#catch me measuring his finger in his sleep to get his ring fitted

[littleplantfreak]

MARI number one that wedding art? GORGEOUS. I don’t know if you ever were asked this but I need to know how the proposal went ♡´･ᴗ･`♡ I wanna hear ALL ABOUT IT.

Sam lovely!! I read your tags and was blushing over them ugh you're the cutest. I hope your weekend was good and that the week will treat you even better!!! I think I was asked about it vaguely before but I spent the day pondering this while I was at work and daydreamed it for a while, so I've settled on it for real.

I'm not good with public things so maybe he'd just leave it in the garden before I do my daily harvest/pruning? Find it under a zucchini plant or something and he's just watching me freak out by myself in the backyard, yelling "OH my god" five dozen times.

I'd see it coming because it wouldn't be like we hadn't talked about it, and I'd probably have a ring for him in my purse at all times because I'll be damned if we both don't have rings, but I'd still be cheering like I'd won the lottery (can you blame me though) and of course I'd be running inside because he needs to be told 'yes' and I will be kissing him until his knees are weak.

Not a normal proposal by any means, but it's one that would suit me the best. No pressure to react any special way, just me taking it in and maybe crying a little depending on the day.

[gelican-gelicant]

Chapter 2: Mirrors

Aysla wakes up with nine bottles remaining. Two was just enough to grant her the brief respite of an hour or two of dreamless sleep before her heart rate begins to pick up, and her palms begin to sweat. She'll take the broken rest over the visions, though. When she's sober, her dreams are vivid and frequent, and she dreads their assured return as she brings her bender to a reluctant end.

In the wee hours of the morning, she stares at the stars, willing her chattering bones to calm their shaking. Bolting to the edge of camp, bottle in hand, she wretches. Nothing in her stomach to hawk up but air, she clutches at her gut weakly until the heaving stops.

She takes a few measured swigs. What a way to start the day. Just enough to stave off worst of the tremors, but not enough to get her good and drunk. She's tapered off before, but she always forgot how god-awful it is.

All her companions are asleep, but one. Astarion leans on a tree off to the edge of her camp, watching her as she rises.

“Good morning. How is our charming resident inebriate? Rising bright and early to greet the day?”

She smiles dryly back at him, amused.

“One could use a drop of my blood as a fire starter right about now - so, more sober than I’d like,” she replies archly.

Astarion thinks he could use her blood for something else, but he keeps it to himself.

“How do you do it, if you don’t mind me asking?” he inquires curiously. “I’ve seen that particular brand of hooch knockout grown men three times your weight - but you seem thirstier than ever.”

“Impressed or disgusted?” she retorts. “You gain a tolerance - it would take a barrel full of whiskey to even get me buzzed.”

“Hmm. I’m sure our little group will thank you for reducing all your barrel-consuming for our benefit - and probably your liver, too,” he says lightly.

He slithers away without an explanation - to clear his mind perhaps? In the forest, in middle of the night? Aysla notes that he didn't pry, so she won't either. She takes one more swig before going to wash up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

First to rise, Astarion, Aysla, and Lae’zel spend the morning looting through an abandoned village in which they find, among other respective treasures and trinkets, enough swill to last Aysla the rest of her taper-down. 

Her rapier bobs at her hip, covered in goblin gore. 

They're joined by a muscle-bound Tiefling woman that they picked up along the way. She has a jolly disposition and a hot temper, and they collectively decide that she's too charming to be as bad as the Karlach of Avernus that Wyll describes. 

Marching back to camp, Aysla shaky fingers itch for more fighting. The midst of battle is the only place where the curl of cruelty in her heart gets some air, and she almost doesn't notice her cold sweat and her weak nerves. Her heart rate is vital, rather than light and fast like a hummingbird's, if only for a few moments.

She catches a few glances from Lae'zel, who looks like she may finally be beginning to appreciate Aysla's presence as an asset rather than a sloshing burden.

Hiking back to camp is slowed down, bedraggled by heavy bundles of loot as they are. Aysla shuffles through her miscellaneous spoils: a silver ring that doesn't fit her, some boots that seem to glow, and a pretty, decorative handheld mirror. Her hand lightly shakes as she holds up the trinket admiringly, checking her face.

"Find anything good?" she says, to no one in particular. Karlach and Astarion walk on either side of her.

"Nothing to write home about, soldier,” Karlach responds. “What've you got there?"

"Cute, right?" she muses.

She holds up the embellished mirror and examines her reflection. The light yellow-green of her eyes like dying grass looks extra pale against the dark circles settled around them. She smiles at herself for a flash, and it looks more like a grimace. 

Aysla is small and striking, alluring when she tries to be, though her smile has a trace of meanness, the hint of an inside joke she shares with no one but herself. Her body language reads as sardonic and cavalier, but if you stare long enough you'd notice flickers of something more tragic in her edges, constantly shaking and over-tense. Her swagger comes off defiant against the backdrop of her anaemic coloring, toxic and pretty like a poisonous flower. She looks like she might have been beautiful once, if not for being so constantly over-"watered" and underfed, rather than the haunting look she possesses now; magnetic but edgy, like the pieces of a shattered doll glued back together haphazardly, its sharp corners turned porcelain razors.

That’s what Astarion is noticing, as Aysla primps. What he doesn’t notice is how the mirror is angled towards him, revealing his lack of a reflection.

She’s planning the little jest she’ll offer him - ‘oh look, it’s the second most good-looking person in camp, ’ or something - when her eyes widen. She angles the mirror back and forth, seeing Karlach to one side, and an empty space on her other where Astarion is meant to be.

"Oh, it’s nice!" Karlach says.

Aysla smiles at Karlach. Once the tiefling turns away, she taps Astarion’s elbow. She squints at him, feeling stupid. She thinks she can make out two little scars, peeking up from under his collar.

“Can I help you?” he scoffs.

Then, she holds up the mirror once more, looking at him with raised eyebrows. His mouth purses and shock and fear flash in his eyes, but he says nothing with Lae'zel and Karlach still within earshot.

Aysla raises her hands and keeps walking, a gesture of "not my business." She can see his jaw twitching even in her peripheral vision and the tension rolling off of him in waves.

What will she do? he wonders. Stake me? Snitch?

His mind is flashing through scenarios when a strange, probing sensation breaks his focus.

Testing, testing, she says through their tadpoles’ link.

Message received, he answers back.

Don't worry, I can keep a secret, she says. You’re tensing so hard you’re going to burst a vein - oh, wait, do vampires even have veins -

I’d appreciate it if you did, he says.

She nods and almost moves on, but her boredom and curiosity wins out.

No reflection, huh? she asks.

He doesn’t respond, just looks at her drolly as if to say "duh."

Do you want a peek?

His brow knits - it hadn't occurred to him. He nods.

Her view plays in his mind in real time. He's jarred by the familiar yet strange image of his own lithe figure walking, graceful and suave. He recognizes the silver hair coiffed effortlessly sit like an angelic crown atop his head - nice to know that hasn't changed. He's pleased at the image he sees. Broad shoulders and lean limbs, goblin-blood-spattered as they are, beautiful and dangerous. He turns to better inspect his own face. Full, soft and cruel-looking lips and twinkling red eyes; yikes, very red indeed. Overall, a face that is charming enough to make someone's knees wobble. Or, are those her knees? Is it her heart that pitter patters a little faster, as she looks at him?

He realizes she’s grinning at him wickedly when the image fades away.

Not wanting to waste the joke she had cooked up earlier, she projects it now.

Don’t look so shocked - you’re still only the second hottest person in camp, she sends, still smirking.

Right - Karlach was a fine addition, he teases back, smiling widely. Is that why you’ve decided to be such a good little keeper of secrets? I can't blame you - I think I’d swoon for me, too.

She ends the connection then, with a playful gasp.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Back at camp, night falling, Aysla makes her rounds, chit-chatting with each of her companions, intentionally saving Astarion for last.

It’s easy enough for her to fall into banter with each of her traveling mates. She's a charmer, both when endearingly drunk and excruciatingly sober.

She leans on that charm tonight - she needs to form a bond of camaraderie with them all, to redeem herself a bit after basically being labeled the weakest link due to her condition the night before. 

Lae-zel seems to forgive any previous misgivings she had of Aysla based on her skill in battle alone. Despite her delicate constitution, she whips a sword like lightning, taking out droves of enemies before they can see where she comes from - a language Lae’zel speaks and admires.

Gale is easy to befriend, too - Aysla lets him talk to his heart’s content, with nothing but an occasional, “wow, how interesting,” which warms him to her quickly. He even reveals some of his own backstory - a dangerous Netherese orb in his chest, requiring him to eat magical items, and his past love affair with a goddess. It dawns on her that based on the timeline he gives, he may have been predated on by Mystra; but she keeps that to herself for now, not wanting to burst the bubble of esteem he seems to still hold her in.

Wyll is too nice, polished, and well-adjusted for Aysla to be able to find any common ground. She gets a sense that he hides something, but she remains polite and unobtrusive. No tragic backstory? No fatal flaw? Doubtful. But she smiles and makes small talk.

Shadowheart, the first to join Aysla on their quest, has begun to grow on her, and vice versa. She nurses a bottle of wine, and they gossip about the others as if they were old pals.

Karlach is an entertaining and sweet addition. She seems to be genuine and eager for friendship, and Aysla reflects on how that always seems to be the case for the terminally ill, while the hopeless, suicidal wretches like herself are all granted nine lives apiece.

Finally, she approaches Astarion.

“Hello, darling,” he purrs. His sharp features glow in the light of the campfire. 

“How’s my favorite, very normal, mortal companion? Feeling thirsty?” she purrs right back.

She wonders if his thirst is as terrible as her own - day two of withdrawals has not been kind to her, and it seems to only be intensifying as the night falls.

“Oh, I manage. Better than you seem to, sweet thing,” he says, teasing her back. “I’ll probably just go and find something four-legged once everyone’s asleep.”

If she didn’t know the look herself, she wouldn’t notice how he is slightly on edge. He’s jumpy, and his eyes are darting around.

She gets the feeling that he’s putting on his best face, but she recognizes what it looks like when someone desperately, direly needs a drink.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Her intuition is proven right when she wakes to catch him hovering over her, just hours later, fangs bared. 

The first time she experienced alcoholic withdrawals, she didn't understand what was happening. She hadn’t known of such a thing. Hangovers, surely, but spasms? Seizures? Cardiac arrest? No one told her there were repercussions for drinking obscenely for days on end. No one warned her that her body would grow accustomed to it, to the point of need; She had woken up in a cold sweat, only knowing that she needed a drink, right away, or the world would end.

She quickly registers a familiar look in his eyes - shame, urgent hunger - she sees her own reflection.

“Shit,” he says, quickly retreating.

“I’m not mad, just disappointed,” she says, jokingly. She tries her best to convey a light tone, but her voice comes out a hoarse whisper. Her withdrawal symptoms are at their apex now, in the middle of the night, and she’s currently a weak, trembling, tortured mess.

“It’s not what it looks like, I swear. I just needed… well, blood.” He whispers back sheepishly.  

You have no idea, she thinks, how much I get it.

“What happened to ‘something four-legged?’” she asks, still careful to stay quiet enough not to wake the camp.

She wonders why he needed to feed on someone in their camp - but she doesn’t question why it would be her. Aysla, the one who is already dying in her sleep; trembling, in a cold sweat. No one would be shocked if she doesn’t make it to morning.

“I couldn’t find anything, and I was so hungry - I was only going to take a little, I swear, just enough to-” he says, but she cut him off.

“No no no, it’s fine; shhh. You needn't explain it to me - of all people,” she says, gesturing to the bottle she's been nursing. He’s thirsty, and she gets it. 

She lies back down, exhausted, in pain, and kind of okay with maybe, potentially, dying right now. “Knock yourself out.”

He pauses and looks at her. “Really? Just like that?”

“Just don't kill me - or, honestly, do; I really feel like shit right now, so,” she trails off.

His eyes flash to her hands, noticing that they tremble awfully now, even at rest by her sides. “I’ll only take a little - I promise,” he assures her.

She remains still, the only form of consent she has the energy for at this point, and he lowers himself gently. She feels his hair on the side of her face, and his breath on her neck, and she thinks to herself that it might feel pleasant if she didn’t also feel like her blood was made of ants right now. 

She hopes that losing some of it might help the feeling. And if he kills her - well, then the feeling will be over anyway, so it’s a win-win.

His lips ghost against her neck, and she feels his hand gripping her hip. Unable to resist the joke, even in her agony, she feigns flirty chastisement. “Now? Astarion…”

He laughs into her neck. “Absolute freak,” he whispers, before biting down.

She feels an icy pinch, like getting an ear piercing, or being cut by a sharp knife. His teeth slice through her skin easily before her body has a chance to register the feeling. She starts to feel lighter each second - a relief from the high blood pressure she's suffered through all night.

She realizes after a few moments that it’s coming to the point where she ought to stop him if she wants to live, but she pauses, deciding if she should. 

If he finished the job, it would be a sort of poetic justice - the drinker, drunk to death.

A faint chuckle escapes her at that thought, and it seems to jolt him back to the moment. He stops, gradually slowing from an intent sucking, to suckling, to lapping, to finally, a tiny lick before he pulls back.

She sees her own dark red blood stain his lips, which he lazily licks.

“I feel incredible. I feel alive, I feel - happy,” he marvels. “Thank you. This is a gift, you know; I won’t forget it.”

He stands up, and then staggers, before catching himself - looking, well, a little drunk.

She already knows the gist of the joke before he gets it out.

“As delicious as you were, darling, I think your blood may be 80 proof,” he says with a smirk.

Suddenly, she feels a strange aura descend.

She loses time. The next second she remembers, her bedroll is crumpled beneath her, and there’s dirt on her arms and blood in her mouth.

Not only do her hands tremble - her arms tremble, her entire body trembles, her bones, her very soul.

When she comes to, Astarion is looking at her from his elbows.

“You weren't kidding. That was… quite horrifying,” he announces.

Her other companions didn’t wake up, which means she must have had her seizure quietly. She snatches the bottle and pulls, and pulls, and pulls.

[rommahh]

Love On Tour…Actually

{Im sorry for how late this was. I went to the show Friday and honestly, it was the best day of my life. I had a little PCD which made me super unmotivated but I’m back. I love you all, R}

You woke up a little grumpy, you won’t lie. You didn’t like waking up alone especially on a show day. It made you uncomfortable to be left to your own devices without any structure or schedule. You understood that Harry was a busy man but it would’ve been nice to receive some text so you could plan your day accordingly.

Sitting on the couch in the lounge of your hotel room, you chowed down on leftover pasta while watching Netflix on your iPad. You had yet to receive a text from Harry even though you had texted him hours ago when you woke up. It was hard to tell if he was ignoring you out of anger or if he was simply just lost in track. Either way you felt dejected.

On the other hand, Harry hadn’t even noticed that he iced you. He was busy running around Nashville trying to get things ready for tonight’s show. He bought you a new dress and shoes, and got the ring fitted. It was hard to figure out your ring size but he end up measuring your finger when you were passed out asleep in bed last night. When you slept, you slept and he knew that would be the perfect time to measure your finger.

Harry was so busy that morning, that by the end of his errands he realized he didn’t even have time to go back to the hotel before rehearsals. He was sporting a small cough and his vocal chords felt overworked but that’s all apart of tour.

Pulling his phone out of his back pocket as he walked into the arena, he dialed your number quickly. He had people trying to talk to him but he paid them no mind.

“Oh? Would you look who’s here?” Harry’s head shot up to the sound of your voice. There you sat on his dressing room couch, arms crossed over one another as you glared at him. Your gaze burned through him and he could just tell he was in trouble.

“Hello lovie.” Harry rasped.

“Harry you sound like shit but here you are up and about running around. You should’ve slept in this morning.” Scolding as you stand up to walk in front of him. Harry could feel the anger radiate off of you but you hid it well. He melted into your hands that cupped his warm cheeks.

“I had a lot of errands to run and I didn’t want to wake you. Also it’s just a sore throat from singing and traveling- comes with being on tour.” He mumbles dropping his head into your neck. You caress the hairs on the back on his neck and massage the tense muscles.

“You’ve got to think about yourself more, Harry. You have a show to put on but you can’t put on your best show if you’re not at your best. I am not happy with you at all.” Even though your words were scolding him, you held him your arms in the most soothing way. That’s what Harry loved about you, you cared for him like no one else could (aside from his mom). You could tell him off with your harshest words but he’d always feel your love from miles away.

“You’re right love, sorry for not keeping in touch today.” You hum in acknowledgement. You both pulled away from each other when his driver walked in with Harry’s abundance of bags. “Thank you, sir.”

“What all did you buy?” You ask walking towards the bags. Harry’s arm shot out in front of you making you stop. You looked up at him in shock. “Fine be secretive.”

You huffed before making your way back to the couch. Harry rolled his eyes at you, making way to his shopping bags. Plucking the bag from Nordstrom he plopped it down on the table in front of you.

“I just didn’t want you snooping at some other stuff. I bought you this, for tonight.” He sat down beside you, thighs touching leaving no room between you two.

“Im not trying to be mean. Just a little peeved that you left this morning without telling me. You also have a cold and I wanna take care of you since you won’t do it.” A hand rubs his forehead luring his eyes shut.

“Sorry baby, I thank you for caring so much.” He whispers sleepily.

“Im always gonna care for my bubs.” Kissing him on the lips, your turn your attention to the bag. The small grey bag had light tissue paper covering the product within the bag. The tissue falls to the floor as you dig into the bag. A silky champagne dress, folded neatly to decrease wrinkles, sits in the bag. The dress was soft and you knew it was loose enough to give you the room to dance. Soft snores escaped the boy beside you- the exhaustion evident on his face.

You pull the dress out of the bag and walk over to where his outfit of the night hung. The dress was hung beside his to be steamed for later. Turning around, you smile at the sight of your curled up boyfriend. Your heart hurt knowing that in a few minutes he would have to go rehearse.

Harry sleepily went through rehearsals sitting in a chair the whole time. He knew his stage cues and performance, he only had one more thing to rehearse but it required for you to not be in the room. He gave one look to Jeff to signal him to get you out. Jeff made up some excuse saying that he needed help with some social media post for the show.

Before the show, there was a catered dinner from some local restaurant. Harry ate a light meal of fresh vegetables and a sweet iced tea which has grown on him having lived in the states for some years. You ate grilled chicken and fries enjoying the free food. The two of you ate alone in his dressing room- wanting a moment of piece before the crazy.

“How are you feeling?” You ask Harry. He shrugs, he was more nervous than anything but you wouldn’t understand why if he had told that to you. He felt floaty. Tonight would be a game changer, a step in a whole new direction. This is something he’s wanted to do for years now but it’s finally happening, and he’s scared.

"Im ok, a little tired but what else is new. I can't wait to sleep all night and cuddle with you." He grabs your hand from across the table. you squeeze it, frowning at his revelation.

"I don't like that you're so tired." You worry, his hand squeezes yours in reassurance.

“Im ok, it’s all apart if the job.” He looks down to your bare ring finger, thumb brushing over the empty spot. Your nails were done in your favorite way, some funky pattern you found from Pinterest all painted on short coffin nails.

“I love you Harry and I’m so proud of you. I know that these years put us both in a bad place mentally but I’m happy of where we are now.” Harry could almost tear up to your words. They settled into his mind, resonating. He was making the perfect decision and you solidified that ideal.

2014

Harry didn’t know how they did it. A show every night, a new state everyday, a new country every few months- he was burnt out. He was tired of shared tour buses and the lack of autonomy. Last nights LA show was amazing, the crowd was amazing, the energy was amazing- so why did he feel so horrid?

He walked around in The Grove, security guards walking in front and behind him. He wanted a peaceful day alone but here they were. Fans watched suspiciously trying to decipher if it was Harry or not. His hat and sunglasses were obviously not the disguise he thought they would be.

As the whispers got louder, his heart started to flurry more. Panic seeped into his veins as he looked for an escape. Bolting in the Barnes and Nobles- security guards close behind- Harry asked for the employees to close shop just for a moment. Harry only needed a moment to get a car near by to escape to. Feeling overwhelmed, Harry hid.

In between the historical fiction and romance aisle is where he sat. Head between his knees, trying to catch his breathe.

“Are you ok?” A voice asked from above him. His head whipped up in shock. Standing there was you, three books clutched between your arms. Adjusting your dress you dropped down to the floor in front of him.

“I-im fine, tired but fine.” He replied. He looked different than he did the night before, you thought. Last night, he was energetic and full of life and now, now you saw a boy whose exhaustion overpowered him.

“You here for any books?” You were just trying to change the subject, something you did with yourself when you had panic attacks.

“Oh no, I don’t-“ he stuttered shaking his head. You smiled at him before pulling a book from your stack. The fault In Our Stars, your new favorite.

“I love this book, one of my favorites. Heard a movie is coming out too so that’s fun.” You joke. Harry’s relaxed slightly, you nestled closer to him. Opening the book, you began reading, your gentle voice calming Harry.

At the start of chapter four, an interruption pulled you both away. Harry’s security guard told Harry that a car was waiting and the perimeter of the store was clear. Harry nodded telling the guard to give him five more minutes.

“I guess this is it.” You mumble closing your book. Harry nods but makes no move to leave. Something clicks in him as he looks at your face again.

“You were at the concert last night, meet and greet?” He muses.

“Yeah, One Direction is my favorite band. My friend bought our vip tickets for my birthday. Best night ever.” You say quietly, scared that he might think that you’re some obsessed fan.

“Oh, well I’m glad you enjoyed the show….so why didn’t you freak out today or- or expose where I was?”

“You’re a human being, just like me. You get nervous, frustrated, and sad just like me. You get panic attacks just like. Who am I to treat you differently?” Your words did so much for Harry. “Now don’t get me wrong, you’re my favorite in the band, but I don’t idolize you nor do I wish to be in your position cause I know it must be hard.”

“It is. Hard, I mean, really really hard. I love my job but I’m tired.” The silence you two shared burned a connection between you two. “This may be weird but could I have your number? I like talking to you and I wanna hear more of this book.”

Placing your hand made bookmark in the book, you closed in and gently placed it on Harry’s lap. “Have it. I have one at home and if you still want to talk about it- I’ll give you my number.”

Harry stills as the book sits in his lap. “I want to talk to you about the book.”

After exchanging numbers, Harry was urged by you to go. Walking side by side to the door, you were separated by his security.

“Harry, don’t let this keep hurting you. Find the joy and grasp on to it.”

You turned out to be his joy. Calls every night after shows and different books being read together, you both gravitated towards each other. Everyday was a new day to grow closer together. He invited you to more concerts, paying for every ticket because he just needed to be with you.

The show was going beautifully. Harry looked amazing in stage in all white and most fans were captivated by your outfit too. It worried you to see Harry so exhausted on stage but you knew he would stick it through like he always does. Proud was an understatement in your eyes. Harry made you more than proud.

You stood in the back of the watermelon pit at the end of the aisle where his stage stopped a few feet away. Jeff stood beside you like he normally did but he was acting suspicious. You two never stood on the side of Harry’s exit but this is where Jeff said you’d get the best view tonight.

Harry sang his final ‘we’ll be alright’ before doing his stage stroll and bows, but instead of finishing in the middle of the stage- he went down stage to the place he normally exits to at the end of the night. You watched in confusion, along with the crowd, as he walked down the steps to you. The crowd erupted in screams as the lights focused on where you were standing.

“What are you doing?” You asked with large eyes of shock. You felt your heart stop in your chest. The crowd getting louder by the moment. Harry walked closer to you, one hand digging into his pocket while his eyes focused on your face. You couldn’t place what was happening but you’re eyes welled with even more tears nonetheless. Jeff was to the side with a huge smile and his phone out to capture the moment.

“Y/N, my love, my light, the best thing that has happened to me,” he didn’t have his mic on so the crowd couldn’t hear him but you could hear him perfectly. As if you two were the only ones in the large arena, you could only see Harry. “From the moment I met you in the bookstore, I knew you were meant to be in my life. Somehow you took me from my darkest place and guided me to my lightest.

I know our lives have been hard but we’ve always found a way to be alright. I want that for the rest of my life. I want you to be by my side for the rest of my life, so will you please, my love, marry me?”

You gave him no time to answer as you yanked him up by his arm. You wept as you exclaimed loud yeses, yeses that could be heard by a few fans who screamed in excitement igniting the rest of the crowd to scream. Harry picked you up in his arms, throwing one arm out to wave at the crowd before bounding backstage.

“Oh my god Harry!” You exclaimed as he set you down. He only had a few minutes to talk so you kept it quick. You pulled his face down to your kissing his lips. This kiss pulled you both deeper into each other.

He pulled away making you whine. “I gotta go back but I promise you’ll get it all tonight. I can’t believe you said yes. I love you so much.”

Harry’s energy multiplied by 100 going back on stage. He even went as far as to explain what watermelon sugar was about. Remembering when the song was made, it made your legs clench together- a pulse overwhelming your lower regions.

Looking down at your hand, you could feel yourself tear up again at the ring he bought you. It fit perfectly in your hand, you remember him measuring your hand that night even though he thought you were asleep. The thought of your future made your heart swell. A future with new music, a wedding, a nice house, and babies made your heart swell. This was something you couldn’t wait for.

Harry found his joy in you but he never knew about the joy he was to your dark life.

