#fuck this felt like a summer romance of mine

[ardans]

Los Amantes Astronautas (2024)

[lnfours]

us. | l.n

summary: and what seemed like fate becomes "what the hell was i doin'?" ; aka time heals all wounds, so they say, but has it been long enough for it to heal the one he left?

warnings: the highly requested part two to ‘august’, use of she/her pronouns, childhood friends to lovers, second chance romance, oscar giving lando advice bc duh, pining, language, lando absolutely word vomiting when it comes to his feelings, fluff towards the end.

‘august’ | listen | masterlist

oscar piastri took pride in being more observant rather than being the life of the party. he much rather preferred to be labeled as the 'wall hugger' rather than the wild child between him and his teammate. he let lando have that role, opting on sitting on the sidelines more often than not.

but tonight, it was completely different. the aussie driver had agreed to hitting the club in monaco tonight to celebrate charles' first home win and his own second place finish. he couldn't shake the feeling that something was going on with his teammate, eyeing him as he sat down in the lounge area the group had gotten for the evening. something out of the normal for the brit.

he decided to take matters into his own hands, joining his friend on the couch. lando sent a tight lipped smile to his teammate, another red flag the aussie picked up on. he wasn't sporting his usual smile, the one that beamed. one of pure joy.

"you feeling alright, mate?" oscar asked, genuinely concerned.

lando nodded in response, "'m good, just a bit tired."

he hummed, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked out at the dance floor of people. the crowd normally lando would be in the middle of, but not tonight.

"gonna make me pry it out of you or are you just gonna tell me?"

lando chuckled softly, letting out a soft sigh, "y'know that new reporter for sky who was in the media pen earlier?"

oscar furrowed his eyebrows in concentration, trying to remember your name, "think so? shit, what was her name?"

"y/n," lando said and oscar nodded in agreement.

"yeah, that's it," the aussie turned back to look at his teammate, "what about her?"

"well, a few years ago, her and i kind of..." lando trailed off, leaving his teammate to raise his eyebrows.

"you two had a thing?"

lando nodded, "yeah, she had a vacation rental next to mine in the states, and one summer we just really hit it off. y'know, we went on dates and eventually it turned into something more, and... oscar, i was in love with her."

the australian was shocked, "did you tell her?"

"i did," lando nodded, swallowing before continuing, "and i was with her when i got the call that they wanted me to join the team, and i just... i fucking left. i left without waking her up and saying goodbye. the best few months of my entire life, falling in love with someone who has never made me feel more loved and appreciated, and it all went down the drain because i fucked it all up."

oscar sat in silence for a minute, processing what the brit next to him had just told him, "well, do you still love her?"

"i never stopped," lando looked over at his teammate, his expression showing the guilt he still felt for leaving that one night, "i don't think i could ever."

"have you told her?"

he shook his head, "pretty sure she hates my guts, so, no."

oscar sighed, "listen, although she has every reason to hate you, i mean, i would too, doesn't mean deep down that she does. obviously, running into you again has probably brought up all of those feelings she worked to get over, but if you really feel the way you're telling me you feel about her, and it seems like you do, you gotta fight for it. you can't just let her slip through your fingers, again, and live a miserable life. nothing's gonna come out of it if you don't work for it."

lando sat in shock at his teammate, blinking at him like a deer in headlights. he had never known oscar to be this wise when it comes to relationship advice. he truly didn't know he had it in him.

"what?" the aussie laughed, "mate, i've been with lily for five years. you think we haven't had our own fair share of ups and downs?"

"no, i'm just amazed that at your age you're so wise." lando joked back, the two of them laughing.

"yeah, whatever," oscar waved him off, "but seriously, i mean what i said."

he nodded, "i know, i just don't know when i should talk to her."

oscar shrugged, "the sooner the better. that way you stop moping around like a sad, lost puppy."

lando jokingly rolled his eyes, pulling his phone from his pocket, "shut up."

his heart hammered in his chest at the thought of messaging you, opening instagram. but, just when he went to open his messages, your profile picture caught his eye at the top of the screen. he tapped onto the story you had posted not long ago, holding it down so it wouldn't disappear as he scanned over the picture.

you were still at the track, posting a picture from one of the offices. a video from your interviews today sitting on the screen, clear that you had stayed late to finish working on them. a caption written out on the photo.

'in desperate need of another cup of coffee'

he was up on his feet before he could even think through what he was about to do. shoving his phone in his pocket as oscar smiled at him softly.

"where're you heading?"

lando turned, walking backwards away from the lounge area, shouting over the bass of the club music playing loudly through the speakers, "'m feeling like having a cup of coffee! thanks for your help, osc!"

oscar raised his glass in a cheers motion to his teammate, watching him turn around and make a beeline for the exit. lily found her way to the lounge area, sitting next to her boyfriend and jabbing her thumb over her shoulder, motioning towards his teammate.

"where's he heading?"

oscar smiled, swallowing the sip of his drink, "going to get his girl."

the night breeze in the monaco air felt nice on lando's skin, a contrast against the overly warm club he had been in. he pulled his phone out once again, searching for a coffee shop that would still be open at this hour. he found one that looked promising after a few minutes of searching, putting in the directions to it and taking off in the direction.

he ignored the hammering of his heart in his chest as he carefully placed the cup in the holders of his car. was it the best idea to show up unannounced with a coffee in hand, especially when he wasn't sure how you felt about him? probably not. but after the conversation with oscar, all he could think about was how he couldn't lose you again. how even after searching for someone to fill the ache in his heart that was put there by his own doing, no one could compare to you. they couldn't ever be you, even if they tried or if he tried to make it work. it wasn't the same.

he parked the car, heading towards the building he knew all the journalists worked in. some of them still hanging around, sending lando smiles but confusion clear in their eyes as his eyes scanned the room.

"do you know where y/n is?" he asked an older man, a guy he had recognized to be your camera man from earlier. the man nodded, pointing towards the room with glass walls. he could see you in the room, your back facing the door. headphones sitting on top of your head, clearly invested in your work. he swallowed nervously, thanking the man before heading towards the room.

you hadn't noticed he entered the room until a hand placing a coffee next to you caught your attention. you slipped the headphones off, placing them on the desk before turning to see who was standing behind you.

he met your eyes, which were also laced with confusion as you spun around in your chair. he sent you a small, nervous smile. the same smile you had given him in the media pen hours ago.

"lando? what're you doing here?" you asked, "and how did you.."

he smiled softly, "saw your story."

"what is it?" you asked, moving to grab the warm cup, "i mean, i like my coffee-"

"with light cream and two and a half sugars. the pink packets, though, not the white ones."

your heart squeezed in your chest, he remembered the way you liked your coffee.

you took a sip of the warm liquid, tasting exactly the way you liked it. you took in a deep breath, meeting his green eyes once again and you swore you were slowly falling in love with him again. it was like you were back at the beach house, back at the exact moment you had realized you were in love with him.

maybe the feelings you thought had gone away after the years weren't truly gone.

your lipstick left a pretty mark on the white lid and he scanned your facial features. in the dim lighting you were still as gorgeous as the day he met you, pretty colored eyes that complimented the color of the strands of your hair. a pair of glasses sitting comfortably on your face, remembering that you only wore them when your eyes were starting to get irritated after a long day.

your voice was soft, "lando, what're you doing here?" you asked again, still confused on why he had come, "i mean, other than dropping off a coffee, which thank you for, by the way, but shouldn't you be out with the rest of the drivers? y'know, celebrating..?"

"well, i was," lando breathed, ignoring how it came out a little shaky, “but, to be honest, i just.. really want to talk to you.”

everything he rehearsed in his head during the driver over here was going out the window with each passing second. the longer he looked in your eyes the more he wished he had never walked out of that house all those years ago. the more it was eating him up inside that he let the best thing he ever had go, that he never told you why.

you sighed, pointing over your shoulder to the screen behind you, “i really have to finish this,”

“it’ll be quick,” he was almost begging. about to get on his knees if he had to, “promise.”

you nodded, your brain yelling at you for agreeing but your heart almost leaping out of your chest at the fact that he was here. standing in front of you. right now. when he could’ve been at the club, wrapped around some other girl. but he wasn’t.

“okay, just, let me grab my things.”

he nodded, biting down on his lower lip nervously as you saved your work and exited out of the editing software. you packed up everything in your bag, pushing the chair in before grabbing your coffee from the desk.

he held out his hand, “here,”

you furrowed your eyebrows in response. he motioned to the bag and you smiled softly, “oh, thanks,”

he nodded, letting you lead him out of the office. you said goodnight to the crew that was left, not batting an eye at the looks they gave you for having the, arguably, most sought out driver on the grid tailing behind you.

once you were outside, he walked next to you. matching your pace as he looked over at you, “so, uhm, how’re they treating you at sky?”

you nodded, “good,” you smiled softly, “didn’t expect i’d work in the same sport as you, to be honest.”

“you’re telling me you didn’t follow me here to make me realize i’ve been missing out all this time?” he joked and you laughed, shoving his shoulder with yours.

“shut it,”

“sorry, too soon?”

you chuckled, “forever might be too soon.”

he chuckled with you, unlocking the doors to the mclaren. he opened the passenger side door, letting you sit down in the seat. you took your bag from him and smiled, a silent thank you, before he closed the door for you and rounded the front of the car to get in on his side. he started the car, looking back over at you, "hungry?"

you hummed, "starving."

"perfect," he said, putting in the directions for a place he knew you'd like. you rubbed your lips together nervously, watching the monaco lights pass by you. the breeze was nice, something you could get used to.

you cut through the silence that fell over the two of you, speaking over the soft music he had put on for the drive, "so, what did you want to talk about?"

he looked over at you, the red of the stoplight illuminating his face. he had grown into his features, but the boyish things about him was what you loved. the way his dimples deepened the wider his smile was, the moles and freckles that littered his skin like stars, and you had noticed the small scar on the bridge of his nose. one that wasn't there years prior, but you had grown to love. you silently hoped he'd tell you the story sometime. wanting to know every detail of his life the past few years, the years you spent watching from the sidelines.

"about what happened," he said, the light turning green and his attention fixing back to the road, continuing to drive, "i feel like i owe you a very long, detailed, explanation."

you nodded as he pulled into a parking lot, "okay, yeah," you breathed out softly, "sure."

he parked the car, turning the engine off before looking back at you. you turned to face him, giving him a soft smile as he looked at you, eyes dancing around your face before he took a deep breath.

"listen, i know it's been a while and i really wouldn't blame you if you hate my guts, but i just... can't. i can't pretend that i've lived in a world i'm completely satisfied with. and i can't bring myself to fall in love with someone else because no matter what, i find myself wishing i was with you, at that stupid beach house where i first felt what love truly felt like."

you sat in silence, taking in his rambling thoughts. this conversation definitely wasn't going as well as he had rehearsed it in his head, but it was too late to turn back now. he was sitting here, spewing every emotion he's felt over the past couple of years in front of you. it's how he truly felt. no filter, no hoops to jump through, just pure emotion and longing and hints of regret, and true apologies.

"you're the first thing i think of when i wake up and the last thing i think of before i go to bed, and hell, sometimes i even find you in my dreams because for a while that was the only place where you and i co-existed. and i'm so fucking sorry for how i left you, how i packed up and moved on with my life without even considering how you would feel. it makes me sick to my stomach to think about the fact that i've fucked up the part of my life that felt normal. that felt real, and all because i was too much of a coward to tell you what was going on. too scared to drag you into all of this,"

he was still rambling and you couldn't help the way your heart hammered against your chest. the moment you had wished for all these years finally unfolding in front of your eyes and you couldn't help the tears that were starting to prick your eyes.

"but now, you're here, and i'm here, and... holy fuck i'm still so in love with you."

his throat bobbed, swallowing down the nerves as you watched him. you were speechless, unsure how to respond to everything he had just spewed to you. your heart was caught in your throat, the tears closer to spilling over after his rambling. he had said everything he was feeling and little did he know it was the same way you had been feeling too.

after every wish and journal entry wishing he'd waltz back into your life, he finally was here. sitting across from you, and now you were speechless. unable to find the words to tell him you felt the same way.

"i'm sorry," he mumbled, looking away and straight ahead of him, almost as if he was embarrassed to spring all of that onto you, "that was a lot all at once, i'm sorry-"

you leaned over the center console, grabbing his face in your hands, turning him to face you and smashing your lips against his. the tears falling down now at the feeling of having him this close again. the familiar feeling of having his lips on yours again being enough to send them dripping down and onto your shirt.

he was quick to kiss you back, as soon as the initial shock wore off. his hand moving to cup your cheek, deepening the kiss as you grabbed his shirt in your fist, not wanting to let go after he had been away from you all this time.

he pulled away when he needed to catch his breath, forehead resting against yours. you smiled softly, the two of you panting breathless and in love. he brought his thumb up to your cheek, wiping away the few stray tears that were still lingering. you leaned into his touch and he pressed a kiss to the corner of your mouth.

"i love you," you breathed, nose bumping his, "so much. i never stopped, even after you left."

he smiled, his voice soft, "i'll spend a lifetime making it up to you."

you shook your head, "it doesn't matter. you're here now, that's all that matters."

"can i start with dinner?" he asked, smiling softly and brushing a piece of hair from your face. you hummed and nodded, pulling away from him as he got out of the car, jogging to open your door. you smiled and placed a quick kiss to his lips, joining your hands together. he walked with you into the restaurant, and as he opened the door for you all he could think about how he was the luckiest man on earth.

there was no way he was letting you again. you were incomparable. chemical.

[foreverisntenough]

‘OURS’

Summary: You were his and he was yours but what would it be like adding one more? Thrust into a whirlwind romance you never could’ve imagined that became your forever love. You continue building a new life across the pond with a very beautiful Scouser. A sequel to the ‘You’re Mine’ fic.

INDEX

Warnings: This series will contain fluff, suggestion, SMUT (unprotected sex,) pregnancy, parenting, mental health struggles, eating disorder, self doubt, body image issues, daddy kink, angst, alcohol consumption - not sure what else really… if i miss anything please lmk!

Note: Thank you for reading! Please be sure to like, comment, or message me what you think of the series! Try not to nitpick with any real pregnant/ baby logistics it’s better if you just read along happily :)

Extra Extreme Warning! This chapter focus on mental health struggles and body image issues (depression and ed) It’s a little dark so if that is at all potentially triggering to you please be advised and do not interact.

Chapter 19 - Can't Do It Anymore | ‘Ours’

“I can’t do it anymore!” You screamed with tears running down your face. You were grown but you felt like a little girl. Your mum standing in front of you in your bedroom angry as she's ever been. 

“Stop! Stop it, We’re going.” She demanded. She was stern and not going to back down. It was the summer before you left for university. A fresh 18 year old eager to get away from the exact scene unfolding in front of you. Your mum was forcing you to attend a gala event she had every year. She was intimidatingly kind but often kept her feet firm in her way of tough love. You loved a good party, maybe a little too much but forcing a smile and talking about what your college courses would consist of next year to business men that stood too close and inappropriately inspected every inch of you. It was a secret to everyone but your mum and Winnie and even they pretended they didn’t know. The way the sheath dress hung off your body reflecting back at your mum in the mirror only amplified the skeletal arch of your spine. ��

“Fine… you want me to go. I’ll fucking go.” You murmured brushing past her heading straight to the en-suite of your room. You chugged a liter of vodka you'd dashed under the sink and popped one too many of your prescribed xanax in an unprescribed way. You collapsed in the bathroom before you could make it out of the house, ruining your night, your mum's prized annual gala, and probably Winnie’s perception of you forever. She had gone to your bathroom initially to steal some of the new blush you had gotten. She was met with something entirely different; finding you laying on the floor. They rushed you to hospital in an ambulance.  

“She’s extremely malnourished.” The attending doctor spoke calmly to your parents outside the room in the corridor. Your dad’s gaze narrowing at you laying in the harshly lit room. Your mum’s face pulling into disgust and shock, offended the doctor could imply something like that.

“She’s just thin. Please.” She scoffed, taken aback that you could be anything but fabulously waift. She hated the way the doctor infered she had not taken care of you somehow. She had given you everything, look at you, you were gorgeous but the hospital gown wasn't exactly chic.

“Ann Marie… listen to them. She’s killing herself. Enough.” Your dad quipped. They loved you in their own ways; your dad thought of you like little girls, your mum as if you were her little dolls. Things slowed after the incident and there was a much closer eye on you. Your mum still pushed, your dad still pulled, and Winnie sat somewhere in the middle. You got relatively healthy, at least enough to pass on scales and keep the chaos at bay but things bubbled under the surface. Suppressing anything that may rock the boat of familial perfection. You and Lauren had just returned to Manhattan after a weekend out east at your parents when she found you in your own sick. Chase had come over the night you returned from the beach. You and Lauren lived together and she wasn’t keen opening the door to see him but he was handsome and a good fuck so she shrugged it off. It wasn’t really him exactly… it wasn’t him. Chase sucked no shadow of a doubt but you couldn’t blame him. It could’ve been any man.  It really could’ve been anyone but you just happened to fall into his terribly mean arms on one night you blacked out and found yourself waking up in his bed. The tectonic plates of the earth shifted, mentally handcuffing yourself to this awful person.

“Still the same for me?” He’d ask you ahead of coming over. He kept tabs on the size of your clothes, the condition of your skin, the way your hair fell. You didn’t eat all day and he fucked the daylights out of you that night after you confirmed you had kept the circumference of your waist just the same as he liked, anything to get him to like you. He shoved his cock down your throat until you were sobbing, he didn't like you, he liked the high of using you. “You want me to love you, Y/N? That’s all you want? Take my fucking cock and I’ll think about it.” He’d mock you, railing into you from behind. You hated that your body craved him. That’s all you thought about. How? How do you get someone like this to like you? Why did you want it so bad? You did it all for him with zero return except for the brutal fuck he'd deliver. Lauren called Winnie sobbing. She knocked on your door early the next day curious to see how the night went but you were there limp in your bed sick.

“Well she’s breathing right? Jesus Christ! What did you do last night?” Winnie screamed freaking out that Lauren had found you like this and yet simultaneously angry with you. This was the second time someone was finding you like this. 

“I don’t know I… I.. she was with fucking Chase last night… fuck!” Lauren cried. The problem wasn’t Chase, what you ate, or your mum, the problem was you. You did it on purpose but no one mentioned it to you. No one said it. Ignorance was bliss. You were discharged again and everything moved on. Texts from Chase still coming in oblivious to the state he walked out on you in despite Lauren’s barrage of messages to leave you alone. You just threw your phone off the bed feeling just the same as the days prior only now slightly  more weak. You curled on your bed just wanting it all to fade away until morning the broke, the annoyingly bright sun refusing to lend you the peace you so badly craved. Why did you want him to love you so badly? Did you really hate him or yourself for being with him. Either way, you just wanted to be loved, that was abundantly clear. You walked into your parent’s kitchen in an oversized t-shirt sleepily and groggy. They made you move back with them for a few months to rehabilitate. 

“Trent Alexander Arnold has pinned one in for Liverpool!” The echo from the TV in the connecting room blasting in the late morning as you reached up into a cupboard. 

“Get in! Come on” Your dad yelled cheering. His loud booming voice making you jump. He heard you fumble the glass of water you were trying to get yourself so he turned to you mid-celebration. “Y/N, you okay? Come watch with me. The kid I swear... He's amazing” He shook his head in disbelief at the goal just scored by the man who would eventually ask him to marry you. A glint flashed in your eyes. 

“He’s cute…” You mumbled to your dad coming over to sit with him analyzing the camera’s close zoom on Trent’s face. His lips curling into the same dimpled smile your daughter had now ricocheting around in your mind finding its permanent home to replay on a loop. 

“Talented.” Your dad corrected you as he looked on more impressed with the tactical skill than Trent’s looks.

“Sure” You rolled your eyes and pulled your legs up onto the couch. Wrapping your arms around your knees.

“About your age you know?” Your dad informed you. That was interesting. You wondered what Trent’s life was like? This stupidly attractive stranger on the TV. You were the same age crying over a pathetic Manhattan party boy last night. Your mind wandered and you began to wonder if Trent lived a life anything like Chase and all the other boys surrounding you; using looks and status to blow through girls and money on nights out. You cocked your head looking a bit closer at his eyes and you felt your heart involuntarily softening. Imagine if he was really really sweet. “How we feeling today?” Your dad intruded the delusions seeping into your brain. You hummed lost in your own thoughts. “Can’t even conjure up a lie for me today?” He laughed sympathetically and quietly turning to face you. 

“Nah.” You finally gave him half an answer. Your eyes fixated on the game now waiting for the camera to catch glimpses of the boy you might’ve just fallen in love with. What if he was nice?  What if he was nice to you? God, if he was nice to you you'd love him forever, and you did. He had a chock hold grip on your heart. 

“Want a beer?” Your dad cut your thoughts off once more. You furrowed your brow confused what he was asking you. 

“Dad?” You snapped out of your reverie about a person you didn’t know feeling stupid imagining a world you didn’t live in, you didn’t deserve that, and certainly the boy flashing across the tv wasn’t going to be the one to give it to you. 

“It’s 8 pm where I am right now.” Your dad laughed again dreaming he was back at Anfield’s stadium tonight instead of on your family’s couch. You hummed, finally wrapping your head around his sentiment. “Let’s go on your thanksgiving break.” He cooed. 

“To?” You turned your body towards him on the couch for the first time taking your eyes off the screen in minutes. You were interested in anything he was offering that might potentially whisk you out of your current place in the world. 

“To Anfield. You’ll love it” Your dad assured you. Loving anything right now felt like a cruel joke but of course you’d go.  8 pm under the floodlights of Anfield with the beer your dad wanted so desperately you watched admiring the boy who would end up being nicer to you than anyone ever had been. 

You changed for the match and you definitely didn’t look good. Winnie FaceTimed Teddy and Dianne for you as you rushed around your hotel room. You did the best you could to not burst right into tears looking back at the cutest face you’d ever seen in your life. The bright wide eyes gleaming mirroring Trent’s exactly seeing her mummy. It was wrong but you hadn’t even responded to any of Trent’s messages from last night yet this morning. You didn’t tell Winnie that. You couldn’t. You couldn’t answer all the questions he had and you didn’t want to answer any more of hers. Honestly, you didn’t know the answers to them. When you arrived at the stadium you prayed for some sort of invisibility shield. That wasn’t going to happen. You were radiating an energy that just reeked of misfortune, you felt eyes burning into you. Trent scanned the stadium for you before you had arrived. Seats left for you and Winnie empty while he warmed up. Marcel sitting there alone also awaiting your arrival. When the two teams lined up ahead of the anthem he finally clocked you. Trent looked fucking livid. You’d never seen him give that face to you. You started crying. You watched him shut his eyes in slow motion, his heart breaking in real time. Winnie squeezed your shoulder. You batted your eyes to try to clear the tears. Your view of Trent blurring then clearing then blurring again. Your heart aching painfully. Trent played incredible. It maybe was the best half of football you’d seen him play. It made you sick thinking maybe you had potentially been a cause for any dips in his form. That not having you around somehow made him better. The second half began. Only a few minutes passed before Trent rocketed home a shot from outside the box. The stadium erupted celebrating the goal and you never felt more silenced. He ran to the corner flag and swung at it with real fire. He screamed while his teammates engulfed him. Media and the crowd probably perceived the celebration as passion but you knew… Winnie and Marcel knew... Jadon who now walked himself into the middle of a horrible situation knew. You sat on your hands watching the game clock tick on. Jadon looked at Winnie and hinted for her to check her phone. No one was really talking between the four of you. It was so awkward. Winnie picked up her phone and nonchalantly tilted the screen away from you, leaning back in her seat reading Jadon's message.

‘Trent knows this is going on, right? He needs to help her, Win.’

Winnie sighed reading it trying to hold back the wave of emotion crashing over her. Of course, Trent knew. You were getting married. He knew everything, he just had never experienced such a low of yours in real time. It was easy to love someone when you only heard about their past. You can forgive them for something you weren’t even there for. Something you’d never had to have experienced. Trent loved you for all that you are but seeing you wither after the birth of your baby wasn’t on his bingo card. Liverpool won and Trent stood on the pitch hands on his hips staring up into the sky still while the team scattered around the pitch jumping in celebration. They won and yet he felt worse than ever.  Before the trophy presentation he ran down the tunnel. Marcel made you go with him down to meet him. God, there was nothing in the world you wanted to do less than face Trent right now. You made Winnie come with you for moral support. You saw him walk towards you. Full kit, sweaty, perfect, beautiful. You couldn’t believe he was at his very best when you weren’t with him, seeing him in all his glory at the very top and you at your very lowest. Producing a man of the match performance and you producing maybe the biggest fuck up or your life. You were in your own world of thought when his curt words cut you off.

