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bonkhrnyjail · 3 months ago

Text

desert eagle

pairing: young joel miller x f!plus-size!reader (age unspecified, no specific physical descriptions other than plus-size and able-bodied) summary: joel gets reluctantly dragged to the strip club after a long day of work. god knows he wasn't expecting to meet someone like you... rating: explicit 18+ mdni word count: 8.8k (sorry) tags: thigh riding, oral sex, so much oral sex, ass play, 69, reader is a stripper, joel is down horrendous, JOEL MILLER LOVES BIG GIRLS, gentleman!joel, until he's not, sub!joel if you squint, joel and reader are both aggressively texan, i'm midwestern so i do not take responsibility for inaccuracies i did my best a/n: soooo this is based off of the beyoncé song desert eagle, the first time i heard it i immediately thought of this idea and i couldn't get it out of my head and i was having literal sex dreams about it so i decided to write it. this is my first time writing joel too so i'm scared :P anyways i love writing about confident beautiful fat women but i think anyone can enjoy this fic so yeahhh anyways you should listen to the beyoncé song and then read the fic or vice versa ok love you bye

Joel didn’t want to go to the strip club.

In fact, Joel wants nothing more than to be alone tonight, and yet he finds himself uncomfortably perched on the edge of a half-crescent booth, dragged along by Tommy and some of the idiot twenty-somethings he’d met on their most recent project.

“Loosen up, old man!” one of the cocky landscapers barked at him when he tried to decline. “A pretty pair a’ tits in your face’ll turn that frown right upside down!”

He almost did say no, almost played the foolproof dad card; unfortunately for him, Sarah had already planned to stay at her best friend’s house the next few nights, taking advantage of the last week of winter break. But he saw the premature wince forming in Tommy’s eye, waiting for the inevitable sting of Joel ruining his chances at making some semi-decent friends in this town—friends that wouldn’t land him behind bars on the weekend, anyways. So Joel surrendered with a begrudging grunt, under the terms that he could stop by home to shower and change clothes. Miraculously, he convinced the other guys to do the same.

Inside, violet and teal spotlights cast a thick fog across the large stage. It illuminates the performers whilst somehow clouding them too, their bodies winding and whirling in a periwinkle haze. Joel’s skin feels humid and suffocated beneath the clinging fabric of his flannel shirt; the glass of Jack Daniels he’d spent the last ten minutes nursing only abets the formation of dew trickling down his neck and spine. The only thing keeping him cool is the wet curls he slicked back sitting at the base of his skull, providing a momentary chill with any slight breeze. He feels claustrophobic, displaced; like his presence was altogether a clumsy wedge into somewhere he didn’t quite belong.

Nothing another glass of whiskey couldn’t fix.

Joel excuses himself from the group without much notice. The boys are hovering over a meaty stack of ones, attempting to divvy up the bills in even increments without having to count them out individually. He strides across the room with a languid ease, scanning the room and the scattered clusters of men, appeasing his unconscious instinct to confirm safety wherever he is—and to keep tabs on the people he should keep Tommy away from. He stops short for a moment, palming his pocket to confirm his wallet and keys haven’t left his side.

“Pardon me, honey.”

A soft, seductive drawl takes him by surprise as a hand on his lower back guides him inches to the left. It takes a moment for his vision to focus, the crisp snap of his neck to follow the voice leaving a slight dizziness in its recoil, the trailing scent of cinnamon and honey wafting beneath his nose.

When he finally sees you, actually sees you, Joel finds himself powerless to avert his gaze. Your body is awash with exquisite peaks and valleys, velvet curves clad only by precarious strings and swatches of fabric covering mere inches of glistening skin. The clack of your heels leaves him hypnotized as you leave him in your wake. His jaw slackens and his lungs become paralyzed as he witnesses the way your body moves like water with every step; like the current that flows across the edges of your figure, rippling as you step onto the stage and coil yourself around the silver pole.

Good god.

The bones in Joel’s knees suddenly turn gelatinous, a huff of air escaping his mouth as he stumbles backward into the bar, bracing himself with flat palms against the polished marble. He steadies himself, blinking out the sting beneath his lids, trying to moisten the dryness in his eyes—a consequence of his bulging stare.

A soft giggle lilts from behind him, piercing through his trance and hammering his conscience back into the earth. Joel turns to the source to find the bartender, shaking her head with laughter as she drags the rim of a glass through a bowl of salt.

“Don’t worry, ain’t the first time I’ve seen a man nearly lose his footin’ around Paloma,” she jeers, a smirk threatening the corners of her mouth. “She’s really somethin’, that girl.”

Joel nods, clears his throat, and swallows the saliva that pools at the back of his tongue. Somethin’ was an understatement, an insult to the ethereal vision twirling before him. The fog and dusky lighting prevents him from capturing a defined image of your face, only catching glimpses of soft cheeks and plush lips as you spin and float with ease, but he’s certain you’re breathtaking.

“You want another Jack?” the bartender offers, pouring out a picture-perfect margarita, the lime hue nearly fluorescent in the lowlight.

Joel grunts in affirmation, his eyes not once straying from your direction.

“Not much of a talker, are ya?” she ribs, chuckling as she reaches for the whiskey.

“Sorry, long day,” Joel winces, suddenly painfully aware of how rude he’s been. “Is she, uh, new ‘round here?”

“Who, Paloma? Been ‘round for about… six months or so? She’s done real well for herself, honestly blew all us away with how much she was able t’make from the jump.”

He bites down on the tip of his tongue, a sharp, electrifying pain searing through his nerves. It does nothing to fracture the beguiling spell you’ve somehow cast upon him, and Joel finds himself staring again, studying your every move, knowing nothing but need.

“Do you know if she… when she’s done here? Her shift, I mean.”

The bartender laughs exuberantly, a wide smile revealing a far-too-pristine row of pearly veneers that nearly glow under the lilac beams.

“Well, I don’t think I can tell you that, sugar,” she coos, sliding Joel’s drink across the space between them. “But you can ask her yourself! I promise, she don’t bite. Sweet as honey, that one.”

Honey.

It still lingers in the air, thick and cloying in a way that grips like a hand wrapped around his throat, like a demanding croon singing over and over: Eyes on me. He can taste it too, a whisper of it stagnant on the back of his tongue, a lurking craving impatiently waiting to be satiated.

Joel thanks her in a low gravel, and strides back towards his table with newfound urgency nipping at his heels. He arrives at the booth with no reaction from the boys, the party too enveloped in counting their stack to be stirred by his presence. It’s only when Joel clears his throat, the force of it deep and thunderous, that the men take any notice.

“I’m gonna need me some of those.”

. . . . .

You didn’t expect the club to be busy tonight.

In fact, you practically relied on Wednesdays being the slowest day of the week. You often used the opportunity to practice new routines, test out new outfits, try something different with your makeup; pretty much anything you didn’t particularly prefer for a crowded audience to behold.

Tonight you find yourself testing the limits of a string-bikini-esque number, the laces doubled around your torso and triple-knotted in the hope of extra security, and the triangular fabric cutouts stuck down to the curve of your breasts with double-sided tape. You climb the pole with ease, perfectly-formed calluses on your palms and heels aiding you with improved grip.

It took just a month of pole classes for you to develop an addiction to the burn of sleek metal sliding across your skin. Something about the sting of it, alongside the quiver of your core, the aching clench of your thighs; it was a remarkable blend of pain that spilled through you like pleasure. It soon became an unholy replacement for Sunday worship—melding yourself around the pole; bathing in the sweltering beams from the spotlights; inhaling the musky scent of crumpled bills lying at your feet. It was entirely meditative, and you’d found a sort of spiritual enlightenment amongst it all.

You let your head fall back as the rod swings you around in tight circles. Normally you let your eyes close when you spin, but tonight you feel called to the fuzzy warmth that pools behind your brows when you get good and dizzy. Your surroundings bleed and curve like an Expressionist painting, and an unmoving figure lurks amongst the brush strokes, appearing and disappearing and blending until it’s a constant image: a broad, stoic, masculine body, melting into everything you can see.

The invasion peeves you. Sure, you know you should be pleased that a customer is watching, clearly interested and coming closer, but for Christ’s sake, you’ve been out for less than five minutes. At 6pm. On a Wednesday.

You carefully bring your body to a halt, slowly inching down the pole until your shoes meet the hardwood. Your vision lags far behind you, skipping like a scratched disc, and it’s enough to nearly knock you from your feet. A lightness billows through your blood and tries to whisk you away, but you sink against it, sitting on your heels and fastening your grip on the cold steel.

Lines begin to gain their sharpness again, and the figure in your peripheral starts to look less and less like a Van Gogh portrait. The man’s face is still muddled, dimly-lit and shrouded by the bill of a baseball cap. You smile at him on instinct, and you notice his chest jerk, like he was entirely unaware that he too was being observed; like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

You also can’t help but notice how broad he is, even from this distance. The plaid lines of his button-up sprawl across his chest, his arms, his waist, and though the shirt clearly isn’t skin-tight, you can tell the expanse of him fills it out with ease. With a slight tilt of your head you motion for him to come closer, and your balance finally stills enough for you to trust your feet again.

The man strides across the room with a glimmer of urgency—not fast per se, but with a spirited buoyancy hot beneath his heels. He parks himself at the table nearest to you, pulling the chair from its nestled nook under the table, and makes himself comfortable, splaying his knees and crossing his arms tightly atop his chest.

God, he’s big.

“Haven’t seen you ‘round here before,” you lilt, descending the stairs from the platform and taking a seat on the table in front of him.

One of his hands peeks from beneath the sleeve of his flannel. It looks gruff, firm, and tightly grasps a palmful of ones, and the sheer width of his fingers make the bills look like Monopoly money.

“Ain’t really been ‘round here before,” he shrugs, his voice exactly as deep as you expected, and steeped in what you immediately recognize as a born and raised Texan.

His eyes are noticeably shifty, ping-ponging between the floor, the stage, your shoes, his watch; anywhere that isn’t your gaze. The majority of his face is still shaded by his cap, and even this close his features remain more vague than you’d like them to be. You realize he must be new to this, and you’ve heard that drawl before; the drawl of a man who was raised to mind his manners.

You don’t make him ask.

“You want a dance, baby?”

You graze your fingers over his, and have to bite down on a grin when his chest hitches sharply against the row of buttons resting over his sternum.

“I… um… no, thank you sweetheart—”

“What’s your name?”

He clears his throat with a stifled, nervous cough.

“Joel,” he blurts, a sober assuredness possessing his voice. “Joel Miller.”

He finally meets your gaze, just as a whirling spotlight dances over his face. A split second of illumination reveals a whiskey-brown stare, dripping with warmth, glinting with a sedated hunger. You bite down on the flesh of your cheek and extend your hand to shake his.

“Paloma,” you croak, imitating his baritone husk, pausing to repeat his cadence. “Paloma Blue.”

A dimple appears amongst a veil of brown scruff, the faint edges of a charming smile peeking through the shadow from his hat. His shoulders remain rigid, hiked with an invisible thread tugging them toward the ceiling.

You really can’t read him.

“Can I do somethin’ for you, honey? You seem tense,” you question.

“I was… I was wonderin’ if you might be interested in lettin’ me buy you a drink. When you’re done workin’, f’course. Wouldn’t wanna get you in any kinda trouble.”

You find it impossible not to let out a chuckle. It’s not the first time you’ve sent a man into a flustered mess of shifting-eyes and stuttering words, though that would usually come after he got too bold and you needed to put him in his place. Joel Miller doesn’t look like those men; college-aged hooligans or machismo cowboys that are all bark and no bite. He doesn’t look like a man who gets nervous; yet here he is, fidgeting profusely with his watch, and you’re quite relieved he’s sitting down.

“Well, ain’t you a sweet one…” you drawl, half-teasing despite the truth to the statement. “I’m s’posed to work ‘til close tonight, but if you can convince my boss to let me leave early, I’m all yours.”

You don’t miss the swell of Joel’s pupils at your affirmation, a look of determination you had yet to witness on the man. The chances of getting out of your shift tonight are next to none, considering there’s merely three of you working the floor and a new hoard of howling youngsters just came tumbling through the entrance.

You point out your boss behind the bar and Joel follows with his gaze, nodding and starting towards her without a word.

You’re a bit shocked at his immediate action; not to mention the lack of the typical prying you’ve accepted as routine. He’s been extraordinarily polite; a man of few words but refreshingly direct despite the subtle shake in his voice, and the honesty alone makes your cheeks flush.

You’re far more used to taking control and providing entertainment for the countless men that frequent the club, always catering to their needs first and foremost, smothering them with flattery—or degradation, if you notice a well-timed “good boy” summons a bigger bill from their pockets. It’s work, but it’s undoubtedly started to bleed into your personal life. The lines between you and your Paloma persona have blurred these days, making you unsure of what you’re supposed to want and what you actually want. You find yourself lost in thought, gazing at the black and white tile as your legs swing underneath you, until the interruption of two dirty boots break your trance.

“Boss said you’re good to go. F’you still want to.”

How the hell did he manage that?

Your jaw hangs slightly in shock, racking your brain to make sense of what he may have done to convince her. You can’t help but be impressed by his vigor, by all of it, and a smile lifts your cheeks to the heavens as you recognize the feeling stirring in your tummy, a feeling that has laid dormant for far too long. You want him.

“I’ll go get my stuff, just hang tight.”

. . . . .

Joel stands by the exit of the club, waiting for you to grab your things. He hadn’t thought a damn thing through before he asked you out, and his voice of reason was nowhere to be found when he forked over 200 bucks to the club owner to get you out of working for the rest of the night. Any semblance of forethought vanished when he saw you, all sashayed hips and strut and so undeniably, deliciously Texan. And your face—oh—once he saw that sweet face of yours… he didn’t stand a fucking chance.

It occurs to him that he doesn’t know where exactly he should take you to get a drink. Should he have asked you to dinner instead? The last thing he wants is you to think is that he’s trying to buy you for the night, or that anything is required of you just because he got you out of work. He just wants to know you, be near you, bask in your presence. He wants to treat you like a gentleman, like he was raised to, because he’s damn sure the kind of men who wind up at that club don’t give a damn about chivalry.

You emerge from the narrow hallway leading towards the exit, clad in gray sweatpants and a flowy white tee that somehow still clings to the most feminine parts of your figure. You shoot him a beaming smile, a playful glint in your eyes as you haul a small duffel bag over your shoulder.

“You’re not takin’ me anywhere too fancy I hope,” you snicker.

Joel offers one hand to hold your bag and swings the door ajar with the other, holding it for you as you pass through. The trail of your perfume—that soft, sugary scent—leaves his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he tightens his grip on the doorframe.

“You need somethin’ to eat? We could get some supper,” he suggests, offering his arm to you.

“Yeah, actually, I usually wait ‘til after my shift, considerin’ work ain’t too far off from a non-stop Tilt-A-Whirl ride. Y’get used to it after a while, but—”

“Better safe than sorry, I bet.”

You look up at him and nod with a half-grin, your eyes sparkling with amusement.

With just a single look, Joel’s stomach flutters and dick twitches at the sight of you. The glow of your face beneath the warmth of the streetlight; your soft features and the intensity of your persistent gaze is beyond mesmerizing. You’re pretty, the epitome of it, all batting lashes and pillowy lips; the very definition of divine feminine. You’re the spitting image of the hazy being that appears behind his eyelids when he touches himself and lets his mind wander; the body he craves to wake up tangled with every morning.

He follows you to the passenger’s side of the car and opens the door for you without a thought, leaning in to his tendencies and muscle memory. You hum a sweet thank you as he extends his arm to help you into his elevated truck, but you barely need the support, your strong legs lifting you into the height of the car with ease.

As Joel turns the key in the ignition, the scream of the roaring engine sends a full body cringe snaking down his spine.

“Sorry, uh, she’s a lil’ noisy,” he winces with an apologetic brow. “She’s fine, runs great, just—”

“A bit of a talker?” you blurt.

He smiles diffidently and nods. You’re better with words than he is, and he finds himself thankful for that—lord knows he needs all the help he can get in your presence.

Joel flicks on the radio, an old Willie Nelson tune lilting from the rear speakers. You let out a hearty grunt of approval.

“Haven’t heard this one in forever,” you slurred. “Practically grew up on this music. ‘M sure you did too, I can hear it in that drawl f’yours.”

He chuckles, shaking his head as he reaches his arm around your seat, crooking his head back as he shifts the truck into reverse.

“That bad, huh?”

“Not bad! Just strong. Just how I like it, really,” you admit, pulling your lip between your teeth, doe-eyed and eager as you catch his gaze.

God, he’s absolutely fucked.

He dials up the volume as he clears his throat and starts down the jagged road. You relax into your seat, curling one of your feet up to tuck beneath your thigh as you hum along to the radio.

He knows exactly where to take you.

. . . . .

A twenty minute car ride with Joel revealed that he wanted to know as much as he could about you. He asked question after question, about your life, your hobbies, your family, and not one thing about your job, which was honestly quite refreshing. Not that you had any shame about your occupation, but most men were more fascinated about what it was like to be Paloma, and most importantly what it could mean for them at the end of the evening. Not Joel, though. It seemed as though he was almost afraid to breach the subject; out of politeness or avoidance, you weren’t sure. You crossed your fingers that it was the former.

You arrive at a little shack of a restaurant, some sort of fusion between a diner and a sports bar. It looks as though it should be empty, the exterior of it run down in a way that makes it appear frozen in time, but it isn’t. Clusters of customers sit in long-stretched booths that fill the width of the windows and the entrance is shrouded with people; some smoking, some chatting, and some seemingly waiting to get in. You scan the crowd and find that everyone visible to you appears quite innately blue collar, down to the sea of Levi’s Jeans and scuffed up boots, extra-illuminated by the cheap plastic solar lights haphazardly stuck into narrow beds of mulch.

Joel hops down from the truck before you can even say a word, and with a quick shuffle he’s arrived at the passenger door. You have to laugh at the absurdity of it, how it seems he has—cover to cover— studied a textbook of how to be a perfect gentleman. Alongside the frequency of nerves you can sense radiating from beneath his skin, you know you need to get a drink in him.

He offers his arm as you hop down onto the pavement and swiftly rests his palm on your lower back, guiding you through the crowd of patrons with ease. A cheap, crackling doorbell sound chimes as you pass through the doorway. The hostess offers a wide and toothy smile, hollering to announce Joel's arrival, by name, towards the kitchen. She appears surprised but delighted to see him, making a point to let him know how much she has missed him with a cringeworthy attempt at a bit too much physical contact. She asks about a Sarah, and your stomach tightens with concern—you hope to god she's anything but a wife. He requests a booth, a cozy, curved table in the shaded, sheltered corner of the restaurant, and the staff oblige him immediately, one waitress clearing the tabletop of dishes and the other wiping the surface down in one clean swipe.

“Hope this is ok,” Joel says. “You’re definitely not the only one wearing sweatpants in here, if it makes you feel at ease.”

“It’s good, seems perfect,” you slip the innermost part of your bottom beneath your teeth and let your eyes do the smiling. “They sure are treatin’ you like royalty in here.”

Joel seems to relax a bit, his spine softening into the back of the cushion and legs splaying wide. He isn’t looking at you as you observe him; his eyes dart around and he musters a casual wave to anyone visibly moved by his presence. The constant, worried scrunch of his brow smooths out for a moment, just as the beams of passing headlights rake over his features, and you finally realize:

He’s fucking gorgeous.

You could see him before, sure, but you didn’t actually see him, not with the lingering luminescence of the warm white that shines through the outspread window behind you. He was steeped in shadow, but now he’s colored in, every detail and curvature entirely yours to behold.

The bend of his nose draws your attention first, strong and angular, demanding your eyes pay it mind. Your gaze follows a natural map, a sporadic trail of sun spots that dance across his cheek, conspicuous evidence of long days working outside in the relentless Austin heat. A few silver hairs are sprinkled amongst his umber scruff; a well-kempt beard and mustache sits just above the soft curve of his lips, flushed with ruddy hue.

He’s gorgeous, plain and simple.

The waitress brings Joel a whiskey before even saying hello. Joel asks what you would like, calls you sweetheart in a low, thick growl. You order a vodka cran and try to ignore the hostess currently staring a hole into the side of your head.

“You gonna tell me why they treat you like royalty ‘round here?” you tease.

“Not royalty—” he cuts himself off with a chuckle and a shake of his head. “They just ain’t seen me in a while. Used to bring my little girl here for breakfast every Sunday.”

“Ah,” you release with a sigh, the ball of tension sitting in your chest following behind. “Sarah?”

“Mhm,” he hums.

“Was worried she might be a wife for a second there.”

“Oh, no, I- I’m not… I wouldn’t…”

“S’alright. I’ll admit though, I’m real glad she ain’t.”

Joel’s face turns a soft shade of pink and a whisper of a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. His eyes flicker, lingering on your lips, a flame dancing behind his pupils, before meeting your gaze again. You can’t control the smile that possesses your face, nor the simmering heat that blankets your chest, and you can’t recall that last time a man made you feel like this.

Every facet of Joel’s appearance exudes an air of dominance. He dresses much like the hordes of men who approach you with their usual excessive bravado and unwarranted sense of ownership over your body, but he seems to act entirely the opposite. He seems apprehensive, wary, like he’s trying desperately to be the right kind of man around you, to treat you the way you deserve to be treated.

You decide to try what Joel orders, some sort of off-menu special order the waitress jokingly calls “The Miller Deluxe”. It isn’t long before you finish your drink, and another appears before you can even ask. You inquire more about Joel’s daughter, his life, his work; returning the line of questioning he surveyed you with in the passenger’s seat of the truck, and you find yourself mirroring his smile as he tells you all about Sarah. He rambles off a brief explanation of his business and Tommy; you immediately know who he is, a somewhat troublesome regular visitor at the club. Joel apologizes for Tommy before you even say a word about him, and your food arrives at the table before you can explain that he’s more of an occasional nuisance than anything else.

The whiskey seems to unwind the tension in Joel’s stature, and words begin to flow with much more ease than they did before you arrived. A natural, charismatic charm seeps through, sticky sweet, until it’s all but enveloped his demeanor, blanketing his palpable apprehension with an earnest geniality that radiates warmth like a fireplace. It washes over you, clinging to every inch of your skin, seeping through to your veins and igniting a flame low in your belly, a flickering heat that demands to be noticed.

You’re fairly certain he won’t be the one to cut through the guarded distance between you. Despite the unmistakable hunger in his eyes, he remains heedful, taking extra care to keep his hand from grazing yours as he reaches for the chip basket and keeping his body at least a foot away from yours. You want—desperately want—to shatter the glass partition he seems to have placed between you, to destroy the self-imposed barrier keeping his temptation at bay.

You start by sliding closer, closing the gap between your knees until they touch. That gets his attention, but he doesn’t retreat, he only meets your eyes with a look of inquiry, curiosity, and a hint of apprehension. You flash him your most doe-eyed, encouraging smile, sanctioning the proximity of your bodies, silently divulging that you want this, that you like him, that he can finally release the imprisoned breath he’s been holding beneath his sternum since he uttered his very first words to you.