[ryoskuna]

⭑ shaken, not stirred. | bartender!sukuna au.

notes: this thought of bartender!sukuna has been in my head for weeks, but it’s when my mom was giving me a lecture while i was thinking of sketching him as bartender that solidified the fact.  this may become a series thing, and you’re also welcomed to ask questions about this au (please do, it is one of my new favorite things). also i have no idea what reader will be in this au-verse, but i’m thinking a law student (am i self-projecting... perhaps), but i’m open to y’all’s suggestions and can do headcanons for whatever kind of reader y’all want to see. additionally, did i screenshot that picture for the banner from episode 14 bc i thought he looked extra good?? yeah... i did.

warnings: like... mild nsfw via music suggestions, mentions of drink tampering but not from sukuna 

bonus: there’s a playlist that goes with this, here.

taglist: @lethargicyashi, @night-rook, @izuniias, @skys-luce-stellare​, @skys-luce-stellare​

there’s something about 6′4 sukuna shaking a cocktail shaker to toxic by britney spears that just.... chef’s kiss.  no i will not elaborate, just think about it.

sometimes, you think he’s taller than 6′4, but that’s just his platform doc martens.

god, the man chewing on a thin stirring/cocktail straw or just holding it in his jaw, in between his teeth and watch his lips purse around it. he’ll take it out to talk, of course.

the waist apron he wears only emphasizes his shoulder-to-hip ratio

the best seat in the house is literally anywhere you can see him??? like behind him, you can see his back muscles flex, but in the front, you can see his tattoos on his chest peeking out from the fact that he is not going to ever button the top two buttons on his shirt. also, he leaves his sleeves pushed up to his elbows on most nights

tongue piercing, check. both of his ears are pierced, but he tends to change up whether he has just one in or both. 

you find out about the tongue piercing when he does his taste-testing of the drinks he mixes, via the straw drop (take a black plastic straw, dips the straw into the glass, covers the unsubmerged straw end with his index finger to create suction, lifts the straw to his lips, releases his index finger, and "tastes" the cocktail). usually he’ll put the straw in his mouth, but if he notices you’re watching, well, there goes the tongue piercing.

he wears rings, constantly. at least two, one on each hand.

he is a megan the stallion fan (and nicki minaj too, but i digress) and knows most of the words to her songs. his personal favorite is crybaby, and you being his s/o, well, he’ll sing it word for word to you while making drinks at home. he leans in and whispers the real intense/filthy parts like (”uh-uh, don’t fuck me like that fuck me like this”) yeah. he looks like he’s talking normal, but the way his voice drops more and he whispers??? goodbye world. 

sometimes he likes to tease too much while he’s singing and will lean in to lick the shell of your ear or maybe nip your earlobe, who knows

and then he’ll pass your drink like nothing ever happened

also has doja cat on his playlist, but yuji is to blame for that

cherry knot tying king

casual friday for the staff at said bar/establishment, and he’s coming in jeans and a loose tank top, you know, the ones with the drops on the sleeves on the sides??

sukuna is extremely aware of what’s happening in the room at all times. some creep hitting on someone? intervene.  someone trying to spike a drink?? he catches them in the act.  someone spiked a drink???? he just looks at the recipient, tells them to switch with him, and before they can say anything, they have a new, safe drink while he has the tampered one. 

does he grab offenders whether they’re being following creeps, coming on too strong, or trying to tamper with drinks by the scruff of their necks and carry them out personally? yes, yes he does. if you’re there, he’ll wink at you before he gives him a kick on the ass for good measure as he pushes them out the door.

he makes custom drinks for people, like he’ll ask what’s your preference in taste like sweet, strong or whatever, plus two other questions that seem unrelated but he’s managed to make the perfect drink for you 

again, he’s highly aware of his surroundings, so if you’re looking at his back, he knows, and will look over his shoulder to smirk at you, looking you right in the eyes.  (SHEESH)

thinking of him coming in on one of his days off with a ballcap and a tight, dry fit t-shirt on, so by the time he’s working, his hair is a lil messy, and you better thank heaven for that dry fit t-shirt because MUSCLES BABE

is working on his own lil drink recipe book, which means you either get to be his taste tester, or taste it when he kisses you 

this man knows he’s hot, he’s a smug shit about it, and works it to his favor. does he tie cherry knots at work because the women at the bar go crazy and give him extra tips?? yes

but if you’re there, oh sweetheart, he’s actually going to give you the cherry before putting the knot in his mouth to tie, BYE 

also.... hehe, had to mention this but uh... you could bounce a quarter off that ass of his 

he comes home from a late/graveyard shift, and just crawls into bed, smelling like syrup and cologne, just... run your fingers through his hair and he’ll be out in a few minutes

occasionally, he will sleep on the couch as not to disturb you, but the man really is too big to be sleeping on a couch.

if his shift starts at 6, he comes in at 5, hair a little damp from the shower he just took, and in a clean dry fit shirt and tight slacks or dark colored jeans. he’ll either work in the dry fit shirt, or he has a button up he can change into in the back

also??? really decent and will help you get stains out of your clothes if it’s something he can swing to clean in the sink like a shirt

otherwise, he’ll write what you need on a napkin and pass it to you

fucking hates white claws with a passion, ngl

during particularly slow moments at work, you might be able to catch him plucking a few cords on the guitar that sits on stage or poking around with the piano (look, i think he’s very capable of playing instruments and his fingers are good for it)

painted nails!! they’re usually a dark purple or black, occasionally a dark red. sometimes they’re clear, but he’s gotten the idea from when he supposedly was in his emo phase (and learned to keep something on them from breaking from his younger brother’s friend nobara)

likes to dance with you to the songs on his playlist in his minimalistic kitchen in between cooking or making drinks 

at least once a month, you can catch him in a necklace

during the winter months, tight turtlenecks or ribbed long sleeved shirts are his best friends

he also drives a very nice and sleek black car (i’d imagine it’s like a black audi TT or an audi R8) that sits in the back of the parking lot and has a habit of turning his keys on his index finger as he walks towards the building/into work.

bartending might have started as a part time job when he was in college, but it’s something he’s just kept up over the years 

man fills up a lot of space and knows it, even when he’s leaning on his back countertop during breaks or on the bar to take orders with his arms folded over his chest

ANYWAYS. be nice to your local bartender because he can bite. take that as you will.

[brattyfics]

26. “The Diamond in your engagement ring is fake” with Miguel Galindo

Stretched out across the costly sectional, you hum lowly as you admire your husband’s side profile. Your feet are seated comfortably in his lap, his arms resting on them as he reads. “Babe.” You call. He looks up, eyeing you with curiosity. You lean forward to lightly scratch his beard (that is more grey than anything these days), knowing how much he enjoys the feeling.

“Remember the time you proposed to me with a fake diamond?” He turns to face you with an unamused look on his face. You suppress the urge to giggle. Miguel is slowly but surely becoming a grumpy old man, and you get more enjoyment out of it than you should. “It wasn’t fake.”

You make a face as if you don’t believe him, and he lets out an exasperated sigh. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Slowly, you shake your head before leaning over to kiss his cheek with a loud smack. “Of course not.”

The day Miguel proposed was one of the happiest, most memorable days of your life. He had Maria prepare your favorite meal, had Nestor (who is surprisingly good at decorating due to his HGTV obsession) put together a romantic dinner set-up for the two of you. He kept you out of the house, spoiling you with a full spa treatment. He always took you on outings when he had the time, so you didn’t think anything of it.

Miguel took special care in wining and dining you-- spoon-feeding you and topping off your glass with your favorite wine. You didn’t question it, enjoying the pampering. After dinner, he helped you to stand and guided you towards the fire pit. He needed more time to gather his nerve. What if you said no? He at least wanted to hold you one more time. The California night air kept you cool despite your shared body heat as you cuddled. He held you, gently stroking your thighs and sides, his lips pressing kisses to the back of your head every few minutes. You were so comfortable that at one point, you almost dozed off.

When he noticed your eyes getting heavy, he knew his window was closing. With a big inhale, he patted your lap. You stood, thinking he wanted to go in the house. You heard him shuffling around as you rubbed the sleep out of your eyes. He had been so good to you all day, and you weren’t ready to fall asleep.

Miguel used your distraction to his advantage, holding the velvet ring case in his sweaty palm. He was usually an expert at undoing his suit buttons, but it took him longer. He sunk in front of you, one knee on the hard concrete. Maybe he hadn’t thought of everything.

Your bleary eyes finally reopened, your hands dropping to your sides. You yawned out half an apology before you realized what was happening. Your hands flew to your mouth, trying to stifle a loud gasp. For whatever reason, you had never allowed yourself to imagine what a proposal from Miguel would be like. You figured a man with his looks and resources would eventually tire of you. But the sight of him crouched before you, pushed all those doubts away.

He wore an anxious smile, his voice shaking as he asked. “Will you marry me?” You didn’t answer for several moments, still trying to get over the shock! Then the glint of the huge ring caught your eyes.

“Oh my god! No!” He visibly recoiled. “No, not no! I’m sorry! I’m not saying no to you, baby.” He let out a shaky breath. “I’m talking about the ring. It’s too much!” You cried, hands shaking as if you were the one waiting for a response.

“Nothing’s too much for you.”

“That’s sweet, you’re always so sweet to me, baby.” You cooed, blinking rapidly. “But really--- wow! I can’t accept this.” You shook your head as Miguel insisted you deserved even more. He set the case down at his side, grabbing your hands. You couldn’t tear your eyes away from the ginormous diamond.

“Forget the ring for a moment. Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me?” You nodded, but you meant the sentiment earnestly. It was just too hard to catch your breath when Miguel was looking at you like that, on his knees and asking you for something he needed from you.

“I need to hear you say it.” His breathing was still ragged, his adrenaline pumping. Tears welled up in his eyes, and you felt yourself getting overwhelmed with emotion.

“I do.” He chuckled, wiping his tears as they fell. “I think you’re supposed to save that line for later.”

“Shut up and kiss me.” You made grabby hands at him, bending down to meet him halfway. His arms wrapped around your midsection, pulling you as close as he could. You kissed until neither of you could tell whether the wetness on your cheeks was yours or the others. You sunk to your knees. Breathless and defeated in the best way, you allowed him to slide the ring onto your finger.

It wasn’t until the next morning that you focused on the ring again. You rested against his chest while he held you. “You’ll have to hire 24/7 security just for the ring.” You pouted. The issue of the bodyguards was something you discussed extensively while dating. You didn’t care much for the idea of someone following you around all the time, but ultimately you would always indulge Miguel, within reason. As long as he didn’t smother you, you’d allow him to take the measures to protect you he felt he needed.

“Don’t worry about it, babe. The diamond in your engagement ring is fake, anyway.”

He fell into a fit of laughter, cackling way longer than he should have. You shook your head at his silliness and made a mental note to remind him of how un-funny his joke was later.

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Miguel Taglist

@thesandbeneathmytoes @taylortheeshowpony

[valdomarx]

Anon requested: Person A thinks that a proposal would be a great way to get out of a jam. Person B thinks it is a sincere proposal and accepts. Realizing it wasn't done from a genuine place leads to some upset.

In Jaskier’s defence, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Marry me, Geralt!” he called, jogging over to his witcher, a little out of breath.

Geralt’s face pinched into something cross and Jaskier was sure he was about to be told to fuck entirely off.

“It’s the Belleteyn festival tonight,” he explained quickly. “I might have, erm, sown my seed a little more widely than would be advisable in the town.” Geralt scowled. “And there may have been some, ahem, threats against my person made by the local lord.“ Geralt’s scowl deepened. “But we can smooth it all over if we’re wed tonight. There’s some local custom -- forgiveness of past indiscretions for newly married couples on May Eve.“

Geralt was still glowering but he hadn’t said no yet. Jaskier pulled out his strongest move: He ducked his head, looked up at Geralt from under his lashes, and licked his lips. Geralt’s eyes followed the movement of his tongue almost imperceptibly.

“So marry me? Here. Tonight.”

.

It had been a lovely ceremony, as fake weddings go. There had been music and wine, dancing and merriment, and Geralt even allowed some of the local girls to braid flowers into his hair.

They’d only had enough coin for one ring, a simple silver band, so Jaskier had taken that and he’d given Geralt his father’s signet ring. He’d never have parted with it for anyone else, but it was Geralt. He knew without question he would keep it safe until this ruse was over with.

Perhaps there really was something magical in the air at that time of year, or maybe it was an evening spent at an increasingly raunchy celebration that did it. But after the festivities were over and the townsfolk returned to their homes, Geralt took Jaskier back to their campsite in the woods, laid him down on a bedroll with indescribable tenderness, and fucked him within an inch of his life.

It was everything Jaskier had been quietly fantasising about for years, except more because it was Geralt and even Jaskier’s profoundly vivid imagination couldn’t match the reality of his witcher, every glorious inch of muscle straining and taut, eyes blown wide with lust, taking Jaskier apart and piecing him back together again.

.

The next morning, Jaskier woke slowly, feeling the telling ache of a night well spent. Geralt was already up, packing up camp and loading their bags onto Roach.

“There’s oatmeal in the pot if you want breakfast,” Geralt grunted. “We should get going soon.” He turned back to his work.

Right. Okay. They just... weren’t going to talk about it then. Back to business as usual.

Jaskier shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course Geralt would be as pragmatic about sex as he was about everything else. A way to get some relief, to meet a need. No expectations.

Hell, it had taken Geralt over a decade to admit they were actually friends. Jaskier felt stupid for even hoping for more.

Sleeping together had been a one time deal, it seemed. Too bad.

.

Jaskier realised he was still wearing the ring a few hours later. He should take it off, get rid of it. Maybe sell it at the next town.

He should ask Geralt for his father’s ring back too. But it seemed somehow rude to ask, too needy.

And he... well, he sort of liked catching glimpses of it decorating Geralt’s finger, like a tiny piece of Jaskier was with him wherever he went.

Jaskier found his thumb rubbing over the silver band around his own finger over and over again. It was silly, he knew, but he liked the feel of it. He would keep it for now.

.

After that, things got weird. At lunch, Geralt tried to persuade Jaskier to eat the last of the apples, as if he didn’t know their supply was running low. And at dinner, Geralt hunted and prepared two squirrels for Jaskier instead of the customary one. Jaskier would eat just about anything in a pinch, but charred rodent was not something he felt the need for seconds of.

Everywhere they went, Geralt kept trying to foist food on him. Did he think that Jaskier was weak? That he wasn't able to keep up without extra supplies? Jaskier was, admittedly, not as young as he used to be, but he thought he still measured up pretty well in the fitness department. He didn’t love the implication that he was falling short in some way.

.

At night, Geralt would lay out their bedrolls close together. Close, but never touching. When he laid down, Jaskier could feel Geralt’s breath on the back of his neck, and his chest ached with want.

He waited every night for Geralt to sneak an arm around his waist and pull him close, or to lean forward and whisper an invitation in his ear. Jaskier would be on him in a second.

But he never did, and every night Jaskier berated himself again for being so foolish and tried to push the thoughts from his mind. It was hard being so close and yet so far from what he truly wanted, but he wouldn’t force Geralt into a situation he wasn’t comfortable with.

.

After a week of this Jaskier was truly beginning to lose his mind, and it was a relief when they came upon a small town where they could rest for the night. Jaskier could go out, find some company and distract himself from the hopeless longing settled in his bones, even if only for the night.

When he announced his intention to look around the town, Geralt said he would come along too. That wasn’t ideal for Jaskier’s plan of distraction, but he’d make it work. He always enjoyed Geralt’s company anyway.

There wasn't a lot going on in the town, but there was a pretty barmaid in the tavern, a cheerful red-haired lady with exuberant freckles and strong curves. She flashed a smile at Jaskier the moment they walked in.

Perfect. He smiled back, ordered two drinks, and set to flirting outrageously with her. She giggled and teased back, not seeming intimidated by Geralt‘s presence, even though he was growing notably testier as their interactions became more charged.

When she reached over the bar to twirl a finger through Jaskier’s hair, Geralt actually growled.

She backed off and looked at Geralt. “Didn’t mean any harm,” she said. “I’m just being friendly. Unless...” She looked down at their hands on the bar, apparently noting their rings, and then back to Jaskier. “Unless you’re spoken for. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Jaskier said with a laugh, just as Geralt said, “Yes, actually, we’re married.”

Jaskier stared at Geralt. Geralt stared at Jaskier. The barmaid held her hands up in the universal gesture for “none of my business, nothing to see here” and backed away to wipe down a table.

Every muscle in Geralt’s neck was tense and throbbing, and Jaskier had no idea what to say.

“Geralt,” he began, carefully. “is this about the other day? The ceremony? Did you... Did you think that was for real?”

Something pained flashed across Geralt’s face, an expression more raw than any Jaskier had seen on him before. Then he stood, turned, and bolted from the tavern.

“Geralt!” Jaskier called, getting to his feet. “Geralt, wait!”

By the time Jaskier was out of the door, Geralt was already disappearing down the dirt road, not turning back.

Ahh, fuck.

.

Jaskier left the girl at the tavern with a hurried apology, pausing only to throw their various possessions into bags and to load up Roach before heading out after Geralt. He knew bugger all about tracking, but he knew the direction Geralt was heading, and after that he relied on Roach’s instincts. She at least seemed confident in what to do.

He caught up to Geralt less than a mile outside of town. He was sat alone in a copse of trees just off the road, staring at the leaves.

He didn’t flee as Jaskier approached, though he didn’t turn to look at him either. “Geralt? I’m sorry. I was thoughtless. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Geralt stood slowly and turned to face him, though he avoided making eye contact. “It was a misunderstanding.” Geralt’s face was carefully blank, a look Jaskier recognised from times he was trying very hard to hide his emotions. “A wrong assumption on my part about the seriousness of the ceremony at Belleteyn.”

“Holy hell, Geralt.” Jaskier’s mind reeled. Geralt thought they had really been getting married, and he had been okay with that? “Does that mean... Would you actually want to be married to me?”

“It was stupid,” Geralt gritted out. Anyone else would have thought he was angry, but Jaskier knew him well enough to see he was hurt. “To think it was anything more than a distraction.”

No no no, that wasn’t right at all. Jaskier tried to take Geralt’s chin in his hand but Geralt turned his face forcefully away.

“Is that why you’ve been acting strange?” Jaskier thought back on it: the gifts of food, the aborted attempts at closeness, the feeling Geralt’s eyes on him constantly, checking his well-being.

“I thought...” Geralt wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I thought you wanted things to be normal. Like they always were.”

“If I were married to you for real, I wouldn’t act like everything was normal!” Jaskier exploded. “Damn it, Geralt. I’d kiss you every morning and hold you every night. And I’d tell everyone we met -- everyone -- that I was the luckiest person on the continent, because this is my husband, the one and only Geralt of Rivia, and he’s the best man I’ve ever met.”

Jaskier shut his mouth. Too late, though. Too late to take any of that back.

Geralt’s brow was pinched, though it didn’t quite look like a frown. It almost made him look thoughtful.

Finally he looked at Jaskier raised an eyebrow. “Every morning?”

Jaskier felt all the fight leaving his body in one grand sweep. Geralt let him push him to his knees on the ground and allowed Jaskier to flop into his lap. Jaskier brushed a strand of hair from his face. “I’ve thought about kissing you every day for years,” Jaskier confessed.

And then he saw it -- one of Geralt’s oh-so-rare smiles. Not the forced grimace he adopted when he needed to look nonthreatening, or the tolerant lip twitch he’d give Jaskier when he was trying to be funny. No, this was a genuine Geralt smile, more precious than gemstones, the kind that lifted his entire face and reached his eyes.

Geralt threaded a hand into the back of his hair, brought their faces closer, and kissed him. At the touch of their lips every part of him went boneless, held up only by Geralt’s arms and a determination to make as much bodily contact as he possibly could.

His head was spinning by the time they pulled apart for air. Geralt’s eyes were sparkling, and Jaskier could have lost himself in that sight for the rest of his life and considered himself a lucky man.

Geralt leaned their foreheads together. “Will you stay with me?” he asked, very quietly. “Even if all I can offer you is charred squirrel and sleeping beneath the stars?”

“Always,” Jaskier promised, without a shadow of a doubt. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

Through the good and the bad, the injuries and the pain, the plenty and the lean times. Through it all, he wanted to be with Geralt.

Jaskier took Geralt’s hand in his and slotted their fingers together. Their rings lay next to each other, the elaborate gold of Jaskier’s crest shining against Geralt’s pale skin and the smooth silver encircling his own finger like an embrace.

It was all startlingly clear. “Marry me, Geralt,” he said, his heart welling over. “For real this time.”

[dinthehottotty]

Cultural Differences - Part 1 - Din Djarin

Summary: Din proposes and you have no idea that you said yes. Not that you'd say no but you don't have the heart to tell him when you realize.

A/N: Before ya ask, yes, I do play assassin’s creed. I’m shamless, I don’t care.

Warnings: Fluff, maybe a sprinkling of angst, part two will have all the smut for @buttercup--bee​.

When you'd met Mando, you thought the same thing as everyone else from a glance. You believed him to be cold and dangerous. Very quickly did that entire idea go up in big, black smoke. It didn’t take long to watch this man ask for compliance rather than immediately demand it. He always did please and thank you’s when necessary and it was a surprise when that only got you hot and bothered.

Love was not on your radar when you joined his crew. Even now, months after you'd been working with him, you felt like you were pining for the man. That would imply that the awkward Mandalorian would ever foster the idea of a relationship with you. So instead you'd happily day dream your way through the days.

It was easy to do. There was no resentment at unspoken affection. You just loved both Mando and that little green bundle of wrinkles with everything in you. It always made you smile at how much he was an overprotective dad with his 50 year old baby. Even if he tried to deny that he was a dad now.

You found it too easy to tease him about it and your cute aggression reared it's ugly head. You were a person who's love language was physical touch. Constantly touching the bounty hunter surprised him in the beginning. But now it had no effect on him. You probably should have asked him more about Mandalorian culture because that would be your down fall with him.

It was a joke the first time you'd kissed his helmet. Planting a big, obnoxious kiss right on the top of his helmet when he was in the pilot seat and had maneuvered the razor crest out of quite the spot without killing you both. Now it was second nature to peck his helmet's cheek. A warm, friendly greeting when he'd returned from a hunt and when he departs for supplies. A quick smooch to his forehead and a pat to a pauldron as a thank you. Nudging his knee under the table at cantinas to tell him to calm down. A reassuring rub to his strong arms when Peli stresses him out too much. He even let you grasp his arm or thigh when you get excited about something. You were physically affectionate, you didn't think twice about gently bumping your forehead to his helmet when you were purposefully being annoying.

The last thing on your mind when doing this was actually whether or not Mando even thought much of it. He didn't tell you to stop, he never spoke about it, how were you to know.

One day, while Mando was on the floor trying to wear the kid out to go to sleep, you found teasing him all you could do. A light laugh bubbled up from you as his attempts failed repeatedly.

"Hand him over, Daddy." Squating down next to him. He turns his helmet towards you.

"I can handle it. Just go to bed," he orders, with no bark in his voice.

"Not a chance. Give 'im here." He heaves one of his heavy sighs before allowing you to scoop him up and into you. It was routine that you took the kid to bed most nights, Mando was okay with it, but he gives a frustrated sigh when the kid looks quickly like he's getting sleepy.

"Why is that so easy for you?"

"He's just used to me putting him to bed, Mando." You throw him a wink and bounce hip to hip as the kid jabbers sleepily.

There's a silence that feels a little heavy and the Mandalorian shuffles awkwardly. "I... I kind of wanted... nevermind," he cuts himself off, turning away.

That catches your attention very quickly. "No, no! Tell me, it's okay." Your hand darts out as he turns to leave and you catch his arm. He pauses even though he can easily push through it.

"I mean... you're like his mom. Kids like their mothers more. They sooth their children better and women are instinctivly better with kids." That startles you. Mando had never once referred to you as anymore than the kids nanny at any point. You weren't even originally hired to watch the kid.

You're cheeks flair up at that, burning uncomfortably and you feel... giddy perhaps? Did he think of you as a mom to his son? It catches you off guard.

"He definitely doesn't like me better," you reply softly and move closer. "I just put him to bed more often and it's close to bed time, that's all. Come here," you coax, your voice lowering to a warm tone. The bounty hunter twists reluctantly back towards you with slumped shoulders. The kid, who's half dozed in your arms, blinks up at him.

"He adores you, Mando, just take him."

"You don't have to-... its not a big deal."

"Take him," you insist. Finally he lifts the kid into his arms which makes the kid blink up with bigger eyes, a confused coo rising from him.

"Hes waking back up-"

"Shhh." You press forward, against Mando's arms as you run the pad of your thumb along the big ears. Softly you hum, no song in particular, and prompt the Mandalorian to sway with you both. It's a soft, intimate moment, that you never want to end.

It takes a few moments for the kid to settle back down and you hope it doesn't take to long but part of you longs for it not to end. The man-droid calling you his sons mother, or comparing you to one at the very least, is enough to fuel your longing for you employer with out a name for months.

At some point you glance up, expecting him to be watching his son. It paralyzes you when you find his visor trained on you. Gently you clear your throat, blush raising more on your cheeks.

"I didn't mean to overstep. I-"

Thunk.

The Mandalorian tilts his helmet forward and it knocks against your forehead suddenly. If you're honest, it actually hurts a bit with how hard he crashes his head into yours but suddenly the bunk feels so much smaller with him blocking the doorway. "You didn't." Is all he says, in his softest voice.

This was purposeful. He wanted to lean his head to yours. Not to be annoying. There was nothing practical about it, but he was doing it on purpose. Maybe he was feeling playful, you think. 

The both of you stay like that for a while, as you allow your eyes to close. It could have been seconds or hours but finally he shifts away to gently put the kid in his hammock.

"I have something for you." He admits.

"For me?" You repeat, a little dazed. He nods.

"You don't have to accept." You arch your eyebrow as you both exit the room and you watch him mosey over to his weapons vault. Your curious as you attempt to guess what it is mentally. You didn't need anything.

But then he drew out a bundle of fabric and brought it over with both hands. He doesn't say anything, instead he just holds the bundle. You pause, hesitantly taking it. It was heavy and solid with plenty of ridges. When you peel the fabric back, the beskar gleams and a surge of emotion rushes forward as you twist the gauntlet. As you look to the inside you see it, the hidden blade attached to the bottom, something you explained to him before.

A rite of passage from your assassin training on your home planet. Yours had long since broken and you couldn't wear it anymore and it had been two years. You’d only really brought it up to him once, cursing that you would of had the bounty he’d only had the chance to capture after he slipped from your grasp. Mando had given you a short, “I still got him,” and carried on until you were both in the safety of hyperspace. The bounty had been sealed away and you couldn’t even remember who it had been.

“Like a knife?” He prompts in a way that made you both confused and suspicious. 

“Knife? What knife?” you asked.

“You could have won the bounty if you had your blade?” he responded, he partially tipped your way. It was a bit odd of him to focus on that, a little out of character. You brushed it off, especially because he had previously explained that Mandalorians were religious about weapons. 

You hadn’t known much about them (really anything) before him. You just pegged him as having an unhealthy fixation about any type of new weapon.

“Oh, my hidden blade,” you hummed and leaned back, making a face. “It broke a while back. I was apart of an assassin’s group on my home world, they had a few initiation practices. The important one was when you get your hidden blade. It’s like a gauntlet without the hand and the blade sits on the inside of the wrist. When you flex your wrist, the blade extends. My safety broke on it, nearly lost my ring finger.” You’d wiggled your finger that had a deep scar on the inside of it. “Then the blade snapped clean in two and I haven’t found anyone to fix it. I have to go home, since the mechanisms are broken. There are so few of my people left, however, that I’ve just put it off.” Was your response. 

After that he’d never brought it up again. 

"Mando," your voice cracks as you glide your fingers across it. "Mando, it's beautiful." You slide it on. It's heavier than your used to, but it fits like a glove. A quick click and the blade shoots out with a flex of your wrist. "Thank you," you murmur before sinking the blade away and launching into a hug with him.

"Din." He says, making you peer up. "Din Djarin is my name." Your heart skips a beat against his chest. You gaze up at him for a moment, before smiling back down at it. You turn, switching the safety off, before twitching your wrist. The mechanism was backwards from what you were used to, but the shiny blade jutted out as fast as your original had. It’d take a while for you to adjust to the weight of it, but it’s like having a working prosthetic after missing a limb for years. 

“Din,” you test, “how did you get it to fit so well, my old one had straps I could adjust,” you ask. Drawing you eyes back up to the helmet, you let the big smile grow on your face. 

He clears his throat a bit and twists to look at the blade that slinked away almost soundlessly. “I... I would measure your wrist when I grabbed your arm. To move you or stop you while we were out.” You grin at him, switching the safety on so that you didn’t accidently stab him.

“I didn’t even notice!” You quickly, jerk forward and hug him. He squeezes you back eagerly but a thought occurs. “Wait,” you draw back to look at him. “This beskar, right?” 

“Yes.”

“I’m not Mandalorian, though. Won’t I get in trouble?”

“No, it’s given by a Mandalorian. There is no issue.” He promises and that’s the end of it because he thunks his helmet a little too hard against you again.

...

It goes on for months. Din suddenly being more physically affectionate with you. It makes you feel like you can have the softness that comes from a domestic relationship, the kind you never thought you could have. He called you something in Mando’a which seemed to change all the time. It was always at times you weren’t focused on what he was saying so you could never listen and try to look it up later. 