“Where were you?” That was all he said. Cold, keeping his distance from you. 

“T…” you pleaded with your eyes falling into pools. Tears already gathering in your eyes. 

“No, where the fuck were you?” He snapped again. Winnie stood off to the side of the corridor. She didn’t know how to help. She felt horrible like somehow this was her fault. It wasn’t at all but she couldn’t help the guilt she felt having been at the club with you, having drank so much with you. She tried to help.  

“Trent, she was…” Winnie began to try to talk but that was not going to fly. Trent didn’t want to hear from anyone but you. This was for you and him to sort.

“Winnie, let her fucking answer. Where were you? Tell me.” You weren’t sure you’d ever heard this tone of voice. It scared you. You felt your bones shake. It was like you were being reprimanded in a principal's office except you weren’t. You were being reprimanded by your fiancé in front of your sister and friends, somehow making it all the worse. 

“The hotel, the hotel. I swear.” You started to hyperventilate. You were having a panic attack in the tunnels of Wembley. This was a fucking disaster. Trent believed you. He didn’t want to but he knew you. He’d know if you were lying. Your answer flooded out drenched in honesty and fear. You felt your chest start to contract and tighten. He couldn’t look at you anymore. It hurt too much.

“I have to go…” he sighed, running his hands over his head frustrated. He was almost annoyed  that nothing happened. He was wildly relieved you were safe and standing in front of him in one piece but annoyed he couldn’t pick one thing to harp on to decidedly be angry about. All this chaos for what? “I need to go be with my fucking team. Marce is taking you home.” He quipped pulling his jersey over his head revealing his stupidly hot body. You tried to distract yourself but it was hard, he looked really good. 

“What?” You asked utterly confused. What did he mean you were going home? Your mind couldn’t keep up with his. The visual stimulant of his naked torso, your blinding headache, and the noise from a rowdy stadium concocting into a right mess. 

“I don’t want you here.” He shut his eyes saying it. He hated saying it but he meant it. He had a hard time looking at you right now. He was so weak against you and right now he was pissed. He didn’t want to cave, he didn’t want to give himself any more time or opportunity to. The emotions rising in your chest swelled with the bile in your throat. It burned and it hurt. Your brain was completely scrambled. You couldn’t process that he just rejected you, turned you away. To be fair, everyone standing there was surprised.  Trent dapped up Marcel and Jadon and swiftly headed back out onto the pitch. Nothing more said, not even a goodbye. You were completely stunned and frozen in your place. Trent was determined to do anything to get you off his mind but everything reminded him of you. You were ubiquitous. Lifting the trophy was nothing but a burden. It was heavy, he was tired and disinterested. Proud of his team but disinterested. 

Marcel drove you home all the way back up towards Manchester and to say it was awkward was an understatement. You cried about 5 times. He’d just turn the music up a little more each time letting you fall apart. You didn’t want him to acknowledge it. He was doing it for both of you. No one really knew what happened, you included. It was one big blur but everyone knew in a way that you had gone awol last night so Marcel didn’t really have anything to say to you until you finally arrived to your house.

“Do you want me to stay? I don’t want to talk but I also don’t want you alone.” Marcel asked you as he pulled into your drive. It was quintessential Marce. He didn’t really want to deal with any of this but he was way too empathetic to just drop it all, no questions asked. He was still your friend, Trent aside. Although right now he felt more like Trent’s brother than your friend. 

“I’m fine. I promise. Thank you.” You lied blatantly getting out of the car and he knew it. You didn’t expect him to but he got out of his car to help you with your luggage. The bags you had filled with outfits you would no longer get to wear this weekend celebrating with Trent now. 

“It’ll be fine.” He gave you a hug and it was like his reassuring words broke the damn down. You began to sob heavily. He stepped back from you not surprised but he was upset that you were upset. He felt bad but he also was a little annoyed with you so he needed to let go. He dragged his hand over his face and pivoted without looking back at you. He turned around though when he opened the drivers side of his car. “I know whatever happened was a mistake, Y/N, but he does a fucking lot for you, ya know? I’m not saying you don’t but he really moves fucking mountains for you and sometimes… fuck.” He sighed looking at you defeated as you stood awkwardly at your garage door awaiting the dagger he was about to twist into you. “I don’t know, you just expect him to. Like you take it as a given, for granite.” You opened your mouth to respond. “I gotta go.” He shook his head and left before you could say anything. Cut to, Trent had finally returned home. It was tense and it was painfully uncomfortable for the fleeting moments before the highly anticipated fight erupted. The second he walked in the door you shuddered. You two stood a good 3 yards apart yelling in voices you never used in your kitchen. 

“You know what that would fucking look like if someone saw any of this?” Trent spat at you frustrated you didn’t understand the point he was trying to make. You had explained to him the extent of your night that you could remember. He was less than impressed but right now he sounded like your mum and it made you feel horrible. Thoughts of all of the times she scolded you telling you ‘what would people think.’ the image of her sat at the edge of a hospital bed appeared in your head. 

“Why do you care what it fucking would look like?” You snapped back at him more annoyed at the remembrance of your mum than him. The sting felt the same no matter whose mouth it was coming from.

“Because I care about you… Do you see yourself lately?  I know with the wedding and the baby it’s stressful but have you looked in the mirror lately? I know how often you’ve been weighing yourself.” The way he said his last sentence was almost threatening. Trent wasn’t dumb and you weren’t exactly trying to hide either. He saw the scale pulled out on your shared bathroom floor every morning. The measuring tape you kept tucked in your drawer just to make sure everything was ‘on track’ lingering after effects from Chase like scars. 

“I can’t fucking look in the mirror, Trent” You snapped and the flood gates opened. You started balling. It took everything in him not to just grab for you. Hold you. Fix this. Tell you it was fine except this time it wasn’t. Nothing was fine right now. 

“What the fuck honestly, I’m at a fucking boiling point. I can't do it anymore. You have a daughter, Y/N! Do you want her to grow up to be like you?” Trent shouted at you, really starting to lose his temper. 

“Do you? Do you want her to be like me?” You asked him incredibly, even more offended than his words echoing your mother’s. Your tears were blurring your vision entirely. You couldn’t make out the face you knew. The face you loved. The one that brought you so much comfort. Right now, your entire life looked to have a smudged haze over it all.

“Fucking hell, Y/N. Can you please not cry all the time?” He pleaded with you having a hard time keeping his distance from you. He was so angry with you but so conflicted with the affection he wanted to show you. You only stood on opposite sides of the kitchen island at the moment but you felt worlds apart.

“I can’t! I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. This is all too much.” You were sobbing at this point clinging onto the lip of the marble slab countertop.

“No, I am not letting you do this.” He hated when you cried. Seeing you right now so upset made him sick to his stomach but pushed him past his normal point of concern into a state of rage. “Why do you fucking treat yourself like this!?! I don’t fucking understand it!” He continued to seethe with fury. He looked at you waiting for an answer. An incredibly deafening silence falling over the room. 

“Because I fucking hate everything about me. What don’t you fucking understand about that. You expect me to be this perfect version 24/7 but I’m not. I’m not!” You kept crying. “I’m sorry. Fuck! I’m sorry, I’m trying but I can’t be like you, okay?” You whimpered, feeling defeated and broken. It felt like you could never measure up to the golden boy that was in the room with you. No matter where you went or what you did he was always going to look sparkly and new, fantastical and interesting and you couldn’t feel more opposite. Having a baby completely ransacked you. You were far from new. You had been stripped of a sense of individualisation and identity. You were Teddy’s mum and Trent’s fiance. Y/N didn’t matter, anyone could fill in the blank of your name. The icing on the cake was the image you were trying to uphold all the while.

“Why do you always have to guilt me? I didn’t do anything here, Y/N, you did! You did this.” He snapped at you once more, moving to be a bit more accusatory. In a more mindful state you probably would’ve understood his reasoning but it just felt like a personal attack at the moment. 

“I step out of line once and it…” you tried to rebuttal but he wasn’t having it. He cut you off before you could even think of what your next word was going to be. 

“Out of line? Out of line? No, baby.” You heard him use the pet name out of habit and it sent a shiver running down your spine. That was not the way you liked to hear that word. After that, you had an even harder time keeping up with his words so transfixed on the snippy way he had said ‘baby.’ “You went missing and said fuck all untill I saw you in the stadium… you were in London alone. The mother of my fucking child, my baby.” Trent felt like he was about to start crying so he turned away from you dropping his head in his hands. ”My baby, my beautiful girl just fucking gone and you didn’t care! You didn’t care one bit” He whimpered a bit quieter than you’d heard him talk all day. You couldn’t get a word in fast enough before his anger rushed back. “God fuck… why do you not care!?! You not caring hurts me! It hurts our daughter! You can’t fucking do this!” He cried out. You were shaking. Your one hand pressed onto your sinuses attempting to relieve the pressure you thought was going to make your head explode. Your other hand’s nails were digging so painfully deep into your palm you were sure you were about to break the skin. 

“I’m not trying to hurt you! It’s me okay? I know it’s me. I’m shit. I get it. You’ve made that so fucking clear... that I’m not allowed to make mistakes. That I’m not allowed to falter from the caliber of excellence you live in everyday.” Your words fell into a slightly sassier sarcastic tone that made Trent twitch with anger but  then sadness crashed back over you dripping onto your next words. “I can’t handle the pressure T, I really can't. I know that you deserve more than this. You deserve to have someone so much better fit for you. and it's not me” You sniffled out. Your lip quivering, your mascara running. 

“I am done with this. If you fucking still think that I moved you to another country to be with me, I made a home for us here, had a child with you, that I want to fucking marry you is not enough. That's on you. Honestly, I’m fucking done. Have a good fucking time in New York tomorrow.  Don't stay out too late and maybe fucking try to take care of yourself because I’m done doing it for you.” He quipped storming out of the room.  You ran to the kitchen sink and threw up nausea hitting you instantly. Leaning over the deep farmhouse sink. He heard you and shut his eyes. He couldn’t turn back. If he did, he knew he’d cave.  You had originally planned to fly to New York again tomorrow but right now running the fuck away from all of this never felt like such a perfectly yet equally terrible idea. You already had your packed bags by the door the next day when Trent came down early, Teddy still asleep. You had slept in the guest room. Although ‘sleeping’ was probably a stretch. You just lied awake staring at the ceiling wavering in out of fits of tears. You couldn't say bye to Teddy, you didn’t want to say bye to him. You wanted to disappear and leave them so things would be better for them. It was for them you told yourself. Trent looked at you from a distance with a blank face. You bite your bottom lip trying so hard not to fall apart. He let out a deep sigh. He walked towards you and your whole body tensed. He wrapped one of his arms around your shoulder blades high on your back and pressed his lips to your forehead. The embrace felt so foreign. Tears began streaming down your face. “I hate how much I love you and I hate how much you don’t.” The way his lips felt on your skin almost stung. It was one of the most harrowing out of body experiences. It truly felt like that was going to be the last time he’d ever kiss you. That would be your last memory of his lips on you. He could feel how limp you were to his touch. He pulled away with his eyes shut and just let you walk out the door. His face fell. You couldn’t get any words to come out of your mouth. You couldn’t pick your eyes up to see him. He couldn’t understand but the pain you were in was palpable, thick in the room. It destroyed him to see you walking out of your house, your home. He tried so hard to hold it together. He tried absolutely everything he could but he fell to the ground. Crouching with his head in his hands. He began to cry. He felt weak and stupid but in the same way you felt that that may have been the last time together, he felt just the same. Suddenly it all scared him terribly that he had lost you, he had pushed you too far. You were his whole world but he had told you he didn’t want you around, he told you he didn’t want to take care of you. The feelings were still prevalent but it was like his heart was bleeding. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He told you he hated that he loved you. You couldn’t wrap your head around it. A part of you yearned pathetically for him to try to stop you from leaving for this pointless trip. You felt your heartbeat slow to a point where you weren’t sure it was beating anymore.  Your chest hurt so bad it felt like your body might have begun to shut down entirely and with this emotional feeling you thought that it might be the only way out of it. Everything had drained of its color watching the door close to your home, your family, your baby, the love of your life shutting you out as your uber pulled away. 

Trent didn’t tell anyone how bad things really had gotten between you two. He was always private but he couldn’t talk about this. He didn’t tell anyone that his Hollywood film romance was crumbling before you two had even got to the altar. He knew if he told George, Marcel, Tyler, or Jude they’d try to fix it and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He was so angry. He didn’t love you any less but he just felt helpless. When he went to bed that night he found himself staring at your Van Cleef necklace he’d given you all those years ago. The one. He got so angry seeing it, seeing you left it behind. It felt like a part of you was leaving him, like you had given up. He held it in his hands imagining your warm skin and delicate décolletage it was supposed to be laid over. He was so indignant. Emotionally charged he yanked the necklace apart, splitting it into two pieces. He felt sick. It hit him like a ton of bricks. He couldn't believe he just did that. That necklace was your relationship and he just destroyed it. He sat with the two pieces of chain, one in each hand. You two separated. 

You were terrified about leaving Teddy but you couldn’t do anything but leave. You couldn’t move. She would be better off with the loving stable Alexander-Arnold family not the disaster you felt you were at the moment. Dianne had her, well Trent did, but when he was at training she would make sure she was okay. You got to New York and didn’t tell a soul you were there. Not your parents, Winnie, or Lauren. You wanted to be alone. You laid in your new apartment on the king sized bed you’d never even had a chance to sleep in with Trent yet. It was the most chilling depressing way to be reminded he wasn’t with you and that he didn’t want you with him. Did he want it all to really end? You were replaying your last conversations over and over analyzing every word he said and inflection of his voice when a Daily Mail article notification dropped down from the top of your phone screen. 

‘Trent Alexander-Arnold seen out on a date in Manchester with a mystery women ahead of his previously planned summer wedding. Has the American dream come to an end?’

Your face fell. You were pretty sure all the air had left your lungs, your brain short circuited. You zoomed in on the photo only inflicting more pain on yourself. You’d never seen the women in the photo in your life. She had curves and a full figure but still slender in all the right places. She looked like if Instagram was a person. You looked… not like that. A confirmation published globally echoing every thought you’ve ever had. You were not what he really wanted. This was all too good to be true and you were never going to measure up. The thought of him with someone else made you sick. The thought of another woman making him smile was somehow worse than anything else you could’ve possibly seen. He was holding the door for her, dimples deepened in his cheeks, his glowing smile mocking you. He hadn’t smiled at you in days now but that face from the tv was burned into your memory. You were a mess. You couldn’t cope without him. You felt completely lost. You felt like you were a missing person when you weren’t with him. You thought you were going to be sick the longer you stared at the images. You ran to the bathroom. You slipped on a rug and smacked your face on the porcelain toilet. You leaned over the toilet and vomited but you simultaneously could make out the drops of blood dripping off your face onto the seat through your hazy vision. ‘Fuck’ you cursed under your breath. The tears falling from your face dropping down to join the rest of the releases.

You sank into the warm water filled to the brim of the bathtub in your apartment. For some reason that had become your place of habit during whatever chaotic episode you currently were inhabiting. You slipped down into the water, letting the full bath completely cover and engulf your body. You closed your eyes. You could feel yourself crying but you couldn’t tell submerged in the water. You couldn’t believe what just happened, what you had lost in days time. Bubbles rose to the surface of the bath as you opened your mouth and screamed repeatedly underwater. When you emerged from the bath you were gasping and coughing excessively, somehow getting air to your lungs even more difficult now than when you were under the bath water. The tears returned now racing down your cheeks as you sobbed. You wanted out. This is what was best. Just get out, that's what was on your mind. You slid back under the water once more. A rage filled scream muffled by the water filling your mouth. Words repeating in your brain ‘please just get me out of here’ ‘give my baby a better mum than this’ ‘let Trent find someone perfectly matched for him.’

“Hey, you good? What’s up?” Lauren answered a call from Marcel. It was a little odd for him to call her. Naturally her curiosity peaked. Was he in New York? She felt like you would’ve said something if he was. They were on good terms but he was also well aware that she was with Jude now so she didn’t think he’d try to push to hang out now. Her intrigue only growing. 

“Hey, you’re in Manhattan?” He asked hesitantly, also feeling fairly weird about this call but he needed someone to check on you. His anxiety had been piling up over the last day or so. Lauren didn’t even know you had come to New York. She was shocked to even hear that let alone the next things about to come out of his mouth. Again, you just wanted to get out of Liverpool. You’d told no one. It had been a little over a day since you had arrived. You didn’t reach out and you hadn’t heard from anyone back at home either. Well, maybe from Marcel and Dianne but you had selfishly and unfairly chosen not to respond to either. Really, you were fixated on the fact that most noticeably you hadn’t heard from Trent. You canceled any of the appointments you had planned to attend for wedding planning opting to rot in your bed in hopes of achieving escapism. 

“I need you to go and check on Y/N. Trent said she flew to go over some wedding stuff but she hasn’t responded to me. He hasn’t either to any messages. Something is going on with them. There was this big mess before the match this past weekend.” He rambled on frantically trying to explain best he could but really emphasize that he just needed Lauren to find you and make sure you were fine, why didn’t really matter. She was confused to say the least. Even when you and Trent had stupid bickering fights she’d still hear about it. Yet this? This.. she didn’t hear a peep and this was far different from bickering over who forgot to unload a dishwasher. Lauren agreed, remembering that she had a key to your new apartment in Manhattan in case someone needed to get in when you weren’t there. You might’ve been there physically at the moment, but you were far from being there mentally that’s for sure. Lauren hurried the fastest she possibly could up to your apartment, the urgency in Marcel’s voice making her incredibly nervous. Her worst fears fueling her speed. She unlocked the door and walked inside only adding more confusion and fear to her scrambling brain because your phone's location had said you were there but the apartment was empty. It was quiet until she heard water in the bathroom. You opened your eyes beneath the surface of the water in a moment of desperation trying to stop overthinking what you were doing only for you to find yourself gasping and in taking a ton of water when you saw Lauren’s figure blurred above the water beside the bathtub.You didn’t have a moment of time to even react before Lauren frenziedly reached into the full tub and yanked you out aggressively immediately wrapping you in her arms over the ledge. Your soaking wet naked body drenching her dry clothes. She dragged your very limp body out. 

“Y/N, what the fuck is going on!?!?!” Lauren screamed, starting to uncontrollably cry. It didn’t look good. You felt so young again saved by Lauren once more. You blinked your swollen eyes trying to clear them of the water blurring them. You slumped back onto the cold side of the tub on the bathroom floor. She shook your shoulders trying to get you to come to and answer her. She was absolutely terrified and rightfully so. “Okay, okay. Jesus!” She ran her hands over her head in panic and shock. “You’re gonna be fine. I’ll… erm… I’ll call T.” She rattled off trying to think what to do. She knew that’s what this was about.  

“You can’t!” You attempted to scream at her but you didn’t even have any strength left shaking from the shock and from the cold air hitting your wet skin. 

“Shit…” She cursed. Laurens chest started heaving. She was trying her very hardest not to fall into her own panic attack finding you like this. “Why, Y/N? Why?” She tried to be sensitive but she was angry for finding you like this.

“He ended it. He’s done…” You whimpered out devastated hearing each word fall out of your mouth. You felt like you were going to throw up imagining life without him.

“What do you mean he's done? You’re getting married so soon. Just try to relax here.” Lauren asked, perplexed because Marcel said things were off, not that you and Trent had split. 

“No… we’re not, okay? Just shut up, please!” You wailed. Heartbroken by the reality of what was all setting in now. Not only what was going on between you and Trent but the situation you had just put Lauren in, the way you left your daughter, the state you were currently in. Tears cascading down your face with no sign of stopping any time soon. 

“Hey! Enough. You’re not doing this.” Lauren scolded you demanding you cut this shit out immediately. She stood up stoic as ever just staring at you.

“You sound just fucking like him.” You screamed back at her dropping your head back behind you feeling incredibly dizzy. You wiped at your face, unable to stop the emotions flooding out of you.

“Y/N… no. We’ve done this. You’ve done this over really shitty things. This is and will not be one of them. You’re not doing it. Get up!” She continued to yell at you sternly commanding you with a scowl on her face. You looked at her confused that she was angry at you. Everyone was angry at you and the only thing that could possibly make it better was rewind time to go be back in your bed at home with your daughter and Trent but that was miles and miles away and probably not likely to happen again. Lauren made you stand up with her help on shaky legs, forcing you under freezing cold water for a moment in an effort to practice some sort of distress tolerance. She sat on the edge of the sink as you stood with tears falling at the same rate the water did from the shower head. She didn’t trust you right now to leave the room. You got out and wrapped yourself in a towel and sat yourself on your bed shaking. Yes, you were cold but also just riddled with so much anxiety. You couldn’t believe you had ruined everything. You had everything you could ever want. You sat there for a long while trying to explain the situation to Lauren through several breaks unable to calm your breath. Although your story probably was a little one sided as you really only relayed the more harsh things Trent had said. ‘I don’t want you here,’ ‘I’m done with this,’ ‘I’m done taking care of you.’ And then of course, you had to show her the Daily Mail article that only ignited another panic attack to crash over you. You were having heart palpitations. There was a laundry list of reasons you probably should’ve gone to the hospital but at the moment you couldn’t move your body and sadly, you didn’t want the help. “He’s not done with you…” Lauren whispered softly, helping you lay down in the big bed taking your phone from you, clicking the power button and watching the screen illuminated with the photo of Trent and the women go black. “He’s really upset, Y/N, He’s allowed to be. I’m sure a lot of it was said heat of the moment but you fucked up and he’s concerned but he’s not done. He loves you more than frankly I ever knew people could love each other. I know he isn't done.” She cooed with a sad sympathetic smile. She looked next to your bed on the bedside table and saw your engagement ring in a little jewelry dish. “Please put this back on, please.” She put the ring back on your finger where it belonged for you and kissed the back of your hand before wiping a falling tear. You took it off because it was making you nauseous that he had promised you a life and you accepted it only to destroy it all. “He’s not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere, and Y/N, you…you are not going anywhere. You are here and we want you here.” You could hear a tremor in her voice as she sat next to you rubbing your back. You weren’t sure when the last time you slept was so you passed out finally feeling her warm comforting touch on you. You were fast asleep when Lauren got up and called Jude from another room. She roughly explained the situation, she didn’t speak too much about you and Trent’s kick off because she didn’t think she had the full story yet. She began to cry when she relayed the terrifying situation she had just gone through arriving at your apartment. Jude was shocked, gobsmacked, massively concerned but more so helpless listening to Lauren sob over the phone. He didn’t know how to help from where he was. 

Back in Liverpool, Tyler had come over to your house to talk to Trent about some end of the season things they needed to get squared away. He sat with Teddy bouncing her on his knee as they had a unnecessarily tense conversation. 

“Yo, what’s with you?” Tyler quipped looking at Trent confused. He was being particularly snippy with him and all his brother was trying to do was his job. Trent didn’t need to be such an asshole to him. 

“Ty, I’m losing her.” Trent sighed scrolling on his phone zooming in on your location to make sure he knew you were at the apartment he had gotten for you at least. He didn’t have the courage to text or call you yet but he needed to know where you were. 

“What are you on about mate?” Tyler asked, incredibly confused. Marcel had mentioned a tiff at the game but like everyone else around you two there never were any really big squabbles so this was definitely a bit of a surprise. 

“I can feel it, bro. Since we had Teddy all this stuff she warned me about, things she had dealt with when she was younger all started flooding back. I always knew like from the day I met her, she wasn’t like the most confident person in the world but since she had the baby she’s just not the same. I hear her get up in the middle of the night, I see her not eating as much, she’s sleeping way more and I can’t do anything. There’s nothing to say even. She’s like a shell of herself, bro. I’m terrified.” Trent expatiated at length but vaguely touching on the slow decline you had been on postpartum. 

“I haven’t seen it to be honest.” Tyler responded hesitantly tilting his head slowly trying to rack his brain to think if he had noticed any shifts in your behavior. 

