#hearing bikini bottom day again for the first time in years almost made me tear up dawg the middle school nostalgia hit me like a truck

[infizero]

take me back to when i was watching spongebob the musical like 10 times within a few weeks

[nerdzzone]

Only For A Moment: June

Summary: A series of shorter one shots from Chris and Whitney’s life together throughout the pandemic. Some happy times, some harder times, some fluff and some things a little more sexy - they work through it all as they try to get settled in their new and blossoming relationship.

Chris Evans x OFC

Part of the Once Bitten/More Hearts series

Only For A Moment: May

Note: Thank you to everyone who liked, reblogged or commented on the first part of this little series. It’s been nice to write some fun family time, but please let me know if you enjoy it too! There will be some drama sprinkled in and relationship building conversations eventually, but I thought I’d let them be happy for a bit 😉

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June 2020

When I first moved to Massachusetts, I'd been very excited about the change in climate. I was ready to get away from the perpetual heat of California and live somewhere with four real seasons and actual snow in the winter. However, as much as I enjoyed those new things, it only made me appreciate summer even more.

I loved lounging in the sun, I loved the bright early mornings with that fresh smell in the air that tells you it's going to be a hot day, I loved how it brought out all the little freckles on Grayson's cheeks and most of all, this year, I loved that we had easy access to a pool.

Swimming had always been my favourite summer activity and it was something that I must have passed on to Grayson because as soon as the weather turned hot, he was constantly pestering us to let him in the water. We were very stern with him about the rules - that he wasn't to go anywhere near the pool without adult supervision - but his patience was clearly wearing thin. Chris had to clean it and get it ready for the season after it had been out of use all winter and every day that Grayson had to wait seemed to physically pain him. It was the first thing he mentioned in the morning and all he wanted to talk about throughout the day until finally, as the temperatures neared the mid 80s and summer had clearly begun, the pool was ready for use.

And it came at just the right time, when we were all needing a little carefree family fun. On top of the normal, seemingly never ending anxiety caused by the pandemic, Scott had left the day before to return to L.A. and get his life back in order. We were excited for him, but there was a hint of sadness in the air as the house felt just a little bit emptier without him.

But that emptiness dissipated instantly when we got outside. Grayson was practically vibrating with excitement and his squeals and shrieks as he splashed in the pool with Chris did a wonderful job of filling any quiet that Scott's departure had caused. He was constantly impressing us with his patience and understanding of the current restrictions on our activities so hearing the glee in his voice was a comforting sound. I couldn’t help but think how a few short years ago rambunctious kids at the pool used to get on my nerves, but now the noise only added to my relaxation.

I was soaking in that relaxation as I laid on a lounger in the sun wearing the only bikini that I'd packed. I thought it was fairly modest as far as bikinis go - very mom friendly - but from the look Chris had given me when I first came out of the house, apparently it was sexier than I thought. I'd watched in amusement as Chris turned to stare, his jaw dropping slightly as I sauntered over to my seat, but there was no time for those kinds of distractions as Grayson protested his dad's lack of attention with a splash in the face. Chris let out an exaggerated shout of surprise, but was quick to retaliate by dunking him completely under the water. The urge to scold Chris was on the tip of my tongue, but Gray was full of heartfelt giggles when he popped back up and a smile slid onto my face as I relaxed back against my chair.

I did fully intended to join them in the pool at some point, but I couldn't resist taking a few moments to watch them play.

Even when Chris and I hadn't been on the best of terms, I had always been grateful for the bond they shared. Grayson had definitely inherited his father's sense of humour - the way they teased and pestered each other was adorable to see - and they both looked at each other with so much pride, constantly thriving off the other's support and approval. Watching as Grayson flourished in his swimming practice with Chris' constant encouragement made my heart ache with happiness and I could have stayed in that moment - sprawled out on my lounger, soaking in their joy - forever without growing tired of it.

It wasn't until they'd been in the pool just over half an hour that there was any trouble. Grayson was a natural in the water - he had no fear of putting his head under, he didn't panic when he couldn't touch the bottom, he was probably a fish in a previous life - and he was excellent at listening to Chris' guidance to keep him out of any dangerous situations. However, he apparently wasn't as eager to follow our rules when he wasn't in the water.

That became apparent when Chris decided to show him how to do a cannonball. Grayson did as instructed and held tightly onto the side while Chris climbed out to demonstrate, but he got distracted when it was his turn to try. Dodger had been whipped into a frenzy by all the shouts and screams so as soon as Grayson was out of the pool, the happy dog went running past him.

"Dodger! Come back!" Grayson grinned, as his eyes lit up with an idea. "Dodger, get in the pool!"

Chris shook his head at Grayson's plan and insisted that it was a bad idea, but was almost entirely ignored as Grayson bolted after the dog.

"Grayson," I shouted over to him, sitting up straight so I could make sure I got his attention. "Don't run around the pool! Your feet are wet and the ground is slippery!"

Again, he completely ignored the opposition to his brilliant idea and he continued his sprint. I let out a huff of frustration and slipped my feet into my flip-flops, ready to chase after him when Chris spoke up.

"Gray!" He shouted, his voice stern and leaving no room for his seriousness to be misunderstood. "Listen to your Ma! You know not to run by the pool!"

Grayson's excitement was clearly clouding his judgment as he still paid no attention. I'd just stood up to go and physically stop him and make sure he understood why he needed to listen to us when he learnt the hard way, slipping and falling backwards.

My heart was in my throat as I jumped in to action, feeling only a hint of relief that he had managed to catch himself with his hands just fast enough to stop his head from smashing on the hard tiles around the pool. His first reaction was one of shock, but it only took a second for the tears to come.

"Shit," I heard Chris mutter as he immediately hoisted himself out of the water before rushing over, hot on my heels. 

I got to him first and pulled him into my arms.

"Oh, buddy, are you okay?" I asked as he buried his face in my neck and cried. "Where does it hurt?"

He sobbed out a quiet 'everywhere', but he was holding his wrist so it was safe to assume that was what bore the brunt of the impact. I rubbed his back as Chris crouched down beside us and took Gray's little hand in his own. He made him move it up and down and make a fist and when he did so without much more than a wince, it seemed like it was probably just a bit bruised.

"I think you'll be okay," Chris announced as Grayson's cries quieted down to a sniffle. "But this is why we reminded you not to run. It's not safe and you could have been really hurt."

"Sorry, Daddy..."

His words were soft as more tears filled his eyes and he crawled off of my lap into Chris' arms. Still crouched down, Chris gave him a big squeeze and assured him that it was fine, but warned him to make sure he listened to us next time.

Once Grayson's sniffles had quieted down almost completely, Chris glanced at me with a twinkle in his eye before leaning in towards Gray.

"Would it cheer you up if..."

His words trailed off and he leaned down to whisper the end of the sentence in Grayson's ear. From the way his eyes lit up at his dad's words and a giggle bubbled up from his chest, I had a feeling that I wasn't going to like whatever he'd suggested.

"Yes, Daddy!" Grayson grinned. "Do it!"

Chris shot me a smirk before sliding Grayson out of his arms and standing up. As soon as he moved behind me, I had a good idea what had just been discussed and my suspicions were all, but confirmed when he effortlessly lifted me up with one arm behind my back and the other under my knees.

"Chris..." I warned him, looking up at him in what I hoped was a menacing way. "Don't you dare throw me in that pool..."

"Why not?" He smirked. "It's such a beautiful day and you haven't even dipped a toe in yet..."

"I'll get in if you want me to, but I don't want to get my hair wet. The chlorine makes it so gross."

Chris rolled his eyes at my excuse and took a step closer to the edge.

"Do it, Daddy!" Grayson cheered. "Do it!"

"Chris..." My plea was more whiny this time. "Please, don't."

"Sorry, honey. The kid needs cheering up."

The grin on his face made it clear that he wasn't sorry at all, but before I could argue the point he tossed me out of his arms. I had just enough time to let out a squeal of protest before I hit the water. It was colder than I expected, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant since it was such a hot day. Still, as I popped back up at the surface and flipped the drenched mess of my hair out of my face, I glared at Chris. He was grinning as Grayson stood next to him, giggling uncontrollably.

"Chris! That was rude!"

My tone was harsh, but there was a smile on my face. It was hard to be annoyed when it had clearly filled Grayson with so much joy and, truthfully, I didn't mind getting wet. I wasn't about to let them know that though as I forced a pout and paddled over to the side of the pool.

"I'm sorry, Winnie," Chris apologized, but with a smirk that made me think he still wasn't being entirely sincere. "Here, let me help you out."

He held out his hand and I hid a smirk of my own. I couldn't believe he was stupid enough to do that, but I accepted his offer and grabbed on. Planting my feet on the side of the pool, I pulled on his arm and sent him flying into the water beside me.

Grayson could barely breathe he was laughing so hard after that and the look of shock on Chris' face when he resurfaced had me unable to hold back giggles of my own.

"I can't believe you fell for that," I teased. "That's the oldest trick in the book."

"Well, I didn't think you'd pull something like that when I was trying to be nice."

"It's called payback."

I shot him a smirk as I went to hoist myself out of the water, but his arms slid around my waist when I was halfway out and dragged me back in. We both ended up under the water this time and when we popped back up, he'd angled us so his back was towards Grayson and he was holding me tightly against his chest. I wrapped my legs around his waist to help me stay afloat and his hands went down to my thighs to support me.

"Well, throwing you in the pool was payback of my own," he informed me, his voice low. "Payback for strutting around in that sexy bikini when I can't do anything about it."

He slid his hands a bit higher, giving my ass a quick squeeze and I leaned down to steal a kiss. I'd be lying if I said that the sight of his very chiselled muscles as he splashed around shirtless hadn't been driving me wild too, but as Grayson called to us from the side of the pool, we were reminded just why the situation was so torturous.

"I wanna turn falling in!"

I pulled myself out of Chris' grasp at the sound of Gray's voice and smiled up at him.

"Jump in!"

"No," he shook his head. "I wanna be pushed too!"

Chris swam past me, chuckling as he went, and pulled himself out of the pool with ease. I was treading water, waiting to swim over and help Gray once he landed in the water as Chris scooped him into his arms. He tickled him, earning more hysterical giggles, and started swinging him over the pool. He didn't let go the first time though and repeated the action as he counted to three before he finally launched Grayson towards me.

Grayson's shriek was almost deafening and he landed in the water with a big splash. He spluttered and coughed as he popped back up, but the giggles quickly came back as I swam over and let him climb onto my back.

"Daddy! Come in!"

Chris smiled and turned around, looking down to make sure his feet were right at the edge of the pool.

"Stay back!"

I listened to his warning and swam a little bit farther away. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure we were in a safe place before swinging his arms and doing a perfect back flip into the water.

"Wow!" Grayson gasped, the awe clear in his voice. "That's cool!"

"Yeah? You liked that?"

Chris looked very proud of himself for impressing the three year old and it was cute to see. He had millions of fans all around the world, but nothing meant more to him than his son's adoration.

"Yeah! I did!" Grayson nodded enthusiastically. "I wanna try!"

"No way, buddy," I told him firmly, shooting Chris a glare as I heard that request and making sure he heard me too. "That's a trick for grown-ups only."

Grayson whined about how unfair I was being, but Chris chuckled and nodded his head.

"Your mom's right, Gray. That trick takes a lot of practice," he warned him as he reached over to pull him from my back. "But we can try something else. Here, stand on my hands."

He moved his hands under the water and put them under Grayson's feet. I watched, feeling a bit nervous about what he was planning, but I trusted that Chris wouldn’t do anything dangerous as they got settled into position.

"Ready?" He asked Grayson, who nodded eagerly despite having no idea what was about to happen. "Okay...One...Two...Three...Go!"

On 'go', Chris pushed his hands up quickly, tossing Grayson through the air. It was much less graceful than Chris' back flip, but that didn't damper Gray's enjoyment. As soon as his head was back above the water, he giggled and squealed for Chris to do it again. I smiled at his enthusiasm as I helped him swim back to Chris.

As we probably could have predicted, Grayson made Chris do it over and over again until we were all wrinkled from the water and baked from the sun. He probably would have made Chris toss him around the pool all night if we let him but, after almost an hour, we ruined his fun and dragged him back inside for a break from the warm weather.

To ease the blow of the pool party being over, we set him up on the couch with a popsicle while we got ourselves changed before joining him. As we all lounged in the living room - soaking in the joy of air conditioning - I was filled with a feeling that was becoming increasingly familiar.

Contentment.

The joy of domesticity was still so fresh for us. All these normal days spent together as a family that some people might find mundane were so special, but as much as I enjoyed them, I couldn't help but feel a hint of regret. I'd spent so long trying to protect Grayson by keeping Chris and I apart that I hadn't realized what he was missing out on and - as Chris pulled me close against his side with Gray tucked under his other arm - I was so grateful that we were finally able to give him the family that he deserved.

-

July

Tags:  @maggotzombie @moonlacebeam @mizzzpink @zaylaugh @flowery-mess @flowerjewels @njrronaldo7 @hockeychick10 @partypoison00 @theladybiers @sidepieces @firoozehmoon @patzammit @sparkledfirecracker @mytbel0st

[komotionlessqueenmm]

Imagine # 731

Words - 1,768

Gif NOT mine. (Found on Pinterest.)

If this gif is yours please let me know, so I can give you credit.

Gif credit goes to - Unknown.

Year posted - 2021

Warnings - Smut.

----

"You know what you gotta do man, you gotta just go up to her, you know, and you gotta just." Jordan smacked his hands together dramatically, pointing to his sister who was across the way laughing with a friend. "I don't know man." Brad took a long drag of his cigarette, staring at (Y/n). "Are you kidding me?" Jordan laughed while smacking Brad's shoulder dramatically, making Brad laugh a little. "I mean look at her. That woman is a fucking Goddess among men." Brad exclaimed making Jordan laugh. "Come on man, she'll adore you." Jordan reasoned before hollering to his sister. "(Y/n)!" She turned her attention to her older brother upon hearing her name. "Come here." He waved her over, smiling when she complied. "Come on man." Brad chuckled bitterly shaking his head. "What can I do for you Jordan?" (Y/n) rested her hand on her hip, the sun behind her giving her an angelic glow in her white bikini, with gold chains adorning her curves. "I'll tell you what you can do for me, you can park your pretty little ass on my friend here's face and give him the ride of his life." Jordan laughed when she rolled her eyes at him. "Fucking hell." Brad hissed under his breath, thinking she'd never give him the time of day now. To his surprise however she moved to stand in front of him, looking him over before taking a seat across his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Oh hey there." He murmured with a grin tugging at his lips. "Is that what you want baby? You want me to sit on your face?" (Y/n) asked sweetly while tracing his jaw with her fingers. "More than anything." Brad admitted, ignoring the excited laughter coming from Jordan. "Well you'll have to work for it handsome, because unlike my brother will have you believing, I'm not a slut." She hissed the last word before standing from Brad's lap, strutting away with more sway in her hips than usual. "She likes you, normally she'd have tried killin' us both for a comment like that." Jordan smiled at his friend, who looked almost crushed. "She doesn't even know who I am." Brad frowned before taking a heavy drag of his cigarette. "Oh she knows who you are, she asks about you everytime she sees you." Jordan laughed as he lit himself a new cigarette.

---A few hours later---

Walking upstairs Brad rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. "Where you off to cowboy?" (Y/n)'s voice sliced through the music filled air with ease. "Looking for a vacant bathroom." Brad smiled with a chuckle. "Come with me, I've got a room here with a private bathroom." She waved for him to follow, her crimson gown hypnotizing Brad as he followed her closely. "Lock and key." She held up a small key before unlocking her rooms door. "Smart." Brad chuckled as he followed her into the room. "Nice room." He commented as he looked over the extravagant room. "Yeah Jordan likes spoiling me." (Y/n) sighed with boredom. "You don't like being spoiled?" Brad asked with a playful glint in his eyes. "I like being spoiled, but I wanna be spoiled by my man, not my brother." (Y/n) explained with a small grin. "So what your man broke?" Brad asked a little worried she was taken. "Gotta have a man first sweetie, the bathrooms over there." (Y/n) pointed to the bathroom, Brad grinned as he walked to the bathroom, pleased to know she was single.

When Brad exited the bathroom he froze in his tracks, watching as (Y/n) unzipped her gown, letting it to pool at her feet. "So Brad tell me, do you want me to give you the ride of your life?" (Y/n) kept her back to him, teasing him with her black lace bra and pantie set. "Fuck yes." Brad breathed out licking his lips. "I don't do this normally, but I've been watching you for some time now. And I'm so sexually frustrated right now, I don't wanna wait until date four." (Y/n) explained, beckoning him to her. "I won't think any less of you angle." Brad promised as he took ahold of her hips. "Good." She smiled before pulling him down for a heated kiss, moaning into his mouth when he squeezed her ass firmly. "Now get your ass on the bed handsome." She murmured as they pulled apart, playfully smacking his ass. "Yes ma'am." Brad smiled before doing as she said, making himself comfortable on her king size bed. "Remove that pesky shirt of yours for me." (Y/n) insisted as she crawled onto the bed, straddling Brad's thick thighs. Quickly Brad sat up and stripped himself of his shirt, making (Y/n) giggle softly, finding his eagerness incredibly hot. "Mmm look at that." (Y/n) hummed as she stroked her hands up and down his firm chest. "I can't wait to see what you've got waiting for me in here." She mused as she unbuckled his pants. "I thought you were gonna feed me." Brad smiled up at her. "Oh I will, but I'm gonna have some fun first." (Y/n) smiled as she pulled his rock hard cock out of his pants. "Fuck that's beautiful." She murmured at the sight of him, licking her lips as she began stroking him slowly. "I'm glad you like him." Brad sighed heavily when she started dragging her tongue up the underside of his cock. "He's perfect." She smiled up at him before taking him into her mouth, and easing him down her throat slowly. "Fuck." Brad hissed, his head falling back into the pillows. "Just like that baby." Brad praised her, tangling his fingers into her hair. "Fuck you're so hot." Brad continued, as (Y/n) bobbed her head along his shaft. With a moan she eased him out of her mouth, releasing the head of his cock with an audible pop. "Delicious." She winked before climbing up the rest of his body, hovering her cunt right over his face. "Ready for me baby?" She looked down at him, wiggling her hips, teasing him. "I'm starving." Brad growled as he pulled her hips down, licking and nipping at her clothed pussy feverishly. "Ah!" (Y/n) cried out followed my a long moan. "More Brad please." She whined with need, laughing with excitement when he proceeded to tear her panties apart. "Fuck yes!" She bucked her hips as he began feasting on her, leaning forward she began kissing and licking along Brad's stomach, inching closer and closer to his cock. Greedily Brad pushed his tongue deep into her needy cunt, this goatee rubbing against her clit deliciously. "God yes!" (Y/n) cried out blissfully, kissing sloppily along his throbbing shaft. Brad growled against her soaked folds, as she began sucking him off again. (Y/n) bucked her hips softly as her orgasm approached quickly, moaning against his cock as he sent her over the edge.

Pulling him out of her mouth (Y/n) began rocking her hips, drawing out her high as Brad continued to feast on her. "FUCK!" She cried out, the muscles in her stomach contracting almost painfully as he lapped at her overstimulated cunt. "Brad!" She cried resting her hands against his hips, she applied most of her weight forward, attempting to pull away from the greedy man. Brad growled as he took a tight hold of her hips, pulling her back into place as he continued to eat her out. "Oh god I can't!" She cried out as a second orgasm washed over her without warning. "Ah!" She practically screamed as the most intense orgasm surged through her body. "(Y/n) are you okay?" Jordan barged into her room, quickly closing the door when he realized what he was looking at. "Oh my god." (Y/n) panted heavily while Brad licked at her lazily. "Oh my god." She repeated softly when Brad released her hips, allowing her to crawl away. "Holy fuck." She chuckled breathily, as Brad pulled her to lay back, swapping places with her, he made himself comfortable between her legs. "How was that angel?" Brad asked as he brushed back her hair. "I can't feel my legs." She giggled pulling him down for a kiss, moaning when he began sinking his cock into her still aching cunt. "Think you can cum one more time for me angel?" Brad asked as he bottomed out in her. "I'll cum as many times as you want me to daddy." She grinned up at him, the nickname sparking a fire within Brad. "Good girl." He growled as he began thrusting into her vigorously, causing the headboard to bang against the wall with each powerful thrust. "Fuck yes daddy!" (Y/n) cried out, clawing at Brads back, encouraging him to fuck her a bit faster. The bed squeaked, the headboard banged against the wall, (Y/n) was a moaning mess, along with Brands grunting and the obscene sound of his balls slapping against (Y/n)'s ass filled the room. "Shit!" Brad growled as he buried his face into (Y/n)'s neck biting at her skin, as he hiked her legs up onto his hips, allowing him to fuck into her even deeper. "Brad!" (Y/n) chanted his name like a prayer, over and over his name passed her lips, fueling his desire to fill her with his seed. "Don't stop." She begged before pulling him into a needy kiss, thrusting her hips up to meet his erratic thrusts in perfect tune. "Cum for me angel." Brad panted against her lips, as her cunt began constricting his throbbing cock. "Yes daddy." She huffed in pure ecstasy, her eyes rolling back as she came for the third time that night. "Just like that baby." Brad groaned as he to came undone, pumping his seed deep into her womb. "Fuck yes." He panted has he continued rutting into her, wanting to pump every last drop into her. "I should have jumped your bones sooner." (Y/n) panted with a chuckle, sighing when Brad pulled out of her and laid beside her. "You're mine now angel." Brad stated as he pulled her to lay against his chest. "Yes daddy." She smiled up at him, giggling when he playfully spanked her ass. "I'm gonna make sure you can't walk tomorrow." Brad warned as he pulled her into a kiss, kneading her ass in his hand. "Good." She hummed against his lips, the both of them grinning like sinners.

[crashdevlin]

Centerfold 4- Memory’s Been Sold

Centerfold Masterlist

Author’s Note: Written for Meghan who requested some fluffy A/B/O smut and then I came up with an idea and ran with it. Smut will start after the plot is established. Also, this is gonna go toward my @spnabobingo​ squares. This chapter fills my Slutty Omega square and is rated E for Explicit.

Summary: Dean is living the normal-boring life with Lisa. When he opens the newest Playboy, he gets the shock of his life.

Pairing: Alpha!Dean x Beta!Lisa, Alpha!Dean x Reader (memory)

Word count: 2083

Story Warnings: A/B/O dynamics, 18+! HERE BE SEX!! DON’T READ IF YOU’RE A YOUNG’UN!!! , masturbation, pornography, mentions of multiple partners, mentions of fem-fem porn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean pulled his pickup into the gas station down the street from Lisa’s house...his house. He had a house. He had a home, a family, an 8-5 job on a construction crew. He had...a real life. A real boring life. He was bored, but he supposed it was normal to feel bored, right?

“Hey, Jerry. The coffee fresh?” Dean asked as he walked into the convenience store.

“Half hour old,” the clerk, Jerry, answered with a smile. “And, uh, it’s Tuesday!”

Dean chuckled as he grabbed a thick paper cup and poured dark, bitter liquid into it. “New mags came in, huh?”

“Yeah. The Penthouse center is hot as hell, man. Oh, and the Playmate of the Month is the hottest omega I’ve ever fuckin’ seen!”

Dean laughed as he fitted the top on the cup. “Well, bring ‘em out, man. You know I’m gonna buy ‘em.” He took a drink as he walked up to the counter. Jerry had a Penthouse and a Playboy on the counter already. “They’re that good, huh?”

“Dude...especially the omega Playmate, man. She is smoking hot.”

Dean set the coffee on the counter and picked up the Playboy, slipping it out of the sleeve and looking at the cover. The cover was a woman, Taffy Rose according to the tiny script on the bottom next to the photographer credit, in a strawberry-print bikini and bunny mask. Hot, but nothing special. Nothing different or new. But he flipped the magazine open to the center and gasped.

“Holy shit.” The bunny mask was gone, her body on full display except the bits of skin hidden by the pink feather boa. His throat went dry. His cock got hard in jeans. His head felt like it might explode.

“I know, right?!” Jerry exclaimed, happily. “Isn’t she the hottest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Yeah. She’s the hottest thing I’ve ever…” Dean’s voice trailed off as he focused on her neck. No mark. He hoped they hadn’t photoshopped one out. She was the hottest thing he’d ever touched, tasted, the best thing he’d ever missed out on...Taffy Rose, Y/n Y/l/n...his omega. Dean cleared his throat and tried to close the magazine, but he couldn’t. She’d grown up so beautiful and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “She, uh...she been in anything I might’ve seen?”

“I don’t know, Dean. I’m Googling her name as soon as I get home. I suggest you do the same, man.”

“Yeah. Uh...I’m just gonna...I’m just gonna take the Playboy. I’ll get the Penthouse next time, Jer.” Dean threw a ten on the counter and walked out with the magazine, leaving his coffee behind and not even caring. He sat in his truck cab for a few minutes, staring at her photo. Y/n went into porn. Whoever would have thought that sweet little innocent young woman with the overprotective parents would- “Actually, no, that makes sense.”

He rubbed his hand over his erection as he looked at the ‘fuck me’ look in her eyes. It didn’t take long for his mind to drift back to her under him, holding him, letting out gasping cries as he fucked her, that look in her eyes as she dug her nails into his shoulders.

His cock softened as he remembered getting on the phone with her to tell her he was leaving.

He felt like he was going to cry when the line clicked. “Y/l/n Residence!”

“Y/n, it’s Dean.”

“Oh, hey! I just got finished washing every surface you touched,” she said, giggling. That giggle tugged at his heart. “I can’t wait to see you again, though. It was so worth the cleaning time.”

“Yeah, uh...it was awesome, baby, but...my, uh, my dad called.”

“Oh?” Dean could almost hear the heartbreak in her voice.

“Yeah. He...got word of a job in Connecticut. He’s pickin’ us up tomorrow.” There was silence on the line for a minute. “Y/n?”

“You’re leaving?” she squeaked.

“Yeah.” Dean had to fight the tears. “Yeah, we’re leaving.”

“But...what about...I...am I gonna get to see you again at all?”

“Not unless you can sneak out tonight. Dad’ll be here in the morning. We’ll be gone before noon.”

“Oh God.”

Dean took a deep breath and started the truck, driving home with a pit in his stomach. He immediately hid the magazine in his desk and sat in the rolling desk chair. He looked around to make sure Lisa and Ben were both out of the den area, hoping they were out of the house, before pulling up Google and searching for ‘Taffy Rose omega xxx’. Several thousand results popped up, so Dean went to the first. A video on Pornhub labeled ‘Sweet omega Taffy seduces her best friend Kat at a sleepover’. Dean swallowed and licked his lips, turning his volume down almost all the way and clicking on the video. She looked fairly innocent, without looking fake, which was a feat of its own considering he knew he was watching porn. The other actress wasn’t pulling it off anywhere near as well, especially the overacted reaction to ‘Taffy’ kissing her.

Dean could remember making out with her when she was just a little younger than the 18 year old she was pretending to be on his screen and it filled him with yearning to see her wrap her arms around this other woman’s neck and pull her in for a passionate kiss. He watched a little longer before hitting the back button and started searching through more and more results.

‘Omega Taffy Rose and her hot omega stepmom’ ‘Taffy Rose fucks her best friends’ ‘Sunny Sweets and Taffy Rose Turth or dare’ ‘Batgirl and Supergirl caught by Poison Ivy’

“Holy shit, she’s the hottest Supergirl,” Dean whispered, as he pulled his dick out of his jeans and started pumping it. It occurred to him, as he lazily jacked off and clicked through the ‘Taffy Rose’ tag on XNXX .com, that she was always with other women, usually other omegas. It took him forty minutes of clicking to find ‘Beta Brad Bull wants to know what omega tastes like’.

Not a single alpha in any of her videos, and not a mark on her neck, despite the fact that so many of her omega co-stars had marks that they had failed to cover no matter the makeup they used. And Brad and Taffy didn't go further than oral.

"That's weird," Dean whispered, tucking his dick back into his boxers but leaving the jeans open in a V. "Usually 'mega actresses are getting knotted every other scene."

He clicked off of the porn site and went back to Google, searching 'Taffy Rose alpha'. He found several blogs asking why a porn actress was unmated, some wondering how she could be in this business without fear of being taken by force, and some judging her for doing porn in the first place, but eventually he found an interview with her. He turned up the volume a bit and started it.

"Taffy, you have just burst on the scene and you've been staring in so many films this past year, it's crazy how popular you are all of a sudden!"

"Yeah, it is. I mean, I just started this as a fun way to make some money and now it's a full-on career!" Dean gasped at her voice. It was deeper than he remembered, seasoned with age, but that giggle at the end was exactly the same. That giggle made his heart hurt.

"Well, as long as you're having fun, right?"

"Exactly!"

"Now, I've noticed, and I'm not the only one, that you seem to favor lesbian scenes. Is that a personal preference, a reference to your actual sexuality, or-"

"Oh, no! I love guys. I live for cock, but…” Dean’s dick twitched at that. Why did her voice sound so musical...especially saying something so filthy? “I don't fuck alphas and there's a lot more work for an omega willing to fuck another omega than an omega willing to fuck a beta."

