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sequinsmile-x · 3 years ago

Text

Day-to-Day

Part of the Whatever Tomorrow Brings series

Chapter 3: Jack

Word count: 4.2k

Read over on a03, or below the cut:

Let me know what you think :)

November 2002

Emily thought she knew what exhaustion was, thought that the long days and short nights at the BAU had taught her how to function on small bursts of sleep.

Then she had a baby.

Her body was running on fumes. The 36 hours she had spent in labour with Theo had left her shattered, and in the three weeks since her baby was first placed on her chest she didn’t think she had slept more than 90 minutes at a time.

She groans as Theo cries out from the bassinet sitting up on the edge of the bed and reaching out for him before he could wake Aaron up. It was his first day back at work in the morning after his paternity leave and she wanted him to get as much sleep as possible

“Ok, sweet boy.” She says, lifting the baby into her arms and settling back into bed, she one handedly shrugs off her pyjama shirt and undoes her maternity bra so she can feed her son.

She rests her head against the headboard and closes her eyes, knowing it was only a few short hours until the day would begin. ______________

Aaron wakes to find his wife sat up, her eyes closed as she leant against the headboard, Theo fast asleep on her chest. She was wearing her maternity bra and her sweatpants, clearly having given up on a shirt at some point in the night. She had one hand cupped under the baby’s bottom, the other hand moving up and down his back. The movement was the only sign that she was awake.

“Your son hates sleep.” She murmurs, opening her eyes to look down at Theo. “Well, apparently he hates me sleeping.”

Aaron sits up next to her and kisses her bare shoulder and cups the back of Theo’s head. “You should have woken me up.”

She smiles at him, exhaustion clear across her face. “You have work, it didn’t make sense for both of us to be up.”

“Can I help at all?”

“Can you take Jack to school?” She asks, looking back down at Theo. “Now he’s sleeping I might try and have a nap.”

“Of course.” ______________

She’s late picking up Jack from school. Theo had slept in the afternoon, and so had she, and the next thing she knew she should have already been out of the house. She gets there as soon as she can, Theo screaming in the back seat and her nerves very much on edge.

“Ok, baby. Please stop crying.” She practically begs as the car pulls up to the school drop off, Jack stood there with his teacher. She steps out the car, and opens the door for Jack to get in. He gets in, not even looking at Emily as he clicks his seatbelt into place. Pulling the door shut, muting the sound of Theo’s crying. Emily turns to Jack’s teacher, sees the sympathetic look on her face.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs Hotchner. I’ve been there myself.”

Emily smiles and nods at her as she gets back in the car. She sees Jack in the rearview mirror, the upset on his face clear as his younger brother continues to cry.

“I’m sorry, Jack.”

He doesn’t respond. _______________

Aaron gets held up at work on his first day back, leaving Emily to sort dinner for a still grumpy Jack as she tries to soothe Theo. She ends up with Theo in a baby wrap, content to sleep against her as she cleans away dishes from the, very mediocre, mac and cheese she had made.

Jack is still sulking when she walks back into the living room, his eyes fixed on the tv screen as he ignores her.

“Jack, sweetie, that's enough cartoons for tonight.” She says gently, feeling like she was treading on eggshells. He made no move to turn the tv off, the usually very reasonable 9 year old ignoring her. Emily sighs, one of her hands on Theo’s back, as she walks further into the living room, turning off the tv herself.

He finally turns to look at her, his eyebrows furrowed in a way that reminded her of Aaron. “I was watching that.”

She raises her eyebrows at his tone. “Jack.” She says calmly. “Please don’t speak to me like that.”

Jack rolls his eyes at her and stands, walking past her. “Whatever, Emily.”

“Jack.” She says firmer this time. “I know you’re upset, but you have to be respectful, ok?”

“You’re not my mom.” He replies. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Emily feels like the wind has been knocked out of her, exhaustion and everything that being a mother to a newborn makes her react in a way it usually wouldn’t. “Go to your room.”

“I hate you.” He says as he stomps up the stairs, slamming the door to his bedroom loud enough to wake Theo.

Emily shakes her head, tears pooling in her eyes as she tries to soothe the baby. ______________

When Aaron gets home he finds his wife crying on the couch, Theo in her arms and the baby wrap abandoned next to her.

“Sweetheart.” He immediately puts his briefcase down and sits next to her, gathering her into his arms. “What’s wrong?”

“I suck at this.”

He cups the back of her head, pulls her face from his neck so he can look at her. “You suck at what?”

“Being a mom.”

It takes him a second to react, her words surprising him. “Em, you’re the best mom.” He says firmly, not even entertaining her comments for a second. “What happened?”

“I was late picking up Jack from school.” She says, shifting a, miraculously, sleeping Theo to rest his head on her shoulder. “I overslept and he was so mad.” She shakes her head at herself. “And he was grumpy all evening, and told me I wasn’t his mom. I overreacted and sent him to his room.” She clears her throat. “He told me he hated me.”

He sighs and cups her cheek and kisses her forehead. “That doesn’t make you a bad mom, baby. You’re exhausted. And Jack is adjusting. He’s gone from being just with Haley, to losing her, to living with us and becoming a big brother all within just under 10 months. That’s a lot for anyone, let alone a 9 year old.”

Emily nods. “You’re right.”

“And he doesn’t hate you. Far from it. He’s just not used to sharing you. Sibling jealousy is completely normal, even when you don’t include the rest of it.” He kisses her forehead. “Want me to talk to him?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’ll do it.” __________

She gently knocks on Jack’s door an hour later. The baby settled and Aaron with him.

“Jack, it’s Emily.”

There's a pause, and for a moment she thinks he’s fallen asleep. “Come in.”

Emily walks in and smiles at him. He was sat in his bed, his favourite toy tucked under his arm. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi.”

She closes the door behind her and sits on the edge of his bed. “Should we talk about earlier?”

He looks away from her, sniffs as he looks down at his bedsheets. “I’m sorry.”

She places her hand under his chin and makes him look up at her. “I am sorry too, I think we were both a bit sad and said things we shouldn’t have.”

Jack nods and suddenly moves towards her, hugging her. She wraps her arms around him too and kisses his hair. “I’m sorry, Emily. I don’t hate you.”

“I know you don’t, sweetheat.” She kisses his hair again, her hand running up and down his back. “I’ve had an idea.” He removes himself from her grasp, his head tilted in curiosity at her.

“What idea?”

“How about on Saturday, dad stays home with Theo for an hour or so and you and I go get breakfast at the usual place?”

“Just the two of us?” He asks, the hope on his face making her chest swell.

“Just the two of us.” She confirms, ruffling his hair. “What do you think?”

His smile is the only answer she needs. ______________

August 2012

It’s when Sara asks him about the picture that he keeps in his dorm room that Jack really, truly, thinks about it for the first time.

It’s a picture taken at his high school graduation. Emily on one side of him, Amelia on her hip, his dad on the other with Theo in front of him. All of them have wide smiles on their faces. The trauma they had been through less than a year before, and still lived with, not present in the happy family photo.

Sara smiles when she sees it and picks it up off of his desk. “Wow, is that your mom? She’s so pretty.”

Jack finds himself almost unable to answer for a moment, unsure how to explain his family dynamic to his new girlfriend. That he had only met his dad when his mom was dying. That a bigger part of him than he would admit had spent the last decade of his life watching Emily with Theo and now Amelia wishing that she was his mom too.

“Yeah.” He says before he can think about it. “Well, technically no.” He corrects, shaking his head at himself, immediate guilt for discounting Haley. Sarah frowns at him and puts the photo back down. Jack sighs, running his hand through his hair. “My mom died when I was 9. Emily is my stepmom, she’s raised me since then.”

Sara smiles at him and reaches for his hand. “Did I ever tell you my dad is technically my stepdad?”

Jack shakes his head at that, the new information about his girlfriend sinking in.

“Well.” She continues. “He married my mom when I was 12, but he’s always been there since then. He’s my dad.” She pauses as if she’s considering if it’s her place to continue, but after a moment she does, a kind smile on her face. “It’s ok if you consider Emily as your mom, you know? I’m sure your mom wouldn’t mind.”

That night he lies in bed and looks at the picture, thinks of how Emily had been there through everything since they’d met. How far they had come since she was teaching him Spanish to distract him from an argument between his parents. How far she had gone to protect him and his siblings when they were separated from his dad, sacrificing her own happiness for them. How fiercely she loved him, the way he knew she would go to war with anyone who hurt him.

She was his mom. ______________

November 2012

Jack gets more and more nervous as they approach Arlington. Sara was coming to meet his family for the first time, for Thanksgiving break of all things. He’d felt confident when he had first suggested it, wanting his girlfriend to know that part of his life.

Now he was more unsure than ever.

“I wish you’d calm down.” Sara says, rolling her eyes at him from where she was sat in the passenger seat. “Isn’t it me that’s meant to be nervous?”

“I know, it’s just...they are really intense.”

Sara stares at him for a second before sighing. “Ok fine, do you want to go over it all again?” She suppresses a smile when he looks almost relieved at her suggestion. “Go ahead.”

“Don’t be surprised if you hear more than one language being spoken.” Jack says as they pull off the freeway. “And, despite how much she might end up talking about her job, please don’t let Mom scare you.” ______________

Emily smiles as she opens the front door to Jack and Sara, beckoning them in from the cold. She immediately pulls Jack into a hug, which he gladly returns.

“Jack, I missed you.” She pulls back to look at him, to try and see if he had somehow changed in the few months it had been since he had last been home. “Your dad will be glad to see you, he’s been talking about this all week.”

Jack smiles at her. “It’s nice to be home.” He clears his throat as he pulls away and grabs his girlfriend's hand. “This is Sara.” He turns to Sara and smiles at her before turning back to Emily. “Sara, this is my mom - Emily.”

Emily swears her brain short wires for a second. Jack had never called her mom before, exclusively calling her by her first name the entirety of their relationship. She doesn’t have time to react before Sara smiles.

“Nice to meet you, Emily.”

She recovers in a second, pushing the emotions down until she has time to process them later. “Lovely to meet you too.”

They all turn to the sound of small feet hitting the hardwood floors, Amelia careening into the back of her mothers legs. She wraps her arms around Emily’s leg, shyly peering out from behind her. Emily smiles, grateful for the distraction, as she bends down and picks her up, settling the 3 year old on her hip.

“Amelia, this is Sara.” She says pointing at her, a smile on her face. “She’s Jack’s girlfriend.” Amelia proceeds to bury her face into Emily’s neck, making her smile and kiss the side of her daughter's head. “Sorry, she can be a bit shy around new people.”

Jack leans forward to try and catch Amelia’s eyeline. “Millie, can I have a hug?”

Amelia turns her face to look at Jack, her hand playing with Emily’s hair, before she smiles at her brother and leans towards him, smiling as he scoops her into his arms.

Emily smiles as she watches her youngest and her eldest together, Amelia giggling as Jack tickles her, brings her out of her shell so he can introduce her to Sara properly. Theo bounds down the stairs to see his brother, the way he had missed him was clear for everyone to see.

She feels the emotion flare in her chest again, the memory of how it sounded when he called her mom flooding through her. ______________

Aaron walks into his bedroom, a small sigh as he runs his hands through his hair, Amelia’s demands for Emily to come read her a story making settling her down for the night. He hears water running in the ensuite and heads towards it.

“Sweetheart? Apparently I won’t do for storytime tonight.” He walks into the bathroom. “You do the voices better…” He trails off when his eyes land on his wife, the way she quickly wipes her face to get rid of the tears she is clearly trying to hide from him. “Em, baby? What’s wrong?”

He places his hand on her cheek and the dam breaks, tears streaming down her face. He pulls his wife into a hug, feels the way she grasps the back of his polo shirt, her fingers digging into the material.

“It’s stupid.” She sniffs into his shirt.

“You’re never stupid.” He says, his hand running up and down her back. He pulls back enough to cup her cheek, wiping away the tears.

“Jack called me mom, Aaron.” She says, sniffing as more tears fall down her cheeks. “He’s never done that before.”

Aaron smiles at her. It hadn’t escaped him that his son had been calling her that all night, as if he had been for years. He’d noticed Emily’s momentary reaction every time, the way she froze slightly before suppressing a smile.

“You are his mom, Em. You and Haley both are. Despite the circumstances, he’s been lucky enough to have both of you.”

She smiles at him, laughing at herself as she wipes tears away from her face. “I know, and I’ve always been happy for him to call me whatever he wants to.” She shakes her head as more tears start to fall. “I just don’t think I realised how much it would mean to me.”

Aaron leans forward and kisses her forehead. “Love you.”

“You too.” She hugs him close, letting him hold her tightly. “What were you saying about storytime?”

Aaron chuckles before pulling back to look at her. “According to our daughter I can’t do the voices like you can.”

Emily laughs. “I should probably go read to her then.”

“Why don’t you get into bed? I’ll bring her in here.”

“If we do that she’ll fall asleep with us, we’ll never get her back to her own room.” She raises an eyebrow at him, he’d always been the firmest in keeping their children in their own beds.

“We can break the rules just this once.”

She is just settling into bed when Aaron walks back in, a sleepy looking Amelia perched on his hip, her storybook in her hand.

“Hi sweet girl.” Emily says as Aaron places Amelia on the bed, the toddler immediately crawling under the covers and curling up against her mother.

Amelia tilts her head at Emily and places her hand on her cheek, clearly taking in her blotchy skin and red eyes. “Mama sad?”

“Oh, no sweetie. Mama is ok.” She kisses the side of Amelia’s head and takes the book out of her hand, smiling as she realises it was Goodnight Moon, the same book she had read to her daughter every night so far that week.

Aaron climbs into bed next to them, wrapping an arm around both of them as Emily opens the book, pleased to have both of his girls in his arms.

______________

June 2018

“Mom?”

Emily turns around in her kitchen, a cup of tea in hand, and smiles when she sees Jack standing behind her.

“Jack! Hi.” She rounds the kitchen counter to hug him. “What are you doing here?”

He hugs her back. “I had no more classes today, thought I’d pop by before Sara was done.” They had moved back to the DC area after college, both of them going to medical school at Georgetown. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

She looks at him curiously. “Of course. Shall we go sit down?”

They settle in the living room, Jack suddenly seeming nervous as he clears his throat and pulls a small box out of his jeans pocket, passing it over to Emily. She opens it and her eyes widen at the ring inside.

“It’s beautiful Jack.” She smiles at him. “I am already married though.”

“Mom.” He says, unamused at her attempt at humour.

“Sorry.” She bites her lip to stop herself from smiling. “So you’re going to propose to Sara. How are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. How did Dad propose to you?”

Emily smiles at the memory. “I’d actually just had my tonsils removed and he was looking after me. I woke up from a nap and he just asked me.” She laughs. “Actually it’s more like he told me. He just said ‘marry me.’” Emily realises that hasn’t helped at all. “Jack, you’ve just got to do what’s right for you and Sara. You’ll think of something.”

“Dad thinks I’m too young.”

Emily rolls her eyes. “I think what your dad is forgetting is that I was your age when we got married.”

“What was it like when you planned your wedding?” Jack asks, the idea of planning his own stressing him out even before he proposed. Emily smiles at that, his confidence in the fact Sara would say yes.

Emily knew she would too.

“Oh I had very little to do with it. I just let my mother get on with it. The only things I picked were your dad and my dress, and let me tell you she had something to say about both those choices.” She smiles at Jack, a slight look of mischief on her face. “I’m sure if we called her she’d be happy to help.”

Jack pales slightly at the mention of Elizabeth’s involvement. “Oh god, no.” ______________

May 2019

Emily finds him exactly where she expected to. She smiles reassuringly at him when he turns around to look at her, before turning back to look at Haley’s grave.

It was a tradition of sorts. Jack came here whenever he had a big life event, anytime it was an important day. His high school graduation, as soon as he could after his college graduation. The day he finished med school.

“I thought I’d find you here.” She says as she reaches him, standing next to him. “Are you ok?”

“Yes.” He answers quickly, before turning to look at her, smiling sadly as she quirks an eyebrow at him. “No. I feel guilty.” Jack says, looking back at the granite headstone in front of him, purposely not looking at Emily.

She furrows her brow. “Guilty about what?”

“That I don’t immediately miss my mom in moments like this. It’s the biggest day of my life and part of me feels like I’ve come here out of obligation.” He admits. “She’s been gone so much longer than I had her, and sometimes I forget you aren’t my biological mom.” He sniffs, his jaw tightening as he tries to hold back his emotions. “And then I remember and I feel awful.”

Emily had spent the entire time she had known Jack wishing she could take his pain, his grief, away. Grief Emily had got a taste of only the year before when she lost her father. He had lost his mother at such a young age, and hadn’t known his father for the first several years of his life. He still had so many unanswered questions, things Haley had never had the chance to fully explain to him.

“Sweetheart.” She says, placing her arm around him and putting her hand on his shoulder. “She wouldn’t want you to feel like this. She loved you so much.”

He nods, wrapping his arm around her. “Is everyone worried?”

“Sara doesn’t think you’ve left her at the altar if that’s what you mean.” Emily says, a wry smile on her face. “But we should get going.” ______________

Emily smiles as she dances with Jack, Sara and her father dancing alongside them.

“Thanks for today.” Jack says, a smile on his face as he looks at her.

“No need to thank me, Jack.”

He hums in his throat in disbelief. “I have a lot to thank you for really.”

“Jack-”

“We’ve never really talked about it.” He says, the song they were dancing to fading into the background. “The older I’ve got the more I’ve realised how hard it must have been for you at the start, but you’ve never said anything. Never really made me feel any different.”

Emily smiles at him, emotion welling in her chest. “Jack, of course I didn’t. You were a kid. You’re my kid.”

He stops the dance, the music coming to an end anyway. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Jack.”

“Can I cut in?”

They both turn to see Aaron standing there, smiling at both of them. Jack steps back, indicating his father can step in to dance with Emily.

“I should go see my wife.” Jack says as he steps away.

Aaron smiles at Emily as he pulls her to him, one arm banding around her back, the other grasping her hand in his. “I remember dancing at our wedding.”

Emily laughs. “That was so long ago now.”

“We’re getting old, Mrs Hotchner.”

She makes an outraged noise, uses the hand on his shoulder to smack him lightly. “Speak for yourself, Mr Hotchner.” ______________

Emily kisses the side of Amelia’s head, her daughter fast asleep on her lap, the excitement of the day too much for the 10 year old, the evening now passin into the early hours of the following morning. She laughs when she sees Theo dragging Elizabeth up to dance, always able to convince his grandmother to do anything.

“Hi sweetheart.” Aaron says as he drags a chair next to her and sits down, throwing his arm across the back of her chair. “Is she ok?” He asks, smiling at Amelia, her head pressed against Emily’s shoulder, her mouth hanging open slightly as she sleeps.

“She’s fine, she’s just tired.”

He kisses his wife's temple. “It has been a long day.” He looks over to Theo and Elizabeth and back to his wife, not missing the sad smile on her face. “Are you ok?”

Emily looks at him. “Yeah. I just wish Dad could be here, that’s all.” She sighs, the thought of John’s death only the year before still felt sharp to her at times. The feeling she had when she got the call was still fresh, as if it had happened only yesterday.

“I know you do, baby. I do too.” He kisses her temple again, trying to press all of his love and support into her skin

“He really loved Jack.”

Aaron smiles at that, memories of Jack trying to teach John how to play video games. The way he had instantly had the older man wrapped around his finger as soon as they had met.

“The feeling was mutual.”

They sit there and watch their eldest dance with his new wife, the promise of a new beginning hanging in the air.

#hotchniss #hotchniss fanfic #hotchniss fanfiction #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #Hotchniss AU #WTB Universe #ITSWM #Day-to-Day #criminal minds fanfiction #family fluff #Criminal Minds AU #Jack Hotchner

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mysticpetals · 3 years ago

Note

Sorry for bothering you, but I had another idea! :D If you don't mind me sending two requests, how about a headcanon (or imagine if you want, you can choose what you like best) where Jake will meet MC's parents and he is super nervous because he is afraid of what they will think of him and if they knew that he is a hacker. But when Jake and MC arrive at her parents' house, they are quite different than Jake thought.

I'm sooooo sorry that this is super late but life got in the way and I just couldn't bring myself to write. And when I did have the time, I was almost ashamed of how long it had been and delayed it even further.

So this is me, finally writing what I should have done months ago. Thank you so much for your patience!!! ❤️

Jake and f!MC headcannons

(meeting the parents)

There aren't a lot of things that phase Jake

In fact, he's seen so much over the years he was on the run, done some illegal things too

But nothing and he meant nothing, could terrify him more than when his girlfriend told him that her parents had invited them over to have dinner together the next week

"next week? Like....like seven days later?"

"yes." she nodded and his brain short circuited.

"oh my god, oh my god."

MC amused herself by looking at Jake panicking about it for a few minutes and then grabbed his shoulders and made him look at her

"relax, babe. You don't have to. I can tell them that you're busy or something."

Jake calmed down for a moment but then he noticed the sad smile on MC's face

And he doesn't like seeing her sad

At all.

So despite his nervousness, he steeled himself to do this

"why don't we go? I think it'll be fun."

MC's face was priceless.

Shocked beyond belief, she cupped his face in her hands and leaned forward, eyes wide

"are you sure, honey? You don't have to force yourself."

She looked so hopeful and excited to hear his answer

And they had been dating for a while. So it was only natural that they meet each other's families

And since MC had already pretty much met his (only the people he considered as one!), it wouldn't be fair if he didn't make an effort too

"yes. We should go," he smiled and MC squealed excitedly, pressing a quick kiss to his lips

"oh my gosh, I'm so excited!! I'll go call them right now!!"

:))))

Did he make the right decision?

Wellllll, standing in front of MC's house, he was sweating profusely

He had worn his best outfit, a white button up shirt and black jeans

And they had already been late because MC liked his look a little too much

Anyway!!!

He was anxious about making the best impression and he really hoped that they wouldn't be put off by his shyness

Or his profession

About which they didn't know

It's fine it's fine it's fine—

MC's hand slips into his, she gives him a soft smile and the world around them fades away

"I'll be with you the whole time. Tell me if it becomes too much."

Jake swears he's never been more in love

Okay, he can do this!! Absolutely!!

He nods resolutely and MC leads them to her parent's doorstep

Jake's heart is pounding but he's ready

The door opens and he's immediately engulfed in a bone crushing hug

He thinks he can't breath and he looks at MC with wide eyes, asking what to do and she just rolls her eyes in fond exasperation

"really feeling the love here, dad. Not like your daughter is here."

And the weight immediately lifts off of him and turns towards his girlfriend who is laughing as her father hugs her to himself

She squeezes him tight in return and Jake feels himself smile

"it's been too long. I wish you'd come by more. And Jake! Welcome home, son!"

Jake is flabbergasted by the warm welcome. Especially coming from MC's father.

Aren't fathers supposed to threaten the boyfriend?

The flashcards he used to prepare for today did not cover this

"Um, thank you," he stammers out somehow and the man laughs

"My daughter here did say you were shy but no matter! Come on in, I won't bite."

He led them inside and Jake just knew that MC was enjoying all this a little too much judging by the amused tilt of her lips

He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw a stern woman sitting on the couch, watching them walk in

"mom! How have you been?"

MC immediately went in for a hug while the older woman kept staring at him and MC's father leaned close to him and whispered

"She's a tough cookie to crack. Good luck, son."

He was so screwed

Jake gulped and watched the smallest of smiles cross her lips as she regarded her daughter, who was talking excitedly

"and this is Jake! My boyfriend!"

Jake literally felt the temperature inside the room drop, when her mother looked him in the eyes

"h-hello ma'am."

She nodded at him and well, that meant she acknowledged who he was, right?

