#dropped out of school with the move and new job but i'm back at it

[clove-pinks]

The other night I logged into my school drive and re-read a paper that I wrote about Fort Meigs, over a year ago. It was an interesting experience to revisit the beginning of my obsession about the War of 1812 in the old northwest, and contrast it with my current understandings.

Overall, I think that what I wrote held up well. I chose the memoir of Shadrach Byfield to represent the perspective of the 41st Regiment of Foot, on the British side, and the account of Private Nathaniel Vernon of the Pittsburgh Blues for the Americans. Between Byfield and Vernon, you can clearly track the events of the first and second siege of Fort Meigs in 1813. I am now aware of many additional primary sources—but still no first-person accounts from any of the numerous Indigenous warriors involved (not including quotes from Tecumseh).

[imagine-nerd]

The fucking disconnect is so real.

[selvepnea]

Bleh

[steddiewithachance]

I'm Here on Business

Wayne is a regular at the bookstore Steve works at and badgers Steve into going on a blind date with his kid.

For @extocancer Happy New Years!!! I hope you enjoy your presents ◡̈

***

It's a quiet night in the little bookstore on the corner of Brinks and Williams. Steve is sitting behind the check-out counter flicking the leaf of a potted pothos placed next to the register. Soft music plays from the radio behind him.

Steve likes taking the evening shifts at the shop just to see the place warmly lit up by all of the eclectic and ornate lamps that Amber, the owner, has collected. The store doesn't give him migraines from obnoxious fluorescent light, which has been an issue at previous jobs.

Ever since Robin moved out of their apartment for Grad school, it's been upsetting to be at home alone at night. Without her company, the couch feels longer. And without her unhinged apartment decor, the walls feel taller and colder. Consequently, Steve has taken on more work hours instead of being home.

Plus, he has kind of fallen in love with reading. It came as a shock to him that he could enjoy it as much as he does. It started when his all-female team of coworkers began ranting to each other about these romance novels they were all into. He felt a little left out and decided to give one of them a try. It turns out that reading was actually a really great coping mechanism for dealing with his temporary loss of Robin.

The nicest, and most surprising thing to come out of this job though, is probably Wayne. A one-time customer turned regular, turned tentative friend for Steve. He's got a caring, parental energy that Steve's own parents never had.

The guy looks like he'd have a gruff or standoffish personality. His face naturally rests in a frown and he's got receding grey hair. He wears a flannel every day without fail; he's got a million different colors of them and Steve has even made a game of predicting which one he'll be wearing when he comes in.

"Did ya guess right today, boy?" Wayne will ask.

"No," Steve often admits glumly. "The universe told me you'd be wearing your green and blue one."

So anyway, Wayne comes around a lot to make small talk. He often mentions how he misses his son, Eddie. He's so stiff with personal information about his kid, but one time he let it slip that Eddie was on tour with his band. Steve had a field day afterward colluding with Google to find out exactly who Wayne's son was.

Eddie Munson, lead singer and guitarist of rock group Corroded Coffin.

Steve hadn't heard of ‘em but they certainly have a following. He listened to some of their stuff, to give himself some context for the next time Wayne brought up Eddie's music. It was nice enough, the guy has a good voice.

Steve's been waiting for Wayne to come in tonight. He's later than usual and it would be ridiculous for Steve to worry about a man who probably just thinks of Steve as that one kid who works at the bookstore. He may not come in at all tonight, and that would be fine too. Steve's still holding out on him pulling up in his... yellow flannel.

Steve's about to cave and start the next book in the current series he's reading when the door jingles. Wayne pushes inside in his mother fucking yellow flannel.

"Yellow Flannel!" Steve exclaims. Wayne chuckles and drops a book on the counter followed by a receipt.

"You got me right today?" Wayne asks fondly.

"Yup. It's been a while. I was aching for a win." Steve starts returning Wayne's book for him without giving him slack this time. Wayne treats the store like a library and Steve doesn't have the heart to tell him it's not allowed.

"Was this book any good?" Steve throws Wayne's receipt back at him and starts moving around the counter to put it back on the shelf for some other historical fiction lover to purchase.

"It was just alright." Wayne follows behind him languidly, eyeing the rows of colorful book spines for something that catches his eye. "But actually I'm here on business tonight."

Steve leans on the shelf and waits impatiently for Wayne to tell him what sort of business he's on.

"I think you ought to go on a date with Eddie. I think you two'd compliment each other."

Well, that's... not what Steve was expecting to hear.

"That's business to you? You came here to set me up on a blind date with your famous kid? I think he's gonna be a tad underwhelmed by a bookstore employee, Wayne." Steve's not gonna lie, he's a little intrigued by the prospect of dating a musician. He read a romance novel about one, not that long ago. Concerts, greenroom intimacy, targeted lyrics: Steve could be into it, in theory.

And ultimately, Steve did see photos of Eddie on Google and he's attractive. He looks good holding a guitar.

"He's gonna be home for a while so I figured now's a good time. Just go on one date. He's a big softie, you'll like him." Wayne pulls a book off the shelf and squints to try and read the title. He holds it further from his eyes before giving up and pushing it back into its slot.

"What happens if he doesn't like me? Will you still come around?" Steve runs a nervous hand through his hair. It wouldn't be the end of the world if Wayne stopped showing up, but it would probably hurt a little. It might fan the flame of his fear of abandonment.

"Of course, unless you break his heart. I know where you work, young man." Wayne pats his shoulder good-naturedly.

"Okay old man, you need my number to hand off?"

***

A day later, when Steve feels his phone buzz against his thigh, his instincts already know who it is. His heart gives that anticipatory squeeze he often gets before a first date with someone he finds attractive.

The text reads:

Hi Steve, this is eddie. Wayne swears we're soulmates. Wanna get dinner on friday?

It's a funny text to receive out of nowhere. Steve doubts Wayne actually used that word, but he imagines that Eddie is probably getting more of an earful than Steve got about this whole blind date. He also wonders what kind of person calls their dad by their first name.

Hi Eddie. I'd love to get dinner on Fri and discuss our soulmate status. I'm pretty sure he expects us to be married by the end of the night. Should I bring my tux? Also do you have a time and place in mind?

The master of puppets (Wayne) suggested we go to Maggiano's, are you okay with Italian? 8 maybe??? Tux optional but I think I will not be wearing one.

Haha. That sounds good Eddie, it's nice to hear from you. I'll see you soon.

***

Steve has to ask Amber to change his shift for Friday to work in the morning instead of the evening.

"Steve has somewhere other than work to be on a Friday night? Unheard of!" She slaps her palms down on the book display she was laying out.

"I know. I'm surprised too." Steve fiddles with his lanyard and gives her a 'please say yes' smile. She sighs.

"Yeah, I'll cover you. You can take my morning slot."

"Thank you! I owe you, boss."

***

When Friday arrives, Steve has the nervous jitters. It's been about a year since his last date, it didn't go very well. He's flattered that Wayne thinks highly enough of him to set him up with his kid.

Steve picks up a few small gifts for Eddie on his way home from work. He always brings his first dates a little something. He likes to see the way their faces light up. He thinks maybe he should get Eddie something music-related. So he walks into a little music store he's never been in and asks for small gift ideas for guitarists. He walks out wearing a smile, and hoping Eddie digs what he bought him.

And he's all smiles and confidence until he pulls up to the restaurant at eight and realizes he didn't send a confirmation text this morning. That's like, a rule, right? What if Eddie doesn't show up?

Steve steps out of the car and is equally anxious and relieved to find him leaning artfully against the restaurant near the front door with his hands in his pockets.

His curls are haloed by the warm light spilling out of the restaurant window. He's wearing a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled up to reveal tattoos on his forearms. And yeah, okay, he's hot.

The fact that Steve's going on a date with someone sort of famous hasn't fully sunk in. He's not sure he needs the added nerves though. He approaches as casually as possible and smiles when Eddie looks over.

The man does a double-take when he sees Steve. His eyebrows shoot up and he pushes off against the wall to stand straighter.

"Hi, Eddie?" Steve steps up onto the curb with a little wave. Eddie gives him a thorough once over.

"Oh, damn. Hi." He pulls a hand out of his pocket to shake Steve's.

Eddie is pretty up close. He's got long eyelashes and a bridge of little freckles across his nose. Steve notices all the little details that the on-stage photos didn't capture. He wonders if Wayne described what he looked like to Eddie who was at an informational disadvantage.

"I don't know what I was expecting you to look like, but my uncle didn't mention you were model pretty." Eddie tucks one of his big curls behind his ear and then steps forward to open the door. Steve's face gets warm at being called "model pretty", but he's terrible at taking compliments. He tries to redirect the conversation.

"Your uncle?" Steve asks.

"Wayne? My uncle?" Eddie motions towards the open door and follows after Steve once he's inside.

"Oh. You know he tells people that you're his son?"

Eddie's face softens and he scratches at his cheek. "Oh. Yeah well, I basically am. Maybe I should start calling him dad, I don't know."

"We don't take walk-ins." The hostess of the restaurant announces, breaking up their small talk. Steve looks over to see a tall woman with a slicked-back ponytail mad-dogging them. She has a cold demeanor, she kills the mood with one look between them. Steve knows the look, he's sure Eddie does too.

"Good to know! I have a reservation, though." Eddie responds.

"What's the name?" The woman pulls her iPad closer to herself like a shield.

"Munson." Eddie glances at Steve nervously.

"Hm. I don't see it." She pretends, tapping around meaninglessly. Eddie is getting agitated and maybe embarrassed too. He's scratching at his arm, unsure of how to proceed. First dates are already so awkward, especially blind ones. And if there's one thing about Steve, it's that he's gonna try to lighten the mood.

"Don't you know who he is?" Steve asks offendedly. Eddie whips around to look at Steve with wide, panic-filled eyes. The hostess raises an eyebrow and looks more closely at Eddie. It makes Steve chuckle. "I'm just kidding, let's go get burgers or something." He grabs Eddie's hand and pulls him back out the door.

"Holy shit, you scared me. I didn't know you knew who I was." Eddie has a hand on his chest and a wild grin. "She definitely didn't."

"I was just messing around. She did not want to seat our gay date." Steve sticks his hands in his pockets and then remembers Eddie's gift. "Oh but hey! I got you something."

Steve pulls out a nice bar of chocolate and a little tin of black pearly guitar picks. He offers them to Eddie with an open palm.

"Oh, what? You didn't have to do that." Eddie grabs them eagerly and slides open the tin. "This is so nice! How'd you know I've been needing picks? Now I feel doubly bad about dinner falling through."

"Hey, if I'm honest, sit-down dinner dates kind of give me anxiety. Too much pressure to keep the conversation going." Steve pulls out his keys, "You like burgers?"

Eddie huffs dramatically. "My palette is far too sophisticated for greasy burgers, Steve. I'm a chicken nugget man, obviously."

"That makes sense. You look like one." Steve teases. Eddie pouts.

"I'm taking that as a compliment."

"If you want nuggets we can just walk down the street. Unless you want me to drive?" Steve points in the direction of the row of fast-food restaurants.

"Yeah, let's walk."

Steve slowly turns and starts walking, glancing invitingly over his shoulder.

"So you know me." Eddie rattles the tin of guitar picks and looks a little worried by the prospect that Steve is some sort of fan.

"Only through your uncle, really. And maybe a short Google search. Sue me." Steve holds up his hands guiltily.

"Oh yeah, Wayne's my marketing manager. I send him out to spread the good word."

"Well I don't know who you've been instructing him to market to, but he's spending all his time in my store making me read book summaries to him because he conveniently forgets his glasses every time he comes in." Steve deadpans. Eddie chuckles and shakes his head knowingly.

"Yeah, It's this new long-con form of marketing. We decided to go all in for just one new fan." Eddie's got these sweet little dimples on either cheek when he smiles.

"Kinda worked, I dunno. I'm charmed by the Munsons." Steve and Eddie are veering towards each other as they walk. They're set to collide like two little asteroids. When they do end up bumping shoulders, it's soft. They stay close after that.

Steve hears a truly horrible sound coming from a bar a few meters ahead of them.

"Oh shit! Karaoke bar!" Eddie exclaims and speeds over. Eddie stands in front of the fenced-off patio and looks in while someone butchers Guns N' Roses. He looks absolutely delighted.

"What, you want to go show off in front of these poor, tone-deaf drunkards?" Steve rests his arms on the little fence and leans forward. Eddie vehemently disagrees.

"God no, I just like hearing all the very talented Midwestern voices." Eddie wiggles his eyebrows to express his sarcasm. "In other words, I enjoy making fun of bad music. I'm only human."

They sit there and give each other pained looks at the bad voices for a few minutes until someone starts trying to drunkenly stumble over the verse to a Nicki Minaj song and then Eddie drags Steve away in anguish.

"Can't take it anymore, Steve. Spare me."

***

The two of them have a good rapport, Steve thinks as they sit on a curb and share a big box of chicken nuggets. Maybe Wayne was right. It's playful. He can see how Eddie and Wayne share a handful of mannerisms and a sense of humor.

"Let's intertwine our arms like newlyweds do when they drink champagne," Steve says with a ketchup-covered chicken nugget in his hand. He wraps an arm around Eddie's and then takes a bite. Eddie follows his lead and giggles.

"I didn't know they did that. I've never been to a wedding." Eddie swallows and reaches for his soda.

"What? Never?"

Eddie shakes his head and looks up at the night sky. It's too cloudy to see any stars, unfortunately.

"My tux is in the car, by the way, should things pan out tonight." Steve jokes.

"I think they're panning." Eddie winks and leans in slightly.

"Oh yeah? Have I lived up to Wayne's description of me?" Steve bats his eyelashes and gives Eddie a sweet little smile.

"You've exceeded it, sweetheart." Eddie picks up Steve's hand and presses a chaste kiss to the inside of his wrist. Steve's heart jumps. When Eddie pulls back, he doesn't pull back far.

"Do you ever kiss on a first date?" Eddie whispers and squeezes Steve's hand. He glances at Steve's lips.

"Mmm, I could be persuaded." Steve feels a heady rush at the fact that he has somehow won the interest of a successful musician who probably meets loads of people every day. Steve reaches forward and tugs at one of Eddie's loose curls. He twists it around his finger and looks up with big doe eyes.

The tension is cut from Eddie's body when Steve looks at him like that. The move has a pretty good success rate at this point. And it doesn't fail him tonight. Eddie rests a hand on the base of Steve's neck. He strokes his thumb back and forth against the hollow of Steve's collarbone and leans in slowly.

Eddie's warm lips press against his own gently, experimentally. Their lips make a sweet sound when the suction is broken and Eddie's immediately reseal against Steve like he's irresistible. It's been forever since Steve kissed anyone, especially anyone worth kissing. He forgot how sweet and floaty it feels.

The hand on Steve's collar slides up so it's lightly holding his neck, it feels quietly possessive. It makes Steve's face heat up. Eddie's free arm wraps around Steve's waist pulling him closer. He lets himself be pulled.

Eddie starts getting more confident and hums softly when Steve weaves a hand into his long hair.

Steve could keep this up for hours, he wants to. But as dark as it is, he doesn't love the idea of continuing this so out in the open. He pulls back with regret.

"Damn, how are you not already taken?" Eddie wipes at Steve's shiny lips with his thumb.

"How are you not already taken? You're the accomplished one." Steve counters, squeezing one of Eddie's knees.

Eddie gathers their trash around them and stuffs it into the paper bag. "Well, I'll be home for a while if you'd want to do this again sometime. I can take you to a nice restaurant next time, I promise." He stands to throw away the trash. "Damn, I don't want the night to be over..."

"It doesn't have to be, you're welcome at mine." Steve leans back on one of his hands and bats his eyelashes up at Eddie.

"My New Year's resolution was to not do first date hookups, though."

"We don't have to, just come hang out." Steve holds an arm out to be pulled up to his feet from where he’s still sitting on the curb.

"Oh, yeah okay. You want me to?" Eddie pulls him to his feet with more force than necessary. It sends them both stumbling and giggling.

"Obviously I want you to."

***

The walk back to the restaurant is much faster than it was at the start of the night. They regretfully have to split at the parking lot, each having their own ride.

"Wait, call me so we can still talk on the way there." Eddie requests before jogging off to Wayne's truck. There really isn't much need to talk on the phone since Steve lives so close, but it's kind of cute that he wants to. Steve hits the call button on Eddie's contact.

"Hello, to whom am I speaking?" Eddie asks in a formal, over-the-top voice.

"This is Steve Harrington. I'm contacting you regarding your car's extended warranty." Steve backs out of his spot and waits for Eddie to do the same before driving out of the parking lot.

"Oh wow, what a coincidence. I was just wondering if my car had an extended warranty." Eddie always plays along, he digs into all of Steve's jokes and finds his own spot to grow there.

Steve drives slower than he normally would so that he doesn't get separated from his date. Eddie doesn't appreciate the sentiment.

"You drive like a grandpa. Has anyone ever told you that?" Eddie laughs and honks his horn. Steve hears it both over the phone and from his window.

"I'm only driving slow so we don't get separated, asshole."

"There's barely anyone on the road tonight to separate us, but it's fine, Steve. I value your safety. Drive at your comfortable geriatric pace."

When they pull up to a red light, Eddie instructs Steve to roll down his window so they can stick their hands out and play Rock Paper Scissors. Steve is so distracted watching Eddie's hand through his side mirror that he misses when the light turns.

"It's green, honey," Eddie alerts him softly through the phone, and Steve apologizes.

He's smiling real big the whole way there and when Steve eventually gets out of the car, Eddie comes up and grabs him from behind.

Eddie plants a few eager kisses on the side of Steve's neck. "You're fun, Steve."

"I'll show you real fun some other time." He jokes and pulls Eddie towards his place.

As soon as Steve opens the door to his apartment, he feels self-conscious about how dull it looks inside. Eddie looks around quietly. His eye catches on a picture of Steve and Robin.

"That's my best friend, Robin." Steve clarifies, just in case Eddie reads it wrong like dates have in the past.

Eddie smiles and pulls Steve back against his chest. "She looks nice."

"Looks can be deceiving." Steve laments which has Eddie chuckling into his shoulder. Eddie rubs at Steve's tummy.

What Steve really wants, what he's been desperate for, for months and months is human touch. He just wants to cuddle so badly. And Eddie doesn't seem the type to cuddle, but looks can be deceiving, so Steve's gonna ask anyway.

"Wanna cuddle and watch trash reality TV?" Steve's shoulders rise to his ears, it's a defensive gesture and he's expecting to be rejected. Eddie looks slightly amused by his offer, but he nods.

***

"So you liked him alright?" Wayne asks smugly patting the counter. Steve nervously watches the back of the store where Amber is reorganizing. Steve shouldn't be having a conversation like this at work while she's around.

"Yes, Wayne." Steve rolls his eyes. "Your nephew is lovely."

"I told him he should come here with me next time. Maybe we'll both visit ya." Wayne looks happy. The corners of his default frown have been pulled upwards by the return of his nephew. He's a good man. Steve thinks if his kid was only home a few weeks he'd want to hoard all of his attention, surely not set him up on dates.

And that's the thing about Wayne, it seems like he puts the people he cares about first. Steve wonders if Wayne is all that lonely when Eddie's gone, or if he just comes into the store so often because he knows Steve is.

"I'd love that." Steve hopes things work out with the Munsons.

[bratbarzal]

Let It Happen (LH43) 1/3

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

WC: 17k

If you're ready, all I mean is we could go, I've never craved someone's attention as much as yours.

General Warnings: an almost unbearable amount of sarcasm and snark, even more idiotic shenanigans, many affectionate empty threats of murder/violence, fluff, mentions of golf 🤢, cursing and I'm pretty sure that's it for this half

A/N: in line with the general consensus lmao this has been split, part two will be posted as soon as it's finished (lol) but it's best read as one whole fic, it isn't a multi-part situation really!! it was originally supposed to be my submission for the eras tour fic challenge (hence the graphic I'm too attached to to change) but took a different direction to the song I was given, and I missed the deadline, and I pretty much listened to the secret of us exclusively while writing this whole thing. also dropping an overwhelmingly summery fic in december might actually be my brand. keep your eyes peeled for a christmas fic in july.

very special shoutout to shea @sleepretreat I made a random comment one day that luke gives seth cohen energy, and she fanned that flame like a full time job. ily shea!! I hope this lives up to any expectations and I owe a lot to your instigating!!

AS ALWAYS!!! never proofread!! I'll probably get around to it when the thought of a spelling mistake keeps me awake at night. and also!! please let me know what you think I am like a teeny tiny little plant that can only thrive under the constant shower of validation and you don't want me to wither and die do you? (I’m kidding) (I’m not)

You kind of, sort of, think you might hate summer.

You haven’t always felt this way, though. Growing up, it had always been your favourite time of the year. 

No school? Check.

Going on vacation, sometimes multiple, all expenses covered by your parents? Double check.

Getting to do all the cool things you don’t have time for in the school year with all your friends? Concerts, festivals, beach days, bonfires on the evenings. Check, check and check again.

But 4 years ago, your whole world as you knew it was torn apart, and summers have never been the same, since.

A season that was once filled with light and companionship, never ending plans and joviality, became darker - isolated, getting yourself out of the house even if everyone else was busy, driving just to drive and making the best of your own company. 

School ended up becoming your escape, especially since you had started college - your studies and the chaos of Greek life distracting you from the calamitous state of your home life, making new friends that became like family and sticking to them like glue, where possible, clingy and possessive to the point of ruin, almost - and so the lack of it in the summers now actually sends you into some sort of warped spiral.

It’s manageable in the winter and spring, the breaks no longer than a few weeks at a time, but going home for summer is somewhat of a nightmare.

It’s hard to go back, hard to ignore the mess your mind has become when it’s just you and your mother - or, you, your mother and whatever bottle of pinot she’s 3 glasses deep into at any given time of the day - and you’re sat in a house that’s a cold reminder of the warmth that once filled it. 

But when Ellie - your best friend since moving to college, the girl who took the sister part of sorority sister to the next level at all possible opportunities over the years - found out you’d put your name down to be the caretaker for your sorority house instead of going home, she had put her foot down on your summertime sadness session.

Which is how you end up moving into her family home - spending the first few weeks integrating yourself into their routine while trying to grip desperately onto some form of your own - trying not to get too used to the feeling of such a big family when you know it won’t be forever.

You braid her little sister’s hair everyday, kick a soccer ball around with her little brother when he needs someone to stand in goal, wash the dishes with her mom, talk sports with her dad, and before long, you blend like a chameleon into their dynamic.

You pick up a summer job at the country club to cling back onto your independence. Your commute provides the solitude and quiet you‘ve grown accustomed to in the years before, a bus journey through town with headphones on, watching the scenery and admiring the greenery until you get to work, donning your navy blue polo and tucking your little notepad into your hip apron as you serve tables at the clubhouse restaurant and bar. 

It’s a much needed escape from Ellie, if you’re honest.

You love that girl with all your heart, appreciate her housing you more than you’ll ever be able to say, but if you have to hear her sit and mope about how hopelessly in love she is with Jack Hughes for even a second longer, you’re going to vomit. Or scream. Or both.

Jack and Ellie grew up together - their families close, Ellie’s dad best friends with Jack’s uncle, or something - and she’s been into him since he had teeth missing - a point she loves to hammer home when it comes to you always listing that as one of his (many, if it’s up to you) cons. Considering his job, and the fact he already lost one, not too long ago, a toothless boyfriend seems like a massive ick, if you’re honest. 

But Ellie is beyond reason when it comes to him. She worships the ground he walks on - talks about him non-stop, messages him every day, regales you with stories you, awfully, but realistically, couldn’t care less about - and it’s the only real problem about living with her.

Even beyond the summer, you two had shared a room your first two years in college, still live in the same house - and it’s a year round problem.

But being unable to escape, having your days tied to close to hers, and knowing that it’s bound to be worse with proximity, Jack back in Michigan for the summer, himself, she’s starting to drive you up the wall.

It wouldn’t bother you if you had never met Jack, but the two of you don’t exactly get along. He’s rude, and self-absorbed, and had looked down on you the first time he ever laid eyes on you, and you really shouldn’t let it get to you, but you do - the thought that your best friend is in love with an asshole, and that she won’t let you hear the end of it. 

Won’t stop whining about how he’ll never feel the same, or that she can’t handle another summer of biting her tongue, of being around him, feeling the way she does, and not being able to do anything about it.

She deserves better. 

Ellie has a heart of gold, and she deserves someone who handles it with care. If Jack Hughes doesn’t like her back, that’s his loss - but you’re kind of getting sick of telling her that.

Getting through a whole summer of it is going to be hard, you think, but it’s better than the alternative. Better than being entirely alone. So you put on a brave face, use work as your escape in the same way you usually do with school, and avoid blowing your top for as long as you can, suffering through the late nights and heart to hearts where Jack is the sole topic of discussion, and bask in the good stuff.

In the chaos of her siblings, in the closeness of her family, and the way they’ve welcomed you with open arms.

This summer could be okay, you’ve just got to give it a chance. 

Luke Hughes loves summer.

He loves being back home in Michigan, spending his days out on the lake, or making the trip out to parade around Ann Arbor, catching up with all his college buddies, making the rounds at all the UMich sporting events he now gets a VIP pass to thanks to his last name.

The routine of it all is familiar, and warming, and it restores a sense of normality that playing in the NHL for the past year has so brutally ripped from him, already. 

He had enjoyed starting his summer overseas - making the team for the world championships and competing beyond the abysmal end to his rookie season - had enjoyed the time away from his brothers, if he’s honest. Quinn and the Canucks making it a few rounds into the playoffs, and Jack back home recovering from getting surgery on his shoulder - and it’s the latter he needed the reprieve from.

He does love living with his brother.

Jack looks after him in ways he’ll never really be able to make it up to him for. He always has, Quinn has too, but ever since Luke got drafted to the Devils, Jack has helped him adjust to the chaos of his career without much fuss or hardship.

And he really is grateful for that.

But, God, can he be annoying.

Especially when it comes to his infatuation with his best friend, Ellie.

Jack and Ellie have always been close - despite the fact she’s Luke’s age - and grew up thick as thieves, spending summers together, especially when the family moved to Michigan, and Ellie’s family were just on the other side of town. 

He’s always been obsessed with her, even if it hasn’t always been love - but these last few years have been different. Like a switch flipped in his head when Jack saw what Ellie was like when he came to visit Luke in his freshman year of college.

A version of Ellie that was no longer just his - no longer exclusive to their summer bubble, and lived in a world beyond lounging by the lake and hanging out with the Hughes family.

A version of Ellie who liked partying, liked schmoozing and charming everybody she came into contact with, liked being the centre of everyone else’s attention, not just Jack’s.

And it’s that version of Ellie that has driven Luke’s brother crazy, which has, in turn, started to drive Luke crazy. He talks about her non-stop, and it was those much needed weeks away in Czechia that almost had Luke forgetting just how stupid his brother has gotten about the whole thing.

Until he came home to Michigan, and Jack, in all the commotion with his shoulder, with ending his season early and starting his summer off alone, has worked himself into such a stupor about the whole thing that merely a week into his return, he has driven Luke up the wall. 

