#but also ready to drop kick like half of these :)

[twyllodrus]

some notable aen elle & aen seidhe figures in elven lore

[soaps-mohawk]

Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 28: Two Is Company, Three Is A Party

Summary: Things don't quite go as expected during your heat, but he can hardly complain.

Pairings: Poly 141 x reader

Word Count: 12.150 words

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, p in v sex, unprotected sex, UNSAFE SEX (please do not do this in real life, practice safe sex), anal sex, anal fingering, oral (m and f receiving), Dom/sub dynamics, threesomes, heat cycles, knotting, kissing, body fluids, cum eating, face sitting, spanking (it's like twice), Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, language, aftercare, and fluff

A/N: Well, this one got away from me. Not much to say other than heed the warnings and DO NOT read this in public or in underwear you care about...also maybe ditch the underwear all together this time.

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Kyle’s eyes immediately dart back to meet John’s gaze. The word coming from your lips has shocked him, startled him even. You hadn’t said much during your first heat, reduced mostly to unintelligible mumbling when you were aware enough to look around with that hazy gleam in your eyes. Here, but not aware. Now your eyes are clear, staring up at him intently as you cling to his wrist. He can’t help but wonder if you’ll remember this, or if it’ll stay lost in the haze. 

John stares back at him, his gaze focused but Kyle knows him well enough to tell he’s just as surprised. He’s still drinking the electrolyte drink, his throat bobbing slowly with every swallow. Kyle knows he’s doing it so he won’t have to answer right away, assessing the situation in the moment of clarity from his rut. He’s still wrapped around you, still locked inside you. 

The moment seems to last an hour, the tension between the three of you palpable. The anticipation from Kyle, waiting to see what John will say, the intense desire from you to pull him onto the bed, and John’s uncertainty as to how to proceed. It's not uncommon for betas to join during heats, it's not even that uncommon for betas to be the ones helping during heats. The pups of a beta and omega pairing do exist after all. 

Kyle's eyes haven't left John's, even as you mouth at his wrist, tongue laving over the sensitive skin, teeth gently scraping like you're trying to devour him. He can't help the stirring in his pants from the heavy scents in the air, the sounds that had been coming from the room less than 20 minutes ago still ringing loud in his ears. 

John pulls the now empty bottle from his lips, taking the time to screw the cap back on. Kyle holds his hand out automatically, ready to take it like he could escape your tight grip to toss it into the garbage with the others. He debates throwing it into the garbage from where he's standing, but the loud nose might startle you, which might make John get defensive. 

Instead he lets it drop to the floor. He'll pick it up later. 

John continues to stare at him, holding his gaze. There's sweat beading on Kyle's back as he waits for what's coming next, what John's decision will be. He has no reason to be nervous. The fact he's in this room, so close to them speaks volumes of trust John has, the safety he feels letting Kyle around his omega in such a vulnerable position. 

“She wants you.” John finally says, leaving it open to Kyle. It's not an order, it's not a hesitant decision left open for you to make, it's not even a direct question. It's an opportunity, an opportunity for Kyle to make the final decision. You've already decided, and in presenting this opportunity, so has John. 

Kyle takes half a step back, a whine leaving your lips but you let him go. Your whine cuts through him, desperate and needy and almost sad. It hurts him, only aiding his decision. 

He kicks off his shoes, stripping out of his shirt and pants. He debates leaving his boxers on, but he already knows what's going to happen, what the endgame of this will be. It’ll be one less obstacle for all three of you. 

Your eyes are intense as you stare at him, lips parted as your eyes zero in on his half-hard cock. Kyle approaches the bed again, the sweet scent of omega in heat thickening in the air. You reach out for him again, but not for his wrist. 

John folds your arms against your chest, shifting the two of you backwards to make room. “Not yet,” he murmurs in your ear. “Let him get settled in.”

Kyle stares down at where the two of you are still connected, your pussy gaping wide around John’s knot. He swallows thickly, his cock twitching to life. He’s careful as he climbs on the bed, not wanting to cause you to shift on John's knot. He lays down face to face with you, a content smile tugging at your lips. The haze is returning, your eyes getting glassy as you tug Kyle closer.

He's not expecting it as you kiss him, wet and sloppy as your tongue traces his lips. Kyle shifts himself closer, his hand settling on your hip as he kisses you back, your mouth wet and hot as his tongue slips inside, dragging against yours. 

His hand slowly trails down your hip, fingers gliding across your still warm skin. You moan against his lips as his fingers follow the dip of your hip down closer to your mound. He can feel where John's knot begins, bulging in your pelvis right above your slit. Kyle lets a finger brush your clit and he can feel the way you spasm around John’s knot. John lets out a groan as you tighten around him. 

You pull away from his lips with a whine, pressing your face into his neck. Kyle leans up on his elbow, giving you more skin to explore as his fingers trail lower, brushing around your puffy lips to the base of John's cock, the small bit that still sticks out of you. He runs his fingers over the red, almost pulsing skin. John lets out another groan, his hips grinding against your ass. It tugs at the knot inside you, causing you to let out a breathy moan that blows hot against the wet spot you’ve made on his neck. Goosebumps form on his skin as he brushes the underside of John's cock, the alpha pushing his hips against yours again. 

Kyle pulls his hand away as pain erupts in the dip where his neck meets his shoulder. “Ow-fuck!” He hisses, jerking away as John sinks his hand into your hair with the arm that's under you, forcing your head back. 

Kyle rubs the sore spot on his neck as John chuckles, leaning his head against yours. “She's in a biting mood this time.” He rasps, a satisfied grin pulling at your lips, still shiny with a mix of yours and Kyle’s spit. “Got me at the start, naughty little thing.”

John grinds his hips against you again, your eyes nearly rolling back as you meet his movements, grinding back against him. Kyle can see it, the change beginning to happen. The haze is settling back in, the moment of clarity gone. It's been almost just over a half hour. It can take between 30 minutes to an hour for an alpha's knot to deflate. 

“She's so sensitive.” John continues, his lips brushing your cheek. “Can make her cum so easily.” 

John's other hand wraps around you, pushing against the bulge in your pelvis. You let out a high pitched whine, your body shaking as you cum around his knot just like that. John curses, eyes squeezing closed as he presses his face against the side of your head. His cock is twitching, his knot tugging on your pussy but you don't seem to care. 

“Fuck...” John groans, the sound long and dragged out as his hand leaves your pelvis, sinking into the sheets in front of you. 

Kyle sits all the way up, watching curiously as John's cock continues to spasm. Quiet growls leave his lips as his cock begins to soften. His knot is getting smaller and smaller, deflating and releasing its hold on you. John lifts your top leg up over his hips before pulling his cock free. A gush of slick and cum is forced out of you as your walls spasm, slowly relaxing after being forced open for so long. 

Kyle can't help himself as he reaches out, gathering some of the viscous cocktail that's gathered on your thigh. It's almost slimy as it coats his fingers, your slick wetter than your normal arousal. Not quite as sticky. John's cum has thickened it, tainting it a milky white color. 

“Beautiful, isn't it?” John smirks, watching Kyle rub the mix of their fluids between his fingers. “Give her a minute, she'll be gushing slick again and you can get a taste.”

He's right, you've begun to tremble, the skin of your thigh starting to warm even more where his leg is pressed against yours. Your pussy is fluttering still, pushing the rest of John's cum out.

Kyle can't help himself again as he gathers more of your release on his fingers, pushing it back inside you. You're tight around his fingers despite the fact you had just taken your alpha’s knot. You squeeze around him, slick gushing around his fingers. It coats his hand, warm and wet. He pulls his fingers from you, watching your pussy spasm as more slick seeps out of you, coating your folds and dripping onto the skin of your thigh. Your scent has thickened in the air, making his mouth water. It's going to his head, making his cock throb. 

He can understand now why alphas will fight over an omega in heat. 

John moves, shifting both of you on the bed until his back rests against your headboard, your body between his legs. He grips you behind your knees, pulling your legs up until you're damn near folded in half. You don't seem to care, panting as sweat begins to bead on your skin. You've gone almost limp, pliable and willing so long as the ache in your core gets relieved. 

John's eyes are dark as he stares at Kyle, his fingers digging into your skin. “Well?” He smirks. “Are you going to give her what she wants?” 

Kyle's eyes drift between your legs, your pussy spread open before him like a buffet. It’s not a new sight. He’s been between your thighs many times, tasted you on his tongue. Yet it feels different now, because it is different. The situation has changed. He’s not fucking you because you’ve come to him, sought him out to relieve the ache between your legs, the neediness that’s built up the whole day. You’re still needy, still begging, but it’s because you have to. Your body needs to be filled, needs to have an alpha’s knot to ease the ache. Your body wants pups, and so it’s forcing you to the peak of attraction to an alpha. Pheromones thick in the air to drive alphas into their most base state, slick coating your thighs to ease the taking of a knot. 

His eyes are glued to you as slick continues to seep out of you, sliding down your ass until it drips onto the sheet below. He’s no alpha, but your pheromones are getting to him, fogging his own mind in need. He’s felt it when he enters to clean, to ensure you’ve eaten and hydrated, that nothing has gone wrong, but the feeling leaves as soon as he’s in the clear air in the hallway. He had thought it was simply the knowledge of what was happening, the sounds from the room and then seeing you and his alpha knotted together. It’s a natural reaction to a beautiful omega naked in front of him. 

He understands it now as his mouth goes dry, staring at your shiny pussy. It’s his turn to experience it, his chance to understand firsthand what both you and John go through. He feels the urge to bend down, to taste you, to drink from the source like your slick is the only thing that will ease his thirst. 

He bends down, laying flat on the bed so he’s face to face with your weeping slit. The room is silent, even your own panting breaths quiet, waiting in anticipation. He leans forward, pressing his face against your slit. He inhales deeply, his eyes almost fluttering as your pheromones go straight to his brain. They swirl around his synapses before shooting down his spine, seeping into his veins and warming his body. His cock is hard and leaking onto the mattress beneath him, throbbing for some relief. He won't give it any yet, wanting to wait until he at least gets a taste of you. 

He drags his tongue through your folds, moaning at the sweet taste of you. There's still a hint of your natural taste under there, but the sweetness of your slick has him burying his face in your folds. He laps at the source, pressing his tongue into your pussy, drinking up your slick like a man starved. His nose presses against your clit, and he inhales the sweet scent of your slit with every breath. Your skin is hot, feverish as his hands slip under you, holding your hips up as he feasts on you desperately. He feels like he's in heat himself, or perhaps as close to a rut as a beta can get. His face is soaked, your slick dripping down his chin, adding to the mess both dry and still wet on the sheets.

You're panting and whining, pushing your hips up against his face desperately. He doesn't care. He'd drown here happily. His nose continues to brush your clit, making you whine all desperate and needy. His cock is throbbing, but he resists the urge to grind against the bed. Not yet. 

“Please, please!” You whine, pussy fluttering around his tongue. You are sensitive, nearly to the brink and he's barely touched you. 

He presses harder against your clit, a loud moan falling from your lips as you cum around his tongue, sweet slick gushing into his face along with the familiar, tangy taste of your cum. He licks every last drop from your pussy, or at least as much as he can with how your slick is still seeping out of you endlessly. 

He lifts himself up from your pussy, meeting John's gaze. John beckons him closer, gripping Kyle's chin as soon as he's within arm’s distance and pulling him against his lips. There’s a low rumble in his chest, the sound shooting straight down Kyle’s spine. It makes him shudder, his cock twitching. 

John licks into his mouth, tasting you on his tongue before licking your slick from his face. Kyle can't help but moan, his cock smearing precum against your thigh. 

“You want her?” John breathes against his lips. “You want to feel her?”

Kyle breathes out a quiet moan, nodding. “Yes, sir.” 

He backs up as John releases your legs, letting you flop onto the bed. He maneuvers out from behind you until you're laying flat on the bed, limp yet willing. You let out a whine, rubbing your thighs together for any sort of friction. He can’t imagine you’re getting any, not with how slick your thighs and pussy are. 

John moves off the bed, cock hanging hard and heavy between his thighs. “Present for your beta.” John says, the alpha command strong in his voice as he slaps your ass lightly. “Show him how good of an omega you are.”

You let out a whine, flopping over and shuffling your legs under you. Kyle doesn’t think you’ll be able to do it, given your weak state, but you surprise him. Your upper body is still pressed into the mattress, but your hips lift, slick still drooling out of your pussy. Kyle is nearly drooling himself staring at your puffy lips and soaked skin. 

He jumps as John's hand slaps his own ass cheek. “Well, give her what she wants.” His voice is rough, his alpha still slipping out around the edges. 

Kyle moves forward almost automatically, obeying the command of his alpha. He shifts so he's kneeling behind you, fisting his cock. It's still hard and throbbing, precum dripping from the tip. He drags the head through your folds, slipping through easily thanks to the slick. He’d understood the importance of slick before from his research for your first heat, but now he’s getting a firsthand demonstration. 

His hand closes around your hip, holding you steady as he presses into you with a groan. You’re so hot and wet and tight around him, your pussy fluttering around him like it’s trying to pull him in. Soft, breathy moans slip from your lips, your hands gripping the sheets tightly as he sinks into you completely with one press of his hips. He pauses in surprise as his hips press flush against your ass without even having to work you open. He supposes you’ve been taking John’s not repeatedly, but yet you’re still just as tight around him as he remembers, if not tighter. He shifts forward slightly so his hips are flush with your ass, his eyes following a bead of sweat as it slides down the line of your spine. It’s hot in the room, and you’re hot under his hands, skin burning with the flames of your desperation. He understands can’t give you what you need, not completely, but he can give you a little relief. 

He can feel John’s eyes on him as he begins to move, pulling back before sinking back into you. Your pussy seems to have a mind of its own as it flutters around him, letting him pull back before pulsing around him, pulling him back in. He’s fucked you plenty of times, but it’s never felt like this. So slick and warm and responsive. Your body moves in accordance with his movements, pushing and pulling with every thrust of his cock in and out of you. It makes his head spin, his movements starting to pick up speed. There’s no resistance, his cock gliding in and out of your pussy easily. 

“Fuck...” He groans, clinging desperately to his sanity as he tries not to cum immediately. You’re whimpering and whining under him, legs already shaking but he can’t tell if it's from the effort of holding yourself up or from your pleasure. 

Low growls rumble in John’s throat, the wet sound of him pumping his cock mixing with the wet squelch of your pussy. It’s an obscene chorus, the harmony of moans and growls and the wet sounds of sex. Slick continues to drip out around his cock, smearing on his skin. You’re pushing back weakly against him, moaning and drooling on the sheets. You’re doing what omegas are supposed to do during heats, lay there and take your alpha’s knot over and over in hopes of being bred. You won’t be, you have protections against that, but your brain can’t comprehend that right now. It can’t comprehend much of anything in this state.  

You squeeze tightly around him, trembling as you’re thrown into an orgasm. Your walls clench, gripping him like a vice, so tightly he almost can’t move. Slick gushes out around his cock, soaking his pelvis, dripping down his thighs. The sensation is almost heavenly as you spasm around him, almost trying to pull him deeper, coax a knot out of him that he can’t give you. 

He starts to grind against you, his vision almost going dark as his own orgasm is forced out of him suddenly, his hands tightening around your hips. You whine as he holds you, hips probably sore from John, but he can’t find it in him to care as he bends over your back, holding your ass flush with his hips. He’s gasping for air, trembling himself from the shared sensation of your orgasm and his own. 

It’s almost too much. 

Almost. 

“You’re not done.” John says, trailing a hand down Kyle’s spine, smearing the sweat that’s broken out across his body. “Give her another.” 

Kyle can’t disagree, can’t even ask for a moment to gather his head as he begins moving again, your body sucking him in so tightly he can hardly do more than grind his hips against your ass. You don’t seem to care, needy whines and moans slipping out of your lips. 

John’s hand dips between Kyle’s thighs, collecting some of your slick before he presses his finger against Kyle’s hole. Kyle lets out a sound that’s almost a whine of his own at the sensation.

“Open up for me.” His alpha growls, nipping at the skin of his ass cheek. “Be a good boy.” 

Kyle nearly cums again, fighting to relax as he continues to fuck you. He bends over you further as John presses a slick covered finger into his ass, a deep groan leaving his throat. You’re still laying there, eyes pinched closed in pleasure as you create a puddle of drool around your mouth. Whisps of hair stick to your face, falling out of the braid Johnny had done for you. He should redo it, keep it in place for the few days still left of your heat. 

He’s pulled from his thoughts when John grips his throat, pulling him back upright. John’s finger is still in his ass, moving with the thrusts of his hips. “Gonna make her cum again?” John growls, licking Kyle’s lips. Their kiss is rough and sloppy, spit passing between them as they lick at each other’s mouths. 

Kyle groans as John pulls the finger from his ass, gathering more slick before pressing two back in. “Shit,” He curses, his hips stuttering against your ass. 

You cum around him again, legs nearly giving out. He clings to your hips, keeping you up. He understands why you carry such nasty looking bruises around your hips after your heat now. It’s not just John’s iron grip, it’s to keep you steady. 

“That’s it.” John growls, fucking his fingers into Kyle’s ass, opening him up. 

Kyle’s cock twitches in anticipation, his hips driving into your ass to hasten his own orgasm in excitement for what’s coming next. 

Kyle’s body does give out as his orgasm slams into him, his hands just barely managing to catch him before he falls into you. Your own body trembles, squeezing around him, milking every last drop. Your legs give out, your body slumping onto the bed. Kyle follows you, keeping his cock inside you. You’re tensed around him, still seeking what he can’t give you. It has to be torture, your body desperate for a knot, for some relief to the pain you must be in, yet Kyle can’t stop. He can’t have mercy on you, not yet. 

It’s addicting, the feeling of fucking you during your heat. He gets the insanity alphas seem to be overwhelmed by during an omega’s heat. It’s not just the pheromones driving the mating instinct, not the sweet scent that drives them crazy. The feeling of your body, the way your pussy sucks him in all wet and hot...for a moment he does wish he could knot you, just to feel what it’s like. 

John pushes a hand into his back, pressing him fully on top of you. Kyle moves onto his elbows, just preventing you from taking his full weight. You’re hot under him, skin feverish and slicked with sweat. His cheek rests against your damp hair, one of his hands slipping up the bed. He brushes your drool slick skin with his thumb, your shallow gasps pressing your back up against his chest. 

“Please....please...” You whine, pushing your ass back against him. 

“Easy.” John says, kneeling over both of you on the bed. His hand slips down between your legs, gathering the slick still seeping out around Kyle’s cock. 

The wet sound of John smearing your slick on his cock is loud in the silence, Kyle’s cheeks clamping in anticipation. You’re clenching around him, almost begging him to move again, but it won’t be him in control anymore. 

Not that he really was in control in the first place. 

John presses his tip against Kyle’s hole, the beta pressing his face into your hair as he groans. His own hand grips the sheets as John presses further in, shifting closer to Kyle’s ass as he works himself into the tight passage. 

“Fuck...” Kyle whines, grinding his hips against your ass. You whine softly at the sensation, pressing against him as much as you can with their combined weight pinning you down. 

“That’s it.” John groans, pressing in further. “Fuck...you can take it.” 

John begins moving his hips shallowly, thrusting further and further into Kyle’s ass. Kyle feels a bit like you, unable to do much but lay there and take it as John begins to fuck his ass. John’s thrusts push him into you, his cock grinding into your pussy. Their combined rocking has your clit rubbing against the bed, your eyes rolling in pleasure. 

You cum twice around Kyle’s cock as John fucks him, his hips slapping against Kyle’s ass. John's hands grip Kyle’s hips tight enough Kyle might sport bruises of his own after this. Deep growls rumble in John’s chest, echoing almost in time with his thrusts. Kyle feels like whimpering from the combined pleasure of your pussy clenching around him and John’s cock driving into his ass. He can’t think anymore feeling just as out of it as you look. 

For a moment Kyle is worried you might have passed out under him, and he lifts himself higher up on his elbows, ready to tap out in concern. You shift under him as he presses up, trying to push yourself up too, arching against Kyle’s chest. He breathes out a quiet sigh of relief as you move, unable to do much still except whine and plead. 

“Please, please, please,” You repeat it like a mantra, head bending back as your body spasms, the sweetest moans falling from your lips. “Alpha!” 

You cry out for him as slick and fluid gushes out of you, your hips lifting off the bed as you push your ass against Kyle. John lets out an animalistic growl as he picks up the pace, fucking Kyle so hard he nearly sees stars. 

“I’ve got you,” John grunts, bending over Kyle’s back. “I’ve got you.” 

Kyle can feel it, worry flooding through him for a moment as the base of John’s cock swells, pushing against the ring of his ass. He’s never taken a knot before, never had a chance to. He’s not sure he wants to as the feels the size of it. He might tear in half. 

Instead John pulls out of him, grunting as he jerks his cock until he’s spurting his hot cum across Kyle’s ass. You’ve gone limp beneath him again, your only movement the slow push of your hips backwards against him. Kyle gently turns your head so your face isn’t pressed into the mattress. The last thing they need is you accidentally suffocating yourself. He can’t help but wonder if John has enough awareness to do the same, or if suffocation is a fear he should worry about during your heats. He hadn’t even thought of that during your first heat. 

John slaps his ass, getting his attention again. “Off.” He says, pushing Kyle to the side. 

Kyle gets the memo, his cock sore as he pulls out of you, flopping over to the side. John drags a hand up your back, the motion very soft and intimate compared to the rough fucking you both had just taken. John wraps his arms around you, lifting you up against his chest. You let him move you, limp again in his arms, your head pressing back against his shoulder. Slick still dribbles out of you, mixed with Kyle’s cum. 

“Over here. On your back.” John directs Kyle and he moves despite his own exhaustion, laying where you had just been. The bed is wet, the sheets soaked through. Kyle silently thanks whoever created plastic heat protectors for mattresses as he settles on his back. 

John lets you flop to the side, Kyle grateful you just miss smacking your head against the wall. You’re staring at him, eyes lidded as you continue to pant. Your hand slips down between your legs, fingers pressing into your pussy despite the fucking you had just taken, the fucking you’ve done since your heat started. John tugs him further down the bed, his knees bent and feet against the footboard. His cock twitches as he waits patiently for what’s going to come next. 

John tugs you up, a whine leaving your lips as your fingers are forced out of you. He maneuvers your body into place, kneeling over Kyle’s face. Excitement thrums in his veins as slick dribbles out of you, dripping onto his chin. He licks his lips, dipping his tongue down his chin to try and get a taste of it again. 

Kyle feels like he may be in heat as John pushes you forward just slightly, his arms wrapped around your middle as his cock presses into you. His knot has deflated for now, his length slipping easily into your slick pussy. Your hands grip the headboard as John begins to fuck you, holding you up over Kyle’s face. Kyle sticks his tongue out, catching your slick and the remnants of his own cum as John’s thrusts force it out of you. Despite the soreness of his cock it’s twitching back to life, the taste and scent of you on his face nearly driving him over the edge. 

You let out the most delicious sounding whines as your alpha finally fucks you, promising you what Kyle can’t: temporary relief from the fire in your veins and the ache between your thighs. A knot. Your legs shake around his head, Kyle’s hands coming up to grip the backs of your knees. He wouldn’t care if you dropped on him. He’d take a broken nose if it meant he’d get to taste your slick from the source again. He could always text Dr. Keller to come and patch him up, though he’d have to tell her how it happened. 

He doubts she’d care. 

John keeps his hold on you tight though, keeping you up as he fucks into you roughly, the bed shaking from the force of his thrusts. You tremble above Kyle as you cum again, more slick gushing out around John’s cock. It’s obscene from his angle, John’s cock driving into your sopping pussy, slick oozing out around his cock, wetting your thighs and John’s thighs and Kyle’s face. He licks as much as he can from his face, basking in the sweet taste of you raining down over him like manna from heaven. 

John groans, his cock twitching as he cums inside you, his hips pressing tight against your ass. Your legs nearly give out again, Kyle’s grip tightening around your thighs instinctively. John pulls out of you, quickly lowering you over Kyle’s mouth. He doesn’t have to say anything as Kyle’s hands slide up to grip your hips, holding you in place as he begins to lick up the slick and cum seeping out of you. 

It’s a musky, sweet concoction, savory and sweet on his tongue. John is still holding you up, keeping you steady as you twitch over Kyle, sensitive and dripping all over his face. Your knees squeeze Kyle’s head as you cum again, Kyle having to turn his head to breathe for a moment as you nearly waterboard him with your slick. 

Kyle licks every last drop of your cum and John’s. He could lay here, licking your slick all day, but he knows that would be near torture for you. No matter how many times he can make you cum, he can’t give you what you need. 

He pushes you up slightly, back into John’s hold. “Do it.” He gasps, taking in deep breaths after nearly being drowned in your slick. “Give her what she needs.” 

John pulls you back, backing up slightly as Kyle moves up the bed more. Your slick is still coating his face, dripping down his chin to his neck and chest. John bends you over Kyle’s chest, letting you rest there as you present for your alpha, somehow still able to hold yourself up. Omega instincts he supposes, giving you the strength to present all pretty and dripping for your alpha. Kyle’s fingers brush your burning skin, your entire body soaked in sweat. You’re still rocking your hips, trying to push back against John. How you’re even awake, let alone still moving is a miracle to him. Another wonder of omega biology. 

You let out a content sigh as John presses back into you, his hips immediately snapping against your ass as he sets a near brutal pace. He’s been fighting it as well, fighting that urge to knot you as soon as he can. Kyle feels honored, having this opportunity, sharing this moment with the two of you. His research has paled in comparison to seeing it in person. He understands it better now, understands the two of you and how you fit together perfectly in this moment. Your body responds naturally to your alpha’s, pulsing around John’s cock as you seek out his knot. John brings you endless amounts of pleasure, both of you ruled by your instincts which provide you both with an intense stamina. 

Kyle doesn't have that stamina, but he doesn’t mind. He can’t even imagine doing this for a day, much less a week. Yet, despite his exhaustion, his cock still continues to twitch, half hard as he holds John’s gaze. His alpha’s eyes are dark, focused and intense. Growls leave his lips, rumbling through his chest. You answer with your own whines, only driving the animalistic instincts within you both. You’re lost in your heat now, just as John is lost in his rut, only bordering on awareness because of Kyle’s presence. 

Had Kyle not been in here, he knows John would have had you in this position for the next hour, fucking you relentlessly until he could finally knot you and bring both of yourselves a little relief. Kyle would have stayed out in the hallway for a while, letting you both rest and John care for you until he decided it was time to check on you both and clean things up a little. 

You’re both close. He can tell by the way you shake over him, hands pushing into his chest as you try to lift yourself up, fingers scratching at his skin, but they can’t get enough of a grip to hurt. John is close too, deep growls rumbling in his chest as he pulls back into his thrusts. His knot must be swelling, pushing against your entrance. 

“Please...Please alpha!!” You cry, trying to push back against him. “Need it!” 

“Need that?” John growls, grinding against you. “Need my knot?” 

“Please!” You whine pathetically, writhing over Kyle. 

He wants to watch, he wants to see John’s knot push into you, spread you open, push in until you’re locked in place. “Let me see.” He breathes, still holding John’s gaze. “Let me see it.” 

John understands even in his hazy state, bending down to lift you back up against his chest. Kyle can see it, his swollen knot pushing against your pussy with every thrust of his hips. You’re crying, begging incoherently for it, trying to push down on it. 

“Shhhh,” John shushes you, his lips brushing your cheek. “Alpha’s got you.” 

The words nearly have Kyle cumming again, his balls tightening as John reassures you, promises you he’ll give you what you need. Your neck bends back, your head pushing against John’s shoulder as he begins to lower you while pushing his hips up, fighting the natural resistance as his knot spreads you open. The slight tapering of it makes it easier, easing your pussy open in preparation for the widest part. You’re shaking, body almost spasming as he presses his knot into you, your pussy spread almost impossibly wide as he slips all the way in, groaning as he locks in place inside you. Kyle can see your pussy spasm, your eyes rolling back as you cum again around him, the last bit of slick dribbling out of you before the rest is trapped inside you by your alpha’s knot. 

John doesn’t let you drop this time, instead lowering you down gently against Kyle’s chest, moving with you. The dark intensity of his eyes has lessened, softening back into the blue he recognizes. John gently moves you off Kyle’s chest, shifting to the side so you’re lying next to the beta. Kyle turns onto his side facing the two of you, his body covered in slick and sweat and your drool. The heaviness of your combined scents has faded a bit in the air, not quite as intense as it had been even just moments ago. 

He’s breathing heavily, almost as heavily as the two of you. You’ve fallen unconscious, or at least you look like you have as you lay there limply, eyes closed, sweaty with drool still wet on your chin. “Thank you.” He says, his gaze meeting John’s again. “Thank you for letting me do this.” 

The corners of John’s lips pull up in a smile. “I’m glad you got to experience it. I doubt she’d complain if you wanted to stay.” He says, trailing his fingers down your arm. You twitch just slightly, and Kyle can imagine how overstimulated you must be from everything. 

Kyle breathes out a laugh, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I could handle much more.” 

John does smile now, his eyes flickering downwards. “One more?” 

Kyle swallows as John reaches for his throbbing cock, nodding in agreement. He shifts slightly closer as John’s warm hand wraps around his length, his thumb teasing Kyle’s leaking slit. Kyle sighs softly, his cock sensitive from the intense fucking it had just experienced. He’s gone for longer, but it hadn’t been like this. You squeezing around him, tightening like a vice as you came, sucking him in as your body searched for a knot. 

John begins to move his hand, pumping Kyle’s cock. He won’t last much longer, nearly burning with overstimulation and sensitivity. 

“Fuck, fuck.” He curses softly, eyes squeezing closed as his balls tighten, the wet thwack of his cock filling the air. It’s damp still from your slick and the mixture of his cum and John’s. 

He cums with a moan, spilling on his chest and the bed. He’s surprised there’s anything left, a whimper leaving his lips as John continues to move his hand, working him through his orgasm. John squeezes the base of his cock before releasing him, lifting his hand to Kyle’s face. Kyle licks the bit of his cum that leaked onto John’s thumb before leaning into his touch. 

“Good boy.” John praises, his eyes hooded with exhaustion. 

The base of Kyle’s spine tingles from his alpha’s praise, but he can’t even bring himself to think about getting hard again, much less actually doing it. 

You let out a soft sound, your eyes cracked open as you stare up at Kyle. He meets your gaze, surprised to see you still conscious. Your hand lifts weakly, thumb pressing against Kyle’s lips before it falls back to the bed. “Pretty.” 

Both Kyle and John chuckle as you drift back out of it, John keeping one arm tucked under you, the other reaching over to pull Kyle closer. He should get up, grab you all electrolyte drinks and nutrition bars but he can’t quite get his body to move. Instead he lays there, staring at you both as you drift in and out of sleep during your quick moment of relief and clarity. John is purring quietly, the sound so different to the deep, animalistic growls that had just been rumbling in his chest. 

You’ll be back at it soon, needy and desperate to fuck like you haven’t been for almost two straight days. There’s still at least three more days to go, four if you’re unlucky. Then he’ll have to worry about things after your heat ends. It had been rough the first time, and he can imagine it will be again, especially with the week you had before your pre-heat started. He’ll call Dr. Keller again after it’s over, let her come and help you, make sure everything is alright. He doubts anything will go wrong, that John would let anything happen to you. 

“Alpha’s got you.” 

The words still ring in his head. The sincerity, the promise in them. He really does have control, he does make sure you’re safe and well cared for, he does catch you when you fall. Not just during your heat, but outside of it. The difference between John and Simon is only getting clearer as you begin to bond with the pack’s second alpha. 

John is the caretaker, the comforter whose strength comes from his heart and his emotional control. The one who can stay calm and lead even in the most dire situations. He’s seen it in the pack, and he’s seen it out in the field. His dominance is soft and he’s only harsh when the need arises. 

