#and i tried to correct her but she just kept making huge generalizations

[utilitycaster]

Hi! This might be a bit of a weird ask (and a rambly one - sorry!) but you're one of the most level-headed and rational fandom members I know and I might need you to slap some sense into me, so to speak, especially considering you've been vocally critical of Marisha's choices for Laudna before. Now I loved the episode and the inner-party conflict in this episode. It was so fun and investing and tbh I've never been as interested in Laudna as a character as during last episode (she just doesn't work for me on several levels) and I do think Marisha did a stellar job RP wise. But something grated against my nerves about how she said OOC that Laudna hasn't lied. Because Laudna has lied. By omission, deflection or otherwise. It cannot all be attributed to Delilah being the pushing force of that. And I feel weird about Marisha (afaik) not acknowledging that. If she said "Laudna feels like she hasn't lied" it would probably be different but the "I still maintain: Laudna hasn't lied. It wasn't Laudna." at the end of the episode after Laura calls Laudna out for the direct lie about the harness feels kinda trying-to-have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too in this regard. I know that Marisha can make decisions that I don't gel with and make characters that can get under my skin in specific ways (and I enjoy that about her!) but idk maybe I have difficulties putting my trust in her with this because I didn't like a lot of her choices for Laudna so far. Anyway. Maybe I just need to hear from you that I'm being stupid about this and that Marisha is going to handle this in a differentiated way. (also highly unrelated but to end on a more positive note I'm excited for you to catch up on fhjy!)

Hey anon! Thank you for all the kind words, and good news! On CR Cooldown Marisha does clarify she means this as "Laudna is not lying because, whether or not it is correct, this is what she believes". I'm going to talk more below, but hopefully that helps.

For what it's worth, I tend to not put a huge amount of emphasis on things the cast says OOC as compared to what's happening in game, for a number of reasons, and advise others do the same. I think it's really easy for those statements to become outdated or outright contradict the text (remember when people kept bringing up Laura on like, one of the first 4SD episodes saying Imogen tries not to read people's minds and it's like. ok but in canon, she does this ALL the time so this is a useless argument?), the cast is working off more information than we are slash might deliberately be hiding info from each other, and also anything said right after they break is often a really emotional statement that they, as Marisha did here, will immediately either clarify or recant after a few minutes to, well, cool down.

The lies of omission thing is also incredibly rich as a source of conflict here, particularly between Imogen and Laudna, which, as someone who's been very frustrated with a lack of conflict on that front, is very exciting. What happens when you have someone who, in classic warlock fashion, hews to the law of lying (I didn't say anything literally false!) and not the spirit (lying by omission that Delilah was the cause) and who also makes promises she's unable to keep; and she's in a relationship with someone who is exceptionally sensitive to lies by omission, lying in general, and kind of has trouble with people simply not revealing their true intentions? I think Laudna is so suggestible that she's a liability, and the party just found out, and that's the dangerous thing - if she were malicious and lying maybe they could pick it up and this would have an easy fix, but she really does believe it will be different this time and Delilah isn't misleading her for power (Delilah is 100% misleading her for power), and that makes it much more complicated. It's very juicy.

[opossum-by-night]

Update on the friends' dog situation, with a sort-of maybe positive ending!!!!!!

(TW animal abuse)

So we went over there to play DnD for the first time in forever and honestly the situation is genuinely desperate. Like, this dog was fucking full-on Cujo snarling when they messed with the clips on her crate, and in response to that they "corrected" her with her "vibration" collar, which she visibly recoiled from. 🙃 At one point she was just regular growling in the crate - I don't even remember why - and they kept "correcting" her over and over again. I literally had to stop looking at any of them because it was making me fucking nauseous to watch.

But later on, when the dog was out of the crate and honestly acting pretty fine overall, she was standing on the couch next to my partner and he reached over her or something (I wasn't looking at them) and all of a sudden she completely flipped her shit and went into this full-on snarling snapping panic. I think her teeth made contact with his hand, but she didn't break skin and it didn't seem like she was trying to bite, just panicking. (I will say that he does not have a good sense for when he's accidentally overwhelming or intimidating an animal, and tends to sort of "trap" them unintentionally with his body language, so I have a feeling that's what happened. Still, a huge overreaction from a dog with an obviously very fried nervous system.) So of course, both of the humans immediately started screaming at her to go in her crate and zapping her with the collar, just generally freaking her out even worse. She did go right back in her crate, thank fucking god, and they finally left her alone for a blessed "time out."

Now the positive twist of this whole horrific story is that after this, they started lamenting what a "brat" and a "terror" she is, and at one point the girl finally fucking asked me for advice!!!!!!!!! 🎉🍾🥂🎇

Now I was so excited for this opportunity and I tried so hard to be SO fucking nice and understanding and not chew their heads off, because I could not waste this precious opportunity!!! I explained that by punishing the dog every time she expresses that she's uncomfortable (e.g. growling), they will teach her to start skipping the warning and going straight to what gets results - y'know, like having full-blown panic freakouts when someone leans over her too far on the couch, or snarling like a hyena when you touch her crate latch!!! Because you're not helping her calm down or be less scared, you're just forcing her to shut the fuck up or else!!! AND THE GIRL UNDERSTOOD!!!!!! She actually said "yeah, that makes sense"!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

And I tried to explain how the dog probably feels like she has zero control or autonomy in her whole entire life because they do nothing but give her orders like a fucking US Marine, so of course as soon as she starts "behaving" with one thing she starts "being a brat" about something else!!!! Because they bought a fucking backyard bred high-energy working breed puppy for their one-bedroom apartment, and they're treating her like Hannibal Lecter so yeah duh she's gonna go buttfuck insane!!!!!

I can't 100% blame them, because they paid all this money for a "professional" trainer who's apparently an authoritarian piece of shit, so like, they think they're doing what they're supposed to do. I tried to encourage them to find an actual qualified trainer, but idk if that'll happen. If only because they don't know what the fuck they're looking for and apparently have no interest in doing the research for themselves. But they at least seemed to agree it would be a good idea to have someone come to their house to help them, instead of sending her back to the shock collar asshole for a board-and-train, which would probably fuck her up even more irreparably.

But seeing the fucking dots connecting in the girl's brain when I explained the growling thing was genuinely such a relief it was almost like a high lmao. Because I think that's the thing that really would've fucked up this dog beyond saving. Whatever other trauma they cause her can at least be worked on, but she's already way too willing to bite and it's almost impossible to re-teach a dog to growl once it's been totally punished out of them.

I'm honestly so proud of myself for explaining it in a way that 1. got through to them and 2. didn't piss them off or make them cry. There's still so much fucked up shit going on, but I actually feel like maybe I made a difference and oh my god I'm so relieved!!!!

[asystemerror]

📝Share a snippet of an unposted WIP, with or without context.

Here's a writing one I did for class a while back! It was meant to be a backstory/flashback for one of my characters in a story my friend and I are writing called, Desiderium!

Neil is essentially a spirit medium who's been born with the ability to see ghosts due to a "family curse". Because of this, he's picked up a fair share of curious ghouls over the years. Mrs. Adlehorn included haha. I was hoping with this short story I could make her less of an antagonistic character as she is now in the story and more of one who simply lets her emotions get the better of her when protecting people she cares about.

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

If Mrs. Adlehorn could say anything about the afterlife, it was that it slowly got duller and duller as the years went on. Her poor house had slowly become empty over the years as fewer people became interested in living in a house like hers. It was ironically fitting, she supposed. The liveliness of her life had seemed to slowly fade as time passed and her memory had slowly faded from the public's mind. She had a sense this would happen, of course, yet seeing time pass without her still felt strange and off putting. Like something she'd hear on a late-night radio show than her actual current experience. 

She tried not to think too much about it, it served her nothing but worry after all. However, it was hard as her mind and soul drifted aimlessly around her house. She spared only quick glances towards the all too familiar rooms of the house, occasionally taking note of a new spiderweb or dust that was plaguing one of the many disregarded pieces of furniture. Those were normal occurrences around the house. What wasn't was the creaking footsteps that came from her parlor.

It seemed that she had a visitor of sorts, a young lad who had wandered into the house for whatever reason. Mrs. Adlehorn had never been good at guessing ages, but from his general appearance, she'd guess he was maybe 10 or so. Perhaps coming here was a dare among school friends? Youth exploring abandoned places? Whatever the reason the visitors seemed to leave as quickly as they came, often freaked out by the eerie quiet of the house. Yet, she couldn't sense any trace of discomfort from this child. In fact, If she didn't know better, she'd say they were looking directly at her.

"Hello, Miss."

She jumped at that. As a ghost, she usually wasn't able to be seen - let alone addressed by most people. She glanced around, double-checking that the child was, in fact, addressing her. When the empty room confirmed this, she gave an answer. "Hello there. Who might you be?"

"My name is Neil." They answered. "I came here because people kept telling me about a ghost that's seen in the upstairs window. I wanted to see if the stories about it were true."

"Oh? Are you satisfied with what you've found so far?" She questioned, curious about how aware the lad was of his 6th sense.

"I think so... I didn't expect to find anything if I'm being honest." He muttered. "Ghost stories are usually made to scare younger kids. I didn't think anyone was actually going to be in here...If that makes sense."

"What do you think you're going to do now?" She asked, accepting the explanation from the child for now. She didn't necessarily expect any huge revelations from the child. It was, however, slightly humorous how shocked they were at seeing a ghost. She would have guessed he'd seen at least one other spirit before herself, even if just at a quick glance.

"I think I maybe want to try to figure out why there are so many ghost stories around this place." He said, still sounding unsure in his own statements. "Surely there's a reason right? Now I'm thinking it can't all be stuff to scare little kids if you're here."

"That's correct. What a smart child you are." Mrs. Adlehorn said miming a small pat on the lad's head. "However, I'm not sure you're old enough to hear that story yet. Perhaps another day?" Or when the poor kid was older. She didn't think it was appropriate to explain what exactly happened in the building quite yet.

[darthmaclunkey]

🦷🔪🍄 for the ask prompt!

ahh yay thank you for asking!!

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on ok, writing-related life hacks I've tried to make everyday practice this year: - writing every single day (I track it in my habit planner along with my silly little duolinguo lessons and daily step counts). I read stephen king's 'on writing' recently and he recommends doing 2000 words a day, so I'm trying to build up to that, but at the moment I'm mostly just doing whatever writing I can - even if it's just bashing stuff into the notes app on my phone before I fall asleep. - when I first write something I just vomit it all out into a pages document, then when I want to polish it up, I open a new document on the other side of the screen and start copying it over, typing word by word - this means I can correct and shuffle around as I go, I've found it really helps with flow and pacing. - this is going to make me sound like a huge nerd, but I've also started carrying around a vocab book. it's a lil pocket sized notebook where, if I come across a word I like/hadn't heard before, I can note down the definition. then when I'm looking for inspiration I can have a flip through my notes.

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project? not necessarily a weird topic, per se, but the other month I was looking up synonyms but kept mixing up my words and typing 'symptom' into duckduckgo instead. so my search history for a solid week was like 'happy symptom', 'tired symptom' - and I wouldn't clock the typo each time until I wondered why all the results were from the nhs or webmd 🫠

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings I have a lot of reylo headcanons, but the one I keep going back to is the idea that rey can be just as socially isolated as kylo is, and how their shared but different experiences of loneliness and awkwardness drive their relationship (I like my bittersweet slow burns) I also had a silly headcanon for one of my own fics: it was a very angsty, pining, enemies-to-lovers-to-enemies story told exclusively from rey's pov, and there was a scene where kylo shows up through the force bond with a bad injury, which she tries to patch up, but he won't tell her anything about it. which was the whole point of the scene - it was really just a way of conveying a breakdown in their relationship. but I thought that I really needed to know myself how he got that injury even if it wasn't disclosed in the fic. so I came up with an elaborately comic & slapstick backstory where general hux got so bored in a first order meeting that he went feral and stabbed kylo, because we've all been in work meetings like that, I think. unfortunately I was so amused by this idea that it impacted my writing of the actual scene.

thank you!! ❤️

[soliloquyepistolary]

What do I need to know about my 3d reality? What message am I not fathoming?

In the dream, I was the pharmacist in charge in a pharmacy I didn’t recognise. A young boy who was a customer turned into a dragon and flew off. There were three girls on the floor helping me out with customers. They looked like they were from the zoomer generation, with short hair like they were hipsters or neurodivergent. One of the girls said the boy had come up to the counter and seemed drunk (they said this as though it was no big deal and he seemed fine), he asked for his ADHD meds and they helped him out. The girl says they followed the correct procedure for ADHD patients as specified in the work manual, which provides guidance in order to approach them in a certain way. But the mother had came to tell us off about what happened to her son. I was extremely sad.  I felt the burn of disappointment at how things played out. I was so, so emotional and I was tearing up over this situation as it was being relayed to me. (Trying to help, being misunderstood, being blamed, disappointing others and yourself, feeling responsible for things out of your control, distressed over an impossible situation)

In the dream, I was compounding a special prescription. I made basmati rice with diazepam tablets mixed in for an Indian couple. I followed the recipe/instructions very carefully and I used a spade to mix it together. There was a huge, huge heap of it. I tried to pack some in a sigma box but there was just so so much and I was unsure how the couple were going to transport it home. It was in a trailer like the ones at TAFE. I was trying to problem solve, should we just treat it like potting mix in the propagation tent? Someone said we can just leave if here and cover it up. I thought of the tarp we put on potting mix to keep cats and other things out to prevent contamination of soil I wanted to have some, I asked half jokingly if I could take some home. No one responded. There was no thanks and I was used to it, I was resigned to it (Going above and beyond for little in return, bending over backwards, always being the person who wants to help)

My 3D reality is no coincidence. Sure, I am distracting myself but there is a reason I feel no qualms about working as much as I am. I need to feel like I am making a difference. I need to feel like I am helping, that I’m useful, that what I’m doing matters. It doesn’t anymore but how am I supposed to let go? Am I doing it right? I control this reality I know... Today I made a dispensing error and I kept thinking, this patient is just an NPC. She’ll figure it out. I knew it was a ‘test’. (I was also thinking maybe she doesn’t even exist). And she comes back without much intervention by me and before MN comes in as well.. I wanted to avoid a customers and got to check packs in the last hour, allowing me to not come into contact with her.

[mueritos]

more about possible autism thoughts...

i didnt mention it til now but my last therapy appt went kind of weird. it was obvious that my therapist doesnt have a well rounded knowledge on autism, and her examples were of the “low functioning”, and she kept saying that I would be “high functioning” and therefore dont have autism/autistic traits. again, she was using very outdated terms and language that ive learned from autistic folks to be generally frowned upon. having functioning labels pushed on to me, along side not really getting a word in to what i was feeling, make me feel like there was no point in even trying to bring up the autistic traits i related to. im still struggling to understand myself and why now its all catching up to me, the anxiety and the sensory issues ive had, the social exhaustion and irritability...wouldn’t it have been more productive to talk about the reasons why i felt connected to autistic experiences rather than go through every way i dont? or, at the very least, why my therapist thinks I dont despite me feeling like the person i am in office is highly curated just for that social context.

sigh. either way, she gave me hw to keep track of my symptoms or things I notice to b more autistic but like. man that whole session really turned me off. now i dont even want to keep figuring this out with her if its just going to be weird. and im not even saying that i know for sure that i have autism! i just wanted a session that felt safe and welcoming to question myself based on my own experiences. and it just wasnt. which is weird because i never had an issue with her til now.

anyway. my classes started today but i didnt have any actual classes until tomorrow. and i like school, i really do, but now that im more aware of my sensory issues and my social needs, im starting to feel more anxiety than dread. like how loud will spaces be? will i let myself rock in public? will i have time to transition better between classes and social events? its just mostly anxiety about going outside and being seen. idk, it freaks me out. wear a mask and feel good that no ones looking at my face, or get stared at for wearing one when everyone else isnt. idk idk it all just sucks in my brain rn and maybe it wont be as bad. but i really dont like this limbo im in. I love being alone and i really crave it more than ever, but what if its more anxiety than social exhuastion? but i still get exhuasted even after being with people all day, especially if i dont have my low sensory hours. idk idk ughhh its just so frustrating trying to understand myself, especially because now i feel weird about going back to therapy. i wud appreciate any insight or tips for how to regulate better <3

[that-spider-witch]

On “Dead” Cultures and Closed Spiritual Practices: Why Colonialism Is Still A Problem.

Let me start this by saying that, as far as my knowledge of Paganism and Polytheism as a whole goes, I’m what the internet witch community calls a “Baby Witch”. I’m stating this out of the gate because I know there will be lots of people, including witches who have more experience on the craft than me, who might decide to ignore what I have to say based on that fact alone, stating that I’m not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion about this.

Here’s the kicker: I’m a ‘baby witch’, yes, but I’m also a twenty-six year old Venezuelan woman. I’m an adult. I’m Latina. I’m a Christian-raised Pagan,but I’m also a Latinoamerican woman over all other things including that. I grew up on this culture, these are my roots. It is because of this background than I’m writing this post today.

Looking through the “Paganism” and “Witchcraft” tags of this website, I’ve seen a few posts throwing indigenous deities and spirits’ names around on lists alongside deties of open cultures. Yes, you can know better by doing your own research and not going by what just a random Tumblr user wrote on one post (as I hope its the case with everyone on this website), but the fact that pagan beginners are still getting fed misinformation is still worrisome to me.

There’s nothing like reading a so-called expert putting Ixchen (Maya), Xolotl (Nahuatl) and Papa Legba (Vodou) on the same damn list as Norse, Hellenic and Kemetic deities and tagging it on the tags aimed at beginners who might not know better to truly ruin your morning. I’m not mentioning user names here: If you know then you know.

To quote @the-illuminated-witch on her very good post about Cultural Appropriation: 

“Cultural appropriation is a huge issue in modern witchcraft. When you have witches using white sage to “smudge” their altars, doing meditations to balance their chakras, and calling on Santa Muerte in spells, all without making any effort to understand the cultural roots of those practices, you have a serious problem.

When trying to understand cultural appropriation in witchcraft, it’s important to understand the difference between open and closed magic systems. An open system is one that is open to exchange with outsiders — both sharing ideas/practices and taking in new ones. In terms of religion, spirituality, and witchcraft, a completely open system has no restrictions on who can practice its teachings. A closed system is one that is isolated from outside influences — usually, there is some kind of restriction on who can practice within these systems.”

A counter-argument I’ve seen towards this when someone wants to appropiate indigenous deities and spirits is to use the “dead culture” argument: Extinct cultures are more eligible for use by modern people of all stirpes. It is a dead culture and dead religion. It would be one thing if some part of the culture or religion was still alive, being used by modern descendants, but the culture died out in its entirety and was replaced, right? They were all killed by colonization, they are ancient history now, right?

Example: “If white people are worshipping Egyptian deities now, then why can’t I worship [Insert Aborigen Deity Here]?”

To which I have two things to say:

Ancient Egypt’s culture was open and imperialistic, meaning they wanted their religion to be spread. This is why Kemetism is not Cultural Appropriation, despite what some misinformed people might tell you. Similar arguments can also be made for the Hellenic and the Norse branches of Paganism, both practiced by people who aren’t Greek/Norse.

Who are you to say which cultures are “dead” and which are not?

Religious practices such as Vodou and Santería certainly aren’t dead, not that it keeps some Tumblr users from adding Erzuli as a “goddess” on their Baby Witch post, something that actual Vodou practitioners have warned against.

Indigenous cultures such as the Maya and the Mapuche aren’t dead, despite what the goverment of their countries might tell you. The Mapuche in particular have a rich culture and not one, but two witchcraft branches (The Machi and the Kalku/Calcu). Both are closed pagan practices that the local Catholic Church has continuously failed to assimilate and erase, though sadly not for lack of trying:

“The missionaries who followed the Spanish conquistadors to America incorrectly interpreted the Mapuche beliefs regarding both wekufes and gualichos. They used the word wekufe as a synonym for ideas of the devil, demons, and other evil or diabolical forces. This has caused misunderstanding of the original symbolism and has changed the idea of wekufe right up to the present day, even amongst the Mapuche people.”

For context, the Wefuke are the Calcu’s equivalent of the Familiar, as well as reportedly having more in common with the Fae than with demons anyway.

This and other indigenous religions are Closed because it is wrong for foreigners to just come and take elements from marginalized groups whom are still fighting to survive and that they weren’t born into. To just approppiate those things would be like spitting in their faces, treating them and their culture like a commodity, a shiny thing, a unique thing to be used like paint to spruce up your life or be special.

I know some of you are allergic to the word “Privilege”, but on this situation there really ain’t a better word to explain it. You weren’t born here, you don’t know what it is like, you are only able to see the struggle from an outsider’s point of view.

If a belief or practice is part of a closed system, outsiders should not take part in it. And with how many practices there are out there which are open for people of all races, there is really no excuse for you to do it.

Why Colonization Is Not “Ancient History”

If you have kept reading all this so far, you are probably wondering “Ok, but what does Colonization has to do with any of this?”

The answer? Everything.

With the general context of culture appropriation out of the way, let me tell you about why the whole “dead culture” argument rubs me the wrong way: Here in Venezuela, we have a goddess called Santa Maria de la Onza, or Maria Lionza for short, whom’s idol statue I have been using to illustrate this little rant. If you happen to know any Spanish, you might recognize the name as a derivative of Santa Maria, aka the Virgin Mary, and you are mostly correct: Her true indigenous name is theorized to have been Yara.

And I say “theorized” because it is a subject of hot debate whether she was really ever called that or not: Her original name, the name by which she was adored and worshipped by our ancestors, might have been forever lost to history.

That’s the legacy of colonization for you: Our cultures were stolen from us, and what they couldn’t erase they instead tried to assimilate. Our ancestors were enslaved, their lands and homes stolen, their artwork and literary works destroyed: The Maya and the Aztec Empire were rich in written works of all kinds, ranging from poetry to history records to medicine, and the Spaniards burned 99% of it, on what is probably one of the most tragic examples of book burning in history and one that people rarely ever talk about. 

People couldn’t even worship their own gods or pass their knowledge of them to their children. That’s why Maria Lionza has such a Spanish Catholic-sounding name, and that’s why we can’t even be sure if Yara was her name or not: The Conquistadors couldn’t steal our goddess from us, so they stole her name instead. Catholics really have a thing with trying to assimilate indigenous goddesses with the Virgin Mary, as they tried to do the same with the Pachamama.

On witchy terms, I’d define Maria Lionza as both a deity and a land spirit: Most internet pages explaining her mention the Sorte mountain as her holy place, but it is more along the lines that she is the mountain. 

You’d think that, with Venezuela and other Latinoamerican countries no longer being colonies, we’d be able to worship our own deities including her, right?

As far as a lot of Catholics seem to think and act, apparently we are not.

The Catholics here like to go out of their way to shame us, to call us “cultists”, to ostracize us, with a general call to “refrain from those pagan beliefs” because they go against the Catholic principles. Yes, the goddess with the Catholic-sounding name, a name she happens to share with a Catholic deity, apparently goes “against Catholic principles”. You really can’t make this shit up. (Linked article is in Spanish)

This is just an act of colonization out of many, of not wanting to stop until the culture they want to destroy is gone. Don’t believe for a second that this is really their God’s will or anything like that, they are just trying to finish what years of enslavement and murder couldn’t. They might not be actively killing us anymore, but they still want us dead.

So no, colonization is not some thing that has long passed and now only exist on history textbooks: It is still happening to this day. It is by treating it as old history that they can keep doing it, and it is by pushing the narrative that our indigenous cultures are “dead cultures” that they try to erase our heritage.

Because we are not dead. We are still here, we are alive, we have survived and we’ll keep on surviving, and our gods and goddesses are not yours to take.

¡Chao! 🐈

[latte-fairytaekwoon]

Bad Behavior (Kang Yeosang and Choi San) Rated

Pairing: Dilf Sugar Daddy! Kang Yeosang × Younger Sugar Baby! Reader (Female) × Dilf Sugar Daddy! Choi San

Genre: Smut, Slight Angst, Dilf/Sugar Daddy AU.

Summary: After coming back and finding out their beloved princess misbehaved, Yeosang and San must remind her to not cross them again.

Word Count: 3.6K

Warnings: Aged up/Older ateez (but age differences are still within legal boundaries). Sugar daddy × sugar baby relationship. Poly relationship. Degradation, exhibitionism, voyeurism, edging, bondage, slight sensory play, orgasm denial, oral (male receiving), fingering, spanking, hair pulling, unprotected sex (always use protection), breeding kink, daddy kink. Dom! Yeosang, Dom! San, Sub! Reader

Taglist: @little-precious-baby @galaxteez @multidreams-and-desires @yunhofingers @yunhoiseyecandy @deja-vux @brie02 @hanatiny (not sure if you wanted to be tagged in Yeosang content that feat. other members), @couchpotatoaniki @daniblogs164 @a-soft-hornytiny @yunsangoveryonder @nanamarkie @minhyukmyluv @leoninadecorazones

✿*:･ﾟﾟ･:*✿✿*:･ﾟﾟ･:*✿✿*:･ﾟﾟ･:*✿✿*:･ﾟﾟ･:*✿

Yeosang sat calmly on the chair leaned against the wall, hands delicately placed on his lap as he listened to the desperate whines echoing through the room. His eyes were hardly blinking as he watched his friend press the wand vibrator further into the small, sensitive button of the young female. Her skin was heated, face flushed, cheeks burning. No matter how much she writhed underneath the man standing over her, she was still unable to free her wrists, which were bound by the ropes they had tied up to the bed posts, and the male who was currently edging her as he pleased made sure she kept her hips and legs with the help of his strong arms.

Taking notice of how her thighs began trembling and wanted to clench together, Yeosang quickly spoke up:

"San move the vibrator away from Y/N, she's about to cum."

Even though she had been blindfolded, she could practically feel the sadistic smile on San's face that sent shivers down her spine everytime she saw it. She threw her head back against the pillow, grunting loudly in frustration when yet another orgasm was merciless was taken away from her, leaving her in utter disillusion.

"Look at how cute she looks Yeosang, bucking her hips up into the air like a needy bitch." San let out a snicker as he released part of his hold on her lower half to watch as her body practically pleaded for his touch once more.

"How pathetic. Maybe you should have thought twice before going out without your daddies' permission to that cheap club and have your body groped by some lowlife douche."

With an annoyed click of his tongue, San gripped the end of her chin and tilted it slightly towards him.

"Well? Was it worth it? Did you enjoy having his dirty hands touching you? I hope it was worth it you little bitch."

Releasing his grip on her chin, Y/N then let out a tiny shriek when she felt the palm of his hand strike against her left cheek, leaving her stunned momentarily.

"I can't even look at you, let alone want to touch you after knowing someone else defiled you." If the silk material wasn't rendering her blind, she'd be able to see the disgusted look on San's face as he pictured the younger man in question touching and feeling up his prized possession.

"San, I understand that you are very upset and disappointed at our little princess, but slapping her like a common whore is not a proper punishment." Yeosang's eyebrows furrowed significantly as he witnessed the appalling incident.

"Oh don't be too soft on her Sangie. If she's going to act like a common whore, then we have to treat her as one. Besides...."

He let out a low chuckle as he traced the outline of her lower lip with his thumb.

"Our princess likes being treated roughly. Why do you think she went out and disobeyed us? She probably wanted to get us mad so we'd treat her like this. Isn't that right babygirl?"

Y/N let out a shuddering gasp when she felt San's hand wrap around her neck, making her swallow harshly and hold her own breath even though he wasn't even cutting off her oxygen. Hearing her other sugar daddy sigh softly, she trembled even more when she discerned his footsteps coming towards the bed, stopping right at one of the corners were one of the ropes were tied to. She released the breath she was holding when San's hand was removed from her neck by Yeosang, who although having a stern look, was still very calm in his demeanor.

"She misbehaved, yes, but I'm sure she's very sorry about her bad behavior. Am I correct sweetheart?" Yeosang shifted his attention to her.

"Y-yes." She responded promptly.

"Yes what?" Yeosang raised an eyebrow.

"Yes daddy. I'm very sorry for behaving so badly." She corrected herself, remembering the way Yeosang liked having her respond.

With a hint of a smile, he lightly caressed her cheek, a sign that he was indeed pleased with her.

"Well then....why don't you show us how sorry you are baby?"

Feeling the tight rope being loosened up, Y/N's hands dropped to her stomach when they were finally freed from their confinement. The blindfold soon was also peeled off and she was graced by the sight of Yeosang's beautiful face peering down at her. Cupping the side of her cheek, Yeosang bent over so he could tenderly place a kiss on her. He was so gentle yet zealous with his kiss, Y/N found herself losing her breath the more he intensified their kiss. She didn't hesitate to part her mouth when his tongue swiped over her upper lip, she allowed him to take advantage as he wanted, wet muscle roaming all around her cavern. Just as they were getting lost in their passion, they were soon reminded they weren't alone when the other male cleared his throat rather exaggerated, his eyes elongating themselves even more as he watched the scene unfold in front of him. Reluctant to break away from his dear sugar baby, Yeosang nonetheless took a step back.

"Now honey, Sannie here was very hurt by what he calls your betrayal."

San crossed his arms and let out an angered puff of air.

"Why don't you make it up to him? Show him how sorry you are?" Yeosang suggested, although Y/N knew it was more of a command.

Propping herself into all fours, she crawled over to the other side of the bed where San was. She tried reaching for his zipper, but San retracted himself away before she could even touch him.

"I don't know if I want a dirty slut's mouth sucking my cock. Who knows what else she's put in there?" He sneered at her, which made Y/N look down in shame.

Shaking his head, Yeosang walked over and patted his friend on the shoulder.

"San, stop being that way. Our Y/N is a good girl and she wants to make up for what she did. And I know for a fact you really enjoy having her suck you off."

San bit down at his bottom lip, enticed by the thought of his favorite doll's mouth stuffed full with his cock.

"Plus look at her, she wants your cock in her mouth too." Yeosang whispered softly in his ear.

Looking back down at the younger female, San took in her eyes that were widened like a deer's and staring up at him with a yearning. Although he made up his mind to give in, purely for his own satisfaction, he was going to have fun with it first.

"You want to show me you're sorry by sucking my cock babygirl?" San tilted his head down at her.

She quickly nodded her head, which displeased the other male.

"Words princess. Those lips of yours aren't just there to adorn your pretty face, now speak up or I'll take away your ability to speak." Yeosang gave her the first warning of the night.