He’s grumpy, all the time - which leads to him being snarky, all the time. He huffs and puffs around the house so much Luke is starting to think he might need an inhaler, and he really can’t take any more.

Not when he’s making such a show of his irritation, stomping around with heavy feet and slamming doors that don’t need to be shut in the first place. 

“What crawled up your ass and died there?” Luke frowns as he follows Jack into the kitchen upon his return from therapy, holding out for the doors he swings open with a little too much vigour so that they don’t swing back into his brother’s slinged-shoulder. “I thought the physio is going alright?”

“It is,” Jack huffs, storming over to the fridge and yanking it open, the jars and bottles in the door clanking together in a way that makes Luke cringe. “I’m fine.”

“Tell that to all the hinges you’re testing the limits of.” 

“Don’t start with me, Luke, I’m not in the mood.”

“You just said you’re fine.” Luke rolls his eyes as he starts to scroll through his group chat with his friends from college, trying to check who said they might be free today to get him out of this vicious circle.

“It’s nothing.”

“Clearly not.” It’s interactions like this that confirm to Luke just how annoying Jack has become - because what reason does he have to be so evasive? Luke is handing him the opportunity to air out his grievances on a silver platter, and he’s rather slam cupboards and create creases in his forehead from frowning 24/7.

“Fine, it’s Ellie.”

Luke wishes he never bothered asking, although he has been wondering why he’s been seeing way less of her already this summer. He had figured Ellie was away with family until he saw her at the gas station the other night - had watched from the car as Jack had what seemed like a heated conversation by the entrance. 

“She’s refusing to hang out with me.”

“Has she said why?” Luke asks, although he doesn’t really care. He’s just asking to get it out of the way in the hopes that Jack talking about it might lighten the load, might make his own life a little easier. 

It’s the bitter muttering of your name that captures Luke’s full attention, his neck audibly cracking at the speed in which his head shoots up, no longer caring what could possibly be going on with the boys in the group chat. 

“She isn’t going back to whatever fiery hell pit it is that she comes from for the summer, and she’s staying with Ellie’s family, therefore Ellie isn’t staying with us.”

Luke hasn’t heard your name in a while. Not since he left college last year, not since he got caught up in the whirlwind life in the NHL, when a schoolboy crush on a girl he interacted with once in his entire college career became the least of his worries.

But one utterance of it has his spine straightening, just like it would have done just over a year ago.

You’re in Michigan. You’re at Ellie’s, on the other side of town. You’re barely two degrees of separation from him.

“Why can’t Ellie bring her here?” Luke asks, throat dry and voice breaking so subtly that he hopes Jack doesn’t notice. That could be fun. Would make up for the hell his brother has been putting him through since he got here. 

Maybe a little glorious sunshine might finally get you to notice his existence. He wouldn’t mind third wheeling Jack and Ellie if you were there, too. It would give him the perfect opportunity to prove he’s worthy of your attention - too shy and too scared to do so, back in college, but he’s different, now. Confident, almost. More sure of himself.

“She hates me.” Jack huffs, “Last time we met she was giving me the stink eye all night.”

And of course it would be his brother to ruin his plans, yet again. You’ll probably hate him, too - a hatred so strong for Jack that it seeps through his entire bloodline, because Luke of all people knows he can be annoying like that. 

“Trust me, she probably doesn’t care enough to hate you,” Luke scoffs, not realising the spool of information he’s just given Jack to unravel. 

“You know her?”

“We had a class together. I know of her.”

Not the truth, but not exactly a lie.

Luke knows a lot about you. It’s borderline creepy, the observations he can still remember, even after so long.

He knows you like only like coffee if it’s iced, had seen you with too many clear plastic cups to count, had watched plump lips chewing at straws by the time you had finished the drink. He had even, one time, tried to zoom in on a picture of your order printed on the side in one of his many states of delusion where he had been trying to build himself up to ask you out. 

He knows you can hold your own in an argument, had watched you debate with the best of them in your business comms class, has watched you shoot down most guys that approach you with a sharp tongue and even sharper wit, and has watched you take down a frat guy or two, usually in defence of your sorority sisters - who Luke noticed you’re the most protective of. 

He knows you match your perfume to the colour of your outfit, had notice you smelled citrusy like lemons in yellow, floral like roses in pink, sweet like candy in purple, and clean like fresh cotton in blue. 

He knows the pieces of hair that frame your face curl when wet from the rain. Knows you used to volunteer at the pool on the weekends it was open to the kids of the community, would teach them how to swim. He knows you listen to Taylor Swift and has heard you humming just about every song of hers he knows.

But he doesn’t really know you - not on the level Jack is assuming, when his eyes widen and hope flashes across his crystal irises.

“You know how I’m your favourite brother?”

“No,”

“And I let you live with me all year?”

“My name’s on the lease.”

“Maybe you could talk to her for me?”

Luke sighs, shoulders heavy and eyes rolling practically to the back of his head. “I already told you, I don’t really know her like that.” 

“C’mon, you could at least try! I’m dying here, Luke! She’s hogging all of Ellie’s time, and she won’t give me the time of day if I try!”

If only Jack knew how much time you’d ever given Luke, he wouldn’t be asking him such an absurd request.

You’re so out of his league, it isn’t even funny. He probably couldn’t convince you to light a candle in a power cut, much less to give his annoying brother a shot to prove himself.

“You’re wasting your time, Jack,” Luke responds, “I’m gonna meet Dylan at the club. No, you can’t come.”

And by the time Luke makes it out to his car, he’s relieved to have ditched that conversation, entirely. He knows what’s waiting when he gets home, what his brother is going to be like for the next few months to come, but a temporary relief is all he needs.

He had already been planning on getting a few late morning holes in at the club, and meeting up with Dylan had been a white lie, needing some alone time away from Jack’s incessant whining to think about how he was going to survive the summer - and seeing you on your break, perched on the edge of the fountain in the courtyard by the clubhouse bar, basking in the sun and talking with your co-worker, he feels like he might have just struck gold.

Since when do you work here?

He supposes since you decided to spend your summer with Ellie’s family - it only makes sense. Ellie doesn’t live too far from the club - not as close as the lake house, but closer than Ann Arbor, at least. She’d worked in the club shop last summer, even when Jack insisted he’d pay for whatever she needed while she was staying with them - had said it was nice to pass the time with something else while they all went off doing whatever - and he assumes you’re doing the same. 

It’s the first time he’s seen you in a while, outside of coming across your pictures on his Instagram feed occasionally, or the flash of your figure in Ellie’s stories. 

He had thought that, after the year he’s had, he’d be over schoolboy crushes like this - would be over the way his breath catches just at the sight of you, over the way the hairs on the back of his neck prick up and stand to attention, over the way his throat goes dry as he watches your eyes crinkle from afar, watches your lips curve up into a heart-stopping grin.

But it’s like he’s picked up straight from where he left off at the end of his college career, pining after you from afar with hearts in his eyes and feet that start to shuffle at just the thought of approaching you.

If he’s going to do this, though, he needs to be clever about it, he thinks.

Approaching you on your break, limited to the amount of time he can use to put his point across, wasting yours, doesn’t seem like something that will work.

Which is how he finds himself bypassing you completely and walking straight into the bar, offering a friendly nod to the guy stood at the front of house, and letting him point him toward the right section to be served in. 

It isn’t long before you’re in front of him, sidling up to his booth, and he had almost forgotten how pretty you are up close. Hair clipped up with loose strands framing your face, chewing at your plump bottom lip as you scribble on your notepad to get your pen to work. And your honeyed voice settling deep in the pit of his stomach, warmth spreading throughout as you introduce yourself, like he has no clue who you are, and tell him you’ll be his server, “What can I get for you?”

“Five minutes of your time?”

The Luke that spent his college years obsessing over you might have stuttered - his voice might have broke, squeaked or choked in your presence - but while his throat does feel a little dry, he’s able to maintain his cool now, even when you look up from your scribblings to meet his eye. Maybe he can do this. Maybe he has matured.

His heart might jump in his chest, his mouth might tingle, his spine might stiffen, but he holds your gaze, hoping if you see a reflection of confidence that you might give him the time of day.

He’s seen you interact with guys before, has familiarised himself with the ten-foot walls you have in place, has seen others fold and try find a long way around, but he thinks that maybe matching your energy is the way to break through. 

Who doesn’t love a shortcut?

Your eyes narrow back at him as pouted lips form around a response, looking him up and down before tilting your head, and coming back with, “I all of a sudden feel the need to inform you we do have security here,” you point the tip of your pen to the entrance, where he was greeted on the way in. “I meant a drink.”

“Water’s fine,” his gaze flickers to the movement of your wrist as you click the other side of your pen, not even writing it down. “Maybe with a side of conversation?”

“I’ll go get your water,” you offer a smile, and the insincerity of it does little to cool his bravado, even if you head off with mutterings of why do I always get the creeps?

He watches you as you make your way over to the bar, not creep-like whatsoever, and he channels the nerves that sneak up on him, now that you’re distanced, through fiddling with his fingers on the table, pinching at the tips of them when you glance back over your shoulder, probably telling the girl behind the bar just how lucky you were to once again get the weirdo in your section.

It surprises him how little he cares, possessing more of your attention now than he ever has before, and if he could tell the Luke from two years ago, who spent every shared Principles of Marketing class ritualistically watching you chew on the end of your pen, that he’d be able to make eye contact without dribbling and breaking out into full body sweats, he’d have lost his mind.

He embodies a strange level of dislocated arrogance that manifests itself in his body language, sinking into the booth with arms outstretched across the back, a dangerous smirk teasing the corner of his mouth when you return, placing a pitcher of water down on the table and a glass with ice. 

“I’m Luke,” he tells you, placing a hand on his chest and doing his best to ignore the thudding he feels beneath it. “Hughes. Jack’s brother,” and when you look back over to him with a raised brow, he adds, “Ellie’s Jack.”

“And who’s Ellie?” You ask with a tilt of your head, your voice dripping in teasing sarcasm. 

“Funny,” he quips, biting back the urge to call you what he actually means. He can hardly call you cute, you’d probably pour that water straight over him. “I went to UMich, we had a couple classes together.”

Your eyes narrow again, and he knows it’s an intimidation tactic, a way to make him feel smaller than he’s acting, shrinking him down to a version of himself you can stamp your authority on, but he finds himself being resilient for once, carrying on like he isn’t affected.

He is. Massively, in fact. Just not in the way you probably want. Your indifference drives him in a way that presses into his spine, an inner voice pleading, notice me, I’m breaking through!

“Bauman’s class, Business Comms, you sat in the second row, I sat in the third, you dropped your pencil one time and I-,”

“I know who you are.”

So he’s been yapping on at you for no reason? Fantastic.

He can’t let his momentum slip, though, so he forces the corners of his lips into a victorious smile, and counters, “So you know I’m not a creep.”

“You literally memorised my seat in a class from 2 years ago, so…” 

“I have a good memory,” he’s quick to defend, fighting the urge to let his eyes linger on your pouted lips.

“Right,” you roll your eyes, “What is it you want, again?”

“I came to talk about Jack and Ellie.” He nods to the other side of the booth, and has to roll his shoulders so that his chest doesn’t inflate with misplaced hubris when you shuffle into the seat with a huff, discarding your notepad to the side as you level him with another raised brow.

“What about ‘em?”

“About how they’re hopelessly in love with each other and doing nothing about it.”

“You got hopeless right. What’s that got to do with us?”

Us. Oh, he likes that.

“I’m thinking they need a little shove in the right direction. And maybe we could be the shovers.”

You presses your lips together in faux-apology, a lopsided, patronising, adorable frown taking over your expression. “No can do, I don’t shove, I’m a pacifist.”

“A nudge, then?”

He isn’t giving up easy, no matter how much sarcasm you try to throw his way. You wouldn’t have sat down if there wasn’t something about this situation that irks you, too.

If Ellie is being only half as annoying as Jack is, he knows that you’re having a bad time of it. And you’re supposed to spending her summer with her - it can’t be easy, having your friend constantly pining over someone and refusing to do anything about it, if anything, making it your problem.

“Are you here to eat or annoy me?”

“Both,” he smiles, “I just figured a problem shared is a problem solved, and all.”

“How profound.” 

“C’mon, you sat down, you at least agree they’re into each other, and I know you’re staying with her this year, so I know you’ve been getting the same grief I have.”

“I’ve been on my feet 4 hours, I wouldn’t look too deep into me sitting down.” 

“Jack’s been moping around about her for years, I can’t listen to it anymore, he’s all, she’ll never like me back, this, and, I’ll never find a girl like her, that,” he whines, imitating his brother’s voice in the most annoying, high pitched tone he can muster, “I can’t take one more breakdown of her snap stories, especially not if it’s all summer if she’s not gonna be staying over, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“How supportive,” the sarcasm in your bite does little to hide the beginnings of your smile, your glare softening into what he hopes is the start of some sort of bond, a shared feeling of exasperation. Finding your footfall in common grounds.

“It’s relentless, we can’t go a single conversation anymore without him bringing her up,” he sighs, slumping into his seat, finally giving in to all the ways this is starting to grate on him. “I don’t get why neither of them do anything.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, too, relenting a little. “She talks about him so much it kind of makes me nauseous.”

“How supportive,” he mimics, nerve endings set alight when your eyes meet his over the table, and narrow in a different way, almost appreciative, almost respectable.

“Can it, Hughes,” you scoff, “Me even entertaining this conversation right now is support enough, I’ve had it in my ear for months about how she doesn’t know how she’ll make it through another summer.”

“That’s what I’m saying. If we can get them together this summer, then we’re both better off. No more whining or crying or earaches for either of us.”

“I’d hope you didn’t make your way out here with the mere promise of no more earaches, Luke.” He tries not to preen at the way you say his name. “What’s in it for me?”

“You and Ellie can stay at our lake house.” He suggests, straightening up before he leans onto the table, elbows extending so that he can rest on them, “It’s closer to the club than her family’s place, it’s gotta be better than having her siblings running around you all the time, I can even drive you to work when I’m free, if you want?”

You blink at him slowly, as if to say, and? “So I can stay at your glorified frat house, and you can be my chauffeur?” You ask with an unimpressed raise of your brow, before letting out a humourless scoff of, “What more could a girl want to do with her summer?

“What do you want?” He asks, leaning further forward.

“To go back to work and not worry about strange guys propositioning me, funnily enough.”

Luke laughs, a deep, breathy laugh that rises from the depths of his chest and comes alive in an almost-bark, and he doesn’t miss the way your eyes flicker to his mouth when it comes out.

This is fun. 

There’s no way he’s letting you leave this table without agreeing - just the thought of one more singular interaction keeping him on his toes.

“Why don’t we make it interesting, then?”

“It’s about time you tried.” The quiver of your lip tells him everything he needs to know - and that’s without the entertained glint in your eye that accompanies it. You’re enjoying this, just as much.

“We could make a competition out of it.”

“A competition?” You ask, with a curious tilt of your head.

There it is, he thinks. Interest: piqued. He practically has you in the palm of his hand. Who would ever have thought, the way to a sorority girl’s heart would be a friendly little wager?

“Whoever actually gets them together, wins.”

It’s all he can think of in the moment - petulant and part-planned, but it seems to be enough.

“Wins what?” You lean onto your elbows, your gaze levelling his as he mirrors your positioning, having to slouch a little further forward in his seat to meet your pretty eyes. 

“Whatever you want.” He doesn’t intend it to come out as low as it does, doesn’t realise how close the two of you have gotten over the table, but he sees the flicker of something cross your features as your head tilts again, eyes still locked on his as yours begin to narrow, still just as pretty even when they’re glaring at him.

“It’s what you want that concerns me.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over it,” he jibes, watching the way your lips part in preparation of another witty comeback. “What do you say?” He asks, not giving you the chance, seeing the way it makes your skin crawl that you weren’t quick enough, for once. “Are you in?”

You heave out a sigh, shoulders slumping - a tell-tale sign that you’re about to acquiesce - and Luke starts to feel his chest puff out in victory. This feels like a shut-out. It feels like the best performance of his life. 

“You’re gonna make me regret this, aren’t you?”

“Oh definitely,” he smirks, eyes tracking you as you lean back into the booth, retreating from him in defeat, a hand running through your hair as he promises, “You’ll warm up to me soon enough, though.”

“I can’t see that happening.”

“I can,” he shrugs, leaning back too. “I’ve been told I’m inevitable.”

Luke can remember, like it was yesterday, the first time he ever saw you.

Freshman year, the week he moved into his dorm at Michigan, Jack had sent him across campus to check in on how Ellie was getting on. He had arrived with some extravagant gift basket in tow, plastic wrapped, a giant blue bow tied around the top and an assortment of snacks inside, and was left knocking for at least five minutes before you showed up.

“Please tell me you’re not another stripper-gram.”

If his throat hadn’t gone so dry all of a sudden, he thinks he would have had more wits about him to have questioned the use of another - a concept that had stuck in his head for weeks until he caught wind of a story of pledges for Pike being sent around campus and forced to lure girls to their house through way of humiliating song. 

But God, you were pretty. 

Siren eyes narrowed toward him, glossy lips pouted pensively, long lashes blinking impatiently as you awaited some kind of response that didn’t come in the form of an open, drooling mouth.

“I’m Luke.”

“Right.” You had sighed, pretty eyes rolling at him. “You’re blocking my door."

“Oh, I’m-,” he stuttered, immediately stepping to the side for you to come forward and insert your key into the lock. “Does Ellie live here?” He asked, confusion etched into his features as he watched you swing the door open, turning in your place to look him over again.

“Depends who’s asking.”

“I’m Luke.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I know her.”

“Clearly.”

“This is her basket.”

“Does she need to sign for it?”

“No, I-,”

“I’ll make sure she gets it, thanks, Lu!”

And when you had taken the basket from his hands, he had been too distracted by the way your skin brushed against his to properly respond, or worry if you had called him that as a nickname or had already forgotten his name, entirely.

He then spent days thinking about you, looking for you - at parties, in the campus coffee shop, online, despite not knowing your name - trying to commit to memory the way your eyes had sparkled when looking his way, until his first Business Communications class.

He had been a little early, first week nerves playing out and his constant craving for positive validation coming to the forefront, and was watching the door waiting for the professor to arrive. He had been slouched in his seat, chin in the palm of his hand, foot tapping rhythmically against the floor, and he had almost given himself whiplash when you walked in. 

He learned your name from there, learned a lot just from watching you in that class, but never really captured your attention.

And if the Luke that has been driving you to work every few days, who has been living with you for the past two weeks - who sits around the same dining table, laughs at the same jokes cracked when you’re all lounging around the house, sits out under the same sun, drinks from the same carton of orange juice in the morning - could tell the Luke that sat pining after you all that time, all the little ways in which he’s captured your attention lately, he’d probably have an aneurysm. 

When you and Ellie moved in, Luke had been the only one allowed to touch your stuff - and there’s a part of him that knows it was mainly because you enjoyed watching him work like a packhorse, hauling your cases up the stairs and dropping them in front of you with a huff, but there’s a larger, more delusional part that thinks you preferred him to the others, maybe even trusted him.

He’s taking credit for how quick you’ve adapted to the dynamic of the house, too. Of all the different faces coming in and out - Quinn’s friends, Jack’s friends, his friends, sometimes even his parents. If you’re around, you’re pleasant. You abide by house rules, some of them stupid, but set by the brothers so long ago that they just work now - like no phones outside of your rooms so that you can be more present. You insert yourself comfortably into conversations, you form your own relationships with everyone - you and Quinn trade book recommendations, you and Jack bicker while Ellie mediates. You do your fare share of chores - laundry, dishes, cooking, even. 

And he’s so caught up in just sharing space, just being around you, even, that for those first couple weeks, he forgets why you even agreed to be there in the first place.

At least, he forgets the incentive part - because he watches mindlessly as you interfere in Jack and Ellie’s dynamic, without a care in the world for the fact that it means he’s losing.

He watches you push one of them out of the way to claim whatever seat at the table or in the car forces them to sit beside each other. He watches you taunt Jack to just the right point where Ellie interferes, coos at him protectively and he melts into her affections. He watches you agree to plans he knows you wouldn’t in a million years follow along with, just to get them together - and all he can do is admire how easy you make it seem. 

He admires when you come out wakeboarding with the group, when you let him fasten you into a vest and don’t flinch when his fingertips brush against bare skin. Watches you bite your tongue over the fact you just got your hair blow dried - a fact you have no problems relaying back to him when he drives you to work the next day, and you’re muttering in his passenger seat about lake water giving you frizz - just so you’re not dampening the mood.

And when you agree to tag along to the golf course on your day off, despite the fact it’s so close to work if could be considered triggering, and you stick by Luke’s side so that Ellie can feign some sort of incompetence until Jack takes it upon himself to correct her form.

You stand by Luke’s side, the two of you watching with mirrored expressions of almost-disgust as Jack wraps his arms around Ellie’s body, and send a shiver down his spine when you lean in for only him to hear as you say, “I’d ask if you’ve put any more thought into what you want out of our bet, but I so have this in the bag.”

The bet.

Luke hasn’t thought about it since that day in the restaurant, if he’s honest, but he had known what he wanted then.

He’s hardly going to tell you, now, though. 

If he’s ever going to take you out on a date, he doesn’t really want to force your hand - not that he has a chance, he’s fallen so behind with this Jack and Ellie thing that it isn’t even funny.

He needs to up his game, if only for the fact that you’ll no doubt catch on to his lack of efforts, soon.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he taunts, because it’s what he does best, “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“And how long do you plan on keeping them up there?” You call him out so easily, tilting your head when his eyes meet yours, mischief highlighted by the sunshine that speckles in your irises. 

“Maybe I’m luring you into a false sense of security,” he shrugs, “Maybe I’m letting you do all the heavy lifting so I can swoop in when those weak arms get tired.” He pokes at your side, basking in the way you scowl like you pertain any sort of threat to him.

He has you figured out, by now. 

“I didn’t have you pegged as being lazy, Hughes.”

“You spend a lot of time thinking about me, huh?”

“You wish,” you scoff, shoving when he dares to get too close, and it’s when Luke is biting back a full-blown grin that Ellie comes back over. 

“This sun is crazy, I think I left the sunscreen in the locker room and Jack’s nose is going all red, would you come back with me?”

You smile sweetly at your best friend and agree, only glaring at Luke over Ellie’s shoulder when she’s distracted with saying her brief, temporary goodbyes to Jack, and once you’ve turned and made your way over to the cart, he lets his eyes linger on your figure as you retreat.

The soft sway of your ponytail, the expanse of smooth skin along your legs, he’s completely hypnotised, and he needs to pull himself together, he thinks.

He tries to regain focus as he and Jack work their way through the next couple of holes, caddying their clubs around without the cart, and chatting mindlessly until Jack sighs heavily, like he’s been waiting to bring something up.

“I want to take Ellie out on the boat tomorrow,” He states as Luke tees up, resting on his club as he squints against the sun to watch his little brother, “Just the two of us, so we can talk about stuff.”

“Sounds riveting,” the disinterest in Luke’s tone is amplified by the lack of attention he’s giving overall, looking out across the green and trying to measure his swing before he takes it. “Have fun.”

“I was thinking I’d need your help for it to work.”

“I’m not being your boat-butler again,” Luke scoffs, mind immediately going to all the times their parents would make Jack take Luke out with him and his friends, and all the times he was made to wait on his older brother hand and foot to make up for crashing his hang-outs.

“I’m not asking you to tag along,” Jack scoffs, “You third-wheeling would be the ultimate buzz-kill. I thought you could be of use elsewhere.”

“You’re making whatever it is sound so fun.” 

Luke takes his swing, driving the ball and watching it soar to his desired point with a hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Jack watches too, stepping to Luke’s side to measure how far from his own ball it lands.

“Nice,” he mutters appreciatively as the two of them load their clubs into their stand bags. “I need you to keep Regina George busy, distract her or something, she’s stuck to Ellie like glue, it’s beyond annoying.”

If only he knew, Luke thinks, a worry in the back of his mind about how his brother owes more to you than he even realises. 

“You worried she’s gonna make her see sense?”

Jack swats at his arm and rolls his eyes.

“I’m worried she’s gonna ruin the good vibes like she usually does and I won’t be able to bite my tongue from saying something and looking like the asshole.”

Distracting you isn’t the worst thing he could be doing with his time, Luke thinks. It’s not like he has to go all out, you’ll no doubt be hanging out around the house and the two of you can hang together. All he has to do is keep you off your phone. Shouldn’t be too hard. You’ve adapted pretty well to mimicking the guys when it comes to staying off theirs.

It ticks off the box of trying to fight for a scrap of your attention. With no one else around, you’ll have no choice but to entertain his company.

And it puts him in front of your little race - lending a helping hand to Jack’s plans to talk to Ellie is surely the same as getting them together. It’s all falling so perfectly into his lap. He isn’t being lazy.

But he can’t let Jack know that, so he heaves out a sigh and offers a slow shake of his head for dramatic effect. “Fine,” he groans, “But you owe me. Big time.”

You’re starting to find it harder and harder to pretend like you don’t want to be at the Lake House.

If you’re being honest, you don’t entirely know why you’re even trying to keep up pretences, but using your disinterest as armour has become like second nature over the years, and you’re hardly going to stop now.

Even if there are already so many little things about being there that are starting to wear you down.

Quiet, early mornings, for one - birds chirping just outside your open window, sun rays pouring in through sheer curtains that flow in the slight breeze, that light feeling that blows through your chest when you’re sat out on the deck behind the house with a fresh cup of coffee, looking out over the still lake and basking in the peace of it all.

And even when it’s not so peaceful, when the kitchen is full of bodies swerving around each other to try and throw together some sort of breakfast spread - pastries and fruit, bacon and eggs, various boxes of cereal on the counter. Quinn had even made a whole batch of pancakes one morning, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t come down every day since hoping to see him donning that same frilly apron that Cole had draped around his waist and working his magic with a pan. 

You’ve never really been a part of such a full house. You had been an only child for so long - and by the time your parents split, and it was just you and your mom, on the days she wasn’t already at work when you got up - and were so ingrained in your own routine in the morning that you think you might actually need the chaos to function better. The rush of bodies, the arguments over who drank the last of the juice, the bickering over who’s turn it is to do the next grocery run - it’s a kind of entertainment you haven’t been privy to in a long time. 

Being kind of disconnected from everything else isn’t as bad as you thought it would be, either. You’re not attached to your phone, checking socials to see what everyone else is doing, to see if your dad has sent any messages yet this summer, and you find yourself connecting a little more with the people around you and leaving your family stress on the back burner. You’re more focused on what’s in front of you, and your relationships with other people. With Ellie, with some of the guys in the house, with your friends at work, even.

And it’s nice to be closer to work too. You don’t have to rush around trying to make the bus - Luke has been keeping his word and driving you to the club most days, and where he can’t, either somebody else has offered, or you’ve just ridden one of the bikes in the garage that the boys said were free to use - the helmet hair is an easy fix when you have access to the locker rooms.