She immediately turned away from him and started asking her daughter how she had been

Well, apparently not

"sorry, Jake. She's not trying to exclude you. She's just....a little hard around the edges."

He appreciated MC's dad because at least one parent didn't seem to hate him

"I appreciate that, sir."

He looked horrified at being called sir

"please don't call me that. Makes me feel old. Call me dad!"

Jake was once again astounded by the man's openness and not wanting to offend him, nodded hesitantly

He smiled widely and Jake was immediately reminded of MC's face when she laughed

"that's more like it! Come on now, the ladies shouldn't be left alone, they'll talk the night away."

MC smiled as soon as Jake entered in the kitchen where both the women were cooking and bringing out the cutlery

"had a nice chat, you two?" MC asked and her father nodded enthusiastically

"I like him! He's very nice, I approve."

"you've known him for two seconds." MC's mom deadpans and Jake smiles nervously

"can I help you with anything ma'am?"

She appraises him for a few moments and then nods

"then please help MC set the table."

Jake literally sighs in relief when the two of them come out from the kitchen

"your mom is scary."

MC laughs and pinches his cheek

"only because you look terrified of her. She enjoys making you squirm."

"well I almost wet myself because she looked at me like I murdered her dog or something"

MC laughs loudly and her father pokes his head out of the kitchen

"alright you two?"

Jake fights off the blush he knows he's sporting and prays that neither of her parents heard what he had said

Table was set quickly, with MC telling Jake about her childhood memories and her parents brought out the food

Jake thought he might have seen MC's mother smile when he made MC laugh but he wasn't sure

Dinner was a loud affair, with MC and her dad competing about who remembers the most about MC's childhood and Jake and her mother listening quietly

He definitely knew where MC got her charisma from

MC's dad was sweet to include Jake in their conversation, addressing him directly and asking him about his own experiences

He slowly found himself relaxing in their presence and telling them about his own hobbies and pet cat

MC's mother gave an approving nod at his choice of pet and asked him to bring him along the next time

Next time

Jake's brain short circuited at the thought that she wanted Jake to come over again

Does that mean tonight was successful?

"so Jake, you didn't say what you do for a living."

Ahhh

Well, it had to go wrong somewhere, right?

Jake froze and looked to MC to see her in a similar state and immediately deduced that she had not told them about his profession

Well

He knew this was going to come up eventually

"I'm a hacker."

Pin drop silence

You couldn't even hear anyone breath over the quietness

MC's mother put down her spoon slowly and opened her mouth to say something but Jake interrupted her before that

"I know you might think it's not a respectful job but it's what makes me happy. And MC supports me every step of the way and I promise you that I'll do everything in my power to honor her confidence in me. Keeping her safe and happy and healthy is my priority and I'll give my all to make sure that she's never unhappy with me."

Everyone at the table looked at him, MC with tears in her eyes and her father looking very proud

Her mother's expression was still unreadable until she smiled at him

The first smile directed at him

"I was going to say that's very interesting. I myself work in cyber security so I've had dealings with hackers. I've found that they're usually very polite."

What

The

Fuck

Jake blinked slowly and MC shifted guiltily in her seat

"haha what a coincidence, right?" She smiled nervously and her dad picked up quickly at her hint

"oh definitely! Why don't you two talk about work stuff and MC and I can clear up the table?"

MC and her father practically fly out of the dining room and Jake and her mom are the only ones left

It was MC's mother who initiated the conversation this time and Jake replied to her questions

He found it quite pleasant to be honest

It was not a regular occurrence that he could chat with someone who knew about computers so this was a nice change

And MC's mom was quite knowledgeable

She even offered to hire him the next time her company had a need of someone to check their software

Jake had no problem agreeing to her wish

He found that she was actually a very kind but fair woman who loved her family dearly, judging by the way she spoke of MC and her father

His heart warmed to know that MC had grown up in such a loving household, even if his heart gave a twinge at never having felt something akin to parental affection

"okay, you two. I think that's enough chatting for today," MC's father said and Jake looked at the time

Holy shit

How is it so late??

MC gave him a discreet thumbs up behind her mother's back and he had to stifle a laugh

"as much as we loved having you two, you should probably get going if you want to reach the city before midnight."

The goodbyes were a little sad and Jake found himself getting a bit emotional too

He really felt like he belonged here and not like an outsider

And MC's parents are so nice and inclusive

No he did not cry

Not at all

To Jake's surprise, MC's mom pulls him into a hug

"take care of my daughter."

And then he's getting roped into another hug, this one much tighter by her dad

"you hurt her, I'll kill you."

And when he stepped back, he was smiling as usual and Jake almost thought that he imagined his words

Anyway!!!

They are in the car and MC is already planning their next trip

And before he would have been scared but now, after spending time with her family, he knew he had found people worth considering his family

#duskwood #duskwood jake #everbyte duskwood #duskwood game #everbyte #jake × mc #duskwood jake × mc #jake × player #duskwood headcannons #duskwood fanfiction #duskwood fanfic #duskwood fic #duskwood jake x mc #duskwood jake fic #everbyte studios #everbyte game #duskwood player

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matildashoney · 4 years ago

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𝙸 𝙵𝚎𝚎𝚕 𝙰𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎? // 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚃𝚠𝚎𝚕𝚏𝚝𝚑 𝙽𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝

𝙼𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚁𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃 // 𝚃𝙰𝙶𝚂 // 𝙿𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃 // 𝚃𝙰𝙶𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃

𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 // 𝚜𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚝 𝚖𝚢 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐

𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙲𝙻𝙰𝙸𝙼𝙴𝚁: 𝙱𝙸𝙿𝙾𝙻𝙰𝚁 𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙾𝚁𝙳𝙴𝚁, 𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝚂𝙴𝙻𝙵 𝙷𝙰𝚁𝙼, 𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝚂𝚄𝙸𝙲𝙸𝙳𝙴, 𝙰𝙽𝚇𝙸𝙴𝚃𝚈

𝚠𝚎𝚕𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎'𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍. 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚖𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚌 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊 𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚋𝚒𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗. 𝚒 𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚎𝚗𝚓𝚘𝚢. 𝚒'𝚖 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝚒 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚘 @summertimestyles 𝚊𝚗𝚍 @theharriediaries 𝚊𝚗𝚍 @hunflowers 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚍𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚘𝚗 𝚎𝚗𝚍. 𝚒𝚝 𝚖𝚎𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎. 𝚒 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑.

Harry and Caroline are fighting, again. Again, being the key word, there.

And well, it’s not really Harry fighting, it’s Caroline. It’s Caroline fighting with herself, Harry trying to stop it, and her internal disarray of chemicals that make her brain function atypically arguing back against him. That’s how it feels to Harry, at least; that he’s fighting the chemicals in her brain and not the nonsense that it tells her, because logically Caroline knows better than to talk to the people that hurt her, by now, especially her mother.

“Harry, I couldn’t not invite my mother! That’s my mom.”

“Caroline, yes, you could have. It’s very simple, love. Quite literally, you don’t text her, you don’t send the invitation.”

“Don’t ‘love’ me,” Caroline bites back daringly, crossing her arms in front of her chest and standing directly in front of her fiancé, his stature much taller and more commanding than her own in the cotton robe she’s clothed in as she gets dressed and ready for their engagement party, this evening. “I’m angry with you.”

“I’m angry with you,” Harry sighs frustratedly, shaking his head and walking out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair slightly damp and shaggy from the humidity of the closed off room. “Callie, you know how I feel about your mother, and you know how it would make me feel that you sent her an invitation to our wedding. Callie, you crossed a boundary and you hurt my feelings.”

That’s what gets Caroline. That sentence is what makes her heart shatter in her chest and feel as though the shards are scraping at the inside of her chest and there’s no way to breathe properly. Caroline hates crossing boundaries, and even worse, she hates hurting Harry’s feelings. Especially when he’s only doing something to protect her.

“Let’s take a breather,” Harry suggests, swallowing a thick lump in his throat and shaking his head, sucking in a deep breath in through his nose and pursing his lips together. “I’ll get ready in the bedroom. Get ready in here.”

“Okay,” Caroline sighs, tightening the cotton around her waist and slowly shutting the bathroom door behind her, their clothing already separated into the bathroom and the bedroom before their shower was even taken, almost a forewarning for what would happen when Caroline accidentally spoke about inviting her mother to their wedding in the middle of their shower and Harry looked at her with wide eyes and an open jaw. “Don’t leave.”

Harry knows that it’s more of a question than a statement. “I’m naked, love. Can’t really go anywhere without m’clothes, anyways.” Caroline doesn’t laugh. “I’ll be right where you left me, Callie. Promise.”

“Kiss?”

“Come here,” he says, ushering her towards him, holding his hand out and grabbing her wrist lightly, careful to not touch the crescent shaped marks she left in her skin earlier in the week. “Kiss.”

Harry kisses Caroline three times, twice always, third for good measure. Caroline hums contently, nodding her head and turning on her heel to walk towards the bathroom, quietly shutting the door behind her before flicking on the air vent and beginning her routine around the room.

Caroline thinks about lots of things in the midst of getting ready for the evening, such as her mother, her father, her family that flew into town two nights ago, their friends, their cat, Harry, but namely about how engagement parties have always been something that seem so over the top to her.

All of it – the wedding traditions – seem like so much work for one night, especially for a night that most of their friends will not remember considering how easily they black out drinking when unlimited liquor is involved. Having an engagement party never really mattered to Caroline, that is until she became the engaged one, mainly because Harry refused to not follow through every tradition that is involved in the wedding planning, from the bachelor and bachelorette parties, to the letters for their first fight being tucked away in a box, to not seeing the bride the night before the wedding. Harry is listening to all of it, and all of it is beginning to get on Caroline’s nerves, a tiny bit. Harry isn’t getting on Caroline’s nerves because she’s angry or mad at him, no, but because he’s so considerate of her through everything, that it is driving her insane that they aren’t married already. If it were up to Caroline and Caroline only, she and Harry would have eloped the day he proposed to her.

And before Caroline even knows it, nearly an hour has passed, and Harry is knocking on the bathroom door to warn her of the time.

“Are you ready, Bug?” Harry calls from their bedroom, buttoning the cuffs of his long sleeves and bringing the suit jacket over his shirt, adjusting the waistband of his trousers and having the material sit lowly on his hips. “Odds of us being early are running relatively slim if we don’t get a move on, soon.”

“Ready!” Caroline calls from the bathroom, the silk, champagne pink dress clinging to the curves of her body, her heels clicking against the linoleum as she hurriedly rushes out of the room and brushes her fingers through the freshly done curls. Caroline refused to have anyone help her get ready, tonight, insisting that she would be perfectly fine on her own, and instead her slightly irritated fiancé wound up in the bathroom with her, helping her finish her hair while she applied the final touches to her makeup and her accessories. “Is the car running, Shakespeare?”

“Has been for a few minutes, now, love,” he says with a smile, taking a moment to let his eyes wander over his fiancée, taking in her appearance and the way she’s never looked more beautiful than with the ring on her finger and his pearls around her neck. “Look absolutely stunning, Cal.”

“Thank you. Look quite handsome yourself,” she blushes, reaching out her hand and graciously giving herself to him, intertwining their fingers and letting his thumb brush over her knuckles as they hurry down the stairs and wave goodbye to their cat and make their way to the car, where Harry is quick to open the door and shut it behind her. Harry is around the driver’s seat before she can even attach her phone to the radio, ready to play their songs over the speakers and sing loudly and proudly all the way to the venue. Harry and Caroline sing quietly together for a while, trying to beat the rush of traffic in Central London to meet at the venue where the engagement party would be held by all their family and the few friends that flew out for the event. Caroline, out of nowhere, says, “I’m sorry I invited my mother without talking to you about it first. I’m sorry that I went over your boundary and I didn’t show you the respect that you show me regarding people that hurt our feelings and don’t respect us.”

“I accept the apology, love,” Harry smiles, kissing her hand and squeezing her fingers softly in his hand. “Care to tell me why you did it? Are you ready for that conversation, or not yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, baby. We’ll talk about it later.” Harry smiles again, this time at Caroline, and kisses her knuckles, trying to soothe the anxiety that he can see physically building in her eyes. “Did you know that once the bookstore is all together, I’ll be writing an entire poetry book about how much I love you?”

“Harry Styles, you love me, your mentally ill fiancée, that much that you’d write a whole poetry book about me?” Caroline teases, turning to face Harry in her seat and smirking at the slight crack of a smile peeking onto the corners of his mouth.

“Mentally ill fiancée,” Harry grumbles, squeezing her hand warningly and shaking his head in disapproval. “Can’t stand you sometimes, Caroline Ryan.”

“Can so,” she says confidently, wiggling her left hand in the air with her quaint diamond ring sitting perfectly on her finger. “Asked me to marry you to prove it.”

Harry is quiet until Caroline sets her hand on her thigh, his eyes traveling from the red light to the dainty ring on her third finger before speaking. “Can I please get you a better ring, Callie? I hate that you wouldn’t let me splurge on a ring for you, like you deserve.” Harry’s been harping on this since the day he proposed, since the moment he opened the little antique box, and the engagement ring was just enough to fit inside. He’s felt like it wasn’t enough to show his love for her, that their love should be shown in a more extravagant way than a dainty gold band and one singular diamond. “I can afford to buy you a better ring, now.”

“Harry, I don’t want a different ring. This is the one that you proposed with, that you thought would mean something special to me, and that’s the one I want,” Caroline says firmly, shaking her head and turning to face the window, soaking in the sights of the city and the bustling traffic surrounding their newly bought car.

Shakespeare’s Library is doing exceptionally well since the grand opening a few months ago, with regular customers and the new influx of shoppers since opening in the city, and it was enough for them to afford to move out of his sister’s house and into the apartment above the shop. It’s small, very small, but enough for the two of them to share comfortably, with one bedroom and a bathroom and decent sized kitchen for dancing at one in the morning. Their dining table is simultaneously the workstation for Caroline’s book – which has yet to be named – and Harry’s records for the financials of the bookstore that’s been his dream since he was a little boy.

“Fine,” Harry agrees regretfully, turning into the parking space and shifting the gears into park, turning to face the woman sitting next to him who is nervously picking at the hem of her dress. Better than making her fingernails bleed, Harry thinks to himself. “Go on and tell me why you’re anxious, Callie.”

Caroline sighs, looking towards Harry and says, “Our love story isn’t all cute and butterflies and rainbows, Harry. Hell, I didn’t even like you at first! Then, I’m supposed to go and tell this story to your family who thinks so highly of me, and I’m going to have to tell your mother that I hated her baby before I loved him.”

“That’s our story, though,” he says delicately, kissing her knuckles and rubbing his thumb over her wrist. “Our story wasn’t meant to be like everyone else’s. It wasn’t meant to be like Niall and Liv’s or Mitch and Sarah’s. Or anyone else’s for that matter. It’s meant to be ours, Callie.”

“How do you know that?” Caroline wonders honestly, sighing and looking into his emerald eyes and seeing the love and affection that pour through them, and all she wants is a kiss. Her eyes barely have to flicker to where his lips are before he’s leaning over the center console and grabbing her face to kiss her gently, his hands holding her cheeks, his rings cold against her skin. “Hm, you know that because you love me. That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it?”

Harry nods proudly, pecking her lips once more before turning the ignition and opening the car door. Hurrying around the car to open her door – because she knows better than to try and open her door, by now – Harry takes Caroline’s hand and interlocks their fingers, walking inside the quaint restaurant and into the private room they rented for their party and the evening. His hand is warm and comforting in hers, his thumb rubbing along her knuckles and her cheek laying on his shoulder as the owners of the restaurant talk quietly with her fiancé about the room and everything that would be catered for the evening. His mother and sister are hurrying inside after them, apologizing for running late and wrapping their future daughter/sister-in-law in their arms for a warm embrace. Their best friends are quickly coming to follow, and the few family members that were invited and to the event are shuffling in behind them. Quickly, the private room is filled to the brim with nearly twenty of their closest friends and family.

“Hi, hello. Come on in,” Harry announces with Caroline at his side, her hand wrapped in his, intertwining their fingers and squeezing every so often to remember that he’s there with her, holding her safe. Harry knows that Callie isn’t doing too well, right now, and she needs him more than ever. “I, I want to thank you for coming and celebrating such a special day with us. Callie and I recently got engaged, as you already know, and we wanted to have a little dinner with our family and friends to celebrate the occasion. Our love story is anything but typical, maybe even ideal, and we thought, what better way to celebrate being engaged, than to tell the story of how we met and fell in love with all our friends that don’t necessarily know the whole story.”

“Tell it then, Mr. Storyteller,” Niall shouts from his table in the corner, earning a smack on the forearm from his girlfriend and a stifled laugh from Mitch sitting next to him. “Ouch.”

“Callie is going to tell the story, actually,” Harry says to their friends and family, squeezing her hand and pulling out the paper that she wrote on from his suit jacket pocket. He kept it there for safekeeping because knowing his fiancée, as lovely as she is, she’s quite forgetful and would have sent herself into a near panic attack had she forgotten the papers at home and had to tell their love story solely on memory.

“All right, baby. This is your time. Can stop any time you need to. All you have to do is look at me. Look at me and I’ll know what to do.” Harry looks at Caroline fondly and kisses her cheek. “I love you.” Caroline nearly melts at the term of endearment; it’s not one that Harry uses usually, especially not since they moved in together two years ago and their names that they have for each other are too sweet for him not to say. Caroline’s hands are shaking when she reaches for the papers from Harry, and his eyes grow wide with nerves as he notices. “Callie, you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” Caroline assures, adjusting the strap on her shoulder and setting her glass of champagne that was given to her as they walked inside the venue on the table, a light sheen of sweat beginning to form beneath her makeup as she feels everyone’s eyes fall to her. Caroline never liked speaking in front of crowds, especially not when there are people that she could very well make a poor impression upon, like his mother and sister, their friends, their coworkers.

This, tonight, is different, though. This is for their engagement, for the next step in their relationship. This is for the stories they’ll tell their nieces and nephews, their friends and family, their audiences when they write their own novels and poetry collections and short stories, like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. This is different, for all intents and purposes. That’s what makes Caroline want to do it – specially to show the love of her life that this means as much to her as it does to him – to tell the story of their love, even if it is less than ideal in the beginning.

“Firstly, I want to thank everyone for coming,” Caroline begins, smiling softly as Harry’s hand finds its way to the small of her back comfortingly. “Especially our friends and Harry’s family, that made it over here and are staying together in a hotel, it means a lot to me that you’ve come to share this time with us, even more so that my family couldn’t be here for the engagement.”

Caroline’s family couldn’t make the engagement, the engagement party, and a majority of the wedding traditions as a majority of the relatives and cousins and aunts and uncles live in another country and are a bit older, a bit estranged. Lucy, Caroline’s mother, still has yet to reach out, even though Caroline and Harry tracked down her location and sent an announcement weeks ago. Caroline, since they sent the announcement, has been hung up on inviting her mother to the wedding, to seeing her there, maybe, just maybe, making a good impression and winning her over, like she wishes she had when she was a little girl. Harry wishes this wasn’t the case, but there is little he can do to change her mind.

“Our story is anything but the typical romantic comedy that my darling fiancé adores, and to be honest, it’s something that, had you told me five years ago, I would be telling at an engagement party, our engagement party, I would have given you some choice words and something along the lines of, ‘Go away’.” Niall and Mitch laugh loudly in the corner, nodding along with Liv and Sarah. “Truth be told, lucky is the best, the only, way to describe how it feels to be me, today. Lucky to be standing with someone by my side who understands me, who loves me, who cares for me on the bad days and the good days. There are plenty of them, the bad days, and Harry is someone that immediately knows what to do, how to take care of me, how to love me, especially on the very bad days – the days when the lights are off and there’s no way to find the light switch. Truthfully, I could go into detail about how Harry takes care of me on the bad days, how he comforts me, how he knows how to make everything better without having to try very hard. All the things I could say about Harry would make you believe that Harry is the kindest, gentlest soul I’ve ever met, and you would be right. There’s no one I’d rather spend every day of my life with, even if our relationship started out a little rocky. Well, very rocky.” This time, his mother and sister laugh quietly with tears in their eyes. “Our life, our relationship, couldn’t be what it is today if we didn’t dislike each other in the beginning, I don’t believe. Especially me. Disliking Harry–”

Harry coughs quietly and says, “Hating.”

Caroline rolls her eyes, shaking her head and says, “Okay, yes, hating him taught me, in some weird capacity, how to love him, how to love someone that doesn’t quite understand me or anyone like me, just yet.” Caroline looks at the papers in her hands, the ones she’s reading word for word, and sets the pages down on the empty plate, sighing heavily and looking out towards all their friends and family with a fond smile. “Honestly, I thought I was going to need all these pages to tell the story, to remember everything and share the details, but I remember. I remember everything like it was yesterday.”

Shakespearean Literature. That’s the first class on Caroline Ryan’s agenda for the day.

Liv is in the same building, a workshopping class with her new boyfriend – that she can’t remember the name of if her life depended on it – taking her attention while they were grabbing coffee, this morning. Liv’s relationship is new, an exciting adventure with someone from another country that she met at a bar when Caroline was “home sick with a stomach ache” - also known as, Caroline had a panic attack while getting ready and couldn’t leave her bedroom. Liv is obsessed with him. Caroline has never seen her best friend so infatuated with someone before, and it makes her happy, simultaneously a bit lonely, but happy nonetheless. Caroline knows that she’s not in the business of finding anyone for her, right now, not when she’s still a mess over the recent death in her family and taking care of her family’s estate and all that’s been drudged up by it.

“Caroline Ryan!” Professor Rigsby shouts as she walks into the classroom, coffee in hand, her computer and notebooks tucked away in her backpack. Caroline is infamously early to every class and the only other person in the room is sitting in the front of the class, their back turned as if no one walked into the room, and it suddenly makes her nervous. “Having my two favorite students in the same class. This is going to be a treat!”

Caroline sits in the back of the room instinctively, trying not to draw any attention on her – more than the professor already called to her – and lays everything down, setting her coffee in the cupholder before she spills it over herself – been there, done that – and opening her computer to a new page of notes, ready to be taken. Max – her boyfriend – texts her to make sure that she’s gotten to class all right and everything is going okay so far – he’s considerate, like that. Caroline types her reply on her computer without noticing that the man that was sitting in the front of the room has slowly made his way towards her and is now standing in front of her computer screen with his hand outstretched to introduce himself.

“Oh,” Caroline says embarrassedly, wiping her hand nervously on her thigh and stretching out her hand, shaking his and nearly missing his name.

“Harry,” the taller man states smoothly, his voice is accented from somewhere overseas – that much she knows, likely the United Kingdom, she thinks – his grey shirt tucked into his checkered black and white pants, which hang loose around his thighs and calves. His hair is slightly shaggy, longer on the top and sides, curly brown tendrils falling into his face that he’s brushing back. The sight of Harry, alone, makes her breathe out a singular breath of relief, thanking her lucky stars that he’s not her type and she won’t have to worry about thinking he’s attractive and stumbling over her words with him if they’re partnered together for annotations – which is likely if he’s their professor’s other favorite student. Besides, Max is a good boyfriend and friend. That in and of itself will make this easier for her.

Harry smiles arrogantly, a dimple indenting his cheek as he stares at her, “Hopefully Professor Rigsby partners us together for the annotations that we’ll have to do this term. It’ll be interesting to see what you have to say.”

“Excuse me?” Caroline says pointedly, already slightly insulted with whatever this man has to say to her. The reason Harry’s talking to her is unknown as it is, let alone why he’s backhandedly complimenting her annotations on the literature of a seventeenth century poet.

“Typically, you know, it’s male dominated course. It’ll be interesting to see what a female, what a woman, has to say about love from a man’s perspective,” Harry says confidently, the disgust written across Caroline’s face with the furrow in her brows and the purse to her lips. “Professor Rigsby said nothing but great things about your writing, so I’m looking forward to getting to know how you interpret literature.”

