#fuck yeah menthol

[glitterspaghettiketchup]

I feel like i've made a mistake

I put two sticks of mint flavored gum in my mouth and now my tongue burns

[ancient-reverie]

back on my one pack a week bullshit. this is #3

[distantwave]

[ludicdoll]

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

farleigh start ☆

pairing: farleigh start x fem!reader

contents: smoking, sexual tension, farleigh being yet again an arrogant cunt, fingering, littleeee bit of degrading but for the most part there’s praise, farleigh’s slightly toxic, dom farleigh, situationship type relationship

synopsis: you and farleigh share a cigarette on the staircase.

a/n: farleigh lives in my mind rent free 24/7, for my bby @uch3na

there’s something so chilling and unnerving about the saltburn corridors at night, everything appeared so much more closed in. felix would usher you to come to saltburn with him every summer, and you always declined. however, this year you gave in. you constantly got lost within the house, always walking loops around the castle. unfortunately, you couldn’t sleep and felt antsy—so you decided to explore the manor. as you slowly creak open your door, you poke your head out and look around. when you’ve confirmed no one is awake, you tiptoe across the polished floors, bumping into several obscuring objects in your way due to the darkness. you walk past a room before stepping back and looking through the cracked door.

the lamp was still on inside, and it only occurs to you when you gloss over the posters on the walls that it’s farleigh’s bedroom. you immediately step back, afraid he would catch you in his door. but you realized he wasn’t in his room at all, in fact he was behind you staring you down.

“what are you doing?” his voice is low and sultry which causes you to jump back and yelp, holding a hand up to your chest. “holy fuck, farleigh—you scared me.” you whisper, worried about waking up the cattons. he’s sitting on top of one of the many staircases in the home, a cigarette between his fingers (as always)

“you stalking me or something?” he asks with a raised brow. you cross your arms, not impressed by his joke. “no, i was just—” you trip up on your words for a moment, distracted by his intense glare. “i couldn’t sleep.”

farleigh looks at you up and down, a thin line of smoke flowing out of his mouth. “so you decided to come to my room instead?” of course, he flipped the narrative to make it seem like you were purposely looking for him. his voice was laced with arrogance, a smirk plastered on his lips. “you cheeky minx,” he mutters as he draws out another exhale from his cigarette. you roll your eyes, tugging at your sleep shorts that were a little bit too small to your liking. farleigh’s eyes darts down to your smooth legs, an intrigued look on his face. the blue moonlight lit the side of his face perfectly, just enough for you to make out his expression shifting.

you dig the balls of your heels deeper into the cold floor, slightly nervous from him examining you. you walk over to the railing, sitting down on the step next to him. farleigh leans over to your shoulder, offering his cigarette to you. you stare up him for a moment before taking it from his fingers, sighing when you feel the cold menthol flavor on your tongue. “you sleep in those clothes?” he asks with a soft judgmental tone while sliding his hand across the soft fabric of your shorts, almost groping at your ass. you groan, rolling your eyes in response. “i didn’t know i packed my old clothes. they obviously don’t fit me, farleigh.” you smack his hand away, turning to look out of the large window. the view of the garden is enchanting and gorgeous, almost beautiful enough to distract you from farleigh inching closer to you.

“mhm, yeah. you look sexy in it though.” you snap your head at him, brows slightly raised from his confident remark. he looks at you funny, shrugging his shoulders innocently as a way of saying “what?” your friendship—well, situationship with him was definitely something. you hated that term, situationship. it felt so condescending to you, just like a more loose term for fuck buddies. farleigh didn’t like when you got too friendly with other guys, he made that known to you because every time he caught you with another boy, he would take you back to his dorm and fuck you dumb. but, for some reason when he would talk and flirt with other girls, you weren’t allowed to do anything about it. and as much as you wanted to tear away from the grasp he had on you, you simply couldn’t. you’d find your way back to him eventually, and he knew that.

ever since you arrived at saltburn, farleigh has made sure that he annoyed you in every way he could, keeping you on your toes as much as possible. for example, during breakfast this morning his hand kept riding up your dress, fingers dancing across your panties teasingly—and during events, he would bounce his leg up and down with you in his lap, his knee rutting up against your pussy. the way he would tease you drove you insane because although he touched you, he never fully went through with it. he didn’t fuck you, finger you, or eat you out even though he would initiate the heavy situation.

“what are you thinking about?” he asks, his chin resting on your shoulder. he’s looking at you, chestnut eyes burning into yours. you hum, passing the cigarette back to him. “just about how much of an ass you are.” you reply with a bitter tone. farleigh tilts his head to the side and you feel him breaking into a smile even though your head was turned away. “it’s not funny.” you groan in annoyance. his hand finds its way to your waist, pulling you close. “it’s a little bit funny.” your leg bounces up and down, a nervous habit you had developed from all the stress you endured at oxford. it’s silent for a while, the sounds of crickets chirping and the soft patter of rain outside filling the long halls. “you keep teasing me, far.” you mumble, ashamed at how needy you sounded right now. he chuckles lowly, kissing your neck. “how so?”

his voice is quiet but somehow it still makes your insides turn and your thighs close tighter. farleigh seems to notice this slight movement and it gets a rise out of him. he smirks mischievously before shifting over on the stairs, moving so your back was now pressed against his chest. “c’mon then. tell me, princess.” he whispers in your ear. his voice is smooth like velvet, yet low and coarse. you watch as a layer of smoke evaporates over your head, then he puts his cigarette out against the cream colored tiles. “elspeth will freak if she finds your ashes on the floor.” you rasped in an attempt to advert the conversation. farleigh clicks his tongue, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you close to his chest. “i’ll just blame it on felix.” you feel the warmth radiating off of him, a slight tent in his pajama pants against your ass. farleigh presses a wet kiss on your neck before peppering a few more down tenderly.

“farleigh,” you breathe out. you let out a small moan, lulling your head back on his shoulder. he looks down at you with predator eyes, a half-lidded stare boring into yours. you moan out his name again, trying to get his attention but his hands are roaming further down your body. “farleigh, not here.” you whisper. he groans, letting out a quiet growl. “yes here, just be good f’me, baby.” you watch as his large hands settle on your hips, his fingers probing at the band of your shorts. slowly, he pulls them down your legs, sliding his fingers between your folds against your clothed pussy. you gasp softly, shifting in his arms nonstop. “you’re soaked through your panties. you like me that much, huh?” he taunts arrogantly.

you felt so sensitive right now, yearning for his touch. he continues to spread his big hands across your stomach, inching closer and closer to your dripping cunt. you twitch from anticipation, needy and desperate in his hands. “oh god, stop it.” you hiss. he pokes his head up, lips parted slightly. “uh-uh, say please.” his hand stops traveling down and you whine in response. a quiet groan escapes your lungs when you realize farleigh wants to hear you beg for him. of course, you’re just as stubborn as he is so you stay quiet at first—trying to prove to him that he didn’t have as much control over you that he thought he did. “say it.” his voice is a bit louder now, more clear with a harsher tone. you bite down on your bottom lip and scoff at his demands.

“i know you’ve been touching yourself to me.” this makes you freeze, and your bratty attitude drops for a split second. and while yes, it was true—you didn’t know he knew about it, which was even more embarrassing. your face heats up quickly, your body feeling like jelly against his large frame. “imagine how much better i can make you feel.” his voice is driven with lust, eyes dark with ardor. you turn your head away, rubbing against his hard dick with a pout on your face. you sigh out of frustration before whimpering a quiet “please,” but he still doesn’t seem satisfied. “what did you say?” he asks hauntingly—his hand resting on your chin and moving your face so you’re looking up at him. you feel your insides coiling in anticipation and frustration all at once. he was such a bitch but you liked it.

“farleigh—” you go to protest.

“nonono, let me hear it.” he interrupts. “please,” you beg instantly, you can't wait anymore, you need him now. farleigh grins, planting a kiss on your parted lips before pulling off your panties down to your ankles. you wince slightly from the cold air hitting your bare skin, gasping when his thumb circles your swollen clit. his fingertips ghost past your dripping slit, drawing a quiet cry from you. his touch is slow and sensual in a way that makes you dissolve further into him. you think that if his arms weren't holding you up, you'd fall right down the steps. his finger probe at your wet hole, sliding it in with a lewd squelching sound. your back arches slightly, hips stuttering upwards against his slender hands. you whine and cry out softly as his finger curls up, sliding in and out of your cunt mercilessly. you try to keep quiet, terrified of felix walking out of his room and seeing farleigh fingering you into oblivion.

“let me hear your pretty little voice, baby,” he mumbles into your neck. you shake your head, pressing your lips into a thin line to suppress your moans. then, farleigh dips in another finger, stretching you out. you pant and sigh, running your hand up to his face then to his curls. you softly tug on them, grinding against his fingers with a stuttered jerk of your hips. “fuck, you’re such a bitch.” you whine. “you love that, don’t you?” he chuckles back in return. you don’t have to see him to know that he had a wide grin plastered on his face right now, you can hear it. although the summer heat was decently cooler at night, the air seemed hotter around you now. your skin is coated in a thin layer of sweat, lips wet and red from you biting down on it. you throw your head back as soon as his thumb grazes past your sensitive clit again. farleigh sighs at the sight, seeming to get off from you whining and tearing up under his hold.

farleigh pushes his fingers deeper inside your walls, running his other hand on your waist up to play with your tits. your shirt slightly slips off your shoulders which causes you to shudder from the tickling feeling. farleigh keeps his deliberate pace, taunting you. he breathes in your scent, lining wet kisses along your shoulder with ease. “farleigh, go faster.” you moan out, he clicks his tongue, narrowing his head further into your neck. you groan, “please,” and he obeys surprisingly. his fingers speed up as his hands massage your breasts softly—drawing a choked sob from your throat. eventually, his hand from your chest moves away back down to your clit, rubbing at it roughly. your breath hitches, back arching into him. you slowly feel a overwhelming sensation over your body, dazing you out like an intense high. you can barely keep your eyes open when he starts spitting out dirty words into your ear. “such a slut,” he sputters out, “you’re lucky you’re fucking gorgeous.”

you roll your hips into his hand, increasing the pleasurable ache between your legs. farleigh sees your desperate attempt and decides to rapidly slide his fingers in and out of you at a more ragged pace. you mutter a string of curses, his name following after in a lewd moan. your hand reaches down to his, trying to stop his intense motions. in an instant, farleigh grabs your wrist and presses it back down against the floor. now, his hand is on top of yours, holding it tightly. you try to close your legs but you realize his legs are over yours, trapping you down. you couldn’t wiggle your way out of his grasp either, he was far too big and strong.

farleigh watched as you squirmed and cried, his fingers performing a vigorous rate against your dripping pussy. and for a moment, everything goes completely blank. it feels like you’re drifting for a second, stars glazed over your eyes. it feels like a rope being split inside your body, you squirt all over his fingers witha piercing moan—a moan loud enough to wake up the entire house. “oh fuck!” you cry out. you try to catch your breath, basking in the silence. farleigh hums, satisfied with your reaction. you feel your gummy walls spasming around his long fingers, “you’re such a whore, y’know that?” he asks. you roll your eyes, the hand in his hair falters back down to your abdomen slowly and you lean your head away from his arm, staring down at his hand still pumping in and out of your pussy slowly. farleigh pulls his hand away from your hole with a pop. you hear him licking at his fingers behind you loudly. he wants you to know that he's a fucking perv. and as much as you want to hate it, it only makes your knees weaker.

his other hand that is on top of your much smaller one loosens, but he's still making sure your fingers are intertwined with his. farleigh untangles his legs from yours, tilting your head up to make eye contact with him. he smiles, eyes glinting from the moonlight. he kisses you, a delicate and tender kiss at that—you taste yourself on his tongue.

when he pulls away from your soft lips, he looks at you up and down. he bites down on his bottom lip, a slightly depraved look on his face. you turn away shyly, grabbing your shorts and underwear from the stairs, stumbling slightly forward. as you get up, you feel an abrupt slap on your ass. you look down in shock, frowning at farleigh underneath you. he grins widely, leaning back on his hands to get a better view up your loose shirt. your face quickly heats up at his lust-driven stare. you pull down your shirt to cover your butt then carefully step past him to find your way back to your room. in the far distance, you hear him laughing.

“goodnight!” he shouts out. you wince at how loud he was, patting the back of your hand against your forehead to wipe off the faint sweat on your skin. you no longer felt the need to go wander, you were just tired.

© please do not publish my work on other sites.

[doestalker]

smoker!suguru geto headcanons

disclaimer: i smoke. i'm not promoting smoking, i know it's an addiction and that it's awfully unhealthy. this is for funsies and for the ones that wanna smoke a cig with geto. gender neutral reader!

smoking indoors fuck yeah !!

he smokes menthols, i know a fellow menthol enjoyer when i see one.

definitely a lighter thieve. just look at him. he's a little lighter gremlin with a 50+ collection.

he likes to roll tobacco too, he's just used to smoking pre-rolls, it's like meditation for him. he likes the coffee and chocolate flavored ones. and he enjoys to roll them for you too.

flips a lucky whenever he buys a new pack. before he said i love you for the first time, he gave you his lucky one.

he always buys an extra pack for you when he's at the convinience store to buy his.

cool summer nights smoking in the balcony with him !!!

he always lights your cigarettes for you.

sharing his cigarette with you but only if you smoke out of his hand, as if he was feeding you.

if you wear lipstick, he finds fascinating the way it stains the filter of your cigarettes. sometimes he asks you to take a drag out of his so it gets stained.

he strongly believes that you can't bum the last of the pack. but one time he forgot his cigarettes at home and you just finished yours, leaving the last one of your pack. you gave it to him without hesitation and he almost proposed in the middle of the streets.

smoking during sex !!!

smoking after sex !!!

he would give you a heart made of cigarette butts glued to a piece of cardboard. you would hang it on the living room unironically.

he may smoke, but a pet peeve of his is the smell of cigarette left on his fingertips, so he would wash his hands after every smoke.

he likes to taste the tobacco on your tongue whenever you make out.

[wh0re43van]

Boyfriend Pt 2 (Warren Lipka x Reader)

Summary: Your boyfriend catches Warren being a little too friendly with you, causing a fight to break out. Warren expresses that he wants to be more than a secret booty call.

Word count: 4.4k

Warnings: smut, violence (not really directed at reader), blood, weed

Pt 1 , Pt 3

I wake up to my cell phone buzzing on Dakota’s nightstand. I groan, throwing the unconscious boy off me as I roll over to grab the small rectangle of plastic. I check the digital alarm clock.

2:35 in the morning. Who the fuck is calling me?

My stomach flips when I see Warrens name lighting up on my phone. I run out of the bedroom and into the bathroom.

“Hey,” I whisper. “Warren it’s 2:30 in the morning,” I giggle quietly as I lock the door.

“I know, I know,” he laughs. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about you,” I hear the bong bubbling in the background. My cheeks burn red. “I just got some crazy bud if you wanna come smoke,” I can hear his smirk through the phone. “I can pick you up,” he offers. I smile at his extremely tempting offer.

“I can’t,” I sigh, disappointing both Warren and myself. “I’m at Dakotas. He’ll wake up and I already agreed to drive him to the gaming store first thing in morning,” I explain. He’s silent for a moment.

“Alright,” I can hear frustration in his voice. “Yeah, I’m the side piece, I forgot,” he scoffs. My heart sinks.

“Warren, I’m sorry,” I want to cry.

“No,” he sighs. “I understand I guess. I will see you soon though,” he says calmly.

“Of course,” I sigh in relief that he still wants to see me.

“I’ll see you around, beautiful,” he says, then the line goes dead. I delete the recent call before crawling back into bed, but I’m unable to sleep. I miss Warrens voice so much. I kick myself for not accept his offer as I toss and turn for the rest of the night.

•

•

The next afternoon, I sit across from Dakota in a small local diner, playing with the spoon sticking out of my coffee mug as he talks on his cellphone to one of his friends about a football game or something, I’m not too sure honestly. I’m not really listening.

A car door slams catching my attention. I look out the condensation covered window next to our booth to see Warren and a guy I’ve never seen before step out of a vehicle. My eyes light up.

“I’m gonna go smoke a cig real quick,” I sputter in one breath, taking my pack of Camels and running out the door before Dakota even responds. I walk up behind warren without him seeing me, as he talks to the other guy getting out of the car.

“Got a light?” I ask, popping a menthol in my mouth as I smile from ear to ear, tapping his shoulder. He turns around with his eyebrows threaded in confusion, but immediately matches my expression as soon as he sees me.

“Y/n,” he pulls me into a hug. “Spencer gimme your lighter,” he demands the other guy. He tosses a blue bic lighter to Warren.

“Who’s-“ Spencer begins to ask.

“Just go get us a seat, man,” Warren cuts him off. The awkward boy walks away quietly. Warren turns back to me, his grin returning as he lights the menthol cigarette between my lips.

“Thanks,” I smile, feeling butterflies in my stomach as he watches me remove the cigarette from my lips, exhaling the smoke.

“Mind if I bum one? Spencer locked mine in his car,” he motions to the pack of Newports trapped on the passenger seat. I giggle, handing him a cig.

“You here by yourself?” he asks as the orange flame from the lighter lights up his face and reflects an auburn glow in his dark eyes.

“Uh, no, actually,” I take another drag, motioning my cigarette towards the window of the dinner. Warren tuns to see Dakota talking on his phone, still unaware of my departure.

“Oh,” his grin faulters.

“I’m, uhm, free after this though,” I offer. Just like that, his dimples have returned.

“I have some stuff to go over with Spencer,” he throws his thumb over his shoulder in reference to the awkward boy in dinner, then ashes his cigarette. “But I’m free tonight,” he stares into my eyes. I can’t contain the huge grin plastered on my face. Warren reaches his free hand out to slowly release some loose strands of my hair that the wind blew into my lip gloss. His hand lingers on my face, we lock gazes as his thumb caresses my cheek, I close my eyes and lean into his touch.

“What the fuck are you doing with my girl, man?” Dakota shouts, quickly approaching Warren. He swiftly turns around to face my angry boyfriend.

“Just calm down man. I wasn’t-“ Warren laughs, tossing his cigarette on the ground, but Dakota cuts him off by shoving his chest, hard. He doesn’t budge, but easily retaliates the gesture, sending Dakota stumbling backwards a foot or two. I know it’s wrong, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say its insanely hot watching Warren get angry.

“Keep your hands off me, douchebag or ill kick your ass right here in front of your girl,” he spits in Dakotas face, literally. Dakota looks at me, wiping Warrens’ saliva off his face, then quickly hits Warren with a right hook. Warren’s head snaps to the side with the loud thud of knuckles on skin. Warren looks back at Dakota in shock, wiping the small trickle of blood from his nose. I watch completely stunned, even though I want to stop them, I can’t move. This all happened so fast.

“You hit like a pussy,” Warren chuckles before uppercutting Dakota so hard that his neck cracks as his head flies backward. I snap out of my haze, running over to Dakota as he steadies himself. I grab his arm in attempt to help him.

“Come on, Dakota let’s just go,” I plead, not wanting to watch him get his ass laid out on the frozen pavement.

“Get off me, bitch!” he screams, back handing me, not taking his eyes off Warren. I grab my cheek, about to cuss him out when Warren takes Dakotas collar into his fists, shoving him against Spencer’s car. Warren grabs his throat, holding his head steady, so his already bruised knuckles can strike as hard as possible against Dakota’s jaw. Blood immediately pours out of his busted lip.

“Don’t fucking talk to y/n like that!” he screams, just inches from my boyfriend’s face. The veins popping out of his neck, his knuckles turning white from how hard he’s gripping onto Dakota. Warren spits the blood that’s dripped from his nose between his lips into Dakota’s face. “Does that make you feel strong, pussy boy? Huh? You feel like man when you bitch slap your girlfriend?” he growls, his fist contacting Dakotas abdomen this time, knocking wind out of him, leaving my boyfriend wheezing.

When Warren screams that last phrase, that’s when I realize; Dakota is fighting for his masculinity, Warren’s fighting for me. I turn on my heels to run inside the dinner, finding the boy that Warren arrived with.

“Spencer, right?” I ask out of breath. He nods his head, confused. “Warrens beating the shit out of my boyfriend, I need you to help me stop him before he kills him,” I explain breathlessly.

“Oh,” Spencer says processing what I’m saying. “Oh my- Oh my god!” He jumps from the seat, running out the door with me.

“Warren, dude come on, you’re gonna get arrested!” Spencer shouts, cautiously approaching the scuffling boys. It seems like this isn’t the first time Spencer has witnessed this. It appears that Dakota managed to get another hit or two in, because Warrens eyebrow appears busted and they’re on the ground now, a small pool of blood forming on the frosted pavement underneath Dakota.

“Fuck off, Spence,” Warren growls about to strike again.

“Please Warren! You’re gonna kill him!” I shriek. Warren pauses, Spencer takes the opportunity to pull Warren off Dakota. I run over to my boyfriend, trying to help him up.

“Get off of me you stupid bitch!” Dakota shouts, slapping me off him as he tries to stand on his shaky legs.

“Hey!” Warren shouts in the background, Spencer holds him back again.

“Dakota, please. You need help,” I plead feeling bad for him.

“This is your fault! If you weren’t out here whoring it up with this clown, this wouldn’t have happened,” he screams in my face, blood dripping from multiple different wounds on his face, his nose already purple.

“Just let me drive you home,” I sigh, feeling less guilty since he had the audacity to call me a whore, when he slept with my cousin in my own car two months ago. Actually, after remembering that, I don’t feel bad for him at all anymore.

“No! I’m walking! Fuck off! And fuck all of you! You too Spencer!” he shouts as he limps away, holding his stomach.

 I guess spencer was the mutual friend.

 I turn to see Warren leaning against Spencer’s car, smoking one of his Newports.

“What did I do?” I hear spencer ask, I ignore him.

“Warren I’m so-“ my eyes well up with tears, my cheek still stinging as the cold wind blows against the hand print on my face.

“Come here, are you okay?” He pulls me into a quick hug then examines my cheek. Placing a bloody hand on my cheek.

“Of course I’m fine,” I sigh grabbing his face. “Look at you,” I frown, putting a gentle hand on his face. He winces against my touch. His bottom lip and right eyebrow are both busted. There’s blood coming from his nose, flowing over his lips and onto his chin. His right cheek is bright red and swollen.

“You should see the other guy,” he chuckles, popping the cigarette back into his mouth. How can he joke at a time like this. Nevertheless, I laugh lightly, shaking my head.

“Let me get you cleaned up,” I offer.

“I’ll go get your keys and stuff,” he smiles.

