#how did i find the my pillow commercials funny???

[beanwaterontherocks]

Reunited

(A little piece inspired by YOU and HIM by @you-and-him ! Lena is my MC for for the VN!)

(CW: Mention of injury and alcohol use)

“Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me”, Lena groaned, hoping that when she opened her eyes, he’d be gone, nothing more than an alcohol-induced illusion. But the familiar voice was crystal clear and the presence behind her felt like a million needle pricks on her back.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find you again?” Adam asked, sitting down the creaky bar stool next to her. Lena opened her eyes; it was almost funny how out of placed he looked. He was every bit as pretty as the day they’d met, and it pissed her off. A member of a global musical sensation, sitting in a dingy bar that had visible blood stains on the old wooden floor.

Maybe this place fit him more than she had realized at first glance, it fit a side only she had seen. It was the stuff of nightmares, the kind of thing that had been in far too many horror b-movies. Lena didn’t feel scared, for some reason, maybe it was the…desperate look in his eyes.

She saw him in commercials, on posters and everywhere online. In the end, she couldn’t avoid the real-life Adam either. It wasn’t like she’d been trying to do that anyway, she drove the same car, the very car he’d lured her out of. The wound had stopped hurting by now, but Lena felt a phantom pang in her flesh.

“You know more about me than you lead on, I get that now, I’m flattered that you’ve come all this way”, she said, pushing her rouge pink bangs out of her face and she sat up, the scratched-up counter didn’t make a good pillow.

“Listen, I’m not going to try that again, can we just talk?”, Adam asked, politely waving over the bartender, he ordered a water.

“Well, unless you can find a way to un-stab me, I don’t really feel like talking to you”, she said, downing the rest of her whiskey.

“Did you tell anyone?” He asked, though he didn’t look the least bit worried. He knew she couldn’t, it’d sound too ridiculous.

“Who would believe that the sweet and kind Adam from CAKE tried to kill me?” Lena put a hand over her old wound. “I guess we match though”, she said, pointing at his waist. She would have preferred a friendship bracelet. Adam clutched his own healing injury, yet there wasn’t a shred of resentment on his face, he looked happy that she had said it.

That was the first time during their reunion where she had felt uneasy, he had changed.

“It’s hard to explain…and I will eventually. I’m happy that I didn’t go through with it”, he said, looking down into his glass, his cheeks were dusted with pink. He was oddly bashful about the whole ordeal, Lena still wasn’t fully convinced that this wasn’t a weird, drunken dream.

“That is the worst possible way you could have said it, tell you what, drink with me and we’ll talk”, Lena said, waving down the bartender.

“Whatever you want, thank you for giving this another shot”, Adam said, smiling softly at her.

This was the dumbest shit she had ever decided to do, and she had done her fair share, but at the same time, it was the most excitement she had felt in a while. Besides, he seemed sincere in not wanting to finish her off. God, the bar was all the way down in hell at this point.

“Shots! Great idea, I hope you like vodka”, Lena exclaimed in a teasing tone. Adam’s smile faded, his red eyes widening in building worry. Weirdly enough, she liked this look on him.

This should be a lot of fun.

[grandhotelabyss]

I wonder, with your knowledge of comics, was there also this wave of quasi pedophilia, or "mixing overly cute with sexy" shit, or is this mostly unique to Japan?

It's not unique to Japan; it's a feature of modernity. My grandparents were watching Betty Boop when they were kids! In her famous theoretical explication of cuteness, Sianne Ngai explains:

To use an everyday, ready-at-hand object as an example of commercially produced cuteness, this small and compact knickknack, a frog-shaped bath sponge, shows how much the aesthetic depends on a softness that invites physical touching—or, to use a more provocative verb, fondling. [...] We can thus start to see how cuteness might provoke ugly or aggressive feelings, as well as the expected tender or maternal ones. For in its exaggerated passivity and vulnerability, the cute object is as often intended to excite a consumer’s sadistic desires for mastery and control as much as his or her desire to cuddle.

Cuteness, like other aspects of the 19th-century romanticization of childhood and the 20th-century romanticization of adolescence, is, as the exaggerated "other" of adulthood and therefore of sexuality, rife in practice with return-of-the-repressed sexualization, from Alice in Wonderland to Shirley Temple, in the same way that cute animals inherently imply the Darwinian "nature red in tooth and claw" they were invented to de-fang, as in Beatrix Potter. Now Betty Boop notwithstanding, I would say that the cute-sexy dialectic is not nearly as prominent a feature of American comics as of Japanese, however, as far as I can tell, or wasn't before widespread Japanese influence, even though it existed elsewhere in American culture. So comics is the cultural variable here between the U.S. and Japan, not the cute-sexy dialectic. American high literature had Lolita as Japanese high literature had Naomi, but only Japanese comics had Sailor Moon. I can't think of an American cognate for the latter in comic books. (I've never read/watched Sailor Moon. I vaguely remember its initial vogue when I was in high school and have been told by today's media literate and with-it youth that it sexualizes female neoteny.) The sexuality you'd find in Superman or Batman or X-Men tended to be iconographically adult, largely of the T&A variety meant to appeal to adolescent boys who were also swiping dad's Playboy in the days before the internet. The return of the repressed Maus deliberately enacts upon funny animal comics is exclusively focused on politics and violence with no special attention paid to sex, while the return of the repressed Watchmen deliberately enacts upon superhero comics is saturated in sex but absent any cuteness. Maybe I'm missing something. A forbidden thought: did the cute-sexy dialectic originate as a style of female eros?—hence its notable early appearance in manga directed at girls just as it appeared in the west in female-targeted children's literature, before it became generalized to males as well, now even stereotypically associated with males, clutching their proverbial waifu pillows in their proverbial goon caves. Someone also recently told me that furry culture comes out of funny animal comics from the '50s and the way those comics absorbed the libidinal energy repressed by the Comics Code. I have no idea if that's true. I'm happy, sort of, to be informed if anyone knows more.

[itsadelight]

i used to worship the my pillow guy and his somehow hilarious pillow commercials

then he turned out to be a major trump supporter, so no, life isnt fucking fair

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Wishmaker

Goddamn it... 

It's bad enough Astruc tastelessly axed Lukanette, but now he just had to show up to give a sarcastic eulogy at the funeral.

Let's get into the fourteenth (chronologically the eighteenth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Wishmaker

Right out of the gate, we get a “Chloe bad” joke with her insulting Marinette for being poor or whatever as she hands out flyers for an upcoming career fair. Chloe doesn't have much of a role in the episode, but she will be important towards the end, trust me. We also get a funny “Marinette stares lovingly at Adrien” joke while she sees him, so it's good the writers are at least trying to get their strange habits out of their systems now instead of later.

While reading over the flyer in his room, Adrien ponders a possible career as he doesn't want to keep being a model.

(The episode came out in English first, so I'm just going to be using quotes instead of screenshots of subbed scenes for this review)

Plagg: Don't you wanna continue to model?

Adrien: I don't think so, Plagg. I'm doing it now because my father asked me to. But now I realize I don't know what I'd want to do. I've never asked myself that question.

This is a really interesting dilemma for Adrien. Unlike other episodes that just have him feel sad for entirely superfluous reasons like Ladybug turning him down or generally moping about his mom, it feels like something you can really understand. He genuinely isn't sure what he wants to do with his life because he's had everything chosen for him before. I also like the use of the English dub saying Adrien modeled because his father asked him to, as if he couldn't actually say no. I also like how Adrien is still starting to lose faith in Ladybug for giving out Miraculous to everyone, which makes even more sense after his view of her was shaken in the previous episode chronologically, “Rocketear”. I also like how Plagg suggests ideas for a career for Adrien, like the two of them opening up a cheese shop together, which shows how Plagg cares for Adrien and wants what's best for him, ultimately highlighting how healthy their relationship is. He's almost like a big brother who gives advice to Adrien, even if it isn't the most sound advice at times.

On the other hand, Marinette already knows what she wants to do with her life, but the Kwamis start to argue over what she actually means by it by saying they know what she wants to do, a painfully accurate metaphor for the writers dictating Marinette's actions no matter how inconsistent they are.

Pollen: What's a career, dear Guardian?

Marinette: Oh. Well, it's... your job! Something really important that you do and gives meaning to your life!

Roaar: Oh! So, your job is being the Guardian of the Miraculous!

Mullo: Of course not! It's being a student!

Xuppu: Not at all! It's making presents for Adrien!

Marinette:Well...

Longg: She said “something important”, like when she crafted the big doll house to hide the Miracle Box!

Wayzz: Or when she designed the alarm for this room! What a masterpiece!

Marinette: Sure, I love crafting but—

Ziggy: You guys don't get it! What gives meaning to her life is to be in love with Adrien, or Luka, that's her job!

Fluff: Luka's the one with the guitar, right?

Kaalki: Her real career is being Ladybug and carve her name in history by her glorious deeds, of course!

Of course, their bickering somehow makes Marinette realize she isn't sure what she wants to do in the future after all.

We then cut to a reality show hosted by TV personality, Alec Cataldi. He's generally an asshole to the people on the shows he hosts and takes pleasure in humiliating or just being a dick to them, making you wonder how he still gets work with that attitude. Basically, he's the Alec Baldwin of the Miraculous Ladybug universe. The current show he's hosting is one where he roasts people for their jobs, making Andre a target by pointing how counterproductive his “business” is.

Alec: Here's a perfect example: Andre, the Ice Cream Maker, the ice cream man that is never around! Let me remind you how this goes: Andre doesn't have a shop, no one knows where he is, it takes forever to find him, and he gets to pick a flavor of your ice cream! You've gotta be kidding, Andre! Give me one reason why I should bother to chase after you when I could get my choice of ice cream in any corner supermarket!

Andre: Well, people don't just come for ice cream when they find me. They come to share their love and experience of magical moments! A supermarket cannot do what I do! I am a creator of magical moments!

Alec: “Creator of magical moments?” You've gotta be kidding!

I'm pretty sure that's what a lot of people thought of Andre when they first saw “Glaciator”. The idea behind Andre is that he chooses ice cream for you representing something about yourself, so he gives Alec a scoop of lime to represent his sour exterior and chocolate cinnamon to represent the dreams he still has within. Alec flinches a little at the ice cream, presumably because of how terrible of a combination that is, and decides to go to commercial to think.