It’s an adjustment, for sure, getting used to being in a full house. Especially this one - with a constant revolving door of faces, friends of the brothers switching out week by week to come and stay, departing just as you’ve started getting to know them with a promise of dropping by again soon.

So far, you’re almost at double-digits for the names you’ve had to memorise. Some of them you were already familiar with, guys from Michigan who you already knew or knew of, but others were more Jack or Quinn’s friends that you’d never had the pleasure of meeting before now.

Cole Caufield being one of them. 

He had arrived a couple of days after you and Ellie moved yourselves in, closer to Jack than the other two brothers, you had noticed, and was going to be staying longer than any of the other visitors - having his own designated room in the house, similar to you girls.

You like Cole - he’s good fun, can take a joke unlike his supposed best friend, and has the kind of smile that almost gives you a buzz whenever it’s flashed your way. Your first few interactions with him were seemingly pleasant, despite Jack constantly in his ear with a hardened glare pointed your way and no doubt unsavoury words uttered. Cole would just shrug him off, laugh, meet your eyes and drop a wink your way - a gesture you’d usually squirm and cringe at, but Cole kind of pulls it off. 

He joins in when you chirp Luke, too - which, if your honest, is your main source of entertainment since arriving, so your interactions with him grow day by day.

You haven’t really spent any one-on-one time with Cole yet, though. You were hoping to, before he left to visit home for the weekend - for no other reason than to get the scoop on something you’d happened upon at work last week - and had planned on asking him to hang out on your day off. But with Cole now gone for a few days, Jack and Ellie off doing god knows what, Quinn and Luke working out wherever, you have no choice but to spend your free Sunday lounging around the house, trying to find something to suppress your growing boredom.

You start with your nails, painting them a summery orangey-red and doing your toes to match, then do your laundry, abiding by house rules that you rotate the loads between the machines, and fold out whoever’s clothes were last in the dryer and place them in the hamper on the side. 

You’re hoping you haven’t had to fold Jack’s underwear but you decide to live in blissful ignorance - trying to identify the load based on the rest of the clothing in there is impossible when they all share, so it kind of works in your favour. 

You FaceTime your mom for almost an hour, getting an update on what she’s been up to with work, and giving her updates on how your summer is going, trying to focus on your time at the club and Ellie so she doesn’t worry too much again that you’re spending your summer in a house filled with boys. 

And by the time Luke and Quinn come back from their workout, you’re in the lounge, 50 pages deep into a book you really couldn’t care less about, but there’s something in you that refuses to beg one of them for company, so you suffer in silence.

Even when Luke does join you, throwing himself down onto the opposite side of the couch you’re occupying and pushing your feet off his side like it’s his sole purpose just to annoy you.

“I was comfortable there, asshat,” you frown, lifting your feet back into their previous position and using one to give him a light kick to his thigh.

“Yeah, well, I hardly want your feet all up in my business while I’m trying to relax,” he sighs, sinking into the cushions with hands clasped behind his head, biceps flexing and tightening the arms of his t-shirt in a way that momentarily catches your eye. You’re thankful for his closed eyes, chewing at the inside of your cheek as you divert your attention back to the mundane words on the pages in front of you.

“And yet here you are when there are 2 other couches.”

“Yeah, well, I know how much you like to be near me.”

You try to ignore him, pulling your feet a little closer to your body and focusing back on the book, but it’s hard when Luke has such a presence. You feel the little looks he keeps sending your way like a physical touch, and the couch shifts with every slight movement he makes, so when he constantly shuffles, you start to think he wants your attention.

Of course he wants your attention. This is Luke Hughes.

“Are you just sitting down here to annoy me?”

He lights up, like he’s just been waiting for you to ask, and shuffles in his seat to face you, fully, bouncing in place like a puppy being teased with a tennis ball. 

“I’m actually trying to distract you, if you must know.”

“Bold of you to assume you have enough of my attention to be distracting in the first place,” you scoff, trying not to react to the way he smirks in your peripheral, the words in front of you all blurring together. If you were actually focused on them, you’d have lost your place, already.

“I think you pay more attention to me than you’d like to admit.”

“That’s some ego you’ve got on you, Hughes,” you narrow your eyes as you look above the edge of your book, “Is that what you spend that big NHL paycheque on, charisma classes? How to flirt for dummies?”

“Oh, is that what we’re doing? Flirting?”

Damn. You walked yourself right into that one. 

Sometimes biting back at Luke comes like second nature, words first, thoughts after - and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it that way. It’s easy, the back and forth, and you can’t really think of an instance with him where you’ve sat in a lingering, awkward silence. You’ve really grown to hate silence, lately.

“You wish.”

“You think I’m charismatic,” he teases in a sing-song voice, knocking at your knee and wiggling his eyebrows when you glare at him. 

“I think you’re an idiot.”

“You’re not gonna ask what I’m distracting you from?”

“I don’t really care,” you lie, eyes darting back down and diverting the attention he so desperately craves away from him.

“Jack wanted to take Ellie out on the boat.” He says, ignoring your attempts to ignore him - pushing your buttons like a full time job. Like an operator for your last nerve.

“Good for her.”

“Alone.”

“No shit.”

“To ask her out.”

“Whoop-de-doo.”

“Whoop-de-,” Luke straightens up, like a whack-a-mole with his head positioning itself over the top of your book, and you kind of wish you had one of those soft mallets right about now. It would be so satisfying to bonk at his head, you think. “What do you mean, whoop-de-doo, is this not what you agreed to be here for? To get them together?”

You scoff, flicking to the next page of the book in feigned disinterest. “He isn’t asking her out today.”

This is the exact something you had wanted to talk to Cole about - whispers in the staff lounge at work earlier in the week doing the rounds would imply otherwise, but your main source is kind of a gossip, and you’re not entirely sure of their reliability, despite the few degrees of separation to the subject at hand. 

Mutterings of Jack and Cole and their little country club connections. 

You can hardly ask Luke of all people if his brother is as much of a man-whore as everyone is making out. Cole was a safe bet - he’d probably just tell you straight up what they’re up to, wear his pride like a shining gold medal. He’s upfront about his promiscuity, at least. Luke is more protective. Of himself, of his family, you’re not entirely sure. There haven’t been as many whispers about him. 

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because he’s a spineless idiot,” you retort, eyes flicking up momentarily to take in his furrowed brow. “No offence,” comes out of nowhere, and you surprise yourself with the instinct to lessen the blow of your words for the first time in forever.

“None taken, he’s only my flesh and blood,” Luke huffs, “You’re just jealous I’m winning our bet.”

“Sure,” you drawl, eyes widening to emphasise the sarcasm as you make a point of angling your head to the next page, like you’ve taken a single word in for the past five minutes. “He’s been talking to one of the girls from work. There’s no way he’s doing that and asking Ellie out, unless he’s completely brain dead.”

And when you look back at Luke, that furrowed brow has shifted into a full blown frown, pouted lips and eyes cast down as if he’s trying to figure everything out in his head. 

It’s probably the pout that has you cushioning your words, once more.

“Again, no offence, I doubt it’s in your DNA.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m no bio student but I don’t think there’s a genetic marker for being a fuckboy.”

“No, about him talking to one of the girls at the club. He didn’t tell me that.”

Why does he have to sound like that? Let down and unsure, quieter than you think you’ve ever heard him. It’s like the tone he carries goes straight to your fingers, clasping the book closed without marking your page - because what business do you have carrying on that charade?

“Do you guys tell each other everything?” You ask as you throw the book until it lands on the coffee table with a gentle thud, shuffling until you’re sat against the arm of the couch with knees bent in front of you, giving him your undivided attention and feeling guilty that it might not be enough.

“I thought we did,” he scratches at the back of his head, nervously, “He literally told me yesterday he was taking her out to talk about stuff, why would he make a point of asking me to keep you busy if he’s not serious about asking her out?”

“You don’t want to hear my answer to a question about your brother not being serious.” 

“Who’s the girl?” He asks, ignoring your comment despite the slight ghost of a smile you see flash into the corner of his mouth. 

“Jessica, she works at the pro shop, apparently they’ve been texting all summer.”

You know for a fact that since you’ve started paying attention, you’ve seen Jack on his phone a lot for a guy who chirps you for your own screen-time, and who has enforced the house rule of no phones outside your room like a prison guard yells out no touching at visitation. So it sort of checks out. You’ve tried to sneak a peak, but he’s protective of his stuff like a yappy little dog with attachment issues at the best of times, so you haven’t really put too much effort into it.

“There were a few people talking about it in the lounge at work the other day,” you shrug, “One of the girls talking about it is Jess’ best friend, so not exactly from the horse’s mouth, but I don’t think she’d be spreading lies about her friend around like that.”

“Can you find out?”

“You ask that like I haven’t been trying.” That gets a full smile, a small chuckle that lifts his shoulder, even, “I was gonna grill Caufield about it but he’s gone. But I know you guys have plans when he gets back tomorrow, so if you want to take Cole I’ll hack away at the grape vine at the club?”

“Does this mean we’re teammates?” 

“No. It absolutely does not.”

Hacking away at the grapevine is really a lot more like plucking absentmindedly at an overgrown patch of grass when it comes to workplace gossip. 

By the end of your shift, you’re leaving the club with a fist clutched full of loose blades, fingers stained green from the amount of information people were willing to ‘fess up.

Liam who works behind the bar had overheard a conversation where Jack had mentioned Jessica, but could only give you useless tidbits, like how he had to stop by the shop for a new putter, and Jess had been the one to ring him up.

Hardly incriminating, but you had a feeling it would be a small piece of a way larger puzzle. That, and guys are notoriously useless at gossiping, there’s definitely more to that story than Liam could even comprehend in his tiny man brain.

Cassidy who works at the front desk had seen Jack and Jess talking in the main lobby last week, definitely flirting, she had said - with hair flips and giggles galore - and way too familiar to be new. 

Much better.

Paola who has the alternative shifts in the pro shop was more than willing to take up ten minutes of your time ranting how Jess’ work is never fully done when it comes to a handover, and she spends half her time on her phone. Kiran, who works the bev cart every Monday, said Jack is always one of the most charming in their golfing group, so it’s no surprise if he is exchanging texts with girls from the club. 

You get dirt from most corners of the place, and it leads you all the way back to your station, to reservations set for the restaurant, where tonight’s list - unfortunately a shift you’re not set to work, although you very much question the serendipity of that - has Jack’s name down at 7pm. A table for 2 in the back corner, shielded from prying eyes and intimate.

And if it weren’t for the fact you’ve already worked a full shift, you would consider staying just to get the full scoop. 

You know Ellie isn’t going to be the one sat across from him, she’s been sending you pictures all day of her various hauls for her quiet night in. New paints and pencils, a sketchpad, some candles - she has all intentions of working on her watercolour technique.

So it has to be for him and Jessica.

Imagine his face, you think, picturing wide, panicked eyes as you roam up to his table to take his order. He’d actually crap his pants. 

But, it’s another set of eyes that you picture when you start to enjoy the scheming a little too much. The sad, teary eyes of your best friend, when she finds out the guy she’s been hung up on for half her life, who she has all but convinced herself isn’t interested, and is - absurdly - ‘far too good’ for her - yeah, right - is dating other girls while taking her out on not-so-platonic boat dates only the day before. A boat date that she had come back to your room, flung herself onto her belly on the bed, and kicked her feet as she gushed all about it. 

So you make your way back to the house after a long day, and resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to, yet again, get all your information on Jack’s date second hand.

You primed Cara, your colleague in the restaurant, to keep an eye out, and she promised to send updates on her breaks, and you have been holed up in yours and Ellie’s shared bedroom trying to keep her busy when there is a persistent knock at the door, and a mop of soft, curly brown hair pokes in before his eyes meet yours.

“Hey, Luke!” Ellie chimes, cheery and all too blissfully unaware of the potentially horrific circumstances you’ve stumbled upon. “You need to borrow my conditioner again?”

You scoff from your position on the bed, watching a slight pink hue flush up Luke’s neck.

“What? No,” he denies, running a hand through his hair and seemingly frowning a little at the way it feels. “I’m going to the store, wondered if either of you needed anything?”

“Nah, thanks, we’re good,” Ellie smiles, attention diverting straight back to where she’s drawing in her sketchbook, missing the way Luke widens his eyes and tilts his head as if to encourage you to take him up on his offer.

“Can I come with?” You shuffle from your position on the bed, swinging your legs out from beneath you and over the side as Ellie looks back at you.

“Sorry, I didn’t realise you wanted something.”

“Someone’s got to show the poor guy what’s what on the haircare aisle, El.”

And you’re thankful that Ellie has settled herself in for the evening already by 6:45, showered, pyjamas on, otherwise she might have tried to tag along, too, just for something to do.

You swipe her phone before she can notice and hide it under your pillow before you leave, thinking it might reduce the risk of her getting bored and texting Jack, or, worse, checking his location.

A trip out gives you the chance for you and Luke to debrief each other on your findings of the day - or, as it turns out, just you, because Luke Hughes might be the worst information-gatherer on planet Earth.

Finding his life’s niche in hockey is fortunate, because he definitely wouldn’t cut it as an investigator.

“He just said he didn’t know anything,” Luke shrugs of his earlier encounter with Cole, and you try not to gape at him in disbelief as he fiddles with the screen in his BMW, scrolling through the interface in search of the nearest store. 

You swat his hand away with a scoff, typing in a destination, “And you believed him?”

“Was I not supposed to?”

“You’re about as useless as a chocolate teapot, Hughes. What is it with guys and gossip, are you all really that dumb?”

“That’s the address for the club,” he points out, ignoring your jibe as he starts driving.

“Well done, you can read.”

“Why?”

“Because, thankfully, one of us is a good detective.” You snark, “Jack’s there.”

“So?”

“He’s on a date.”

“No he isn’t,” Luke frowns, attention momentarily taken from the road as he looks over at you. “I’ve been with him all afternoon, he would have told me if he had a date, tonight.”

“Oh yeah? Where’d he say he was going when he left, earlier?”

He hadn’t been home when you got back from work, but that had been around an hour ago. You figured if he was sneaky enough to book into the restaurant when you’re not working, he’d have his wits about him to avoid you, entirely. Whenever the two of you cross paths, you can’t help but try get on his last nerve, and he’s hardly going to want to start his evening in a foul mood.

“To get his hair cut.”

Jesus Christ, you think, he’s so lucky he’s cute.

“You’re so clueless. He’s at the lounge with Jessica, the girl I told you about yesterday.”

“And what are we supposed to do about that?”

“We’re gonna supervise. And maybe interfere, if necessary.” 

You don’t really have a plan, but it seems like the right thing to at least get a look in as to what the hell Jack thinks he’s doing, especially if you’re going to carry on with this whole plan of getting him and Ellie together. If he’s seriously entertaining other girls while making out to Luke that he only has eyes for Ellie, your plans might have to change. You’re not sure if Luke will be on board with the new path you’re willing to take, but you’ll be happy to kill his brother on your own.

“Interfere?” Luke’s eyes are wide, but he keeps them on the road, fingers flexing against the wheel. “I just came out for chips to make nachos, not play spies!”

“Cara’s working tonight, she said she’d keep an eye on them for me. I bet if I cover her hosting shift on Friday she’d sabotage their date. We’d just have to sit back and watch.”

“Oh,” Luke’s brows furrow, as if it’s taking any consideration at all to mess with his brother. “You really are an evil genius.”

You try not to think too hard about who’s been spewing that rhetoric already in his ear, and instead you smile when he casts his eyes your way, proud and pleased. 

“Thank you.”

It takes another 15 minutes to get to the club, considering Luke’s best Driving Miss Daisy impression, so their date is already underway by the time Cara is ushering you to a booth in the far corner, where you can see Jack’s table, but he shouldn’t be able to see yours, and agreeing to play along.

“Can I get you guys any drinks?” She asks as she hands over two menus, and you’re too interested in trying to gauge the vibe at the other table while Luke looks over his.

“Two diet cokes, shaved ice, no lemon,” he says, and you can’t help but frown at the way the specificity of that order rolls so easily off his tongue. That’s your order.

“Any food?”

“Could we just get some nachos, please?” You ask, sliding your menu across the table without even looking, not wanting to give Luke too much of a chance to peruse his own out of fear you’ll be here all night. “And extra picante on the side.”

“Extra guac, too,” Luke adds as Cara scribbles the instructions on her notepad, “And some of those chicken tenders, and extra ranch. And maybe some fries. Yeah, chilli fries. And breadsticks.”

You level him with a glare, already proven right in your decision not to give him too much time to think about what he wanted. He’ll order every appetiser on the menu, if given half the chance. 

“Thanks, Cara, that’s everything.”

“Sure thing, should be around fifteen minutes. They only just ordered,” she points her pen back to Jack’s table, where Jess is leaning onto the table and Jack is leaning back in his seat - heavy on the distance but even heavier on the eye contact. That little shit.

“Does he have any allergies?” You lean onto your own table to ask Luke, quirking a brow up when his eyes darken in response, mischief swirling in his emerald irises.

“Absolutely not,” Cara interjects, “I’m doing this so you cover my job, not make me lose it.”

“Let me guess, he ordered the steak, medium-rare?” Luke asks, and she nods, hesitantly. “Char it.”

“Won’t he complain?”

“He’ll just grumble to himself about how tough it is. It’ll put him in a bad mood. That’s what we want, right?”

“Yeah,” you confirm, nodding your head to ease Cara’s worries despite what you really want is for Chef Michael to poison the cut, entirely. If Jack Hughes wants to play with your best friend’s heart, you’ll play with his gut. But you can settle for burnt meat. Luke can work some sort of magic with that, you think, convincing Jack of all people that any first date that resulted in him coming home all sour-puss and sulky should never result in a second. “Bad mood. Bingo.”

“Fine,” Cara grumbles, “But if he even thinks about asking for a manager, you’re covering my next 3 Fridays.”

She storms off to the kitchen, and you and Luke simultaneously sink into your seats, attention immediately diverted back to the table in the opposite corner of the room.

“We should have kept the menus,” Luke mutters from across the booth, “Could have hidden behind them.”

“What are we, children?” You snark, “You can’t think of any more creative ways to stay hidden?”

“I heard PDA makes people pretty uncomfortable,” he leans onto the table, dropping you a wink when you glance over out of the side of your eye, “We should make out to throw everyone off the scent.”

“In your dreams, Hughes.”

Luke sort of envies the charm you hold over people.

The way you can convince people to do your bidding with a mere flutter of your eyelashes or a flash of pearly teeth and a glimmer in your irises.

He has trouble, sometimes, skirting around his honesty or hiding his intentions - and he knows that’s not a bad thing, knows that being clear and truthful is an admirable trait, if anything - but the way you persuade others to bend to your whim with intricate white lies based on observations you’ve made or intel you’ve gathered is a praiseworthy level of genius. 

It had taken such minimal effort for you to get Cara on side, to convince her that being a little clumsy is hardly grounds for her termination, and spilling a little of Jack’s drink close to the edge of the table - close enough that it drips onto his pants and Luke can see the steams of frustration exuding from his brother’s skin from all the way on the other side of the restaurant - or bumping her hip on the edge of their table every time she passes are really just harmless irritations, not likely to cause actual complaint. 

You had used the mere tone of your voice to convince Liam from behind the bar to squeeze a little lime in Jack’s water, knowing just from observing him back at the house that he hates the taste, face curling in disgust at even the slightest hint of it, and Luke had watched your eyes gleam in delight every time Jack took a sip of his drink and tried not to spit it back out, seeking much needed reprieve to swallow down the world’s toughest steak cut. 

You’d even worked your magic on him, pouting your lips when the food had arrived at the table, and he had initially declined to share his chicken tenders with you - your grumblings at him ordering enough to feed the five thousand fresh in his memory, but so easily wiped away by the soft, sad look in your eyes, and your whining of, “But I didn’t realise how hungry I’d get. Plotting and scheming is hard work, Luke.”

You ended up eating half, but he could hardly complain - you were doing the heavy lifting out of the two of you.

He was sitting back and enjoying the show - enjoying your company, if he’s honest. Enjoying the way his gangly limbs would sometimes knock into yours under the table, enjoying the way he kept getting little nuggets of information out of you while you were distracted, sipping at your coke and making little comments about yourself, about your life, without even realising you’re doing it. 

And an unplanned, pseudo date ends up being the first time he thinks he’s had a glimpse at the real you.

The you who knows more about hockey than you’ve ever let on before, who comes back to his stories with contextual questions about the game, even has references to a few games of his back at Michigan, and keeps the conversation flowing despite your feigned disinterest, and a constant gaze cast his brother’s way.

That would usually drive him crazy.

He’s experienced it so often that he has come to expect it, people only entertaining his company to acquire the attention of his brothers, but that’s not what you’re doing. Not really.

You pay more attention to Luke than you’d ever let on.

You ask him about his time in Ostrava at the beginning of summer, even though he’s only mentioned being overseas once while you’ve been staying with him - an offhanded comment from Quinn at breakfast that you must have taken on. Ask him about all the food he tried while out there, when he mentions he doesn’t like picante, and you use it as a springboard to talk about what sort of spices he does like, or if he’s the type to try things or stick to what he knows. 

You ask him about being the youngest sibling, and it stems from an offhanded comment Luke had grumbled about always being the last to be clued in on stuff, about how Jack had probably confided in Quinn about his extracurricular activities at the club, and didn’t trust him enough to let him in on the fact he’s going out on dates. You ask if he usually figures things out himself before he’s told them, if that’s what makes him so good at observing and analysing stuff, and he hadn’t ever realised he was particularly good at those things before you brought it up. But then you reference a day in class one time, where he had picked up on something in a textbook that you never would have figured out in a million years, and his heart leaps at the praise you don’t even realise you’re giving him.

You sandwich your perceptions in your usual snark, but he doesn’t miss the slight curve of your lips anymore when he bites straight back, knowing now that there is some part of you that feels the nip of his teeth, that acknowledges his existence beyond him being a speck of inconvenience in your peripheral.

And he gets a little carried away in that acknowledgement - stops paying attention himself to what is happening on the other side of the room and tries to focus on what’s in front of him; the girl he pined after his entire college career, sat sharing nachos and pretending not to know him at a level you so clearly do.

You must get carried away, too, because neither of you notice Jack’s date wrapping up until Luke catches him hand his card over to Cara.

He’s lost count of how long the two of you have been at the club, now - way longer than it takes to get chips from the store, that’s for sure - and all he does know is that if Jack catches either of you two here, after a night of mishaps, bad food, spilled drinks and Cara’s incessant clumsiness, he’ll know who’s to blame. 

“We better get out of here before he sees us,” Luke sighs, not entirely wanting to wrap up his time with you but knowing he doesn’t really have a choice.

“I’ve just got to pick something up before we head back,” you reply, edging out of the booth at the same time Luke does, “I’ll meet you out front just give me two minutes?”

“Be quick,” he tells you before you scurry off, and he flags down Cara, who tells him you already put your bill on your worker tab. He tells her to switch it to his, and that he’ll drop by tomorrow to pay it off, promising to leave her a good tip for her stellar services for the evening. 

He waits where you asked him to, making sure to stick to the side of the entryway where he can duck for cover if his brother makes an appearance - but you show up first, skipping out from the staff lounge with a bag of tortilla chips in hand.

“Let’s go, Lukey boy!” He follows you out like a puppy on a leash, all the way to where his car is parked, almost bumping into you when you stop and turn without warning, stretching your hand out to him. “Give me your keys.”

“Are you crazy?” He snorts, “You’re not driving my car!”

“I know a shortcut!” You reason, stepping forward and making a grabby motion with your fingers, “We gotta beat Jack home, I just paid another server $20 to spill a whole drink on him before he leaves and he’s gonna be pissed. I want to see the meltdown back at the house and you drive like a nun!”

Luke doesn’t know why he gives in so easy - it could be the proximity, the way you’re so close you have to look up at him, eyes twinkling softly under the moonlight, voice carrying over to him like a siren song, or it could just be because he’s weak - but he hands his keys over with a roll of his eyes and climbs into the passenger side, sliding the seat back with a huff to accommodate his long legs and watching as you adjust the driver’s side, cringing at the way he’s gonna have to figure out exactly how he had it before.

You drive like a maniac, to the point where Luke has to screw his eyes shut as you use some back road, can hear the squelch of mud beneath his tires and squirms at the thought of having to take it to the car wash, tomorrow. 

But you make it back to the lake house much quicker than if he were driving, he’ll give you that. So quick that you feel comfortable enough to turn to him once you’ve pulled up, in no rush to unbuckle and get out to get inside before Jack gets home.

“Just so we’re clear, this is a point under my name. You’re not claiming tonight as a win.”

Luke chuckles, turning in his seat to face you, features illuminated by the dim overhead light that turns on when the engine switches off and a slight flush of exhilaration to your cheeks. There’s no pretending you haven’t enjoyed yourself, not tonight. “But the steak thing was my idea?”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be sat watching baseball and thinking he was getting a 3 hour haircut, you can’t seriously be trying to steal this from me, I thought you athletes had integrity!”

“You’re really keeping score?”

“You’re not?”

If Luke’s honest, he hasn’t really thought about your whole wager all night. He’s been too wrapped up in the idea that his brother had lied to him. Twice. And now his whole plan for the two of you all summer has potentially been messed up. But hearing you mention it, hearing you talk about it like it hasn’t been flushed down the toilet by his brother’s idiocy sparks something in him - excitement, anticipation. He doesn’t want to let this go.

“I actually think we made a good team back there,” he shrugs, eyes meeting yours to gauge your reaction to the thought of doing this together.

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you’re gonna lose,” you retort, eyes sparkling with those same sentiments he had just felt. 

“Probably,” he acquiesces, “Also ‘cause you kind of scare me a little after tonight, last thing I wanna do is go up against you when you have the power to turn half the country club against me.”

You smirk, and his eyes are drawn to the plush curve of your lips, watching them as they form around the softly spoken words, “God forbid you can’t go a round of golf without your caddy breaking down.”

“Exactly.” He mutters back, glad to see your gaze is still zeroed in on him when he meets it again. He can feel the thump thump thump of his pulse in his ears, and takes a deep breath before proposing, “Partners?”

He cocks a brow and holds his pinky out over the centre console, and you eye the digit, sceptically, narrowing your eyes into a glare before raising them to meet his. “Fine,” you grumble, then hook your little finger through his and tighten it to shake, a slight yelp of surprise filling the car when he tugs, your lax arm giving way until your knuckle touches his lips and he kisses it.

“Ew,” you whine, snatching your finger back as he fills the space himself with a hearty chuckle, wiping it on his hoody in disgust. “That’s gross!”

“No take backs,” he smiles, victorious, with his chest puffed out, primed for you to swat at with the flex of your hand, and the two of you are only pulled out of the moment by the sound of tyres pulling up on the gravel behind you, both of you stumbling to unbuckle yourselves and climb out of the car. 

Jack is exiting his own vehicle behind, and stomps down the driveway, shouldering past you until he realises who he has passed, turning back and looking at you with suspicion cast across his features. 

“Where have you twobeen?” Jack asks, glancing a curious eye between the two of you before meeting Luke’s gaze, levelling him with an inquisitive glare.