Caroline is confused as to why Professor Rigsby was talking to another student about her writing, and why this student thinks it’s acceptable to say such a thing to her. Her nails are instinctively becoming more enticing to pick at the longer he stays and speaks to her, and she’s suddenly happy that the room is filling with students and Harry’s attention is being pulled in an opposite direction.

Caroline’s eyes fall to her thighs, the hair growing beneath the hem of her shorts suddenly bothering her and becoming an obsession to note for later when she’s in the shower. Her nails make crescents in the skin, and she nearly is digging deep enough to cause a cut when the professor coughs and makes an announcement to start the class.

“Welcome to Shakespearean Literature, young master’s students. I’m Professor Rigsby, but you knew that already,” Donald Rigsby announces to the class, standing at his podium and flailing his arms about as he speaks.

Donald is an older man, likely in his sixties or seventies, and he reminds Caroline of her grandfather, in some ways, the one that used to read classic literature to her as a child when her father told him not to, that it was too mature for a young girl her age, and he would say, ‘Shush, Gabriel, it’s framing her little mind for when she’s a famous writer, too.’ Gabriel Ryan never liked the idea of his daughter growing up, even when she was grown and sitting at his bedside while they took the intubators out of his chest and lungs. “In this course, we are going to be focusing on William Shakespeare’s poetry collection and a few of his playwrights, including my personal favorite, The Twelfth Night. Our discussion groups will be online, and you will be expected to attend every Monday and Wednesday to discuss in person with the whole class. Annotations will be with your partner and individual for every unit, every piece of writing we analyze. Collection of annotations will be done before the exams and given back within a week’s time.” Caroline is focused on picking at hairs on her thighs when her name is shouted out from the podium. “Harry Styles and Caroline Ryan, you’ll be my first set of annotation partners.”

Harry turns in his chair and gives a smile towards Caroline. Caroline nods, smiles, and goes back to focusing on her skin, a speckling maroon dot on her skin in the shape of a moon telling her that she’s gone too far, once again. Caroline can feel Harry’s eyes – that’s who she suspects it is, anyways – on her as the professor announces the rest of the students’ partners for the workshopping annotations, and she nearly looks away from her thighs long enough to meet the stare of the person doing so, but by the time she lifts her head, there are four new marks in her thigh and Professor Rigsby is announcing what textbooks they’ll need for the term and that the class will be short today as they’re only going over the syllabus and their first reading.

Donald Rigsby ends class a staggering ten minutes early – which for him, is impressive – and Caroline is nearly the first one out the door. Nearly, is the key word; that is until she spills her books and notebooks out of her hands and onto the carpet of the hallway of the English Department. Hands littered with rings start to grab the books around her and slide the materials into her knapsack, hurrying the other students around them and eyes drilling holes into her scalp as she continues to stare at the ground, not daring to look up. Only does she lift her head to mutter a quiet, ‘Thank you’.

“Of course,” Harry says calmly, smoothly, his voice silky in every syllable as his enunciations blend together. “Maybe, I was thinking, we should exchange numbers, you know, to work on the annotations?”

“Emails would probably be best,” Caroline says kindly with a forced smile, nodding her head towards the hallway to the elevators and beginning to walk, Harry quickly following and walking alongside her. “Have everything on record, and all that, you know?”

“Hey, Callie!” Liv shouts from across the hallway, skipping happily towards her and leaving her boyfriend behind as he carries his textbooks in one hand and a backpack over his shoulder. “Harry?”

“Hey, Liv,” Harry smiles, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and waving towards the two walking towards them. “Hey, Niall.”

That’s Liv’s boyfriend’s name. Niall. How come I couldn’t remember that? Caroline wonders thoughtfully, shaking her head and smiling at her best friend and her boyfriend as they step in front of her and her newfound partner, analyzing the situation ahead of them without saying a word.

“Funny that you two have a class together! Not to mention, that we’re all in the same building. The four of us can walk to class together, now. Harry, did you know Callie before this?” Liv asks, smiling to herself as her boyfriend intertwines their fingers together and begins walking towards the elevators. Liv, although the closest thing Caroline has to a best friend, is always too excited for coincidences like this. Liv thinks it’s the universe or something, some bullshit that Caroline refuses to believe in. Gabriel Ryan wouldn’t have believed in it, therefore, why would she?

“Um, no, actually,” Harry says, almost nervously, as though he is trying to find the right words to describe the situation at hand. “Professor Rigsby introduced us, and we’re partners for our annotations.”

“Good ole Rigsby and his annotations,” Niall laughs, clicking on the button for the lobby of the building and kissing Liv’s temple as she lays her head on his shoulder sweetly. “Thank God, we don’t have him, this semester. One more round of annotations and group discussions and it would’ve made me lose my mind.”

“I like Rigsby,” Caroline chimes in, brushing her fingers through her hair and ignoring the way her rings get caught in the curtain bangs that are framing her forehead. “Rigsby is a big fan of my dad.”

Harry tilts his head in confusion and furrows his eyebrows. “Of your dad?”

Caroline sighs, trying to hold back tears and bites on her fingernail. “Gabriel Ryan is, was, my father.”

Harry’s jaw gapes open, his hand immediately reaching into his back pocket and going on his phone, opening an application and clicking on something to show her. Caroline peeks over and looks at what he’s trying to show her – a picture from one of her father’s last concerts – and nods solemnly, smiling at the memory of the night that was so perfect and so surely one of the best nights of her life. Gabriel Ryan’s farewell tour was two years ago, a farewell tour to settle into retired life and write music for fun and focus on his daughter. Gabriel Ryan’s farewell tour was two years ago, and the picture that Harry showed her, was a year before the worst day of Caroline’s life.

“The ‘Must Bid You Adieu Tour’,” Caroline says fondly, smiling to herself and slinging her backpack over her shoulder as they all begin to walk out of the elevator and into the lobby of the building, people bustling around them and hurrying to their next class. “That was the best tour, the ‘Bid You Adieu’ Tour. Had the biggest shows ever on that tour. There’s a picture of the audience from the Staples Center hanging in my living room.”

Harry is quiet for a moment, waiting for Liv or Niall or Caroline to speak, and when they’re silent, his voice cracks and says, “I’m really sorry about your father, Caroline. Can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for you. Especially to find him.”

Caroline swallows thickly and nods, taking her sunglasses from her hair and sliding the metal over her face, hiding the way her eyes are watering and there is a red line circulating her deeply brown irises. Caroline’s freckles line her nose and her cheeks, and there is a singular braid plaited down her head behind her curtain bangs that Harry takes notice of. Gabriel Ryan’s spitting image, now that Harry thinks of it.

“Um, yeah, it wasn’t great,” Caroline says with a dry laugh, shaking her head and taking a step towards the exit with her keys swinging in her hand. “Harry, um, email me and we can get started on the annotations for next week. Liv, I’ll see you at home?”

“Niall’s going to drive me in a little bit. Think we’re grabbing lunch. That’s what we’re doing, right, baby?” Liv smiles, taking Caroline’s hand before she can walk away and squeezing it gently, turning over her shoulder to look at her boyfriend who’s already started talking quietly to his friend.

“That’s right, yeah,” Niall says coolly, smacking Harry’s arm and turning to face Caroline as she walks further towards the exit. “Callie, you’re still coming for dinner, tonight, right?”

“Um, yeah, we’ll see,” Caroline smiles, nodding her head and biting at her bottom lip until the skin is breaking and she can taste the familiar metallic sense on her tongue. “Might have some work to get done first, but I’ll try to make it.”

“Come on, Callie,” Niall whines, shaking his head and clicking his tongue at her disgracefully. “Mitch will be there and he’s bringing Sarah, Harry’s coming, you have to come.”

“I’ll try to make it,” Caroline swears, nodding her head towards the exit and clutching her backpack tighter to her chest. “I’ll see you later, Liv.”

Harry looks between Niall and Liv and sighs, wondering quietly to himself if Caroline is always so hostile and guarded towards new people. He nearly asks Liv the question, wondering aloud if he had said or done something to bother her, but Liv cut to the chase. “Don’t take it personally, Harry.”

Harry looks between Niall and Liv and says, “Take what personally, exactly?”

“Caroline’s, um, demeanor,” Liv says quietly, turning her head to make sure that Caroline’s disappeared from the vicinity before speaking. “Caroline is just guarded, that’s all. Makes people work to get to know her.” Liv lets go of Niall’s hand and walks closer to Harry, holding her index finger to his chest and saying sternly, “Callie’s schoolwork is her biggest priority, making sure that she gets to graduation, so I swear to God, Harry, if you do anything to mess with her or ruin her grade in that class, I’ll ruin your life. That’s a promise.”

“Got it,” Harry says, shaking his head and taking a step away from her, his hands held in the air in surrender and his green eyes wide. “Is Caroline, like, depressed, or something? Guess anyone would be after what happened to her father, but you know. It’s been over a year. Hasn’t it? Hasn’t she, like, gotten over it, by now?” Harry says the word as though it’s a swear and it’s forbidden, his voice lowered and tempered. “Guess like, what other reason would she have for not wanting to come to a party with all her friends?”

“Callie has her reasons. That’s not something you just get over, Harry. Callie’s father taking his own life isn’t something you get over,” Liv says softly, delicately trying to say things without invading Caroline’s personal information to share. “Everyone has their reasons, Harry. It’s not my place to share those reasons, those issues with you. That’s Callie’s choice.” Liv turns to face him, once more. “And by the way, Caroline goes by Callie.”

“Got it, Liv.”

* * *

Harry emailed Caroline as soon as he and Niall got back to their apartment that afternoon.

Caroline, I’m free for annotating The Twelfth Night, this Sunday. I figure we should do it before our discussion posts are due, so I’m thinking we should meet earlier in the day. Maybe around 2? Let me know your thoughts.

Harry Styles

Harry worded it differently about three times, changing the phrasing and the context and the juxtaposition of his words nearly a dozen times before deciding to send it. Harry isn’t sure why he feels a sense of nervousness looming over him, why the idea of being rejected is bothering him so much. Harry has Anna Marie – never call her by her first name or she will raise hell – his girlfriend of three years, to be exact, so it’s not like he’s intimidated by her in that sense, in a romantic way. Things have been rocky with Anna Marie lately, so maybe that’s why - it’s the residual nerves that he feels. That makes sense. That has to be why.

Maybe, you know, maybe, Caroline is pretty. But that doesn’t have anything to do with why Harry is afraid of being rejected, though. Of course not.

“Harry, is Anna Marie coming, tonight?” Niall asks, pulling Harry out of his thoughts and away from his reading. Harry was already reading the text for the weekend, periodically checking his email to see if Caroline responded. Harry nods without saying a word, hating himself for inviting her. “Christ Almighty. Love you, mate, but holy fuck, she’s annoying.”

Believe me, I get it. Do you think I don’t know that? Harry thought to himself.

“Anna has her moments,” Harry says, cracking his neck and knuckles and leaning back in his chair, moving his hair away from his forehead and sighing deeply. “Caroline,” he says hesitantly, instantly drawing his friend’s attention back and causing him to stop in his tracks, “is she seeing anyone?”

“Harry, no,” Niall sterns, shaking his head and taking a seat at the chair across from him. “Look, Callie is a nice girl, but she’s fucked in the head, mate. Like proper fucked. Especially since her dad passed away. Liv is her best friend and wouldn’t say anything, but you’re mine and I’ll say something, as much as we love the girl. Callie ...Callie is so nice, and she really cares about all of her friends and all that, but she’s not dating material, not now at least. Especially not you.”

“Fuck is that supposed to mean?” Harry asks accusatively, crossing his arms in front of his chest and furrowing his brows at his best friend. “Especially not you. The hell is that supposed to mean, mate?”

“Harry, you don’t really get mental health shit,” Niall says, shrugging his shoulders and leaning against the back of the chair. “Like, I told you about my anxiety in small spaces, my claustrophobia, you said to take a deep breath and to not be in small spaces.”

Harry looks at Niall with utter confusion and a seemingly lack of care. “I mean, what else are you supposed to do, Niall? Makes sense, doesn’t it? Get nervous in small spaces, don’t go in small spaces.”

“My point exactly.” Niall shakes his head and stands up, brushing his hands over his face and sighing a deep breath, trying to get the point across to his best friend to no avail. “Also, you have Anna Marie. For what reason are you asking if she’s single or not? Callie is practically engaged, by the way.”

Harry isn’t sure why he feels hurt by this. He just met the girl. He barely knows her. Other than the fact that she has more issues than he’s even slightly aware of. “Engaged? Already?”

“Max and Callie have been dating since she’s eighteen or nineteen, I think. Liv explained everything to me, but I forget most of it. It’s all a long story. Everything with Callie is. Callie is basically only still with him because he met her father and her father approved of him,” Niall says with a shrug, pursing his lips together and taking a swig from his beer.

“That’s kind of shitty, isn’t it? Only being with someone because your father approved of them.”

Niall laughs sarcastically, shaking his head and setting his beer on the table. “All right, Mr. Nobility, why are you dating Anna Marie if you don’t like her?”

“Fair enough,” Harry shrugs his shoulders and nods, swallowing thickly and looking back at his email. “Caroline hasn’t emailed me back.”

“Maybe she’s on her way here,” Niall reasons, standing up and walking into the kitchen to finish the burgers and fries – vegetarian options for Callie and Liv already made – that he’s making for dinner for their miniature party that they’re having, liquors already set on the table ready to be consumed. “Liv texted me and said they were driving over. Max can’t come tonight; he’s studying for some law school exam. Think it’s for a huge internship or something at a huge firm in the city.”

“Nice.” Harry can’t pinpoint why he feels so hostile towards Max, already. He’s never even met the guy. His character must be upstanding if Caroline introduced him to Gabriel Ryan, and to be practically engaged at the age of twenty-four. Harry can’t pinpoint why he feels this way, but he knows that he absolutely despises it.

Harry hates feeling jealous. Over anything, really. Harry gets so bothered by it, that it makes his skin crawl in the most disgusting way.

Knocking on the door pulls Harry out of his daydream, out of his trance. Niall quickly hurries to the front of the apartment, wiping his hands on a towel and opening the door, his girlfriend immediately wrapping her arms around his shoulders and hugging him tightly. Caroline walks inside, eyes meeting Harry’s as she walks through the hallway and into the living room where their dining table is set with wines and tequilas and vodkas for their consumption later in the night. Harry smiles softly, nodding his head and closing his computer, standing and walking towards Caroline and nearly opening his arms for a hug.

Then Harry realizes, he barely knows her.

“Hey, I got your email,” Caroline says, speaking as though she’s rehearsed it. “Usually, I’d rather do the annotations earlier than Sunday, since that’s when our discussions are due, but this week it’ll do. Maybe, next week we can meet on Friday.”

“Oh, all right,” Harry says solemnly, his cheeks flushing red with embarrassment. “Um, yeah, Friday works, yeah.”

“Harry!” a shrieking voice shouts walking into the apartment, and immediately there are three separate groans at the girl’s appearance. Anna Marie’s – there’s no one else that frustrates their group as much with simply the sound of her voice – platinum blonde hair is pin straight, cascading down her back, and her face is painted with a minimal array of blush and bronzer and mascara. “Harry, hi, baby. How are you?”

Harry forces a smile and kisses her cheek, sighing a heavy breath when she whines and grabs his cheeks and coaxes a kiss to her lips. Anna Marie smiles, then, turning to face Caroline and says, “This is?”

“Caroline Ryan, my annotation partner for the Shakespearean Literature course I’m taking,” Harry says, smiling and reaching for a stray beer on the table, popping the cap and taking a swig. “Caroline is Gabriel Ryan’s daughter.”

“Holy shit,” Anna Marie says, shaking Caroline’s hand and slinking back into Harry’s side, her arms wrapped around his waist, his arm resting around her shoulder. “Harry and I went to the last tour together with Niall and Mitch. Concert of a lifetime.”

“That’s for sure,” Niall says, walking into the living room with his girlfriend under his arm and taking a seat at the table, pulling Liv onto his thigh and taking a swig of his beer. “Enough of that, I’m sure Callie doesn’t want to spend her night out talking about that.”

Caroline nods thankfully at Niall, smiling softly at her best friend and reaching for a glass and the red wine. Grabbing for her phone in her back pocket, she already aches to leave and be with her boyfriend and be comfortable in the safety of his apartment. Caroline practically lives with Max on the weekends, living with Liv in an apartment on campus during the week, and today is one of those days where she wishes she stayed in the comfort of his apartment and in his arms. Max gets Caroline, knows when she takes her medication, understands her swings, the Lights On, Lights Off. Max gets it, and that’s more than she could say about anyone that she knows, including Liv, sometimes.

Caroline’s father was the exception. Gabriel Ryan got Caroline better than anyone else could.

Gabriel Ryan was a seasoned professional at handling Bipolar Disorder. That’s what Caroline always says, at least. Gabriel Ryan, who became famous at the young age of twenty-three, only three years before his girlfriend, Lucy, got pregnant with their daughter, later to be named Caroline, after their favorite song. Bipolar Disorder I, the more hyper-manic and hyper-depressive form of Bipolar Disorder, overwhelmed his life as a teenager, making him suicidal and attempt suicide nearly three times before being sent to an inpatient facility where he wrote his the very first album on the sheets of paper given to him during their music therapy time. Gabriel Ryan got discovered through a series of restaurant gigs in the city, signing to Columbia Records at the age of twenty. Gabriel Ryan met Lucy at his very first paid gig with Columbia, and they were together for six years before they decided to get married and have a baby. That is until Lucy discovered that their daughter, sweet Caroline Elizabeth – named after the song that played at every show because it was Gabriel’s favorite and the royal name that Lucy had an obsession with – was suffering from the same fate as her father at the earliest age of six years old. Lucy didn’t last long after that, leaving Gabriel to live a life of stardom and fatherhood with only himself and Caroline. Caroline was Gabriel’s pride and joy, his heart and soul, his everything.

Gabriel Ryan carried his daughter with him everywhere, seeing every sight known to man from the comfort of their tour bus and their hotel rooms and the hidden moments with security walking around to protect her. Truthfully, Gabriel Ryan never cared about himself; he solely cared about his daughter. Of all the places they travelled to, the Grand Canyon was their favorite spot, their prized place, though. The Grand Canyon, where Gabriel took Caroline once a year, from the time she was twelve until she was in university and an adult, was the spot where she felt completely free for once in her life. This place, this safe space, started as a miniature vacation after a stint in the hospital for inpatient treatment when Caroline was beginning to hurt herself a bit too much for Gabriel to contain and handle. The Grand Canyon was his way of bringing his daughter closer to the world, to show her that although she felt small against the world and a bit too much to handle, there was so much of the world for her to see, for her to experience. Gabriel Ryan wanted to show his daughter that the hurting, the crying, the pain of her mother leaving, the harm to herself, the ache would end, that it wasn’t her fault, that she could overcome anything.

Caroline remembers their very first real conversation about her mother like it was yesterday, the way it was the moment that changed everything, that made her believe she would never walk through the world alone, not as long as her father was by her side.

* *

Southern California Hospital, Hollywood, 2006

Caroline Elizabeth Ryan, Age 12

Gabriel Ryan is escorted into a private room with his daughter for them to speak, his heart sinking into the pit of his stomach as he notices the bandages wrapped around her forearms and wrists to prevent her from digging her nails into her skin anymore. His heart aches for his daughter, properly aches and twists and churns in writhing pain, wishing he was able to take the pain his baby experiences and add it to his own. Gabriel could take it; what’s a little bit more if Caroline doesn’t have to hurt anymore?

“Hi, Cal,” Gabriel sighs, taking a seat on the chairs grounded in the linoleum floor and laying his hands in his lap awkwardly, unsure if his daughter would want him to hold her, right now. “Are you ready to talk about why you’re doing this?”

“Doing what?” Caroline smiles, shrugging her shoulders and crossing her ankles beneath the chair, pursing her lips together and folding her hands on her thighs. “Dad, I’m not doing anything.”

“Callie,” he says warningly, narrowing his eyes and turning his attention the bandages on her wrist and the thinness of her hair. “Caroline Elizabeth, I need you to talk to me.”

“Isn’t Mom supposed to come, too? I’ll talk to you when Mom gets here.”

Gabriel sighs sadly, leaning his forearms on his knees and resting his cheeks in his hands, his eyes welling with tears at the thought alone. “Caroline, sweetheart, Mom isn’t coming.”

“Mom isn’t coming, today.”

Gabriel knows what this is, the denial. Of the first stages of grief, as he’s learned through therapy, denial is one of the hardest to work through. Grief is hard to work through. Gabriel doesn’t quite understand why this is happened now, not that this is new or anything, it’s been nearly two years since Lucy left Caroline and him. Two years since Lucy up and left without a letter or a reason. Lucy sent a card to Caroline for her birthday, this year, and Caroline refused to let Gabriel see it, to read it, and it was only when she was in the hospital for making herself bleed so badly across her arms that her skin started scarring that Gabriel was able to see what the letter had said exactly.

Mental illnesses like yours and your father’s will always get in the way of a family.

Gabriel threw the letter out as soon as he read it, as soon as he read the horrible things that were written inside of it. His stomach twisted with disgust for the woman, the way she spoke in such a demeaning manner toward their daughter and spoke about how her leaving was her fault, that Gabriel, the man that would raise her, his mental disorder – subsequently, their daughter’s mental disorder, as well – is to blame for the reason their family would never be able to work the right way.

Gabriel wonders how anyone could say such a thing to their own child. He could never, would never say such a thing to Caroline, whether he believed so or not, and he certainly wouldn’t leave her. Caroline is his whole life, the reason he does absolutely anything and everything at all.

“Callie,” Gabriel says slowly, reaching for her hands and grabbing them, taking her much smaller ones into his hands and clutching her wrists, careful of the bandaging and the gauze that seems to have been torn at the corners, as if Caroline was trying to get through to her skin, once again. “Callie, Mom isn’t coming today, tomorrow, or ever. Mom knows you’re here and didn’t want to come.”

“That’s not true! Mom would’ve come if she knew I was having an episode! Mom would’ve come!” Caroline is growing frantic, and her breathing is rapid and nearly out of sorts, coming in too heavy and too quickly for Gabriel to try and talk her through. “Mom would’ve come, Dad. Mom loves me. Mom loves us. We’re Mom’s family.”

“Deep down, I’m sure Mom loves you very much, baby,” Gabriel says sadly, solemnly, trying to choose his words carefully and not dare to utter anything that would tip her over the edge so soon. “As a matter of fact, I know Mom loves you. Mom just doesn’t know how to show it to people like us.”

“Mom has time to practice, we just have to show her,” Caroline justifies, shaking her head and standing up and walking towards the door, folding her arms in front of her chest and sighing out a deep breath, her eyes welling with tears as she thinks about the letter and the words and knowing that that is the likely the last time she’ll ever hear from her mother, ever again. “Daddy, why won’t she let us show her?”

Gabriel stands on his feet and walks towards his daughter, laying his hands on her shoulders and waiting for her to turn around into his arms, his words laced in disappointment and sadness as he says, “I don’t know, baby.”

“I want Mom to love me for me,” she whimpers, wrapping her arms around his midsection and crying into his chest, her thumbs and forefingers digging into her palms and the heels of her hands tightly, squeezing and squeezing until the pressure builds and releases into her veins. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” he says, kissing her hair and sweetly rocking their bodies back and forth, trying to comfort her in the way he knows how. Gabriel knows that sometimes nothing is going to work the way it should comfort his daughter, and he simply has to live with that. “My love, you did nothing wrong.”

“Clearly, I did something to make her leave me, Dad.”