Marinette talks to Andre about what he does, and he explains he used to be an office worker, with the only highlight of his days being making ice cream for himself after work. It eventually inspired him to quit his job and start making ice cream for everyone. It's a nice backstory, and I think a lot of people watching who are struggling to think about their future can relate to this like with the earlier scene with Adrien. It's also a nice touch for the flashbacks to reveal Andre has served ice cream to some of France's most famous couples.

(Jean Coutau and Jean Marais)

(Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin)

(Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet)

Granted, I'm wondering how old Andre is to have even met some of these people given Jean Cocteau died in 1963, but seeing how Master Fu is 186, I'm guessing the Miraculous Ladybug universe just has really good healthcare. Either that, or the people in this universe take Jay Kordich's diet very seriously.

Andre gives some ice cream to Marinette, who is soon joined by her ex-boyfriend who she never loved according to the writers. Actually, judging from her face when Luka talks about the very first guitar he made, the writers made another 180 regarding Marinette's feelings for Luka.

Of course, because the show wants to remind the audience Alec still exists, he makes fun of Luka for taking two years to perfect the delicate craftsmanship it takes to sculpt any instrument when you can just download an app on your phone. Your inner boomer is showing, writers, even if you were born after the time period for that generation. Luka retorts with some vague philosophical line he's known for that's one of the reasons why people are so mixed on him as a character

Luka: Musical instruments fill the space and space fills the instruments. No phone in the world will ever be able to do that.

Despite it being incredibly confusing, it gets to Alec, causing him to run off in tears. Luka and Marinette continue to talk, but it turns out that's Adrien decided to sit down nearby because of course he did. Though, like the last scene, it's a pretty interesting one as the three discuss what they want to do with their lives. There's also a really nice visual of a blimp with an ad Adrien was in passing by while Adrien talks about his father dictating his life, a really nice symbol. Of course, the scene is somewhat ruined by Luka suddenly deciding to be an Adrienette shipper.

Luka: You two will eventually find what's already in front of you, but you can't hear it clearly. Just let the melody flow.

He's referring to their uncertainty of their futures, but earlier on, Luka wanted to help Marinette be honest with her feelings about Adrien, and even before that, Andre was saying that Marinette and Luka didn't have to be in love to enjoy his magic ice cream. It's here when I realized this episode is subtly trying to end any chances of Lukanette still happening with so many little details. Right when the two spend time together, that's when they decided to help Adrien who showed up for no reason, preventing them from potentially coming to terms with their feelings for each other or at the very least discuss how hard it is to be friends with their history. And things only get more frustrating towards the end, where you'd swear someone decided to smother Lukanette with a pillow in its sleep.

Back to Alec, he's roasting a wig salesman (does he even have permission to film any of these people?) for his job, but as soon as the salesman puts a wig on him, Alec immediately gives us his life story.

Alec: When I was a kid, I used to have long hair, but everyone made fun of me. That's why I shaved it all off. I've been making the wrong choices my whole life. My TV shows are nothing personal. I make fun of people when they make fun of me when I was a kid. (Starts to tear up) I should've been the person I always wanted to be, trying to change the world instead of mocking it! (Falls on his knees) I've wasted my life!

I didn't paraphrase this at all. This is seriously what happened. He goes from mocking everyone he meets, to slightly doubting himself after seeing an ice cream vendor and a young musician, and then he starts having an existential crisis about his tragic backstory. It's not a bad idea, but if there was some more buildup in previous episodes, I'd understand. But this goes from confusing to straight out insulting towards the end. I'll get to that later on.

Shadowmoth notices Alec's emotions and akumatizes him into Wishmaker through his microphone.

Wishmaker has a pretty cool design. The grey skin color coupled with the mostly black outfit really highlights Alec's broken heart, and he looks pretty sinister. His powers... leave a lot to be desired.  Like the name states, Wishmaker has the power to make everyone's childhood dreams come true, like this one guy's dream is to be Santa Claus, so he transforms into Saint Nick without any hitch. Wouldn't it make more sense if Wishmaker twisted the dreams of his victims like a genie and made them miserable while they ironically lived out their fantasies by twisting around their words? Instead, all of his “victims” seem pretty happy, which doesn't really do much to make him a threat in my opinion.

So the aforementioned Santa starts dropping presents like bombs near Marinette, Adrien, and Luka, and they're separated by a giant robot. Marinette quickly transforms into Ladybug, and gets Luka to safety, though as soon as she leaves, Luka goes to check on where he told Marinette to stay for safety, and doesn't see her there. Instead, he sees his deadbeat father (transformed into a crocodile) drowning and goes to save him.

Ladybug meets up with Cat Noir (who transformed off-screen) and the two easily incapacitate the robot before engaging Wishmaker, avoiding his blasts. Apparently, they'll get their secret identities revealed if they get hit, so Ladybug goes to get Luka to help out as Viperion while Cat Noir holds off Wishmaker. Ladybug goes to get Luka, leading to the funniest joke in the episode.

She gives Luka the Snake Miraculous and he transforms into Viperion, immediately activating his Second Chance. For newcomers, Second Chance allows the user to set a point in time when activating it and if something goes wrong, they can go back to that checkpoint in up to five minutes. Ladybug also summons her Lucky Charm, a stuffed dinosaur toy.

Back with Cat Noir, as he engages Wishmaker, the Akuma starts to tempt him with the idea of living out his childhood dream, because he genuinely doesn't remember his. As Shadowmoth orders Wishmaker to use his powers on Cat Noir, Ladybug and Viperion show up, but in the chaos of the fight, Ladybug gets hit by Wishmaker, revealing her childhood dream as the “Knitting Fairy”, and exposes her identity to Viperion, who uses Second Chance to undo the timeline.

In the new timeline, Cat Noir's vulnerability gets to him, so he willingly lets himself get his by Wishmaker, not only exposing his identity as Adrien, but tragically reveals his childhood dream, to be whatever his parents wanted him to be. I feel like this works a lot better than some of the other moments where Cat Noir defied orders or screwed around on the battlefield because it's clearly framed as a moment of weakness on his part, and it was naturally built up over the course of the episode. The reveal of Adrien's childhood dream is a real gut punch too, as it shows just how much Adrien's life has been controlled by his family.

In the third timeline, Viperon deflects Wishmaker's blast meant for Cat Noir and redirects it toward a man whose childhood dream was to become a giant stuffed dinosaur. The stuffed dinosaur in question goes to give Wishmaker a hug, restraining him long enough for Ladybug to steal for Cat Noir to cataclysm (It's a microphone, how hard is it to break???) before she de-evilizes the Akuma. Ladybug uses Miraculous Ladybug to force everyone to stop living out their childhood dreams, she gives Alec a Magical Charm, and Luka decides not to tell Ladybug he knows both her and Cat Noir's secret identities. Why did Ladybug expect Luka not to know her identity when the whole reason she recruited him was to make sure nobody else found out her identity?

Now, while it isn't outright said, it's hinted at that now that Luka knows Marinette is Ladybug and Adrien is Cat Noir, judging from his dejected look after finding out the latter, he may be giving up on all attempts at the idea of getting back together with Marinette, and may or may not start shipping the Love Square now, just like how Kagami decided to ship Adrienette in “Mr. Pigeon 72”. I'm not saying the idea of Luka knowing someone's identity is bad, but it feels like this only happened specifically to stop him from having feelings for Marinette because now he knows Adrien loves her alter ego, and vice versa. Maybe it'll be touched upon in a later episode, but this was just a dick move by the writers in terms of ending all chances of Lukanette like this in order to ensure the Love Square has absolutely no competition.

So the episode ends with Marinette and Adrien deciding to focus on their futures while Alec starts a new show where he helps people live out their childhood dreams, albeit dressed like Style Queen for some reason.

Eh, he still picked a pretty cool Akuma to dress up as in my opinion. A lot of people have viewed this ending as evidence Alec is a drag queen with how he dressed up, coupled with the fact that he said something that was very similar to famous drag queen RuPaul.

Alec: And now, we're gonna love one another, starting with everyone loving themselves! Because how are you gonna love other people if you don't love yourself?

Though Astruc, being Astruc, once again decided to be vague when asked about the subject on Twitter, though at least the subtext is better than when he said he didn't make Juleka and Rose girlfriends because of censors while making it seem like a noble act.

Overall, this was a really good episode, though there were some underlying issues that really kept me from actually liking it. For the most part, it had some good drama with the main character, a rare scene where Marinette didn't stammer around Adrien, a creative (albeit flawed) Akuma with some good action, and an interesting idea with Luka knowing everything about the Love Square now.

There are just two big problems that really got to me about this episode. Let's get the obvious one out of the way, Luka. Honestly, he really didn't need to be in the episode. Sure, he gave some sound advice to Marinette and Adrien about their careers, but it felt kind of strange to see someone their age talking to them about their future when Andre, someone who actually had experience struggling to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, was pushed to the side. And like I said earlier, I think the only reason Luka found out about Marinette and Adrien's identities was to discourage him from thinking about getting back together with Marinette. After all, now that he realizes how “made for each other” they are, he can't stand in the way of the Love Square.

The problem is that in the context of the episode, we don't really see what made him see things that way. At least in “Mr. Pigeon 72”, Kagami consistently viewed Marinette's attempts to get her and Adrien back together as a subconscious desire to be with Adrien. It was dumb with how she decided to go to Team Adrienette at the end of the episode, but it was something. I'm glad the episode didn't force in too many Love Square shenanigans, but I think more should have been done to contextualize Luka's feelings towards the reveal. I get the writers wanted to make sure Lukanette had no chance of coming back, but this just feels rushed.

And then there's Alec's redemption arc. While it's not a bad idea in concept, the problem is that it flies in the fact of a recurring theme this season, that being redemption. Because, here's the funny thing: Alec blatantly said he became an asshole TV personality because of his history of bullying, and decided to retaliate as a result, but he eventually saw the error of his ways and turned over a new leaf. For long time readers of this blog, I apologize for bringing this up yet again, but what exactly makes this different from everything Astruc said about Chloe? You know, when he said that you make your formative choices when you're fourteen? Just like how Alec decided to become a reality TV host making fun of people after a troubling experience from when he was a kid?