"Yes, I want to show my daddy how sorry I am. Will daddy let me suck his huge cock?" She ended her inquiry by poking her tongue out to wet her lips.

With a totally smug grin, San started to unzip his pants.

"Hmmmm I don't know if you truly deserve to suck off my cock, after all, it's a superior cock to all the other one's you've had, aside from Yeosang's." He added, to which his friend couldn't help but smirk at.

"So why don't you beg first and then maybe I'll think about it?" But San and Yeosang both knew he'd end up face fucking the girl on the bed.

"Please daddy, let me suck your cock. I know I've acted like a total slut, but please use my mouth as you wish. Fuck yourself on my face until you make a mess of me."

With a satisfied gaze, San didn't hesitate to strip himself out of his pants, revealing that he had not worn any underwear underneath at all. Getting a peak over at Yeosang's disgruntled look, San could only shrug.

"We both know we'd end up fucking her either way so what was the point?"

Noticing that Y/N seemed to brighten up at his words, San was quick to tear down any illusions she had.

"Don't get ahead of yourself missy. Just cause I said we'd fuck you, it doesn't mean we're going to let you cum."

She couldn't help but pout her lips when he shut her down so cruelly. Resting a palm on the top of her head, San grabbed the base of his erect member and tapped the head along her upper lip.

"Maybe if you suck me off real good, I might think about it."

Lips parting around his cock, Y/N hummed as San sunk his length deeper inside her mouth. He sucked in a deep breath and then released a heavy groan, head tilting back as he slowly rolled his hips forward. Y/N generously opened her mouth to make way for his entire cock to slide in and out of her. San started a slow pace at first, wanting to savor the feeling of her wet mouth engulfing his entire shaft.

"Shit, you always treat me so well." He said in a raspy voice when he felt Y/N start suckling around his length.

"Told you she was our good little girl." Yeosang spoke up from the other side of the bed, watching in earnest as his friend was getting his cock sucked by their sugar baby. Feeling the atmosphere get heated, Yeosang started unbuttoning his dress shirt, peeling it open enough for his rock hard abs to peek out, a sight very few got to behold. He ran a hand down his thigh, resisting the urge to whip his own member out and jerk off to the scene in front of him. As much as he wanted to, he had a lot of self control and he'd much rather have Y/N wrap her own hands around his cock. Or better yet, he'd rather pound it into her pussy.

San continued to let our groan after groan, his hips starting to become more aggressive in their movements. With a hand gripping the back of her head, he forced her face down until she was gagging all around his shaft. When he released her, she only managed to take a deep breath before he was bucking his hips up into her mouth in a continuous motion.

"Oh God- yes that's right. Suck my cock like the good whore you are."

Y/N felt herself clench around nothing when he heard San speak up above her. Hollowing her cheeks even further, one of her hands slid up San's thigh and then cupped his balls. That action had him throwing his head back as he drove himself into her mouth more roughly.

"Oh fuck babygirl, you're driving me insane."

If she could, Y/N would have smiled at the praises San was now bestowing upon her. She made sure to squeeze and fondle his balls as she knew he'd like, further heightening the pleasure he was feeling. She was so concentrated and focused on sucking San off that she didn't realize Yeosang had leaned closer towards them. One of his hands delicately came up to caress his baby's ass, fingertips brushing across her soft skin and creeping closer to her tiny hole. With a sly smile, he plunged his middle finger inside her, wiggling it slightly before curling it up and rubbing it on her hood.

"Yeosang-" San growled when he was made aware of what was happening only because when Yeosang started pushing his finger inside Y/N's pussy, she had given him a particularly long suck that caught him off guard, nearly throwing him over the edge.

Smiling unapologetically, Yeosang merely added a second finger into her hole, using them to spread her folds apart.

"She's mine too and I get to play with her however I want."

Although muffled due to San's cock, Y/N was moaning wildly as Yeosang swirled and circled his fingers into her, his thumb playing close attention to her clit.

"My cute little doll for me to play with." He finished saying as he continued to finger her hole.

"Yeah? Well right now I'm going to paint this little doll's face with my cum. Make a mess on her."

Holding her head in place, San shut his eyes and through gritted teeth began to recklessly fuck himself against her face, his tip hitting the back of her throat every time he pushed back in. As soon as his cock twitched, San pulled himself out and quickly began pumping his length. Making sure to get as close as possible, San groaned in ecstasy when sputters of his cum started pouring out and landing on Y/N's face. Yeosang himself whined lowly as he watched the white liquid trickle down her forehead, cheeks and even her nose. Whatever fell close to her mouth was quickly cleaned up by her tongue, further pleasing the male she just brought to his climax.

"Oh you're such a dirty girl." He grinned at her.

Knowing his friend wasn't done with her quite yet, Yeosang slipped his fingers that were still lodged in her heat out. Bringing them up to his mouth, he licked it all clean as he saw how San began turning her so her ass was now facing him.

"You sucked me off like a champ baby, but you know my hard on is difficult to get rid of."

She did indeed knew, having been used over and over by solely him in just one night. It seemed he was insatiable when it came to her, never leaving without at least making sure they came 4 to 6 times. If Yeosang was added to the equation, then it'd be less, but only because it would get more rough, kinky and he'd insist on not pushing their precious princess too far.

Y/N eagerly pushed her ass up as far as she could, wiggling it a little just to put on a show for San, which he noticed.

"Does the little slut now want to get fucked from behind?" San teased, his hardening member poking at one of her cheeks.

"Please Daddy." She made sure to remember the manners Yeosang had taught her, the latter smiling proudly that she remembered the training he'd given her.

"All right, but only cause you said please."

They both moaned out, one from the overwhelming feeling of his member being gripped tightly and the other from having her walls stretched out so deliciously. Y/N couldn't get comfortable just yet, as there was still an extra pair of eyes watching them and he was now beginning to strip himself out of his clothes, his eyes peering down at the younger female so intensely.

"San, quit playing around and fuck her, but make sure she doesn't cum."

Before Y/N could get a chance to say anything, any words about to come out of her mouth were strangled out when the man behind her started pounding his cock into her core. His hands were gripping down harshly on her skin, using her ass as leverage to push himself back inside her even more deeper. Yeosang stood to the side watching all this with an eerily serene and pleased smirk. As much as he loved punishing and fucking their babygirl himself, he preferred and enjoyed more watching San carry out his orders and punish her instead. San may be the one who mostly took action, but it was always at Yeosang's commands. He was the true mastermind behind everything that happened in the bedroom. His cock was painfully hard as he reveled in the sight of seeing his friend's cock being driven inside Y/N's pussy.

"You enjoying this you fucking sadist?" San snarled as he noticed the way Yeosang was staring. Wanting to toy around with Yeosang for a bit, he cupped a bit of Y/N's hair in his hand before yanking on it so her face would look up at Yeosang.

Smiling with no remorse, Yeosang chuckled under his breath.

"More than you'll ever comprehend. Now can you please add a little bit more spice in this? Make it hard for our princess to not cum."

Having the perfect idea in mind, San used the free hand that wasn't gripping her hair to come down and spank one of her ass cheeks.

"F-fuck!" Y/N cried out as her body jolted forward.

"You heard Yeosang. Don't you dare cum at all baby." He warned her as his hand landed 2 more smacks across her skin.

Y/N's legs began trembling under San. The combination of his hips snapping his cock deep in her plus his hand striking her ass was becoming unbearable to withstand. She wanted to cum so badly, especially after hours of being edged and toyed around with before. Her eyes looked over to Yeosang, silently pleading him to allow her to give into her much anticipated release. But he remained unmovable, he just continued to watch her as his hand slowly stroked his shaft.

"Please daddy....." She whimpered in a rather pathetic manner, trying hard not to clench around San's dick.

When Yeosang moved towards her, she thought that maybe she'd get what she wanted, but instead she shuddered when he suddenly gripped her face harshly.

"I told you time and time again that I want you to use your words, but it seems you just don't get it. So why don't we try to fix that?"

Releasing her cheeks rather harshly, Yeosang looked over to San.

"San, do me a favor and shut her up for a while. I don't want to hear any sound from her for a few minutes."

Getting the hint of what Yeosang wanted, San sent him a knowing smile.

"It'll be my pleasure."

Pressing his hand on the back of her head, he pushed her face until it was completely sunken in the mattress underneath them. Yeosang smirked with satisfaction as he heard Y/N's screams being muffled now as San intensified his thrusts, the new angle making it easier for his dick to hit her g-spot each time he pushed back in.

"Oh fuck! I'm gonna cum." He gasped out, frantically chasing his high.

"Cum inside her."

That command shocked even San. Ever since they started the relationship, they had never once came inside Y/N's hole, always preferring to cum on her body.

"Have you lost your-"

"Did I stutter? Either you cum inside her little cunt and fill her up or I'll make sure neither of you are cumming at all."

Knowing fully well Yeosang was very capable of making it happen, San didn't press the matter any further and caved in. With feral groans, he stilled his hips as he began emptying himself inside Y/N, cock spurting out endless amounts of cum that painted her walls. Even though her sounds were semi muted, both of them could make out her frustrated whines at not being allowed to cum while feeling San's hot semen pool into her. Releasing his hold on her, San pulled out of her and quickly stepped aside as he could tell Yeosang couldn't hold back anymore.

Before Y/N could fully catch her breath or get a hold of herself, she gasped when she was suddenly turned around on her back as Yeosang stared at her with hunger and lust. She let out a choked wail when his cock entered her and gave her no time to prepare as he started a merciless rhythm of tearing into her pussy. With her legs thrown over his shoulders, the position only made her more weak. Her clit and folds were beyond pink, bordering on a crimson red and were puffed up to an extreme. Tears brimmed down her face as she felt her body give into the overwhelming pleasure she was feeling. Her body was so exhausted after so much foreplay and being used for her daddies' twisted ways that she felt like she was going to pass out from how intense her growing orgasm was becoming. She couldn't feel or register anything aside from the burning between her legs and the sound of skin slapping that was heard throughout the room.

"You wanna cum now my little doll?" Yeosang taunted at her, one hand snaking to her neck once more and squeezing softly.

"Yes! P-please let me cum!" She begged fervently, shouting as loud as she could even though her throat was being constricted.

"Fine. I think you learned your lesson princess. Now cum for me. Cum for your daddy." He instructed her.

With eyes rolling to the back of her head, Y/N's body started convulsing uncontrollably under Yeosang's. Her vision blurred as shockwaves gripped at her body and had her dissolving into a puddle of intense pleasure. Throughout all this, Yeosang continued to plunge his cock into her, not stopping until his own cum was flooding her heat, mixing in with her juices and with San's cum that had been previously bestowed inside her. He had a completely unapologetical and proud smile as he pulled out to watch his cum seep out of her.

"One of us is going to get you pregnant babygirl.... let's wait and find out."

[dreamwritesimagines]

Burn The Witch 12 - Bad Surprise [Bucky Barnes x Reader]

A.N: Thank you so much for your wonderful support and feedback my loves ! ❤ Here’s the next chapter, I hope you like it as well and please let me know what you think! ❤ Thank you! ❤❤❤

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Warnings: Enemies to lovers, fake dating, mentions of blood, sex, violence, death, manipulation, language, guns, knives.

Summary: Sometimes plans have to change.

Series Masterlist

Every job required something from people, and your job was no different.

Being a spy was not a conventional profession, everyone knew that. You were expected to be on the move all the time, be a good liar, be a good fighter, be whatever the job told you to.

And most important of all; never show fear, which you were usually fine with. You had learned long ago how to keep your calm in times of crisis. You had even managed to keep your calm facade when your last mission required you to play Russian Roulette with a target in order to keep your cover.

But this? This was something else.

Bucky cleared his throat to stifle a laugh as he looked down at you.

“Is it just me or are you using me as a human shield against a peacock right now?”

Your eyes snapped up at his for a moment before you turned your gaze to the peacock again, taking a subtle step to Bucky’s right to keep him between you and the animal.

Coming to the zoo was his idea, and you thought it could be a fun experience. You had never been to a zoo before, and it would count as one of the old times dates, so you were almost giggly by the time you got there.

Right until now.

“I think peacocks don’t have souls.”

“Alright.” Bucky sipped his coffee while you tried to ignore the fear bubbling at the pit of your stomach, eyeing the peacock that walked around the area behind the fences.

“I’m serious,” you insisted “What if it attacks me?”

“It’s not going to attack you Y/N.”

“It could,” you said, “It looks like it wants to attack me.”

The peacock fanned out its feathers all of a sudden and let out a squawk, making you jump out of your skin.

“Fuck!” the curse left your lips and Bucky’s eyebrows rose, an amused grin pulling at his lips.

“Sorry!” you said quickly, “Sorry, I…I don’t trust peacocks.”

“You got mugged in a dark alley and got shot, and a bird is where you draw the line?”

Correction, you were once held at gunpoint by the Italian mafia and peacocks were still where you drew the line.

“That’s not a bird.”

“….Peacocks are birds.”

“No, that’s the devil looking like a bird,” you said, “In-in bird shape. Bird shaped demon.”

“Okay, how about we see some other less threatening animal?”

“Let me check—oh my God Bucky they have sharks, I love sharks!” you said, waving the brochure in his face and he pulled his brows together.

“Sharks fall under the less threatening animal category?”

“Of course they do!” you said, looking at the brochure before looking around, “I think the aquarium is over there, let’s go.”

You grabbed his hand to entwine your fingers with his as you both started walking towards the huge blue structure.

“So I feel like I shouldn’t ask because I know you can’t exactly tell me the details,” you said, “But you’re not going on another mission soon, are you? This week?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, “Why?”

“I’m kind of planning something.”

He tilted his head, “What are you planning?”

“Not a club, relax.” you said, “Although I find it quite ironic that you’re this unstoppable brave superhero with super strength who gets intimidated by dancing.”

“I’m not intimidated…” he grumbled under his breath, making you giggle.

“Whatever you say,” you sang, and reached the entrance of the huge building and you pulled your hand out of his.

“Excuse me sir, is the aquarium still open?” you asked the security guard by the door and a small smirk appeared on his lips.

“Yes but it is closing in ten minutes sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?

Jesus Christ….

You smiled politely at him, batting your lashes.

“Oh—“ you took a look at the sign, “I just want to see the killer shark and we’ll be out. In five minutes. Please?”

He eyed you up and down but seemed to snap out of it when Bucky cleared his throat behind you as if warning him, making the guy gawk between you two.

Even you had to admit you seemed like a quite unusual couple. You were wearing a short white sundress with ruffled sleeves and sweetheart neckline with your hair loose while Bucky looked as if he was there to kill someone, a complete opposite of you with his dark jeans and black leather jacket as well as leather gloves.

You didn’t even have to turn your head to know that he was glaring at the guard before the guy shifted his weight, then stepped aside.

“Enjoy.”

“Thank you!” you said, grabbing Bucky’s hand as you led him inside. He followed you without any objections whatsoever, in complete silence as the sight of blue filled your vision along with many fish swimming behind the glass.

“You don’t even see it, do you?” he asked softly and you pulled your brows together.

“Hm?”

“Does anyone ever say no to you?”

You approached the label by the glass, “You do.”

“Do I?”

“All the time,” you nodded, still reading the label but your head shot up when you felt him tug you by the hand. A giggle escaped from your lips as he turned you around so that you could look up at him, then wrapped his arm around you to scoop you up, making you squeal.

“Bucky!”

“All the time?”

“Put me down!” you said, your laughter echoing in the empty aquarium halls and he tilted his head.

“Not until you explain yourself,” he teased you, “All the time?”

“Sometimes, sometimes!” you said quickly, “Very rare times I might add!”

“Mm hm, I thought so.”

“If you drop me, I swear to God—“ you started but was cut off when he pulled you into a kiss, making you wrap your arms around his neck. He took a step with you still in his embrace and you gasped as you felt your back hit the thick glass, but every single protest you could think of seemed to disappear from your mind as you lost yourself in the kiss. You raked your fingernails over the nape of his neck, making his grip around you tighter-

Then someone coughed.

Bucky pulled back instantly and you turned your head to see another rather annoyed technician leaning on her hip, watching you with her brows raised.

“Aquarium is about to close,” she said, pointing at you, “Take it elsewhere.”

Bucky put you down and you tried to fix the skirt of your dress, trying to look presentable.

“Sorry!” you said as Bucky mumbled an apology beside you as well, and the technician shook her head and walked away, talking about how she wasn’t getting paid enough for this. You covered your face and let out a whine but Bucky chuckled, causing you to lower your hands to stare up at him.

“Why is this entertaining for you?” you exclaimed and he held your wrist, gently steering you to the exit.

“Come on.”

“We can never come here again, ever.” you insisted as you followed him outside. It didn’t escape your notice that he bumped his shoulder into the security guard’s quite hard, almost knocking him over on your way out and your jaw dropped.

“That was mean!”

“Nah, he had it coming. Are you hungry?”

“But you could get in trouble. Besides, he was a nice guy—“

“Uh huh, a nice guy who was ogling you.”

You pulled your brows together, pretending to be confused, “Oh I’m sure you misunderstood.”

He tilted his head and pulled you closer to wrap his arm around your waist, then brushed his lips against yours, making you sigh.

“Bucky, it was mean and you can’t just kiss me to distract me—”

“I can try,” he murmured to your lips before kissing you again and you looked up at him when he pulled back with a grin.

“Fine,” you admitted, still pouting. “I’m hungry. Starving actually, let’s eat something.”

                                                    ***

You were finding it harder and harder to convince yourself it was time to go home after every date with Bucky.

Scratch that, you were finding it harder and harder not to invite him upstairs.

But of course, you would have to report it back to the General and discuss the further strategies with him and for some reason, it felt more of a betrayal than this whole thing.

Surprisingly enough, it was something you wanted and not something you would will yourself to do because of the mission. There was no denying it, he was an attractive guy and you really liked spending time with him and you kept having dreams about him and whenever you were with him you had this lightness in your mind, as if you were a different person.

A better person, maybe.

You shook your head at your thoughts and left your apartment to knock on Keith’s door.

“It’s me, open up.”

You heard footsteps before he opened the door and a boyish smile pulled at his lips at the sight of milkshakes in your hand.

“Jesus, finally!”

“I made it at home, can’t promise it’s good,” you said as you walked past him into his apartment and stepped into the living room, “What are you watching?”

“James Bond,” he grinned at you, “Hey, have you ever tried milkshake with gin?”

“No?”

“Me neither, let’s try it.” He said, taking the big glasses from you to pour gin into them. You sat on the couch and took a look at the screen.

“How many times have you watched this again?”

“Like a hundred,” he handed you your glass and you took a sip.

“Not bad,” you commented, putting your feet up on the coffee table. He sat beside you, keeping his eyes on the screen.

“What did you do today?”

“Had a date.”

“With Barnes?”

“Yeah. At the zoo.”

“He took you to the zoo?” he asked and you nodded.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“And peacocks are fucking scary,” you muttered, “And hey, we learned that Bucky is the jealous type.”

“The guy was dating people back at 40s, I could tell you that much myself.” He snorted, “Chloe says you went on a mission with Julian?”

You slipped a little on the couch, “He’s an asshole.”

“I know. Is he really that bad in bed?”

You shrugged your shoulders, “Nah as much as I hate to admit, he’s pretty good. Unfortunately.”

“So top or bottom?”

“He goes either way to be honest, that comment was more about me.”

“About you?”

“Yeah, I like to be on top.”

“Suddenly everything about you makes sense,” he murmured and you took another sip of your milkshake.  

“Don’t try that with Barnes though, the guy is from 1940s. He’s probably used to missionary only, you don’t want to give him a heart attack,” he wiggled his brows, making you scoff.

“Shut up.”

“Chloe is right, maybe you should go full on vintage on that when the time comes.”

You turned to look at him.

“Speaking of Chloe,” you said, “Anything you would like to tell me?”

Keith’s grin faded slightly and he shifted his weight, “Like what?”

“Bringing her coffee, taking her out to the field…” you trailed off, “What gives, man? I thought we had a deal.”

“We never had a deal,” he defended himself, “You slammed me back during training years ago at the academy and told me not to even think about it when you saw me looking at her.”

“No,” you shook your head, “Five years ago, in Ireland. That undercover job, the one that almost got you killed? We made a deal.”

He swallowed thickly, looking down at the milkshake before taking a sip. “Y/N…”

“Keith, you can’t,” you insisted, “She deserves a normal life, a normal family and kids and a dog and stuff.”

“I know,” he ran a hand over his face, “I know.”

“Then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a spy,” you said, “You said it yourself, spies die like flies.”

“Not all of them,” he said, “General is still alive. He has a family.”

“Yeah, one in a hundred,” you said, “Face it. That’s a very low possibility for us.”

“You don’t think you’ll get to grow old and have a family and all that?”

You pulled your brows together.

“No,” you said, “Of course not. I’m probably going to die in one of these missions.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Keith, I can’t have any of those,” you said, “I can’t. I…it’s impossible.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” you muttered, “I made my choice ages ago.”

“Y/N,” he sat up straighter, “Do you want to?”

With a very bad timing, your imagination went overdrive and a strange scene flashed before your eyes. You laughing in Bucky’s arms, watching two kids playing in the garden-

You shook your head, trying to shake off the thoughts.

“I could never have that,” you stated simply, “You might love Chloe and you might also be lucky enough to have her love you but…it’s not the same with me.”

“I’d say Barnes loves you.”

A bitter smile pulled at your lips and you bit inside your cheek, taking another sip of your milkshake.

“He loves someone who doesn’t exist,” you managed to croak out, “He loves my cover. He could never love me.”

                                                           ***

Spending the night at Keith’s and drowning your sorrows in gin and milkshake meant that you would have a killer hangover the next day. Unlike Keith, you didn’t have the luxury to sleep until the noon, seeing that you had a cover job to keep so for the whole day until noon, you walked around like a zombie.

Coffee helped though. Just a little.

Thankfully it was a slow day at the shop. After serving a couple of people, you had nothing to do other than seriously considering sticking your head in the freezer to get rid of the hangover.

“Long night?” Tara asked as she walked past you to put the straws into the cup and you nodded, groaning.

“Remind me not to drink, ever.”

“I make that promise to myself every Monday, does not seem to work.”

You chuckled, “Have you ever tried to mix gin into milkshakes?”

“No?”

“Don’t,” you shook your head as you helped her to move an empty milkshake container into the kitchen. “It’s a terrible idea and I’m experiencing the consequences of that mistake right now.”

“That sounds like a fun night though.”

“Fun night, terrible morning,” you let out a laugh as you walked out of the kitchen but as soon as you did, your eyes caught the sight of the man in the shop. Your smile was wiped off your face as the familiar anger filled your system.

Jesus Christ, this day sucks.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you asked and Julian had the audacity to shoot you a grin.

“Whoa cute outfit,” he said, eyeing you up and down, “Holy shit I didn’t even know I was into this whole thing, I’m having an epiphany.”

You looked over your shoulder to see if Tara was still in the kitchen, then turned to Julian.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was craving milkshakes,” he stated, “Hey, would you recommend Lavender Macaron?”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“I think I’m gonna go with Lavender Macaron, makes me think of France,” he said, “Fun times.”

“Fun for you maybe.”

He shot you a look, “Come on Y/N, we didn’t leave the honeymoon suite for two days. That was the greatest-“ he lowered his voice, “Mission I’ve ever had.”

“You’re putting this entire operation in—“ you started but stopped talking as soon as Tara walked out of the kitchen. Julian raised his brows for a moment before smiling at her and you went under the counter to grab his arm.

“Y/N, is everything okay?”

“Just peachy,” you said as you dragged him out of the shop, and he heaved a sigh, following you.

“No I’m serious…” he said with a chuckle as soon as you both stepped outside, then motioned at the uniform, “This is something else.”

“Why are you here?”

“I heard that it was good, I did not think it was this good.”

“I’m seriously two seconds away from punching you.”

“How come you never dressed up like this for me when we were dating?”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you insisted and he shrugged his shoulders.

“I was around.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Believe whatever you want,” he said, “Your shop has good rating, although I’m beginning to believe it has less to do with milkshakes and more about the waitresses.”

“Julian I swear to God—“ you started but you were cut off when someone cleared his throat, making both you and Julian turn your heads. Your stomach dropped as soon as you saw Bucky watching you two with a frown and you withdrew your hand from Julian’s arm.

“Bucky,” you breathed out, “Um-hi.”

“Hi,” he said without taking his eyes off Julian, and you could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

He was trying to decide whether he was a threat to you.

“I didn’t…I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I figured I could drop by,” he said, crossing his arms, “What’s going on?”

Fuck.

Fuck, you had no idea how to turn this around. Thankfully neither of you had said anything about the mission, so it was more than likely that Bucky just knew you knew each other, but other than that, your cover wasn’t blown.

“Nothing! Nothing at all, he’s just—“ you stammered, trying to come up with an explanation, “He’s um—“  

“Oh come on Y/N, don’t be one of those secretive people,” Julian said, “You hate secrets. You’re Bucky, right? I heard about you.”

Bucky just raised his brows, his glare on him unwavering but even if it was quite chilling, Julian was a trained assassin just like you were, so he was used to it. Instead he curled his lips, looking between you before offering him his hand.

“I’m Julian,” he introduced himself, shooting you a grin as if you two shared an inside joke “The evil ex-boyfriend who’s gonna take her from you.”

Chapter 13

[mrsparker3696]

Peter parker x reader - baga-boo and silvy pt.3

**************************************

You walked out of your room, storming into the living room.

"Y/n? How was date- whats wrong?" You mom asked Suprised.

She sat like almost every night, on the couch watching Grey's anatomy, drinking coffee or wine and complaining about how lame the plot is.

"I just found out who my boyfriend really is" you said, walking back and forth anxiosly behind the couch.

Your mother paused the show and turned to look at you with a worried look "and? What he's not cute? Got a huge nose? Don't tell me he got a goat beard, those are th-"

"No mom its not that!" You stopped her. Your voice was loud and you mom could see how stressed you are by the way you snapped.

"Do you remember the boy I told you about?" You asked hesitantly. You mom nodded and waited for you to keep going "the one Who always teased me and annoy me at school?" She nodded again.

You waited for her to connect the dots and gave her a look.

It took her a few moments until she gasped loudly and jumped out of the couch "no. Fucking. Way"

"Mom!"

A few moments earlier.

"Y/n?!"

No no no no no.

This is not happening to you.

It can't be.

Its just a really messed up dream. Right?

"It was you all this time?!" He squiked.

Peter begged that it was just an illusion.

Maybe you're messing up with his head with your powers.

"Yeah no shit parker"

Nope. Definitely y/n.

"How long have you known?! Are you?- am I?-" he breathed heavily.

"U think I'm gonna throw up"

You frowned your eyebrows and rolled your eyes at his over reacting "stop being dramatic. And I've just found out!" You yelled at him

"What? How?" Peter was upset for a second. How he didn't figured it out himself?

"When you said 'that girl went over the edge'" you mocked his high voice.

Peter rolled his eyes "trust me, im not happy about it either"

You shook your head frustratedly

Your mind flew to all the thing you two did together.

All the kisses and the whispers...

All the hickies and the touches

All the promises and confessions.

Nope. You can do it. its too much especially with him looking at you like-

"thats it. I'm leaving. I can't do this. Especially when... you're here" you snapped putting on your mask and flying away.

"No wait y/n! Dammit" he tried but you were already far gone.

"So what are you going to do?" Your mother broke you out of your memories.

You sighed and moved to sink down next to her on the couch, buring your face in your hands and leaning on your knees "I really don't know mom. Everything is so confusing"

Your mother sighed moving her hand to rub your back comfortly "I know sweetie. And I know you don't like this peter boy because he tease you at school-"

"Made my life miserable" you corrected her.

Your mother rolled her eyes "but remember our conversation from just last night. You told me how much he cares for you and how much you care for him. Maybe he's just teasing you because he was just used to it after all those years. Maybe it all just a misunderstanding" she tried her best to calm you down.

Your mother loved spiderman.

She saw how much he made you happy and how he changed you in the past year.

You used to be quiet and introvert kind of girl.

You would never stand up for yourself, you would laugh and smile only with your mom and it was hard for you to make friends.

Being silver witch made you feel free and made you forget about your social anxiety.

When you met spiderman, he made you laugh so hard you kept giggling even after you got home. You got more confident and happy. Your grades jumped up and you were better in general.

It took so much effort from you to convince your mother that he's alright just to hang out and patrol with, and when it got to actually dating you almost begged her.

After a few calls and stories, she finally agreed and learned to love the way he treats her daughter.

But seeing you giving up on this so quickly, only a day after you lectured her about how much he's important to you, got her mad.

She understood how confusing it must be for you, she really did.

Be she knew better than letting you giving up on this kind of love.

You walked over to your room, shaking your head "you just understand mom. I- he- we-" you started to say and groaned when you could find the words, then fell on your soft comforting bed "its just so confusing"

Your mother walked over after you, seeing you cuddling yourself in the blankets and sighed.

She knew you need time.

She walked over to you and kissed your head "okay honey. I have a early shift but if you still feel bad, feel free to skip the day, alright?"

You nodded, happy that your mother understood you "okay, thanks mom, I love you" you whispered.

Even though your voice was muffled from the pillow, your mother heard and gave you a soft smile as she stood up "i love you too. Sleep tight"

Peter's pov:

After you left peter, he swinged back to his apartment.

"Pete? Is that you? Are you home already?" He heard his aunt yelling at him from the kitchen.

Peter pushed the spider button on his chest and his suit turned big and loosed up from his body.

He changed quickly and grumbled to his aunt.

his aunt and incredible ability to read people quickly saw his upset mood and frowned.

She left the towel from cleaning the dishes and walked over to him, sitting in front of his next to the small bar table "hey, whats wrong? I thought you had a date tonight with your witch girl"

Peter shook his head and ran his fingers through his head shakily.

The scenes from earlier kept repeating in his head.

Your broken voice after you found out who he is and the shock and disappointment on your face after you took off your mask.

"I messed up may. I messed up so bad"

May looked at him worriedly and took one hand from his head, taking his attention "you want to tell me what happened?"

Peter took a deep breath before starting "everything went good at first. She was happy and i was happy and then she asked me how my day was, so I told her and then I told her about this girl, y/n, and that she punched Harry and-"

"Wait, a girl punched Harry? Why would she punch Harry?" May cut him off.

