#fic: the giver of light | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bratbarzal · 5 months ago

Text

On Your Side (NH13) / Prologue

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen

WC: 13k

Chapter Warnings: angst, miscommunication, ghosting? maybe, some cursing, mentions of OC having nephews (gross), being broken up with over a text, allusions to anxiety, my oc being argumentative and avoidant (she's me), and nico also being avoidant and a poor communicator (he's a man) (he's also a capricorn) (sorry capricorns)

Summary: Poppy Jensen’s job with the New Jersey Devils was supposed to be her first big step into adulthood - a way to prove to herself and her overbearing parents that she could make her own way in life. She was never supposed to become involved with any of the players. Becoming best friends with their captain was stupid. Getting her heart broken by him was tragic. Getting knocked up with his child was just plain messy.

Series Masterlist

A/N: is a 13k prologue excessive? probably. is the mixture of tenses in this part going to grind your gears? most definitely. am I going to do anything about it? no.

I've never actually published any writing before so go easy on the girl. if I need to tag any warnings just let me know. if you like the fic let me know. if you don't like the fic I beg you I'm having a bad month spare meeeeee.

TW for british english spellings because shock horror I am unfortunately british, get used to u's and s's where you least expect them, I will change my spell check settings for no one!! nico's facebook aunt shenanigans have lit a fire within me today and I was writing a later chapter for this fic and thinking if I don't actually put this out into the world I never will so here we are hi my name is maggie I hope you enjoy

Poppy

New Years has always been Poppy Jensen’s favourite holiday. The dwindling aftermath of Christmas - lights and decorations still hung throughout the city, everyone decked in the hats, scarves and ugly sweaters gifted by distant relatives over the Christmas period, and the six days of limbo usually spent drinking and eating copious amounts of leftovers before the new year, new me resolutions kick in - and experiencing it all in her hometown surrounded by the people she loves the most, there is no other time like it.

This year, she feels like the festive period has been one, long, strung-out horror show.

Self-inflicted, of course, like all the other tragedies of her life, she does know she only has herself to blame for how pathetic it has turned out.

She had prepared herself for Christmas to be a dud. The one time of the year that she and her family put aside their differences, and this year she had opted out - or, so her mother had dramatically concluded; she actually just had work commitments. But, this would be her first spent alone due to the fact her parents had decided to go and visit her older brother, Oliver, and his family in San Francisco.

They didn’t have to fly across the country - Oliver has more than enough money to book his clan on a flight back to his home state, but obviously as the golden child, the Jensen’s must bend to his every whim. Of course, Poppy had been invited. Her relationship with her brother wasn’t mutually acrimonious, but the aforementioned work commitments got her out of that bore-fest.

She does love her brother. Sometimes. Christmas, especially - he’s a great and expensive gift-giver. And she loves his wife, Kimberley, and their two sons - her nephews, James and Lucas - but spending the holidays with them would have been a lot. Her family is hard work on the best of days, and the only reason Christmas is ever bearable is because her mother hires help, and it’s impossible for the stress train to leave the station if Priscilla Jensen is given enough wine early enough in the day to dull her usual wicked demeanour.

Kimberley, God bless her soul, maintains a sober house, and Poppy, as much as she respects this, would not go anywhere near that train wreck if you paid her a million dollars.

There’s also the fact that the holidays were invented to unwind, and Poppy somehow always gets lumped on nephew duty. She had long grown out of her boys are gross phase, but lord, do those two try everything in their power to bring it back. She has lost count of the amount of their bodily fluids she has had wiped all over her best clothes over the years. If she had agreed to fly out, she no doubt would have ended up being the one to watch the kids while everyone else had their version of a good time, and so she’d successfully managed to avoid all that with a half-assed promise of visiting at Easter, instead.

Her brother hadn’t been too upset - one less place setting at the table for him to worry about - but her mother had been livid, and there was no chance Poppy would live it down without owing her.

God forbid she, as an adult, actually got to choose how to spend her time.

She hadn’t actually been completely alone on Christmas, not all day, at least. Her best friend Nia had invited her to eat with her and her dad, but they were hardly putting her in the festive spirit with their constant snipes at each other, and so she’d given herself stomach ache stuffing herself full of corn bread and roasted carrots and dipped out to make it home for the Giants game - because there’s no better tradition than watching your team lose on Christmas Day. At least she wasn’t there to watch her dad and brother yell at the TV and get all grumpy for hours after the fact.

She’d watched Love Actually with mulled wine in hand and fallen asleep on the couch - waking up in the middle of the night to the muffled sound of her neighbours screaming at each other through the walls.

Poppy had the 26th off, and spent the day preparing her apartment for New Years, knowing she wouldn’t have any other opportunity to get her big clean done. She’d cleared out half her wardrobe - done several loads of laundry so that she could donate clean clothes to the women’s shelter a few blocks over - rid her kitchen of all the outdated tinned foods in the backs of her cupboards, dusted every surface, vacuumed every floor, colour-coded her bookshelf to look more aesthetically pleasing and then within an hour put it back in alphabetical order - all in a day’s work.

By the time the 27th rolled around, and she had to return to work, she had tired herself out completely. She had been drained, and the worst part of it all, she didn’t even actually need to be there.

Sure, December was a crazy time to work in the NHL, their schedule unrelenting when the season got into full-swing, and the holiday events that Poppy’s team had to organise seemed never ending, but she had technically been given limbo-week off. Not that her mother had to know.

The Youth Foundation team had all wrapped up work for the year on the 23rd, and if Poppy was a truly good daughter/sibling/aunt, she would have booked herself on a red-eye after the home win that evening, but the second the opportunity to accept an actual real excuse not to change her plans arose, she took it with open arms. Her guilt of lying to her family diminished, along with her will to live at the fact she had - self-inflicted, as always - put herself down to work her favourite time of the year.

Her career with the New Jersey Devils had started with an internship in her final year of college. She had worked with the digital content department for her first year, quickly being sniped by the Foundation in the middle of her second year and working her way past content creation to helping co-ordinate and run some of the community events.

When her friend Jessica had approached Poppy and begged for her to cover her spot in the department they had started out together in for limbo-week, spending it with the team at their games, she had jumped at the bit. She knew no one else would agree to work last minute after having their time off approved, and was pleased to relay to her mom that she had to prove herself as a team player if she wanted more responsibility at work. It was all in the name of bumping up her performance and getting her name out there, and definitely not avoiding her family and that whole shit-show.

Poppy loves her job, and is more than happy with her career, but she could sing about it until the cows come home and her parents could not care less. They rarely ever acknowledged her successes because her life didn’t fit the mould they had set out for her - another reason she hadn’t wanted to spend this Christmas hounded with questions of why don’t you come work for your dad? Or why didn’t you accept the interview Ollie so kindly got for you? She doesn’t want a non-sensical, nothing job made up to keep her under her family’s influence. She has forged her own path, one that many dream of in one of the biggest industries in the country, and no matter how much she disappointed her parents in comparison to her lackey brother, she is content with where she is.

She had completely forgotten, however, that the devils played away on the 29th and 30th, and if she was going to be tagging along with the bare-bones limbo week media crew, there was no way in hell she was getting out of joining the team’s New Years celebrations.

She had done her fair share of dodging team events already this year, and despite the fact she could appease most of her friends within the organisation, there was one person who would not let her off so easy.

This year is Jack Hughes’ first year hosting the big Devils New Years party - he’d, in her opinion, stupidly volunteered pretty much last minute after the venue the team had booked flooded in November and cancelled their reservation - and he would not let Poppy get out of coming, even if that meant scuppering her own annual tradition of getting shit-faced with her girls in their perfectly planned New Jersey bar crawl.

She’d done her best work to convince him - had almost sold him on the dream - she and her best friend, Nia, always start at the bar below Nia’s apartment in Hoboken, and then dot to the bars closest to their other friends apartments until they end up by Poppy’s, which has the perfect little rooftop set up where they get to watch all the fireworks across the Hudson. It’s how she’s spent the holiday every year since she and all her girls turned 21, and it was her favourite day, her favourite way to ring in a new year with her best friends in her favourite place in the world.

Jack’s argument was that he also had a great view across the Hudson from his Jersey City apartment, and that she was less likely to catch hypothermia this year because his view came through floor to ceiling windows and the luxury of central heating.

She’d tried to argue that she had all intentions of meeting her future husband on her adventures through New Jersey, and he gave the quick rebuttal that he had plenty of single friends she was yet to meet.

There was no excuse she could give that he couldn’t counteract, and so she’d eventually given up with the resolution that when he is 3 drinks deep, Jack Hughes can barely remember his own name, let alone keep tabs on where Poppy is, or if she ever showed up in the first place. She can always just say she’s running late until he stops asking.

And then she’d somehow gotten roped into helping him set up.

Jack had cornered her on their flight home from Boston, where they had just lost to the Bruins and, all of a sudden, no one was in any kind of mood to party.

“I swear,” he had said, throwing himself down into the vacant seat beside her as she attempted to clear her inbox on the short journey, swiping away messages and storing others to review when work started back up in the next week, “If I mess up this party, and my name goes down in Devils history tied to the biggest depression session this team have ever seen, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“How the hell would that be my fault?” She had scoffed, kicking at his feet when he had tried to man-spread next to her and they had quite abruptly knocked knees. The staff seats toward the front of the plane weren’t quite as spacious as the player seats further back.

“You brought some serious negative energy with you on this trip,” he shrugged, reaching for the bag of skittles she had stashed in the pocket on the seat in front of her and stealing a handful, “And I can’t blame you for us losing, so I’m gonna blame you for constantly trying to abandon my event and making me feel so insecure about it that it turned into a complete bore-fest because I didn’t have my literal professional event planner friend to help me set it all up.”

Jack Hughes had joined the New Jersey Devils at the same time Poppy had started her internship. There had been some corny ice breaker session for everyone new to the organisation that season, and they’d bonded over their shared love for country music. He’d become dependent on her as a local to the area for recommendations for everything - food, sports bars, coffee, grocery shopping, running routes - and they’d quickly developed a friendship that had lasted them thus far. No fallouts, no drama, no issues. Being friends with Jack is easy.

Poppy is older by near enough 18 months, and considers him as close to a little brother as she will ever find - annoying, teasing, loud and somewhat of a know-it-all, but he cares deeply, and he’s loyal, honest and open with her, and she loves him for it.

“I’ve done my part even helping you plan the thing,” she had to snatch the bag back from him before he finished the skittles off, needing the sugar to keep her awake for the quick drive home when they landed. Jack had been on her back about this party since he had first put his name in the hat to host, and she had been gracious, helping him arrange food, drinks, decorations and DJ equipment in the hopes it would lessen the blow that she didn’t want to attend. “I didn’t bring negative energy.”

“Do I have to kidnap you when we deplane or are you gonna come around tomorrow morning and help me?”

“Kidnap me?” she couldn’t help but laugh, casting a quick measured glance over his figure. “Real cute, Jack, you’re nothing without your stick.”

“I could take you.” He attempted to throw a skittle up into the air and catch it in his mouth, not accounting for the fact they were on a moving, somewhat turbulent plane, and he barely had enough finesse to pull that off on the ground. The candy landed and bounced off his cheekbone, and he watched it fall to the floor with a child-like pout.

“It’s fighting talk like that that would lose you another tooth, Hughesy,” she had threatened in jest.

“I’m a middle child, I don’t start fights I can’t finish, Popcorn.” He also has a track record of giving Poppy the worst nicknames she has ever heard in her entire 24 years on this Earth. “Luke’s already said he’ll help me on the kidnapping front, we have a plan.”

“Your plan is nothing without incentive, Jack. You come at me with weak threats when you could just offer me something in return.”

“Like what?” His eyes narrowed toward her, shuffling in the seat until he was facing her fully.

“I want to bring Nia.” If she was going to be subjected to this, she was bringing back up - and she had thought this would be a good trade, knowing how protective the boys were of their private events, especially those thrown in their own homes.

Poppy hadn’t liked the way his lips curved up immediately, like she had fallen straight into his trap. “Done.” She should have known better. He stood up, edging back into the aisle and sending her a wink. “I’ll text you details on when and where I need you. Your hot friend is more than welcome to offer a hand, too.”

And that is how Poppy has ended up spending the day of New Years Eve, her favourite day of the year, rushing to set up Jack Hughes’ apartment.

Her first task had been to go round to Jack’s and accept the deliveries that came while he and Luke were out picking up the decks for the DJ. Drinks arrived by the crateful, the boxes of paper plates, cups and other table wears took her several trips up and down from Jack’s apartment to the building lobby until she broke out in a sweat, and she had done her best to hang all the decorations, her last call being to pick up the bigger decoration delivery from downstairs.

Poppy, with the help of Lionel, the building’s concierge, loads the elevator full of decor, ranging from golden helium balloons that spell out ‘Happy New Year’ and ‘2024’, a large roll that should hopefully unravel to reveal a backdrop for a makeshift photo-booth, as well as a deconstructed balloon arch that gave her PTSD from the amount of events at the Rock she’d had to put them together.

Lionel offers to come up with her to help unload everything upstairs, but the thought of cramming another person in there with all the stuff makes her feel claustrophobic, so she politely declines - though, when the elevator doors open and she bumps face first into a firm chest, her nose smushing against a khaki t-shirt she wishes she had someone else with her to buffer the tension that stiffens her spine.

A large, calloused hand wraps around her upper arm to steady her, and another reaches out to keep the doors of the elevator from closing in on where she stands. She looks up into eyes swirled with the colour of warm, melted chocolate, and her throat feels just the slightest bit drier than it had 5 seconds ago.

“Hey,” Nico Hischier’s voice is deep, scratchy like he’s just woken up - he probably has given how late the team got in last night - and trickles down in static currents from her ears to the base of Poppy’s back.

She takes a short, startled step back, and gulps down the dryness in her throat before she gives a quick, “Hey,” in response. “Sorry, I’ll just take a second to unload all of this then the elevator is yours.”

“I’ll help,” Nico doesn’t phrase it as a question, as if knowing she would immediately decline. Not, let me help, or do you need help? He’ll just do it. “You get everything out and I’ll take it inside?”

She nods, despite the voice in the back of her head telling her that he’s only helping to get the job done quicker, and be able to get downstairs. She makes a conscious mental effort to drown it out while the two of them work in a silent tandem, her lifting the decorations into the hallway and him towing them down and into Jack’s apartment.

She makes another conscious effort not to watch when he lifts things, the flex of his arms, the rippling muscles of his shoulders.

“Is that the last of it?” He asks, gesturing to the rolled up backdrop leaning on the side of the elevator and propping it open.