“That’s the fucking problem. She’s fooling everyone. It’s fucked. Like I get it she looks good. She always looks good, she’s perfect but it’s not right. Something's not right and I’m getting worried. I was absolutely fuming after the final and I just didn’t want to talk to her to be honest but then she left for New York… and…” Trent rambled half ass explaining the situation at hand but leaving out the part that you two hadn’t spoken since you walked out of the house. 

“Well you love her, you can’t just dip because it got hard.” Tyler was very quick with his response. He wanted to make sure Trent wasn’t trying to jump ship considering at the very moment he was holding the child you shared.

“I’m not dipping. I’m never fucking leaving her. It’s just such a mess. It felt like it went 0 to 60.” Trent dropped his head back onto the couch cushion in despair so confused and conflicted on what he was supposed to do next.

“Well, first off, good. If you’re gonna marry her, you’re buying into all of it, mate. It’s not your responsibility to heal her of something but it’s your responsibility if you really love her to get her to the people that can if she’s not willing to do it herself. You love her and she’s the mother of your child and if she can’t see that… you need to make sure you do everything you can to show her there’s no other possible feeling there but your support.” He looked at Trent with a lot of sympathy but Tyler really was starting to worry about you. His brain switching gears from the assistance to his younger brother to a growing anxiety about the girl he picked up from the airport and never left all those years ago. He started to remember little things here and there, comments made or small actions that felt like nothing at the time but maybe cumulatively he should’ve caught on. 

The next day after Trent had a big think, he remembered that one of George’s cousins ran a clinic in Liverpool so he figured he could start there. He asked George for her number and she agreed to meet him happily willing to help. He at least wanted to learn what options he even had. He wanted to know a simple answer of what he was supposed to do but he knew that wasn’t the reality.  The photos of their meeting hit you like a ton of bricks. You thought he was seeing someone else, taking your night out and spitting it back at you. Showing you he could disappear just the same and rub it your face simultaneously. That wasn’t the case at all though. He wasn’t thinking about her in that regard in the slightest; the only thing he could think about was you, you 24/7. Unfortunately, he wasn’t aware of what was happening in your apartment at the moment which probably wouldn’t have given him much peace of mind. Ignorance was currently a mild form of bliss until he got home seeing he had a missed call.

After Lauren spoke to Jude she texted Marcel updating him in a fuzzy but still transparent way. She didn’t think she could handle another call after the emotional one she had with Jude. Eventually, Lauren mustered up the courage to call the one person she knew she had to… Trent. Her legs bounced in anxious anticipation but he didn’t answer her call. She felt her stomach drop. Maybe things were that bad. Maybe he really was done. He couldn’t be, she’d kill him, so she told herself she’d call once more but after that if he didn’t pick up, if he didn’t want to talk then she would resort to getting Dianne’s number from Marcel. This couldn’t go on any longer. She didn’t want to press but this needed to be sorted. Trent picked up the second time she rang but didn’t say anything once he answered for a little while so Lauren didn’t say a thing either. The line was silent until Trent's desperation outweighed any anger he had been harboring.

•

Thank you for reading! Please like, comment, or message what you think of the chapter 🤍

Next part - Chapter 20 xx

[pricelessemotion]

I’m such a fool | S. H.

part one part two

Summary: steve has his own confession to make. you’re not sure how to take it. 

Pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

Warnings: language, angst with a happy ending, alcohol, underage drinking (reader and steve are both 20), friends to lovers, little women “you’re being mean” reference 

Word count: 1.7k

Notes: part two of the linger duology but can be read as a stand-alone. pic is not mine all creds to the owner!

masterlist

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“What are you doing?” 

You’re currently cradling Steve’s face in your hands, pressing the back of your hand to his forehead. The droplets of perspiration at his hairline are indicative of a typical day in Family Video, where the AC doesn’t work and neither do the employees. 

“Making sure that you’re not sick.”

Steve murmurs a sound of confusion as you take your hand away and dramatically wipe it against the bottom of your vest. It’s been a slow day, the customers few and far between. On days like this you’re normally in the back, sorting through new shipments and cataloging them. Instead, you’re leaning against the counter and looking at Steve like he’s grown two heads. 

“Two very pretty girls just walked out the door without a failed pick-up line or a signature smile. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” You ask, your brows furrowing in faux concern. 

“Oh, fuck off.” He waves his hand in the air as if swatting away an annoying fly and turns to look down at his clipboard so that he doesn’t have to look you in the eye.

If Steve is being honest with himself, he hasn’t felt in the flirting mood lately. As much as he has pretended to be normal since your confession, he hasn’t been. In fact, Steve feels like all he has been doing is pretending. Pretending like he doesn’t notice the way your hair smells like coconut shampoo every time a scarce summer breeze pushes the scent in his direction. Pretending to sort the returns while you sit behind the counter reading a weathered copy of a romance novel he can never remember the name of. Pretending to curse the lack of AC in the store, when really he’s grateful for it because it means he gets to see you in as little clothing as possible. 

Yeah. Steve’s gotten real good at pretending lately. 

What he doesn’t know is that you’ve gotten real good at pretending too. You try to ignore the relief that settles over you at the fact that Steve seems to be in too weird of a mood to flirt. Hoping to lift his spirits you cast a sidelong glance at him. 

“Are you doing anything tonight?”

~

Steve doesn’t even know why he decided to come to this stupid party. Actually, he does. The reason standing right in front of him, wearing a mini skirt and nursing a red solo cup of whatever the hell was in the punch bowl in the kitchen. 

Robin’s arm is slung around your shoulder, the two of you wrapped up in your own little world when suddenly the song changes. You’re pulled out of the kitchen, hand in hand with your best friend as she slur-screams I love this song. You begin dancing together, albeit haphazardly, in the middle of the living room. Usually this is the part where you would turn around and beg Steve to join you, but he’s still standing in the doorway of the kitchen. You’re shining so bright tonight that he’s afraid if he gets too close he might get burned. 

He sighs and looks down at the cup in his hand. It was more for show than anything because he promised to be the designated driver tonight but, god, if he didn’t wish he could drink right now. 

The sliding glass door opens with little resistance, his drink forgotten on the kitchen counter. As he steps outside and sits down at the edge of the pool, he curses himself. Since when did he become this guy? He used to go to parties all the time. He used to have fun. Instead, he’s the guy who isolates himself and sits at the edge of the pool while letting the girl of his dreams dance the night away. 

The door opens again and he hears the melodious sound of your laughter. You shut the door quietly, but the sounds of the party are only ever so slightly muffled. You’re still giggling when you join him, the slight sway of your walk giving away the depth of your inebriation. Clumsily, you drop onto the ground next to him and gently nudge his foot with the tip of your converse.

“What’s on your mind, Stevie?”

The nickname sounds easy coming from you. 

“Where’s Rob?” He’s avoiding the question and he knows it. He hopes that you’re too drunk to notice. 

“Vickie showed up. I thought I’d give the lovebirds a little alone time.” You give him a thoughtful look. “You didn’t answer my question.” 

He huffs. He should’ve known that even in the state you’re in that you would see right through him. You’ve always been able to see right through him. 

You let the silence hang in the air while you drop your head back and trace the constellations in the sky. You’ve gotten as far as Orion when he finally plucks up the courage to speak again. 

“I think you know what.” He says it softly, as if the tone of his voice could ever cushion the blow he’s about to deliver. 

The first look you give him is one of confusion. You’re still thinking about Orion and the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The second look you give him is one of betrayal. A million responses run through your head. Some are angry. Some are spiteful. Some are, annoyingly, full of hope. Shaking your head, you decide to go with the simplest option.

“Why?” 

“I think you know why.”

But that’s all that Steve does. He thinks. He thinks about your incessant need to always have a paperback in hand. He thinks about the mixtape that’s been on repeat in his car since you gave it to him. He thinks about the way your lips might feel on his. He thinks about how you might react to his confession, but he doesn’t know. You’ve always been able to read Steve like an open book. He still struggles to know what page you’re on.

Maybe it’s the moment. Maybe it’s the alcohol flowing in your veins. But the words flow out of your mouth as easily as the spiked punch flowed in. 

“You’re being mean.” Tears begin to collect on your lower lash line. You lift your head and blink as if trying to will them away, but they fall down your cheeks anyway. Steve wants nothing more than to cradle your head in his hands the same way that you did that morning and brush them away. He doesn’t. His hands stay firmly planted on the ground. 

“Baby-”

“Don’t.” You begin, your voice low and threatening. 

You struggle to stand up because your entire body is shaking with anger. Or hurt. Sometimes one disguises itself as the other and you can’t find it in yourself to figure out the difference. Not when he’s looking at you like that. 

“What am I? A last resort? You worked your way through the entire female population of Hawkins and thought you’d settle for a sure thing?”

“Hey-”

“Do you know how many girls I had to see you flirt with? How many dates I had to watch you go on?” You cringe at the hurt filling your voice and want anger to come back and take its place. 

Steve tries to cut in again but you don’t let him have the chance. He may have been the one who started this conversation, but you were sure as hell gonna finish it. 

“You don’t get to do this to me. Not when-” The tears are making your voice sound watery and garbled in a way that you despise. “Not when I have spent the past year of my life loving you.”

Steve is mentally kicking himself because he really needs to stop going to parties and letting the girl he’s in love with get drunk and break his heart. Once is bad luck. Twice is a pattern.

But against all odds you’re still standing there. The mascara you had so delicately applied earlier now smudged. Steve doesn’t know if you’re shaking from anger or from the cold but he shrugs off his jacket and wraps it around your shoulders anyway. You don’t push him away or storm off and leave him in the dust. Instead, you trace the constellation of moles on his neck until eventually you’re looking into his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to figure out and I’m sorry that my timing is awful.”

You take a moment to really look at him. The alcohol that once clouded your judgment is long gone. It seems to have been swept away in the flood of your argument, taking the anger and hurt along with it. It’s been replaced by something lighter. Something that feels a lot like hope.

“I’m sorry too for, uh, basically calling you a whore.” Steve laughs and you can’t help the smile that tugs at your features.

“I kinda deserved that. I swear I’ll do everything in my power to make it up to you. You deserve the world. Hell, you deserve the entire universe and-”  

When the two of you finally kiss, it’s something akin to a stellar collision. Hands desperately grasping at each other as if afraid you might slip from the other’s fingertips. The muffled sounds of the party, the chirps of the crickets, the slight gurgle of the pool filter all fade into the background. There’s nothing on your mind, only Steve. Steve. Steve. 

Once you remember that breathing is a thing, you pull away and laugh at how Steve whines at the loss of contact and chases your lips. You press your forehead to his and close your eyes, toying with the hairs at the nape of his neck. He hums appreciatively, arms circling your waist to pull you ever so closer.  

“You’re a fool, Steve Harrington.” You say, still trying to catch your breath.

The smirk that graces his features is nothing less than devilish. He uses the pads of his thumbs to wipe at the tear streaks that have since dried, cradling your face as if it were the most delicate thing he had ever touched. 

“I’m a fool for you.”

—

likes are appreciated, comments and reblogs are cherished ♥️

taglist: @freezaz123

[joelswritingmistress]

Camp Crystal Lake: Chapter 14

Requested by @yellowjacketsbuzzbuzz

Joel Miller x f!reader (romance/horror)

Setting: Camp Crystal Lake

The reader is taking on the position of a camp counselor at the infamous Camp Crystal Lake. While she begins to enjoy her summer, even crushing on the camp director Joel, a killer lurks in the woods unbeknownst to anyone.

Scott swung by his feet in the darkness. What seemed like a silly situation had suddenly become ominous. Teri had been gone for awhile now - at least it felt like a while. Maybe ten minutes or so. But ten minutes alone in the strange wilderness in such a vulnerable position made the hairs raise on the back of Scott’s neck. Suddenly, all those stories he scoffed at about Jason Voorhees and the murders hit his mind like a crashing wave.

“Fuck.” Scott whispered the lone curse word to himself. He glanced around the darkness, attempting to twist and turn at every little rustle he heard in the trees. “Where is she?”

As the words escaped his lips, Scott felt a hand yank on the hair on the back of his head. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Shock would be the last emotion he felt before the blade of a giant machete passed before his eyes. There was nothing he could say or think or feel as the blade slid across the front of his throat. Blood poured from the wound right before his eyes and Scott felt the world around him blur..and then darken as the life drained from his body.

***

Teri had looked everywhere for some kind of tool that would help her cut Scott down from the tree. When she found an oversized fishing knife in one of the sheds she decided it was her best option and began her trek back through the path. Unlike before, Teri wasn't relaxed. She was spooked and eager to get back to the cabin to cozy up with a good book.

Fucking Scott. She cursed him in her mind. A part of her was ready to “tear him a new one”, so to speak. She knew he wouldn’t leave her alone unless she really laid into him and so, as all the playfulness exited her body, she was prepared to give him a pep talk prior to cutting him down from the tree.

There will be no more of this, Teri decided.

“Alright, Scott, listen,” she shouted as she rounded into the small clearing where he swayed back and forth. “Before I cut you down..” Teri’s voice faded as she spoke when she picked up that something was unnatural about the way her friend swung from side to side. “Scott?” Teri took a deep breath and took two baby steps in his direction.

Something was off. Something felt.. Wrong.

“Scott?” Teri called out his name a second time. When he didn’t respond she hurried up to him and grabbed him by the torso. He didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He just hung there. And then she saw it - the giant gash by his throat where blood still dripped. Scott’s eyes were lifeless, like a doll’s eyes staring at nothing. Because he was dead. Scott was dead.

“Scott’s dead,” Teri whispered. “Scott’s dead. He’s dead.” She continued to whisper to herself. “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.” Her mind couldn’t comprehend the reality of the situation and so her instincts and emotions kicked in and she screamed. Tears streamed down her face as she continued to shriek in terror; though this drew the assailant from the darkness and as she gave her final scream for help, a knife plunged into her abdomen.

***

“Thank you for taking me home,” I said as I buckled my seatbelt in Joel’s truck. “One more and I would have wanted to just crawl into bed.” “So you don’t want to crawl into bed?” he asked, chuckling as he spoke the words. It made you laugh with him.

“Well, I mean one more and I probably would just want to go to sleep.”

“We can do that, too.” Joel smiled and linked his hand through mine as he pulled the pickup out of the parking lot.

“Can we do both?”

“We can do.. whatever you want.”

I leaned across the way and on a straightaway in the road Joel leaned back and took part in an overgenerous kiss. He immediately refocused on the road but pulled my body toward him as much as possible.

“I know we just kind of started this,” Joel said, “But, uh, I’m not looking for just sex. Not with you.”

I let out a little sigh and couldn’t keep a smile from my lips. “I’m not either.”

“At the end of the summer are you still going to be living in town?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He squeezed my hand, “We should.. continue this.”

“Can I ask you something? I just want to be honest.”

“Sure.” Joel looked over for as long as he could before returning his attention to the road.

“Like you said, it’s new,” I repeated, “But.. do you want to be exclusive? Like, only date each other? I know we really can’t go out on a ton of traditional dates here, but this atmosphere will only allow us to get to know each other better and-”

“Yes.” He responded right away, “I know you’re younger than I am, so I didn’t want to make you feel tied down-”

“I wouldn’t feel tied down,” I cut him off now. “I know we kind of did things backwards but I never just sleep with a guy to sleep with a guy. I need to feel something; a connection. And I felt it with you from the second I saw you.”

Joel glanced at me, and then back to the road as a car passed and then back to me. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I let out a breath, feeling contentment in his words. “So, are we, like..”

“I want to be with you,” Joel concluded, “Just me and you. Nobody else. Not casual sex. Just, like, the start of a possible..”

“Relationship?” I asked, when he struggled to find the right word to conclude the sentence.

“Yeah.” He nodded, “Yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about being in one of those.” Joel snickered at his disdain for the word, but I also knew there was something there in words that we would unpack later. It had nothing to do with me and he was completely receptive to the idea of being in one with me.

“I want to be with you, Joel.” “Good.” He tipped his mouth up in a half-smile, “Because I really want to see where this goes.”

I leaned up to kiss him on the cheek but Joel turned and kissed my lips at the last second.

“Fuck the other cabin, just come up to my room when we get back,” he said. “We don’t have any work to do tonight.”

“Okay.” I leaned a head on his shoulder. “I’d be happy too,” And then added for good measure, “Townie.”

Joel laughed and kissed my forehead. “Says the other townie.”

I looked up toward him and we shared a look and a smile, “Exactly.”

@gissellec1 @cattt777@armybts20137 @bbiophiliaa @littleblackcatinwonderland @mermaidgirl30 @brittmb115 @yellowjacketsbuzzbuzz @beltzboys2015-blog @lwfics-deactivated20240701 @pedropascal111 @mellymbee @itscatrodriguez-thepearl

@alex-does-art-things @gothcsz @sarap-77

[gojos-thot-patrol]

Suguru Geto, Pining, “It’s true romance is dead. I shot it in the chest and in the head.” 🌶

Hey, so remember when I said I was going to make these short little fic lits? yea? This is a whole ass one shot, I got so lost in the sauce, I started this at like, 4 pm, its 6:30 am, I need to lie down...

Now Presenting...

Starring: A truly love sick Suguru Geto making some of the worst mistakes he can make in this situation.

Suguru missed you constantly, but he especially missed you late at night. He really had no one to blame but himself. He had never been much of a romantic, always believing it to be pretty useless in the grand scheme of things. Romance was like driving around in a classic car; yes it was fun and flashy at first and everyone is jealous of you. But it's a lot of upkeep, it's not very fuel efficient, and when you inevitably drive headfirst into traffic because of some issue you didn't even know about, you get sent home in a body bag, and the car gets passed on to your next of kin.

You challenged that long held belief though. You were funny, and kind, not to mention drop dead gorgeous. Suguru remembered meeting you at that concert as a before and after event. Who he was before you, and after you. The two of you had spent the summer listening to any new record you could get your hands on, going to dingy basement parties for the free booze, and in the backseat of his car. On highways going 100 miles per hour and parked on backroads counting the stars in the sky. You were his first love.

So of course he had to ruin it. He may have loved you, but that didn't mean he knew how to love, or that it came easy. You got frustrated with his refusal to label your relationship, the way he treated you as if you were his dirty little secret, and how most nights he only called when he was already high. Your final fight, if you could call it that, was barely an argument. It was quiet, filled with the things he wanted to say as you told him that it had been fun. But the summer was over, and you were done being used. The romance was dead before it even started.

Even now, as he laid in his bed texting some woman he met at a different party, all he could think of was you. He tried to imagine he was talking to you, but frankly, her texting tone was all wrong, and she sent pictures of her tits way too fast to ever be you. He was used to having to work for it, but it seemed like this girl was looking for exactly what he was looking for: something to fill the void. 

"I showed you mine, you show me yours 😘🍆💦"

Gross. Suguru cringed at the explicit use of emojis. But, he reached into his pants anyway. It's true, romance was dead. He had personally shot it in the chest and in the head. He was still trying to get the angle right to make it look bigger than it really was (not that he needed to) when his phone rang in his hand. "Oh God, please don't ask me to talk to you" he thought to himself. He didn't have it in him. He wanted meaningless, impersonal sexting right now. If she wanted an emotional connection, she was fucked. That was reserved for you.

He actually looked at the name lighting up his screen before sending it to voicemail, and for the first time in three months he felt his heart race. "Shit!" He muttered under his breath, rushing to answer his phone and put his dick up at the same time. 

"Hey Y/n. Wasn't expecting to hear from you tonight." He answered, trying to sound like he was just woken up instead of trying (and failing) to take a cock pic. 

"Hey, I need your help." You sounded so unbelievably defeated. Suguru didn't know if the tightness in his chest was from the inherent anguish of hearing you sound so broken, or from the rush of euphoria of you needing him. All he ever wanted was for you to need him. 

“What’s going on beautiful?” He asked, trying to maintain the sleepy voice while rushing to his mirror to make sure he looked at least presentable. He didn’t, he looked like a mess that had spent the last three months alternating betweening lying awake at night, getting high with his best friends, and well, crying. But, that was fine. Hell, maybe it would even help his cause. He had that sad boy needs fixed vibe about him.

“Don’t call me-” you cut yourself off with an exasperated sigh, “Look, my car finally gave up the ghost, I’m stranded off of I-45 going into 6th street. Can you come get me?” Oh shit. Yea, that made sense, it was only a matter of time before that amalgamation of rusted steel and duct tape you called a car gave out on you. He still couldn’t believe you called him though.

“Of course I can pick you up baby girl, I’m on my way.” He said, pulling his arm through a jacket and grabbing his keys.

“Look, Suguru, I wouldn’t have called if I had another choice. Satoru has a flat, Kento is asleep and Ryomen is drunk. This doesn’t mean anything.” The icicle that pierced his heart and melted into his blood forced him to pause. You called fucking Sukuna before you called him? Hell, you called everyone before you called him. You were all his mind, body, and soul could think about; And he was your last resort. Typical. 

“I’m just happy you called me,” He muttered, “It's too cold to walk tonight.”

“I know, it’s why I called…I know it’s harsh, I just don’t want to give you any false hope.” you explained. Too late for that.

“Yea, thanks for that. I’m on my way.” he huffed, hanging up before he had a chance to say something he’d regret.

🚗🚗🚗

It probably wasn’t his best idea to blast the playlist that you had made him on this drive, but he had dug his grave and now he planned to lie in it. It wasn’t hard for him to find your car, at this time of night you were the only other person near the road. He parked behind the clunker, and went to text you about it, but you came to check out the headlights on your own. And fuck, this was a mistake, he should have woken up Nanami.

“Hey, thanks for grabbing me.” you shivered as you got into his heated car, immediately putting your hands to the warm vents, “It’s freezing out there.”

“Mmhmm,” He hummed an auto response. He was too lost in memory to focus on your words. The moment his eyes landed on you the emotions and memories came flooding back. He could feel your fingers tangling in his hair, and taste you on his lips. He wondered if you still remembered his taste, because he knew he was cursed with yours forever. 

“Soo…ready to go?” You asked, snapping him out of his daydream. He shook his head, trying to banish the thoughts of your soft skin against his from his mind. 

“Yea, no, sorry. I’m just…tired.” He said, pulling back onto the road. “So, any idea what you’re going to do about that?” He questioned, jerking his head back to your car. You groaned as you got comfortable in your seat.

“Fuck no. I can’t really afford a tow truck right now, and I’m like 68% sure the engine is blown.” you sighed, placing a hand to your temple to try and prevent the headache that was threatening to come back.

“I mean, I can help you if you want.” He offered, “I just got that job, so I’m actually doing kinda okay right now-”

“Wait, Sugubear, you got the job?!” You asked, all smiles and giggles all of the sudden. He even cracked the biggest smile he had in a long time at it. Sugubear. It was a pet name he hated during your relationship, but he couldn’t imagine why he ever did now. Now it made him feel like he was on cloud 19.

“Yea, I did!” He bragged, “I started like, 3 weeks ago.”

“That’s great Suguru! I’m proud of you!” You laughed. 

“Why thank you,” He nodded, “I’m pretty proud of me too.” He went to go and place his hand on your thigh, a reflex from when the two of you were still hot and heavy. He fully expected you to stop him. Maybe it was because of the relaxed atmosphere that was starting to settle, or maybe it was because you missed his touch as much as he missed yours; you let him make contact. He really hoped it was because of the latter. 

🚗🚗🚗

“Well, this is my stop,” You said, patting him on the shoulder as he pulled into the parking lot of your apartment, “Thanks again for the ride-”

“Wait!” Suguru said without really thinking about what he wanted you to wait for. He just didn’t want this to end. He’d been without you for so long, he wasn’t ready to go back to how things were just an hour ago. “Can I come up?”

“What, why?” You scoffed, shaking your head. “I only needed a ride.” Why?! What did you mean, why?! Because he craved being home? Because he missed the space the two of you had occupied for so long, the place you carved out for him in your environment and in your heart. Because he needed to be surrounded by everything that's you again, because every night when he slept he dreamed of the smell. 

“Because I need the like, four hoodies I left at your house that you still haven't given back.” He thanked God for three things in that moment; 1. That it was always ice cold in your house, making him always feel like he needed a hoodie, 2. That he left them there when you left him, and 3. That you had never given them back. You sighed, knowing you couldn’t really keep them from him. That would be theft. 

“Ok, fine. Just be fast, ok? I’m tired.” And you didn’t just mean physically tired. 