"Because he teased her and her friends. I teased her" he admitted, ashamed of his actions "she got mad and told us that she won't let us hurt her friends"

"You teased a girl and her friends? Peter!" She pinched his ear and he yelped "I thought I thought you better!"

"I know i know!" He said "but its a long story may..." he sighed.

May rolled her eyes.

She thought her nephew was a sweet gentleman. Apparently not to everyone "you're going to tell me about it later!" She raised a finger at him and he lifted his hands up in defense "but keep on"

"Then, she recognized me. Silvy- silver witch, I mean, she's y/n. Then she yelled that she can't do it and another bunch of stuff and took off" he sighed and covered his faced with his hands. "The girl i love is the girl who hates me, may. I don't know what to do"

His aunt sighed and walked over to him and hugged him from the back.

Peter gladly excepted her love and held her hands that were on his chest.

She kissed his head.

She knew peter fucked up. Badly.

But he still was her nephew. Jerk or not jerk.

"What are you planning to do, huh?"

She asked after a few moments of silence.

"I really don't know may"

May took a deep breath peter letting go of him "Alright, you go get some rest and you can stay the day over tomorrow to think. But that it! I have an early shift and when I come back home I want you ready with a plan to get your girl back. On this kind of love you can't give up" she kissed him one last time before leaving to her room.

May was right.

He's gotta think of a plan.

And do it fast.

[mythicamagic]

May I have one for "just wait for me here." "It's not like I can go anywhere." please.

Sesshoumaru arched a brow, staring across the sunlit glade towards a peculiar sight. His brother’s miko was acting strangely. She stood, clutching her bow tight- knuckles turning pale from the force of her grip. She tentatively used one end to feel around the grass, before prodding the ground with her shoe and inching forward.

Although they shared the same clearing, Kagome didn’t look up, nor acknowledge his presence.

Sesshoumaru gave in to curiosity, not particularly concerned about an enemy but too intrigued to ignore this display. She jerked when his boot crunched on a twig.

“Stay back!” Kagome snarled, voice shaking as she whipped her bow up defensively.

Sesshoumaru bit back a chuckle. What good would a mere bow do as a weapon without arrows? His humour soon abated however, staring into her murky blue eyes that gazed just over his shoulder.

Ah, I understand.

“W-who’s there?” she stammered, fear clouding her scent.

Inuyasha and her friends were clearly absent, always so foolish. They’d left a blinded miko vulnerable and alone?

Sesshoumaru gave the quivering woman a once over, noticing a few scrapes over her bare knees. Cut rope looped around her freed wrists. That strange white and green clothing she always wore was marred with dirt, torn in various places. She’d likely been kidnapped and escaped her captor on her own. Mildly impressive.

Still, she was nothing to do with him. Sesshoumaru turned on one heel.

“S-sesshoumaru?” Kagome called out tentatively. The words became firmer, more confident. “Sesshoumaru...wait. Please.”

The Daiyoukai paused, looking at her sightless blue eyes. “How is it that you knew who I was?”

She released a short, hard breath, clearly relieved to be speaking with someone. “I’m getting better at sensing stuff, I guess.”

“Hn,” he frowned, “and your eyes?”

Kagome touched her cheek, curling in on herself a little, “a demon blew a powder into my face and it blinded me. He kidnapped me...but I managed to get away. I just hope its temporary, ya know?” she gave a nervous giggle, despair threatening to take her under. Sesshoumaru hummed, attention drawing away to the forest surrounding them. He knew these woods well, and there was nothing around for miles. No villages nor clans. Just wild flatlands that eventually led to the mountains. She’d certainly ran a long way.

“I know we’re not friends- or even allies,” Kagome mumbled. “You’ve got no reason to help me-”

“That is correct,” he silkily agreed.

Her pretty features tightened with barely concealed frustration, amusing him. “But I’d owe you, hugely, if you just drop me off where Inuyasha can find me. I promise I’d return the favour- tenfold!”

Sesshoumaru chuckled, rather liking his position in this situation, studying his immaculate nailbeds in an unnecessary show of disinterest. “There is nothing a human could give to me that would be worth my time- nor do I need a favour.”

Blowing out a frustrated hiss of air through her teeth, Kagome stepped forward, gazing in his general direction. “So you’re going to just leave me here?”

“As previously established, miko,” he purred in a low tone. “We are not friends nor allies. Are we lovers?” he teased.

She instantly turned red, barking; “in your dreams!”

“Well then, if we are not friends, allies nor lovers, I have no need to heed your cries above those of the ants I crush beneath my feet when I walk,” Sesshoumaru turned away again, heading in the opposite direction.

“Wait!”

The desperate crunch of feet thundering through tall grass reached his ears, though the demon lord kept pace. Something knocked into his side- and Kagome stumbled, before latching tight onto mokomoko, wrapping her arms around his furs and hugging them to her chest.

Golden eyes widened at her audacity, pressing a palm against her forehead, trying to extract her from his person. “Off.”

“No way!” she twisted and tried to bite at his hand, narrowing sightless eyes. “Don’t be so heartless. At the very least, leave me at the nearest village- jerk!”

“You are doing a poor job of endearing yourself to me, wench,” Sesshoumaru lifted his hand, resting sharp claws against her damp forehead, slick with sweat. He prodded warningly. “Release this one.”

Kagome shuddered but refused to let go. “I-if I do, I’m as good as dead anyway,” she murmured, tightening her grip. “Please.”

Sesshoumaru flirted with the idea of releasing acid from his nails and reducing the nuisance into a pile of melted flesh and bone. However, even while blind- those blue eyes managed to fill him with a strange sense of intrigue. If this woman died, he ludicrously felt that the fates would turn their wrath upon him, not that he heeded the threat of any higher powers. She was so unusual in appearance, word and deed he could not help but think her a special existence, but even were she ordinary, Sesshoumaru felt his world would become less amusing without her presence in it. Encounters with Inuyasha would prove somewhat blander.

Sneering, his claws lowered. Continuing to walk with no acknowledgement of her trailing form hurrying after him, Sesshoumaru allowed her to hang onto mokomoko like it were a lifeline.

----

Kagome focused on keeping her footing, stumbling after the silent Daiyoukai. His furs pillowed her cheek, comfortable and silky. From what she could tell they’d left the wilder grass behind, her muddy loafers crunching on twigs and dry earth.

They didn’t talk often and she didn’t give voice to her exhaustion, closing her eyes after a while since it did little good to keep them open, her world endlessly black.

She tried not to fall prey to the dark feelings of dread and worry threatening to claim her, lingering on the outskirts of her tired mind. She’d come too far to give up now.

Kagome bumped into something solid and stopped. “What is it?” she mumbled.

“I am going to rest for the night.”

“Oh…”

His voice sounded a little light, which meant he found something entertaining. “I take it you are going to cling to me throughout?”

“Y-yeah, can’t have you running off on me.”

“Hn, if that is the case, measures will need to be taken.”

Kagome wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. Nonetheless, she faithfully followed when he walked on, having little choice in the matter.

Warm, stuffy vapour began caressing her skin, rendering it slightly damp, her hair curling from the humidity. It began closing in around her like a shroud, the air thinning a little. Lapping water reached her keen hearing.

“Hot springs?”

“Indeed.”

Mild alarm raced through her bloodstream. Kagome squeaked- feeling herself being lifted up, a single hand grabbing her by the scruff and yanking so hard mokomoko was successfully pried from her grip, sending her flying through the air. Kagome cried out when water rushed up to meet her, warm and lulling, closing over her head. She quickly found her footing on the bottom of the pool and pushed up, sputtering as she broke the surface.

“You jerk! What the hell?!”

Sesshoumaru answered with a lofty chuckle. “You cannot expect to sleep near me while wearing such dirty clothes.”

“Throwing me into a hot spring isn’t the answer though!” she growled, splashing the water in his general direction, though she had no idea if it made contact or not.

“Hm? Would you have preferred being stripped bare to shudder against me all night long?” he suggested offhandedly.

“Of course not,” Kagome gritted out.

“Then I suggest you start bathing yourself, miko.”

Hesitating, Kagome wrestled with herself. The sound of his boots stepping over rocks and drawing further away loosened her tongue.

"J-just don't abandon me here, okay?"

He halted. "And what will you do if I decline to listen?"

"I'll haunt your ass once I'm dead."

"Hn."

He continued on, his answer not exactly assuaging Kagome's fears. With little else to do but tentatively trust him, she stripped out of her uniform and bathed as best she could. Without the use of soap or a sponge and being unable to see the dirt being washed away, it would likely be an unsuccessful bath. She tried her best to make herself 'clean', scrubbing at her uniform for good measure.

The silence was heavy, only broken by the sound of gently lapping water. She had no idea what time it was. How far away Inuyasha and her friends were. Kagome shivered, hugging her arms to her chest. She began to feel paranoid, suspecting the slightest sound. Dark youkai reached out, brushing her senses.

Kagome exhaled in relief, hanging onto Sesshoumaru’s aura.

“Step out of the water.”

She stiffened at the abrupt sound of his commanding voice. “And let you see me naked? No thank you.”

“There is no point in assuring you that I will not- since you cannot see if I am being truthful. I can merely promise that my curiosity about the human form will never be acted upon.”

Kagome flushed red. So he could look He just disliked humans too much to ever be ‘interested.’

She reluctantly supposed she had little choice in the matter. Standing, Kagome waded through the hot waters towards his voice, reaching out to feel for the side in order to climb out- only for her hand to be ensnared, captured by lithe fingers.

Kagome’s hazy eyes widened, climbing out with the aid of his grip, quickly covering herself with both arms as soon as she were able. “M-my clothes are wet…”

Something wrapped around her body, and she recognised the material to be a short towel. Quickly drying herself, Kagome paused when new, silky material nudged against her cheek. “Dress in this once you are done,” Sesshoumaru’s low voice rumbled.

Since she could sense his strong, dark presence linger close, she wondered if he were watching out for enemies or just plain watching her. Kagome fumbled with the silks, feeling around for the collar. Sesshoumaru’s rumbling chuckle made goosebumps race over her bare skin. She nearly bit out a comment- feeling hot breath fan over her forehead. His single arm nudged at hers, guiding her hand through a sleeve, before holding the parting open, allowing her to slip it on. Kagome blushed wildly, groping for the obi and hurriedly tying it at her waist.

A cool hand stilled hers once she was done, cutting into the rough rope still bound around her freed wrists. Kagome murmured her thanks.

“Where did you get the yukata?” she mumbled.

Mokomoko bumped her chest and Kagome held onto it reflexively as Sesshoumaru strolled away, the furs guiding her forwards. “I have many bases littered around the countryside, should I need to make use of them for trysts or shelter.”

“T-trysts?” she squeaked. “Is this clothing from...?”

“Do not worry, foolish one. That is an unused article of clothing. I keep them in case my lovers are in need of a spare change of clothes. I have been known to be...impatient.”

She arched a brow and used her free hand to measure the length of her sleeves, touching the seams. “This is a man’s yukata.”

“What of it?”

Kagome clicked. “Oh, nothing. I just didn’t know you were interested in guys.”

Sesshoumaru gave a tired, long-suffering sigh while wafting steam pulled away from their bodies, leaving them exposed to the cool air while they walked through what Kagome assumed to be a sparse forest. “Provided an individual captures my interest, gender has no bearing on who I share a bed with. It is inconsequential to me, unlike humans with your...limited choices.”

“Hey! Humans can swing both ways too. A-and look who’s talking! You’re getting all high and mighty about gender but species and blood purity matter a great deal to you. Sounds limiting to me.”

He became silent for a moment, which made Kagome feel slightly victorious. “Admittedly I have never lain with a human before,” he pretended to sound considering. “Are you volunteering yourself, miko?”

“As if,” she snorted, cheeks burning red. “You’ve tried to kill Inuyasha,” she quickly supplied as a valid excuse.

“Hn,” he gave an entertained noise, “so if we were not enemies, you would accept?”

Her mouth grew dry, feeling like she’d held her face over a flickering fire. “You’re way too arrogant to be my type.”

The sound of his quiet chuckle changed as they seemed to step into an enclosed space. Kagome reached out and touched a rocky surface, dragging her palm over it. The remnants of a demonic barrier littered the area. She suddenly stopped, yanking mokomoko and forcing Sesshoumaru to stop with her. “Have you just taken me into one of your trysting spots?"

“Where else are we to rest?”

“Not here!” she burst.

“You complain often, miko. I will leave you to the hungry animals outside if need be," he sneered. "Do not worry. This place has not seen use in a long time and is clean, I assure you,” his tone lulled into a patronising one.

Kagome held her tongue, uncomfortably settling down onto a silky bed of furs when he guided her over to it. She felt extremely weird. Staying in a place where Sesshoumaru had once had sex wasn’t exactly how she’d envisioned her Thursday going.

Something smooth and pronged was placed into her hand- and she gentled a little, quietly thanking him. Beginning to brush her wet hair, Kagome carded her fingers through the strands, making a soft noise of enjoyment.

All the while, she felt the keen sensation of being watched. Arranging herself into a more comfortable position on the bed, she sighed, gazing in his general direction. “I might be blind right now but I can feel your eyes on me. What’s up?”

“Up?”

“I mean- is something bothering you?”

“No,” he sounded briefly considering. “Rather...this one noticed your ears.”

“Hm? The fact that they’re round compared to yours?”

His thumb and forefinger closed around the sterling silver stud pierced through her earlobe. Kagome stiffened, soon relaxing. “Oh, my earrings? They’re not a big deal.”

“They are different from what I have seen before,” he stroked the shell of her ear consideringly, making her shiver. "I wish to test something.”

Since the demon lord had been magnanimous enough to offer shelter, provide new clothing and allow her to tag along with him, Kagome decided to indulge his curiosity. She sensed him move and root through something nearby, a box, she assumed.

I wish I could look around, her lips pursed, exceptionally interested in what one of his hideaways looked like.

“Remove the earrings.”

Nodding, Kagome fiddled with them, taking them out and rubbing her ears slightly. Removing them always felt weird. An inquisitive claw brushed her ear, and Kagome swallowed, holding still with mild confusion as Sesshoumaru donned her with new earrings. When he pulled away, Kagome brushed her fingers over them, finding some sort of stone dangling from her ears. They were cool to the touch and weren’t too heavy, a nice weight.

“What kind of stone are they?”

“Never you mind,” he rumbled, something tickling her brow. She wondered if it were his bangs sliding forward. Soft breath fanned over her nose before it pulled away. “Merely wear those for the duration of your stay. They suit you.”

Kagome tilted her head slightly, “well...okay? They’re not a keepsake from an old flame, are they?”

“No. Those are mine.”

She hummed, touching them again. “You can keep my earrings if you like. They can be my way of saying thanks. They kinda look like diamonds so maybe they’re to your expensive tastes.”

Even though they’re fakes.

Sesshoumaru made a rumbling noise that she assumed was positive, and wondered if they had been his true aim all along. She figured that would be all for the night- before feeling a touch against her hair. Kagome paused, fighting an exasperated smile. Who knew Sesshoumaru could be kind of… cute?

"Anything else?"

"Hn, your hair would suit this kanzashi. Hold still."

Kagome got the feeling their dress-up session was going to take a while.

---

When she awoke, the permanent darkness made it difficult to know exactly what time it was. Only the birds chirping in the trees outside let her know dawn had broken. The heat at her back that had warmed her throughout the night was gone. Kagome sat up, touching her bed hair and refusing to examine what the warmth had belonged to.

"Sesshoumaru?" she rasped.

She heard him shift and stand within the cave, "I sense something nearby. Wait for me here."

"It's not like I can go anywhere," she quipped, smiling slightly.

He made a noise of acknowledgement, walking away. His footsteps became softer until they disappeared completely. Kagome felt unnerved by it.

She reached out with her aura, but this time there was no assurance from his dark youki. Kagome steadied her breathing, trying not to freak out.

Strangely, the darkness was giving way to something. Murky shapes. Browns, whites and buttery yellows. Kagome’s heart burst with gladness.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “It wasn’t permanent...thank God.”

She could see! Well, kind of. Colours were back though, and shapes were sure to follow.

A commotion was happening outside though. Distant cries could be heard, along with familiar shouting. Kagome stumbled to her feet, following the light source out into the open despite the lack of solid objects yet.

Inuyasha’s loud voice broadcasted his location, making him easy to find- a bold red blur to Kagome’s eyes. Other colours were nearby, purples, blacks, pinks, yellows, oranges and greens.

“Guys!” she breathed.

The murky shapes turned, sharpening slightly into hazy focus. She registered Inuyasha’s horrified features. “K-Kagome...what the hell?”

She blinked and frowned, wondering what his problem was. The Hanyou rounded on a white shape that had sprinkles of red mixed in. “Hey, bastard! Why the fuck is Kagome dressed up like that? W-why does she reek of you!”

Looking down towards a nearby puddle, Kagome crouched and squinted, curious about what Inuyasha was babbling about. Her face came into focus, and her lips parted in surprise.

It wasn’t just one kanzashi, a few were nestled into her fall of curling wild hair. They glittered in the morning light. Some made of ivory, the others were black and adorned with gems. The blue of her eyes linked beautifully with the sapphires hanging from her ears. Everything paired well with the yukata he’d given her, which was white with illustrated ocean waves and smoky clouds patterning its hem and sleeves.

After enduring kidnapping- stumbling about blind for many hours, falling into ditches and streams and not knowing if she would live or die- Kagome couldn’t help but appreciate being swathed in finery. It made it feel a bit...pampered. Happy.

“Kagome, are you alright?”

She raised her head to find Sango and the others drawing closer, Inuyasha was still engaged with a verbal sparring match with Sesshoumaru that would likely head south soon.

“I’m fine,” she murmured, Shippo’s cute face appeared near hers, clear as day.

“We were worried!” he exclaimed. “We couldn’t find you anywhere after Inuyasha caught up with that demon goat and killed him.”

Nice to know my kidnapper is dead, she thought dryly, murmuring an assurance to Shippo but soon standing. She hurried closer to Inuyasha just as he took out Tetsusaiga.

“Hey- stop,” she called firmly, grasping his trailing sleeve. “That’s enough. Sesshoumaru took care of me last night, that’s all.”

“Took care of you?” Inuyasha paled, ears pinning back.

Kagome turned red. “W-what? What’s weird about that? Nothing happened!”

“Then why are you dressed like- like...that!”

Sesshoumaru gave a velvety chuckle from where he stood further away, tilting his chin up and curling his lips with an air of disdain. “I amused myself with your miko, Inuyasha, that is all,” he sneered. “She struggled so sweetly beneath me when I forced the clothes on her.”

“Bastard!” Inuyasha snarled, confused when Kagome stepped in between them. She glared first at the Hanyou, “Quit it- both of you! You’re acting like children!”

Turning her dimmed sights on Sesshoumaru, she struggled to see him clearly since he stood further away. “I don’t know what you seek to gain from lying but...thank you for all that you’ve done up till now,” she murmured. “My offer still stands if you need a favour.”

Inuyasha blustered behind her, shouting up a storm. Kagome muttered a ‘Sit’ to get him to quiet, straining to hear Sesshoumaru’s reply.

To her surprise, with Inuyasha briefly incapacitated, Sesshoumaru drew closer. The sweep of his brows, regal nose and cupid’s bow of his lips caught her dazed attention- her breath halting. Familiar diamond style studded earrings adorned his ears.

“These will do nicely as payment, miko,” he rumbled.

Kagome blinked and slowly smiled, sharing a quiet moment with him. “I-I suppose you’ll want these back,” she murmured, closing her hands around the sapphires on her ears.

“I have plenty more.”

“Right, of course you do,” she giggled, hearing Inuyasha squeak out a ‘did you just giggle at Sesshoumaru?!’ from his crater.

“Hn, as I said, they suit you,” Sesshoumaru turned. “And miko?”

“Yes?”

He began walking away, but she could hear the smile in his voice without seeing his expression. “You have captured my interest.”

Kagome’s eyes widened, heart bursting into overdrive. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies, and she felt a mix of confusion and anticipation.

Ditto, she thought with a faint smile.

[trickfootpike]

OKAYOKAYOKAY now that i've had a few nights to Ruminate here are way too many thoughts from 9/16's show -- fair warning that they aren't *super* coherent as a lot of this i just tried to loosely organize from dms i threw at folks night-of, but it is most of what i remember sticking out to me!

GENERAL THOUGHTS --

last saw the show in august of 2019 - back then i saw it up in the mezzanine, this time i was 7 rows back dead center in the middle of the orchestra. watching the show from the mezzanine feels like a god's eye view of the show while sitting up close in the orchestra is much more like being in the world of men, and how it hits in hadestown particularly is just nuts bc you really do feel like you're on the factory floor.

back in the London production i remember eva playing eurydice with more youth and hope to her, and when the show came to Broadway eurydice hardened. in a world with a pandemic eva seems to have actually shifted this back! Eurydice is still holding tightly onto Orpheus Knowing that the world is unlikely to be kind enough to let them have each other for long but she starts off less faithless than she used to, I suppose I would describe it? she's definitely played more open with others from the beginning rather than having it be something she has to really work towards!

WAIT FOR ME IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT FEELING FROM THE ORCHESTRA THAN THE MEZZANINE AND NOT JUST THE LAMPS. the lamps really only swing out to over the first 2 rows, speaking very generously, anyway. what i remember being most impactful from last time was how the whole theater rumbled as the walls of the set split to reveal hadestown. what i couldn't see and afaik no boot's been able to pick up is the the set ALSO SPLITS AND STRETCHES OPEN AT THE TOP. that awning that covers the balcony lifts and the wall of hadestown is revealed to stretch floor to ceiling and it is just so much, so fucking much oh my god i could not stop hysterically blubbering to myself watching hadestown stretch open like it is absolutely here to devour you whole. it makes you feel the immensity of The Wall. I've linked ig videos of the set pre act 1 and post intermission to give like the best perspective on it i can and tried to film them so they were zoomed as closely as to what my eyes were seeing as I could, but here are also some pictures!

PRE ACT ONE

INTERMISSION

after our lady of the underground when eurydice comes back from hades' office and Persephone is finishing with her show, me being closer this time i was actually able to see amber's face during way down hadestown ii and flowers. and how she portrays seph's feelings re eurydice, it's like : genuine concern and watching over her when she first starts on the line, Quiet Seething and Jealous Rage as the fates' tattle "Hades put his hands on ya" that sticks for a While including the first half of flowers, but as soon as eurydice remembers the meadow her and Orpheus visited her heart just b r e a k s and you can see her wiping away tears. seph's just so caught in her own feelings of helplessness in hadestown. when hades tells her to stay out of him dealing with Orpheus all the fight just deflates out of her and the direct accusing look Orpheus gives her at the end of if it's true mixed with seeing his effect on the workers makes her physically rear back like she's gotten the fight slapped back into her

even with this audience who almost for sure has all seen ht before, there was still the loudest heartbroken gasp when orpheus turned. i know everyone calls this out but it still hit me hard that with a greater percentage of previous viewers in the audience it still hit us all like a fucking brick

and ofc. road to hell ii. it's a millions times more impactful than it already was what with the pandemic, making it through hard times and how they could be hard again but making the best of them even if it doesn't turn out well this time either. i was crying so hard last time but this time i was crying harder but also feeling like a huge weight was being like, very softly cradled in my chest to take some of the burden away

TOM'S HADES/HADES AND PERSEPHONE SPECIFIC THOUGHTS --

Tom's Hades whole tl;dr could be that Hades is a Performance. all those descriptions of him beign "jazzy" and "egodriven" are correct, but there is also this massive vibe he gives off that all his showmanship is there as a cover up for the very pessimistic man at the core of him. when him and persephone are getting along the jazziness is there for genuine playfulness with her, but apart from seph it is a purposeful exaggeration on hades' part to get Whatever it is that he wants. he is playing up aggression as king (see papers) and what he thinks as being suave (see hey little songbird) to maintain his throne and his marriage, and Epic III is the Destruction of that performance. Tom's Hades at the end of Epic III isn't trying to sell anyone anything, you just get to see the suddenly very scared and unsure heart of the man behind the performance of foreman and king. And oh boy is Tom's Hades at his heart unsure. He is so fucking pessimistic; back in Act 1 when Orpheus starts to sing Epic I he turns from Persephone even before she gets reminded of the world above and starts longing for it, because he already expects to see it coming and he doesn't turn back to her Ever Again, literally until he comes to get her in Way Down Hadestown. Not even when she gives him a kiss on the cheek goodbye. His Kiss, The Riot is him trying to figure out how the hell he's gonna be able to rebuild his performance after his whole kingdom saw through it, but he also ends it being so very certain that the deal he figures out for Orpheus Will end with Orpheus failing somehow. There is no doubt in this very pessimistic Hades that doubt will come in, whereas Patrick used the end of His Kiss The Riot almost like he was desperately trying to justify that his doubt came to him only in Persephone's absence

road to hell i: tom's hades loves cheering on the band so much he is Part Of The Problem that Hermes has to get to chill out and it makes so much sense for this jazzy dramatic motherfucker

balcony time (road to hell i until livin' it up on top): when they were upstairs playing dominoes they kept laying their tiles with these overexaggerated movements.. Like when they actually getting along they are so damn flirty and trying so hard to make each other smile and laugh and it is TOO CUTE

way down hadestown: Once Again "I missed ya" gives me no rest, mostly because Tom delivered it with this super coy and cocky grin and Amber immediately smiled back at him like Persephone couldn't help herself

chant i: is spent with him looking up proud into his creation while persephone is looking down with heartbreak and disgust seeing the workers as people in suffering and the ugliness of hadestown. as the song goes on he gets increasingly frustrated like a child who's super proud of the drawing he brought home from school that Persephone has nothing but terrible things to say about. when eurydice starts singing about her suffering seph throws out her arm and points to her like "see! See what you're doing!!" while hades is more in himself processing his disappointment, frustration, heartbreak, but over the next minute you start to see him Formulating A Plan as he watches eurydice. but he doesn't look entirely sold on going through with it until seph throws out her last verse in disgust. it was absolutely the straw that broke the camel's back.

hey little songbird: THO IT SOUNDS SO SEDUCTIVE ON AUDIO. OML DOES IT LEAN INTO EURYDICE'S "STRANGE MAN" DESCRIPTOR. HADES IS LIKE THE CREEPY SALESMAN ON THE CORNER WITH WATCHES AND A TRENCHCOAT. BUT HE'S SELLING HIS SHIT WELL, HE'S JUST ALSO A WEIRDO

Why We Build The Wall/"Behind Closed Doors": That followup on hades' threat when eurydice arrives in hadestown. as hades goes to the stairs he like not whacks, but definitely nudges seph's arm harder than Patrick does to get her attention. when he did she Startled and laid her hand over her arm where he'd tapped her like she was overwhelmed by just that touch........ but then she turns around and watches him take Eurydice up and when he opens his coat and she Realizes you see her whole body go slack. once eurydice goes past the office doors hades turns and lingers staring pointedly down at seph, for *seconds* whereas with patrick i remember it being more of a pointed glance. it drills home that hades is doing this specifically to spite seph and he wants her to know it. and you can see amber discreetly wipe her face before she turns back to "does anybody want a DRINK." there's less direct seduction between hades and eurydice but more explicit threat between hades and seph about eurydice

papers: actually isn't too much Bastärde as it is his Performance. HOWEVER, the way he directs the workers to beat Orpheus is chilling. Like patrick he hangs around, but he's watching until the last 10 seconds so it's way longer. And he makes like the smallest gestures with his hand to direct the workers to the different stages of beating Orpheus, fuck it was twisted

how long: how long actually starts with seph and hades seemingly coming to each other on a similar page - hades came out pensively fiddling with his wedding ring and Amber delivered "I know" like seph was already past the eurydice situation. this also could have been a product of time and seeing how actually little he did "seducing" eurydice lmao

chant ii: very much Hades Sees Orpheus As A Threat™️ (more on this further below) , also dare i say it but tom kills I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY

epic iii: oh man oh man. he looks so untouched until Orpheus starts the lalas and he goes from completely passive unimpressed face to like. his body unfolds on his stool and his hands go slack and he looked between Orpheus and Persephone when he asked where Orpheus had gotten his melody. he asked it a lot softer than I expected him too as well. a big part of the audience actually laughed when Hades sang his lala because Tom cracks his voice during it but it petered off into sniffling when they realized why and then we were all just crying together as persephone placed the flower in his vest.

lovers desire: SOME VERY CUTE STUFF. hades' performance is broken but tom's hades is still a Jazzy Jazzy Man at heart and they're like 100 times more playful with each other - they're both giggling and grinning their asses off while they dance together and give each other these like nudges to the next series of steps and it was adorable and I was discretely sobbing. they both played it like they knew how to do this dance with each other better than they knew anything, the little nudges were like..... them playing inside this dance they already knew so well? Like more overexaggeration to make each other laugh and just revel in this wonderful thing they've rediscovered- specifically I remember that Amber raised her skirt soooooo high when she was doing the curtsey and Tom was like waggling his eyebrows at her and adding extra flourishes with his hands and widening his eyes super big everytime he pulled off a move (the funniest ones were when they do like the two-step where they move one after another in sequence and he's copying her moves in reverse and oml it was just adorable). When Seph had the move where she pulls their linked arms over his head to tuck him into her I remember that was the one part where he wasn't doing this goofy act but his expression straight up melted and he looked so smitten. and when it's the last bit of the dance and he spins her across the stage, seph's face breaks open with tears his expression responds with like this mix of heartbreak and "ohhhhh no baby please don't cry" as he moved across the stage to quickly take her into his arms for the dip at the end

AFTER this when orphydice has finished promises and right before Orpheus turns to ask Hades if they can go, they come out of slow dancing to the side but are still super wrapped up in each other - seph wraps herself around one of his arms and presses herself super close and Tom leaned down with this little smile like Hades was gonna try and steal a quick kiss, but then he hears/sees out of the corner of his eye/senses or something Orpheus approaching and pulls himself up and formal to be the king. When he says I don't know and seph wrenches herself away from him to the other side of the stage to firmly stand behind Orphydice he gets this look of Extreme Frustration on that she's still not standing with him and these damn kids are still more important, bc even with character growth he still is a petty selfish bitch who does not like to share lmao, he's just getting that he Has To now

wait for me ii: Hades stays onstage by the microphone stand to the left to watch Hermes deliver his judgement to orphydice/seph/the workers and watching Tom during this was a Treat. this is the first time he's seeing how orphydice and esp Orpheus function when he's not involved to terrify them. they're so sweet and so good, and they have what looks like so much unwavering faith in each other unlike him and seph, maybe they really could... so when he delivers "i let them try" that last word is stretched with so much wonder. he's getting this first glimpse into feeling how everyone else felt when orpheus sang of how the world could be that isn't just focused in about how he feels about persephone, which always drives him - now he's having to deal with the Greater Implications and orpheus' seemingly unbreakable faith in a better world rocks him to his core. that certainty that orpheus would fail gets shaken as he watches them and when Seph asks him if he thinks they'll make it, his I Don't Know is 1/2 defensive and 1/2 actual uncertainty. he still hates to be wrong but he's wondering if his beliefs about doubt will turn out differently this time. he isn't optimistic about it by any means but orpheus, eurydice, and the workers' response to them both does give him pause

meanwhile in hades and persephone's section, on a personal level they deliver their lines to each other like they're a great deal more nervous about what next fall will bring than i've seen and heard before - something I'm thinking stems from hades' worldview being so suddenly shaken and seph too being a little more vulnerable?