"Now, why don't you fuck alphas? It would seem a natural thing for you, right?"

She looked down, a bit of the bashful teen girl showing on her face. "Um...I just...it's dangerous, since I'm not mated...and it's special, ya know?” She bit her bottom lip and looked back up and Dean’s jaw dropped. “I may be a slut, but I can't fuck some random alpha and take his knot. I've never taken a knot and...probably never will."

"Fuck, I'd give anything to have you on my knot, Y/n," Dean whispered as the door opened and Lisa and Ben entered. Dean scrambled to exit out of the browser and cover the open jeans with his t-shirt. Reality crashed down on him. There was his family. There was his beta girlfriend and her son...his boy whether by blood or not. “H-hey, honey. How was work?”

“It was good. How was your day, Dean?” she asked, walking over to the desk in the den.

“It was-it was a day,” he answered, tilting his head to allow her to kiss his cheek.

“What’s this?” Lisa asked, pulling open the half-closed desk drawer. She gasped and slammed the drawer closed when she saw the magazine. “I cannot believe you!” she snapped.

“Come on, Lees, it’s just a Playboy,” Dean defended.

“‘Just a Playboy’? Dean, you’re living with a teen boy now! You can’t have this stuff! You can’t expose him to-”

Dean scoffed and stood, looking down into her eyes. “Lisa, I promise you that boy knows about porn and knows how to find the good stuff online. My Playboy is probably too tame for him.”

“How dare you? Ben would never-”

“Yeah? Check his browser history.” Dean rolled his eyes and stepped around her, walking out of the house and to the garage. He grabbed the cover and pulled it up just enough to open the door and climb into the front seat of the Impala. He took a minute to let a wave of nostalgia roll over him at the feel and smell of his baby before he settled back, legs kicked out and jeans shimmied down enough to pull his cock out.

He closed his eyes and wrapped his fingers around his base. He could see Y/n in his mind. He could hear her laugh. He could see her smile, the way her eyes lit up when he said her name. He started moving his hand up and down his length as he remembered the way Y/n looked at him the first time he sunk his dick into her.

He ran his thumb across the head and gasped as he remembered her digging her nails into his shoulder muscles, how innocent she sounded when she said ‘I think you can go faster’, the way she whimpered with every thrust, the way she wrapped her legs around his waist and babbled his name, the way she whispered ‘harder’ and thanked him when he grabbed her white wood headboard and started pounding into her like the alpha he was. He wanted nothing more than to knot her, but she couldn’t take it.

She could take it now. He wanted to fill her and knot her and make her scream. He wanted to hear her moan and giggle and gasp and-

His breath caught as cum shot out of his cock, splashing over his hand. He gasped in a breath before another stream of semen left him. “Fuck.” Dean fucked himself through his climax until there was absolutely nothing left for him to give and then he slumped into the leather.

He was suddenly filled with despair. He found her. His omega, the one that got away, the one woman his mind returned to in quiet moments. He found her, but she was in the San Fernando Valley in California and he was in Cicero...with Lisa and her boring, normal life. Lisa and her son that she coddled. Beta Lisa that sent him away when he went into rut, who would never be able to take a knot. He loved that Lisa took him in, nursed him back from the brink of breakdown, but the yearning he had pushed down since he was sixteen years old was now back with a burning vengeance.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[absent-angel]

What’s in a Name

Fandom: Fairy Tail

Summary: The first time she sees him her home is on fire. [NaLu] [Fae AU] [@nalu-week 2020 Bonus Day: AU]

Read it on ff.net

AN: Well, I’m late per usual but it’s here! Also, I’m sorry but I don’t have the patience go through at search out all the italics tumblr doesn’t recognize, so if you want to read it as it was written please use the link. :)

Word Count: 6106

Warnings: Language

The first time she sees him, her home is on fire.

Flames are clawing up the walls, smoke blacking the ceiling. She coughs into the sleeve of her lace trimmed nightgown and tries to stifle her sobs long enough to scream for her mother. She is only ten years old, and the only thing she remembers from the fire safety course last year is to stop, drop, and roll. She's not on fire, but after a few moments of running aimlessly around her room and choking on smoke, she sinks to the ground anyway. It is easier to breathe down there. The room is filling with smoke and through the cackling and popping of the flames she can just barely make out the sound of the frantic voices of the staff on the other side of the wall.

Again, she screams for help but the smoke gags her. The air is so hot that she feels her lungs blister with every breath she takes. Most of her room has been engulfed, and the ceiling is starting to rain down blackened sheets of drywall—hitting the floor like a bomb. She knows she should move but she doesn't know where to go. Her bedroom door was long since engulfed by the greedy flames, and the only window is blocked - her pink velvet curtains have long since turned into two towering pillars of heat and flames. There isn't nearly enough room for her to get through. On her hands and knees she crawls under her bed, because it seems to be the only safe place left. 

Her face shines with a mixture of sweat and tears as she presses her cheek against the wood floor. She gasps for breath, lungs burning for oxygen. The edges of her vision are starting to go black and she forces herself to take larger gulps of ash-laden air. When she calls out again her voice is dry and cracks with every syllable. Still, she forces the words out in a coughing wheeze. "Please! I don't—want to die!" More tears slip down her cheeks, she can almost feel them evaporating on her flushed skin. The voices on the other side of the wall have faded, and all she hears now is the hissing and popping as the fire consumes. 

Her eyes, already burning from the heat and smoke, begin to feel heavy and she feels the overwhelming urge to sleep. Slowly, she blinks, and when her eyes reopen she sees something that wasn't there before. By the curtains she sees a man. 

She should be suspicious of the fact that the smoldering heat and open flames seem to have no effect on him—but she isn't. With every last bit of strength, she tries to drag herself toward him. She only makes it to the foot of the bed. He doesn't see her, she knows he doesn't, because he is humming and eating the flames licking up her curtains. "Help," she pleas, but it is only a weak hiss of air passing her chapped lips.

His dark eyes snap to hers, an alarmed expression parting his lips, before her world fades to black.

A week later she wakes up surrounded by clean white floors and starched linens. There is a mask strapped to her face and wires taped to her skin, and dazedly realizes she is in a hospital. She expects her mother to be there, but it is Ms. Spetto that comes rushing to her bedside; tears following the deep wrinkles around her mouth as her time worn hands gently cup Lucy's cheeks. Her lips move around the same words, over and over again. By the fourth time she repeats it, Lucy is able to wade through the fog of painkillers enough to understand.

“I’m so sorry.”

Lucy is ten years old, and the day she wakes up—relieved to be alive—is the day she finds out her mother is dead.

X

The second time she sees him it is at Burning Man. 

She is twenty-one and so out of her league, but a classmate convinced her to come along. She is angry and determined to rebel against her father in every way possible so she does. It takes her a day and five semi-permanent coloring kits to get her hair ready. Cana (her classmate) helps her dye some of the blonde strands into rainbow colored streaks. Lucy admits that she's concerned about the turn out at first, but now that she has the colored strands weaved into two French braids she is more than happy with her decision. 

Everyone seems so bright and full of color, so full of life. She is lost in a sea of costumed bodies, sky high sculptures, cleverly modified "cars", friendly smiles, and booze. Lots of booze. The sun is mercilessly hot, and she knows that her shoulders will likely be burned even through her sunscreen (and the thick layer of dust she had accumulated from her traditional virgin roll in the dirt upon her arrival). It is nothing like she has ever experienced, and she is glad that Cana convinced her to come. 

Her friend disappeared  hours ago—Lucy assumes she is probably back in the tent doing she-doesn't-even-want-to-know-what with her boyfriend. She takes a drag of her beer and shivers when she finds it is still cold. The bikini top and shorts she is wearing do little to keep her warm, but she knows that once she joins the throng of dancers she will probably be wishing for the cold. 

Night descends and people are lit up with any and every possible glow-in-the-dark accessory imaginable. The large sculptures dotting the desert are aglow with a mixture of Christmas lights and LEDs, but the one in front of her is a cacophony of large billowing flames that—if not for the smoke and heat—would almost look like clouds. Adrenaline pumps through her veins, quickening her pulse as she is torn between fear and awe and the towering flames. She has made sure to find a spot upwind to avoid the smoke, but she can still feel her breathing beginning to tighten. Her asthma doesn’t flare up often, but when it does smoke is usually the culprit; fitting since it was the burning air and toxic smoke she inhaled when she was ten that gave her the condition in the first place. She reaches for the inhaler she stacked in her front pocket—just to be safe.

Then she sees him.

He is everything she remembers and everything she has forgotten. He sits on the crude arm of the sculpture, grabbing handfuls of flames and slurping it up as if it were soup. She can’t hear anything over the music, but his leg swings idly to the beat and, somehow, she can almost hear him humming along.

Lucy goes still—frozen in a sea of moving bodies. A man next to her asks if she’s ok, but she barely registers it. By the time she does, he’s already laughing her off has having a good trip. She watches as he disappears into the crowd, hoping that when she looks the fire eating man will have disappeared.

He hasn’t.

He’s staring right at her, with those eyes she remembers most. The same startled expression parting his mouth; fire painting him in orange, red light.

Her inhaler drops. Lucy runs. Maybe she is on a bad trip—maybe someone put something in her drink—but she doesn’t care. Even if it isn’t real, it’s real to her. She doesn’t want to stare at the face that has haunted her for more than a decade. The face she has told no one about, because even as a ten year old she knew better than to believe in strange men that eat fire like it’s a meal.

Adrenaline is making her pulse race and her mind foggy. She should have ran back to her tent—Cana’s boyfriend being there or not—but instead she finds herself surrounded by cold, empty desert with the fire (and other people) at her back. The air she gulps down is cold, but she knows the goosebumps dotting her exposed skin are from far, far more than just the temperature. There are a hundred of things she should be worried about—snakes, coyotes, real men that might see her as an easy target—but all she can think of is dark eyes and flames and the wheezing in her chest.

She forces herself to stand upright, dutifully recalling her doctor’s instructions should she have an attack without her inhaler, and tries to calm her racing heart and reign in her short, gasping breaths. It’s just her mind playing tricks, she tells herself. Just childhood trauma coming back to haunt her. It was a big fire, she should have known it would trigger a reaction. Really, what had she expected? Only, each inhale of cold, dry air seems to only make the pain in her chest coil tighter; every breath shorter. 

Suddenly the fire-eater is the least of her concerns. She has to turn around—has to find the spare inhaler she has stashed in her duffle bag. If she doesn’t—if she passes out, here, in the dark corner of desert—she won’t live to see the sunrise.

She turns, squeaking out a scream when she finds a face not a foot away from her’s. A face that, even in the darkness, she recognizes.

He tilts his head, brow furrowing as he watches her gasp. His hand wraps around her neck, too light to bruise but too firm for her to escape. Fear prompts her to claw at his hand, fighting against his hold, but then something strange happens.

The coil in her chest loosens, the whistle in her breathing stops. She can breathe. 

Lucy’s heartbeat thunders in her ears, but as his hand retreats her breathing slows, deep and measured and so blessedly normal it’s shocking. She stumbles backward, tripping and falling on her bottom, but she is too numb to do anything else but stare. She doesn’t know what he did but she knows it saved her life, and she isn’t sure how she should process that. “How?” she asks, the word cutting through the silence.

He crouches down, head tilted and eyes curious. “You can see me?”

Lucy swallows, trembling. She doesn’t dare repeat her question. “Am I not supposed to?”

Rubbing the back of his neck, he gives a small, perplexed shrug. “I don’t know. No one has before.”

“That’s a lie,” she murmurs, before she can think better of it. But he doesn’t seem offended. “I saw you. You were eating the curtains.”

He recoils, disgusted. “Gross! Who the hell would eat curtains?!”

“They were on fire,” she says, confidence growing the longer she sits there. He hasn’t hurt her—he’s never hurt her—and she gets the feeling that he never will. Why would he bother saving her otherwise? Her vision has begun to adjust to the dark, and he seems much less scary now that he’s more than a shadow. The pink hair helps too. “I was a little girl, and I saw you.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, seeming torn between awe and complete confusion. The way he looks at her is disconcerting… like he doesn’t know what she is, even though she’s the one that should be perplexed. “How’d you do that?”

Her shoulders lift into a weak shrug. Beneath her the ground is still relatively warm from soaking up the sun’s heat all day, but even that is rapidly leaving, and she shivers—teeth on the verge of chattering now that some of the adrenaline has waned. “I didn’t do anything,” she grumbles, sitting up and rubbing her arms with her palms. “You were just, there, and I saw you.”

Glancing at her hands, he frowns. “Why are you doing that?”

“What?”

“That thing with your hands. And the shaky thing.”

“Because I’m cold? It’s cold out here.”

“It is?” He looks around, as if temperature is something that can be seen instead of felt. “Huh. Guess I didn’t notice.” His feet lift, crossing underneath him, and it’s as if gravity has ceased to exist. Perhaps, for him, it never has. In the dark, his eyes burn inhumanly bright. “What’s your name?”

A warning trill traces her spine. Lucy doesn’t remember all of her mother’s teachings, but she remembers this: names have power. Back then it was merely a rule for storybooks; realms with magic and fae instead of electricity and cars. Still, her mother’s voice rings, clear as day, that one can never be too careful. “What’s yours?”

His grin is wide, almost approving, as he laces his fingers behind his head. “You know, you really are the only one that can see me. Do you see other things too?”

Lucy stares at him, a sudden swell of emotion stirring in her chest. “I thought I imagined you,” she says, barely above a whisper. “No one could tell me how I got out of the house. You... you did that, didn’t you? You saved me?”

He shifts, looking uncomfortable. Mouth parting, he’s on the verge of offering an answer when his body tenses—eyes snapping to the dying flames yards away. He frowns, looking genuinely disappointed.  “Well, damn. Guess this is goodbye.”

Lucy shakes her head, “Wait! You didn’t answer—“

He flips something toward her: a coin, gold and glinting despite the darkness. Out of instinct, she catches it. The metal is inhumanly warm and unnaturally bright, and it momentarily shocks her into silence. When she looks up he is sending her a dimpled grin. 

“Call me!”

Then, between one blink and the next, he’s gone; and Lucy wonders how she could possibly call when she doesn’t even know who or what he is.

X

The third time she sees him, her shoulders and cheeks are still burnt from the Nevada sun, but she is at least in the privacy of her own home.

Her father has always thrown money at problems to make them go away, and Lucy is no exception. It is easier for him to shower her with gifts through the mail than to shower her with time, and though it still sends a shot of bitterness through her heart she has learned to at least appreciate the practicality of his seemingly endless pocketbook. The cozy two-story Tudor style home he bought her, just around the corner from her college campus, is particularly well loved.

The wallpaper is old—some of it even original—and peeling in some places, and the oak floors speak back to her with every step, but she loves the warmth it provides; so unlike the cold, polished marble homes of her youth. 

There are multiple fireplaces. Lucy has never used them, but she considers them thoughtfully now; despite it being the heat of summer. She rubs the coin between her fingers restlessly. 

She lights a match—hesitating long enough to feel the heat brush her fingertips—before flicking it into the fireplace. The crumpled balls of paper take a moment to catch, but once it does the fire flares to life; the flames licking at the bricks. But nothing changes and she frowns—disappointed.

In her front pocket, the golden coin hums; emitting a heat she can feel even through the denim of her jeans. She pulls it out, stares at her reflection in the polished surface, and wonders. Her eyes flick to the fireplace, considering, and tosses the coin into the flames.

She stares, waiting for something (anything) to happen. After a few long seconds she begins to think nothing will, but then—between one blink and the next—he’s there, bouncing on the pads of his bare feet and a dimpled grin stretched ear to ear.

“Bout time! What took you so long?”

Lucy sits, practically falling into her favorite wingback chair, and stares up at him in disbelief. “I... can’t believe that worked.”

He links his hands over his head, stretching. Lucy tries not to notice the way his muscles flex beneath his open vest. Perhaps it was a mistake calling on him during the day. Between the harsh shadows the Burning Man fire cast and the desert darkness, she had failed to realize how inhumanly handsome he is.

A pink eyebrow raises questioningly. “Well, why wouldn’t it?”

Lucy flushes. She prays to whatever the hell god is listening that he didn’t notice her staring and forces herself to focus on the conversation instead of his pecs. “Why would it?!”

He opens his mouth, but whatever answer he was preparing to give her is cut off by the dimming flames in the hearth. “Don’t let it die!” he yelps, bordering on panic. “Throw something in there! Quick! If the fire dies, the door shuts!”

Hastily, she looks around for something to toss in but it wasn’t like she was prepared for any of this. She doesn’t buy firewood—why would she when this is the first time she’s ever dared to use her fireplace—and the crumpled pieces of paper she had lit were just junk mail. “I don’t have anything else!”

He growls, an inhuman sound for an inhuman man, and points to the stack of books on her side table. “There!”

Lucy blanches. “That’s my history textbook!”

“Who cares!? They got most of it wrong anyway!” he snaps. The last of the flames is retreating into the embers. “Hurry!”

It is a testament to her stress level that her sanity lapsed enough to throw her three-hundred dollar textbook to its fiery grave. She watches, gaping, as it catches—a whooshing pillar of ink fed flames.

Delighted, her guest tastes a sample and makes a face. “Geeze, did no one teach you how to build a fire? You kinda suck at this.”

Lucy’s face hardens. “I try to avoid it.”

“Why would you so that?! Fire is awesome! It cooks stuff and keeps people warm—“

“It killed my mother.”

His smile falls. “Oh.” 

Silence presses down on them, so awkward it’s stifling. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as she gathers her courage to ask the question that’s haunted her for years. “You were there,” Lucy whispers, her heart aching. “Why didn’t you save her too?”

He rubs the back of his neck, unable to meet her gaze, but there is an apology in his voice. “I can’t interact with people of this plane—I don’t really exist here.”

Lucy shakes her head. “But you saved me.”

Frowning, he crosses his arms over his chest. “Well yeah. Wasn’t going to leave ya there.”

She can’t tell if he’s being oblivious or stubborn, but her frustration rises regardless. “But I’m from this plane.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Of course I am!”

He doesn’t argue, but his stare is pointed. Knowing. When he shrugs it feels placating. “Ok.”

Lucy feels like it’s anything but, and when the fire starts to die she doesn’t feed it.

X

She doesn’t see him for another three months.

Honestly, she hadn’t planned on calling on him at all, but it’s Christmas Eve and all her friends have fled the campus and returned home for the holidays. Christmas is a holiday she hasn’t fully celebrated since her mother died. She remembers that the Heartfilia mansion used to be so lit up with lights and garlands it would glow from the street. Ms. Spetto liked to joke that it could probably be seen from the moon.

The fresh scent of pine and the magic of the holiday left with her mother, though, and her father has never so much as put a wreath up since. When Lucy was in the dorms she would try to add a bit of cheer, but it always paled in comparison to the grandness of her childhood memories. When she received the keys to her home, Lucy vowed to go all out come Christmas.

Garlands drape over the fireplace mantels and twine between the railings of the staircase. The Douglas fir she had to physically wrestle into submission sits—slightly leaning—in the corner of the living room, lit up in row upon row of white lights and branches heavy with the glass ornaments she found at the superstore around the corner. The fire is crackling merrily in the fireplace, and a mug of hot cocoa warms her palms.

It is all picture perfect—something straight off a holiday card.

It feels hollow. Forced.

Lonely.

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, quelling its quivering. She doesn’t want to spend her Christmas alone; not again. 

From the fireplace mantle, partially hidden behind the heavy garland, the gold coin winks at her. She stares at it until her cocoa grows cold; torn between the desire to fill the emptiness in her heart and being sensible enough to know better than to invite a strange being into her home (again) for no other reason than to have some company.

Lucy considers herself to be logical, for the most part, but right now she’s tired of putting responsibility first. Right now, she wants to take a page out of Cana’s book and just say fuck it.

She stands, making a beeline to the dining room and fishing out a bottle of Kahlua from the back of the alcohol cabinet. Dumping a generous amount into her (now cold) hot chocolate, she doesn’t even bother to stir before taking a several gulps. It slides down her throat, smooth and warm, before settling in her stomach. It feels like courage, or perhaps it’s simply recklessness. Either way, she takes the smooth faced coin from the mantle and tosses it into the fire before she can talk herself out of it.

He takes longer this time—a good three blinks—but when he arrives there is a holly crown weaved into his hair and a pink flush to his cheeks. His clothes are different from all the times before; finer. High collared and made from a golden material that reflects the flickering light of the fire. “Hey,” he breathes, an excited (relieved?) smile pulling at his lips. “I didn’t think you’d call.”

For a moment she can only gape at him; struck by how otherworldly—how Fae—he looks. “Um, I, well. I just thought... you know, it’s Christmas?” She pales, realization dawning as fast as her embarrassment. “Oh, but, you wouldn’t celebrate Christmas. Would you?”

The chuckle he gives is light, and blessedly unoffended. “Nah, can’t say I do.” He gestures to his clothing. “But we go all out for the Winter Solstice. So similar deal, right? With the whole eat, drink, and be merry and whatnot?”

Despite the alcohol making her thoughts fuzzy, Lucy has enough presence of mind to know better than to invite a conversation of religion with a near stranger (let alone a mythical being) so she nods. “Uh, yeah. I guess so.” Then it clicks, and she feels her face heat. “Oh, you were—did I interrupt the, uh, merrymaking?”

He waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I was getting sick of seeing Ice Prick’s smug face anyway. He’s always an extra pain in the ass this time of year.”

She blinks, but decides she really doesn’t want to know. “Oh. Well then, um, would you like some hot cocoa?”

His answering smile is boundless; bright with an enthusiasm that Lucy knows is worthy of far more than what she’s offered.

X

For the remainder of winter break, Lucy lights a fire in the living room hearth every evening.

She never enjoys it alone.

X

Cana looks at her strangely when she returns from break, eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”

Lucy frowns, sitting in the seat beside her. The coffee shop is busy, but the line is mostly frantic to-go orders of students who hit the snooze one too many times. The sitting area is practically empty saved for two or three others. “I missed you too? How’s your dad?”

“Drunk,” Cana says without a beat, her lips thinning. “Seriously, though. What’d you do? Your aura is freaking me out.”

Lucy doesn’t typically put too much faith in the idea of psychics, but Cana’s has a history of being uncannily right about things she doesn’t have any business knowing. Also, she’s sorta made friends with a fae over Winter Break so who is she to judge? “What are you talking about?”

Cana rests her chin in her palm, a painted fingernail tapping thoughtfully against her cheek. “You’re... bright.”

Raising an eyebrow, Lucy tried to interpret Cana’s baffled expression. “And that’s...bad?”

The brunette snorts, taking a sip of her coffee. Her eyes continue to stare over the rim. “It’s fucking weird. I can’t read anything off you. It’s like staring straight at a lightbulb.”

Lucy doesn’t have an explanation—she’s not even sure she even understands—so offers a shrug and a sheepish smile. “Sorry?”

Cana hums, shaking her head. “It’s pretty,” she consoles, eyes tracing something Lucy can’t see. “But it’s fucking weird.”

X

“Why can I see you?” Lucy asks, staring up at the ceiling. The wood planks are unforgiving on her joints, but the warmth of the fire (and perhaps that glass of wine) has made her too sleepy to care. Monopoly money and plastic houses are scattered over her coffee table, a few of the paper bills littering the floor.

Her guest pauses in his inspection of the thimble, brow raised. “Why does anyone see anything?”

She huffs, eyelids heavy and words mumbled. “Why do you keep answering questions with more questions?”

His grin is crooked but soft. “Because I won’t lie to you.”

She hums sleepily, lids drifting shut. It feels good to rest her eyes. “You can tell me anything.”

They both know it’s the truth. Sometime in the last six months he has become one of her closest friend, her most trusted confidant. At least a couple nights a week, she calls on him. They play board games and watch movies—one night Lucy taught him how to bake chocolate chip cookies. He still hasn’t told her his name. Lucy hasn’t told him hers either.

The chuckle he gives is as warm as the fire at her back; his voice a promise. “Someday I will.”

Lucy is asleep before she can answer.

X

On the anniversary of her mother’s death, Lucy lights a candle.

She tries to sniff back the tears, but they press against the backs of her eyes—building in pressure until they spill over her lids. The tiny flame dances, moved by her uneven breaths. It hurts. Ten years later and it still hurts.

Legs weak, she sinks to the floor, hand over her aching chest as silent sobs wrack her body.

A hand rests against her back. Lucy doesn’t look to see who it belongs to— it’s too warm to be anyone but his. She curls into herself, unsure if she feels irritated by him coming uninvited (the candle, she thinks, it must have been the candle) or relieved that she doesn’t have to fall apart alone. 

“I didn’t call you,” she tells him, voice cracking. The coin is in her front pocket, hidden and far from the open flame.

A callused knuckle brushes a tear from her eyes before it can fall. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “you did.”

She wipes her nose on the sleeve of her sweater.  She still doesn’t understand, and she hates when he gives her these vague responses, but she’s in too much pain to fight for an answer. “But how’d you open the door? The coin—”

He offers a brittle smile. “There’s more than one way to pick a lock.”

His arms wrap around her, pulling her close until the heat of him surrounds her.  It feels so good to be held—to be touched— something in her breaks and she releases a low, keening sob. His hold tightens, a hand reaching up to caress her hair. Lucy can feel his lips brush against her forehead, his words whispering across her skin. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her.”

Her fingers grasp his clothing, and she inhales his spiced scent in between gasping breaths. She’s sorry too.

X

Wake up.

A kiss of warmth at her lips, magic in her lungs. Hands shake her. Rough. Begging. 

Breathe. Come on, breathe.

Lucy opens her eyes with a gasp, ragged and raw. Pavement digs uncomfortably into her shoulder blades, and her chest aches with every inhale. Her vision is blurred, but she can make out his pink hair through the fog. One side of her face feels hot, and she rolls her head to the side to investigate.

Her home is on fire.

At first she thinks she’s only reliving her childhood nightmare, but the familiar man—fae—hovering over her grips her upper arms with a strength that is bruising. “You idiot,” he hisses. There are tears clinging, unspilled, at the corners of his eyes. “Why the hell didn’t you leave the ashes in the fireplace?!”

Lucy blinks, trying to clear the blurriness at the edge of her vision. “Ashes?” she echoes. She had cleaned those up, swept them into her trash can. The hearth was filthy from all his visits. “But they were cold.” She knows—she checked. It had been hours from when the fire died and his visit ended.

She can hear the piercing echo of sirens and knows they are for her.

His hands move, callused palms cupping her cheeks; so gently they tremble. “Idiot,” he repeats, softer this time. Almost an endearment. The piercing echo of sirens reach her ears, Lucy knows they are for her. He leans down till their foreheads touch, his breath warm against her lips. “Those ashes almost killed you,” he whispers, voice rough. “If you didn’t leave my coin downstairs—” he cuts off, cringing. “You weren’t breathing. When I pulled you out. You weren’t breathing.”

Lights, red and white, flash over her front yard. Someone with heavy steps and full fire gear runs toward her; shouting something Lucy can’t bother to make out. She’s too focused on the fear, the relief, in her friend’s dark eyes.

The fireman is kneeling beside her know, opposite of the fae that saved her. His fingers check her pulse as he speaks to her (Miss are you alright? Can you hear me? Does anything hurt?)

Lucy doesn’t answer, doesn’t even glance his way. To do so would mean breaking eye contact with her best friend, and right now his presence is offering her more comfort than any human could. “What’s your name?” she rasps, reaching for him.

“Natsu,” he answers, taking her hand in his. His fingers, callused and warm, trace her cheek, and Lucy knows that what he’s given her is far more than just a name. “It’s Natsu.”

She wants to thank him—for saving her, for his trust—but she’s being picked up, pulled away from him, and set in a stretcher. A mask is strapped over her face, IVs taped to her arm, and she fights to hold onto his hand. “No,” she mutters weakly, “No, I want to stay with him. Stop...”

They keep speaking to her, encouraging and emphatic, but they don’t listen to her requests. She struggles, gloved hands push her down, but then Natsu is there beside her—reaching between the bodies surrounding her to grasp her hand. “It’s ok,” he says. “It’s ok. Don’t fight them.”

She holds his hand with a white-knuckled grip, relieved that he doesn’t let her go as they load her into the ambulance. The paramedic puts a stethoscope to her chest, listening to her pulse, as the doors close. Beside him, Natsu kneels beside her, thumb stroking over her knuckles. “I’ll stay with you for as far as I can,” he promises. Lucy nods, but her eyes are starting to feel heavy.

He makes it four blocks, before a pained grimace overtakes his features. His lips part, probably trying to warn her, but he isn’t quick enough. He disappears, torn away from her by the boundaries of his magic, but when her fingers close she finds that he didn’t leave her empty handed. Sitting, comforting and warm, in her palm is a familiar gold coin.

Lucy closes her fingers around it, tests the taste of his name on her lips, and falls into sleep.

X

They discharge her after two days. The doctors tell her it’s a small miracle she escaped without any damage to her lungs, but Lucy knows better.

