#but in an ‘i’m not tangled up in expectations and buried longing and loneliness so i can tell you there’s nothing there’

[autumnhobbit]

Genuinely think half the problem here is a lot of parents are not in a place themselves where they can teach their kids how to recognize when something is good, and how to handle the intricacies of emotions, attraction, and decency while navigating social relationships with other people.

When I was growing up, the way adults talked about relationships, both amidst themselves and directly to me, gave me the idea that marriage just sort of happened, like it was something you tripped into without conscious choice and were now stuck with. This led to a conclusion by me that any male I met could possibly be my future husband, which colored every interaction with stress and awkwardness and fear and kept me from actually being normal around other kids, because I had artificially inserted this importance into interactions that should have just been. Well. Interactions.

Looking back on it now, I can see that every single crush I had had absolutely nothing to do with looking at another person objectively, judging their character and decency, or even seeing if I liked them; if they made me feel safe, or engaged, or reinvigorated. I only had crushes on boys who I found cute or attractive. None of those necessary thoughts ever went into it, and none of the boys even liked or noticed me. Maybe one or two of them were actually people I liked and talked to. Hindsight also helps me see that when a guy was interested in me or had a crush on me, I was oblivious to it and was incredibly uncomfortable, because we were all kids and didn’t know how to talk or act and it just came off like them showing off around me or trying to talk to me when I didn’t know them, which led to avoidance on my part.

My husband was the first guy I ever met whom I actually liked and was interested in, and he was the first one who actually seemed openly interested in me. When I daydreamed about marriage as a kid, the only thing I thought about was a boy liking me. I never thought about what I would like about him, just about being appreciated and valued myself. Selfish, right? But I was emotionally neglected and it came out as desperately longing to be important to someone. And then when I found it, I realized it naturally came with a reciprocal effect on me. I do find my husband fascinating and comforting and I enjoy his company, I want to do things with him, experience new things with him, build a life with him. That couldn’t have happened if I dismissed him right away because I wanted to avoid the awkwardness of getting to know him.

I am aware we got incredibly lucky with each other, and I’m grateful for it. But what we have also took work that we both consciously chose to do. We had the guidelines of knowing that premarital sex wasn’t an option for us, and that certainly helped. But it’s tragic to think how many people could build happiness with someone if they could just let go of their fantasies and expectations long enough to see what’s really there and what could be if there’s mutual effort. But how could they? No one taught them, because no one knew how themselves. So many families of origin weren’t formed by conscious choice but by natural consequences of behavior, even if your parents are decently healthy and love you, they might well have no clue how to navigate relationships with others.

trads who use the term "courtship" are an immediate red flag to me

[bubupop]

Something about us (Mammon)

Your first weeks adapting to the Devildom weren’t the greatest, luckily you had a great demon humansitter! (Implied reader x Mammon). No beta reader. Angst(?) to Fluff. Also this one hit home as an immigrant myself):

-----------

Maybe he wasn't the smartest or best brother of them all, but he is without a doubt your favorite. It all started about a week after you came to the Devildom when the weight of the situation fell on you and the numbness wore off. adjusting was hard, it wasn’t your first time having to adapt to a new place but it didn’t make it any better, if anything it shook the ice thin ground of stability you had. All that effort thrown out of the window for a situation you couldn't help and now had to adapt to. You weren’t going to fit in, the dorm you were thrown into made you anxious and the knot in your stomach would easily go up your throat, crying and puking were fairly common, you were upset. totally. you were in your right to be, of course. You also felt all alone, in an unknown environment, no one to trust or who will love you, no safety net, no one by your side. The loneliness creeping on you during those long nights where you couldn't sleep. Least to say it was hard, you enjoy it all now but back then it really was hell for your sanity. 

But it all changed that day. It was a complete accident, obviously. Had Mammon known you were silently crying in the corner of your bed he would have never gone inside your room. Don’t get him wrong, he isn’t heartless by any means, he just wasn’t good at comforting people never been comforted by anyone else himself. So, when he just barged in your room, just roaming around at this random hour not expecting you to be there and seeing you lift your face from your knees, thick tears falling from your eyes…, well, least to say it broke his heart, being already a little fond of you it hurt. But, then again, Mammon is a dumbass. He just stood there, petrified. Unsure if he should leave the room or try his best to comfort you. You were petrified, too. This part of you was one you always reserved when you were alone and now, knowing someone just saw this ‘ugly’ version of you… needless to say it made your heart skip a beat in fear and throb harder, thicker tears started to form and your eyebrows frowned. Your head was now buried in your knees again and the sobbing and sniffing became more audible than before. Ah, Mammon had fucked up, no?

Slowly, he approached your bed, feeling guilty of intruding you in your alone time. He just sat on the edge of the bed in silence. Accompanying you. “Yer not alone.” That's all he said but also all he could think of saying as his thoughts tangled in his head. But your heart felt a little lighter. You cried louder and he, for a second, thought he had royally fucked up now and was about to stand up and sprint out the room when he felt your weight shifting in the mattress, moving towards him. He froze. You slowly reached for his hand, settling with barely grasping his fingertips. He stood there, and you cried a little more. You were not alone. Calming down a little and feeling embarrassed you used your other hand to tidy up your messy face and the other one stayed threaded to his. 

���I’m sorry. Thank you, Mammon. You are so kind.” Is all you could mutter after crying for a while, as expected your mind was a mess but the gratitude you felt towards your official babysitter was real. He muttered something under his breath as he stood up, nodded and left your room. The next day a little candy was placed on your desk. Ah, number two, isn’t it the best number?

It kept happening like that for a while, about a week and half or maybe two when it shifted. He would now be comfortable and you allowed him to be right next to you. Sometimes cuddled, some sitting and others on the floor. It was common now that he spent his days in your room and the other members of the household were indifferent to it so you thrived in their indifference towards you both. The human and the stupid older brother. Partners in crime. Best friends. He would soon rub your back and hold you slightly, flustered. But still there for you to hear your thoughts and from time to time he seemed to open up to you and mumble his own too. And, while it is true that Beel and Levi soon came into the picture, they weren’t Mammon. Mammon was both your best and first man, the one who opened his arms for you and gave you a safe space to cry, a shoulder to lie your head on that allowed you to become stronger and move on. He was already a comforting presence, a safe space, someone you could call ‘home.’

And if someone asked you: who is your favorite brother? You’d say you couldn't choose one, you loved them all so much to choose. But that would be a lie as not to hurt the others after how close you became with all of them, but truth to be told Mammon was, is and will always be your favorite, your first and best friend, ally, pact and many other things.

[dialux]

I’ve been going on a reading binge of all your Tolkien Women fics, and I cannot stop thinking about Indis. As a consequence I’ve created a headcanon that hurts my heart and I am going to inflict it upon you because this is clearly your fault.

Indis is one of those people just meant to be a parent, it fits her so well everyone knew it was just a matter of time before she became one. And once she gets married she tries so hard to be there for Feanor despite her own grief, but he won’t let her in. She has her kids and everyone congratulates her on having four (four!!) wonderful children, but in her heart she has five. Because Feanor might not have let her into his heart, but she certainly let him into hers, and she will always think of him as her eldest son.

It will haunt her to the end of all days and beyond, that he was always her son but she could never truly be his mother, and on her bad days she thinks that every catastrophe and death of the first age can be laid at her feet for not succeeding in the one thing everyone said was her speciality.

Okay, so a) fuck you, b) fuck you, c) fuck you. This story is basically just saying that, only in more euphemistic terms, anon.

...

Once, there were three: a woman with fair hair, a man with fair eyes, a woman with fair skin. 

...

The woman with fair skin is captured and taken by the Dark One to his fortress, where she languishes for long weeks in grief and agony. She is not turned, even as those captured alongside her become evil beings, twisted and gruesome and cruel. Melkor wonders why this woman- this limpid-eyed, weeping girl- can withstand what no other has managed.

He does not get the chance to find out.

The woman with fair hair storms Utumno. She drags her sister out alongside whoever is left of their people. But the fair-skinned woman collapses only a few days’ from the chill of Utumno, and she shows her sister the secret she expended all her fea upon: a child, a fair-haired, fair-eyed, fair-skinned girl.

Intyale the Fair-Haired buries her sister Indis in a cave of glittering light. Then she takes the child down to her people, and she bids her brother, fair-eyed Ingwe, to watch their niece. Indis he names her, for the mother she will never know, and he raises her as his own daughter, this girl who bears the brightest things of all his family.

...

She is the daughter of all three of them. Of Indis the Slain, and Intyale the Bright-Speared, and Ingwe the Grand. Indis bears one woman’s name and another woman’s steadiness and a man’s strength. She is the princess of the Vanyar. She will always be that.

She will always remember how desperately her mother fought to keep her alive. Hidden in Utumno, chanting song after song of hiding and cleaving and darkness, straining for one more moment- one more moment- to keep the little babe at her breast alive- defying Melkor himself- 

The Vanyar suffer the greatest of the losses to the Dark One before ever Orome comes to them. They- none of them, not from the eldest down to the youngest child- will ever trust Melkor ever again.

She was born in grief. 

The Doom that Namo places- it is shocking, it is pitiless, it is cruel. But then Alqualonde still rings with the laments of the Teleri. But then, Finwe is dead. Melkor has taken not just one from Indis’ life. 

She was born in grief, and, as one by one her children too learn that taste, she wonders: Perhaps the doom is my own.

...

When she is very young, she asks Intyale: What did I get from my mother?

And Intyale- this, Indis remembers very, very well- had paused, and considered, and then said, Her silence.

...

From Indis her mother, she receives silence. From Ingwe, she receives the knowledge of ruling and leadership. From Intyale- 

-from Intyale, she receives the strength of will to remain unbowed.

...

Indis loves Miriel with the kind of love of a calf for its mother: overwhelmingly, adoringly, all-consumingly. She spends hours with Miriel, learning to weave those tapestries, hands tangled in thread of silk and cotton and wool, eyes affixed to the wall just as often as she watches the silver spirals of Miriel’s hair.

The Noldor tend to craft to show their passion for the world, but Indis has nothing of that: she is a fair dancer, a well-versed scholar, a singer of surpassing talent. None of them call to her more than the rest.

She aids Miriel often, now that the building of Tirion is almost complete. Indis enjoys sitting with her and with Finwe, sipping a salty-hot tea as the light changes from gold to silver; she often falls asleep there, slumped over in her chair, and returns only at the second Mingling to Ingwe’s abode.

...

This is what they all forget about Miriel’s death: it was slow.

Slow and lingering and painless. She had dignity unto the end. Finwe clutched her hand until it could not be held. Little Feanaro is the only person in all of Aman, they say, who has lost his mother.

Indis bites her tongue until it bleeds, and does not speak.

...

Intyale dies upon the hills of the Ered Luin. Indis is still young in those days, not quite an adult and not quite a child. Three children are gamboling near the water, and there is- something. Not quite something, but not quite nothing either. Intyale realizes before anyone else, and flings herself forwards, bare-handed.

Bare-chested.

The water boar is driven backwards into the river. Indis grabs the children. Two maiar run, grasp the situation, calm the boar down with songs. Intyale emerges from the river dripping.

She collapses upon the sand, and Indis is there in heartbeats: Intyale is the only mother she remembers, distant and proud though she may be. When she dares to let her eyes drift to Intyale’s chest, everything tightens up inside of her. Her mother is rent open, from breast to belly. 

“No,” says Intyale, and reaches up, and grips Indis’ chin tighter than she ought to be able to, so close to death’s door. “Look at me, little one. We are more than our flesh.”

“You are dying,” whispers Indis, trembling.

“Yes,” says Intyale bluntly. “Call for Ingwe.”

Not for the maiar, who might save her. And not for the Valar either. Intyale has given up: Indis doesn’t realize this until later, but her mother- her aunt- would not have called for Ingwe had she not been determined to join the sister she watched fall.

Intyale forces Ingwe to swear to care for Indis as he would his own daughters. Then she asks for her spear, and to be burned until even her bones show no ash. She tells everyone who her sparse belongings must go to. And then, fingers clutching the bone-spear, she dies.

...

(Feanor, too, burns. Half her family burns to death, Feanor and Fingolfin and Fingon and Turgon and Maedhros and- and- and-

That fire is not of Finwe alone. Fire can be taught to catch, and Feanor never burned quite so brightly to anyone else as he did for Indis and her usurpation of his sainted mother. No: the fire is Indis’ inheritance, and Indis’ gift.)

...

Intyale does not tell anyone who her bone-spear should be given to. Indis finds herself holding onto it, and somehow never lets go.

...

This is what they forget: Miriel was the first to die in the peace of Valinor. 

The second is Finwe.

...

Feanaro has lost his mother, but Indis will become that mother if he will allow it. She would wish for nothing more. Of course she wishes for nothing more. 

But he does not.

Indis watches him when he does not realize. She can see it- the grief, the loneliness. He is a little boy, and Finwe is not half the father he would wish to be, and there are impossible things in this world that Indis wants- her mother, her Miriel, her peace- but most of all she just wants little Feanaro to be happy, to know happiness and joy and trust in it instead of fearing the joy will turn cold and dead in his arms.

...

Miriel had been- quickly angered.

So had Finwe. So do most of the Noldor. Indis is patient enough not to pay much attention to it. 

Well. She is patient.

...

Miriel had been easily provoked into greatness. A few insults, a carefree comment- Miriel would sit at her loom and weave, something ever-greater and ever-better. Even now, the finest gown in Indis’ keep is one that she received from Miriel the day after she spent hours insulting Miriel’s taste in fabric.

Indis would have done that to her in those awful weeks after Feanaro’s death. She would’ve gone in and insulted Miriel to within an inch of her life, made her so breathless with rage that Miriel would have levitated out of her bed to strike Indis about the face. 

But Este’s healers- called in when the labor lasted for more than two days- refused to hear of it, and Indis could only watch as Finwe’s face went whiter by the hour and all they heard from the sickroom were little Feanaro’s wails and the healers’ murmurs. She obeys the Valar: she watches Miriel fade into Lorien, and never return.

Little Feanaro is all that’s left of Miriel. 

She is certain that he’s very much like her, too.

...

Feanaro thinks that his dislike of Indis comes from her marriage to his father. Perhaps the dislike deepened into hatred then; Indis does not know. What she does know- for she’s ensured it- is that Feanaro hated her well before her marriage.

...

(“I expected better of you,” says Indis, once.

Feanaro is three years old. His eyes are Miriel’s in shape and size and beauty. Indis, determinedly, does not flinch. 

“I’m just doing with Rumil taught me!” he exclaims.

“In Valmar,” says Indis, “children learn their letters by the time they turn a year old.”

Feanaro flushes red. “I don’t like these letters. They don’t make sense.”

“Then make your own,” says Indis, careful not to let sympathy seep into her voice.

She does not smile when the news percolates through Valinor of Feanor’s Tengwar. She does not smile, but oh, oh: how she wants to!)

...

This is what they do not see: Feanaro is young, and while fire is forever dangerous, while fire is forever alluring, it is too easy, far too easy, to stamp it out. Especially when it is young. Especially when it is small.

Indis would have been the shelter to that little flame if he would have allowed it. But he will not, so all she can do is throw fuel onto the fire. Chaff and dross and dried straw: insults and backhanded compliments and petty slights. If Feanaro will not let her protect him, then she will build him so high that none will ever be able to strike him down.

(Letting him die was never an option.)

...

Finwe dies, and they leave, and then Feanaro dies, and then Findis disappears, and then Nolofinwe dies, and then Arafinwe comes to her, for the first time since his father’s body burned in Tirion’s courtyard.

“We have been given leave to go to Beleriand,” says Arafinwe quietly, solemnly. “Morgoth shall be defeated and thrown into the Void. The Vanyar shall all come, by King Ingwe’s decree.”

“Is there something you wish to ask me, then?” asks Indis gently.

Arafinwe swallows, one reflexive jump of his throat. “Will you join me?”

Indis rises. Steps away. Goes to her bedroom and plucks it from the wall, and returns in time to see her darling son’s shoulder slump with frustration. 

“I will not,” she says. Arafinwe jumps, startled. Indis steps closer to him and presses the bone-spear into his palms. “I will not return, Arafinwe, to that land. Already it has taken much from me. I will not offer it more.”

“But-”

“Take this,” says Indis. “It is your grandmother’s.”

Surprise glitters in his pale eyes. “I have a sword.”

“This has already held off Morgoth once,” says Indis. “There are tales that will never be told, of the courage of the elves that never saw the Blessed Isles. Intyale Bright-Speared was your grandmother named, and well-named was she! This spear held Morgoth back long enough to release prisoners in the depths of Utumno before ever Orome saw us, long enough to let Intyale’s sister flee. Long enough for Intyale’s sister to hand the child in her arms over to Intyale.

“The sister’s name is Indis,” says Indis. “I was that child. I was named for her.”

Arafinwe stares at her. “You speak so rarely of them.”

“I’ve no desire to relive tragedy for the rest of my life,” says Indis flatly. “Now come. You’ll need to learn how to use that, if you wish to hold Morgoth hostage!”

...

Perhaps she began this, when she chose this path.

Perhaps she could have averted this.

But Indis is the daughter of Intyale, and it will be her bone-spear held to Morgoth’s throat at the end of this awful, deathful road, and if nothing else- if nothing else- she has the will to remain unbowed, this girl born in the shadow of Utumno, this woman who watched all those around her fall as wheat before a scythe, this mother who would rather her children loathe her than die, this daughter who has lost both mothers and knows, bitterly, the whole of that unfathomable loss.

...

That is what she tells Feanor, finally, when he returns to life.

There is something thoughtful in his gaze. He nods, and returns, a week later, and when she blithely tells him that his sons have inherited his monotonous fashion sense, Feanor flushes, and then pauses, and then says, carefully, “I’d rather it be monotonous than Finarfin’s gaudiness,” and Indis drinks her tea- salty-hot, just as she likes it- and she says, smiling, “I am glad you can be taught.”

[the-darklings]

“ you’re my person. you’ll always be the one i go to. ” Jean + Clara/V 🥺

prompt: “you’re my person. you’ll always be the one i go to.”

pairing: jean x v (coa verse)

wc: 2.3k+ (aka I don't have an off button when it's them regardless of setting/verse)

notes: so while I'm obsessed with jeara in npfh verse, something about exploring them in coa where jean is almost a rogue figure in v's life and is near entirely removed from the overall dramas of her life is just so... (makes a vague, distressed sound). guess i'm just a sucker for "no matter what, life keeps drawing us back together" energy, also I just love their antagonistic, sexually charged banter : )

It’s the soft cocking of a gun behind you that alerts you to someone’s presence at your back.

It’s a split second, a whirlwind of gripping your own weapon, but it’s all too slow. Far too slow, John and Cassian and the Elder would have reprimanded you. Disappointing after years of work and training you’ve done. Sloppy at best, life-threatening at worst.

For priding yourself on speed as your greatest physical weapon, you simply react too slow. It’s not because your instincts are dull anymore — no, if anything, after the dessert you’re an even sharper version of yourself.

But there’s is a singular hole in your instinctive wall. One person who — unfailingly, and irritatingly — seems to slip behind every single one of your guards. More of a snake than you are. More deadly, more deceptively charming and coy.

"Well, well — look who the cat dragged in."

Jean’s voice is still silk. With the gentle roll of his accent, the ice in his eyes shifts and morphs — cracking at the sight of you; always, a match and a fuse — when you level your pistol on his face. Unflinching. A slight, indulgent twitch of his mouth greets your clinical action. He appears so infuriatingly unconcerned to have a fully loaded weapon trailed on him you have to bite back a snarl. Arrogant bastard.

But you’ve seen what his mouth is capable of. He would no doubt make an innuendo if you brought up the said mouth but he’s stopped entire gunfights with his wit and tongue alone in the past. Has stood beside you plenty of times, trying to weasel you both out of serious trouble.

You have a habit of running into each other every time the other needs backup the most. Neither of you would ever admit to needing one another but you’ve served each other’s self-interests plenty of times.

"What are you doing here?" you demand.

The Frenchman doesn’t move, dragging his stare over your body with curious, probing intensity. It’s near lazy, bordering on sexual perusal and instinctively your skin warms under the examination. Prick.

"Lovely to see you too, chérie,” he greets, his voice honey yet always just tantalisingly teasing the idea of more. He’s learned to present himself as the devil’s biggest temptation long ago; a temptation very few resist. His arm finally lowers with those words, followed by a click of safety coming back on but you’re not so quick to follow his lead. “You look positively alive," he adds, a touch sardonic.

Your lips twitch. "Sorry to disappoint."

Last time he saw a mess, not an assassin.

His broad frame is clad in a stitch-to-stitch perfect tailored suit. Dark and sleek. Not dark enough to be outright black but an odd, shimmering material that indeed reminds you of a devil in disguise. Prowling around and passing around favours and information but at a price — always a price, and never one you want to pay in the long run.

"Hm, yes,” he hums thoughtfully, a melody of rumbling deepness that is his voice settling in your gut as he draws closer. Strolling forward without a care in the world, as if you don’t have your pistol still raised. Still aimed at him. Your finger on the trigger. As if there isn’t a pinch to your features; a warning, venomous gleam in your eyes. “While you disappearing is no novelty. You disappearing for seven months to a point even I can't locate you certainly is."

With the sheer vastness of his web of information, you can only imagine how profoundly irritating he found it. Jean doesn’t like losing. Doesn’t like not being in control, in the know. Never has. Others dance to his tune. Losing is a language he doesn’t speak. If there is no way to get his way, he makes one. He cares little for the collateral damage left behind. His ruthlessness alone has always put you at odds though he’s always been quick to point out how hypocritical you are for your wry comments. How every enemy of yours has oftentimes been left spluttering on their own blood, robbed of life or a future.

You burn everything, chérie, he told you once, years ago now, to destroy so thoroughly is a curious talent for one so invested in life and greenery to have.

"I'm touched by the concern," you say eventually, your expression still sour and your mouth curved downwards.

Jean’s face creases at that, an eyebrow quirking, and lips stretching further back. That stupid little dimple in his left cheek appears again, and it’s a rare sight — one to always makes you wonder if this is genuine amusement or just another mask he wears.

"Actually I needed you to kill someone for me, vipère,” he rebukes, dismissive of your notations of sentimentality. A small sound whistles past his teeth, his eyes narrowing down on you when he halts in front of you, his chest bumping into the muzzle of the gun. The pearly white of his dress shirt cuts for a bleak contrast to your sleek, black pistol. “Your sneaky ways have proven to be... most useful."

His voice lowers, dripping towards a lulling, beguiling thing. He slants his head lower, near blending into the shadows of the room where you were searching for more information about your current mark just moments prior.

"Yeah, right," you huff, unimpressed.

"Does it surprise you?” he wonders curiously, his cologne tickling your nose when he slants even closer, still towering over you. And you know his cologne — so damn well, you know it in your marrow — know how it smells when it’s faded and muted. When you nudge your nose against the juncture of his throat, burying yourself in him. Greedy or not, you always stole his warmth. And for some reason he always permitted it. Perhaps he found some begrudging amusement in moments of lingering contact and intimacy between you. For a man who might as well be carved from ice, he knows exactly how to make you burn. “The idea that I think you're my person? A trustworthy contact? You'll always be the one I go to."

Your arm lowers at long last, making you peer up at him from under your lashes. Consider him. Jean’s mouth rests slightly agape, his breaths slowing, slowing, slowing — matching yours, you realise suddenly, ignoring the pinprick of desire at the base of your neck. His proximity chips at your guard and you lean closer too. Alone in this dark room, alone in this world, two solitary figures occasionally passing by each other. In these rare instances of proximity, it’s easy to forget your loneliness. Easy to pretend you’re one and the same.

Your fingers slither up his chest and towards his neck. To kiss him you would have to stretch your limbs and muscles. This you know intimately. If only because you know exactly how his body fits against yours. And what an odd thought it is — to know that where there is fear and unease with others, there’s only need to be closer with him. Every cell in your body seems to hum at the mental image; eager to agree, eager to indulge. The idea of sampling more of him, tangling yourself further in the spider’s web is too tempting. Too enticing. Jean inclines into you. Your escape, hideaway, so dissimilar to how the dessert felt. Like a gilded cage. A makebelieve. With him though it feels…

Your breaths mingle, intertwining, neither of you breaking the eye contact first. He doesn’t allow you a single inhale without devouring every micro quiver of your lips.

"Nice try,” you exhale knowingly before your mouths can touch, leaning back with a saccharine grin. Your fingertips tease over the heated skin of his neck despite the broken spell. It thrills you, the tension of strong tendons you feel there, pulled tauter by your prodding. “Now why are you really here?"

For a single instance, you think Jean will continue his pretence, his unending fictitious act. Mock you further with yet another agreeable mask he shows everyone else. But a flicker, and then his charm melts into something more cunning, crueller, yet somehow — impossibly — even hungrier and darker than before. He’s still too close, too physically there; next to you, in you, like a splinter you can’t get out. Or want to.

Unravelling of a facade packaged in a span of a second, a heartbeat.

"I need him alive, V."

His voice drips from honey to dark velvet. Teasing, seductive promise. Jean’s fingers drag against the curve of your jaw as he speaks, his touch inveigling but you’ve danced this dance before. He should know better than to expect easy prey by now.

"And I need him dead,” you snip back, cupping his cheek in return, scraping your fingers against the dark stubble against his jaw with an innocent tilt of your head. Sometimes you hate it — the way he’s able to rip out something darker in you, more chillingly untamed. Jean is a paradox, a tempest blowing against the ruleset. So often being beside him makes you recklessly want to do the same. “So if you're after something, I suggest you work quicker, Jean."

There’s a split second in which you think he might flip on you the way he’s done on so many others. A warm, inviting smile — all charisma and magnetism, toothy and wide — seconds before he plants a bullet in your body. You’ve seen him do it so many times in the past your head spins. In part from wondering if he will give you one last kiss before he pulls the trigger, or if he really believes you will not take him down with you if he attempts it.

"If I get the information I need by sunrise, have dinner with me tomorrow."

His thumb nudges against the curve of your bottom lip. Rough yet gentle, sensuous yet treacherous. He’s so used to getting his way you want to refuse him out of principle alone if nothing else. It’s rather enjoyable — in a dark, cruel way — to deny him, to see how many masks he can flip through until only his own face remains. You've yet to see such a day.

"There's a distinct lack of a question mark in that statement," you note coolly.

The tension between you sits like a physical weight. Overbearing and thick; you glimpse all the things he’s doing to you inside his mind already. His fingers digging into your hips, hoisting you into his strong arms. A hiss of searing breath against your ear, teeth against your neck, animalistic, skin against skin. Sweat and filth and passion. You’ve healed during your stay at the dessert. He can see it in you. A part of you has transformed, shed your old, torn skin — he’s certainly coaxed and encouraged this change in you prior. It had become a particular interest of his once John departed.

Bury your past, vipère, it doesn’t serve you anymore.

Glaciers of his gaze thaw and spark into a sapphire flame the longer you gaze at one another, hungry and wanting. Jean’s angular, virile features tighten with restraint but he doesn’t crack, a faint grin still lingering in place.

"I'm not going to grovel at your feet, vipère,” he says, his words ringing deeper and sultry, near gravelly. A knife’s edge, really, razor-sharp against your fragile pulse. His fingers trace the contours of your parted mouth, and you sense his breath when he nudges close. The scent of tobacco and red wine still lingers on his own lips muddying your honed senses. “It's not in my nature to do so. If I want something, I go for it."

And for some reason it’s him — him you lean into, him you don’t shun or snarl at when he touches you. So intimately. Painting you with his hands anew — bloody hands of a murderous man, a liar and a cheat.

Your lashes flutter. "And here I thought you liked games."