Simon is the protector. He’s rough around the edges, a man of action not comforting words. A clear minded leader, but one well versed in raw power and violence. He’s abrasive and standoffish, yet fiercely protective of those he deems his. 

They can see it the most now with you. John is the one you turn to when you need comforting words and to be held. Simon is the one who looms like a protective shadow, a silent threat behind you. 

Yet he can see the softening around Simon’s harsh edges, those walls he’s built up since you arrived crumbling down around the two of you. It’s not just in his physical acceptance of you, but the mental acceptance of you being a part of the pack, you being a part of him. 

He hopes Simon does do it. He hopes Simon will claim you someday, let you bring together both halves of the pack completely. He knows Simon wants to. Johnny has talked about the yearning, the stares, the lingering. You’d let him. You probably want him to yourself. Yet he knows Simon will hold off, torture himself with it until he has no choice but to give in. 

It’s a pattern, a fatal flaw of his. 

It will happen eventually though. They all know it. 

It’s quiet. Has been for nearly an hour. It’s been a while since he’s checked on you both, forcing a nutrient bar into John’s hands as Kyle sat by the bed feeding you one. Neither of you had been interested in eating, but had begrudgingly chewed the indistinguishable dried mush of nutrient-rich foods shaped into a bar. Kyle had tried a bite of one just to see what it was like. 

It wasn’t good. 

He had taken it as a sign the end was near. The thumping of the bed against the wall had slowed, losing the ferocity with which it had steadily thump-thump-thumped against the wall for the last five days. Even the moans and groans and growls have quieted, and the breaks between rounds have gotten longer and longer. 

He gets off his cot, padding silently to the door. He opens it, slipping in before closing it quietly. You and John are cuddled together on the bed. You’re shivering, the blanket he’d folded and draped over the footboard five days ago is draped over you both. 

Kyle steps up to the bed, John’s eyes opening. He looks tired, eyes slightly red and bags hanging heavy under them. You both have to be exhausted, physically and mentally. He presses his hand to your forehead, a soft whine leaving your lips. John gently shushes you, tightening his hold around you. Your temperature is considerably lower than it has been, even a few hours ago. Kyle lifts the blanket for a moment, checking the two of you. John’s knot has deflated and the only thing still leaking out of you is a mixture of leftover slick and John’s cum. 

“I’ll go start the bath.” Kyle says, letting the blanket drape over you again. 

He heads into your bathroom, starting the water in the tub. He waits until it gets warm before putting the stopper in, letting it fill. He opens the cabinet under the sink, pulling out the epsom salt Dr. Keller recommended to help with the soreness. He’s used it himself, the few times he’s had a bath in the last few years, mostly after missions when he’s been particularly sore, bruised and aching after taking a beating physically and mentally. He’d used lavender scented salts to try and calm his mind, but he’d chosen to go with unscented for your heat, knowing the added scent may confuse you. You’ll need your alpha’s scent close to ground you in the disoriented state you’ll be in for the next couple hours. 

He pours some salt into the bath, stirring it with his hand until it’s dissolved. He seals the bag, slipping it back in the cupboard before pushing himself to stand. He heads back into your room, pulling the blanket back again before helping John off the bed. They try not to disturb you too much, John flinching at the whine you let out as his warmth disappears. Kyle knows he doesn't want to leave you, but you both need the bath to help with the sore muscles and keep them from locking up after so long. You also need it to help with the sudden drop in your temperature. 

Kyle eases John into the warm water, helping him sit in the tub. He wishes it was a bigger tub as his alpha’s long legs bend at the knees, unable to stretch out completely. They’ll want a longer, deeper tub in the seaside cottage you’ve dreamed of. Maybe one with jacuzzi jets. Kyle turns off the water, John leaning back against the tile wall, his eyes half closed. 

Kyle pushes himself up to stand after a moment, heading back to the bed to get you. You’re shivering, letting out quiet whines as you search out your alpha in your confusion and disorientation. 

“I know, I know.” He tries to soothe you, projecting his beta scent into the air. It won’t be enough, but it at least offers up some comfort in your state. You still need your alpha even though your heat is over. 

He scoops you up, wincing as you whine in pain, but he knows it’s necessary. You need the warm water to help keep you stable, and a moment with your alpha to help get you grounded. 

He eases you into the tub, John’s legs parting to make room for you as Kyle settles you against his chest. Your alpha wraps his arms around you, holding you tightly as you whimper softly. Kyle makes sure the two of you are settled before getting back up, ensuring the towels are ready before heading back into your room. 

He pulls the sheet off your bed, crusty and still slightly damp from the week of near nonstop fucking. He knows some of those crusty spots are his own cum, yet he still can’t quite believe it really happened. He’s spent the last few days thinking about it, pinching himself to remind himself it wasn’t a dream. He really did get to experience some of your heat. 

He can’t get the image of John’s knot pressing into you, your puffy, slick pussy spreading wide around it. The way your body shuddered, the relieved moan as you finally got what you wanted, what you needed. It was a beautiful sight, and he wishes he had Johnny’s talent so he could paint it and keep it forever. 

He bundles your clothes in the sheet along with the blanket to take them to the wash, cleaning up the wrappers and bottles and adding them to the trash bag he’d started. He pulls the plastic heat protector from the bed, balling it into another trash bag. He packs the bundle of laundry to the laundry room, starting the washer before taking the two bags of trash out and stuffing them in the bin to get picked up later this week. He wouldn’t be surprised if one of them goes missing, some young, desperate alpha pulling it out to jerk off to your scent. 

It makes his nose scrunch up in disgust. 

He heads back to your room, pulling the clean sheets out of the top of your closet, remaking the bed. He puts your comforter back on the bed, folding your blankets and putting them at the end of the bed. He stacks your pillows and stuffed animals back in place as much as he can remember, though he knows you’ll remake your nest later once you’re more aware. Right now it’s important you be surrounded by the comfort of familiar scents. 

He makes sure everything is as back in place as it can be, pulling a shirt out of your closet for you to change into once you’re out of the bath. He’s not quite sure whose it is, the only smell coming off it is the scent of laundry detergent. It’s soft after being washed quite a few times, likely one of the first you got from them, or at least one you’d stolen early on. You’d cut the tags out, something you’ve done with almost all of your clothes. He can’t blame you. If he could, he would do the same. 

He heads back into the bathroom once everything looks as back to normal as it can, kneeling next to the tub. 

“How do you feel?” John asks. 

Kyle nearly laughs at the question. He should be the one asking him that, but of course John would be worried about the rest of his pack before himself. “Not bad.” He answers. “Tired, but nothing compared to how you have to be feeling right now.” 

John huffs out a laugh, gently stroking your hair as you whimper softly. He’s taken it out of the braid, managing to untangle it a little. “This is the hardest part, I think.” 

Kyle nods. “I can imagine.” He grabs a washcloth, squirting some of your strawberry scented soap onto it before he begins gently scrubbing your skin, attempting to get some of the dried fluids off. 

“Fucking nonstop for days in a lust induced haze is easy.” John says, shifting you slightly so Kyle can reach more of your skin. “It’s coming down from it, when you start to feel the effects of fucking for days nearly nonstop that it really starts to settle in. The aches, the pains, the exhaustion from almost no sleep, the hunger, the thirst.” He shakes his head. “Maybe I’m just old.” 

Kyle makes a face. “You are getting up there.” 

John gives him a playful glare, shaking his head. His face softens as he looks at Kyle, dutifully cleaning up after their five day instinct-induced haze. “Thank you, for earlier. Giving her what she wanted.” 

Kyle nods. “Of course. Couldn’t turn down a chance to experience it, and I wouldn’t want to leave you with an upset omega during her heat.” 

John snorts quietly. “I doubt she’d have been upset for long. Probably doesn’t remember most of it.”

Kyle hums, John helping him get you sitting up so he can rinse your back and attempt to get some of the dirt and fluids out of your hair. A part of him knows that’s true, but a part of him hopes you will remember at least some of it. He’ll never forget it, his mouth watering slightly as the memories of your slick on his tongue, dripping onto his face. John fucking you over him, letting you drip all over him. It may be a bit selfish of him, but he wants to experience that over and over, every time you sit on his face, every time he fucks you, every time John fucks you in front of him. 

Kyle helps hold you up, wincing at your whines both in pain and from the loss of your alpha’s touch as he scrubs the dried slick off of his skin. The water is murky from the mix of soap, slick, and cum coming off of you both. The water is starting to get cold as he rinses John’s hair, making sure to get the soap off of you both. 

“Ready?” He asks, reaching down to pull the plug. 

“No.” John says, lips tugging up in a half smile, likely all he can manage in his exhausted state. “But the bed is more comfortable than the tub.” 

Kyle grins at him, slipping his hands under your arms, and with the help of John, he gets you standing. John twitches at your whine of protest, Kyle holding you up as he tries to towel you off as much as he can. The dryer he can get you, the less cold you’ll be once you’re back in bed. You’re still shivering despite the bath, your face pressing against Kyle’s chest in search of any warmth you can get. 

Kyle scoops you up, carrying you to the bed. You let out a whine as he eases you down onto the edge of the bed, but he shushes you gently, quickly drying your hair as much as he can. He pulls the shirt over your head, pulling your arms though the holes before shifting you to the head of the bed. He pulls the comforter over you, letting you sink into the softness of your stuffed animals before he heads  back to the bathroom. 

John has gotten himself standing, leaning against the wall as he dries himself with the other towel. Kyle drapes one of his arms over his shoulder, helping guide him back to the bed, lowering him onto the edge. He finishes drying John off before he grabs a pair of boxers from your dresser. He’s not sure whose they are either, but they fit decently enough for now. 

He helps John under the covers with you, his arms wrapping around you. You immediately gravitate towards him, pressing against his chest. John holds you tightly, shushing your quiet whimpers. 

“Here.” He passes John an electrolyte drink. “Keep hydrating yourself. I’ll go scrounge up some real food.” 

“You’re a good man, Kyle.” John says. “A good beta.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Kyle says, looking over the two of you again before leaving the room in search of food. 

You’re crying when he returns. 

He’s expecting it this time, less shocked by your shuddering breaths and quiet sobs. John has shifted you both, his back against the headboard, your body curled up between his legs. There’s a stack of blankets wrapped around you, and one of your stuffed bears clutched tightly against your chest. John is purring softly, the sound vibrating in his chest as he tries to soothe you through the disorientation and sudden drop in hormones as you become more aware. 

“I let Dr. Keller know.” Kyle says, setting the tray of food down on the nightstand. “She’ll be here soon. Wants to do a quick checkup.”

“Fine with me.” John says, shifting you just slightly so he can set the tray in his lap. You let out a whimper at being moved, John’s purr intensifying until you settle again. “I’m starving.” He says, picking up the fork. 

“Johnny went and picked up lunch.” Kyle says, pulling your desk chair over to sit next to the bed. 

John chews the bite of food in his mouth. “How are they?” 

A smile tugs at Kyle’s lips. “Holding up. Johnny’s got a noticeable limp to his step.” 

John lets out a quiet chuckle. “I’d imagine so. Might have to mark him down as a casualty.” 

“I don’t think he’d complain.” Kyle says. “I can’t imagine any of us will be doing much for the next few days.” 

John shakes his head. “Definitely not. You and Simon are probably in the best shape. You’ll have to hold down the fort.” 

“We’ll do our best.” Kyle says. 

John eats his food eagerly, managing to get a couple bites of potato and some peas into your mouth. You’re aware enough to chew them a few times, probably not wanting to eat in your current state, but your body knows you need to. He’s glad omegas have the drive to eat as much as they can before their heats. You might not survive if you didn’t. Not on those nutritional bars. 

Kyle takes the tray once John is finished, setting it on your desk for now. He’ll give it to Johnny to take back when they go for dinner. John adjusts you against his chest again, resting his chin on your head as he goes through his emails and messages. You shift in his arms, pressing your face into his neck, your tears sliding down his skin. He rubs your back, keeping you pinned against him as he quietly purrs, trying to soothe you. It hurts them both that he can’t, but Kyle knows it’s a natural response. He doesn’t blame you. It must be so jarring not remembering, and all the physical things changing so rapidly, and adding on top of that the pain? He’d probably cry too. 

The knock at the door is soft and quiet, yet you still startle at it, jumping slightly in John's arms. He gently shushes you as a whimper chokes out through the tears. 

Kyle lets Dr. Keller in, closing the door behind her. The soft scent of beta fills the room, Dr. Keller doing her best not to startle you further in your disoriented state. John shifts you slightly so she can see you better. You let out a whine of indignation at being moved, the quiet purr still rumbling in John's chest. 

Dr. Keller sets her bag on the floor before kneeling next to the bed. “Hi honey.” She says, opening up her bag. “Still pretty out of it, huh.” 

The tears continue to cascade down your cheeks, your eyes barely open as you stare at her. You’re still leaning heavily against John’s chest, unable to hold yourself up. Dr. Keller brushes the hair away from your face before taking your temperature, holding the digital thermometer up to your forehead. 

She glances at the screen when it beeps, her brows furrowing just slightly. “A little low,” She says, putting the thermometer back in the bag. “But not concerning.”

John maneuvers you again, pulling an arm free from the blankets so she can check your blood pressure and pulse. 

“How did things go this time?” She asks, placing the blood pressure cuff around your arm. 

“Better.” John responds. “Smoother.” 

“Easier now that we know what to expect.” Kyle says. 

“Good.” Dr. Keller says, taking your pulse and blood pressure. “Heart rate and blood pressure are normal.” She puts the monitors back into the bag, pulling out a pill bottle. “Muscle relaxers, same as last time. Her temperature is a little low, but that could just be a response to such a rapid drop in body temperature as well as changes in her hormones. If she starts feeling cold to the touch, or her extremities start turning blue, get her to emergency.” She zips up her bag, pushing herself up to stand. She gives John a pointed look. “Take care of yourself too. I recommend ice packs.” 

A smile quirks John’s lips, but he doesn't offer any arguments or disagreements. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.” 

Kyle already knows he’s going to be sent for ice packs soon. 

Dr. Keller turns to face him, giving him a soft smile. Kyle hasn’t had many interactions with your doctor, most of them being during your heat and after. Yet, he can’t help but feel comforted by her presence. Maybe it’s her ability to project her scent so much, enough to make even him feel relaxed, or maybe it’s just her calm demeanor, the way she always seems to be so confident and in control. 

“Same thing as last time. Check for blood, if she’s still unresponsive or refusing food after a couple of hours, call me.” She says. “You did a good job, again. You should be proud.” 

Kyle smiles. “I am. Thank you, doctor.” 

He sees her out of the barracks, standing in the cool air for a moment before he closes the door, heading back to your room. 

You’re tucked against John’s chest again, curled up as tight as you can. John has shuffled down the headboard a bit, relaxing back against your pillows. You’re still crying, but it’s been reduced to mostly sniffles. He steps up to the bed, running a hand over your head. He wants to braid your hair again, keep it from tangling but he wouldn’t dare move you right now. His hand moves lower, wrapping around John’s wrist, his thumb brushing his alpha’s skin for a moment. 

“You should go do something.” John says, eyes half closed. “Get out of here and take a break for a bit. We’ll be fine. Going to take a long nap.” 

A smile tugs at Kyle’s lips. He loves moments like this, when his Captain, his alpha is sleepy. He’s softer, the usual sternness that paints his face gone, his shoulders relaxed. It’s partially due to the pain he has to be in, and the exhaustion after the last five days beginning to hit him now that your heat has passed. Kyle squeezes his wrist for a moment before letting go. He’s a bit unsure of what he should do, after standing watch and taking care of the two of you for almost a week. It feels strange to leave now, especially with the two of you so vulnerable. 

John’s hand wraps around his wrist before he can move away, and he turns to look back at his alpha. “Grab me an ice pack first.” 

Kyle’s lips tug up in a smirk. “Of course, sir.” 

He heads to the rec room, pulling one of the larger ice packs out of the freezer before heading back to your room. He doesn’t bother closing your door this time, letting the room air out just a bit as he goes to your bathroom. He grabs a hand towel from under your sink before wrapping it around the ice pack. He pushes the cabinet door closed with his foot before heading back into your room. 

He pulls the stack of blankets and your comforter up just enough to slip it underneath, feeling blindly as he situates it against John’s crotch. The alpha lets out a quiet sigh as he settles the ice pack in place, the cold already beginning to sink through the towel. 

“Thank you.” He says to Kyle, eyes half open as he stares up at his beta. 

“Get some sleep.” Kyle says, tucking the blankets around the both of you before leaving the room, closing the door behind him. 

He stares at his cot, knowing he should start cleaning up, but he’s tired himself. He feels the urge to lay down again, but instead he heads for the laundry room, switching over the laundry. 

He stands in the middle of the hallway once he’s done, staring down one side towards the rec room. He could always sprawl out on the couch and turn on some daytime TV show and pass out there. It wouldn't be too terribly uncomfortable compared to the cot he’s spent the last five days on. 

He turns his head down the other side of the hallway, glancing toward Simon’s office. They have yet to show their faces, not since they left to grab lunch. He wonders if they’ve even returned, or if they chose to stay away for the time being. He chews on his lip for a moment before making his decision, turning down the hallway towards Simon’s office. 

The scent of alpha is strong down the hallway, the musky scent a relief after the sweet scent that’s permeated his thoughts. He doesn’t mind your scent usually, but after five days of the intoxicating sweetness, he needs a break. He needs something fresher, something...different. 

He pauses at the door, hesitating for a moment. He could use some company for a while. He’s been alone with his thoughts far too much. He takes the plunge, knocking on the door. There’s no immediate response, which he was expecting. 

“Just me.” He says, pressing close to the door as he waits. 

“Enter.” Simon’s gruff voice finally says, Kyle just catching it through the door. He might not have heard it if he hadn’t been so close. 

Kyle turns the knob, opening the door. The scent of sex and the thick musk of alpha hits him like a train as he leans into the office. Simon is seated on the edge of one of the cots, mask off and pants flung onto the floor by his desk. Johnny is on his knees between Simon’s legs, a distinct choking sound coming from his throat. 

Simon releases Johnny’s head, letting him pull back from his alpha’s cock. He takes in deep gulps of air, his hand still wrapped around Simon’s hard length. Kyle leans against the doorway, crossing his arms with a knowing smirk. 

“They’re done and cleared, whenever you’re ready.” He tells them. 

Simon grips Johnny’s mohawk, still looking at Kyle as he pushes Johnny’s head towards his cock again. “We’re not quite done here yet.” 

“Looks that way.” Kyle says, and he can’t help the stirring in his pants as Johnny takes Simon back into his mouth. 

A smirk tugs at Simon’s lips as he stares at the other beta. “Want to lend a helping hand? Give poor Johnny a break?” 

Kyle’s throat goes dry at the idea, his eyes flickering to where Johnny has Simon in the back of his throat, lips wide around the alpha’s thick cock. Kyle can’t help but wonder how many times he’s been in that position over the last few days. Johnny lets out a whine as Simon pushes him deeper, his nose almost pressed against the light hair at the base of Simon’s cock. 

“Fuck.” Kyle groans, closing the door behind him. 

Simon wraps his fingers around Kyle’s arm as soon as he’s close, yanking him down so hard Kyle almost falls against him. Kyle has a clear view of Johnny sucking on his alpha’s cock, bobbing his head on the massive length from this angle. Simon’s hand is tight around his forearm, holding him still as he presses his nose against Kyle’s throat. A deep growl rumbles in his chest, his teeth nipping at Kyle’s skin. 

Of course. Kyle hadn’t showered or changed clothes after he left your room. 

He smells like you. 

Simon’s hips buck up, Johnny letting out a strangled gag before he pulls back off of Simon’s cock. 

“Fucking christ.” Johnny chokes out, coughing after getting hit in the back of the throat by Simon’s cock. “Gonnae kill me.” 

Simon doesn’t pay him any mind, his tongue too busy trailing Kyle’s throat, as if he could lick every inch of your scent from his skin. There’s a low rumbling vibrating in Simon’s chest, his grip tight around Kyle’s arm. 

Kyle’s own cock is throbbing, almost as much as it had upon seeing slick drip out of your pussy. Simon lets out a growl before releasing Kyle’s arm, gripping him around the back of his neck. Kyle lets out a quiet moan as Simon forces him down on his knees next to Johnny. The alpha stands from the cot, towering over them as his hard cock nearly throbs in their faces. 

He stares down at them, his eyes dark with lust. It’s not unlike how John’s eyes had looked when he was lost to his rut. 

“Such pretty boys.” Simon rasps, running a hand over each of their heads. 

Johnny purrs, leaning into his touch. Kyle feels the beginnings of a purr rising in his chest, his beta pleased by the large alpha’s praise. 

Kyle turns to face Johnny, gripping his fellow beta’s chin. He turns Johnny to look at him, that gleam in his eyes and stupid grin he gets when he’s subby on his face. Kyle leans forward, licking Johnny’s lips, silently conveying what he wants. Johnny responds immediately, opening his mouth to Kyle. Kyle drags his tongue along Johnny’s, tasting the familiar muskiness of Simon’s cum. 

They’ve been at this for a while. 

Johnny moans needily, his lips closing around Kyle’s tongue, sucking it into his mouth. Kyle groans, pressing his lips to Johnny’s, kissing him deeply. 

“Fucking hell.” Simon groans, fisting his throbbing cock as he stares down at the two betas making out in front of him. 

Drool drips down their chins, Kyle’s mind flashing back to the drool that had dripped out of your mouth, pooling on his chest. His cock throbs and he presses closer to Johnny, holding his face still as he licks the spit from Johnny’s skin. 

Simon groans, watching them. “If you two don’t get back to what you’re supposed to be doing...” 

Johnny grins playfully, both of them turning to face Simon with shiny faces. Simon’s cock is hard and angry looking as he holds it out for them, waiting patiently. Kyle slides his hand down Simon’s cock, replacing the alpha’s hand as he grips the base. Johnny and Kyle both lean forward, dragging their tongues down the sides of Simon’s cock, tracing the veins popping out. Simon groans as they work their way back towards his head, their tongues meeting at the tip. Their tongues swirl over the engorged head, flicking along his slit to gather the precum dripping from the tip of his cock. 

They pull away for a moment, Johnny licking the fluid from Kyle’s mouth before they kiss again, Kyle’s hand pumping Simon’s length. Kyle’s free hand sinks into Johnny’s mohawk, tugging him away from his lips. His hand is still pumping Simon’s cock as he guides Johnny back towards his alpha, Johnny’s mouth opening eagerly. Kyle guides Simon’s thick length into Johnny’s mouth again, using his grip on Johnny’s hair to move him along Simon’s cock. 

Johnny takes more and more of Simon into his mouth, choking slightly as Simon’s head pushes against his tongue. His throat has to be sore after this last week, but not nearly as much as his poor ass. Kyle pushes Johnny all the way onto Simon’s cock, the beta’s nose pressing into the hair around Simon’s cock. Johnny gags, his hands pressing against Simon’s thick thighs before Kyle pulls him off his alpha’s cock. 

Kyle quickly replaces him, licking Johnny’s saliva off the thick length before taking Simon’s cock into his mouth. He relaxes his throat, bobbing his head lower and lower on Simon’s cock. He’s always impressed by the alpha’s size, his own cock throbbing at the memory of John’s cock, the knot pressing right against his rim. 

Simon’s knot must be damn near colossal. 

Kyle presses down until he can feel it, Simon’s cock pushing on the back of his tongue. He pulls off of Simon’s cock, pumping the length for a moment as he breathes. Johnny takes his place again, sucking on Simon’s tip as Kyle cups Simon’s balls in his hand. Simon groans, a growl still rumbling in his chest as your scent still lingers in the air. 

“Gonna cum for us, alpha?” Kyle says, squeezing Simon’s balls gently. 

“Fuck...” Simon groans, the word long and drawn out. 

Kyle and Johnny switch places, Johnny fondling Simon’s balls as Kyle takes Simon’s cock in his mouth again. Simon reaches down, cupping the back of Kyle’s head as he begins to thrust into his mouth, the tangy precum dripping onto Kyle’s tongue telling him everything he needs to know. The alpha is close, his thick length twitching against Kyle’s tongue. Johnny massages Simon’s balls, holding onto them as Simon continues to fuck Kyle’s mouth, the beta suctioning around the alpha as best he can. 

Simon pulls out of Kyle’s mouth, pumping his cock rapidly as he cums, his seed spurting out and landing on Kyle and Johnny’s faces. Kyle licks the salty cum from his lips, wiping the bits from his face with his fingers before sucking them into his mouth. He leans over, dragging his tongue over Johnny’s skin, gathering the rest of Simon’s cum. 

Simon is breathing heavily as he watches Kyle lick Johnny clean before they kiss again, passing Simon’s cum back and forth on their tongues. Simon moans, squeezing around the base of his cock, trying to keep himself from getting hard again as he watches the two betas. 

“Screamin’ Jesus.” Johnny groans as Kyle licks his lips one last time before swallowing down Simon’s cum. “Never gonnae tire of that.” 

“Such a good boy.” Simon praises, running a hand over Kyle’s head. “A reward for taking such good care of our alpha and omega.” 

Kyle grins, practically preening from the alpha’s praise. 

They have no idea. 

NEXT ->

@bobaprint @ashy-kit @anunintentionalwriter @mockerycrow @protokosmonaut

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@mirzamsaiph @xlxnq @chickennn-soupp

[rinsoap]

➣ includes : brother's best friend! suna rintaro. oh and also small age gap between him and the reader, only two ish years though. LOWKEY SUGGESTIVE? one mention of the reader not wearing a bra if that is something u deem suggestive.

note : i'm so in love with romantic and sexual tension between u n suna it's so fun to write! also lmk if u want a pt2 or something not sure what i'd do for a pt2 but y'all can send in some ideas lol

suna rintaro who is your brother’s best friend… he likes seeing you around the house, ready for bed looking so cute in your comfy shorts and a little top n no bra. he likes that he gets to see what you look like everyday instead of only seeing you dolled up. he likes when you’re glammed, of course, you always look stunning. he just likes stealing glances of you do everyday tasks.

like tonight, in the kitchen far too late in the night, he’ll lean against the doorframe as he watches you make a snack. he notices the curves of your shoulders, and how the small of your back peeks out from your top riding up a little. you’re still humming the song you’ve had stuck in your head all day. you turn around and surprised to see him, you gasp, causing him to widen his lazy half smile. you roll your eyes, party because he scared you, but also because he looks way too good. hands shoved into the pockets of his sweatpants loose around his hips, hair messy, and a white tank top on that fits him perfectly. he looks like a slut.

“what could you possibly want,” you sigh, and he shrugs in response. “just wanna see what you’re up to”

“where’s my brother? shouldn’t you be hanging with him?” you question, pointing a strawberry pop tart at him accusingly.

“he’s asleep” he closes the distance between you to take the pop tart out of your hand, taking a rather generous bite.

“rin stop, oh my god you just ate like half of it,” you exclaim, snatching it back, “you’ve already cleaned out half the fridge, when will your greedy ass be satisfied?”

“rin?” he cocks his head, his sleepy smile settling into a smug one, “you haven’t called me that since, like, elementary school” the eye contact he so casually maintains is difficult for you to keep, and your face gets furiously hot, looking away. “yeah well, i kind of thought you were embarrassed by it, so i got embarrassed and i stopped” you try to exit the conversation and walk past him to the doorway he was just standing in, trying to signal that you were going to leave to your bedroom. he follows you, much to your dismay. he leans against the doorway, his back to it, and you mimick his action. you're both looking directly at each other, and it feels weirdly intimate. seeing each other face on meant he could see every expression on your face.

“why would you think that? i wasn’t embarrassed.” he says, his eyes scan you from your painted toenails to the top of your head, but inevitably looking into your eyes. after a beat of hesitation, he continues talking. “...you know, i had a crush on you then. i was really sad when you stopped calling me it.”

the heat in your face returns as he laughs. how can he sit there and laugh after dropping this insane piece of information??

“you’re kidding. i totally liked you back, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” you look at him incredulously, mouth agape and growing annoyed as you realize he was not as shocked finding out your feelings as you were in learning his.

“yeah, i figured. but your brother, you know? and just in case i wasn’t right, i didn’t want you to reject me and then show up at your house the next day to watch movies with your brother” he had a point. you remember those movie nights. you always wanted to watch with them, but your brother would always say no and kick you out of the room. suna always let you watch anyways, offering a seat on the couch beside him despite his best friend’s wishes.

the movie nights were not the only thing your mind was pondering on. if he knew about your crush then, did he know now? your feelings were much too complicated for you to call it a crush, and you'd like to think you've learned how to be at least a little subtle, so maybe he didn't know.

"that’s crazy. we just barely missed each other i guess” you finally say with a chuckle that turns into a thoughtful hum, glancing anywhere but his eyes.

"what? so, you don't have a crush on me anymore?" oh, so he did know. he easily closes the gap between you two, and for once, it doesn't seem like he's teasing you. "rin..." you say, mouth slightly open like you're going to add something else, but you don't. "i don't think we missed anything... am i wrong?" he leans towards, and you swear he's going to kiss you but he stops before your lips touch, "you can tell me if i'm wrong."

you grab his shirt and pull him in to press your lips against his, bringing him into a surprising, but long kiss. his hands thread through your hair, lingering in the moment. when you break away, they slide from your hair to the sides of your neck, and he has the dumbest smile on his face. "definitely not wrong."

[miladysproblems]

Percy Jackson Headcanons<33

A/n: I was at the beach and I was also going through a huge pjo wormhole so-

Warnings: one swear word?, excessive amount of fluff

Imagine you at the beach, excitedly running towards the waves in the ocean, ready to dip your feet through the gentle waves. You giddily waited. And waited. But somehow the waves never touched you. Everytime you thought they came close, the waves just whisked away. It was almost like it was teasing you.

This kept going back and front a few times when finally you hit your limit. Frustrated, you jumped forward, desperate to feel atleast a drop of ocean but it went further away. It repelled away like you and the wave were poles on the same side of a magnet.

And that's when you saw, your boyfriend, the love of your life, percy Jackson with a shit-eating grin on his face. Gods, that smile. You wanted smack him and kiss him at the time. He was such a pain in the ass and so cute and-

Not the point. You glared at him but his grin got even wider and that's when you realized at the huge wave, twice the size of your body, towering over you.

You shut your eyes tightly, waiting for the huge dump of water over you. But nothing came. You opened your eyes slowly, only to see the wave no longer but percy, still standing perfectly where he was, a few meters away from you, definitely not close enough for you to catch. But the goddamn grin was still there and pure amusement gloated on his face. That's it, you decided and you chased after him. And he ran too, laughing so beautifully- but right now you wanted nothing more than to kick his ass.

"PERCY JACKSON! YOU COME HERE RIGHT NOW" The boy laughed even more if that was possible. That jerk. That beautiful jerk.

"NOPE, SWEET GIRL"

You swore the waves were laughing at you, along with percy. The waves caught up with you and tried to slow you down, you couldn't tell if it was percy who did that Or the ocean itself. But frankly you couldn't care right now. All you wanted was to catch percy. And then kiss him or beat his ass. You didn't know.

Running behind him, still deep in your thoughts, you tripped. You braced yourself for impact but nothing happened. You peaked one of your eyes open, to see the wave, the size of a small dune, supporting your back and percy running towards you, in concern.

"You okay?" He sounded breathless and gentle, which was weird considering he was still in contact with the waves which should kinda make him invincible. But it didn't sound like he was breathless from running towards you. No, not at all. He sounded breathless from seeing you fall, as if even the mere thought of seeing you hurt made his lungs constrict tighter and his heart break beat faster.

"Yeah I'm fine." You smiled softly as the wave let go of you and percy caught you instead. You were home now. You wrapped your arms around his neck and leaned into him softly.