You had found a short list of terms people had translated from the lost and secretive language. Most were mean ones, and you’d only heard him use a couple of those, but never toward you... well... maybe one. But that’s not the point! You were so lost with him. 

It wasn’t until after nearly dying on Hoth, and then again on whatever water disaster of a planet this was. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And when Din dove in after those fisherman launched the kid in to be fed, you ripped those black market trades apart in sheer rage. Fortunately, or un fortunately, Mandalorians arrived and slaughtered more. You were happy to not have Din or the kid drown, but your want of revenge was exponential.

In short, it was a really rough week. One of the worst since the kid had arrived. He wouldn’t stop eating the frog lady’s kids that you were transporting. Not that your really surprised, but you were at the end of your rope.

Sitting in a warm little bar was nice. Between the kid warming himself in your arms and Din’s casual hand on your knee, you were simmering down. You were pressing yourself into din’s side, hoping to leach some of your warmth between his armor. He wasn’t even shivering anymore.

After quite the shock for the both of you when the other three took their helmets off, you had now been stunned into an exhausted mode. Anger had disappeared and replaced it’s self with the same distrust you felt radiating off Din. Shock seems to be the trend on this planet because one moment you’re ready to hear about the fall of Mandalore and the next Bo Katan is twisting to look directly at you. 

“I find it strange that you’re wearing beskar at a black market beskar port.” She throws at you. Everyone glances at your wrist. 

“It’s a gift.” Your rumbling response is the first words you’ve spoken to her from your sour mood. She lifts a condescending eyebrow at you. 

“From you I assume?” She asks Din. 

“Yes.” Is his response. 

“Why a gauntlet?” Bo Katan makes a face. A flick of the wrist and the blade makes and appearance. Eyes widen. “Ah. An engagement gift.” Your brain stuttered in your head. 

“How romantic,” her sidekick, Koska chirps. You were waiting for Din to deny it, all the while rushing through the encounter of when he gave it to you. Had Din proposed? Were you engaged to him this whole time? You weren’t even sure if he saw you in a romantic light, nevermind him actually wanting to marry you. 

“I’m surprised you accepted a proposal from a watcher. Can’t be easy to love someone if you can’t see their face.” Bo Katan remarks. Din’s head turns a little towards you, he’s trying to read you right now. He’s waiting for your response. Had he done this on purpose? He wouldn’t do it out of malace, that you’re certain on. You wouldn’t put it past him to go this long into a relationship and not talk about his feelings. 

“Hardly.” Koska smirks towards Bo Katan and you feel Din slowly let out a breath from beside you. You gently nudge his side. 

“But to never kiss, to never see his face, might be harder than you think.”

“She can see me once were married.” Those words shock you more than the actual announcement that you were engaged. It sealed it for you as well. This surprises those sitting across from you. The ring leader grins suddenly. 

“You really should communicate better with your partner. I don’t think she realized that you were even engaged to begin with.” Din swivels his head and you bite your lip as you’ve been caught red handed.

“You didn’t?” He asks, more of a demand. You wince.

“No, but even if I did know, I still would have accepted.” Din sighs, next to you, clearly frustrated. “In my defense, the only thing you asked me was, ‘Do you accept,’ which granted is a little cryptic, if I’m being honest.” Din takes a deep breath, shaking his head at you. 

“What normally takes place on your world? A gift, correct?”

“Yeah, a ring! Not a hidden blade, you dork. I will say, I prefer this, it’s much more practical.”

“You don’t know anything about Mandalorians, do you?” Bo Katan prompts.

You pass her a look. “I’d never even heard of a Mandalorian before I met him.” All three of them have amused reactions and Din just sinks more into your side. You drop your hand down to his knee. 

The conversation takes a new direction after that and your thankful to not have the attention on you anymore. 

It’s not until you have agreed to help the three of them that the both of you decide to take the oldest (and smallest) clan member to the frog lady’s house.

“If you don’t behave,” you murmur, bristling in the cold ocean breeze rolling through the streets, “I will allow the frog lady to eat you, okay?” you promise the kid. Din pulls you to a stop and the kid perks his tucked ears up, prepared for your betrothed to deny that promise.

“Were you pulling their leg in there? Did you really not know we were engaged?” 

“I mean, I suppose you were pretty forward with me, but I had no clue.”

“You think I was forward?” he demands. Uh oh. You were not expecting that response.

“What... what did I do that was forward?” You hear yourself ask when your not sure you want the answer. Din shakes his head at you. 

“The keldabe kisses?” 

“The what kisses? You mean me kissing your helmet?” 

“That too. Obviously, I’m not able to kiss you the way you’re used to. I won’t be able to until were married, so what Mandalorians do instead is the keldabe kiss.” His hands are placed on your shoulders to hold you in place and he leans down, thunking his helmet against your forehead. “This.” 

You’re eyes go wide as you think about the many times that you basically laid a big one on Din. “Did... did you consider us being in a... romantic relationship before you proposed?” 

“I believed we were, you didn’t?” What a question. Mortification filled you and you could feel your cheeks burning despite the brisk wind. “Do... do you love me?” Your chest aches deeply at the insecurity in Din’s voice. The sound that rumbles isn’t like his warm and gentle tone he usually has. It’s brittle and frail.

“Of course I do! I just... I thought we were just really close friends, that you didn’t see me in that way so I bottled it up and hid it away. I mean... I wanted to mean more to you, but I just... maker, I feel so stupid.” The kid coos with confusion in your arms as you pull away. “Din, I’m sorry.” 

“Do you want to marry me?” He asks so softly it’s almost taken by the wind. You find yourself immediately folding into his arms.

“Yes, Din, yes, I want to marry you. I love you.” You murmur the last part against his cape, feeling to shy to look at him when you say it. His rigid body soften around you and suddenly you’re clutched tightly to his chest. Tighter than he’s ever held you. Ironically, for the first time all day it feels like you can actually breathe. 

“Good... good.” He breathes near you. 

“Can we get out of the wind for a bit?” you prompt.

“Yes, let’s go.” Not how you were expecting your day to start... or end. But there are worse endings to bad days.

Tagging:

@lxdyred​, @boliv-jenta​, @amidjarin​, @buttercup--bee​

[a-simple-gaywitch]

Resident Geniuses

Summary: When the BAU is called to NYC for a case, they weren’t expecting to have to pair up with the local Interpol team. Spencer wasn’t expecting to meet his female counterpart

Word Count: 1496

Warnings: Implied Sexual Content, Talks of Murder Case and Crime

Requested: Yes/No

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” -Albert Einstein 

~

The BAU team was in New York working on a case. The city had yet another serial killer demanding their attention. The team was set up in the FBI field office, trying to lay down a profile. Unfortunately, this unsub would dump the bodies in New Jersey, making him harder to pinpoint. The team was getting closer until the next body showed up. Same MO and signature, but the victimology was completely different. 

Then the local Interpol team arrived. Hotch and the woman in charge of the other team went head-to-head almost immediately.

“The man who was murdered is an international art thief. That makes this our jurisdiction, Agent Hotchner.”

“But he crossed the state line into Jersey. That makes this our jurisdiction, Agent Langley.”

“Um, Maura, Agent Hotchner?” a shy woman towards the back of the group spoke up. “You’re missing the obvious solution of us working together,” she said. “Wouldn’t collaboration help us both reach our goal?”

Agent Langley looked at the woman. “You’re right, Doc.” She sighed. “Agent Hotchner, we should pair up our teams to combine what we know and what you know.”

After a bit of discussion, Maura and Hotch returned to the two gathered teams. 

“Morgan, Prentiss, you are going with Agent MacKenzie and Agent Leavitt to the crime scene,” Hotch said.

“Lorenzo, you’re staying here with Agent Jareau to keep the media at bay.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Reid, you’re staying here with Doctor (L/N).” Spencer’s head snapped up when he heard Hotch addressing him. Spencer looked over at you. You were sitting at a table, going through the FBI’s files. Spencer thought the way your brows furrowed in concentration was adorable. Just looking at you put butterflies in his stomach.

The two teams split up. Tanner MacKenzie, a man who was like your brother, patted your shoulder on his way out. 

“Good luck, Doc.” He looked at Spencer. “I’m sorry man, she’s gonna drive you mad before the end of the day.”

You flipped him off as you took a seat and looked through the files. “Why don’t you bugger off and go catch up to Steph.” It was the first time Spencer was really noticing your accent. 

After the other agents cleared out of the conference room, Spencer cleared his throat. “So, Dr. (L/N)-”

“Oh, (Y/N), please,” you interrupted him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just don’t like the formality.”

He smiled at you. Spencer found you so endearing. “Call me Spencer.”

~

You and Spencer got along like a wildfire. While the two of you worked, Spencer learned that you were from a small town in Northern England but that you went to Oxford for your degrees. You just about matched him, with 3 PhDs and 4 Master’s degrees. 

He learned that your nickname was Doc, but only your team could call you that. He learned about your family and how hard it was for you to be an ocean away from them.

You laughed at all Spencer’s jokes, and you actually understood them. Spencer had never met anyone he got along with as quickly or as easily. You were intelligent, funny, and beautiful. And when the team finally got back to the hotel for the night, you were the only thing on Spencer’s mind.

Spencer looked up at the hotel ceiling, realizing he was truly, completely, unequivocally, fucked.

~

When Spencer arrived at the office the next morning, the Interpol team was already there. They were rushing around the office, functioning as a well-oiled machine. 

“What’s going on?” Hotch asked. 

“There was a double murder last night,” Agent Langley informed him. “Both were women. One has ties to a crime ring my team has been investigating, the other doesn’t. Both fit your preliminary profile for victimology.”

“This changes our whole outlook. We need to sit down, all of us, and discuss this.”

Once everyone settled at a conference table, Hotch said, “So, start giving me theories. Why the seemingly random kill before reverting back to his original victimology?”

“Was he a victim of opportunity?” Morgan asked. “Or he got in the way and needed to be eliminated?”

You shook your head. “No. Marcel Delacroix is -was- a recluse. He only left his apartment for jobs.”

“A hit job?” Prentiss suggested. “Maybe the unsub was hired by someone to take the art thief out?”

“That could be possible,” Agent MacKenzie said with a nod. “The world of an art thief is competitive, much like the world of the one making the art. Jobs can be hard to come by, especially if people know someone is good, like Delacroix.”

“But that brings up another question- what is this unsub’s true motive?” Jason Gideon asked. 

You were muttering under your breath, looking at the case file. 

“What’s going on up there, Doc?” MacKenzie asked. 

“Can I see the information on the previous victims again?” Hotch slid the files over to you. The BAU watched as you arranged the photos around the table. 

“What is she doing?” Prentiss asked.

“It’s her process. It only makes sense to her, but her genius always pulls through,” Langley said.

“Sounds familiar.” Morgan nudged Spencer, who was just watching you work. “Reid?”

“What? Sorry, I was trying to see if I could figure out what connections she made.”

“I got it!” you said. “None of these are random. They’re all linked to the same crime family.” You went on a spiel about how they all connect, and who the unsub was. “The only problem is, we don’t know where to find him.”

“Leave that to us,” Hotch said.

~

The two teams worked together to bring the unsub into custody. Thankfully, he didn’t make things harder for everyone until he was put in restraints. 

“Well, good work, Agent Hotchner,” Maura said, holding her hand out to shake the man’s. 

“You too, Agent Langley. It was nice to work alongside your team.

“Likewise. Well, I guess we should be going back to our own office. We have a lot of paperwork to fill out.”

Before your team left, you walked over to Spencer. “You know, Dr. Reid, that cell phone in your hands can be used for more than just work,” you said in a low voice. You handed him a card, brushing your fingers against his. It sent a shock through Spencer. “Goodbye, everyone! It was nice working with you!” She waved to the BAU before following her team out of the FBI office. 

Spencer smiled as he watched her leave. He looked down at the business card you gave him, your personal number scrawled on the bottom. In Roman Numerals. He tucked the card in his pocket before his team saw. 

~

“Hey, has anyone seen Reid this morning?” Hotch asked the team as they waited for the jet to be ready at the airstrip. 

“No, I thought he left for the hotel with Morgan last night,” JJ told him.

“He told me he was riding back with you,” Morgan said. 

“I’m here, I’m here!” Spencer said, running over to the team. “Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s not usually like you. Are you okay?” JJ asked. 

“What? Yeah, I’m fine. Just overslept.”

Gideon squinted at him. “You’re wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday.”

Spencer looked down at his rumpled clothes. “I, uh, I fell asleep reading last night and didn’t have time to change this morning.”

“Is that a hickey?” Emily asked him. Spencer’s hand flew up to cover the dark spot on his neck.

“No way, Pretty Boy has a hickey?”

Spencer’s face was bright red. “Shut up, Morgan.”

“So… Tell us about her!” JJ said.

“Yeah, who’s the lucky lady?” Morgan asked him.

“Um…”

“Guys. If Reid doesn’t want to tell us who he’s sleeping with, he doesn’t have to. As long as it isn’t interfering with his job.” Hotch gave Reid a pointed look. 

He shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Good. And I don’t want to hear any of you pestering Reid about it.”

The team climbed onto the jet. After everyone got settled, most falling asleep, Gideon took a seat next to Reid. 

“So, how was your night with Dr. (L/N)?” he asked.

“How did you-”

“You’re not that discrete, Spencer.” Gideon gave him a soft smile. 

Spencer smiled back. “She’s amazing. She makes me feel�� normal. I don’t feel like I’m weird or just a brain with her.”

“She sounds like a lovely girl. Why don’t you want to tell the others about her?”

Spencer sighed, looking out at the clouds. “I guess I just want something for myself for a bit. I really care for (Y/N) and I know how invasive the team can be. I don’t want them to scare her away.”

“I don’t think they could scare her away if they tried. She’s perfect for you.”

~

“Never give up on something you can’t go a day without.” -Winston Churchill

[shinygoldstar]

Midnight Snack

DannyMay Day 11: Midnight

(Also DannyMay Shadow, Scars, Power, Nature, Seasons, Teeth can you find them all?)

Word Count: 2271 (not beta’d. experimental writing)

Warning: mentions of ghost cannibalism, nothing explicit

@floralflowerpower ​ – for that ghost cannibalism post

(it’s 1 am so i’m gonna sleep now. might post on AO3 later)

Edit: AO3 Added!

.

It was mid-October. The leaves are starting to turn yellow heralding the approaching autumn. Danny was happy because that meant the unusually hot weather is almost over. It wasn’t that he’s melting from the heat- quite the opposite, he’s probably the only person in Amity that isn’t sweltering under the sun with his cold core. But due to this exact same reason, his cooler body temperature also drew in water vapor which condenses on his skin, pooling into beads of water dripping down his shirt, making him appear extra sweaty. He can’t wait for the temperature to be cool enough to not change clothes every few hours. Good thing his clothes are purchased by the dozen; no one really noticed him wearing new sets of clothes throughout the day.

.

It was the contaminated fridge foods that disappeared first. No one missed them. At least until they can’t find the mutated turkeys for their annual Thanksgiving hunting event.

.

Danny yawned as he and his friends entered Fenton Works. Autumn is comfy. Just the right temperature where he can wear loose clothing and not be stared at for being underdressed for the weather. No ‘sweating’ either. His mouth closed with a click, a bit too fast on his new fangs. Danny winced. The fangs seemed to have grown longer overnight again. At this rate Danny won’t be able to pass them off as normal pointy canine teeth for much longer. It didn’t hurt but the itch is annoying. Danny took a detour to the fridge, grabbing an ice cube from the freezer and popped it into his mouth, absentmindedly chewing on the cubes to take the edge off the itch as they walked down to the basement lab. His parents are at a paranormal convention at a nearby city and won’t be back until tomorrow. Danny and his friends gladly took the opportunity to do their ‘Danny’s quarterly fitness test’.

Danny flipped on the light switch and walked to the center of the lab, transforming into his ghost form. “Okay I’m ready. What’s first on the list?”

Tucker dropped his bag and took out a piece of notebook paper, “Okay, first we gotta do the baseline measurements. Height, weight, temperature, and the ecto reading.” Sam dug through her sports bag, pulling out the measurement tape. She held it against Danny, eyes scanning the tape measurement numbers. “Still the same height.”

Tucker nodded, noting down the measurement in Danny’s health notebook. “Next, weight.” Danny stood over the scale. “Yup, still the same weight too.”  

.

Then it was the ecto-samples that Jack misplaced in the kitchen fridge. Jack warned everyone a few days later (everyone knows to avoid glowing food on normal basis so the delayed warning is mostly just courtesy), but no one could find where it went and assumed it grew legs to join the other tiny ecto-samples lurking as their equivalent of household pests. (No matter how often Maddie tried to patch up the mouse hole it keeps reappearing in the same shape but in a different part of the house as if the original mouse hole got transplanted from its original location)

.

“Lunch Lady’s right. You need to eat more. You’re still as skinny as ever.” Sam remarked as Danny took the thermometer out of his mouth. “76 F. The ghosts keep attacking me all day and night. You’d think my parents would notice when a ghost sneaks pass them while they work in the lab but I triggered all their ghost alarms just by being in the house so they deactivated the system when I’m around. They must’ve kept it turned off during the day too.”

“Tough luck dude. Ecto scan next.” Tucker passed the scanner to Sam while Danny stood still for her to scan. The machine beeped, “Wow 6.8, that’s quite a jump from last quarter’s 5.1”

“Maybe it was from all the ghost fighting I did over the summer?”

.

As the leaves began to fall from the branches, ghost attacks lessened in frequency. Not looking the gift horse in the mouth Danny happily enjoyed the lack of ghost attacks to focus more on his studies. If he did well enough, he might even get Bs for his efforts. He also managed to avoid getting detention for the entire week much to the relief of everyone involved.

.

Two days before Thanksgiving, the Fentons finally remembered their turkeys. But by then it was gone. In a rush, they quickly purchased a pre-made turkey instead. While Danny enjoyed the fact that they’re having a normal family dinner for once, he can’t help but feel like there’s something off about the chicken. As if it’s missing a particular tangy or zingy flavor that would’ve made it richer in flavor. ‘Must’ve been because it’s overcooked.’

.

"Honey? Have you seen the new ecto-samples I placed in the basement lab fridge?" “Again Jack? This is the third time this month. Have you checked the upstairs fridge?” “I-ah was pretty sure I placed them in the correct fridge this time. Must be some no-good thievin’ ghost.” “I’ll set up the ecto-anti-theft, that’ll get ‘em good! No ghost can escape Jack Fenton for long!”

.

*Intruder Alert* *Intruder Alert*

Red lights peppered with robotic voice and alarm noises lurched Maddie into full alert mode. She quickly took stock of her surroundings and tried to wake Jack up. But Jack had his earplugs on and continued to snore blissfully. A loud knock on the door caught her attention. “What’s going on mom?” Jazz’s voice floated through the door. Maddie quickly rose to open the bedroom door, swiftly pulled Jazz in and locked the door. “Jazz dear, try to wake your dad up. I’ll go check on the intruder.” Maddie strode quietly to the door then paused, “Have you checked on Danny?” Jazz bit her lips and looked away for a moment “-ah yeah! Danny’s snoring so loud he can’t hear the alarm.” Maddie twisted the doorknob but paused, hesitating. “He’s fine mom.” Jazz reassures her. “If Danny wakes up, he’ll come here first. I’ll let him know what’s going on.”

The alarm rang loudly in her ears as she walked down the stairs to the basement lab, its loud ringing noise effectively covering up the sound of her footsteps. Reaching the basement floor, Maddie quickly crept over to hide behind the shelf on her left, eyes scanning the lab for the intruder.

The glass jars clinked as a shadow moved about the fridge. A very familiar shadow. That didn’t glow. Maddie turned on the lab lights. “Danny?” she started, carefully walking over to face him, her eyes still scanning him to check if he’s really her Danny. The faint, barely noticeable scar on his eyebrow from his attempt to fly off the tree when he was five is there confirming his identity.

“What are you doing down here-?” Maddie noticed the glowing jar in his hand, “and what exactly are you doing?” Danny hazily stared at her; eyes half-lidded. Maddie snapped her fingers to get his attention. Danny didn’t blink. “He's still not awake, Danny come on wake up!”, she shook his shoulders. “Huh? Wuzzat?” Danny groggily woke up. He blinked in confusion.

Finally aware of his surroundings, Danny looked down at his right hand that still held the glowing sample. “Aah!” Danny yelped dropping the sample, then realizing he dropped the sample, tries to catch the jar, fumbling clumsily. Maddie would’ve laughed if it was anywhere else but in this situation. “Danny, do you remember what you were doing?”

“I was doing my homework and was craving for a good cheeseburger?”

---

“And the half-opened jar of ectoplasm?”

“Pickles?”

---

“Dude are you for real? That was priceless!” Tucker crowed with laughter. Sam leaned away from Tucker to avoid the meat spittle, “Urgh! Gross Tucker! Swallow it before you speak!”

Danny grumbled into his glass of milkshake, “’s not funny Tuck. you didn't see her face. She was about ready to scan me for signs of ecto-possession. Good thing my lie about craving cheeseburger and opening the wrong fridge worked. Otherwise I’d be in big trouble if she scanned me now with my latest ecto-reading. Anyways I'm banned from the lab now.” Danny bit into his burger.

“So what really happened there dude? Did you seriously sleepwalk into the basement lab?”

“I think so? I don’t really remember anything before Mom found me in the lab. Only that I was feeling a bit hungry.”

.

The ghosts stopped coming. Everyone in Amity held their breath when there were no ghost attacks for two weeks straight, then a month. Then two months, three. No ghosts. They let out their collective breath. It might be too soon to hope but for now they will enjoy their ghost-free, perfectly ordinary life. It feels a bit strange to not have ghost related interruptions as part of their daily routine but they didn’t miss the ghost-related reconstruction expenses. The local insurance company employees received a nice bonus for the ghost-free month.

.

By the time March rolled in, Danny is restless. “Guys, there's definitely something big going on.”, he waved his hands for emphasis. “The Fenton portal is still open yet no ghost came through? Not even Boxy since the North District warehouse thing last month. There’s definitely something big going on. I've been taking the ghost-free break for granted for a while now and it helped save my grades but this is too big to ignore.”

“Dude, maybe it’s because you’re much more powerful now? Your latest reading last week is 8.2. None of the ghosts we’ve met so far is above 6 except for Vlad and the Ghost King.” Tucker suggested.

“You might have a point there, Tucker. We haven’t seen any of the ghosts bothering Vlad so far and he’s definitely higher than 6.” Sam added.

Danny frowned, “Maybe you’re right but I just have this nagging feeling that that’s not quite it.”

.

Danny entered the Zone with little fanfare. The area around the Fenton portal looked normal enough, the usual rocks and clouds of debris are still floating around in their usual areas. Danny aimlessly passed through the nooks and crannies, ducking under the endless spiral staircase, not entirely sure of what to look for. The Zone felt a bit quiet today but Danny haven’t been to the Zone that frequently to be certain about it.

.

The Ghost Zone, while still filled with random bits of odds and ends felt empty somehow. It wasn't until he sighted Skulker that he realized he hasn't seen any of the tiny blog ghosts nor the occasional passerby ghosts through his trip.

.

Luckily or unluckily, Danny quickly spotted someone he knew in the distance. As if called, Skulker turned his head towards Danny, then veered sharply to the left and flew fast in Danny's opposite direction, a first for the self-proclaimed hunter to not hunt his favorite prey. ‘Something's not right and Skulker definitely knows something.’ Danny thought.

Danny quickly chased after him; Skulker could never beat Danny at speed chase even at his best, and he won't be winning today's unplanned race either. “Hey Skulker! What’s going on?” Danny yelled over the gap between them but Skulker gave no reply, diving down deep into the reddish forest ravines of the island below. Not to be deterred, Danny did a quick aerial flip, adjusting his flight angle to follow down Skulker’s path. Danny soon caught up to Skulker and launched him into a nearby rock with sticky ectoplasm to hold him still long enough to talk. Skulker ejected from his metal suit but Danny was faster and caught the real ghost before he can escape.

.

(Why is Skulker fleeing?)

.

"Hey Skulker, not hunting me for once?" Danny asked teasingly.

Skulker paled (Danny never knew ghosts can turn pale) and squirmed even more. Danny's smile dropped.

"What’s going on Skulker?" he asked worriedly. “None of the ghosts have appeared in the human world and the Zone looks empty somehow”

Skulker squirmed a bit more but realizing he’s stuck finally said, “Ghost Child, haven’t you ever wondered why the Infinite Realms is never overcrowded?”

Danny frowned, puzzled as to where this leads to. “How is this related to this situation?” Skulker stared at Danny stunned.

“What?” Danny asked, suddenly self-conscious, “-was there something I was supposed to know about?”

Skulker sighed, unconsciously loosening a bit of his tension, “You’re so young. So very young. We Ghosts don’t fade as fast as Newcomers arrive from your world. In the Realms, there's a natural system that keeps the population under control. An ecosystem. There's predator and there's prey. And then there's the Apex Predator. There's a reason why Dark was feared. It wasn't just for his harsh rule. It was because he was the Apex Predator.”

Danny struck at the odd wording, "’Was’? Was that because he got sealed?” Danny paused, “But wait- if he's sealed, he would still be the Apex predator. So how-? Wait. Did I?"

Skulker nodded, "Good you're catching on fast. By defeating Pariah Dark, you have proven to the Realms that you're the best candidate for the Apex Predator. And with the new status comes sets of conducts, one your body instincts know well. You've been culling down the uncontrolled excess from Pariah Dark's sleep quite fast. Your hunger would settle down soon of course once balance has been re-established in the Realms."

“But- How- Wait- What-?” Danny looked down at his hand “Hey Skulker--!” but his hand is bare.

.

Danny’s lips tasted oddly tangy, energized.  

.

.

.

-----

(Skulker might've slipped out of Danny's slack hand while Danny is in shock. Danny might've bit his lips hard enough to bleed. It's not that hard with his new fangs. But this is just speculation...)

[janekfan]

You need to back off + Please come home for some angsty Jmart?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29122362

Prompts are getting filled! Slowly but surely! :D

I hope you like it ^^

Jon woke himself coughing with the realization that what he’d hoped were allergies the day before was now full blown body aches, chills and a productive hacking cough. Reaching out for comfort, he encountered only cold sheets and he shut his throbbing eyes tightly against sudden tears, too emotional. Needy. Sick. Not that he wasn’t needy when he was well either, but.

Martin wasn’t here.

Jon gripped a handful of bedclothes, curling on his side in the space where Martin should be and wasn’t. He thought of warm hands and soft kisses testing his temperature and gentle tutting. Martin would fuss over him terribly, plying him with medicine and perfectly steeped tea with honey and lemon for his sore throat. He would want for nothing, of that he was certain, but.

Martin wasn’t here.

And it was Jon’s fault.

No. Not entirely. He was away for the long weekend for an international conference.

But the shouting match they’d had before he left was very much Jon’s fault.

It figured that he would chase him away. Jon was miserable and ungrateful on his best days and like a dog with a bone on his worst. Why couldn’t he just let things go? Why did he have to push and question and needle Martin like that when he knew his partner needed time to think? Was already anxious about being away for so long? Jon certainly knew how to pick the best time for a row. Impeccable timing as usual, god damn him. Another fit crept its way through his tight chest, up his throat, painfully forcing itself free, and he stifled himself in a pillow.

He wanted Martin.

He had no right to, but he wanted him just the same.