She’s breathing better than she has in the last decade—since before she survived the fire that took her mother. Natsu has given her more than his name, more than his kiss. When their lips touched, something in her awoke. She can feel it, even now, lazily curling around her soul—sleepy and languid; a cat in front of a warm hearth. It’s new but she knows, instinctively, that it is hers.

Long ago, her mother used to spin her stories of the Fae and their blood—how the magic often slept, hidden, in plain sight for generations before awakening.

Lucy knows why she can see Natsu; knows why he was able to save her.

She goes home; what’s left of it. Beyond the yellow caution taped perimeter is a charred skeleton of what used to be her house. Most of the walls have buckled, little more than piles of blackened brick and ash. Of all four fireplaces her home once boasted, only the one in the living room is recognizable. The stack is short, but after a bit of digging Lucy is able to find the hearth.

With soot blackened hands, she fishes her discharge papers from the plastic, hospital issued bag she was sent with and diligently crumbles each page until the hearth is full of her makeshift kindling and—gleaming on top—his coin. It won’t burn for long, she knows, but as she brings a lighter (her only purchase between the hospital and home) to the paper, she hopes it will be enough.

The moment the paper catches, she can feel his presence behind her—a subtle shift in the air, the spiced scent of magic. She faces him, heart fluttering in her chest.

His fingers brush over her eyelids, a soft smile curling his mouth. “You’re awake,” he murmurs, awe darkening his gaze. “You can see.”

“Yes,” she murmurs, holding his palm to her cheek. The calluses lining his fingers brush against her skin, warm and welcome, and she sighs—leaning into his touch. “I can see.”

His grin is interrupted by a shudder—so minute she would have never known if she weren’t holding his hand—and his eyes flick over to the fireplace. Lucy doesn’t need to look to know they are running out of time.

Quickly, before the fire goes out completely, she kisses him. Chaste, but branded with the heat of a promise. “Lucy,” she whispers against his lips. “My name is Lucy.”

Natsu sucks in a quick, startled breath and stares down at her as if she is something amazing. Slowly, his lips curl and his cheeks dimple—eyes lighting up. “Lucy,” he echoes—savoring each syllable as if they are the finest gift she could give him. Lucy suspects they might be.

He brushes a stray hair away from her face with a tenderness that makes her pulse flutter and her eyes close. When he kisses her, it is soft and unhurried despite the dying fire behind her. It feels like coming home. Her fingers grip his vest in what she knows is a vain effort to keep him beside her.

When he pulls away she opens her eyes, and finds the world different. There is stardust tangled in Natsu’s hair; magic in his smile. Where her blackened hearth once stood is a bridge made purely of light and something so other it makes her heart ache with the desire to touch it. “I thought it was a door?” she murmurs, entranced.

Natsu’s forehead rests against hers, his lips so close she can feel the force of his smile. “It was. Fire is my doorway, the coin I gave you is my key. But you, Luce... Don’t you see? You’re the bridge.” He kisses her temple. “You’re the best of both worlds.”

He steps away from her, hand held out in invitation. Framed by the bridge’s ethereal light, he looks every bit like a Fae from her childhood storybooks. “Come with me?”

When Lucy takes his hand, their fingers lace.

[omgjasminesimone]

Cheer

Logan x MC

Follow up to this AU

Word Count: ~3,000

Logan rips the bandage with his teeth, tenderly looping it around Ellie’s knee multiple times. He makes sure it’s tight enough to provide ample support, but not so tight it’s cutting off her circulation. “There, how does that feel?” He asks, placing a gentle kiss to Ellie’s knee before looking up at her from where he’s kneeling on the gym floor.

Ellie tests it out, bending her knee a little. “That feels good, thank  you Logan.” She’s about to turn to head back to practice when Logan grips her hand.

“Hey, take it easy out there, alright? You don’t have to go full out every practice.” Logan suggests.

Ellie smiles, looping her arms around his neck. “Aww, are you worried about me?”

Logan’s hands go to her waist, hugging her to him. “Obviously. It’s pretty nerve wracking to watch my girlfriend get thrown around like a rag doll.”

Ellie smirks, absentmindedly playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Well, us real athletes have to do some pretty dangerous stuff. Not all sports are as easy as basketball.” She teases.

Logan frowns and pulls away from her a little, but he’s not doing a very good job of looking believably upset. “Well damn, way to make me feel bad about myself. And so soon after Canyon Crest not making it to the State Championships too. You can be so cruel. Good thing you’re so pretty.” He teases right back.

Ellie would have continued with their flirty banter, but the star crossed couple is interrupted. “Logan! If you keep distracting one of my most important flyers, I’m banning you from coming to practice. We’re trying to win a national title here!” Ellie’s cheer coach yells.

“Yes ma’am! Sorry about that, won’t happen again!” Logan yells back apologetically, getting to his feet. “You got me in trouble.” He quietly, and playfully, complains to Ellie.

She smiles at him. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

Logan grins, pulling her to him for a quick kiss. “I’m holding you to that troublemaker.”

“Ellie!” Her coach yells again.

“Coming!” She quickly replies, scurrying back over to the squad to keep working on the pyramid.

...

A week later in Orlando, Ellie is still distracted at a Logan free practice session. “Come on, stick it!” The coach yells as Ellie is tossed up onto the bases’ hands. Ellie wobbles, tightening her core to try to save it, but ultimately crumbles down to the ground.

“Oh my god, I told you not to replace Gia with Ellie.” Ingrid complains. “She’s about to cost us Nationals!”

Ellie never expected to make mat for the biggest cheerleading event of the year, and she certainly wasn’t expecting to be made a flyer, one of the most challenging and revered roles. But when Gia broke her leg after over flipping on a basket toss, it just made sense to give the spot to Ellie. Ellie is tiny and easy to lift, she works hard, and her technical skills are unbelievable for someone who’s been cheering less than a year.

But now, with only 2 days before the competition, the pressure is starting to get to her. Ellie doesn’t want to let anyone down. The squad has been working for months, for this two and a half minute performance that has to be perfect.

“Where is your head at Ellie?! You never drop this much. I took a big chance on you, because I believed in you. And right now, I’m starting to question my judgement.” Their coach critiques. Ellie fights back tears, nodding to show she’s listening. The coach turns her attention to the group. “Take 5. I want better attitudes from everyone when you come back in here.”

Ellie practically runs out of the gym, heading straight for her phone in the locker room. She sniffles as she dials Logan’s number from memory, leaning against the locker.

“Hey troublemaker, how’s Orlando?” He asks, sounding happy to hear from her.

“Logan.” Ellie replies, voice already breaking.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Logan immediately switches to comfort mode.

Ellie starts to cry as she explains that she’s not hitting any of her stunts. That she’s barely throwing her full. That she doesn’t think she can do it.

“Ellie.” Logan interjects when she finally lets him get a word in. “Everyone knows that you can do it besides you. You have to believe in yourself. That’s all it is babe.” He sighs. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

More tears well in her eyes as she tries to take in his sweet words. “I miss you.” She mumbles, rubbing at her eyes to try to keep her tears at bay.

“I miss you too. And I love you. You can definitely do this Ellie, so go back to practice and kill it.”

“I love you too, and I’ll try.” Ellie promises.

Practice goes a lot better after her Logan pep talk. Ellie is always amazed at how effectively he can instill confidence in her, even from over 2,000 miles away.

She’s feeling a lot better by the time she heads back to the room she’s sharing with Riya. And Ellie’s mood brightens considerably when she opens the door, and finds Logan sitting on the bed.

“Surprise trouble- humph.” He’s cut off when she tackles him onto the bed, kissing him soundly.

It’s several long moments before she can tear herself away. “What are you doing here?!” She questions.

Logan smiles, his hands coming up to rest just under her cheerleading skirt, squeezing her thighs. “Like I’d miss your big competition.”

“But what about school?” The cheerleaders all have permission to miss a couple of days for the competition. She doubts Logan has any such agreement over at Canyon Crest.

“Troublemaker, we’ve got like 3 more weeks until we graduate. I doubt they’re going to rescind my Langston offer for missing a couple of classes where we’re most likely just watching movies.”

“You never know though. You worked so hard to get your grades up to qualify for that Langston basketball scholarship. I’d hate to see all that go to waste.” Ellie insists.

Before Ellie, Logan didn’t really care about school. He probably would have dropped out if not for basketball. But now, he just wants to be wherever she is. So when he found out Langston was her plan, it became his plan too.

He needed straight As in all his Fall semester classes to raise his GPA enough to meet the Langston athlete minimum. It was hard work, but Logan was motivated. He might not have been serious about school, but he’s sure as hell serious about Ellie Wheeler. It also helped that his beautiful girlfriend is a great tutor.

He’s really looking forward to being at Langston together starting in the Fall. It will be nice to have Ellie cheering for his team, for once.

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll get the assignments from a friend, okay?” He offers.

“Okay.” Ellie readily agrees, resting her head on his chest. She yawns, settling in for a nap. “Wait, are you trying to stay in here? What about Riya?”

Logan gently massages her back, lulling her to sleep. “She’s planning to stay in the room me and Darius are technically splitting.” He reveals.

“Perfect.” Ellie mumbles, almost asleep now. She doubts the Mar Vista Prep athletics program would sanction opposite gender room sharing, so they’ll have to be sneaky. Luckily, the couple has gotten pretty good at sneaking around due to Ellie’s dad forbidding her from dating Logan in the first place. Detective Wheeler has a strict ‘no athletes’ rule Ellie has chosen to ignore.

...

“....are you running through the routine in your head again?” Logan asks, playfully splashing her with salty Atlantic Ocean water.

“Am I that obvious?” Ellie returns, attempting to splash him back, but he weaves. Damn those quick basketball reflexes.

“Yep. I can practically hear you running the counts.” Logan quips, pulling her to him for a kiss.

With only one day left before the competition, their coach has instructed the cheerleaders to take the day off. It’s not worth risking injury when the routine is probably as good as it’s going to get at this point.

They do have a final early morning practice before the competition tomorrow though. And Ellie is determined to have a better showing than at their last practice.

“I’m just a little nervous, so I feel like I can’t relax. Sorry, this probably isn’t the Orlando vacation you wanted.” Ellie apologizes.

“I came to see you. I wanted to cheer on my favorite cheerleader. And to keep you from psyching yourself out because I know how you get.” He concludes with a small smile.

Ellie pouts up at him as he absentmindedly plays with the ties of her bikini bottom. “I’m trying not to get in my head.” Ellie knows how she gets too.

“Would it make you feel better to get some more practice in? I can be your base.” Logan proposes.

Ellie quirks a brow. “You?”

“What? I’ve seen how cheerleading works. I know how to do it.” Logan insists. He turns her around, placing his hands on her hips. He pulls her back a few steps into slightly deeper water, she assumes to break her fall when he no doubt drops her. “Let’s do that one where you go from the ground into Ingrid’s and Riya’s hands.”

“A hand toss cupie.” Ellie corrects.

“Yeah, that. Ready?” Logan replies.

“Ready as I’m gonna be.”

Ellie is expecting a countdown, but Logan throws her high in the air without one. She instinctively tightens up and Logan manages to grip her heel above his head, but that provides basically zero support so she crashes back into the water.

Ellie surfaces, sputtering a little. “Sorry troublemaker. But that wasn’t bad for a first try, huh?”

“Yeah, not bad. I’m actually kind of impressed. You put way too much power in that throw though. It’s supposed to be more of a gentle toss.”

“Noted. I’ll try to tone down my athletic prowess. But if you think about it, this is good practice for college cheer. Those male Langston cheerleaders will probably toss little old you like.....10 feet. Hey, you think I have what it takes to make the Langston cheer squad if the whole basketball thing doesn’t work out?” Logan teases, encouraging her to wrap her legs around his waist as he walks them deeper into the ocean.

“Honestly? I think I have a better chance of making the basketball team.” Ellie retorts with a smirk.

Logan laughs, gently running his thumb in circles on her thigh. “Teach a girl to shoot free throws and suddenly she thinks she runs the world. You’re gonna have to learn to dribble before you make the team babe. Also, your defense could use some work, tiny.”

“Hmm...maybe it would be easier to get you on the cheer squad then.” Ellie continues to play along.

“That’s the spirit! Want to try the cupie again?”

“No, I think I want to make out with my super athletic boyfriend instead.” Ellie buries her hands into the long wet strands of his dark hair.

Logan grins, leaning in close. “That can definitely be arranged.” He murmurs just before capturing her lips.

...

Ellie shakes Logan awake, causing him to groan and try to roll away from her. “Logan, you’ve gotta get up. Riya is coming to do my hair and makeup.” Ellie informs her sleepy boyfriend.

“You want me to leave?” He murmurs, stretching his arms out and yawning.

“No, but you have to put clothes on.” Ellie replies. She’s already dressed in her cheerleading uniform, ready for that early morning practice.

“I can do that.” Logan agrees, reaching down to the floor for his duffel bag. He pulls out some clean clothes, throwing them on.

Ellie quirks a brow when he pulls a Mar Vista Prep t-shirt over his broad shoulders. “Wouldn’t you never be able to live it down if you were photographed in that?”

“I definitely wouldn’t be able to show my face at graduation, but I love you more than I hate Mar Vista.” Logan quips, pulling her back into bed to get his kisses in before he has to worry about ruining her cheer makeup.

Riya arrives much too soon for Logan’s liking, using her key card to enter the room. “Alright, break it up you two. We can’t afford for Ellie to be sore before our big performance.” She insinuates with a grin.

...

Ellie stretches her quads as Mar Vista waits in the wings as Riverview High performs their routine. Ellie is unbelievably nervous. She can’t help but wish she started cheer earlier. Maybe she’d be feeling more confident if this wasn’t her first ever High School Nationals. 

She shakes out her arms, and tries to simultaneously shake out her nerves. Things went fairly well during practice, but now, staring out at the large crowd and watching other teams complete their routines flawlessly has Ellie a little bit in her head. 

She searches the crowd for Logan. Before she left for practice, he promised her he would be in the front row cheering her on. It takes her a few moments to spot him, standing with Darius in the front row on the left side. He laughs at something Darius says, and Ellie feels herself automatically calm down a little at the familiar sight of his bright smile. 

“Okay, Mar Vista, bring it in!” Ingrid yells, bringing Ellie’s attention back to the task at hand. All the cheerleaders put their hands into the circle. “Let’s bring it home, Mar Vista on three. One, two, three!”

“Mar Vista!” The squad choruses, lifting their arms. 

Ellie lets out a deep, calming breath. She’s got this. 

“And now coming out of Los Angeles, California, Mar Vista Prep!” The announcer introduces. The team walks out to polite applause from the audience, and fervent applause from the Mar Vista alternates, family members in attendance, and Logan and Darius. 

Ellie gets into her starting position, taking another deep breath before pasting on her cheer smile. She automatically looks to Logan, who smiles and winks at her. ‘You’ve got this.’ He mouths at her. Ellie’s smile becomes a little more authentic. 

Their routine starts with the cheer chants, the easiest required element for the competition. They shout loudly, and in sync, using their poms and signs as they cheer on the Mar Vista Bulldogs as if they’re at a game. 

The fast paced dynamic cheer music comes on as they transition to the dance and tumbling section. Ellie takes off across the stage, performing a round off into two back hand springs for momentum before throwing her full. She can feel her rotation is perfect in the air, and she lets out a quick sigh of relief when she lands on her feet and snaps upright, going right into the synchronized jump section. 

Ellie can see out of the corner of her eye that everyone’s toe touches and pikes look great. So far, so good. But now, it’s the part everyone is most worried about. The stunts and their big finale pyramid. 

Ellie cheer jogs over to her stunt group, placing her hands on Ingrid’s and Riya’s shoulders as they bend to brace her feet when she jumps. She crouches as they rotate so she’s facing the audience, and then back flips when they toss her in the air. 

She’s caught, and placed back to the floor. They immediately go into their next stunt, Ellie launching back into the air for a scorpion. Out of the corner of her eye, Ellie sees another stunt group’s bases having to take a couple of small steps to keep their stunt in the air, but she’s relieved to see them recover. 

Ellie spins, falling back into Riya’s and Ingrid’s arms. The squad tightens their formation for the final pyramid, and Ellie is placed back on the ground. Ingrid and Riya launch her back into the air for her next trick, and when she’s caught and lifted back up, Ingrid’s grip is absolutely terrible, but Ellie refuses to go down, over correcting in time for another cheerleader to fly overhead and for Ellie to catch her left foot like she’s supposed to. 

She releases her teammate’s foot, crouching as Riya and Ingrid carry her further back. “One, two, and up!” Riya counts out, and the bases launch Ellie over the middle of the pyramid. Ellie makes sure to smile brightly into the audience before she flips and is caught by another stunt group. 

Ellie winces when the catch is a little off, probably bruising her rib. But there’s no time to worry about that now. There’s just one more stunt standing between her and a perfect Nationals routine. 

She’s placed back down so she can jog back to Riya and Ingrid. “Whoo, let’s go Mar Vista!” Ingrid encourages. Everyone knows that if they can pull off this last move, the championship is all their’s due to their increased skill difficulty level.

 Ellie launches up into a bow and arrow, drops back into her bases’ hands as they scurry to the pyramid, gets into pyramid position, lifting her foot from Riya’s strong grip to perch on another airborne teammates thigh, and finally another flyer lands on her outstretched leg, Ellie gripping her firmly so she doesn’t fall. 

“Bulldogs!” They shout when the pyramid is complete. Ellie is finally able to breathe. Ellie looks out at Logan, who’s whooping and whistling loudly. And in that moment, everything is perfect. 

...

Mar Vista knew they won the moment that pyramid hit, but it’s still nice to hear it officially and be awarded a huge golden trophy, as well as individual gold medals. 

Ellie hops off the stage into Logan’s waiting arms, giggling when he spins her around. “You’re incredible.” Logan praises, capturing her lips and completely ruining the lipstick Riya had applied so painstakingly. 

“How does it feel to be dating a National Champion?” Ellie quips when they finally break apart for air. 

“Hmm...kind of indescribable troublemaker. Maybe next year you’ll get to find out.” He kisses her again, burying a hand into her hair so when he pulls away her bow is all askew. “So, what do you want to do next, champion?” He asks. 

Ellie smiles. “I’m going to Disney World!” 

...

A/N: Things I regret, attempting to write out that cheer routine, and then being too stubborn to cut it after all the googling I had to do. A mess. haha. 

taglist:  @choicesarehard @brightpinkpeppercorn @regina-and-happiness @drakexnadira @flyawayboo @fairydustandsarcasm @alesana45 @maxwellsquidsuit @god-save-the-keen @mrsmckenziesworld @paisleylovergirl @iplaydrake @sinclaire-made-me-sin @choicesgremlin @lovehugsandcandy @desireepow-1986 @blades-of-light-and-shadow @justdani14 @emceesynonymroll @emichelle @badchoicesposts @client-327 @riverrune @liamzigmichael4ever @princessstellaris​ @mskaneko​ @anxious-arliah @zaffrenotes​ @iam-ankita​ @ohsnapitzlovehacker​ @n-whas

[lalahbug]

Healing - Levi x Reader

Fandom: Attack on Titan Word Count: 1813

My Masterlist

Warnings/disclaim: general Modern/Office-like AU. Mentions of depression, in case anyone is triggered/sensitive to this topic

Author’s Note: Originally posted on DeviantArt, under the same username, on 12/03/2016. Revamped/edited in 2020.

___ is a blank for your name/oc/whatever you prefer Written in 3rd person

Line/header is to separate paragraphs to indicate time skips, as Tumblr hates my formatting.

Story under cut

          Petra was picking papers off of ___’s desk, getting ready to fax them to her.

          “Morning, Levi.”

          “Morning Petra, where is  ___?”

          “She called off, but will work from home starting tomorrow.” Levi knitted his eyebrows together. “I know, she’s never called off. I don’t know what happened, though. She said she’d likely be gone all week and would like the form to start working from home. So if you have anything you need her to do, you can give me the paperwork so I can fax it to her.”

          “We were supposed to have accounts meeting tomorrow,” Levi grumbled.

          “I can give her a call, to see when she can reschedule.” Levi nodded before leaving Petra to her work.

          Levi sighed as he signed papers, that ___ should be looking over. Petra, his assistant, had let him know about how  ___ would like to work from home from now on. He could barely process the thoughts of it and why she didn’t want to come in anymore. It was an option that the company had, but she had never shown interest in it. What was with this sudden change, she didn’t even talk to him about it. Petra knocked at his door, he told her to enter.

          “Sir, ___ sent back all of her numbers and let you know everything about the accounts through email. She also wanted me to tell you. ‘The best accountant in your office isn’t going to leave, but I need to be alone for a bit. I apologize for any inconvenience.’  That’s all she had said, but it seems like she got her work done faster than usual. So I think this may be a good thing.” Petra smiled at Levi.

          “Get me her contact information.” She gave him a confused look. “I’m going to visit her on my way home. I need to know why she wants to change everything and I have some papers I need her to sign.”

          “Yes, sir.” Petra came back in a few moments with the information he requested. “I also wrote where her spare key is, in case she can’t hear you at the door.”

          “Why do you know where it is?”

          “I’ve had to go pick up some things from her when she had scheduled days off. She’s in her backyard a lot, so she doesn’t hear the door.” Levi clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Is there anything else that you may need Mr. Ackerman?” His assistant smiled at him.

          “Do you have any idea why she’s doing this?”

          “No, sir. Last we talked about anything personal; her family was healthy and her fiance was looking into a house for them.”

          “I didn’t know she was engaged.”

          “Oh yeah. She’s been with him for about 5 years.”

          “Oh,” Levi said with a bit of pain in his voice.

          “Sir, don’t feel bad! I know you flirted with her a lot, but I thought you knew she was taken. And you were just teasing her. Like you did in high school with a couple of girls.”

          “It makes sense why she always declined me.” Levi sighed and looked down at the papers on his desk.

          “She always said that she loved your persistence and confidence. That if she wasn’t taken, she would take up your offers for dates. Sir, I still think you should go check on her.”

          “You do?” Petra smiled and nodded.

          Levi pulled up to ___’s house, with his briefcase in hand, he went to knock on her door. After a few moments of silence, he knocked again. He sighed and moved the potted plant on her porch, removing a brick from the house, which was hollowed out with the spare key inside. He quickly unlocked the door and put the key back. Walking inside, he was a bit impressed by how she had styled home and more importantly how clean everything was.

          “Ms. ___?” Levi called out, which was answered with a bark and a husky came bounding around the corner to growl at him. “Hey, you must be Tobi.” He kneeled slightly and held out his hand for the dog to sniff him. Tobi seemed to approve as he turned to walk away from Levi, Levi followed him. 

          Tobi led Levi to the backyard, once ___ was in sight, Tobi ran over to the edge of the pool and started whining at ___. She was floating on her back in her bikini, which made Levi blush a bit. He had never seen her outside of suits or jeans.

          “Tobi! Shush, baby.” The dog whined louder. “I’ll drag you into the pool, don’t make me do it.” She giggled, Tobi yelped at her. “That’s it!” She laughed while fixing her into a standing position but froze when she saw Levi. Her face went aflame as if some tossed red paint on her face.

          “Mr. Ackerman!” She swam up to the edge of the pool, quickly walked over to her patio, and wrapped her towel around herself. Levi eyed her body the whole time, enjoying the view as she did so.

          “Hello,  Ms. ___. I need you to sign some papers, mainly some new accounts, and the form for you to start doing work from home.” Levi made his normal blank stare.

          “Oh, of course! Let me guide you to my office and I’ll change.” Levi gave her a curt nod and she walked back into the house, Tobi walking beside her the whole time. Almost to her office, Levi noticed a room, empty and messy, catching his attention, because of the mess inside.

          “What happened there?” ___ paused for a moment before walking over and closing the door. 

          “Please ignore that room.” Levi decided to ask after he got the signatures. She opened her office door. “Please make yourself comfortable. I’ll be a few moments.” Tobi followed after her as she left. Levi placed his briefcase on her desk and looked over to an accent piece that had pictures on it, noticing one face down. Curious, he walked over picking up the picture, to see ___ in a cute sundress and a guy hugging her from behind. It was very endearing but it only hurt his heart. ___ took the photo out of his hand.

          “Please do not touch my photos.” She placed it back down, making sure it was face down.

          “Why is that one picture face down?” Levi raised an eyebrow at her as she walked over to her desk and sat down.

          “Sir, you wanted me to sign papers. I do not want to share my personal life with you.” ___ stated coldly, it wasn’t the first time she told him this. This time was different, though, her eyes were sad. “Please sit, so we may get the papers done.”

          Levi walked over and opened his briefcase, handing her a folder. “These are our new accounts, I need them put into the accounting system.” She nodded before placing the folder in a basket. “Then this is the paper form we need to fill out for your transfer technically.”

          She took the paper from him, started filling it out, signing it at the bottom. Levi was looking over her shoulder, correcting her on the date. 

          “Sir, we’ve talked about this about 23 times. Personal space and not looking over my shoulder. I don’t like it.”

          “Well, you put down the wrong date so it’s a good thing I am. Also, you didn’t fill out the reason for the transfer.” He noticed she tensed up before writing, ‘personal/family issues.’

          “You need to sign this too.” She handed him her pen, he touched her hand and leaned over her to sign it. “Is there anything else?”

          “How do you want to go about doing our meetings from now on?” He eyed her, she was clearly still wearing her bikini but had a t-shirt and jeans over it.

          “We can email for the weekly meetings and we can do Skype or something for the monthly meetings.” She shrugged. “Do you have a better solution?” She turned in her chair to face him.

          “Yeah, just show up to the fucking office for work.”

          “I could probably come in for meetings.”

          “What the fuck is going on with you?”

          “Sir, I don’t want to let you into my personal life. Work and personal need to be separate.”

          Levi placed his hands on her chair, trapping her there. “___.” He stared into her eyes as she blushed from him saying her first name. “You are an important asset to me. I want to know why my main accountant is staying at home.” 

          “Because I’m depressed, I have been all this time. Now, I can’t function and pretend anymore. I want to be in this, I want to learn how to climb out and I can’t make myself get out my bed let alone go into the office. But I can do my work from my bed.”

          “What made everything go south so badly?”

          ___ teared up. “My fiance found someone else and left me. I’m alone now. I’ve never been alone with my depression and now it’s swallowing me.” A few tears leaking down her face, her bottom lip trembled a bit as she tried to hold back.

          Levi sighed and gave her a small look, placing a hand on her cheek wiping away her tears.

          “It’s his loss, my gain.” Levi kissed her forehead. “Let me heal you.” Levi kissed her gently, she only looked at him, with dismal (e/c) eyes. He glanced at her lips, then to her eyes, he kissed her once more. “I’ve loved you for years. And he’s a fucking fool if he won’t appreciate you, I will.” More of her tears started to escape. “You’re beautiful, even when crying.”

          ___ gulped for a moment, before finally giving in, letting all of the tears go. She reached up, wrapping her arms around Levi’s neck, trying to muffle her cries into his neck. Levi bent down more to pick her up, carrying her to the couch in her office. As he sat down, he placed her on his lap, before wrapping his arms around her tightly.

          “I’ll heal you with the love that I have harbored for years.” ___ rests her head on his shoulder, clinging to him. He couldn’t help but smirk. “I never thought I would be able to hold you, it feels amazing to be here for you.” He kissed her forehead. “Take your time loving me. For now, I want to be your support. Even if you never say that you love me. I want you to be happy, your happiness means everything to me.”

          ___ closed her eyes. “I still want to stay home.”

          “I’ll bring your work every day that you stay at home.” She nodded. “At least you’re mine now.”

          “I never agreed to that.”

          “You will, one day.”

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter one | welcome to new york

Sam made her way out of the house again, but that time with a towel slung over her shoulder; on her other shoulder was a canvas hand bag which held her brushes and her paints, as well as a few little white canvases. Those two little photographs tucked inside of her bikini top stayed in such a snug place that she almost forgot they were there by the time she had stepped out the front door back out to the hot sun. She slipped on her sunglasses once the bath of sunlight washed over her head and bare trim shoulders.

There was a pathway on the right side of the house, which led down to a little clearing; beyond that was a narrow pathway to the water's edge. She moved about the sand to keep it out of her little slip ons. It didn't seem that long ago, and everything from the past few years felt like such a flash and a blur. She could still feel them touching her and she swore that they both were going to be with her until one of them dropped dead. And yet they still slipped away from her, right through her fingers.

Sam stopped at the clearing for a second to adjust the towel on her shoulder, and to fix the lock of hair behind her ear. Too hot to do anything else. She knew there was a tree down by the waters to protect her from the sun.

Those photographs never budged from their hiding places in her bikini top. At one point, she took a look down at her chest and the pieces of yellow and blue fabric. Alex hidden away in the left, Joey in the right. That was exactly how she took them aside when it all started out. They were both on either of her arms and she managed to balance it all with her artistry and her social life.

It was a year ago when she met Joey and she was renting out an apartment in the outskirts of New York City. That was how it felt, anyways, as if it had just happened.