“We went to the store for chips,” Luke holds the bag up, the crinkle loud enough for Jack to hear, and he feels an insurgence rising within him, spurred on by the way his brother is looking at him like he’s the one who should be ashamed of his actions. “Nice haircut.”

Jack runs a hand through his hair, surprise crossing his features in a brief flash at the call out, like he had never even expected Luke to notice his hair looks no different to the last time he saw him mere hours ago, like he would never even need to question his alibi.

“Oh, yeah, I got the day wrong. Went out for dinner instead.”

“On your own?” You ask from beside him, your presence giving Luke the kind of back up he very much needs right now, a new target for Jack’s narrowed eyes that takes the heat off of him a little, lessens the burden of lying to his brother - despite Jack being the one who started it, it doesn’t make Luke feel any less bad, doesn’t quell the need to word vomit and admit to all the ludicrous things he had done to ruin Jack’s night. “You end up having a little accident there, bud?”

Luke tries not to outwardly laugh as his attention is diverted to the wet patch that still soaks up the front of Jack’s pants, lips quivering as he presses them together, oblivious to the steam pouring out of his brother’s ears as he immediately gets riled up. 

“One of your esteemed colleagues at the club apparently lacks hand eye co-ordination. Plus, some of us like our own company,” Jack scoffs, “Some of us can go an evening without the need to annoy anybody else.”

“It’s not news to me that you’re in love with yourself, dude,” you retort back, entirely unbothered by his jibes. “Bet you’ve got all sorts of riveting thoughts swirling around that ginormous head of yours, must keep you busy for hours on end.”

“At least I have thoughts, at least I’m not some airheaded-,”

“Hey,” Luke’s tone is authoritative when he calls out, stern and demanding, “Cut it out, Jack.”

“She started it!”

“She asked you a question,” Luke frowns, disappointed with how quick his brother had taken to escalating the situation, all in an attempt to deflect the attention from his own deception. He knows you don’t need him to protect you from Jack’s sharp tongue, knows you can very much defend yourself, but he needs to vent his frustrations, somehow, without causing a bust up on the driveway. “You could have just give her a straight answer without biting her head off.”

He feels like you’re a little closer, all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know it’s the slight brush of your arm against his or if it’s something else, something less tangible - but it warms him, all the same. Steadies the static thump of his heart in his chest at the thought of starting an argument with his brother out of nowhere. 

“Whatever,” Jack rolls his eyes, “I’m going to bed.”

And as Jack turns, Luke sees your lips part, ready to send him off with the last word until a large hand clamps itself over your mouth, and your wide eyes meet his over the sides of his fingers.

He’s not sure why he did it, why he all of a sudden feels comfortable enough to cross the boundaries of purposeful touch, but he doesn’t entirely regret it.

Plush lips press mid-word against his palm, and your skin is soft, cheeks warming ever so slightly beneath his hand.

“You gotta let him go, there’s no use fighting with him tonight, it’s better to drag it out. Didn’t think I’d have to teach you about the beauty of the long game,” he says, voice low as he watches his brother retreat to the house, waiting until he’s safe inside to retract his hand. “Not like this, anyway.”

“Your brother’s an asshole,” you grumble, “Full offence.”

“No arguments from me,” Luke concedes, holding his hands as if surrendering to the fact, himself. “What are you gonna tell Ellie?”

“Nothing.” You sigh, stepping a little down the drive and toward the house before turning back to him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, partner.”

There have only been a handful of times in your life you’ve ever been thankful for work coinciding with huge plans, but when the group had decided that they wanted to go see Zach Bryan play Ford Field, you had thanked your lucky stars you had been put down to work a full shift at the restaurant and wouldn’t be able to go.

Not only for the fact that he isn’t really your thing, but for the fact that you’re finally getting a full evening to yourself.

So far, in your time at the house, most evenings have been spent with everyone else - group dinners, game nights, movie nights, even a couple of girls nights with just you and Ellie scattered in there, but nothing on your own, yet. 

You can’t wait. And with an empty house, you have a full pamper night planned. You’ve been stocking up odd bits on your trips to the store over the past couple of weeks - sheet masks, aromatherapy candles, you’ve even picked up some flower petals from the spa at the club, in the hopes that you might even treat yourself to a relaxing soak in the bathtub. You can play whatever music you want, make whatever food you want, sit wherever you want in the house, out on the deck, overlooking the lake with a book in hand and no chirpy voices in your ear all night.

You can’t wait.

The only downside is not having a ride home, but you haven’t finished too late. The sun will still be up for a couple of hours, and a walk in the simmering heat back to the house doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

Your feet carry you with ease down the back roads, and you even make the journey without your headphones on, taking in the scenery, the blissful peace of your surroundings, so lost in the tranquility of it all that the sight of Luke washing his car on the drive when you get home dampens your mood as quick as a torrential downpour of rain, flash floods coursing through your evening and wrecking your plans entirely. 

“What the hell are you doing?” You can’t help the bite in your tone as you approach, sneakers crunching against the gravel as Luke pauses the hose, looks over at you with the sun in his eyes, and you have to remind yourself he’s just ruined the one night you have for yourself before you get distracted by the fact that he’s shirtless.

“Washing my car?” he calls back, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Detroit right now?”

Luke shrugs, and you have to will your eyeballs not to move any lower than his neck to watch his shoulders lift and drop, lest you get too caught up in the broad expanse of his chest and do something ridiculous like drool.

“Wasn’t feeling it.”

“You weren’t feeling a concert you guys haven’t shut up about for weeks, but you were feeling washing your car?”

He’s dead. When he’s finished with his car and he retreats to his room, you’re gonna smother him with a pillow and discard of his body in the lake. You’re not even gonna let him shower, first. That’s what the lake’s for.

He’s crapping all over your plans because he wasn’t feeling it?

“It needs cleaning,” he shrugs again, and you swear you’re gonna jump in and run him over with the damn thing, “In fact, you really should be helping me.”

There’s a small part of you that feels like the thoughts of violence are worryingly aggressive, but then a larger part of you realises he must have a death wish.

“How’d you get to that conclusion?”

“You’re the one who drove us through a swamp,” he scoffs, a pointed hand flung toward the body of his car, where the sides are lined with a thick layer of dried dirt from the other night, “You get it dirty, you clean it up.”

“As much as I would absolutely love to fulfil your pervy car wash fantasy, I have much better things I could be doing with my time.”

Or you did, until Luke rained all over your parade of solitude.

“Like what?”

“Literally anything but this.” You gesture at the show he’s putting on. The suds dripping from the roof of the car, the hose in his hand, the buckets scattered around the perimeter. “I need to shower, I just walked from the club and I-,”

A death wish might actually be an understatement.

Luke wants you to murder him in the most gruesome, horrific way you could possibly muster - he has to, because there’s no other explanation for why he’d turn the hose on, point it straight at you, and drench the front of you, entirely. 

You can feel the fabric of your t-shirt dampening and sticking to your chest, and you scrunch your eyes shut to stop droplets of water slipping into them, thankful that when they open again, his own are looking back at you, and not any lower.

You’d really have a reason to kill him, then. 

“You did not just do that.” You growl, glaring back at him with a clenched jaw as the fucker beams back at you, pressing the trigger once more in a short burst that fires straight at your chest, again.

“What, that?”

“You’re so dead.”

You drop your bag and launch for him, aiming to take the hose from his grip, but he fires it again out of sheer panic, the water spouting out from between your splayed fingers, cold and pressured, and it soaks the both of you, raining down as you grapple for the head and Luke remains unrelenting.

There are squeals and yelps called out into the misty air between the two of you, and you get to a point you can’t tell what sounds are coming from who, but you manage to wrestle the hose from his grip and point it straight at him as he jets away with a laugh that rumbles straight from his belly.

It’s the kind of laugh that elicits another, and you don’t realise until he’s circling back to you that the laughter is coming from you - giggling, even, as the two of you engage in a water fight like misbehaving children - and it isn’t long until all aggressive thoughts wash away with the suds that slip to the gravel, forgetting why you were even annoyed in the first place.

It shouldn’t be as fun as it is, but after the long day at work, and the tiring walk back, letting your guard down and engaging it a little mindless chaos seems to wake you up a little.

Your childish game gets Luke what he wanted, anyway, the two of you working together to clean his car when you realise he’s only running in front of all the parts that actually need hosing off and relying on you having bad aim to get the job done, and you figure getting your hands a little dirty is harmless when you’re already soaked through and in dire need of a shower.

And your pamper-plans of a bubble bath and self-care don’t entirely come to fruition, but Luke promises to make up for his petulance by ordering pizza and sticking a movie on, so you bite your tongue to refrain from voicing your initial complaints, and decide to just go with the flow, for once - he hasn’t exactly led you astray, yet.  

You take a little longer in the shower than normal, with no one around to complain about hogging the bathroom or worry about them barging in unannounced, and you suppose that’s a small victory - one little luxury you get to cling to as you bask in the steam, letting all the tension slip from your aching muscles after being on your feet all day.

And once you’re out, hair dried just enough with a towel that it isn’t going to drip or soak your t-shirt, and you’re dressed in your pyjamas, you make your way downstairs, where Luke has already set up a plethora of snacks in the living room.

Nachos, popcorn, candy and drinks scattered across the coffee table as he relaxes on the couch, hair extra curly after his shower and an old Michigan t-shirt stretched tight across his now much-broader chest. 

“Thought I’d wait for you to pick a movie,” he chimes up from where he’s sat, gesturing with a lazy point to the wall of blu-rays beside the TV. 

“Did Netflix never make it to the Hughes household?” You scoff in disbelief as you take them all in properly for the first time. You’d seen them in your peripheral when you’d been hanging out down here, before, but actually looking at them up close, reading all the titles, seeing the sheer volume of how many there are, it kind of surprises you.

“We can look on Netflix if you want. They always take stuff off, though.”

You know. All your favourite movies get taken off of streaming, and you only ever find out about it when you’re really in the mood to watch them. As soon as you realise the wall is alphabetised, you know exactly where to look.

“That’s alright,” you shrug, stepping to the side as you track backwards, through M, L, K and J. “You guys are pretty analogue, I’ve noticed.”

“What do you mean?”

“The board games, the DVDs, the whole no phones around the house thing.”

“No phones around the house is common courtesy,” he chuckles, “But I guess we’re a little weird about the other stuff.”

“It’s pretty cool,” you shrug, spotting the DVD you want and sliding it out to assess the case. “It’s old school. Probably better for the brain. My little brothers can’t really function without an iPad and they’re 5, it’s freaky, like they’re haunted by the capitalist ghost of Steve Jobs or something.”

“I didn’t know you had brothers,” Luke frowns where you almost expect him to laugh, and you spin on your heel to face him. He has this look about him like he should have known that - like the two of you have ever conversed in anything other than sarcastic quips and scrunched up faces, or whatever attempts at flirting have been on his part. 

“Technically they’re half brothers,” you shrug, “They live out in Philly with my dad and step mom, I don’t really get to see them much.”

“Didn’t know you were from Philly, either.”

“I’m not, my dad moved out there when him and my mom got divorced.”

It’s not something you really love talking about. 

The few times you’ve tried, you’ve been shot down, patronising tones scoffing at how your biggest trauma is the separation of your parents, as if your whole world didn’t crumble down with the demise of their relationship, the demise of life as you knew and very dearly loved it.

“You don’t see him even in the summer?”

“Him and his family are on vacation in Europe for 6 weeks. England, France, Spain, Germany, the boys are into soccer so they’ll be out there until the Euros.”

You don’t miss the way Luke’s face scrunches at how you call them his family, and you’re not sure you’re ready for him to start pitying you, so you throw the DVD case toward him before you can second guess your choice.

Interstellar. 

You hope he doesn’t pick up on why it might be one of your favourites. Especially not considering the topic of the conversation at hand. Something about the crippling regret Cooper has for leaving Murph behind plucks harmoniously at some unidentifiable strings deep within you, but you’re hardly about to admit that to Luke, of all people.

“I love this movie,” he smiles, almost surprised, as if he expected you to throw The Notebook his way. Maybe next time - he’d probably love that movie, too, if he gave it a chance. 

“Me too. I love space movies.”

“Like Space Jam?” He asks as he pushes himself up, going toward the TV to set up the movie with the DVD in one hand and the remote control in the other. 

“No, like movies about Space,” you say, throwing yourself down onto the same couch he just vacated and tucking your feet beneath you to get comfortable. “Although I guess Space Jam would technically fit into that bracket.”

“I didn’t realise that was a genre,” he chuckles.

“Not the scary ones, though, I don’t wanna be freaked out by space.”

“Is that like a thing? You just like any movie set in space?”

“I like anything about space, period. Movies, documentaries, books. Thinking about it makes me feel really insignificant.”

“Insignificant? Is that not a bad thing?” He asks as he makes his way back, settling into his side and angling his body toward yours.

“Do you ever think about how big the universe is, Hughes? It’s humongous! If I ever feel anxious or panicky I think about just how big it is and how I’m not even a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. If I’m so tiny, how big can my problems actually be?”

“I guess that makes sense,” he seems to mull it over in his head, the thought of him even considering it and not making you feel stupid warms your chest - makes you forget just how much of yourself you’ve shared with him in the last couple of minutes alone, makes you worry less that you’re sharing too much. “I think I might be the opposite, though. Probably the youngest brother in me, I only feel better if I feel bigger.”

You think that might be why he’s always trying to one up you - sassy comments and inappropriate jokes galore. Not that you mind any of it, not really.

“What about you? What movies do you like?”

“You’re gonna be so shocked.”

“Sports movies?”

“Look at you, knowing me like the back of your hand.” He coos, nudging at your knee with his hand. “I’ll watch anything, though. We should take it in turns, whenever it’s just us,” he says like the thought of spending time alone with you has only just crossed his mind. “Picking a movie to show each other.”

You think there’s a lot of yourself in the media you consume. The movies you watch, the music you listen to, and sharing those things with Luke feels like giving him the only other key to a high security vault. It’s something you’ve avoided so far - letting him play his songs in the car, avoiding making any sort of pick in the group movie nights. It’s daunting, and it’s a lot of pressure, and so you don’t know why you agree with so much ease - a shrug, and a casual muttering of, “Sure, why not?”

The pieces of your dynamic slowly start to slot together, and you start to realise why you’ve been entertaining his company so often, lately. Why your mood so quickly de-escalated itself, earlier. Why you’ve found yourself curled up on the same couch as him, instead of literally anywhere else in the house, doing anything other than this. Why you’re so quick to agree to letting him access all these unseen parts of you.

And why you think he might be able to read your mind, after he asks, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Only if I get to ask one back.”

“What were you gonna do tonight, if you were on your own?”

Thank God, you think, your heart jumping at the thought of anything else he could have asked.

“I was gonna do a sheet mask and steal the bottle of wine Quinn stashed behind the laundry detergent.” You admit with a nonchalant shrug, the plans you had been looking forward to all day seeming mundane in comparison to this. “Why’d you stay behind? You love Zach Bryan.”

“I love sheet masks and stolen wine, too.”

Your lips curve up before you get the chance to huff at his non-answer, and you feel your throat go a little dry at the way his curve, too - the way his green eyes darken when they meet yours, and you feel like he’s looking straight through you.

It’s around half way through the movie that you realise how much you’re enjoying yourself - when you look over at Luke, and the light from the screen is still bouncing off the sticky white sheet plastered to his face, only just able to make out his round eyes through the little slit in the fabric. 

You sip at your wine to hide your smile, and turn your attention back to the TV until Luke nudges at your feet with his, and your eyes meet over the tops of your bent knees. 

“You tell anyone I did this, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Your laugh ripples through every inch of your upper body, rumbling up from your belly and manifesting itself in shaking shoulders, your smile wide and your sheet mask slipping out of place. “You can’t threaten me with a good time, Hughes.”

You spend the rest of the night trying not to think about how there might just be a tiny door in your heart, eking it’s way open for him to squeeze his gangly limbs into.

>PART TWO<

another a/n: I don't want to put a timeframe on when the next part will be posted bc as soon as I do that, my brain will revolt and it won't happen, but I'd love to know your thoughts in the meantime!!! I have a lot of the rest actually written, and what I don't have written, I have drafted, so it shouldn't be too long but!!! like I said no timeframe!! I've had a lot of fun with this dynamic, and hearing any opinions would mean a lot to me!!

this was my first time writing reader insert if you saw any instances of she/her where they shouldn't be, no you didn’t. I tried as best as I could to avoid using Y/N because it takes me out of it I don’t even remember if I put it anywhere but sometimes it's hard to get around I did my best ok!!!

[oceantornadoo]

you: an absolute teeth-aching bone deep want to be loved and to give love. that hollow feeling behind your chest is too familiar and you want it gone. you just want to be in love, to treat someone with gentleness and to be wanted.

your 141 bae who has been in love with you since the moment he met you: ...i'm right here

gn!reader headcanons below the cut:

childhood best friend simon: let's say you knew him before he lost his family. a scrawny-limbed blond, always willing to extend a trip to the park or a cigarette behind school - anything to not go home. you'd visit him when he started part-time as a butcher in high school, wrinkling your nose at the smell of bloody meat but staying anyways, doing your homework at the singular table in the shop. he was there when you moved away from town, for college or a new job or any life-altering decision that he was secondary to, something simon could only hope to grasp. once he leaves for the military, you mourn your relationship and move on. simon is a blur in your mind, a reminder of snow days and sweet tea summers and leaf piles and dandelion picking, on a nostalgic shelf in the untouched corners of your brain. ten years later, you've finally made a name for yourself and truly gotten out; grown roots. but you still have this soul-deep yearning, some unfamiliar-shaped hole in your chest that miraculously fills when you open your door to simon, a grown man who's tired of wanting you from afar. tired of stalking your social media and writing fantasies in his head. tired of picking people to fuck just because they look like you, then going soft halfway through because their voice isn't the right pitch. he's here, and he's ready to do whatever it takes.

best friend gaz: now this is different from a childhood best friend, so keep that in mind. gaz is always this guy-next-door type with a panty-dropping smile and impeccable manners. this notion does him some good, helps him avoid some deep-rooted british military prejudices, but it also turns you away. you check him off as nice and place him in the best friend box. you don't understand how he tracks your every move on a mission, almost always getting caught by johnny or price. you miss how he grips his pint ten times harder when he sees you on the pub floor, dancing with some stranger whose hands are a bit too low. he tells you he gets rejected for being "too nice", but really, he ignores his 27 unread DMs and flirty cafe eye contact in favor of movie nights, prank wars, your shitty reality shows. he's grasping onto straws, can't you see sweetheart? when you're drunk and turn into a cuddler, he can pretend just for a second that you truly mean it. gaz lets your hands wander under his shirt, lets you murmur your darkest fear of never being loved into the quietness of your room, leaving you to sleep on top of your covers with a kiss to the forehead. he doesn't know what's pushed him over: you almost dying on that last mission, you making out with a stranger in a bar, you you you in those pants and that shirt and that's it. he has to say something. has to put it all on the line because gaz can't live like this anymore.

best friend's brother price: it was some one-sided crush, your best friend's brother with his suave teenage ways as compared to your brutal tween phase, acne and braces on the way. it had dissipated quickly, john never the wiser, his presence substituted with trendy band obsessions and first kisses. instead, it happened at your best friend's wedding. you were both in the wedding party, some object of fate throwing you together as your best friend forced you two to dance. you were tipsy on champagne, on the happiness of marriage, that you giddily admitted your fleeting childhood crush and how much john had grown since then. and that was it. john was always going to settle down, always going to have a pretty thing waiting for him back home, he just didn't figure out until right now that it would be you. he tries to hide his affections under friendliness, not wanting to ruin your friendship with his sibling, but john has never been discrete. he's suddenly invading your life with offers of fixing your kitchen sink, painting that one spot you can't reach, moving your couch to fit your latest pinterest board. you're practically family, love - which kills all your hopes for something more, feeling like a familyzone. but john means it differently, means you're predestined to be his, already accepted and loved by his loved ones and how could he not see it before? you refuse to accept his kindness and it absolutely kills him, so he scares off potential dates and any chance of meet-cutes with an arm around your waist and why can't you see him the way he sees you?

friends with benefits johnny: it was just sex, right? you'd been the one to say it, the one to set that boundary with your fellow sergeant. you didn't think johnny was capable of more, mistaking his cheeky smirks and booming laugh for being unserious, when in reality, johnny is as serious as it gets. he tells himself he can fuck you because he'll marry you one day, that cross sitting heavy under his shirts. he doesn't wash his sheets for weeks after that first fuck, too busy inhaling the scent of you cumming around his mouth, his cock. that is, until, you tell him his sheets stink and refuse to fuck him and he pretends you're having an argument as a married couple, all intimate and bored. johnny sees a recruit getting too flirty and pulls you into a supply closet using his best distraction methods. he sways you from joining a month's long solo mission, some stupid excuse about missing your lips too much when really he knows it's a suicide mission. johnny forces you to stay over after a midnight fuck, some bullshit about simon being up at that time and seeing you in the hallway on base. in reality, he treasures cuddling you with his brawny arms, pretending you're his willingly. pretending he's made peace with you, this wild creature, never tamed but understood. he can't force himself to ask for more, too scared to lose the crumbs he's holding onto. johnny tries to hide it with a fiery personality and a thick accent, but inside? he's a complete goner.

[theysherobinbuckley]

a little something I started but probably won't ever finish - alternate first meeting steddie! post s3, pre s4

(context: in an effort to cheer up his perpetually grumpy new neighbor, Eddie broke out his old skateboard and immediately ate shit for it. Cue Red calling none other than Steve Harrington to solve the problem...)

Red was barely in the door when Harringron turned on him, jaw clenched and fingers twitching. Having those dark eyes focused so entirely on him nearly made Eddie dizzy.

His lips were moving and- oh shit. Eddie was totally supposed to be listening.

"Uh, what?"

"What are you doing hanging around Max?"

Eddie frowned. "We're neighbors?"

"So?"

"So I'm being… neighborly? Is that illegal?"

"Neighborly is getting someone's mail while they're out of town. Not a super senior hanging around with a girl who's not even in high school yet."

"You better be fucking careful what you're accusing me of, Harrington, because to be honest, you don't look any better. Don't think I haven't heard your beemer pull up at all hours of the night. What the fuck is that about, huh? King Steve likes 'em young?"

Eddie's back hit the trailer before the last word even left his mouth. All the breath rushed out of him at once as Harrington pinned him with one arm across his shoulders.

"Don’t fucking say that," he seethed. "She's like my sister. I'm not- I wouldn't hurt her."

Eddie reached up to pat Harrington's arm placatingly, sending him as sweet a smile as he could muster.

"Hey, I believe you, man. I'm a little lost, sure, but I believe you." He sent a look to the trailer to his right. "Now can you let me down before Muriel sends Axel out to break your arm?"

Harrington followed his gaze and, upon seeing Muriel frowning from behind her curtains, dropped Eddie faster than if he'd told him he had the plague.

"We're in my kingdom now, Harrington," he said, grinning and waving in Muriel's direction. "These are my people. We take care of each other here. And Red's one of us, whether you like it or not."

Steve frowned, opened his mouth to respond, maybe even protest, but Eddie cut him off.

"I was just trying to make the kid smile, okay? So I got out my old skateboard, did a few tricks, busted my shit." He held up the ice pack he'd stolen from Red's fridge. "She called you 'cause she said you'd know what to do."

Harrington was quiet. Noticeably, he did not apologize for jostling Eddie's extremely sore wrist, but whatever.

"Did she?"

"Yeah, man, I tried to talk her out of it, but she seemed pretty confident you'd pick up. And here you are, so…"

"No, I mean- did she have fun?"

Eddie shrugged. "I mean, she didn't look as miserable as usual. Laughed a couple times when I fucked up a dismount. What's up with that, by the way? The constant dispair?"

Harrington's whole body tensed, and Eddie was almost scared he was gearing up to punch him just for asking.

"You remember Billy Hargrove?" he replied, his voice tight.

Eddie couldn't help but sneer at the mention of that piece of shit. Wayne had always taught him not to speak ill of the dead, but that didn't mean he couldn't think some choice things about him. Like the fact that he was pretty sure the guy was rotting in hell for all the things he'd said to Jeff in the school halls.

"Unfortunately. What about him?"

"He was Max's older brother. Step-brother."

"That's..."

"Fucked?" Harrington supplied. Eddie nodded. "Yeah. So I just- I need to make sure another Hargrove doesn't come around. Sorry I got all... you know. I've been told I can be kind of intense."

"No shit," Eddie laughed. "No hard feelings, I guess. Since it's in Red's best interest."

"No hard feelings," Harrington echoed. "Thanks for looking out for her."

Then, something Eddie had never even dreamed of: Harrington stuck his hand out, clearly expecting a handshake.

Huh.

It was over in a second, but Eddie's hand burned where Steve's had been.

"No problem. I'm kind of the park babysitter," Eddie replied. "Part of the job description."

Harrington lit up at that.

"I babysit too! Max and a few of her friends. 'S why I'm always around. I'm usually playing chauffeur for one of the other gremlins."

"That makes more sense than you having a torrid love affair with Susan."

"Yeah, she's not really my type," Harrington said with a smirk.

Eddie watched in shock as Harrington's eyes slowly, deliberately dipped up and down his form.

Talk about fucking whiplash. Eddie could still feel Harrington's strong arm against his chest, the brush of Harrington's nose against his own, the heat of Harrington's breath on his face. And now the king was checking him out?

"I see. Not into MILFs?"

Eddie was in the middle of making plans to staple his big stupid mouth shut when Harrington laughed.

"I'm more into brunettes."

And boy, didn't that seem pointed.

[soaps-mohawk]

Plans For The Rest Of The Year

Since we are in November, it's time to touch on some things I've been thinking about over my month long break.

First things first, CRCB will continue but there's going to be some changes to the update schedule. I will not be doing weekly updates anymore. It's just not possible anymore. It was a stretch back when I was lucky enough to have the ability to do weekly updates, but now with work and the upcoming holiday season, it just won't be possible anymore for me to do weekly updates.

Instead, I'm going back to how things were in the beginning. Those of you who are OGs will remember that I kind of just updated whenever I had a chapter done and that's what the update schedule is going to look like going forward. It probably will remain that way for the rest of the duration of the story since come January I will be going back to school and also working on moving. This will also allow more time to answer comments and asks and not make me feel like I have to crunch to get things answered within a week along with writing the chapter. I'm very sorry to everyone who will be disappointed, but for my own sanity I have to just update whenever I can manage to get a chapter done.

That being said, there will be some other changes. During the break I worked on an old fic for a different fandom, and I honestly kind of miss writing for other fandoms. So that's also going to play into CRCB's update schedule. Sometimes I just want to (and need to) write other things, and I'm going to allow myself to do that. I also have some other COD fics (shorter fics) that I'd love to work on as well when the inspiration comes so it won't just be no content until the next part of CRCB. There will be other things posted as well. Those of you subscribed to my Patreon, you'll be getting a similar post but with some other things regarding content there soon.