Let's say that I agree with Astruc's views about Chloe. How is Alec different from what Astruc's said about Chloe for almost two years at this point? What makes Chloe, someone who was the victim of a troubled childhood who never got help, an irredeemable monster while Alec, someone who also had a troubled childhood and had even more time to get help while never getting any, capable of change? I thought he Alec made a formative choice when he was young and stuck with it, just like how Chloe started to fully develop at the age of fourteen. I mean, Astruc, you yourself said that Chloe's troubled childhood “was no excuse to treat people like shit”, according to you.

I'm just saying, dude, if Chloe can't be redeemed because of the stuff you yourself said, then that shouldn't apply to Alec either. When you really think about it, it's almost like Astruc either made up a bunch of excuses to not redeem Chloe, or he's a massive hypocrite for going back on his word. You can't really justify this kind of hypocrisy relating to Alec's redemption when you remember just how much of a hardass Astruc was when explaining why redemption was impossible for Chloe.

This coupled with the treatment of Luka really drags this episode from really good to blatantly insulting to certain viewers. Then again, these two choices just got to me personally. I feel like if those two things weren't there, things could have made this episode a lot better for me personally. I can see why a lot of people in the fandom still like this episode, but I'm honestly not a fan of it.

[fruitcoops]

Hi, Eve

Rose here from yesterday, thank you very much for the Birthday message, I wasn't expecting you to read it let alone reply but I was looking for Coops kids Birthday fluff specifically. It doesn't matter if you don't have time however as I don't want to be a bother.

Hello Rose, and happy (belated) 20th birthday! Sorry for the wait--I really wanted to get this one right to celebrate such an important number. I hope your day was absolutely fantastic! SW credit goes to @lumosinlove, but Stella is an OC

Combined with asks for Sirius lightly making fun of Remus' accent and Remus yelling at a game show (@nazar4114)

“Medusa!” Stella shouted with all the force in her thirteen-year-old lungs. Remus leaned forward on the couch. “Medusa!”

The front door opened with a creak. “I’m h—”

“Yes!” they cheered in unison as Nicole answered correctly. Remus turned and gave Stella a double high-five, feeling his heart squeeze at the vivid joy on her round face. “Good guess.”

“I knew she was gonna get it,” Stella said with a pump of her fist as she turned back to the show and folded her legs underneath her.

“Gonna,” a familiar deep voice mimicked from the doorway. Paper bags rustled before footsteps stopped behind the couch; Remus tilted his chin up without sparing a glance, and Sirius pressed a laugh-laced kiss to his cheek before dropping one on Stella’s head as well. “You sound too much like your dad.”

“Love you, too,” Remus said wryly.

“I’ll take ‘Myths and Moths’ for 400, please.” Nicole’s voice snapped his attention back to the screen, and Stella narrowed her eyes.

“Daily Double!” the automated voice announced. Stella gasped; Remus bit his lower lip. “This mythical shield was wielded by Athena, and is sometimes said to be made of goat skin.”

“Aegis,” Stella whispered, then raised her voice. “It’s the Aegis, Nicole. You know this.”

“We know you do,” Remus said, scooting forward. “You just guessed whose head is on it.”

Nicole’s buzzer went off with two seconds to spare. “What is the Aegis?”

“Hell yeah!” Stella whooped.

Remus turned to her and raised his eyebrows. “Excuse you.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you two going to do this the whole afternoon?” Sirius asked from the kitchen, obviously amused. “We might need to get the neighbors some noise-cancelling headphones.”

Stella blew a dark lock of hair out of her eyes as she flopped her head back. “It’s almost final Jeopardy, papa. We have, like, ten minutes.”

Sirius blinked at her, then shook his head. “I swear you two share genes.”

“Ope, you caught me,” Remus said over the noise of the commercial break. “When I was 20 and had literally never left Wisconsin, I went and had a secret kid in Maine who looks terribly like you just so that someone would watch Jeopardy reruns with me thirteen years later. Oops.”

“It’s the truth,” Stella said with great gravity. “I remember.”

“Mon dieu,” Sirius muttered, though he couldn’t keep a smile down. He had never been able to hide around Stella, not once in the three years since they had adopted her. It was one of the things Remus loved most about him. “By the way, nobody under the age of fourteen is allowed in the kitchen for the next…hour. Ish.”

Stella squirmed around until she could rest her arms on the back of the couch. “What if I get thirsty?”

“I’m sure you can invoke birthday privileges and ask your dad to get something for you.”

“Birthday privileges?” Remus scoffed. “Nobody in this house has a birthday today. Yours was last month, and mine’s in March.”

“It’s my birthday,” Stella said.

“What? No, it’s not.”

“Yeah-huh.”

“Your birthday is in June.”

“It’s today.”

“Or maybe July?”

“It’s today, in December, when there’s snow,” she insisted, throwing herself back against the pillows. “Come on, dad, that’s not funny anymore.”

Remus raised his eyebrows. “Is somebody too old to find their poor old dad amusing now? Can you go back to being twelve so somebody will laugh at my jokes again? I know, I know, we're super lame compared to all your friends’ parents—”

“So lame,” Sirius agreed from the kitchen.

“—but I like to think we get one more year of pre-teen cuteness before the teen angst takes over.”

Stella sat up again with a groan. Looking at her, Remus saw a mix of himself and Sirius that had always baffled him, considering they had adopted her comparatively late in her life; beneath it was something uniquely Stella. Maybe it was her double-jointed elbows, or the board-straightness of her hair next to their curls, but there was no mistaking that she was her own person through and through. He loved that about her. “I’m not going to be a terrible teenager.”

Sirius poked his head around the edge of the kitchen—his nose was adorned with a smudge of flour. “Can I record that for future use?”

“Non.”

“Ooo, using the French,” Remus hissed. “That transformation is already beginning.”

“It’s not like you were bad teenagers, right?” She settled upside-down on the couch with her flamingo-patterned socks high in the air.

“I almost convinced Grandma to let me dye my hair blue, but otherwise I was pretty good.”

“I was terrible,” Sirius laughed. “I didn’t talk to anybody for a solid three years.”

Stella frowned. “How? I think I’d die if I did that.”

“He’s stubborn,” Remus stage-whispered.

“I heard that.”

Stella suppressed her laughter as best she could, but she was about as good at hiding her emotions around them as Sirius was. She didn’t really giggle—the amount her voice had deepened over the past three years always gave Remus whiplash—but her laugh had the same cadence as it did the first day they heard it. While Stella had been quiet at first, it only took love and time to bring her out of her shell. Within a year she settled into their lives like she was always meant to be there.

A thoughtful look crossed her face. “This is my last year before high school.”

“Does it feel different?”

“Not really.” She paused, then shrugged. “And a little. I don’t feel older. It just feels like there’s stuff I won’t get to do anymore.”

“And a lot more you will get to do.” Sirius left his dishtowel on the counter before joining them on Stella’s other side. “You can drive soon, you’ll get a longer curfew, you get more freedom…”

“I guess.”

“What are you going to miss?” Remus asked as she toyed with the hem of her shirt. It was a basic Lions FAN jersey; he was fairly sure she bought it to be ironic. That, and she only wore one of theirs if she was upset with the other, or if one needed a boost at a game.

“I dunno.” A few beats of silence passed. “My classmates. My team. It feels like everything’s going to turn upside down.”

“You can still keep in touch with your friends, and I bet your team won’t be too different,” Sirius said quietly. “Even if it does, that doesn’t mean you have to give all of them up. People change in different ways. They come and go on their own time.”

“There’s going to be a lot of upside-downs over the next couple years, kid.” Remus offered her a smile. “But you’re going to be just fine.”

“You two sound like such dads right now.”

“This might shock you, but that’s because we are.”

The corner of her mouth tugged up and she lolled her head to the side to look at Sirius. “Is the cake done?”

“Fifteen more minutes.”

“Will you watch final Jeopardy with us?”

“What’s the category?”

“US Presidents.”

Sirius exhaled through his nose, but nodded. She grinned and turned herself upright to snuggle against his arm. “You just enjoy watching me lose.”

---------------------------

“Alright, is everyone ready?” Sirius called from the kitchen.

“On three,” Remus said, raising his phone camera. “One, two, three!”

“Happy birthday to you,” over a dozen voices sang. They were off-tempo and so out of key the composer was probably spinning in his grave, but Stella’s clear joy didn’t waver for a millisecond even as her cheeks reddened. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Stella, happy birthday to you!”

Finn, of course, dragged out the last note. So did Leo, Logan, Kasey, James, Lily, and Talker in varying degrees of awful harmony attempts. It was terrible, and beautiful. “Make a wish,” Sirius said softly as he set the cake down and stepped back. His eyes were the brightest quicksilver Remus had seen in many moons.

Stella closed her eyes, took a breath, and blew as hard as she could—the entire room erupted into cheers when all the candles went out. She was laughing and blushing at the same time when Remus turned the lights back on, though the humor won out in the end and she helped pass plates of cake to her many aunts and uncles. Like every year prior, Regulus managed to smear a bit of frosting on her chin, only to immediately deny it with great offense when she noticed. It was becoming a bit of a tradition—one that Remus never grew tired of.

I know what I would wish for, Remus thought as he looked around the table at their patchwork family. Celeste, Dumo, and his own parents had no doubt spoiled their first grandchild with ‘cusp of adulthood’ gifts, and Natalie and Lily would certainly steal her away after cake for some girl time. Finn and Logan would remain the fun uncles while Leo and Regulus kept their thrones as the cool uncles; Stella would interrogate Jules on the intricacies of high school for at least an hour before they destroyed everyone in a snowball fight. The world they built together had a place for everyone.

I would wish for this. This, for us, forever. It wasn’t a bad eternity to imagine.

[walkerismychoice]

Queen of My Heart - Chapter 38 (The End!)

Book: The Royal Romance

Pairing: Drake X MC, Liam X Olivia, Hana X OC Lydia

Rating: PG-13

Summary: The show comes to and end, and Riley contemplates her future

Author’s Note: I can’t believe I’ve finally brought this series to an end. There was quite a long time I thought I may never finish. I want to thank all the readers and friends who’ve read and encouraged me along the way. I want to especially thank @debramcg1106 as of late for helping me work through the ending and pushing me to finish it out. This is the technical end of the story, but I do have an epilogue planned as well.