MISC THOUGHTS

Tom seems to be leaning into Hades not having done anything with Eurydice other than tempt her down - once she's in Hadestown even during Why We Build The Wall he drops the salesman croon entirely and when he does rarely speak to her/about her it's commanding as a king who sees her just as another object under his possession, with very little interest in her for anything at all beyond that. he was just going after the goal of making sure Seph knew he had Options whether or not he actually pursued them

tom is super dedicated to how power-hungry hades is. I remember when I saw Patrick during chant ii he was playing hades as more affected by how much seph seemed to care about the workers now and desperately trying to get her attention back (even negatively), Tom was more consumed in seeing Orpheus as a threat because of how effectively he had turned his "children" on him. He knocks Seph down in those "shackle her from wrist to wrist" less as a personal petty attack to her like Patrick does and more like to try and destabilize her as someone backing Orpheus up. Tom's Hades perceives Orpheus as a Threat no matter how much he plays up his Performance as Nonchalant Jazzy King. he really emphasizes Hades' relationship to Orpheus whereas Patrick played more into his relationship with Eurydice, which makes so much sense what with Tom's Hades being a pettier more egotistical messy bitch obsessed with his kingdom and Patrick's Hades' obsession being his wife and Hadestown being like, this side-effect of being a god that he just couldn't help, he Had to build and strive for power whereas Tom's Hades reveled in it and wanted it. Instinct versus drive I guess. one of my buds put it super well as: "Patrick!Hades sees everything as a threat to his power Tom!Hades is so certain of his power that he can afford to be somewhat nonchalant but the fact that Orpheus alone is his main genuine threat is fucking brilliant"

and ok for now, that's what I've got! if anyone wants any clarification or wants to ask details about specific moments I didn't put in here feel free to shoot me an ask!

[tippedbykreider]

talk some sense to me | j. oleksiak

Word count: 26.2k Warnings: mutual pining, arguing, sex Author’s note: Childhood best friends to lovers so frustrating you’ll want to slap them both. This fic is mostly unchanged apart from a few additional bits here and there (maybe added another 1k total). Fic title is from ‘I Found’ by Amber Run Summary: True friends are hard to find and harder to keep but when a friendship like the one Jamie and Leo share withstands the test of time, it’s clear that there’s something else there. Can two people who know each other better than anyone else be honest with themselves and face down what has always been there between them?

A moment.

That’s all it takes.

One moment that sits like a void and one moment that can change everything, whichever way it goes. This was such a moment, so big that it felt like entire galaxies could fit inside of it and still leave room for more. He waits for her to speak for what feels like forever while she stands on a knife edge, knowing that whatever words come out of her mouth will rearrange both of their lives in ways that they understood would make it impossible to return to how things were not even ten minutes ago.

Yes, it’s a moment that’s terrifying in every conceivable way.

But it’s theirs.

*

Leonora Harris had lived in Toronto, Ontario for her entire life and couldn’t ever imagine herself being anywhere else. This was something that had her parents scratching their heads on more than one occasion. You see, Bill and Diana had always believed that their daughter would spread her wings and blaze her own path in the world and while they were correct in that assumption, they’d assumed that she’d be doing it somewhere a bit more exotic. There were a lot of things that kept Leonora in the city, one of those things was a huge sense of belonging and a feeling of home that she wasn’t sure she would find anywhere else, another was landing the job of her dreams at the Royal Ontario Museum after finishing university. But perhaps the biggest reason and the reason that she would never allow herself to admit, was because Toronto was the place her best friend also called home, even if it was only for three months out of the year.

True friends are hard to come by and even harder to keep, that’s why people never had an abundance of ‘old friends’, so when a friendship like the one Leonora shared with Jamie Oleksiak comes along, it’s worth sticking around for. Jamie had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. The memory of their first interaction was now so old that the minor details had started to get a little fuzzy around the edges, but one thing that had remained the same and would always remain the same was the indescribable warmth that memory brought that would flicker in her stomach like the first sparks of a bonfire, before it crawled through her skin until it felt like she was glowing all over.

They’d been four years old, she’d remembered, and embarking on their first day of kindergarten. Jamie had been wearing dungarees that much she was sure of and his hair was a chaotically endearing mop of blonde curls but she couldn’t quite remember if the sweatshirt he’d been wearing was red or blue, not that it mattered, of course. She remembered seeing a quiet flicker in his eyes that she later understood to have been fear and had offered him the biggest smile she could muster.

That simple gesture, that smile, is what had made Jamie find his courage and give her a toothy grin back after he’d placed his raincoat on the peg. It was also what had him waiting for her to do the same instead of running along into the playroom to find a quiet corner for himself. If anyone asked Jamie what he remembered the most vividly from that day he would always tell them the same thing:

‘Her eyes. Her eyes and that smile.’

He also remembered how the butterflies fluttered in his stomach as Leonora approached him, all bright green eyes and thick wavy brown hair that had been put into bunches, presumably by her mother. Even years later, Jamie still wasn’t quite sure how he even found his voice but he was sure, even at the tender age of four years old, that the girl in front of him was going to be his friend. No, his best friend and so with a shy smile and a quiet voice he said, “My name’s Jamieson but you can call me Jamie.”

“I’m Leonora,” she replied with a confidence that far exceeded her age.

Jamie’s brow had furrowed at that and he’d taken to chewing on his bottom lip.

“Leo- Leono-,” he gave a frustrated little sigh as he tried to roll his tongue around her name and failed. “Can I call you Leo?”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “You can call me Leo.”

They’d spent the rest of that morning at the drawing table and neither Leo nor Jamie would be able to tell you exactly what they’d talked about all those years ago, but Leo distinctly remembers sitting next to Jamie while they ate lunch and after he’d learned that strawberries were Leo’s favourite fruit, Jamie had proceeded to give her exactly half of his, counting them out one by one until they both had an equal pile in front of them. He would do that every single time he had strawberries and Leo would do the same for him. They would even do this on the days where they both had strawberries, so their piles would consist of half of Jamie’s and half of Leo’s because ‘friends should always share’.

 That mantra was one that they would carry all through their childhood, from elementary school right until the end of high school and even beyond that. It wasn’t just strawberries that he shared with her either, it was near enough everything. What was Jamie’s was Leo’s and what was Leo’s was Jamie’s, that’s just how things were and it extended beyond the material. They shared happiness and disappointments, highs and lows but perhaps the most special thing that they shared was the joy of being able to watch each other find their identities. Jamie had known about Leo’s confidence from the day he met her and it was something that had only grown and blossomed as time went on. He had always admired how sure of herself she was, even as a small child and as she entered her teenage years, Jamie began to understand just how unapologetically authentic she was. It always knocked him back a bit, how outspoken she could be and how she was never afraid to say what she really meant. Even now, more than two decades later, it still had the ability to knock the air out of his lungs.

Jamie had always been laid back and a little bit shy, awkward even. It was something that he’d carried around with him throughout his life, particularly growing up. He sometimes found it hard to open up around people he didn’t know (although anyone would tell you that once he felt truly comfortable it could be difficult to shut him up) and he was often content to go with the flow. On paper, it could have seemed like Leo and Jamie would drive each other up the wall, with Leo’s feistiness contradicting Jamie’s relaxed nature. Yes, they were opposites in every way, but much like fire and water the two of them found ways to create balance and harmony.

Jamie had always felt like he could truly be himself around Leo and that came from not just a place of familiarity, but also of acceptance. She accepted him as he was despite his shyness and despite the fact that he wasn’t as good with words as she was, but more than that, she built him up and encouraged him in everything he did and that is what made it so easy for Jamie to be open with her, not just about his anxieties and the general worries that your formative years bring, but about everything else too. This was something that hadn’t gone unnoticed by Richard and Alison, Jamie’s parents, who couldn’t help but be overjoyed by the spark of confidence their son had whenever he was around the girl with the free and easy laugh and the keen eyes. They welcomed her into their family much in the same way Bill and Diana had welcomed Jamie into theirs and the gruesome twosome (as their families would affectionately call them) were together more often than they were not. It didn’t matter whether they were sitting quietly studying or yelling as they engaged in an overly-competitive game of Crash Team Racing in which Leo would seize and relish the opportunity to gang up on Jamie with his sisters, the bond between them both was clear as day to anyone who knew them and only seemed to strengthen as the years rolled by.

 Their after school routine had remained the same throughout the years and usually consisted of going to one of their houses and sitting in relative silence while they completed their homework, helping each other whenever the need arose. As they got older they would retreat upstairs and spend the time before the other would leave to go home for dinner listening to music and swapping mixtape CDs they’d burned for each other. It was one of those CDs from Jamie that had introduced her to TOOL at the age of sixteen and they had quickly become one of her favourite bands, even still to this day and she always felt a warm kind of fondness spread through her body and resonate in her chest whenever she listened to them, the memory of her first exposure to them still clear in her mind as if it had only been yesterday. She had been laid on her bedroom floor with her legs resting up on the bed and Jamie’s rolled up hoodie under her head as a makeshift pillow, a conscious decision on her part despite being offered one of the pillows off her bed. Truthfully, the fluffy down pillow Jamie had suggested would have been a far comfier option but his hoodie was still warm from where it had been on his body not a half-hour earlier and smelled just like his deodorant and shower-gel and, well, like Jamie and that in itself evoked a kind of softness and comfort within Leo that the pillows on her bed couldn’t begin to replicate, although she’d never admit that out loud to him, of course.

“Okay, so I don’t know if you’ve heard of these before but seriously Leo, they’re fire.”

Jamie was leaning halfway over her from his position on the bed as he placed the cd into her stereo. She squinted at him slightly, unsure of exactly when he’d had this particular growth spurt that made him suddenly look comically large on her double bed.

“What genre?” Leo asked as she watched him settle back against her pillows, his feet hanging off the end of her bed by a hair.

“Prog rock,” he replied, giving Leo a questioning look and a laugh as she audibly groaned. “What?”

“Duh? Remember when your dad made us listen to Rush?”

“This is better, I promise,” Jamie grinned as he pressed play on the small remote in his hand.

“Better be.”

Leo closed her eyes and listened as the first muted notes filtered through the speakers of her stereo followed by a beautifully haunting male voice.

‘So familiar and overwhelmingly warm This one, this form I hold now

Embracing you, this reality here This one, this form I hold now, so Wide eyed and hopeful

Wide eyed and hopefully wild’

To this day Leo can still remember the feeling of something stirring within her chest, an awakening almost, as she connected with the lyrics and the intricate melodies and changing time signatures, somehow made stronger by the fact that Jamie was sharing this with her, which meant that whatever the music was making her feel, Jamie must have felt it too. She let herself get completely lost in the melodies and found herself contemplating the meanings behind the words and allowed them to settle in her bones. She opened her eyes as the track finished to find Jamie watching her with an expectant smile on his face, blue eyes shining with something unspoken that she couldn’t quite place.

“It’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Leo said softly. “Yeah, really good, actually. What did you say this band was called?”

“Tool and when I was reading up on them I found out they’ve been around for years, like since we were born. I found a few of their albums at the second-hand store, you can borrow them if you want.”

Leo looked at Jamie for a breath, a gentle smile playing on her lips and a thoughtful gleam in her eye, before deciding to move from her position on the floor to squeeze onto her bed with him as the next song on the cd began to play. Jamie shifted slightly to accommodate her and wrapped his arms tightly around her back to pull her into him. It wasn’t the first time that they’d laid like that together, nor would it be the last, but there was a flicker of a feeling in Jamie’s chest as he allowed his senses to really come into focus. It was the soft, almost hypnotic beat of the music in the room, it was the smell of pineapple and coconut from Leo’s shampoo that had become her signature scent but above that it was the way in which his breathing followed the same ebb and flow of hers without him even being conscious of it. It was a sense of unity that he wouldn’t truly understand until he was much older but more than all of that it was being lost in this moment with her.

 Life continued much as it had before but the start of their final year in high school brought about a series of changes for the duo. Jamie was excelling at hockey and there was a real sense of well-placed optimism that his abilities on the ice would take him far. While he didn’t have a definitive plan (keen to keep the majority of his focus on his studies) he knew that there were going to be some tough decisions ahead. Leo was all too aware of the very real possibility that her best friend could be moving away but she tried not to dwell on it too much to keep the tightness in her chest at bay, focusing instead on attaining the grades she needed to attend the University of Toronto to study History. Their final school year also brought a change in the form of a girlfriend for Jamie and while Leo made every effort to befriend Sarah and give her the benefit of the doubt, she knew that Sarah had a real problem with her and her friendship with Jamie. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the girl- oh who was she kidding? Of course she didn’t trust her and while Leo tried not to get into the dangerous habit of comparing herself to Sarah and despite her best efforts and intentions, she couldn’t understand just exactly what Jamie saw in the girl.

She’d spoken to her mother at length about it, not least because she couldn’t help but feel a little pushed out and bent out of shape at her sudden demotion to ‘favourite girl number four’ (she would never dream of putting herself ahead of Penny and Hayley in those rankings), but was only met with her mother’s keen eyes that were far too similar to her own for her liking and an annoying sing-song sentiment of ‘sounds to me like someone is a little jealous’, She wasn’t jealous. She wasn’t. She just thought that Sarah was bad news and that was all there was to it but, ever the faithful and supportive friend, Leo would put on a smile and be on her best behaviour whenever Sarah was around and she would never say anything derogatory to Jamie about her whenever she wasn’t. She would pretend like it didn’t hurt like a kick to the stomach when Jamie would change his plans with her plans to go hang out with his girlfriend and worked hard to keep the look of pained disappointment on her face at bay when he would unexpectedly bring Sarah along to the plans with Leo that he did keep.

Despite her feelings of definitely-not-jealousy, and much to her dismay, Leo’s gut feelings of mistrust turned out to be well placed when a sullen looking Jamie had turned up at her house a few days before their leaver’s prom. Leo hadn’t planned to go, of course, given that her first choice school dance buddy would be attending with his girlfriend. That all changed though with Jamie’s revelation that he wouldn’t be going with Sarah.

“I don’t follow,” Leo said from behind her glass of water.

“She um…” Jamie rubbed the back of his neck with his large palm, face flushed slightly in embarrassment. “She dumped me, actually.”

Was spitting out her water everywhere the most appropriate response Leo could’ve had? No and it was something that Jamie would mercilessly tease her about in the future at any given opportunity, but it was all she had in a moment where she was filled with genuine shock and disbelief.

“Fuck off.”

“I’m serious,” Jamie mumbled, his eyes cast downwards to his hands that were in his lap and playing with the hem of his overshirt. “She told me we were done. I found out from Dougie that she was going with Finn Tremblay instead.”

“That jock quarterback? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Leo’s initial shock had quickly dissipated into anger, something that Jamie had gathered from the way her voice had gone up a few octaves and she’d taken to gripping her glass of water so tightly that her knuckles had begun to pale.

“Your glass, Leo.”

She set it down on her nightstand with more force than was necessary and muttered something to herself that Jamie couldn’t quite make out except for a few choice words that included ‘that fucking asshole’ and ‘I knew it’. Her tornadic rage soon quietened to a gentle breeze though as she attuned herself to the sadness radiating from Jamie and she brought herself to look at him with sympathetic eyes.

“God, I’m so sorry, Jame. Really.”

Jamie responded with a small shrug, a desperate attempt at nonchalance albeit feigned that he knew that Leo wouldn’t buy; she knew him far too well for that but it was all he could muster in the moment.

“She didn’t deserve you.”

There was a weight behind those words that surprised both of them and there was a lot more meaning to them too but Jamie didn’t have it in him to push right now and Leo wasn’t about to explore that meaning herself either because truth be told, she’d startled herself with both her choice of words and her delivery. Instead she reached across the space between them where they sat cross-legged opposite each other on her bed and took one of Jamie’s big hands to rub gentle circles across the back of it.

“It’ll be okay,” she spoke gently, her voice a shade above a whisper.

“I know,” Jamie murmured and he meant it too because he knew that Leo was right. It would be okay. It would always be okay as long as he had her in his life.

The pair resolved to make the most of a shitty situation (although Leo was sure to let Sarah know exactly what she thought of her) and, after some last minute dress shopping, Leo had found herself looking uncharacteristically glam to attend prom with Jamie. They’d insisted that it was no big deal but you’d never guess it from the way both parents couldn’t contain their excitement as they took pictures of the duo in front of Bill and Diana’s fireplace. Diana and Alison shared a knowing glance on more than one occasion and were practically bursting with glee as Jamie slipped the corsage he’d bought for Leo onto her wrist. One of the things that struck Jamie the most about that night was the ease in which it was to slow-dance with Leo. He’d anticipated it to be awkward and a little bit uncomfortable, y’know, given that Leo was just a friend and while he couldn’t deny the fact that his heart was hammering in his chest as she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest, he also couldn’t stop himself from dropping his head lower to nose at her hair either.

 One of the things that Leo was consistently described as being by all who knew her was a ‘whirlwind’. Whenever she’d have a spark of an idea she’d add kindling and stoke it, fanning the flames until it was a roaring fire and even the calming waters of Jamie couldn’t quell it. There was no stopping her once she’d set her mind on something and while Jamie appreciated that drive and determination, it had landed them both in hot water on more than one occasion. The first time was just before Leo’s seventeenth birthday when she’d asked him to accompany her to get her nose pierced. He’d discovered as they were sat in the waiting room, much to his horror, that she hadn’t actually told her parents about her plans to get a piercing and although she was of the legal age of consent, he’d still uttered the words ‘this is a really bad idea’; but even he couldn’t deny that the small little stud, which would later be swapped out for a dainty silver hoop, completed her face and served as an extension of her personality. Her parents on the other hand hadn’t quite seen it that way and Jamie remembers to this day, with great clarity, the exact lecture they’d given her the second they noticed the new addition to their daughter’s face and while they’d not blamed Jamie for not stopping their daughter’s impulsive behaviour he couldn’t help but feel like an enabler. The telling-off from Bill and Diana did little to deter Leo and before long she’d expanded her piercing collection with multiple ear piercings and, much to her mother’s dislike, a navel piercing. Jamie hadn’t learned his lesson either though because during the summer after they’d both turned eighteen, he once again found himself being dragged along to a tattoo parlour by Leo to fulfil his best-friend duty of chief hand holder while she got her very first ink.

That summer would prove to be the last one before everything changed. From the moment the pair entered their last year of high school, the reality of their futures beyond school loomed over them. It was easy to ignore for the most part, school served as a good distraction and kept Jamie and Leo busy enough that they didn’t have much time to venture too far down that rabbit hole but these kinds of things have a habit of rolling around, regardless of our best efforts to ignore them, as sure as death and taxes. Leo’s future at the University of Toronto was set in stone with the return of her provincial exam results and while she should have been delighted at the fact she’d be enrolling at her first choice university and studying her chosen degree, the uncertainty of where Jamie would be and what that would mean for their friendship weighed heavily on her mind and with each passing day of summer that inched them towards September, Leo felt as if she had feet like concrete and a head like lead. Jamie sensed this, of course, knowing her better than anyone, even herself and that’s what made the decision to move across the border, so that he could pursue a career in hockey, the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his eighteen years of life, only surpassed by the conversation neither Jamie nor Leo ever wanted to have.

That evening would stay with Jamie forever like a scar from a wound, vivid and raw at first before fading into something so faint that it’s barely noticeable, except it was still there. It would always be there. The look on Leo’s face was like a knife through his chest and the tears that clung to her cheeks like fresh dew on a rose petal felt like someone was twisting it further into the cut.

“What do you mean ‘you’re leaving’? When? Where?”

“Massachusetts, I’m going to Northeastern University. They have a really good collegiate hockey programme there and-“

Jamie was cut off by Leo shaking her head vehemently as her tears began to flow more freely, her voice strangled in her throat.

“No. You-you can’t. Please, Jame. You could play hockey anywhere, you don’t need to go to another country.”

He swallowed thickly as he watched her, the lump in his throat growing by the second while he willed himself not to cry at the pleading look in her tear-filled eyes. It was ironic really, that the person begging him to stay was the same person who had given him the confidence to take that leap of faith and spread his wings in the first place. If you’d have told Jamie even three years ago that he’d be moving away from everything he’d ever known to a foreign country at age eighteen and take steps towards chasing his dream of playing professional hockey he’d have laughed in your face, but being around Leo and hearing her tell him every single day that he was ‘awesome’ and ‘could be anything he wanted to be in the whole world’ made him slowly start to believe it himself.

“I wish it was that simple, Leo. I do.”

Jamie’s voice was so quiet and raw that he barely recognised it as being his own but it was and Leo heard him. She heard what he was saying and everything that he wasn’t and her eyes closed as her lips were drawn together in a tight line while she held on tightly to the thread that was keeping whatever composure she had left together. She knew deep down that this is what Jamie needed to do, that he couldn’t stay in Toronto and for what? For her? That was a kind of selfishness that Leo wasn’t comfortable with, no matter how tempting it was and no matter how much she wished that she could spend every day for the rest of her life being able to hang out with her best friend, he was destined for greatness. She was sure of it. So she nodded as fresh tears streaked down her face, her voice muted and broken, “I know, Jame. I know that. It’s just… I’m really gonna miss you.”

Jamie reached for her as the first sobs she’d been holding back surged forward, pulling her into his lap from his position at the head of her bed and settling her against his chest. His own tears fell silently into her hair while he held her steadfast, willing the broken pieces of her heart back together with each ‘I’m sorry’ that he murmured against the crown of her head. Jamie had never once allowed himself to imagine a life where he wouldn’t see Leo every day but as he stared down the reality, his new reality, he was thankful for every bit of strength and courage the girl wrapped within his arms had ever given him, and while he knew that it would be hard and while he knew that the sting of missing her would sit heavily in his chest every single day, he knew that it would be worth it all to make her proud.

 While the Earth continues on its pilgrimage around the Sun, life goes on. Life must go on and though it hadn’t been the easiest adjustment for Leo and Jamie to make, they’d made it all the same. They managed to talk most days, often Skyping each other as they went about their evening routines and while it wasn’t anywhere close to the real thing, it would serve as a good enough substitute until summer rolled around again and Jamie would be back home in Toronto. It was both a blessing and a curse, how quickly the months collapsed into each other and it felt like no sooner had Leo started her first semester, she was taking her end of first year exams and looking forward to having a couple of months off before September crept back around and she’d suddenly become a second year. The anticipation of seeing Jamie again was only fuelled further by their shared excitement at their plans for their time together. Both of them had celebrated turning nineteen since the last time they’d seen each other in person and while Leo had enjoyed her first legal drink over Skype with Jamie, it wasn’t quite the same knowing that he wasn’t able to have one with her because of the difference in drinking laws but they’d resolved to use their new found legal drinking status to buy each other a drink once he was back home.

His first night back in the city was spent in Leo’s room where they’d laid side-by-side on her bed, fingers intertwined and talked until they were hoarse. It knocked Jamie back a bit, as he listened to her recount her first year at college, how the girl beside him was both different and still the same all at the same time. University had done her good, he thought, and she seemed a little more worldly and wise, or she did in his eyes anyway. But the fire still burned in her belly, brighter than before in some ways and Jamie was struck by the realisation that his best friend, the girl he’d known all his life, was blossoming into a woman. Some things never change though because she’d almost bowled him over as she practically launched herself at him and into his arms when she opened the front door to find him stood on her parents’ porch, somehow even taller than he was when he’d left nine months ago. He’d reluctantly made the short journey home a little after 1am and Leo had slept more soundly that night that she could ever remember.

It was a Saturday night in early-August when the two of them had decided to head into the city to fulfil their promise of buying each other a drink. Leo had suggested The Lab as she’d been there a few times already throughout her first year and had always had a good time. In all their years of friendship Jamie could probably count on one hand the amount of times he’d seen Leo with more makeup on that her usual mascara and Burt’s Bees lip balm so to say he was a little floored as he watched her come out of her house from his spot in the back seat of a taxi was an understatement. Her long chocolate hair was in beachy waves and the upper half of it was secured into two little space buns on the top of her head. His eyes flitted over the celestial print mini dress that hung loosely on her body and down to her signature black doc martens and felt his chest begin to flutter in a most unusual way. She didn’t give him too long to question those feelings though because she was opening the cab door and sliding into the seat next to him before he could really decipher what that was all about.

“Hey!”

“Hi,” he replied, looking at her a little dumbfounded as he took in the smoked eyeliner she wore and the subtle wash of colour on her lips. “You look…”

“Please say ‘nice’,” she whined. “I had a total crisis about ten minutes before you arrived. You should see the state of my room. Clothes everywhere.”

Jamie chuckled at that and his eyes had softened in a way that was both familiar to Leo and different all at the same time. There was the usual friendliness there, sure, but there was something that she just couldn’t quite place hidden within those ocean eyes of his. The easy smirk he was wearing was one she’d seen before though and so she wasn’t surprised to hear that his response was one of playful teasing.

“I was gonna say that you look great, but yeah, let’s go with ‘nice’”.

Leo instinctively rolled her eyes and swatted gently at his bicep with an exaggerated sigh.

“Ass.”

“It’s not like you to wear makeup,” Jamie remarked.

“Yeah, well, figured I’d make an effort seeing as though this is technically a belated birthday celebration.”

“I’m honoured that you thought I was worth the effort.” Even in the darkness of the back of the cab, Leo could still see the shit eating grin that had graced Jamie’s features.

“Who said I made the effort for you?” she replied without missing as much as a beat. “I might be wanting to look pretty for the handsome men of Toronto.”

“What handsome men?”

Jamie cringed as soon as the words were out of his mouth, not only at what he’d said but also at his delivery which had been rushed and a shade accusatory. It’d taken him a little by surprise if he was to be completely honest and he didn’t quite understand why the suggestion had made him feel a momentary pang of annoyance and disappointment all at once. Much like a bolt of lightning though, it had gone no sooner had it come. Leo simply scoffed, not prepared to unpack whatever the hell that was and replied with a gentle roll of her eyes.

“It was a joke, Jame. No one in this city is dumb enough to go out with me.”

The words were there on the tip of Jamie’s tongue, all he had to do was say them but the fact they were there at all had made Jamie’s heart take off galloping and so he swallowed those words down and forced his eyes away from his best friend, because that’s all this was between them, and out of the cab window to look at the passing lights outside.

Jamie had been successful at stuffing the weird tightening in his chest he’d felt from the second he’d laid eyes on Leo down into his stomach and the beer he was drinking was doing a good enough job at drowning it. Leo on the other hand was having a much tougher time of things. Instead of the Long Island Iced Tea hushing her racing mind it seemed to give it more impetus. Why did Jamie have such a knee-jerk reaction to what was quite clearly a joke? Why was she suddenly really impressed at the fact he could sing The Bad Touch word for word when it was something he’d been able to do for years? Why did the plaid over-shirt she’d seen him wear hundreds of times look so good on him all of a sudden? And when did he get so broad? She had questions, lots of them and even her questions had questions, the biggest one being ‘why am I being weird about this all of a sudden?’ It was Jamie. It was just Jamie, her best friend of fifteen years.

She hadn’t planned on having a second Long Island Iced Tea and she definitely hadn’t planned on two turning into three but perhaps the third time was the charm because the whirring in her head had stopped and all she could focus on was the lopsided grin on Jamie’s face as he looked at her from his position on the barstool to her right.

“You’re drunk,” she grinned from behind her glass, in no position herself to make such a statement.

“’m not,” Jamie replied in the way that only a drunk person trying to convince both themselves and everyone else that they weren’t.

“Liar.”

“Says you.”

Leo laughed at that, a little wild and a lot silly and it split Jamie’s face into a huge grin while he brought his hand up to tuck a strand of hair back out of her face. Leo’s laughter softened into a gentle smile, her eyes fixed on Jamie’s. He’d always loved her eyes, he thought, ever since they were small and they were every hue of the forest, rimmed coolly with moss. Their lightness often reminded him of summertime, when the sun-rays warmed each extended leaf and even now, in the darkness of the dimly lit bar, he could see them sparkling like emeralds and while he wasn’t sure if it was the beers that had him feeling a little bolder than usual, he couldn’t stop himself from asking her the question that had been sitting high in his throat since the cab ride there.

“Why’d you say that before? About no one in this city bein’ dumb enough to date you?”

She shrugged apathetically while her fingers busied themselves with the hem of her dress.

“S’true,” she replied. “’m not easy to be around. I know that. You know that, you’ve been puttin’ up with my ass for fifteen years.”

“Leo.”

“What?”

Jamie reached his hand down and squeezed her leg gently, enough pressure just to get her eyes on his.

“I was honestly surprised that you weren’t datin’ anyone. You’re… God, you’re so fuckin’ awesome. Any guy would be lucky to have you as their girlfriend.”

Leo tore her eyes away from his just long enough to get the heat quickly rising in her cheeks under control. Jamie waited for her, his eyes soft and gentle when she finally met his gaze again.

“Any girl would be lucky to have you,” Leo mumbled.

“Tell that to Sarah,” Jamie chuckled quietly in response.

“Sarah was stupid,” Leo said with a vehemence that made Jamie’s stomach flutter and had him leaning in to bring his face closer to hers without a second thought.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He was so close now that Leo felt his reply on the exhale of his breath against her lips. She looked down at Jamie’s mouth and swallowed hard, her eyes closing as he inched his mouth closer and closer until-

“Jamie!”