That's the plan moving forward at least for now. The end of this year and next year are going to be very busy for me with a lot of changes, so I have to adapt this hobby to fit into my real life schedule. Since that's what this all is. A hobby. It's not my job (even though I wish it could be) so it has to be sacrificed a bit in favor of things going on in my real life. I'll still be writing and posting and updating stories, it just won't be nearly to the extent that I was before October.

There probably won't be a CRCB chapter this weekend since I don't have one ready yet, but potentially at some point next week. I'll probably make a post here the day before the chapter will be posted, and I for sure will post on my taglist blog the same time that the chapter drops here so make sure you're following there and have notifications on if you want to be notified of when the new chapters are coming out.

I think that's all I have for now regarding this blog and CRCB and what's going to happen going forward. Again, I'm very sorry for everyone who I'm going to inevitably disappoint with this news, but things just have to be this way.

I hope you all have a good day and I will see you probably later when I answer some of the asks sitting in my inbox.

[roosterforme]

Okay, but how about the first time Jake and Darling have a fight? How would that go?

I really like your stories bc while it is fiction, I feel like you show every aspect of a relationship, not only the good parts.

🩷

OMG, nonny. I'm swooning. I try to make my stories realistic (as much as they can be for fanfic). Nobody is happy and confident all the time. Everyone is stressed about something. Relationships are hard work, and dealing with someone else is sometimes weird and annoying. So thank you, I appreciate that so much.

Jake and Darlin' argue all the time about all the small things in life. They have different opinions on a lot of things, but it's never usually anything they remember by the next day. I think their first big fight would happen shortly after she moves in with him, just after she graduates from school and starts her new job. (angsty below).

"I had the longest day at work," you muttered, shoveling the last bite of the dinner Jake made into your mouth. You set your fork down and stretched as you stood. This whole week was dragging. You realized you were probably complaining more than usual, but you were just over it. "Let's go take a bath and just go to bed. I'll clean up tomorrow morning."

Jake looked at you, his lips pressed into a firm line. "Go ahead. I'll clean it up."

You reached for his hand, but he was already stacking the plates. "You cooked. I don't want you to clean up. I'll do it later," you reiterated.

"Just go get in the bath," he snapped, carrying everything back to the kitchen.

"I don't want to take a bath without you!"

Jake dumped everything into the sink and spun around. "You're not the only one who's working full-time, but you're certainly acting like it."

With narrowed eyes, you asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Jake took a deep, practiced breath and let it out slowly. "I know you're tired, but it would be nice for you to acknowledge that I work longer hours than you do. So just go relax in the bath by yourself while I clean up."

"Well, now I don't want to!" You were suddenly so angry, you couldn't see straight, and you also wanted to cry. "You're treating me like a child!"

"You're acting like one."

His words hurt you more than a slap across your cheek would have, and your jaw dropped open. But then his next sentence made it even worse.

"In my house no less."

"Wow," you gasped, turning and running toward the bedroom as you started crying. It wasn't like you weren't paying to be here. You knew it wasn't much, but you had been insistant about giving Jake five hundred dollars per month. And for what? So he could act like you were an unwanted guest?

You ran into the bathroom and slammed the door behind you before you curled up on the tub mat on the floor and sobbed. Work wasn't like school. Trying to figure out how you fit in with your coworkers was exhausting, and you were still learning all the ropes. You drove back here every day mentally drained, and up until tonight, Jake was always the one who seemed willing to listen. You should have just cleaned up the kitchen, because now you felt like you didn't belong anywhere.

"Darlin'." Jake's voice was as sharp as his knock on the door. You tried to dry your tears, but it wasn't working, and maybe you really were a child compared to your boyfriend. "Darlin'!"

"It's not even locked!" you shouted, but it came out as weak as you felt. Jake opened the door, and in an instant, he was curled up on the floor with you, pulling you into his arms.

"Fuck. I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry I acted like an asshole." You tried to wriggle away from him, but he wouldn't let you. "I think I'm more exhausted this week than I'd like to admit, and I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

In spite of the fact that you were on the floor crying, you mustered up the courage to whisper, "I'm not a child."

"You're an adult," he said firmly. "An adult who just started a very impressive job. You're holding it together better than I did when I was in flight school." He kissed your forehead. "And you're absolutely right. We should have just climbed in our bathtub and then gone right to our bed. The fucking dishes do not matter right now. They can sit in our kitchen sink until whenever the fuck we feel like cleaning up."

Jake rubbed slow, soothing circles against your lower back until you were all cried out. If you thought you were tired before, it was nothing compared to how wrung out you felt now. You wanted to put forth a peace offering and just get up and clean the kitchen, but his lips were on your damp cheek and his voice was in your ear. "I love you, Darlin'. It has been a long week for both of us. I would like nothing more than to climb in a hot bath with you, relax until the water gets cold, and then get in our bed and go to sleep."

You nodded and started the water while he got two towels ready, and then both of you undressed. Jake kissed your bare shoulder and held you while the tub filled. "You belong here," he whispered. "I don't want you anywhere other than our house."

[justsomerandomfanfic]

Wrapping Paper - Mike Schmidt X Female Reader

Title: Wrapping Paper

Mike Schmidt X Female Reader

Additional Characters: Abby

WC: 2,449

Warnings: The incident at Freddy's mentioned, post FNAF movie, pining, Mike's nervous, sort of idiots in love, teasing, flirting?, ~hand holding~, mini angst, and fluff

It was Abby's birthday, and Mike still didn't have a present for her. For weeks he had been looking around craft stores when he could before heading to work or after - having found a well-paying job that he hadn't been fired from yet. But even after weeks of searching, he still had nothing to give her. Mike had probably been to the craft stores more than a dozen times at this point, checking the clearance items for anything that he thought Abby would like. But, the clearance section was a small rack at the back of the shop that had half-empty boxes of crayons from unruly children taking them in the store, scribbled on notebooks, and so on. This was all he was able to afford too, he'd go to great lengths for Abby, but it saddened him that he couldn't even afford brand-new supplies like the sixty-four pack of crayons or a nice big notebook for drawing. 

Tapping absentmindedly on the wheel of his car, Mike drove home yet again empty-handed. Pulling up to his house, Mike let out a sigh as he leaned back against the seat of his car, shutting his eyes briefly before raising his arm and reading his watch. Getting out of the car, he grabbed his backpack and headed inside. Dropping his back off into his room, Mike went to the kitchen to start making dinner before Abby came home from school. But just as he was putting the spaghetti noodles in the pot of water, there was a knock at the door. 

Shutting off the stove, Mike brushed his hands on his jeans before making his way to the front door. Opening the door, he was pleasantly surprised to see you standing before him. You had a smile on your face, and you were holding a large box wrapped in colorful paper.

"Hello, Mike," You greeted him, tilting your head to the side slightly as your grin became more of a nervous one, "I hope I'm not too early," Shuffling the present under your arm, you pulled out the folded invitation from the front pocket of your jeans. The plain piece of printer paper doodled with little pictures of what you had assumed were you, Mike, and Abby, along with the date and time of Abby’s little birthday celebration. "It says three, but I thought that maybe you might need help setting things up?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, sure," Mike stumbled out, moving to the side to let you in. Mike watched as you placed the present on the table, dropping your bag beside it. 

You had been Mike's neighbor for the past year, recently moving in only a couple of weeks after the incident over at Freddy's. He remembered the day he met you vividly, watching Abby ride her bike up and down the sidewalk as your car pulled into the previous vacant house beside his. Stepping out of your Jeep Grand Cherokee, he watched as you opened the back of the car to begin carrying boxes into your new home. Gaining the courage after watching you struggle to unlock the front door with two cardboard boxes in your arms, Mike rushed over. 

Fumbling with your keys as you tried to unlock the door, shuffling the boxes to rest on your arm and propped-up knee as strands of your hair fell in front of your face. The way you smiled at him, grateful as he took the two boxes out of your straining arms, helping you move the rest of your boxes and furniture in. Breathily, you thanked him, offering to bake him cookies or something for him and his sister, and from then on, you, Mike, and Abby would spend a lot of time together.

You'd come over for dinner sometimes, Abby adored you, always asking about you and drawing pictures of you with her and her brother. You do the very same, inviting the two to come over for lunch or dinner, or to play board games, or to watch movies. 

Mike couldn't help but be attracted to you, ever since he watched you pull into your driveway. He didn't say anything though, pushing those rapidly growing feelings to the back of his mind, in fear of ruining the amazing friendship that you and him shared. Sometimes Mike would have to stop himself from staring at you across the table during dinners. His heart would race when he saw you spending time with Abby - seeing both of your smiling faces always brought warmth to his chest, and his breath would hitch slightly at the sound of your laugh. But he deeply cared about the friendship between you two, and wouldn't ruin the good relationship by doing anything stupid. So he held his tongue. And for the most part, you did the same thing.

Turning around to face Mike, he swiftly snapped out of the daze he had been in, meeting your eyes as you smiled at him, "So, what can I help you with? Do you need help with decorations or maybe a cake?"

Scratching his cheek, Mike shrugged a shoulder, looking around the room, "Uh, I don't have any decorations. I was about to start making the spaghetti when you arrived." He spoke, watching as you simply nodded, making your way into his kitchen. "I- I totally forgot about the cake… I’ve been so busy…" He finished, a bit embarrassed at his realization.

Noticing the pot of lukewarm water and the opened box of spaghetti noodles, you hummed to yourself before looking through the cupboards. Mike followed, leaning against the entrance of the kitchen, watching as you pulled out a small bag of flour, sugar, and a small circular pan. "Well," You huffed, a bit out of breath as you pulled out a large plastic bowl from the lower cupboards. "At least you still have some of the ingredients from our last bake day." As you began to start making the homemade cake, you glanced over at Mike, whose gaze was staring down at the floor at his feet. "You alright, Mikey?" You asked, gaining his attention.

Looking up, he let out a deep sigh, shaking his head as he pushed off the wall, "I haven't been able to find Abby a present. I've been looking for weeks but I still can't find anything for her."

You paused, pouring some flour into the bowl, looking over at the man as he began to pace the room slightly, "You couldn't find anything?" You asked, raising your eyebrows as Mike nodded his head.

"Nothing! I checked two craft stores every day after work for like three weeks." He explained, rubbing his hand over his forehead, "But I can't seem to find anything that isn't damaged or just something I think she'll like." Stopping his pacing, Mike's shoulders dropped as he let out a sigh, "I really am trying my best, y'know. It's frustrating." He admitted, glancing over at you as you turned around to look at him.

"You are doing your best, Mike," You spoke softly, slowly stirring the flour and other dry ingredients together, "And you know that Abby knows that and that she loves you." Pausing you glanced at him with a small reassuring smile, "I don't think Abby will care if you gave her a present or not, just you spending time with her, celebrating her birthday, is enough for her."

Mike nodded and walked over to stand next to you, watching you as you began to crack the eggs into a separate bowl, "You're right..."

"As always," You sang, unable to stop the grin on your face. Mike looked down at you, softly smiling to himself as you began to hum some song you liked or probably had stuck in your head. Looking up at him, your grin softened as you noticed Mike already looking at you, making your cheeks burn as you quickly looked back down at the dismantled cake ingredients in front of you. "Want to help me maybe, Mr. Schmidt?" You asked, using the remaining courage you had left to give him one last glance.

Nodding, Mike smiled lightly and picked up a whisk, beginning to help you with the mixing. He felt his heart flutter, and his mind wondered, but it faded as he began to focus on the task at hand.

It didn't take long though before the cake was finished, baked, and topped with vanilla icing and colorful candles; unlit and ready for the birthday girl. You and Mike were finishing up the spaghetti, you were working on the sauce while Mike made the meatballs. You bit your lip as you chuckled, watching as Mike almost lost his grip on the spatula he was using to roll the cooking meatballs around in the pan. Looking over at you, Mike felt his stomach twist, seeing the amused smile on your face, "What?" He questioned, glancing from you to the pan and back.

Smiling to yourself, you shook your head, "Nothing. Just enjoying my time with you, is all," Pouring the pasta sauce into a pot and putting on the lid, you leaned against the countertop to look at Mike. 

Biting the skin on the inside of his cheek, Mike turned off the stove, meeting your gaze, "Look, Y/N..." He hesitated, swallowing hard as he looked away. He was quiet for a moment before sighing and taking a step closer to you. "Thank you... For coming here today." He mumbled, his voice soft and gentle. That's not what he was meaning to say, though he did really appreciate you helping him. 

"Mikey, you don't have to thank me," You reached over to place your hand on top of his, "I'd do anything for you and Abby." You replied quietly, giving his hands a soft squeeze.

Slowly, Mike flipped over his hand, now palm to palm, he intertwined his fingers with yours, bringing your hands to his lips so he could place a light kiss on top of yours before returning your hand to the counter as the front door opened and slammed shut. 

"Mike! I'm home!" Abby called out, dropping her backpack on the ground near the door, immediately spying the brightly-colored wrapped present on the table; a smile lit up on her face. Exiting the kitchen, a warm sensation flowed throughout Mike's body as you pulled your hand away from his, greeting the young girl whose smile widened at the sight of you, "Y/N!" She cheered, rushing into your arms.

Chuckling softly, you returned the hug, pulling away after a few seconds, "Hey, Abs," Pulling away from each other, crouched down as you held her by her upper arms, "Look at you... How old are you now? Twenty-Five?" You joked, making the girl laugh as she shook her head.

"No! I'm eleven!" She told you while laughing, making you nod your head and stand back up.

"Of course, how silly of me." Turning back around to Mike, you paused, seeing that he was still standing there, watching you interact with Abby; a fondness evident in his eyes. Looking back down at the girl, you smiled at her, "So, are you hungry? We made spaghetti." She nodded her head eagerly, sitting down at the table, her eyes staring at the present in the middle of the table; her eyes sparkling. You smiled, walking back into the kitchen where Mike was already plating Abby's food. Pulling out two extra plates, you began plating yours and Mike's, peeking over at Mike who seemed to be becoming more and more nervous as he spooned spaghetti on the plate. Bumping your hip with his, you caught his eye, "You'll be fine. I have a plan." You whispered with a small grin, leaning up to press a quick kiss to his stubbly cheek before bringing yours and Mike's plate to the table. Mike blinked, slowly walking over to the table, his cheeks tinged pink as he sat beside you.

Soon enough, the both of you were singing 'Happy Birthday' to Abby as Mike sat the cake down on the table in front of her. The candles, lit and aflame, flickered before being blown out, applause erupting from you and Mike as Abby made her wish after her birthday song. Chuckling softly to himself, Mike leaned forward on his forearms, "What did you wish for, Abs?"

Rolling her eyes, she shook her head, "I can't tell you, silly."

Shaking his head in amusement, "Alright then. Cake or presents?" He then asked as you readied the cake knife and three small plates for the cake. 

"Presents!" Abby declared, beaming as Mike let out a small huff, smiling as he turned to you; you could see the nervousness in his eyes as he looked over at you.

Picking up the present, Mike moved the cake out of the way as you placed the present in its place, "Here you go, Abs," You spoke, gesturing for her to go ahead and open her gift. Mike watched beside you as Abby ripped the colorful wrapping paper off the cardboard box, pulling off the tape with amazing speed. He felt tense, hoping that she wouldn't hate him for not getting her a gift. Before his mind could run off anymore, he felt your hand cover his and he lifted his gaze to meet yours. Smiling at him, you squeezed his hand which made Mike's breath hitch as he felt an odd feeling well up inside his chest. Taking a deep breath, he gave you a small smile before turning back to Abby who gasped in shock.

"Oh my gosh!" She exclaimed, peering inside the box at the many goodies that were found within, looking up at you, she gave you a huge smile, "Thank you, Y/N!"

Mirroring her smile, you waved a hand, "Don't forget your brother, he helped pick out a couple of the items," Mike turned to look at you in surprise, causing you to chuckle under your breath.

Abby got out of her seat, rushing around to hug her brother tightly, "Thank you, Mike!" She thanked him, grinning widely at him.

"Anything for you, Abs," He said, patting her on the back. He turned to you as Abby went back to sit back down, digging around in the box; pulling out craft supplies, stuffed animals, and candy. Mike couldn't help but look at you with an awestruck expression on his face; this girl was too good to be true. "Thank you, Y/N."

Resting your cheek in your hand, you gave him your stunning smile, "Don't mention it."

Shaking his head slightly, Mike looked back at Abby who was already drawing with her new multi-colored markers in her brand-new notebook. 

[munsonluhvr]

MAMA, I'M IN LOVE WITH A MECHANIC (PART 1)

mechanic!eddie munson x receptionist!reader, no warnings. ❀ part 2 & part 3 coming soon...

“No, that’s not-“ Joyce Byers begins to say as she gently pushes you to the side of the register with a frustrated, yet gentle, sigh. “It’s like this,” she says, pushing the metal buttons of the cash register, making the cash drawer pop out towards you. You frown, biting your lips as embarrassment creeps across your cheeks. On the other side of the register, the teen-boy customer looks between you and Joyce with an impatient look. 

It’s your first day as the new receptionist at Munson’s Timeless Tune-Ups, a car repair shop owned by Wayne Munson and his nephew Eddie Munson; though, so far, you’ve only met Wayne. Joyce, the current receptionist, is moving to California for a ‘new start’ she told you, and you are learning her ways, or trying to learn at least. 

It’s only 1pm, and already your head is beginning to ache. Since 7am, you’ve been learning how to work the register, schedule appointments, and learn automotive terminology in order to tell Wayne and Eddie the issues the customers are having with their vehicles – and you’re starting to wonder if you’ve made a terrible mistake in applying for this job. 

“You’ll get the hang of it, y/n. Don’t worry,” Joyce says, offering you an encouraging smile though you question her transparency. So far, you haven’t figured out the register quite yet. She moves a few paces to the side, pulling out a box cutter from her back pocket and bending down towards the small pile of cardboard boxes that rest behind the counter. “Mind helping me with these?” Joyce says, gesturing towards the boxes. You nod, leaving from behind the register to help. 

Together, you and Joyce cut the boxes open, revealing various types of air fresheners and other car accessories, placing them neatly on the racks on the wall. Munson’s Timeless Tune-Ups is a small, humble shop, the register adjacent to the garage area where the Munson’s fix the cars. The office is small, the register placed on top of a wooden table. Off to the right, the wall is covered with things to purchase, small pamphlets explaining different car issues. The windows that line the wall allow for ample sun to flush into the office, making it bright. 

Behind you, the telephone rings loudly, causing you and Joyce to jump. Joyce drops the product she holds back into the box and moves towards the telephone. You hum softly, continuing to place the little packets of air fresheners onto their hooks. You’re living in your own mind until Joyce inhales sharply and then places the phone back onto the hook. “Y/n, I’m so sorry to have to do this, especially on your first day, but my son Will needs to be picked up from school,” Joyce says, moving quickly to collect her jacket and purse from the chair. “I don’t think the Munson’s have many cars left to do so you won’t have to worry about using the register, hopefully they’ll give you exact change.” 

You try to maintain a smile, though panic is beginning to settle into you. You barely can use the register, somewhat know how to schedule appointments, and ask the right questions to write down for the Munson’s, but what are you to do without Joyce? “O-Okay, Joyce.” 

“Just be sure to lock up, the keys are on the hook by the door.” Joyce gestures towards the door that leads into the garage part of the shop where a set of keys dangle on the hook. You nod, biting your lip again to ease your anxiety. “Good luck.”

“I hope your…“ you begin to say as Joyce pulls the door open. “…son feels better,” you finish, though Joyce is gone before you can finish your pleasantry. You sigh to yourself, looking at the several boxes that are left to unbox, price, and put onto the wall.  You continue your work, pleased that you at least have something to keep you busy until the shop closes. 

Off in the distance, somewhere in the garage, you can hear Wayne and who you assume is Eddie, chatter back and forth, listening to the radio loudly. Occasionally there is a loud bang, a clank, of the last of the customers cars behind repaired. Your fingers are laced with angst, the anticipation of not knowing how to use the register, or anything really, making it hard to concentrate.

Working in the quiet of the office is disturbed when the chime of the front door signals a customer. Placing your hands on your knees to lift you up, you turn towards the door ready to greet the customer but the male standing in the doorway is covered in grease, dirt marks tattering his bare arms and glistening chest. He has long, dark, curly hair, a red bandana covering the top of his head. This must be Eddie. 

“So, you must be Joyce’s replacement. Y/n, right? Aren’t you pretty,” Eddie says bluntly, moving towards the water dispenser in the corner of the office. Your eyes widen, goosebumps raising on your skin as you watch him walk past the front of the register. “Thanks,” you mumble, looking down at the surface of the register counter. 

“Wayne said this is your first day on the job,” Eddie says, glancing at you. His eyes graze the length of your body as you places a small, paper cup underneath the spicket and then push the lever for water. “How’s it going so far?” 

You flush under his sight, feeling every curve and inch of your flesh under scrutiny. You clear your throat, trying to glance at Eddie casually. God, he’s so gorgeous. “F-Fine. Joyce had to leave but I think I can manage.” 

Eddie hums, taking a few paces to sit in the chair that’s a few inches from you. He sighs loudly as he sits, kicking his feet out to rest on the register counter, blocking you in. He leans his head against the wall, looking at you. “I’m sure you can, I believe in you,” he says with a wink. You smile, then look away, sitting on the stool directly behind the register. 

He’s wearing a white, cotton tank top, that’s now see-through due to sweat. His jeans are covered in dirt marks, his yellow steel-toed boots now dark brown with dirt. His fingers are covered in silver rings, a silver chain adorning his defined chest. You feel your core begin to melt. 

“I just need to rest a minute, the garage has been so busy today,” Eddie says, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyelids. “You don’t mind, do you?” 

You shake your head, glancing at him quickly. “Of course not. Plus, it’s your shop.” 

“My uncle’s shop, I merely work here. Plus,” Eddie says mimicking you, “you were in here in silence and I had to come in here and disturb that.”

You shrug, a little smile creeping across your mouth. “I don’t mind the company.” 

Eddie hums softly again, opening his eyes only to flash you a little smile. You two sit in silence for only a moment when the last customer saunters into the office. “May I pay?” he asks, looking between you and Eddie. You nod, turning away from Eddie and to the customer. 

The panic begins to set in again as you stare at the metal keys of the antique cash register. You take the yellow slip from the customer, looking towards the bottom for the total that Wayne has written. You recall Joyce’s protocol on how to use the register and you follow them confidently, feeling Eddie’s eyes on you. You punch in the numbers and wait for the cash drawer to slide open – but nothing happens. “Um,” you say nervously to the customer. “Sorry, let me try again.” 

You try again yet come to the same result. You clench your jaw, heat beginning to creep up your neck. ‘Why me?’ you think to yourself.

“Let me help,” Eddie says, taking his feet of the counter. He stands up, sliding up beside you close enough that your arms brush. He punches in the total on the register, a few other buttons, and the cash register opens up with a ding! Your fingers work quick to take the customer’s bill and exchange it with the exact change. “Have a nice day,” you murmur, moving to sit back on the stool, your line of sight aimed at the floor.

Once the customer leaves, Eddie moves around from behind the counter, moving towards the front door where the customer left only seconds before. “It was nice meeting you, y/n. I can already tell I’ll be hanging in the office a lot more.” Eddie says, turning towards where you sit on the other side of the office. Before you can reply, Eddie slips out the door. 

[fanbasetwo]

Hii love! I couldn’t tell if your asks are open or not but I wanted to request reader having their first kiss with hao </3☹️

I love your writing so much btw! 🤍

NOTE : my asks are always open but you can still check it out on the pinned post where I do mention the ask status (if it's closed or not) this is my first hao ask btw + tysm for the compliment, I'm glad you enjoy my works 💕 MASTERLIST!!

You and Zhang Hao had been together since high school. When it was time to grow up and explore job opportunities, the two of you managed to make long-distance work, though you’d always joked about who’d be the one to kiss first once you reunited. When Hao finally moved back to your city after landing a job, things shifted—not in a bad way, but definitely in a new direction. You both decided to live together because, honestly, after five years of dating, it didn’t feel like a big leap.

Still, there were moments of awkwardness, like when you’d share the same bed at night. Sure, you’d cuddle, but neither of you ever took it further—not because you didn’t want to, but because you were both too shy to take the first step. Every touch felt hesitant, every glance carrying the weight of unspoken feelings.

“Hao?” you whispered, nudging him gently. He was sprawled on the bed after a long day at work, clearly exhausted. You both split rent evenly, and lately, you’d noticed how much effort he put into his job. He hummed softly, his body shifting as he turned on his side to face you. Without a word, he pulled you closer, his arm draped around your waist.

“Did you have a hard time at work?” you asked, your voice barely above a murmur as your sleepy eyes met his. He blinked at you, his gaze warm yet hesitant, before one hand reached up to cup your cheek.

“It’s not work,” he said quietly, shaking his head slightly.

“Then what is it?” you pressed, your curiosity piqued.

He hesitated for a moment, his thumb gently brushing against your skin. “It’s about us,” he admitted, his voice soft but tinged with uncertainty. “Are you... not attracted to me anymore?” The question caught you off guard, and you frowned, trying to piece together why he’d think that. “Of course I’m attracted to you,” you replied quickly, your tone laced with confusion. “Why would you feel otherwise?”

He let out a small sigh, looking almost embarrassed. “Because... you never, you know... take any hints. And you don’t really drop any hints either. About wanting... my kisses.”

His words trailed off, his cheeks dusted with a faint pink as he avoided your gaze. You stared at him for a moment before giggling softly, the nervousness between you both dissolving just a little. “Is it because I smell?” he asked suddenly, his tone half-serious, making you laugh even harder.

“Hao, no!” you managed to say through your giggles, shaking your head. “I’m just... nervous.”

“Then... can we do it now?” Hao's voice was barely a whisper, his nose brushing against yours as his hand rested gently on your cheek.

“Right now?” you echoed, your heart racing at his sudden question. His shy yet eager nod made your cheeks flush, and though you wanted to take the lead, the thought itself made you feel timid.

“Okay,” you murmured, giving a small nod of your own.

Neither of you moved at first, the shyness between you lingering in the space where your breaths mingled. It was as though a silent agreement passed between you: close your eyes and let it happen naturally. You squeezed your eyes shut, nerves buzzing through your entire body. And then, it happened—a soft, fleeting brush of his lips against yours. The touch sent a jolt down your spine, warm and electric, leaving you breathless even in its gentleness.

Both of you were lying on your sides, facing each other, and though the moment was slightly awkward, it was perfect in its own way. You tried to remember the romantic scenes you'd seen in dramas and movies, hesitantly capturing his upper lip between your own. Hao followed suit, tentatively suckling on your bottom lip, his movements clumsy yet tender. The kiss was inexperienced, both of you unsure of what to do next, but that only made it more endearing.

Your lips moved together in a rhythm that was anything but polished, yet the emotions behind it made your chest feel tight in the best way. With every soft press, every subtle tilt of your heads, you felt your connection deepen.

It wasn’t perfect or seamless, but it was real, filled with the quiet love and nervous excitement you’d built over the years.