Tag List: @khakie4 @dreadpirateemma @ritachacha @blackcoffee85 @choices-fanatic @boneandfur @butindeed @simplyaiden-blog @bobasheebaby @traeumerinsworld @theroyalweisme @umccall71 @lizeboredom @debramcg1106 @enmchoices @withice @viktoriapetit @mfackenthal @drakesfiance @drakelover78 @speedyoperarascalparty @silviasutton1989 @krisnicjack @devineinterventions2 @choiceswreckedme @notoriouscs @blackcatkita @hamalu @akrenich @drakewalkerfantasy @jamielea81 @andy-loves-corgis @jlouise88 @jovialyouthmusic @sleepwalkingelite @i-miss-trr @dragonball-luver @gkittylove99 @lovingchoices14

Word Count: 2230

Queen of My Heart Chapter Index

Due to everything that transpired, filming of the finale was delayed two weeks. Riley was grateful for the time and hardly left Drake’s side during his recovery. He was sent back to the palace after a couple days, and Riley had to convince him that whiskey was not a suitable replacement for the antibiotics and pain medication the doctor prescribed. Reluctantly he obliged. He worked with physical therapy, and by the end of those two weeks, you’d have hardly known he’d been injured at all.

Olivia was salty her ball had been ruined, but the production staff made up for it, giving her and Liam an overnight filmed at Olivia’s northern Lythikos retreat. She was still worried the country would favor Riley with Liam, but Kat assured Olivia between her heroic actions, personal growth, and some favorable editing, it would be hard for most people not to be on her side.

As for Madeleine, it was still unclear if she would be charged criminally or would be incompetent to stand trial due to her mental health, but either way, she wouldn’t be a danger to anyone for quite some time. It was questionable if Jo’s involvement in the whole thing broke any laws. She wasn’t Cordonian, so she couldn’t be charged with treason for skirting security and endangering the life of the crown prince, but authorities were looking to see if there was anything they could make stick. At the very least she was blacklisted and would never work in television again.

So finally, on a calm, clear, day, there was only one obstacle left. Riley met with Liam, adorned in a stunning, body-hugging, Swarovski crystal filled dress, to put on the performance of a lifetime and act as if he’d shattered her heart. Of course, it wasn’t that easy. There were a couple of takes where neither of them could keep a straight face followed few that were unbelievably dramatic, but ultimately Riley was able to tap into her vulnerability and the tragedy she had faced to bring genuine emotion and tears to light. It didn’t matter that it was unrelated to what was happening in the scene, it was real. Kat said it was perfect, and Liam was free to propose to Olivia.

-----

Now that all is said and done, who will Liam choose to be his future Queen? Will it be the fierce Duchess Olivia, or the plucky newcomer Riley? Stay tuned for the finale of Queen of My Heart.”

Maxwell draped his arm around Riley’s shoulder. “What do you think, sis? How did I do on my television debut.”

Maxwell, Bertrand, Savannah, Hannah, Lydia, Liam, Olivia, Riley, and Drake were all huddled in the palace screening room to watch the finale as it aired.

Just about anyone would have been an improvement over Chad,” Riley teased, ”but the squid suit was definitely a nice touch. Your delivery was great, but did you have to call me plucky?”

“You know I had to play it cool,” Maxwell explained. “Plucky is good, but not over the top. Don’t want anyone thinking I’m playing favorites because you’re my sister.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “The suggested ‘noble newcomer’ would have been sufficient.”

“It was a stylistic choice.” Maxwell made a gesture with his hand indicating a mock hair flip.

"Ugh, enough about Maxwell," Olivia groaned. "I'm ready to get to the good part. Can we just fast-forward through any mushy Liam and Riley stuff? Nobody needs to see that."

"I second that." Drake raised his hand in rare agreement with Olivia.

Liam just shook his head. "I know nobody watches live network television anymore, so you must have forgotten how this works. There's no fast-forwarding. Not even through commercials."

"That's fine with me." Lydia chimed in. "More time for making out."

"Lydia!" Hannah's cheeks turned a deep shade of pink.

Lydia pecked her on the lips. "Sorry babe. You're just too damn cute when you blush."

Hannah remained quiet but her smile gave her away. Lydia, with her outgoing, bold, and slightly unpredictable personality, was the perfect complement to Hannah being so shy, proper, and focused. They brought out the best in each other, and the difference in Hannah between when Riley met her until now was night and day.

The friends watched the show and Riley only cringed at herself in a few places, which was much less than she thought she would. Things did get a bit awkward during the montage of kissing scenes between Riley and Liam, and Maxwell and Bertrand made a show of covering their eyes for the steamier parts. They all laughed inappropriately when Liam dumped Riley since they knew it wasn't real. And then finally when Liam proposed to Olivia, everyone cheered.

Riley thought of her friends and family at home. She pictured aunt Susan, Sarah, and Daniel all rooting for her and how disappointed they must have been that she "lost." She couldn't wait to tell them, however, she hadn't lost at all.

"Wow, Livvy." Drake quipped, bringing Riley out of her deep thoughts. "How much did you have to pay them to give you such a flattering edit?"

Olivia threw a pillow at his head which he deftly dodged. "Fuck off, Walker. You were so desperate to get on the show, you leapt in front of a bullet."

"Now, now children." Liam said in a mock scolding tone. "Let's all play nice."

"Yes, father," Drake and Olivia replied in unison, causing laughter to erupt around the room.

Riley still didn't have all the answers about what her future would hold, but she had found her people. Where she was in that moment was where she needed to be.

Savannah yawned. "It's getting late. We should probably go and relieve the sitter." Riley hasn't wanted to pry into Savannah and Bertrand's relationship, but they were working together to parent Bartie and things seemed to be falling into place for them.

"Yes, yes." Bertrand agreed. "Time is money!"

"Oh my god, Bertrand." Savannah rolled her eyes. "Life isn't all about money."

"She’s right." Maxwell propped his arm on Savannah's shoulder. "Besides, now that the show is over, we'll be getting some money, and Kat said if viewers responded well to me, they would probably offer to extend my contract in the franchise. By the looks of these tweets, I'm going to be rolling in dough. 'That Maxwell guy is so hot...ridiculously funny...just what the show needed.' Should I read more?

"Please no." Bertrand groaned. "We can talk finances later. Goodnight, all."

As the rest of the crowd dwindled, Liam asked Drake and Riley to stay behind. He kissed Olivia and promised to join her when the conversation was through.

"So what's up?" Drake got right to the point once only the three of them remained.

Liam cleared his throat. "Well as you know, I highly value your loyalty to the crown."

"Heh." Drake let out a terse laugh. "I don't really give a fuck about the crown, but I do care about you."

"In any case, you take your job very seriously and I could see you as head of the guard one day, once Bastien retires." Liam paused before continuing. "However, I do have another proposition for you."

Drake raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Go on."

"How would you like to be the head of Valtoria?" Liam asked expectantly.

Drake' eyes narrowed in contemplation. "I thought Valtoria was unoccupied. Is there a new Duke or Duchess there now that needs a security detail?"

"No, no." Liam laughed. "Well, there could be. That's what I'm trying to ask you. I would like to give Valtoria to you."

"No fucking way. You have to be kidding me. Did you sign up for some royal version of a prank show now?" Drake scanned the room as if searching for hidden cameras.

"I'm serious, Drake. I think you would make a fantastic duke."

Drake scoffed. "I'm a commoner who despises most nobles and everything the monarchy stands for."

"That's exactly why you'd be perfect for the role." Liam explained. "Cordonia needs a fresh perspective - someone who can resonate with the people the monarchy serves. Just think, you could have a real voice in creating change. I don't want to rule like my father has and his father before. I want the people to have the representation they deserve, and you are a key to that."

Drake sighed deeply. "I don't know Li. Even if I could do this - if I wanted to - what makes me worthy? What's everyone going to say when they find out you gave an average dude the title of Duke just because he's your best friend?"

"I'll tell them that Drake Walker is anything but average. He's smart, capable, and fiercely loyal. He's saved my life more times than I count and has more integrity than anyone I know. Public policy can be learned, but these qualities cannot be taught. He may not be noble by blood, but he is my family, and he belongs."

'Wow, Liam." Drake ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what to say."

"You're quiet over there." Liam directed at Riley. "What do you think?"

"Me?!" Riley had been as shocked by this as Drake, and she didn't know what to think. This was about Drake, not her. Did her opinion really matter? "I, uh.... think this is really Drake's decision."

Drake took Riley's hands in his. "But it's yours too. I mean, if we are going to be together..."

"Oh, well..." How was Riley supposed to help Drake decide such a life altering thing when she didn't even have her own life sorted out?

Drake didn't leave her fumbling for too long. "Liam, I really don't know if either of use is equipped to answer this question right now. It's a very generous offer, and the fact that I'm not totally shutting you down for suggesting such a ridiculous thing as me being a Duke should tell you I'm genuinely willing to entertain the idea."

Liam chuckled. "I completely understand. This life is new to both of you in different ways, and to navigate a new relationship on top of all that is a lot to ask. I'm in no hurry to fill the vacancy. Consider it an open-ended invitation. I trust that you'll be ready to make your decision long before the public pressures me into making a new appointment."

"Thanks, Liam." Drake gave him hug and patted him on the back. "Now get back to your fiancé before she blames me for keeping you too long."

-----

Back in her palace guestroom, Riley nestled into Drake, her head resting on his chest. "It's been quite a night, huh?

"You could say that again." Drake pulled her tighter against him.

"I kind of feel like we're moving so fast, we're skipping steps - like we're being asked to decide the rest of our lives before we even know what we want to do tomorrow." Riley knew nobody was outright asking for an immediate decision, but she felt the weight of everyone's expectations. Whether she stayed in Cordonia or went back home, she'd probably be disappointing someone.

"Who says we have to?" Drake asked. "You heard Liam. He doesn't need an answer right away. I Know you haven't decided what you want, and I sure as hell don't know what I'm going to do yet. Why don't we take some time together to just...be. Do normal couple things and see where the relationship takes us."

"Normal couple things... I mean I don't know how I can go back to my normal peasant life after attending weekly balls dressed in couture gowns," Riley teased, "but I think I could make that sacrifice for you, my commoner boyfriend."

"Hey, watch who you are calling commoner." Drake pinned Riley down and tickled her sides until she begged him to stop, and he collapsed beside her again. "I just may outrank you soon if I so choose."

Riley laced her fingers through Drake's. "It's crazy to think how our lives have changed in a few short months. I don't think I could have made it through all of this without you, and not just because you kept literally saving my life."

