips were attached to the new girl she’d met only twice over the last month. Her eyes narrowed when she realized his hands were searching out the hem of her shirt and the zipper of her skirt.

“Uh, Wally?”

No response. Just more moans and groping.

“Hey, Wally!” She snapped – literally.

His eyes opened, and he distanced himself from his girl, though only slightly.

“Iris. Hey. What are y-”

“I live here, remember?”

“Yes, right. I know. I just thought…”

“It’s nine o’clock, and you’re crashing on my couch. Where were you expecting to go?”

He had the gall to have a straight face.

Meanwhile, the girl just inches from him blushed.

“Oh, my God, Wally,” she whispered under her breath. “I thought you said she wouldn’t be home.”

Iris got to her feet.

“You were going to fuck in my bed.”

“Well, I…”

“You were!”

“Maybe I should go…” the mortified girl muttered.

“Yeah, I think you’d better,” Iris barked.

“Hey! Don’t talk to her like that!” Wally ordered.

Iris’ eyes widened.

“Maybe you should leave too.”

“And go where?”

“I don’t know. Home?”

“I came here so I didn’t have to. You know they’d never take me. They can’t stand the sight of me.”

“Yeah, well, right now I can’t really stand the sight of you either.”

He fumed. She fumed right back.

“I’ll just go,” the girl piped up again. “I’m so sorry about this, Iris.” She swallowed hard.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Both women gave him a deadly glare until finally Wally relented. He softened as he turned to his girlfriend.

“I mean, do you really want to go?”

“I…”

Iris was in disbelief. This was her apartment!

“I’m calling mom.”

He spun around to face his sister instead.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Leave.” She pointed toward the door. “Come back when you have your priorities straightened out.”

He scoffed but wrapped his arm around his girl and guided her to the door.

“Come on, Linda. We can go to your place.”

“I have a roommate,” she panicked.

“Guess you won’t be fucking then,” Iris said dryly.

Wally glared but left the apartment. Iris locked the door immediately. He had a key, so it wasn’t going to keep him out, but it would give her some peace of mind until she went to bed.

Heaving a sigh, she collapsed back on the couch and closed her eyes for a few minutes before grabbing her book and relaxing into it again.

It took a while, and she was just about into the zone of where the characters were headed when there was a knock on the door.

She sighed, aggravated, and deliberately set the book down on the coffee table. Then she got to her feet and headed toward the door.

“So help me, Wallace, if that is actually you… If you lost your key… If you’re coming back this soon, there better be an apology,” she muttered heatedly.

She was so focused on the possibility that it was her brother that she flung the door open without looking through the peephole and was fuming when she came face to face with a familiar yet completely unexpected face.

“Scott?”

“Did I…come at a bad time?”

She blinked, suddenly aware of just a teddy beneath her fluffy robe. She looked him over and debated her options. He looked dashing, as always, and the easy charm was there in his half-amused smile pulling at his lips. There’d been an easy flirtation between the two of them since they’d met five years ago, but they’d never acted on it. Now here he was the night before the spring semester started with red roses in one hand and an uncurling fist that was probably sweaty as the other.

Suddenly, she needed nothing more than to act out one of the steamy love scenes in her book. Damn it all to hell what the next day brought.

She grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and pulled him into her apartment, kissing him soundly on the lips. He made no attempt to push away, and in fact moved to undress her through the far less layers as she was undressing him.

The door was shut, and the flowers dropped in the flurry of it all, and before either of them realized the gravity of what had happened, they were in Iris’ bedroom fucking, and Iris was kind of smug about it because it should serve Wally right for trying to do it first.

That didn’t mean she’d let him spend the night however. If Wally saw him gossip would spread, no doubt to get back at her, and she didn’t need either of their teaching reputations ruined like that.

So, about ten minutes after they’d crested, and Scott was laying in bed beside her with a gigantic grin on his face, Iris propped herself up and made a gesture towards the door.

“Okay, time for you to go.”

His jaw dropped.

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, honey.” She stroked his chest. “You were fantastic.”

“Then?”

“We’re not together. I was just feeling stressed out, and you alleviated my stress. Thank you.” She smiled serenely.

He blinked.

“Seriously, go. If Wally sees you here, gossip will spread before either of us gets a word in our classes tomorrow. That’s hardly the best way to start the semester.”

He blinked again, still trying to process. She didn’t like that.

“Go!” She pulled on her robe and yanked him out of her bedroom.

He seemed to figure out what was going on by that point and caught his clothes as she threw them at him.

“I…uh…”

“I’ll see you tomorrow in the hall.”

“You will?” he asked hopefully.

“In the hall,” she repeated.

He frowned, and she sighed, moving swiftly past him to open the door and usher him out.

“Did you like the flowers at least?” he asked pathetically.

“They’re lovely,” she assured. “Goodnight, Scott.”

Then she closed the door in his face and locked it, promptly turning and throwing out the flowers without even a single sniff. Wally couldn’t see she had flowers. He was annoyingly observant and picked up on shit like that.

She returned to her bedroom, changed the sheets, and took a quick shower to rinse off the sweat. Then she settled in to sleep with a smile on her face. Amazing what a one-night stand could do for a girl’s mood.

This semester was going to be great.

[krisdreaming]

🎄 4th Day of Fluffmas 🎄

⟵ Day 3 | Masterlist | Day 5 ⟶

All the Way Home I’ll be Warm || Kuroo Tetsurou x Reader

Word count: 3,813 (oops?) | Gender neutral reader

(prompt: “I sort of told my family I have an s/o and now I need someone to stand in for them – HELP”)

-

Day 0 (Briefing)

Kuroo is sitting across from you at the little cafe on campus, and for some reason he actually seems to be looking forward to the next few days. He even brought a notebook, but you can’t tell if he’s being serious about taking notes or if this is all part of the act. You had asked him because you knew he was always down to help you out with your late night adventures and crazy schemes, but this one might just be the craziest.

“Okay boss, what’s the plan?” He props his elbows on the table and leans closer to you. “Actually, before we get into that, I think I’m going to need a little back story. Why, exactly, do you need a fake boyfriend?”

“Well, you see...” You lift your mug closer to your face and peer into it for a moment. “It just gets really old having everyone ask about it at every family gathering, you know? I know I shouldn’t have lied but how was I supposed to know they would insist that I bring my boyfriend to Grandma’s?” You shoot Kuroo an apologetic smile.

“And that’s where I come in.” He finishes. You nod. 

“I’m curious.” He props his cheek on his fist. “How long is our relationship going to last? Are we meant to be?” He flashes you a cheeky grin, and you duck your head. Okay, maybe asking someone you already (possibly) have feelings for to be your fake boyfriend might not have been the best idea, but it’s too late to back out now.

“Actually, I have a feeling that next year, you’re going to leave to study abroad. We’ll probably make a mutual decision to end our relationship because we don’t want to deal with the long distance.” You laugh. “Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a repeat gig.”

“Wow, you’ve really thought this through.” Kuroo actually does write something down in his notebook. “So, do we have any cute nicknames for each other?”

“Hmm.” You hum in thought. “Probably nothing too crazy. We’ve only been dating for four months.”

He nods sagely. “Well, you can call me Tetsurou, I don’t mind. Or Tetsu.” He adds quickly. For a brief moment, you consider it.

“Oh, ah. I’ll stick with Tetsurou. Sounds good.” You manage a quick smile. “You can call me F/N.”

“You got it.” He makes another quick note. “Do we have a safe word?”

“A what?” You almost choke on the sip of coffee you’d just taken.

“A safe word.” He repeats. “You know, if things get too weird, we can use it to tell the other person to chill out.” You nod slowly. That was one thing you haven’t thought of. “If we’re just calling each other by our names, how about we just call each other Babe if we start to get uncomfortable? Will that make it worse?”

“No, it’s a good idea.” You nod. “Yeah, I’m cool with that.” You shake your head. “This is so weird, dude, I’m sorry.”

He laughs. “This is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. If this works out I might switch to a theater major.”

“No way, I think Chem might eat me alive if you leave me.” You grimace. “You’re the only reason I passed our lab last semester.”

“Kidding.” He finishes the last swallow of his coffee. “There’s no money in theater anyway, and if I switched majors I’d probably have to drag you with me. I’m too used to having you around.” He grins, a more sincere smile this time, and you can’t help but return it. 

“Well, that’s good, because you’re stuck with me. And just to warn you,” You have to change the subject before you get too flustered. “My Grandma is going to show you every single photo she’s ever taken of me. At Thanksgiving, it took her almost an hour to get through them with my cousin’s girlfriend.”

“Aw, little baby Y/N.” Kuroo laughs. “I might enjoy this too much.” He pushes back his chair, and you stand too. “I’ll walk you back to your dorm.” The early winter darkness has already fallen.

“Sure, thanks.” You fall into step beside him, stepping outside for the chilly walk across campus. 

“Thanks for helping me out.” You add, your words puffing steam into the air. “I really appreciate it.”

“Anytime.” He knocks his arm against yours. “To be honest, after all this talk about your Grandma’s cooking, I might have tagged along even if I didn’t have to pretend to be your boyfriend.” He laughs.

“You certainly won’t go hungry.” You agree. “She’ll make sure of that. Don’t blame me if it affects your volleyball physique.”

“Don’t worry, I’m naturally slender.” He pats his middle. “I’ve got the quickest metabolism you’ve ever seen.”

You shake your head. “If you say so.” By now, you’ve reached your dorm. “Oh, by the way!” You call out as he turns to go. “I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about your hair?”

He turns back to face you. “Not a thing. Many have tried, none have succeeded.” He runs his hand through it and makes it stand even more on end.

“Fair enough.” You shrug. “They’ll have to deal. See you tomorrow.”

“Later!” He lifts his hand in farewell and turns to go. For a few more moments you stand and watch his retreating back. These next two days might be harder than you thought.

Day 1

“Here we are.” You announce as Kuroo gets out of his car and grabs his bag. You each drove your own car, and he’s parked right behind you in your Grandma’s driveway. “Ready for this?”

“Ready as ever.” He slings his bag over his shoulder. “Lead on.” You reach for the door, and before you can turn the handle it swings open with your Dad and Grandma behind it.

“Merry Christmas!” Your Grandma pulls you into a tight hug, and you breathe in the familiar scent of rose and sugar cookies. “Come in, come in.” She releases you and is immediately locked on Kuroo, who has a sheepish smile on his face.

“Oh my.” She looks up at him with a huge grin on her face. “Aren’t you quite the handsome young man! Just look at how tall he is.” She turns to your Dad, who has given you a quick hug and is now quickly sizing up Kuroo.

“Dad, Grandma, this is Kuroo Tetsurou.” He gives you a quick prompting glance. “My boyfriend.” You add, already feeling your cheeks grow warm at saying the words out loud.

“Nice to meet you.” Your Dad reaches out and catches Kuroo’s hand in a firm handshake. 

“It’s great to meet you sir.” Your Dad must approve of the handshake, because he gives Kuroo a nod and a smile.

“Come here.” Grandma gestures, and Kuroo leans down to be enveloped in a hug. 

“Thank you for having me, Ma’am.” Kuroo says the moment he’s released. A pleased grin breaks across her face.

“What a polite young man. Honey, it looks like you’ve found a good one.” She pats your shoulder.

“Guess so.” You smile.

“Well now, come, let me show you to your room.” You feel your eyes grow wide, and when she has turned her back you look at Kuroo and mouth room?? As in, singular? He gives the slightest of shrugs, and you follow her upstairs.

“Now, normally I would make sure you each have your own room, but we’re a bit full right now, and besides. I guess you’re all grown up now, aren’t you?” She gives you a fond smile and you survey the guest room she’s assigned to the two of you. A queen sized bed is the only sleeping surface in the room.

Luckily for you, Kuroo doesn’t miss a beat. “Thank you, this looks great.” He plops his duffel bag on the bed, and you follow suit.

“Thanks Grandma.” You echo.

“Dinner is at 6. Some of your cousins are here already, go find them once you’re settled in!” She bustles out to get back to her kitchen, and you let out a sigh.

“Sorry.” You grimace. “I figured there was no way we’d have to share a bed.”

“Hey, no big deal.” Kuroo shrugs. “I mean, it’s a huge bed. I’m not worried about it.” Realization dawns on his face. “But I’ll sleep on the floor if it’s weird for you.”

“Oh, no. No. That’s fine with me too. I’m good.” You manage a smile that you hope is reassuring. You and your brilliant ideas. You silently scold yourself. “Come on, let’s go find my cousins.”

It isn’t much of a surprise that your cousins adore Kuroo. He has them all laughing before you know it. One of them turns to you. “How did you get lucky enough to find someone like him?” 

Kuroo doesn’t miss a beat and slings his arm around your shoulders. You hope your flinch at the sudden contact isn’t too obvious. “I’m the lucky one, actually. Completely random lab assignment on the first day of the semester, and the rest is history.” He grins at you, and you laugh, finally reacting enough to slide your arm around his back. It’s not like you’ve never casually hugged before, but this feels a little different.

“Aww! That’s so adorable.” Your cousins all titter amongst themselves, and luckily, you’re saved at that moment by your Grandma announcing that dinner is ready.

Around the dinner table, the rest of the introductions take place. Kuroo easily answers the different questions asked of him about volleyball and his major. Soon, though, conversation turns to other things.

“So, Kuroo.” Your jokester uncle speaks up right as dessert is being brought to the table, and you’re already cringing. “Any thoughts on marriage?” Kuroo has his glass lifted to his lips, and he ends up spitting half of the water back into it as a coughing fit overtakes him. He recovers remarkably quickly and sets down his glass.

“Well, sir, we are still in college. For now we’re focusing on our studies.” He sends you a quick glance. Your uncle laughs loudly. You rest your hand on Kuroo’s arm in a way you hope is reassuring.

“I’m just messing with you, son. We’re all glad to have you here.”

“I’m glad to be here.” He nods. For some reason, this seems to be the first thing that’s actually shaken him. You give him a long glance with an eyebrow raised, but he just shakes his head ever so slightly, giving you a quick smile.

Everyone is still around the table chatting as your Grandma and aunts clear the dishes away, and before you know it she returns with a suspiciously familiar album in hand and a dastardly gleam in her eyes. The woman is ruthless.

“Oh, Kuroo-kun, I have some photos of y/n as a child if you’d like to see them! Ah, such a sweet child.” She hugs the album to her chest.

“You know, I would love to see them.” Kuroo sends you the biggest shit-eating grin he can muster, and you pout. He must have recovered from earlier. All you can do is sit helplessly beside him as your Grandma flips through the album page by page, going over each photo you appear in with excruciating detail. Kuroo is enjoying it a little too much, but you suppose it’s a small price to pay for what you’re putting him through.

Finally, the torture is over and everyone begins to turn in for the night. Pajamas on, you sit on the very edge of the bed mindlessly scrolling on your phone as you wait for Kuroo to finish in the bathroom.

“Well, that was an experience.” He appears, rubbing a towel on his still-damp hair.

“I’m sorry about my uncle!” You quickly blurt out. “He’s always saying stupid stuff like that.”

Kuroo waves his hand as though brushing it off. “It’s fine. Just caught me off guard. Marriage wasn’t in my notes.” He laughs. “You using that extra pillow?” He gestures to the spare on top of the dresser.

“All yours.” You say, finally crawling under the covers, as close to the edge on your side of the bed as you can get.

“So.” Kuroo gets in on his own side, arranging the pillows to his liking. “Think everyone’s buying it?”

You shrug. “Seems like it. You’re doing great. I never knew you were such a natural.”

“Yeah, well.” He looks away from you suddenly. “Neither did I. Guess I’m just a man of many talents.” He meets your gaze again and grins. “You’re not doing too bad yourself.”

You laugh weakly. “Thanks.” For a few moments, an awkward silence fills the room. “Well, goodnight.” You finally say, reaching over to turn out the light.

“Night.” He echoes back before smushing his face down into his pillows. It’s not the first time you’ve witnessed his sleeping habits, but it’s not something you can get used to so easily.

As he’d promised earlier, the bed is so large that the two of you aren’t touching at all, but there’s something about the sound of his breathing next to you that keeps you from falling asleep immediately.

Day 2

When the sun peeking through the blinds wakes you the next morning, you almost forget the exact circumstances you’re in. You slowly roll over as you wake up, and you almost yelp aloud at the sight of Kuroo laying next to you, silently scrolling through his phone.

“Oh, morning.” He whispers. The last traces of sleep are still in his voice, and he has marks on his face from where the pillow creases dug into his cheeks. You swallow hard, trying not to stare for too long. He looks softer this way. 

“Morning.” You whisper back. “You sleep alright?”

“Like a baby.” He confirms. “Must be the bed, I slept better than I usually do.”

“You’re almost free.” You change the subject, because you don’t want to admit that you also slept better than usual - after you finally fell asleep, that is. “I told Grandma you’d be leaving after the gift exchange this afternoon.”

“Sounds good to me.” He nods, sitting up a little straighter in bed. “Think there’s any coffee made?”

“Always is.” You grin, and the two of you make your way to the kitchen. Your Grandma and aunt are already there, chatting softly, so you pour each of you a mug and retreat to the empty living room.

“This is really nice.” Kuroo comments when you’re situated on the couch. “Your family is awesome. You’re pretty lucky.”

“I know.” You nod. “they’re crazy, but they’re mine.”

“I’m really glad you invited me along.” He says. “I know it’s a weird reason, but being part of your Christmas is kind of cool.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” You admit. “You fit in really well with them. They’re going to ask about you later, you know.”

“What can I say, I’m a popular guy.” He grins. “Maybe I’ll put off studying abroad for another year so I can come back again.”

“Maybe I’ll have a real boyfriend next year.” You’d meant it as a joke, but something changes on Kuroo’s face and you instantly regret saying it.

“Maybe.” He finally says, giving you the smallest of smiles. Before you can say anything more, your Grandma calls for breakfast.

It’s a lazy morning, and whatever strange thing had happened between you before breakfast, you both manage to ignore it. A game of team Monopoly ensues, and after Kuroo learns your family’s amended rules for the game he gets surprisingly into it. He’s back to his normal self, laughing and teasing you as you play. As it gets down to the last tense rounds between the two of you and your cousin and his girlfriend, he shuffles your money around.

“I can pull this off.” He murmurs to you. “$2,000 on Park Place, and-” his trap pays off, and your cousin gets stuck there and is forced to forfeit his entire savings to the two of you. “Victory!” He crows, and in his excitement he presses a firm kiss to your cheek. Instantly, your entire body is warm. You inhale sharply.

“Um, Babe.” You whisper, not really sure why this has affected you so much.

“I am so sorry.” Instantly, concern is written across his face. “I just got really excited.” He looks around, but no one is paying you much attention. Your cousin and his girlfriend have already gone off to scrounge for a snack. “I’m sorry.” He says again, gripping your arm. “That was way overstepping.”

“No, it’s fine. It wasn’t even a big deal.” You’re starting to relax, so you brush it off. “It just surprised me, that’s all. I’m fine.” He nods. He’s still quiet, though, and you can tell that it’s bothering him.

It’ll all be over soon, though. You only hope that things can go back to normal after this. The thought of losing your entire friendship with Kuroo over one of your crazy schemes makes you feel almost sick to your stomach.

Finally, it’s time for the gift exchange. Your family is gathered around in a circle, and the younger cousins are working on sorting through the gifts beneath the tree. “Okay everyone.” Your Grandma brings her hands together. “Let’s go around and talk about the good things that have happened this year.” It’s the yearly tradition. One by one, your family members share about fun vacations and promotions at work, anything that happened over the year that stood out to them as special.

Finally, it gets around to Kuroo. “We can skip you, if you want.” You say quickly. “I know it’s kinda weird.”

“Nah, no way!” He shakes his head. “I had a pretty great year, I might as well share about it a little bit.” He pauses, and now he’s looking fully at you. You bite down on your lip. “I met a pretty amazing person this year.” He begins. “We have so much fun together. They’re really special to me.” Murmurs go through the room, and you can see smiles growing on your family members’ faces. “I really mean that, Y/N. I can’t imagine my life without you.” Somehow, you can tell that this isn’t part of the charade. His expression is completely genuine, and his smile is filling his eyes.

“Wow.” Is all you can say, softly. “Thank you, Tetsurou.” Everyone’s eyes are on you, and you realize it’s your turn to share. You clear your throat.

“I had a pretty great year, too. I passed Chem lab which is a miracle in itself.” You chuckle lightly, still feeling a little unsettled by Kuroo’s declaration. “And I met a really great guy, too.” You shyly glance in Kuroo’s direction, and he nods in encouragement. “He’s my best friend, and I wouldn’t choose to be here with anyone else right now.” You mean every word, from the bottom of your heart.

With that, your turn is over, and your cousin’s girlfriend starts to share about the vacation they took to Italy over the summer, but you aren’t really paying attention. You’re too busy trying to untangle everything that has happened so far today. Is it possible...? You can’t even dare to ask yourself the question.

Soon enough, the presents are opened, the wrapping paper has been cleaned up, and your uncle is sacked out on the sofa, snoring away. Kuroo gets to his feet.

“Well, I think it’s about time I head out.” He stretches his arms over his head. “I’ll go grab my things.” He disappears for a few moments, and you wander over to the foot of the stairs to meet him when he returns.

“I want to go thank your Grandma.” He says, motioning toward the kitchen. You nod and follow behind him. “Hey, I’m leaving for home now.” He announces to your Grandma and two aunts who are in the kitchen. “But thank you so much for everything. The food was amazing, and I had a great time with your family. Thank you for making me feel welcome.”