"Only the ones I win,” he breathes hotly, his teeth gleaming, a wolf’s jaws open for devouring. His large palm slips to cup your face, bracing against your cheek, steadying you. Your mouths are almost touching, almost kissing, almost biting. “And you... are... most certainly a game I'm happy to play every time, ma vipère.”

The last part — wanton and just a touch possessive, throaty with a heavier accent — scrapes against the shell of your ear. Hot, wet exhales of oxygen skitter against the curve of your neck and it leaves you shuddering against him. Jean grins into your skin at the small victory, his mouth flitting over your beating pulse in reward. Once, twice. He’s not touching you further, and you grind your jaw to prevent yourself from touching him in return.

Always the game of who will give in first.

When he realises you’re not about to hand him his victory as he no doubt hoped you would, he pulls back, a flash of teeth visible in the darkness. Lights from the street outside illuminate his handsome features when he moves back. His eyes drink in your form, from head to toe, his thumb swiping over his own mouth slowly. It coils your stomach when you realise it’s the same hand he touched your mouth with.

An indirect kiss to taste you. Despite your controlled expression, you feel that distant kiss as if he were smearing your mouth with his until your edges blurred with his.

“Dinner will be at 8 pm sharp. Don't be late,” he instructs, low and smooth, his voice still scratchy with hunger. He pivots to go but pauses midturn, glancing at you over his shoulder while his hand slips into his slacks. “Oh, and do wear red. You always look so fetching in that colour. And it looks ever-so pretty on my bedroom floor."

[f0rever15elf]

They Were Roommates: Part 2. Jealousy

Part 2 of They Were Roommates: Part 1 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5  / Part 6 / Part 7 (Coming soon) Pairing: Moder!Pero Tovar x f!reader Rating: NC-17 Word count: 6,010 Warnings: so much smut (i’m not sorry), oral (f receiving), vaginal sex, lots of swearing, restraining, over stimulation, tiny bit of angst (for the spice) 

Summary: The first intimate night with Pero has been weighing heavily on your mind. A night out with his coworkers helps to fix everything. 

A/N: Thanks to @whiskeyslasso​ for so many of the inspiring ideas, and for convincing me to make this into a multi-part series. Also, for your sweet words about the first part. I hope this lives up to your expectations.  How many parts? I dunno, let’s see when I run out of ideas lol. I can’t even begin to tell you how long I spent staring at the wall trying to work this part out. 

Masterlist |  Ao3

Life with Pero didn’t really change much after that night you asked him to stay with you. Not quickly, anyways. You both still go to work, you still prepare dinners, and he still helps to clean the house. The only real notable difference is how much closer Pero stays to you. When you cook, he is either sitting at the bar watching you, or leaning against the counter in silence as he observes. When you share a moment of down time on the couch, he pulls you to his side, draping his arm around your shoulder as calloused fingers dance along the curve of your body. But the biggest difference is that your room slowly becomes your shared room. With each progressing day, more and more of Pero’s clothes make their way into your massive closet, taking up the other half that is usually kept empty. Your sheets take on his smell and his toiletries find their way to the counter next to yours.

It was comfortable.

The only thing you don’t really like is how unspoken everything is between the two of you. You had never really talked about the night of intimacy you two shared after he caught you with your pants down, literally. You had thought that labels didn’t really matter to you, but with Pero, you find yourself wanting them. You want that affirmation that what you have with this grump is more than just a mutual comfort in the embrace of another, warding off the years of loneliness. You want to be able to call Pero well and truly yours.

Fingers snap in front of your face and you zero back in on reality. Pero stares at you, the corners of his lips tugging downwards as his eyebrow arches in question. “You still with me, hermosa?” Your cheeks heat up as you attempt to stutter out a reply.

“Y-yeah, sorry, I don’t know where I went just now. What were you saying?” You scratch at the back of your neck, an anxious habit.

“I asked you if you have to work this weekend. Friday night.” He crosses his arms, leaning back in the bar chair as he watches you attempt to save dinner, the chicken looking a little crispier than you would have personally liked as you flip it.

“Shit,” you mumble, disappointed, before looking back up. “No, I don’t. I have Saturday off also. Why?” Pero just shrugs, not saying anything and it’s your turn for your eyebrow to arch. “What are you planning, gruñón?”

“I’m planning nothing,” he grumbles, staring you down.

“You know, I really don’t believe you,” you mutter as you grab two plates down, serving up the chicken and rice before hopping up in your seat next to Pero. Your leg rests against his as you eat in silence, the touch comfortable and familiar at this point. The silence allows your mind to wander again,  thinking about just what exactly this was, what it could become. You weren’t even sure if that was something Pero was looking for. Hell, you hadn’t realized it was something you were looking for until the thought of spending your life without your Spaniard caused an ache to riddle your chest. Falling hard into your daze again, you don’t realize that Pero has already cleared your places until he quickly rotates the seat of the chair, caging you between his arms as you yelp.

“Hermosa, you don’t seem well. Lost in a daze all day…” His rich, dark eyes scan your face, and you could swear that worry creased his brow just a bit more than his scowl already did. His face, his body so close to yours kicks your heart into a sprint as you press back into your seat, eyes wide.

“I just have a lot on my mind, Pero. It’s nothing.” His steady gaze holds yours long enough that you fidget in your seat, worrying he was going to call your bluff. Slowly, ever so slowly, he leans forward until his lips are level with your ear. The feeling of his breath against your skin sends a shiver down your spine and you have to bite your lip to keep from whimpering.

“Then why don’t I fuck you until the only thought you have is of how much pleasure my cock brings you buried inside that needy cunt?” The huskiness of his voice shatters all resolve you have and you melt, hands snapping up to grip his arms as a whimper finally makes its way past your lips. He nips at the shell of your ear before pressing his lips to your neck, sucking and nibbling at the exposed skin. Your head falls to the side as you let out a needy whine, fingers digging into his biceps. Pero presses himself as close to you as the chair will allow, spreading your knees so he can stand between them. When a gentle beg for more passes your lips, Pero pulls back, staring down at you with a look so dark and hungry that you feel as if your body will spontaneously combust.

Strong hands move from caging you to the chair to rest on your thighs, inching up under the bottom of your shorts. The touch feels electric along your skin, raising goosebumps along it as you squirm in your seat. His hands move at a maddeningly slow pace, avoiding the heat at your center in favor of gripping your hips. His eyes never leave yours as he gauges your reaction, unable to get enough of the sight of you.

“P-Pero please, don’t tease me like this,” you beg, your eyes reflecting your need and desire as you can feel a wet spot rapidly growing in your panties. With a growl, he crashes his lips to yours, swallowing your pleas with fervor. He pulls his hands from your shorts, instead grabbing your legs to wrap them around his waist before sliding his hands under your ass to lift you out of the chair. Your arms wrap around his neck, holding yourself to him as he carries you back to the bedroom, his lips never leaving yours. A little nibble to his bottom lip draws a groan out of him before he lays you down on the bed, laying himself on top of you. Impatient fingers tangle themselves in the thick curls at his neck, tugging them to hear that delicious moan you pulled from him the last time you found yourself in such a position. And oh dose it work like a charm.

The guttural moan Pero lets out goes straight to your core and you wrap your legs tightly around him, pulling his hips down against your as you rock your hips up against his, desperate for some kind of relief. His hands grip your hips in response, holding them firmly to the mattress as he pulls back, eyes raking up and down your body. “Fuck…” he breathes, watching you writhe under his grasp, lost in your own desperate desire.

In a flash, Pero’s hands leave your hips only to yank your shorts off your body, tossing them somewhere on the floor. You shiver at the sudden cool air brushing over you and the predatory smile works its way across the Spaniard’s lips that raises every single hair on your body in anticipation of what he has planned for you.

“I think dessert is in order, eh hermosa?” He scoots down the bed until he is level with your absolutely dripping slit. He hums in appreciation as his fingers spread you wide, drawing a heat to your face as you grab his hair. “Look at you, so desperate for me.” How is it he could say such things so easily? His words absolutely ruined you every time, and you weren’t sure if you go get any wetter. When he finally takes your clit into his mouth, you damn near come up off of the bed, curling up around his head as he absolutely devours you. Your legs wrap up around his head, but he lets you go long enough to press your legs back against the bed, effectively holding your down, spread wide for him as he savors the taste of you on his lips. The hairs of his mustache tickle you in the most delicious of manners as his tongue delves inside of you, tearing a keen of pleasure from your throat.

You weren’t prepared for when he eases two fingers into your dripping slit, his tongue running circles around your clit in a way that had you seeing stars. Your walls clench around his fingers and he groans against you, his own hips grinding against the bed as he seeks his own pleasure. As your fingers curl tighter in his hair, you lay back against the bed, your back arched and eyes screwed shut. The sounds of him sucking and licking at you, the squelches of his fingers plunging inside of you, were absolutely obscene. And you love every second of it.

As he picks up the pace of his thrusts, you begin to pant and whine, begging for him to let you cum. You were so fucking close, teetering right on that edge, you just needed a little bit more. Reading your body, he drags his teeth lightly against your clit and you scream as your stomach tightens, euphoria washing over you. Pero continues to thrust his fingers into you, still sucking at your clit until it becomes to much and you lightly push him away, your chest heaving from the intensity of your orgasm.

As he sits up, resting on his heels, his tongue runs along his lips to collect the traces of you shining on his face before licking every drop from his fingers. You weren’t sure you have ever seen something more erotic. Your eyes dip quickly to his waist where you find his bulge straining in his pants to the point where it looked uncomfortable, and a smirk works across your lips. Getting on to your hands and knees, you crawl towards him, pressing your lips to his in a hungry kiss. The taste of you on his lips draws a moan from you and you reach to palm his cock through his pants. He bucks into your touch, letting you have this moment of presumed control.

“You know, I still have all of these thoughts in my head,  gruñón.” The words tumble from your lips, dripping with as much desire and intention as you can manage as you glance up at him from under your lashes. You see the fire in his gaze flare and he grabs your wrists, pulling your hands from his pants and up over your head. His head tilts ever so slightly and your heart stutters, your breathing picking up.

“Que mala.” you shiver at his words, trembling with want in his grasp.

“P-please…” The quivering of your voice is impossible to stop, and Pero’s smirk widens. He lets go of your hands which drop to your sides and presses firmly on your chest, pushing you back onto the mattress. The gasp that earns him sounds like music to his ears. He steps from the bed to rid himself of his clothes and you move to sit up until he passes a serious look your way, with the slight shake of his head. You lay yourself back down, swallowing thickly.

Once rid of the offending garments, he slowly climbs back over you, capturing your lips in an absolutely starved kiss that leaves you breathless before reaching into the nightstand to grab out a foil. He raises it to his teeth, ready to rip it open until you grab his wrist.

“L-Let me,” you beg, and he shivers.

“Fuck...beg in that voice and I will bring you the world, hermosa.” He allows you to take the packet from his hand and you use your own teeth to slowly tear it open. You take his leaking cock in your hand, pumping him twice, reveling in the hiss between his teeth as he bucks into your hand before you slowly roll the condom on to him. As soon as you do, he grabs your hands, forcing you back onto the bed with your hands pinned above your head in one of his. You bite your lip in anticipation, bucking up against him and he growls, running his other hand down your body before lining himself up, slowly easing in to you. Your jaw drops and you toss your head back, letting out a silent scream of pleasure as he fills you so completely. You feel his eyes on you as you revel in your own pleasure, bucking up against him wantonly. His hand grabs your hip firmly, holding your down as he thrusts into you so fucking slowly you could scream.

Squirming against his hand holding yours, you let out a needy sob, your face so contorted with pleasure and need. Pero watches you, drinking in every bit of your beauty as the sounds escaping you severely test his resolve. It’s only when your eyes open, delirious and glassy with pleasure, and your lip trembles with the ghost of a beg on them that he snaps his hips against you, ramping up his pace. He drops his head to your neck, sucking yet another mark along the tender skin there as he plows you into the matters, each thrust tearing pleasured screams from your throat.

“Yes, yes, yes oh my god, PERO!” His name on your lips because of how he fucks you drives him mad and he tilts his lips to your ear.

“So fucking beautiful, como una diosa,” he grunts, the sound of skin smacking against skin ringing in your ears. You let out another pleasured whine as his hand runs along your stomach before slipping between your bodies, rubbing your clit in languid circles, a harsh juxtaposition to the brutal pace his hips have set. Your cries of pleasure turn strangled as you arch off the bed, begging for release. Begging him to let you cum. He nips at your ear, picking up the pace of his rubbing as he growls into your ear. “Cum, maravillosa. Scream my name and cum for me. Let the neighbors know who fucks you like this.”

That was all you needed. A blinding white light flashes through your vision as you arch up off of the bed, your walls clenching down tightly on Pero’s cock as he keeps up his harsh pace, riding you through it. Your toes curl and your fists clench as his name echoes off the walls of your room. Everything is totally him, the only thought you can bring together being how good he feels, how good every point of contact with him feels. How desperately you want this to be how you always exist, totally consumed with him, by him. The whimpers and moans from your lips bring Pero to his own climax, his hips slamming against yours as he captures your lips once again, crushing his to yours. He groans into your mouth as he thrusts shallowly a few more times before breaking the kiss, gazing down at you with a smirk.

The look of you can only be described as “thoroughly fucked out,” and he twitches inside of you at the sight, knowing he’s the one who left you like this. His hand releases yours, but you don’t move, too exhausted to. As he eases himself out of you, his soft moan matches yours. He leans down to brush the hair from your face and press a kiss to your forehead before he moves to the bathroom to clean himself up, bringing you a glass of water as he returns. You graciously accept, your throat raw from your screams of pleasure.  

“And how are those thoughts now, hermosa?” He settles into the bed beside you, smirking at you.

“What thoughts?” You grin back at him and he chuckles, shaking his head before closing his eyes as he enjoys the light feeling of his release relaxing his body. You prop yourself up on your elbows, looking down at him as he rests. This was one of those few times where the frown lines of his forehead smooth out, his face relaxed. He looks so peaceful and you’d never tire of seeing it. The smile on your face fades ever so slightly as your previous thoughts slowly worm their way back to the forefront of your mind. He said he would never leave you, but what if he had just been placating you? He needed a roof over his head still, what if he had just said what you had wanted to hear so you wouldn’t kick him out?

A frown tugs at the corners of your lips as you get up, sighing at feeling so thoroughly spent. Maybe a shower would clear your mind. Pero grumbles, rolling over to watch you as you strip out of the shirt that never got removed in your haste. You were still acting strange, he thought, but he wasn’t sure what was the matter. And, well, if you wouldn’t talk to him, there wasn’t much he could do. At the sound of the water turning on, he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.

Under the water, you close your eyes, trying to let the droplets take your anxieties with them as they roll down your skin. You had to be overthinking things, you just had to be. Over the months you had spent with Pero under your roof, you had learned one thing; if he was displeased with something, he let you know. You needed to just...let this go, and let things develop if they were going to. With a sigh, you turn off the water, stepping out and drying off, wrapping the towel around you as you head to your dresser for a change of clothes.

Laying yourself next to Pero feels like the most natural thing in the world. His arm drapes across your waist, pulling you against him with a soft grumble before he dozes back off, and you could laugh at how often you found yourself like this, your cheek pressed up against his chest. The steady thrum of his heartbeat strong in his chest echoes in your ear, and your own falls into cadence as you relax against him, joining him in sleep.

For the next few days, you don’t see much of each other. Work has been keeping you late so by the time you get home, Pero is asleep, usually on the couch. He loved his security detail job, but it was physically demanding and left him exhausted pretty early into the night. It bordered on a blessing, him being asleep by the time you got home, allowing you to sneak to your room after covering him up to be alone with your thoughts and avoid his prying gaze as he still tries to figure out what was driving you mad.

Friday finally rolls around and you head off for your morning shift, leaving Pero sleeping soundly in your bed, not wanting to wake him on one of his rare days off. You are sure he had been planning something, the man had practically been GLUED to his phone for the past three days, something he rarely did. What you weren’t expecting, was to come home around lunch time to see him in the kitchen, cooking. Or, well, attempting to cook anyways. The smell of burnt sugar hangs in the air causing your nose to crinkle.

“Pero…? What...are you doing?” His head snaps up, the look on his face that of a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar before the stoic, grumpy look replaces it once again. You wander into the kitchen to see the mess he’s made. It looked like your pantry had exploded and you arch an eyebrow, staring at him.

“How you do this every night, I will never understand,” he grumbles, moving a smoking pan with two charcoal briquettes off of the burner, turning off the heat.

“You mean cooking?” you chuckle, hopping up in the bar chair across from him. “Dad taught me from before I was able to see up onto the counter. What, uh….what did you utterly destroy in that pan there?”

He scoffs, tossing the spatula into the pan that you really hoped wasn’t ruined. “It was fish. At one point, anyways.” You bite your lip to fight back the smile that wants to split you lips at how irritated he sounded, like this whole debacle was the fish’s fault.

“And...why did you do this…?” He looks up at you in response, staring at you again with that intensity that he has carried with him since the night you first saw him. It causes your pulse to quicken and you clear your throat, sitting back in the chair.

“I thought it would be...nice,” he mutters under his breath, turning to put some of the…many…dirty dishes into the dishwasher. “We need to eat before we go, anyways.”

“Go? Go where?” He turns around, still scowling as he cleans and you hop up to help him, putting away the spices that littered the counter tops.

“Out. To a bar. My idiot coworkers want us to come.”

“I haven’t been out in ages...are you sure you want to go? I never took you for the bar patron type,” you grin and elbow his side and he casts a sideways glance your way.

“William will not stop harassing me, so we should go so I can have five minutes of peace at work for once.” You snicker and nod, scraping the remnants of the fish into the trash before letting the pan in the filled sink to soak.

“I finally get to meet this William you talk so much about! That will be nice.” You swear you think you hear him let out a low growl and turn to look at him quickly before shaking off the idea. “I’ll wear something nice. I haven’t dressed up in a while.” He nods, grunting as he shuts the dishwasher with a little more force than necessary before starting it. “And we can grab a bite to eat on the way there. Maybe some pizza. Pizza is good before a night of drinking.” You quickly squeeze his hand as you walk by him, smiling. “I’m going to shower and get ready, and we can head out.” You feel his eyes follow you down the hallway and you sway your hips a little more than normal, putting on a bit of a show for him before disappearing into the bathroom.

“Are you done yet?” Pero calls from the living room a couple of hours later, his voice bordering on exasperated. “I’m turning gray.”

“Oh hush you! You can’t rush perfection!” You yell from in front of your vanity, lacquering your lips with a shimmering gloss before pinning two silver hoops into your ears. You step back from the mirror appraising yourself. A navy blue strapless dress was your choice for the night, with a wide silver accent belt and your silver, strappy heels. You wore a smokey eye that took you three tries before you were finally satisfied with it, settling on your silver hoops and thin silver choker for jewelry, your hair up in a simple, neat style. Your heels click down the wood of the hallway, your purse over your shoulder as you head to the living room. “I’m all set. Let’s go eat, I’m starved.” Pero grunts, standing from the couch before looking at you, his mouth falling open for the briefest of moments before snapping it closed again. You grin and do a slow turn. “Well, what do you think?���

“Guapísima…” He says softly, coming over to stand in front of you, his eyes raking over your body. “Gorgeous.” You beam up at him, preening over the complements.

“You’re looking pretty amazing yourself, gruñón. Wine red suits you.” Pero was wearing a deep red button down that he had rolled up to the elbows and some black jeans. You didn’t even realize he owned any button downs. His hair was still a mess, but it looked like he had at least tried to tame it some. You bite you lip to try and keep the lewd thoughts at bay about how amazing he would look with that button down open, hovering over you as he- Nope! None of that! No time for that! Shaking your head in an attempt to clear it, you grab your keys and head out the door. Pero follows silently, his eyes never leaving your figure as you walk in front of him.

After grabbing your pizza, the two of you make your way to the club that apparently William had suggested. It wasn’t one you had ever heard of before, but it was on the nicer side of town, so you weren’t too worried. The two of you made it in without a problem, skipping the line, and you were pretty sure it was due to Pero’s size and that scowl he still had plastered on his face. It’s amazing his face didn’t hurt from wearing the expression so much. Loud, bass heavy music filled the club, the low, flashing lights disorienting you for a minute. Pero rests his hand on the small of your back and it sends a shock up your spine as he leads you to a table near the back.

“There he is! The resident grump!” A happy looking man with dark blonde hair stands up, the lights shining in his eyes. “Glad you finally made it!”

“William. Of course we came. Now maybe you will leave me alone at work, eh cabrón?” William chuckles at Pero’s suggestion and shakes his head.

“Not a chance, amigo. After this, we’re gonna be best friends.” You giggle at the grumble Pero lets out as he guides you into the seat, sliding in after you. “Hello there, pretty lady. The name’s William. I’ve been partnered with your grumpy friend here since he joined our little security detail.” You smile and extend your hand to him, shaking it firmly as you give him your name.

“It’s nice to finally meet you. Pero’s told me a little bit about you, but it’s good to finally have a name to put to a face.” You chuckle as Pero crosses his arms, scowling at William. Your left hand comes to rest on Pero’s thigh, squeezing gently in an attempt to calm him down. It was going to be a long night if the man didn’t try to relax a little.

An hour or so and a few drinks into the night, some more of William’s friends show up, including his girlfriend Cynthia. You take an immediate liking to her, and after she finishes trying to suck off William’s face, she grabs your hand and pulls you to the dance floor. You laugh, swapping stories about the men in your lives, giggling like schoolgirls. It had been a while since you’d had a girlfriend to actually talk to and you absolutely craved the attention. Pero never left the table to come dance with you, electing to stay and talk with his coworkers. Every now and then, you would feel his eyes on you and you would punctuate the sway in your hips, knowing he was watching. A shyer you would have perhaps thought twice about doing this, but after several stiff drinks, you don’t have a care in the world.

Cynthia eventually wanders off to the bathroom, but you stay on the dance floor, enjoying the bass pumping through the building. You feel someone behind you and turn with a smile, expecting your Spaniard. When you are met with the eyes of one of Pero’s coworkers, your eyes widen in surprise as he joins you in dancing to the music.

“I don’t think I ever got your name! I’m Justin!” he calls over the music. You nod and give him yours in return, smiling as you dance with him. You aren’t sure how long you danced for, or how many jokes he tells, all you remember is that he is one of the funniest guys you had ever met. You like him, and were happy that Pero was working with someone so nice. Suddenly, hands are on your hips and you jump, looking up over your shoulder to see Pero there, glaring daggers at his coworker. You rest your hands over his and tilt your head in confusion. He looks down at you before crushing your lips against his own in a harsh kiss, pulling your ass back against him. When he breaks the kiss, his eyes dart over to look at Justin again who is slowly backing away to head back to the table. Your brow furrows and you turn in Pero’s arms, wrapping your arms around his neck. His hands still hold your hips, pulling you flush up against him.

“What the hell was that about?” You ask, confused as you attempt to keep the tremor out of your voice at the feeling of him through his jeans.

“I didn’t like how he was looking at you,” he growls, watching your face in the flashing lights. “Like he wanted to take you right here in the middle of the dance floor.” You shudder at his words, the hard edge to them something you had never heard from him before. It sounded possessive, and it went straight to your center.

“He was just being friendly, Pero.” He scowls, leaning down to kiss you again, biting at your bottom lip roughly. You gasp and open your mouth, letting him lick into it as your tongues dance around one another, drawing a moan from you. Pero’s fingers dig deeper into your hips and you were sure you were going to have bruises.

“No. He wasn’t. I am the only one who gets to look at you like that. Me. No one else.” His possessive, demanding tone raises the hairs all over your body and you shiver, pressing yourself up against him.

“Pero...are you...jealous?” You voice is coy, a grin spreading over your face. He grunts and pulls his hips back ever so slightly before pulling you harshly back against him, earning a pleasured gasp from you. He leans down to growl in the shell of your ear.

“We are going home. Right now.” Anticipation and adrenaline flood your veins and you nod rapidly. He takes your hand, pulling you to the door with just enough time for you to wave at Cynthia at the table, making a gesture to text you. The cool night air does little to calm the heat that fills your whole body. Pero’s grip on your hand is firm, his pace brisk as the two of you make your way home. He remains silent until the front door of the apartment shuts and locks.

The next thing you know, he has your front pressed up against the entry way wall, his hand palming your ass through your dress as he slides a knee up between your legs, spreading them. His lips attach to your neck as he bites a bit more forcefully than you were use to, and you would be lying if you said the little bit of pain didn’t turn you on. You let out a lewd moan, pressing back against him.

“P-Pero, what has gotten in to you?” you whimper.

“Mine,” he hisses against your skin. “You’re mine, no one else gets to look at you like I look at you. No one else gets to know about this.” He smacks your ass and you cry out in pleasure, begging for more. He leans back enough to flip you around so your back is against the wall before his knee returns to between your legs, pressing up against your soaking panties, his lips pressed to yours. You grind your hips down against his thigh, whimpering into his mouth as your hands come up to grab fist-fulls of his hair. His hands greedily grope your breasts before moving down to your hips, guiding your ruts against his thigh. This time, it’s you who breaks the kiss, muttering against his lips.

“F-Fuck, Pero, I need you. Right here, right now. Please.” You accentuate your plea with a tug on his hair and he groans, reaching a hand down to undo his jeans. He pushes them down just far enough to free his cock from the restrictive trousers and you bat his hand out of the way, gripping his cock and giving it a few sharp strokes. He mutters curses in Spanish, digging into this pocket to yank out a condom. You reach for it as you did the other day but he yanks it away from you, tearing it open with his teeth before rolling it along his length. Strong hands grip under your thighs, hiking you up against the wall. You wrap your arms around his shoulders, pressing back against the wall as he holds you there, yanking your panties aside before lining himself up with you. His lust blown eyes glance up at you as he sinks you down on his cock, fully seating himself inside of you. He smirks as the grip on his hair tightens, your face contorting in pleasure, and his hips move back before sharply thrusting into you.

From the start, he sets up a brutal pace, one far more frustrated than the other times he has fucked you. Jealousy brought out something entirely different in Pero, and you love it. You feel wanted, desired, needed; and the roughness it inspired in him was driving you insane.

“Fuck, hermosa, you feel so good, so tight for me. Perfección.” He ruts into you at a maddening pace, his moans coming out through clenched teeth. You reach down with one hand to rub your clit in time with his thrusts, screaming out his name as he fucks you into the wall, the lewd slapping sound of his hips hitting your only encouraging you. “You. Are. Mine. Eres mío. Solamente mío.”

“Yes, yes, fuck, YES! I’m yours, Pero, I’m fucking yours. I’m so close oh my God!” You lean your head forward to kiss and bite at his neck, leaving a matching mark on his as on yours, his scruff rubbing against your jaw deliciously. Your orgasm blindsides you and you bite down harder on Pero’s neck as you clench around him, earning a fantastic growl from him, stiffening in his grasp as he thrust into you twice more before joining you in your euphoria. You pant against his neck, twitching as you come down, your limbs starting to feel like jello. Pero’s shoulders heave as he tries to catch his breath.

Slowly, you lift your head to look at him, moaning softly as you feel him twitch inside of you. His eyes have lightened, the lust lifting with his orgasm and you smile, leaning in to press a soft kiss to his swollen lips. He hums against your lips, returning the kiss for a moment before breaking it to slip out of you, carefully easing you back to the ground. Your hand moves to stroke his cheek gently, and the frown eases just a bit under your touch.

“I mean it, hermosa,” he mumbles, reaching up to grab your hand, holding it against his face. “Be mine. Only mine…” His eyes are nearly begging and your heart melts, every doubt and worry of the past week fading away as if they were never there.  

“Pero...of course I will be. You have me completely.” Tension releases from his shoulders at your acceptance and he leans in, pressing a sweet kiss to your lips, then your forehead.