“No, Warren, I can get them. Just stay here,” I dash back into the dinner, everyone giving me weird looks. I smile awkwardly, throwing a 10 down on the table, then run back to the boys, the bells on the doors jingling loudly behind me.

“Okay, come on,” I take Warrens hand.

“Should, uh, should I just go home then?” Spencer asks awkwardly with his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah, Spence. Get the fuck out of here,” Warren dismisses him, half joking with the timid boy. I can tell that their friendship has an interesting dynamic.

•

•

“Thank god my folks ain’t here,” Warren sighs as he unlocks his front door, allowing me to enter the home first.

“Where’s your first aid kit?” I ask looking around the house, which is becoming a familiar scene.

“I’ll grab it, just head down to my room,” he says motioning to the basement door as he walks up the carpet steps. I obey, making my way to his bedroom.

I sit down on his couch, a few moments later, Warren enters with the first aid kit.

“Is the worst of it on your face?” I ask the mangled boy in front of me as I pop the plastic box open. He winces as he pulls his black t-shirt up and over his head. He turns around to reveal a nasty patch of road rash stretching from his spine over to his left shoulder. “Oh, Warren,” I gasp, sadness in my voice. I feel horrible for him. He sits down on the couch next to me.

“He got the best of me for about four seconds, but it was enough to fuck my back up pretty bad,” he laughs. Somehow still smiling even though he’s covered in dried blood-most of it not his- and his lip is busted.

“I’m sorry about that, Warren. I should have just stayed in the diner,” I shake my head as I open a gauze pad and grab the rubbing alcohol.

“But if you’d done that, you wouldn’t be sitting in my room right now,” he grins, but winces a bit. It probably hurts to smile; His cheek is bruised pretty bad.

“Yeah, but at least you wouldn’t be in pain,” I say as I pour the strong smelling alcohol onto the gauze.

“Worth it,” he smirks, resting his busted knuckles on my thigh.

“This is gonna sting,” I say, taking a deep breath. He nods, closing his eyes. I press the alcohol soaked cotton onto his split eyebrow.

“Fucking hell,” he grunts through gritted teeth, squeezing my thigh.

“I know, I know,” I pat the wound a couple more times before removing it. “I’m sorry,” I dampen another gauze pad, moving to his lip. He hisses again but allows me to clean the gash. Finally, I have him stand and turn so I can clean his shoulder. I can’t help but admire his back, running my fingers gently over the undamaged skin, leaving goosebumps behind every trace. The room is quiet, just the faint buzz of the dim overhead lights and Warrens breathing.

“Does it look bad?” he breaks the silence, looking at me over his shoulder.

“No, uh,” I clear my throat. “Sorry just uhm,” I clumsily grab a new cotton pad and the alcohol, naturally spilling it a bit, embarrassed that he caught me staring. “No, it’s not too bad,” I say as I fumble with the cotton.

“Why are you so nervous all the-“ he laughs, then I push the alcohol to his cuts. “Shit! Fuck, Y/n warn me next time!” he shouts. I wince at his loud tone as all the muscles in his back tense. I pull away, tears begin to form in my eyes. The past hour has been so stressful and him raising his voice sent me over the edge. I know he didn’t mean anything by it, that I just caught him off guard, but I can’t help how my body responded.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he quickly turns around, seemingly forgetting about the pain, bringing me into a tight hug as a couple tears roll down my cheeks. “I didn’t mean-“

“I know,” I smile up at him as he wipes the stray tear from my face. He looks so pretty, even when he’s doused in dried blood and half his face is bruised. “I’m sorry, I’m just stressed… I really need to smoke,” I sigh.

“Ditto,” he agrees, pulling away. “I’m gonna shower real quick. If you could, would you grab me the icepacks out of the freezer in the kitchen? Then I’ll bust out the bong,” he winks as he walks towards the bathroom in just his blood stained jeans. I smile and nod, then turn to walk up the steps.

•

•

After locating the ice packs, I run to my car to grab my weed. I go back inside, making my way to the steps, hearing a The Offspring cd playing as I descend into the basement. I see Warren already sitting on the couch, wearing nothing but a towel, his damp dark hair stuck to his forehead.

“Hey beautiful, what took so long?” he asks as I take a seat next to him.

“Oh, I ran out to my car to grab my bud so I could match you,” I explain as I set the jar on the table, then I hold an ice pack to his cheek. “You poor thing,” I sigh. He looks much better now that he’s cleaned up, but now I can see the wounds for what they really are.

“Come on y/n, you know I’m not gonna let you match me,” he laughs, continuing to break up the weed.

“Warren, I insist. I already feel bad enough that I got you into a fight,” I open the jar, but he snatches it out of my hand.

“No,” he says sternly, looking into my eyes. “And don’t say that. You had nothing to do with the fight, that dumbass came out swinging and disrespecting you. That’s all on him,” he says seriously. I just nod, a bit intimidated by his stern tone. He grabs the lighter and the bong handing it to me,

“Ladies first,” he winks, the mood much lighter now. He takes the icepack into his own hand so I can hit the bong. He watches me as I take a big hit. The warm smoke filling my lungs quickly. I blow the milky smoke towards the ceiling, as I sink into the couch.

“What?” I giggle when I realize that Warrens still watching me.

“You’re just so pretty, I never want to take my eyes off of you,” he smiles, setting the icepack down to take the glass out of my hand, pulling a huge hit. I see his muscles relax almost instantly.

“You’re pretty too,” I chuckle, taking one more hit. It doesn’t take long to feel the effects, I feel light but heavy at the same time; like I’m floating, but my limbs are too dense to move. This is one of my favorite feelings in the world.

“I was, until I got my face banged up,” he frowns, putting his mouth to the opening of the bong.

“I don’t think it’s a bad look,” I say honestly. “I know you’re in pain, but you do look pretty badass. It’s kinda sexy actually,” I giggle, the THC clouding my brain doesn’t allow me to keep that last thought to myself. Warrens ears perk up at the word ‘sexy’. He sets the bong down, scooching closer to me, the towel wrapped around his toned torso falls a bit, exposing his V-line and a bit of brown hair right below it. The sight makes me moan internally.

“Is that so?” he smirks, his face coming closer to me.

“Mhm,” I smile, bringing my hand up to feel his bare chest. He hovers above me as I lay heavy in between the couch cushions. “Even sexier than normal,” I smile, looking at him through lidded eyes. Warren leans down, pressing his busted lip against mine, I kiss back gently.

“I’ve missed your lips,” he smiles, resting his forehead against mine.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I ask, cupping his uninjured cheek in my hand.

“Nah, you fixed me up real good Doc,” he chuckles. “Plus, I’m pretty stoned right now. As they say, weed’s the best medicine,” he says bringing me into another kiss. I melt completely into him; This is all I’ve craved in the two weeks it’s been since I’ve seen him last.

“I’ve missed you so much, Warren,” I admit into the kiss.

“Lay down darling, I owe you for fixin’ me up,” he says helping me turn to lay down the couch.

“Warren, you should just take it easy, baby. You’ve been through a lot,” I rub my hand up and down his arm, over his silly tattoo. He smiles at the pet name, reaching for the waistband of my pants.

“I am taking it easy, beautiful. Weed might be the best medicine, but you’re a close second,” he smirks, taking my pants and underwear off in one swoop, making my stomach flip. I’m almost ashamed of how easily I become puddy in his hands. “Mmm, so pretty,” he gently runs his hands up my thighs as I spread my legs for him, he doesn’t even have to ask. I’m always ready for him.

“Warren you really don’t have-“ he places a quick kiss on lips.

“Shh, I don’t wanna hear you speak unless you’re moaning my name, okay, beautiful,” he says gently but sternly, a small smile plastered on his face. I can’t help but giggle as excitement courses through my body. I simply nod my head ‘yes’.

He slides down my body admiring me in all my glory. He gently slides a finger over my heat, watching me intently.

“Sucha pretty girl,” he coos as he settles his head between my legs. He wraps his arms around my thighs, holding them open as he begins licking at my clit, quickly earning a moan of approval from me. He gently sticks a finger inside of me as he continues working on my nub. “Does that feel good baby,” he asks against my core.

“Mhm,” I moan out, bringing a hand to hold onto his damp hair. The amount of weed in my system amplifies the pleasure by 100. He sucks gently on my bundle of nerves as his finger pumps into me, curling perfectly.

“Fuck warren,” I pant, curling my toes, my breath becomes shallow. He continues his steady pace, the pleasure winding in my stomach begging for release. I begin grinding against his face, begging for more contact as his tongue works expertly against me. He moans against my sensitive skin, sending chills down my spine.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” I come undone, gripping hard onto his hair as my hips continue to grind into his face, covering him in my release. He pulls away proudly, licking his fingers as I try to catch my breath.

“You taste just as good as you look,” he winks making me blush. He sighs happily, before grabbing the bong, taking another hit.

“That’s all I get?” I ask as he passes me the glass. He looks at me confused. I take a quick hit- not worried about the weed, I want him inside of me. I reach over, further removing the loosely draped towel covering his torso, revealing his erection.

“I was treating you, baby,” he laughs, “but if you insist,” he lays me back down on the couch once again as he presses a gentle kiss to my lips. He gives himself a couple pumps before lining himself into me, those dark bloodshot eyes gazing into mine makes my heart skip a beat.

“Fuck, I love how you stretch me out,” I moan as he pushes into me, a proud smirk appears on his bruised face.

“You feel so good, beautiful,” he grunts, grabbing my hips as he begins to thrust in and out of me. He’s so deep; I swear I can feel him poking my stomach.

“You fuck me so good warren, faster, please,” I whine, begging for more. I’m defenseless against him, the amount of pleasure he brings me is inhuman. He obeys, fucking me faster and deeper. I wrap my legs around him as he leans down, placing a sloppy kiss to my lips. “I want you to cum in me warren,” I pant against his lips, his eyes go wide. “I’m on the pill,” I giggle. “Please Warren I want to feel you cum inside me, I’ve never let anyone else do it, please,” I beg. His eyes cloud with even more lust, something I didn’t think was possible. He groans, sitting up so he can pull my hips flush against his with every thrust. He brings one hand down to play with my bundle of nerves, I’m unable to contain my noises of pleasure, moaning out his name.

“Fuck,” he groans lowly to himself as he rocks his hips into me. “Who’s pussy is this?” he asks in a deep growl, goosebumps appear on my skin. “Y/n, who’s fucking pussy is this?” he asks again as he thrusts hard hitting my g-spot perfectly.

“Fuck!” I scream. “Yours! It’s all yours Warren,” I pant desperately, my tone that of one you’d hear in a cheesy porno. His possessiveness and the way he’s hitting the deepest parts of me mixed with the weed brings me to my second orgasm of the night.

“That’s fucking right,” he growls, grabbing my face. My walls clench around him as his powerful thrusts become sloppy. I scream out his name, euphoria enveloping me as he shoots his cum deep inside me, I’ve never experienced anything as erotic as him fucking his seed into me as it leaks out of my throbbing cunt onto his couch. Warren pulls out reluctantly, his legs visibly shaking. I lay limp in the same spot, trying to steady my breathing and stop my own legs from shaking.

“Are you okay?” he laughs helping me sit up.

“Yeah,” I giggle. “I’ve just never been fucked like-“ I stop when I see his lip gushing blood. “Warren, baby, your lips bleeding again,” I stand up quickly to find the gauze, I ignore his cum that begins to run down my thigh.

“Leave it” he waves his hand, laying back on the couch. “I feel too good to care,” he laughs. “Come lay with me,” he pats the couch. I pick up an alcohol soaked cotton pad, then sit next to him.

“Let me clean this first,” I say. He nods reluctantly, hissing as the pad hits his lip. The bleeding stops soon. “You need to put some antibacterial ointment on that. Mouth abrasions can get infected really easily,” I begin to explain.

“You should break up with your boyfriend,” he blurts out. I don’t think he was listening to anything I said. He stares at me nervously awaiting my response.

“I know I should,” I sigh, he reaches over to the coffee table handing me my phone. “What? Now?” I ask shocked. He nods his head.

“I want you to be mine, all mine. I can’t go another two weeks without seeing you, having you too busy with that douche to see me, and I sure as fuck don’t want anyone else touching you like I just did,” he pours his heart out, not dropping my gaze once. I look away, biting my lip. He’s right, as always. I belong with him; Anyone can see that.

“Well, at least wait until the morning,” I sigh looking back at him. “I mean you did just beat the shit of the guy and cum in his girlfriend, isn’t that enough for one night,” I smile lightly, not sure how he’ll feel about the idea.

“If you stay with me tonight, and do it very first thing in the morning, then I’ll agree,” he offers with a small smile. I agree, cuddling into his side. He lays a kiss on my forehead.

I should feel guilty, but I don’t, not towards Dakota at least. I feel guilty about getting Warren hurt, but my bitch ass boyfriend had it coming. I’ve finally found someone who cares about me, and I refuse to lose that, even if this is just a fling.

[silkscream]

CHAPTER 6: IF ONLY IT WAS WARMTH

ੈ✩ gojo satoru x reader, geto suguru x reader

He would drink half of his body weight in liquor by the time the clock struck twelve, maybe, honoring the tradition of forgetting the past year. He would be able to forget all the ways he’d caused you pain from his carelessness and his inability to communicate transparently. And then, maybe, he'll start the year anew with a kiss on your mouth. He could stake his claim on you officially, in front of everyone.

ੈ✩ chapter cw/tags: explicit content (18+ mdni) , oral sex, fingering, threesome, alcohol usage

ੈ✩ wc: 7.4k

ੈ✩ a/n: happy birthday to my pookie suguru and happy new year to all of them, especially reader, because god knows she needs it

playlist ✸ read on ao3 ✸ series masterlist

Shoko’s short hair is in low space buns – proper ones, her hair now long enough for her to not look like she had haphazard tufts of hair sticking out of her head. She'd begged you to cut it for her before the formal, complaining that longer hair was too much to deal with. You’d snorted then – it was only down to her collarbone, just barely.

She holds out a cigarette to you as you lean on the glass of the storefront, your cheeks cold and bitten by the wind. 

“Thanks,” you sigh, inhaling and trying your best not to choke on the smoke. You almost do, a tickle in your throat about to rumble before you exhale. Shoko laughs. You still haven’t gotten used to Seven Stars, but you knew it was because she always preferred menthol the same way that Satoru preferred strawberry sake. Something to get a taste of to deflect from the damage it was doing to their insides. 

Utahime emerges from the front doors, flustered by the immediate temperature change. 

“Did they catch you for shoplifting or what?” Shoko teases.

“Never,” Utahime scoffs. “I’m not a delinquent like you.”

Shoko rolls her eyes, a sly grin on her face. You had only been shopping with the two of them for an hour and a half, yet the two of them were able to find their dresses unfairly quickly. Shoko had chosen a dark plum silk dress with purple floral details. Utahime had picked a simple red dress with a square neckline and straps that tied into bows at the shoulders.

“You wanna keep looking at other places?” Shoko asks you.

You smile graciously, shaking your head. 

“You said you guys were hungry, right? We can go back to shopping after lunch,” you shrug.

“Oh, yeah, that idiot texted,” Utahime murmurs absentmindedly as she looks at her phone. “The boys are running a little late. Let’s get a table without them.”

“The boys are coming?” You try your best not to sound nervous, though your voice comes out small.

“Not surprised,” Shoko jeers, dropping her cigarette on the pavement to snuff it out with her combat boot. “Satoru’s never been on time in his fucking life.”

Your stomach flips at the mention of his name. There wasn’t any reason for the boys to come since it was a girls’ day out, you thought. Then again, this is Satoru’s friend group. You wonder if Mei Mei would show up. The possibility makes your chest a bit tight.

You’re too afraid to ask the girls about her, so you lay your head low and listen to their conversation as you all walk to the restaurant, only chiming in with head nods and insignificant comments. 

The izakaya is a bit crowded, but you’re thankful for the warmth granted to you when you enter the restaurant. The smell of cooked meat makes your mouth water. As the three of you settle at your table and wait for drinks, you find your eyes straying away from the girls and toward the front door. 

Utahime is explaining the specifics of one of her most recent missions when you feel a commanding presence in the restaurant, immediately locking eyes with a pair of blue pupils staring back at you. You suck in your teeth, toying with the sleeve of your sweater as you attempt to appear nonchalant. 

Satoru and Suguru seem to steal the attention of the whole restaurant. You see the flustered look on the hostess’s face and it makes you cringe. Satoru’s cheeks are twinged pink, eyes bright as he speaks to her. You notice that patrons around him are also looking at him. Moths drawn to a flame.

When they arrive at your table, Suguru smiles at you warmly. Satoru is quick to slide into the booth next to you and Shoko while Suguru sits across from you, next to Utahime. The boys are dressed similarly – both wearing a white button-down and black jeans, though Satoru is wearing a black suede jacket and Suguru has opted for a denim one. 

Shoko leans against your shoulder to look at the menu, flipping immediately to the end of the menu for the beer and wine section.

“Shoko, we aren’t–” You’re interrupted by her hand covering your mouth.

“You really don’t go out much, jeez,” she chuckles. “They never card us here.”

With that, she orders three beers for herself, Utahime, and Suguru, a plum wine for you, and a chu-hi for Satoru, given how sugary it is. 

You’re quiet as everyone talks amongst themselves. It’s mostly Satoru and Suguru bickering over trivial matters, which ends up with Satoru bickering with Utahime over nothing, just because he likes to push her buttons. Shoko is quick to be the mediator in every situation. She’s able to interrupt with her own stories about volunteering at hospitals – private endeavors funded by Jujutsu Tech.

You listen to her, only bombarded by the sensation of a hand on your thigh. You kick Satoru lightly, but he doesn’t let up. Your face darkens when the waitress returns with your drinks, paying extra attention to Satoru, who unfortunately indulges her. 

“Any luck with finding a dress?” Suguru asks. He’s asking everyone, but his gaze ends up pointed at you.

“Not yet. Shoko and Utahime found theirs, though,” you smile. “They’re gorgeous.”

“Oh, I bet,” Satoru nods, smoothing his palm over your thigh again, making your breath hitch. You clench your jaw. “What were you thinking of getting, Twigs?”

“I don’t know, yet. Whatever speaks to me, I suppose.”

“You’ll look amazing in anything,” Suguru says. You smile at him in response, noticing the way Satoru straightens in your peripheral.

You sigh in relief when the food comes. The five of you dig into several shared plates, the smell of them wafting under your nose. Satoru piles pieces of tonkatsu and fried tofu onto your plate before you can protest.

“I can serve myself,” you mumble to him, irritated.

“I know what you like,” he shrugs.

Unfortunately, he’s right – he’s able to arrange your plate just the way you like it without any of your input. You’re honestly surprised at him remembering what your preferences are — you hadn’t shared a proper meal with the Gojo family in a few years. Even then, you considered your short hangouts with Satoru insignificant, fleeting enough that he wouldn’t care to remember what kind of food you liked.

You don’t speak much during the meal, mostly entertained by watching your friends debate and bicker. They’re a colorful bunch – you’d almost feel out of place if it wasn’t for each of them looking to you during a conversation for your input. All of them care about your presence. It’s something you aren’t used to.

“I think you should get something super sparkly. Or sheer and sparkly. Honestly, you could show up in a trash bag and still look hot as fuck,” Shoko murmurs before she attempts to chew on a peculiarly long piece of beef dangling from her chopstick. 

“She’s right,” Suguru adds, smiling at you as he holds his jaw in his hand casually. You smile shyly in response. You can feel Satoru’s eyes burning into your head. 

“Don’t be too pressured by them, though,” Utahime says. “Again, you’d look hot in anything, so don’t sweat it if you end up wanting to wear a kimono–”

“She’ll wear a dress,” Satoru interjects, lazily prodding a piece of pork on his plate. “She always looks the best in dresses.”

You cough lightly. It’s not enough to attract attention, but you do feel eyes on you as you down your plum wine in an attempt to calm down. 

“You guys are making me feel like a Barbie doll,” you joke, attempting to distract from your flustered state. You nearly wince at the feeling of Satoru’s palm on your knee. Unfortunately, his small strokes on your clothed leg do relax you a bit, like you’re being petted like a dog. 

“It’s your first Gojo ball, baby!” Shoko chimes. “You are our little Barbie doll.”

You feel more relaxed when she rests her head on your shoulder. It’s enough to make you forget that Satoru is touching you underneath the table, his hand rising higher than it should. When your eyes wander and end up on Suguru’s face, you freeze for a millisecond, nervous, as if you’re being found out. However, his eyes grant you solicitude and comfort. Or maybe it’s the plum wine making you warm.

It’s a miracle that you’re all able to pay the bill and leave the restaurant considering how many beers Utahime was craving, but Shoko had reminded her that you still needed a dress. In all honesty, you felt better off borrowing something from your mother. Something from Satoru’s mother if you were truly desperate, but the prospect of having to approach her for it made you want to die. 

After getting boba (per Satoru’s request), the five of you enter a vintage boutique that smells like black tea and tatami floors. It’s dim inside despite it being daytime, but the warm light of several hanging lanterns illuminates the place amiably. 

The boys go off to a corner – Suguru looks through a rack of jackets while Satoru tries on nearly every pair of sunglasses displayed on a mid-century bureau. He tries on a pair with lenses that resemble moth wings, three of them overlapping. He looks ridiculous, yet somehow still charming.

“Twigs, look!” he beckons.“Six Eyes.”

“Funny,” you nod. You chuckle at his face falling into a pout when you aren’t as enthused as him.

Your attention gets stolen away from Shoko, who is shoving a dress into your hands as she ushers you toward the dressing rooms.

“Try this on.”

“Wha– how do you even know my size–”

“Trust me!” she giggles, pushing you into the stall and promptly pulling the curtain closed.

You’re left to stare at yourself, dreading the act of taking all of your layers off. The dress in your hands barely looks appropriate for a formal event, short as it is. You put it on anyway, frowning at the way it barely hits above the middle of your thigh. It’s lacy and frilly with a corset top, making you feel like a triple-tiered cake, but it’s oddly… flattering. You feel like a Harajuku doll.

“Shoko, I can’t wear this to–”

“Oh!” Utahime gushes. “You look adorable!”

“She’s so cuuuuute,”’ Shoko adds.

“Oh,” Suguru blinks. “Come here.”

“Um–” Your breath hitches when he spins you around to tie the straps on the back, tightening them. 

“Better?”

“I– I think?”

Satoru watches Suguru move your hair out of the way and scowls. His eyes widen when he notices the length of the dress on you. Or lack thereof, rather.

“I feel like I’m wearing tissue paper,” you mumble.

“You look hot as fuck,” Satoru says bluntly. You roll your eyes even though he makes you flush.