She had moved all the way out there from the second place she lived in following Lake Elsinore, Carson City, about three years before to live the artist life full time. A long way from home and yet she was willing to go forth with it all. Over two thousand miles and with the clothes on her back, Sam had settled into the neighborhood of New York City. It was some time later she met Alex.

And then she met Bill.

She went with Bill instead and there were moments wherein she questioned as to why she went with him instead of the two of them. She even spoke to one of her old friends before she left for the West Coast again, and Aurora asked her what had happened between her, Joey, and Alex. She replied with something that she couldn't exactly recall, but she went with him instead. He charmed her and tugged her away from them, at least that was how she saw it in hindsight.

There was a part of her that didn't want to think that, given her new home life. She was everyone's mom there in Lake Elsinore, and she was acting as Matilda and Cassie's mother. There was no way she could turn away from all of this. There was no way she could look at all of this and turn her back from it all, and head on back to New York City. For all she knew, someone had already taken her old apartment.

Aurora had begged her to return to the Big Apple, and yet she couldn't. Sam could still hear the tears in her voice. She looked down at the big rock on her right ring finger glimmered back at her like a hot ember from a fire. She couldn't return to that funky little neighborhood outside of the city.

She was stuck. She was stuck in a marriage that, deep down, did nothing for her anymore. And yet if she could bring Aurora and her fiance Emile out there for at least a visit, it would be a bit more bearable.

Aurora! She missed that whole circle of artist friends, but she missed her especially, because she was easily Sam's closest friend there in the City. Her jet black hair and her milky Japanese complexion, and the way in which she laughed that resembled to a pair of wine glasses tinkling together.

If there was any compliment she could give to her return to Lake Elsinore was painting and making art down by the surface of the waters. The noise of the city had fallen away into the silence of the mountains and the gentle white noise of the waters. And yet, she couldn't help but yearn for it all back again.

She recognized the willowy tree down by the water's edge, and she shuffled past a pair of low scraggly shrubs. Everything was so dry, even standing down there by the water; so dry that it made the crown of her head itch a bit. The hot sun beating down on the crown of her head didn't help matters, either.

She stepped over a dead tree branch and set down her hand bag on the smooth surface of the rock. She lifted her sunglasses up from her face and rested them atop the hot crown of black hair. Sam took a seat on top of the rock so the shade protected her from the hot sun.

She thought about Joey in particular, given he was the first one she met in the City. She set the canvas on her lap and rested the soles of her feet within the edge of the shade. One of the first things Joey had given her was a black and silver anklet, and she knew it was still in the jewelry box in the bedroom. She kept it tucked away in that little box and she wanted to keep it there forever. Keep it there forever, much like how that photograph of Joey had to be hidden away from the rest of the world.

Before she picked out one of the narrow brushes for herself, she reached into the right side for the photograph of Joey. It was so small, too small to do anything with, but it was better than nothing. It was better than having no way to see his round, sweet face and his black curls. The same went for the photo of Alex: she could see the gray sliver at the front of his head, the full tip of his nose, and his little Mona Lisa smile.

She had moved into that small studio apartment near the Bronx, about half a mile from the freeway. Nothing fancy, just a little two bedroom apartment with a view of the skyline from her window. Around then, she was still insisting on going by her full name of Samantha. The choice was either Los Angeles or New York, and she had been avoiding the former. Four years spent in Nevada and she vowed to never return to the Golden Empire. It simply didn't feel like an appropriate place for an up and coming artist, and it was all too familiar no less. It was that inner feeling about leaving home and traveling about the place, to see the world for herself and do whatever she pleased. The evening in which she was deciding whether or not to leave the little place in Carson City, she spotted the place in the listings and she knew it was perfect. She took the offer and she knew it was a new chapter for her.

Within a few days, she picked up everything she had and travelled that distance, alone. Even though her parents would show up within a day or so to help out with her settling into her new place, but she would go at it alone. The first plane ticket out to New York City and she found her rental car in the airport parking lot. She set one foot after the other down on the sidewalk before her.

It was a four storied little building of white stucco and with black trimming. It made her think of those old fashioned hospitals from the turn of the century. She strolled up the steps and made her way into the front lobby. There she met up with Emile St. Vitus, the landlord at the time. He was a young heavy guy with his disheveled black hair and his smooth milky skin.

“Samantha Shelley, right?” he asked her with an ever so slight Southern twang.

“That's my name,” she replied to him, and she couldn't resist the grin on her face.

“You got here pretty quickly,” he confessed to her as he rummaged through his black coat pockets. “I wasn't expectin' you for at least another few days.”

“It's just me,” she assured him; she knitted her eyebrows together at his feeling around for something. “What're you looking for?”

“Your key,” he replied. “It might be in back in my apartment.” He gestured for her to follow him back into that bottom hallway. She closed the heavy wooden door behind her, and it let out a sharp squeak all the while. That front lobby was cozy and narrow, perhaps no bigger for the width of a couch for someone to bring one in for their place. To her right stood a narrow stairwell with a wooden banister and steps covered in brand new dark carpet. The whole place smelled of lemons.

“Right this way,” he said to her again.

“Where are you from, by the way?” she asked him; she brought her head closer to his ear so he could hear her.

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“New Orleans. I've lived in New York City, down in Manhattan, since I was five years old, though.”

“I was going to tell you—I like your accent.”

“Well, thank you. I haven't been in the Big Easy for a long time, but sometimes I'll slip sump'n out like 'darlin'' or 'y'all.'” Emile stopped before the third door on the left side of the hallway, and he took out the key from his jeans pocket. He pushed the door open.

“I'll wait right here,” she told him as she hung there at the doorway. It was a bit of a task, though, because of the luggage she had been carrying around for a time, but she was willing to let him delve around the place for that key in question. She adjusted the strap of her hand bag on her shoulder. Her bags rested down by her ankles, and the one holding her clothes stood further into the hallway; the inside of her fingers were tired from carrying them around.

“If you ever need anything, I'll be right in here,” he assured her.

“Sure, sure.”

Sam watched Emile shuffle through papers on the heavy dark wood coffee table. She glanced about the front room, which looked cozy and warm even in the face of the warm evening outside with everything closely knit together about the floor. One thing that caught her attention was the black crucifix on the opposite wall right in front of her. The body and arms of Jesus was lined with a tiny bit of gold leaf, but enough for her to see it from clear across the room.

The sound of someone kicking the bag full of clothes caught her ear. She turned her head to see a slender young guy with long jet black curly hair stumbling forth. He caught himself and stood upright. He turned around to show her his raised dark eyebrows.

“Oh, god, pardon me,” he said to her in a broken voice.

“Oh, no, it's okay,” she assured him as she dragged it closer to her feet.

“I didn't see it, I swear,” he sputtered.

“It's okay, I promise,” she reassured him with a wave of her hand to him. She noticed his large liquid brown eyes, his straight pitch dark eyebrows, and his prominent nose with a gentle kink in the bridge. He was rather handsome with his slightly rounded face and his chubby little apple cheekbones. All chubby and round in the face, but his body was slim and lanky, even delicate. His hands were large, almost like paws, complete with slender trim fingers.

She looked down at his sinewy thighs, clothed in tight black jeans; she dropped her gaze down to his knees, his slender lower legs, and his feet, the latter of which were donned in black Chuck Taylors. He had on a little black leather jacket with the zipper tugged part of the way down his chest to show off his olive green shirt.

“It's okay,” she repeated to him again. “It's not like I have anything fragile inside of there.”

“I hope not,” he said in a soft voice; he had bit of a New York accent, but it was a bit more distorted in comparison to the Brooklyn one. It almost sounded like he was saying “naw” when he said “not”.

“I swear,” she insisted.

“You swear? Like... fucking hell? Like that kinda swear?”

She giggled at that, but it also made her squirm a little bit. This strange man must have noticed the nervous look on her face because he swallowed and scurried away from her. She watched him go down the corridor, all the way to the very end. He ducked inside the room there and closed the door, and all Sam could think about was what she did right then. It was awkward, for sure, but he got a laugh out of her. The way he moved stayed with her: he shuffled about the carpet and he swayed his hips from side to side with each step. Or perhaps it was just her imagination and her aloneness talking and she fixated on something that could give her some kind of great reward.

Emile emerged from the other side of the front room with something silvery in his hand.

“Samantha?”

She turned her head and he stood before her for a second to hand her the key.

“The key was hidin’ behind the remote control, if you can believe that. Anyways, I’ll talk more later, but right now, I haveta run. I’m positive you know where your place is.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you, too.”

“Absolutely!” He brushed past her and doubled back towards the front door. Once he was outside, Sam turned her head so she could look down the hall again. That strange man hadn't surfaced out of the room there at the end.

She sighed through her nose, and picked up her things, and doubled back to the stairwell; she kept the key nestled in between her right index and middle fingers. The steps creaked underneath her, even though she wasn't very heavy. She reached the landing to catch her breath. She was on the third floor, which meant she had to take that next flight of stairs, complete with all those things weighing her down.

She fetched up another sigh and picked it all up again. She lugged it all upstairs to that second studio on the right side of the corridor there; she set her things down and let out a low whistle. Once her heartbeat calmed down, she slipped the key into the hole under the doorknob. The small click was the sweetest thing she needed to hear. She let the door swing open before her so she could pick up her things yet again; she lugged it all into the apartment, complete with her nearly stumbling on her shoelaces.

Sam caught herself and set everything down on the floor, right up against the wall. She sighed again and looked about the spacious front room; on the far side of the room was a doorway and a closet; in front of her was another doorway. She poked her head in through that one to find the tiny kitchen combined with a little nook which, she knew could be the dining room. She doubled back across the floor to check out the other room, which she knew was going to be her bedroom; right in front of her was the bathroom. The whole place had that new room smell, and she knew the place had been repainted.

“Perfect,” she muttered to herself. “Home sweet home.”

The first thing she needed was a bed, even if it was just a makeshift bed like a spare cushion, or a few spare ones. She picked up her hand bag, and doubled back to the front door, and locked the place up for the time being. Moved to a new place and had no bed to sleep on afterwards.

Sam descended the stairs, and spotted that strange dark man at the front door. He watched her walk closer to him; his brown eyes fixated on her even though she was walking at a normal pace.

“Hey,” he said to her in a low voice.

“Hi,” she greeted back to him as she held onto the strap of her purse.

“I'm still sorry about earlier,” he blurted out with a bow of his head; she glanced down at his feet, right as he cocked his left foot inward a bit.

“I assure you it's okay,” she assured him. “Really, it was just full of clothes.”

“Well, and that stupid joke I said to you, too—” He shrugged his shoulders a little bit. “—I felt like I made you uncomfortable.”

“No, no—you got a laugh out of me. I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah...” He shifted his weight at the sight of her.

“I have to get a bed,” she told him.

“D'you just move in?”

“Just moved in. On the third floor.”

“Ah, that's cool! I was just helping someone move, too. Right down the hall here.”

“That's cool,” she echoed him.

“Yeah, it's—it's really cool.” He swallowed and shifted his weight again. She dropped her gaze to his chest and his stomach.

“So, uh... you got anyone comin' to help ya?” he asked her.

“My parents are coming tomorrow, but—I don't have any place to sleep, though.”

“True, true...” He lifted his gaze past Sam's crown of dark hair to the hall behind her. “...oh, there's Frankie!” She turned around to see the tall lanky guy with long nappy black hair down past his shoulders and thick bangs to accentuate his olive shaped face. He approached the two of them with a smirk on his face and his hands clasped together.

“Hey, Joey—who's this young lady?”

“I just moved in,” she told him as her heart hammered inside of her chest. “I—I need a bed.” She ducked past the guy in front of her, Joey, and headed outside before Frank could say anything. She headed down the front steps back to the sidewalk.

Alone in the Bronx, a girl alone in the brand new big city, but she spotted a furniture shop up the street. She hoisted her hand bag again and walked at a brisk pace down the sidewalk. She reached the crosswalk, right when the light turned red so she could stop and think for a second.

Sam looked back to the apartment building, and she thought about those two guys. It was just an awkward encounter, it was nothing she could think about too much. Although Joey was kind enough towards her that she could perhaps nod it off as nothing more. She couldn't think too much about that other guy, Frank, given she only looked at him for five seconds. But then again, it had to be from the fact she was a girl from the West Coast having relocated in the Big Apple.

The light turned green and she pressed onward across the dark pavement, right across the street. Another crossing. Another round of green lights. She reached the furniture shop there and ducked into the side with the beds. If she could climb into one of them and sleep there, she would do that.

She thought about her parents, and she wondered if her mother would help her pick out everything. An artist and often times she questioned her ability to pick out things that looked good. Her wardrobe was drab with lots of black, and her hand bag was a nice shade of soft beige. She eyed a little twin bed, the surface of which rose up to her waist. She set one hand on the top and put her weight into it.

It was the first bed and yet she was already sold on it. She reached down to check the price. Perfect!

And now something to put on top of the bed. She wandered through the room in search of sheets and a blanket. The place was bigger on the inside, much to her surprise.

She turned a corner and spotted Joey and Frank checking out towels. She gasped at the sight of them. Frank turned to see her with a stunned look on his face. Joey was saying something all the while.

“So, you've got—” He stopped in his tracks and turned to follow Frank's gaze. “—hey.”

“Hi?” she greeted him, and she couldn't resist the smirk on her face.

“Didn't expect to see you here,” he confessed, and showed her a smirk in return: she noticed a little gap on the right side of his teeth.

“Um, me, neither.”

“Guess we were right behind you,” Frank told her with a nod of his head; his accent wasn't nearly as prominent as Joey's distorted one; she spotted a piece of gum tucked on one side of his teeth.

“Yeah, I guess so, too. Um—” Her mind went blank and Joey ran his fingers through the roots of his curls, right on the crown of his head. “I—needed a place for my head.”

“I do, too,” Frank added with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Do you—do you need any help?” Joey offered her.

“Well—like I said, my parents aren't going to be here 'til tomorrow, so... yeah. I could use a hand.”

“Why didn't they come with you?” Frank asked her.

“I needed to put up the money and boogie out here quick,” she explained.

“You're not from around here, are you?” he continued, and he knitted his eyebrows together.

“It's okay, I'm not, either,” Joey assured her.

“California,” she replied, and they both gaped at her.

“Wow, long way from home,” Frank remarked.

“I was born near the L.A. area, but I lived in Carson City for four years. It was just—time for me to leave and start a new chapter, though.” She turned her attention to Joey. “You're not from here, either?”

“Sorta,” he clarified. “I'm from upstate. Frankie—” He gestured towards him. “—is from here in the Bronx so—ya got any questions, ask him.”

“And—if I head out to upstate, I can refer back to you?” she asked him.

“Absolutely!”

“Oh, yeah, you do anything upstate, Joey's your man,” Frank explained. “What's your name, by the way?”

“Samantha. Sometimes I go by Sam, though.”

“Sam, and not 'Tha?” Joey cracked.

“'Hand this over to 'Tha',” Frank joined in with a smirk on his face; that coaxed a giggle out of her. And then Joey's expression turned serious.

“So seeing as you're alone, let me reiterate—do you need any help?” he offered her.

“Do you guys wanna—help me?” She was taken aback by it. “You know, I don't want to impose.”

“You're not imposin',” Frank assured her with a shake of his head and a tucking of a lock of black hair behind his ear. ��We're both moving so—you and I need all the help we can get. That's why we were both shocked to find you were here by yourself.”

“Movin' sucks,” Joey added. “Especially when you're going cross country like that.”

“Yeah, Joey moved from Oswego—his hometown—to be closer to New York City last year, to this little town called Kingston.”

“It's right up the road from here,” Joey pointed out, “like about an hour north from here. It was either there or to Camillus, outside of Syracuse, and it was like—I gotta be closer, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah...” Sam's voice trailed off as she wondered why he had to be closer to New York City from an even more mysterious place such as upstate New York.

“But even though it really wasn't that far, it was hard,” Joey continued, “I was beat once I got settled into my new place. Like really, I lay down to go to bed and I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.”

“That is tired,” she agreed with him; and she folded her arms across her chest, “you know, come to think of it—one time, my dad was helping a friend of his move to a new house—not very far, either, like to the other side of town—and he was so tired by the end of it, he actually fell asleep standing up.”

“Oh, well, I got nuttin' on him then,” Joey teased her, and that brought a little smile out of her.

“Anyways, I found a little bed for myself—over there—” She pointed to the other side of the room. “—by the beds. A little twin. Now I just have to find sheets and blankets and a pillow—you know, all that crap.”

“Hey, me, too!” Frank's face lit up. “You wanna do that together?”

“Sure, why not? I'm not very good at picking out things like that, though.”

“I'm not, either,” he assured her. “But—let's see where it goes, though.”

Indeed, Frank and Joey led Sam into the upholstery section of the shop to help her out, and also for her to help the two of them out. She lingered behind them as she searched about the shelves for anything that caught her attention: she slipped past the two of them so as to reach the end of the aisle with the bedding and the bed sheets. She gathered herself when she spotted a set of blue satin and a comforter that looked as though it was made of velvet. She tucked it underneath her arm and then searched about the shelves for a pillow.

Frank and Joey's conversation behind her caught her ear but she was more focused on finding a soft pillow, a soft place for her head.

Frank burst out laughing at something, but Sam ran her hand over the surface of a plush bright pink pillow. Like petting a cat.

“Oh, girly!” Frank remarked; she turned her head to find him walking towards her. “That's so girlish, it's badass.”

“It's soft, too. Think I'll take this one...”

She scooped the pillow off of the rack and tucked it underneath her free arm. Both her arms quivered with soreness from carrying such heavy bags down the block to her new place, but she was more than willing to carry her new bedding back to the front.

“Hey, Sam I am—” Joey called after her. She turned to see him holding up a set of black sheets next to his head. “—what do you think about this?”

She ambled over to him to check them out for herself.

“Black Egyptian cotton,” Frank added.

“Ooh, lovely,” she remarked. She noticed a pair of furled throw blankets tucked under his arms, one under each arm. “What you got here?”

“A couple of blankets that, I'm not too sure how to pair them with these black sheets,” he explained. He held up the brown plaid one under his right arm, followed by a black and white one from under his left arm.

“The one in your left hand,” she quipped within a second.

“You like this one better?”

“Yeah, it looks like it fits the sheets better,” she remarked.

“Alright! This was easier than I thought.” Frank set the other blanket back onto the shelf.

Sam didn't hesitate to return to the front of the shop. She told the young clerk she had picked out the twin on the other side of the room and she wrote down the number on a pad of paper in front of her.

“She also needs it tonight,” Frank joined in.

“Okay! What's your address?” the clerk asked her.

“I'm right down the street,” Sam replied, “that apartment building after the stoplight.”

“Blackwood Villas,” Frank clarified.

“Apartment thirty two,” Sam added.

“Okay... I'll get a couple of guys down there in a bit,” she assured her with a final scribble on the paper.

Once they had paid for their new bedding, Frank and Sam stepped back outside. Joey followed suit with a towel tossed over his shoulders.

“I needed a new towel,” he explained.

“Frankie couldn't get towels, but you sure could, though,” Sam cracked.

“Exactly! That's what he and I were talking about earlier.”

The three of them walked together back to the crosswalk and then to the apartment building; Sam continued to linger behind the them, but she still stayed close with them given she was the newcomer. Frank ascended the steps first and held the front door for both her and Joey.

“Well, thank you to you both,” she said with a tremble to her voice.

“And thank you,” Joey told her as he adjusted the towel over his shoulders like he had been sweating out the whole day.

“By the way—if you want or need anything, I'm right down the hall here,” Frank told her.

“I'm sure I'm going to need you,” she pointed out. “'Cause—you know. Moving sucks.”

“Movin' sucks,” Joey echoed with a shrug of the shoulders.

“What're you gonna do?” she asked him.

“I think I'm gonna go get sump'n to eat,” he told her. “I'll see you tomorrow, Frankie.” He turned to her with a nonchalant look on his face. “And you have a good night, too.”

“You, too, Joey,” Sam replied, and that was when the two guys from the furniture shop arrived with her new bed. “I'll be sleeping comfy tonight!”

"Oh, and by the way, welcome to New York," Frank declared. "Enjoy your stay!"

"I think I will," she assured him.

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader- “The Work Wife” Part 6

You’ve been working for The Joker for the past 10 years: you speak and act for him and no matter the circumstances, Y/N is always there to take care of everything he needs.  The King of Gotham might not be married, yet he has a perfect partner: his work wife.

Starts HERE

After 1 Month

The Joker circles the warehouse, inspecting the boxes and crates full of ammo and smuggled goods received with last night’s shipment.

“Hmm…” he eyeballs a decorative vase engraved with gold and silver, wondering if the extravagant object should become part of his collection at The Penthouse. His cell start vibrating and J takes it out of pocket, impatient to hear about his wife’s routine checkup:

“ ‘ello,” he kicks two packages out of the way.

“Hi,” you greet your spouse. “Just got out of my appointment; the doctor said all seems fine. He ordered some lab tests to make sure my blood levels are within the normal range; I should get the results in about 3 days.”

“That’s awesome!” he grumbles while bending over to grab some papers scattered on the floor. “I’m glad you’re ok, I should have come also for moral support.”

Y/N smiles at the confession, choosing not to disclose it makes her happy:

“You have to sort out the cargo; the buyer will be there shortly.”

“Yeah, but this could have waited.”

Your smile gets wider as J fumbles around with several items. 

“Tell you what: I’ll finish up some stuff here and I’ll drive to pitch in.”

The King of Gotham wouldn’t normally decline yet he’s actually worried after everything that happened.

“Nope, I want you to rest; you’ve been too active lately and you need to slow down. Why are you giggling?” he smacks his lips, displeased four trunks look like they’ve been tampered with.

“Nothing in particular,” the bubbly Y/N keeps the best for last.

“I’ll see you home; I found something I don’t like,” The Joker grunts as the heavy lid is lifted from one of the containers. “Stay put and relax!” he orders and you nonchalantly drop the bomb:

“Maybe I will,” and after a small pause: “Oh! By the way, I was given green light for sex.”

“ ‘kay, see you in a couple of hours,” J struggles with the box and waits for your long “Byeeeeee” before hanging up. A few seconds into his task and it hits.

“Holy shit!” he exhales and holds his breath, startled. “Jesus!!” he abandons the precious merchandise, running towards the exit. “Froooossst!!!” he gets his henchman’s assistance. “Take over!!”

“Yes sir!” Jonny emerges from one of the SUV’s parked inside, not understanding why his boss is in a hurry. “Anything wrong?”

“No!!! I have a personal emergency!!” The Joker shouts and pushes the heavy metal door to the side, wishing he was already at his destination.

*************

J enters the code on the pin pad and he is granted access into your apartment. He went to The Penthouse first: you weren’t there and he figured you must be on the 29th floor. He storms inside and rushes towards the bedroom when his enthusiasm is abruptly halted by no other than Jonathan Crane coming out of the kitchen.

Scarecrow almost drops the fresh coffee mug you brewed for him; The Clown Prince of Crime was certainly not informed you had company. Doesn’t matter though, he’s not one to be embarrassed by his current situation:

“May I help you Crane?” a high and mighty J sassily blurs out wearing nothing but his birthday suit.

“I doubt it,” Jonathan is quick to respond. “I dropped by to bring you extra ampules of Liquid Dream like you wanted and pain killers refill for Y/N in case she needs more.”

You suddenly pop up from behind Scarecrow, not being able to stop the question:

“Why are you naked?!”

The Joker opens his mouth because he has a cool explanation, yet the guest doesn’t care about it.

“I think I should bail,” he smirks as he passed by J. “I’m taking the cup, I’ll bring it back next time,” he announces and can’t contain a smartass remark: “Nice attire.”

Your husband bitterly growls and as always, you have to be the catalyst for a better outcome:

“Thank you, Jonathan!”

Scarecrow waves without adding extra comments, 100% positive you’ll burst out laughing as soon as he vacates the premises.  

And he’s correct.

“Oh my God,” you snicker since you didn’t expect such a funny coincidence to unfold within today’s schedule. “That was hilarious!” the amused Y/N finds herself in The Joker’s arms moments after Jonathan’s departure. “Where are your clothes?!” you kiss him and he yanks at your waist, purring.

“The jacket and shirt in the car, pants and boxers in the elevator,” he admits while guiding you towards the couch in the living room. “The socks and shoes are somewhere on the hallway.”

“I was wondering when you’ll realize about the news I shared,” you whisper in his ear as he takes off your summer dress, aroused.

The two bodies plunge on the sofa, Y/N enjoying the intimacy as much as he does:

“J… … J…” you cling to him when his left hand slips in your bikini.

“Mmm? Does something hurt?” The Joker pecks the tip of your nose, ready to quit if you say yes.

“No… it’s not that,” the seriousness in your voice makes him pay attention.

Maybe you shouldn’t bring up the past in these circumstances; here it comes anyway:

“If the Las Vegas events repeat themselves… I won’t forgive you again,” you stare in his eyes without blinking. “I won’t return… ”

The Joker is silent and you wonder what’s going on in his mind; it’s not a secret he was miserable after being abandoned in the City of Lights due to his despicable conduct.

“They won’t.”

“Are you sure?” the doubt in your tone forces him to reveal:

“I’m sure because it felt horrible when you weren’t around.”

You caress J’s hair and remind him you won’t compromise for less than his total commitment:

“You’re either mine or you’re not, ok?...”

“I’m yours,” he grumbles and it’s not very difficult since the woman asking is no casual fling but the only one he ever wanted to marry for reals. “I want the special treatment,” the immediate request makes you snort: it’s so like him to articulate crap like this in the middle of a serious discussion. 

“Do you?!”

“Yes!!” The Joker nibbles on your neck and underlines his affliction: “I’ve been so horny I’m not sure how I still function; I behaved though, I swear!” he’s fast to emphasize while pulling on your bra strap. “You know why?” J throws the question out there, aware the statement will please his wife. “I tolerate you… even if you’ve been nagging me for almost 12 years.”

“Careful,” you admonish. “Uttering such words makes you sound like you’re in love.”

“God forbids! You think so?!” the painful grimace on his face prompts more teasing from your part:

“Yeap, no cure for this terrible disease.”

Your bra ends up on the floor and he’s not content with the epilogue.

“I’m screwed then.”

“Noooot yet,” you wink and his purring intensifies when your teeth sink into his shoulder. “We’re getting there.”

************

Same morning, 11:47am

“There you are!” J exclaims discovering you on the terrace. “You disappeared on me Y/N: I thought you said we’ll have lunch,” the hyper spouse recalls. “What’s wrong?” he frowns seeing you wiping your tears and doesn’t stress the lack of an answer when he notices the ultrasound picture. The Joker quietly sits by you on the swing, kissing your scared cheek in the process. “You ok?”

“U-hum,” you nod. “I wish I didn’t have the miscarriage, you know?...” your bottom lip quivers while placing the image in your robe’s pocket. “I really wanted a baby…”

“My poor old girl…” he sighs and doesn’t expect you to agree.

“I am old!” you keep sobbing and he squeezes you closer to him. “It was probably my last chance to have a child and I blew it!”

The King of Gotham sucks at cheering; he attempts nevertheless:

“Mmmm… You’re supposed to say you’re not old and then I reply that you are old for my standards, which should prompt you to fight back and highlight my standards are crap. Am I to carry on these sort of conversations meant for two by myself now?!” he huffs. “People will think I’m crazy!”

You snort at his monologue and it’s the perfect opportunity to make it clear your opinion is unchanged:

“Your standards are crap!”

“There you are,” the delighted Joker reckons. “I got nervous for a moment,” he chuckles and you elbow him, smiling through tears. “What about we eat something and then we can plan our location for the honeymoon we didn’t get to enjoy?”

J’s plan is working: the little surprise proposition is distracting Y/N and she carefully weighs in his sentences.

“Would you like to elope?” he pushes for a decision and you play with your wedding ring, mumbling:

“I don’t wanna go to Vegas.”

“No Vegas!” he’s fast to consent. “Where to then?”

“Well…” you sniffle, “…what about Reno? We could stay at Solaris Casino; Mark Nessi would accommodate us.”

“He would. If we pack and leave, we can make it there by 7:30-ish pm.”

“You want to leave today?! What about your meetings? You actually have one tomorrow.”

“Meh, Frost can postpone them,” The Joker dismisses your concerns. “I vote we bail and have fun, hm?” he lifts your chin up. “Let’s get the hell out of here, yes?” the impatient Clown wiggles next to you.

“OK…” Y/N elects to grant his plea because escaping town couldn’t have a better timing: it will be nice to spend time together and try to get over the disappointment of his past mistake.

**************

Reno, 8:42pm

You and The Joker are strolling towards the gambling area, excited to have made it here an hour ago. The traffic wasn’t bad and you took turns driving, that’s why you had dinner first and then changed clothes in order to enjoy the night properly.

“I liked the lobster,” you pull at his arm since he’s distrait. “How was your stake?” you seek to chat when he suddenly opens the door to one of the storage closets and shoves you inside. You get trapped against the wall as J claims his special request for the evening.

“I want the special treatment,” he growls and you smirk.