After allowing himself just a few moments to wallow in misery, he forced himself up, driving the heels of both hands against his eyelids. It was a cold. It’d been going around the university and he was always early to catch whatever pathogens his students carried with them. He’d been run down and tired the last week and not from finals apparently. He shuffled awkwardly to the bathroom, limping heavily on his bad leg, absently trying to massage the deep ache left over from the worms all those years ago. He let the water run for a moment, get as hot as he could stand it, and with Martin’s voice in the back of his head, resigned himself to the use of the shower stool he’d insisted on. Sagging forward, Jon let the pounding pressure beat heavy against his back, breathing in the steam in the hopes it would loosen the knots tied thick and rigid around his lungs. Washing up took everything he had left and he wanted nothing more than to collapse back into bed and curl up around Martin’s pillow. Instead he slipped on his favorite of Martin’s jumpers over his pyjamas and took up his cane and made himself tea with honey and lemon and forced himself to drink it even though it tasted wrong. Struggling through the foil of the blister pack exhausted him further but he dutifully downed the tablets with the dregs of his cold cup of subpar tea. Dizzy, nauseated, the room spun around him wildly and he swallowed it down with a sob, laying his hot face against the cool surface of the dining table.

He wanted Martin.

Martin asked him to please not call unless there was an emergency. This wasn’t that. This was some sort of bug and Jon was an adult and he could take care of himself. He shivered. Teeth chattering in his skull and against his better judgement he fumbled for his cell with numb fingers. He thumbed it awake, blinking at the blinding glare. Recents. Martin. Messages. Jon scrolled through them, lingering on his responses. It wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough and Martin had asked him. Asked him not to contact him. For emergencies only. This wasn’t an emergency. It wasn’t. The screen went dark. The tears slipped over the bridge of his nose, tracing the faint scar there left by some fear or another so long ago and Jon chose to be selfish.

What else was new?

“Jon.” Measured, but not cold like he feared so much it would be but focused enough to cut him off before he could even think to apologize. “You need to back off. I’ve asked for some space and I would appreciate it if you would let me focus on this conference. I’ll be back soon. We can talk then.” He paused and with it, so did Jon’s heart. “I love you.”

“I, I love you.” But he’d already hung up and Jon didn’t blame him.

Shivering with chills, Jon dragged his sorry self back into bed, curling into the duvet and closing his eyes against the woozy rolling of his stomach. The tea wasn’t sitting well and Jon found himself panting, shallow and fast, concentrating on keeping himself together and willing himself to sleep though that plan didn’t seem to be working. Salt flooded his tongue and he lurched for the bin beside the bedside, dry heaving painfully. Sweat poured down his face, dripped off his chin.

It wasn’t an emergency.

It wasn’t.

He coughed, wincing and lifting a trembling hand to his throat and pressing against Daisy’s remnant souvenir, imagining the hurt there. A mewling whimper carried on an uneven breath escaped the cage of his fingers. Restless sleep crashed over him, was dragged away from him, uncomfortable, hot and cold somehow simultaneously. Jon picked up his phone repeatedly to call, to text. But he needed to let Martin have this. He wasn’t like him. He needed time and Jon needed to be patient no matter how ill he was feeling, no matter how much he wanted Martin’s reassuring voice. And it was his fault he couldn’t have it.

Jon couldn’t remember a time in his life where he felt this poorly; not even starved for statements, or scarred by numerous fears. Sleep hadn’t been forthcoming after he lurched awake to be sick again and he hadn’t had the forethought to put anything he might need on the bedside table. Objectively, he knew when he ran fevers they had a tendency to spike at night and that if he could just get up to fetch some medicine he would feel better. Subjectively, he was convinced his legs wouldn’t hold him, that he was dying here alone and when Martin returned for his things he would find his body. Panic built and built and built in his chest, cutting off his ability to breathe, stealing the air around him as surely as Crew had when he dropped him effortlessly, eternally through the void and before he knew it his fingers were acting without express permission.

Insistent buzzing next to his ear dragged Martin up from the depths and he groaned in irritation when the rectangle of light blinded him momentarily. He sighed when he could finally see the caller and he supposed Jon had waited as long as he could before giving in and ringing him again. The man was not known for his patience, after all. Martin glanced at his still sleeping roommate, a paramedic out of Brussels, and slipped out of bed to take the call in the hallway.

“Jon.” The frustration was warranted but melted away into concern when his only answer was a strangled, hitching gasp.

“I, I’m s’sorry.”

“Jon, darling, what’s wrong?”

“Y’you want space and, and m’sorry, but I--” A sudden explosive cough caught him off guard; it sounded painful and tight.

“Jon, I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m sorry.” His hoarse whisper didn’t hide the wheeze on his breath. “Shouldn’have called, m’sorry.”

“It’s alright, sweetheart. Tell me what’s wrong.” Martin clutched his phone, voice calm and steady, hundreds of miles away from where Jon was falling apart.

“P’please?”

“What, Jon?” He was openly crying; big, ugly sobs in between each shuddering syllable, and Martin was almost at a total loss, murmuring sweet things through the line in an attempt to calm him, until his hiccuping slowed and he asked again and he answered, sad and small.

“Please? Come h’home?”

“Jon?” Tim let himself into the flat, speaking soft and low, lest Jon was asleep. “Martin told me you aren’t feeling so hot.” He pushed forward to the bedroom, sympathy welling up at the sight of Jon curled up so small, face hidden in his sweat-damp pillow. “Hey, bud.”

“Tim.” Raspy and rough, like he’d been chewing on rocks, he finished his identification on a weak cough.

“The one, the only.” When he laid the backs of his fingers against his temple, Tim hissed through his teeth at the blazing, dry heat of his skin.

“M’sorry…” the ghost of an exhale, shaky and slurred, and Jon managed somehow to pry heavy lashes apart to reveal unfocused eyes glassy with fever. Tim stroked messy curls away from his face, heart clenching when he groaned low in his throat, before deep brown rolled back and dislodged more tears.

“Let’s get you taken care of, okay?” But first, a quick status update for Martin, who had called him nearly in tears himself.

“How is he? Are you taking him to A&E?” Tim could almost see the way he was clinging to his phone.

“I don’t think so. Gonna get some water and medicine into him and see how that goes.”

“Tim? Is he okay?”

“He’s sick, looks like the flu and he’s likely been down with it a couple of days.”

“God, he tried to call me and I--”

“Gonna cut you off right there, Marto. This isn’t anyone’s fault. It just happens.”

“I was so upset with him--”

“And I’m sure he earned it. When he’s well again you can talk it out.”

“Tim.” Trembling,

“I’ll make certain he’s alright until you get home. I’ve got him, Martin.” While on the phone, Tim gathered up supplies, thankful that Jon lived with someone with brains enough to keep a stocked medicine cabinet complete with a fancy ear thermometer with disposable covers. Because Martin. Jon didn’t so much as twitch this time. 39.4. “Okay, buddy. Up you come now.”

“Nng…”

“Mhm,” Tim hummed good naturedly, holding the glass of water to chapped lips and going slow. “Good?” He took the unintelligible noise as a yes, allowing him a few more careful sips before slipping the capsules onto his tongue. “There we go. We’ll see how that sits.” He divested Jon of the wash worn wool keeping in all the heat, soothing him wordlessly when he tried in vain to keep it. A clean set of pyjamas would make him feel better and he let the relatively cool air of the room wick away the moisture left from a cursory damp flannel.

“...Tim?”

“Hey, sleeping beauty.”

“Why’m’I in...in my pants…?”

“Did your best to sweat through the last set, here.” Tim helped guide loose limbs through the appropriate holes.

“S’cold…” punctuating his statement with a full body shiver, Jon slumped forward into Tim’s chest. “M’Martin’s cross.” Nodding, Tim gathered him up to deposit him on the sofa so he could change the bedclothes. “S’my fault…”

“When he comes home, you can apologize. Get him his favorite takeaway, yeah?” Jon listened intently, watery gaze fixed to Tim’s. “Put up those books of yours he’s always tripping over.”

“He, he. He’s coming home?” Lower lip trembling, Jon sounded too hopeful for this to be the distance of a long weekend.

“Oh, you daft fool, of course he is, of course.” He let Jon cry himself out on his shoulder. “He loves you, just needed some space, you know he likes space to get his thoughts in order. Of course he’s coming back.” Gentle and soft, Tim kept up his reassurances and hoped he’d forget that particular fear. Jon was too used to abandonment and all too accepting that he was the cause of it. That he was unlovable. “Alright, dry your eyes now.” Tim thumbed away matching saltwater tracks after settling him back on the couch cushions. “There we are.” Lord, he looked exhausted, the very textbook image of a bad flu with sore, red rimmed eyes limned with bruises. “Back in a tick, love.”

Clean, cool sheets, Jon tucked between them, kettle cooling off the hob, Tim set himself up on Martin’s side of the bed, getting another read, 38.1, and sending a quick update text before tapping open his most recent gaming obsession. The conference ended tomorrow morning and Martin would be home the same evening. With the next day off, Tim could wait that long. Jon’s burn-scarred hand snaked from under the blankets to grip his joggers.

“Hullo.” Tim tugged his fingers through messy curls. “Feeling a little better, champ?”

“Yeah…” It was still early hours and Jon needed all the sleep he could get.

“Sip on this.” And fluids. Tim levered him up, helping him hold the lukewarm mug of tea in shaky hands and laying him in his lap where he could knead out the knots tying up his shoulder blades until he sank deep.

Familiar voices hummed around him like moths just out of reach, melting together, drifting apart, slipping through his fingers. A door opened, closed, and Jon thought for a moment the Distortion must have him until a familiar palm pressed itself against his forehead. Martin’s face materialized in front of him and blurred just as quickly when tears filled his eyes. Wildly, he dove for him, not thinking about the edge of the mattress and collapsing into him when his legs gave way.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, you’re alright, love.” Jon pushed his face into Martin’s neck, body numb with relief. “Shh, shh, shhh.”

“M’m’sorry, so sorry.”

“I know.” Martin curled around him, holding him firmly, tightly, running his hand up and down the shallow seam of his spine. Jon didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve how good Martin was to him. And he, he didn’t--

“I d’don’t unders’stand.”

“Understand what?” Jon couldn’t look at him for fear of what he might see, hiding instead in Martin’s jumper. He shouldn’t have said anything at all. “Why I came home?” He didn’t speak, shook harder, swallowed with difficulty past the cloying clot of emotion in his throat. “Oh, love. You’re not well and everything’s a little mixed up right now.” Lightly, softly, Martin kissed his temple. “I’ll always come home.” Jon felt needy and childish, choosing to believe Martin and taking comfort in it, in the chaste press of his lips against any skin he could reach. “Back in bed now, you’re burning up. Tea?” Nodding once, Jon couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth again, worried that he’d destroy this tentative peace and so, so grateful to have Martin home and the next time he opened his eyes it was to Martin climbing into bed in his pyjamas, tea already on the nightstand.

“Will you tell me about the conference?” Jon accepted the open arms as the offer they were, fitting himself like a puzzle piece against his side, sick and sweaty and lulled by the soothing rumble of Martin’s voice beneath his ear.

There were other things to talk about, but for now, the two of them, here and now, were enough.

[joonkorre]

(love) is a heartache

@drarrymicrofic prompt: hope is a heartache - léon

let it be known that harry goes through life purely on vibes. half of his reasons why for every decision at his big age are “idk imma just hope for the best”

ao3

People’s hearts twinge sometimes. For Draco, he can barely remember the last time he doesn’t have these twinges. It’s pretty normal at this point.

“No, it’s not,” Pansy says. She’s a Healer, so she’s probably right. But Draco prefers to ignore that.

“Leave it be,” Draco murmurs, lips against her scalp, “I’m fine. Say, are you free tomorrow?”

“Yeah. You want to go somewhere?”

“Mm. Sleep.”

They go out the next morning, Pansy in thick makeup and Draco practically drunk under nine layers of Charms. The air is a bit humid, which seems to get worse when the bustling street intensifies in volume into a roaring din. Pansy pulls him under an awning, yanking at his sleeve a bit to try out her disgusting sugary coffee. She always does this whenever she wants to take his attention away from something, which means he just has to look at exactly where she’s doesn’t want him to. As his lips wrap around her lipstick-stained straw, he glances up.

Across the street, a couple strolls through a gushing crowd. Fiery red hair, airy laughter, a pale arm wrapped around her fiancé’s waist. Curls of black, sleek spectacles, a protective palm on his fiancee’s shoulder. They make the perfect picture, a vibrant oil painting. Their existence is formed from bold strokes of sunlight and starburst kisses, with the focal point being a shock of phthalo green and cadmium lemon, two minute specks that make all the difference. As all good paintings do, they pin the viewer on the spot, as if the viewer himself is a thing to behold. Then they shift away.

The exhibit moves forward and out of sight. It’s closing time, the viewer has overstayed his welcome.

Something leaps in Draco’s chest and splatters on the floor of his stomach. Placing her hand over his heart, Pansy frowns at him. She doesn’t ask why Potter stared at someone who looked like a stranger to him. Only tells him to start finding answers.

Months later, on the most awaited day in recent Wizarding history, there’s a knock on Draco’s door.

He throws on a sweater, and a throw, too, for good measure. Ambling to the door, he checks the mail slot before peeking through the peephole. Nobody but a package is outside. Draco hums and unlocks his door, crouching down the moment it opens. What feels like soft satin brushes against his cheek, cool and smooth. With a flash, a pair of shiny dress shoes appear before him.

“Draco.”

Draco peers up as he rises, hands around the package. Potter has his maddening Invisibility Cloak slung over his arm, his roguish charm heightened by a perfectly fitted three-piece suit. A tiny posy is pinned on his left lapel, muted green hellebores with a few sprigs of privet berries. He’s dressed like a man in love.

Draco feels something he hasn’t felt in months at the sight. He’s trained himself to suppress it the moment it showed itself and has been relatively successful until now. The sting, without warning, bursts from within his chest, calling forth a slight wince. Potter’s brows furrow.

"How do you know where I live?"

“How long has this been going on?”

Draco frowns. “Pardon?”

“That,” Potter gestures at Draco’s chest. “The heartache.”

He rears back. What the hell is he supposed to say to that? At Potter’s unchanging expression, Draco shoves his hair out of his face with a quiet huff and puts a hand on the doorknob.

“It’s none of your business. Please leave.”

“It is, actually,” Potter stops the closing door with one arm.

“Excuse me? We haven't had a proper conversation in more than a decade and suddenly you want to act like we're friends? Leave, now.”

“Listen to me. How can it not be my business when I feel it, too?”

“Check with a Healer, then. If you can put past grudges aside, I can hand you Pansy Parkinson’s business card,” Draco grits through his teeth, pushing against the door with his entire body, his throw slipping to the ground.

“Draco, stop, I already know, stop.”

“Know what? No, I don't care. Leave at once, else I’d alert the Aurors.”

A rough slam sends Draco staggering back. Potter pants, hard lines on his face. His chest heaves under his crisp white shirt, its top two buttons unclasped, and he steps over the threshold, closing the door.

“You think they’d believe you?”

The pain shoots from his chest to the rest of his body, and for several seconds, his lungs wouldn’t work. He whips his head away from Potter, who groans and sags against the wall.

“I told you to leave.”

“I’m sorry, that was a shitty thing to say,” Potter says immediately, sweat dotting his temples.

After an uncomfortable pause, clearing his throat, he picks up the near-forgotten package from the carpet. His hand feels around the outline of the object within, rectangular and heavy. Glancing at Draco, he says hoarsely. “I know why you bought this book.”

“Know this, know that, you know nothing,” Draco lunges forward, only for Potter to twist out of the way and raise the package out of his reach.

“The Life-long Burden of Dark Curses: A Caution by Elise Arrowlane, limited edition,” he says, unbothered by Draco’s slackened jaw. “You ordered it from the new bookstore on Diagon months ago. You were small and old and grey, but I recognized you. I always could.”

“Okay,” Draco sneers, “so you’re a stalker. Old news. Anything else?”

“There’s no need to order one. I would’ve borrowed it from Hermione if you had only asked,” Potter says. “Instead, I got curious and read it for myself. That’s how I connected the dots about the heartache, how I realized we’ve both had it since that day years ago.”

“Oh, the day you slashed me into ribbons and almost cut through my heart?” Draco clenches his jaw.

Being able to shout this ugly kind of truth into the perpetrator’s face feels oddly liberating. That is, if liberation also comes with a specific kind of agony that makes Draco want to fall to his knees.

“Dark Magic leaves a mark on both the wizard and their victim, doesn’t it? No need for a book to tell us that,” Potter says, the harsh afternoon glow of him gentled by the soft lamplight in Draco’s hallway. “In certain cases, it even leaves a link. A connection.”

Draco bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. The only consequence from that horrid night was his fucked up heart and nothing else, nothing at all. Whatever Potter is insinuating, he hates it. He hates this. He hates him.

“How are you so sure there’s a connection.”

“I wasn’t,” Potter says. “The Healers said it’s a health thing I developed after the War and I just needed to avoid strenuous activity. I didn’t think much of it, but then I read the book and realized that it usually flared up whenever you watched me.”

Scoffing, Draco turns and stalks into the kitchen. Walking past the boiling kettle, he throws a cabinet door open and grabs a mug, his hand trembling.

“Interesting how my health suffers when I see the bastard who quite literally carved me open.”

“I was eating dinner when I thought I was going to die of a heart attack at 23,” Potter continues. Draco pulls the drawers out, unable to find a single bag of tea for several excruciating moments. “The next day, I was reading about your mother’s death on the Daily Prophet. That was the first sign.”

Grabbing a rag and wetting it, Draco wipes the countertop even as he’s just done so last night.

“When Ginny saw you on the street during our date and extended her hand toward you, you shook it. But your heart ached.

“I saw you looking at the picture of Ginny and I kissing on the front page of Witch Weekly. Your hair was brown and your back was curved, but I saw you. Your heart ached.

“When I announced my engagement to her on the Battle of Hogwarts’s 10th Anniversary, you were clapping along with everyone else. But your heart ached.”

Draco throws the rag on the counter. The kettle whistles, a piercing sound. “What’s your point? Are you here purely to flaunt your relationship and imply that I’m in love with Ginevra Weasley? If so, I got it. Thank you so very much, it’s been enlightening. Now get out.”

“The point is,” Potter says, lifting the kettle off the burner to pour it into Draco’s mug, placing his tea bag in, “unless the article about you being gay was wrong, Ginny isn’t the one you’re in love with.”

“What arti—” Draco stops. “That was years ago.”

His sexuality was leaked to some irrelevant gossip rag, not even making the front page. Nobody noticed, nothing changed, and it hasn’t entered his mind in what feels like forever until Potter reminds him.

“I remember.”

“You—” Draco frowns. His eyes strain on the cup of tea until they hurt. He squeezes them shut, sighing. “It doesn’t prove anything. Perhaps I’m jealous of my childhood nemesis having a better life than me, ever thought of that?”

“Yeah,” Potter says, “I’ve thought about this a lot. Which is why I’m here. To make sure.”

Draco takes it in, then, unable to help himself, curls his lips at Potter and his attire. At his artfully gelled hair, his hanging bow tie, the elegant boutonniere on the lapel of his dark blue suit. His empty ring finger.

“Couldn’t you have chosen a better date to make sure? Preferably before your wedding day?”

Potter steps closer. A respectable distance away, but closer.

“I could’ve, but I spent most of those days in denial. Then the dots connected and I couldn’t deny it anymore, so I decided to just go through with the wedding regardless, be with the woman I loved. Hoped that maybe the odd emotions I had would go away,” he shrugs, raising his eyes to meet Draco’s. “Saw Ginny at the end of the aisle and, well, I couldn’t stop thinking that it should’ve been someone else. All this time, I’ve thought that she didn’t feel… right in my arms, but I pushed it down. And there she was in that white dress.

“Seeing that today was the last straw. I had to leave.”

Draco’s breath catches in his throat. Swallowing it down, he grabs his mug, scooping out the tea bag just to have something to do. He takes a sip without blowing, ignoring its scalding heat.

“That was stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Draco can feel a headache building. “That was a horrible decision. I never imagined you—you!—out of all people, could be this irresponsible. What the fuck.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am. Merlin, that poor fucking woman. If your purpose here is to make me feel bad for Ginevra and all 300 of her relatives for once in my life, you’ve succeeded, congratulations.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that to me, say that to—oh, you’d do what you want no matter what I say, wouldn’t you?”

“Depends on the situation.”

“‘Depends on the situation,’ he says,” Draco mocks, getting a carton of milk from the fridge to save his bitter, bitter tea. Potter doesn’t reply. Stirring the milk in, Draco lets out a heavy sigh.

“What do you want me to do about this?” He says. “I didn’t make you run out of your own wedding. If you expect me to take the blame for your inane decisions, the first person I Floo wouldn’t be the Aurors, but Ginevra Weasley herself.”

A small smile graces Potter’s lips. “I don’t expect anything from you but honesty.”

Draco squints.

“And how will you know if what I say is a lie? Will you reject my genuine answer if it’s not what you want to hear?”

“That won’t be a problem,” Potter says. “I trust your heart will speak the truth for us both.”

There’s a pang in Draco’s chest, and judging from the twitch of Potter’s brow, he can feel it too. Not another word is said, the two men merely facing each other from across a tiny kitchen, considering. Draco can feel the warmth of sunlight beaming through the little window and coating his nape as he leans against the sink, earl grey on his tongue. Lovely citric notes of bergamot drift up his nose. He closes his eyes. What to do, what to do.

Weightless oxfords clack against the yellowed tiles, clear and bright in Draco’s ears. Fabric rustles as Potter slips a hand into his pocket only to retrieve it a second later. Draco lets himself be cornered, barely glancing at the wool-clad arms caging either side of his waist. A clink catches his attention, however, and he tilts his head to the left.

Millimeters beside Draco’s hand on the counter, glinting in the sun, is a wedding band. Draco knows Potter and Ginevra’s in and out, has examined the picture on that day’s issue of the Daily Prophet more times than he should have. He knows the marquise droplets of Ginevra’s gems and the chevron curve of her ring, the blankness of Potter’s own band a dream and a question in his mind.

The band that’s resting on the counter is different. Rustic gold and a fissure in the middle, the fertile earth splitting open to reveal a stream of diamonds, a sparkling river. Draco sets his mug to the side and holds the ring up close, his finger smoothing over the grooves of its texture.

“Did you make a stop at a jewelry store before breaking into my home?” He asks.

“No,” Harry murmurs. Draco looks at him in surprise. “I’ve had this with me for months.”

A pause.

“I thought you said you were in denial.”

“I was, but I knew, somewhat, that I wanted someone else,” Harry’s head lowers, slow and careful, until his forehead rests against Draco’s shoulder. “I told myself that I just liked the way it looked, had to get it in case I didn’t want the other ring anymore. But I got it a size smaller. Been carrying it in my pocket ever since.”

Draco’s heart throbs and throbs. Large hands circle his waist, bunching up the back of his sweater and pressing him close, chest to chest. A blanket of pure heat envelops his body as he breathes in the timeless saffron and neroli of cologne, half-lidded eyes pinned on the band he’s given. Oh, dear, he thinks, and again when it settles at the base of his ring finger with ease, as if it belongs there and never left. Oh, dear.

[whump-town]

Lie to Me

Guess who's back on their shit?

Another cancer fic for you because there's something very weird about me that stays drawn to the idea of secretly being sick

Anyways

Warnings: well... cancer

Pairings: none? yet.

Supervisory Special Agent Hotchner has a certain reputation around the office. The BAU’s ghost, walking around in his leather dress shoes and fancy suits without so much as a groan from the old, torn tile beneath his feet or the muffled swish of the material of his slacks. You never know he’s there until he wants you to and by then it’s always too late. By luck of his poor hearing or his natural affinity for silence, nothing admitted in his silent presence ever graces his lips for a repeat. The secrets all die with him. He’s as loyal as a dog -- in ways that lead to natural gravitation. The reason why Penelope Garcia beams at him every time their paths cross, why she so eagerly rushes to match his pace. To just walk beside him and talk his ear off even though she knows her answers will come in the form of soft hums and furrowed brows. In other ways, it’s killed him. Left him to live the life of a lame dog, dragging his dying body away from them. Hoping to spare them the agony of his death.

Some things that people say about SSA Hotchner are true. He really does move like a ghost and it’s a thing of great mystery and annoyance. It’s cost Emily Prentiss numerous mugs but perhaps the flash of his smug crooked grin makes that worth the shattered cup at their feet (she wouldn’t agree with that statement). He’s made Derek Morgan nearly jump out of his skin, whirling around to attack whatever snuck up on him only to find Hotch frowning back at him. If asked, David Rossi will blame Hotch for 79% of the grey hairs on his head because he hadn’t even begun to go grey until he met Hotch.

He’s really not as scary as people make him out to be.

Penelope Garcia wishes everyone knew that. She wishes cadets looked at Hotch the way that they look at Derek and Spencer. As awe-inspiring giants, they crane their necks to look up to. Instead, they lower their eyes away from him. Whispering to one another about the rumors and the things that they have been told. They regard him as a lesson -- someone to measure their existence against. To know when to get out of the job. To know when they can no longer turn back.

He’d saved her when it seemed no one else in the world really looked at her. She’d watched him take her homemade pink stationary in his hands, held it delicately as he looked over what menial ideas she could think of. He’d looked at her kindly, not at all like the snobby FBI brat she assumed him to be, and shaken her hand, “Thank you, Miss Garcia.” For the months following her career change, he’d been too kind. Brought her lunch to her desk because she was too anxious to leave her office. Gave her advice about where to park and how to miss Strauss in the hallways.

As important as his approval is to her, his well-being is more important. So, no, she doesn’t turn away when she sees him on Saturday in the emergency room. He’s sleeping off a cocktail they’d given him, turns out it’s rather hard to place a catheter near the heart when it’s beating erratically. His anxiety had nearly caused him to be sick and so he’d agreed, finally, to let them give him something to calm him down. Which is where Garcia finds him, left arm cradled to his chest, too long limbs hanging off the stretcher, and breathing slow and steady through the oxygen canal under his nose. A precaution, that’s all, given the sedatives they’d doped him up with.

“Sir?”

The fingers in his left-hand twitch, flexing towards his palm and he grunts softly at the pain that the movement causes. Slowly, breathing hitching and his eyes fluttering open, he wakes up. He’d heard, vacantly, the hesitant “sir” from the end of the bed but he assumed it was a nurse. As his eyes rise up to search the room he’s surprised, entirely so that he thinks he’s hallucinating, to find Penelope.

“Are you okay?”

He’s still piecing together the last few hours but nods. Cracking open his dry lips he swallows thickly, trying to work his voice around the tightness in his throat. Dehydrated and still disoriented he reaches for the cup of water left for him but at the current angle that he’s laying at, he can’t get it. He clears his throat, sniffling, “can you, ugh--” He’s still looking at the cup, dazed to the point he can’t think of the words he means to say. Tired eyes look back at her, pleading silently that she understands.

Penelope nods, moving forward instinctively. She doesn’t look at him, at his dark blood dried to his arm. His hospital gown stopping just at the clear protective barrier between her and the port placed on the inside of his arm. “Here,” she whispers. She needs to be closer so he doesn’t have to stretch but can’t bring herself to be close. Not within his reach. Not so close that she can see the dark rings of sleepless nights carved under his eyes. Far enough away that the tremble in his hand is easily overlooked. So that he doesn’t seem as weak and frail as his voice sounds.