The warmth of anticipation quickly receded and Leo opened her eyes to see Jamie pulling back from her and looking wildly over his shoulder for the source of the voice. Leo had assumed he’d found it when she felt him slide off the stool beside her, instantly missing his presence, and cross the short distance to the man who’d called his name who turned out to be a guy they’d both known from high school. She knew that she should’ve followed Jamie’s lead and catch up with an old acquaintance and she knew that if her mother knew what she was doing she’d think her to be rude, but Leo’s mind wasn’t in any position to be giving the instructions required to move her legs because while she sat there mindlessly playing with the beer mat that had found itself between her fingers, her brain was already analysing what just happened in about a million different ways while still managing to ignore the complete obvious when it came to acknowledging what it all meant.

 The third Long Island Iced Tea was a bad idea, that much was clear to Leo as she awoke the next morning. She was thankful that her past drunken-self had at least had the foresight to bring a pint of water and a Tylenol up to bed with her. She groaned as she hauled herself up the pillows until she was propped up against them, sitting with her head resting against the headboard and cursing the tiny crack in her curtains that was catapulting the morning sunlight right into her eyes. She reached for her water and took a sip to swallow the tablet before taking long, deep gulps until the glass was drained. Leo wasn’t exactly sure why she’d found herself almost kissing Jamie although if you were to ask her a decade later she’d tell you that she knew exactly why, but rather she was simply refusing to acknowledge the glaringly obvious. She chewed on her bottom lip much the same way her mind was chewing over his words to her last night: ‘any guy would be lucky to have you as their girlfriend.’ What did that mean exactly? And why would he say something like that?

She was pulled from her brooding by the obnoxious vibration of her phone against the nightstand. Leo knew who the message was from before she’d even unlocked her phone and while a very large part of her wanted to just forget last night ever happened and carry on as normal, she was also curious to hear Jamie’s thoughts on it all.

Jamie: Hey, just wanted to check in with you. Hope the head isn’t too bad this morning 🙈 x

Leo: Drunk me was a very good friend to future hungover me and made sure I had some water and Tylenol lol I bet you don’t even have one, which is very rude by the way. If I’m suffering then you have to suffer too x

Leo paused for a moment as her thumbs hovered over the keyboard, racking her brain for the words needed to gently broach the subject of last night. She’d hoped that Jamie would save her the trouble but she wasn’t going to be that lucky.

Jamie: I had a slight headache this morning but I imagine it’s nothing compared to yours. You were really going for it with those Iced Teas 😂 x

Leo: Three was a mistake, yes x

Leo: Actually, while we’re on the subject I kinda wanted to talk to you about last night x

Jamie: You mean we weren’t already talking about it? X

Leo: I meant the part where it seemed like you were going to kiss me, specifically x

Jamie: Ah. Yeah. That x

Leo pulled her hand through her hair and sighed in frustration, almost regretting even bringing it up. She was almost certain that Jamie had meant nothing by it, they’d both had a lot to drink, right? Surely this was just one of those things between two good friends caused by too much to drink and they’d be laughing about it in a few months’ time. That was Leo’s take on it, anyway, and she was sticking to it.

Leo: I mean, we were both drunk, right? X

Jamie: Yeah, I guess x

Leo: And I think it was just a combination of the alcohol and still having those feelings of missing you while you were away and I was just so excited that you were home that I got swept up in it all x

Jamie: Right. Yeah, that makes sense x

She chewed on her bottom lip in thought, knowing that really this should have been a conversation they’d had face to face but better to address it now than wait and give them both chance to analyse it to death.

Leo: So we’ll just chalk it up as one of those weird alcohol moments? X

Jamie: Yeah, sounds good to me x

While it didn’t do much to settle her nerves, Jamie’s response was good enough for her and she felt confident enough that the matter could be put to bed and that it wasn’t necessary to give it any more thought. She sent Jamie a final message to tell him that she was going to get up to take a shower and that she’d talk to him later on after she’d got home from visiting her grandparents. Jamie had too decided that a shower was the best course of action, partly to wash the smell of bar and cigarette smoke from his body but also as an attempt to clear his head. He wasn’t entirely sure why last night of all nights he felt like he couldn’t take his eyes off Leo. Sure, she was wearing makeup which wasn’t something that she would usually do but it wasn’t as if that act itself was out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary though was the way his hands felt on her waist as they danced together, the way he remembered his heart had sounded as it whooshed in his ears when his lips were no more than a hair away from hers. That almost contact had set a fire in his belly and now that it had been lit he wasn’t exactly sure if it could actually be extinguished. Maybe Leo was right though. Perhaps it was one of those moments that should be chalked up as them both having too much alcohol and too much time apart; Jamie’s only hope was that if he could ignore that fire for long enough and not stoke the flames by giving it all too much thought, it would burn out on its own.

 August quietly slipped by and all too soon Jamie and Leo were once again saying farewell. Instead of heading back to Massachusetts, Jamie was going to be making a new home in Saginaw, Michigan having decided to sign with the Spirit in order to further develop himself. Leo continued to catch up with Jamie much in the same way they had the year before while she threw herself into her studies, the four hour drive often being just that little bit too far to make their conflicting schedules feasibly work. Her passion for her degree was clear to Jamie and he looked forward to hearing all about her classes and assignments, even going so far as asking her to send them to him so he could read about all that she’d been learning so far. Jamie had always known that Leo was incredibly bright, she’d always been articulate and she always knew exactly how to express herself which was something that Jamie both admired and was envious of. While he still had a long way to go, he never let himself forget just how much he’d learned from her in that respect and it was just one of the many reasons that he was grateful for her friendship. The ease in which she expressed her ideas and opinions in her academic writing was so impressive to Jamie and it really gave him a new appreciation for her mind and her talent. These were all things he already knew, of course, but seeing her flying and flourishing at university filled him with an immense amount of pride for her.

Naturally, much like most things in their lives, that feeling of pride was felt by Leo whenever Jamie told her about his games and life playing in the OHL and she was beyond excited for him when she’d watched him get selected by Dallas in the 2011 draft. She followed games whenever she could and talked to Jamie after he’d finished playing whenever their schedules would allow. She was so unbelievably happy to see Jamie making positive steps towards his professional playing career and when his path led him back to St. Catharines, Ontario to play for the Niagara IceDogs, Leo could have burst with the joy of having her favourite person back home, even though he was busy more often than not. Despite his schedule, Jamie always made himself available to talk to her whenever school had her stressed, especially given that her third year was proving to be quite the challenge and the closer proximity to home meant that they could hang out a lot more whenever their schedules allowed. But more importantly, as had been the common theme throughout their lives so far, they pulled each other through the ups and downs of the year and spent that summer joined at the hip, enjoying their last bit of time together before Jamie would make the move down to Texas just before the start of Leo’s final year at university.

If Leo had thought that her third year was difficult then she was in for a rude awakening when it came to her final one. The pace was relentless, especially when it came to balancing all of her different classes and assignments and while Jamie didn’t have a clue what she was talking about half the time, he was happy that she was at least enjoying the process and supported her in any capacity he could across all the miles and time zones. Leo couldn’t watch as many of Jamie’s games as she would have liked, given her own gruelling schedule, but she sent him words of encouragement every single day and despite her not being able to be physically with him, Jamie felt her presence all around him just the same and counted down the days until he’d be able to spend the summer with her once more. He’d talk with her whenever he could and there were more times that she’d fallen asleep still on the line with him than Jamie could count, each time making the ache in his chest more prominent than the last. Trips to Toronto during the season were infrequent and much too short but seeing her, even for those few hours after a game, where it felt like there had been no time or distance between them both at all, gave him the quiet peace he needed until he could be with her again, laid on her bed at her parents’ house with the windows open, the gentle breeze and her soft humming against his chest as they listened to music together with their fingers laced tight.

Jamie still remembers to this day the exact moment that Leo opened her degree results. He’d thankfully been home and arrived at her parents’ house not long after 9am to have breakfast with them while they waited for the results to go live on the school online portal. Diana had made pancakes, he recalled, with bacon and maple syrup and Bill had been out in the car to pick up a Tim Horton’s for everyone and (hopefully) celebratory Timbits for Leo. Jamie wished that he could’ve bottled the look on Leo’s face when she found out that she’d be graduating from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Religious Studies and because of her exceptionally high grades, she could therefore progress onto the Master’s program to study History further. He remembered whispering in her ear how proud he was of her as he held onto her tightly and it only grew with the realisation that he’d get to share that moment with her on her graduation day.

 On June 18th, 2014 Leonora Harris awoke to her father carrying in a tray laden with coffee, fresh orange, toast and jam along with a card bearing handwriting she recognised as belonging to Alison Oleksiak. Her was mother close behind with the biggest bouquet of flowers Leo had ever seen bundled within her arms.

“Happy graduation day, sweetheart,” Bill said softly as he placed the tray into Leo’s lap after waiting for her to sit herself up and dropped a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

“These came for you about five minutes ago,” Diana added, setting the bouquet down on the nightstand.

Leo took the opportunity to peer at the flowers wrapped in brown paper and cellophane and tied up with string. Her floral knowledge was admittedly limited but she recognised the large lion-head dahlia blooms nestled amongst sunflowers and yellow roses and peppered with smaller sprays of baby’s breath. She reached for the small card poking out from amongst the flowers and opened the envelope to reveal a small piece of paper. After admiring the beautiful penmanship of whomever had written the message she allowed herself to read it and felt a lovely warmth spread from the centre of her chest all the way down to her toes.

Leo,

Congrats again on your new membership to the Silly Hat Club! Enjoy every second and don’t trip over. I’m really proud of you and I always knew you could do it.

Love, J xxx

Leo smiled as she put the small piece of paper back into the envelope before turning her attention to the card on her breakfast tray which had contained a ‘Happy Graduation’ card from the Oleksiaks and a gift certificate for her favourite book store which was where she bought the majority of her second hand CDs from.

“Exicted?” her mother asked from her new position sat by Leo’s feet at the end of the bed, her hand laid gently on her shins over the comforter.

Leo nodded and echoed her mother’s smile in reply.

“We’re so proud of you, honey,” Diana continued, voice cracking slightly as she sniffled with pure happiness. “So, so proud.”

“Thank you, mama. Not sure I coulda done it without you both though.”

“We just gave you the tools, Nora Noo,” Bill spoke softly. “The hard work was all yours.”

Leo grinned at her father and it was a smile she would wear for the remainder of the day. She felt every bit the part in her navy blue wrap dress underneath her cap and gown and Jamie had to fight hard to swallow the lump in his throat as he watched his favourite person in the whole world cross the stage to collect her diploma. He didn’t miss the sly glance and smirk Penny was wearing to his left and all he could manage was a mumbled ‘shut up’ which told the youngest Oleksiak all she needed to know and would have her looking rather smug for the rest of the day. The group returned to the Harris house after the ceremony had finished and Alison and Diana were satisfied they had all the photos they needed. Leo wasn’t even sure how her mother had found the time to prepare food but within twenty minutes of them arriving back at the house, the kitchen island was filled with various nibbles and a charcuterie board. The champagne was popped and Bill led the group in raising a glass to Leo, Jamie with his arm tight around her waist all the while.

Long after the food had been cleared away and their families had begun to migrate towards the living room, Jamie took the opportunity to gently grab Leo’s hand and lead her through the kitchen out to the back porch, refilling their champagne flutes on the way and purposefully ignoring the shit-eating grins Hayley and Penny were throwing their way. He settled on the swing loveseat, his large arm draped along the back and nodded for Leo to sit down beside him. She settled back against the cushions, her body pressed lightly into his side and took a sip of champagne as the pair slipped into an easy silence while twilight slowly began to descend all around them. They stayed that way for a few minutes, content to watch as the sky melted into a watercolour of magenta, red and violet. Jamie broke the stillness first with a voice so quiet that Leo could’ve been forgiven for not hearing him at all. She could feel him prepare to speak before the words had even left his mouth though, the small breath he took settling all through her own body and preparing her for whatever he was about to say.

“I’m so proud of you, y’know that, right?”

“Of course I do,” Leo whispered in reply, not wanting to burst the calm bubble that they’d cultivated around them.

Jamie reached inside his pocket and pulled out a small black velvet drawstring bag, handing it to Leo and nodding for her to open it.

“What’s this?”

“Your graduation present,” Jamie smiled softly.

“But you already sent me flowers,” Leo protested.

“Those were your graduation flowers. This is your graduation present.”

“Jame.”

“Just open the damn bag,” he laughed quietly, blue eyes keen as he watched her run the cord between her fingers.

Leo’s fingers pulled at the cord around the top of the pouch to open it up and reached inside to pull out a thin woven leather bracelet. The silver of the clasp glinted faintly in the afterglow of the day and dangling from the tan cord were two silver charms: a graduation cap and a lion head. Leo swallowed thickly in an attempt to keep her tears at bay, not quite trusting herself to speak for fear that once she started crying, she would not be able to stop.

“Do you like it?” Jamie asked nervously after Leo’s silence had gone on a little too long for comfort.

“I love it, Jamie,” she sniffled. “It’s perfect.”

She handed the bracelet to him and offered her wrist in a wordless request for him to put it on her. He took it from her gladly and after a few seconds of fiddling and a nervous laugh from Jamie as his large fingers struggled with the dainty clasp, the bracelet was around her wrist and Leo was smiling softly as she admired it. Jamie’s arm had found its way back to its previous position along the back of the swing, his fingers tracing patterns along Leo’s upper arm idly which was something he’d done countless times before and yet none had ever felt as intimate as it did in that moment. His heart had taken to hammering in his chest as he watched her and the way the dusk and the faint glow of the string lights on the porch gave her an almost ethereal quality which made the fire in his stomach that he’d tried so hard to forget about spring to life and begin to burn ferociously. It was almost too much, that overwhelming need to kiss her despite not quite understanding where these feelings were coming from and why they were springing up now of all times, but he remembered the night at the bar where they’d come to within a breath of it and he remembered the morning after, their conversation and the fact that they were just friends and that Leo wasn’t really his. So he did the only thing he could think to do in that moment, he took a deep, settling breath before casting his eyes back out towards the sky.

“Are you okay?”

Her question was quiet and soft and it crawled all through Jamie’s skin to settle within his chest.

“Yeah,” he replied just as quietly. “Just… Thinking about when we were kids and how much everything has changed.”

“We’re still the same though, you and I.”

“You are, but you’ve always been awesome and smart and just… amazing but I’m not the same,” Jamie shook his head. “I’m so different to what I used to be, in the best kind of way and I know that that’s down to you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Leo murmured.

“Except you did,” he countered but with the softness still present in his tone. “You taught me what it meant to be brave and made me believe that I could do anything and because of you I’m playing in the AHL, I played for the Dallas Stars and even if I never get called up to play for them again, I did it. I played in the NHL and I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

“Jamie.”

Leo’s voice was caught somewhere in her throat, tangled up in the lump that stubbornly sat there and all she could do was reach for his other hand and hold it tightly in his lap.

“It’s true and you wanna know what else is true?” He paused while he waited for Leo to reply which he got as a small nod before continuing, sure and steady in his delivery. “That you’re gonna kick ass on this master’s degree. You’re the smartest person I know, Leo and you’re gonna be fucking amazing.”

Leo rested her head onto Jamie’s shoulder, mostly out of a need to be close to him but partly because her eyes were full to the brim with tears and she didn’t want him to see her cry on what was such a happy day, which was probably a good thing because a few stray tears had slipped out and onto Jamie’s cheeks as well.

“You’re such a sap,” she half-teased, her voice muffled by his button up shirt but she squeezed his hand all the same.

Jamie closed his eyes and pressed a soft kiss into her hair, the gentle teasing enough to pull him back into reality, the one where they were just friends and where their relationship was easy and didn’t need to be complicated by romantic feelings, the reality where come September he’d be leaving town again and they would go back to phone calls and FaceTiming across the time zones whenever they could. They were just friends. They were just friends. They were just friends.

Jamie swallowed thickly and forced a lightness into his tone and a smile onto his face before he gave her a reply. “Yeah, I know. But don’t go tellin’ anyone or we’re gonna have to throw hands.”

“You’re too scared to fight me, Oleksiak.”

Jamie breathed a laugh into her hair at that, her response so quick and quippy and so Leo that it was enough to elicit a real and genuine chuckle despite the knot that sat heavy in his stomach. His fingers flexing around the shoulder his arm was draped over as he spoke, “Yeah, you’re right. I am.”

It would be something that Jamie wouldn’t find out until much later on, but from the moment he put that bracelet around Leo’s wrist, she made damn sure that she never ever took it off, even as the months rolled into years and even when it felt like there was so much distance between them, both literally and figuratively, that bracelet was a reminder to Leo that her favourite person was always with her, no matter what.

Jamie meanwhile would keep trying to smother the fire that Leo had set in his stomach the night they’d almost kissed but despite his best efforts, the flames would keep creeping higher and higher with every single thought he had of her and he was beginning to understand that they would not stop until they reached his chest and engulfed his heart completely.

 The next couple of years would pass for both Jamie and Leo in a bit of a blur. Leo threw herself into her master’s education completely, determined to give herself the best possible chance of landing a good job after she’d graduated. It was as intense as she’d expected it to be and while she had initially struggled to pick a topic for her thesis, after numerous 3am phone calls with Jamie and a heart-to-heart with her parents, she finally settled on focusing her paper on the role of the church on life in the Middle Ages, which to quote Jamie, sounded ‘impressive as fuck’. The research material was interesting enough and Leo found that there was enough there for her to really get into the meat of it all. Jamie on the other hand was trying his hardest to establish himself as an NHL defenseman and would find himself flitting between the Texan and Dallas Stars. He’d have been lying if he said that it didn’t weigh heavily on him sometimes and while he tried his hardest to keep his conversations with Leo light so as not to worry her during an important part of her studying, her incredible ability to sense when he wasn’t quite feeling himself was so good that it was almost eerie. He would apologise every single time for venting and she would tell him that’s what friends were for and offer him words of encouragement and advice that spurred him on and pushed him to keep working hard and to keep chasing his dream of making it in the National Hockey League.

Leo graduated for a second time in the summer of 2016 with a Masters in History, achieving a remarkable A+ as her final grade which secured her dream job working at the Royal Ontario Museum. Jamie once again sat at her parents’ side, chest swelling with pride, as he watched her cross that stage to collect her diploma. He’d also helped her move into and decorate her first apartment, an airy two bedroomed place not far from her new place of employment and Jamie’s own downtown loft that he was renting, right before he had to fly out to Rio to watch Penny represent team Canada at the Olympics. Leo called Jamie after every single one of Penny’s races, making sure to get a promise from him that he would tell the youngest Oleksiak just how proud Leo was of her and of course, reminding Jamie that he was henceforth known as ‘Penny’s brother’ and that he would no longer be allowed to pick on her now that she was Canada’s sweetheart, which had earned her a great deal of grumbling from Jamie.

Jamie was thankful that he would at least get to spend a couple of weeks at home before he was due to fly back down to Texas. It was a late-August evening when Leo found herself sprawled out on Jamie’s couch. He’d only been back from Brazil for a couple of days but had said that there was a couple of things that he needed to do before he had to leave to report for training camp. He was playing on his Playstation and while at first Leo been content to just scroll through Instagram, she’d soon grown tired of that and was now eyeing him from her position at the opposite end of the sofa. If he noticed her restless sighs he certainly didn’t give anything away and his focus remained fixed on the television. She narrowed her eyes at him after a particularly obnoxious exhale of her breath garnered zero reaction or response and began to scoot slowly towards him, a mischievous glint in her eye that could only be born out of boredom.

Leo settled next to Jamie on her knees, a slow grin forming as she looked at him. He was still looking at the TV, completely engrossed in whatever game it was that he was playing and if he had noticed her then he kept maintaining an air of indifference as his thumbs pushed at the buttons on his controller. She’d started by giving his bicep a gentle prod, looking at him expectantly while she waited for his eyes to find hers. Nothing. She prodded again, a little harder this time and while she noticed the corner of his lips quirk he still didn’t turn his gaze onto her. Leo furrowed her brows as a small pout graced her features which earned a faint chuckle from Jamie. He knew what she was trying to do, of course, knowing her better than anyone, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, at least not yet.

Leo began to gently prod the side of his head, her pout devolving into an impish little grin as she noticed Jamie roll his eyes exaggeratedly.

“Oh my god, can you not?” he grumbled but with a playful edge to his tone.

“I’m not going to stop poking you until you give me attention.”

“Real mature. Not the kind of behaviour I’d expect from a master’s graduate at all,” he smirked as he side eyed her.

“Those are your standards, Jamie, and quite frankly, I don’t subscribe to them.”

She reached down to pinch at his ribs through the thin material of his tank top, the yelp she received more pained than she was anticipating.

“Oh my god! I did not pinch you that hard!”

“You got me right on my tattoo!” Jamie protested.

“What tattoo? Since when have you had a tattoo there?”

Jamie lifted the hem of his tank to reveal an intricately patterned tribal lion head, the skin still red and raw.

“When did you get that done?” Leo asked, looking closely at it.

“Yesterday so it’s still pretty fuckin’ tender.”

“Awwww,” Leo smirked, making Jamie’s eyes flicker with a hint of nervousness at the devilish look in her eye and the mischief in her tone. “You love me so much you got a lion.”

Jamie groaned and rolled his eyes as Leo’s face split into a fiendish grin.

“I did not get a lion for you. You don’t have the monopoly on lions, y’know. They can represent lots of things, like bravery or courage. Not everything is about you, Leo.”

“Suuuure,” she teased.

“Whatever,” Jamie grumbled as he pulled his shirt back down and used the controller to turn off the Playstation before setting it down on the coffee table. “Happy?” he groused but still surveyed Leo with that familiar warmth he had in his eyes that was reserved exclusively for her.

“Yup,” she replied, obnoxiously putting her feet into his lap and wiggling them until he brought his hand down to rest upon her shin, the gentle weight of it and the warmth of his touch against her bare legs sparking a sad smile on her features while she studied his features like she was committing them once again to memory, the realisation that he would be gone again next week washing over her like someone had just blown a dam.

“What?” he asked with a gentle chuckle while his eyes searched her face.

“Nothing, just… I’m gonna miss you when you go back to the States.”

“You’re gonna miss harassing me, more like.”

“No!” she rebutted, before immediately giving him a small grin. “I mean, yeah, but not just that. I’m gonna miss you. I always miss you.”

Jamie’s expression softened as her voice trailed off and his thumb began to take on a mind of its own as it started drawing small circles against her skin.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper to which she nodded in reply, unable to speak for the quickly forming lump in her throat. “I’m gonna miss you too.”

Leo shifted and moved towards Jamie, slotting easily against his side like she belonged there while still being cognizant of the still fresh tattoo. As Jamie pulled her closer he tried not to lose it as her arm draped lazily across his abdomen and her face pressed against his chest. Her fingers had occupied themselves with the hem of his shirt and he swore his heart was going to beat right out of his chest as they’d slipped underneath the fabric and were dancing lightly over the skin above the waistband of his shorts. Leo didn’t notice the wide-eyed expression on his face though, her eyes were closed and she was too focused on the strong beat of his heart to stop herself from spiralling over the thought of him going back to Texas and not seeing him again for another nine months. She hated this part, the part where he would go back to his other life, the other life that she was only a part of via a telephone screen and while she knew that his life was really none of her business, it was getting harder and harder to remind herself that he wasn’t really hers and to let go of all the anxieties and insecurities him leaving would bring.

 If he’d heard it once, he’d heard it a thousand times: ‘you need to get yourself a girl, Rig.’ While Jamie knew that this particular sentiment from his teammates came from a good place, it wasn’t as easy as just picking up any girl in a bar and falling into bed with her and while he knew that it wasn’t a betrayal and that he certainly shouldn’t view it as such, the lion on his ribs made it feel like one regardless because whatever bullshit he’d fed Leo about it representing courage and bravery, they were traits that he’d learned from her and it was his way of having her with him always. It wasn’t like he wasn’t at least trying, but he knew fine well the reasons why he could never get past a first date with anyone, because whether he was consciously doing it or not, none of them could compare with the girl back home in Toronto with the jade green eyes. Jamie was beginning to understand that it was senseless to try and ignore what was right in front of him but he was so crippled by the fear that it’d been too long, that too much had been left to build up, that, as Segs had put it, he’d find himself ‘eternally friend-zoned.’ Jamie knew that he’d been through too much with Leo, that she’d become such an intrinsic part of his life, that he was sure his heart would shatter if he lost her and the last thing he wanted to do was push her away with a confession of love that he wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d reciprocate.

‘The way I see it there’s three possible scenarios here,’ Tyler had said. ‘You tell her how you feel and she tells you she feels the same way. Boom. Happily ever after. You tell her how you feel and she tells you she loves you but just as a friend and you have to go on knowing that or you confess your love, she freaks the fuck out and you ruin twenty-plus years of friendship’ and because success wasn’t a complete guarantee, Jamie figured the best course of action would be to suck it up because if he had to choose between having Leo only as a friend and not having her at all, then he would be her friend and love her quietly for the rest of his days.

Their lives had continued much in the same way as before. They would talk whenever they were able to, which was less than they both would’ve liked due to the time difference and their conflicting schedules, but they made it work as best as they could and when Jamie returned home in the summer things were the same as they’d always been, the only difference being the fire that had started off as a flicker in his stomach had taken to consuming his whole body and the urge to pull her body against his and kiss her like he so badly wanted to was almost unbearable. The only thing that kept holding Jamie back was the same thing that he wanted most in the whole world. He found himself coming back to Tyler’s words over and over again, chewing over them like a starving dog with a bone and resigning himself to a lifetime of purgatory because the thought of losing Leo completely cut deeper than the thought of never having her in the way that he longed for the most.

Leo, meanwhile, was struggling more than she would have ever admitted to Jamie. The schedule of her job and how it wouldn’t quite mesh with Jamie’s, despite her best efforts, was beginning to weigh heavy and she surprised herself, if she gave it a second thought, with how much her mood would tank if she didn’t get to speak to Jamie. She knew she shouldn’t have let it bother her because not only did that make it sound like she was incredibly dependant on him (which wasn’t the case at all) it also made her sound a little bit possessive and she wasn’t okay with that, not least because Jamie’s wasn’t hers in the first place and because it was a trait and a behaviour that didn’t sit right with her. Jamie was his own person, after all, with his own life and his own wants and desires and she had no right to lay claim on him just because of some childish though process such as ‘he was mine first’. The loneliness was crippling though and the first time Jamie had told her that he wouldn’t be able to Skype because he was going on a date, Leo had to swallow down the ball of emotion in her throat that she hadn’t expected. She tried to tell herself that this was a good thing for Jamie, that he deserved this and that it was going to happen eventually because Jamie was all the good things in the world and it was only a matter of time before he found himself a nice girl, but she couldn’t help but feel like she couldn’t breathe every time she thought of Jamie with someone else. It wasn’t fair though, on either of them, because they were just friends, that’s all and if Jamie was dating then maybe she should too.

 It was just before Christmas in 2017 when Jamie found himself packing up his life in Dallas and moving the 1200-plus miles east to Pittsburgh. Trades were never easy but he kept reminding himself that it was part of the job and at least he would be closer to Toronto, his family and Leo. He’d not long sat down in his new apartment, an opened bottle of beer on the coffee table and a pizza on the way. He knew it wasn’t exactly a nutritionist’s dream but after spending the best part of his day unpacking his life into a space that was still too clinical to really feel like home (and he knew needed Leo’s touch), he wanted something easy and cooking a healthy, balanced meal wasn’t it. It was getting on for 10:30 at night and while there was a huge part of him that wanted to be selfish and call Leo, especially now that they were on the same time zone, he also knew that she needed to be at the museum early tomorrow and would already be asleep, so he took to scrolling through Instagram instead. It wasn’t something he did very often and he wasn’t one to post anything on there himself, but Leo used it quite frequently and in a moment where he found himself missing her, it would be a decent enough substitute until he could call her the next day.

He wasn’t sure why he was so taken aback by her latest post, maybe it was because she hadn’t ever mentioned anything to Jamie, but the sight of Leo wrapped in the arms of a man who had his lips pressed into her hair had jarred him and now that the initial shock had worn off, he felt his free palm begin to hurt from where his fist had become so tightly balled that his nails were digging into the flesh there. Jamie noticed that she’d tagged the mystery guy in the post and so, despite his better judgment, he clicked on the handle and followed it to the profile. He was called Ben, Jamie learned, and he was annoyingly good looking but the thing that had Jamie’s heart hammering as the anger began to pool in his stomach was the fact that Ben had more than one photo of Leo on his profile and there was a recurring theme with each of the captions on these photos that had Jamie’s jaw clenching: ‘my girl’. Jamie locked his phone screen and sat gripping the device in his hand for a few moments while his teeth pressed tighter and tighter together. He sniffled slightly before squashing that emotion right back down and slamming his phone down onto the coffee table. He’d taken to pacing around the open plan living area and tearing his hands through his hair while he tried to get control of the breathing that was getting a little wild and a little ragged.

They’re just friends. He knew that. They’d ever been anything more and he’d never told her that he wanted them to be anything more, not explicitly anyway, but Jamie’s heart felt like it had been stuffed into a vice and now someone, Ben, was turning the handle and crushing it into a broken and bloody mess. Jamie cursed loudly into the room and resisted the urge to put a fist shaped hole into the drywall. He had no one else to blame but himself, of course, and he knew deep down that he shouldn’t have expected a girl like Leo to stay single and wait indefinitely for him because she was sharp, beautifully wild with a mind that was her own and a smile that had lit up Jamie’s whole world since they were four years old, any man would be mad not to fall for her. But he’d been right there in front of her for over twenty years, he’d been the one to wipe her tears away, he’d been the one to help her fix shelves up in her new apartment, he’d been the one she called at three in the morning when she couldn’t sleep. He had been all of those things and he had been loving her for all that time and yet she didn’t see him. Maybe Tyler was right, maybe he was so deep in the friend-zone that there was no way out of it because right now Jamie was up to his neck in it and it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

What he didn’t understand though and perhaps the thing that had irked him the most about this was the fact that Leo had never mentioned that she was seeing anybody. Not once. Jamie knew that she’d been going on dates and while that thought had made his chest ache a little, he also knew that she wasn’t his and that she was only doing the same thing he was but now that he thought about it, she hadn’t mentioned going on a date for a good couple of months and now that he’d seen that photo, he understood why. So why hadn’t she told him that she was seeing this guy? Especially if it had been going on for a couple of months now. He grabbed his beer and drained it before dragging his weary body to bed and drifting into an uneasy sleep.