"You sure? " His voice soft and gentle, like the waves with a bit of uncertainty. Oh sweet boy. You nodded reassuringly and smiled at his demeanor. He could be be so sweet when he wasn't a pain in the ass. At your nod, percy seemed satisfied and smiled back at you softly, his gaze affectionate and soothing. You wanted to be at that moment forever.

But you also had to take your revenge. As percy leaned in, closing his eyes. You pushed him into the water but of course the waves were on their lord's side. Percy glinted at you mischievously.

"Nice try but I guess you'll have to try harder." Before you could comprehend anything, percy pulled you in the water with him and this time the waves didn't stop him.

You came up, gasped for air, still shocked.

"You asshole!" Percy had that wide beam his face that made you want to kiss him punch him. He gazed at you affectionately, like you were the one who put the sun in the sky and for a moment, his intense gaze almost made you freeze. The boy looked at you liked that half the time, yet you still couldn't get used to it. You could never get used to it.

But that would not stop you from splashing water on his face and it wouldnt stop him either. You and percy played around, just like normal people, with no monsters, no world ending quests. Just you and him. Just us.

Maybe it was the air, or it was the waves but you fell towards him and he caught you. Like always. He leaned in and he had the same gaze he had before, so affectionate and intense, it caught your breath. Again. For a moment, time seemed to stand still and as his lips grazed yours, you swore this boy would be the death of you.

Percy pulled you towards him and you let him. Because who wouldn't want to get pulled in by the allure of the ocean that engulfed around them. It was just you and him again. Against the world. As always.

P.S you hated sand stuck on your clothes so he made sure you came out dry. Perks of having the son of Poseidon as your boyfriend.

[bratbarzal]

Let It Happen (LH43) 1/3

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

WC: 17k

If you're ready, all I mean is we could go, I've never craved someone's attention as much as yours.

General Warnings: an almost unbearable amount of sarcasm and snark, even more idiotic shenanigans, many affectionate empty threats of murder/violence, fluff, mentions of golf 🤢, cursing and I'm pretty sure that's it for this half

A/N: in line with the general consensus lmao this has been split, part two will be posted as soon as it's finished (lol) but it's best read as one whole fic, it isn't a multi-part situation really!! it was originally supposed to be my submission for the eras tour fic challenge (hence the graphic I'm too attached to to change) but took a different direction to the song I was given, and I missed the deadline, and I pretty much listened to the secret of us exclusively while writing this whole thing. also dropping an overwhelmingly summery fic in december might actually be my brand. keep your eyes peeled for a christmas fic in july.

very special shoutout to shea @sleepretreat I made a random comment one day that luke gives seth cohen energy, and she fanned that flame like a full time job. ily shea!! I hope this lives up to any expectations and I owe a lot to your instigating!!

AS ALWAYS!!! never proofread!! I'll probably get around to it when the thought of a spelling mistake keeps me awake at night. and also!! please let me know what you think I am like a teeny tiny little plant that can only thrive under the constant shower of validation and you don't want me to wither and die do you? (I’m kidding) (I’m not)

You kind of, sort of, think you might hate summer.

You haven’t always felt this way, though. Growing up, it had always been your favourite time of the year. 

No school? Check.

Going on vacation, sometimes multiple, all expenses covered by your parents? Double check.

Getting to do all the cool things you don’t have time for in the school year with all your friends? Concerts, festivals, beach days, bonfires on the evenings. Check, check and check again.

But 4 years ago, your whole world as you knew it was torn apart, and summers have never been the same, since.

A season that was once filled with light and companionship, never ending plans and joviality, became darker - isolated, getting yourself out of the house even if everyone else was busy, driving just to drive and making the best of your own company. 

School ended up becoming your escape, especially since you had started college - your studies and the chaos of Greek life distracting you from the calamitous state of your home life, making new friends that became like family and sticking to them like glue, where possible, clingy and possessive to the point of ruin, almost - and so the lack of it in the summers now actually sends you into some sort of warped spiral.

It’s manageable in the winter and spring, the breaks no longer than a few weeks at a time, but going home for summer is somewhat of a nightmare.

It’s hard to go back, hard to ignore the mess your mind has become when it’s just you and your mother - or, you, your mother and whatever bottle of pinot she’s 3 glasses deep into at any given time of the day - and you’re sat in a house that’s a cold reminder of the warmth that once filled it. 

But when Ellie - your best friend since moving to college, the girl who took the sister part of sorority sister to the next level at all possible opportunities over the years - found out you’d put your name down to be the caretaker for your sorority house instead of going home, she had put her foot down on your summertime sadness session.

Which is how you end up moving into her family home - spending the first few weeks integrating yourself into their routine while trying to grip desperately onto some form of your own - trying not to get too used to the feeling of such a big family when you know it won’t be forever.

You braid her little sister’s hair everyday, kick a soccer ball around with her little brother when he needs someone to stand in goal, wash the dishes with her mom, talk sports with her dad, and before long, you blend like a chameleon into their dynamic.

You pick up a summer job at the country club to cling back onto your independence. Your commute provides the solitude and quiet you‘ve grown accustomed to in the years before, a bus journey through town with headphones on, watching the scenery and admiring the greenery until you get to work, donning your navy blue polo and tucking your little notepad into your hip apron as you serve tables at the clubhouse restaurant and bar. 

It’s a much needed escape from Ellie, if you’re honest.

You love that girl with all your heart, appreciate her housing you more than you’ll ever be able to say, but if you have to hear her sit and mope about how hopelessly in love she is with Jack Hughes for even a second longer, you’re going to vomit. Or scream. Or both.

Jack and Ellie grew up together - their families close, Ellie’s dad best friends with Jack’s uncle, or something - and she’s been into him since he had teeth missing - a point she loves to hammer home when it comes to you always listing that as one of his (many, if it’s up to you) cons. Considering his job, and the fact he already lost one, not too long ago, a toothless boyfriend seems like a massive ick, if you’re honest. 

But Ellie is beyond reason when it comes to him. She worships the ground he walks on - talks about him non-stop, messages him every day, regales you with stories you, awfully, but realistically, couldn’t care less about - and it’s the only real problem about living with her.

Even beyond the summer, you two had shared a room your first two years in college, still live in the same house - and it’s a year round problem.

But being unable to escape, having your days tied to close to hers, and knowing that it’s bound to be worse with proximity, Jack back in Michigan for the summer, himself, she’s starting to drive you up the wall.

It wouldn’t bother you if you had never met Jack, but the two of you don’t exactly get along. He’s rude, and self-absorbed, and had looked down on you the first time he ever laid eyes on you, and you really shouldn’t let it get to you, but you do - the thought that your best friend is in love with an asshole, and that she won’t let you hear the end of it. 

Won’t stop whining about how he’ll never feel the same, or that she can’t handle another summer of biting her tongue, of being around him, feeling the way she does, and not being able to do anything about it.

She deserves better. 

Ellie has a heart of gold, and she deserves someone who handles it with care. If Jack Hughes doesn’t like her back, that’s his loss - but you’re kind of getting sick of telling her that.

Getting through a whole summer of it is going to be hard, you think, but it’s better than the alternative. Better than being entirely alone. So you put on a brave face, use work as your escape in the same way you usually do with school, and avoid blowing your top for as long as you can, suffering through the late nights and heart to hearts where Jack is the sole topic of discussion, and bask in the good stuff.

In the chaos of her siblings, in the closeness of her family, and the way they’ve welcomed you with open arms.

This summer could be okay, you’ve just got to give it a chance. 

Luke Hughes loves summer.

He loves being back home in Michigan, spending his days out on the lake, or making the trip out to parade around Ann Arbor, catching up with all his college buddies, making the rounds at all the UMich sporting events he now gets a VIP pass to thanks to his last name.

The routine of it all is familiar, and warming, and it restores a sense of normality that playing in the NHL for the past year has so brutally ripped from him, already. 

He had enjoyed starting his summer overseas - making the team for the world championships and competing beyond the abysmal end to his rookie season - had enjoyed the time away from his brothers, if he’s honest. Quinn and the Canucks making it a few rounds into the playoffs, and Jack back home recovering from getting surgery on his shoulder - and it’s the latter he needed the reprieve from.

He does love living with his brother.

Jack looks after him in ways he’ll never really be able to make it up to him for. He always has, Quinn has too, but ever since Luke got drafted to the Devils, Jack has helped him adjust to the chaos of his career without much fuss or hardship.

And he really is grateful for that.

But, God, can he be annoying.

Especially when it comes to his infatuation with his best friend, Ellie.

Jack and Ellie have always been close - despite the fact she’s Luke’s age - and grew up thick as thieves, spending summers together, especially when the family moved to Michigan, and Ellie’s family were just on the other side of town. 

He’s always been obsessed with her, even if it hasn’t always been love - but these last few years have been different. Like a switch flipped in his head when Jack saw what Ellie was like when he came to visit Luke in his freshman year of college.

A version of Ellie that was no longer just his - no longer exclusive to their summer bubble, and lived in a world beyond lounging by the lake and hanging out with the Hughes family.

A version of Ellie who liked partying, liked schmoozing and charming everybody she came into contact with, liked being the centre of everyone else’s attention, not just Jack’s.

And it’s that version of Ellie that has driven Luke’s brother crazy, which has, in turn, started to drive Luke crazy. He talks about her non-stop, and it was those much needed weeks away in Czechia that almost had Luke forgetting just how stupid his brother has gotten about the whole thing.

Until he came home to Michigan, and Jack, in all the commotion with his shoulder, with ending his season early and starting his summer off alone, has worked himself into such a stupor about the whole thing that merely a week into his return, he has driven Luke up the wall. 

He’s grumpy, all the time - which leads to him being snarky, all the time. He huffs and puffs around the house so much Luke is starting to think he might need an inhaler, and he really can’t take any more.

Not when he’s making such a show of his irritation, stomping around with heavy feet and slamming doors that don’t need to be shut in the first place. 

“What crawled up your ass and died there?” Luke frowns as he follows Jack into the kitchen upon his return from therapy, holding out for the doors he swings open with a little too much vigour so that they don’t swing back into his brother’s slinged-shoulder. “I thought the physio is going alright?”

“It is,” Jack huffs, storming over to the fridge and yanking it open, the jars and bottles in the door clanking together in a way that makes Luke cringe. “I’m fine.”

“Tell that to all the hinges you’re testing the limits of.” 

“Don’t start with me, Luke, I’m not in the mood.”

“You just said you’re fine.” Luke rolls his eyes as he starts to scroll through his group chat with his friends from college, trying to check who said they might be free today to get him out of this vicious circle.

“It’s nothing.”

“Clearly not.” It’s interactions like this that confirm to Luke just how annoying Jack has become - because what reason does he have to be so evasive? Luke is handing him the opportunity to air out his grievances on a silver platter, and he’s rather slam cupboards and create creases in his forehead from frowning 24/7.

“Fine, it’s Ellie.”

Luke wishes he never bothered asking, although he has been wondering why he’s been seeing way less of her already this summer. He had figured Ellie was away with family until he saw her at the gas station the other night - had watched from the car as Jack had what seemed like a heated conversation by the entrance. 

“She’s refusing to hang out with me.”

“Has she said why?” Luke asks, although he doesn’t really care. He’s just asking to get it out of the way in the hopes that Jack talking about it might lighten the load, might make his own life a little easier. 

It’s the bitter muttering of your name that captures Luke’s full attention, his neck audibly cracking at the speed in which his head shoots up, no longer caring what could possibly be going on with the boys in the group chat. 

“She isn’t going back to whatever fiery hell pit it is that she comes from for the summer, and she’s staying with Ellie’s family, therefore Ellie isn’t staying with us.”

Luke hasn’t heard your name in a while. Not since he left college last year, not since he got caught up in the whirlwind life in the NHL, when a schoolboy crush on a girl he interacted with once in his entire college career became the least of his worries.

But one utterance of it has his spine straightening, just like it would have done just over a year ago.

You’re in Michigan. You’re at Ellie’s, on the other side of town. You’re barely two degrees of separation from him.

“Why can’t Ellie bring her here?” Luke asks, throat dry and voice breaking so subtly that he hopes Jack doesn’t notice. That could be fun. Would make up for the hell his brother has been putting him through since he got here. 

Maybe a little glorious sunshine might finally get you to notice his existence. He wouldn’t mind third wheeling Jack and Ellie if you were there, too. It would give him the perfect opportunity to prove he’s worthy of your attention - too shy and too scared to do so, back in college, but he’s different, now. Confident, almost. More sure of himself.

“She hates me.” Jack huffs, “Last time we met she was giving me the stink eye all night.”

And of course it would be his brother to ruin his plans, yet again. You’ll probably hate him, too - a hatred so strong for Jack that it seeps through his entire bloodline, because Luke of all people knows he can be annoying like that. 

“Trust me, she probably doesn’t care enough to hate you,” Luke scoffs, not realising the spool of information he’s just given Jack to unravel. 

“You know her?”

“We had a class together. I know of her.”

Not the truth, but not exactly a lie.

Luke knows a lot about you. It’s borderline creepy, the observations he can still remember, even after so long.

He knows you like only like coffee if it’s iced, had seen you with too many clear plastic cups to count, had watched plump lips chewing at straws by the time you had finished the drink. He had even, one time, tried to zoom in on a picture of your order printed on the side in one of his many states of delusion where he had been trying to build himself up to ask you out. 

He knows you can hold your own in an argument, had watched you debate with the best of them in your business comms class, has watched you shoot down most guys that approach you with a sharp tongue and even sharper wit, and has watched you take down a frat guy or two, usually in defence of your sorority sisters - who Luke noticed you’re the most protective of. 

He knows you match your perfume to the colour of your outfit, had notice you smelled citrusy like lemons in yellow, floral like roses in pink, sweet like candy in purple, and clean like fresh cotton in blue. 

He knows the pieces of hair that frame your face curl when wet from the rain. Knows you used to volunteer at the pool on the weekends it was open to the kids of the community, would teach them how to swim. He knows you listen to Taylor Swift and has heard you humming just about every song of hers he knows.

But he doesn’t really know you - not on the level Jack is assuming, when his eyes widen and hope flashes across his crystal irises.

“You know how I’m your favourite brother?”

“No,”

“And I let you live with me all year?”

“My name’s on the lease.”

“Maybe you could talk to her for me?”

Luke sighs, shoulders heavy and eyes rolling practically to the back of his head. “I already told you, I don’t really know her like that.” 

“C’mon, you could at least try! I’m dying here, Luke! She’s hogging all of Ellie’s time, and she won’t give me the time of day if I try!”

If only Jack knew how much time you’d ever given Luke, he wouldn’t be asking him such an absurd request.

You’re so out of his league, it isn’t even funny. He probably couldn’t convince you to light a candle in a power cut, much less to give his annoying brother a shot to prove himself.

“You’re wasting your time, Jack,” Luke responds, “I’m gonna meet Dylan at the club. No, you can’t come.”

And by the time Luke makes it out to his car, he’s relieved to have ditched that conversation, entirely. He knows what’s waiting when he gets home, what his brother is going to be like for the next few months to come, but a temporary relief is all he needs.

He had already been planning on getting a few late morning holes in at the club, and meeting up with Dylan had been a white lie, needing some alone time away from Jack’s incessant whining to think about how he was going to survive the summer - and seeing you on your break, perched on the edge of the fountain in the courtyard by the clubhouse bar, basking in the sun and talking with your co-worker, he feels like he might have just struck gold.

Since when do you work here?

He supposes since you decided to spend your summer with Ellie’s family - it only makes sense. Ellie doesn’t live too far from the club - not as close as the lake house, but closer than Ann Arbor, at least. She’d worked in the club shop last summer, even when Jack insisted he’d pay for whatever she needed while she was staying with them - had said it was nice to pass the time with something else while they all went off doing whatever - and he assumes you’re doing the same. 

It’s the first time he’s seen you in a while, outside of coming across your pictures on his Instagram feed occasionally, or the flash of your figure in Ellie’s stories. 

He had thought that, after the year he’s had, he’d be over schoolboy crushes like this - would be over the way his breath catches just at the sight of you, over the way the hairs on the back of his neck prick up and stand to attention, over the way his throat goes dry as he watches your eyes crinkle from afar, watches your lips curve up into a heart-stopping grin.

But it’s like he’s picked up straight from where he left off at the end of his college career, pining after you from afar with hearts in his eyes and feet that start to shuffle at just the thought of approaching you.

If he’s going to do this, though, he needs to be clever about it, he thinks.

Approaching you on your break, limited to the amount of time he can use to put his point across, wasting yours, doesn’t seem like something that will work.

Which is how he finds himself bypassing you completely and walking straight into the bar, offering a friendly nod to the guy stood at the front of house, and letting him point him toward the right section to be served in. 

It isn’t long before you’re in front of him, sidling up to his booth, and he had almost forgotten how pretty you are up close. Hair clipped up with loose strands framing your face, chewing at your plump bottom lip as you scribble on your notepad to get your pen to work. And your honeyed voice settling deep in the pit of his stomach, warmth spreading throughout as you introduce yourself, like he has no clue who you are, and tell him you’ll be his server, “What can I get for you?”

“Five minutes of your time?”

The Luke that spent his college years obsessing over you might have stuttered - his voice might have broke, squeaked or choked in your presence - but while his throat does feel a little dry, he’s able to maintain his cool now, even when you look up from your scribblings to meet his eye. Maybe he can do this. Maybe he has matured.

His heart might jump in his chest, his mouth might tingle, his spine might stiffen, but he holds your gaze, hoping if you see a reflection of confidence that you might give him the time of day.

He’s seen you interact with guys before, has familiarised himself with the ten-foot walls you have in place, has seen others fold and try find a long way around, but he thinks that maybe matching your energy is the way to break through. 

Who doesn’t love a shortcut?

Your eyes narrow back at him as pouted lips form around a response, looking him up and down before tilting your head, and coming back with, “I all of a sudden feel the need to inform you we do have security here,” you point the tip of your pen to the entrance, where he was greeted on the way in. “I meant a drink.”

“Water’s fine,” his gaze flickers to the movement of your wrist as you click the other side of your pen, not even writing it down. “Maybe with a side of conversation?”

“I’ll go get your water,” you offer a smile, and the insincerity of it does little to cool his bravado, even if you head off with mutterings of why do I always get the creeps?

He watches you as you make your way over to the bar, not creep-like whatsoever, and he channels the nerves that sneak up on him, now that you’re distanced, through fiddling with his fingers on the table, pinching at the tips of them when you glance back over your shoulder, probably telling the girl behind the bar just how lucky you were to once again get the weirdo in your section.

It surprises him how little he cares, possessing more of your attention now than he ever has before, and if he could tell the Luke from two years ago, who spent every shared Principles of Marketing class ritualistically watching you chew on the end of your pen, that he’d be able to make eye contact without dribbling and breaking out into full body sweats, he’d have lost his mind.

He embodies a strange level of dislocated arrogance that manifests itself in his body language, sinking into the booth with arms outstretched across the back, a dangerous smirk teasing the corner of his mouth when you return, placing a pitcher of water down on the table and a glass with ice. 

“I’m Luke,” he tells you, placing a hand on his chest and doing his best to ignore the thudding he feels beneath it. “Hughes. Jack’s brother,” and when you look back over to him with a raised brow, he adds, “Ellie’s Jack.”

“And who’s Ellie?” You ask with a tilt of your head, your voice dripping in teasing sarcasm. 

“Funny,” he quips, biting back the urge to call you what he actually means. He can hardly call you cute, you’d probably pour that water straight over him. “I went to UMich, we had a couple classes together.”

Your eyes narrow again, and he knows it’s an intimidation tactic, a way to make him feel smaller than he’s acting, shrinking him down to a version of himself you can stamp your authority on, but he finds himself being resilient for once, carrying on like he isn’t affected.

He is. Massively, in fact. Just not in the way you probably want. Your indifference drives him in a way that presses into his spine, an inner voice pleading, notice me, I’m breaking through!

“Bauman’s class, Business Comms, you sat in the second row, I sat in the third, you dropped your pencil one time and I-,”

“I know who you are.”

So he’s been yapping on at you for no reason? Fantastic.

He can’t let his momentum slip, though, so he forces the corners of his lips into a victorious smile, and counters, “So you know I’m not a creep.”

“You literally memorised my seat in a class from 2 years ago, so…” 

“I have a good memory,” he’s quick to defend, fighting the urge to let his eyes linger on your pouted lips.

“Right,” you roll your eyes, “What is it you want, again?”

“I came to talk about Jack and Ellie.” He nods to the other side of the booth, and has to roll his shoulders so that his chest doesn’t inflate with misplaced hubris when you shuffle into the seat with a huff, discarding your notepad to the side as you level him with another raised brow.

“What about ‘em?”

“About how they’re hopelessly in love with each other and doing nothing about it.”

“You got hopeless right. What’s that got to do with us?”

Us. Oh, he likes that.

“I’m thinking they need a little shove in the right direction. And maybe we could be the shovers.”

You presses your lips together in faux-apology, a lopsided, patronising, adorable frown taking over your expression. “No can do, I don’t shove, I’m a pacifist.”

“A nudge, then?”

He isn’t giving up easy, no matter how much sarcasm you try to throw his way. You wouldn’t have sat down if there wasn’t something about this situation that irks you, too.

If Ellie is being only half as annoying as Jack is, he knows that you’re having a bad time of it. And you’re supposed to spending her summer with her - it can’t be easy, having your friend constantly pining over someone and refusing to do anything about it, if anything, making it your problem.

“Are you here to eat or annoy me?”

“Both,” he smiles, “I just figured a problem shared is a problem solved, and all.”

“How profound.” 

“C’mon, you sat down, you at least agree they’re into each other, and I know you’re staying with her this year, so I know you’ve been getting the same grief I have.”

“I’ve been on my feet 4 hours, I wouldn’t look too deep into me sitting down.” 

“Jack’s been moping around about her for years, I can’t listen to it anymore, he’s all, she’ll never like me back, this, and, I’ll never find a girl like her, that,” he whines, imitating his brother’s voice in the most annoying, high pitched tone he can muster, “I can’t take one more breakdown of her snap stories, especially not if it’s all summer if she’s not gonna be staying over, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“How supportive,” the sarcasm in your bite does little to hide the beginnings of your smile, your glare softening into what he hopes is the start of some sort of bond, a shared feeling of exasperation. Finding your footfall in common grounds.

“It’s relentless, we can’t go a single conversation anymore without him bringing her up,” he sighs, slumping into his seat, finally giving in to all the ways this is starting to grate on him. “I don’t get why neither of them do anything.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, too, relenting a little. “She talks about him so much it kind of makes me nauseous.”

“How supportive,” he mimics, nerve endings set alight when your eyes meet his over the table, and narrow in a different way, almost appreciative, almost respectable.

“Can it, Hughes,” you scoff, “Me even entertaining this conversation right now is support enough, I’ve had it in my ear for months about how she doesn’t know how she’ll make it through another summer.”

“That’s what I’m saying. If we can get them together this summer, then we’re both better off. No more whining or crying or earaches for either of us.”

“I’d hope you didn’t make your way out here with the mere promise of no more earaches, Luke.” He tries not to preen at the way you say his name. “What’s in it for me?”

“You and Ellie can stay at our lake house.” He suggests, straightening up before he leans onto the table, elbows extending so that he can rest on them, “It’s closer to the club than her family’s place, it’s gotta be better than having her siblings running around you all the time, I can even drive you to work when I’m free, if you want?”

You blink at him slowly, as if to say, and? “So I can stay at your glorified frat house, and you can be my chauffeur?” You ask with an unimpressed raise of your brow, before letting out a humourless scoff of, “What more could a girl want to do with her summer?

“What do you want?” He asks, leaning further forward.

“To go back to work and not worry about strange guys propositioning me, funnily enough.”

Luke laughs, a deep, breathy laugh that rises from the depths of his chest and comes alive in an almost-bark, and he doesn’t miss the way your eyes flicker to his mouth when it comes out.

This is fun. 

There’s no way he’s letting you leave this table without agreeing - just the thought of one more singular interaction keeping him on his toes.

“Why don’t we make it interesting, then?”

“It’s about time you tried.” The quiver of your lip tells him everything he needs to know - and that’s without the entertained glint in your eye that accompanies it. You’re enjoying this, just as much.

“We could make a competition out of it.”

“A competition?” You ask, with a curious tilt of your head.

There it is, he thinks. Interest: piqued. He practically has you in the palm of his hand. Who would ever have thought, the way to a sorority girl’s heart would be a friendly little wager?

“Whoever actually gets them together, wins.”

It’s all he can think of in the moment - petulant and part-planned, but it seems to be enough.

“Wins what?” You lean onto your elbows, your gaze levelling his as he mirrors your positioning, having to slouch a little further forward in his seat to meet your pretty eyes. 

“Whatever you want.” He doesn’t intend it to come out as low as it does, doesn’t realise how close the two of you have gotten over the table, but he sees the flicker of something cross your features as your head tilts again, eyes still locked on his as yours begin to narrow, still just as pretty even when they’re glaring at him.

“It’s what you want that concerns me.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over it,” he jibes, watching the way your lips part in preparation of another witty comeback. “What do you say?” He asks, not giving you the chance, seeing the way it makes your skin crawl that you weren’t quick enough, for once. “Are you in?”

You heave out a sigh, shoulders slumping - a tell-tale sign that you’re about to acquiesce - and Luke starts to feel his chest puff out in victory. This feels like a shut-out. It feels like the best performance of his life. 

“You’re gonna make me regret this, aren’t you?”

“Oh definitely,” he smirks, eyes tracking you as you lean back into the booth, retreating from him in defeat, a hand running through your hair as he promises, “You’ll warm up to me soon enough, though.”

“I can’t see that happening.”

“I can,” he shrugs, leaning back too. “I’ve been told I’m inevitable.”

Luke can remember, like it was yesterday, the first time he ever saw you.

Freshman year, the week he moved into his dorm at Michigan, Jack had sent him across campus to check in on how Ellie was getting on. He had arrived with some extravagant gift basket in tow, plastic wrapped, a giant blue bow tied around the top and an assortment of snacks inside, and was left knocking for at least five minutes before you showed up.

“Please tell me you’re not another stripper-gram.”

If his throat hadn’t gone so dry all of a sudden, he thinks he would have had more wits about him to have questioned the use of another - a concept that had stuck in his head for weeks until he caught wind of a story of pledges for Pike being sent around campus and forced to lure girls to their house through way of humiliating song. 

But God, you were pretty. 

Siren eyes narrowed toward him, glossy lips pouted pensively, long lashes blinking impatiently as you awaited some kind of response that didn’t come in the form of an open, drooling mouth.

“I’m Luke.”

“Right.” You had sighed, pretty eyes rolling at him. “You’re blocking my door."

“Oh, I’m-,” he stuttered, immediately stepping to the side for you to come forward and insert your key into the lock. “Does Ellie live here?” He asked, confusion etched into his features as he watched you swing the door open, turning in your place to look him over again.

“Depends who’s asking.”

“I’m Luke.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I know her.”

“Clearly.”

“This is her basket.”

“Does she need to sign for it?”

“No, I-,”

“I’ll make sure she gets it, thanks, Lu!”

And when you had taken the basket from his hands, he had been too distracted by the way your skin brushed against his to properly respond, or worry if you had called him that as a nickname or had already forgotten his name, entirely.

He then spent days thinking about you, looking for you - at parties, in the campus coffee shop, online, despite not knowing your name - trying to commit to memory the way your eyes had sparkled when looking his way, until his first Business Communications class.

He had been a little early, first week nerves playing out and his constant craving for positive validation coming to the forefront, and was watching the door waiting for the professor to arrive. He had been slouched in his seat, chin in the palm of his hand, foot tapping rhythmically against the floor, and he had almost given himself whiplash when you walked in. 

He learned your name from there, learned a lot just from watching you in that class, but never really captured your attention.

And if the Luke that has been driving you to work every few days, who has been living with you for the past two weeks - who sits around the same dining table, laughs at the same jokes cracked when you’re all lounging around the house, sits out under the same sun, drinks from the same carton of orange juice in the morning - could tell the Luke that sat pining after you all that time, all the little ways in which he’s captured your attention lately, he’d probably have an aneurysm. 

When you and Ellie moved in, Luke had been the only one allowed to touch your stuff - and there’s a part of him that knows it was mainly because you enjoyed watching him work like a packhorse, hauling your cases up the stairs and dropping them in front of you with a huff, but there’s a larger, more delusional part that thinks you preferred him to the others, maybe even trusted him.

He’s taking credit for how quick you’ve adapted to the dynamic of the house, too. Of all the different faces coming in and out - Quinn’s friends, Jack’s friends, his friends, sometimes even his parents. If you’re around, you’re pleasant. You abide by house rules, some of them stupid, but set by the brothers so long ago that they just work now - like no phones outside of your rooms so that you can be more present. You insert yourself comfortably into conversations, you form your own relationships with everyone - you and Quinn trade book recommendations, you and Jack bicker while Ellie mediates. You do your fare share of chores - laundry, dishes, cooking, even. 

And he’s so caught up in just sharing space, just being around you, even, that for those first couple weeks, he forgets why you even agreed to be there in the first place.

At least, he forgets the incentive part - because he watches mindlessly as you interfere in Jack and Ellie’s dynamic, without a care in the world for the fact that it means he’s losing.

He watches you push one of them out of the way to claim whatever seat at the table or in the car forces them to sit beside each other. He watches you taunt Jack to just the right point where Ellie interferes, coos at him protectively and he melts into her affections. He watches you agree to plans he knows you wouldn’t in a million years follow along with, just to get them together - and all he can do is admire how easy you make it seem. 

He admires when you come out wakeboarding with the group, when you let him fasten you into a vest and don’t flinch when his fingertips brush against bare skin. Watches you bite your tongue over the fact you just got your hair blow dried - a fact you have no problems relaying back to him when he drives you to work the next day, and you’re muttering in his passenger seat about lake water giving you frizz - just so you’re not dampening the mood.

And when you agree to tag along to the golf course on your day off, despite the fact it’s so close to work if could be considered triggering, and you stick by Luke’s side so that Ellie can feign some sort of incompetence until Jack takes it upon himself to correct her form.

You stand by Luke’s side, the two of you watching with mirrored expressions of almost-disgust as Jack wraps his arms around Ellie’s body, and send a shiver down his spine when you lean in for only him to hear as you say, “I’d ask if you’ve put any more thought into what you want out of our bet, but I so have this in the bag.”

The bet.

Luke hasn’t thought about it since that day in the restaurant, if he’s honest, but he had known what he wanted then.

He’s hardly going to tell you, now, though. 

If he’s ever going to take you out on a date, he doesn’t really want to force your hand - not that he has a chance, he’s fallen so behind with this Jack and Ellie thing that it isn’t even funny.

He needs to up his game, if only for the fact that you’ll no doubt catch on to his lack of efforts, soon.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he taunts, because it’s what he does best, “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“And how long do you plan on keeping them up there?” You call him out so easily, tilting your head when his eyes meet yours, mischief highlighted by the sunshine that speckles in your irises. 

“Maybe I’m luring you into a false sense of security,” he shrugs, “Maybe I’m letting you do all the heavy lifting so I can swoop in when those weak arms get tired.” He pokes at your side, basking in the way you scowl like you pertain any sort of threat to him.

He has you figured out, by now. 

“I didn’t have you pegged as being lazy, Hughes.”

“You spend a lot of time thinking about me, huh?”

“You wish,” you scoff, shoving when he dares to get too close, and it’s when Luke is biting back a full-blown grin that Ellie comes back over. 

“This sun is crazy, I think I left the sunscreen in the locker room and Jack’s nose is going all red, would you come back with me?”