“You didn’t do anything to earn it! This morning I made an exception because it’s been weeks since we had sex. Don’t let my lenience trick you!”

“Don’t nag me!” J cuts you off. “This backless red dress of yours is doing things to me so I want the special treatment,” he slides his arms around your waist.

“Surrounded by shampoo bottles and toilet paper?!”

“It’s quite sexy,” The Joker grins and you compromise a tiny bit:

“I’ll only do the first part! That’s it! I want to go and play poker.”

His face comes close to yours and you start kissing every inch of it, ogling the door instead of paying attention to him.

“You’re not doing it right!” your husband complains. “You’re supposed to look at me!”

You switch your concentration and keep staring in his eyes, abandoning the project when you consider it done.  

“Where are you going?” J stops your movement. “Thanks to you I can’t walk now,” he lifts up your short dress and you dodge his touch, opening the door in order to escape.

“Of course you can! Come on, stop sulking,” you drag him out and he follows, bickering at your indifference.

“You’re mean!” The Joker admonishes and you intertwine his fingers with yours, guiding him in the direction of the VIP room.  

“No, I’m not,” you defend your actions. “I’ve been around you for so many years that those blue eyes and long lashes don’t have any powers over me,” Y/N teases. “I’m immune.”

“Bullshit!” he mutters and you steal a kiss, inviting him to enter the poker room.

“Do you want to sit by the bar?” you point and J doesn’t oppose the choice. “I’m getting a cocktail. Grape juice?”

“No,” he pouts and makes himself comfortable while you fetch your drink.

“Hello Mister Joker,” one of the dolled-up girls swiftly pops up at the table. “I didn’t see you in forever!”

“I’ve been busy,” he avoids the subject and barks when she tries to collapse on the chair next to his. “This seat’s taken!”

“Oh,” she straightens her back. “By whom?!” the envious Ella inquires.

Did another girl get to him first?! It’s common knowledge he’s generous with his flings and she can’t believe another will cash in the benefits.

“My wife,” he taps his fingers on the table, annoyed the interrogation continues.

“You got married Mister Joker?!” the woman doesn’t hide her astonishment: it’s not that his nuptials were broadcasted on the news. Plus… he’s a very weird man, totally not husband material.

“A few months ago,” he sneers and she’s not smart enough to take the hint.

“Who did you marry Mister Joker?” she giggles, more and more convinced he’s bluffing: The King of Gotham is probably messing around to make her jealous.

“My best friend and main nagger,” J bitterly mentions. “Isn’t this what people do? Marry their best friends?”

“You almost got me Mister Joker,” she laughs at his strange acknowledgement, reassured he’s messing with her: an individual like him would pronounce such nonsense only to initiate flirting.

“Excuse me!” you bump into her on purpose, aware why she’s there. “I got you grape juice on ice,” you place the glass in front of your spouse and he opens his mouth in amazement.

“I was literally about to order this! How did you know I changed my mind?!”

“Best friends know,” you bend to kiss him and J pouts, annoyed you overheard his childish affirmation.

“You have such a cool tattoo on your back!” Ella exclaims. “Is that Japanese?”

Y/N turns in her chair, confused to notice the lady is still standing behind them.

“Yes.”

“What does it say?”

You take a deep breath, fed up by her unwanted presence.

“It says that if you don’t get lost, I’ll make sure your body is never found again! And if it’s eventually found, it surely won’t be identifiable!!”

You reprise your position at the poker table, patiently waiting for the dealer to finish handing out the cards.

“I’m so hot and bothered,” J brushes his lips on yours. “Your attitude begs for my undivided eagerness to peel you out of this dress,” he lustfully glares at your cleavage.“What do you say we leave and have a party on our own? We can play strip poker in the honeymoon suite.”

“We just got here minutes ago,” you fix a rebel strand of hair then whisper: “Table seven, white shirt guy.”

“Do you ever take vacations?” The Joker grinds his teeth, nonchalantly gazing at your suspicious target.

“I like to mix business with pleasure,” you wink and accidentally spill a little bit of your cocktail on his pants. “Oops, pardon me; I assume you have to come with me if you need help stepping out of your wet garment.”

“As that old Arkham report specifies: I need all the help I can get,” The Clown reveals to an amused Y/N, excited she’s receptive to his innuendos.

**************

You emerge from the walk-in closet in your skimpy purple lace attire and The Joker gasps, enticed at the view.

“Oh my God! Com’ere!” he gestures for your company and you crawl in bed, pushing aside the items scattered on the sheets:

“What’s with the shampoo bottles and toilet paper rolls?!”

“I’m attempting to recreate the seductive atmosphere in the storage room, maybe it can convince you to continue the special treatment.”

“You don’t give up, do you?” you scoff and straddle his lap, conflicted if you should grant his wish.

“I usually don’t… Are you gonna help like you promised and take off my pants?” J gropes you and the knock at the door interrupts your answer.

“Room service!”

“Did you order from the menu?” you ask and your husband purrs:

“More champagne.”

“Maybe our new friend has arrived,” you wink, hopping out of bed.

“Why don’t we find out?” The Joker spanks your butt as you cover your body with the bathrobe.

Y/N grabs the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and hides around the corner while he shouts:

“Come in!”

The waiter pushes in the rolling cart in the middle of the lobby, greeting his grouchy customer:

“Hi Mister Joker, would you like one bottle or two?”

“One!”

You creep beyond him and smash the glass against his skull; the man falls on his knees and you take advantage of his dizziness to switch him face up: it is the guy from table seven!

“Who send you?” you ferociously punch him and he struggles to escape when The King’s gun ends up one inch away from his temple. “Who send you?” Y/N shrieks and she’s so absorbed into her job she can’t discern the mesmerized Joker staring at her. It’s not that he didn’t see you in action before, but it finally clicked:

It sure pays off being married to your work wife!

Also read: MASTERLIST

You can also follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: Diyunho.

[chilling-seavey]

Anything But Mine (d.s.) - Chapter Thirty-One

A/N what do you think Daniel should do?

Thursday, August 20th, 2020

Summer was coming to an end and the new school year was approaching quickly. Even in the dwindling last days of August, the weather was hot and sunny, making a perfect opportunity for a beach trip. Of course, it was Aidan’s idea, filling backpacks with coolers and bags of chips at some time before noon. His housemates woke to find him almost ready to leave and he ushered them upstairs to get themselves dressed and ready.

Callum had convinced Florence to join them; the concept of Callum and Aidan back to conversing still almost foreign to her. But, she would do anything for her brother and his happiness, so she got her daughters dressed and out the door with too many bags on her arm. Florence was surprisingly happy to hear that both Grayson and Emilio wanted to join their group to the beach for the day. Things had been sort of awkward since the meeting with the doctor three weeks prior but they still tried to assure her – and themselves – that were still allowed to be friendly despite the circumstances.

They were to all meet at the boys’ house by the university first, making sure they had enough supplies to last the day and were all accounted for. Clementine was beaming, bouncing on her toes with excitement in the living room, running around her mother’s legs. Callum had greeted Aidan with a quick hug, the action making Florence smirk to herself. It still felt so normal.

The boys had started to come back downstairs, dressed in their swim trunks, t-shirts, sunglasses, and flip flops, towels draped over their shoulders. Corbyn approached the newly arrived group first, taking the newborn from the stroller and held her close, cooing a little ‘good morning’ to her.

It wasn’t long until the front door opened, and Cayleigh was walking in, dressed in a bikini and oversized t-shirt, her long brown hair tied back with a scrunchie. She greeted everyone loudly, before she pressed a kiss to Daniel’s smiling face. Florence didn’t even bother herself with looking at them, her heart still aching with the fact that Daniel wasn’t speaking to her.

“If we’re all here, let’s go!” Aidan clapped his hands once, making his way to the door.

Loaded with coolers, canned beer, a few pop cans, and enough chips to survive a zombie apocalypse, the group made their way to the city bus. Their group was excessively large, especially with Florence and the stroller and Daniel with his guitar, and strangers offered them rude glances throughout their trek to the lake.

Since it was a Thursday, the beach wasn’t too busy, allowing them excess space to set up, laying out a bunch of blankets and an umbrella. Florence set up Penelope in the shade of the umbrella, both her girls layered in sunscreen. Clementine was eager to get in the water, trying to squirm away from her mother trying to apply sunscreen to her cheeks.

“Come on, baby orange!” Jack beamed, taking her hand and running with her towards the lake, Clementine’s little coral flouncy bathing suit rippling as she ran messily across the sand.

“Always have a hand on her, Jack!” Florence shouted after them.

Most of the group had gone to the water right away, the pile of the boys’ shirts and their shoes sitting on the large towel beside Florence as she sat with the newborn and watched. It was too early post-partum to go swimming, so she was stuck on dry land all day. She didn’t mind, she always loved to spend one on one time with baby Penelope. And watching Clementine have fun.

Between Grayson and Jack, Clementine was having the time of her life, splashing happily in a foot of water, the grown men needing to sit on the bottom to be comfortable to play with her. Grayson earned himself a splash in the face by the toddler, making her shriek with laughter.

Most of the group was deep in the water, Zach dumping a pail of water on Cayleigh’s head who screamed and tripped over Emilio, the two of them falling messily with a huge splash. Callum and Aidan were farther down, their close proximity and clear enjoyment making Florence smile warmly. It was a reality she didn’t know she missed.

In her thoughts, she didn’t notice Jonah walking up the beach until he sat down next to her.

“What are you doing?” Florence chuckled.

“Keeping you company.” He shrugged, draping a damp arm around her clothed shoulder.

“You like the boring squad better or something?” Florence teased, pushing him away from her.

“Definitely.” Jonah nodded, unzipping one of the backpacks and pulled out a cooler. They fell into a momentary silence. “How about Callum and Aidan?” Jonah finally spoke, taking a long sip from his drink.

“Finally. That’s all I can say.” Florence shook her head through a smile. “I know they’re still figuring things out but…finally.”

“I’m really happy for them.” Jonah agreed, propping one hand behind him on the towel. Florence glanced over at him, a gentle smile plastered on her face. It made her happy to see her brother so supported. It was a vast difference from high school, and it was so refreshing.

“How about you?” Jonah asked, returning her stare. “Are you happy?”

Florence’s smile didn’t falter but she turned to her left where Penelope was asleep on the towel under the shade of the large umbrella. She looked back to Jonah. “I’m fine.”

“Just fine?” Jonah questioned.

“Oh, my God!” Cayleigh shrieked, running up the beach towards them. “I need a drink!” she fell onto the towel with a huff, yanking over a backpack to pull a drink from. Most of their group followed after her.

Florence looked back to Jonah and pulled a tight smile, hoping it was believable. “Perfectly fine.”

The day went by quickly; most of the drinks and snacks disappearing by dinner time. Clementine was having the time of her life and crashed in her mother’s lap in the shade around 3pm. Florence busied herself with a novel, finishing it by the time the pizza was ordered. The group were sat in a circle around the multiple open boxes of pizza, Daniel playing his guitar lazily with Cayleigh curled up next to him. Clementine had claimed a spot between Zach and Jack across the circle, blabbering on to them excitedly, her energy resorted after her hour-long nap. Emilio had claimed the recently awoken newborn, talking to her quietly as she stared up at him from his arms. Of course, Cayleigh was the loudest, going on about the day with a can of beer in hand, and Daniel was absolutely beaming at her, hanging onto every word she said. Now the boys themselves were getting tired of hearing her talk so much.

“What are we going to do for dessert?” Florence finally jumped in when Cayleigh took a second to breathe. She couldn’t help but notice how Daniel’s smile fell into an expressionless stare the moment she opened her mouth. He acted like that question was an insult to his entire family. Florence couldn’t hold back her confused and disgusted glare.

Clementine yelled out for ice cream, oblivious to the awkwardness that had started to grow amongst the group.

“I can take you for some ice cream.” Daniel offered a gentle smile to the toddler, acting as if Florence wasn’t even there. But that wasn’t new.

Clementine merely sat silent and stared back, her eyes flicking between him and Cayleigh who was still wrapped up in his arms. Clementine looked up to Jack who sat beside her and then to Zach who was on her other side, both waiting for her answer. Her response was simple, her little hands wiggling into their hands, whispering a barely audible, “No thank you” to Daniel.

Jack kept his composure the best he could as he got to his feet, but Zach couldn’t hold in his laughter, trying to smother it with his free hand as the toddler led the two of them down the beach towards the ice cream shop. Daniel was left in a state of surprise. Since when did Clementine not want to be with him?

The remainder of the group erupted into fits of laughter, Daniel, Cayleigh, and Florence being the only ones not laughing.

“Bro, you just got rejected!” Corbyn said. “Brutal!”

“What did I do?” Daniel frowned.

“I don’t know but you got beat by Zach.” Aidan snorted. Laughter rose again. Florence couldn’t help but crack a smile herself, the absolute ruthlessness of her daughter making her day.

“She hasn’t gone near me all day and she hardly looks at me now.” Daniel mumbled sadly.

Florence couldn’t hold back her eye roll at how familiar that sounded to her. The hypocrisy was unmatched.

But even still, the evening progressed, Daniel playing a few songs on his guitar as the sun set. It was the perfect summer weather and the light breeze kept the humidity bearable. Florence found herself distracted, though, her mood falling fast and all she wanted to do was go home. Maybe it was the tiring day or the stress on her mind or the fact that Daniel was still avoiding her like the plague but still found it in his heart to sing the song Clementine, the song that meant way too much to her and had way too many memories attached to it. Whatever it was, Florence could feel herself start to tear up. Emilio noticed her change from beside her and he set a hand on her thigh, leaning in to quietly ask if she was okay. The gentle shake of her head was enough and he slowly got to his feet and helped her up.

“Where are you going?” Jonah asked quietly.

“Home.” Florence whispered, her voice shaking as she tried to keep her emotions calm. Grayson stood up and joined them who had Clementine asleep in his arms. The toddler still had chocolate ice cream smeared across her face and down her shirt.

Daniel still played on, not even looking up, reaching the chorus of the old folk song that he used to sing to Clementine when she was a baby. The song that was her namesake.

Callum got up as well, as if preparing to leave with her, but Florence sopped him. “Stay here with Aidan.”

“I…I don’t have to. I can come home with you.” Callum mumbled.

“Stay. Please.” Florence assured him, giving him a gentle nudge back to Aidan who was watching them with concern etched in his features. Callum simply nodded and sat back down. The boys and Cayleigh said their goodbyes, all except for Daniel who’s consistent singing was much quieter but still going. He was focussed on the sand, his fingers plucking away at the strings of his guitar, filling the warm air with pitch perfect notes. Florence took one last look at him before they headed off.

Grayson was the only one who had driven to the beach and he carried sleeping Clementine across the sand towards the parking lot, Florence and Emilio following behind him with the stroller and their bags. They were silent as the sleeping children were buckled in and Emilio squished between them to give Florence the passenger seat. She tried to keep her mind busy as Grayson drove towards the highway, staring out the window as the city lights zoomed past. Daniel’s gentle voice played in her mind, thinking back to the first few weeks of being a new mom when Matt would be out partying and Daniel would come over with his guitar to help get the baby to sleep. It brought her back to late nights in the last month of pregnancy, how every time she couldn’t sleep or was worried about the future, Daniel would be there with her, singing softly to relax her. The song Clementine. Her daughter’s namesake, and as such, the song that at one time pushed the two best friends closer than ever. She simply felt so alone.

The small sob that fell from her trembling lips surprised her and Florence pressed a hand to her mouth to quiet herself down. Emilio leaned forward and set a comforting hand on her arm, glancing at Grayson’s concerned expression through the rear-view mirror.

“It’s okay.” Emilio whispered, running his thumb in little circles over he exposed skin.

Florence simply shook her head, holding her face in her hands as she cried.

“What’s going on, Flora?” Grayson asked quietly, his right hand falling to her thigh.

“That song.” Florence sniffled. “He…He fucking sang it on purpose. That was my song.”

“Clementine?” Emilio questioned. 

Florence nodded, wiping her cheeks with the side of her hand. “He knows how much that song means to me and what it holds and he just…he just had to sing that.”

“I don’t think he did it on purpose.” Grayson said slowly, not wanting to say the wrong thing.

“If he can’t even look at me, then he can’t sing my daughter’s song. My song.” Florence pressed a finger against her chest to make her point. 

“I’m sorry.” Emilio breathed, his heart aching at constantly seeing how much she was going through in so many aspects of her life.

“Things were looking better between us. I don’t know what I did wrong.” Florence cried.

Grayson and Emilio glanced at each other again and sighed quietly almost in unison. They knew since the truth came to the surface that Daniel would find a way to screw everything up.

[bromberryx]

Picnic Part 2 - Steve Rogers x Reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: {2nd Part} You´re new to the Avengers team, Steve´s room is next to yours and you want to get to know him better. After the picnic, Wanda invites you to a girls-night in the whirlpool. But there´s a surprise.

A/N: I really hope you´re enjoying these ^^, I´m still trying to figure out how Tumblr works. 

There will be a Masterlist really soon!! Little reminder: English isn´t my native language, so feel free to correct me :)

Word count: 1,844

Warnings: Alcohol, fluff, mentions of sex, mentions of loss, tea

***

After the picture was taken, everyone packed their things and the group started to leave the park.

You looked for Steve, but instead Wanda jumped next to you.

„So.. you and Steve?“ she grinned. 

You could feel heat rising to your ears, did Wanda see you?

I mean, you two didn´t kiss or something like that. You were just.. taking a close look at his beautiful eyes…

„Nope, I don´t know what you mean. He just asked me if it´d be okay if he´d sit with me. And I said yes…“ you looked to the ground, grinning.

*** 5 weeks later ***

Wanda knocked on your door. It was late afternoon and you were laying on your bed, listening to music.

 „Hi Y/N! Nat and I thought about going into the Whirlpool tonight, wanna join?“

You mood lightened. You were starting to feel comfortable in the group. The team welcomed you so warmly and you could feel that they, especially Wanda, really wanted to comfort you and include you in everything.

„You guys have a WHIRLPOOL?“ You squeaked. „Definetly!! Yes!!“ 

Wanda laughed. Her hand lightly touching your shoulder. 

*** later that night, 8 pm***

Swimming in a whirlpool was an experience you never got to have. 

You grew up in a small town close to New York. Your father left your family when you were just 7 years old. Since then, your mother had to raise a child on her own. 

You never had the money to buy a whirlpool.

Your excitement was overwhelming, a girls night at a whirlpool! 

But, of course, Tony didn´t tell you to bring a swimsuit when you were moving in. 

But luckily, Wanda had two. 

Since Nat didn´t wear bikinis, one was left for you.

The cups were triangle-shaped and under them there were 2 cuffs. 

You would never describe your body as a „perfect bikini-body“, but this bikini did look very cute on you.

You put the two-piece on and put a red towel around your body. Your feet slipped into some pair of flip-flops, you grabbed your phone and started walking outside your apartment.

In the elevator up to the roof, you started to feel a little dizzy, you were nervous.

When you arrived at the door, you could hear footsteps running towards you from behind. You turned around and look into the face of..

„Steve!“ You swallowed. Wasn´t this supposed to be a girls-night? Sweat started to run down your body and your heartbeat started to rise. You went on some missions together in the last weeks and spend some evenings together. Either just talking or you showed him how to play video games. But you didn´t get a chance to get closer to each other - besides, you didn´t get to see him without a top on yet.

Steve only wore a pair of swim trunks, they fit really tight around his lower parts. And so you couldn´t help yourself but stare.

The door behind you opened. „There you are, come in!“ Nat sounded amused. 

They didn´t tell you.

The two of you stepped in. The room was quite dark, blue LED-lights bringing some light into the room. In the background there was some music played. The song „oh baby“ by LCD Soundsystem was playing. 

You looked at Wanda, who smirked at you. You looked at her as saying „You didn´t tell me on purpose, did you?“ She nodded slightly, still with a big grin on her face. 

Nat was pouring Champagne into glasses.

 „Only 3?“ you asked, confused if Steve was just an illusion of your enthusing self. „But we are 4 people right? Or is someone about to leave?“

Steve started to giggle „No honey, alcohol doesn´t affect me at all. Because of the super-soldier.serum and stuff.“

„Oh.“ You couldn´t say any more. This has been the second time Steve called you „honey“. And everytime he says it, it was feeling like butterflies were flying inside of your belly.

Nat handed you the champagne and grabbed your wrist „Let´s go into the pool! You will love it, all the bubbles and stuff, just like heaven!“ You smiled. 

But you didn´t want to take the towel off, you were starting to feel uncomfortable. Nat and Wanda had taken theirs off already and you looked at two perfectly trained bodies. 

Normally, you didn´t have a problem with showing your body, but tonight everything was different, you felt like you weren´t as pretty as your friends.

A big, warm hand settled on your shoulder. „Are you okay, Y/N?“ Steve was looking down at you. Again, you melted into these steel-blue eyes. „´You felling uncomfortable? You don´t need to hide that body, I´m sure you look beautiful without it!“ 

Somehow, Steve´s words gave you a boost of confidence. Slowly you were taking the towel off your body.

The gaze of Steve told you that you looked stunning, but he didn´t stare. Instead, he reached out for your hand, looked into your eyes and led you into the pool.

The water was hot and the bubbles were tickling you a little. The champagne still in one of your hands, you raised your glass and said „Cheers!“ The sound of clinking glass fulfilled the room.

„So, how about you guys tell me a bit about missions you´ve been on. I want to know everything!“ You looked at the others, full of excitement, the champagne already starting to kick in a bit.

„Ladys first.“ Steve raised his hands in innocence. 

„Alright, let me start.“ Nat raised her voice. „So one time, Steve and I were on a secret mission. We got a secret USB drive from Nick Fury and -“

„Technically, he gave it to ME and I hid the drive in a vending machine and Romanoff took it without permission.“ Steve interrupted her.

„You left it at a hospital, you should be thankful that I took it before someone other took it.“ 

„You know what, Romanoff…“

„Enough! Nat, tell the story!“ Wanda barked.

„Okay, so I took it and we went into a shopping centre to see what´s on it. We were undercover and suddenly Hydra agents were all around us.“ She took a big sip of her drink. „And so we had to use so special techniques to hide from them.“

„Which are?“ You were impatient. 

„She pulled me into a kiss.“ Steve giggled. 

„Yeah, but that´s not the point.“ Nat took another sip, the glass was now empty. 

She went on while stepping out of the water to refill it.

„Later that day, I asked him if that was his first kiss since the 1940´s.“

You and Wanda burst into laughter. Steve rolled his eyes, shaking his head. „Of course not!“ 

Which made you laugh even more. 

„You don´t have to lie, Stevie, it´s okay.“ Nat giggled. „We all know that..“ She stopped, her facial expressions looked like she had to throw up every second.

„Nat, are you alright? You don´t look so good…“ Wanda moved closer to her, grabbing her arms and lifting her up. „Slowly, Nat. We´re going to the bathroom. I hope we´ll be back soon.“ You were looking at the two women leaving the room and closing the door. 

Awkward silence. You and Steve both look at the shimmering water, blue lights reflecting. 

„You didn´t tell us.“ 

„Sorry?“ he looked at you, his eyebrows drawn in confusion.

„Was that your last kiss since 1940?“ A little smile. He looks at you now. You, still focused on the bubbling water, insisted on your question. „Hm?“

„Yes.“ You knew it. His reaction spoke for itself.

You looked at his face. His perfectly white teeth shining in the light. 

„But you could have had the chance to kiss someone, right? I mean you´re nice and polite and .. a little attractive.. maybe. There must have been plenty of girls wanting to date you..“ You stuttered.

„Oh, you think so?“ He smirked. „Yes! Hundreds of girls! They all set up tents in front of the Stark tower. And they all screamed „Steve, come out, we want you!““ 

After you chuckled for a moment, he moved his toned body closer to you, your arms were touching. 

Your hand slowly moved towards his´. Your face red from the heat of the water and because of the fire that burned inside you. And it wanted to get out, even more than that evening at the picnic. 

„Steve..“ you whispered. „I´m really excited that we´re neighbors.“ 

Your lips were almost touching his´. His hot breath warming your bottom lip, looking at each other eye in eye.

„So am I“ A voice sounded, but it wasn´t Steve´s, it was Wanda. She was looking at you, eyebrows raised in expectation and hands on her hips.

*** the next morning***

„Mornin´“ Sam captured you, still in your pyjamas. You weren´t a morning person.

Even though you already put some make-up on - you still wanted to make a good impression- you looked nearly dead. Dark circles under your eyes that even Sam from the other side of the room could see.

Before you could wish him a good morning too, Wanda and Nat plunged into the kitchen. Wanda with a big smile on her red lips, Nat still a bit tired looking. She seemed to have a hangover from yesterday´s actions.

„Have you heard about the newest tea, Sammy?“ 

He shrugged. „Don´t call me that.“ 

Nat didn´t answer. „Anyways. Y/N and Steve made out in the pool yesterday.“

„They did wha- Oh. Wait, did you guys just f*ck in the pool?“

„No! We just … nearly ..kissed.“ You were overwhelmed by all the pressure pushing down on you. Tears starting to fill your eyes. You were ashamed. You could´ve kissed him, if only not in front of others. Confusion filled your head with questions such as: Will they judge me? 

Sam sighed. Nat sat down next to you. „Hey, I´m sorry.. it´s just a joke, but maybe I´ve gone too far.“ She hugged you. Tears now running down your face.

Steve joined with a happy „Morning, children!“ His happy mood stopped immediately when he saw you cry, asking what´s wrong. 

„Maybe you two should talk.“ Sam mumbles, eating a piece of toast.

You two left the kitchen, your cheeks still wet from your tears.

Steve looked down on you, moving his hand to your jaw, rubbing your cheeks with bis thumb.

„Honey, what´s going on?“ 

You told him about the rumor that Nat spread this morning.

He slowly pulls you to his chest, hugging you tight. „It´s okay, honey. It´s okay…“ 

Silence, only your quiet sobs filled the room. „Do you like me?“ You asked, still surrounded by the warmth of his big arms. 

„Of course I do, honey.“ 

[tonyspep]

we made these memories for ourselves

a/n: soooooooooo thanks to the wonderful rocketrhap4229 i decided to combine my latest fic ideas into one. originally i was going to do richard as a dad and then one where he and his bride runaway from their big fancy wedding like jim and pam did in season six of the office in episodes niagra part one and two. instead, i put both ideas together and here we are. for the “you” aka mia i imagined gemma chan who's going to be in the eternals with richard this fall.

~*~we made these memories for ourselves~*~

pairing: richard madden/you

summary: when you're overwhelmed by planning your wedding, richard has the brilliant idea of whisking you away and creating memories just the two of you and your daughters

rating: t

As the date to your wedding drew closer and closer, you found yourself running more and more ragged. You were seriously regretting not listening to Rose who had kindly offered the services of the wedding planner she and Kit had used. It's not that you weren't adverse to taking advantage of what Richard's celebrity had to offer, you loved getting pampered and dolled up before his premieres and such, but this was your wedding.

And while you (obviously) had no experience planning a wedding, you were determined to do it yourself.

You didn't want some stranger – as impolite as that may sound – handling the most important day of your life with Richard. You wanted everything to be perfect, but you didn't realize how much work went into making sure everything was perfect. From seating charts to choosing the church to handling the fittings not just for your dress and your daughters flower girl dresses but for your bride's maids and his groomsmen and the tasting for the food and cake, you didn't know how you found a moment to breathe, and things were only getting more hectic as the day drew closer.

“Hey,” There was Richard's familiar brogue in your ear while you sat at your vanity and as his fingers slid through the grooves of yours, pulling you to your feet, you clung to him like you had during those first frantic months Millie had been born and you were so afraid you were a horrible mother because you could not get her to sleep.

You couldn't stop the floodgates; the stress of it all finally catching up with you and your whole body shook in the strength of his arms, tears spilling from your eyes as you struggled to catch your breath.

“I'm sorry,” You murmured, pulling away as you furiously rubbed at your eyes, willing the tears to stop.

You hated yourself for crying over something as trivial as wedding planning, no matter how important it actually was. You reminded yourself how blessed you were to have the life you did and that you shouldn't have been crying at all, despite everything that had been weighing you down these past few months.

Richard had done his best to help, but the fact that Marvel was even giving him time off from filming to give you the spring wedding you had always longed for, was more than most studios would have done so he was sometimes pulling doubles to get as much of his scene work done as he could.

“Talk to me,” His crystal blue eyes boring into yours and the genlte tone of his voice almost had you spiraling again, the familiar saline sting starting all over, but you steadied yourself. You felt your lip wobble slightly, another sob desperate to escape, but you shoved it down. “I'm fine,” You assured, waving your hand dismissively. “How many stories did it take before Bella finally went to sleep?”

You didn't want to talk about what was really bothering you, so you turned the subject to your youngest daughter. Though, your oldest Millie looked more like Richard, it was two year old Bella who had your husband wrapped around her finger. One tiny tremor of her bottom lip or pleading bat of her obscenely long lashes and he was a puddle, and it was much worse when he would return after being gone filming for long periods of time.