He sips the water, knows from too many mistakes not to drink too much just yet. “Why are you here?” He nearly sounds like himself, dark brows furrowed and voice taken its steady, deep rhythm back.

She looks over her shoulder, past the curtain pulled around them for the sake of privacy. “I, uhm, volunteer for a support group that meets every Saturday here at the hospital.” She points to the front desk, to a woman with curly hair pulled back in two ponytails. “I came downstairs to say hi to Mac and I saw you and I just…” Suddenly, realizes how she shouldn’t be here. That if he wanted comfort he’d have told them, or someone.

Wait. Stop.

That doesn’t matter. Hotch doesn’t know what’s good for him. Everyone knows that. So she made the right decision to come over here.

“You’re not driving yourself home, right?”

In her silent contemplation, he’d began to fall asleep again. The cup in his hand dangerously tipped and eyes held open by slow, deepening blinks.

“Hotch?” She touches his hand, flinching away at just how cold his skin is.

He cracks his eyes back open, cracks of soft brown iris finding her slowly. He hums, mouth cracked open.

“Will you let me take you home?”

Home. He hums again, vaguely aware of her warm hand coming to rest over his. Moving his stiff fingers away from the cup, taking it from him so he doesn’t spill it over himself.

It’s meticulous work, keeping him awake. Even harder making sure he gets dressed but once he’s sitting up he’s much more alert, grumpy now for being duped into asking her for help. She’d offered it but that means nothing to him. He’s no less thrilled to find his brain too foggy and arm too weak to work his arm through his sweater. She still smiles when his head pops through, hair a crazy mess on his head.

She packs him carefully into her car, a boxy little thing he’d frowned at when she bought it. He’d been the reason behind Morgan and Reid both coming to her office with statistics and fear about the safety of it but she’d loved it. He’s a worrier, prone to stewing and her car had taken up a lot of his energy for the first year she owned it. Now he’s being packed into the green monstrosity, senses assaulted by incense. Everything’s sparkly and he ends up sitting with a teddy bear in his lap, a troll in his hand. He’d taken their rightful place as her passenger.

His legs do not fit no matter how far back he moves his seat back and Penelope feels awful that he looks so uncomfortable but also finds it to be humorous. His knees to his ears, dark scary Agent Hotchner holding a stuffed bear to his chest, head resting against the window. It’s sweet.

It’s fairly easy to figure what his thought process today when she pulls up to his house and no one’s home. Jack’s camping, she learns. He’s dozed off again, prone and more willing to whisper half-truths. Will be away for the whole weekend until Tuesday morning. Jessica is getting her nails and hair done, he’d made the appointment just to make sure she really did it. The haircut should have ended just in time that he could call her and ask if she’d pick him up from the hospital. Where he thought he would have already artfully hidden the PICC line under his sweater and played the affair off as a routine sort of deal. A check-up.

“Sir…” she’s standing now, awkwardly, in his living room. The curtains are drawn back the way he likes, closing off the sun. He’s tucked under his heating blanket, trying to remain awake for the sake of the fact that it’s rude to fall asleep while entertaining guests. Yet, failing miserably. “Sir, I was just wondering… Is everything okay?”

“I’m--” the truth nearly slips right out. He clears his throat, managing to sit up just enough to catch her eyes. “Don’t worry about me, Garcia. Jessica will be around in an hour.” He holds his left hand closed, trying to stop his cramped fingers from twitching. “Dave and Emily are coming by for dinner. I’ll be okay.”

It’s completely unethical.

It’s so unprofessional.

But she can’t help herself.

Her eyes prick with tears when Emily shakes her head in the kitchenette, the sound of Hotch’s wet coughs breaking through his closed office door. “He needs to get that checked out,” she sighs, hiding her bleeding worry with annoyance. “Sounds awful.” And Penelope stands there with Hotch’s secret tongue-tied.

He’s getting worse and fast.

She gets a call from Derek, seething anger laced into his words. “He fucking-- He fucking just-- .” She knows it’s really just fear. Can hear him walking, his rapid pacing as he tries to outwalk his expanse of emotions. “He -- He shouldn’t be in the field. I mean, it’s like he didn’t even see it coming. He was just…” She remains steady. Wipes the tears that slip past her eyelashes with the back of her hand. Derek cries, on the ground with his knees to his chest, and he tells her what happened. How Hotch was paying attention to him and if he hadn’t been then maybe…

She greets them at the elevator, feels her smile attempt to waver when Hotch’s tired eyes raise from the ground. The bruise along his cheek a deep agonizing yellow, the wound on his temple still weeping angrily through the bandage. He can’t fly until his concussion is healed, longer if his tinnitus doesn’t get better. “It’ll be fun having you home,” she assures him, giving his fingers an extra squeeze.

Luck, it seems, has never seemed to favor Aaron Hotchner’s particular brand of bold.

Working at the District Attorney’s had been a morally fulfilling job. In theory, he could rest assured, each night, that he was doing what he could to help people. He was putting the real bad guys behind the bars. Even as his dreams filled with the images of the victims who had to wait for months, and even years, to get their proper justice. In reality, he slept poorly and rarely. Unable to properly maintain his workload without impossibly long hours. With time he found his work to be unfulfilling. He was doing nothing to stop crime from happening and sinking further into the realization that was failing more people than he could ever begin to help.

In court, he was ruthless. Haley didn’t like the man he became in the courtroom. Ruthless and harsh, he appeared evil and terrifying with his hawk-like eyes and infallible ability to pinpoint weaknesses in his opposers. Around the office, they nicknamed his alter-ego “Hot-head Hotchner” because the Aaron that gets flushed ordering lunch couldn’t possibly be the same man who made a man wet himself on the stand. Haley couldn’t agree more.

Hot-head Hotchner got him offered a job in corporate law, several firms were throwing big numbers at him to encourage that lasered focus to be on their side. Lest they find themselves opposing it. Morally, he could never go into corporate law but the offer to spend hours bending law into something pliable and poking holes in judicial wordings was compelling. It would be complex, rewarding work with a big pay-out. Better than the shitty salary he made at the D.A.’s office. Before he could make the compromise he met David Rossi and he never got his chance to bend the law to his will, he held his moral ground and instead changed career paths.

It was bold leaving what he knew he was good at for something new entirely.

A costly decision.

He never got to fulfill his secret desire to mold the law but bending the truth wasn’t a far cry from the same thing. Lying has never been something he felt comfortable with and that had no exceptions. He hadn’t wanted to tell the team Emily had died but that had far less to do with his morals and so much more to do with a picture much bigger than himself. The hell he knew that would rain down upon them in the weeks to come. The inability of the team to cope. Intuitively something holding them back and what they could only assume was a stage of grief.

To Emily Prentiss, he has never lied. Stretched versions of the truth he maintains to not be the same thing as a lie. If they count then his answer would be different but the eye of the beholder adds context. And as the holder of this context, he resolutes the power to declare them very different.

“New girlfriend?”

He’s breathing through a bought of nausea attempting to take him off his feet. The cold countertop biting into the skin of his wrist, his palm pressed flat to the surface so that he doesn’t grip the edge. So that his pale bloodless knuckles holding onto dear life do not betray the severity of which he fears he might get sick or pass out.

His phone is on the counter, turned upside down so that he doesn’t have to see the screen light up with every new text that comes through. The high-pitched “ding” of each new message is lost to the tinnitus he’s been succumbing to now for the better part of the week. No amount of coffee or Tylenol has helped.

Raising his gaze makes the pounding in his head worse but he has to meet Emily’s questioning gaze. They’ve started to notice his “off” behavior. His inability to stand for long amounts of time without physical drain. His decision to stay home on the last several cases, working here with Garcia rather than joining them in the field. The way he relies on Morgan’s lead more than he used to, falling silent and allowing the other man to make decisions. He suspects they just assume he’s looking into retiring or that he’s struggling to kick his “chest cold”, he doesn’t bother correcting them.

“No,” he manages, swallowing around the heaviness of his tongue. The way his mouth seems full of salival added pangs to his stomach as he knows he’s going to be sick. “It’s Jessica.” She’s angry with him and for good reason, though he doesn’t offer an explanation as to why.

Emily hums, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head. “What’d you did you do to piss her off?” In other circumstances, he might assume she’s attempting to pry. She’s just here for another cup of coffee, offering him a way to release some of his stress. No hard feelings if he suggests she fuck off and willing to lend an ear if he wants to talk. She’s not holding her breath but she hopes he comes undone. That he admits to some awful conspiracy and that this whole time they’ve been in some twisted social experiment to see how unified they actually are. That he isn’t as sick as he looks. That he’s just in a low spot and in a month he’ll be putting the weight back on and Derek will be telling them all about training for another marathon. How Reid could do more pushups than Hotch.

“I’m sorry,” Hotch whispers. He tries to step away from the counter. Feels the temperature in the room drops several degrees, his skin broken out in goosebumps. “I think to sit down,” he says frantically, knows now he needs to sit before he passes out.

Emily grabs his arm, tries to help him up. To get him to the chair that’s right there, so close.

“Hotch?” Derek jogs into the kitchen, he’d seen from afar and come running. “Emily, what’s wrong?”

Emily helps him to the ground, hand holding the back of his neck as his body starts sinking faster, beyond his control. She sits down on the ground beside him, eyes scanning across his body to find a feasible answer. Below her, Hotch’s breathing has gone rapid and shallow. His eyes rolled back into his head, neck-craning as he unconsciously fights to get air into his lungs. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know. He just-- He was just--” Hotch wheezes, an awful sound. He chokes, blood coming to paint his lips. To coat his teeth.

“Hotch?” Derek moves to his side, picking up Hotch’s shoulder to move him onto his side. “Hotch, answer me!”

His only reply is a wet gurgle, a blood-coated wheeze.

[bratkook]

queen of broken hearts. jjk (m) part three.

“Tell me i’m the worst, make you cry and make you hurt, i’m the queen bow down to me, I will leave you out to bleed.”

part one. part two.

pairing: jungkook x reader genre: angst but theres a happy ending yay word count: 7.4k warnings: nothing crazy this time, just mentions of the explicit polaroid photo, an attempt at infidelity, oc is still a liar who doesn’t deserve anything author’s note: ok i couldn’t not write a third part of this to tie it all up and give you guys the happy ending jk deserves so here it is, i hate this oc and love that all of you hate her too lmaooo

Jungkook glances down at his phone, seeing the text he had just sent. A simple string of letters that spelled ‘i’m outside’, a familiar pattern his fingers had memorized. Except for the first time in a very long time the text wasn’t being sent to you.

The device pings with a response from Taehyung, stating he was on his way down, so he locks it once more and sets it underneath his radio in his car. Jungkook grunts as he catches on to the lyrics ringing in his car and skips the song currently playing, it was one of your favorite songs and once he listened to the lyrics he felt like it was a direct jab at him, especially when you had asked him to download it with that same smile that lead to heartbreak. That didn’t stop him doing as you asked, just because you liked it so much.

The amount of times the song I Feel Bad by Blackbear had played in his car as he left your place had nudged it up the algorithm, making his phone constantly play it when he shuffled all of his songs. He needed to fully delete it from his library.

Jungkook had to admit he was doing pretty good, it was going on 6 weeks and you were still blocked from his instagram. He had even gone as far as making his page private to prevent you from lurking, he doubted you’d go to that extent though, not as desperate to see Jungkook’s life play out without you in it. Surely you had moved on to the next shiny toy.

The only thing he had yet to do was block your number, the small no dignity having part of him hoped that maybe you’d reach out, maybe you’d apologize for anything and everything, maybe you’d wake up and realize how you truly felt for him.

That never happened.

Your thread of messages was bone dry, taunting him in his inbox so much he had to delete it all to stop himself from typing out a message at 3am in sheer desperation. He wouldn’t be reaching out and it was clear you wouldn’t be either.

“Hey man.” Taehyung greets him as he pulls the passenger door open, sliding in with ease and slamming it shut behind him. Jungkook blinks back to reality, giving his friend a small smile as they shake their hands in the playful way they always did.

“Jimin’s not with you?” He wonders, expecting the other boy to have come down with him since they all had plans together.

Taehyung shakes his head as he settles into the seat, adjusting his messy hair in the visor and buckling up just as Jungkook pulls out of the parking spot. “Nah, he’s at his apartment. He told you he’s bringing someone with him right?”

Jungkook frowns at that because no, Jimin hadn’t mentioned bringing anyone along with him and he really hoped it wasn’t a girl. The last thing he wanted was to be subjected to seeing them swap spit when they were meant to be having a guys day. It seemed a little stupid for Jungkook to hope for that but he had grown to appreciate spending more time with his friends lately, once again realizing just how much of his time you had consumed, always ditching the plans he had with his friends to go get his dick wet and his heart shredded.

“It’s some guy that just started working with him.” Taehyung fills in, taking the initiative to be in charge of the music because Jungkook’s current mix was sort of depressing. He frowns as he scrolls through the artists, choosing to type someone in to play music that wasn’t in his library.

When the beginning sounds of a hit Bad Bunny song fill the car Jungkook nearly swerves as he whips his head to stare at Taehyung bobbing along, “Since when the fuck do you know spanish?”

“I don’t, you just gotta vibe along.” He proves his statement by proceeding to horribly sing along in broken spanish, but his energy is contagious, spreading to Jungkook until he was eventually dancing along with him. The two of them making up their own moves on the short drive to Jimin’s and Taehyung can’t help but feel successful at making his friend have a good time. It had been a while since Jungkook behaved like his usual self.

Him and Jimin still didn’t know about you but after he had decided to block you he had fallen into a tiny pit of despair, returning to the shell of himself that they had seen during the weeks you had ghosted him. It took a lot of coaxing before they were able to pull him out, not asking any questions about anything no matter how much their curiosity itched.

They knew their best friend was hurting so they tried their best to do whatever they could to make it better, constantly reaching out to drag him out of his one bedroom apartment, making plans he couldn’t say no to, being the best wing men they could whenever they hit up bars. It had worked though, they had managed to fill up the small you shaped void inside of him enough for him to be able to ignore.

He never really thought of you until he was completely alone, usually when the sky was the darkest and he had trouble sleeping, remembering the countless nights you’d text him to come over when you were also restless. On nights like that he’d force himself to take a sleeping aid, not wanting flashbacks of you underneath him to wear down his strength when he had been doing so well.

So far so good.

“Is this Bad Bunny?” Jimin instantly asks when he enters the car, having already been waiting outside of his complex with his friend beside him.

“Yeah!” Taehyung laughs, turning the volume up slightly.

Jimin just shakes his head as he slides over in his seat, giving Jungkook a similar greeting before his friend follows suit. He’s a silver haired guy with sharp eyes, a small smile being sent Jungkook’s way as Jimin introduces him. “Oh, this is Yoongi, he just became Jamba Juice’s newest bitch.”

Taehyung shoots him a sympathetic look, he had worked along side Jimin a few months ago before quitting in a fit of rage so he knew how unpleasant the job was. “My condolences.”

Yoongi just chuckles, nodding in acceptance, not attempting to deny that the job was hell on earth but it paid alright so he’d just suck it up. “Jimin never shuts up about the two of you at work.”

Jungkook laughs at that as he starts to drive once more, wondering just what Jimin said about them while on the clock, they had all been friends for years so he really had an infinite amount of stories to bring up.

Whatever he had said about them must have been good enough because Yoongi fits right in, balancing out Taehyung’s crude sense of humor with his own, being made aware of some of the inside jokes they all had together and continuing them with ease.

Jungkook begins thinking that he wouldn’t mind Yoongi becoming a part of their group, he had a pretty easy going personality and didn’t protest when Taehyung ended up dragging all of them to some random flea market near by.

Unfortunately it all slowly starts to crumble on the drive towards the restaurant Jimin wanted to try.

“Hey Jungkook, do you have a phone charger?” Jimin asks from the back seat, glaring at the dwindling percentage on his phone due to him now being in charge of the music selection because Taehyung was adamant on playing reggaeton and they were all sick of it.

Jungkook hums in confirmation, too busy staring at his own phone screen for the directions to notice that Jimin was already opening up his center console to grab the cord that he knew was always there.

The photo that greets him as he opens it up definitely isn’t always there though, the shiny polaroid of you looking directly into the lens stares right at Jimin and he immediately recognizes you as the girl from the diner.

“Woah, this is dirty Kook.” He laughs out, trying his best to avert his eyes from the salacious photo and pull out the charger he was originally searching for.

“What?” Taehyung asks, peeking over and gasping obnoxiously when he spots the photo too. He’s not as caring as Jimin is, grabbing the photo from the edges and bringing it up close and personal to his face for a better view.

“Who the fuck is this?” He asks as he stares at the picture with a goofy smile on his face. He tilts the polaroid side to side to look through the glare the sun provides but the raunchy act caught on film is clear as day. Jungkook carries a photo of some girl sucking his dick in his car, what a perv.

Jungkook finally looks up and when he sees the polaroid in Taehyung’s hand he feels his heart drop, reaching across and trying to snatch it but he falls short. Taehyung scoots further in his seat, holding the photo higher up and screaming when the car swerves as Jungkook lurches across his seat and tries to reach for it once more.

“It’s just some girl.” Jungkook grunts as he steadies the car again, his face burning hot as he hears Jimin laughing along in the backseat. Leave it to his friends to act like they’ve never seen more explicit photos, parading it around like it’s the first x-rated polaroid they’ve ever seen as if they didn’t have a collection of ridiculous porn bookmarked onto their phones.

The way Taehyung’s currently holding the photo up gives Yoongi a clear view of it and as his eyes lock onto yours he tilts his head slightly. What was Jungkook doing with a photo of you, covered in cum with his dick in your mouth.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Jimin teases, placing his hands on his shoulders and laughing louder when Jungkook finally snatches the photo from his friends grasp, swatting the side of his head for good measure before stuffing it back into the center console and slamming it shut.

“No, she’s mine.” Yoongi finally speaks up, leaning back into his seat and staring at the back of Jungkook’s head as he drove. A small smile is on his face as he crosses his arms over his chest, the entire car falling into a dead silence, no one wanting to break it until they knew how serious this was. 

Taehyung is half expecting this to become a world star beat down whereas Jimin can’t tell if he’s joking or not, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Yoongi and Jungkook. He sort of wishes he had never asked for a charger now.

Jungkook can’t get himself to say anything, his fingers gripping his steering wheel tighter as his mind starts to spin, desperately waiting for the joking laughter to ensue but it never comes.

Could he really be your boyfriend? Had you been with Yoongi even when you were going on dates with Namjoon or was Yoongi new. Then came the twist of the knife when he realizes that if Yoongi was new, filling in Jungkook’s shoes now that he was gone, you had seen him in a better light than you’d ever see Jungkook in, making him your boyfriend in a few weeks when Jungkook’s known you for years.

“Why do you have a photo of Y/N giving you head?” Yoongi asks, a little caught off guard by the situation. The two of you weren’t officially dating yet but considering he had met your family it felt a little unnerving to see a photo of you like that with someone that wasn’t him.

He’s not upset at Jungkook, he can see how flustered he is, but he needed some form of explanation before he filed you under cheater in his mind.

“It’s an old photo.” Jungkook can barely get out, wanting to shrivel up at the awkward tension filling up the car.

“How old?”

“Over a month ago.” That admittedly wasn’t that old and it doesn’t do much to settle Yoongi’s uncertainty but he decides not to push it, the only person who needed to explain was you.

“I can toss the photo if you want me to.” Jungkook suggests, he had forgotten about the photo after he stuffed it into the center console when he left your house and although he would like to keep it, now that the cat was out of the bag and your new boy of interest had seen it, he felt a little wrong holding on to it. What were the fucking odds.

Yoongi shakes his head, it was a photo taken from your camera and you obviously knew it was being taken, if Jungkook wanted to keep it for whatever weird reason that was his call, for all he knew Jungkook was one of your exes. 

“Just maybe don’t keep it in your car man.” Yoongi suggests, his fingers itching by his side with the want to text you for an explanation but he knows he needs to play his cards right to get an actual answer from you.

Jungkook takes Yoongi’s suggestion as a demand, the second he gets back home after they finished hanging out he pockets the photo once more and decides to shove the photo deep into his underwear drawer. Hopefully it’s something he’ll forget about and stumble upon in a few years and not feel the same gutted emotions he does now.

Jungkook knows he’s only hurting himself further by allowing a fragile string to continue to tie the two of you together but its the small tinge of hope that maybe one day he’d feel a tug from the string in your direction that prevents him from snipping it.

As he lays in bed he feels a similar dark shadow start to fall over him, reminiscent to the one that had nearly swallowed him whole weeks ago. The only plus side to this was that he now knew that you had moved on, something that should help him think straight, not let his memories get warped until you’re seen as this sweet angel that never did him any wrong.

The other plus side was that he didn’t get his ass beat by Yoongi, the boy had swept it under the rug and went about the rest of the day as if nothing had happened. He was unaware that Yoongi was at your place now with Jungkook being the topic of discussion.

Yoongi was currently trying his best to not burn a hole in your floor as he paced back and forth on your carpet with you staring at him looking as comfortable as ever on your bed. How you looked like that when he had just interrogated you on your relationship with the other boy was beyond him.

He wasn’t even sure if you were lying to him or not, your answers seemed too practiced to be truthful, too thought out for him to fully believe. The second he had brought Jungkook up it was like your brain went into autopilot and the perfect answers he was looking for just spilled out.

But somewhere along the line you said something that rubbed him the wrong way, a phrase that made him double take when you implied that Jungkook meant absolutely nothing to you, how it was all fun and games and Yoongi didn’t buy that for a second. The defeated look on Jungkook’s face throughout the rest of the day showed Yoongi how he felt and it sure as hell didn’t look like absolutely nothing.

Even if you and Jungkook weren’t serious, the way you were speaking about him, with no sympathy or regard to how he felt it made Yoongi a little uncomfortable. Had you said that Jungkook was horrible, treated you like garbage or anything that warranted this sort of reaction he could understand but you just seemed so emotionless.

“You don’t care about him?” Theres been an evil glint in your eye ever since Yoongi mentioned Jungkook, the slight anger you felt at him treating you how you treated him resurfacing at his name. You don’t even know why he’s asking you this, did he want you to say you didn’t care about him to boost his own ego or did he want you to say you did to see if your feelings lied deeper?

“Why should I?” Your tone is cold and Yoongi is a little caught off guard at how quickly you’re able to turn off the bubbly personality he had been drawn to in the beginning.

“I mean considering you let him photograph you sucking his dick I’m not really buying this whole facade you have going on right now.”

A small laugh fills the room and Yoongi can only stare at you, briefly wondering if this was some sort of joke because the way you’re acting now is the polar opposite to the you he’s known for the past month. You just found the situation laughable, you always covered your tracks, careful enough to not trip over your own lies but your edge must be wearing off.

“There’s no facade.” You reply calmly, hoping the soft look in your eyes is convincing enough for him but it’s not. Yoongi knows he must be on to something, the minute he brought Jungkook up he saw the way your demeanor changed and now he wasn’t sure if you were just down right heartless or playing it off.

“You honestly don’t have any empathy for other people do you?” He shoots out, looking directly at you and seeing the way your eyes lose their sweetness, narrowing in size as you try your best not to glare at him but he can see right through it. He can tell he’s digging a little too close to uncharted territory but he was sick of the mystery that was you, never knowing where anything stood because you were too selfish to think of other people’s emotions due to your actions.

“Is that really what you’re focused on.”

“Yeah, a little.” He scoffs in disbelief, “I don’t really want to find out my girlfriend’s a fucking sociopath years down the line.”

You laugh again at that, leaning back on your arms as you sit on your bed, “Girlfriend?” The look you give him makes him stumble over his words for the first time, realizing that you hadn’t ever put a label on what you were and now feeling a little embarrassed by your condescending tone.

You honestly don’t even know why you react the way you do, you actually liked Yoongi, could see this becoming something serious, but the way he was exposing your faults, making you see the parts of you that desperately needed work, it rubbed you the wrong way so you needed to knock him down a few pegs. A classic self sabotaging move you always did, not being able to bite down the hurtful words you knew you’d throw his way.

“You think I’m your girlfriend?” You ask, only rubbing salt onto the slowly opening wound and he almost winces but he can see that this is your defense mechanism so he doesn’t let it burn as much as he knows it should.

“Is that what you’re gonna turn this into?” He counters, a displeased look on his face, “Trying to hurt my feelings because I’m asking you pretty justified questions is a low blow Y/N.”

That shuts you up, the next batch of spiteful words you were ready to shoot his way dissolving on your tongue when you see the way he looks at you. You’d expect him to be angry, visibly upset at what you had said but instead he just looks tired.

“Look, I obviously struck a nerve bringing him up because this–“ he motions to you, making you realize how tense your body had become, “isn’t the you I know, so whenever you decide to put your fangs away and talk about your buried emotions let me know.”

You don’t even know how to respond to the way he shut you down with ease, your eyes only showing more of your confusion when he steps forward and kisses the top of your head, “Goodnight.” Is all he says before turning around to leave your room and apartment altogether.

“Goodnight.” You weakly mumble out as he shuts the door behind him, completely throwing you off the course of events you were sure were about to transpire.

The anger you felt inside slowly starts to fizzle out until all you feel is sick, a pit of disgust brewing inside of you at the way you had behaved. Not just with him but with Jungkook.

This had become a regular feeling for you ever since Jungkook decided to throw you aside, being the main reason you had decided to hold on to Yoongi when you had met him by chance, needing something to distract you so the guilt you felt wouldn’t drive you into doing something you knew you’d regret.

The amount of times you wanted to reach out to him during these last few weeks was concerning for you, never really realizing just how much you relied on him when you needed to get out of your head. The slow clarity that he had always been quick to come to you and offer help in any way he could while you always shut him down, diverting questions when he’d ask what was wrong because you were scared of him getting too close, all it had done was burn him.

You had left him scarred and wounded as he laid on his bed, contemplating smothering himself with his pillow as he regretted his life choices that landed him in this situation. It’s the selfish side of you that has you opening up your phone and calling his number without a second thought, you keep it on speaker and toss it on the bed, half expecting it to go directly to voicemail since you were sure he had blocked your number too, but it continues to ring.

Jungkook nearly bolts up in shock when the phone by his head starts to vibrate and light up, his squinting eyes staring at the screen and freezing when he sees your name displayed on it. He feels like he stops breathing as his phone buzzes on his comforter, it was now clear that Yoongi had in fact brought him up to you and he was pretty sure if he answered the phone it would not go in his favor.

He lets it ring until it eventually goes to voicemail, his phone dimming down once more and he finally relaxes. It only lasts a brief moment, his phone buzzing once more with a text this time and he doesn’t want to open it.

Instead he grabs the device and stuffs it in between his mattress and box spring, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath before sliding back into bed and forcing himself to sleep.

It doesn’t come easy for either of you, he’s constantly tossing and turning on his bed, having to shove his hands under his butt to get them to stop creeping toward the side his phone was tucked under. You on the other hand are constantly checking your phone when you wake up every few minutes, phantom rings pulling you from your slumber and hoping Jungkook responded to your text but every time you blindly stare at the brightness of your screen you’re met with nothing, not even the read display that usually appeared.

It’s not until the sun peaks over the horizon, the soft orange illuminating the inside of Jungkook’s room and waking him up, that he feels his resolve cracking. He tries to blame it on his half asleep state, not being awake enough to know right from wrong but he’s way too aware of the way his fingers move and latch on to his device as he pulls it from its hiding spot.