You smile sweetly at your best friend and agree, only glaring at Luke over Ellie’s shoulder when she’s distracted with saying her brief, temporary goodbyes to Jack, and once you’ve turned and made your way over to the cart, he lets his eyes linger on your figure as you retreat.

The soft sway of your ponytail, the expanse of smooth skin along your legs, he’s completely hypnotised, and he needs to pull himself together, he thinks.

He tries to regain focus as he and Jack work their way through the next couple of holes, caddying their clubs around without the cart, and chatting mindlessly until Jack sighs heavily, like he’s been waiting to bring something up.

“I want to take Ellie out on the boat tomorrow,” He states as Luke tees up, resting on his club as he squints against the sun to watch his little brother, “Just the two of us, so we can talk about stuff.”

“Sounds riveting,” the disinterest in Luke’s tone is amplified by the lack of attention he’s giving overall, looking out across the green and trying to measure his swing before he takes it. “Have fun.”

“I was thinking I’d need your help for it to work.”

“I’m not being your boat-butler again,” Luke scoffs, mind immediately going to all the times their parents would make Jack take Luke out with him and his friends, and all the times he was made to wait on his older brother hand and foot to make up for crashing his hang-outs.

“I’m not asking you to tag along,” Jack scoffs, “You third-wheeling would be the ultimate buzz-kill. I thought you could be of use elsewhere.”

“You’re making whatever it is sound so fun.” 

Luke takes his swing, driving the ball and watching it soar to his desired point with a hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Jack watches too, stepping to Luke’s side to measure how far from his own ball it lands.

“Nice,” he mutters appreciatively as the two of them load their clubs into their stand bags. “I need you to keep Regina George busy, distract her or something, she’s stuck to Ellie like glue, it’s beyond annoying.”

If only he knew, Luke thinks, a worry in the back of his mind about how his brother owes more to you than he even realises. 

“You worried she’s gonna make her see sense?”

Jack swats at his arm and rolls his eyes.

“I’m worried she’s gonna ruin the good vibes like she usually does and I won’t be able to bite my tongue from saying something and looking like the asshole.”

Distracting you isn’t the worst thing he could be doing with his time, Luke thinks. It’s not like he has to go all out, you’ll no doubt be hanging out around the house and the two of you can hang together. All he has to do is keep you off your phone. Shouldn’t be too hard. You’ve adapted pretty well to mimicking the guys when it comes to staying off theirs.

It ticks off the box of trying to fight for a scrap of your attention. With no one else around, you’ll have no choice but to entertain his company.

And it puts him in front of your little race - lending a helping hand to Jack’s plans to talk to Ellie is surely the same as getting them together. It’s all falling so perfectly into his lap. He isn’t being lazy.

But he can’t let Jack know that, so he heaves out a sigh and offers a slow shake of his head for dramatic effect. “Fine,” he groans, “But you owe me. Big time.”

You’re starting to find it harder and harder to pretend like you don’t want to be at the Lake House.

If you’re being honest, you don’t entirely know why you’re even trying to keep up pretences, but using your disinterest as armour has become like second nature over the years, and you’re hardly going to stop now.

Even if there are already so many little things about being there that are starting to wear you down.

Quiet, early mornings, for one - birds chirping just outside your open window, sun rays pouring in through sheer curtains that flow in the slight breeze, that light feeling that blows through your chest when you’re sat out on the deck behind the house with a fresh cup of coffee, looking out over the still lake and basking in the peace of it all.

And even when it’s not so peaceful, when the kitchen is full of bodies swerving around each other to try and throw together some sort of breakfast spread - pastries and fruit, bacon and eggs, various boxes of cereal on the counter. Quinn had even made a whole batch of pancakes one morning, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t come down every day since hoping to see him donning that same frilly apron that Cole had draped around his waist and working his magic with a pan. 

You’ve never really been a part of such a full house. You had been an only child for so long - and by the time your parents split, and it was just you and your mom, on the days she wasn’t already at work when you got up - and were so ingrained in your own routine in the morning that you think you might actually need the chaos to function better. The rush of bodies, the arguments over who drank the last of the juice, the bickering over who’s turn it is to do the next grocery run - it’s a kind of entertainment you haven’t been privy to in a long time. 

Being kind of disconnected from everything else isn’t as bad as you thought it would be, either. You’re not attached to your phone, checking socials to see what everyone else is doing, to see if your dad has sent any messages yet this summer, and you find yourself connecting a little more with the people around you and leaving your family stress on the back burner. You’re more focused on what’s in front of you, and your relationships with other people. With Ellie, with some of the guys in the house, with your friends at work, even.

And it’s nice to be closer to work too. You don’t have to rush around trying to make the bus - Luke has been keeping his word and driving you to the club most days, and where he can’t, either somebody else has offered, or you’ve just ridden one of the bikes in the garage that the boys said were free to use - the helmet hair is an easy fix when you have access to the locker rooms.

It’s an adjustment, for sure, getting used to being in a full house. Especially this one - with a constant revolving door of faces, friends of the brothers switching out week by week to come and stay, departing just as you’ve started getting to know them with a promise of dropping by again soon.

So far, you’re almost at double-digits for the names you’ve had to memorise. Some of them you were already familiar with, guys from Michigan who you already knew or knew of, but others were more Jack or Quinn’s friends that you’d never had the pleasure of meeting before now.

Cole Caufield being one of them. 

He had arrived a couple of days after you and Ellie moved yourselves in, closer to Jack than the other two brothers, you had noticed, and was going to be staying longer than any of the other visitors - having his own designated room in the house, similar to you girls.

You like Cole - he’s good fun, can take a joke unlike his supposed best friend, and has the kind of smile that almost gives you a buzz whenever it’s flashed your way. Your first few interactions with him were seemingly pleasant, despite Jack constantly in his ear with a hardened glare pointed your way and no doubt unsavoury words uttered. Cole would just shrug him off, laugh, meet your eyes and drop a wink your way - a gesture you’d usually squirm and cringe at, but Cole kind of pulls it off. 

He joins in when you chirp Luke, too - which, if your honest, is your main source of entertainment since arriving, so your interactions with him grow day by day.

You haven’t really spent any one-on-one time with Cole yet, though. You were hoping to, before he left to visit home for the weekend - for no other reason than to get the scoop on something you’d happened upon at work last week - and had planned on asking him to hang out on your day off. But with Cole now gone for a few days, Jack and Ellie off doing god knows what, Quinn and Luke working out wherever, you have no choice but to spend your free Sunday lounging around the house, trying to find something to suppress your growing boredom.

You start with your nails, painting them a summery orangey-red and doing your toes to match, then do your laundry, abiding by house rules that you rotate the loads between the machines, and fold out whoever’s clothes were last in the dryer and place them in the hamper on the side. 

You’re hoping you haven’t had to fold Jack’s underwear but you decide to live in blissful ignorance - trying to identify the load based on the rest of the clothing in there is impossible when they all share, so it kind of works in your favour. 

You FaceTime your mom for almost an hour, getting an update on what she’s been up to with work, and giving her updates on how your summer is going, trying to focus on your time at the club and Ellie so she doesn’t worry too much again that you’re spending your summer in a house filled with boys. 

And by the time Luke and Quinn come back from their workout, you’re in the lounge, 50 pages deep into a book you really couldn’t care less about, but there’s something in you that refuses to beg one of them for company, so you suffer in silence.

Even when Luke does join you, throwing himself down onto the opposite side of the couch you’re occupying and pushing your feet off his side like it’s his sole purpose just to annoy you.

“I was comfortable there, asshat,” you frown, lifting your feet back into their previous position and using one to give him a light kick to his thigh.

“Yeah, well, I hardly want your feet all up in my business while I’m trying to relax,” he sighs, sinking into the cushions with hands clasped behind his head, biceps flexing and tightening the arms of his t-shirt in a way that momentarily catches your eye. You’re thankful for his closed eyes, chewing at the inside of your cheek as you divert your attention back to the mundane words on the pages in front of you.

“And yet here you are when there are 2 other couches.”

“Yeah, well, I know how much you like to be near me.”

You try to ignore him, pulling your feet a little closer to your body and focusing back on the book, but it’s hard when Luke has such a presence. You feel the little looks he keeps sending your way like a physical touch, and the couch shifts with every slight movement he makes, so when he constantly shuffles, you start to think he wants your attention.

Of course he wants your attention. This is Luke Hughes.

“Are you just sitting down here to annoy me?”

He lights up, like he’s just been waiting for you to ask, and shuffles in his seat to face you, fully, bouncing in place like a puppy being teased with a tennis ball. 

“I’m actually trying to distract you, if you must know.”

“Bold of you to assume you have enough of my attention to be distracting in the first place,” you scoff, trying not to react to the way he smirks in your peripheral, the words in front of you all blurring together. If you were actually focused on them, you’d have lost your place, already.

“I think you pay more attention to me than you’d like to admit.”

“That’s some ego you’ve got on you, Hughes,” you narrow your eyes as you look above the edge of your book, “Is that what you spend that big NHL paycheque on, charisma classes? How to flirt for dummies?”

“Oh, is that what we’re doing? Flirting?”

Damn. You walked yourself right into that one. 

Sometimes biting back at Luke comes like second nature, words first, thoughts after - and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it that way. It’s easy, the back and forth, and you can’t really think of an instance with him where you’ve sat in a lingering, awkward silence. You’ve really grown to hate silence, lately.

“You wish.”

“You think I’m charismatic,” he teases in a sing-song voice, knocking at your knee and wiggling his eyebrows when you glare at him. 

“I think you’re an idiot.”

“You’re not gonna ask what I’m distracting you from?”

“I don’t really care,” you lie, eyes darting back down and diverting the attention he so desperately craves away from him.

“Jack wanted to take Ellie out on the boat.” He says, ignoring your attempts to ignore him - pushing your buttons like a full time job. Like an operator for your last nerve.

“Good for her.”

“Alone.”

“No shit.”

“To ask her out.”

“Whoop-de-doo.”

“Whoop-de-,” Luke straightens up, like a whack-a-mole with his head positioning itself over the top of your book, and you kind of wish you had one of those soft mallets right about now. It would be so satisfying to bonk at his head, you think. “What do you mean, whoop-de-doo, is this not what you agreed to be here for? To get them together?”

You scoff, flicking to the next page of the book in feigned disinterest. “He isn’t asking her out today.”

This is the exact something you had wanted to talk to Cole about - whispers in the staff lounge at work earlier in the week doing the rounds would imply otherwise, but your main source is kind of a gossip, and you’re not entirely sure of their reliability, despite the few degrees of separation to the subject at hand. 

Mutterings of Jack and Cole and their little country club connections. 

You can hardly ask Luke of all people if his brother is as much of a man-whore as everyone is making out. Cole was a safe bet - he’d probably just tell you straight up what they’re up to, wear his pride like a shining gold medal. He’s upfront about his promiscuity, at least. Luke is more protective. Of himself, of his family, you’re not entirely sure. There haven’t been as many whispers about him. 

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because he’s a spineless idiot,” you retort, eyes flicking up momentarily to take in his furrowed brow. “No offence,” comes out of nowhere, and you surprise yourself with the instinct to lessen the blow of your words for the first time in forever.

“None taken, he’s only my flesh and blood,” Luke huffs, “You’re just jealous I’m winning our bet.”

“Sure,” you drawl, eyes widening to emphasise the sarcasm as you make a point of angling your head to the next page, like you’ve taken a single word in for the past five minutes. “He’s been talking to one of the girls from work. There’s no way he’s doing that and asking Ellie out, unless he’s completely brain dead.”

And when you look back at Luke, that furrowed brow has shifted into a full blown frown, pouted lips and eyes cast down as if he’s trying to figure everything out in his head. 

It’s probably the pout that has you cushioning your words, once more.

“Again, no offence, I doubt it’s in your DNA.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m no bio student but I don’t think there’s a genetic marker for being a fuckboy.”

“No, about him talking to one of the girls at the club. He didn’t tell me that.”

Why does he have to sound like that? Let down and unsure, quieter than you think you’ve ever heard him. It’s like the tone he carries goes straight to your fingers, clasping the book closed without marking your page - because what business do you have carrying on that charade?

“Do you guys tell each other everything?” You ask as you throw the book until it lands on the coffee table with a gentle thud, shuffling until you’re sat against the arm of the couch with knees bent in front of you, giving him your undivided attention and feeling guilty that it might not be enough.

“I thought we did,” he scratches at the back of his head, nervously, “He literally told me yesterday he was taking her out to talk about stuff, why would he make a point of asking me to keep you busy if he’s not serious about asking her out?”

“You don’t want to hear my answer to a question about your brother not being serious.” 

“Who’s the girl?” He asks, ignoring your comment despite the slight ghost of a smile you see flash into the corner of his mouth. 

“Jessica, she works at the pro shop, apparently they’ve been texting all summer.”

You know for a fact that since you’ve started paying attention, you’ve seen Jack on his phone a lot for a guy who chirps you for your own screen-time, and who has enforced the house rule of no phones outside your room like a prison guard yells out no touching at visitation. So it sort of checks out. You’ve tried to sneak a peak, but he’s protective of his stuff like a yappy little dog with attachment issues at the best of times, so you haven’t really put too much effort into it.

“There were a few people talking about it in the lounge at work the other day,” you shrug, “One of the girls talking about it is Jess’ best friend, so not exactly from the horse’s mouth, but I don’t think she’d be spreading lies about her friend around like that.”

“Can you find out?”

“You ask that like I haven’t been trying.” That gets a full smile, a small chuckle that lifts his shoulder, even, “I was gonna grill Caufield about it but he’s gone. But I know you guys have plans when he gets back tomorrow, so if you want to take Cole I’ll hack away at the grape vine at the club?”

“Does this mean we’re teammates?” 

“No. It absolutely does not.”

Hacking away at the grapevine is really a lot more like plucking absentmindedly at an overgrown patch of grass when it comes to workplace gossip. 

By the end of your shift, you’re leaving the club with a fist clutched full of loose blades, fingers stained green from the amount of information people were willing to ‘fess up.

Liam who works behind the bar had overheard a conversation where Jack had mentioned Jessica, but could only give you useless tidbits, like how he had to stop by the shop for a new putter, and Jess had been the one to ring him up.

Hardly incriminating, but you had a feeling it would be a small piece of a way larger puzzle. That, and guys are notoriously useless at gossiping, there’s definitely more to that story than Liam could even comprehend in his tiny man brain.

Cassidy who works at the front desk had seen Jack and Jess talking in the main lobby last week, definitely flirting, she had said - with hair flips and giggles galore - and way too familiar to be new. 

Much better.

Paola who has the alternative shifts in the pro shop was more than willing to take up ten minutes of your time ranting how Jess’ work is never fully done when it comes to a handover, and she spends half her time on her phone. Kiran, who works the bev cart every Monday, said Jack is always one of the most charming in their golfing group, so it’s no surprise if he is exchanging texts with girls from the club. 

You get dirt from most corners of the place, and it leads you all the way back to your station, to reservations set for the restaurant, where tonight’s list - unfortunately a shift you’re not set to work, although you very much question the serendipity of that - has Jack’s name down at 7pm. A table for 2 in the back corner, shielded from prying eyes and intimate.

And if it weren’t for the fact you’ve already worked a full shift, you would consider staying just to get the full scoop. 

You know Ellie isn’t going to be the one sat across from him, she’s been sending you pictures all day of her various hauls for her quiet night in. New paints and pencils, a sketchpad, some candles - she has all intentions of working on her watercolour technique.

So it has to be for him and Jessica.

Imagine his face, you think, picturing wide, panicked eyes as you roam up to his table to take his order. He’d actually crap his pants. 

But, it’s another set of eyes that you picture when you start to enjoy the scheming a little too much. The sad, teary eyes of your best friend, when she finds out the guy she’s been hung up on for half her life, who she has all but convinced herself isn’t interested, and is - absurdly - ‘far too good’ for her - yeah, right - is dating other girls while taking her out on not-so-platonic boat dates only the day before. A boat date that she had come back to your room, flung herself onto her belly on the bed, and kicked her feet as she gushed all about it. 

So you make your way back to the house after a long day, and resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to, yet again, get all your information on Jack’s date second hand.

You primed Cara, your colleague in the restaurant, to keep an eye out, and she promised to send updates on her breaks, and you have been holed up in yours and Ellie’s shared bedroom trying to keep her busy when there is a persistent knock at the door, and a mop of soft, curly brown hair pokes in before his eyes meet yours.

“Hey, Luke!” Ellie chimes, cheery and all too blissfully unaware of the potentially horrific circumstances you’ve stumbled upon. “You need to borrow my conditioner again?”

You scoff from your position on the bed, watching a slight pink hue flush up Luke’s neck.

“What? No,” he denies, running a hand through his hair and seemingly frowning a little at the way it feels. “I’m going to the store, wondered if either of you needed anything?”

“Nah, thanks, we’re good,” Ellie smiles, attention diverting straight back to where she’s drawing in her sketchbook, missing the way Luke widens his eyes and tilts his head as if to encourage you to take him up on his offer.

“Can I come with?” You shuffle from your position on the bed, swinging your legs out from beneath you and over the side as Ellie looks back at you.

“Sorry, I didn’t realise you wanted something.”

“Someone’s got to show the poor guy what’s what on the haircare aisle, El.”

And you’re thankful that Ellie has settled herself in for the evening already by 6:45, showered, pyjamas on, otherwise she might have tried to tag along, too, just for something to do.

You swipe her phone before she can notice and hide it under your pillow before you leave, thinking it might reduce the risk of her getting bored and texting Jack, or, worse, checking his location.

A trip out gives you the chance for you and Luke to debrief each other on your findings of the day - or, as it turns out, just you, because Luke Hughes might be the worst information-gatherer on planet Earth.

Finding his life’s niche in hockey is fortunate, because he definitely wouldn’t cut it as an investigator.

“He just said he didn’t know anything,” Luke shrugs of his earlier encounter with Cole, and you try not to gape at him in disbelief as he fiddles with the screen in his BMW, scrolling through the interface in search of the nearest store. 

You swat his hand away with a scoff, typing in a destination, “And you believed him?”

“Was I not supposed to?”

“You’re about as useless as a chocolate teapot, Hughes. What is it with guys and gossip, are you all really that dumb?”

“That’s the address for the club,” he points out, ignoring your jibe as he starts driving.

“Well done, you can read.”

“Why?”

“Because, thankfully, one of us is a good detective.” You snark, “Jack’s there.”

“So?”

“He’s on a date.”

“No he isn’t,” Luke frowns, attention momentarily taken from the road as he looks over at you. “I’ve been with him all afternoon, he would have told me if he had a date, tonight.”

“Oh yeah? Where’d he say he was going when he left, earlier?”

He hadn’t been home when you got back from work, but that had been around an hour ago. You figured if he was sneaky enough to book into the restaurant when you’re not working, he’d have his wits about him to avoid you, entirely. Whenever the two of you cross paths, you can’t help but try get on his last nerve, and he’s hardly going to want to start his evening in a foul mood.

“To get his hair cut.”

Jesus Christ, you think, he’s so lucky he’s cute.

“You’re so clueless. He’s at the lounge with Jessica, the girl I told you about yesterday.”

“And what are we supposed to do about that?”

“We’re gonna supervise. And maybe interfere, if necessary.” 

You don’t really have a plan, but it seems like the right thing to at least get a look in as to what the hell Jack thinks he’s doing, especially if you’re going to carry on with this whole plan of getting him and Ellie together. If he’s seriously entertaining other girls while making out to Luke that he only has eyes for Ellie, your plans might have to change. You’re not sure if Luke will be on board with the new path you’re willing to take, but you’ll be happy to kill his brother on your own.

“Interfere?” Luke’s eyes are wide, but he keeps them on the road, fingers flexing against the wheel. “I just came out for chips to make nachos, not play spies!”

“Cara’s working tonight, she said she’d keep an eye on them for me. I bet if I cover her hosting shift on Friday she’d sabotage their date. We’d just have to sit back and watch.”

“Oh,” Luke’s brows furrow, as if it’s taking any consideration at all to mess with his brother. “You really are an evil genius.”

You try not to think too hard about who’s been spewing that rhetoric already in his ear, and instead you smile when he casts his eyes your way, proud and pleased. 

“Thank you.”

It takes another 15 minutes to get to the club, considering Luke’s best Driving Miss Daisy impression, so their date is already underway by the time Cara is ushering you to a booth in the far corner, where you can see Jack’s table, but he shouldn’t be able to see yours, and agreeing to play along.

“Can I get you guys any drinks?” She asks as she hands over two menus, and you’re too interested in trying to gauge the vibe at the other table while Luke looks over his.

“Two diet cokes, shaved ice, no lemon,” he says, and you can’t help but frown at the way the specificity of that order rolls so easily off his tongue. That’s your order.

“Any food?”

“Could we just get some nachos, please?” You ask, sliding your menu across the table without even looking, not wanting to give Luke too much of a chance to peruse his own out of fear you’ll be here all night. “And extra picante on the side.”

“Extra guac, too,” Luke adds as Cara scribbles the instructions on her notepad, “And some of those chicken tenders, and extra ranch. And maybe some fries. Yeah, chilli fries. And breadsticks.”

You level him with a glare, already proven right in your decision not to give him too much time to think about what he wanted. He’ll order every appetiser on the menu, if given half the chance. 

“Thanks, Cara, that’s everything.”

“Sure thing, should be around fifteen minutes. They only just ordered,” she points her pen back to Jack’s table, where Jess is leaning onto the table and Jack is leaning back in his seat - heavy on the distance but even heavier on the eye contact. That little shit.

“Does he have any allergies?” You lean onto your own table to ask Luke, quirking a brow up when his eyes darken in response, mischief swirling in his emerald irises.

“Absolutely not,” Cara interjects, “I’m doing this so you cover my job, not make me lose it.”

“Let me guess, he ordered the steak, medium-rare?” Luke asks, and she nods, hesitantly. “Char it.”

“Won’t he complain?”

“He’ll just grumble to himself about how tough it is. It’ll put him in a bad mood. That’s what we want, right?”

“Yeah,” you confirm, nodding your head to ease Cara’s worries despite what you really want is for Chef Michael to poison the cut, entirely. If Jack Hughes wants to play with your best friend’s heart, you’ll play with his gut. But you can settle for burnt meat. Luke can work some sort of magic with that, you think, convincing Jack of all people that any first date that resulted in him coming home all sour-puss and sulky should never result in a second. “Bad mood. Bingo.”

“Fine,” Cara grumbles, “But if he even thinks about asking for a manager, you’re covering my next 3 Fridays.”

She storms off to the kitchen, and you and Luke simultaneously sink into your seats, attention immediately diverted back to the table in the opposite corner of the room.

“We should have kept the menus,” Luke mutters from across the booth, “Could have hidden behind them.”

“What are we, children?” You snark, “You can’t think of any more creative ways to stay hidden?”

“I heard PDA makes people pretty uncomfortable,” he leans onto the table, dropping you a wink when you glance over out of the side of your eye, “We should make out to throw everyone off the scent.”

“In your dreams, Hughes.”

Luke sort of envies the charm you hold over people.

The way you can convince people to do your bidding with a mere flutter of your eyelashes or a flash of pearly teeth and a glimmer in your irises.

He has trouble, sometimes, skirting around his honesty or hiding his intentions - and he knows that’s not a bad thing, knows that being clear and truthful is an admirable trait, if anything - but the way you persuade others to bend to your whim with intricate white lies based on observations you’ve made or intel you’ve gathered is a praiseworthy level of genius. 

It had taken such minimal effort for you to get Cara on side, to convince her that being a little clumsy is hardly grounds for her termination, and spilling a little of Jack’s drink close to the edge of the table - close enough that it drips onto his pants and Luke can see the steams of frustration exuding from his brother’s skin from all the way on the other side of the restaurant - or bumping her hip on the edge of their table every time she passes are really just harmless irritations, not likely to cause actual complaint. 

You had used the mere tone of your voice to convince Liam from behind the bar to squeeze a little lime in Jack’s water, knowing just from observing him back at the house that he hates the taste, face curling in disgust at even the slightest hint of it, and Luke had watched your eyes gleam in delight every time Jack took a sip of his drink and tried not to spit it back out, seeking much needed reprieve to swallow down the world’s toughest steak cut. 

You’d even worked your magic on him, pouting your lips when the food had arrived at the table, and he had initially declined to share his chicken tenders with you - your grumblings at him ordering enough to feed the five thousand fresh in his memory, but so easily wiped away by the soft, sad look in your eyes, and your whining of, “But I didn’t realise how hungry I’d get. Plotting and scheming is hard work, Luke.”

You ended up eating half, but he could hardly complain - you were doing the heavy lifting out of the two of you.

He was sitting back and enjoying the show - enjoying your company, if he’s honest. Enjoying the way his gangly limbs would sometimes knock into yours under the table, enjoying the way he kept getting little nuggets of information out of you while you were distracted, sipping at your coke and making little comments about yourself, about your life, without even realising you’re doing it. 

And an unplanned, pseudo date ends up being the first time he thinks he’s had a glimpse at the real you.

The you who knows more about hockey than you’ve ever let on before, who comes back to his stories with contextual questions about the game, even has references to a few games of his back at Michigan, and keeps the conversation flowing despite your feigned disinterest, and a constant gaze cast his brother’s way.

That would usually drive him crazy.

He’s experienced it so often that he has come to expect it, people only entertaining his company to acquire the attention of his brothers, but that’s not what you’re doing. Not really.

You pay more attention to Luke than you’d ever let on.

You ask him about his time in Ostrava at the beginning of summer, even though he’s only mentioned being overseas once while you’ve been staying with him - an offhanded comment from Quinn at breakfast that you must have taken on. Ask him about all the food he tried while out there, when he mentions he doesn’t like picante, and you use it as a springboard to talk about what sort of spices he does like, or if he’s the type to try things or stick to what he knows. 

You ask him about being the youngest sibling, and it stems from an offhanded comment Luke had grumbled about always being the last to be clued in on stuff, about how Jack had probably confided in Quinn about his extracurricular activities at the club, and didn’t trust him enough to let him in on the fact he’s going out on dates. You ask if he usually figures things out himself before he’s told them, if that’s what makes him so good at observing and analysing stuff, and he hadn’t ever realised he was particularly good at those things before you brought it up. But then you reference a day in class one time, where he had picked up on something in a textbook that you never would have figured out in a million years, and his heart leaps at the praise you don’t even realise you’re giving him.

You sandwich your perceptions in your usual snark, but he doesn’t miss the slight curve of your lips anymore when he bites straight back, knowing now that there is some part of you that feels the nip of his teeth, that acknowledges his existence beyond him being a speck of inconvenience in your peripheral.

And he gets a little carried away in that acknowledgement - stops paying attention himself to what is happening on the other side of the room and tries to focus on what’s in front of him; the girl he pined after his entire college career, sat sharing nachos and pretending not to know him at a level you so clearly do.

You must get carried away, too, because neither of you notice Jack’s date wrapping up until Luke catches him hand his card over to Cara.

He’s lost count of how long the two of you have been at the club, now - way longer than it takes to get chips from the store, that’s for sure - and all he does know is that if Jack catches either of you two here, after a night of mishaps, bad food, spilled drinks and Cara’s incessant clumsiness, he’ll know who’s to blame. 

“We better get out of here before he sees us,” Luke sighs, not entirely wanting to wrap up his time with you but knowing he doesn’t really have a choice.

“I’ve just got to pick something up before we head back,” you reply, edging out of the booth at the same time Luke does, “I’ll meet you out front just give me two minutes?”

“Be quick,” he tells you before you scurry off, and he flags down Cara, who tells him you already put your bill on your worker tab. He tells her to switch it to his, and that he’ll drop by tomorrow to pay it off, promising to leave her a good tip for her stellar services for the evening. 

He waits where you asked him to, making sure to stick to the side of the entryway where he can duck for cover if his brother makes an appearance - but you show up first, skipping out from the staff lounge with a bag of tortilla chips in hand.

“Let’s go, Lukey boy!” He follows you out like a puppy on a leash, all the way to where his car is parked, almost bumping into you when you stop and turn without warning, stretching your hand out to him. “Give me your keys.”

“Are you crazy?” He snorts, “You’re not driving my car!”

“I know a shortcut!” You reason, stepping forward and making a grabby motion with your fingers, “We gotta beat Jack home, I just paid another server $20 to spill a whole drink on him before he leaves and he’s gonna be pissed. I want to see the meltdown back at the house and you drive like a nun!”

Luke doesn’t know why he gives in so easy - it could be the proximity, the way you’re so close you have to look up at him, eyes twinkling softly under the moonlight, voice carrying over to him like a siren song, or it could just be because he’s weak - but he hands his keys over with a roll of his eyes and climbs into the passenger side, sliding the seat back with a huff to accommodate his long legs and watching as you adjust the driver’s side, cringing at the way he’s gonna have to figure out exactly how he had it before.

You drive like a maniac, to the point where Luke has to screw his eyes shut as you use some back road, can hear the squelch of mud beneath his tires and squirms at the thought of having to take it to the car wash, tomorrow. 

But you make it back to the lake house much quicker than if he were driving, he’ll give you that. So quick that you feel comfortable enough to turn to him once you’ve pulled up, in no rush to unbuckle and get out to get inside before Jack gets home.

“Just so we’re clear, this is a point under my name. You’re not claiming tonight as a win.”

Luke chuckles, turning in his seat to face you, features illuminated by the dim overhead light that turns on when the engine switches off and a slight flush of exhilaration to your cheeks. There’s no pretending you haven’t enjoyed yourself, not tonight. “But the steak thing was my idea?”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be sat watching baseball and thinking he was getting a 3 hour haircut, you can’t seriously be trying to steal this from me, I thought you athletes had integrity!”

“You’re really keeping score?”

“You’re not?”

If Luke’s honest, he hasn’t really thought about your whole wager all night. He’s been too wrapped up in the idea that his brother had lied to him. Twice. And now his whole plan for the two of you all summer has potentially been messed up. But hearing you mention it, hearing you talk about it like it hasn’t been flushed down the toilet by his brother’s idiocy sparks something in him - excitement, anticipation. He doesn’t want to let this go.

“I actually think we made a good team back there,” he shrugs, eyes meeting yours to gauge your reaction to the thought of doing this together.

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you’re gonna lose,” you retort, eyes sparkling with those same sentiments he had just felt. 

“Probably,” he acquiesces, “Also ‘cause you kind of scare me a little after tonight, last thing I wanna do is go up against you when you have the power to turn half the country club against me.”

You smirk, and his eyes are drawn to the plush curve of your lips, watching them as they form around the softly spoken words, “God forbid you can’t go a round of golf without your caddy breaking down.”

“Exactly.” He mutters back, glad to see your gaze is still zeroed in on him when he meets it again. He can feel the thump thump thump of his pulse in his ears, and takes a deep breath before proposing, “Partners?”

He cocks a brow and holds his pinky out over the centre console, and you eye the digit, sceptically, narrowing your eyes into a glare before raising them to meet his. “Fine,” you grumble, then hook your little finger through his and tighten it to shake, a slight yelp of surprise filling the car when he tugs, your lax arm giving way until your knuckle touches his lips and he kisses it.

“Ew,” you whine, snatching your finger back as he fills the space himself with a hearty chuckle, wiping it on his hoody in disgust. “That’s gross!”

“No take backs,” he smiles, victorious, with his chest puffed out, primed for you to swat at with the flex of your hand, and the two of you are only pulled out of the moment by the sound of tyres pulling up on the gravel behind you, both of you stumbling to unbuckle yourselves and climb out of the car. 

Jack is exiting his own vehicle behind, and stomps down the driveway, shouldering past you until he realises who he has passed, turning back and looking at you with suspicion cast across his features. 

“Where have you twobeen?” Jack asks, glancing a curious eye between the two of you before meeting Luke’s gaze, levelling him with an inquisitive glare.