"You may not have taken a bullet for me, but you've saved me too. For once in my life, I see multiple paths with meaning and purpose. I've seen so much of myself reflected in you, but it id the version of me I want to be, not the one I was. You've shown me trials and hardships don't have to make you bitter, and that you don't have to fit the cookie cutter mold to find your place here... Oh, God, listen to me. What have you done to me Bennett?" Drake shuddered in mock disgust.

Riley softly pressed her lips to his and pulled back with a smirk. "I don't think I can take all the credit, or the blame as you might put it. But enough talk about the future. You said we should focus on the now, and right now all I need is you."

"Well then, your wish is my command." Drake pulled Riley tight to him and then they lost themselves in each other, completely unencumbered by any decisions about their future. Those could wait for another day.

[tomtenadia]

A Little Braver - Chapter 10

Evening everyone!

I have a present for you.

This lady here will be off on holiday for a week on Friday, so I thought about landing the new chapter tonight.

This one is a juicy one and I hope you will love it. A bit of fluff before the angst gremlin comes back for a visit.

This chapter comes with a smut warning. Yes, you read correctly. In the future I will be using FTB mostly because I find it difficult to write and keep it non cringy, but for this chapter I wanted to try and add some hotness.

Also, for those who haver read Island Dreams, I am heading to Lewis on my holiday, and i might post some photo of the locations mentioned in the fic.

Well, now i can let you enjoy the chapter

Aelin was at home sitting on the sofa, enjoying the food she had just ordered in, a bottle of beer and hockey. Her favourite team the Stags was playing an away game with the Skull’s Bay Pirates. 

The Stags were in the lead in the championship and the Pirates were just in second place, which made that game quite an important one. She was glad she had the night off although they would usually all camp in the communal area of the firehouse and watch the game all together. At least being at home meant she could have a beer.

Ice hockey in Terrasen was a religion. She had been a fan of the Stags since she was a kid and her dad would take her to the games. Then Aedion became her hockey buddy and once she joined the station she started sharing the passion with the rest of the team and they would also go and watch the games all together if possible.

She took a sip of her beer and kneeled on the sofa, the game was getting intense and she could not stand still.

In that instant her phone went off and she let out a curse.

“Oh for crying out loud.”

“What?” She answered while her eyes were glued to the tv.

“Good evening to you as well.” Rowan sounded almost offended by her brisk tone.

“Whitethorn, I am watching the game.”

“Uh?”

Aelin groaned as something happened on the screen and the Pirates almost scored.

“Ice hockey, Whitethorn. You have been in Terrasen enough to know it’s a religion here.”

He replied with a low chuckle. Then she heard him move and then all of a sudden a noise in the background and realised he had his tv on “wonder if they show it here. Wendlyn is not big on ice hockey.”

“You can tell. Their team sucks.” She drank a bit more “I can tell you that we are winning for now against the Pirates.”

“That’s the big match of the season I am gutted I am missing it.”

Aelin got agitated and swore a few times during some actions.

“You are a very scary woman.” She heard him switch off the tv “do you want me to call later?”

“No,” she said softly. She was actually quite happy. Since he had left three days before they had talked quite a lot over the phone at night and she had started to love their ritual. He was the one calling once he was free and she loved that new dynamic of theirs.

“How was your day training?”

“Oh, just wonderful. I spend my days dealing with cocky idiots who think they are gods because they have been admitted to flight school. Then they go ahead, mess up the exercise for everyone, almost get killed and have no respect for rank.”

She let him vent “sounds like you have a bad class.”

Rowan sighed loudly “I have been a flight instructor for six years. I had a few bad apples along the way, but this class is hopeless.”

“Can you do something about it?” She was still following the game but her attention had shifted to him. He sounded quite down.

“I reported them to the academy Commandant. I explained that starting flight school with the wrong foot was not recommended.” Another sigh “In the end it’s their school and they can do whatever they want. I don’t care. Being reckless in a jet is like jumping into a fire in t-shirt and shorts.”

“That would be very bad.”

“I know what the fuck I am doing. I have been doing this for the past 12 years. I have been in combat. Real bloody combat. Those idiots have only seen simulators. What do I need to do to be taken seriously?” He was really mad and Aelin wished she could do something for him.

“Ro, two weeks and a half and you are out. You are back with your team and students that you like.”

“How’s the game going?” He changed the topic, clearly being done talking about it.

“We increased our lead.”

She heard a popping sound “did you just crack open a beer?”

“Oh yes, I need it.”

Aelin smiled “I am having one too. Brullo has this friend who opened a brewery and I bought a few bottles and they are so good.”

“You have such connections and don’t even tell me?”

“I am sorry your highness.”

“You are excused this time. But don’t make it happen again.”

Aelin laughed “what are you going to do? Spank me?” And she froze. She should really need to learn to connect brain and mouth.

“Depends, will you like it?” His reply surprised her so much that she froze with the bottle halfway to her mouth. 

“You just have to hang around and see for yourself.”

He moaned “I will need to get back to you on this.”

“Will it help you decide if I tell you that I am wearing a hockey jersey and nothing underneath? I just had a shower…”

“Aelin…”

“What? Are you interested all of a sudden?”

“Obviously.” He groaned.

“I am teasing you, I have clothes on, but good to see where you stand.”

She heard him groan in frustration “you really are a menace and I don’t know why I bother with you.”

“You don’t have to stay on the phone if I irritate you so much. You are the one who called.” She bit back. Why they always end up fighting?

“I did not mean it like that.”

“Well then go and learn how to communicate with people because I am sick and tired of your attitude.” Her tone had grown angrier.

“Aelin, please. I was joking.” His voice was thick with sadness.

“No, I am so fucking tired of this.”

“Why can’t you believe that I was joking? Why do you always believe that I hate you?” He shouted back “I have been quite supportive with you recently. I have flown in to stay beside you after you lost a colleague. You have a problem with my attitude?” He vented “well, yours is not any better either.”

Aelin sighed “Rowan, why do we always end up like this?” She lay down on the sofa, the game completely forgotten “we had a nice conversation and then it always gets ugly between us.”

“I am sorry…” he paused and meant it “I have been looking forward to calling you. I had such a bad day that knowing I was going to phone you kept me going. I didn’t want any of this. I did not want to fight with you.”

“We are both bad at communicating.” She relaxed a bit. She did not want to fight with him either. And he was right, he had been supportive and amazing. Then she had an idea “Ro, I have four days of holidays coming up. I booked them ages ago, I had plans but they went to hell. Would it be crazy if I flew to Wendlyn? I will play tourist when you work and be out of your way, but what do you think?”

“I’d love that. Very much. It really sucks here.”

“It’s for this Friday. I known it’s short notice—” he interrupted her.

“No, it’s perfect. I don’t have a class this Friday, I can pick you up at the airport. Have Saturday and Sunday as tourists and I assume you are flying back on Monday.”

“Yes.” Her heart started racing. It was a crazy plan, but all of a sudden she was excited.”Let me check my roster, because if I finish at a decent time I can fly in Thursday night so we have three full days. Do you think you can manage that?”

“Happily.”

“Ok, stay there Buzzard, I am putting you on speaker phone.”

She ran to the kitchen and had a look at the calendar on her fridge with her roster and cheered loudly.

“Whitethorn,”

“What?”

“I come off shift at four. Now let me check for planes.”

She went to get her laptop and sat back on the sofa, “do you know any good airlines for Wendlyn?”

He laughed “Yes, my own plane.”

“Funny. Us common mortals don’t have that privilege.”

“I have no idea, Fireheart, I haven’t flown commercial in a lifetime.”

“Fine.” Aelin was silent for a few minutes typing away and looking for flight options. “Ok,” she said after a while “I can get one flight that gets me into Doranelle at 10.45pm your time, is it too late?”

“I guess I will postpone my nap.” He joked and she laughed back. He suddenly relaxed. The fight had been verging on vicious and he had not cared for that.

“On Monday I can fly back with a noon flight.”

“That one is perfect. I can drive you back to the airport and be back in time for my class.”

Aelin smiled wickedly “great, give me five minutes while I book it. Go and do grampa stuff in the meantime.”

“I am not a grampa.” Aelin heard him munching on something. Knowing him it was probably a carrot.

“Ok, now I need to find a place where to stay.”

“My flat?” He added shocked that she would think about staying anywhere else “Aelin, I have a flat. It has a second bedroom. And you don’t have to worry about giving me anything because it’s a flat owned by the airforce. It’s not a castle but it’s nice. You are not paying for a hotel.”

“Are you sure? Three days with me 24/7. That’s a lot of fighting.” She asked. She loved the idea, but wasn’t sure yet if they could survive that long in close quarters without killing each other.

“Perhaps we can leave the fighting aside and work on us?”

Aelin was silent for a moment “Us? As in…”

“As in more than two idiots fighting and pining for each other.”

Her heart pounded in her chest “Yeah, that would be intelligent, wouldn’t it?”

“Definitely.”

“But that’s a conversation for when you are here.”

Aelin smiled. She could not believe it was actually happening.

Rowan yawned over the phone “This grampa here would like to go to bed now. It’s quite late here.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

“I am looking forward having you here.”

Aelin hugged the pillow all excited “me too. Good night, Buzzard.”

“Good night, menace.”

Aelin squealed and threw the pillow at the other end of the living room in utter joy.

Thursday had finally arrived. Aelin thought the day would never come and that time had slowed down on purpose just to annoy her.

“Aedion you are in charge while I am away, will you be fine?”

The man was driving her to the airport “I will be. Go and enjoy your break. We will cope.”

“Ok, you know you can always call Dorian. He can come out on a call.” She was nervous. She hadn’t been away from the firehouse on holiday since before Sam died and was worried about her team.

“Stop fussing. We will be fine. You need a holiday. You haven’t been away in a lifetime. You deserve this.”

She breathed out, relaxing at his words. She knew she could trust Aedion and Dorian had given her his blessing too. 

“Just tell airforce boy to behave or I’ll scratch his toy plane.”

Aelin laughed. Rowan seemed to have a problem with the army but Aedion’s dislike seemed just as strong. To her it was just hilarious.

They arrived at the airport, she grabbed her duffel bag and backpack from the backseat and went to hug Aedion “thank you for driving me.”

“Let me know when you land on Monday and I will come and pick you up again.” And he hugged her back.

They parted and Aelin walked into the airport with a spring in her step and the biggest smile ever.