It takes him a moment to build up the courage to open up your message, half expecting a massive paragraph with you telling him off for whatever reason but the only thing that greets him is a short ‘can we talk please’.

He’s not sure what makes him wary, the fact that you want to talk or you using the word please. Jungkook’s fingers hover over the keyboard, not sure if he should even respond to you. This was what he wanted though isn’t it? The main reason he had decided not to block your number, hoping you’d reach out and explain yourself. But now that you had done the first half he wasn’t sure he wanted to see it through.

Still, his fingers take over and type out a quick response.

jungkook 7:49am : talk about what

The buzzing wakes you up instantly, your phone clutched to your chest in the same position you had fallen asleep in with the hope that he’d respond.

It’s a little surprising to see that he doesn’t immediately agree like he normally does, dropping whatever he was doing to come to your place like he used to but you guess it was called for.

y/n 7:50am : i just want to clear the air

y/n 7:50am : do you wanna have breakfast?

He hates that he feels the tiniest spark of excitement inside of him at you asking him out for breakfast, something he had been wanting forever, but his fingers shake too much as he holds the device, his body reminding him of the withdraws he had already gone through once before. He couldn’t do this again.

jungkook 7:54am : i don’t think thats a good idea

You can only stare at your screen, not knowing how to respond to his message. It was your own selfish desire to fix things, to help ease the guilt off your chest, that made you want to persuade him to do what you asked but when your phone vibrates a second time you know his mind is set and it’s best to leave it alone.

jungkook 7:57am : please don’t message me again, it’s better this way.

You once again feel the familiar twist in your chest, more so when you respond with a simple okay and your bubble turns green before a notification pops up stating the message could no longer be delivered. Jungkook had been the one to weld the chest shut this time, blocking your number to finalize it before locking his phone once more and begging himself to go about his day as if the curiosity of what you wanted to tell him wasn’t eating him alive.

“Jungkook you need oyster sauce and soy sauce, they’re not interchangeable!” Jimin scolds when Jungkook places the oyster sauce back onto the self, his hand once again swiping it off and placing it into the basket he was currently holding.

“Damn sorry, I told you I don’t know what I’m doing.” Jungkook groans, giving his friend a pout that goes ignored because he’s too focused on running through the list he had on his phone to ensure nothing was forgotten.

Jimin was in charge of helping Jungkook out today on his date, it was Valentines day and Jungkook had been dating his girlfriend for a few months now and wanted to make this date a little more special than just eating out. However, he wasn’t blessed with culinary skills so Jimin would be helping him out throughout it all and making a swift exit before his girlfriend would arrive for dinner.

Jungkook wanders off when he notices Jimin is still hyper focused on the array of sauces lined up in this aisle, ending up in the makeshift Valentines day aisle set up, the plush toys in pink and red all holding candies with cute sayings sewn on to the heart on their chests. It seemed too easy to just pick one up and settle with that so he gives himself a mission to do while Jimin finishes up the essentials.

He roams the entire store, grabbing a lavender wired bucket with enough of his girlfriend’s favorite candies to fill the bottom of it, along with that comes an elephant plushie that happened to be her favorite animal. Jungkook had spotted a bouquet of sunflowers by the front of the store so he makes his way in that direction once more, passing by Jimin who was looking for him but continuing on in his trek.

Just as he grabs the bouquet he wanted he hears his name being called and for a moment he thinks he imagined it, not being able to place the voice it belonged to but when it repeats itself much closer he turns around.

Jungkook is even more caught off guard when he spots your brother, looking nothing like the shy and awkward 13 year old he was back then. He hadn’t seen him since he stopped tutoring him nearly four years ago but he recognized the eyes that he shared with you.

“Jihoon?” He questions, smiling when the younger boy nods. He had always looked up to Jungkook, practically idolized him when he was tutoring him, wanting to be him in every aspect. Jungkook had been everything a nerdy 13 year old boy would want to be, adopting a similar clothing style to him that had managed to still stick around with age.

“I saw you and just had to come say hey.” Jihoon says, pulling him in for a typical bro hug.

Jimin huffs as he reaches Jungkook, having chased him down the aisles and finally catching up to him. He gives the younger boy a wave, a little confused as to who he is but when he hears your voice and spots you, it all clicks in his mind.

“Jihoon c’mon, we need to grab what dad wants!” You shout from the end of the aisle, not wanting to approach Jungkook to save yourself the embarrassment. You were still completely blocked off of everything, no form of communication happening between the two of you since that night. The town you lived in was small so it was kind of inevitable that you’d run in to him eventually but having it be today of all days, with him holding up Valentine’s day items just made it all a little more sour.

He looks up at the sound of your voice and gives you a faint smile because thats just who he is, it doesn’t pain him to look at you now though, the small void you had left inside of him nearly patched all the way up with time and distance.

“I know, but look who it is.” Your brother announces, completely unaware that you and Jungkook had very much stayed in contact after he finished tutoring him. You knew who it was, you were very familiar with Jungkook’s face and could probably spot the back of his head in a crowd.

“Hi Jungkook.” You muster out, slowly making your way down the aisle towards them because you knew your brother wouldn’t back off unless you came over and greeted his old tutor.

“How are things with Yoongi?” Jimin speaks up, a knife slicing through the tension and a knowing look on his face as he stares you down. He knew that you and Yoongi were no longer together, having to be the ear Yoongi vented to with all of your problems while at work and while hanging out, knowing that Yoongi had tried his best to make it work but you had been too stubborn, too stuck in your ways to even budge. Jimin knew enough about you now to be able to connect the dots to the way Jungkook had been so torn months prior. You were a bitch and he didn’t like you.

“Oh, we broke up.” You utter out, an odd look on your face because you had no idea who Jimin was or how he knew both Yoongi and Jungkook but you figure thats irrelevant now, staring back at Jungkook and seeing a neutral expression on his face.

Jihoon, not being able to read the room, asks Jungkook if hes buying groceries for a Valentines date tonight and Jungkook shyly confirms it, teasingly asking Jihoon if he had a date tonight as well. “Nah, haven’t hooked anyone onto me yet. Y/N and I are just helping our dad make something for our mom tonight.”

“Yeah speaking of that, we need to get going Jihoon.” You hope your brother can sense your tone, your fingers tempted to grab onto his hair and yank him away, needing him to move along and let you get as far from Jungkook as possible. That sinking feeling in your stomach had returned, only worsening when you realized how good he was doing, how unaffected he was at seeing you.

“Right, anyways, have a nice night with your girlfriend.” He sings with a playful wave as he retreats from the aisle to go back to shopping. You linger a little at the end of the aisle and stare at him for a moment longer, a small wave being sent his way that he reciprocates with a smile.

“Isn’t she polaroid girl?” Jimin grunts out as he readjusts the basket he was holding, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah.” Jungkook mumbles out, continuing to stare at the end of the aisle where you had disappeared, the polaroid being a distant memory in his mind after he had burned it.

“Babe,” Jungkook laughs into the receiver of his phone, resting against the cool exterior of the bar all of his friends were in, “I promise there wont be a repeat of last time.”

“That laugh means trouble Jungkook,” Sooyoung giggles back, already mentally preparing to baby Jungkook back to health when he undoubtably arrives home absolutely hammered, “If I have to hold your hand while you barf up everything and refuse water again I’m filing for divorce!”

Jungkook gasps dramatically, his hand placed over his heart as he hears the way his wife snickers, “Less than a month after and you’re already calling it quits?”

Sooyoung just hums along, sat on the couch of their house and flicking through the channels to find something to watch while their dog laid snuggled up by her feet, “Thats just how to cookie crumbles, unless,” she pauses, mentally picturing the way Jungkook raises his eyebrows as he waits, “you hold my hand while I barf next week when I go out with the girls.”

“You run a tough bargain, but I’ll even hold your hair back hows that?”

“Sounds perfect, be safe Kookie. I love you.” She smiles as the words leave her mouth, the fluttering affect he had on her never fading even after all this time.

“Always, I love you too.” He blushes as he makes a kissy noise, smiling wide when he hears one back before ending the call and and makes his way back inside, instantly spotting his friends gathered around the booth they had managed to snag.

When he makes his way over to them he slides in beside Taehyung, squishing him and Hobi into the booth and hearing them groan in protest.

“Are you done confessing your profound love for Sooyoung?” Jimin teases before throwing back a shot of vodka, he was already very loosened up, this being the second bar they visited due to celebrating Jimin’s wedding in a week.

“Shut up, as if I didn’t catch you literally on the verge of tears in the bathroom as you talked to Daehyun earlier.” Jungkook smiles when Jimin zips his mouth and locks it with an imaginary key, not denying any but of information Jungkook just spilled out. The rest of his friends howl in laughter at the secret, riling him up further and Jungkook decides his job here is done, getting up to order another drink and another round of shots for everyone else.

He leans over the counter and grabs the bar tenders attention with a soft wave of his hand, “Can I get a whiskey sour and another round of shots of tequila.” The woman nods, already having his card on a tab and begins making the drinks for him.

Jungkook settles into one of the stools there, getting comfortable as he waits, not yet sensing the eyes currently staring a hole through his temple from a few seats away.

You had spotted Jungkook walking in with his friends earlier, watching him step out for a phone call before coming back in again. He looked a little different from the last time you saw him, his hair a little longer now with a slight wave to it as it reached his cheekbones. The last time you had seen him was in passing at the same grocery store a few months ago, you had managed to duck into an aisle before he spotted you, being none the wiser that you were hiding from him.

Jungkook starts to feel the burning from his side of someone staring, slowly turning his head until his eyes meet your stunned ones. You expect him to look away, pretend he doesn’t know you and try to hide like you always do but instead he smiles at you, waving you over like you were an old friend of his.

It takes a few moments of building up courage before you get up from your spot and move across the three stools that separated you two with your drink in your hand.

“Hey, how have you been?” He asks with a soft grin, thanking the bar tender as she places his drink and the line of shots in front of him.

“I’ve been alright, Jihoon just moved out of state for work so my parents have been extra needy without someone to baby.” You force a smile back at him, your finger tracing the rim of your glass as you beg the awkwardness to leave, not used to having the underhand in situations like this.

“He’s gonna do great things I’m sure.” Jungkook sighs, taking a sip of his drink and humming at the taste. Looking at him now was like looking at an entirely different person, sure he had the same face but the way he carried himself was a stark contrast to the Jungkook you were accustomed to from three years ago, no longer second guessing himself, instead speaking with an aura of confidence and ease surrounding him.

“You know he never shut up about you once you stopped tutoring him?” You laugh, seeing the smile spreading on Jungkook’s face, “I remember that one time he begged my parents to buy him that one yellow jacket you own, he had to get straight A’s all semester before they got it for him and he never took it off.”

A genuine smile spreads across your lips as you reminisce on the times before, how you had taken them for granted and now seemed to grasp at anything that reminded you of it.

“We had something good going before, I’m sorry for ruining it.”

That catches Jungkook off guard, setting his drink down with a soft thud as he looks over at you fully, “I guess that depends what you consider good.” He jokes, proud that he can make light of a situation that used to leave him feeling wounded.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” You cringe, not yet having the luxury of the past not affecting you. He watches on as you take a big gulp of your drink, wiping the excess that drips down your lip with your fingers.

“Don’t be, it’s water under the bridge.” He reassures you, reaching across the small gap between you two and placing his hand over yours when he notices the small trembles of nerves making them shake.

Your hand turns in his grasp, your fingers wrapping around his large ones in a search for comfort. The intentions you originally had when you first spot him leave you as your thumb traces the black band around his ring finger, a clear sign that he was off the market for good, making the words spoil in your mouth as you hold them back.

“Oh, when did this happen?” You ask softly, letting his hand go as he brings it up to spread his fingers out with a proud look on his face.

“About a month ago, I managed to trick someone into marrying me.” He jokes, a glimmer in his eyes as he recalls the day of his wedding, the happiness swelling his heart when he thinks of coming home to Sooyoung after the night is over.

“You never needed to trick someone into marrying you Kookie.” The sound of his nickname doesn’t feel right coming out of your mouth now, like nails to a chalkboard, no longer making his stomach flutter the way it used to.

“It felt like I did.” He admits with a shrug, remembering the years of him pining over you, making a fool of himself for the off chance that’d you one day see him for what he was worth. But like he said, it was all water under the bridge and seeing you here was a welcomed surprise to him now.

You want to say more to him but your tongue gets tied up, no longer having the list of phrases you were going to use when you spotted him. Jungkook catches on to the discomfort growing within you so he downs the rest of his drink to free his hands to be able to carry the shots to his thirsty friends.

“It was good seeing you.” His eyes are sincere as he stares at you for the last time, “I’ll see you around.” You know thats the truth, no doubt would you two run in to each other once more but you know this will be the closest interaction you’ll have. He still had you blocked on everything even years later, not knowing a single piece of information on you and leaving you in the dark about his. But this was just the way things were meant to be.

“Yeah, good seeing you too Jungkook.” You whisper out, watching him as he grasps the shot glasses and makes his way back to his friends, hollers and cheers filling up the bar at the sight of alcohol.

Jungkook slips back into his seat, passing the glasses around to everyone and raising them up to cheer for the end Jimin as an unmarried man. As he throws back the shot, nearly having it come out through his nose when he laughs as he sees the disgusted look Taehyung makes at the taste, he can’t stop himself from looking back in your direction.

You’re still sat on the stool, finishing up the rest of your drink and signing off your tab with a grin on your face. He eyes you curiously when you put your card away, your fingers sorting through your bag before pulling out a shiny diamond ring and slipping it back onto your ring finger.

He can’t help but feel a little disappointed at his realization, having almost fallen into the same web of lies you had intricately set up for him. Staring at him and knowing he’d catch you in the act, hoping to rope him in to bed one last time but the black band on his finger had been what broke the spell, making that same pit of disgust brew inside you and fill you with guilt at what you almost did.

As you walk out, eyes landing on Jungkook’s and noticing that he had spotted your own wedding band you give him that same shamless smile he had burned into his memory before slipping out of the bar altogether, returning home to your husband who would be none the wiser.

Jungkook just shakes his head as he reaches for another shot in the center of the table and throws it back, joining in with the laughter of his friends. Taehyung jostles him around as he recalls a story from the last time they were here but Jungkook’s mind is still focused on you.

Old habits died hard and it seemed like you never had any intention of changing. You may have left him shredded in a thousand parts but he took pride in being able to say that he put himself back together on his own, and when his phone lights up with a goofy selfie of his wife and their dog he realizes he had dodged a bullet, no longer hating the string of events that lead him to where he was now.

[youngbloodbuzz]

Chapter 7 bitches. Back at it with a horny ass Dani.

"The desk did not fit. At least, not the way it should have." Desk= Dani The house it didn't fit in=her relationship with Eddie. Starting off extra depressing.

"Sometimes she wondered if that was all she ever saw because that was all she had ever been trained to see. Her mother's hand reaching through space and time to ring a bell in place of food." As someone with a narcissistic parent I relate to this so much.

"'You sure? I think we have a spare tent in the garage, if you want me to check?'" shoulda brought ittttt

"'Why didn't you ask me?'" Fuck I don't often feel that sorry for Ed but in this moment, damn. That's rough bud. Like a lunch in the gut.

Eddie is trying so hard to have a mean full conversation about their future. He's really trying to move forward and listen to what she wants but she's so overwhelmed and shuts it down. I really, really feel for Eddie in this scene.

"'I think we should wait. Until we're married at least. Before we have this conversation.'" No this is definitely something you talk about BEFORE marriage.

"And he had. Eddie's wants and desires were always clear. He did not employ the oblique tactics that Dani was so accustomed to. The social contract he offered had always been upfront. Like a hand reaching out. An offering. A choice. One she could have disregarded from the very beginning."

Eddie wears his heart and all his feels out on his sleeves, and I think he feels like the issue is that Dani doesn't. But that's not true, Dani does wear it in her sleeve..just not for you.

"-Dani had hoped beyond measure that she would grow accustomed to the idea of being attracted to Jamie. That the notion would lose its polish the longer she mulled over it. Instead, it seemed to buff into a mirror shine. Until even the sight of Jamie's hair pulled hastily back from her face, stray curl over the arc of her ear, was enough to distract Dani utterly."

"Dani shook her head. 'No. Everyone's still meeting at the school at nine. I just -' she tried to think of some excuse — what was it she'd told Eddie? something about schedules — but all that came out was, '- wanted to be here.'"

*Took at break to sleep*

"How could she say it aloud? That having a child was just another bar on the cage? People like her didn’t say that. People like her were supposed to be gushing over florals and dresses for the big day. She should have picked a venue by now. She should have made a guest list by now. She should have felt something by now." Fuck. Y'all really have a way with words. It makes me hurt not just to the character but for real people, that even today get married to hide who they are.

"Yet here she stood, gently grasping Dani's arm with warm fingers, looking at her as if Dani'd hung the moon on a chain." She loves you back you knob.

"'Are you two going to hold hands all morning, or do you actually want tea?'" Mikey's over it and they haven't even gotten that gross yet.

"She could handle this.

She could not handle this." Congratulations Hannah. You have found her last straw. (Also that's how I felt when they said it was twins)

"'I'm sorry,' said Dani, blinking rapidly and lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of sunlight. 'Can you repeat that? I don't think I heard you properly.'" Poor Dani it's laughable at this point. Y'all are just straight up cruel to our girl.

"And Hell would freeze over before Jackie let Jamie share a tent with her." Pretty sure they've already shared a tent if you catch my drift...

"'Don't let my suffering be in vain,' Hannah said under her breath, sharing a wicked little smile with her." I see you Hannah. I see through your "oh heavens it seems we forgot a tent, how tragic...."

"-in the hope that they might be able to indulge in some early afternoon arson."

"The hem of the shirt draped along Jamie's bare legs, and Dani found herself tracing the length of Jamie's bare thighs with her eyes — surely those shorts weren't suitable for hiking or whatever activities usually happened at camp grounds; far too short, far far too short — until she swallowed and jerked her gaze up sharply towards the distant treeline." thirsty

"-Jamie was standing to stretch, hands on her lower back, eyes closed and groaning faintly-" thirstY

As much as Dani is freaking out I'm guessing Jamie is as well.That's a small space to be in with someone you are attracted to/in love with but can't have.

"'You're almost as bad as that new baker in town.'" OWEN

"'Fucking hell, Jackie, give it up. I told you: I won't -' Jamie turned around and froze in place. 'Oh. It's you.'" I'm pretty sure I'd pay cash to know what went on between them. Like I have guesses. BUT I WANT TO KNOW. Though I would absolutely cackle if everyone is thinking they fucked and in reality it's something super lame like she caught Jackie cheating on her bf or shoplifting.

"'Is she still bothering you?' Dani asked incredulously. 'It's been years. I'm surprised she even remembers your name.'

For some reason that was funny for Jamie let loose a bark of laughter. 'No. She's not bothering me. Just wanting to buy my silence.'" Hard to forget someone's name if they give you a good enough orgasm... or if you spent a while moaning their name....

"-Jamie put the refrigerator key back on its proper hook, pointed at it sternly as though it might go running off-" she's so fucking precious

"From this angle she could just make out the bob of Jamie's head as Jamie tied her shoe. Dani held her breath and tried not to imagine threading her fingers through dark curls as Jamie glanced up at her with a crooked smirk and a dangerous glint in her gaze." thrisTY

"'Can't. There isn't one. She's still beneath those waters, you see.'" Nice

"'Think it was red?' Jamie supplied helpfully. 'Or maybe green?'

'Those are literally opposite colors.'" Dani is SO done.

Anytime these little glimpses of Nan peek out of Jamie I can't help but think how proud Nan would have been of Jamie.

"This is totally keeping me busy" she says as she stares 🙄

MOONFLOWERS

"Eyes dark and glinting in the low light with faint amusement and something else Dani couldn’t decipher." She's looking at you just like you are looking at her babes.

“'Christ, you look a mess,' Jamie said, her voice loud in the tent below the sound of rain and distant thunder.  // "'God,' Dani said, sliding her hands up Jamie’s inner thighs, her breath caught at the faint quiver beneath her palms, 'You’re a mess.'"

"Jamie said, 'and Nan grounded us both.'

“' didn’t even know she could do that.'

'Nan’s house, Nan’s rules.'

"When their backs accidentally touched, a graze of damp skin that sent an electric shock down Dani’s spine, she jerked away and laughed in a nervous high pitched tone. 'Sorry,' she said, trying furiously not to look over her shoulder." God this has to be just as torturous for Jamie.

"Just a dream, she tried to convince herself, swallowing thickly. She breathed in and willed herself to wake up."

"As though she actually saw her, rather than gazed right through her at some imagined figure in the background."

"Eddie never would've explained it like this. He might if she asked, but all too clearly she could remember being scoffed at by him and the mechanic for not knowing some basic piece of knowledge or another....She never asked anything about cars again after that." I would say fuck Ed but it's kinda a man think not just an Ed thing. So fuck men.

Her car dying will just be one more bar in that cage. Her last bit of freedom and independence.

"Nothing had happened, she reassured herself. Nothing had even happened. Just the wild fantasy in her head where she was brave enough to reach out and touch her, brave enough to act, brave enough to speak." When she tells Eddie, it's so much braver than her kiss Jamie. Speaking up is the bravest thing she could do.

"And she’ll have the Caesar salad,' Eddie said." Ugh fuck that gives me violent flash backs to my college boyfriend.

I think Dani feels like if she speaks up about even the smallest thing it will be like unscrewing a cap and knocking over the bottle, nothing will be able to stop it, it will just all come out.

"She couldn’t think of which was more terrifying: that they would finally see her for what she was, or that they never would." God that's a powerful sentence

“'It was worth it to see him so happy,'" the kind of friendship we all need.

"'He gets it from you.'" Well ya'll got me grinnin' like a possum eatin' a sweet potater.

"Dani eagerly leaned forward in her seat, watching it grow closer in the horizon with an anticipation she didn’t expect." I wonder if Eddie would have noticed her slight shift in mood/excitement the way Jamie did. I feel like no.

"'Not since.....after'"

"'Girls must be all over you.'

Jamie coughed into her glass. 

'Um —' Carson started, mid-laugh, his cheeks pink and not meeting Dani’s eyes “'— something like that.'" Dani needs a better gaydar.

"'You too,' Dani managed to politely reply, oddly feeling that the suggested nickname towards Jamie didn’t extend towards her. " Dani is about to get JEALOUS. Though I like that even in her jealousness she doesn't get possessive.

"'They’re practically my sisters.'" 😭😭

"'Got one here too. This one’s covered up for the most part, thankfully. Only so many scars one can have before it takes away from everything else.'

'Quite the opposite, I’d say' Robin replied, smirking over the lip of her glass, eyes intent on Jamie." Agreed

"Dani’s stomach twisted in a way that was wholly unfamiliar to her as she watched Robin slide next to Jamie at the bar." Siri play Jealous by Nick Jonas

"Dani raised her head and found that from across the table, Carson was already watching her." / "Carson’s eyes flickered between them for a moment and he chuckled." It must take everything in Carson to not say something.

"'Enjoy your date!' he called back." Though he did manage to get in a harmless dig.

"Feeling as though she was watching a car crash happen in slow motion, terrible and enthralling all at once, Dani watched Jamie run her tongue along the length of her fingers in one long swipe." thirSTY

"It was like unlocking a heart-hued door. A door that had always been there, chained up without a key, beating and thundering to be opened this entire time. And all it took was the curve of Jamie’s smile and the warm graze of their hands to find the key." The imagery of this is beautiful. I love her starting to realize it's more than attraction.

"-the pull was still there, inevitable as gravity"

"For a brief wild moment, Dani thought about grabbing her hand and pulling so that Jamie was flush against her back." Jamie would have fucking died

"-feeling her hand mindlessly grasp Jamie’s, tangling their fingers together." 🥰

"Pressed it down until she could no longer feel the ghost of the warmth of Jamie’s hand in her own.......Dani’s stomach sank when the feeling of being unmoored returned, crashing through her scant defenses as Jamie spotted her, eyes lighting up."

"“Reckon you can manage both,” Jamie said with such fixed certainty that Carson straightened upright." Everyone deserves a friend like Jamie, but Carson does especially.

"When she looked up, she caught Carson’s gaze. Unlike last time, his smile shot a course of fear through her, of being looked through and seen in a way she was wholly unready for." This all has to be so terrifying for Dani. I want to hug her.

"That was definitely Carson pressing another man against the wall, the pair kissing hungrily as their hands wandered. Dani was frozen to the spot, feeling as though she just crashed through an entirely different reality." This is your reality. Everyone is gay. Also good for Carson❤️

Jamie can't handle taking a drag after Dani's mouth was on it, could she?

"Robin smoked quietly, her eyes drifting between Dani and Jamie with a look that wasn’t so much displeased as it was inquisitive." Everyone realizes that Dani and Jamie are on a date except Dani and Jamie.

I want them to go to another show now that they are together.

"'Queer as a three dollar bank note?'" this takes me out every time. I read it aloud to my wife.

"'So, you’re saying that girls used to be all over you?' Dani cautioned to ask, unexpectedly enjoying Jamie’s flustered huff.

'Guess you can say that,' Jamie muttered, still pointedly not looking at Dani." Dani, baby... are you just now realizing that your best friend is a Lesbian heart throb?

"'So, there’s no one special then?' Dani said, a finger picking at a hangnail. 'In your life?'

'Nope,' Jamie said, shaking her head, 'No one special.'" Dirty liar.

"Thoughts appeared in her mind, unbidden and unexpected. Images of a younger Jamie, more wild and reckless and less steady as she was now. Eyes dark under seedy bar lights, pressed against a faceless woman in a secluded corner. Lips dragging across a pale throat, a hand inching up a thigh towards less than appropriate places, the other burying and pulling at long blonde hair." thiRSTY

"She wondered, with the faint daze of someone standing on the precipice of a crumbling cliff, just how soft Jamie’s lips were. If women threw themselves at her because they understood just by a glance that Jamie knew exactly what she was doing, exactly how to press and drag and leave marks to remind them of a night in rumpled sheets." thIRSTY

"Pressing her hand higher still, dragging it until it was where Dani never would have imagined needing it most, just to see what Jamie would do. " tHIRSTY ALSO what she would do is crash the car ma'am.

"Indentured to the mask and noose made for her by her own hands.." I like that she's becoming more and more cognizant of what this life she's living really is. It isn't something that is just passively happening to her: remaining stagnant, it's something that is actively harming her and the walls around her are getting tighter and tighter.

"Always eager to please and obey under the promise of being loved without second guessing it for once." Fuck that's a heavy look into her heart.

I love that by the end of the car ride it wasn't just lust that she was feeling toward Jamie, it was love and a need to be close.

"Nothing happened, she told herself again, and repeated it like a mantra when it did nothing to help that coil of guilt twisting tighter around her chest. "

Dani really needs to rub one out to relieve some of this sexual tension damn.

"Jamie on her knees, looking up at her with a smirk and that dangerous glint in her darkened eyes, pliant and eager as Dani, raking a hand through her curls and gripping tight. Jamie moaning as Dani arched her head back by the hair, exposing the long lines of her neck. Jamie’s hands dragging up her legs, her thumbs 0skimming the soft skin of her inner thighs as Dani pulled her closer and closer to wet heat." THIRSTY

"She pulled the hair hard enough to hurt. 'Look at me,' she breathed, insistent and urgent as the coil grew tighter. 'Jamie, look at me.'” Fuck that's 🥵

Fun fact: I'm on a heart rate monitor and my heart rate spiked reading that a nurse popped in to ask what was wrong ☠️☠️

"'You were making little noises in your sleep. I thought it might be one of those nightmares again.'" No the nightmare is waking up.