Jamie awoke to a text from Leo but he didn’t bother to read it. He was still too keyed up from the night before and he needed to get his focus on hockey while he got himself ready to head to practice. He’d be playing in his first game as a Penguin on home ice that night and he wanted to make sure that he gave it his all and made a good first impression. His time in Dallas had been plagued with inconsistency, healthy scratches and yo-yoing between the minors and the big league and he didn’t want to put himself back into a situation where he didn’t know if a mistake on the ice was going to have him sitting in a press-box for two or three games. His first practice went as well as Jamie could’ve hoped it would and he couldn’t deny the relief that flooded him when he was made to feel welcome and like he’d always been a part of that group. Leo had always talked about the magic of new beginnings but it was never something that Jamie had ever experienced for himself but as he sat in his new stall before his first game as a Pittsburgh Penguin, Jamie couldn’t help but feel the spark of electricity that he was sure was what Leo had meant.

He was sprawled out on his couch watching TV when Leo had called him. There was a part of him that wanted to let the call go to voicemail but he knew that wasn’t fair because for all he was mad that she hadn’t told him about her new boyfriend, he also knew that it was her prerogative and it was, quite frankly, none of his business and he needed to get over whatever this was, no matter how hard it might be.

“Hello?”

“Hi!” Leo said excitedly. “Oh my god! I watched your first game, you were amazing! Do you love it? Is everyone nice? What’s your apartment like?”

Jamie couldn’t help the soft chuckle that floated past his lips at her animated tone and barrage of questions.

“Yes, yes and yes.”

“What’s it like? Pittsburgh?”

“I’ve only been here a day, Leo. I literally went from my apartment to practice, back to my apartment and then to the rink for the game.”

Although Jamie couldn’t see her, Leo furrowed her brows at the hint of an edge in his tone and while she could’ve easily played it off as him just being tired, given that he’d uprooted his life and moved halfway across a country to then play a game of hockey, she knew him better than that and so, never one to beat around the bush, she figured she’d just get to the point.

“Is everything okay, Jame? You seem… I don’t know, you seem off.”

“I’m fine, Leo,” Jamie replied with a sigh. “Just tired.”

“Please,” Leo said with such a softness that it made Jamie’s throat tighten. “Please don’t lie to me, Jamie. We’ve known each other too long for that.”

Jamie exhaled slowly at that, a settling breath to give him time to gather his thoughts and composure.

“I just,” he began, voice controlled and measured but quiet. “Don’t understand why you didn’t tell me that you had a boyfriend.”

“I don-“

“Don’t lie to me, Leo,” Jamie said, tone a little harsher and throwing her own words back at her. “We’ve known each other too long for that.”

Leo bit her lip and exhaled shakily. Even through the phone she could picture the hurt and disappointment on Jamie’s face and while she knew that she should have told him, she also didn’t really have a good enough reason for not doing so and somehow that was worse.

“I didn’t,” she started, still unsure what to say even as the words were coming out of her mouth because there were still the reasons as to why she didn’t say anything that she still didn’t really understand herself. “I didn’t know if it was anything serious and I guess I just wanted to be sure.”

“You waited a whole two months.”

“I- wait, how did you know we’d been dating for two months?” Leo challenged.

“Irrelevant,” Jamie shot back.

“It’s absolutely not irrelevant. You didn’t even know I was seeing anyone before that post I made yesterday let alone that it’d been two months. What? Are you stalking him now?”

“It’s not stalking if his profile is public,” Jamie defended earning him nothing but a scoff from Leo. “Besides, not like I was gonna find out from you any time soon, maybe once the wedding invitation came through the mail.”

“Oh don’t be so fucking ridiculous, Jamie,” Leo scorned. “You know it’s not like that.”

“So what is it like? I’m dying to know.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal! I was going to tell you but I figured I’d let you get settled in Pittsburgh and get your first game under your belt and I haven’t told you before now because I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t more than just a couple of dates. It really doesn’t have to be a big deal, Jamie.”

“If it wasn’t such a big deal you wouldn’t have been so bothered about waiting for me to ‘get settled.’” He emphasised her words as he quoted them back to her but his tone was little more than a frustrated growl. He knew this was a stupid thing for them to be fighting about and he knew that she didn’t owe him a thing but it was easier to channel the hurt it brought him than confront the overwhelming jealousy that was crushing him.

Leo was done with this argument though and she didn’t like the way her whole body felt like it was aching at the sound of Jamie’s voice through the phone so she did the only thing she felt like she could do in the moment.

“I’m sorry, Jame. I-I really didn’t think it was-.” She trailed off quietly, for once in her life at a loss for words. “I think I’m just gonna go, you must be exhausted.”

“Don’t,” Jamie pleaded, voice small and quiet and full of regret at snapping at the person he cared about most in the world. “Please, don’t go. I-.” He exhaled slowly as he rubbed his free and across his face. “I’m sorry too. You’re right, it’s your business and you were gonna tell me when you were ready to. That wasn’t fair of me.”

“Please don’t think I was hiding it from you,” Leo said, although in a few years’ time, when she looked back on all of this, she would realise that that was a lie.

“I know. I know you weren’t.”

There was a silence that fell between them, bigger than all the miles between them and filled to the brim with things unsaid but it only lasted a few beats before Jamie’s big exhale swept it away with his breath before he spoke quietly.

“He good to you?”

“Yeah, Jame. He’s a really great guy, I think you’d really like him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Leo murmured. “When you’re back in the summer we should get drinks or something.”

“Sounds good, Leo,” Jamie said under his breath. “I should probably head to bed, I’m beat and it’s gettin’ late for you too.”

“Okay,” she replied sadly. “We’ll talk tomorrow though, yeah?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we will.”

Jamie and Leo did in fact talk the next day and the day after that, but despite the apology they’d both made and despite the fact that they had put their little spat to bed, there was far too much sitting there between them unsaid. It was like litter on the ground at a place of outstanding natural beauty, you could still admire the beauty of the trees or the mountains or the winding river, but the piles of rubbish collecting on the floor were glaring and impossible to ignore and you’d find yourself wanting to go over and pick it all up. Nobody wants to look at trash though, not when there’s still rivers and trees and mountains and so Leo and Jamie found themselves ignoring everything that now sat between them and instead kept looking at the beautiful things in their lives. They were busy enough to keep distracted, Leo more so now that she had Ben in her life and before long winter and spring were a whisper of a memory and summer announced her presence in the city with sunnier days and warmer temperatures.

 It was the first time in his life that Jamie wasn’t filled with the usual excitement at going back home, that’s not to say that he wasn’t looking forward to seeing his family, his friends and Leo, but there was something that just didn’t quite feel the same and while he knew exactly what that was, there was no point dragging it back up and flogging it some more. Leo was still with Ben and that was all there was to it. He’d seen Leo a few times since he’d come back home but she was often tied up with work, no longer benefitting from the long summers off she had when she was at college, and the free time she would’ve had before was no longer exclusively Jamie’s. He tried hard not to let himself be hurt with the change in dynamic and instead took the opportunity to spend quality time with his siblings. The idea of getting a drink with Leo and Ben wasn’t one that filled Jamie with any amount of joy, but a promise was a promise and Leo was still the most important person in his life, even if he was no longer hers and he wouldn’t ever go back on his word.

He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but he also wanted to give himself an easy out if he felt like he needed it so he decided that he was just going to have the one beer so that he could drive himself there and home again. Whether it was subconscious or not, it took Jamie longer than usual to get ready and he wasn’t entirely sure if it was the balmy Toronto heat that had him feeling sweatier than he would’ve liked but he eventually slipped on a pair of converse to complete his shorts and t-shirt ensemble and was in the elevator down to the garage, the keys to his truck gripped tightly in his hand.

Leo was already at the cocktail bar when he arrived, perched on a barstool at a little round table. Her hair was up in a messy bun that she always managed to make look effortless and Jamie had to make a conscious effort to swallow as his eyes took in her sun-kissed skin and the strappy sundress she was wearing. He should have expected her to look gorgeous, of course, because it was Leo and she always looked so effortlessly beautiful but it didn’t make knowing that she was here with someone else and not him hurt any less. He couldn’t blame her though, not really, because for all there was so much between them now that it should’ve been obvious, he still hadn’t outright said it or even talked to her about it and that was on him and him alone. He approached the table where she was sitting alone and looked around the bar for the man he’d only ever seen photos of.

“Hey,” she called out with the smile that always made Jamie’s heart leap up into his throat. “You made it.”

“Said I would,” Jamie replied, hugging her on the barstool and pressing a gentle kiss to her hair. “You look, you look good.”

“Thanks,” grinned Leo. “So do you, very festive. Ben’s just headed to the bar, do you want anything?”

“I’ve got mine, thanks though,” Jamie half-gritted as he made his way to the bar.

He could do this, he could. It was just one drink. He could manage that, right? Because that’s what friends did, they went out for drinks together and so Jamie resolved to put on his best smile as he walked back to the table, where Ben had now situated himself next to Leo, with his beer in hand. Ben was shorter than he was, Jamie noted, and he was definitely on the slighter side but still incredibly handsome with dark brown eyes that seemed to be in a state of perpetual kindness, short and neatly maintained stubble and hair that was darker than Leo’s which he’d secured in a bun at the back of his head. He was nothing like Jamie which should have made him feel better, knowing that if this was Leo’s type then it was no wonder she didn’t see him in that way, but it didn’t, it just made everything feel that little bit worse. He gave them both a tight lipped smile, all he could manage in the moment, as he sidled onto a barstool directly opposite Leo and took an obligatory sip of his beer before offering Ben his hand.

“Jamie”

Ben shook Jamie’s outstretched hand and Jamie was sure to give him a firm and not threatening at all handshake.

“Nice to meet you man,” Ben said with an accent Jamie recognised immediately as either Australian or New Zealander and he tried not to wince at the force with which the giant man was shaking his hand with. “I’m Ben.”

“Good to meet you, Ben. Nice to see you’re taking good care of my girl.”

Jamie knew that his remark would earn him a pointed glare and he was dead right because without even looking at her he could feel Leo’s eyes were boring into the side of his head.

“Yeah,” Ben laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, she’s amazing.”

“She really is. She tell you we’ve been friends for over twenty years?”

“Yeah, I did,” Leo cut in, giving Jamie a warning look. “Ben knows all about you.”

“That’s good,” Jamie mused as he took a sip of his beer. “Yeah, Leo and I? We go way back.”

Jamie put his beer down and stretched his shoulders back, somehow managing to make himself look even broader than usual and watched Ben closely, his blue eyes piercing. Leo rolled her eyes to herself and took a large gulp of her mai tai, if Jamie was going to act like a macho teenage boy then she was going to need to be at least three drinks in for this.

“You were four, right?” Ben asked nobody in particular.

“Yup,” Jamie replied, popping the ‘p’ as he looked at Leo. “Shared my strawberries with her and everything.”

Leo gave Jamie as inconspicuous of a kick as she could manage under the table and shot him a murderous look. She didn’t quite know at what point her best friend had been possessed by the ghost of Bro-mas past or why he was acting in such an insane and ridiculous way but the man opposite her wasn’t the Jamie she knew and to be quite honest, she wasn’t sure that she liked him. Jamie paid her no mind though, his focus remained fixed on the man to Leo’s left as a cocky smirk played on his lips.

“So, Ben,” he folded his arms tight across his chest, his biceps straining against the white fabric of his t-shirt. “What do you do?”

Ben sat up straighter on his stool, whether that was to try and subconsciously match Jamie’s macho-man aura or whether it was to try and instil some confidence in himself Leo couldn’t quite tell but she kept her eyes keen on Jamie and tried to engage whatever best-friend telepathy she could to tell him to knock it off.

“I’m a veterinarian.”

Jamie gave a tight lipped smile, not because there was anything wrong with being a veterinarian, quite the opposite actually. He gave a tight lipped smile because it meant that the man sat beside the girl he loved more than anything else in this world was smart and compassionate and successful and good for her. Those three words had him feeling more inadequate than he could ever truly express and he knew in that moment that there was no point even trying anymore because Ben could give her more than he ever could, intellectually and emotionally, although it still did nothing to abate the raging jealously that was running rampant through his body.

“Leo told me you’re a pro-athlete?”

Jamie was pulled by his thoughts by Ben’s question, an interested and expectant look on his features and Jamie felt the need to take a couple of gulps of his drink before he could answer.

“Yeah, play hockey in the NHL for the Dallas Stars.”

“Not the Maple Leafs then?”

Even though Jamie knew that Ben’s question was innocent enough, he couldn’t help the scoff or the mildly withering look he sent across the table despite the fact that he could feel Leo practically fizzing with annoyance.

“No, bud. It doesn’t work like that.”

Jamie started to look around the bar, clearly done with the conversation and Leo had to fight to keep her tone even and calm.

“Ben doesn’t really know much about the draft and stuff, he’s not from here, grew up in Sydney.”

“I figured,” Jamie said, clearly disinterested. “Still, pretty bold move to live in a city like Toronto and not know about hockey.”

“He knows about hockey,” Leo shot back. “He doesn’t need to know about the draft and how it all works to know about hockey.”

“Who’s your favourite player in the league, bud?” Jamie asked Ben, ignoring Leo completely and with an air of cockiness that had her blood boiling.

“I uh, I don’t really follow it all that much,” Ben replied as he shifted uncomfortably on his barstool which put a smug little smile on Jamie’s face that he didn’t even try to hide.

“You should,” Jamie said as he brought his beer back up to his lips and took a small sip, setting it down on the table with more force than was necessary. “Ask Leo here, she knows what’s up.”

His eyes met Leo’s and instead of the temperate green waters he would usually find there he was met by a roaring flame and if looks could kill, Jamie knew he’d be dead three times over. Still, he swallowed down his pride and as much of his jealousy as he could while he changed the subject and asked Ben about Sydney and what growing up in Australia was like because while he hated every bit of this and while he wanted to walk right out of this bar and go home to mope, he knew how important this was to Leo and how much it would mean to her if Jamie got along with him. Jamie nodded along as Ben talked about his childhood and Sydney and gave a strained smile when he felt like social cues dictated it, all while sneaking glances at the watch on his wrist to see if enough time had passed for him to leave without it seeming rude. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Ben, because no matter how much he wanted to hate the guy, even Jamie couldn’t deny that Ben seemed like a good man, with good priorities and a good upbringing, it was just that he wasn’t mature enough to set his jealousy aside so that he could be a good friend to Leo. But as he saw the smile on her face at the sight of her best friend and her boyfriend somewhat getting along, he resolved to at least keep trying, if only for her.

He’d learned that Ben had taken an interest in baseball since moving to Canada and while he couldn’t understand how he’d found baseball before hockey, he still made small talk about the Blue Jays and how their season was going so far. One thing that Jamie both appreciated and found incredibly painful all at the same time was the way that Ben talked about Leo like she was the sun, the moon and the stars and even though he tried to be strong and try not to let the fact that she was here with someone else and was happy bother him, because he loved Leo and he only ever wanted good things for her and it was what she deserved, after nursing his beer for a shade over two hours, Jamie decided that he couldn’t do it anymore and stepped down off his stool, ceremoniously taking his truck keys from out of his pocket.

“Well, it’s been lovely catching up but I gotta head out, Penny has a swimming thing in the morning and I said I’d go watch.”

“Wait, you never told me Penny had a thing. You know I would’ve come along,” Leo said with her brows furrowed.

“Yeah, well I figured you’d be busy.”

“You would have known if I was busy or not if you’d bothered to ask me in the first place,” she shot back, giving Jamie a pointed look that told him she didn’t buy any of his bullshit.

Jamie shook his head, a wordless indication that he wasn’t prepared to get into it with her right now and simply said, “I’ll just talk to you tomorrow, Leo, yeah? And it was really great to meet you Ben.”

He didn’t even give either of them chance to respond because no sooner were the words out of his mouth, he’d turned on his heel and was striding towards the door.

It wasn’t too long before Leo was letting herself, and only herself, into her apartment. She hadn’t planned to spend the night here, as Ben’s place was a lot closer to the bar they’d been to, but after the little stunt Jamie pulled she felt like she needed to be alone in her own space despite Ben’s best efforts to come home with her. She poured herself a large glass of wine and went to settle herself on the balcony to enjoy the last few moments of the quickly fading light and try to calm down. As she looked out across the small park opposite her apartment and swirled the wine around her glass she thought about what had happened with Jamie and tried to pinpoint at what point it had gone wrong. She wondered if maybe Ben had said something to get Jamie’s back up but as she replayed their interaction over and over again, she kept drawing blanks and that bothered her greatly. You see, Jamie’s whole demeanour was so unbelievably out of character for him and he’d been on the offensive from the get go and Leo couldn’t for the life of her understand why he would agree to meet Ben if he had such a problem. The more she allowed herself to stew over it, the angrier she got and, perhaps against her better judgement, she found herself reaching for her phone and scrolling through her contacts until she reached Jamie’s number.

She wasn’t sure what she would achieve by pressing the call button but if there was something going on with him she was determined to get it out of him one way or another. Hell, she wasn’t even sure if he would even pick up the phone, but sure enough after fifteen seconds or so, Jamie’s voice came through the speaker, rough and raw.

“Leo, I don’t wanna-“

“What’s going on with you?” she interrupted. “You agree to come out with us and then spend the first fifteen minutes being rude, stand-offish and doing some sort of weird macho routine like you’d been possessed by Johnny Bravo and then once you were finished doing that you were disinterested and cold for the rest of the time. Oh and don’t think I didn’t see through your little ‘Penny has a thing’ bit. I wasn’t born yesterday, Jamie.”

“Penny does have a-“

“Don’t lie to me, Jamie,” she spat bitterly. “Don’t.”

“God, you want me to explain and then don’t let me finish! Jesus, Leo!”

“And I don’t want you to insult me by feeding me some bullshit line and using your sister as an excuse to leave early but you tried to anyway! If you didn’t want to hang out with me you should’ve just said.”

The hurt that dripped from Leo’s voice was like a kick in the stomach to Jamie. His heart was screaming at him to tell her everything, to tell her than he loved hanging out with her, tell her that she wasn’t the problem, that she never was, to tell her that he loved her, that he was being stupid and childish and that he couldn’t bear the thought of her with another man, not when she had his whole heart. But his head was gagging his heart, silencing it until it was nothing more than a muffled cry, muted and abstract behind thick walls and yet, despite its conquest of impassioned subjugation, his head didn’t actually have anything to say and so he sat there, floundering in silence while Leo grew more impatient at the other end of the phone.

“I thought you’d be happy for me,” and while she spoke quietly, there was a very distinct edge to her tone. “I thought that you’d want me to find someone, someone who could look out for me while you were gone and make me laugh like you do and it’s not like you’ve been sat at home alone every night, Jamie. I know you’ve been on dates and stuff and that’s good, I want you to go on dates and find someone and be happy because you’re, because you’re my friend and I want you to have someone and not feel like you’re alone. God, I was so lonely when you left, Jame and I don’t blame you for that. I’ve never blamed you because you were too good to stay. You had too much potential and you had to find your wings and you did and I am so, so proud of you. So fucking proud. I spend my life telling anyone who’ll fucking listen to me how proud I am of you. I cry myself hollow every single time you leave, it never gets any easier and from the second you leave I’m already counting down the days until you’re back, because you’re my favourite person, Jamie. You’ve always been my favourite person.”

Jamie sniffled quietly as he heard Leo’s soft cries filter through the speaker, dragging his hand through his hair in frustration because he knew she felt it too, all she had to do was say it out loud and it was so close that all she had to do was reach out to it.

“And I want you to be happy too,” Leo continued. “I want you to be so happy. Maybe we’ve been a part of each other for so long that we don’t know how to just be us on our own. Maybe we need to discover who we actually are because for our whole lives it’s been Jamie and Leo and maybe you need to learn how to just be Jamie and maybe I need to learn how to just be Leo.”

Jamie wiped at his eyes as the first of his tears began to fall and his heart shattered into a million little pieces. This is what it was like to blow it, to lose someone you loved. This is what it was like to have your whole world come crashing down because it felt like everything he ever known was shrinking into darkness and that he couldn’t breathe.

“Leo,” he pleaded but with no real words to follow up with. “Please.”

“I think,” Leo choked out as her sobs came harder as the words she never wanted to say sat high in her throat because while she was mad at him for how he’d acted earlier, he was still her Jamie and she still loved him more than anything. But sometimes people who love each other need some time apart to think and to grow and that is what had her saying, “I think we need to give each other some space.”

“No, Leo. Please. Please, babe. Don’t say that. I know I was an asshole tonight and-.”

“We need this Jamie, we do. I need this, because this, this fighting and hostility and all of this weirdness, it’s not us. It’s never been us. Please.”

Jamie sat on his couch stunned, the weight of her words echoing around him after she’d spoke them through the phone. This was everything he’d ever feared and now that it was really happening he didn’t even know how to begin to deal with that. You can hypothesise and spend your time thinking up all of these scenarios and everything you would say, how’d you deal with them, but nothing, nothing, can ever prepare you for the real thing and Jamie understood that now because it felt like his head was spinning and he couldn’t quite organise his thoughts.

“Jamie?”

Her quiet voice pulled him out from the depths of his own head and he gave a strangled ‘yeah’ in response.

“I just think we need some time,” she whispered, the tears threatening once more.

Jamie honestly didn’t know what else to say to her and the ‘okay’ he gave was so quiet and so abstract that he wasn’t even a hundred percent sure that he’d actually said it, he must have done though because the line went dead and Jamie was left sitting in the pieces of his shattered heart.

 Jamie couldn’t remember how long he’d cried for, he wasn’t even sure how many days he’d stayed locked inside his apartment before he felt strong enough to put on a brave face and eventually go outside. He knew that he only had himself to blame though, that he should’ve told her years ago that it was her and that she was it for him and now, because of his own stupidity, his own jealousy, he’d only succeeded in pushing her away and he wasn’t sure how he could fix this or if he could even fit it at all. It was a strange feeling, being in the same city as someone and yet feeling like they were a million miles away, it was even harder having to dodge questions from his family about how Leo was doing and what they’d been up to and even though he was certain that his mother could see straight through his lies, he was thankful that she could at least sense that this was something he didn’t want her to prod him about. For the first time in his professional playing career, Jamie made the decision to leave Toronto early and head back to Pittsburgh before the start of training camp, citing a desire to get a head start and get back in shape ready for the season ahead and while his parents found it all to be rather odd, Jamie did his best to assure them that everything was fine and that he’d see them the next time the Penguins played the Leafs in Toronto at Christmastime.

Leo wasn’t doing much better, despite whatever front she’d put up to try and convince herself and everybody else. She’d cried until she was nothing but a shell, figuring that the best thing to do was just to get it all out of her system so that she could look to put it all behind her and move on but stumbling every single time whenever she remembered that he’d called her ‘babe’, because that was new and she didn’t fully understand what exactly that had meant and why it made her heart leap into her throat every time she thought of the word rolling around on his tongue. To make matters worse, the day after she pushed Jamie away for some self-imposed space, Ben had stopped by her apartment, naturally concerned after she’d ignored all of his calls – not that it was anything personal, she’d been ignoring everyone.

He’d told her that he thought Jamie was in love with her and he also told her that he thought she loved Jamie too, like it was that simple and while Leo tried her best to assure him that her and Jamie were just friends, he wasn’t about to be convinced. Make no mistake, it wasn’t as if Ben was accusatory in anyway, in fact Leo would’ve preferred it if he was, because he was looking at her with far too much understanding and kindness than she was sure she deserved. She found it admirable really, how he was able to be so mature about it all and it just proved to her how childishly she had handled everything and just how blind to everything she’d been. The words Ben had left her with were ones that she’d meditate on for weeks, months even. He’d said, ‘I think you need to talk to Jamie, really talk to him. You both need to sit down and look at every single thing between you both because it’s all there, the love, the spark between you two. I’d never even met the guy before but I could just feel it between you guys as soon as you looked at each other. I saw the way he looked at you when he walked into that bar, he looked at you like you’d hung all the stars in the sky. That’s love, Leo and I know that deep down you feel that way too. If after you’ve done that you can still look me in the eye and honestly tell me that you don’t love him and that there’s nothing there then I’ll be here waiting and we can give this a shot, but I think you need to really think about what you want.’

It seemed like such a simple thing on paper, working out what she really wanted, but the reality of it all was that Leo wasn’t exactly sure what that looked like. One thing was clear though, without Jamie in her life she was miserable, but this had been her idea and she knew that it’d been one that had broken his heart and to slink back to him so soon, with her tail between her legs after knowing she’d hurt him by pushing him away, was too much for her silly little pride to handle. She told herself that she would call him, that she would reach out and apologise, but with every day that slipped by it felt like the space between them grew tenfold and something as simple as a phone call felt like it was as hard as climbing Everest.

Jamie had hoped that getting back to Dallas would take his mind off Leo, the sprawling void between them and his feelings for her, and he’d tried, he’d really honestly tried, even going so far as signing up to dating apps to try and drown her out that way, but it was useless. Leo was everywhere and nowhere all at once and Jamie felt like he was floating in outer space, surrounded by dust and emptiness when all he wanted was to feel like he was home; but as each day passed without any contact from her, the more lost Jamie felt and he was terrified that he’d never be found and that he’d be floating around in the nothingness forevermore.

 The months fell away much like the russet leaves of fall and Christmas was suddenly only a whisper away. Jamie had made preparations to stay in Toronto following the Penguins’ matinee game against the Leafs on December 23rd and would fly back into Pennsylvania the day after Christmas ready for his first game after the holiday on December 27th. He couldn’t remember a time where he’d been able to enjoy Christmas at home with his family since turning pro and even though his return to Toronto would bring him closer to Leo and while there was still a lot of uncertainty between them both given that they hadn’t actually spoken since August, he was looking forward to being able to unwind for a few days before the second push of the season began. He hadn’t told Leo that his plans would bring him back to the city but she’d figured as much when she’d discovered that the last game the Leafs would play before Christmas would be against Pittsburgh and she knew he would be staying once she realised Pittsburgh’s next game wasn’t for another few days.

She knew that she should reach out while he was home, not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because she hadn’t actually told her parents that she’d not spoken a word to him in the last four months and it would look incredibly weird if she didn’t see him at least once while he was back in town. There were a number of reasons why she’d not said anything about the spat that she’d had with Jamie, the main one being because it would open a whole can of worms that she absolutely did not want opening, it would open her up to questions from her parents and they were questions that she didn’t want to face and didn’t really have answers for. The reason she didn’t have answers to those questions was because while she’d finally accepted that Jamie wasn’t just a friend, she also knew that she’d blown any real chance with him because of the way she’d acted so it was far easier to maintain that air of indifference and pretend like there was nothing there so that she didn’t have to deal with the reality that she’d ruined everything with her own stupidity.

She’d toyed with the idea of sending him a quick text message to check in, but after everything they’d been through it seemed a little bit impersonal, although it didn’t have her picking up the phone either. She’d wondered if Jamie would even want to see her while he was home for those few days over the holidays, after all, for all she’d been the one to impose their time apart, he hadn’t exactly reached out to her. What did she expect though? She knew deep down Jamie was always going to respect her wishes, even if they broke his heart, but it was easier to ignore that and instead fester in her own misery.

The decision on whether or not to see Jamie was made for her though, with her mother telling her that the Oleksiaks thought it would be nice for them all to get together before Christmas and that arrangements had been made for them to all attend the game followed by dinner at The Butcher Chef. Leo couldn’t help but be a little bit surprised at this, considering how awful she’d been to Jamie and she was shocked that his family would want to spend more than a second with her, which could only lead her to believe that Jamie had deployed the same tactic of silence with his parents as she had done with her own. It should have been funny, how similar they were, but it was that similarity that had dropped them into this mess in the first place. If only one of them had been mature enough to look at all that there was between them and take that leap of faith, perhaps she’d be overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Jamie instead of that sickening anxious feeling that knotted her stomach. It was ironic, she thought, how Jamie had always thought of her as being brave because right now, as she looked back on her behaviour and how she’d handled it all, she’d been anything but.

Leo was more than a little relieved to discover that they’d be meeting the Oleksiaks inside of Scotiabank Area because it meant that Jamie wouldn’t be with them and she could at least catch up with Richard, Alison, Hayley and Penny without any massive amounts of awkwardness. She could play off her recent and sudden distance on work being crazy and hopefully, just hopefully, by the end of the game she’d be feeling relaxed enough that seeing Jamie wouldn’t be the big deal she’d made it out to be in her head. As she took her seat in the stands she found herself sandwiched between her mother and Penny, the youngest Oleksiak. Leo had always loved Jamie’s sisters, especially Penny, seeing a lot of herself in the younger girl and they’d always been partners in crime when it came to winding Jamie up. They’d talked about Penny’s swimming and how she’d been and the thundering in Leo’s chest had begun to settle somewhat until Penny had mentioned how down Jamie had seemed the last time they’d talked and that she hoped Leo could give him one of her world-famous pep talks to snap him out of his funk. If Penny had felt Leo stiffen beside her at that, she mercifully didn’t say anything and continued to watch the game. Leo couldn’t focus though, not when the guilt had suddenly jumped up from where she’d shoved it deep down into her stomach and now felt like it had lodged itself within her windpipe. She had taken to focusing on the game clock, counting along with the numbers until she could push through the tightening in her chest and set her features into something that was a bit more neutral instead of the tight-lipped grimace she was wearing. Leo was thankful that the game on the ice was end-to-end because no one had seemed to notice the turmoil she found herself in and no questions were asked.

Leo declined the invitation from Alison and Richard to go down with them to wait for Jamie to come out of the locker room, simply stating that she would keep her parents company and wait with them upstairs and was relieved when they didn’t press the issue or make insistences. It was around forty minutes later when she saw the tall figure of Jamie’s dad appear in the foyer, Alison and the girls close behind with Jamie bringing up the rear. It was like one of those cliché romance movie moments, where two people find each other’s eyes across a crowded room and it feels like the whole world stops spinning, except most of the people had filtered out of the stadium by now and the space between them felt so vast that it would take lightyears to cross.