“Yeah, but I got it,” Poppy gives a tight smile, lifting the roll but staying in place so the doors don’t close behind her and she doesn’t get stuck any longer in Nico’s presence on her own. “Thanks for helping.”

There used to be a time she couldn’t get enough of being around Nico, but those days are long gone.There is a permanent frigidity between them now - it’s been there since the summer just gone - and she’s overstimulated enough having spent her morning being Jack’s lackey while he no doubt slacks off with his brother grabbing brunch out. Her patience is beyond wearing thin, and so the last thing she needs is prolonged contact with the Devils captain where she will no doubt end up blowing up and making everything worse.

No one wants to ring in the new year with an almighty fallout.

She can’t help the frown that befalls her features when he makes no effort to occupy the elevator. He makes no effort to do anything, only looking at Poppy with a pensive pout. “Jack said I should come help you out.”

Of course he did, she thinks.

For the past four months, Jack Hughes has been acting like it’s his greater purpose in life to bring Nico and Poppy back together - like the demise of their friendship was the greatest personal inconvenience he has ever faced in his life.

He has orchestrated one too many ‘accidental’ run-ins just like this one, and Poppy isn’t going to entertain his childish games any longer.

Nico doesn’t want to be her friend - she knows this for a fact - so Jack’s schemes are becoming a waste of everyone’s time.

“I’m alright, Nia’s on her way, you don’t have to hang around.”

Nia was due at Jack’s apartment two hours ago, but is no doubt still asleep after she was out last night for her pre-New Years celebrations. She’ll come over soon enough, though, and so Poppy doesn’t feel entirely deflated to turn down help she actually might currently need.

“I don’t mind waiting until she gets here.” Nico shrugs, again not giving her a natural opportunity to say no. He nods towards the apartment, gesturing for Poppy to start making her way over. “We both know she won’t take the stairs.”

Something about the way he so casually recalls information about her best friend plucks at her nerves, just a little, reflective of the part of their lives they had once shared with each other like it was nothing, but she shrugs it off, beginning to head towards the apartment with the roll tucked under her arm.

“I thought New Years was your favourite holiday?” He asks once they’re both inside, the sound of the door clicking shut behind him and somewhat trapping her in his presence echoing throughout the room. He doesn’t allow for any kind of prolonged silence between the two of them. If Nico Hischier is good at anything, it’s getting people to talk to him.

It’s not entirely that she doesn’t want to talk to him.

She does.

She’s wanted to talk to him every day for the past 4 months that they hadn’t talked - has been craving even mundane, casual conversation about the weather or traffic on the way into work, but now, as he yet again indifferently recollects such personal details about her as if they have remained close, she begins to feel uneasy.

“It is,” she gives a half-hearted, dismissive response.

“Then why are you all grumpy?”

“I’m not.” She frowns, eyebrows furrowing and arms crossing as she turns to face him, the lie tasting bitter on her tongue.

She’s not trying to be difficult. Or maybe she is. She is in a particularly bad mood, but she had thought she’d done a good job at masking it. He’d been around her all of 2 minutes and saw right through her.

“Jack said you’ve been off all morning.”

Like he cares, she thinks, her mood souring further at the fact he doesn’t see through her or even care at all, he’s here at the request of someone else. Following up on his duties as a captain and fulfilling a favour for one of his actual friends.

Embarrassment floods the pit of her stomach, and rears its ugly head in the form of her biting tone when she replies, “Jack’s been out all morning, how would he know?”

“He left you to do all this on your own?” Nico frowns, gesturing around to the half-way set up apartment. All that’s left to do aside from put up the decorations she’s just lugged up is set up the food and drinks, and Poppy figured she could leave that task to Jack so that it all remained fresher for longer.

“I do this kind of thing for a living, remember?”

She cringes inwardly at the venom in her voice, turning away from him with a huff and missing the way his posture deflates.

“You run events, Poppy, you’re not an assistant.” She can hear his heavy footsteps follow as she moves to set up the photo-booth area. “If I’d known he had you running after him all morning, I’d have-,”

“Called someone else to come help me so you could carry on avoiding me?”

She really is wound up now. Jack bailing on her to do God-knows what while she sets up his party had been one thing - there was a rational part of her brain that would tell her there would no doubt be hiccups in trying to source a bunch of DJ equipment in New Jersey on New Years Eve and he hadn’t actually bailed - and she could write off Nia’s disappearance due to the fact Poppy had sprung the plans on her last minute when she got home and called her last night, and she was bound to show up at some point. But Nico implying she is letting Jack walk all over her and needs anyone’s help to get through setting up a basic party is downright offensive. At least, in her stressed out state, it is - and so she can’t find it within herself to bite her tongue about their situation any longer.

If it drives him away and brings back her solitude to finish setting up without him occupying any precious mind space, so be it.

She almost forgets a key fact about the man before her. He doesn’t give up so easily.

“I’m not avoiding you.” He bites back, stepping into her space and helping her lift the backdrop roll to fit into the brackets she had set up earlier when the structure for the booth had arrived. “I would have come to help you, myself, Poppy.”

She wishes he would stop saying her name.

4 months of radio silence and he’s thrown it at her like a dagger twice in the span of 30 seconds, the way his it rolls of his tongue in a low, smooth rasp scratching an itch she didn’t know she had, and now she can’t shake it.

“I’m fine,” she huffs, reaching as far as she can and pressing until she hears the brackets click into place. At the brief noise, Nico catches on to what he needs to do at his side and manages to click it into place, barely lifting his arms. She moves into the middle of the structure, pulling at the velcro tab holding the roll together until it cascades to the floor and unveils the backdrop in its entirety.

“What else needs doing?” He asks, his tone gentler this time.

“Nothing,” she mutters, winding the velcro in between her fingers to occupy them, before moving to pass him and make her way to the next task on her list. It’s only small things now. Arranging the balloons, setting up the arch, clearing table space for the equipment when Jack finally arrives home. “You can go, I’ve got it.”

“Mohn,” Nico sighs lowly, warm hand clasping around her forearm as she attempts to pass, holding her in place beside him.

She really wishes he wouldn’t call her that.

If Jack is the prince of childish monikers that make her insides curl, Nico is the king of making her melt.

The nickname takes her straight back to the days before the waves of the summer break washed their friendship away. The times where he’d give her a ride home from the Prudential Center after work, whispering a, “Goodnight, Mohn,” in her ear as they hugged goodbye over the centre console in the front of his car. The times she’d meet up with the team to celebrate a win at their favourite bar, and he’d throw a never-casual, “Looking good, Mohn,” her way with an appreciative once-over.

And it takes her even further back to when they had met, and she’d first offered her name.

“I’ll be interning with the content team, my name is Poppy,” she had offered a bright smile, reaching her hand out for him to shake, and making sure to keep a firm grip, just like her father had taught her, when he places his hand in hers. As she had done since she was a child, it was instinctual to follow up with, “Like the flower.”

“Mohnblume,” he had uttered, a smile so deep his cheeks dimpled into deep valleys.

“Huh?” She had been only a little bit caught out by the way his eyes shone, forgetting her manners as her head tilted to the side in confusion.

“Poppy flower, that’s what it is in my language.”

“Oh,” she had exclaimed, furrowed brows raising, a soft flush warming her cheeks, “Pretty!”

“Very.”

She had convinced herself for a long time that it was just his way of remembering - an aid in blurring the lines between the two languages that, especially back then, he often found himself mixed up in. And then, after a while, using it seemed to bring a protected familiarity between them - like an inside joke - and he’d use it less in front of others and more in the times it was just the two of them.

Years down the line from hearing it for the first time, and months down the line from hearing it for the last, her heart still thumps the same erratic beat at the sound.

Nico’s eyes still shine the same way when he looks down at her, and she fights every fibre of her being not to think too much about it. Or not to think about the touch of his hand on her arm, still holding her in place, the two of them closer than they have been in a long time, now.

It’s painfully easy to forget the months of distance after only seconds in his immediate company - to wipe from her memory the reason for her reticence and to push down the stubborn desire to push him away.

Her lips part to speak, and she doesn’t know if she’s about to turn him down or take him in, because another voice fills the apartment before any words get the chance to spill out.

“I come bearing gifts!” A sing-song lull breaks the silence as her best friend makes her presence known, entering the apartment with a drinks carrier in one hand, and a to-go back over the other wrist.

Poppy steps away, shaking Nico’s grip from her arm, and turns to give Nia her full attention, hoping that she is either too hungover or too focused on herself to see or care about the obvious tension between her and the captain. She manages to bite her tongue from letting a Thank God slip out, and makes her way over to retrieve a much needed drink.

“They were out of chai so I got you an iced tea,” Nia holds out the drink to Poppy, and then the to go bag, “And half a cinnamon roll.”

“Half?”

“What? I was hungry too.” Nia scoffs, turning her attention to the brooding presence on the other side of the room. “Sorry, Nico, I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Would you have only eaten a third if you did?” He trials a joke, and when Poppy sneaks a peak back toward him, he looks apprehensive - scratching at the nape of his neck as if anticipating a bad reaction to his attempt at lighthearted humour.

“I’m sure Poppy doesn’t mind sharing if you’re starving,” Nia makes her way to the bar set up by the kitchen, placing her own cup down and shrugging off her purse beside it.

“I wouldn’t dream of depriving her of half a cinnamon roll.” While his words are directed to her best friend, Nico looks at Poppy with a wistful smile, and she can practically see the memory of an old shared routine wash over his eyes.

A weekly ritual of meeting by the PATH station close to both of their apartments on a free morning for a run, and then catching breakfast to go and grab a juice or a smoothie for the walk home - abandoned just like all the other little traditions they once had together.

Nico and Poppy had been close, before. Closer than she is to Jack, now - closer than she’s been to anyone else on the team, ever. So close that Nico knows her best friend enough to joke around with a familiar ease; so close that they’d even hung out as a three before, back when the girls shared an apartment in Poppy’s first year with the Devils, and he had been the only person that Nia had ever been happy to share her childhood friend with.

And now, Poppy stands between them in a silence so uncomfortable she feels like the room is shaking.

She hasn’t talked to Nico in months, and hasn’t talked about him in just as long, but she knows Nia can read her like a book.

The girls had grown up together - been through everything side by side, pinky fingers intertwined with an eternal promise of friendship and understanding. The demise of relationships, friendship group implosions, familial hardships, Nia’s goth phase, the time Poppy wrecked her hair dying it a vibrant cherry-red because her high school crush said Ariana Grande was hot - she still shudders thinking of how her hair glowed red in any direct light for years in the aftermath. Through middle school, high school, college, and all the way up until now, the pair know each other inside out.

So Poppy knows that Nia knows something happened.

Nia knows that Poppy hadn’t been able to go a day without bringing up the Swiss Captain before the summer, and then all of a sudden, she didn’t mention him at all. But she also knows her friend well enough and loves her too much not to have pressed on an open wound.

“It looks insane in here, Pop,” Nia gawks at the set up around her, every corner of the open plan layout of Jack’s large apartment decked out with decor and party amenities. “Do you guys go this hard every year?”

“Depends who’s hosting,” Nico shrugs, knowing when it had been his turn the year before, his event had been much more lowkey. Poppy had seen the pictures, had been sent an abundance of wish you were here snapchats around midnight from the Captain himself. Jack has a thing about his reputation that won’t let him even consider doing anything lowkey. “I forgot this would be your first year coming.”

“Oh, we’re not coming.” Poppy covers her mouth as she speaks around a bite of her food, unable to wait until she’d finished her mouthful due to the immediate urge to shut him down once again.

“You’re not?” He almost sounds disappointed. She doesn’t dare check for the furrow of his thick eyebrows or the pout of his lips. “Jack said he’d convinced you.”

A flash of anxiety shoots across her chest at the thought of him considering her attendance. Had he asked Jack? Had he mentioned her specifically - pushed him to convince her? Or had Jack just brought it up in an offhanded comment?

“I just agreed to get him off my back about it.” Her choice of words is only slightly intended to hurt. She and Nico were no longer friends - she hadn’t been the one to make that decision. Despite that fact, she tries to suppress the guilt clawing at the base of her throat at the wash of understanding that passes over his features. A solemn nod, gaze bouncing to the floor, lips pressed together. “We have plans with our friends.”

“Actually,” Nia’s voice captures both their attention swiftly - Poppy’s head whipping around in subtle alarm and Nico’s in anticipation. “Blake’s flight back from Arizona got cancelled, and Kelsey bailed on me last night because she got Covid of all things over Christmas.”

“What about Emma?” Poppy asks, hoping and praying their hermit friend has all of a sudden grown some stellar social skills and agreed to carry on their tradition for the sake of Poppy’s sanity.

“She double booked with her boyfriend, and he’s a huge drip I don’t really wanna hang out with those two all night.” God damn Emma and her tool of a boyfriend, Poppy thinks. “At least if we come here, we’re still close enough to your place we can make it back for fireworks on the roof.”

“We get a great view of them from this building,” Nico makes his presence known again, attempting to offer a solution. “If you didn’t want to walk back home so late.”

“See, Pop,” Nia claps her hands together with a grin, “We get to come to a cool party, don’t have to worry about creeps following us around all night, and still get to hold on to tradition. Win, win, win if you ask me!”

“Right,” Poppy sighs, knowing now that Nia has her heart set on the plan, there’s nothing she can do about it. Any persistence on her part would be too obvious. “Fine.”

“Awesome! What’s left to do?”

Poppy eyes Nico, knowing she’d told him only a few minutes ago that there was nothing left. “Just need to clear a table for the equipment Jack’s getting,”

“Which one?” Nia asks, making her way over with her iced tea in hand once Poppy points toward the table in the corner by the wall-to-wall window. “Are you helping or just standing around looking pretty?”

Nico’s cheeks flush, a subtle warmth arising to his skin, and he gives a bashful chuckle.

Poppy feels a little nauseous, and it’s not from the sickly sweet half of a pastry she’s just forced down.

Nia’s eyes flicker between the two of them like she’s at a grand slam, and her lips twist to hide a smile.

“I actually need to head out,” he says, gaze darting quickly to Poppy before turning to her best friend, “I have some things I need to do before tonight. It was good to see you, though, Nia.”

Nia hums around the straw of her drink, giving a dismissive wave. “You too, see you later!”

Nico begins towards the door to the apartment, and just before he passes Poppy, he stops. He doesn’t reach for her this time, doesn’t step too close, but she can feel his presence regardless. And every hair on her body stands to attention like she’s been shocked by static when he says, lowly, “I’ll see you tonight, Mohn.”

She can only nod in response, not trusting her voice to speak, not trusting her eyes to look into his and be able to look away.