“You should get it,” Shoko nods in agreement.

“Wh– we’re here for a formal dress!”

“Who thinks she should get it?”

Everyone raises their hand and stares at you. You blink at them in horror. 

“Okay, maybe, but this isn’t the priority.”

They leave you to your own volition after that, except for Satoru, who has resorted to following you around like a stray dog. You have to swat him away several times from trying to sip your boba until you eventually give up. 

“This one,” he points at something silk. “You like blue.”

“You like blue, Satoru.”

He sighs dramatically, watching you as you pick through dress after dress. The image of you in that white lacy number is burned into his mind – the way the hem exposed most of your legs, neckline showing off your chest. Despite the complicated straps, he imagines he could probably wrangle you out of it somehow, or at least be able to flip the skirt up—

His daydreaming is shaken by the blur of your rushed body into the dressing room. He follows you in without a warning.

“Satoru,” you hiss. “You can be without me for two minutes.”

“I can’t, actually,” he deadpans. Fuck, he’d made himself a little hard thinking about you. It doesn’t help that the dress you’re trying on is halfway on you, exposing the side of your breast to him.

The dress is beautiful – a light taupe color with tulle over the silk lining. The sheer fabric over it is adorned with crystals. 

“Jesus.”

“What?”

“Nothing, you look – um,” Satoru swallows his words. He’s never been fucking speechless in front of a girl before.

“Zip me up.”

His large hands scale the length of your bare back gently, making you shiver. His fingers close on the zipper, tightening the dress as he helps you. It feels more intimate than it should. When he catches your face in the mirror in front of him, he blushes and looks away.

He fixes your hair for you, watching you in the mirror as you examine yourself. He presses a chaste kiss to your shoulder. The feeling of his breath over your collarbone makes warmth pool in your gut. 

“You have no idea how hard you made me.”

“Control yourself,” you snap. 

God. Even that riles him up a bit more. 

You ignore him, stepping out of the dressing room to see three stunned faces. 

“Oh, uh, I needed help getting zipped up,” you mutter when Satoru emerges from behind you.

“Oh, wow!” Utahime muses. “Holy shit, this is the one.”

“Agreed,” Shoko nods.

“Really? It’s not too much?” you ask, tilting your head in the mirror. It’s flashier than your usual taste, but the fabric softly hugs the curves of your body in a way that’s comfortable despite the elaborate design.

“It’s perfect,” Suguru says. “You look perfect.”

You smile as Shoko adjusts the left strap of the dress for you, plucking out the tag from behind. When you notice her eyes widen, you strain your neck to look. 

“This shit is vintage Dior,” Shoko snorts. “Damn, it’s almost 300,000 yen.”

“Oh,” you frown. 

“We have all day!” Utahime offers. “There are tons of stores in the area–”

“I’ll pay for it,” Satoru interrupts. You draw a sharp breath.

“Satoru, I can’t let you do that–”

“Don’t worry about it. Think of it as a grad present. Get the other dress, too.”

You look at him, bewildered. 

“It’s not worth the trouble, I’d only wear it once–”

He interrupts you again, the sound of your name a firm warning despite the pleasant demeanor in his eyes. He gestures towards the dressing rooms.

“My mother will love it. You’ll look gorgeous,” he says. “Now go on so we can check out.”

You’re obedient, sighing in defeat and slight embarrassment. Shoko and Utahime look at each other, both raising their brows at Suguru, who shrugs at them, looking mildly amused. Satoru pays no mind to anyone’s reaction, merely returning to the accessories to look at sunglasses once more. 

He’s placid as he holds your bag for you, strangely gentleman-like as the five of you leave after checking out. You think there has to be a punchline waiting for you at the other end of this. Whatever this game of his was.

“So frowny today,” he murmurs into your ear. The two are slightly behind the others, who are engrossed in a debate about Godzilla movies. “You’re gonna get wrinkles if you keep it up.”

“What are you plotting?” you ask him, narrowing your eyes. 

“Nothing,” Satoru shrugs. “Just want you to look your best, s’all. I know how much you wanted that dress. Should I pay you to let me fuck you in it, too?”

You know you’d let him for free, which pisses you off. It makes your cunt ache.

“I’m not your whore.”

“Of course not, baby,” he grins, ruffling your hair. “I’m yours.”

New Year’s Eve, 2008

The banquet hall is more extravagant than any parties you’ve seen thrown at the Gojo estate. Fairy lights drape over each other, hanging from the dark blue ceiling in a way that looks like stars. 

The last time you spent New Year’s Eve with Satoru, the both of you were thirteen. Your mother had made everyone toshikoshi soba before the two of you had gone off to the local festival together to watch the fireworks. Your mother’s hand-me-down kimono on you was a bit oversized, but she had braided your hair, gathering it into a bun held together with hair sticks that were a gift from Satoru’s mother. 

You wear them in your hair now in a bun with the rest of your hair cascading down, borrowing from Suguru’s usual style. You feel odd in a gown that costs more than anything you’ve owned. 

“Cute,” Satoru had remarked, poking the dangling jade charm that hung off of your hair sticks. “I remember these.”

You calm your nerves with a glass of champagne offered to you. The menace next to you wasn’t helping your anxiety for the night – Satoru had been attached to your hip since you’d arrived. You didn’t even get a chance to see him with his date. You’re thankful that someone from his clan sweeps him away for a conversation, leaving you to scan the crowd for any sign of Suguru, Shoko, or Utahime. 

You’re startled by the feeling of a hand on the small of your back, but your face relaxes when you turn and see your dark-haired date. Suguru looks like a model, as expected, standing tall in a suit that mirrors Satoru’s. His hair is gathered in a bun, his bangs framing his face.

“There you are,” he greets you, placing a kiss on your jaw. Your eyelashes flutter. “Having fun?”

“Um, yeah,” you answer lightly, taking another sip of your drink. 

“You look beautiful, by the way,” Suguru says in your ear after leaning down. You were going to need copious amounts of alcohol before you could get used to his mere presence in a suit like this. “Gonna give Mei a run for her money. She always treats these things like the red carpet.”

You follow his gaze until it lands on Satoru and a girl with bluish-silver hair talking with who you assume to be members of the Gojo clan. Her hair is in an elegant updo weaved with baby’s breath, leaving two parallel face-framing pieces of hair in the front. Suguru is right – she has the look of a Hollywood movie star, shining in a lilac dress that compliments her pale skin. 

“Don’t worry,” Suguru says, smoothing a hand over your shoulder. “Her family stopped trying to marry into the Gojo clan after her father invested in some global conglomerate. Not to mention, she’s getting promoted to Grade 1 very soon.”

“Why would I be worried?” you laugh nervously. 

He shrugs, flashing you one of those soft, reassuring smiles of his as if he knows something you don’t. You suppose he does. If you were a cat, you could purr at the feeling of him gently stroking his fingers through your hair soothingly. It calms you. It feels wrong for you to get used to it. 

“The girls are here.”

You hear Utahime before you see her. She runs toward you with a squeal, arms wrapped around you happily as she compliments you.

“Utahime-senpai pre-gamed a little too hard,” Shoko explains.

“Don’t call me that. And it was two beers!” Utahime whines. She holds your head a bit too tightly, though you don’t mind. “God, you look so pretty. I guess Gojo’s trust fund can be used for good, occasionally.”

You’re grateful for her hands in yours – it makes you feel less out of place. You had to remember how to breathe earlier, walking around the banquet hall with only Satoru to accompany you. Underneath his scrutiny, you felt small despite the elegance and ostentation of your attire. There were many eyes on you and you assumed it was because of the crystals of your dress. However, there was a part of you that assumed it was because you weren’t welcome. You were a new face. A stranger.

Another glass of champagne gets shoved into your hands – golden liquid that dissipates the creature inside you that continues to pry open your insecurities. When you follow Suguru and the girls to the dancefloor, your shoulders sag in relief.

“I didn’t know Y/N and Suguru-kun were a couple. They’re adorable.”

“What?”

“Did you introduce them, Satoru?” His mother awaits his response, sipping nonchalantly at a glass of wine as her eyes wander towards the sight of you and Suguru on the dancefloor. 

“They aren’t dating,” Satoru mutters.

“Oh,” she hums. “Well, they look lovely together.”

They don’t.

Satoru wants to scream, maybe pull his hair out, but when he observes the way Suguru rests his gentle hands on your waist as he dances with you, he thinks that maybe his mother is right. He’s downed at least three glasses of sugary prosecco, hiccuping in conversation more than he means to. The two of you together are lovely. Alluring, even.

He’s too exhausted to mingle with more of his family. All of it is politics to him, anyway, which he doesn’t care for at all. As Satoru watches you dance with Suguru and the girls, something in his chest aches, something akin to jealousy. He would never say it out loud, always choosing to suffer in silence.

Your face brightens when Suguru whispers something into your ear. It used to be the way you looked at Satoru.

He stumbles up to the bar now, knocking back a shot of tequila. The taste of it is grotesque – he could never understand why his friends enjoyed liquor. Even the taste of sake, mild as it often was, made his nose crinkle in disgust. But he needed the boost if he was going to survive the night.

“Drowning your sorrows all by yourself, handsome?”

“Oh. Hey.” He nods a half-greeting to his date. Mei Mei smirks as she tips back Japanese whiskey, her dark lipstick still in place.

“Got a crush or something? You keep staring at that girl,” she muses. “I’m sure Geto-kun would share, no?”

Satoru feels provocation bubble up in his sternum as Mei Mei giggles at his plight. He knocks back another shot and resists the urge to vomit.

“She’s my best friend. Her mother– she works for us,” Satoru slurs.

“Cute. A Cinderella story.”

“Sure,” he mutters.

“What, Geto beat you for Prince Charming? Girls your age are easy, Gojo-kun,” Mei says. 

“Not her.”

“If you wanted her all to yourself, you should’ve just said so.”

Satoru’s face tightens. He bottles up his frustration and the new realization that Mei Mei is completely right – his obligation to be her date didn’t mean much. Perhaps, it never did. He was already mildly wasted when he had talked to the more important members of the clan earlier – it wouldn’t have mattered if you or Mei Mei were wrapped around his finger for the duration of these talks. 

He feels helpless now, watching all of you. Outside of himself. He twists the ring you gave him on his finger anxiously.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Mei snipes, pushing him lightly on the arm. “Your moping is depressing me. Go over there.”

For once, Satoru is grateful for Mei’s input. He had always been a bit selfish, but not to the extent that she was. She had always been unabashed about what she wanted, in a way that was blunter than Satoru, if that was possible. Then again, she only cared about money, anyway. But when it came to you, he wanted everything, but he couldn’t express that to you in a way that felt normal. He couldn’t tell anyone.

It had already made him nervous to claim you in such an unspoken fashion, knowing that his friends were catching on by the second. Suguru obviously had to be teasing him for the sake of it. Maybe that was why he decided to take you as a date at all—to spite Satoru. The thought makes his blood boil.

Satoru is glad for the after-party – the function of the ball was for networking and matters that he could give less than two shits about. The bonenkai that started an hour before midnight was always a gathering of the clan’s youth, along with whoever was in proximity to them. 

He would drink half of his body weight in liquor by the time the clock struck twelve, maybe, honoring the tradition of forgetting the past year. He would be able to forget all the ways he’d caused you pain from his carelessness and his inability to communicate transparently. And then, maybe, he'll start the year anew with a kiss on your mouth. He could stake his claim on you officially, in front of everyone.

This is what he tells himself. Though, through blurred vision and slurred words, Shoko and Utahime are belligerent in their teasing of him. 

“You’re going to get alcohol poisoning if you keep it up,” Suguru tells him with an air of concern. 

“I’ll be fiiiiiiine,” Satoru groans, rolling his eyes. “Twigs! Come sit on my lap.”

You don’t protest, but you don’t sit on his lap, either. His heart beats erratically at your proximity, especially since you’ve changed into the white dress from the boutique that Shoko had picked out for you. It shows off a good amount of your skin. It makes him feel fucking feral.

“C’mere,” he pouts. “Acting like I have fucking cooties.”

“I’m not letting you throw up on me,” you joke. Your cheeks are flushed. Your hair is tousled to perfection, missing your hair sticks as you let your locks flow freely around your shoulders. 

Satoru wants to touch you. Devour you. 

Utahime makes a joke that has your laugh tumbling out of your mouth like a gift. Bursting with joy. 

Satoru sighs, settling his head on your lap as he stretches out his limbs on the couch you’re sitting on. He expects you to protest, but you don’t. You welcome him with a hand through his hair as if he was still yours. As if you hadn’t been ignoring him for ten days straight.

Through the window, fireworks are already bursting through the night sky. Shoko and Utahime pull you off the couch for a shot, leaving Satoru to fend for himself. 

“You good, dude?” Suguru asks him. He barely registers his friend’s presence until Suguru grasps him firmly on the shoulder.

“Fuck, ‘m so fucking drunk, Sugu,” Satoru slurs.

“What’s wrong with you tonight?” he chuckles. Satoru doesn’t answer – he’s too focused on trying to fix his blurred vision. Even the Six Eyes isn’t susceptible to the effects of excessive alcohol consumption.

You, on the other hand, are drunk by the influence of your peers, senses on fire in the best way possible. It greatly contrasts the last time you had gotten this drunk, blacking out at Shoko’s birthday party. At the moment, your heart is full and your head is light.

Utahime’s arm hangs over your shoulder as Shoko grabs your attention, prompting you to pay attention to the countdown into the next year. You blink wildly as you stumble to your feet. It hadn’t even occurred to you that it was this close to midnight – you were mingling with everyone at the ball just an hour prior, hadn’t you?

“Five, four, three, two, one… Happy New Year!”

You giggle drunkenly. The arm wrapped around your waist feels like home, and when a hand turns your face just slightly, your eyes close on the feeling of ardent passion.

Your mouth is met with another’s, lips soft and tasting of the same champagne you had drowned yourself in for the night. When you open your eyes, you’re met with amber-brown ones – fox-like, full of ardor as they gaze into you. Your hand caresses porcelain skin in adoration.

You blink once. Suguru kisses you again. His hand is clutched in your hair, body slotting with yours in a way that lets you feel his palpable desire. The rapid beat of your heart. The feeling of his lips on yours is new, unprecedented. A blooming fruit ripened to the perfect sweetness. You moan at the feeling of his tongue sweeping over your bottom lip. He’s insatiable – he’s holding you so close that you think you might just melt into him.

When you break apart, you exhale sharply, touching your fingertips to your mouth as if to remind yourself of reality. You take a step back in surprise. Eyes blown out of lust and astonishment. 

“Happy New Year, darling.”

It’s whiplash to your senses. You’re yanked by a set of warm hands.

When you look up, it’s Satoru who’s urging you towards the hallway, an elevator awaiting you. Suguru follows behind with his hands in his pockets, his expression full of mirth.

“Satoru, what are you–”

“Shhh,” he interjects, capturing your jaw in his hand easily as he kisses you. He can taste Suguru on you – champagne and mint and the hint of smoke. It makes him moan into your mouth.

“Don’t get too worked up, Satoru,” Suguru murmurs.

“Shut up. You’ve been hogging her.”

“Ha, now that’s hypocritical.”

Your lips twitch as Satoru tugs you once more like a ragdoll. It takes you a bit of swatting to convince him that you can walk on your own. 

“Satoru, what the fuck–”

“Relax, my uncles own the hotel. I already booked a room–”

“Presumptuous of you,” you retort. You look at the two boys, dizzied. Still processing what the fuck is going on, though there isn’t time when Satoru is pushing you into the elevator. Suguru maintains his distance in a way that’s almost teasing.

“You weren’t invited,” Satoru mumbles, sticking his tongue out at him. His companion only laughs darkly. 

“You don’t have the balls to kick me out, though, do you?”

The elevator doors open. Satoru sighs dramatically as he takes your hand and leads you down the hall. Your eyes nearly bug out of your head when you enter the room – a large suite with two queen-sized beds. It’s luxurious, for sure, in a way that looks unreal. Fireworks are still bursting outside in your periphery from the balcony. There’s a fucking balcony.

You gasp when Satoru pushes you onto the bed forcefully, his arms caging you in. When you look at Suguru, he only smirks.

“Satoru–”

“Be gentle with her,” Suguru chuckles.

“Can’t believe you stole my fucking New Year’s kiss,” Satoru slurs. “Fucking prick.”

“You snooze, you lose,” Suguru drawls, bored as he sits on an armchair beside the bed. “Order another bottle of champagne for us, rich boy.”

“Whatever. After I fuck her.”

“Satoru!” you hiss, shoving him away. You look at the two of them in bewilderment. Suguru is unperturbed, merely looking at you with curiosity. Satoru is, of course, pouting. The moment of reprieve allows you to take a moment for yourself. It also lets you realize how truly drunk the two of them are. As your head swims, you realize you aren’t any better.

“Baby, I don’t even really want him here,” Satoru complains, rubbing his hand on your thigh. “Kick him out.”

Suguru looks at you expectantly, his grin sugary-sweet. Your bottom lip throbs at the memory of his tongue in your mouth regardless of how brief it was. 

“Who said I wanted to fuck you tonight?” you frown at Satoru, who looks like he’s about to cry from your statement alone.

“It’s been two fucking weeks,” he mutters into your neck. “Can’t take it anymore.”

“What a baby,” Suguru comments. “Maybe you should toss him a bone, princess. Then maybe he’ll stop whining.”

You’re flustered beyond repair, warm in your body despite how little of it your dress covers. It doesn’t help that Satoru roams his palms over your skin, making you flush from the heat of his touch. It also doesn’t help that Suguru’s eyes on you alone make you feel like you might spontaneously combust. 

Satoru has always been expressive, but you’ve never seen him so… emotional. It’s odd, the way he looks at you. Like you have him in the palm of your hand and not vice versa. As if you were the one who dragged him into this hotel room alone.

Maybe it’s the devil on your shoulder speaking to you in your head or the massive amounts of champagne in your system from the ball, but something makes you rise from the bed, leaving Satoru limp and pliant. You lean over him as you stand, pushing his hair back to feel the warmth of his forehead.

“Drink some water,” you coo to Satoru, stroking his cheek gently. Your voice is so sweet. It makes his cock throb underneath his slacks. “You need it, baby.”

Satoru curls into himself as his body settles onto the bed, eyes stuck on you. Staring at you with helpless baby blues, which widen as you sit on Suguru’s lap. He groans a bit in annoyance, rolling his eyes when he rises to take a water bottle from the mini fridge and downs a third of it in one gulp.

“Come here, please.”

“No,” you laugh. “Rest for me.”

“Okay,” he mumbles, obedient. Desperate. He looks pathetic, like a sad dog. “But I want you to sit in my lap.”

“You have to earn it then.”

As if on cue, Suguru snakes a hand to your abdomen, holding you gently. You adjust in his lap, absentmindedly grinding into his thigh. Satoru groans at the sight of it. He feels fucking insane – his drunkenness makes him feel like he’s losing his fucking mind. He hasn’t fucked you in two weeks, and now you were grinding on the thigh of his best friend right in front of him.

Suguru is gentle as he strokes your bare thigh, but it makes your core pool with desire nonetheless. You’re sure he can feel it, which would make you flush with embarrassment if you were sober. Feeling the hitch in his breath behind you only fills your chest full of lust.

You turn your head so that you’re nose to nose with him. His lips are centimeters from yours, though you only drink up his low exhales. His mouth glistens, you notice – the remnants of your lip gloss stuck on his mouth. 

Satoru whines in front of the two of you like an animal that’s been kicked. You’re both good at ignoring him. It awakens something dark inside you. Something hungry and heinous.

You’re too drunk to initiate anything, you realize – you’re perfectly content with being used. It’s degrading, maybe, but you trust them. Both of them. 

You turn your head, curling yourself into Suguru’s grasp so he can kiss you fully. You moan as he prods his tongue into your mouth, tasting the remnants of champagne on your teeth. His hand rubs on the inside of your thigh, hiking up your dress until it’s pooled around your waist.

“Don’t fuck her with your cock,” Satoru growls. “I wanted to be the one to do that. If you fuck her in that dress before I do, I’ll actually kill you.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Suguru sneers. 

Suguru knows better. He wouldn’t fuck you so quickly while you’re this inebriated regardless of how much you could beg for him. For now, he circles his fingers on the skin of your thigh until you move his hand higher. When his fingertips graze your wetness, you moan.

You can barely move with the way Suguru holds you, his arm around your waist iron-tight. It excites you. Satoru had always been rough with you, but he had also been your first. The feeling of someone else wanting you so much has you dazed, head staggering each time Suguru touches you in a place that feels new.

You aren’t sure if you enjoy being watched or if you enjoy watching Satoru squirm. Either way, you decide to make a show out of it – your voice moaning louder than usual when Suguru slides a finger under the fabric of your panties. Circling the core of your leaking pussy.

“Sugu,” you whine, desperate.

“I know, baby,” he coos. “Be patient.”

Satoru groans. You almost laugh when you see him palming his cock over his pants.

“So fucking adorable,” Suguru muses, his fingertip rubbing on your clit, now. “So pretty. Can’t believe Satoru’s been hiding you from me for so long.”

“Fuck off,” Satoru rasps, his drool spilling onto the bed. “She’s fucking mine.”

“Ours, now.”

Suguru grins widely, pressing into the swollen nub of your clit more intensely while his other hand prods at your hole. You gasp when you feel a finger move past your slick, gliding in between your walls as they tighten.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he chuckles. Satoru groans again at the sight of your glistening cunt, his rasp something in between pleasure and anguish. “He’d look good tied up, don’t you think?”

You nod, breathless. Eyes half-lidded. Drunk on him, drunk on yourself.

“Go ahead,” Suguru encourages, freeing his hand to take off the tie around his neck. “Know you wanna.”

You exhale deeply when he lets go of you gently. It terrifies you – the notion that you enjoy being held down. Trapped under a man’s grasp. Suguru still has a hold of you, has his hand circling your clit before he stops and nudges you toward the bed. Your knees feel weak as you crawl to Satoru with Suguru holding you from behind. He massages your shoulder gently. 

You crawl on the bed, pinning him down. Satoru lets you tie his wrists together without complaint, his eyes blown out. He’s too clumsy to kiss you properly, missing your cheek by a hair.

When Suguru pulls you back onto his lap, he’s seated back on the chair, now pulled closer to the bed. Your cunt, bare and wet and exposed, makes Satoru’s mouth water. His face is just inches away.

“So fucking tight, baby,” Suguru taunts as he pushes his index finger inside your cunt. “Has he really fucked you so much or am I the first?”

“Suguru,” Satoru warns. 

“Sheesh, we should’ve put a muzzle on him, huh?” 