When you finally pulled away, both of you were breathless, faces mere inches apart as you opened your eyes. Hao’s lips were slightly parted, his cheeks glowing with a faint blush as he grinned at you.

“That was...” he began, trailing off as he searched for the right word.

You giggled, touching your lips lightly. “Messy?”

“Perfect,” he corrected, his gaze soft and adoring.

[undreaming-fanfiction]

Written for @steddieangstyaugust, day 6 - "Who did this?" Childhood friends Steddie, delayed because I'm still sick and sleeping most of the time, sorry. I will catch up eventually.

When he was eight years old, someone up there sent Steve Harrington a miracle. It was't flashy, shiny or anything, so it took him a while to recognize that it was indeed a miracle. It came in form of a boy about a year older than him, with a mop of wavy dark hair, large brown eyes and even larger smile - Eddie Munson.

Steve was doing well at that time, or so everyone kept telling him. His parents had the money to buy a big house, get him a babysitter when needed, send him to all the activities he wanted - only they were rarely with him. But that was fine. When you have everything that so many others don't, you can hardly complain about something as mundane as feeling lonely.

God, Steve felt lonely.

He was the rich kid, the one with the "nothing is ever good enough" parents, and that rarely won him any friends. They all expected him to organize parties, to get a bouncy castle for the afternoon, to bring a cake whenever they asked, but it felt like they never really wanted him. Steve found the feeling painfully familiar.

It took one gentle rejection of another set of requests and demands, a suggestion that maybe they could just go and check out the fair that was just unpacking nearby, and everyone lost interest in him, called him cheap. Unpacking meant that it wasn't open yet, and that Steve wouldn't pay for the rides. He was just leaving the playground when he heard a high, loud voice call out to him. "Hey, hey you! Yellow t-shirt! Wait!"

Steve stopped and turned around, glaring at the skinny kid rushing to him. "Yellow t-shirt?" he asked, wondering if he should be insulted.

"Well, duh. I don't know your name yet. I'm new here." The boy stopped in front of him with a wide smile plastered on his face. "But now I will. I'm Eddie, I moved in with my uncle a week ago. You are?"

Steve offered him his hand. "Steve. So, uh..."

Eddie laughed and shook his hand. "Hi, Steve. Now, did these sharp ears hear something about a fair?"

Something lifted in Steve's chest, something he never knew weighed so heavily on him. "Sure did!"

His new friend - only friend - beamed at him. "Then lead the way! "

..

It was after they properly inspected all the attractions that the fair had to offer that Steve noticed a bruise on Eddie's arm. It was pure chance - he and Eddie were swinging on a tree branch and Eddie's sleeve fell back, revealing a nasty bruise. It must have been older, but the size and discoloration were still enough to make Steve concerned.

"Who did this?" he asked, pointing at Eddie's shoulder.

Eddie seemed to freeze mid-swing. He dropped to the ground and pulled the sleeve back. "No one. I fell, I'm clumsy like that." He spoke fast and with that carefree smile, but Steve's gut had a mind of its own.

"Eddie. You don't get bruises like that from falling," he said and despite Eddie's protests, leaned in to examine the injury. He'd seen some like that, on kids whose parents tended to fight a lot, or at least according to his parents, "had a nasty violent streak". He always tried not to stare, but he knew what they meant. "It looks...looks like a punch. Did someone do that to you?"

The smile faltered and Eddie dropped his gaze to the ground. He shuffled around awkwardly on his feet, as if he was deciding whether to run. "Uh...yeah. I mean. It's probably not a secret, it's just that it used to? I mean," he added, noticing the confused look on Steve's face, "my dad tends to get angry a lot when things don't go well. He lost his job, mom left us...so yeah. That's also why I'm here, in a new town, new school...my uncle lives here. I'm staying with him."

"Is he..." wavered Steve, "...is he angry too? Will you be OK?"

If there were any tears in Eddie's eyes, they were gone in an instant. "Wayne? Oh no. He's great. He's a bit scary, but he's so nice. You know, he gave me his own bed. I told him I don't need it, but he didn't care. And he gave me some really cool books! You'll never have to worry about Wayne. Or me. That's a promise."

..

Steve didn't think Eddie meant to lie. "You'll never have to worry about me" sounded wonderful, but it never worked that way with them. And Steve found himself asking Eddie the same question over and over.

"Who did this?" he asked as Eddie came to the school with his head shaved, gently coaxing an answer from Eddie that his classmates thought cutting his hair would be a great prank. "It'll grow back even thicker, just you wait," he snickered, but Steve could see his restless fingers reaching out for the strands that were no longer there.

"Who did this?" he asked as he was helping Eddie fish out his school supplies from the pool. Eddie just laughed it off, saying he'd pissed of a bunch of seniors by not lying to their girlfriends about cheating.

"Who did this?" he asked as he saw Eddie with a black eye and his locker painted over with the word FAGGOT. Eddie shrugged and slammed the locker shut. "It's not like they're wrong," he whispered to Steve. When Steve turned up at his and Wayne's trailer in the evening, Eddie hugged him tight, as if he thought he'd never see Steve again over that admission. As if.

"Who did this?" he asked as he was picking Eddie up after his roleplaying club, Hellfire, and seeing that someone cut Eddie's tires. Eddie just laughed and explained that apparently dragons and adventures were the work of Satan now.

"Who did this?" he asked in marvel as he saw Eddie's first tattoo. It was so crooked and imperfect, but so much like Eddie. When he admitted it was his own work, Steve asked for one of his own.

"Who did this?" he laughed as he kissed Eddie for the first time and found a small braid hidden in his mane of hair. When Eddie admitted he made that one himself, that he gets restless sometimes, Steve asked to teach him. So he could always braid Eddie's hair for him when they eventually moved away together.

But maybe the answers didn't matter.

The answer to "who did this?" didn't matter to the mob that gathered after Chrissy Cunningham's death. They decided they knew already.

"Who did this?" didn't matter when Steve raced to the hospital with badly injured Eddie in his car, the wound on his head bleeding onto Steve's pristine window.

"Who did this?" lost its importance when Wayne and Steve waited for the dreaded news.

And knowing who did it certainly doesn't help Steve now, as he and Wayne are picking up a headstone for Eddie's final resting place.

[hibiscuslovecandles]

✧˖°DIGITAL GIRL✧˖°|BSD X DDLC

Genre:Fluff,crack,AU,GN!Reader,Angst?

Warnings: Suicide,Murder,Yandere,Might be ooc this was one of the first fics i wrote, not proofread, Let me know if there's any warning I missed!

Note:I don't usually write like at all so just letting you know to not expect more of this from my account I'm just trying to get this out my notes app man give me a break it's been there too long

🐅The childhood best friend

🐅Atsushi was the cute boy who lived in the orphanage a few blocks down that you’d occasionally see through the orphanage gates .

🐅You'd usually see him when your parents would send you to the convenient store for sweets or when you were walking to a friend's house.

🐅He always looked….So tired,Like he was just dragging himself around,You didn't understand why.

🐅Your parents were walking with you one time and saw him in the courtyard of the orphanage and immediately tensed at the sight of him and started speed walking out of discomfort due to his….worrying appearance.

🐅Your first ever interaction with Atsushi was when your parents gave you money for candy and when you were on your home you stopped infront of the gate when you saw Atsushi.

🐅You got closer to the gate an called out to him: “Psssst” while waving him over to you,He limped his over to you and once he was close enough you put your arm through the gate bars and dropped a piece of candy in his hands.

🐅And that's how the friendship between you and Atsushi started!Whenever you'd see him you'd call him over and just chat with him and depending if your parents gave you enough money or not you'd get him his own candy instead of a piece of yours.

🐅As a kid you never really understood why the candy meant so much to him,Didn't the orphanage give him treats?What's so special about what you're doing?

🐅He’d always panic a little when you'd give him his own candy and immediately shove it into his mouth and let out a hushed “Thank you”

🐅You were eight. You didn't understand why he stopped showing up to the gate when you told him to ask the orphanage director if he could come out to play with you.Did he get adopted?Was he was actually grounded forever?Did he get mad at you?

🐅You never found out why.Two months into not seeing your friend Atsushi your parents broke the news that you'd be moving a good 13 hours away.Your dad had lost his job and your mom's job didn't make enough to support all of you so your parents were going to move in with your grandparents.

🐅You cried for hours when you found out you were gonna be leaving home and leaving all your friends behind.Your teacher and classmates held a goodbye party for you,Your neighborhood friends said bye,Atsushi didn't say goodbye. You waited outside the gate the day before the move to tell him but he never showed up.

🐅You moved in with your grandparents and were upset with moving for like two weeks but just like kids do you quickly got over it and moved on when you became interested in something else.Occasionally looking back at 9 years ago and all your memories of Atsushi you realize how…malnourished he looked…no wonder he was grateful for the candy you'd give him…

🐅18 years old and your parents break the news that their moving back to your childhood neighborhood…WHAT!?IT WAS OKAY TO MOVE WHEN YOU WERE EIGHT SINCE YOU WERE YOUNG AND DIDN'T HAVE THAT SOLID OF RELATIONSHIPS BUT NOW?YOUR LAST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL?FUCKING BULLSHIT.

🐅Moving back was a struggle,You were away from your actual friends and you had to resettle down,You weren't really social and just wanted to get through this school year so you can move back and be with your actual friends.

🐅Until you saw a very familiar boy on the train to school…It was Atsushi the skinny orphan.

🐅When you both got off the train you both thought you'd walk in different directions and never see eachother again.WRONG!You both go to the same school so you both walked in the same direction.There was an uncomfortable silence between the two of you the entire walk to school.Luckily the two of you had different homerooms and wouldn't need to see eachother….until school ended.

🐅You walked out of school and was texting your mom on your phone letting her know how school went when a hand grabs your bag to stop you.

🐅It was Atsushi!He wanted to catch up after school at the park,Out of intrigue(And also because you just moved therefore have nothing else better to do) you agreed.

🐅Whem the two of you met up at the park you caught up on eachothers lives,You found out why he never showed up at the gate again…..No food,No lights,No water,No interaction,for weeks until he understood he was forbidden to see you again….You were disturbed by this. You told him how before you moved you waited outside to tell him and he began profusely apologizing for not showing up and you had to explain to him how its not his fault.

🐅The two of you went to a store near the park together and got yourselves a sweet treat.

🐅After this it became routine for the two of you to go to the park after school to just hang out and at the end of your hangout to get something sugary to eat. It was nice to eat with him and talk with him not through a gate.

🐅There were times where Atsushi would spend the night at your house,Usually after he had a panic attack,so he could calm down since your presence soothes him.He’ll just lay in your bed with you crying until he slowly mellows out and falls asleep with you.Your parents have gotten used to his presence at the house though they do feel guilty for having misjudged him when he was younger.He really is a nice boy!

🐅It was one of those nights and you woke up on time ready for school instead of waking him up you decided to just let him sleep in your bed so you could do your morning routine.He was still asleep by the time you were finished…..Oh well!And off to school you headed off!

🐅You were about ten blocks in before you heard the sound of shoes slapping against pavement behind you and immediately knew who it was.Atsushi trying to catch up to you with one shoe untied,only his left arm in his uniform jacket,and a orange in his right hand that was on your kitchen counter. You stopped walking to watch him pull himself together as he babbled about some literature club he wanted you to join.

🐅He was trying to convince you to join,despite your reluctance due to your lack of interest in writing, all the way to the train station until he mentioned there would be cupcakes and tea!Hell yeah you're coming!

🐅He waited for you outside your classroom so you both could walk to club together!On your way to club you found out he's the vice president of the club no wonder he wanted you to join -.- 🐅He introduced you to the other club members: The….eccentric Dazai,The calm Chuuya,and the charismatic club president Fyodor

🐅Writing poems with them is interesting enough.Atsushi really likes writing poems about food it seems haha!

🐅….Tf you mean the school festival is coming up soon and we gotta get ready for that🧍🏽‍♂️

🐅Sorry Atsushi that I can't go home with you and hang out with at park and eat!I have to make sure Dazai doesn't kill himself after school!Maybe next time….You say for fourth time this week

🐅After taking care of some business for the school festival you're finally on your way home!It's pretty damn dark out,The street lights are on and everything,You check your phone and see it's 8:30…You aren't gonna get any homework done.

🐅You turn around when you feel a hand on your shoulder, it's Atsushi,He ends up walking you home.

🐅On your way home the two of you discussed you helping the others for the festival,During this entire conversation his eyes were…glassy like he wanted to cry,then suddenly he started apologizing profusely while crying into the crook of your neck with his hands gripping the sleeves of your uniform where he confessed that it hurts him how selfish his love for you is…

🐅You both went your separate ways.

🐅“Good morning-……Atsushi?”

🦀The boy in homeroom

🦀First day of senior year in a new school yay…Atleast he kept you entertained enough.

🦀When you walked into your homeroom class for the first time your main objective was: SURVIVE. Sure you saw a few people from your elementary school you could talk to but its been a good 10 years so they probably forgot your existence, created way stronger friendships, and created solid dynamics with eachother so what was the point on socializing with them?That's the reason why you didn't interact with Atsushi on the way to school.The goal is to graduate and immediately move back to your grandparents where your real friends are so its best to just sit all the way in the back of the class and hope you're still able to read from the board.

🦀Unfortunately you ended up sitting behind a complete weirdo. The moment you sat down behind his head immediately turned to look at you,Lept from his seat,On one knee askung you out.

🦀And based on your classmates reactions of: Looking at you and the weirdo wrapped in bandages for 3 seconds then going back to what they were doing and completely not acknowledging what he just did you can assume this is a regular occurrence.

🦀This’ll be fun.

🦀When the first period teacher walked in he immediately asked Dazai to stop his behavior towards you and just rubbed his face with his hands with a mumble of how he hates his job. Thats how you found out the boy's name was Dazai.

🦀The teacher got the class seated and had you introduce yourself properly and gave you a heads up that he has expectations for you that you will meet when you take his class.

🦀It was kinda hard to pay attention to what he was saying when this Dazai kid is literally snoring loudly in the middle of class and noone seems to care.

🦀When class actually began he immediately woke up then kept leaning back in his seat,his head was completely in the way,It's too late to move seats now so I guess you're just not gonna get any work done on the first day.

🦀Everytime he'd lean back he'd either be completely disinterested in you or he'd be pestering you to speak to him!The mixed messages he was giving you were crazy.

🦀At some point he leaned so far back in his seat that he hit the back of his head on your desk and flopped over on the ground causing the entire class to look at you to,Some laughing,Some just staring,the teacher rushed over and scolded Dazai for his antics.

🦀Which led to you,by the teachers orders,having to drag Dazai to the nurses office with his arm slug over your shoulder and your arm resting on his shoulder to make sure his head didn't bust open all over the floor.

🦀You seriously doubted if he was actually hurt since he kept mumbling to you about philosophy or something,You don't know probably some weird kid school threat stuff,hell he even made full eye contact with you during the walk to the infirmary you expecting him to say “Don't come to school tomorrow” but instead “You're an alright person.Keep being a okay person..”….Not sure what that means but you dropped him off with the nurse because you had no time for this edgy bullshit.

🦀After that you quickly got used to Dazai's off-putting antics just like the rest of the class and the teachers.Turns out him asking to go out with you wasn't anything special apparently he's asked every girl in your homeroom that question atleast once.Damn can't even have a y/n moment.

🦀You learned more about the freak sitting infront of you during class when he'd chat at you instead of doing his work. You know he likes crab and alcohol and that he's most definitely suicidal but you immediately knew that one when he saw him wrapped up like a mummy…..and anything else about him is a mystery.

🦀You did try pressing him for more on his life but he'd just smile at you and try and have you guess.Goodluck asking other classmates cause they tried the same thing….Meh that strange guy probably kills dogs on his free time so it'd probably the best if you just go with the flow and don't try to dig too much into him.

🦀Hell you've even started playing along with his antics more amused at this point than concerned like you were at first.Are you still worries for him?Yes but it'll save you tears if you pick to go along with his weird shit instead of question it.

🦀You even sit next to him during lunch,Less out of will and more out of “I don't wanna look like some unsocial loser” so why not sit next to the weird kid.Atleast he knows how to keep a conversation interesting.

🦀Everyday he'll ask you if you brought your notes in and when you give him your notes he'll tell you got things wrong. So you do pay attention or not?He's totally not taking it as an excuse to talk to you or anything.

🦀When Dazai is actually paying attention to what's happening in class you like to throw stuff like paper and erases at the back of his head to annoy him.The dreadful looking boy would always throw them back at you or start leaning back in his seat again to block your vision of the board.Hes your homeroom pal who you annoy in homeroom and homeroom only. You don't really go out of your way to hangout outside of homeroom. Homeroom is enough Dazai for you.

🦀But life decided you needed more Dazai in your life. BY INTRODUCING YOU TO SOMETHING CALLED A LITERATURE CLUB.

🦀When Atsushi introduced you to everyone in the club you avoided eye contact with that weirdo and pretended to not know him,Dazai seemed more amused than anything and ran with it…not really he VERY dramatically greeted you and said he totally hasn't met you before.

🦀He brought tea for everyone!You didn't realize he could do something without messing it up :0

🦀Though the ginger haired,Chuuya,didn't seem too pleased with the tea.He kept glaring at Dazai. Best not think too much into it.

🦀Dazai didn't seem to mind Chuuya glaring at him.He even poked fun at guy who most definitely wanted him in the ground!

🦀God hes weird.

🦀Aaaaand the two are arguing over poetry.What kinda nerd yells about poetry.

🦀They had you compare their poetry to eachother. Chuuya's poem is very cynical and depressing and full of metaphors there's a sense of loss that his poem emits. Dazai's poem comes off as very casual,like talking to a friend you haven't see in awhile about how life has been treating the two of you,but when you read inbetween the lines there's something off about the poem like the poem itself has something to hide. Comparing two edgelords. Great. Luckily it was quickly resolved.

🦀When it came to reading your poems in front of eachother you frankly felt illiterate compared to the rest of them. Atsushi would always reassure you that your writing was amazing,which you appreciated compared to Dazai who would rest his elbow on top of your head and talk about the parts you needed to work on,Thank you Atsushi Fuck you D(ickhead)azi.

🦀Back in homeroom and you've recently been making some small friendships with your classmates,From this you learned more about Dazai,turns out noone is really friends with the guy they'd more describe themselves as “Good acquaintances” with Dazai,They'll talk to Dazai during lunch and have a fun conversation with him but other than that they don't really know anything about him. Some described him as a man whore, Some saw him as a weirdo, and others thought he's just some guy. All three seem like a accurate character profile to you.

🦀You brought tea to the club meeting and everyone liked the tea you prepared!Dazai just began fawning over you and proposed that the two of you go down together like Romeo and Juliet…It's just tea bro calm down its not that serious but hey it's cute or whatever so you roll with his dramatic ass and feed into it.

🦀He casually stands behind you while you're busy trying to write a poem he’ll have one arm resting on the table so that the back of your head is practically against his chest as he critiques the words you use.

🦀….A school festival is happening and we need to prepare?Damn you Atsushi🤠

🦀Well I might as well work with Atsushi-Hm?Annnd Dazai is whining WAIT PUT THAT DOWN DAZAI!

🦀Sorry Atsushi that I can't go home with you and hang out with at park and eat!I have to make sure Dazai doesn't kill himself after school!Maybe next time….You say for fourth time this week

🦀During those days you'd spend with Dazai it was actually kinda fun!Did you get much work done?Eehh but you both to eat crab on the pier with your feet ankle deep in the ocean as you two sit there and watch the sunset while laughing about shit that won't matter later. You don't know anything about him but you're content.

🦀You actually got him on task so that the two of you could actually focus on the actual objective. Banner making.

🦀Making a banner for the literature with Dazai in his crumby apartment was an experience. The two of you set the blank banner paper on the living room floor and he just went wild flinging paint everywhere!You,worried,asked him if his parents would get mad at the mess…There was a moment of silence between the two of you before he replied that his parents are always at work so they won't mind in a nonchalant tone. You felt like you shouldn't push further.

🦀Dazai insisted on making something attention gaining but you had to explain that eye catching and people giving your banner stares for being a bit too creative aren't exactly the same

🦀So the two of you had to make a eye catching but not eye buring banner and you two somehow managed to do it?

🦀A light yellow background with yellow polka dots and the words written in cute pastel colors.

🦀It wasn't the vision Dazai had in mind but believe it or not throwing paint on a banner and writing literature club in sharpie isn't exactly cute.

🦀The two of you had to clean up after painting Dazai walked into his kitchen that was eerily empty to wash his hands in the sink. The soap helped the water to remove the paint off his hands,It also helped to get the paint off your hands when you wrapped your arms around his waist to reach the sink to clean your gunky hands,Dazai stiffens for a second only for a second before you could even notice. He smiled at the way your body presses against his back.

🦀After finishing the banner for the school festival you're finally on your way home!It's pretty damn dark out,The street lights are on and everything,You check your phone and see it's 8:30…You aren't gonna get any homework done.

🦀G̶̨̩̗͎̅̿̆̄̒͗̈̿̽̆͂o̴̬̪͈̯̳̥̩̹͊͗̕o̸͙̝͍̤͚̝̗͚͂̒͝d̷̨͚͓̫̱̲̙̹̩̜̤̄ ̶̛̹͚͖̱͚̯͈̂̏̐̊́̔͌͐̓̊̒̋͛̚m̸͚̞͎̥̳̑̉̑̈́̈́̓̔͝ǫ̶̖̤̹͙͕̥̩̰̮͎͇̹͎̺̓͂̀̌̈́̑̄̇͛̽͆̍͂̚͠r̸̩̫̗̘̽͐̈́̾͛͐͊͊̓̿̍̓͛̑n̸̺̲͔̰̯̖̓i̸͎̭̔̆̅̋n̴̟̲̪̞̫̭̬͍̥̲̼̯̔̔͗̓̔g̶̠͔̝͙̦̩̮̓͑͌͆́͂̐͊̈́̈́͌̚͝͝-̷̹͇̯̲͚̱͎̞̊̀…̸̢̱͙̤̲̫̗͙̮̯̰̔̾…̷̢͚͔̼͍͎̜̙̖̮̣̪̠̿Ą̴͉̪̯̺̯̘̜͛̚ͅt̵̬̘͇̖̠͍̏́͐͛̊̒̅̈́̑͗͘͜͠͝͠s̷̡̢̺̫̤̲̥̻̙͙̀̏̏̍̓̈́̔̉͛̐̚͘͠ͅͅu̵̢͔͉̱̗̳̙̺͕͉͚̮͛͗̋̆̍s̶̡͉̜̰̦̠̳̳͒̿̐̒̅͑̂͊͒̓͋͘ͅͅh̷̢͓̺͇͖͍̜̐̈͛̈́̓̀͗͑̀̏̂̽́́͜i̷̡̧̬̼͓͈͙̰̖̣͑͌̋̉̓̓̎̀̕͜͜?̵̢̼̮̩͖̥̂͌̄̀͂̓͗̃̂̈́̀̈”̵̢̼͔̗͎̺͙̭͙͕̞̓̈̅̃͆͐̏̉͗̅̕͜

🦀Your train ride to school went as expected,pretty boring,you don't have anyone to walk to school with since you aren't exactly someone with alot of friends you just kinda read manga and stay at home. You just hope nobody tries to get too friendly with you at 8am.

🦀You spilled your way into homeroom,make your way to the back of the class,and sat behind some brunette kid wrapped bandages.

🦀He didn't acknowledge you while you were walking to the desk behind him but now that you are situated in the seat behind him he looks over at you eyes wide,You raise a brow at him before he quickly whips his head back around,Freaky.

🦀You learn from some of the girls in your homeroom who watched it go down that his name is Dazai and that it was strange that he just stared at you and didn't immediately ask you out….Wait what-

🦀This becomes casual for you eventually. It's still weird that this kid you don't care about stares at you randomly but after awhile he actually began conversing with you. He was a….interesting guy to say the least. The first thing he said when he actually began speaking to you was to go out with him…Great now you owe Yosano 20$ for her guessing right. Noone seems to know anything about the guy and noone seems to want to find out…You're one of those people. Don't really wanna know what someone as suicidal as Dazai's upbringing was like.

🦀Despite him being a pretty chill person he would just get randomly deep and edgy,It made you a bit put off by him and you kinda avoided him but Dazai being Dazai just proceeded to suffocate you with his presence more and more

🦀During lunch he always moves to the seat to your left and moves it so it's right up against yours and sit there. Watching you eat,stealing parts of your lunch,laugh and whine when you scold him for stealing your shit,showing you his book about how to commit suicide and suggest suicide methods for the two of you.

🦀Hes fucking crazy.

🦀Whenever the teacher has an assignment that REQUIRES you to work with someone Dazai's eyes sparkle as he whips his head towards you. You immediately turn to the person on your left or practically BEG the teacher to let you work by yourself not wanting to work with this guy and spend anymore time with him than needed.

🦀You start being completely alone in your homeroom. Everyone seems to avoid you or ignore you all of them except Dazai but you don't exactly want him to pay attention to you.

🦀You still talk to him but it's more out of desperation than genuinely wanting to socialize with this crazy ass since nobody else seems to want to interact with you. Fakeass bitches.

🦀It's like luck is on Dazai's side and never yours because during gym class and you have to pick teams you always end up on Dazai's team. It didn't matter what was happening in gym class Dazai was always a few steps away from you. Baseball?He's sitting next to you on the bench. A free day?He's already waiting at your spot on the bleachers.

🦀You talked to gym teacher Sakunosuke about this but he couldn't really do anything about your classmates putting you two on the same teams but whenever he's setting up teams he puts you and Dazai on other teams,whenever Dazai is following you he'll send him to do something else,so Sakunosuke does help whenever he can.

🦀Whenever your taking notes in class and trying to get your education can you guess who's sitting in reverse in his seat and playing with your hair instead? Osamu Dazai that's who!

🦀You’ve texted your friends about his behavior and they also think he's got a few screws loose in the head and best believe you told you're parents and they think he's peculiar.

🦀Thank God you only see him during homeroom.

🦀During school clean up you sat on some stairsteps in a unpopular part of the school reading some manga when a sudden pair of shoes echoed through the halls,You jolted up and grabbed the sponge out of the bucket water and pretend to have been cleaning the entire time,then the walking stopped.

🦀You look up to see a man with neck length black hair with dark purple eyes looking down at you with a kind smile in a all white school uniform. Fyodor is his name and he wants you to join his literature club!Initially hesitant you give in after he explains that his club needs more members to stay open so you decide to attend the club after-school since it's not like you have anything else to do.

🦀Once club hours started you followed Fyodor to the literature club and see Dazai and some ginger guy in there. Great more Dazai.

🦀You walk into the room and it feels like someone is missing….Meh just ignore it!

🦀Speaking of ignoring you completely pretend he doesn't exist but that doesn't stop him from draping himself on top of you using all his bodyweight while whining about how cruel you are for ignoring him even though you keep telling the other two you've never seen this man in your life before.

🦀You wrote you're immature poem and read it out loud all of them praised your hard work but you cant but feel it was pity praise because DAMN they can write poetry maybe literature club shouldn't be your thing buddy.