Rowan realised he had arrived at the airport a bit too early. He was so eager to see her that he had arrived with an hour to spare. He was a thirty year old man giddy like a child waiting for winter solstice presents. Considering their track record, three days together could go down in flame or be a success. A part of him was definitely anxious at the prospect, but when Aelin had suggested the idea he had no doubts. He wanted to do it.

Bored, he paced the arrivals section when a woman walked past him and her trolley ran onto his feet. He almost shouted at the woman but then decided to ignore it.

He viewed airports as pure madness. Utter chaos and he hated them. The good thing about his job was that if he had to travel for work he could use his jet. And when he used to travel with Lyria they had always driven. Now he remembered why he had avoided those places of pure chaos.

He moved to the big window where he could see the runaway and for a while studied the airplanes. One of his ex squadron mates after retiring from the airforce had become an airline pilot and on plenty of occasion had tried to convince him to join him, but Rowan always declined. There was little enjoyment in flying that way. 

While staring at the aircrafts landing and taking off, his hand was tapping on the handrail with excessive energy. 

He huffed a puff and and bored kept wandering around the airport. He had alway considered himself a decently patient man, but in that moment he felt as if he could not wait any longer. Had to really tell himself that she was coming and that it was not his imagination playing tricks on him. 

Luckily by the time his wandering was over, the arrivals notice board had changed the status of her flight to on approach and he went in front of the arrival section, knowing full well it would still be ages before her entrance. 

Forty minutes later he saw her and he was positive he now had the most stupid grin on his face. He recognised her golden mane tied up in a complicated braid. Gods, she was stunning and Rowan did his best not to drool too much.

She was dressed in simple jeans and a hoodie from the Terrasen Fire department and he chuckled. He waved at her and called as well.

Her smile when she spotted him could have lit up the night sky and he was positive his heart had just skipped a beat. 

Quickly an eagerly he walked to her, making his way through the crowd that had gathered.

She ran to him, then dropped her bags on the floor and in an instant she was in his arms. He lifted her up and kissed her. Not caring about the consequences. She was there. That’s all he cared about.

She kissed him back and for a while they were the couple that meets again after a long time apart and could not keep away from each other.

“You are here.” He said kissing her again and then brushed her hair in a tender gesture.

She smiled at him and slowly slid down from his arms.

He bent down and grabbed her bags “let’s go. You must be tired.”

Aelin took his hand and he did not pull away “the flight was crap. As soon as we hit the ocean it was bumpy as hell.”

Rowan chuckled “those civilian pilots struggling to handle a bit of wind.”

With her free hand she pinched his side “Meanie.” She told him “and it was bad and scary.”

He kissed her head “be glad that you have never experienced what a really terrifying flight his.” His voice was sad for a moment and Aelin squeezed his hand back.

“My car is over there.” They reached his vehicle and he dumped her stuff in the trunk.

It was fifteen minutes later when they reached his flat.

“I am a bit outside town but I love it. Much easier to go to work as I don’t have to drive through the centre. Saves me so much time.”

They entered the building and Rowan headed for the lift but Aelin stopped “pet peeve of mine. I don’t take lifts. I have saved enough people trapped in them, that now I don’t use them at all.”

“It’s eight floors, Aelin.” He complained.

“It’s good for your butt. Let’s go grampa.” Aelin grabbed the duffel bag and backpack from him and threw them on her shoulder and made her way to the stairs.

He realised that she was used doing stairs. But he was lazy and always used the lift.

“I am taking my chances.”

Aelin grabbed his hand and pulled him away “Don’t be an idiot. Come on.”

He protested but in the end caved.

Aelin relentlessly climbed on for eight floors and Rowan followed a few steps behind cursing that he had chosen to fall for a super fit firefighter.

“I can tell you some horror storie that will put you off forever from using them.” She told him while climbing the steps two at a time.

When they finally reached his floor, Aelin wasn’t even tired, Rowan instead was ready to strangle her.

“Come on grampa, I am sure your butt and your heart are thanking you right now.”

“Move.” She moved aside and let him open the door of his flat.

Once in, he flicked the lights on and Aelin looked around. The living room was spacious, from one door she could see a kitchen but what stunned her were the floor to ceiling windows at the end of the living room and the view. She dumped the bag and walked there and went to the windows.

“This is amazing.” He stopped at her side “Doranelle is called the City of Rivers. It’s not as beautiful as Orynth but it has its charming spots.” He explained with flat voice.

“Well, from up here it’s pretty cool.” Below her lay a sea of lights, then looking more carefully, she noticed the dark areas and assumed those were the rivers. She was looking forward to see that sight during the day.

Rowan pulled her arm “come on, you must be knackered, I’ll show you to your bedroom.”

She followed him into the room and smiled when she saw the bed. It looked so cozy.

She looked at him smiling “Orynth is a few hours behind so I am actually quite fine.” Gently she pinched his arm “you are trying to get rid of me.”

“I was just being considerate. You flew here after your shift.”

In one step she was close to him “I am quite hungry, though.”

Rowan laughed and patted her head “I knew it so I made something that just could go back in the microwave. Give me five minutes.”

“I’ll go and get changed in the meantime.”

It was much later when she was finally full and she and Rowan were now sitting on the sofa watching some tv. She had curled up her legs under her and his hand was absentmindedly tracing up and down the length of her exposed leg. It was much warmer than Orynth so she was wearing shorts and a baggy t-shirt.

She turned to look at him and saw Rowan concentrated on the documentary they had been watching. His face was relaxed, the tension had left his body and the sight of him like that took her breath away. His features always had an hard edge, but in that moment, relaxed, she could not look away. 

“Do I have something on my face?” A half smile appeared on his face.

“No.” She shimmied down to his side and leaned her head on his shoulder and he adjusted his position so she could be comfortable.

“You know I am not a pillow, right?”

In challenge, Aelin snuggled closer and her arms went around his waist. Rowan brought one arm around her shoulder and squeezed it almost in a silent gesture to tell her it was okay. He pulled her so close she was almost on his lap and in instant later his lips were on hers in a demanding kiss. 

Aelin sighed in delight and melted in the kiss. Rowan’s hands sneaked under the t-shirt touching skin. The kiss turned avid, all teeth and tongue and eventually she found herself straddling him. 

Her hips ground against his in a suggestive motion and a wicked smile spread across her lips when she felt him hard against her. Fingers found their target in his hair, and with a gentle tug she angled his neck and her lips began tracing its lines eliciting a loud moan from Rowan. 

His strong hands were a steady presence on her sides, pulling her closer with his thumbs brushing timidly the underside of her breasts.

Rowan’s tongue slowly traced the shape of her lips and she opened for him and when he intensified the kiss she began pondering what that tongue of his could do somewhere else. That image was her undoing. Aelin came up for breath and looked at him, his eyes smoky with lust.

She looked at him with the same desire and she was positive he had noticed the need in her stare as well.

Then Aelin stood and removed her t-shirt revealing her bare torso. She moved a step back and without ever removing her gaze from him she wiggled her finger in an invitation, then turned and swayed her hips on her way to his bedroom.

Rowan ran a hand down his face and eventually stood and followed her.

Shit. He was in such deep, unending shit.

It was the middle of the night and both Rowan and Aelin were still awake. They lay naked under the blankets while she was nested in his embrace, her head tucked under his chin, while he traced lazy lines on her back with his fingers.

She looked up at him and noticed his downcast stare. He looked sad and could not understand why. They just had some mind-blowing sex. Three times. 

“Hey, what is it?” She asked him, caressing his face.

He shook his head gently “nothing. Just thinking.”

“You are regretting this,” she said in accusation sitting up beside him.

Rowan threw an arm on his face and sighed “No.”

“Liar, that is not the face of someone who is happy after getting laid three times.” She folded her arms at her chest. 

He remained silent and Aelin bent over to grab her clothes “don’t worry. I get it. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll find a flight home tomorrow.”

His arm shot out and stopped her, then he sat on the bed and pulled her back “please, no.”

“Then talk to me, damn it.” She threw her clothes back on the floor “I can’t read your mind.” She shouted back frustration rising again. 

Rowan’s hands fisted for a brief moment “I am crazy about you,” he whispered, as if terrified by the admission “and there is a part of me that tells me that is wrong. Reminds me that I lost my wife a year and half ago and I should not replace her so quickly, not after I swore forever love at the altar.” he sat at her side but never looked at her, too scared of her reaction “I loved every single of minute we had together tonight but my stupid conscience keeps telling me that is wrong.” He lowered his head “and I know that my guilt will ruin everything, eventually.”

Aelin fully turned to him and cupped his face “Ro, look at me.” He lifted his eyes and stared in the blue depths of her own eyes “for some crazy unexplained reason I fell for you as well. I think I must be crazy,” she chuckled “I know your pain. Sam was not my husband but almost. After I lost him I promised myself I would not commit anymore. The pain of losing him was so bad that I decided I’d rather remain alone than suffer again.” She told him, caressing his cheek with her thumb “then you annoying bastard came along and destroyed all my resolutions. I wanted to hate you, for so many reasons, but the more I tried to do that, the more I failed.” His lips twitched in a faint smile “the way I see it, moving on is not a betrayal on your wife. You will alway love her, as I will always have a space for Sam. We are in our early thirties, what do you want to do? Stay celibate and miserable for the rest of your life? Pass on opportunities just because you want to be faithful to her?” She explained “also, and I do not mean this to be disrespectful, but didn’t she have divorce papers ready and a plan to cut you off from your kid’s life?”

Rowan collapsed back on the bed and sighed heavily. She was right. He had loved Lyria but she had planned to leave him. “what do you want to do?”

She looked at him with a puzzled expression.

“About us.”

Aelin leaned against him and snuggled back to his chest “one step at a time, remember?” She looked at him and his wonderful green eyes shone in joy “and if my memory does not fail me, you told me you were all in if I were.”

Rowan nodded gently and kissed her head “I still am.”

“Well, we have covered sex, even if we broke the rules, and we know that in that field we have plenty of chemistry, we just need to learn to talk without shouting and communicate better. We both have lots of baggage. What I suggest is that we spend these three days playing couple and once you come back we’ll just go from there.”

His arms folded around her and pulled her as close as possible, her golden hair in his face and the scent of lavender enveloping his senses “I think I like this plan.”

“Good, now let’s sleep though. It’s the middle of the night.”