“Mom left us, Callie. Mom left you and me.” Gabriel sucks in a breath and allows a singular tear to fall into his daughter’s hair, sucking back the remaining ones and trying to hold himself together. “I swear to you, Caroline, I’ll never leave you.”

Caroline looks at her father with the brightest, widest eyes he’s ever seen, nearly impossible to resist looking into and swearing up and down whatever she wanted. Caroline was Gabriel’s daughter, after all. “Never ever? Mean that?”

“Never. Mean that, always.”

* *

“Callie,” Liv calls, ripping Caroline out of her daydream and smiling softly. “Niall made burgers for us, are you hungry?”

“Um, not really,” Caroline says, smiling forcedly and shaking her head, sipping her drink lightly and reaching for her phone to text her boyfriend, silently hoping that he hadn’t made it home already to have to drive all the way back to get her. “Actually, I think I’m going to head out early. I’m not feeling too great, and I forgot that I was supposed to help Max study for his exam that’s coming soon. I’m sorry. I should go, though.”

“Callie, you just got here,” Niall groans, leaning his head back against his neck and sighing when his girlfriend smacks his knee. “All right. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Caroline lies through her teeth. “Niall, I’m fine! Really.”

“No, Callie,” Niall says again, shaking his head and setting his beer down. Caroline had only been at the party for a mere thirty minutes, and the last twenty minutes have been zoned out of their conversation, thinking about something with a blank stare and glossy eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Thank you for asking, I’m okay.” Caroline’s phone vibrates in her hand, her screen lighting with her boyfriend’s contact and his simple text telling her that he’s on his way. “Max is on his way. I’m going to wait outside.”

“Do you want me to come, Callie?” Liv wonders concernedly, standing from Niall’s lap and walking towards her, holding out her hands to squeeze her arms sweetly. “I can come. I’ll wait with you.”

“No, it’s okay.”

Caroline takes her things and walks to the front door, her best friend following closely behind, hugging her tightly and telling her to text her when she’s with her boyfriend. Caroline nods solemnly and forces a smile through gritted teeth, and Liv can tell that something is wrong, and she immediately wants to chew out Anna Marie for bringing up her father and talking about such a touchy subject so carelessly. Over a year later and Caroline still couldn’t speak about her father without breaking down into tears. Could anyone even blame her? Caroline found her father in his bedroom, overdosing and slightly conscious, in their family home. That’s not something you can get over, so simply. Caroline did everything she could to save him, but it didn’t work.

Caroline lives with that guilt, every single day.

“Love you, Callie,” Liv says softly, hugging her best friend and squeezing her tightly. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Liv, I’m okay, I swear.” Caroline leaves shortly after that, hiding away in her boyfriend’s car and breaking down into tears in his passenger seat, his hand squeezing her thigh and interlocking their fingers as she gathers her emotions and sniffles wetly. Max asks what’s wrong, concern and worry etched into his boyish features, his slight stubble on his cheek rough against her hand as he kisses her knuckles. “Max, I want to go home.”

Caroline doesn’t know, however, that Harry followed her outside, that he hurried out the door, ignoring the calls of his girlfriend and their friends, ready to apologize profusely for bringing up her father and his concerts and such a touchy subject, once again. Harry didn’t listen, as he usually doesn’t, and it’s come back to bite him in the ass. Harry’s emotions are all over the place when he sees Caroline and Max in the car together, the way she looks so comfortable and safe with him. He isn’t sure why he’s so bothered by this, he doesn’t even know her, but the idea that he hurt her and someone else is having to comfort her makes his skin itch. Harry stands there until they drive away, panting from racing down the stairs and hurrying out the door, trying to make it in time.

Harry stalks up the stairs, sulking and upset, walking inside and rolling his eyes at the sight of five pairs of eyes on him as he steps inside the apartment. Niall shakes his head with disapproval and Mitch snorts out a laugh, Liv rolling her eyes with Sarah. Anna Marie immediately takes his hand and pulls him to the side to reprimand him for leaving her so suddenly and without any warning.

That’s where Harry decides he’s had enough. Harry has had enough of Anna Marie. Harry has had enough of her and her reprimanding and her rules and regulations and the stipulations of their relationship. Harry has simply had enough.

Maybe it has something to do with Caroline. Maybe it’s the infatuation that he already seems to have with her because she’s so closed off from the world. Maybe it’s the unknown and the obsession that Harry’s had with her father that is making him so infatuated with the idea of her, that is making her the center of his thoughts for the last six hours. Maybe it’s all of those things combined.

All that Harry knows, for sure, that he is that he is done with Anna Marie, and there’s nothing that he wants more than to be alone for the rest of the evening, drinking with his friends, thinking about the mysterious girl that he may call his partner. That’s all Harry wants, now.

Harry’s sister lays her hands on the table dramatically and his mother feigns a smile on her lips as Caroline sighs and takes a sip of her water, pausing momentarily before continuing the story, Harry’s hand gently on her lower back to encourage her. “Harry, you made her cry,” Gemma says from the side of the table, earning a groan from Harry and a snicker from Caroline. “What a way to make a first impression, H. Way to go.”

“Hey. Go easy on him. Harry made up for it,” Caroline says hesitantly, shaking her head side to side and shrugging her shoulders. “Eventually.”

“Eventually,” Liv says from beside her, clicking her tongue and looking over the table to eye Harry. “Only took him a solid six months to get his act together.”

“Hey, in my defense, I did go to apologize,” Harry says, holding his hands up in the air and shrugging his shoulders. “Callie was already gone by the time I got there.”

Caroline looks to Harry with tears in her eyes, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she says, “Came to apologize?”

“Originally, I didn’t want to let you leave thinking I only cared about talking about such a sensitive subject. It was insensitive of me, to say all those things, back then. I was quite insensitive, I’ll say,” Harry tells her, ignoring the onlooking stares from their friends and family and solely focusing on his fiancée, taking her hand from the table and kissing her knuckles sweetly. “I know that’s not why you hated me, though. Can go on and tell them why.” Caroline looks at Harry concernedly. “Cal, it’s okay. It’s not going to hurt my feelings.”

“Go on, Callie,” Gemma encourages, taking a sip of her champagne and leaning into her boyfriend at the table. “Tell us why you hated my little brother, over there.”

“Well, I started to hate Harry because he nearly skipped our annotations session,” Caroline says shamefully, casting her head to her chest and looking at her feet beneath the fabric of the tablecloth. “Then, Harry gave me many other reasons in the midst of it.”

“Hey, hey,” Harry says warningly, squeezing the back of her thigh beneath the table and grinning wildly when she smacks his arm away. “Be nice, Caroline. This is our engagement party.”

“In your dreams, Harry.”

Caroline and Harry talk amongst themselves and their guests for hours after the story comes to an end, Harry nearly tearing up at the part where Caroline admits when she first realizes she was in love with him and not simply hating him. Certainly, there is a fine line between the two, mistakable for either hatred or love, and Caroline had a hard time discerning between the two. Harry didn’t know many of these things, seeing things from her perspective for the very first time since they started dating five years ago and they talked out their differences and their boundaries. Harry’s heart is in it completely, staring at her with so much love and adoration that it’s nearly impossible to tear away when the restaurant is beginning to close and their friends and family and slowly making their way out, thanking the two for the invitation and the wonderful evening.

Harry takes Caroline’s hand immediately, squeezing her fingers that are interlocked with his and kissing her knuckles as he always does, opening the car door for her and closing it when she settles in her seat. He makes his way around the driver’s side, his chest already tight with a feeling, and his feeling is confirmed when his fiancée is hunched over herself in the front seat, crying hysterically into her hands. His hand immediately finds its way to her back, rubbing soothingly, his other hand unlocking her seatbelt and gently prying her away from her seat to sit in his lap, her dress bunched around her thighs and face falling into his neck as the tears wet his suit jacket.

“Know that was a lot for you, today,” Harry says calmly, rubbing his hands along her spine and squeezing her thighs, waving away his sister that is peering in through the window and waving her hands to try and grab his attention. “Know that was a lot for you when you’re not feeling great, but I’m so proud of you, Callie. Need you to know that. I am so proud of you, baby. Talked the whole time and your words commanded the whole room’s attention. Great storyteller, that’s what you are. That’s why people are going to read your novels. That’s why people love you. It’s why I love you.”

“My father should’ve been here. My mother should be here,” Caroline whispers into his neck, sniffling and trying to regain control of her emotions as she sits on his thighs and toys with the buttons on the bottom half of his blouse. “Of course, though, I’m alone. Again. I’m always alone, Harry.”

“Caroline Elizabeth Ryan, you are not alone.” Harry takes Caroline’s chin between his fingertips and holds it eye-level with him, shaking his head and kissing her nose to lighten the strictness of his voice. “Callie, you’re never alone as long as I’m around. I’ll always be right by your side.”

“That’s what my father said.”

Harry knows how harshly the depression roots itself in Caroline, and this is the worst of it, when it reminds her that the strongest person that she knows lost their battle against the overwhelming enemy that she’s known her entire life. “Gabriel did everything he could to keep the Lights On for you, Callie. He just, he couldn’t do it anymore.”

“How does that make you any different? That was my father, and he couldn’t stay alive for me!”

“Callie,” Harry sighs, cupping her jaw instead of holding it tightly and gently caressing her cheek with his thumb, “Callie, I swear to God, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Harry, I didn’t even want to come to our engagement party. That’s horrible. That’s horrible of me! How could you want to be with someone who’s brain barely functions and their excitement never lasts and I’m so fucking moody all the damn time that even I can’t keep it straight! I told your mother and your sister why I hated you from the beginning, and I didn’t even get to explain everything. I’m a horrible person. I’m not good, Harry. I don’t want this for you. I love you enough to tell you that you deserve better.”

“Have you ever thought, for a single second, that maybe you are the best thing that has ever happened to me? Have you ever even thought about that?” Harry whispers, gently taking her hands and kissing her fingertips, coaxing her eyes to meet his. Caroline was never one for eye contact, and it’s always when the Lights are Off that it’s the worst.

“Me?” Caroline sniffles, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to look into Harry’s eyes, the light green irises staring back at her making her melt in his arms. “How on Earth could you possibly mean that, Harry? Mean to tell me, you really mean to tell me that you won’t look back on our marriage in ten years and want to divorce me because I’m too much to handle and I’m never happy for more than a month at a time, and even then, it’s not a real type of happy, it’s the mania at play.” Caroline sucks in a deep breath and keeps going, Harry looking at her silently, waiting for a moment to get a word in. “Harry, I go to the beach at three in the morning to feel something, I rarely sleep, I am either hyper-depressed or hyper-manic and there’s no in between. Can’t forget that when I actually sleep it’s for, like, fifteen hours of the day, and it makes me not want to look pretty or act nice or do anything that I have to do. Harry, I’m a mess.” Caroline looks at Harry with tears in her eyes, her chest heaving with panted breaths as she finishes her ramble and sucks in a shaky breath to try and regain control of her emotions.

“Are you finished?” Caroline nods silently. “Caroline,” Harry says Caroline’s whole name for emphasis, and she knows it, “I will go to the beach at three in the morning. I will sleep in the back of our car. I will stay awake for days to make sure that you’re not alone. Once you crash, I’ll let you sleep, I’ll stay with you, then I’ll wake you up and I’ll eat with you and I’ll shower with you and I’ll make sure that you’re doing the things you need to do to be okay, to function, and then I’ll lay in bed with you, and I’ll hold you until you feel like you can get out of bed and do it all over again. Callie, I don’t care that things are a little bit messy, okay? I love you. All of you, for who you are. I love that brain inside your head, and I love the way you speak about me and I love the way you love me. I don’t care about anything else. I only care about you. I love you. I love you so much that it hurts me to see you this way. I need you to understand that, Callie. I need you to really understand that. I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you, I’m always going to be with you. No matter where, no matter when.”

Caroline’s tears fall into Harry’s palms, his thumbs brushing the streaks away from her cheeks and onto his skin, his heart falling apart for the woman in his arms. Caroline’s heart is so pure, caring so deeply about him to make sure that this is what he wants, that he’s sure that he’ll have to reassure her every day of their lives. That Harry doesn’t mind as much, Harry minds that her brain makes her think he doesn’t want this, want her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. That’s not what we do.”

Caroline nods understandingly and swallows a thick lump in her throat, sniffling a heavy and shaky breath and says, “Thank you for listening to me and caring for me. I love you. Kiss?”

Harry purses his lips into a shy smile that Caroline loves, her mouth twitching at the corner into a smile when she leans forward and kisses him softly, their lips synchronizing together so perfectly, as though their lips were made to be on each other’s all along. Harry looks to Caroline, once more, sighing and pursing his lips as he says, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you, I swear to you.”

𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝: @goldenbabys-world, @burberryharold, @stylesfics-xx, @grace-ful-gold, @summertimestyles

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ncssian · 4 years ago

Text

A Favor: Part Three

Nessian Modern AU

Masterlist

a/n: tw for abuse mention. i hope this chapter is readable bc a lot of it was written when i should've been sleeping.

***

“...expecting heavy snow, possibly even a snowstorm, by the end of the week.” The TV blares softly in the background as Nesta types away on her laptop propped on the arm of the couch. The fireplace is up and crackling, and Cassian has to stop in the threshold between kitchen and living room to take in the scene. He’s getting a little too used to this, he worries sometimes. She’ll be gone as soon as her apartment is fixed, he reminds himself, and pushes off the wall to circle the couch and approach Nesta.

He sets the steaming mug of coffee down on the table before her and takes a seat beside her. She doesn’t even stop typing as she glances up and murmurs a “thank you” before returning to her paper.

Cassian doesn’t want to interrupt her work, so he settles into the comfortable habit of watching her. They watch each other a lot— Nesta claims it’s because she’s bored and there’s nothing else to look at. Cassian has no such delusions.

She’s in a wool sweater and thick leggings today. Her hair is pulled back in a worn braid and her glasses are pushed all the way up her nose, but what catches Cassian’s attention tonight is the way her baby hairs escape her braid and frizz around her temples. Yesterday it was the way her cheeks flushed in the firelight, and the day before it was those damn glasses. Today it’s baby hairs.

The fantasy is quick and sneaky, there in his mind before he’s even aware of it.

Getting up to sit on the floor before her. Nudging her legs apart with slow hands while her fingers stutter over the keyboard. Pushing the hem of her sweater up, and pulling her leggings down. “Focus on your work,” he says when she tries to push her laptop away. “Finish your paper for me.” Tracing the inside of her thighs with his lips until his head is right—

The slam of a laptop snaps Cassian out of it. Nesta makes a frustrated growl and rubs her hands across her face before shoving her laptop aside to reach for the coffee.

He raises a brow, endlessly amused by everything she does. “Writing troubles?”

“I deserve a break,” she grumbles.

“I could help with that.”

Tucking her feet beneath her legs, Nesta ignores him and gestures at the TV with her chin. “Think we’ll get snowed in?”

Cassian almost hopes so. Any excuse to build more fires and stay inside with Nesta. “I’ll have to make a shopping trip,” he says casually. “You want anything?”

“I want to be in a state where there aren’t blizzards in October.” She looks over at him. “I miss Tennessee.” It’s a simple admission that brings Cassian to attention. She never gives out details about herself unprompted.

“I didn’t know you still got homesick.” Feyre never talks about her childhood in Tennessee. The only indicator of the Archeron sisters’ pasts is Elain’s sweet little Southern belle accent, which Cassian has a feeling is more for show at this point than anything else.

Nesta shrugs awkwardly in response, but he keeps going. “Rhys’s mom had a summer house in the Smokies. We would go down there each year without fail until college.” Rhys thinks it was fate that the summer home was so close to the small mountain town where Feyre grew up. Cassian thinks that’s a stretch.

“Yeah?” Nesta sips her coffee. “Have you gone back since?”

He shakes his head. “Rhys and Feyre are renovating it right now. You should come vacation with us when it’s done.” He perks up at the sudden idea.

Nesta gives him that familiar weird look from the corner of her eye. “Mm-hm,” she hums noncommittally.

“I’m serious,” Cassian insists. “We could have fun.” He’s already imagining it, getting to show Nesta around the place he grew up. Hearing what she has to say about the rocks and corners he would hurt himself on when he played with his brothers, maybe even hearing about her childhood in the Smokies. But Nesta looks stuck, unsure of how to turn him down.

“It doesn’t sound like a good idea,” she states finally. “I wouldn’t be welcomed there, and I would be the odd outlier the entire time at best.”

Cassian already knows Nesta has no interest in getting friendly with the rest of Feyre’s friend group, and he can respect that. But he still wants her there.

“You wouldn’t have to hang out with everybody there,” he says. “You’d have me and your sisters. That’s three whole people.”

She looks surprised at that. “Since when did I have you?”

Oh. Cassian shrugs. “We’re friends, right? I like you, so you have me.”

She straightens even further at that. He continues without waiting for her reply. “That’s why I want you to vacation with us. I like you, and I’d like having you there.”

Nesta sits back against the couch, staring at him, and then her coffee, then him. “This is new,” she finally says.

Cassian is lost. “What is?”

She considers for a moment, chewing her lip. “I’ve had people say they love me,” she says slowly, “but I don’t think anyone has ever liked me very much.”

The words are so incomprehensible that Cassian just sits there like a fool. She’s making even less sense than when she told him she used to come around to Feyre’s all the time and he never noticed. “I don’t get it. Who doesn’t like you?”

Nesta frowns deeply. “Don’t make me come up with a list. It’s not nice.”

Cassian might need a list, because he wants to have words with these people. “Okay, then. Why wouldn’t anybody like you?”

Nesta’s eyes narrow into a glare and she scoffs like he just said something offensive. “Jesus, I don’t know. Why don’t you call up my ex and ask if you care so much?” She sets her empty mug down and stands up, gathering her laptop and notes as she goes.

Cassian doesn’t know what he said wrong. “Wait, Nes—”

“Thanks for the coffee, I’m going to finish my work in my room.” She pushes her glasses up her nose and speedwalks out of the room, ignoring Cassian’s calls to wait.

***

Cassian can’t sleep that night knowing Nesta is upset with him. He tried knocking at her door when he came upstairs an hour after Nesta had, but the lights were off and he received no reply. Now in bed, he listens to the howl of late autumn wind outside and goes over everything Nesta said earlier.

She misses Tennessee. She feels that nobody likes her. She has an ex that definitely doesn't like her.

It's the last two details that bother Cassian the most. He’s about to spiral into another hour of overthinking when his phone lights up on the nightstand.

Subconsciously thinking it's a text from Nesta, his hand shoots for his phone. He has to smother his disappointment when he sees it's only Feyre checking in.

Feyre: how are things going with nesta? is she causing u any trouble?

Maybe he’s still upset about his conversation with Nesta, but the text rubs him the wrong way. Nesta sounds like a pet or a rowdy child.

Cass: not at all. she’s perfect

He quickly erases that last word and hesitates, trying to think of another one.

she’s lovely wonderful great. He settles on great and clicks send.

A reply pops up a few seconds later.

Feyre: lmao sure

Cassian frowns at his phone. What’s that supposed to mean?

Another text appears: just tell me if you need anything and i’ll take care of it. i know this isnt easy.

What isn’t easy? Having a roommate? Cassian replies, We don’t need anything, we’re fine. He uses capitalization and everything, feeling offended for some reason. And then, not really wanting to see a reply from Feyre, he turns his phone off and leaves it facedown on the nightstand.

He shuffles deeper under the covers and pushes his friend out of his mind, thinking about ways to make up with Nesta tomorrow instead.

***

Nesta stays up all night berating herself for how she reacted to Cassian’s innocent question. She wasn’t expecting him to pry for details because no one ever pries into her life, and she freaked out instead of rationally assessing the situation.

A part of her is satisfied now, having seen this coming from a mile away. It happens with everyone she meets, when she says or does something wrong and inevitably pushes them away. Maybe she should keep pushing him away, and keep him at arm’s length for the rest of her time here.

A larger part of Nesta is embarrassed at having caused a scene, and worse, mentioning Tomas. Because that’s exactly where her mind went when Cassian asked that question— to the man who used to say he loved her, but who never truly liked her. Intrusive memories from years past attack Nesta until the sky outside turns a light gray: dressing up for fancy business events and having his arm wrapped around her waist in an illusion of affection. Him pinching her side hard enough to make tears spring to her eyes when nobody was looking and leaning into her ear to lovingly whisper everything wrong with her that night. Going home and having makeup sex.

She’s still flustered from Cassian and can’t keep the thoughts out as well as usual. When she finally does drift off into a restless imitation of sleep, it’s by holding her thumb to her wrist until the steady beat of her pulse soothes her worn nerves.

Nesta wakes up cramping.

It takes her a few moments to pull out of the fog of sleep and recognize the feeling, and she groans aloud. This can’t be happening to her right now.

She was stupidly hoping that her period would hold off until she moved back into her apartment. Her premenstrual cramps are telling her she has two days at most.

She refuses to go through that experience in the same house as Cassian. Her family doesn’t even like being in the same house as her when she’s on her period. Her ex would outright leave their apartment and stay at a friend’s until she got over it. So this…

She groans once more and pulls herself out of bed. A quick phone check tells her it’s only been three hours since she fell asleep, but she’s given up at this point.

Nesta tiptoes hesitantly out of her room, not wanting to face Cassian just yet. It’s only when she reaches the stairs that she realizes the house is unusually quiet, even though it’s almost eleven.

Frowning, Nesta pads into the kitchen to find two things: a covered dish sitting on the island and a green sticky-note stuck to the fridge. She goes for the note first.

In messy handwriting it reads: Went out for groceries. Text me if you need anything. Beneath the words is a dark, almost furious scribble of ink, as if Cassian had written something there only to forcefully scratch it out.

Without overthinking it, she gets out her phone and texts Cassian that she needs pads. It only occurs to her after she’s sent the message that that’s probably not enough information.

Having Cassian know Nesta is on her period is one thing, but him knowing the size of her pad? The heaviness of her flow? She might need to enforce that rule about him never speaking to her again.

In her best attempt to not be viewed as a walking blood gusher, she asks for a smaller size pad than usual and turns her phone all the way off so she can’t see any replies.

Once you’re out of this house you’ll never have to see him again, so it won’t matter if you’re the rude bitch who cried and bled a lot while she was staying at his place.

Going over to the kitchen island, she uncovers the plate she assumes is for her. She isn’t expecting anything much, maybe Cassian’s leftovers from breakfast, so she hesitates when she sees a full stack of chocolate chip pancakes. Carefully decorated with berries and syrup, they’ve long gone cold, but— still.

Nesta reaches out as if they might not be real, or not meant for her, but nothing happens. Mouth tightening, she snatches the plate and grabs a fork.

Cassian comes in through the kitchen door twenty minutes later, long after Nesta’s cleaned off her food and washed the dishes in the sink. He throws her a smile as he shakes snow out of his hair and sets down the bags of groceries on the island by Nesta’s laptop.

“Oh, is it snowing already?” She throws a concerned glance outside, not having noticed while she was working.

“It’s light for now, but it won’t be for long.” He starts taking off his coat, and Nesta gets up to help with the groceries. She quickly finds the bag holding her stuff and discreetly sets it aside, but then Cassian grabs another bag and upturns it, its contents sprawling all over the island. “I don’t know what your period’s like, but we’re gonna be snowed in for a while so I got some of everything just in case.” He looks hesitant.

“Oh— thank you,” she says, overwhelmed. There’s three different types of painkillers, all that she already owns, and ten different types of junk food. And they're all for her. Nesta plucks up a package, stunned. “How are gummy worms supposed to help me on my period?”

Cassian leans his elbows on the marble and shrugs. “They’ll make you happy.”

“I’m allergic to gelatin.”

His face falls. “Oh.”