Joel swings an arm around your shoulder, resting against the wooden panel atop the booth seat, leaving a few inches between your skin and the sleeve of his flannel. He doesn’t have to tell you a thing; you oblige him immediately, leaning your shoulders back and relaxing into his forearm. You fit seamlessly into the crook of his elbow, and the warmth emanating from his body makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention.

The second vodka cran—the one that you nearly shotgunned—possesses your will for a split-second and you find yourself reaching for his face, whisping the pad of your thumb across his wiry scruff. Despite the rough tickle it leaves behind, you immediately crave the sensation elsewhere, certain that the drag of it across a more delicate area might just feel like heaven.

“Can I be honest?” you whisper in a low lilt, tracing the brim of his cap with lazy fingers.

Joel nods with a thick swallow, his Adam's apple jumping almost comically in his throat.

“Yeah, f’course,” he responds with a strained attempt at nonchalance.

“I don’t like this hat.”

You grip the bill of the hat, wiggling it back and forth playfully. Your actions are outrunning your thoughts by a mile now, and you’re unable to keep your hands from wandering towards Joel’s magnetism. His face transforms into a bewildered, amused grin, one brow furrowed and the other cocked toward the ceiling.

“Mm,” he hums, a low, resonant sonance from the pit of his chest. “Why’s that?”

“I can’t see you,” you whine. “Can’t see that pretty face of yours, s’all hidden by a shadow.”

“I, um—” he whisks the hat off, running his fingers through a slicked mountain of curls. “My hair’s still wet.”

Christ. The light bathes his face, every detail revealing itself to you in absolute glory. He’s fucking beautiful, his features demanding of your undivided attention, an impossible balance between striking and soft. The flicker of need at the base of your core spreads at the speed of a wildfire, setting you ablaze with a hunger you can no longer ignore.

“Joel?”

His name spills from your throat, sliding off your tongue like a siren’s nectar. Your fingers find their way to his mane, weaving through the strands with a gentle tug. His inhale catches in his lungs, the air held prisoner as your nails trace along his temple and jaw. His eyes finally meet yours as the pad of your thumb drags across his lower lip, and it’s only then that you will his breath to freedom, a stuttering exhale pulsing with anticipation.

“I think we should get the check.”

A momentary shock quickly turns to realization, and with widened eyes and a stifled smirk he nods, wasting no time to flag down the waiter and ask for the bill. Neither of you speak; you find it almost impossible to do so, your gaze spellbound to the curve of muscle and veins that lay beneath his collar, and you swear you can see his pulse jumping beneath his skin.

You want nothing more than to feel the rush of it beneath your tongue.

Joel offers his arm to help you out of the booth, his flannel rolled to his elbows, exposing his thick and freckled forearms and a modest watch strapped to his wrist. He wastes no time whisking you towards the door, his palm flat against your lower back, waving a few rushed goodbyes to the folks he chatted with on the way in. You can feel his heat, his fervor, singeing your skin through your shirt, his fingers curled into the soft skin just above your ass. He holds the door for you as you lock eyes; you’re met with primitive opacity in his gaze, the desperation of it surging straight to your cunt.

You grasp his hand, and book it towards his truck, counting down the seconds before you lose control.

. . . . .

Joel hums with surprise as you twist the neck of his flannel into your fist, tugging him into you and colliding your lips savagely with his.

Fuck, you taste better than he could’ve possibly imagined.

He didn’t intend for the evening to end like this. In fact, he almost wanted to avoid it, wanted to take you out with the crystal-clear message of no expectation whatsoever. But he’s just a man after all, and the second your eyes started talking and hands started wandering, he knew there was no way he could resist giving you what you wanted.

His hands find their way to your hips with magnetic force, slipping under the hem of your shirt with ease and grasping at the softness that lies beneath the fabric. The strength of his hands is enough to push you flat against the passenger door as he tilts your pelvis towards him, easing your knees apart with an effortless nudge of his leg.

You gasp into his mouth as he pulls you onto his thigh, grinding you into the thick denim. The sound of you, breathless and needy, stirs a ravenousness in his chest that Joel had thought was long laid to rest, an avidity that only you have managed to awaken. You, in all your glory, drenched in honey and cream, calling out to him to come and taste.

As he bucks your hips a second time, you whine, your hands shooting up and tangling in his hair. You tug his head back, distancing his lips from yours, and he can’t help but groan at the loss of contact. Your gaze bears into his eyes with a newfound ferocity, a determination that leaves him straining against the confines of his jeans.

“You gonna give me what I need, Joel Miller?” you speak against his mouth in a hush.

Goosebumps litter the better part of his neck and chest as his eyes struggle to keep you in focus. The sting of pain at the back of his scalp only swells his desire, a sensation so staggering that he finds his breath caught, full and tight in his lungs, escaping only through labored, silent sighs.

“M’gonna give you whatever you need baby, whatever you want,” Joel pants, slurring his words against your gluttonous smirk.

Suddenly you’re diving beneath his jaw, dragging the heat of your mouth across the pattern he knows follows a prominent vein in his neck. Fuck, it feels euphoric, his pulse jumping against your tongue, every rush of blood to and fro delivering another wave of want straight to his cock. He gives in, letting his eyes roll back into his skull, no longer able to maintain any semblance of insouciance as he’s damn near collapsing under your spell. He can’t recall the last time he’d been touched like this. On the rare occasion he’d bring a woman home he found himself falling into routine, taking control because that’s what he sensed she would expect, fulfilling some sense of duty as a man that he never quite understood. He’d always felt a sort of magnetism toward assured women, but somehow they were never the ones who ended up in his bed, only wavering ladies who looked to him wide-eyed, waiting for instruction.

He’s quite sure he’ll never go back.

Joel drags your hips against him once again, this time increasing the friction, bearing you down on his thigh enough to feel the damp spot that’s pooled between your legs. You yelp, biting into his neck, the sting of your canines against his skin bordering on vampiric. Joel hisses, the pain once again blossoming into some sort of pleasure, twitching and crying from the head of him.

“Babydoll—shit—” he curses, stunned as you drag your lower teeth towards his ear, undoubtedly leaving behind a sketch of crimson. “You wanna get in the truck baby? Plenty’a room in the backseat.”

You hum in agreement, your lips wrapping around his earlobe, flicking it against your tongue before giving it a feeble nip. Joel fumbles in his pocket until he manages to unlock the door with his key, wasting no time as he pulls you tight to his chest, swinging the door ajar before offering a hand to help you inside. Despite his lust-stricken haze, his gentlemanly charm seems to be beaten into the very fiber of his being. You step into the car, gracing him with a personal view of the perfect splay of your hips and ass, only revving his hunger as he follows suit.

. . . . .

You don’t allow Joel but a second before you’re caging him in between your legs, straddling his thighs against the backseat of his truck. The rough grip of his hands on your hips, grinding you down on his knee, kneading into your curves; it was enough to set you entirely ablaze. No more matchstick flickering at the pit of your stomach, every cell in your body is pulsing with need, pleading for release by the hands of Joel Miller.

You can’t help but glide with a sharp rock of your hips across his lap, desperate to return some friction to the pounding ache within your walls. Your eyes lock with his as your clothed cunt skims the sizable tent of his jeans, observing him feverishly as he groans at the sensation.

“Fuck—” he grunts, his chest heaving as you slowly drag away again. “Easy, easy baby…”

His hands find the valley of your waist with ease, slowing your pace to an achingly languid speed. With each brush of your throbbing clit against the seam of your panties, another gush of slick floods from your core. It’s filthy, obscene, soaking all the way through the thick material of your sweatpants and onto Joel’s denim. You can’t even remember the last time you were this wet. It makes you burn that much more, the way his mere presence alone was enough to turn you into a sopping mess.

“Joel—” your palms cradle the curve of his jaw, holding him still to allow you to study him in the lowlight.

He’s so fucking beautiful, positively mesmerizing, his pupils blown wide with a raptured stare, the sharp curve of his nose like something carved from ancient marble. The pad of your thumb snakes across the pout of his lower lip, pressing down until his jaw goes slack, parting his mouth with an exhale.

Joel seems to lose himself in your gaze, his eyes not once leaving yours as you slip your thumb between his teeth and force him even wider, applying pressure to the tip of his tongue and feeling the muscle flex against your fingertips. You need his mouth, need it anywhere and everywhere and right fucking there, you need him to clean up this mess he’s made of you.

“You know how gorgeous you are, sugar?” you hum, spreading the slick from his tongue across his lower lip and down his chin. “You know I don’t do this for just anybody, right?”

“You’re the gorgeous one, baby, so goddamn gorgeous,” Joel pants, snaking his hands higher, up the bend of your waist until his palms reach the yielding skin that cloaks your ribcage. His thumbs trace the band of your bra; smooth, fluid motions that send chills crawling up your spine. “So beautiful I reckon’ it might jus’ kill me.”

You can’t help but smile at his sweetness, his accent reduced to a slurry of words, appearing to be drunk on your aura. It seems you’ve managed to reduce him down to his very core, the heat from your body melting through the hardened layers of gruff masculinity to reveal an almost desperate eagerness to please, a yearning to relinquish control.

“I can’t have you dyin’ on me, honeypie,” you allow your hands to wander, your fingertips finding their way to the uppermost button of his shirt. “I got far too many plans for that pretty little mouth of yours.”

You lean down to kiss him once again, your thumbs making quick work of the trail of remaining buttons. Your lips move sloppily against each other, the both of you unable to stifle your muffled moans, swallowing each other’s pleasure as your tongues waltz in the in-between.

“Tell me what to do, baby,” Joel croons against your cheek. “Fuck, want you s’bad, jus’ wanna make you feel good.”

Your fingers nestle into the damp mess of curls at the back of his skull. With an innocuous little tug, you guide his lips to the expanse of bare skin on your chest, his mouth settling at the heart of your sternum. You don’t even have to ask, his tongue darting past his lips, savoring the taste of you with a deliberate torpor. The graze of his scruff against your thumping heart feels better than you could have possibly imagined, sharp yet soft, ticklish enough to make your breath catch in your throat. You blanket the backs of his hands, your fingers settling in the spaces between his, maneuvering the wide expanse of his palms to splay across your breasts. You can’t believe the sheer size of his hands, enveloping your tits entirely, calluses harsh against the sensitive peaks veiled beneath the mesh of your bra.

“Touch me here,” you sigh, unable to keep yourself rocking slowly against his thigh. “Taste me. Show me how bad you want me, pretty boy.”

Something akin to a growl claws from his throat, and you gasp as his nails hook around the seam of your bra, exposing the peaks of your breasts with a relentless tug. He wastes no time, pulling your nipple into his mouth, his tongue flicking at the sensitive bud mercilessly.

“Fuck, oh fuck, that’s good baby,” you bear down into his thigh as his thumb finds your other nipple, rolling it between his forefinger. Your core surges with another wave of need, crying for attention, spilling her tears from your center and dampening the denim-clad thigh beneath her. “I need— shit— I need you lower, Joel.”

In your hungered haze, you push Joel flat against the seat of the truck, his eyes wide and wild as you climb atop him, his chest hiking and falling against your bare tits. He looks downright enraptured, licking his lips like a kid in a goddamn candy shop, fiending for a sugar high.

“You wanna taste me, sugar plum? You gon’ let me feed you?”

“Christ—” Joel curses, his hands wandering along your torso, lifting your shirt above your head and flinging it across the dash. He unclasps your bra with his free hand, sending it flying the opposite direction. “Please darlin’, need’ta taste you.”

You manage to kick off your sweats while Joel holds you steady by the hips, his eager words somehow igniting even more fervor in your movements. His thumbs knead into the give of your lower tummy, meandering beneath the waistband of your panties and twisting the elastic around his knuckles, slack-jawed and nearly possessed by the sight of your bare curves alone.

Joel gives you a nod, cupping your ass to ease you forward as your knees find a home adjacent to his ears. He pets along the length of your thighs, damn near drooling at the sight between them.

“Don’t hold back on me now,” Joel slips a finger beneath the seam of black lace, teasing against the soft damp skin closest to where you need him the most. “M’a big boy, can handle myself.”

You gasp as he shoves the soaked cloth covering your cunt to the side, brushing your desperate clit with his knuckle as he does so. You’re bare to him now, surely glistening and ripe and ready to be devoured.

“Don’t doubt it, cowboy,” you croon, raking a hand through his curls before lowering yourself onto his eager mouth.

A rocket of white-hot pleasure shoots straight through you as Joel latches on to your clit, nestling the bud between his lips. The searing sensation is enough to make your hips twitch forward, sending your hands to scramble for purchase to keep you upright. You can’t even make a sound; the release of euphoria coursing through you stealing the breath from your lungs, leaving you to choke on empty inhales until Joel finally gives your bud a moment of reprieve.

His tongue dips into the pool of your center, sending another swell of nectar from your core, coating his scruff in sweet slick. You hear him groan, muffled between your thighs, as his arms lock around your hips and push you down even further.

“Fuck, Joel—” you hiss, trying to keep yourself from grinding against the sharp curve of his nose, pulling yourself away slightly.

You swear you hear a hum of disapproval from between your legs as Joel chases you with his mouth, his grip tightening and his fingers digging mercilessly into the give of your thighs. His tongue is deep, drinking straight from the source of your arousal as his arms begin to rock you against his face, his nose grazing against your clit with an impossible precision; sending wave after wave of pleasure coiling up your spine. It seems dangerous, the way he’s devouring you without a single breath, but he holds you steady, bearing the weight of you onto his mouth with no hesitation.

“Baby, shit sweetheart— you gotta breathe,” you manage a fistful of his hair, pulling him off you with considerable force.

He looks thoroughly dazed; glassy irises and pink parted lips glistening with your dew, like a man who’s been given a taste but is nowhere near satiated. His chest swells and shallows rapidly beneath your ass, each breath bringing more color to his cheeks and a myriad of pearls forming across his hairline.

“Need more,” Joel pants, his fingers weaving around the lace stretched across your hips. “Need these gone, angel.”

You oblige him with a swiftness, pulling the garment to your knees, dismounting him to allow you to slip it past your ankles. His palms cup your ass and squeeze, his thumbs spreading you open to reveal even more of yourself to him. The stretch feels good, the sensitive muscles fluttering with the shock of the exposure, sticky and soaked from the steady drip seeping from your sex.

“So pretty…” he kneads into your pliable cheeks. “Can I taste it? Please sugar, need’ta taste all of you.”

God, his desperation is like a siren song, your desire burning hot and full in your throat. You hum with approval, mounting him once more but reverse this time, a wave of goosebumps skittering across your skin in anticipation.

He starts gentler this time, licking a languid stripe from your taint to your tailbone. His tongue splays across your skin, wide and flat, making sure not to miss a single inch. A guttural moan escapes your lungs; an uninhibited response to the forgotten feeling of heat in that region, an entirely distinctive kind of pleasure that sends your eyes spinning to the back of your skull. Your nails dig crescents into the cushions your hands are so violently clinging to, your back arching, matching in a manner to match the little moons left behind by your fingers.

Joel groans in response to your noises, biting at the supple flesh gathered in his hands, his hunger surely spurred by the sweet sounds of your euphoria. Like a switch, his mouth turns greedy again, lapping against your puckered skin with a ferocity that makes you cry out his name. He gives you no moment of respite, jerking your hips toward him and seizing your clit with his curved tongue and pulling you into him, his nose practically fucking your cunt.

“Ohhh, that’s…” you trail off, your eyes beginning to water from the sheer intensity of it. “Christ, you’re heaven.”

At that, Joel seems to lose control, seemingly possessed by a determination to make you meet God. His palms jerk your hips back and forth, your clit never once escaping the grasp of his lips, his nose delving into your pussy with reckless abandon. Pleasure ravages the whole of you in a frenzy, wave after wave surging in your belly until you’re all but crying, quivering as you white-knuckle the headrest holding you steady. Your orgasm topples through you, your vision blasting with light as your walls clamp again and again, squeezing the length of Joel’s nose buried in your cunt.

Joel doesn’t release your clit from his mouth until you’re yelping, twitching and gasping from overstimulation. His grip softens as you fly forward to your hands and knees, your chest heaving with exhaustion, your muscles bearing through the aftershocks of your release. His lips find the backs of your thighs, trailing sweet, slow kisses across the expanse of skin. They feel like praise, almost like he’s thanking you without words; a mellifluous tempo of graciousness that you had yet to experience from him.

Part of you wants to linger in the divinity of this moment, but from your position you find yourself face to face with the bulging mass beneath his jeans. It looks painful, the outline of his shaft straining against thick denim and a sturdy zipper. You manage to unbutton the pants with your one free hand, slipping your palm beneath the waistband effortlessly.

“Jesus, Joel,” you chuckle, astonished by the way his cock fills your palm, heavy and thicker than you would have ever anticipated. You begin to stroke him above his boxers, softly and slowly, swirling your fingertips across the head of him as you feel him groan beneath you, dampening your fingers with his weeping tip. “Lemme help you, sugar.”

Joel grunts out his approval, his palm splayed across your ass, seemingly as a means to ground himself to this mortal plane. The callused pads on his fingertips clutch you relentlessly as you free his dick from the confines of his clothes, holding the base of him steady as you glide the tip of your tongue across his glistening slit.

His hips jerk forward at the sudden contact, sending the length of him thrusting into your open mouth. You welcome him wholly, savoring the salty musk that coats your cheeks and the sting in your jaw as you stretch to accommodate him.

“Fucking—shit—” he growls, his breaths coming in short, shallow bursts. “C’mere, god damn—”

He tugs you back onto his open mouth, burying himself into you once more with a reignited ferocity, drinking the remnants of your orgasm. You yelp, your throat flexing around his tip as he flicks your overstimulated clit, the blend of pleasure and torment accosting your nervous system.

It’s downright mean, the mercilessness of his tongue sending you straight into overdrive. Two can play at that game.

You take him as deep as you can manage, hollowing your cheeks as you swirl your tongue around his girth. He groans into your pussy, licking you faster, pulling your lips apart with his tongue and spreading them like angel wings. You can’t help but grin, the unspoken competition between you revving with intensity with each passing second, sending the both of you toppeling into bliss, warmth spilling down your throat as you cry out against his cock. Your thighs begin to shake as you reach your peak, tears beading in your eyes as you grasp tightly onto the flexing muscles in Joel’s legs. You choke on his name as his dick falls from your lips, bearing through surge after surge of euphoria. The pleasure is so consuming that it coils itself around your windpipe and renders you mute, holding you hostage until it’s had its way with you and leaving you dizzy when it finally relents.

Your arms give out on you and you collapse, exhaustion possessing you for a moment until your consciousness returns. You feel Joel pressing soft, sweet kisses to the back of your thigh, and suddenly become aware of the fact that you’re likely crushing his dick beneath your weight. You ease off of him slowly, your legs quivering with the effort, turning to face him as he shifts himself to a seated position and fastens his jeans.

The moonlight catches the sweat beading at his hairline; the glassy whites of his eyes and the dew on his lips beaming under the cool-toned hue. He looks like art, soft lines and harsh edges painted exactly where you’d want them; masculine shadows dancing across his skin as he shifts his weight, daring you to watch them move. You’ve never been so completely mesmerized by a man. Not once in your life has a man rendered you speechless, but here you are; irreversibly hypnotized and a stranger to the English language. You’re aware of yourself—painfully aware of your staggering silence and your gawkish gaze—and you shake your head, laughing at the unbelievable effect washing over you.

Joel’s cheeks turn ruddy, his irises shifting between you and his lap as he drapes his arm across his chest, giving his own shoulder a hearty squeeze.

“What’s funny?” he breathes, insecurity creeping in his throat.

You come to suddenly; the stark realization that you’re probably making the man nervous is enough to break you from your trance. You crawl towards him, your fingertips grazing the underside of his jaw, tilting him towards you until your lips are merely an inch apart.

“Nothin’ sugar,” you hum, pressing your lips to his in a gentle kiss. “You’re just one hell of a cowboy.”

#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #plus size reader #plus size!reader #joel x reader #young joel miller #tlou #the last of us

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guppybibi · 3 months ago

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Just a Teenage Dirtbag, Like You

aahh this took me a while ToT, not proofread idk

content: smoking, i dont listen to weezer im sorry, don't bother with the timelines tbh i gave up

Teenage!König who used to go hang out at abandoned places, ranging from hospitals, schools, malls, to even churches. He doesn't necessarily do anything there, just chills around in his own bubble.

Though sometimes he comes across groups of teenagers, some his age, some older and younger. Doesn't really matter though, they don't mind, and he certainly doesn't so it doesn't cause them any trouble.

Doesn't really do anything people his age would consider fun there..no booze, no cigarettes, he simply just sits at a corner, avoids the growing black mold on the damp wall and thinks. God, the amount of people he unintentionally spooked by pulling this can barely be counted on his fingers.

Most of the time, he moves from one abandoned place to another, not much different from a criminal that was on the run. Though this particular spot at an abandoned store was perfect for him, pretty hidden, not much people around, it was like it was meant to be. So König does the closest thing he could to mark his territory there, set up a shabby corner for himself there. Sure it may look like a homeless person is staying there but you gotta do what you gotta do.

It's always just been König and himself, well for the first few months at least. The first time he heard it was basically a month ago, some swishing and rustling here and there but it could've easily been nature's work. Who knows what the birds and the bees were up to?

Over the days though, König was more than sure someone else was there with him, the fact that he could clearly hear whispers and bustling made him positive about it. Not that it was a bad thing, he could really care less if a whole family moved into this place, he could just be that guy staying (not so) secretly in their attic or basement..Plus it's not like he's the righteous owner, so it doesn't matter.

It's like having a roommate you don't know about. (And they were roommates?!?)

So that's how it went for months on end, acknowledging each other's presence (Well that's what König thinks at least, he's not sure if you're aware of him being here with you.) yet never interacting.

And König's completely fine with that, not the littlest bit disturbed about it. The two of you meeting is bound to be inevitable but he'll let time do it's magic and wait, König is used to waiting after all. Waiting to get picked during group projects, only to be chosen last since didn't really have a choice. Waiting for his turn because he was constantly the last in line. Waiting and waiting and waiting, he's used to it. So it's fine with him.

The presence of the mystery person you're here with is incredibly noticeable, not that you've seen them directly. But you could imagine that the way they carried themselves would be this strong & dominant figure, it's best not to mess with whoever they are. It's like they're purposely making their presence known by the way they stomp around the place. (Little did you know it was just König walking:c he didn't mean to be so loud) You're simply just here for some peace and quiet, not to cause trouble.

Getting away from society's norms were exceptionally hard as little miss perfect, more difficult than any exams you've went through. So you found solitude in this forsaken space, the freedom you have here is beyond what you can taste in the outside world. And you're grateful for it.

It's really not much if you're being honest, a picnic mat laid down on the dusty concrete floor with some fairy lights stringed around that occasionally flickered when the battery was running low.

You didn't want to do this, but not all wants are met aren't they?