“Mia,” He's nearly pleading, his large hand cupping the sculpted plane of your cheek to keep you looking straight into his too-perfect-too-beautiful eyes, and you crumble because what else can you do?

“I didn't,” Unable to keep the floodgates at bay like you hoped you would be, and you begin to full on sob once more. “Think it would be this hard. I should have,” A few hiccups here and there, and you don't fight being pulled into the safety of his strong arms, your own winding around his neck so you can anchor yourself against his sturdy frame. “Listened to Rose,” A brief bout of laughter. “She was right, you know? I don't know why I thought I could do this. I've never planned anything except your surprise thirty first birthday and even then, your sisters did most of the work. I just didn't want some,” Several more hiccups escape as you try to regulate your breathing. “Stranger,” You sigh, fingers carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Planning the most important, the most special day of our lives. The girls already think you're Prince Charming and I'm supposed to be the beautiful Princess and it's just a mess.”

“Oh, darling,” A warm chuckle underneath his brogue as he shakes his head, fond smile you know so well curling at his plush lips. “Is that what all this fuss is about? Don't you know by now, Mia Elizabeth Wu, I'd marry you anywhere? If our little terrors weren't fast asleep, I'd marry you right now just as you are in this very becoming dressing gown,” His voice goes low as he slips his other hand, that's not holding your cheek, underneath the hem of your silk robe an indulgence from early on in your relationship before two beautiful little girls and diamond rings and future in-laws and such, when you would jet here and there and everywhere just because, packing nothing but bikinis and lacy teddies.

“And don't you know?” He continues, bending his head so it falls forward into the curve of your neck. His teeth nip at that spot where your shoulder meets your collarbone, his lips sooth the nip, taking care of your decolatage and it takes everything for you not to moan, he's always known just what to do to you. “You are the beautiful Princess. One more beautiful than I deserve. Tonight, I'll show you that you are.”

“Richard,” His name tumbling breathlessly off your lips. “But you must be quiet, lovely,” Husky and low against your lips. “If not, I'll have to take this tie off your dressing gown and bound these pretty little wrists and I quite like your hands all over me.”

It still amazed you after two children how he could leave you so thoroughly satisfied, that years later he was still able to leave you as breathless as ever and that even now he was discovering new ways to bring you to the brink and fall over the edge. You were a tangle of arms and legs, his fingers lingering along your spine before dipping past the dimple at your back to grab a handful of your right cheek, hiking your leg further up his hip and you laugh as he nips and bites at your lips before drawing them into a proper kiss.

It's soft and warm, everything you longed for as a little girl, his tongue leisurely melding with yours until your panting all over again.

“Better now?” His voice rough and deep, making a shudder roll through your practically boneless frame. “Better now,” You whisper back, your forehead resting against his. “Don't tell Rose,” You say as your eyes begin to close. “She was right. I'll never hear the end of it.”

“Your secret's safe with me,” He assures, chuckling before he presses a loving kiss to your forehead.

~*~*~*~

There are two things you don't have to plan and that makes you ever so grateful, your own Hen Night and Richard's Stag Night. You could feel a headache coming on, as you sipped at your customary cup of lavender tea the next morning, just from the thought of it. Though, you took comfort in knowing Alfie wasn't in charge of the planning and that Kit had taken the reigns, assuring you your fiancee` would be back to you in one piece.

Of course Emilia who had immediately bonded with your younger sister, Charlotte, had not made the same promise to Richard. You, briefly, shuddered from the thought of them along with Rose, Gwendolyn and your gaggle of girlfriends from your days at Grayford and then Cambridge all at your door forcing you into some garish sash and tiara while they kidnapped you – basically – with the intentions of taking you somewhere you didn't know. You hoped you would only end up at Emilia's or Rose's and the living room would just be decorated in hot pink crepe paper streamers while every bit of penis paraphanalia in London surrounded all of you.

But you doubted they would plan something so tame.

You laughed softly to yourself as you shook your head and took another sip of your tea.

You didn't want to look at your phone – who knows how many messages you had already – but your day would have to start soon enough, after all you didn't know when those loons would decide to kidnap you. Or when you would receive a text from Alfie that he and the boys were planning on whisking Richard away and not to put up a fight.

Just as you were about to turn and reach for your kettle, an exicted squeal of “Mama!” turned your attention to the kitchen's doorway and there was a very happy Bella squirming inside Richard's arms, her own chubby limbs stretching as she tried to reach for you. You returned her excited squeal with one of your own, “Bella!” which made her giggle as you did grabby hands before reaching her and Richard in three easy strides.

You bent forward to nuzzle your nose against hers and tickled her wonderfully round tummy before plucking her out of Richard's arms and into your own. “Mama,” Soft as her tiny hand moved around your face, squeezing your nose and you laughed, knowing she wanted to play.

“No Eskimo kiss for me, darling?” Richard doing his best to sound put out and you shook your head before leaning over to nuzzle noses with him as well.

Then came the sound of rushing feet, which meant a certain someone was about to come rushing at your legs, not wanting Bella to have all of the attention. You were prepared for the speeding blur that was your oldest daughter to come rushing at you, but you weren't prepared at all for what Millie was wearing. Your eyes went wide at the sight of her in her flower girl's dress, which made you look at Bella in your arms and you found her wearing her dress as well.

“Richard...” You started to say, but Millie's small voice interrupted you. “Daddy, how come Mama isn't dressed, too?”

“Dressed, too?” You asked, your eyes narrowing sharply in the direction of your fiancee`, your lips forming the familiar thin line they always did when you were struggling to show just how upset you were, a habit both you and your sister had inherited from your mother.

And in that moment, you realized Richard was standing in your kitchen wearing the white tuxedo you requested him to wear for the wedding. It was identical to the one he had worn at Cannes for the Rocketman premiere, the one you very much adored. Though, he could tell you were upset and confused, he still approached you with that so hard to resist and ever so charming smile on his plush lips. He reached for your hand, careful not to jostle Bella who was still nestled in the crook of your arm and brought your knuckles to his lips just like he had when he introduced himself to you at the Dolce and Gabana show all those years before.

Like always you couldn't help but shudder. Bella may have had him wrapped around her finger, but you had been wrapped around his the moment you met.

“Say yes to running away with me,” He murmured huskily into your ear, his teeth briefly tugging at your earlobe before he soothed the bite with his lips, then he trailed them down the elegant curve of your neck, taking special care of that spot he knew so well. “To being the beautiful Princess Millie and Bella know you are.”

“Are you...” You couldn't form the words, your voice trailing away as you felt tears spring to your eyes. “Rich....”

“Shhh,” He pressed his thumb to your lips, halting your inevitable protest. “We can still have the wedding everyone expects. Nothing will change, except we'll have this, something that's just for ourselves and the girls.”

The romantic in you couldn't help but swoon. You had never imagined yourself as the type to run away and get married, you were more like the Monica Gellar type who had been obsessing over your wedding since your were a little girl. You bit down on your lip, twisting the flesh between your teeth and then there was Bella's voice in your ear, “Mama wear dress, too?”

The hopeful look in her warm brown eyes made you melt. A soft hiccup escaped your trembling lips as you nodded shakily, taking in an unsteady breath as you pressed a kiss to her soft dark hair and whispered, “Yeah, Mama's going to wear a dress, too. Yes, she is.”

“Mia...” Now Richard's tone was shaky, his crystalline eyes just as hopeful as Bella's had been. “Yes,” You assured, your voice louder than before. “Yes, Richard Madden I'll runaway with you.”

Even with Bella in your arms, the two of you shared a heady kiss, your head spinning when he finally pulled away after briefly letting your tongues tangle. He easily took Bella from your arms, throwing her up in the air and then catching her easily as she howled with laughter. Millie rushed toward the pair, not wanting to be left out and you shot your fiancee` a withering glare over your shoulder before you retreated back to your room, silently warning him not to ruin the girls' dresses. They would still need them for the wedding you had been slaving away for as well.

~*~*~*~

Briefly, you panicked about what you would wear. Your dress – unlike the girls' dresses wasn't here – you still had at least two more fittings to go through to ensure it was absolutely perfect. Then you remembered how you had requested Richard wear the white tux and as if he was behind you, your senses assaulted by his heady scent of verbena and musk, you remembered him going into your side of the closet and pulling out his own request. It was the dress you had worn on your very first date, a simple silk charmeuse slip dress in a deep green by Dior that the fashion house dubbed as holly.

He confessed– after you had been together for months – he had seen you wear the dress on the runway for the famed French fashion house and thought you were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He had been too nervous to talk to you then, only introducing himself to you at the Dolce show because his friends had given him such a roe about it. You had found him handsome, of course, but more so he was utterly endearing; fumbling and wringing his hands and biting his lip.

yes, you thought, soft smile blooming across your lips, this is the one.

~*~*~*~

i'm speechless

staring at you standing there in that dress

what it's doing to me ain't a secret

cause watching you is all that i can do

“speechless” - dan + shay

Keeping a four year old and a two year old from ruining their beautiful dresses was easier said than done. Especially his squirmy little monkey Bella. Mille had, more or less, settled down happily munching on her favorite snack of butter cookies and strawberry jam that managed to only cover her cherubic face and thankfully nothing else. Richard had been just about ready to surrender and take Bella back upstairs and put her pajamas back on until they were literally almost ready to leave and then he heard the familiar trills of your soft laughter. He breathed a sigh of relief, ready to question how you could handle them for days on end alone when he – apparently – couldn't do so for all of twenty minutes, when every word died on his tongue.

You were wearing the dress. At least that's what he called it in his own head, anyway.

You told him most models didn't get to keep the clothes they walked the runways in, but sometimes they got lucky. The first night he stripped you of this very silk slip dress, he told you it was him who got lucky.

That dress had followed the two of you from your flat downtown to his newly purchased Hidden Hills home in Los Angeles to both of your childhood homes and finally the sprawling cottage in the Essex countryside where you would raise the girls.

He'd pulled the straps down with his teeth, then raised them again after you had stumbled from the closet at his parents anniversary party, he had slipped his hand underneath the hem teasing you the first time he met your parents for dinner. He let you slip it from your own body only once... After the worst fight you ever had, you threatening to walk all the way back to your own flat – even in your strappy delicate golden heels – and after words he promised – the first time he had ever promised anything so fiercely – that he would never let you go.

He had been so careful of the dress when you whispered in his ear after Kit and Rose's wedding that you were pregnant again and soon the two of you would have your hands full with another little girl.

“Mia...” Your name heavy on his tongue as his mouth parts and he can't stop from licking his suddenly dry lips.

“You wore the white tux for me,” Your voice heady in his ear, your lips teasing his ear and throat like his had done to you. “There was nothing else that I could wear for you.”

and i'm speechless

you already know that you're my weakness

after all this time i'm just as nervous

every time you walk into the room

i'm speechless

~*~*~*~*~

You couldn't stop your eyes from flooding with tears as Richard stared deeply into yours while saying his vows, ending them with, “And yet I wish but for the thing I have; my bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”

Though, you ended up forgoing graduate school to model, you still remembered those words from the late night cramming sessions over Shakespeare as an undergraduate at Cambridge. You always thought those words from Romeo to Juliet were beautiful, maybe the most beautiful in the whole play and for a brief moment you thought you might be dreaming, that you would be woken up by two little girls pouncing on you or Richard's lips latching here and there, but you weren't.

His hand shook as he slid the beautiful sterling silver band over your knuckle, kissing the finger after he secured it against your engagement ring and you released the breath you didn't even know you had been holding.

The Justice made his pronouncement and then Richard gently took your face in his hands and your lips touched, so soft and warm, and like always you tasted forever.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Wet Sugar [Part 7 of 30]

"Never understood how the trees gave us air

'Cause when you took my breath away

Trees were still there

I know that you're not in love with me

Which brings the ocean toward my eyes

Toward my eyes

See, we've all been there before

So don't you judge me

I'll never ask for more after this warning

My heart's in dumps for sure

But I'll keep on running for you, for you

So give me a pulse

Steady and deep

Now tell me the one thing you wanted from me…"

Leah Jenea – "Pulse"

Summary: Erik is in Africa and Yani deals with fall out...

A.N.: Hey all, had to split a chapter in two. My updates are averaging about 10,000 words (almost a 1/3 of a whole ass book each post, whew!]

Mature Content. NSFW. Y’all already know...

It felt different.

Sitting on the sand and running her fingers through the sugary soft grains, Yani couldn't quite figure out the sensation creeping over her spirit. Men had come and gone over the years through the compound. But Erik was the first she ever took an interest in…interacted with actually. Thinking back on it, she couldn't remember any of the men she had ever had a passing conversation with.

She touched the side of her neck. Trying her best to cover it with a cowrie shell choker, she could feel the tender bruise where Erik's lips and tongue had broken the small blood vessels there marking her skin with his love bite. Not just a hickey, but his actual teeth marks, those gold slugs digging into her flesh, the heat from his mouth branding her.

She had stood against the SUV expecting her Aunt to show up at any moment and catch that man hunched over her body like he was Vlad the Impaler turning her into a creature of the night. She gave her neck up to him wantonly, hungry for his mouth on her there and everywhere. When his fingers pinched her nipples, his tongue licked her ear and he whispered, "Your titties getting wet for me yet?"

She thought she would pass out from how gravelly his voice sounded. The possessive tone made her thighs shake and at that point, she pushed him back.

"Not in front of Sweet Pea," she gasped praying that her bra would control any leaking milk that could happen because of him.

"She needs to see her Mama getting some lovin'. Help her know what it looks like," he said trying to pull her back in his arms.

She held him back while peeking around his side looking out for Leona.

"Just one more kiss," he said.

"My Auntie will be here soon."

"Let me just hold you then."

His eyes seemed to be pleading with her.

"Okay—"

He lifted her up and placed her back on the backseat so that they were face to face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he leaned in to hold her. His body heat seeped into her dress and made her feel secure and protected. Her nose took in the scent of his cologne, and the scent of the almond smelling oil he used for his hair.

"Give me your number," he said when he pulled back from her. He had his cell out again.

She gave him her number but he didn't share his.

Leona returned and Yani kissed her daughter while fighting back the sorrow that was filling up her heart. Being with Killmonger felt normal. Natural. She watched him check the seatbelt securing Sydette, and when they drove away, she felt a dull pain grow in her chest and a few tears squeezed from her eyelids.

He was gone.

Yani allowed herself to fall back on the sand. She stared up at the pastel colors in the sky and tried to remember every inch of Killmonger. From his dark locs and thick neck to the curves on his strong thighs and the firm girth of that heaviness between his legs.

She couldn't ignore the urgent thumping from her clit and she pulled her bikini bottom off and spread her legs, not even caring about the sand digging into her backside.

"Ahhh…" she panted when her fingers pressed into her clit. It was already swollen, the delicate hood retracted revealing the tender pink bud. She pulled open her sticky inner labia and tried to imagine Killmonger slapping his dick on her, hitting her clit hard. He would be rough with her. She knew this. When he pulled his dick out of his pants the first time he touched her and let slip that he wanted to fuck her, the coarse edge in his voice let her know he was a man who broke pussy down. He was older, more experienced, and when he picked her up and slammed her on his dick to dry hump her, the strength she felt in his arms and legs made her feel weak. Delicate. He clearly had grown man dick. And that is what she wanted. Not sorry peen from the bum ass boys she ended up with.

Her thoughts drifted and she ruminated on when he kissed her pussy, could probably rub out a good orgasm re-imagining that night, but instead, her mind went to him yelling at her in his bedroom. For some reason, re-playing the hard and rough anger that came out of his throat got her so wet so fast. In the heat of the real moment she had been terrified, but lying on the warm sand with the new day's sun waiting for the first morning breath to carry it high above her, Yani fantasized about Erik yelling at her, barking orders at her, his lips curled in that mean scowl that was profoundly sexy to her in the safety of her imagination.

She pressed harder on the slick nub of her clit, her mind's eye replaying Erik's rough words, re-living the narrow lowering of his eyelids, his lips letting his gold teeth shine. And God, his hands lifting her up and pulling her onto his strong sculpted body… Yani's fingers flicked her clit with harder pressure re-imagining the rage on his face like he wanted to snatch her up and choke her within an inch of her life--

"I'll give you this wet pussy, Killmonger!" she squealed thinking of his juicy big lips and his turbulent-looking eyes. There was a storm lingering deep within those dark brown iris' of his.

Yani's three fingers sank down into her center and she pretended it was that man's thick brown dick hitting her walls and her stomach muscles clenched tight. She turned her head to the side feeling the sand scratch her cheek. She took the fingers of her other hand and pinched her clit as she wiggled her digits in her pussy. She wished she had her ruby anal plug, wanting that space filled so her sphincter could squeeze tight when she came.

She heard herself wailing with ecstasy as her pussy throbbed around her fingers. She would never have the chance to fuck him. She would never know how much time and tenderness it would take to fit him inside of her. There would be no more love marks. No more deep bites from golden canines. No more hands squeezing and pinching her nipples to make them weep.

Her release was total and complete.

Her limbs and torso felt abandoned by something it never had before. Probably never would. She might spend the rest of her life comparing imaginary fucking with a stranger to whomever she ended up with in life.

Her index and middle finger stirred around the inside of her vagina, the sloppy wetness there was profound. It dripped down her inner thighs and ass cheeks. The tears from her pleasure gathered down on her neck, but they soon turned to tears of sorrow.

"Him no come back," she said out loud, needing to hear it out in the open so she could accept it. For a brief moment, she thought she couldn't breathe. Couldn't feel her heart beating within her chest. She placed a warm hand against her neck. There was a pulse there. She was alive. Life would continue as it always had.

Flinging her bikini top on top of her clothes she picked herself up and waded out into the sea. She swam so far out that when she glanced back to look for her clothes, she could barely see the shadow of them on the sand.

Sinking down…

Her eyes searched below the surface for fish or sea turtles or anything that could distract her. When she allowed herself to float on her back, she remembered yelling at him when she first saw him. He floated in her waters and she wanted him gone, banished from her sanctuary. But now…all she wanted was for him to be floating on his back next to her, naked, his dimples flashing only for her and her baby.

She stayed in the water for as long as she could. When the sun began to shift, she dog-paddled toward shore, then body surfed all the way back.

She heard the cell alarm chime from her clothes and she knew it was time to finish up the work she had left at the compound. Once they were all gone, she and her Aunt would close down shop and wait for Klaue to return or not. She would have to collect a few more hours at the restaurant or at the Eco Tours to make ends meet again. Chez needed to come through with the money he owed her because she had to pay for tuition in another month.

Dressing quickly, Yani headed over to Klaue's. Pausing, she once more heard the stirring sound of Tahir's voice. The morning call to prayer.

She walked to where she could listen and watch him without disturbing his time. Tahir was in white again, his skull cap covering the wavy curls on top of his head. When he prostrated himself, Yani tried to hum the beginning parts of the prayer under breath. She had looked it up online on Kendall's laptop, finding a web page that gave a phonetic translation that she could follow.

"You need more of a nasal sound on that last part, Yani."

Startled, Yani glanced up and saw Tahir looking down at her.

"What?" she sputtered, confused as to how he knew she was there.

"Your voice…"

Confusion.

Oh, shit.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know I was singing out loud, I was humming it and then—" "It's alright, you sound wonderful."

She walked up to where he was and he stepped down from the veranda.

"Listen… Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem. Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil 'aalameen…"

Yani listened closely to his words and watched his lips and tongue move. He touched his throat.

"A little vibrato in there helps," he said, "bring it up through the diaphragm."

"Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem. Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil 'aalameen…" she sang. She could hear the difference right off.

"That was perfect, my Goddess."

Yani felt herself smile.

"Oh, there it is, at last. I was worried you had forgotten how to do that since Killmonger left," he said.

Her eyes darted away from his gaze and her smile faltered.

"I miss him too. He is my one true friend in this world and I barely know that much about him except that I miss his presence and his leadership. The prayers brought us closer together. He said that it gave him peace. Looks like it gives you peace too, yes?"

She nodded.

"I want to learn how to say them…the words," she said.

"For yourself?"

"Yes."

Tahir held out his hand.

"Come with me."

She hesitated.

"Up to the veranda. I will teach you."

She took his hand.

###

Tahir sat with Yani in the dining room of the front house. Leona was down in the apartment watching tv. It was their final hour with Klaue and his crew. Yani knew she was ready for a break from all the men. It was a hectic month of work for Leona and Yani knew her Aunt was ready to slow down and spend some time in her own home back in Red Hook.

She sipped the can of coke she drank with Tahir. He guzzled down two cans and Yani sized up his face.

"What does Killmonger do when you are not working for Klaue?" she asked.

"He travels."

Tahir kept his answers enigmatic when it came to Killmonger. Gave no specifics to where he traveled to. All of her questions asked for the last twenty minutes were answered without real answers.

"Does he have a woman?"

Tahir put down his drink.

"You should forget him, Yani."

His answer surprised her.

"I'm just curious—"

"No…you're not curious…"

Tahir's eyes were a solemn brown and they swept over her face.

"You are so young. Your life is in front of you. Killmonger is not a man to…he's not…"

Tahir's eyes broke away from hers and he took another drink from his soda can.

"Say it, man," she said feeling anxious watching him. She squirmed in her chair. She hated how cryptic he was being with her.

"He's a dangerous man. Much too dangerous for you to be mixed up with. Be happy that he is gone."

"It would be easier just to tell me he has a girlfriend," she said.

"He has many women. Whenever he wants. He had several while he was here. Where he is now, he will have some there if he wants. That's how life is in this work we do. There is not one woman. No girlfriend. We use women when we want to have sex or a good time. That is all."

Yani felt her face get hot from his words. So blunt.

"Will he come back here?"

Tahir shrugged. He glanced at his watch and stood up.

"Goddess, it was a pleasure knowing you. I must get some sleep now—"

Yani jumped up.

"Can you give me his number? An email?" she said.

"I won't do that. I can't."

"Please?"

"No. I'm sorry. It's safer if you leave him alone."

He crushed his cans of coke. His eyes were gentle regarding her face.

"I can pass one message to him, but that's it. One message."

"I want to give it to him myself."

"Sorry, Yani. We have rules."

Tahir was not going to budge. And she didn't want to pass on an intimate message through this man.

"Goodnight, Mr. Tahir," she said.

She walked down to her Aunt's apartment under the front house. Leona sat with her reading glasses on watching Wheel of Fortune.

"Why the sour face?" Leona asked.

"Just tired, Auntie. Can I have the car keys?"

"Inside the bowl," Leona said.

Yani walked over to the ceramic candy dish by the tv and grabbed the keys.

"You worked very well, Yani. I'll have your money for you tomorrow. You have enough for tuition now?"

Yani grinned.

"I'm going to pay for both of my first two semesters next week. All I have to do is get through the first year and my grades by this time next year should help me get a scholarship. Any word from Klaue?"

"He hasn't said anything to me yet. I'll let you know what he decides."

Yani nodded and walked out of the apartment. She went back to the front house to make sure things were locked up.

"Yani."

She froze when she saw Klaue standing out on the patio.

"Yes, Mr. Klaue."

"Let Kendall and the guys know that I won't need them here until the end of the month. Things can go a little wild while I'm gone."

"I will tell them."

"You and Our Lady did well."

"Thank you."

Klaue always made Yani feel insecure. He could be irascible toward anyone, his moods often shifted from moment to moment, and right now, he looked a little tipsy from the beer he drank with his dinner. He stepped past her and she couldn't resist asking him a question.

"Will you be coming back soon, Mr. Klaue?"

He turned back toward her, his bloodshot eyes looking curious. His lips pressed tighter together.

Shit. He probably thought she was prying.

"I'm starting nursing school in the fall. I just want to know if there will be work available any time soon before I attend my classes."

She gave him a tepid smile, not sure if she had offended him by asking about his schedule. She had never done that before.

"You're going to be a nurse?"

"Yes, Sir. I want to help women who are having babies."

"Ah, well, you have experience with your own daughter. Good for you. Education is important. You want to better yourself."

He wiped a hand across his jawline.

"I will let your Aunt know for sure, but I may need extra help later in the summer. Can't say for sure."

"This job really helped me save up money for school. I probably won't be able to work here as much when you come back."

"I see. Well, you will be missed. Perhaps you can do some things on the weekend instead of during the week."

She smiled at that.

"Goodnight," he said leaving her.

Late summer.

Maybe…maybe Killmonger would be with him.

###

Yani parked her Aunt's car and checked her cell. There was a missed call from Zachary. Her nerves kicked up. There was no text or voice message. She quickly checked Zachary's IG and snapchat feeds. His other social media timelines were pretty quiet, just postings of joke memes and few music vids. She slipped the thin phone into her back pocket again.

Running up the stairs she was surprised to see Chez sitting on the top step. Scowling, he stood up when he saw her.

"You brought me the money?" she said, a hopeful tinge to her voice.

Chez snatched her up by the front of her shirt and raised his hand up until the cotton material was pressing against her throat and her belly was naked to the world.

"You stupid Bitch!"

Her hands flailed out scratching his wrists, but he held onto her tight. He dragged her back down the steps, her feet tangling up trying to keep him from breaking her ankles. Once he had her down by the parking lot, he slammed her body onto the hood of her Aunt's car. The pain in her back flared up and she kept still while his eyes glared at her, his face close to hers, the smell of hard liquor on his breath offending her senses.

"Chez! Stop it! You're hurting me!"

"Why the fuck am I getting a call that you have some other nigga claiming my child? You crazy? You married now?"

Fucking Kim.

"It was a joke!"

"No, it wasn't! You were seen kissing all over him. He had his hands all over you in front of the baby! Fucking slut!"

He lifted her up and slammed her back down, knocking the breath out of her.

"Who the fuck is he?"

Yani tried to ease up from the hood, but Chez was too strong.

"My Aunt works for him," she gasped, "He was playing, I swear! He was just joking with my boss!"

"Is Sydette mine?"

Yani was scared, but she felt anger seeping into her veins. It strengthened her resolve. She slapped at his face, scratching him.

"How dare you ask me that! You fucking bastard! I never cheated on you. I was always with you and you know Sydette is yours! Fucker!"

Her arms did windmills, striking him in his face and chest.

"Yani!"

Twyla came running out from the apartment. She bounded down the steps and lunged at Chez, putting him into a headlock and lifting his neck up. Yani took advantage when he released his hands from her and proceeded to punch him in the face with her fists.

"Alright! Stop!" Chez yelled.

They all heard Sydette crying from the open apartment door. A few neighbors stuck heads out of windows to watch the wild scene unfolding before them. Chez broke away from Twyla and darted up the steps.

"Chez!" Yani shrieked, running behind him.

Chez ran into her bedroom and grabbed Sydette from her crib, pressing her screaming little body against his chest.

"Let her go, Chez!" Yani shouted.

Her entire body was shaking watching him hold her baby. Chez peered down into Sydette's face.

"Is she mine? Don't lie to me, Yani! Kim said that man had dimples like her and he was holding her like she was his—"

Chez dropped down to one knee, almost losing his balance and dropping Sydette.

Yani fell to her knees in front of him grabbing for her daughter. Chez shoved her flailing arms back.

"Let me have her, please! Let her go!"

Chez's eyes looked haunted. There was fear there. Yani wiped tears from her face and held her hands out to him.

"She's yours! Everyone knows she's yours. You can do a blood test if you want, I don't fucking care…let her go…!"

Twyla flew into the room ready to beat the shit out of Chez again, but Yani held her back. Twyla grabbed a baseball bat from behind the bedroom door and held it in position.

"People are talking shit, Yani. Saying you played me!"

Chez'z eyes swam with tears. Sydette kept screaming. Yani crawled closer to him and took Sydette from his rigid arms. She sat back on her backside and pulled up her shirt, releasing a breast from her bra. Sydette latched onto her nipple and it had an immediate calming effect on her. Yani breathed deep, her eyes watching Chez.

Her back muscles shot jolts of pain and she grimaced. Chez watched her feed his baby. His tear-streaked face broken.

"You tryna find a father for her?" he asked.

"You should just pay your child support on time, Chez and not worry about who Yani sees. You cheated on her and ruined your relationship. She nuh have to tell you nothin' 'bout her personal business. That baby is yours and you are a shitty faddah—"

"Twyla…"

Her cousin glared at her face. She closed her mouth when she realized Yani wasn't in the mood to have Chez lectured about his failings.

"Chez, I got into nursing school. I need Sydette's money now. I will be going to school full-time and I need you to help me."

She could feel herself tearing up again and she was upset about crying all the time. She was forever crying over some man. It was tiresome.

Chez crawled to sit next to her. He took a finger and stroked Sydette's cheek.

"I'll have your money soon. I promise."

A sharp biting pain pinched her lower back and she groaned a bit. Chez reached behind her and rubbed her back gently. She tensed up when he touched her.

"Easy," he said.

"Why would you do that to me?"

She was pouring waterfalls from her eyes and her free hand reached up to cover her eyes.

"I messed up…I messed up…" he whispered.

He pulled her in close to comfort her and Sydette clutched onto her other breast trying to hold Yani in place.

"You ever put your hands on my cousin again, I will bust your head open to the gray meat Chez. Don't test me! Sydette will visit your bum ass in the grave next time," Twyla hissed.