“We went to the store for chips,” Luke holds the bag up, the crinkle loud enough for Jack to hear, and he feels an insurgence rising within him, spurred on by the way his brother is looking at him like he’s the one who should be ashamed of his actions. “Nice haircut.”

Jack runs a hand through his hair, surprise crossing his features in a brief flash at the call out, like he had never even expected Luke to notice his hair looks no different to the last time he saw him mere hours ago, like he would never even need to question his alibi.

“Oh, yeah, I got the day wrong. Went out for dinner instead.”

“On your own?” You ask from beside him, your presence giving Luke the kind of back up he very much needs right now, a new target for Jack’s narrowed eyes that takes the heat off of him a little, lessens the burden of lying to his brother - despite Jack being the one who started it, it doesn’t make Luke feel any less bad, doesn’t quell the need to word vomit and admit to all the ludicrous things he had done to ruin Jack’s night. “You end up having a little accident there, bud?”

Luke tries not to outwardly laugh as his attention is diverted to the wet patch that still soaks up the front of Jack’s pants, lips quivering as he presses them together, oblivious to the steam pouring out of his brother’s ears as he immediately gets riled up. 

“One of your esteemed colleagues at the club apparently lacks hand eye co-ordination. Plus, some of us like our own company,” Jack scoffs, “Some of us can go an evening without the need to annoy anybody else.”

“It’s not news to me that you’re in love with yourself, dude,” you retort back, entirely unbothered by his jibes. “Bet you’ve got all sorts of riveting thoughts swirling around that ginormous head of yours, must keep you busy for hours on end.”

“At least I have thoughts, at least I’m not some airheaded-,”

“Hey,” Luke’s tone is authoritative when he calls out, stern and demanding, “Cut it out, Jack.”

“She started it!”

“She asked you a question,” Luke frowns, disappointed with how quick his brother had taken to escalating the situation, all in an attempt to deflect the attention from his own deception. He knows you don’t need him to protect you from Jack’s sharp tongue, knows you can very much defend yourself, but he needs to vent his frustrations, somehow, without causing a bust up on the driveway. “You could have just give her a straight answer without biting her head off.”

He feels like you’re a little closer, all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know it’s the slight brush of your arm against his or if it’s something else, something less tangible - but it warms him, all the same. Steadies the static thump of his heart in his chest at the thought of starting an argument with his brother out of nowhere. 

“Whatever,” Jack rolls his eyes, “I’m going to bed.”

And as Jack turns, Luke sees your lips part, ready to send him off with the last word until a large hand clamps itself over your mouth, and your wide eyes meet his over the sides of his fingers.

He’s not sure why he did it, why he all of a sudden feels comfortable enough to cross the boundaries of purposeful touch, but he doesn’t entirely regret it.

Plush lips press mid-word against his palm, and your skin is soft, cheeks warming ever so slightly beneath his hand.

“You gotta let him go, there’s no use fighting with him tonight, it’s better to drag it out. Didn’t think I’d have to teach you about the beauty of the long game,” he says, voice low as he watches his brother retreat to the house, waiting until he’s safe inside to retract his hand. “Not like this, anyway.”

“Your brother’s an asshole,” you grumble, “Full offence.”

“No arguments from me,” Luke concedes, holding his hands as if surrendering to the fact, himself. “What are you gonna tell Ellie?”

“Nothing.” You sigh, stepping a little down the drive and toward the house before turning back to him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, partner.”

There have only been a handful of times in your life you’ve ever been thankful for work coinciding with huge plans, but when the group had decided that they wanted to go see Zach Bryan play Ford Field, you had thanked your lucky stars you had been put down to work a full shift at the restaurant and wouldn’t be able to go.

Not only for the fact that he isn’t really your thing, but for the fact that you’re finally getting a full evening to yourself.

So far, in your time at the house, most evenings have been spent with everyone else - group dinners, game nights, movie nights, even a couple of girls nights with just you and Ellie scattered in there, but nothing on your own, yet. 

You can’t wait. And with an empty house, you have a full pamper night planned. You’ve been stocking up odd bits on your trips to the store over the past couple of weeks - sheet masks, aromatherapy candles, you’ve even picked up some flower petals from the spa at the club, in the hopes that you might even treat yourself to a relaxing soak in the bathtub. You can play whatever music you want, make whatever food you want, sit wherever you want in the house, out on the deck, overlooking the lake with a book in hand and no chirpy voices in your ear all night.

You can’t wait.

The only downside is not having a ride home, but you haven’t finished too late. The sun will still be up for a couple of hours, and a walk in the simmering heat back to the house doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

Your feet carry you with ease down the back roads, and you even make the journey without your headphones on, taking in the scenery, the blissful peace of your surroundings, so lost in the tranquility of it all that the sight of Luke washing his car on the drive when you get home dampens your mood as quick as a torrential downpour of rain, flash floods coursing through your evening and wrecking your plans entirely. 

“What the hell are you doing?” You can’t help the bite in your tone as you approach, sneakers crunching against the gravel as Luke pauses the hose, looks over at you with the sun in his eyes, and you have to remind yourself he’s just ruined the one night you have for yourself before you get distracted by the fact that he’s shirtless.

“Washing my car?” he calls back, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Detroit right now?”

Luke shrugs, and you have to will your eyeballs not to move any lower than his neck to watch his shoulders lift and drop, lest you get too caught up in the broad expanse of his chest and do something ridiculous like drool.

“Wasn’t feeling it.”

“You weren’t feeling a concert you guys haven’t shut up about for weeks, but you were feeling washing your car?”

He’s dead. When he’s finished with his car and he retreats to his room, you’re gonna smother him with a pillow and discard of his body in the lake. You’re not even gonna let him shower, first. That’s what the lake’s for.

He’s crapping all over your plans because he wasn’t feeling it?

“It needs cleaning,” he shrugs again, and you swear you’re gonna jump in and run him over with the damn thing, “In fact, you really should be helping me.”

There’s a small part of you that feels like the thoughts of violence are worryingly aggressive, but then a larger part of you realises he must have a death wish.

“How’d you get to that conclusion?”

“You’re the one who drove us through a swamp,” he scoffs, a pointed hand flung toward the body of his car, where the sides are lined with a thick layer of dried dirt from the other night, “You get it dirty, you clean it up.”

“As much as I would absolutely love to fulfil your pervy car wash fantasy, I have much better things I could be doing with my time.”

Or you did, until Luke rained all over your parade of solitude.

“Like what?”

“Literally anything but this.” You gesture at the show he’s putting on. The suds dripping from the roof of the car, the hose in his hand, the buckets scattered around the perimeter. “I need to shower, I just walked from the club and I-,”

A death wish might actually be an understatement.

Luke wants you to murder him in the most gruesome, horrific way you could possibly muster - he has to, because there’s no other explanation for why he’d turn the hose on, point it straight at you, and drench the front of you, entirely. 

You can feel the fabric of your t-shirt dampening and sticking to your chest, and you scrunch your eyes shut to stop droplets of water slipping into them, thankful that when they open again, his own are looking back at you, and not any lower.

You’d really have a reason to kill him, then. 

“You did not just do that.” You growl, glaring back at him with a clenched jaw as the fucker beams back at you, pressing the trigger once more in a short burst that fires straight at your chest, again.

“What, that?”

“You’re so dead.”

You drop your bag and launch for him, aiming to take the hose from his grip, but he fires it again out of sheer panic, the water spouting out from between your splayed fingers, cold and pressured, and it soaks the both of you, raining down as you grapple for the head and Luke remains unrelenting.

There are squeals and yelps called out into the misty air between the two of you, and you get to a point you can’t tell what sounds are coming from who, but you manage to wrestle the hose from his grip and point it straight at him as he jets away with a laugh that rumbles straight from his belly.

It’s the kind of laugh that elicits another, and you don’t realise until he’s circling back to you that the laughter is coming from you - giggling, even, as the two of you engage in a water fight like misbehaving children - and it isn’t long until all aggressive thoughts wash away with the suds that slip to the gravel, forgetting why you were even annoyed in the first place.

It shouldn’t be as fun as it is, but after the long day at work, and the tiring walk back, letting your guard down and engaging it a little mindless chaos seems to wake you up a little.

Your childish game gets Luke what he wanted, anyway, the two of you working together to clean his car when you realise he’s only running in front of all the parts that actually need hosing off and relying on you having bad aim to get the job done, and you figure getting your hands a little dirty is harmless when you’re already soaked through and in dire need of a shower.

And your pamper-plans of a bubble bath and self-care don’t entirely come to fruition, but Luke promises to make up for his petulance by ordering pizza and sticking a movie on, so you bite your tongue to refrain from voicing your initial complaints, and decide to just go with the flow, for once - he hasn’t exactly led you astray, yet.  

You take a little longer in the shower than normal, with no one around to complain about hogging the bathroom or worry about them barging in unannounced, and you suppose that’s a small victory - one little luxury you get to cling to as you bask in the steam, letting all the tension slip from your aching muscles after being on your feet all day.

And once you’re out, hair dried just enough with a towel that it isn’t going to drip or soak your t-shirt, and you’re dressed in your pyjamas, you make your way downstairs, where Luke has already set up a plethora of snacks in the living room.

Nachos, popcorn, candy and drinks scattered across the coffee table as he relaxes on the couch, hair extra curly after his shower and an old Michigan t-shirt stretched tight across his now much-broader chest. 

“Thought I’d wait for you to pick a movie,” he chimes up from where he’s sat, gesturing with a lazy point to the wall of blu-rays beside the TV. 

“Did Netflix never make it to the Hughes household?” You scoff in disbelief as you take them all in properly for the first time. You’d seen them in your peripheral when you’d been hanging out down here, before, but actually looking at them up close, reading all the titles, seeing the sheer volume of how many there are, it kind of surprises you.

“We can look on Netflix if you want. They always take stuff off, though.”

You know. All your favourite movies get taken off of streaming, and you only ever find out about it when you’re really in the mood to watch them. As soon as you realise the wall is alphabetised, you know exactly where to look.

“That’s alright,” you shrug, stepping to the side as you track backwards, through M, L, K and J. “You guys are pretty analogue, I’ve noticed.”

“What do you mean?”

“The board games, the DVDs, the whole no phones around the house thing.”

“No phones around the house is common courtesy,” he chuckles, “But I guess we’re a little weird about the other stuff.”

“It’s pretty cool,” you shrug, spotting the DVD you want and sliding it out to assess the case. “It’s old school. Probably better for the brain. My little brothers can’t really function without an iPad and they’re 5, it’s freaky, like they’re haunted by the capitalist ghost of Steve Jobs or something.”

“I didn’t know you had brothers,” Luke frowns where you almost expect him to laugh, and you spin on your heel to face him. He has this look about him like he should have known that - like the two of you have ever conversed in anything other than sarcastic quips and scrunched up faces, or whatever attempts at flirting have been on his part. 

“Technically they’re half brothers,” you shrug, “They live out in Philly with my dad and step mom, I don’t really get to see them much.”

“Didn’t know you were from Philly, either.”

“I’m not, my dad moved out there when him and my mom got divorced.”

It’s not something you really love talking about. 

The few times you’ve tried, you’ve been shot down, patronising tones scoffing at how your biggest trauma is the separation of your parents, as if your whole world didn’t crumble down with the demise of their relationship, the demise of life as you knew and very dearly loved it.

“You don’t see him even in the summer?”

“Him and his family are on vacation in Europe for 6 weeks. England, France, Spain, Germany, the boys are into soccer so they’ll be out there until the Euros.”

You don’t miss the way Luke’s face scrunches at how you call them his family, and you’re not sure you’re ready for him to start pitying you, so you throw the DVD case toward him before you can second guess your choice.

Interstellar. 

You hope he doesn’t pick up on why it might be one of your favourites. Especially not considering the topic of the conversation at hand. Something about the crippling regret Cooper has for leaving Murph behind plucks harmoniously at some unidentifiable strings deep within you, but you’re hardly about to admit that to Luke, of all people.

“I love this movie,” he smiles, almost surprised, as if he expected you to throw The Notebook his way. Maybe next time - he’d probably love that movie, too, if he gave it a chance. 

“Me too. I love space movies.”

“Like Space Jam?” He asks as he pushes himself up, going toward the TV to set up the movie with the DVD in one hand and the remote control in the other. 

“No, like movies about Space,” you say, throwing yourself down onto the same couch he just vacated and tucking your feet beneath you to get comfortable. “Although I guess Space Jam would technically fit into that bracket.”

“I didn’t realise that was a genre,” he chuckles.

“Not the scary ones, though, I don’t wanna be freaked out by space.”

“Is that like a thing? You just like any movie set in space?”

“I like anything about space, period. Movies, documentaries, books. Thinking about it makes me feel really insignificant.”

“Insignificant? Is that not a bad thing?” He asks as he makes his way back, settling into his side and angling his body toward yours.

“Do you ever think about how big the universe is, Hughes? It’s humongous! If I ever feel anxious or panicky I think about just how big it is and how I’m not even a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. If I’m so tiny, how big can my problems actually be?”

“I guess that makes sense,” he seems to mull it over in his head, the thought of him even considering it and not making you feel stupid warms your chest - makes you forget just how much of yourself you’ve shared with him in the last couple of minutes alone, makes you worry less that you’re sharing too much. “I think I might be the opposite, though. Probably the youngest brother in me, I only feel better if I feel bigger.”

You think that might be why he’s always trying to one up you - sassy comments and inappropriate jokes galore. Not that you mind any of it, not really.

“What about you? What movies do you like?”

“You’re gonna be so shocked.”

“Sports movies?”

“Look at you, knowing me like the back of your hand.” He coos, nudging at your knee with his hand. “I’ll watch anything, though. We should take it in turns, whenever it’s just us,” he says like the thought of spending time alone with you has only just crossed his mind. “Picking a movie to show each other.”

You think there’s a lot of yourself in the media you consume. The movies you watch, the music you listen to, and sharing those things with Luke feels like giving him the only other key to a high security vault. It’s something you’ve avoided so far - letting him play his songs in the car, avoiding making any sort of pick in the group movie nights. It’s daunting, and it’s a lot of pressure, and so you don’t know why you agree with so much ease - a shrug, and a casual muttering of, “Sure, why not?”

The pieces of your dynamic slowly start to slot together, and you start to realise why you’ve been entertaining his company so often, lately. Why your mood so quickly de-escalated itself, earlier. Why you’ve found yourself curled up on the same couch as him, instead of literally anywhere else in the house, doing anything other than this. Why you’re so quick to agree to letting him access all these unseen parts of you.

And why you think he might be able to read your mind, after he asks, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Only if I get to ask one back.”

“What were you gonna do tonight, if you were on your own?”

Thank God, you think, your heart jumping at the thought of anything else he could have asked.

“I was gonna do a sheet mask and steal the bottle of wine Quinn stashed behind the laundry detergent.” You admit with a nonchalant shrug, the plans you had been looking forward to all day seeming mundane in comparison to this. “Why’d you stay behind? You love Zach Bryan.”

“I love sheet masks and stolen wine, too.”

Your lips curve up before you get the chance to huff at his non-answer, and you feel your throat go a little dry at the way his curve, too - the way his green eyes darken when they meet yours, and you feel like he’s looking straight through you.

It’s around half way through the movie that you realise how much you’re enjoying yourself - when you look over at Luke, and the light from the screen is still bouncing off the sticky white sheet plastered to his face, only just able to make out his round eyes through the little slit in the fabric. 

You sip at your wine to hide your smile, and turn your attention back to the TV until Luke nudges at your feet with his, and your eyes meet over the tops of your bent knees. 

“You tell anyone I did this, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Your laugh ripples through every inch of your upper body, rumbling up from your belly and manifesting itself in shaking shoulders, your smile wide and your sheet mask slipping out of place. “You can’t threaten me with a good time, Hughes.”

You spend the rest of the night trying not to think about how there might just be a tiny door in your heart, eking it’s way open for him to squeeze his gangly limbs into.

>PART TWO<

another a/n: I don't want to put a timeframe on when the next part will be posted bc as soon as I do that, my brain will revolt and it won't happen, but I'd love to know your thoughts in the meantime!!! I have a lot of the rest actually written, and what I don't have written, I have drafted, so it shouldn't be too long but!!! like I said no timeframe!! I've had a lot of fun with this dynamic, and hearing any opinions would mean a lot to me!!

this was my first time writing reader insert if you saw any instances of she/her where they shouldn't be, no you didn’t. I tried as best as I could to avoid using Y/N because it takes me out of it I don’t even remember if I put it anywhere but sometimes it's hard to get around I did my best ok!!!

[jobean12-blog]

Easy to Fall

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x female reader

Word Count: 2.3K

Summary: You and Bucky have been dating for a while but the tension is building and you both feel you’re ready for the next step.

Author’s Note: Love a shy and unsure Bucky! Especially when he finds his way and is just 🫠🤭and special thanks to Sam for his encouragement hehe 😏thank you all for reading! Much love always❤️❤️❤️ thank you lovely Daisy @firefly-graphics for the divider🥰

Warnings: soft sweetness, fluff, fun, flirting, tension, lots of kisses, fingering, some oral (f rec), p in v, smut

“Maybe you should have a drink or somethin’ before she comes over?”

At Sam’s sincere but pointless suggestion Bucky’s eyes lift from his phone and he just stares wide eyed.

“I wish that would help,” he says. “Maybe I should just cancel.”

“Buck,” Sam says, stepping around the kitchen island. “Don’t. You know you’ll kick yourself if you do that. You really like this girl. And it’s not the first time you’re hanging out. Why are you so nervous this time around?”

“That’s exactly it though. I really like this girl…”

Sam’s eyebrows meet his hairline. “And?”

“I’m gonna fuck it up. Things are good…really good and I think we’re ready…”

Bucky’s words trail off and Sam remains silent, expression still unsure.

“Aw Wilson come on,” Bucky says with exasperation.

At Sam’s continued silence Bucky turns spins around and runs a hand through his hair.

“We haven’t…but I think…”

When Bucky turns to face Sam again the realization finally hits. “Oh. OH!” Sam exclaims.

Bucky let’s out a defeated sigh.

Sam waves him off. “You won’t fuck it up. Just relax and have fun. Enjoy each other. Let things happen…organically.”

Now Bucky laughs. “Organically or…?”

“You said it. Not me,” Sam chuckles with his hands up in defense.

After a beat of silence and unspoken camaraderie Bucky smiles.

“She’ll be here in half an hour. Get out.”

“And there’s the Barnes I know!” Sam grins as he grabs his jacket. “Good luck!”

“Want something to drink doll?” Bucky calls out over his shoulder as you take off your shoes and drop your bag to the floor.

“I’ve got beer, water…juice boxes…”

You come up behind him in the kitchen, pressing yourself to his back and looking under his arm into the fridge.

“You have…juice boxes?”

He shrugs, leaning into you, discreetly inhaling a whiff of your scent, and closing his eyes.

“Buck? Juice boxes?”

He blinks, looking back down into the fridge and focusing on the cold air hitting his face.

“I took Mrs. Adams food shopping last night and she always insists on getting me snacks.”

“You have the nicest neighbors! Mrs. Adams is my favorite of the old ladies in your building!”

“We can invite her to our wedding then,” he teases.

You laugh and lean up to kiss his cheek. “One juice box please.”

“She also got me Oreos, ice cream and tried to get me to buy condoms when I told her I had a hot date with you.”

“Does she think you were going to get lucky tonight?”

“She likes me to be prepared,” he says lightly.

“And well stocked on snacks apparently,” you giggle.

He grabs the juice boxes and Oreos and points to the living room.

“Me. You. A scary movie.”

“I barely got through the last one,” you sigh defeatedly.

“But you did,” he says. “And remember, you can hide in my hoodie again.”

“Probably the best idea,” you say.

You sit down next to each other, arms and thighs touching, the feel burning through your clothes.

The crinkle of your straw wrapper crackles in the air and Bucky turns to you, watching as you cheekily puncture the top of the box and slide the straw into the side of your mouth.

“I love fruit punch.”

He keeps watching, his gaze fixated on your lips. Finally, he looks away from your mouth and back to the television.

“I like them all,” he says. “Sugar.”

He starts the movie, and you settle back against the couch cushions, grabbing for an Oreo. The beginning scene lights up the screen and the suspense builds almost immediately. Something jumps out and Bucky flinches and fumbles his Oreo.

“You okay there, Barnes?” you ask with a smirk. “Even I knew that was coming.”

“My mind was occupied. Lost my focus.”

You shake your head and look back at the screen. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably. But I’m not tellin’ ya.”

The movie continues and you inch closer to him until you’re resting under his arm and against his chest. Your face is half hidden in his hoodie and you’ve got a death grip on his wrist, holding it to keep his hand in front of your eyes.

“You could use your own hand you know,” he jokes.

“But yours is so much bigger!” you whine and tense when you hear the creepy music come to a crescendo.

Before anything jumps out in the movie Bucky sneakily moves his free hand toward you then shouts and pokes you in the side.

You scream and jump up.

“OH MY GOD! You did not just do that!!!

He smiles sweetly, eyes bright and full of mischief.

You reach for your empty juice box and hurl it at his face. Your eyes widen when he deftly catches it and throws it right back at you, hitting you squarely in the chest.

A beat of silence and stillness passes before you lunge for him, shoving him back on the couch before lifting a pillow and smacking him in the face with it.

Your unrestrained laughter hits him right in the chest, and he’s unprepared for your assault, cough-laughing through a flurry of your fingers digging down and tickling roughly.

He bucks up beneath you, growing more aware of your precarious arrangement of limbs, and advances toward you on the couch, swatting at your hands, and darting his fingers between your arms to tickle your ribs.

With his other hand he grabs a pillow from behind you and uses it to hit you right in the face. You shove at him hard, sending him right off the couch and onto the floor, where you dive on top of him, pinning him down, wrestling in earnest.

You’re laughing and yelling and one of you knocks the containers of Oreos onto the floor and it crumbles under you leg when he rolls you over to hover above, getting the upper hand.

He finds the place on your waist that, when prodded with a long finger, makes you cry out in hysterics.

His fingers dance up your sides and under your shirt, the feel of your warm skin only egging him on until his fingertips brush the lace edge of your bra.

At the same time, you both seem to realize that he’s over you, lying completely on top of you, situated between your legs with his hand up your shirt and, in unison, you both freeze.

You have two tight fistfuls of his shirt in your hands and your eyes travel the slow path from where his hand is hidden up to his face.

Your breath catches and you let your legs slide up over his hips. Your body gives beneath his and he’s suddenly intensely aware of the soft warmth between your legs and the press of your curves against him.

“Doll?” he murmurs.

You suck your bottom lip into your mouth to stop from smiling.

He presses forward, not much but just enough to feel more. Your lips part and you watch a pink blush creep up his neck and onto his cheeks.

“Bucky.”

“Fuck,” he growls, bending and pressing his mouth to your neck as he starts to rock against you.

He nearly comes at the sound you make, soft and restrained.

“Kissing you again is all I could think about since our last date,” he admits as his lips trail along your neck.

“Just kissing?” you ask, nearly breathless.

He smirks and kisses you again. A kiss you feel from the place where you lips meet to the tips of your curling toes.

When he pulls away and sits up you mourn the loss of him, but then he falls back down onto the couch and takes you with him so you’re straddling his lap.

His hand slips between your legs to rub you over your leggings, going slow enough that he can check in with you, his expression soft but his eyes heated.

You tilt your head and brush your lips to his, moaning when he rubs small circles right where you need it.

“I…” he starts, his breathing heavy as he slowly slips his fingers inside your pants.

“Please Bucky.”

It’s all he needs to hear as his fingers stop teasing and dip between your legs, sliding into your panties to where you’re ready and wet.

He takes your hand and holds it over his cock, and rocks into your palm. You can see the shape of him beneath the denim of his jeans, long and pressed against his stomach.

A wave of heat flashes beneath your skin and you grab for the bottom of his shirt, lifting it up and over his head. His mouth meets yours and he drags his teeth over your bottom lip.

His fingers push deeper, and you arch into him, his satisfied hiss swallowed by your mouth. Your hands fall to his jeans, and you work open the button and pull down the zipper, reaching in and wrapping your hand around him.

“Oh god.”

He slumps against the back of the couch and watches, his darkened blue eyes dragging from where you’re touching him to where he’s touching you.

His cock is perfect, just like the rest of him.

“Pants off,” you breathe out. “Please.”

You lift up and wait while he shoves them down his thighs. Before you can sit on his lap again he grabs your hips and pins you in place in front of him, hooking his thumbs into the fabric at your waist and slowly peeling it down your legs.

“Fuck baby doll. Look at you.”

Everything in you catches fire when his fingers slide up the inside of your thigh and he sucks in a breath-you’re skin is wet and glistening-and looks at you like you’re a meal and he’s deciding what to eat first.

He makes a guttural sound, and it vibrates down to your bones when his eyes meet yours. His fingers slide over you, dipping inside and teasing. His other hand smooths along the curve of your ass and he pulls you closer, kissing your stomach and then lower, where he licks softly, his nose a soft brush against your skin.

Your hands fall to his hair, and you tug hard, eliciting a moan from the back of his throat. Your stomach begins to tighten, and you whisper his name, giving his head a light push.

“I want to come with you inside me,” you purr.

He licks his lips and reluctantly leans back against the couch, gripping his cock and calling you closer with a crook of finger then guides you over his lap again.

He leans in and tugs off your shirt, kissing along your collarbone and down to your breasts, teasing your nipple with his teeth and moaning around it.

You sink down slowly, and he sits back against the cushions to watch where he’s disappearing inside you.

“Doll.”

You move over him, slowly.

“Fuck you look incredible.”

His hands settle on your waist, gripping softly but strong enough to keep the rhythm. He kisses you like he still can’t believe he’s doing it, and you adjust the position of your knees and you both gasp as you bottom out, your ass coming to rest on his thighs.

“Oh Bucky,” you moan, pressing your face to his neck while you catch your breath.

His palms smooth along the curve of your spine and down to your waist and he presses his fingers into your hips, rocking you faster then slow again.

“I want you in my bed,” he says through a grunt. “I want to spread you out under me. I want to kiss and feel every inch of you.”

He sits up, nips at your neck before sucking gently. You kiss for what feels like forever and your movements narrow into small rocks forward and back, just feeling him inside you. You try to keep it together when he reaches down, and his thumb starts moving in practiced circles over your clit.

Your hands dig into his hair, steering his mouth back to your breasts and watching as he captures your nipple with his tongue. He bares his teeth, sliding them over the sensitive flesh and you cry out, feeling him twitch inside you.

The tightening in your belly builds and he’s watching you, watching the way you move together and the place where your bodies connect. You follow his gaze and look down, the way the muscles in his stomach clench, where the beads of sweat have collected in the dip where his dog tags lay. You circle your hips, and he groans, tightening his grip where he holds you.

“Fuck baby. Do that again.”

You do, moving over him and using the back of the couch for leverage. He throws his head back.

“I’m so…I’m…” he says between gasps of air.

His fingers return to your clit with renewed enthusiasm and with each rock of your hips and each thrust of his the cord around your spine tightens until his name is spilling from your parted lips.

He presses up into you, hard and fast and over and over until he’s coming with a long, helpless groan against your shoulder.

With such softness it steals your breath, he reaches up and cups the back of your neck, bringing your lips to his and whispering, “stay with me tonight.”

[fictionalmenxyn]

🝊𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐫🝊

Pairing: cop!rafe x reader

Warnings: language and suggestive

🝊🝊🝊

You were on your way home, yes, you may have been going a few numbers over the limit. It was a 55 and you were going 60, not too bad. But you saw the famous red and blue lights flash along with the ‘woop woop’ of the sirens.

You mentally smacked yourself, also rolling your eyes at the slight fact the cop was being over dramatic. You indicated and pulled over.

You roll down your window, reaching over into the glove box grabbing your license and registration. You put them in your lap as you waited for the officer to walk over.

You see the figure, through the side mirror walking over. You double check over the things in your lap. The officer spoke “hey sweetheart”

You head whipped to the side to look out the window. Seeing Rafe “Rafe?! The fuck are you doing pulling me over??” He grinned. His thumbs tucked into his tactical vest “someone was goin’ over the limit, baby.” You roll your eyes “you do the exact same and you’re a cop” he chuckled “I know, I just saw your plate and wanted to see you, while I’m on shift.” You nodded “touché… so officer? Any big things happen today??”

He leans down so he can talk to you better “hmm not much, few speeding, one dui… you know, the usual…” you nod. “And do officers take a kiss as an apology for going over five above the limit?” He smirked “hmm for now, yeah, officer Cameron would take that as a temporary apology…” you rolled your eyes. You lean out of the window and give him a peck. “Not good enough, sweet girl.” “What?!” “You heard…” “babe…” Rafe grinned “not babe, its officer, right now”

You rolled your eyes for what felt like the hundredth time. “Alright, officer…” you give him and another kiss. This time a proper and longer one. He pulled away “thank you” he stood straight again. He glanced to the road then to you. His thumbs still tucked into the armpit of the tactical vest. “You’re lucky you’re cute, I’m lettin’ ya off this time, no ticket for you pretty girl…” you look up at him. “Bullshit, you just don’t wanna do the paperwork.” You grin as he chuckles and shake his head “I like your logic, babe…” you smile “thank you…”

“That doesn’t mean you’re getting away with it when I get home…” “gonna need to teach you a lesson on how you shouldn’t sass the officer…I saw the eye rolls, can’t hide it from me, sweetheart” you blush slightly. “You can’t hide that blushin’ either…”

A voice over the radio speaks, Rafe looks back to you. Quickly leaning down and pressing two quick kisses to your soft lips. “Gotta go, see you later, I love you” you smiled “I love you too, go get those bad guys.” You smirk as he playfully rolled his eyes.

As he walks away, he calls out “don’t forget I’m not done with you, baby!” You chuckle as you start your car up again.

You watch as he drives off, sirens and lights beaming. He speeds off, going to god knows what incident. You smile, you loved seeing him all geared up and in uniform. It did things to you, especially when he wore it while getting you ready for some fun. Or when he lets you wear his training clothes. Like his ‘OBX PD’ training tee. Or the sweatpants, he liked you lost in the shorts though.

You couldn’t wait for him to get home to you. If it wasn’t illegal to actually speed. You’d do it more just for him to pull you over. The half-assed stern look he’d give you for going over just a little bit. Or when the one time you did a quick break at an empty junction. You only did a quick stop at the ‘stop’ sign because no one was there. So you didn’t think you needed to stop and wait a few seconds. He taught you a good lesson on that one…

You were already in bed, wearing only his PD tee when he got home. Dropping his bags to the floor and taking off his heavy tactical vest. Kicking his boots off as he crawled into bed and on top of you.

He kissed you like he hasn’t seen you in weeks. Your tongues clashing. He moves down your jaw and marks up your neck. Then he moves up your neck and to your ear. He whispers “I still haven’t taught you a lesson about speeding have I?” You gasp as his knee goes between your legs. He smirked “words” “no, officer…” he smirked “you look so good in my tee baby..” he smashes his lips against yours.

And the night was only just beginning…

🝊🝊🝊

[sttoru]

“toji, dear, you can’t just hold megumi like that.”

you left your husband and (almost) one year old son alone to go to the kitchen and returned a second later, only to find toji holding your child like he was holding onto some grocery bag. you knew he was not the best with kids.

“why not? kid seems pretty happy ‘bout it.” toji answers nonchalantly while looking down at the baby, “look at ‘m.”

your eyes move to focus on megumi, who’s limbs were kicking around in the air—the back of his romper being held by toji’s rough hand. your son seemed fine; no cries or protests. in fact, he was happily sucking on his pacifier and those little blue orbs of his were glimmering like he was having the time of his life.