After he departs, there are a few minutes of an ear-piercing silence. Poppy can hear every movement Nia makes, from the slurp of her drink, to the manner in which she throws things around with little care for where they end up. And louder than anything, she hears the violent thud of her heartbeat in her own ears.

“So,” Nia drags out when Poppy joins her at the almost empty table. “What the fuck was that?”

“What was what?” Poppy and Nia have known each other fifteen years, she doesn’t know why she hopelessly thought that would work.

“Don’t play dumb,” Nia scoffs, “You and Captain Sexy,”

“There is no me and Nico,”

“But you know who I’m asking about,” she scoffs like she’s caught her best friend out, and then adds, with a suggestive wiggle of her brows, “So you do think he’s sexy?”

“What are you, twelve?” Poppy rolls her eyes, “He’s the only captain we’ve been in a room with, pretty obvious who you were referring to.”

“Admit it, Poppy, I saw the two of you when I came in, you totally wanna jump his bones, you have for as long as you’ve known him.”

“We’re not having this conversation, Ni.”

“The hell we aren’t!” Nia grabs her best friend by the shoulders, “I’ve bitten my tongue for months, Pop, watching you mope around and get all glum whenever work is brought up. I couldn’t get you to shut up about the guy before, what the hell happened between you two?”

“Nothing happened!”

“It totally did!” Nia can spy the aversion Poppy is attempting from miles off. “Don’t tell me you two finally hooked up and you didn’t fill me in,”

“He has a girlfriend, Nia.”

The way Poppy says it is like a period to a sentence. End of conversation. End of speculation. It doesn’t matter what they had been before, or what they are now. It doesn’t matter what she feels. There is no her and Nico because he is someone else’s. That’s the crux of it.

“Since when?” Nia frowns.

“Since the summer just gone.”

And there it is. Understanding washes over the face of her best friend, and Poppy has to force herself to look away.

He’d maybe been with her before that, too, but Poppy doesn’t actually know the entire timeline of it.

All she does know is that he’d come back from Switzerland with a drop dead gorgeous model hanging off of his arm, and he no longer had a use for Poppy in his life.

She knows other little bits, that she’d sourced from parts of conversations with others, or potential social media sleuthing that she will never admit to even with a gun to her head.

Talia, a model from somewhere close to home back in Europe, and Nico had hit it off at some festival when he’d gone back to Switzerland for his break. He’d very quickly and very clearly become smitten with her. Poppy had seen as much with her plastered all over his private stories and even posted on his private instagram feed.

By the time he came back to New Jersey for pre-season training camp, she was tagging along to team gatherings, he’d take her on his morning runs, grabbing breakfast together, he’d pick her up every day after work so he could no longer drive Poppy home, not that he’d ever attempted to explain any of that to her. She was at every home game, was his plus one to every event, and Poppy and Nico’s friendship had fizzled out so much that she sometimes feels like the whole thing had been a fantasy, or a figment of her imagination. Something she’d misunderstood, miscalculating every interaction they had ever shared and assuming they meant the same to him as they did to her.

They didn’t.

She doesn’t think any of it would have hurt her so much if he’d have let her down easy. A sorry for bailing on you the first time she’d text him if he wanted to meet up for their weekly run and he’d left her on read would have lessened the blow. He could have been straight up with an I just want to focus on my relationship right now. That would have been the decent thing to do, but he’d just dropped her, instead. Didn’t come around her office for lunch, didn’t text her after training when one of the guys said something stupid and he thought it might make her laugh. He’d cut her off from the intimate parts of his life - ghosted her, even - and all she could find it in herself to do anymore was miss him.

She’d made attempts to bring him around, at first. Tried speaking to him at work, tried texting, but after a few weeks of staring at the delivered sign at the bottom of their message thread, she had given up. It still taunts her every time she opens it up to delete the entire thing and move on like he clearly has - erasing all the inside jokes and times they had confided in one another like they meant ever meant anything in the first place.

She can count on her hand the amount of times they had spoken since the summer. Work related, entirely. A good game here and a have you seen whoever? there. Today is the first indication in months that they had ever been anything more than two people who worked in the same organisation. Friends of friends, co-workers, barely acquaintances.

Not people who know each other’s favourite holidays and are chummy with each other’s friends.

“I’m sorry, Poppy,” Nia frowns, “I didn’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she shrugs, attempting nonchalance despite the stinging in the back of her throat. “Let’s finish here so we can go get ready.”

Nico

Nico Hischier isn’t the biggest fan of New Years Eve. He isn’t really a fan of the festive period, at all. He isn’t a scrooge by any means. He can appreciate the coming together of people and the celebration of the year just gone, and the one starting fresh - but ever since he moved from Switzerland and started his career in the NHL, the holiday period has felt unnecessarily long.

His schedule is jam packed - games up until the 23rd, starting again after Christmas on the 27th, and again after New Years on the 3rd - and there aren’t enough consecutive days together to celebrate in the way others get to do this time of year.

He knows he has to make do with the fact - a small price to pay for living his dream - and his teammates help, all sharing in their sacrifices and trying to make the best out of a bad deal. But he can’t help but feel a lack. A lack of tradition, a lack of family being around, a lack of normalcy.

He remembers the holidays as a child, spending time at home with his parents and his siblings, having two weeks at home for his winter break and getting to spend his days doing whatever he pleased. As someone who moved overseas at such a young age, he looks back on those times fondly.

But now, living at least 8 hours away from the rest of his family, this time of year only serves to remind him of the isolation that creeps up on him like a bad cold.

It starts at the beginning of the month, the sniffly nose period of the bug, when chatter starts around who’s doing what for Christmas. Decorations go up, parties are planned, names are passed around in a hat for Secret Santa, and discussions begin around who is managing to go where.

Next comes the tickle in his throat - the last game before Christmas, where the team all depart and separate with temporary goodbyes as those who have family nearby all get to go home - their parents arranging home cooked extravaganza meals, reuniting with their siblings, exchanging gifts - and Nico, for the 5th year running, feels like a bit part in someone else’s festivities as he and a few of the other European guys all bustle into the dining room of whoever is willing to accommodate them for the day.

Then comes the rest, the sneezing, the coughing, the lethargy, in the period between Christmas and New Years, when everyone is reeling off the back of their celebrations and looking forward to ringing in the next year with a big party.

Nico had thought this year might have been better. He had been in a relationship, there were parts of the holidays he could tweak and adopt into his circumstances - exchanging gifts with a loved one, bringing her along to Christmas dinner at Jesper and Nicole’s place, and not having to feel like a third wheel or like he had to shrink to fit at the kiddie’s table.

He’d even tried to start his own holiday traditions with Talia, his girlfriend. He’d booked an overnight stay at a fancy hotel on the Upper East Side in the middle in the month on one of the rare occasions he’d had two consecutive days with no game or other commitments - despite how hectic his schedule had been. He’d taken her Christmas shopping down Fifth Avenue like she’d talked so much about how she’d wanted to do ever since she came out to New Jersey with him after the summer. He’d taken her ice skating, away from the Rock so that it didn’t feel like work, they had bought and decorated the tree in his apartment together, he’d brought her along to every team holiday event.

And on the day of their home game against Anaheim on the 17th, just a few days after their trip into Manhattan, in the middle of the third period, she had unceremoniously dumped him with an I’m just not feeling this anymore. Over text. As she was already at the airport preparing to fly back to Munich to spend the holidays with her family. He had slumped into his locker after their brutal 5-1 defeat and couldn’t believe what he was reading.

Nico wanted to be angry. As he read the text, he could picture any other person throwing and smashing things. Calling her up and demanding an explanation - because it was clear she hadn’t been feeling it for longer than she let on, considering she was about to board a no doubt fully booked flight across the Atlantic in the eleventh hour.

But there was too large of a part of him that just felt relieved.

Talia was great.

He had met her properly in the summer when he had gone home to Switzerland, but they’d had mutual friends long before. He’d liked a couple of her instagram pictures here, she had responded to a few of his stories there, and then they had been formally introduced at a friend’s party.

Things with her were easy, at first. Nico wasn’t looking for anything serious, and she had ticked all of the right boxes. She was good company, always down to do whatever he was doing with whoever he wanted to do it with. She recognised that summer was the only time of the year he truly had to himself, and she let him take the reins on how he wanted to spend it.

She would go on hikes with him, would lounge around in the sun if wanted, go to parties, go to festivals, join him on little weekend trips to Ibiza or Mallorca. And she was a great release when his training had picked up. She would work around his schedule. He’d invite her round to his apartment and he had enjoyed spending time doing nothing with her after a long day at the gym or at the rink.

She had slotted so perfectly into that version of his life that he gave very little thought into inviting her into the rest of it.

She was beautiful, sociable, charismatic - and then she became hard work.

When summer was over, and he invited her to spend some time back in New Jersey, she didn’t quite grasp how much things would need to change. She constantly wanted to have plans. Wanted to go to parties, wanted to go out, be around other people, take little trips - and he had tried to accommodate her the best he could, but he didn’t have the time for himself, let alone for another person, to be doing things all the time. He had tried to tell her as much, and she said she was okay with it, said as long as he was present with her, she could settle for not doing the things they had in the summer, but she expected too much from him.

She wanted Nico’s attention at all hours of the day, weaving herself into every aspect of his routine. He wanted to run? She would go with him, could really use the fresh air. He wanted to do some solo training at the gym? She had been meaning to work on her lifting. He couldn’t go to the grocery store - could barely even go to work without her wanting to be there. His phone would blow up whenever they were apart, and if he didn’t text her back straight away, she’d become cold - making him feel guilty and grovel for her forgiveness.

Talia was fun, until she wasn’t. Until she was exhausting, and Nico couldn’t keep up with her any longer.

She didn’t give him the grace to have an off day. He was tired, he was struggling, and when the season kicked into full swing, and the team’s schedule was packed, he became unable to juggle it all.

His work was suffering, his star was dimming, his body ached and his performance dipped - both in his professional and personal life.

And so, after the detonation of their relationship, a break up text felt a little like a wake up call.

Talia had contributed so much to the deterioration of normalcy in his life, that Nico was still trying to piece back together his routine 2 weeks later.

His holiday period this year had been spent in a haze - and it wasn’t for the reason everyone thought. He had caught the pitiful glances sent his way over the dinner table at Christmas, had seen the way the couples in the room tried to spare him of their PDA whenever he was around, and he could have told them it was okay. He was okay. But there was a large part of him that was trying to figure that out, still.

He had known he wasn’t heartbroken. He wasn’t shooting off texts to Talia and begging for her to come back. He’d already boxed up what little belongings she had left behind and was going to ship them internationally after the New Year had passed. He had deleted, not archived, all their photos on his private socials, and had even deleted most of them from his phone. He wasn’t in pieces over the fact she had ended things.

But he knew something still wasn’t right.

At first, he had thought it was work related. Their worst week of the season had happened just before Christmas - 3 losses at home in the span of 5 days - and he thought that could be the reason for his slump. Then, they won against Detroit and he still felt off.

Then, he thought he had been anxious about Christmas - about showing up on his own, having to explain his breakup to everyone not quite caught up on the news yet, and he would have to wallow in that same old feeling of watching everyone else enjoy the holidays. But Jesper and Nicole had thrown together a pretty nice day for the guys. The food was great, the company was great, and he’d gone back to his apartment that night with a feeling of relief - like he’d been dreading something for so long only for him to have genuinely enjoyed himself.

And finally, as if being thrust into a freezing cold ice bath, realisation had washed over him on the morning of the team’s final home game of the year against Columbus.

He had been walking through the back offices of the Prudential Centre when he had stumbled upon a conversation, and had heard Poppy Jensen’s voice for the first time in what felt like forever.

“I’m just kinda beat, to be honest, J,” she had said in response to a question Nico hadn’t caught. He had thought no one would be around, most of the Foundation staff having the week off, and hadn’t expected to come across anyone on his venture to the best vending machine in the building. The Foundation offices were often frequented by kids, and had an assortment of candies throughout their machines instead of the protein bars or rice cakes elsewhere in the staff areas. At the sound of her voice, he had come to an immediate halt, peaking around the corner where he could see into her office. She was moving some things into a box on her desk and Jack Hughes was reclining in the chair in front of it that once had been claimed by Nico as his own. “I’m all social interaction-ed out, the holidays have kinda beat me to a pulp, I don’t think I could keep up with you guys, I’m sorry.”

Nico watches as she swats at his feet when he tries to kick them up onto her desk, and can’t quite see the crease between her brows as she frowns at their mutual friend, but can remember how it used to form all the same. “You’re such a bullshitter,” Jack had scoffed, clearly pre-empting the stapler Poppy would throw at him, managing to catch it with ease.

“You can’t call me a bullshitter in my own office,” she gawked, “You don’t see me marching out onto the ice and calling you an attention whore.”

Jack had thrown the stapler straight back. She caught it all the same, and dropped it into the box.

“You haven’t hung out with us in forever!”

“We hung out at the Toy Drive like 2 weeks ago!” There had been two toy drive events organised by the Foundation in different parts of town, and, as he had long become accustomed to, Nico had been put on the one separate to the event Poppy was working. It had been fun, but when he’d checked the social posts the next day and seen the pictures posted of the other team - all smiles between them, a slightly blurry Poppy in the near background of all of Jack’s pictures to indicate how close they had been throughout the event - he had felt like he’d missed out on something.

“That was work, it doesn’t count, Popsicle.” Nico could hear the roll of Jack’s eyes.

“Yeah, well some of us don’t consider helping underprivileged children and spreading Christmas spirit ‘work’, Jack.” Poppy had used air quotes to emphasise her sarcasm, and a fond warmth had spread throughout Nico’s chest at hearing her hold her own against someone as brazenly wise as Jack Hughes. “I thought we were hanging out, having fun, improving our community together. You should really check your ego!”

“I sh-,” Jack had managed to cut himself off, no doubt realising how loud he had gotten. “You’re the one who’s been avoiding the whole team all year, ‘cause you’re hung up on-,”

The door to Poppy’s office had slammed closed before Nico had a chance to hear the end of his teammate’s sentence. Their voices had been muffled after that, and shame had started to creep up on Nico at the fact he’d been eavesdropping on a private conversation.

He’d foregone the snacks he originally snuck off in search of, and returned back to the locker room to get ready for his practice skate.

For the first time in a long time, when Jack arrived and threw himself down on the bench beside him, Nico had wanted him to bring her up.