But Nesta just places the gummies in front of him and starts sorting the rest of the stuff. All the chocolates end up on her side, and the candies and gum and hot chips on Cassian’s side. When she's done, she finds him watching her closely. “Did you want some chocolate?” She offers out a Twix bar, her favorite. “I can trade you.”

“Uh, sure.” He accepts her Twix in exchange for his Hot Cheetos.

Silence ensues as Nesta tears open a Toblerone package and breaks off a triangle of nougat, when she remembers she has to tell him something.

“Thank you.” Her words are out of place and out of nowhere, spoken during the wrong time mark of a film and ruining the rhythm of the scene. Despite this, she powers on. “Thank you for breakfast, but also for this. Thank you for everything, really.”

Cassian perks up. “Did you like breakfast?”

Nesta nods through a mouthful of chocolate. “Chocolate chip pancakes are my favorite, and you’re good at making stuff.”

He raises a dark brow. “You mean cooking?”

“Same thing.”

“Well, I’m glad you liked it.”

Nesta slumps in relief, thinking her necessary talking points are over with. She's thanked him for shopping and for breakfast. What more could be— damn.

She clears her throat, even though she doesn't know what to say yet. She won't apologize— she doesn't know if she's physically capable of it, to be honest, but she can still seem regretful.

“Are we over last night?” she says bluntly. So much for regretful.

Cassian seems startled that she's even brought it up, which is perhaps a good sign that he already forgot about it. “Of course,” he says. “Nesta, I really didn't mean to offend you—”

Oh god, he’s not over it. “Don't apologize,” Nesta demands, throwing her hands up to ward him off. “You didn't even do anything, why would you apologize?”

“Well, you looked upset,” he says seriously. Cassian’s apologetic face looks an awful lot like hurt, though Nesta doesn't know why he would possibly feel hurt. Still, she has to pin her stare to the dark cabinets so he can't hurt her in turn. He keeps talking. “I know I promised to push your boundaries, but I never want to hurt you.”

His sincerity is more than disarming; it makes her ache.

“And I hated not talking to you last night.”

That gets Nesta's attention, and she suddenly feels two things at once: a swoop of joy that he likes talking to her, and a heavy drop of guilt that she ignored him all last night, even when he knocked on her door and apologized profusely.

“I fell asleep early,” she decides to lie. “I wasn't ignoring you.”

Cassian smiles softly and reaches out to brush a thumb over the tired circles under her eyes. “I can tell,” he says.

She's gone dead still, but she doesn’t flinch. She doesn't even want to flinch. Cassian clears his throat and drops his hand, and Nesta’s eyes follow him closely. “We’re good,” she says in finality. “Let’s go back to normal now.”

Cassian nods, his face carefully blank. “Okay. Then stop stuffing your face and help me with the rest of the groceries.” He moves off the island and elbows her on the way.

That makes Nesta smile, which makes Cassian smile even harder, and just like that, they’re back to normal.

***

a/n: two things: 1) cassian definitely texted feyre that morning and asked what nesta’s favorite breakfast was, and 2) can you tell im in love with writing nesta archeron?

tagging: @ladywitchling @sjm-things @thewayshedreamed @drielecarla @sensitiveillyrian @superspiritfestival @aliveahaahahafuck @cupcakey00 @sayosdreams @rainbowcheetah512 @claralady @thebluemartini @nessiantho @missing-merlin @duskandstarlight @lucy617 @sleeping-and-books @awesomelena555 @julemmaes @wickedqueenoffantasy @poisonous-bloom @observationanxioustheorist @gisellefigue08

#a favor #nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #ncssianwrites #nessian fic

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glenncoco4 · 3 years ago

Text

You Can Count On Me

A/N: Chapter 9

••••

The shaggy blonde is so focused on his girlfriend that he doesn’t realize she misses the turn towards his apartment, instead she keeps going for a few minutes until she hits the Santa Monica exit. A few minutes later they’re back in the same spot at the overlook where they were just a week ago.

“What are we doing here?”

She turns towards him, that unrecognizable look still swirling in her mismatched eyes. “Well, I’ve been thinking.”

His heart picks up speed when he suddenly realizes what the look on her face earlier could very well be...“Yeahhh.”

“And what I want more than anything else in this world is to feel safe every day of my life.”

“You do realize you’re a federal agent, right? One of the most dangerous jobs ever.”

“That’s not...I’m not explaining myself right.”

“Well, you can always resort to my form of communication.” He wiggles his eyebrows playfully, semi-kidding but not really.

Shaking her head, unable to keep the smile off her face, she leans over the console, bringing her lips to his in a chaste but passionate kiss. “Better?”

“Oh yes, very much so.”

A sudden burst of nervousness washes over her and she looks down at her left hand, imagining what it would be like to have a ring there and not just any ring, his ring. “What I was trying to say is that I want to feel safe every day of my life in all aspects. I feel so safe with you as my partner. And I know safe is such a mundane word but to me safe means you. You make me feel like I’m the most precious thing in the world. Like everyday you wake up next to me is better than the last. You have my back no matter what just like I have yours. And as cliche as it sounds, when we’re curled up together in bed or just on the couch and your arms are around me...in my mind its just you and I existing together. You challenge me in a way that no one ever has before and it’s one of the reasons I love you so much and...”

“Kens?”

There’s a hint of desperate hope in his voice, which is strangely calming to her. She finally lets herself look up and when her eyes meet his cerulean blues everything in her is telling her that this is the right choice. “What it all comes down to is this...there’s nothing more I want in this world than to grow old and grey with you. So if your offer still-“

He doesn’t give her time to finish her sentence before his hand finds the back of her neck and he’s pulling her towards him. His lips find hers, but she suddenly pulls back making him whimper. He curiously watches her, wondering the cause of her actions when she gracefully maneuvers through the two seats into the back, tugging him along with her. The fact that they’re parked in a not so private place is the last thing on either of their minds especially once she straddles his lap and his hands find the hem of her tee, ridding her of the white piece of cloth. Good thing NCIS sprung for the extra tinted windows.

••••

The past week has been filled with a happiness that neither of them can describe. Who knew that officially being engaged would bring this type of euphoria into their lives. Ever since Kensi took him back to that outlook and finally said yes to his proposal everything and nothing has changed at the same time. They’ve been more touchy ever since and definitely happier. A huge challenge that they’ve come across the past week however is having to go into character around the guys at work.

There have been a couple of instances where they thought the charade was up but it turned out that their coworkers were oblivious as to what was going on around them...which is quite concerning if you think about it.

The week of bliss had been shattered when a marine’s young daughter goes missing. Kensi was suddenly lost in the past and the similarities of the story playing before them was to her own.

As she and Marty step onto her front lawn after walking home from school, they both immediately feel something in the air shift. Sharing a look, they quicken their pace, taking the front porch steps 2 at a time.

Marty swiftly pulls the screen door open, ushering his best friend inside before the sound of soft sobs fill the room around them. They both all but throw their things onto the ground before finding Roberta in the living room, her arms wrapped around Julia comforting her as best as she can.

“Wh-what’s going on?” The shaggy blonde 17 year old speaks up as his best friend finds his hand, already preparing herself for the worst.

Roberta looks up, tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, it’s your dad.”

“No!” The brunette shakes her head vigorously. “No!”

“What happened?”

“His helicopter was shot down.”

He’s already prepared for her to collapse in his arms, hell he’s surprised he’s still standing himself. But instead of tears, the young brunette just screams in denial once again before running out the front door.

Without thought Deeks chases after her, running out the door as he calls out to her. He doesn’t know why he thought she’d stop. He sees the direction she’s going and immediately knows where she’s running off to.

A few minutes later his flip flop bound feet hit the wooden dock as the echo of her whimpers break his heart. Slipping off his shoes, he takes a seat right next to her, his arm winding around her shoulders as he pulls her into his body.

Her fingers find the cotton of shirt, grabbing on for dear life. It’s not until he feels her tears seep through the fabric that he finally lets himself break down as well. Donald Blye was more of a father to him than his own and there’s nothing in this world that’s going make the pain go away.

His lips find the top of her head, knowing that he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure she makes it out of this, but for now he will grieve with her, because that’s what you do when you love someone.

As the arrests are made and Amanda is reunited with her father, Deeks’ attention shifts to his fiancée. He’s seen how lost she was today, who could blame her considering what she went through with her own father. The case brought up memories for himself, but nothing compared to what he knows is going on inside his partner’s head.

Walking up next to her, it takes everything in him not to pull her in his arms. Her focus doesn’t move away from the marine and his daughter as they embrace, and share apologies. The tears forming in her eyes is unmistakable and considering their coworkers are focused on other things he lets his facade slip a little. “Thinking about your dad?”

“Yeah.” She nods, unable to look at him otherwise her tears might fall.

They’re sitting at the table eating lunch, actually eating might be a bit of an overstatement. It’s been 6 weeks since they got the news about Don. 6 weeks of tears and regrets along with denial. It was only 3 days after the news until Marty and Roberta found themselves living in the Blye residence once again.

Both mother and son knew that moving in to take care of their respective best friends was the only option. So here they are, sitting in silence, trying as best as they can not to breakdown.

A sudden knock at the door pulls the four out of their haze. Marty wipes his mouth and quickly stands. “I’ll get it.”

Walking to the front door, he can see the top of an official marine’s hat peaking through the door window. Dread fills the young man’s body, already sensing that this is the official house call, the one that confirms their worst fears.

He reaches for the door knob, his head falling in defeat thinking about the hole Kensi is going to go further down. God he wishes he could take this pain away...he’d do anything. She’s been so beside herself especially considering the last time that she ever talked to her dad they were fighting.

Begrudgingly pulling the door open, he looks up and meets the eyes of one of Don’s unit members. His brow furrows in confusion until he hears the squeaking of the porch swing. He almost falls to his knees when he sees the familiar warm brown eyes.

Marty stands there for a minute, paralyzed in shock.

“Hi, Marty.” Donald hesitantly stands with the support of his crutches.

All he think about is Kensi and Julia. He doesn’t respond to his surrogate father, and before he can even process what he’s doing, the 17 year old turns and walks back into the house, cerulean blues wide in shock.

Kensi’s brow furrows when she hears her best friend walk back into the kitchen and says nothing. She looks across the table at his frozen features and begins to worry. “Marty, what’s wrong?”

This gets the attention of the two older women, three pair of eyes now all on him. He wants to say something but his words fail him. All he can do is turn towards the hall and watch the marine walk down the hallway, that’s when he suddenly notices the reason for the crutches.

Kensi’s and the mom’s eyes follow his, it takes a few seconds but slowly Donald steps into view. The resounding gasps fill the room, none of them able to process what’s happening before them.

“Hi...it took me awhile but I finally made it.”

No one says a word, but each set of eyes look the man up and down, stopping their gaze when they realize the reason for his crutches.

“Oh my god, Don, what happened to your leg?” Roberta’s lips work faster than what her brain can process, the words spilling out of her like its the most reasonable question to ask.

Marty’s eyes go wide in shock, before her sending a pointed glare.“Mom!”

“What?”

Before anything else can be said the marine’s eyes follow the length of his body, eventually coming to a stop where his left leg once was. “Oh my god!”

Marty can’t help but crack a smile, his attention flying to his best friend trying to gage her reaction and get some sort of semblance as too what she may be feeling. The small smile and huff of laughter that emanates from her gives him his answer.

Shaking herself out of her daze, the 14 year old jumps out of her chair, running over to her father and carefully wrapping him a death gripping hug.

“Hey, he came home.”

Her story may have a happy ending but it was that month and a half that still weigh on her mind. “I know, but its just those 6 weeks and...”

“I know, baby. I know.” And he does. Just like before they found out Don was alive, he’d give anything to take this pain away from his girl.

Once given the okay to go, the pair make their way towards the SRX and just as he expected, she hops in the passenger side leaving him to drive. That’s when he realizes this is one of those days that only has one solution. Quickly pulling out his phone, he shoots off a quick text knowing exactly what she needs.

••••

Every once and awhile the shaggy blonde catches himself taking a look at her. She must be more lost in thought than he assumed because she doesn’t notice him miss the exit to her apartment and continue on towards Malibu until they’re pulling into the parking lot. “How about some tacos at the beach?”

“Sure, I guess.” She shrugs.

As the SUV pulls to a stop, Marty’s eyes find the lone figure about 100 feet in front of them.

Noticing he hasn’t made a move to get out yet, Kensi’s brow furrows and follows his line of sight. As soon as her eyes land on what he’s staring at her heart fills with even more love for him than she ever thought was possible. She feels the tears pool in her eyes, her hand finds the his neck, pulling her surprised fiancé’s lips towards hers in a kiss emotional passionate kiss. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you.”

A smile rises to her lips as she places another kiss to his lips before hopping out of the SUV, gaining attention from the man on the bench. The older brunette stands up as quickly as he can and starts heading towards the junior agent.

When he received a discreet text from his surrogate son, the former marine dropped everything he was doing and headed to the beach. It wasn’t an emergency, which is always a relief but considering there wasn’t much to the text that alone told him she was dealing with something.

As he slowly walks towards her, he outstretches his arms, leaving Kensi to all put collapse into his arms. “Rough day?”

“Yeah.”

The detective watches on as the pair embrace, it breaks his heart knowing that she’s still dealing with the turmoil of thinking she lost her father for years now. He’s tried to help her get through it, her parents have tried, but one thing Kensi Blye is good at, it’s not forgiving herself.

After a few minutes the pair pulls back, giving Marty the chance to get in his own hug with his surrogate father. “How you doing, son?”

“Better now that she’s better.”

The older man notices a change in the younger man’s gaze towards his daughter. And then when she sends Marty a teary-eyed smile, wrapping her arms around him in thanks, it suddenly hits him. They’re together.

#Densi #Densi Fanfic #Kensi Blye #Marty Deeks #You Can Count On Me #NCIS: LA

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icouldntfinditsoiwroteit · 3 years ago

Text

Story 1

At the moment I may or may not be a bit obsessed with One Piece without even watching the anime, and I'm even more obsessed with Sanji and the Vinsmokes in general, so I thought of four story ideas with a reader insert, two will be romantic and the last two will be platonic.

1. Aracne

Fem Reader X Vinsmoke quadruplets.

Soulmate au (red string, sort of)

Sneak peek.

In this Au Reader is a Third, her family has webbed countless portraits for the Vinsmoke family, she goes with her older brother in order to further her practice and experience in webbing a portrait.

She is four years older then the quadruplets and one year older than Reiju.

Story time

*Big brother says I need to be careful with the Vinsmokes, they don't act bad but I don't like how their eyes look and I feel dizzy when I look at them, although brother said that it was sea sickness,* (F/N) thought while she carried some of the webbing material behind her brother.

Her brother had three spider arms and one pair of human arms while she has tree pair of human arms and one pair of spider ones.

*Mother always says how we are total opposites in not only personality but also in bodies just like the Mrabara,* (F/N) remembered.

"Brother,"

"Yes?" They had already arrived to the webbing room.

"What is a Mrabara?" (F/N) moved to one side for her face to be visible.

"W-Where did you hera that word?" Brother's face was twisted in nervous worry.

"Mom,"

"Oh thank god," His face relaxed.

"Is there something wrong with Mrabara?"

"It's a mature word," Brother tried to explain.

"I'm mature," (F/N) pouted following her brother who had entered the webbing room.

"Never said you weren't.......just don't say it in front of Clío and if you do tell her mom taught you the word," Brother said while he started to prepare the webbing station.

"Come help me with this (F/N),"

Four hours later.

"Are you listening (F/N)?"

"Yeah," (F/N) muttered in her seat while she watched her brother web.

"What did I just say then?" Brother looked at her and smiled playfully.

".............."

"You already bored, don't you usually last for 7 whole hours?" Her brother gave her a worried look.

"I don't know," (F/N) really wanted to walk outside but she didn't know why, she loved webbing to the point that in her lessons they had to remind her to eat, although they said that it was normal.

"Tell you what, I'll ask for something to eat, meanwhile go and retrieve my webbing book," (F/N) lightened up at the thought of walking outside.

"Ok," (F/N) bolted to the door.

"Stick to the route we came from," Her brother reminded and she just nodded in agreement before she opened the door and left the room.

When she left the room she bumped into someone slightly smaller than her, she caught the stranger before they could fall to the ground.

"Are you ok? I'm so sorry," She looked at the stranger who had yellow hair.

"Hello?" She asked after stopping herself from apologizing again when she received no answer, the boy was frozen.

"S-S-So-orry-Sorry," The boy whispered.

"Why are you apologizing?" She then gasped recognizing the prince.

"Your highness, I'm so sorry," She apologized again.

Before she could keep apologizing they heard some footsteps approaching them and then someone calling out.

"Sanji!!" The boy stiffened at the voice calling his name, he took (F/N)'s hand and ran.

(F/N) followed along until they reached a dead end, she could see how the little boy was trembling and heard how the taunts and footsteps where still following them, but something good was that the dead end had a window.

She took out of her pockets a thread serger that had spider web her family told her to always carry with her, she roped the thread around the boy to create a small harness.

"I'm going to get you down there," The boy only looked at her in shock.

She pushed the window open and put the boy in the ledge of the window, under the window was a small bush where he could easily hide.

"Be very quiet," She said as she pushed the boy and started to let him down as fast as she could, the steps where getting closer and closer.

Luckily she felt the boy reach the ground a few second before the chasers reached her, but she only had time to throw her end or the thread and close the window.

"SANJI!!" She turned around in surprise and saw that a bow with green hair had yelled that.

*It's the princes,* (F/N) noted when the last two boys rounded the corner.

"Ichiji, this is just a girl," The blue haired one whined.

The red haired boy glared and (F/N) felt shivers when she made eye contact.

"Oi, where did Sanji go?" The green haired boy asked.

(F/N) only shacked her head.

"Then what is a insect like you doing here?" The blue haired one asked.

"Looking out the window?" (F/N) gave a look of "seriously", this seemed to anger them.

"An lowlife doesn't need to see out the window, maybe we should use this one since we can't find Sanji," The blue haired one was clearly the most volatile.

"(F/N) what are you doing here?" Came her brother's cold voice.

"Brother, I just wanted to look out the window," (F/N) explained while the boys turned around and their grins disappeared when they saw her brother.

"Young princes, I will be taking my sister with me now," He greeted politely.

(F/N) immediately followed him not looking behind, this made her brother the only one who saw the red strings tied to her pinkies.

Au info dump

In this Au there is a species called Aracne, this species is a hybrid between a spider and human, there are different forms a Aracne can be born into such as seconds, thirds and fourths, although the form is respective to the family they come from.

Seconds

As the name says, they are basically half spider and half humans, the spider humans is always the lower, members of this species are considered either as builders since due to their form it would be incredible dangerous for the to go into the sea and their silk is the strongest and more resistant or as knowledge guardians (librarians) and they have the most elders since they have the longer lifespan. They can also be seen as teachers and caretakers too, they are also the ones who take care of the security alongside the Fourths, there is usually two of them per family they take the role as grandparents or simply mentors although the last one is extremely rare and two is just the minimum but unofficially they take care of all family's since they most probably took care of them as children. Their bites are fatal and will take your life in less than a minute and can dissolve any surface.

Thirds

Their humanoid features are more dominant than the spider ones, in this form they possess either one, two or three pairs of arms and the rest takes the form of a spider leg that is always in their lower backs. When it comes to females their web exit is in the middle of where the lowest spider legs find themselves this causes them to be incredibly flexible to reach for the web. They are considered the negotiators and commonly leave their homes to aid their nest's economy, this is usually trough them selling their services in making clothes, rugs and even portraits with their silk but this kind of service is only given to royalty or families considered sacred or that are friends with them. (It is considered a honor or sign of power to have one portrait since it is believed that they can predict the future). Their bite is also mortal but will take six minutes to kill an adult, although it has been used in some medicine that kind of works like chemo.

Fourths

They are the ones who exit their island the most in unofficial matters unlike the thirds, this is due to their forms being less evident and easier to hide, they are the ones in charge to keep the island updated in politics, economy, science and culture although some of them also accompany as guards the thirds when it comes to political exits, they only possess two to tree pairs of arms, their whole body possess small hard hair that allows them to still be able to climb webs like the other forms, their bite takes ten minutes to kill someone or if they are a strong human they can survive but not without any damage that is usually caused to their muscles, although their venom if processed correctly can be used to cure countless of sicknesses, this is a secret guarded with their lives in order to prevent their active hunt. They are also the buffest since they need to compensate their lack of spider legs with their strength.

More info

Skin and eye color varies an there is no consistence, when it comes to eyes Seconds may possess 8 to 6, Thirds 5 to 3 and Fourths possess 4 to 3, two eyes is incredibly rare and only happens when someone is born from a Fourth and a human, hybrids are born from the union of two different forms, the Aracne are not against romantic relationship between different forms but when it comes to reproduce they worry, if a fourth became pregnant with a Second or Third they will die during the pregnancy or in childbirth since the baby's form will be mixed and the Fouth's body cannot handle it, same goes for a Third with a Fourth although there are higher chances of survival there is still the possibility of some life damage occurring, Seconds are the ones who can carry in a less dangerous way the offspring of the lover but due to the Second's anatomy a Fourth's baby has a 85% of chance to die and a Fourth's has a 50% chance to die in the womb.

If the hybrid is born healthy they are raised normally but health issues will come in the future if they aren't born with them already, although there are cases where hybrids manage to enjoy a full life, they still needed medical help to manage it.

There is a lot less danger if the child is a mix between a Aracne and a human, since a human's gene would only water down the child's form a long as it is the Aracne who carries, if it where the human they will die if they carrie the offspring of a Second or a Third, if it is a Fourth's child they carry it comes with less danger but their chance of survival is of less than 30%.

#vinsmoke reiju #vinsmoke ichiji #vinsmoke niji #vinsmoke sanji #vinsmoke yonji #vinsmoke family #vinsmoke siblings #vinsmoke judge #vinsmoke brothers #reader insert #one piece #What am I doing with my life #for some reason I have 3 more stories of this #Soulmate au

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mrwinterr · 5 years ago

Text

Happy

Pairing: Rockstar!Bucky Barnes AU x Female Reader

Summary: You meet your favorite artist and get more than what you bargained for.

Warnings: Smut 18+ (consensual and protected sex, oral [male and female receiving], vaginal fingering, belly bulge, light degradation) dirty talk/language and recording. Mentions of drugs and alcohol and a tiny bit of angst.

Disclaimer: I don’t smoke regularly, so anything that has to do with drugs mentioned are techniques I’ve outweighed based on what I’ve been taught by different people. I don’t know which method works best nor am I encouraging the activity. It just came with this fic’s territory. It’s not that deep. You do you, boo.

Title Inspiration: “Happy” by The Maine

A/N: I might or might not have based some of this on true events. All I can say is, life is short, shoot your shot! Enjoy!

A/N #2: There’s a Part 2 now!

“You owe me.” Your friend next to you said for probably the third time this hour. You learned earlier in the day to tune her out. She had been saying that since you persuaded her to accompany you on the weekend long road trip to the neighboring state just so you could see your favorite band…again.

Growing up your parents thought this was just another phase, but as your teenaged years passed on by and you’re now well into adulthood, you’re still a bigger stan for The Avengers as ever.

The Avengers consisted of three members: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. Everyone had their take on each of the guys, Steve was the nice one, Sam was the goofy one and Bucky was the bad one. It was silly. They weren’t *NSYNC or The Backstreet Boys, but the fangirls will be fangirls.

Their music wasn’t exactly mainstream, but they did very well within in their genre’s scene. They graced the covers of a couple of magazines, garnered thousands, close to millions, of views and streams online, were featured on TV every now and then, toured around the globe, sold a bunch of records, even independently, but despite all that notoriety, they stayed true to their sound and that’s what kept you around as a fan.