“Cara mía…” his own hand comes to brush along your cheek, smiling at the heat under his fingertips before taking your hand, leading you to the bathroom to get cleaned up. This had been a night you would not soon forget.

Translations:  hermosa: Beautiful Que mala.: How bad/naughty.  como una diosa: like a goddess maravillosa: marvelous  gruñón : grumpy Guapísima : gorgeous/sexy cabrón : Bro, asshole (slang) Perfección: Perfection Eres mío. Solamente mío: You are mine. Only mine.  Cara mía: My darling (In this house we stan Gomez Adams) ~~~~ Tags:  @lilkermit14​, @the-feckless-wonder​, @whiskeyslasso​  Let me know if you would like to be added! 

Requests are open! Tag list is open!

[aquaticstyles]

from the dining table

I know I said I was posting at 7, but I finished earlier than expected :) 5k inspired by the song we all know and love, From the Dining Table. Hope you all enjoy reading! I really liked how this one turned out. As always, feedback is welcomed and appreciated!!!

“Whatcha doin' out here by yourself?"

You nearly jump out of your skin and send the wine sloshing in your glass splashing onto the freshly cut grass at the sound of his voice.

You hoped—you prayed that you could get through the night without running into him. You were here to celebrate your good friend and her new husband, not re-open old scars. Yet here he is, right in front of you, dressed to the nines in all black, tailored perfectly to fit his broad shoulders and slim waist, chestnut locks styled haphazardly and intentionally all at once, new, foreign stubble on his upper lip and jaw making him that much more ruggedly handsome, chest hair peeking through the opened buttons of his shirt, and a white rose clipped to the lapel of his jacket.

He looks good. He looks really good, and you would like to die.

You would very much like to bury yourself in a hole.

He seems so familiar, traces of an old lover lost in the gold flecks of his eyes, but you don't know him, at least not anymore. He's a stranger now, an array of old photographs and journal clippings scattered throughout your memory. He went from being your person, to a person--from being the one person you could talk to for hours upon hours tangled in the sheets, the moonlight from the open curtains dancing upon miles and miles of bare skin, without ever growing tired, to the one person that sucks every word out of you, leaving you speechless, an awkward shell of the confident woman you used to be around him.

You would have followed him anywhere, blind, heart thumping beneath your chest, relying solely on his palm in yours to guide you through the dark—to the ends of the earth, tiptoes over the edge, ready and willing to plummet thousands of feet downward.

The breeze that floats through the air and brushes against your arm adds more goosebumps to the ones already present due to the man next to you. Everything around you is calm—the ocean to your right, waves slowly reeling in and releasing back against the shoreline, the sun setting in the horizon, creating warm hues of tangerine and pomegranate in the sky and sparkling on the endless canvas of blue below, the palm trees rustling gently, the soft chatter of guests behind you in the distance. Outside, there's a whirlwind of serenity, but inside, there's a hurricane crashing against your rib cage.

"Oh, I, um, had a phone call," you confess. You barely got the day off to come to the wedding, and your phone has been buzzing nonstop with work emails, texts, and voicemails.

Yes, you had to take a phone call, but you also needed a minute. A minute for yourself. A minute to reflect, on both past and future.

A minute to inhale--his palm in yours, your cheek pressed against his chest, his temple resting on top of your head, swaying slowly in the kitchen, Frank Sinatra's 'One For My Baby' echoing softly, pulling you closer to him if possible, hushed whispers of "I love you" from two hearts beating in unison.

A minute to exhale--love letters, broken promises, his (your) favorite t-shirt, borrowed books, his handwriting still in the margins, tokens of his thoughts, postcards, one for each new city he inhabited while he way away from you for months on end, pearls, a Frank Sinatra vinyl, your ring stretched and bent from his pinky, anything and everything that was part of him, tucked away in a cardboard box in your attic, collecting dust.

Weddings are supposed to be joyous; they're supposed to remind you of just how amazing life can be, particularly when it's spent with someone you love, but you can't help but feel lonelier than ever.

This is what you wanted.

This is what you wanted with him.

"Still always working," sparkles dance in those eyes of his, morphing every coherent thought in your head to mush. It's criminal how relaxed he is. It's almost as if you're old friends catching up, as if all of the history between the two of you simply no longer exists. He's smirking at you, making your insides turn to jelly and your brain slosh around in your skull. He seems entirely unfazed as he strolls closer to you, the whiskey in his glass barely moving from how slow he progresses. He's honey, the golden sugar dripping lazily from a swarming hive.

You look good. You look really good. And he notices.

His eyes trail from the very tip top of your head, to your cherry red toenails, and you immediately shrink in on yourself. He studies your appearance, long locks of hair he used to comb his fingers through flowing in the slight breeze and cascading down your back, thin straps holding up the loose, silky fabric of your sundress, heart-shaped lips glistening, coated in your favorite lip gloss (He thinks the longer he stares, the more he can taste them again—the more he can feel the sticky substance transferred on his own lips, remnants of your sparkles imprinted on him), freckled cheeks paired with a rosy nose, results from a sunburn (You're tanner than he last saw you. Has your skin always been this golden?), a new tattoo on your inner right forearm, a compass, so minute that one would have to be staring to notice (Which he was, and he did).

Then he sees it.

That all-too-familiar gold band wrapped around your right middle finger, catching the light reflecting from the white wine in your glass.

The ring he gave you.

The one he saw in Japan and had to buy because it had you written all over it. The one he left on his pillow in your shared bed, waiting for you once you had successfully stretched and rubbed the sleep from your eyes while he was off to an early studio session. The one he had engraved, "H.S." on the inside of, a little piece of him always with you. The last token of him you couldn't bring yourself to rid of, a time capsule from a past love.

As soon as you realize he's spotted it, your grip on the glass in your hand tightens. Harry's eyes immediately snap back to yours—after all this time, you still wore the ring. Why were you still wearing the ring?

In a desperate attempt to distract Harry from asking that question you knew was swimming around in his mind, you clear your throat, "Still always working," you force a tight-lipped smile and rock on your heels, "that and you know I'm no good at dancing." You nod your head to the crowded dance floor alive with couples drunk off the mini bar behind the two of you.

Harry's hard expression softens, accompanied by a dimple as memories of your horrible dancing come flooding back. He releases a warm chuckle, one you haven't heard in ages that echoes in your eardrums longer than you would have liked, "Can't argue with that, 'member you almost broke m'big toe a couple times." His eyes never leave yours as he takes a sip from his glass, the amber liquid gliding down his throat with a faint burn.

The space between the two of you progressively decreases as he moves closer and closer, until suddenly his shoulder is only a couple inches away, daring to brush against yours. You're both facing the ocean now, backs towards the roaring crowd. You close your eyes, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore easing the anxiety coasting through your veins. You inhale slowly, enjoying the feeling of the wind brushing against your cheekbones, cooling off the nervous heat Harry has caused. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Harry turns his head and watches you with your eyes fluttered closed, admiring your side profile up close with no shame, because how could he not? He hasn't seen you in person for over a year—it's like he's seeing you for the first time again. He fights the urge to tuck a stay piece of hair behind your hair, something he would have done without thinking if things hadn't gone completely downhill. He wants to memorize how you look in this moment, the exact position of every eyelash, the exact angle of the slope of your nose, just in case he has to go another 12 months without seeing you again. But boy, he wants to see you again. And again.

You keep your eyes closed, your lips turning upwards in a faint smirk, "I saw you at Target the other day," you open your eyes and turn to look at Harry, only to find him already fully fixated on you. Has he been staring at you this whole time? "Rolling stone? That's big."

He grins at your flustered look of shock; he was caught, but he's not embarrassed at all, not trying in the slightest to hide how much you have captivated his attention, "Uh yeah," Jesus, your eyes are beautiful. Your eyes didn't look this beautiful when you were together. Did you do something to your eyes? No, that's impossible. Is that a new piercing in your ear? You hate needles. Did you pierce it yourself? What else has changed about you? Harry, focus. What did you say again? Oh, yeah, Rolling Stone. "Doesn't do well for my narcissism though."

"Hmm... I can imagine," you take a sip of wine, returning your eyes back to the horizon, this time focusing on a pack of seagulls gliding through orange creamsicle skies. You can't stare into his eyes for too long without thinking of everything, the good, the bad, the ugly. Each time you look into his eyes, it's like reliving every conversation you ever had. His words, a gallon of feathers poured on top of you, soft tufts brushing against your skin. His words, a gallon of daggers poured on top of you, sharp metal piercing your skin.

Silence overwhelms the two of you—filling the void of words needed and wanted to be said.

Harry clears his throat and finally looks in front of him to the breathtaking sunset melting into the skyline, almost as breathtaking as you. Taking a big gulp of his whiskey, he prepares himself for the words about to spill from his mouth. He has to ask, because you're here, in person, live in stereo, and when will he have an opportunity like this again? This question has been swimming in his brain for months; it's been eating him alive, the unknown mystery of the situation. He's dying to know if you've heard that one song.

"Have yeh listened to the album?"

He chose the absolute worst time to ask this question, right when you were taking a sip from your glass. You nearly choke on the liquid sliding down your throat, erupting into a coughing fit as soon as you get a breath of air. Harry's eyes widen, immediately angling his body towards yours, a look of alarm flashing across his features. You hunch over, sending cough after cough into your free hand. A warm palm rests on your back between your shoulder blades, causing goosebumps to rise, and as soon as he's about to ask if you're okay, you wave your hand, brushing off your near-death experience. You cough one last time, your raspy voice hesitantly admitting, "Um yes, I have."

Harry furrows his eyebrows, analyzing your face to make sure you're actually okay and before he can stop it from happening, he's rubbing small circles into your back. He hovers his body slightly over yours as you cough one last time into your elbow. You mouth "I'm good" inaudibly and send him a thumbs up. You finally straighten back up, brushing your hair out of your face and blinking slowly a couple times, God, that was embarrassing, way to keep it cool.

When your posture returns to its natural state, and his palm on your back is no longer appropriate, Harry removes his hand and pushes it into his pocket. He silently curses himself for not grabbing intertwining your fingers together and squeezing your palm once—that was something he would always do when you were together. It was his thing. When you would be out shopping and the paps would show up inconveniently out of nowhere, he would grab your hand and squeeze it once, letting you know that he's here and he's sorry, before dropping it. When you would be eating dinner at your parents, laughing about who knows what, his knee brushing yours underneath the table, he would grab your hand and squeeze it once, letting you know that he's here and he loves you, before dropping it.

Silence returns again and you're both back to your original positions overlooking the sea. Bass thumping, "cheers!", clinking, birds chirping, leaves rustling, waves crashing, heavy breathing, congratulations, "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!", his rings tapping against his glass, the soles of your shoes crunching the grass, heart pounding.

The loudest silence breaks, "Figured one day you'd at least g'me a call back."

If you weren't sure if that last track was really about you, you were completely certain now. Maybe one day you'll call me and tell me you're sorry too. For the first time since he's been in your presence this evening, you regain a sense of confidence, your nervous jitters diminishing with your next statement.

"I didn't have anything to apologize for."

And you didn't. Not when he was the one that left, when he was the one that decided he didn't want to love you anymore, when he was the one that chose his life over the both of yours. It hurt. It still does. So why would you call him and tell him that you're sorry too? Sorry for what? Loving him too much? Because you loved him too much. He was the love of your life, the man you wanted to marry, the man you wanted to be the father of your children, the man that completely and utterly captured your heart and sewed it together with his own. But he left. And you had to figure out how to live without him, how to do the dishes when he wasn't drying, how to dance when it wasn't his records playing in the background, how to kiss when it wasn't his lips that were folded over yours, how to love again when it wasn't him that you were loving. You had to do it all. Alone. Pick up the pieces he scattered, put them back together, and super glue them.

Then he put out his debut album. And suddenly he was everywhere, from magazines, to billboards, to tv shows, to recommended YouTube videos, to Instagram, to twitter, to even Facebook, there he was again, closer to you than he had been in months, yet still light years away. And all of those pieces you super glued? Yeah, they became completely undone again, and it didn't help that you decided to actually listen to his album. It was one thing to see him everywhere, but to hear him again, hear that voice that once felt like home, it ruined you.

That song ruined you.

You remember the day that song was inspired from, every single detail.

-

You had a particularly busy day at work, and you decided to have a spa night. A bubble bath, a bottle of rosé, a face mask, a couple bath bombs, and a pizza was exactly what the doctor prescribed. You had just stepped out of your steamy wonderland, your body covered in your favorite, fluffy robe, soapy suds still clinging to damp skin, completely content in your cotton bubble and slightly buzzed from the glasses of wine you consumed. It was nearly 3 in the morning, and you just sat down at your vanity to apply your various lotions and serums when the phone rang.

Who on earth is calling you this late at night?

You shuffled your slippered-feet to your bedside table, glancing over to see something you never thought you'd see again.

His name.

Harry Styles

Flashing on your screen.

Nearly giving you a heart attack.

You froze in your tracks, eyes widening, mouth hanging open, breathing halting, heart beat slowing and thumping louder than ever in your ears. It felt like the entire world was put on pause, every car on the busy street outside your apartment stopped, traffic lights stuck on red, clouds frozen in place in the sky, every form of life on hold. You miss the call, not that you could have answered anyways; you were completely and utterly paralyzed.

Another notification: Harry Styles Voicemail.

Then you're breathing again, quick, sharp puffs of air in and out. Are you dreaming? You squint your eyes shut tightly and pinch your wrist. This has to be a dream. You open your eyes, the same notification illuminating your screen. You're not dreaming.

God presses play on the world, your surroundings slowly returning back to their normal pace around you, your bubble bursting as you frantically pull your phone from its charger, typing in in your passcode at the speed of light and going straight to the neon green cube on your dock. A shaky thumb taps on the voicemail, hitting the speaker button. There are a couple seconds of static, and for a moment you think maybe it was an accident, a butt-dial, a complete misunderstanding. Please let this be an accident.

Key word: moment.

Because as soon as you think you can forget about this, go back to your nightly routine, and have a peaceful sleep, his voice is booming through the speakers, and you're paralyzed again.

"Um... Hi, it's Harry," the ghost of the man you used to know lets out a nervous laugh, "But you knew that didn't yeh? Probably why you didn't answer..." there's silence, two seconds, five seconds, eight. "I'm in Japan. It's noon here, and m'drunk, alone in my hotel room," his voice is deep, raspy, tired. "'Member that ring I gave you? I'm stayin' a couple blocks away from that shop. Y'loved that ring. Think tha' was the last good thing I did."

Your eyes shift to your right hand, the one that's not death-gripping your phone, the one that holds the piece of metal he's referring to. A lump grows in the back of your throat, and suddenly it's becoming harder to stand. You collapse on the edge of your bed and gulp. Tears pool uncontrollably in your eyes, falling onto the robe that now feels like pinecones suffocating you.

"I saw Mark befo' I left. Ran into him at the grocery store," Mark, your co-worker, your friend. Mark didn't tell you he saw Harry. Why didn't he tell you he saw Harry? Why is Harry talking about Mark? Why did Harry call you? Why did Harry leave you a voicemail? "I asked him how you were, and he said you were fine. Are you fine?" No. "Cause I'm not. M'not fine at all."

You shut your eyes in pain, wincing at his words. Waterfalls flood from your eyes, and you hate it. You hate that this is affecting you so much. You hate that he still has a hold on you. You wished you could not care; you wished you could simply say "fuck you forever" and forget him. It's been 6 months since the breakup, and you want more than anything to move on and forget him.

"Love I-" You bite your tongue at the pet name, almost drawing blood. When was the last time he called you that? 'Love'—the equivalent of a knife plunging into your chest again and again. "I fucked up... and I miss you." And again. "God, I miss you so much." And again. "And m'sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." And again. "Th'worst thing I ever did was what I did to you."

You're fully sobbing at this point, your phone thrown across the other end of your bed, his voice slightly muffled by your duvet. Your hands are tangled in your hair, elbows resting on your knee caps, shoulders shaking as you hiccup, wave after wave of his words hitting you. Little do you know, Harry is on the other end of the world doing the exact same thing—hands pulling his hair, hunched over on the edge of his grand suite's expensive mattress, an almost empty bottle of whiskey to his right, tears staining the carpet beneath him.

"And I know this is late. M'a fuckin' idiot for not saying it until now. I just..." He breathes out a sigh, and you pinch your eyes shut even tighter. No, he's drunk. He doesn't mean it. He's drunk. He doesn't mean it. Don't fall for it; you've been doing fine. You're fine... right? "I needed yeh to hear that. Need you to know I'm so sorry for hurting you. I did th'one thing I swore I'd never do."

Relaxing your grip on the roots of your hair, you sit up at his words, the words you have waited to hear him say for six months. Why don't they sweep you off your feet like you imagined? Why don't you feel different? You had thought about this moment over and over, the moment he would finally own up to his mistakes, finally apologize for all the shit he put you through. You imagined him showing up to your doorstep with a dozen sunflowers, your favorite, a speech prepared on how much he still loves you and how much he is sorry for everything. After, you would launch into his open arms, sinking back into his quicksand, enveloped in his love all over again. Everything would fall back into place; you would be whole again. What you didn't expect was a drunken voicemail, making you want to crumble inside yourself until all that is left is a pile of bones, useless. It felt as if there was a surprise epilogue to your joint ending—you were experiencing the break up all over again. What was supposed to give you life, hope was slowly taking it away each second the voicemail continued.

"I'm dying, love." Me too. "Can I still call you that?" No. "M'dying without you. Just... Please call me. Please let me show you how sorry I am. Need to hear y'voice. I'm so sorry. Call me."

-

His voicemail remains in your phone. You never called him back. You've lost count of the times your finger hovered over his contact name, nearly jumping into the deep end, just for you to take one step backwards on the diving board. One particular night, after taking another step back, you decided to write down everything you wanted to say, everything you wished you knock on his door and scream at him until you lost your voice—all of the heartache, the sorrow, the stress, the hope, the anxiety, every single emotion you felt since it ended. You wrote twenty-two pages. They're now hidden in your bedside table, addressed and stamped, never sent. Harry didn't call you again; that was the last time you heard from him, over a year ago now.

Silence welcomes itself again. Comfortable silence is so overrated.

Shoulder brushing against yours, Harry stands still, digesting your last words. I didn't have anything to apologize for. There was a time when he would have completely disagreed with that statement, clearly, given the lyrics to his last track on his debut album. Then, he would have argued that both of you had dipped your toe in your downfall, each equally responsible for how things crumbled apart. Now, however, he sees how it was him that was in the wrong. He was the one afraid of the commitment you wanted from him—part of him could never fully love you like he wanted to. A couple hundred therapy sessions later, he's sorted his shit out, and he sees just how much shit he put you through, as if someone had sat him down in a theatre, showing him your love story from your perspective. You don't owe him an apology; you were perfect, always giving him your all, every single drop, every single ounce of your love from an endless fountain. He was the one that left. Hewas the one that broke you into small, jagged pieces.

But he's selfish. He still misses you so much. He misses your hand encased in his, your laugh at his terrible jokes, your lips on his cheek, your faint snores that only erupt on Friday nights after a hard week at work, your face buried in his neck, chest on top of his and legs entangled in his on the couch, your finger poking his dimple, your face scrunched in concentration as you painted his nails, your records playing in his house (the ones you said he had to borrow, but if he scratched them, he was a dead man), your hugs (the way you would make him feel itty bitty in your embrace, enveloping him into your open arms after he was away for too long), your mind, always alive and itching for those deep conversations that always arise at midnight in his bed.

That's why he came to the wedding in the first place. He was originally booked to shoot a music video, but he quickly cancelled at the possibility of seeing you here. And that's why when he finally spotted you, off in the distance, speaking into your phone away from the buzzing reception, he knew he had to talk to you. He didn't care if it re-opened closed wounds; he was selfish and he had to talk to you. He missed you.

"Listen-"

"I-" Harry speaks up at the same time you do, beginnings of sentences clashing together. Your eyes meet again, shoulders turned towards each other now. He grins, bunny teeth making an appearance at the mishap regardless of the obvious tension that has invaded the air between the two of you. You envy that trait, his ability to make any situation comfortable and relaxed despite its origin. "You first."

"No, um you go," you mumble out awkwardly, finishing off the remnants of wine in your glass in a rather large gulp to ease the nerves. You know Harry, sometimes better than he knows himself, and you know that he would have never approached you if he didn't have some motive on his own. You had to shut this down—there was no way you could go down this road with him again, not when just this conversation was enough to ruffle your feathers, making you feel like a traitor in your own body, someone you don't even know.

"How 'bout we both go?" There's a cheeky look in his eye, and if you look hard enough you could see a tinge of excitement, hopefulness, "On th'count of three?"

Not daring to quirk upwards, your lips remain straight, and you nod.

"One," You can do it. Just tell him you want to basically forget he exists. "Two," You can do it. Just tell her you still love her. "Three."

Two similar heartbeats.

"I still love you-" Sweet sugar crystals, an honest confession from candy land.

"I think it's best if we don't see each other again." An exploding cannon, sinking his battle ship.

Two entirely different headspaces.

-

The next morning, you wake up with a massive headache, one that was undoubtedly brewing as you cried yourself to sleep the night prior (it might also have to do with the entire bottle of wine you consumed as soon as you slipped off your heels in your apartment).

You notice it's technically no longer morning when you check your phone, squinting in pain at the sudden brightness, the numbers 1:25 yelling back at you. Thank god it's Saturday; you haven't had a hangover of this intensity since college and there is no way you could possibly go to work like this.

Slowly slipping out of the warmth of your numerous weighted blankets, your socked feet hit the plush carpet, and you bend down and open the bottom drawer of your bedside table. Tied up in a pink bow are four envelopes, addressed and stamped, waiting to be delivered to the man whose hopes you crushed. You reached for the stack, running your fingers along the edges, reading over his name, tracing the letters with your fingertips.

With the letters firm in your grasp, you rush to your front door, making sure to slip on your robe; you don't want anyone to drive by you putting these letters in your mailbox in nothing but a t-shirt and undies, after all.

You're finally doing it, diving into the crystal-clear water that was once forever still. You're going to mail all twenty-two pages, every emotion. This is it, the last period to the epilogue, the ending of this book, the closure the both of you so desperately need.

As you reach for the handle, you pause, noticing the one thing you nearly forgot about—that gold band. You slip the piece of metal off your finger, observing his initials engraved on the inside for the last time. Untying the bow holding the envelopes together, you slide the ring onto one end of the cotton-candy colored ribbon and retie the knot, the ring now attached. Inhale, one moment to reflect. Exhale, one moment to say your final goodbye. You swing open the door, and right before you can make another move, something stops you. Looking down at your doorstep, a bittersweet smile breaks out across your face. He was saying goodbye too.

A dozen sunflowers.

[luminescencefics]

you feel like home - part seven

“I know that. And I’m sorry. Just—fuck, Ryan—I need to speak with you. Please.” It’s the waver of his voice that forces Ryan to finally look into his eyes, noticing the way his skin looks taut and the bags underneath are more pronounced now than ever before. The pallor of his face is almost disturbing, and even though Ryan is still upset, the sight of him pleading with her is enough to make her concerned. 

His hand is still grasping her elbow, and when she tears her eyes away from his face and down in the direction of his hand on her body, he gets the hint and drops it, backing away slowly. Her door is ajar and with a silent nod of approval, Harry’s following her into the flat.

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*** When It Goes From Worse to Maybe Okay

In the days that follow, Harry’s never felt so alone. It’s an odd thing to say, considering he’s spent every day with his son the same way he has for the past five years. But there’s something missing this time—something that makes him feel less than part of a whole. The loneliness is deep in his chest now, and the emptiness echoes through his body until he feels a shiver run underneath his skin until he’s nothing but hollow.

He’s never felt so cold in his life. 

The hollowness grows deeper when Harry thinks about how most of this is mainly his fault. Because he has become so in tune with Ryan’s feelings in such a short amount of time, sensing her unease before she even knows she’s started fidgeting in front of him. And maybe that was his problem—he spent most of his time making sure she was okay, and in turn, forgot how to even act in front of her. 

It’s not like he didn’t try to speak to her on more than one occasion. After Ryan left his flat with his tea mug, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He could barely sleep that night, going back and forth in his mind of whether or not he should just knock on her door and kiss her. And the restlessness didn’t stop—the next morning he heard a crash on the other side of his bedroom wall, and his mind started reeling, wondering if she was on the other end of the abnormally thin plaster. Was she up all night thinking of him, too?

And then when he knocked on her door and she was wearing big glasses and her hair was a messy knot bound together by a flimsy pen and she looked so cozy, he’s not quite sure why he didn’t kiss her then, either. Because he wanted to—it was all he could fucking think about. It was as if his body movements were in sync with his heart, because they moved closer towards her on their own accord without asking his brain for permission, and it was only when he could feel her short spurts of breath on his neck when he realized he could kiss her right then and there if he truly wanted to. But her brown eyes were blown out and her bottom lip was quivering and her hands were shaking, so he backed away. He figured she was uncomfortable and how could he kiss her when he was asking her to watch his kid for a few hours?

He was a blushing mess that entire afternoon. And when he finally had the entire flat to himself and grabbed his guitar, plucking strings and making melodies that faintly sounded like Ryan’s giggles, he never wrote a song faster in his entire life. Harry found himself scribbling dark eyes and olive skin and scraped knees, messy hair and big jumpers and hallways in his leather journal. And when he pieced them together and finally started singing, the song was so obviously about her that he couldn’t even believe it. Has she always subconsciously been in every lyric he’s written since he’s met her?

Harry couldn’t stop thinking about the song until he was standing right in front of her a few hours later, looking into her dark eyes underneath big lenses, her olive-skinned shoulder poking out of her oversized jumper. His heart took over again, and when they prompted his lips to blurt out an invitation for dinner, he couldn’t even be angry with his head for not kicking into gear. He had never been more nervous for a date in his entire life—was it even a date? Did he even say the word date? 

His mind was in overdrive. Harry cleaned his already spotless flat twice over, and when he looked at the clock and saw that he only had thirty minutes until she was knocking on his door, he panicked and jumped into the shower. The entire time he was shampooing his knotted hair, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was panicking, too. Was she staring at herself in the mirror, deciding what shade of lipstick to wear? Did she change her outfit three times? Did she want him as badly as he wanted her?

After changing out of jeans and a corduroy pair of trousers, Harry knew he was fucked. His confidence was slipping, and he almost laughed at how much of a teenager he was being. It felt like he was fourteen again getting ready for his first date—giddy and nervous and practically shaking at the knees. Ryan felt like a lot of firsts for him, if he was being honest with himself. Did he feel like that for her, too? 

God and when he saw her. Her dark hair was falling down her back and the color matched her twinkling eyes, and when he noticed the subtle shade of lipstick she was wearing, it looked as if she had just eaten a perfectly ripened raspberry that stained her pouty lips. He couldn’t stop staring at the tangled gold necklaces around her clavicle—he saw the year 1993, a Greek letter that he assumed was her astrological sign, and a pendant that looked as if it had been on her neck for her entire life. He was fascinated—completely and utterly transfixed with the girl standing in front of him in the hallway.

Kissing her seemed inevitable with the way they were dancing around each other in his kitchen, the way her bare shoulder brushed against his forearm when she leaned over him to grab the rolling pin, the way she looked at him underneath the curtain of her eyelashes when she was on all fours in Jackson’s bedroom. The way she cleaned up without hesitation, the way she seamlessly fit in his living room, the way she flirted with him to the soft sounds of Joni Mitchell playing in the background.

But then he was talking about Rachel and feeling things he hadn’t felt in a long time. Talking about his unearthed hidden emotions he kept buried for five years, and suddenly Ryan was looking at him with the saddest look on her face and he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was fucking terrified. 

