#but i also spent an hour last night throwing on an entire open sheet of newspaper to watch it go WOOSH!

[runawaymarbles]

actually i think being fascinated by the process of lighting things on fire is what makes us human

[marnle]

Cities are destined to be cold - Bucky Barnes x Agent!reader

Summary - When a mission goes wrong Bucky is angry. You’d never gotten along with each other, a hatred deep within the two of you. Yet this mission changed the air. When your taken from Bucky, he realises what he’s lost, and how truly, you’d saved him in ways he didn’t think were possible.

Warnings - this shit sad af, quite suggestive basically smut just without the descriptive part lol. Did I mention this is sad and angsty?

A/n - YOOOO, you guys ate up my last fic, hope this is up to par :)

ALSO! My requests are in fact open!! And I’d love to write for you guys as I’m currently on winter break! Thank you all <3 have a good ol Christmas, or enjoy whatever you celebrate. Safe reading <3

————

The city was different to what he remembered, he watched as the snow fell around him, painting his nose and cheeks a deep pink. He watched as the coruscating lights danced around his vision, twirling and moving as though they were one. He felt as though he was radiant, you beside him even more so. He missed the beat of your heart next to his. He missed the feel of your hands across the plains of his body, he missed the feel of your mouth upon his. He missed you more than his soul could understand, and how he wished you’d return to him once more.

It had been a month since you were taken by Hydra, a combat mission gone terribly terribly wrong, your whereabouts were unknown, physical state was unknown. The team had tried to bargain, they’d requested proof of life, yet nothing ever came. Bucky didn’t know if they were holding you captive, or had disposed of you; a strenuous attempt at destroying him from the inside out. Bucky’s heart felt as though it had been torn from his chest, his head felt as though it were an extra weight upon his neck, for he could barely hold it up.

He’d never gotten to tell you how enamoured he was with your being, he’d never told you that you were the reason he began to feel again, began to live again. All of the nights you’d spent together tangled within the sheets made him weak in his knees. You were the first person to trust him, treat him as though he walked the planet like everyone else, the first person to tell him it wasn’t his fault. And now he was sure he’d never be able to tell you that you owned his heart, his body and his soul.

-

It was the later hours after a formidable mission, the biggest of the year, the team had cleared out and successfully liberated one of the largest Hydra bases they’d ever come across, saving hundreds of innocent lives and gaining paramount intel that could help them even further in the future. You’d fought until your knuckles were bruised, and your body ached unlike any other. You weren’t enhanced, just an incredible fighter, so your body felt the sting of the hits you took, and the rush of the adrenaline that ran through your veins as thick as your blood.

It was the first time he ever held you.

You both weren’t exactly close, longing stares from across the room was all your acquaintanceship seemed to include. In fact, at first, you and Bucky didn’t entirely find each other appealing. You’d do something that he felt was entirely too risky on a mission, he’d voice his concerns in the form of a bellow, and you’d voice yours back even louder. Yet the day he found you in your room after the previously aforementioned vigorous mission was when the air between you both changed drastically forever.

-

Bucky stormed down the corridor towards your room, his steps were heavy with anger as he unceremoniously slammed his fists against your locked door. He was so incredibly frustrated with you. You’d yet again defied his orders to hang back, and ran in without any sort of cover to throw yourself in front of a group of civilians whilst Hydra open fired, whilst the team open fired. He’d screamed down the comms line so extremely loud that his voice had gravelled afterwards, yet you still didn’t listen.

“You let me in this room now, agent!” he bellowed, whilst his fists continued slamming into the wood of your door.

The door swung open, you stood in front of him, hand grasping a woollen blanket that was wrapped tightly around your form. It made you appear small. He thought you looked like the most beautiful thing to ever grace his vision. Still in your combat shirt and pants, darkened from the bloody carmine of your enemies.

“How can I be of service Barnes?” you growled, anger evident in your tight stance, and balled fists, of which were covered in bruises.

Without a second thought he strolled into your room, slamming the door behind him.

“I’m sure the door certainly didn’t deserve that.” you speculated, a smirk adorning your face.

“Shut it right now, and let me make one thing so obviously clear.” he replied, cutting you off entirely. His face was bathed in a layer of red, his usually welcoming cerulean eyes were cold and flinty. His nostrils were aflare too. It made you visibly curl into yourself, and it made Bucky sick to his stomach. It was as if you were both in a standoff, you were waiting for each other to make the wrong move in order to set alight the fuse.

Yet your posture was unnerving, you looked frail, weak, something that you’d never ever appeared. Bucky's chest felt as though a thousand pound weight was sitting upon it. You looked pale, nauseatingly pale. Yet it was you who backed down, and you never backed down. You practically limped towards the floor to ceiling windows at the other side of your room, you stumbled and threw yourself on the ground in front of them, still wrapped in your woollen blanket as if it were the only thing keeping you alive.

Bucky cleared his throat and walked up behind you. He watched your gaze as it swept over the city, the opaque lights of midnight ran across your face and features. Bucky thought you looked grandiloquent, the way your eyes were lit up like a thousand night skies. How he wished to gaze into them for eternity.

“You look unwell.” He stated stoically, as though his tone would solve all of his imminent problems. You only hummed, a small hand grasping your side blindly, as you refused to look back at him. Your face scrunched up in obvious discomfort.

“God what on earth is wrong with you?” he pressed, walking in front of you and blocking your line of sight, you could no longer see the calming lights of the city. Inducing you into the beginning of what one only could assume as a panicked state.

He stared down at you, and his eyes bore into the centre of your being, melting your metallic facade as though he were molten himself.

“I'm fine.” You managed to growl out, still grasping your side, yet with a little more vigour. You refused to meet his eyes, yet Bucky's gaze traced towards where your hand sat vacant, and widened as though he’d seen a ghost. The colour of his skin drained to a pale green.

“What the fuck did you do?” he whispered, his voice grainy whilst he kneeled in front of your form. Hands going towards your own.

Yet you smacked him away.

“I said I’m fine.” You replied, yet your waterline began to fill, your eyes began to glisten.

“You are not fine!” he replied, anger evident in his eyes, let alone his tone. He avoided your defensive arms, arms that were covered in small bruises and cuts from the battle prior. He grabbed the seam of your shirt with trembling hands, lifting it just high enough to expose your ribcage; where a large gash sat, slightly bloodied and held together by what he felt was the worst attempt at stitching he’d ever seen. He tried not to react, he wanted to uphold his angry facade as much as anyone, although a small broken gasp did escape his lips.

He practically threw your shirt back down, with so much force it felt as though the air around you had drastically moved. Bucky stood up, and strode across the room into your bathroom. You could hear him rustling through the cabinet underneath your sink. The taboo language that seemed to flow so freely from him at such a time made you breathe through your nose a little louder, ignoring the throbbing pain in your ribs.

He barged back into the room and made his way straight towards you. You simply lifted up your arms and allowed him to remove your shirt. You couldn’t care that you were practically bare in front of him, the lack of feeling in your fingers made you feel as though you were miles upon miles away. He began to pick out the awful stitches you’d attempted to do yourself as you gritted your teeth.

“Is it so goddamn hard to ask for help?” he asked as he roughly pulled out one of the stitches, causing you to groan in pain, tears forcefully running down your face, and dripping onto his hands.

“We’re on the same team, why the hell are you constantly hiding things from me Y/n?”

He stopped wrapping the bandage around your torso as his defiant glare met your own, eyes sparkling with worry. A lonesome tear ran down his cheek, spilling from his eye as your thumb met it before it could fall and join your own.

“I don't want you to worry Bucky”

He felt as if the world had collapsed around him. You even more so. He wasn’t physically able to conjure up words, the touch of your hand upon his jaw and cheek felt so powerful, one could assume you’d burnt him, so he continued to wrap the bandage around you.

As he pulled it tighter you winced and pushed away from him, the pain becoming too much to bear, you leaned on him as though he were the last pillar holding up the universe, painfully gritting your teeth so very tightly. He breathed heavily at the noise, it pained him greatly to see you in any amount of pain.

“I know it hurts sweetheart, I know, I’m so fucking sorry.” he said as he finished cutting off the last of the white bandage. He placed his large hand on the back of your head and brought you to his chest. He felt your tears wet his shirt, the same shirt he wore as a bullet grazed you and he didn’t notice. He ran his fingers through your locks, listening to your sobs quieten and your breathing even out.

“Shh, shhh..” he whispered as he rocked your shaking form, his heart splintering at the sight. His hands caressing your spine and back. His lips grazed your hairline, the soft feeling sent a shiver through your whole being, chilling you to the bone as an array of goosebumps began to rise upon your icey skin.

“Please don’t leave me.” You weeped. A thousand seas would’ve been less volatile.

“I won’t.” He whispered.

“Please don’t hate me.” you gasped, grasping his shirt within your fist, hoping his promise wasn’t a false camaraderie.

“Never.” His breath breezed across your scalp, dipping deep within the cracks of your being, mending your emotional wounds as though they were never present.

“You need to rest sweetheart.” Bucky said as he brushed away a strand of your hair that had begun to disrupt his view of your eyes.

You nodded your head as you witnessed vulnerability you’d never seen.

“Ready?” he asked.

You nodded once more as he lifted you from the ground and wrapped your body around his. His large, warm hands grasping you underneath your thighs, yet never straying too far to be considered something more.

He walked the two of you towards your bed, he felt the warmth of your breath against his neck where you tucked your head, felt the chill of your skin against his own. He felt as though he was floating himself. And he knew from that moment onwards he’d never want to leave such a feeling behind him. He sat you upon your fluffy sheets, sage green in colour with a white blanket placed on top.

“You're really cold, love.” Bucky whispered as he dragged his calloused hands up and down your ice cold arms.

“Get in with me?” You asked, peering up at him through your eyelashes. You felt as though you were committing a crime even laying your eyes upon a person so extremely angelic, never mind asking him to lay with you. Yet your mind was clouded by the voracious heat that seemed to be freely flowing from the plains of his body, something you not only needed, but craved deliciously.

“You sure? I can sleep on the floor sweetheart, it wouldn’t be the first, won’t be the last.” He asked, his eye refusing to meet yours, a fear resided deep within him, a fear that you’d see through his facade, and uncover that, yes, in fact he did have weaknesses, and one of them was placed strategically in front of him.

“Please Bucky, I promise.” You replied, beginning to remove the cargo trousers you wore on the mission, as Bucky had previously had you remove your shirt to combat your awful attempt at doctoring. You lifted the sheets and wrapped yourself within them as though they were the softest thing on earth. Like how Bucky often thought you were the softest thing on earth.

He silently nodded, too afraid to allow himself to speak, as he wasn’t entirely sure he was able to, afraid he’d let you know too much.

He began to remove his shirt, he didn’t miss your heartbeat ascending, he didn’t miss how your eyes tore him apart. You were studying him, every dip, curve, scar, burn, muscle. Yet when your eyes did leave his body, they never left his own. He peeled his pants off, the residue of the mission evident on his dirty skin. He hadn’t had time to shower. Too exasperated at your actions. Too worried about your wellbeing. He stood bare in just his boxers, slightly moving his hand in front of him to hide from your gruesome glare. Yet you simply lifted the covers, and he allowed himself in.

His chest was heavy, heavier than he believed it had ever been before, even through his trauma, this moment was the epitome of his time out of Hydra. He was elated, yet terrified. He lay flat, afraid to contract a singular muscle, it had been a long time since he felt the touch of another, nevermind lay beside one.

Yet, as though it were clock work, you wrapped your entire body around him as if he were the most tranquil, essence of life anyone had to offer. He froze at the contact, letting out a breath that was far too loud, yet, the feel of your head on his chest, along with the skin to skin contact his body so desperately craved, and rightfully deserved; he felt grounded.

He wrapped his large arms around your freezing frame, holding you as close as he physically could, not wanting this moment to fade away within his jumble of memories. He’s sure that even as a younger man he’d never felt such strong, relentless emotions. They crawled up his spine, wrapped around his torso and climbed his chest. Suffocating him.

“You’re so pretty.” You observed, looking up at his chiselled face, and lost eyes.

Bucky was sure his heart had stopped entirely beating, that the blood flowing through each valve was simply a figure of his messed up imagination.

“You know that right?” You continued, and it pushed him off the edge of the cliff he constantly balanced on, as though it were a battle for his sanity, yet his fall was far from a death sentence, but freedom.

He grasped the back of your head, and pushed his lips onto yours. He kissed you like you were the last thing on earth, he kissed you like you were the first thing on earth. He pushed his tongue into your mouth and moaned deeply when you reciprocated as such. Teeth clashed, lips were deformed in an arrangement of reds and pinks.

He dragged his lips down your neck, sucking and biting wherever his mouth met the warmth of your flesh, leaving behind an array of purple in his wake. You felt as though death were about to physically grasp your hand, and take you to where you belonged, with his presence by your side, you couldn’t care where that was. As long as his round eyes looked at you as though you were the moon and stars, you had decided that nothing else could ever matter.

He followed the curve of your body, dipping and caressing every mark and scar he’d lay his eyes on, similarly how you did not a minute earlier.

He made it to your underwear, he peered up at you. His dark locks were graciously dishevelled, sticking up from a variety of different places. His eyes were darkened with lust, and something more, but you wouldn’t allow yourself to delve that deep at this moment of time. You thought he looked beautiful, like an oil painting, the glisten of his eye made your heart practically jump from your chest. You’d never understood what love had felt like, people had described it as a leap of fate, perhaps even a fast passing of time. You understood now, you felt like the room was spinning and your body was floating. The warmth that spread across your body was unachievable elsewhere, especially as it was due to him. You knew you’d do anything for him, for the entirety of your breathing.

You nodded at him, he partially nodded back, subconsciously replying to himself, reminding himself that yes, this was real. You subtly moaned from the anticipation. The tension in the room was palpable.

He peeled your panties off of your body, kissing his way up your legs and thighs, before dipping his head deeper, making you worsen his disorderly state further, as you grasped his hair by his roots, making him groan, it was gravelly, and you’d play it on repeat until the day you died.

The night was long, filled with passion you’d only ever read about. Bucky was like a harp, his strings were heavenly, he played you as though you were one too, he knew the ins and outs of your body within an hour, bringing you over the edge time after time again until he allowed himself to even begin to feel an ounce of pleasure. He was cautious around your wound, whispering what one could call poetry in the darkness of midnight directly into your ear. Two souls were combined that night, two ungodly souls who had needed each other for years, and hadn’t even noticed it. The longing that clung to two hearts was unmistakable, and how you finally felt as though your soul was complete, well, so was his.

-

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. He wrote to you, not directly evidently. But his soul needed to be fed, his whole was missing, the darkness he once thought would never return began to crawl towards him once more. Its claws were sharp, its eyes were red. He felt the cloud of the earth wrap around him for the last ever time.

So as he glared at the skyline, he remembered that the same skyline allowed him to feel once more, without it, he wouldn’t have finally connected with you. The snow dazed him, reminded him of your cold body that night. And how by the end of it he promised you you’d never be cold again. How he hoped he could take back such a thing, as he was sure that wherever you were, his heat wouldn’t ever save you.

He watched as the earth continued around him, cars, couples, children. Previously he wouldn’t have paid attention to them, too entirely absorbed by his own mind, that the simpler things in life seemed to go overlooked. He watched as a woman held another's hand, watched as a child threw a ball of frozen ice at their unsuspecting victim not a metre ahead. He watched as the cars carefully crawled towards their homes for christmas. He thought about how, until you, he hadn’t even slept on a mattress, he thought about how when you’d left, he’d never sleep on one again.

Perhaps he’d never feel your gaze upon his ever again, but he’s sure that somewhere, somehow, you’d meet again, angelic eyes falling to him once again. Fixing his broken being, for this life couldn’t be completed, couldn’t be enjoyed, couldn’t be fixed. He’d wish to tell you how you did fix him. But without you beside him he would go about his days draped within the cold, a cold he’d come to realise only you could replenish.

————

Dayumn. Fanx 4 reading :D

[cosmal]

spacey jane — send me a lyric and a character and i’ll write a blurb.

lyric: ‘bedsheets, no clothes. touch me like nobody else does’ — ceilings by lizzy mcalpine

character: jonathan byers!! something like waking up next to each other would be so cute I feel. or even like, the morning after their first time or something <3

nobody else does

jonathan byers x reader

summary the morning, after you're first time with jon, doesn't go how you'd expected. it's better.

warnings/tags fem!afab!reader, she/her, references to smut, 18+

There’s something really calming about watching Jon sleep. The part in his lips where his face is smooshed into his pillow, the tousled hair that covers it. The sun that shatters through the blinds and lights up the expanse of his back. The freckles that litter it. How you can see his breathing stutter when his moving back jumps every once in a while.

It’s so calming you almost fall back asleep again. You don’t have enough time when you watch Jonathan wake up. Blinking into consciousness. He’s frowning and then smiling when he remembers where he is.

“Hey,” he says. So quiet you almost miss it. You would’ve if you weren’t tracing the pattern of his soft lips like they might disappear one day. Like you’ll never get to kiss him again.

The past week that’s all it’s felt like. Like you’ll never get to kiss him how you want to. Then last night happened. He’d kissed you because he wanted. Kissed you until he couldn’t breathe — you’re sure you weren’t at one point. And the things he’d said, how he touched you like you were glass.

Y/N, stop. Look at me. Need to see you’re face — yeah there we are, gorgeous.

You smile into your pillow at the thought of it. Giddiness with a mixture of bewilderment. Had you dreamt the entire thing?

“Morning,” he says again because you’re in your head.

You shake back your thoughts before they consume you. If he keeps looking at you like that you might cry.

“Morning, Jon,” you say, hand coming up to his face.

He lets you brush his hair from his face before he says, “How you feeling?”

You remember you’re naked. How your legs ache in a good way. How heavy your stomach feels. “M’okay.”

“Yeah?” he asks. Jon is usually very soft. Though to see him like this is something different. Gentle and delicate in the early morning hours.

“I’m a little sore,” you say shyly, face heating more than the sun has allowed you to. “But I’m okay.”

Jonathan lets the arm between you both come down to sit on your belly, over the thin sheet that covers you, rubbing and massaging the flesh there hard enough to soothe you. It does. Though the thought of him wanting to touch you outside of last night's happenings makes you feel warm. And the almost overwhelming need to cry.

After last night, after all the encouragements and praises he had doted you with, he’d made sure you were comfortable. Made sure you had water and enough pillows. Opened the window so you weren’t hot. He’d stroked your hair until you’d fallen asleep.

You don’t think you've ever spent the night after sleeping with someone, let alone being treated the way Jon had been with you. You almost expected to be kicked out afterwards, despite how lovely he'd been, it’d be nothing different.

Boys can have a way of making you feel like you’re special, deserving of everything they give you just to earn something from you in return. Then throwing you out once they get it. You feel guilty for ever thinking he was like that in the first place.

You don’t even know you’re crying until Jonathan does. He lets his hand roam up to your face to catch your first tear with his thumb, wiping it from the bridge of your nose.

“Hey,” he coos, “you okay?”

You know what’s wrong but you also don’t. Well, you do really know, though the reaction you’ve given startles you. You blink back your tears, smiling.

“Yeah,” you mumble wetly, letting your hand fall on top of his where it’s pressed firmly into your cheek.

“I don’t wanna be annoying,” he almost laughs. It’s more of a animated huff, “but you are crying, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart sits in your chest and has your eyes welling up again. “Sweetheart,” you echo kindly.

“Yeah.” He sounds like he agrees. Like it’s second nature to him. You’ve called him worse. Like baby or lovely.

“M’sorry,” you giggle into his hand, kissing the curve of his palm gently. “Just really happy.”

“Happy?”

You nod and bring a hand up around his shoulder to tug him closer. You bring him in until your chest is touching his, a rumple of sheets between you. Your face in his neck, your shoulder under his arm when he hugs you back.

“You’re really nice, Jon.” It’s not what you want to say. You mean it but the words aren’t right. “Just, um,” You feel silly. “thank you for being so lovely.”

Jonathan has a suspicion he knows what you mean. He feels the exact same way. You’d treated him how he hadn’t expected and he hopes he’d shown how grateful he was for it. Still, he thinks he might continue his appreciation.

“It’s okay,” he says, kissing into your hair. It smells like the conditioner that you use when you're here. His conditioner. He smiles when he remembers when you’d spent the night. You’d used his shower and slept in his bed with him.

He rubs your back. Your shoulders and the space between them. Lines and patterns that have you both shivering.

You’re still crying. Because he’s touching you and it’s different. It’s soft and kind and he’s not doing it because he wants something else. You think he wants to stay here and do nothing but this as much as you do. Maybe even more.

You press your stuffy nose into his neck and sniffle. Jon holds you closer on instinct. You kiss his bare skin and feel his heavy pulse over your lips. “Thanks, Jon.”

“It’s okay, pretty,” he says.

You spend the rest of the day in bed because he wants to. He wants to hold you and he wants to kiss you just as much as you do. Maybe more. You don’t complain.

[sukirichi]

sweet lies [02]

His lies were way too sweet – and you were too addicted to make him stop.

cw. explicit smut, slight body worship, public sex, dirty talk, praising, toxic megumi, fwb dynamics, slight angst, body marking, sukuna bullying megumi, age gap, scratching, mentions of oral (m receiving) and mutual masturbation, the traditional unedited fic

note. choose your fighter, megumi or sukuna 😈 also UHM do you guys want me to make the ending angsty or fluffy? i wrote out two versions so LOL let me know what you think! we’ll get more of the megumi scenes on the next chapter though~

series masterlist | 01 | 02 | 03

Sukuna isn’t kidding when he said he’ll have you unable to walk by the end of this.

You’ve lost count of how many times you guys have fucked.

Once more in the stalls when you thought of repaying the favor by sucking him off, followed by him growing impatient and hauling you inside his car. Both of you were too tired to go for another round, but were still very much addicted for the other’s touch that mutual masturbation seems like the best option.

Thankfully, Sukuna’s cut his nails, so having three of his fingers buried knuckle deep in you feels like absolute heaven. He’s not complaining about your smooth hands wrapped around his shaft either, especially not when you’ve had enough practice with Megumi to know just how to make a guy lose his mind. By the time you’ve made it back home, Sukuna’s grown hard again, too impatient to make it to the bed before he just fucks you raw against the wall. You’re trembling at his hold, left with no choice but to trust his strength to drop you on his cock and bounce you to his pleasure.

It’s a miracle you’ve made it on the bed.

His digital clock reads a quarter at three in the morning, and for a moment, you worry about how tired you’ll be in class tomorrow when Sukuna’s large hands grips your thighs sharply.

“Goddamn,” he hisses through clenched teeth, chuckling at the irresistible sight of your breasts bouncing before him. Limbs tangled, minds controlled with the primal need to fuck, and moans shared with his deep grunts – you somehow end up on top of him, your thighs feeling like they’re on the verge of giving up as you continue to ride his thick length.

“You are so fucking sexy,” he slaps your ass and causes your hips to rut deeper, forcing that delicious curve of his cock to meld with your walls. You throw your head back, palms planted on his chest, focused only on that burning pleasure between your thighs. “I could fuck you all night long.”

Even though you truly have no wish to, you shake your head, fingers balling into a fist. “I have class tomorrow, need to wake up early,” you protest, the words falling into deaf ears as Sukuna thrusts up into you. He must’ve noticed how you’re growing tired and took matters into his own hands, feet grounded on the mattress to pound deliriously into you. You’re debating whether to be thankful or frustrated he still has so much energy even after hours of fucking, but it honestly doesn’t matter. You’re falling into his chest, arms slipping on your equally sweat-covered bodies. Right now, you just wanted to cum – once more, again, one last time! “Ah, Sukuna, t-too much!”

“Too much?” he laughs and tangles his hand to caress your scalp, the gesture too soothing that you almost forgot he’s fucking you into oblivion. “Want me to go slow?”

“No…”

“Thought so, sweetheart,” his grin is absolutely cocky as he bends his knees in a fold, pushing you until your back rests on his muscular thighs. Your mouth falls open at his hands wrapping around your threat, keeping you right there, hips flat and grinding on his cock. “Come on. Come for me,” Sukuna urges, tightening his hold around your neck a little harder.  

That’s all you need for your vision to blur and see stars, your body’s shaking uncontrollable. He’s thrusting with all his power and energy that it feels like you’re nothing but a hole on top of him, tongue falling open in a wanton manner as your drool trails down your chin.

You look filthy, you feel filthy, and yet, Sukuna sees it entirely different.

“So – fucking – gorgeous, fuck. I woulda fucked you sooner if I didn’t feel weird about it.”

“What?”

“Aw, come on, sweetheart,” he smirks at your half fucked out state. Sukuna rolls his hips in such a mind numbing manner that you end up staring at the ceiling, trying your hardest to decipher the colors of his room to get a grip of yourself. But he feels so hot, cock throbbing and pulsing inside you, your puffy lips encasing him with a translucent ring of cum and it feels so fucking good you don’t really understand what he’s saying anymore. “Did you really think I never saw you in my dreams?” he slaps your ass again, the reflexive response of tightening around him pulling a deep groan from the beautiful man beneath you. “I have such a sexy roommate, I couldn’t help it.”

“Then why didn’t you – ah, right there, shit – tell me?”

“Cuz,” he snickers and finally lets you breathe, your pupils blowing wide from the sudden flow of air. Sukuna kneads your breasts greedily, never stopping his mind-numbing rhythm of ramming deep into you. Your body burns, your thighs ache, your pussy feels sensitive but you can’t find the energy to stop him. Instead, you fall prey, failing in your mission to keep him wrapped around your fingers because now you’re wrapped around his cock, and you were quite fucking addicted to it. “You’re my friend’s student. Felt so fucking wrong.”

“What’s the difference now?”

“The difference is,” Sukuna’s face contorts into something of discomfort for a moment before he leans forward, his sturdy grip homing in on your hips again. You feel his searing breath on your ear, so parching it puts the warmth of your pussy to shame. “Having you like this has never felt so right, and I’ll keep fucking you if you let me.”

“I-I’d let you,” you concede absentmindedly and capture his lips for a sloppy kiss, tongues giving up on a battle of dominance. You’re always so clingy when you’re about to come, something Megumi never fails to chastise you for, and you fear Sukuna might push you away as you wrap an arm around him, nails painfully scratching down his back. Red marks leave a trail on its wake until his blood pierces through the sheets, the pain manifested through the increasing roughness of his pace. Now it’s your turn to whimper in his ear, pulling the man close and tugging harshly at the ends of his hair. Gosh, were you actually crying? “Sukuna, I’m close! Yes, yes, right there!”

Sukuna groans at the erotic sounds you reward him with. “Come for me, that’s right, ohhhh,” he stills inside you, his seed spilling deep inside you. You wince at the burst of warmth spreading all over your belly and Sukuna chuckles at your bulging belly. He presses down on it to coax his cum to trickle all over his cock, and he’s fucking filthy – you learn easily – to watch you make a mess on his cock with a childish smile on his face.

You push yourself off him and fall to his side, him following suit not long afterwards. The room feels completely stuffed from your intense fucking, the bruises on your body and scratches on his back a huge attestment to that.

Your legs remain wide open as you clench around nothing, his cum oozing out like a waterfall. Sukuna (that damned pervert) dips two fingers into your hole for one last moment just to drench his fingers in it, his eyes lit up in wonder while he lets it web around his fingers. You snicker at his actions and roll to his side, eyes fluttering close from the wave of exhaustion that comes into full force.

The lingerie set you intended to wear for Megumi was now ripped at the other side of the room, discarded, forgotten – merely evidence of a moment that had never been given to him.

Oddly enough, you don’t feel bad, not even when Sukuna faces you, his cheeks squished by his soft pillows. “I’m spent. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired. My gym sessions can’t compare to this.”

“You go to the gym?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t born this gorgeous, you know. I had to work hard for this,” Sukuna gestures to his body. You can’t help but follow the gestures and admire the hard planes of his muscle ripped above one another, the smatter of dark hair leading down his hips adding to his already immense sexual charisma. It makes you want to jump on him all over again, and you have to bite your lip to resist that urge, rolling your eyes at him in favor of letting him know you could totally go for another round.

“Dork.”

“Got me laid though, was worth the effort,” he jokes, and you both laugh.

It’s actually…weird, to laugh so casually with someone like this. It might be normal for Sukuna in his past sexual endeavors, but it’s totally a different thing for you. You and Megumi had never even bothered with aftercare. As long as he’s satisfied himself, he’d clean himself off in the bathroom and wear his sweatpants, winking at you before he leaves you alone all over again. The memory – albeit not really a regrettable one – is still painful each time you’re reminded you’ll keep coming back to him.

But are things different now? Could you go back to Megumi? You only ever wanted to fuck Sukuna because you’re sad and horny, but it wouldn’t be fair to him, especially when your roommate has been nothing but nice to you. Besides, him being a little more decent doesn’t immediately equate he’s different than Megumi.

For all you know, you could just be another cheap fuck. Sukuna is older and sexier, after all, he’s clearly had a lot more experience than you do.

As if reading your mind, Sukuna rests his head on his palms, elbows flat on the bed as he turns to you. The expression on his face is unreadable, but there’s some sort of softness behind it – a softness you’re not really familiar with.

“Hey. I don’t exactly know what you’re going through, not everything, anyway, but whatever we have right now, I want you to know it’s not because I see just as a pretty pussy, okay?” he says with a straight face, but you really shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up because Sukuna smirks, mischievous eyes darting back and forth to your soaked pussy and bare breasts. “Although you do have a pretty pussy. Can I eat you out again?”

With that, you snatch the pillow underneath him and whack it straight at his face. Sukuna laughs at your protests, the sound growing louder and a lot more mocking the harder you hit him. “Gosh, Sukuna, shut up!”

You end up hitting him way too many times in the face that he can’t get his words through, and before you could react, Sukuna’s ripped the pillow away from you. He cages you in his arms and hovers over you once more, his boneless dick grazing the insides of your thigh. It’s not meant to be sexual, and nothing about his stance gives off anything that shows he wants to do it again, but you can’t help but feel aroused, shifting your legs up and down the bed as you squirm.

“Seriously though,” he repeats, “We can be casual, or this could be a one time thing. Card’s all yours to play. If you want to forget everything tomorrow, I’d gladly do it. Let’s just go back to the way we were-”

“Sukuna.”

“Yes?”

“Did you really think I was only using you to distract myself?”

Sukuna’s lips flatten into a line. “I’m not stupid,” he says somberly, “I could tell you were still thinking about him. Not that I mind, though, you can’t stop yourself from loving someone,” Faintly, you’re distracted by his thumbs rubbing at your pulse point. It’s so lulling you want to fall asleep, but Sukuna isn’t done talking. “My point is…you don’t have to worry about being weird with me. We could just be friends with benefits, if you want, and not the kind you have with your boy toy either. ”

His blatantly catches you off guard and your eyes widen before they narrow at him, trying your best to hide your embarrassment. If Megumi was painfully honest, Sukuna’s ridiculously blunt that his mere words make your heart do weird things you’d rather not feel.

Careful, you remind yourself, Megumi is the one you want. You have to keep reminding yourself that before your feelings get the best of you. It’s Megumi, it’s always been Megumi and it always will be Megumi. Sukuna is just your roommate who’s nice enough to take your mind off things. You only wish you weren’t lying too much in case he gets the wrong idea you’re leading him on, but then again, isn’t that what you’re doing?

Friends with benefits or not – you still have no plans on getting involved with this guy any longer.

It’s always Megumi. You just really needed a quick fuck, someone whose dick didn’t belong with the guy you’re so hung up on over. The change feels nice and you definitely feel a lot better than the last time you met Megumi, but this guilt…it tastes bitter on your tongue, too heavy to swallow and ignore. It’s always Megumi, you tell yourself again in an attempt to relieve your pain.

Though it doesn’t subside and you huff in exasperation, turning away from Sukuna. You can’t stand looking at him right now.

“I’m not,” you mumble weakly, but the tears – the guilt, the heartbreak of not being Megumi’s lover, the regret and the ironic need to be closer to Sukuna feels all so confusing – all threaten to burst through. You don’t want him to see you cry, that would be lame, so you scoot closer to him and kiss his shoulder as you shyly ask, “C-can we cuddle?”

“Of course,” he chuckles, pulling you closer, “You don’t have to sound too nervous to ask.”

“Sorry, it’s just-”

“He never does that?”

“…Yeah.”

“Well, I’m not him,” Sukuna answers confidently, surprising you when he grabs your ass to press you flush against him. You’re both sweaty and hot to the point it’s uncomfortable, but Sukuna smells so sweet with his lingering cologne that you can’t help yourself from planting your face in his neck, breathing in the little hums he makes. Sukuna kisses the crown of your head – which is a little too sweet than you’d like – while his other hand runs down your back in a slow, sensual manner. Hell, it feels close to body worshipping, and you hate that you silently want more of this. “I’d cuddle you every day if you asked me to.”

“You’re surprisingly sweet,” you voice with a smile. Sukuna’s chest rumbles from the low laughter, and like that, you cling to him like he’s the only sturdy pillar in your life. It’s pathetic, maybe even desperate, but if he doesn’t mind, then why should you?

However, the moment is quickly ruined when the bell rings. “Shit, I forgot he was coming over!”

Sukuna glares at the door and holds you tighter, almost possessively, and refuses to let you go even as you squirm under him. “At three in the morning?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to meet him right now,” you groan helplessly.

Sukuna shoots you a blank look after that, then shoots out of the bed in an instant. You watch as he quickly dresses up in a fresh pair of sweatpants, grabbing a random hoodie from the back of his chair, presumably to hide the scratch marks. You have to hide your smile behind your hand because he looks so drool-worthy with marks littered on his already marked skin, and the fact he lets you mark him is even hotter.

He pauses at the door for a moment, pointing a finger at where you peered up at him curiously. “Stay there. I’ll talk to him and say you went out or whatever. Just make sure to silence your phone in case he calls. Better yet, turn it off.”

Sukuna closes the door behind him, already on the way to the entrance just as you press your ears against the door to eavesdrop. There’s a slight shuffling before the door unlocks, then, “Why the fuck did you lock-” Megumi pauses in his words, and you can perfectly picture his infamous scowl painting his handsome features already. Gosh, you wish you could actually see it, but if Megumi catches you sleeping with someone else, he might totally lose interest in you. That’s not something you could afford to happen.

“Oh. You’re her roommate.” You snigger at his usual what the fuck tone – how Megumi of him.

“Hey, kid, it’s a little too late for a visit, don’t you think?” Sukuna taunts, and it takes everything in you to not burst through the door at that moment. You’re stuck between wanting to laugh and crying, mostly because you would love and hate for Megumi to get riled up. “Do your parents know you’re here? Kids shouldn’t be out this late.”

“I’m not a fucking kid, I’m in uni,” he defends, “Do you know where Y/N is? I need to talk to her.”