That and the band’s front man Bucky Barnes.

He was hot – plain and simple. Ok, maybe he was just that to most, including your friend who couldn’t deny it, but you didn’t want to objectify the man. What their music had done to get you through the years, they were more than that. There was a level of respect there. You also didn’t buy into the “bad boy” gimmick the fans have dubbed for him. They were human beings just like the rest of us. Imagine being called something like that by the public? They just so happened to be fortunate enough to share their talent to the rest of the world.

“You’ve already seen them. I don’t know why you think you need to for what a tenth time?” She clearly wasn’t amused by your infatuation with the band, but she was still your friend and she would always be by your side through thick and thin even if she didn’t have the same taste in music as you. You loved her for that. Who else would stand for hours in a dark room full of loud, sweaty, smelly, rude even, and sometimes drunk people with no self-control for you? She really was the real MVP.

And she was right though. You’ve already seen The Avengers perform. It was probably more, but you’ve lost count. Whenever they’re in your city or two to four hours in the next one over, you loved this band alright!

You both were polar opposites standing next to each other in line waiting for the venue doors to open. She was calm and still, arms crossed with an unamused look on her face – she could almost play as the “mom that tagged along and didn’t want to be there” – but you knew she wasn’t really mad. There was a bar inside she could occupy herself at. You on the other hand were trying to contain your excitement. You tried your best to not fidget around in anticipation so much. You didn’t want to sweat off your makeup that you managed to apply on point or get an embarrassing stain on your clothes.

“It doesn’t matter,” was always the response you gave her, “their music means everything to me. I’ll always come out to support them.”

She playfully rolled her eyes and scoffed a bit at that. She wasn’t trying to knock you down. She knew you deeply liked the band, but she also knew another side of you, and she liked to pick at it. “Yeah that and you’re into Bucky,” she said and just flat out poked at the side of your breasts. The bra that you chose to purposely wear tonight gave your boobs an extra push and it didn’t go unnoticed by her. They were out there, tastefully, since you were hardly the flashy type.

“Okay, but who isn’t?” You flare back swatting her hand away and trying to shut her down. You didn’t need to have this conversation with her while other fans were around. You didn’t want to sound like a fangirl. You weren’t 13 anymore.

“Chill.” She said raising her hands up in surrender. She wasn’t going to fight you on this one again.

When the top of the hour hit, the roar of the crowd signaled the doors had opened. Once inside, you hit the line to the bathroom considering you’d been outside for a few hours. You didn’t just have to pee, but you needed to freshen up. Your cheeks were a bit flushed from standing in the heat. You dabbed lightly at your face with a small blotting sheet, sprayed a bit of body spray and finished putting every hair back into place before finding your friend, who was already at the bar.

You sported a 21 and up paper wristband that was handed at the entrance, however you weren’t planning on drinking. Usually you had one or two drinks at most, but you were assuming you would be the designated driver tonight. You just always flashed your ID to the bouncer for the wristband to emphasize that you were of age. Unfortunately, some bands have had a bad reputation of fooling around with underaged girls, who lied about it.

She held up her drink to you with a smile on her face. Yeah, you were going to be the one driving back to the hotel, but at least she’s happy. She tried to coax you into ordering a drink of your own, but you only shook your head at her nonsense and stood away from the crowd.

As an avid concert goer, you’ve been to enough shows that you’d been in every section of the crowd. Hell, you’ve even gone crowd surfing before! Plus, you couldn’t hang with those vicious and hormonal fans in the crowd anymore, so you learned to enjoy the show from the back with a full view.

The opening bands were decent. You’d never heard of them, one was probably local, but you always believed live music was just as good, if not, better than opposed to being recorded and remastered at a studio.

During their sets, you caved and bought a drink from the bar, hoping it’d help to pass the time before the headliners came on. Your friend was seemingly on her phone when a random guy approached you asking if he could buy you a drink. The house lights were on. Did he not see the can of beer in your hands? You politely declined his offer and further advances until he gave up and walked away.

“Girl. He was cute!” Your friend said shoving you lightly.

“I wasn’t interested,” you shrug and taking a swig of your drink.

“You’re not being fair,” she started and seeing that you weren’t catching on continued, “you can’t wait around hoping that one day Bucky will notice you. Honey, he came here to play a show and make money not look for a girlfriend.” Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh, bursting your bubble like that and all, but her intentions were good. Bucky Barnes just set the standards too high.

She wasn’t wrong. Guys like Bucky meet new people every day, met girls probably way prettier than you. The majority of their fans were female because let’s face it, the guys had sex appeal and you know what they say…sex sells.

Looking around the venue, you took in the kinds of girls you were going up against. There was a mixture of women of different backgrounds and sizes decked out in different styles, but the ones who won most of the time were the ones that looked good dressed in risqué clothing and heels. Some of them probably even wore less make-up than you or none at all. You couldn’t understand how it was effortless for some people.

It wasn’t that you had low self-esteem. You had your fair share of internal struggle, so sometimes your insecurity played its part. You had your good days and you had your bad days.

You decided upon wearing something simple that you would be comfortable in while still serving a look. And the only other significant thing you did to your make-up was add in a little more shimmer. Yeah you wanted to impress, not sell your soul to the devil.

“Okay, but I just really wasn’t interested,” you said again hoping she’d understand. She did, aware you wrestled with that demon in your head always taunting and ridiculing you that you could look better when you’re perfect just the way you are. With an added bonus of telling you that Bucky was missing out if he hasn’t noticed you already, she ordered another drink in time before the lights dimmed and ear-piercing screams erupted to alert that The Avengers finally took the stage to headline the show.

Like each of the shows you’d previously attended, they were amazing. They poured their hearts out with each beat and belt. Every lyric resonated with you so deeply. There was just so much raw emotion packed into their performance. The beauty of concerts was that they were designed to let you forget about all the bullshit happening in the world for a few hours. They were therapeutic for you.

If you hadn’t known any better, you’d say your friend secretly liked The Avengers’ music because she broke you out of your shell and had you swaying along with her to their songs…that or it was the alcohol taking over her. You didn’t fight it and you allowed yourself to let loose.

You tried to give each member equal attention, watching them as they played, but you couldn’t help but keep your eyes on Bucky the most. They were just trained on him. His cheeky smile and onstage presence were electric. The mere sight of him, all sweaty as his clothes stuck to his skin accentuating his toned body so well, all but had you shuffling trying to ease your body’s frustration and mind.

The only time you looked away was when you swore you thought he looked at you. Making eye contact with someone on stage was kind of awkward sometimes, but with him it was almost intimidating. Believing he was probably staring at the girl behind you, you downed the rest of your drink, pushed that thought away and tried to enjoy the rest of the show.

A full set of songs that showcased their albums and a two-song encore later, you were driving yourself and your buzzed friend back to your hotel room. It wasn’t that far from the venue, electing to stay within its vicinity. Upon entering the room, you tossed the shirt you bought at the merch booth on your bed before removing your leather jacket while she face-planted down on her bed, arms wide open, letting out an exaggerated sigh of relief. You couldn’t blame her. It felt great to rest right after standing on your feet for hours.

Your back rested against the headboard, you knocked your boots and socks off a while ago and had your bare feet up on your bed. You hadn’t changed out of the rest of your clothes or even wiped off your make-up yet. Instead, you sat there skimming through the timelines of your social media accounts while you waited for your friend to get out of the shower.

You had posted a few photos and videos of the night to your story, like your outfit, a few of you and your friend sightseeing, and of The Avengers’ set. You refreshed your timeline and noticed Bucky’s account pop up before everyone else that you followed. It’s no surprise that you were following them on social media. You liked seeing them share the personal moments of their lives. They used to be interactive with their fans. Bucky had even once commented on the old photo you had with the band years ago.

You met them after a show when they were just starting out with their first full-length album debuting that summer. Now, they hardly came out because all it took was one crazed fan to ruin it for everyone else. Their popularity sometimes deemed it unsafe for venues to let them stick around so late, restricting them from meeting their fans.

You click on Bucky’s account and go through his story. There was one of a view of the open road from their tour bus, a clip of a song he liked, a cryptic quote with a deep underlying meaning to it, him getting ready to go on stage and then of the show.

He had taken a photo of the crowd towards the end of the set, asked fans to tag themselves if they could, because the crowd was amazing…as if they didn’t say that in every town they played in.

His caption read: “Awesome crowd tonight! Probably our best show yet!” topped with how much he loved the city. Sometimes you wanted to reply to his posts like he was one of your friends, but then you second guessed yourself knowing he’d never see the message, or he would and just ignore it because he was busy. You knew it was a long shot, but what did you have to lose and what is it that they said these days? Shoot your shot.

You didn’t linger on the body of the message for too long, settling with a “Great show tonight! You guys were amazing as always! :)” hitting send and closing out the app thinking it would conceal any embarrassment that might come out of it. It was a ridiculous thought.

After surfing through the channels of the TV and picking at the food you had delivered to your room, your phone pinged. You saw that it was a notification from your social media account, but once your face unlocked the phone and the subject appeared, you nearly choked on the drink you were sipping on.

Bucky Barnes sent you a message.

Your heart pathetically started beating really fast. The phone almost slipped from your hands as you opened up the toxic app again to read what he said. He probably just sent you an emoji or something.

“Thanks for coming out.”

That was it. Okay, what did you except? A proposal. That was a fair response. He probably had some downtime and was able to reply to people. You couldn’t be that special…but thinking you could strike gold again, you started typing up a response.

“Of course! Will always be out there to support you guys! Hope the city treats you well and have a safe rest of the tour.” Yeah, that was a good one. You say to yourself thinking that would be the end of it…except it wasn’t.

“Appreciate it. You know of any good spots around here?”

Nope. You did not. Do you look up some recommendations for him? No, that’s too much. Great, you’re having a conversation with him through DMs and you can’t even genuinely contribute enough to hold it down.

“No, not really. I’m not from here actually. My friend and I drove here just to catch the show. Maybe YELP?” Shit. You just might’ve effectively got rid of him with turning him to the Internet instead.

“No way! That’s love. Good thinking.” They came through in separate text bubbles.

Why were guys so short? You couldn’t work with that. You thought about it for a while but came up with nothing, so you sent the sassy ‘girl sticking her hand out’ emoji as a reply. Damn, you were really bad at this.

Several minutes passed by and thinking you were really done with him; you got another message. It was Bucky again and he sent you a photo. It was from your own feed; the group photo of you and his band mates all those years ago.

“I thought I recognized you.” You sat up straight as you read that message over and over, eyes bugging. Thankful your friend was taking her sweet time in the bathroom, so she wouldn’t see you all strung up.

What? There’s no way. That was a long time ago. Your thoughts spiraled at his words that had you blushing. He’s pulling your chain.

“Impossible. That was forever ago!” I guess two could play this game then.

“I swear. You tripped and fell into my arms that night.”

What the hell? He actually remembered that? Yeah, that did indeed happen. You had been waiting outside surrounded by a bunch of other chatty girls, pushing and shoving their way to get to Bucky first. By the time he turned to you and you stepped forward, you lost your footing and fell straight onto him. He played it cool, but then you heard Sam, who was trapped in his own circle of girls, signing and taking pictures away, that Bucky has girls falling for him all the time.

“OMG. That was so embarrassing, and I was so awkward!” You couldn’t even speak to him when you managed to hold your own ground. You were young then, you thought you effectively put that behind you.

“You weren’t awkward! You were cute and that’s what has stuck with me since. One of the most memorable moments.”

Yup, he was definitely pulling your chain. While you were ecstatic that you were interacting with your favorite artist, you couldn’t help but wonder why you. He was a public figure and you were just a fan.

“Is this weird?” Came through as his next message after your silence.

Oh, no. I hope I didn’t offend him. You might as well tell it like it is and get it off your chest.

“I don’t know...just a bit. Probably because I’m just a fan? I feel like you should be careful. I mean I should be too…” You really did wonder though. How was it that people of his status were willing and freely open to people they barely knew only to get threatened of being leaked and blackmailed by their own nudes or messages? What made them trust the other party so easily with that kind of stuff? They couldn’t be that dumb. Well, you got your answer.

“I don’t think of you or anyone as just a fan, but you are right…at the same time I feel that you’re grounded enough and a good person that we can trust each other. If that makes sense.”

You weren’t sure if it did. He still didn’t really know you.

“Awe, well that’s really flattering. I totally understand that because that’s how I feel.” Did you? There was a pause between that message and the next that would come.

“What’s your cell?”

Really? It was just that easy? Oh, okay then. Nonetheless, you still gave him your number. The DMs stopped and transferred over to text messages. You have Bucky Barnes’ phone number. What fan fic were you living in? Shit like this doesn’t just happen, does it?

The texts between you and Bucky went back and forth, some playful and some slightly suggestive, but you were completely oblivious to them thinking that was just in his nature. You found out the band was staying in for the night before heading back out on the road tomorrow afternoon off to the next city. You didn’t realize you were holding your breath when you stared at his most recent text asking if you wanted to hang out. It was kind of late, but you didn’t get a guy like Bucky Barnes asking you to hang out on the regular.

“Are you alright?” Your friend questioned breaking your train of thoughts. You could see her from your peripheral that she was towel drying the ends of her hair even though you’re still staring at your phone.

“Bucky sent me a DM inviting me to his hotel room.” You answered in a stoic demeanor, but it felt really strange coming out of your mouth.

“Okay. How long was I in the shower?” Your friend asked with her hands on her hips wanting an explanation.

You recount the details and show her the messages you and Bucky had been sending to each other. She scrolled through each of them and you could see the look of apprehension forming on her face.

“I don’t know,” she said her words trailing before giving you a worried look, “shouldn’t you be the slightest bit concerned?”

“About?” You ask taking your phone back from her.

“All of this!” She exclaimed her arms outstretched in exasperation and not understanding why you were so blinded by Bucky. “You briefly met the guy, years ago might I add, and you decide it’s okay to meet him at his hotel room in a city you don’t even live in?”

Alright, it did raise a couple of red flags, but you were a consenting adult and you lived a life of being cautious and in fear a little too much you wanted to be reckless for at least one night.

“I know you’re only looking after me, but I got to go for it. You know I like him! Sure, I may not know him on a personal level, but I’m allowed to have some fun, right?” You try reasoning with her. Just how different was all this compared to what people around the world were already doing with each other anyways?

She was a bit skeptic before reluctantly agreeing and letting you go but with the promise from you to be careful, share your location and his room number with her just in case she needed to save you or come after him. You thanked her for understanding and assured her that you’d be back before check-out in the morning.

On the drive to his hotel room, you thought about how you always imagined the different scenarios of what it’d be like when you’d ever meet Bucky again. What things you’d do differently or say. How you’d make sure to not trip or do something to embarrass yourself the next time. How you’d be more confident.

Parking was a pain in any city’s downtown, you ended up having to pay for parking twice in one night. Not surprising to you, they stayed in a nice hotel. It wasn’t over-the-top nor was it fancy, but it was definitely clean and a slight step up than of what was in your budget for booking a room.

When you’re finally at his door, you wonder if you were going to be catfished. Were there other people in his room? Were you really that special? Fuck it. Was the final thought, putting an end to the rest, and knocked at his door.

You hear a click and sliding of the chain door unlock, then you’re face-to-face with Bucky. He’s dressed down in sweats and a zip-up hoodie. He shoots you a smile and steps aside for you to come inside, there wasn’t much light offered to illuminate the room other than the ones the lamps attached on the wall between the beds and what little the TV could provide.

“Oh, thank God. You’re real.” Motherfucker. Did you really just say that?

Bucky laughed at that and you explained, honest with him, that this whole thing just felt surreal. He nodded in agreement, offering to take your jacket from you and a drink. It was alcoholic. Not denying him, you accepted it and waited to see what he would do next.

You watch him sit down on the king-sized bed with his feet up, one foot over the other. You’re standing there next to the dresser that also served as a stand for the TV he was watching a random show on. Not sure what to do, you set the drink aside, kick off your boots, leaving them next to the luggage rack, and sit on the spot next to him with a considerable amount of distance between your bodies.

It’s quiet and you’re trying to hush the voices in your head. Did he really invite you to just watch TV with him? Is this awkward for him? Oh, no. He’s going to realize I’m boring.

You feel the bed shift and you see Bucky is leaning over, opposite of you, to grab something from the nightstand. You don’t see much of what he’s doing as your view was blocked by his large back. When he changes positions, a brief spark of a flame emits from his hands. Your eyes trail up from his hands to his lips and notice it was a blunt. You were pretty sure this was a non-smoking room, but it wasn’t under your name, so it didn’t really matter in the end.

Of course, he did that kind of stuff. It was part of the lifestyle to be exposed to it. He took a steady hit and you watched as he exhaled slowly, a cloud of smoke disappearing into the air in front of him.

“Want a hit?” He asked passing and offering you the blunt.

It’d been a while since you last smoked anything. You tried it a few times and even then, you didn’t think you did it right. You stare at the neatly rolled blunt in between his thumb and forefinger, but not too long as to not let it go to waste and ash up all over the bed.

You steadily take it from him and carefully attempt to take a puff. Wrong. That puff was anything but steady. Not realizing how close you were actually sitting next to Bucky, when you tried to exhale you ended up coughing – terribly. Bucky’s face scrunches up as he braces for the impact of white smoke to hit his face.

“Oh my God,” you say covering your mouth in disbelief, but it was a bad idea because your body didn’t like that, and you ended up coughing even harder.

“I’m so sorry,” you manage to get out in between your coughing fit while passing him back the blunt and trying your best to waft at the smoke. Well, if you thought your first encounter with Bucky was embarrassing. This had to take the cake. It wasn’t proper etiquette to blow smoke in the other person’s face.

He waves it off letting you know that it wasn’t a big deal before taking another hit. He even begins to give you a few pointers to inhale in increments, until you get used to the smoke. You don’t even notice the long looks Bucky gives you hit after hit. You take a second to let the smoke stay in your mouth before you give it a second inhale, letting it process through your system before gently exhaling. It was a lot of fucking steps to remember.

“Don’t try to put too much emphasis into the exhalation,” he said as he watches you take another hit, almost perfecting it and with each puff and pass being deeper and longer than the previous, “see, you’re getting the hang of it!” He whimsically lifts his hand up for a high-five that you softly pat in return, but he seizes that moment to hold your hand instead, intertwining his fingers with yours.

The more you breathed in the more your body started to relax. All the edge was taken off and you felt good. You and Bucky continued to pass the blunt, smoking whatever was left of it and what he had with him, as you told random bits of information about yourselves to one another. By now, you and Bucky were leaning on each other, backs against the headboard, the TV barely audible as it continued to play a rerun of whatever that was on earlier.

“You know I really do remember you?” He says causing you to turn your head to look down at him. He has his gaze fixed on your hands, his thumb barely grazing the back of your hand. He’d been playing with your hand, drawing random shapes on it.

“That’s hard for me to believe,” you answer back truthfully.

“Why?” Bucky questions while looking up at you. He was in a slouched position, his hoodie and shirt rising up, allowing you a thin glimpse of his skin, while you sat a little higher up than him.

You admired his handsome face, the crease lines in his forehead, the faint and not so faint marks scattered all around it, his wet lips that shone when he ran his tongue over them and the stubble that surrounded it all down to his adorable nose. Then there were those blue eyes that once put you in an overawe of intimidation, were now a bit alarming in a new sense. They were swirling and growing darker.

“You meet new people every day, Bucky. There’s no way that I could’ve been that unforgettable to you.” You just couldn’t wrap your mind around that. Staring at him, you tried to read him, but you were too faded to concentrate.

“But you were,” he tells you in a low voice just before you notice his eyes shut and he leans in to place an experimenting kiss to your lips. He pulls back to quietly study your expression, and when you don’t show any sign of disapproval, he goes in for another.

This time with added pressure, more emotion, Bucky pulls you down by the back of your neck and casually slips his tongue in your mouth the moment your lips parted. Your heart started racing when you reciprocated his kiss, trying to keep up with him. He definitely liked to dominate. You could even slightly taste the blunt you both shared moments ago as his tongue tangled with yours.

He slips off his hoodie leaving him in a dark gray shirt. Navigating his body over yours, he pulls you down into a more comfortable position. He’s cradling the side of your face as your lips continue to move one another, getting hungrier and hungrier.

The movements cause your top to ride up, exposing your midriff. His hands wander down to caress your skin before you feel his fingers grip at the waistline of your jeans. You instantly grab his hand and stop him. This was moving all too fast for you.

Bucky didn’t press on it for too long and slipped his fingers out, running his hand back up your side and this time underneath what your tank top was covering left of your upper body. His hand snuck back out and started tugging at the material bunched underneath your breasts. When your top was finally discarded to reveal your red bra, he latched onto your neck, kissing up along your jawline and nipping at your ear, the sound of his harsh breathing sent a tingle at the contact and shivers through your entire body.

You winced when you suddenly felt one of his hands at the back of your head, yanking a handful of your hair causing your head to snap back. It gave him more access and you closed your eyes letting the sharp pain run its course and turn into something pleasurable as he practically devoured your neck. You could feel him inhale deeply, getting high on you, and possibly the lingering aroma of the drugs, and sucking tiny splotches onto your skin then licking to soothe them.

He pushed aside the straps of your bra as his lips travelled down your shoulder before stopping at the curve of your breasts. You briefly opened your eyes to see him fixated on your chest. He uses both hands to grope them.

“You think I didn’t notice these from the stage?” He asks now looking at you, squeezing and releasing them before pulling your bra down, your breasts spilling out of the cups. He instantly latches his mouth onto a nipple, while the other hand digs in between the mattress and your back to unclasp the bra. His tongue swirled around the nub, teeth lightly grazing and sucking at the skin around it.

You run a hand through his hair, it was a little sweaty and you couldn’t blame him. It was getting hot; you could feel the heat radiating off of him. It became even more apparent after he got rid of his shirt and you feel his clammy skin on yours.

He pulls back, straddling your waist, most of his body weight falling on his knees, careful to not to crush you. Your hands cascaded down his chest and rested at his thighs. You gave them a shy squeeze, something you’ve always dreamed of doing and you were only slightly satisfied.

Bucky flashes you another smile before he braces one hand next to your head and leans back over to fish something off the nightstand. When he pulls his other hand back you notice he’s going through something on his phone. Curious, you look at his face trying to get another read at him, but this whole night was just full of surprises. He finally looks at you before speaking.

“Can I ask you something and you promise not to freak out?”

It depends.

“Yeah…” Who were you kidding? You’d gladly get on your knees for this man. He swooped in for another hard kiss, your mind turning into mush just before you could get anything else out.

“I think it’d be so hot if we recorded ourselves,” his face was so close to yours making sure that your focus was on his and only his. He must’ve felt you shift because he allowed more of his weight to drop; he was closing in on you and it was like you almost had no chance of escape. You weren’t going to lie. The way his weight was crushing you and sinking you deeper into the bed felt really nice. You were speechless. He wanted to record a sex tape with you.

“I travel so much,” he starts listing off reasons why while still cradling the side of your face again, your hand bracing his forearm, and starts kissing your face, “it gets really lonely being on the road.” At this point, he’s probably kissed every inch, “I’d love to have this...it’d be so much easier for me to come thinking about you.”

Motherfucker. His dreamy voice speaking those words into you did one hell of a number because you were aching down there plus the way his hips dragged at your still jean-clad lower region didn’t offer much relief.

“I-I don’t know,” you hesitate for a bit. What if his phone got hacked and the footage leaked?

“It’s just for me, baby. I swear,” he asks with hopeful eyes.

Sure, you could’ve had the strength to say no, but you were more than willing to be everything he desired. With your consent, he sealed it with another wild kiss. The magnitude of it setting you ablaze.

Bucky sets his phone back on the nightstand, propping it upright, camera on front face mode to display the both of you on its screen, and at the perfect angle he hits the red record button.