Because she was there and sitting in front of him and it was everything he could have ever wanted—but then she started talking about her parents and her breathing pattern shifted in a way that made Harry nervous. And when her hands started trembling and her cheeks were painted red and she couldn’t bring herself to even look at him, he knew she was panicking, so he grabbed her hand to bring her back to him. To them. To sitting on the couch with their knees touching and being surrounded by the comfort of one another. 

And he wanted to kiss her—so fucking badly that his entire body was shuddering with anticipation. But it didn’t feel right to him, not after he just unloaded his past relationship with Jackson’s mother, not when she just told him about her parent’s divorce, not when she was shaking so hard underneath his hand.

He wanted the moment to be perfect, and for the first time in days, he listened to his head instead of his heart.

But when he saw the look on her face, all downtrodden and blank eyes, he immediately regretted it. And when her hand left his and she ran out of the flat without even putting her shoes on, Harry had never been angrier with himself. 

In trying to find the perfect moment, Harry let the actual one slip right through his fingers. 

And he deserves it, he supposes. Harry’s always been a suffer in silence type of person, and after the way he treated her in his living room, he’s never suffered more. Because being with Ryan, even for the short amount of time he was given, made him feel alive again. She was quirky and different and somehow burrowed herself into his life without even truly knowing it, and when she left, he felt her absence everywhere.

Where Ryan was scared of the unknown, Harry was afraid of reliving it. Afraid of letting somebody into not only his own heart, but also his son’s, only to just leave in the end. He was afraid of needing somebody—because raising a child without much help forces you to become acquainted with the feeling of solitariness. Before he met Ryan, he felt as if he was swimming in an abyssal ocean, floating his way through life. But with one chance meeting, one awkward run-in in their shared hallway, it’s as if he’s come up for air—breathing in all the possibilities of what could be. 

Being alone is scary, but being left is even scarier—and even though he was never in love with Rachel, Harry tried his hardest to make it work because he assumed it was what was expected of him. He never wanted his son to suffer in the end, to feel neglected, to feel not good enough. 

He knows in his heart of hearts that Ryan would never treat him the way Rachel did. But for a split second, his mind went into that dark space. The space that warned him not to let his heart, or more importantly, Jackson’s, fall into the wrong hands. Because giving somebody else that power allows for the pain he shoved deep inside his chest to come back up to the surface, and he isn’t quite sure if he wants to relive it.

But the crippling feeling of regret after he saw Ryan hold back tears in the hallway was enough to make him hate himself just a little bit more.

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Harry had been building up the courage ever since he told her he wanted to kiss her when she was in the lift to knock on her door and make it right. He wrote everything down, for fuck’s sake. An entire list of all of the things he had done wrong, of the things he wanted to do to make it better, of the ways she made his heart beat loudly inside of his chest like the bass drum to a rock song. 

But then Rachel shows up at his door unannounced, giving him the worst type of news he could have ever received. 

Without warning, she drops a napalm bomb on his front doorstep, informing Harry that she was offered a job position at her firm’s New York office. Before he could even hear her out, Harry instantly falls into defense mode—closing the door a few inches behind him so that Jackson remains unaware of his mother’s presence, folding his arms over his chest in a lame sort of protective armor, frowning deeply through his dried lips. Because once again, Rachel was choosing herself over her son. And once again, Harry was left to pick up the pieces.

So he tells her this.

“I can’t fucking hear this right now,” Harry whispers harshly, cutting her off just as the words temporary position falls from her lips. He didn’t even acknowledge it, didn’t even comprehend the string of sentences she was trying to explain to him.

“Harry, would you listen to me? I haven’t finished explaining. It’s only for a few—”

“—No! I don’t want to hear another excuse, Rachel! I’m the one that’s left to pick up the pieces whenever you fuck off to go do whatever it is you’re so passionate about. I’m the one that has to tell your son where his mum is. I’m the one who constantly puts Jackson first while he’s second, hell, practically fucking third on your list!” With every locution, he’s watching Rachel grow redder and redder with anger, and he knows it’s because he hasn’t let her get a word in edgewise.

But he isn’t in the mood to speak rationally. He’s had a week from hell, and just when he was about to go and make it better, Rachel had to show up and ruin it with ease. 

“Don’t you fucking dare accuse me of anything without even listening to what I’m trying to say to you! God, Harry you’re so bloody thick sometimes! I’m trying to speak to you like an adult, yeah? Like the way we always said we would talk to each other when we started co-parenting!” Rachel points a long finger into his face, waving it with each stressed syllable that falls out of her rogue-painted lips.

“You have to actually be a parent in order to co-parent, Rachel,” Harry spits out, and the minute he sees Rachel’s stony expression falter, he almost takes it back. 

He watches her take a deep breath, shaking the sadness from her eyes before the harsh expression replaces it. “Are you always going to make me the villain in your story, Harry? We came to the agreement two years ago that Jackson would stay with you while I finished law school. And for the past year, I’ve been doing the best I can, taking Jackson on long weekends so that you can have a break and I can spend time with him. We knew this would only be temporary until I became a practicing solicitor. This job will expedite that—I’m only needed there for six months, and then when I come back, I’ll permanently be in London. I’ll be working lesser hours, I’ll have more flexibility,” she pauses, eyes staring straight into Harry’s. “I can see Jackson for more than one weekend of every month.”

Harry’s head feels as if it’s about to explode, and suddenly he doesn’t want to be reasonable anymore. He wants to be angry. He wants to be upset. He wants to be irrational. 

“Do whatever the fuck you want, Rachel. You’ve been doing it all along.” He knows he’s being unfair, because even though Rachel has always been more selfish than Harry, she’s still a good person. She still tries her best to be a good mum to Jackson even when she’s buried in mountains of paperwork. She still tries to be a good friend to Harry even after all of the shit they’ve been through.

But Harry feels angry with the world, so he decides not to remember these attributes. Instead, he makes her the antagonist in his story—because being angry at her makes him a little less angry at himself. 

And when he sees messy brown waves behind Rachel’s shoulders in the hallway, it’s as if everything happens in slow motion. He watches Jackson run after Ryan, he hardly processes what Rachel says to him from his doorway, he watches Ryan comfort his wailing son with concerned eyes, and before he can even speed up time, Rachel’s yelling at Ryan, and Harry’s not sure how he hears it all over the sound of his heart dropping to the floor with a loud crash. 

Ryan’s gone just as quickly as she came and Harry’s left to pick up the remnants of his and Rachel’s disaster once again—scooping up Jackson with one arm to try and quell his chest-heaving sobs, closing the door on Rachel and telling her he’ll speak to her later, falling into bed with a heavy head and an even heavier heart.

That was three days ago. 

Now he sits in his dark flat, curtains completely drawn, lights still off. The wick from the sandalwood candle on the end table flickers from his position on the couch, the tiny flame creating swirling patterns along the slate grey walls, the crooning sound of Van Morrison from the record player the perfect backdrop for Harry’s dismal mood.

Gemma came to pick Jackson up for a few days after video chatting Harry and noticing the paleness of his face and the purple bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep through the grainy screen of her mobile. Her concern was evident, and after hearing Jackson mumble that daddy’s been sick for a few days (a lie both siblings chose to ignore), he didn’t even fight her when she told him Jackson was going to stay with his cousins for the weekend.

Now that the flat is empty, void of Jackson’s high-pitched laughter and tiny bare feet slapping against the hardwood flooring, the loneliness is practically unbearable to Harry. He can feel it eating away at him, and sitting on his couch listening to Astral Weeks for the third time through isn’t making him feel any better. 

Harry knows he needs to do something about it—because Ryan isn’t sitting in her flat feeling sorry for him, and out of everybody who was hurt by what happened in the hallway three days ago, she deserved it the least. 

Because thinking of her messy hair and big eyes, small hands swallowed by oversized knitted jumpers, pouty lips and red cheeks, small quips of smiles and dulcet giggles, secret tattoos scattered on olive skin—thinking of those things makes the heaviness in his head feel a bit lighter. 

And even if he ruined any hope of them ever having something, he knows she deserves an apology. Because all of this agonizing waiting and tiptoeing around feelings is only making his head spin faster and faster like a brand new top on a granite counter, and Harry can’t bear feeling like this anymore. Not when there’s any inkling of hope left.

Harry remembers hearing the sound of Ryan’s heavy oak door close almost an hour ago, and ever since she moved in practically two months ago, he’s picked up on her habits. He knows that she delegates Friday’s as her food shopping day, and before he even realizes what he’s doing, he opens the curtains and flicks the living room light on, waiting by his front door near the peephole to try and catch brown hair whipping past.

And when he sees it almost fifteen minutes later, he has to blink to make sure he didn’t miss it. But there’s no denying Ryan’s tousled locks, and without hesitation he opens his door, meeting her in the hallway where it all began.

“Ryan,” Harry starts, watching the way she starts shifting her shopping bags into one hand so she can reach for her keys in her jacket pocket with the other, seemingly ignoring him. She’s trying to get out of this conversation with everything in her, and Harry knows this. But he needs to apologize. He needs to talk to her—even if it ends with her slamming her door in his face. “Ryan would you please—”

“—I really don’t think you have the right to ask anything of me right now, Harry.” It’s short, clipped, absolute. She still isn’t making eye contact with him, and Harry feels as if he’s going to burst. Once she allocates her keys it’s as if Harry works in fast motion, grabbing her elbow that isn’t anchored down by shopping bags, practically begging her at this point to just fucking look at him.

“I know that. And I’m sorry. Just—fuck, Ryan—I need to speak with you. Please.” It’s the waver of his voice that forces Ryan to finally look into his eyes, noticing the way his skin looks taut and the bags underneath are more pronounced now than ever before. The pallor of his face is almost disturbing, and even though Ryan is still upset, the sight of him pleading with her is enough to make her concerned. 

His hand is still grasping her elbow, and when she tears her eyes away from his face and down in the direction of his hand on her body, he gets the hint and drops it, backing away slowly. Her door is ajar and with a silent nod of approval, Harry’s following her into the flat. 

Luna, upon noticing a new figure entering the flat, treks over to him happily, rubbing her body against his shins and purring loudly. He crouches down and pets her quickly, watching Ryan settle her bags down on the countertop. When she spins around with her lower back resting on the counter, her arms crossed over her chest defensively, he stands up quickly and rubs at the back of his neck timidly.

“Go on, then.” Her voice has never sounded so distant, and Harry’s suddenly panicking at the thought of her wanting nothing to do with him ever again. Not even for his own selfish reasons, but for Jackson. Because he’d never forgive himself if he ruined things with his son’s new friend due to his own idiocy. 

“I’m sorry. What happened in the hallway was entirely uncalled for. Rachel had no right to speak to you that way, and I should have done more than just stand there and watch it all unravel. You didn’t deserve that.” His voice is scratchy from lack of use, and he begins wringing his hands in front of his waist due to the onslaught of nerves flushing through his system. Suddenly he’s terrified of what Ryan is going to say.

“Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t deserve that.” He feels the knife lodged into his chest start to twist, a pinching gut-wrenching pain shooting through his body. He hates it.

“I know, and I’m so—”

“—You’re sorry. I know,” she cuts him off and he’s left standing there completely unsure. His mouth opens and closes as he tries to formulate something, anything, to get her to stop looking at him like that. 

But before he can find the words, Ryan’s voice carries from her kitchen into Harry’s position in the middle of her living room. “Jackson didn’t deserve that either. And I’m not trying to wedge myself into your lives, because trust me, the message was received loud and clear. But you don’t get to stand there and judge me, psychoanalyze me, just to go off and talk about me to your mates or your ex-girlfriend. You don’t get to voice any other insecurity I have to the people in your life, to put into your songs or whatever the fuck you do with that information. Because you’ve lost that privilege. You’ve lost every and all privileges to get to know me.” Harry flinches, his eyes squeezing shut at the rib-racking pain that echoes through his entire body.

“You’ve lost that privilege when you told your son’s mother that I was the nanny. That I was kind to you with the ulterior motive to fuck you. And even if that were true, you have no right to tell people that. Because I’m fully aware that my social anxiety is crippling at times. I’m fully aware that I’m better off on my own because people intimidate me. I’m fully aware that I’m not the type of girl who ends up with boys like you. And that’s fine. I can live with that. But what I can’t live with is you deciding that on your own, and judging me just because you feel like you can. Because that’s cruel, Harry.”

It’s the most she’s ever said to him without stumbling over words or breaking eye contact. Ryan’s standing strong in front of him, cheeks void of a crimson blush, lips in a straight line. Her hands are still and her feet aren’t shifting and Harry’s never felt worse about himself in his entire life.

Her words crush through his body, bulldozing any inkling of self-guilt and anger. Because suddenly, he’s overwhelmed with the feeling of self-hatred. He want to scream, kick, and punch through every fucking wall because he’s made this woman feel like complete and utter nothingness, and the only person who deserves to feel like that is him. 

He’s fucking heartbroken.  

Before she can send him on his way for the last time, he suddenly finds the words to speak. He needs to fix this, to salvage any inkling of hope between them. Because he’s never thought of her that way, and the fact that she thinks so lowly of him because of the false things Rachel said to her when she was angry gives Harry the push he needs to tell Ryan the truth. 

The whole truth.

“I had no right to make you feel like that, and I’m sorry for that. Truly fucking sorry. But I never, ever, referred to you as Jackson’s nanny. I never spoke a word about you to Rachel or to my mates. If anything, Jackson probably talked about you and Luna with her, because god knows that boy is in love with you. That was just Rachel making presumptions and taking her anger with me out on you, and I’m so sorry she made you feel like that, and I’m even sorrier for not intervening. I would never judge you for being who you are, I just—fuck.” Harry runs an exasperated hand through his messy hair before looking at Ryan, taking a deep breath and inching closer towards her.

“I panicked. Because everything was happening so quickly and for the first time since Jackson was born, I wanted to cradle you against my chest instead of him. And that’s a fucked up thing to admit, because he’s my fucking son and he was crying and he needed me, and all I could think about was how your heart was breaking and I needed to shove that feeling down before it took over. Because it fucking terrifies me.”

There’s a sudden silence between the pair, with nothing but mahogany eyes staring into emerald. Ryan’s aware that in all of her time knowing Harry, he’s never been this open and honest with her. He’s laying all of his cards out on the table, and that revelation alone is enough to make the empty hole in her chest start filling up with each subtle beat of her heart.

Harry takes a tentative step forward, and once he realizes that Ryan isn’t backing away, he takes two more so that he’s standing directly in front of her.

“I’m not used to wanting to be around somebody else besides Jackson. It’s been almost five years, just me and him, and then when you came into the picture, I suddenly wanted to be around you. Every second. Of every fucking day.” When Harry acknowledges that her eyes haven’t diverted to the ground, he can feel the hollowness in his body start to dissipate, the coldness in his veins start to thaw out with each beam of light that radiates off of the girl standing in front of him.

“It scares the shit out of me, Ryan. I’ve never felt this way about anybody before. And I know I messed it all up by not kissing you, and I know I made you feel like I didn’t want you. But I just—I’m so scared of you leaving me, of leaving Jackson. Because no matter how many times I deny it, I’m so fucking scared of being left again. I don’t know if my heart can handle that.”

Ryan nods slowly, processing Harry’s biggest fear being laid out in front of her. She starts to feel bad for him all of a sudden, because maybe she was wrong in thinking that he didn’t want her. Because even though he’s in front of her and he’s here holding his heart in his shaking hands for her to have, part of him is terrified because he can’t only think about himself, he has to think about Jackson, too.

And that’s something Ryan possibly overlooked. Because she’s never been left the way Harry has, she’s never had to put all of her love and care into another human being who looks at her as if she hung all of the stars in the sky, she’s never had to be a parent by herself. 

There’s no rule book for that—no step-by-step instruction manual to describe how difficult that process truly was. And Harry did it because he had to. Because he needed to. Because he wanted to. 

And when she looks at him—really looks at him, at the small wrinkles around his brilliant green eyes that she wants to smooth over with the pad of her thumb, at his curly hair that somehow is still fluffy and tempting to touch, at his dried lips that she still wants to put on her own with everything inside of her—she’s mystified at how he could possibly think that.

How could anybody ever leave him?

With a small smile that somehow makes him feel whole again, she says, “Who said I was leaving you?” 

The weight that lifts from his shoulders practically makes him float through thin air. Harry takes a small step forward, testing the waters ever so slightly to make sure that she doesn’t cower away. And when she stands tall, looking at him as if she never wanted to blink again, he takes two more.

With one final step, he’s toe-to-toe with Ryan, so close that he can see the obsidian specks in her irises, the gold flecks when the light hits them just right, the gentle swoosh of her ebony lashes. He can feel her warm breath fannings against the column of his throat, and suddenly he’s reaching out, wrapping one long finger around a stray tendril of her dark hair.

“You’re wrong about not being good enough for boys like me. You’re wrong about being better off alone. Because I’ve done that, Ryan, and loneliness is shit.” His voice is low and deep, sweet like honey that seeps through her concrete walls. Ryan can feel them breaking apart inch by inch, and when he brings his other hand up to cup the underside of her jaw, she can practically hear them cracking, disintegrating beneath their feet.

“You’re so stupidly made for me, it’s fucking terrifying. And I know that I have Jackson. And I know that’s probably not in your plan. And I know this is going to sound absolutely insane,” with one last breath he leans down, the tip of his nose brushing against hers ever so softly. “But imagining another day without you is nearly impossible.”

Ryan tries her hardest not to gasp at his confession, and before she can conjure up the right words to say, Harry’s mouth is on hers. 

His left hand is cupping her jaw and the right is holding the back of her head gently and suddenly Ryan can feel the empty hole in her chest come back to life—thumping so loudly against her body she’s almost certain Harry can feel it against his own. 

Harry’s practically sweating at the rush of heat that swarms his insides, and when he feels Ryan reach up on the tips of her toes so that her chest is flush against his own and her arms lock around the back of his neck, he almost topples over at the feeling of it all. 

It’s everything and more, and part of him can’t believe that he waited this long to finally feel it—because he could write fucking symphonies about the way her lips feel against his own, the way the little hums in the back of her throat make his spine tingle, the way her fingers weave through the hair on the base of his neck so that she can anchor herself to him completely. The way he’s never felt this way kissing somebody.

The way he never wants to let go.

But they have to at some point, and begrudgingly he lets her go, watching the way she blinks against the apples of his cheeks. The flush that he’s grown to admire is back on her face, but this time it’s from another reason completely, and Harry’s almost positive that this is his favorite version of it yet.

“Should’ve done that a week ago,” Harry mumbles against her lips.

Ryan giggles and Harry’s almost certain he’s in love. “You’ve done it now, that’s all that matters.”

And when he brings his lips back to hers and wraps his arms around her lower back, hoisting her up and spinning her around until he’s swallowing her giggles with his own mouth, he knows that she’s right.

All that matters is them. Right now. Together.

***

A/N: Hi all, that was part seven of you feel like home AKA the penultimate chapter AKA the one that hopefully makes you guys smile instead of cry. I hope it was worth the wait! This was the story I wanted to tell, and I hope this clarified the frustrations we all felt about Harry in part six, as well as our first impressions of Rachel. I never wanted to villainize her, I just wanted to explore the possibility of a mother wanting to put her career first the way so many men have done in the past. I hope I did that justice.

Thanks for all the feedback and love you guys are giving this fic, it makes writing it that much more fun. Part eight will be posted on Thursday December 17, so feel free to chat with me in the meantime and tell me your thoughts! This was a submission for the 1DFF Quarantine Challenge, which has other amazing writers participating as well, so feel free to check out the page! See you next week for the FINAL part, and stay tuned to watch me get emotional during the entire week x

taglist: @stylishmuser @vikki1220 @greatestview @verorax @cronias13 @adoremp3 @ilovegolden @taintedwonder @stepping-into-the-light @onlyphysicallypresent @dontwanttobealone @justsaying20 @elemayox @awomanindeniall @ihearthemcallingforyou @halloweenniall @live-at-the-forum @kakayam @harryinsweatersandbandanas @hopelessly-harry @ficnarry @morethanamelodyy @niallgolden @harryswinterberries @caramello-styles @harrysstyle @greatestview @solllaris​ @niallgolden​ @mellamolayla​

[gentlemancrow]

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

OK so I saw @hey-there-hunter ‘s JMart Wedding Challenge and I pretty much fan ficced immediately??  Like it was an instantaneous plot bunny that stabbed me in the brain and would not let me free until I made it exist.  SO HERE YOU GO!  Read it here or head on over to AO3 below!  And enjoy some unapologetically aggressive fluff with weddings!  Also subtitled someday Crow will stop abusing excessive astral imagery and symbolism for extended metaphors, but today is not that day.

Read on AO3 instead!

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

Jonathan Sims always thought of himself as a man with a deep appreciation for the great literature of the world.  A passionate turn of phrase, crystalline motes of clear imagery like snowflakes reflecting light in his mental scape, a devastating contemplation on the nature of good and evil in the hearts of all mankind, everything that could express the beauty and tragedy of the world in ways he never could.  Prose was a bright paintbrush on a ragged canvas of the universe he had known from an early age was swathed in shadow and pain and evil, and those words on those pages, for at least a moment, were another world he could hold in his hands, could cradle and protect, could mourn.  He liked the power of them as well, of the tinkling brightness of alliteration, the oaky sophistication of a well-aged metaphor, the evocativeness of the idiosyncrasy in a simple simile, laying bare truths in ways he never could have articulated for himself.

There was one thing he could not abide by in language, however, one cardinal sin liable to besmirch any piece of lush and sparkling verse or prose and taint it forever.  And that was idioms.

Jon loathed idioms and their dismally quirky cliches dressed in familiarity’s tacky clothing almost as much as he hated spiders.  Perhaps it was something about their reliance on common knowledge and repetition.  He couldn’t bear reading the same book twice, or even a book that felt too familiar, it only made sense that hearing a hackneyed phrase repeated in that awful singsong sardonic tone of someone who knows full well they’re saying something asinine that has been repeated ad nauseum for millennia would scrape at the back of his skull and down his spine.  They were too whimsical and blasé, crutch words for when one’s limited lexicon came up empty, or worse, for ill comedic effect.  They reinforced that staunchly English notion of skirting about the true depth and breadth of emotion for clipped niceties and unfeeling banalities.  Idioms to him were mere verbal window boxes, colorful and meaningless, dressings for untold disasters behind the shining windows they peacocked before.  

He hated them all with vaguely equal rancor, but there was one he could definitely single out as the one he hated the most, and that was the one about hanging the moon.  Such and such thinks you hung the moon, to me you hung the moon, and so on.  This particular rhetorical felony attracted his wrath only marginally because any moon symbolism never failed to feel outlandish and infantile, a mawkish image of love and care rampant in nursery rhymes and cheap commercialized slogans for t-shirts and wall art.  That was the least of it.  He hated the idea of hanging the moon mostly because once, another lifetime ago now it seemed, Tim Stoker had lobbed it in his face in a fit of smoldering rage and he had been completely, complacently, ignorant of its magnitude.  

Funny thing was, he couldn’t even remember what the actual fight had been about any longer.  Though he could remember exactly where he was standing, cornered next to the file cabinet for the year 1985, January through February, and the label had been peeling up on the upper left-hand corner.  He remembered he’d discovered a hole in the elbow of his jumper that morning and he had been obsessing over it all day, fussing with the dangling green thread and tugging at the knit as if it might magically close the wound.  He’d put his finger clean through it with his arms crossed haughtily over his chest without even realizing he’d been fiddling with it when something flippant about Martin came out of his mouth.  It hadn’t even been cruel, he couldn’t even remember how Martin had come up in the argument in the first place, he could only remember Tim’s mouth moving like he wanted to say something else, then him forcibly stopping himself before he snarled.

“Yeah well, god knows why, but he thinks you hung the moon, so you might try treating him at the very least like a human being once in a while.”

It was such a small thing.  Small words for a small feeling cloaked in a chintzy veneer of idiomatic dismissal.  A trembling little bird cupped in his scarred and battered hands and smothered.  Or so he thought.  Sometimes trembling little birds turn out to be phoenixes, and those who looked to someone else to hang the comfort of a wise, silvery moon in the sky already have the hammer and the picture wire at the ready.

As far as Jon was concerned, the moon only rose on their Somewhere Else because Martin deigned to pull the strings every night, not him.

It was Martin who brought him tea every morning, set it down on the breakfast table with that little flip of the tag and the deft, one-fingered turn of the handle toward him.  It was Martin who scolded him because whites are a separate load, Jon, were you raised in a barn?  Martin who talked him through every episode of the Doctor Who reruns that were the only thing their ancient aerial could pick up.  Martin who planted flowers in the garden and brought muffins from the sweet old lady at the grocers because they traded baking recipes.  Martin who still looked at him with diaphanous pools of ethereal moonlight in his eyes and his smile like he alone hung it in the sky over his head to wash him in its radiance.

Even after everything.

Even after it had been Martin who had to hold the knife buried in his chest as he lay gasping wetly for breath in an alleyway in Another Chelsea to keep the hemorrhaging at bay.  Martin who had cupped his face in his bloody hands with tears streaming down his and forced him to focus, furious love blazing in his sea mist eyes as they locked with his, screaming at him and him only, heedless of anything else.

“Look at me.  LOOK at me, Jon!  Stay with me!  Stay with me, DAMN YOU!”

Stay with me had not been a plea, it had been a command.  He had never once said please because it was never an option.  Shivering, breathing blood through his teeth, the streetlights a fading, star studded halo in Martin’s strawberry blond curls be damned, he was right.  Against every tangled thread of fate twisted deep into his flesh, or perhaps because they had been the only thing that held his torn innards together, he made it to the part where he awoke a few fractured times to nothingness, and then to fingers he knew every inch of inextricably bound up in his and a fierce whisper in his ear.

“I’m here, Jon.  I’m still here.  I’ve got you.  I’m going to fix this.  I’m going to get us out of here.  We’re going to be okay.”

It had been Martin who orchestrated their clandestine escape from the hospital the moment they both agreed he was well enough to survive under his rudimentary medical care and before the authorities got too invested in an urban ghost story of two men who didn’t exist.  Not to mention one of which should, by all medical and logical law, be dead.  It had been Martin who had stolen the necessary antibiotics, drugs, and wound care supplies, Martin who had picked enough pockets to buy passage on a midnight train to the only place they could think to go, and expressly told Jon not to ask where he learned how, even though he knew full well he would later.  Martin who had fought for everything and kept him hidden and safe while he lay in a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drifting in and out of consciousness between kisses, cold compresses, spoonfuls of whatever he could get him to swallow and keep down, and desperate ‘I love you’s.

Martin had been the one who hung the moon even on the nights Jon couldn’t see it, just so he knew it was there, that the light might finally guide him home.  Not him.  He could have never done something so selfless and simple and beautiful.  No not him.  Not The Archivist.  How could he have ever known that?  Stupid, myopic, pedantic, all-seeing and blind.  A blustering, sanctimonious Tiresias in a sweater vest and half-moon glasses.  And how important was the moon, anyway that he was expected to hang it too?  Would not night still come and the stars still shine?  The stupid, vapid saying should have been about the sun anyway.  Something that nourished and guided and warmed.  Not the moon.  Not the thing of night and hungry wolves and quiet loneliness.  Not a thing of the darkness they fought and still not won, not exactly, not in a way that mattered.  How could he have known the weight of such a thoughtless, frivolous, meaningless phrase and how far and how long Martin had borne it for him to protect he who hung his moon?  

He could see the weight of it so clearly now.  He could see it especially on the darkest days, which came, in grotesque mockery, the moment they found something like their safehouse and rest at last.  Jon had conned his way into a job at the village library with an ancient head librarian who didn’t care much for too many questions, or background or credit checks, and was more than happy to pay in cash.  With Martin’s help of course.  Martin himself had taken up stocking at the village grocers, and their life had teetered onto something so close to quaint and normal it suddenly laid bare the gravity of the depths of darkness they had escaped.