Deciding fuck it, you open the door by an inch, just enough to peek. As expected, Megumi is glaring behind Sukuna’s shoulders in search of you. Meanwhile, Sukuna’s completely calm, checking his nails boredly as if Megumi isn’t fuming in front of him. And boy, do you know how much Megumi hates being ignored. “Oh, I think she went out, I don’t know why though. House was empty when I got here.”

“She didn’t tell you where she was going?”

At Megumi’s imposing tone, Sukuna tilts his head to scrutinize Megumi. Now that you’re seeing them together, Sukuna’s twice the size of Megs, their height and shoulder width too different to start comparing. But knowing Megumi, he’s not going to back down from a tattooed guy twice his size, not even as he sarcastically remarks, “Ain’t you her friend? She should be telling you that kind of stuff.”

Truthfully, you expected he would put up more of a fight. The two of them share a heated staring competition before Megumi scoffs, the first one to look away. “Whatever,” he dismisses, “Tell her to pick her damn phone up. I’ve been calling for the past hour.”

“I think I should tell her to get better friends.”

“What was that?”

“I said get home safely,” Sukuna chirps. Even with his back turned to you, you could tell Sukuna’s just further pressing his buttons with a grin that’s not meant to be inviting at all. Just when you think it’s done, however, Sukuna finishes off with, “Kid.”

Megumi rages. His blue eyes flame into something feral, his fists balled at his sides. He’s always had a temper issue and you nearly reveal yourself to stop whatever fight is about to ensue, but Sukuna’s already closing the door, ridding any opportunity for the younger one to retaliate. At the sound of the door closing, Sukuna leans against the door, his smile still plastered on his face as if he knows you’re watching the whole time. He meets your eyes from the slight peep of his door, waving his hands sarcastically.

“Sukuna, you didn’t have to be so mean.”

“Sorry,” he isn’t apologetic at all. “Next time I’ll be nicer to your asshole crushes,” he adds with a slight roll of his eyes and you punch his chest playfully. You don’t stop him from grabbing your wrists to embrace you in a hug that doesn’t seem so platonic – but not so suggestive either. Sukuna rests his chin on top of your hand while he sways you both side to side, his voice muffled in your hair. “I understand why you’re attracted to him though. He’s really handsome.”

“Yeah, he is,” you agree sadly, thinking of how much it’s really all a waste Megumi has to be like that. “Just sucks his personality ruins everything.”

“A pretty face is always deceiving,” Sukuna suddenly pulls away and holds you an arm’s length away.  “Hey, want to have early breakfast?”

“I think that would be late dinner,” you frown at him.

“Whatever, food is food,” he responds rather excitedly, and you watch as Sukuna rummages through the fridge. Now that you think about it, having sex so much really took a toll on you, and your stomach grumbles loudly. Sukuna hides his chuckles through the fridge but you hear him anyway, shouting at him that you’re not hungry. “Wasn’t asking, sweetheart. Now go get cleaned and changed, I’ll make something for you.”

If anyone were to tell you that a good fucking is all that’s needed for you to immediately form a new kind of friendship with your roommate, you’d call them weird. Sukuna isn’t necessarily out of reach, you and him just simply didn’t cross paths.

But now, you’re dressed comfortably in his boxers and the oversized shirt you stole from him, eating the slightly burn cheese sandwich he’s made, sharing conversation and laughing with him like you’ve been doing it for such a long time. Your sandwich is actually half forgotten on the plate as you whack your palms on the counter, “That’s how you and Prof Gojo met? I never would’ve expected you guys fought over a girl!”

“He was fucking annoying in high school,” Sukuna grumbles over an angry bite, “He was getting all the girls that when someone confessed to me, the hottest chick, no less, he straight up punched me in the face,” you laugh as you imagine the memory of a younger, already rebellious looking Sukuna getting smacked by the even more intolerable Gojo Satoru. Sukuna is lost in his own memories as well, shaking his head from around the last bites of his bread. It’s clear he hates the burnt crust judging from the way he turns a little green, but he’s bragged about his cooking skills so proudly that he has to save face in front of you. “Ah, such good times,” he muses before wincing at his own words, dropping his bread in disgust. “Damn, I sound old, don’t I?”

“You’re only like, five years older than me, it’s fine,” you giggle, “I like the maturity that comes with older people. You’re a lot easier to be with than guys my age.”

“Please,” Sukuna smirks, “Just say you like fucking older men. I won’t judge.”

If anyone were to tell you that you would be jumping over the counter to strangle your roommate who’s now running like hell, your laughter bursting through the once silent apartment, you would call them a liar. But now, you and Sukuna are panting on the floor, too tired from sprinting all around before calling it quits. Maybe it’s a lie – maybe this connection will never really be that much of a big deal – but as long as this lie and play pretend of friendship lasts, you’ll just enjoy every sweet moment of it.

taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed) (bold can’t be tagged) @uwubby-1 @expectoscamander @your-consulting-fangirl @dora-the-grownup @cosmotoic @charlie-xo @kittaliapenn @sukunas-cult-leader @flowersgirl02 @cloudsinthecosmos @90s-belladonna @averysheart-raleighsdick @generousstudentpsychic-bat @kat-su-ki @issamomma​ 

[watchmegetobsessed]

THE DEAL

a/n: i literally wrote it in less than a day because i was inspired by a movie... of god, i have issues, but ANYWAYS! this one is a classic friends with benefits to lovers story with so much angst and a grandiose love confession at the end so buckle up, you are in for a treat!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEEASE give feedback if you enjoyed it!!

pairing: Harry X Reader

warnings: some, drinking, sexual content, a hell lot of it, angst and messy emotions, it’s a lot!!

word count: 11.8k

masterlist

If your life was some romantic comedy his would be the moment where the camera would zoom on you, your eyes blankly glued to the ceiling, makeup from last night smudged under them as a muscular, inked arm gets thrown across your chest, a snoozing man beside you as you have the internal little monologue.

“You’re wondering how I got into this situation, right? Completely naked with one of my best friends after a night spent with heavy drinking and ending up fucking in his apartment until we both fell asleep.”

Yeah, this is probably what the voiceover would say as the camera would slowly get farther from you, Harry’s sleeping figure coming into the frame while you’re still lying like a damn statue. This was not supposed to happen. Not that it was bad, because oh God! Harry really is as good as his ex-girlfriends gushed to you when you met them on night outs. You could never blame the women for falling for him, he has the charm, the personality, the humor and definitely the looks. If you weren’t you, you’d be one of those girls who would do anything to get his attention just for a split second. But you’re not.

Growing up with a single mother that was repeatedly fucked over by several men, you were taught to be the kind of independent woman who needs no man. Who only uses them for whatever reason and throws them away before they could even realize what’s happening. Feelings could never be involved in the equations, those are just not for you.

For a while you thought you weren’t even capable of feeling anything at all. But the way you cried when your hamster you got for your sixteenth birthday died changed your mind and you realized that you are just saving yourself the time of allowing people to make you develop feelings for them and then give them the chance to break your heart. You’ve seen that happen to your mother enough times to know that you don’t want to go through that. It’s not worth it and why would you risk it all when you could easily get what you need and move on to the next one?

Your friends always joked how you’re gonna be the single aunt to their children later who would take them to clubs and honestly? You’re just fine with that. Because you always thought that while your married friends will be busy with keeping their marriage together with whatever pathetic man they chose to marry, you’ll be living your best life without a worry on the world. That sounds pretty good for you.

There’s no need to make it prettier than what it is, you’ve had a lot of hookups the past years but you always tried to keep yourself in check, have some kind of rules to follow so you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else in the process. One of those were that under no circumstances would you ever sleep with a friend. No matter how badly you want to, no matter if they are begging, it can never happen.

But you broke that rule.

Turning your head to the side you look at Harry’s sleeping face squished into the pillow and you almost wince, because you know that when he wakes up, this gonna hurt like a bitch. He’s gonna freak out, or what’s worse, he’ll want to take it further, take you out on a date… be in a relationship with you! And you’ll have to break his heart because none of those will ever happen.

You and Harry went to high school together and he is one of the very few people you stayed in touch after graduation. Though you grew a little apart when you went to different universities, later on you both somehow ended up in New York and while you’re working as a graphic designer at a magazine, Harry is making good money from writing music for other artists. He’s been one of your closest friends these past years and while you’ve always found him attractive, you should have never let this happen, because it will mess everything up and you didn’t want to lose such a good friend.

Harry stirs in his sleep next to you, his hand squeezing your side before his eyes blink open, green irises finding your wide eyes. He stops for a moment, looking around, taking in his surroundings before his eyes fall closed again.

“Wow, must have been one wild night?” he mumbles into the pillow before a raspy chuckle falls from his lips.

Last night, the two of you and a couple of your mutual friends celebrated that Harry has gotten his biggest deal so far, having to write an entire album for an up-and-coming artist, so you all got pretty wasted, especially you and him. It’s a little blurry how the two of you ended up like this, but you do remember wildly making out hidden somewhere behind the bar before he asked if you wanted to come to his place. You stupid little thing, should have said no…

Groaning, Harry rolls to his back, his arm falling from you as he lies sprawled out next to you.

“The tequila shots. Shouldn’t have had them,” you rasp out, a smirk tugging on his lips at your words. “So, um… we both can agree this was a one time thing, right?”

Harry peeks at you, pushing himself up a bit so his head rests against the headboard. The sheets slide down a bit lower on his body, revealing his toned chest and his several tattoos. Memories of you kissing them eagerly last night flash into your mind and you can only hope you’re not blushing like a school girl.

“What if I don’t agree?” Harry cocks an eyebrow and you almost groan. You knew this was going to happen!

“Harry, I’m not going out with you. You know me, I don’t do that. It’s nice that you think that it could work between us, but I don’t do relationships and I’m not changing my rules, not even for you.”

Harry starts laughing, as if you just said the best joke of the century, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. You give him a puzzled look as you sit up, holding the sheets to your chest.

“Who talked about dating, Y/N?” he then asks. “You said last night was a one time thing. We fucked last night. What if that wasn’t the only time we did that?”

You start to put the pieces together, though you’d definitely be sharper if you already had your first coffee of the day.

“Are you trying to start a… friends with benefits thing with me?”

“I mean, you could call it whatever you want. I personally really enjoyed last night and judging from the way you were screaming my name, you did too.” Now you’re for sure blushing. “Why not do it again?”

“This is not a movie, H. I don’t think it’s manageable without ruining our friendship.”

“Have you ever tried something like this?” You shake your head no. “Then how could you know?”

“Have you tried it?”

“Never,” he chuckles. “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. We are both cool, smart people. I think we can give it a try and whenever someone is feeling like they had enough, we’re just gonna stop.”

“What if you catch feelings?” you ask, raising eyebrows at him.

“Oh, but what if you fall for me?” he throws the question back with a cocky smirk and you smack his naked chest.

“You know I never do that!”

“I don’t think you can just decide that, but alright,” he chuckles, holding his hands up in defense. “I promise you I won’t catch feelings for you, Y/N. I swear on my…”

“Your mom’s and sister’s life!” you point at him. It’s clear that he thinks it’s silly, but you just keep staring at him until he gives in.

“I swear on my mum’s and my sister’s life that I will not catch feelings for you, Y/N.”

“Alright. And we can end it anytime?”

“Whenever you’ve had enough of me,” he smirks back, so pleased with himself that it’s clear he doesn’t think that could ever happen.

“If you keep that cocky look on your face it’s gonna be a very short deal, Styles,” you warn him, but he just laughs before he quickly pulls you back down to bed, getting on top of you, his hips sinking between your legs and you gasp when you feel that he is already semi-hard.

“Why don’t we get a head start on it then?” he offers, his lips crashing against yours before they travel down your body and soon enough he gives you something that’s a thousand times better than a coffee in the morning.

At first you’re clearly hesitant about it. Not sure if it was a good idea or you just ruined everything between you and Harry, but soon enough you realize that it wasn’t as bad of a decision as you thought it to be.

Harry is the one to call you for the first time, two days after the night you drunkenly hooked up. You’re just leaving the office when he hits you up, asking if you have plans for the night or you’re free to go over to his place. An hour later you find yourself pressed up against the wall of his apartment’s hallway, both of you eager to get each other out of your clothes. Now that it all happens without either of you being drunk, you actually have the chance to think about how good it is with him. He is just the perfect mixture of dominant and soft, knows when to be the boss and when he has to slow down a bit.

He makes you cum three times. Three mind-blowing times, and you also give him two orgasms. You try to make it equal and make it three, but he respectfully says no.

“If you touched my dick again I think I would start crying,” he chuckles jokingly, so you don’t even think about pushing it.

Instead, the two of you order Chinese, have dinner together, talking like you always used to before the deal and then you go home. There’s no awkwardness, no weird situations, not even when you leave. Harry leans closer and for a moment you think he is gonna be corny and kiss you goodbye, but then you feel him smack your ass before pushing you out the door, just like he always did before, joking about how he is gonna charge you rent if you stay any longer.

Nothing has changed, only that you now spend a good chunk of your time together naked, moaning each other’s name before you get back to your usual.

So after that you don’t shy away from reaching out to Harry as well. It becomes a regular thing, the two of you meeting up about two of three times a week. You fuck, hang out a bit and go your separate ways. Slowly, you start to forget about times when you stayed dressed up for more than ten minutes after meeting Harry.

You keep switching between your and his place, but sometimes meet somewhere in the middle. You’ve had sex in a restaurant bathroom, in his car in a parking garage and even in his cousin’s place in Brooklyn. That was a bit odd but still quite pleasing.

Tonight is going to be the first time you’re gonna be out with all your friends and Harry since the deal was made. No one knows about it and you intend to keep it that way.

Once you’re done at work you head home, texting Leticia, another friend from high school to meet you at your place to get ready together. She was Harry’s friend at first, what’s better, she openly hated you at first for some reason.

“You just had a punchable face at fifteen, you can’t blame me,” she used to tell you. It was actually Harry who made the two of you friends and you’ve been close ever since.

You get to your apartment almost at the same time. Leticia starts rambling about her asshole of a boss at the law firm where she works at as you open a bottle of wine to start the evening while you roam through your wardrobe for an outfit.

“Is Leo coming? I owe him a few bucks from last time,” Leticia wonders, digging into your dresser for a pair of tights she can borrow to pair with her leather skirt.

“I think he is, but he is going to be late. He is coming from Staten Island from his dad’s,” you muse, checking yourself out in the red dress you just tried on, not quite pleased with the look, so you quickly work down the zipper and look for something else.

“Um, whose is this?”

Turning around you see that Leticia is holding up a shirt Harry left at yours a few days ago. She is clearly confused about the men’s clothing between your stuff, because you are not one to steal them from the men you sleep with since you don’t really want anything from them to remind you of them.

“Oh, um, that’s… That’s Harry’s. He left it here a few days ago,” you shrug, not making a big deal out of it, but Leticia is nosier than that.

“And why is Harry leaving his clothes around your place?”

“Is that a crime?” you snort, trying to play it cool.

“No, but in what kind of situation did this shirt come off of Harry and end up in your dresser?”

You can’t think of a good answer that would stop her from interrogating you, and the way you’ve just gotten silent is telling her more than words could. She drops the shirt, eyes widening at you and it’s clear that she put two and two together.

“Oh my God! You’re sleeping with Harry!”

“No! I’m… I just—We…”

“You two are totally fucking! What the fuck!” she gasps in complete shock as you pinch the bridge of your nose.

“Let me explain it, alright? W-We hooked up on the night when we went out to celebrate his big album deal.”

“When I couldn’t go, right?”

“Yeah. So we were both very drunk and it just happened. And I really thought it would ruin everything but we somehow ended up making a deal.”

“Jesus, you guys are acting out the Friends With Benefits movie? Who are you, Mila fucking Kunis?”

“It’s not like that!” you defend yourself quickly, but then you realize that it’s just like that so far. “Well, it kind of is, but the ending won’t be like that.”

“Do you really think you can just do it with absolutely no strings?” Leticia sighs, her hands coming to her hips as she stares back at you.

“It’s been going great, so I really think it’s doable. And if any of us decides they had enough, we’ll just call it quits.”

“Yeah, because it’s that easy,” she rolls her eyes. “One of you will catch feelings and someone is gonna end up crying, Y/N.”

“No, that’s not gonna happen,” you shake your head stubbornly. “He promised it won’t happen.”

“Feelings don’t give a shit about promises! I hope you really know what you’re doing, because I don’t want to have to choose between the two of you,” she grumbles before throwing Harry’s shirt back into the drawer, grabbing the tights she’s been looking for.

Leticia doesn’t hold a grudge for the news she just found out, but she surely has gotten you thinking. Is it really gonna end bad? Why can’t there be a scenario where it goes perfectly fine and no one gets hurt? Harry promised it’s gonna be alright and he has been proven right so far, so why are you having second guesses now?

Arriving at the bar the majority of your friend group is already there, including Harry. You sit across him in the small booth, just exchanging a quick smile before the first round arrives and the evening starts. You allow yourself to take a better look at him while he listens to Mitch’s story and you can’t say that you don’t find him hot. He is wearing a vintage, floral printed shirt, the first few buttons left undone, so you have a nice view of his chest and his necklace you’ve felt under your lips so many times before when you were kissing down his body. He keeps twisting and playing with his several rings and it makes you stare at his hands for a tad bit longer than you intended to. God, he looks so damn good, you really just want to fuck him here and now.

You keep changing who goes up to the bar to order and the third round is yours, so sliding out of the booth you go to the bar and wait for your turn. A young, handsome guy is making the drinks and you clearly catch his eyes.

“And what can I get for you, beautiful?” he smirks at you when it’s finally your turn.

“Two vodka sodas, a martini and three vodka cranberries,” you smile back at him with a hint of flirting in your tone.

It’s kind of second nature to you, a few charming smiles and winks have gotten a lot of free things for you in your life and you never miss a chance to use your advances.

“All that for one pretty girl?” he teases you.

“I would be all over the floor if I drank all of it,” you chuckle, pulling your card out of your wallet, tapping it on the terminal as he finishes up the drinks, kindly putting them on a tray so you can easily bring them over to the booth.

“Don’t worry, I would surely pick you up then,” he winks at you, placing the last drink to the tray before you thank him and head back.

As you take your previous seat you notice that Harry is watching you intently.

“What?” you mouth him over the conversation at the table.

“Nothing,” he shakes his head, turning his gaze away, grabbing his drink and focusing back on everyone else.

You go up to the bar two more times, once to ask for some chips and once for some napkins after a drink has gotten spilt onto the table. Every time you exchange a few words with the bartender and you have to admit, he has a great sense of humor paired with his looks.

Sometime later in the evening you decide to switch to water, so you go up to the bar a fourth time, the bartender coming to you right away at this point. As you wait for him to grab you your drink you feel a hand on your lower back. Turning to the side you see Harry standing next to you.

“Hey, want to come to my place after this?” he asks, leaning closer to your ear. His hot breath hits your exposed skin on your neck and a shudder runs down your spine, especially with his hand still on the small of your back.

“You want a rerun of your first time?” you smirk back at him, referring to the drinks you both have had, though it’s definitely not as wild as that night was.

“No, but this dress is making it hard not to want to rip it off,” he bluntly tells you as you glance down at yourself. At last you decided to wear a black bodycon dress that surely shows every dip and curve of your body and apparently Harry has been enjoying the show.

The bartender arrives with your water, his eyes falling on Harry and you see that he is a little taken aback by his presence.

“Hey man, can you get me another one as well? I’ll pay for both,” Harry nods at him and there’s something foreign in his tone that you can’t really put your finger on. The bartender just nods back and goes to grab another water.

“What if I wasn’t in the mood?” you tease him, continuing the discussion where you left it a moment ago.

“Oh, please!” he chuckles smugly. “I saw you eyeing me from across the table, Y/N. I know you are definitely in the mood.”

He is right. So damn right. You’ve been crossing your legs under the table for a while now, feeling your arousal growing every time you saw him run his tongue over his lips or whenever his finger played with the lip of his glass, imagining him doing the same with your body.

Biting into your bottom lip you need to take a deep breath, but when Harry sees your teeth digging into your lip, he loses his patience.

“Or we can just do it now,” he growls lowly, grabbing your hand before he starts pulling you towards the restrooms. You don’t even have the chance to protest, not that you want to.

He is quick to pull you into an empty restroom, locking the door behind the two of you before his lips attack yours, pushing you against the door with vigor and hunger. His hands are already bunching your dress up around your waist and you moan his name when your hips meet and you feel his hard length through his jeans.

“We have to be quick, so no one notices we disappeared,” he pants as he helps you up to the counter, your back hitting the cold mirror behind you.

“Then shut up and just fuck me,” you challenge him and it makes him absolutely feral.

You don’t have time to enjoy it the way you usually do in bed, but the excitement of the situation alone has gotten you so wet that you’re already dripping when he pushes your panties to the side with one hand while his other works on his own pants.

“Fuck, already so wet for me, huh?” he breathes out, his lips brushing against yours before they kiss you fully.

“Just like how you’re rock hard for me,” you grin against his lips, a hand wandering down to his cock as you pull it out of his boxers, stroking it a few times before he pulls a condom out of his back pocket and wraps himself up. “Were you counting on this quickie, Styles?” you ask when you realize that he just had a condom ready on him.

“I knew for sure I’m gonna fuck you tonight, but wasn’t sure how long I’m gonna last,” he grins, capturing your lips again before he pushes himself inside you with no warning, making you both gasp.

“Fuck! Harry!” you moan as he starts moving rapidly, definitely not taking his time like he usually does. He is pounding into you without mercy, panting against your lips as his ring clad fingers are digging into the flesh of your thighs.

“You like that? Like it when I fuck you somewhere public?” he growls, making your legs curl around his hips.

Your hands move up his chest and neck, fingers tangling into his curls and you give them a tug, earning an animalistic grunt from him as he starts going even harder and faster. You’re rapidly getting closer to your orgasm.

“You close?” he pants and you nod. “Come on, cum all over my cock, Y/N.”

A few more thrusts and your walls tighten around his dick, squeezing him as you gasp, riding your high, your head falling backwards, meeting with the mirror behind you. Harry follows you a few pushes later, moaning your name repeatedly before his movements come to a halt and you both take a moment to catch your breath.

When he pulls out you both just quietly clean yourselves up, fixing your clothes and hair so you don’t entirely scream sex with your appearances.

“My offer to come to mine after still stands,” he smirks, running a hand through his hair before you head out.

“Tempting, but I have some work to do in the morning, so no,” you turn him down, stepping out to the dark hallway that leads back to the bar. Harry grabs your hand and pulls you back, his lips smashing against yours, surprising you with his move. He kisses you deeply, sucking on your bottom lip hard before he pulls back.

“What was that for?” you ask out of breath.

“If you’re not coming over, I needed something to have a good night,” he shrugs with a smug smirk before you return to the bar.

You catch the bartender’s look as you finally get your waters and Harry pays for them. You catch the two men eyeing each other for a moment before you and Harry return to the table and you forget about the whole thing.

A Sunday afternoon you’re lounging at Harry’s. You jumped at each other’s bones when you arrived, but now you’re chilling on his couch, watching a series you both wanted to start so you decided to give it a go together. Your leg is lying across Harry’s lap, his hands absentmindedly kneading your thighs. It feels nice, like a massage, especially after how sore he made you earlier, stretching you out more than he usually does with a new pose you tried out.

Your phone chimes next to you and tearing your gaze away from the TV you check to see who just sent you a text. It was one of your coworkers, Anthony, he sent you a raging text about how he still has no idea what to wear to the company party that’s gonna be next Saturday and you realize that you totally forgot about it.

“Shit!” you curse under your breath.

“What?” Harry asks, pausing the show.

“I have this stupid work party next weekend and I totally forgot about it,” you growl, checking your calendar quickly if you can squeeze in a quick shopping spree before Saturday or you’ll have to find something in your closet.

“Aren’t those things nice with a lot of free food and drinks?” Harry wonders.

“Yeah, but I don’t like it, because all my colleagues bring their partners and I’m usually the only single one and they keep trying to set me up with someone,” you roll your eyes even at the thought of having to suffer through another one of those awkward conversations about your love life. Like it’s any of their concern!

“I can go with you if that helps,” he offers and you give him a look over your phone. “What? I’m sure if you brought someone they wouldn’t bug you.”

“But we are not together,” you remind him narrowing your eyes at him.

“They don’t have to know that. It’s a win-win, Y/N. Your colleagues would stop nagging you and I can eat and drink for free,” he smirks, clearly pleased with his little plan.

“I mean… you’re not wrong,” you sigh.

“See? Then it’s settled,” he pats your legs, smirking widely at you, but you’re still not entirely convinced. “Come on, Y/N. It’s gonna be fun!”

“This is so cliché, Harry!” you groan, your head falling back against the arm of the couch. “Pretending to be a couple? Straight out of a damn movie.”

Harry lifts your legs up so he can get out from under them, placing them back to the cushion before he climbs over to you, half of his body pressing onto yours as he squints his eyes at you.

“We can fuck in the bathroom, if you want,” he bluntly offers and you just start laughing at his dirty mind and technique of convincing you. “What? There’s literally no better offer out there. Free food, free drinks and free sex. Really good sex, if I may add,” he points out and you smack his chest lightly.

“Didn’t know you were thinking about charging me for the sex,” you joke.

“Might as well do, baby. Especially if it’s the best you can get,” he smugly huffs and you’d retort something funny, but you get caught up on the name.

“Baby? Since when are you calling me baby?”

“Since we are gonna be a couple next week. Gotta rehearse, baby,” he repeats the nickname and a foreign feeling bubbles in the pit of your stomach. Why is this one little word making you feel things you haven’t before? “And you know what else we can rehearse?” he continues, oblivious to your inner dialogue.

You don’t get to answer upon feeling his hand slide between your legs, fingers gently pressing onto your clothed clit and though you can’t stop a moan from slipping through your lips, you still grab his wrist and pull him away.

“My legs are too sore, I wouldn’t enjoy another round of you pounding into me,” you tell him and you can see the proud glimmer in his eyes that he was the one who got you into this state, though he luckily doesn’t comment on it.

“It doesn’t have to be pounding, then,” he smirks and leaning down he kisses you, taking his time as his hand frees itself from your grip and slides under your shorts and panties, fingers meeting your already throbbing bud.

He repositions himself so one of his thighs are between your legs, his lips never leaving yours as his fingers start drawing circles on your clit, sending pleasure down your body in waves.

“Fuck,” you breathe out against his lips when two of his fingers tease your entrance before pushing all the way inside, curling them between your clenching, wet walls.

“No, we are not fucking right now,” he smirks, never missing a chance to joke around and you want to retort to his comment, but words get caught in your throat when his thumb starts playing with your clit, fingers sliding in and out of you in a steady rhythm.

“So, are we on for Saturday? It’s gonna be fun, hm?”

The little shit is using his fingers to convince you and he has the audacity to ask you questions when you are about to see stars. Sometimes you really do hate how big of a smug fucker Harry is, but it’s hard to feel hatred for him when he is about to make you cum again.

“I-I don’t… Harry!” you gasp when he abruptly pulls his fingers out of you, right when you were so close. “I was about to fucking cum!” you growl, raging eyes meeting his green irises.

“I know,” he chuckles. “Say that you’re in and I’ll make you cum.”

“You motherfu—“

You don’t get to finish, his lips smashing against yours as his fingers return, moving faster than before, quickly pushing you towards the edge again.

“Say it. Say it, Y/N,” he mumbles against your lips as your chest is heaving and you start buckling your hips to meet his movements.

“Fuck… Okay! I’m in, just please make me cum!” you whine, hands gripping his shoulders like your life depends on it.

“Good girl,” he smirks and finishes you off without any more teasing.

You cry out his name, fingers digging into his muscles as you push your thighs together, trapping his hand between them while he keeps fingering you oh so perfectly. He makes sure you ride out the last waves of your orgasm before he pulls his fingers out and without batting an eye, he just licks them and fixes your panties and shorts before returning to his previous position with your legs across his lap, starting the show like nothing really happened.

Saturday morning you’re able to quickly get your nails done and Leticia comes with you, the two of you having brunch together afterwards. You go to a new place near the nail salon and as the waiter arrives with your orders, you notice that he slides a napkin onto the table with a small smile.

Grabbing it you see a phone number scribbled onto it. Normally, you send back a smile and tug the napkin into your purse, but this time you just leave it on the table and decide to ignore it.

“What the hell is up with you?” Leticia asks and glancing up at her you see her gesturing towards the napkin. “You don’t seem too thrilled about the approach which is very unlike you.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m just… not interested,” you shrug, reaching for your fork.

“Not interested? The dude looks like the lovechild of Chris Hemsworth and Johnny Depp. He is exactly your type, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m just not seeking another hookup right now, that’s it.”

“Oh my God!” Leticia gasps and you give her a puzzled look.

“What?”

“You don’t want other men because of Harry!”

“What? That’s crazy,” you laugh, because she has clearly left her mind at the salon for even thinking that.

“Have you hooked up with anyone else than Harry since you’ve made your little deal?”

“I, uhh… Flirted with the bartender when we were out together.”

“Flirting doesn’t count, not even in relationships.”

“I don’t think many would agree with that, Tish,” you huff.

“Okay, but did you have any interest in fucking someone else?”

“I don’t get it why you are making a big deal out of it. Why would I seek anyone else if I’m perfectly pleased by him?”

“Honey, that’s like… how relationships work.”

“That’s not true,” you shake your head, though what would you know about relationships? Your first and only one was when you were seventeen and it lasted twenty-one pathetic days.

“Are you fucking with anyone else?” She asks, eyebrows raised at you as you shake your head no. “Are you fucking him?”

“Obviously,” you scoff.

“Do you spend time together that doesn’t include sex?”

You are almost quick to say no, but then you realize that would be a big ass lie. Every time he comes over to your place or you’re at his, it’s never just the sex. That’s always primary, but not everything you do. All the dinners, the movies and shows you’ve watched together, when you sit on your tiny balcony with a bottle of wine, talking and laughing like you always did before the deal, something always happens after the sex.

Your silence once again answers Leticia’s question. Reaching over the table she takes your hand in hers, giving it a soft squeeze.

“Girl, you are totally dating Harry.”

Leticia once again manages to put a flea in your ear about this whole Harry thing. You wish she didn’t say a thing, because now you can’t think of anything else than the fact that you really are doing all the things with Harry that people who are dating do.

You get so riled up that you almost cancel on the evening, but you’d hate to have to sit through the evening with your colleagues alone when you said you’d be bringing someone. That would make their usual nagging a hundred times worse. So instead, you suck it up and decide to ignore the issue just for the time being and you get ready.

You were able to find a new dress beforehand, the yellow dress is truly a sight to the sore eyes with the corset-like top and very subtle lace details here and there. It’s a little daring, but everyone goes all out for these parties usually and you definitely don’t want to be underdressed.

Harry texts you that he is in front of the building a little before seven, holding up the taxi he came with so you quickly grab everything you need and head out.

You’re the first one to see him through the glass entrance doors of your building, he is standing next to the car in a simple black suit and a soft yellow shirt underneath. It was actually your idea to match your outfits and he surely understood the assignment, especially seeing his also yellow nails.

Part of you is still hung up on what Leticia told you, but a bigger one is so excited to see him and also very into his look for the evening, that you push your doubts to the back of your mind and step out of the building with a shy smile on your lips as his eyes fall on you and you see his lips part.

“Wow! This dress is… wow!” he breathes out, his eyes raking your frame up and down shamelessly as you walk closer.

“Do you know any other words than wow?” you tease him, biting into your bottom lip.

“Yeah. How about: I would love to bend you over this taxi and take you here and now in this dress?”

Your face heats up immediately, slapping his arm, but then you leave your hand on his bicep and give it a squeeze as your answer: you’d definitely love that if it wasn’t kind of illegal to have sex out on a busy street.

The ignorance in you is so high that you don’t even mind how Harry keeps a hand on your thigh in the car, what’s more, you’re quite liking the warmth of his touch on you. His fingers are gently tapping against the music the driver is playing and he even hums a little along the songs.

“Hey, how is the album writing going?” you ask to break the silence a little.

“Great! They asked for fifteen songs until the end of August, so I have plenty of time, but I’m already done with six,” he beams, and you smile back at him proudly.

“That’s amazing. Can I hear any of them sometime?”

“I mean… if you buy the album?” he chuckles, making you roll your eyes at him. “I’ll see what I can do about that,” he then adds, giving your leg another squeeze before turning towards the window.

The party is just the same as it always is. A luxurious evening to celebrate the company’s success in the past six months, a way to give back to the employees and make them feel appreciated with all the free stuff. It’s nice, but you don’t feel like it’s necessary, people would be happier with a raise after all, than one night of free food and drinks.

Harry holds your hand as you walk in, the majority of the guests already present, music playing and there are several open buffet tables and bars in the gigantic ballroom that was decorated in a forest-like theme just for tonight.

“So you did not lie about bringing a date!” Anthony beams as soon as he sees you, his boyfriend, Pete following him right behind, both of them wearing matching burgundy suits.

“Have I lied to you about anything?” you chuckle awkwardly.

“Plenty of times,” he points out before turning towards Harry. “Hello handsome, I’m Anthony, Y/N’s favorite coworker, and this is my boyfriend, Pete.” They all shake hands, Harry smiling back at them warmly before his hand finds yours again, his fingers lacing together with yours in an instant.

“Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you, I’m Harry.”

“Oh my! The accent!” Anthony gushes, clearly already a fan of Harry’s. “I was really afraid Y/N just said that she is bringing someone so we would get out of her hair this time.”

“I feel offended,” you give him a look, but he just shrugs it off, even though he is more right than he knows.

“Come on, let’s get you guys a drink, we are all sitting over there!”

Joining all your coworkers at the table, you get a head start on the food and drinks, not shying away from stacking everything you like onto your plate. Talking, mixing and mingling, Harry stays right next to you, charming everyone the two of you meet, earning you some approving looks from your colleagues that usually try to set you up with someone they know. This time, you’re left in peace the moment they see Harry with you, his hand always somewhere on you, holding your hand, the small of your back, your hips or waist or, your personal favorite, the back of your neck under your hair. His presence is uplifting already, but his tiny touches just warm you even more on the inside.

“I have to say, Y/N, you are absolutely glowing!” Dianne, one of the editors compliment you when the two of you are at the bar waiting for your drinks to be refilled. Harry stayed back at the table, deep in conversation with Pete about guitars, from what you could understand from their conversation.

“Oh, thank you!” you chuckle softly.

“This man is for sure treating you well. It’s so great to see you finally finding your person.”

She meant well with her comment, but it’s what brings everything you kept hidden in the back of your head out to the front. Tonight was supposed to be all pretending, making everyone believe something that’s not even there, but then why do you feel like it’s real? Like you fooled yourself with everyone else as well?

Your eyes fall back to Harry at the table, who is intently listening to something Pete is telling him and as if he had a sixth sense, his eyes snap at you, a smile stretching across his pretty face at an instant that makes you stomach dance again, heart beating oddly fast.