“see, told ya,” toji smirks as he sees the surprise on your face due to how content megumi was in such an uncomfortable-looking position, “no need to worry. ‘m strong enough not to drop him.”

you can’t help but roll your eyes and walk over to the couch, sitting down. you had a small bowl of food and a spoon ready to feed your child, “well, thank you. you can hand megumi over now, though. i need to feed him.”

toji raised an eyebrow as he looked at the baby food. he sits beside you, placing megumi on his lap before grabbing the plate and utensil from your hands, “i can do it.”

he instantly went ahead and scooped up some mushed food, which was way too much for one bite. especially for a literal child.

“alright lil’ buddy, open up.” toji hums and guides the big bite to megumi’s mouth. your son parts his lips with a happy expression, taking in the food, but not without leaving a small mess around the corners of his lips. it was expected to happen since megumi’s mouth had only so little capacity.

“tha’s my boy.” your husband grins before feeding the poor child another huge bite. more than half of it got smeared onto megumi’s chubby cheeks; his romper also catching some drops that fell from his lips. though, that didn’t matter to toji. all that mattered was that megumi was not making a fuss and just munched on the food that was given.

the mess being made was of little importance to toji. the fact that he ‘succeeded’ in doing such a small task without making his son cry, was enough of an achievement for now.

“damn, i’m gettin’ pretty good at this parenting stuff, don’cha think?” toji boasts with a proud grin.

…well, it seemed like your lover still had a long way to go for it to be considered ‘good’ enough by your standards. you’re glad he was trying at the very least.

[ducktoo]

Drunken Oopsie

Kang Hyewon x M!Reader

Note: damn haven't been paying attention to Kwangbae for a hot minute. I missed the good ol' Kangbi and Hyeyul man TT

Also double upload ha! Little treat for many supports from yall!

It was supposed to be a quiet Friday night. A ramen-and-rom-com kind of evening where the biggest decision you had to make was whether or not to eat the ice cream sitting in your freezer. But as usual, life—or more specifically, Kang Hyewon—had other plans for you.

The sharp buzz of your phone against the coffee table shattered the serenity of your apartment. You glanced at the screen and frowned.

Kwon Eunbi.

That wasn’t a call you got often, and definitely not at this time of night.

“Hello?” you answered, the faintest edge of concern creeping into your voice. "Noona?"

“Y/n!” Eunbi’s exasperated tone hit you immediately. “Hyewon’s drunk. Again. And guess what? She’s been saying your name like a damn spell!”

Your stomach dropped. “She’s what?”

“Saying. Your. Name,” Eunbi groaned, clearly annoyed. “It’s been going on for twenty minutes, and honestly, I’m over it. You need to come get her before I leave her here to fend for herself.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, already feeling the familiar mix of frustration and worry building in your chest. “Where is she?”

“Blue Haven Bar,” Eunbi said. “And hurry up. She’s one terrible karaoke attempt away from getting kicked out.”

“She promised me she’d cut back,” you muttered under your breath, already grabbing your jacket.

“Yeah, well, her promises seem to expire after happy hour,” Eunbi snapped. “Just get here.”

She hung up before you could respond, leaving you to stare at your phone in disbelief. A long sigh escaped your lips. You weren’t even mad at Eunbi for being snippy—dealing with a drunk Kang Hyewon would test anyone’s patience.

Abandoning your half-eaten ramen and the rom-com still playing on the TV, you grabbed your keys and stormed out.

-

The scene at Blue Haven Bar was exactly what you’d expected. The place was packed, the music loud enough to make your head ache, and the air thick with the smell of alcohol and desperation.

You spotted Eunbi immediately. She stood near the bar, arms crossed and looking like she was ready to murder someone. Next to her, perched precariously on a stool, was Kang Hyewon.

Hyewon was a mess. Her hair was disheveled, her cheeks flushed, and she was swaying slightly to music that wasn’t even playing.

“There you are,” Eunbi said, relief and irritation warring in her voice as you approached. “Took you long enough.”

“I came as fast as I could,” you shot back, your eyes narrowing as they landed on Hyewon.

“Y/n-ahh!” Hyewon exclaimed, her face lighting up the moment she saw you. She attempted to stand, only to stumble and nearly fall.

You rushed forward, grabbing her arm to steady her. “Hyewon, what the hell?”

She blinked up at you, her lips curling into a goofy smile. “You caaame,” she slurred, leaning heavily against you.

“Of course, I came,” you said, exasperation creeping into your voice. “What were you thinking? Drinking this much again? You promised me—”

“Promises, shmomises,” she interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. “I missed you, so I drank.”

You stared at her, your jaw tightening. “That makes zero sense.”

“Welcome to my world,” Eunbi muttered. “She’s been like this all night. Good luck getting anything rational out of her.”

Hyewon’s eyes darted to Eunbi, and she pouted. “Eunnie, you’re so mean. Y/n’s nicer. That’s why they came.”

“I came because you’re a frigging mess,” you corrected, the irritation bubbling just beneath the surface. “Not because I’m nice.”

She gasped dramatically, clutching her chest like you’d just insulted her entire existence. “You don’t mean that!”

You groaned, rubbing your temple. “Okay, that’s enough. We’re leaving. Now.”

“Finally,” Eunbi said, throwing her hands in the air. “She’s all yours. Don’t let her puke in your car.”

Hyewon clung to you as you guided her toward the exit, her legs wobbling like a newborn deer. “Y/n’s the best,” she declared loudly, earning a few amused glances from nearby patrons.

“Yeah, yeah,” you muttered, feeling your face heat up. “Let’s just get out of here.”

-

The walk to the taxi stand was slow and frustrating. Hyewon alternated between dragging her feet and stumbling forward, forcing you to practically carry her.

“You’re mad,” she said suddenly, her voice soft and almost childlike.

“You think?” you snapped, not even bothering to hide your irritation. “You promised me you’d stop drinking like this. Do you know how worried I was when Eunbi called?”

She frowned, her lips trembling slightly. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“Then why do you keep doing this?” you demanded, stopping to look at her. “Why can’t you just call me when you’re upset instead of drowning your problems in alcohol?”

Her gaze dropped to the ground, and for a moment, she looked genuinely remorseful. “I… I didn’t want to bother you,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper.

You stared at her, your frustration momentarily giving way to disbelief.

“Bother me? Hyewon, you could never bother me.”

She glanced up at you, her expression unreadable. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” you said, sighing. “But this? Making me come pick you up every time you drink yourself into oblivion? This is what bothers me.”

Her bottom lip quivered, and she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”

You exhaled sharply, the tension in your chest easing ever so slightly. “Let’s just get you home.”

As you flagged down a taxi, Hyewon leaned against you, her head resting on your shoulder. “You smell nice,” she mumbled, her voice muffled by the fabric of your jacket.

You rolled your eyes, trying to ignore the warmth spreading across your cheeks. “Don’t try to butter me up, Kang Hyewon. You’re still in trouble.”

She giggled softly, her breath warm against your neck. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad,” you lied, though the tightness in your voice betrayed you.

“Liar,” she whispered, her tone teasing despite the exhaustion lacing her words.

You sighed, already dreading the conversation you knew you’d be having with her later.

-

The taxi pulled up in front of your apartment complex, and Hyewon, who had fallen silent for most of the ride, suddenly perked up.

“This isn’t my house,” she mumbled, blinking at the unfamiliar surroundings.

“You’re in no shape to go home alone,” you replied, stepping out and helping her stumble out of the car. “You’re staying at my place tonight.”

She didn’t protest, but as you guided her to your apartment, she kept muttering under her breath, her words slurred and barely coherent.

“Y/n is so nice… always taking care of me… but also so mean…”

“What was that?” you asked, shooting her a side-eye as you unlocked the door.

“Nothing!” she chirped, then giggled like she’d just gotten away with the world’s greatest secret.

Once inside, you helped her settle on the couch. She slumped against the cushions, her head lolling back as she sighed dramatically.

“Water,” you said, placing a glass in her hand. “Drink all of it.”

She obeyed, though with the coordination of a toddler, spilling a little on her shirt. She looked down at the wet spot and pouted.

“Awwww” she whined, her voice dragging out your name. “You’re so bossy.”

“You’re so irresponsible,” you shot back, folding your arms.

Her pout deepened, and for a moment, she looked like a chastised puppy. Then she burst into laughter, completely ignoring your frustration.

“What’s so funny?”

“You,” she said, grinning up at you. “You’re always so serious. It’s cute.”

You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Ya, Kang Hyewon, I don’t think you understand how worried I was tonight.”

Her smile faltered, and she sat up slightly, tilting her head. “You were worried?”

“Of course I was worried!” you snapped, the frustration you’d been holding back spilling out. “You promised you’d slow down, Hyewon. You promised! And instead, I get a call from Eunbi saying you’re drunk out of your mind and repeating my name in some bar!”

“I didn’t mean to…” she mumbled, her voice small.

“You never mean to,” you said, softer now but still firm. “But you can’t keep doing this. It’s not fair to me—or to yourself.”

She blinked at you, her expression unreadable. Then, out of nowhere, she started laughing again, the sound bright and disarming.

“Hyewon,” you said, your tone a warning. “This isn’t funny.”

“I know,” she said between giggles. “I know it’s not funny. But you’re just… you’re so…”

“So what?” you asked, exasperated.

“So perfect,” she blurted out, then slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide as if she’d just revealed the world’s biggest secret.

“What?”

Her cheeks turned crimson, the blush creeping all the way to her ears. “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”

“Hyewon,” you said, stepping closer, “what did you mean by that?”

“I meant what I said,” she mumbled, looking anywhere but at you. “You’re perfect. You always take care of me. You always show up when I need you. You… you’re everything I could ever want.”

Your heart stopped.

She looked up at you then, her eyes glassy but filled with a sincerity that cut through the fog of her drunkenness. “I like you, Y/n. I’ve liked you for a long time. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and electric.

“Hyewon…” you began, your voice barely above a whisper.

“Wait!” she said, holding up a finger. “Don’t say anything yet. I… I know I’m drunk, and maybe I’ll regret this tomorrow, but right now… I just needed you to know.”

She slumped back against the couch, her eyes fluttering closed. “I’m sorry if this ruins everything,” she murmured, her voice fading. “But at least now you know.”

You stood there, frozen, watching her as she drifted off to sleep. The confession echoed in your mind, over and over, until you finally let out a shaky breath.

“Kwangbae…” you whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “You’re an idiot. But I like you too.”

-

The next morning, Hyewon woke up to the smell of coffee and a pounding headache.

She groaned, sitting up slowly and clutching her head. “What happened last night?”

“You got drunk. Again,” you said, handing her a cup of coffee. “And you confessed.”

Her eyes snapped to yours, wide with panic. “I… I what?”

“You confessed,” you repeated, grinning from ear to ear. “Told me I’m perfect and everything you could ever want.”

Hyewon looked like she wanted the couch to swallow her whole. “Oh my god. Kill me now.”

“Not before I tell you I like you too,” you said, your tone light but your words serious.

She froze, her jaw dropping. “Wait. Are you serious?”

“Dead serious,” you said, sitting down next to her. “Now, are you going to let me take care of you properly, or are you going to keep being a mess?”

Her cheeks flushed, but a small smile tugged at her lips. “Only if you promise to not be bossy about it.”

You rolled your eyes, but you couldn’t help smiling back. “Hell no.”

The silence that followed was surprisingly comfortable. Hyewon sipped her coffee, her eyes darting to you every few seconds like she was still trying to process everything.

“So…” she started, breaking the quiet, “what now? Do we, like, plan a date or something? Or do we just sit here awkwardly pretending I didn’t embarrass myself last night?”

You smirked, leaning back against the couch. “Oh hell no, we’re absolutely never letting you forget last night.”

Hyewon groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“Buuuuuutttt…” you added, your voice softening, “I think a date sounds nice.”

She peeked at you through her fingers, her expression cautious but hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you said, nudging her shoulder gently. “Though, if you pull another stunt like last night, I might have to reconsider.”

“I won’t,” she said quickly, sitting up straighter. “I promise. No more drunk Hyewon.”

You raised an eyebrow, skeptical.

“…fine, no more out of control drunk Hyewon,” she amended, grinning sheepishly.

“Yeah, sounds better alright.” you said with a chuckle.

The two of you sat there for a while, sipping coffee and letting the morning sunlight stream in through the windows. It felt… easy, like a puzzle piece finally clicking into place.

“Ya…” Hyewon said suddenly, breaking the quiet.

“Yeah?”

She hesitated, biting her lip before meeting your gaze. “Thanks for always taking care of me. Even when I don’t deserve it.”

“You always deserve it, Hyewon,” you said, your tone firm. “But you’re welcome.”

Her cheeks flushed again, and she looked down at her coffee, a shy smile playing on her lips.

“So, about that date…” she said, her voice teasing now. “I’m free tonight. You?”

You laughed, shaking your head. “You just want to make sure I don’t ditch you after last night, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said, grinning.

“Well,” you said, leaning closer, “lucky for you, I’m free too.”

Her grin widened, and for the first time in a long time, you felt like everything was exactly how it should be. And maybe, just maybe, this was the start of something worth every bit of chaos Kang Hyewon brought into your life.

[borathae]

↳ Index [Day 07 - Picnic Sex]

Pairing: Soft Dom!Yoongi x f.Reader

Genre: established relationship!AU

Kinks: public sex on a meadow, drunk sex, cunnilingus, vaginal fingering, praise kink, good girl kink, sensory play where he makes her guess with what he is touching her, vaginal penetrative sex in missionary, use of a condom, multiple orgasms (f.receiving), giggly and cuddly aftercare, Yoongi is a cute menace when he is tipsy

Wordcount: 4.6k

a/n: i missed this couple so much!!! holy moly i’m sobbing in the club, they’re the cutest!! goodness :( thank you for requesting this, i’m in love with them <3

Yoongi has been gazing for more than ten minutes. His lips are curled into a constant, soft smile and his eyes sparkle adoringly. He also has his head tilted to the side slightly, kicking his feet mindlessly. He doesn’t know that he is gazing, but you finally notice after coming down from your wine induced monologue about tea. 

You swallow down the flutter of your heart, cheeks heating up under his gaze. 

“Sorry, I was talking a lot.”

He shakes his head, smiling drunkenly and fluttering his lashes, “you weren’t”, he says softly.

“I just think tea is so neat.”

“I know you do. It is.” 

A shy giggle slips from you, shoulders lifting to your ears.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Just so dreamily. It makes me shy.”

Yoongi chuckles and scoots closer. His chest brushes the side of your arm and he has his hand propped up on the picnic blanket behind your butt. Like this, you can smell his sweet breath and practically feel his kiss. 

“You’re so beautiful, I can’t help it”, he whispers and brushes the back of his hand down your cheek as gently as possible. “I love listening to you. Everything you say is so wonderful.” 

“Are you drunk?” 

His flushed cheeks and droopy eyes should be answer enough. 

“Maybe a little.” He drops his cheek on your shoulder, peeking up at you through his lashes. “The wine is so good and the food was amazing and you are beautiful and this date is perfect”, he gushes as his fingers trace your stomach and thighs mindlessly.

You giggle, nudging him with your nose. You learned from dating Yoongi that he becomes very cute when he is drunk. He gets clingy and touchy and his loosened tongue can’t stop saying the sappiest stuff. He also giggles constantly and gets such a cute blush on his cheeks. You already think that he is cute on normal days, but when he is drunk, you could smooch him constantly because of how adorable he is. 

Yoongi sighs dreamily and kisses your shoulder, straightening up afterwards. He currently has ginger hair, which reflects the autumn sun in shades of orange. You lovingly like to call him your tangerine because of it.

“Close your eyes”, he says and because you trust him, you do. You know that if he asks something like this, the outcome will be nice for you. You stay seated for a while, enjoying the silence of the moment. 

You and Yoongi went on a picnic date on the meadow today. It was a sunny, warm autumn’s day and you felt like getting out of your houses. So you met up on your bicycles with homemade food in your baskets and your pets next to it, ready to drive down into the valley for a nice date. Levi and Holly are napping together in the grass just a little to your right, the food has been finished already and the bottle of wine, Yoongi brought, is half empty. Which explains why you and he keep giggling and snickering. You are both just tipsy enough that the current moment is so, so exciting and nice.

Yoongi still hasn’t acted on whatever he was planning to do.

“What are you doing?” You ask him, snickering. “Did you leave?”

“No. Guess what I’m using”, he says and a second later you feel something light tickle your face.

You giggle, chasing the sensation. He starts off at your temple, guiding it over your cheek and down your neck until he traces your exposed collarbones. You are wearing an autumn sundress today, which reveals your collarbones and cleavage. 

The sensation stops, the ghost of its touch remains on your skin in tingles.

“What was that?” he asks. 

“Something that tickled, mhm, maybe a feather?”

“No, try again.” The sensation begins anew, sending shivers down your back. It makes your heart flutter in giddiness.

Stop. It is time for you to guess. 

“Is it grass?” 

“Yay, you did it.”

You open your eyes, inspecting the blade of grass between his fingers. He picked the flower for it, which explains why it felt so feathery on your skin. 

A drunken snicker leaves you and you draw closer to him.

“This was fun. I wanna try again.”

“Okay, I’ll give you more.” 

You close your eyes, waiting impatiently for his next touch. Something soft like fabric. He dances it from your temples down to your collarbones.

You smile, turning your head to where you think his face should be.

“That’s your jumper.”

“Mhm, which part?” The sensation starts anew. He is so gentle as he guides it over your skin. It feels so good.

“Your sleeve? Maybe?”

“Correct.”

You open your eyes, meeting his adoring gaze. He lets out a soft chuckle and pokes your nose with his own, rubbing the tip against yours afterwards. You close your eyes halfway, reciprocating the affection. 

“One more, please?” 

“Okay, one more. Close your eyes.”

You obey, skin tingling in anticipation. The touch is chaste, tickling your skin.

“Are you fluttering your lashes against my cheek?” you ask in a snicker.

“Yeah”, he laughs.

“Oh god, you’re silly.”

He chuckles and kisses your cheek, dancing his lips to your ear afterwards to whisper. You shiver like crazy at the feeling of it, sighing quietly.

“Two more guesses, okay?” 

“Yeah okay…”

The next object is obvious to you with the very first touch.

“Your fingertip!”

“Mhm, correct”, he whispers, dancing it down to your collarbone to trace it. 

You open your eyes halfway. He is breathing a little heavier than before.

“What’s the last one?” you ask him, breathing heavier as well.

“Close your eyes and guess.”

“Okay.”

You can hear him shimmy closer to you and then you feel it. His lips on your neck, kissing the most sensitive spot.

You tilt your head back, parting your lips in a surprised moan.

Yoongi purrs, sucking on your skin gently before he lifts his lips. You open your eyes, looking at his pouty lips.

“And?” he asks.

“Your lips”, you sigh, gazing dreamily.

“Correct, you did so well.”

“Hah”, you let out, eyes practically lost in the view of his lips.

Yoongi, who notices and feels tingly because of it, speaks softly. He traces your thigh with his fingertips as he does, gazing at your neck.

“Wanna have a reward?”

“A reward?”

“Mhm, it’ll feel good”, he says, ghosting his lips over your neck without touching it.

“Ah”, you let out, chasing him.

“Is this a yes?”

“Yeah, please.”

He climbs atop of you, laying you down on the blanket as he does it. 

You allow him happily, exposing your neck to him so he could keep kissing you. He claims the opportunity happily, showering you in kisses and careful touches. By now, it is an unspoken shared feeling by both that this is turning you on. It was sweet at first, but sweetness sometimes tastes too addicting not to crave more of it. The day is so nice, the date so romantic and you have been sharing such nice intimacy on your little, comfortable blanket. You are also giddily drunk and stupidly in love with each other. It was bound to happen that all of these feel good emotions escalate. 

Yoongi still lifts his lips to ask, hands on an innocent place.

“I know you already said yes, but is it really okay for me to touch you?”

“Yes, is it okay for you too?”

“Yes, more than okay, my darling.” He kisses your jawline once. “Just tell me to stop if it gets too much, okay?”

“Yes okay. You too, yeah?” 

“Mhm, yeah.”

He lowers his lips, planning not to lift them again for quite a while. You fall into the sensation with a sigh, melting like a drop of chocolate in the sun.  

He kisses every inch of your neck and jawline, even giving you soft bites because he knows that you love the sensation. His lips brush against your ears as well, allowing quiet moans to reach them and with it, make you shiver. It is so hot to feel his moans like this, it will always excite you.

Yoongi of course knows that and he will use every card against you to get you as turned on as possible. He loves turning you on, especially when you look as pretty as you do today.

“I love this dress on you, I love it so much”, he breathes, rubbing his palms over the soft fabric while his lips are tasting your collarbones.

“Thank you”, you sigh, wiggling your feet. He always makes you feel so beautiful. 

“I love the colour and the fit and the fabric. You make this dress look so beautiful, my darling”, he continues, right hand sliding to your waist to trace it. The dress is a little tighter around your waist, giving it a synched look. It also makes his touch feel like electricity on your skin, forcing your back to arch off the blanket.

Yoongi purrs, kissing a path down your chest until he reaches your cleavage. The position and gravity naturally makes your breasts lay flatter than as if you were standing up, but Yoongi still buries his face in them. He makes a funny noise as he does, eliciting a loud cackle from you. You ruffle his hair instantly, chest tingling in happiness. 

“You’re so stupid”, you laugh. 

“I had to do this. I love your tits”, he mumbles, voice playful and happy. 

“If you say so.” 

“Mhm, I do.” He gathers them in his hands and massages them gently. “I really do.” 

“Wow Yoongi…this is…so nice…” you sigh, arching into his touch.

“It is. So nice”, he breathes, placing loving kisses on your clothed breasts before moving lower. 

By now, you are practically panting in excitement, body shuddering each time he touches a new spot. He has both hands on your sides, holding you safely as his lips kiss a path down your clothed stomach.

Soon every inch of it is kissed as well and Yoongi straightens up. You open your eyes, meeting his adoring gaze. His cheeks are pinker than before. 

You prop your feet up on the blanket and open your legs. Yoongi’s eyes widen, he does a sneaky double take before gawking at your face in shock. 

“Please”, you beg.

“A-are you sure?”

“Yes. You?”

“What? Of course I am, you don’t gotta ask. You know me, I could live between your legs”, he says and lies down on his stomach, burying his face in your inner thigh to munch on it playfully.

You giggle and whine, writhing deliciously at the sensation. He is kissing and sucking your skin, leaving the softest of bites as well. They don’t hurt at all, they’re a soft graze with his teeth before his tender lips replace them. The sensation is so tingly that you could honestly scream. He riles you up so much.

Soon, you cannot take the teasing anymore and you reach down to rake your fingers through his locks.

“Don’t tease please.”

“I’m not, you’re just impatient.”

You chuckle, heart fluttering. You love when he bickers with you. He is such a cutie. A cutie who currently takes off your panties, making you heave in excitement. You help him slip them off your legs, then prop them up again as wide apart as possible.

Yoongi chuckles because of your eagerness, running his palms down your inner thighs.

“You’re beautiful, darling”, he says, meaning your pussy.

“Yoongi, you’re still teasing”, you whine.

“Yeah, that’s right. I was teasing right now.”

“God, I can’t stand you”, you laugh, ruffling his hair.

Yoongi smiles, lowering himself like this. He purrs, kissing your pussy to get her used to him. Your laughter stops, a loud gasp replaces it.

“Mhm, so soft”, he lulls, wrapping his lips around your clit to give it a gentle suck.

“Oh.” Your hips flinch up. “Wow.” They drop again, legs twitching aggressively.

Yoongi lets go of you and finally darts out his tongue, guiding it through your folds to part them. You are already a little wet, making him purr in contentment. He loves your taste and your scent. He runs his hands to your hips, holding them safely. One squeeze for good measures.

“Don’t stop please”, you sigh, feeling more and more turned on. He is still gentle right now, going slow. It is so nice to be worked up this way.

Sometimes Yoongi gets really hungry for your pussy and he goes down on you sloppily and quickly. It overstimulates you within seconds, forcing you to yelp up and orgasm after just a few licks. He is very cocky whenever that happens because of how quickly he can make you climax. And you love these moments, they’re so sexy to you.

You can’t lie however and you have to admit that you really, really love when he is being gentle with you. The pleasure goes so much deeper and builds up so much more. The fact that he is capable of doing both is also very arousing to you.

“You’re so good”, you praise, voice breathy.

“Mhhm”, he purrs into you, guiding his wet tongue through your folds until he has your clit under it. He slides his left hand from your hips, using two of his fingers to part you and therefore expose more of your clit. Like this, he circles his tongue around it, careful not to grace it directly but instead make the area around it sensitive.

“God this is torture”, you both whine and chuckle, closing your legs on him slightly.

“Mh-hm, is good”, he lulls, pushing your legs apart with one hand. His tongue continues its teasing rounds while his right hand rubs your inner thigh. He purrs and does the unthinkable thing of dancing his tongue down to your entrance instead.

You throb around nothing, chasing him in a weak roll of your hips and cursing under your breath. If you weren’t already dizzy from the wine, you are definitely dizzy now that he teases you so much.

Yoongi listens to your needy curses, feeling really dizzy himself. You taste stronger than you did before, a sure sign that he managed to get you wetter. Yoongi laps it up deliciously, eyes closed and button nose buried between your soft folds. He loves when he gets messy from your pussy, burying his nose deeper while his tongue teases your entrance.

“Please, this is torture”, you let out in a whine, scratching his scalp softly but needily at the same time.

“What do you need?” he dares to ask as if he wasn’t teasing you on purpose. Gosh, he is such a menace when he is drunk and therefore playful.

“More, I can’t take the teasing please.”

“Again, you’re just impatient.”

“Min Yoongi”, you warn, lifting your head just enough that you can make eye contact with him. His eyes sparkle boyishly, his cheeks are flushed. He is also kicking his feet giddily.

“Okay, okay fine”, he laughs, “I give up. Do you want my fingers, mhm?”

“Yes please, two of them please.”

“Okay, I’m only doing this because you’re impatient.”

You drop your head with an exasperated groan, mumbling a quiet “you’re so annoying.”

He chuckles and puts the pads of his middle and ring finger against your entrance. He spits on them so the slip would be easier then finally applies pressure. You take him in greedily, walls practically sucking him in.

“Yes, god yes”, you moan, thrusting your hips ecstatically.

“Slipped right in”, he croaks, feeling his cock throb in his pants. He didn’t expect you to take him so easily nor to be so wet inside for that matter and it’s really affecting him. Once entirely inside, he begins moving, pumping his long digits in and out your soft walls.

“This feel so good”, you moan, fingers closing around his left hand.

“It does. Fuck darling, you’re…” he trails off, deciding to let his tongue do the talking another way. He presses it against your clit, licking it eagerly while his fingers fuck you slowly and deeply.

“Yes this, yes this, yes this, please this”, you chant, body beginning to writhe in pleasure. You always like to whine when he is teasing you, but it is always so worth it. Now that he finally pleasures your favourite spots, it makes you literally float on cloud nine. The warmth is so deep, so constant, so good. The slight intoxicated buzz of the wine makes it even more intense.

“This please, this please, this, this, ah this…”

Yoongi moans into you, grinding his cock into the ground. He is so turned on, head fuzzy and body running on nothing but you. He wanted to make you feel good ever since you went on your monologue about tea. He loves listening to you so much, everything you say is so interesting to him and you look so cute when your eyes are glowing from intoxication that Yoongi knew he had to make you feel good ever since you began talking about tea. Witnessing you in such a state, tasting how wet you are, feeling how much you clench is everything his drunken heart needed. And he wants to do everything in his power to make you feel as good as possible. He curls his fingers each time they grace your g-spot, staying there for a few seconds to massage the tender spot. And each time he pleasures your insides, he focuses his licks on the most sensitive part of your clit. Judging by the noises you are producing, this is going to make you orgasm.

You never tell him that something is bringing you close because it then does the exact opposite for you. You somehow stress yourself out about orgasming and then stop being close. So you always stay quiet until you are literally in the middle of climaxing. Yoongi never thought that it was weird that you did that, instead he studied your reactions until he learned just from your noises and movements when something he does is bringing you close. Like this, you can enjoy yourself without stressing and Yoongi is having the best time. Yoongi loves doing this for you because he loves you and he loves making you feel good.

Today is no different. Yoongi keeps using his fingers and mouth on you while you get noisier and shakier with each touch and lick. He can’t wait to have you climax, moaning with you as he brings you closer by the second.

Three more eager licks and with his fingers against your g-spot, and he breaks you.

“I’m cumming”, you moan, already shaking out of control.

Yoongi growls into you, enjoying the tug you have on his hair as he helps you ride out your orgasm. You are also grinding your hips into his face instinctively, smothering him in your warmth. He is in heaven. He really is.

“Oh, uh, ah”, you let out once overstimulation sets in, fleeing him in flinches of your hips, “ah, wait.”

Yoongi knows that you aren’t a particular fan of intense overstimulation and so he slips his fingers free, kissing a path up your body.

“Damn this was…okay phew”, you get out, making him chuckle and nibble on your jawline.

“Did you like it?” he coos drunkenly.

“Did I like it? I loved it, oh my lord.”

He snickers, sucking your cheek into his mouth as if he was eating your face.

“No, don’t do that”, you whine, pushing him off gently.

“I can’t help it. You’re so cute that I wanna eat you.”

You whine, nudging his chest because he flusters you so much. Yoongi smiles, snuggling his nose into your cheek.

“Do you want more?” he asks.

“Do you want more?” you ask him.

“Maybe? My cock’s so hard.”

“Oh god”, you snicker, “poor boy.”

“Yeah, poor boy. God, I wanna fuck you so bad”, he says, grinding his hips into you.

“Oh”, you gasp, shuddering in reaction and gripping his back, “Yoongi, holy fu-ah.”

“Please ___ can I fuck you? Please?”

“Yes, please do.”

He moans, kissing your cheek in gratefulness, “thank you, thank you, oh thank you.”

“Just do it, you drunk doofus you”, you snicker, ruffling his hair.

“Yeah, right.” He sits up and looks around. “Wait, I need to figure this out. I don’t wanna expose my butt”, he says, making you laugh.

“I don’t think anyone would see”, you say, propping yourself up on your elbows so you could get the condom from your bag as he undresses.

“I can’t risk it. What if someone does? Then they’ll see my pale ass. That’s embarrassing. I wouldn’t complain if I actually tanned, but I look like a ghost right now.”

“You would still complain, come on now”, you cackle, making him chuckle.

“You know me so well.” He finally managed to get his cock out of his pants without exposing his butt. “There we go. That should work”, he says.

“That’s so sexy, baby. Here, condom.”

“Thanks, darling”, he accepts it and opens it to roll it on. 

You watch him, feeling so excited for what was to come. He gives his cock three jerks for good measures then lies himself over you.

“Hey there”, you say, combing your fingers through his hair.

“Hey there”, he says, leaning into your touch. He guides his cock to your pussy, grinding it through your folds. “Mhm, so wet. Can I stick it in?”

You nod your head vigorously, “stick it in, please.”

“Look at me, yeah?” 

“Mhm yeah.” 

Pressure on your entrance for just a second then he breaches you, cock sliding into you easily. You and he moan together, eyes getting lost in the other’s.

“Wow, this is so nice”, you sigh.

“Yeah, so nice”, his voice is practically nothing but airy sounds. He is so far gone, giving up completely once he bottoms out. “Fuck”, he presses out, eyes rolling back and head dropping so his nose is nuzzled into your cheek.

“You’re so deep”, you croak.

“Mh-hm”, he whimpers, nodding his head. He shivers when you run your hand down his back so you could hold his hip.

“Move please.”

He fulfills your wish gladly, rolling his hips into you gently but deeply. He wants to stay inside you, feel you around every single inch of him. He is so happy when he is inside you, so happy.