Also super lucky she wasn't saying Jamie's name out loud. That would have been rough to explain.

"But her hands were already moving to tug him free of his boxer briefs." This wasn't what I meant when I said rub one out.

"– not of feeling him, but of feeling something – " This is a hard scene to read. My wife was in a relationship with a man for 4 years, she's a lesbian. And while she wasn't thinking about her best friend she definitely wasn't thinking about him. It's such a real and a raw thing for women trapped in these relationships. My heart just goes out to them.

Also When I first read this scene I was like bitch you better be on birth control. The last think you're gay ass needs is a baby.

"He grinned at her askance. 'It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it, is all. It isn’t your usual style.'

No. Her usual style involved actively avoiding the act all together, and then, when she ran out of excuses, passively lying back and hoping he finished quickly."

Our Friend Ed here needs to learn about something called "enthusiastic consent"

"'Shall you go check and make sure she's still fit for purpose? Only, I'd hate for our newest and most ardent volunteer to be taken from the line of duty by hay. Bailed up, as it were.'

Hannah said it with such a straight face that it took a moment for the pun to register. Dani scrunched up her nose. 'Oh, Hannah,' she said somberly. 'That was terrible.'" Love Owen's influence

"'Calm down, Spence,' she said, smacking his stomach lightly with the back of her hand. 'It's only Dorothy and Toto.'

At that, Jamie gave a very convincing growl from beneath the wolf mask, but the girl only scowled and pointed at Jamie. "'Bad dog!' she scolded." 😅😅

"'You'd think they'd be more creative than the bleachers. I can't imagine you get much privacy there.'

'Oh, you'd be surprised,' Jamie said dryly."

"'The bleachers?' Dani said, crinkling her nose. 'Really?'

Jamie hummed around a crooked smile. "

'Best place, though?...Definitely the old art room on the third floor. Always empty on Wednesdays and Fridays. You can get away with murder in there.'" Who you fooling around with in high school Jamie? Hmmmmmm?

"And then she could imagine it. All too clearly. Jamie pressing her back against the wall of a darkened room surrounded by art supplies. Jamie ducking her head to mouth against her neck. Jamie's hands and Jamie's eyes and Jamie grinding up against her with heady reckless abandon. Stolen moments between classes. Fingers drifting beneath her skirt, rucking the fabric up her thighs." THIRSTY!

"— touching Jamie was dangerous, touching Jamie was incendiary and she was a box of tinder ready to go up in smoke —" Dani's really going through it.

"'Well,' Jamie eyed the length of Dani’s skirt or rather lack thereof, 'Can’t complain.'" Thirsty James

"'C’mon, then. Let’s go.' She gestured for Dani to follow her and as she turned away she lifted the water bottle to her lips for another sip.

'To the third floor art room?' Dani blurted out incredulously." The way I gasped the first time I read this.

"'Is it working?'

Jamie’s answering grin was slow, her eyes measuring the distance between Dani’s hem and Dani’s knees. 'Wouldn’t know,' she said finally. 'I’m not a parent.'" They are just blatantly flirting at this point. Disgusting. I love it

Jamie's such a Brit with her Guy Fawkes Night reference.

"'Piles of costume masks and action figures?' Jamie repeated, incredulous. 'Might as well have said there’s haunted Victorian dolls down there. Christ.'

'Yeah, I’m with her on this one,' Eddie said."

"'Good night?' Jamie asked, grinning and pointing at his neck with the now empty water bottle." So the first time I read this I was like damn she really has a heart break kink.. but now reading it again I think she senses that something is different about Dani, that she's getting closer, flirtier, and just overall more. I think she feels her mask/walls starting to slip and she needs to ground herself by reminding herself that they are a couple and as far as she knows are doing normal couple things. Remind herself that it's him she's with, not her. But idk maybe she is just horny for heartbreak.

"Jamie was backing away, bringing the bottle up to her brow in a mocking sort of salute. 'Yeah. ‘Course. Catch you both later.'" By far the awkwardest moment of the fic hands down.

"'Yeah,' Dani choked out. 'Yeah. Everything’s - Everything’s great.'"

And with that, we come to a close on chapter 7! I'm glad you are enjoying thing because frankly even if you weren't I'd still be back next time with chapter 8.

yessss ch7 here we gooo

oh eddie. my poor lad. he really is trying, but god the communication between them is just godawful, no one is winning here. it's always fun and fascinating to see the flip switch from "eddie's an oblivious asshole" to "oh....oh no."

jgkalsdkfads yOUR NURSE HAD TO WHAT?? LMFAO that is the FUNNIEST reaction i've ever seen to this chapter and those scenes i am CACKLING. well done, proud of you

roman, bad place au. dani gets pregnant skdgbjkasdjfa 🙃

that's such a fascinating take. jamie is without a doubt a masochist with her feelings, especially when they were in high schoo. but this is MMM mucho interesting.

this chapter is just SO much fun. we called it the "thirst chapter" in our dms for a reason lmao sorry dani ur horny on main for your bff and just gotta live with it. and bro we Absolutely LOVE these kinda reacts, and i'm so excited to see the rest lol

@romanimp

[earliebirb]

say your name like a prayer

steve/tony, au: mob, hurt/comfort, established relationship, 3005 words

From behind him, Steve hears the sound of the door opening and closing. 

He dog-ears a page from the book he was reading to mark his spot, but otherwise doesn’t bother getting up from his chair or turning around to look. There are only three people in the world that can enter a room with Steve Rogers inside without knocking and leave unscathed.

At the moment, one of them is already inside the room with him. The remaining two are the only people that can make it through the twenty-five men Steve has stationed throughout the hospital floor, the only two people on the clearance list approved by him.

Three people, if one were to count Helen Cho, the doctor Steve has personally handpicked to oversee everything. 

After all, Steve wouldn’t leave Tony’s care in the hands of just anybody. Helen is unfalteringly loyal to him—has been, ever since Steve took her under his wing ten years ago and paid off her family’s debts. 

Only a select number of people are aware of her true loyalties, of course.

The rest of the hospital staff won’t be able to make it through his men without thorough searching and his explicit permission, barring any medical emergencies.

Stationing his men throughout the floor wasn’t difficult to set up, considering the fact that his men have infiltrated various institutions, his network stretching over almost every single industry imaginable, including the medical field. 

“I brought you the extra blankets you asked for.”

“Leave them on the armchair by the door,” Steve orders, eyes fixated on the motion of his own thumb, moving in repeated one-way strokes across the ridges of Tony’s knuckles.

He hears some quiet shuffling, but when he doesn’t hear the sound of the door being opened and closed, he asks, “And why aren’t you leaving?”

Thumb not once faltering in its methodical stroking, Steve’s eyes travel up Tony’s wrist. His gaze lingers on the ugly mottles of black and blue forming a loosely connected ring around its circumference. Both of Tony’s wrists had been tied behind his back, rope pulled tight with enough force to bruise. 

“Boss— Steve. People are starting to talk. It’s been some time since you attended a meeting. They think you’re… unwell. I’m afraid further absence will cause something bigger than just flimsy rumors. I think it’s time that—”

His thumb stills.

“Get out,” he says, and to people who are not familiar with him, his voice is low enough to be mistaken as a request.

Bucky knows better, though. Should know better.

Steve is not asking.

“Steve—” Bucky tries anyway, and Steve clenches his jaw.

“Barnes,” he barks out.

Steve hears his right hand man immediately go quiet at the invocation of his last name, the very usage of it a scalding reprehension that kills any argument he might have thought to bring forward.

“I’ve made it very clear that in my absence you are to act as my proxy, have I not?” Steve asks, speech measured. 

“Yes, Boss.”

“Then that’s all you need to worry about.” Steve goes quiet after that, letting his answer sink in. The pregnant silence stretches out for a few moments, the air between them growing almost suffocating with tension. “Now, if you don’t have anything actually important to talk about, leave.”

Steve stares at the frail figure lying on the hospital bed, looking even smaller than usual in a loose-fitting hospital gown. Tony’s pallid complexion and state of restful sleep are even more jarring when juxtaposed with his usual lively demeanor—full of vigor and always ready with a witty remark. His right eye is a dark blue and purple mess, swollen shut. Sutures hold together a cut on the left corner of his upper lip.

This is everything he never wanted. His biggest fear materializing right before his own two eyes.

This is exactly what Steve had warned Tony of. Once Tony was in, he was in for the long haul. There was no going back from this, no ordinary life to return to once he was well and truly involved with Steve.

When Steve had voiced his concerns, Tony kissed him in lieu of a reply. 

Because Steve had always been weak and selfish when it came to Tony, he decided to keep him. He decided right there and then, that if he didn’t have the strength to turn Tony away, then he would pour his everything into protecting Tony instead. 

Clearly, his everything wasn’t enough. Maybe it would never be enough. Perhaps, in some ways, this outcome has always been inevitable. 

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make Steve’s blood boil and his bile threaten to rise up to his throat.  

Heart twisting with worry, he closes his eyes. He inhales and holds his breath, trying his best to focus on the slow and steady beeping of the EKG machine in the background, like the room’s own heartbeat. 

A grounding reminder that Tony is still alive and breathing. That he is safe now, right in front of Steve, within arm’s reach.

“You’re disturbing his rest,” Steve says, clipped tone brooking no further argument. 

It takes a minute, but eventually Bucky does leave. 

Steve gets up to gather the blankets on the armchair. He covers Tony’s body with one of the blankets, providing an extra layer of warmth on top of the sheets already covering him, making sure to leave Tony’s arms resting on top of the layers. He wraps another blanket around Tony’s bare feet, hoping it would keep them warm. He knows how much Tony hates having cold feet. 

“Sorry for the intrusion, sweetheart.” He leans down to press a kiss to Tony’s bandaged forehead, careful and tender. Sitting down in his chair, he opens the paperback copy of 1984 to the previously dog-eared page. He keeps the book open with one hand while the other takes hold of Tony’s, squeezing it to feel what little warmth is left to comfort him. 

“Now, where were we?”

***

Sixteen days since he was admitted into the hospital, Tony wakes up.

He comes to gradually, eyes opening and closing periodically. The first time Steve catches Tony opening his eyes, he struggles to breathe through the wave of sheer relief and calls out Tony’s name with his heart in his throat. Tony gives him no reply, blinks once, twice, and drifts back into sleep. 

Tony continues to slip in and out of consciousness for what seems like eternity.

Throughout it all, Steve never lets go of his hand.

Hours later, Tony lets out his first coherent word in over two weeks:

“Steve?” Tony’s voice is more breath than sound.

“I’m here, sweetheart,” Steve whispers, a tight knot loosening in his chest. He squeezes Tony’s hand reassuringly. 

Tony blinks wordlessly at Steve, looking like he is trying to map Steve’s features with his eyes. The bandage around his head has been removed a few days prior, allowing Steve to brush his hair away from his forehead with the knuckles of his fingers.

At this, Tony swallows. He blinks once more, slow and languid, before closing his eyes with a weary sigh and falling back asleep. 

The next time Tony regains consciousness, he spends some time looking his fill of Steve before registering his surroundings, eyes darting around the room.

“Where?” he croaks.

“Hospital,” Steve answers. Tony takes in the answer quietly.

“Steve,” Tony says. “I’m tired.” 

“Go back to sleep, sweetheart.” Steve lifts Tony’s hand, holding it against his own face. The warmth of Tony’s calloused palm seeps into Steve’s cheek, solid and comforting.

The lines of Tony’s face soften almost imperceptibly, brown eyes gazing at him softly.

“Steve,” he breathes, eyelids growing heavy.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t leave.”

Steve swallows around a lump in his throat and turns to press a long kiss to the center of Tony’s palm.

“I won’t, sweetheart. I’ll stay right here,” he promises. 

Sometime during the long hours of his continuous effort to remain vigilant, Steve’s exhaustion catches up to him and without meaning to, he falls asleep.

***

At first, Steve thinks he is still dreaming in his sleep. He had fallen asleep with his cheek against the sheets, hand holding Tony’s. The next thing he registers in his slow drift back to consciousness is the feeling of fingers carding through his hair repeatedly. He squeezes his eyes shut, determined to stay asleep.

Then he feels the same fingers wander down to his unkempt beard and he hears an amused huff of breath.

The pad of a thumb presses the corner of his mouth gently. “I know you’re awake.”

Steve stills. Ever so slowly, he lets his eyes flutter open. It takes him a while to convince himself that Tony is indeed wide awake and that the fingers on his face are very much warm and real.

When he straightens up in his seat, his back muscles protest after having been bent at an unnatural angle for the past few hours in his slumber.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty.” Tony’s soft smile greets him, eyes crinkling at the corners. Steve stares at him with wide, unblinking eyes and finds it impossible to return his smile. 

“You’re awake,” he says instead, voice gravelly with the last remnants of sleep. Tony looks significantly better, like life has flooded back into him. Absently, Steve notes the new presence of a glass of water on the hospital nightstand, a straw sitting in it.

“Since around two hours ago. Helen even came by to check up on me.”

Steve bristles. “Why didn’t—”

“Shhh. It’s okay.” Tony’s fingers curl around his wrist, giving it a gentle squeeze and killing Steve’s anger before it has a chance to rise. “I told her not to wake you.”

“You look dead on your feet, Steven,” Tony says. Steve’s chest grows tight at the familiar way in which Tony says his full given name, a soft and fond cadence to his voice that turns the word into a personal form of endearment.

Tony’s brown eyes are fraught with worry. It’s all ridiculously outrageous but so painfully Tony. He has only been awake for a few hours and already treating his own condition with well-practiced flippancy, worrying about Steve like Steve is the one who just woke up from a two-week-long coma.

Steve’s mouth twists. He swallows audibly, eyebrows furrowing in an effort to stave off the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He directs his blurry gaze down at the hospital bed, upset and ashamed.

Tony’s fingers slide over his fist, which Steve has just realized is clenched tight around a handful of bed sheets, knuckles turning white.

“I’m here, my darling. I’m right here. I’m okay.” 

Unable to hold back for another second, Steve stands up and gathers Tony in his arms carefully, mindful of his injuries. He lets out a long and relieved breath before pressing kisses to the crown of his head. Tony buries his face in the crook of Steve’s neck and inhales deeply.

“You stay. You stay right here,” Steve chokes, voice splintering.

“Not going anywhere,” Tony murmurs, pressing a kiss to the column of Steve’s throat. He slips his hands under Steve’s shirt, fingers gliding across his ribs, inches away from where he knows the initials of his own name are tattooed vertically down Steve’s breastbone. 

“Is it just me or did you lose weight? Have you been eating properly? And don’t even try lying to me ‘cause you know I can totally ask Bucky or Sam and they’ll tell me the truth, Rogers.”

Steve’s hand slides up to cradle the back of Tony’s head. Tony is warm, he is so much warmer now. Tony is okay. He presses another grateful kiss into Tony’s hair, eyes shut in silent prayer to whatever deity is kind enough to deliver Tony back to him.

“I’m never letting you go anywhere without my men ever again,” Steve whispers. 

Tony huffs, leaning back to look up at Steve and trusting Steve’s hand to take the weight of his head. “I’m okay, sweetheart. I’m right here, with you. Besides, no one saw it coming, okay? It’s not—”

Tony breaks off abruptly with a soft grunt, hand reaching up in an aborted motion to touch his own head. Steve pulls back in alarm.

“Sweetheart? What’s wrong?” Steve hears his own voice turning even more hushed, panic wrapping tight like a vice around his vocal chords. “Do I need to call Helen? Hold on, I’ll—”

Tony catches his arm before he can press the button to alert the hospital staff, bringing it down. 

“Does it hurt, Tony? Tell me the truth.”

Tony shakes his head, eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed. 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes,” Tony breathes. He leans forward to rest his forehead against Steve’s shoulder. Steve hears him inhaling deeply before letting the air leave his lungs in one long and tremulous sigh.

“Let me get Helen just in case—”

“I’m fine,” Tony says breathlessly, pulling back with his eyes still closed, “just let me catch my breath.”

“Okay. Okay. Get some rest.” Steve plants one last kiss to his temple before sitting back down in his chair, hand holding Tony’s. “If anything hurts, tell me.”

Tony nods and continues to focus on taking deep, long breaths, sinking back into his pillow. Eventually, he swallows, eyelids fluttering open again. He lets his head loll slightly off to the side on the pillow, eyes roving over Steve’s face.

“I suppose I shouldn’t ask what happened to the people that took me?”

For a split second, something cold and hard lodges itself in the pit of Steve’s stomach and his grip on Tony’s hand tightens ever so slightly. He concentrates on the sight of Tony’s kind, brown eyes trained on him and the cold subsides, warmth trickling back in. He brings Tony’s hand up to his mouth.

“Yeah,” he whispers, lips brushing Tony’s knuckles, “you probably shouldn’t.”

He doesn’t say what Tony already knows—that he would give Tony every single detail of what he has done to them without even a moment’s hesitation if Tony really did want to know. Steve will tell him anything and everything he wants to know, because he keeps no secrets from Tony. 

Tony studies him for a long moment. Steve is unable to make out the thoughts running through Tony’s head, but his eyes stay warm and kind as they gaze at Steve through the companionable silence. When Tony pulls his hand away from Steve’s grip, it is to tuck a lock of Steve’s long and overgrown blond hair behind his ear.

Something shifts in his honey-brown eyes, like a puzzle piece sliding into place, and his hand cups Steve’s cheek, palm pressing against the bristles of Steve’s beard.

“Climb into bed,” Tony says. “You need to rest and I need to be held.” 

Steve ends up holding Tony close as he sleeps, arm secure around his waist. Contentment washes over him as he indulges in the warmth of Tony’s back pressed up against his chest. He takes his time in trailing light kisses from the back of Tony’s ear down to his nape, ending with a reverent kiss to the eagle tattooed on the back of Tony’s neck—a well-known insignia bestowed only to the inner circle members of Steve’s organization.

Tony’s tattoo has a distinctive characteristic that distinguishes itself from the eagle tattoos given to the other members. Whereas the eagle tattoos decorating the necks of the other inner circle members are simply black in color, the wings of Tony’s eagle have red and gold feathers interspersed with the black. It was an idea proposed by their resident tattoo artist, Clint, intended as an extra measure of protection.

Most people in Brooklyn and the surrounding boroughs know to look out for the eagle insignia, because it is in their best interests to avoid an altercation with one of the Captain’s inner circle people. 

People also know, however, to look out for the eagle with red and gold feathers in particular, because finding someone with that symbol tattooed on the back of their neck means you are dealing with the Tony Stark, and messing with Tony Stark is a guaranteed death sentence.

Everyone knows you don’t touch the Captain’s beloved. 

Still, Steve thinks grimly, some idiots try.

Sam and Bucky had offered to finish them off for Steve, but as far as Steve is concerned, people who don’t possess the common sense to not lay a finger on Tony don’t deserve the mercy of a swift death.

Steve knew that he needed to deal with them himself, for his own peace of mind. 

So, he had brought out the toolbox—the one he usually only brings out for special occasions—and spent a few gratifying hours in a secluded warehouse with the two men who had orchestrated Tony’s abduction. From pliers to knives of varying sizes, he took his time to find out which ones worked best, which tools were the most effective in eliciting screams from the men. With his own two hands, he made sure that they paid for their sins.

Maybe he shouldn’t, but he finds comfort in the thought of those dismembered corpses sinking down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

In his line of work, Steve has cultivated a moral compass of his own. He has always marched to the beat of his own drum, other people be damned.

He is definitely not going to start developing scruples now, and especially not for protecting the one thing that he can’t live without—the only person on earth whose thoughts and well-being he puts before himself, before everything else.

With his power and status, there are no guarantees in the life he leads. Loyalties are fickle and ever-changing. Rules are bent and broken. Lives are lost on a near daily basis. 

Well, no guarantees but one: Tony Stark will always come first. No matter what, no matter who, no matter when. 

Always.

Even if Steve had to burn down the entire world to keep him safe and sound.

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

When We Went From Friends to This - a. beauvillier

One day late, but here it is! I’ve been studying for the LSAT, but finally took it today, so I’ll have some more time to be writing more regularly now. Title is from Taylor Swift’s Paper Rings. I loved getting to write this, so please please let me know what you think, my inbox is always open! Reading the tags is one of my favorite things to do, and reblogs help me know people are liking my work.

word count: 7.7k+

September 18 (sat)

Astride Leclair was the kind of person you always wanted on your side. She’d drop anything for a friend, always be the first to reach out, and would never give up on something — or someone — without a fight. She was also incredibly stubborn. Astride had also always had a penchant for adventure, which is how she found herself in a new job 600 miles and one international border from her hometown. And she hated asking for help, it really didn’t matter the circumstance. Which is how she found herself alone, trying to heft an armchair up the stairs of her new apartment building after being very rudely informed by the width of the elevator door that it wasn’t going to fit. 

The lump sum her firm gave her for relocation was enough to cover a fair amount of the furniture for her new place and she tried to bring as much as she could on the drive down, but it wasn’t like she was about to rent a U-Haul and there was only so much a Honda Civic could hold. And Astride was still her father’s daughter, still would rather step on a rusty nail than pay Ikea for assembly, so by God she was going to do it herself. And “doing it herself” apparently meant dragging an 80 pound box up three flights of stairs in 90º heat in September, when New York City seemed to have not quite yet gotten the memo that the rest of the Northern Hemisphere was now in fall. 

Astride finally managed to get the chair in the door, propping the door open with one of her moving boxes, unceremoniously pulling the box through the entryway as she scooted backwards into the living room. The 600 square foot expanse of her apartment was covered in boxes, more boxes, and for good measure, extra boxes. There were moving boxes, furniture boxes, shoeboxes filled with anything except for actual shoes. There was her guitar leaning against the microwave, three suitcases worth of clothes in the barely-assembled bedroom, and her dog in a crate in the corner, who had started to whine. 

“I know, baby, I’ll get you out soon,” Astride said, shooting a sympathetic glance towards the beagle mix. She had adopted Poutine a little over a year ago, soon after starting her first job out of university. It was never a question whether or not she would make the trip with Astride, and thankfully it was much easier than she anticipated to find a dog-friendly apartment in Brooklyn. It wasn’t too long a walk to Prospect Park, a little under a mile, and she was looking forward to getting out with Poutine later in the day. If, that was, she actually finished unpacking enough boxes to function like a normal human being. She had picked up her mattress-in-a-box earlier in the day, but it was still sitting in the corner of her bedroom and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to a night on the hardwood floor. 

---

Three hours later, Astride had finally gotten all of the boxes out of her car and began to make decent headway on assembling the chair, finally having let Poutine out of her crate. The beagle trotted around the apartment, sniffing the baseboards, boxes, and single bag of groceries Astride had picked up from Whole Foods earlier in the day. The rest of her Ikea order was coming the next day, the actual bedframe and couch along with a couple of other larger furniture pieces that she had had to leave in Montréal. Whatever she couldn’t order online she’d find at a thrift store. 

Astride looked tiredly over at the kitchen. She really wasn’t in the mood to cook, and was in even less of a mood to dig through all the boxes until she finally found her set of pots and pans. She really should have taken her mom’s advice and labeled everything, but Astride was stubborn as a mule, and once she was stuck in her ways, there was precious little anyone could do to convince her otherwise. Pulling out her phone, she navigated to her Uber Eats, feeling a tiny pang in her heart as she switched her location to New York. Not the language, though. Astride was so hungry that she literally clicked on whatever place could get there the fastest, which ended up being a Chinese place a mile or so away. After placing her order — she got an extra box of chow mein so she wouldn’t have to deal with breakfast the next day — she settled back into the hair, the only fully-assembled piece of furniture in the whole apartment. Her finger hovered over her Instagram for a moment before she clicked on it, liking a few photos before going to post one of her own. It was a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge as she crossed it that morning, Poutine’s head lolling out the front window. One tap and one caption later, it was posted. 

---

Anthony flopped onto his bed, his duffel landing with a satisfying thump on the floor beside him. Training camp had just ended, and while he’d certainly been keeping up on his workouts over the summer, the hours upon hours of skating had nevertheless made him more than a little sore. He grabbed his phone, opening up Instagram and scrolling through the new posts, only half paying attention. Astride’s new photo caught his eye.

Sometimes, needing a change means a new haircut. Sometimes, it means a new country. Very excited to start this next chapter in my life. Salut, New York! Anthony quickly clicked onto her profile page and read her bio. International economics analyst. Eating my way through the world one pancake at a time. BCom McGill. MTL-NYC. He read the last line over and over again. MTL-NYC. He swiped back to the photo; she had tagged herself in Brooklyn. Brooklyn. She was less than an hour away, not even thirty if the traffic wasn’t bad. But she hadn’t told him, she hadn’t said anything. Anthony felt a pang in his heart. Astride knew who he played for — obviously — and she knew that of course he’d want to see her any time they were even remotely in the same place. She knew that. Right? 

He spent the next twenty minutes typing out a message to her. Then deleting it. Then retyping it. Then continuing the type-delete-retype cycle until his head was spinning. This was his best friend. Why was he so nervous to talk to her? Because she was his best friend, and as much as he hated to admit it, he really wasn’t sure where they stood. He hadn’t been sure for a long time. Hey Asty! He internally cringed at himself at the use of her old nickname. I saw you moved to New York, that’s amazing! I’m over on Long Island, so I’d love to catch up with you for coffee or something when you get a chance. It’s been too long :) 

It might have been a little petty — scratch that, it definitely was petty — but Astride didn’t respond to his text that night. She didn’t have read receipts on, thank God, but it sat in her messages, without response, like something she was too scared to confront. And she didn’t even know why. Okay, fine, she knew exactly why. She had moved and suddenly they were in the same city for the first time since they were kids and he was, had been, her best friend, but why now of all times? It’s not like he was never in Montréal during the year, or like they couldn’t have committed to a weekly FaceTime or something, or at least texted more than once a month. He could have done something. And that something, that lack of a something, was what kept her from responding until the next morning, tapping out a text as she halfheartedly made her way through a bowl of oatmeal. Hi, Tito, just saw your text! Lie. I did, an opportunity for a transfer came up and I decided to take it. I figured you were pretty close by, so it would be great to catch up. I don’t start at the office for a week, if you’re free any time between now and then. That much was true. She wasn’t stupid, she knew the Islanders played on, well, Long Island, and as much as she wanted to still hold a grudge against him, her heart ached at the prospect of finally being able to see him again. 

Anthony responded almost instantly, Astride having just closed the door to the dishwasher — a luxury in New York, she was told — before seeing her phone light up with the telltale bubble. I’d love to, we just finished up training camp so I’m more or less free aside from practices. A second later. Is brunch still your favorite meal?

Astride laughed. It didn’t surprise her that he remembered, but it was still touching to see him say something about it. It is.

How about Tuesday? I’ll send you the directions. It’s this little café in Flatbush, I think you’ll love it. 

I’m counting on it. 

September 26 (sun)

Brunch had turned into dinner, which had turned into going to a Broadway show — Anthony had insisted the moment she told him she’d never been — which had turned into him coming over for Saturday night movies, an old habit of the pair’s from their days back in Québec. Which had turned into two movies and two bottles of wine, which had turned into Tito sleeping over on the couch instead of driving the thirty-odd minutes back to his apartment. Poutine sniffed him curiously, nudging one hand with her head. Astride stifled a giggle, opening the door to the balcony. “He’s very sleepy, Poutine. It’s not good manners to wake up your guests.”