Today was a particularly bad one, everyone succeeding in getting under your skin like it was a challenge everyone agreed on. Heated stomps were placed on the cracked surface beneath you, unable to contain your temper any longer, you throw your school bag against the ground on your slightly secluded spot and let out a huff. Sitting down, you pull out a pack of cigarettes from your pocket, not so little miss perfect now huh?

Blowing out a puffy cloud of smoke, you sighed in relief. Heaven knows how much you needed that pick me up. Unbeknownst to you, the smoke was spreading out that even König who's practically at the other side of the building, could smell it.

König wasn't too bothered with the smoke's odor, having grown up in a raggedy-ass neighborhood, at the end of the day cigarette smoke was unavoidable. Though this day wasn't the best for König, as he had yet another awkward social interaction to add to the list. He simply went here to clear his head but if it's filled with a bunch of cloudy smoke, he's certainly bothered by it.

Unsurely, he believes that the scent could be coming from outside, not from you. But it doesn't hurt to tell you about how it bothers him right? Plus, he thinks that he should introduce himself now as you two have basically been roommates for months now. So he'll do it, he'll be the bigger person and communicate.

Standing up reluctantly, König went over to what he believed was your spot in this forgotten place. To his surprise, he sees you. Well, the actual you, not the figure of you he made up in his brain. You were the polar opposite of what he thought you'd be like, expecting to see a troublesome teenager living the life of a teenage dirtbag, not a teenage girl who looks like she's the top of her class. But you were smoking a cig right now, not..what he'd exactly expect coming from a person looking like you. He doesn't judge though..most of the time so he approaches you nonetheless.

"Um..excuse me?" He calls out, hoping to get your attention as quick as possible to avoid embarrassingly repeating his words again. Luckily for him you're in no need for hearing aids just yet, instantly turning over once you heard his voice. "Yeah?" You ask, bobbing your head to the side while you blow out a cloud of smoke, lightly tapping your cigarette.

"Sorry to bother but do you think you could smoke outside?" He asks, watching you intently when you toss the cigarette aside. "Oh? No it's totally fine, I'll stop. I just needed a little shot in the arm, that was enough." You answer, scratching the back of your neck. This was..awkward to say the least. This was your first ever conversation despite technically knowing each other for months now.

König's eyes ineptly darted around the place as he mentally decided if he should try to take this conversation further or just scurry away, but oh! Look at that, a Weezer poster plastered on the wall! The perfect conversation starter!

"You like Weezer?" He asks, making himself comfortable as he sits right beside you. König notices the way your eyes spark up like fireworks on New Year's day. "I do! I'm like their #1 fan, ya like Weezer too?" You were gladly met with him nodding his head, happily pulling out your CD player so you two can jam along to their songs.

Chucking in a random CD from your..let's say extensive collection, "No One Else" starts playing. You soon learn that his name was König likewise, he learned about your name too. He learned more than that actually, the things you liked and didn't, your pet peeves, and the fact that maybe love at first sight was real.

Oh God König felt like an absolute idiot, why did falling for you feel like tumbling down a flight of stairs? König never really bothered with 'crushes' and all that, his confidence lowered down from all the bullying he receives daily.

Now though, perhaps he has a chance, he hopes. Maybe he should give love a try again.

Things between the two of you seem to progress into something better, something more than just two best friends. König couldn't believe it, how could his heart let his guard down and actually let you in? The so-called infatuation should only last about 2 weeks max, not months! He wants to individually torture each and every butterfly in his stomach to get rid of this unfamiliar feeling, love.

There's no doubt about it anymore, it really was that hideous thing called love. And König did not like it one bit, he had always felt like he doesn't deserve anything close to love. Don't even get me started on commitment, actually confessing to you? He'd rather crawl into a cave and never leave than do that! Commitment is a big thing to ask from König, it's just something so foreign to him, the only thing he's committed to in his life was his education and future career.

The future in question may be approaching soon, a little too soon. When König found out that you could already volunteer at the military this time of year, he was torn apart on what to do. This could've been the future career he had always thought about as a kid, already imagining himself as a recon sniper. Then there was you who randomly came into his life and instantly stuck to him like super glue, he was doomed.

He needs to choose, like..now if possible.

It's been weeks since you've heard from König, the band posters on the walls of his spot replaced with imaginary missing posters with his face plastered on it. All of his things in his spot was wiped clean, well as clean as the abandoned building could get but you know what I mean. He wasn't responding to your calls and texts either, you were so close to calling the authorities because he could've been left in a garage freezer by some serial killer! There was little you could do besides wait, wait like a clingy puppy by the doorstep.

When König had gone, you went to the abandoned place less often, internally hoping that the things you left there weren't raided or stolen. But you had another particularly rough day, wanting to reminisce and clear your mind, you make your way back.

Unexpectedly, you find a crumpled up note on your spot. Last time you checked, nothing like it was there. You hesitantly grabbed it, debating if you should open and see. But curiosity takes over you as you open it, it was a lengthy letter, obviously from König based off the rusty penmanship.

It was a random string of words about König signing up for the military, all of the words flying out and through your head to protect the state of your already fragile heart. The words "Goodbye, I love you." go in your line of sight.

He just left for the military, left this note and nothing else, he abandoned you like a shipwreck, abandoned you like the place you two first met.

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enha-sua · 1 year ago

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(🔴) ... [ NOW PLAYING ] [ENGENE-MADE] THE LOVE TRIANGLE THAT IS : HEESUHOON !

❛intro❜ : every generation has famous ships , it's inevitable.... but out of all the fourth gen ships , there hasn't been any that comes close the mess of a love triangle that is heesuhoon.

quick heesuhoon analysis: heeseung likes sua , but sunghoon also likes sua , but sua hates love triangles and they both know that but that doesn't stop them , and they think they're being slick but fans are aware and some are team suseung and some are team suhoon , and then theres a portion of them who just want all three of them to get a house together and live there lives until their golden age there (me) and for heehoon to stop being so obviously suspicious of jungwon , because of the small crush he had during i-land...

anyways today we're here to decide who's the best ship , and then it's up to you guys to pick your favorite ship

ROUND ONE !

heeseung tying her shoe for her when she can't do it

example one: *video from a concert* *sua having to sit down during a few concerts because she sustained a injury to her knee and had to wear a cast* *doesn't know her shoe is untied* *heeseung does though* *heeseung mouthing: "your shoe" * *she can't hear* "huh" *bends down in the middle of the concert to tie her shoe* *the rest of enhypen are in complete confusion* *like dawg you are in the middle of the concert🤨*

example two: "unnie , your shoe!" *fan points to her shoes.* "ah! thank you" *about to bend down and tie it* *heeseung is quicker than that though* *bends down* *engenes going crazy* *enhypen once again caught in these two's love story while the staff are in the back gave up telling them to chill out* *sua is flustered* "as expected from heeseung." *jay is annoyed , even though he's captain of the ship*

heeseung: 2 sunghoon: 0

ROUND TWO !

sunghoon always holding her bags for her

example one: "this bag is so annoying , i don't even know why i carry it." *spots a wild sunghoon minding his business*"my shoulders hurt so bad." *sunghoon immediately grabbing the bag* "i told you to stop using this bag , you always get red marks from holding it on your shoulders all day." *holding it in his hand.* "i'll only hold it for a second , then you're getting it back" *aggressive love* *3 hours later: he still has it* *jake notices him holding it on his shoulder now* "bro , she tricked you again?" *he doesn't even care* "yah , her shoulder was hurting , leave me alone." *he was hoodwinked*

example two: *fan video from twitter when they were at the prada event* *sunghoon waiting for her to get out the car* *ladies if he could he would* *finally gets out the car , and they're walking* *sunghoon mouthing: hand me your bag* *look at her smile , she knows she has him wrapped around her finger* *sua mouthing: thanks love* *happy hoonie* *suhooners have a field day with this video every other week*

heeseung: 2 sunghoon: 2

ROUND THREE : !

heeseung giving her his sweater

*sua talking to engenes* *heeseung senses something is wrong* "are you cold?" *he's so cute 😭* "no , im fine." *she's obviously cold* "i told you to wear something warm." *heeseung scolding her as usual* "yah- im not cold" *doesn't want him to win* "fine , next time you should listen* *pouty sua* *she keeps talking , but he can see her shivering* *takes his sweater off , wrapping it around her body* *smiley sua* "i knew you were cold." *look at his smile , that is the look of a man in love*

heeseung: 3 sunghoon : 2

ROUND FOUR !

sunghoon always keeping a sweater for her in his bag

*sua literally past out in the back😭* *sunghoon noticing* "that's because she's up all night playing on her ipad , she never goes to bed on time." *shaking his head like he isn't right beside when she's spamming weverse like a lunatic* "she's probably uncomfortable and cold." *gets up and walks away from the camera* *5 minutes later* *he's back with her sweater , draping it over her body* "she falls asleep anywhere , so you have to keep one at all times." *he says with the most serious face* "cute" *like what sunghoon😭*

heeseung: 3 sunghoon: 3

ROUND FIVE !

suseung being cute

example one: *sua's birthday live* "where are the members? everyone is busy , they said they could've make it , but i'll take the cake home and we'll share it." *look at her frown* "anyway , back to what i was talking about." *5 minutes later* *knock on the door* "oh? who could that be?" *confused sua* *door opens* "i'm li-" *look at how her eyes light up* "what are you doing here" *that smile 💔* "what do you mean?" *it's heeseung !!!* "i came to wish you a happy birthday." *handing her the gift* "what is this?" *embarrassed heeseung* "ah! don't open yet , wait until i leave." *spoiler alert : it was the necklace she really wanted , im fucking sobbing😭* "thank you." *hugs him* *all the suseungers are dying*

example two: *sua and heeseung on a day out* "she forced me to sit in the nail salon for and hour while she got her nails sone." *she bamboozled* "i asked you if you wanted me to wait , i was gonna wait !" *not him just laughing* "anyways , i got these , they're baby pink , and look i got little bow gems." *heeseung cooking up a idea* *smirking* "let me see." *pouty sua* "no" "come on , let me see." *so unaware* "fine , only because they're cute and i want to show them off." *shows him* *grabs her hand and interlocks them* *look how flustered she is* "what are you doing?" *heeseung trying to be innocent* "what" *so fucking cute😭💔*

heeseung: 5 sunghoon: 3

ROUND SIX !

suhoon being cute

example one: *sua doing a live in her room* "i cleaned my room for this , it's normally clothes everywhere" *same love , same* *knock on the door* "give me a minute" *gets up to answer it* "yah , im live." "i know , i was watching on my way home." *sunghoon doesn't care , he's come to disturb her piece* "park sunghoon!" *sits on her bed* "what do you want?" *sits back down* "did you just get home?" *like did she forget she was live , her whole body is turned to him* "hmm , i bought you food." *smiley sua* "thank you." *like the eye contact is killing me* "i'll wait for you to finish , so we can eat together." *and he did , he waited for the entire live 😭*

example two: *vacation content* *sua likes sitting by herself sometimes* *sunghoon likes to sit with sua* "what?" *says nothing* "what do you want?" just grabs her hand , and holds it.* *her face is all red , enhypen staff are literally throwing up rn trying to edit this* *they literally just sit in silence , while he plays with her fingers* *like the rest of the members are literally bouncing off the walls and they're just sitting there*

heeseung: 5 sunghoon: 5

BONUS CLIP OF HEESUHOON IN ACTION !

heehoon both being jealous and ready to kill jungwon ( not literally no jungwons were actually hurt ) *hopefully😀*

"noona." *sua anytime the maknae line calls her that* "ah , cute!" *pinches his cheek* "so cute" *sua calm down , he's not going no where there's no need to be hugging him like that* *jungwon pretending this is his own personal hell , knowing he loves this* *heehoon on the other hand , this is their personal hell* *look at their faces 😳* "yah sua." *heeseung stopping sunghoon from a scandal* *sua hears them , turns around* *notices their expressions* *smiles* *look at them giggling like little school children* *all she did was smile STAND UP*

heeseung: 6 sunghoon: 6

❛outro❜ : there's no winner they both are equally in love with the girl who hates love triangles and they should all just get a house together and live out their days there... but in all serious , who's your favorite ship , suseung or suhoon ?

comment down you fav , and don't forget to like and subscribe for more sua content goodbye 👋🏽

©️ENHA-SUA

#꒰..🪷꒱ sua : content ⊹꒪#kpop added member #kpop reactions #kpop addition #enhypen 8th member #enhypen reactions #kpop female addition #kpop female oc #enhypen added member #kpop female member #enhypen female addition #enhypen female member #8th member of enhypen #enhypen addition #fictional kpop idol #fictional idol addition #fictional idol oc #fictional idol community #enhypen female oc

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l223m0nade · 21 days ago

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Bees (a stucky au snzfic)

ok ok

so I saw this random thing on a tumblr post:

and it got its Stucky-idea hooks so deep in my brain. It just did. And the thing is my deepest inspo is honestly in the land of snz. (This fic kind of ends abruptly sorry but i want to do more and it'll probably end up on Ao3 w like a M or E rating 😳🫣 when and if that happens i'll link to it)

Stucky au, no powers, age gap, what I'm picturing in my head goes less with the words "silver fox Steve" and more with the words "dorky Dilf Steve" like 2012 Cap fashion with current Chris Evans face? in..a good way? and longhair early-20s burnout Bucky. I have some backstory headcanons that are just hinted at here, hopefully it's tantalizing rather than confusing.

anyway have 11.5k words of this and encourage me to write more bc i have fallen in love with these particular boyz. Some light existential angst but mainly idiots pining aka the sweetest sauce

~Fic~

Sam isn’t sure how much longer he can allow this to go on. His barback and the new semi-regular square dude are once again being all awkwardly flirty while pretending they’re not, like two sad lonely white...ducks, who never learned a mating dance and have zero game.

At least Square Dude has an excuse: he’s the most obvious newly-divorced newly-out family-type guy Sam’s ever seen. He’s clean-cut, with a ridiculously handsome square jaw, wearing well-made but unstylish button-down shirts and pants that make him look like he belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting. He started coming in about two months ago, quiet, friendly when ordering his one or two beers of the evening, and firmly shy when it comes to the inevitable overtures sent his way. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is him dipping a first toe into the pool: coming to a relatively quiet gay bar, just to sit and watch men talk to each other and let the whole notion sink in.

By now most guys would’ve found someone to spread their wings with or gone elsewhere to find em, but Square Dude, whose name is Steve, seems content to talk to the guy who pours his beer about whatever DIY project Bucky is pulling questions out of his ass about.

The crush is painfully obvious, and suburban closeted Steve can’t be blamed for having no deal-sealing abilities, but Bucky has no such excuse. Sam has watched him pull stiff-backed business bros in five minutes flat when the mood struck him, with his big blue puppy eyes and his dark wicked smirk and long lean slouch. But with Steve all he appears capable of doing is asking him questions about crown molding as though those words mean anything to him while gazing at him like he’s beaming the words You could fix me directly into Steve’s skull. Steve, for his part, just doesn’t seem to be able to look anywhere other than Bucky.

As usual, anyone that tries to strike anything beyond a friendly conversation is kindly but firmly rebuffed. “He’s not ready for that yet,” Bucky had insisted with unnecessary defensiveness when Sam implied it was time for the new guy to move from spectating to participating in the relatively mellow flirting and hookup scene the bar played host to most evenings. “People go at their own pace.”

“The only pace he’s going at is towards you,” Sam smirked. Bucky glowered at his implication. “You gotta make it weird. He comes here to, like, practice. I’m part of that, in a chill, friendly way.” He shrugged and looked at the glass he was drying. “When he is ready, it’s not gonna be for me, it’s gonna be for someone actually in his league, like a...hot college professor, or something.” Sam had rolled his eyes and resolved to stop trying to help Bucky Barnes flail around in his mess of a love life anymore, for the hundredth or so time.

Tonight is busy enough that Sam can mostly be distracted from this bad sitcom, and not so busy that he has to yell at Barnes for being distracted. Still, there are a couple empties on tables in the Steve-less side of the bar, and after finishing the drinks for the people in front of him he turns, catching Bucky’s voice, in a tone of delight he uses when speaking with only one person, saying “Wait. Seriously? Bees?”

“Yeah!” Steve responds, equally puppyish. He’s tall and broad, sandy hair and beard just beginning to show a hint of salt-and-pepper. He looks like anyone’s fantasy fireman or lumberjack, at least in the context of a place like this. He also exudes genuine sweetness and vulnerability despite his intimidating muscled height.

Bucky Barnes, Sam’s barback and old friend, leans against the bar doing the helpless-goober-with-a-crush stare, a look on his face like Steve just announced he was a Nobel Prize winner. “No way. How do you keep bees? Just as, what, a casual hobby? That’s, like, a whole thing, you can’t be an expert in so many things!”

Bucky is all shaggy longish dark hair and stupid cheap graphic t-shirts, with a striking, animated face that is used mainly for sarcasm. He and Sam had been at the same high school a few blocks away, though Sam is older, and in the funny way of life they’ve wound up good friends. He’s working at Sam’s place because, in his words, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with his life. Bucky’s going through his own version of one of those fairly bleak lost periods of 20-something misery, but he’s smart and not a drunk and decent at what he does for Sam, and if he bangs a third of the customers he does it discreetly enough. Sam never knew dark-blond, broad-shouldered, bass-voice sad-eyed dudes pushing 40 were the kryptonite that made him unable to do anything including flirt, until Steve came in one day and Bucky sprayed himself with the keg he was tapping.

Steve chuckles— is this man blushing? “Oh no, I’m nowhere near an expert. But it’s pretty easy once they get established. Don’t need much from you. I’m not, uh, living at the place with the backyard where the hives are, right now….so….but they’ll be fine without me.”

Steve gets a little quiet and Bucky’s fangirl expression dims with distressed sympathy. It gets sad like this sometimes when talking to Steve. Recently divorced guys had this problem, where everything came back to the one topic. Steve’s not doing it pathologically, didn’t seem like, just genuinely realizing another change. Bucky looks stricken. He doesn’t always seem young, at newly 24, but sometimes it still shows.

Sam finally manages to catch his eye away from gazing at Steve to convey a quick head jerk of get-the-hell-over-there-and-do-the-job-I-pay-you-for, and Bucky peels himself away with an apologetic smile at Steve. Sam picks up the conversation with Steve as Bucky clears tables at top speed, hearing how he’s renting a place month-to-month not far away, not able to plan something more permanent just yet. He doesn’t say anything revealing, but it’s still easy to paint a picture of a small, empty apartment. Bucky’s not the only one with a soft spot for this guy, and Sam is warmed by the thought that his little bar offers him respite.

………………..

“That’s so sad,” moans Bucky a few days later. It’s just after opening on a weekday afternoon, and Bucky seemed quieter than usual so Sam is tantalizing him with what he learned talking to Steve the other day. “Did he say—you know he has kids?”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam answers. He’d been as offhand as a person could be about that sort of thing, but it wasn’t hard to see how he really felt. He was standing in the rubble of a sincere loving marriage to a woman with whom he had two 11-year old twins. Helped explain his rectitude when it came from moving from his spot at the bar, meeting someone other than the staff. Bucky’s eyes are pools of sympathetic anguish and Sam feels the need to say, “This kinda stuff happens to people, Buck,” earning an eye-roll for his patronizing efforts. “It’s good he’s coming here, learning about himself. I think you help a lot, for the record.”

Bucky starts and gives him a bewildered look. “What?”

This is aging him. Sam sighs, “He’s lonely. Maybe feels kinda lost right now.”

Bucky’s mouth gets a pained downward slant to it.

“He. Likes. You.”

At that, of course, Bucky gets uncomfortable, blushing and moving off to wipe tables somewhere away from Sam, rubbing his nose and clearing his throat like he’s been doing since he got there. He brightens when Steve comes in an hour later, and Sam rolls his eyes and leaves them to their game of mouse-and-mouse.

Steve is telling Bucky... how window insulation works. He thinks he asked, he hopes to god he did, at least. He’s been embarrassing himself for weeks, coming to this place almost every day. He’s kept it pretty well under wraps that although he liked the neighborhood simplicity, and talking to Sam, and got comfortable after the first few visits, the real reason he’s there more evenings than not is to see Bucky. With his bright grey-blue eyes and dark hair hanging past his chin, swinging against his cheekbones, with his smile and wicked sense of humor and his confounding ease in himself, the ease that gives Steve despair and hope for himself. With that mouth and that divot in his chin, and those last two thoughts are not allowed, because the need to put his thumb into that dot in his sculpted chin and kiss those ridiculously pink lips is urgent and unthinkable.

He doesn’t do that, he just sits and pines and chats awkwardly with him, and gets to know a few other regular guys and talks sports with Sam. He just likes talking to Bucky, it’s easy, easy like nothing has been in a long time, and he’s a creep, he’s a pathetic older guy using his experience to take advantage of a younger guy—

Only, he’s not actually experienced here, at all. And Bucky is so smart, he’s self-deprecating about it but it’s not like he and Steve aren’t generally on the same level beyond his inner glossary of home improvement terminology. He downplays the fact that he knows cars like an expert, insists the stuff Steve learned from keeping up an old house and the hobbies he picked up to stay sane is somehow far more impressive— Steve’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose, to make him feel less adrift and clueless. He has that way about him, of someone who looks after other people without realizing it.

Things were all dark there for a while, with the end of his marriage to Peggy. But he’s pretty sure he and Bucky are friends, and he feels bright when he sees him.

Tonight, though, Bucky seems just a little worn down. He’s wearing a waffle-knit shirt under his incomprehensible-thorny-calligraphy-t-shirt, as though he’s cold, and his eyes are tired. Steve waits for a reply to the last thing he said and looks to see Bucky with a dazed, spaced-out expression, before he shakes his head and rubs his nose, saying “Sorry, I thought I was gonna sneeze, what’d you say?”

Talking about the goddamn weather and window insulation was segueing into a real conversation, to Steve’s delight: “How my mom moved us out to Jersey so we could live somewhere better and I never forgave her.” Bucky gives a wide-eyed grimace of agreement and he can’t help the bright laugh that bursts out of him. “How about you, you grow up in the city?” He’d inadvertently spilled his guts about the divorce on like his third time in the bar, something that humiliated him to think of but Sam had simply said with an understanding face wasn’t too unusual, so Bucky knew the basics about Peggy and the twins, but Steve had felt clumsy asking Bucky about himself.

He rolled his eyes with his problematically attractive crooked grin and answered, “Aw man, I grew up practically around the block from this place. Went to high school at the big catholic cinderblock in the neighborhood. I was at school on the west coast for a couple years, but…” His eyes cast downward. “now I’m back.”

Steve remembers how bad it felt at that age, to not have accomplished enough fast enough. Saying that will make him sound like an old grey dad and even if that’s what he is he can still hold out a little hope of being something different here, so he just says, “Brooklyn’s a good hometown to come back to.”

That makes Bucky smile at him and look him in the eye, like he liked what Steve said, even like it made him feel better. Steve tamps his answering grin down to reasonable levels.