In the months prior, he would freeze up at the mention of Poppy Jensen, not wanting to face the reality of his dwindling connection to someone who had once been such a huge part of his life. He had other focuses - namely, Talia - and reflecting on what had once been between the two of them did not serve any kind of good purpose. It opened him up to uncomfortable conversations that he wasn’t willing to have, uncomfortable realisations he couldn’t quite come to terms with, and he had been too comfortable avoiding any kind of confrontation around it.

But in the short time between witnessing the conversation between Jack and Poppy, and getting ready for the team’s morning practice, too many questions had been swirling around his mind, and he needed answers.

Why was Poppy packing up her desk?

Why was she avoiding hanging out with the team?

What was she so hung up on? Had something happened?

He’d spent so long avoiding even thinking about her, that he all of a sudden felt like he’d missed everything.

Luckily for him, Jack Hughes needed little to no prompting for his blabbermouth nature to prevail.

“You know, for someone who’s literal job it is to lead us as a Captain, you’ve done terribly at warning me just how stressful this whole New Years thing is,” Jack had huffed as he began changing into his practice gear.

“I did nothing but warn you,” Nico responded, “You called me Mr Grumpy Pants and told me I was just afraid your party was gonna be better than mine.”

“Yeah, well, you should have insisted, it’s stressing me out.”

“You’ll be fine,” Nico scoffed, running a hand through the mess of his hair and leaning back into his locker. He watched Jack’s jittery movements as he shrugged on his pads, and felt the need to reassure his friend. “Everyone’s looking forward to it. As long as there’s plenty to drink and decent music, people will have a good time.”

“Not everyone,” Jack grumbled, “I can’t even get Poppy to come and she loves parties.”

So that’s what they had been talking about.

Poppy did love parties, but Nico couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her at one.

“Poppy has a New Years ritual, she didn’t come to mine, either, I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.” Nico shrugged, despite the wave of a memory that washed over him of him doing exactly that when she hadn’t showed up last year. He’d had to restrain himself from leaving his own party - spent the night texting her updates on what everyone had been doing, snap-chatting her pictures in the hopes it would entice her the few blocks over from her apartment building. He’d only been consoled by the text he’d received just after the clock had struck midnight, settling for the pride in knowing he had been one of the first to get a Happy New Years message from her - knowing it wasn’t just a mass text she would have copy-and-pasted to everyone else, and had been personalised to him with a bunch of perfectly curated emojis and exclamation marks after his name.

Nico didn’t see Jack’s stiffened posture at the way he had so nonchalantly mentioned her for the first time in forever. Didn’t see the side eye, or the pensive twist of his mouth as he carefully considered his next words like he was about to step through a minefield.

“I’m gonna keep trying,” he had sat back down on the bench beside Nico to put on his skates, “I’m definitely her favourite, she’s been helping me organise the whole thing, I don’t think it will take much to convince her.”

Nico tried not to show any kind of reaction to Jack being Poppy’s favourite, or at the thought of how much time they must be spending together to organise such an event. A part of him knew he was only saying it to rattle him. “Cutting it a little fine, aren’t you? New Years is in a couple days, and the guys from the Foundation aren’t even around this week, are they?”

“She’s covering someone on content until January, I said I’d drive her home after the game and me and Lukey can double down on it. And if we can’t get it done tonight, she’s coming on the road with us at the end of the week. I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Oh,” Nico was thankful for how Jack had leaned over to tie his skates up, because he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been able to mask whatever had flooded over him at the revelation that his teammate would be driving Poppy home.

That was his thing. He was pretty sure his passenger seat was still positioned to her liking despite how long it had been since she’d sat in it. He was still working his way through the stash of smiley face air fresheners she had stashed in his glove compartment. He still felt like he was forgetting something every time he left the parking lot and she wasn’t sat beside him, chatting his ear off about some of the kids she had worked with in the day.

“Maybe you should ask her?”

Nico’s eyes shot over to meet Jack’s in alarm. “Me?”

“Yeah, the more people that ask, the more she might feel like she’s missing out. Flash her those cute dimples, how could she possibly say no?”

“I think I’m the last person that’s gonna convince Poppy to come, Jack.” Nico had tried to be nonchalant about it, but he had come across so painfully uncomfortable that he could feel the hair on his arms stand, not liking the ache that spread through his chest at the statement.

There was once upon a time that cheering Poppy Jensen up had been a large part of his routine. Even small acts, like bringing her a coffee on a busy day, where he knew she wouldn’t take a break to go get one herself, and knew how much she disliked the stuff from the pot in her office. Sending her texts from across the room when there were big organisation meetings and he could see her chewing at her fingernails at the vast amounts of information being spewed about. Tagging her in cute animal videos he’d come across on TikTok when he was across the country on a roadie and on a different timezone - she’d wake up to them sometimes, and he’d wake up to her response.

“Right, I forgot you two aren’t friends anymore.”

“Is that what she said?” Nico had swallowed down the hurt at the thought of her coming to that conclusion - vocalising it to someone and finalising the decision before he had any chance to do anything about it.

He couldn’t really blame her, though - he’d had plenty of chances.

Nico could feel himself beginning to spiral, words swirling around his head like a tornado of realisation and guilt.

Aren’t friends anymore.

Avoiding the whole team all year.

Jack is driving her home.

He’s her favourite.

Aren’t friends anymore.

Shit.

He didn’t even take in Jack’s response to his question. As much as he wanted to know the answer, he couldn’t bear to hear it.

Nico couldn’t face up to what he had truly lost.

It wasn’t his girlfriend of five months, who had dumped him over text during the most wonderful time of the year. It wasn’t a few games, that, sure, it had sucked that they had been beat, but in retrospect, the team had had a pretty decent start to the season, and shouldn’t have had his back up that much.

Nico had lost someone who had, at one point, been the most important person in his life.

The person he would usually have gone to to help him through the other stuff - the breakups, the losses, the stress, the anxiety - the crushing weight that had been pressing down on his chest since he had left for Switzerland at the beginning of summer.

Nico and Poppy used to work around each other like a beautifully choreographed, well-rehearsed dance. She always knew when he was overwhelmed or exhausted, he always knew when she was stressed or upset, and they both knew how to pick the other back up.

They hadn’t even fallen out of sync when they’d stopped talking to each other, only this time, they were moving around each other. If Nico entered a room, Poppy would leave. If she knew he was going to be at a team party, she’d make up an excuse not to go. If someone mentioned Poppy in casual conversation, Nico would quickly change the subject. All of it had been subconscious, on his part, at least.

It had been so easy after such a prolonged distance between the two of them to move when she pushed, to watch when she ran, like he had grown into his part in their relationship akin to repelling magnets, always moving away from one another.

It had been so easy that he hadn’t even really realised what was happening - lost and handicapped by a thick fog clouding his thoughts and his judgement. He’d let their once blooming friendship wither and die, and for what?

As he had watched Jack waddle out of the locker room for their practice session, muttering a dismissive, “Whatever, I’ll figure it out,” to his Captain, it was like he had been awakened into full consciousness.

Nico had thought that his turmoil had started with the holiday period. Had thought the ache of homesickness had swirled in with the grief that came with the loss of his relationship, and the shame his poor performances on the ice had thrown upon him. But it had started long before that. He hadn’t been himself since he’d returned from his summer break. Before that, even.

Without realising that he had lost her, Nico had spent the last few months subconsciously mourning his friendship with Poppy - the crushing weight of that grief consuming him to a point that he felt lost with no way out, and had expressed it in a bunch of misguided ways.

He reached into his bag to retrieve where he had stashed his cellphone, scrolling through his Messages app until he stumbled across Poppy’s name. The last text had been sent in September, by her, and he had never responded - had never even opened it, the blue dot to the left of their message thread taunting him with chirps of how awful he had been to ignore it.

Poppy: Hey, can we talk? I miss you.

How late is too late to reply to a text like that? He could only hope she still felt the same way.

Turns out, 4 months might be too late.

Nico has drafted an embarrassing amount of messages to Poppy over the days since that conversation in the locker room.

His notes app has a whole folder dedicated to her. Bullet pointed lists, random memories that made him think of her, structured essays that laid out a timeline of their friendship, and all the mistakes he would need to beg for her forgiveness for.

He’d tried sending a message when he had got back to his apartment after the game against Columbus, feeling a rush of confidence from the adrenaline of their OT win, his high had soon dwindled when he was alone. He sat staring at all the different iterations of an apology he could offer, and had even chickened out of the final draft of a very simple but hopefully effective, ‘Hey.’

He knew he was overthinking it. A conversation starter would at the very least open the door for the apology, and all he needed to do was talk to her in some way - but that turned out to be easier said than done.

She wasn’t in her office when he’d gone to seek her out at work the next day, and when he realised she was probably in the content and media offices, he felt like he would be cornering her if he sought her out in front of anyone else. When the weight of how far removed they now were from each other’s lives dawned on him, a text felt too informal, and so the paragraphs sat untouched in his notes. The weather hadn’t been too great, so he couldn’t try and intercept her on the running route he knew all too well, and even attempting to orchestrate a seemingly random encounter outside of work seemed too creepy so stopping by the cafe around the corner from her apartment in the hopes she’d be there grabbing a latte was off the cards.

He’d seen her on the plane to Ottawa, having to pass her seat to get to the team section at the back, but he had a few people boarding behind him, and she had her eyes cast toward her cell, headphones on and typing intently to somebody, he couldn’t even offer her a friendly smile to try and warm her up to the possibility of a conversation.

Between their win against the Senators, and their loss against the Bruins the next day, there wasn’t much time, or energy, really, to seek her out, and so he’d had to press the breaks, but as they flew back to New Jersey from Boston, a panic had started to swirl within his chest.

Nico knew he couldn’t enter a new year without clearing the air, and so time was well and truly running out. He again had seen her on the plane, and when he had plucked up the courage to get up and go sit with her, Jack had beaten him to it. When the plane had landed, and the team bus had driven them all back to the Rock, the Hughes brothers had both walked her to her car to see her off for the evening.

For someone who had been not-so-subtly trying to initiate a reunion between Nico and Poppy for so long, Jack Hughes sure knew how to get in the way. But, he was easy to forgive - especially when Nico had woken up to his texts late this morning.

Jack: need ur help

Jack: urgently

Jack: wake up dude

Nico: I’m not driving anywhere for you

Jack: not asking u to

Jack: u will like this I promise 😌

Nico: what do you want?

Jack: need u to keep Poppy company

Jack: she’s in my apartment and she seemed off when she got here

Jack: been on her own for a few hours

Jack: so she’s grumpy 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻 👹👹

Nico: doubt I can change the grumpy part

Nico: especially if you’ve left her alone for hours

Jack: don’t need to

Jack: ur a grump too

Jack: will cancel each other out 👍🏻👍🏻😇😇

Jack: u going down or no?

Nico: fine

Jack: I’ll be back in 1 hr :)

Jack: love u cap 😚

Nico: 🙄

And that was how Nico had found himself trudging down to Jack’s apartment, hopeful at the dream of a bridged gap between him and Poppy, and quickly disappointed by the reality.

She had been cold, rightfully so, and had made it clear as day she didn’t want anything to do with him. She had shrunk into herself, backing away from him any time he got too close, defecting to a state of avoidance - gaze dropping to the floor, declining his offers to help her, making assumptions she was in his way, as if the thought of him seeking her out had become an entirely alien concept.

He couldn’t blame her for how she was being with him. It had been his fault things had collapsed between them - he’d come to that conclusion with the vast amounts of evidence piled up in his phone storage the past couple of days, but it didn’t make it hurt any less to see her like this - or to feel an actual, tangible resistance when he had tried to insist on being around. She didn’t want him around, that much was obvious, and it was starting to feel like it was to late to fix what he had so royally screwed up between the two of them.

The once well-oiled machine that was their friendship was now clunky, clattering, dying a slow death with parts that were now obsolete.

But that didn’t change how much he wanted it to work. His parents had once told him when he was growing up that nothing was beyond repair, and if he wanted something fixed enough, he would figure out a way.

They had been talking about a model train he, his father and his brother had made when he was very young. The company that made the sets had gone bust, and they no longer sold the individual parts anymore - so when his sister had stumbled over something in the garage back home, knocked a box, and the once pristine collectable train had tumbled out and ended up cracked and chipped, he had been heartbroken. He and Nina had filled in the chips with wood filler, and touched it up with her nail polish, and it wasn’t the same but in a way it was better - a new sentiment attached with a memory of bonding with his sibling.

The same thing could apply to his friendship with Poppy. Maybe they couldn’t go back to what they were - maybe they could be better.

And, when Poppy had made one too many attempts to push him away - when he had taken a hold of her after she had tried to move past him, dismissing him and his desire to help her, once again - a fire reignited within him. A spark of hope flickered at the familiarity that had flashed across her face as he referred to her in an endearment he hadn’t let himself use in so long.

In that moment - hand wrapped around her arm, just above her elbow, the skin soft and warm, close enough to smell the all too familiar cloud of vanilla-coconut scent that followed her, and her eyes locked on his - he had seen a crack in her armour.

He had seen an element of want - wanting to reconcile, wanting to fix things, wanting him in her life in the way he had been those months ago - and in a mirror of his own emotions, he had seen trepidation.

They wanted the same things, had the same fears, had the same end goal.

And when the unforeseen interruption of her best friend arriving startled her back into her withdrawn persona, he had realised something else.

Nia’s contrasting attitude toward Nico - open, friendly, familiar - had opened his eyes to the fact that Poppy hadn’t told her best friend about the demise of her friendship with Nico.

And that, as much as it needed unpacking entirely, was Nico’s backdoor entry into the high security vault of Poppy’s good graces.

Thankfully for him, Nia’s obliviousness to their tension had worked entirely in his favour. He tried not to look too much into Poppy’s attempted avoidance of spending the evening in his presence, despite her other plans falling apart. Tried to shoulder the blows of her sly digs at them not being friends anymore. Tried to ignore the pang in his heart at Poppy’s best friend being the one to throw flirty jibes his way, and not her.

A determination had begun to brew within him - swirling, bubbling, steaming - and it was going to push him to finally bridge the gap he had forced between them.

His first success was her agreeing to come to the party, and he could easily build on that momentum.

Nico and Poppy were going to be friends again by midnight, he would figure out a way.