“Even when they fall asleep on your couch and steal all your blankets?” Anthony said sleepily from behind. 

Astride wheeled around, greeted by a half-awake Anthony Beauvillier, who was indeed bundled in all of the blankets she owned that weren’t actively on her bed. “Tito! Oh my God, you scared me. How’d you sleep?”

He shrugged. “Not bad, about as well as can be expected.” He tapped his phone, cursing when he realized it was dead. “Do you know what time it is?”

She glanced down at her watch. “8:52, why?”

Anthony jumped up, throwing his shirt back on and grabbing his still-dead phone. “I’m supposed to meet Mat for breakfast at 9:30, and the place is,” he paused for a moment, running through the grid system in his head, “probably half an hour away? I’m never the late one, can’t break that streak now.” 

“Gotcha.”

He grabbed his keys, looking back at her. “Why don’t you come? You’re already dressed, and you remember Mat, right?”

She wiggled her hand. “Kind of?” She crossed the room, letting Poutine back in. “You only want me for my charged phone and navigation system.”

“You got me,” he said, laughing. 

---

“You named your dog Poutine?” Mat snickered, taking a bite of his eggs. 

“Would you rather I named him Tim Horton?” Astride deadpanned. “He’s a good Canadian boy with a good Canadian mom. He needed a good Canadian name.” 

Mat raised his coffee mug, tilting it over towards her. “Touché.”

Anthony waved his hand in front of Mat’s face, trying to catch his attention from where he was utterly preoccupied with destroying his sourdough toast. “Hey, Mat.”

“Mmm?” He glanced up. 

“Did you know that Astride lives right by Barclays? Like, right by Barclays?” 

His eyebrows rose. “No way?” Astride nodded. “That’s a great area, would have been awesome if you were here a couple of years ago. Short walk to the games.”

“That’s what I told her yesterday,” Tito responded. 

---

“You’re kidding,” Anthony said, looking up at her building, then across the street to Barclays, then back to Astride, one hand tangling through his hair. “We used to play right across from here.” 

Astride laughed. “I thought about that,” she said. “You know I still watched your games, right? Even after we fell out of touch?” Anthony shook his head. “You were still someone I cared about, are still someone I care about, even when we only talked a few times a year.” 

Beau stood there, unable to formulate a complete sentence. As far as he knew, the last Islanders game she watched had been the 2016 opener, his NHL debut and her first year at McGill. Why did he assume that? Why did he assume the worst? You can care about people even when they’re not in your life anymore. And sometimes, if you get really, really lucky, they come back. 

October 9 (sat) 

“Ebs is having a barbeque thing over at his house this weekend, just stuff to celebrate the beginning of the season if you wanted to come. No pressure if you’ve got plans already, though,” Anthony said over the FaceTime. 

Astride nodded enthusiastically. “That sounds great, I’d love to come! Just let me know when to show up and what to bring, and I’ll be there.”

 It was almost a fifty-minute drive for Astride from her apartment in Prospect Heights to the house in Garden City, but there wasn’t too much traffic and besides, she had always liked driving. So she set off in her Civic, plugged her music in, and headed down 495. Anthony met her outside of the house, greeting her with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek as he cocked his head towards the backyard. “Party’s this way. Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone.” 

Astride dutifully followed, trying not to let her nerves take hold of her. Everyone might have already been Beau’s friends, but she didn’t know them, or the dynamic of everyone’s relationships, or really, what to expect at all. 

He noticed her apprehension, stopping her with a feather-light touch on her arm just before walking through the back gate. “Hey, Asty. What is it?” 

She let out a little huff, still upset that he could read her like a book even after all this time. “I’m just worried that I’ll feel like I’m intruding on everything, like everyone already has their friends and a group and everything, and here comes some random Québécoise who’s a friend of Tito’s—” 

He laughed, turning her around to face him. “Astride, they’re going to love you. As long as you’re the hilarious, witty, caring person I know you are, they’re going to love you as much as I do, and you’re going to fit in just fine. Do you trust me?” 

She gave a tiny nod. “Yeah.” 

He smiled, squeezing her hand. “Good, now come back, everyone’s waiting.” 

They walked through the gate, greeted by a crowd of smiling faces as Anthony brought her around to everyone to make their rounds. There was Anders, he was the captain, and his wife. There was Jordan and Lauren, and she already knew Mat, and JGP — who was excited to have another person to speak French to — and a dozen or so others, along with their respective partners and children. Anthony had gone over to talk to Mat and some of the other players, while Astride had wandered over to the drinks table. Some of the other women were chatting nearby; one of them caught Astride’s eye and waved her over to join them. 

“Beau didn’t tell us he was bringing anyone!” one of the women said, pulling her over to the group with a bright smile and handing her a glass of sangria. 

“Mhm,” she replied, taking a sip of the drink. “I’m new to the city, obviously, so I think he wanted me to have some people I know outside of just work.” 

They all nodded. “How long have you two been together, though?” another asked. “I didn’t even know he was seeing anyone, did you?” She looked around at the others, who shook their heads as Astride’s eyes bulged. 

“Together? No, no, we’re not together. We’ve been best friends for ages, but,” she shook her head. 

“Could have fooled me,” Lauren said with the smallest of winks. 

Astride suddenly became very interested in the floating berries in her sangria. She looked over at Anthony, who was throwing his head back, laughing at something one of the rookies had said, and smiled. But Lauren’s words kept lingering in the back of her mind. Could have fooled me. Okay, it wasn’t like it was the first time they had been mistaken for a couple; whenever she’d make the trip up to Shawingan to visit him when he was in the QMJHL, more than once she’d have to explain to his teammates that no, she wasn’t Beau’s girlfriend, they were just best friends who had known each other forever. Just best friends. 

Astride had always equated her lingering feelings for Anthony to the nostalgia of a childhood crush, the safety and security that came with remembering something from a time that seemed so simple and so easy. But childhood crushes didn’t last for ten years. And that wasn’t something she hadn’t wanted to come to terms with, something she’d been putting off for years if she was being honest with herself. 

“You didn’t tell me Astride was coming,” Mat commented, seeing her mid-laugh in conversation with the other girls. 

Anthony nodded. “Yeah. She didn’t have any plans for the weekend and I thought it would be nice to introduce her to everyone. I remember how shitty it felt to be in a new city away from your family, don’t want her to be lonely. Plus, I genuinely think she’ll fit in great with everyone.” 

Mat hummed his agreement. “She’s changed since Switzerland, don’t you think?” he asked appreciatively, referring to over five years ago, the last time he had seen her in person.

“Don’t even think about it,” Beau mumbled to Mat, seeing his eyebrows go so far up they were hidden in his hairline. 

“I see a hot girl, I appreciate a hot girl,” Mat shrugged. “But don’t worry, I won’t try anything. I know she’s off-limits.” 

The rest of the afternoon passed quicker than she would have thought, and after a few hours and more good conversations, it was time for Astride to leave. “Have a safe drive back,” Anthony said, giving her a hug. 

“I will,” she responded. 

He opened the driver’s side door for her. “I’m really glad you came, you know. Everyone liked you, you fit in great.” 

“It wasn’t all me,” she said, sliding into the seat, turning her head to Anthony to continue the conversation. “Everyone really did seem to go out of their way to make me feel included, I think they understood the feeling of moving to a whole new place without a big support system and wanted to do what they could to help mitigate that for me.” Astride consciously left out Lauren’s little comment, four words that had been bouncing around in her head for hours since they had been said. He didn’t need to know. She didn’t need him to know, it could confuse him and complicate things when they were just getting back into the rhythm of friendship, of being each other’s person. 

Anthony tapped his fingers on the car door. “I’m glad.” 

“Me too.”

Beau went to sleep that night, Mat’s words bouncing around in his head. “I know she’s off-limits.” It’s not like Cass was his sister or something, someone who would inherently be barred from his best friend’s dating pool. But Mat seemed to know right away, without having ever been told, that she wasn’t someone he could ever even consider pursuing. Why? And what did Mat seem to know that he didn’t?

November 12 (fri)

It was early November, and Anthony and Astride had just settled down at a table in Prospect Park, coffee cups warming their hands through the late fall chill. “How do you feel about last night?” Astride asked teasingly. He had a three point game, two goals and an assist in a 4-1 win over the Canes, so there really wasn’t any question that he was still riding on the high. 

Beau rolled his eyes. “Good, obviously. It would have been nice to get a hat trick, but I know that’s asking for a lot and I didn’t want to tempt fate too much. They made a really good push late in the second.”

“But you won,” she said, poking his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her mocha. 

“But we won,” he agreed. He suddenly got quiet, the kind of quiet where, if you know the person well enough, you can tell that something’s up. That they’re thinking of something. And Astride was right. “Do you ever think about Switzerland?” he asked. 

Astride looked at him from the side, knowing right away that he wasn’t asking about the country. “All the time,” she admitted. 

---

It was the spring of 2015, and they were in Lucerne. By they, Astride meant her, Tito, and the rest of the 2015 Canadian U18 World Cup team. And by in Lucerne, she meant crowded into someone’s hotel room with no adult supervision. Anthony wasn’t sure where any of the coaching staff had gone, but if he was being honest, he was riding on way too big of a high to even care. They had clinched the bronze medal earlier that day, celebrating with the family and friends who had made the trip out, gotten dinner, and then packed into the first team room they came to. Well, technically, Astride, Tito, and Mat had made a stop at the grocery store before meeting everyone else back in the room. The drinking age in Switzerland was 16 for everything but spirits, and everyone was planning on taking full advantage of that. The cashier gave them a look as she took her and Anthony’s French licenses and Mat’s English one, but the charge went through just fine, and fifteen minutes later they were walking back through the doorway with three cases of beer and a few bottles of sparkling wine for good measure. Astride had never been so grateful to have her own checking account. 

“You ever drink before?” Mat asked her as they opened the cases. 

Astride shrugged. “Not really. A glass of wine every now and again back home with my parents, but nothing too crazy.” 

He held out a bottle for her, fishing around in his pocket for the bottle opener they had picked up at the store. “Have fun.” 

And have fun Astride did. She had finished off two of the beers, and one of the younger teammates — she didn’t remember who — had popped open the wine. In his slightly inebriated state, it took longer than it should have to twist off the muselet, which then led to foam all over the floor and fifteen sixteen and seventeen-year-olds running to the bathroom to grab towels to try and mop it up with. And then running back to the bathroom to get the water glasses because they needed something to drink it out of, right? And then to everyone else’s rooms because they quickly realized that two cups definitely wasn’t enough to go around, and then everyone was back in the room, on the beds and around the beds, finally letting themselves celebrate. Astride was just finishing her glass when Mat spoke. “Anyone up for never have I ever?” Nobody said otherwise, so two minutes later, they were all arranged in what could very generously be called a circle, fresh drinks in hand. After a solid five minutes of repeating the rules — there was always at least one person who seemed to genuinely struggle with the idea that you drank if you had done the thing, not if you hadn’t — they were slowly but surely making their way around the circle. 

Questions ranged from the mundane — “Never have I ever gotten detention” — to the raunchy — “Never have I ever had my parents walk in on me” — neither of which Astride or Tito drank to. 

By the time it was Mat’s turn, he had had plenty of time to think, looking around the group with a conspiratorial grin. “What is it?” Tito asked skeptically. 

He shrugged. “Never have I ever...kissed anyone in the circle.” As expected, nobody drank, but apparently that wasn’t expected, not for Mat, at least. He looked between Anthony and Astride incredulously. “Seriously? You two have never kissed?”

Anthony shook his head. “Nope.”

“How? You’ve been friends for, like, a million years, not even when you were little or anything?” he asked. 

“Never,” Astride said. “Kind of hard to kiss your best friend when you haven’t kissed anyone before.” She barely even realized that everyone was still listening in. 

“You’ve never kissed anyone?” Anthony asked, surprised. 

Astride looked down at her hands, sipping her beer. “Nope.” She gave him a brief smile. “I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but no. Just hasn’t happened yet.”

Maybe it was the alcohol talking, or maybe it was feelings buried so deeply in Anthony’s mind that he didn’t think would ever see the light of day, let alone have to be confronted, that made him say what he did next. “I could—if you wanted—you don’t have to, but—” he stammered.

Astride laughed, looking at him curiously. “What is it, Tito? You’re not normally one to stumble over your words like that.”

He picked at his fingernails, an old nervous tick from his childhood that his mother was never quite able to get him to break, keenly aware that the whole room had decided to listen into their conversation. “I was just trying to say...I could do it, if you want. Kiss you, I mean. If you just wanted to get it over with, or whatever. I just figured. You know me, you trust me, you’re comfortable with me. Better that than some idiot at school who doesn’t care about you.”

Her cheeks burned as she looked over at him, but even though it took her nearly a minute to respond, she had her answer after five seconds. “Why not?” Astride flashed him the purest, gentlest smile, the kind that let him know just how much she cared about him and how deeply she trusted him. And the look on her face meant the world to him. 

Anthony leaned in, his hand coming up to rest on her shoulder, his fingertips just barely touching her cheek as their foreheads leant together. “You sure about this?” He needed her to be sure. 

She nodded. “I’ve had a couple of drinks, and I never imagined my first kiss would be in front of an audience,” she paused to giggle at the rest of the team, who were giving the scene their full attention in a way that somehow wasn’t uncomfortable at all, just wholesome and supportive, “but yeah. I’m sure.”

That was all the permission Anthony needed to lean forward, pressing his lips against hers, in a kiss that was soft and sweet and somehow everything Astride needed all in one. He pulled back after a moment, a goofy smile on his face. “How was it?”

Astride couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “Good, it was really good, Tito. Thank you for that.”

“What are friends for?”

---

“Friends are for kissing each other, apparently,” Astride giggled, leaning into Anthony on his couch. 

He laughed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb over her arm. “Did you ever think something was going to happen between us?” Anthony asked curiously. 

Astride shrugged. “At some point, yeah. I think it was kind of hard not to, with our parents and literally everyone we spent time with saying we were destined to fall in love.” She looked down at her hands, trying not to give away the fact that at one point, she had believed them. 

November 30 (tues)

“Do you want to come over Friday?” Anthony asked, sprawled out across her couch on one of his rare nights off. He had made the drive over to Astride’s apartment, cooking salmon and roasting vegetables while she took the much more daunting task of picking what to watch on Netflix. She settled on Back to the Future. “I can order in Thai, I know we’re trying to work our way through the Mission Impossibles.” 

Astride grimaced. “I actually...kind of have a date Friday night,” she admitted. 

Anthony made a hum of surprise. “You do?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t act so shocked, Tito. There are men in this city of nine million who want to take me out.” 

He sputtered. “It’s not that that shocks me, Asty. You’d have men lining up around the block for you if you’d give any of them a second glance. It’s just that. You never seem to bother actually going after any of them. What made this one different?” 

“I mean, honestly hour?” Astride said, shrugging. 

“Honestly hour.” 

“I haven’t been on a date since I left Montréal, you know that. It had been a few months there too. And I’ve loved hanging out with you more, getting to know Mat and the team and everyone’s partners, but...I needed something different, too. Something that felt like a part of my life that wasn’t directly connected to the team. Which, don’t get me wrong,” she added hastily, “I love them, and it’s been so nice to be a part of that group, I just…” Astride trailed off. 

“You can’t let that be the only part of your life. I get it,” Anthony added helpfully.  

“Yeah,” Astride agreed. “So enter Cole. He works in a different division of the IE department, I’m obviously Europe and he’s Asia, mostly does work with Taiwan and Singapore. Um,” she said, her eyes turning towards the ceiling, “he seems really nice, did international business at UPenn, which is a great program. Speaks fluent Mandarin, uh, I think he mentioned he’s got a few fish at home.” 

Anthony snorted. “What’s wrong with fish?” Astride asked defensively. 

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong with fish,” he said. “Just seems like an odd choice. Maybe his building doesn’t allow pets or something.” 

“Maybe,” Astride responded. “I wouldn’t know, he lives in Manhattan, over in Tribeca. Bikes to work.” 

Tito laughed again. “I don’t trust people who bike to work in New York City, Asty. They have zero regard for their own lives or safety.” 

She giggled. “That might be true. But I’m looking forward to it, the date, I mean. I really am. It’s been a while since I’ve really put myself back out there, and I’m ready for something good. Something real.” 

He gave a half-smile from his side of the couch. “I’m happy for you, Astride. I hope you have a great time, and I hope he treats you right. If he doesn’t, just let him know that you can sic an entire professional hockey team on him with a single phone call.” 

“I will,” she said. “I’ll call you when it’s over, tell you how it went.” “

I’ll be waiting,” he said. 

Anthony thought back on the conversation as he sat on the corner of his bed that night, about to go to sleep. He turned his phone over and over in his hands, his eyes fixating on the chip in the crown molding that he hadn’t gotten around to fixing yet. He wasn’t lying to Astride when he said he was happy for her. He was, of course he was, who wouldn’t want their best friend to be happy? But while he wanted nothing more, nothing more, than to be able to give his full-throated support for her date, and the potential the future held for her and this Cole guy, he couldn’t do it. There was something stopping him. And the worst part of it all was that Anthony was starting to realize what it was. 

---

Astride had said that their dinner reservation was at 7, some brasserie in the West Village. “That’s a French thing, right?” Cole had asked. 

“It is,” Astride responded, gearing up for her translation skills to be used for the first time in months. She spoke almost exclusively French around Tito, and with JGP and Brassard, but the majority of her day was spent in English. Cole said that the restaurant had come highly recommended from one of his Wall Street friends, something that should have been the first red flag. 

“Never trust the finance bros,” Reese, a German specialist and one of her friends at the office, had said. “They all think they’re God’s gift to mankind when I can guarantee you they ain’t shit.”  

She had said it was at 7, so Anthony wasn’t expecting to hear from her until much later; honestly, he would have been surprised if she had called before 10. He tried not to think about what it could mean if she didn’t call at all that night. She had said it was at 7, so when he heard a knock at his door at half past nine, he practically jumped out of his skin before scrambling to open the door. His eyebrows rose when he saw Astride on the other side of the door, then his face contorted into a look of sympathy as he saw the sad smile on her lips, her jacket slung over one arm. 

“Can I come in?” she asked. He nodded without question, holding the door while stepping out of the way. He padded to the kitchen, bringing out a bottle of Moscato and two glasses. Astride smiled gratefully at him as he uncorked the bottle and poured. He knew that she couldn’t do red wine when she was upset, and she was upset. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked tentatively. 

Astride shrugged, sipping the wine. “Not much to tell other than it was probably the worst first date I’ve ever been on.” 

That piqued Anthony’s interest. He’d never be happy that she was upset, but something told him the story wasn’t quite that simple. “What about it was so bad?” 

“Where do I begin?” she sighed. “He was on time, but that’s pretty much the only thing Cole did right the entire night. He was rude to the waitress when we had to wait all of ten minutes until our reservation was ready, because the couple ahead had gone long. Then he ordered the most expensive bottle of red wine they had, without even asking me to see what I wanted. He really just was trying to show off that he could afford it. And it was a Sangiovese, and you know I hate dry wines, so I was just trying to choke the whole thing down. And then he insisted on ordering for me, which is probably the most chauvinistic thing I could think of, I mean, who does that anymore?” she asked incredulously. 

Tito shrugged. It was disrespectful, absolutely, but more than that, it was just weird. If women have mouths that work, then they’re more than capable of doing something as simple as ordering their own food. 

“And he kept trying to pour me more wine after the first glass, even when I told him a million times I was good.” Anthony’s grip on his glass tightened. Astride rubbed her temples with her free hand. “He just kept going on and on about work, and this big promotion he’s insisting he’s going to get even though I know for a fact that they want Maria for it. I could barely get a word in edgewise. That’s when I just decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I faked that Jean-Claude was calling, grabbed my jacket, and caught a cab over here.” She looked up at him, the same disappointed expression she had worn when he opened the door. “I was really hoping this one would pan out, Tito.” 

He felt an ache in his heart. He may have been less than thrilled about the prospect of Astride going out on a date, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less to see her so despondent. He leaned over, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear that had fallen loose. “I know, Asty. And I’m sorry it didn’t.”

December 13 (mon)

Anthony and Mat were the last ones in the locker room after a morning practice. “I found this new place nearby last week that’s got great smoothie bowls, want to get one after you finish packing your stuff?” Anthony asked, looking over at Mat. 

“Yeah, yeah. Sure, Sounds good,” Mat nodded, half-listening. 

Anthony glanced over at him, a weird look on his face. “You good, dude? You sound distracted.”

Mat spoke abruptly, looking over at Tito with a laser-focused expression. “How long have you been in love with Astride?” 

Anthony’s eyebrows jumped a foot. “In love with Astride? Why would you think that?”

Mat gave him a look, the kind of look that let Anthony know he was dead serious about what he was saying, and more than that, that he believed it. “Tito, I’m dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

Anthony leaned forward, elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “It’s that obvious?” 

“Yep,” Mat said, popping the p. 

“Do you think she knows?” His voice had dropped to barely above a whisper. 

“I don’t know,” Mat said, shrugging. “I don’t think so, she doesn’t seem like the type of person to really be able to know about something as big as that and not address it. Doesn’t like to keep things bottled up, it’s not really her style.”

Anthony nodded. “It’s not.” He raked one hand through his haid, his head still leaning on the other one. “God. How do you tell your best friend you’re in love with her?”

Mat put one hand on Beau’s back, comforting him as best he could. “I don’t know, Tito. I wish I could help. What I do know,” he said, “is that you’re going to have to eventually. Because it’s going to tear you up if you don’t.”

December 18 (sat)

Astride tossed one final empty can into the garbage bag. “I think that’s it,” she said, giving his living room a cursory look. What had looked like a warzone only less than an hour before now more closely resembled the somewhat-messy but perfectly respectable bachelor pad of a man in his 20s, like it should have. With the holidays approaching, Anthony had decided to take it into his own hands to host a party — alongside Astride, who he had practically begged for help — intent on showcasing his newly-acquired skills by playing bartender the whole night. He was surprisingly capable, Astride had thought, if her Sazerac was anything to go by. 

He smiled at her. “Thanks, Asty. And thanks for staying and helping clean everything up, you really didn’t have to.” 

She tied the bag off and set it by the door with the other one. “I wanted to. And besides, I’m staying over,” she said, looking over at Anthony, “so what did you think I was going to do? Lock myself in the guest room while you cleaned up the whole apartment by yourself? What kind of a woman do you take me for?” she asked in mock offense. 

Anthony laughed, sitting down on the couch with a satisfying thump, pulling Astride into his side when she settled next to him. 

“I’m so glad we got back in contact,” she said, muffled against the fabric of his hoodie. “I’m so glad we’re friends again.” 

He felt guilty; more than that, he knew that the guilt, at least some of it, was deserved. “I should have done more,” he lamented. “I should have done more to keep in contact, more to show you I cared, more so you’d know that your friendship is one of the things I value most in my life.” 

Astride gave a small smile. “It’s a two-way street, Tito. Sure, I won’t lie and say that you really put all that much effort into keeping in contact. You didn’t.” He winced, she shot him a sympathetic look. “I love you, but you know me. I don’t mince my words. But I definitely could have done more than text you congratulations or leave a thirty-second voicemail on your birthday. We both could have done more. We both should have done more,” she said, correcting herself. “What do you think happened, though? Where did we go wrong?” As much as she might have hated it, Astride was that kind of person. She went through every bad decision in her life with a fine-toothed comb, needing to know what went wrong, needing to know what she could have done differently. 

“I think,” he began, “that it was just so easy to get distracted from ‘back home’ things. From our friendship, from my relationships with my family. From the important things, the things that I should have made an effort to prioritize even when the season got hectic and games got hard. And I’m not trying to make excuses,” he added quickly, “but there was just something about where I was, physically and mentally. I was 19, a rookie in one of the biggest cities in the world, and I think I just lost sight of things. Between the practices and games and going out and community events and trying to get in more than five hours of sleep a night, it was a lot,” he admitted. “It was stressful, probably weighed on me more than I wanted to admit. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m well aware I was — and am — living a life thousands of kids would kill for, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that you don’t really understand unless you’ve been through it. I don’t have many regrets from my rookie season, or really many in my career so far. Don’t regret moving for minors, don’t regret going to the Isles, don’t regret any of the contracts I’ve signed or plays I’ve made. Well,” he smirked, “maybe a few. But the one big one? The only real regret I’ve had? Letting you go.” 

Astride swallowed hard, choosing her next words carefully. “What do you mean, letting me go?”

Anthony let out a hard sigh. He’d put it off for long enough. He couldn’t do it any longer. “Never telling you how I feel.”

“How you feel?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, her fingers tangling in the fringe of the fleece blanket that was slung over the couch cushions. 

“Like I love you so much my heart could burst.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “How long have you known?”

He looked at her with a soft smile. “Ever since Switzerland.”

“Six years?”

“Six years.” He reached out slowly, so slowly, pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear when she didn’t move back. They sat in silence for a moment, and when Anthony spoke again, his voice wavered. “Asty? Say something.”

Astride’s lifted her head, finally meeting his eyes. “I knew since I was 15.”

His face split into a grin, wider and wider until she was sure she’d never seen a bigger smile. “You did? You do?”

She nodded, leaning forward so their foreheads were touching. She put her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat fluttering butterfly-fast underneath her fingertips. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been in love with you since I knew what love was, Tito.”

He pushed forward, pressing his lips against hers for the first time since 2015, the first time since Switzerland. It was gentle and meaningful and somehow communicated all of the love and emotion that had been built up between the two of them in the past six years. Anthony pulled back after a minute, his lips pink and slightly puffy. “Tell me where your head’s at, Astride.”

“Is it too cliché to just say that this might be the happiest I’ve been in years?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Not at all.” But there was something that she wasn’t quite letting go of. “What is it, Astride?”

Astride sniffed. “I want this. You and I, I want it so mad it hurts. I just hate the idea that we’d turn into some sort of cliché. Childhood friends who grow up and fall in love, but something goes wrong and they split up and suddenly the dynamic of everything is messed up and I don’t want that, Tito. I don’t know if I could deal with you hating me because of how things ended.” 

“But things don’t have to end, Asty. Every broken heart, every date where some asshole has stood you up has led you to know that you deserve more. You deserve so much more, Astride, you deserve the sun and the moon and someone who would hang them in the sky for you. It doesn’t have to end in heartbreak. It doesn’t have to end at all.” 

Astride had always been someone who was cautious, someone who thought before she acted and never spoke without thinking through every possible outcome. But this was one of the times that she couldn’t do that, one of the times when, as much as she may have hated it, she needed to take a leap of faith. And so she did. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Anthony asked, his voice lifting. 

She nodded, the happiness on her face unmistakable. “Okay.”

And as Astride and Anthony FaceTimed her parents to break the news, her mom slapping her dad’s shoulder, claiming that she had “called it” back in 2014, Astride was filled with a sense of undeniable, irreplaceable joy. The kind of joy that the poets write about and artists put brush to canvas trying to depict, the kind that most people go their whole lives only hoping to get a glimpse of. The kind that made Astride more certain of one thing than she had perhaps been in her entire life. It didn’t have to end in heartbreak. And this one didn’t have to end at all. 

And as they stood two years later in a little church in their hometown, promising in front of their family and friends and the entire New York Islanders to love each other for the rest of their lives, Astride finally believed it.