Bucky’s also been rubbing at his nose on and off this whole time, and he can see it give a little twitch right before he breathes out a “scuse-me” through hitching breaths, his eyes flickering closed. He pushes his nose firmly into his long-sleeved elbow. “hhh-hh-tdschuh!” He sneezes quietly and muffled. “Oh, snf, sorry,” he says, blinking and emerging from his elbow but not lowering it, the hazy ticklish look still on his face, breaths hitching. “Another—hhh—‘nother one?” He freezes, looking up at the overhead lights, nostrils flared, but after a second he deflates with a sigh. “Nope, nevermind. Snff.” Steve’s guts swoop. This crush is so unsustainable. He’s gonna fail to be cool and friendly and he’ll have to watch Bucky go all uncomfortable and pitying as he explains to Steve that he has six hot boyfriends who are not almost-forty almost-virgin losers who only know how to take up his time when he’s trying to work. According to his therapist these “harangues of negativity” are “unhelpful.” But Bucky looks tired and a little pale and like his nose is going to start turning pink and Steve is just trying to survive.

“Bless you,” Steve says softly in his gentle voice that’s so deep it takes Bucky by surprise and makes his stomach flutter every time he talks to him. He feels like he might be blushing.

“Thanks,” it comes out husky and he clears his throat hard, moving to the little sink to wash his hands.

“Allergies, or…?” Steve ventures, a little divot between his eyebrows of concern-more-like-pity.

“I dunno, something’s bothering my nose today,” he says lightly with a shrug. In truth Bucky has a good idea what’s making him sneeze. The fucking radiator that was supposed to heat his cheap shitty basement apartment had stopped working in the middle of the night, so he’d spent six hours until dawn shivering, and an itchy tickly feeling had been growing in the back of his nose and throat since around noon. It’s starting to evolve into a runny nose and an ever-present but elusive feeling of being about to sneeze, and he knows that means he’s coming down with a cold.

He sees some convenient glasses to clear and excuses himself with a smile so he can sniffle out of Steve’s earshot; he’s enough of a mess compared to Steve on his best day, he doesn’t need to show off his scraggly urchin runny nose aesthetic of tonight any more than he has to.

For the next hour, these light, tickly sneezes either sneak up on him or abandon him at the last minute, leaving his nose feeling like it’s going to start getting stuffy.

Steve watches Bucky do his job, sniffling, rubbing his nose, and sneezing furtively into his sleeve or collar; tucking the strands of hair that have come loose from his short ponytail behind his ears, and feels so helplessly tender for him that it can’t be normal or healthy even by desperate crush standards.

Bucky’s coming down with a cold. He seems to want to brush it off, but Steve can hear a slight change in the resonance of his voice that gives it away even if the tired pink starting to border his eyes and nostrils doesn’t. The place is getting crowded and he’s busy; Steve feels for him, as well as pathetically jealous of his attention as he banters with him in passing once in a while.

He glances up as Bucky heads in his direction with a short stack of empty glasses and sees his steps slow; he pauses, blinks up at the overhead light, eyes hazy, and then, wavering, starts to turn his face into his shoulder, before pausing again and then sighing and sniffing as the sneeze evaporates. He looks up and sees Steve watching him like a creep and laughs, “Damn, lost her,” and then as he continues behind the bar, “You havin’ fun watching me look stupid?”

“It’s agony actually,” he responds, gets a laugh, and feels the now-somewhat-familiar internal squeal of this is flirting! I’m flirting with a guy and I think he can tell! It’s painfully pathetic, but he can’t help but track the fact that Bucky knows plenty of the folks that come to Sam’s, that he’ll give anyone his attention if they ask for it, smiling and joking, but the only person he really goes out of his way to talk to, initiates teasing with, is him, Steve. It’s still nothing more than polite obligatory chatting, he’s sure— when you work at a bar this kinda thing is natural. Bucky is young and charismatic and gorgeous. His love life would probably give Steve enough combined envy and jealousy to cause heart failure, which would be perfectly appropriate because he is an old square divorcee. It makes him warm and bubbly enough that he seems to be Bucky’s favorite customer to pass the time with.

A guy down the bar gets his beer from Sam and sidles closer. “This seat taken?” he asks with a good-humored cocked eyebrow. This is why Steve actually started coming to this place: to meet people, to meet guys, in a way that, well, went somewhere. To call his own decades-old bluff. Not to moon over staff half his age who woulda been out of his league even if he was still in his twenties. He turns to the guy—his age or a few years older, attractively lithe with muscle, a hard but handsome face, and smiles.

Bucky gets busy for a stretch— Sam’s place is actually full tonight thanks to the playoff game. He enjoys the feeling of being a genuinely necessary part of the bar’s operation, when some nights it’s hard to believe he’s more than Sam’s charity case. Nights like this remind him that he has a real job, he’s decent at it even with a bum left arm; whether he’s living out his dreams or not he’s an adult with a job, a place to live, and people he cares about. Plus it distracts him from feeling sorry for himself for coming down sick.

His satisfied feelings fade when he looks over to the Steve end of the bar and sees Brock Rumlow talking to him. He scowls. Fucking Rumlow. He only ever comes on nights with games these days, but Bucky would be perfectly happy if he never came in at all.

It’s fine. Steve’s fine. He is a grown-up, significantly more of one than Bucky. Of all the people who have no need of his misplaced ineffectual chivalry, Steve has got to be last in line.

Maybe he finds more stuff to do in the general area of that end of the bar, and maybe he’s listening for Rumlow to say something dickish, or maybe he’s just a masochist and he wants to know firsthand if they hit it off. Sam is trying to point his “Don’t-be-Stupid” face at him like a flashlight beam but he resolutely ignores it while he replaces a couple bottles that legitimately needed it, ok, just because they’re in a convenient place doesn’t make that untrue.

“Yeah, I’m glad I found this place,” he catches Steve’s cheerful voice. A wave of bar noise obscures their next words, and then he makes out Rumlow,

“—actual sports on the TV. ‘Course,” the smile is audible in his voice, “the clubby places are good for at least one reason, y’know?” He quiets down to say it but not enough. Steve wouldn’t particularly like that, Bucky guesses, and then grinds his teeth as his brain helpfully supplies him with the memories of how easily Brock had charmed him, months ago. It wasn’t any kind of nightmare, but it was still probably his least favorite hookup to date: he’d been so happily focused on Bucky at first, then rough and selfish in bed, capped off by an unnecessarily clear implication that he wouldn’t be calling. Bucky knew the score with casual sex, but it had still given him enough whiplash to sting; it crossed his mind a few days later that it had been like Rumlow wanted him to feel like a dumb kid.

Steve has sputtered something about “not sure he’s looking for anything like that” while Bucky fumed about the past. He has to grab beers for a couple guys, and bending to get in the lowboy fridge makes his nose run suddenly, and flush with an insistent tickle. He manages, just barely, to squash the sneeze completely into a silent mmp! into his shoulder, andmakes a getaway to the bathroom. He blows his nose, but it won’t stop tickling, so then he stands there like an idiot, holding paper towels like they’re a book he’s reading, staring up into the lights and waiting to coax the sneeze out.

He can feel it coming but it still takes forever. At least the bathroom is empty. He wrinkles his nose exaggeratedly and sniffs and his breath finally starts to catch.

“hehh...heh...heh—heh-Uhh....huhh. Fuck.” There’s no way it’s not happening though, his goddamn nose tickles so bad— “hhHAh—EHSsschhooo!” It’s a ridiculous cartoony sneeze but at least it’s satisfying. He blows his nose again, then sighs. He’s definitely sick. Gonna be great sleeping in a freezing apartment. Turning into kind of a shitty night, he thinks with sarcastic pep.

When he leaves the restroom he can’t help glancing over to where Steve sits, and sees he’s now frowning at whatever Rumlow’s saying, looking politely uncomfortable on the way to annoyed. As he drifts back into earshot he hears, “….fun, but, if you’re looking for more than, um, casual, I dunno, kind of a dead end.” Then his pulse jumps as Rumlow looks right at him and finishes, “not dating material, trust me. Either way,” he leans in, “I think you can do better.”

Bucky closes the distance but puts himself behind the bar so he doesn’t immediately clock the asshole. His fists are clenched. Can he throw him out? If he doesn’t get away from Steve and shut up Bucky’s gonna end up fired and charged with assault, probably, but he doesn’t know if he can throw someone out on the grounds of being a jerk that he hates. Thank God, Sam’s caught on that something is up.

Rumlow doesn’t seem to have won Steve over, in any case. He’s turned cold and hard in a way that makes him look unfamiliar, and he says quietly but very clearly, “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.” He sounds like a straight Army Captain contemptuously shattering an underling’s heart immediately post-office-suckjob or something; in the morass of anger and panic it still registers with Bucky’s dick to his utter bewilderment. It definitely triggers some core memory for Rumlow, who turns the color of old milk before flushing and standing. He takes in the sight of Bucky glowering behind Steve and barks an ugly laugh. “It’s like that, huh?” he asks, shaking his head in mock pity. “Good luck with that rescue mission.”

Bucky feels like he did when Hank Ackerman pantsed him in 8th grade. Everything’s too bright and clear. He wants to cover his face and run into the back, but he’s rooted to the spot by the thought that that’s just what the dumb baby slut Rumlow’s been making him out to be would do.

“That’s it man,” Sam comes up beside him, smile on his face as though he’s just casually joining their conversation. “You’re done. Get outta here.”

Rumlow scoffs, takes a step towards the door, then turns with the beginning of a macho intimidation-lean in Sam’s direction. He’s hammered, Bucky hadn’t realized, and he can usually tell with people. He’s...kind of fucking scary. Had he gotten rougher around the edges, or had he been like this when Bucky went home with him? Jesus Christ.

Sam just returns his stare, all semblance of friendliness gone from his face. “Get out.”

Rumlow glares another second, but then he goes. There’s a reason Sam’s successful running a bar in the middle of the still-managing-to-be-seedy part of Brooklyn, as well as his finely tuned sensibilities to the unmet needs of Brooklyn’s grownup queer folks. He has the air, recognizable to serious troublemakers, of someone who will absolutely meet and raise any escalation. There were, in fact, a taser and a gun behind the bar, but Sam had never had to use them.

Steve stands up sharply, like he’s—what, gonna follow? Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but then—“Steve.” Sam’s got the side bar entry folded up and he’s intercepting his angry stride. “Please don’t.” He goes on, too quiet for Bucky to make out. Steve deflates and sits back down, taking a long drink of beer and then frowning at his knees.

Bucky consciously lets go of his tension as he sees Rumlow’s silhouette, walking outside, disappear from the last window on the right. He feels shaky, the way any kind of confrontation leaves him, and embarrassed as hell. He avoids Steve’s eyes for all he’s worth, scrubbing a hand under his nose and sniffing sharply.

Steve was just a customer. Bucky was just one of many people that Steve made polite conversation with in the course of a day. Feeling like this was just a consequence of getting that confused. Because he’s an idiot. He has to sniffle again. He also feels about ten times sicker than he did a few minutes ago, and successfully blinking away the brief prickle in his eyes just turns it into the need to sneeze.

Steve tries to breathe smoothly and calm down. This frat-boy rage is ridiculous, he still wants to go punch the hell out of that fucking creep. He must be drunker than he realizes, although deep down he knows it has more to do with the inarticulate surge of protectiveness he’d felt for Bucky since the guy had gestured to him with a jerk of his head as he crossed the room.

He hears a shuddering gasp and sees Bucky duck down to crouch behind the bar. His concern flares way up, but then he hears the three muffled sneezes, all in a rush, “hhhMPtchsh—hmptsschoo—hptsshhuh,”. He straightens back up, sniffing hard, more wetly than he sounded earlier. He’s rubbing his nose and glaring at the door, not looking at Steve.

“Bucky,” he says, frowning, determined to get this across, “what that asshole said about you—��

“Steve, snff, it’s fine, just drop it, okay, I’m asking you,” he meets Steve’s eyes with a downcast expression, before it flickers as his breath catches, and he sneezes again, half-pinched down into the collar of his shirt, “ihh-dtsschuh!”

His nostrils keep quivering and he lets out a shaky sigh of frustration before ducking around the corner out of sight with his hands tented over his nose and sneezing, “hiih-hih-HIDtschoo!...hih-HIH-TISchoo! ..heehh...heh—HEH—” the last one deserts him and leaves him sniffling. They’re still pretty quiet, but a lot heavier and spraying than the first sneezes Steve heard earlier. Bucky blows his nose and washes his hands thoroughly, and when he’s back behind the bar his nose is decidedly pink.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky’s lips thin in exasperation— it’s not like him, compared to the guy Steve’s talked to the last few weeks. Whatever, he can’t help but say, “you do sound like you’re coming down with something, you should—”

“Steve, I’m fine,” says Bucky, in a soft tone that brooks no argument. Still tense, he turns to Steve with a crooked smile and says, “Really,” and it’s warm, if strained, between them again, and it seems like that’ll just have to satisfy Steve, and he says as much to Bucky who blushes and bites his lip for some reason.

Sam rescues Bucky by asking him to do inventory in back, letting him be sneeze and be dramatically in his feels without anyone around, especially Steve. The bar is slow enough now that he just shamelessly hides for the rest of the night. He’s constantly sniffling and sneezing and needing to blow his nose with the roll of rough brown paper towels back there, and even without that he’s too keyed up and pissed and miserable for human company, so it’s for the best.

He casts furtive recon glances to the bar where Steve sits, first craning his neck trying to spy Bucky, then brooding into his beer glass which makes Bucky feel like an asshole, then perking up at least a little shooting the shit with Sam, hopefully talking shit about Brock Dickface Rumlow. Then the misery wells up enough to get him to actually focus on work to avoid feeling it, and then it’s a few hours later and they’re closing up and he goes home to his little icebox and tires not to think about anything.

The next day, Sam chooses evil.

Steve and JB Barnes are both at least somewhat complex men, and it is always a bad idea to meddle in the affairs of others. But screw it, he’s had Bucky moaning in his ear for months now, and he was gonna have to recheck all his angry counting from last night, and these guys really seemed dumb enough to let the tension of mutual attraction strain between them until it just broke, some misunderstanding threw them both on the defensive or whatever, and they missed the chance at any of the fun part of connecting with each other.

So.

It isn’t a big surprise when Bucky calls him around 2, apologizing and pausing to make some gross “ihHgjshuhh!” noise, saying he was probably too sick with this cold to come in. What is a surprise, for poor Bucky, is Sam’s implacable response: “Duuude, I’m so sorry, but there’s some kinda convention in town and the place is packed, I need you here so bad, no matter what. You can take the next two days off, I’ll pay you.” He hears Bucky swallow back the what the hell and resignedly say ok. He feels diabolical. But hopefully it will be worth it. Steve usually comes in early on Thursdays, and he’d looked all hangdog-worried about Bucky the night before.

He’s been there twenty minutes already, chatting distractedly with Sam and staring at the TV screens but really looking all over the room like Bucky might be hiding somewhere. Bucky slouches in, ten minutes late, takes in the mostly empty room and gives Sam a betrayed glare.

“You really ndeeded mbe, huh,” he mutters as he puts his backpack away.

“You don’t even sound that bad,” Sam rejoins cheerfully, and Bucky’s mouth drops open with incredulity.

He moves some boxes around in back without issue. Then he tries to start prep by the bar. In a fifteen-minute period he has two sneezing fits that require him retreating to the bathroom to blow his nose endlessly and wash his hands. Sam decides that’s plenty sufficient. He and his customers are gonna pay a price in germ exposure for this stupid ass cupid skit he’s putting on.

“Steve, you believe this guy?” Bucky’s been avoiding Steve’s concerned hopeful looks since he got here. “He insisted on coming to work.” Bucky chokes in outrage, then coughs for real, while Steve moves a few seats closer. Sam turns; Bucky couldn’t look more betrayed if there was a knife with Sam’s name on it in his guts. Lord deliver him from dramatic white boys. “Did you take the bus here, Buck?” There was no other way for the guy to get to work, but he just replies flatly,

“Yeah.”

“You oughtta go home and rest.”

“Le me give you a ride, Buck,” Steve jumps in with the Air-Bud eagerness Sam had expected. They confirm it and bustle Barnes into a Civic while he’s sneezing too much to protest. Sam washes his hands metaphorically of the situation, and also very literally and thoroughly.

Steve’s car is a little old, and cold, and dusty. Bucky shivers as he buckles his seatbelt. He feels silently nervous and thrilled to be in Steve’s Car!!, but at the moment it’s hard to be anything but….sneezy…

“hhh-hh-hhmmPtchuh! S-s-sor-ry-hiihHIptchsh!” Holding them back when he feels like this just makes his nose more irritated and thus even sneezier. He stubbornly jams his fist under his nose to quell the tickle. He has some napkins from work, so a nose-blow is possible, but it doesn’t feel possible, not so close to Steve, who has it a million times more together than Bucky even on days when he isn’t falling apart on a cellular level.

“Bless you,” Steve says quietly. He looks at him reflexively, to see a small, sweet, sympathetic smile. “Ready?” Bucky gives a little nod and the car pulls out into the slushy road.

His nose is running onto his finger, it’s a crisis. This is why it’s always a terrible idea to leave the house when you’re really sick. “Ugh, I gotta blow mby ndose, I’mb sorry, I’mb so gross right ndow,” talking also makes his nose angry. Fucking Sam and his supervillain plan to humiliate him. What had he done to deserve this? He fumbles for the napkins with his less-dextrous left hand, the one he should have stuck under his nose, goddamnit, he’s gonna sneeze again…

“Psh, don’t worry about it,” scoffs Steve like the big huge dad he is, then with a sympathetic glance he turns the radio on, to the classic rock station, because of course, Bucky almost laughs even while racing to get tissues on his face before this giant wet sneeze overcomes him. The music is loud and it does help him feel less embarrassed.

“heh—HEH-KSSSHOOoo!” he gets the wad of napkins in front of him just in time. Blowing his nose after that demolishes them, but he feels a little closer to a human being.

“Bless you!” Steve chuckles. “Man you got a good bug, jeez!”

Why are he and Sam both so cheerful. “Thanks, I’mb glad you’re impressed,” he croaks.

“You have cold stuff at home?” Huh? When Bucky doesn’t answer he continues, “Tissues, tea, soup, medicine, you know?”

“Oh, umb, sorry, I’m tired,” Steve makes a sympathetic sound. “I usually just use toilet paper. I took the last of my Dayquil before work. I dunno if it even helped, all it feels like it did is mbake me jittery and sdeezy.”

“Why don’t we stop by a drugstore.” He sounded decisive.

“Oh, you don’t have to bother with that, really Steve—” he pauses to sniffle desperately. Technically he can afford a couple things, and he probably needs them. “Or—you could drop me off and I’ll get myself home from the store, that would totally be a big help—”

“Is the heat even on in your place?” Steve interrupts, shrewd-eyed. At Bucky’s wide-eyed sputtering response he continues, “I knew it. I used to be a broke Brooklyn kid, once upon a time. Only reason to come into work, am I right? Can’t believe landlords are still getting away with this shit.”

Bucky considers denial, then slumps. “S’why I’mb so much...hhh...worse...hh-huh-hudschuh! Snff-snff. Worse today. They said it’ll be fixed by tomorrow so...we’ll see, ha. I got a space heater and an electric kettle though, I can get in my blankets and drink tea and I’m fine.”

Steve is quiet, no response, and Bucky worries irrationally that he pissed him off. A few minutes of classic rock later, he pulls into the small parking lot attached to the drugstore, turns the car off, and turns to him, looking a little uncomfortable.

“Bucky I—” he breaks off and laughs to himself. “I know you have to be polite to customers, I don’t want to—” he makes eye contact, looking pained and rueful. “I’d like to think we’re friends. But I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything,”

“We’re friends,” Bucky interrupts gently. Steve’s face brightens like a sunrise and Bucky’s chest does a nice warm thing.

“Yeah? That’s...I’m real happy to hear it.” Steve says, sheepish but grinning. Then his eyes get the determined look that Bucky is starting to think means trouble. “Well the reason I asked is, as a friend, I really hate the idea of you trying to ride this out in an icebox apartment. I have heat. And a couch!” He hastens to add at whatever wide-eyed look Bucky’s giving him. “It’s just, I know it’s no fun being sick by yourself, and, well, honestly I wish I’d socked that asshole at the bar last night, and I really wish I’d clocked him as a jerk faster, and I’d feel a lot better if I could do something nice for you, and you really seem like you could do with some rest and medicine. Will you let me grab some stuff here and spend the night at my place—where there’s heat— and let me fuss over you?”

“Steve, that’s—that’s so nice, but I really can’t imb—snff—impose on you, and I gotta be so contagious right now…”

“I don’t care about that,” Steve says easily. “And I know you’re not gonna die on your own, but,” and, whoa, he’s deploying some kind of dignified mature version of puppy-dog eyes, it’s so sincere, and also so certain, that it starts to seem like the only sensible course of action is to let his gorgeous crush take him to his apartment while he’s the polar opposite of sexy, an unspeakable snot factory, and also possibly starting to run a fever.

….His apartment is gonna be so goddamn cold.

And lonely, incidentally.

And Steve is so nice. He’s literally, actually here, he seems to mean it that he wants to take care of Bucky’s sick bedraggled ass as some kind of friend-favor. There’s no way this is a come-on with him in this state, even if he can still muster enough energy to wish it was. No way Steve’s ever gonna want to fuck him after watching him snuffle through 200 tissues and mouth-breathe all evening, but he was nuts to think he ever would anyhow. He’s just that nice, and Bucky is that pathetic, and that might not feel great, but he wants to be Steve’s friend, he really does, and even through his own shyness he can see that the guy is pretty lonely.

“You, umb. You really don’t have to.” He says, watching Steve, who waits with obvious hopefulness. “But. Uh.” Steve raises his eyebrows and gives him a little smile, and Bucky finds himself returning it helplessly. “If you really don’t mbind. It could, potentially, be really ndice to take you up on that. You really don’t have to though!”

“I want to, though.” Jesus, he’s so sincere. Bucky feels some weird kind of protective way about the earnest honesty in his eyes.

“Well, then, okay. Thangk you, I really appreciate it.” He laughs, finally feeling how miserable it would have been to go back home and try to sleep in a cold blanket pile on his mattress on the floor. “Mby place sucks right now.”

“Alright then,” Steve beams. “Let’s get you a couple things and then get you cozy.”

Bucky’s nose is not okay with him using his face to talk instead of constantly blow it. It’s gotten completely blocked, and it’s tingling unpleasantly, and running so bad again he has to smush his knuckles under his nostrils. The tickle crests and his breath catches before he can do anything about it, but he clenches his jaw and forces it into a stifle. “hhh-huh-MMP!!” The problem with doing that is it just makes the tickle— “hh-mMP!” worse. “Ugh, sorry.” His hand is a dam against his nose at this point.

“Bless you!” They both step out of the car, but Steve hurries over to his side with a crinkle in his brow. “Why don’t you just stay here and I’ll grab a few things. Anything in particular, or just tissues and NyQuil?”