> Chapter One

#nico hischier #Nico Hischier x reader #Nico Hischier fanfiction #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagines #Nico Hischier imagine #anyways #if you do by happenstance read all these tags #we need to have a conversation about people as colours #I would have ranted about this in my an but honestly I think I went on enough #nico is green I won't budge on this because I am also green and he is mine #like if your fav colour is green you know what I mean it becomes your entire existence #but also every time I write him in an outfit its like khaki olive vibes #he's just an earthy toned fella #no one can change my mind #I call this phenomenon hot guy synesthesia I'm writing a thesis on it you've just read it #anyways I'm gonna publish this and run for the hills #*writing #*oys

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total-dxmure · 2 years ago

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✦ MARLEY AND ME →【ELLIE WILLIAMS】→ CHAPTER TWO

pairing: modern!ellie williams x single mom!reader

summary: you’re a single mom just doing the best that she can to make ends meet. ellie can’t help but think that you're the kindest, most beautiful girl that she’s ever met. compared to taking care a little girl that's in her terrible twos, coming to terms with the fact that you’re a lesbian is a walk in the park. awkward first encounters, ellie’s broken gay-dar, and her overwhelming urge to take care of the care-giver. . . the road to domesticity is a long one, but it’s well worth the pining that it takes to get there.

warnings: hella SMUT! in future chapters, eventual substance use, no use of y/n (you have nicknames/petnames), the reader is marley’s biological mother, talk of coming to terms with ones sexuality, mention of a shitty baby daddy ( though there is no co-parenting between them), ellie is a total girl mom, lots and lots of fluff, ellie is an anxious dork in this fic, reader is broke but happy, ellie takes pride in being a provider, this is going to be a multi-part fic, ellie is an absolute simp for the reader since chapter one and will remain her #1 fan.

⬶ previous chapter | next chapter ⤅

There were a thousand different ways to tell someone that you loved them.

For you, it could be found in the way that your hands shook with exhaustion after a long night at work as you reached up for the off-brand box of mac n’ cheese. You had your calculator pulled up on your phone, trying to make sure that you had just enough in your bank account for a week's worth of groceries.

Or, it could be found in the simple way that you prepared your daughter’s breakfast in the mornings. Half dead from working eight hours at the little diner, located right off of the interstate. After what felt like a never ending shift dealing with drunk patrons, the first thing you did after getting just four hours of sleep was make your daughter a bowl of oatmeal. You fixed hers the way she liked it- with fresh bananas and strawberries. Fresh fruit was expensive though. A luxury. It was something that you didn’t see yourself worthy of, not when your precious daughter loved it so much. So you stuck to a dash of milk and a few sprinkles of brown sugar, wolfing it down after going without dinner.

You were a single parent, and while your mom and step dad loved watching her while you were at work, you felt incredibly guilty that you didn’t have the extra funds to pay them back for their hard work. You had rent, power, and water to worry about. Plus your insurance bill was incredibly high because of your age, even despite the fact that you drove a car that was nearly as old as you were.

You said “I love you” every time you fed your daughter before you fed yourself. You couldn’t remember the last time you had eaten a meal while it was still hot off of the stove.

You said “I love you” when you didn’t complain. You refused to be defeated or beaten down solely because you were a young single mother. You didn’t want Marley to remember her childhood that way. So you bought her cheap toys to keep her happy. You let her wipe sticky little hands all over the few articles of clothing that you owned. You let her lay in the bed with you when she couldn’t go to sleep, despite the fact that you barely got any shut eye yourself. You carried the weight of her on your shoulders and never complained.

And above all else, you didn’t regret her for a second.

Not when her father abandoned you to do god knows what. Not when you gave birth with just your mother in the room. Not when your lights got cut off. Not when you lost most of your friends, because what young adult wants to hang out with a two year old all the time?

Marley was your pride and joy despite all of it.

So you tossed the box of mac n’ cheese into the cart when she started to reach for it and added the cost of it onto your calculator.

You looked down at your phone as you pushed the buggy aimlessly forward, not sure what else you needed to pick up. You stuck your hand into the front pocket of your overalls, leafing around for your shopping list.

“Uh. . . long time no see.”

Your head snapped up as you heard the familiar raspy voice in front of you. Your stomach did a few flips as you took in her tight fitting boot cut jeans and gray tank top. Her nose wasn’t the only thing that was splattered with freckles, but her revealed shoulders as well. Ellie had looked good in her work clothes, but there was something extra attractive about the way that she dressed in her free time. It was all about comfort and mobility. She didn’t need loads of jewelry, or even makeup for that matter, to be beautiful. You suddenly felt underdressed for the grocery store, hyper aware of the fact that you had only slapped on some mascara before running out of the house.

Your eyes flickered down to the basket she was holding, and you couldn’t help but smile at the fact that the only thing in it was a case of beer and a few microwavable meals. Her dirty, paint covered hand tightened on the handle, and she shuffled her feet before clearing her throat.

“I know I look like hammered shi-” She caught herself, her eyes widening as she noted that Marley was with you. “Poop. Hammered poop.” She corrected, motioning over her outfit.

You brushed her off with a wave of your wrist, making a small noise of denial. If she thought that she looked bad, you didn’t want to even think about how you must look in her eyes. You’d barely had time to run a brush through your wild hair before jogging out the door.

“Do you have the day off?” You asked her, putting some of your weight onto the buggy. Your daughter started to get antsy, so you reached down into the buggy and handed her the rabbit plushie she had insisted on bringing with her, only to toss it behind her the second that the two of you started shopping.

You noticed Ellie’s eyes soften as she watched your daughter hug the small stuffed creature.

“Yeah,” She looked back over at you, her eyes just as soft as they had been a second ago. Your heart began doing that funny thing. The weird pounding ache that made you feel like you were dying. “I scheduled some time off so that I could help Joel repaint the outside of his house.”

Her boots were splattered with white, and now that you were really staring at her, so was her pants. A few baby hairs were still stuck to the sides of her neck and forehead, probably from sweating in the summer sun.

“That was nice of you.” You said simply, chewing on the inside of your lip as you tried to find something else to say.

You didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, but it had been almost a week since you had last seen her, and she never had texted. You despised how sensitive you were, but you couldn’t help but see it as some sort of rejection. Maybe she had asked for your phone number instead of just giving you hers because she never planned on reaching back out at all.

“Nah, not really. He had an old Gibson lying around, so he gave it to me. That’s enough payment, I’d say.” She kicked an imaginary rock on the worn linoleum floor, trying to find a way to tell you that she hadn’t texted you because she’d been afraid without coming off as a complete pussy.

Your eyebrows knit together in confusion, and you spoke before you could even think the question through. “Gibson? Is that like. . . food or something?”

Ellie stood there for a second, lips parting as she stared at the confused look on your face. The longer she stared, the more embarrassed you felt.

‘Oh god, that’s totally not what she was talking about.’ You thought to yourself, damn near close to slapping yourself upside the head.

She had to place the basket down so that she could brace her hands onto her knees as she laughed. You had made her chuckle a few times the other day, but nothing like this. Her smile was so beautiful, her laugh so hearty, that you forgot the reason why you were embarrassed in the first place. Her laugh was as raspy as her voice was- if not more so. It was also loud. You were sure that people could hear it all throughout the grocery store, despite the loud 80’s throwback that was blasting over the speakers. You didn’t mind if people could hear her, so long as they knew that you were the one to inspire this sort of reaction. You’d happily continue to ask the dumbest questions on the planet if it meant that you got to hear her laugh like this again.

She straightened up, shaking her head a few times as she tried to take steadying breaths.

“I-I’m sorry. . . I’m not laughing at you. That was just- that was a really cute question.” You felt the need to look away from her green eyes. “A Gibson. Like the guitar? Ever heard of one?”

You did slap yourself upside the head, then promptly covered your face with both of your hands. “Oh my god. Of course. . . Holy shit, that’s embarrassing.” You whined.

“Hey,” Ellie smiled at you again. It looked like she was really starting to come out of her shell. All it took was you embarrassing the absolute hell out of yourself. You would have done it sooner if you’d known. “No ‘S’ bombs in front of Marley.” She playfully scolded.

“Right, right. Wouldn’t want a mini sailor as a roommate.” You looked over at the child in question, rolling your eyes as you noticed the poor rabbit’s ear practically halfway down her throat. “She has an odd fascination with trying to eat things that shouldn’t be eaten.” You explained, knowing that you’d have to toss her beloved stuffie straight into the wash the second that you got home.

“I mean. . .who hasn’t eaten something that they shouldn’t have? If bubblegum wasn’t supposed to be swallowed, then why do they make it taste so good?” She stuck one of her hands into the front pocket of her jeans.

“Don’t give her any ideas. I’m sure she’s going to be one hell of a gum eater.”

The two of you took a second to just stare at each other, unsure if the lack of contact should be mentioned or not. You were the first person to break and mention it.

“So. . . I never got a text from you. Was it the caffeine addiction or the two year old that scared you away?” You said it lightheartedly, letting her know that it wasn’t meant to be taken as a jab or a judgment of her character.

Ellie swallowed hard, looking down at her shoes so that she could come up with a way to gracefully answer the question. She decided that there wasn’t a smooth way to answer.

“Neither. I was. . . uh- I was sort of scared that you wouldn’t answer me if I texted you first. I was hoping that I would run into you again.” It sounded stupid now that she was saying it outloud.

It also made it sound like she had romantic intentions. Granted. . . she had hope, but she’d be happy just to call you a friend. If that was really the case though, she shouldn’t have felt so nervous to reach out to you in the first place.

It was nice being around you. It felt effortless, and you didn’t take her ‘rough around the edges’ personality the wrong way, like most people. She would like to blame Joel for her crass attitude, but she’d been like this far before she was adopted. The two of them just happened to be more alike than she cared to admit.

“How about this: you give me your number right now, and I’ll text you when I get home.” You felt ten times better knowing that you really had just been overthinking.

You handed over your phone, and smiled as she reached out for it, starting to type her number in. She paused for a second though, realizing that she was so frazzled over seeing you again that she had forgotten the phone number that she’d had since freshman year of high school. She wondered if it would be too cheesy to put some sort of emoji after her name, and decided against it. Her contact was saved under “Ellie Williams”.

It was right to the point. No nonsense. It was so her that all you could do was smile fondly down at your phone before shoving it back into the pocket of your overalls.

You were also guilty of reading her a bit wrong. She was far more shy and anxious than you gave her credit for. It was sweet, actually. Being forward wasn’t exactly something that you were very good at these days though. Your ex had. . . ruined you, for lack of a better phrase. You hadn’t dated in years, and while most would blame the fact that you had a child, you knew it wasn’t quite that. There were nice people that didn’t care about that sort of thing. Yes, they were few and far in between, but they were out there. The second that someone showed you even a bit of kindness that crossed the boundary of friendship, you often pulled back. Or away completely.

You’d always known that you were into women. It wasn’t a discussion that you had to have with anyone in your life though, because you and your ex had dated all the way back in high school. Queer kids often have some sort of “coming out” story, but you never felt the need to. After the messy breakup you hadn’t felt the need for romance. Were you lonely? Incredibly so, but you’d rather be alone than allow your daughter to get attached to someone only for them to leave.

Now that you were older, you started to realize that maybe you had settled with a man because that was what you thought you should do. Getting married and having children was just the thing to do around here. Living in a place like Jackson, there wasn’t a ton of representation. Now that you were more experienced in the ‘life’ category, it was safe to say that you couldn’t imagine yourself settling down with a man. It wasn’t because of the trauma that Marley’s father had put you through either, it was something that had always been there. A part of you felt guilty that it had taken you so many years to gain the courage to be yourself, but you were far too young for it to be too late.

Or so you told yourself when the anxiety started to weigh down on your heart.

“Do you eat a lot of microwavable meals?” You asked her, pointing to the basket that she had picked back up after her fit of laughter.

She flushed. Like actually turned pink. You smiled as she let out a small groan, wiping a paint stained hand over her face.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t see those,” You didn’t feel as bad for pointing them out as you should have. Not when it gave you a solid reason to see her again. “I’m super busy with work, and after a long day of being around food, I really don’t feel like cooking for just myself.”

Bingo. She’s single.

The old fluorescent light above the aisle that the two of you were currently chattering away in flickered. The both of you looked up at it simultaneously.

“Well, if you ever want a home cooked meal. . . you could always come over to my place? As long as you don’t mind watching a two year old try to use a spoon. It looks like a murder scene.” You said, eyes still locked on the light. You were really putting yourself out there, and felt too scared to see her reaction to the question.

She forgot how to breathe for a second. Was she just being pathetically optimistic, or were you asking her on a . . . very casual date?

“I would really like that.” She breathed, nodding her head to emphasize the fact that she was more than happy to come over. Toddler and all.

Most people her age would be a bit put off by the fact that you had a child, but it was a nonfactor for Ellie. She’d had almost an entire week to fantasize about you. During her routine daydreams, she recognized that she wasn’t bothered by Marley. If anything. . . it made her like you more. You were capable, and she’d like to think that you were incredibly mature. Ellie needed that in her life. She would never vocalize it, but she wanted stability. She wanted happiness. She wanted you.

You made her feel like she was in high school again, which was good. The constant stomach flops and heart palpitations didn’t feel good, but she hadn’t felt this giddy about someone since. . . well, probably forever.

“Great,” You beamed at her, and once again she felt like she might double over. Was her hands shaking? Yeah. . . they totally were. “When is your next day off?”

“Sunday.” She answered a little too eagerly and nearly winced.

“Ah, that’s great! Same here. Well, how does five thirty sound? I’ll text you my address.” You, on the other hand, didn’t care how eager you sounded.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“-and then I just. . . jogged off.” Ellie recalled, taking another drag off of the spliff before handing it over to Jesse.

She gave him a small shove when she noticed his slack jaw and narrowed eyes. He fell back against the couch, shaking his head wildly.

“No you didn’t.” He denied, hoping that his friend wasn’t that awkward.

“No, I totally did. The keys on my belt were jingling with how fast I was moving to get out of there. I forgot like. . . half of the things on my list.” She was mortified. She wanted to shrink down into a small ball and die. She was hoping that Jesse would give her some sound advice, but she should have known that he would give her major shit before going all Confucius on her.

“Oh my go-”Jesse’s barking laugh turned into a fit of coughs. Ellie wanted to think that it was the drug usage and not her retelling of the horrific events from earlier on in the day that was making him laugh so hard. He wiped at an invisible tear on his cheek, followed by a drawn out round of repeated “oooh that was good”’s.

“Help. Me.” Ellie said through clenched teeth, zipping her gray hoodie all the way up to her neck.

“Bring her flowers.” He said with a shrug, taking another long drag.

“I can’t bring her flowers, Jes! What if. . . I don’t know- what if she’s straight and I totally weird her out?” It would be a nightmare to show up with a gift like that, only to have read the situation completely wrong.

“. . . Can’t you tell if she’s gay or not? It’s not uncommon for people to realize they’re a lesbian after having kids.” Jesse’s brows furrowed as he blew off the ash from the eye of the spliff, handing it back over to her.

She took another long drag for courage before letting out a sigh, the smoke curling out from her mouth.