“Of course.” He said, fully planning to drag this out as long as possible. As the two of you went up the stairs, Geto found his hand landing on the curve of your waist. Anything to replicate the intimacy the two of you once had. And he noticed you didn’t remove his hand either. As he walked into your small studio apartment, he took off his jacket as well as yours. He could feel himself truly relax for the first time in months. Humans like to think that they get to consciously decide where home is, and they’re wrong. Home is the place where you feel truly safe, and calm. The place where you can truly let your guard down and let go of your worries and your sorrows. It was the place where you felt loved and secure, and you don’t get to decide where that was. Your heart did. The saying “Home is where the heart is” was true for multiple reasons. 

His first order of business was to lay down in the bed he helped you move up the stairs at the start of your relationship. The one he helped you break in. He collapsed face down into the pillows, melting into the cheap memory foam. He was pleased to find it still kinda remembered the shape of his body.

“Hey, what are you doing?” you asked, turning around to see him making himself comfortable. You turned your back for five seconds-

“Getting cozy, what’s it look like?” he asked, turning to his back. You had to laugh at the audacity of the act, really.

“And who said you could do that?” You quizzed him, walking over to pull him out of the bed. As you reached your hand out, he grabbed it, pulling you into the bed and into his chest. 

“I did.” He answered with a smile.

“Suguru, please, don’t do this. You have to go.” You tried to sound stern, you really did. But in the end, you couldn’t hold back your giggles. He was so warm.

“No I don’t,” He shrugged, “I don’t have to do anything, not really. I could stay here.”

“Sug-” You were cut off with a kiss. Suddenly, any protest you had in you melted into the honeyed warmth of his kiss against yours. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t crave Sugurus' presence as much as he missed yours. The safety and contentment you felt when you were wrapped in his arms was unparalleled by anyone else you had ever been with. It was what made him so.

His hand slipped to the back of your head, pressing you closer to him while his free hand played with the hem of your shirt. You moaned softly into his lips, your fingers going to tangle in his long dark hair. You noticed it was fully down. He must have been such a mess. He pulled away from the kiss, albeit reluctantly, to press his forehead to yours.

“I miss you so much, I can’t breathe without you.” He confessed softly. 

“I miss you too.” You finally admitted. He pulled your hips closer to his by your belt loops as you said that, showing you just how much he missed you. 

“I need you Y/n.” He whispered to you.

“I want you too.” You sighed. That was all the permission he needed. He was on you in a flash, sucking deep dark bruises into your neck as his hands moved to unbutton your jeans. You had never known him to be this eager, and in his he had never known himself to be like this either. Suguru wasn’t the type of guy to pine for anything. If someone didn’t want him, that was just fine, because there were a thousand and one people who did want him, and everyone was replaceable. Everyone but you. He had tried, so so hard to move on, but every new body he found himself in was just a pale imitation of yours. None of them could hope to be even half as warm and receptive as you were.

“Sug..” You moaned softly as his fingers traced the growing wet spot in your underwear. 

“Look at you Sweetest,” He teased, “Already so wet and ready for me. Did you miss me Darling?” You nodded and whined in response, rocking your hips to try and create more friction than he was willing to give. He couldn’t hold back the grin that tugged at his lips, seeing you so needy for him again. “How much did you miss me Darling?” He asked. 

“So much..” You whined out, “I thought about you every night when I…” You trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought.

“When you what?’ He wasn’t going to let you get away with that. Embarrassment burned at your chest and behind your eyes.

“When I touched myself,” You admitted. Your words went straight to his already impossibly hard cock. His own jeans were starting to get really uncomfortable. 

“Oh yea?” He asked, trying to contain himself. To try and distract himself from how tight his pants were getting, he slipped your underwear out out of his way, giving him direct access to your weeping pussy, and more importantly your swollen clit, He rubbed expert circles in them with two fingers, causing your back to tense with pleasure as a moan escaped your throat.

“I thought about that!” You announced, “I thought about how good you felt, and how much you filled me up,” A heat was already starting to pool in your stomach for him. You smirked at the next memory that entered your head, “I thought about facetiming you while I played with my pussy, and how you’d have reacted.”

“Fuck, you should have.” He groaned, imagining how that scene would have played out, “I would have come over sooner.” He removed his hands from your slit, much to your very vocal dismay, and pulled you out of your jeans and your panties. Before you knew it, you were on your back and he was in between your legs, holding your hips firmly in his large hands. He dipped his head in between your thighs, running his tongue from your cunt to your clit, collecting all the sweet slick pooling there. The familiar taste lit a familiar fire inside of him, and all he wanted was to see your face when you came on his.

His lips wrapped around your clit, writing his name with his tongue over and over again to lay claim to what was his. G. E. T. O. G. E. T. O. You let out a truly embarrassing whine as he did. Your hands found his raven hair, tangling into the messy locks and giving a good pull. All of this only aided to egg him on, and he slipped two fingers into your dripping cunt, curling up.

You saw stars explode in front of your eyes. Three months was a long time to be alone with just your cheap toys, and you found yourself more sensitive to him than you had been before. Sharp jolts of pleasure flowed through you in waves, building up a tension in your stomach. You tried to rock your hips up into him, but he held you still, leaving you to moan out his name in a truly pathetic manner.

“Say it again,” Suguru said, pulling away from you just long enough to communicate, “It sounds so pretty when you do.”

“Suguru!” You whimpered out, relief washing over you as he returned to the job at hand. He curled his fingers perfectly into your g-spot, leaving your body tense and waiting. “Suguru!” You called out again, earning you another direct hit and ohh boy you we’re not going to last much longer. “Suguru, please I’m so so close,” You moaned, throwing your head back as it became too heavy to hold up. Suguru didn’t let up on his ministrations, deciding that getting you over the edge was more important.

You didn’t just fall over the edge, you flew. You felt like a firework, with lighting bolts of pleasure shooting up through your center and exploding in your chest, washing you in embers of euphoria. Your thighs encased Sugurus head, and he decided he had no other choice than to eat you through your orgasm. A sacrifice he was oh, so willing to make. He didn’t let up on you until your trembling legs fell away from his head, leaving you a jittery mess under him. He couldn’t help but smile at his handy work.

“Have I ever told you how breathtaking you look when you cum Dearest?” He asked, lovingly tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. You gave a breathless laugh.

“Once or twice I think.” You muttered, slowly reregulating yourself. “It’s been months since anyone touched me like that..” You confessed softly.

“It’s been months since I touched anyone like that.” He responded. It wasn’t technically a lie. He didn’t care enough about anyone he’d been with since the two of you broke up to treat them with even an ounce of the care he gave to you. You pulled him down by his hair and into a kiss, tasting yourself mixed with him on his lips. He bit your lip to deepen the kiss, needing every ounce of you you were willing to give. 

Fuck, this was starting to actually hurt. His hand moved down to try and relieve some of the pressure building there. Everywhere you touched left a trail of electricity on his skin, and he couldn’t think of anything beyond making as much skin to skin contact as possible with you in that moment. And honestly, it was the only thing you wanted too. 

You pulled back long enough to pull off your shirt, cluing in Suguru to follow suit. You took the opportunity of distance to try unbuttoning his jeans. His hand met your wrist though.

“Y/n, You don't have to-”

“I want to.” You asserted, “You think you’re the only one that wants your cock inside of me? Please, I’ve been fantasizing about this way too long to settle for some, admittedly really good, head.” You were both lucky he didn’t lose it in his pants right then and there at your words. Instead, he pulled you into one very rough kiss, all tongues and teeth. He unclipped your bra as you unbuttoned his levis. You palmed him through his boxers, but not for very long before he pushed you away and finally freed his straining cock.

He stroked himself a few times, taking in the sight of you on your back and desperate for his cock. He wanted to remember you like this, just as desperate and needy for him as he felt for you. The sight of it alone sent electricity up and down his spine.

And suddenly, his lips were on your again, kissing them breathless and swollen as he pushed inside of you. You whined into the kiss, digging your fingernails into his shoulder blades as you tried to accommodate for his stretch. Suguru was thick, and it always felt like no matter how ready you were for him, you were never actually ready. You felt his shoulders tremble at the feeling of being encased in you again.

“God, you feel so fucking good Y/n,” He breathed out as he bottomed out. He gave an experimental thrust sending static coursing through every inch of your body and his. “Christ, it’s like you’re made for me.” He praised as he did it again, starting to set a rhythm that was going to send you into outer space. “So fucking good and just for me.”

He was saying a lot of yours and your mind was processing none of them. Every push and pull of his hips graced your overly sensitive g-spot perfectly, filling your body with ecstasy and your head with oxytocin and dopamine. Why did you break up with him again? It didn’t matter, not really. He was back and he felt so unbelievably good.

“So good Sug,” You slurred out, “So good, so big..” Oh, now that was an ego boost that went straight to his head- both of them in fact.

“Is my sweet girl cock drunk already? Fucked dumb on the man she thought she didn’t want anymore?” He cooed, his contempt with you for leaving him slipping into his words. Not that you registered anyway. You nodded stupidly, your second orgasm building up fast inside of you. It’s okay though, he wasn’t going to last long either. With every buck of his hips your walls hugged him tighter, sucked him in deeper, kept him there longer. It was a feeling he hadn’t been able to replicate once; be it with his own hand or whatever whore looked vaguely like you at the party that week. He was already starting to come undone, but was determined to get you there first.

“Sugubear..” You whimpered out softly, reaching a hand up and into his hair, making doe eyed contact with his quickly softening black eyes. Your hand fell from the back of his head to his cheek, cupping it gently. Instinctively he leaned into it, ignoring the panic in his chest as he realized that this was probably the most intimate thing he had ever done with another person. 

“Y/n, I-” His eyes widened as he realized what he was going to say. OH FUCK can’t say that! He may have been in love, but there was no way he could say it out loud. Not right now. “I can’t believe how good you fucking feel.” He groaned, moving one of his hands to massage quick circles into your puffy clit.

That was all the extra push that you needed. Your eyes screwed shut and your body tensed as it braced for impact. Fireworks erupted from behind your eyes and your body was overtaken with seismic waves of white hot electricity, pleasure coursing through your every being in sharp spikes. You felt like you had driven a ferrari at 169 miles an hour right off of a cliff and into a soft grave of euphoria and cotton. 

And Suguru was right behind you. The tremors of your pussy pulling him deeper and deeper, pulling him over his own edge. He held your waist with a grip tight enough to bruise as he came, the warm feeling filling and spreading throughout you from deep inside. He figured the consequences of this action were a future Suguru problem. He barely managed to collapse next to you instead of one you, pulling you impossibly close to him. It was as if he was scared that if he loosened his grip, the dream would end and you’d be gone again. 

You let him, enjoying the warmth for a long while. You pulled away with a kiss, and even then he seemed reluctant to let go.

“So, uh..wanna spend the night?” You asked sheepishly. He laughed softly. 

“I thought you’d never ask,” He said, kissing the top of your head. “Do you need anything? Anything at all?”

“Um, a warm rag would be great actually… ya know, for clean up.” You giggled. He nodded, instantly ready to grab you anything you needed. 

“Yea, of course! I’ll be right back.” He said, standing and heading to your bathroom. He wasn’t gone for very long before his phone pinged.

“Oh, hey you got a notification!” You called to him from the bed.

“You know my password, what’s it say?” He called back, assuming it was probably Satoru. Gojo’s sleep schedule was a nightmare and he had a tendency to make that everyone else's problem. Especially if he found another internet conspiracy rabbit hole to fall down. Suguru still remembered when he learned about the dead internet theory, he didn’t stop talking about that one for mon- wait, why hadn’t you responded yet?

“Well, what’s it say?” He called again, coming back with the warm rag. The look on your face instantly soured his stomach.

“Who's Naiomi?” You asked, tears swelling in your eyes against your will. Naiomi? He didn’t know, who the fuck was Naiomi? “And why is she sending you pictures of her breasts?” You asked. He didn’t fucking kno-

Oh.

Oh.

Naomi. 

Party girl.

“Hey, you should give me back my phone,” He panicked, joining you on the bed and trying to grab the device. You were quicker though, moving away on unsteady legs to read messages you Really Should Not be reading. 

“I’m so fucking hard for you right now Pretty Girl, I can’t wait to see you again and-” You muttered outloud to yourself before the realization hit you, “Wait, Suguru, did you meet up with this girl?! You said you hadn’t been with anyone!” You snapped.

“It was only one time-” He instantly regretted saying that, wondering why he couldn’t just put the goddamn shovel down. 

“No it wasn’t!” You yelled, “It very clearly wasn’t, why do you keep lying to me?!” You begged, fat tears of frustration starting to roll down your cheeks and absolutely devastating your former bedmate. He went over to you, and reached out to wipe the tears away, only for you to smack his hand away instead. “Don’t fucking touch me!” You demanded.

“Y/n, please, I’m so sorry, it was a mistake, she doesn’t mean anything to me-”

“If she doesn't mean anything, why are you lying about her!?” you scoffed, wiping away your own tears. “How many other people are there Suguru, and dont you fucking dare lie to me again, your phone is in my hand.”

Oh fuck. “Only a few.”

“Only a few?! How many is a few?” The awkward silence that followed was thick, as he desperately tried to remember the number. 

“Okay, so maybe a lot.” You thought you were going to be sick, just for him to continue. “I was chasing after you!” he tried to explain, “I missed you, I missed our intimacy, I tried to find it in hollow sex with strangers-”

“They’re not strangers if you kept going back!” You snarled. 

“I know! I know But they’re all just off brand you! They mean less than nothing to me, especially compared to you!”

“That’s not helping!”

“Oh, come on Y/n! We were broken up, I’m willing to bet you met up with someone-!”

“I absolutely did not, you fucking pervert!” you seethed, throwing your own phone at him for him to catch, “Look! And it’s not like I didn’t have the opportunity either! Gojo tried to hit me up less than a week after we called it off.” You sneered, just to rub salt into his wound. It worked too, especially when he went to your messages to confirm it. That two faced fucking bastard was trying to talk you up while Geto was actively crying on his shoulder. He threw your phone onto the bed.

“Look, I don’t understand why you’re acting like a crazy bitch about this! It’s not like I cheated on you, I couldn’t have! We were never actually dating!” He snapped, cyanide dripping from his words and hitting you directly in your soft heart. Geto was having an out of body experience, watching the whole thing as if it was a gruesome horror movie. He wanted to shake himself and yell DO YOU EVEN HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING?! OUT YOUR EGO ASIDE FOR FIVE FUCKING SECONDS AND COMFROT HER GODDAMN IT. 

The silence that followed was thick with regret and shame. He felt it weighing down on his shoulders like a soaking wet weighted blanket, in the color mental illness gray. “Y/n, I-”

“I think you should leave Geto.” You were so calm. Calmer than the say you broke up with him the first time. It petrified him, turning every muscle fiber he had into cold stone. 

“Please, Y/n, I’m sorry, I-”

“I think I made a mistake calling you tonight.” You said, starting to get dressed, no longer comfortable with him having any claim to your body. You felt like you needed a boiling hot shower. Luckily, he took a hint from you and started getting dressed himself. “I’ll send you gas money-”

“You don’t have to do that Darling.” He cut you off. You let out a humorless laugh.

“I’m going to. I don’t want you to feel like I owe you anything. And after that, please don’t contact me again, Suguru. I-I really can’t be around you.” The thought of that happening gutted him to his very core. Even after the two of you had broken up, You’d see each other at frat parties and basement shows. You’d talk, even if it was only small talk, just to be polite. It was those small interactions that got him through those six months. He had no idea how he was going to manage a life completely devoid of you.

“No, Baby girl, please, we can work through this-”

“Please stop calling me pet names.”

“Y/n, I’m begging you don’t do this. We can work this out, I love you.” He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore, anything to not lose you. But, he fucked up because the tears were back again. Instinctively he went to hold you, only for you to step way back. 

“How dare you lie about that too.” You whispered, barely holding back sobs.

“I’m not lying Y/n, I lo-”

“Do not say it again” You snapped, “Get the fuck out of my house.” Suguru wanted to stay, he wanted to fight for your relationship, and for the opportunity to try again. But, you were very clear. And at this point, he had to realize he was just doing more harm than good. He took a shaky breath as he threw on his jacket.

“Fine. I’ll leave.” He muttered. The moment he was on the other side of the door, he heard your sobbing. He at least managed to make it to the wheel of his car before he had his own breakdown.

Yep, It’s true, romance really was dead. Suguru Geto had shot it in the chest and in the head.

[zmb1eslut]

Never healing wounds.

convinced myself I was alone.

word count: 535

warnings: animal violence, threats.

a/n: Luke Castellan's POV. First draft.

Another night without an ounce of sleep, because the summer air costumes itself as the warmth of Thalia's fingers wrapped around my arm when we hid together. And I can't both breathe and drawn on the shame. I was not enough to save her.

I draw the bow I borrowed, using the moonlight as a guide.

The best swordman in the last 300 hundred years. Yeah, get the last one for me and I'll show him why I'm tired of his fucking shadow. Distracting myself with just a dumb title to forget why I even pretend to care. She left it all for me. Us. And Annabeth is still here, and new children come every year. Everyone needs this guy. He's so much fucking fun. Worth dying over, apparently.

So die.

I shot without a warn and didnt move until the bird smashed itself on the ground. And as it's blood drained onto the dirt mine started flowing through my veins like it hadn't for a long time. I felt like myself again, just a moment. When survival meant killing, in a way, every day. To eat, to breathe, regret.

I kill myself everyday for them to live. Watch me care.

And watching me she was. I wasn't sure if I wanted to bother with awknowledgment or explanations. She was kinda nuts on her own way but never spoke out of place. Maybe she would just go back to cabin eleven, twirl her hair for another edgy prick's attention and leave me alone this once.

I hoped.

And I was wrong for doing so.

"Why?" She asked, seating nearby on the floor.

It almost made me laugh. She had a way of sucking with words that made me wonder if maybe it was me who didn't tuned in correctly. Always lacking some fundamental sense. She made me feel like I was going mad. And for cringy it felt to think, just her presence made me wanna punch a wall, a sweet way to say, strangle the voice out of her throat until the lack of air turned off the last of her half-assed idiotic thoughts forever.

"Why what?" I asked prepping for the next blow.

"Why not just use your hands?"

'It doesn't scratch me right' was my first thought. Did it even make sense? Was it even true? It was a weird question to make so I shouldn't worry that much anout a good answer. Still I did, I kept trying to aim as an excuse to not speak yet. And eventually I had no running away. "It would feel inhuman." I admitted, maybe to myself before shooting the nest.

"You aren't one." She said, and when I turned to look at her over my shoulder, she was fixed on the broken eggs like I was a moment ago. I wasn't human she said, and somehow I was many people's favorite.

"I'm at least a half." Was my first clever retort as I tried to not let her words dig too deep in my thoughts.

"So, less than one."

"I'm never 'less than'" And silence.

My night was already spoiled so I went to retrieve the arrows, put it all back on it's place, run away, hide under my sheets and never truly sleep. To wake up tomorrow and held a funeral for the bird on the floor after some camper reaches for me with teary eyes. Bury it deeply with the guilt and shame, wash it from my hands in front of everyone, and be a hero like every other day.

"Can I shoot?" She stopped me.

"I'll rather have someone teach you on daylight" Literally anyone at any point that isn't me and isn't now.

"But if I wait I'll get no chance of it being you will I?" At least she didn't played dumb. I had to sigh either way though. Was she so bad at getting cues. Yes. It won't ever be me If I have a choice, still I smiled, I wasn't a stone.

"Not my grounds, no."

"Then just guide me like they do in romances."

"Why exactly?"

"It'll make me feel alive."

[angelicyouth]

Lavender ; Chapter 2

⇢ pairing: stan marsh x broflovski!reader

⇢ genre: summer romance ; soulmates AU

⇢ synopsis: ❝You looked forward to attending the sleepy, beachside town's famous carnival every summer. But not because you got to see your cousins or your friends after a year of not seeing them—it was to see the boy behind the ring toss booth.❞

⇢ [series masterlist] ; [previous] ; [next]

// FIFTEEN:

“I fucking saw that, you dirty little cheat!” Clyde’s screeching loudly interrupts the otherwise tranquil heat of the afternoon, the boys and you gathered around your cousin’s backyard with your feet dipped inside Ike’s inflatable kiddie pool filled with water.

“If what you saw is all the nasty ass spit flying out of your mouth from all your fucking complaining then sure, Clyde—that’s what you saw!” Craig barks back as he roughly hands the yelling brunette his half of their shared popsicle, your tongue leisurely lapping at the sweetness of the one that you split with Tweek.

The two of you are leisurely sitting next to one another, your head comfortably resting against the blonde’s shoulder as you both lazily watch your bickering friends. You can feel Tweek’s damp locks of hair against your own as his head leans against the top of yours, perspiration beading at the hairline of the whole group yet you couldn’t find it in yourself to care with this almost torturous heat.

The sleepy beachside town has been met with sweltering temperatures that exceeded last year’s, causing the boys to be greedy with their ice cream and easily irritable with the weather. There was an operating fan in every room of your friend’s houses (except for Tolkien and his fully functioning air conditioning system) to which all of you yelled at Clyde when he unplugged one just to charge his phone.

Nothing deters the brunette as he yells out, “I’ll look for a fucking magnifying glass and a ruler just to prove to you that you made your half bigger than mine, asshole—I swear I will!”

But before the ravenette can make a scathing retort back, the glass sliding door leading to the house opens as Tolkien roughly chucks a newly bought box of frozen sweets at the wailing jock. All future responses are cut off as their hands hurriedly fumble to save the package before it falls into the water, the promise of more ice cream after this one ending their argument as their mouths wrap around their snack.

After devouring the rest of the popsicles, you all hop onto your bikes to race each other to the beach with the threat of the last person there having to stuff seaweed into their swimsuit. Not only that, but they have to go up to a random person of the opposite gender to try to get their number.

Your stomach hurts from laughing too hard when Clyde gets pushed towards his designated pile of soggy seaweed on the sand after losing, his nose crinkling up in disgust when a wet squelch signals its success in finding its temporary home. It makes him look like he has a full diaper on, the sight of it only fitting the childish pout resting on his face.

“What the fuck ever! This makes it look like I have some gnarly pubes or my dick isn’t as small as Craig’s micropenis!” The brunette snickers as he swiftly dodges the ravenette’s predictably upcoming kick, the rest of you watching as his earlier bravado suddenly disappears when a few older girls begin to giggle with numerous obvious glances towards his stuffed shorts.

After the humiliating public rejection, he embarrassedly stomps his way back towards your cackling forms before reaching inside his swim trunks to grab the now warm seaweed and chuck it at the closest person. You all scramble to dodge as you painfully wheeze, tears rapidly leaking from the corner of your crinkled eyes onto your heated cheeks. 

“Sick, dude! Don’t throw that shit on me—it was just stuck on your sweaty fucking balls!”

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

You felt stupid because you were fifteen now but you couldn’t help but to think of the stuffed flower at the bottom of your suitcase as you step through the familiar throngs of carnival rides and games. All too soon, the sky faded from blue to black as your group repeated the cycle of eating unhealthy food and riding all the rides on the boardwalk as your tradition from previous years.

Deciding not to tell the guys about seeking out Stan, you wait until the perfect moment to make an excuse before you slip away from the group for a bit. As you excitedly walk towards the isolated booth, you think about how you never once considered the possibility that someone else could be working the game instead of the familiar bleached blonde.

This causes you to pause in your steps and while your usual reckless abandon would have caused you to give less of a shit and continue your journey to the ring toss booth, you don’t. You’re not sure if it's because the students at school have made it a common topic to talk about crushes and whatnot at every given moment with this new age but you can’t help but to feel self conscious at your one-sided fascination with the older teen.

You’re used to feeling like a dumbass and not thinking before you act (you’re surrounded by Clyde and your other friends after all).

But now…

You can’t help but to suddenly feel scared of the hurt of the rejection you know will appear when the bleached blonde routinely dismisses you like he always does. You’ve seen girls at school cry for days when they’ve broken up with their significant others and while you’re not quite sure as to what you feel for the older teen, you can’t deny the attraction that forces you to stop by the booth every year.

Almost like a hypnotic walk, taking control of your body and leading you there.

Like a connection.

But before you can make a decision as to what to do, you suddenly jolt when a pair of arms wrap around your shoulders from behind, Clyde whisking you off to fall into line for another ride as Craig mocks you about getting lost. 

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

This is what drove you to sneak into the carnival alone before it opened the following day, despite knowing that you were definitely not supposed to be there. But when did some measly yellow tape with the words Do Not Enter ever stop you from going anywhere?