What is happening to you? This cannot be real, you can’t be having feelings, especially not for Harry. No, you do not allow that for yourself, emotions are off limits for you, because if you fall for someone that gives them the chance to leave you and break you and you’ve seen what it does to a woman. You got enough of the suffering through your mother and you vowed not to let it happen to you. And not even Harry Styles will change that. This is about sex and nothing else, no feelings are involved and that will not change. You won’t let it.

Excusing yourself from Dianne you quickly go back to the table, the refills long forgotten as you take your seat next to Harry. His hand instantly finds your leg as he looks at you with a sweet smile at first that turns into slight confusion.

“Thought you went for a refill?”

“Forget the drinks,” you shake your head, leaning closer to his ear. “You promised me bathroom sex.”

You feel the shift in him right away, how he bites into his bottom lip, his bright green irises darkening at your words, his hold on your leg tightening. His gaze flickers to your eyes and you want to devour him, you want him to take you here and there to prove you that this is all it’s about: sex.

Clearing his throat he mumbles a lame excuse as he pulls you from your chair, tugging you towards the restrooms, you try to keep up with his pace in your heels, but you also can’t wait for him to slam you against the door and fuck you quick and hard.

As soon as you’re locked away from the party in one of the bathrooms, your lips collide with his as he pushes you up against the door, a leg coming between your thighs and you can’t stop yourself from grinding on him.

“Fuck,” he rasps out, hands cupping your jaw as he angles your head just right while your hands are already traveling down his body to reach his pants, eager to get them undone as fast as possible.

However the sudden rush and desperation catches Harry’s eyes and he grabs your hands, stopping you mid-action.

“Hey, everything alright?” he asks, out of breath, concern filling his eyes.

“I just need you to fuck me,” you bluntly reply, but he doesn’t move.

“Okay, but why do you look so shaken up? Did something happen?”

“Harry, stop babying me! I said I’m fine, I just want you to fuck me!” you snap, losing your patience. Not sure if it’s with him or with yourself though.

“You’re obviously not fine! You are snapping at me for being decent and making sure you’re okay!” Harry steps away from you, the moment completely ruined as all physical contact ends with him, his eyes staring back at you in disbelief and you feel like a ticking bomb that’s about to explode.

“It’s not your concern if I’m okay or not. We have a deal, just go with that and leave the rest to me!”

“But above the deal we are friends too. I’m not gonna just… fuck you senseless when you’re obviously upset about something. You’re not in the right mindset.”

“Oh my God, stop being so fucking nice! Stop making these grand gestures and stop pretending like you give a fuck!” You raise your voice and it surely surprises him, but he is still more concerned than angry at your outburst.

“What do you mean pretending? I do care about you! Is that a fucking crime now?!”

“It is because it is for the wrong reasons!” you retort, feeling your throat closing up at the same time. Oh God, you hope you won’t start crying, that will make it even worse. “I think you are taking this pretending a little too far tonight. We are not a couple, this is not real, Harry,” you remind him.

He stares back at you for what feels like eternity and you wish you could read his mind, because you can’t read anything from his eyes, he just stands there like a statue and you feel panic crawling up your spine, slowly digging its claws into your flesh.

And then he finally breaks his silence.

“And would it be so bad if it was real?”

You can’t help a sob that emits from you, feeling like your guts are in a tight grip by his words. This is exactly what you didn’t want to happen.

“No, take that back!” you whine.

“I’m not taking it back! Y/N, what we’ve been doing these past weeks is exactly what a relationship is like and you didn’t seem to have a problem with it until a label was put on it. It doesn’t have to change anything!”

“But it is! And you know I don’t do this!”

“Don’t do what? Feelings? You don’t get to choose that!” he chuckles bitterly.

“I do! I fucking do! And I chose not to have them so… this is ending here, because you clearly caught feelings,” you pant in desperate need of getting out of the bathroom, but when you are about to open the door Harry’s hand snaps against it, keeping it closed. You rest your forehead against the cool surface of it, feeling Harry stand so close to you behind, his chest is touching your back.

“Don’t just walk away, we are in the middle of a conversation,” he growls, his voice filled with anger and warning.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” you whisper, shaking your head as you turn around and face him, your back pressing against the door.

“But I do,” he simply replies. “Why do you think you can just run away from feeling anything for the rest of your life? Why would it be so bad if you fell for someone, huh? I know you do have feelings, I know you well, Y/N. You’re not some cold hearted jerk, you are a caring and loving person, so why won’t you let yourself be happy?”

“I am happy the way I am, have you thought about that?”

“No, you’re not. I’ve known you half my life, I know that you want to be cared for, you want to be loved and cherished, yet you push away everyone who wants to give you that.”

“Because it’s not that easy, Harry!” you snap at him. “It’s never just the lovey-dovey shit! Feelings come with hurt and pain and heartbreaks and I don’t need that! I can’t handle that!”

“It’s not always the case! But if you never put yourself out there, you’ll never find the happiness you’re seeking!”

“Well, for me, it doesn’t worth it! I don’t want to fall for someone, plan my future with them and open up to them completely only for them to fall out of love with me one day and decide they don’t want anything to do with me! I don’t want to give anyone the chance to hurt me like that, because I’ve seen what it does to a person! I witnessed it all, Harry! I will not be a victim to that!”

You’re full on shouting, tears rolling down your cheeks at this point. You are letting everything out that’s been bottled up deep inside of you all this time. Nothing can make you believe in the fairytale that will never become your reality and you rather save the time and pain than experiment with it.

What really hurts is that now you are losing your friend. Your best friend. Because the way Harry is looking at you makes it obvious that you’ll never be like before the deal. The hurt, the shock, the panic and the anger, it all mixes in his wide-eyed gaze and it’s like a knife into your chest.

“You promised me, Harry,” you sob, voice now barely more than just a whisper. “You swore you wouldn’t catch feelings but you lied!”

“I didn’t lie,” he simply answers clenching his jaw. “I said I wouldn’t catch feelings for you, but truth is… I already had them. I was already in love with you, have been for a while. And you know what? I think you love me too, but you’re just too afraid to admit it. I know it because I can feel it. The way you touch me, look at me, the way you talk to me, it’s written all over you, but you choose to ignore it.”

“You don’t know shit,” you shake your head vigorously. “You think you know it, but you don’t.”

“Stop denying it, Y/N! You can’t just switch it off! Loving is not as horrendous as you think it is! Yes, it comes with pain too, but the good is always there to make you forget about it. You have to give it… you have to give yourself a chance!”

“I don’t have to do anything, Harry,” you sass back, pushing him away so you have the chance to sneak out of the room before he could stop you. But he doesn’t let it end that easily. Running after you he catches your wrist before you could get out of the hallway, pulling you back.

“Don’t just fucking walk away, Y/N! We need to talk about this!”

“No, we don’t. And I’m done with this. Done with… you.”

It hurts. The words rolling off of your tongue hurt, but you choose to ignore it once again as you shake his hand off of yourself, marching back to your table to grab your bag and leave.

“What do you mean you’re done with me? Don’t do this, Y/N! Let’s just fucking talk!”

Harry keeps trying to stop you, but you’re determined to leave. Your coworkers notice the little scene, but you don’t pay it any attention as you head out of the room, knowing well they’ll talk shit about you behind your back as soon as you’re out of the building.

“Y/N for fuck’s sake just stop already!” Harry snaps, grabbing your arm once again when you’re outside, pulling you back, but you’ve had enough.

“No! I’m not stopping, you need to stop! Stop trying to make yourself believe this is anything more than just the deal we made! It’s not and it will never be, because you don’t get to have the privilege of hurting me, nobody gets to do that!”

“Who said I want to hurt you?! That’s the last thing I would want to do! It’s not as cruel as you imagine it, Y/N. I know that your mum had a terrible love life when you were younger, but that’s not the only side to love! There are so much good about it, so much to fight for and endure with the bad sides, you can’t just throw all of it out the window because you decided love is just not for you!”

“I can and I will. Watch me!” you bite back, tearing your arm out of his hold as you step to the side of the pavement and wave a taxi down.

“Please don’t get into that car, Y/N, let’s talk!”

“We talked enough,” you huff as the car stops in front of you and you hop inside, but just as you are about to close the door Harry once again stops you.

“Y/N, I love you. Please don’t do this!” he begs, so much sorrow and pain radiating from his face and for a moment you fall weak. You almost reach out to him, because part of you hates seeing him like this, especially knowing that it’s because of you. You just want him to be happy, but you know it’s not gonna be with you. You can never give him what he wants and needs. He’ll be better off without you.

“I’m sorry,” you choke out before pulling the door closed and the car drives away. Turning around you see him stand on the pavement, completely broken and shaken, his hands tangling into his hair as he angrily kicks at the dirt before the car melts into the traffic and he falls out of your sight.

You did it for your and Harry’s sake. It had to be done and you are both better off this way. At least that’s what you’ve been trying to convince you to believe.

But why does it hurt so badly then?

Harry tried you calling a million times after you left him at the party, he even came after you and banged on your door for thirty minutes straight, begging you to let him in and just talk, but you didn’t even answer him. Just waited until he left before you curled up in the shower and cried for about an hour.

The calls and texts kept coming in the next few days, but after a while he gave up. He got nothing but silence from your side and one last, long ass text that you didn’t even read because you knew you’d just start crying again, he finally gave up.

You were left alone with all the pain and emptiness and you realized how big part of your life Harry played before. Somehow, everything reminded you of him and you couldn’t do anything without wishing he was with you.

You truly believed that time will heal you, that soon you’ll realize that you made the right decision, but days turned into weeks and nothing changed, you just learned to live with the pain. You stopped going out with your friends and not just because you were afraid of seeing Harry, but because you genuinely couldn’t get yourself to leave the house. Your evenings consisted of binge eating all the ice-cream you could find in your freezer and watching reruns of your favorite shows, but nothing could really take your mind off of Harry.

Day after day you cancelled on Leticia as well until she had enough of your hermit life. She got fed up watching you sink into your pit of sorrow and decided to take things into her own hands and not let you run away from her.

A Friday evening you’re doing what you’ve been doing for weeks now, lying on your couch in sweatpants, scrolling through Netflix when there’s a knock on your door. You wait, hoping whoever it is will think you’re not home and go away, but another obnoxious knock rips through the apartment and you growl.

“I know you’re in there bitch, open the fucking door!” Leticia shouts from outside and you curse the day you became friends with her. Maybe you would have been better off as enemies.

“I’m busy!” you call out, but make your way to the front door anyway, opening it to reveal her.

“Yeah, I can see that. Busy with being a bag of trash,” she comments on your appearance, walking inside without an invitation.

“Jeez, you really did wake up today and chose violence,” you mutter under your breath as you shut the door closed.

Leticia is quick to turn the TV off and open up the windows as you just stand there, not sure what she is doing here.

“When did you clean this place? And when was the last time you took a shower?” she asks, her nose scrunching when she takes a better look at you.

“Okay, did you come here to offend me? Because I don’t need that so please leave.”

“No, I’m here to beat some sense into you.”

“Good luck with that,” you scoff, taking your spot on the couch once again. You reach for the remote with the intention of turning the TV back on, but Leticia stands in front of the screen, blocking the device completely as she stares down at you with a disapproving look, arms folded on her chest.

“You’re acting like a child, Y/N. Avoiding everyone and being mad at the whole world, are you an emo teenager now or what?”

“I’m not mad at the whole world!”

“Okay, then you’re mad at just Harry, still, it’s a mistake.”

“I’m not mad at only Harry either,” you admit truthfully.

“Who else then?”

“Myself?” you mumble, eyes falling closed as you slide lower down on the couch.

“That makes the two of us, but why are you mad at yourself?” she asks, finally moving from her spot in front of the TV as she sits next to you on the couch, crossing her legs as she waits for your answer.

“Because…” you start with a sigh, opening your eyes, but you avoid looking at her, instead, you stare at the wall across you. “Because I can’t fucking stop thinking about him,” you admit and your lips start trembling instantly, just like every time you think about him. “I miss him so fucking badly, Tish! I miss our conversations, I miss his stupid jokes, I miss him raiding my fucking fridge and I miss…”

You bite your tongue, not wanting to admit the next thoughts loudly. Because you miss kissing him, you miss holding him and be held by him. You miss sex too, but you miss the tiny things even more, the way his lips feel against yours, how he smiles against them when you whimper his name and you miss the awkward little things the most. When he accidentally bumps his head against yours or when say random shit right before he pushes into you just to make you laugh, or when he leans in for a kiss but misses it and ends up kissing your nose or just the corner of your mouth. You miss everything about him and you hate him for that, but you hate yourself even more. It feels like your own conscious has betrayed you.

Shutting your eyes closed you let the tears roll down your cheeks as Leticia scoots closer and wraps her arms around you, cooing soothingly at you.

“It’s alright. It’s totally normal, Y/N.”

“It is not! Not for me at least!” you protest pulling back, wiping your cheeks with the back of your hands.

“Stop with the bullshit already!” she growls in annoyance. “You are not some kind of ice queen who is incapable of loving! You love me, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s different,” you roll your eyes.

“Not really. You love your other friends as well, right?” You nod. “And you love your mom,” she adds and you nod again. “Would you do anything for these people?”

“Of course.”

“Do you like spending time with them? Do you care about them in all kinds of ways?”

“Yes,” you sigh, fumbling with the hem of your shirt.

“Do you feel the same way about Harry? Do you care about him, would you do anything for him to make him happy?”

“Yes,” you whisper truthfully.

“Then don’t complicate it. You love him, no big deal! And he surely loves you back, because he told you, right?” You nod. “Then pull your head out of your ass and just let yourself be happy for once.”

“Why are you coming with this too? I was happy on my own too!”

“No, you were getting by,” she points it out. “You were doing good, but you weren’t… a whole. Harry gave you everything you missed, but for some fucked up reason you think it’s the end of the world to depend on someone else partially when it comes to your happiness. Which can be a smart thing, it’s important to be your own person and be independent, but sometimes we need some help from others. From people that love us and we love them back. It’s not a crime, Y/N.”

“No, but it’s gonna end up with me being heartbroken.”

“You already are,” she ruthlessly replies, bringing your attention to what you’ve been trying to ignore all this time. “Hate to break it to you, but this is what that feels like. So why not just go with it, you already felt the pain, now you could go for the good parts as well.”

“I don’t know if I can do it, Tish,” you breathe out, resting your head against the back of the couch. “Even if I did it, I know I would mess it up and hurt him or maybe he’ll do something stupid and hurt me and I don’t think I can handle that.”

“So what? It’s part of the deal. And besides, you’re already hurting each other, so you better get your shit together,” she scoffs, poking your side playfully.

It’s part of the deal. Are you ready to make a new deal? One that you’ve been avoiding your whole life? Are you ready to cut yourself open for someone else and just hope for the best?

Probably not. And probably you’ll never be. But your tactics didn’t succeed so far, you still ended up in pain so why not give it a chance? Even if it’s gonna be the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

“Do you think he hates me now?” you ask quietly, peeking at her scared of her answer.

“He is a bit mad at you for shutting him out, but he could never hate you. That man loves you so much, it’s almost disgusting,” she admits, making you chuckle. “Just… be honest with him and talk to him. You need it. You both need it.”

Harry’s fingers strum against the chords again, trying to get the tune right, but he fails again, a frustrated growl leaving his lips as he lets his head fall forwards. He’s been trying to finish the song for hours, but it still hasn’t come together the way he imagined and his patience is running short.

It’s been hard for him to focus on writing, with you on his mind all the time, everything seems like a hard task. He has written plenty of songs since the night at the party, but he could never use them for his job. One, because they are so fucking sad and depressive and they asked for upbeat hits from him, and two, because they are all so personal, he could never give them to someone else. He can’t let anyone else sing the lines he wrote to you, but you’ll probably never hear them.

Giving up on finishing the song today, he puts the guitar aside and calls it a day. Walking into the kitchen he opens the fridge and realizes that it’s completely empty aside from a bottle of ketchup and a single banana. He’s been such a mess lately, he forgot to go grocery shopping yesterday. Huffing to himself he grabs the banana and reaches for his phone to order something right when his doorbell rings. He is not expecting anyone, but Mitch has been popping in every few days to check in on him since everything that went down with you, so Harry is convinced it’s him again.

“Great timing, do you want Italian or Chinese?” he asks, walking up to the door, but as he swings it open he freezes when he sees you standing on the doormat. “Y/N…” he breathes out as if he was seeing a ghost.

“Hi! I-I hope I’m not bothering you o-or anything…” you ramble nervously.

“No! No, come on in!” He snaps out of his trance and steps aside, letting you walk inside. A feeling of nostalgia hits you right away as you think back at the last time you were here. Just a few days before the party, when everything was different.

“I’m sorry I came without asking, I just… I would say I was nearby, but that’s not true,” you chuckle anxiously as the two of you walk into the living room. You notice that his place is a little messier than usually, but it’s not nearly as bad as yours was before you did a deep cleaning yesterday after Leticia’s comments on it.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. What… What brought you here?”

“I, uhh… I’ve been thinking. A lot. And I have a few things I need to tell you.”

For a moment Harry’s stomach drops, because he thinks you came here to tell him off one more time for breaking your deal, for everything that happened at the party. He is already bracing himself to just let you lash out on him, but it never comes. And when you speak up again, he nearly faints.

“I love you.”

It’s a strong start, definitely a surprising one. Harry’s lips part and his eyes widen, his look almost comical, but you’re not laughing, not now. You have a lot to tell him and you can only hope he won’t throw you out after everything is said.

“I love you and I’m sorry it took me so long to stop ignoring it, but I promise you I’m done with that. And I’m sorry for everything I said to you that night, I was… mad and confused and I didn’t know how to deal with everything at once. I was delusional and ignorant and… a fool for thinking that I could just choose to never have feelings, especially for you,” you add with a tiny, nervous chuckle. “You were right. About everything. That I can’t live without ever putting myself out there and risking it. And I think deep down I knew that, but I was so afraid of getting hurt that I made myself believe I’m good on my own, but I’m not. Not entirely, to be precise. Because sometimes it is worth risking it and… and I realized that you are the person for me who is worth this risk.”

The tears are already blurring your vision, for the millionth time these past weeks, but it feels right now. Opening up to Harry and telling him all of this is hard, but with every spoken word you feel lighter and more relieved.

“I’m sorry if I made you think that I don’t love you, because I do. I really do. You are my best friend and these past weeks have been hell for me without you. I was so keen on avoiding a heart break that I ended up breaking my own heart,” you chuckle bitterly, the first tear running down your cheek.

Harry reaches out and wipes it away with his thumb and you involuntarily melt into his touch. You’ve been starved for it and now it feels like home. When you look up and your eyes meet his, you see that they are red too and it just makes you want to cry even more.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just thought that I was doing the right thing, but I was so far from that. So I’m really sorry and I understand if you don’t want to see me again for the way I acted. I was… a horrible friend and… an even worse girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah. Because you were right, we were more than just the deal and… if you choose not to throw me out after this, I would… I would love to give it a try with you. I want to be the girlfriend you deserve and though I’m sure I’ll mess it up a lot of times, I promise I’ll try my best, becau—“

He makes your rambling stop in the best way possible, lips smashing against yours as he cups your tear-soaked cheeks in his warm palms, pulling you close to him, your arms curling around his waist immediately.

Harry has kissed you several times before, but none of them compares to this. It’s messy and salty from both your tears, but you wouldn’t change a thing about it, the way his lips move against yours, tongues meeting, devouring each other, making up for the lost time and full of promises for the future. You hold onto his shirt at his back for dear life as he just keeps kissing you over and over again until you both run out of breath.

“So, does this mean you’re not throwing me out?” you joke, breaking the silence once you’ve pulled back.

“Fuck no,” he laughs, pecking your lips a few more times before his lips meet your forehead. “You are not leaving this place, ever. You’re trapped,” he adds to the joke and you break out in a relieved laughter.

“Wait, so I’m stuck with you now?” you whine playfully, but all you get is another kiss on the lips, hard and demanding.

���Yeah, forever, baby. You won’t get rid of me now, not after the speech you just gave me,” he smirks down at you, his arms coming to curl around your shoulders as he keeps you pressed against him tightly. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” you reply, your heart soaring as you hear those words again from him, this time, not even trying to dodge them in any way. In fact, you just want to hear him say it every minute over and over again for the rest of your life. “And I’m happy to be stuck with you,” you add with a shy smile as his grin widens at your words.

“Yeah? So we have a new deal then?” he teases, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Absolutely.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed it!

[s-brant]

Pirates and Princesses (8/8)

(gif: @beccs) (PART SEVEN) (SERIES MASTERLIST)

Summary: JJ must confront his childhood trauma when returning home for the first time since his dad went to jail and prevent it from sabotaging his new relationship. Meanwhile, something sinister happens at the Chateau that brings Y/N face to face with her grief over John B’s death.

Word Count: 13.4k

Warnings: Angst, implied sexual content, strong language, parent/child abuse, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, and fluff.

A/N: Welcome to the final chapter of Tokens! This one has a little bit of everything in it, but it also has detailed scenes about JJ and his dad, so proceed with caution if you’re easily triggered by that topic. The love you guys show this fic warms my heart so much, so thanks to anyone who stuck with this story until this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!

Now that she has been sentenced to both punishments, one as a consequence of the fight with Kacey and the other as a consequence of the stunt she pulled with JJ to break out of ISS, Y/N can confidently say that out of school suspension is superior to in-school suspension by a long shot. Instead of sitting in a humid room with Alec for the duration of multiple school days, she's allowed to stay home, go out surfing, and do whatever she wants in lieu of doing classwork.

She promised herself not to make it a habit, promising the invisible presence of John B that she likes to pretend follows her around that she will never get herself into trouble again, but she sees no problem in enjoying her suspension while it lasts.

For the first few days of her suspension, JJ skipped school to spend it with her. Their memories of the conversation they had at three in the morning on Sunday were fuzzy, but not missing entirely. She noticed a difference in his behavior for the first few hours after they woke up under the tree together for the second time in one week. It wasn't a difference in their relationship or how he treated her, it was a difference in him.

He was quieter than usual as they cleaned up cans of beer and tossed them into the recycling, sending pictures to Kie while she was in class after she made them promise not to throw them in the trash. Rather than cracking jokes or making casual conversation with her, JJ made his way around the yard with the recycling bin in his hands and his head in the clouds. It disappeared as the day progressed, but for a little while, he wasn't completely there.

Today, he went into school instead of ditching to spend extra time with her in between shifts at work and time spent with their friends. Since they can't exceed three consecutive absences without a doctor’s note and he doesn't own a printer or laptop to forage the header from a doctor's office, he had no choice but to part from her this morning.

He bites his lip to contain his smug facial expression at the recollection of her wake up call for him. The hand holding his locker door open for him to lean on in the midst of his not-so-wholesome thoughts of her squeezes the metal hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

The curtains weren't shut all the way when they fell asleep before midnight last night, allowing a shaft of sunlight to shine in and land on his face. But that wasn't what woke him up from the dream he was having. In fact, the reality he opened his eyes to was a hell of a lot better than any dream he remembered.

Most of his memory of those moments spent suspended between consciousness and unconsciousness consisted of feeling her pressing a kiss to his shoulder, then her hands rubbing up and down his waist to slip lower and lower until they settled on the waistband of his underwear. It was then that he woke to find her looking up at him for permission from where she peppered kisses along his chest.

Their eyes met right as she kissed the edge of his nipple with this pleading, needy look that he took pride in causing without actively attempting to. She woke up on the brink of coming undone from a pleasant—to put it tamely—dream about him. With a glimpse at the time displayed on the alarm clock, it didn't take much for her to roll over to wake him up.

It ended with her beneath the sheet, finishing what she started Friday afternoon until he was clutching the pillow beneath his head in the midst of his orgasm. It happened so fast, a fault of how hot he found it to wake up to her wanting him so badly, but it felt slower than it truly was in the early morning haze of exhaustion they felt.

The memory as he relives it is as heady as it felt the first time around. He sees it in fractions; her eyes looking up at his, warm palms finding the familiar planes of his muscular body with the exploratory touch of someone who's never traveled it before, and the intense sensations he felt at the end...It's easy for him to stand here and lose himself in it. Despite the class he has to go to, he bargains with himself for one more second spent in the paradise of his memories before he has to come back to reality.

Reality, as his shitty luck would have it, comes in the form of a familiar feminine voice chirping from behind his back as he replays his morning bliss.

"It's good to see you're alive and well, Maybank."

He decides, based on who he knows he'll see when he turns around, that he might invest in a sharpie to write "Bang head here" on the inside of his locker door for instances like these where he'd rather suffer brain damage than speak to someone he can't stomach the presence of.

When he turns to see Kacey with one arm still stretched to hold his locker open, he doesn't bother concealing the genuine reaction from his face for the sake of her feelings. Any care he had for her and her feelings was thrown to the wind as soon as she decided she could steal from and put her hands on his girl last week. However, after a second of thought, a condescending smirk finds its way to his face.

He says, jerking his chin to vaguely gesture at her bruised up face, "Purple really suits your complexion. It makes your eyes pop, don't you think?"

Though the swelling of her black eye has deflated in the days since the fight that’ll soon tally up to a week, the verbal jab hits right where it intended to if the light leaving her eyes tells him anything. She bounces back after a second, though, ever the relentless pest they've come to see her as.

She offers a sickeningly sweet, yet fake smile to mirror the one gracing his striking features and spins so her back meets the locker beside his, allowing herself to invade his space further.

A collection of Y/N's stickers decorates the inside of his locker door that he briefly entertained the idea of designating as a place to bang his head against. They range from girly, glittery ones to those he willingly picked when she gave him the choice. Whenever they're at his locker together, she sticks one on the inside, and the evidence of the habit catches Kacey's wandering eyes.

Her fingertips brush against the surface of the sticker-covered metal while she ignores his protest of, "Can you not touch my stuff?" to inspect them. Since one of the Pogues in particular is famous for her endless supply of stickers, her expression sours at the thought of the girl responsible for them.

She spares him a quick glance out of the corner of her eye as she continues to analyze the sticker collection against his instructions not to, asking, "Why weren't you at the bonfire?" A failed attempt at a seductive look in his direction makes him fight not to roll his eyes. "After how last year's ended, I thought you wouldn't miss it for the world."

JJ doesn't bother to take a second to think things through before he reaches to slam the door closed with her hand still outstretched inside of it. Watching her pull it away just in time to avoid jamming it in the locker probably pleases him more than it should, but he can't help it. His hand catches on the edge of the door, halting it in place right before it closes where her hand previously rested.

She doesn't look too happy with him when he opens the door with no harm done except for the drop of her stomach when he initially pretended to swing it shut on her bruised knuckles. She didn't get many shots in on Y/N when they fought, but apparently it was enough.

He doesn't bother with the fake niceties she's giving him after the disrespect she showed him, his friends, and, most importantly, his girlfriend. The fact that she thinks she has any right to breathe in his direction, let alone flirt with him, after she stole JB's bandana is criminal. 'Cause not only did she mess with Y/N, she messed with John B on multiple levels, and his loyalty to his best friend hasn't disappeared with death. Kie and Y/N told him everything she said about their departed friend in the locker room last Thursday.

But he's smart enough to know what'll hurt her more, so he doesn't go for the general scolding he imagined giving her in his head. Since he was told everything about the encounter in the locker room, he knows she's still holding their history together near and dear to her heart.

"We stayed home," he says, casual and cool as always, with added emphasis on the first word, "You know how it is, my girl doesn't like parties. Especially not ones with kooks."

Hook, line, and sinker.

She scoffs, "Your girl?"

Looking at her now, he wonders if she was always this stupid, or if this is a new development she's had in the year since he last spent more than a minute or two at a time with her. It’s easier to trick her than it was with Kie and Y/N a few days ago, and those poor girls flew into that trap like moths to a flame.

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

The ire is visible in the way her face tenses up in places, her lips pressing together a little more firmly and her forehead creasing between the brows.

"Doesn't your, um, history bother her?" she asks, and he's gotta give her credit for being a sneaky little shit when given the chance. The girl takes every possible opening she can to strike for a potential weakness. "No offense, but you kinda get around."

He shrugs this time, deciding to drop his casual act and aim straight for the jugular.

"She likes having someone who knows how to fuck her right, actually, but I really appreciate the concern."

Much like Kie's reaction to their matching tattoos in the hot tub the other night, her jaw is unhinged to meet the unswept hallway floor they stand on. It makes him wish Y/N weren't suspended in order for her to see the gobsmacked reaction Kacey has to the harsh dismissal. Though he wouldn't want to incite an extra round of the Kacey vs Y/N WWE showdown by having her watch another girl flirt with him and essentially call him a slut upon rejection, he knows she'd get a kick out of it.

This one's for you, baby, he thinks with a quiet laugh to himself and turns his focus to the sticker collection she so lovingly crafted.

There are plenty of summer themed ones left over from the same pack he gifted her for her birthday with the surfboard sticker she used to tease him, as well as a newer genre of Valentine's Day stickers she started using the closer they grew since first getting together. They're mostly different colored candy hearts with corny phrases ranging from "U SXY THING" to the classic "BE MINE" and one printed with "ANGEL" on it—his favorite by far.

However, others are random ones from her endless stash built up over the years from birthdays and holidays deemed worthy enough by her dad to stop by Dollar Tree for a new pack, so the one he sets his attention on is likely meant for teachers or coaches to give to their students. The opportunity appears too good to be true to him when it clicks, but it isn't.

He peels the sticker off of the locker door, careful not to disturb the ones around it, and leans in closer to her to place it on the front of her tank top.

"Leave us alone or I won't stop her next time," JJ says lowly, past the point of civility, then backs away to slam his locker shut for real this time as his voice raises back to a normal volume, "And keep John B's name out of your mouth, got it?"

All she can do is look down at the sticker placed on her shirt with squinted eyes to try and read it while he walks off in the direction of his next class. It tears away from the fabric with a soft noise, and when she finally reads it, she rolls her eyes.

“Good Try!”

​​Walking out of school to see the Twinkie parked in the usual spot Y/N takes when she isn't suspended is a delightful treat he didn't know to expect after a rough day in class and his run in with Kacey. His head was hung low on his way to Kie's car to hitch a ride to his house before going home to the Chateau, since he had some things to pick up with his dad out of the picture for the near future, but then he heard her greet them.

JJ's body melts into hers upon contact, and he nearly pushes her up against the closed passenger side door of the van with how hard he hugs her. Though he doesn't want to acknowledge it, his dad has been living in his thoughts more than usual today. Ever since he texted him goodbye, he's been withdrawn inside of his head more and more, and after today's inconveniences, the rising anxiety of his plan to visit home has him two seconds from losing his mind.

Her eyes widen at his zeal, meeting Kie's concerned gaze from over the shoulder she rests her chin on. She stands with her keys swinging around her finger as she watches the couple embrace one another. In an answer to the silent question Y/N asks her in their stare, her lips mouth the words, "His dad," to her.

Deep down, Y/N had a feeling.

It began with his impromptu request to run away with her a few days ago and extended into his uncharacteristically reserved attitude the next morning that receded somewhat, but has yet to fully disappear. There is a part of her that's upset that he hasn't come to her to talk about it, to communicate the way they swore they would, yet she also knows it isn't that simple.

She has to remind herself that she knew what she was getting herself into with him. That's not to say that dating her must be a walk in the park for him, it isn't.

She knows based on the amount of times he had to hold her as she cried, or the time he curtailed her panic attack in this very parking lot, that she hasn't made it easy for him in the aftermath of John B's death. But it's because she knows how it feels that she has such patience with his communication issues.

It's not a conscious choice most times, it's an involuntary blockage preventing the words from being spoken no matter how desperately they long to be. They may have made a promise, but she won't chastise him for succumbing to the same pitfalls as her. It’d be hypocritical.

"Bad day?" she asks.

Her voice is tender with him, prodding gently for a clue as to why he pounced on her on sight. He sinks further into her arms at the sound and lets the sanctity of her touch sway him into submission. Everything about her sets him at ease, if only for a second. Her hand lifts the beat-up red hat from his head to allow the other to brush through his hair.

There's a hum of agreement that she feels vibrating through the center of his chest into hers, and her arms pull tighter around his shoulders in response. This time, when she looks up to see Kie there, she's waving a quick goodbye and setting off toward her car, clearly giving JJ the space he needs.

"We can go to the beach," she says softly, "I have a towel in the back of the van, we can just lay there and talk about it if you want."

The idea of her kind offer to him should add to the comfort he finds in her embrace. It should make him nod and whisper his gratitude to her for being the one person that knows him better than anyone, but it brings him back to the gloomy headspace he was in before seeing her.

It started as a minor distraction when he first arrived at school after carpooling with Kie. It followed him in the quieter moments, only making appearances when he wasn't distracted with more pressing matters. It began as that and built the closer the day came to ending. The sooner his inevitable visit back to his childhood home came, the more he lost himself in his fear, reverting back to a state of helplessness he now occupies with no small amount of shame.

His bottom lip trembles with the urge to cry.

"Can we stop somewhere on the way home first?"

The last place she expected him to drive the Twinkie is here.

As they made their way down each street, taking each turn necessary to bring them closer to the house he seldom let her go to over the course of their lifelong friendship, she felt her heart begin to race. And now, as the van rolls to a stop in the yard in front of his house, she has swallow back the lump in her throat at the sight of it.

She has only been here a few times.

The first time, she was seven years old.

It was a sweltering summer morning in the Outer Banks for her and John B as they set off to retrieve their friend after he missed their plans to meet up at the Chateau for a day of having fun, riding bikes, and playing on the boat. Pirates and Princesses was her favorite game to play with them because JJ would switch roles with her halfway through when she grew tired of being the damsel John B had to rescue from the most cruel and vicious Captain Jesse James Maybank.

The HMS Pogue would rock beneath his feet as he marched across the deck of the boat and took her place as the kidnapped Princess Routledge. He handed off his "sword" to her, a stick he found in the yard, and stood at the edge of the boat with his hands behind his back as though he were a tied up damsel in distress for her to hold captive. The sun setting behind them laid a picturesque backdrop that made the scene all the more vivid to their imaginative young minds.

The boat floated in the afternoon current as John B approached the pair with his best pretend face of worry for the fair Princess Maybank, who had the sharp sword of the pirate queen pressing into his throat with the threat of death should he have tried to escape.

Sometimes, she'd let John B advance on them and tie make believe rope around her wrists and ankles while he and Princess Maybank claimed their victory. Other times, they'd get backed up until the heels of her sneakers hung off the edge of the slippery deck. One move from her brother would have her yell something along the lines of not taking either of them alive, then she'd let her and JJ fall back into the marsh together with gleeful laughs infiltrating the humid air upon their return to the surface.