“I can’t. . . I can’t tell when it comes to that sort of thing.” She said lamely.

Jesse’s jaw dropped for a second time that night. Ellie sunk back into her overly-comfortable couch, pulling her hood up and over her head so that she could disappear.

“I just thought you had a thing for straight chicks this entire time,” He gasped, reaching out so that he could roughly shake her by her shoulders. “But you’re telling me that you’re a flaming homosexual and don’t have a gaydar?” He’d known her since high school, and he was just finding out? Damn. . . this entire time he thought that she must be some sort of masochist or something.

“Yes. Are you happy now? I don’t have a gaydar, and I have no clue if she’s sending me friendly signals, so I’m asking for your help.” She needed someone to spell it out to her. He’d seen you at the restaurant, afterall.

“. . . Did you happen to see her nails?”

“It’s almost like you want to get punched in the mouth.”

✦ message me about being put on the taglist!

@viswifetotallyreal @lillysbigwilly @overtrred28 @corpsebridenightamare @gimalo135 @erikaar

why not to buy tlou2 remastered (please read).

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whitefeathers · 2 years ago

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oh my god PLEASE write more peeta smut !!! the fic you just posted was so so good and i completely agree THERE IS A HUGE LACK OF THG FICS !!!! 🫶🏻 thanks for doing the lords work

ask and u shall receive… Peeta nation rise up we will NOT be silent any longer

content disclaimers: 18+ only, teasing, just build up really, brat taming if you absolutely squint, reader has a pussy and long hair, praise + “good girl”

Peeta oozes charisma, gentle boyish charm with a teasing undertone. As his confidence grows the more time he spends with you, the more that undertone comes to light.

He’s a giver in bed, but he won’t just hand it to you. You’re a fussy little thing at times - bratty, not wanting to admit that you want his hands on you, that the reason your cheeks are hot and you fidget in your seat is because you need him.

For so long, you’ve never wanted to show that weakness, but Peeta gives you no choice.

“Sweetheart, you just need to ask…” he’s drawling, eyes soft and trained on your face. He makes a point of flicking his gaze to your lips before meeting your eyes again.

You can feel his body heat and the painfully teasing rest of his huge hand on your thigh.

He knows what you want, he’s not silly, he can see it in your eyes that your little cunt is wet for him, but he wants you to beg.

“Ask… ask for what?” You play dumb, and he just laughs gently. His thumb starts to rub circles into your thigh, a comforting, insanity inducing touch. He’s so strong and capable. Those hands, holding you down, keeping your thighs spread and your mouth gagged on his fingers as he-

“Whatever it is you need. Sweetie I can feel you, you’re so warm…” his hand is high enough so his knuckles can brush ever so slightly over your clothed pussy and you mewl. Peeta grins.

“And responsive.”

You want to fight more, you do. To not let him win this little game of cat and mouse, to not show that weakness you’re terrified of.

But his lips find your neck and his thumb finds your clit through your jeans, and you’re fucked.

“Please, Peeta,”

You can feel his smile on your neck as he pulls away from his suckling of your skin.

“Good girl.”

#peeta mellark x reader smut #peeta x reader #peeta x reader smut #peeta smut #peeta mellark smut #xoxopeeta

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rowanmutt-afterdark · 2 years ago

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I've gotten a LOT of Mirage x Reader requests, so here I am feeding the lot of ya. Hope you enjoy! I got a couple ideas this one was by far my favorite. I already planned on doing an oral scene but a suggestion to do it helped motivate me.

I had a lot of fun writing this. I hope to write more Mirage and other Transformers Characters I'm the future.

Enjoy~

WARNING : ⚠️ 🔞 NSFW themes, oral sex, and masturbation included in this short fic. Please do not read if you are under the age or 18. This is a NSFW blog so if you are under the age, please move on!

ROTB Mirage X Gender Neutral Reader

It's night, that's all you know. You've lost track of the time. The amount of time you've spent on your back with your legs suspended over a pair of shoulders for… you can't even remember. All you can feel is a mouth and glossa teasing your sex. It's like his glossa is dancing around, leaving your back tingling and your legs shaking as he starts to bring you towards yet another orgasm.

You are making the lewdest of sounds as you buck against his face. His glossa slowing down as he helps you ride through your orgasm until he feels you go limp, is only when he pulls away to smirk down at you. A shit eating grin that makes you glare at him through your half lidded lashes.

"What number was that?" Mirage asks as he pulls away briefly to lick his lips, his blue eyes casting a glow over your body in the darkness of your garage.

"I-I can't remember." You admit, breathing heavily as you try to catch your breath. You hear a tsk and his glossa clicking in disappointment.

"Now, Mami/Papi, I told you to count for me. It seems I may have to start all over, again. I don't mind doing that, but from your bodies reaction. You're getting tired. Now, let me ask again, baby. What number?" He asks. You rack your brain for a number, your brain is so hazy with lust and the feeling of floating on cloud nine makes it even harder.

"N-nine?" You ask.

There's silence before you feel his mouth on you again making you sob in pleasure as he picks up where he left off. Sucking at you rather loudly, pulling your hips up off the table and closer to his mouth, your hips were practically pressing against his nose!

"Not quite, baby. The number you were looking for was thirteen. Seems you need another to help jog your memory. Don't worry, I'll keep you awake. We still have a few more hours until your roommate gets back. For now, enjoy the ride, baby."

You groan before squealing as his glossa is quickly working at you again. You can hear his lips smacking and sucking around you, it's loud and lewd. You love it. Though your body was starting to scream at you that it was starting to get to be too much. Mirage has you so focused on his glossa that you don't hear the sound of his paneling covering his spike opening with a soft 'click'. A soft glow and his arm not holding you is moving jerking motions.

You take a peek to see his servo wrapped around his erect spike. It's bright blue and red bio light lighting up his torso and thighs as he strokes himself while he's enjoying getting a taste of you. It's hot to see him getting lost on the pleasure he is feeling and giving you.

Mirage is a giver, he loves seeing you get worked up and begging for him. Due to the size difference, it's rather difficult to take him. So, you have found other ways around penetration. Though after the incident involving you almost popping yoru jaw out of place trying to give him oral, he's not let you do anything to his spike besides giving him a handjob or using your thighs.

"I can feel you getting closer, Ven a mí, nena~" He purrs against your sex making you arch your back and open your mouth in a silent scream as you cum again. This one hits you so hard that your vision goes white as Mirage helps keep you still against his mouth so you can ride it out.

When you come back to, Mirage has you laying on the blanket he laid out earlier. You are laying on your back and him laying on his side with his servo on your middle. You glance at his crotch to see his spike has already been tucked away, but his thighs are covered in his release.

"Have fun, mi amor?" He asks with a cheeky smirk. Your response is smacking at his chest rather weakly.

"Fuck you."

"We just did."

"I hate you."

"Love you too, mi amor."

#transformers #transformers x reader #rotb x reader #transformers mirage #mirage x reader #transformers rotb #transformers smut #smut #18+ fic #minors dont read #mirage has a death grip on me i love him so much!#mirage simp 2023 #transformers smut and fluff #valveplug

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amywritesthings · 1 year ago

Text

the morning of. / an armin holiday fic

pairing: armin arlert x f!reader (attack on titan / shingeki no kyojin) word count: 2k summary: It's not only your first holiday after the Battle of Heaven and Earth, but your first time living with Armin. Waking up next to overachiever has its perks.

tags: 18+ MINORS DNI! post-aot finale, smut, dirty talk, foreplay (f!receiving, armin's a giver), light dom undertones, orgasm, angst with a happy ending, armin is a sweety but also a lil freaky credit: dividers by @saradika

welcome to the ninth day of the twelve days of amymas and also merry christmas eve !!

Christmas Day.

This year marked the very first holiday season after the Battle of Heaven and Earth.

And you?

You're surviving, but you're not alone:

After the papers were signed and the truces were finalized, all Armin Arlert wanted to do was go back to Paradis and exist.

To live in peace if only for a little while, perhaps somewhere not too far from the sea, before he went back for more ambassadorship opportunities.

For his friends.

For himself.

(But with you.)

So you went back on the first boat to Paradis with Jean and Connie.

While Armin worked hard to square away everything on Marley, you worked towards the future of rebuilding of this little island, aiming your sights beyond the Walls.

To create the perfect home for the two of you.

Although gathering building supplies and hands steady enough to build a cabin required effort, you managed to pull enough favors from the people of Paradis: a quaint cabin on the outskirts awaited the 15th Commander of the Scouts on the far side of the island, right by the mouth of the ocean.

And when Armin came home, that’s where you stayed.

Although it was no secret that you and Armin had a thing in the Scout Corps, it's odd to acknowledge it was real in front of all of your friends.

Yet, given the weariness in everyone's bones, no one bats an eye at the fact that you live together.

(It’s better that everyone is happy in their own way.)

And it's quiet, for the most part.

The tide comes and goes. Birds chirp and squawk over the waves.

Armin had been busy visiting Mikasa Ackerman on Christmas Eve, imploring her to stop by for dinner at your place.

You were already prepared for Christmas Day. After all, it was easy to make him gifts while he was away so much.

Crocheting a sweater, for instance, to combat the chill of the sea. Buying a few practical items, for the next time he departs for Marley.

When Armin returned, he seemed happy.

(Mikasa said yes, he exhales with relief.)

And when you went to bed, Armin seemed in his own head, like he was waiting to be alone.

You assume it's for reflection.

It isn't a bother to sleep early.

When you awake Christmas morning, the sun has yet to rise. Only a faint hue from the open bedroom window illuminates the room.

Armin is still fast asleep.

His blonde hair has gotten a little longer around the frame of his face, cascaded in a halo around his face.

He looks exhausted.

Spent.

Carefully you nudge his outstretched arms, attempting to wake him just enough to cuddle against him.

Armin gives easily to your request, making a small noise in his sleep as he subconsciously invites you in.

By the time you nestle under his arm, he lets out a soft sigh.

“...time is it?”

“Early,” you whisper back, nuzzling your nose to him. A gentle ghost of a smile passes against his lips. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmmph — no, gotta… get up,” he mumbles, eyes still closed. “It’s Christmas.”

You shake your head with a small laugh, studying his face.

“We don’t have any plans. We can sleep until dinner if we want.”

“Mm, but what about…”

"Rest, Armin," you interrupt, kissing the tip of his nose. "I'm going to make some tea."

Armin takes a slow inhale through his nose, only to curl his arm around your body to pull you closer.

Firmer.

Keeping you from making a move from his side.

It's amusing. Cute.

To accommodate, you drag your thigh higher along the outer curve of his to slot better beside him.

“...can’t go downstairs," the command is his exhale, "not yet.”

“Why not?” you question playfully.

Using your shoulder, you crane your neck to view the mouth of the stairwell connected to the bedroom — as if you'll manage to see why for yourself.

Armin catches the movement, causing him to finally open those brilliant blue eyes of his.

He’s a light sleeper, freakishly alert, but through the last few months he's found himself more lax when it comes to laying in bed with you.

(At ease. Gentle.)

“Because I have to be there when you do,” he replies with a little more awareness in his voice. “I… might have done something.”

You whip your attention back down to the blonde beside you and note the growing blush on his pale cheeks.

“Done… something?”

“Like maybe gone a little overboard.”

You blink. “In what way?”

“In a… well, it was supposed to be a surprise— Wait!”

When he notices you shift to sit up, Armin quickly pushes your back against the mattress and pins you to it with his own warm body.

He curls around you with a light chuckle, eyes still a bit bleary.

You drop back with a gentle oof, and stare up that boyish, charming face of his.

You can’t help it.

You lean up to capture his lips in a brief kiss, and he makes a short noise of surprise.

Your head drops back to the pillow, lips curling to a smirk.

“Is that why you’re so tired? You were up all night doing something downstairs?”

"You make it sound like I was doing something bad."

"I mean, if the shoe fits."

"For your information, I brought a few decorations back."

"Back?" you repeat. "Like from Marley."

He nods. "Not that you didn't do a great job with the tree. I didn't touch that. I just... sort of covered our entire house with stuff. Garland. Candles. Beads—"

"Armin?"

"—so you'd wake up to a sight to behold. You know, for our first winter season." He pauses before sheepishly including: "Together."

Chuckling to himself, Armin cups his palm to your cheek and leans in, refusing to allow that one kiss to be the only one.

“You always ruin surprises.”

“I know,” you manage to joke right back. "But I bet it really is."

"Really is what?" he murmurs, leaning in to press a lingering kiss to your lips.

You accept it with a hum of approval.

"A sight to behold."

(Just like him, you want to tell him, but he'll never recover.)

Armin doesn’t just give kisses — every peck has a meaning, every slow drag has a purpose, and the air in the room shifts in an instant.

The kisses deepen, and soon enough Armin is caging you underneath of him.

His palm cradles your head like you’re a precious gem, mindful of his weight hovering over you.

When his hips instinctually grind into yours, the thin layer of your pajamas make direct contact between your legs.

Armin chokes out a shaken gasp, shuddering from pleasure.

He’s already hard from morning wood, and you can’t help but grin against his mouth.

“Sorry,” he hiccups, pressing his forehead into yours as he stops himself. “Sorry, you — it’s, ah, it’s always you.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, willing his arousal to disappear, before fluttering his eyes open down to you.

“We can be lazy about it,” you sing-song, reaching down to snap the waistband of his pajamas. He jolts. “If you want.”

Armin's eyes widen a fraction at what you’re implying, before his face turns scarlet.

“I mean, yeah, I… you don’t have to convince me. But — downstairs—”

“Can wait,” you interrupt, flicking his lower lip with the tip of your tongue.

Armin shudders, reaching down to glide his hand over the swell of your breast, circling his thumb over the peak.

"You sure about this?" he whispers as he continues to rub affectionately, mindful of the noises bubbling in your throat.

You've never nodded so fast in your life.

Eventually the blonde turns his wrist, pointing his fingers down to your hips, before slipping his fingers under the waistband.

He whines when he realizes you’re already plenty wet.

“You, too, huh?” he weakly jokes about your states of arousal, but he bites his lip and slowly — slowly — circles your clit with his middle finger.

You gasp, dropping your head back.

He seizes the moment and dives in, peppering loving kisses to your neck.

The circles grow more certain.

Stronger.

“Just… wanted this first Christmas to mean something,” he murmurs against your neck, sucking at the skin and nipping gently.

You writhe against the sheets, moaning to the morning air.

“You deserve something good. I want to give you something… so good…”

“Armin,” you breathe, and you feel his lips curve to a smile against your lips.