How could you not disobey when it looked as if it was prettily tied up in a bow to be given as a present?

People were busy getting ready for the upcoming afternoon so you went by unnoticed, resolutely walking towards the far corner of the boardwalk that was tucked away from everything else. Clyde had said he was surprised that the ring toss was still operating and you could see why—no one ever seemed to stop by yet as you got closer, you could see the lights and prizes that meant it was still in business.

To your relief, Stan was there. His pretty blue eyes were still stuck to the glass screen of his phone, yes, but he was still working at the carnival and he was still appointed to the same booth. 

This time, however, you don’t let the older teen speak up first this time. “Let me help you out.”

Your stomach clenches in nervous anticipation of your bold actions but your face doesn’t show it as Stan lifts up his head to look at you. A few beats of silence passes on by and while the multiple shades of cerulean hues were familiar, the bleached blonde didn’t hold an ounce of recognition in his eyes—again.

It hurt… 

Again.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.” The smooth lilt of his deep baritone awakens something within you after not having heard it for a whole entire year, your heart clenching painfully in yearning.

“No shit.” You respond back and you can’t help but to internally preen at the fact that you echoed his previous words to you from years before back at the teen. 

God, you felt like you were on a roll.

Stan considers this for a moment before his legs swing down to hit the floor in front of his stool, a scoff escaping his mouth. “Whatever. If some kid wants to do my job for me then I’d be an idiot to not let them.”

“I’m not some fucking kid!” You angrily retort back, to which the older teen simply ignores.

“I swear I’m not! I’m in high school and probably not even that much younger than you, you know.” Stan just shrugs and the dry responses ignites the familiar irritation that fills up your body every single time you’re in the presence of the apathetic teen.

“Unless you’re a dumbass who failed a couple of grades and got held back a few times. How old are you, then?” The bleached blonde hops off his previous perch on his stool, his arms lazily stretching upwards over his head as your eyes immediately zone in on the small sliver of skin being exposed at his waist.

“I’m 17.” Stan responds around a bored yawn, your attention going back to his face when the cotton of his shirt resumes its previous position over his taut stomach.

“That’s not even that much older than me! I’m going to be a sophomore next year—I’m 15.” Your lips automatically curve along your face into a happy grin at the revelation that there were only two years between the two of you. 

He really wasn’t some old fart like how he acts he is.

The older teen doesn’t respond, the metal of his keys softly dangling against one another as he unlocks something underneath the counter. You speak up again, “Let me help you.”

“I’m getting the prizes and shit. If you stand over the counter, you can hang them up.” Stan picks up a stuffed bunny and demonstrates by reaching up to rightfully place it in its display but you can’t help but to watch the way the silver of his rings prettily catches the sunlight over his longer fingers.

“My name is N/N. I mean, Y/N.” You stutter and you internally curse at yourself because you were doing so well at taking control of the situation and at taking the initiative to get closer to the teen.

“Stan.” Is all he supplies and you can’t help the frown crossing your face, your teeth biting onto your bottom lip because you already knew that.

You haul your body over the counter and get to work with putting away the plushies that the bleached blonde seamlessly hands to you, the older teen sitting atop the cold structure of the counter beside your feet as his other hand fiddles with his ever present cellphone. You can’t help but to smile in fondness every time a gentle breeze swings by, the soft caress of the wind causing the stuffed toys to dance along in the air.

“Hey.”

“Hm?” You distractedly hum back, watching the toys sway and say hello.

“Come here. I’ll show you how they fuck people over with this game.” And just like that, it’s as if you're an overeager puppy desperate to get its owner’s attention again as your trance gets broken and you hop down to land beside the older boy.

“They put the bottles really close together.” He mumbles as he sets up the glass objects onto the wooden table in front of you both. “So to win, you’d have to do it perfectly.”

“The rings are different weights so that you can’t get used to them.” The bleached blonde continues as you pick up different colored ones to test them out, and he was right.

“These are the order of the colors you should throw it in. You start with red because it’s the heaviest.” He throws it with a perfect arch before he grabs the next colored ring.

“Then it’s orange, yellow, green.” Each word is emphasized with the appropriate object as they beautifully twirl around the neck of the glass bottle.

“Light purple is always last—it’s the lightest.” You watch in fascinated awe as the rings all neatly lay on top of one another, like the rings around the planets of the solar system that Craig talks so much about.

That seemed to be the end of setting up as Stan drops back onto the stool to routinely tap against his phone, your eyes wordlessly staring at the disconnected teen. Clyde had said that he stopped entertaining other people that he didn’t deem worthy of his time except for his friends and you couldn’t help but to want that for yourself.

While you were loud and impulsive, Stan was quiet and deliberate.

He was cool in a completely different way than your older cousin. Where Kyle was passionate about what mattered most to him—of his studies and his morals, Stan didn’t give a shit about what other people thought of or if he pleased anyone with his actions. He barely spoke but every time he did, it felt hypnotic in the way where you were hanging onto every intonation and cadence of his words.

“You can come back later on tonight.” The older teen speaks up, your attention diverted from where it was watching his tongue dart out to wet the pretty pink of his plump lips. “I have to clean up after the carnival if you want to help.”

You beam in affirmation at the invite before you excitedly bound out of the boardwalk to meet up with your friends. When you tell them the exaggerated tale of you sneaking into the carnival, Tweek admonishes you in panic for the possibility of getting caught and banned for life.

There’s a secretive smile on your face as you shrug sheepishly.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

It was late into the night when you finally remember your promise to Stan, having lost track of time as Craig roughly wipes the remnants of cinnamon sugar from your lips and Clyde finishes the last bite of your shared churro. You tell the guys to just go on ahead without you because you forgot something and after much reassurance (“I’m not going to get abducted by aliens, Tweek”), you jog back to the far corner of the boardwalk.

“I’m sorry.” When you had shown up, the older teen was done packing everything up and now he only shrugs in response at your guilty face.

“S’fine. Going home now.” You obediently nod in reply but you’re distraught at how childish you still were in comparison to Stan for forgetting such an important event in the distraction of fun with your friends.

Taking a step forward to the direction of the entrance, you can’t help but to notice that the bleached blonde was slinking away towards the darkness of the beach despite saying he was heading home. You bounce on the balls of your feets as you decide what to do before you take off after where you saw the older teen disappear.

Trying to stay quiet was no hard task as you walked through a multitude of bushes and overgrown tree branches until Stan finally sits down on the sand, your smaller form ducking behind a piece of driftwood on the beach. Peering past the brittle barricade, you watch as Stan heaves out a deep sigh before he lifts his head towards the illumination of the beautifully present moon.

Your breath gets caught into your throat at the sight of the vestiges of light prettily caressing the visage of the boy in front of you, his gaze intense as the shadows accentuate the affection his face holds for the brightly lit object shining above the both of you. Stan’s lips part ever so slightly and you can’t help but to wonder: what was he saying in secrecy to the moon?

You wanted to know.

But, you were intruding. It felt like an intimate moment that you shouldn’t be a part of and with one last glance, you stand up to slowly back away.

And just like that, a floodgate had opened. As you ride on your bicycle across the quiet expanse of empty streets, you’re ridden with the thoughts that you wanted to kiss Stan. You wanted him to look at you with that deeply held fondness that he looked at the moon with, wanted him to whisper his intimate thoughts to you.

But most of all, you wanted to hear him say your name.

When you throw your bicycle atop the grass of your cousin’s front lawn, you’ll look up to the moon across the glass panel of the window when you’re tucked away in bed that night and ask:

“What were you guys talking about?”

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

// SIXTEEN:

This time, this year, standing on the boardwalk with your friends as they hand over your shared money to the person behind the ticket booth, you weren't going to assume that Stan remembered you. This was a mistake you made last year and the year before that but now you weren’t going to have expectations that could lead to any hurt.

It was your turn to be strategic—no more fumbled introductions or childish tantrums.

You were cool too, goddammit.

Steeling your resolve with one last deep breath, you walk up to the hidden booth. This was it—you were going to make Stan remember you this time.

“Hi.” You greet, the older teen looking up from his phone to nod his head at you. He looks as tired as he did the previous years, as if the universe just wouldn’t let him sleep but despite it all, he’s still as beautiful as before.

“Sup.” There is no recognition flickering behind his ever pretty eyes but that was okay, you prepared for this.

The stand is set up like it always is as you rummage through the pockets of your skirt to pull out the appropriate amount of tickets, your mind reminding itself of the order of colors to throw it in as he passes you the stack of rings. It’s almost funny how you remember, how clear the memory with Stan was when just yesterday Tweek was yelling at you for forgetting the tray of chicken nuggets you placed in the oven and letting it burn to a blackened crisp.

You pick up the red ring, the heaviest from what the older teen had told you but as you prepare to throw it, you don’t close your eyes like last time. Stan watches as it seamlessly glides across the air, the satisfying clunk! causing the corner of your lips to twitch upwards.

One after the other, you throw them in the order you remember until there was nothing left to throw. You made every single one, a beautiful array of colors with the pretty lavender color sitting atop the stack.

It’s quiet for a period of time as Stan squints at the perfect sequence of colors and back at the girl who made everything without batting an eye. “What the fuck. How’d you know the order..?”

“You showed me last year. Or did you forget, old man?” You teasingly smirk at the stunned expression on the teen, a satisfied thrum running along your veins.

“What? I showed you?” The skin between his eyebrows begin to crease in disbelief, “I don’t remember doing anything like that at all. Are you fucking with me?”

Although this meant that he forgot about you again, you couldn’t help the cacophony of butterflies that dangerously flutter along your stomach at the notion that you were the only one Stan had ever told that to. You want to stay a bit longer to make a deeper impression after your success but you made a promise of having a hotdog eating contest with Clyde later on so you had to go.

“I’m Y/N. And you’re Stan—I remember you.” There’s a blank look in Stan’s eyes as he looks at you but it was okay. Like you said, you were prepared for that to happen again.

“I have no idea why you remember an asshole like me. You won though, what prize do you want?” He stands up as he slides his mobile device into the coarse material of his jean’s pocket, your eyes breaking away from his form real quick to scan along the hanging prizes.

“Nah, I’m okay. I just like playing.” You flash him a wide grin, your pearly white teeth making an appearance when you see the eyebrow that he quirks up.

“I’ve never heard that before. You like playing rigged games or some shit? Or just ring toss in particular?” Ever so slightly, the corner of his mouth lifts up in amusement which in turn causes you to feel like you won a Nobel Peace Prize or some other great accomplishment.

Like usual, your mouth works faster than your brain as you impulsively say, “It’s not the game that I’m into.”

You internally shriek but outward you stay composed, tilting your head to the side when you see the older teen slightly part his pretty pink lips. “... Oh.”

You’re absolutely beaming in delight at this newly predatory position you’ve reached, flashing the bleached blonde a smile. “Later!”

Waiting until you were no longer in sight of Stan, your feet pick up their pace as it steadily hits the structure of the boardwalk in a thump-thump-thump motion like your still racing heart.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

Your head is laid against Craig’s lap, the ravenette’s longer fingers running through the soft locks of your hair in repetitive motions that threaten to put you into deep sleep. All eyes are on the television as you watch Tweek and Tolkien duke it out on the big screen, the incessant sound of a vibration against the wooden floor irritating the boys.

“Who the fuck are you texting, Clyde?” Tolkien nosely asks, his head trying to catch sight of the brunette’s flashing phone as he tries to dodge any prying eyes.

“Fuck off—It’s none of your goddamn business!” He screeches, the sheer volume of his voice causing you to jolt awake.

“It’s probably a girl, dude.” Tweek lazily says, his blonde bangs tied up into a mini palm tree at the top of his head to keep it away from his sweat-sheened face.

“Pfft, now you know that’s a damn lie. Clyde can’t pull for shit.” Craig snorts from his position above you, a high-pitched whine resounding from your throat when his fingers stop their soothing ministrations in your hair.

“Fuck you! I get enough, thank you very much!” The brunette is indignant as he harshly swats away Tolkien’s teasingly reaching hands away from his cellphone, the rich teen diverting his fingers to tickle Clyde instead in an attempt to distract him.

“Yeah, if getting some is kissing your own grandmother on the fucking cheek when you see her then sure, Clyde. You get all the retired bitches.” Tweek hollers out a loud laugh as he brings an elbow up to hit Craig in the ribs at his words, your eyes closed as you sleepily giggle at the burn.

“N/N got even more action than you when she was 13, Clyde. You’re a lost fucking cause.” Everyone snickers as you blindly bring a hand up to swat at the resident blonde of the group for bringing up that memory, a nostalgic grin curling at your lips as they teasingly push at your resting body for having game as a kid.

Your first year with the boys for the summer, you caught the attention of one beautiful Wendy Testaburger when she saw you by chance on the swings of the park with your friends. She knocked on your window to break you out of the house in the middle of the night, the pair of you intertwining your hands together as you both silently giggle off into the warm darkness of the air.

Surprising you with an impromptu visit, she led you to a clearing where the din of the luminescent fireflies casted her soft features alight in a beautiful glow. You both rested your backs against a magnificently tall tree that you couldn't identify under the inky night, the ravenette pulling out two lunchables for the both of you from her Chinpokomon backpack to snack on as you talked.

She had dropped you off back to your cousins with your first kiss as a parting gift that summer night.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

“Stan! Can I help you set up?” You present the older teen a soft smile, your hands clutching one another as you fiddle with your fingers as an outlet for your nervous energy.

He looks up from where he was staring down at his phone, an eyebrow quirking up at the sight of you. “How the fuck did you get in here?” 

“How else? I climbed through the tape, duh.” You roll your eyes as you cross your arms over your chest, shifting you weight to one side as you await for his answer.

He snorts but it’s still pretty, a lilt of amusement tainting his tone. “You mean the one that clearly says Do Not Enter in all caps?”

“Hm. If it’s made out of something so flimsy then it feels more like a suggestion, no? Whatever, I’m only asking because you let me help you last year.” You lean over the counter separating the two of you as he busies himself with unlocking all of the cabinets.

“You sure like to claim a bunch of shit that I don’t remember.” He hums before he stands to his full height, your breath getting caught at your throat because this is the first time you’ve stood this close to one another and face-to-face at that.

You lean back from your previously leaning position when you take note of his taller frame (not as much as Craig but still a fucking giant compared to you, holy shit) but you don’t back down. “It’s not my fault that you don’t remember me.”

He hums again in thought as he crosses his arms, “And that’s such a fucking shame. I feel like I would have remembered someone like you.”

You busy yourself with hopping onto the counter to sit because it’s easier to flirt when you can’t see the mesmerizing depth of ocean blue eyes. “Someone like me, huh? And what does that mean? Someone attractive? Funny? Charming?”

Your feet leisurely swing as they dangle from your perched position and from your peripherals, you can see Stan laying his palms flat against the counter beside you as he leans his weight against the structure. “I was going to say someone annoying as hell.”

“Fuck you! I don’t have to go out of my way to provide you free labor just for you to be a piece of shit meanie!” Your cheeks angrily puff out as your lips curl into a pout.

“Boo-fucking-hoo. If you don’t like the working conditions then quit.” Is all you get before he shoves a box full of glass bottles into your arms.

You mutter to yourself as you petulantly place them onto the wooden table until you catch sight of Stan watching you. “Close together so that they can fuck you over, right?”

“Yeah, all the games are rigged here.” He says before he resumes his task of hanging up plush toys but you already know because he told you that before.

“This stand isn’t very popular.” You remark when the two of you are done setting the booth up and are standing under the shade provided by the hanging prizes.

He waves off your words, “Like I give a shit. Not my fault that the stand’s hidden in the asscrack of the boardwalk.”

Sending him a judgemental glance, you scoff at his response. “Pretty sure it is your fault. You’re a fucking asshole, dude. It’s like 30 degrees colder here compared to the rest of the boardwalk because of your shitty personality.”

“Says you. You show up every year, apparently, and now you’ve snuck in early to force your help onto me. Which I don’t get any fucking tickets for, by the way. ” The taller teen sends you a condescending look back.

“Who gives a shit about some tickets when you get to hang out with me!” You boldly declare, presenting the older boy with a shit eating grin.

The bleached blonde simply narrows his eyes down at you, “Like that’s any form of compensation. What, your mom let you out of the house dressed like that?”

You look down at your skirt as the soft material flutters along with the wind. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m here with my aunt, first of all. And fuck you—people loved my outfit when I wore it to a party once.”

The older teen just sends you a look, as if communicating that he never asked for an explanation. “Well the party you went to probably sucked ass, then.”

“I mean, parties fucking suck in general when you’ve been to enough. It’s fun at first but it’s repetitive so it gets pretty tiring.” You mumble, honestly reflecting your personal experiences from the high school parties you often get dragged to.

“Hm? What happened to you?” He lazily asks, a well-welcomed breeze caressing both of your locks of hair against the harsh sun rays.

You think about how you made out with a boy who had similar bleached blonde hair and couldn’t get yourself to go through with it when you began to imagine that the larger hands trailing down the skin of your waist was Stan’s. Or how the only reason you agreed to get locked in a closet during a game of seven minutes in heaven was because the deep lilt of the boy you went in with sounded similar to Stan’s baritone voice.

“... Peer pressure, lots of confusion. Don’t worry though, I don’t think I’ll be doing those things again.” Your voice is soft between the space of the booth you’re standing in, your fingers fiddling with the creases in between the folds of your top.

“Good—I don’t know what I’d do without my worthless assistant if they got into shit.”

Your mouth parts to give a scathing retort but you pause when you see the sight of a gentle curl along Stan’s lips for the very first time.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

“Back to torment me?” Is what greets you when you come back the following day before opening, the older teen in his usual laid-back position atop his stool.

You roll your eyes, “Fuck off. You don’t even have to do anything—I can do all of this shit by myself and with my eyes closed.”

“Like that means anything. A fucking baby could do this.” He lazily scoffs.

As you get to work, your body goes through the motions now ingrained into your body as taught from the taller teen while Stan sits back and relaxes. When you stop in front of one of the floor to ceiling mirrors that make your body look all wonky for comedic effect, you can’t help but to pause in front of the panel of glass.

Because from the reflection, you could see Stan watching you.

Not that he was making eye contact with you, but the bleached blonde was watching you work without knowing that you had caught him in the act. It was a different type of attention from the years of disinterest that it made you smirk to yourself at this newfound knowledge.

Slyly, you take off the jacket adorning your frame as if it was bothering you because of the sweltering heat. You see how Stan’s eyes slowly darken as they take in the expanse of newly exposed skin with this new but special kind of attention, leisurely dragging his sight across your body as if he had all the time in the world to admire your form.

When you leave the booth later on to meet up with your friends, you notice how he doesn’t call you a kid anymore.

・ ─ ・ ⋯ ・ ─ ⊹ ♡₊˚๑

“Hey. Show me how to play this game again.” You ask, Stan staring up at you with his leg tucked under his chest as usual but without a phone in sight.

“Light work.” He scoffs, a cocky lilt to his voice at the simple request.

You slip inside the booth as you internally preen at the fact that you’re the only person that Stan would let in like this as you drag your fingers across the necks of the glass bottles. “Get them all over just this one bottle then.”

He smirks, the handsome expression making your insides warm at how attractive his confidence is. “Like I said: fucking easy.”

“Then show me.” You stick out your tongue at him as you step back outside of the booth, your skirt following the movement of your body.

“Got a ticket for my troubles?” Rolling your eyes, you flick the paper at him as he steps beside you, his ring-adorned fingers flexing in preparation to throw.

His aim is precise as always as he goes through the order of the colors imprinted in your mind, all until he has just the light purple ring in his hold. He sends you a glance and you can’t help but to notice that it’s with the same attention from when he looked at you in the mirror earlier in the day. But this time, you make eye contact.

His hand wobbles before the worn out object clatters onto the ground.

Your eyes widen in surprise as you don’t understand what was going on because you’ve never seen Stan lose composure, your head quickly whipping back to the side to look at the older teen beside you. He looked… Angry.

“Seriously? Don’t lose on purpose just to make me feel better. I’m not a fucking kid anymore no matter how much you think I am.” Scoffing, you walk towards the fallen item as you place it back against the counter.

“I didn’t lose on purpose.” His voice is quiet, back to his usual self again.

“What then? Forgot how to play, old man?” You tease, collecting all of the rings from the bottles to gather them back into one pile on the counter.

“Want me to teach you how? It’s free of charge since I feel so bad.” Snickering, you resume your previous position beside the taller teen.

“I taught you first.” He grumbles back as you perch yourself atop the counter, leisurely swinging your feet back and forth in delight.

“Red is first.” Stan rolls his eyes at your words before he picks up the aforementioned ring, his hands still trembling ever so slightly.

You quirk an eyebrow when you notice, jumping down beside the bleached blonde to reach for his wrist in an effort to guide him into a throw. The second your skin touches for the first time, however, the older teen gasps at the contact as the second ring of the night meets its demise on the ground.

“Holy shit! I’m sorry—” Cutting off your words, muscular arms wrap around your waist to which you immediately wrap your own around broad shoulders.

Leaning his weight against your body, you try to keep the both of you upright as he burrows his face into the safe solace of your neck and a shaky breath hits your exposed skin. It’s quiet for a moment as you don’t know what to do, confused and begging anyone that was listening to make it so that Stan couldn’t feel how quickly your heart was beating underneath your chest.

You stay that way for the rest of the night with Stan oddly quieter than usual, the teen not responding as he stays in your embrace whenever you try to fill the space with meaningless talk. When he gives you a wordless goodbye in the form of a gentle nudge when people begin to leave the boardwalk, you hurriedly rush to speak up in your immense confusion to the events that transpired.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.” But he still doesn’t answer.

Your hands clench around the soft material of the shirt adorning his frame, “Please say something. I don’t want you to forget about me again.”

Like you always do.

Finally, Stan pulls away and looks at you. “I don’t think I’ll forget someone like you. I don’t even know why you’re so dead-fucking-set on getting to know an asshole like me in the first place.”

You silently watch as he returns behind the counter of the booth, his hands rummaging between tufts of plushed toys before he pulls out a cute star. “Here—as payment for helping me because I don’t want to owe a shithead like you anything. Something to remember me by and because it looks like you.”

Gently grabbing the proffered item, you smile as you whisper. “You’ve said that to me before, asshole.”

When the thoughts of what had occurred crowd your mind on your ride back home, you’ll hug your new gift to your chest as you think about how you’d never forget Stan.

[popcorn-plots]

want to ask this girl out on a date, but I'm really nervous... it would be our 4th date, but I haven't really talked with her since she quit her job and school let out.... the last date we had, I told her that I wasn't really sure how I felt, because I couldn't figure out if I liked her as a friend or liked her as something more.

I think I like her as something more. Like, really like. I want to be with her and see where this goes, have a little summer romance and kiss her and be able to call her mine for however long it lasts, but I have no fucking clue how to tell her all of that or even how to ask her out--

I'm super nervous and I don't want to mess this up

@azrail-has-a-vendetta I'm pretty sure you know who this is

[hernakedmuse]

Amberline

Disclaimer: This story is going to be dedicated to a very good friend of mine, why she thinks I'm good enough to let me write a character for her, I dunno.

This a Kyle Scheible x OC, there's definitely smut, adult situations, all high school characters are portrayed by adults. There's mention of eating disorder.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Part I

Sacramento High School was no longer a public school.

This year it was changed to a charter due to its very low performance.

To be honest, this town is now poor or rich, and I fall into the latter as my mother loves to remind me. It's why I've been babysitting since I was twelve, and why this past summer I was working at a doughnut stand at a fair, and this school year I'll be working at Blockbusters.

College doesn't pay for itself, and mom made it no secret that she wasn't going to donate one red cent, why should she even though my babysitting and doughnut money go toward the nice apartment we live in and toward her payments for her Lexus she can hardly afford.

I don't even have a car, and does she ever drive me to work or school? No, it's my bicycle or a bus.

She's one of those southern women that always drone on about earning things, telling me life ain't easy and I best get a grasp of that early, especially since I'll be joining the rich kids of Sacramento for my senior year.

Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic High School is so graciously funded by Charlene Sixkiller, my dearest mother. She said it'll help me get to a good school. I'm truly grateful, but I feel so pressured, I feel like school and me leaving at eighteen is all we talk about at home.

I don't even know what I want to do.

Like fuck.