It’s showtime.

He revisits the mission of removing your pants and is this time successful. If you both weren’t so faded, he’d probably have an easier time taking them off, but they were tight, and you were grateful he didn’t clumsily break your ankles in the process. Chucking them somewhere off to the side, with his fingers, he traces the top pattern of the matching red lace panties you had on.

He let out a faint chuckle commenting on how red is his favorite color. Oh, you knew. You precisely chose this set just in case you got lucky. He plants kisses to your hip bones, his lips evading the area that cried out for his attention the most, and slithered down the bed, so he had your calves now placed over his shoulders.

Bucky laid gentle pecks on them and came back up to start nipping at your inner thighs, most likely leaving his mark there also, until you felt the tip of his nose hit your center. Your panties were definitely a deeper shade of red at this point. He pushed your panties to the side enough to get started.

You feel the pads of his fingers begin to rub circular motions at your clit. The first wave causing your hips to jolt involuntarily. You feel the smirk that formed on his face against your thigh at your body’s response.

“So sensitive,” he says pushing your hips back down to continue his task at hand, “and so wet,” he added while pulling his fingers away to examine your arousal that coated his long digits. You don’t take your eyes off him and you almost forget how to breathe when you watch his lips wrap around his fingers, noting his eyes closed and how his cheekbones become more prominent on an already perfect jawline as he sucked them off clean.

When Bucky opens his eyes, they’re darker than before, clouded with lust. He roughly yanked at your panties, still in his other hand, effectively tearing the overpriced garment. After giving it a few more tugs, it was long gone. Headfirst in between your legs, Bucky craved for more of you. He licked a broad strip, down up, to your clit. His tongue teased your folds before dipping inside you, the intrusion causing you to gasp. Your body withered around desperately searching for a path to release. Bucky kept at it, his nose nudging your clit with each plunge his tongue made.

Not denying you of a finish, he adds his fingers into the mix, curling them to find that spot. Noting that your eyes had closed sometime during the act, he stills, and you whine at the sudden halt. Your hand aimlessly reaches out to his face. When you find it, you open your eyes and pick your head up to find out why he had stopped. Bucky offers one of his hands for you to hold on to before speaking.

“Baby keep your eyes on me,” he orders, and his eyes don’t leave yours as his head lowers back down to your pulsing heat. You struggle to keep your eyes open and head from lolling back in ecstasy because you desperately wanted to come. Fuck, he was so talented.

The noises as a result of his onslaught were downright sinful. Bucky’s hips started to ground into the bed trying to relieve some friction of his own. His moans tremble across your entire body. There’s no warning when you come, and you don’t even give him a chance to escape your thighs that clamp around face. Not that Bucky minded, feeling you clench around his fingers as he drank in more of what your body had to offer. Bucky only then emerges when your legs fall limp against the bed.

He plops back down next to you, but as he does so, he pulls you on top of him. Your lips reattach themselves with his and the raw nature of tasting yourself on his lips drive you both mad. He hadn’t even wiped around his face, so you feel the wetness on his chin scrape across yours, staining you with your own arousal.

Your hands moved on their own from planting themselves on his firm chest then working their way down the ripples of his abs, through the trail of hair leading to the top of the waistband of his sweats. You tauntingly pulled the drawstring to loosen it before letting it go and instead grip him through the soft material. Bucky grumbled at your actions, but let you carry on.

You palmed him, getting a feel of how thick and long he was. Bucky was growing whiny with each passing move your hand made, he took matters into his own and grabbed your hand, shoving it into his pants. Your hand instinctively wraps around his hard cock and you give it a light squeeze and a few strokes, generating long drawn out moans to spew from Bucky’s mouth.

His cock felt even better with nothing separating you two. Bucky’s pants and boxers easily slide down his muscular legs, which spread apart to give you room. You maneuver south to lie on your stomach, still in between his legs, and grab his member that was curved resting at his stomach and bring it your face.

“Wait,” he says almost breathlessly. Your mouth is only inches away from the head already weeping profusely. He sits up to rest on his elbows and retrieves his phone from the nightstand. Oh.

“Okay, smile for me,” he directs, and you follow his lead before your tongue darts out at his slit and follow the ring around the tip of his cock. You pull back to savor his taste for a moment, your hands spreading the pre-cum around his shaft. Your strokes are then accompanied by the long licks you give at the sides and to his balls that your other hand had been playing with. Bucky’s head rests on his pillow so his other hand could rest on the back of your head and guide you down his length. Your mouth immediately started to water, but it made it easier for you to bob up and down. He let you move at your own pace for the most part. Bucky pushed your hair off to the side, away from your face to get a better view of the outline of his cock poking at the inside of your mouth. You let his cock drag across the inside of your cheeks a few times until it audibly popped out of your mouth.

“Fuck me. I knew you’d be perfect.” His words mixed with his incessant moans were like honey pouring into your ears. He loved the way your eyes looked directly at him through the camera lens when you come up with a long tantalizing lick to the underside of his cock and crawling back up to straddle him.

Bucky gets a good shot of your flushed face and breasts that had some of your drool combined with his pre-cum running down your body before dropping his phone beside him. He sits up causing you to fall back down at the other end of the bed. He picks out a condom from the nightstand and you watch as it rolls down the length of his cock. You bite your lip watching it twitch.

He’s on his knees, but sitting on the balls of his feet, you are lying down patiently waiting for him. He swipes his cock through the wetness of your pussy, prepping himself to slide in. He’s watching your reaction with each pass his dick makes. Your body is yearning for him to be inside of you, to hit that fucking spot over and over.

Just when you think he’s about to do it, he’s reaching over for that damn phone again. Out of habit, you cover your face with your hands. Not only showing the last shred of humility you had left, but also because you probably looked like a fucking bitch in heat.

Bucky pulls your hands away, he still has the phone in his hands, and he’s got it angled to playback from his point of view before he finally pushes into you. He’s big, much bigger than what you’ve experienced, you think you need a moment to adjust, but he never gives you that opportunity and you find that it doesn’t matter when he feels so good. Too good that you find it hard to breathe with each thrust he’s making because he’s hitting it so deep. You push your hands out in front of you to his lower abdomen and attempt to slow him down. Bucky shakes his head and knocks your hands out of the way.

You let out an abrupt yelp at his retaliation to your failed efforts in trying to stop him with a particularly harder and much forceful thrust. Instead, your hands grab fistfuls of the hotel bed’s white blankets and just let him have his way.

“So beautiful,” he says spreading you further then coming down on you to reclaim your lips with his. He rips your hands from their tight grips on the bed sheets to pin them down next to the sides of your head. You don’t care where his phone went, just happy to have both his hands on you. The skin-to-skin contact just hit different sometimes.

The kisses become so feral you start to feel a burn around your mouth from his stubble. Bucky rolls his hips into yours deliciously, a damn true artist, the rhythm he’s got going sends you just about over but never fully beyond the edge to prolong the climax.

Much to your dismay, Bucky withdraws away from you again, back into his previous position, a new idea popping into his wicked mind. With his hard cock still inside you, he slides his hands under your hips and hoists your lower half up towards him, resting your ass on his thighs, effectively bottoming out. You don’t hold back at the way that made you feel and let out an embarrassingly loud moan. He holds still for a second and you’re not quite sure why. You try to move by wiggling your hips, but he holds you still.

He’s staring at how close your bodies are, connected, he moves just the slightest. It causes your pussy to contract and your stomach to tighten up. He does it again in different intervals, his eyes surveying the entire thing. The next push is a little harder and when you see the devious smile breakthrough his face, he does it even more. The thrusts are much sharper and almost painful, but it quickly subsides when you feel the head of his cock probe at the right spot.

Bucky lifts your hips up higher, your back arching in bridge fashion you weren’t aware you could even do until he resumes his new pattern of thrusts again. This new position aided his cock in hitting your sweet spot a little better. He’s filming you again and resting one of his palms on your stomach. He’s not only watching, but he’s feeling the bulge in your belly from the distension caused by the jabs of his cock.

“That’s my girl,” he praised, continuing to pound into you, “you take this cock so well.” The sight boosts Bucky’s ego and for you it actually probably wasn’t a good thing, but you’d be damned the angle did so many wonders to you right now.

“You love watching your cock go deeper and deeper inside me, Bucky?” You ask trying to look up at him from that position. Where did that come from? Your words cause him to freeze momentarily, but you could still feel his cock throbbing inside of you. He liked that.

Another impish thought running through his head, Bucky pulls out, picking you up so you’re also knee-height with him, giving you another searing kiss, then he’s behind you. He gently pushes you down, you on your elbows, Bucky leans over behind you, his soaked cock sliding up your ass resting on the small of your back as he places his phone back on the nightstand in the same position it had been in the beginning.

You don’t dare look at the screen in front of you, so you look down until you feel Bucky enter your pussy once more from behind. Your head rises and it wasn’t due to the surging pleasure, but because Bucky uses your hair as a rope to bring your body upright with his.

He thrusts up into you while he mutters incoherent slurs and lewd noises into your ear. He peppers the side of your face with wet and uncalculated kisses, his hands massaging your breasts before one of them migrates down to cup your pussy. His fingers dip in and starts another assault to your clit. You’re already tethering off the edge and on the brink of succumbing to him, but he just knew when to let up and keep you starved for more.

“Look at you,” he says, using his other hand to turn your head to face the small screen, the numbers continuing to go up. “You’re such a fucking slut for my cock,” you don’t argue with him and instead moan his name. “You like watching yourself fuck this huge cock, don’t you?” You couldn’t lie to yourself anymore; watching the two of you was hot. Your uncontrollable moans now muffled into Bucky’s palm. And he just kept egging you on, “I know I do. It’s gonna remind me just how tight this fucking pussy is.” Damn him.

“You want to come, baby?” He asks, the speed of his fingers picking up a notch.

You pull down Bucky’s hand to respond, “Mmm, yes. Fuck! Please let me come, Bucky,” you don’t know what has possessed you, but it spurs the both of you on even more. Your next words do it for Bucky, “I want to come all over your cock,” and he’s immediately coming and spilling into the condom, still inside you, you feel his release pump through him. He’s biting your shoulder, some of his weight coming down on you, his thrusts becoming erratic, but one did the trick for you and you finally let go.

And what drives Bucky even more wild, is that you don’t stop. You keep rolling your hips into him, riding it all the way out. Bucky’s trying to hold on, with a bruising grip on your waist, his forehead resting on your back; the aftershock of his release proving too much. Your release pours out freely, you feel some of it slide down the inside of your thighs mixed with sweat.

You sag against Bucky, each of your body weight balancing against the other. You feel him scatter lazy kisses up your back and pull your face towards him to press one against your lips, moaning in satisfaction. He slowly pulls out of you with a low groan, your body feeling numb when you fall forward to lie down on the bed. Bucky discards of the condom and shuts his phone off before settling next to you.

He pushes the hair out of your face, and you, facedown, peek an eye open. He has a more than content look on his face, you notice his eyes were back to their normal color. He allows some time to pass for you both to calm down. Sleep wants to overcome your body, but it doesn’t when Bucky’s touch puts you on notice again. He runs his hand up and down your back. He’s insatiable, but he didn’t anticipate your comeback in the end and put him in a daze. He could get addicted to you.

“Is it weird if I fly you out to Brooklyn?” He said out of nowhere. Brooklyn was thousands of miles away from where you lived. He wanted to pay your way to see him again. It was such an outlandish request. You’re starting to regain a more balanced sense of perception and thought, and you ponder on this for a few seconds. “Never mind. You think it’s weird,” he says lifting the blanket over his head turning his back to you. You could tell he was just trying to be cute.

“Oh, come on! You caught me off guard. You can’t blame me!” You respond, but he doesn’t budge. You muster up enough strength to sit up to lean over the side of his body, resting your chin on the top of his shoulder, and try to grab at the blanket. You pull it over his head and see the lazy smile etched across his pretty face. All you do is return the smile and close your eyes, basking in the post-coital bliss.

“Stay for the night,” came as his last request and turning to lie on his back, wrapping his arms around you.

You don’t think about your car, that’s still parked nearby or care if the parking rate is probably going up by the hour and start eating at your bank account. You don’t think about how pissed your friend would be when she wakes up in the morning and you’re still not back in time. You just think about how tomorrow he’d be far away. You scoot up to give him one more kiss before laying your head to rest on him and make the best out of the present. Happy that you went with your gut on this one.

A/N: This could flop. At first, it was easy to write, but then the ending tripped me up. & while I have your attention, please let me know, anonymously or not, if there’s an interest in a Chase Collins fic? Charles Blackwood smut, anyone? Anyway, I hope this delivered! Thanks for reading!

#mrwinterr writes #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fanfic #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian x reader #sebastian stan smut #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan x y/n #marvel fic #rockstar!bucky barnes #rockstar!bucky #rockstar!au #happy

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ninjastormhawkkat · 4 years ago

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Another Wordgirl Au: Morally Gray Wordgirl

Morally Gray Wordgirl au

I don’t know if anyone else in the Wordgirl fandom thought about this at one point. A what-if I thought one day was what would have happened if Steven became Dr. Two Brains before Becky became Wordgirl? Such as what if Steven became Two Brains when Becky just came to earth as a baby? This is where the au begins

In this au, Becky is adopted by Dr. Two Brains. After Becky and Bob crash land on earth, Bob carries Becky around for a bit and enters the city. This is around the time Steven first becomes Two Brains. Bob, while carrying Becky, runs into Two Brains. At this point, Bob has no idea that Two Brains is a villain. Two Brains has cheese with him and Bob is hungry. Two Brains awkwardly hands some of his cheese to Bob. Two Brains may be a villain now but he is not heartless to not offer someone that is hungry food. Bob eats the cheese while Two Brains holds Becky. Two Brains is nervous at first because some random monkey just gave him a baby to hold😟. When Becky looks at Two Brains, she curiously calls him daddy. She is just a little kid who think that this new man holding her is her parent now. Two Brains heart just melts😍after hearing her call him daddy and looking into her innocent, alien, eyes. He immediately begins to dote on her as a dad would, ex. baby talk and cooing. Bob watches the interaction between Two Brains and Becky and decides that Two Brains would be a great person to stay with and raise Becky. He later regrets his decision.😓😆Here is an outline for how this au would go:

1. Becky still becomes Wordgirl. Bob tries to implement heroic morals into Becky during the time she is being raised by a villain. Becky wants to become a hero because she does not want to see the lives of innocent civilians hurt. However, since Dr. Two Brains also implemented villainous ideals into Becky growing up, her moral values are kind of mixed in her actions as a hero.

2. Becky is more sympathetic towards villains. Ex. When Chuck and Butcher claim to be innocent after being framed by Amazing Rope Guy, she immediately believes them and tries to figure out another angle of who really committed those crimes.

3. She isn’t as upset as when the spotlight is turned off her such as when Tiny Big came onto the scene or when Granny May became bingo champion. She is still upset, but Becky is not as focused on the limelight as canon. She, from Huggy’s teachings, believes that a superhero’s true reward comes from protecting the citizens and just helping when needed to prevent or avenge the cruelest of injustices. Wordgirl will accept gifts or keys to the city out of politeness. She uses the limelight to give the people of Fair City comfort and assurance that she is still there to protect them. Becky views heroism as a job more than a pleasure. It is basically, “You get good results based on how hard and well you do the work, not just what others say.” mentality.

4. That being said, Becky will not take a passive stance and try hard to prove her innocence if the citizens suddenly began to take advantage of her heroism or if they turn on her such as with the evil duplicate or when Granny May framed her for crimes. As I said earlier, Becky in this au views heroism as a job she enjoys and doesn't take impolite backlash, constructive criticism yes. Basically she just becomes done when residents of Fair City act like morons who think they know better. (I have always had a problem when a majority of the residents in Fair City act like gullible idiots. It always irks me how they will turn on Wordgirl easily and not often give a proper apology when they realize they were wrong. Sometimes, to me, it seems the villains have better appreciation for Wordgirl than the citizens. I am not including all citizens, just seems like a majority do this.) (Okay rant over.) Becky will be like, “if you guys don’t want me anymore then good luck.” She will intervene again just to keep the city from going into complete chaos. She still cares about the safety of the citizens, she just does not like it when they abandon their trust in her for no good reason. She is not even mad at the villains who cause this. They didn’t force the citizens to dislike Wordgirl, that was their choice.

5. Becky will not often take her dad to jail. She loves her dad and does not like the idea of him not being home (the warehouse; Becky’s living conditions their are like my version of the Becky Boxleitner au, just somewhat better due to her living their all her life.) She also does not like the idea of having to fight him, but has to in order to keep up appearances and not let anyone get suspicious and start suspecting her identity. That being said, she will let Two Brains escape after stoping the crimes depending on the severity. If Two Brains just steals cheese from the grocery store, she may often ignore it (its just cheese and it can easily be replenished). For crimes such as stealing money or turning artwork into cheese, Becky will stop her dad, but later act like he got away (if police are not around. “Two Brains Quartet” still happens because police are there.). Becky may do this sometimes for other villains depending on her or their mood. Citizens and Villains believe that Dr. Two Brains is an extremely tough villain to catch which raises his credibility as Fair City’s #1 villain when Wordgirl does this. Captain Huggy Face is not happy when Wordgirl let’s her dad go, but he deals with it because she cares about her dad. Becky does stand her ground if her dad, and the other villains, do something dangerous that affects the lives of the citizens. Incidents such as the plot to mind control all the city with bunny buttons and the cheesteroid do get Two Brains arrested. (Becky is like, “Sorry dad, but I can’t let you threaten the lives of innocent civilians.”) Since this happens rarely, Becky usually stays at her friends houses until her dad leaves prison. She has a visitor clearance and does visits with her dad when she can. (Still brings him cheese.) Not much interaction with the Botsford family unless they were a focus in episodes.

6. Becky is more aware of when villains act deceitful. (She was raised by one herself.) She pretends to be tricked to let their guard down before turning the tables on them. (She can be tricky and deceitful herself when she wants to be.)

The police force are more competent in this au than in canon. They were able to capture most villains, with exception to Two Brains and other major villains, before Wordgirl came onto the scene. The city was similar to Gotham before Batman showed up. It was fine, but crime rates were still high. The episode “The Wrong Side of the Law” happens differently than canon. Wordgirl is civil and polite to the police, but does really like law enforcement or fully trusts them due to her upbringing by a super villain. (Two Brains taught her she can respect law enforcement because they are capable of doing a good job, it does not mean she has to like them or follow the rules all the time. I sorta think that the villains have some respect for D.A. Sally Botsford because of how she is good at her job.)

Now on to “Normal” girl Becky. Becky is still referred to as Becky Boxleitner. (Dr. Two Brains did not want kids ignoring or making fun of Becky with a last name like Brains, or something mouse related. He wanted people to know and treat his daughter as herself, not just who she is related to. Two Brains also wanted to give Becky some protection so random people wouldn’t bother her because of his actions. So he just gave her his old human name.) Becky is similar to her canon character with a few changes.

1. Becky will empathize with someone if they are feeling upset and hurt. But if they are doing something dumb and stupid, or anything that is concerning to her, she will be upfront and honest with that person (not complete brutal honesty but something like “Please don’t do something stupid, I care about you and your health.”). She isn’t mean, but she is forward and won’t bother to hide feelings if hiding your emotions will only make the situation worse.

2. Both Becky and Wordgirl are sassy like her dad.

3. She is still passionate about words and respects her teachers and main authority figures.

4. Becky is more clever about excuses.

5. She enjoys science more as well as literature. Becky has top grades in her class. (Next to Tobey). She enjoys science fairs and is a bit better at creating workable, and visually acceptable, inventions.

6. Becky likes puns (Two Brains) and knows every fact about cheese as well as every fact about words (again Two Brains’ fault).

7. Becky is still a fan of Pretty Princess, but has ponies, books, and science stuff in her room. She is a bit more tomboyish than canon.

Becky is still friends with Violet in this au. I always viewed Violet’s mom as an open-minded nature women, based on Violet’s character and where they live. She is easily accepting of Becky and Dr. Two Brains despite Two Brains life as a villain. Becky is also forward early on how some of Violet’s traditions make her uncomfortable so there is no issue in the series.

Becky is more a fan of words and science in this au. She and Violet have fun mixing art and science. Becky does not take art classes, but rather is part of after-school science and reading clubs. (She takes science club with Tobey and reading club with Violet.)

Becky is also friends with Tobey in this au. I have nothing against Scoops’ character. I was just more fond of his character development in the episodes during and after he learns Becky’s identity, plus a few before the reveal. (In the early seasons, it seemed that Scoops would do anything for a big story, even as exposing Wordgirl’s identity as Becky. I was upset in that Vocab Bee episode because Scoops did not seem to consider Becky’s input or feeling when he found strong evidence that Becky was Wordgirl. To me it seemed unfair that Becky had to throw her chances at a competition she was having fun in just to protect her identity because of Scoops’ actions and attitude.) Tobey met Becky when they were between 5 and 6. Tobey just lost his dad (up to interpretation on how) and was just lonely. Kids would make fun of Tobey’s nerd-side and some other mean reasons, or they would ignore him. Becky sympathized with Tobey because most kids, not Violet, would avoid her because of her dad. (They would not dare bully her for fear of how Dr. Two Brains would react.) Tobey and Becky easily began to get along and overtime became friends. Claire McCallister was worried about her son hanging out with the child of a villain. But quickly after seeing how Becky was a good kid plus Two Brains being a good dad despite his status, and that her son was happy with friends, she let her worries slide. Claire, Dr. Two Brains, and Violet’s mom, have made an unofficial single parents support group between the three of them. In this au, Tobey does not become a villain, but still builds robots. (I already have a new villain that takes canon Tobey’s role.) Becky and Tobey are silently crushing on each other. Tobey does suspect Becky is Wordgirl, but respects her secret identity and will wait for her to tell him (or a reveal). (Still cares for her anyway.)

Scoops parents are friendly but are strong law-abiding citizens so they avoid Two Brains and Becky. Scoops in this au is nice, but is more concerned on news stories. He originally talks to Becky in hopes of getting an interview with her dad. Scoops is trying not to be inconsiderate, but he is sorta using Becky as a way to get to her dad. Becky deals with this stuff from other reporters and fans of her dad. Neither Dr. Two Brains and Becky like this attention. (Two Brains likes being in the news and in magazines, but he doesn’t like people using his daughter to get to him. Becky is the most important person in his life with cheese being second.) Becky shuts Scoops down after his first few initial attempts. Scoops is disappointed, but he apologizes and doesn’t bother her anymore. Becky is civil and polite to Scoops in this series, but that is about it. There is no crush. (I don’t know if I will keep the Violet x Scoops ship in this au or change it.)

I really like this au along with a few other aus I made up which include an Alliance Swap au. I am going to expand more on this au and the characters later.

#wordgirl au #morally gray au #a becky boxleitner au #with just a Dr. Two Brains dad twist #poor Bob #he has to deal with a good/evil Wordgirl #I just realize I made Becky a little bit like Manny Rivera from El Tigre #That was not my intention but okay then.#wordgirl #oc mention

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iamkidfish · 3 years ago

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some things we can’t get back (i miss the way we used to be)

Read it here!

Ian hears of a party happening this weekend from Taz Nguyen as they’re walking to class and tells Leah during their shared lunch break, sitting on a table in the quad. It’s something she’s been doing all semester, all of high school really, but there’s a weird sense of deja vu that hits Leah when Fatin, on the other side of the quad, walks by surrounded by a flock of people.