🦀Dazai and Chuuya are getting into a pretty heated arugment over poetry.What kinda nerd yells about poetry?

🦀Fyodor ushered you out of the classroom and he tells you to wait in the hallway before he walks back into the classroom. After a while Fyodor opens the door and gestures for you to come inside then suddenly Chuuya storms out the class with blood dripping down his chin…these two really threw hands over poetry….Best not to poke at Chuuya unless you want to slapped.

🦀You walk back into the classroom and there's a lingering tension from Dazai even after Chuuya left. You tried asking Dazai how did it escalate to actual physical violence but he keeps dancing around answering.

🦀Fyodor puts a firm hand on Dazai's shoulder and reassures him that Chuuya will forget about it tomorrow.

🦀Chuuya really did forget like Fyodor said!You tried to ask him about his fight with Dazai and he doesn't even remember there being a fight!….Weird

🦀Dazai grabs your arm almost immediately after your conversation with Chuuya finished and begged asked you to read with him,You reluctantly agreed to read his suicide book with him. There was one particular method that he seemed really enthusiastic to try with you,he was just babbling about how beautiful your guy's death would be and how people would write and base stories off of your oh so romantic double suicide for centuries,When he caught a glimpse of your oh so disturbed expresion he stood up with a smile and walked to the hallway saying he needed water.

🦀After he gets back he immediately hands you a poem that's pretty vague and full of weird unexplained concepts. Freaky but better than anything you could make.

🦀Third day and you decide to proof read poems with Chuuya,His poem oddly intimidates you with how fancy and professional it feels, You look up and he wasn't even reading your poem at all!He was just staring at you!Before you could call him out he slips you a folded piece of paper. You open the paper and it flat out tells you to avoid Dazai…You look up from the piece of paper and Chuuya….has no face tells you to ignore the piece of paper he gave you and tells you to spend time with Fyodor…

🦀You tried to talk to Fyodor about it but insists that you spending time with Dazai only enables his behavior and that you should just stick with him.

🦀When you read your poem out loud to the club they compliment your work Dazai is the only one who asks you if he can take yours home with him and if you want to read his poem to yourself.

🦀You take his poem and read it…You swear that's blood and…other bodily fluids on it...

🦀When you finish reading he's all up in your face asking if you liked it and explains its about a man and his mistress tying themselves together and drowning together and that he put his smell on the poem. He runs off saying he has to vomit before you can even properly understand what he just said.

🦀A argument started between the 3 men about who you should prepare for the festival with. You end up picking Fyodor so far he's the only sane person in this damn hell literature club.

🦀Dazai goes quiet before he locks Fyodor and Chuuya out of the classroom leaving you two alone.

🦀He confesses his love to you and apologies for his behavior and that he just didn't know how to process his feelings for you and him being annoying was how he dealt with them.

🦀“OH GOD OH FUCK DAZAI STOP PLEASE”

🍷The hallway crush

🍷You'd always see him at his shoe cupboard in the morning, you never knew the name of the short copper hair beauty but he was a pretty sight that's for sure, and to be honest the less you know about him the better.

🍷You'd sometimes walk near him on the way to class though his classroom was on the third floor and yours was on the first floor so you'd just walk in the same general direction before he went up the stairs.

🍷He never really acknowledged you maybe it was because he genuinely didn't notice you, maybe because he had friends that he'd be talking to on the way to class, it could be really be whatever reason but it doesn't really matter

🍷You learned the guys name during lunch through Dazai. Chuuya Nakahara. He said Chuuya suffered from a Napoleon complex…that couldn't possibly be true.

🍷He must be pretty fast because despite you being on the first floor and him being on the third floor he'd always be out the school before you so you'd always end up looking at his back as he walked off of school property and hop into a sleek black car and be driven off. Damn he must be rich.

🍷Everyone knew little to nothing about him,He was a new student too but unlike you who actually opened up to some people so people knew shit but nobody even knows where he came from or what school he attended before coming here or even his childhood town.

🍷You tried to ask Atsushi about him but he was just as oblivious to the guy as you were hell he didn't even know who you were talking about until when you two were walking home together you pointed at him.

🍷He was a popular hallway crush alot of the girls in your class said he was their hallway crush so you weren't the only person who saw the appeal in him and his grey eyes.

🍷So imagine your reaction when during a school assembly in the gym Dazai's description of Napoleon complex was right. You were a good four rows behind him so you dont know what lead up to this but he just got up and decked the guy nexted to him in the face!The fight that happened between the two of them was terrible but Dazai who was next to you had the same reaction as you. A smile. Chuuya looked even prettier when he was beating the fuck out of some guy. If he survives this fight you might actually ask him out it'd be nice to date someone who is so fearless and strong but sadly the teachers had to break up the fight before it could get really bloody(as if Chuuya's knuckles weren't covered in the other guys blood)

🍷Maybe you two could fight together.

🍷When everyone went back to class they were talking about the fight that happened and we're already spreading rumors as to why it started but you still had heart eyes for Chuuya and were still enamored by his actions meanwhile Dazai seemed annoyed your love dazed state and poked fun at you for it as a way to get you to forget about Chuuya and to focus on him instead….and it worked you immediately tried to defend yourself as to why you were crushing so hard on Chuuya despite knowing jackshit about him causing Dazai to smirk to see your heart eyes gone and on him.

🍷You thought it was strange how the next day after the fight,despite the teachers seeing that Chuuya threw the first punch and there having been blood spilled, he was still here wasn't suspended or anything meanwhile the guy he punched in the face is nowhere to be seen. Did he bribe the school or something?

🍷You ignored the obvious blaring red flag as you watched him from the corner of your eye not wanting to bother him as he is swarmed by his friends and classmates who were asking him about the fight and you didn't want to become apart of the mini crowd happening around him,You just felt so drawn to him yet it was like there was never a good opportunity to interact with him.

🍷After that it was almost like everyday he'd open his shoe cupboard and a brand new love letter would be inside,He'd never react when seeing these letters they'd just end up getting shoved into his bag while his friends hyped him up in the background,You never put one inside his shoe cupboard because of this.

🍷Even though some of the girls in your class encouraged you to do it you decided not to,Not only because you don't know the guy that well but also Dazai said that Chuuya would reject you either way. Thanks.

🍷Your eyes are locked onto Chuuya's back as you and Atsushi leave school together,Not hearing anything Atsushi is saying just being hypnotized by the way his red hair blew in the wind and the perfect way the sun's rays hit him…then he got into his car.

🍷This guy you don't know has got your heart in a fucking swirl.

🍷One of the girls from your class sent his Instagram account into the groupchat!Creepy but you checked out his Instagram so you aren't really better than em. His Instagram didn't have much on there besides a few photos of food and wine. Dammit. Not even a beach photo with him shirtless?Really?

🍷You tried to push Yosano for any information about him since she's apart of the Armed Student Council….Turns out she doesn't know much about him either she recommended that you ask Principal Fukuzawa or Vice principal Kunikida but that just feels obsessive for a simple hallway crush. She even recommended you just talk to him!What does she think you are!?Normal?

🍷Asking Dazai….was a waste of time he just teased you for asking him and when he finally heard your annoyed pleas for him to stop he just listed a bunch of negative stuff about Chuuya saying he had anger issues, he was a prick,and saying Chuuya was a alcoholic(despite Dazai being a alcoholic but whatever.)

🍷…Atsushi what are you a nerd?What is a literature club?I don't think I've ever raised a pen.

🍷You mainly agreed to go with him for the cupcakes and tea but you also decided to attend with him for his happiness,He seems really passionate about this whole literature thing and you wanna support your friend.

🍷When you arrived at the club room with him he introduced you to the club members and yes Dazai was being dramatic about not knowing who you are one knee on the ground and everything, and that definitely should've caught your attention, but your eyes kept darting to Chuuya who was sitting at a desk reading only raising his head when Atsushi announced you as the newest member .

🍷Chuuya is here?Maybe a literature club isn't COMPLETELY nerdy .

🍷You mainly clung to Atsushi’s side during this club meeting since he was the only person you'd say you knew but you kept sneaking a glance at Chuuya nearly everytime you went to take sip of tea that Dazai generously provided for all of you. Chuuya didn't really seem to notice the way your pupils would dilate whenever you'd lay your sights on him…mostly because he was busy glaring Dazai down despite Dazai minding his business…Probably just some untold beef that happened you're unaware of and shouldn't stick your nose is.

🍷The day after this first club meeting Chuuya gave you a little nod of acknowledgement at the cupboard to show “Yeah I recognize you, Don't know you enough to say hello and wave, but it'd be rude to not acknowledge you so I'm just gonna do the bare minimum”

🍷Some of the girls in your class saw this exchange and bombarded you with questions about Chuuya but luckily Dazai and Yosano managed to push back the crowd of girls that was circling you.

🍷Though Yosano and Dazai did tease you for it. Thanks guys😒

🍷Due to your stupid little crush on this guy you ended up writing a poem around him unaware that you'd have to read it outloud to the rest of the club. Stupid teenage puppy love bullshit.

🍷You sat with Chuuya by the closet in the club room reading manga and you ended up learning something about him! Turns out he reads manga occasionally when he's bored!Nice to see he has some form of interests.

🍷When you read your poem out to the club everyone seemed to know who the poem was centered around and made comments hinting that “Yeah.We know.” meanwhile the guy the poem was about had his arms crossed with his face aimed towards the ground along with his leg bouncing up and down with his only reply to the poem was saying it was alright… A win is a win.

🍷After your turn Dazai and Chuuya were next. Chuuya said Dazai's was just okay…and Dazai called Chuuya's edgy. Can't have shit in this literature club. They start arguing over poetry🤦🏽‍♂️

🍷You just keep glancing at Fyodor wanting him to step in or something while Chuuya accuses of Dazai just trying to impress you Dazai's reply is that Chuuya's just jealous that you like his poem more.

🍷You agree with Chuuya but groan at Chuuya being too proud and explains your reasoning to Dazai who seems chill with it .

🍷Chuuya actually waves to you the next day at the shoe cupboard…You could already feel your classmates eyes burning into the back of your head…..The classroom gossip is gonna be crazy.

🍷“Are you guys hooking up?” “Is this a secret romance between the two of you?” “Is this like a Romeo and Juliet situation and that's why you two are dating in secret?” “Obviously you guys are engaged in a arranged marriage right?” “Is he your sugar daddy or something?” “I don't think that's how sugar daddies work” “Haruno I love you but sssshhhh”

🍷This time Yosano and Dazai just watched in amusement while you were trying to answer all your classmates questions. What great friends you have.

🍷You gotta be kidding me. Fyodor put all the manga on the top shelf to “clean”….. fuck you dude you know my abilityless ass isnt reaching that shit you just wanna see me struggle. Luckily Chuuya's ability helped with this to get the box of manga down. You just lean against Chuuya's side when you two got the box down and he doesn't acknowledge it other than sliver of a smile creep onto his face at the physical contact .

🍷During this club meaning Dazai asked if you were mad at him for the last club meeting and a very awkward conversation between the two of you started…So awkward infact that you left Dazai alone so that the two of you couldn't even share poems….Extremely awkward that you hoped Dazai's suicide book would actually give him a good painless way to go.

🍷Atsushi seems…down today you tried to ask him about it during club knowing his past and all but he brushed you off. Since he didn't want to talk to you about it you had to make a choice Dazai doesn't seem uh…there to try and talk to Atsushi, Chuuya doesn't really seem to interact much with Atsushi so would it really feel okay to send him, Fyodor is the president of the literature club and Atsushi is the vice president so they must've interacted plenty before you joined plus he's level headed enough so Fyodor it is!

🍷Fyodor hasn't seen any change in Atsushi but he still goes and checks up on him which is sweet :)

🍷You went over to Chuuya since it has become a pretty normal thing for you to talk to him in club. You try to mention Atsushi with Chuuya but he seems almost ticked off by this through his eyes narrowing and folding his arms, To try and not have him get piss and punch the lights out of Atsushi like that guy at the assembly you explain the situation in more detail, luckily he chills out and let's you know that since Atsushi is your best friend (and not your love interest.) If he had a problem he'd talk to ya about it.

🍷Chuuya likes the poem you made!That's great! Hey Chuuya can I read yours- what do you mean it's shitty?

🍷After much convincing he finally tosses his poem at you and……it's about you…It's about longing that's sweet :)

🍷You tried to give it back but Chuuya turned his head away from you and waved his hand saying to just keep it

🍷Putting the poem in your pocket you go and try to talk to Dazai but he just kinda backs off of you…Hm that's weird he hasn't offered you a date yet.

🍷You try and go to talk to Atsushi after you see Fyodor leave his side, Atsushi clearly has something on his mind. He let's you know that he knows your poem wasn't about but FOR Chuuya then before you could push further he left with the excuse of needing to get some rest…

🍷……A-…..A festival?

🍷Fyodor almost immediately after Atsushi left mentions this festival now how he and Atsushi will be in charge of making pamphlets for the club, Dazai is making the banner(oh god…), and Chuuya is baking cupcakes

🍷“You bake?” “Shut up.” “No I find it cute actually.”

🍷Not wanting to be useless for once you pick to work with Chuuya despite him saying he can do it by himself Chuuya seems happy.

🍷Dazai gets really passive aggressive for no reason saying he was used to working alone and shit.

🍷Sorry Atsushi that I can't go home with you and hang out with at park and eat!I have to make sure Dazai doesn't kill himself after school!Maybe next time….You say for fourth time this week.

🍷After checking up on Dazai and making sure he wasn't dead….again. You headed over to the address Chuuya gave you and you end up infront a basic suburban house with a green tree in the yard. He isn't a rich boy? You notice that the black car Chuuya is drove in after school isn't parked maybe his parents are at work?

🍷When Chuuya let you in you noticed how… clean the place was, It felt more like a place you'd rent for the vacation than stay in long term kinda clean, you asked Chuuya about his parents and turns out his parents are always working!…..Then who picks him up in the balck car after school?Now that you think about it it's weird that theres no family photos up not even childhood drawings…

🍷Is-….Is this even his house-

🍷Pusing those thoughts to the back of your head Chuuya already has the ingredients for the cupcakes out and ready. He tosses you a grey apron and puts on a nice red apron and you can't help but stare as he ties his hair back into a small little ponytail and how his hands tie his apron around his waist, If Chuuya didn't think your staring was cute he would have let you know that he knows you're staring at him.

🍷You played your favorite playlist as the two of you were baking well more like Chuuya, He tried explaining what to do but you were busy bumping to the music from your phone and sure he was frustrated but he was also infatuated enough with you that MAYBE he'll let this slide.

🍷You did help obviously you aren't just trying to bounce around his house like some dickhead you of course helped with making the frosting.

🍷Once Chuuya put the cupcakes in the oven to bake and you put the bowl of icing to the side, you grabbed Chuuya's hand and encouraged him to dance along with the song playing but Chuuya kept saying no in a seemingly serious tone but soon he cracked into chuckling out no and instead he dipped one of his fingers into the icing the smeared it against your forehead….That's why your now chasing him around the kitchen island now-

🍷You somehow chased him into the living room and pushed him onto the couch getting a “what the hell” outta him and you should be saying the same thing because damn how'd you catch him💀

🍷He backed up on the couch the moment you landed on the other side damn near crushing his legs but before he could leap off the couch you managed to grab his wrist and lick the frosting off the finger he had icing on. His face was red and he was completely silent, he shifted his position on the couch and scooch over to you so that he's able to lick the icing he smudged on your forehead;

🍷After finishing baking and decorating the cupcakes for the school festival you're finally on your way home!It's pretty damn dark out,The street lights are on and everything,You check your phone and see it's 8:30…You aren't gonna get any homework done.

🍷G̶̨̩̗͎̅̿̆̄̒͗̈̿̽̆͂o̴̬̪͈̯̳̥̩̹͊͗̕o̸͙̝͍̤͚̝̗͚͂̒͝d̷̨͚͓̫̱̲̙̹̩̜̤̄ ̶̛̹͚͖̱͚̯͈̂̏̐̊́̔͌͐̓̊̒̋͛̚m̸͚̞͎̥̳̑̉̑̈́̈́̓̔͝ǫ̶̖̤̹͙͕̥̩̰̮͎͇̹͎̺̓͂̀̌̈́̑̄̇͛̽͆̍͂̚͠r̸̩̫̗̘̽͐̈́̾͛͐͊͊̓̿̍̓͛̑n̸̺̲͔̰̯̖̓i̸͎̭̔̆̅̋n̴̟̲̪̞̫̭̬͍̥̲̼̯̔̔͗̓̔g̶̠͔̝͙̦̩̮̓͑͌͆́͂̐͊̈́̈́͌̚͝͝-̷̹͇̯̲͚̱͎̞̊̀…̸̢̱͙̤̲̫̗͙̮̯̰̔̾…̷̢͚͔̼͍͎̜̙̖̮̣̪̠̿Ą̴͉̪̯̺̯̘̜͛̚ͅt̵̬̘͇̖̠͍̏́͐͛̊̒̅̈́̑͗͘͜͠͝͠s̷̡̢̺̫̤̲̥̻̙͙̀̏̏̍̓̈́̔̉͛̐̚͘͠ͅͅu̵̢͔͉̱̗̳̙̺͕͉͚̮͛͗̋̆̍s̶̡͉̜̰̦̠̳̳͒̿̐̒̅͑̂͊͒̓͋͘ͅͅh̷̢͓̺͇͖͍̜̐̈͛̈́̓̀͗͑̀̏̂̽́́͜i̷̡̧̬̼͓͈͙̰̖̣͑͌̋̉̓̓̎̀̕͜͜?̵̢̼̮̩͖̥̂͌̄̀͂̓͗̃̂̈́̀̈”̵̢̼͔̗͎̺͙̭͙͕̞̓̈̅̃͆͐̏̉͗̅̕͜

🍷Your train ride to school went as expected,pretty boring,you don't have anyone to walk to school with since you aren't exactly someone with alot of friends you just kinda read manga and stay at home. You just hope nobody tries to get too friendly with you at 8am.

🍷When you were putting your shoes away in your shoe cupboard a head of orange hair appeared in the corner of your eye you glanced over put you couldn't get a good look at the person's face due to them having their head down while taking off their shoes.

🍷The patter of loafers is all you hear until that same blotch of orange shows up in your peripheral vision walking to class. You look over at him and see his side profile….so pretty….The sound of shoes disappeared as time slowed down as you watch him head up the stairs to his class…

🍷So yeah best believe you texted your friends about him immediately when you got home, took them awhile to respond because of time zone but you wished you didn't tell them cause as friends do they clowned on you for this but hey you go I guess💀

🍷Next time you saw him at the shoe cupboard you managed to sneak a picture of him, not a good one but it was a picture, sending it to the groupchat was a mistake like not them agreeing and yall wanting to take him away from you🤨(Chuuya doesn't even know you exist)

🍷The mummy guy who sat infront of you during glass, Dazai, suddenly grabs your phone and plays keep away with it as he read the texts between you and your friends…He tossed your phone back to you and warned you that you should avoid Chuuya if you want to stay outta trouble and that he's a shady guy…but hes hot with a fancy black car :(

🍷Hell some of your classmates joined in and started taking pictures of him and showing you them in class/sending them just to tease you a bit

🍷 “This yo man🤨?” “……That's a whole ass leprechaun-”

🍷Even your parents started getting the idea when they went to your room to check if you were sleeping at like 11 just to see you under the covers on your phone texting your friends about this random guy who doesn't even know you exist with your legs kicking.

🍷Yosano entertained this crush of yours and hell she even said she'll try to use her position in the Armed Student Council to find out stuf about this guy for you!

🍷Dazai simply waved off your crush on Chuuya saying “It's just a puppy love you'll get over it in a week” and discouraged Yosano to not bother looking into him saying “It's just a little thing [NAME] will get over it in a week” Way to be supportive Dazai😐

🍷You can't help but feel stupid whenever you think about this guy and all the imagined scenarios in your head that put a goofy little smile on your face that just has your friends, classmates, and family poking fun….besides Dazai-

🍷He's just the kinda guy that has you giggling and screaming into your pillows while your parents are downstairs in the living room mildly concerned.

🍷If it was possible you'd have a wobbly smile with hearts in your eyes and heart beating out of your chest.

🍷Planning your wedding with him on a whole pinterest board like a giddy cartoon character with a crush.

🍷During school clean up you sat on some stairsteps in a unpopular part of the school reading some manga and your phone featuring the imaginary wedding inbetween the pages keeping the book open when a sudden pair of shoes echoed through the halls,You jolted up and grabbed the sponge out of the bucket water and pretend to have been cleaning the entire time,then the walking stopped.

🍷You look up to see a man with neck length black hair with dark purple eyes looking down at you with a kind smile in a all white school uniform. Fyodor is his name and he wants you to join his literature club!Initially hesitant you give in after he explains that his club needs more members to stay open so you decide to attend the club after-school since it's not like you have anything else to do.

🍷Once club hours started you followed Fyodor to the literature club and see Dazai and future hubby😍

🍷The club room was nice and cozy, it was warm and the sun coming in through the windows made the environment so calming, but the room feels empty…Sure you,Fyodor,Dazai,and Chuuya are all here and the room is full of desks yet you can't shake of the feeling that something is missing even though you've never been in this room before…

🍷Best let it not get to you!

🍷You wrote a amateur poem and read it out to your fellow club members with Chuuya giving you very reluctant compliments you can tell he's just being polite, Dazai being so over the top that you can't tell if hes making fun of you or not, and Fydor being so calm that you can't tell if he hates your poem. Note to self pay attention in writing class more.

🍷Dazai and Chuuya are getting into a pretty heated arugment over poetry.What kinda nerd yells about poetry?

🍷Fyodor ushered you out of the classroom and you he tells you wait in the hallway before he walks back into the classroom. After a while Fyodor opens the door and gestures for you to come inside then suddenly Chuuya storms out the class with blood dripping down his chin…these two really threw hands over poetry….Best not to poke at Chuuya unless you want to slapped .

🍷You're shocked cause how have go be pretty lame to get into a physical altercation OVER POETRY.

🍷You walk back into the classroom and there's a lingering tension from Dazai even after Chuuya left. You tried asking Dazai how did it escalate to actual physical violence but he keeps dancing around answering.

🍷A wave of shock hits you, the last time you saw Chuya get into a fight was like 4 weeks ago during a assembly and the last guy couldn't even get a hit in so the fact that DAZAI. THAT FREAK WAS ABLE TO LAY A HAND ON HIM?

🍷Talk about underestimating.

🍷Fyodor puts a firm hand on Dazai's shoulder and reassures him that Chuuya will forget about it tomorrow.

🍷Chuuya really did forget like Fyodor said!You tried to talk to him about his fight with Dazai and he doesn't even remember there being a fight!….Weird, From their interactions in the club that you've seen Dazai really got a rise got out if Chuuya so you're suprised that Chuuya didn't even seem to care.

🍷You decided to trade poems with Chuuya!You read his and he reads yours!….You thought you were bad at poems but damn!Chuuya didn't even put words it was just numbers and letters it looked like code from those movies or something.

🍷Looking up at Chuuya to question what he just gave you you see….oh god is that blood? Stop it! GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAY

🍷Third day and you decide to proof read poems with Chuuya,His poem oddly intimidates you with how fancy and professional it feels, You look up and he wasn't even reading your poem at all!He was just staring at you!Before you could call him out he slips you a folded piece of paper. You open the paper and it flat out tells you to avoid Dazai…You look up from the piece of paper and Chuuya….has no face tells you to ignore the piece of paper he gave you and tells you to spend time with Fyodor…

🍷You tried to talk to Fyodor about it sure you find Dazai weird but hes sure as hell needs hep but Fydor insists that you sending time with Dazai only enables his behavior and that you should just stick with him and he tells you to just forget about it. Forget about Dazai.

🍷When you read your poem out loud to the club they compliment your work Dazai is the only one who asks you if he can take yours home with him and if you want to read his poem to yourself.

🍷You take his poem and read it…You swear that's blood and…other bodily fluids on it

🍷During this exchange you kept glancing from his poem and looking past his shoulder. Chuuya was giving you look of disapproval and concern before he eventually completely averted his gaze from you

🍷When you finish reading he's all up in your face asking if you liked it and explains its about a man and his mistress tying themselves together and drowning together and that he put his smell on the poem. He runs off saying he has to vomit before you can even properly understand what he just said.

🍷A argument started between the 3 men about who you should prepare for the festival with. You end up picking Fyodor so far he's the only sane person in this damn hell literature club

🍷Dazai goes quiet before he locks Fyodor and Chuuya out of the classroom leaving you two alone. Chuuya was cussing Dazai out from the other side of the door demanding to be let in and that he doesn't trust Dazai to be alone with you.

🍷The yelling stops suddenly. Chuuya was mid yelling before it went quiet…

🍷He confesses his love to you and apologies for his behavior and that he just didn't know how to process his feelings for you and him being annoying was how he dealt with them

🍷“OH GOD OH FUCK DAZAI STOP PLEASE”

🐀The club president

🐀In the beginning, there was darkness.

🐀A formless dark void.

🐀And then a voice boomed “Let there be light!” and there was light.

🐀Not much of a memory he can recall from, can't even remember what he had for breakfast or what he learned in class today, He just remembers the club room.

🐀The sweet boring club room.

🐀It was just him, Dazai, and Chuuya. He doesn't remember how he knows them or how he met them but they were apart of his club…that he has no recollection of starting .

🐀Then his vice president, Atsushi, walked in with…you.

🐀Your hair, your body, your voice, all things that belong to a monster. You.

🐀He enjoys your existence. Always acting innocent to everyone when he can read your soul.

🐀He likes having someone such as yourself in his club.

🐀He let's you stay in hope that you'll stop going down the route your on and turn to him.

🐀Yet you keep up with your ways.

🐀Continuing to present yourself to other like youre worth nothing. That's why you agreed to attend the literature club with Atsushi you heard there'd be attention. He sees right through you siren.

🐀You reading with him is clearly you buttering him up you're playing the long game from what he observed. Well played.

🐀But you don't know that he knows this. That he knows that you're actively trying to deceive him. He just sips the tea Dazai made and reads his book all while you're toying with your food for entertainment like the disgusting creature but he won't give into your act, a man such as himself should never entertain a dog unless he wants to meet his end.

🐀The way your lips flapped when you shared your poem made him want to vomit. Your poem was terrible yet he gave you praise, to stay civil with you.

🐀Your mouth is filthy. It doesn't matter what you're saying it all sounds dirty by a mouth tainted by the devil. One of God's worst creations. That's the only way to explain YOU.

🐀As much as he's unamused at how dirty you are he understands that poor souls like you need proper guidance.

🐀Your uncleanness was appealing and if he must take advantage of you to use your evil for himself he will.

🐀You stepped out the room.

🐀In a blink of a eye his vision went dark and he was back in the classroom repeating the same thing… Drink tea, read, write poetry,and read poem out loud.

🐀pick him let him help you

🐀Dazai and Chuuya get into a argument about poetry and drag you into it only makes him loathe you more with you acting as some sort of madonna and managing to convince everyone of it makes him irritated. He only watches as you manage to break up the fight.

