#em is doing breakup prompts which reminded me that i still had a few...

[sionisjaune]

After a secret is revealed brocedes!

Nico burst inside the lab, the panels of his white coat flapping furiously behind him. 

“You,” he said, ripping a spare pair of safety goggles from the rack near the door and shoving them over his head. He stalked over to Lewis’s bench and slammed his palms down on the table. Lewis’s glassware rattled, and the spongy surface of the gel medium he was inspecting quivered underneath the microscope. 

“You got the Lauda Award,” said Nico. His face was flushed, and his hair was in disarray, barely mollified by the band of his safety goggles. “What happened to applying together, Lewis? We had a plan.”

Lewis nudged the petri dish out from under the lens and capped it, setting it to the side. Now that Nico was here, his work was certainly done for the day. “I decided to go for it.” 

“Ugh,” said Nico, an ugly noise in his throat. He carded a hand through his hair, freeing several locks from the confines of his goggles. His hair fell over his face in a floppy sheet, exactly like it had when he and Lewis were fifteen. Lewis watched him shake silently with rage and resentment, shivering like a malfunctioning machine. Eventually he produced a packet of folded papers from the pocket of his coat. He shook the paper in front of Lewis's face. “HAM4 transcription factor misfolding is related to muscle function in adults with cerebral palsy.” Nico’s whole face was screwed up, like he was tasting something sour. “Since when do you even work on this?”

Lewis's heart skipped a beat and began to race, blood pounding anxiously in his ears. He busied his hands flipping the microscope off. Nico was accusing him of keeping his research secret as if Nico didn’t close his laptop whenever Lewis walked behind his desk on the way to make tea—as if Nico didn’t shut the door to Toto’s office when he was in there, so that Lewis couldn’t hear them down the hall. As if their days of sharing crib sheets and editing each other’s papers weren't already a decade in the past.

“Where did you get that?” said Lewis, standing from the stool. He shoved the cover over the microscope and lifted the petri dish to return it to the incubator.  

“You really should lock your desk,” said Nico, eyes dark.  

Lewis blinked, and paused where he was, halfway across the lab. He spun around, petri dish in hand. “Let me get this straight,” said Lewis. “You’re accusing me of breaching your trust when you stole my research from my desk?”

“We had a plan,” Nico whined. It really was whining. Lewis used to think it was sexy, how Nico’s voice climbed to a woman’s breathless octave when he wanted something badly. “Fuck, Lewis,” he said. “One more year, and then we were going to do it together.” Lewis watched him make a big show of damning the lab safety protocols and removing his goggles to rub at his angry eyes. “It’s fucking over, now.” 

“We shouldn’t be collaborating anyway,” said Lewis, shaking. He turned back around to finish putting the tissue culture away. It was better if he didn't have to stare at Nico’s red face. “Our fields are diverging. We’re only going to slow each other down.” 

“I’m not talking about collaborating,” said Nico, coldly. “We’re done. Find a new apartment, and find a new fucking boyfriend. You seem to like that geeky post-grad just fine—maybe he’ll fuck you and let you leech off of his grant too.” 

Nico turned around and walked out in the same way he had entered, in a giant, theatrical flurry, flinging his goggles and Lewis’s research at the ground. The door slammed shut after him, and Lewis was left kneeling in front of the incubator, warmth radiating through the little glass window in the front, his dish of muscle cell culture tucked gently inside.

His research fluttered to the floor, a snowstorm of text and tables, and settled on the vermiculite. Some dreams died. Lewis decided he could live with that.

[wrestlewriting]

#6 [Finn Balor]

Requested, #6. “I need a place to stay.” - reader and finn get back together (they broke up months ago) please and fluff (Prompt from here.)

@nickysmum1909 @mistressbalor @superkixbaybay @hiitsmecharlie @ihtscuddlesbeeetchx3 @valeonmars​ @pjanina13 @catie-kaboom @cosmicswimming 

“This is an awful idea,” you mumbled to yourself as you shuffled down the hotel hallway.

Why were you doing this? You should just turn around and go back to your room.

Except, your room contained two of your closest friends. Two of your very drunk, and very animated, closest friends. And you were tired, and wanted to sleep. You’d been fighting a nasty illness, and all you wanted to do was down NyQuil and pass out. So you’d downed Nyquil. But you couldn’t pass out because there was no peace in your room.

You came to the door that you knew your ex-boyfriend was behind. Of all the places you thought of to go, this was the only one that you felt you had any chance of success with. Seeking out any of your other coworkers was an option, technically, but you weren’t close with many, and you knew many had roommates on the road.