“Dyquil is just schndapps,” Bucky grumbles, then his brain catches up a little and he says “tissues,” fervently, and then it catches all the way up and he says “wait, ndo way are you buyig!”

Steve cocks an eyebrow like a handsome jerk. “You really wanna go in there?” With your current nose situation? He’s kind enough to not say.

He casts about for a moment—“Grab me a little pack and then I’ll go in!”

Steve gives him a skeptical look and says “Sure,” in a way that makes him think his orders won’t be followed, but he’s too busy squishing his nose more firmly and silently begging it not to make him sneeze again to keep arguing, or to protest when Steve opens the door for him and puts his car keys in his hand before dashing into the store with a promise to be quick.

He’s back not even ten minutes later, by which time holding his nose plugged and not letting his sneezes out has put Bucky in a state of perma-misery, stifling relentless sneezes every few seconds, unable to keep his eyes fully open. Steve tosses a box of tissues onto his lap before he gets all the way into the car because he is a saint.

“Guh,” Bucky says gratefully, pulls out a wad of about ten, and lets the miserable sneeze that had been building out into the nest of forgiving softness. “HehgSHOOmpff!!” And then blows his nose forever. Finally he feels like he can speak and have a face again; the little drugstore bag is now home to a dozen nasty used-tissue balls. “Well,” he says as he puts the last one in there, “wish I hadn’t had a witness for that.”

Steve just chuckles. “You’re fine,” he murmurs, his voice a soothing rumble. “I grabbed you a toothbrush, and I’ve got some stuff that can fit you for pjs.”

Bucky feels like he sneezed out the last of his strength. “You’re way too nice.” He sniffles and slumps against the window, looking at the familiar blur of orange streetlight. “I should be more worried you’re a serial killer.” Steve chuckles again, and he likes that, so he goes on, “Probly got a nice Jeffrey Dahmer setup at your place. Sorry if I don’t make a good steak.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Steve replies, sounding indignant. Then laughs for real, shaking his head, “I’m not gonna chop you up and eat you, I swear.”

“It’s fine. Just mbake mbe into soup,” sighs Bucky. That would be warm. He’ll just be a big hot pot of Bucky, and Steve will stir him and season him so carefully with his big strong hands. This is a weird train of thought. He might have a fever. But he can still hear Steve chuckling.

Steve pulls into his parking spot and the car shudders to stillness as he takes his key out of the ignition. Next to him, Bucky is asleep with his head mushed against the window. He’d conked out for the last five or so minutes of the drive. “Hey, Buck, we just got to my place,” he says softly, trying not to sound too bedroom-y. His eyes flutter open, the blue of them standing out, and Steve takes a steadying breath because Bucky is so good-looking it catches him off guard and overwhelms him sometimes.

His eyes are glassy-bright and there’s a flush high on his cheekbones, and as he shifts upright in his seat Steve reaches over and touches his forehead without thinking about it. It’s noticeably hot, but not burning. The twins’ childhood bouts with the flu gave him a sense of bad-fever heat. “Think you got a temperature,” he murmurs sympathetically. Bucky just blinks up at him, a little wide-eyed, and only then does he realize his big meaty hand is practically covering half his face. He feels himself flush to match Bucky, and for a second they just look at each other.

Until Bucky sniffs a miserable liquid sniffle and they both almost jump. “Sorry,” Steve mutters awkwardly, and Bucky’s saying the same thing at the same time. They both move to get out, “Just one flight of stairs up.”

“huh—tschumpf!” is Bucky’s answer, his nose buried in a new handful of tissues. “huhh, hUH—huh.” The second sneeze fizzles, leaving him blinking and frowning and wrinkling his nose snifflishly against the ticklish haze as he shuts the door. “Fuck. Sorry, scuse mbe.”

“Bless you.” It’s probably not normal to find someone so sick so adorable.

Steve leads him up and along the hall and then he’s unlocking the door, feeling giddy that he’s letting Bucky into his apartment, and then guilty for being excited, when the poor guy is just hesitantly accepting a much-needed favor. Bucky trails in behind him and then stands still while Steve sets the bag from the drugstore and started to turn to him, saying, “It’s not much, but—”

“ASHHOO!” Bucky’s sneeze interrupts and snaps him forward into his tissues, and then he just stays folded over for a second like it sapped the last of his energy. Then he straightens, rubbing his nose into the tissues and sighing. “Jesus, sorry,”

“Bless you! You don’t have to be sorry, you’ve just got a cold.” Steve has to hold himself still to keep from rubbing his back.

“You’re...hh-huh….? Snfff, ugh. Totally gonna catch this, I owe you way mbore apologies.”

“I won’t hold it against you,” he chuckles, toeing his shoes off. Bucky follows suit and he continues, “I stopped caring after raising toddlers, they’re little germ factories, you catch everything.” Why’d you bring up your old-dad status, Steve? “I’ll grab you some things to sleep in.”

An hour and one confrontation about Steve giving up his bed later, Bucky is ensconced on his couch like the king of cold-medicine commercials, surrounded by blankets and pillows and tissues and steaming cups and bowls. He feels a little more human, which is nice, but lets him access how incandescently awkward he feels at being rescued from his idiotic life like a snotty Cinderella. Steve has been flitting back and forth between the couch and kitchen, fussing over him to a truly excessive degree while exuding satisfaction and cheer, like some kind of calendar-model Santa with a caretaking kink. He was practically rubbing his hands together at the prospect of getting Bucky blankets and tea on his couch. Now he’s giving a rundown of his TV system standing next to the couch and it feels the tiniest bit manic and Bucky can feel himself getting a little too quiet but he can’t help it. After a minute Steve notices, and sets the remote down.

“I should stop babbling at you and leave you in peace,” he says with a bashful chuckle, turning to leave the room.

“No, I— you don’t—” Bucky doesn’t really have a response beyond ‘please chill out and hang out with me and let me picture cuddling with you,’ which will not be said aloud.

“You really don’t hafta feel like you need to entertain me, Bucky.”

“It’s not, I don’t,” he sighs and then sniffles. He doesn’t want to sit here and stare at the wall and stress about this, alone in this room in Steve’s goddamn apartment. He maybe should have thought about just how much he’d fallen for Steve before taking him up on this offer, because the concern and sweetness and fussing are starting to ratchet up his anxiety, because what if there was a chance it meant—

“Is anything the matter?” Steve crouches smoothly to be on his level and torment him with his eyes’ blueness. When all Bucky can do for a moment is flounder he looks more concerned, and a little downcast. “I really don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. If anything’s bothering you, you can just tell me.”

What the hell is an ordinary sinner supposed to do in the face of this much sincerity? Act like he thinks he’s a damn grownup, Bucky guesses, and girds his nervous loser loins.

“Why’re you—” he starts, frowning, then cuts himself off and tries again with a small, apologetic smile.

“It’s just...this is such an imposition, and you seem...kinda weirdly happy about it? I just don’t get why.”

One side of Steve’s mouth quirks up, making him look dry and self-deprecating and unfairly handsome. “You’re worried I’m gonna start talkin about Scientology, or put you in my basement dungeon?”

Bucky shrugs. “Kinda.” Just ‘cause he went home with strangers didn’t mean he had no sense.

Steve seems to cast about for an explanation, and he also starts to turn pink. “It’s—you’re just so—” and then he sighs and sits on the end of the couch, next to his blanketed feet, addressing his words to the wall in a rush. “Honestly, Bucky? I have a huge crush on you, and,” he laughs in embarrassment, decidedly blushing now, “I’m just real happy to have a chance to take care of you in whatever little way.” Now he does turn to look at him, pained. “I’m sorry, that must be so uncomfortable to hear. I promise you’re not my hostage! Please don’t make a break for it, it’s cold out and you’re so sick. I swear I’m not Cathy Bates in Misery.”

“Y—hihdsschuh!” The sneeze catches him by surprise, but he has wadded-up tissues in his hand already anyhow. He has to blow his nose, and he does it thoroughly to buy time. Steve stares stoically at the ceiling as though waiting for sentencing. Is this seriously Steve telling Bucky...he likes him?

“You…” he stops, sniffs. He needs a plan. He doesn’t have one. His mouth is gonna keep moving anyway, “You said, ‘you’re just so—‘, what were you gonna say?”

Steve looks confused for a second, and then just helpless. “Bucky, you’re just so sweet. I’m happy for a chance to do something for you because I owe you, you get that, right?”

“Owe me?” Bucky asks, nonplussed. Steve laughs with what seems like disbelief at his confusion.

“Yes, Buck! For the last few months! For taking pity on me that first night I came into Sam’s. You asked me a question about antifreeze.”

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs. His world is rearranging itself. Steve remembered that?

“I feel—real self-conscious, I guess, coming into the “scene,” he gives it air-quotes and Bucky’s heart swells a little more, “by the route I have. Y’know, married dad who woke up one day and realized the stuff he repressed at sixteen might be the real him. Sam’s was the third place I tried to go into. I just felt so ridiculous, I still do— 39-year-old brand-new gay dude, it’s idiotic. I was practically gonna have a panic attack, I was definitely gonna leave and not try again and just...stop trying in general, maybe, to figure this new scary shit out. Except you were there, this—this smokin-hot guy, and you’re acting like you actually want to talk to me, and… so I stayed. And came back.” He looks Bucky in the eyes and it makes Bucky’s stomach clench. “I feel like you’ve been taking care of me this whole time, helping me ease into things, helping me not to feel bad about being completely uncool, asking me about stuff I actually know about instead of laughing at me because I’ve never heard of ‘poppers’,”

At that, Bucky has to give in to the giggle bubbling out of him, which inevitably leads to a short coughing fit. His first instinct is to keep laughing, rake Steve over the coals, but Steve is looking at him with a careful sort of expression, and it occurs to Bucky that just because he’s older and seems like he has it all together and has great posture doesn’t mean he’s immune to feeling vulnerable. And he looks like he’s feeling really fucking vulnerable right now. Acting like Bucky is worthy of this adorable schoolboy crush is absurd, but it’s not like it was so many eons ago that little baby Bucky Barnes was having his First Gay Bar experience, and he’d been scared as shit.

He already feels like he missed the boat on his life. Steve is starting over at 39. He’s so fucking brave. Bucky...somehow, unthinkably, Bucky is in a position where he could really hurt this guy.

“I’mb, umb. Snfff. Thing is, I’m a little surprised…” And Steve must think that’s the prelude to rejection because he pulls this sad little smile onto his face that’s the worst thing Bucky’s ever seen, and he has to make it go away, “It’s just, to hear you tell it I took pity on you and I’ve been talking to you to, like, guide you along and coach you because I’m some saint!” He smiles, starting to feel amused. “Steve— I just wanted some reason to talk to you, dude.”

Steve blinks at him. “What?”

He has to laugh, putting his forehead in his hand. “Sorry. I, just, I have not been operating under the assumption that I had a chance with you? And now it sounds like you’re telling me I do? While I sit on your couch filling your trash can with my disgusting tissue mountain?”

All he gets from the man is “...Huh?”

“You said ‘crush’,” he insists, and he’s not laughing, his heart is pounding actually. “What did you mean by that?” He’s gonna awkwardly say that he wants to fuck, and once that box is checked in his Gay Awakening, he’ll move on to actually date people actually in his league, and that’s maybe not gonna feel great, but, well…

Steve looks up from staring at his hands, makes eye contact, and he looks a little confused and a lot like he’s facing a firing squad. “I meant, I mean that…” he blows a breath out. “Jesus I have no idea what I’m doing. I mean that I’ve been trying to work up the courage to ask you out on a date, since pretty much the first night I met you.”

Bucky’s head does a record scratch and Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes, “But I guess instead I kidnapped you when you were sick and blurted this out to you while you were trapped on my couch waiting to be left alone to sleep. I was never smooth but I swear I’ve done better than this.”

A giddy feeling is rising up in Bucky’s chest, making him forget completely about how tired and crappy he feels. “Well, I am smooth,” he says, “I’ve got game. At least, I did, until you showed up and turned me into a giggling bimbo. What the hell, Steve.”

“This is starting to seem like a romantic conversation but I can’t tell,” murmurs Steve with his face still uncertain but a little twinkle in his eye.

Bucky’s nose is gonna ruin this, he’s surprised it gave him that long a grace period. “Yeah, snfff, real romantic, I’mb gonna—hih—fuckin’ sndeeze—heh-heTShoo! Againd.”

Another sneeze teases out, and then he has to blow his nose for about ten years. “Bless you,” says Steve all quiet and bedroomy in his deep voice, and he’s definitely smiling, sparkle-eyes, leaning towards him the tiniest bit, but still looking like Bucky’s leaving him hanging a little, unsure, and he can’t help the wave of doubt he feels.

“Steve, you—” he stares at the blanket on his lap. “I’m a mess. You’ve accomplished shit, you have a real goddamn job, I—I’m just, ok, we’re both adults, but I feel like a screw-up kid compared to you.” He takes a deep breath and says what he doesn’t want to, “I’d be...pretty damn flattered if you wanted to hook up. I kinda can’t imagine you actually want to date me.”

He dares to look up and Steve looks more serious. He doesn’t say, “no shit.” He says, “I won’t argue if you say you don’t want anything, but I sure don’t agree with how you describe yourself. I don’t want to hook up—at least, not just that— I want to date you, get to know each other better, because I like you. I trust my judgement, when I think someone’s a good person.”

He says it so simply, and Bucky finds himself believing it despite himself, and a warm happy fire is kindling under his ribs. “Well, shit,” he murmurs, “it’s starting to seem like you’re asking me out.”

“It’s...starting to seem like you might be saying yes? If I am?” Steve looks agonized and Bucky’s doubts are no match for the giddiness fizzing up inside him, and he lets it show on his face with a grin, and whatever that looks like makes Steve kinda gulp and scootch up closer to him. Bucky makes a show of giving a slow, considering nod. Yes.

Steve has this soft, nervous little smile on his face, but his eyes hold something weighty, almost burning, as he moves even closer, and it’s just, it’s really, wow, Bucky has maybe never been taken seriously in quite this way by anyone before, it makes his knees feel watery and kindles something in his core. “I know you’re sick,” he rumbles, “but I feel like I gotta kiss you,” and how is it that the softer he speaks the deeper his voice sounds? He brushes his curled fingers over Bucky’s cheek because that’s how close they are now and this isn’t really Bucky’s life, is it? “What if I was to kiss you, right now?”

It’s hard to tell with the sexiness melting his brain but he realizes Steve is actually asking, because he’s a gentleman— a gentleman Bucky wants to be taken apart and turned inside out by. “Then you would be a guaranteed victim of my plague,” he breathes. “But I wouldn’t stop you, I’m not that selfless.”

“Sounds like a dare,” Steve murmurs, and tilts his head and presses their lips together.

It’s a short simple kiss but they each give a quiet gasp at the contact, and then stay there a moment. Steve’s beard isn’t huge but he feels it, like a firm underline to the shockingly warm plush pressure of his lips. He thankfully tragically remembers that congested people can’t make out and pulls away after just a brief press of lips, but not before giving a soft lick to Bucky’s, full of promised things to come.

They sit there a few inches apart and breathe. Bucky feels like a vibrating tuning fork. He just barely stops himself from shakily saying “wow,” like a highschool virgin, but when he sees Steve looking at him with lips still parted and a gobsmacked expression he changes his mind and lets it out anyway, “wow,” with a giddy grin.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, blinking like he got hit with a cartoon hammer, going from pink to red, and then he swoops in and kisses Bucky’s cheek, and then stands, going, “Excuse me, just gotta go...out of your sightline, and. Do something cool. And serious. No victory dances.”

…..the next morning…….

Steve could hear Bucky in the shower, sneezing three times, but not sounding—four times—nearly as heavy or exhausted as the night before. A few minutes and one loud noseblow later, he came out wrapped in a towel, mercilessly bare-chested, his nose bright red but his eyes clear and cheerful. Steve’s attention caught on his chest as his nipples tightened in the relative chill as Bucky said sheepishly, “forgot my clo-hothes—” his voice swooping to a breathy quaver on the last word, “hhh-hh-hehh—EHisSHOooh!” he turned as far away from Steve’s part of the room as possible and sneezed over his shoulder. “Snnfff. Excuse me, sorry.”

“Can I lend you some warmer stuff, just for now while we eat breakfast? There’s no way you’re not still sick,” Steve fussed, forcing himself to round the kitchen island slowly and casually instead of rushing over and wrapping him up in his arms and kissing his red nose that was twitching again. He quelled it with another sniff that sounded a lot less congested than the previous night.

“Ah, I’m ok. I felt really bad yesterday, but I slept so well,” he said with a warm grateful smile at Steve that went to his toes, “I don’t feel shitty and run-down anymore, just all, like, shnuffly.”

Steve chuckled helplessly and went over to rub his shoulder. “You’re adorable.”

“No way!” Bucky glowered, but then a few drops fell from his wet hair to his chest and neck, and he shivered into a sneeze so quick and light it sounded incomplete, “hih—tish!” followed by “ih-hihtchoo!” and he blinked, taken by surprise.

“That was... the cutest thing that ever happened,” Steve said truthfully.

“Shuddup— heh—edschoo!”

#at some point they bone and there are like snapshots of that written #just sayin #snz fic #stucky snz fic #sneeze kink fanfiction #cute sick bucky #snzfic #lots of not-snz plot but the story is still basically Bucky Has The Sneezies You Must Save Him Steve

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plutoslvr · 2 years ago

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Okay so in my last Kevin post, I mentioned I have analysis' on how Kevin isn't a coward and how his trauma still affects him and you guys wanted to read it so here!

Why Kevin Day Isn’t a Coward:

Essentially this comes down to 3 specific points in the fandom and even in the books since people are very adamant about the whole coward thing. The two things that people (in book and fandom-wise) use to argue that Kevin is a coward are:

Kevin is still afraid/ doesn’t stand up to Riko

That he left Jean behind in the nest.

Starting off with the first point. Kevin is still afraid and doesn’t stand up to Riko for the majority of the books. Firstly, we need to understand that Kevin has been abused from an extremely young age in the Nest and was conditioned into thinking that kind of behaviour was normal. And by that I mean specifically Riko’s abuse but before that, it was Coach Moriyama that abused both of them.

He was stuck in the Nest for over a decade where his only role was “property” the entire time. That was all he would ever be to them and additionally to that, he wasn’t even allowed to be better than Riko. His entire life from the very start has been about exy but it was only after his mothers death where it became life or death.

During tfc when Neil finds out how Kevin’s hand really broke Wymack says “But the day Kevin stops playing forever is the day he dies. He has nothing else. He wasn't raised to have anything else. Do you understand? We cannot lose to the Ravens this year. Kevin won't survive it."

He wasn’t raised to have anything else, exy is quite literally his everything, and without it, he has nothing and nobody. In this same scene, Wymack says, “Kevin doesn't talk about his time at Evermore, but I could tell it wasn't the first time Riko or Moriyama laid a hand on him. It was just the first time Kevin was smart enough to pack his bags and walk away.”

We never find out in detail what exactly happened to Kevin in the Nest but in TRK when Neil goes there we can see how deluded and obsessed Riko is with Kevin.

Neil moved up alongside him and regretted it almost immediately. Postcards of faraway cities both foreign and domestic were taped to the walls. Beneath each one were scraps of paper. Kevin's now-familiar scrawl listed dates and explanations for the travels. Most of them were games. Some indicated photo shoots and interviews. Books lined the shelves built into the headboard and Neil knew from skimming the spines they were Kevin's. Kevin was majoring in history for reasons Neil couldn't understand; these dry titles were the sorts of things he would find fascinating. It gave Neil chills to see his space preserved like this. It was like Kevin had gone out on an errand, not that he'd transferred to another team entirely.

Riko is so sure that Kevin is going to come back to him because he’s instituted such fear into him, he doesn’t think Kevin has the strength to stand up to him. Which he does, but people don’t seem to realise you can’t undo over a decade's worth of trauma overnight.

Anyway, during Neil’s time in the Nest, he’s treated very similarly to how Kevin would be considering he was in his place but also not as harsh because they had to send Neil back to the Foxes inevitably.

"I am going to love hurting you," Riko said, "like I loved hurting Kevin."

What follows this is Riko tying Neil down and torturing him with a switchblade. By the time Neil leaves the Nest he doesn’t remember anything from the experience- he was so traumatised by it that he doesn’t remember it at all. (It also kinda sucks how Neil gets more sympathy for being in the nest for 2 weeks than Kev did for being there for over a decade.)

Putting this into perspective, Kevin went through that for so much longer and doesn’t get nearly enough of the same sympathy Neil did. Neil returned and Kevin got punched for letting him go even though he tried persuading Neil not to. Kevin has always had Neil’s best interest at heart.

Kevin shook his head and bulled on when Neil started to argue. "The master wants to salvage you. He's going to sign you to the Raven lineup in spring. So long as you keep quiet and keep your head down he won't tell the main family he's found you." "I'm not a Raven," Neil said. "I never will be." "Then run," Kevin insisted, low and frantic. "It's the only way you'll survive."

Kevin was willing to sacrifice the only chance he had to prove his autonomy to the Moriyamas if it meant Neil would be safe. Without Neil, they wouldn’t have enough players to qualify and they wouldn’t be able to play at all. (Again: “But the day Kevin stops playing forever is the day he dies. He has nothing else. He wasn't raised to have anything else. Do you understand? We cannot lose to the Ravens this year. Kevin won't survive it.")

Not to mention the whole “Kevin was silent for an endless minute, then said, "You should be Court." It was barely a whisper, but it cut Neil to the bone. It was a resentful goodbye to the bright future Kevin had wanted for Neil. Kevin recruited Neil because he believed in Neil's potential. He brought him to the Foxes intending to make a star athlete out of him. Despite his condescending attitude and his dismissals of Neil's best efforts Kevin honestly expected Neil to make the national team after graduation.

And even after that, he promised to teach Neil, because at the end of the day, Neil was still Neil and he never gave up on him once.

And Neil understood that being on the run for 8 years was more preferable to the Nest.

“But all Neil had to do was look at Kevin to know he would have hated that life

too.”

Sorry I kinda went off track there anyway we can also see how much Riko’s presence still affects Kevin especially in scenes like the Kathy Ferdinand show.

“Any animosity Neil felt toward Kevin for forcing him onto this show evaporated. He couldn't be angry when Riko was here, not when Riko was to Kevin what Neil's father was to him. Petty anger had nothing on this full-fledged terror.”

Obviously, we all know what a dickhead Neil’s dad was to him so Neil comparing the fear of his father being similar to Kevin’s fear of Riko is so important because it just puts into perspective how afraid Kevin is here face-to-face with his abuser the first time since said abuser permanently disabled him.

But what I don’t think is that Kevin has been standing upto Riko since the start because right after this when they were backstage, Kevin physically stopped Riko from hurting Neil even if it meant getting hurt by Riko again.

A black look twisted Riko's expression into something ugly and unrecognizable. He reached for Neil, but Kevin caught his arm to stop him. Riko slammed his elbow back into Kevin's face without missing a beat.