“Oh.” Your Grandma waves her hand dismissively. “You deserve it. It’s obvious you make my grandchild very happy.” She smiles at you. “Thank you for coming, it was truly a pleasure to meet you. I hope we’ll see you again.” It’s a good thing she isn’t watching your face as she says that. Kuroo’s grin doesn’t waver.

“Thanks again.” He says with a wave as he ducks out of the kitchen. As you head outside, a chorus of goodbyes follows behind you. The moment the door closes, Kuroo releases a heavy sigh. “Whew.”

“Are you glad it’s over?” You ask hesitantly, standing by his car as he tosses his bag in the backseat.

“I really did have a great time.” He says, making no move to get in his car. “But I have to tell you something.” You nod slowly, and he reaches for your hands. “Is this okay?” You nod again.

“Yeah.” You manage, barely above a whisper.

“I’m really sorry I got so weird earlier. It’s just what you said about having a real boyfriend next year... Y/N, I want to be your real boyfriend. And I probably should have told you that before we even left school, but I couldn’t find the words. I never thought someone like you existed. I had a stupid crush on you for so long. So... What do you say?” He looks at you expectantly.

“I would like that a lot.” You say, a grin growing across your face before you can stop it. You take a deep breath. “I guess I asked you to be my fake boyfriend because it was a hell of a lot easier than asking you to be my real boyfriend. It was stupid.”

“Good.” He says, reaching out to brush a strand of hair away from your face. “Then that’s all that matters.” With that, he cups your face with his palm, slowly leaning in. “Oh. Can I...?”

“Yes.” You giggle, and he doesn’t waste any time in kissing you, soft and sweet. He pulls away, only to lean in for one more kiss.

“For the road.” He say softly, a huge smile on his face. He wraps you up in a tight hug. “I’ll see you after break. Call me tonight maybe?”

“Definitely.” You agree as he slowly steps away. “I’ll see you.” You lift your hand in a wave as he gets in his car and drives away, and for a few moments you just stand in the driveway, watching until his car is out of sight. When you turn to go back inside, all three of your cousins are at the window. One of them winks at you. You stick out your tongue at them, but right now you don’t even have room to feel annoyed.

[naturepointstheway]

Another Semester, another four classes.

So now I’m in the penultimate year of my Geology and Marine Science science degree, and this semester, starting next week, I’ll be taking four classes, with a nice salty splash of Marine Science to go with the geology. I may or may not jump ship with one of the foursome, but I’ll see.

But first...a review of last semester. 

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 

Oh boy...this one started out so good, and then bungey jumped--without that safety rope thing--to oblivion, especially once it was obvious that the tutor had it in for me just because I had a disability. Like giving me an extra low mark because she didn’t like me and was uncomfortable with differences. Well, I definitely withdrew out of that one real quick, and was quietly ignored.

FIELD STUDIES AND NZ GEOLOGY

This one was hard as fuck, and I was wholly convinced I was going to fail the entire thing, but somehow, it held on with great tenacity. Probably helps that my university added five marks to all the papers once the final exams were over, to account for the extra stress of everything during the lockdown when COVID was at its worst in NZ. But I passed and I’m happy to have this class behind me. 

MINERALS AND ROCKS

This paper is infamous among geology majors for being THE toughest class ever--move over, First Year Health Science. Not to mention I HAD to break my fucking ankle like two weeks before the final exam which meant I could barely study, missed two lectures and a lab, and my brain was all LOL NOPE when I tried to catch up once home after the first surgery. And of course I had a second surgery on my ankle four days before the online exam. 

Thankfully, I had special consideration accepted, which helped improved my grade markedly even though I got a pretty good final result all things considered. And to be honest, I kinda enjoyed the first couple or so weeks and the final module on metamorphic rocks. 

Fun Fact--in case you didn’t know, the Grand Canyon was part of AN ANCIENT SEAFLOOR. Think about that for a sec. Think about what our favourite Diaz boys are looking at. An ANCIENT SEAFLOOR. That was once UNDERWATER. FUCKING AWESOME.

Looking forward onto the next semester now. 

GEOCHEMISTRY 

I’m looking at this one with a mix of anticipation and apprehension, especially if it involves chemical equations. But then, practice makes perfect, and having a broken ankle STILL in a cast means I won’t exactly be doing much else anyway...and it’s the middle of winter, and it’s cold as fuck outside. 

MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS

Sighs...Man, this is going to be fucking awesome. Especially since we get to go on a five day or so field trip down to Stewart Island/Rakiura as well for some field experience. YES.

GEOPHYSICS

I have heard mainly great things about this, and it will definitely be a challenge, but I’m definitely welcoming the challenge. This is also relevant to what I’d like to do in terms of planetary science, so is a great fit for me I think.

GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS

This is yet another first year level class to add to my degree, and it repeats a lot of what I already learned, but regardless, I feel like I’m really going to love this one, especially with all the assignments and lab reports--I’m a researcher type at heart. Bring on the marine science. 

[ironndred]

September Calls - Chapter 1 - IronSoldier!AU

This is based off of some really sick fanart of Tony as Winter Soldier.  This was fun to write, especially having CA:CW on in the background for “research purposes”, and I’m excited for what I have planned!  There’s definitely planned smut for this AU, but I’m still trying to figure out what relationships are going to be featured in this, so for now, no pairings except for Starker is going to be tagged (though there is one implied pairing in here that I’m testing out just for the sake of this au).  It’s really early in this storyline and this is a Tony!centered chapter, so there aren’t any Starker elements in this quite yet, but I promise it’s coming!

| Chapter 1 |

Word Count: 1.9k; Rated T: violence, blood, kidnapping, implied torture

Chapter Summary: Mission Report - September 1st 1991.  The beginnings of Iron Soldier.

I’ve got a tag list going from my previous chapter fic Tinker , but if you’d like to be tagged for this, please let me know!

 Hope you guys enjoy!

September 1st, 1991

“You should say something.”  Maria plucks a stray thread hanging from the collar of her son’s t-shirt.  She smooths out wrinkles in the fabric as she watches him preen in the large, floor-to-ceiling mirror in the front foyer.

“Has it ever made a difference?  It’s not the first time he’s forgotten.”  Tony looked at his mother through the reflection in the mirror.

“He’s your father, Tony.”

“Well, being his son never meant much, so why should that matter?”

Maria let him turn away and watched as he walked over to Jarvis, who was checking the tags on several suitcases.  This was going to be the fifth year in a row of study abroad, of an emptied bedroom and packed luggage.  But she lost count of how many years had gone by before Tony was numb to it all.

“Mrs. Stark,” Jarvis’ voice cuts through the silence that’s seemed to fill the main foyer, “is Master Tony ready?  We’ll have to start loading his belongings in the car if you want him to get to the airport on time.”

Maria interjected.  “But Howard hasn’t arrived yet.  If he misses his flight, I can always send for a private-”

“It’s okay, Mom.  Can’t always fall back on Daddy’s money.”  Tony assured, more than immune to his father’s absence.  

He helps Jarvis take his bags to the chauffeur, ignoring the way Maria’s eyes have glassed over.  Once he’s settled everything in the car, he turns around, seeing that Maria has followed them outside.  Tony lets out a sigh -- she’s never made this part easy, but he understands.  Or at least that’s what he tells himself as the years go by.

“Ma.  I’ll be back before you know it.”  Tony offers his mother the most sincere smile he can muster.  “You have until December to procure for me the finest of eggnog.”  Maria’s eyes twinkle at the thought.  She pulls him close, wrapping her arms tight around her boy, inhaling deep.  He smells of soap and his father’s cologne.

“Will you call?  Let me know you’re okay?”  Maria says as she draws back.

Before Tony can answer, he’s interrupted by the sound of tires on gravel and a car door opening and closing with a slam.  Tony and Maria look over as Howard makes his way towards them.  He briefly stops to give Maria a quick kiss on the cheek.

“What’s going on here?”  Howard asks, looking Tony up and down and then to the chauffeured car behind him.

“Tony starts the semester on Monday.”  Maria looks at Howard.  “Won’t you wish him a safe trip?  We won’t see him again till Christmas and-”

“It’s gonna be hard to see him considering we’re gonna be in the Bahamas...”  Howard claps Tony on the shoulder and begins to make his way into the front door.  “But we’ll be back right after New Years.”

“Right, right.  I’ll have my secretary pen you into my schedule for February, then?”  Tony answers, masking behind a smirk and a piercing glare; dejection hid well beneath sarcasm.  Maria just drops her gaze to her feet.

“Be good, Tony.”  Howard calls back as he slips into the house, not even a glance behind him spared.

Maria knows not to say anything, as much as she’d like to, so she embraces Tony once more, a kiss on the cheek her only answer.  Jarvis offers the young man a sad smile and the biggest hug he can muster.  Tony does his best to reciprocate, but much of his energy right now is wound into keeping himself whole.  He only nods and smiles, sniffing as he climbs into the backseat, Jarvis shutting the door for him.

As his car pulls out from the front driveway, Tony turns around and looks back at the home he leaves behind.  He looks at his mother, dabbing away her tears so as to not ruin her make-up.  It may be the way his vision blurs as his own tears begin to well in his eyes, but he swears he sees Howard, standing in the doorway behind Maria, watching from afar.

------

He’s jolted awake by a bump.  

There's a sharp pain where the zip ties dig into the bones of his wrists and suddenly, he opens his eyes to darkness.  He chokes down a scream and holds it in his throat, not wanting to attract attention to himself as he assesses the situation; he doesn’t know where he is or who’s watching.  He can smell the adhesive from the duct tape that’s wrapped around his head and covering his mouth, but it’s the realization that he’s also hogtied that makes his stomach drop.

Another bump.

Tony feels himself slide across carpet and into what feels like the treads of a tire.

Holy shit.  I’m in a trunk.  I’m fucking hogtied and laying in a trunk like a bag of laundry.

With many, many bumps along the way, it feels like an eternity before he feels the car park and the rumble of the engine quiet.  But he’d rather take an eternity in darkness over what might be coming next.  Whoever shoved him into the trunk of a car doesn’t seem too concerned about his comfort, and that could translate into some very scary things later if this situation escalates.

He hears the jingling of keys and cold air blankets him suddenly.  He can hear the whirring of something mechanical grabbing at the zip ties binding him and the snap of plastic as his feet are unbound from his hands.   He feels himself being hoisted up onto a large, broad shoulder, and he wishes he could reach up and rip the tape covering his eyes..  Tony stays quiet, but his heartbeat is almost deafening.  All he can hear is the pounding of blood in his ears, a high whirring and heavy breathing before he’s dropped to the ground.  Tony scrambles, being bound making it difficult, but not impossible, for him to sit up.

This is it.  They’re gonna cut off my head, wrap it up in a box, and leave it on my front door for Jarvis to find.

“Be careful with him.  You’ve done enough, already.”  A voice from far away booms across the room, a Russian accent staining each word.  Tony flinches, hoping that’s the only other voice that will be joining them today.  He’s relieved that the other man is answered only by silence.  As he squirms to find a more comfortable position, Tony stills as he feels harsh hands pick at the duct tape obscuring his vision, unraveling it from his head.  

Tony finds that he can’t bring himself to open his eyes.  He’s scared; everything is so bright and can’t bear to face whatever is coming, but he knows he doesn’t have much of a choice when he feels those same hands grip him by the jaw.  Tony is forced to look at the man crouched before him and he’s met with steely blue eyes surrounded in black paint, everything else from the nose down covered by a gunmetal kevlar mask.  He also makes sure to look at the other man behind him, making note of the worn, red leather book he’s flipping through and embroidered patch on the shoulder of his uniform.  A black skull.  Black tentacles below.  Blood red threading.

There’s a moment of stillness, an unnerving silence except for pages being turned.  Tony goes back and forth between the two men who’ve captured him, and an idea begins to sink in that this might not be as simple as trading him for a duffle bag of money.  This is Howard’s doing, a consequence of being the son of a powerful man with a powerful mind and powerful intentions.  This was a consequence of being a Stark.

What did you do, Howard?

Tony’s brought out of his thoughts when he hears the pages stop turning.

“Желание.  Longing.”  The uniformed man begins.

“Ржавый. Rusted.”   The masked man tightens his grip on Tony’s jaw ever so slightly.

“Семнадцать. Seventeen.”  Tony thinks back, his 17th birthday not so far behind him; vanilla cake with whipped cream and fresh strawberries and the smell of blown out candles.  Secret fingers of whiskey tossed back in the music room while Howard turns a blind-eye.  

Ma.  Have they called you yet?

“Рассвет. Daybreak. Печь. Furnace. Девять. Nine.”  It’s almost uncomfortable, how tight this other man’s grip is on Tony’s jaw.  He breaks his gaze with the other man to look down at the hand holding him still, noticing how it shines under the fluorescent above them.

“Добросердечный. Benign.”  

This is crazy.  This guy is fucking crazy.

“Возвращение на Родину. Homecoming.  Один. One.” As he speaks, the uniformed man begins closing in.  The distance between them shrinks and Tony tries to pull his face away.  He’s trying to scramble back as far as he can, but he’s stilled by a sharp jerking of his head as a warning to behave.

Be good, Tony.

“Грузовой вагон. Freight car.”  A hand comes up and pulls off the tape that’s covering Tony’s mouth.

“Who the fuck are you?!”  Tony can’t think of anything else to ask.  On his lips, he can taste blood mixed with the sweat that’s begun to pour down his face.

“Солдат.”

“I-I don’t understand! Just tell me who you are!”  

It’s steely blue eyes and a dampened voice that answers him this time.

“Soldier.”

-----

June 2016

“More than 70 people have been injured. At least 12 are dead, including Wakanda's King T'Chaka.”

Steve swallows hard as he and Sam watch the news unfold, Sharon’s voice distant and muffled in the background.  The television cuts to surveillance footage of a man dressed in dark clothing and a baseball cap, walking through a parking garage and immediately, Steve’s stomach drops.

“Officials have released videos of the suspects, one of whom they have identified as James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier; the infamous HYDRA agent, linked to numerous acts of terrorism and political assassinations.”

Steve clenches his jaw, and in his peripheral, he can see Sam glance over at him for just a moment.  The broadcast continues, and the surveillance footage unpauses to show the Winter Soldier walking to an unmarked SUV.  The frame freezes and it’s not the best quality, but it focuses on a man sitting in the driver’s seat, gloved hands gripping at the steering wheel.  The man is also wearing a dark baseball cap, goatee trimmed short and his right eye socket kissed with the remnants of what was once a black eye.

“The other suspect, confirmed to also be an agent of HYDRA, still remains unidentified.”

-----

The final wire is soldered in.  Thumbs press into C4 and final moldings are inspected.

He works silently as the last panel is installed to the unit.  The signing of the Accords begins at 11am and they only have a small window to plant the explosives before security is ramped up.  They may have to leave a few hours earlier than planned.

“We are flying very close to the sun, my brouček.”  Helmut Zemo walks up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder.  He doesn’t flinch anymore, but he feels goosebumps beneath the fabric of his shirt that separates the warmth of Zemo’s hand from his own skin.

“Is it ready?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready, my little beetle?” Zemo squeezes his shoulder, leaning down to speak into his ear. “Who are you?”

“I am Iron Soldier.”

-----

Taglist: @thaliapxrker @starkeriseverything @nneeek @mrstark-please @frenchfrostpudding @starkeristheendgame @darker-soft-starker @sweeter-than-starker @silkystark @sadbumblingmess @starrystarker @katzenbaby1 @seriously-starker @precioustarker @unpopular-starker-blog @t1of3 @unfreindlyflower @momobaby227 @starker-reader @shinycreatoroafbonk @hermit-fangirl @peterisstarks @masteringthelove 

[thewritewolf]

Eating Habits Chapter 12: A Little Broken

Marinette and Adrien have some troubles at their new apartment, and Adrien makes a long-delayed visit. 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 (Final)

Enjoy!

Read on Ao3. 

It was a surreal feeling, being back in her old bed after spending the last few months out of the bakery. Marinette was a little miffed that she got nostalgic so quickly, but after how rough that semester was… maybe it was for the best. A little piece of safety and normalcy in the rough waters she was going through.

Her pencil stilled as she listened to the happy noises filtering up from below her. She smiled to herself, easily picking out the musical tones of Adrien’s laughter. It was that laughter, standing out so starkly against the sound of falling rain and the rumble of thunder, that she remembers most clearly about the day that she fell in love with him. That, and those bright green eyes so full of kindness.

She resumed her sketching, idly committing some ideas to paper. It may still be Christmas break, but that was no excuse to not get a head start on the spring designs. If the end of year show was anything like she was led to believe, then she’d need to do even better than what she had done for the winter show. To her surprise, thinking about all that work didn’t fill her with dread like she had been expecting. Instead, a fire lit in her gut.

“I know that look,” came a small voice beside her. Marinette glanced back at her kwami munching on a cookie as she continued, “That’s the ‘I’m on top of the world and nothing can stop me’ look.”

Marinette snorted and poked Tikki’s belly, causing her to giggle . “I didn’t realize I was so expressive.”

“Of course! You’re a very open person, Marinette. It’s one of the many things I like about you.” Tikki looked around the room with a knowing smirk. “Although that openness with your feelings has taken many forms over the years. Remember when you plastered Adrien’s face all over these walls?”

“Tikki!” Marinette said, mortified. She remembered that most of them were still up by the time she’d gone on her first date with Adrien.

The kwami giggled. “Don’t worry! I’m just saying, when you feel things you can’t help but let those feelings out. It’s nothing to be embarrassed by.”

Marinette relaxed a little. “I suppose… And besides, I’ve traded in the pictures for the real deal. Fourteen year old me would be so jealous of me now.”

“Going to a premier design school, living together with Adrien, defeated Hawkmoth.” Tikki looked at her chosen with a warm smile. “There is a lot for past you to look forward to, isn’t there?”

Marinette leaned her head back and considered what Tikki had said. Rushing from one thing to another for the past two years, and juggling akuma battles with normal life for four years before that, she supposed she hadn’t really considered it like that. Practically every goal she’d made when she was a kid had been met, with the exception of making her own fashion brand. But with how well her online boutique was doing, even that might not be just a dream for much longer.

The smile on her face remained a constant feature for the rest of her stay at the bakery and if Adrien noticed that she cuddled him just a little bit tighter that night… well, he didn’t complain.

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

Adrien let out a big sigh as he stepped through the door to their apartment, taking a few weary steps before plopping himself face first down onto the couch.

From the doorway Marinette giggled. He practically purred when she ran her fingers through his hair as she said, “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“It’s the exact level of dramatic I intend to keep up going forward,” Adrien said, lifting his face just high enough to meet her amused smile. “So you’d better get used to it.”

“Oh, kitty,” she said, “I got used to it a long time ago.” She pulled her hand away and Adrien pouted at her. “We can watch a show or something in just a minute. I need to start some laundry so I can at least pretend to be busy while we goof off.”

Adrien dragged himself into a seating position to call after her teasingly as she walked out of the room. “You know, you might have a problem with having to stay busy all the time!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she yelled back. “Tell me something new.”

“New? Well, now you’ll have me here to help you all the time.”

There was a pause. “Good. Because I think I could use some help. Like right now?” He recognized her tone as the one she used a lot as Ladybug - the one that allowed no negotiation or hesitation.

Curious, he stood up and marched after her. Inside the washroom, he found Marinette frantically pressing buttons as the washing machine made a strange rumbling noise. Soapy water poured out onto the floor and Adrien leaped into action, tossing towels onto the ground to buy them some time.

Marinette glanced at him while he did so. “That’s good, but it doesn’t fix the main problem.” She huffed at the machine, glaring at it in the hopes that it would spontaneously fixed itself. Sadly, it did not. “I’ll call a repairman.”

Adrien thought back to a couple nights ago, when Tom fixed the dishwasher by himself. This was a part of his duties now, right? “No, wait! Let me fix it!”

“You don’t know how to-”

“I might - we won’t know for sure unless I try, right?” At Marinette’s doubtful look, he pouted. “I know I’m not good at a lot of normal person things, but I have to at least try to get better.”

“Adrien…” She looked at his pouting face and sighed. “Alright, go ahead and try.”

“Yes!” Adrien immediately set to work. After tinkering with the washer for a few minutes he’d established two things - first, that it was definitely not working properly, and second that he had no idea where to go after that. After tentatively searching the machine, he found a hatch in the back and set off to find some tools to help him open it.

After making sure the washer was unplugged he began poking around the insides of it, making more realizations. First, absolutely nothing looked familiar. Which was to be expected since Tom usually said that he’d handle it and let the rest of them relax. And the policy while he was living at the mansion was to either call for the help to fix or replace the whole thing entirely. Usually the latter since… well, his father never wanted more people than necessary to be inside the mansion.

Adrien frowned as he started getting distracted by old memories. After an hour of it and a mounting frustration from his failure to get any closer to fixing the washer, he dropped his screwdriver and walked back into the living room. Marinette was at the couch on her phone. He caught a glimpse of what she was looking on as he joined her - Local handyman and their rates.

His shoulders hunched, he asked, “Already knew I was gonna fail, huh?”

She tugged on his sleeve and he obliged, settling his head on her lap. Her free hand combed through his hair and he relaxed into the touch. If he were behind the mask at the moment, he’d have been purring.

“Kitty, you don’t know how to fix it and that’s okay,” she whispered in a consoling tone. “You don’t have to be good at everything to be loved, alright?”

He did his best to cry as quietly as possible while she was on the phone. He smiled through the tears because he knew he wasn’t crying for his lack of affection early in his life, but because of the unconditional love he had now.

The thought reminded Adrien that, with all that had happened recently, it was about time to make another visit soon.