After a year, after the island, the bunker, some things stay the same: Fatin doesn’t even look at her.

or: after the island, Fatin retreats back to her old ways and Leah tries to help

Pair: Leah/Fatin

Wordcount: 2.7k of the most leatin angst I have ever written hehe

Read it on ao3 or under the cut

Leah knows something is wrong with Fatin pretty quickly after they return back to Berkeley, but it takes her months to pinpoint exactly what it is, and even longer to track her down on the weekends. It's harder than it should be, especially with Ian and Dot helping her, but then Fatin avoids eye contact with her in the hallway as Leah is walking to fourth period (like she has done all semester) and the realization hits her like a punch to the face: Fatin is running again, just like before except this time, (and it jolts sharply in Leah’s chest) she’s not just leaving out of spite, Fatin is running away from her.

It’s like she’s back in those fucking woods, muddied and exhausted, and fear is buzzing a warning in her chest that’s making her question her instincts instead of the suburbs of Berkeley, where her life should be going back to normal, but fuck, Leah will trudge through the woods until she sees Fatin again, even if she doesn’t want to be found.

Operation: Find Fatin (or O.F.F. as Ian writes it on a whiteboard in an empty classroom during their lunch break one day in October, after Leah explains the whole situation to him and embarrassingly, her feelings) starts with recon, both Leah and Ian trying to find what parties are happening and which ones Fatin is going to. That’s the hard part: determining which of her classmates Fatin would deem cool enough to party with and finding them. Once she asks, they’re more than willing to give her addresses, dates, and times, anything to get one of the members of the Unsinkable Eight to go to their party.

After a year, after the island, the bunker, some things stay the same: Fatin doesn’t even look at her.

Whatever they meant to each other on the island is gone now and it still leaves the sharp acidity of disappointment in Leah’s mouth.

The information Taz gives them turns out to be fake or Fatin doesn’t show, either way it’s kind of a disaster. Both of them get healthily shitfaced off of green apple vodka that burns the back of Leah’s throat and Ian helps himself to the wine cellar in the basement, which obviously Leah needs to make fun of him for his preference for expensive white wine. Whoever’s house it is, it’s fucking ginormous, enough for Ian to air out his (long) list of drunken grievances off the top balcony, overlooking the Bay below. He shouts it like he’s the king of the world, confident and stumbling all at once, and Leah’s too drunk to stop him. If their lives were a movie then maybe Ian would try to kiss her again and maybe if they were different people then Leah would let him, but luckily, that part of their lives has passed; instead, they both lean over the railing in silence.

Later when they’re back around people, she overhears info about another party with an address that’s close enough to Uber (because there’s no fucking way either of them are driving right now) without having to justify spending too much money on tracking Fatin down—even though she’s worth it—so Leah drags Ian away from the girl he’s talking to and they scramble outside.

The autumn air is cool and welcome on her burning face. As they’re waiting for the Uber, Ian stumbles around like the drunk idiot he is and Leah can’t help but laugh at him. Their car pulls up and then she’s shoving him inside, all of their limbs flailing awkwardly. The guy driving is nice, at least; he really doesn’t talk except to tell them goodbye. Even in her inebriated state, Leah’s still coherent enough to give him a five star review. The walk up the cobblestone driveway is a long one, especially since Ian keeps wandering off onto the perfectly manicured lawn, and she’s not a complete asshole but she’s also not perfect, so she pulls Ian back onto the driveway but not before he can stomp through some flower beds. She might as well have to buy one of those child backpacks that doubles as a leash.

Just as the alcohol is wearing off enough to make her reconsider walking basically the San Francisco Marathon to get to this house party, the house comes into view. Of course it’s fucking huge, just like the last one. There’s four giant stone columns, maybe about twenty feet tall, connecting from the top of the hours to the base of the porch, and Leah has to laugh because who the fuck would ever be pretentious enough to model their house after the Parthenon.

And it hits her, because she knows exactly the type of family who lives here, the one that buys thousand dollar waterproof suitcases and sends their eldest daughter off knowing fully what’s going to happen to her, and still somehow not giving a shit, the one that cares more about appearances rather than the wellness of their own children.

Vaguely, Leah remembers Fatin mentioning her mom being a real estate agent and yeah, by the look of their house, that checks out. The next time Ian goes ambling around, Leah doesn’t stop him from ‘accidentally’ knocking over a few potted plants along the stone walkway up to the front door, spilling soil behind him like a trail of breadcrumbs. The closer they get to the house, the louder it becomes—not just with music, omnipresent bass blasting out of what’s sure to be a state of the art sound system, enough to rattle Leah’s teeth, but people, singing or yelling, trying to be heard above the music—and the whole house swells and throbs with the cacophony of it all, a whole ecosystem behind the front doors.

Her plan is simple: grab a drink or two with Ian and then start wandering the house, looking for Fatin. Leah’s got a pretty good idea that Fatin has to be around here somewhere; she’s not the type to go ghost at her own party. Automatically, the plan becomes more complicated when Ian sees some of his friends right when they walk through the front door and they motion for him to come smoke with them. Leah lets him go and watches as Ian walks away, pulling a joint from behind his ear, where it rests against that silly arrow tattoo he has.

Now she’s alone, standing in the entryway and picking at the hem of her dress, and it’s not what she imagined her first time stepping into Fatin Jadmani’s house would be like. At the very least, she thought she’d meet Fatin’s brothers (remembers how fondly Fatin would talk about them, would swap stories with Shelby about their younger siblings) or maybe even her mother, obviously not in a romantic way (Leah doesn’t allow herself that much hope, even in daydreams), but meeting her family all of the same. Meeting her father is very much obviously out of the question, for the things he did of course, but more because Leah might punch him the second she sees him for making Fatin cry all those times on the island, after dark when she thought no one else was awake. And it would be during the day, not at what Leah considers Fatin’s attempt at the most successful rager on this side of the west coast

There’s really only one logical fix for this: she needs a drink.

Briefly, Leah does wonder where the rest of Fatin’s family is, if they’re aware this party is happening, as she maneuvers past the throngs of people settled in the living room, lying on the couches and floor like it’s their own house. As suspected, the kitchen—where all the drinks are—is even worse. Leah has half a mind to tell the people who are raiding the panty to have a little self respect, but the drunk part of her brain concedes there’s probably some great snacks on the shelves.

She grabs a hard seltzer from the fridge—she should slow down anyway—and settles in one of the chairs adjacent to the ridiculously large kitchen island complete with granite countertops. At least it’s a little less crowded here, people tend to grab their drinks and keep migrating to other parts of the house. Leah looks around, trying to find if she knows anyone else here, which she spots a few kids from school who look vaguely familiar, maybe they’re in the instrumental performance concentration, but it’s hard to tell because everyone is dressed differently (thighs and midriffs on display, unbuttoned shirts revealing surprisingly toned chests and stomachs ) honestly, most of their time is spent holed up in the practices rooms anyway. The majority of the people here she doesn't know and whether they’re from the local public high schools or UC Berkeley or have some other connection to Fatin she doesn’t know about, pretty much everyone is loud, annoying, and drunk.

So is Fatin, who Leah sees parading around the backyard, but she’s also soaking wet. And wearing one of the smallest bikinis Leah’s ever seen, which is impressive because she knows Fatin’s wardrobe. Maybe she lets her eyes linger a second longer on the shadow of Fatin’s exposed hip bones than she would if she was sober. Leah looks around the kitchen and the few other people sitting near her have also stopped drinking or talking or whatever they were doing to watch Fatin walk and talk to the posse of conveniently very attractive people who are surrounding her.

Now she knows, the Jadmani’s have a pool. And apparently Fatin likes to go swimming at nearly 1 a.m, effectively shutting down all coherent thoughts in Leah’s brain. She needs to get out of there before Fatin can get to the kitchen and notice her leaning against the countertops so Leah grabs the nearest liquor bottle, dumps a truly potent amount into her can, and slips out to the living room.

But then, not less than five minutes later, when she’s inspecting a piece of artwork hanging on the wall—

“Leah”

And she turns—

Fatin looks as surprised to see her as Leah feels, standing in Fatin’s living room and holding a can filled with a liquid she wouldn’t voluntarily drink even if her life depended on it, and there’s a moment where they just look at each other. Something like recognition flashes in Fatin’s eyes and Leah tries to say something, starts to open her mouth, but then Fatin’s jaw clenches tight (and she looks at Leah like how she did on the beach, blood on her hands, menacing) and she’s turning around to the people who surround her, loudly introducing Leah to them as her ‘friend’—like they didn’t spend almost three months surviving on a deserted island together, didn’t sleep next to her almost every night, didn’t hold Leah in her arms after she ran into the ocean, like all of these people don’t already recognize her—and the small, selfish part of Leah can’t hate her, but every other part of her body does.

The crowd of people, much larger now that two members of the Unsinkable Eight are in attendance together, cheers as Fatin makes her way over to Leah. She puts an arm around Leah, who’s so surprised by the physical contact she stumbles a bit, and the crowd roars louder. Then, Fatin kisses Leah’s cheek, hard and sloppy, and Leah can feel the hot alcohol on her breath and it’s nothing like the last time Fatin had kissed her, all slow and sweet and full of timid promise, as they watched the sun set over the island, but she stands there, allows herself be guided by Fatin, the cup in her hand shaking from the rattle of the bass and bodies pounding the floor.

Fatin kisses Leah’s cheek and it burns.

And it’s only after Fatin removes her arm from around her shoulders that Leah takes her cup, throws it back and downs the entire contents in one swallow.

Fuck, it’s not fair and she realizes how desperate and needy it’ll sound if she asks why Fatin’s been ignoring her at school, how pathetic it’ll sound, especially in front of a whole crowd of people who wouldn’t give her the time of the day if she wasn’t stuck on that island. And this plan was doomed from the start anyway so Leah lets herself be pushed around, Fatin holding her wrist and tugging her along, introducing Leah to all of her new ‘friends’, and reassuring them Leah is ‘chill’ (a laugh bites and claws its way out of her throat).

The night continues and Leah can’t stand it: the polarization of Fatin’s behavior, the way she’s gone from completely ignoring Leah’s existence to showing her off like a prop, the way the others talk Fatin into rolling up hundreds and brushing them through lines of God-knows-what on the coffee table, the way Fatin looks at her, once, after she’s brushed the drugs off her nose the second time, and her eyes are hazy but looking at Leah like she remembers, like she still cares.

Leah looks away first and Fatin goes right back to being the life of the party. Or maybe she’s always been like this and Leah’s just been disillusioned this whole time.

Somewhere between getting to the house and her fourth drink, Leah stumbles away to find the bathroom. Only when she opens a door, it opens up to a bed and not a toilet, and there’s two people making out on said bed.

And one of them is Fatin.

The other is a girl, which doesn’t surprise Leah but makes her do a double take when she realizes the girl has blue eyes. Blonde hair, pulled back into space buns, but blue eyes, just like hers. There’s a hickey, too, fresh on the girl’s neck.

Yeah, she needs to get out of here.

Leah pulls Fatin off of the bed with a mild grunt and suddenly they’re face to face, standing just outside of the doorway. Fatin is staring at her, freshly-kissed and beautiful, and her life is a goddamn tragedy because Leah’s experienced this before, on an island thousands of miles away, and well, it doesn’t look like she’ll experience it again anytime soon. Maybe Fatin remembers it too or maybe she just takes pity on Leah, but she’s always been too good at reading Leah’s feelings and she offers a quiet, too-sincere, “you can join if you want, a spot in the action,” and for one blissful, magnificent second, Leah considers it. Lets herself indulge and really looks at Fatin for the first time tonight, eyes roving over Fatin’s body and noticing her sunburn hasn’t totally healed right near her temple (even after months) and the mottled skin of her left thigh, the white scar there, from the first few days on the island, too high on her leg that Leah can’t look at it without getting dizzy.

She’s drunk enough to look Fatin directly in the eyes and stupid enough to think her offer means more than it does. And Leah realizes she just wants Fatin to be fucking serious for once, so she doesn’t break Leah’s heart while she’s drunk and high and fucking laughing about it, realizes bitterly that Fatin’s first direct sentence she’s spoken to her since the bunker, since everything, was about a threesome and how fucking fitting that is and what a goddamn full circle that is, and she realizes this isn’t going to work for them, not now, not like this.

So she does what the others wanted her to do that first week when they were searching in the woods, she stops looking, and leaves.

#the wilds #the wilds fic #leah rilke #fatin jadmani #leah x fatin #leatin #leatin fic #some times youre allowed to have bad coping methods after being used in a highly unethical experiment #writing #buckle up folks

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m00nycore · 4 years ago

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𝙒𝙄𝙏𝙃 𝘼𝙇𝙇 𝙊𝙁 𝙈𝙔 𝙎𝙏𝙐𝙋𝙄𝘿 𝙃𝙀𝘼𝙍𝙏 ;; 𝙤𝙣𝙚 .

𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙘𝙖𝙥𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 .

𝙎𝙀𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙎 𝙈𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙇𝙄𝙎𝙏

𝙙𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙡𝙛𝙤𝙮 𝙭 𝙤𝙘 (𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙪𝙥 𝙩𝙬𝙤 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨)

𝙩/𝙬 : 𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝, 𝙩𝙤𝙭𝙞𝙘 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨, 𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙜𝙚, 𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚, 𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛. 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣.

𝙏𝘼𝙂𝙇𝙄𝙎𝙏 ;; @dreaming-about-fanfictions @aesthetic-el

Her room became a prison.

Persephone tried in vain not to cry herself to sleep the first night she spent trapped in the manor. No, she told herself, you’re too strong for that.

But she wasn’t. She vomited the very minute Draco left her alone in the room. She had to assist in killing Dumbledore. The Dark Mark painted her forearm. It was too much for her.

Her step-mother had arranged for her favorite house elf, Poppy, to bring her belongings to her new, overly spacious room. It had been quite the fight for her to be able to keep Poppy with her- until Narcissa Malfoy agreed, on the condition that Poppy helped to maintain the house while Persephone was absent.

She sat on the edge of the bed, Poppy organizing her things, while her hairless cat, Aegis, laid curled on her lap.

“Poppy,” she murmured, the elf immediately running towards her.

“Yes, Mistress Persephone?” she wondered, her giant eyes full of love and respect.

“Just Persephone,” she gently reminded the elf; she knew it was hard for her to correct that. “You don’t have to put my things away, dear. I can do it myself… would you sit with me?”

Poppy hopped onto the bed, and Persephone leaned on her. In some ways, Poppy was the mother she never had. In other ways, Poppy was like a best friend, or a little sister.

“Poppy,” Persephone whispered, tears collecting in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What’s the matter, ma’am?” Poppy wondered, alarm written over her features. “Did Poppy do-?”

“Poppy, you’ve never given me a problem for as long as you have lived,” she pulled the elf into a hug, which she returned. “Poppy, do you promise me to keep a secret? Even from the Malfoy’s?”

“Ms. Persephone has my word!” she exclaimed, full of determination.

Persephone sighed, absentmindedly stroking a sleeping Aegis. “Poppy, I’m getting married now,” she showed her the extravagant ring, making her friend’s eyes widen.

“Congratulations, ma’am!” she exclaimed. “To Mister Malfoy?” she inquired, curiosity and innocence laced in her tone.

“Yes…,” Persephone confirmed. “But I don’t love him. I was forced into this. Honestly, I used to hate him in school… we haven’t talked civilly in… I don’t remember when.”

Poppy frowned. “Why is Ms. Persephone being forced to marry? Poppy doesn’t understand.”

“Apparently, our parents agreed… but, Poppy… here’s when it gets to be a bigger secret… Draco has been tasked by the Dark Lord to kill Dumbledore,” Poppy gasped at her statement. “And I… have to help him. They made me a Death Eater,” she showed her forearm, still red hot and painful. “Poppy, I can’t do it. I don’t want to. But if I don’t…”

Tears pooled in Poppy’s eyes. “They may kill Ms. Persephone!” she wailed. “Poppy doesn’t want Ms. Persephone to die! Poppy loves Ms. Persephone!”

Persephone gathered Poppy in her arms again, shushing her. “Poppy, I love you too… I’m more worried about them hurting you to hurt me,” it was true, it had definitely crossed her mind. Her love for her house elf was apparent, and they could very well use that against her. It wasn’t like she cared about any harm coming to others. Persephone cared about Poppy and herself. Self-preservation might be selfish of her, but she simply didn’t care. She wouldn’t have the Dark Lord kill her.

“Ms. Persephone should never worry about Poppy!”

She smiled sadly at her. Poppy was loyal to a fault, but she was the only being alive she considered family. Her father was a monster, as well as her step-mother.

“Ms. Persephone looks ill,” Poppy said. “Does Ms. Persephone need something to eat?”

“No,” she responded. Truthfully, she hadn’t eaten all day. Nor did she yesterday, when she had received her assignment. The Malfoy’s hadn’t seen her since. She imagined Draco was isolating himself, as well. She wouldn’t blame him.

A knock sounded at her door, and Poppy quickly jumped off the bed, running to finish putting clothes away.

“Poppy, stop, I’ll help,” she told her, in a whisper. “Just stay there, please. I need you,” Poppy nodded. “Come in,” she responded, in a voice that betrayed none of her turmoil.

Narcissa Malfoy entered the room, with all the grace and authority she was raised to aspire to. She was absolutely beautiful, and she seemed kinder than the other women she had encountered in the circle, purely because of her obvious love and devotion to her son.

“Hello, Mrs. Malfoy,” she greeted, wondering why she had come to see her.

She nodded, crossing the room and taking a seat on the plush couch.

“You haven’t been eating,” she stated. “You shouldn’t starve yourself.”

Persephone couldn’t muster a reply. Narcissa continued. “You were unaware of your betrothal to my son,” it was a statement rather than a question. She paused. “You two are just children.”

Persephone heard the sorrow in her voice. She was worried for her son more than anything, she knew, but was Narcissa concerned for her?

“I,” she began, locking eyes with Poppy, who looked anxiously at her. “I’m being rude… thank you, Mrs. Malfoy, for allowing me to stay in your home and for me to bring my dearest Poppy along with me.”

Narcissa spared a glance at Poppy, who bowed to her.

“I supposed you needed some sort of comfort,” she told her. “So you genuinely were never told of your betrothal?”

Persephone locked eyes with her. “I wasn’t, ma’am, no.”

Narcissa looked towards the window. “I was always fond of your mother… and I was distraught to hear about her passing,” she said it as delicately and discreetly as possible, considering the circumstances behind her death. “I watched you grow up. I knew you were clever… you never played with Draco or the other children… you observed. You read books.”

Persephone was at a loss for words. She had no clue where her soon-to-be mother-in-law was going with this.

“I love my son,” she stated. “I love him more than anything. You know, you’re like your mother… in more than just looks. I expected you to be a Ravenclaw,” another pause. “My dear,” Narcissa stood, tears in her eyes, and sat next to her. “I care for my son, and I care for you as his fiancée. Persephone, as a mother, I am not only concerned for him, but for you. You don’t have anyone left… but, however you feel, you have Draco now. Persephone, I beg of you… help him. Protect him.”

Persephone stared down at Aegis, regretting that her hands were always so cold on her hairless skin.

“I will,” she whispered.

Narcissa nodded, and walked to the door. “You’re welcome to leave the room, to walk around the manor or the gardens,” without another word, she left.

Her mother had once told her a story when she was little.

“Do you know why you were named Persephone?”

The five-year-old considered. She wasn’t fond of her name. It sounded silly, and once Draco made fun of her so much that she cried. She liked her middle name, Wren, better.

“I don’t know, mommy. I hate my name,” she pouted.

Her mother laughed, gentle, stroking her daughter’s hair and snuggling her closer in the plush bed.

“There’s an old Greek story about Persephone,” her mother began. The child perked up. “You were named after a goddess.”

“A goddess?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “The story isn’t completely happy, but it teaches an important lesson.

Persephone was a beautiful goddess, the goddess of spring. Her mother’s name was Demeter. Demeter and Persephone loved each other and would spend lots of time playing and dancing through the meadows. Demeter loved her daughter almost as much as I love you,” Persephone giggled, snuggling closer to her mother. She continued. “But, one day, Hades, the god of the Underworld, saw Persephone and fell in love with her beauty… so, he had her kidnapped and brought to the Underworld with him.”

The child gasped in horror, eyes widening.

“Demeter grew very sad. Almost as sad as I would be if I lost you. She searched the earth for her daughter, and the plants and crops stopped growing. Demeter was the goddess of agriculture. Humans grew hungry and starved because she wasn’t helping anything grow.

One day, Hermes, messenger of the gods, saw the misery Demeter felt, and he told Zeus, the king of the gods, to bring her back. Zeus demanded Hades return Persephone, who was pale and sick, but something bad had happened. Persephone ate pomegranate seeds in the Underworld, and if you eat there, you must stay there. Zeus decided that for half of the year, Persephone would stay in the Underworld with Hades, and the other half of the year, she would stay with her mother. So, when Persephone was on earth, it was spring and summer. When she wasn’t, it was fall and winter.”

Persephone looked up at her mother, brow creased with concern. “Mommy, that’s too sad. Why did you name me after something sad? I never want to leave you ever, ever, ever!”

She smiled at her child, with all of the love and adoration in the world. “Oh, my sweet baby… you will never leave me, nor will I leave you. I named you Persephone for a few reasons. One, you reminded me of beauty and springtime as soon as you were born. Your hair and eyes are as dark as mine, but you are vibrant and sunny, even in the cold. But the biggest reason, my love, is because nothing and no one will ever compare to the love I have for you. I love you more than anything in the world.”

Persephone jumped onto her mom, hugging her tight. “I love you more, mommy!”

“I love you more!”

“No, I love you more!”

She dissolved into giggles as her mom began tickling her, once again telling her she loved her more.

Persephone was lost in the memory, walking through the gardens. She wasn’t springtime, no, not anymore. She was only Persephone to her mother, and the people she had to act in front of. No, she was Wren now. Wren was pale and wan, battered and self-serving. Wren was a Slytherin, she lost the kindness she had carried before.

She only cared for what she knew was right, what she knew was worth fighting for.

The Malfoy’s gardens were spectacular, plants and statues well cared for, the scent of fruits in the trees and the perfume of flowers thick in the air. She wandered, in the warm night, dressed in her silk pajama shorts and matching top, trying in vain not to think of the hell she was living in.

She stared at the magnificent fountain with the strange urge to drown in it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a new presence.

Draco walked up to her, in a black suit, an impassive expression drawn on his features.

He stood by her, neither looking at each other or saying a word.

“You aren’t wearing the ring,” Draco was the one to break the silence.

“No, I’m not.”

There was silence again.

She took his hand, which he shook away.

“What are you doing?” he nearly spat, disgust on his features.

She exhaled out of her nose. “Practicing. Didn’t you hear him? Hogwarts needs to see the happy couple.”

“I’m surprised that you’re even going to go through with any of this,” he commented.

She considered, finally looking at him. He was pale in the moonlight. He didn’t look well, either. He looked back, eyes falling to her bare arms, the Dark Mark covered with bandages that Poppy helped her with.

“I’m a selfish person, Draco. I don’t fancy dying. Nor do I fancy helping you to spill blood that doesn’t deserve to be spilled.”

Draco scoffed. “You’re just a blood traitor like your mother,” he sneered. “It’s exactly why I didn’t want this betrothal. Not with the likes of you.”

She glared at him, a hard set to her mouth, and began to walk away.

“Where are you going?”

She whirled around, tears threatening to form in her eyes. “If we’re suddenly so fond of speaking ill of one’s dead parent, I’ll make do with calling your father the biggest prat on the planet- he got what he deserved and I have no qualms hoping that you’ll be next, you twat.”

With that, she resumed her walk back to the manor, until Draco called out.

“Bardick,” he only ever addressed her by her surname. He walked up to her. She had stopped walking but still faced away.

She felt something press into her hand. A green apple.

“Eat. If you starve to death, it’ll ruin the mission.”

He walked by her, quickly, making his own way back to the manor.

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