This scene is probably the best to describe how downright afraid Kevin is of Riko but there are others when Kevin has multiple panic attacks at just the thought of Riko or being in the same vicinity as him and rightfully so! Riko abused him, manipulated him and then took away the only thing he had. And Kevin was just forced to think this was okay.

And a lot of characters and fans see his fear as cowardice instead of a normal trauma response. This is also because Neil tends to speak out more against Riko than Kevin (You know I get it…) but unlike Neil, Kevin has had direct repercussions towards him for the “mistake” of talking back to Riko which of course makes him hesitant.

He knows the Moriyamas could drag him back at any moment and he's terrified of that happening.

Which leads to the second bit of “Kevin doesn’t stand up to Riko.” when many times, he has.

The most prominent example is in TRK, just after the foxes lost their first match to the ravens.

“You have fallen so far, Kevin. You should have stayed down and saved us the trouble of forcing you back to your knees." "I'm satisfied," Kevin said. It was the last response any of the Foxes expected from him. They forgot about Riko in favor of gaping at Kevin. "Not with their score or performance, but with their spirit. I was right. There's more than enough here for me to work with."

Kevin chose the foxes over the ravens- over Riko. He doesn’t allow their loss to become something Riko can use against him but instead something to affirm his current standing with them. This is also the first game Andrew played without his meds meaning he’s crashed by the end of it.

Kevin distracted the Ravens from Andrew's unsteadiness by facing them.

Kevin willingly turned to talk to his ex-abuser and his team if it meant Andrew wouldn’t be under fire. Most people only see Kevin and Andrew as Andrew protecting Kevin but Kevin protected Andrew just as much.

And of course we have the whole tattoo removal and the last exy match against the foxes but I need everyone to understand that those are so so so important. Kevin spent the entire series save the last quarter of the last book viewing himself as Riko’s property. Riko refers to him as such and even without Riko near him, his control is still strong over Kevin.

So Kevin removing his tattoo and replacing it with something with a higher hierarchical structure than Riko’s status as king is so detrimental, it’s a turning point for him because he’s viewing himself as his own person now. And Kevin scoring the winning goal brings us full circle because the last time he did that with Riko, he ended up disabled and shunned.

This brings me to my second point about Kevin running away from the nest. Alot of people see Kevin escpaing from the nest and leaving behind Jean as an act of cowardice. This bit gets a bit complicated because in no way shape or form am I trying to compare trauma’s or anything like that.

But to continue on. The ravens had a very strict policy that we got to see during Neil's experience one of which being that no matter how injured they were, they were still expected to show up to practice. The more mistakes they made the more punishment they'd find themselves in. Not showing was practically a death wish.

Now Kevin having his hand fucking broken would mean thay either he doesn't practise and get punished or practise with his fucked up hand and further damage it. If he stayed I wholeheartedly believe he would've died.

He ran away to save his life and that will never be cowardice not once. He didn't go to Wymack immediately when he found out because he knew what kind of target he'd paint on Wymacks back.

"He was trying to protect him," Neil said. "If Coach knew Kevin was his son, he'd have tried to take him from Edgar Allan." Nicky grimaced. "They'd have never let Kevin go."

He only left when he had no other option. He had nothing left, the one thing he did have was taken away from him, he had no purpose and for once Riko didn't care enough about him to pay attention. And he used that to run.

Leaving Jean behind was something he always regretted, but it was a game of survival. Jean was a gift to the Moriyamas, he was also property to them and couldn't leave. And if the roles were reversed I strongly believe Jean would've done the same thing.

Also Kevin finds a place for him layer with the trojans because he knew that being a fox wouldn't be good for him.

"He isn't safe with us," Kevin said. "I won't give him false hope."

Staying in the nest would've been suicide for Kevin. He's one of the biggest victims in the series but nobody talks about it enough I fear and there's so much to learn about him via context clues etc.

And the saddest thing in my opinion is that Kevin knew was it was like to be loved, he was raised by his mother for a few years before going to the Moriyamas.

ANYWAY to conclude, I suck at essays and I hope I've worded everything well and what I'm trying to say gets across. Kevin is not a coward, never has been a coward and never will be. He's survived through such a damaging and abusive environment only to get moved to a separate environment where everyone just ridicules his defense tactics and he has no real sense of support.

His reasons for what he does always stems from the fact the he doesn't want to go back to being under Riko and Coach Moriyamas "care" and that he's afraid. And most of the time it's things he can't shake from the nest.

Like when he pushes the foxes its so they're always at their best and so none of them get hurt or punished for mistakes. He pushed himself the hardest because he doesn't want to directly affect his teammates.

Or the celebrity persona he was forced to develop.

Or how he makes sure everyone is staying healthy and that they don't force themselves to play when sick or injured because he knows what it's like to be forced to play like that day after day.

AND IVE GONE OFF COURSE AGAIN yeah I kinda mashed together both analysis' of how Kevin's trauma from the nest affects him and how he's not a coward into one thing AND THIS IS SUPER LONG so if ur still here thank you very much for reading I really hope this makes sense

#kevin days defense lawyer right here #this is the longest thing ive ever posted on tumblr #aftg #kevin day #aftg kevin #neil josten #aftg neil #andrew minyard #matt boyd #aftg series #aftg andrew #andriel #kandreil #kevneil #kandrew #david wymack #riko moriyama #FUCK HIM #jean moreau

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yuyuswrld · 1 year ago

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O Captain, My Captain

Series Intro

characters: various aot boys x reader

genre: SMAU with writing, romance, smut, angst

for my marco fans, there’s a little sneak peak at him at the end :)

notes: this series will be 18+ even though this introduction does not have any smut in it. please do not interact with me if you are under 18. all characters in this series are over the age 18.

You learned that Eren Yeager was a stone wall incredibly quickly. It was a shock to you, considering how popular he was despite being unable to converse with someone he didn’t know well. You’d have steered away from him forever if it had been up to you. However, knowing your luck, you had to see him every day after all your classes were over.

It was a slip of judgment to allow yourself to be recruited as the next manager of the volleyball team. Sure, you had watched a couple of games here and there for school spirit, not to mention copious amounts of alcohol at the after-parties. But when one of your professors approached you on your way out of class, describing a great way to amp up your resume and get all-expenses-paid vacations, becoming a sports team manager was the last thing you expected.

“It’s kind of funny, actually,” Connie starts to explain after you walk into the gym, noting the tasks you'll be in charge of before you commit to the offer. “Our old manager, Hanna, got pregnant with one of my homies. Now she’s off giving birth and whatnot, so we’ve been down a manager.”

“So what does a manager typically do?” You question, shifting the conversation slightly to get to the point. The more you look at the different stereotypical characters running across the courts and the loud smacks that echoed throughout the gym, the more your desire to take the opportunity dwindles. Sure, cute boys and another achievement on your resume are great or whatever, but you really try to avoid getting committed to sports – especially after crashing and burning last time. You shudder as a chill runs down your spine at the thought before Connie starts talking again.

“Oh, um. I won't lie, I honestly have no idea what she did, either.” You stare at Connie in silence, cocking an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Uh, is there someone who does?” You ask. It's getting difficult to ignore your doubts about your decision to come here.

“Yeah, I think so. Let me go grab ‘im.” Connie jogs further down the court, interrupting someone as they finish their current spike. But as your eyes focus in on who was walking closer, you knew you we’re going to have the displeasure of meeting Eren Yeager.

Connie runs over to drag his brown-haired teammate over, who takes his sweet time walking over after sparing you only a glance. He is good looking, sure – but you aren't fooled by appearances, and you've heard far too much about him to even remotely consider him attractive from listening to Petra gossiping about him. She had a big mouth and somehow knew everything about everyone, the good and the bad, but it came in handy when it came to staying in the loop at school. Eren had a nasty habit of cursing out any girl who made an advance on him, citing his career and how a ‘bitch’ would only get in the way of it.

You think back to the memory of Petra sipping her drink, watching Eren walk out of school and head towards his Hellcat in the parking lot. You two had been sitting at the school’s cafe as you enjoyed your “study” date, which had inevitably just turned into a gossip session.

“You see that guy? That’s Eren Yeager. He’s on our volleyball team and he’s a fucking psycho.” She'd rolled her eyes as she recounted the gossip she had gotten from her friend. “Apparently Mina – y’know the one from our bio class? They hooked up at a party and afterwards he accused her of trying to sabotage his volleyball career. He even called her a psycho. That’s not even the only time he’s done it apparently. I know he’s cute, but stay away unless you want to end up on a true crime podcast.”

You brace yourself for the upcoming conversation as he nears.

“You’re going to be the new manager?” Eren says in a monotone voice, as if being forced by his mother to make small talk with a distant aunt. The displeasure of being interrupted is written all over his face.

“No – well –” You start before Eren cuts you off without hesitation.

“Usually Hanna prepares the towels, fills the bottles with water, and mops the gym after practice. Coach Levi's pretty anal about the gym being clean, so pay attention to that. You’ll want to learn about formations and strategies, too; Hanna fucking sucked when it came to game sense. You’ll work with the sports director Erwin to set up practice matches and travel plans. There’s probably more, but that’s your job, not mine.” He jogs back over to do spiking drills without another word. Your jaw slackens, scoffing at the attitude. What a little shit. Connie shrugs at you in an I’m pretty sure that’s right way. You smile at him, politely dismissing yourself before trudging your way back to your professor’s office.

“Absolutely not,” you say, dramatically sighing to emphasize the sheer disappointment you feel from the experience. “I only talked to Connie and Eren, which was already too much. You’d have better luck with a dog trainer or circus clown to manage them.” Your shoulders drop, but you prepare to defend yourself as to why.

“Please,” Professor Hange begs, their eyes beading with desperation. “I was the one who introduced the previous manager to the guy that got her pregnant. On accident, of course, but they’re totally on my tail about getting a new manager to fill the spot!” They spin around haphazardly before collapsing on their standing desk in an unconvincing sadness. “I’ll even see if they’ll pay you as if you were working a normal student job.”

You internally cringe, but are now forced to consider the prospects. Chewing on your lip, you respond. You know if you look back on this moment at any point, you’d want to go back in time and slap yourself.

“If you can make it a paid position, I’ll do it.”

Unsurprisingly, Professor Hange got their way in the end.

next: part 1, reiner x reader

#aot #aot x reader #eren yeager #eren jaeger #eren x reader #eren smut #attack on titan #aot fanfiction #attack on titan fanfiction #anime smut #marco bott #marco bott x reader #smau #aot smau

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herejusttosufferalong · 5 months ago

Note

Re: To the anon asking about Rory.

They’ve been close friends for AGES. He’s not going anywhere sadly.

I don’t really like his vibe

Hey, I’m the one who asked about Rory—thanks for replying. I know they’ve been besties forever, but what I meant was if Rory was a huge part of L’s life before HBS. I don’t remember seeing him much when L and J were together, except in a couple of stories and the singing vids. Also, are Tom and Charmaine married? I like them for some reason; they don’t give me the ick like Rory and his gang do.

Continuation of my earlier ask:

My BFF and I talked to two of our male friends, and they patiently listened. We just finished filling them in on the drama from yesterday and today. We’ve been chatting since 5 am lol. Here’s what they had to say:

Luke and Nic are in love: There’s a lot of eye-fucking to prove it. The tension suggests they haven’t acted on it, which is expected. The guys think Nic wouldn’t be okay with that, and Luke seems decent enough not to have crossed that line. However, they do believe they might have hooked up before Luke had his HBS. They could be reevaluating their relationship, using intimacy tools to see if it’s genuine affection or just heightened emotions and sexual tension from filming their season.

Luke’s friend group seems toxic: By friend group, they mean just Rory. The others seem fine. L dating a young girl soon after Rory did confirms Rory as the alpha of the group, and L as gullible since none of his other friends are doing the same. Maybe J dating someone young also influenced L dating A. It could be an ego thing, a guy thing, or both. L will probably cringe at this situation looking back. They said this whole relationship has nothing to do with Nic. This is Luke’s problem—a midlife crisis, even—and he needs to figure it out, which won’t happen as long as he’s with Rory and his gang.

A is super insecure: It doesn’t make sense because she’s the one who bagged the hot Netflix lead and goes on vacations with him. But her social media behavior reeks of insecurity and constantly seeking validation. This confirms that L isn’t invested in the relationship, which confirms to us he’s VERY much into Nic. So, think about this whenever A’s trolling upsets you. 😉

Nicola doesn’t care: The guys think L and N might have discussed their feelings, but Nic sees that L has issues to deal with—mainly himself. She’s hustling and thriving, not caring about his current relationship. Posting their pictures shows her character and work ethic. This only benefits her, and Luke should learn from it. They think L should make a final thank you post, even if people find it disingenuous. It’s better than nothing.

A needs to chill with the Hailey Bieber cosplay: The white outfit was an exact recreation of Hailey’s, and it’s weird. She keeps track of her comment section and allows comparisons to Hailey, which is embarrassing to say the least. The guys think A will stick around as long as she can. L seems to struggle with breakups, and now that A’s integrated into his friend group, it’ll take a lot of time to end things. She might be playing into his guilt, which is why he’s still liking her posts. She's young but smart enough to understand that. They think the only way out is for L to keep busy with work, but he doesn’t seem to have any now. Expect things to get worse before they get better. If he works, he can slowly distance himself from the relationship, and it will inevitably end. Either that or he’ll meet Nic, talk, realize they still have feelings, and that will give him the courage to end it with A. Even then, he has to make it up to Nic for all the shit he’s pulled.

Nic and Newts dating: Once they start dating, we won’t get a hard launch or pap pics. They might return to their old social media banter and comment and like each other’s posts.

So yeah, I’m really grateful to have my brother and these friends who indulge and listen to me. I think it’s safe to say they’re roped into the ship as well lol. Love to see what you guys think. Omg, also, I watched a TikTok of Luke singing as a teen, and the guy in the back looks like Rory. If it is, HE’S the one who glowed up, not L lol.

It is Rory in the background looking jealous AF

Thank you for sharing anon, love seeing the different perspectives

💜🥃

#this is all opinion #merely speculating #theories

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goldendiie · 2 months ago

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the confessional

Or: an exploration of Sarge's religion in The Third Blink AU. (Repost of something I deleted from my AO3).

The mid-September air was thick and sweet with the smell of harvest, chilled by the early tides of Autumn. The stars would have been beautiful on a night like this, if anyone had been looking. The Parson County High School football field was cast under bright-white light: the first in the line of regional games had just finished in a landslide win, as usual.

Willie Jones was seventeen. The autumn of his senior year had been good to him, so far. He cared little for his schoolwork, these days: he’d much rather spend his time on the football field, or raccoon hunting with his friends. That’s what high school was for, he figured: enjoying youth while he still had it, unconcerned with his future.

He collected his gear, shoving it into an aged duffel bag. As he left the locker room, he carried it over his shoulder, with his helmet and shoulder pads in his opposite hand. He thought idly about what would happen when his team inevitably won the championship. Perhaps they would be deemed the best high school football team in Ohio; for a moment, he fantasized about winning nationals.

“Hey, Jones!” Someone called to his left.

He turned. Gerry Oswald, the starting quarterback, waved him down. He was tall and broad-shouldered, bigger than any of the other guys on the team. Willie crossed the parking lot to join him.

“We’re going to get a twelve-pack and go cruising,” Gerry said, “Want to come?”

Willie looked past him, to the small group of people that would evidently be tagging along. Most were football players, and all were seniors.

“Won’t your dad have something to say about you keeping the truck out late?” Willie asked.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” Gerry said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

The gesture sent shockwaves down Willie’s spine. His mind was terrifyingly blank, and his skin buzzed where Gerry’s hand had anchored.

“I, uh… I better not,” he managed. He came up with some half-assed excuse. “I told my dad I’d help him out around the auto shop, tomorrow morning. I don’t want to be hungover.”

“You’re lame, Jones.” Gerry moved his hand, and scuffed up Willie’s hair; afterwards, it fell back to his side. “Tell you what—We’ll drop by your house in a couple of hours. Maybe you’ll quit being such a square by then.”

“If you really want to,” Willie said. He offered a smile. “I doubt I’ll change my mind, though.”

Gerry was already walking away. “Think about it, Jones.”

Willie deflated, trying his hardest not to watch him walk away. He forced himself to turn, walking back toward his hand-me-down Jeep. His skin still buzzed from where Gerry had touched him; his mind began to wander, but he stopped it before it went too far.

The steering wheel was cold to touch, but it thankfully grounded him. He fumbled through the console for his pack of Newports, and was quick to light one up.

Incidents like this—the touch, the strange yearning, the terrible, awful feeling that sat in his gut—had become more frequent in the past months. He wished that things were different; but, as a realist, he knew that they weren’t. There was a bright neon sign that flashed in the back of his mind, but Willie simply chose not to look at it.

Silently, he smoked his cigarette. Across the parking lot, he could see Gerry and the others crowding into an old pickup truck. If he listened hard enough, he could hear their laughter.

Distantly, he regretted not joining them. It would have been fun; but frankly, he did not trust himself to be drunk around everyone else. All it would take was another touch of the hand, another gesture…

No. It wasn’t good to think like that. It wasn’t normal.

Willie fit the key into the ignition, and put the Jeep into gear. As he drove away, he shoved every bad thought into the back of his mind, where they fit very neatly into an unlabeled mental box.

. . .

Six days later, Willie told his parents that he was going to take a walk to the corner store. He politely declined when his twin brother, Wade, offered to tag along; “I’ll be quick,” he said, “I’m just going to buy a new lighter.”

It was a beautiful evening, the kind that only came around toward at the very beginning of fall. The sky was pink, and the air was still and cool. Leaves crunched under his boots as he walked, and he resisted the urge to light a cigarette.

He walked two blocks, stopping outside of a church. He stared at its door for several moments, struggling to find his courage: his family had attended this church every Sunday for longer than he could remember. Silently, he prayed that the priest would not recognize his voice.

The door creaked as Willie entered. Despite the evening, a light was on in the confession box.

Hesitantly, Willie approached. His heart pounded in his chest as he opened the door and stepped inside. He breathed deeply, struggling to calm himself.

His voice was a near whisper as he spoke. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said. “It has been three years since my last confession.”

“Welcome,” the priest hummed. “What do you have to confess?”

“I…” Willie took a deep, shuddering breath. “I… I can’t—”

“God will forgive you.”

“I’m… I think I’m a homosexual,” he croaked. “I’ve had… impure thoughts, about other boys in my class.” He finished, quietly: “For this and all my sins, I’m sorry.”

“Have you acted on this?” The priest asked.

“No,” Willie said. He added, silently, never.

“Then you have not sinned, my child,” The priest said; his voice sounded as though he was smiling. “You are simply weathering another of God’s tests. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Willie stared blankly at the wall across from him. “… What?”

“You have not sinned unless you’ve acted upon it,” The priest clarified, kindly. “Lead not into temptation, child.”

Quietly, the priest ended the confessional. Perhaps he was meant to be stuck with this burden; God wanted him to live a normal life, despite whatever he felt. They key was, of course, to never act on it.

. . .

It wasn’t that Willie lost his religion when he enlisted. Quite the opposite, actually: he knew that God watched over him in Vietnam, and he knew that he was ensured safe passage home. Really, he had neglected to go to church for convenience’s sake: he was not terribly worried about his eternity, in the little time that he had to himself.

He ended up as a quartermaster in Arizona, far into the desert. He liked it there: the weather was always warm, and it hardly ever rained. It certainly made boot camps a little bit difficult, but he believed that it was better training, anyway.

Soldiers held confessionals at small-town bars: between pulls of whiskey, they spoke of their lives overseas. I saw what happened in Phuoc Tuy, a young man would say; or, I cheated on my wife with a prostitute in Saigon.

Willie (or, rather, Sarge—as most people called him, these days) never joined in their religious ceremonies. He observed from afar, listening. He resigned himself to keeping his secrets to himself; he was not keen on being cast out from the group.

Besides: his memories of Gerry Oswald after the regional football game were something he liked to keep to himself. It was a grim reminder of who he was, what he was; another of God’s tests.

. . .

“Cigarette?”

There was man—beautiful, young, with flowers in his hair and beads hanging from his neck—offering an open pack of Marlboro Reds. Sarge took one, despite himself. He’d been trying to quit.

He replied, “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

Sarge was twenty-three, and it had been five years since his last confession. He tried desperately to remind himself of temptation, but failed miserably.

Instead, he was occupied by the heavenly man that shared his cigarettes. His name was Fillmore. He was nineteen years old, and he’d dropped out of college to open a business. He protested the war in Vietnam, smoked marijuana, and believed in Free Love.

Together, they stood outside of one of the bars on the Radiator Springs downtown strip. They had been drinking together—not a lot, just a few beers—and Fillmore had wanted to step outside of a smoke. Sarge could nearly feel the tides of addiction upon him; he joined him for a cigarette far more often than he should.

“You still haven’t told me,” Fillmore was saying, puffing smoke. “Why didn’t you go to college? I mean, you had that football scholarship, and everything…”

“I didn’t want to,” Sarge replied. “I liked the military more.”

“Weird, man,” Fillmore whistled. “I wonder what you would’ve been like. More jock-ish, I guess.”

He was nearly enchanting in the evening light. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with kind eyes and a nice smile. He appeared to chuckle to himself as he took another pull from his smoke; with his eyes turned elsewhere, Sarge found it incredibly easy to stare. He fixated on the curve of his collarbone underneath his shirt, the way his fingers curved as they held his cigarette, how his brown hair fell into his eyes whenever he ducked his head.

A bite from the apple of Eden had led to the creation of humanity.

. . .

Sarge’s mind burned against the inside of his skull as Fillmore walked him home after the fireworks show. His lips buzzed where Fillmore had kissed them, barely an hour earlier; he was certain that he looked disheveled, kiss-swollen and blushing. Oh, how he wished it to continue: he wondered what Fillmore would taste like in the dark and without clothes, how they might touch each other then. Their sin might become holy through the sacrament of free love.

“Listen,” Fillmore spoke (and, Sarge wished that he could listen to his voice forever). “I, uh… If you need me, you know where to find me.”

Sarge nodded, unable to bring himself to speak.

“For anything,” Fillmore continued. “Like, uh…” he laughed softly looking away. “Anything.”

“Okay,” Sarge managed.

They stopped outside of his motel room door. The space between them crackled with electricity; it was almost as though a sort of chemical reaction would take place, if they stood together for too long.

“Goodnight,” Fillmore said, voice barely above a whisper.

Come inside, Sarge wanted to say. Let me have this.

Instead, he echoed: “Goodnight.”

The motel room door felt more like a mental barrier than anything else. Outside, there was Fillmore: beautiful, tragically attractive, kiss burning like cigarette ashes on bare fingers. Inside, Sarge was alone with his thoughts: Lead not into temptation: deliver us from Evil.

Temptation lived across the street, in a multicolored geodome. He smelled like smoke, listened to rock and roll, and dropped acid. Temptation had wandering hands and pearlescent teeth, and kissed like he really meant it.

. . .