Aelin kissed him and not long after fell asleep in his arms.

Rowan woke up the following morning and smiled at the warm body at his side. Aelin was sprawled on him, using his chest like a pillow. The blanket had fallen down to her waist and he realised they had fallen asleep naked. With his fingers he traced gentle lines on her shoulders, then leaned over and deposited a few kisses fully inhaling her scent. She moaned and slowly came to awareness and when she realised where she was she gave him a wonderful smile and he kissed her, fully, avidly.

“Someone looks happy,” she joked brushing his short hair.

“Nope, just trying to get back my side of the bed.”

She gently patted his shoulder but Rowan rolled on top of her and gave her a deep kiss “good morning, you.”

She stretched luxuriously in his arms then she kissed him back pulling her body close to his.

“Mmmm,” she moaned “morning wood or are you just happy to have me with you?”

He kissed her, then his head dipped in the hollow of her neck and his tongue traced the length of it “both.”

“We should definitely tend to it.” She teased and a moment later she straddled him “I do like being in charge, just so you know.” She leaned forward and kissed him, then disappeared under the blankets and Rowan cursed as soon as her mouth was on him.

Rowan stood and still naked went to make breakfast. They had remained in bed much longer that he had planned but it had been totally worth it. Their chemistry in the sheets was definitely perfect. Aelin followed him and she leaned, naked as well, against the counter. He bent forward and kissed her “we definitely need coffee.” She turned and Rowan looked at her, her long blond hair unbound and reaching her lower back. Along ragged breath escaped from him, then he went back to preparing breakfast. Staring at her naked form could lead to more dillydallying and he wanted to take her out to explore.

She walked back to him with two mugs of coffee while he finished to prepare French toast.

“Take the strawberries out the fridge, please.”

“I usually put maple syrup on.”

Rowan rolled his eyes “well, I am making them so we follow my rules.”

She pinched his butt “brute.”

Five minutes later they were sitting on the sofa, enjoying their breakfast. She brushed his hair with her hand. “Thank you for this. It was so lovely.” She placed her empty mug on the coffee table together with her plate and she turned to him fully and went for a kiss. Now that they had crossed that line she could not keep her hands off him. He pushed her down on the sofa, laying on her back and he kneeled between her legs. She propped herself on her elbows opening more for him and bit her lower lip at his lustful glance “you are so cute like this…” his voice rough with need.

Without ever averting her gaze she brought a finger to her mouth and slowly sucked it in a suggestive gesture, then her hand trailed down along her abdomen.

“Touch yourself.” At the same time his hand went around himself and started moving up and down while watching Aelin. Her fingers circled around her sensitive spot and he saw her threw her head backward and close her eyes. Her mouth slightly open. He leaned forward and kissed her, his tongue brushing her lips before clashing with hers. Her fingers buried inside her and Rowan lost it. He pushed her all the way down “I can’t fucking resist you.”

She looked up at him and smiled wickedly “then bury your dick inside me, captain.”

Rowan lifted her and walked back to the bedroom in a quick motion. 

His mouth landed on her breasts and Aelin’s hands kept him there, while he sucked and teased with his teeth. A moment later he moved away and went for the drawer grabbing a tie and Aelin lifted her arms above her head as soon as she realised his intentions. 

“This is very interesting, captain…”

Rowan very gently tied her hands to the boards of the head of the bed and then sat on his haunches to stare at her naked form in adoration.

“You are stunning,” he said while slowly caressing her belly. Keeping her hips in place he bent forward and his face disappeared between her legs which then quickly propped on his shoulders.

A savage moan left Aelin’s lips as his tongue found its target on her bundle of nerves and when he teased her with a finger she was all ready to combust.

“Fuck Ro— ” he cut her words with a second finger inside her. Those long digits that curled inside her, causing her legs to jerk while she felt the pressure build inside her. The orgasm creeping up quickly.

“I need you….” She told him breathlessly.

Rowan smiled, undid her ties and turned her around and then tied her again. He grabbed her butt and propped it up and his mouth was on her in an instant “you are so wet and ready for me.”

He went up on his knees and aligned himself with her entrance. His first thrust was gentle and enough to allow her to get used to him, he pulled back just a little and slammed into her to the hilt.

“More…” Cried Aelin grabbing the pillow and fisting her hands in it.

“More…” she begged him again.

His speed increased and Aelin felt her core tighten.

Rowan reached with his finger and teased her clit at the same time. Aelin moaned in the pillow as his ministration grew in intensity, until she could not hold it any longer and pleasure exploded in her making her crash over the edge. And while she was about to collapse into oblivion, she realised that Rowan hadn’t joined her in his release.

The grip on her hips grew stronger and she knew she was going to carry some marks. She met his thrusts and when his pace became frenzied she knew he was close as well. 

“Aelin, I am— ” he groaned loudly as he spilled into her and then collapsed exhausted on her back. He deposited gentle kisses on her back then collapsing exhausted at her side.

Rowan untied her then he took her hand and brought it to his chest “you are a wicked woman.”

Aelin chuckled “I had no idea I had it in me. I never… I mean Sam and I we never… this way, tied hands and all..…” Rowan brought her hand to his lips “Lyria and I did it, at the very beginning. Then it stopped and we calmed down until it became mechanical just because we were married. Once she found out she was pregnant she did not allow me to touch her at all.” He rolled over, facing her and his hand caressed her face “I thought it was because she was not well but…” he sighed “I haven’t told this to anyone but I suspected she was cheating on me.” He confessed and felt lighter. He had kept that to himself for a very long time “and to make things worse, I have a very, very strong feeling that the child was not mine. I think she lied to me on how far along she was.” He closed his eyes for a moment in a pained expression “I know she had stopped being happy about our life for a while. Whatever I did was not enough. She wanted me to retire and give up my job.”

Aelin extended her hand and brushed his cheek with the top of her hand “but she knew from the beginning what you were and what you job entailed?”

“Yes, I was clear from the start. Explained that my job took me away from months on end and all the dangers involved in it as well.” He closed his eyes enjoying the touch of her hand on his face “I think she hoped I would drop my career after we got married.”

“I loved her. I did all I could to show her that I was doing my best to keep the promise I made her at the altar.” He covered her hand with his “I failed her.”

“No,”Aelin whispered, this was conversation was giving her an insight into him and she realised she had no idea of how much pain and regret he was keeping bottled in him.

“I can’t fail you as well.” And she heard his voice break and snuggled closer to him “Ro, look at me.” She pulled his chin down to her “I am all in. I want to be all in. I am terrified, but I run into fires as a job, I know how to control my fears.”

He kissed her in a heartbreaking sweet kiss “I don’t deserve you.” His voice soft.

Aelin cackled “No one does, I am amazing that way. But you come pretty close to being worthy.” She joked and he kissed her back.

Rowan pulled away from her and then pushed her off the bed “come on, time to explore.”

Her blonde head emerged from the side of the bed “shower is mine.” And she bolted for the bathroom, he ran as well but once he got there she slammed the door in his face.

“Don’t spend half an hour in it.” He shouted. Then the door cracked open a little and her hand darted out “there is space for two…”

Rowan laughed and followed her inside.

The shower took much longer than expected and when they finally left the flat it was much later that he had planned. The whole morning had been totally worth it though, they had talked and he had a feeling it had helped move their complicated relationship in the right direction. He had even confessed her things he had never mentioned to anyone. He felt like he could trust her. She knew loss and darkness like he did.

They had lunch at one of the street vendors he had grown to love and now they were walking hand in hand along one of the the rivers and off toward the palace. Aelin walked silent at his side, taking in the city. “That’s the old royal palace.” He pointed at the stunning building they could see in the distance. “There was a monarchy once… and then the people rebelled and it got ugly and it went down and a government similar to what we have in Orynth was created.”

“The palace looks stunning.”

“I think they do tours to go inside. It’s where the government resides now but some areas are open to the public.”

“It’s fine I’d rather walk around and see the city. We can just see the palace from the outside.”

“As you wish,” his arm went around her shoulder and the feeling was incredible.

They walked to the palace and Rowan guided her behind it. When they arrived she was speechless. “It really is the city of rivers.”

Eight of them joined just behind the palace to form a gigantic basin with isles in the middle full of trees. In some parts the rivers went down a wall forming a waterfall.

“This is… gorgeous…” then she looked over and the spray of the waterfall had formed a beautiful rainbow “look,” she said to him pointing ahead.

He pulled her closer and kissed her temple “It’s quite an amazing corner this one.”

Aelin disentangled from him and walked around the area for a while and Rowan took photos of her. She was wearing an amazing green dress with a flowy skirt and he could not keep his eyes off her. 

“Come here you.” He did as he was told and joined her. “Hold me from behind.”

His arms went around her waist and they both gave their back to the basin. Aelin moved her phone so they both could be in the picture together with the magnificent background.

When she was about to click he kissed her temple.

Aelin looked at the photo “I am gorgeous.”

Rowan scoffed “I think you are the one who should move in with ego, although I think that in your case he needs a house on his own.”

She ignored him while she changed the picture as her phone background.

“I am pretending you never said anything.” And walked away from him.

Rowan laughed and a moment later he grabbed her arm and pulled her in for a kiss “Indeed you are stunning, captain.”

Aelin offered him her hand “shall we continue our tour?”

He took the hand she offered and they continued their exploration. They made their way to the area that was known as the historical one. The houses were built in stone of different colours and it looked very charming “here there are a lot of lovely small shops and some very cozy restaurants. It’s probably the most beautiful part of Doranelle.”

They continued walking until they reached a very colourful area “this is so pretty,” said Aelin pulling him toward the built up area.

Aelin dropped his hand and started walking toward all the small shops. She noticed a bakery and she walked in and Rowan followed in silence. Once inside he noticed she was busy chatting with the owner about their delicacies. Five minutes later she joined him with a bag in her hands.

“Did you buy the entire shop?”

She inclined her head and gave him a smile “almost.”

They reached the main square and discovered there was a market on and the place was full of stalls and food vendors. The air smelled of spices and food and Aelin stopped at every food stall enjoying some samples of the local food and buying some as well. Rowan followed her in silence and enjoyed seeing her relaxed.

“Are you going to spend you entire salary on food?” He joked, placing a hand on her lower back.

She turned and looked at him “I am on holiday Whitethorn, shush.”