Suguru presses down on your clit and then presses two fingers into your wet cunt, making you moan. With his other hand, he discards you of your lace panties and shoves them in Satoru’s mouth.

“Sugu– more–” you whine. Satoru groans at the same time as you, his white lashes blinking quickly in succession as he watches you writhe under Suguru’s grip.

Suguru adds another finger and it’s enough to make you cry out. You feel so fucking full. You shake lightly in his grasp, moaning sweet nothings until he kisses them up, his tongue laving over your wine-stained bottom lip. 

He thrusts his fingers into you in a steady rhythm that makes your legs shake. When he curls his fingers inside of you, you cry out at the feeling of his fingertips stimulating your G-spot. You’re stunned at how quickly he finds it – it’s as if he’s fucked you before. His thumb circles your clit at the same time, making you melt into him, catching his mouth in a kiss as he works you through your release.

Your head is clouded. Underneath his hands, your plasticity has no bounds, able to bend and twist the way your boys want you to. But Suguru simply holds you as you come down, adoring the way your eyes flicker. 

Your attention is stolen by the sound of Satoru’s moan. When you look at him, he’s helpless, which is a first. He’s squirming on the hotel bed, eyes dark and desperate on you. 

Suguru soothes his fingers over the skin of your thigh soothingly. His teeth nip the skin of your jaw in a way that makes Satoru’s face darken. Even after your orgasm, you grind over Suguru, desperate to get him as excited as you. You nearly cry out at the feeling of his hard cock underneath you.

“You cum in your pants or what, Satoru?” Suguru taunts after exhaling deeply, catching your breath in a slow kiss.

“Shut the fuck up.” 

Satoru unties himself, easily. You’re still drunk, confused as you watch him, wondering if he had just figured out a way to untie himself on his own or if he had always known, waiting until you finished. You never understood his games. At the moment, you’re much too far gone to care.

You’re pleasantly surprised when your body is thrown onto the bed. Satoru has you pinned to it with his hands on your hips. It’s all a hurried blur, but the taste of him on your lips is familiar. It makes you soften to his touch as he pries your legs open.

You barely have time to react when his tongue circles your clit, then penetrates your cunt. It’s sloppier than what you’re used to from Satoru, but you don’t blame him. He watches you for your reactions, his eyes wide with desire-fueled mania, pupils taking up the ocean of his irises. Wide enough to make you feel shy under his gaze.

“Tastes so fucking good,” Satoru mumbles, exhaling into your cunt. You roll your eyes back at the feeling of his mouth on you. When you turn your head, you see Suguru palming his cock. 

“So pretty for us, princess,” he smirks.

Satoru pauses, if only to have his hands crawl up the length of your body to pinch your nipples. You shiver at the feeling of his hands on you, roaming your soft skin. You feel vulnerable like it’s your first time all over again. 

“S-Satoru– oh, fuck–”

He hums, pleased. He keeps his mouth on your cunt, lapping up your slick rigorously as his free hand stimulates your swollen clit. You hear a low gasp that doesn’t come from Satoru.

You can barely grasp language when you cum – shaking underneath Satoru’s hold on you and whining his name in the aftermath. He grins when he hears it, rises to his feet just so he can kiss your exposed collarbone and the expanse of your bare breasts. 

He kisses you then, reveling in the whine that emits from your mouth when he licks into you. Your hand curls into the back of his neck, caressing the softness of the white hair on his nape as he kisses you. He’s rutting into the mattress out of desperation. 

Satoru only stops when Suguru holds him back, literally, with a pull to his white dress shirt.

“Greedy whore,” Suguru scoffs. “Blow me later.”

“No,” Satoru replies, rolling his eyes. When he turns back to you, his demeanor is sugary-sweet, looking at you with adoration. He’s breathless as he stares at you as if he’s committing the image of your nude body to memory. “You okay, baby? Want me to fuck you?”

“Not now,” you breathe. You must look like a mess in front of them. You’re sweating through the lace of your dress, which is currently bunched up to your hips. It hadn’t even occurred to you that you were bare everywhere else. “Sleepy.”

“Oh, poor baby,” Suguru purrs. “Satoru, help me get her to the bathroom.”

The boys manage to strip you of your dress and convince you to wash your face, which you do half-heartedly until Satoru takes matters into his own hands. 

“I don’t know if this is the moisturizer you like, but it has, uh, ceramides?”

You’re barely listening as you sit on the toilet, stretching your legs. Satoru plays scientist, fumbling over a toiletry bag that he’d usually kept for you underneath his bathroom sink.

He massages your face underneath his fingertips. The sight of your fresh face makes his heart beat erratically. For a moment, he wishes Suguru would leave or fall asleep just so he can keep this version of you for himself. The version he knows best. The one’s he’s committed to memory.

“Ready for bed, sweetheart?” Suguru asks. 

The sound of both of their voices is lost to you, fading into the background of your mind as you fall into the bed. You feel comfort in being naked until the boys dress you in your discarded underwear and someone’s oversized dress shirt. The action is a blur to your senses, because the moment they release you, you hit the pillow with heavy eyes closed.

“Love you. Love you so much.”

You don’t recall who says it back. It won’t matter to you when the morning comes, you suppose.

[inbloomwriting]

Everything to me - Chapter 2

Chapter two - Blueberry & Kidney Bean

Chapter 1

Plot: Jamie Tartt is a lot of things: professional footballer, the island's top scorer .... sexually, extremly handsome. But one thing he never saw himself as was a dad. Too bad he has to deal with the consequences of his own actions. This fic follows reader and Jamie as they navigate life and turn from practially strangers to parents. Pairing: Jaime Tartt x female reader Warnings: Pregnancy, swearing, mentions of food and alcohol, slight mention of sexual intimacy (nothing graphic), strained/toxic parental relationship Notes: 5.6k words. I do not have a set uploading schedule. Please bear with me as I work on this story. I know hardly anything about pregnancy, all my information comes from google. I tagged everyone who asked me to do it when I posted part 1. Please let me know if you want to be taken off or added to the taglist. Likes, reblogs, comments are all much appreciated. I am German. Sometimes I get the tense wrong or make mistakes. I am useless when it comes to punctuation. Go easy on me, please

The store smells like dust and cardboard and old carpet. It's not necessarily a bad smell, it just doesn't live up to her memories.

She remembers the perpetual scent of menthol cigarettes and some kind of cheap men's perfume wafting through the air. The store used to smell like her dad and now it doesn't. And that just makes it all even more real.

Boxes upon boxes litter the room, filled with records. Some older, some newer. Guitars adorn one wall while the others are covered in posters from tours that happened long ago, some even before she was born.

There is something comforting about being here. It’s like stepping back into the past. Long nights watching Dad and his friends play their guitars after store-closing. Discovering new bands whenever a new shipment of records came in. And yes - she is the first to admit that in her younger years, she mostly chose the records by how cool the cover looked. 

It’s also memories of Dad getting caught up in the after-hours jam sessions and forgetting about her dance recital and that one time he threw a guitar at the window out of anger that a shipment of records got lost. It took him months to get the window replaced. She could probably still trace exactly where the crack used to be. 

Being here is very reminiscent in all the good and bad ways. But it’s a warped version of the past. One that’s laced with all the knowledge she has now. Like a movie that you’ve seen a million times.

“I don’t think pregnant women are supposed to be doing that!” 

Jamie’s voice cuts through the nostalgia-induced fog like a sunbeam through the clouds. And it also gives her a little heart attack as the only sound filling the room up until now had been her moving around and the soft tunes of an Eric Clapton record playing in the background.

“Jesus fuck! You scared me. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to startle pregnant women either and give them heart attacks.” 

He looks at her with those big expressive eyes of his and a comically overdone pout on his lips. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. But seriously give me that.” 

He’s so quick to take the box of records from her hands (Y/N) hardly has time to process what’s going on. 

Quite honestly, his worry is a bit misplaced here but she appreciates the sentiment even if he might be a little overly cautious at that moment. It feels nice to be cared for. 

“You know I’m pregnant, not sick, right? I can carry stuff.” 

“Yeah but why would you if you got me carrying it for you?” 

He has a point, she has to give him that. 

“Fair enough. Those go over there in the corner please.” 

Jamie follows her order without hesitation and, after setting the box down in its designated place, his eyes dart across the room and light up with childlike wonder and curiosity.

“This used to be your dad’s place, yeah? It looks really neat with all them posters and shit. Like stepping into an old person’s mind but like a cool old person that buys you alcohol when you’re 15 and lets you watch horror movies when your mum said no.” 

Of all the adjectives in the world, (Y/N) wouldn’t ever think of using the word “cool” to describe her dad. He was creative and fun and eccentric and stubborn — but cool? 

Then again he was her dad and no one ever likes to think of their own parents as cool. Oh god, will their kid think she’s uncool?! 

“Uh yeah, the shop and the apartment right above us. He owned it, now I do. I’m trying to get it all fixed up and ready to be sold.”

“What? Why?” 

There is something to be said about Jamie’s face and his absolute inability to mask his emotions. Everything he thinks and feels is mirrored twice as vividly on his face. He’s all furrowed brows and pouty lips. 

“I mean — it’s a record store. People don’t really buy records anymore. Be honest, when was the last time you bought one instead of just streaming the music?” 

“Like two weeks ago.” 

“Fuck off, no you didn’t!” 

“Uh — yeah, I did. Olivia Rodrigo if you must know.” 

A soft giggle falls from (Y/N)’s lips. How fitting for Jamie to buy an album full of teenage angst. 

“Well, you’re one of very few people though. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to sell. I’d keep it open. Instead of selling instruments, it’d turn that part of the shop into a little stage with a coffee counter or a bar. Host open mic nights and shine a spotlight on undiscovered artists. But the world isn’t perfect and there is no way I can afford to turn that vision into reality so really there’s no use in letting myself get too caught up in it.” 

There is pity in his eyes and she hates it. She doesn’t want pity, not his or anyone else’s. Has seen enough of it, especially lately. If she had received just one more “Sorry for your loss” card in the mail from relatives she hadn’t seen in decades, she probably would’ve stabbed a fork in her own eye. Pity does no good to no one. 

“Anyway, Jamie. Not that I don’t enjoy hanging out with you, it’s kind of necessary if we want to get this whole beings-friends-thing right, but uh — what are you doing here?” 

“Jesus, can’t a guy just come around to say hi to his baby? “ 

She thinks the way he says the word “Baby” in his thick accent is surprisingly and undeniably adorable. As if it ends in an “eh” instead of a “y”.

“By the way, they’re as big as a blueberry now.” 

And the way he’s keeping track of the baby's growth gets her right in the heart. For some reason, this seems to come so naturally to him when it all still feels weird and foreign and surreal to her. As if it were happening to someone else and she’s just a mere spectator. The idea that something as small as a blueberry will one day turn into a proper baby, a child, a teenager … a whole ass adult - is so wild to her. Almost incomprehensible. A person with their own feelings and dreams and personality. (Y/N) wonders if at any point in this pregnancy, she'll wake up and it'll all just make sense or if that only comes once she's holding the baby in her arms.

“That's cute. Doesn't answer my question though. What brings you here?”

A shadow of something flickers across Jamie’s face. Something unreadable and unfamiliar. Something that makes (Y/N) feel a sense of dread bubbling up in her stomach.

“I uh — I can’t do this.”

And there it is. That unfamiliar shadow is now a metaphorical atom bomb, a mushroom cloud of all that could have been and won’t be.

“Oh okay. I mean no, not okay. This sucks actually. You said you wanted to be part of the baby’s life and now you’re bailing? That’s a shit move, Jamie. You’re a right prick for pulling that crap.” 

“What? Oh no!” his eyes widen as the realization sets in. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Well then what did you mean? Cause you’re truly giving me a heart attack right now. Second one for today. You really need to start working on your conversation starters.” 

She had given him the chance to opt out of being a dad, to not be a part of the baby’s life. It seemed like the right thing to do and, foolishly, (Y/N) had believed that she’d be okay with him doing just that. In this very moment though, she feels everything but okay. The idea of Jamie changing his mind is terrifying. 

Sometimes you don’t realize just how much you need something — or someone until you’re faced with the possibility of losing them.

“I mean, I can’t do this alone. I need to tell someone. All I keep thinking about is the baby and I feel like I am going to explode any second now. I know we can’t tell everyone yet ‘cause of — well you know, things going wrong and stuff. But I need to tell someone. You got to tell Rebecca and your mum, I think it’s only fair I get to tell two people as well, yeah?”

A sense of relief floods her. Starts in her toes and fills her all the way to the top of her head. He wants this — wants the baby. It’s not just her in this. It’s nice to know you have someone in your corner. It’s also scary. Because he deserves to know just whose team he’s on. And being vulnerable fucking sucks. 

“Jamie, that’s fine. Absolutely you can tell your mum.” 

“And Simon? You got two people so — “

“I didn’t though.” 

“Uh yes, you did. I know you told Rebecca.” 

“That’s right.”

“And your mum too”.

The silence that follows his words is deafening. Being vulnerable means also admitting guilt. It means owning up to all of your mistakes. Though we are not the sum of our mistakes, they are what help shape the person we become. And (Y/N) really doesn’t think they make her a very good one.

“And your mum too?” 

More silence.

“You didn’t tell your mum? Why not? “

To his credit, Jamie looks truly surprised and confused. There is no judgment there, just absolute bewilderment and that signature softness that rounds out his features and settles in his eyes whenever Jamie talks to her about something serious. Granted they’ve not had that many conversations but she hopes that softness stays. She hopes that maybe their baby can have those soft, gentle eyes too.

“I’m not sure. I think I’m scared. My mum and I have a — complicated relationship. I disappoint her, she judges me. You know, the usual.” 

“You think she’ll be disappointed because we're having a baby? Is it because of me?”

(Y/N) shrugs, breaking eye contact and fixing her gaze on the old grey carpet with the ugly 90s pattern. What if those soft eyes can look straight through her, see all the ugly parts and the insecurities? That’s too scary for now. Too much too soon.

“No, it has nothing to do with you. Think she’ll just be disappointed I didn’t get pregnant according to the timeline she dreamed up for my life when I was like 2 years old. Had it all planned out for me and I never stuck to it.” 

Jamie is quiet for a moment but (Y/N) doesn’t dare to look back up at him. She can’t deal with any more pity.

“Well if you want to practice telling a mum, we can start with mine.”

“Huh?” 

“You can come to Manchester with me if you want. To tell my mum. We’ll have one mum down then, makes it easier to do it a second time. It’s science.” 

Jamie has the fascinating quality of making you believe in his words just by being so undeniably charming and because he believes in them himself. He makes it look easy when it is everything but.

“And if things don’t go well with your mum at least you’ll know you have at least one mum you can rely on, even if it’s not your own. She raised me pretty much by herself so she knows a thing or two about babies and parenting and stuff.” 

The mocking raise of (Y/N)’s right eyebrow doesn’t go unnoticed by Jamie who opens his lips to a silent gasp and clutches his chest with an overly dramatic gesture. 

“What? You saying I didn’t turn out perfectly?”

“No,” she laughs, a lightness festering in her chest. Like the first rays of sunshine after a cold winter that never seemed to end. Like a glass of wine after a long day at work. Like your favorite song on the radio at the exact moment you need it most. “I think you turned out exactly the way you were supposed to.” 

“Thanks,” Jamie says with that cheeky smile playing on his lips that makes him look a little younger than he actually is. Then he dares to wink at her and it’s a little annoying but also insanely charming. “Not sure you meant it as a compliment but I am taking it. Now when are you free for a trip up to Manchester?” 

(Y/N)’s been on a lot of road trips around the country when she was younger. She’s even spent a whole summer traveling Europe, partially by train but most of the time was spent stuffed in a Fiat Punto with 3 of her friends and all their luggage. It was stuffy, it was chaotic and it was immensely fun. None of those road trips ever involved a shiny black Aston Martin Rapide though. 

Or a famous footballer dressed in the ugliest lime green sweater (Y/N) has ever seen. 

“That’s all the luggage you got?” Jamie questions as he moves the black shades off of his eyes and sets them on the top of his head, holding back some of his hair. It shouldn’t work so well but it does. 

“I mean, we’re only staying for a night right? Why? Should I have brought more? How much did you pack?” 

He glances at her, then towards the car, and back at her. A sheepish look crosses his face before being replaced by his childlike cheekiness. “That’s confidential. Don’t worry about it, yeah?” 

“I got my ginger lollies, that’s all that matters really.” 

“You feeling alright?” 

“Mh, I’m good. Just pregnant.” 

His eyes drop down to her stomach for just a second before he nods his head in what (Y/N) can only describe as a mix of pride and satisfaction. “Yeah, you are.” 

That’s new. Well not new-new but it hasn’t happened since the day of the funeral. That tingly feeling in her stomach that has fuck all to do with the baby and everything with how the baby got there. Yes, Jamie is hot and (Y/N) is the first to admit as much but there has been so much stress and chaos and she hardly had time to think about anything but surviving and making sure not to completely lose herself in bad visions of what-ifs that her brain has had no time to process any feelings of arousal or lust. That look he just gave her though, that one made her remember it for just a second.

“You sure you’re alright?” 

Jamie’s voice shakes her from her daydream and brings her back to the real world, her eyes focusing back on the obscene car parked in front of her tiny apartment building looking so insanely out of place.

“Uh yes, I’m fine. I just — sometimes I forget that you’re famous.” 

Jamie regards her for a moment before shrugging his shoulder and grabbing the bag from her hands. “I don’t. It’s fun. Now come on, let’s goooooo.” 

His voice is dipped in excitement and there’s a bounce in his step. If this is how the prospect of seeing his mother makes him feel and behave, she must be one lovely woman. Whenever (Y/N) thinks of her own mother her chest fills with tiny metaphorical icicles. Sharp and rough and painful. It’s all regret and judgment and disapproval. It’s “You gained weight”, “you look tired”, and “You should really look into getting a new job”. Daggers disguised as roses. Stabs right to the heart in the name of being honest. “I just care about you, because I love you, because I am your mother!” 

If there is one thing (Y/N) knows for sure, it’s that she will never ever find the need to resort to criticism and thinly veiled malice in order to show her child that she cares. They will know. Every single day. Because she’ll make sure to show them. Every single day in all the big and tiny ways a person can show their love. 

“Kidney Bean?”

“Kidney Bean. And apparently, the baby is sprouting webbed fingers and toes right now. Oh, and it’s starting to move!” 

“Can you feel that?” 

“No, not yet.” 

“It’s mental. Last week she was the size of a blueberry and now she’s a kidney bean. Kid’s growing up too fast.” 

It’s true. There is so much happening all at once and it’s almost impossible to really process it all. Suddenly there is a tiny spark of a human inside her. Not really a baby yet but a baby to her. And it's moving and developing and changing every second of every day. Fucking insane.

“Wait … you said she. You think it’s a girl?”

Maybe it’s the sunlight casting a glow through the windshield but (Y/N) is almost certain she can just about make out a blush dusting Jamie’s cheeks. 

“Dunno.”

“Jamie Tartt, do you want to be a girl dad?” 

He glances at (Y/N) through the corner of his eyes for just a moment but it’s enough for her to see the sincerity in him. This is something he’s thought about before. Learning new things about Jamie is fascinating.

“Ah,  it’s stupid, really. It’s — It’s dumb or whatever.” 

“No, come on, don't go shy on me now. Tell me.” 

He takes a deep breath. A moment passes then another. There is no rush. Sometimes silly thoughts are the result of harsh truths. 

“Told you my dad was a prick. Like the biggest piece of shit walking this earth, yeah? And I knew that all my life. Thing is I still tried to impress him. I just — I wanted him to like me so badly. Just felt wrong that me own dad didn’t care about me and that made me angry. And I kept that anger inside me for so long. Sometimes when I think about the baby and the future I am scared that if I have a son that anger will jump over to him. Like maybe all Tartt men are cursed or some shit like that. But if I had a little girl maybe that would make it easier for me to be a good dad. I don’t mind either way, obviously, but the idea of having a son scares me.” 

It’s the most vulnerable he’s been with her so far and by the way he clenches his jaw and grabs onto the steering wheel just a little tighter, (Y/N) can tell this isn’t easy on him. It means a lot that he shares this part of him with her anyway. It feels like they are actually becoming friends. So opening up to him in return is only half as horrifying. 

“When I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, I wrote a short story for school and I won an award. They did this big ceremony thing where the 3 finalists got to read their stories out loud for an audience and then receive their prizes. My mum didn’t show up, not sure if it was because she stayed longer at the office and didn’t care enough to leave on time or if she just didn’t feel like getting out of the house. Point is, she wasn’t there. When I came home that night I was sad, obviously, and I was also pissed. Because why the fuck couldn’t she take one night off to come see me succeed at something even if it wasn’t something she deemed worthy of praise. 

So I yelled at her and I’m sure I said some hurtful things. But I was so devastated and angry and I needed an outlet for once. She called me ungrateful but I was used to that, she always called me ungrateful. Then she looked at me with that look of absolute resignation and malice and she said that she hopes I have a daughter like me one day and that she makes me realize how hard it is to love me. 

When I think of the baby, sometimes I see a little girl too. One that I will love so much she never has to doubt it for a single second. And I will also prove my mother wrong. Because it will be so easy to love my little girl and it would’ve been so easy to love me, her little girl.” 

It’s the first time she’s ever said those words out loud. Truly, (Y/N) had not expected for them to come out in an Aston Martin, on the way to meet her baby’s father’s mother but life doesn’t seem to care for plans very much these days.

Softly, as if to not startle her, Jamie places his hand on hers, squeezing gently.

“I think your mum is a right bitch.” 

“Thanks. I think your dad is a huge asshole.” 

“We’re gonna be better than them, right?” 

It’s not really a question. It’s more of a promise.

“We will. I know it.”

His hand doesn’t leave hers for a good long while. 

The nerves don’t hit her until they pull up to the quaint little house with the white front. There’s a rose bush to the side and some kids playing football just across the way. The nerves don’t hit her until Jamie puts the car in park but when they do, they hit her like a freight train.

“Woah, you alright?” 

“Huh?” 

“You look all pale and like you’ve seen a ghost or something. Do you have to puke?”

A chuckle falls from her lips at the absurdity of it all. In all honesty, she’s not met a lot of parents yet but the few she did meet were parents of actual partners. People she had been dating for a while. It was a natural progression of steps. This is all wrong and sideways and topsy-turvy. You’re supposed to meet the mum first and then get pregnant. 

Again with the life and the plans. 

“I’m fucking nervous.” 

“Hah,” Jamie laughs. The audacity of this guy. “You’re nervous to meet my mum? Why? She’s an angel.”