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

Next week, Marinette was visiting Alya for the afternoon which left Adrien alone for the day. It was finally time to make the trip. Adrien didn’t enjoy going much, but he always felt better after he went.

The first stop was to find some flowers. Adrien knew that she would appreciate them. Being in the dead of winter, it was hard to find some Sharry Baby orchids, but he didn’t give up. Four stores later and he ended up having to purchase a bouquet of fake ones. It wasn’t much - they didn’t even have a scent - but he was sure she would appreciate it. Orchids had always been her favorite. A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. Weird how those sort of things had stuck with him.

It was a long walk to the park, but the cold had never really bothered him and it meant that he was mostly alone with his thoughts. On days where he went to visit, he didn’t really feel like being social. There was just him, the crunching of snow beneath his feet, and the quiet snoring of his kwami that he more felt than heard.

Eventually his wandering brought him to the base of a statue and he looked up in the kind but stony eyes of his mother. The sculptor had depicted her staring ahead, her hands folded in her lap as she sat forever on a stone pedestal. After everything that had happened, he couldn’t bear to leave it at the mansion, especially not after he had sold it. His mother’s side of the family had expressed some interest in having it taken home, but no one protested when he decided to donate it to a flourishing park.

Maybe they didn’t fight for it because they knew that was what she would have wanted - not to have her statue stashed away and hoarded like his father had done, but let it sit inside the bounty of nature. She had always loved plants and flowers and taking care of them. It was another thing he was sure she and Marinette would have bonded over. Adrien smiled. Marinette may have decided on a designer and he knew she would go far in it, but she would’ve made an excellent florist too.

His thoughts returned back to the other side of his family. Maybe they let him keep the statue close by because they’d taken his mother across the channel to be buried with the rest of her family, far away from Adrien and Gabriel. After losing her for a second time, maybe they had felt bad for him, and left him the statue out of pity.

Not that Adrien minded, of course. He had long since gotten used to talking with the statue over some grave marker. Much more pleasant scenery too.

Adrien sniffled and pretended it was just the cold messing with his nose.

After putting the bouquet on his mother’s cold lap, Adrien took a seat on the bench facing her and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket to keep from fidgeting.

“Hey, mom,” he began in a whisper. “I know it’s been a while, but things got pretty crazy for a bit. I meant to visit after the anniversary, but, well…” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, it’s been a hectic few months.”

He swallowed, trying to order his thoughts. “Chloe’s back in town. I think the time in America with Audrey really opened her eyes to what she doesn’t want to be. Plus, she got back with Kagami, so I really think she’s getting better.”

The statue didn’t respond.

“You remember Nino and Alya, right? I’ve told you about them a ton. They’re doing great. Super busy these days, but we find time every now to hang out.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his legs. “I wish I had what they do. That… certainty of what they want out of life. I just feel… a little lost, you know?”

He risked a look back at his mother’s eyes and found that same kind expression.

“Marinette - I know you remember her, I’ve talked about her enough - she’s been such a huge help, though. She really is my light.” He stared off into space for a moment, a dreamy smile on his face. He shook his head to pull himself out of it. “Uh, anyway. She started university. She was really worrying me there for a while, but she’s doing better now. But here’s the big news - we moved in! Well,” he added after a moment, “we had lived together before, but now we don’t have her parents to worry about and well-” He blushed and coughed.

“I just… It’s good to be surrounded by people I love and who love me back. It’s…” he looked up at her eyes and held her stony gaze. “...it’s been a while.” He sighed.

A soft wind blew through the clearing, gently caressing Adrien’s face. He inhaled and caught the scent of Sharry Baby orchids on the air.

Adrien felt at peace and continued his one sided conversation with a happier heart.

[sheikah]

Close Quarters

This is the first bit of a fic that I intended to be for @annabelleebythesea back in December (hence the winter and Christmas setting haha) but couldn’t finish in time. It’s still only halfway done, but I’ve decided to publish the first part so that it’ll hopefully motivate me to finish the rest later :) This is unbeta’d and just for fun. Enjoy! Read below or on AO3.

“Think of it as … professional development.” Olenna Tyrell smiled blithely as the room erupted with protests. It was one thing to ask faculty to attend an in-service meeting before the Christmas holiday, but quite another to force them up the mountains for a team-building retreat. Even Dany, ordinarily agreeable and understanding when it came to Olenna’s stringent policies, couldn’t help feeling a little mutinous at the idea.

“And just what professional qualities will we be developing while holed up in your time share, Principal Tyrell?” Cersei Lannister’s dislike for their principal was well-known, and as the drama teacher she was, expectedly, outspoken and a little theatrical.

For once, Dany found herself in agreement with Cersei, however impertinent her question. She couldn’t see the logic in a faculty ski trip.  

True, Dany was somewhat new to White Harbor and its flagship secondary school, Winterfell High. She was in her second year of employment teaching history and had yet to establish many lasting friendships among her fellow teachers. But that was alright. Friends and colleagues weren’t a part of her classroom, and she managed quite well in the instruction of her classes on her own. No snowy excursions or forced mingling with other faculty were going to improve her rapport with her students.

But unlike many of the outraged teachers in the room Dany lacked a valid excuse for avoiding a holiday getaway. She had no family waiting back home for a visit, no children of her own to look after. In all likelihood she would spend the entire holiday break at home with her three cats were it not for this trip. A lonely prospect, but not enough to stoke her interest in the retreat.

To her right, Tyrion Lannister, resident wine-sodden English teacher, shifted restlessly in his seat, a sardonic grin forming on his lips.

“I hear the luge is all the rage on the conference circuit this semester. Excellent way to build your CV.” There was a scatter of chuckles from among the gathered faculty, though Cersei, Tyrion’s elder sister, seemed less than amused.

Principal Tyrell merely stared at Tyrion without a flicker of warmth until the room fell silent again.

“If you ever bothered to attend a conference, instead of spending your weekends at the pub, you’d understand the importance of networking with others in your field, Mr. Lannister,” she returned coolly.

Tyrion sat up a little straighter at the jab, but offered no argument.

“That’s all very well,” Cersei pressed, forcing a strained smile. “But we’re not in one another’s fields, are we? Missandei is fluent in languages I’ve never heard of, but she can’t teach Mr. Snow’s students trigonometry. Neither of them can direct a full theatrical production. Our work is different. Each of us, every day, has a different approach to what we do. And sending us all into the mountains for some juvenile bonding ritual is no way to improve our test scores.”

“What do you care about test scores?” Sansa Stark demanded from the next row over. “You’re the theater teacher.”

“You’re one to talk. As if home ec is really setting our girls up for success on the SAT,” Cersei sneered.

“It’s not just about that. A trip like this, we might all get to know each other.” Sansa offered Olenna an angelic smile. If nothing else, she was better at faking it than the rest of them.

“Yes,” agreed Oberyn Martell, eyebrows wagging suggestively. “I think we could stand getting to know another better.”

Dany sighed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at them both. Sansa was the home economics teacher and a nice girl from what little Dany knew of her, if a bit of a brownnose. But her support of Olenna’s silly trip felt like treachery to the rest of them. And as for Oberyn, the always-inappropriate gym coach? He was just eager for an excuse to carouse with his colleagues

“It’s about communication,” Olenna insisted. “Look at you all! You’re riotous at the prospect of a paid holiday simply because it involves interaction with one another. You need each other. To discuss learning trends, problems across disciplines, classroom management styles, conflict resolution, conduct issues, ideas for student engagement. You’re almost as detached as our phone-obsessed teenagers! But we need to work together, to improve our learning environment, student completion, and, evidently, faculty morale.”

A scoff sounded behind her and Dany turned to find the aforementioned Mr. Snow glowering as usual. Jon was the resident math teacher. He was young, like Dany, and the students loved him. She couldn’t imagine why.

“Something to add, Mr. Snow?” Dany asked, turning in her seat to fix him with her lilac stare. There was a flash of surprise in his eyes when they found hers, but it was gone just as quickly.

“Of course not, Ms. Targaryen.” There was ice in his reply, a promise of more and unkinder words left unspoken. Typical.

Olenna passed a curious glance between the two of them before nodding with finality.

“Good. With that settled you’ll all receive the details of your itinerary through your faculty email. The only thing left to decide on is transportation arrangements.”

“Transportation?” Tyrion asked. “Won’t we all just pile merrily into one of those yellow deathtraps the students are lucky enough to ride in every day?”

Olenna’s glare was enough to make even Dany flinch.

“Our school busses are very safe, Mr. Lannister, I assure you. The incident last year had nothing to do with the integrity of the vehicle. Mr. Dondarrion didn’t see the oncoming vehicle in time on account of his … impaired sight.”

Tyrion only blinked at Olenna, his smile never wavering. It took all of Dany’s self-control not to erupt into laughter at his side.

“For the gods’ sake, can we end this meeting? What transportation are you providing, Principal Tyrell?” Cersei demanded, already standing to leave.

“None.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” Olenna answered calmly. “None. While our busses are more than safe for their intended purposes they aren’t rated for ascent to high elevations, especially in the winter months. No. You’ll need to take your own vehicles. We’ll pay for your mileage, of course, but we’re only budgeted for three reimbursements, so you’ll need to carpool.”

A synchronized groan rose all around the room, but Dany was silent, panic overtaking her at this latest development. She hadn’t considered the possibility that she might need to drive herself, much less any others. She wasn’t used to driving here, to the snow-laden roads and their treacherous slickness. Back home, she could count on one hand the number of times the roads had frozen over. Her city wasn’t prepared for it. Why bother? That far South, it simply wasn’t cold enough. So any time the conditions didn’t favor driving, businesses simply closed, the citizens bundled up safely in their homes until the streets were passable again.

Since the move to White Harbor Dany had used a rideshare service to get to work when the weather was poor, always telling herself that she’d learn how to drive in the snow eventually, when she was ready. Just not yet.

Apparently she’d have to teach herself over the next two days. That, or hope she was lucky enough not to be chosen to ferry the others up the mountain in her car.

“Cersei,” Olenna said, interrupting her reverie. She squinted down at a notebook that lay open on the podium before her. “You’ll drive up first, being that you’ve got no after-school engagements on Friday. Based on their schedules, it looks like you can take Sansa and Missandei with you.”

Cersei swore under her breath but nodded, Sansa looking more than a little disappointed behind her. In front of Dany, Missandei turned in her seat, a grimace of dismay on her pretty face.

“Fuck me,” she mouthed, shaking her head. No one in their right mind would want to ride up with Cersei. Dany couldn’t help sympathizing her with her friend. She indulged in a bit of pity for herself, too. She’d hoped that if nothing else, she and Missandei would at least ride together.

“Samwell,” Olenna continued, still eyeing the schedule carefully. “You’ll also leave Friday afternoon, with Oberyn, Tyrion, and my granddaughter.” This time Dany couldn’t suppress her snort of amusement. Of all the employees at Winterfell High, Samwell Tarly was the most tightly wound and by-the-book. He was a nervous man, always wary of disgruntled students and overbearing parents. How the timid librarian was going to survive a weekend away with the likes of Oberyn and Tyrion ribbing him was beyond her. At least Olenna’s lovely granddaughter, Margaery, would be there. She was kind but firm, the students’ best-loved counselor. With her around, the men wouldn’t be too hard on Sam.

Looking around the room, Dany realized with horror that this left only three people unassigned: herself, Davos Seaworth, the aging guidance counselor, and Jon Snow.

“Mr. Seaworth is out with the flu,” Olenna reported, finally looking up from her schedule. “So that leaves …  Ms. Targaryen, you have the honors’ society meeting Friday evening. And Mr. Snow, you’ve got fencing practice. That means the two of you will have to ride together, leaving Friday night.”

No.

Dany opened her mouth to protest but Olenna spoke first, her eyes suddenly glued to the ornate gold watch on her wrist.

“We’ll adjourn now. Much to do. Look for more information in your emails.” With that, the principal bustled out of the room in a sweep of her dark green skirt, leaving the rest of them grumbling in her wake.

“I can’t believe this,” Dany muttered, meeting Missandei’s pitying gaze. “I can’t ride up with Jon.”

She turned hesitantly to see if he was still behind her, wondering if she should approach him first to make a plan, explain that she couldn’t drive. But he was already gone, the desk he’d been sitting at vacant.

“What is it with the two of you anyway?” Tyrion asked, quirking a brow at her as they filed out of the room with the others.

“What do mean? Nothing.” Dany paused, staring down to fiddle at a hangnail on her thumb as she scrambled for the right words, determinedly avoiding Missandei’s knowing look. “I don’t like him is all. I’d think even you could understand that. He isn’t the friendly sort.”

The lie was easy, natural so that she almost believed it herself. The truth was less simple, and dodging it now only brought the memories back with staggering force.

It had been almost a year since the office Christmas party. Dany had only been teaching at Winterfell for three months back then, still learning the ropes, still getting to know its colorful cast of faculty and staff

She and Missandei had been fast friends. They were close in age, hired at the same time, and Dany’s interest in world history paired well with Missandei’s knowledge of various languages and cultures. They often planned joint projects in their classes together, had dinner on the weekends, and spent lazy evenings at one another’s apartments grading papers and splitting a bottle of wine.

Dany’s friendship with Tyrion was less conventional. He’d been dubbed her “new faculty mentor,” a job he approached with dry humor and no real advice. But the arrangement had paired them together at various work functions until she had developed a grudging affection for the sardonic older man.

Dany was grateful for her newfound friends, and for the most part she was happy with her colleagues at Winterfell; but even then, Jon Snow had found his way under her skin. He was quiet and withdrawn in the lounge, his nose always in a book, earbuds in place to block out any chance at the distraction of conversation. He taught math, she knew, but he was usually reading fiction instead of working through equations. Adventure thrillers and fantasy epics.

Every day he brought a healthy lunch from home, and he was almost always early through the door in the morning because he came to work straight from the gym. His dark-colored dress shirts fit well enough to show the sturdy build of his arms and shoulders. At least his hard work was paying off.

Outside his classroom he never talked to anyone save his best friend, Sam, and the occasional chat with Tyrion for a book recommendation. Even his cousin, Sansa, seemed to prefer Margaery to the company of the seemingly cold Jon. So Mr. Snow was a man of rigid discipline and few words, but Dany liked nothing more than a hopeless cause.

It didn’t help matters that she frequently looked up from her morning coffee in the lounge to find him watching her silently from his seat across the room. The moment she caught him looking he’d quickly drop his gaze back to the book in his lap. Ordinarily it would have annoyed her to be stared at, but Jon’s attention was a little flattering. He was handsome, with a fine, bearded jaw and big brown eyes framed by Warby Parker wayfarers. Yet despite his frequent glances her way, they’d never spoken past the obligatory introduction in her first week.

Jon’s withdrawn behavior would’ve been sufficient to catch her attention on its own. Dany had a history of involvement with inappropriate or unavailable men, after all. Her catastrophic breakup with Drogo would have been reason enough to move across the country, even without the job offer at Winterfell. So Dany had been ready to write Jon off as another case of her inconvenient attraction to, for lack of a better word, assholes.

But then she’d seen Jon teaching. She’d happened by his classroom on the way to the lounge during her free period, and the little rectangular window into his room framed a portrait of an entirely different man.

He was animated and energetic, the sleeves of his button-down rolled up to his elbows as he moved from one corner of the board to the next, scrawling out numbers and graphs and turning to his students with a smile so dazzling it stopped her in her tracks. Who got that excited about algebra?

Maybe he wasn’t the office grump after all, just a man who didn’t much care for idle small talk and forced pleasantries. Dany could respect that. She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly herself, and being the new girl in a small town like White Harbor was a lonely business. A part of her wanted to fix that.

So she’d gotten absurdly dolled up for the office Christmas party that year, barely zipping herself into a sequined red cocktail dress and using the occasion to break in a pair of her highest heels, shiny black patent leather.

The party was held off-campus so that they could all indulge in the booze they so desperately needed around the holidays. The school’s hospitality fund had gone toward an open tab at the sports bar off Main Street, Tyrion’s favorite weekend haunt.

The place had been spruced up for Christmas, string lights along the bar, red and green window paint near the entrance broadcasting season’s greetings to the passersby. The tables had been pushed back or removed to make space for a crude dance floor, and music was blasting through the sound system at a near-deafening volume.

Dany could feel the bass in her bones, a humming vibration that excited her. It’d been too long since she’d had any real fun or done anything for herself. She was always so focused—working toward her next career goal, learning new ways to approach her students. That night was supposed to be different.

Things started off well enough. She slid up on the barstool next to Tyrion, already a few beers in and chatting up the bartender.

“Targaryen!” he’d greeted her enthusiastically before sweeping his eyes over her dress. “You look like an HR violation waiting to happen.”

Dany snorted, shaking her head demurely. That was good. She hadn’t worn a skin-tight, sparkly dress to blend into the background. But it wasn’t Tyrion’s admiration she was after.

“Put her first drink on me,” he instructed the bartender, throwing a friendly nod Dany’s way.

“Thanks. Vodka soda, please. With a twist.”

Tyrion frowned at her drink order.

“And two shots of whiskey straight up,” he added, winking at Dany’s surprise.

“Tyrion, no,” she protested quickly. “That’s too much, I—”

“Not to worry,” he sang out with a grin. “It’s not for me. One for you, and one to quiet down this insufferable chatterbox to my left.”

“Who?” she wondered aloud. Tyrion just patted the bartop twice in parting and slipped easily from his seat and onto the floor. On the other side of his now-empty stool sat Jon Snow. His expression was one of confusion to match Dany’s own as Tyrion picked up his drink and backed away from them.“

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he warned, and with a wink, he disappeared into the crowd.

Dany scoffed before turning back to Jon. He looked smart in a slim cut black suit. He wore black a lot, she’d noticed. Black like his hair. He had nice hair.

“Hi,” she offered simply. The greeting came out in an awkward sort of yell to be heard over the music and the dead space of the empty seat between them.

“Uh, yeah. Hey,” Jon returned. She saw his gaze dip to take in her outfit, the plunge of her neckline. He swallowed with a bob of his Adam’s apple before dragging his eyes back to hers.

A clink of glass against the bar signaled the arrival of the shots and Dany eyed them apprehensively. She didn’t drink nearly often enough to be comfortable shooting whiskey. But she’d resolved to have fun tonight. To relax. And with this night marking the beginning of a week’s holiday break from work, she didn’t have any reason to be up early the next day.

“We don’t have to—I mean, you don’t have to take it. Tyrion is just—he’s pushy. But you don’t have to drink that,” Jon assured her, leaning across the stool to be heard over the noise of the bar.

That’s more words than you’ve ever said to me, Dany thought, a smile tugging at her red-lacquered lips.

“I know,” she said, taking the shots in hand. She held one out to Jon with a nod of encouragement. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Snow.”

Jon stared at her hand for a moment of indecision before accepting the proffered whiskey.

“Merry Christmas, Daenerys.”

“You can call me Dany,” she offered. “My friends call me Dany.”

They toasted with a clink of their glasses that sloshed some of the liquid onto Dany’s fingers before she brought it to her mouth and downed it one gulp. It was strong and bitter on her tongue, burning all the way down her throat, and Dany had to fight the urge to gag from the taste. She’d never been one for hard liquor.

Jon appeared totally unaffected, swallowing it without the merest wince of discomfort. He looked up just as Dany was sucking the spilled, sticky drops off her skin, eyes rivetted to the sight of her finger between her lips. He shifted in his seat before turning back to the bar.

Dany sighed, taking the vodka soda Tyrion had bought for her from the bartop and sipping it to dispel the lingering flavor of the whiskey. She could see Jon fidgeting out of the corner of her eye, nursing a pint of some draught. The empty seat between them felt like a canyon. She wanted him to scoot over and sit by her. Strike up conversation. Something.

But he didn’t. Instead he traced a fingertip idly through the frost of condensation on his beer glass, determinedly keeping his eyes straight ahead. Apparently, he was done talking.

Dany pressed her lips together in irritation, her stare boring into the side of his head. She wasn’t used to this, to having to be the pursuer. In any other circumstance she would be the one rebuffing a man’s advances.

She polished off her whole drink waiting for him to make a move. And then another. It was a lot for someone her size. Even more for someone who drank as seldom as she. But Jon’s silence was maddening enough to keep her going, anything for a distraction from the awkward tension that hung palpably between them.

It was tempting to abandon him altogether and join the crowd on the dancefloor. Dany had already spied Missandei in a sleek black cocktail dress, dancing close with her boyfriend Grey. They looked happy. And she knew that somewhere out there Tyrion was several whiskies deep and engaged in some drunken philosophical discourse with an unwilling participant. Most likely Samwell Tarly. That’d be something to watch.

But she was too curious about Jon to leave things as they were. This was the closest they’d gotten to a real conversation. She’d seen him all those times in the lounge at work, even in faculty meetings. He stared at her. That meant he was attracted to her, didn’t it? So what was he waiting for?

Missandei bellied up to the bar next to her, giggling helplessly, Grey in tow.

“Dany!” she greeted her, patting her a little too hard on the back before ordering another glass of wine.

“Why aren’t you dancing?”

“Wrong shoes for it,” she fibbed, shrugging. “Enjoying the party?”

“Very much,” Missandei confirmed. Grey only smiled. He didn’t speak much English, which was just as well since Missandei was an expert in his native Valyrian tongue.

When her wine was delivered Missandei raised it to Dany, who toasted her with a clink of her own glass.

“Merry Christmas, Dany.”

“Merry Christmas,” she returned brightly. Missandei’s jovial spirit was infectious, even as she peered over Dany’s shoulder, no-doubt eyeing her sulking neighbor. She raised a brown questioningly at Dany before taking another sip of her wine.

“See you out there then?”