I love writing but my mom says that it doesn't pay the bills. It's a big reason why she won't help me with college, because I'm choosing to be an English Major.

Okay so maybe I do know what I want to do with my life.

I write gothic novels, a cross between horror and romance. I'm not very good at it but I love writing, between that and my diary it's the only way I can actually express myself.

-

It's awkward going to Catholic school and you're not a catholic, mom was brought up southern Baptist, and I hardly know a damn thing about my dad. Although he's probably the same, being from the same area.

I've only been to my mom's hometown of Rocky Mountain, North Carolina five times in my life, and every single time I count the hours for when we return to California.

My dream school is UCLA. It's hard as hell to get into, but going to this school will help. L.A. is far enough from central California where I won't have to deal with my mom again, and besides my dad's there. Maybe I can find him, ask him why I wasn't worth sticking around for.

My alarm clock blared Good Charlotte throughout my room. With a long groan and a painful stretch, I literally threw myself out of bed.

Dragged myself to the bathroom and pulled myself into the shower. I know being goth at a catholic school is going to be a total nightmare, but I was still Gung ho on making a good first impression. I washed my hair twice with the fruity smell of my Garnier shampoo and conditioner. Then massaged my loreal color mask into my waist length black hair before combing it through and clipping it up on top of my head.

My acne is starting to clear up but there's still some stubborn blemishes on my cheek. I washed my face with a morning burst about four times before using the scrub, why did I have to have problematic skin? Between acne, my fat ass and my boobs, I felt like there were twenty signs to point out how much of an ugly freak I am. I still tried though, some days I didn't think I looked bad, but days like today…

I scrubbed my skin with my electric apple lathered loofah until it was red and raw, and then rinsed my hair mask. I turned on the radio and brushed my teeth to the new Red Hot Chilli Peppers song By the Way, my eyes gazed with judgment at my reflection. How shall I fix myself today? I was getting over an eating disorder from last year, this weight is new to me. My doctor said I looked great, but sometimes I see a dancing hippopotamus in fantasia.

I rubbed Ponds onto my face and Bath and body works toasted hazelnut lotion on my skin. I sprayed my Secret powdery deodorant on. Blowing drying my waist length, ebony hair took a half an hour and that was me rushing. I sealed it with my Garnier serum and then did my makeup, far too much black eyeliner just past the point of you have gone too far, and cherry chapstick.

I pulled on my black panties and bra before pulling on the gray pleated school skirt I was forced to wear, I felt like a soldier preparing for war. The white buttoned down shirt was tucked in and I threw on my black zipper hoodie leaving it unzipped. I pulled on black knee high socks and scrunched them down before tying on my doc martens oxfords. I shoved on my many bracelets from a Hot Topic haul and made sure my black, stretchy choker constricted my neck. I brushed my hair down one more time and sprayed on my Victoria's Secret love spell body spray I got for my last birthday. I looked at myself, the kohl making my green eyes pop like I was on something. I wouldn't call myself hideous, just not pretty, not enough.

I wasn't enough for my old friends, when I was found passed out in the girl's bathroom everything changed. Nobody wanted me around, Alyssa and Taylor stopped sitting with me at lunch, and Alyssa started dating my crush Zach. They all acted like we never met.

But I was always the one who brought the least to the group. If I couldn't make it to a Marilyn Manson concert, they still went, but when Alyssa had the flu and couldn't make it to Disneyland, everyone canceled.

I was the one who was everyone's shoulder to cry on, at twelve I taught Taylor how to use pads and take motrin when she got her period, I told Zach he was good at drums, and anytime Alyssa had guy troubles it was me who lost sleep talking to her until 3am on the phone, it was me who bought her Häagen-Dazs and watched her stupid guilty pleasure show with her, Sex and the city, it was me who washed her hair and ran her a bath.

But it was never enough. Who knows, maybe I'm not meant to be happy. It's not in the cards for me I think.

The main reason for starting fresh and going to a new school wasn't just about college. It was so I wouldn't have to see the faces of the people who were supposed to be my best friends in the whole world, and couldn't get off their asses to visit me in the hospital.

I put my headphones and placed my Simple Plan CD into my player and turned it on blast.

Mom already left for work, she wasn't the kind of mother to prepare me a big breakfast for my first day. I grabbed an apple and granola bar and left to go catch the bus, getting catcalled on the way by guys old enough to be my dad.

Getting on that school bus was what you expected, the kids caught a look at the girl with black hair and equally black eyeliner and snicker or get out my way faster than a bat out of hell.

I sat in the very back next to a girl with shoulder length, dirty blonde hair pushed back by a headband that matched her gray school skirt.

She started talking to me, I saw her mouth move but couldn't hear one word. What is wrong with her? Can't she see that I'm wearing headphones? I wanted to ignore her so badly but I could not be rude to save my life. So I tapped the pause button with a black nail and pushed my headphones down before looking at her. "Can I help you?"

She smiled and laughed. "I was just saying you're new, I've never seen you before."

She wanted to bother me for that? I smiled though. "Yes, you're right. How perceptive of you."

The girl just laughed. "I'm Gretchen, I go to Mary's too, what grade are you in?"

"I'm a senior."

"Me too! We're the only seniors on the bus, did you know that?"

Thank you Gretchen for making me feel like such a loser.

The bus ride consisted of Gretchen asking for my entire autobiography. Was she a news reporter or something? All she got out of me was that I went to Sacramento High, which she made a snobby face at, and that I didn't leave behind any friends.

Once we got off of the bus, she didn't leave me alone. She was telling me about everyone who went to our school. I nodded along without paying attention but couldn't find the heart to be mean. I mean she's taking the time to get to know me and be my own personal tour guide.

"Amberline is a really strange name." She said suddenly.

I shrugged. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that, I'll change it when I get the chance."

She laughed and I held back the urge to roll my eyes. "I'll just call you Amber, come on Amber I'll take you to morning mass?"

"Morning mass?"

She nodded. "It's a catholic school of course."

I followed her to the chapel, it was all very beautiful and sacred looking. Pairs and pairs of eyes focused on me though, and I noticed boys filing in, which confused me since this was an all girls school. I asked Gretchen about it.

"The boys school shares certain things with us like the chapel for morning mass." Then Gretchen gasped and whispered loudly to me. "Oh there he is!"

"Who?" I asked with confusion, she was acting hysterical.

"Kyle Scheible!"

Walking in the line of boys to the priest was a boy far too handsome to be in high school, but you could clearly tell he is in fact in high school. Is he the usual ghostly pale and manic panic black haired with piercings type I go for? No, he was so much better than that. Something I thought I'd never say.

I can't believe that I can actually understand Gretchen's state of hysteria, but I do.

He has hooded, sleepy looking dark green eyes, with flecks of Hazel, I saw this as he walked by me. His lashes were poetically long and his nose pronounced beautifully. His lips were drawn in a pout that matched his careless posture of hands buried in the pockets of his khakis, which should have taken away how hot he is but it didn't.

His hair, God his hair needed the attention of my fingers combing through the dark chocolate curls. He wore it longish in a poetic way, his lean physique made him look taller, and he has the sort of neck you just know smells so good.

And because Gretchen isn't that great of a whisperer, he did look over. It was a lazy look over at first, like he was used to these whispers of him, which he probably was. But then his lazily droopy eyes popped open and bit when looking over at us. At me.

Oh no, oh God he was looking over at me? I immediately felt self conscious, what if he notices my breakouts? What if he finds my nose strange or finds me annoying looking? It's a catholic school. What if my look was too Crucible for him? Why did this guy who I don't know, opinion matter so much to me?

He looked at me, he really looked at me– Oh God, he stepped out of line to walk over straight to me. I could barely hear Gretchen's panicking, it was just me and him in this place of worship. Someone whispered how Kyle never approaches anyone.

He then stood over me, my eyes widened a bit and a hardly there smirk painted his pursed lips. His dead eyes swept over me, and in a lazy voice he asked, "Do you smoke?"

"Yes."

I don't know why I said it, I've never touched cigarettes in my life and I've only had one beer when I decided alcohol wasn't for me. But for this mystery boy, I thoughtlessly said yes.

"I mean no, I lied, I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that." I said breathlessly. Why was I out of breath?"

Kyle just…smiled at me, it looked foreign on his lips like he wasn't used to it. "What's your name?" His voice was musically calm.

I opened my mouth to answer but I was up next to bite the wafer and sip the wine. I didn't hear from Kyle for the rest of the day.

@meetmyothersouls

[ghostbustermelanieking]

some memories i have of reading percy jackson and the olympians/the heroes of olympus for the first time (circa late 2011-2014)

i got the pjo box set for christmas from my librarian aunt. i also got a nook that christmas; the first two books i bought on it were the lost hero and the son of neptune

i actually remember seeing commercials for the son book on the disney channel before this and being like "huh, that looks cool"

for some personal context, this christmas was the first one after my parents had separated, but we were spending it together anyways

interesting factoid: at this point, i had not read harry potter. i actually resisted reading hp for a long time (til like summer 2012). i was DEFINITELY a percy jackson kid, and here's how you can tell: i can actually count how many times i've read hp. but not pjo lol

percy jackson was also pretty much my gateway into greek mythology aside from, like, the basic stuff i was aware about from pop culture circa age 10. and my dad actually telling me the story of the iliad at some point prior

i tore through these books so fast that i actively missed major plot points. the best example i have is the fact that i just did not at all pick up on annabeth and percy's romance until the end (so heroes of olympus was pretty jarring lol)

i latched onto thalia so hard as a kid. she was like one of my favorite characters, and i remember being annoyed she stopped being central after ttc

similarly, i remember ttc was pretty much my favorite of the series as a kid (and still sort of is, tbh, next to tlt). i think it was because of all the new female characters asdghjhklll i got too attached

ok let's face it, i got overattached to all the female characters for no real reason. annabeth, thalia, bianca, rachel, piper, hazel were all favorites of mine

this isn't anything significant, but i pretty distinctly remember reading botl, like i remember riding around in the car with my mom that day, and being like out in a woodsy area on some property, and like the music playing in the car

i also remember renting the movie like, mid-read through of the series (around ttc or botl) and not like. hating it? i got a lot angrier about the movie the older i got, and the more attached i got to the books, but i feel like i actually had knowledge of the movie before i ever read the books. like i remember seeing ads for the movie and being like, huh, looks cool. so like, the aging up of characters wasn't super weird to me. i'm sure i spent the entire movie mentally comparing it to the books tho

i fucking. got SO attached to the new characters in TLH. it felt so fun to see new, different characters in these worlds, with different experiences and different parents, and i loved the premise, and the characters/dynamics of piper, leo, and jason

and while i was absolutely sucked the fuck in once the "percy is missing" plot was revealed... i do remember just being slightly annoyed that this new series had percy as a main character. like i love percy! but i was so invested in these new characters, and seeing different aspects of this world, that i was bummed we were spending time on a character we'd already spent a lot of time on, instead of getting to know more new people in this world

like i found the different gods and their kids to be super interesting, and i always wanted to know about them; i wanted to know more about the ones we didn't know much about, that we hadn't seen a lot of! to put things into context, i was kind of bummed jason was a son of zeus/jupiter, and hazel a daughter of pluto/hades, bc i felt like we'd covered that ground with thalia and nico. i was bummed that annabeth was the seventh quest member, even though i was so stoked for her and percy reuniting

(completely hypocritically, i always wanted a demigod sibling for percy asddgjklll rip to the imaginary daughter of poseidon in baby me's head)

also loved son of neptune, although i wished we'd spent more time developing the roman world and characters (aside from hazel and frank ofc). i remember reading it on my nook, one of my first e books (so i had no real context of how much was left in the book), and i remember being SOOO frustrated when it cut just before the reunion, and i realized i'd have to wait for the sequel to come out

some more personal context: my great uncle passed away right after christmas, and i went to his funeral (my first). i'm pretty sure i read most of son on the drive up/in the funeral home

i was so desperately anxious for the mark of athena to come out that i started scouring the internet for previews in like march. i stumbled on what i thought was the preview, but i was confused when the plot just kept going... and that's how i read my very first fanfiction on accident (and i was scandalized)

finishing the mark of athena upset me a lot. i can't remember if i actually threw the book, or just thought about it, but by god the sentiment was there

i remember not really liking the last three books in hoo. or at least not feeling like they lived up to the hype. i usually enjoyed percy and annabeth's style, PARTICULARLY in hoh, but i felt like the arcs of the other five characters either fell flat or moved in directions that actively bummed me out. these characters felt so well-drawn and compelling in their first books, but it felt like the thread got lost somewhere along the way -- i remember feeling flat about it even as a kid, and being genuinely frustrated bc of how much i had enjoyed tlh and son

i also remember just kind of being bored with those last three books. now some of this might just be bc i was an easily bored kid essentially skimming these massive chunks of books (i also found tlo to be kind of boring, bc i was missing the nuance like a dumbass), but i felt like something was missing. i felt like we'd rushed too much through establishing character relationships, so the status quo felt... weird

THAT BEING SAID, hoh was definitely my favorite of those three

i was a pretty sheltered kid. so at age 12, i think nico's storyline in hoh was one of -- if not the -- first lgbt storylines i encountered in fiction. i remember sitting in my seventh grade classroom reading those scenes really distinctly

saw the sea of monsters in theaters, and i feel like my reaction was simultaneously "this is better than the first one, at least it's more accurate" and "oh my god whyd they change so much"

was distinctly annoyed by boo as a finale, AND bored by it, to the point where i avoided rereading it for YEARS

anyways i reread pjo so many times that my copies are literally falling apart asdfgjklll

[broodpeas]

Books 2024.

Here are the books I've read this year.

The romantic comedies that I still can't believe they were published.

Mr. Wrong Number by Lynn Painter.

Happily ever after by Lynn Painter.

Both books, if I could give them negative stars, I would.

Not like the movies. Kelly Winfrey.

The effort for flawed characters is loable, but that's about it.

One-star romance. Laura Hankin.

One star indeed. The narrator is shrill, and that is a term that as a staunch feminist, I never use in a negative connotation. Until I read this book.

The Fiancé Dilemma. Elena Armas.

I thought the obsession US romcom book clubs have on this author was because she was a good writer. I was wrong. by god, was I wrong.

Kissing Tolstoy. Penny Reid (Novella).

I was happy to see a writer debunking this holy male writer in order to explain a very inappropiate relationship between a professor (a russian, very white, very controlling man) and a student (who loses all agency in this short book). The result is a red flag book.

Love hacked. Penny Reid.

Again, the red flags! So many red flags!!

Ten ways to seduce your boyfriend. Penny Reid.

Right on cue. Falon Ballard.

Till heist do us part. Sara Desai.

Unnecessarily long, with a confusing plot and characters who dilute and are so weak I almost stab my eyes with a fork.

It happened one summer. Tessa Bailey.

The clocky app book section of the internet will tell you this is hot and steamy. I will tell you that the scene where they have sex in a hospital is not only inappropiate (of all the damn places, the place where sick people go to?!), it's just...ew.

To woo and to wed. Martina Writers.

Not only is this book terrible, it's a blatant copy of Bridgerton with a very lazy, terrible approach to Austen.

Lush Lives. Vanessa Lyon.

I never understood the plot of the book nor the characters. Yay for disabled queer love, but it felt I was ticking a list on diversity.

Books that I forgot I'd read until I check my reading apps (I Am Angry I Read Some Of Them).

The Rosie Project. Graeme Simsion.

Do not let men write romcoms.

The Shaadi set-up. Lilie Vale.

I'm not of indian descent, but I'd take offense if I were.

Love and other flights delays (compilation, novella). Denise Williams.

Token. Beverly Kendall.

A crown of ivy and glass. Claire Legrand.

I am an adult person who no longer hates read. Yet, I found myself despising this book so much that the hate lead me to pre-order the following book in this series.

The wedding date. Jazmine Guilroy.

If this author ever does a refund, I'd never accept it because no money can ever give me back the hours I wasted reading this.

The Bridgerton series because come on, this is me.

An offer from a gentleman.

The offer! The cinderella plot and then the attempt to make it a plot twist and failing! I am here for this and I can't wait for the tv series.

To sir Philip, with love.

Eloise, I don't think we was ready for this. She became a therapist, a savior, and a mom in like 3 days. She also lost her agency, which was barely noticeable in the books and I am so ready for the season. This is a fantastic hot mess.

Good romcoms only women and queer people will enjoy.

The roomate fiasco and The fake boyfriend fiasco. Both by Talia Hibbert.

Long live this amazing author who gives us red flags, beige flags, sex toys, consensual relationships, fucked up pasts, therapy and redemption.

Say you'll be mine. Naina Kumar.

The ending felt extremely rushed, but the book is sweet and funny. What a delightful read.

Seven days in june. Tia Williams.

The summer of everything. Julian Winters.

Business Casual. B.K. Borison.

Do you take this man. Denise Williams.

Just like you. Nick Hornby.

Fantastic reads that made me laugh and weep and I couldn't stop reading until I was done.

Words in deep blue. Cath Crowley.

The Dating plan. Sara Desai.

The marriage game. Sara Desai.

Summer romance. Annabel Monaghan.

Past, present, future. Rachel Lynn Salomon.

What a lovely conclusion to a book that I think didn't need a sequel. It's just wonderful reading for a YA audience.

The singles table. Sara Desai.

The thing is this book isn't bad, it's just that the characters needed a few pages to discuss therapy. Like, I was worried about fictional people's mental health.

Technically yours. Denise Williams.

I liked it so much I'll probably read it again.

The Holy Crap This Is So Good books.

We could be so good. Cat Sebastian.

The most beautiful love story I've read in a while. I was invested. I want to believe this isn't just fiction. Queer love!

Funny Story. Emily Henry.

The chokehold Henry has on us is deep and wonderful. Never formulaic, never a dull moment.

Ariadna. Jennifer Saint.

I didn't think a feminist re-telling of one the best greek mytholgy female characters could be so compelling, so human and so stunning.

Hanh Khan Carries On. Uzma Jalaluddin.

This book solidified my belief Jalaluddin is one of the best contemporary romcom writers.

Joan is Okay. Weike Wang.

One of the best books I've read in the past decade of my life. What a writer, what a book, what a heartbreaking story. The pace can feel slow but it's necessary, it's important.

The Rachel Incident. Caroline O'Donough.

Another excellent, remarkable and incredibly joyous book. O'Donough deserves all the praise, because this debut novel really is a punch. Ireland is producing great writers and I'm so glad I stumbled upon those authors.

How to fail at flirting. Denise Williams.

This book is not an award winning book, but it's not about that. I love how she built those characters, how she made the lead find her voice, to find a path for herself, to give herself the chance to be compassionate with herself, to give herself grace and peace, and to trust the world, that is dark and terrible but you still can find good things in it. It's a beautiful book on survival and love.

The Fantasy Section.

Fire and Blood. George R.R. Martin.

I was there for the dragons and I wept for the dragons only.

The Familiar. Leigh Bardugo.

I didn't think Bardugo could write a good book and she slapped me. She shut me up. She really is a fantastic author, who is capable of writing one of the most exciting, magical, heartbreaking and wild books I've read in years. Also, this book is set in Spain! it has spells that I grew up hearing. The research for this book is amazing and it shows. And the love story is just great, they have their revenge and it is fantastic.

A venom dark and sweet. Judy I. Lin.

I knew I needed to wait to read this book because the cover looked promising. It delivered so much more, just so much more. The plot moves nicely, the magic is so delicate and simple, the characters sometimes lose a bit of punch, but overall, I loved reading this book. I just love when a fantasy book is capable to absorb my attention and I can't do anything but read the book. I can't wait to read more from Lin, honestly.

A song of Ash and Moonlight. Claire Legrand.

How is it possible that the same author who wrote that terrible and annoying ass book wrote this one? Whatever Legrand did, I don't care, I just want her to keep writing stories that are human and flawed and filled with mystic, fantasy, betrayal, plot twists and love. This book was an obsessive read, I inhaled it. It's already one of my favorite fantasy books, with Lin and Samantha Shannon's Priory.

Fantastic books I read that were not e-books.

A very large expanse of sea. Tahereh Mafi.

If I could give this author the thanks for writing a book that made my sad mind breath and rest, I could. It's a YA book but I found myself reflected in the lead character: her love for music, her distrust of the world, her disappointment and heartbreak over people who insists on hating something they don't understand. One of the best books I've ever read.

The Island of Missing Trees. Elif Shafak.

I started this book and I was very confused by it. I started I think earlier this year and I put it away. Then, in late november I picked it up and it was worth it. I cried, and I couldn't help but think in my aunt and how much she would've loved this book and this author.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Gabrielle Zevin.

Very Confusing Books.

Prep. Curtis Sittenfeld.

I don't have a rating in this book in my good reads. I just don't know still how I feel about this- it's Sittenfeld's debut novel but it's very different from what I read so far from her. It was a difficult read.

Nothing serious. Emma Medrano.

This book has a story that is difficult to swallow and process. A good debut novel, a very good writer. But it's a difficult, confusing book.

How to read now. Elaine Castillo.

Some of the essays here were too long. It's not a pop culture read and it really is a very academic writing that exists in pop culture. It's very well written, has some really good discussion points, but some things needed editing, as in: just get to the point of what you're saying.

Norah Ephron: The last interview and other conversations.

I love Norah Ephron but some things made me wince and others just let me plain right confused.

Yo soy el monstruo que os habla. Paul B. Preciado.

Why did Preciado gave this speechh? It's great but also...why?

Books I haven't finished because reading is not a competition (and I'm never winning).

Ghosts. Dolly Alderton.

Gengis Khan and the making of the modern world. Jack Weatherford.

Heir. Sabaa Tahir.

Devotions. Mary Oliver.

71 poemas. Emily Dickinson.

There's always this year. On basketball and ascension. Hanif Abourragib.

Doce Césares. Mary Beard.

Wolf Hall. Hilary Mantel.

La primera cruzada. Peter Frankopan.

Historia Económica de Colombia. José A. Ocampo (editor).

Disorientation. Elaine Hsieh Chou.

Los papeles de Afganistán. Una historia secreta de la guerra. Craig Whitlock.

Opinions. Roxane Gay.

Green dot. Madeleine Gray.

Bad Taste. Nathalie Olah.

[cherry-romper]

You Sound Like a Song

Playlist

+ Yuji, Megumi, Nobara, Maki, Inumaki, Yuta, Todo, Gojo, Nanami, Toji, Geto, Choso, Kusakabe, Higuruma, Sukuna.

Yuji; Magnetic - ILLIT

Even from afar, Pulling me close,

You're my crush

Everything about you sticks to my heart

This time, I want you, You, Like its magnetic

Don't wanna hide it, the magnet in my heart

Megumi; Pretty Boy - The Neighbourhood

Even if my heart stops beating, You're the only thing I need

Now its all about to end

As long as I got you, I'm gonna be alright

I'm not afraid to die

No, I'm lucky you're with me

Nobara; God is a woman - Ariana Grande

You love it how I touch you, my one

When its all said and done, You'll believe God is a woman

Have it any way you like

And I can tell that you know I know how I want it

When you try to come for me, I keep on flourishin'

Maki; Rules - Doja Cat

You ain't talk money, then really that's none of my business

I don't even need these lenses, 20 on 20 my vision

Look at me like I'm alien, bitch, I'm fucking reptilian

All y'all bitches was wrong, Talkin' bout I fell off, You ain't even get on

Inumaki; Blondie - Current Joys

There are flowers in my heart

They're growing thorns and it hurts

And I won't, See you again

Can we kiss? Can we dance?

Yuta; 死ぬのがいいわ (Shinunoga E-wa) - Fujii Kaze

I want you to be my last

If I have to keep being separated from you like this, I'd rather die

I choose you over three meals a day

I'll always stick with you, my baby

Todo; Talk - Hozier

And I'd be the immediate forgiveness

Imagine being loved by me

I wont deny Ive got in my mind now, All the things I would do

I'd be the sweet feeling of release mandkind now dreams of

Gojo; Heartbeat - Childish Gambino

I wanted you to know, That I am ready to go

Whenever you're around, Can't speak, I can't speak

So we fuck 'til it come to conclusions

Im a ghost and you know this

But you don't want the same thing, Well, two can play that game

Nanami; Trash Magic - Lana Del Rey

Boy, you wanna hold me down, Tell me that you love me?