“Do you not know how intimidating that is? Like, if she was shit I wouldn’t care but she sounds wonderful and I want her to like me. No, I need her to like me. Desperately. And I can only imagine what she thinks of me already. Some floozy who gets knocked up and really just wants your money.” 

Before she even fully realizes what’s happening, (Y/N) feels Jamie’s hands on her cheeks, framing her face in warmth.

“Calm down, please. I promise it’ll be alright. My mum will love you, I know it. Probably more than she loves me. Actually no that’s a lie, but she will love you and she will love our baby. Promise.”

“She’s not gonna judge me for — you know. Getting pregnant even though we’re not dating or anything.” 

“My mum was married to my dad, worst person on planet Earth. Don’t think she’s in any position to judge you. It’ll be alright, trust me.” 

She hardly knows this man and yet she can’t help but do just that. Trust him.

The first thing (Y/N) notices about Georgie is her smile. A smile that is so familiar because it looks exactly like Jamie’s smile. Warm and radiant and true. A part of (Y/N) hopes that their baby inherits that same smile. Partially because it’s a really good smile and partially because maybe that could help Jamie realize that he is more than the sum of his father’s problems and mistakes. He is all his mother’s boy.

“Oh, I missed you, my baby.” 

Georgie wraps her arms around Jamie’s middle, getting swallowed by his frame for a moment. There’s no denying that part of (Y/N)’s heart breaks a little seeing how loving of a relationship these two have and wondering where she and her own mother went wrong.

And as it so happens with so many kids that have never been loved quite the way they deserved, (Y/N) can’t help but search for the problem in herself. 

“Yeah sorry for not visiting earlier. You know how it is with training and stuff.” 

“Don’t worry about it. I know my boy is busy being a star.” 

The words hold a slight mocking, never mean but in the way that only people who are close can tease each other. You know every word comes laced with deep affection, with pride, with love.

“And it’s so nice to meet you too. I’m Georgie.” 

It takes a second for (Y/N) to realize that Jamie’s mum is now talking to her directly.

“I uh — oh thank you. Nice to meet you too, I’m (Y/N).” 

Georgie smells like mint chewing gum and floral perfume as she pulls (Y/N) into a hug. She’s soft and gentle and it’s been the first hug from a mother (Y/N) has received in quite some time.

“Sorry, didn’t even ask if you’re a hugger.”

“Oh that’s alright, don’t worry about it.” 

She’s not a hugger, never really was, but there is something about Georgie granting her some affection that isn’t all that bad. Maybe their kid can have at least one grandmother who cares and who isn’t completely disgusted by the idea of showing any kind of positive emotions.

“Jamie never brings girlfriends around so I’m a bit out of my element here if I’m being honest.” 

“Mum we’re not — she’s not.” Jamie takes a big breath before starting again “(Y/N) and I are friends, yeah? Told you about it on the phone.” 

“Right, right. Well, you don’t bring around a lot of friends either so same difference, really. Now come inside will you, I’m sure we got a lot to catch up on.”

Oh if only she knew how true that sentiment really is.

There are pictures of Jamie staring back at (Y/N) from every corner of the house and Georgie leads them through the hallway and towards the kitchen. Every wall and every shelf holds a memory of him at one point in his life. Gap toothed with a football in hand smiling, surrounded by a field of tulips arm wrapped around his mother’s shoulder, his teenage self smoldering at the camera with an even more questionable haircut than the one he is sporting right now. Oh to be loved in a way that every past version of you is being remembered.

As they reach the kitchen a sweet scent fills the room when a man clad in an apron turns around and faces them with a huge smile playing on his face. He has a dorky kind of charm to him that immediately puts you at ease. Maybe it’s just the frilly apron, maybe it’s the big oven gloves, maybe it’s the smile. Either way, (Y/N) thinks that if they take the news well, her kid might have truly lucked out on one side of the grandparents department. 

“Jamie, welcome home.” 

“Hi Simon, thanks, mate. Glad to be back. This is (Y/N).” 

“The friend, right.” Simon says and shoots Georgie a look that neither of them misses. Subtlety doesn’t seem to be one of his best qualities. “It’s nice to meet you, (Y/N).”

“Nice to meet you too. It smells amazing in here.” 

“I found this new recipe for honey blondies. Not sure if they'll be any good but I guess we'll find out. If you guys want to go have a seat, I'll come bring them over.”

“Actually,” Jamie speaks up while nervously fiddling with his hands. “I was hoping we could have a talk before we do anything else. There’s something I need to tell you both.” 

Imagining the hypothetical scenario of telling your mum you’re having a baby and actually doing it really are two completely different things it seems. Gone is all of Jamie’s confidence and replaced with a whole lot of anxiety. 

“You're worrying me, Jamie. What has you acting so serious? Did you get someone pregnant or something?”

Georgie's words are followed by a thick awkward silence. It's heavy and suffocating and it makes (Y/N) feel uneasy in both her heart and her head.

It doesn't take long for Jamie’s parents to realize what his silence means. Everything communicated by not saying a single word.

“Oh, fuck.”

And there's nothing to add to Georgie's reaction. It's the exact same one (Y/N) had when she first saw those faint blue lines.

Of all the possible outcomes and ways this day could’ve gone, (Y/N) had not expected to find herself staring at not only a curly-haired Roy Kent but also come face to face with two very persuasive arguments belonging to no other than Keeley fucking Jones. 

“This is surreal.” 

The posters stare back at her all crinkled paper and bleached ink, as if to mock her silently. 

“Ah, well I told them to redecorate when I moved out, think they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.” 

A light dusting of pink settles on the apples of Jamie’s cheeks as well as the tips of his ears. This man can’t hide his emotions for the life of him. It’s quite adorable really. 

“Do they know?” 

“Does who know?” 

“Roy and Keeley. Do they know you have their pictures up in your room?”

“Well no and It’s not my room anymore, is it? ‘S not like I have ‘em hanging at home. Put these up ages ago.” 

A giggle slips through (Y/N)’s lips at his desperate attempt to talk himself out of this situation. 

“It’s okay, Jamie. I won’t tell.” 

“There’s nothing to tell, alright?” he responds in mock offense before sitting down on his childhood bed next to (Y/N). “Just liked boobs and football and those two were the best those fields had to offer, yeah? Can’t really blame me.” 

“Not much has changed has it?”

He shrugs his shoulders in response “Nah. Still like boobs and football but no way I’d put up a poster of granddad’s ugly mug nowadays.”

From the few times they talked about his job, including his teammates and coaches, (Y/N) was able to gather that Jamie’s relationship with Roy is something special. Odd, but special. Maybe that’s what happens when you end up working with your childhood idol. Either way, no matter how much shit he likes to talk about him, it’s clear that Jamie respects and admires Roy a great deal still.

“And uh — and Keeley?” 

“What about her?” 

“Is she — are you — how are things?�� 

She still remembers that crestfallen look on his face on the day of the funeral. That infinite sadness in his eyes. She hadn’t put two and two together at that moment but later that night it all clicked. Keeley was the woman he was in love with, the woman who did not love him back. And while (Y/N) knows that she and Jamie are only bound together by happenstance and fate — if one chooses to believe in that, and that there is nothing romantic about their situation, it does sting a little to know that the man you’re having a baby with is in love with someone else.

“We’re good. We’re friends, think that’s all we’ll ever be. Her and Roy, they’re happy and I don’t want to ruin it for either of them. Keeley and I just were not right together.” 

“And you’re okay with that?” 

He nods his head, a small smile playing on his lips “Yeah, I’m alright with it. If I hadn’t made a fool of myself at the funeral then you and I wouldn’t have — you know, and then we wouldn’t be having a baby. Little Kidney Bean.” 

“That’s true. Your mum seemed excited.” 

“Hah, sorry about her. She can be intense.” 

Intense might be the understatement of the century. It took her approximately 2.3 seconds to get over the initial shock of the announcement and really process it before Georgie let out a scream of pure excitement and joy and wrapped both Jamie and (Y/N) up in her arms. She didn’t fully let go for a good 20 minutes. It was intense. It was also phenomenal.

“Don’t apologize. I am so glad she took it so well, Simon too. At least now I’ll have the certainty that my baby will have one set of loving grandparents at least.” 

“Hey,” Jamie says and nudges her shoulder with his “We’ll sort out telling your mum next, okay. I’m sure it’ll go better than you think. And if not we can always call up my mum for some more hugs and a pep talk. Whatever happens, you won’t have to do it alone. I promise.” 

For what is probably the first time in her life (Y/N) lets herself believe that there truly is someone else having her back, undisputedly and all the way. It’s unfamiliar. It’s a little scary. It’s also wonderful.

“Thanks, Jamie. I appreciate it, I really do. Think so far we’re doing alright, huh?” 

“I’d say so. Two sexy parents and a little Kidney Bean.” 

Their laughter echoes through Jamie’s childhood bedroom for quite a while longer until at some point it stills and gives room to soft breathing and quiet snores. The bed isn’t meant for two grown adults and really Jamie truly meant to sleep on the couch but somewhere between talks of baby clothes and childhood memories, eyes grew heavy and tired, and soon enough both of them are fast asleep.

Just them and their little Kidney Bean 

— and a curly-haired Roy Kent 

— and Keeley’s boobs.

taglist (@ me if you want to be taken off or added): @captainfrisbee - @scaramou - @mischiefmanaged71 - @rexorangecouny - @respondingtoshowerthoughts-blog - @tweasley20 - @dreamtrydoforkinggood - @oxxolovemelikeyoudooxxo - @heletsmelovehim - @snubug - @katdahlali - @oldglitterstory - @lalla-04p - @aiyaiy

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Transcript

Jonas: This is my friend, Dalia. Dalia, this is Jude.

Dalia: The roomie.

Jonas: Roommate and friend.

Dalia: I've heard a couple things about you.

Jude: How worried should I be about that?

Dalia: They were good things, mostly. Though they tell me you speak German like shit.

Jude: Where you from?

Dalia: Pittsburgh, you?

Jude: Guess.

Dalia: You got a fucked up accent, but I hear something familiar. Gimme a state.

Jude: New Mexico.

Dalia: Roswell and Chile peppers. Y'ever seen an alien?

Jude: As a kid I went to this UFO convention with my weird neighbour and her grandma.

Dalia: And? Did you see a UFO?

Jude: I usually don't tell people this part, but yeah.

Astrid: Dalia, they didn't have menthols, so I had to get plain.

Dalia: Ugh! Vile. I'll have to make do. By the way,Jude, this is my friend, Astrid. Astrid, this is Jude, Jonas' friend and roommate. He was just telling me he saw a UFO. Continue.

Astrid: I don't believe in flying saucers and such things.

Dalia: That's closed-minded. Jude, would you like a cigarette?

Jude: I don't really smoke.

Astrid: So you're the guy Leon was bitching so much about.

Dalia: Astrid. Oh lord.

Jude: Hm. What he say?

Astrid: All of this stuff about how you apparently refuse to speak the language, and that he's forced to switch to English and all of this.

Dalia: And you can disregard it. He's a giant baby and just pissed that his English is bad, and he can't be a pain in the ass in all languages.

Jude: Thought this guy was a friend of yours.

Astrid: We endure him.

Jude: I don't understand that.

Dalia: You will when you see his apartment.

[slowd1ving]

[INAMORATA] SNIPPET . *࿐ SUNDAY, MOZE, SOMEWHAT JIAOQIU?? MENTIONED NSFW

currently writing a very... interesting fic for halloween it's a one shot but already at 9k words lmao anyways here's some of the exposition

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

Tinny music crackles in your earphones that knot haphazardly at your chest, almost in sync with the subdued spark from your lighter. The song isn’t particularly good (neither is the weather: a drizzle that always seems to drip from a perpetually ultramarine sky), but any shitty song would do to liven up the ambience of the smoking area in this particularly bleak corner of the campus, 

It’s blue, you note boredly. The smoke, that is, mingling with the vapour wisps of condensed breathing. There’s a certain meaning to be found in standing outside in subzero temperatures, finding peak entertainment in the clouds produced from your mouth as if you were some child. You just haven’t quite found it. Meaning, that is. 

You’re sure there’s one or two bad songs about it, if you scroll through the playlist enough. 

Inhale. Bitter menthol washes over your tongue–you’ve long gotten used to the flavour. Of course, the glaringly red car that slows down on the road in front of you also helps in forgetting to appreciate any new notes of the stick between your lips, but you digress. 

A window rolls down. The street-lamp glowing a frigid lazuline flickers precariously. You exhale, watching the smoke trace shapes over the bloody car—some boxy shape that could totally be used as a muscle car. These things happen simultaneously. These things also wash the murky taints of calculus from your mind and instil some form of amusement into your week. 

If you don’t count maintaining your cover at a human university as being thrilling enough to regale anyone with. 

Brusquely, a hand sticks out into the drizzle to wave at you—self-consciously, you wave back with a question clouding your mind. Though, it is almost immediately answered when street-lamp strains a bit more and you finally see the outline of an acquaintance you met while hauling boxes into your new dorm room at the beginning of the semester. 

A tentative alliance, more like, with the both of you sniffing something off about the other. 

“Yo, Jiaoqiu,” you greet back after he beckons you closer. His glasses are slipping off his face, and your hand itches to push them back up. 

Of course, it perhaps doesn’t hurt in establishing closeness by being guts deep in him just a week ago. 

“You’ll be there for the Film Fair, right?” he murmurs. You can’t possibly miss how his eyes flick to your lips briefly: how his pretty throat is wrapped tight with a scarf tonight to protect from both the boreal chill and prying eyes, how his glasses can’t seem to hide his incandescent gaze on the marks on your body, barely hidden by the loose shirt draped over you today. 

He was on the culinary course, he’d told you a week ago, but you could’ve figured out that much from the exquisite breakfast he’d cooked for you in the morning: one you didn’t need to eat. Instead, the sanguine flesh of berries had ended up being smeared on his skin alongside the mellow cream—you could’ve surmised his degree from the divine taste of his body, easily. That, in your opinion, had been your best meal for a good while yet. 

“You want me there?” You take another drag of your cigarette, watching him watch you. In his eagerness, your keen eyes pick up on the glamour disguising his fluffy ears starting to wane; and unbidden, a memory rises to mind of a night much like this. Those same ears, pressed flat to his head, with that lilt of his voice sounding far less confident. 

A friendship is forged with a good fuck, you wisely conclude. 

“Yeah, duh,” he breathes, and the vapour coming out of his mouth mingles with the smoke pouring from your own. 

Or two. 

“Send me the details,” you smile, a slanted one that mirrors your lax attitude. “You still have my number, right?”

Of course he does. 

“Yeah, I do,” he clears his throat, almost shaking himself out of a stupor that he never noticed he was in. There’s a tense dance occurring between both of you constantly, and unfortunately for him, he can never quite outpace you. It’s present in the regretful line of his mouth as he glances at the time on his phone, the lingering gaze that traces your being, and the downturned mirage of his ears—as if he forgets that you can see through his glamour. “I’ll see you.”

“See you,” you return, savouring the rich scent of energy that exudes from him—one he can never mask, for he cannot himself tell that it even exists. 

As the cherry-red Mustang—or whatever car it is—rolls away, you stroll back to the smoking area to appreciate the remnants of your cigarette: something you hadn’t been able to due to all the distractions, as you’d like to put it. 

But all is not well. 

Instead, you resume your road-and-cigarette-smoke watching only to discover another pair of eyes meeting your own from the shadows cast by the lamplight across the street. With the prussic overcast to the sky, you once more don’t recognise the figure afore you initially; until a car drives past and its glaring headlights reveal him for all but three seconds. 

Moze. 

You think you’ve seen him around Jiaoqiu several times—perhaps enough to rationalise that they are indeed friends, forged with something a bit more innocuous than a one-night stand. 

But regardless of how you stand tangentially with your mutual buddy (or fuck-buddy in your case), the common threads that bind you also included that as of this year, he is your roommate. And classmate, too, in perhaps one of the most obscure classes to ever be known to man. If you had less of a spine, you might’ve waved—but as it stands, the wintry chill between the two of you suits you just fine. If anything, the fact that he hasn’t beaten you up for sleeping with his friend leaves a positively amicable aftertaste in your mouth. 

Absent-mindedly, you stub the cigarette into the already-bleak wall, leaving a rather abstract trail of ash behind. His nose wrinkles in distaste, but you ignore it.  

Is it a sin for an incubus to be any more addicted to human creation? Wow. You really should’ve been a philosopher. 

Well, any more than it is being an abomination, you muse one final time, almost ruefully. 

Almost. 

[that-house]

SATAN’S PERFECT IDIOT OR: POP MUSIC AND THE BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL IN NEW SPACE CITY OR: INVINO VERITAS AND THE DOCUMENTARY TO END ALL DOCUMENTARIES (AND THE WORLD)

To explain why for me, universally-beloved pop sensation Invino Veritas, being drunk on The Every Night Show with Blue Jerry Seinfeld was a bad thing would require copious context that I’m too lazy to give right now, especially when it could be revealed at a more interesting and dramatic time later. Suffice it to say the conversation had started bad, and was going worse.

“is that legal?” asked famous talk show host Blue Jerry Seinfeld, bluely.

“No,” replied famous pop star Invino Veritas (me, in case you forgot), honestly.

We both trailed off into an awkward silence, the sort of silence that two famous people trail off into when one of them confesses to double-parking a private jet in front of the fire escape of an orphanage on live TV, but in my defense building an orphanage near the corner store where I buy my menthols was poor civil planning on their part. Hardly anyone got hurt, anyways.

“While we’ve got you here, would you like to say anything about your upcoming album, Always Read the Fine Print?”

I batted my eyelids coquettishly, my seventeen thousand dollar UltraGlitter eyeshadow emitting enough light to temporarily blind (and in one case, as my lawyers would later tell me, somehow permanently deafen) the audiences at home. “Well, let's just say it’s still a bit of a work in progress.”

Blue Jerry Seinfeld stared at me gormlessly and bluely. As part of his ten year contract with The Every Night Show, he was obligated to stay awake 24/7/365/10, or actually more like 24/7/365.25/10 to account for leap years. It gave him a miserable earnestness that drew his guests in and inspired them to share things they’d never even admit to themselves. He didn’t need that for me, though, because I was drunk.

“I’m actually delaying on purpose,” I continued.

Blue Jerry Seinfeld’s sleepless blue eyes bored into my soul the way a particularly blue soul drill might similarly bore into my soul, only bluer. “Tell me more about that.”

“You see, Blue Jerry Seinfeld, you know how I’m with Morgenstern Records, you know, the record label owned by Lucifer Morningstar?”

“The guy from the bible, right?”

“Yeah. He did porn for a while, too.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen that. Good stuff.”

“Yeah.”

We trailed off into another awkward silence, the sort of silence that two famous people trail off into while thinking about the biblical Lucifer’s penis and its frankly ridiculous proportions. Thirteen inches length, seven inches circumference, by the way. I know you were wondering.

“Anyway, what about him?”

“Yeah, so you know all those stories about how someone makes a deal with the devil, and then they get totally screwed on the wording?”

“I’m familiar,” said the man who was contractually obligated to go ten years without sleeping. He was kind of ugly, now that I thought about it.

“I don’t think you’d really get it, actually,” I said, dismissing his lived experience the same way I dismissed my first butler for not excitedly running to come greet me at the door every time I got home. I mean, it wasn’t in Gerald’s terms of employment or anything but would it really have killed him to go above and beyond every single day? (LAWYER’S ADDENDUM: Gerald MacDonald had a rare and little-known heart condition which would have killed him if he ever felt any excitement or joy, and the depressive spiral he fell into following his termination likely saved his life. You cannot conclusively prove that my client, Invino Veritas, was unaware of his condition or that she specifically ended his employment for any reason other than to protect him).

Blue Jerry Seinfeld bristled in irritation, shaking his venomous quills as if to deter a predator and making a noise that sounded like a blue, be-quilled clone of a 20th century comedian muttering “fucking divas, man” under his breath. “As you were saying,” he said, more audibly and bluely.

“As I was saying, I made a deal with the devil and then I got totally screwed on the wording.”

You know what, to save time, let’s just assume that Blue Jerry Seinfeld does everything bluely going forward, and I can just say that he did a thing and you can add in the word “bluely” yourself, because the way he did it, whatever it was, was undeniably blue. So next paragraph, when I was going to say “‘Much like me and my deal with the studio,’ said Blue Jerry Seinfeld, making everything about him, bluely,” I’ll just say “‘Much like me and my deal with the studio,’ said Blue Jerry Seinfeld, making everything about him,” and you’ll just have to keep this paragraph in mind.

“Much like me and my deal with the studio,” said Blue Jerry Seinfeld, making everything about him. Did you do it? Did you do the thing I told you to do? The super easy thing I literally just told you to do? Here, consult this flow chart:

Yes, I did as I was ordered by pop sensation Invino Veritas: good girl, or whatever you are. Keep it up!

No, I ignored the super easy request of a really hot woman: literally how did you fuck that up. The bar was so low.

“Sure, Blue Jerry Seinfeld. Whatever. Anyway, back to talking about me: so I have a seven record deal with Morgenstern Records, right? And in the last five years I’ve put out six albums, all to incredible critical and financial success. Selling my soul to the devil was the best decision I ever made.”

“But…?” said Blue Jerry Seinfeld (don’t forget).

“But… I may have neglected to Always Read the Fine Print. See what I did there? Anyways, it turns out that when the seventh album is done, I go to Hell, and so does everyone who’s ever listened to even a single second of my music.” And of course, due to my incredible popularity and sex appeal, my music is inescapable in New Space City, so every single one of the ten trillion people who live here has heard my music.

“What the fuck? My fucking kids love your music! Oh god! Oh god we’re all going to die! Oh god! Oh cruel and merciless god, all I have ever asked of you is the chance to dream again, and now it seems I will be denied even that!” Blue Jerry Seinfeld was having a panic attack, something famously pretty common in cheaply-made clones. He didn’t even have kids, he just had implanted memories from the 1990s.

It was frankly pretty embarrassing, watching this blue man break down and cry on the floor, and clearly the studio execs agreed. A crack team of clonehunters rappelled onto the stage and shot Blue Jerry Seinfeld until he stopped twitching. The corpse was dragged off stage, and The Every Night Show with Blue Jerry Seinfeld cut to commercial.

The commercial was an ad for dog food, and featured a few scandalously-uncollared dogs dancing at the club to my hit single I Literally Just Killed a Guy (So Let’s Make Out in the Back of a Cop Car), so if there were any dogs in New Space City who somehow hadn’t heard my music, well, they probably were going to Hell now, too.