No longer did they have to run, no longer did they have to fight, they could finally lay down the chase and curl in upon each other to lick their wounds in quiet.  But without the driving, primal instinct to live, to survive, that ushered in the days where all the hurt came back to roost and brood and fester.  The days where he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, or the days Martin couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, or the days they shouted themselves hoarse, stormed apart for hours then came back, silent and broken, red-eyed and exhausted to hold each other and weep into the spaces between neck and shoulder where it still smelled like love and home.

He could see so painfully clearly the toll following him to the ends of the cosmos and back had etched its marks into his goodness, his body and soul, see how often he would walk down the road from their cabin, just a little ways, to stand on the heather spotted hills and gaze out into the frigid infinity of the gray sea.  Cold terror would grip him then, incite a desperate want to run after him, to throw his arms around him and bring him home, but also the fear it would only be to have him turn to mist and slip through his fingers forever.  He always had a cup of steaming tea waiting for him when he came back, just in case.

But again, and always.  It was Martin who would pick up Jon’s hands, kiss every slender, scarred finger through his tears and be the first one to utter ‘I’m sorry.’  Martin who told him with just a single scathing flash of stern blue eyes and not a single word uttered that he was certainly coming to bed and not banishing himself to the couch like an idiot.  Martin who wrapped him in his arms and warmth and boundless love and reminded him, “One way or another.  Together.  That was the deal, right?  You don’t get to back out now.  No returns, refunds, or exchanges, I’m afraid.”

And even through the deepest sobs he would find the laugh Jon didn’t think was in him.  Martin sifted through the mire and the muck and held fast to the tiny, shining things so easy to lose in the darkness.  Things Jon was certain were lost forever, only to be reignited and hung in the brightening sky of their story.  Even if they weren’t quite the moon yet.

It had also been Martin who, on a perfectly ordinary day, on a simple walk through the local farmers market, stopped to peruse one of the usual unremarkable stalls filled with crystals and oils and trinkets.  Jon had wandered off to procure the parsnips and the strawberries, unrelated recipes Martin swore, he had been tasked with finding.  When he returned he found him, a radiant monument tall among the faceless locals, rusty curls caressing his face in the salty breeze, carved of marble and rose quartz and gazing down at a pair of hematite rings on a velvet display box.  His eyes were distant, but not in the enthralled, disembodied way they were when he looked at the sea, or the broken way when they weren’t speaking, but in the contemplative, regarding of puzzle pieces way when he would look into the fire during their talks and turn his words in his mind over and over again like a rock tumbler until they were polished just right.

“Getting into crystals now, are we?” Jon had joked, “Surely I’m not so dull to be around that that’s becoming an attractive hobby.”

Martin snorted and shook his head.

“Supposed to mean healing, or grounding, or something.  Aligning your meridians, I think the lady said?  Whatever that means,” he elaborated, reaching out to touch.

They clinked weightily together, thick and glossy and the dark astral gray of a moonless night.  Martin turned over the card that went with them and read.

“’A grounding stone that belongs to the planet Mars.  It strengthens our connections to the earth and aids the warrior on their journey.  It is a stone of invincibility, but also fragility.  It balances yin and yang energies with its magnetic properties for the perfect reflection upon one’s own soul, astral, physical, and spiritual.’”

“Hematite, is it?” Jon asked, “Also more commonly called bloodstone.  You know if you scratch it, it leaves a red mark.  Like it’s bleeding.  Watch.”

He picked up one of the rings and firmly ran it down the corner of the card Martin had been reading from.  Sure enough, the black stone had left a faint, but starkly crimson mark on the yellowed paper.

“It BLEEDS?” Martin exclaimed in horror.

“It’s just a kind of iron oxide, so, rust, basically,” Jon explained with a chuckle, “Kind of weirdly romantic if you think about it?  This intimidating shiny black stone like armor, made of iron to boot, but with a bleeding heart at its core.”

“I just thought it was pretty, I didn’t know it bleeds,” Martin had laughed in that incredulous way he always did when Jon was telling him something he didn’t actually want to know, but appreciated anyway.

“I find that the strongest, prettiest things often do,” Jon had said in reply.  He remembered saying that particularly clearly, waxing poetic, feeling a swell of affection for the hugely beautiful man he leaned against and was adorably aghast at bleeding rocks.

“Yeah, I reckon they do,” Martin murmured back.

And then his cheeks had flushed bright red under his freckles and the stone steps of his shoulders crumbled a bit under the crushing ancientness and vastness of what he had originally been pondering.

“So, I mean, before you spoiled it with the blood thing.  I was thinking… Well, I was just having a browse and I saw these and I thought they were quite fetching, and then the lady told me they meant grounding and healing and a journey, like on the card.  A-And there were two of them, all by themselves, and everything else was so colorful and flashy these were just so… Um.  Maybe the blood and rusty iron thing makes it more poetic now, actually?  I don’t know.  Sorry I-  This sounded so much better in my head.”

It wasn’t his fault, Jon remembered thinking.  Martin couldn’t find the words because there weren’t any.  Not in this universe or any other.  Not for what they’d gone through, and especially not for what they meant to each other.

“I guess I was just thinking.  If… I bought one.  And wore it.  Sort of like.  Um.  You know.  Would… Would you-?” he had asked, his voice trembling.

Jon had never said yes, yes of course he would, faster or with more conviction in his life.  And there was that look again, rising from the ashes, that flooding of golden, unbound love and light, of eyes turned sky blue, of looking at the man who hung his moon in the sky come back to him.  He could still hang Martin’s moon all over again after so many nights of black clouds and darkness, even if it was only paper.  They’d paid for the rings in rumpled bills, exchanged them right then and there, and kissed each other as the crowd of oblivious people in a world they did not belong in flowed like a river around them.  Jon forgot the bag with the parsnips and strawberries.

But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t even matter that Martin’s fit nicely on his ring finger, but Jon had to wear his on his thumb, and even then sometimes on a chain around his neck for fear of losing it.  It didn’t matter that it was the closest thing they were ever going to get to a proposal and a wedding, consigned now forever to the shadows in a borrowed reality with only each other.  Because it was theirs, and they could begin to figure out how their broken pieces fit back together again.

But like most things that don’t matter, it didn’t until it did.

It began as simple things.  Seeing a wedding on some program they weren’t actually paying much attention to and Martin making a flippant, innocuous comment as he combed his fingers lovingly through Jon’s long and silvered chestnut hair in his lap about how he would have loved to have a cake that had a different flavor on every tier at their wedding.  Just so everyone could have something they liked.  And Jon woke up from his half catlike stupor and looked up at him with such aching regret as those words settled into the pit of his heart alongside ‘he thinks you hung the moon.’  

And soon they began to gather a collection of completely innocent remarks that ran the gamut from ‘would they have worn black or white?  Or one of each?  I don’t know… does it really matter?  And were these engagement rings or wedding rings?  I don’t know.  Neither?  both?  And do we say husband instead of boyfriend now?  Fiancé?  Whatever you want, Martin…’ To the heavier, cancerous weights that sank to the bottom of his gut, even below hanging the moon, like ‘I know Tim would have thrown the most amazing bachelor party for both of us, and his mum had always talked about him getting married someday like it was a farfetched pipe dream, but she would be happy for them, he thinks.’

He could never answer those questions.  There was too much at stake, too much finality and familiarity in them, a strange weightlessness in a world that weighed far too much.  The sun and moon continued their eternal dance of time, ignorant, unbothered, but Jon kept collecting those silent debts of normal life, secreting them away in a hidden singularity in his heart that only grew heavier and metastasized farther the more times Martin walked out at night, not him, beaming starlight from his eyes and his fingertips, to hang the moon again.  So soft, so full of wooly cows and pink heather and the smell of tea and sea salt and Martin’s shampoo on the pillow next to him did it become, that it was almost inevitable that one morning Jon awoke absolutely convinced none of it could be real.  

The moment he decided that, everything made so much more sense.  He could breathe again.  There was a reason he could never sit still, never just feel at ease or talk about the future like it was a real thing that could still happen.  He knew why the silence made his brain itch and why he still glanced around corners and glowered at anyone who dared let their gaze linger on his Martin too long.  Why Martin’s ring fit and his didn’t.  There was too much debt to the universe to be paid, too many broken promises, too many corpses in his wake, he had done nothing to deserve this idyllic life of love and peace and smallness and Martin.  It had to be Her doing, It’s doing, some carefully woven torture chamber that would lure them to the apex of their joy, the center of the web, where they would just be devoured over and over to empty husks and set up like chess pieces to fill with love and light just to knock down again.  He wasn’t free after all.

Jon had been halfway into his coat and halfway out the door to do, he didn’t know, something, anything, to go to the library to use their computer and research something he didn’t know he was looking for when Martin had seized his hand and whirled him around.

“Jon.  STOP.  It’s over.”

And he’d stopped.  He’d looked into those baleful blue eyes, fallen into their depths, landed on the precipice of madness, and broken.  It wasn’t over.  Not for him.  He finally understood.  It was still there.  The Eye.  It always had been.  Though not really, he understood slowly as he wept on his knees in their doorway into Martin’s chest, it had indeed closed forever on him, but it lingered as distant static, like a phantom limb, a metaphysical itch that could never be scratched.  Martin had cradled him close and listened, listened so patiently as he ripped the jagged black fear from the deepest, ugliest part of his heart, hauled it up bloody and messy from his throat and finally laid it bare for both of them to see.  And when it was done and he couldn’t cry anymore Martin had locked eyes with him in a way that made him forget any others could have ever existed outside of crystalline blue and filled with moonlight.

“Listen to me.  I know you think you have some cosmic burden to bear.  That you’re still wearing some… some fucked up crown and sitting on a throne of skulls and death and eyeballs or whatever image you want to put there, and that you have to sit and hurt and watch over everything so it doesn’t happen again, but...  Sorry, Jon, but that’s bullshit.  It’s just a scar now.  That’s all.  Just like the rest of them.  Ugly and beautiful and proof that you —Jonathan Sims— are still alive.  And you are not The Archivist anymore.  You’re just mine.  My Jon.”

He’d held his Jon’s stunned face in his hands and peppered kisses over the pock marks in his skin, over the slash on his throat, the burnt fingers that still couldn’t bend quite right, even the one on his chest, the one almost always hidden by fabric but the one he didn’t need to see to find.  His heart and fingers would always remember exactly where it was.  And he’d kept his lips there a moment, then turned his ear to his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist to listen to his heartbeat like a trembling little bird.

“If I can hear it and feel it.  So can you,” he whispered.

Unsteady fingers curled desperately into Martin’s silky locks, hematite loop cool against his scalp, “Thank you…”

Martin stayed for the kiss on top of his head he knew was coming and smiled.

“Okay, so it’s simple to fix if you think about it,” he murmured into Jon’s chest, “We just need that thing, you know?  The thing that makes you feel like you’re still doing the thing, but you’re not.  What was the word for it again?  A placeholder?  Like when you quit smoking and you hold a pencil or a straw or something that’s not actually a cigarette so you can wean yourself off the ritual?”

Jon blinked owlishly down at him as he dried his eyes.

“A… placebo?  Are you talking about a placebo?”

“Yeah!  That’s it!  We just need to find you a placebo for Knowing things!  That’s all.  Like… reality shows, or-or zoo cams or something!  We’ll figure it out together.  Alright, love?  I promise you.  It’ll be okay.”

Jon was skeptical, so very skeptical, but if Martin was determined to find a balm to soothe his jagged, ontological scars he would happily play the part of lab rat for him.  They’d tried a myriad things to replicate the feeling of Knowing and looking something deep within him still craved.  The zoo and animal livestreams were a bust, cute and entertaining as they were, but animals weren’t ever the purview of The Eye and the camera itself was barely a scrap.  Reality shows came closer, the more salacious the better, but even that temporary fix wore off when Jon’s disgust with the overall content and participants outweighed any benefit.  Martin was just happy to have finally converted him to Bake Off, at least.  They tried people watching in the square in the village, but it made Jon far too self-conscious and guilty.  He used the binoculars exactly once, and that was to look at the cows in the fields, and the choose-your-own-adventure books Martin had been certain would strike a sagacious chord wound up in the donation bin at the library.  But that was when he was struck with a bolt of genius.

Unbeknownst to Jon, which brought him no small measure of glee, Martin ordered, received, and then set up with a literal bow in their back garden the finest telescope he could afford on his meager savings.  He’d researched for days, asked on every amateur astronomer forum he could find, and had it delivered to the grocers so he could make it a proper surprise.  He’d even gone so far as to attack and blindfold a hapless Jon the moment he made it home from work on the day it was ready, and stood behind him giddily bouncing as he tore the tea towel away from his eyes.

“A… Telescope?” he’d blurted dumbly.

“Yes!  It’s perfect, right?  I asked around to find the one that had all the best features, and this one has the best overall magnification and the most lenses, but it doesn’t have the little satellite positioning thing?  I figured you wouldn’t want that anyway, you always like figuring things out and finding things on your own better.”

Martin had been positively radiant.  Jon had just stared at the gawping black tube and chewed the inside of his cheek as he processed what to say.

“I mean… thank you, Martin, really.  It was a sweet thought, but if the binoculars didn’t-“

“Screw the binoculars!  This is different!” Martin happily insisted, “You can look at so much more!  Stars and planets and galaxies and what have you, and it can maybe be sort of like you’re looking for other worlds?  Wormholes or whatever?  Or signs of The Fears and where they’ve gone?  Or even if the stars are the same here as they were back before?  Space literally has so many things to LOOK at we can’t even count them!  This has got to be it!”

Jon tried to smile and laugh and agree to try it out, at the very least, if only because Martin was beaming so sweetly with pride and hope.  Though that first night he didn’t, ushering them back in with promises of tomorrow, Martin, I promise tomorrow.  Tomorrow had been a lie.  As had been the next night.  In fact, it took Jon a full week to even remember they even had a telescope, and that was only after getting the smuggest, Cheshire grin out of Martin after casually mentioning there would be a visible, if partial, lunar eclipse that night.  He’d relented, only because he’d entrapped himself, and they’d both bundled up, looked in the manual for the best size lens to view the moon with, poured a few glasses of wine, and turned their eyes to the stars.

Martin had gone first, gripping the eyepiece and adjusting the focus all the while gasping in awe.  It was so beautiful he’d burst into poetry with a crooked grin.

“Art thou pale for weariness?  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth, and ever changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy?  Sounds a little familiar, eh?” he joked, casting a wry look over his shoulder.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly.

“Gross.  Keats again?”

“Nope, Shelley this time, and even he thinks you ought to have a look at the moon.  I think you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Jon had sighed obligingly and shuffled to the telescope, fully expecting to look at something bright and round with a bit of a shadow on it that was distinctly unremarkable, have another glass of wine, and then go back inside to snuggle by the fire.  What he saw in that tiny pinhole of light pierced straight through the hazel brown of his eye and plunged him into another world entirely.

The sands of the moon glowed the purest white in the refracted light of the distant sun with which it waltzed.  He could see in crisp, shadowy relief the innumerable scars she bore, the depth and breadth of Ptolemaeus, the boundless lonely flatness of the maria, named for the oceans they were once thought to be, an insult to the rock plains forged a millennia ago in birth by cataclysmic fire.  Every crater remained wrought in perfect, frozen detail with no erosion or foliage to slowly heal them over, and she beamed them proudly, ostentatiously in her heavenly light.  A hulking, ancient protectorate, hung by the hands of creation at the dawn of time for a fledgling planet, hundreds of thousands of miles away, and yet so crystal clear and unafraid as he perused her millions of years of cosmic sentinel through a lens.  It was dwarfing, humbling, viscerally awe inspiring in a way he dared not voice for fear of snuffing out the fragile glow of wonder and excitement welling in his chest he had been so certain was gone forever.

Astronomy had never been something that had particularly interested Jon, back when his entire reality from the moment his childish hands had touched a single book was spent peering into shadows and watching his own back.  There was no point in wondering what lay among the stars when danger and death lurked so close behind with slavering jaws ever poised at his throat on terra firma, but now.  Now, he had been living in an alternate world, dimension, reality, somewhere, he couldn’t even say for sure.  He’d been hurled potentially through the very stars that twinkled coquettishly above, flashed through their nebulous veils and curtains under their indifferent gaseous gazes, but seen nothing.  Here was a vast expanse of complete chaotic indefiniteness inviting him in to see what few had ever seen, to guess and hypothesize and gesture wildly at secrets only the stars could keep.  To Know.

Jon had jerked back so suddenly from the telescope to survey the entirety of the astral dome above them that Martin had choked on his wine.

“Jon?  Are you quite alright?”

“Yes, I…” he’d murmured, only even half hearing that Martin had said anything at all, stars reflected in his wondering dark eyes, “I’m fine, I just… How… How much more can this see?  How deep does it go?”

Jon hadn’t seen the victorious smirk on Martin’s face as he set down his wine glass and picked up the instruction manual and lens guide.  They’d watched the rest of the eclipse, of course, marveling through the lens at the inky trickle of shadow over craggy white, but then they’d changed the lens to the strongest one, according to the guide, and spent the rest of the evening triangulating their position beneath their slice of the universe and plotting out the various stars, planets, and constellations above.  Jon had even dashed inside to grab a mostly blank notebook and had filled several pages with notes and observations and things to research later, all while Martin held back tears watching him come so alive over a project he didn’t even know he needed.  Eventually though, sleepiness and cold claimed him, and he kissed his beloved goodnight and left him, more than gladly, to ride out the intellectual flare up until it burnt both him and itself out.  

Martin had no clue what time it was when he finally returned, and it didn’t even matter.  All that mattered was at some point, a practically frozen Jon had climbed into bed, snuggled up close behind and wrapped his arms around him to kiss the back of his neck so softly like the wings of a butterfly and whisper.

“Thank you.”

Another victorious smirk and a loving murmur.

“Told you so.”

Where there had been nothing but an Eye shaped hole in him, scarred around the edges and aching in its vacuum, Jon had filled it with the names of nebulas and quasars, of the myth of Andromeda, and Orion, and Castor and Pollux, or Hercules, and why they had all been hung in the stars for eternity.  The stories were much the same as he remembered, but he’d found slight eccentricities, tiny irregularities in the sky which fascinated him even more so.  Night after night he would look at a different astral body, chart it down in his notebook, then come bounding in with starlight beaming from his eyes and his fingertips with some cry of eureka.

“Martin!  Did you know here Polaris is in the south and Sirius is in the north?”

“Martin!  Did you know the Andromeda Galaxy is actually a little closer to the Milky Way here?”

“Martin, you have to come see this!  Oh, no it’s not weird this time, it’s just I finally got Saturn in the telescope and you can actually see the rings!”

His nightly herald would always be different, but Martin would always rise from the comfort of the couch, put his slippers on, and let Jon talk as long as he needed to about his latest discovery, watching him smile again while he, too, watched the matching smile it never failed to ignite illuminate Martin’s face and they lit each other up in the fused brilliance of a binary star.

Martin no longer hung the moon for Jon, he’d finally just up and quite literally given it to him, and there was no mortal way to repay him for that.  Or so he’d thought.  It came to him, as most flashes of brilliance do, on a night he hadn’t even been thinking about it at all.  All he had been doing was sitting in a lawn chair with his telescope long after Martin had gone to bed, chewing his pencil idly, vaguely missing a cigarette and pondering notes on Vega and Lyra between watching it through his lens.  He’d been stuck for days on Vega and its potentiality for another solar system and what that could imply for their new Earth and their new sun, as well as Lyra and the tragic tale of Orpheus and his doomed love.  Even in their new reality he still turned back at the end of the story, still could not contain the roiling, effusive adoration to his own downfall.

Bitterness had risen like bile in the back of Jon’s throat as he replayed the myth again in his head, unsure why it was vexing him and rewinding in his brain so torturously.  “Stupid, stupid man, if he’d only just…” he’d thought again and again, each time giving the star-crossed musician a different decision, a different choice, urging him down another path somewhere, anywhere along his journey, but in the end, he’d always looped back around to the original.  It was the point of the story, after all.  Not so much the love itself or even the loss of it, but the power of it over one man and the creation born from his mourning and eventual destruction.  Patently Greek.  But the chorus would always begin again in Jon’s head.  If he’d kept his Eurydice, if his songs had been happy, if he hadn’t spent the rest of his life mourning so intensely he was eventually destroyed for it, would he have become the paragon of healing he was, the oracle, the lynchpin of the fate of the world he had eventually become?  Which of them was the stupider man?

Jon was only mortal now, he was no longer all-seeing oracle and dark savior, he had no authority to say, but it was a trifle easier to ponder the hubris of Orpheus instead of his own.  He couldn’t help but think, achingly, sometimes the heroes just deserved to pull their beloved from the pit of Tartarus, promise to love them for eternity, and then simply get married, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after.  A story wasn’t a story if it didn’t write itself upon the very bones and sinews of its heroes, that was the law of the universe, but when the story was done and the cracks and fissures in their tissues had faded to myth and legend, what became of the heroes who did not die a tragic or heroic death and were not hung in the stars?  What happened to heroes left behind?  Twisting his bloodstone ring on his thumb idly as it caught the shivering fire of those stars in its dark mirrored surface, the musical arrow of the muses pierced his heart, wide-eyed in wonder.  He’d asked the universe, but he already knew the answer.  He’d always known.  He knew, and he knew it with such clarion joy as he had never known anything before.

He could no longer be the man who hung Martin’s moon, he hadn’t been for a long time.  That much was clear to him, but he could certainly do something else.  Perhaps they had grown past the need for moon hangings in the first place.  He knew how their story ended.

It took months of saving, secreting, preparation, and then finally just simply waiting for the perfect, clear night.  The moment it came, the moment he knew it was the night, Jon struck without hesitation.  Poor Martin wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the couch, into Jon, when he returned from a late shift at the grocers, but found himself instead stuffed right back into his coat with a picnic basket in hand and hauled out into the frigid night in a flurry of Jon with little time to protest.  He bounded up the hill behind their little cottage beneath a perfect blanket of stars flaming coldly overhead, trailing Martin’s hand in his behind with his breath coming in silvery puffs of clouds, and paying no heed to the whining.

“Jon, whatever it is, does it have to be NOW?” Martin panted, “I am absolutely knackered and it’s beyond freezing and wouldn’t it be nicer just to curl up with a cuppa and fall asleep in front of Star Wars or something?  Doesn’t that have enough stars and space in it?”

Dauntless, Jon only tugged harder.

“There’s tea in the basket, and I’ve seen Star Wars.  And yes, it has to be tonight, it’s really important, I promise.”

“Look.  I love you.  So much.  You know this, and please know it is with the utmost love and deepest affection in my heart that I point out that you say that every time, and you’ve still shown me Pluto like, a hundred separate times.  While I quite like it, and I still feel sorry for it being bumped out of the solar system and all, it’s just a dot?  How many times can you look at a dot?” Martin sighed.

His words finally threw a caltrop into Jon’s warpath, and he paused, turning over his shoulder woundedly.

“What?  No, it’s not Pluto, I swear just- Please, Martin?  I’ll never ask again if you don’t want to, but just for tonight, please?” he pleaded.

Martin winced, and immediately folded under the onslaught of doleful honeyed brown eyes under a nimbus of stars.

“Oh, lord there you go with the puppy dog eyes.  Okay, okay fine, but there better be a nip of whiskey in this,” he chided lovingly with a gesture at the thermos in the basket.

The smile flared back to life brightly on Jon’s face as he turned back up the craggy little footpath to the top of the hill.

“Of course, hot toddy with tea.”

“Ooh, lovely, you do know me.”

The rest of the way was trivially short to the small, flat hilltop surrounded by heather where Jon had already set up a blanket and the telescope over a pristine vista of the dark line where the stars sank into the sea.  He ushered Martin to sit down first, then perched on his hip beside him and poured him a generous helping of tea and whiskey from the thermos before pouring his own.

“Thanks, much.  Right then, what exactly are we up here to look at that we couldn’t see from our garden?” Martin asked, accepting his cup of potent hot toddy and sipping it gratefully around the lemony steam that billowed up.

Taken aback by the sudden logic lobbed into the center of his romantic posturing, Jon looked momentarily stunned, as if someone had slapped him upside the head.

“Oh!  Oh, um, well-!  Ahah, that is to say- Uh.  There is a reason for all this.  It’s not that we couldn’t see it from our garden, we very much could have.  B-But it’s so beautiful up here, and you can kind of hear the sea?  And it’s nice and peaceful, and the heather is still blooming a bit and um…” he trailed off, cheeks burning.

“Okay…?” Martin probed, frowning a little.

“Er, actually...  It’s less about the stars than it is- W-Well it is about the stars.  Let’s get that clear.  But to be completely honest I mostly just… I-I well.  There’s something I need to tell you?”

Jon was ill-prepared for the look of abject horror on Martin’s face as he went paler than the moon overhead.

“Shit, what is it?  Did you find something?  You saw something?  There’s been a sign of The Fears?  Oh god it’s not HER is it?” he asked frantically, nearly slopping hot toddy all over his lap.

“What?  No!  No, none of that!” Jon spluttered, aghast.

Martin regained a modicum of color in his face and breathed in measuredly.

“Okay, so then what is it?  Oh god, you’re not… Jon you’re not ill, or something, are you?  Please, you can just tell me if-“

“No, I am not ill either, damn it, Martin!  If you would just listen to me!  I-!” Jon moaned exasperatedly, “I just wanted to do something… nice.  Something nice for you.  And nicer than I normally would because I am apparently much worse at crafting romantic moments than I thought and-“

“Wait…” Martin cut in, eyes gleaming with realization, “Jonathan Sims… Are you grand gesturing?”

“Well I am certainly trying but you are making it exceedingly difficult!” he retorted, red in the face and breathless.

“Oh my god, you are!  I’m so sorry!” Martin laughed brightly, “Oh god Jon you poor thing I’m so sorry, I’m awful, I’m the absolute worst!  No please!  Don’t let me spoil it.  Please go on.”

Grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead, Jon tried to summon the words again, only for Martin’s strong, warm hands to take it from him and tip his chin up to gaze into his eyes.

“Hey.  Hey, Jon.  Look at me,” he breathed, looking into his eyes idolatrously, “I’m sorry.  I love you.  You can tell me.”

Taking the steadiness from those clear blue depths he needed, Jon focused on them, on the strawberry blond curls tossing in the icy breeze, of the kiss of chilled pink under his freckles, and that eternal, sunshine smile.

“Okay,” he finally answered, smiling softly.

With a deep, shuddering breath, and a long swig of whiskey laced tea for good measure, Jon drew himself up and fished deep in his soul for the words he had waited a millennium to say.

“Okay… So here it is.  Um… I’ve um, I’ve had a lot of time alone lately with my new hobby, as it were.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  A lot of it is overly complicated and ridiculous and doesn’t deserve to live outside of my head but… a lot of it has been about you, about us.  And I know we don’t need to-to put a label on us or put us into a… a box or anything like that.  But every time I look at this ring on my finger, I can’t help but remember we never actually talked about what they meant,” he began, holding out his left hand and fidgeting with the loose band around his thumb.

“Oh Jon, don’t worry about that.  It was just me being a big sappy, sentimental dork.  And if I recall correctly, we’d had a pretty awful row a night or two before, and I just wanted to feel close to you again, I guess?  We both know what they mean to us.  It doesn’t matter,” Martin assured him sweetly.

“Except that it does!” Jon insisted passionately, “That’s the point!  You are a big sappy, sentimental dork, Martin.  I bet you were the kid that had a dream wedding all planned in a notebook with pictures cut out of magazines and everything.  I adore that about you, but big sappy sentimental dorks should have big sappy, sentimental moments like huge, expensive seaside weddings with three-flavor cakes and all your friends and family and rose petals and dove releases and whatever else your heart could dream up.”