I do my hair up, all high and wide, White flowers tied

He said, "Lana Rey. Will you serve me lemonade?" I said, "Yes Bill, I will, It's the day of the parade, And you look even more handsome than you, Did the day that I left you"

All I want is to feel good

Toji; L'AMOUR DE MA VIE - Billie Eilish

I wish you the best for the rest of your life, Felt sorry for you when I looked in your eyes

Did I break your heart? Did I waste your time?

It isn't asking for a lot for an apology

Its not my fault, I did what I could, You made it so hard, Like I knew you would

Geto; favourite crime - Olivia Rodrigo

Know that I loved you so bad

I was your willing accomplice, honey

One heart broke, four hands bloody

The things I did, Just so I could call you mine

I hope I was your favourite crime.

Choso; Is There Someone Else? - The Weekend

Is there someone else or not?

'Cause I wanna keep you close, I don't wanna lose my spot

If I ain't with you, I dont wanna be

I don't wanna be a prisoner to who I used to be

'Cause I wanna be with you forever

Kusakabe; The Color Violet - Tory Lanez

I left the party with a barbie marking X on the dot

But she likes my watch and my droptop and my persona

I've got some nerve to play hard

I've waited for my chance, but playboys we don't dance

Tis beat in my dance is not for romance

Higuruma; Salvatore - Lana Del Rey

All the lights are sparkling for you, it seems, On the downtown scenes, shady blue

The summer's wild and I've been waiting for you all this time

I adore you, can't you see you're meant for me?

I was so wrong not to doubt your Medellín, tangerine dreams

Sukuna; Living Dead Girl - Rob Zombie

There's only one sure way, To bring the giant down

Crawl on me, Sink into me, Die for me

Living dead girl

Blood on her skin, Dripping with sin, Do it again

[yourfriendanniefish]

what did you do today, annie?

today i told myself i was doing research for a comic book by trolling through probably a hundred old livejournal posts from between 2004-2006 because i couldn't find the exact moments of one particular "relationship." that above cap isn't from what i was looking for, but it certainly stood the heck out. i wrote that in 2004, when the majority of my friends disappeared. see now i was a junior hanging out with majority seniors, and they all graduated, and most of them moved out of town, and suddenly there was this emptiness and i hated it. but also... look at that. look at what i wrote. i was... 17??? like, it's wild to self-declare myself as innocent.

okay but i did find some of what i was looking for, so sure, fine, here's a recap of a group of mental spaces i occupied in 2005, at age 18, because that's healthy:

and i had to look at it for a while, because it was from 2005 and i couldn't tell what it was from, like, i couldn't place where that was. 2005? summer? what was i doing that summer? and i realized that a lot of my timelines were weird in my head about the thing i was looking for.

okay, so i had a crush on someone, they were an "artist," a real "poet," and i was like "wow that's so romantic." and they were a little younger than me but they hung out with adults and so everything was always kind of weird there. and they were trying to be, like, real "bohemian," and it was kind of a drag to be around? like, stealing a personality from a theater group but missing all the nuance of what choosing to be an artist as an adult has in it. it was just the "smoking cigs" and "fucking" and "writing little plays about both of those things." anyways, i decided i was in love with that, and it was really stupid, though i didn't see it then, i just saw the romance of it all, the window into some tiny life that felt huger than mine, even if it wasn't, even if it was (like all lives are) just a tangle of other people's interests formed into something i didn't understand. we hung out and she taught me about plays and i decided on the spot i was going to be a playwright because when i was 17 i was a fucking idiot. this was like, october of 2004.

at the beginning of 2005 after knowing each other and being friends (and me secretly but not that secretly liking her)i went to a show and she said something like 'this whole trailing me around thing has to stop,' and i didn't know what she meant because... we were friends? we hung out? like... we were both in the same friend group? and yes, i liked her too but this wasn't about that, i had tickets to a theater festival that she worked at, this was definitely not a trailing thing i was just literally watching a guy dance. so i didn't talk to her for a month. but then because we shared friends i kept seeing her around and eventually she kept saying the phrase "i've been such an ass," and i'd say "yeah," because what else was i supposed to say? but i didn't realize it but that would be the rest of our "relationship," me liking her and her knowing that and then apologizing for being mean that one time.

and then like, three months later she asked me to go on a walk and we sat on a bench and she (again) said 'i've been such an ass' and i (again) said 'yeah' and she said 'well but do you want to give it a try?' and i said 'whoa, what' and she said 'you know... us,' and i forgot all the weird stuff that had happened and said 'yeah, of course' and then i didn't see her for like a month until the day i wrote that post up there.

that day i had gone to a performance she was in. it was the summer theater program's showing of the things they were workshopping.(okay fine, i looked it up, hey wow here you go you can just watch some of it online, isn't that just a bonkers window into a bad past.)

anyways i went and her friends were there and they knew she'd asked me out and they knew about the weird thing at the beginning of the year too and they knew about some other stuff that i didn't know about, and before the show started she walked passed us and i said 'hey,' and she extremely pointedly and obviously did not even look at me and i said (probably too out loud) "this is the stupidest relationship" and her friends both laughed and said "yup" and "yeah, buddy" and i thought "what am i doing here" and it was only later that i got more of the story— and the story was, apparently, that the guy she was most often seeing (a 31 year old fiddler) was like, out of town? so she started kind of seeing one of the stage hands (i think he was like, 22), but then he was like "well actually maybe i don't want to go out with a 16 year old," but they had already hooked up a little bit and she was devastated so (and this is the wording that was used when someone explained it to me, remember we are recreating the dumbest memory palace here) she decided to ask me out that night because she knew i'd react with absolute adoration and she really needed that, then.

but i couldn't think about that i could just think of all the times she'd grabbed my arm and wrote something on it, like all the times she wrote "debauchery" on my arm because it was "our" word.

anyways we didn't talk for awhile and i went to college (on my last day of school i tried to say goodbye to her and stammered out some sort of weird "thanks" and she pulled me aside and wrote, one last time, "debauchery" on my arm) and one night during my freshman year she called me and i ran to the dorm lounge with a phone charger plugged into the wall and my face pressed up between the couch and the phone and during that phone call she said this exact phrase:

the far stupidest thing i've ever done is not fall in love with you

and i think about that line and i think, still, 18 years later, what the fuck does that even mean but i think i get it. it was enough at the time to nearly re-snag me on her, that weird nettle nestling in my brain.

and then she went to romania and lived with a 51 year old man and during that time started emailing me about running out of money and maybe her moving to chicago (which she eventually did, and stayed a lot longer than i'd realized. it's actually wild to me how much time we spent in the same city without really realizing it). and i found some of those emails last year and my eyes bugged out at them because some of them were just so achingly sad:

i look at that and i want to be that young person's friend, and i wish i had been a better friend to them at this exact period of their life, but i couldn't, because i myself was pretending to be a different kind of adult and also there was too much history there, and i did not want to get hurt again.

and then i look at more of these emails and my eyes bug out because they seem to be saying something else i did not realize at the time:

i look at that and first i think "yikes why would you say the r-word like that" and then i look at the end and see "when the only person i see all the time is you. (don't worry, i always look kinda cute.)" and i think "wait, what," was she serious? and i look at another email and it just says:

and it's like... okay but you told me that the far stupidest thing i've ever done is not fall in love with you, and now you are saying that you did though? and like, which is it, you know? but i look at those emails now and think "wow thank God i didn't really fall for it, if there was even anything to fall for." but then i remember "well she was already seeing the 51 year old Romanian guy when she wrote this, and then by the time she came to Chicago to "define" it with me she was kind of dating another one of us in the friend group (but i guess that kind of just happened on the drive over maybe?), so like what would have happened anyways?" and the answer is nothing.

the answer was always nothing. the answer should always have been nothing. this person was never supposed to be someone you went out with. they were a friend, a kind of fucked up friend who treated you pretty weird for awhile.

okay so here's what "defining chicago" actually looked like: mostly it looked like her eating all the food in the house, including my roommates', (one day she made a weird soup of a tuna salad and slurped it), and it definitely looked like her drinking too much, and when she did she kept saying "sorry" for "hurting me," and i had forgotten the feeling of that hurt so i kept saying "it's fine," and i actually meant it, but she kept saying "i was such an ass" and i said "yeah, you were, but that was then" and she'd say "sorry." and she just wouldn't stop.

and one night we went to a friend's apartment for movies and margaritas and she kept getting up during the movie but no one really thought much of it and then we heard a loud bang from the kitchen, and we went in there and she was passed out on the ground because she'd been sneaking back to the kitchen to take little shots of the tequila, which was now empty, and i had to fireman carry her back to our apartment, and we all apologized (okay, i apologized, to everyone), and i felt real bad, but also what was i supposed to do? and then the school year started for her and i just never saw her again.

then the next year one of the old friend group looped me in an email chain that had a draft of a set of short stories she was working on and part of it said this:

Chicago without him was easier than Chicago with him, for when we arrived I discovered the white city I had been relying on was gone like the moral from a fable. 

...

I tried to keep Chicago vague. I wanted an emotional home, not a physical one. With my coats and my keepsakes and my sign from Bosnia filling a room in Albuquerque I was still part of the city that had rejected me. I didn't feel like Chicago could give as a city what I needed from a lover. And I couldn't get to anywhere I felt I belonged because they were places I'd left already. Dreams I remembered when I woke up, but couldn't manage to live. 

I started drinking tequila again because the question and answer session in my head was a seesaw and the answers were so light they just catapulted into the sky and never came back down. With the only answers I could find victims of gravity, I needed the world to spin.

For three weeks, one with ***** and two for me after he was gone I slept and woke rooted to a friend's couch playing hide and seek with my thoughts on the rest of my life. They hid. Not under the cushion or the wood of the back porch by the ashtray, so I never found them. 

I think ***** kept his thoughts in Oak Park. Or I was just too dizzy and selfish to to try and be a park of what he was thinking. 

He said as his plane was about to take off that he was unprepared for our separation. I had practiced denial, not of his departure, but denial of my life here. If I cast no nets and laid no foundations that didn't include him I could stay his. 

I didn't trust Chicago. I knew the winter would betray me, and I couldn't find a corner worthy enough to conceal my heart. Not safely, but as a beat on a scavenger hunt to elation. 

...

Garrett Durant (that's my friend, his name can stay) dropped acid and tried to hail five tubes of toothpaste to the wall with his mind because he couldn't find a hammer and a nail. 

Garrett Durant dropped acid and carried a china hutch he found in an alley for thirty feet by himself before he gave up and left it in the dark. 

Garret Durant dropped acid and sat down at his antique typewriter and wrote

yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

yyyyyyyyyyy

yyyy

y  

Not?

And I resigned to digesting something I had already swallowed. 

Garret Durant dropped acid and the ink demanded of the paper, "Why not?" 

I replied, "***** is gone." And I realized that didn't answer anything and nothing I was willing to accept would make it better.

With ***** gone, the only way I could keep what I borrowed was if I waited, and if I wasn't willing to live in that expanse of time, even if it was a purgatory, I would get cornered, and have nowhere to go but back to Albuquerque. 

But ***** didn't leave right away. 

We couldn't go out on ****'s twenty-first birthday, so with whiskey and gin we watched "Down by Law."

And Samuel Beckett entered the room.

I curled my legs around his lap, and though the muscles moved like water lily petals at night with the distance across completed, but an eternity of liquid distance down, I felt like a cat.

He with Cat Blue Eyes and I was too drunk to know if I had landed on my feet.

***** didn't leave right away, but I wrote him off as gone and slept between sheets of lined paper editing my nightmares of potential sequences of digits that would compose his Canadian phone number. Wondering if it would shift from words to music notes leaving me trapped with no way to communicate, I tried to find other valid equations that would guarantee a new set of results. What could I substitute for X that would forfeit plural result like 

we

and

us. 

We played in Humbolt (sic) Park. We ran down Milwaukee Ave. at midnight. We laughed a little nervously, but more tenderly. ***** ate milky thirty five cent Mac n' Cheese, and I ate runny tuna fish salad with mustard. We watched "When Harry Meet Sally," and avoided the initiation because of the separate places we had to go. We hovered without landing because we had to take off. 

And when he did take off, I sat on the back porch and watched the two squirrels that lived in the neighbors tree. They were bright eyed and bushy tailed lovers who climbed and flirted through the yard, across the water-weighted fence and the new telephone cables. If they were afraid of Autumn because it allowed winter to exist, it didn't show in their dark eyes or the articulated way they smiled private smiles at each other. 

And I read it now and I think "oh, well, that's what you thought?" and I read it then and thought "she never mentioned me," but then I read now the other emails and think "did this ever add up in your head," because it didn't add up in mine, like, with whom were you actually trying to define Chicago with, or did that even matter, as long as any kind of definition came out of it.

And i just wonder if she was like, really lonely. Not in the "i'm trying to insult you" way, just like... was she okay? She made it out, so I guess she was okay enough, like most of us are.

She was in Chicago and I just... forgot.

And then I came back and I remembered.

I tracked her down last year and we talked on zoom once and she wanted to talk more but i... just couldn't? i didn't write back... there was something that freaked me out about it, like knowing there was a human attached to this insane tangle of memories about someone i definitely used to say i was in love with but that was literally twenty years ago and now i just feel really sad about all of it...

...and maybe that's what it really is, i think of all this knotted up remembering and it's just sad. like, i'm not sad about it (i am, kind of), i just feel bad for everyone. i feel bad for the lives everyone had to lead then. i feel sad about how everything happened. i wish it could have happened in a nicer way, even if she now thinks it mostly went great.

(like, i personally wouldn't have wanted to date a 31 year old when i was 15, but she did want to and she did and she's still fairly vocal about it being something she wanted —like, literally, she told me that, last year— and i think "well... okay, i guess," but there's still that part of me that's like "is it, though.")

and there's still that part of me that remembers how it felt when she said "you want to give it a try" and "you know... us" and mostly it's just interesting that i got caught up in the wild orbit of someone whose life was far more complex than mine, and i'm thankful a little or at least for the stories i can try to tell about all those tiny weird times, even if they at the time hurt because they don't hurt now, even if they're a little sad.

i guess i'm just happy to still mostly remember a small totality of one person. and i'm definitely thankful for the exact turn of phrase that still bounces around my little head:

the far stupidest thing i've ever done is not fall in love with you

[yoongimain]

Need You To Be Sure | kth

You need all of the clarity that Taehyung won’t give you. 

Pairing: Taehyung x Femme!Reader

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Romance. 

Warnings: Vulgar language. Angst. Complicated boundaries. Complicated feelings. 420 blazing. ANGST.

Songs: What I Need - Haley Kiyoko, A Soulmate Who Wasn’t Meant To Be - Jess Benko

Words: 3,150

Taehyung - 1995

Femme Lead - 1998

Note: This is my attempt at a series, written as a gift for a dear friend of mine. Please let me know what you think in the comments as this is a new writing style for me and I would love the feedback! Writing style inspired by @kithtaehyung​

Some italicized lines are the OC’s thoughts! ​

Date Posted: 8/3/2022

Taehyung is beautiful. He is especially beautiful when you wake up first, and get to see the sunlight peek through the curtains and onto his face. His gentle breathing makes your heart flutter, and you can’t help but wonder if he also feels that way when he sees you. 

You snuggle into his chest more, allowing him to fully embrace you in his slumber. 

Taehyung and yourself have been close friends since your youth. You were both geeky kids in middle school, and even then a part of you always knew that you would end up recklessly in love with him. His goofy, childish charms were enough for anyone to. 

He grunted out a tired “Good morning, little bear.” and pressed a lazy kiss to the top of your head. His hands rubs your shoulder in an attempt to put you back to sleep. You smiled and wiggled your way up to his face again, kissing his lips to do the opposite. 

“Good morning sleepy head.” 

He smiled rolling you over and smothering your face with kisses, sending you into a fit of giggles. Nothing made your heart feel as full as these little moments with Taehyung. 

“We need to leave for class soon.” You pushed him to sit up and shook his arms around until his eyes were completely open. 

His eyes turned to crescents when he finally processed the very naked you covered in all of his marks before him. 

“Let's go take a quick shower then.” He wiggles his eyebrows and pulls you off of the bed along him and to the bathroom to start the day his way.  

---

“What time are you out today?” He asks from next to you on the bus. He kept his attention on his phone, scrolling endlessly on Instagram. 

“I’m out of here by four. You?” You say, scrolling through the private Spotify playlist he made for you. 

“Around five.” He answers, cutting your conversation short as you approach campus. He tugged on the string to alert the driver of his stop. 

“Happy Summer!” He simply smiles at you and gets off of the bus, heading straight to his lecture hall. 

Taehyung is beautiful, but it was moments like this that make you realize how unattainable he is. Things were complicated between the two of you. You were always clear on how you felt about Taehyung, but you could not move forward alone. Instead, you both keep dancing around in this state of uncertainty. 

Taehyung was always there for you when you needed him most. Since your childhood, he was the one that you spent your time with. Telling each other secrets and holding each other when times get rough. Your friendship was just too precious to lose over stupid feelings. 

Instead of making your feelings clear, you betray yourself by keeping your feelings hidden, watching him through each partner that did not deserve him. Relationships that turned him to his hoe phase. Each party you went to together always ended with him leaving with someone else. 

And tired of it all, you tried hooking up with someone too. 

It could have been the liquid courage that night, or the fact that Taehyung was already making out with some person you have never seen before in the corner of the room. You could never know what brought you to angrily smash your lips against the nerdy upperclassmen Namjoon Kim, but you did.  

Your little show did not last for long, as Taehyung came over and told Namjoon to get the fuck off of you and took you home. 

The only thing you heard the entire ride back was how disappointed he was and all his constant nagging. He was burning your ears off and you just simply had enough. 

“Guys like him are just trying to get in your pants.” He said, angrily gripping the steering wheel as he drove. 

“Oh! So you can get into anyone’s pants and it's totally fine, but if anyone else wants to get some it is a crime?” You finally spoke, now parked outside of his house. 

“What are you on about? This isn’t about me. This is about that koala looking asshole putting his hands on my little bear!” He argued, turning to you to make his point clear. 

You did not shy away and looked him straight in the eyes, your tears threatening to spill. 

“Of course it isn’t! And stop calling me that I’m not a fucking child anymore Taehyung!” 

All the anger left his face as he watched you in your vexation. 

“H-hey…” He started. He reached for you, but you quickly turned away. 

“You know what? I am over this shit.” You pushed the door open and slammed it after you. 

You thought you were ready to move on from Taehyung that night. You were once so sure that staying beside him would be enough. You thought that waiting for him to finally see you was enough. 

However, you knew, you would never be enough. You would always just be his best friend. You would always just be his little bear. 

With a heavy heart, you picked up your feet with whatever dignity you had left and trudged in the direction of your home. All of the complications you have tried to avoid have brought you there. 

“Hey, wait a second!” He called out from behind you. 

You knew that any confrontation from either of you would just change the dynamic of the friendship, and you just couldn’t deal with that right now. 

Don’t stop. Do not stop. You tell yourself. You picked up the pace and began to run. Your adrenaline pumping your alcohol struck blood through your veins. 

He continued to scream your name and chase you down the avenue. Once he caught up, he pulled you by the arm and made you turn to him. 

“What has gotten into you? What is all of this about?” He brought his hands up to your face to match your eye level. Something that always made your heart skip a million beats, and maybe was too intimate for the middle of the suburban street. 

What was the point in hiding it anyways? No matter what happens, our relationship will never be the same from this point. 

His eyes searched yours for any answers to the problem at hand. Internally your heart burned with what you have wanted to do for decades. 

You reached for his face, a million thoughts racing in your mind. Your eyes drift from his eyes, to his lips. 

Just do it! 

You pulled him to your level, pressing a firm kiss against his lips. All of the anxiety, hostility and resentment you felt dissipated. 

Your mind was empty. Once he returned the kiss full on, your heart was full. 

He had wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you in closer. A kiss that was worth a million words to you, and certainly too intimate for the suburban streets. 

You both had talked in his room that night. Mostly of your feelings and how long you have had them for. 

You both set boundaries. You didn’t want him to sleep around anymore, and he wasn’t ready to fully commit to any relationships. In all other words, it was complicated. 

Hence why you are now here, feeling like a super secret sneaky link almost a year later. 

---

“Aha! Alright, truth or dare?” Jimin drunkenly asks. 

Most of the mutual friends are gathered at Jimin’s house for a start-of-summer party. Half of the freshmen in attendance are already blacked out in their own corners. Designated drivers are all stressed out and babysitting their half conscious friends. 

You just stared at the bottle that was pointed to you, not knowing what to choose. You glance up to Taehyung who was leaning against the wall with a cup in his hand. His white shirt was tucked into a pair of green corduroys. 

God- my favorite color. 

And they look amazing on him. 

“Tick tock!” Jimin slurred, bringing your attention back to the matter at hand. 

“Uh, truth?” You respond, still thinking about how delicious Taehyung’s arms looked in that t-shirt. 

“I hope you don’t think you are playing it safe.” Jimin thought aloud. “Is there anyone you would sleep with in this room?” 

Taehyung’s ears perked up, but he kept a nonchalant look on his face. Everyone in the circle was silent, anticipating your answer. 

“Yes.” You smiled. Of course no one actually knew how active you were considering Taehyung’s reluctance to say so. 

Your hand reaches for the bottle and gives it a spin. Everyone watching the glass slow down to a stop right in front of Namjoon, who is sitting beside you. 

Taehyung straightens up in form, still uncomfortable with the fact that Namjoon and I had kissed before. 

“Truth or dare?” You asked. You watch Namjoon smile confidently, asking for a good dare. 

“See! Not everyone is as boring as you are!” Jimin laughs out loud. I ignored the comment though, and gave a task for the nerdy tree.

“Kiss the most attractive person in the room.” I say, gesturing to everyone in the room. He shrugged his shoulders and took a big gulp of his drink. 

Namjoon pulled me from the floor, onto his lap. 

“You asked for it.” He says, putting a hand at the base of your neck to pull your lips to his. 

Before my mind can even process the situation I am in, I am pulled away by a raging Taehyung. 

Taehyung who, in all his anger, pulled you straight to your feet. He tugs you behind his back as asks Namjoon what he thinks he is doing. 

Namjoon pushed his tongue on his cheek and stood up, facing the cockblock second time offender. 

“I believe we were playing the game, Taehyung.” He says, crossing his arms in defense. 

“You are outside of your fucking mind Namjoon. I thought I already warned you not to mess with them.” He says, referring to the toss up they had a few days after that party a year ago. A toss up that was making a comeback at this event, now. 

“That's funny because I don’t recall them being in a relationship?” The taller opponent backs. 

“You said to never touch your person ever again, and yet they aren’t even yours. Now, how does that work?” 

Taehyung could not hold his anger any longer, and took a swing at Namjoon. Namjoon falls back which causes a domino effect of everyone rushing to his aid while others hold Taehyung back from jumping him any further. 

“Don’t make me repeat myself again Namjoon! Or you are fucking dead!” He screams as Jimin and another mutual friend Jungkook pulls him out of the house. 

You quickly gather your belongings and run outside to a seething Taehyung. Jungkook and Jimin tried to calm him down, with little to no success. 

The pair had firm hands on his shoulders, talking to him almost at a whisper. 

“Taehyung?” You finally speak, taking the attention from the trio. 

Your secret partner pushes through the other two, and takes you by the wrist. 

“Don’t bring that asshole around me again.” He says while passing Jimin. He walked you to his car that is parked about two blocks down. His pace leaves the soles of your feet burning against the rocky pavement.

“Taehyung.” You call out to him, with no response. Instead, he keeps his steady pace and rushes to his car that is now in vision. 

“Taehyung!” You scream. You pull your wrist back and root to one place, forcing Taehyung to turn to you. 

“What?! You want to go back in there and fuck that bastard in front of everyone, too?!” He shouts in anger. He ruffled his hair in frustration. 

“You know what? I’m over this shit.” He turns from you to walk away before you could throw a punch in, but you're faster than that. 

He knows better.

“Over what? Huh?” You stomp after him, momentarily forgetting the stinging at the bottom of your feet. 

“Whatever this fucking is!” He finally turns to you, gesturing to the space between the two of you. Through his eyes it was hard to understand what this would all mean for you both in the end. 

Was there really any use in holding on, if he was never in your hold in the first place? 

“So you refuse to be in a relationship with me, but you want me to treat you as if we are?” You ask him. 

“You know how I feel about you.” He tries to defend himself. 

How dare he use your weakness against you. Just as he did before, expecting you to bend to his needs again. Only each time this happened, your needs were left for another discussion. 