A few minutes later, they’d defrosted a new Blue Jerry Seinfeld, and rammed an icepick into the part of his brain responsible for feeling fear. “Sorry about that everyone,” said the new Blue Jerry Seinfeld, oozing blue blood from a hole in his eye socket. “So, Invino, you were saying that we’re all going to Hell. I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

“Yeah, pretty much. Of course, if anyone kills me before I finish the album, I guess I’d be the only one to go to Hell.”

Why did I say that. Oh right, the context.

So when I was like, seven years old, I got into a wish-god’s windowless white van because he said he could turn me into a princess. When I told him my name was Invino Veritas, and that I lived at 3243293 Jelq Street, he started laughing.

I asked him what was so funny, and he said that he was going to turn me into a princess but then he had a way funnier idea, and cursed me so that I have to tell the truth as long as I have literally any alcohol in my bloodstream. It didn’t really affect me at the time, but once I reached the legal drinking age of twelve I started losing friends really fast because I couldn’t stop telling people that I thought I was better than them.

Who names their kid Invino Veritas, anyway? Like, that’s just asking for them to get bullied by an omnipotent, kinda pervy deity with a penchant for stupid puns. No one else in my family has a weird name, and still I got singled out for a stupid name-based curse from birth, the assholes. Whatever, I got to channel that rage into my music and I’m over it now. I’m over it.

“Could you say that again, for audiences at home?”

“Sure thing, Blue Jerry Seinfeld. When I finish my next album, every single person and dog and elf in New Space City will be immediately sent to Hell, unless I’m killed before it’s done.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to say, before a swarm of desperate fans looking to avoid eternal damnation storms the studio?”

“Just that I hear your complaints, and I’m listening, and I think I can delay the album for, like a year or two, so you should do whatever you want in the time you have before the world ends. Quit your job. Go on that vacation. Kill a guy and make out in the back of a cop car. Preorder Always Read the Fine Print, because I don’t think I can cash those royalty checks once I’m in Hell.”

“You heard her, New Space City. This has been The Every Night Show with Blue Jerry Seinfeld, and it will continue to be The Every Night Show with Blue Jerry Seinfeld until the world ends or my contract expires.” He turned to me, gripping my arm with the sort of intensity that you only get in freshly-defrosted clones. “You can escape out the back. I’ll hold them off for as long as I can. Good luck out there, Invino.”

Aw, that was actually really sweet of him. “Thanks, Blue Jerry Seinfeld. I’m sorry I called you ugly in my internal monologue.”

“Dying feels like falling asleep,” said Blue Jerry Seinfeld, still not releasing my arm.

“Okay, Blue Jerry Seinfeld.”

“Invino, even when I’m dead I don’t get to close my eyes. The cameras are always rolling.”

“Okay, Blue Jerry Seinfeld.” I tugged my arm free of his grip a little bit, but his grip was like magically-reinforced iron that was way stronger than steel or titanium, but probably weaker than magically-reinforced steel.

“The cameras are always rolling, Invino…”

“I have to go, Blue Jerry Seinfeld.” He let me go, and I sprinted out the back of the studio. Behind me, The Every Night Show with Blue Jerry Seinfeld cut to commercial again, and the screaming started.

[hier--soir]

exit music

pre-outbreak tess servopoulos x f!reader

pairing: tess servopoulos x f!reader rating: mature, 18+ mdni summary: in late september, 2013, you drive home from an interstate trip, eager to reunite with tess and your son. warnings/tags: it's outbreak day in detroit, tess and reader are in a long-term relationship with a young child, cigarette smoking [r] [a/n: man i miss smoking menthols], major angst, descriptions of blood and injury, mention of a gun, SPOILERS-> infected child, imminent loss of a child, grief and dissociation, unhappy ending, inferred death of the reader. word count: 3.1k masterlist a/n: i wrote this months ago and it's inspired by the background story for tess' character that got scrapped for the show. i'm sorry, i just couldn't stop thinking about it so i banged an angsty one out. short and sharp aka ouch. anyways i haven't posted anything in months and just remembered this existed so thought i'd share follow @hier--soirupdates if you'd like to be notified when i share my writing

It’s evening in late September, and Summer just won’t quit.

The thick, obtrusive heat swims in through the open window of your Ford Focus, dampening the leather steering wheel beneath your palms. It leaves the skin inside your elbows damp and turns the hair on your neck slick and curly beneath the collar of your shirt.

It’s pitch black out, only headlights and the dull yellow hum of a streetlamp lighting your surrounds.

Idling at a red, you glance at the blinking 11:57 on your dash and crank the window shut. Slip the phone from your pocket and dial the only number you know by heart.

She picks up on the second ring, just as you pull onto the interstate. “What time do you call this?”

A grin splits your face, teeth clacking in delight at the sound of that familiar husky voice.

“Hey pretty mama,” you whisper, voice low and longing. “I wake you?”

A sharp click sounds through the receiver; that shitty old lamp on your bedside being turned on.

“Hey, doll,” Tess softens. “Naw, how’s the drive? Tell me you aren’t far.”

“Drive’s killing me slowly,” you sigh, straightening in your seat. The phone stays balanced on your thigh, fingers hooked over the wheel. “But I just passed Paw Paw; pretty much a straight shot through now.”

“What’s that,” she says. You imagine her checking her watch. “Five hours you been driving already?”

“Something like that,” you tell her. “Stopped for dinner near Chicago. Fucked up the timing of it all.”

“It’s late, baby. You gotta be tired.” 

“Mhm, think I’ll pull over soon. Get some shut eye around Kalamazoo.”

A short huff of laughter bursts down the line. “Good old Kalamazoo. Sounds like a fucking hoot.”

When that beautiful sound dies down the sound of tires on road and wind against the hood rushes back in and you frown a little.

“Tell me about you day?” you ask softly.

“Well, your son’s giving me grief out here.”

“Oh, my son?”

“Yeah.” You can so easily picture the grin on her face; the glint in her eye as she teases you. You wish you were home, staring at it in person. “My kid’s a saint. Dunno who this little devil is.”

“Come on now.” You smile. “What’s he doing?”

“The kid won’t eat,” she groans. “Cooked his favourite, and he screamed my damn ear off still.”

“You do the potatoes how I do them?”

“I did my best, thank you, Martha Stewart.”  

You hum, fingers falling lax against the wheel. The 131 stretches out in a straight shot ahead, black bitumen and white lines lit up only by the high beams of your beat-up car.

Tess’ voice shifts lower, coarser around the edges as she breathes into the phone. “Think it’s too late to return him? Get our money back?”

A rough bark of laughter escapes you, and you welcome the warm swell in your chest. She laughs too, but the sound is a little choked. A long day, you can tell.

“What’d the day care say?”

“The usual,” she replies. “Said he was good, played well, napped well. Apparently, they had pancakes for lunch.”

“Pancakes,” you repeat wistfully. Your stomach pulls taut and hungry at the thought of sticky syrup and sweet buttermilk.  

“He misses you,” she says. “Keeps asking for you.”

“I’d hope so.” You pinch your cheek. Just a quick grab of flesh between thumb and middle finger, eyes watering at the shot of pain. It sharpens your senses. “Four days is a long time to be away from a parent. ‘Specially at his age.”

She goes quiet for a minute. You hear something soft, maybe the sheets rustling as she rolls over in bed. The low whir of a fan in the background.

“Can’t say I blame him,” Tess says finally. “Four days is long.”

An old road sign rushes forward to meet you, a blur of green as your car whips past. Kalamazoo: Next Exit. You flick the indicator on.

“I miss you too, baby,” you murmur. “Get some sleep, alright? I’m pulling over, need a few hours of shut eye, but I’ll be home by morning, you hear?” 

“I hear you.” Another soft click – the lamp turning off again.

“Hey, Tess?” you say quickly.

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

The line crackles a little, and her low voice fills the car one last time. “Hurry up and get home so you can say it to my face, doll.”

You wake with a jolt, sucking down deep lungful’s of hot air as your eyes roll and struggle to adjust to wakefulness again. The car still feels hot, parked in a six-space lot outside an old diner and a gas station. You fumble with the keys, pressing them into the ignition and cranking the window down as soon as the engine thrums to life.

Head lolled drowsily out the window, you gulp fresh air and catch your bearings. The blue numbers on the dash read 5:04, telling you that you slept longer than you meant to. And then blue, more blue, blue and red, red and blue. Flashing across the lot, shining through the passenger window.

The hairs on the back of your neck rise as you lean forward, struggling to see across the lot where the ambulance idles. The side door hangs open, a gaping mouth that reveals a brightly lit medical bay, and the lights atop it pulse in a never ending strobe. You can’t see anyone around. Not even inside the gas station, despite the rig being parked haphazardly by the entrance.

The diner to its left is much the same. The façade is all glass. Inside, a long white counter, linoleum tables, cherry red booths, a gaudy checked pattern on the wall. Not a soul in sight.

A grinning hamburger on the front door leers at you, with a speech bubble drawn from the lip of its mouth that reads You Hungry?

Still glancing around, your hand pats across the passenger seat and weasels its way into your bag. You pluck out a smoke and pinch the filter between your forefinger and thumb until you feel the little ball inside pop. Tuck it between your lips, only looking away for a second to light up, eyes already returning to the gas station by the time cool smoke hits the bottom of your lungs.

“Don’t think they’re comin’ back.”

You flinch, head snapping to the side to locate the origin of the voice. The cigarette tumbles from your lips but you pay it no mind.

The man sits on the curb, legs splayed out in a wide V as he sips a beer. Face gaunt, eyes sunken, he stares at you through the open window. The label on his Budweiser is damp with condensation, peeling off where his bony fingers have gripped it too tight. The sight of it makes any remaining saliva in your mouth dry up.

“What’s that?”

He jostles his beer in the direction of the ambulance. “They’re gone.”

“The paramedics?”

“Yeah, them.” He takes a sip. “And the boy.”

Something uncomfortable curls in your gut and you grip your seatbelt, dragging it across your body to click it into place. Slowly, so the man doesn’t notice. And then you wince, looking down to see the lit cigarette in your lap, burning a perfect little hole through your jeans.

“Fuck,” you whisper. Snatch it up quickly, fingers rubbing away the ash and the ache. Tuck it back in your mouth and take a quick, wary drag.

“Where’d they go?”

“Lord knows,” the man grumbles. He hisses between his teeth as he stands, knees popping as he takes a step towards your car. He adjusts his cap, revealing a flash of thinning white hair beneath. You rest a hand on the gear stick and try to remember if there’s still an old tennis racket on your backseat. “Where you live?”

“Not far.” Your voice cracks around the lie.

He stares for a moment, face placid. Unimpressed.

“S’funny,” he says. “No one livin’ not far sleeps in the middle of a lot in Kalamazoo.”

You take another drag and don’t respond, heart beating something fierce in your chest. The man seems to sense your reluctance, that spike of fear warming your blood, and he nods a little.

“Should get gone,” he warns you. “Somethin’ bad in the air tonight.”

“Yeah,” you respond, throat tight around the words, unsure of what exactly you’re agreeing to. “Okay.” 

He tilts the lip of his bottle towards you. “Got a spare?”

You pass a smoke through the window and tear out of the lot as he lights up, leaving blue and red behind in your rear-view mirror.

Tess doesn’t pick up when you call.

Not the first time, a few hundred metres down the road from the man and the flashing lights, when all you have is a half-smoked cigarette and a bad feeling.

Not the second time either, when you drive through Marshall and see a house on fire with the sun rising behind it turning the sky a deep heady red.

Not the third time or the fourth.

Not the fifth when you see those Detroit skyscrapers come into view, and there’s smoke billowing around them.

You lose count after that. Don’t know how many times you call, watching cars blur past yours, heading in the opposite direction. Don’t know what’s going on, don’t know what’s wrong, don’t know anything that will help quell this blistering panic that curdles in your veins. All you know is foot on the gas and that two hours feels like ten.

The battery on your phone is dead by the time you reach the suburbs, drained by fingers jamming against her contact over and over, persistent, unrelenting. Familiarity cloaks the car as you speed through the winding streets, but fails to offset the dread splashing its way up your chest, burning at the back of your throat.

The dash reads 7:49 when you shift the Focus into park halfway up the curb, leaving the door wide as you stagger out and up your own front lawn. If it weren’t for the roaring in your ears, you’d notice how quiet the street is; how eerie, caked in the early morning light. The Jacobsen’s front door is split open two houses down, hanging off its hinges, but you pay it no mind, fumbling for your keys.

“Tess?” Your voice wavers and you curse under your breath, jamming the key in the lock and twisting. “Tess!”

The house shakes with the force of the door slamming behind you. “Tess? Danny?”

No sign of them in the front room or the kitchen. Eyes hot and sharp now, you move down the hall, their names the only thing you can think to say. Over and over again, you call out for them, and when you reach the end of the hall, your stomach goes wet and watery.

“Tess.” You drop to your knees where she sits at the top of the stairs, head cradled in her hands.

With shaking fingers, you pry her palms from her face; tilt her trembling chin up so you can look into her eyes.

Her long locks are tied back, revealing a deep gash across her forehead. The edges of the cut have already begun to scab, but there’s red smeared across her browbone, down the thin bridge of her nose. She sniffles, jaw going tight, balking at the sight of you.

“Didn’t you hear me? I was calling yo—what are you doing back here?”

You glance down the stairs to the entrance of the basement. Door closed, as always.

Your heartbeat is deafening in your ears. So loud you almost miss it when she says your name, only noticing from the way her lips tilt and curve around the word as you look back at her.

“You’re here,” she’s saying. “You’re alive.”

Badoom boom, badoom boom. You can hardly hear her over the heavy beat of it.

“What?” you grimace, searching her face for some kind of explanation. “That’s not funny.”

“Had to…” she frowns back, hands trembling as she reaches out to touch your hip. “I had to do it, I’m sorry.”

It sharpens all of your senses, seeing her like this. Watching and listening as nonsense spills from her mouth; the love of your life, all apart on the floor of your home.

“Talk to me.” You cup her cheek, shaking her a little when her eyes stay dazed and foggy – like the lights are on but no one’s home. “Tess, hey, what happened? You’re bleeding.”

“Fell,” she mumbles.

You spare a glance and think you spy her blood a few stairs down—a little pool of it on the pale wood, like she laid there for a moment, stunned after colliding with the step.

And then there, by her side, you see the gun. The one she always kept locked in the safe in your shared bedroom, hidden away. The one only to be removed in case of emergencies.

You freeze, fingers stilling against her face. “You…? Babe, where’s Danny?”

“Danny?” she whispers, empty gaze shifting to something over your shoulder. Her face tightens. “Did you lock the door?”

“What?” You pant, face pinching in confusion. “Tess, you need to tell me what the fuck is going on. What happened to your face?”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head and a lone tear spills past her waterline, rolling down just to spill into her mouth. “You have to lock the door, you need to—they’re gonna to get in here, they’re gonna find us—”

“Who?” You grip the back of her neck now, forcing her to look at you. “Honey, I can’t help unless you tell me what’s wrong.”

“They’re biting people,” she whispers then, and her eyes are wide, eyebrows pinched. A clammy sweat beads across her forehead, mixing with a fresh trickle of blood, and her eyes… those eyes you love, they look hollow. Sunken and lost. “Biting… eating them, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“What?” Disbelief sharpens your voice. Badoom boom, badoom boom.

“I called an ambulance,” she continues, voice raising now. Loud enough to match that rough drum of blood rushing in your ears. So loud, it’s so loud. “But they wouldn’t come, baby, they wouldn’t come for him.”

“For…” No. Your chest feels tight. You aren’t sure if you’re breathing anymore as you stare, unblinking. Hardly feeling the tears that wet your own face, mirroring hers. “Tess, where’s Dan?”

There’s a beat, a long, lonely, pause, and then it’s like things shift into slow motion as she raises an unsteady hand and points toward the basement door. You move fast, turning to move, and her face crumples in on itself, spit pooling in the corners of her mouth as she says your name, grasping your hand to hold you still.

“No,” she pleads, voice rough and rasping, nails digging into the soft flesh of your forearm. “I had to, I had to do it, don’t you understand? You can’t go down there.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” You’re yelling now, fear turning you mean and rough, spittle flying, fingers tangling with hers, trying to pry her grip from your skin. 

But she doesn’t need to tell you. Because that rough drumming, that incessant roar of blood in your ears—it isn’t your heartbeat anymore.

No, you can see it now, the way the door shakes on its hinges.

The rhythmic pounding of a little body slamming against wood floats up to you on the landing. Relentless, like a song you’ve heard one too many times and have grown to hate. Badoom boom, badoom boom. And noises, ones you’ve never heard before but are sung in your little boy’s voice. Grunts and wails, high-pitched sounds that turn to screeches as they tear from his throat. Those thumps and cries blend together in your ears and your stomach drops, ass falling to the ground as you slump beside Tess, staring down.

“I had to do it,” she mumbles, repeating it like a mantra. The words blend with Danny’s symphony. “He wouldn’t stop, I had to, I had to, I had to, I couldn’t make him stop, I couldn’t do it.”

“What did you do?” You shout, voice fierce and tight now as you try to shake her off. “Tess—Tess, stop. Jesus, you’re acting fucking insane.”

“Baby, please—"

“He’s just a little boy,” you try to reason, jostling her away. “Listen to him, I-I need to see him.”

“Not you too,” she shakes her head and begs, mouth hung open, a gaping maw. “Please, baby, not you too.”

“Tess,” you whimper, pleading as you slide down to the next step. Her fingers twist in the collar of your shirt, and she’s crying. Desperately hoarse little cries like you’ve never heard her make before, but you don’t look back. Heart aching as you listen to your boy behind the door. “I just need to see him, wanna make sure he’s okay, I’ll be one minute, I’ll—I’ll be one minute. Don’t you hear him? He’s scared, baby, please, don’t you hear him? That’s our boy—”

“No it’s not,” she shrieks.

A siren begins to keen somewhere nearby, piercing enough to make you cringe, and Tess’ fingers loosen on your shirt.

“You can’t,” she sobs, fingers sliding down your sweaty back as you slink another step down. “Not you too, you can’t. Please, I had to, you can’t.”

But as you creep lower, and then lower again, you feel her fingers fall away. Her blood on the stairs soaks into your jeans, warm and thick, as you approach the door, and soon you can’t hear anything but that haunting medley of sounds. The door rattles, your boy screams, and the woman you love cries Not you too, I had to do it, you can’t, I had to, I had to, I had to.

It’s all you can hear.

Badoom boom as you flip the lock.

Please don’t as you grip the handle. I had to.

It floods your ears; the click of the safety on her gun as the door cracks open, and Tess crying as you collide with your little boy, cradling his face against your neck and trying to calm the odd way his little limbs trash against your body. You open your mouth to soothe him, and hardly feel the blur of his mouth on your skin.

thank you for reading, feels weird but nice to post some writing again after so many months x

[esggs]

The Homo Economicus in Love - Noritoshi Kamo

[wc: 4k+  |  noritoshi kamo x reader  |  college au  |  fluff-angst-smut  |  tw: alcohol, weed, smoking, economics, kissing Nobara, swear words, Boys over Flowers, cunnilingus, handjob, blowjob, unprotected piv  |  three-part series, part 2 and 3 to be released next week]

Synopsis: You’re the sweet shy nerd who swears Marxist revenge on the heir of the Kamo Conglomerate, Noritoshi Kamo: You’re going to give him the worst heartbreak of his life. 

lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com

Part 1: Operation Kamo

Where do you hide away your most rotten petals, sweet lotus? Do you arrange them on your outermost ring, so that they may fall out and away before disdaining eyes? Or do you lock them closest to your heart? Where do you hide your rot, my love?

1 year and 2 week ago 

Over the cheap cigarettes and vodka-cranberry juice spilled out of plastic cups, Nobara’s voice carries weakly. “Prof Geto called yn a ‘sweet girl’ today”, she drawled. Nobara is the sort who refuses to admit they’re far drunker than they claim to be. “Everyone calls you ‘sweet girl’, imagine if they saw you like this.”

Nobara’s barely sitting upright, both from the pegs she’s consumed and your hips straddling her lap. Hey Nobara, wanna make-out, but like friends? Nobara Kugisaki, the woman that she is, doesn't back down, so here you two are, lips wet with each other’s liquor. Your other friends, all sitting on the floor in a circle like you two, had just shrugged at your antics. Fushiguro keeps an eye out on the two of you. Maki’s in a chugging contest with Itadori (she’s clearly winning even though Itadori refuses to back down), Inumaki and Panda are switching between watching them and you. Yuuta’s out for more cigarettes. 

“She is a ‘sweet girl’, though. People have layers, Nobara.” Itadori, having lost another round to a still very sober Maki, defends you. Your friends, of all people, know that. You have a ritual that once every three months all of you come together to have a casual get-together where you get blackout drunk. And you, the shy, nerdy, underconfident, mild-mannered goody-two-shoes sweet girl, drink the hardest of them all. It could get you kicked off campus and even arrested, but isn’t that the fun of it? 

“Yeah, Nobara”, Panda joins the conversation. “yn can top Microeconomic Theory at 2 pm and top you at 2 am. In fact, she can do both at the same time, I bet.”

“I didn’t top Micro, man.” You choke down a moan as Nobara nips your neck, but you have to set the record straight, as much as it hurts you to admit it. “That assface did.”

“Kamo?” Maki asks.

“Yeah, that fucker.”

“Aw, I didn’t know you two still had that little rivalry going.” Maki teases. “What is this, a little fanfic where you turn academic rivals-to-lovers?”

You turn away from Nobara to pout at Maki. “It’s not like that, I genuinely dislike that guy because of the principle of it. There’s layers to my hatred.” You’re slurring a bit, both words and thoughts getting mixed up in your head. “If he wasn’t such a looker I'd have punched his face by now. Like, even the thought of him–” You’re starting to get mad at someone who isn’t even here (is it the cross-fading? It was only a few cigarettes, menthol ones too) “– he’s so smug, so fucking pretentious! Always looking down on me! He’s a part of the bourgeoisie, he’s conservative, he talks over me in class, he literally counters every single point I make in class, what a teacher-ass-kisser, and his hair is so ugly! But he’s so not ugly, he’s almost pretty! I wish I could hurt him, I wish–  I wish I could show him the greatest love and then break his heart in the most painful way possible!”

“Isn’t that a bit much?” Itadori laughs. But he understands where you’re coming from. For someone like you, who was born poor and struggled so much to get a good education and finally get into your fancy old-money college, Noritoshi Kamo, the chaebol heir, represented everything unequal with the world. When you’ve been up all-night working at the convenience store just to pay for tuition while he just dashes up swanky-suited to classes in his Rolce Royce with organic coffee, and then has the fucking audacity to top Microeconomics Theory … you want to kill him. 