On the day he didn't show up, none of that happened. She and John B rode their bikes together along sidewalks until they pulled into a driveway marked with the address number he remembered from the other time he sought him out to play before.

Y/N didn't understand what they were hearing when they pushed their kickstands down and called out for their friend, but John B's little face blanched at the sound flooding out of the opened windows of the dilapidated yellow house. It was a combination of banging against the walls, glass shattering, and childlike shouts of frustration and pain. Her big brother placed himself in front of her protectively when the front door opened and smacked against the side of the house, but it wasn't his dad storming out of the house, it was JJ.

His eyes widened at the sight of the siblings standing there, and his heart dropped to his stomach at the realization that they heard it. Maybe not all of it, but based on how the girl peeking out around John B's shoulder looked at him, they heard some.

The van is parked in the exact same place their bikes once were, the exact place she and John B stood years ago when they were first confronted with the harsh reality about their best friend's home life, and he looks like he has fully backpedaled into the state of mind his childhood self inhabited. Even when he turns the key in the ignition and lets the rumbling engine sputter down in silence, he sits in the driver's seat with his lip drawn between his teeth in thought.

Yet as soon as she summons the courage to say something, he takes a deep breath and opens the door without a warning or the typical instruction for her to stay in the car. He doesn't tell her to follow him in, nor does he order her to stay out as he used to when his dad still lived inside. He gives her the choice to make on her own, and, when faced with the opportunity to support him or stay outside like the confused little girl she once was, she chooses the first option.

Her swift steps kick dirt up from the earth onto her ankles as she follows him out of the van to the front steps of the house. She tries not to make her concern for him as evident as it'd be without her intervention on her way up the porch, but it's impossible to erase every sign of it from her face.

It isn't a particularly special or scary house. It's a normal home that'd likely look more inviting if JJ were still living here to mow the lawn and tend to the household upkeep his father saddled him with since he was old enough to be put to work. But she knows better than to trust the street appeal. As he takes her hand to lead them through the threshold of the haunted structure, she is overcome with a sense of creeping trepidation that she can't shake.

"You're sure he isn't here?" she asks.

The entryway is crowded with stacks of mail his father wasn’t bothered to open, as well as empty cardboard boxes that once held cans of beer that are scattered, empty, in various places around the house. Her question is answered by the state of the rooms they breeze past in the direction of his bedroom, but she needed something to say to fill the silence. With them, they usually don’t feel uncomfortable not speaking to each other, but this feels different.

The way he stares out in front of him with his hand squeezing hers hard enough to cut off circulation unnerves her more than the tainted energy of the house itself. He isn't himself. He's a shell of the JJ they know and love, the JJ who is most comfortable tucked away in the safe walls of the Chateau with their friends, not here. If anything, how he is while he's here is the antithesis of his behavior while living with her.

Ever since John B died, he's practically moved in with her. When they're hidden away in her house without the reminders of his home life in sight, he's usually the caretaker of the relationship. It comes naturally to their dynamic, both with him being slightly older and his promise to take care of her, but everything is flipped here. It's an alternate reality for him, or, perhaps, actual reality smacking him in the face after a carefully constructed two months in utopia with her.

They come to a stop in front of his closed bedroom door.

"He's gone," he says, not even sparing a glance at her for reasons she can't decipher, "He texted me a few days ago to say goodbye."

With that, he turns the doorknob and lets the door swing open to reveal the bedroom she only saw one other time.

The second time, she was thirteen years old.

It was a Friday.

Since his dad was supposed to be at work, they stopped at his house on their way home from school exactly like they did today so he could share with their friends what he got from his cousin the night before. Being the good girl she was, she didn't even know what he was showing her when he dug it out of the backpack in the bottom of his closet.

Her brows furrowed at the ziploc bag, more specifically the contents inside of it. She was knelt down on the floor in front of the opened closet door with her shoulder pressed up against his to inspect it. The dried green cluster of a plant didn't look like anything she'd seen before, and she couldn't help but ask him what the hell it was rather than react the way he knew the others would.

"What is it? It looks like dried up moss."

JJ laughed and pulled another bag with rolling papers and a grinder stowed inside.

"It's weed. My cousin Ricky gave me a discount since—"

He halted mid-sentence abruptly enough to startle her, his head turning in the direction of where he heard a trunk pulling up to the front of the house. Her stare was still set on where he was holding the plastic bags in his hands, and she noticed, after he stopped speaking in reaction to his dad coming home, that his hands began trembling. It was so minimal, she almost didn't catch it until she saw the bag wavering under the light coming in from his window.

Before she could open her mouth to say anything more, she felt his hands on her shoulders shoving her into the closet. He followed in closely behind her and crawled in until they were both crammed into the confined space together. With the closet doors shut in front of them, he clamped a hand over her mouth, whispering in her ear for her to be quiet.

She stands with her arms crossed over herself in the center of his room, and though nothing has yet to be said or done to convince her anything is wrong, that's the exact reason why she feels so unnerved by the entire experience of coming here.

He's silent.

The closet doors are wide open as he stuffs the rest of the clothes he had yet to bring to the Chateau into the biggest bag he could find. He rips through his belongings in a fit of melancholy driven anger. His thoughts are swirling with similar memories to the ones she conjures from being here again, but his are tinged with a darkness hers don't have, even with hearing him crying in pain as a child and hiding in the closet with his hand smothering her mouth to evade his dad.

JJ visibly grimaces at the memories he's forced to relive in flashes with every glimpse he gets of the room he spent so much time hiding in. It used to be more tolerable to be here, or at least easier to suffer through. At least he was used to it before, but he got so accustomed to life somewhere else that the second he was confronted with coming back, he started to fall apart.

Whatever he can't live without, he finds space for it in the bag and prepares to leave the rest behind. But every object he touches and step he takes around the room brings him back to the person who he spent his adolescence simultaneously fleeing and wanting more from. More notably, it brings him back to the train of thought that has been nagging him ever since he texted him over the weekend.

The third and final time she came here was over the summer.

It happened right before Hurricane Agatha waged war on the island, when none of the Pogues heard from JJ for two days after he said he had to go home to help his dad with something. She didn't want to track him down to his house after they went over twenty-four hours without a single message. She didn't want to have to go back to the house that gave her chills to think about, let alone go to again after they hid in his closet when they were younger, but he gave her no other choice.

What was she supposed to do except go check on him where he last said he'd be? After all, if she lived in the hazardous environment he did, he'd do the exact same for her. If their friends were involved in her thoughts at the time, they would've gone out on a limb to say he would've gone beyond what she did to protect her if the situation were flipped. If he knew someone was hurting her, he would've come in swinging first and asked questions later, but, in her defense, he strictly told her to never come back to his house. By walking over in the first place, she was breaking one of the fundamental rules of their friendship.

Nevertheless, she found herself crouching around the side of his house to find his bedroom window and check if he was in there. Kie and Pope weren't aware of what was happening with his dad yet, but she and John B accidentally found out years ago, so she wasn't wondering why he wasn't answering them, she was wondering if he was alive.

Part of her truly thought underneath it all that Luke might've killed him. He might've been too drunk or high and went too far when beating him, too far to the point where he didn't want to risk going to jail to take him to the hospital for help. She couldn't live with herself if she didn't check, and if he got pissed at her for showing up against his wishes and didn't want to speak to her ever again, she could live with that.

She knocked on his window in a cadenced beat loud enough for it to heard through the room but not any further. After the first series of knocks, no one came to the window. It ripped her heart to pieces to wonder if she'd see him again as she continued to knock and allowed the sound to increase in volume in hopes that maybe he was asleep, but it didn't bring anyone to the window.

It wasn't until she turned back around to go to the front of the house again that she bumped right into the solid wall of his chest and was pushed back up against the house. The question of what she was doing there was on the tip of his tongue, but she said something that stopped him from asking it.

Her arms were thrown around his shoulders in a desperate bear hug.

"Oh God, JJ, you scared me half to death!" she cried into the front of his shirt, "I thought he killed you!"

He can't help but think of it as he packs his belongings away for a final time to bid his hellish childhood home goodbye: What kind of life are they going to have together if they can't get off this island? Running away may have been an idealistic drunken fantasy for him to entertain after his conversation with Pope got him to admit his true feelings for her, but they both know his consistency can't be trusted.

One moment, he's planning to tell her. The next, a day like today comes along, sweeps his legs out from beneath his body, and he's questioning whether it's worth it to force her to put up with his fickle commitment to her. It isn't fair to her, is it?

Right now is just about when he'd normally start to hyperventilate with an oncoming wave of panic, and he does, but he can't let it fully sweep into him with her here. He fights the urge to smack his head with the heel of his palm, as if that'd forcibly remove the poisonous thoughts infiltrating his mind and ruining the careful work they've done together to remedy their issues with communicating their feelings.

Just like you ruin everything, a thought whispers in the corner of his mind. What made you think this would be any different?

His actions around the room have turned somewhat aimless and distracted, which she notices as soon as he starts to disintegrate into a mess of heavy breaths and self-sabotaging thoughts. She picks up on the shift in his energy as soon as the anxiety starts to wash over him, and she'll be damned if she continues to stand here quietly to let it happen.

It's one thing if he's being silent because being here upsets him, or if he simply doesn't know what to say, but she refuses to let him tailspin into a mental breakdown without doing something to stop it. Whether he knows it or not, after what they went through with him trying to push her away last week, she knows what's occurring within his mind right now.

He flinches at the feeling of her hand grabbing his shoulder to turn him to face her at first, and when she reaches again with her other hand to try to hold his hand as he cries, he shrugs off her touch.

"JJ..." she lets the solemn sound of her own voice murmuring his name trail off, "it's just me."

His head shakes at her consoling words. Everything else inside of his mind is so earth-shatteringly loud, he can't drown it out with logic or reason to bring himself away from the memories of his dad. Those intrusive thoughts keep attacking him with doubled, then tripled force the harder he tries to resist them, and he's so exhausted from it. All of it—the memories, his dad going to jail, and his inability to accept her love to its fullest extent without convincing himself she'll abandon him—is exhausting.

This time, when she rests her hand on his shoulder, he swats it away as the frustration of today crushing him with the force of an avalanche. Not to hurt or scare her, but to get her hands off of him before he bursts out of his skin with the sickness it stirs in his stomach. So detached from himself, he anticipates pain from every touch she gives him, and he knows it hurts her.

JJ hardly recognizes his own voice as he backs away from her a step and says, "Don't."

He can tell it hurts her based on how she looks at him immediately after, but he can't handle being touched right now. How did this happen so quickly? It was overwhelming when they first parked outside, but as soon as he stepped foot inside, it was as if a switch was flipped inside of him and all of the buried feelings he kept hidden over the past two weeks exploded into this.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"You need to leave. I just-I can't breathe and"—He still refuses to look up from the ground or see her face as he paces around the room with no real intent in mind—"You can't see me like this."

That is what breaks her out of her soft spoken, timid attitude to handle the situation the way it needs to be handled. Their natural dynamic worked best for him to take charge when she had her panic attack because JJ acts first and thinks later. He saw that she was in distress and jumped in to help her before things got worse rather than allowing her to keep him at an arms length where he couldn't do anything about it.

Taking a page from his rule book, she takes action.

The room surrounding them is in a state of disarray from him searching through it for the items of clothing and objects now stashed in his duffel bag. There are multiple obstacles in her way as she steps between them like navigating a minefield to reach him after he backed away in instinctual fear, but they don't stop her from reaching him. Nothing could.

Y/N walks right up to him and reaches to grasp his face between her hands, forcing him to stop pacing around and actually look at her for the first time since they arrived her so he hears what she says. To say the least, the way he looks right now is enough to make her cry. There are tears welled up to the brims of his blue eyes, his lips are downturned with his sobs, and he's staring at her like she's about to strike him.

She says it as slowly and clearly as she needs to get it through his head, "He's not here," and before he manages to squeeze out another word of doubt between his rapid inhalations, she cuts in, "Take deep breaths."

He isn't listening to her.

The movement of his chest that hits hers from how close they stand to each other has yet to settle into the familiar pace she remembers from nights of falling asleep with the rhythm of his breaths beneath her head.

Her eyes search his face frantically, from left to right and top to bottom, for any sign of the person she's known for years, but she doesn't see him. Instead, she sees the same panicked child her and John B saw the first time they visited this house. It's uncanny how similar the expression in his face is. It feels to her as if she's been hurled back in time to the moment itself, and when she tries to think about what would've worked with him back then, she doesn't know what else to do except help him escape.

So, with the helplessness of having to watch him turn into a sobbing, incoherent mess, she decides to step into the darkness with him and do what seven year old Y/N would've done. Just like their games of make believe, of pirates and princesses, she assumes the role John B would have and rescues him from what holds him captive. It’s his own mind in this case, but, in the physical sense, it's the house.

She drops her hands from his face and takes his hand in hers to drag him out of the room. The packed bag sits on the floor in their wake as she pulls him back through the bedroom door and into the living room, not caring about what they came here to do.

It doesn't matter anymore.

The various rooms of his dad's house pass by them in a blur as she leads him down the hallway to the front door with one sole objective in mind: get him out of here. If he wants his stuff to bring back to the Chateau, she'll go back inside and get whatever he needs her to, but she isn't letting him inside of this house again. Not under her watch.

Thankfully, since he is undeniably stronger than her and she wouldn't have stood a chance, he doesn't fight it. He stumbles after her guiding hand the same way he always has, just like how he followed her back to the Chateau after she and John B saw him that day when they were kids. She led the way as he sat on the handlebars of her brother's bike, and he watched her hair flutter in the wind with the momentum of their bicycle spokes until the tears dried up.

He watches her drag him out of the home until they've reached the safety of the yard at the bottom of the porch steps, and as soon as the soles of her shoes meet the dirt, she feels his hand slipping out of hers.

"JJ?"

She turns around to see him clutching his chest, rubbing his hand along the front of his shirt over his heart as though it'll loosen up the tightened muscles preventing him from catching his breath. His body weight is leaned onto the railing of the porch steps for support. He's partially slumped on it, looking at her desperately, like she somehow knows the answer to every question screamed inside of his head, and she has never felt as useless.

"You're gonna leave," JJ says through the gasps and cries that leave his cheeks stained with tears.

When she reaches out again to help him remain upright without leaning over the railing, he doesn't shove her hands away as he did inside of his bedroom. It's a small battle won, but she takes it as a win nonetheless.

"What are you saying? I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere—"

"You're gonna leave! Everybody does! My mom, John B, my dad, and you"—his head falls to look at the ground instead of her, and she watches him work through it in his head—"I mean, look at me. You don't want this."

"Don't tell me what I want," she says.

Her voice remains as steady and calm as she can force it to be amidst the turbulent situation, but the way he said it...It takes her right back to sitting in the back of the Twinkie with him at the Cherry Bowl, except it's ten times worse. That felt like a break up, but based on what he's saying, this is one. She hasn't prepared herself for the heartache she feels in response to it.

"You don't want me, you just think you do 'cause I was there after John B died, but you don't. You're gonna go off, find some perfect guy that isn't as fucked up as me, and have a great life somewhere else, but it ain't here," JJ says, his breathing evening out with the distraction of the argument to keep him tethered tor reality, "And it won't be with me."

He can see it every time he's looked at her and debated saying those three titular words that have been floating around in his head since he first met her.

How could she want someone who can't walk into his childhood bedroom without breaking down, or someone who still has years-old scars from cigarette burns on his skin when she touches him? Her bright future contrasted with his pre-designated fate on the Cut, her personality better matched with someone more similar to her, her life continuing on whether he's there or not—it's his worst nightmare, but he's prepared to see it through.

What he doesn't expect is for her to hold her ground.

"You honestly think I'm buying into that bullshit?" she asks.

"What?"

She doesn't put it softly, she states facts with as much harshness as his cruel fantasy had, "You're trying to push me away and I won't let you."

Her typically sweet, soft features have hardened into a bitter expression he's sure he mirrors. The arms holding his waist to keep him upright move to climb up his chest and cup his face between her hands with all of the gentleness her face and voice don't have right now.

She sees right through him.

When he tries to look away again, to avert his eyes to make what he's trying to do easier on himself by not having to look at her when he does it, her grasp on his face holds firm. Her hands guide his chin back up so they're face to face, and he realizes what a mistake everyone makes in assuming her this dainty, broken girl whose only source of strength came from the brother she lost. She's a forest fire.

"You're not hearing what I'm saying—"

Y/N interjects, "I am hearing what you're saying, I'm just saying it's bullshit."

She refuses to let him off the hook, and though it frustrates him on the surface, deep down, it makes him fall in love with her all over again. Her insistence against his speech about her leaving him proves him wrong more than anything else could, 'cause he gave her the perfect chance to dip and she shot it down instantly.

The house looms behind them as a menacing presence that threatens to take control of him again, but she doesn't let it. She keeps his eyes on her no matter how many times he tries to look away and doesn't let anything get in the way of what she says next.

"You think that if you push me away and get me to leave you right now, it'll hurt less than it would if I did it later, and I don't accept that. I won't take the bait and let you torture yourself anymore, okay? I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'll never leave you. Not willingly, anyway."

She looks into his eyes, and this time its softer, more loving, and he's never felt as understood as he does when she continues to speak.

"I'm in love with you. Whether it scares you or not, it's the truth, and I'll never stop saying it. If you think that your issues with your dad are gonna change that for me, you've officially lost your mind." Their noses brush as she leans in to ghost a kiss over his mouth and pulls away a second later to whisper, her forehead pressed to his, "I love you, JJ. Stop being so stubborn and just let me."

His next breath in trembles as he lets her words sink in, and he's stuck at a crossroads inside of himself without a clue of what to do.

The breeze blows her hair away from her face, the afternoon sunshine painting her golden, and when he sees her hair flutter in the air like it did so many years ago, he can't help but feel as calm as he did during their bike ride home. The further away he got from his dad and the house where it all happened, the calmer he grew, and it hits him at this moment that he's so taken aback by her confession to him, he forgot why he was so upset.

It's sobering. The intoxication of his panic hurtled him back in time to the frightened, childlike state of mind his dad's violent abuse often sent him to, but it was hearing her say those words he's feared for weeks that brought him back. Like the jolt of a defibrillator, he's roused back to life with more clarity than before.

She loves him, but, perhaps more importantly, she said she'd never leave him, and that is what he needed to hear more than anything. That is the statement worth more to him than the four letter word he has agonized over endlessly. No one else every attached the promise of "I love you" with the stipulation of it lasting forever. They said the empty words and contradicted it with their actions, but she hasn't done that. Her actions spoke the words long before her mouth did.

He sighs.

It's a deep, yearning sigh that sends him melting into her with the acceptance of what he's denied for too long. He savors the hands cradling his head, as well as the body pressed up against his that he has memorized down to every beauty mark and imperfection, and makes the right choice.

It isn't like it was the night at the Cherry Bowl, or the night he spoke to Pope about it. It still takes more bravery than he possesses to form the words, but there isn't a physical incapability stopping him anymore. It's just him against the trauma beckoning him into its trap again, and he won't let it lure him back into that house.

"Alright," JJ says to her through a sniffle in acceptance to her command, as if he were agreeing on afternoon surfing plans rather than something as monumental as allowing someone to love him, then continues onto with a timid tone, "I love you too."

Before he can watch for her reaction, she's surging forward through the few inches of space left between them to connect their lips in a kiss.

It's vastly different to the kiss they shared in the hallway at school last Friday. In contrast to that one, the reigning emotion within him that drives the kiss after the hesitant beginning doesn't lead them into increased intensity, it gets gentler. It doesn't explode into chaos and passion, it's a tired kiss that he never wants to retreat from. It's the physical manifestation of his feelings for her underneath the guarded exterior he uses to protect himself: gentle and yielding, yet undeniably powerful.

He feels her smiling through her tears against his mouth. In the face of everything that happened this afternoon, he doesn't feel like he should be smiling back at her, but he does. He smiles while kissing her with tears streaming down his face, still reeling from his traumatic response to coming home for the final time, and wonders how a person can feel such contradicting emotions all at once.

Y/N is the one who starts to pull away first, though it's only to check in on him. If she had it her way, she could stay here with him until the sun sets, but he did just come back from the brink of a full-blown panic attack, so she can't in good conscience ignore his well-being for the momentary bliss of their love confessions.

Her thumb brushes over his bottom lip, her smile drooping with worry as she asks, "Wanna spend the rest of the day on the boat? You always say being on the water makes you feel better. Maybe it'll make it easier to talk about it."

His Adam's apple bobs with how he swallows the lump in his throat.

"Can we maybe take baby steps for now? I don't think I can handle telling you all that shit yet."

It was already enough to allow her to follow him into the house, watch him break down into a fit of panic no one else has seen him in, and tell her he loved her, but it'd cross the line into uncharted territory to talk about everything between him and his dad so openly. Between the minor annoyance of dealing with Kacey to this hellish visit home, he thinks he's reached his quota on feeling uncomfortable today.

She nods in agreement.

"Baby steps."

Drawn back to each other by a force stronger than gravity, they collide again, but it isn't a kiss this time. It's a hug charged with all of the previously unspoken emotions they've buried inside of themselves for years, the same hug she gave him the last time she came to this house with the fear of his potential death lingering in her thoughts.

She throws herself at him with the same desperation she did that day and relishes the feeling of his muscular arms returning the embrace until their bodies are tangled together. She'd usually never refer to something as inherently affectionate as an embrace as violent, but it's the closest she can come to capturing how it feels as their bodies meet. It makes her lose her footing on the bottom step they stand on together, teetering on the edge she'd surely slip off of with the force if not for him keeping her steady.

He's about to say something, a thank you to her for calling him out on his bullshit and not letting him go that easily, when the grating sound of her ringtone blares from the back pocket of her denim shorts.

The contact popping up on the screen along with a series of frantic messages when she pulls away from him to answer shows Pope's name.

Pope You and JJ need to get back to the Chateau ASAP!!

The van doors slam shut behind Y/N and JJ as soon as it rolls to a stop in front of the Chateau.

Under the assumption that something dire happened, as in injury or death or catastrophic damage to the house itself, they bolted off of that porch faster than they knew they could move. She only turned back when she remembered the packed back of JJ's things they abandoned on his bedroom floor and, not wanting him to reenter the house, she brought it back to the Twinkie in record time.

They're preparing to trample up the porch into the house like a stampede of animals when they hear Kie calling them over to the backyard and change direction.

"No one's hurt!" she shouts, knowing that was likely where their minds went after everything they went through during the summer, "You have to see this though, I don't know who did it!"

Sticks and fallen leaves crunch beneath her feet on her way around the side of the house. Her mind races with the possibility of what could've happened that didn't hurt their friends but necessitated a series of texts and calls as frantic as the ones she received at JJ's house. She drove over here in defiance of the speed limit, something she rarely does, and prayed nothing terrible was happening.

It gave her flashbacks to when she found out John B and Sarah died in the storm. The pedal beneath her foot brought the van to an uncomfortably swift speed, then she remembered the sound of Shoupe's voice when he gave them the news. JJ warned her to slow down, then she remembered how it took multiple people to help her restrain him from attacking the new sheriff for letting his men drive their friends into their deaths.

At first, she doesn't realize what's wrong.

Kiara and Pope are standing and waiting for them across the grass near the large tree that sits as a centerpiece to their yard. Based on the body language screaming their frustration and the tears in their eyes, she can tell something bad did happen, but it's not clear what it is until she looks past them to the tree. More specifically, until she looks at what's on the tree.

"Oh my god," she whispers to herself.

Her hand is already up to cover her mouth and conceal the instantaneous frown besmirching her previously relaxed face. They both are stopped in their tracks halfway to where their friends are standing, and she can’t hear JJ's reaction over the rising volume of her hysterical thoughts.

Spray painted in red on top of their memorial for John B are the words "COP KILLER" in bold letters that conceal what they burned into the tree trunk for his gravestone. It sticks out from the beauty of the greens, browns, blues, and swathes of other earthy tones composing the scenery around the Chateau like a thorn amongst flowers, so much so that she wonders how she didn't instantly see it when they rounded the corner to come back here.

Yet that isn't the only thing amiss in the peaceful sanctuary they call home, there are random things strewn around the ground around the tree. An old t-shirt spray painted with the word "murderer" on the front, four ripped up envelopes, and a gorgeous mahogany jewelry box...broken on the grass.

The freshly turned dirt they had the contents of the box buried beneath is scattered around the trashed area as well. It clicks with her a few seconds late that whoever came here to do this must have seen the pinwheel she put in the ground to mark the "grave" and dug it up to add insult to injury.

She moves forward without consciously realizing it and stumbles until she reaches the first object of the debris field. Before this, she was doing a masterful job of holding in her cries, but as soon as she crouches down to pick up the pieces of the jewelry box, the lid snapped clean off the hinges to separate it from the bottom section, it comes rushing out of her against her will. The first unrestrained keen is the first thing to snap JJ out of his shell shocked trance.

He walks after her as fast as his legs will take him without breaking into a run, but she isn't letting him get close before she puts the box back down and shuffles forward to collect the torn letter remains. She doesn't want them to get blown away by the wind anymore than they already might have been, so she scrambles to gather the pieces until they're cupped in her hands to protect them.

"Why?" she asks and looks up at Kie and Pope with tears dripping down her face, "Why would anyone do this? Who would do this?"

Pope says, "My guess is as good as yours. We didn't see anyone leaving when we got here, so it must've happened before school ended. This is all we saw before we called you guys."

For a second or two, JJ is grasping at straws for why this happened and who did it like the rest of them are, but then something Pope said makes it click into place. It sets off a domino effect in his mind as he brings back the memory of a certain offspring of satan being absent from gym this afternoon despite being at school earlier, since his encounter with her before Physics made him, unfortunately, aware of her existence again.

His face is set in anger, jaw clenching with the tension of him grinding his teeth together, and he takes his hat off to fidget with it between his hands for a second. Their friends are too focused on her crying to see him contemplating it, but as soon as he speaks, they look up to see him setting his hat back onto his head in preparation to leave and track Kacey down.

Y/N's head snaps up from the torn letters in her hands to the sight of him storming off across the yard with his only goodbye being the words, "I'm gonna kill that bitch."

Her and Pope stare after him in shock, unable to put the pieces together about who that "bitch" is, but Kie doesn't miss a single beat. While Y/N is crumpled over on the ground in tears, she's rushing after JJ before he can approach the bike parked in front of the house. He doesn't even make it five steps before he feels her hands latching onto his wrist to stop him.

She asks, "Who the hell are you talking about? And why would they do this?"

His eyes narrow at her. His unreleased frustration for the situation in general and having to watch Y/N cry after an emotional afternoon together comes rushing out when he snaps at her.

"Kacey. She talked shit at school and I put her in her place. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna pay her a little visit."

He yanks his arm sharply towards himself to free it from her grip, but she's a step ahead of him. Quicker than he can think to stop her, Kie swipes the keys hanging out of his back pocket away and throws them to Pope, who, bless his heart, can't catch to save his life. The key ring jingles with its contact at the dead center of his chest, and she mouths an apology to him before turning back to face JJ.

"What the fuck, Kie?"

He makes to stomp past her and retrieve the keys from Pope only to be stopped by her hands reaching out to grab his shoulders.

"Listen to me, you can't go anywhere. Look at her," she whispers lowly enough to keep Y/N from hearing, pointing behind her to where she sits on the ground with Pope knelt beside her, "I wouldn't put it past Kacey to pull a stunt like this. I'm just as mad as you, but revenge can wait and you know it. She needs you."

The fury visible in his expression is subdued by looking past Kie's shoulder to see Y/N crying softly to Pope about the vandalized memorial.

The last time he saw her so distraught over something, it was the day they made the memorial and buried the box in the first place. She sits on her knees with her mom's broken jewelry box between them, shuddering with the sobs she has no control over, and pours the torn paper into the empty bottom half of the box. Exhausted to the core, she looks more like a sullen, kicked puppy than she does herself.

It makes his anger-fueled instincts that urge him to hunt Kacey down and do something, anything he can to make her feel the pain they do right now bubble down into sorrow. It's visible in his eyes when he looks at her.

Kie knows she's gotten under his skin when he sighs, sparing a parting glance to the bike in the driveway, and nods once at her before setting off back to where they're sitting in the grass.

Meanwhile, Y/N is stuck staring down at the disarray of her backyard with nothing but pain aching through her to the bone.

Her brother did wrong things sometimes as a consequence of being human, but never this, never something worthy of having his name dragged through the mud and being branded a murderer after his death. He stole scuba gear from Ward and broke dozens of laws in their hunt for the gold, but he never crossed that line into moral bankruptcy. Rafe did, and it kills JJ to see someone like Kacey do this to his best friend while hanging off of Rafe and his friends like a leech.

The fabric of his worn t-shirt is tarnished by the dried paint clinging to the front of it to the spell the lie written there, and her vision blurs with tears for what feels like the millionth time in the span of an hour. First, it was JJ. Now, it's John B, and she can't help but wonder if the heartache will ever end. It began to feel better over the course of the week, her grief for him slowly beginning to slip from her mind until now. Until the storm clouds converged again to batter her with another wave of it.

Through the deafening volume of her mind racing with thoughts and feelings to process what's happened, she hears Pope shuffling around to stand on his feet. Then, another person sits down in his place and scoots closer until their bodies are touching, and she knows it's him. She doesn't have to wait to hear his voice or look to see his face, she can tell based on the feeling of his touch and the smell of him she's so intimately familiar with, yet couldn't describe it aloud if she tried.

He doesn't smother her. He sits close enough to touch her and doesn't push it any further.

The background of the pale, cloudless sky frames him in the foreground like the subject of a painting—a living, breathing painting that she could study endlessly. The other trees planted in the yard's leaves flutter distantly behind him and try to draw her gaze away, but she keeps her eyes on him.

Maybe that's how it is, she thinks.

Maybe it'll get better and worse in a dance that'll only stop when they're no longer here to agonize over it. Maybe this is what moving on from John B will always be like. It'll feel like they've made strides in the right direction, then something will come along to shatter it to sharp pieces that'll reopen their stitched up wounds. If that's the case, at least the four of them have each other to lean on when it gets worse again.

JJ sits with her and lets her crawl onto his lap, resting her head on his shoulder, until the sun sinks below the horizon.

The gentle bobbing of the HMS Pogue at the surface of the water steadies her amidst her eddying thoughts. It keeps her present to the moment the way the ropes tying the boat to the dock keeps it from floating adrift into the marsh. It's a motion engrained in her from the start of her life until now from countless days spent on the water. Whether it be for fishing, swimming, or playing make believe with her boys all those years ago, it's as much a part of her as her personality or body itself.

JJ was right about one thing: being out on the water makes it easier to think.

He hasn't followed her out since she woke up before sunrise and snuck out of bed to come here. Despite her efforts not to wake him, he woke up when she disentangled her body from his, silently cursing the fact that they always cuddle so closely, and he tried to pull her back to him with a whine of displeasure in his groggy, half-asleep state. Sleep finally found them after hours of staying up together to talk about what Kacey did, unable to relax from the chaos of yesterday, so he wasn't prepared to wake up that soon.

"Go back to sleep, angel," she whispered as she hovered over him, brushing a chaste kiss to his lips that he was too tired to return.

That was the last time she saw him since this morning, and now that the sun has risen to its peak in the sky without her moving an inch from her perch atop the bow of the boat, she's begun to wonder if he's awake yet. It isn't uncommon for them to sleep in for half of the day when there isn't school or work, so it isn't surprising to her that he's just now waking up when she hears the back door to the Chateau opening and closing.

Unbeknownst to her, JJ has been awake the entire morning since she left bed.

They were so attached to each other yesterday night, he didn't have the time to put it together without her seeing and ruining the surprise, but once he heard the door to the porch close to signify her leaving, he kicked the blankets off of himself and got to work. He wasn't originally planning on starting so early, since they stayed up late into the night together, but once he woke up to the feeling of her sneaking out of his arms, he was too awake to fall back asleep.

The sound of his footsteps on the dock warns her of his approach, but she doesn't raise her head from where she rests it in her palms to stare out at the water.

"I was wondering when you'd finally wake up," she says.

There's another few steps, then the boat jostles with his weight stepping onto it.

He doesn't say anything to her in response. The only clue she gets as to what he's doing are the footsteps on the deck that lead closer to her until she feels him sitting down on the bow next to where she is. And she's about to open her mouth to ask if he's okay when he sets something down in front of her.

It's a shoe box.

Y/N turns to see him, eyes flickering over his tired face, and looks back at the box with furrowed brows.

"What is this?"

His hair is messy, exactly how it was when she left him in bed this morning, and if she weren't more focused on the mysterious box he plopped down in front of her, she'd be combing through it with her fingers. He's gotten used to those casual displays of affection from her; how she runs her hands through his hair on mornings before school when he forgets to brush it, or when she fixes a button on his flannel that he missed.

JJ's lips are tipped in a smile, and she can't help but blush with how he looks at her. She never used to see it, but he has always looked at her like this. Like he's hopelessly, utterly in love with her. Even before they lost John B, back when he'd expend all of his romantic and sexual attention on girls he hardly knew, he still looked at her this way.

He gestures at it and says, "Open it."

The lid of the box is coated in a freshly dried layer of blue paint to match the shade of the sky overhead. She knows instantly that he must have dug through the arts and crafts box she specifically labeled with a warning for him and John B to stay out. It's painted with aimlessly sloppy brushstrokes and stickers placed at every corner of the cardboard box, all of which she recognizes from the stash she kept under her bed alongside the India ink he borrowed last Friday.

As she gives him a skeptical look and reaches to lift the lid off of the shoe box, she makes a mental note to rewrite the label on the arts and crafts box without the warning for him to keep out. Since John B isn't here to steal anything from it and JJ never follows that rule anyway, it's redundant at this point.

Any skepticism is washed away from her face as soon as she flips the lid open to reveal what's inside. It leaves her speechless as she looks down at it all.

"JJ..." she murmurs in awe.

Sitting at the bottom of it is a folded up t-shirt she saw JJ wear multiple times, but never again since John B died. He refused to glance at the shirt his best friend gave him the year before they never saw him again, let alone dig it out of the corner of her closet where he keeps his things...until now.

But that's a scratch on the surface of all of the things about his gift that stuns her to silence. The next thing to catch her immediate attention is a picture she hasn't seen in years.

It's one that Big John took of the three of them together right where she and JJ are sitting. She was much younger in it, flashing a toothy grin with her arms thrown over both boys' shoulders. To her left, John B was leaning his head on her shoulder. To her right, JJ was wearing an eyepatch they crafted out of an old black shirt he stole from his dad. It was cut with the kitchen scissors and tied around the back of his head in a knot.

She brushes her thumb over John B's face, then sets the crinkled photograph back down atop the folded shirt and moves her attention to the last surprise.

Letters.

Torn up pieces of paper painstakingly taped back together sit one on top of the other, some missing pieces here or there, and it makes her mouth part in shock. Her hands shuffle the letters apart to see each one and recognize the handwriting: Kie's bubbly, swirling letters, Pope's neat cursive, hers, and JJ's chicken scratch writing that she's able to decipher from years of proofreading his essays.