“Maybe later,” Dany replied, hoping it was true. She had to admit that it looked like a lot more fun than her current occupation.

When the couple had gone, she turned back to Jon with a sigh loud enough to be heard even over the boom of the music.

“So,” she began, scooting toward him and onto the empty barstool at last. “What’s your problem?”

His face hardened instantly, posture going rigid.

“Excuse me?”

She was being rude. She knew that much, but the heady combination of liquid courage coursing through her veins and the weeks of compounded curiosity about this man spurred her on anyway.

“Why did you come here if you’re only going to sit there pouting?”

“I’m not pouting. I’m having a pint at a bar. What else would you have me do?”

“I don’t know, dance.”

He scoffed, shaking his head.

“I don’t dance.”

Dany rolled her eyes, sucking at her straw as it rattled loudly in her empty glass.

“Another one, please,” she called, raising her drink in the air to call the bartender over their way.

“You might want to slow down,” Jon cautioned. “You’ve been putting those away pretty fast all night.”

“So you’ve been watching me ‘all night,’ but couldn’t bother saying a word?” Jon shrunk back, clearly uncomfortable. Good, Dany thought. At least he can feel something.

When her drink arrived she took it at once, defiantly holding Jon’s gaze as she brought the straw to her lips and took a deep drink. The nerve of him, really, telling her she ought to slow down. He made no further protests, though, and Dany could feel his eyes on her mouth as she drank.

“So you don’t dance,” she noted. “And you don’t talk.”

“I never said I didn’t talk,” he fired back.

“But you haven’t.”

“Well, neither have you!”

Fair enough. She swallowed, trying to find a suitable response. He was right, of course. But she’d left the door open for conversation, hadn’t she? She’d told him her nickname, she’d taken the gods-damned shot of whiskey. The ball had been in his court, then, and he’d let it roll right past him. For an hour.

“Fine,” she relented finally. “We’re talking now. So, um. Why did you come here tonight, anyway? This doesn’t really seem like your scene.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing myself,” he answered, swishing his drink idly in his hand. “This isn’t exactly going how I’d thought it would.”

Interesting.

“How did you think it would go?”

His hand stilled around his glass, his eyes finding hers. There was something in them that sucked the air right out of her, something serious and suggestive. Maybe she was right, after all. Maybe he did want her.

“I, ah.” Jon cleared his throat. “I don’t know. I thought for sure Tyrion would’ve been kicked out by now.”

She giggled at his unexpected humor, nearly toppling from her precarious seat on the stool. “Maybe he has,” she pointed out, shrugging. “Haven’t seen him in awhile, have we?”

Jon smiled at that—a handsome, disarming smile. It put her at ease to see it, to be reminded that under his coarse exterior was the kind man she’d seen in the classroom before.

“So when you aren’t sitting at bars avoiding dancing and talking,” she teased. “What do you do for fun?”

He shrugged. “I like training, exercise. I run and hike with my dog. I do a bit of reading. And I’m a fencing instructor.”

Dany snorted, inhaling a burning swig of her vodka soda and coughing to clear it. Her eyes teared from the choking sensation, but even through the blur she could see Jon’s scowl.

“Fencing?” she asked, gasping for breath. “Fencing?”

“Aye, fencing,” he answered, bristling. “What of it?”

“You’re—you’re a nerd, Jon Snow,” she announced, his obvious grumpiness only adding to her amusement. She tried to imagine it, Jon in one of those little white practice suits she’d seen in the movies, face hidden behind a mesh mask, curls stuffed under a helmet, sword-fighting like they were in some period drama. Being a history nerd herself she could appreciate the hobby, but it didn’t make the idea of the surly Jon prancing his way through fencing footwork any less hilarious.

“A ‘nerd?’ Gods, what are you, ten?” he demanded, crossing his arms.

“You’re a fencing math teacher. Face it.”

“Fencing is a noble craft, an art-form dating back centuries. You ought to know, history expert and all.”

“Still a nerd,” she grinned.

“I’m not,” he insisted, but she could see the beginnings of a smile on his lips.

“Alright, if you’re not a nerd, then prove it. A nerd wouldn’t dance with me,” she challenged playfully. “Come on, prove me wrong.”

He blinked at her, slowly uncrossing his arms.

“Fine,” he agreed, shrugging out of his jacket. He stood up and held out a hand, refusing to meet her eyes. “One song.”

Dany’s lips curled upward in a sultry grin, excitement thrumming through her. She wanted him. More than she’d thought she would, and the prospect of dancing with him had her body bursting with anxious energy. She took a final sip of her drink before setting it on the bartop next to her clutch and accepting Jon’s hand.

It was warm, warm and rough and big. He laced his fingers through hers and then turned away leading her through the press of bar patrons and out to the dancefloor.

The crowd had somewhat thinned from earlier that night, though Missandei and Grey were still going; Margaery and Sansa, too, laughing breathlessly and stumbling about. Dany didn’t really see anyone else she recognized among the dancers, though it was hard to tell in the semi-darkness.

The music was even louder here, the tall speakers abutting the crude wooden dancefloor. It was typical club fare, lots of bass, energetic beat. Ordinarily it wasn’t Dany’s type of music, but tonight she couldn’t have chosen anything better. When Jon turned to face her she saw uncertainty and nervousness etched into his features, but when she guided his hands to her hips they felt natural enough, and soon they were swaying and stepping in time with the song.

It didn’t take long for them to slip into an easy rhythm. The music pounded out louder than her own pulse in her ears, the dark of the bar casting everything in a haze of smoke and laughter. Dany was just drunk enough to be fearless and free. She didn’t even notice when she stepped out of turn, or the pain in her feet from her ill-advised stilettos. Everything blurred together into sensation and instinct.

It had been awhile, but Dany had loved dancing and clubbing with her friends back home. Even so, dancing with a man was different. She’d always seen it as a test of chemistry, rhythm and compatibility made physical. If that was true, Jon was passing the test with flying colors, holding her temptingly close one moment and spinning her out with an effortless flow in the next. Dany found herself returning the flash of his smile peeping out at her in the dark. He was good.

“I thought you couldn’t dance!”

“I never said I couldn’t,” he shouted back over the music, lifting her abruptly out of a dip, her hair whipping in the air. “I said I didn’t.”

For a heated moment they stood, breathing heavily from the dance, her face inches from his.

“I’m glad you changed your mind.”

The song ended on an instant of silence, their panting breaths suddenly deafening in her ears. Dany tried to hide her disappointment. It was over too quickly. Jon’s closeness, the grip of his hands and the dizzy excitement of moving with him on the dancefloor had only served to make her want him more. A tease. But despite his earlier “one song” declaration, when the next song filled the room with sound, he didn’t let her go.

Instead, he twirled her around in his arms, plastering her body to his and splaying his palms over her hips to hold her against him. She gasped, covering his hands with her own and relaxing into his hold. The song was slower than the first, and she writhed against Jon in time with the beat, her ass pressing at his hips.

She fell into something like a trance. All their prior hesitance melted away into a delicious euphoria as she danced shamelessly in Jon’s arms, breathing in the spice of his cologne, relishing in the heat of his palms through her dress, his breath at her ear and on her neck as they moved together. The second song blended into a third, and then a fourth, and soon Dany stopped counting. She felt wild and desirable, sweating from exertion, hair a mess and skin flushed. Jon was everywhere, all lingering touches and breathy exhales, his body moving sinuously with hers.

It felt filthy to dance with him this way, especially at a work function of all things. But Dany found it hard to care about prying eyes with Jon’s hands sliding up from her waist, the pronounced feel of what she knew to be his erection throbbing at her backside.

For months she’d done nothing more than steal a glance across the staff lounge, pass in the hall close enough to brush his shoulder. Every moment had made her ache with some unsatisfied need. To be so close now, finally, was enough to make her wet with anticipation. The palpable attraction between them, the reciprocal, fluid sync of their movement went beyond anything she’d ever expected.

Jon’s quiet reserve had intrigued her before, but she’d never dreamt it was masking this—that underneath his careful exterior he was so passionate and uninhibited. It was like her touch had flipped a switch, lit a fire, burning his mask away to reveal a wolf in a man’s clothing. Yes—a wolf, and she wanted nothing so much as to be devoured.

Dany could feel her dress riding up almost to her hips as she danced, grinding back on Jon with his leg shoved up between hers. Every touch was like a promise of what could be if only they weren’t in public, if only they were alone.

She lifted her hands to feel for him behind her, grabbing blindly for his face, her fingers raking through his short beard. His palm was hot on her throat, guiding her head back until it rested at his shoulder, angling her face to his.

All at once the music crescendoed and Dany crushed their mouths together, grateful then for the towering heels that gave her height enough to match him. The kiss was rough and frantic, charged with all the building fervor from their dance. His lips were soft but unyielding, his beard scraping roughly at her mouth as he opened his lips to kiss her deeply. She met the hot slick of his tongue with her own, tasting the faint tang of his beer, the cool of some minty gum.

Jon dropped a hand from her jaw down lower to traverse the décolletage over her dress, then lower still, scandalously low. She moaned into his open mouth as he all but groped her through the fabric. She hadn’t worn a bra with the strapless dress, leaving nothing but the thin, sequined fabric between the flesh of his palm and the aching sensitivity of her nipple.

It was getting to be too much, too intimate, and even her booze-drenched awareness knew how wildly inappropriate it was, how mortified she’d be if their colleagues noticed what was happening. But it was only when Jon pulled back, gasping, that she had the clarity of mind to act.

She turned around in Jon’s arms to face him properly, still breathless from the kiss. She stood, drinking in the sight of him. His eyes were lidded and dazed, lips wet and kiss-swollen. Her lipstick was smeared all over his face. It only made her want him more, like she’d marked him, like he was hers—no longer that untouchable-hot-guy from work but the very-fuckable-hot-guy who’d all but dry humped her on the dancefloor.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” she breathed, leaning in to speak at the shell of his ear.

“Okay.”

Dany took his hand and marched him off the dancefloor, navigating through the throng of people and back to their former places at the bar. In a daze she collected her purse and settled up her bar tab, staring at her reflection in the huge mirror that spread across the wall behind the bar. She looked strange and unfamiliar, her eyes ringed in dark, smudging makeup, hair sticking to her damp skin, cheeks flaming.

This was completely mad. She was a schoolteacher. A sensible and responsible woman. She didn’t go out to clubs picking up men, especially not men she’d have to confront in the staff lounge at work after the fact.

She was wrenched from her thoughts when Jon came up behind her. He was back in his suit jacket, looking at least a little more put-together than she did. She noted with some satisfaction that there were still faint splotches of pink coloring his face from her lipstick. His arms wound around her waist and he pressed a kiss to her shoulder before meeting her gaze in the mirror. “Ready to go, gorgeous?”

Dany’s heart thumped double-time at the possessive wrap of his embrace, the hint of mischief in his voice. How could she say no?

At her eager nod of assent Jon helped her into her coat and then guided her through the throng and out the door. When the brisk chill of the night air hit them on the sidewalk he pulled her in close, enveloping her in warmth. Dany let out a breath, nestling against his chest

“I didn’t drive here,” she murmured.

“Me neither.” Jon fished in his pocket for his phone, still shielding her between his arms as his thumbs tapped the screen rapidly, calling an Uber.

“My place or yours?” she whispered, stifling a giggle at the cliché. She could hardly believe it even now. She wasn’t one for one-night stands or going home with a guy on the first date. But she couldn’t stomach facing the silent loneliness of her cold apartment. Not tonight. And while Dany wanted to blame it on the vodka sodas, it was more than lust or loneliness that drew her to Jon. She liked him. She’d never been good at any of this, but he made it easy, natural.

“Uh—what’s your address?”

Dany spun in his arms, wriggling his phone out of his grip to type in her address. It took a few attempts, her fingers clumsy and unwieldy from the booze.

“Let me—” Jon began, noting her difficulty.

“I’ve got it,” she insisted, shrugging him off. After two more tries she finally spelled her street name correctly, confirming their ride. “Hope you like cats, Jon Snow,” she said with a grin, returning his phone to his pocket.

He smiled, nodding, but there was something off in his eyes. He looked distracted. Different. Dany opened her mouth to ask what was wrong but thought better of it when their ride arrived. The driver shot them an impatient glare and Jon dropped his arms from her sides, moving to get the door.

At Jon’s invitation Dany got in first, sliding across the back seat to make room for him beside her. When he didn’t follow she leaned over to peer up at him where he stood framed in the car doorway, a hand on the hood. He was looking down at her with an inscrutable expression that made her stomach drop.

“Be safe tonight, okay?”

“What? What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” Jon mumbled, his dark eyes shifting away.

“What do you mean? Jon, get in,” she said, hating the pleading tone that entered her voice. “Don’t do this.”

“Good night, Dany.”

He pushed away from the car, shutting the door hard and stepping back off the curb. Dany gaped at him, scooting hurriedly toward the window and fumbling with the controls to lower it, but the car pulled away before she could.

Pressing her face to the cold glass she could just make out Jon’s shrinking form. He remained on the sidewalk, watching the retreating vehicle until they were out of sight. Even then, she couldn’t help noting how handsome he looked—hair tousled in the breeze, hands jammed in the pockets of his well-tailored slacks.

Asshole, she thought bitterly.

That night the alcohol was enough to soothe her to sleep in spite of her wounded pride and infuriating lust. But the rest of her week’s holiday from classes gave her ample time to nurse a healthy rage at and loathing for Jon. It was cruel of him, teasing her that way, touching her that way, kissing her that way, only to send her home without so much as an explanation. In her darker moments she blamed herself. She should have known better, really. He couldn’t have truly wanted her. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so cold and silent at work. In her experience, if a man was interested he made it known. Loudly and often. Why should Jon be any different?

He was different, though. Jon Snow was a snob, she’d decided. A snob and a tease. She tried to console herself with the notion that she’d dodged a bullet—clearly sleeping with him would have been a mistake of epic proportions. He’d done her a favor, really. If they’d gone through with it she’d be left with nothing but regret. Right?

When classes resumed the following week Dany did her best to act as though nothing had happened. Jon must have returned to the bar after their ill-fated encounter, because no one—not even Missandei—mentioned their leaving together. All conversation in the faculty lounge focused on Oberyn’s salacious dancing and Tyrion’s over-indulgence that led to him falling asleep on one of the newly-felted pool tables at the bar.

Dany was grateful for the gossip. She wanted nothing so much as to forget that night and the tumultuous emotions that had followed it. The alcohol had helped some. As it was, she could only remember the party in pieces, flashes.

The problem was that the images in her memory, jumbled as they were, were hot. Every time she thought of dancing close with Jon, the shameless snap of her hips, the moist heat of his breath on her neck, she had to squeeze her thighs together against the tingle of recognition, of desire. Despite her lingering anger her treacherous body wanted him still, which only made it more difficult when she saw him again.

He cornered her at the coffee pot, stepping in near enough that only she could hear.

“Dany,” he began, his voice a hurried whisper. “About last week. I—”

“Save it,” she cut him off, stepping away from his closeness, from the disorienting scent of his cologne, potent with memories. “And my name is Daenerys.”

There was a blink of pain in his eyes before his expression shuttered again. He left the break room in a huff.

If Dany was honest, she was desperate to hear his explanation. The unanswered questions and wondering what she’d done wrong were enough to keep her up at night. But her pride wouldn’t allow her to show it.

Thankfully, that morning was the only time Jon attempted to broach the subject, and from that day on he’d treated Dany with nothing but the same chilly civility she’d noted in him before the party.

Eventually she’d broken down and told Missandei what had happened, and her friend had been supportive and encouraging, repeating the oft-used “he doesn’t deserve you” refrain. Dany wanted to believe it, but Jon had been the one to reject her, and while there were no outward signs of what happened between them, a peculiar tension remained—a heat that made the air between them simmer with something vacillating between hatred and hunger.

So now, a year later, all those months of confusion about that night and her growing frustration at his stony demeanor coalesced into a bone-deep dread at the prospect of a weekend away in close quarters with Jon.

He’d left in such a hurry after Principal Tyrell’s meeting that they hadn’t had the opportunity to plan, which meant that sooner or later, one of them would have to initiate contact. The thought made Dany’s stomach turn.

Three days later it had become clear that Jon was leaving it up to her. Dany had been expecting him to approach her at work, drop by her classroom, find her at lunch. Anything. Instead he seemed to be avoiding her with more than his usual determination, so that by Thursday evening she still hadn’t seen him at all.

Dany was sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine, Drogon spread out on her lap, a stack of ungraded papers guilting her from the coffee table. All her bags for the were trip packed and ready to go for the following day. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She’d have to be the one to reach out to Jon.

She clicked open her phone, her thumb hovering over her contacts with mounting anxiety, when the ding of her text tone sounded out, startling a hiss from Drogon.

She snorted with laughter as the notification lit up her screen: “New message from Pompous Dickhead.” The entire faculty directory was synced into all their contacts through the school’s email app, so Dany had always had Jon’s number in her phone. But Missandei had taken the liberty of changing his record from ‘Mr. Snow’ to the delightfully crude new moniker after Dany shared the story of their unfortunate Christmas party rendezvous. She’d never had occasion to contact him before or change it back. Maybe she never would.

After all, Missandei was a language expert. Who was Dany to question such an apt description of Jon’s character?

She opened the message with a smirk, her eyes scanning quickly over the brief text:

Pompous Dickhead: “Meet outside the back entrance tomorrow at 6. Be ready to get on the road. We’ll take your car.”

Dany shook her head, setting her glass down and thinking over how to reply. She couldn’t be the one to drive them up into the mountains. She wouldn’t. But she wasn’t about to admit fear or weakness to Jon.

“No. Let’s take yours. See you at 6.”

She sent the message with a shaky hand, dreading his response. She’d prefer not to lie, but if Jon pressed, she’d just say her car was in the shop. Anything was preferable to making herself vulnerable after the way he’d already hurt her pride.

The ellipses that signified Jon typing a response flickered into view, then disappeared. A moment’s pause and he was typing again. Dany bit her lip, anxiety prickling at her scalp. Maybe it’d be easier to just agree, to take her chances behind the wheel. At least if they wrecked she wouldn’t have to go on the stupid retreat.

But then his reply finally came.

Pompous Dickhead: “Fine.”

Rude, but at least he was consistent. Dany sighed. This was going to be a long weekend.

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Two Hundred Eighty-Four: Apple Pie ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

Though he never would have thought as much when he was first shoehorned into this class, Sasuke has to admit...Home Ec has grown on him. While he’s still a good student and honestly enjoys most of his classes at least somewhat, there’s just something really...nice about that class in particular. Sure, it’s not just baking cookies everyday, but it’s become a nice change of pace compared to everything else.

He tells himself it’s because the class is just so...different. He’s actually learning some handy skills, even if most guys wouldn’t bother. He’s handier in the kitchen than ever, knows several ways to sew by hand (and how to use a machine), and they’ve even broached into things like human development. Never did he think he’d know so much about babies...but, well, you never know. Maybe he’ll have to...deal with one someday.

But if he’s honest with himself - truly honest - there’s another very big factor to why he’s come to enjoy the class as much as he does.

Strolling into his last block of the day, Sasuke finds himself to be a little early, and almost alone. There’s an away basketball game, and several of the girls typically present are absent, either as part of the team, or the cheer squad. Along the whiteboard, he reads the daily instructions. Apparently, given the low class percentage, they’re just having a free day.

Before he can stop himself, Sasuke perks up...because he knows exactly what that’s going to mean.

“Hi, everyone!”

Turning, he gives a lax wave to the only other senior in the class: Hinata Hyūga. “Hey. Seems we’ve got a free day with the game today.”

“Oh?” Like him, she seems to brighten at the notion. “That’s great! I’ve had a recipe I’ve been wanting to try with you!”

“Yeah?” Sasuke does his best to temper his reaction, despite the warmth the notion brings him. “Something we can finish in class?”

“Well...it might go a little over...is that okay?”

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing to do. A few teachers lightened up because of the game, so I’ve got hardly any homework.”

“Me too! O-okay, we’ll do it then!” Digging into her binder, she pulls out a recipe with a grin. “Apple pie!”

Sasuke blinks, looking the paper over. “...is it very sweet?”

“Well, sort of...but the apples are a bit sour, so that sort of...balances it out?”

“...okay.” He won’t admit it, but he’s not quite so put off by sweets anymore. Not since meeting Hinata.

The pair move to the kitchen wall, first gathering their ingredients and a pie plate. “So I actually use a different pie crust recipe...it’s just a few ingredients you mix and press in the plate, and bake with the rest of the pie! It’s so much easier than rolling stuff out,” Hinata offers, flipping the page over and showing the separate crust instructions. “You want to do that, first?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Great! I’ll start peeling and cutting the apples!”

Having not actually made a pie yet, Sasuke follows the recipe carefully, wary of messing something up. But true to Hinata’s word, it’s actually pretty simple. Mixing up the handful of ingredients, he smoothes it along the bottom before announcing, “Okay, now what?”

“Here, mix up the spices and sugar for the apples - I’m almost done!”

He does as asked, not bothering to quip or question. By now, the pair have done enough baking together to just know how to go about it. Hinata leads, and Sasuke follows. In all reality, he’s probably gotten enough practice to lead himself, but...well, he hasn’t given that a try just yet.

Hinata pours his mix over the sliced apples, coating them well and putting them in the pie plate atop the crust. “All right, I think we’ll do the Dutch style topping.”

“...what’s that mean?”

“It’s a crumbly sort of top, rather than a solid sheet of crust!” She shows him how, pulsing the ingredients in a food processor until they form, well...crumbles! “Now we just spread this over the top...and there we have a pie! It has to bake for about fifty minutes, so...we’ll run over class by a little bit. But I don’t think the teacher minds.”