He was cautious, Leo noticed, but his eyes were just as soft as they’d always been as they took her in. She looked good, Jamie thought, but there was a sadness in her smile and the spark he’d always associated with her was barely there. He wanted so desperately to pull her tight against his chest and tell her that he was sorry over and over again until he was sure that she believed him, but this wasn’t the time nor the place so he settled for an awkward wave and a ‘hey’ that sounded too nervous and too hesitant to be greeting an old friend with, instantly regretting it when he saw the tight-lipped smile and too formal ‘hello’ that she gave in reply. Their parents exchanged a serious of glances that ranged from confusion to concern but much to Leo and Jamie’s reprieve, Alison simply clapped her hands together and remarked how lovely it was that everyone was back together again. Leo made sure to stick close to her parents during the short walk to the restaurant because while she wasn’t certain that Jamie would try to address the weirdness between them and while she also knew that it was a conversation that they absolutely needed to have, she wasn’t sure that a five minute walk within earshot of their families was the best time.

An awkward exchange at the door to the restaurant, where the two of them spent a good twenty seconds inviting each other to go in ahead, earned the pair strange looks from their parents and Penny had uttered ‘weirdos’ as she side-eyed them while they were all escorted to their table. The fact that they’d purposefully chosen seats as far away from each other as possible raised their fathers’ eyebrows while Alison and Diana shared a worried glance. Penny was giving her brother a pointed look from behind her menu before flicking her gaze across to Leo, who was studying the wine list as if it were written in hieroglyphics, and back to Jamie, who could only respond with a pleading look and a shake of his head. When the order was taken Jamie couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows at the prawn, avocado and chilli bruschetta Leo had picked for her appetizer. For as long as he’d known her they’d been united in their mutual hatred of the green pitted fruit and despite the fact that it was entirely plausible that her taste-buds had changed in the four months since they’d last spoken and despite it being something so incredibly small, and so incredibly innocuous, he couldn’t help but feel further away from her than ever before. The feeling only grew as he listened to her talk to his mother about what she’d been up to in her spare time, not even knowing that she’d taken up watercolour painting and had been to a belly-dancing taster class that she’d thoroughly enjoyed and was considering signing up to. It might have only been four months apart, but it might as well have been an entire lifetime that had passed and the ache in his chest made it impossible to focus on anything else other than the overwhelming sadness he felt at the recognition that everything had changed between them and that things would never be the same again.

The pair soldiered on through dinner, seeming to talk to everyone else but each other and while there was the occasional shared glance, it never lasted for any longer than a couple of seconds before one of them looked away and carried on like it had never even happened. It was all getting a bit much for Jamie, with the way that it felt like he was losing her with each second that passed and the way it felt like she was at the other side of the world and not at the other side of a table. He wanted to scream into that void, scream that this was all stupid, that he was sorry and that he missed her so much that he felt like he was going to die, but he didn’t. Instead he’d told Bill all about Pittsburgh and the season so far and made small talk about what kind of vehicle he should buy next. Leo found herself getting agitated at how forced it all felt, how uncomfortable she was and all she wanted was for dessert to be over so they could split the bill and say their goodbyes so that she could lock herself in her apartment and drown her despair in a bottle of wine. It killed her that the man she’d known from being a little boy, a man who knew her better than anyone else in the world, felt like a complete stranger, but above that, it killed her that this had been all of her own making. There was so much she should have done differently and even more that she should have said, but instead her own stupidity and stubbornness had pushed away the one thing in her life she wanted the most and she’d convinced herself that Jamie had only agreed to this and sorted tickets for the game tonight because he knew it would make his mother happy. That thought forced Leo to swallow down the emotion that sat high in her throat because it was just another reminder of every BBQ and every party the two families had ever shared together and how it all felt that little bit different now. Not only had she ruined things between her and Jamie, but she’d also managed to ruin things for everyone else too.

Not a moment too soon for Leo, the two families were paying the check and found themselves outside in the chilly evening air. Leo let herself be passed down the line of Oleksiaks for a goodbye hug, chastising herself each time for how stiff was but still not able to let herself relax despite the awareness, until she was confronted with Jamie’s large frame. She couldn’t not hug him with how it felt like all eyes were on them both and so she allowed herself to be pulled awkwardly into his body while her own was filled with tension that she was sure everyone could see but couldn’t help all the same.

“Goodnight,” Jamie mumbled. “Have a good Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Leo replied, voice robotic and distant as she pulled away a little too quickly. “You too.”

An awkward silence descended upon the group that had Jamie shifting uncomfortably and Leo drawing her coat tighter around her for reasons unrelated to the cold Toronto air. Leo could tell her mother was desperate to say something and she was praying to anyone who was listening that this would be one of those things that Diana would let slide without pressing further. Someone somewhere must have heard her silent pleas though because her mother said her goodbyes once more and wished Jamie a safe trip back to Pittsburgh before the trio headed back towards the car. Nobody spoke for a few beats as they settled into their seats and put on their belts but Leo knew that the barrage of incoming questions was imminent judging by the look in her father’s eye as she caught his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Wanna tell us what that was all about?”

“It’s nothing,” Leo mumbled as she adjusted her coat.

“Honey, that was about as far from nothing as you could get,” her mother replied as she turned in her seat to look at Leo. “I coulda cut the atmosphere between you two back there with a knife.”

“Honestly, mom, it’s nothing and I’d really rather not discuss it right-“

“Not an option,” her father cut in, a stern edge to his tone. “I’m pulling rank and I’m playing the ‘dad’ card here. What happened back there was painful to watch and it made dinner incredibly awkward so I’ll ask you again, what happened between you two?”

Leo exhaled into the darkness of the car as the city lights passed by outside, unsure where to even begin. She decided to lead with the obvious and hoped that the rest would follow.

“We fought,” she said matter-of-factly. “We had a stupid argument and we haven’t spoken since August.”

“Oh, Leonora,” her mother sighed. “What could the two of you have possibly fought over that stopped you from talking for four months?”

“Remember when I was dating Ben?”

Diana hummed in acknowledgment.

“Well, that night that Ben and I went out for drinks, the night before we broke up, we met up with Jamie and he was… he was kind of an asshole to Ben.”

Bill chuckled softly at that, a million miles away from the harshness of his tone not a few moments ago and shook his head which earned him a glare from Leo into the rearview mirror.

“Oh come on,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re a bright girl, Leo. You must have realised that he was acting out of jealousy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. Why the hell would Jamie be jealous of Ben?”

“For someone who is so incredibly smart you really are oblivious,” her mother replied with an exasperated sigh. “That boy is head over heels for you. Has been for years.”

“What? Don’t be insane!” Leo scoffed as she rolled her eyes. “Jamie and I are-“

“Just friends,” Bill interrupted. “Sure ya are.”

“We are.”

Leo crossed her arms over her chest, not caring that it made her look like she’d regressed back into her teenage years, especially with the frustrated pout that had formed on her lips. Her father sighed in mild frustration, too full of food to have much patience for his daughter’s stubbornness.

“You’re just too stubborn to see anythin’ else. Talk some sense into her, Di, would ya?”

Diana surveyed Leo with a soft expression, perceptive enough to know that her daughter was struggling with some inner tumult but was too bull-headed to verbalise it and too proud to ask for help.

“Nora Noo,” she said softly to get Leo’s eyes on hers. “You must know by now that Jamie loves you,” Leo went to speak but Diana anticipated her protests and cut her off gently. “And not just as a friend. He loves you and I’d hazard a guess that you love him too.”

“He doesn’t love me, mom. We didn’t speak for four months.”

“And was that his idea?”

Leo looked away and her silence told her mother all she needed to know.

“I didn’t think so. Sounds to me like he was just giving you the space you asked for.”

“Why would you assume it was me who asked for space? I never said that,” Leo protested.

“You didn’t have to,” Diana countered, her eyes keen on Leo. “I know you well enough to know that you were clearly struggling with all these feelings that you didn’t know what to do with, you were mad at him and the easiest thing for you to do was push him away and because Jamie loves you so much, he respected your wishes, even though he’s quite clearly been struggling too.”

Leo didn’t have an answer to that because she knew that any words that came out of her mouth would’ve been a lie. Her mother had hit the nail on the head and she knew it too because while her eyes were still soft on Leo, there was the hint of a smirk on her lips and she knew she had her daughter stumped. She decided not to push the issue anymore though and shifted in her seat to face forwards again, leaving Leo sat in the back of the car, brows knitted together and her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. She didn’t speak another word until they pulled up outside of her apartment building and even then all she could manage was a subdued goodbye followed up with ‘see you both tomorrow.’

If Leo could’ve been a fly on the wall in the Oleksiaks’ car, she’d have laughed at the fact that Jamie was being subjected to a similar, if not identical, lecture from his parents as the one she’d received. They’d get a good kick out of the absurdity of it all later on when the dust had settled, but Jamie didn’t know that yet and his face was currently drawn in pensive thought while he mulled over his mother’s words that had scarily echoed Diana’s to Leo in their sentiments. He knew she was right, about all of it and the more he thought about it, the more he began to understand that this might be the only chance he had to make things right before Leo slipped away from him for good. It was that realization and that overwhelming fear of losing the one thing in his life he was sure of that had him asking his father to turn the car around and to take him to Leo’s apartment.

 The warm glow of the Christmas lights in Leo’s apartment would have ordinarily brought a smile to her face but she was too weary to fall for their charms tonight and it was the kind of weariness that she was sure couldn’t be fixed with sleep. Seeing Jamie tonight had made everything exponentially harder and only served as a painful and bitter reminder of just how bad she’d let things get between them. She should’ve reached out, she should’ve stared down everything that was right in front of her but she was too afraid to see and she should have said everything that she knew to be true in her heart and that Jamie deserved to hear. She wiped the makeup off her face angrily as she tried to supress a sniffle, a too-big Huskies sweatshirt that had belonged to Jamie hanging off her frame that served as a symbol of her wilful suffering. She knew that it wasn’t the best idea to try and numb the pain with a bottle of wine, but she didn’t know what else to do in the moment and so she collected the bottle of medicinal Riesling from the fridge, grabbed herself the biggest wine glass she owned and took them into her living room.

She was just about to bring the glass up to her lips when a loud and urgent knock at her door made her jump right out of her skin. She debated ignoring it but it became so insistent and unrelenting that she was worried the noise would disturb her neighbours and so she begrudgingly set her glass down before dragging her body from the couch and to the door. On the other side of it was a frantic looking Jamie, chest heaving from presumably taking the stairs and a slightly wild look in the usually calm ocean of his eyes.

“Can I come in?” he asked, a hint of nervousness in his otherwise resolute delivery.

“You know you can,” Leo breathed as she moved out of the way to let him in, closing the door behind him and leaning against it as she watched him carefully.

The silence stretched between them, Leo waiting nervously for Jamie to speak while he took a few settling breaths. He knew that he had to get this right because he felt like one wrong word would lose him everything. It was the same reason why Leo maintained a tentative reticence.

A moment.

That was all it would take.

One moment that sat like a void and one moment that could change everything, whichever way it went. This was such a moment, so big that it felt like entire galaxies could fit inside of it and still leave room for more. He waited for her to speak for what felt like forever while she stood on a knife edge, knowing that whatever words come out of her mouth next would rearrange both of their lives in ways that they understood would make it impossible to return to how things were not even ten minutes ago, not that either of them wanted to go back to that.

Yes, it was moment that was terrifying in every conceivable way.

But it was theirs.

“What happened to us?” Jamie wondered aloud, breaking the deafening silence. “How the hell did we get to this?”

“You were the one who was an ass, Jamie, not me,” Leo shot back, perhaps angrier than was necessary given the fact that Jamie’s question wasn’t delivered accusingly. “I know I should’ve told you about Ben and I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings by not saying anything sooner but that toxic masculinity bullshit at the bar? Really?”

“You don’t fucking see it, do you?” Jamie laughed humourlessly, Leo’s tone causing a flicker of anger within his chest. “Even now, when I’m here right in front of you, you’re still too stubborn to see it or maybe you do see it but you just don’t have the balls to tell me that you don’t feel the same way.”

“Don’t you dare make assumptions about how I feel,” Leo snapped, the tears springing to her eyes in an instant. “Don’t you dare. You have no idea what these past four months-“

“Of course I do!” Jamie spat. “I’ve been living it every single day since you told me you needed space! I wake up and it hurts, I go to bed and it still fucking hurts. I felt like I was dying every single day. You wanted this and it fucking broke my heart, Leo, it broke my heart but I did it anyway because you asked me to and I would do anything for you, anything in the whole world and yet you couldn’t even be honest with yourself and see what was right in front of you.”

Leo’s heart splintered and cracked at the agony etched into Jamie’s features, agony that she knew she’d caused and she couldn’t stop the tears from breaking the dam she was precariously keeping them behind and surging forward as Jamie’s own silent tears slipped out onto his cheeks.

“All I wanted was for you to love me like I love you, Leo. That was it.”

Jamie’s broken voice pulled the sob from her lungs but even though it felt like she couldn’t breathe and even though she knew she’d made such a mess of things, she still managed to catch those three words and hang onto them like they were a life line that would keep her from drifting away into outer space. They were also the words that had her legs carrying her towards him, closing the distance and pushing everything that separated them to the side until she was pressed tightly against his chest with her arms tight around him.

“I do, Jamie,” she cried. “I do love you. I love you more than anything else in this world and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that I pushed you away, that I ignored everything for so long. You’re my person, Jame, you always have been, ever since we were kids, long before I even understood what love was. Fuck, I’m so sorry, Jame.”

Jamie held her tightly within his arms, frightened that she might float away if he didn’t keep her steadfast against him and buried his face into her hair, his own quiet tears falling into the umber strands as he shushed her gently to quieten her cries.

“I’m sorry too, babe. I should have told you, I should have said something, I just didn’t know what to say and I was so scared that I’d lose you and then when I found out you were dating, I just, I hated the idea of you with anyone else and I know that was wrong and I know that I should’ve just told you how I was feeling but the thought of you not feeling the same way, God, it killed me.”

Leo lifted her head, the wet jungle of her eyes shining like the Amazon meeting the lagoon of his as her hand reached up to caress his strong jaw and Jamie nuzzled into the touch before he pressed a soft kiss to her palm, everything else melting away until it was just the feeling of her skin and the gentle press of her body against his.

“There’s no one else like you Jamieson Oleksiak,” she murmured softly as her thumb swept gently across his cheek. “No one.”

“I love you, Leo,” Jamie whispered, his eyes shining with tears before he slowly dipped his head down to bring his lips to hers and captured them in a tender kiss, their first kiss.

She melted into him instantly, her hands moving to the back of his neck while his found the backs of her thighs to lift her up and wrap her legs around his waist. He kissed her like he was suffocating and she was his oxygen, kissed her for every time he should’ve told her that he loved her and kissed her for every day that he should have already been kissing her and for everything Jamie was giving her, Leo gave it back tenfold. Their mouths moved together in a complete unity which betrayed the fact that they hadn’t already been doing this for years, each knowing what the other needed with each pass of their tongues and every pause for breath.

Leo’s fingers tangled themselves into Jamie’s short curls and the gentle tug she gave them earned her a deep groan and a flex of his palms against her thighs. It was instinctive, really, to carry her into her bedroom and though Leo should’ve felt anxious about sharing that final part of herself with Jamie, it felt like the most natural thing in the world for her to do. He removed her clothes carefully, almost dutifully, exalting her skin with his mouth like her body was a temple and every kiss was a holy offering. He learned her body like lyrics from his favourite song and remembered every sigh and every flex of her fingers against his skin whenever he did something that she liked until he was confident that he would be able recite it word for word if she asked him to. He’d never felt more at home than he did between her thighs with her arms wrapped around the broad expanse of his back and with every breath and every moan shared between them both, he knew with complete certainty that she was it for him and while he didn’t know the exact details of what their life together would look like, he also knew that it didn’t really matter as long as he had her.

They moved together between the sheets as sure and as steady as the falling snow outside, in their own world where nothing and no one could touch them and all that mattered was what they were giving to each other in that moment. Leo carved her name into Jamie’s skin as her nails raked across his shoulders, a wordless encouragement for more of him. She was cradled within his arms, safe and warm and home while his lips brushed along her jaw, whispers of love murmured into her skin with every breath he took. He quickened his pace as he sensed the wave begin to grow inside of her, swallowing her moans with a kiss when the wave finally broke against the shore and she tumbled over the edge. He stayed with her as she rode the crest of her orgasm, working her through it while he chased his own high.

“Fuck, Leo. I’m so close, babe,” he gritted, hips driving into hers.

“Let go, Jame…”

He kissed her roughly as his hips faltered, spilling inside of her with a low groan and shallow thrusts until he was spent. Leo’s lips brushed along his jaw, pressing kisses along the sharp angle of his face and against the shell of his ear.

“I love you so much,” she whispered, Jamie smiling against her neck before pulling out and rolling onto his back, nestling her into his side until she settled with her head against his chest and her arm draped over his stomach. He dropped his lips to press a kiss against her forehead, gentle and chaste and full of all the love her had for her while Leo’s fingers traced along his ribs, leaving a ripple of goose bumps in their wake.

They laid in silence for a while, limbs tangled in the sheets while the snow fell silently outside. It was a peace that reflected the one they both felt within their souls and Leo wasn’t sure she ever wanted to leave the solace and serenity of their cocoon, the steady thump of Jamie’s heart and the gentle rise and fall of his chest had her in a trance-like state and it was Jamie’s soft chuckle that pulled her back to the present.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly into her hair.

“Yeah.” She shifted and propped herself up on her elbow so that she was looking at Jamie, smiling at the peaceful expression she found resting on his features. “Just happy.”

He reached out to cup the back of her head and pulled her in to place three gentle pecks to her lips, smiling against her mouth before he pulled away to look into her eyes and tuck the loose strands of her hair back.

“Good,” he grinned. “Because this would be really fuckin’ awkward if you weren’t.”

Leo laughed at that, free and easy and Jamie felt like he could fly with the way her head was thrown back and her eyes had crinkled with her bright smile.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, it really would.”

She looked at him for a breath, the smile still playing on her lips before she moved her eyes to the tattoo at his ribs and traced the lines of it lightly with her fingertips. She knew that this was good and right and everything she’d ever wanted for so long and she knew that it would take a while before she could truly forgive herself for everything she’d put Jamie through, but the rhythmic stroking of Jamie’s fingers against her lower back kept her grounded in this moment with him before her mind could take off running while she focused on the black lines of ink on his skin.

“I um wasn’t completely honest with you about that tattoo,” Jamie mumbled.

“What about?”

“When you asked if I’d got it for you.”

Leo shook her head gently. “I was only teasing, Jame.”

“Yeah, I know,” he acknowledged. “But it really always was for you, at least in some part.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Remember that I told you that it represented bravery and courage?” He asked, Leo nodding in response. “Well those were things that I learned from you. You taught me what it meant to be brave, what it meant to live fearlessly and to be brave and chase my dreams. That lion is you Leo and you’ve been with me. You’ve been with me this whole time.”

Leo didn’t quite know what to say to that because while she’d always quietly and selfishly imagined that it was for her, having it confirmed by Jamie was an entirely different ball game and it was a little overwhelming but in the best possible way. She instead curled herself back into his side and rested her head against his strong chest, her arm draping heavily around him. Jamie wrapped her tight in his arms, nuzzling his nose into her hair and pressing soft kisses to the crown of her head while he breathed her in, all pineapple and coconut and Leo.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked quietly.

“You know you can.”

“What was with the avocado tonight?”

Jamie was slightly taken aback by the gentle laugh Leo let out against his chest but didn’t move from where his nose was nestled amongst the wild waves on top of her head.

“I don’t know, honestly,” Leo admitted, her lips quirking into a small smile against Jamie’s skin. “Guess I just wanted to try it to see if I still hated it.”

“And I’m guessing by the fact you left half of it on your plate-“

“Still disgusting,” Leo interjected with a laugh which Jamie matched in earnest before pressing another kiss into her hair while she went quiet again once more.

She closed her eyes and let the steady thud of Jamie’s heartbeat quiet her mind that had taken itself off to the races and was trying to work out how this would all work and where that would leave them when Jamie had to go back to Pittsburgh in a couple of days. Jamie sensed her though, so in tune with her and her body and her mind to pick up on the subtle little cues that told him she was going down the rabbit hole, so he called her back to him with a gentle whisper of her name.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

“I just,” she sighed quietly. “I just don’t know how this looks for us, Jame. I just got you and now it feels like I’m gonna lose you all over again. It’s different this time, you leaving and I know it’s gonna-.” She trailed off, sniffling slightly as the pain of Jamie leaving town washed over her and filled her eyes with fresh tears.

“Hey, hey”, Jamie soothed, tucking his fingers under her chin and tilting her head up to get her eyes on his. “It’s okay, babe. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure it out, okay? Pittsburgh isn’t far away and you can come and stay whenever you want. We’ll get through the rest of this season and then when I’m home in the summer we can work out all the details, yeah?”

Leo saw the intensity and the certainty in Jamie’s eyes and she saw the truth in them, their truth and Leo knew that whatever happened, Jamie would make sure that they were okay, so she nodded her head slowly and buried her face against the crook of his neck.

“We’re gonna be fine, baby,” he murmured into her hair. “Let’s not worry about that right now, yeah? Let’s just focus on this moment.”

He pressed a sequence of kisses to the top of her head and settled her comfortably against him, drawing little circles with his fingertips at her hips until he felt her body go heavy as she slipped into sleep.

Jamie laid there, his eyes drifting to the window where the snow was still falling heavily outside and smiled to himself despite the fact that he knew Leo was right. He didn’t know how this would look for them either and he didn’t know what the future had in store for him, he didn’t even know if he was going to be in Pittsburgh next year and God only knows where he would end up. But none of that really mattered, not really, because when he looked at Leo fast asleep in his arms, the woman who was his whole world and always had been, he knew that wherever he went, wherever his path would lead him, he would always have a home in her heart and now that he knew that he had a home in hers too, everything else was just confetti.

Love isn’t always fireworks. It’s not always loud or in your face or even a moment where you lock eyes with a stranger across the room and fall head over heels at first sight. Sometimes love is quiet. Sometimes love grows slowly like an oak tree, starting out as a tiny acorn before springing tiny shoots and leaves and while it might not look like much at first, the roots grow deep and strong and nurture the sapling until it becomes something big and beautiful. It happens so slowly over time that it can be difficult to notice it happening at all, but it grows all the same, bigger and bigger until it’s mighty and proud and impossible to ignore. The tree is strong, unmoveable, enduring and weathers whatever storm comes its way because it’s had the time and the devotion to mature into something truly remarkable. That is the kind of love that many only ever get to dream of and Jamie and Leo would be thankful every second of every day that they were lucky enough to find that in each other because even though we live in a universe of infinite possibilities, there are some things in life that just make sense and when it’s good and it’s right, it will always find a way.

[liptonsbabe]

Chains of a family [B.W]

Bill Weasley x Grant! Reader

Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Summary: Molly knows about the reader’s relatives and she’s not so sure to put her trust in a girl that had just betrayed her own family

Word count: 1.9K

Warnings: Swearing

A/N: Hi! i’m so happy that you guys liked this thing! thank you so much for your support and, again, if you want to keep reading this let me know. Same note as ever, english not my mother language, so tell me if something’s is wrong.

Chapter 2: Not your family

The next morning turned out to be quieter than you imagined.

You slowly got out of bed and looked at everything around you noticing how quaint Bill's old room was. The ceiling was lined with grainy wallpaper with stacks of photographs of Quidditch players hanging from the reeds that moved from side to side, simulating the playing field; the right side of the room had a huge hole behind the small stool that tried to hide it, and from that hole a small garden gnome was sleeping peacefully with a small piece of cloth on top of his head. You stood up, walking towards the huge window that gave you a beautiful view of the Weasley's garden that at that moment was covered by a thin layer of drizzle that had fallen during the night.

Molly's fruit trees gleamed under the faint rays of the sun and you saw how a doxy from between the leaves poisoned Mrs. Weasley's apples, causing them to fall from the tree branches in a thick black mass with a foul smell coming out of it. You shook your head, excited to witness a very different way to wake up.

Even though several minutes have passed since you woke up, the house continued to remain in a strange silence that made you think that the family had decided to leave the burrow with the intention of buying more supplies or something like that. You knew that Bill wasn’t at home precisely for his obligations within the Order, so you didn’t worry about looking for him around the room, so you decided that a better option was going down to the dining room and know what was happening.

As you went down the spiral staircase, you cursed in a whisper when you forgot to put on your slippers before leaving the bedroom cause the floor was so cold that you slipped a couple of times. Back in the days, when you were still welcome in your parents' house, you had many servants who did all the things for you - putting on your shoes as soon as you woke up was one of those things - but now that your life had changed so much, you assumed that you would have to adapt and start taking care of your own needs.

Your curious eyes roamed the walls covered in family photos that caused a big warmth in your chest. In each of those photographs, all of Molly's children appeared along with their father, smiling for the camera and sending effusive greetings. A pic was hanging at the fireplace were Molly and Arthur were carrying a small white bundle crying his lungs out. You assumed it was Bill as his parents seemed too young back then and even as a small baby, you could recognize those tantrum features anywhere.

A giggle escaped your lips when you noticed a funny sequence from that same photo in which, even with Bill crying in his mother's arms, his father tried to carry him for a moment to calm him down, however the baby's cries didn’t stop. The baby was so annoyed that he ended throwing up  the milk ration that he must have had before the photo session on his father's neat shirt.

You laughed because you knew that William's impertinence was something he had carried with him for several years now.

"Bill hates those photos." You jumped in your place scared to see Molly standing behind you. Your cheeks turned red “He says that it’s embarassing but i think that’s nonsense. He was an adorable baby”

"he was," you answered, looking anywhere but into Molly's shrewd eyes. "but I guess displaying them in the fireplace isn’t the right thing to do."

“Is it not?

"No, they should be at the front door where everyone can see them”

Molly giggled as you watched the sequence of photos over and over again. A silence settled between you, but surprisingly it was not an awkward silence, but one that was allowing you to create a bond that neither of you expected. Mrs. Weaslsey brought up a rag, wiping it around the corners of the photo from the dust.

"Arthur and I had to save up for months to take those pictures," she mentioned wistfully, "we just had Bill and it seemed like a good idea to welcome him into our family with a gesture like that. Arthur was new in the ministry and wasn't earning too much, but we had that quirk and decided we could afford to skip certain things to pay for the pictures. It cost us ten galleons and it still took us four months to gather them”

“Oh” You didn't know what to say, but you just kept looking at the photograph feeling a bit uncomfortable. You never had those problems at home because your family was insanelly rich thanks to the inheritance in life that your grandfather Tim had left to his son and later to his grandchildren. Even the descendants of your grandfather's servants came to work in your house, reason enough for you and your siblings to grow up with no sense of responsibility other than your own wishes. Molly sighed remembering those times when life seemed to be easier.

"So when Bill asked me to remove it from the fireplace, I refused. He doesn't know how hard it was to raise that money, but I think he has nothing to be ashamed of, he was too adorable!

"I don't doubt it for a second, Mrs. Weasley."

"You can call me Molly," she said, walking back to the kitchen where you continued watching the way the pans moved back and forth preparing breakfast. You were not very good at cooking - in fact, you had never cooked before- however, that didn’t stop you from offering your help. So you took a pan, placed it on the stove, and decided that you would find a way to make a good mountain of strawberry-filled pancakes just like your dear nanny did. Molly observed you carefully. "I think that now that you are living with us it is appropriate to have a more cordial treatment.My son told me a lot about you”

“Just the good things, i hope”

“Kind of” You stopped mixing ingredients to look at her carefully” He told us a bunch of marvelous things about you and how you two met. Actually, what worries me the most is what he didn’t tell us”

And there was the recrimination you were waiting for. You were aware that it had to arrive sooner or later, however, you would have been grateful that it did it when Bill were by your side to give you the opportunity to defend yourself properly. You cleared your throat uncomfortably, knowing that what Molly needed to hear from your own lips was which family you came from. You continued your task with the pancakes, turning out as bad as you expected.

"I'm sorry it turned out this way, Mrs. Weasley."

"Molly," he corrected.

"Molly" you smiled slowly "But believe me when I tell you that it was me who asked William not to mention anything about my last name or where I come from. I know that in this case, with the war above our heads, it is necessary to be certain of the people who enter your family and I apologize for that, it's just ... Bill is very important to me” Molly's eyes narrowed “Since we met ... I have found a home in him and well, all that feels when someone is in love. "Mrs. Weasley shook her head, understanding the feeling." I have experienced the rejection before. When people know that Tom Riddle is my family ... they run away in fear, curse my family and even walk away from us, as if sharing a blood bond makes us as evil as he is.

“And it’s not like that?” Molly asked with a hand on her neck. She didn’t want to be like the others and judge you without knowing the full story, just as she had promised Bill the night before that she would, but it was so difficult not to remember the death of his brothers by Voldemort’s hands and to pretend nothing had happened in the past. You sighed because the eggs you cracked on the bowl got mixed with their own shell “ I've heard of the Grants before, they're all Death Eaters, including your siblings!”

“It is difficult to have to choose a side  when you don’t have your own convictions”

"And you have it?"

You looked at Molly in pain. Of course you expected those reactions from Bill's mother, she was within her right to be upset that her oldest son never told her that he was in a relationship with a girl who seemed to have the most fucking powerful and evil wizard in the world as a great-uncle. No, Molly wasn't mad, she was deadly angry, she felt like she was bursting!

Her hands became fists and without knowing how, you found yourself between the wall and Molly's big arms from one second to the other. The pancake batter was forgotten, as was the woman's promise to treat her son's girlfriend in a good way.

"How is it possible ..." Molly questioned in an agitated voice, pressing your arms against the wall, "... that a single deer leaves the nature of its own herd?" How can you ensure that one rotten apple even in a gold container doesn’t rot the others?”Your breath caught at the questions of the woman in front of you. Once again, you were aware that your presence wouldn’t be good news to them, but at least you hoped they understood your motives before judging you “Explain to me, (Y/ N) Grant, when have you seen a pig away from his equals?”

Your words caught in your throat at Molly's fierce question. Bill had talked a lot about the temper of his mother. Even if she could be really grumpy at times, she was in general a very sweet, pleasant and maternal woman with everyone; however, you didn’t fit into that generality because it seemed that the woman was determined to kill you with her own hands.

"If my presence bothers you so much, then you shouldn't have let Bill and I to stay here."