Martin snickered and shook his head, charmed at least by the mental image of kissing Jon on a seaside cliff at sunset while doves flew in glorious formation around them and everyone they had ever known and loved cheered.

“Pfft, I don’t need a grand wedding and all that, I just need-”

“Me.  I know,” Jon finished for him with a smirk, “I knew you’d say that.  Maybe not.  But you deserve one.  And I know I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s necessary in this case.  You deserve it.  All of it.  Me on one knee with a ring in a box, you deserve us picking out flowers and tuxedos and arguing over the font on the invitations.  You deserve Tim’s awful bachelor party and laughing at me at the altar because I had to read my vows off a card and they’re still so stiff and awkward and they pale in comparison to the beautiful poem you wrote about me.  You deserve smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and crying as we exchange rings.  All of it.”

Martin weighed his words carefully on his tongue with a sip of his boozy tea to chase away ghosts of things that never even were.

“I mean, sure, not going to say I never wanted that.  And I did have that stupid wedding notebook, by the way.  But all that became a pipe dream the minute we wound up here, right?  No use being upset about something that can never be.”

“That may be so, but the crux of it is… you also contented yourself with the idea of it never coming true not because we’re here, but because you didn’t think I wanted it,” Jon answered, his unspoken truth hanging heavy in the chill night air between them, “Every time you tried to tell me you wanted to be with me forever, I brushed it off and painted it gray and tucked it away and carried on the way we always were like nothing happened and it didn’t matter.  Because it was alright, really, you were just so happy to have what we have, that I didn’t die in your arms that night, that we were still together after everything.  That I at least kept that promise after I’d broken so many.  You were so grateful just for what you were gifted after we thought we would end with nothing you didn’t dare think to ask the universe for more and I am so, so sorry it took me so long to see that, Martin.  I’m so sorry.”

His voice broke.  The breath caught in Martin’s chest as he reached out to touch his wrist comfortingly.

“Jon, I-“

“No, please.  Please let me finish I… I can’t give you any of those things.  I can’t give you our friends back, I can’t give you cake and doves and the sunset and crying through vows in front of the vicar.  I can’t even give you an elopement at the register office because we still don’t legally exist.  And I guess for a long time I resented myself for that.  For all of it.  For stealing that from you, for dragging you through literal hell only to give you a shadow of a life stuck here with me because I betrayed you.  But- no stop, don’t say anything yet I’m not done.  B-But now I finally realize.  You’re right, Martin.  You were always right.  It doesn’t matter.  Those things are all just… things.  I said to you once, a long time ago, and I’m still not even sure if you really heard me, that I didn’t want to just survive.  It was true then, and maybe it wasn’t true for a while, but it’s certainly true again.  We did not fight tooth and nail to just survive.  We fought to live, and live together.  So what I’m saying is… I know now I don’t have to give you tuxedos and white roses as long as I give you something… Something to prove to you that you are my everything, my entire world, something to show you that I love you more than I have loved anything in my entire life.  That I want forever with you.  S-So I…” he trailed off, sucking in his breath to give his gesture of undying love the ardor and grandeur it deserved, “I bought us a star.”

The proclamation rang out like the toll of a bell, its gravity sonorous and quaking.  Martin blinked.

“You… I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

Jon set his empty thermos cup aside, flailed his hands in the air and shook his head frantically

“I-I know, I know it sounds mental just hear me out!” he protested, “Technically I didn’t buy the star, if we want to get picky about it.  I mean obviously no one can own a star.  Just the rights to name it?  It’s a thing you can do online.  I was a bit gobsmacked it was real to be honest.  I just had this silly idea when I was out looking at the stars.  I was looking at Lyra and thinking about you and Orpheus, and I… W-Well I just typed it in, ‘can you name a star?’ and it came right up.  Right then and there.  It um… comes with… hold on.”

Remembrance placed a gentle bookmark down on Jon’s fluttering thoughts, and he rummaged in the picnic basket for a moment before pulling out a navy-blue manila folder covered in stars and full of the paperwork and certificates that had come with registering theirs.  He handed it to Martin, who took it in place of his own empty cup, numb, muscles quivering under his jaw, and opened it to the glittering gold typeface that proclaimed ‘Congratulations!’.

“It comes with paperwork, too!  See?  So, it’s official, at least?  The Jon-Martin star.  Not a marriage license I know, but at least our names are together on something legal?  Our real names?  I figured even if we manage the fake identity thing we’d have to get married as not us.  Not really.  So…  I-It could be like our marriage certificate?” Jon explained, chewing his lower lip.

Martin said nothing as his hand turned the pages of the documentation, his eyes distant in a way Jon had never seen before.  Not disembodied and enthralled, not broken, not even regarding puzzle pieces.

“Oh!  Um, also I-I got us a binary star.  I forgot to mention that bit,” he went on, filling the sudden void, “It’s, ah- What a binary star is- It’s technically two?  But they’re caught up in each other’s gravity and they orbit each other so tightly they look like one star together, one that just shines a little brighter.  They’re bound together forever by the most powerful cosmic force in the universe.  Just like us.”

Only silence answered, punctuated by one last crisp whisper of paper, and then the folder closing with Martin’s spread fingers atop it, bloodstone gleaming in the vivid pale light of the night.  Jon’s heart pitched frantically in his chest, and desperate, stranded tears pricked at his eyes.

“I uh… I would have rather gotten us a whole constellation.  Heh, you know?  But they don’t do that, obviously,” he tried softly, his fingers barely brushing Martin’s knuckles, “They record heroes in constellations, after all.  Great deeds, doomed romances, lovers who can be together no other way… That would have been a better way to honor us, I think.  Our story.  A-And who knows?  Maybe back on our world there are a few new stars to remember what we did, to mark the place we left it, so that everyone we left behind can look up and remember us.  They don’t know how the story really ended, and they probably never will, but we do.  We do, and I want to end it right here, right now.  With our star shining above us ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”

Martin still said nothing, but his head bowed, casting a slice of shadow over his eyes, and his shoulders quivered as a thin, bright line of wet silver trickled down his cheek.  Jon felt the very sky shatter above and begin to crumble around him.

“Please… M-Make no mistake, Martin.  P-Perhaps the gesture is silly and meaningless, but it was all I could think to do to go with everything I’ve said tonight.  Martin… Martin, don’t you see?  These are my wedding vows to you.  This is me saying ‘I do’ and also ‘Martin K. Blackwood would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the universe?’  All at once.  This is me saying I swear to you I will be yours, through everything, until the end of time.  M-Maybe I wasn’t before.  Maybe I was still punishing myself, but I’m telling you, I’m ready now to have my happily ever after.  With you, Martin.  If you’ll have me.  If I haven’t-“

He would never finish.  In a dizzying blur of blue folder, flashing hematite, and a wreath of golden curls, Martin kissed the words off his lips.  He kissed him so hard and so fierce, through wracking sobs with his hands woven so raptly into his long, wavy locks he thought his lips would bruise and his fragile soul would finally shatter to pieces in Martin’s arms.  Undone, all Jon could do was surrender and kiss him back with equal passion, thumbing away the hot tears as they spilled freely down his cheeks and anointed them both with their cleansing, hoary heat.  Their lips parted and they panted softly against each other in the space between, each afraid to break the sacred, pulsing silence.

“You’re crying,” Jon whispered at length, “I’ve said something wrong. Martin, darling I’m so sorry.  I never meant to-”

Martin laughed, raspy with tears, but ethereal, sparkling, like stardust floating on the breeze.

“People are allowed to cry when they’re happy you stupid, silly man,” he murmured in between kissing him again, and again.

“Oh.  Oh.”

He kissed him one last time, that idiot man who always burnt the toast and always knew the facts but never knew what to say, who finally figured it out and bought him a star, and threw his arms around him, enveloping his slight, fragile form protectively in his embrace.

“I love you.  I love you so much.”

Jon sank into that warm, familiar comfort and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I love you, too, Martin.  I want to be yours for the rest of my life.  I want to be me, I want to be us.”

“I know.  I’ve always known.  Oh god, you do know that right?  I know that you love me, it’s written in everything you do and say.  I have never, ever once doubted you love me with everything you are.  Even in the moments I was afraid that… that maybe we just weren’t meant to be together, I still knew it wouldn’t be because you didn’t love me.  Never because you didn’t love me.  Just maybe that we didn’t fit together anymore,” Martin replied in a small voice through his tears as they spilled down his cheeks.

As much as he wanted to vehemently deny there was ever a chance they might have not fit back together again after they had both been so shattered, to kiss him and tell him not in a million years would there ever have been a future where they weren’t Jon and Martin against the world, Jon knew it to be inescapably true.

“I’m so sorry you ever had to be afraid of that,” he swore, digging his fingers into Martin’s back pointedly, “After everything.  After we fought so hard to escape fear itself.  That I almost let it truly win in the end.  That I couldn’t just let go… Because… Because this was never about The Eye, was it?”

A heave of breath and its shuddering exhale shook Martin’s body free of lifetimes of grief, and fear, of ugliness carried far beyond the borders of their souls.  His fingers curled tighter in unspoken reply.

“No Jon, no it wasn’t, but I’m so very glad you finally figured that out.”

“Me, too…” he whispered.

They held each other in the quiet wake of being a moment and let the astral plane wheel calmly overhead.  An impatient star twinkled.

“Wait… you never answered me,” Jon finally said as he pulled back, sliding his elegant fingers down Martin’s strong arms.

“Huh?” Martin blurted, scrubbing under his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

“About marrying me tonight.  You never actually said yes, so…”

A twinkle in his eye and a slight mischief to his grin, Jon dove back into the picnic basket and emerged with a velvet ring box.  Martin’s hands flew to his mouth.

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did!  Nothing fancy, but I thought it was high time to retire the blood rings,” he explained rising from his former perch on his hip to kneel properly.

The box cracked neatly open, and inside lay a simple, white gold band with a tiny circle of milky moonstone embedded in it on a midnight-blue satin cushion, blindingly bright against the dark.  Martin sobbed joyfully all over again.

“So, uh… I suppose if it had just been us, if we’d just been together, without everything, and we’d arrived at this moment.  I would have done much the same.  I would have brought you somewhere beautiful, somewhere I could teach you some inane fact you didn’t actually care about, but liked because it came from me.  Emulsifiers in ice cream and rum raisin…” they both snickered, “And I would have tried my best to make it into some sort of romantic metaphor but completely bunged it up and you would be laughing as I got down on one knee, just like this.  And it would have just been simple.  To the point.  Just… Will you marry me?  So…”

Jon assumed the traditional position, on one knee, arms outstretched, his every slender point a star in a perfect constellation of love.

“Will you marry me?”

Their eyes met, across a thousand different realities, across a thousand different worlds, carried on celestial winds to fall hopelessly, inexorably, into each other’s orbit.

“Yes, yes I do believe I will.”

With one last farewell kiss upon it for what it had meant for them both, Jon slipped the bloodstone ring from Martin’s finger and replaced it with the delicate band made of starlight.  It took its place radiantly, and shone as Martin drew his hand back to admire it with an equally radiant grin before it dimmed with concern.

“But what about you?” he asked worriedly as he watched the old ring entombed lovingly in the box.

Jon only smirked and produced a second box from the basket, which he offered on his open palm out to Martin.

“Naturally, I got one for myself.  Couldn’t pass up a chance to get a wedding ring that actually fits, could I?  It’s just… Don’t you think you deserve to give it to me the way you would want?” he urged.

Martin took the box eagerly, biting his lower lip in thought.

“Not sure you want to give me that freedom.  I had about five different ways of asking you in my head and all of them you would have hated so, so much.  But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t kind of the point,” he answered wryly.

Jon chortled.

“Sorry I, the unromantic one, sprung this on you, the romantic one.  But I did want to surprise you.  I-I mean you can still write me a vows poem later?  If you want to, of course.  I’d love to have it, even if I don’t actually get to hear it at our wedding.”

Martin’s face flushed immediate crimson and his eyes darted coyly away as he toyed with the wedding band box in his lap.

“Oh that?  A-Actually I… I have it memorized, i-if you really wanted to hear it.”

“You- WHAT?” gasped Jon, his cheeks flushing in tandem.

“Oh yeah, I wrote my vows poem for you ages ago and I’ve gone over it so many times I know it by heart.  It was comforting, okay?  I-I’d read it again when times were good and I thought maybe you’d actually- um… a-and when times were not so good, when you were gone, in your own head, when I was afraid we were broken for good, whenever I needed it.  I’ve read it over a thousand times and never changed a thing from the first time I penned it.  Never needed to.  I’m surprised I haven’t recited it in my sleep at this point,” Martin admitted sheepishly.

Jon’s entire body flushed with a solar heat that melted his joints and his heart into a swirling flare of adulation.

“I can think of no better way, then, to receive my ring,” he breathed, reaching out to cup Martin’s cheek in his hand, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

In mirror ballets of love exchanges, Martin cradled Jon’s hand against his cheek as he spoke the first lines of the vows etched ever on his being softly into his palm.

“Let he who, shadow dwelling, must In paper, pen, and book be bound Shake off the chains of dark and rust And chart his own bright fate unfound.

Let he with lifelong burdens borne Cut paper wings with thread of gold And hand in hand, the sky forsworn Flit clouds and sun in laughter bold.

Let he whose blood and soldier’s ken The world did shield from dark and fear Heal fast those wounds, be whole again And sleep at last, held close and dear.

Bring him to me with spirit free With stars in eyes and music sung From lips a joyful promise be One soul conjoined, one fate’s thread strung.

Two hearts rejoice in love renowned. We lift our heads, alive, uncrowned.”

He waited until the last couplet to pull the ring from the box and slide it onto Jon’s finger where it too, fit perfectly, like it had always been there, and shone defiantly bright in the moonlight.  Jon wept.  He had been weeping since the first words of verse left his beloved’s lips, but seeing that ring like a piece of his missing soul returned to him undammed the tears effusively.

“God that was… Martin, I don’t have words.  I-It was… so beautiful.  You’re so beautiful.  Thank you,” he cried fervently, “I wish I could tell you properly how much that meant, but I just-“

“Hey… That’s alright.  I’m the words guy.  You’re the emulsifiers guy.  Making you cry is all I need to see to know how you feel,” Martin assured him warmly, reaching out to brush his tears away as he chuckled.

“Yeah… add this one to the running tally.”

“Oh, I have,” Martin snickered, “Speaking of!  Now we’ve done the crying through vows bit.  Shouldn’t we say the ‘I do’ bit, as well?”

Jon pursed his lips with a shrug as he reached out with his left hand to take Martin’s left as well, twining their fingers together

“Yes, I suppose we should.  I don’t see why not.  Well then, Martin, do you?”

“I do.  And Jon, do you?”

“I do.”

“You may now soundly snog the groom.”

“Martin…”

The emphatic drawl of his name the way Jon only called it when he was frustratingly enamored of him perished gently against Martin’s velvet lips as they caressed his.  They kissed slowly and reverently, sealing a pact ordained by the heavens long before either of them had seen the stars in the other’s eyes, lighting with white flame the torch to guide them for the first time, forward.  They broke it only to punctuate it with two more featherlight kisses and a breathless laugh, bowing their foreheads together in deference to the forces of fate and the universe.

“I know this isn’t the wedding either of us ever dreamed of, but as far as I’m concerned, it was perfect,” Jon murmured, nuzzling closer into his husband, swaddling the new, fledgling and beautiful word in his heart.

“Well, hey, what is a wedding really other than just a formal declaration that this is it?  This is us, we’re forever, no matter what.  We did it.  And you did it for me, in the STARS, Jon… Can we just remember that again?  You put us in the actual stars.  I am so writing a ballad for our constellation later, you do know this.”

“Oh lord.  Of course you are.  But really, it was the least I could do, after you’ve done so much for me, sacrificed everything for me.  Waited for me for so long.”

“And you came back to me,” Martin reminded him passionately, “And I don’t just mean back to life, here, in this world.  I mean you came back, Jon, MY Jon, the Jon I was in love with the moment I laid eyes on him.  The fidgety and obstinate Jon who can’t make a decent cup of tea to save his life, who puts on two different socks in the morning because his nose is already in the paper or a book, who teaches me about bleeding rocks and binary stars and still reacts to the simplest acts of kindness like a warm cranberry orange scone without asking for one like they’re divine miracles he is undeserving of, who looks at me like I hung the moon or something every time.  Even when I thought I was a complete and total waste of a human being, you, Jonathan Sims, the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant man to ever walk the Earth, looked at me like I hung the moon.  And that was… Still is… everything to me.”

The heavens shifted, the stars wheeled, the last piece clicked smartly, smugly into place.

“W-What did you say…?” Jon asked with such urgency, grabbing his hands so fiercely, Martin startled.

“Wh-I-I don’t-?  Which part?  The moon hanging part?” he stuttered, rolling his eyes fondly as he realized mid-sentence, “Oh, right.  Ugh, Jon are you seriously going to get after me about your weird vendetta against idioms at our wedding?  Because if you are that would be annoyingly adorable and so intensely you and kind of perfect, but also can you not on THIS particular occasion?”

The laugh that tore from Jon’s throat was half mad, half euphoric as the weight of the moon lifted from his shoulders and became naught but an indifferent sentinel disc in the sky once more.

“No no no, it’s just… It’s funny, I had more than a few things very, very wrong for a very, very long time.  That’s all.  Don’t worry about it,” he explained, leaning in and pressing a delicate kiss to Martin’s forehead, “If you’re the one who hung the moon after all, then I suppose ‘written in the stars’ will have to do for me.”

Martin lit up with literary glee.

“Oh ho!  Two space related idioms in one go?  What a rare treat!  Maybe this is your gateway drug into puns…” he teased impishly.

“Absolutely no chance in hell.”

They both laughed, laughed with the billowing icy breath that reached with victorious fingers up to the heavens.  They laughed, messily sniffing back the pesky drip of tears and cold.  They laughed with lightness of the encumbrance of hematite armor shed, its bloody protections no longer needed to cage wounded hearts and keep them safe and close.  They laughed in breath and also in the dancing points of light in their eyes as they fell into one another free from gravity.

“So uh… Do I get to see my star tonight, or don’t I?” Martin finally remembered, relishing the utterly horrified yelp from Jon.

“Oh god I completely-!  Y-Yes!  Yes of course, it’s already set up at the proper coordinates!” he had already sprung to his feet, “Oh, though, hang on, it took longer to get to the star viewing part than I anticipated, so I might need to adjust it a bit.  Oh!  And I have a little strawberries and champagne, if you like?”

“I do like, please and thank you!”

Jon set to readjusting the telescope to the proper ascension and declination while Martin poured them two glasses of crisply bubbling champagne.  They twined their arms to drink a toast from each other’s glass, ‘to us’ or ‘to happily ever afters’, or to several other messily rambled toast worthy sentiments.  They couldn’t decide and toasted to all of it.  They ate plump red strawberries and licked the juice from each other’s fingers as they looked at their star, which was, after everything, just a dot, just like Pluto, but Martin had to admit that he rather liked looking at dots after all.  And that one was their dot.  The warm intoxication of love and champagne begged for music, and someone fumbled in the cold for a wedding playlist on some app, somewhere, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could join hands, gaze into each other’s eyes and dance inelegantly, stepping on each other’s toes, under the umbrella of stars in a gentle rain of moonlight.

“I don’t see your problem with cliches, idioms and all that, really…” Martin mused at length, laying his head on Jon’s shoulder as they slowly spun to the rhythm of a longing ballad and the song of the sea, “Like this stupid, great song.  They’re familiar and cozy and everyone knows them.  They’re like… like old friends.  Always there to rely on when we can’t come up with the words ourselves, because sometimes we can’t.  And if something trite and silly sums up the way you feel, why not just let it be?  Sometimes things are said over and over again because some truths are universal, you know?  They’re just… human.”

Jon pressed a kiss into the mop of curls that tickled his nose and smelled faintly of toasted sugar and lavender and mused on all of the romantic cliches that had just passed through his mind unbidden.  Who was he to deny he was but one star in the sky, a single gear in the grand mortal mechanism of the universe.  If he had handed himself over to the humanity of it all instead of rusting, stopping, looking outside where there was never anything to see, perhaps he could have had this dance much sooner.  It didn’t matter though, until it did, because that night Martin took his breath away, made his world go round, he was head over heels for his match made in heaven, and better than heaven, they were written in the stars.

“You know what, Martin?” Jon laughed in reply, “Tonight, being what it is, I am willing to concede.  You are absolutely right.”

“I’m glad…” came the tender acceptance, followed by a distinctly puckish beat of silence, “Then does this mean I can I start saying love you to the moon and back?”

“Don’t push your luck...”

[sevsnapeposts]

Snapetober Day 2: "You have to let go".

hello everyone. this one was a hard prompt but i managed, and it hurts a little. poor Sev has a lot to carry, huh? so yes, this is from his POV. again, you can read it over in ao3 if you'd like, and also if you'd be kind enough, go give me some kudos over there. thanks, hope you enjoy~.

Day 2 - "You have to let go".

--

"I'm very disappointed, Prue".

It wasn’t easy to say those words. Severus knew well what it was like to hear those words, what it was like to feel like a failure, to feel like he had failed others, but he knew that this was the best way to reprimand her, to let her know that what she wanted to do was wrong.

"Isn't my current state enough of a warning that you shouldn't get involved in such things?", he continued. He was standing on one side of the desk, his arms folded, his expression serious and cold; meanwhile, Prue avoided looking at him, also with her arms crossed and a frown. The fact that she wouln’t look at him made him more upset. “Can't you see where I'm in because of my stupidity? I thought you’d know better than this”.

Prue was still quiet, very interested in the cobblestone of his office. Severus couldn't blame her immature behavior; after all, she was only 16 years old, and the fact that he, of all people, was the one who spoke such harsh words to her must have made her very defensive.

The man sighed, flopping into his chair. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off the impending headache without potions or spells.

"I can't take care of everything, Prue. I have to look after Draco, and also tend to Dumbledore, and don't forget Potter, plus myself all the bloody time because Voldemort is getting more and more impatient”, he told her in a whisper. He was about to add something else to show her that he trusted her, but his choice of words proved to be the wrong one as Prue bolted to her feet, turbulent green eyes, a sea of emotions behind them.

"Do not worry for me, professor", she blurted out, in that shaky voice that always came out when she was upset. “I know how to take care of myself. I will not waste any more of your time with a burden like me”.

And with that she hurried out of the office. Severus sighed again, knowing it was useless to go after her and try to reason when those eyes filled with tears and the girl drowned in her own isolation.

Still, that didn't stop him from feeling bad. It wasn't his intention to make her cry, much less make her feel unwanted or that he saw her as another dead weight to carry. He simply wanted to show her that holding grudges only poisoned one’s soul, that excessive pride would only harm her, that the Dark Arts were unpredictable and extremely dangerous especially when some used them as an emotional outlet. He knew about that, more than he liked to admit.

Severus could understand that Prue hated her parents and was offended at the fact that they were now looking for her nonstop due to finally noticing the incredible witch she was. He could understand that she wanted nothing to do with them, that she loathed the very idea of looking at her mother. He would allow her to stay with him for the rest of her life if she wanted to (romantically or not), once things settled down, as long as she didn't go back to her hell-turned-heaven home attempt.

But what he would never allow was for Prue to go tangle herself among the Dark Arts, looking for something to get her payback for the suffering they had put her through. She was obsessive, it was in her nature to be so, and Severus knew very well that once the first curse was cast, once the Dark power was discovered, she wouldn’t return.

Nevertheless…

He was being a hypocrite, right? Telling her all those things about resentment and envy, treating her as if he were a saint, as if he had gotten over his own demons.

He would never really act upon it, because he was far above those caveman impulses, but Severus didn’t deny his dark thirst for revenge and was aware that no matter how long it had been since then, deep down he wanted to return every little thing they did to him.

To Voldemort, for killing the woman he loved the most.

To Dumbledore, for putting him in the situation he put him in, taking advantage of his pain and regret.

To Lucius, for inviting him to his cult of idiotic and intolerant cretins when he knew that he himself was an idiot and a cretin in a desperate search to belong to something, to be someone.

To James Potter and Sirius Black, for everything they did to him, for making his life more miserable than it already was.

To his father, for every humiliation, every tear, every blow. Not only for those that had left marks on his skin, not only for those that had left marks on his memory, but also for those that had adorned the body of his mother.

And in those moments when he was drowning in his misery, Severus also wanted to blame Lily, and her mother, and Prue, for how unfair life was. For everything bad that happened or had happened to him. He straightened up and buried his face in his hands, his head pulsing hard, the urge to do something stupid and irrational and potentially dangerous almost overwhelming his firm discipline.

Emotions were strong, especially the negative ones. As powerful as the Dark Arts themselves, capable of destroying everything in their path, leaving nothing but pain and destruction where before had been love, friendship, kindness.

Wrath, hatred, loneliness, envy. Severus felt them strongly, being transported from his heart to the tip of his fingers, urging him to pick up the wand and de-stress with some of his old student, teenager habits.

"Let go", he growled to himself, like a warning, like an anchor. There was no one else in there to tell him so, but he had him, as little as that seemed at the moment. He squeezed the wand, which he had taken almost without realizing it. “You have to let go”.

Grudges were strong, but he was stronger. He had learned to be. He knew that many were his mistakes and his alone.

It wasn’t Lily's fault that she had ended her friendship.

It wasn’t her mother's fault that she had been terrified and made bad decisions out of fear.

It wasn’t Prue's fault that she misunderstood him. She was a girl, just a girl who had always been displaced and put last. If anyone was to blame for making her cry it wasn’t her and her insecurities and her overthinking, but him, for not being careful. He had told her not to repeat his mistakes and yet he found himself repeating them.

He had already broken Lily's heart by calling her a Mudblood. Did he, too, have to break Prue's, making her feel that she was a burden to carry, to understand how to choose his words better?

Another sigh, and Severus finally put the wand back in one of his robes’ pockets. He wiped away a hot, angry tear that had trickled down his cheek when he least expected it. The headache was still there, more intense than before, but much less than what it could have become.

He managed to avoid catastrophe, and he would soon drink something for the bloody malaise he felt. It was still too early to go after Prue, but he knew that when she came to her senses, as much as he did, he would be able to explain things to her and steer her away from her misdeeds. If necessary, he himself would set the example, and make his peace with everyone who had ever hurt him, for her.

[hiscyarika]

Vaar’tur (Morning)

Word Count: 1.4k

Pairing: Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) x Reader

Summary: The Mandalorian savors precious moments in the early morning.

Warning(s): Pregnancy

Ambiance: “Rooftop Kiss” - James Horner

A/N: MORE Soft!Din? Absolutely. It never ends.

Masterlist

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Din steps off of the Razor Crest, looking out at the sun as it begins to peek over the horizon. The rays stretch across the expanse of soft grass and reach the lake. Pure blue water glitters gold in the light. He takes in a deep breath, letting clean air fill his lungs. He smells the scent of the wildflowers you’ve told him the name of a thousand times that he just can’t remember. He’s just spent a week inhaling dust on the desert planet where his bounty had been hiding. It feels good to really breathe again.

The Mandalorian smiles to himself as his eyes settle on the small cottage by the water. He’s just strides away from you and the child, rather than worlds. He hates to be so far from the two of you for so long. In fact, it’s reached the point that he only goes off bounty hunting when it becomes a necessity. It’s strange, this feeling of being almost fully settled down. He’s always imagined that the only home he’d ever have was the ship.

But then again, he’s always imagined that he’d be alone on the ship.

Din opens the door to the cottage, making sure that it closes silently behind him. He can’t hear you or the kid rustling around anywhere, though as early as it is, he’s not really expecting either of you to be awake. He takes a moment to savor the silence that has fallen over the cottage. It’s different from the silence that comes with his solitude on the Razor Crest, cold and unsettling, reminding him of his loneliness. No, this silence is peaceful, comforting. He can rest now.