With the oven already hot, it’s Sasuke who puts it in, setting the timer. They tidy up, and then...it’s time to wait.

As per usual, they pass the time on their phones, the instructor hardly caring on such a relaxed day. Hinata plays a mobile game, Sasuke browsing a forum he frequents.

But eventually they get bored.

“So...what’s your favorite kind of pie?”

“I honestly don’t eat much of it. Too sweet most of the time.”

Hinata makes a face. “I still don’t understand that…”

“Well what about you?”

“I’d say...lemon meringue.”

“Lemon?”

“Mhm!”

“What’s...meringue?”

“It’s egg whites and sugar, beaten together until it’s light and fluffy! You bake it, and the tops turn a light brown...it’s so good. Maybe we’ll try one next time! It’s actually pretty simple.”

“I could maybe do lemon if it isn’t too sweetened.”

The bell eventually rings, and the pair linger, their teacher more than used to them staying past the bell. It’s not too long before the timer dings, and Sasuke retrieves the pie. It actually smells...really good! Cinnamon and nutmeg just might make it tolerable.

��Want some ice cream?”

“Is...pie really not enough?”

“Apple pie and vanilla ice cream are like...a match made in heaven!”

“I’ll pass.”

“How about caramel sauce?”

Sasuke blinks owlishly. “...I think it’ll be sweet enough.”

Hinata dishes some up, indulging in a little bit of some ice cream left over from the day they all made a batch by hand. And then she seems to hover in wait, eager as always to see his reaction.

Sasuke takes a bite of his own, chewing thoughtfully. “...I like it.”

“Yay!”

“It’s not so sweet.”

“I went a little light on the sugar for you.” Hinata then digs into hers, humming happily.

“...you know...I’m gonna be really sad when this class is over.”

That makes her pause. “...are you...switching next semester?”

“Dunno yet. But I only needed the half a credit.”

“Oh...well, I was going to stay. There aren’t really any classes I need in this block next semester.” She gives a halfhearted smile. “It’ll be sort of l-lonely without you.”

“Yeah...I’ll have to see what the guidance counselor says. My dad’s riding me pretty hard about pumping up my grades for applications.”

“Well, that makes sense. It’s important. I’m still not sure what I’m doing next year, so...I’ll admit I took a bit of an easier road than I could have.”

“It’s different for everybody. Gotta do what makes you happy, too.”

“Yeah…”

The pair sink into a slightly awkward silence. In truth, he’d be more than happy to stay. And surely his mother would support it. His father, on the other hand…

“Well, if you do switch, I’m still glad you were in here,” Hinata then offers, smiling a bit more warmly. “It’s been a lot of f-fun teaching you stuff!”

“Yeah? It’s been nice learning it. Maybe we can still make some stuff after school sometimes, when we’re not too bogged down.”

“I...I’d like that!”

“Then consider it a plan.”

The atmosphere then lightens until he gives the clock a glance. “But, speaking of...it’s getting kinda late. Think we should go?”

“Probably...want to take some pie home?”

“Sure.”

They each take a few slices, Sasuke sure his mother would like some. If only Itachi were home, but...well, that won’t be until Winter break. The pair part ways in the hallway, Sasuke going to pack up his stuff for the evening. The thought returns as to what to do come the end of the semester.

He really does want to stay...and surely half a credit won’t make that big of a difference, right? Maybe he’ll talk to Mikoto about it...sighing and picking up his bag, he leaves the school behind, apple pie carefully nestled in his backpack.

                                                       .oOo.

     (This is a sequel to days 98, 108, 139, and 227!)      I have...fallen another day behind OTL Yesterday was just exhausting, in more ways than one, so...I took the night off. I'm sorry ;n; I probably won't have time to catch up until at least the end of October since I have another challenge going on, but! Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be done on the last day, aha~      Anyway! More of our cute lil Home Ec AU. I really do love this one, it's just so stinkin' sweet. But it seems we have a little bit of a plot conflict...Sasuke might be leaving the class? Say it ain't so! We'll have to see what his decision is come the end of the semester, but...at least he and Hinata will keep on keepin' on no matter what!      But with that, I really need to get to bed, lol - thanks for reading!

[griffinxwoods]

stuck 

clarke and lexa are snowed in at raven and anya’s holiday/housewarming party

i wanted to finish this for clexa week but, life happens, and i wasn’t able to so here’s a snippet, the beginning really, and if you guys like it, i’ll wrap it up soon and post it to ao3. but i figured something is better than nothing, even if i think it’s pretty rough so, here you go. also, a rough attempt at a moodboard. nevertheless, enjoy! 

_____________________________________________________________________

It’s almost over. Technically she’s halfway to the finish line. But it’s almost over.

Finals week is upon them.

Clarke has a few sketches to finish for her portfolio, her finals project only has a few tweaks to be done, and then she can finally relax for winter break. She can worry about her last official university semester once the new year rolls around.

Tonight, though, Raven wanted to have a group study session at Clarke and Lexa’s apartment. it’s a nice change from the stuffy Arkadia library, at least Clarke can sketch on her couch instead of those hard, wooden chairs, oddly always warm.

The crew’s scattered around her apartment, Octavia and Lincoln are sitting at the kitchen island, going through flashcards for Lincoln’s psych exam. Bellamy has taken to the recliner, flipping through the pages of his latest history read. He graduated years ago yet, he still hangs around. Nerd. Jasper and Maya are sat at one end of the dining table, there’s less studying and more of Jasper goofing around, but poor Maya has a highlighter in her mouth and about 3 other different colored highlighters in each hand, going through her bio notes. Pre-med is rough and Clarke feels for her. Monty is next to them, fiddling with a broken car radio he’s trying to fix for Miller. Raven and Anya are at the opposite end, Raven seemed to have wrapped up her studies early and somehow dug out Clarke’s old toaster and opened it up, rewiring it. Anya’s just eating some nuggets.

Clarke’s stomach grumbles. Hmm, not a bad idea. She moves to get up from the coach when Lexa appears, plate of nuggets in hand.

Clarke beams up at her, “how’d you know?”

Lexa shrugs, “You’ve been sketching for a while, figured you’d want some fuel.” She flops down next to Clarke and pulls up the Twitter app on her phone.

Clarke pulls her in for a kiss, slow and tender. She caresses Lexa’s face and Lexa pulls back, rubs her nose against Clarke’s, moving her head to the other side. It’s sweet and slow, perfect.

Clarke leans back and looks at Lexa through her eyelashes, “Thanks, baby.”

Lexa’s lips curl up a bit on one side, that sweet smile reserved only for Clarke. She reaches for Clarke’s hand and rubs her thumb over Clarke’s.

BANG.

“Attention, everyone!” Raven yells. “Hear ye, hear ye, I have an announcement before we wrap up this lovely hellish study session.”

Everyone jumped in their places at the crash, but they gather closer nonetheless. Raven smashed Clarke’s old toaster on the ground. Sigh, typical. Dramatic, as usual.

“Anya and I are throwing a housewarming party,” Raven beams.

“Does that mean we have to buy you gifts for being an adult,” Lexa scrunches her face, she grabs a nugget and pops it into her mouth.

Raven tilts her head to the side and feigns a smile, “Yes. Why ever the fuck else would I be hosting a party when you and Clarke have a perfectly furnished apartment.” she waves her hand in the general direction of everything they have, then points at the kitchen, “a fucking Nespresso machine, Clarke. You guys are boujee and I want in on it.”

“Raven,” Clarke sighs.

“Help me, I’m poor,” Raven pouts and bats her eyelashes.

Lexa stifles a laugh, “Might as well make a, like, baby registry for your apartment, ya know”. She pauses and looks at Clarke, “Is that a thing? Did we do that?”

She pats Lexa’s arm and sighs, “Yeah babe, it’s a thing. Technically.”

“Lexa, you beautiful dumbass, te quiero tanto” she practically launches herself across the table to grab Lexa’s face and plant a quick rough kiss on her lips. “I’m gonna sign up for that and send you all the link. I want a blender. And a microwave. And those smart light bulbs. God, they’re so fucking expensive, I don’t understand why. Gonna need Ms. Amazon Alexa too so I can connect that. I wanna speak to her. Our own smart house, how zesty of us. Oh! A fridge, need that too but the one you tweet on! That’s so boujee, I love it- ”

Lexa’s stunned, really didn’t expect that one. Clarke plopped back against her seat and lets out an exhausted breath. She’s used to Raven’s antics, of course, but tonight she just wants to finish her sketch and cuddle with Lexa. They’ve been here for hours, she’s tired and she has an early class in the morning. She picks up a pencil and continues to work, letting the conversation idle into background noise.

Her peace only lasts a few seconds.

Jasper mischievously snatches a sheet of paper and crumples it up, throws the ball at Lexa, and laughs, “She won’t shut up and it’s your fault, Woods.”

Lexa snatches a fat eraser out of Clarke’s hand and launches it at Jasper’s face, pure reflex.

Clarke gives up, her efforts futile, she snaps her sketchbook closed and groans.

“Fuck! Ow, what the fuck, Lex?”

“If you so much as look at me wrong, I will Spartan kick you off my balcony, you failed abortion. Capice?”

Clarke snaps her head towards Lexa, trying and failing to controller her laughter, and smacks Lexa lightly on the arm, “Lexa, no.”

“What? He’s annoying.”

“He’s our friend, remember. Be nice.”

“I’ve never claimed him. He’s your friend.”

“Everything that’s mine is yours, sweetheart,” Clarke singsongs and boops her on the nose.

Lexa tries to bite Clarke’s finger and falls short, her eyes narrow on her girlfriend, “Pick your battles, Griffin”

“HELLOOOO!” Raven bangs on the table abruptly. Everyone stops. “We were talking about me.”

Anya’s exasperated at this point. She only decided to come over for the free food and now she has to deal with this? She checks her watch, wondering when would be a good time to drag Raven out of her before she rips someone’s head off for suggesting teal accents when her apartment theme is planned to be black and gold. Seems trivial to Anya but, she knows Raven well enough by now.

Lexa blinks, “Oh? I-”

“Can you not? Thanks. Anyway, back to me now.”

Lexa throws her hands up, defeated, “Why am I in trouble when that sorry excuse for a man physically attacked me. In my own home! I’m a victim.” Lexa narrows at him, “the white man wins again.”

“Hey!” Jasper protests.”I was just-”

Raven lowers her voice and glares at Jasper, he gulps. “I will tie you to a chair and set your three mustache hairs on fire one by one. I know how long you’ve tried to grow that out, you’ve gotten attached to them, little man. Do not test me.”

Octavia grins, “This is getting good. Shall I make popcorn?”

Jasper slouches back into himself. Maya gives him a soft kiss on his cheek and a soft smile, and Monty puts him in a headlock and tousles his hair playfully, “You’ll be fine, buddy.”

Anya pinches the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed. She checks her watch again, looks around the room. Good enough. She raises herself out of her seat and steps towards Raven, an arm snaking around Raven’s neck.

“Alright Reyes, that’s enough. We get it, we’re poor, we need house stuff, and you’re becoming a dictator.”

“The Castros are shaking right now,” Lexa smirks.

Raven snorts, “Ha, noice.” They high five and Clarke and Anya share a look, both rolling their eyes.

“Okaaaay” Anya drawls, she detaches from Raven and grabs her hand as they make their way to the door, “So we’re gonna go. This was nice until crackhead Martha Stewart here took over.”

Raven pauses, a little insulted but nonetheless, she continues, “I want the fridge that can tweet, Anya.”

“I know baby,” Anya sighs, dragging Raven along.

“It’s essential. It’s the future. Technology, it revolves around us, you know.”

“I really don’t even know what you’re saying anymore.”

Lexa waves from her seat, grinning, and turns to Clarke, “We’re not getting the fridge.”

Clarke hums absentmindedly, “Absolutely not.” She really doesn’t care anymore, though. She just wants to go to bed with Lexa. She rubs her hands down her face, crosses her arms and yawns.

Lexa watches her, noticing the drooping eyelids, sketchbook closed in front of her. She stands and clasps her hands together.

“Okay putas, time to go. Pick up your shit and get outta here, it’s beddy-bye. Clarke looks like she’s going to knock out on this couch and I’d rather not carry her to bed so, let’s move on out.” She ushers everyone up and out, herds them towards the door like a shepherd gathering stray sheep into a barn. Or out, rather.

They all protest on their way out, but appreciate the eviction considering how late it’s gotten and no one noticed.

“Thanks for the food, Lex. I’ll see you on the field tomorrow, right?” Lincoln hugs her and gives her a sharp look. She’s on her vacation and he knows how quickly she can fall into a lazy spiral if she lets herself.

Lexa grunts, “But it’s supposed to snow.”

Lincoln gives her a sharp look and she concedes, nodding in agreement.

They all file out, waving goodbye, and piling into their cars. Lexa closes the door, locks it and leans against it, letting out a sigh of relief.

“It’s quiet,” Lexa breathes.

“Lex. Bed,” Clarke whispers. She’s waiting in the bedroom doorway, hand reaching out towards Lexa. She strides over and slips her hand into Clarke’s, placing a tender kiss to her lips. Clarke hums and her lips curl into a smile on one side, similar to one of Lexa’s.

They fall into bed, a tangle of limbs, soft kisses on smooth skin, breaths evening out.

Clarke curls deeper into Lexa’s warmth and not a minute later, drifts off.

[quicksilversquared]

How To Fake A Marriage Ch. 23

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21 22     

(AO3) (FF.net)

As the summer and Adrien's job finally drew to a close, Adrien made one last push to try to get all of his filing done. That meant a week of early mornings, and a lot of whiny, sleepy girlfriend when he first got up.

"Nooooo," Marinette complained as Adrien rolled over to try to get out of bed. Sleepy arms latched around his waist. "Air's too cold. Stay in bed."

Adrien smothered a laugh and scooted back under the covers to try to pry Marinette's arms open. She refused to budge. "I have to go in, Mari. C'mon, let go of me."

"Noooooo."

"Marinette."

Marinette's arms tightened, pulling him back several centimeters. Adrien suspected that she was anchoring herself somehow, because otherwise she would be the one moving. "Bed's too cold without you."

Adrien snorted, letting himself slide up next to Marinette for a few moments more. He couldn't deny that the thought of staying with Marinette for a bit longer was a tempting idea. "Right, right. And then what do I tell my boss when I'm late and can't finish up my filing, hmm?"

Marinette didn't answer, only snuggled into his side more.

"I don't think my boss would be impressed if I told her that my neighbor wasn't letting me out of bed."

Marinette snorted, wriggling to get comfortable on top of him. "That makes it sound like some random person you barely know broke in and sat on top of you to trap you in bed."

Adrien gave the top of her head an amused pat. "Well, you are sitting on top of me."

"Not random though." Marinette yawned widely. "And I didn't break in."

"True enough."

"And I do know you pretty well."

"But you are trapping me." Adrien gave her arm another tug. "C'mon, Mari. Let me up. We can snuggle later."

Marinette groaned, slowly letting her grip loosen until Adrien could work his way free. There was a small pout on her face and Adrien couldn't help but grin and duck down to press a small kiss to her lips.

"You have to get up soon anyway," Adrien cajoled as he dug in his dresser for his clothes. Marinette had already buried herself again under the cover. "You won't get to sleep for that much longer."

"It's a whole hour," Marinette's voice said from under the cover. "Nope. Sleeping."

Adrien laughed and started to get dressed. It was amazing how fast he had gotten comfortable with dressing and undressing with Marinette still in the room. He knew that Marinette wouldn't look if she knew he was in any state of undress, so there was no point in getting all shy about it.

Besides, it wasn't as if Marinette wasn't ever going to see him undressed at some point, considering how things were going. He really wasn't all that concerned about it. In fact, if she did decide to ever watch, he might put on a little show just to tease her. He would probably get a pillow to the rear for his efforts, but it would be fun.

"Didn't you use to get up earlier to go over to work?" Adrien asked as he straightened his shirt. "I remember going over to your apartment sometimes last fall and you would already be gone."

Marinette groaned and peered out from under the blanket at him grumpily. "Yeah, well, first year, first few months- I had to make a good impression. I'm, like, a senior intern now and I don't have to be so overeager. I can do a great job without coming in before most of the normal designers. Now shush and let me sleep."

Adrien just laughed and patted the sleepy girlfriend-lump in his bed before heading out to keep getting ready.

The day went by fast. Adrien spent most of the day plowing through paperwork, determined to get the pile down to nothing before he left so that the normal secretary wouldn't have to try to catch up on much once she returned from maternity leave. It helped that a lot of people had been on vacation and so not as many forms had been coming in for him to file as normal. He had nearly finished for the day when Nathalie called him.

Sighing, Adrien picked up his phone and answered, hoping that it was only Nathalie and not his father who wanted to speak with him. "Yes?"

"Adrien," Nathalie greeted. "I know this is last-minute, but do you think that you could come back to Paris for a photoshoot before your next semester starts?"

Adrien frowned. "I thought I already modeled fall stuff!" he protested. He was almost certain that the photoshoot that he had done at the very start of the summer had included a fair amount of fall outfits. After all, he had spent several hours baking in the summer sun while modeling long-sleeved looks.

He had heard of suffering for fashion before, of course, but he would rather it didn't involve his suffering.

"Yes, well, your father made some new things that he wants in the fall spread, and there's some early winter ads that he wants to get done." Nathalie sounded completely unconcerned by the dismay in his voice. "So do you finish up with your job early enough this week to come back to Paris? I can get the train tickets-"

Adrien sighed, turning to his calendar. As much as he wanted to just refuse and tell Nathalie (and, by extension, his father) to just find a different model to use, it would be easier in the long run if he just agreed to the shoot. "I'm working through the end of this week, and then I'll need the weekend to get ready for the new semester and make sure that all of my books and everything are in order. But I suppose I can go back to Paris the first weekend after school starts again."

He didn't want to. He really didn't want to. Going back to Paris for a weekend meant a weekend where his father could complain about his life choices in person, should he actually choose to show up at any of the shoots or for dinner. But he wouldn't mind seeing Nino and Alya again, even if it was only for a short while, and Marinette had mentioned that she wanted to get her sewing machine from Paris sometime to work on some of her own projects. He could fetch that while he was in Paris, so Marinette wouldn't have to make her own trip.

Unless she wanted to, of course, which was entirely possible. After all, she actually enjoyed seeing her own parents.

"Any chance of you coming back over your fall break this year?" Nathalie inquired. "Do you know yet? Does it line up with your friend's Fashion Week?"

"No, this year it's two weeks before my break," Adrien said automatically. He and Marinette had checked early this year so that they could be prepared. While the timing still wasn't the best, it seemed like it should be better than the previous year. "But we were thinking of going somewhere during my break. We hadn't decided on where yet, but she has vacation days saved up that she wants to use, and we want to explore the country."

"I don't suppose you would be interested in coming back to Paris?" Nathalie tried hopefully.

"Not a chance."

Thankfully, Nathalie didn't try to argue. "Very well. We wouldn't be able to put the full photoshoot off until then anyway." She paused. "...actually, do you think you could do two weekends in a row? One for fittings, one for the photoshoots? Otherwise, it's a whole lot to fit into one weekend."

Adrien made a face. He didn't really want to go back to Paris twice in one month. Even if he didn't have any specific plans in London, he, well...

He wanted to spend time with his girlfriend. So sue him.

"Of course, I understand if you'll be too busy at that point in the semester," Nathalie continued when Adrien didn't respond. "But it would be difficult to fit both fittings and photoshoots into the same weekend unless you could come over before mid-day on Friday."

"That sounds better," Adrien said immediately. He pulled out his phone to double-check on his schedule for Fridays to make sure that he was remembering it correctly. "I have two classes on Fridays, both lectures, and the second one ends at ten. I could probably make a noon or eleven thirty train."

"I'll book you for the eleven-thirty train," Nathalie decided. There was the sound of her clicking something on the computer. "And then back on Sunday night on the nine p.m. train, so you can have time to catch dinner with your friends before you leave Paris."

Adrien grinned. That was really nice of Nathalie to think of that. Hopefully his father wouldn't try to stick in an evening photoshoot on Sunday.

After ironing out a few more details (Adrien had to promise to have Marinette do his measurements so the seamstresses would have the absolute most up-to-date accurate measurements for his outfits), Nathalie hung up and Adrien dove back into his filing, hoping to finish the pile he was on before he took off for the day.

"Why didn't you just say no?" Plagg wanted to know, popping out of Adrien's bag. "Surely your father has other models. They're not exactly in short supply."

Adrien let out a huff. "Yeah, but sometimes it's better to choose my battles. It's one weekend, and I'll get to see Nino and Alya again for dinner, hopefully. It won't be any fun to have to do a ton of back-to-back fittings and photoshoots, but I'll manage."

"I better get cheese if I'll have to spend forever cooped up in your bag on the train for ages," Plagg grumbled. "Your bag smells."

"It does not, I just washed it," Adrien said automatically. He reached over the desk to grab a paper and squinted to read the writing on it. "It smells just fine. If anything, it just smells a lot like Camembert. And it wouldn't do that if you didn't leave crumbs all over."

Plagg just sulked.

  The end of the summer came too fast and too slowly all at once. Adrien was glad to be done with office paperwork and glad to see Paul and his other uni friends on a more regular basis again, but now he had homework and readings and projects to take up his time. As expected, his coursework had picked up for his second year, and the concepts took a little more work and focus to understand. The professors also warned them that there would be more papers this year, something that worried Adrien. He had to write the papers in English, and it could sometimes take him quite a while to work out the grammar and to edit correctly. Writing research papers when he had to read published papers first was even harder, since it could take quite a lot of time to wade through the technical jargon in English.