Yani gave her a look to try and calm her.

"Him make me so vex. I want to hit him right now, right in front of his daughter!"

Yani lifted Sydette up and pulled down her own shirt.

"Hey, Sweet Pea. Mommy is okay now."

She rubbed the baby's back trying to soothe the anxious bouncing in her daughter's legs.

"Time for you to go, Chez," Yani said.

She stood up and held Sydette securely against her and moved away from Chez. He picked himself up from the floor. Wiping his eyes, he glanced at Twyla still clutching the baseball bat in her hand.

"I'll call you in a couple of days with the money."

He leaned over and kissed Sydette on the cheek. When he tried to kiss Yani on her cheek, she pulled away from him

After he left the apartment, Yani flopped down on her bed and really let the waterworks go. Twyla put away the bat and took the baby from her arms.

"How bad is the pain?"

"Just get me some ibuprofen—"

"We should call the cops on his ass. File a police report—"

"And how would I get my money then?" Yani whimpered.

"Just take him to the courts, let them garnish his pay—"

"He don't work regular jobs like that—"

"Can you call Killmonger to whoop his ass again?"

The sound of Erik's name made Yani cry harder. Sydette wailed along with her.

###

Luanda.

The capital of Angola.

Erik could hear Portuguese and Kikongo spoken around him as he sat with Klaue eating a simple meal of muamba de galinha. It was a tasty aromatic chicken stew and the woman who brought them their plates was happy to see Erik eat like he was at home, not scared to lick his fingers and ask for more. The garlic and chili made the meat and sweet potatoes hit hard with the palm oil it was cooked in, and he ate until his belly was bursting at the seams. Homestyle foods with beer always made him happy, and he thanked the woman in Portuguese and English.

"Estava uma delícia," he said. The waiter smiled at him, and when she tried to converse with him further, Klaue gave her a look that made her leave the table quickly.

"Chill, man. She can talk to me," Erik said.

"We're not here as tourists. Do that on your own time," Klaue answered with a brusque voice.

"I done told you about your tone with me. I'm not one of your little minions, bruh."

Erik gave back what he was given with this man. Klaue seemed to respect that. He didn't allow the other men to come at him like that, and Erik knew it was because Klaue really and truly needed him more and more.

Erik swiped the last bit of bread on his plate through a smear of stew gravy and gobbled it up. Licking his fingers again, he wiped his hands on a napkin and reached for a small cigar in his shirt breast pocket.

"You got a light?" he asked Klaue.

Klaue reached into his vest pocket and tossed Erik a green lighter.

"I'll be out front."

Pushing away from the table, Erik glanced at the waiter.

"Make sure you tip her well," he said.

It was already hitting ninety degrees outside and it was already eight o'clock at night. He lit his cigar and savored the spicy tobacco taste on his tongue. A few people watched him as they walked past him. On a purely physical level, he fit right in among the locals, until they noticed his keloids. He did his best to take on the nuance of the Portuguese spoken there, but there were several linguistic differences in the Brazilian Portuguese he knew and the Angolan version surrounding him. He tried his best to catch onto local slang to help blend in, but once he spoke, people knew he was from some other place. Most thought he was Brazilian.

Things were incredibly expensive there. For a country with large oil reserves and heavy foreign investment, Erik could taste poverty in many places. There was no real development in infrastructure for the poorer citizens, and he felt his jaw get tight knowing that once again, so many people struggled for basic chances at life. Being on the continent made him incredibly angry. All the wealth in the world coming from this land, and yet…pockets of struggle life. And to be that close to Wakanda only infuriated him more. It would be so easy to slit Klaue's throat, bleed him out like a stuck pig, and drag his body before the Wakandan court. Take what was rightfully his and change the trajectory of the shitty world he saw around him.

His temples throbbed and he took another drag on his cigar. Pulling out his cell he checked Kendall's social media. His round-about way of checking in on that girl that had his nose wide open like some horny teenager.

Kendall's performance at Rush had gone viral weeks after performing there, and right along with his new-found clout, Yani's appearance there had generated some major heat. Both vids on Kendall's social media platform had over a million views which were impressive considering they came from a small island. The comments under Yani's vid had Erik cracking up until he started noticing men and a few women posting links to Yani's personal page. She had an open IG feed, and two other social media platforms that she used. They all had the same handle, Black Gyal Mermaid. Erik used a burner handle and an old Goku avatar to lurk on her pages.

Yani posted things like pictures of Sydette and her other family members, and Erik soon discovered lots of pictures of her at the beach in various swimsuits that did not hide the imagination. He scrolled through several and had to switch back to Kendall's page to keep himself from getting aroused. Kendall mentioned several times about being excited about performing for J'ouvert festivities and Erik made and note to find out what that was all about later. From what he could tell, things were okay for Yani back on the island. He saved a few pictures of Yani and Sydette on Kendall's page, his favorite being a solo shot of Sydette sitting on some sand wearing the outfit Erik bought her. It made him smile to know Yani had her wear it in a lot of photos.

He pulled up the picture that he had taken the last night he saw the two of them.

Sydette's little face giving Yani a toothless grin and Yani's round cheeks lifted in a beautiful reflection of her daughter. The other photo he took always centered him because Yani's face when it was just her eyes looking at him, those eyes held so much longing. He had to stop looking at it because it made him want to drop everything and jump on the next plane out of Luanda. He had a job to do and he couldn't afford the distraction of a woman and child that weren't really his.

"I gave her a big tip," Klaue said, joining Erik outside for a smoke. The robust odor of Klaue's cigar overwhelmed the pleasing aroma of his own. Typical.

"You set for Benin?" Klaue asked.

"Yeah."

"You sure you don't want me to go with you?"

"Just scouting man. Checking on some speculations."

"Just be back and ready to meet these Boko Haram clowns."

"Thought we were dealing with the Nigerian government first."

"Yeah, well the rebels are on the move and we have a short window to make the exchange and get out before the Big Dogs move in on them. Quick turnover and then we're off to Abuja. I'm serious, bru, do not miss your flight back."

Erik's cigar was burned down to the band. He took another drag. Selling arms to Boko Haram that could kill civilian Naija populations, while also providing arms to the government to attack Boko Haram, that might also end up killing civilian Naija populations. Erik shook his head at the fuckery he participated in.

"How soon can you start experimenting with the vibranium we already have?"

"I have some design mockups made…I just need some space, some privacy to work…"

"Our Lady's Manor…"

"What-?"

"The island compound. You transport the vibranium back to St. Thomas. Stay there. Take the time to perfect the weapons we need in complete privacy. Experiment there and also watch over some other goods I want transported back there."

"How much time you talking?" Erik took a long drag of his cigar and blew it out toward Klaue's face. With bated breath, he watched the man's expression. St. Thomas was the perfect spot. Isolated. Private. Tranquil.

Yani and Sweet Pea…

"We finish the Kabul job and you can have the summer."

He kept the smile fighting to break out on his face under control. A whole summer in paradise. Working at his own pace and his only real responsibility was protecting a small cache of vibranium and whatever else this man wanted hidden. Plenty of time to play too…

"Bet."

He stubbed the last of his cigar against the restaurant wall and tossed it in a public trash can.

###

Erik chartered a private light plane to take him into Benin.

He brought specific clothes and his fake glasses that made him look like a visiting academic. He kept his hair tied back the entire three days he spent there. He was happy to be away from the Luanda compound, the work there finally complete, the arms delivered on time and with few complications. Erik forced Klaue to cut half a dozen men loose from the crew that he felt were a hindrance. He suggested Hunstman, but Klaue was adamant on keeping the man and Erik eased up his pressure to bag the troublesome mercenary.

Erik sat in a café enjoying a honey-sweetened espresso and scrolling through a small computer tablet. Feeling secure where he was seated, Erik sent a poke to his play Aunt in London. He nibbled on some muffins and ordered another espresso from his server when his Aunt hit him up.

"JaJa!"

"Auntie Serah!"

Erik secured his earbuds so he could hear her privately.

"Let me look at you!" she said.

Erik held his tablet from different angles so she could see all of him. He missed the sound of her Cameroonian French accent.

"Nephew, you look so good! I spoke to Bakari last week and he said you haven't been back to D.C. for a long time. What's going on? Where are you?"

"Doing some business. Been busy this year."

"Clearly. Have you seen your grandfather? How is he?"

"Doing well. Aunt Rolita is staying with him now, so he's in good hands…"

"And Disǎ? Have you spoken to her?"

"No—"

"Tu es un imbécile!"

"She cut me off Auntie, what am I supposed to do? I'm not begging her to take me back again. She won't. Ever. So don't ask me about her…please. That's old news."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Auntie…c'mon. You sound like Auntie Shavonne and Soliel—"

"Fine, fine…I won't ask about her again…even though she was the perfect one for you—"

"Auntie—"

"Ça ne fait rein…you are too much like your father, stubborn…too arrogant to try and patch things up."

"But you used to like that about him when you were dating him back in the day."

"Ooh! Watch your tongue! You are grown, but I am still your elder."

"Okay, I hear you."

"She was a good woman."

"I can find another good woman."

"Oh, so you are open to—"

"Stop. How is Uncle?"

"Addae is well. You just missed him."

Serah's face studied him hard. Her aristocratic-looking face looked a bit disappointed. Her sharp cheekbones and slightly graying sculptured twists made her the Queen she was whenever he saw her.

"Where are you?" she asked again.

"About to step into The Royal Benin Museum."

"You actually flew there? What are you looking for now, JaJa?"

He grinned.

"There are some Benin sculptures and pre-colonial art I want to look at, but I need you to help me with some confirmation dates. For research purposes. The last collection you told me about never made it here. It's on hold."

"That sometimes happens with private collections. I told you that."

He swiped some tabs and sent her the data he needed clarification on. He watched her receive his file of pictures. He sipped on his fresh espresso while she looked over his attachments.

"These are pre-Dynastic artifacts, JaJa. East African—"

"Wakandan?"

"Possibly. There has been speculation that the reign of Queen Shuriyah of Wakanda allowed some pieces to get into the hands of the British and French through the black market."

"What dates should I be looking for to get me in the ballpark, Auntie?"

Serah lifted her index finger to her chin, her eyes downcast studying the photos.

"The ones you have here…"

She enlarged three pictures and threw them back on his screen.

"…Edo. Looks to be fifteenth century, sixteenth at the latest."

"Could they be mistaken for other tribes?"

"Sure. Ashanti. But for any chance of pieces being mislabeled Wakandan, you have to find some Fula artifacts. Anything between the seventh and eighth century. There are records of some contact between Wakanda and ancient Central Africa and parts of Western Africa."

Erik's eyes caught sight of his waiter and he waved him over to pay.

"I need to get over to the museum now."

"Call me when you have more free time."

"I will—"

"Don't say you will and don't. You do that to all of us a lot, JaJa."

"I promise—"

"JaJa…"

His Aunt's eyes gave him another once-over.

"Be careful," she said.

"I always am, Auntie."

"I worry about you. When will you come see me?"

"How about Christmas?"

Her eyes sparkled.

"I don't want a layover visit young man. You come and stay through New Year's."

"We'll talk about that later."

"I love you," she said. Her eyes shimmered with tears.

"Hey, c'mon now—"

Her hands fluttered around her face and she wiped her tears away with her index fingers.

"You cry every time you see me," he said.

"I can't help it. The older you get, the more I see them in you. I wish—"

"I know what you wish. I'll see you in December. No fly-by. A real visit."

"I'm holding you to that. I will let Addae know. When I see you, I can show you things that will help you track what you are looking for. Deal?"

"Deal. I love you too, Auntie. I don't say it enough, but I do."

Serah nodded and a few more tears pricked her eyes.

He swiped the screen and her face was gone. Sitting still he thought about what his life could've been. His father had dated Serah in grad school before he met Erik's mother. From what she told him, once his father met his mother it was a wrap. What he found interesting about that little history was that Serah became pals with his mother. He always wanted to know more about that turn of events, but it was often difficult to discuss his parents without Serah weeping about the past. If his father had stayed with her, she could've been his mother. He could be living a normal life in London with her. Maybe his father would've chosen a different path with her.

Or maybe, he would never have been born.

Erik paid his check and walked to the museum, keeping a close watch of his surroundings. His clothes were neat and he carried a gray crossbody bag with a fake passport as well as a tiny camera hidden within the lenses of his glasses. He stood in front of another café and pretended to glance over a menu posted in the window. He took a few test photos with the glasses. They worked fine when he checked his computer tab.

The museum was not a happening place in the middle of the week, and Erik explored freely without worry about being watched by too many eyes. There was a docent available, but he wandered aimlessly, admiring sculptures and paintings. He found the section he was interested in scoping out and his camera glasses uploaded pictures to a private network.

Surveying a few ironwood masks and some intricate copper weaponry from the past, Erik knew right away there was nothing there with vibranium. He didn't feel the itchy sensation on his inner lip where his vibram tattoo would alert him of the prized metal. Disappointing. However, he spent the rest of his visit mapping the layout of the entire museum and uploading it through his glasses.

Ninety-minutes passed and he approached the docent desk to ask a question.

A sharp-looking man wearing an elegant steel-gray suit greeted Erik. Although there was air-conditioning in the space, it wasn't strong enough to cool Erik down. Neither the docent.

"Quick question. I'm curious to know when you will be having other pre-dynasty collections in here."

The older man, his silver hair making his dark skin more dynamic, handed Erik a pamphlet.

"There is a collection returning here next Spring," the man said.

Erik surveyed the pamphlet.

"I was told before I left New York that there was a traveling global exhibit making the rounds."

"Ah, yes, in conjunction with the Museum of Great Britain. Unfortunately, young man, unless you plan on coming next fall, you will miss out."

"Do you know what that exhibit will have?"

"It is still being put together, but there is a website you can look up from the pamphlet that will give you some idea of what may be curated."

"Thank you for your help," Erik said.

He stopped by the small museum gift shop and bought his Aunt Serah a pink sweatshirt. He checked his watch. He debated staying the extra day he planned on, but it was better to get back to Klaue and have more time to flesh out his proposal of allowing Erik to stay in St. Thomas alone. He texted the charter pilot he hired to fly him in and changed his departure schedule.

Catching a cab to his hotel room, Erik bought a to-go meal for his dinner. The four-star hotel he stayed in was cooler and his skin drank in the coolness when he stripped off his clothes. He checked the room for surveillance bugs and found none. A notification clicked on his tablet and he peeped it.

Kendall had a new live-vid update on his timeline.

Erik stretched back on his bed and opened the vid.

Kendall wore flashy sunglasses as he frolicked in beach water.

"Yo, what's going down with my K-Town fans?"

Erik smirked at the posturing Kendall was doing in the vid.

"I'm here in Megan's Bay chillin'. Wanted to let you all know to download and stream the new single that just dropped today…"

A stream of water was splashed onto Kendall's head disrupting his live stream.

"Aye! Chill, Cuz!"

Erik felt his heart palpitate when he saw Yani running into view kicking up water. She wore a baseball shirt and cut-offs with sunglasses hiding her eyes too.

"Buy his single!" Yani yelled.

Kendall kicked water at her and she ran away. Erik felt a bit disgruntled when Kendall didn't move his cell to capture more footage of Yani.

"Do what she says, Fam. Get the new single, support ya boy and oh yeah, check out the cover for the new D.J. Junior compilation. My cousin Yani is on that cover so show her some love too! I've seen the comments, so I know it's fiyah! I'm out!"

The live stream ended. Bummed that there was no more footage of Yani, Erik swiped over to Yani's feed. Nothing new was posted. He googled the D.J. and pulled up a link that sent him to the album cover.

"Shit," Erik groaned when he saw it. He enlarged it.

Yani.

It was the type of shot that he could expect to see on a hip-hop compilation cover, or a thirst trap click-bait photo to garner page and streaming clicks.

The front cover was Yani simply sitting on the beach in a blue velvet bikini. She was facing away from the camera, looking off in the distance, her skin forever sun-kissed, but the bikini bottom…it was nearly a thong except for the tiny triangle that rested right over the crack of her…

Erik sat up so he could breathe a little better. He had seen this girl naked, but she looked more naked with a scrap of velvet clinging to her ass. And there was a big handprint made of sand on her right ass cheek. Her whole backside just sat there all juicy and fat, and…and whose fucking handprint was that? She leaned slightly forward and he could see sand clinging to the underside of her cheeks. All he could think of was her sitting on his lap like that.

His dick chubbed up right away. He flicked his fingers on the album cover and made it bigger.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Before he knew it, he had a full-blown erection on his hands and he wasn't ready for it. Not really. Not when she was thousands of miles away frolicking on a beach, hauling around a fatty that needed to be on his sack with a quickness.

He squeezed the photo back to thumbnail size so he could look at the back of the cover. A listing of artists was on the left side of the cover with Yani in another bathing suit, but this time a gun-metal colored one piece. She stood in some thigh-high water, her left hand resting on her left thigh, her eyes cast down, the fucking curves, the slight swell of her belly, pebbled nipples poking through…

He started reading the comments under the photos. They were full of water splashes, peaches, eggplants, eyeballs, and tongue emojis. Over five thousand comments and the album just dropped earlier on island time.

At first, the comments were amusing, the usual sexually-charged bravado that happened with pictures like that. But then there was a hashtag he saw trending with many of the later comments. The Big Nut Challenge. He clicked on some of the links and was struck by the boldness of some men and a lot of women who were sharing x-rated clips of themselves masturbating to Yani's pictures.

"Look at these wild mofos right here," he said out loud. He skipped many of the men and peeped the women who were openly sharing explicit vids of them playing with their pussy in front of Yani's picture.

Another notification chirped, this one from Yani's timeline and Erik wasted no finger time swiping open her avatar. It was another live stream.

"Lookie, I appreciate the love from so many fans of D.J. Junior, but man, I am shocked by this Big Nut Challenge."

Her eyes were glancing down at the live comments flooding her page. She took off her sunglasses and let her eyes look directly into her cell camera.

"Doing too much people!" She giggled and the angelic sound of her voice pulled him into her so quickly again.

"The comments are coming so fast…I'm trying to read them you guys…lemme see…Did you have fun taking the photos? Yes! I actually did. Those of you who follow me already know I post pictures of myself at the beach or showing off new swimsuits. I wasn't doing it for a while since I had my baby, but a girl is getting her snap back a little bit…"

She laughed and he closed his eyes, imagining holding her again, feeling the vibrations of her voice tickle his ears.

"Will you be out for J'ouvert? Of course! I wasn't able to go last year because I had my baby then, but I'm not missing this year. My cousin Kendall is performing so be sure to come out and support!"

She looked confident, sounded confident.

He sent her a message with his avatar. He knew she was a Goku fan, so there was no way she would ignore his avatar.

Sure enough, she read his question.

"What does your husband think of the album cover? Um, I'm not married…"

Her eyes scanned more questions as they peppered her timeline and she answered as many as she could.

I heard you were married.

"You heard wrong."

Do you have a boyfriend?

"I am very single."

The jovial expression on her face shifted to a cautious one. She read off more questions. Some were asking if she was on the album. Did she plan on doing more covers. Who cut her hair. Did she exercise...

Would you go out with me?

She ignored that one. He eased up realizing it came off creepy.

More comments and questions flew at her. Some really out of pocket ones popped up and he felt his teeth grit together. She started ignoring the comments and talked about her life.

"I got into nursing school, so I will be busy this fall, so you all need to enjoy my posts because I will be studying hard and not posting as much."

Congrats on nursing school.

"Thank you," she says reading his post.

Who will take care of Jerome while you are at school?

Her face froze for a second. Staring at the question, she swiped her cell and he knew she was dragging his question and avatar back down to read it again.

"Bye now!"

Her live stream went dark.

His computer made a chirping sound. His burner notification showed he had one new follower. His only follower. Yani's thumbnail picture stared at him. Ten seconds later she was in his DMs.

Killmonger? This you?

He jumped out of his feed.

He shouldn't have communicated with her like that. He was safe lurking on her timeline and Kendall's, but he blew it.

He couldn't help it. Hearing her talk, seeing her face..., he'd been gone a month and he couldn't wean himself from her like he thought he could once he had left.

He brought up the two pictures of her from the album cover again. Shit like that was titillating, and his dick was still thick between his legs. He reached down and gripped his shaft, stroking it harder than he meant to. He enlarged her photos, that ass of hers dragging him by the balls. His eyes flicked back and forth between the photos. He was beyond excited by them…but he was also feeling the tendrils of anger building up too. Irrational anger in a way, but the type of anger he had when he felt that something that belonged to him was taken away.

It was that damn Big Nut Challenge. That stupid social sharing that had his woman at the center of it. That was his woman niggas were jerking off to. Bitches were out there flicking their beans to his shit. The same fat ass he was beating his meat to also. His pre-cum coated his fingers while his eyes became half-lidded and burned with the image of her thick cheeks teasing the world. And that goddamned handprint on her ass. Who the fuck did that to his woman? He was the only one allowed to put a hand there. He imagined her in reverse cowgirl dropping that good weight on his heavy dick. He knew them cheeks would clap hella loud for him.

"Daddy is gon' be all in that shit, girl. You wait and see," he growled at the screen, still feeling a low-level rage in his belly knowing he wasn't the only man with their dick in his hand yanking hard on the stick. Only one big nut counted and it was his.

"Pound Daddy's dick, baby…fuck…!"

Hot ropes of cum shot out onto his screen, drenching Yani's photos.

"Yani…shit," he gasped, still feeling more ejaculate drip down from his slit onto the bed.

He fell back on his back panting hard and started laughing at himself.

"Girl, when I get back to that fucking island…I swear to God you in trouble."

He left the bed and padded over to the tiny bathroom and grabbed a hand towel. He cleaned himself up in the sink and grabbed another hand towel to clean up his tablet.

He was wiping the last of his cum off of the bed when a sudden knock on the door froze him in place.

He didn't order any room service.

And no one knew he was there except for Klaue.

With extreme stealth, Erik reached for his belt sitting on the hotel dresser. He slipped on his fake glasses. He wound the non-buckle part of his belt around his hand once and inched his way to the door. Staring at the door with the glasses from the side, he could see the heat signatures radiating behind the wood. Two people. Tall and wide. Men.

Uninvited.

[Part 8]

Tag List:

@fonville-designs​ @soufcakmistress  @cherrystainedlipsbaby @tclaybon  @thadelightfulone @allhailqueennel @bartierbakarimobisson @cpwtwot @shookmcgookqueen @yoyolovesbucky @raysunshine78 @the-illllest @terrablaze514  @l-auteuse @amirra88 @jimizwidow @janelledarling @chaneajoyyy @sweetestdream92 @purple-apricots @blackpinup22 @hennessystevens-udaku @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @bugngiz @stariamrry  @honeytoffee @theblulife

[prettyyoungandbored]

You and I {Douglas Booth!Nikki Sixx} Chapter Seven

Pairing: DouglasBooth!Nikki Sixx x Reader 

Summary: There was a time when all Y/N and Nikki had were themselves and Nikki’s dreams of creating the next great band. What happens when the dream comes alive?

Warning: One scene that’s a little bit graphic. 

Taglist: @fandomshit6000 @cosmicsskies @tashy-bear@versaceismehoe@thissongitsaboutyou@prettysureimgayxo @divaanya @yoinks-i-dont-feel-so-good @evrsncnewyork@technicallyvirtualmilkshake @keepcalm-and-beyou @itsametaphorbriansblog @tarahell@scarecrowmax @queen-introvert @toadspleen @hi-my-name-is-riley @okj232 @tayrae515 @keepcalm-and-beyou @bella-0104-123 @kickstartmyheartmc @danknena @gerardwayisbae127  @emmygremlinturtle (If for some reason I missed anyone, please DM me and I’ll fix it!) 

A/N: I’m sorry it’s late. My wifi was being weird tonight and going on and off. Anyway, thank you so much for the continued love for this story! You all have no idea how much it means to me.  I hope you guys enjoy this!

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Touring was one thing, but touring with the Ozzy Osbourne was a whole other thing.The first night of the tour, Ozzy came onto the Mötley Crüe tour bus, drunk and high on cocaine and made it clear that being with him was not for the fainthearted. To his luck, Mötley Crüe  were more than up for the challenge. If Ozzy was the king of partying, Mötley Crüe were the princes. 

Every night Doc and the security team struggled to keep the boys’ mayhem to a bare minimum. No overnight stay in a hotel room was complete without a visit from the police or a room being trashed. No matter how many times Doc hid their drug stash, Vince and Nikki always found a way to sneak it back to themselves. 

Y/N, on the other hand, didn’t know whether to be amazed or terrified with what was going on. She didn’t mind Nikki getting drunk but when it came to his cocaine habit she felt uncomfortable. He hadn’t done drugs around her and since he and the boys were signed and the money started slowly coming in his usage of it became more frequent. 

She’d tried coaxing him out of it and he would apologize and say he’d “ease up” on it only to continue what he was doing. 

When it became a part of his pre-show ritual, she became worried that maybe it was becoming too much. 

Then one night, she managed to get him alone after a show for after show sex at one of the hotels. Just as she was about to finish, he whispered for her to close her eyes. She closed them and found herself so lost in the sensation of him massaging her breast, she didn’t hear the sound of the drawer opening. It wasn’t until she felt something on her neck and him inhaling that she realized what he was doing.

“Are you fucking serious?!” she screamed. 

 She pushed his chest off of her and stood up, her fury overpowering her. She grabbed her robe and tossed it on her. Nikki got off the bed and ran to her. 

“Babe, c’mon,” he pleaded, laughter in his voice. “I was just having some fun.” 

“Yeah so did I until you had to put that shit on me!” 

Nikki cradled her face his hands. “Baby, c’mon. I’m sorry-.” 

She pushed him off and headed toward the bathroom door when he grabbed her hand. He pulled on the belt of her bathrobe, bringing her close toward him. His lips hovered over hers. “Let’s go back to bed and finish what we started.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you finish the rest of the bag since that’s clearly way more important than spending time with me.” 

She then went into the bathroom and closed the door, locking it behind her. Nikki banged on the door. 

“Y/N, get out here,” he groaned. “Don’t do this to me.” 

“Just go hang out with Vince. I don’t want to talk to you right now.” 

“I’m not leaving until you come out.” 

“I’ll come out when you get rid of the stash.” 

“Y/N-.” 

“Get it out of the room or else.” 

Nikki groaned and went back to the bed. He put on some pants, grabbed the stash, and went out the door, slamming it behind him. He was about to head to Tommy’s room when he saw Vince making out in the hallway with a blonde from a concert. He tossed the bag at Vince.

“The fuck?!” Vince called out. 

Nikki went back into the room. He threw his hands up. “It’s gone. Happy now?!” 

The bathroom door opened and Y/N stepped out. She folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes, bright red and glossy, were enough to hit him with guilt.

“I get that you want to be like Ozzy and you want to do stupid shit,” she began, her voice soft her stern, “but I also don’t want you to lose you because you can’t control yourself or your habits.” 

“It’s not that bad-.” 

“You snort first thing in the morning, before a show, after the show - you can’t even have sex with me without needing it! How do you think that makes me feel?” 

Nikki bit his bottom lip, exhaling quietly. He took her hand and rubbed her knuckles. “I’m sorry. I never meant to upset you.” 

She lowered her head. “I hate that it bothers me because I don’t want to tie you down, but I also don’t want to lose you.” 

He kissed the top of her head. “You won’t. I promise.” 

She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest. He rested his chin on the top of her head. “I’ll try cutting back on it, alright?” 

She nodded. He pulled back and lifted her chin with his fingers. “I love you.” 

Her eyes widened, mouth gaping open. She stepped back. “What did you just say?”  

He blinked. “I love you.” 

She always knew he did, but enough time had passed to where she was ok with never hearing it and just embracing his show-not-tell. Once those three words came out of his mouth, it didn’t matter that it took so long for him to say it. In fact, it solidified everything he’d done to show he loved her. 

Her lips curved into warm smile as a tear fell down her cheek.“I love you too.” 

He grabbed her face, pressing a sloppy kiss against her lips. At that moment he didn’t need anything or anyone, but her.

A couple days later in Clearwater, Florida, the boys and Y/N hung around the pool area of their hotel. The boys sat in the beach chairs, soaking up the sun. Y/N emerged from the pool, wearing a black strapless bikini top with a matching high cut bikini bottom. As she was wringing her hair with hands, Nikki watched her intently. He wanted to take her right then and there, not caring if the other guests around were watching.  

She made her way to Nikki, grabbing her drink off the ground when Tommy smacked her butt. He smirked. 

“I’m sorry,” he laughed.

Y/N leaned up and used her free arm to smack him across the face. Mick stifled a laugh as Vince and Nikki roared into fits of laughter. 

“Dude!” Tommy cried out. 

“Shouldn’t have touched me,” Y/N shrugged.

She grabbed her drink and curled up against Nikki’s body, throwing one leg over his. Her head nestled against his chest. He threw one hand over her. 

“You should’ve come in the pool with me,” she whispered. 

“We’ll come back tonight, just you and me,” he whispered back.

“Sans clothing I assume?” 

He chortled. “Such a perv. I love it.” 