He steps into the small room just off of the kitchen. There’s a couple of chairs and rug where the three of you usually spend time together after dinner. It’s here that he begins to remove the beskar from his body, where there’s less of a chance that he’ll wake you or the kid with the sound of clanging metal. He won’t disturb your rest if he can help it.

With every piece of the beskar that leaves him, Din can feel fatigue settling deeper into his bones. His entire being aches to lie on the mattress of your shared bed, which was infinitely more comfortable than the cot in the ship, not that he sleeps much on the job anyway. Not only is he focused on the job at hand, but he’s found it much harder to fall asleep when you’re not with him.

Once his armor lies neatly on the rug, Din makes his way into the kid’s room. It’s mostly empty, save for the few toys you’d managed to procure for the little creature, and there’s his pod, of course. Bare feet padding quietly across the floor, he peers over the edge of the pod. The child is still fast asleep, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. His ear twitches, and for a moment Din thinks that he might have woken the little one, but he stirs no further. The Mandalorian holds back a sigh of relief.

Satisfied now that he’s had a moment to check on his kid, Din makes his way to the other bedroom. His heart beats a little faster in anticipation as he opens the door, but he stops when he finally sees you.

He can’t help but stand there for just a moment and take in the beauty that he sees. You’re curled up on his side of the bed, face half buried his pillow. Your hair has fallen gently over your face in sleep-mussed waves. Sunlight is beginning to come in through the thin curtains, enveloping your body in a soft golden glow. And then his eyes fall on the swell in the blankets, cradled delicately in your arm.

Pride and affection flow through him. You’re just over seven months along, but just being able to see the way that you’ve grown with his child is enough to bring him more happiness than he’s ever known. He feels his eyes begin to burn. You’re absolutely ethereal, and he knows that he’ll never get used to it.

Din joins you in bed, carefully settling in behind you. He tucks your head beneath his chin and drapes an arm over your torso, relishing the feeling of your warmth and having you back in his arms. He rubs his thumb lightly across the curve of your belly. Tired eyes slip closed. Slow, measured breathing deepens and evens out. He’s almost asleep when you finally begin to stir.

When you wake, you’re immediately aware of the fact that you are no longer alone in bed. Your lips lift in a soft smile. You take Din’s hand in yours, lacing your fingers together as they lie on top of your belly. He presses his lips, warm and soft, to the crown of your head, and you turn to face him.

He shifts with you, his body now curved around yours. He wraps both arms around you, one hand cupping your cheek. Your legs tangle together as you both try to get as close as you possibly can. It’s hard to tell now where he ends and you begin.

“Good morning, my love,” you whisper, and as he looks at you his smile falls into a look of gentle admiration. Unable to contain himself any longer, Din presses his lips to yours, allowing them to linger for a few moments.

“Missed you…,” he murmurs against your mouth. His eyes close again as he rests his forehead against yours, your noses just barely brushing against each other. It’s a leftover habit from the past, before he had revealed his face to you, when his helmet was still a barrier. A Keldabe kiss, he calls it.

A hum of amusement escapes your lips. “We missed you too. You didn’t run into any trouble, did you?,” you ask him. He seems unharmed, which leads you to believe that he completed the job without a hitch. But you also know that he has a tendency to hide his injuries as long as he can manage, so as to keep you from worrying about him.

He chuckles at your question, though not in dismissal of your concern for his well being. “I’m just fine, cyar’ika. I promise,” he assures you. He kisses you again, craving the contact and indulging in it as much as he can, not that you mind at all.

“I’m just making sure,” you murmur. You hold his gaze for a few moments, but a sudden, forceful kick from your unborn child has you separating from him, your hand immediately going to the spot on your abdomen.

Din’s eyes immediately fill with concern, and he sits up a bit in bed. “Is he hurting you?” You’d both taken to referring to the baby as “he,” though really you had no idea.

You shake your head, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “No. Just surprised me. I’m alright.”

The tension in his body melts away, and he settles down beside you again. He presses a soft kiss to your temple, his hand finding its way back to your belly. Now that the baby is awake, he wants to be able to feel the little kicks himself.

“Good morning, ad’ika,” he whispers, moving so that his face is right next to your stomach. Your heart swells at the sight and you gently card your fingers through his hair. There’s another kick, forceful enough to see, and you swear your heart could burst as Din beams down at the spot. His entire face lights up with a level of happiness that you don’t get to see often.

Din can’t help but be completely enamoured. Interacting with the baby this way is something that he could never get tired of, and though he’s ecstatic for the day that the baby finally comes, he knows that he’ll miss these intimate moments with you. It’s a simple, beautiful part of life that he’d once thought he would never be able to experience. But now he has you, and he’ll forever be grateful to you forgiving this precious gift to him.

When the baby finally quiets again, Din lies back down with you, your back to his chest again. He leaves little kisses down your neck and across your shoulder, so light that they’re practically nonexistent. His eyes slip closed and again his body reminds him that it’s time to rest. He can already hear your soft snoring.

“Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum, cyar’ika,” he mumbles, falling asleep with his face buried in your hair.

[sweeethinny]

I really need a sirius/hestia fic where he gives vibes of "treating everyone badly except you" at hogwarts (where they may already be togheter). I love the way you write💛💛

I'm sorry for taking so long, I ran out of my computer and I hate writing on my cell phone, and it took longer than expected, and I'm sorry ahahhaah

thank you so much for liking Sirius and Hestia, they are a great couple and I love to write about them, and I hope you like it <3

I went a little further and wrote something like "I treat everyone badly because I'm away from you and we have a kind of secret relationship", I hope you don't mind!

James never imagined that one day he would see that scene. In fact he once thought it would be cool, because he felt a little bad when he was the only one who brought up the subject of girls - at least the subject ''the girl I like..'' - and Sirius, Peter and Remus always seemed to keep any relationship they had hidden.

Okay, maybe Sirius didn't hide that much, but it doesn't mean that James was prepared to see that scene when he went up to their dorm, tired of another night as prefects with Lily - they were friends now, which James didn't like to think about too much because it left him with conflicting feelings.

He arrived later than usual, having chatted with the girl in the Common Room for a while just trying to muster up the courage to ask her out again - they had gone to Hogsmeade together in the past week, clandestinely, to get beer, but James wanted a real date now - and he didn't expect any of the other boys to be awake.

They all had a lot to do, with NEWTs getting closer and with teachers passing more and more homework, it was almost impossible to have an hour of the day off, and of all four, Sirius seemed the most irritated by that routine.

James had noticed that his friend was more sulky than usual in the last few days, first he blamed that they lost to Hufflepuff in the last game, but even when James stopped to think he remembered that Sirius was already angry before the game. And it was only when Peter pointed out his friend's mood that he realized what was going on.

He realized it had been a week since he had seen Hestia around, not near them at least. James still saw her sitting next to Lily, talking and laughing, but now she wasn't coming to be with them like before, sitting next to Sirius as if no one noticed that he kept his hand close to hers, or that the two always seemed to share an intimate and almost non-verbal talk, looking at each other for a few seconds before laughing and Hestia blushing, denying and turning to talk to Remus. Sirius was going to run a hand through his hair as if he wanted to disguise that he was blushing, leaning against the couch and teasing Lily again.

James had even gone so far as to ask Sirius after Remus commented on how Hestia had disappeared, but the conversation didn't last long and James suspected that Sirius just wanted to keep someone's mask without feelings;

‘Won't Hestia come over for a drink with us?’ James asked, sitting on the sofa closest to the corner, the Common Room starting to get empty.

'No,' was all Sirius replied angrily, sitting on the windowsill, looking like he was in another world as he stared out into the night.

James didn't know much about the suffering or anything that Sirius was feeling lately, they never talked about it and his friend never seemed to care so much about a girl that he suffered when something went wrong, they were used to talking about James with Lily, but again, Sirius was great at hiding his feelings behind a mask.

James noticed how that day he seemed even more irritated than usual, silent as if it were a shadow beside them, not even seeming to notice when Regulus passed them in the corridor, which James believed was the worst .

A person in silence is always much more dangerous than one who is shouting what he feels, his father always said.

However, Sirius no longer looked so irritated when James entered their dorm.

He didn’t used to eavesdrop on what his friends were doing when he was late, far from it, James always made sure his bed was well protected from any noise that might happen eventually, especially when there were four other hormone-laden teenagers sleeping together, but that night it seemed unusual.

Sirius had forgotten an open crack in the curtain that surrounded him, on the side that faced exactly the window, and when dawn broke, the light would penetrate his cocoon and James didn't want to have an angry Sirius already at seven in the morning, so he went to close before going to bed. However, his friend was not alone in bed as usual, in the mess of blankets was another body hugged to his.

James knew it was Hestia before his vision even focused on her curly hair, he just knew. Sirius was not a guy who slept hugging many girls, and James very much doubted that now he would start adhering to this display of affection.

It was strange to have seen him at that moment, it was almost as intimate as anything else he could have walked in, but it looked even more so. James wondered if it was because they had all gotten so used to not knowing how Sirius felt, that seeing him hugging Hestia as if she were the most important thing seemed almost like seeing a new facet of his friend.

He closed the curtain as carefully as he could, avoiding making too much noise, Sirius deserved to receive that kind of affection.

SIRIUS

'Do you think any of them noticed that I came to sleep with you?' Hestia murmured when they were both awake for what felt like hours, but at the same time, which was like the clock was stopped so Sirius could stay a few more minutes feeling whole with her hugging him. He would never tire of that feeling.

'No,' he assured, tightening his embrace around her and sinking his nose into that tangle of fragrant curls. 'I said it was a good idea, didn't I? You slept through the night.’

'You are much better than a pillow.' Sirius was happy that Hestia still had her eyes closed, and her face buried in his chest, because he smiled from ear to ear, proud and a little too silly for that hour in the morning. He felt at peace, however. 'I missed you.'

'I missed you too.'

They were both silent, he didn't want to have to get up and face the day, not when he couldn't hold Hestia in his arms or hold hands with her, kissing her until they were both tired. For the first time Sirius wanted to be a passionate asshole, as James was with Lily.

Sirius had never wanted that so much as he did now, it was as if Hestia made him feel safe enough not to be afraid to show it.

The last week had been terrible without her around, he never felt so miserable. Not even when he still lived with his parents.

'I love you.' Sirius never thought he said those exact words to anyone, anxiety clutched his stomach making him feel a little sick, at the same time that his chest seemed to grow with all the conflicting feelings. A part of him didn't want to expose himself like that, the other part was afraid that something would happen to them and he would never be able to say that to her.

There was still a war going on outside, and each day was a new tension that surrounded them.

Sirius did not want to think about dying without saying that to Hestia, it was almost as painful as thinking about death itself.

Her brown eyes flew open, staring at him as if Hestia doubted she had heard that, and suddenly Sirius felt more suffocated than before, thinking about the worst scenario that could happen, thinking about her far away again, and all that loneliness he has felt in the past few days.

Suddenly, he thought that dying would be less painful than the silence that was following.

But then Hestia smiled, her cheeks a little flushed, a small smile on her face. 'I love you too.'

[scarabbai]

Adeptus Fragile! Handle with Care.

Rating: T

Relationships: Ganyu & Xiao | Alatus, Xiao | Alatus & Zhongli, Ganyu & Zhongli, etc.

Fic Summary:

Centuries have passed since the age of the Traveler and their companions, and the immortals of Teyvat—or what’s left of them—have moved on, living modern lives in modern times. The adepti of Liyue are no exception.

But when something rather unexpected happens, their modern life begins to get a little... too modern. One sunny morning, the great Conqueror of Demons, an accomplished senior in the ranks of the Adepti, wakes up and looks at the world with innocent eyes.

“Who am I?”

Archons, someone give poor Ganyu a break...

-

Chapter 1:

In which Xiao wakes up

AO3 Link

The first thought that comes to him when he wakes up is: Fuck, my head hurts.

The second one comes after, when he pulls the sheets tighter around himself and buries his face in his pillow with a groan: I don’t want to get up.

The third slams into him just as he’s about to fall back asleep: Wait, where am I?

He bolts upright in bed, shaking the sleep out of his eyes like a wet dog shaking out its fur. He regrets it when it only makes his headache worse, but the fact that he doesn’t recognize any of his surroundings when his eyes do a quick sweep of the room overshadows that.

Alright, this is fine. Everything is fine. Remain calm. Remain calm, uh...

The realization crashes down on him like a wave, leaving him cold and shivering.

He doesn’t even know his own name.

Okay. Okay, you know what? He can do this. He can work with this. First things first: get situated.

He makes a move to get out of bed, but with his legs tangled in the sheets, it ends with him taking a rather ungraceful tumble instead. His face burns with embarrassment when he lands on the floor with a thud, reduced to nothing more than a balled up heap of limbs. Frustrated, he kicks and struggles blindly, but it only gets him more jumbled up. He’s like a cat trying and failing to escape a blanket cocoon.

He huffs. Mortals and their needlessly irritating fabrics...

Wait, what? Where did that come from? He scrunches up his face in confusion, puzzled by his own thoughts.

Thankfully, he doesn’t need to think much more about it when he hears a knock at the door.

“Xiao,” calls a voice from outside the room, and his head snaps toward the sound. Shit, someone’s here. “Xiao, are you alright in there? I heard a loud noise.”

He doesn’t respond, not trusting his own ability to speak. What should he say? What should he do? And why is that voice, of all things, so familiar? It’s comforting, despite having no idea who it belongs to.

The knocking comes again, more insistent this time. “Xiao,” the voice repeats, firmer but concerned. “If you don’t say anything, I’m coming in!”

He struggles harder in response, but his awkward flailing gets him nowhere. He slumps in defeat. Apparently, this is his life. Whoever he is, bested by a very long and very tangled roll of cloth.

When the door opens, he freezes. A girl with light blue hair steps into the room. She has a gentle and earnest look to her despite the worry written all over her face, and...

Are those horns on her head?

There must be some kind of next level pathetic expression on his face because when she glances over and sees him looking the way he does on the floor, her first reaction isn’t laughter. Instead, she gasps in horror and rushes over, kneeling down and fretting over him in a way that makes him tense up and abandon the idea of wriggling free. He shrinks away and hides his face from her big, purple-pink-whatever colored eyes—they make him feel guilty, somehow.

“Xiao, what’s going on? What happened?” She reaches out but seems to rethink her decision, pulling her hand back before it can touch him. Is he poisonous or something? “It must be the karmic debt again... I’ll call Zhongli, he’ll know what to do.”

She’s back on her feet almost instantly, but before she can turn and leave, some unknown impulse—fear? Loneliness? Just the need for an explanation?—has him reaching out.

“Wait,” he pleads, and the sound of his own voice surprises him somehow. “Don’t go...”

The words stop her in her tracks. He can’t identify the emotion in her eyes when she slowly leans down again to take in his teary-eyed expression, but he thinks it might be uncertainty. Or suspicion? Maybe it’s just intense focus. He’s not sure what that something is, but he’s pretty sure now that he’s bad at reading people.

With that same look of scrutiny on her face, she cautiously reaches out and places a hand on his forehead. Her skin is cold to the touch, and he fights the urge to flinch away. He’s learning very quickly that he’s unused to physical contact.

Despite this, something inside him relaxes as the coolness spreads from his head to the rest of his body. She’s trustworthy, he decides. He may not know who she is or why her presence is so soothing, but he knows this.

Is she family? She feels like family. He does have a family, right?

A thoughtful—and somewhat displeased—hum breaks him out of his thoughts. Expression blank but eyes curious, he blinks up at her while she puts her hand to her chin and frowns at him. She seems troubled.

“Xiao–” She cuts herself off, worrying her lower lip in uncertainty. Dimly, he realizes she’s been referring to him by that the whole time—Xiao might be his name. “You’re... acting a bit strange this morning. And you came stumbling home last night, and you went to sleep when you never do, and...”

She sighs. Heavily. She sounds so distressed it makes him feel a bit sick in solidarity.

“I don’t mean to pry or overstep, but...” She pauses, unsure, and that inexplicable feeling of guilt returns to him in her brief silence. “Are you alright? I think there might be something wrong...” A look of alarm crosses her face, and she quickly backpedals. “Not with you, of course! I’m just saying...” She fidgets a little, but when she meets his eyes this time, her resolve seems stronger. “I’m just saying if you’ve gotten into any trouble, you can tell me. I’ll do my best to help, wherever I can. It’s the least I could do.”

He stares at her in response. She stares back, wilting a little.

Definitely family, he concludes. A doting older sister, perhaps.

Awkwardly, he realizes her silence means he should answer her somehow, but instead of replying with something intelligent or actually explaining himself, all his stupid mouth blurts is, “Good morning. Are you my big sister?”

He immediately wants to bury himself.

While she balks, caught off guard by his clearly uncharacteristic statement, he panics. More foolish nonsense spills out of his mouth, and between her confused spluttering and his inability to form proper words, their attempted conversation dissolves into an unrecognizable mess of half-formed sounds. It’s as if he isn’t used to speaking or hasn’t spoken in a long time, and this failed speech of his is making up for it.

In the end, none of what they attempted to say was actually comprehensible. He takes one look at the pure confusion—and maybe even a little horror, but he has a hard time telling—written all over her face and knows he has to try again. It appears he’s bad with words as well. Shame and frustration settle in his chest at this discovery.

The first thing he manages to come up with is, “Sorry.” He buries his face in the fabric wrapped around him, feeling small. “I don’t... know what’s happening,” he admits, and he hopes the note of fear in his voice is muffled. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who you are.” His eyes sting with tears. Suddenly, he feels pathetic. “I don’t even know who I am...”

Saying it out loud breaks something inside him—it all feels so much more real now, and he‘s so confused, so lost. What is he supposed to do? Who was he? Why did this happen? Frantic thoughts swell like rising water within him, and he sobs, drowning. He doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.

The question that says it all falls from his lips like tears:

“Who am I?”

- - -

Oh, this is bad. This is really, really bad.

She doesn’t know what she expected from this morning, but it certainly wasn’t this. It certainly wasn’t waking up to find Xiao—whom she greatly respects—in... whatever state it is he’s in.

He had called her big sister. Her! The big sister! The sheer disbelief she felt at those words—if anything, Xiao is the senior. His rank in adeptal affairs is higher than hers despite their ages, and their interactions have always reflected this. And if that wasn’t jarring enough, what he revealed next sent her reeling.

No memories. None at all. Can you believe that? The Conqueror of Demons with sudden amnesia? What is this? What has her life come to?

She realizes, belatedly, that Xiao is crying. He’s crying right now in front of her when he had never once showed an ounce of vulnerability before her in the past, and the sight is shocking.

Well, no time to lose. She has to do something, even if she’s not sure what exactly it is she should do.

Swallowing down her nerves, she tries to sound as gentle and reassuring as possible when she shushes him and murmurs, soothingly, “It’ll be alright, Xiao, it’ll be alright... You’ll be okay.”

As she says this, she awkwardly reaches down and—the act kills her a little inside—pats Xiao lightly on the head. Despite his sobbing, he calms slightly. That alone is enough to make her nerves fade just a little, and she takes the opportunity to help him out of the blanket bundle he’s gotten himself into. With careful hands, she unwraps the sheets tangled around his body, peeling away layer after layer until he goes from sad spring roll to just Xiao.

As she pulls back to assess her handiwork, it really strikes her how... small Xiao is.

He hasn’t gotten any shorter or thinner, his facial features are unchanged, and overall he looks the same as he did yesterday, but the way he holds himself now makes all the difference. His emotions are out in the open as he wipes at his tears, his heart unburdened by memory, his eyes innocent. Without the millenniums of suffering and coldness that defined him, he feels so young.

He’s just a boy, she thinks as she pulls him into a hug. He resists at first but settles into the embrace soon after, resting his chin on her shoulder. Mindful of the way he shakes with quieting sniffles, she rubs little circles into his back. The action seems to soothe him.

Ganyu considers the situation. This is okay, actually. This is alright. Zhongli-dàrén will help her figure out what has happened to Xiao when they go to him, but she can handle this for now. She can manage this.

Responsibility is a self assigned fate that has always fit her like a glove, and this is just another to add to her list of duties. Surely it won’t be that hard to look after her new little brother?

“Your name is Xiao,” she begins, voice soft. “I’m Ganyu.”

She feels rather than sees the nod Xiao gives in response. It makes her smile as she pets his hair.

“And you’re right, Xiao-dìdì. I’m your big sister, and I’ll take care of you.”

[decayandfanfics]

The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut later.

A/N: I’m trying so hard to write crusty boy here really in character. At least after AfO is taken. Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.

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Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

An intelligent enemy rather than a stupid friend.

True to his word, Jin treats you like a friend. He makes his best to make you feel a little more comfortable, knowing that you are probably scared to death. So, he engages with you, tries to help you with the cleaning and laundry. So does Compress, ever a gentleman he makes himself useful by being chivalrous. Of course, this doesn’t make you forget your own precarious position, but at least you use it in your favor and suddenly you are delighted at the sight him washing dishes.

After three days of their invasion, you find yourself folding some clothes when he asks you.

“board games?”

“yes” Compress smiles at you “since Shigaraki and Spinner have appropriated your tv and laptop, I thought it would be fun to play something, don’t you agree?”

“well…I’m afraid I only got a chess board.”

“It’s fine, dear. Will you play with me? I’m a little rusty, but I’m sure it would be fun.”

You look for the board, stored in some dark dusty corner of one of your closets as Compress prepares the little kitchen table for your game.

Seven matches later, you sight already getting bored of your constant wining. To be honest, Compress isn’t that bad, but there is no point in comparing you two when you spend playing your first two years in college.

Toga and Twice had gathered around the table to cheer, without really understanding what was happening, and not long after that Dabi and Magne were watching too.

“That was pretty impressive, dear!”

“you aren’t bad either, but I was in the chess club in college a few years ago. I learned a lot in there.” You say moving your eyebrows in funny gesture.

Compress stands giving you a bow and before you begin to gather the pieces to store it again, Shigaraki sits in front of you, putting each black piece in its place.

“Tomura -kun is going to play! You think he can beat her?” Toga whispers to Compress, before Magne answers from behind “Shigaraki is very good at this kind of games, my bet is on him.”

Shigaraki gives you a defiant glare, and you gather again your own pieces. Once you are ready, his ungloved hand points your turn to open the game.

He seems sure of this, a cocky smirk twitching his dry lips up, so you decide you will play seriously this time.

You open by moving your queen’s pawn, and he follows your movement just as you expected. Your king’s knight moves to protect your pawn, and again he reflects. The moment your bishop moves, you have control of the board.

You smile and his smirk turns into a feral grin stretching across his face.

“Smart girl…” he states amused before moving, and then, the game is his. “but you better try harder.”

You wrinkle, the tip of your teeth showing briefly before such challenge.

“Then, better not to disappoint.” Your answer sounds as playful as his defiant statement.

Forty minutes into it and you are completely invested in the game.

The back and forth is tight. For every strategy, he just counteracts your wits with something better and more difficult than the last. At the same time, every time he thinks he already got you, you manage to scape his control and get ahead again.

Its…weirdly exciting, to say the least.

Shigaraki’s eyes burn through your own, trying to read your expression in an attempt to predict your next movement and for a brief second you think about their color and the way his mouth twist upward whenever he fails to trap you.

He’s every bit the strategist you would expect from a ruthless leather, and you wonder how the media managed to paint him to be so childish and immature before, when you see nothing but a skilled hunter.

You feel surprised. Having never really thought about his clever ways or how he just seems to organize the league like a perfectly calibrated weapon, but seeing him now, you can trace every time, every word and every motion that gave away his intricate thinking pattern.

Surely, he’s bat shit crazy with the hero drama and such, but surely that’s not intelligence exclusive.

Your hand travels to your chin, a finger gently taping over your lower lip as you think your next move in one of your classic hard thinking gestures.

With your eyes fixed in the game, you don’t see the dragging look he gives to your lips.

You blink concentrated in trying to disarm his attack, unaware of his brief thoughts. Unaware of the fluttering motion of the eyelashes that crown your clever eyes, fanning softly over the smooth skin of your cheeks.

Just a mere second of self-indulgence and an intrusive flashing idea creeps out of nowhere between his destructive thoughts like a whisper of something unfathomable to him.

She’s very pretty. He thinks as he absorbs every angle of your face, trying to imprint in his brain the way light reflects over your cheekbones and between your lashes.  

You move you tower, and his attention draws back to the game, knowing he already won.

You watch it in slow motion, slapping yourself for not seeing it coming. His slender fingers taking his bishop, striking down your tower and compromising your king. That’s it, you lost, but the moment gets buried under the sudden butterflies in your belly when he arches his brow smugly and smiles softly as the “jaque-mate” leaves his lips, and in a brief defining second the thought takes form in your brain, gluing itself to your skull.

He’s quite handsome when he smiles like that.

Half feral, half childish, and every bit a smart ass.

Yeah. He looks handsome like this. Comfortable in his own skin…youthful.

Confident.  

He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed in yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.

A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing your name the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.

A clever pretty girl.

“Again?” he offers quietly, lowering his gaze because something in him just cannot stand your sweet defiance in a way he never thought possible.

Out of nowhere, he feels…

Embarrassed?

What the fuck.

Of what? He doesn’t know, but he knows he feels his blood creeping neck up and warming his face and he hates you for it, yet he can’t help the need to keep playing with you, just to feel there is something in you that relates to him.

The rest of the league cheers, about it. Magne, Compress and Dabi (surprisingly) engage in the game making bets and pointing moves.

Two games after and he has won two to one (yet in his mind it feels more like a draw after hours of relentless back and forth) when you finally call it for the night before standing, ready to just go to bed.

You give them all the good nights, your eyes lingering on his briefly, like trying to convince yourself that something weird just transpired between the two, just to disappoint yourself when he denies you the pleasure of his attention, seemingly distracted with the little tower between his fingers.

You brush it off like maybe it's only your imagination, maybe that's his way to get competitive and you saw something out of sheer loneliness and stress. You even tell yourself a joke about Stockholm syndrome, completely unaware of how later that night a lanky shadow slither through your bedroom door and watches your sleeping form, just to confirm again that you were, in fact, very pretty.

Chapter 6

[zigtheeortega]

to hell and back

✿ pairing: logan x mc

✿ word count: 4174

✿ warnings: mentions of violence from book one & angst

✿ tags: @diamondsless ; @agentsewell ; @violinet ; @messofakind ; @hudush ; @roguemal ; @troublemakerinspace ; @choicesarehard ; @litgpop ; @auroraemery 

✿ author’s note: i’m incredibly nervous to post this, as this is my first ever logan fic so please be gentle! i got the idea for this fic after watching portrait of a lady on fire, after being reminded of the myth of orpheus and eurydice, which if you haven’t ever heard of it, read up here! the idea of a forbidden love always breaks me but i’m a sucker for punishment, so i thought i’d apply that myth to future logan x mc (my mc’s name is raquel). i hit a follower milestone, too, so i thought i’d celebrate by pushing myself out of my comfort zone! woo![disclaimer: i’d never want to accidentally upset anyone by writing him ooc, so if you have any pointers, please dm me] 

•─────────✦✿✦────────•

He was the last person she’d expected to hear from. It’d been years. Her life was finally getting back on track, and she was moving on.

She white-knuckled the steering wheel, her hands slick with sweat, and peeled out of the parking lot of her dorm, leaving her world to enter his again.

Some days, her time with the Mercy Park Crew felt like a distant dream, a day dream she’d conjured while bored at school. Other times, she’d reminisce on his specific features to make sure she’d never forget what he sounded like, how he looked, how he felt.

Some days, she’d zero in on his eyes, the way the brown tones were multidimensional, layered, and how dark and full his lashes were, shading his dilated pupils when he’d stare at her lips before leaning in for a kiss.