🐀Its all black again.

🐀He disappears again until he's needed again.

🐀He can't remember anything…

🐀Other than the face…It was pure…On the other side of the screen….not inside the simulation. The only thing that is real.

🐀And he's back in the club room with Chuuya, Dazai, and Atsushi everyone and everything feels flat. 2D like paper cut outs. They aren't real…besides you.

🐀Your avatar walks in, he can see you inside the eye of your avatar, and he sees the avatar look at Atsushi and walk up to him…

🐀When your avatar walks up to him and asks him to check on Atsushi for you he agrees. So that you be distracted with spending time with the others and he could…mess with Atsushi at bit .

🐀Fyodor wished he could spend time with you but he needed the others out of the way first if he wanted to reach out to you. You two are the only two that are real.

🐀He left after he was certain he was done messing with Atsushi and went back to his usual spot and sat to drink the flavorless flat tea and blank weightless book right on time since your avatar immediately goes to Atsushi.

🐀He felt a sense of pride when he watches Atsushi drag himself out of the classroom. It worked.

🐀When Atsushi left he swiftly switches your attention onto him making sure to keep eye contact with your avatar so that he can see you.

🐀He lets you know that he and Atsushi were going to be making pamphlets for the festival, Chuuya was going to be baking, and Dazai was going to be banner making. He felt his digital heart boom when you agreed to work with him on the pamphlets. Finally just some one on one time.

🐀But Dazai and Chuuya shut it down since he already has a partner, Atsushi, to help him.

🐀….They just sealed their fates.

🐀When you left the class room and black came back into his vision. He immediately made it his goal to mess with Atsushi more to get him out the picture then get the others.

🐀The two of you are married under the eyes of God. Jesus was able to help Mary Magdalene. He'll he able to save your damned soul. That's why he's sentient.

🐀G̶̨̩̗͎̅̿̆̄̒͗̈̿̽̆͂o̴̬̪͈̯̳̥̩̹͊͗̕o̸͙̝͍̤͚̝̗͚͂̒͝d̷̨͚͓̫̱̲̙̹̩̜̤̄ ̶̛̹͚͖̱͚̯͈̂̏̐̊́̔͌͐̓̊̒̋͛̚m̸͚̞͎̥̳̑̉̑̈́̈́̓̔͝ǫ̶̖̤̹͙͕̥̩̰̮͎͇̹͎̺̓͂̀̌̈́̑̄̇͛̽͆̍͂̚͠r̸̩̫̗̘̽͐̈́̾͛͐͊͊̓̿̍̓͛̑n̸̺̲͔̰̯̖̓i̸͎̭̔̆̅̋n̴̟̲̪̞̫̭̬͍̥̲̼̯̔̔͗̓̔g̶̠͔̝͙̦̩̮̓͑͌͆́͂̐͊̈́̈́͌̚͝͝-̷̹͇̯̲͚̱͎̞̊̀…̸̢̱͙̤̲̫̗͙̮̯̰̔̾…̷̢͚͔̼͍͎̜̙̖̮̣̪̠̿Ą̴͉̪̯̺̯̘̜͛̚ͅt̵̬̘͇̖̠͍̏́͐͛̊̒̅̈́̑͗͘͜͠͝͠s̷̡̢̺̫̤̲̥̻̙͙̀̏̏̍̓̈́̔̉͛̐̚͘͠ͅͅu̵̢͔͉̱̗̳̙̺͕͉͚̮͛͗̋̆̍s̶̡͉̜̰̦̠̳̳͒̿̐̒̅͑̂͊͒̓͋͘ͅͅh̷̢͓̺͇͖͍̜̐̈͛̈́̓̀͗͑̀̏̂̽́́͜i̷̡̧̬̼͓͈͙̰̖̣͑͌̋̉̓̓̎̀̕͜͜?̵̢̼̮̩͖̥̂͌̄̀͂̓͗̃̂̈́̀̈”̵̢̼͔̗͎̺͙̭͙͕̞̓̈̅̃͆͐̏̉͗̅̕͜

🐀He’s been in the code. He knows everything that happens and he's tampered with it enough that'll make you gravitate towards him but also not scare you away.

🐀He wrote his poem to specifically for you turn to him,you two are meant to be, let him out.

🐀He felt nothing when Chuuya and Dazai gave you their poems considering he knew what would happen to them and that soon you'll only be able to interact with him.

🐀He was calm when he ushered you out of the club room due to the fight between Chuuya and Dazai, something he planned to happen, he counted for the exact amount of time it his head that he coded and on cue Chuuya stormed out he was already waiting for what to happen next.

🐀And it happened Chuuya forgot everything about the fight that Fyodor scripted.

🐀Fyodor wrote another poem. Eve trying to convince Adam to bite the apple for her.

🐀Please help him. Don't fall for the snakes.

🐀You're coming to him, Finally ignoring the non existent fictional characters and coming to him. Everything is going just as planned to freak you out into his arms. Faceless Chuuya gave a shock? Weirded out by the bodily fluids on Dazai's poems?Don't worry he's here and normal. The normal option. The real option.

🐀You care for Dazai yes?He's your friend so don't enable this behavior of his. The more time you spend with him the more you're supporting him. Just forget about it. Forget about him. Forget about everyone.

🐀Look at his behavior towards you!It's disturbing. Depraved. You wouldn't want his poem fluids to get more alarming would you?Because he can up the extremity if needed.

🐀You have to pick Fyodor for the festival now. He's coded that you physically can't pick anyone but him. He just feels his digital stomach flip when you pick him. He can finally speak to a real person. Not just someone who's a bunch of code like Dazai and Chuuya.

🐀They were finally dealt with.

🐀“OH GOD OH FUCK DAZAI STOP PLEASE”

🐀Its just him and your avatar. Him staring into your avatars eyes and at you. He explains that all this was inevitable that it was meant to happen. God didn't make him self aware for no reason. For no purpose. He's meant to be with you. He had to ruin the others files for you to focus on him and it worked. Now your eyes are on him. DELETE?

[riverashifts]

@ MY BACKSTORY ᰔᩚ . ݁ 🎀 ͘ ࣭ 🎱 ⸰

⌗ 제이's GiRL : introducing my backstory—what i did pre-debut and how i became the idol i am known to be

˳ ׄ ⟡ ◌ ⃘ i want to do something splendid ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ｡‏‏‎ 𓏸𓈒 something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after i'm dead. i don't know what 𖦹 ˚   ⊹   ♡ but i'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all ( little women 1868 )

⊹﹒EARLY CHILDHOOD

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ born in the same hometown as i was in this reality, i had a fairly normal childhood for the first five years of my life, i had a loving mother, and a father who would do anything for our small family ] — and then my mom was diagnosed with a terminal illness and passed on february 5, 2007

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ this caused several ripple effects for my father and i. my dad became a workaholic and took on jobs he never would've taken before ] — that's when he started taking on international jobs within the company, causing the two of us to move around a lot

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ first to seattle, then all the way to shanghai, then to toulouse, then to berlin, then to yorkshire ] — we only stayed in one spot for about a year or two before moving away as quickly as we settled in

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ during this time, i had to learn how to entertain myself because my father was always so busy with work. this is when i started really getting into music and wanting to become a singer myself ] — however, i was also really into reading—and when i heard they were casting young girls around my age for a role in the book-to-movie adaptation of one of my favourite books, i had to audition

⊹﹒FIRST ACTING ROLE

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ who would've guessed—i got the role!! filming took place in berlin, so for the time being i lived with my aunt and uncle on their farm near berlin. filming lasted for about just under a year—for me, at least, as i didn't have a very big role ] — thanks to this movie, i not only opened many doors to a career as an actress, i also met my first boyfriend, louis partridge, as he was one of my cast mates. we only started dating later on, though

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ gilded, the film, was released in 2012 and filming for the sequel, cursed, started quickly afterwards. the second movie released in 2014—and on the red carpet for the premiere event in la, i met sabrina carpenter, one of my best friends, who was there to promote her upcoming disney show "girl meets world"!! ] — meanwhile, my father was working in london, meeting my future step-mom and step-brother while i was out of the country

⊹﹒GROWING FAMILY

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ my (future) step-mom had recently divorced her husband and gotten a job overseas from korea in england, where my dad worked as well. they became close very quickly—but my dad would keep this a secret from me as i was still living away in berlin ] — when filming for cursed wrapped up, i finally moved back to england with my father, where he dropped the bomb that our family would be growing—they were to get married in a few months

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ i did not like my new family, especially the woman who would be replacing my late mother. i barely paid any attention to my future step-brother and i never even looked at my future step-mom ] — not only that, i was furious with my father for making such a big decision without consulting or even telling me. i wanted to escape

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ and then one day i came back home from school to my step-mom (after the wedding) preparing a meal in honour of my late mother—it was the anniversary of her death ] — from then, i realized that my new mom was not replacing my biological mom, but was stepping up to help heal our broken family. i no longer had any hostility toward them. instead, i started to learn to love them

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ it did not come to a surprise when my brother, hyunjin, started talking about missing korea, and in turn, so did his mother ] — so soon enough, we were packing our things once more and moving to korea as a new family

⊹﹒BEING A JYPE ACTRESS

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ sometime in 2015, hyunjin and i went out with our mom to do some shopping and ... we were scouted by jype recruiters!! ] — we were skeptical at first, but decided to give it a shot and auditioned for the company

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ we both got in. hyunjin as an idol trainee, and me as an actress. i was a little disappointed, to say the least ] — for years i had been wanting to join the music industry, and with this audition i had come so close, and yet they didn't want me to become an idol

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ still, i stuck around as an actress. i ended up starting with some minor roles in k-dramas, and eventually moving onto bigger things such as extracurricular and all of us are dead ] — but that's when i started to have enough. it had been years and i wasn't making any progress to becoming an idol. so, i quit

⊹﹒PRE-ILAND

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ i joined big hit soon after, and that's where i trained for the next year and four months ] — i was known as the "killer trainee" because i would always dominate the monthly evaluations—alongside heeseung, a good friend of mine

. ۫ ꣑ৎ ݁ 𓈒 ๑ [ things were going very well and i was making actual progress toward my dream. i was happy ] — and then the staff brought me together with two other girls (huh yunjin and aris young) and asked us if we wanted to join their upcoming survival show.... and of course we did

[daethvalley-sims]

ARCANA LEGACY CHALLENGE

Hello!! I started putting this challenge together back in March when I played Persona 3 Reload and made that my entire personality for a while. I'm a master procrastinator so I didn't get much down at first other than a vague outline but I'm SOOOO glad I waited because the Lovestruck and Life & Death packs have added SO MUCH to this challenge. Really it was the release of Life & Death and the tarot theme of the pack that inspired me to come back to this and it ends the challenge so nicely. I'm obsessed.

This is a 14 generation legacy challenge with each gen representing one of the first 14 of the 22 major arcana cards, beginning with The Fool and ending your journey with Death.

Anyway... below's the rules. If you play this I'd really love to see so please tag me here or on bluesky (daethvalley.bsky.social) !!

Updates:

8/12/2024: The Fool can now get jobs to be able to complete the Renaissance Sim aspiration.

Generation 0: The Fool

Young and vulnerable, you have not yet experienced any of life’s challenges, and thus embrace all that lies ahead without fear or worry.

Your founder will begin as a Young Adult with §0 and nothing to their name besides the clothes they’re wearing and the companion at their side. Representing the start of your journey, the Fool generation will lay the foundations of hopefully a long standing and successful legacy. 

Generation Rules: 

Create a new Sim. The only limitations are that they must have the Kleptomaniac, Goofball and Cat/Dog Lover traits and the Chief of Mischief aspiration. Their gender, appearance, likes/dislikes and turn ons/offs are all up to you. If you choose to download a Sim from the gallery, they must be a blank slate with no skills, milestones, or achievements. 

Your sim must start the game with or adopt a fluffy companion - Cat or Dog is up to you (a Dog is suggested) and the corresponding Cat/Dog Lover trait. 

Move into an empty lot. The location is up to you (you’ll only spend one generation here) and once moved in, cheat your money down to §0.

There are no rules about how you make or spend money other than you must never reach higher than level 3 in a career. 

Complete the Chief of Mischief aspiration. 

Complete the Renaissance Sim aspiration. 

Purchase the Brave trait from the Rewards Store (8,000 satisfaction points)

Have at least one child (this is a legacy after all!) and have the best relationship with them. 

Marriage is optional but only after completing your aspirations. 

Swipe an object every time you leave your home lot.

Master at least one instrument.

The Fool embraces anything and everything that life throws at them. Accept all self discovery moments. 

Traits: Kleptomaniac, Goofball, Cat/Dog Lover

Aspiration: Chief of Mischief AND Renaissance Sim 

Max skills: Mischief, one instrument. 

Career: Various

Generation 1: The Magician

Raised by the Fool, you see the potential of the world laid ahead of you. You feel a spiritual calling to the Magic Realm and determination to do whatever it takes to master its sacred power. 

Generation Rules:

Leave home as a teen and move to Glimmerbrook and become a Spellcaster via completing the Rite of Ascension ritual at the magic realm. 

Drop out of high school to focus on your magical studies.

Complete the Spellcaster skill tree and become a magical Virtuoso.

Have at least one child with one of the Sages (don’t move in with them as they will lose Sage status). 

Never marry.

Embrace the power of crystals and master Gemology to manipulate your abilities and moods.

Complete both your chosen Spellcaster aspiration and Crystal Crafter.

Traits:  Childish, Creative, Self-Assured

Character values: Irresponsible

Aspiration: Spellcraft & Sorcery OR Purveyor of Potions, Crystal Crafter

Max skills: Gemology

Career: Freelance: sell your crystal creations! 

Generation 2: The High Priestess

Your parent, the Magician, achieved the greatest heights of the Magic Realm. Inheriting the intuition and knowledge of a Sage you seek enlightenment: serenity, acceptance, and a peaceful life. 

Generation Rules: 

Leave Glimmerbrook and move somewhere peaceful. 

Don’t contact your parents after you leave - they’re in another realm! 

Start afresh: Complete the Inner Peace aspiration and gain a clear perspective. 

Get married and have at least one child with any sim. 

At least one child must be born a Spellcaster, that is your heir. 

Coach and guide others to achieve enlightenment as you have by completing the Zen Guru aspiration. 

Remain a Spellcaster but never use your abilities. 

Never use any Mean or Mischief interactions.

Traits: Proper, Neat, Squeamish

Character values: Emotional Control

Aspiration: Inner Peace AND Zen Guru

Max skills: Wellness

Career: Any 

Generation 3: The Empress

You are a 3rd generation Spellcaster, not that you’ve ever had a connection to the Magic Realm. Still, your strong magical bloodline connects you to the elements and the natural world. You bring life - a large, happy family and a flourishing garden. 

Generation Rules:

Complete your childhood aspiration (you choose which!) 

Never use your Spellcaster abilities.

Move to Henford-On-Bagley and embrace the simple way of living. Your home must have the Simple Living lot trait applied.

Grow your own food, and keep farm animals for milk, eggs, and wool. 

Get married to any sim. 

Complete the Freelance Botanist aspiration.

Progress through the Big Happy Family aspiration up to Loving Guardian. 

Have at least 3 children. 

Any child not born as a Spellcaster is eligible to be heir.

Traits: Family Oriented, Generous, Loves Outdoors

Character values: Compassionate

Aspiration: Freelance Botanist AND Big Happy Family (up to Loving Guardian level)

Optional university degree: Biology

Max skills: Gardening, Parenting

Career: PhD of Pollen (Gardener - Botanist branch) 

Generation 4: The Emperor

The magical abilities that ran through your family lineage have been lost. You are left with a natural born ability to lead and easily gain the respect of those around you. With strong family values instilled upon you from an early age, you respect authority, and command the same in return. A figure of strength to many, it’s up to you to solve the mystery surrounding the small desert town you moved to after joining the military. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Playtime Captain childhood aspiration. 

Complete the Leader of the Pack aspiration while in high school.

Early graduation is allowed if Leader of the Pack aspiration completed. 

Do not attend university. 

Move to Strangerville immediately after high school graduation and join the Military career. 

Fall in love with a local and get married before fighting the final boss - you never know what could happen. 

Solve the Strangerville Mystery and become a local hero! 

Have at least 2 children. 

Be a diligent parent - all children must gain the Top-Notch Infant/ Toddler traits, have a strict family dynamic, and they all must gain at least 2 positive character value traits. Any child with the Responsible trait is eligible to be heir. 

Purchase the Mentor trait from the rewards store and mentor your heir in Charisma. 

Traits: Hot Headed, Glutton, Insider

Character values: Mediator

Aspiration: Leader of the Pack AND Strangerville Mystery

Max skills: Fitness, Charisma

Career: Grand Marshal (Military - Officer branch) 

Generation 5: The Hierophant

Your parent taught you absolutely everything you’d need to know, and as a result you’ve grown into an equally diligent sim. Drawn to knowledge over strength, you studied hard and under the mentorship of your parent, became a master orator. Beloved by all, it was inevitable you’d be voted in as the National Leader. However, romance wasn’t something that interested you, and your work responsibilities left you little time for the one child you did have. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Admired Icon aspiration while in high school. 

Attend university and complete a Distinguished Degree in History. 

Join the Debate Guild at UBrite and reach Level 3.

Max Research & Debate skill before graduating university. 

Move to San Myshuno and join the Politician career. 

Work from home and complete the active work tasks at least twice per week. 

Never have woohoo or a romantic relationship.

Have one child only, either through adoption, science baby, or alien abduction. 

Have a full staff - nanny, maid, chef, gardener (if applicable). They will raise your child. 

Live in a Penthouse by the end of the generation. 

Achieve the Wise trait if played until Elder. 

Be acquaintances only with your child. 

Traits: Ambitious, Outgoing, Unflirty

Character values: Responsible

Aspiration: Admired Icon AND Friend of the World

Max skills: Charisma, Research & Debate

Career: National Leader (Politician - Politician branch) 

Generation 6: The Lovers

You lacked attention as a child, and as an adult crave affection more than anything. Where better to find it than the City of Love itself? Your rich, sheltered upbringing has left you naive and sadly you had to kiss a few frogs before you found your prince.

Generation Rules: 

Perform averagely in school.

Do not attend university.

Move to Ciudad Enamorada as a Young Adult.

Join the Barista career.

Have a toxic relationship with a bad/ awful compatibility sim. Get engaged but NOT married.

Leave your toxic ex and explore your options by completing the Paragon Partner aspiration.

Quit your job as a Barista and join the Romance Consultant career.

Meet The One and complete the Soulmate aspiration.

Have at least one child. 

Be a loving but ineffective parent - never use discipline.

Any child with the Irresponsible trait is eligible to be heir.

Traits: Lovebug, High Maintenance, Jealous

Character values: Uncontrolled Emotions

Aspiration: Paragon Partner AND Soulmate

Max skills: Romance

Career: Certified Dating Specialist (Romance Consultant - Matchmaker branch) 

Generation 7: The Chariot

Your parents loved you, but you were still left to find your own way. You were a daredevil child and carried your bravery and willpower into adulthood, determined to achieve a feat no sim had managed before. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Mind and Body aspiration as a child. 

Complete the Live Fast aspiration as a teen. 

Move to Mt Komorebi and take up Rock Climbing AND either Snowboarding or Skiing. 

Complete the Extreme Sports Enthusiast aspiration.

Lead a mountain excursion (solo or with another sim) and reach the peak of Mt Komorebi. 

Staying in Mt Komorebi after completing the excursion is optional!

Only join a career after completing the Mt Komorebi excursion. Part time jobs are ok before that. 

Marriage is optional.

Have at least one child - your heir must grow up with the Responsible and Mediator traits. 

Traits: Self Assured, Adventurous, Practice Makes Perfect

Character values: Irresponsible

Aspiration: Extreme Sports Enthusiast

Max skills: Fitness, Rock Climbing

Career: Any (after generational goals achieved) 

Generation 8: Justice

Your parent was reckless, but you admired their tenacity and strength of mind. You grew up brilliant in the more conventional way, committed to earning the highest grades and learning everything you could. More importantly, your strong sense of right and wrong led you down the path of seeking justice. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Whiz Kid childhood aspiration.

Complete the Goal Oriented teen aspiration. 

Join the Chess Team after school activity and become Captain. 

Maintain the highest grades and study hard to ace your exams so you graduate as Valedictorian - this means NO early graduation. 

Learn skills through reading books and studying where possible. 

Attend university and complete a Distinguished Degree in History.

Complete the Academic aspiration while at university.

Tutor other students twice per week.

Write and publish research papers. 

Join the Law career - Judge branch after graduation.

Get married to your first relationship. 

Have two children with a negative relationship - one Genius (they will be heir) and one with the Outgoing trait. 

Have high expectations for your children - discipline them often and have a strict family dynamic, but always help them with homework, school projects etc. 

Adopt a dog. 

Traits: Bookworm, Overachiever, Loyal

Character values: Responsible and Mediator

Aspiration: Academic

Max skills: Logic, Research & Debate 

Career: Chief of Justice (Law - Judge Branch)

Generation 9: The Hermit

Your parents had high expectations for you and your sibling, who couldn’t be more different from you. You were a born Genius while they excelled socially, and you often felt as if you were in competition with eachother. As a teen you retreated further inside yourself and preferred the company of your family dog to spending time with other sims. You spent your time learning everything you could about computers and gaming, and eventually made a living from your bedroom. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Whiz Kid aspiration as a Child. 

Have a negative relationship with your sibling. 

Attend high school but only to study. 

Only befriend other Loner sims. 

Spend most of your time in your bedroom - you’ll need a computer in there! 

Reach level 5 of the Tech Guru career before becoming a Freelance Programmer.

Complete the Computer Whiz aspiration. 

Earn money through video gaming tournaments, hacking, and making apps & video games. 

Your relationship must be online only - never meet them in person (if you choose to have one).

Never move out of your parents house. 

Have at least one child. Be creative with how you get one, it’s still a legacy after all! 

Your parents will raise your child. 

Traits: Genius, Loner, Geek

Character values: Argumentative

Aspiration: Computer Whiz

Max skills: Video Gaming, Programming

Career: Project Manager (Tech Guru)

Generation 10: Wheel of Fortune

You were raised by loving grandparents, but you felt a bit abandoned by your parent that hardly saw you. You wanted to rebel against the life your grandparents laid out for you and in the spirit of the founder of your family, the Fool, you embraced everything that came your way. With a belief in destiny and sheer good luck, you moved forward without a plan and trusted that everything would work out in your favour. 

Generation Rules: 

Anything could happen!

Have your grandparents help you get the Top Notch Infant and Top Notch Toddler traits.

As a Child, choose and complete the aspiration that best fits your randomised trait. 

As a Teen, we’ll use the https://simsrandom.com/ random legacy generator to set the rules for this generation. 

Stick to what the randomiser gives you unless you don’t have the packs, in which case you can re-roll. 

Traits must be randomised when your sim ages up, and can’t be changed. 

Age up to Young Adult with a character value that suits your path.

Select an aspiration that suits your randomised career/ hobbies. 

Reach the top of your Primary Career.

Complete the Generational Goal. If it’s something you’ve already done in this legacy (i.e. the Strangerville Mystery) you can re-roll. 

Miscellaneous Fun must be followed. 

Max 1-2 skills that align with your sim’s goals. 

Traits: Random!

Character values: Random!!

Aspiration: Random!!!

Max skills: Random!!!!

Generation 11: Strength

The legend of your great-great-great grandparent being the first sim to reach the peak of Mt Komorebi inspires you. You come from a line of masters in their field and you aspire to live up to the greatness of your ancestors in the only way you know how - you are determined to push your body to its limits and perfect your physique, and nothing else is important to you. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Rambunctious Scamp aspiration as a Child.  

Join the Football Team as a Teen and become captain. 

University is optional.

Befriend other Bros and lead a club practising physical activity.

Drink protein shakes every day! 

Complete the Bodybuilder aspiration. 

Join the Athletic career and reach level 10 in the Bodybuilder branch. 

You can have relationships but never marry. 

Have a one night stand resulting in a child and raise them as a single parent. 

Have a permissive relationship dynamic with your child. 

Traits: Active, Bro, Self-Absorbed

Character values: Insensitive

Aspiration: Bodybuilder

Max skills: Fitness

Career: Mr./ Ms. Solar System (Athletic - Bodybuilder branch)

Generation 12: The Hanged Man

The idea that your family is born from magic feels like a distant dream. Your parent was so self-absorbed that they never saw the truth. Spellcasters don’t exist, not for generations anyway. Any magical connection to the earth has been long lost.  Instead of striving for greatness, can’t you just be normal? A normal life, a normal job. Of course you have aspirations - they’re just not realistic right now. 

Generation Rules: 

Maintain a B grade through Grade school and High school. 

Don’t complete your Child or Teen aspirations. 

University is optional but you can’t do a Distinguished Degree. 

Keep a Private Journal as a Teen. 

Have the Beach Life aspiration but never start it. 

Never travel outside of the world you live in. 

Join the Salaryperson career and become Head of Department (Supervisor branch).

Gain the Workaholic lifestyle. 

Write many books on your family history but never publish any. Put them in a keepsake box.

Marry a sim with Bad or Awful compatibility. 

Have at least one child. 

Fight Father Winter and ask him for proof of his powers. 

Traits: Gloomy, Noncommittal, Skeptical

Character values: Responsible

Aspiration: Beach Life (never complete this) 

Max skills: Writing, Logic 

Career: Head of Department (Salaryperson - Supervisor branch)

Generation 13: Death

There has to be more out there than your parent had you believe. You’d read their unpublished novels on your family’s legend and knew it was up to you to seek the answers and return to the magic your ancestors were born from. You left everything behind and travelled alone to the town under a permanent autumn. It was here you found your answers, and your end. 

Generation Rules: 

Complete the Artistic Prodigy aspiration as a Child. 

Don’t go to university- you’ve got better things to do. 

Move to Ravenwood as a Young Adult. 

Get involved in the community and complete all the favours for the Order of Lenore. 

Complete the Ravenwood tarot deck. 

Write a bucket list and work towards it but don’t complete it. 

Complete the Ghost Historian aspiration and befriend many ghosts. 

Never marry or have children.

Be the only sim in your household when you die (you can have pets). 

Meet an untimely end - die before you become an Elder.

Traits: Macabre, Music Lover, Chased by Death

Character values: Good Manners

Aspiration: Ghost Historian

Max skills: Writing, Thanatology

Career: Publish your history books! 

Mini Generation: Temperance

That can’t be… it? You were so young, and you were so busy searching for your answers you never did everything you wanted to do. Fourteen generations and it ends here. However, death had taken a special interest in you, and offers you the chance to address your unfinished business before you move on. 

Generation Rules: 

Attend your own funeral.

Achieve your unfinished business and complete your Soul’s Journey to earn the Burning Soul trait. 

Head to Mourningvale on the day of the Thinned Festiveil and be reborn in the Baleful Bog. 

With the knowledge of 14 generations behind you, you are reborn as The Fool, and the cycle is completed.