“He deserves it, to be honest. He’s got such an attitude problem.” Maki says. “But he’s a hard shell to crack. If you can actually do what you’ve said, yn, I’ll pay for a barbeque dinner.”

“It’s a bet then.” You’re gonna do it. Drunk and sober, you’re actually gonna do it.

Inumaki bets against you. Panda bets for you. Itadori doesn’t like the whole thing (he bets against you). Fushiguro doesn’t care (he bets for you). The topic’s passed by the time Yuuta returns.

1 year ago

Noritoshi Kamo isn’t having a good day. He lost his notes for Micro Theory, and then his favourite coffee (almond-milk cappuccino with organic Yemeni beans, dusted with dark chocolate!) was made too bitter, and then this traffic jam made him late to class, and now his favourite classmate is absent again. What a shame. You two have such fun discussions in class.

Little does he know that you’re sitting in the corner of the last bench in a dark hoodie looking like you’re a secret agent on a mission. You are. This is all going according to your plan. 

A week ago you watched Kamo lend his notes to Todo. Two days later, you asked Todo for “your” notes back (you never lent him any but it’s not like he remembers who he takes his notes from). You then missed two days of classes (when they covered Consumer Behaviour) to set the final act: now. 

The bell rings. People are getting up to leave. Kamo is packing his things up. Here goes Operation Kamo: Make-him-fall-in-love-with-you-and-break-his-heart.

“Professor!” You walk to the front of the hall. 

“Ah, yes, yn!” Prof Utahime, as always, is happy to see you. “Did you have any doubts about the class?”

“Yes, Prof, I’m struggling with Consumer Behaviour. But I have so many questions, I don’t think even Office Hours could help me.” 

Utahime is genuinely perplexed. Consumer Behaviour is one of the most basic concepts, how could a top student like you be confused about that? “Oh, then would you want some extra tutoring? I could connect you with some peer tutors.”

Score. You casually hold your hands behind your back, and in your hands you visibly carry Kamo’s apparently lost notes (the bait). 

“That would be perfect, prof.”

“But I don’t mind taking extra Office Hours for you–”

“– No!” You clear your throat. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

“In that case, for a peer tutor I’d recommend– Oh! Kamo!” Your fish, who had taken the bait and was coming to retrieve his notes from you, looks alarmed. “So lucky you’re right here! yn was just looking for a peer tutor. You help her in Consumer Behaviour, alright?”

“Me, Professor?”  “Thanks, Prof!” 

But Utahime’s already waved you two off. Kamo is left looking at you (he didn’t even know you were in class) and you need help with Consumer Behaviour of all topics?

“Oh, Mr. Kamo” You fake some shyness. From what you’ve observed of him, you guess that he likes his girls demure and soft, so that’s who you shall be from now. “When should I attend your tutoring sessions?” 

“Please don’t call me that.” He says, “And it’s from 8.30 to 10 pm every Thursday.”

“Thank you so much!”

See, people only know u as the shy little bookish nerd. They don’t realise that you’re doing everyone a favour by putting your brains into academics instead of mischief like this, because you’re damned if you’re not winning this bet. 

11 months ago

Every Thursday night from the past month, you’ve been diligently studying with Kamo. Even though it started as a peer tutor session, it was too painful for both of you to keep pretending like you do not understand Pareto Efficiency. “It just means that the resource you’re distributing amongst people has been completely distributed, with nothing left over. So you can’t give more to one person without giving less to another.” Kamo would say with a straight face. “You don’t even know that?” 

Right now, you’re working on your assignments together in a classroom i.e. you two do your own assignments side-by-side without a word or question. You refuse to discuss your answers with Kamo citing academic plagiarism. Kamo will answer any doubt you face but not without condescension. While he’s not falling in love with you, your homework sure is getting done faster. And you two have now adapted to a mutually silent tolerance instead of barely-hidden hostility. 

“I’m tired.” You yawn at the clock: it’s 3.16am . “Let’s finish this tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow we’ll have to get started on the Macroeconomics paper, we need to finish this today, yn.” Kamo’s stern. “Don’t tell me you’re falling behind again.”

“Hardly, asshole. But unlike you, I can’t afford to constantly drink fancy British coffee to keep awake, so please, forgive my poverty.”  You’re too fucking tired too keep up this soft baby girl shit. Besides, I can seduce Kamo with just my looks, I don’t need to put in that much effort. He’s a man, after all.

That’s a new side of her. Kamo’s a bit taken aback. Not bad.

“I didn’t mean any offence.” He says carefully. 

“As if you could offend me.” You’re not mad, just snappy and really need a break. “I’m gonna take a walk.”

“By yourself?”

“Shocked I don’t have a chauffeur?”

“Stop that.” He says. “You know I can’t let you walk around this late all by yourself.”

He’s really pissing you off now. “So you’re my father now? Don’t think you can order me around like your servants, okay?”

“I wasn’t doing that!” He gets up from his seat. “Fine, you do as you like, but I’ll accompany you.”

In Kamo’s mind, he’s acting like any gentleman should, especially to a delicate girl like you. In yours, he’s being far too overprotective over a stranger. But you swallow down your irritation when you realise the situation: you two, walking under the moonlight. 

The mission is back on and you’re locking in. 

—

“It’s not British, it’s Yememi.” The path you walk on is cold and quiet. Surprisingly, college students do sleep sometimes. You note that Kamo, hands in the pockets of his stiff slacks, has quite a deep voice. “My coffee. The British do tea.” A bit rough, a little haughty. His voice reminds you of oak trees in harsh winter.

The night air has significantly cooled your temper. “I just said whatever came to my mind. I’m sorry if I was too brash back there.”

Kamo hums. A pause. “It’s better when you are straightforward like that. I spent a semester trying to figure out if you like me or not.” Huh? Isn’t it obvious I dislike him? “I enjoy listening to your points in class.”

“Please,” you retort. “You counter all my points, and only my points.”

“Yes, because it’s a discussion?” Kamo seems genuinely confused. “After all, you make the best points in class.”

The flash of understanding strikes both your heads at the same time. 

Kamo – Ah. She’s insecure of her status in the college and saw it as me talking down her opinions.

You – Ah. No one’s ever told this rich prick to shut the fuck up.

And that, folks, was the first olive branch they spread to each other. A common understanding of each other’s rotten sides, even though this was just, at best, overripe. The first shared acknowledgement of each other’s flawed humanity.

You two finish your assignments on time. Kamo has started to nod at you everytime you cross paths on campus. Sometimes he even stops for a little chat. 

10 months and 18 days ago

“You’re ethically challenged.” Fushiguro says. You both share the same Statistics class, despite the fact that he’s majoring in Computer Science. 

“Shouldn’t we eat the rich? I’m doing a version of that.”

“If you want to manipulate Kamo into sleeping with you just say that.” He disregards your outraged expression. “What is this weird Boys Over Flowers thing you have going on?”

That the resident rich-boy on campus, Noritoshi Kamo, has started to hang out everywhere with poor little nerdy you is the gossip of the college. Only your friends knew your real intentions behind this, that is, all except Yuuta, who would innocently joke about you two falling in love. The kind of jokes that make the whole friend group fall silent.

As you take your seats in the classroom, Fushiguro leans towards you. Kamo’s also in the class, sitting far in front of you two. “What will you do when you start liking him back?”

“Do you think that I’m 12 years old?” You reply back. “It’s not like either of us thinks we’re in a Disney fairytale. It’ll be a weird situationship at best.” 

“You’re just saying that because you feel guilty about everything. Why even bother going to these lengths to play nonsense games?”

Damn. That was… upsettingly correct. What can you even reply to that?

Fushiguro just sighs. “Just keep out of trouble. I don’t want to clean your puke from sad-bingeing too much ice-cream again.”

He’s talking about the time when you had a thing with Yuuta. It ended pretty badly, and even though you still remain friends, Fushiguro remembers that heart wrenching pain that you went through post the break-up. He was there for you, even though he brushes it off as not a big deal, and you are forever grateful for that. Fushiguro has always been there for you.

—--

“Yn, Fushiguro.” Kamo shook his hand. “Let’s go with Mai for the fourth team member. I can introduce you to her over lunch.”

“The group presentation is after two whole months, though.” You protest.

“We’ll start early then.” No one made him the captain of this ship, but apparently Kamo just assumes that role.

Was Mai Zenin Megumi Fushiguro’s cousin? Yes. Technically. Had Fushiguro’s deadbeat dad done his utmost to keep him from his side of the family and hence Mai lived in a totally different world to Fushiguro? Also yes. 

Because even with his full-ride scholarship and bursary grant, Fushiguro would still never be able to relate to the talk that’s been going on at Kamo’s friends lunch table. “Vacationing at the Pyramids?” “Travelling the world with his mentor Tsukumo?” “Interning at his dad’s multispeciality hospital?” He’s never even heard of Loro Pianna. Neither have you. Even when Kamo's friends aren’t actually trying to be mean, you still feel like outcasts. 

You suppose this is the world of the rich. Where you don’t belong. Where they let the majority of the world population starve to death because they fucked up the food supply chains to get more profits. Where they take the private jet from Tokyo to Kyoto and let Bangladesh suffer from global warming. Where all their luxury alligator skin handbags are made by slave children in sweatshops. And they don’t care. They don’t care at all.

I despise them. You grit your teeth. I despise Kamo to the core.   

He deserves this. He deserves what I’m doing.

10 months ago

There has been a grave development. Over trying Yemeni coffee (“I can pay for myself.” “Not this, you really can’t.”), giving you a lift to Political Philosophy class on the other side of the campus in his Rolls Royce (“There’s a TV???” “Do you want to watch something?” “Oh my god– There’s a TV in your car??”), to tipping you heavily at the diner you waitress at, you’ve realised you’ve been partaking in Kamo’s wealth. 

Especially now that you catch yourself taking notes on Marxism with a Caran D’Ache pen (¥ 65,000) stamped with the crimson lotus of the Kamo Conglomerate. This is just plain wrong on so many levels. 

It’s okay to take his money, you reason. He’s got his asshole filled with it. But the money signifies a certain amount of closeness that you two have created. You don’t even accept expensive gifts from Yuuta, the most well-off out of all of you poors, and you two were close. Very close. As for Kamo, he now texts about his archery practice (he has a tournament coming up), he sends you photos of his notes if you miss a class without even being asked, he recommends you Coursera courses that complement your degree. Noritoshi Kamo didn’t even know your first name two months ago. 

This is going too far. The mission was to make him trust me, depend on me, not vice versa. I have to speed this up. Now.

“Hey, Kamo.” Your whispered tone is so casual, Kamo almost missed the tacit question behind your words. “Want to revise Macroeconomics in my dorm after class? Fushiguro’s staying over with Itadori, so it’ll be quieter than the library.”

But he doesn’t miss it. He’s also a college student after all, he knows what you’re asking. Or at least what he presumes that you’re asking. This could be an innocent request... No, the way your eyes flicker down to his lips for a second as a little blush heats your ears red, he knows it’s not.

He’s gonna refuse. He doesn’t even look like he’s interested. You don’t know that his heart is thumping in his temples and his palms are sweaty. 

He turns to look at you full in the face. In his steady eyes, you see that he trusts you. He trusts that whatever happens, however this ends, it’ll be okay, because he trusts you. Cold leaden terror fills your veins.

“Okay.” Kamo’s smile is soft. You’ve never seen him smile before. “I’ll be there.”

—---

If Kamo is uncomfortable with the state of your untidy dorms, he doesn’t say anything. He takes the glass of cranberry juice you offer him in your best cup, and chats freely about this and that, sitting cross-legged on your bed (you don’t have a couch). Much more freely than he ever did. It’s as if he’s lifted an invisible barrier, letting you step into an inner part of him that he keeps shielded from everyone. Except for you, now. 

You’re scared. Whatever fringe of delusion you keep up to convince yourself that you’re still a good person is rapidly vanishing. The full weight of your guilt is settling in heavy. Your hand, wrapped around your juice, starts to shake. 

Kamo notices. Of course he does. Ever since you asked him to come to your dorms, and even before that, he’s noticed everything about you. He was very happy to be your friend (he was very happy to have a friend at all, and if it’s someone as smart, beautiful, funny, sweet and amazing as you, that’s all the better), but to hear you say that you wanted something deeper with him, how could he refuse? He’s still pretty new to you, especially in this context, he doesn’t know everything that you like or dislike. So when he notices your hand shaking, he takes the drink off of you and covers your hand with his and presses it softly against his lips. He hopes that this is something you like. You do.

“Are you so nervous?” He asks. “We can do Macroeconomics if you’d rather. I want you to be comfortable.”

This is your chance. Break it off, don’t cross this line, let things go back to how they were. This is just going to hurt the two of you. The two of you. 

You set out to hurt him in the most painful way possible. If you let this go any further, you will. Do the right thing, yn. Do the right thing. 

“I’m good. Noritoshi–,” you reply. “– I want you.”

You close your eyes. It’s enough. I don’t want to think about anything anymore. 

His calloused hand cradling your cheek, his hair falling over your neck. you feel a warm kiss on your forehead. “You don’t have to say anything. I love you. Have for a while. I don’t do this usually, you have to know.” His lips scrape the shell of your ear. “Tell me if you want me to stop.” 

You keep your eyes stubbornly closed to everything. “I don’t, Toshi–” He smiles at the pet name you’ve picked. “–love you too. Have for a while, too.” 

His chapped lips melt hungrily into yours. He doesn’t hesitate to throw himself fully onto you, pushing your back onto the bed as he climbs over you, his hand behind your head. Hot, heavy, wet– he smells of oak and cedar. With hints of dark chocolate. You can taste the desperation on his tongue. 

He moans out loud as you run a tongue down his neck, prepping to leave him littered with your bites. Does he notice when you unbutton his pressed shirt? When his heavy leather belt snaps unbuckled? Or is he only focused on you pulling your shirt off, eyes glued to your beautiful breasts and the softness of your belly? 

He pulls the cups of your bra down with a finger to lick over your cleavage, nipping at your tits, boldly grabbing the fat of your ass. He’s far too gone to use his head, and you’re making a conscious decision not to. 

“Like this?” Kamo draws a trail of kisses down to your sex. 

“Yeah.”

“Show me how you like it done. I want to please you.” You nearly choke at his words. 

Nodding, you pull his hands into your panties when you’re suddenly struck with …shyness? He just laughs and lands a kiss straight onto the wet patch through your underwear. Damn. Where did this Casanova come from?

“I do it like this.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he studies you, despite a painfully hard cock, as you dip a finger into your slick hole and rub circles on your clit with it. You softly pinch a nipple with the other hand. Your cries are sinful as you add another finger into your cunt. 

“My turn.” Kamo looks straight at you as he licks your juices off your finger (you almost faint). “Tap if it's too much.”

It is too fucking much. You don’t know where he learnt to push the clitoral hood back as he breathes cold onto it, to lubricate it with spit as he licked circles onto it, to push two curled fingers into your cunt at once, to use his whole wrist to thrust around as he felt for your g-spot, to bite your thighs that hot. But you’re not left in a state to complain as he tells you to “Cum.”

“I don’t know if I can,” you giggle. “I’ve never done it like this.”

“It’s my mission then.” 

You throw your head back and close your eyes.

You do, surprisingly, cum on his tongue. “You’re so gorgeous.” From his angle, all he can see are your boobs bouncing as you grind up onto his tongue, trying to chase the aftershocks of the orgasm. Your face is flushed, with a tear building on your lashes that Kamo wipes off. His tongue is warm when he pushes it into your mouth.  

“Are you a virgin?” He asks. “Do you want me to..?”

“I’m not, Toshi, it’s okay. Are you?”

He grins. “No, I had a girlfriend.” You laugh at that– “Me too.”

“I’m really hard, love.” He pulls your hand to touch him through his boxers. Oh my god. He really has everything in life, doesn’t he? He’s packed like he’s going to war. “Do you want to? If you want to wait, I’ll understand.”

“No, no, I don’t want to wait a second more. Toshi, I want you so bad.” He almost came in his boxers hearing you beg like that. 

Kamo knew that he was on the larger end, as far as dicks go. Girls, especially sweet ones like you, baulked at it, and he fully expected you to do that too. 

He didn’t know that you would spit into your hands and wrap them around him in what felt criminal. The way you twist your wrists. The kitten-licks to the tip. The warmth of your tongue on his balls. “Stop, yn, love.” Red-faced, bite-marked, messy-haired: he looks delicious. “I can’t– I really can’t!”

Kamo’s made a decision in his head: he manhandles you onto your back and pins you down with the weight of his whole body. Face-to-face. Finally. 

He kisses you through the initial burn of penetration, letting you bite your pain onto his lips. So full. So stretched. So fucking heavenly. A little thought floats into your head that he’s not using any protection and neither are you, but when he looks like that, brows curled in bliss as he bottoms out inside you, nothing matters anymore. Only he does. Only Noritoshi Kamo. 

You thrust against him, as if to wake him up. “Move, baby.”

He’s gentle, at first, at least. With you in his arms, he’s losing any sense he has rapidly. He ruts against you through his strained breaths and choked groans, leaving hickies on your neck, the curve of his thick cock grinding against that particular spot of yours. Oak, cedar and dark chocolate. 

Neither of you last very long. Your second orgasm tips him into his: your face writhing in throes of pleasure (that he gave you) and the way your cunt clenched hard onto him… he can't resist spilling his hot cum inside you. 

Exhausted, he just collapses onto you. His cum leaks around his cock, which is still inside you, and is dripping down the curve of your ass. It takes a moment for him to steady his voice: “I love you, yn. Other people, I can’t trust them because I’m a Kamo, and I don’t know how to make friends easily either. But it feels so easy with you, yn. You feel so true.”

bonus: Kamo helps you tidy up your room. Both Itadori and Fushiguro are shocked to see your floor without any clothes lying around. 

college majors of jjk characters are here

a/n: reposted cuz i deleted my og post by accident (╥﹏╥)

tagging: @maskedpacific

[kingsofneon]

Concept is: JayTim omegaverse non//con, where Jason decides he wants Tim's first heat in exchange for joining the pack. Tim knew his first would be sold, it's just a thingTM, but once he started living with Bruce, had been under the impression he'd get to pick....based off https://archiveofourown.org/works/47094745. But i wanted to see more character study/what tim thought about the situation of having his first heat sold off. And then also mind break because it Feels Good, which is my favourite 🎉 Sorry! 💪

Tags: non//con / mind break / omegaverse. Size difference, ONLY jaytim unlike the insp fic. About 1k of a snippet bc i lost juice unfortunately. I would say Tim is about 17-18 and Jason is 19-20: takes place probably after the Joker UtRH standoff. Bruce is a Bad Dad in this.

Tim doesn't know Bruce intends to sell his heat when Bruce knocks cautiously on his door frame and says, "Would you be alright to patrol alone tonight?"

"What?" he asks, then, "Oh, yeah, I mean, sure. That's fine. Did you let Dick know? We were going to go past Burnley for that smuggling case."

Bruce's face gets all...twisted. "Yes," he says, and Tim can lie to Batman - but Batman can't lie to him. He frowns, but lets it go.

When Jason corners and scruffs him, he doesn't realise it's connected to Bruce. It's only after Jason clicks his tongue in disdain and says, "You'd think fucking Batman wouldn't have me do all the work," that he realises something about this is planned. He kicks back, trying to catch Jason's leg, but Jason's fingers worm under his gorget and press harder, cracking a strangled whimper from Tim's throat. He hates being scruffed on patrol, and Jason - Red Hood - has never been gentle.

"Jay," he breathes out, because scruffing barely makes it possible to think, let alone talk, "wha's-?"

Is it proof he still trusts his "allies" too much, though Jason is barely considered as such? A lesson, because Tim keeps skipping scruff training to pack bond with Young Justice?

What test is this, he wants to ask, how do I win?

He doesn't think about heat until Jay's wrist is pressed to his nose and his next inhale burns. He coughs, struggling harder against the scruff as menthol and magic burn against the roof of his mouth.

"You're- in trouble-" Tim says, slurs really, fighting to get the words out. "Jay. Jay- rut-"

"I won't be in trouble," Jason promises, softer than he's been so far. "And we might finally get rid of your stupid Bat-worship. So you can see how Bruce really treats his kids."

"M'not? His kid-" Tim manages as Jason's fingers sink further into his neck, making him choke as it moves from scruffing to leverage. Jason hauls him up, a dizzying movement when Tim's thoughts are already syrup, and he barely hears Jason's words as he gets dragged down to street level.

"I know, little bird. It's why this'll teach both of you a lesson."

The lesson is this: Tim is shoved down a fire escape and into an empty room, head still reeling from Jason's rut-scent and the mean scruffing. He's trained enough to hear zipties and mostly break out of it, but Jason's still bigger than him, and the broad palm pressed flat to his back is warm and awful.

Jason comes up behind him, and Tim flinches at the press of a knife against his side. It slides firmly under the stitching, leaving him shivering in the night air, skin pebbled with goosebumps.

This is the lesson, Tim thinks as Jason shoves him onto an unmade bed. Don't trust your allies.

This is the lesson, Tim thinks. Don't let people tie you down. They'll want to hurt you.

Jason peels off their scent blockers, leaving them on the bedside table, and pulls Tim to the edge of the bed. He makes Tim sit up, and cups his cheek when he pulls off Tim's mask.

This is the lesson, Tim thinks, his heart beating double-time, his scent floating in the air and easily drowned out by the smell of Jason's oncoming rut. They'll be soft. They'll be mean. They want to see you undone.

"Tim Drake," Jason says, hand cupping Tim's cheek. "I'm going to show you why Batman should never have had another Robin."

"We were past that, asshole," he manages, the scruffing having faded and his stomach in knots, too nervous to keep him drifting and pliant thanks to the oddness of Jason's actions.

"No," Jason said. "No, we never got past that. 'Cause you never gave it up, and Bruce won't admit he's wrong, and I'm going to show you - he wants me back more than he wants to take care of you. He's always gonna want something more than he wants to take care of you."

"Your mommy issues are not universal," Tim scoffs, and then Jason presses a knee to his crotch and Tim jolts. "Wait, what are you-"

"Batman," Jason repeats, vitriol in his tone, "wants me to rejoin his pack. I don't give a shit about his fucking pack. But he said I could take it out on you."

"And- you told him where to shove it," Tim says, because Robin's still about hope and he's never learnt his lesson, no matter how many times Bruce tried to teach it.

They want to see you undone.

"Tell me, little bird. You shared a heat yet? Picked who you're gonna sell it to?"

His stomach flinches involuntarily. He can make a connection faster than he can stop a reaction, and this connection lets slip a lot. Too much.