Perhaps his dishonorable discharge from the military was God’s way of punishing him. It certainly seemed that way, when everything in Sarge’s life was going wrong.

That’s why he found it so, incredibly easy to give in to proverbial temptation. He slept with Fillmore, very shortly after everything happened. If God had already forsaken him, then there was no returning. It was strange, really, for something so incredible to be considered unholy.

The terror of it all caught up to him eventually. You have not sinned unless you act upon it.

He spilled his heart on accident, begging Fillmore to understand: It’s not normal—none of this is! This wasn’t supposed to happen—not to me, not to you, not to anyone…!

“It’s wrong, you know that?” he finished, breathless. “It’s wrong.”

Fillmore looked back at him earnestly. His devil-horns were missing, now; he looked back at Sarge apologetically, sympathetically.

“It’s not wrong,” Fillmore said quietly. “It’s just… human nature.” He offered a smile, squeezing Sarge’s hand, “There’s nothing wrong about love.”

. . .

“I think I prayed for you,” Fillmore was saying, in his trademark corniness. “I asked for happiness, and I ended up with you.”

Sarge wouldn’t exactly call it dating, but he would call it love. It was tumultuous and rocky—never perfect—but it was theirs. He’d been seeing Fillmore for the better part of three years, now. It had never felt like sinning.

Sarge began to think that his personal heaven was something like this: sitting close to one another, sharing a cigarette, talking quietly. He would exist in these moments forever, if he could.

“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” Sarge finally replied.

“I don’t,” Fillmore said. He rested his head back on the pillow, sighing heavily. “You know there’s other stuff to pray to, right?”

“… Such as?”

Fillmore looked back at him as though it was obvious. “The universe,” he replied. “Who do you think controls the tarot cards?”

“I don’t think tarot cards are real, in the first place.”

“Ugh. Whatever, man.”

Though they had their issues, Sarge did love him. This is something that he would not deny: sometimes, he liked to think that they would grow old together. Perhaps they’d still play their drinking games at the local bar, or they’d do the Sunday crossword together down at the diner. But they’d still be them, through everything.

That, in itself, was enough to put Sarge at ease. Perhaps this was worth it, between heaven and hell combined.

Lord, Fillmore was certainly rubbing off on him.

. . .

Parson County, Ohio, had gone largely unchanged in the years that Sarge was gone. The high school had begun to fall into a state of slight disrepair, and the downtown strip had aged considerably; though, frankly, it probably always looked like that.

He had not returned to his family home since he left for his second tour in Vietnam, now about six years ago. It looked mostly as he remembered it: painted blue, with white shutters and a picket fence, and enough room for the dogs to run outside. His childhood bedroom had gone unchanged as well: football pennants and photographs still hung from the walls, and his bookbag was still discarded in the corner.

Family dinner was something he had somewhat dreaded, upon his return. His father stared calculatingly at him, one eyebrow raised.

“So, you’ve been out of the military for three years,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You haven’t settled down with anyone, have you?” His father looked at him knowingly, “No old lady helping out around that surplus shop of yours?”

Sarge swallowed thickly. “No,” he said, and it was only a partial lie.

“Mm-hm.” He nodded, unconvinced, “Well, we’re waiting on some grandchildren, so—"

“Thomas,” His mother interrupted dotingly.

. . .

That evening, Sarge returned to the church. It loomed over him imposingly; the door creaked in the same fashion as he entered, and the light in the confession booth was still on.

This time, he did not go to the booth: instead, he approached the pulpit, looking up to the crucified statue of Jesus. It stared back at him almost expectantly, as though it was waiting for him to atone. He did not pretend to pray; in fact, he’d probably forgotten how.

He thought of Gerry Oswald, of Fillmore, of smoking cigarettes and the dull flame of a Zippo lighter. He thought of confessionals in boxes and bars, and acting upon temptation.

I have not sinned by loving.

#pixar cars #cars fandom #cars sarge #cars fillmore #sargemore #the third blink #i sort of forgot that i gave him a twin #wade jones. hm. maybe i should expand on him somehow.

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deathofacupid · 8 months ago

Text

mystery | clay jensen

a/n: why is the 13rw fandom so small... it's literally killing me. this takes place during the riot at liberty in season 4.

summary: you've always needed an excuse to talk to him, the riot came up, and there was your chance.

warnings: mentions of riots, fighting, and violence. cursing

pairing: fem!reader x s4!clay jensen

word count: 1.4k+ words

you can hear the faint squeaking of the swings as you close the door and lock your car. it's not winter quite yet, but there's a bristle of leaves floating in the air.

it's getting colder and darker; a dried up leaf sways down into your hair, and you pick it out, admiring the curl of the corners and the brown tint of the edges.

there's a chill in the soft breeze, and clouds appear when you breathe out. the trees blaze with autumn; red, gold and auburn leaves littered the ground like a many-hued carpet that crackled and rustled as you hike along. though, it's rather comparable to a graveyard - bugs lying on their backs' motionless.

there's a certain smell in the fall air, you're sure.

melancholy, you think. it smells melancholy. while you tread along the willow-lined path, you couldn't fully enjoy the warm colors that were gifted alongside, but rather saddened by the end of life.

the soft wind in summer, how it wrapped around someone, hugging their body, now a harsh, cold shove - tearing leaves off their branches.

their swirling waltz, a desperate, autumnal finale, mocks the fleeting glory of their once vibrant life. the shimmering gold, a cruel adornment, a gilded cage before their inevitable demise.

the leaves' shimmering gold is a bittersweet farewell, a prelude to their return to the earth from whence they came.

the song of birds in the air - not so much a song as a cry - at the lack of food for the winter.

autumn's beauty is a human illusion, a veil cast upon its raw truth. beneath the veneer of vibrant hues lies a season steeped in melancholy, a mournful dirge for life's retreat.

now knowing this, how could anyone be expected to enjoy a "beauty" of what's only death?

you follow the trail to the childern's playground, and you aren't thinking, not really. more of following a trail you've subconsciously set out for yourself, in hopes of escaping a round of life.

you're only half aware as you're walking there, the sound of the crunch on mulch, or the soft humming. based on the vocal noises, it's safe to assume that it's a man. boy?

you guess you'll find out.

when you near the swingset, you do see that it's a boy, maybe your age. squinting in the darkness, you realize that you know this boy.

after everything that's happened in the past few years, it'd be hard to not.

clay jensen, well-known senior, not for the reasons you think. famous for the the right things, or at least, you don't think they're the right things.

if you think back, you'd say it started from hannah. when you think of clay, the first thing that comes to mind is the butterfly effect.

one small lie, a simple rumor, triggering a whole chain reaction. someone (multiple people, actually) hurt hannah, hannah hurt herself, which in turn, hurt others.

you'd say clay was one of those people.

you remember freshman year, you had some classes with him, you liked clay, in a more than friends way. you left hints, but he never picked up on them, but you didn't give up.

he was quiet, shy, and nerdy - everything you wanted in a guy.

but when hannah entered the frame, and you saw how he looked at her, you realized he'd never look at you the same.

so you let them be.

last you heard, he was with the new girl. well, she wasn't that new anymore. ani... whatever her same was. you don't pay much attention.

you're not sure if they're together. he's still pretty cute, but he's kind of a lot.

you see him slowly swinging back and forth on the swing, and you take a seat beside him. his head snaps towards you, and he opens his mouth to say something, but you beat him to it.

"you have serious balls, jensen."

"um, thanks? sorry, uh, do i know you?"

you're gonna pretend like that didn't sting. "freshman year, we had so many classes together."

clay furrows his brows at you, before they hit the top of his head. "oh! yeah. y/n. right?"

"yep."

"sorry. i swear i know you, i just- there's a lot going on right now, you know?"

"i imagine."

"setting that car on fire was a risky move, though."

clay blinks, "w-what?"

"that was you right?"

"why? did you see?"

"so it was, then."

he presses his lips together, it's so much harder to get a laugh out've him. you swear it used to be so easy.

you try and amend your words, "no, i didn't see anything. i just... assumed. it seemed like something you'd do."

"uh-?"

"not in a bad way or anything. you've just kinda been like that," you're aware you're being rather vague, and you might've accidently offended him.

oh, well. if there's a hole, might as well dig it deeper, right? there's no where to go... but down?

that's probably not the best method of thinking.

"i don't- what do you mean?"

"well, like, you haven't flown under the radar with this stuff. again, not in a bad way. it's admirable, for the most part, how up-and-front you are with what you believe in and your causes or whatever."

"for the most part?"

you give him a look, "from everything i said, that's what you got?"

he chuckles, and you feel your heart warm. making him happy, it felt like a prize to be won. sure, it wasn't a laugh (yet), but it was something.

"did you... were you there the whole time?" clay asks.

"more or less. i, uh, saw the... i saw diego and justin in the hall."

"oh, shit. did you-"

"no, i didn't. say anything, i mean."

you're not stupid. sure, you aren't a genius, but you've got the ability to put two and two together. it's clear diego wanted justice for monty, and justin had to be part of that.

sure, what was going on between the two could've been only about jessica, but that didn't sound right. jess with diego? no way.

you'd seen her and justin together. that love doesn't come around often, and it'd be stupid to let it pass.

if jessica and justin were "affiliated" before, and now diego was in the picture, was jess trying to stand in his way? convince him of something else?

also, seeing jessica and justin making out kind of gave it away.

that would lead you to your next point, these kids.

alex, zach, clay, jess, justin, ani, charlie...

none of them fit together, and you couldn't see what they'd have in common. unless, it was something else keeping them tied.

almost all of them were mentioned on hannah's tapes, which also included bryce. monty and bryce were best friends, and nothing would've seperated them. monty would do practically anything for bryce.

instantly, it should be obvious that it wasn't monty who killed him.

these kids cared for their late friend, giving them much reason to hurt bryce. however, was it possible all of them ganged up on him? or just a few?

if it were just a few, what were keeping the others from telling?

more secrets, maybe?

if you knew, which you don't, you wouldn't tell.

"why?" he asks.

you look him in the eye, "something told me that wouldn't work out well for some people."

you see him still, clearly figuring out what to say. "what people?"

"i know more than you think i do," you shrug.

clay narrows his brows at you, "you don't know shit."

"oops, did i hit a nerve?" you wince. "sorry. we can drop it."

he stares into the darkness, licking his lips, contemplating his next move. "what do you know?" clay sighs.

"well, i know you know. i also you it wasn't you."

"how?"

"you've always had a hero complex, jensen." he remains quiet, so you continue. "it's not a bad thing, but it's not great either. it's gets you into tough situations, doesn't it? but you'd do anything for your friends. you're loyal. that's what makes you... you."

"i don't know what you think you know, but it's not true."

"okay," you shrug.

"o-okay?"

"it's not my shit to deal with. i don't need nor want to meddle."

clay play with his fingers, slowly nodding. "hero complex, huh?"

again, you shrug. "i call it as i see it."

"yeah, okay," his gaze flickers to you, then back to the floor.

"i'm, uh, sorry. for," you pause, vaguely gesturing around, "everything." when he stays silent, you go on. "i mean, hannah and bryce and monty and the whole trial. it's a lot for one person to deal with. especially a kid."

he pauses, clearing thinking of what to say, "i- i guess? it's never been... like, sure it's not normal, but i wouldn't take back anything i've done."

you open your mouth to say something, "not that i've done anything," clay adds quickly.

"um, okay."

he inhales, "yeah."

"yeah."

clay clears his throat, "well, uh, i should... get going. but... maybe we can do this again?"

"i'm up for interrogating you at midnight anytime."

"cool."

"bye, clay," you smile warmly.

"bye."

you watch him as he walks off into the distance, listening to the crunch of gravel underneath his tires.

clay seems like such a mystery.

and you love mysteries.

#clay jensen fanfic #clay jensen x reader #clay jensen fluff #clay jensen #clay jensen imagine #13rw #13 reasons why #13rw self insert #thirteen reasons why

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liillyliilly · 6 months ago

Text

Can Not Sleep

matsukawa issei x reader words; 4263 synopsis; red string of fate AU with insomniac matsukawa

The utter horror of that red string appearing, and three years too early at that. Biologically, something must have been going on with her. Because she was only a third year in high school, she was only 18. When she stared at it just a little too long she supposed that this was the world telling her she was screwed.

And imagine her surprise at who she was linked to, her soul was interwoven with Matsukawa Issei’s. The same idiot she had a bet with to see who could kiss more people by the end of the year. They had known each other for most of high school, but they never ran in similar circles, there was just enough overlap in friends to cause them to mess around and make silly bets.

The horror at being tied to him was understated by her close friends who said at least he was hot. Sure he was hot, she’d give him that, but he was also extremely intimidating. Everyone said he had an easy-going nature, and that was true, but he also scared the living daylights out of her. No one could be that chill with everything that went on in the world, he must have been some kind of mutant to ignore the terribleness and to keep living each day to its fullest.

She deduces since neither of them talks about the string, life can continue as normal. She assumed the bet was still on, so she went to her current rotation of guys, trying to seal the deal with three of them that week at various locations throughout the school. She was not going to let eighteen thousand yen disappear that quickly from her reach.

He deduces that since neither of them talks about the string, that life is not continuing as normal. He assumed the bet was entirely off.

This is why he got a very infuriating chill when he saw his soulmate kissing someone from the debate team under the stairs on his way to English class. She pats the debater on the shoulder, telling him to get to class. When he goes in for one more kiss, Matsukawa pulls him back by the hood of his jacket, telling him to essentially get his ass in gear with one look in Matsukawa’s eyes.

“So we’re not going to talk about this,” He waves his pinkie in the air. The red string that usually remained invisible appeared visually to the pair of them, connecting his right hand to her left hand. “And you’re just going to keep kissing half the boys in school?”

“I’m at 35 boys now, thank you very much.” She cringed the moment she saw his face tighten in discomfort. She knew that he had capped out at 20 girls and had given up when the string appeared. She hadn’t heard it from him of course, she heard it from Iwaizumi who told her she needed to talk to Matsukawa because he was losing it slowly but surely day by day.

“I thought we could wait a few more years until we discussed,” She held her pinkie up in turn, “This.”

“Years? I was thinking something along a timeline of months.” He rubbed his eyes with his right hand, the string inevitably pulling her closer to him, she had to push against his chest to put some space between the two of them.

“Months? We’re still in high school mind you.” Her pinkie started to hurt, but she ignored it because she needed to set him straight about the expectations for this whole soulmate ordeal.

Matsukawa started citing all the things they were told in elementary school, she wanted to just roll her eyes. They were an exception to the rules, the whole legally registering, the whole getting a red circle tattooed around their pinkie finger to signify the bond they had, they had to be an exception because of their age.

They kept arguing, not realizing that their red string had begun to circle them, tying them up. Too busy with getting the argumentative edge to remember the other things about red strings, that they had a mind of their own. Or at least, the string’s mind was a manifestation of subconscious and conscious thoughts both soulmates had.

She went to walk away, only to realize that Matsukawa’s side of the red string, being a much darker red, had looped around her legs, her thighs, and her torso, and was keeping her from getting away from him.

He realized his fault in tying the two of them together, and for a moment he did look apologetic. So he offered words as a condolence, “You’re pretty.”

“I know.”

“And humble too.” His part of the string just looped around their waists again, meaning they’d be stuck for another thirty minutes or so. A teacher passed by and just giggled a little before guiding the pair to the nurse’s office to wait out the string.

It was shocking to realize that he never slept. Which meant that she began to never sleep.

The first time she realized he stayed up way too late was a few weeks after Matsukawa had let his side of the string go wild, resulting in the principal just telling the two of them to keep the whole red string thing to a minimum at school.

She was snoring, happily too, when her left hand began to move up and down from under the pillow. At first, she thought maybe it was just a dream, and she tried to go back to sleep. But then her hand would not stop the vertical motions, repeatedly. She called him in a fury.

“Get me out of your mind when you’re doing things like that at night!”

“I can’t help it! Biologically you’re literally that for me.”

She groaned and told him to take a cold shower so she could sleep. He had obliged that time. All the other times she just texted him and told him to make it quick, she also made it part of the routine to just scream into her pillow to release the anger at having part of her body being physically pulled by him.

Having the mental connection of thinking about your soulmate linked to physical actions was going to kill her. This was why the red string usually appeared when they were 21, because at least people had the common decency to not use their soulmates to get off in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t always him doing sexual acts either, sometimes he would just tap. Late at night, he would tap his fingers against his mattress, thinking about her. She didn’t mind that one as much as the other stuff he would do at night. She thought that the tapping was sort of sweet, in an annoying nuisance way. There would be some kind of pattern sometimes, but she could never tell distinctively what the pattern was.

Other times, she would just lay awake at night because the red string was doing its little heartbeat thing, where you could feel the heartbeat of your soulmate, but it was especially prominent when they were thinking about their soulmate. Matsukawa’s heartbeat was almost always extremely tangible for her.

She still hadn’t wanted to talk to him about the whole thing, just considering it one of those silly little things she had to deal with. But that was one of Matsukawa’s breaking points, the silence. He could do the waiting as long as she liked, but the silence was killing him. So much so that he had actively utilized her annoyance with the string’s mental-physical connection to tug so frequently one day that she would have to talk to him since no phones were allowed during the school day.

Peeking her head into his classroom, she was relieved to see it was just him in there, the rest of his classmates had gone out to buy lunches and such. He sat at his desk, moving his pinkie by hitting a volleyball in the air with both his hands.

He saw her when the door she was using to peek through had begun to slide and creak. She fell face-first to the ground when the door slid out of control, he laughed and told her to come over. Grabbing a chair, she sat across from him on the other side of the desk. He stopped tugging on the string when she finally sat down.

It was silent for a moment, they avoided each other’s eyes.

He cracks first.

“Talk to me.” He pleads. He reaches out and grabs her hand with his.

“Okay.” She bites her lip, “What do you want me to say?”

“Anything. But lemme say something first real quick, we used to be friends. Good friends I would say, but since this occurred it’s like you treat me as invisible. Like I’m not there. I can understand you wanting your time and stuff to process, like yeah this is a huge change to our lives. But I need you to realize you aren’t the only one dealing with this. I’m here too. I’m the one at the end of your string.”

She feels like crying because he sounds like he wants to cry.

“I’m not ready?”

“To treat me like a person?”

“I’m not ready to treat you like a soulmate. And all that goes on with that. I hate needles.” A flashing image of the needle that will inevitably trace around her pinkie is enough to get her to cringe.

“I know you hate needles. You told me about that first year.” Matsukawa leaned back in his chair, looking outside for a moment. “We, we can put a pause to the soulmate thing. At least for this year. But I want us to be friends again, back to normal.”

She smiles, rubbing his arm with her hand gently, “I want that too.”

Matsukawa did not enjoy being just friends. Not when his entire world had shifted. He had his person right there and she didn’t want to be anything more than friends. Suddenly everything she did was driving him crazy, and he still hadn’t even kissed her yet. Maybe it was his fault for expressing his impatience just a little too loudly during a passing period, because what the hell?

Her picture was pasted all over the walls, with the text: SOULMATE HATER almost spray-painted over it. Matsukawa realized that high school may be the worst invention of the modern world, because who decides to put a bunch of horrible undeveloped humans into one building for hours on end and say that that’s good?

She was shocked, to say the least when she got to school and traded out her shoes for her slippers. Her picture was right on her locker, with the most foul accusation. It wasn’t Matsukawa’s doing, he’d never do that. So she reasoned it must have been people sticking their noses into business that wasn’t theirs in the first place. It was crushing, embarrassing, and humiliating. She tried to rip down all the pictures in the entryway, only to see that all the walls had been glued with the poster.

Then she wanted to cry, because there she stood holding crushed paper in her hand, and other students were flooding in, seeing the pictures, and then looking at her, the worst part was that they then began to talk.

Rushing to the bathroom, she didn’t even realize that she brushed past Matsukawa and his friends, who were all trying to rip down as many of the pictures as quickly as possible. Oikawa sees Matsukawa hesitate, then tells him to go after her, Oikawa reassures him that he, Iwaizumi, and Hanamaki could deal with the photos (Oikawa left out saying that he was also going to find the person but then again some things could be implied with a look).

Matsukawa was crushed abysmally worse than when she said that she had just wanted to be friends, because there she was curled up on the floor of the bathroom rubbing her eyes, she wasn't quite crying but her body was shaking. He didn't know what to do, but he didn't want to mess it up.

He crouched down, and put his hand on her knee, rubbing his thumb over her kneecap.

“Hi.” He offers.

“Hey,” She uses her sleeve to rub her nose, “You do know I don't hate you right?”

He didn't believe it was even possible for her to hate anyone, “You don't hate me, you love me. It might not be all the way right now, but you do love me.”

She chuckles, pulling him down to sit with her. On the disgusting floor of the girls’ bathroom, they waited out the first class of the day, just talking. Eventually, Hanamaki texts Mattsukawa that the coast is clear. She doesn’t know what to do so she just shakes his hand and heads to her next class. He’s left stunned at the entrance of the girls’ bathroom.

It was the following weekend, the whole photo disaster had died down due to the band kids accidentally having an orgy on their trip to Tokyo. While disgusting, it made her grateful to have something else be the focus of the school than her red string.

Matsukawa was bored out of his mind, switching through TV channels. Everyone else was busy with makeup work or their families. He looked down at his hand, he moved each finger once. What was she doing? Who was she with? When would he see her again, outside of just school?

He stared at her icon in his phone, the last texts had just been her thanking him for taking down the photos and for sitting with her. He decided now was as good a time as ever.

to y/n (future wife) 🤩⭐✨💌: Do you want to come over?

to matsukawa issei 🧵🍀: Why would I come over?

to y/n (future wife) 🤩⭐✨💌: To hang out?

She was chewing the inside of her mouth. He was cleaning up the living room as quickly as he could because he had a feeling she would be coming over.

to matsukawa issei 🧵🍀: I have Oreos, you better have more snacks at your house

They didn’t expect to have such a good time together. Sitting cross-legged and across from each other on the couch, they were trying to get Oreos from their forehead to their mouths without dropping them and without using their hands. Matsukawa was surprisingly gifted at this game. She had dropped at least three Oreos, but she was having a great time with each new attempt.

“You gotta move your nose less.”

“I can do it without you coaching me!” She started laughing though, so the Oreo fell, and she made a short sound in reaction to dropping her Oreo. Falling back onto the arm of the couch she kicked her feet out and rested them in Matsukawa’s lap since he had turned around and was looking for the remote to the TV.

It was midnight and they were glued onto the movie screen, gradually, throughout the movie, they moved closer and closer until the length of their sides were touching. He was scratching her back lightly, soaking in the light hums she let out appreciatively. When one of the characters in the movie died, she asked a question.

“How many more months until school ends?”

“For break? Or the end of the year?”

“The end of the year.”

“I think like maybe four or five, we’re about halfway done.” He ate another apple slice from the apples that he had cut up and put in a bowl on the side table. She asked for one and he gave it to her.

“Okay, last day of school, we can go for it.”

“Go for it?”