In fact, Adrien already found himself hard at work all week to make sure that he would be on top of things and wouldn't have to do any homework over the weekend. In fact, he was spending more time in the evenings working on his assignments than Marinette was spending on her commissions.

At least he had a fantastic soundtrack to do his homework to in the evenings. Marinette had been sent several more demo tracks from the bands that had commissioned her, and they were pretty good.

"I don't understand why your wife decided not to come with you this weekend," Plagg said as he and Adrien rode the Eurostar back to Paris. "Doesn't she want to see her parents and Nino and Alya again?"

"She thinks that there would probably be a lot of speculation if we both went back to Paris the same weekend if there wasn't a holiday or something," Adrien said. He marked his place in his book so he wouldn't have to re-read the passage he had just waded through. "It makes sense that we would travel together when we go exploring and whatnot, but if we're just going back to Paris, then it starts to look like we don't want to be apart at all."

When Plagg didn't respond, Adrien went back to his book. He hadn't quite grasped the concept that his professor had introduced that morning, and he wanted to have a solid understanding before their next lecture on Monday. He only had a couple hours before he would be in Paris, and he was determined to make the most of them.

By the time the train pulled into Paris and Adrien hopped into the Gorilla's waiting car, he had read the section over twice and had done a few practice problems for good measure to make sure he was understanding and applying things correctly. He had his Physics section down, just in time to switch over to modeling instead.

The rest of Friday passed in a furry of fittings. Things were nearly perfect- clearly the measurements Marinette had taken helped speed things along- and then Adrien got a slight haircut before being shuffled off to an evening winter-themed photoshoot. By the time that was over, it was late and Adrien hadn't had a chance to eat more than a few bites in between shots.

"At least early-morning shots aren't a staple of fall and winter shoots," Adrien said with a sigh as he scarfed down his late dinner. Next to him, Plagg was loudly inhaling a round of Camembert. "I'll actually get to sleep. Not as much as I would at home, but I won't be woken up before the crack of dawn, at least."

Saturday was a mix of outdoor and indoor green-screen and set shoots. Adrien ate whenever he could, snitching bites during set restagings and whenever he had to wait for another model to finish getting ready. There was a proper break scheduled in for dinner- Adrien figured that he probably had Nathalie to thank, as his father usually didn't take things like food and breaks and rest into consideration when making schedules- but she was busy coordinating the photographers and makeup artists and hair team for the next round of sunset and evening shoots and wouldn't appreciate an interruption, even if it was to thank her.

By the time Sunday rolled around, Adrien was fairly certain that it would take a full week, if not longer, to get all of the product out of his hair. It had been brushed and styled and sprayed and re-brushed and re-styled and re-sprayed more times than he could count. A piece would start to slip marginally out of place and an army of stylists would immediately descend and spray it back into submission. His hair didn't even feel natural anymore.

Once he got back to London, he was going to have to hop straight in the shower.

Thankfully, everything was running on schedule under Nathalie's watchful eye. Everything seemed to be going right, and Adrien hoped that it would hold out for the entire day. He had made plans to join Alya and Nino for dinner at their apartment at six, so they would have a couple hours together before he had to swing past the Dupain-Cheng bakery to pick up Marinette's sewing machine and her sewing kit and then head straight to the train station.

He hadn't spotted his father at all weekend. Adrien wasn't certain if he was happy about that or not.

With the last photo snapped, Adrien only gave himself a few seconds to relax before he was dashing off to the changing room. He had to exchange a few pleasantries with the other models before they let him go and he dashed off to get in the car. His small suitcase for the weekend was already stashed in the trunk.

"Remember, you should be at the station by eight fifty at the very latest," Nathalie reminded him as the Gorilla pulled the car out into traffic. "If you want to stop by the bakery after your dinner, I would say you would have to leave your friends' apartment by eight or eight fifteen."

Adrien nodded. He would probably leave closer to eight, simply because a short visit with the Dupain-Chengs was a thing that really did not exist. He would probably leave with not only the sewing stuff, but a large bag of bakery leftovers as well.

Once he arrived at Nino and Alya's apartment, Adrien had only just stepped inside the outer door when he was nearly bowled over by Nino. His friend was grinning as he slapped Adrien's shoulder.

"Hey, model boy," Nino said with a grin. He squinted at Adrien. "Dude, is that eyeliner?"

"Hey, I had to look pretty for the pictures," Adrien said with a shrug. "Blond doesn't showcase the eyes that well, so I have eyeliner. And I came here directly from the shoot, so no judging."

"Aw, but where's the fun in that?" Nino asked as he lead Adrien up the stairs towards his apartment. He grinned. "Seriously, it looks like your hair might just crunch if I touch it. Like, it looks fine from a couple paces back, but up close..."

"Yeah, it's lucky we don't do shots that focus on my hair," Adrien agreed. "It feels fake right now. They could have added in all sorts of hair extensions and I honestly wouldn't be able to tell anymore."

Nino laughed.

Alya already had dinner on the table when they got upstairs. She greeted Adrien cheerfully, wasting no time in joining Nino in teasing Adrien about his makeup and hair.

"Hey, we don't have that much time together," Adrien protested as Alya ruffled his very, very stiff hair. "So I didn't want to waste half of that time showering."

Alya snickered. "Really? You'd spend an entire hour showering? Your water bills must be horrendous. I suppose it's a good thing you and Marinette don't live together, or she would never get any time to shower herself."

"I have more stuff in my hair than I normally do," Adrien protested, deciding to ignore the jab about Marinette. "So therefore it would take longer to get out. I don't spend that much time in the shower."

Neither Nino nor Alya looked convinced.

"It's too bad Marinette didn't come back with you this weekend," Alya said as they dished up. "She hasn't been back to Paris for forever, it seems. But I heard that she has more commissions that she's working on!"

"That she does," Adrien confirmed with a grin. "Several sets of album art, and then one of the singers found out that Marinette sews, too, so she has a couple rocker outfits to make. She has this faux leather stuff all over now."

"Is she going to use the sewing machines at Madam Rosalie's for those outfits, then?" Alya wanted to know. "I thought she left her sewing machine in Paris because she thought it would be too bulky and heavy to bring to London."

"She did leave her machine originally, and I'm getting it before I go to the train station," Adrien told her, impressed that Alya would remember that. "Marinette let her parents know so they could gather everything up, since I'll be in a hurry. I brought a big suitcase back to Paris so I can pack her sewing machine into it so it'll be easier to carry." He grinned, remembering his bodyguard's expression when he saw Adrien with his largest suitcase packed for one weekend at the train station. "The sewing machine is packed in a box for travel, so I had to pick a really big suitcase so it would fit. The Gorilla was really confused when he first saw it, because he thought I packed a ton for just one weekend."

His friends laughed.

"So what are you up to now?" Nino asked him. "You're done with your job now, right? The filing one?"

Adrien nodded. "Yeah, thank goodness. It was all right for a job, but it just wasn't what I wanted to be doing. I'm just focusing on school right now and honestly, I don't know if I could do more at the same time. It's only the first week, but it's already obvious that it's gonna be a whole lot harder this year."

"So that means he's gonna be boring," Nino mock-translated, grinning when Adrien kicked him under the table. "What? You know that's true. You'll be all study, study, study."

"It'll only get worse my third year, or so I've heard," Adrien said. He shrugged. "I think this week was as hard as it was mostly because I had to get all of my homework done before the weekend, and because I had to get used to new professors. They have a different teaching style, most of them, and I need to figure out how to get the most out of their lectures and then it'll be easy. Easier, at least."

"You could ask older students about those professors," Nino suggested, then checked himself. "I mean, students who have been in the program for longer. Third year students."

That was a good idea, actually, and not something Adrien would have thought of himself. He wasn't used to having to ask for help in catching on to a professor's teaching style. Normally he was the one that other people came to for help. "It would just be a matter of finding those students. I'm not super-familiar with people outside of my classes and I can't exactly, like, just go up to other students at random and ask them if they've had a certain professor."

"Then go to the tutoring center or something," Alya told him. "They should have students that did really well in those classes there that could give you study tips or readings and stuff so you can stay top of your class- because I know you're a crazy student like that."

Adrien just shrugged. There was nothing wrong with him wanting to put his best foot forward in his classes. The better he understood the concepts the better he would do in his classes, sure, but it would also make it easier for him to understand stuff in the higher-level courses later on.

From there, Adrien got to hear about how Nino's DJing was going (apparently he was largely in between doing indie movie soundtracks at the moment), and about the articles Alya had been writing for the paper. She was finally getting to do articles with more substance instead of just fluff pieces, though as one of the youngest on staff she still had to do jobs like sorting through letters to the editor and small local interest pieces.

"It's busywork, really, "Alya told them with a huff. "And at least I don't have to go through all of the letters to the editor. The interns whittle it down some to get rid of the junk, and then when it's my turn, then I just narrow further so that the editor can just look through a few things before making the final selection."

"It's not as exciting as covering superheroes," Nino told Adrien in a stage whisper. "Most things aren't, though."

Adrien had to laugh at that. "I can see where stuff would be a little less exciting than what you did with the Ladyblog. But at least your dates and interviews don't get interrupted all the time by attacks. Paris is doing better with Hawkmoth gone."

"Yeah, but it's less exciting," Alya complained. "At least I have my research to do when it's a slow day. It's a lot of sifting through dead ends, but when I find something, then it can be really fun."

"Or really frustrating, if you can't find anything else about them," Nino added. He grinned at Adrien. "She forgets that I hear all her grumbling in the evenings when she'd found a potential historical user but can't find more than, like, two really vague sources."

"It's frustrating!" Alya defended herself. "I just get a feeling about someone, that they were probably a user, but there's no proof. And without proof, all I have is a folder of random normal heroes and people throughout history from all over the world."

"Do you contact historians then?" Adrien asked. "From those areas? I know for that the big ones you could find experts on that person, but maybe you could just find people who were just experts on that period of time. They might have access to other materials that you couldn't find online, stuff that wasn't translated. You might need to find a translator to contact some of them, though."

Nino looked a little nervous. "Uh, maybe we could hold off on hiring a translator," he suggested. "Just have a list of historians you want to contact and the language you would want to contact them in for your application packet. Otherwise I can see it getting really expensive really fast, and we don't exactly have a ton of extra money sitting around."

Alya pouted.

"I mean, if you can find someone who speaks one of those languages who's willing to do it for free- like, one of our friends- then go ahead," Nino said quickly. "But if you'll probably be able to have the newspaper pay for it, then we won't have to spend a ton on translator fees."

"I suppose," Alya grumbled. "I just hate dropping a lead like that. Or not dropping, but at least putting it aside for a bit. I just worry about forgetting about some of the things I've found," she told Adrien. "My research is a bit messy right now. There's a lot of information and a lot of research, but it's a mess. I really have to sit down and properly sort it some time."

"She's getting a filing cabinet for her birthday," Nino whispered in Adrien's year when Alya hopped up to go refill her glass. "And oodles of folders and other organizing stuff. Maybe it's a boring gift, but she needs it right now."

Adrien just grinned.

The rest of their time flew by far too fast, and then Adrien was hugging his friends good-bye and heading out to the waiting car. The Gorilla drove him straight to the Dupain-Cheng bakery and Adrien hopped out, grabbing his ridiculously large suitcase from the back.

His clothes were going to be a wrinkled mess by the time he got back to London, with the amount of flopping around they were doing in his suitcase, but that hardly mattered. He'd have to wash them once he got back home either way.

"Remember, you only have thirty minutes with them before we have to go to the station," Nathalie reminded Adrien as he made to go up to the front door. "So don't linger too long."

"Of course."

It didn't take long for Tom to answer the door after Adrien pressed the doorbell. The large man grinned when he spotted Adrien, and as soon as the door was open, Tom enveloped Adrien in a hug.

"Adrien, son! It's good to see you," Tom said. He gave Adrien one last friendly squeeze before releasing him. "It's too bad Marinette couldn't come back for the weekend with you. Is she busy with work?"

"Work and commissions," Adrien agreed. He stepped inside the door so Tom could wave to Nathalie and the Gorilla before closing the door and leading the way upstairs. "She's working hard, making connections and whatnot. If she's ever between design jobs, she'll be able to get enough commission work to support herself, I think. And it'll look amazing on her resume, of course."

"She's done very well for herself," Tom said proudly. "Sabine and I had initially been concerned when Marinette wanted to become a fashion designer, since it's such a competitive industry and so many people don't succeed, but I don't think she'll have a problem."

Adrien nodded in agreement as Tom led the way into the living room. He could see where Tom might be concerned, since the fashion industry was very competitive and plenty of talented designers went undiscovered. The designers who ended up struggling the most were the ones who decided to strike out on their own instead of joining an existing company, and it seemed that Marinette had already decided against doing that. It was probably a smart move- while being an independent designer probably sounded glamorous, it was a lot of work and a lot of struggling to get things on the market and popular while not earning a particularly steady income.

"Adrien, dear!" Sabine called eagerly as she caught sight of him. "It's so good to see you! We got Marinette's machine all packaged up, and then we found everything else she wanted and got it in her sewing bag there." She pointed to the bag and box sitting on the table. "But won't you visit with us first before you run off again?"

"I can stay for a bit," Adrien agreed. "Just let me get the sewing machine into my suitcase right away, so we're not rushing at the end."

"Be really careful with it," Sabine warned, fluttering around him as Adrien unzipped his suitcase. "It's a sturdy machine and all, but too many knocks around will throw parts out of line and it can be pretty expensive to fix."

"I'll take care of it," Adrien promised. He glanced into his suitcase and quickly scrambled to cover a couple, ah, purchases he had made with a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Over the weekend, he had managed to squeeze in a trip to the store to pick up a few things, stuff that he couldn't exactly risk buying in London in case the paparazzi happened to spot him- and no, he wasn't being paranoid. The reporter that he and Marinette had spotted in the store had been there around the same time as they were several more times, and on top of that, several of the cashiers were young uni students that recognized him from the tabloids and he didn't want any of them taking note of any, ah, mature purchases.

Not that he was necessarily going to need any of said mature purchases anytime soon, but Adrien preferred to be prepared. He also preferred that his secret girlfriend's parents not notice the aforementioned purchases.

"So you just started classes this past week, I heard?" Tom asked as Adrien carefully moved the box with the sewing machine in it from the table to his suitcase. It was heavier than he had expected. "Is your second year getting off to a good start?"

"It is," Adrien confirmed with a grin. He arranged the box in his suitcase- it only just fit, which meant no rattling around when he carried it from place to place- and then tucked everything else in the suitcase into the space over the sewing machine box. He quickly zipped up the suitcase before the Dupain-Chengs could see anything incriminating, and then the suitcase went next to the table so he wouldn't forget either it or Marinette's stuffed sewing bag. "My classes are going to be more interesting this year, I think. We've moved on from the more basic stuff, and I think I get to pick the first of my elective classes second semester."

"Exciting," Tom said. He grinned at Adrien. "And you get to keep my daughter over there with you for another year, so I'm sure that's a bonus."

Adrien nodded a bit cautiously. He could recognize fishing for information when he saw it, especially after spending so much time with Alya and Nino. "Yeah, it's great to have her there! I love having a friend from Paris in London, and right next door, too. And then I get to hang out with Marinette and her friends from work, too, which is always fun. And I hate just sitting in my apartment alone, so..." He trailed off and smiled, trying to not let the smile get too sappy. "We hang out a lot. It's nice to have the company."

"Would you invite your friends from university over otherwise?" Sabine asked. She plopped down a large paper bag that, from the smell of it, was filled with delicious pastries, then headed over to perch on the couch. "Are most of them younger than you are?"

"I have invited my uni friends over before, just not anywhere near as often," Adrien told her. "None of them live in the building or next door like some of the other Rosalie workers do, though, so they have to come further. And yeah, my friends from uni are all younger than I am. There's a few other nontraditional students in my classes, but they're all, like, a lot older, with families and whatnot."

"I don't know if you're old enough to count as a nontraditional student," Tom said with a laugh. "And come over here and sit down, son. You don't have to just stand over there. We want to know how things are going in London."

Adrien grinned, crossing the room and settling down on the cushion Sabine was patting. Marinette's parents were always so welcoming and eager to hear what he was up to. In only twenty minutes, they learned more about what Adrien had been up to over the summer and his first week of the semester than his own father had learned over the entire weekend. There were more than a few pointed questions about him and Marinette that Adrien had to dodge, but Adrien had had so much experience with reporters that it was child's play to evade all of the questions.

"Oh, is that your ride?" Tom asked when Adrien's phone chimed. He looked disappointed. "Is it time for you to leave already?"

"Yeah, I have to get to the train station soon," Adrien admitted, checking his phone and shooting a quick message back to Nathalie to assure her that yes, he was on his way. "Nathalie got me on the latest train back to London, so I can't miss it. It was great getting to talk to you guys again."

"It was great getting to see you again too, dear," Sabine told him fondly. "Now Tom, do you want to help him carry everything downstairs? Maybe you can take the suitcase."

Tom ended up taking both the suitcase and Marinette's sewing bag while Adrien trotted down the stairs after him with the bag of pastries. How he was going to carry everything once he was getting on the train he had no clue, but he would make it work somehow.

"Take care of our girl for us," Tom told him as Adrien stepped out the door. "Make sure she doesn't overwork herself, between her job and her commissions. And see if she'll come back with you next time you come to Paris, all right? Facetiming her just isn't the same as seeing her in person. And give her a hug for us."

"I'll do that, sir," Adrien told him. "I promise."

[searching-for-mercury]

Voltron -- Klance -- Fake BF

All I Want for Christmas is a (Fake) Boyfriend

Summary: A while ago, in a fit of anger, Keith told his mom he had a boyfriend. Did he actually have a boyfriend? No. Did he care? Also no. At least, not until his mom, months later, tells him to bring his supposed boyfriend over for the holidays. Not wanting to admit he didn’t have one, Keith asks around for someone to play the role and who agrees to play the part? The annoying guy from his Lit class.

(ao3)

Chapter 5

Hanging out on his sofa doing nothing of any great importance wasn't Keith's idea of time well spent. Whenever someone asked, he'd take their shift at the Call Center. It wasn't a job he loved, but it was a job and work meant money. It also meant time he wasn't thinking about stupid things he didn't want to think about anymore.

              He didn't consider himself a coward when it came to confrontation in heated situations, like calling someone out on their bullshit. He spoke up when he had to or when it felt necessary. Heck, he even spoke up when his anger took the wheel.

What he didn't want to do, however, was pursue something he didn't know the outcome of.

              Did he really even like Lance? Or was it something casual, void of any deeper feelings? Had he just been pulled along during the holidays? Gone with the natural romantic flow of things. And did he really want to put any effort in something he was so unsure of?

              All those feelings followed him when school started and then the first Wednesday of the semester arrived, along with the source of all those thoughts creating a slushie of confusion in Keith's mind.

              He slid into the booth at Taco Bell with a couple burritos and a head full of worry.

              Lance slid in on the other side with a bunch of tacos, burritos, a drink, and his energetic personality. If Keith was any other person, he'd have said the cheer emitting from him was contagious.

              "This is amazing," Lance said and fished out his phone from his large, brown jacket. Snow was still piled up outside from a full weekend of just that, but the roads and sidewalks had been cleared.

              "You're taking a picture," Keith said. "Of Taco Bell."

              "It's okay, you don't need to understand," Lance said, angling his phone a little different. It made a little shutter noise every time he took a picture. "Just let me enjoy this."

              He definitely had an Instagram. There was no way he didn't. And Keith would bet real money on Lance uploading his weird Taco Bell pictures with filters slapped on, like he'd just gone to a fancy restaurant and was marveling at what had been delivered to the table.

              When Lance looked up at him, Keith felt himself almost jump at the sudden eye contact; he'd been staring.

              "Aren't you going to eat?" Lance asked.

              "Could say the same to you," Keith replied, but he started to unwrap one of his burritos. He focused on the window as he bit into it. Winter meant shorter periods of daylight, so even though it was only five in the afternoon, the sun had already disappeared and everything outside was settled in a monochromatic sort of glow.

              "How's the semester been for you?" Lance asked after swallowing the biggest mouthful Keith had ever seen anyone take in his entire existence on planet Earth. "Taking anymore literature classes?"

              "No, it's just some biology and math," Keith replied. "Been pretty normal. You?"

              Lance rolled his eyes. Keith hadn't noticed how dark of a blue they were until right that moment and he wished he still hadn't. "What do you mean, normal? Normal could mean anything," he said.

              Keith shrugged. "Going over the syllabus, being gradually introduced to the various topics, getting homework due later this week. Normal."

              Lance nodded and took a long drink from his cup. "Same here. But oh man, wait until I tell you what kind of teacher I have for my oceanography class. Total nut. Came to class wearing full on scuba gear and showed us pictures of his adventures during break. He seems like an okay guy, but not the kind you'd know on a personal level. Just like, oh yeah I know him. We talk. He comes to parties sometimes but do we hang? Nah."

              Keith just nodded like he knew exactly what Lance meant.

              "He seems kind of unpredictable, but I'm hoping his grading is consistent," Lance continued. "Or maybe he knows he's totally bonkers so he lets his TA grade stuff."

              "If only more teachers did that," Keith said and grabbed his soda, wishing it were maybe something a little stronger than Pepsi. Just maybe.

              When he returned to his quiet apartment, the first thing he did was find his calendar. Had they agreed to every Wednesday? They had. They most definitely had. And there were so many of them. Wow. He was seriously kicking his past self in the ass.

              The next Wednesday came with a flurry of new snow and new conversation topics.