“He's my son! All I want for him is to be happy, and that's why I don't understand what he managed to see in you”

"Maybe the same thing you saw in your husband." Molly's lips twitched in anger, but you didn't stop. You hoped that she would at least understand what your words meant, because that would make it easier for both of you to try at least get along better, even if Molly seemed not to want to do it under any circumstances. How is it that this haughty little girl dared to compare herself with her dear and wonderful husband? "I'm sorry, but I don't think this conversation is going to take us anywhere."

"If someone betrays his own family ..." Molly stopped you before you walked out the front door. The others got down the stairs, seeing the scandal formed in the kitchen “The rest of us can't expect too much, can we?

Your eyes blured.

[kakiwrites]

the girl best friend

Genre: slight angst and fluff

A tetsuro kuroo x reader

Synopsis: while work started to pile up on you, kuroo found a new person to talk to just to pass the time. What happens when you break free from your workload only to see that the girl was a bit too close for comfort.

a/n: hey guys! Sorry for the 3 day hiatus but I wanted to look for new ideas for awhile but I'm finally back with something! It's not the most unique one but I was really inspired to do this one! Let's get started!

 Living on the other side of Tokyo was hard for both of you.

 You go to different schools and you had a lot of things on your plate. You had barely talked to Kuroo these days but you were sure he understood your situation. You didn't want to stray away for so long.

 After finishing the last of your schoolwork for the rest of the week, you decided to head to Nekoma for a surprise visit. What can you say, you missed your boyfriend and you wanted to make it up to him.

  You got there a few hours later, due to traffic. You checked your watch. It was time for his volleyball practice. You head over to the nekoma gym, hearing the volleyballs hitting the ground and the muffled yells from where you stood outside the door. You got to admit, you missed this. You burst open through the doors and looked around at the members just getting off the court for a short break.

 Kuroo was the first one to notice you. He ran over and wrapped his arms around your waist then hoisting you up, spinning you around with ease. "kitten! I'm so happy you're here!" he said with joy. He placed you back to the ground then pressed his lips onto yours. Kuroo's teammates were either happy for them or were retching and sulking corners in jealousy.

 You opened your mouth to greet him when the doors slammed open to reveal a pretty, petite, skinny girl with long flowing hair. "tetsu-kun~" she called out, skipping over to him only to still at the sight of you in his arms. You saw her bright smile falter into a sour look before it turned back to the blinding smile. Kuroo looked back at you with a sympathetic smile before he pulled away and walked over to the girl and pat her head, talking to her in a whisper. You couldn't catch what he was saying.

 You couldn't help but feel your heart clench at the sight.

 You just came back and now he was swept away with some stranger.

 You wanted to confront her, you wanted to ask who she was but you decided not to, giving her the benefit of the doubt. You hesitantly head over to the bleachers where Kenma was seated with his switch. You sat next to the faux blonde who glanced up from his console before his golden eyes shifted back down at his game. "welcome back, (y/n)." he greeted as he clicked on the buttons on his switch carefully. "you seem sad and confused. What's wrong?" he asked. You glanced back at him.

 Kenma always surprised you with how observant he could be.

 "I'm just curious who that girl is." you told him, looking back at the scene. Kuroo was still talking to that girl who seemed to have a tight grip on his arm. You had to turn away as to not hurt your heart any further.

 "oh, that's Aneru.  call her 'asshole' for short." kenma said so nonchalantly, you almost burst out in a fit of laughter. Kenma glanced up from his game and smiled, happy that he made you happy even a little bit. But that smile didn't last long, his expression turning somber. "she's been trying to get close to kuroo for the past two weeks and I keep telling him to tell her off already but as you can see, she's still bothering him."

 You couldn't help but sigh. So he's been having this problem for a while now, yet he hasn't told you one thing. Sure, they might be friends but even kenma looks uncomfortable in her presence. Why didn't he mention her? Did he think you were that busy? Or maybe…

 He really enjoyed her company.

 Maybe even more than friends.

 You had to force on a melancholy smile when Kuroo and Aneru approached, her eyes clouded with passion and love for the uncomfortable man beside her.

 "(y/n), this is my friend-"

 "-his best friend." Aneru corrected your boyfriend with a huge smile with a hand out for you to shake.

 "uh… yes, this is Aneru." he finished, trying to lean away to get his hand out from hers but the girl didn't budge. You didn't have a choice but to shake her hand. You felt her grip tighten on yours until the pain became unbearable, causing you to pull away. She gave you a sadistic grin, pulling Kuroo down.

 "kuroo here told me all about you but I couldn't believe that he has a girlfriend as…" she paused to look you up and down with a judgemental glint in her eye. "unique as you." she said with venom in her tone.

 Kuroo looked at you with worry. He didn't want to add to your long list of things to do with a problem of his own. He wasn't stupid, it wasn't like he couldn't tell she was trying to flirt with him. But he didn't know she was this bad, putting you down. The truth was, he tried everything he could think of to make her leave him alone to no avail. She just kept coming back. he could see that his teammates were also getting annoyed by her pestering so he stayed by her side so she wouldn't bother others. Which right now, he realized was a bad decision.

 You just nervously smiled at the girl, shooting a pleading look at kenma who was now staring at the ongoing conversation. "nice to meet you, Aneru. You look so pretty." you tried to compliment but She continued to grin at you menacingly.

 "oh thank you, got to look pretty for my tetsu-kun~"  you, kenma, and kuroo collectively cringed at the nickname. "though, it is a bit chilly. Can I borrow your jacket again today, tetsu-kun?" she pleaded, jutting her lip out and trying to win him over in a horrible attempt of a puppy dog look.

 Kuroo finally snapped, snatching his arm away then striding over to your side, pulling you closer by the hip. "you really think I haven't noticed your little gestures and flirting?" he spat with a scoff. "not just that, you're nitpicking on the most beautiful girl here. I don't take too kindly to desperate wannabes." he continued, standing his ground. At that moment his eyes darkened and the once confident and conniving girl started to shake like a leaf under his gaze. "back. Off. From me, my team and especially from my lovely girlfriend." and with that Aneru ran off, her wails dissipating out of the hallway.

 As soon as she was gone, kuroo turned to face you, his hands running up and down your waist, worry now swimming in his irises. "I'm so so sorry for not telling you, kitten. I knew you were busy and i thought I could handle it-" he started to ramble which you cut off by leaving kiss after kiss on his lips.

 "I was so scared and nervous when I saw how close she was with you." kuroo was about to reassure you when you pressed your lips against his once more to stop him from speaking. "but I didn't even have to worry. Thank you, tetsu." you finished, wrapping your arms.

 All of the other members sighed in relief. "finally I don't have to hear her annoying voice yelling 'tetsu-kun~' every ten seconds." yaku yelled, rubbing his face. Everyone else laughed while voicing their agreement.

 "since you dealt with her for a while, how about I treat everyone to ice cream, how's that?" you offered as kuroo smiled beside you.

 You never heard the team scream louder.

 And that's all! Hope you guys enjoyed this! If anyone is reading with Aneru as their name, please forgive me. I'm sure you're 100 times cooler than the Aneru here~ requests are open so please don't be shy to leave any requests in my inbox! Love you guys 💖❤️💕

General taglist (don’t be shy to comment your tumblr @ below): @tokyoghoose @macaronnv @reogou @midnightangelfox @wumboho @seiijixcia

[roger-that-cap]

meet me in the gardens

knight!natasha x noble!fem!reader

summary: being the widow of a decently wealthy lord and sitting on a large plot of land automatically meant that you were a candidate for the program that you couldn’t say not to; the hosting. you had to sponsor a knight and keep them in your home for an entire year, which was troublesome enough on its own. but you never expected yoru knight to be a woman, and you certainly didn’t expect to have a full on illegal love affair with her, either. 

warnings: actually none but a misunderstanding and the lack of editing that i think u guys may or may not be used to at this point

word count: 5.3k

part two!!

The knight before you was the opposite of a man. She was so opposite in fact, that you had to actively make yourself not appear like you were shocked. You knew that the twins were having to try even harder to keep composure.

She was without a doubt, one of the prettiest people you had ever seen before. Being a lady, you had seen so many handsome young men and gorgeous young women, but there wasn’t one who’s fairness struck you like this woman’s. Her eyes were an unfamiliar shade of blue, and you knew that they were the kind of eyes that were made for surveillance and observation, and if you looked hard enough, maybe a window to her thoughts. She had pink lips that were set into a genuine yet thin smile, almost like she wasn’t used to wordless pleasantries at all. Her hair was cropped just above her shoulders and it shined a brilliant red that you had rarely ever seen. Despite the powerful and extremely potent energy that she was giving off, she was short, shorter than you, but something told you that she was strong. Stronger than anyone knew quite yet, but you could feel it. But, you were still confused, regardless of how she had rendered you breathless for the quickest of seconds.

The problem wasn’t that she was a woman. There wasn’t even really a problem at all. It was just the fact that a woman was a knight. You had never seen anything like it in your entire life, and you had never even thought of the possibility of that happening. At all. You had to fight tooth and nail to keep property that you hardly even wanted, all because you were a woman. Because you weren’t pregnant with a son who could carry his hypothetical father’s name. Because you were a woman without the heir to your late husband’s fortunes, you were seen as nothing, for a long time. And now, there were women who were becoming knights?

You were more impressed than confused.

You felt another pinch from Pietro, this time a little harder. You breathed in through your nose, a welcoming smile on your face as you grappled for words.

“Hello,” you said, public voice still working hard as you internally scrambled for words. You were looking the red headed woman right in her eyes, the eyes that were so intense that if you hadn’t been in rooms where extreme business had gone down, you would have melted. You tried to remember the standard greeting. “Welcome to my keep. I hope that I can accommodate you during your stay, and that you are successful in your search for what it is that you are looking for.” You knew the words were off by a bit, but you saw the coachman nod in approval that you didn’t really care to have.

The knight took a step forward, and the sound of a heavy footstep crashing against your well-kept grass made you shiver. The trampled grass had nothing on the way that you reacted to hearing her voice. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Mirellis. I sincerely thank you for allowing me into your home.”

It was hardly your home, and you could tell that the two of you had already gotten off on the wrong foot. You knew it was because of your shameless staring. “May I be graced with knowing your name?”

If possible, she stood up a little straighter. “I am Natasha Romanoff, My Lady.”

If you were hearing correctly, you heard the slight awkwardness in her last two words. Only people with titles of their own called other lords and ladies “my lady”, and lower born people were to call them “milady”. She must have been lowborn, just like you. “It is my deepest pleasure to meet you, Natasha. May I show you around my keep?”

“Typically,” the coachman cut in, and you furrowed your brows at the way he interrupted the stop-and-start flow of the conversation. “It isn’t the lord—sorry—lady of the house’s job to do that.”

Wanda opened her mouth, highly defensive of you and ready to go because it was a fight she could afford to pick. A servant and a coachman were on the same level. She would face no punishment for talking back to the man. However, you reached to your right and squeezed her hand twice.

“Well, I am the lady of the house, and I would like to show my new guest her accommodations.” The man narrowed his eyes slightly at you, and it became obvious to everyone that he clearly wasn’t expecting back talk from you.

You knew that everyone thought widows were these gentle, sad women. The type that cried themselves to sleep and wished to meet their husbands again in the afterlife. The type that listened at anything that a man uttered simply because he was a man, or because they didn’t have the energy to entertain an arguement or to correct them. Especially ladies. But you were not supposed to be a lady. You wore fancy dresses and had gold and had a small castle to yourself, but part of you would always be that girl who beat up the boys who lived a few acres away for talking about your hair and then rolled in mud with them, laughing about it the very next day.

Even through the glances that were thrown between the five of you standing there, you continued. “My staff has worked so hard on making sure it was nice for her. I’d like to show off their diligence now.” It wasn’t a question.

“Do as you please, milady.”

You resisted the urge to nod smugly. “Thank you.” You watched him climb back onto his chair and quirked a brow. The coachman always stayed for dinner. It was considered offensive if they did not, both to the knight and to the lord or lady. “Did you not want to stay for the meal, good sir?”

“I must get back, milady. If that is alright with you.”

You knew you should utter something lengthy that you didn’t mean at all, but the most you could get out after his blatant rudeness was a quick “safe travels.” There was a long stretch of awkward silence as you watched him leave, arms hanging at your sides as the trotting sound of horses carried him away.

“Goodness, was he rude.”

“Pietro.” Wanda hissed, and you bit the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. You whirled around to look at the knight— Natasha— and saw that she was already looking at you with blatant curiosity.

“Would it be alright with you if I took you around myself?” You asked, and she nodded her head. “Well, I’m sure you’re hungry. Would you like to eat first?”

You were beginning to realize very quickly that the woman was the staring type. Her eyes, no, her entire face and persona was so demanding and intense. It was hard to even be provoked by her shameless staring and possible judgement, because at least she was open with it. The more you looked at her, though, the more you knew that you would never understand what was happening behind her eyes. “I would like to see.”

“Then you will see,” you stated, and gave Wanda a look. She knew immediately what it meant, and she walked off to tell the chefs to expect you in an hour or so. “We can start with the outside area and make our way in.”

She was very much the staring type. Not even just at faces or people in general, but with everything. You noticed that when anything caught her eye, she looked at it for a few seconds in silence and then moved on, like she heard them speak something unknown to everyone else and took the time to listen.

“These are the training grounds,” you said after walking to the back half of the castle, where the grass was still trained to grow with strength and hardly a thing was out of place. The training grounds were for young squires in the area or kids that just wanted to play fight. You had made the area yourself, and it was one of your favorite parts of your home. You liked being able to look outside and see children playing freely, and the sound of laughter was something that everyone needed in life. “You’re free to use them in any way you see fit, of course.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“You’ll run into aspiring knights here and there, but they are good children.” Your voice was fond as you spoke of them, and then took a right. “And just down here, we have the gardens.”

And gardens, they were. They were the only thing in the castle that was actually yours while your husband was alive. When you had arrived, the patch of land was so disgraced that it would have been insulting to call it a garden. The flowers were droopy, the soil was dry, and the vibrant colors that were once there had been sucked away. Your husband didn’t care about the area, and neither did anyone else, so you adopted it. You had built it from the ground up and made it into what it was; a huge and gorgeous garden full of colors, with ivy hanging from rails in what looked like an unruly manner and bushes full of roses and begonias and everything in between. It was caged off by golden rails, but the rails were hardly binding. They were so wrapped with leaves that it looked like they grew with the garden.

“This is my favorite part of the keep,” you stated softly, walking down it. You had expanded it so that it went down and into the forest, the rails forming a path. You walked down it every so often yourself, deep into the woods where no one would bother you, where you could look at the stars above in peace.

“Is it yours?”

“What?” You asked, tearing your eyes from a particular bush to see her looking up at the ivy.

“This garden,” she said, and you realized that you were strolling closer and closer to the woods. You stopped walking, but didn’t make any move to go and meet her. “Do you tend to it?”

“It’s mine,” you answered, not even bothering to take the subtle pride out of your voice. “It’s my project. I started it when I got here, and now it’s flourishing.”

“Where did you learn how to garden?”

It was no secret that typically, ladies did not get their hands dirty, even if the activity was simple planting. They were supposed to stay inside and knit or something like that. Ladies could go outside to look at gardens, but they had staff to plant for them. So, did Natasha not know that you weren’t born with a title? “When I was a girl,” you answered vaguely.

“Your Lord Father allowed you?”

My father was no lord. “Yours allowed you to wield a sword?” The sound of armor clanking brought you out of your slight hostility, and you sighed. “I apologize.”

“It’s quite alright.” The harshness in her voice told you that she was offended by what you said, and she turned around once she realized that the two of you were nearing the tree line.

You walked around with Natasha, giving her the rest of the tour halfheartedly and only speaking when absolutely necessary. It was clear that the two of you clearly weren’t clicking as well as you hoped to, and while that was tragic, you weren’t going to kiss anyone’s feet to get in their good graces.

“I’m sure you’re hungry by now.” The second you stepped on the wood floors of the inside of your keep, the warmth hit you. Your shoes clicked on the material as you walked ahead of her, not looking back or waiting for an answer. “I’ll show you the kitchens, and then the dining hall.”

The dining hall was known for its size. It was huge, and the ceiling was high. Everything that was said echoed, and the lighting provided by strategically placed candles made the hall have an elegant, almost eerie feeling to it. The staff was already bustling around, plating food and pouring wine. Wanda and Pietro were already there, their harsh and bickering whispers hitting your ears until they heard you approaching.

“Oh, please, sit.” Wanda did so immediately, and Pietro walked around the table to pull out your chair, which sat at the head of it.

You cringed when Pietro sat down. He had been dethroned from his seat at your left hand, because it was courteous of you to give up that seat for your new night. That was one tradition that you wouldn’t break, simply because it would be seen as disrespectful. “You can sit right there, Lady Natasha.” You saw her lip twitch.

In all honesty, you had no idea what to call her formally. You two certainly weren’t close enough to address each other by first name, and you doubted she even knew it. But she wasn’t a man, and male knights were called “Sir”. She wasn’t a “Sir”. You didn’t want to offend her further by calling her it.

The first half of the dinner was in awkward silence. Wanda kept giving you glances, and you frowned at the way she was looking at you- like you had clearly messed something up. You sighed through your nose when you heard Pietro clear his throat, a sound that meant that he was about to run his mouth.

“So, my lady knight, what do you think of the castle?”

The red head didn't even realize she was being addressed until she looked up and saw you and everyone else looking at her expectantly. “It’s very nice.” You waited a bit, listening to hear whatever empty compliments that she would give for the sake of being polite. Ten seconds passed, and there was nothing.

You chuckled. “Thank you,” you answered just as shortly, holding back the urge to laugh much louder than was appropriate.

“So, where are you from?”

“The slums.” You nod in acknowledgment, and guilt. Sometimes you repressed the images of people living from coin to coin. But silly you, silly everyone. For there to have been people on the top, there had to be people at the bottom. And those who lived at the bottom lived in what were called “the slums”. “I don’t know if you would know anything about that, My Lady.”

Wanda made a noise that told you that the bold knight’s words were clearly meant to wound you, and Pietro’s brows shot upwards so quickly that you barely saw the movement happen. You stared at your plate, jaw dropped open in surprise and mortification.

You were fuming on the inside. How the hell would she know who you were? What you dealt with? How your husband was as cruel as he was disgusting? How you grew up a poor farmer’s daughter? She didn’t know, and that was what kept you grounded. How could she have known?

Before you could get in your right mind to utter a threat that you were sure that your late husband had said in your presence at least once, you nodded your head and took it in stride. You stood up from the table and didn’t look at her or the confused look she shot you after looking at your painfully unfinished plate.

“Wanda will show you to your chambers, Lady Natasha. I hope you enjoy your first dinner of many here at my castle, and I hope that tonight begins your yearlong journey to wisdom.” And with that, you turned on your heels after taking your plate shamelessly, heels clacking against the polished floor once again, silence filling the hall until long after you left.

§§

By the third day Natasha was there and the second that you had been blatantly avoiding her, you were starting to feel bad for fueling the fire between you two. She was to stay under your roof and do what she had to for a full year, and you antagonized her. You gave the sacred act of showing a knight to their room to someone else, and you understood Natasha’s lack of speech towards you to be a consequence of that.

But that was fine. You certainly didn’t need for the girl to like you. It would have made things much easier and smoother, but it wasn’t a necessity. Your job was to give her food, water, shelter, and time to find herself and her purpose as a knight. Nothing said that the two of you had to be as thick as thieves.

But that also didn’t mean that you would actively pass on befriending her. You decided after a long time of sitting at the polished wooden desk that had become yours that you would be her friend should fate allow it, and if not, there was no harm to it. But you weren’t going to chase her, no matter how wonderfully her bright hair would work as an object to follow.

A soft calling of your name happened seconds before Wanda opened the door. You greeted her informally and grinned at her, until you saw the look on her face and the sealed paper in her hand. Immediately, your joyful expression left and you sighed.

“Who is it this time?” Wanda shut the door behind her after your question, and you gave her a look. “It can’t be Lord Rumlow again.”

Brock Rumlow was not a good man. No man who had power was a good man, but he was one of the worst. He had gone through two wives in the past three years, and the second one was found with stab wounds in the forest. How he had gotten out of being tried for her murder was beyond you, and it made you sick to your stomach every time you thought about it. Now, he set his sights on you, a widow sitting on plenty of money and land. He had been sending you letters, flowers, gold, dresses, anything that a narcissistic man would think that another human being would like simply because the things were tangible. And the letters always said the same old thing; to marry him. And he wasn’t ever really asking.

“It’s him,” Wanda confirmed, her tone telling you that she felt the same way you did towards the vile man.

“I want to burn it,” you said, and immediately, Wanda crossed the room to put the note in the fire, waiting for your final say. “Let me read what this imbecile has asked for now. I wonder what beautiful horse or jewel he’ll offer for my hand, this time.”

You took the letter from Wanda gently and gave her a small smile, and she urged you to open it, just as nervous to see what was inside as you were. You stared at his seal for a few seconds, eyeing the red wax with a three headed serpent engraved with disdain before tearing it right open. You did the rest without ceremony, your eyes narrowed as you found the messy and unbothered handwriting that you would recognize from anywhere.

Lady of Riverstone,

I take it that my other letters may have been lost to the wind. I apologize for not reaching you earlier. But, if you have been getting my letters, then my main offer stands the same. I would be honored for you to take my name and stand under my veil, and for you to become my wife. Marriage to me would give you a great deal of benefits, and I have listed them down below. I would like an answer within two fortnights, and if I don’t get one, I’ll send another letter.

It was all more of the same, more of the same offers and then a little more, vague threats, and monotonous language that he hardly knew how to use correctly. You read with a neutral expression, even though Wanda was shocked reading all of the things he was offering. He signed it off like he did every other letter.

Lord Rumlow, of Serpent’s Keep.

“He offered you two tons of gold to send your father?”

“Do you notice how he’s never called me Lady Mirellis?” You asked, sipping the chalice of water that constantly sat at your desk, and got refilled whenever someone walked by and saw it nearing empty. “Or by my name?”

“I have.”

“It’s always ‘Lady of Riverstone’,” you sighed, shaking your head. “If he wants the land, he should just go on and say that. It’s much more respectable for him to be honest with me. Maybe I would have said yes already.”

Wanda made a face. “You’re lying, now.”

“Well, of course I am. I've never seen him, and all he wants is a woman to beat around. I’m not that woman, no woman is. Do you think I want to find myself dead within a half year of being wed?” There was a sharp knock on your door.

“He wouldn’t kill you. He wouldn’t gain these assets after your death,” Wanda said softly, understanding that you were about to finish the conversation. “He must be truly desperate to pay ou two tons of gold. That could help nearly anyone out of a pickle, and it would certainly pay off some things back at the farm.”

You knew that. But the truth was… you held a certain amount of irrational and rational disdain for your family. You knew that some of it was warranted just off of the way humans worked in general, but others weren’t. You knew for a fact that a part of you would always be bitter about the way that no one fought hard enough for you not to be taken from your home. You knew that a part of you would be bitter because they took the money that your late husband had offered them, like you were the fattest, most desirable pig in the pen. And there would forever, and ever, be a part of you—if not all of you— that would be angry about your wedding night.

Half of your family showed. The other half came, took you to a back room, and cried. They cried on your night of terror, and you comforted them. It was the one time where you truly needed your mother and her maternal instincts, the one time you needed your brother to teach you some moves that could hurt a man if you needed them. And they either weren’t where you needed them, or weren’t what you needed them. Both truths hurt the same.

“My family doesn’t need money,” you settled on saying, swallowing the burning that came with thinking about the people you shared blood with. “If they needed it, they would ask.”

“Your father is a proud man, he wouldn’t set that pride aside. Especially not to ask one of his own daughters for money.”

“Well, let that be their problem,” you said, although your harsh words weren’t as impactful because of the tremor in them. “I won’t marry Lord Rumlow.”

Wanda leaned forward a bit, and she took both of your hands in hers as the knocking grew louder. She looked you in the eyes, just the way one true friend looked at another. With the same ferocity in her voice as the time when she assured you that no one was going to force you to give up your rights to ladyship, her next words were no louder than a whisper. “And no one will make you.”

Your eyes almost grew watery as you held her hands, feeling the purity of the bond you shared with her surging. “Thank you.” You looked towards the door and let her hands go, uttering a soft command.

Pietro stood there with his arms crossed and a flushed look on his face. He cocked his head to the side at the sight of you and Wanda hovering over a broken open letter, and took a few steps forward. It was upside down, so you turned it his way so that he could read it easier, and the second he recognized the handwriting, he groaned.

“I think I can assume what this is,” he rolled his eyes, and he picked it up and walked over to the fire. When you’d said nothing, he tossed it in and the three of you watched it burn. “I came to tell you that our little knight is strange.”

“How so?”

“Well, she's writing.”

You furrowed your brows. “Writing?” You repeated, remembering her saying that she grew up poor. Most commoners had no idea how to read or write. You only learned because you had to learn when you married a lord. And even if knights had the ability to read and write, they hardly did. Words had very little value to a man who could wield a sword.

But Natasha Romanoff was no man.

“What on earth would she be writing about?” Wanda asked, leaning against the desk. “I wonder if she’s required to write a review on her treatment.”

Pietro gave a short but genuine laugh. “She’s probably writing down terrible things about you to give to the king after she returns home,” he joked, and Wanda cracked a smile, but you couldn’t find it in you to laugh.

“I couldn’t care less about a review of my hospitality or lack therefore of,” you drawled.

Wanda rolled her eyes. “Yes, you do, because you’re a kind person.”

“But she is not.” You felt bad for saying the words that you said not even seconds after.

“We don’t know that,” Wanda reasoned softly. “Actually, I happen to know that she’s quite nice. And she’s level headed and very smart, from what I can see. She’s no man with a little praise under his belt, that’s for sure.”

“So, she’s not boastful.” You said. “That’s good. But I don’t see her and I sharing more interactions than what we need to.”

“With all due respect, Lady Y/N,” Pietro said, leaning forward with that characteristic smirk of his plastered over his face. “You are very dramatic. You always have been.”

You could hardly even pretend to be offended. “That’s not true.”

“It is,” Wanda said quietly, though not fearfully at all. “You are always dramatic, and then things work out.”

Wanda was right. She very much was, actually. Things like the river nearly drying up and crops rotting too quickly and other things that were completely out of your hands terrified you. The things that you couldn’t control made you irrational and erratic, and that was probably your worst fault. You did the same with things you could change, only with worrying. Something as simple as an apology could fix something, but you would sit on giving the apology for hours, sometimes even days.

That night, when it seemed like everyone else was fast asleep and dreaming sweet little images, you put on slippers and walked right outsides, your guards not even asking you where you were going. You walked right out of the side doors and into the garden, humming quietly to yourself as you walked through the entrance of it with your pails of water.

It was quiet besides the noise of bugs chirping, and the occasional flap of wings from birds above. Even your humming had tapered off, and it felt like you could have been able to hear things from miles away. You smiled in the crisp air as you bent over to water a rose bush, a soft affirmation towards the red flowers when you saw how pretty they looked in the moonlight. When you stood back up and turned your head around, you gasped in fright and tumbled towards the ground.

“Shit,” a hand caught your arm and the other was on your shoulder as your chest heaved, adrenaline rushing from being so frightened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you saw me.” It took you a second to see the face of the woman speaking in the moonlight, but when you saw it was the knight, you sighed.

You were set back on two feet, and then Natasha took a step backwards. “Why are you out here?”

She shrugged. “It’s pretty.” There was a stretch of silence as you waited for her to say something, anything else. “It’s safe.”

A part of you was angered by that statement. Yes, the gardens were safe. Of course they were, they were your safety! They were your place that you went to when you felt like nothing was in your control, like your own decisions weren’t yours. Nothing could hurt you in the gardens, and plants couldn’t talk. They held every secret that you could ever tell, they held every tear that you never shed in front of another, and they saw every emotion that you were too stoic to show in front of others. They were the one place that you could get peace. And now the knight has ruined it.

But on the other hand, you were proud of yourself for creating something that someone else can admire. You created something that someone else could be free in, and in a way, that was amazing. And that hand was outweighing the other.

So, you said, “I’m glad it feels that way.” You cleared your throat softly when you realized that you were speaking to her the way you spoke to the twins. “I created it as my own safe space, so I’m glad someone else thinks of it that way, too.”

There was a short yet heavy silence between you and Natasha, and then you saw her turn to face you, her eyes burning a hole into the side of your face. “I know you’re not very excited to have me here, but I’m here. So we can at least try to be cordial.”

“Is that not what we’re being?” You asked, not even taking your eyes off of the moon. “I thought we were even being a little friendly.”

“It would be nice if it lasted.” Natasha muttered, and you nodded your head.

“I don’t know if I offended you with the question about whether or not your father approved your knighthood,” you said, sighing. “I assume that I did. And if you carry around that offense, then I apologize. I don’t like talking about my own father, but you couldn’t have known that.”

“You do not need to be forgiven,” she states. “I apologize, as well.”

“And it’s not that I don’t want you here,” you started, already cursing yourself for going into what she had said not even a full minute earlier. You were tense as she waited for you to continue, but you just shrugged and sighed. “Just know that that’s not it.” Something reached toward you out of the corner of your eye, and you finally turned your head to look at her.

She was… she was nothing short of gorgeous. You were taller than her, so you looked down at her just a little bit. Her red hair looked more brown than anything, and her blue eyes were pale and still as beautiful as they were during the day. There was the smallest hint of a smile on her face, nervous almost, as you looked down at the arm that was reached out your way. The moon was shedding you both its white light, and it primarily rested right where her arm was extended, her palm lord and turned to the side.

She wanted to shake hands with you. Shaking hands was seen as archaic, and knights certainly didn’t touch ladies unless they were assisting them. But, you knew by now that Natasha was not the typical knight. One of her fingers twitched, and you realized that she was just waiting there, her hand hanging in the air, like a gavel ready to drop at any moment. And quickly, almost enough to make the other woman startle, you took her right hand in your own and shook it twice, keeping your eyes right on hers.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

                                                       ******

hiiii guys! still establishing things here with this chapter, but when things kick off, they are going full speed. i already love this fic, and i can’t wait to put all my ideas down for it as the finished product! i hope you guys liked it, and if you did, please show her some love! i have a little taglist building up, so here it goes!

@normanijauregui​ @fayhar​ @8plasma​ @procrastinatingsapphictrash​ 

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