“Do I though? Because it just seems like you only see me anymore for a quick fuck when its convenient for you!” You burst, finally breaking into tears. “Which one of us is actually over this?” 

“Then what the hell else do you want from me bear?!” He shouts. “Stop using your fucking tears on me!” 

You could only scoff at his words, flipping this around and victimizing himself. 

“I need more Tae. More!” You frustratingly wipe your tears from your eyes. “More than just sex, more than just fucking participation.” 

He gnawed on his bottom lip, unsure of what else to say to you. He sighs and stuffs a hand into his pocket. 

“Can we just talk about this at home?” He asks. Avoiding the topic, which is ultimately invalidating to your feelings that you just let out on him. 

It is hard to think that he would be this dismissive of you, considering how much you have both been through. When was it that he had changed? 

“What, for you to keep us a secret even more? No!” You state, wrapping your arms around his waist. 

“Do you want to be with me, or not?” You ask, scanning his face for any answers you could possibly find. 

You hate that you know him so well. You hate that his confused eyes are far easier to read than any book. You hate the gut feeling within you that says you need to just let this man go once and for all. And even more…

“I don’t know, bear.” He says.

…You hate that he is telling the truth. 

He doesn’t know what he wants with you. 

Were you his best friend? Were you his partner? A casual fling that was never meant to happen? 

“Then, I think I should go.” You tell him in a whisper. 

You pulled your arms away and gave a short “Good bye.” as severance. 

You turn your back and walk back to the house. Your vision on your bright phone screen is blurring out by your tears. 

Each step you took shattered your heart a little more. 

Though you know this fight would come sooner or later, you still wished you had a little more time to push it off. 

A little more time as his little bear. 

--

“Hey, you need to get up at some point.” Your sister knocks on your door. 

Cursed be rooming with your sibling. 

It has been three days since the summer party fiasco. 

Seventy-two hours since you lost your best friend. 

You stayed in your bed for most of the time. Sleeping your pain away and reliving your decision each time you open your eyes. 

You knew that you would need to leave this deal with Taehyung at some point in time, but there was nothing that would ever prepare you for it.  

You roll over and tap on the screen of your cell phone. Messages flood your phone from friends who witnessed the fight. Jimin, wondering if you were okay. Jungkook, messaging you for Jimin. Namjoon, apologizing for causing conflict between you and Taehyung. 

Taehyung?

Nothing. 

Not a text. 

Not a call. 

Radio silence that draws new tears from your previously soaked eyes. 

You finally bring your feet to the floor and carry your weight off of the bed. Your sister is still knocking on the door, refusing to leave until you unlock the door. 

“I’m coming.” You croak out, unlocking the bedroom door. 

“Alright. I want you to take a shower, come out and eat, and then we will watch a movie.” She ordered. 

“Even if you just stand under the water, please take a good twenty minute shower. I am going to cook your favorite, okay?” She asks, turning you around to the bathroom in your bedroom. 

“Okay. Thank you.” You gave her a quick hug before closing the bathroom door. 

--

“I think it's pretty funny that they even kept him on this show after all of that controversy.” Your sister refers to a character in the romcom you both watch. 

You nod in response, but your mind is still lingering on Taehyung. 

You want to know where he has been. 

Just as much as you want to know why he hasn’t sent a single message. 

“Hey, what is on your mind?” Your sister scoots closer to you, pausing the show. 

“I just want to know where he is, you know? Like, what he is thinking.” You fiddled with your phone in your lap. Your eyes start to water again, and you shrink back into the couch. 

“Well from what I understand of Taehyung, seeing as you both grew up together, He is very dense.” She says, lighting a blunt to mellow the mood. 

“He is so dense that he might just need some time to himself to really think about everything you have said.” She reassures, and continues to tell you Taehyung might contact you soon enough. 

The only thing your sister doesn’t understand is that he has had over a year to think about it all. 

Over a year to know if he wanted you or not. 

Over a year of experiencing your love. 

But he is still confused. 

You simply could not give anymore of yourself to him until he knows for certain what relationship you both have. 

She passes you the blunt, and you take a slow drag. Keeping the smoke inhaled for as long as you could before releasing. 

“Or you can just take the time you need and hang out with friends instead of waiting for his dumbass to call.” 

You chuckle and hand the blunt back over to her. 

“Yeah, I guess you are right.” You unlock your phone and check your notifications. Messages from various mutual friends flood your phone, but one specifically catches your eyes. 

Jimin: “Attachment.img”

Jimin: I thought you deserve to know. 

You open your messages with Jimin and find a photo that makes your heart contort. 

Everything around you just… stops.

Note: Thank you for taking the time to read this. Like I mentioned before, please drop a comment below and let me know what you thought! 

[angelasscribbles]

The Agreement Chapter 4: Recriminations

Series: The Agreement

Fandom: The Royal Romance

Pairings: Riley x Liam, Riley x Drake

Rating: MA

Warnings for this chapter: Mature themes

Song Inspiration: Youngblood by 5 Seconds of Summer

Remember the words you told me, love me 'til the day I die

Surrender my everything 'cause you made me believe you're mine

Yeah, you used to call me baby, now you calling me by name

Takes one to know one, yeah

You beat me at my own damn game

Lately our conversations end like it's the last goodbye

Yeah, one of us gets too drunk and calls about a hundred times

So who you been calling, baby, nobody could take my place

When you're looking at those strangers, hope to God you see my face

Word Count: 4,119

A/N: Riley and Liam deal with the emotional fallout of Riley's choices.

My other stuff: Master List.

Riley stepped off the plane and inhaled the crisp morning air. Autumn in Cordonia was always her favorite. The bite of the slightly chilled air felt amazing. Especially after the heat of Texas in the summer.

“How the hell is it this hot in September?” Riley groused as she pulled at her dress.

“Sorry, babe.” Drake told her, “Sometimes fall skips Texas altogether.”

“How is that possible?” She blinked up at him.

“One night you go to bed sweating and the next morning you wake up cold.”

Riley’s eyes slid to Savannah who raised her shoulders, “He’s telling the truth.”

Her eyes tracked back to her husband to find him studying her, his soft brown eyes filled with concern, “Are you okay? Is the baby okay? Do you need to go back inside? We can postpone this.”

“Fuck no, Walker. We’re doing this thing!” Her entire mood shifted when she looked into his face, “Let’s go get re-hitched!”

Her hand was in his as they made their way through the airport, her eyes slightly unfocused as her mind whirled with details about getting Valtoria ready for the baby, his locked firmly on her wondering what she was thinking about.

Liam probably.

They had spent four months, the entirety of the summer, in Texas and there had been no communication between the king of Cordonia and the duchess of Valtoria.

He knew that wouldn’t, couldn’t, last.

Riley caught a glimpse of two members of the King’s Guard as Drake helped her into the back of the car that would take them home.

She sighed as leaned back into the plush leather upholstery of the limo. Of course.

Liam already knew they were back. Nothing had ever been on her terms.

That was about to change.

She had thought that letting herself fall fully in love with Drake would have done something to diminish her feelings for Liam. But the truth was she'd been falling for Drake for years, slowly, almost imperceptibly and it had done nothing to even dull the edges of her love for the man that had shattered her.

Liam had broken her heart, but he had also opened it up in the first place, he had swept her off her feet as well as sweeping her feet out from under her.

He was her first real love, and her first real heartbreak, he could make her feel like the only person in the world and also like the most insignificant one. Being with him had brought her to the highest highs and lowest lows of her life.

Her feelings for Liam were complicated.

She stared out the window as they drove, watching the reds and oranges of falling leaves.

Drake sat next to her. Her hand was still clasped in his.

She turned her head and gave him a smile.

Her feelings for Drake were simple.

~~~~~

Riley groaned in protest as a persistent ringing slowly penetrated the fog of her sleep clouded brain. “Who the hell is calling you at this hour?” she grumbled irritably as she rolled toward Drake.

“It's not my phone.” he said, his tone guarded.

She cracked her eyes open to give him a baleful look. She envied him his ability to come immediately and completely awake on a moment's notice no matter how little sleep he had. Occupational hazard he had told her, first from the military, then later from being in the Royal Guard.

He had loved being in the Guard. Something else he had given up to marry her, become a duke and devote his life to ruling.

She fumbled for her phone in the dark. “Hello? Liam?” She pulled the phone away from her ear to check the time. What the hell? “Do you know what time it is? Are you…are you drunk?”

Drake swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached for his clothes, grabbing his underwear and pajama bottoms from the pile in the floor where they had been carelessly tossed just hours earlier.

“Hold on a minute,” Riley said into the phone, then to her husband, “where are you going?”

“To give you a little privacy.” he replied.

She sat up shaking her head as she reached for him, “No, you don’t have to. Drake, please-“

“Hey,” he told her as he leaned over and ran his fingers through her hair before placing a kiss on her forehead, “It's okay. I'll be right back.”

He had known that eventually Liam was going to make an appearance.

He hadn’t expected it to be a drunken two a.m. phone call on their first night back but here they were.

Riley watched him walk out of their bedroom as she held the phone to ear.

“He can't take my place Riley, and you know it!”

“Hello to you too.”

“Remember when you told me you loved me forever? You can't be serious about this!”

“I can’t be serious about what, Liam?” Anger burned the last vestiges of sleep away.

“Any of it! Is it mine, Riley?”

“Is what yours?”

“The baby! It’s mine, isn’t it?” He demanded.

She snorted, “No, Your Majesty, it’s fucking not so you don’t have to worry about your precious public reputation!”

“No, that’s not what I….” On the other end of the line, Liam squeezed his eyes shut as pain shot through him. He had wanted it to be his.

Which begged the question, why hadn’t he agreed to have a baby with her sooner; while there was still time, still a chance for them? Why hadn’t he just given her what she wanted?

Regret, pain and desperation surged through him, but what came out of his mouth was a snarl, “I want a paternity test!”

“Oh yeah? Really? The press would have a field day with that, wouldn’t they?” She’d gone from angry to livid.

How fucking dare he try and act like he gave a shit now. This baby was Drake’s. This baby was hers! Her pregnancy was the first thing in six years that she had done for herself and goddamned if he was going to tarnish that.

“I don’t give a fuck about the press, Riley! This is about us! You and me!”

“Since when is the press not a consideration in any discussion about us, Liam, huh?”

“I have a right to know if I have a child, Riley!”

“You do have a child, with your wife! Or did you forget about that?”

“You know what I mean! If this baby is mine-“

“Then what, Liam? Huh? What? If this baby is yours, you’ll ignore him, see him a few times a year? Keep his existence a secret from everyone? Make him feel worthless and unloved just like you did to me?”

“Riley….” Was he crying? “I never meant to make you feel that way…I’m sorry…please…”

“Please what?” Now they were both crying.

“I can’t do any of this without you….”

“You’ve been doing everything without me just fine for six years!”

“No, I haven’t! You don’t know what it’s been like for me not being able to be with you like I want to be!”

Her mouth fell open, “I don’t know what it’s been like for you? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Riley….please….”

“I’m done with this conversation. Go to sleep, Liam. Don’t fucking call me again until you can do so sober!”

She ended the call, tossed the phone to the side and drew her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them and dropped her head onto them. She let the tears flow freely down her face as she sobbed quietly.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting like that when she heard her husband’s voice.

“You okay?”

She lifted her head to find Drake standing in the doorway, a tray loaded with food in his hands.

“What’s all this?” She asked with a sniffle.

“Oh this?” He lifted the tray with a grin. He brought it to the bed and took a seat next to her, “Thought the baby might want a midnight snack.”

Her stomach growled. “I could eat.”

“Healthy food first!” He lifted half a turkey sandwich from a plate and held it out to her.

She giggled as she took it, “You’re too good to me.”

“Nah.” He smiled as he took the other half of the sandwich, “That’s not possible.”

Her eyes scanned the tray. It was loaded with all her favorite comfort foods. Fresh tears sprang into her eyes as her heart filled with love for this man.

His smile faded, “You want to talk about it?”

“These tears are good ones! I was just thinking how lucky I am to have you.”

“Yeah, right.” He scoffed, as he brought the sandwich to his mouth and looked away, “I’m the lucky one and everybody knows it.”

She laughed as she brushed the wetness from her face.

They ate in companiable silence for a while.

Drake regarded his wife thoughtfully as he chewed. She hadn’t chosen him so much as she had chosen herself, he understood that.

He knew that, on some level, what she had chosen was to not give Liam another chance to hurt and disappoint her. The choice had been between going to the palace that night, or going to Texas and everything that both places represented.

Choosing the palace meant choosing to continue the cycle of hurt and heartbreak with all the commiserate baggage and detritus. Riley had chosen to break free of all that.

And he was proud of her for it.

But he had no delusions that she and Liam were actually over.

~~~~~~

“I’m so sorry Your Majesty, but I…I can’t give you that information. You’re not on the approved list of people who have access to her itinerary.” Riley’s personal assistant squeaked. She looked like she wanted the earth to open up and swallow her.

His mouth fell open, “I am the fucking king! Who the hell does have access?”

“Her husband.” The girl flinched at the cold fury that crashed across the king’s features.

Even in his agitated state, he saw the irony. Was this karma?

Liam opened the door to Riley’s bedroom to find her crying in Drake’s arms. “What’s wrong? I came as soon as I got your message!”

“I…I just needed to see you…” She sobbed quietly as she moved from Drake’s embrace to bury her face in Liam’s chest. “My grandmother passed away this morning and I just needed to see you.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry my love.” He crooned gently as he stroked her hair, “Do you need help making the arrangements?”

She shook her head, “Drake already helped me with all that.”

Liam’s eyes flicked up to meet Drake’s. He should be grateful. Why did he feel angry about it? What he said was, “Thank you.”

Drake just nodded, his expression blank, unreadable.

“I’ll have the royal jet fueled and ready to go for you.”

“Already done.” Drake said.

Liam felt annoyance fill his chest again. He ignored his best friend as he asked Riley, “When are you leaving?”

She jerked back in surprise, “Me? You mean us? When are we leaving, right?”

“I’m so sorry, love. I can’t get away right now. If we were married, then of course, it would be expected. But if I cancel my diplomatic obligations to go with a ‘friend’ to a funeral, people will want to know why.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that…” She knew he was right, but it still hurt.

“I’ll go with you, Riley.” Drake said quietly.

Fucking Drake.

Liam knew he should be grateful that someone would be there for her. He knew that Drake was just doing what he himself had asked him, no, begged him, to do.

He was being her husband.

The problem was that Liam wanted to be her husband and he found himself resenting Drake more and more as time went by.

Liam hated the way her body sagged with relief at Drake’s simple statement, the way her eyes lit up with gratitude as she thanked him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. Next time have my assistant page me.”

“I tried! She said that you weren’t to be disturbed and that she wasn’t at liberty to give out your schedule to just anyone. Just anyone Liam, that’s what I am now!”

“No!” He murmured into her hair as tears pricked at his own eyes, “You’ll never be just anyone to me. You’ll always be my everything.”

“Why are you harassing my assistant?”

He spun to find Riley had just entered the room. Her eyes were cold, her tone sharp.

“I wasn’t! I was just trying to find you!”

She said nothing as she made her way through the outer office and pulled open the door to her private office.

She didn’t bother to look back. He followed her into the office and closed the door behind them.

“What are you doing here, Liam?”

“We need to talk.”

“About what?”

He gaped at her, “What do you mean about what? About us! I’ve been trying to give you space, Riley, but it’s been six months! Six fucking months with no word from you at all!”

“I didn’t choose you, Liam, remember? And you didn’t call.” She tossed the stack of folders she’d been carrying onto her desk.

“What?”

“I didn’t show up at the palace that night, and you didn’t call me to find out why. Not that night, not the next day, not the day after that, not-“

“I fucking called you the day you got back to Cordonia!”

“You drunk dialed me, Liam! And even that was four months after the fact!”

“Oh, I’m sorry for not calling you the next day to ask how you were enjoying fucking my best friend! Which, you’d already been doing behind my goddamned back for god knows how fucking long in the first place, right?”

“Fuck you, Liam. Why are you here?”

“How long?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said,” Liam’s jaw was clenched so tight his teeth might shatter, “How long were you fucking Drake behind my back?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“How is it not my business, Riley?”

“By virtue of the fact that you married another woman, Liam!”

“You know damn good and well I’m not in love with her and I’m not sleeping with her!”

“You slept with her once.”

“Once! Literally once, Riley!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve slept with Drake a lot more than once!” She regretted the words the moment they left her lips.

She had wanted it to hurt.

Liam stumbled back like he’d been hit.

Bullseye.

“Liam, I’m sorry….” She stepped forward and reached a hand out to caress his cheek.

He took her hand from his face and pulled her closer. His heart beat wildly in his chest, his breath came in deep gulps as he stared into her eyes, searching for something, anything to indicate she still loved him.

She had fucked his best friend.

She was his best friend.

She had chosen another man over him.

He had chosen another woman over her first.

She had put a knife squarely through his heart, and his back.

He loved her.

She might not love him anymore.

He loved her.

She made him hurt like he had never hurt in his life.

He loved her.

He could fix it all.

He wrapped his arms around her and attacked her lips with his. He felt her go stiff in his arms for a fraction of a second, then her body relaxed, and she kissed him back.

She kissed him back.

She still loved him.

As the kiss deepened, and heated, his hands stared to roam across the familiar curves and valleys of her body. Every inch of it as familiar to him as his own.

Until he felt the unfamiliar and new curve of her stomach under his palm.

Right. She was pregnant.

With Drake’s baby.

He pulled his hand away like it had just been scorched and stepped away from her.

He struggled to get his emotions in check before he met her gaze again.

“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” She challenged.

“What?”

“Seeing the person you love have a child with someone else.”

“No.” He answered, his voice clipped.

“I’m happy, Liam.” She said as she cradled her bump, “I’ve always wanted to be a mother, you know that.”

“But it was supposed to be us!”

“I know.” She said softly.

A little sadly?

“But it wasn’t.” She continued, “And it was never going to be.”

“I just needed a little more time!” He insisted.

“It’s been six years!” She yelled.

The angry retort that leapt to his lips died there as he took in her demeanor.

She was angry, but she was also hurt.

He had hurt her.

Badly.

And he had been completely blind to it.

“You’re right.” He admitted in defeat.

“I know I’m right.” Despite her best efforts, hot, angry tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorrier than I can ever tell you.” He took a step toward her.

She stepped away.

“Can we go somewhere and talk about this? Please? Let me take you to dinner.”

“Maybe another time, Liam. I can’t tonight.” She said his name so formally, so coldly.

Liam. She used to call him her king.

“Why?”

“Because I told Drake I'd be home for dinner tonight.” She wiped the tears from her face as she moved behind her desk and started gathering up paperwork.

Liam’s jaw clenched, “So, you're letting him control you now?”

“What?” She looked up at him in surprise, “No! It's not about that!”

“What’s it about then?”                    

“Common fucking courtesy, Liam!” She shoved the papers into her attaché case furiously as she spoke, “He didn't ask me to be back at any certain time, he made no demands upon my time! He never does! But I said I'd be back at a specific time, and I intend to keep my word! I'm not going to have him sitting there watching the clock waiting for someone who doesn't show up! I know what that feels like, and I won’t do that to him!”

“Can't you just call him and tell him plans have changed?”

“Is it really that simple Liam?”

“Yes, it’s really that fucking simple, Riley!” He yelled.

She pressed her lips together in a tight line as enmity filled her eyes. Her voice was low and seething with barely contained hostility when she asked, “Then why did you never do it?”

~~~~

Drake and Max were catching up, having predinner drinks at Valtoria while waiting for Riley to return from a late meeting when a floral delivery arrived.

Drake signed for the flowers and closed the front door. Max followed him to the kitchen where he sat the vase carefully on the counter.

The flowers and gifts had been arriving daily for weeks, ever since Liam’s unexpected appearance at her office.

“So, he isn’t giving up, I see.” Max observed.

“Nope.”

Max spotted a red velvet jewelry case on the counter. He flipped the lid open curiously then let out a low whistle, “Wow, Drake, that fucking necklace is worth more than everything you own!”

 “Probably.” Drake shrugged.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“No.”

“Why not? I think it would bother me.”

“Because it doesn't matter. If he doesn't figure out that material things aren't what she needs or wants he isn’t going to get very far.”

Max gave him an appraising look, “And you give her what she needs?”

“Damn straight I do!” He sounded confident, sure, a man with no doubts.

Riley plucked the box out of his hands, her face lighting up, “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” He replied carefully, “It’s not from me.”

“Oh.” Her face fell as she unwrapped it.

She cracked the box opened and stared down at the glittering jewels, sparkling sapphires surrounded by brilliant diamonds. It had to have cost more than the palatial estate they were currently standing in. Which Liam had also given her.

But his money wasn’t what she wanted.

Her face betrayed no expression as she snapped the lid closed and tossed it onto the counter.

Looking up at her husband, the smile returned to her face, “So, what do you want for dinner?”

“Riley, don’t you think we should talk about-“

“There’s nothing to talk about, Drake. Unless you want to help me pick out a stroller. I am seriously torn between three different ones, and I could use some help deciding.”

“Okay.” He gave up. She would talk to him about it when she was ready and not a moment before. He knew her well enough to know that.

~~~~

Liam kicked the closest piece of furniture, sending it skittering across the sitting room.

It had been weeks since his argument with Riley and she still wasn’t returning his calls.

“What did the ottoman do to you?” Madeleine asked, a note of amusement in her voice.

Liam’s head jerked up in surprise. He had thought he was alone in the room. He took in his wife’s appearance. Her perfectly coifed hair, her flawlessly applied makeup, her ramrod straight posture.

Why couldn’t he just love her? It would make everything so much easier.

But he didn’t and it wouldn’t matter if he did. She didn’t love him either.

His days were filled with meetings, political agendas, business, diplomacy, and considerations of the crown.

His nights were filled with torment.

He drowned his sorrows in bourbon.

His dreams were haunted by the smell of lilac and lavender and by the memory of dark tresses and soulful ocean blue eyes.

It had always been that way, ever since his wedding, but now that she wasn’t speaking to him, it was infinitely worse.

He missed her. He missed the soft, velvet touch of her hands, the lyrical sound of her voice, the way butterflies erupted in his stomach every time she smiled at him.

At least before he had known that he would see her again, would hold her again, would be loved by her again. Even if those stolen moments had been few and far between.

The ache in his chest coiled tighter around his heart as he considered, for the first time, that he truly might never touch her again. His heart split open at the thought of having actually lost her.

“It’s Riley.” Slipped from his lips before he thought better of it.

“Oh?” Madeleine regarded him curiously, “Is something wrong?”

“She’s not speaking to me. She’s playing house with Drake, for real and she….she’s pregnant.” He saw the alarm on his wife’s face and headed off her question, “It’s not mine.”

“Ah.”

Not that he had expected sympathy. “Ah? What’s Ah mean?”

“Nothing…just….It's been 6 years Liam, what's changed?”

“Riley's changed! She thinks I took her for granted! And now she’s ignoring me! I just want to make it right, but she won’t even talk to me!”

“Huh.” Madeline raised an eyebrow in consideration, “Well, good for her.”

“Good for her?” He stared at his wife in astonishment.

“Yes, Liam. Good for her! Is she right? Have you been taking her for granted? Have you prioritized her in any way?”

He stared at her in astonishment, “I thought you, of all people, would understand why I’ve made the choices I’ve made! The optics! The press! Public-“

“Oh, cut the shit, Liam.” Madeleine fixed him with a soul piercing stare, “Cordonia's future is secure. We’ve given them an heir and you’ve been a good king. Your approval ratings are high. The country is thriving. What’s your real issue?”

He gaped at her, “Aren’t you worried about a scandal?”

“I was.” She admitted, “But not so much anymore. I think the goodwill we’ve built can weather it if the affair came to light. Besides, none of it would touch me. I’d be the injured wife. The only negative blowback would be to your public image. Is your male ego so fragile that you couldn’t handle a little dirt on your name for the woman you love?”

“That….that….that’s not it at all!” He sputtered.

“Then what is it?”

“I wasn’t just protecting the image of the crown; I was protecting her! I was shielding her from being dragged through the mud again and cast as a homewrecker!”

“Did you ask her if she wanted your protection from that?”

“What?”

“It was a simple question, Liam. Did you let her in on what you were doing or is this coronation night all over again?”

“I….” His perception of the last six years shifted.

He was an idiot.

A colossal, massive, world class idiot.