              "We are going to talk after I finish this," Lance said, mouth full of what was probably fake beef and suspicious lettuce. The lighting overhead threw shadows on his face whenever he dipped down to take another bite. It also made his hair and skin look almost the same shade of brown.

              "Did you not eat lunch?" Keith asked.

              Lance only shook his head -- his cheeks were too full.

              As the weeks tumbled on by, their conversations got steadily less awkward, for which Keith was thankful. Thrilling discussions about weather, traffic, and class faded away with more personal things taking their place. Keith learned Lance's family came from Cuba, for instance, a couple generations ago. He didn't talk much about them and when he did, it was always about the past.

              And then one day, Keith must have asked the right questions and Lance must have been in the right kind of mood, because he told him something that felt entirely unlike him.

              "I don't actually know my parents," Lance said with a shrug. He picked at the paper wrapper from his meal. "They, uh, died. When I was small."

              Keith stopped eating.

              "My grandma took care of me for a short while, I guess, but it wasn't enough," Lance said. His voice was soft and low and Keith couldn't see his eyes for they were turned down, towards his food.

              It was such a quiet sort of shift, but Keith wasn't sure he was supposed to be hearing what Lance was telling him. More importantly, it didn't feel right to have it there in a Taco Bell, under cheap florescent lighting with pop music playing quietly in the background. There weren't many people in the booths around them, but there never were.

              It took Keith a moment longer than he felt was right and he wasn't sure if what he was about to ask was right either, but he said, "Enough for what?" His tone was careful, gentle maybe. He hoped.

              Lance cleared his throat and pushed himself up; Keith hadn't even noticed how he'd sort of curled up into himself, sunk down into the plastic seat. "Wasn't enough to take care of me," he said. "Services came, picked me up." Lance was looking straight at him, then, and Keith felt like his breath had been taken away, too.

              Foster care. Lance had been through the foster care system. Keith didn't know much about it, but he'd heard horror stories, about abuse and the shuffling from one home to another. Maybe he flinched or maybe his eyes conveyed an understanding, somewhat, but Lance smiled at him. It wasn't a very bright smile, not all full of warm feelings that would seep out and into others, but it also wasn't bitter.

              "Don't feel sorry, or whatever, I didn't tell you to get sympathy," Lance said with a firm voice. There was a lot more strength in it than before, when it was full of faraway recollections. "I just felt like you should probably know. I mean, I know so much about you now."

              Keith shrugged before he thought things over too much. "I don't really know what to say," Keith said. He had a habit of plowing into sensitive topics like a dog running through piles of snow for the first time. "I mean, are you okay with talking about it? Can I ask questions? Because if not, that's cool. Just say the word and I won't ask a thing. But if you -- why are you laughing?"

              It had started with his shoulders shaking and his mouth twisting up and then back down in an effort to not laugh, but then it bubbled up and out and Keith was left feeling more confused than he wanted, truth be told.

              "Sorry, it's just. You're taking this very seriously," Lance said between near-silent bouts of laughter. "And it's serious! It is. But. I don't know, it's really funny right now." He leaned forward until his forehead touched the table. His shoulder still shook.

              Keith frowned at first. "I don't understand you," he said. "I really don't."

              It only made Lance laugh harder.

              And then Keith felt his own mouth start to turn and even though he had absolutely no reason as to why, he started to laugh as well. Maybe the why didn't really matter.

              In the midst of all that laughter came a sudden realization: Keith's wavering crush became a very solid 'like,' and it hit him in the chest much harder than he thought possible. Whereas before his feelings of attachment had been drifting around, like a loose balloon low on helium, somewhere it had become tethered to the ground and in need of some serious re-evaluation.

              "Okay," Lance said, breathing a little heavier. "I don't, just so you know, I don't usually laugh when I tell people unhappy things."

              This only made Keith look at him more confused, which made Lance laugh a little more.

              "I'm serious! It just felt too heavy, man. And I dunno, I feel pretty comfortable around you," Lance said, giving a one-shoulder shrug.

              Keith felt way more happy than he felt he should have, in that moment. A spark of glee. Warmth filling his chest. A small pang of uncertainty. He didn't know what to say or how to react to those feelings. If he spoke, would he blurt out something he'd regret?

              He walked away from that exchange with a heavy feeling in his stomach that wasn't due to three burritos and a medium-sized Mountain Dew. What was he supposed to do? Tell him that he liked him? How does one even do that? And wouldn't it be weird, after everything that happened at his mom's house?

              Keith didn't have an answer to any of those questions. He flopped down on his couch and stared at the ceiling as if it held all the answers. He kind of wished it did, that it were that easy.

              And then something occurred to him: did he really have to say anything? He was kind of a pro at pining in secret. He'd had a crush on Shiro for years and never said anything ever and he'd gotten over him! For the most part. Where there once had been a strong sort of longing there was now just an ache. And he could deal with the ache.

              Yes, he was going to do what he did best: not saying a goddamn thing.

 ~*~

                School picked up real fast, as did work, and Keith was left wondering where all those weeks had gone. It was getting dangerously close to midterms and he felt like the semester had just begun. How dare the midterms sneak up on him like that.

              There was still snow everywhere -- in fact, it usually stayed up until April, which probably had to do with them being so close to the mountains. Once in a while, they'd get a freak blizzard in May and it was all anyone would talk about. May was also the end of the semester and, ultimately, his dates with Lance.

              They weren't dates. They were just casual meet-ups in Taco Bell where Keith paid. Yes. Right.

              Keith shook his head. Not exactly where he wanted his mind to be. Instead, he focused on the squat, brown buildings around him. Campus usually looked much nicer in the summer. Everything would burst out blooming and there'd be so much more color in everything, not only the plants. Even the people would glow, wearing their brightly colored shorts and tank-tops, big plastic sunglasses. He bet Lance would outshine everyone, his face radiating warmth, exposing more of that smooth brown skin to soak up all that sun and --

              Goddammit.

              He tried focusing on the buildings again. He just needed to focus on the horizon, on the building he needed to get to. Then he would sit in class, where his mind couldn't wander as much, and he'd be fine. Really.

              But then Keith saw him a little ways away and his heart stuttered.

              Lance hadn't noticed him -- he wasn't turned his way. He was smiling or laughing at something someone had said, maybe one of the girls, and they were all walking like they had nowhere else to be at that moment. Keith often got mad at groups like that because they created a jam -- like when those commercials on the TV showed cholesterol build-up in the body. Just because they didn't have to be in class didn't mean others didn't.  

             Keith took an immediate right turn, even so he was nowhere near the building he had to get to. The action didn't even require any kind of thought process, it was like his body knew exactly what to do. He felt stupid immediately after -- why did he need to take a longer route to his class just because he saw Lance?

              It didn't make any sense.

              It also made him feel weird the next time they ate Taco Bell together. Had Lance noticed him running away? Was that was he was calling it now?

              "Hey, just a heads up," Lance said. They were close to finishing their meal and Lance was pretty much just picking at the remains. "I won't be able to come next week."

              Keith stopped chewing.

              "I promised one of my friends I would go to an art exhibit. One of her pieces is in there," Lance continued. "I don't know if she's got an award or anything, but she asked me a while ago and wasn't sure of the date when she did."

              Keith nodded. Yeah, of course. He cleared his throat, realizing he hadn't actually said it out loud. "Sure," he said. "I mean, it's you who will be missing out."

              "I know," Lance said and Keith could almost see hearts in his eyes with the way he looked at the menu above the counter.

              Lance's friend -- who he kept calling Plax, though Keith wasn't sure if it was her real name or just an affectionate nickname -- had always invited him to her art exhibits ever since they became friends. In return, he would bring her to movies in Spanish hosted by the school every month.

              "They've got subtitles," Lance assured him, as if that's what Keith was really worried about.

              ~*~

                Keith didn't know what to do. He usually did, or it came to him along the way and he didn't often need to think so damn much. The not knowing was what was really getting to him, the not knowing how to proceed, to make his brain just turn off maybe, for a moment, so he could just relax into a feeling of who cares.

              He'd gotten over a crush before, he could do it again. Except Lance was everywhere, even when he wasn't. His name popped up in conversations, stupid things reminded Keith of him (seriously? The color blue?) -- he even surprised him once on campus.

              Despite what movies portrayed, libraries were not actually quiet. No stern older woman glared at people through her cat-eye glasses or shushed them when things became a little rowdy. People collaborated on projects in the library, they studied together at tables and tested each other on terms. It was exactly for this reason why Keith was wearing headphones. How else was he supposed to concentrate?

              He'd managed to work out the chapter he needed to read in order to complete his homework and had just started said homework when someone grabbed him by the shoulders and he shot up in the air.

              Lance was laughing as Keith yanked his headphones out.

              "What the hell?!" Keith snapped.

              He was still laughing. The nerve.

              "Seriously!"

              And then Lance, who was still struggling with a case of the giggles, plopped down in the seat next to him. "You should have seen yourself," he said. "You jumped like, a foot."

              Keith would have sworn that the urge to smile wasn't because whenever Lance did, it was always kind of like the feeling one got after watching a fantastic movie where a rag-tag group of people came together to form a sort of makeshift family in the end. But no, it wasn't because of that. It was because it was a funny thing, right? Him springing in the air. And irritating. He hated when people snuck up on him.

              "What're you doing?" Lance asked, nodding to the book. An amused smile still tugged at his lips.

              "Homework," Keith replied. "For a biology class."

              "Interesting," Lance said, but he said it in a funny voice and then pulled the book closer to him.

              "Kind of," Keith replied. "Mostly boring, though. Dry writing."

              Lance lit up like he'd seen a puppy. "Yeah!" he said. "The actual content is pretty cool, usually, but the way they describe it! So boring! I wish they could make it sound more, I dunno--" He gestured with his hands.

              "Like a book," Keith said and then realized just what he'd said. "I mean, like a novel. Something you read for fun."

              "Yeah! If it were written in a style that was a little more casual, I think everyone would understand this stuff better," he said. "Maybe then the scientific community would boom and we'd finally get our flying cars."

              "Flying cars."

              "Haven't you ever seen The Jetsons? Flying cars. I want to live in space, like they do," Lance said and grinned. "Don't you?"

              Keith shrugged. He could have made an argument about how that might clutter the sky or maybe corporations would want to stake claims to space, divvying it up like they did land, but he didn't have the heart. There was an ache in his chest, sort of like when he caught a cold sometimes and every time he coughed, it hurt.

              Lance nudged him a little, as if to say "Hey, what's up?" with an expression so soft, it just made everything worse.

              Keith didn't remember what he'd said or how the conversation flowed after that, but eventually Lance left him to do his homework in relative peace. Had to go meet up with some friends. He was always doing that, meeting with friends and having plans. Lance was the most social person Keith knew, after Hunk. It was admirable, really, even so Keith knew he would have hated to have so many acquaintances to keep track of.

              It was when he was with Hunk that he did something incredibly stupid.

              After class, he spotted Hunk strolling towards the parking lot so he jogged a little to catch up.

              "You finished for today?" Keith asked.

              "Yeah, you?" Hunk replied.

              Keith nodded. "But I've got work in a couple hours."

              "Ha! I've got off," Hunk teased, hitting him gently in the shoulder. "But I'm gonna meet up with Shay later tonight."

              They'd reached the parking lot. Hunk owned a mustard-colored Jeep Renegade. It used to be a Wrangler, because he liked going camping a lot with friends, but he'd traded it in after finding out it was prone to roll in accidents.

              Keith immediately started looking for it. "Got a big date?" he asked, trying to push the teasing attitude back at him.

              "Yeah," Hunk said and he stopped walking. "I mean no, I don't know."

              An idea floated around in Keith's head, taking root as suspicion. "Hey, are you going to..." It wasn't even him and the words felt embarrassing.

              "Maybe?" Hunk said, looking up with panic and worry painted all over his face. "Should I? I thought about it for a while and my parents have already been teasing me about it."

              Keith shrugged. He was literally the last person anyone should ever ask about relationship advice.

              "I've got a ring."

              "What."

              Hunk looked a little sheepish and glanced around. "Not here, I haven't picked it up yet. It's still at the store. But I was planning on heading over there before picking her up," he said.

              Keith's heart was pounding and he had no idea how to respond. Did he offer congratulations? But he hadn't yet popped the question and neither had Shay given her answer yet. She would, though. She would most definitely say yes. There was no way she wouldn't, they were both so very much in love and had been for years.

              "Do you want to come with me?" Hunk asked. "To pick it up."

              The nod Keith gave was all that he felt he could really give at the moment. Marriage. And there'd be a great big wedding because that was Hunk's family -- they did everything big and heartfelt. A glowy, fuzzy, warm happiness.

              The trip didn't take very long and they each took their own cars, on account of Keith having work and Hunk having his obvious plans, but Keith was still jittery with nerves. He was too young to have married friends. Sure, it had been several years since high school, but it didn't feel like it.

              And the ring was, well, a ring. It looked expensive, but he didn't ask how much it had been. Hunk hadn't picked the traditional diamond. Instead, there was a yellow sapphire in the middle, with green jasper chips dotted along the sides. It matched a necklace Shay wore, Hunk had told him. She'd gotten it from her grandmother and, well, there was a whole story behind it that Hunk didn't really want to get into.

              "And it's black silver because," Hunk shrugged, "it's cool looking, I guess. And if she says yes, then I'll get a wedding band in the same silver."

              It took a moment for Keith to respond. "She'll say yes," he said. He was sure of it.

              Hunk looked giddy for one moment, worried the next. He stared down at the ring for a moment, thumb swiping over the sapphire. "I sure hope so," he murmured.

              With the ring secured in a little bag Hunk had asked the sales woman to staple shut -- he didn't want it falling out on accident and had listed off several circumstances where it could all go terribly, terribly wrong -- they walked out of the store in silence. It felt heavy, significant. Something life-changing was going to take place.

              Their cars weren't very far away, but it felt like an eternity before they reached them. Keith's eyes wandered up out of habit, to scan the area, and then back down to his car door. Then up again. Even when he was in the most unlikely of places, Lance was there. Sure, he was across the street, walking out of a candy store, but he was there.

              Keith immediately grabbed onto Hunk's jacket and tugged him down with him. There was no thinking, just grab, pull, and drop.

              As he sat there, heart pounding, his reasoning caught up with him. Had Lance seen that? He sure hoped not. What could he give as an answer? That he wanted to avoid talking to him because whenever he did, his chest felt tight and he was overcome with a crushing wave of hopelessness? No, because that was dramatic and he swore he wasn't.

              "Uh," said Hunk, who was still crouched next to him on the pavement. "I feel like I should comment on this. So I'm commenting. What are we doing, Keith?"

[engl699readingjournal-blog]

after my initial time spent in Berlin, I wanted to see all the friends I had made (miraculously) again as soon as possible. the fall semester was a real special kind of dismal – at some point before studying abroad, I remember thinking how dumb it sounded to feel “culture shock” or any kind of adjustment period when coming back into your own element, your home, your comfort zone. what was the big deal? I’d go back to school the next week and catch up with my Maryland folks and pick up where I left off. I thought that anyone who felt culture shock re-immersing themselves into the culture in which they were raised, and which they only left for about six or seven months, was surely being overdramatic.

I did not pick up where I’d left off. for all intents and purposes I went on with my senior year as expected, because the academic calendar does not stop or slow down to accommodate your mental breakdowns. there was the matter of getting off the bupropion, which took seven more months to accomplish – at one breaking point I flushed all the pills down the toilet and proceeded to have an extended withdrawal period that I refused to go to the doctor and talk about precisely because I didn’t want to admit to flushing the fucking pills down the toilet. the “what are you going to do after you graduate?” question started to assault my conscience from all angles. the stories I came back with about my new friends, my experiences, some absolute disasters, felt increasingly not worth sharing. none of the people I told them to were there, they had only experienced filtered pictures of streets in Prenzlauer Berg and weird shit displayed at the Schwules Museum through my Instagram. they knew very little of the manic episodes and the hospital visit, which were things I unsurprisingly decided not to broadcast. some friends noticed my tendency to be up tweeting at times when they should have been in bed and chalked it up to my becoming some kind of Berlin night denizen. I did spend a lot of nights out late, but the fact is that most of those tweets were probably posted from my bed where I sometimes sat among enormous boxes of Aldi cereal and sacks of stale rolls and huge mineral water bottles for 36 hours at a time without moving.

there was nobody to talk about that with. talking about that would have required backstory; letting someone from home in on an inside story or anecdote that involved a Berlin friend would have involved me explaining everything from how I met this or that person up to the circumstances that got us into this or that situation and why it was funny in the first place, and that was exhausting, so I just didn’t bother. I thought the solution to this slump was to go back as soon as I could and throw myself back into the life I had created for myself there, for whatever reason not really considering that the obvious common denominator when it came to all my Big Life Issues was me. so I went back for the New Year and stayed with one of my closest friends there for the entire month of January. during the spring and summer we had spent a lot of time hanging and visited London together in July. I think to them I was sort of an interesting figure; I had sort of materialized in their life right when they were at the end of a nine-year relationship and when I guess I made it pretty clear that I was not interested in That we became friends. I think they were very intrigued by how fucking far away I lived; at the beginning, when I was invited somewhere, I showed up, having somehow found my way to the location, then just vanished when the night was over. I don’t know what kind of questions were asked about me or if anyone asked any questions at all, but I guess that superficially this strange artsy American student with sunken eyes and skin the color of white asparagus vibe was attractive. by the time I went home, we had become very close, and I was in good standing with their whole gang, I didn’t think about how shitty it is to be trans every ten minutes, I didn’t have a dining plan or a fucking RA, I felt like a God Damn Adult.

I was not a God Damn Adult. I don’t think it was that I felt more mature than I actually was, but mental illness makes you feel that way. when you are depressed, it is sometimes hard to remember that you can’t keep a routine because you are sick, not because you expect other people to do your laundry or cook for you. when you are anorexic, it is sometimes hard to remember that you aren’t eating because you are committed to not eating, not because you are too irresponsible to go grocery shopping. when you have anxiety, it is sometimes hard to remember that you won’t go into a packed bar or board an overcrowded train out of self-preservation and not because you’re too shy or sheltered to face the Real World. I have faced many aspects of the Real World. sometimes I prefer to limit my intake of it.

something about returning to Berlin for the winter break felt like returning home after being called away by an inconvenient business trip. my friends in Berlin had seen parts of myself that my friends and even family at home did not – not really because I trusted them more, but because various illnesses manifested themselves differently while I was away, new illnesses developed, some illnesses worsened. it wasn’t so much a matter of me letting them in, but that it was all very plainly visible and impossible to avoid discussing. it was good to be back around them. the semester had been draining and I was content to sit in my friend’s apartment scowling at and defacing Siegessäule magazine, watching movies, sitting in the same two cafés within a block of the apartment. I had plans to go to museums and exhibitions, but forgot I didn’t have the money to do that. I was still using my expired student ID from the F.U. to take transit. David Bowie died that month and I spent an entire week with another close friend, sitting in Neues Ufer and moping. I bought soy milk, black bread, and mango-curry spread and ate these breakfasts with great ceremony when I woke up at noon. I contributed rent money, bought toilet paper and cleaned the apartment when I felt it was cluttered, I tried my best to leave no traces of my existence as a guest because that to me was what a good guest did. apparently it was not good enough.

two days before I left, this friend and I went to brunch at a place around the corner and shared a large Mediterranean brunch plate. I remembered this place from the summer, when the floor-to-ceiling windows opened outward and the seating overflowed onto the sidewalk. now it was perpetually slate-grey and snowing. later I learned that this friend hated Berlin in the winter, so maybe I wasn’t entirely responsible for their decision to lay out every flaw in my personality onto the tiny breakfast table like a door-to-door curtain salesman might fan out swatches of fabric for a housewife’s consideration. but that’s what happened. not five minutes into the meal, which was an obscenely large arrangement of brightly-colored fruits that felt absurd considering that we were seated against cold foggy glass through which I watched people in 35 pounds of layers bike past. a small park across the street was frozen over – I remembered eating ice cream there a few days before flying home in August. now it was littered with trash and petrified dog shit preserved under a layer of frost – my friend asked if I had enjoyed myself.

yes, definitely, I said. I had had a really awful semester, I was glad to be away from home in January. January, I explained without feeling the need to go into excessive detail, was historically the worst month of the year for me. if someone died, it was in January. if I wanted to die, it was in January. I wasn’t feeling that way this year. I felt rested. some things needed to be taken care of when I got home, like the extended bupropion withdrawal and the panic attacks, but I was nonetheless very happy to have seen everyone. I had enjoyed myself.

this didn’t seem to be the answer they were hoping for. I guess they were hoping I would say something along the lines of: “well, you know, I realized that I’m unmotivated to pull myself out of a minor funk by forcing myself to do things I don’t want to do,” or, “well, you know, I realized that I’m moody and deal with increasingly confrontational conversations with friends by going silent,” or, “well, you know, I really wish I had done more.” because that’s what I ended up learning about myself in the next thirty seconds – that I made little effort to feel better when I was down, which must have meant I didn’t want to get better in any facet of my life. that I spent days at a time content with sitting in a café instead of going to museums and theaters the way I had planned on doing before arriving.

well, I said, I didn’t realize how tired I was. I had more in mind for myself than I wanted to do.

but you really didn’t do much at all. you spent most of the time in the apartment.

no, I really don’t feel like that was all I did.

it just seems to me that you are maybe – not so independent.

this I found really odious and began raving. fuck the giant fruit plate that sat between us uncomfortably, big as a pottery wheel. not independent?

well, I remember back in July –

fucking July?

when we were in London. you said you might not have done much at all if I hadn’t initiated our days out. and this month, for example, when you had to go to the grocery store sometimes, you asked me if I wanted to come too. and if I said no, you wouldn’t go either, instead of just going by yourself.

fucking July? the grocery store? I got there eventually, didn’t I, each time? nobody ever shat without toilet paper, did they? I walked around about six cities by myself, hadn’t I? was it not clear that I meant our ideas of visiting a city were different – I took walks, they liked museums?

and that sometimes I was slow to react, as if I spent more time in my head than in reality. I did not take initiative. I drank tea but never made it. I only helped open the windows to air out the room when they were already up doing it.