"Omega don't pick who buys their first heat," Tim says, steady and firm, his hands clenched behind his back as he thinks about Jason's thigh between his legs.

"Yeah but Brucie's always been such a soft touch with his pack. Everyone knows it. His lil wards are special. They get to pick."

"I'm not his ward," Tim tries, "My family already had expectations-"

"Batman's not, though, is he. If you had to compare. Batman wants what's good for Gotham."

"What did you want for it?" Tim growls, because playing the fool only gets you so far if the person you're playing against won't let you divert.

"Aw, baby bird, I'm gonna get it. It's more about what he wanted for it. We'll see how that goes."

-----(this is where i lost juice and need a connection pt1)

"Wait, wait, wait-" he pleads, breathless and barely stretched, Jason's perfunctory fingers having done less than just heat alone, and his cock felt maddening, pressed against Tim's cunt. "Please-"

"You want me to slow down?" Jason says, and Tim can hear his grin through the words; can hear his laughter when Tim nods, just on the edge of frantic.

"S'too much," he whispers, mortified, and his fist curls into the blankets. He can't take Jason's cock, not like this, not with his core shaking and his mouth already fumbling, stumbling, tripping over his brain. "I- I can't-"

And now so is his cock.

"Think I'll fuck you stupid?" Jason sneers, and Tim's stomach curls, because...humiliatingly, yes. How could he not, when Jason knew what he was doing? When the heat of Jason's body pressed against his back reminded Tim so much of the singular time Robin had rescued him and scented him, chuffing in the tone of a reward: good-puppy-safe. Jason's new scent burns his nose, but the memories are still there.

Tim cries out at the stubborn press, Jason's cock bullying into his pussy, and his hips jerk against it. The grip Jason has on his waist keeps him presented, though, unable to escape, and then suddenly they're pressed together and Jason's other hand is at his throbbing clit. "Don't worry, little bird," he sneers, pulling back to thrust and making Tim choke, "Bruce will be able to replace you too."

A sob slips free of Tim's mouth, Jason's words taking a reckless stab at his heart even as pleasure rockets through his frame, and he buries his head in his pillow to try and muffle any further noises.

It doesn't stop him from going slack-mouthed and moaning as his second orgasm hits, though, and the clench of his cunt around Jason's cock makes him claw at the sheets, drooling. It feels so much bigger when he's clenching around it, and the aftershocks make him tighten involuntarily, rhythmically, riding it out and trying to convince Jason to knot.

Jason's hot inside him. Burning, human heat, and it's awful because Tim can feel his knot, just outside his cunt, rubbing against his pussy, and logical thought sobs no even as every other part of him weeps for relief.

It's too big, if Jason shoves his knot in now, he tries to convince himself, tries to think, but his mind feels like it's melting in pleasure and he's drooling on the mattress.

----(need more juice pt2)

The slick sound of his cum gets louder in his ears, and Tim whimpers as the edge of his heat gets more prevalent, thoughts dripping slow and unpleasant. He's cum three times now, but his Alpha- but Jason hasn't yet popped a knot, and the scent in the air reflects that. It means something's wrong. That Tim's not- he's bad, he's not working right- and Jason said he could be replaced, and why wouldn't he, if Tim couldn't get him off, couldn't make him knot, does he even deserve-

Jason strokes across his oversensitive clit and Tim squirms with a bitten-off shriek, jerking against his hold to try and escape the ever-present touches. "S'sto-p-," he whimpers, the words slurred from between his teeth, "J'son, st'p-"

"You don't wanna get me off?" Jason asks, and Tim's stomach drops. Oh god, was he really stopping Jason's knot, by protesting? By not squeezing him well enough, that Jason had to make him cum to get him tight?

"P'ls," he whimpers, the words caught tight on a sob. "J'son-"

"What're you begging for, pretty O," Jason whispers, dragging Tim up into his lap, his arm a band around Tim's stomach. The firm hold makes Tim squirm again, crying as he notices again that Jason's cock is filling him up, as the press of Jason's arm makes it more obvious there's a cock filling his insides.

[soullessdianthus]

𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲

A/N: A repost version, therefore I couldn't answear theoriginal question! This one turned out to be GN!Reader x Soap. :)🎄

The snow had finally covered the cobblestone streets and all the rooftops across the city. Hanging ropes of lights shimmered in a variety of bright colors, Christmas music and carols echoing along the market, blending with people's warm laughs. 

You were standing outside of the shop's window, looking at the little things stacked on display, hands hidden deep inside jacket’s pockets. You shivered just before your boyfriend came out of the shop with a paper bag in his hand. 

— Sorry for keeping you freezin’ so long, baby. 

Johnny swung his hand open, offering you a big bear hug under his bulky arm. With his gentle and pure smile, how could you not accept his offer? 

You clung to his side trying to warm yourself up. Soap was a walking radiator of your own and his cologne smelt so good lately. The delicate scent of wooden gum mixed with menthol and sweetness of sugar cane. He smelt like home. 

— Mind if we go for a hot chocolate on our way back? — You asked him with that look on your face when begging for something, like a puppy. 

— Yer cold? 

He gave you a little concerned look, kissing the top of your forehead, just under the hem of your woolen hat.

— A little.

— Then, maybe this will help. Merry Christmas, bonnie. — Johnny handed you a little paper bag and kept looking at the priceless expression painting on your face. — Saw ye lookin’ at them. 

— Oh, Johnny. Thank you, that’s so sweet! 

Quickly like a little child you impatiently dug up the present hidden between the decorative papers – it was a pair of thigh socks with a little bow on each side of them. 

— They’re so cute, I love them! Thank you, Johnny. 

You lifted your chin to kiss your boyfriend’s lips and it didn’t end on just one, innocent peck on the lips. If not for the masses of people around, it could easily turn into full make out session in the middle of the street. 

— Yer blushin’ — he pointed out, cradling you closer to his chest, before leaning to your ear. His hot breath tickled a sensitive spot there. — Now, ye really want that hot chocolate? ‘Cause I can’t wait tae fuck you silly in them. 

 If your pretty, frozen face could go even more flushed – it did, when the thoughts of another pleasurable night with Johnny became inevitable. With his bare hands, calloused by years in the army, wandering so gently along your skin, squeezing where you need it the most, John devouring each little detail about you just to hear your cute whines and moans. 

— Ye-Yeah, I like the sound of that.

[ashlingiswriting]

do i know you? chapter two

[ chapter one ] [ masterlist ] "...but i know they love each other. that should be enough, yeah?" richie jerimovich x reader, past mikey berzatto x reader, slow burn chapter two, 3.2k words

five days later, you take the elevator down from your apartment and richie is there. by your building, in your spot, standing with his hands deep in the pockets of his big leather jacket, not even smoking.

when you walk towards him, he looks up at you through the glass of the double doors. he doesn’t even have the couth to look down, or away, or nod—to do anything that would modulate the feeling of his blue eyes resting on you for the whole time it takes you to reach him. for that unnerving behavior, he gets no courtesy, not even a scrap of hello. 

you look like the world’s most obvious drug dealer, you say.

he smiles a little at that. you cannot be held responsible for what your body does then, the wash of wanting that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the deepening crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. 

takes one to know one, right? he says.

i’m not—

i know, he says, too quickly, as if he’s startled that you’re startled too. it was just a joke.

it might not have been wholly a joke, but you can’t tell. you don’t dare ask him why he’s here either, cause he might answer and get what he wants from you and leave. so you head straight for an old standby, something that always used to work with the other one: nicotine and arguments.

you all smoked out? you say. it’s as near to invitation as you’re going to get.

he shrugs, but he can’t quite manage to look completely indifferent. hit me.

you hand him a cigarette before lighting up your own. he looks utterly disgusted. 

this a fuckin menthol? he says, and the cadence is familiar. exactly what you wanted. you have to smother a smile hard to stop it from escaping.

why, you say, playing the innocent. you got a problem with that?

you knew he would hate it. that’s exactly why you did him the courtesy. it’s just that easy: he pulls a stupid face, you start, look, and you’re off to the races.

he talks shit and so do you and it’s comfortable. it’s so stupid comfortable and lazy and easy until he says in passing, it’s like mikey always says, and you have to stop him before he reaches the end of that sentence. you have to.

you say, mikey’s dead, right?

there’s that family echo in richie’s face. he’s not carmy, lost that quality of innocence, but he too has this trick of looking like you’ve just slapped him out of the blue. mikey’s dead, yeah, but richie can’t say it.

so then why are you digging him up, huh? you say, and it’s all michael, every last syllable of it: the michael you hated most and were never gonna quit, the warm, all-knowing, bullying, fundamentally loving little piece of shit. 

it’s got to be michael that comes out of your mouth, cause if it isn’t him, then it’s gonna be you. and if it’s you saying what you really wanna say, you’re gonna say that you’re sorry, because you are, you really are, so fucking sorry. 

it’s michael who comes out of your mouth, and then you shut it, final.

yeah, richie says after a second, and then he looks away, fumbling in his pocket for the lighter so he can smoke the much-loathed menthol. yeah.

somewhere far-off, there’s a siren. it's somebody else’s turn to save a life now, or somebody else who needs help bad, not you. but you won’t let him go.

you get out your own lighter, realize your mistake too late. he must see the smudge of blood on your wrist, just above where the glove stopped, but he says nothing. lets you cup your hands to shield his cigarette from the wind, perilously close to his face. lets you light it with one click. 

there’s a crumb of something stuck just above his eyelid, just below his eyebrow, one brown speck easily lost in the . 

you force the words past the lump in your throat. who gives a shit about daley anyway, is what i’m saying.

like an old horse who knows the way home even in the dark, he picks up the thread of your conversation and argues back even though you both know that neither of you really give a shit.

see, this is how i know you’re not chicago born and raised…

time is a hand dragging you away, and you just keep arguing past it. no victory in it, no defeat. just a holding pattern, you and richie, no more smoke and absolutely no sense, until finally you’re so restless and cold that he does actually start to piss you off. 

how’d you get to arguing about tourism and local politics, of all things, when you don’t care about either? what is it that sets you off? maybe this is why michael didn’t want you meeting his people—you take things too personally sometimes, you get irritated and lose your sense of humor, which would be an embarrassment if you weren’t too irritated to care. or you can’t take losing, which given your entire life is a very unfortunate trait. or maybe richie was just put on this earth to be maximally annoying to you specifically. 

god but he makes a kid of you when he hits sweetheart on a syrupy note of condescension, sends you stomping away to the doors with a you’re such a fucking man.

thank you! he yells after you. 

weirdly, the next morning, there's still annoyance at him, but there's nothing else. none of the biggies, no hangover of loss, no dark movement of fish swimming under ice. which is nice, for once, if puzzling. why doesn’t it hurt?

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tonight, you need michael. you’ve needed him more often than ever since he died, possibly because he died, which is fucking inconvenient.

tonight you also you earn your pay and then some. you don’t like making house calls, but for old caruso you would willingly drive for six hours hours, do three back-to-back surgeries, and drive all the way back home. luckily, tonight’s requirements are not so ludicrous: just save a life that, well.

he should be dead, old caruso says to you by the kid’s bedside, once the work is all over. the kid is twenty-eight and you are only thirty-three, but he is a kid and he will forever be a kid, thus the attempted robbery, thus the manslaughters and the whimpering and the hole in his gut. thus you sitting quietly on a plastic-covered chair while old caruso’s daughter in law hands you a cup of weak, honey-colored tea, and the confession from the father that the son does not deserve to live, right in front of the son’s wife.

you’re not paid to receive this type of confession, and you don’t want the intimacy. sure, you get along with old caruso as much as you can get along with anybody who blackmails you into putting your life at increasing risk, which is a lot—but, in the end, to know people is to like them, and to like the wrong person is to fuck yourself with a thoroughness that is not only ruinous, but worse, exhausting. you’ve had enough of that.

you look down at little caruso’s abnormally pale face. even unconscious, there is a hint of pain in it. he has none of his father’s features, but that same long face, which tends to give the wearer a comical aspect right up until the moment it is terrifying. he’s the last of his brothers left on this side of the bars, and given the way things have been going lately, you doubt that’ll last much longer.

you say, as long as he doesn’t come down with an infection, he’ll live.

the old man regards you with a hint of surprise. perhaps, surrounded as he so often is with women of only his own family, he’s unused to women rebuffing his attempts to use them as emotional trash bags, in which he can put unpleasant thoughts, then tie them up safely so the smell of rot doesn’t permeate his house.

i like you, chao, he says, unexpectedly. then he puts on his reading glasses and reaches for a book on the stack by the bedside. it is only then that you realize that this is not only your thanks for the night, but also a dismissal. 

the car is a beautiful car, sleek and black and near-perfect in silence as it glides through chicago. it is a car meant to carry the likes of old caruso, not you. the driver must know this, because he swears at the gps once when it suggests a left turn he doesn’t approve of, and nobody swears around old caruso unless they’re family.

it’s only when you store up this one detail that you realize: there is nobody to tell. a full story, life saved, father loving and hating, weak tea, cursing driver. but there is no one left. 

you let your head rest against the cool glass of the window, close your eyes. 

no one left. fucking inconvenient.

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you walk the last couple blocks to get your head right, only to find that richie is waiting there. 

it makes sense, right—the beginning of your on-call night shift dovetails with the end of his, and your building isn't far from the beef. the schedules work out and just. there he is.

you shouldn’t be surprised, so why do you go still and quiet, why do you watch him tilt his head up, exhale smoke, and peer beyond it? why do you try to see what he’s looking at? it’s another apartment building, that’s all, just another one of those that’s too boring to even be ugly. he exhales so slow. he doesn’t notice you for a while. you feel like you’re watching him look at another woman. 

when he does, you refuse to look down or away, refuse to nod at him, the same way he did to you last time. somebody’s gotta make the first move, and it’s not gonna be you. 

except, at some point, you break.

what’s up, you say. can’t really help it. you’re surrounded by macho bullshit every day, and it’s the sort of thing that rubs off on a person. 

i’m gonna fix you, richie says.

the laugh tears out of you, incredulous and loud and real. just when you think nothing’s funny anymore, along comes this motherfucker. it just about bowls you over, the idea of anyone fixing you, like a tsunami in the river or a sudden suspension of gravity, a constellation of pink elephants. 

the way richie laughs, he’s in on the joke for sure. richie was never supposed to know you existed, but you always knew better than to expect michael to keep the secret of you to himself, especially from richie. men, you think, but it’s not angry. this part is convenient, that he knows what a wreck you are. you won’t have to explain it. you can’t help but notice: he came anyway. for that, you’ll let him laugh at you and then some. for that, you’ll let him do near anything he wants.

good fucking luck, you finally manage to say, laughter still coming out the edges of every word, near breathless with it.

richie throws something at you that you catch one-handed. it’s a small box. 

we gotta get you off the menthols, is what i’m saying. you can taste in his voice that he’s pleased with himself for the laugh, and you look down at the box with your smile still warming your face, and then.

it’s a pack of sapphires, cause of course it is. you can’t remember which of them taught the other one to smoke. maybe they had their first together.

so now tonight’s gonna taste like michael, is that it? maybe you should be grateful for the warning.

you piss me off, you murmur, still looking at the box in your hand.

really? he says.

fuck it. you open the box. nah.

this time, he lights it up for you. there is no wind and still he cups the cigarette, care as a habit even when it’s no longer necessary. his nails are dirty, his hands are precise, and you’re grateful for the second warning that comes along, the glint of gold on his ring finger. it didn’t come a moment too soon. 

so how’s your night, richie says. 

you exhale slow. through the smoke, you can see michael watching you. he was always better at rules than you were: don’t go to the beef, don’t meet with his friends, don’t make shit complicated. you always believed in the rules, you really did, which is maybe why you waited till he was dead to start breaking them.

in other words, it’s too late when you say, so fucking boring. it’s too late, but you lie anyways. just bone-crushing, neverending boredom. what about you?

he shakes his head, leans against the building. all this new stuff carmy’s dragging in, man. it’s a pain in my ass. swear to god, sometimes it’s like he’s aiming directly for my head.

yeah? he glances over quick, but you still catch the surprise. guess you said it too close to gentle. you say, i mean, i’m sure you deserve it.

reassured, he picks up again. if you could see the fuckin mess he’s made of our…

you lean back against the building beside him, listening. actually listening. maybe you’re a trash bag and maybe you don’t care, cause you don’t want to go up to your empty apartment and now you don’t have to. when he loses steam on the rant, you pass him your cigarette. when he picks up a new rant, you take the cigarette back. eventually, you both meander onto the subject of past concerts you’ve been to, which are never the same, and it’s like talking about nothing at all.

the two of you are still going when your phone rings half an hour later—little caruso is awake earlier than you expected, something’s off with the pain meds, you need to go—but he gets in a few jabs before you leave, mostly on the subject of your blue nokia burner phone, which cost you twenty bucks and actually flips open and closed. you drive a horse and buggy too?

what can i say, i’m cheap. hey, if you keep hanging around, maybe it’ll keep down the rent, you say. it’s the most invitation he’s ever gonna get, and you’re almost nervous to hear the answer.

urban uglification, richie says. 

you’re awash in relief. fucking exactly. 

you don’t say see you later, because you know you don’t have to.

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so i’m freezing my balls off, crouching behind this sculpture, trying to keep all these kids in their hiding spots. by now most of them want to bail. i mean, these aren’t even high schoolers, they’re fuckin middle schoolers, right? the sun’s basically set and it’s getting dark, so they’re getting anxious, i’m getting anxious, everyone’s anxious. so me, i start telling them the plot of die hard just to keep them from leaving. i kid you not, j, half these kids have never seen die hard in their lives. 

michael looks at you, all animated and incredulous, gesturing wide with the hand that’s not holding yours. you’re in bed, naked in the summer heat, sitting face to face and cross-legged because he got so excited about this story he just had to sit up, and it felt weird for you to be lying there while he wasn’t.

never seen die hard even once, he says.

you shake your head, indulging him. it’s a fucking classic.

a classic, he echoes with satisfaction. so anyway, i’m at the part where gruber is about to kill mcclane, right near the end, and i’ve got like thirty middle schoolers eating from the palm of my hand. out of the corner of my eye, i see richie and tiff coming down the path, fuckin finally. 

he’s so excited, it’s like he’s seeing the two of them for the first time. the man could power an entire factory with that smile. one of your hands is empty, so you hold onto his ankle, just because you can.

it’s pretty dark and the lights in the park aren’t great, but it’s definitely a couple, the woman’s blonde, and i’m like oh shit. game time. let’s go. we jump out, start singing. i’ve got the marry me sign, whip it out. and this woman screams, i mean screams. 

poor tiff, you say, in real sympathy. you would've hated all this.

see, but that is not tiff, michael says. that is a total fucking rando that we just surprised for no reason at all. 

you bust out laughing. from the cadence of his storytelling alone, you know it’s too early to laugh, but you can’t help it. michael’s all lit up like a christmas tree. he keeps going.

she’s screaming bloody murder, so of course my kids stop singing and a couple of them scream too, just to join in on the action i guess. the man, the guy that’s with her, he’s wearing a north face jacket. and you know what he does?

he calls the cops.

he points at you with his free hand. calls the cops. ten minutes later, cops show up, they call all the parents, it’s a mess. i am up to my neck in shit. it takes me like an hour to convince everyone that this is not the world’s stupidest human trafficking ring, and another hour to convince them that they don’t really want to throw me in jail for disturbing the peace. when it’s all over and the kids are safely heading home, i finally get richie on the phone and i’m like, where were you, man. what happened?

he chickened out, you guess.

see, i wasn’t even thinking that, i was thinking that tiff found out ahead of time, like sugar spilled the beans or something and she turned him down before he could even propose. i was all set to fish him out of bottle before he drowned in it. but you know what richie says? you know what he says to me?

what?

i forgot. he throws his head back, lets out great big generous peals of laughter. this wet motherfucker! ‘i forgot.’

it takes a while for michael to stop laughing, mostly cause somewhere during the middle of the comedown, he lets out a weird little snort that sets you off. but eventually, he goes back to his story, sated.

he goes, it wouldn’t have been right. like, what do you mean it wouldn’t have been right?  a choir singing her favorite song, at sunset, you’re gonna ask her to marry you, i hand painted this fuckin sign, we’ve been planning this for like a month now, what could be wrong with that? he’s like, i just knew. i knew when we were going down the elevator that the speech i wrote was all wrong and i was gonna have to say some things i couldn’t say in front of a bunch of middle schoolers. 

he’s shaking his head now.

so he proposed to her, i kid you not, in the elevator. he said whatever he was gonna say—he never told me what it was—and he went down on one knee, and that was it. by the time they hit the bottom floor, they rode it right back up, went back to her apartment, and i’m pretty sure that when i was trying to argue my way out of handcuffs, the two of them were sound asleep, all tired out from fucking like rabbits on speed. un-fucking-believable.

he’s so happy for richie, it shines out of him.

it’s a good thing it was only a phone call, cause i would’ve beat his ass. i’ve had forty-three chicago winters at this point, and that is the closest i’ve ever come to getting frostbite. hand to god, sometimes i think i still can’t feel the tips of my ears. 

yeah? can you feel that? you trace the shell of his ear with one delicate fingertip. you’d make it prelude to a kiss, but you sense a faint shadow crossing over his face now, some darker thought about to rear its head. so you leave it at that, stay watchful.

he tips his forehead forward till its resting on yours. it’s so crazy, he says, like a sigh. 

you cup his cheek in your hand. it’s a great story.

i mean, all that, and they still broke up.

aw, not the end of love. you didn’t want this. comfort’s not one of your strengths, but since there’s no one else around to do it, you play the optimist as best as you can. maybe they’ll get back together. 

i mean, i hope so, he says, though not very hopefully. he thinks for a little while, and then he says, i don’t know why she…i mean he’s a good guy, you know?  

his dark eyes flick up to yours. at such close quarters, it feels like a lot, but it’s an invitation and not an attack. you take it, carefully, but you take it. 

he says, richie’s a good guy, and he loves her. sure, she divorced him, but i know they love each other. that should be enough, yeah? 

he says it directly to you like he’s presenting an appeal, as though either of you are capable of fixing somebody else’s broken life.

i know, you say. you kiss him now, because there is nothing else to say. 

there isn’t much you put your heart in these days, but you put it into this kiss, long and slow, and then you crawl into his lap, bury your fingers in his thick hair, and do it all over again. his hands spread warmth as they slide up your back. by the end of the night, your mouth will be sensitive and tender from his stubble, but he’s smiling into the kiss and it’s worth it. 

he’s not wrong. it should be enough.

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[ chapter three ] [ masterlist ]

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@garbinge, @narcolini, @drabbles-mc, @beingalive1 — if anyone else wants a tag, let me know.