She pictures him at her desk all morning while she was sitting out here, ripping tape off of the roll and arranging the puzzle pieces of the ripped letters until he was sure he got it right. It made him want to rip the hair from his scalp, but he sat there and pushed through the frustration to make it as perfect as he could for her. The missing pieces were primarily from Kie's letter, which fluttered away on a balmy breeze when Kacey tore it up and threw it to the ground, but the one he wanted her to have the most wasn't missing more than a single piece.

Y/N looks up from the letters held like a precious treasure in her hands to see him watching her with that same classic JJ smile on his face, but he doesn't let her get a word in yet.

"Go on," he says, leaning closer to pull his letter to John B out and place it on top of the pile for her to read, "I want you to read it."

"You didn't let me read it when I asked before though, are you sure you—"

He interrupts her before she can worry herself over it, "Dude, just read it. I promise I'm fine with it. I want you to."

The letters crinkle under her touch as she looks back down and smooths them out on the deck enough to read through the clear tape. With one last confirming glance to him for permission, she takes a deep breath and reads the first line.

Dear John B,

You really know how to keep a guy on his toes, don't you? You really outdid yourself on this one. I was so sure we were gonna make it, but I guess you had to go all Romeo and Juliet on us, huh? As long as you and Sarah are happy macking on each other in heaven, it's okay.

In all seriousness, I fucking miss you, bro. I miss you more than I realized a person could miss another person. Whenever I need to talk to you again, I don't know what to do. I guess that's why it's good that Y/N made me write this.

Also, I'm really sorry for—

"What does it say there? There's a whole chunk missing," she murmurs.

He scoots close enough to her that she can feel his body warmth radiating onto her through the shoulder of his flannel. Sunlight reflects on the silver rings decorating his fingers as he holds one side of the paper to tilt it enough for him to squint at.

"Macking, I think. It's supposed to say "I'm sorry for macking on your sister."

—macking on your sister. You can totally kick my ass for it, but before you come back from the grave to murder me, let me defend myself, okay? She isn't just another girl for me, John B.

I think you knew it before I did.

Last summer, you asked me straight up if we were hooking up behind your back after I kissed her in front of you on the porch. I laughed in your face, but you were right.

You saw everything before me, man. You knew I loved her since we were kids and waited for us to come to you about it, so that's gotta mean something, right? I hope it means you wouldn't be mad at me for this.

I swear I won't fuck it up with her, but you already know that. That's why you asked me to take care of her,. I didn't know why at the time but I do now. I won't let you down.

I'm keeping my promise.

- JJ

P.S. Don't miss me too much. We'll be shotgunning beers together up there before you know it.

There are tears blooming in her eyes when she lifts her gaze from the tattered paper to look at him again, but they aren't sad. For once, the tears slipping down her cheeks are happy tears, not born from grief, sadness, and pain, but bittersweet happiness.

They're caught staring at each other for a second before he asks her shyly, "It isn't too sappy or anything, is it? 'Cause I thought it—"

"C'mere," is the only thing she can get out before she's tugging him forward by the front of his shirt to kiss him.

JJ stumbles a little with the unexpected force of her pulling him to her, but he takes it in stride. He steadies himself and lets his hands shoot out to grapple for purchase on her waist, keeping her pressed up against him tightly as he kisses her back.

And it doesn't get much better than this, does it? This is it for him. He meant what he wrote to John B, he won't fuck it up with her, especially not because of his trauma with his dad getting inside his head and sabotaging his relationship with her. This is what makes everything worth it.

It brings happy tears to his eyes too.

She can taste the salt of them where their lips meet in the middle. It makes her smile, wrapping her arms around his neck and clenching the letters he mended for her in her fist to keep them from blowing away in the wind, and they both start to laugh into each other's mouths at the poignant feeling they both share but can't quite place.

They pull away from each other to catch their breath after another moment of it, and she can't help but stare. How could she not when she feels like this? It’s less like he’s her boyfriend and more like a piece of her soul has attached itself to his with no hope of letting go in the near future.

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me," she whispers to him.

Plain and simple. No room for disagreement or a bashful rejection of the compliment. She's pulled back from him enough to hold his gaze and make sure he sees her seriousness, and there isn't anything he can do to refute her statement.

He brushes his nose against hers affectionately, dipping down to kiss her again, but when he leans back to see her face, he can't help himself.

"Ditto."

The rest of the day after their moment on the boat, locked away in their own little world where none of the monsters chasing them could sneak through and ruin it, melts away peacefully. After another half hour spent looking through the box together, of her thanking him over and over again, he hops off of the HMS Pogue onto the dock and extends his hand to her in the most gentlemanly manner possible.

His lips are curved into a smirk as he kneels down on one knee as though she's a revered royal and bows his head in subservience, "Princess Routledge."

Her hand fits in his warm, calloused palm as a perfect match, and she steps off of the boat onto the dock beside him with an expression to match his.

"Captain Maybank," she says in her most regal royalty voice.

Her stellar performance breaks into a laugh they share as he stands and throws his arm around over her shoulder to walk back to the yard. The cardboard box is tucked beneath one of her arms while the other slips around his side to hold him back, and her heart feels full with both the presence of JJ and John B alongside her.

They bury it together.

Tag List: @gabiatthedisco, @fangirlvoice, @black-syren, @apparrio, @particularcth, @planetdemon, @idk-ijustworkhere, and @krisphann

Also, now that it’s over, let me know what your favorite part was in the comments or tags if you’d like to :) I’m curious.

[naughtyneganjdm]

Parenthood

Summary: Being a parent is hard and exhausting, but being married to Joel makes it so much easier for Y/N after becoming a mother for the first time.

Characters: Joel Miller, the reader (OC)

Warnings: Swearing, fluff, etc.

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31264607

Notes: Someone requested me to do a short one-shot for Joel and I know I've never written a Joel story directly, so this is my first. Technically I write a version of a character inspired by Joel for The Guest/Arcadia, BUT -- this is what I came up with. In case people didn't know Y/N means your name or you can insert any name you want. Thanks to anyone that reads it! And I also apologize for any potential errors, this was written rather fast and edited when I was really tired.

There it was again, that same incessant buzzing. Truthfully, Y/N should have been used to it by now. It had already been three months. It was the same time, every single night. Yet, when this time of night came, she never found herself ready. Drowsily, her eyes fluttered to an open. The room was still blurry while her tired eyes adjusted to the dark room around her. The only thing that lit up the room was the bright, red light from her alarm clock that she had set up. Three in the morning always came too fast.

Parenthood was the hardest thing she had ever experienced. Not that she didn’t love it. Hell, she loved every second of it, but you’re never prepared for how much work it truly takes when you have a baby. Everyone always warned her that it would kick her ass. Most of the time she thought it was a joke, but now she knew better. Then again, this wasn’t a normal world that she was living in. Maybe if things were ordinary and the world was like it used to be, things would be easier.

The fears of the infected were always lingering at the back of her mind. Not only that, but those that were trying to infiltrate the community was a repeating fear in her mind. There was never a dull moment in Jackson. The anxiety had always been there, but it just enhanced when she became a parent. Because then, you weren’t only thinking about yourself, but you were also thinking about the life of your child.

Finally mustering up enough strength, she turned her head into the pillow and let out a small groan. Sliding her palms out over the cool sheets beneath her, she pushed up with her strength and got herself into a seated position. Throwing her legs over the side of the bed caused a chill to fill her entire body. With the blankets and sheets wrapped around her on this cool fall night it had kept her nice and cozy. Without them, the briskness of the chilly Wyoming air had flooded in through the windows to her bedroom and she shuddered.

Curling her fingers around the edge of the bed, she dug them into the mattress and let out a yawn, “It’s my turn this time baby…”

Hearing nothing in return, she looked over her shoulder to see that her husband was missing from his side of the bed. Stretching out her hand toward his side of the bed, she felt the coolness of the sheets beside her showing that he had been gone for quite some time.

“Joel,” an undeniable grin tugged at the corners of her lips when she thought about her husband. There were no doubts in her mind where he was. It was where he was most nights. Even though they had set the alarm and she was always waking up, this was the same way most nights.

Getting up from the bed, she moved groggily through their dark bedroom making sure not to knock into anything until she managed to turn on the light. It may have been hard waking up at three in the morning for the feedings, but this was easily becoming her favorite time of the day. Quietly opening the bedroom door, she tip-toed through the hallway to try and stay quiet. A light filtered into the dark hallway just right outside the door of the baby’s room.

Coming to a pause, she stayed still in the hallway when she heard the faint sounds of Joel singing quietly and it made her heart full. Joel’s singing was something that had drawn her to him when she had first met him. On the outside Joel seemed like such a shy man. For him to sing, he really had to trust you at first, which of course blew her mind when she found out he wanted to be a singer when he was younger. Even though he was ridiculously charming, handsome and multi-talented, Joel had grown to become someone who was very self-conscious of himself. It was something she had been working on with him for quite some time. After helping him gain some confidence and getting him to open up to people, the walls he had worked so hard to build were slowly breaking down. Now he was giving guitar lessons to the folks in Jackson which was something Joel wouldn’t have done when she had first met him.

Dragging her feet, she stopped at the door to lean against the doorframe. The sight alone caused her heart to flutter inside of her chest. Joel was sitting in the corner of the room in the rocking chair that he had made himself. He was wearing his pajama pants with a burp cloth thrown over his shoulder. In his arms was their son. Joel’s eyes were locked on him with such love and adoration while he sang to him.

Awe flooded through her. It was a picture perfect sight. The two of her boys together reminded her all over again why she fought so hard for the life that she did. Having the two of them in her life made everything worth it.  Every day she found herself swooning over her husband in a new way. Joel made it easy to love him. On the outside he appeared to be rough and tough, but he had the biggest heart of anyone she had ever known.

A few minutes she spent just watching the two of them together until Joel’s eyes finally lifted up from their son to see that she was observing. It drew a smile to tug at the corners of his lips, but he didn’t stop singing. Once she knew that Joel was aware she was there, she moved into the bedroom and stepped beside Joel to look down at their son. The sound of Joel’s voice was calming him to the point of falling asleep again. As Joel finished the song, their son was fast asleep.

“He’s beautiful,” she reached out to place her hand over Joel’s bare shoulder, squeezing firmly at it. Joel leaned his head against her arm cherishing the warmth of her close to him. Seeing their son in his arms was beautiful. It blew her mind that together they were able to make something so pure and perfect.

“That’s because he looks like his mama,” Joel insisted and the compliment was intensified by the drawl of his Texan accent. It made her smile, but her eyes were drawn back to their son. Joel cuddled him in closer to his chest and hummed before speaking up again. “Isn’t that right Brayden?”

“Well, I think he looks like his daddy,” she corrected him, her fingers trailing up the side of Joel’s neck and toward his thick graying hair. Caressing over his scalp caused Joel’s eyes to close tightly and a worn-out sigh escaped his throat. “How long have you been in here babe?”

“A few hours,” Joel answered clearing his throat as he nodded over toward the baby bottle that was on the dresser. “I reckon I may have fed him like a half hour earlier than we were supposed to, but he was getting fussy and I figured I’d give you a break.”

“Well that’s because he knows his daddy is always going to be there to pamper him,” she continued to stroke her fingers through Joel’s hair. It was unbelievable how good of a father Joel turned out to be. Even with being as busy as he was for the people of Jackson, he always made sure to be there for Brayden. Even though parenthood was exhausting, she was thankful that Joel was the person that she got to share it with. Overall, Joel was a phenomenal father and husband. Without him, she was certain that she would have driven herself crazy. “I love you so much, you know that?”

“I love you too,” Joel lifted his head to stare up at her with exhausted, hazel eyes. When his eyes connected with hers, everything in the world seemed to fall into place for her. Joel was everything she could ever want and more. Lowering down, her lips collided with his and she delicately kissed him. The coarse hairs from his short beard tickled at her face and it made her smile against the kiss. When Joel noticed her smiling, he softly chuckled against her lips and hummed. “What?”

“You’re just…so perfect,” she declared, sliding her palm down over the side of his chiseled face. Appreciating his features, she knew that Joel was everything she could ever dream of. When she first met Joel, everyone labeled him as the handsome, grumpy, closed off brother to Tommy. Never in her wildest dreams did she ever think she would be married and have children with him, but here they were and she was so thankful for it.

“I think you may be a little biased,” Joel winked at her giving her another small peck against her lips before giving his attention back to their sleeping son in his arms.

“You should sleep sometimes you know. You work your ass off. What is Jackson going to do if you collapse from exhaustion?” she inquired, palming in over his muscular shoulders and over the planes of his upper back.

“If something was going to happen to me from sleep exhaustion, it would have already. In the last twenty years, it would have already happened with how much shit I’ve gone through,” Joel denied her claim with a snort. Pulling Brayden up closer to him, he pressed gentle kiss over his son’s forehead and sighed. “I think I’m actually used to not sleeping. In the past, I’d have so many nightmares that I hated sleeping. I got used to it. Now, I’m just afraid of going to sleep.”

“Why?” she frowned, lowering down to her knees beside the rocking chair and Joel looked to her with a saddened expression that made her chest hurt. Sliding her palm in over his thigh in a supportive caress, she tried to get him to open up to her in a calming way. “Joel?”

“Because everything is so…perfect,” Joel simply stated with a small shrug of his shoulders. It took him a minute to gather his thoughts. Biting at his bottom lip, he made it obvious that he was really having a hard time putting words together to make her understand. “My whole life, I’ve never had things go right, ever. I’m afraid that one day I’m going to wake up and this is all going to be a dream or something bad is going to happen to Brayden.”

“Oh honey, you can’t think like that,” she tried to hush him and Joel tilted his head to the side, his eyes tearing over as he thought about everything that had happened in his life.

“You don’t understand. Since I’ve been a teenager things have just been going wrong. You know I had Sarah as a teenager. I was a stupid kid that wasn’t thinking things out. Ya know? At the time, I knew I had to get my shit together and give the best life I could to my baby girl. Then her mother took off on me and ran away. I tried giving her the best possible life I could, but…” Joel found himself getting caught up in his emotions when he thought about his late daughter.

“You did the best with what you had,” she insisted knowing that she had many discussions with Tommy about Joel's past with his daughter. Even Ellie had opened up to her about what she knew when it came to Joel’s daughter that he had lost so long ago. Her eyes fell to the broken watch that he still wore on his wrist and it broke her heart to know that these thoughts were wearing heavy on Joel.

“But I still lost her. No matter how hard I fought for her, it wasn’t good enough,” Joel countered and a single tear slid down the side of his face. Trying to attempt to open up to her why he was feeling this way was hard because even he knew that he was complicated. “Then for the next twenty years it was just nothing, but shit. I would try, but something was always happening. It wasn’t until I got here in Jackson and I met you that it felt like for once something was going right. I wondered if I had died back in Colorado because you…you were too good to be true.”

Damn, that hit her deep. Instead of saying anything, she reached out to slide her hand in over his arm giving him a supportive grasp.

“I was a broken mess and I was pretty much an adoptive father. I figured I would come to the town; give Ellie a life here and then that would be it. I accepted that life. Then the most beautiful woman I ever laid eyes on suddenly has eyes for me,” Joel chuckled thinking back to when he had first arrived in Jackson. It was a few months before the two of them really had a good conversation, but their chemistry was almost immediate. “I couldn’t believe my lucky stars that someone like you was interested in someone like me.”

“You know, you were the one that asked me out first,” she teased him, poking him playfully in the ribs and he laughed. Almost immediately, he looked to make sure that their playful teasing didn’t wake Brayden up. Adjusting their son in his arms, Joel looked to her again and shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, but you made it very clear that you liked me. I just had no game. So, I didn’t know if I was stupid or not. So when I asked you out I was actually feeling like a total moron on the inside because I figured you might say no and I was wrong the whole time. From the moment you said yes, I knew that you were the one,” Joel stammered, a hint of a smile pressing in over his handsome features when he thought back to her past with him. “They say when you know, you know. Well that’s what it was like with me. The moment I made you laugh and smile, I knew that you were the one that I was meant to be with. It was like a horse’s back kick, it hit me that hard.”

“Leave it to you to come up with that kind of comparison,” she winked watching his nose wrinkling in amusement.

“I just meant I knew you were everything I wanted and more. I didn’t understand why someone like you would wanna be with a fool like me,” Joel recalled his thoughts from the past and his eyes surveyed over the ring he had been able to find when they went scavenging through a nearby city. They were just lucky that they knew someone who could make him a wedding band in the town. Getting married was a surprise. One that Joel never thought he would experience again. With his past, he closed his heart off from ever getting that close to someone again. But then everything changed when he met Y/N. “Then you said yes to marrying me and everything felt right. I had you…I had Ellie…and then this beautiful boy comes into our lives. God, I almost reckon my heart stopped on the spot when you told me that you were pregnant.”

“Tommy told me he thinks you passed out,” she informed him with a tiny laugh knowing that she had told Joel when Tommy was in their home. It kind of just fell out of her lips when she couldn’t get Joel to focus at the time. He was always so busy with everything that it was hard to make him think only about one thing. “He always teases that he had to catch you.”

“Well, I think you just almost knocked me right outta my boots,” Joel snickered, acknowledging that it did shock him. “I just never thought that it would be possible for me to have something like this. Happiness. Every night I sit here and wonder how I got so lucky to have you here in my life. The both of you. Ellie too. I worry that I don’t deserve you or any of you.”

“Joel,” she whispered, lifting up enough to palm in over the side of his face to get him to look at her. Leading him to her, she pressed a tender kiss over his lips taking her time to appreciate the chills it would give her every time she kissed the man of her dreams. “We’re lucky to have you. I can’t think of someone else I would rather share this life with. You…you’ve made me believe in second chances. You’ve made me believe in something more.”

“I just have lost anyone I have ever cared for,” Joel confessed, his eyes tearing over as he spoke and he found it hard to look at her when he admitted that. “Everyone I have ever cared for has gotten hurt or left me. That’s why I’m in here every night. I’m just so afraid…”

“And you have every right to feel the way you do. Life has been so hard, but I can tell you this. Since you walked into my life…you were the only thing that has ever felt right. You brought Ellie into my life and that kid is a pleasure to be around. Then you gave me Brayden and between the three of you I know what happiness truly is,” she explained with a quiet breath knowing that she was getting emotional as well with everything he was telling her. “I think our small little family here is going to do everything we can to take care of each other. We’ll do whatever it takes, just like we always have. I just know that every day I wake up thanking the world that I have you here in it with me.”

“I love you, so much,” Joel blurt out, his hazel eyes exceedingly serious when he nodded. “I just want to be the best father and husband that I can be. I want to give you the closest thing to a real life that I can. I want all of you happy.”

“We are happy. I don’t know if you realize it or not, but the only time that little man is happy is when he is in your arms. He knows who is daddy is and he loves you…so much,” she promised, getting up from where she was kneeling so she could lean over to press a kiss against his temple. “If you’re worried, after tonight we should move his crib into our room until he’s old enough to be alone. That way you can feel safer knowing he is with us.”

“You’d be okay with that?” Joel asked for confirmation and she nodded slowly. Of course she was okay with that. Nothing about that would bother her. Carefully, Joel pulled himself up from the rocking chair and moved over to put Brayden back in his crib. Standing at the edge of the crib, his large fingers wrapped around the sides of it while he watched his son sleep. “I worry about things because when I was a father last time, I was young. Now I’m fucking old.”

“Joel,” she laughed, moving in behind him to wrap her arms around his muscular body. Taking advantage, she managed to press a kiss over his shoulder since he was slouched down enough for her to do so.

“I’m serious,” Joel chuckled while her right hand caressed over his the center of his bare torso, teasing her fingers through the dark hairs that covered his body.  When she traced over the puckered flesh where his scar was, it made him look down at her fingers. After keeping Ellie safe and being able to have this family, all the scars on his body almost felt worth it. All that pain he went through was worth it to have the family that he now had. “I’m an old fart.”

“You are the only person I know that has the amount of energy that you do. I’m pretty sure you could outrun a lot of the kids in town here Joel. I don’t know how you do everything that you do, but your age is not a factor that I’m worried about,” she assured him, sliding in beside him and he loosely wrapped his arm around her shoulders while they stared down at their son. “Plus, I already know you’re an amazing father. That’s one thing I will never doubt.”

“I hope so,” Joel sighed pulling her in closer to him while they watched their son sleep. “I can make him another crib. I’ll go down to the basement so we’ll have two. I was carving him one of my horses, but I suppose I can stop to give us something more useful.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” she knew that Joel’s workshop got moved to the basement as soon as they had their son together. This room was full of wooden sculptures before and half made acoustic guitars, but now it was their son’s bedroom. Still, some of Joel’s sculptures he had done helped lighten the room for their little boy. “Are you ready to get some sleep?”

“Just a little bit longer,” Joel sighed wanting to be with his son for a few more moments before they would go back to bed. Wrapping both of his arms around her, Joel squeezed her tight to him and kept her in his arms firmly. “You are the first person who has made feel like I’m not alone in a very long time Y/N. I hope you know that. You gave me the greatest gift of all time and that was a second chance at life. I love you and I always will.”

[sneezefiction]

answers

oikawa x reader

desc: oikawa changes some lyrics in taylor swift’s song “love story”

a/n: please keep in mind that most of this is just humorous & there’s no serious characterization in this particular story. i laughed a lot while writing it :,,) for @cutiekawa because you gave me the idea; thank you for that! and also for @seroto-rin because this is very similar to your husband’s lyric changing habits lol – i still laugh whenever i think about it <3 warnings: language, mentions drinking/being drunk

wc: 3k

— It’s 2 am when you hear Oikawa pattering down the hallway and past your room. From the gentle footsteps and the occasional whisper of “shit” when the floor creaks, it's obvious that he’s trying to stay quiet.

But his attempts are in vain because, one, you’re wide awake and, two, he’s just knocked over an empty beer can from earlier. It was probably the one he’d left on the hall table – you’d told him to throw it away but he’d refused saying that he’d “throw it away in the morning when his arms weren’t so tired.” 

This is just karma.

The clatter of the aluminum on wooden floors echoes throughout the dorm. A much louder, especially frustrated, “fuck” follows right after it.

The word, though crass, sounds deceptively attractive on his tongue. But most things Oikawa-related just happen to be attractive. 

You muffle your laughter with a blanket. He’s probably disoriented from the alcohol – it’s only been an hour and 5 drinks each since you both called it a night. You’d headed straight to bed but he’d fallen asleep on the couch where you left him, hair a-mess and lips parted.

But, for someone who used to stay out till daybreak on weekends, he’s spent most Fridays hanging out with you instead.

This weekend was no different.

Oikawa ordered Thai takeout, you found a mindless Netflix series to binge, both of you had a little too much to drink, laughter ensued, the doe-eyed boy found his head in your lap, and…

You pull a face – one that goes unseen because of the dark, but you make it anyway.

Okay, that last part was a little different.

He’d had his head in your lap.

His head… in your… lap.

And, if you’re not mistaken (or delirious), you’d had your hands in his hair, twirling strands and tracing circles at the base of his neck. A foggy image of him gazing up at you with softened eyes, deep chocolate in color, begins to solidify. 

That lazy smile, a hand on your thigh, tresses tickling your skin...

You turn over in your bed, bunching up your sheets and holding them close to you like a shield of fabric — a flimsy, make-shift defense against tipsy mind-wandering. It isn’t very effective.

Your brain is not wandering but racing around this hand-in-hair realization.

Like an iron rod poking at hot embers, these prodding memories make your cheeks grow hotter by the millisecond. You bury your face in your pillow, embarrassment tight in your throat. 

Somehow you’d forgotten that he’d practically climbed into your lap. You’re not in the clear quite yet, but your brain is functioning well enough that it wishes you’d had a little more to drink – just enough to forget about it entirely. You starfish out on your bed, arms and legs dramatically splayed across the mattress.

Do (hot, charming, charismatic, windswept) flatmates usually get this... cuddly? Is that normal?

Does Iwaizumi wrap his arms around his roomies after a long day and a few bottles? How about Mattsun? Makki…?

Okay, no, none of them really seem like the type to get up close and personal with their roommates without good reason. Well, maybe Makki, but he’d do it to be a pain in the ass – not to charm the living-hell out of someone.

You try to take in a deep breath and wrap your head around what this means for you… but end up inhaling a feather from your pillow instead. As you hack and cough, you try to smother the noise in more cloth material – you really didn’t need him coming into your room, much less leaning over your bed to check on you.

Oikawa is messing with your head. 

If you knew any better, you’d have run away screaming the moment he’d asked you to room with him. No one that pretty and charismatic is good news. At least, not when it comes to shared housing.

But, here you are, writhing under the covers and hot like a fever all because he couldn’t keep to himself. Screw him and his charming smile for putting you in this position.

He either knows you’re crushing like he’s the last man on earth or he’s blissfully unaware and way too physically affectionate for his own good. 

You don’t dare consider that he likes you back though. Only deer and Olympic athletes made leaps like that. Oikawa had too many admirers… an irritating amount.

The blankets scrunch even tighter between your fists, likely thanking their maker that they don’t have nerve endings.

Every fiber of your being is begging to know if these feelings are reciprocated. You’d hate to live out the rest of this semester knowing the boy down the hall may not like you back. Worse, that he finds out you think he’s hot shit and doesn’t like you back – that would be unrequited love at its finest.

But, with a degree and your mental health on the line, why should you care about such minor, itty bitty, pointless details. 

This isn’t that big a deal.

And even if he did like you back? Well, Oikawa isn’t someone you can simply ���pin down.” He comes with a distinctive, dramatic personality and a meddling side. Not to mention, he’s already the embodiment of chaos – he’s proven this to be true over the past 4 months he’s lived with you.

There’s a familiar squeak of the shower faucet handle and the hiss of hot water. You jump at the sound.

Maybe he’d forgotten, but your bedroom shares a very thin wall with the bathroom. Though you recall him saying he wanted to take a shower earlier, so you guess that he’s only just remembered.

You pick up your phone, blue light casting a less-than angelic glow on your sleepy face. You pray that TikTok will have some sort of life-changing “I’m in love with my hot, crazy flatmate” advice. Or that it will distract you from your inner turmoil. Either would be appreciated but the latter seems more likely.

Scrolling slowly, you get through about 3 videos before something else catches your attention.

There’s a deep reverberation buzzing through your wall. A gentle hum, much like a shower-concert lullaby.

But the noise is getting louder. And the humming? A lot more lyrical.

You shift into a sitting position, propping yourself up with your hands. With your side sunken into a pillow, you press your ear against the cool drywall. Your ears tune into the sound.

Oikawa, voice confident and free, is… singing.

“...But you were everything to me, I was begging you ‘please don’t go’…”

But he’s not just singing.

“And I said…”

He’s belting Taylor Swift with the enthusiasm of an 11-year-old Swiftie super-fan. Like the world would end if he didn’t put enough passion into this performance. Like the showerhead is his microphone and the surrounding tiles are his adoring audience.

“Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I'll be waiting; all that's left to do is run...”

Most people would be pissed if their friend were singing in the shower at 2 am… but you can’t find it in yourself to be anything but enamored.

God, you hate him for doing this right now. Hate that he’s inadvertently endearing you to him. Hate that, no matter what you do, he’s somehow always there.

Pressed up against you on the couch, meeting you for dinner at his favorite restaurant, fussing at each other over a shitty cup of coffee in your even shittier kitchen, calling you when he needs somebody to keep him company at the library… 

“You'll be the prince & I'll be the princess…”

And now he’s accidentally serenading you with Taylor’s “Fearless” album. In the shower.

You facepalm, sinking into your hands, exasperated and just so… done.

You sink back down into the bedsheets, wishing your earbuds were nearby to drown out the regrettably adorable performance. 

“It's a love story y/n, just say ‘Yes.’”

And your heart drops, panic setting in like the touch down of a whirling tornado. A fire tornado. A fire tornado with frogs and lizards and sharp objects spinning around inside of it.

What… did he just say?

The lyrics… they were muffled. You definitely heard them incorrectly. You… you just need to get your ears checked. Yes, that’s it. That’s all there is to it. You’ll schedule an appointment first thing tomorrow morning.

Because who the fuck sings like that at 2 am in a shared dorm? And who the fuck puts someone else’s name into a song like that? No one? Yes, no one.

Especially not the Oikawa Tooru.

And especially not with your name.

Because that’s just... weird.

The grip on your phone is mighty – thank God for durable glass because any other material would’ve splintered or shattered in your hold. 

But what the hell.

“Y/n, save me, I've been feeling so alone,” he sings as though he were Beyoncé’s son.

This time it’s clear as day. Oikawa is definitely still out of it and he’s undoubtedly singing your name.

No, no, no.

“I keep waiting for you but you never come…”

You bolt out of bed, feet hitting the floor at lightning-strike speed.

“Is this in my head? I don't know what to think,”

In one swift movement, you fling the bedroom door open and rush down the hall. You shouldn’t be listening to this. 

“He knelt to the ground & pulled out a ring, and said...”

And before you can stop your hand, it’s knocking rapidly on the bathroom door.

There’s a gasp, what you assume to a bar of soap hitting the shower floor, and an abrupt silence that follows.

You’d only wanted to stop him from singing.

However, you hadn’t thought through what you were going to say to him about this whole... lyrical mess. Your face feels like the surface of the sun, burning and flaring and flushing. What are you supposed to do now?

Oikawa speaks up, voice quiet, “Hello?”

Shit.

Maybe if you’re careful you can get yourself out of this. Just act like you didn’t hear anything and bring it up tomorrow when you’re both thinking straight. A thorough and sober discussion would be needed.

You had questions. Questions that needed answers.

Why did he have his head in your lap? Had you said anything to him that you’d regret later? Does he like you? Where should you two place your boundaries if he doesn’t like you back? And why Taylor Swift?

“Y/n, is that you?” He asks, nonchalantly.

Who else would it be?

The handle squeaks and, with that, the water stops. Only the gentle swirl of the drain and the occasional drips and drops from the showerhead are audible.

It’s too late. You’re already there. You’ve knocked and, in doing so, you’ve sealed your fate.

“...Yes,” is your whisper of a reply.

“What’s up? Was I too loud for you?”

You’ve got the entire building on high-alert singing that loudly.

...is what you would say if you weren’t currently imploding. This is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. And nothing you ever want to experience again.

“Um, yeah, sorry.” You look down at your shuffling feet.

The hallway is pitch black, hardly allowing for even a mere shadow. Rushing out of your room, you’d forgotten to turn on even a single light.

You hear him step onto the tile floor and the rustle of a tower from the bathroom closet.

“Wait, can we talk?” He asks as though it weren’t the question of the fucking year. “I mean, preferably after I get out of the bathroom.” There’s a lack of tact to his words.

This isn’t the charming Oikawa you’re used to. This is a blunt… confusingly straightforward Oikawa.

His tone wavers like maybe he’d had a little more to drink than you’d last remembered. Your memory was proving to be disappointingly unreliable tonight.

You swallow thickly, “Sure.”

Because what else can you say?

“Can I stop by your room in a minute?”

You take a deep breath, “Yeah.”

And you patter back to your no-longer very safe haven. Oikawa is about to infiltrate your space… with your permission. And the weapons he’ll bring will either harpoon you or leave you emotionally paralyzed – whether that emotional paralysis is a good or bad thing will be decided in the near future.

Your bed, though soft and blanket-covered, looks far less appealing now. It may as well be a bed of nails because you would rather hide beneath it than sit atop it.

But you sit anyway, letting the mattress dip and the springs twang.

The bathroom door cries as it opens, putting you on edge. Your heart is pounding like a drum at a summer festival – hotter and louder with every beat.

The trod of footsteps tells you he’s approaching and, sure enough, the open door reveals Oikawa.

With only a lamp to brighten the space, he’s more contoured than usual. His hair is wet and heavy against his head, taking on an even darker brown than before. You’ve seen him fresh out of the shower before, but this… is different. Oikawa’s shirt sticks to his chest slightly – he must’ve thrown it on without drying off fully to get to you faster.

He takes a few steps into your room, choosing to lean his back against a wall next to your work desk. Oikawa brings his hands behind his back, pressing his weight into them. Brown eyes flicker from you to the wall behind you and back again.

Naturally, tension lays thick as a fog in the air space. 

“Hey, I’m…”

You cut him off, “You don’t have to say sorry! It’s… it’s okay.” 

Oops, you’d said that a little too loud. Not that it mattered much after Oikawa’s passionate performance.

An eyebrow raises and confusion sparks across his face. Your body freezes.

He brings a hand behind his neck. “Oh, I was just gonna say that I’m still kinda drunk.”

You knew that much. Though you really thought he’d say something other than that. Preferably something about the, uh, devoted love-song?

Why is he acting so casual right now? Is this even Tooru? Had he read too many alien conspiracies and been abducted for learning too much about extraterrestrials? 

Maybe he doesn’t realize you’d even heard him say your name in the shower.

“Oh... right.” You say slowly, lips staying parted at the end of your sentence.

“Which… probably isn’t good for either of us,” Different words drawl out and there’s a soft slur to some syllables, but at least he’s easy to understand, “me drinking too much, I mean.”

“Yeah,” you mutter.

“I think we should both just go to bed then.”

Your chest tightens. Of course, you want answers.

They’re likely embarrassing, face-reddening, Taylor Swift-centric answers. But you want them, nonetheless.

Although, it’s probably for the best that you don’t bring this up tonight. It was all probably a joke or a harmless accident – and, anyway, he admitted to being drunk.

“Right.”

“But I think you should know that I like you. A lot.”

“Yeah,” you respond again, automatically.

There’s another heavy silence. The pretty boy just stares at you, cherry colors tinting his cheeks but showing no expression of fear or embarrassment. You stare back, processing his words at turtle-like speeds.

The words tumble out, “Wait, say that again?” You double back, your own face reheating to its earlier temperature.

“I’m gonna be mad at myself in the morning if I don’t leave right now. And I really need to stop listening to that stupid song,” Oikawa says to himself. 

“But I wanted to see how you would respond if I changed the lyrics,” the words are pointed back at you again.

He stands up, feet moving slowly toward the doorway. Did he just… completely ignore your question?

Your jaw drops, “Did…” you can hardly speak.

Clearing your throat, you try again, focusing intently on your words, “...did you mean for me to hear you?”

“...Maybe.” He draws out the “e,” looking back at you.

That’s it. He’s lost his fucking mind. You’re going to strangle him. 

No TikTok advice could have prepared you for the monstrosity that is Oikawa Tooru. How Iwaizumi put up with that... that child for all these years, you have no idea.

You have to make a note of sending him a “get well” card, because nobody could be mentally okay after dealing with him for that long.

“B- but… why? What?” You stammer out, back stiff as a board.

“You like me don’t you?” He tilts his head, hair flopping cutely with it.