Other days, she’d focus specifically on his hair; the strong coconut smell of his deep conditioning mask, which he unabashedly used, a secret she swore to keep, and the silky feeling of his thick waves beneath the pads of her fingers.

She’d spent years mulling over her time with the Mercy Park Crew, spilling tears every time she came across her prom photo with Logan, so often that she had to lock it up in a journal she’d filled long before. She was used to the feeling of a choked sob, the tension in her lungs and the soreness that came after a good cry: a comfort so familiar to her that it was one of the only things that reminded her she was alive – that she was human.

She’d spent so much time grappling with her morality, the guilt of her involvement weighing heavily on her for her entire freshman year. The depression that came with it was unrelenting, the loneliness of moving across state lines settling in almost immediately. The nightmares were worse.

They came as quickly as they went – in short blips, interwoven with her worst memories. It wasn’t unusual for her to wake up in cold sweats, vivid details of bullets ripping through flesh, the metallic smell of blood burned into her memory.

She often woke up trembling, panting, always quick to muffle her cries with her pillow as to not wake her roommate.

She spent the majority of her first year in isolation, a self-inflicted punishment for the people she’d harmed in such a short span of time. Thankfully, her roommate was rarely there.

She was homesick, but not for Los Angeles. 

No matter how much she wanted to go back, she wouldn’t allow herself to go. Not for holiday breaks or summer.

For the first year, her chest felt like a gaping wound, and she struggled with aimlessness, the thoughts of her purposelessness a constant mental burden. She toed the ledge, always close to jumping but never committed.

It took intense therapy to get her to a safe distance.

She slammed on the brakes, the red hue of the brake light in front of her the only thing warning her to stop. The burst of adrenaline she got from almost rear-ending another car was the most she’d felt in a long time.

She had chased the high relentlessly, either isolating herself completely during depressive episodes or throwing herself into high risk situations to feel something – anything.

Driving had become a utility to her, transportation and nothing more.

She associated the exhilarating sensation of pressing the gas pedal until her foot was nearly pointed, the smell of burning rubber, her tangled, windswept hair caught in her lip gloss – with Logan. It was wrong to try to recreate it without him.

When she’d left for Langston, she’d never looked back. Partially because she felt like she had nearly nothing anchoring her to L.A., but also because her last semester had a sense of finality to it. The crew vanished without a trace, and her inhibitions returned.

It took her five days of driving and stopping to make it to the campus. Her once intimidating, tightly packed car barely filled her half of the shared dorm room. And once she was on campus, she rarely drove anywhere, unless absolutely necessary.

She clung to the hope that she’d be able to find a crew of her own in undergrad, and that she’d hear his voice again. Envisioning Logan’s lips enunciating her nickname gave her a rush close to adrenaline, but not quite.

The soft pattering of rain on her windshield drew her out of her reminiscent thoughts. She blinked, glancing around the pitch black road, searching for a road marker. She flicked her high beams on, bouncing off of a distance marker. “Greenwood – 13 miles”.

He’d called at nearly midnight, his voice trembling, quiet, the bass of his voice keeping him from a true whisper. “Raquel, I need you.”

His tone was pure fear, the four words dripping with the subtext of a flubbed deal, a job gone wrong.

She kept the same phone number, clinging to the belief that maybe, just maybe, she’d hear her name roll off his tongue one more time. 

It took three years for her to hear his voice again. And he was terrified.

She’d spent three long years dealing with the aftermath of the spring of her senior year of high school. A couple months of living in a new world had left a lifetime of damage, and she’d come out of it changed. The damage had festered, so much so that she had to seek help.

She’d promised herself that if she ever saw him again, she’d stand her ground, and try to pull him out of the deep end. She was strong willed, and well intentioned, that much she was sure. She learned so much about herself during that last semester, and she was grateful for it.

And all of that was abandoned the second he spoke her name.

She turned off the highway, and after a long stretch of backroads framed with gravel driveways, the bar came into focus. The open sign flickered, overshadowed by the numerous draft beer logos shining brightly around it.

The parking lot was nearly empty, a couple of reverse-parked pickup trucks scattered across the gravel. The muffled music met her ears, barely audible over the electric bug zapper near the entrance.

She still couldn’t get used to the muggy, swampy weather of the east coast, much less the mosquitoes and the irritating itchiness of a fresh bite.

The chill of the air conditioning hit her before her nerves did. With nothing but a few bills, her driver’s license, phone, and determination, she’d set out to save him. She hadn’t even prepared.

What was she supposed to say to the one person who burrowed his way into her subconscious and never left? The one that she was forced to live without, even though she craved daily him like the sweet bitterness of nicotine, the fleeting high enough to keep her coming back, no matter if it’d eventually kill her.

In the back booth of the dingy bar, she saw him.

She noticed the stubble first, so foreign from the smooth tanned skin she remembered running her fingers across. The dark circles under his eyes aged him, the years of trauma finally catching up to him. It’s like his light was dimmed; she thought he was broken before, but whatever healing journey she’d had, he’d endured the opposite over the years.

His cheeks looked hollow, like he hadn’t eaten in days. From the look of his greasy hair and dirt stained white tee, he’d been on the run nonstop.

“Logan?” She called out, just loud enough for him to hear.

He met her eyes, and for a brief second, they were empty, devoid of emotion, just long enough for her to notice, before they filled with tears. He jumped up from the tattered booth seat: grabbing her in a crushing hug, burying his face in her neck.

He murmured her name into her neck over and over, like he couldn’t believe she was real. She wrapped her arms around him, his familiar warmth bringing her to tears. 

And they stayed like that, enveloped in each other, not a single thing around them mattering, except the feeling of being in each others’ arms after years apart.

When she pulled back to look at him, he stared at her lips, and ran his thumb across her chin. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she breathed, her arms snaking around to his front, and she grazed the tight muscles of his torso.

A drunken man shoved past them towards the restrooms, taking her out of the moment.

“Should we sit?”

He nodded, sliding onto his side of the table. “Do you… want a drink, or?” He asked, a bit nervously.

“No, I’m driving.” She fiddled with the braided keychain attached to her car keys, pulling at the frayed edges.

“That’s the responsible Raquel I missed,” he chuckled, breaking the tension a bit. He took a deep gulp from the beer bottle in front of him.

“I missed you so much,” she sighed, watching his face intently, committing every new detail to memory, tucking it away for later.

“I missed you, too.”

It was a hard conversation to initiate, much less navigate. She was still deciding if he was real – she’d dreamt of the moment she’d see him again, and it wasn’t anything close to what was happening.

She’d daydreamed of him pulling up to her dorm, parked out front like he did when they first met, as cliche as it sounded. Donned with the same white tee and jeans, he was leaning against the car (in her dream she pictured a convertible, so she could watch how beautifully the wind’s rough caress styled his hair, able to tousle it in a way a pair of hands never could), a smirk on his face, his arms folded, but his body language was never uninviting. He was relaxed, untroubled, as she kissed him, and they drove off into the sunset. A cliche, but at least they were both happy.

“So…” she started.

“I know you have a lot of questions, but I don’t know if I can answer all of them right now,” he finished, apologetic.

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say that… subter-fudge doesn’t always work to get you out of sticky situations.”

“You mean subterfuge?”

“Okay, truth be told I’ve never used that word in my life, but it was the word of the day on this dictionary app I have. And I was saving it for a good time, but I think I fucked it up,” he smiled, shaking his head.

She reached across the table, covering his hand with her own. “Let me get this straight. You not only learned a new word to use on me, but you have a dictionary app? You know you can just Google words, right?”

He shrugged. “I try to learn a new word as often as I can. It’s not much, but I feel smarter, even if I never use the word.”

“I thought it was cute.”

He chuckled, tracing his thumb across her knuckles. “You’re just trying to flatter me because I messed up.”

“No, I’m flattering you because you tried… and I missed you,” she said, squeezing his hand, the roughness of his skin comforting to her.

“God, I missed you more,” he whispered, eyes roaming over her face. “You really answered after all that time?”

“Yeah, of course. I knew you’d come back for me, eventually,” she smiled, burying the years of grief underneath the momentary gratification.

Her life since meeting and leaving Logan had been a probability. The numbers were infinite, the outcomes varied. She thought her psychology class would’ve been more rough on her mentally, but numbers didn’t lie.

Her calculus and statistics classes had been terrible – not just because she had to work twice as hard for a good grade in math classes, but because the problems so well translated to her life.

There were so many times that she could’ve died – so many times that she could’ve gone to prison for working with “criminals.” So many times that she jeopardized her future. And she was offered a way out, to start fresh.

But as many times as she tried to scare herself into feeling lucky and grateful for being steered back onto her path to success, she felt hollow. She had a one in a million chance of getting out of that life alive, but she had a one in a million chance of meeting Logan, too.

There were millions of people in Los Angeles County – she could’ve gone her whole life without knowing him, blissfully ignorant to the rough underbelly of the city she’d grown up in.

He changed her from the second he met her. Her probability split down the middle, branching into paths and subpaths, and multiple more until each move she made was critical. And the moment he left, she clung to him, despite the probabilities of them ever meeting again slimming more and more with each passing day.

He squirmed a bit, looking uncomfortable. She could tell that he was holding back. “Look, Raquel, I have to be completely honest with you, or it wouldn’t sit right with me. I know you haven’t seen me since you left for college, but… I’ve seen you.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, all of the jobs I’ve taken since leaving L.A. have been on the east coast, so I could stay close to you. To protect you.”

It shouldn’t have been music to her ears, but witnessing those words fall from his lips filled her soul with a sensation she could only describe as tranquility.

Her first year of college was riddled with depressive episodes, but the ensuing paranoia that came after she was reminded of The Brotherhood was even heavy, even more suffocating. She watched her back so much that her body was covered with bruises from the times she’d run into door frames, trash cans, people, sometimes causing her to trip and fall.

She was so unhealthily fixated on all of the possibilities and outcomes that she withdrew, not wanting to be the reason anyone close to her was harmed. She spent so long worrying that it nearly ruined her.

But hearing that he was always there, close enough to keep her safe, alleviated her, renewed her, replenished her. It nearly undid the hurt, minus a critical detail.

“Why didn’t you reach out to me?”

“I couldn’t… hurt you. The crews I ran with… it would’ve –” he cut himself off with a shake of his head, throwing back the bottle to finish it off.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Logan,” she whispered, watching his labored breathing, like he was so close to crumbling before her eyes.

“No, I can handle it. It just might take me a few tries to get it out,” he smiled weakly, gripping her hand, and she held firm, grounding him.

“Truthfully, I wanted to call you. You don’t know how many times I typed your number out and deleted it. I know your number by memory now.

“I was already here by the time you moved in. I’d been recruited by one of Teppei’s old friends, if you could call him that. He seemed like a great guy at first, but…” he trailed off, pained.

“It got really bad. This guy said he never worked with the same crew twice, and I thought since he kept calling me back that I was special.” He laughed curtly, the familiar look of brewing rage bubbling beneath the surface. “It was stupid, but each time he kept pushing me into doing more than I bargained for. I did a lot of things I couldn’t stomach, but by the time I realized what I was doing, I was already getting orders for the next job.”

He watched her hand on his, refusing to meet her eye.

“I always thought I’d dip when things got too rough, but I couldn’t give up being so close to you.”

“You didn’t run?”

“I told you I was tired of running,” he grinned, and it seemed alien on his gaunt face – like it’d been so long since he smiled he’d forgotten how to do it.

“So, what are you doing now, then?”

“Running.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, so deadpan, so pragmatic, that she knew not to pry. He was at rock bottom, and she was his only way out.

“What can I do?” she asked, no hesitation, ready to throw herself in the line of fire for him.

“I just need a ride to the used car lot on the other side of town. I have cash and someone there waiting to sell me one, so all I need is a ride.”

“You could’ve just called a cab or something, though. Why do you need me?” She prodded.

“I don’t know if you’re gonna like what I’m gonna say,” he hesitated, clearly torn.

“I can’t like or dislike it if you don’t tell me.”

He sighed. “Well, this might be the last time I can see you… for a while.”

“Can’t you just hide out and wait out till it’s safe? You can’t leave now, I just… I just got you back,” she choked, panicking and grieving all over again. 

“I have to. There’s a pretty hefty warrant out for me. And I’ve got people looking for me. I can’t drag you into that,” he said, solemn.

“No, you can get out, Logan, we just have to plan it out. We can beat this, we just have to try,” she whispered, vision blurring with tears.

“Hey, hey, Raquel, it’s okay, I’ve accepted it,” he soothed her, reaching out to stroke her face, swiping his thumb across the streaks of water the teardrops left behind. “I just wanted to see you before I left.”

“Logan, I can’t say goodbye again. I just got you back,” she repeated, the familiar sense of dread creeping in, her chest tight.

“I can’t. I’m in too deep.” And he left it at that.

He left a tip, and they walked to the car, hands intertwined. She wanted so badly to just talk – to catch up on the years he’d missed, to make him proud, but it wasn’t the time. There’d never be a time. Being together in that moment was precious, every minute counting.

She’d have to memorize every second; they would have to last her a lifetime.

“Do you want to drive?”

He chuckled in response, a spark of his old self coming back. “Nah, I’ll be doing enough of that. I really missed seeing you behind the wheel.”

They slipped onto the warm leather seats – the moist air left over from the rain had seeped into the atmosphere of the car. She cranked up the AC, sweat beading on the back of her neck.

She peeled out onto the gravel backroad, not knowing what to say next. Thankfully, he leaned forward to tap the volume knob, turning on the radio, but the soft hum of the engine drowned it out, white noise in their silence.

He slipped the dog tag from around his neck, ruffling his hair, and placed it on the neck of the rearview mirror. It dangled, catching the occasional light of the passing streetlight.

“Is that a new necklace?” she asked, watching it sway as she turned onto the ramp to merge onto the highway.

“I hope you don’t think it’s weird.”

“I think we’re past that.”

“After I gave you my last necklace, I wanted something of my own to remember you by, so I got this done,” he rotated the piece towards her.

“Troublemaker” and her phone number was carved into the metal, scratched and slightly rusty.

“Oh, Logan,” she breathed, gripping the steering wheel harder. She couldn’t tell him bye. She’d just gotten him back.

“I want you to keep it.”

“No, you need it to remember me by, like you said,” she forced through a sob, the composure she’d thought she’d had a grasp on crumbling with each syllable that fell from his lips.

“I don’t need it, Raquel.”

“If I take it it means that…” she couldn’t say it.

“That it could get ugly. And I might not ever come back for you.”

“I want you to, though, Logan. I’m so close to finishing college, and I’m going to start med school soon, and I’m gonna have a great job, and I can take care of us and I–” she cut herself off, crying, her body heaving.

“I’m so proud of you,” he whispered, and was met with the calloused pads of his fingers on her jaw.

“I can’t do this without you.”

“You can. You’re way stronger than you think. I know you made it through some hard ass classes without anyone’s help,” he joked.

“You are too.”

“This isn’t about me anymore. It was never really about me,” he said, tracing a hand down her shoulder to rub the nape of her neck lovingly. “I know you never moved on. Hell, I didn’t really let you move on since I was secretly playing bodyguard for years. But this time I’m serious. You’ve gotta let me go, Troublemaker.”

“You know I’ll never do that,” she laughed feebly.

“You have to at least try. For me.”

She didn’t answer him. She pulled off of the highway, begging for the car to break down, for some divine intervention to happen to prove that they deserved to be together.

When she parked in the empty lot, the only light coming from her headlights and the flashing streetlight, he turned to her, a softness in his haggard appearance.

They stared at each other, drinking in every inch of their bodies. She wanted to remember him as bright, more vigorous, more alive.

And before she knew it, their lips were on one another’s, fervent and hungry. He smelled exactly the same, and she breathed him in, lacing her fingers in his hair, taking full advantage of their brief moment of solitude.

He parted his mouth, tasting her, groaning. They kissed over and over, reacquainting themselves. It morphed into her breaking down, yet again, kissing and embracing him over and over, trying desperately to reclaim the moment as healing. But she couldn’t see it that way, even as he whispered affirmations in her ear, reminding her of all of the things he loved about her.

The rain picked up again, tapping insistently against the windshield, setting a much more soothing ambiance than the situation called for.

Finally, she leaned back, so unwilling to part from the warmth of his arms. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he breathed, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I need to hit the road so I can make it over the state border by sunrise.”

“Logan…” she whispered, begging. “I know we can make this work.” She sounded like a broken record, proposing empty ideas with no solutions. She knew there wasn’t a solution, but she preferred empty words to the stinging slap of the truth.

“I’m a fugitive. You’re going to be a doctor. I can’t compromise that. It’s selfish.”

“But I want you to be selfish,” she clasped his hands in hers, holding it to her chest. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

“That’s the problem, Troublemaker. I can’t let you do that,” he brought her hands to his mouth, kissing her knuckles once, twice, before unlocking his door, and stepping out. “You were always too good for me, Raquel.”

He circled to the front of the car and smiled at her one last time, the tears in his eyes glimmering, reflecting the headlights. She watched the rain dot blotches all over his ratty tee, clinging to his form, and it made her wish she’d been able to see all of him. 

Then he turned, and walked further and further into the lot of cars, his form becoming hazy before disappearing completely. 

And she couldn’t stop him. 

Probability always won in the end – the numbers didn’t lie. She could’ve seen it coming from a mile away, but she didn’t want to see it.

She was paralyzed in fear, knowing that there was no way she could save him from the hell that’d engulfed him, but refusing to believe it.

[aadyeah]

negative Emotions bad Logical disposal of negative emotions good people keep telling me to feel it all but why when I can just shut it all off and bury it after I feel the bad once?

why feel jealousy when you already know what it feels like and can avoid it? why feel loneliness when you already know what it feels like? and same goes for all the other ucky shit

bury it, ignore it, fight it off as long as possible then deal with it when it overflows. kinda like I am losing this analogy please forgive me I just needed an unbiased vent

listen hon idk you or the problems you're going through so I can't say much. only a therapist can help you here. 

but if you ask me, I would say that experiencing emotions as they come and go is always a better and faster way to stay afloat. 

think of your emotions as yarn. if you don't ball the yarn, and keep pushing it aside, you're gonna end up with a huge tangled mess. sorting the yarn as you get it is definitely easier than untangling that mess, right?

but THEN AGAIN I'm not a therapist so don't expect me to have all the answers. if you really need to vent, try talking to a friend or a family member who is willing to help you. 

there are people behind tumblr blogs and they have their own problems, too. i dont have answers to everything, jaan.

[pynches]

there’s no one else (i’d love to hold more)

a/n: for @thegirlwhocanbemoved, the “wait, are you jealous?” prompt. It may not be what you expected but i still hope you like it!

word count: 1999

no tw!

For as long as Ronan could remember, everything he dreamt was a reflection of himself, his feelings and emotions implemented in whatever he decided to give life to in his dreams. Often, these feelings and emotions were unconscious, something Ronan wasn’t aware of before he saw them play out in real life.

The first time Chainsaw landed on Adam’s shoulder, gently nipping at his fingers as Adam had reached up to ruffle her feathers Ronan knew he was in trouble.

Chainsaw had taken a liking to Adam from the start. She had been too shy, however, to interact with him. Instead, she stared intensely at Adam every chance she got, much like her creator, flying away whenever Adam happened to look in her general direction.

This went on for a while.

Then Ronan stopped hating himself.

Chainsaw became a lot more affectionate after Ronan stopped denying his feelings. Adam’s shoulder had become a permanent residence for the raven and Ronan couldn’t blame her, he would be touching Adam on any occasion too if he thought Adam would let him.

Adam didn’t seem to mind either, always petting Chainsaw or ruffling her feathers, blissfully unaware of the implications of this, how she was really a part of Ronan’s soul embedded into the body of a raven.

Chainsaw was all too happy with the attention, preening at Adam’s careful fingers and fond gaze, something Ronan had dreamed about having directed at himself for months.

“I think she likes you better than me,” he had said one night at St. Agnes, a loaded confession disguised by an off-handed comment.

Adam laughed at that, something soft and fleeting. Ronan wanted to catch the laugh and put it in a bottle to listen to when the loneliness he often felt was threatening to rip him apart.

“I wonder why,” Adam shot back, his tone sarcastic but not unkind. He scratched underneath Chainsaw’s chin, Ronan had to clench his hands into fists at the sight before he did or said something stupid. Something that would reveal too much of himself and set him up for the eventual rejection he would like to procrastinate until he was less vulnerable, if that time ever came.

Chainsaw watched him knowingly, he had always dreamt up his creatures too smart for their own good. It almost seemed as if she was smiling mockingly. “Look! I’ve got Adam’s hands on me, something you’ve always wanted but never been the recipient of.”

Ronan stuck out his tongue at the bird when Adam wasn’t watching and went back to laying on the floor with a sour expression, his headphones back on his ears to drown everything out.

Not that much later, Ronan felt a soft kick to his boot and opened his eyes to Adam staring at him, Chainsaw tucked against his chest.

“I’m going to bed,” Adam said softly once Ronan had removed his headphones with the customary eye roll. It took him only a few seconds to realise why Adam had reduced his voice to a whisper.

Ronan felt his mouth pull back into an involuntary sneer. “Why the fuck should I care, Parrish,” he said loudly, waking up Chainsaw who glared at him. He would have felt bad for her if there wasn’t a hot surge of something awful coursing through his body at the sight of her nestled against Adam’s body, all protected and warm while he was reduced to sleep on the floor with only his jacket as a sorry excuse for a pillow.

“Jesus, Lynch,” Adam said, his tone reprimanding, his eyes disbelieving. Ronan tried to shake it off like he often had in the past without issue. He had been on the receiving end of that exact expression more times than he could count, but it usually not Adam who was looking at him like that, talking to him like he was something else than just “Ronan”. Something to be ashamed of maybe.

Ronan shrugged, pretended he had brushed the comment off and went right back to closing his eyes, ignoring the happy squawks Chainsaw let out when he was allowed in Adam’s bed.

Ronan’s blood only boiled further until he was so close to saying something he sat up immediately. He shook out his jacket and put it on, ignoring the confusion on Adam’s tongue.

“Ronan-”

“You can babysit the bird tonight,” he said before he walked out of the door. He was down the stairs before Adam could even comprehend what had just happened, he was in his car before Adam looked down at Chainsaw who looked back with a guilty expression.

Nothing ever escaped Adam, especially not when Ronan was the subject of his watchful gaze.

Ronan knew this, he knew he would have to explain himself in the morning but with the wide expanse of the highway stretched in front of him, the deafening beat of some song he had randomly burned on one of his tapes drumming through the thoughts nagging in his brain, he really didn’t care.

He knew Adam, despite his best efforts to remain unknowable so when the next day rolled around and Adam kept glancing at him from his locker, Chainsaw still on perched on his shoulder, Ronan sighed and closed the door, stepping right into Adam’s face. “What?” he asked, though he knew exactly what Adam was going to ask next.

“What happened last night?” Adam asked as if they had rehearsed this.

Ronan kept to the script. “Nothing special.”

It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the truth either.

Adam lifted one of his eyebrows with practised ease. “I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t give a shit about what you believe,” Ronan sneered back. This time it was more lie than truth. He watched as Adam looked around the hallway, catching some people glancing at them. They once had been notorious for fighting at any given moment but that changed over the months they had known each other. Now, when they happened to fight, it was treated as a new piece of gossip, happily spread between the bored boys of Aglionby.

“Meet me at St. Agnes tonight?” Adam asked. Ronan treated it as a command. He could never say no to Adam and somewhere deep within him, he knew Adam knew this but that was something he wasn’t ready to think about yet.

Ronan nodded and watched as Adam walked off, Chainsaw still on his shoulder, ignoring Ronan completely.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he did miss Chainsaw, the bird he had hand-fed through the early stages of her life and as much as he loved fighting, he hated fighting with her.

The evening couldn’t come early enough.

By now, Ronan had memorised Adam’s schedule to the minute. That didn’t prevent him from showing up late to St. Agnes. It was half an hour after Adam got off from work and Ronan had sought out every excuse to be this late. He marked it off as being busy but he knew the real reason.

He didn’t want to seem too eager and scare Adam off.

He knocked on his apartment door obnoxiously, impatiently waiting until Adam opened the door.

His hands were still a little dirty with leftover motor oil, his hair in disarray, no doubt from going through it with his hands when he was looking at one of the few exercises he didn’t understand and stressed about until he was practically tearing out his hair and biting through his pencils. In those moments, Ronan wanted to wrap him up and finally show him the softness Ronan kept inside at all times, show Adam the softness he deserved to feel.

Instead, he brushed past Adam into the small room, looking at him with a bored expression even though his heartbeat would have revealed it if Adam could hear it as much as Ronan could feel it.

“What do you want?” he asked, his words venom on his tongue.

Adam sighed as if he was already tired from the conversation, tired from Ronan. It set him off even more.

“To talk.”

Adam nodded his head to his mattress and sat down, staring up at Ronan until he sat down too.

“I don’t have anything to say,” Ronan tried but Adam pretended not to hear him. Instead, he looked at the sunset happening outside of the window that now had his attention. Ronan desperately wanted to get Adam’s eyes back on himself.

“You’ve never acted this way with Chainsaw,” Adam said, pricking through every layer Ronan had wrapped himself up with. “Something is wrong.”

“What do you care?” Ronan asked, hiding his desperation for Adam’s caring nature behind a disinterested tone, his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket to match the attitude even though he did it for the added benefit of feeling the heat of Adam’s skin through the leather of his jacket.

“You’re my friend,” Adam said like it was something simple. Ronan wanted to tear himself apart.

“She’s attached to you,” Ronan mumbled, willing for Adam to understand him without having to say anything more.

He didn’t understand it and even if he did, he didn’t let anything on.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s always around you. Sitting on your shoulder and shit,” Ronan said. Adam understood it as it was, the only explanation he was willing to give.

“Wait a minute,” Adam said and Ronan knew this was the end. “Are you jealous.”

Ronan Lynch didn’t lie but that didn’t mean he had to tell the truth either.

They stayed silent for a few seconds, watching as the sun fully disappeared and left them in the darkness, unable to see anything but the shimmer of leftover light outside.

Everything was easier in the dark.

“Are you jealous of me or are you jealous of Chainsaw?”

Ronan swallowed hard.

Adam took his hand, tangling their fingers together. Slight tremors were going through the muscles of Adam’s hand, revealing his own nerves at this development.

It made Ronan feel a little better.

“I don’t like a bird better than I like you,” Adam offered with a small laugh, a way out, a way for Ronan to laugh along with him and forget this happened.

“Do you like me?” Ronan asked instead, letting the desperation he felt bleed through his words. It was the one chance he gave Adam to say something or he would try to get over him even though it felt like Adam had nestled himself in his heart much like Chainsaw had nestled himself against Adam’s chest the night before. Secure and unmovable.

He felt rough fingertips on his jaw and couldn’t suppress the goosebumps rising on his skin. He couldn’t see Adam come nearer but he felt his breath mingle with his own, his lips close enough if he had the courage to lean forward.

He didn’t have the courage.

Adam had.

The kiss was slow, soft, nothing like either of them but right enough it made something unfurl in his chest.

“Does that answer your question?” Adam asked, a whisper against his lips before he was pulled into another kiss.

It wasn’t until they were breathless and lying down on Adam’s shitty mattress, unable to hold themselves up anymore, only illuminated by the soft glow of the bedside table light Adam had quickly turned on, that Chainsaw joined them, bumping her head against Ronan’s hand apologetically.

Ronan smiled unguardedly at her, giving her some crumbed crackers from his pocket he had kept there just in case she came flying back to him.

“You’re still my favourite girl,” he told her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Don’t tell the maggot.”

He felt Adam’s eyes on him but for once he felt unafraid and looked back like he had wanted to do since the moment they met.

Adam smiled at him, his lips stretching over his teeth, and Ronan forgot what he had been jealous about in the first place.