“Come for me first,” he whispers, tightening the circles around your clit the way he’s grown to master. “Just once and I’ll take you downstairs, I promise.”

“What about — mmph — you?” you whine, bucking your hips into his hand.

You want to feel him, in every way imaginable.

You want him to feel good, too, but you can barely think straight.

His knee nudges under yours and pushes upward, forcing your right leg wider. Opening your folds to him, giving him direct access to what he wants.

"You said we had no plans, right?" Armin replies with gentle amusement.

His fingers speed up to make a point.

"By that definition, I can have you here for as long as I want."

"Armin."

Your back arches, desperate to rock against him with little shame.

"Maybe this is my gift. Hearing you say my name like that. I'll make up for all the times you had to take care of yourself while I was away. Then, and only when I think I've made you come enough, you can return the favor."

He lifts his head, keen on watching you come apart by his hand.

“I’m in no rush.”

“Armin—”

“I got you,” he interrupts, pressing a kiss to your lips to drown out your cries. “You’re doing so good for me.”

He doesn’t give up.

He’s so timid in so many aspects of his life, but after some trial and error in bed, this is the one place he’s certain.

Sure of himself.

He knows you, just like you know him.

And Armin won’t give up until he has you whimpering under him.

Your toes curl when that familiar pressure begins to build, and he doesn’t let up.

Doesn’t stop.

All he does is leave your lips to nip at your earlobe.

“You’re close already, aren’t you?”

He whispers in your ear, and you bite your lip to keep the noises down.

“Don’t hold back. I want to hear you.”

Stars burst.

Sometimes all it takes is Armin’s gift of words that sends you reeling, and soon you fall over the edge with a strangled moan of need.

He continues massaging your clit, slowing the speed but not quite letting up.

Not until you make that squeak of overstimulation.

Then he hums with happiness, and pulls his hand out of your pajama bottoms.

“Better?” he asks gently, using his other hand to gently run along your cheek. He licks his fingers clean, savoring the taste of you.

Spent, you nod with a lopsided smile.

“...I feel like you’re already spoiling me.”

“Oh, that’s hardly what I call spoiling,” he breathily admits, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. “You okay?"

"More than," you promise.

"Good. C’mon, let’s go downstairs."

"I don't think I can feel my legs."

He chuckles, sitting up with a grin. "Then I'll carry you on my back. We'll make some fresh tea and enjoy the day before the rest show up.”

You leisurely follow, sitting up on your elbows.

When you hold out a hand for him to take, he pulls you up.

Forehead to forehead, he takes a pause to nuzzle them together, eyes slipping closed.

"Happy Christmas," he says.

"Happy Christmas to you, too, Commander." He snorts at the title. "If we’re going to start off every Christmas this way, I’m not gonna say no."

Armin’s grin only widens.

He turns his back to you at the edge of the bed, beckoning you to climb on.

Sleepily you oblige, wrapping your arms around his neck.

He turns his chin to kiss the tip of your nose, murmuring a promise in return:

“I’m open to starting new traditions, but only if they're with you.”

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thesweetnessofspring · 3 months ago

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THG Trick or Treat 2024 👻

It's time to get out your candy bags, put on a costume, and get to dropping asks!

How it works: There are THG/TBOSAS bloggers who have put on their porch lights to let the fandom know they are ready to give out treats to those who come into their ask box!

For the trick or treaters: You can leave anything in the ask box. This can be a simple "trick or treat," a seasonal description, or a prompt or request. Please note that any prompt or request is optional for the responder to fulfill.

For the treat-givers: It's completely up to you what you give the trick or treater! It can be a seasonal photo, a joke, a song, a line from a WIP, a doodle, a recipe, a headcanon, a fic rec, a moodboard, a drabble or anything else you want to give.

Blogs who are taking trick or treaters are under the cut below (if you would like to be added or I missed you, please drop a reply and I will add you to the list).

@adsosfraser

@adultingproperly

@atelierlili

@capric0rnie

@charlunday

@chloerie

@darlingsnow0

@deepdonutkid

@disgurrr

@distractionsfromthefood

@districtnothing

@enobariasdistrict2

@headcavedin

@hellpeppre

@horrorsix

@hungergameshyperfixation

@katnissdoesnotfollowback

@lavenderbehindherear

@lettersfrompanem

@liberalk1tsch

@littlemarianah

@mage-chocolate

@maidstew

@majorsoapfan

@millennium-queen

@mollywog

@moonlightredfern

@moreespressoformydepresso

@mrstarkitsmellslikeanewcarinhere

@norbertsmom

@notsocooljess

@ongreenergrasses

@queenlissa

@rarepairheathen

@skylightangels

@starrrbakerrr

@tetheredfeathers

@scandalouslamb

@scarycoryo

@sejanusplinth

@snowalwayslandsontop

@solar-halos

@the-sun-and-the-sea

@thesunpersists

@thesweetnessofspring

@tumblingghosts

@unnamednarrator

@waywardangel-wilds

@whenthewallfell

@youreyesholdgalaxies

#thg trick or treat #thg trick or treat 2024 #thg trick or treat 24

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atinylittlepain · 2 years ago

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Nothing to Hide - A Joel Miller Story

no outbreak!joel miller x f!reader

joel miller masterlist

she learns a couple new things about her man over the course of a night.

warnings | 18+ SMUT, and nothing but(t), yes this is a pegging fic

a/n | it's here! welcome, everyone, to the inaugural night of the Peg that Middle-Aged Man Campaign 2023! over the course of the next week or so, I as well as a handful of my favorite writers will be putting out some excellent fics under this campaign for the whole spectrum of Pedro Pascalian characters! so keep your eye out! much more to come, muahahahaha

i know for a fact that both @beskarandblasters and @wannab-urs will be posting or have already posted two other spectacular PMAMC fics on this fine evening, so go check those out as well!

.......................................................

“What is that?”

“Don’t– you can’t laugh.”

“Oh my god, Joel. What the fuck is it?”

“Well what d’you think it is?”

“I think you lost a bet is what I think.” He’s silent for a moment, his lack of a reply all the answer she needs to burst out into laughter.

“No, really?” Joel lets out a huff.

“I was really really drunk and dumb, ok? Jesus, woman, stop looking at it!” She stifles her laugh enough to turn him around by his shoulder so he’s facing her, running a quick hand through his curls, his face flushed and set in a scowl.

“Oh, baby, I’m gonna be looking at it a lot with what I’m about to do to you.” She can see the bob of his throat in the faint light of her bedroom, the way his eyes go a touch hazy, drooping under his lashes. He’s pretty, something she’s known since they started dating, though she also knows he’d probably short-circuit if she ever called him that. But tonight, she intends to treat him like it, giving, providing, where he’s always so eager to do the same.

“Why don’t you lay out on the bed for me, handsome?” He gives her a jerky nod, seeming to think twice before he cups her cheek in his palm, dragging a hot kiss from her before he complies. He’s still in his boxers, long expanses of tan, bare strength laid out on her sheets, propped up on his elbows to watch her as she rifles through a dresser drawer to find a few things. His eyes widen when she turns back to him, baby pink strap in one hand and a bottle of lube in the other.

“Don’t worry about it, baby. We’re gonna work you up to it, ok? And if you don’t like anything, just tell me and I’ll stop.” It’s setting heat threading through her core, thick and warm, the silk of her panties sticking to her cunt from the pulse of arousal, coaxed on by the stark contrast of how he normally is to how she gets him right now. Her man, always in control, always the strong one, the dominant one, the giver, laying it all willingly at her feet.

It had started with a bit of pillow talk one night. Joel knew that she had been with women in the past, but he had never been so bold as to ask anything about it, not until that night, drunk on sweat and sex, a boyish grin slipping across his lips, turning dark and reverential fast when she was more than happy to tell him about her experience, going so far as to show him the toys she had held onto. But what she hadn’t been expecting was Joel Miller, the walking homage to southern masculinity, asking his next question.

“You ever used that, um, with– with men?”

They had talked about it more afterward, Joel eager to bring it up, ask questions, seemingly just as perplexed as she was that he was so interested in it.

“I don’t know, I mean– never thought about something like this before. But, with you it just– fuck, it seems kinda hot.”

And that’s how they’ve ended up here, her kneeling between his spread legs on her bed, palms rubbing up and down his thighs as she leans over and lays a kiss to the little swell of his belly, smiling against the jump of his muscles.

“Relax for me, Joel. I promise I’m gonna take good care of you. You trust me, right?”

“I– yeah, I do.” She slides one palm up from his thigh to his chest, pressing lightly to get him to lay back.

“Then just let me do all the work, alright? Gonna make you feel good.” With that, she draws her attention back down to the waistband of his boxers, hooking her fingers in the sides to tug them down and off his legs before settling back between his thighs, her fingers tapping the joints of his knees as a light command.

“Can you bend your knees for me, baby? Need you a little more opened up than this.” She’s surprised by the groan he lets out at her simple question, a breathless shake of his head.

“Fuck, I– you– that–” She cuts off his floundering, her palm rubbing a soothing circle against his chest.

“Hey, if you don’t feel comfortable, we don’t have to do anything different, seriously.” “No! I mean, no, I want to. It’s just– different. But different’s good. I’m good.” How could she say no to that?

“Ok, baby, I’m gonna warm you up. You tell me if I do anything you don’t like, alright?” He nods, his eyes staying glued on hers as she ducks back down, lips ghosting over the underside of his already hard cock before lapping gently at the tip. She works him over with her mouth for a while, taking him down as far as she can, her hand stroking the rest, reveling in the way his muscles slacken and tense beneath her ministrations, the way he starts to let himself go to the pleasure, his head pressed back into the pillows, eyes scrunched shut, shaky pants and curses leaving his lips. When it seems like she’s gotten him nice and relaxed, she pulls off of him, continuing to lap at his length while she fumbles around for her bottle of lube, spreading a dollop between her palms before getting her hands on his length.

“Just want you to get used to the feel of this stuff, alright, baby?” He hisses at the cool contact, but lets out a breathy, low-rumbled uh-huh as she swirls her slicked-up palm down his cock, slipping her hand down to cup his balls, a move that sets a broken groan thrumming in his throat. Her other hand presses against his thigh, getting him to open up more for her as she slips a finger down a little further, finding that tight ring of muscle and applying a bit of pressure, Joel’s hips bucking up at the sensation.

“Easy, baby, gotta stay relaxed for me if I’m gonna open you up.” He lets out a disbelieving laugh, throwing his head back as she presses her finger in, her other hand lazily stroking his cock as she does.

“Jesus, fuck– you’re good, so fucking good. Never felt anything like this be-before.” She smiles up at him, pressing a kiss to his hip as she slowly pumps her finger inside of him, only stopping to lathe more lube over her hand.

“Think you can take another one, baby? You ready for that?” He nods, a long sigh leaving his lips, but that’s not good enough for her.

“Need words, Joel. You gotta tell me what you want.”

“I– yes, more, please. Want more.” To get a please out of Joel Miller is no small feat, and she revels in it, just a little, easing a second finger in along her first one, stretching him out even more. He’s a vision, chest flushed, cheeks ablaze, one hand tugging at his mussed-up hair, the other balled into a tight fist in the sheets as she works him open. It’s messy as hell, lube slicking up everything, dripping between his thighs, his cock throbbing in her hand, his words a filthy slur of praise and curses that go straight to her aching core.

“Do you wanna finish like this, baby? Or do you wanna take it a little further?”

“More, yeah, want you– want you to go further.” She slips her fingers out of him with a smile, crawling further up the bed to steal a kiss, his mouth insistent and devouring before she pulls away with a lewd smack. His eyes trail up and down her body as she stands at the foot of the bed, first slipping her bra off, followed by her panties, before reaching for the strap. And he’s an intent and willing audience, following the way she slides the harness over her hips, deft fingers fitting it snug to her body.

“Can I have you on all fours, handsome?” He moves tentatively, a dazed look on his face when he glances over his shoulder at her, trying to watch as she spreads lube over her silicone dick. Her eyes, meanwhile, are focused back on the thing she had been so shocked to see earlier, moreso surprised that he had somehow managed to hide it from her over the months that they’ve been dating. Thick, dark ink, one of those culturally insensitive, faux-tribal numbers she’s sure he walked into a parlor and just pointed at on the wall, goaded on by Tommy and his construction crew buddies no doubt. There’s no two ways about it, Joel Miller has a tramp stamp, and she can’t help but lay a giggling kiss to it, causing him to let out a huff over his shoulder.

“I’m gonna get it removed, ok? Just– haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“And what if I kinda like it?” She can barely keep a straight face saying it, biting back a laugh as he huffs at her again, though she’s quick to soothe him, running a palm up his spine before her hand settles at his hip.

“I’m sorry, baby, no more teasing. You ready for me?” When all he does is nod, she taps him on the ass, a few pats of her palm seeming to remind him what she wants.

“Yes, fuck, ready.” She keeps one palm splayed over his lower back (and his tattoo), holding him steady as she slowly presses forward, easing him into it with gentle rocks of her hips. He’s breathing hard, little groans loosing from his chest, but he doesn’t tell her to stop, letting out a long sigh when she’s finally seated fully inside. She curls over him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, her words a faint rasp into his skin.

“Doing so good for me, Joel. Tell me when you want me to move, baby, take your time.” He cranes his neck, looking for a kiss she’s happy to give him, a desperate tangle that’s still so sweet.

“You can move, I just– fuck– it’s good, feels really fucking good.” It’s what she wants, wants him to feel good, and to keep feeling good, leaning slightly back on her knees to find a slow rhythm with her hips, one hand reaching around to stroke his throbbing cock, Joel letting out a harsh moan when she does. She’s never heard these sounds from him before, broken grunts and breathy chants of her name with each thrust of her hips, completely losing himself in the sensation. She curls back over him, her hips set in a deep grind as she drags her lips over his temple.

“That feel good, baby? Nice to have someone take care of you, huh? Taking it so good, Joel. You gonna come for me? Gonna let me have it?”

“Jesus fucking christ, feels so fucking good– you’re gonna kill me, shit– fucking close, so fucking close.” With one more pass of her hand over his cock, one more rock of her hips, he comes on a punched-out exhale, slumping down onto his elbows with a shuddering heave. She presses kisses all over his shoulder blades as she pulls out, trying to soothe the hiss he lets out at the ache, quick to guide him onto his back so he doesn't flop down into a pool of his own spend. If he hears her low-murmured be right back, he doesn’t show it, forearm slung over his face, chest still heaving as she slips out of the bedroom to get him a glass of water.

“Is this how you feel? After we– when I– when we–” She cuts off his stumbling question with a light laugh, sitting down on the side of the bed next to him and coaxing a few sips of water out of him.