You gape like a fish, mouth opening and closing.

And it’s not that you don’t want to respond.

It’s that you can’t. You have no words. You vocal chords are on a panic-induced lockdown.

Because he knew.

He knew this entire time. Which you thought he might, but that doesn’t make the situation any less infuriating.

“And I like you back.”

You’re dumbfounded. You can’t think. This is ridiculous.

You open your mouth once more but he has no intention of continuing this conversation.

“Sleep well!” Without further comment, Oikawa flashes you a sleepy smile and begins scampering back to his room after having wreaked havoc on your poor heart.

Your voice comes back just in time for you to wake up the entire building once more,

“No, you get your ass back here and explain yourself!”

[twistedmusings]

A Midnight Prank

[Set during Chapter 5] 

Ace figured that if you were sleeping so peacefully in your bed while he had to spend a good portion of the night on the floor, why shouldn’t he try to get his revenge? A small midnight prank would be a good way to teach you about leaving him laying on the floor like that~ 

Warnings: Lime. Very mild somnopholia and food play with Ace slowly starting to realize that he might have taken a prank a bit too far. 

A/N: What better way to start this writing blog than to reveal myself as an Ace stan. I barely blinked when I first started with this game but the moment he popped up in Ghost Marriage I guess my eyes just suddenly saw the light because this boy has such yan possibilities as well as being a tease about everything. So enjoy this self indulgent drabble, I’ll see if I write more like these ò uó. 

“Oh Great Sevens…my back.”

Ace stands up and stretches, looking down at his best friend’s and Grim’s position on the floor. Of all the things Vil could do, poisoning the food? 

Well not really poisoning but cursing the food? Who the hell cursed food? Especially Trey’s baked goods?! It was a late-night snack, a team bonding exercise! To him, Ramshackle was the place he could get away with being himself without having to follow Riddle’s sometimes ridiculous rules! Yet he had just spent the good half of the night laying on the cold, hardwood floor with Deuce and Grim like some punished first year despite the fact that he was best friends with the prefect of this dorm! 

And speaking of you. 

He glares at the stairs, remembering the helpless look you had sent him as you went upstairs with Vil following short after. You, better than anybody, knew how the floors of Ramshackle were! If you had been laying on the floor paralyzed, Ace would have brought you at least a pillow!

 Maybe!

A grin spreads on his face as his brain plans out a pretty simple prank. He goes over to the chocolate cake he had taken a bite out of and scoops up some of the whipped cream frosting the cake was lavishly decorated with , grinning as he grabs  a napkin and makes his way upstairs.

“This is for betraying the First Year Loyalty Pact, [Y/N]. Get ready to get yelled at, dear manager~”

His steps are quiet on the stairs, knowing where each and every creak would be in the old, wooden stairs. It had been a while since he had pulled a prank on you, the both of you teaming up to pull pranks on others and quickly running away as soon as the plan was executed. A part of him always thought that you, the favourite of Riddle whenever you came over to Heartslabyul, would not be as on board with his pranks but seeing you come up with your own little plans as both of you hid away from your rose garden duties was unexpected and highly welcomed.

Your excited tone, the way you moved your hands. It would get Ace riled up and ready to execute absolutely anything under your orders. 

Cater had described him as being 'whipped' but Ace didn't even know what that meant so jokes on the upperclassmen, he supposed. 

He snickers as he gets to your door, praising the Queen of Hearts that it was only ajar instead of fully closed. Ace had gone over a few scenarios in his head, maybe covering your entire face with the frosting or putting the frosting on your hand while tickling your nose so that you would slap yourself. Nothing too big since he still wanted to keep his friend status with you. 

Yet his best idea had popped up once he reached the side of your bed, looking down at you sleeping so peacefully. 

"Not for long~" 

If he took a peek at the clock he could see that it was three in the morning. He guessed that Vil's curse lasted around four hours. Practice started at eight so they would usually be awake around six thirty to eat a meager breakfast and start walking to Pomefiore-- 

Which meant that if you happened to take a bite out of this delicious frosting that he held in his finger, you would wake up unable to move and miss the entirety of breakfast altogether. He would also add the extra bonus of closing your door so you would have to scream for someone to come get you. 

"Essentially two birds with one stone, right [Y/N]?" he sits down at the edge and leans over you, "Your screaming will piss Vil off so much, probably throw him off his whole morning routine. Heh, even in this scenario you are my partner in crime…" 

Ace moves to trace the chocolate on your lips, a smile on his face as he wonders just what words you would be yelling out first thing in the morning. After this maybe he should go set up his camera to record Vil lecturing you while you were stuck in your bed. 

Ah. 

His fingers weren't moving. Why weren't his fingers moving? 

"Haha...ha. O-Okay, I got this. [Y/N] say 'ahh'." 

A warm hand cupped your face as he used the one not holding the sweet confectionary, pressing his thumb against your lips and swallowing down the rather huge lump in his throat as it slowly made its way past them. Ace pressed down lightly, your mouth parting slowly as his nail scraped against the top of your teeth which allowed him to press down and watch as your mouth parted open for him. 

Shit. Shit. Shit. 

He was sweating, why was he sweating? A normal prank would have him smiling as adrenaline rushed through his body but this wasn't the kind of rush he was expecting. 

Ace was nervous. 

Thumb pressing against your tongue, he stopped his exploring there and not daring to go another step. He remembers back in his dating days during middle school, his girlfriend always insisted on doing the 'cutesy' thing and feeding each other. Strawberries, cotton candy, anything that was just cheesy and picture perfect enough to make him sigh in annoyance. Back then it had all just been a bother. 

But with you, why was it making him feel so--

"Augh!" 

Ace pulls his finger away, your lips still parted slightly as he grabbed his hand as if it was burned. 

Come on Trappola! What the hell is wrong with you!

You! You with your soft lips, warm tongue and inviting face that looked so so peaceful while sleeping. As if nothing would wake you! Just leaving the door open so anyone would come in and take advantage of the opportunity right before them. 

The infamous prefect of Ramshackle...looking so defenseless. 

"[Y/N]." 

Ace leans over you once again, the finger covered in chocolate this time making its way past your lips with no shame as his eyes seem to glaze over with unprecedented confidence. This was all for the sake of a good prank. Hell, he should one up it and sleep next to you tonight. You would wake up to Ace looking over you, unable to move as he teases you for not noticing his presence sooner. 

"You should really lock your door at night." he shivers when he feels your tongue lapping at his finger, "Otherwise next time I'll have to pull an even naughtier prank." 

He presses down on the slimy muscle, eyes widening when he starts getting a reaction. His finger moves up and down, tracing your tongue as your body starts to slowly respond to the attention of something sweet teasing your tastebuds. 

"Mmnnn." 

The chocolate was all gone when Ace pulled his finger back, licking his lips as he saw a faint trail of drool connecting his finger to your lips. You should have the taste floating in your mouth as your body slowly took in the curse. 

Ace barely notices himself panting until he takes a deep breath, fingers toying with the sheets covering your body as he leaned in ever closer. Maybe he should check? After all he wanted to prank you so good that you wouldn't forget about it. The thought making you squirm and open your mouth, begging him to put something inside-- 

"Ace?" 

Blood nearly rushes all the way back up to Ace's head as he hears Grimm's voice, the little creature looking at him tiredly as it floated towards him. 

"G--Grimm?! What--!" 

"My tail and ears hurt! I can't believe [Y/N] just left us there. When they wake up I'm going to--" 

Grimm yawns as he makes his way over to you, gently laying on your chest as the Heartslabyul student quickly stands up and makes his way through the door. He doesn't waste any words on saying good night as he steps out into the hall, gently shutting the door behind him and sliding down to the floor. 

What the hell did I just do? 

He looks at the finger that had done the act, staring at it as if it had a mind of its own. Your mouth had been so warm and now his entire body felt cold. Anf you weren't even aware that you had just left him feeling like this! 

Ace sighs as he runs a finger through his hair, standing up and making his way downstairs to check if Deuce has woken up. 

Not necessarily noticing how he bit at the top of the finger that had become so intimate with you. 

                                                        ~~~~~

Omake 

"Kalim? It's four in the morning why the hell are you awake?" 

Ace blinks as he supports a sleeping Deuce, the other still snoring away as Kalim smiles and places a finger to his lips. 

"I'm going to see if I can sneak in a cuddle with [Y/N]. Grimm mentioned how warm they were yesterday and I've been curious ever since!"  

"Oh, cool. Have fun then." 

The Heartslabyul student keeps walking as the Scarabia dorm leader opens the door to your room, whispering a goodnight. It was only when he heard the click of your door did he nearly drop his fellow student. 

"WAIT WHAT?" 

[dovenymph]

little lune

authors note: inspired by @soulmemesarc birthday prompts!🥳🎂 also this is unedited sorry for any typos

" no no no! breakfast in bed for the birthday girl/boy/angel! lie down, let me take care of this... "

" so there's this tradition. a law, really. i have to kiss you as many times as your age. so prepare yourself, babe. "

find my masterlist here

word count: 1.9k

you and harrison really didn’t have much in common.

this, you discovered, on your first date. he’d seen you at his neighborhood coffee shop on multiple occasions and prayed each day that you couldn’t see the infatuation building in his eyes, hoping one day soon, he’d’ve built up the courage to finally talk to you.

and you both thank god that that day had come and you spent nearly the entire day tucked away in the corner of the cafe talking about everything and anything.

he loved dogs, liked to consider himself a dog dad, even though the blue-grey staffy he showed you just over one million pictures of, technically belonged to his best friend. you on the other hand, grew up with cats curled up at your feet.

harrison could stay out all night, and did most weekends! very used to having to scrub last nights remnants off his body in the mornings and piecing together the events through blurry instagram stories. whereas, you were much more lowkey. always down for a good time, but couldn’t really stand the feeling of other people’s sweat on you while packed in a crowded club

despite this, the two of you fit together like puzzle pieces. like he was the sun, and you were the moon.

when harrison first brought up the comparison, you laughed and teased him for being such a cliche but when he smiled down and replied with “just for you, my little lune”

your face burned under his palms as he spoke the pet name so adoringly and with so much kindness in his eyes. and in that moment, you both knew that your differences in opinion were trivial and the only thing that mattered was you both bonded over your growing affection.

your face burned under his palms as he spoke the pet name so adoringly and with so much kindness in his eyes. and in that moment, you both knew that your differences in opinion were trivial and the only thing that mattered was you both bonded over your growing affection.

there was one thing you both had in common though and that was sleep.

there was one thing you both had in common though and that was sleep.

you could sleep for hours each, harrison very proudly bragging that his record was 18 hours straight.

whenever you went over to his house, he immediately locked the two of you in his room, receiving many suggestive comments from his roommates about the nature of your activities, but in reality he just locked his arms around you and took you to dreamland with him as the two of you slept the day away.

so it was no surprise that that was the position you both were in right now, the morning of your birthday slipping away like a handful of sand through open fingertips.

soon enough though, the ring of your phone had gone off too many times for you to ignore and you had to wake up and face the multitude of happy birthday calls you were receiving, without a doubt waking your boyfriend in the process.

“mmm, tell them to fuck off” he muttered as your cousin wished you a happy birthday, the phone being passed around to all your relatives.

“can’t babe, m’family’s callin’”

“b-but… we haven’t had a birthday snuggle yet”

the softness in his tone (his teddy bear persona being reserved for your eyes only) practically melted you “almost over, m’love”

five minutes later, the last of your cousins and aunts and uncles had wished you a happy birthday and you hung up, the multiple conversations taking away any last shreds of slumber.

you looked over at haz who had his face smushed into the pillow, his soft, blond hair swept into his face, looking as delicate as ever. his hands involuntarily twitching at the comforter as they called out for yours to intertwine with.

with a smile you cautiously slipped off the bed, but he still awoke anyways, poking his head up like a child. “where ya going?”

“to start the kettle, go back to sleep.”

“no no no!” he whined “breakfast in bed for the birthday girl. lie down, let me take care of this.” he dragged himself out of bed, placed a tender and loving kiss to your forehead before shoving you to the mattress and throwing the covers over your entire body, leaving you nothing but a giggling white sheet.

his heart soared in his chest at the sound as he made his way to your kitchen. he’d only been over your place a few times, your relationship still relatively new. so he tried his best to quietly turn on the kettle and then locate your pots and pans to get started on a birthday breakfast for you.

as he was flipping the pancakes, he started thinking about making a little smile with the strawberries and that brought a little smile to his face.

he barely recognized himself when he was around you. he was so lovesick, so head over heels for you. unlike he’d ever been with any of his previous girlfriends.

your relationship wasn’t in the early stages per-say, he openly called you his girlfriend, and you your boyfriend, but he still felt the need to impress you, he still felt nerves creep in his stomach before every date. the honeymoon stage, as some liked to call it. the comfortability was just around the corner, he was sure of it. but until then, he liked to keep you on your toes.

placing the meal on a tray and walking back to your bedroom, he thought to later tonight and bit his lip. he had planned something for you, something grand. it was a little much for your first birthday spent together, but he only realized that after everything was payed for; but you deserved it. you deserved all the magnificent things life had to offer, and he would fall to his knees in order to be the one to give them to you. so he hoped you would like it.

“happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday my darling, happy birthday to you” he sung as you looked up at him from under the covers.

“thank you, lovie. it looks great.” you smiled and he carefully placed the tray on your lap, crawling up next to you.

“anything for you, lune.” he spoke with a kiss to your lips.

that was how the morning progressed, bites of pancake shared here and there, syrup flavored kisses peppered in between.

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．

haz’s wet chest was pressed against your back in the bath. the room scented vanilla and filled to the brim with bubbles and candlelight.

“what do you want to do later today, haz?”

“anything you like sweetness, you’re the birthday girl.”

“hmm, nothing planned big guy?” you teased, and he splashed a little water on your exposed torso.

“of course i do… but, it’s still your day, you can do whatever you want.” he replied, pressing kisses to your neck.

“whatever i want?”

“mmhmm, have whatever, do whatever… have me do whatever you want… to you” he spoke, voice deep and kisses hard.

your heart rate picked up, sure he could sense it as he pressed his tongue to your pressure point, gasping you consented with “i like the sound of that”

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．

“haz… can you at least slow down???”

“sorry! sorry! it’s not my fault i swear!” he retorted, swerving in and out of his lane.

“yeah well i can’t exactly tell now can i?” you snapped, feeling around the blindfold he insisted you wore

“hey! don’t mess with it! we’re almost there!” harrison looked over at you and worried his bottom lip in nervousness. the location was only down the road and every possibility was running through his head. did he invite enough of your friends? sure you got along with his housemates and coworkers, but he didn’t want you to feel awkward at your own party. was it too much, would you feel too pressured?

he turned into the parking lot and took a deep breath, you were here now, so it was now or never. “can i take it off now?”

“yes, sweetness.”

you yanked it off and immediately looked around, face contorting in confusion.

“cmon, it’s around the corner.” he grabbed your hand and started to make his way.

“i- i hope you like it. if you don’t that’s fine, we can do something else. i swear! no pressure really, this, this is really just an idea. but i thought it seemed fun, so i, yeah, again, i just hope you like it.” he rambled, about to add on another reassurance that you could leave whenever you wanted when your gasp interrupted him.

“woah…” you took in the field before you. fair games, food trucks, rides and even a ferris wheel covered the entire ground. your friends already enjoying the festivities.

“haz this… this is amazing…” your head snapped towards his as you thew yourself into his arms. “th-thank you so much, oh my god!”

harrison knew that if you weren’t anchoring him in that moment, he would’ve floated to heaven. you were so sweet and happy, he was more than elated.

“it’s all for you, babe. let’s go enjoy, yeah?” he said, pride running through his veins at the good job he did.

you found your friends, all giving you bear hugs and dragging you away from harrison to go on rides. he didn’t mind, he got to spend all day with you, and you were too good not to share.

he sat at one of the picnic benches as tom brought over two slices of pizza. “mate, i gotta say, this is fucking awesome”

harrison beamed at him at the compliment. “yeah i know!”

tom laughed and shook his head, “wanna call you a smug div, but honestly, y’should be proud of yourself.”

harrison felt his cheeks warm at his friends words. “thanks mate, i- i’m just glad she likes it.”

tom let out a *whapush* noise, “so whipped.” and harrison just rolled his eyes, but bit back any denials. he was whipped for you. not only did the thousands in pounds he spent for tonight prove it, but the way his heart danced in his chest at the mere though of you, did too.

“yeah, i guess i am” he smirked, meeting tom in a fist bump and beelined towards you.

you felt his arms wrap around your waist from behind as you spoke to your friend, her eyes lighting up at the scene.

“mind if i steal her for a moment?” he asked, giving your friend his best puppy eyes, to which she giggled and shook her head, sending you a wink on her way.

“y’alright, birthday girl?” he muttered, head buried in your neck.

“more than alright. thank you again haz, i really, i really don’t know how i can make this up to you.”

he spun you around in his arms and gave you a passionate kiss, trying to convey all his love through it, hopefully telling you that you didn’t have to make anything up to him, that he’d buy you the earth if it’d make you smile.”

when he pulled away, you stared up at him like he was a figure from your dreams and he thinks you understood him.

“cmon, let’s go on the ferris wheel!”

“lead the way, lune.”

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．

the night sky surrounded you both as you at at the top of the ferris wheel, looking down at the city.

“so…,” harrison began. you hummed in response and he squeezed your clasped hands together.

“so there's this tradition. a law, really. i have to kiss you as many times as your age. so prepare yourself, babe.”

you laughed and scooted impossibly closer to him, “oh yeah?”

“mmhmm! now remember, i don’t make the laws, only enforce them.”

he began to count upwards from one and kiss your lips. some soft and light, others held out and leaving you a little breathless.

“so many kisses tonight, i love it”

“well there’s more where that came from.” he said, “now where was i? oh right, 16…”

[dreamingofaizawa]

Powerful Ch. 2

Yakuza! Shouta Aizawa x Fem! Reader

*Mafia AU*

Warnings: Misogyny (not from Shouta), a dagger, kinda fluffy

Word Count: 3.5 k

Author’s Note: This is turning out pretty good, I think. It’s turning into a kind of slow-burn ish thing, and as much as I can’t stand slow-burn sometimes, I’m liking it so far. If I’m being honest I feel like (hopefully) this is the thing that can help me get over my smut writing block. I haven’t been able to get myself to write smut for a while, and I’m hoping this can help me fix it.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

Also, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I usually put in that little line spacer when there’s a pov change. You know, this one:

____

So yeah. And the three asterisks (except the ones at the beginning):

* * * Usually means a timeskip. If it’s unlabelled it’s only a short skip, anything over 24 hours I’ll label.

Enjoy~

*

*

*

Shouta woke you up, his rough hands rubbing your back and deep voice softly calling your name. When you let your eyes flutter open you realize you’re still on top of him, only your head is further cradled into his neck and your leg had found its way around his waist. The position had your face warming as you lifted your head and met his dark eyes.

“Good morning, little one.” He sounded groggy, like he’d just woken up himself. You pulled away and he released you so you could sit up. Off of him. You couldn’t quite hold his gaze, so you looked down at the bedsheets.

“Good morning, Shouta.” He sits up beside you, a hand grasping your chin and making you look at him.

“Am I too forward? Or are you afraid of me, little one?” You raise your eyebrows, not expecting him to really consider your own comfort.

“Can I speak freely?” He nods, and you take a breath.

“You are being just a little forward, but I think it’s only really enhanced because you’re known for being cold and unwelcoming. And also the fact that we only formally met last night.” His hand drops, and he waits for the second half of your answer. You take a moment to choose your wording, make sure you’re accurately communicating your feelings without offending him.

“While I do feel awkward and, frankly, small around you I don’t necessarily fear you. So far you’ve shown that you aren’t cruel, and though you are capable of some...violent things, I have no reason yet to believe you would be violent toward me.” A small smile tugs at his lips, a foreign thing to see.

“I assure you, I am not a violent lover. Nor will I ever be.” He reaches over and grabs your hand, lifting it to his face and leaving a soft kiss on your knuckles. It’s a simple, sweet gesture that has your face and chest heating. Then he gets up and you follow him out to the living room where three large suitcases are waiting. Your suitcases, you realize, Mother and Father must have packed all your clothing and had them sent here. Shouta picks up two of them and you take the last one, returning to the bedroom.

“The closet has plenty of room, so go ahead and sort everything out. I’ll be in my office. Once you’re done just wait for me, we’ll be going out later.” You nod, and he’s disappearing into his office. For the first time, you take a good look at the room. Your room now, you remind yourself. 

It’s large, enough to fit three more king beds with plenty of spare room. The king-sized mattress sits in a black frame that was built to look like it was hovering inches off the ground, fitted with light gray sheets and a large black comforter. The entire room is illuminated by lights embedded in the ceiling, the floor a dark hardwood that matches the doors to the bathroom and walk-in closet. A table sat on either side of the bed, both painted black to match the bed frame.

The walk-in closet is big as well, though it’s much brighter than the main bedroom. The floor is smooth white tile, a white center island with a glass top looking into the top drawers that held numerous watches and ties. Most of Shouta’s clothing seems to be folded, the suits and more high-end clothing the only pieces hung up. You filled the empty spaces with your own clothing, keeping everything organized like you had back at home. With everything tucked away, you decided it was time to change out of the robe, tugging on undergarments you missed those, a pair of loose sweatpants and a racerback tank top. Then you brought the now empty suitcases back to the living room and dug through the kitchen for some breakfast.

____

Shouta emerged from his office to you humming to yourself as you worked over the stove of bacon and pancakes. He didn’t even know he had bacon, let alone the ingredients for pancakes. It was quite cute, seeing you bounce lightly along with the tune you’re humming, spatula in hand. It’s a domestic sight, completely foreign to him. He leaned on the doorframe, choosing to admire you a while longer.

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to come get some food?” He blinked, slightly shocked, you hadn’t even turned around to see if he was there. You must have heard the door open, though he made sure none of the doors in his home creaked. It’s an irritating noise. He made his way over to you, hooking his chin over your shoulder and placing his large hands on your waist.

He knows he’s moving a little fast with the intimacy. He’d asked you earlier, though you said you didn’t mind, you were absolutely right that it’s weird being so close so soon. In all honesty, as long as you’re alright with it he wants to continue being touchy like this. He’s never truly had any interest in naming a partner, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want company. He’s been lonely for a long time, longing for someone to hold, and while he’s absolutely sure any woman would love to court him willingly, he wants someone special.

He can’t stand the women that throw themselves at any man with power and money, most of them only in it for their own gain. If he were to announce before the ball that he was looking to name a wife, he’d probably have had a line of fawning women on their best behavior to butter him up, flirting and smiling those too-big smiles in an attempt to get a rock on their finger and power to wield at their leisure. That’s why he’d decided to watch from afar, and you struck him as different the moment he’d laid eyes on you.

The more time he spent in your company, the more he’s commending himself for picking you. You’re one of the probable few that held a semi-neutral opinion of him, not fearful nor starstruck. You’re intelligent, well-articulated, and while you have your limits you tend to go with the flow, let the wind carry you this way and that. And you’re honest with him, he has no doubt you’ll tell him if there’s a boundary he crosses.

____

You’re grateful he can’t quite tell the state you’re in right now. Shouta’s hands on your waist flustered you, more than you care to admit. Sure, he’s advancing rather quickly, but you meant it when you said you didn’t mind. You’d been forbidden from dating, made to save yourself for the strategic marriage your father had planned. For the longest time you’d wanted to be held, touched and loved by someone. And here Shouta is, fulfilling all your teenage daydreams. He has no reason to be so close behind closed doors, where no one can see you, so he must feel some sort of real attraction toward you right? Otherwise he’d be more closed off, only opting to speak on his own terms and not caring at all about you or your comfort.

You shake yourself from your thoughts and the two of you sit at the dining table, quietly eating your breakfast. It is a little awkward, but you expected as much. Shouta, like you, probably isn’t used to eating with another person. You both finish breakfast soon, and once the dishes are washed Shouta startles you with his next words.

“We’ll be leaving in an hour or two for a lunch meeting with a few other clans.” You have to take a pause and think about what he’d just said.

“We? You want me to join you?” A part of you wants him to confirm it, another hopes he doesn’t.

“Yes, I want you there with me.” Cue your confusion.

“It’s almost unheard of, having a woman in a clan meeting.” As much as you hate the patriarchy and its traditions, they are still traditions that, once challenged, could upset many people.

“Let’s say I’m breaking the status-quo. If I’m going to have a wife, she’ll be wielding my power alongside me, not just existing as a means to further the bloodline.” It becomes apparent to you that Shouta, despite his position, is very much not traditional. You turn to him and lean against the kitchen counter, crossing your arms over your chest.

“So why have you chosen me? I’m the daughter of a very low-ranked oyabun, have almost no experience compared to you and I am most definitely not someone other oyabun would approve to be your wife, let alone leading the entirety of the Yakuza.” He quirks an eyebrow at you, crossing his own arms.

“I don’t care what other oyabun may think of me or my choices, they don’t dictate what I do. As for why I’ve chosen you, it’s quite simple. I’ve known you for less than a day and it’s already obvious to me that you can take most things in stride, without allowing it to affect you emotionally. You’re good at compartmentalizing your own thoughts, can keep a level head under pressure, and that’s exactly what I need.” Your own eyebrows raise, not expecting a read like that.

“And last night as I watched you, it was clear to me that you’re skilled at masking your emotions, especially nervousness or fear. Think about what any other woman would have done, had I walked up to them and asked their name. Before I could get another word out they’d probably drop to their knees and begin begging for their lives. Most would probably faint on the spot, pounce on me, or any other number of unsavory responses after announcing a sudden engagement to me. But you? You did nothing, simply answering my question and taking my hand with no theatrics.” 

You nod slowly, mildly understanding his point. While it’s true you had almost no reaction, you’re almost sure there’d be at least a dozen other women in that hall that would have reacted the way you had. 

“Still, there must have been many others that acted like I did. For me to be so completely unique is…” You trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence.

“Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. I trust my own judgement, little one, and you should have a little more faith in yourself. Now, let’s go get ready. I’ve already got a dress for you to wear. It’s only semi-formal, we’ll be going to a restaurant for this meeting.” You give a small sigh as you follow him into the bedroom. 

All you can do now is go along with it, whether you trust his judgement or not. Suddenly being put in a position of so much power is stressing you out a little bit, but Shouta isn’t wrong about your compartmentalization. The stress could be dealt with later, right now you have a meeting to attend.

* * *

On second thought, maybe the stress should have been dealt with earlier. Standing outside the restaurant, wrapped around Shouta’s arm is making your heart pound in your chest. You’re unconsciously squeezing his bicep, and even as he looks down at you, there's nothing on your face to indicate your nerves. You’re completely deadpanned, eyes focused and mind working overtime. Shouta’s calloused hand falls over yours, a mildly comforting gesture.

“Don’t worry, little one. The most you’ll have to do is sit still and look pretty. I’m aware of your inexperience, I don’t expect you to be put on the spot. If you are and feel uncomfortable then all you need to do is tap my leg. You’ll be fine.” You nod. The pep-talk is appreciated, but it isn’t the meeting itself you’re worried about. What kind of backlash will Shouta be getting once you enter? What will be said about his reputation afterward? All you can do is wait and see.

You stride into the venue, and are led to a private room by a hostess. You can hear the casual conversation from the open door, but once you’re inside the immediate silence is unsettling. You don’t need to look directly at the half dozen men to know all their eyes are fixed on you as you both sit at the head of the table. Shouta quickly and smoothly brings the attention off of you.

“It’s good to see you, gentlemen. Let’s get this meeting started, shall we?” The tension in the room is still palpable, the clear discomfort from the men hadn’t vanished, but their main focus now is the subject of the meeting. You sit and listen carefully as they talk about several things, from natural disaster preparations to minor territory disputes. Some of the smaller syndicates under these oyabun had spread operations outside their borders, but that was quickly settled as most was due to small misunderstandings and unclear borders. Soon the meeting was nearly coming to a close, and suddenly Shouta left to use the restroom. 

And now, you’re a lioness in a clan of hyenas.

You keep quiet, listening to their conversation and following along with the political debates to further familiarize yourself with the inner workings of the higher circle. Suddenly the table goes quiet, and you lift your eyes from the table to meet the gaze of six men that value tradition. Unsure what to do, you drop your gaze again, but don’t drop your chin, choosing to look down your nose at the wood grain. Shouta had told you to hold yourself as he does, and you make sure to try, but you know when to keep to yourself.

“Tell me, girl, what are you doing here?” You blink, not expecting to be confronted so blatantly. You look up at the man who had asked the question. He looks to be in his late forties, jet black hair graying at the temples and striking brown eyes aged and tired. He’s not thin, a little heavier-set, but it’s clear there was a point that he was fit and muscular. He’s already irked you. You nod your head, a small bow, before calmly answering.

“My name is (y/n). I would appreciate it if you could please use it, Oyabun. I am here because Shouta wants me to be here.” The man narrows his eyes at you, a small scoff comes from one of the others but you don’t avert your eyes to him.

“Well why does he want you here, girl?” The blatant rejection of your request made your blood boil, but you kept a pleasant face.

“I don’t know. If you wish to know you may need to ask him yourself, Oyabun. And please, call me (y/n).” You’re certain he won’t use your name, and you addressing it again will probably anger him, but you can’t care too much when you know you’re within your right to ask that anyone use your name. Especially when you yourself are using a title for the man.

“I’ll address you how I see fit. Just because you’re the Black Dragon’s fiance does not mean I will acknowledge you as anyone of importance.” Ah, that’s right. You had forgotten Shouta’s nickname. Black Dragon is the name people used for him, whether they were afraid of the man or in awe of him. You take an imperceptible, steadying breath. Misogyny is one of the few things that challenge your composure.

“I do not ask you to acknowledge me as a person who holds power. In fact, I am aware of my previous rank and understand that it was maybe unwise to have me here. All I ask is that you please use my name.” The near growl that escapes the man does nothing to your self-control, doesn’t even strike any kind of emotion other than irritation. At this point, the other five men seem to be siding with you, their gazes fixed on the rather aggressive-reacting oyabun with something akin to confusion. 

“Do not talk back to me, girl! I should remind you of your place here.” The other men sit in shock as he rises from his seat and begins to circle the table. He must have had tunnel vision, because Shouta’s voice cuts through the room so abruptly he freezes, his eyes snapping over to the entrance where Shouta stands, glaring daggers at him.

“Touch her, and I will personally bury you six feet under.” The man is frozen in shock, almost in disbelief. He tries, albeit weakly, to get Shouta on his side.

“O-oyabun! I… This girl, she--” 

“I believe she asked you to use her name. Politely, might I add.” He’d been listening? How long had he stood there?

“In fact, you should address her as Onna-oyabun.” Your breath caught at that, the same as the rest of the room. That title was a myth, a rarity in its own right. There were so few instances where that title was applied to a woman under such specific circumstances that it’s a mere legend today. The most recent was an old woman who had inherited her deceased husband’s clan, which was extremely small, and even that was long ago. 

Shouta’s hand landed on your shoulder, his rough thumb drawing small circles into your skin. He was silent, waiting for the older man, or anyone in the room, to oppose him. You could feel his glare in the faces of the other clans’ oyabun, the intensity of it making even you uneasy. It felt like an eternity before Shouta spoke again, venom laced in every syllable.

“I’ve chosen to let you keep all of your teeth, in favor of keeping her from seeing what violence I’m capable of. Next time, I won’t be so gracious. It’s time to go, little one.” You bow your head quickly before taking Shouta’s extended hand and strolling out of the room.

In the car, it’s silent. You have every intention of apologizing for causing a scene, though you aren’t sure if you should speak here or at home. Shouta doesn’t leave you any options.

“What is it? There’s something bothering you.” How perceptive.

“I’m sorry, Shouta.” He turns his head, his expression questioning your intelligence.

“For what? For asking to be addressed in a way that isn’t demeaning? He had no reason to ask why you were there, let alone attempt to attack you like that. I always hated that man, you’ve just given me a reason to threaten him.” You did a double-take.

“You heard everything? How long were you standing at the door?” 

“Ah. I put a bug in the metal piece on the front of your dress. I knew they might be unsavory toward you, and with me out of the room they were more likely to speak their minds.” You nearly gawked at him. No wonder he’d chosen your dress for you. 

“You never went to use the restroom.” He shook his head.

“No, I didn’t. It is I who should be apologizing, little one. The entire ordeal was intentional, as much as I hoped it wouldn’t actually take such a turn. Though I will say I was serious about that title. I fully intend to marry you, and I intend to have you by my side for every meeting from here on out.” You suck in a sharp breath at that bit of information. Marriage seemed like such an abstract concept until now, having Shouta say it somehow made it all the more solid. And to join him for every meeting? 

“As long as there are no more surprise incidents then I think I can come with you.” A low chuckle rumbled in his chest, and he squeezed your hand.

“Deal. Though I may need to do that a few more times just to keep some men in line.” You let yourself giggle, he must hate a few of the others as well.

“In that case I’ll help you. I was afraid he’d actually get me for a second there.” 

“Really? You didn’t even react. What if I were a split second too late?” You smirked, a mischievous little tug at your lips.

“Well if you were too late he’d have at least one stab wound and be bleeding out on the floor.” He shoots you a bewildered look before you tug up the hem of your dress, exposing a large dagger strapped to your thigh. He can’t contain his laughter, throwing his head back and wiping away at a few stray tears once he can breathe again. You can’t help but laugh with him, and notice just how handsome he looks when he’s happy, or in this case amused.

“Wouldn’t that be an unpleasant surprise.” He chuckles a bit more, getting it all out of his system before looking over at you. 

“Regardless, I won’t be letting them get that close. I’m sure you’re capable of defending yourself, and as much as I’d love to see you stab an annoying misogynist, the risk to your safety still remains. Not to mention he disregarded my warning last night. You’re untouchable, little one, he knows this and still thought he could touch even a single hair on your head.” 

You let a small smile settle on your lips, lacing your fingers with Shouta’s as a comfortable silence falls between you.

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

Tags:

@inumorph

[annabethy]

“never do that again” and/or “that was embarrassing”

perhaps,, in the tiktok au if you want😳 bc i’m way too excited about that one

in which annabeth embarrasses herself but doesn’t mind too much,, percabeth,, part 3 of tiktok au

The way Annabeth wakes up is not at all what she expected. Her eyes blink open slowly, and she is in a bed with sheets too soft to be hers. Her senses are on high alert when she sees a wall that definitely isn’t the color of her bedroom, and she spends so much time observing the area around her that she fails to notice the strong arm that’s curled around her waist until someone shifts behind her.

A featherlight kiss is pressed to the curve of her ear, and she suddenly recalls who exactly is behind her and why. It brings a flush and a smile to her face all at once.

“Hey,” Percy whispers, a delicious low scratch to his voice. He stretches his legs, and she can feel is very bare skin against her own naked legs. “You awake?”