Finn was alone in his hotel room, given that Sami wasn’t yet in town.

Your history with Finn flashed through your mind as you stood silently at the door. You’d met when he’d signed to WWE, and by the end of that year you’d been dating. Coincidentally by the end of the following year, you were broken up. It wasn’t anything terrible. You both had just decided you were at different places in life; he still in the early stages of his WWE career, and you having had a few years under your belt. You were looking to retire soon, have a family. He was looking to still make a name for himself, family a hope in a few years to come but not then.

He was still the standard that you compared all other men to. The very few dates you’d be on since your breakup hadn’t led to anything.

It wasn’t that you were still carrying a torch for Finn…so much that you were still carrying a torch for Finn. You were pathetic. Months had passed since your breakup. You’d stayed friends, albeit distant ones. But since his draft to the main roster a couple weeks ago, making it so you saw him consistently, every feeling you were trying to suppress towards him came to the front of your mind at every possible moment.

Taking in a breath, you knocked hard. This was such a risk, and you shouldn’t be taking it, but you were. Desperate times and all that. You waited, chewing on your lip, shifting from foot to foot.

The door opened moments later, a rumpled and sleep-loaded Finn coming in to your vision. He was shirtless, a pair of sweatpants low on his hips, leaving his entirely too-perfect torso open for viewing.

“Hey,” you mumbled, watching as Finn continued to blink at you, realizing the situation.

“…hi,” he replied, cautiously. “What’s up?”

“So, love em’, but Bex and Char had a lot of wine, and they’re being super giggly and awake…and I uh, I feel like shit and want to sleep….”

“And you need quiet to sleep,” Finn finished. You knew he knew that, but for some reason hearing him say it, meaning he hadn’t forgotten that detail about you, twisted your heart.

“Yea.”

“Why’d you come to me?”

“I need a place to stay…and I don’t really um, trust anyone else to sleep in their room….”

Finn regarded you for a moment, and you noticed how the muscles in his arm contracted, indicating his grip on the door had tightened. He had every right to turn you away. But you really hoped he wouldn’t.

Wordlessly, he opened the door further, giving you the answer you wanted. You bowed your head, walking passed him in to his room. It was easy to see which bed Finn had been in; the one closest to the wall like usual. You silently went to the other bed, ripping back the sheets and crawling in. As you got settled in the bed, you listened as Finn got back in to his own, resituating himself for sleep.

You figured laying in the bed, finally having the silence you craved, you’d fall asleep with no problem.

Like many things you had thought about tonight, you were wrong.

No matter what else you tried to think about, your mind continued to focus on the fact that Finn was laying mere feet away from you. You had this weird feeling throughout your body at this knowledge; your stomach was tight but your skin felt like something was crawling all over it.

With much tossing and turning, you eventually found yourself on your side, facing towards Finn’s bed, your body curled towards itself. You closed your eyes tightly, willing yourself to fall asleep.

It didn’t work.

“Why aren’t you asleep yet?” You were startled by Finn’s rough voice permeating the silence.

“Just…aren’t,” you weakly answered.

“C’mere,” Finn requested, and your eyes shot open. Had you heard him right? You couldn’t have.

“…what?”

“C’mere,” he repeated, and through the darkness you could just make out him lifting up the covers on his bed. “You need sleep. I need sleep. If you keep movin’ around, I won’t be sleepin’. So, c’mere.”

“Finn….”

“I’ve missed you.” His sudden declaration sucked the air from your lungs. You noticed he let the covers drop back to the bed. “Seeing you every day now…it’s reminded me how good I had it with ya. And…it was stupid of me to agree to a breakup. You and I do want the same things in life…and our timeline, it isn’t as far apart as either of us thought. I think…we could compromise, make it work, until we’re on the same page.”

You didn’t know what to say. This felt entirely surreal. You couldn’t wrap your mind around what he was saying. It was one thing for you to still be pining for him…you hadn’t expected the situation to be reciprocal.

“When I found out I was bein’ drafted here, you were the first person I thought of to tell,” he admitted. “But I didn’t…didn’t know how’d ya react. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me here or not.”

“You are the only thing I want,” you murmured.

“Then, c’mere, and in the mornin’ after some sleep, we’ll talk this out,” Finn offered, again lifting the covers, inviting you to him.

Crawling into the bed beside him, where he promptly pulled you into his body, was the best you’d felt in a long time. And when he laid a kiss to your head, settling in for a good night’s sleep, you felt tingly all over, in the best way possible. Who knew what the morning would bring, but for right now, it seemed your gold-standard man was again really yours.