She just lifted up her pinkie, the tiny red string a rich red color, a more vibrant shade than Matsukawa’s deep blood-red hue. The grin in response that he gave was astounding.

When Aoba Johsai lost to Karasuno, the third years were in shambles. It was again late at night, and Matsukawa just couldn’t help but tug on the string, he wondered if she would call him, or if she would text him telling him to stop. His insomnia got the best of him at times like these.

When his brain wouldn’t let him relax into bed and finally stop thinking. He thought of everything he could have done differently in that last game. Everything he could have done differently to make her love him just a little more, or at least for them to get closer sooner.

Then, with one text, he was opening his front door and she was hugging him so tightly he thought that his breathing would never return to normal. When her shoulder was soaked through with his tears, he gave her one of his sweaters to change into. That was probably the reason for the mental-physical connection to the string, he mused, so that when one of them needed each other, they could be there faster than fast.

The days went by, and they hung out more and more frequently. She was getting used to his personality, all sides of it. The goofy, the serious, but most importantly his ability to stay calm. She could be worried, or anxious, and he would just be there in a capacity that she didn’t understand the magnitude of.

One time, when she went on a family trip to Okinawa. And Matsukawa felt so ill that his mom just knew it was from string sickness. He felt like she must have been too far apart and suddenly waves of nausea hit him like a truck. His mom was amazed that her son was the one who got this side effect of the soul connection since she had texted L/N’s mom and asked if she was doing alright. When the result came up perfectly peachy, Matsukawa’s mom just laughed and got her son another glass of ginger ale.

He called her that night too, begging.

“You're intoxicating, I’m actually running a fever, you need to come home early.” Matsukawa wanted her back within a ten-mile range as soon as possible.

“You mean go back to my house?” She was ruffling her brother’s hair and adjusting his swim shirt for the late-night swim he wanted to go on. Rubbing sunscreen on his ears and pinching his cheek when he complained.

Matsukawa hit his head against his pillow and clarified for her, “No, I need you to come home, which is with me. I said what I meant. Keep up.”

She said she would call him again tomorrow. He was still extremely sick until she got back from her trip. And as soon as he was feeling normal again, he came over.

“You’re a terrible listener, I said to come home not go back to your house.” He tugged her hand, waving at her parents through the door. They waved back at him. She jumped a little, leaning to the side, putting on her shoes, and asking him to slow down.

To her surprise, he pushed her back up, so she was standing. He put her shoes on instead, lacing the ties just tight enough to be secure. He patted her thigh on his way to standing up again, using his head to point to his car. When they got to the park, he took her right to the swings. They weren’t swinging, just sitting on the seats and rocking slightly.

“This is for you.” He hands her a small baggie, made of velvet.

“Drugs?”

“Shut up.” He turns his face away from her, waiting for her to open the gift.

Inside the bag was a shiny small silver ring, it was understated, but the metal had been molded so there was a single knot that was meant to face upwards. She handed the ring to him. He froze for a moment before she held her hand out for him, wiggling her ring finger. He just rolled his eyes and put the ring on her.

“Great, it’s like preparation for the real thing.” She inspected the ring on her finger and Matsukawa just chuckled, shaking his head in exasperation.

“I have something for you too.” She kicks the ground a little more, actually swinging a little. “You need to close your eyes though.”

So Matsukawa holds his hand out and tightly shuts his eyes. He did not expect her to put one hand on his, holding it tightly, and then for her other hand to cup the side of his face, but he most definitely did not expect her to press her lips to his. When she goes to separate from him, he just grabs the back of her head and pushes her back to his lips.

He wishes he could go back in time to erase all other kisses from his history, he wanted this to be his first kiss, he wanted this to be the only kiss to ever have graced his senses.

He tugs the string at night. Always at night. Sometimes she just can not sleep because her finger feels the short but rough tugs. She only realizes there’s an actual communicative pattern when her teacher mentions the development of Morse code within the world, and how that completely shifted global communication.

She heads to the library, thinking there was no way that he was doing what would’ve been completely crazy. He was already in the library, in the exact aisle she wanted to go down, so she ducked and hid in the other section until she saw him leaving. She rushed to get to the book she had asked the librarian to help her find. And when she opened it, a note fell out.

Better start learning ;) - Issei <3

What a goof. It is fully believed that she never studied anything even remotely that intensively before this.

His late-night messages range from sweet genuine confessions to things so borderline toe-curling she has to stop transcribing or else her face would get too hot to live with. Most commonly, he’ll just tap out: I love you.

She knew he was an insomniac. But this was driving her crazy, to know he wouldn’t sleep, or more realistically, couldn’t sleep. She starts going over to his house most nights, just hanging out until she goes home to sleep. Matsukawa starts sleeping better and more frequently when she comes around.

“I bet I’d sleep even better if you just stayed over.” Matsukawa was pushing his luck with that one. She went home but came back with a duffel bag around fifteen minutes later.

Brushing their teeth together made her realize that she did love him back. He kept trying to talk but his mouth was full of toothpaste.

“Do you really wear a chain to bed?” She judged the silver accessory he was wearing in combination with his pajamas. He was lying against his headboard, watching her flit around his room, inspecting and assessing his things. He took the necklace off immediately and threw it under his bed.

“No idea what you’re talking about.” He blurts out. She sat down on the futon his mom laid out for her. “Yeah, you’re not sleeping on that.” Matsukawa resolves and then pats the spot next to him on his bed.

Maybe having her sleepover wasn’t the best idea, because he just wanted to stay awake talking to her and tracing shapes on her hip. But she was asleep and nuzzling into her pillow by the time he got to the part in his story about Oikawa tripping over a volleyball when he saw that Hanamaki and Iwaizumi were wearing crop tops for a joke at practice. He tucked a hair behind her ear and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into him. He claimed that that was the best night's sleep in his whole life.

His mom also came in around 3 am just to make sure nothing that would cause her to be a grandma prematurely was occurring, and all she saw was her son holding his soulmate like a teddy bear. The pictures of them sleeping were well worth all the years she spent dealing with not only her insomnia but Issei’s as well.

Matsukawa’s mom had sent the photos to Y/N before her son. So when Matsukawa was messing around on Y/N’s phone, he was very pleasantly informed to see the two of them sleeping as her lock screen, and then a photo of their shoes facing each other as her home screen.

When it was time to grow up, say goodbye, and move on, Matsukawa could not have been happier. How could he not when Y/N gladly held his hand in public during all the various graduation activities? Hanamaki joked that he had never seen Matsukawa smile longer than two seconds at max, and now here he was smiling like an idiot because the girl he liked was holding his hand and pressing kisses to the corner of his mouth.

The rest of his life went pretty great. Getting married practically right out of high school (much to her chagrin, but hey, she didn’t say no when he proposed so that’s her fault), working at a funeral home which meant helping people move on and understanding that life continues even when it feels like it shouldn’t, and one of the best parts of being with his soulmate was getting much better sleep.

bonus thought...

might need a man who works in a funeral home after this

https://youtu.be/A77PnWNmeqY?si=5azlWNgcizMS1m39 (for the music lovers who need a late night jam fr fr)

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rubykgrant · 2 months ago

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I should actually like. Write it all out as a story, but I don't have the strength for that... but a funny thing in my scenario where the younger rookie Grif and Simmons get time-traveled to a future (that takes place in the eventual plot of my bigger story-line) where they see their older selves together in a relationship, and just HATE that. The older guys take it with some good humor, they remember being Like That, it's fine... the funny part is, while younger Dexter still thinks the Dick he knows is a dick (and a dork), he gets an EMBARRASSING crush on older Simmons. Which, Grif notices, and explains to his Simmons-

"I maybe kinda had a thing for older dudes when I was his age. Not WAY older, I never had a crush on a teacher or somebody's dad, but some of my friends' older brothers? Yeah. I dunno, I thought they all seemed cooler and chill, and like- obviously more mature, but I thought that actually meant they wouldn't be annoying little jack-asses like everybody I went to school with. But they were still annoying jack-asses, who just happened to be a couple years older than me. That's why I didn't even date guys until I was done with high school. I also liked cute nerds. So, you're like ALL of his types, but he's still stuck at the age when I thought all guys were jerks and I was also a jerk, so I decided to avoid guys for the rest of my life. He's gotta be MISERABLE..."

Meanwhile, Dick is absolutely having a CRISIS about the older Grif; he's supposed to like girls, and girls are supposed to be "beautiful", right? So why does this DUDE look beautiful, but also still absolutely looks like a man, he's strong and handsome, and that's what a man is "supposed" to be, right? How can somebody be beautiful and handsome, with curves and muscles, strong and soft, with really nice hair, and a really nice smile, and a really nice laugh, and just a little bit of facial hair that actually looks more rugged than scruffy, Dick didn't think he'd be into that but- BUT HE ISN'T! Girls. Girls? (Simmons also notices this, and he tries really hard to kind of be encouraging without sounding too high-and-mighty, like "I know you because you're ME, so the way you feel doesn't matter, eventually you'll feel the same as I do", that wouldn't help. Simmons just lets Dick know, his life isn't some "cure of inevitable fate", and there isn't anything wrong with how he feels. When he gives his younger self a hug, it feels like a moment that SHOULD be between a father and son, but in both the past and the future, their dad wouldn't do something like this... so, that part is less funny, more bitter-sweet)

#red vs blue #dexter grif #dick simmons #rvb

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raemanzu · 5 months ago

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Duel Nature

@zexalmonth

D - Duel

This little one-shot takes place basically during the last episode of the series, because I felt kind of cheated by how rushed the ending was.

Yuma wants to connect with Vector after all the Barians are revived, and what better way than a duel between friends? But Vector already has enough battles to fight.

----

They materialized on the school roof, of all places. All of them at once, coming to on the ground, like they’d all been part of some bullshit revival meeting—ha, revival, literally—and only fainted, not straight-up died.

For a moment, Vector thought to himself that this had to be some new form of hell. Perhaps the last dying gasp of his consciousness was playing tricks on him, or whatever fragment of him still remained within Don Thousand was being kept as a plaything—it would be fitting. But there was Astral, the smug glowing bastard, descending from the sky like the saint every one of his kind thought they were.

Wait. No, he wasn’t there, not fully. Vector couldn’t feel his presence like he normally could.

“What the hell?” Nasch was standing up, in his stupidly teenage body holding his head of stupidly teenage hair in his hands and grimacing. “We’re alive?”

We. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.

Vector reached out to create a portal, to get away from Nasch and the other emperors before they all inevitably turned their attention to him, the guy who’d stabbed every last one of them in the back, and—nothing happened.

There was nothing there.

Don’t panic. Vector affixed a manic grin onto his face and shoved his errant hands into the pockets of his pants, noting with relief that at least he hadn’t been revived in the idiotic school uniform. Instead his favorite black and white coat was a reassuring weight on his shoulders. Small mercies. Think.

The last thing he remembered was the torrential wind, the rock crumbling under his fingers, getting sucked into… well…

Vector felt as if that same invisible hand was squeezing his core again and sucked in a breath, arm twitching with the urge to cover his chest with one hand. Bright red eyes flashed in his memory, and his empty stomach twisted.

No, there was something else. A sense of time passing, like he’d merely been asleep. And he’d felt Astral’s presence somewhere close, unmistakably. That unnervingly clear resonance, artificial, perfect.

“I have used the numeron code to revive all of you,” Astral was saying, “because that is Yuma’s wish. These human bodies are yours to use as you desire, and will age and die the same as other humans’. Earth is your home now.”

Nasch looked stunned by this, until Yuma leapt down from who-knows-where like a whooping cannonball. “Shark!! Alito! Shark sis! Ahh, Astral, it worked!!”

The sound of his so-happy-I-could-cry voice shouting out the rest of their names was like razors in Vector’s chest.

“It’s Rio,” Merag snapped. “Or Merag, pick one!”

Yuma was too busy jumping Nasch, who honestly might have hit his head and lost all power of speech judging by the incoherent noises coming from his mouth.

Vector took a step backward, unable to tear his eyes off the sight. Yuma, the last hand that had touched his, promising to—

He turned abruptly for the door to the stairs, skin prickling with chills.

His hand touched the knob. “Vector,” Mizael said, and that’s the push he needs to hurry up and yank it open, slipping through before anyone else can say a thing.

With the door closed, he couldn’t hear their voices anymore. Still not a whisper of resonance, either.

Just humans, now? Forever? Until he dies again—what, of old age? The thought was so wrong Vector heard a breathless laugh escape him as he hurried down the stairs.

The laugh quickly turned to an embarrassing squawk as a glowing yellow hand gripped his arm and threw him against the wall. Ow. Fuck.

“Where are you sneaking off to?” Mizael’s pompous voice always made Vector fantasize about snipping off that stupid hair-wing (ear??) with a little concentrated chaos, and he wondered if it had that effect on anyone else. It had to, right?

“Ohoh, Miza-chan, you already miss me that much?” Vector strained to keep a suave voice. That was the problem with human bodies. They had inconvenient things like lungs and throats and flight instincts. And were too easy to pin against walls by someone with a body of condensed energy and crystal.

And why the hell was Mizael Barian anyway?!

“Don’t bother to lie. You’re always up to something.”

“Too bad, our private time is already getting interrupted~!” Vector hated the frayed edge of his own voice and forced his face into a foxlike grin as he saw the unmistakable burst of light and color heralding the arrival of several other Barians.

One, two, three, four, five.

And Astral, floating in through the ceiling.

Vector realized with a bitter taste in his mouth that the only human heart pounding in this damn stairwell was his. And no matter how desperately he reached for that easy familiar power, it was gone.

“Let him go, Mizael,” Nasch ordered calmly.

Mizael made a reluctant noise. “And what? Let him slink off to scheme up even more ways to betray the rest of us?”

Ugh, he could feel Nasch’s eyes on him. That much hadn’t changed. That pompous, benevolent stare, measuring him up, deciding just how much pre-emptive disapproval to dish out. Vector looked carelessly toward the ceiling instead, keeping everyone in his periphery, and sighed as if this was all just a minor annoyance.

“The war for Barian world is over,” Nasch mutters. “We lost.”

Vector thought he had no feeling left in him for Barian world. But something about the defeated voice Nasch just used really pissed him off.

“Oh, Astral, you really wiped it all out?” A tiny hint of Shingetsu’s whiny voice broke through. “Then just took the seven of us back home to be your pets? I didn’t know you had such a taste for the exotic~”

Right then the sound of Yuma’s feet pounding on the stairs above them made Vector’s stupid human heart literally skip a beat, and not in a cute way—in fact it made him wonder if it was trying to stop entirely. That would have been convenient.

“Wait up, guys!” Yuma panted desperately.

Mizael let go of Vector’s arm with a hmph, but Girag had moved his bulk to block the path going down, so all Vector could do was straighten up and think fast. Nasch turned human again first as Yuma approached, then the others, but not so fast that Yuma didn’t catch sight of the transformation as he rounded the corner, panting and rosy-cheeked.

“W-what’re you all in such a hurry for?” Yuma laughed. “I mean, you can do whatever you want now that you’re alive again, but since the big fight is over, I was hoping we could all just be friends!”

Awkward silence. Nasch and Alito started to talk at the same time, then stopped and gave each other looks.

“To answer your question, Vector,” Astral said solemnly, “I did not destroy Barian world. It has been merged with Astral world, and all the souls that existed within each world now exist side by side.”

“All except for us,” Durbe said thoughtfully, adjusting his glasses.

Astral nodded once. “Yuma thought you all deserved a second chance, considering the way your human lives were cut short by Don Thousand’s manipulations.”

Yuma’s presence was bad enough on its own. But Vector was going to be damned—well, he already was—if he gave the other former emperors time to realize just how short his end of the stick was this time. Assuming they didn’t already know, in which case he wasn’t going to give them time to rub it in his face either.

“Yuma-kun~!” Vector cried out, just the slightest edge of Shingetsu still clinging on. “So you defeated Don Thousand after all?”

“Yeah!” Yuma looks thrilled, though there is a flicker of something in his eyes that Vector instinctively turns away from. “You don’t have to worry anymore. Uh, any of you! So, how about it? We’re not enemies anymore, right?”

“To exist in this world as humans means we will need some form of income,” Durbe said.

Astral pointed to each of them in turn, somewhere near their pockets. “I took the liberty of giving you all a modest starting amount. Yuma reminded me that Shark has quite a lot of money and a rather large mansion as well.”

Nasch makes an odd face with his shoulders tensed, like he’s suppressing his initial instinct to grimace. “Uh, yeah, you guys can crash there until you get your own places I guess.”

“I’m sure it’s for the best if I get a start on looking right away,” Vector said, a sharp edge slipping through the sickening sweet of his voice. “So excuse me please, Girag~”

Girag stepped aside at Nasch’s nod of permission, and with another prickle of feeling all their eyes on his neck, Vector hurried—but not too fast—down the stairs.

“Hey, wait right here, okay guys? I’ll be right back!” Yuma’s cheerful voice was already faint enough Vector could only just hear it.

Shit. Shit shit shit. He’d just been reaching into his pocket to see what Astral thought was a modest amount of cash. Vector looked for somewhere to hide. It would be so easy if he could just portal away like usual.

But there was nowhere except the nearest exit from the stairwell. He rushed for it and was halfway down the hall when the door clacked back open behind him. Ugh. There was no helping it.

At least the others weren’t watching.

“Shinge—ah—Vect—ehh, what should I call you??” Yuma laughed awkwardly as he approached.

“Vector,” Vector said in a low voice, not turning around.

Those puppy-like footsteps stumbled to a halt a little ways behind him. “O-okay, Vector! Hey, I was just coming to say, if you don’t want to stay with the other guys, you can come stay with me!”

This guy. Was he serious?

Heat crept up Vector’s back. Not so strange, really. Yuma was like a human sun, burning into him even when his eyes were closed, and in front of Vector, all that existed was the black scar of his own shadow, distorting the hallway floor like another gateway to hell. Sweat trickled down his back. Ugh. Sweat. The smell of his own fear and human-ness was already rising from inside his jacket. And his stomach felt hollow and cramped.

He was going to have to eat soon. Sleep. Piss. Shower. Get a job… what a joke. Hilarious! Astral sure had a sadistic sense of humor. Either that or he was much more oblivious than Vector had thought, setting Vector up with the perfect excuse to tug on Yuma’s heart strings. It would be so easy.

Pull out the waterworks. Turn around with tears in his eyes. Yuma-kun, I think I’m the only one who can’t access my Barian powers! The others are going to murder me in my sleep if I don’t stay with you. But I don’t want to cause any more trouble….

And then. And then. He would be the fox invited into the hen-house. Curl up and play with the foolish little chick who thought he could be friends with someone who’d just as soon swallow him whole. Bat the dumb kid around a bit while he giggles, not even realizing he’s getting slowly crushed by this “game.” How could Vector do anything else? It was just his nature, like a cat chasing a mouse. And Yuma was such a good mouse.

“Vector?” Yuma’s voice was a little breathless, and too close.

Vector turned sideways with half a glare out the window, still not looking directly at him. Yeah, like the sun… too dangerous to stare at for long.

“Yuma… you’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

Yuma laughed. Of course he did. A sheepish little laugh, scratching his head and waving his hands.

“Everybody says that! But I’m just glad you’re okay now.”

“Yeah….” Vector said distantly, a strange buzzing feeling beginning under his skin. Like an inverted sense of resonance, like a phantom limb, like the part of him that had been Barian had simply gone numb and was coming back as pins and needles. For a moment it excited him, but when there was still no response to his reach for power, he realized he was shivering. No, this wasn’t a sudden awakening. Maybe it was more like a premonition of an addict’s withdrawal.

Yuma, to his credit, hadn’t touched him yet. He wasn’t even quite within arm’s reach. From the little Vector could see out of the corner of his eye, Yuma’s smile wavered for a moment, then burst back brighter.

“What do you want, Yuma?” Vector asked, with false politeness.

“I, uhhhh… I want to duel you!” Yuma burst out.

“Duel?” Vector let the incredulous slant to his voice stay. “You want me to duel you? Again? How long has it even been since you were last dueling for your life? Haven’t you had enough by now?” Something was seriously wrong with this kid. Maybe he really did get off on near-death experiences.

Yuma wasn’t intimidated, still laughing nervously. “But it’s the best way for me to know what you’re feeling right now so—!” He groped for his duel disk.

Vector couldn’t help it. A sick laugh burst from him. “Yuma… What am I supposed to duel you with?” He spread his empty hands, indicating his lack of disk, d-gazer, or even deck. “And what for? To understand one another? I already understand you perfectly!”

But how could he, when Yuma was so beyond logic. Was his will to save Vector actually unbreakable? All Vector knew was that he never, ever wanted to find out. No, there would be no more dueling with Yuma. If that shred of a conscience Yuma believed in really still existed, Vector would have to refrain from taking such bait.

“Well, dueling is fun!” Yuma said stubbornly with a childish pout. “Can’t we just duel as friends for once?”

“Maybe later,” Vector sighed airily, though his lungs felt like they were operating at half-capacity as it was. “I have things to take care of and youhave lots of other friends to catch up with, don’t you? So, I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Yuma-kun.”

Yuma lit up at this reassurance, just as Vector hoped he would. “Yeah!! See you tomorrow, Shi—v-Vector! Ahaha!”

He gave Vector a big thumbs-up and, though it cost him about five years of whatever his new human lifespan is, Vector gave him one back—barely restraining the impulse to cringe when Yuma taps knuckles with him—before turning to walk away.

He didn’t hear Yuma’s footsteps withdraw, and so he didn’t look back over his shoulder until he’s turned the corner toward the building’s exit.

The act was worth it. Even three more minutes of being in Yuma’s orbit might have destroyed his resolve. As it was, his mind still raced with the perverse impulse to think ahead, to anticipate another meeting, another chance to—what?

No. He was going to stay far, far away from Yuma and all the other Barians. And do what? All his ambition, all his drive, it was just the restless energy of a rabid animal. He could duel (once he managed to build a deck, he thought bitterly), but it would have to be with enemies. Enemies or nobodies. People who didn’t matter, who didn’t know what he once was, and didn’t know what he was (what was he?) now. Vector chewed his thumbnail as his shoulders crept up toward his ears, the sun setting to his right as he set out on the nearest path to the waterfront. The water itself was blindingly glittering when he came within sight of it, the light breeze a bit warm. He wanted to close his eyes against it but couldn’t help staring at the dazzling brightness.

It was going to be gone soon. The sun was setting.

To his left, his shadow was so long it crept up a building on the opposite side of the street. And when he looked at it directly, the neon afterimage of the glittering light on the water swam and danced on the darkness of it like mosquito larvae in a pond, expanding and swelling into the reaching pale sickly hands of ghosts.

He closed his eyes, but they were still there, even closer, behind his eyelids, the afterimage burning and burning until he was panting and all he could do was turn back toward the light in desperation.

At a bench on the edge of the water, he sat, watching the sun go down. He let his eyes take in every last ray, knowing exactly what would be waiting for him in the shadows when it was gone.

#zexal #vector #barians #tsukumo yuma #yu gi oh zexal

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