Annabeth smiles softly into the sheets when his arm tightens. “No.”

“Mh-hm.” His face presses into her neck, nose nudging the soft skin. She can hear him yawn quietly, and she certainly agrees with the action. There’s a subtle ache in her body and she is absolutely exhausted. “Are you as tired as I am?”

“Entirely spent,” she says, voice pausing when he bends down to brush his lips against the spot of smooth skin right between her shoulder blades.

Annabeth isn’t sure what she should say when he doesn’t answer. She had zero intentions of coming and sleeping with him when they were supposed to film tiktoks. It’s not something she usually does either, but she can’t say that she regrets it in the slightest. It’s the best thing to happen in the last week, if she’s being honest.

Percy sits up behind her, the thin sheets pooling around his hips, exposing her back to the cold air of his apartment. She’s not facing him, but she can hear his breathing and when he scratches at his chin, no doubt lining with stubble. The thought makes her bite her lip. The bed dips slightly when he slides off of the mattress, and then there’s a quiet curse at the cool touch of the hardwood floor.

When he comes around the bed so that he is within eyesight, she notices that he has thrown on a pair of sweatpants but kept a shirt off. She lets herself shamelessly scan over him, and he just squeezes her foot accusingly.

He smiles at her softly, fingers scratching her lower leg from over the blanket. “Breakfast?”

She groans, shoving her face back into the mattress. As much as she would love staring at Percy while he makes her food, no doubt a sight she doesn’t want to miss, her brain is also still too hazy for it to possibly be time for her to get up. “What time is it?”

“Eight.”

Annabeth chokes. “Eight?!”

“What? Do you have something against the number eight?”

“Eight a.m.,” she mutters in disbelief. “Who wakes up at eight in the morning?”

“I do,” he says, laughing.

Annabeth lifts her head just to scrunch her nose at him in disgust before she very pointedly turns over in bed. “I simply cannot wake up before ten or else I don’t work.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she confirms, closing her eyes and smothering a smile when his fingers pull the blanket down her back a little bit so he can rub the skin soothingly. “Unless you’re going to kick me out?”

Percy blows air through his lips dismissingly. “Kick you out? Never.”

She looks over her shoulder. “Can I please go to back to sleep?”

“Go for it,” he says kindly. “What do you want to eat though? So I can have it ready when you wake up?”

“Cinnamon rolls,” she says, not at all expecting him to actually make it. Her eyes flutter shut again, and she hears him give a low chuckle. She is surprised when he bends down to her side to press a kiss to her cheek, and when he walks out of the room to leave her be, she wonders what exactly it all means.

Certainly this isn’t the way a one-night-stand plays out, but is that even what it really is? Surely Percy doesn’t treat all of his hookups with cuddles and kisses the morning after. She decides she’ll figure it all out later because she’s already beginning to knock back out.

Annabeth thinks the only reason she truly wakes up is because of the warm smell wafting in through the open door. The sweet scent makes her smile. She stretches, back popping deliciously, and she feels much more awake. She decides it’s probably best to get up. It takes her a good few minutes of searching for the shift she’d had on last night before she settles on throwing on his oversized t-shirt and calling it a day. It falls just below the curve of her ass, and the sleeves almost reach her elbow, but it also smells like him and makes her feel happy.

She stumbles out into the living room. Percy is sitting at the kitchen island, his back to her. He’s thrown on a shirt sometime while she was asleep.

Annabeth reaches behind him, settling her chin on his shoulder as her arms wrap around his waist. “You actually made cinnamon rolls,” she notes, smiling into his neck.

Percy tenses, and her mind blares with alarm. Her head whips toward him, expecting to find his face filled with annoyance, much like any other experience sleeping over with a guy.

Instead, he’s suppressing a smile, and a second later, dropping his face into his hands.

“Annabeth,” he whispers, a touch of humor in his voice, “I’m on a live.”

She blinks and looks towards the screen she just noticed in front of him. It’s a live recording, and she sees over one-hundred thousand people are joined.

Oh god.

She just about dies from mortification on the spot.

“Oh.” Annabeth takes an immediate step back, her face blazing with heat.

She just walked up to him wearing nothing except his shirt, and she just kissed his neck, and this is not good.

Percy, of course, just smiles and drags her closer. “Do you want to say hello?”

“Absolutely not.”

He shakes his head, laughing. He reads from the screen, “Why is Annabeth naked in your apartment?”

She groans miserably.

“She’s not naked,” Percy says. “Next question.”

Annabeth covers her face. “Percy.”

He looks at her again. It’s a soft glance, understanding, and he turns back to the camera. He ends the live rather quickly, but she knows the damage is already done. He has twenty million people following him, and every single one of them is going to know within hours.

“Come here,” Percy says, tugging her closer. He wraps his arms around her waist. “Are you okay?”

“That was embarrassing,” she whispers miserably.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but he’s laughing. “I thought you’d be asleep for at least another hour.”

She just makes a sound that’s a mix between a groan and whimper.

“It’s not that bad,” he soothes. “They’ll all forget about it soon enough.”

“We’ve both been doing this long enough to know otherwise.”

Percy laughs.

“This isn’t funny,” she accuses.

Percy’s hand moves from her waist so he can pinch his fingers together. “It’s a little bit funny.”

Annabeth pushes his shoulder without force, but even her lips are turning up in a smile. His grin is just contagious – it’s hardly her fault.

“You’re so beautiful,” Percy whispers, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face.

She raises an eyebrow but makes no comment. This feels like so much more than a hookup, and she finds that she likes the thought.

“I like the clothes,” he says in admiration. “You look good in my clothes.”

“Yeah, well I couldn’t find my shirt.” Annabeth’s face drops back into the crook of his neck as his hands trail down slightly beneath the edge of the shirt. She breathes him in and says the first thing she thinks of to change the subject. “You made cinnamon rolls?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I didn’t think you’d actually make it.”

“Of course I did.”

She spots grabs a half-eaten cinnamon roll from his plate and takes a bite out of it. It’s amazing, really, still warm and gooey. Annabeth thinks she could eat a million of these, and she tells him just that.

“I made it with a touch of love.”

“Do you always make cinnamon rolls with love for all of your hookups.”

“There aren’t enough hookups to make a definitive decision on that,” he tells her. “But I wouldn’t call you a hookup.”

“You wouldn’t? Then what was that we did last night?”

“Hookup sounds too neutral, like I don’t care about you, and that’s not true at all.”

The words make her tingle. “You like me.”

Percy laughs, and it’s a melody in her ears. “Yes, you’re like my middle school crush.”

“So what does this make us then?”

“You tell me.” It’s exactly what he said last night, except she hadn’t answered him that time. At least not with words.

“I mean, people definitely think we’re dating now that they saw me wandering around in just your shirt.”

“I guess we have an image to uphold then?”

“We also met yesterday,” she reminds him.

“Then let me take you out. A real date.”

She smiles. “A real date?”

“We never did make it to that diner.”

“And then what?”

“Then I take you on another date?”

“Then?”

“Another, and another, until you fall in love with me.”

It’s a bold statement but based on how she’s feeling after only one day, she doesn’t doubt that it’ll happen, as long as he keeps looking at her like she has the stars in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I think you might fall in love with me first.”

“A part of me already has.” Percy kisses her once. “I love your personality.” He kisses her forehead. “Your humor.” Nose. “Your selflessness.” Neck. “Everything about you.”

“You know all of that already?”

“I’ve been following you for a while,” he says. She laughs slightly because it’s a statement that would sound creepy if it weren’t for why they met. “But you can call it intuition.”

And she thinks that this might turn into something beautiful.

She surges up to catch his lips. It starts sweet – she can taste the frosting from the cinnamon rolls on him – and quickly turns more fiery. He bites at her lower lip, hands roaming on every piece of skin he can possibly reach. He rucks up the shirt slightly, kisses her harder, and she’s dizzy with affection. But he stops himself, and she does too.

“Do you have anything to do today?”

“Depends on what you have in mind,” she says, sly.

He hums and picks up the abandoned cinnamon roll to take a bite before speaking. “How about we go to a diner, and then we spend the day out? Maybe we’ll fall in love in the process.”

She plucks the treat from his fingers and takes her own bite. “I think I’m ready to fall in love.”

Annabeth would never admit it, but she thinks that’s the day she really does fall in love. He’s everything she never knew she was missing in her life. He takes her to eat, and then they walk around the city. It’s a simple date, but one that fits them so well. His eyes never leave her, and it leaves her even deeper into this love they’ve created.

They definitely run into a few of their followers while they’re out, and every single time, it’s a show trying to explain themselves. But they always leave hand in hand, smiles plastered on their faces. It consumes all of her, and she doesn’t mind one bit.

It’s insane to think that this is because of tiktok of all things, but she supposes love has always been mysterious.

After all, the goddess of love sprang from the sea, and the handbook of love was written in invisible ink.

[asweetprologue]

me lámh le do lámh - Part VIII

First | Previous | Next | Masterpost

They left the next day just after the sunrise broke watery through the clouds still lingering overhead, not wanting to overstay their welcome. The walk back to the nearby village was an easy one, the air still cool from the recent rain. The innkeeper hadn’t given their pre-paid room away to other guests despite the fact that they hadn’t used it for anything more than storage, which was a surprise. It was noon by the time they made it back, and they were easily able to secure the room for another evening so early in the day. Jaskier agreed to play at dinner, so they even managed to get a slightly reduced rate.

When they made it up to the room, Jaskier flopped immediately down on the bed, throwing an arm over his face. “Melitele, I could sleep for a week,” he groaned, slightly muffled. “I haven’t been this sore in years.”

“Good for you to finally get some exercise,” Geralt smirked as he checked on their belongings. Everything was where they’d left it, luckily. Geralt let out a breath of relief to see his potions all secure in their bag, the oathstone nestled amongst them.

Jaskier lifted his arm enough to glare at him. “As if walking day in and day out at your side isn’t work enough.”

“You’ve ridden Roach more than I have over the last week,” Geralt pointed out.

Jaskier put his arm down, head tilted to the side to look in Geralt’s direction. His hair spilled messily across the pale sheets. “I suppose I have,” he said, a small furrow appearing in his brow. The easy energy he’d had since they’d woken this morning was gone; now he seemed tense. His eyes lost their focus, his mind clearly going elsewhere.

Geralt didn’t know what to make of it. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m going to go and see if they have any contracts for me. We won’t be stopping much over the next few weeks.”

At this Jaskier refocused, curious. “Where are we going next? We have all the pieces for the ritual, right?”

Geralt nodded. “The last piece is a location. We’re going back to Posada.”

*

The journey from the Brokilon to the Blue Mountains was one of weeks, rather than days. At this time of year the River Sodden and her many roads were wide open, and they were able to easily pass south under the Mohakams. This far south, spring was already giving way to summer, the warm vestiges of the Nilfgaardian desert winds finding their way to the pockets and hills of Angren and Rivia.

It should have been a pleasant journey. It was one they’d taken many times before, once Nilfgaard was no longer an issue, and they were both well familiar with the area. They kept the river to their south and traveled during the cooler parts of the day, stopping often. The wide river offered a constant source of beauty and convenience, and they were able to wash and fish regularly. Rivia, though not Geralt’s home by any stretch of the imagination, was friendly and offered plenty of places for them to stop and rest at the halfway point.

It should have been downright delightful, but instead it was… tense. Jaskier was quiet and contemplative much of the time, reserved in a way Geralt had rarely known him to be. He barely touched his lute, to the point where Geralt asked after it, only receiving a vague and unconvincing answer about saving the strings from the humidity. He spent the evening hours scribbling away in his journal, or simply lying and staring up at the stars. Sometimes, disconcertingly, he watched Geralt, especially when he seemed to think Geralt wasn’t paying attention. The furrow between his brow had grown to be near constant, and his shoulders had lost their easy swoop. When they spoke, something about Jaskier’s words felt needling, as if he was testing the waters for something. What, Geralt couldn’t even begin to guess.

He wanted to ask about it, but he found himself unable to find the words to do so. Jaskier didn’t seem mad at him—he knew what that looked like well enough, and this wasn’t it. He wanted to ask, but if he did it seemed possible, probably even likely, that Jaskier would admit that he’d figured out that Geralt was hiding something from him. He might even have realized the extent of Geralt’s feelings, or what the ritual really meant. Maybe Silvandrel had said too much, or Geralt had been too expressive, or too generous. Whatever it was, Jaskier was smart, maybe the smartest man Geralt had ever known; it wouldn’t take much for him to put two and two together. As he found Jaskier’s eyes lingering on him more and more frequently, it seemed also more and more likely that Jaskier was just trying to find a way to let him down easily.

Still, it wasn’t unbearable. Traveling with Jaskier in a mood was still better than traveling alone, and as always Geralt relished the chance to spend such uninterrupted time together. It was the best in the evenings, when their camp was already set up and the heat of the day had dispersed, and they had nothing better to do than sit and talk before both of them grew too tired to stay awake.

“What’s it like?” Jaskier asked one evening, lying on his bedroll with his ankle propped up on one raised knee. His lute was in his hands, a rare thing nowadays, but he wasn’t really playing it, just plucking a tune here or there. Testing the waters, it seemed.

Geralt was sitting with his back propped against a ragged tree stump, charred at the top where lightning had once struck. He looked up from where he was examining Roach’s tack, taking too long to reply as he was caught up in the image of Jaskier in the firelight. “What?”

Jaskier swiveled his head to look over at him, looking uncharacteristically pensive. “Being immortal. Or—not mortal. What do you even call a witcher, anyways. Semi-mortal? How long do you usually live? I’ve never gotten a straight answer about it.”

Geralt shrugged, the bridle dangling between his knees as he set his elbows to rest on them. “No one really knows,” he admitted. “Vesemir is… three hundred? We’re not sure, that’s based on references he makes, but Lambert swears sometimes he says things just to throw us off. Witchers don’t really… die of old age.”

“Surely some of you must retire,” Jaskier insisted. “Maybe not lately, but in years past…”

Geralt shook his head. “If they did, I haven’t heard of them. The Path is our life; we meet our end while on it. I know we can live for several human lifetimes, at least. I was older than you are now when we met.”

Jaskier’s mouth twisted in a smile that ached with bitter nostalgia. “I must have looked like a child to you.”

“You were a child,” Geralt laughed.

Jaskier threw something at him, and it bounced harmlessly off his knee. An acorn; the entire area was thick with oak trees. Clearing the ground beneath their bedrolls had been a pain. “Ass,” Jaskier chidded, but he was chuckling too. “I suppose we must all seem rather young to people like you though. Yennefer is the worst, she shouldn’t be allowed to poke fun at my very dignified salt and pepper and then turn around and call me an infant the next moment.”

Young man, Silvandrel had said, with that odd patronization that came only to those who would outlive most people they met. “It’s… not exactly like that,” Geralt allowed, studying Jaskier’s profile painted in orange and gold and dark dusky blue shadows. “Age isn’t the same as experience. There are eighty year olds who have done less in their lives than you had at twenty-three.” Jaskier looked over at him again, with a distinct expression of surprise and awe that Geralt was beginning to recognize as his reaction to Geralt giving him a compliment. He pushed on, turning his own gaze back to the tack in his hands. “I just mean, you don’t seem young, or inexperienced—at least not anymore,” he added, unable to resist throwing Jaskier a quick smirk.

“So Yennefer just calls me a toddler for her own enjoyment,” Jaskier said, squinting at him.

“Well, yes,” Geralt snorted. “But, it’s—you’ll understand. After. It’s not that you all seem young, necessarily, it’s just that you all seem sort of… I don’t know.” He shrugged. It was difficult to articulate the strange sense of fragility and youth that he associated with all humans, no matter their age.

“Temporary?” Jaskier offered, and Geralt grunted an affirmation. Of course Jaskier would be able to identify the feeling without ever experiencing it himself. Jaskier hummed in acknowledgement, and was quiet for a few moments, as if mulling that over. His fingers played over his lute strings, picking out a melancholy tune. After a while, he said, “It sounds a bit lonely. Knowing that almost everyone you meet will die a hundred years before you do. That they’ll never understand the way you view the world.” His eyebrows were knotted together as he contemplated the night sky.

Geralt bit his lip. “It… can be. Even amongst ourselves, we never know who’ll make it back after a year on the Path.”

Jaskier’s foot tapped the empty air where it hung over his knee. “Everyone I know, went to school with, taught with in Oxenfurt. They’ll all be gone before I will, if this works.”

Geralt felt dread unfurl within him, but this wasn’t something that he could deny Jaskier. This was the reality of Geralt’s offer, of what he was asking Jaskier to do. “Yes,” he said. But you’ll have me, he didn’t say, even though it burned at the tip of his tongue. You’ll have my brothers, and Ciri, and even Yennefer, and you’ll have me, always. That’s the point.

Jaskier looked over at him, eyes bright. He looked like he could hear Geralt’s thoughts, like maybe he was thinking the same thing. And then he grinned brightly and said, “I’ll outlast Valdo Marx by a century.”

Geralt couldn’t help the startled bark of laughter that left his throat. Jaskier launched into an excited diatribe against Valdo Marx, something about destroying his legacy after death, and Geralt allowed the babble to wash over him as he went back to fixing Roach’s tack.

After a while the conversation turned to other things, and they spent the rest of the evening in relative quiet. Eventually it was time to bed down for the night, and they banked the fire and crawled into their respective bedrolls. Just as Geralt was on the edge of sleep, Jaskier’s voice slipped through the quiet darkness around them.

“I don’t think I’m going to be.”

Geralt shook himself, turning to squint at Jaskier’s grey form, two aching feet away from him. His entire body itched to roll closer, but he focused instead on Jaskier’s words. “Hmm? You won’t be what?”

Jaskier let out a deep breath into the night air, soft like a secret. “Lonely.”

*

Posada was much the same.

Geralt didn’t know how long it had been since he’d been back. He knew he had been here post-Filavandrel incident, and he suspected Jaskier had as well, but they’d not returned together to the little valley at the edge of the world since the beginning. It had to have been at least ten years since he’d last been here on his own, but the small town was relatively familiar looking still. It had grown a bit since the war, likely as refugees from the south settled in the area, and there were new houses clustered around the outskirts. Still, the bones of it remained unchanged, and the inn was right where they’d left it.

They said nothing as they made their way into the town and headed in that direction. There was, so far as Geralt knew, no other place to find rooms for the night, so they didn’t have much of a choice. Stepping inside the small downstairs tavern should have been just like stepping into any other of the thousands like it that he’d been in, but it wasn’t. Things had been rearranged, of course; the furniture had been shuffled, and now a long table sat on the far side of the room before the fire. The small, cleared out space that Jaskier had stood in to sing was gone, filled with a cluster of tables and chairs. But the lone table in the back corner was, somehow, unmoved.

Geralt turned to Jaskier and found him staring at the spot as if entranced. He brushed his fingers against Jaskier’s forearm, and the bard blinked at him, startled back into the moment. “We should get a room,” Geralt said by way of explanation, and Jaskier nodded.

The man who arranged for their stay was not the one who had done so the first time, or the time after that, but his features were similar, so perhaps this was a son. He was amiable enough, and though Jaskier didn’t make any commitment to playing he offered them a fair rate.

Jaskier did end up playing, after they’d sat and eaten a quiet meal, avoiding the table in the corner in silent agreement. His fingers had worried at the edge of his lute case for a long moment, his eyes unfocused, and then something determined had steeled over his face and he’d stood.

There was a decent crowd this time around, bigger than the last time—the first time—that Jaskier had played here. Geralt remembered the stumbling notes, the ridiculous stories that spilled from the bard’s lips, unrefined. The way that the patrons of the bar had heckled him until he dipped sheepishly off the stage. He could understand why Jaskier might be nervous about playing here; even if no one remembered him, this had obviously been one of Jaskier’s first real performances for an honest audience.

It was like night and day. Jaskier had the entire room eating out of the palm of his hand in moments, as he always did, and his voice was clear and strong. Geralt recognized most of the songs, and almost all of them were about him, though he didn’t think any of the patrons put two and two together. Whereas Jaskier normally poked and prodded at Geralt throughout a performance to let everyone know that his muse was present, tonight he was subdued, letting Geralt watch quietly from a side table without dragging him into the proceedings. He might have thought that Jaskier had forgotten his presence entirely, if not for the occasional glance he caught Jaskier throwing his way, stealing his breath each time.

When he was finally done with his set and bowed his way out to the cheers of the audience, he made his way back to Geralt with his lute tucked under his arm. Jaskier leaned against the table in the space next to him, their knees just barely touching where Geralt’s was thrust out away from the chair. Jaskier looked down at him with almost a sheepish expression, giving him a quirked smile. “So. Three words or less?”

There were so many things he could say to that. So many things he wanted to say. You’re so beautiful, he thought, his eyes catching on the way Jaskier’s fingers wrapped around the neck of the lute, how his eyes shone in the low light of the inn. I loved it. Don’t leave me. I love you.

Instead, he said, a bit hoarsely, “Definitely more accurate.”

Jaskier laughed, some of that tension he’d been carrying for weeks breaking, and Geralt felt sweet relief at the sound. “Well I’d certainly hope so, after nearly thirty years of tailing you. At the very least I know my drowners from my nekkers.”

“At least there’s that,” Geralt chuckled, passing Jaskier a tankard of ale as he sat. “Glad to see you got something out of it.”

Jaskier took a sip of his drink, leaning his cheek on his fist. His eyes were bright when he looked at Geralt, and his expression was one Geralt recognized—he was bothered about something, but trying to keep his demeanor jovial. On anyone else, Geralt expected it would be an immaculate deception, but Geralt knew him. He wasn’t fooled by Jaskier’s court masks.

“Was it worth it?” Jaskier asked, taking another sip of his ale. His eyes left Geralt’s, flitting around the room.

Geralt frowned at him. “Was what worth it?”

Jaskier looked back at him, expression unreadable. “Letting an ambitious and no doubt obnoxious bard leave this tavern with you all those years ago.”

Geralt couldn’t help it; before he could think to stop himself, he had reached out to set his hand over Jaskier’s where it still held the handle of his cup. Jaskier jerked a bit at the touch, a drop of ale sliding down over their layered hands. “Of course it was,” Geralt said vehemently, not bothering to keep the earnestness out of his tone. Jaskier had to know. Even if he already suspected that something was afoot, even if this was some sort of test, Geralt couldn’t risk letting Jaskier think that he regretted a single moment of it. “You’re… Jask, you’re one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Geralt could hear the sharp intake of breath at that, could see the way Jaskier looked down at their overlapped fingers and blinked rapidly. A small smile stole across his face, though there was a twist to it that seemed almost sad. “I’m glad, Geralt. Truly.”

Geralt wanted to ask, And for you? Was it worth it? But the tavern goers were quickly heading out now that Jaskier’s set was finished, and it was obvious that they would soon be the last ones remaining. And he found himself afraid, as he so often was nowadays, of the possibility that Jaskier would say no, that he should have spent the last thirty years playing in noble houses and courting beautiful women, rather than trekking endlessly after a surly witcher. He knew that it would make sense for Jaskier to have regrets, but he found that he didn’t think he was strong enough to hear them spoken aloud.

So instead he transferred his touch to Jaskier’s wrist, giving it a light tug. “We should head up,” he said, and Jaskier nodded. They pulled apart, and Jaskier finished his drink, and collected his lute. As they both turned to walk up the stairs, Geralt found his eyes catching once again on the little table in the corner. It had sat empty the entire night, as if waiting for something—or someone—to fill its seats once again.

~

Almost done folks! Just two more parts, and tomorrow’s includes the last piece of art for this story! 

tags: @whereismymonsterlover 

[clefairymuke]

regrets | chapter twelve

prev. chapter | next chapter

pairing: levi ackerman x reader

themes: enemies to lovers, angst, fluff, smut

tw: violence / explicit sexual content

word count: 1660

When the sun poked its head through the window and serenely convinced your eyes to open, you were disappointed and grateful all in the same moment. You stretched a bit, expecting your arm to brush Levi, but only being met with the soft white sheets adorning the bed the two of you had shared. Part of you was a bit upset, and the other was glad you didn't have to face him. What would you even say to him? You placed your hand over the ruffled sheets next to you; it was still warm -- he hadn't been gone long. Your mind had spun together embarrassment, confidence, happiness, dismay, longing and dislike all into one confusing feeling that left you dizzy.

As your vision focused, you saw his clothes still neatly laid over the chair. You sat up rather quickly and peeked over the side of the bed; his boots were still there, too. "Fuck," you whispered, throwing your head back on the pillow and sighing.

Like clockwork, Levi walked in. His hair was messy and unkempt, and his eyes looked tired. His pants hung loosely around his hips from the night of sleeping in them. Between where his pants hung low and his shirt rode up, the bottom of his stomach and the band of his underwear peaked through. "Good morning," he greeted you, the tiniest grin evident on his face for only a second. "How did you sleep?" He walked over to the chair, sauntering in the nonchalant fashion only he could accomplish.

"I slept well," you answered, embarrassed down to the bone. You knew your cheeks shone red, and you wished Levi had left before you woke up. "Sorry about last night. I -- um --" You watched as he pulled his shirt swiftly over his head with one hand and elected to stare at the ceiling instead. "I was having a pretty rough dream." You found yourself glancing over at him again as he buttoned and tucked in the white shirt he wore the day before. He nodded.

"Erwin kept me away much longer than I would've preferred. Don't be sorry, though. I needed to catch up on sleep anyway." He slung his jacket over his shoulders and sat on the edge of your bed, pulling his boots onto his feet. He tied them into bows before standing and facing you. He reached out and placed his hand on your shoulder, sending the same tingles down your arm that overtook most of your body the night before. "I have work to do. I'll be back tonight. Good luck with Hange today." With that, he turned and started toward the door.

"Levi," you called after him, seeing him turn his head to the side in acknowledgement, "you left your shirt." It was laid flat at the foot of the bed, neatly placed as if he put it there on purpose.

"I know."

---

When Jean came in that morning, you knew you were in for a ride. You had been questioning what to do in the hour between Levi's departure and Jean's arrival, and eventually decided on telling him the truth. You were pulling your shirt over your head as Jean sat on the bed and faced the wall opposite to you, and you decided now was as good a time as ever.

"So, I have a little bit of news," you began, your voice trailing. You watched the back of his head as he perked up, waiting excitedly to hear whatever you had to tell him.

"Well, go ahead and take the floor. No need for a dramatic introduction," he told you, folding his hands in his lap.

"Levi and I slept together last night," you obliged.

"What the fuck?" he said rather loudly, his head whipping around to face you. Your arms launched to cover your unclothed body as his face turned red, and he turned right back around to face the wall.

"Damn it, Jean, I'm changing!"

"My bad. You just dropped a lot of information on me at once. Maybe we did need a dramatic introduction." You watched him lay his head in one hand and saw the rise and fall of his back as he sighed. "You're going to be the death of me, you know. You had sex with Captain Levi?"

Your cheeks burned red at his assumption. "No! What? I didn't word that clearly enough. We literally slept together. Asleep. In the same bed. Together." You watched the rise and fall again as he breathed out, likely with relief.

"How the hell did you end up curled up in bed with the captain?" His tone sounded slightly less urgent, more exasperated than shocked.

You slid your shirt -- Levi's -- over your head and relived the events of the night before for what must have been the hundredth time. You half hopped, half limped around the bed and sat next to Jean, leaning back on your hands.

"Okay, so he came in and we had tea like always. Then, some guy I didn't recognize came to tell him that Erwin needed him in his office. He told me he'd be back soon, but after a few hours I fell asleep. When he came back, he woke me up because I was having a pretty bad nightmare," you recalled, looking up at the ceiling. Your eyes moved to Jean's as you continued. "He was making sure I was okay, and asked if I need anything. For some reason, I asked him to lay with me."

Jean shook his head. "And he just climbed in bed with you? That's hard to believe."

You shrugged. "It's the truth. He took off his shoes and his jacket and stuff and just hopped in. Cuddled with me and everything. It was pretty strange."

It was, undeniably. No matter how hard you tried to rationalize the events of the night before as the natural progression of your newfound friendship, or just a gesture of comfort during a traumatic time, the fact that it was strange at best was unavoidable. You hugged yourself inconspicuously and absentmindedly, thinking of how it felt to have his arm around your shoulders and your face tucked into the safety of his chest. You remembered how, when he thought you were asleep, his fingers started to trace circles in your hair and on your arms. He'd never admit to that, though. Just as you'd never admit that you laid there, eyes closed and yet still awake, until his breathing became even and his fingers trailed away to fall onto the mattress at your side. When you were sure he was sleeping, you finally allowed your eyes to peer up at his face for a few long moments to admire how peaceful he looked.

"Do you have a thing for him?" Jean asked, voice a bit less exasperated, snapping you out of your trance of memories.

"No!" you defended yourself, before the truthful part of your brain came forward. "Well, I don't know. I hated him a couple of weeks ago. Then he apologized to me, and started coming to my room every night. He's not as abrasive as he was before." You let your arms rest on your knees, hands hanging daintily down. "Maybe I do. But it isn't like it matters. He would never look at me that way."

The two of you continued idly talking about the night before as you walked to meet Hange, Connie joining on the way and ending the conversation abruptly. The day was full of much more walking on your own than the typical one, and it was evident how much better you were getting. You decided that perhaps the end wasn't too far away.

Still, you couldn't take your mind off Levi. You remembered your anger when he caught you stealing food for Sasha, the livid hate dripping from your voice as you yelled at him. You thought of his harsh tone as he berated you for risking your life, and again when he announced that he knew of your time spent with Eren. Then, your mind shifted.

You could hear the sincerity in his voice as clearly as day as he told you that he would have risked his life just the same in your situation. Even in his dislike for you, he found a moment to praise. The validation that moment alone gave you was immense. You imagined his arms cradling you as he carried you back from the bathroom that night, knowing that marked the beginning of everything with him.

Then, you thought of how it was now. The hushed talks over steaming cups of tea as you slowly became friends were now a staple of your day. Sure, he was tough, and hardly agreeable. At times you absolutely loathed him. But beneath that surface, you theorized, there was an entirely different person. You could see it when the corner of his mouth turned up as if he was trying to keep his smile as a secret. Or when he looked at you in concern, his almost invisible display of caring for you. When he touched your hand and asked if you were okay. When he held you so gently after your nightmare that you were sure you were in the arms of a much more sensitive man.

You thought of your excitement for the night to follow, of the feeling of the soft cotton of his grey shirt against your skin -- the fact that no one knew it belonged to him. It was overwhelming, yet predictable. Confusing, while still one of the clearest things you had ever experienced. Comfortable and serene and simple, foreign and anxious and complex.

Somewhere within your mess of a mind, you were sure of how you felt. You were also sure that it would be either a hopeful bound forward, or a troublesome march down the path of regret.

You hoped for the former.

[redgillan]

Under Pastel Skies - 8

Sugar daddy!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Modern!AU Bucky doesn’t need anyone, especially not a sugar baby. He isn’t that desperate… but she smiles so sweetly and she’s endearingly awkward, and he’s so lonely. She’s an artist, a painter, the type of person who always puts others before herself. Throwing caution to the wind Bucky offers her a place to live, a place where she can finally paint whatever her heart desires. He doesn’t need much in return; a friend, a muse.

Word Count: 3,734

Warnings: none

A/N: If this chapter had a name it would be “me, you, and steve’. Also I know how infuriating they are, so oblivious and dumb but isn’t it the point of pining ;) Thanks for your patience!

Wannabe sugar daddies, don’t interact with this post.

Bucky’s cab pulled over to the curb in front of his building. He tugged on the lapels of his coat, pulling it tighter around him, and braced himself for the blast of cold air waiting for him on the other side.

He hated the cold, hated winter. It reminded him of the day he lost his arm, alone on that godforsaken mountain until Steve found him. But he could deal with the cold if it meant he’d find you on the other side of that door.

He knew you were home, you had texted him about an hour ago telling him that you had a surprise for him. It had made him smile. He’d hurried home, desperate to see you even though he’d seen you that morning.

He had it bad.

He’d been restless since the gala, unable to sleep without dreaming of you, your velvet dress in a heap on his bedroom floor, your scent lingering on his bed sheets. He would wake up bathed in sweat, on the edge of coming.

He would deal with it with an ice cold shower.

Bucky had accepted the fact that his feelings for you weren’t as innocent as they once were. He had always thought you were strong, full of life and a little awkward, but lately he’d been wanting to kiss you, touch you, feel your warmth against him.

He wanted it so badly it hurt.

He wouldn’t say he loved you. He certainly felt something for you but love was something foreign to him. Sometimes he wondered if his feelings were even real. He’d gone from living an extremely solitary life to spending every single day with you. It could have easily been a product of his loneliness and your soft spoken demeanour.

He had stopped counting the number of times he’d almost kissed you on the lips. The urge was always there, eating away at him, but he always caught himself at the last moment, his lips landing on your forehead, your cheek or your temple instead.  

“I’m home,” he shouted, closing the door behind him. He bent to untie his shoes and kicked them off while he unzipped his coat. “What’s the big surprise? Is it something we can eat?”

He hung his coat next to yours on the hook and walked down the short corridor that led to the kitchen. As he walked, he became suspicious of the silence that hung in the air. Slowly he peeked into the kitchen and found you in the company of someone he thought he’d never see again.

“Steve?”

“Not edible, sorry, Buck.”

Bucky’s face broke out into an instant smile, ear to ear and ecstatic. “Fuckin’ hell, Rogers, you look like a yeti.”

Steve barked out a laugh as he stepped forward and hugged him. He wrapped both his arms around Bucky, almost lifting him off the ground despite knowing how uncomfortable hugs made him feel. Chuckling, Bucky returned his hug with one arm; the only kind of hug he could give.

“I’m happy to see you.” Steve pulled back and held him at arm's length.

Bucky looked over Steve’s shoulder at you who were standing behind the kitchen counter, grinning at them. “Is that my surprise?” You nodded. “Ugh, I was kind of hoping for pizza honestly.”

“Asshole.”

“I’m joking, man.”

Steve returned to his seat and Bucky followed. You grabbed a mug from the cupboard and fixed Bucky a cup of coffee. He gave you a grateful smile.

“I’m sorry you had to deal with this punk on your own,” Bucky told you. “Did he give you a hard time?”

“Nah,” you said. “He was pretty sheepish. Also, I almost gave him a heart attack.”

Bucky burst out laughing as Steve’s face and neck flushed red. You told Bucky the story of how you and Steve met outside his apartment building. Bucky doubled over laughing when you made a pretty spot-on impression of Steve’s confused face. Steve rolled his eyes at your theatrics, a smile on his lips.

“In my defense, no stranger has ever screamed my name like that.”

“Oh, if the alley behind the church could talk, it’d call you a fucking liar, Steve.”

“First, shut up!” Steve jokingly pushed Bucky off his seat. “Second, I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.” That sobered you both up faster than a cold shower. Steve caught a furtive sideways glance between you and Bucky. “Did I say something wrong?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” you replied with a smile. “I’m his, uh-” you trailed off and looked to Bucky for help but he was unable to speak. “I’m his roommate.”