You gasp and moan his name, head rolling to the side in defeat. He chases you, lips against your neck and eyes closed.

“Feels good?”

“Yeah, feels good. You’re so deep, ah Yoongi.”

“Mhm so deep. You’re taking me so well, baby.”

“Yoongi…”

“I love when you moan my name. Makes me wanna fuck you so good.”

You shiver from just his words, arching your back. Your clothed breasts rub against his clothed chest this way. He reaches down and caresses your back once before he pins you down onto the blanket gently, sliding his thumb to your clit.

“Yoongi”, you moan louder, clenching around him and scrunching your face.

“So good, such a good girl. Keep moaning my name”, he lulls, turning your brain and limbs into goo. He is so sexy when he praises you. You didn’t even know that you had such a huge praise kink until he did it one night and you literally melted.

“Yoongi…”

“That’s it, that’s my girl. Such a good girl”, he praises, rewarding you with slightly harsher thrusts. He is still incredibly gentle, but there is strength behind them. Strength and skill, meant to make you see stars.

“Yoongi!” you wail, arching your back.

He moans in reaction, twisting the blanket above your head. His cock throbs deep inside you, his stomach flutters. There is nothing that gets him off more than when you moan his name. He feels so good when you do and as if he could fucking do anything. Seriously, you give him such a boost of confidence when you act this way during sex that Yoongi feels almost unbearably cocky.

“Don’t stop please.”

“Put your finger in my mouth.”

You open your eyes, “huh?”

“My mouth, put it in”, he says, sticking his tongue out.

You follow his order, although confused. Yoongi takes your finger and licks it greedily, making you moan from the sensation.

“You’re so hot, oh god”, you mewl, throbbing around him.

He purrs and lets it slip out, “rub your clit with it. I need both arms to support myself. My shoulder hurts otherwise.”

“Oh god, you’re so sexy. Yoongi”, you moan, replacing his finger with yours.

“There we go, good girl”, he growls, slamming his elbow onto the ground next to your head and grabbing the blanket roughly. He angles his hips better, using the new support to pump into you sloppily.

“Yoo-”, is all you get out before your tongue stops working and all you can make are the most primal of noises.

“Yeah that’s it, isn’t it? You like that, don’t you?” he taunts, sounding so sure of himself.

You nod your head vigorously, whimpering each time he buries his cock deep inside your walls.

“Of course you do. You are so beautiful when I fuck you. Shit, I’m dizzy. You’re driving me insane.”

“Yoongi, you…cum…”

“Don’t hold back, I’ve got you baby, I’ve got you.”

“Say…it…please…”

He cradles your cheek, lowering his drunken voice seductively.

“Cum for me, darling.”

“Ah, Yoongi!” you break instantly, scratching up his back as you clasp him desperately.

“Good girl, cum for me, such a good girl”, he talks you through it at first, but then you squeeze him so tightly that he feels lost as well, “you’re making me cum too, ah ___.”

He drops his face into the crook of your neck, releasing into the condom a second later with a guttural growl. You scream his name in reaction, wrapping your limbs around him as tightly as possible. It forces his weakened body to drop on yours.

“___”, your name leaves him in a whimper, his arms cradle you against him as best as possible, “wow this was, wow.”

“Yeah, so wow”, you agree, melting under him. It’s so nice to have his weight on you and to calm down in his arms.

“How are you? Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, so okay. You?”

“I think my heart gave up. I nutted so hard.”

“God you”, you laugh loudly, “ever since you have orange hair, you’re a menace.”

“Mhm yeah probably”, he teases and gives your cheek a kiss for good measures before he has to sit up and slip out so the condom wouldn’t fall into you. He rolls it off his cock and ties a knot, then wraps it up in a fresh napkin. He hands you your panties.

You sit up and put them on while he stuffs his cock back into his pants.

“I can’t believe we just did that. Do you think someone saw us?”

“Probably not. The day is really quiet.”

“Let’s hope so. Oh my god ___, I can’t believe we did that. Are we insane?” he says, suddenly shrinking shyly as he draws closer with a giggle. He even hides his face behind his hands, laughing with his shoulders.

“Actually, you’re right. What were we thinking?” you agree, suddenly having to giggle shyly as well.

“This is what happens when we drink wine. We have stupid ideas like that.”

You agree in snickers, falling around his neck in a tight hug. He hugs you back instantly, giggling into your neck.

“I love being with you, Yoongi baby.”

“I love being with you, ___ baby.”

[p0orbaby]

We No Speak Italiano

summary: you’ll never miss a day of Duolingo again

warnings: are language barriers and miscommunication warnings?

a/n: based on this request ! also thank you to @onsomenewsht for inflating my ego and helping navigate italian !

word count: 2.1k

-

Alexia looks at you like you’ve just dropped the biggest bombshell in the history of bombshells. Her eyes are wide, mouth slightly agape, and she’s got that look, like she’s trying to figure out how to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture with no instructions and half the screws missing.

“Estoy embarazada,” you say again, because you’re pretty sure that’s the right way to tell her you’re mortified after spilling your entire glass of wine on her brand-new sofa.

Your high school Spanish teacher would be so proud.

But instead of the expected response, maybe a nervous laugh or string of expletives, Alexia gasps, and her hands fly to her mouth like she’s just heard the Virgin Mary is back for round two. Her eyes flick down to your stomach and back up to your face. The calculation going on behind her eyes is something like 2 + 2 = 5, but you have no idea why.

“I… Oh my God,” she says, her voice all wobbly, like she’s about to cry. “I didn’t… I mean, this is… Are you okay?” She’s speaking in slow, deliberate Spanish now, like you’re suddenly a toddler and not a grown-ass woman who just spilled wine.

You blink at her. “Sí?”

“Madre mía”

-

It starts with a breakfast that makes no sense.

You wake up to the smell of something cooking in the kitchen, which is odd because Alexia barely knows how to operate a toaster without supervision. You stumble out of bed, groggy, and follow the scent of food.

What you find in the kitchen is nothing short of alarming: Alexia, apron-clad and concentrating so hard that she’s actually sticking her tongue out a little, is stirring something in a pot while a blender whirs ominously next to her.

“Buenos días,” she sings out when she notices you standing in the doorway. She’s all smiles, too bright for this early in the morning, and you immediately get suspicious.

“What’s going on?” you ask, eyes narrowing as you take in the sight of an overfull fruit bowl, a plate stacked with multigrain toast, and what appears to be an entire carton of eggs scrambled and ready to be eaten.

“Sit, sit,” she insists, pulling out a chair for you like you’ve suddenly developed a bad back and need assistance. “I made breakfast”

“You… made breakfast,” you repeat, eyeing the smoothie she pours into a glass and slides over to you. It’s an unsettling green color, like pond scum, and you’re not sure it’s fit for human consumption.

“Sí. You need to start your day with lots of nutrients.” She’s practically bouncing on her toes, like a Labrador eager to please.

You blink at the smoothie, then back at her. “Since when did you learn how to use the Nutribullet?”

She doesn’t answer directly, just gives you an encouraging smile that feels a little too close to a grimace. “Drink up. It’s good for you”

You take a tentative sip, and it’s like drinking liquid grass mixed with what you can only hope is kale. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“No!” She’s almost offended, but there’s a hint of nervousness in her voice that you can’t quite place. “It’s full of vitamins. Good for… energy”

You stare at her, but she just stares back, eyes wide and almost… expectant.

“Okay,” you say slowly, deciding to let this weirdness slide, for now. Maybe she’s on a trendy new health kick. Or maybe it’s an early birthday surprise gone wrong. Either way, you down the smoothie in a few brave gulps, trying not to think about the fact that it tastes like lawn clippings.

Alexia beams at you when you finish, like you’ve just accomplished something monumental. “Bien, bien. Now, sit tight. I’ll get the rest”

She practically skips back to the stove, where she starts piling eggs and toast onto a plate. You don’t even bother asking why she’s suddenly turned into Martha Stewart; you’re too busy wondering if you’ve somehow walked into a parallel universe.

It’s only later, after you’ve forced down an absurd amount of scrambled eggs, that she starts talking about how “important it is to stay healthy” and how she’s “going to take care of everything from now on,” which sounds sweet but also vaguely threatening.

You brush it off, chalking it up to some kind of weird phase. After all, everyone gets weird sometimes, right?

-

By day two, you’re starting to suspect that something is seriously wrong.

It begins with a confrontation over laundry, specifically, the fact that you’re not allowed to do any. At all.

“I’ve got it,” Alexia says, practically wrestling the basket out of your hands when you attempt to head for the washing machine.

You try to grab it back, but she holds it over her head like some ridiculous game of keep-away. “What is with you?”

“You shouldn’t be lifting heavy things,” she says, so earnestly it makes your brain short-circuit for a second.

“It’s a basket of clothes,” you argue, “not a sack of bricks. And I lift heavier things at the gym every day”

She shakes her head, not budging. “No. Let me do it. Just relax”

You gape at her, watching as she carries the laundry to the washing machine like it’s a ticking time bomb. She’s being weirdly gentle, placing the clothes in like they might shatter if she drops them too hard.

Then there’s the vitamin situation. You’re sitting on the freshly cleaned sofa, flipping through channels, when Alexia plops down beside you with a clatter of bottles and packages.

“Take these,” she says, handing you an array of supplements that looks like it belongs on the shelf of a pharmacy. There are multivitamins, folic acid, omega-3s, and some other pill you can’t even pronounce.

“What is this?” You hold up the folic acid like it’s a foreign object. “I’m not trying to hatch an egg here”

“Just take them,” she insists, pushing the bottles toward you. “They’re good for you”

“I’m pretty sure the only thing these are good for is draining my will to live,” you mutter, but she gives you that look, the one that’s all big hazel eyes and soft smiles, and you end up taking them just to get her to stop hovering.

When you try to go for a run that afternoon, she practically tackles you at the door.

“Maybe you should rest,” she suggests, like she’s trying to steer a toddler away from a busy street. “You know, take it easy for a bit”

“Take it easy?” You raise an eyebrow. “I’m not 80. And since when do you care about rest days? You’re usually the one dragging me to the gym at 6 AM”

She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again like a fish gasping for air. “It’s important to be careful”

“Careful of what, exactly?”

She hesitates, and you catch a flicker of something in her expression, nervousness, maybe? Fear? Whatever it is, it’s weirding you out. “Just… you know, careful”

You’re about to argue, but she gives you a kiss on the forehead, all soft and sweet, and you end up staying in just to avoid making things even more bizarre.

-

By day three, you’re done. Absolutely, 100% done.

It starts with the breakfast smoothies, again. This time, it’s a vibrant pink concoction that tastes like liquid chalk mixed with berries, and you’re pretty sure it’s the same smoothie you saw in a TV ad for pregnancy supplements once.

When Alexia starts lecturing you on the importance of hydration, while handing you a liter of water with electrolytes, you decide it’s time to get to the bottom of this.

“Alexia,” you say, setting the water down with a definitive thud, “we need to talk”

She glances at you, clearly nervous, and you know you’ve hit the jackpot. “About what?”

“About why you’re acting like I’m a fragile little baby bird that needs to be protected from all the big, scary things in life,” you reply, crossing your arms.

Her face flushes, and she avoids your gaze, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “I just-, I want to take care of you”

“I appreciate that,” you say, softening just a little, “but you’ve gone full-on helicopter mode. And it’s freaking me out”

She looks at you for a long moment, then sighs like she’s been carrying the weight of the world.

“You didn’t tell me,” she says, voice soft like she’s whispering state secrets. “How long? I mean… when did you find out?”

You stare at her, a mental Rolodex flipping through every interaction you’ve had over the last few days, searching for the moment when you apparently lost your mind. “Find out what?”

“That you’re…” She trails off, wide-eyed, and then whispers, like she’s on a soap opera, “Pregnant”

There’s a beat of silence. And then another one. You feel like someone just turned off the power in your brain. You’re pregnant? No, no, no. Last you checked, you were just really bad at pouring wine.

“Wait,” you finally say, holding up a hand to stop her from offering you yet another pillow or maybe a foot rub. “Pregnant?”

Alexia’s eyebrows are practically in her hairline. “You said you’re embarazada”

Oh. Oh. Oh no.

“Alexia,” you say slowly, enunciating like you’re the one explaining the IKEA instructions now. “I said I’m embarrassed. Not pregnant. Embarrassed. Mortified. Humiliated because I thought I ruined your sofa with a ten-euro bottle of red”

She looks like she’s buffering, trying to load what you just said. “Embarazada… means pregnant, in Spanish”

Ah, the joys of faux amis, false friends, words that sound like they should mean the same thing but are actually waiting to sabotage you like linguistic landmines. Your high school Spanish teacher can take a hike.

You wipe away a tear, trying to catch your breath. “Alexia… I told you I was embarrassed. Imbarazzato doesn’t mean pregnant in Italian, it means mortified. Humiliated. Just how I felt when I spilled that wine and thought I ruined your furniture”

“Wait,” Alexia says, her brow furrowing in that cute, confused way you’d normally find adorable if she weren’t in the middle of thinking you’re harbouring a tiny human in your uterus. “So you’re not…?”

“No!” You laugh, a little hysterically because, seriously, how did you get here? “I’m not pregnant. We’re both women. How would that even work? I mean, unless there’s something about human biology I missed in school, I’m pretty sure that’s not in the cards for us”

Her eyes widen as the realisation hits, and then she groans, burying her face in her hands. “Dios mío, I’m such an idiot”

You’re still laughing, but you manage to pat her knee reassuringly. “An adorable idiot, but yeah, kind of”

“Well, you did say ‘embarazada,’” she points out. “How was I supposed to know you just meant you were embarrassed?”

You shrug. “Maybe when I didn’t start eating pickles and ice cream? Or asking for your jersey for when the baby arrives?”

“Touché.” She’s still grinning, that big, beautiful smile that makes you forgive her for thinking you were about to drop a baby bomb on her. “So, you’re just embarrassed”

“Yes. Very. And I’m also very much not pregnant. I’m sorry for confusing you”

She sighs, exaggerated like she’s relieved, and you both start laughing again, the awkward tension from the past few days melting away. But there’s still a mischievous glint in her eye, one that makes you a little wary.

“What?” you ask, knowing full well you’re about to regret it.

“Well, since you’re not pregnant,” she says slowly, leaning closer with that flirty smirk you love and hate in equal measure, “how about we do something about that embarrassment?”

She wiggles her eyebrows, and you roll your eyes. “Oh, so now that I’m not a fragile incubator, you’re all over me?”

“Exactamente,” she says, pulling you into her lap with surprising ease, even for someone who regularly benches more than your body weight. “Besides, I have to make sure you’re really not pregnant”

“Alexia,” you say, trying to sound stern but failing miserably when she starts nuzzling your neck, “that’s not how this works, remember?”

She grins against your skin, pressing a teasing kiss to your collarbone. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” You push her back just enough to meet her eyes, raising an eyebrow. “But if you want to keep treating me like a queen, I’m not going to complain”

“Deal,” she says, her voice softening, her hand resting on your cheek. “But next time you’re embarrassed, can you please just say it in Italian, or English?”

You laugh, pressing a kiss to her lips. “Sure, but only if you promise not to freak out the next time I spill something”

“No promises,” she murmurs, pulling you closer, “but I’ll try”

[rustedhearts]

just friends (again) (roommate!steve harrington x fem!reader)

summary: you’ve convinced everyone around you that you and steve are just friends. now you just have to convince yourself—but it proves difficult when steve finally admits how he feels.

uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.

✶ just friends (part one) ✶ the library

tags: pining, yearning, they want each other so bad they're so stupid, little angst/hurt/comfort, oh steve harrington the man that you are. didn't proofread so ignore any mistakes oops.

buy me a ko-fi! (my blurb commissions are also still open!)

“I’m having a little carpet picnic.”

Julia Roberts’ voice filled the living room with a familiar warmth. The pinks and whites of the Beverly Hills hotel room from Pretty Woman coated the couch and the surface of your face with a gentle glow. The Chinese food you ordered a few hours ago was starting to stink. Even Ted, who was curled at your feet for most of your movie marathon, could no longer stand the vegetative life and scampered away.

It had been a week since Eddie broke things off. After Steve punched him, you spent the Sunday post-knockout calling and texting, hoping to sort things out. But Eddie never picked up. Eddie never replied. You figured stopping by the shop was a bit too far—if he wanted to talk to you, he would’ve by now.

So here you were, spending another weekend on the couch. Single. Broke. Lonely.

“He thought I was cheating on him,” is the excuse you have for getting dumped.

But the look on Theresa’s face when you told her is the first time it made you recoil. The first time you doubted that Eddie was 100%, entirely out of his mind.

Theresa winced into the overpriced lattes you were drinking at a curbside patio on Wednesday. “Well…I mean…”

And you gasped, mouth agape and heart hammering in your chest. What the fuck did that mean? Because you were just friends. All Steve ever was and is: your best friend. Why did everyone act like you were having a secret affair when the doors were closed on the public?

“You’ve gotta be kidding me—“

“I’m not defending the prick,” Theresa justified. “He was an asshole for talking to you like that. But I can see why he might have thought that. You and Steve are really close. Like…very close.”

“We’re friends,” you insisted.

And Theresa dropped it, holding her hands above her latte with innocent agreement. But her words haunted you the entire week. Every time Steve filled your coffee and had it ready on the counter for your commute to work (he even used your favorite travel mug). Every time he came home with a bag of peanut m&ms when he dropped by the store because it was the little treat you always asked for, but he didn’t even need to be asked anymore.

But like any other Saturday, the apartment was void of him for most of the day. He mumbled some excuse about going to the mall through your door this morning, and when he came home twenty minutes into Pretty Woman with an Abercrombie shopping bag, you knew he’d been date shopping.

“Hey,” he called to you, door clamping closed behind him. His keys jingled on their toss toward the table cluttered with half-opened mail.

Cheek squished against a throw pillow, body splayed flat on the couch, you cut him a glance sideways and adjusted the volume. “Hey.”

Steve kicked off his shoes and set his bag near the door, making your chest tighten when he immediately sauntered toward the couch. He turned to the tv with his hands on his hips.

He asked what he always asked, despite his eyes watching the very thing. “Watchya watchin’?”

“Pretty Woman.”

“Did you already watch Mystic Pizza?”

“Yep.”

Steve sighed. “Damn. Alright, well, scooch over.”

When he plucked your feet up and flopped down under them, he smelled like the sickeningly sweet butter of a soft pretzel, and the overwhelming stench of Abercrombie & Fitch. You couldn’t believe he still shopped there.

His hands were still resting on your ankles, bracing your feet against his jean-clad thighs. His touch was warm, soft, all-encompassing—and suddenly all you could think about even as Richard Gere came on screen. Steve's touch, his heat, the body those hands came attached to resting just inches away. He was wearing blue today. He looked so good in blue.

You swallowed and coughed, cheek rubbing on the pillow. Steve’s finger twitched around your calf.

“You okay?”

“Mhm,” you croaked.

His eyes bored into you for a moment before he turned back to Julia Roberts. "Notting Hill or My Best Friend's Wedding after this?"

Your lips parted to reply, but then his finger began tracing shapes into the patch of skin between the bottom of your pant leg and the elastic of your sock. Air choked in your throat. Your eyes bulged on the glowing television screen. The muscles in the center of your body knotted and squeezed like nausea.

In your stock-still state, it didn't even occur to you that Steve somehow knew your entire I'm-sad-and-can-only-watch-Julia-Roberts-movies marathon setlist, but it certainly crossed your mind later on. You and Steve are really close. Maybe Theresa had a point.

"Um..." Your tongue darted out to lick your suddenly-dry lips.

"You good over there?" Steve chuckled, head tipping to gauge the features and their current predicament on your face.

You buried it further into the pillow, as far as it could go without hiding completely. "Yes, Steve, I'm fine."

Steve pulled back, settling into the couch again. "Jeez, oh-kay."

He waited a moment, and you inched free from your pillow enough to bring your eye back to the television, doing your best to focus on the movie you'd seen a million times and not Steve's hand sweeping under your pant leg. He'd done that a million times, too. Touched you. Felt you.

He held your hand when you crossed the road like a child that needed guidance. He braced your back to move you which way he wanted, and to pull you close when public situational occurrences arose that made him uncomfortable. He brushed your hair once when you were victim to an ungodly illness that had you picturing death. He removed your makeup on your birthday last year when you got so drunk you puked in the doorway.

His hands were always so gentle. His touch was always so soft.

But, God, why did it feel so different right now? Why did it feel so good?

"Want a mall haul?" Steve asked, too uncomfortable in the sudden silence of the living room. He was already standing and placing your feet back on their own before you could reply.

In your periphery, he headed toward the door to retrieve the bags he neglected. "Got a couple shirts to try. Also, am I too old for that store? I swear, everyone in there was like a little Taylor Lautner wannabe from 2012—meaning they were fourteen and on steroids—"

"Steve!"

He stopped. Standing at the edge of the rug with both hands on the corded handles of his Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bag to pull it open. The snicker gathering in his throat hitched into a snort, smirk drooping into wide-eyed surprise.

You never yelled. Not at him. Not at anyone that didn't deserve it, like the neighbors when they were arguing too loud again and you were trying to nap. Like the guy that tried to steal Steve's package a few months ago that you nearly tackled down the hall.

But never Steve.

You shot up on the couch, hands flying to your pounding head. "Just...please! I don't want a mall haul, I don't want to talk, I just...—I just wanna be alone."

Steve blinked, cheeks colored pink. He closed the bag slowly, paper crinkling as he went. He took it in one hand and backed up, stepping off the rug foot by foot. He glanced at Ted, who skittered in surprise at your outburst and was standing with an arched back and black pupils near the tv stand.

"Uh...yeah, okay. Sorry," he mumbled, scratching at the nape of his neck.

Your shoulders slumped, deflating into the couch as Steve turned his eyes to the floor and tugged at the back of his hair. That stress tick again—the one you hated causing. He turned slowly, caution stiff in his spine. You watched his finger twist and wind into a lock of chestnut hair as he trudged into the hall. His door clamped closed a moment later.

A heavy, moaning sigh shuddered from your mouth as you flopped back on the pillow. Two arms locked over your head, pressing down on your eyes to blind them and the horror you created.

"Slippery little suckers," Julia Roberts snickered on the screen.

"It happens all the time."

✶ ✶

You ate dinner separately. It was the first time you'd ever eaten dinner separately within the same four walls. Even the night you moved in together, when you were nothing but a pair of strangers gauging how weird it might be to live with the opposite sex without something romantic or sexual in the undertones—even then, you ate a greasy cheese pizza together on the living room floor with an empty box as makeshift table.

He asked all the right get-to-know-you questions, and when he successfully made you laugh with all his snarks and quips, you knew Steve Harrington would be an alright roommate. You never figured he'd become your best friend.

Tonight, you pouted into the salad you regretted purchasing yesterday because a "healthy" lifestyle was born and had died within the span of your forty minute shopping trip. And now, you wanted nothing but another wet, shiny pizza, and Steve Harrington's dumb jokes.

He ate in his room. Shuffled out while you were finishing Notting Hill and made another bland chicken-rice-and-broccoli dinner. And then he shuffled past you, shut his door, and ate it alone. Never even giving you a chance to tease his unseasoned plate for the purpose of "gains." You thought he could remain just as toned and handsome with flavor on his food.

By the time you were showered, redressed, and gurgling with lingering hunger, you were properly sour with guilt.

And maybe the black sweatpants with the bedazzled jewels on your ass were pulled on with manipulative purpose before you shuffled to Steve's door. You lingered there a while, gnawing on the skin around your thumbnail and glancing between the wood grain of Steve's door and the plush surface of your yellow slippers. At this proximity, you could hear the low hum of his radio behind the door. He had a strange affection for the 70s and 80s station.

If only you knew that it was because Steve knew "the all time hits of the 70s and 80s" were your favorite.

The radio dimmed, and a moment later Steve's voice called through the door. "I can hear you lingering out there."

You jumped, stepping away from the door. Your thumb returned to your mouth, teeth piercing the skin to nibble it away. The shuffle of feet and jingle of the doorknob came too swiftly for you to evade, and then the door swung open to reveal Steve in grey sweatpants and a tight red t-shirt. He looked good in red, too.

"Oh. Hi," you murmured, hand instantly dropping to your side.

Steve caged the doorway, biceps bulging on either side. You averted your eyes with a swallow.

He sighed. "Hi."

Steve watched you sweep a slippered foot back and forth like sloshing through water. He tipped his head and bit away a smile when he caught the edge of a jewel on your hip. His favorite sweatpants.

"Are you mad at me?"

Steve sighed again, this time a little shaken with laughter. "No, kid. I ain't mad at ya."

To prove his point, he nudged the door open with his palm and motioned toward the bedroom behind him. "Come on in."

You flopped on the edge of his bed, bounced up and down by old springs. Steve swung the door closed and joined you, easing back against his wooden headboard to reassume his rumpled position. He reached toward the nightstand and turned the knob on the radio to lower the Elton John song playing.

Steve snatched the small plastic basketball from behind the radio and tossed it in the air. "So, what's goin' on?"

You watched the ball soar into the air and come back down into his palm. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I was just...cranky."

Steve quirked a brow, catching your eye over an orange blur when he threw the ball again. "Yeah? That all?"

The corners of your mouth pulled down. "Yeah...? What else would it be."

Steve shrugged, chin turned up toward the ceiling as he watched the basketball fly toward it. Elton John died down and switched to Def Leppard. "Hysteria" was one of Steve's favorite songs.

"You tell me. You were having a Julia Roberts marathon."

"So?" Your thumb returned to your mouth, teeth ripping at the skin.

"You only watch Julia Roberts when you're sad."

"Not true."

Steve fixed his head straight again, eyes narrowing into a pointed look. The basketball sat in his right palm against his chest. You huffed, angling yourself toward the door to glare at it instead of your roommate and his smug, all knowing expression.

He waited a while, like he always did—waiting out your stubbornness and refusing to let it break him. You could talk to him, you knew that. He wanted you to know that.

"I guess..." You sighed, throwing yourself back on the bed with your arms locked over your eyes. "I guess I'm just upset that Eddie still hasn't called. I've been calling and texting him, but...he doesn't wanna see me."

Steve immediately felt every blood cell in his body curdle. Like they were burning and festering, irritated under his skin. He swallowed, bringing the basketball to sit between his knees where he could pick at the design with blunt fingernails.

"And you want to see him?"

You dropped your arms, letting them plop to your sides. "I mean...yeah."

Steve couldn't help it—he scoffed.

The sound had your head turning, brows furrowed his way. His head was shaking, eyes focused distinctly downward to avoid yours. All the smugness of his expression dimmed into something distasteful and angry.

"What the hell was that for?"

"Nothing."

"You scoffed."

"I sighed."

"No, you scoffed."

"Well—"

This time, Steve did sigh. He took the basketball in his hands and chucked it toward the door, causing it to boomerang off the wood and catapult back toward the mattress again. The sharp smack had you jolting upward, and your eyes widened on Steve when he hopped from the bed and stood to his feet.

"What the hell—"

"He's not good enough for you!"

You paused on weak wrists used to push you upward. Steve stood a foot away from the bed with pink cheeks and outstretched hands. They curled back toward him to sweep through his hair and tug hard at the roots.

"Steve—"

"He sucks. Alright? All your ex boyfriends sucked, but especially Eddie. He didn't understand you, he didn't appreciate you. He made you cry, for fuck's sake, and you want him back? I just don't get it."

Your lips parted, but it felt like gulping for water on dry land. And Steve watched, helplessly, as you stammered for words in the face of his impending and inevitable confession. Inevitably painful, he knew, but he could no longer stomach the tireless routine of finding the body closest to yours in another dark bar, hoping she would comfort him enough to soothe the ache he had for you.

You, who slept across the hall and shared the sofa with your head on his shoulder. You, who looked at him like some sort of light source with those little round eyes. You, who made his heart pound and weep endlessly every second that you were near, and every moment you were away—leaving him in a constant, centrifugal loop of torture.

So—knowing it might ruin every bit of good the pair of you worked so hard to keep—Steve stepped closer to the bed and swallowed. He prepared himself to form the words he'd practiced a million times over in his head.

"I just figured that eventually...you'd get tired of all the wrong guys, and realize that...I'm here. That it was me, that you loved me. Because I love you—don't you love me?"

He paused, but it would never have been enough time for your mind to process his proclamation. He had a look of such anguish embedded in his features, all scrunched and screwed together with wet, shiny eyes.

"And I figured it was easier to sleep my way around than sit and watch you waste your time with these idiots. But they were never you. And I never bothered to get to know them, because I only wanted to know you."

Your breath hitched when Steve crowded your corner of the bed, hands clasped over his chest. You had to tip your head back to meet his eye, and you felt your arms shake in their locked position holding you up. The sight of him blurred with the onset of your own hot, salty tears.

Steve sniffed: a wet slurp proceeded by a tear slipping down his cheek. He wiped it quickly and sank to his knees before you on the bed, hands coming to cradle your bent knees.

"I just can't take it any longer," he whispered, and his hazel eyes were like shiny coins gazing up at you.

His lips were wet with his own tears. His tongue swept them away. Every breath inhaled rattled in his chest, and every exhale shuddered his cheeks full. He chuckled when he rubbed his palm into his eye and turned it red, sweeping his forearm over his face to clear the tears again but they just kept coming.

"Fuck, say something, please," he huffed, lacing it with laughter despite its absence of humor.

Your throat felt like it swelled to twice the size. Sickness rolled in your stomach. But it only grew at the thought of breaking Steve's heart with your silence. Because the longer he looked at you with those almond eyes, and the longer he sniffled and massaged your knees to comfort himself—the more your heart crumbled.

"I...I don't know what to say," you croaked.

Steve inhaled again, stuttering through a sniffle. He wiped his cheek on your knee and chuckled again. "Yeah. Yeah, of course—it's okay."

"Steve—"

"It's okay," he insisted, scrambling to his feet. He backed away toward the door and you finished pulling yourself upright.

"Steve, wait—"

"Really, it's okay, honey. I'm just gonna...—we ran out of ice cream, so 'm gonna g-go—go get some. Mint chip, yeah? Okay."

He sniffled again upon his exit, slipping through a small crevice he opened the door to. The front door slammed shut moments later, and you rolled onto your stomach to unleash a scream into Steve's mattress.

"Stay tuned for more all time hits of the 70s and 80s!"

✶ ✶

Steve did not return with the mint chip until nearly midnight. It came in a plastic bag that announced his arrival even before the clamber of keys. Yet, it was the squeal of old hinges that woke you from your couch slumber, and you jolted upright as the door swung open.

Steve closed the door and stood there for a moment, spotting you in the dimness of the living room. You rubbed your eye and he shifted on his feet. Ted scampered off the couch and butted at Steve's calf.

He held up the plastic bag. "Got the mint chip. It's uh...it's all melted now, though."

You wanted to reply, to make him feel better again. His eyes were still pink and puffy, and you hated the thought of him spending hours in his car or another dark bar agonizing over what you might be thinking. Worst of all, regretting any of what he said.

Because you spent the past few hours doing plenty of thinking. You laid in his bed, curled on your side, and looked at all the pictures pinned to a cork board above his desk.

The sepia toned film strip from a wedding last fall where you took him as your date. You were smiling in every one, and to the unbeknownst you might have already appeared as a couple.

The Polaroid from his most recent birthday, where you were sitting on his shoulders and clutching onto his hair for dear life. His sister took the picture.

The black and white he printed from his phone of just you on a park bench, feeding the ducks. You never even knew he had that one.

And when you shuffled to your room, you suddenly stopped. The clack of hard-bottomed slippers caught your attention, and you looked down at the plush yellow footwear around your toes—a gift from Steve.