I only drank the tea because it was there and I knew you weren’t going to drink two liters of hot lemon water with chunks of ginger. I never thought to open the windows myself because I thought it was a pointless exercise in making a room 7 degrees and no less stuffy than before.

not independent? I flew into a complete rage. did they know that when I spoke about how January was historically bad it was because of a high-school suicide attempt that stained the entire month for me, that when I said I was content with my January for once it was because it was the first January in five years in which I wasn’t close to doing that again? I didn’t want them to know all this, but it ended up that way. why do people not point things out to me as they happen? why compile a dossier and then present it to me like an airing of grievances or the way a court clerk reads a docket aloud to the judge at an arraignment? I told them I would never do something like this to anyone I called a friend and went silent. the still-hot cup of black tea was to be unfinished, a roll I had ripped in half was left on the heap of stupid fruit and hummus. fuck you, I thought. eat this entire ridiculous plate yourself. I wondered whether it would be a good idea to spend my last two nights in a hostel, if this whole thing was that big of a deal. they told me that they hadn’t expected my reaction and were only trying to help. I said I was done eating and started counting Euros to pay them back for half the cost of the plate. I had to walk to a friend’s nearby apartment to pick up the bike I had borrowed and ridden once and drop it off with its owner, another few blocks away. I would see them back at the apartment.

in many of the conversations between Isherwood and the two Landauer cousins – Natalia and Bernhard – I feel reverberations of the conversations I had with this friend, who is still a friend. many instances of “why are you asking me this question?” and “what are you thinking about me based on this answer I’m giving?” many small spats that end in silence that is sometimes just as explosive as the argument that should be had. many feelings that conversations were more judgment than lively discussion, comprising many topics that I didn’t feel like talking about but would have been met with a “why?” if avoided: why wasn’t my position against parents beating their kids’ asses stronger? I don’t know. my parents beat my ass on what I felt was probably the proper occasion. was it possible that I was attracted to men since I wrote stories about men who were attracted to men? no. how did I know? why wouldn’t I get a soup? I ate a Kinder bar from the fucking vending machine on the train platform and didn’t want anything. why? many whys. many back-and-forths like this. many signs that both people are carrying around too much baggage associated with the fucking month of January. at the gloomy winter excursion to the Landauers’ Wannsee country house, Isherwood enters, at Bernhard’s invitation, into a space of memory and tragic association for a reason that he does not quite himself understand. why is he the one privy to Bernhard’s entire life story? what exactly is the nature of this relationship? why do months pass before they speak again? in Isherwood’s crafted world of innuendo and suggestion, we do not know just how intimate this relationship is. at a closer look, holes open up in the narrative that could easily be filled with the obvious. as with the famous ellipsis in The Great Gatsby, one moment Isherwood is being led to Bernhard’s bedroom with Bernhard’s hand on his shoulder. the next morning they are having breakfast. I have such holes in my own memory but I am sure none of them involve sex. depression eats away at your brain cells, its effect much like that of self-censorship.

in June, during my study abroad, I went to the hospital for a panic attack. as with most panic attacks, I thought I was going to die, and when I explained to the E.R. doctor that I had a laundry list of pre-existing psychological conditions I was put into a bus and rerouted to a mental health clinic on the Wannsee (after we made a really unnecessary detour through Charlottenburg which added an entire hour to the journey). there, I spoke in English with a woman whose job was apparently to stay up all night and receive nutjobs like me at 3 AM in her small, inviting office. she asked me if I wanted to stay there. that sounded terrifying. I had work to do and nineteen credits to earn. no, I did not want to stay there. yes, I would start eating. yes, I would take care of myself. she told me I was brave for being here all alone with all of the things that I was dealing with, and that it took a great deal of strength to take all of your problems abroad with you – many people foolishly thought that going somewhere meant somehow that those problems would not come with them. I did not see myself as brave or strong. I saw myself sitting in a consultation room at a psych clinic while the sun rose. I wondered whether I would be forced to stay on some grounds, whether saying “yes” to an invitation to stay was the only right answer. but “no” was accepted. I walked out with a business card, saying goodbye to the man at the reception desk like I was leaving a Holiday Inn. I walked a few miles until I decided it was time to get on a bus.

(this was not something I tweeted about)

[teenwolfshots]

“My pack.” Stiles Stilinski

Requested by @awalkingcontradiction101 I really hope you like it! I loved working on this.

Stiles’s POV

Finally after another semester of hell not seeing the pack summer is here and things can go back to normal, hopefully. I’ve missed the pack more than I could ever imagine. Scott is my brother, and not going to the same college has been difficult. We all agreed to meet at Scott’s house when everyone gets home for the summer. I twitch my hands along the steering wheel as I drive to Scott’s. I haven't seen him or anyone else in weeks. I park my jeep in his driveway next to his car and run inside as fast as I can. Scott must have heard me from inside, because he comes tearing through the front door before I can. We stop in our tracks and just look at each other before breaking out in smiles and tackling each other in as manly a hug as we can manage.

“Hey.” We break apart and greet each other. Three more cars pull up and park on the road behind us. It’s Lydia, Malia, and Liam. Lydia and I have kept in touch the most out of everyone here. I’d hope it’s that way, we are dating. I refused to let our relationship die once we went to college. With Lydia going to MIT and me, well, not, it made things hard. Her academic schedule was so rigorous I often had to stay up until crazy hours in the morning until she was done with homework to talk to her. She skips happily up to me, her beautiful strawberry blonde hair bouncing along her shoulders. I envelope her in a bear hug and watch in front of me Scott and Malia exchanging hugs. “How’s it going?” Lydia asks in a coyly way. “How’s it going? Really? That’s how you want to start this?” I make her laugh. “Yeah,” Our lips meet halfway in a bird-peck sort of a kiss. I’ll save those other kisses for later. “Malia!” I greet my ex-girlfriend. Sure, we used to date, but it’s not at al weird now. We’re best friends. “Stiles!” We grab each other in a hug, Malia being overly powerful as usual and bruising my ribs. I give her a stiff smile when we break apart and go back to my girlfriend. Wow. I never ever thought I would be calling Lydia my girlfriend. I’ve loved her ever since I saw her in the sandbox when we were four years old.
Scott and Liam are too busy chatting away outside to notice the rest of us going inside. I wonder if Liam and Hayden are still a thing. They probably are considering they both still go to Beacon Hills High Ms. McCall greets us like we’re her own children. We practically are considering how much she’s done for us. She’s nursed us all back to health at least once, and I’ve also called her mom more than once. We all sit back and enjoy each other’s company like never before. This time, we don't have to be on guard that some supernatural being is out to get us. This time, we can just be here with each other. No outside drama, and it feels amazing. Like a weight that’s been living on my shoulders ever since Scott was bitten has been lifted. My shoulders feel light as I look around the room at my best friends laughing and talking together. This summer is going to be one to remember.

Baldric’s POV They all go inside, their hearts feeling light. I’m surprised this renowned alpha hasn't sniffed me out yet. But they're all just a bunch of teenagers. They know nothing about what real power is. I turn and go back into the woods from where I came. “Are they together again?” My beta, Cecelia asks. “Yes. But we shall wait to see if any others return. They are, after all, a family.” I turn to look at her curious green eyes. “And a family reunion needs every member present.”

FLASHBACK TO CHRISTMAS BREAK Baldric’s POV
I watch the pack having a meeting through the window of Scott’s living room. Scott, Stiles, Liam, Lydia, Malia, Hayden, and Theo. All of the most valuable players. I hear the crunching of leaves behind me, but I don't have to guess who it is. Cecilia steps beside me. I can hear the fast pace of her heart. It doesn't surprise me, she's always been way too eager. “Anything interesting?” She asks. I wait a moment before replying. “Stiles is the one we need.” She buzzes with excitement. “So you have made a choice then, alpha?” She squeals. I look to my left at her shaking body. Her eyes shake with adrenaline. “Calm yourself, Cecilia. Where are the others?” This questions calms her nerves. I specifically asked her to stay behind and watch the rest of the pack. She obviously let her curiosity get the best of her. I exhale loudly through my nose. “Go and watch them. Now.” She wastes not another moment before dashing off through the woods. I watch the pack again through Scott’s window. The meeting is finished and they start to disperse. I watch Stiles go through his notes and see his concentrated face gaze down at the pages. I can’t deny that Stiles does have a handsome face. Maybe our time together won’t be as difficult as I thought.

FLASHFOWARD TO PRESENT TIME Stiles’s POV The pack all agrees to meet at the movies for some fun at eight, so I pick Lydia up at seven thirty. “Is this a date?” She asks from the passenger seat of my jeep. I smile and she my head. “No. Not with everyone there!” She giggles. God, that’s like music to my ears. “Fine. But you have to promise me to a date sometime in the near future.” I chuckle. “Promise.” I park at the theatre next to Scott’s car and escort Lydia out of the passenger side. Everyone is here already, and Liam laughed at our late entrance. “Too busy making out to get here on time?” Hayden then emerges from the bathroom and takes Liam’s arm. Guess they are still dating. That actually really shocks me. “We were not, for your information.” Lydia speaks in a sassy tone. “Ok!” He acts playfully defensive. “Everyone’s already gotten their seats.” Liam chuckles and takes Hayden inside the theatre with him. “Go, I’ll get us some stuff.” I get my wallet from my back pocket. “Ok, I want a,” “Cherry coke. I know you, Martin, don't think I don't remember.” She blushes at my words. “Ok, just hurry.” She trots along side of Liam and Hayden inside the theatre. I’ve already seen this movie so I know what happens. So I don't bother watching it and get lost in the buttery goodness of this popcorn. “Stiles!” Scott shushes me for chewing too loudly. Lydia ia giggling and looking down at the completely empty bowl of popcorn. “Relax!” I whisper. I stand up and dust off the popcorn pieces that were on my lap. “I’ll get more!” I tell them. Just as I’m bout to leave, an explosion from the screen stops me. “OH! It gets so good in about ten minutes!” “STILES!” They all groan which makes me laugh. I’m about to order more food when I see that all of the attendants that were here before are gone. In fact, everyone that was here has vanished. I’m completely alone in the lobby of the theatre. “Hello?” I call out. Nobody answers. I put back my wallet and take out my phone to call Scott. When it starts ringing, it’s ripped out of my hand from someone behind me. I turn around and see the glowing red eyes of an alpha only inches away from my face. Fear clutches at my chest and that heavy weight returns to my shoulders. His eyes are glowing red, fangs protruding. His face is scarred like he’s been scratched up pretty badly in his human life. His hair is white/blonde and somewhat long, tied into  man-bun on the back of his head. He wears a scratched up leather jacket and dark wash jeans. Something about him makes me rethink trying to run away, I’ll probably get ripped to shreds if I do. He tilts his head to the side and crushes my phone to smithereens in his claws. “Hello, Stiles.” He greets me in a eerie tone. “H-how do you know my name?” I ask of him. He smirks at me. “Why wouldn't I know you, Mieczyslaw Stilinski?” He chuckles. My blood runs cold. Only a very few number of people on this earth know my real name is… That. Abruptly, he brings his claws up and covers my face with a cloth-like material. I feel myself spinning from whatever fumes I’m breathing in, and as suddenly as he brings it to my lips, I’m out.

I wake up in a different location. I’m tied to a metal chair with rope around my wrists. My eyes are having trouble focusing which makes my temples throb. I’m in a small room filled with old waste buckets and greasy tools. It looks like some sort of weird mechanical shop, a really small one. It’s like a big bathroom in here. I look down and see the chair has been welded to the floor and my legs are tied to the legs of it. I sigh loudly through my nose. Why does this crap always happen? What seems like hours later of just sitting there, the iron door swings open. I try to see out into the hallway for a clue to where I am, but I see nothing. A different man than the one who took me comes inside. He has dark red hair and freckles all over his face and neck. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat. His eyes are extremely dark, almost black. He takes an empty bucket from the corner and turns it over, sliding it across the tile floor and plopping down on it in front of me. “You’re not scary.” He simply says. I’m confused as I speak. “What?” “Baldric made you sound… Different.” His voice sounds like he’s in the midst of eating something and has been smoking for fifty years. But he doesn't look older than his mid-twenties. Baldric… That has to be who took me at the movies. My mind then wanders to his choice of clothing. He’s dressed like it’s in the middle of winter. “It’s summer.” He notices my eyes taking in his appearance. He smirks, probably wondering why I’m so brave. I don't even know why I'm so brave. “Not here it’s not.” He stands up from the bucket and kicks it back in the corner, making me jump from the loud echo. And as suddenly as he stands up, he's gone. Where in the hell am I?”

I’m served some dull pudding and crackers later in the day, or night, or whatever time it is. I can’t exactly tell because there are no windows in this room. I try to keep track of the time in between visits to guess what time of the day it is, but just as I get close, there another visit when I assume it’s four o'clock in the morning and I have to start all over. For a few days, they merely keep me alive with a pathetic excuse for food. If they wanted to kill me, they would have done it in the theatre. I’m here for another reason. And finally, Baldric makes his first sighting since I’ve been here. He comes inside with someone else following him. A girl that looks around my age. She’s obviously a werewolf. Her eyes glow every other second from excitement. Baldric wastes no time in coming over to me and grabbing my jaw fiercely in his hand. He examines my face and takes his time doing so. “Well.” He stands up and walks around the chair i’m in. “You’re defiantly not scary, despite what Desmond thinks.” That red head. “If anything, you look like a nerd.” Well, thanks. “Which is exactly why we need you, Stiles.” He stops in front of me and makes intense eye contact. “You’re a smart boy, right? So I can assume that you already know what you’re here for.” I stay silent. “Or maybe not..” He trails off. “You and Scott have been friends for some time now, correct? And so have you and Lydia, your red-headed girlfriend. But Malia, Liam, Hayden, and Theo came along later correct? Tell me, am I getting everything correct so far?” My mind is exploding with the knowledge that he knows so much about the pack. “Let us start with you, Stiles. Myczyslaw Stilinski, son of Noah and Claudia Stilinski, your mother died from frontotemporal dementia which is a shrinkage of the brain that leads to dementia and death. Later became friends with Scott McCall and you both bonded over your interest in creepy things, and your father being a cop came in handy since he would lead you to creepy and interesting things all the time.” He walks in circles around the chair I’m in as he speaks, the other wolf silently watching him and giggling to herself in the corner near the door. “Scott. He was bitten by an alpa by the name of Peter hale, and the two of you have been raining happiness and sunshine ever since, HAVEN’T YOU!?” His eyes glow red and fangs protrude from his vicious lips. “TELL ME NOW, STILES!!” “TELL YOU WHAT?!” I get brave and snap back at him. He turns from me to calm himself. “We’re done for now.” He tells the other wolf. She nods and opens the iron door for him. He doesn't speak anything word as they both silently exit the small room. My throat closes and I feel hot tears streaking down my face. Someone who knows this much information has been watching the pack for quite some time. Fear washes down and across my chest. And I ask myself again… Where the hell am I?

The next day, he has me out of the room I’ve been captive in. I’m in a much larger room with tons of random items. Large metal boxes, wooden crates, oil cans, and empty water jugs. It’s so random and dirty it makes me shake. In the back of my mind I’m wondering why it’s taking the others so long to find me. Baldric is holding my arm firmly in one hand and leading me alongside him. “This is our training room. I hope you will use this well.” He lets go of my arm and I can feel the blood rushing back into it. Next think I know I’m being slammed up against the nearest wall. Baldric’s hot breath hits me in the face like a strong wind. He has me in such a strong grip it’s no use in trying to get away. He brings up a hand and caresses the side of my face, and my brain shuts off my breathing. “If you do this right… I’ll let you sleep somewhere else tonight.” I think back on the past few nights in that chair. My back and my neck throb like I’ve never felt. Anywhere would be an upgrade to that. I shakily nod my head. He grins like the freaking joker. “Very well.” He lets me go and I stretch out my sore back. “Come here now!!” He yells out. I wait to hear a response but nothing comes. But I start seeing people come out of the woodwork. ‘One, two, three..’ I count them in my head. A total of seven emerge and form a circle around Baldric and I. “Stiles, this is my pack. And you are going to train them.” It finally clicks. He knows everyone in the pack. Their history, their traits, their personality. Of course he would choose me if he wants a stronger pack. I’m his new trainer. “They look strong enough to me.” I observe every member here. Wether male or female, they are all perfectly fit. They look like the don't even know what a carb is. “They may look strong, but mentally they are about as useful as a newborn baby.” Baldric speaks. “You will start now.” He simply demands. I rack my brain for something to do. I guess I’ll just go along with this charade until the pack rescues me. “Alrighty then!” I clap my hands together Mr. Miagi style. I spend the day with them training and going over fighting scenarios. I give them scenarios that will never in a million years come up or work, so when they face Scott’s pack they’ll be completely useless. Baldric’s been watching the entire time and he doesn't notice the trash I’m teaching. He obviously knows nothing about combat either.

We do this everyday at the same time everyday for a week. All they do is train. Nobody speaks a word to each other as I call out scenarios to play out. They really are as dumb as Baldric claims them to be. And every night as someone escorts me to my sleeping quarters, I memorize the hallways of this place. It seems like were in large basement of some sort, because I keep seeing stairs going up but never down, and no windows or doors of any kind. My room is down the same hallway as a flight of stairs, and I’m determined to make a run for it. I don't care if Scott is a day from saving me, I’m not staying here another night. Some nights, Baldric will come into my room and spoon me while he sleeps. Whenever I try to Scott away his claws come out and he growls in my ear. Definitely rather be groped by a psychotic freak than be clawed to death.

The next night as I’m being escorted back to my room we pass the stairs, and i decide to go for it. The wolf taking me back is Cecelia. I know this because Baldric often yells at her. She’s the one with the crazy eyes and racing heartbeat. Her grip on my arm is just light enough that if I’m fast I can escape no problem. We pass the staircase. This is my only shot. I try to pick a moment when she’s least expect it, dashing for it as fast as I humanly can. She gasps and screams as I run for it, instantly chasing after me. The hallway isn’t too long and I’m there within seconds. I climb the stairs two at a time and ignore the screaming pain in my leg muscles. It’s a spiral staircase and I’m almost to the top. There’s light at the top and the faint noise of people talking. “HELP!! HELP ME!!’ I scream, hoping someone will hear me. But I’m not quick enough as Cecelia grabs my leg and drags me back down under. She’s careful not to use her nails protruding from her skin as she drags me. We manage to get back down into the hallway as she places a hand over my screaming mouth. She shoves me into my room and locks the dapper before I can even turn around. A hot pain grabs my attention down on my ankle. I look down, seeing the purple swelling there. My body is flowing with too much adrenaline to feel the extent of the injury, but I am one hundred percent certain my ankle is broken. “Just wait until alpha hears about this!” She screeches. “No, wait!!” I stick my hand through the hole in the door where they drop off my food trays. She starts walking away and I think for something to say. “What do you think he’s do to you of he finds out you almost lost me?” She stops dead in her tracks. “You’ll be hurt far worse than I will!” That part is definitely true. I can tell he’s hurt her in the past because of how twitchy she is around him. She comes back to the hole and looks inside at me. She stutters and stumbles for about three minutes before finally speaking. “No one will know about this.” Then she stomps away. I feel myself sliding down against the wall in defeat. My one chance is gone. I don't even know where the hell I am and I’m betting Scott doesn't yet either. I’m guessing my dad and the other deputies are helping with the search. My heart breaks thinking of them searching and coming up with nothing. It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen them. And without realizing it, I’m sobbing. My broken ankle is throbbing and my heart aches just as much. What the hell am I going to do.

The next day in training, Baldric knows something is up. They way Cecelia looks between us and my limping makes him wonder. “Cecelia.” He calls her over. She slowly walks to where he stands, hands behind her back and eyes looking down towards the floor. “What happened to our guest?” She stutters and stammers for an answer. And right as she's about to answer him, I hear gunshots. The sound of multiple shotguns going off inside this big room rings in my ears as I duck towards the floor. My heart hammers in my chest. What now?? “HEY!” Baldric tries to get the attention of his pack but fails. Then, one by one, each members falls with a blast. Blue smoke lingers in the air and familiar faces emerge from them. Scott, Lydia, Malia, Liam, Hayden, Peter, and my dad along with all the other deputies have rifles in their hands. “Stop! Bullets wont stop them!” I shout. Baldric is too distracted by his fading pack to stop me from speaking. “Do you really think I’m dumb enough to let your dad and his deputies use anything other than wolfsbane bullets?” Chris Argent steps onto the scene. My heart is bursting with hope and I find enough strength to stand up and wobble on my broken ankle. “Stiles!” Scott comes to support me along with Lydia. “Hey.” Her eyes are filled with tears as she greets me again. I feel the tears well up in my eyes as I realize I’m being rescued. “Come on, there’s a car outside to take you to the hospital.” Dad says. He pats me on the back as Scott and Lydia help me walk. I watch as the deputies each carry their own werewolf and place them in crates. Chris walks up to Baldric and shoots him in the chest with a wolfsbane bullet. Then I trip, causing me to yell in pain and trip. “I’ve got him.” Scott says to Lydia. He carries me with Lydia following closely behind. I knew they would find me. They’re my pack.