“Oooh! Okay.”

Was that relief on Steve’s face? Bucky’s stare hardened. A muscle in his jaw jumped when Steve engaged you in a conversation. He asked you how long you’d been living with Bucky and if you liked the apartment. His tone was conversational but Bucky knew him like the back of his hand, he knew Steve was flirting with you.

“Are you staying for dinner?” you asked Steve. Bucky’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. You picked up the laminated meal plan from on the counter. “Creamed spinach and baked eggs.”

“Sounds great,” Steve agreed.

“You don’t like spinach,” Bucky grumbled under his breath.

“I’m not twelve anymore,” Steve countered with an arched brow. It made you laugh. “Besides I haven’t eaten a homemade meal in... wow, probably years.” Steve turned to you. “I don’t know if Bucky told you but I’m a landscape photographer. I live in the wild most of the year. It’s kinda like travelling by foot on an endless backpacking trip. It’s amazing but the food is disgusting.”

“Yikes!” You grimaced in sympathy. “Well, Bucky’s an amazing chef. I keep telling him we should open a restaurant together.”

You walked over to Steve and mock-whispered in his ear. “If we ask nicely, he’ll probably make us some garlic bread.”

That made Bucky smile. His first instinct was to answer with his usual ‘I’d do anything for you, angel’ but he couldn’t say that in front of Steve so he bit his tongue. He saw the disappointment in your eyes, as if you were expecting that usual answer too.

“I should go upstairs,” you said. “I have a painting to finish. Have fun, boys.”

Steve watched you go, then he shook his head and heaved out a sigh. He waited until he was sure you were out of earshot before he turned to Bucky.

“She’s quite something, isn’t she?” he said. “So, are you two...”

“We’re friends,” Bucky said.

Steve nodded. “Is she single?”

“As far as I know.”

Bucky’s jaw was clenched hard, the tendons in his neck looked like they were about to snap. He loved Steve like a brother but, goddammit, he wanted him to leave and never return. He balled his hand into a fist, feeling a visceral urge to punch something.

Yet, Steve seemed completely oblivious to Bucky’s turmoil. After living in the wild for several years, he was having trouble picking up on social cues.

“Do you think I should ask her out? I’m a bit rusty.” He ran his hand through his long hair, tugging at the strands. “I should get a trim first, right?”

“And a fucking shower,” Bucky grumbled to himself.

Steve didn’t hear him, he was too busy glaring at his hair in the big mirror on the wall.

Bucky tried to push away that nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was becoming harder to pretend this was all innocent. Not when he had to physically restrain himself from punching his oldest friend in the teeth. Steve was allowed to ask you out, Bucky had no right to be jealous.

And yet...

“How long are you stayin’?” he asked, eyeing Steve’s backpack. It wasn’t unusual for him to take Steve in when he was between assignments, but things were different now.

“A few weeks. Is it going to be a problem?”

“Listen, if it were just me, I’d let you stay,” Bucky replied. “But I’m not alone anymore. She doesn’t know you, you’re basically a stranger, and you’re already thinking of hitting on her. I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable. This is her home.”

Steve blushed. “No, of course. I understand. I would never-”

“All I’m sayin’ is, she has the final say,” Bucky cut him off. “If she lets you stay, you can take the kids’ room.”

“You sure? It’s right next to her room. I could take the room upstairs, the one above the living room.”

“No, you can’t,” Bucky sighed. “It’s her painting studio.”

Steve stared at him with a suspicious frown. “Are you sure there’s nothing between you and her?”

“Yup, she’s just a friend.”

He tried not to fidget as he forced himself to hold Steve’s gaze. He kept his head high and acted as composed as he could even though his heart was jackhammering in his chest.

“Okay,” Steve drawled out, not entirely convinced. “If you say so.”

As Bucky expected, you allowed Steve to take the guest room, the one with the bunk-bed, though Steve told you that it wouldn’t be a problem. It also meant that he would be sharing your bathroom, and while it didn’t seem to bother you, it made Bucky really uncomfortable.

That evening, he sat down with you and Steve at the dinner table. He made sure Steve was seated at one end of the table, thinking that if you didn’t have him in front of you, you’d interact less. Bucky’s plan backfired pretty quickly. Steve had so many ‘I-lived-in-the-wild-for-ages’ stories that he monopolized the discussion –and your attention.

Bucky spent most of the night lost in his own thoughts, daydreaming, and only smiled when he caught your gaze. He snapped out of his haze when he noticed that he was alone at the dinner table. You and Steve were washing the dishes, talking and laughing.

He felt a pang of envy at the sight before him; it was supposed to be him and it scared him that someone could take you away from him. Then it hit him. He wasn’t special, you were kind and sweet with everyone. It was what had attracted him to you in the first place; your kindness, your fortitude and loyalty.

He couldn’t blame Steve for falling for you, too.

“Guys, I’m going to bed,” he said, standing on the landing between the two rooms.

You turned around mid-laugh and smiled warmly at him. “Good night, Bucky.”

“Sweet dreams, angel.” It slipped out. He didn’t even realize what he’d said, but Steve did.

Steve cocked a brow at his best friend’s retreating figure before he hung his head and let out a brief chuckle.

Over the next few days, Bucky’s mood didn’t improve. He was holding back, unable to reach out to you the way he used to. Steve was always there. Always.

In the morning Steve would come back from a run, sweaty and hungry, and wearing a shirt that was two sizes too small for him. He really laid it on thick, even by his standards, but you didn’t seem to mind.

In fact, you would often go out with Steve when Bucky was working on his new book. He took you to art shows, introduced you to important people and you visited art supply stores together, which annoyed Bucky more than he thought possible.

He felt stuck in a Garfunkel and Oates song, praying for Steve to go away.

I could've wished a thousand wishes for Steve to disappear.

Worst of all, Bucky was snappy with you. Especially after he inadvertently overheard you and Natasha talking about Steve. You painted a vivid picture of Steve’s ass. Figuratively of course, though Bucky couldn’t be certain that you didn’t have hundreds of notebooks filled with drawings of Steve’s ass.

“Hey, stranger.”

He looked up when you walked into his study carrying a tray with his breakfast –coffee and two slices of toasted white bread with butter and jam. You left the tray on a pile of papers and closed the door behind you.

“I was wondering about you, since you didn’t show up for breakfast.” You stood behind him and worked your fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes and let you massage his scalp, the tension slowly leaving his body. “Something’s bothering you. I can tell.”

Bucky was so relaxed that his filter was non-existent. “Yeah, Steve’s bothering me. He stole my angel.”

“He can’t steal a mythical creature.”

“You’re my angel,” he half-moaned when you applied pressure to his scalp.

“I haven’t been feeling like your angel lately,” you said, giving him another squeeze before you let go of his head. You took a seat on the armchair close to his desk. “You’re... I don’t know. You’re moody and irritated, and I don’t know how to help you. I know you don’t like surprises, and Steve showing up out of nowhere and staying here was a pretty huge surprise. It’s difficult to cope with change but I think you’re acting a little weird. I swear, Bucky, sometimes you look at Steve like you want to kill him. Is it because we spend time without you?”

Bucky straightened up in his seat and took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. “Yeah, I guess. You two are having fun and I’m stuck here, alone.”

“You feel left out.”

“A bit,” he replied earnestly. “But if you like him, you should go for it. He’s a good-looking guy, he’s nice. He’s also a dumbass but that’s part of his charm.”

You laughed. “What? Why are you telling me this?”

“I heard you and Natasha,” Bucky explained, blushing. “You said, and I quote: ‘he's got an ass you can bounce quarters off of.’”

You burst out laughing. “Oh, Bucky.”

“What? I’m just sayin’ if that’s what you wanna do... I’ll give you a bunch of quarters.”

“No, thanks,” you laughed. “I’m good. I keep my quarters for something else.”

Bucky speared you with a suspicious look. “So you don’t think his ass is like a juicy peach.” He blinked. “Also a direct quote.”

“Oh, no, I stand by what I said. His ass is so-” you lifted your hands and made a squeezing motion “-tight.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” he rushed to say. “It’s not that impressive. Anyone can do squats. I do squats.”

“Fishing for compliments?” He rolled his eyes and shook his head. You looked at him with a fond smile. “Eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He reached for a slice of bread and bit into it, focusing his attention on his laptop screen. You got to your feet and walked to the door.

“Oh, um, by the way, how much of that conversation did you hear?” you asked, leaning against the half-open door.

“Not much, I left after the juicy peach thing.”

You hummed while nodding, your eyes cast down. When you looked up at him, a glint of something mischievous shone in your eyes. “You should have stayed a little longer,” you said enigmatically, your eyes roaming shamelessly over his body.

You raised your eyebrows and closed the door behind you, leaving Bucky speechless and confused. “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” he shouted, hoping you could hear him through the closed door. “Angel? Come back!”

Needless to say he didn’t write much after that.

Bucky made a conscious effort to stop being an asshat. A week later, he was in a better mood, and only glared at Steve twice –the first time when Steve put his hand on your knee and the second when he made a vaguely flirtatious remark.  

You let Steve and Bucky handle the dirty dishes, and Bucky was sure you did it on purpose. Your little smug smile said as much. Steve didn’t seem happy, he had never liked household chores and probably only did the dishes to spend time with you.

Bucky remembered Steve’s childhood bedroom; shades always down, his bed perpetually unmade, and a monster pile of clean and dirty clothes on his desk chair. He remembered Sarah’s exasperated sigh whenever she entered her son’s bedroom. It made him laugh.

Bucky had always been a neat person, something his mom always took pride in. ‘Look at my son who does his own laundry and sets the table without being asked. Look how well I raised him!’ After his accident, cleaning became an obsession, a way of controlling something that was uncontrollable.

“Did you get Sam’s text?” Steve asked, tossing the now-wet towel on the counter. “Emergency brunch tomorrow at 10.”

“Yeah, I know. Sam has a loose understanding of the word ‘emergency’. Last time he wanted to know if he could pull off a goatee. Not exactly an emergency.”

“Mhh,” Steve replied, thinking. “Are you coming?”

“Hell yeah,” Bucky chucked, “I wanna know what this new emergency is.”

Steve cast him a sideways glance while leaning his back against the kitchen counter. He mulled over something as he watched his friend clean the sink.

“So, um,” Steve started awkwardly. “I have a date tomorrow.”

Bucky’s hand faltered a bit. “Ah? With who?”

Steve looked toward your bedroom door and let out a very loud sigh. “A real-life angel, Buck.”

Bucky let go of the sponge and straightened up abruptly. He glared at Steve, hoping he’d heard him wrong. “What did you just say?”

“I have a date tomorrow night so you’ll have the place to yourself.” Steve smiled to his friend, blissfully unbothered. “I think I’ve been invading your personal space. You always look upset so I thought this would be a great idea. And I’ve been alone for so long, I need... relief you know.”

“Awesome,” Bucky replied, gritting his teeth.

“Great, I’m glad you see it that way,” Steve said, grabbing Bucky’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “See you tomorrow, Buck.”

He watched Steve walk to his bedroom and close the door behind him. Something inside him cracked, and he felt the overwhelming urge to throw something, watch it break into tiny pieces.

He took a deep breath and went in search of you instead. He found you upstairs in your studio, kneeling in front of a canvas, the handle of a pair of pliers in your mouth. It took you a few seconds to acknowledge his presence, and Bucky grinned when you let out a little shocked gasp.

“Did you have fun washing the dishes with Steve?” you teased, taking the pliers out of your mouth.

“I think we need a dishwasher.” He walked into the room and squatted down on his haunches next to you. “Whatcha doing?”

“I’m removing the staples on the stretcher bars so I can roll up the canvas and put it in a tube,” you said. “This way they’re protected and I can carry them pretty easily. I have a meeting with a gallerist tomorrow. Apparently Steve knows her well. He mentioned my name and she wants to see my work.”

“That’s amazing, angel,” Bucky exclaimed. “How can I help?”

“I’m almost done. I just need to finish this one. Can you grab that sheet of plastic on the desk? We’ll wrap it in it and then we’ll use a piece of canvas for extra protection.”

He followed your instructions and made sure not to ruin your hard work. Once the canvas was in the tube, you placed it against the wall next to two similar tubes. Then you cleaned up and put away your tools.

“I don’t know if Steve told you but-”

“Yes, I know,” Bucky cut you off. “The date. It’s great. Honestly.”

“Yeah.” You lowered your gaze and studied your shaking hands, unable to meet his eyes. “Listen, I was thinki-”

“I really need some time to myself anyway,” he talked over you. “So it’s great, y’know? We all get what we want.”

“I guess,” you replied. “It’s getting late, I should go to bed.”

“Getting up bright and early tomorrow, uh?” The jovial tone in his voice sounded forced, even to his ears. You nodded mechanically. “Well, good night.”

“Good night.”

You both stood unmoving, staring at each other. Your eyes were asking for something, pleading with him, but he was too lost to understand. He was lost in his own feelings, remembering something Sam had said a while ago.

There’s an entire world between like and love.

And it was true.

Like was doing the dishes with you. It was laughing and screaming while you chased each other around the living room, using fairy lights as lassos. Like was booping your nose when you watched him cook dinner. It was speaking gibberish after watching a foreign film.

Love was that sweet agony that made him feel more alive than he had ever felt. It was letting you hold his hand and play with his fingers even though his nose felt itchy. Love was seeing you wrap his bow tie around your wrist like a bracelet. It was walking around a deserted planetarium with you.

Love was the colour of your favourite lipstick; Carter Red.

“Thanks for your help,” you said, interrupting his train of thought.

“My pleasure.” He tried to smile but it hurt.

Everything made sense now. His crankiness and irritability, his sudden aversion to his oldest friend, the one who had saved his life. The one who had asked you out on a date –or so it seemed.

“Sweet dreams...” he paused, considering, then used your name instead of your usual pet name.

He had no right to call you ‘angel’ anymore. Steve had asked you out first, he had asked Bucky multiple times if he was okay with that, and Bucky’s answers had always been a gritted ‘yes’.

The truth was, his epiphany didn’t change anything. He wouldn’t have asked you out because there was too much at stake: your friendship, your livelihood, your career, the well-being of your family. He couldn’t put you in an uncomfortable position, couldn’t ruin your hard work.

And he was terrified of these feelings. They were too new, too raw.

You pinched your lips together and nodded, avoiding his eyes. He clenched his jaw hard, hating the resigned look on your face. Why did you look so defeated? Without saying anything, you walked past him and left the room, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Part 9

[personasintro]

one day | ksj drabble

𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀; you and your boyfriend are spending your holiday in malta, but you've no idea that during your stay he realizes something very important – until he tells you and you couldn't be happier

𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲: fluff, smut, established relationship

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: fingering, unprotected sex, strong language, teasing, dom!seokjin but he's kinda sub when oc teases him, oral sex [male receiving]

𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 4.7k

a/n: commissioned by @moonerva​ who's been incredibly patient with me, so thank you luv again!! also, this drabble is a part of the one I've written before, but can be read alone! (you can read it here!)

𝗺.𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 | ☕️

Warm air spreads across your cheeks while you walk through the night streets in Malta. Hands locked with your boyfriend, you admire the architecture and just enjoy your time spent together. It's a nice change from your daily lives, although you love what the two of you have back home.

Moving together proved to be the best decision you – as a couple – have made. Your first shared apartment isn't huge, definitely not the right home for the rest of your lives, but it's home for now. Surprisingly, Seokjin is very neat with his stuff, making sure there's no mess that you could possibly complain about. And no matter how many times his firm, but incredibly nice mother had told you, it's pain in the ass to live with him, you know you've made the right decision. Obviously, she was teasing most of the time, making sure Jin hears her whenever she talks behind his back.

“Mooom, stop. Do you want her to break up with me?” You remember him whining from the kitchen, preparing the dinner for the two most amazing women in his life.

Mrs. Kim just waved him off with a laugh, telling him you're not going anywhere.

And she was right. You're not and you're still very in love with her son. There's nothing that could change that, not even him acting like a child throwing a tantrum whenever he plays one of the games on a computer, getting angry over him loosing. Just the single memory is enough to make you smile, glancing at your boyfriend who looks at the baroque church you're passing by.

“You want to take a picture here?” he asks, pulling out his phone to take another set of pictures of none other, than you.

He already has hundreds of your photos, posing in front of monuments or just you completely oblivious that he's taking a picture. He loves those photos, they catch your natural beauty – and he loves whenever you catch him in the act, scolding him for doing that in the first place.

The same thing happened just an hour ago, when you were sitting in one of the local restaurants. You were enjoying your dessert when from the corner of your eyes, you could see your boyfriend stealing a few snaps of you. He cackled when the cream dripped down your chin, but he didn't stop and still teased you by taking pictures. It was funny, the locals and tourists nearby probably thought the two of you are crazy.

“We took so many already,” you laugh, admiring the building nevertheless. “Look! There's a fountain!” you exclaim, pointing ahead of you while you rush there, leaving your boyfriend standing in the middle of street with dumbfounded look.

He chuckles, thanking for your red dress that makes it easier to find you. They're just basic summer dress, with flowery pattern but it's you that make them gorgeous. You're gorgeous. Quickly following you, the last thing he needs is to loose you, he rushes towards you. He doesn't see you for a moment, his heart picking up the pace when all he sees are tourists and locals filling the street. He can't begin to imagine that something might happen to you. His eyes dance across the street, panic raising within his entire body and he's ready to yell your name, not caring he's in the middle of street full of people. Luckily, when a group of tourists leave, his eyes find you immediately. You're sitting on the edge of the fountain, fingers dipping in the clear and turquoise water. A breath of relief leaves his mouth and he allows himself to relax, although he fully relaxes as soon as he's by your side. He grabs your shoulder, sighing once again as he closes his eyes.

“You scared me,” he tells you, “I couldn't see you.”

And you want to tease him, turning around to take a glance at him but the grin disappears as soon as you see his face. He looks so scared and when he sits beside you, you notice his shaky hands that you quickly grab.

“I'm sorry, I thought you're right behind me.” you apologize, bringing his hand to your mouth as you give them a kiss.

“It's okay.” he smiles, knowing deep down he just panicked a little bit too much.

He lost you out of sight for a whole minute, and you're not a little child that needs his protection. But he can't imagine something bad could happen to you, just the thought of it makes him want to throw up. You're everything to him. He wants to be there for you, anytime you need him. He wants to protect you, cherish and love you for the rest of his life. He can't imagine feeling about someone like he does about you. Sure, he had couple of girlfriends but they were never that serious and then you came. When he least expected it, you came into his life and brought light into it.

When you look at him through your thick lashes, the little and decent make-up that makes you look much more youthful and natural, his heart blooms with even more love.

“No, it was stupid of me to do that. We're in a foreign country full of strangers. I'm sorry.” you insist, shaking your head to prove your point as he smiles at you.

He reaches towards your face, grabbing your cheeks as he stares lovingly into your eyes. Opening his mouth, he's about to say those three words that you love to hear, and always bring the brightest smile onto your face full of love and adoration. However, he's interrupted by the round of applause coming nearby that steals both of your attentions.

There is a woman, her hands covering her mouth as she's crying while the man is on her knee, holding a shiny ring. She nods, yelling a confident 'yes' before she pulls him off the ground and hugs him. Everyone starts cheering and even you, in the distance, can't resist and start to applaud for them. The bright smile that is caused by you being happy for some strangers decors your face and Seokjin joins you, applauding too. Although, his eyes are set on you.

“Oh my god, did you see that? That was so cute!” you beam, turning around to look at your boyfriend who acts like he hasn't been staring at you for awhile.

He smiles, nodding. “Yeah, it was lovely to be a part of such experience.” he admits, seeing you glancing at the couple that takes a few pictures with the woman's new ring before they walk away.

“Woah, that was so romantic.”

“Is that how you'd like our engagement to be?” he asks, head tilting in curiosity while he watches you.

Your cheek flush as you tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “I don't know, I'd like anything to be honest. I'm not picky.”

“Well, you can be more detailed. You know, for the future.” he wiggles his brows, causing you to laugh at him before it dies down and you stare at him.

“Are you planning to propose, Kim Seokjin?” you tease, eyes sparkling with amusement and adoration.

To be honest, the thought about marriage crossed your mind a few times. It's something you both want and talked about at the beginning of your relationship. But now that you've took another step in your relationship, that being you two living together, a marriage is the next big step. Although, it doesn't have to be so soon and the last thing you want, is for Seokjin to feel pressured. Whenever is the time right, you know it'll be amazing and one of the most special memories.

“No,” he deadpans, eyeing widening when he sees the horrific look on your face. “I mean--not now!” he quickly explains himself, causing you to giggle over his stressed expression.

“I was just joking, Jin,” you giggle, standing up. Dipping your fingers into the water, you lightly splash his face to get him out of his zoned state. “Now come on, I believe you promised me something after we get back to the hotel.” you smirk, remembering his promise.

His eyes darken as he stands up abruptly, clutching your hand in his as he leads you back to the hotel. You can't help but giggle at his determination, teasing him about it, considering he had you this morning and the night before. He laughs with you, but stays silent.

Little do you know that his mind is filled with other scenarios, not of him making love to you, but him bending a knee with a shiny ring in his hands, asking you the most important question that would change your lives.

What would you like?

Would you want it to be in a public?

Or would you prefer it to happen privately?

Would you even say yes?

Are you ready for marriage?

Even he knows that it might be too soon, but it's not too soon to be thinking about it and start planning it. He decided long time ago that you're the only one for him, he doesn't want anyone else. You'll be the mother of his kids, you're going to carry his surname and make him proud. Fuck, the thought makes him happy and he can't wait for it to happen. But you're both too young, and although you love each other deeply, you're taking it slow and naturally. There's no point in rushing, not when he knows you're the one and you feel the same way.

The hotel room that you've booked for a week looks messy. The sheets on your bed are completely rumpled, there are Seokjin's and your dirty clothes all over the floor. Despite of you being a neat person, and so is Jin, but you left your room like this, not bothering to clean up a little bit. The two of you were too excited to look around, knowing you'll spend your whole day outside anyway. The only time you spend there is when you're sleeping or your boyfriend is pounding you into the already messy mattress. God, you hope there are no traces of your morning and night adventures.

It's more about your dignity than anything else, when you're about to do the same thing like every evening. However, this time you don't let your boyfriend leading you towards the bed and having that power over you.

“Oh come on, princess.” he scoffs lightly, once you push his shoulders and make him sit down. He plops onto the soft mattress with ease, looking up at you with a mere shocked gaze.

Caressing his broad shoulders, you take your time to feel him through the fabric. Jin's shocked expression doesn't go unnoticed by you, but you ignore it and let him stare at you with a hidden interest. He's usually the one who takes the first step, guides you while you're in the position of enjoying his touch and let him do the whole work. It sounds selfish, but it's really not. One of Jin's pleasures is to see you enjoying yourself with his touch. He loves the fact that he's the one who makes you squirm, moan and whine for him.

He spreads his legs, allowing you to stand between them as his hands are automatically grabbing your hips. He almost groans at the thinness of your dress, silently admiring how it fits you and your figure, even though they're completely loose and don't show your true curves, you're still breathtaking. Even the slightest tan you've managed to get in three days of your stay. He lets his eyes wander around your little details, like the diamond necklace you've been wearing ever since he gave it to you on your first anniversary. It's a simple necklace, a little heart sparkled with tiny diamonds. The other necklace – the shorter one – has a little 'S' on it. It symbolizes him and his name. You bought it for yourself, wanting to have him close to you even if he's not by your side. He didn't buy it, he's not so narcissistic. It's cheesy and so cringe, according to your own words, but it settles a calm feeling whenever you're stressed and Jin isn't there. You've never felt so attached to anyone, and it scares you. Just he thought of him not being in your life freaks you out. You wouldn't be able to live through your break-up, if that ever happens. Fuck, you hope not.

Jin remembers the exact moment when he saw the necklace around your neck. He was surprised, but couldn't help that stupid and wide grin from appearing on his face. When you told him why you bought it and even laugh it off, he just couldn't stop staring at you before he showered you with hundreds of kisses.

“What do you want, Jin?” you ask slowly, hands still caressing those wide shoulders while he scoffs again.

“Is that even a question?” he asks, causing you to raise a brow at him. He sighs, but still answers. “You, obviously.”

“You had me. This morning and yesterday, actually. And the days before too.” you point out, not looking into his eyes but you know they're solely set upon you.

He's probably frowning, wondering where the hell is this going to? He doesn't like that, he wants to rip those dress off you. “What are you doing, princess?” he asks cautiously, voice low and raspy.

“What do you think I'm doing?” you ask, feigning an innocence while you bat your eyelashes knowing it'll drive him insane.

It does, his eyes darken and he clenches his jaw. Giving him a little smirk, you drop onto your knees knowing he'll be distracted from what he was about to say. And you're right, he shuts his mouth and stares at you through hooded eyes, while your palms spread over his knees. You give them a few strokes, staring at him while acting all innocent when deep inside, you're smirking and laughing devilishly.

“Princess,” he says, and it sounds like a whine but he controls his voice and gulps instead. “Touch me.”

Well, you're surprised by how quick it took for him to say it out loud. Jin never faked or held back his need for you, but you still thought the male pride would stand in the way.

And how could you resist those soft but dark brown orbs full of want and love?

Unzipping his pants, he helps you to take them off, not fully though. They pool at his ankles, along with his black boxers. His hardening length almost slaps you and you flinch back, not expecting him to take his boxers too. Raising a scandalous brow at him, he gives you an innocent shrug and smile which makes you giggle. Taking his length into your hands, you squeeze the soft and velvety skin, admiring that part of him. Well, it's not like you see it for the time but it's still worth the attention.

And from the corner of your eyes, you notice him smirking cockily at the salivating look you give him. Spitting into your hand, he curses at the sight before you start stroking him. His hips jerk and with a head thrown back, you're the one who smirks this time. He groans, wanting you to fasten up your pace but you don't. He must be thinking you're not getting the message, and that's why he looks at you and is met with your little smirk.

“Faster, princess. C'mon.” he says, jerking his hips again to prove his point but you just shrug.

“Why? I like it this way.” you tell him innocently, almost bursting in laughter at the sight of his narrowed eyes and clenched jaw.

“Y/N,” he warns you, his breath hitching when your thumb brushes against the mushroom head. He realizes him being sassy won't get him anywhere, and you'll just tease him even more. He sees the darkened and amused glint in your orbs, and although it's something fresh and he hasn't seen it for a long time, he knows you're in one of those moods. “Please, princess.” he whines and he gets the reaction he wanted.

You listen, obviously happy with his reaction as you quicken up your pace. Your saliva is used as a lube, making it easier to pump him. He moans when you set up a stable pace, jerking him off while he gets fully hard.

“Put it in your mouth now,” he breathes out, “Please.” he adds, causing you to chuckle.

For a moment, he's scared you'll make him beg for it, although you've never been that type. God knows what's going on inside your pretty head, he thinks.

Scooting closer to between his hands, you kiss the tip of his length making him groan. Your soft and plush lips have that kind of effect on him, even though he's the one with a perfect set of lips that any woman could ever dream of. Sucking at the tip, he almost goes feral when you take him into your mouth. Going further, you let his cock go deeper while you take all of him. It's not easy and you almost choke around him, but holding your breath helps a lot and just the thought of how you make him feel is enough to continue. You drool all over his hard length, getting his balls soaked with your saliva as you hold yourself there. He moans, not having the heart to jerk his hips upwards even though that's exactly what the horny side of him tells him to do. He can't, and holds himself back as much as he can before you move up. You let his cock head stay inside your mouth, breathing through you nose before you take him again. This time, you start blowing him while humming around his throbbing cock. Your heart signs with pride when an evident groan slips out of his mouth and gets longer with each move you make. He pets your hair, groaning louder when you lick the underside of his cock.

“Oh, fuck. Princess,” he whines, hips jerking when you suck on the head again and hum in response.

Jin's mind is filled with the need to get a release, not thinking that there's a whole night ahead of you and if he cums now, it'll take time to get himself hard again. He could take that time to truly take care of you, to taste you and he knows your little moans would be all he needed to get his cock hard again.

But none of this is on his mind, all he can do is grabbing you by your head while he clutches your beautiful sleek hair in his grasp. He's getting there, with each moan getting a bit louder, you know he's about to cum down your throat. And you'd like that, but you have other plans. Just as he's forcing your face down onto his cock, you pull away. He nearly screams, his release being snatched from him in seconds.

Cheeks red and chest heaving, he narrows his eyes in confusion. He watches you wiping your mouth, detaching that line of saliva that connected your mouth and his cock, before he opens his mouth.

“What the hell,” he murmurs, shoulders dropping in disappointment at your sudden decision. “Y/N.” he breathes out, not hiding the disappointment in his voice either.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” you hum, eyes averting between his hard cock and face.

He grunts, reaching towards you as he gets you onto your feet effortlessly. You squeak in surprise, but your stomach jumps with excitement, especially when you hear him growl.

“You know I don't like being teased,” he says through clenched teeth, making sure you stare deeply into his eyes. “Whatever this little stunt was, you're done.”

Your heat pulsates at his words, clenching around nothing. Thank God he can't see your clenched thighs together, even though something tells you he probably knows. He always said you're easy to read, that's how good he knows you. There's not a person who knows you like Jin. Not even your parents, family or friends.

“But you like it, huh?” he chuckles lowly, tilting his head to the side. “You like when I get like this. When I talk to you like this.”

Nibbling on your bottom lip, you can't control the heat that spreads over your cheeks and all over your body that trembles with excitement in Jin's hands. He stands up, chest bumping against yours as he hovers over you. It's just for a second and it happens fast before you're sent to bed. Back bumping against the mattress, you stare at your boyfriend that has the same lustful look, like he hasn't had you every day. He can't get enough of you.

Eyes trailing down, he notices your dress being hiked up and exposing your thighs. “Take off your dress.” he barks an order, yet his voice stays light but authoritative at the same time.

Slowly sitting up, your eyes don't leave his face and you make sure it stays that way for the whole time you're slowly taking them off. Purposely, your movements are slow and you really take the time to get the soft and red fabric off your body.

“Don't test me, princess.” he warns you, narrowing those brown eyes at you in silent warning.”Underwear too.” he adds, mouth salivating at the sight of a similar shade of red bra and matching lacy panties.

And you do listen, trying to appear calm and slow when your heart keeps hammering inside your chest like it's about to jump out. When you're fully exposed to his hungry eyes, he hums in approval before he stands up. You almost let out a whine, fearing he's going to be the one to tease you right now or worse, he'll leave you high and dry. But it all dies down when he fully takes off his jeans and boxers which stayed pooled around his ankles. His button up is going next, falling carelessly onto the floor before he stands in front of you in his natural naked state. Licking your lips, you let your eyes wander to his still hard cock, waiting for attention. The angry red color of his head almost matches to your underwear that's laying on the floor with Jin's clothes.

He hovers over you, connecting your mouths as he tastes himself on you. He groans, hand dipping between your legs. Jin's thumb gently rubs your clit, humming again at the feeling of your wetness that spreads all over his fingers.

“Hm, maybe I should just stick my cock inside of you for all that teasing,” he tells you lowly, but still lets his fingers slide into your cunt. You gasp at the sudden penetration, walls automatically clenching around his two fingers.

Too good. It's too good.

“For that all teasing from you, I just might.” he chuckles, enjoying your squirming and breathless form. You make him feel powerful, he loves that.

His hand goes down, stroking his cock while you spread your legs for him. He holds a question in his eyes, but your whining and spread legs that he knows so well, give him an answer. When Jin finally lines himself up and thrusts into you, you're left speechless and able to move, until he's fully inside of you. He kisses you, rough and fast, before he starts rocking his hips into yours. But even that doesn't last that long, until he quickens up his pace and starts to pounding you. You shouldn't be so surprised, after all that teasing, you had to see it coming.

His name echoes in the room, you voice is like a sweet melody to his ears, along your moans and gasps of air that you let out every time he hits your g-spot with his thick cock. He feels your cunt clenching in approaching orgasm, while his eyes stay fixed on yours. Jin's grunting, pounding into you in harsh and quick thrusts. Your eyes close, rolling back when you see yourself cumming.

“Open your eyes,” he demands, his hand wrapping around your neck when you listen to him and open your eyes. He squeezes your neck softly, your eyes betraying you again as they roll back, chasing that long-wanted orgasm.

“I love you.” he grunts, slowly squeezing your neck again while you finally let go. Your cunt throbs, clenching uncontrollably around Jin's cock while he still keeps fucking you.

He's chasing his own orgasm, following you two minutes after as he cums with a deep groan, spilling himself into you. His cock throbs, twitching while he's painting your inner walls white with his seed. He rolls his hips into yours a few times, repeating; “I love you, I love you, I love you.” all over again.

“I love you.” you tell him, once he finally stops and drops his body onto yours. He's still careful not to crush you to death, his hands holding himself slightly while his hand is no longer around your neck.

“I'll marry you one day. And you're gonna love it.” he says, voice muffled and breath hitting your shoulder as he keeps his head buried between your shoulder and the dirty sheets.

If they weren't coated with yours and Seokjin's fluids, you'd feel much more disgusted. Surprisingly, you don't mind it that much. Let's wait until the two of you go to sleep.

His words make you smile, your heart flattering at his honest and soft words.

“I know I'll. No matter what you'll do and how you'll do it, I know I'm gonna love it.” you smile, feeling him do the same against your skin.

He pecks your shoulder, slowly lifting himself up as he slips out of you. His cum is already dripping down your ass, staining the sheets even more but you don't move. All you can focus is Jin's eyes staring into yours, a hidden meaning inside of them but all you can see is love. A pure love that makes your heart ache happily. You've never felt this kind of love.

“That's my promise. One day, I'll marry you and make you officially mine.” he promises, causing you to giggle.

“I'm already yours, you dummie.”

He gasps, faking a petulance. “But you'll have my surname and I get to call you my wife. And then, I'll make you nice and pregnant with my babies.”

You're not going to lie, his words have a huge effect on you and you know he's talking about future, but you already can't wait for it when the time comes. You're both still young to that kind of commitment, and you'd like to wait a little longer. But whatever the future holds for the two of you, you'll welcome it as long as it's by Jin's side.

“Look at you, here talking about babies.” you giggle, caressing your hands over his chest.

“If they get to be beautiful and smart like you, I want the whole army of them.” he says, your laughter echoing around the walls that sounds so blissfully to him.

A natural and soft smile spreads on his lips as he kisses you. Your lips mold together, creating a perfect rhythm that makes butterflies erupt inside your stomach.

“One day, maybe not the whole army but...” you trail off, making him laugh as he leans his forehead against yours.

“One day.” he says, eyes glinting with happiness and love.

Your own eyes mimic his – what are you supposed to do other than to nod and agree with a huge smile.

“One day.”