You stood on the other side of your bed and stared at the windowsill full of miscellaneous yellow items all gifted from Steve. The movie ticket stubs shoved in your mirror and the hundreds thrown in a box on your dresser because you'd probably seen a thousand over the years with Steve, who loved movie theater popcorn and sitting close to you in the dark.

The birthday cards he wrote extensive messages of well wishes and gratitude for your friendship in with terrible penmanship. The purse he bought you for that you said you liked in passing but would never spend that much money on, and the note still tucked inside the zipper that came pasted to the bag on Christmas morning:

Because you deserve it.

Love, Steve

And then you ended up on the couch, falling asleep watching the door and waiting for it to open.

Steve trudged to the kitchen while you were lost in thought, and you hurried to catch up as he swung the freezer open. He wrapped the plastic bag around the pint of the ice cream and stuck it on the top shelf, hand reaching to close the door—when he was pushed forward by a force crashing into him.

And then there was warmth around his stomach: two arms curling around his ribs. Two hands pressing to his stomach and pulling him in. Steve stopped, immobilized in the open freezer door.

"I'm sorry," you breathed into his shirt, eyes closed tight. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything, I was just so stunned. And I'm an idiot, I'm an idiot, Steve, for letting this go on for so long. Of course I love you, of course you love me—God, I just never wanted to ruin everything. But you make me so happy, and I—"

Steve spun around, causing your head to lift off his back. You went to drop your arms, but he instantly brought them around his neck. Two hands, still frozen from melting ice cream, braced your cheeks.

"You mean it?"

You nodded in his hold, happy to see his hazel eyes free and clear of tears. "Yes. Yes, of course I mean it—"

"Oh, thank fucking God," Steve breathed, and then his mouth descended on you.

You curled to the tops of your toes to press into his kiss, whimpering at the warmth and softness of his lips. It felt exactly as you thought it would—anticipating their plushness every time he pressed his lips to your cheek over the years.

It lasted until the pair of you were breathless, and you heaved for air upon release. Steve brushed his thumbs over your bottom lip, smearing spit and hemming your airless grin.

He kissed you all night, and let his hands roam where they could not roam before. You fell asleep in his bed tucked under his arm, and when you woke you shared the refrozen pint of mint chip with one spoon.

And when Steve called his sister while you were showering to share the good news, all she did was laugh.

"Jesus, about fucking time."

[maxlarens]

i promise i'm writing my max oneshot CURRENTLY but i had to get the sillies out about this really badly. australian spring/summer i love u i love u i love u!!!! also at this point i think the difference between a one shot and drabble on this account is non existent and simply based on vibes. this is only a one shot bcs it feels a bit more coherent i suppose?

LN: australia street

pairing(s): lando norris x piastri!reader, oscar piastri & piastri!reader

word count: 1.3k+

It all feels very familiar, nostalgic even— though you've never been in quite this situation before. With Oscar sure; you always rope your brother into doing things when you're in Australia again. But this is the first time that Lando's joined you.

It's nice, to be home.

Not that it's yours or Oscar's home anymore (that's not true. It always will be, no matter where in the world you jet off to). It's certainly not Lando's. It's hard to put words to the feeling, you just know it's nice.

You're driving, of course, because Oscar and Lando can never decide which of the two of them should drive. So you'd snatched the keys to the Piastri family '96 Holden Commodore and slammed the driver door behind you before either of them could say boo. Lando had snagged the passenger seat in a mad dash that you'd watched play out in the rear-view mirror, while Oscar had complained all the way to the backseat.

"Whered'ya wanna go?", you half turn your head to ask Oscar, checking your blind spot at the same time.

Oscar hums as he thinks. You can feel Lando's eyes burning a hole into the side of your face.

"Do you remember that fish and chips shop—"

You do, "Where Dad used to take us? Yeah, it closed down," then you add, "Besides, Lando hates fish. Jeez, Osc."

"Ah fuck," Oscar groans, "That sucks."

Lando makes a noise, indignant, "I can't believe you forgot. It's my one thing."

Oscar rolls his eyes, "It's not your one thing, Lando. You have plenty of things."

They start to bicker, devolving into an argument that you only understand about half of, about pet peeves and the things the other one does that get on the other’s nerves. You chime in a few times to agree about Oscar’s annoying habits, the things you'd grown up complaining to your Mum about. Quietly to yourself, you decide on a route to an old Italian place you know is still kicking around— they won't mind.

You roll your window down, feel the balmy spring breeze in your hair, on your face. It smells like the bloom of jasmine flowers, of warmth, of the smoke of people BBQ-ing in their backyards. You breathe deeply, absently aware of the petered-out conversation. Oscar dozing in the backseat like he always does. Lando looking out the other window, watching gum trees and bottlebrush on the sides of the road. 'M looking for koala’s he'd said the other day, which had made you laugh. You'd been tempted to tell him about drop bears, but you're sure that Daniel had already warned him of the dangers.

"Do you miss it here?", Lando asks suddenly.

"Mm," you affirm, "I do."

"A lot?"

You shrug at the question, not sure why he's pressing it, "Sure, Lan."

"Then why do you travel with Oscar?", you spare a glance at him, he's fiddling with a bracelet on his wrist, the one you'd made him that matched the one you'd made Oscar that matched the one you wore, "Don't you want to, y'know, settle down here?"

You raise an eyebrow, scoff a little, "God, I'm not an old maid, dude. I'm not ready to pop out babies yet. Far out."

"No, no," he's blushing, you know he is, you don't even need to check, his tan cheeks growing a little darker, redder, "Fuck. That's not what I meant. You know what I meant."

You snicker. You do. But Lando is fun to rile up.

A latent sigh leaves your mouth, "I dunno," you admit, "It's my favourite place. But I have the rest of my life to come back, and besides, it's more special like this. I appreciate it more when I'm only here for a short time."

Lando hums, turning your words over in his head. You think he may be about to say something else—

"Do you like it here, Lan?"

You're not sure why you ask. No, you are. There's this fantasy that keeps floating around in your head. Little bits of it have been coming true on this trip. Lando standing in the garage with your Dad, talking about project cars and then showing him grease covered parts, explaining where they'll eventually end up. Your Mum roping you, Lando and Oscar into helping her cut vegetables at the kitchen counter. Your younger sisters giving you loaded looks behind Lando's back, you trying to pretend you have no idea what they mean by them. It's a pipedream, it's weird and you need to stop doing it.

But you can't. Sometimes, you look at Lando and your thoughts just pick up and run away with themselves.

Lando nods in answer to your question, "'Course. It's very," he trails off, fingers finding the beads on his bracelet again, he hums, "It's very you. Hm, does that make sense?"

You feel warm all of a sudden. Something creeps up your neck, settles at the base of your skull. You blink a few times, remind yourself to focus on the road.

You skitter out a laugh, an awkward thing, you're trying not to look at him, your hands tight on the wheel, "Yeah— uh— it does. I s'pose."

You lapse into silence for a short while. The sky is eggshell orange and purple and red, stretching out in front of you. Punctuated by the star-brightness of the street lights, terracotta tiled roofs and the shadowed branches of towering Eucalyptus trees. It fills you with a feeling you can't name— there's nothing else quite like it out there. Not in London, not in Monaco, not in any of the many other cities you've traveled to or lived in for a stint.

They're all gorgeous and interesting in their own right, but they don't live up to the special peculiarities of suburban Australia. The flash of a possum's eyes where it's skittering across a powerline. The faint sounds of kookaburras laughing as dusk falls. The glow of families watching TV in living rooms coming through screen doors left unlocked. Old men tinkering in wide open garages. Wheelie bins with red and yellow lids out on the curb— cricket stumps painted on the sides.

It’s special. In the way that home is always special.

Then Lando says, apropos of nothing, “Pretty.”

“Huh.”

He shrugs, gestures around at the neighbourhood, “It’s pretty. Warm too. I can see why your parents live here. Raised you guys here. I can see myself doing that.”

You decide not to tell him about the bipolarity of Melbourne weather. Cold to hot to wet to dry to gusty all in a few hours. You let him enjoy the rare consistent spring day. And you try not think about what he’s saying, what he’s admitting. You try not to think about what you might be admitting, driving him through streets you used to play in, to places you used to go with your family, talking about settling down, like it’s on the horizon anytime soon.

It’s not— you’ve not met anyone to settle down with.

At least you don’t think you have.

It’s certainly not Lando, in the passenger seat of the old family car, fresh off a day of meeting your grandparents for fuckssake and taking a tour of your childhood bedroom. Laughing at your old boyband posters and the teenage girl shrine you’d kept to Niki Lauda. It can’t be Lando, who you turn to when you can’t turn to your brother, who gives you his hoodies when you’re cold even though he’s colder, who’s come on a bloody trip to Australia in his four week break because you’d said you wouldn’t know what to do without him for that long.

It can’t. It’s not.

He’s talking in hypotheticals and you’re getting carried away with yourself again. Like you always do.

listened to this playlist while writing😌

[neoplatinum]

morning beauty | myoui 'mina' minari

summary: has mina always looked this beautiful?

pairing: mina x 10th-member!reader

themes: fluff, major major fluff, minor 2yeon, rest of twice

wc: 3.9k

you had something to confess, a little guilty pleasure of yours, well guilty as in you didn't want the other members to find out. but it was truly something you enjoyed for yourself and kept hidden away from the rest of the girls.

you always chose to room with mina, because you liked waking up to her. it started when it was something jeongyeon commented on during the 2022 once day fanmeeting.

when jeongyeon explained that she would like to be reborn married to mina, she explained it was because she wanted to wake up to mina's face everyday. while chaeyoung and nayeon were playfully laying their claim on their women.

you realized you never actually slept in the same bed with mina, so you don't know what jeongyeon means by it. mina's gorgeous, you could never deny that, but wow does jeongyeon sound like she has a crush. you laughed at the sight of a jealous chaeyoung and nayeon.

letting the thought slip into the back of your mind for a while.

--

until twice's 5th word tour: ready to be was starting up. after the grueling work and practice that came with preparing for a seven leg tour, also was the need of having partners for hotel rooms. the first foreign show was kicked off in sydney, australia.

the beautiful warm city with bright lights shining in to the hotel lobby. while you were still trying to adjust to the time difference. just as you were about to yawn, body sinking into the hotel couch, mina walks up to you.

"hi, we're going to be rooming together." in that quiet, calm voice of hers, handing you a second key card. you nod and continue to yawn and rub at your eyes, ready to get settled in the hotel room before soundcheck. stuffing the keycard into your pocket, and rolling the luggage towards the elevators.

the room was gorgeous, facing the beautiful sun shining in, but you felt like a heavy log in water. the time difference was really messing with your energy levels, so you begrudgingly rolled your luggage inside. flopping onto the bed immediately.

mina's quietly humming a song as she gets settled. tucking her luggage away on her side of the room, and then getting ready to play on her switch.

you watched her, with your body laying flat on your stomach, but your head turned towards her. hearing the low sounds of her game, she doesn't say much, but it's comfortable being around her.

she’s always brought you a comforting sense of home even if you are thousands of miles away from korea.

mina's a nice contrast from constantly rooming with nayeon.

nayeon always flings her outfit all over the bed, even landing them on your bed. chargers and phone misplaced all the time, begging you to call her number and to find her chargers. this is a much different change of pace.

you wake up to the sight of mina, wearing cute jeans and a plain tee, long hair running down her back, her face away from you. rummaging through her toiletries bag for something. then she gets up to go wash her face. her face half turned towards you when she realizes you are awake.

you let out a small gasp, has her side profile always been this pretty? your eyes go wide, trailing down her face, from the sharp eyebrows to the beauty mark above her lip and her defined jawline. it's all too much for your heart to handle while still waking up.

"i'm going to go wash my face before soundcheck." she says quietly, nodding at you before disappearing into the bathroom. you begin to wonder what's in the sydney water.

--

the rest of the soundcheck and concert, you've been in a daze: a mina daze. constantly eyeing her from across the stage, side glances and unfocused. has she always looked this good?

you try and snap out of it before the concert starts, but as you watch mina perform 7 rings from behind the stage, your jaw drops naturally. eyes glued to the screen, watching her turn around to drop her ass. you nearly drop your mic.

jeongyeon stares at the performance, cheering mina on, but her eyes fall on you, watching you watch mina. she keeps that in mind.

the rest of the concert goes off without a hitch, the crowd's shouting and the energy in the sydney night is beautiful. you're enjoying a break as the group takes a quick break to chat with fans. you lean down to grab water bottles, handing some to the other members.

then the big screen shifts to mina, and you hear her voice reverberate around the stadium. you try and watch her across the stage, but she's blocked by tzuyu so you turn to watch the 4k big screen instead.

and as she shares her feelings for the sydney onces, you get entranced by her speaking. watching the way her eyes shine under the fluorescent lights and the gorgeous outfit she has on. the second time that day you ask yourself, has she always looked this good? mina continues to talk until you notice yourself being shown on screen, eyes glued to the screen.

you completely miss the timing for your turn to speak, and then nayeon and jeongyeon are making a big deal about you staring at mina. pushing and shoving you playfully as you try and play it off coolly. it's too late though because the internet's already circulating with videos of you staring down the screen with mina's face blown up.

onces all over the internet are making memes over it, the sight of your face, jaw dropped and just in awe of mina on the big screen.

by the time you are focused on the concert again, and interacting with fans. you begin waving and doing requests off of once's posters.

laughing at one that's asking for sana's hand in marriage, you tug her towards the excited fan and watching sana offer her hand out, laughing and running away. as if she didn't just kill that poor fangirl.

--

the walk out of the van into the hotel lobby is tiring, you can feel the adrenaline finally wearing off. the intensity of having to perform for so long taking a toll on you, you keep massaging your shoulder as you follow the girls up the elevator. jihyo and jeongyeon happily chatting about being in australia. and looking forward to exploring local spots.

mina taps you lightly, and you turn your body towards her.

"i brought massage oils." she says quietly, pointing towards the hand thats been rubbing your shoulders. you thank her quietly, letting her walk you to the hotel room, too tired to even talk.

you fall into a chair, watching mina take out another toiletry bag. grabbing some massage oil, taking the time to work the muscle aches and the tension in your shoulder. a nice relaxing feeling with her pressing the buildup away.

"thank you mina." you offer as she leaves to go wash off the massage oil. your cheeks dusted light pink at the attentive care she has for you, even if she's bone tired from her own performance.

after doing your nightly routine, you get ready to sleep off the exhaustion, dreaming of soft hands and long jet black hair. dreaming of the girl in the other bed in the room.

--

waking up you feel like you've been transported into a different world. eyes watching mina do her morning routine so gently and quietly. moving around to collect her outfit for the day, and to put on light makeup.

you try and concentrate on your own morning routine, but you keep glancing over at mina through the wall mirror as she fixes her eyeliner by the other sink. with your face dripping in water, you forget what you were supposed to be doing. that warm yellow light bringing a gorgeous hue to her skin.

walking out to join the other girls for breakfast didn't help either as mina was seated next to you, taking the edge seat closest to the window. the sun bouncing off her skin, glowing even more than in the bathroom. dahyun had to tap on you five times to get you to pass her the syrup bottle.

you try and snap back into the real world, but with a face like mina's, how can you?

--

the melbourne concert was amazing, the synergy in the air making you forget about your little dilemma. you playfully tugged chaeyoung along, running around the stage and making half hearts with her at every corner. hearing the shouts of fans at the sight at every pose. you nearly run into mina at one point, not noticing her in your peripheral until it's too late.

at the last second, you pull her body towards you, arms circling her waist in a protective hold, making sure she didn't fall backwards off the stage. in the stress of the moment, you don't realize how close you are to her face, until you look up. her eyes staring into yours, and your eyes go wide at the closeness.

trying to play it off, taking your arm away from her waist and asking if she's okay. but the video is circling the internet that night, fans squealing at the near kiss.

you try and avoid the topic as you and mina get ready for bed, mina wouldn't confront you about it, you know that much. she's quietly humming another song as she cleans up her make up bag. sorting it and tucking it away.

you try and think about anything else other than her, this mina fixation is slowly eating up your attention.

--

with the osaka and tokyo shows, you begin to get closer to mina, her taking time to bring you around to her favorite spots when she was younger. she's in her home country, and her parents are friendly, familiar faces.

they offer nice gifts to all the members, even asking you how your shoulder is doing. you reply that it's doing well, all thanks to mina's massage oils. they smile at that, glad their daughter is so nice and thoughtful to the other girls.

mina brings all the members over to the myoui residence for a sleepover.

you get a real feel for pre-debut mina. the game obsession is still obvious, but you also discover her childhood memories. photos littered in her room and a giant wall dedicated to the group. you try not to tear up at the sight of everyone as the final lineup from sixteen, but the memories are coming back.

she walks in with a box in her hand.

"this is for you, from my parents." and you look down and see massage oils, top of the line and very very expensive. your eyes widen at the sight, you would never justify buying this for yourself.

"oh mina, you don't have to." you push the box away.

"my parents insisted. i told them about your shoulder, and they ordered it right away." you smile at that, the myoui's are always so thoughtful. you begrudgingly take the box, and thanking her parents for the wonderful gift. promising to always look after mina.

that night as you get ready for a sleepover at the myoui's with all the girls huddled up in her living room floor, you think that you would love to live with mina.

--

then came the US leg of the tour, and with it came more moments spent with mina. you nearly had a heart attack when you found out mina was experiencing back pain the whole concert. she didn't even mention it, just pulled out a back brace from her luggage and wrapped it over her shirt.

mina had to calm you down from calling your manager, your frantic voice demanding a doctor visit immediately. she managed to convince you to let it go, with the promise of much-needed rest and letting you take care of her.

so you use the massage oils her parents bought to massage her back every night. attentively rubbing her lower back and then to her upper back. removing the knots in her shoulder, mina falls asleep at one point, so you tuck her in. pulling the comforter up and washing your hands before getting ready for bed.

with her back pain having flair-ups, you always carry her luggage, insisting that she doesn't carry heavy things. you insist even if she rolls her eyes because you'd rather have an unhappy mina who feels coddled than a mina in pain and aching from carrying around her luggage.

you start to question why you do all this for mina.

--

you've developed a routine since rooming with mina at every hotel. always tucking away mina's luggage by the side of the bed that is closer to the bathroom. in that corner that she always likes, always setting her makeup brushes from biggest to smallest, left to right on her vanity. you always make sure the water you brought to her was warm, not too hot but also not too cold.

when mina is feeling a little under the weather from being in the rain for the atlanta concert, you urge jeongyeon to come with you to buy medicine for her.

you stroll into the target, looking around for cough drops and cough medicine, going up to the cashier and through the use of your translator app, you successfully are directed to the right row. getting cough drops for mina.

while you are busy debating between two brands, with jeongyeon holding a basket full of remedies, jeongyeon asks you this.

"who is mina to you?"

"mina? she's our member." you laugh, what a silly question jeongyeon.

"no, who is mina to YOU?" jeongyeon asks again, as you shove one bag back into the display. then reaching into the back of a different row to get a bag of cough drops that hopefully no one has touched.

"she's my..." you stop, hand on the bag. a little confused by what jeongyeon means. "why are you asking this question?"

jeongyeon keeps shuffling her feet, peering on the other side and picking up a box of travel toothpaste for herself. "you've just been really close with her, and now you're even out here buying medicine and little things that she likes."

"well of course i would, it's what you would do for nayeon." you roll your eyes at the obvious.

"exactly, nayeon and i are together, and when she was sick you didn't rush me out here to buy her medicine. so what does that make mina to you?"

you grab the bag, placing it into the basket and briskly walking away.

"hey! you can't avoid the question!" jeongyeon catches up to you, while you continue to ignore her, and then you see a row of red. the nintendo switch display aisle.

bingo.

you begin searching through the rows of game cartridges for pikmin 4.

the game that mina's been raving about the release for. talking to you animatedly about how she excited she is to get her hands on it, talking about her obsession with the previous games. you kept that in mind to buy it for her when it releases.

with the chaotic schedule, mina never had the time to buy the game, so you took it upon yourself to buy it for her.

"oh you are so in love with her, dodging my question only to buy mina a switch game?" jeongyeon smirks at you placing the game into her basket.

"am not!" you shout back, and jeongyeon cackles because you're lying through your teeth. your cheeks are flushed, and you're throwing the worst temper tantrum ever.

"yeah, sure." jeongyeon continues to cackle as you take the basket out of her hand, rushing forward to pay for the stuff, ignoring the way jeongyeon is just waiting for you to look at her with that knowing smirk of hers.

you are not giving her the satisfaction.

you return to your hotel room after shoving jeongyeon to her room. begging nayeon to take her girlfriend away so she can stop asking you if you're in love with mina.

obviously you are not.

you walk into your own room, seeing mina laying like she was before you left, switch in hand and looking pale. you immediately press your hand to her forehead, oh good, she doesn't have a fever.

you start taking things out of the shopping bag. cough drops, and bottle of cough medicine in case she needed something stronger. pedialyte to rehydrate herself, chicken soup that won't hurt her stomach. and tylenol medicine in case she gets a fever. at the display of all the items on her nightstand, you scratch the back of your head. did you really buy that much?

"thank you, you really didn't have to get me so much. it was only a cough." she says quietly, taking the bag of cough drops and ripping it to throw one in her mouth. you realize you have definitely overreacted, but how could you not when mina was coughing?

then you remembered the gift in your hand.

"i also bought something for you." you hand her the physical copy of pikmin 4. watching the ways her eyes go wide, excitement coursing through her, she leans forward, offering you a hug, that has you frozen. and she turns to open the game. you sit by her side the rest of the night letting her explain the game to you.

oh god, maybe you are in love with mina.

--

it becomes a habit, watching mina play her games every night, no matter how hard or confusing the game was, you alway sat by her to watch her. sometimes she caught you watching her instead of the game and would just redirect your focus back to the game.

then it becomes a habit of sleeping in the same bed. you wake up to the sight of mina, always waking up before her, sometimes you liked tucking her hair out of her face if you were bold. or plugging her switch into the outlets when she falls asleep playing it. you don't question it when she gets closer to you, and you lay your arm over her protectively.

today, mina didn't even want to wake up, so here you are, arranging breakfast in a tray from the lobby, bringing it up to her. with jeongyeon following you, you forget about how this isn't normal behavior for you. so dedicated and attentive to mina's wellbeing.

you walk in and gently place the tray by the counter. then you sit down to wake up mina, tapping her shoulder in a way you know won't spook her. as she slowly gets up, you brush her hair away, you also unwrap utensils for her to eat the breakfast you have for her.

she's enjoying her meal, with you making sure each bite isn't hot, blowing on it if it's too hot. and then you hear it.

"oh. my. god." your head snaps towards the hallway, the sight of jeongyeon and nayeon peering in, with jeongyeon filming the whole interaction. nayeon giggling like an idiot and hitting jeongyeon on the arm. then you get up ready to chase them out the room, them both turning on their heel rushing out the room.

you grow embarrassed, cheeks and ears flushed red and you look at mina, who also seems embarrassed being caught like this.

"let me go talk to them." you say, needing an out from this awkward moment. mina nods and continues eating her meal, letting you walk out, with your hands in your pockets and a nervous shiver down your spine.

you spot the two girls, eyeing jeongyeon's phone, and you can see it even if their back is turned to you. nayeon's snickering and jeongyeon's loud gasps. the video of you hand-feeding mina playing through the speakers.

"jeongyeon!" you shout as you get ready to snatch the phone out of her hand. she's quick, tucking the phone into her shirt. if it had been literally any two other members, you would not have to lose your head like this.

"so...mind explaining to us what's going on?" nayeon looks at you amusedly, pointing at the hotel door. you shake your head no, adamantly.

"oh also, just so you know, jeongyeon sent the video into the groupchat." nayeon says to you, and jeongyeon chases after her girlfriend down the hallway. you get ready for the confrontation that's going to happen when everyone in the group chat sees the video.

--

jihyo has you and mina in two chairs, watching you two closely. eyes boring into your and then into mina's, it keeps going on until you finally snap.

"jihyo please, can you just say what you want to say?" you sigh.

"okay, i had to do this to jeongyeon and nayeon when i found out they were sleeping together." she explains, you gag at the information, while mina looks away. "are you two together?"

"we're..." you trail off at the end. you haven't asked mina at all, you barely know if she feels anything towards you. mina taps her foot rhythmically. a nervous tick she's developed over the years, you hold her hand, and she stops tapping her foot.

"ooookay, i'll let you guys talk it out." jihyo slips out of the room, closing the door behind her.

you look at mina, she's not looking at you either. but the urge to confess was too much to handle, and you realize words are tumbling out of your mouth, before you had the time to think it through.

"i like you mina, i realized it through this tour, with how beautiful you are, i mean that inside and out. you were so attentive about my shoulder and you always offered to give me a massage even if you were tired from the concert."

you continue to word vomit in front of her.

"i mean i always knew you were gorgeous, but wow you take my breath away. seriously, all those videos circulating the internet was actually because you took my breath away. i want to wake up to your face, every. single. day. i don't know if you like me back, but i really do like you."

her face is beet red, hands rubbing one another as she listens to you talk, and then without another word, she gives you a quick peck on the lips, and returns to her seat. even more embarrassed than before.

"mina?" you gasp out. feeling for your lips, ones that she just kissed. she shakes her head no, but her feeling are betraying her. her body sinking into herself.

you giggle at it; it's cute that she can't even say it. "i'm going to assume you like me back because you kissed me."

she nods her head shyly, and then you let out a laugh.

--

at the very last concert of the ready to be tour. you're busy trying to tease tzuyu with momo. a wonderful encore stage to wrap up the amazing 49 concert tour. you continue to circulate the stage, often chasing jeongyeon and nayeon, when you spot a sign, "mina, will you marry me?"

you squint a bit at it, a little hard to read in the night, but when you get it, you immediately bring the mic to your lips, accidentally speaking into it.

"you can't marry mina, i'm marrying her."

the video breaks the internet.

--

a/n: this is a birthday gift to minari!! thank you to @im--yoong who messaged me requesting this fic, this is the video that inspired this fic!!

ALSO HUGE HUGE HUGE SHOUTOUT to @cry4mina who helped me move this story along, frfr saved me. bare-faced mina could save me, i believe it. stay safe and stay healthy everyone!

[ageofstarkey]

Hi! Could you write a Mattheo one, where it’s that time of the month, and you’re just really not feeling like facing the world.

poor thing ✰ m. riddle

summary: you’re on your period, and matthéo’s there to help you feel less awful.

pairing: bf!matthéo x reader

warnings: reader is implied to be afab, mentions of reader having their period, discussion of period-related symptoms, nothing else really???

note: hello!! thank you so much for the request!! i’m still trying to find my groove with writing, but i hope i did your prompt some justice :’) also pretend that boys can in fact enter the girls dorms in this universe lmfao

masterlist

comments & reblogs are so appreciated!

✰ ✰ ✰

“aren’t you getting up for potions?”

when you roll over, you see pansy watching you from the doorway. she’s dressed and ready for the day - book bag slung carefully across her body. she studies you with something akin to concern; awaiting your response with perfect, furrowed brows.

with a quiet sigh, you push yourself into a half-sitting position. “i don’t think so. i got my period last night and i feel absolutely horrid.”

“want me to tell riddle? i’m sure he’s looking for an excuse to skip anyway”

you roll your eyes fondly. “he’s already missed too many lessons this year - let him figure it out on his own time, yeah?”

pansy shrugs. “fine. hope you feel better.”

you groan, flopping none-too-gracefully back on your pillow. ���me too.”

when pansy leaves, you take a few moments to savour the silence. it does little to ease the uncomfortable ache in your abdomen, but it’s quiet enough that you can almost pretend your head hasn’t been throbbing since the second you opened your eyes.

eventually, you snuggle back under your thick quilt, resigned to sleeping away your misery. it doesn’t take long for your fatigue to take over, pushing you steadily towards the edge of unconsciousness.

you’re nearly asleep, when you hear a sharp knock at the dormitory door. your brows tug downwards in confusion. with a quiet groan, you drag yourself out of bed. the floors are shockingly cold against your bare feet, and you curse quietly under your breath as you approach the door.

when you tug it open, you’re pleasantly surprised to see your boyfriends handsome face. although he should be in class, you can hardly fight the grin that tugs at your lips. “you are not supposed to be here.”

matthéo quirks an eyebrow, sporting a smirk you know all too well. “shall i see myself out then?”

you roll your eyes fondly. “no.”

“didn’t think so.” he lets himself in, kicking the door shut behind him. “do you wanna lay down?”

“merlin - more than anything.”

he tugs you gently towards him, pressing his lips against your forehead in a chaste kiss. “i figured as much.” he murmurs the words against your skin, punctuating them with another kiss. when he pulls away, he nudges you gently towards the bed. “how are you feeling?”

“awful.”

“cramps?” he shrugs off a few layers of clothing, before tugging back your quilt and laying on the bed.

with a gentle little tug, you’re falling into the empty space beside him. “my entire body just… aches.” with a defeated sigh, you drop your head on his chest.

matthéo hums softly, stroking a gentle hand up and down the length of your spine. “poor thing.”

“tell me about it.”

with a quiet little laugh, he tilts your head up towards his own. “do you think you’ll survive?”

“i really might not, théo. this might be it for me.”

matthéo rolls his eyes, but he wears a fond little smile that gives him away. “you’re ridiculous.”

“i am not!” your lips turn downwards in an involuntary pout. “it hurts.”

“i know, sweetheart.” he closes the small gap between you, kissing away your feeble little frown. “why don’t you try and get some rest, hm?”

“you’ll stay?”

he kisses you again - longer this time, and you swear you’re feeling better already. “‘m not going anywhere.”

[k3n-dyll]

||Men, minors and ageless DNI

CW: 18+, wlw, scissoring, domtop!Sevika, Sevika w/ a clit piercing

Word Count: 409 Masterlist Divider Creds Free Palestine

Thinking of Sevika with a clit piercing, desperate and needy after waiting for over a month for it to heal. She's making her reward for being patient worth it for both of you, holding one of your legs over her shoulder, kissing and nipping at your calf as she glides her cunt steadily against your own. The little silver balls decorating her now hypersensitive clit provide an added layer of pleasure to each sloppy roll of her hips, her moans and praises for you coming much louder and more frequently than they would have prior to the new piercing.

She keeps her body pressed close to your own, full breasts squishing up against your own, stiffened nipples gently passing over yours with each movement while she whispers in your ear

"Missed this so f-fuckin' much" "Forgot how pretty you look takin' it for me - fuck"

Sevika most definitely hadn't forgotten though.

After a full 4 weeks of no touch it was all she thought about, dreamt about, even. Having cum from just the thought of putting you on your back like this again more times than she'd admit aloud.

Her honey smooth voice and the wet, sticky sounds coming from your connected bodies are only contested by the uncontrollable, desperate whines pulling from your own throat. You needed this just as badly as she had. There's no denying, of course that your girlfriend was skilled with her hands and mouth, but it had never crossed your mind just how much better it feels to have her toned body tangled with your own until you weren't able to for what felt like ages.

The resulting orgasm is like a shock to both your systems, Sevika's fucked out brain only able to form the word "fuck" alongside the low grunts that punctuate each of the last few thrusts against your cunt. Her head drops to the crook of your neck when she begins to come down, her brown skin glistening with sweat in the dimly lit bedroom as she presses soft, wet kisses to your shoulder.

Before you can manage to calm down from your own high, her hips begin to roll once more, though shes barely finished catching her breath. You can't help but chuckle a little at how quickly she's ready to fuck you again.

"Already?" you ask her, doing your best to tease her through already escelating moans and ragged breathing.

"I'm not even close to done yet"

AN: More Sevika!!! Also, sorry y'all I haven't been on it with new content, work has been kicking my ass

Reblogs are appreciated <3 || Taglist: @delinthecut, @sevsbaby @half-of-a-gay, @porcelainmystery @archangeldyke-all