Just then a woman in a hot pink bikini walked by them, catching all Vince and Tommy’s eyes. Nikki glanced at her for moment before Y/N smacked his arm. 

“Subtle,” she snorted. 

Nikki chuckled and turned to Vince. “How many chicks have you fucked so far?”

He thought for a moment. “Three?” 

“No, not today. On the tour.” 

“Oh man.” He thought again, before laughing. “I lost count after that gang bang in Salt Lake City.” 

“That was fun,” Nikki laughed. 

Vince turned to Micky who was sitting at a table, an umbrella protecting him from the sun. “What about you, old man?”

“Did you ever stop to think that the slobs who fuck you guys probably fuck every other band who comes through town?” 

Y/N threw her hand up. “Thank god someone finally fucking said it!” 

Vince, Nikki, and Tommy all looked at each and burst into laughter. Vince nodded. “Yes, yes they do.” 

“Dude we’re like pussy brothers with the whole scene,” Tommy said. 

“I happen to have respect for myself and the female of our species, unlike you animals,” Mick said simply.

Y/N turned her head to him and held out her drink. “And on behalf of the entire female species, we thank you. We should hold parades in your honor.” 

Mick gave her a little smile, shaking his head. 

Just then the sound if hands clapping caught their attention. They all looked up to see Ozzy entering the pool area, wearing nothing but a woman’s yellow floral dress. 

“Let’s have some fucking fun, huh?!” he announced to the pool area. 

Everyone’s eyes fell to the Prince of Darkness as Y/N let out a laugh. Nikki toasted his drink. “Morning Oz!” 

Ozzy turned to the old couple and pointed at them. “You guys need some drinks?” He bent forward and flashed his bare ass at them with a dollar bill sticking out of his crack. “Drinks are on me!” 

This woman’s about to shit herself, Y/N thought to herself.

“Go on! Take it!” Ozzy encouraged her. “C’mon! It’s like a piggy bank in there!”

Nikki and Y/N continued laughing, Y/N’s drink almost slipping from her hand. Ozzy leaned forward and made his way toward the boys announcing “Drinks are on me!” 

“Morning Oz,” Tommy greeted him. 

“I’ll take a refill,” Nikki said, holding up his drink. 

“Yeah same here,” Y/N agreed, holding up hers. 

Ozzy’s eyes went to her, his grin widening. “Mornin’ there kitten! Good to see you out and about!” 

He lifted his dress, flashing the group. Y/N turned her head away. 

“Jesus Christ, Oz,” she grumbled. 

“I know it’s bigger than Sixx’s,” he laughed. 

“You’re not wrong.” 

The other boys laughed while Nikki squeezed her playfully. Ozzy then climbed up the empty life guard chair. 

“I gotta hand it to you Oz,” Nikki began, “All these years, and you’re still keeping up with us kids.”

Ozzy sat on the chair. “Keeping up? I’ve fucking lapped ya, mate. Now come here and have a talk with your Uncle Oz.” He motioned toward them. “C’mon, c’mon. Even you, kitten! Come along now, kitten!” 

Y/N sighed and got up from the chair as she and the boys came toward the life guard stand. 

“Now this is your first real tour, right?” he asked them. “I want you to be careful. Have fun, but know when to say when. ‘Cause a life full of booze, drugs, and unprotected sex is only gonna fuck you up, man. I mean, you take it too far and you’ll go fucking mad!” 

Ozzy jumped off the stand, Tommy and Vince grabbing him to make sure he was ok. He turned to the boys. “And give me a straw. I fancy a bump.” 

“We’re all out of blow dude,” Tommy told him. 

“I said I want a bump!” Ozzy snapped, turning to Tommy. “Straw please!”

Tommy handed him the straw from his drink. Ozzy gave the boys and Y/N a look before jumping onto the ground. Y/N took note of the straw that was up his nose was going so close to the line of ants on the ground. 

He better fucking not, she thought.

But he did. Ozzy Osbourne inhaled a line of ants as if it were cocaine. The boys groaned in disgust while Y/N began gagging. Ozzy stood up and turned to the boys.

“You think you’re ready for that, man?” he challenged. “Do ya? Do ya think you’re ready for that?” 

Next thing they knew, Ozzy took a hold of his member and began urinating on the cement. e boys “ooh”ed as Y/N’s gagging only got worse. Onlookers, young and old, inside and outside the pool gasped in disgust. A couple of girls laughed. 

“Sorry,” Nikki said to onlookers. 

Ozzy finished and then turned to the boys. “Everyone else has a drink.” 

And then, Ozzy Osbourne, in a move only Ozzy Osbourne would do, bent down and licked his own piss. At this point, onlookers were screaming. Mothers were escorting their young children out of the area, covering their eyes. As the boys hollered, Y/N could feel a wave of nausea hit her like a train. 

“I’m gonna fucking puke,” she mumbled. 

As Ozzy stood up, Tommy praised, “You’re a god dude!” 

Nikki then handed Y/N his drink. “Crazy fucker. Watch this.” 

He began unzipping his pants and Y/N eyes shot open.

“Nikki please don’t,” Y/N begged. 

“Dude c’mon!” Tommy pleaded.  But Nikki didn’t care. He began urinating over the cement carelessly. Y/N set down the glasses and grabbed Nikki’s shoulder as he zipped up his pants. 

“Are you fucking insane?!” she exclaimed. 

He smirked at her and just as he leaned down to lick, Ozzy pushed him aside and began licking Nikki’s urine. 

At that point, Y/N rushed out of the pool area and began vomiting in the bushes outside the area. Mick came to her, rubbing her back as she continued vomiting. 

“I’m gonna kill him,” she winced. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Mick grumbled. “Crazy fucker.”

Nikki came over and pushed Mick’s hand off of her. But the second his hand got to her back, Y/N stood up and slapped his hand away. 

“Find your own room to sleep tonight,” she growled. 

She then stormed into their room, slamming the door behind her. Nikki sighed. It was gonna take a miracle to fix this.

After the incident in at the pool area, Y/N would barely speak to Nikki. No matter how much he sweet talked her and coaxed her into talking to him, she wouldn’t budge. Doc, after hearing about what happened, had made sure she got her own room. 

That night at the concert, Y/N stayed near Doc and only looking at Nikki when he was onstage. 

She couldn’t believe he would be so stupid as to attempt lick his own urine in front of everyone just to show off Ozzy Osbourne. 

The next morning after Florida, Ozzy’s wife Sharon joined the tour. Suddenly Ozzy went from being a wild animal to completely domesticated. It was a fascinating switch to watch, especially for Y/N and the boys. The man who licked not only his urine, but someone else’s and who snorted ants, was now calm and going to bed right after concerts. Y/N didn’t even see a drink in his hand whenever Sharon was around. 

Y/N wished she had whatever magic Sharon had.  

On the bus ride to their next destination, Y/N had on her headphones as she listened to music on her walkman. Nikki took a seat beside her and tapped her shoulder. She took off her headphones. 

“I miss you,” he told her. 

“I miss the old you,” she responded sharply. “The one who didn’t need to attempt to lick his own pee!” 

Nikki bit his bottom lip. “I’m really, really sorry. I was just trying to have fun.” 

She turned her head away. He brushed her hair away and began kissing her neck. “Let me make it up to you.

She felt herself smirk and glanced over at him. “If you’re a good boy tonight, maybe after the show I’ll let you.” 

Nikki smirked back as Y/N put back on her headphones.

***********************************************************************************************

During their set that night, Vince leaned into the mic. “This last song goes out to a very special person here with us tonight.”

The audience cheered as he went on. “This song was written by our bassist, Nikki Sixx, for a very, very special lady in his life - his girl Y/N. So Y/N, this one’s for you.” 

Just then, “Looks That Kill” began to play. Y/N fought back a smile as she bopped her head along. Doc, who was standing beside her, chuckled.

Now, listen up She's a razor sharp If she don't get her way She'll slice you apart Now she's a cool, cool black She moves like a cat If you don't get her game Well, you might not make it back She's got the looks that kill That kill She got the looks that kill That kill She's got the look She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill Now she's bulletproof She keeps her motor clean And believe me, you She's a number thirteen The church strikes midnight She's lookin' louder and louder She's gonna turn on your juice, boy Oh, then she turns on the power She's got the looks that kill That kill She got the looks that kill That kill She's got the look She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got the look Now, listen up She's a razor sharp If she don't get her way She'll slice you apart Now she's a cool, cool black Move like a cat If you don't get her game You might not make it back She's got the looks that kill That kill She got the looks that kill That kill She's got the look She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill She's got looks that kill

When Nikki got off the stage, he headed toward Y/N. “How was that?” 

Y/N held out hand. “Take me to your dressing room now before I change my mind.” 

As Nikki led her back to his dressing room, they passed Ozzy and Sharon. 

“Use you protection!” he called out to Nikki. 

Y/N turned her head to say something when she noticed Sharon giving her a look. Y/N smile fell and before she could think anything, Nikki pulled her into the room and locked the door.

Later that evening, Y/N finished getting ready for bed in her hotel room. Nikki would join her later as he was out with Vince doing god knows what. 

There was a knock on the door. Y/N made her way over and opened the door to find Sharon Osbourne staring there. 

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she greeted. She looked over Y/N’s shoulder. “Is Nikki around?”

“No, it’s just me. He’s out with the boys and maybe Ozzy.” 

“Ozzy’s sleeping in his room,” she corrected. “Anyway, I was coming by to ask if you’d like to grab a drink with me? Very rarely do I meet an actual girlfriend and not...well...you know.” 

Y/N nodded her head, confused and yet intrigued by the invitation. “Let me change and then I’ll go with you.” 

Sharon gave a nod as Y/N closed the door. Something felt off. 

[harringroveheart]

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT // READ ON AO3

Run, he thinks— Billy, thinks, in the parking lot of the Starcourt Mall.

Run.

If he could, he would.

He puts his foot on the gas, the engine thudding underneath him, growling, vibrating in his bones: a threat and a warning.

Max looks scared. She doesn’t scare easy,  but that’s how she looks. He can’t see that far – can he? – but he’s looking at the ashy pallor of her, the whites of her eyes. It’s hard to remember now. Who she is.

Run, Max, he thinks, with everything that’s left of him.

But also. Just faintly.

Help me.

***

Help me. Like the quietest voice in a crowd.

He doesn’t deserve it.

The words are the sounds of his fists against some other kid’s cheek. The sound he made when his dad threw him into the side table and he lost time. His fists on Steve Harrington. The wet sound he made when Billy hit him when he was gone already. The sound of his mouth smacked open under Billy’s knuckles and the feel of it too.

He understands that she doesn’t hear.

He doesn’t care. Not really. It’s so cold, where he is. And he doesn’t want her here.

But he’s so scared too. And so lost.

It’s a monster, Max, he thinks, foot on the pedal, knuckles bulging white on the steering wheel. The world rends apart on the sound of the car roaring, the world narrowing and coming to the fore.

I knew, he thinks. I knew I was a monster but I’m not this, Max. I’m not. Please.

Please.

Please, believe me.

***

He learned it early: no one is coming to rescue you.

It was just— A childish hope. Something he should have stomped on like a weed.

Like all those nights under his bed, on the threadbare carpet full of ash, curled up around the phone, pathetic, snotty, waiting.  

No one comes. Not for Billy.

***

“I’m sorry,” he says, and maybe he means it.

Is he dying? Max is so far away and so grown up, all of a sudden. Such beautiful red hair and such a serious face.

The mall is kind of beautiful too. And if he had his time again, he would go to the food court, to get ice cream and to see Harrington squirm, and to see him in the sailor suit, like all the girls in Hawkins talk about.

God. God, it hurts so much to be good. He wishes he’d been bad and been wrong and taken what he wanted instead of being what was strong. He wishes he’d bitten his lip clean through and not cried when Neil beat him the first time – with a belt, and he wishes he’d said something to Tommy H, too, when he asked him, You here to shake things up? Take on King Steve? He wishes he’d said no.

No, I want to breathe. No, I want to live like you do, right in my skin. And I want to tear out of here one day with all of it in the rearview mirror, and a pretty boy to look at in the passenger seat who I maybe sometimes let pick the music, and the smell of gasoline and a summer sky ahead.

But he didn’t and he doesn’t. And he won’t get a chance to, now. He’s dying.

He’s the bad guy.

He dies.

***

It hurt so bad the first time.

He screamed so hard and no one came. Don’t be a pussy, his dad always says and he’s trying so hard not to be but it’s—

Inside him. It takes over so fast. He’s always been such a fighter but there’s no fight in him for this.

What do you want, he screams, the whole world turned upside down and rank with the smell of fear, his body raw all over with adrenaline, his brain shrieking, turning over and over like a starter motor failing to catch, the high whine of panic – wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.

What do you want, it asks.

It’s slick, heavy, overwhelming. It’s in his throat, behind his eyes.

What do you want, Billy?

Show me.

***

“You okay, in there, Hargrove?” Harrington asks. He smooths a hand over Billy’s forehead, threads fingers into his hair until he has his attention. “Thought I’d lost you for a second.”

They’re in the food court bathrooms. The color makes him dizzy, hurts his eyes.

“What were you saying?” Something about colleges…

“I was asking you if you thought it was a good idea – me staying on for another year until you finish school.”

Billy smirks, remembering he has hands with which to touch. He sneaks his fingers into the band at the back of thosenridiculous uniform shorts. Harrington gasps, looking around nervously as the sound echoes off the tiles. It’s the middle of the day but the bathroom is empty. Billy knows without needing to look.

“You gonna save up? Buy me a nice big house in Loch Nora with all that ice-cream money, baby?”

Harrington squirms, cheeks turning rosy. “I just…don’t want to leave you, okay? You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“That’s kind of my default,” Billy says, a little distracted by the way Harrington is grinding against him just slightly, his hips moving into Billy’s hands even has he gets his arms up between them, pushing Billy back.

“Got to get back to my shift,” he says, breathy and annoyed.

“You free later?” Billy asks, because he’s hopeless.

“Yeah,” Harrington says, and kisses him, sharp and nasty, pinching Billy’s bottom lip between his teeth so hard it makes his eyes water. He backs out of the stall looking cocky as hell, winking even as Billy rubs a hand over his smarting mouth. “Come find me, okay?”

Of course. Always. Of course, he will.

***

The radio is playing his favorite song. Perfect timing. Max is mortified. She reaches over to change it but he slaps her hand away. 

They’re taking the same road they drove into Hawkins on – behind the U-Haul and Neil’s truck. Back then the drive had been silent - too sick on the taste of his own tears down the back of his throat. But it’s different now. They’re happy. And he can usually find metal on any station.  

“Ugh, why do you always have to listen to this.”

“Can’t help it if they’re playing my song, Max,” he says, cranking the volume, tapping out the shred of the guitar on the wheel only to rile her up.

The countryside flies past his window – yellow, green, blue. Trees, fields, power lines.

“Where are we going?”

Dumb question.

Wherever they want.

“Wherever your heart desires, shitbird,” he says. “Sinclair can even come too.”

She rolls her eyes. “As if he’d get in the car with you. You drive like a psycho.” But she says, “Let’s go to the pool.”

“Good idea,” he says.

Maybe today’s the day he’ll get to practice mouth-to-mouth on Harrington. He turns the car around sharply, riding up on the shoulder and spraying dirt in their wake.

The drive to the pool is straightforward – the turn off for the lake, the Fair Mart, more trees, the—

He slams on the brakes.

“What the hell, Billy?”

He doesn’t know. It’s just. There’s nothing there. He stares at the empty patch. A gap in the trees, the grass stamped down to nothing, the leaning tangle of an old wire fence. A scrap piece of corrugated tin roof. He feels suddenly cold, all over.

“Billy, come on,” Max says.

“I’m…” he says. “I think I’m lost.”

She scoffs. “Are you kidding? The pool is like, two minutes from here. Let’s just get back on the road.”

He looks at her and then back at the…absence of a place. It gnaws at him. “I thought there was something else here.”

“Let’s just go, Billy. There’s nothing there.”

There should be, though. He puts his hand on the door latch and Max grabs him by the shoulder.

“Don’t.”

The sun is going down. There are shadows on the ground with nothing to cast them. Something that skitters, in the corners of his eyes.

“There’s nothing there.” He doesn’t believe her.  “Billy,” she says again, more urgently. “There’s nothing there.”

***

“You ever been surfing?” he asks, spread out on the bonnet of his car, the metal so warm against his skin it should hurt. The air tastes like gunpowder. What time are the fireworks, again? He wants to ask. But he forgets the answer every time. It’s not important.

“Nah,” Harrington says. “No beaches in Hawkins.”

Billy almost rolls his eyes. There could be. Harrington has a limited imagination.

“We could go to Cali?” he asks, not looking at him, looking at the first scatter of stars where they start just above the haze of sunset. “When all this—when I’m done with school. I’ll take you and Max somewhere we can go to the beach every day.”

“You just want to see me in a bikini,” Harrington says.

“Is that less degrading than your scoops suit?”

“Depends what you do to me in it,” Harrington says, eyes mischievous, rolling the words out around a breath of smoke.

“No,” Billy says, suddenly sick with upset. “He wouldn’t say it like that.”

And when he turns to look again, Harrington is looking up at the stars, smiling. Was never smoking at all.  

Billy reaches out to tuck just a little bit of his hair behind his ear, just to make him perfect.

“What are we waiting for, again?” Harrington asks.

“Fireworks.”

“Oh yeah. I told the others to meet us here. They should be here soon.”

“What time did you tell them it starts?”

“Who cares?” Harrington says. “I like having you all to myself.”

“Do you?” Billy asks. “You’re not bored here?”

Harrington’s eyes sparkle. “With you? Relax, man. Lie back and look at some stars with me.” He slips his hand alongside Billy’s until Billy relents, lets him tangle their fingers together, pulling until Billy’s lying down next to him, looking up at the stars in the sky. There are too many of them. “Now, say something romantic,” Harrington says, squeezing.

“I’m not good at that,” Billy says, licking his dry lips and counting. There are definitely way too many of them. “I’m not good. At anything.”

He can feel Harrington rolling his eyes. “I’m sure there’s something.”

He thinks about it.

“You ever been surfing?”

***

“I never thought I’d find a way out from all the monsters. I never thought I could just be happy,” Harrington says, looking at him with his big lamb eyes. Billy’s in love with him. Billy’s happy too.

They undress each other in the dark. Touch mouths. Harrington is too rough and too hungry and Billy doesn’t mind disappearing inside him.

“What’s this?” Harrington says after, tucked in along his side like a girl, like he didn’t just nail Billy so hard into his bed it had him crying. His fingers stroke over his arm, coming away dark and wet.

“Don’t worry about it, princess,” Billy says, pressing their lips back together, kissing his eyes closed. “You’re dreaming. ”

***

Hawkins. It’s a warm night and promising. There’s a phone booth, somewhere, with the light on, like something he can only remember if he tries real hard.

Tonight he’s forgotten.

It feels like he’s on the edge of the world. The engine purring, the steering wheel solid and real in his hands. He could go anywhere. He could follow the long string of lights out of town, drive until he hits the coast. He’ll never need to stop for gas.

He turns around.

***

What do you want, Billy?

It hurts right up until it doesn’t.

***

It’s a fresh night, cold and clean. Billy’s tired. He’s been driving all night. And longer. But it doesn’t matter, not anymore. The lights are on in the Byers house, like he knew they would be.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them, he’s home.

He gets out of the car. Leans on the door, smiling.

“Am I dreaming or is that you, Harrington?”

[honeycombandtea]

made for the @itfandomprompts ​ ‘first time’ prompt!

warnings: none

pairings: reddie, stanlon (if you squint)

summary: The Losers enjoy a hot day by the water, but Eddie has some internal conflict about one of his best friends.

              “Jesus, Eds! It’s hotter than your mother in a bikini out here,” Richie groaned as he slumped down underneath the shade of the tree. Eddie rolled his eyes and handed him a bottle of sunscreen.

              “Put this on before you look like a lobster, dumbass,” Eddie said with a sigh. Richie held a huge grin on his face as he unceremoniously slapped sunscreen onto his freckle-kissed shoulders. Bev splashed in the water just a couple of feet in front of them, close enough to even sprinkle water on Eddie’s legs as he attempted to dodge a rather big spray. Ben held her securely on his shoulders as they charged around the quarry, Mike and Stan tailed after them. Albeit Stan looked reluctant as all hell—his knuckles white around Mike’s broad shoulders. Ben swooped down and planted a huge kiss on Beverly’s cherry red lips. Richie gagged.

              “Save room for Jesus!” Richie called from his spot in the grass. Beverly had spared a moment to flip him off before she crawled back on Ben’s shoulders. He bumped his shoulder against Eddie’s in a sloppy movement. “Don’t you think all this romance stuff is gross?” He asked with a snort as he wriggled his toes in the grass. Eddie shrugged his shoulders and took a long drink from his water.

              “You were just dating someone a month ago, Richie,” Eddie reminded with a chuckle as he bumped his shoulder back. Richie made finger guns in response and reached down to the small bag he brought with him. He pulled out a frosted looking coke and a cosmic brownie, and without having looked, he tossed it back to Eddie. “Thanks, Rich!” Eddie said as he tore the plastic open. “These are my favorites.”

              “Yeah, I know,” Richie stated easily as he took a drink. Eddie watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed. “You can pay me back by letting me have some alone time with Mrs. K.” Eddie snorted and lightly kicked Richie’s shin.

              “She wouldn’t go for you— and she’s been blind dating for years,” Eddie said with his eyebrows raised. Richie feigned a look of betrayal as he flopped down onto the dark grass. Derry was known for having mild summers, but this one was a scorcher. Nearly every day in June the Losers found themselves in the cool, almost comforting, water of the quarry. Eddie wasn’t allowed to go most days, but Richie had helped him come up with an elaborate lie about summer homework and studying. Truthfully, this summer Eddie had found himself studying the way Richie’s eyes crinkled up when he laughed; or how his cheeks were furiously dusted in freckles from the sun. At best, these feelings made him feel weird—even kept him up at night sometimes—at worst, they made him sob hot tears into his pillow. He shook his head as he leaned back against the bark of the tree. This was something he didn’t need right now.

              “Earth to Spaghetti Head!” Richie called from beside him. Eddie’s head snapped in his direction almost immediately. “Whatcha thinking about, Eds?” He asked as he lazily shoved his glasses back up on his nose. From the quarry in front of them, they could hear the noises of Bill being shoved in the water. “Get him, Ben! Put him in a world of hurtin’!” Richie called as he stretched to look over his shoulder. Eddie rolled his eyes and he pulled his knees to his chest.

              “Don’t call me that,” he said half-heartedly as he curled his toes into the blanket. “I’m just…thinking about college.” Richie sighed as he scooted closer, the warmth from his body almost radiated onto Eddie’s skin.

              “We’re not even staring senior year yet,” Richie said as he spared a glance towards Eddie. The sun made his brown eyes shine like raw amber—Eddie had to look away to spare himself the guilt. “There’s time to just be dumb,” he tried again as he put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. He flinched from the sparks that crackled as their skin brushed together and scooted away. Richie’s hand dangled in the air for a few awkward seconds before he placed it in his lap.

              “You’re always dumb, Richie,” Eddie said with a smile as he stared at those bright eyes. Richie stared back at him for a few moments, as if he wanted to say something, but he screwed his eyes shut and laughed.

              “Yeah, yeah. I’m dumb until I’m helping you pass calculus, Eds,” Richie said as he jabbed his fingers into Eddie’s side. He squealed with laughter as he flopped back on the blanket with a soft thud. Arms flew out and tangled together as they both wrestled around under the shade of a massive Birch tree. “Cute, cute, cute!” Richie laughed as he pinned Eddie’s arms above his head. Eddie shook his head rapidly in response and tried to fight back a smile.

“Get off!” He gasped with laughter. The silence from above filled him with a sudden shot of panic. Eddie opened his eyes hastily to see Richie as he stared down at him, his lips parted slightly. The dark curls that made up Richie’s hair hung loosely around his jaw like a frame for a painting. His chest moved with every breath, every exhale and inhale. “Rich?” He asked softly as he watched Richie’s glasses slip further down his nose. “Richie, your glasses—”

Richie moved off him swiftly and shoved his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. The silence between them was thicker than the dense summer air. “You had somethin’ on your nose,” he said with a small grin as he flopped back on the grass. He looked like he was conflicted with something, but Eddie didn’t want to push it.

              “Right,” Eddie said back. Bill wrapped a towel securely around his waist as he sat down next to Eddie. “Hey, Bill,” Eddie greeted with a little wave.

              “Big Bill!” Richie called as he propped himself up on his elbows. “Looking absolutely delish today. Is that a new chest hair?” He asked as he rose his eyebrows up and down. Bill moved his towel rapidly through his hair to semi-dry it.    

“B-Beep beep, R-Richie,” he said with an eye roll. “H-hey, what happened t-to you and S-S-S—”

              “Stacy,” Eddie supplied for him. Bill gave him a grateful smile.

              “I dunno, she didn’t wanna deal with my huge wang,” Richie supplied with a cackle as he fell back on the blanket. Bill sighed as he leaned his face into his hand.

              “I h-heard y-you didn’t even k-k-kiss her,” he accused with a slow smirk. Richie’s face looked shocked—then horrified. He quickly sat up and strangely enough looked at Eddie.

              “We kissed!” He squeaked as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I couldn’t get her off me, that dog.” Bill gave him a knowing look as he flicked his eyes to Eddie.

              “H-have you k-kissed anyone, Eddie?”

Eddie choked on his drink of water and spat it out on the grass. His tanned face was a light pink as he flushed to his ears. “I mean…not really,” he admitted with a glare in Bill’s direction. Bill looked over his shoulder and called to Stan.

              “S-S-Stan! W-we leaving s-soon?”

Stan walked over, bird book clutched under one arm, and tossed a wet curl from his eyes. “Everyone’s packing up, so I’m leaving you to connect the dots, Bill,” he quipped. Richie blew kisses at him and made loud smacking noises with his lips. Stan made gagging noises in response.

“I know you love me, Stan the Man!” Richie said with a cartoonish wink. Bill got up and wiped the loose grass from his legs.

              “We’re h-heading back t-to mine f-for movies and p-p-popcorn. You in?” He asked with a child-like smile. Eddie frowned as he scratched his cheek.

              “I would, Bill, but my mom said I had to be back before dark,” Eddie whined as he stuck his lips out in a pout. Bill gave him a small reassuring smile as he turned his attention to Richie.

“I’ll stay with Eds a little while longer.” Bill shrugged and took off with the rest of the group up the hill and towards his place.

“See you guys later!” Mike and Bev called as they followed behind the others. Richie blew them all a huge kiss, and Bev eagerly caught it in her fingers. The summer breeze wrapped itself around them like a friendly embrace. Eddie began to pick at the grass as he struggled with something to say.

“Is it true?” He asked as he lifted his gaze to Richie. He peered up at the clouds with an almost a sad glint in his eyes. “About you not kissing her?”

“What would you do with the answer, Eds?” Richie asked as he looked back at him. The breeze wrapped around his curls and tugged them any direction it pleased. Eddie watched as the chocolate color turned almost honey-like in the sunlight.

“I don’t know,” Eddie said softly as he stared helplessly at the boy in front of him. The sun was beginning to dip in the sky; the world around them descended into orange thanks to the light of the evening. It was like a moment caught in pictures or detailed in a canvas.

“I’m saving it for someone,” Richie said. His face wasn’t crinkled up in the way it does when he’s joking or playing around. This was a rare moment that Richie Tozier expressed exactly how he felt. Eddie found it hard to breathe, almost as if he needed his inhaler again. Why did he feel that way? He hadn’t in years.

“Maybe…” Eddie started as he bit down on his lip. “Maybe I am, too.”

Richie wiped his hand on his swim trunks and leaned closer to Eddie. He smelled like coke and nicotine, like all the things Eddie’s mother hated, and Eddie loved it. He drunk it in like it was a drug—he needed more. The space between them became smaller and smaller until their noises bumped clumsily together. Richie let out a tight-sounding chuckle.

              “Watch where you’re going, mister,” he chided. Eddie rolled his eyes and quickly licked his bottom lip. He didn’t miss how Richie followed the motion. The two boys stared at each other for seconds on end.

              “You just going to stare at me?” Eddie said with a roll of his eyes. Richie gaped back at him with a flush high on his cheeks, so Eddie decided it was now or never. He grabbed onto Richie’s shoulders and collided their mouths together in a messy kiss. Richie tasted like chocolate and the warmth of holding hands in the dead of winter. His hair beneath Eddie’s fingers felt like ropes that held him onto this moment. Held him steady and calmed the fear that he knew he’d deal with after. They pulled away, breathless and red in the face, and laughed. Richie wiped a tear from under his glasses and giggled away.

              “That was good, Eds. Your mom was better, though.”

              “I hate you, Richie. You know that?” Eddie asked as he curled his fingers around Richie’s with a squeeze.

              “Oh, trust me, I know,” Richie said as he squeezed back.

None of the Losers were surprised when they started dating the very next day, but especially not Bill Denbrough.