“So you liked it?” He quirks a brow at her, one of his hands coming to rest on her thigh, squeezing the swell of it when she laughs again at his expression.

“Gotta be honest, darlin, my expectations were low. Kinda wanted to try it just to see, I guess. But fuck, that was, uh, that was something else.” She can’t help herself, leaning down for a quick kiss that he chases after with a much deeper one, greedy hands squeezing and pulling until she’s getting dragged onto his lap, wincing at the slick stick of it and pulling away.

“What? What’s wrong? C’mon, darlin, wanna take care of you now.” Though he tries to pull her back in for a kiss, she plants a firm palm on his forehead to hold him back, stifling a laugh at his perplexed expression.

“That sounds nice, but you are covered in lube and it’s sticking to everything. Can we continue this in the shower, baby?” Ever the gentleman, Joel acquiesces to her request, letting her get up before shuffling into the bathroom in all his bare glory to get the water warmed up.

It’s an irresistible urge, walking into the bathroom, seeing his back facing her, his cute little ass and the hilarious art just above it, and she just has to give a quick pinch to his hip before raking her nails over the ink, grinning at him as he turns around with an exasperated huff.

“Ain’t ever gonna let me live this down, are you?”

“That depends, do you have any other tattoos you’ve been hiding from me?” His grin goes smarmy, drawing a gasp out of her when he pulls her into him with a hooked arm around her waist, pressing a hard kiss to her lips.

“Nothing else to hide, darlin. Think you’ve seen it all now.”

...........................

tags for folks who i think would enjoy this lmao: @wannab-urs @beskarandblasters @jksprincess10 @cutesyscreenname @swiftispunk @northernbluess @pr0ximamidnight

#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #tlou #tlou fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller angst #the last of us #joel miller fluff #joel miller smut #joel miller one shot #joel miller au #joel miller fic #joel miller imagine

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whoppert · 9 months ago

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I have a WIP fic for this but just in case it rots in my computer (pls don't steal it)

Unasended Astarion, who frees the vampire spawn and follows them to the Underdark at the end of the game

at first he's paralyzed by depression that he's stuck here in the dark. it's not fair (it really isnt) but over time he realises that the spawn have made a little community and they consider him a... folk hero????

He's shocked and they're like obviously u r a hero, u freed 7000 slaves and killed their master like how much more hero do you get? They give him big fancy titles and he LOVES that - Astarion Breaker of Chains, Freedom Giver, Protector of the Helpless, Light in the Darkness.

He doesn't really believe them (he certainly doesn't tell them how close he got to killing them all) but he'll let them sing his praises.

This sends him into a further depression spiral because this was his fault, he brought these people to Cazador, he's the reason they were enslaved in the first place. He really has to learn to regulate his emotions and process things in a healthy way and for the first time he has more than just his friends but a whole town's worth of people to help him. They're particularly sympathetic to his brand of trauma and help him feel less alone.

Only eventually he starts believing them. Why can't he be a hero?

Overtime he starts to really care about this little community :) he's the defacto leader (even tho he hates that) and so any issues are his to deal with. I like to think they build a town in the Underdark and Astarion's familiarity to the Myconids means they help (they could not give two shits about spawn in the Underdark because they don't eat mushrooms). He and his siblings council the feral spawn until they learn to control themselves, teaching them that it's their decision if they want to feed on animals or people but there are strict rules about what people they can feed on (mostly bad people but there is no short supply of horny drow that are willing to be fed on). When threats come to the village, Astarion is leading the charge against their enemies (not everyone is pleased to have the spawn in the Underdark even if they are being pretty responsible about it). He's learning about Gur culture from the child spawns and learns the error of his racist ways.

Eventually, he becomes the Folk Hero.

He negotiates freedom for Underdark Gnomes ('Do you want 7000 Vampire Spawns let loose in Menzoberranzan? Cause I'll release them. Free your slaves or I'll have my children bring me the heads of all the Great Drow Houses.')

He works with Gale to enchant their little town to have a day/night cycle (it's not sunlight, just light because he misses it) and the City of Spawn is the only place in the entirety of the Underdark you can feel the warmth of the 'sun' on your skin

His friends come to visit and he is so changed for the better. He's happy, he's joyful. He no longer worries about spending eternity alone. He reclaimed his soul, something he thought lost to Cazador entirely

In 1000 years the Underdark is a fundamentally better place - all because he's there

#astarion #bg3 spoilers #bg3 #bg3 fic #bg3 gale #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #baldurs gate astarion #baldur

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beesxrated · 11 months ago

Text

A Day In

Another Halsin fic.🪻

Masterlist

Light pours through the trees waking you up. You groan and turn in the large arms around you, burring your face in his bare chest. He pulls you closer kissing the top of your head before he rolls and faces you as well. Halsin's lips meet yours in a long sleepy kiss before they continue to your cheek and your neck. His hands trace and caress every inch of your body as his lips and tongue caress the rest.

"We just woke up, Halsin." You mumble as his lips meet your stomach just above your waist.

You feel him chuckle against your skin, "You can tell me to stop if you want, love."

But you don't, you enjoy his touch and lips against your body as he slowly moves downward. His hands push you down onto your back and his mouth having almost reached what you desire most. Instead he raises himself up and kisses you again on the lips before pulling away and sitting up on the edge of the bed. You lay there frustrated.

"I have some things to get done, but after those I am all yours." He leans back and kisses you hard.

You sigh, voicing your frustrations, "How long will you be?"

"I do not know. I would say maybe an hour or two."

"I don't know if I can wait that long, Hals."

He smiles at you, "I will make it as fast as I can."

He gets up, dresses himself and leaves your space. You lay there in your frustration thinking of all of the ways to get him back for this. Playfully, you think of doing the same to him, but know you don't have the willpower to pull away from him like that. You doze off thinking about Halsin.

You awaken this time to shadow, eyes still closed you begin to wonder if you may have slept through the entire day. That fear is quickly squashed as lips meet yours, softly. You open your eyes and find Halsin starting to travel down your body again.

You surprise Halsin as you push him down onto his back, taking your time in kissing his body as he has done to you many times. He seems to enjoy it just as much as you do. His hands slide into your hair tugging as you nip at his hips. You look up for just a moment to see his eyes closed and seemingly enjoying every touch. You tease him, kissing and touching all around the throbbing bit of his pleasure.

He groans as you finally take it into your mouth. His hands grip the roots of your hair pushing further into you. His body starts to shake as you work on him. You notice how much he is enjoying this and regret not doing it sooner. He's always been a giver and never complained, and now you also like being a giver.

Haslin tries to get out your name, but shudders every time you change up what your doing even a small amount. Noticing this you release him and he immediately flips you around on him. His mouth on your pleasure and yours on his. You start to lose focus as he grips your hips keeping you in place, refusing to let you move as he finishes you off.

Once he's finished with you he pushes you back into the bed on your back. His hands massage you as he continues with his mouth for a minute longer before he shifts himself up onto his elbows. Halsin almost growls, something you'd never heard him do before, as he pushes himself into you. You realize you have become louder now than you ever had before, your throat starts to feel scratchy as you groan his name.

You have lost all sense of yourself as he forgets his previously soft and slow motions you were used to. He thrusts harder than you'd ever thought he could before. He seems almost feral as his teeth find your neck and he growls again. Your nails scrape up his back and into his hair gaining a deep, heavy moan from him. Halsin brings his head next to yours as he reaches ecstasy, letting out a low grumble. His trusts become slow and shallow as you feel him finish. As he pulls himself from you he lets out a huff, and falls next to you.

Your body shakes as it tries to regulate the emotion and pleasure coursing through your body. Halsin lays his head on your chest, breathing heavily. His hands trace shapes or words on your stomach as you brush fingers through his hair.

"What are you tracing?" You ask when your throat stops stinging.

Halsin hums a bit, "Nothing, just letters."

"Does it say anything?" You ask trying to focus on the letters he could possibly be writing on your body.

"I love you." He says, "And promises in a language forgotten."

"What are you promising?"

"You will learn in time. For now, I want to lay with you."

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always-andromeda · 2 years ago

Text

𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐫, 𝐈 𝐀𝐦 𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐓𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞

𝐃𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐣𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧 𝐱 𝐅𝐞𝐦!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 ⭐︎ 1,119

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 ⭐︎ The dark never quite appealed to you until Din showed you the delights that could be hidden within it. Tucked away in the shadows of the Razor Crest, his mouth seeks out yours.

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ⭐︎ I can't even pretend that I came up with the title for this fic. Last semester I read an article by Leah Comeau analyzing Tirukkōvaiyār, an ancient Tamil poem. That line appeared in the poem and it immediately gave me Din vibes. Thank you college education for giving me ideas for my internet smut.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 ⭐︎ smut (minors, please do not interact), oral (female receiving), Din gets absolute drunk off of pussy lmao, Din using bits of Mando'a (sorry I am a sentimental whore) lots of intimacy and bits of angst here and there, nothing else I can think of!

The dark never quite appealed to you until Din showed you the delights that could be hidden within it. Tucked away in the shadows of the Razor Crest, his mouth seeks out yours. And right away it comes off as an apology. An apology for the secrecy in which your relationship operates.

Working with him was already risky enough. If those who wanted the Mandalorian's head on a pike knew just how much he values you...Din doesn't even want to conceptualize how the danger would only multiply. All he wants is to anchor himself in your being.

He hovers over you, letting messy kisses land wherever he wants them to. Some hit your jaw, your chin, your cheek. As soon as he catches the corner of your lips, he focuses in with smaller pecks until one finally lands right in the middle of your mouth. There it waits, parted slightly in anticipation. There's a second of silence as his nose bumps against yours and you know right away that it's not an accident. It's affection.

Din doesn't spare another moment before he dives back in. You can hardly keep up with his desperation. Given your deprivation of sight, you have no choice but to feel every landing of his lips on your skin.

Though it’s just light kisses, each one chips away at you with its ravenous energy. In a way, you can't blame him. When was the last time he'd been able to take that helmet off so he could feel the touch of another? When will the next time be? Because for all you both know, he could be killed before next time comes. You push that thought away. Instead, you tell yourself that he's far too intelligent, far too skilled, far too shrewd to let anything bad happen to him. And for a little while, that staves the worries away.

At least it's long enough to focus on his mouth, smothering your abdomen with open mouthed kisses. The smacking sound of them makes your breath catch in your throat as the vibrations get closer and closer to where you need him.

Always the noble giver, Din provides generously. He takes his time running his tongue through the nooks between your thighs and your cunt. Though his navigation between your legs is imperfect, it's still welcome. Whether it's the dark that causes this or his innate urge to savor this moment, you don't know.

Either way, you need it. But you don't have it in you to whine or whisper for him to give you more. Slowly, he tastes you. Lets the musk and sweat of your skin build on his taste buds until he becomes intoxicated from the potency. You let your soft gasps fade into the white noise of the enclosed room.

You don't think you'll ever get over this; trying to picture what his face might look like as he works. This time you feel the prickle of facial hair on your inner thighs, making you twitch. Then there's his nose. You have no clue what it looks like but you're fully convinced that it's perfect based entirely on the way that the bridge of it gently nudges at your clit.

Hand fanning over the expanse of your thigh, he squeezes. A low groan from his throat mixes with the wet sounds of his tongue attempting to drink up every bit of sickly sweet nectar he can.

Starved. Ravenous. And you still can't blame him.

He feels your walls clench and shiver around his tongue and chooses then to retreat. Teasingly, he kisses around your labia. He bides his time before he spreads you out once more, runs his tongue through the folds and finally latches onto the thrumming core that begs for his attention.

By the time your legs begin to shake and you gasp out, "I think I'm close," you swear you detect a hint of disappointment in his tone when he replies, "Already?"

Time must've flown by while he was having his fun because without even meaning to, he'd brought you to the edge and back more times than you could be bothered to keep track of. Part of him longs to do it all over again.

But he doesn't have nearly enough self control to even try to exercise it. You know exactly what he needs. He takes as much as he can get from you, knowing full well that at the end of it he'd need to disappear once more. As long as he held onto his faith, this would have to do. You'd be his breath of fresh air, keeping him going when the way becomes difficult for him to find a point in following.

Besides, you cry out so beautifully already. Your figure squirming, heels digging into his back, you feel almost like one of his bounties, begging for his mercy. But because it's you, he truly feels pity. With his eyes adjusted to the dark, he can barely make out your eyes as they squeeze shut. And he bets that if the light were on, he'd see glimmering trails of tears making their way down the sides of your face. That image motivates him enough to finish the job properly.

In an instant, the quiet and almost claustrophobic atmosphere of the Mandalorian's bunk crumbles away as you're sent into hyperspace. And then you simply float. In the infinite, unending darkness of the room, Din's presence envelopes you as he whispers one word against your skin, over and over again.

Cyar’ika.

It protects you; lets you feel the full weightlessness and peace of pleasure before letting you gently drift back into gravity's grasp. There isn’t just desperation, hunger, or simple affection in this act. There’s love. Trust. All things that you know how difficult it is for the Mandalorian to muster for someone outside the bounds of his creed.

You couldn't be more relieved when he surfaces to hold you in his arms. Amongst all of the chaos that comes with being with him, you wouldn't want it any other way. Not when you feel his head nuzzle into the crook of your neck. You laugh a little weakly when you comb your fingers through his hair and feel how damp it is.

Din hums halfheartedly, wordlessly wondering what was so humorous to you.

You don't bother answering, knowing that he'd probably be out before too long. You burn this feeling into your bones. And you hold each other the way that only two people in the middle of an uncertain galaxy can; with an almost impossible sort of faith. Entangled with you, Din feels just as safe and sure as the beskar he hides beneath.

#˚ʚ meda writes ɞ˚#pedro pascal #pedro pascal x f!reader #pedro pascal x female reader #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal x y/n #pedro pascal smut #the mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x f!reader #din djarin x female reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din djarin x y/n #din djarin smut

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inevitably-johnlocked · 10 months ago

Note

hi my dearest

any fics that are based on a movie? or good alternative meeting ones?

Hi Lovely!

I've got a TONNE of Movie-inspired fics! What a grand excuse to post the next part of my Crossovers list! Hope you enjoy all of these!! I've also gone through my MFL list to pad out this list a bit more, hee hee.

If anyone has some more to add that isn't on one of my numerous movie / TV-related lists, please do!

And finally, I actually ALSO had WiPs on this list but I had to remove them because Tumblr has a link limit, so if you guys want me to post a separate 2.5 list with those on it, just let me know! I've about 20 MORE fics I could add here :P

MOVIE / BOOK / TV CROSSOVERS and FUSIONS Pt 2