They reached the end of the road and Aelin stopped in front of a clothes shop. In the window they had the most stunning black dress she had ever seen. She took Rowan’s hand and dragged him in.

“Hi, I saw the black dress in the window, is it possible for me to try it on? It’s stunning.”

“Of course,” said the shop owner “I make all the dresses myself.” She passed it to Aelin and pointed to the changing room.

Rowan sat on a chair and waited for her while his mind tried to picture her in the dress. When she finally emerged again he realised he had no idea how to picture her in such a dress. He swallowed hard as she walked to him.

“What do you think?” She turned to give him a full picture. The back of the dress dropped in a curve halfway down her back. It hugged her curves spectacularly and it had a cut up to above her knee. He was close to a heart attack.

“You… it’s…” he actually had no words “you are perfect.”

She smiled at him and for a brief second Rowan wished they were back in his room because he wanted to show her in another way what he really thought about it.

“Good, I am taking it. I will find an occasion to wear it.”

Once they were outside Aelin looked at him “did you really like the dress?”

Rowan wound his arms around her waist and pulled her closer, his mouth close to her ear “I had so much fun imagining all the possible ways for me to peel that dress off you.” 

“That’s the type of dress I would wear completely naked underneath by the way…”

He pulled her to his chest and bowed down for a kiss “I really hate that we are in public right now.”

She kissed him back. She was loving this side of him. One she had not expected him to have. He always appeared so composed and impossible to fluster. But under the captain’s mask she was discovering him to be quite a very interesting man. 

“You can ravish me tonight.” She added smiling against his lips and then walked away, leaving him alone and dumbstruck.

Yes, they could make it work.

She really wanted to.

TAGS

@rowaelinismyotp​

@jlinez​

@swankii-art-teacher​

@courtofjurdan​

@whimsicallyreading​

@tillyrubes10​

[impala666]

The One With Mrs. Bing Part One: She’s Back

Here we are. The episode I have been very excited about. Enjoy!

Friends rewrite (masterlist) Last Part (The One With The Monkey Part 4) 

Last night you had slept on the couch, you just wanted a little bit of your own space. During the night it had been nice, but now you were laying on your stomach with your face buried in your pillow trying to sleep. While you could hear Chandler making breakfast and drinking coffee before he headed off to work. You had to work yourself at the store in a few hours, but you just didn’t want to get up yet. The only thing that was going to help make your day was that you didn’t have that long of a shift anyway. So you’d work for a few hours and then spend many more hours with your friends just hanging out. Finally, you decided that enough was enough and it was time for you to get up and face your day. So rolling onto your back you let out a loud sigh and pushed the blankets off of you before you managed to make it to your feet. “Good morning, sunshine!” Chandler optimistically greeted you. You stopped at the peninsula of the counter and just glared at him, with your hair a big tangled mess which only made him smile more. “What?” He asked you, taking a sip from his coffee cup.

“You’re just being really cheery and I thought that was weird.” You shrugged it off though and entered the kitchen to get your own cup of coffee. 

“Where’s Joey?” Chandler asked.

“Not sure.” You answered honestly. “Probably still sleeping would be my guess.”

“How’s that going? I know you wanted to slow down, is that good?” Your big brother asked, just to check in on you.

“It’s been going great! He’s been surprisingly understanding and incredibly supportive. It’s just nice to have people who support me instead of trying to tear me down.” You smiled as you sat down across from him at the table.

“And you’re always going to from now on. Besides, if anyone knows about leaving home to pursue a career path that doesn’t meet the parents expectations other than you, it would definitely be Joey.” Chandler smiled at you in proudness and supportiveness.

“I know,” you told him with a small smile. For once in your life it was nice to know that if you fell, you had friends there to catch you and help you get back on your feet. You never had that with your parents; you could barely remember your dad before he got a divorce from your mom who was hardly ever home to begin with. All you really ever had was Chandler, at least you had him up until the moment your mom shipped him off to boarding school and then you were basically all alone until now. “And thanks for bringing up the whole disappointed parent thing.” You smiled at him in sarcastic thanks. 

“You are welcome,” Chandler chuckled along with your sarcasm. Then the both of you just continued to talk about your daily lives until Chandler had to go to work and you unfortunately had to start getting ready. 

********

All of you were finally done with your work day, so all of you went over to Monica and Rachel’s for some dinner all together telling each other about your day, to your surprise Phoebe and Monica had quite an exciting one. They caused a man they thought was attractive to be hit by an ambulance. “There are no conscious men in the city for you two?” Chandler asked, leaning against the couch as he silently judged his friends. 

“He doesn’t have anyone,” Monica defended herself and Phoebe. 

“Yeah. We feel kind of responsible.” Phoebe agreed. 

“I mean,” you started all high pitched, but when you felt Joey put his hand on your waist from behind you, you stopped when you heard him chuckle.

“I can’t believe you said woo-hoo.” Joey added as he kept laughing slightly. “I don’t even say woo-hoo.” 

“Oh! She’s coming up!” Rachel announced to everyone as she grabbed the TV remote and turned the volume up. Everyone else was excited to see who was going to be on the screen, but you and Chandler couldn’t help but make eye contact and roll your eyes. 

“When we come back we’ll be talking about her new book, Euphoria Unbound. The always interesting Nora Tyler Bing. You might want to put the kids to bed for this one.” Jay Leno announced as he lifted up his copy of your mothers latest erotic novels. You couldn’t help but feel sadder and sadder the more he talked about her before they went to commercial. Ross, Monica, and Joey sat next to you with big excited smiles on their faces. Chandler already didn’t want to watch this but when he saw you drooping into the couch and your smile falling into a frown with a sad look on his face, he knew he couldn’t take it any longer. He knew you hadn’t heard from your mother since you moved out because he hadn’t either. 

“We don’t have to watch this.” Chandler decided enough was enough. “Weekend at Bernie’s is on Showtime, HBO, and Cinemax.” He announced the change of TV as he picked up the remote.

“Come on, she’s your guys’s mom.” Joey complained in surprise that neither of you wanted to watch your mom on one of the biggest talk shows in America. The fact that Joey didn’t see why you were upset made you just that much more upset.  

“Exactly. Weekend at Bernie’s! Dead guy getting hit in the groin 20, 30 times!” Chandler tried one last time for the sake of both of you. 

“Guys.” Rachel beamed to you and Chandler. “I love your mom’s books. I cannot get on a plane without one. I mean, this is so cool.” Rachel was practically giddy when she found out that your mom was the author of her favorite novels. 

“You wouldn’t think so if you were 11 years old and all your friends are passing around page 79 of Mistress Bitch.” Chandler relayed. You would have jumped in on the conversation too, because man did you have a million stories, but you just couldn’t think of any. Plus because of recent events you weren’t really in the mood to talk. 

“Yeah, Chandler. I love your mom. I think she's a blast.”  Ross spoke, apparently on the side Rachel was on. That your mother was this fun, wonderful person. 

“Yeah, you say that because she’s not your mom.” You finally mumbled loud enough for all of them to hear you. They all turned to look at you, and for the first time they were seeing how hard this was for you. Ross immediately stopped talking, Monica and Phoebe looked at each other not sure if they should say something, and Joey wrapped an arm around your shoulder and pulled you a little closer to his side. It made you feel slightly better, but you just wanted to run and hide under the covers in Joey’s bed for at least a week. But when the others heard kissing noises, they all turned around to see that Paolo was here and was practically eating Rachel’s face off of her body. 

“When did Rigatoni get back from Rome?” Ross asked, now adding to the sad party you were having. 

“Last night.” Monica answered him.

“Really? So then his plane didn’t explode in a ball of fire?” Ross asked, clearly not jealous at all. “Just a dream I had. But phew.” He thought would be funny to say out loud. 

“Hey! Hey! She’s on!” Apparently Phoebe was also excited about all of this, and Joey left you and was now on the edge of his seat on the couch. 

“Ah! Nora Bing!” Paolo yelled in excitement, much to your dismay as you watched your mom walk onto the screen, waving at the audience on the other side of the camera. 

“Before we get to the book, now what is this about you being arrested in London? What’s that all about?” Jay Leno asked your mother, which had you rolling your eyes at that piece that was news to you. 

“Your mom was arrested?” Phoebe laughed with astonishment. 

“Shh, I’m busy beaming with pride.” Chandler told her, which clearly wasn’t accurate. 

“This is kind of embarrassing, but occasionally, after I’ve been intimate with a man..” your mom started her answer.

“Why would she say that’s embarrassing?” You masked your pain with fake humor. To which everyone ‘shhed’ you. 

“I just get this craving for kung pao chicken.” Your mom proudly answered for everyone. 

“That’s too much information!” Chandler yelled at the TV. 

“So now you’re doing this whole book tour thing. How’s that going?” Leno asked her. 

“Oh, fine. I’m leaving for New York tomorrow, which I hate. But I get to see my kids, who I love.” Your mom smiled proudly, but it was hard to tell from the botox that she had gotten done. But all that you could focus on was the fact that she was coming here. She was coming here, to New York, after everything that had happened, and that was the way you had to find out. You were dying on the inside. But all your friends around you and your boyfriend all awwed for you and your brother. You crossed your arms tighter over your chest, wishing you could be anywhere else right now. 

“Oh, this is how we find out.” Chandler yelled, sounding like he was pissed. “Most mom’s use the phone.” 

“You know, I…”Jay Leno started saying as he got comfortable in his seat. But he also seemed like he didn’t want to offend your mom.“Don’t take this the wrong way, I just don’t see you as a mom somehow. I don’t mean that bad.” 

“Oh, no.” Your mom scoffed while looking at the audience. “I am a fabulous mom. I bought my kids their first condoms.” Half of your friends turned to look at your brother while the other half turned to look at you with your hand over your eyes in embarrassment. You then just decided that you couldn’t handle it anymore and ran out of Monica’s apartment and to yours, and to Joey’s bed so you could hide. You were just glad that you managed to avoid eye contact with all of them. However, Chandler was just standing there completely mortified. 

“And then he burst into flames.” Chandler said to himself as he felt like he was dying on the inside. 

[harryandmolly]

fear and loathing in mandeville canyon *5*

summary: Shawn & Lilly, derailed, detoured, but maybe not destroyed

warnings: language, NSFW (unprotected sex), The Reckoning pt. 1 (this warning brought to you by Georgie Kingston)

wc: 4.7k

------------

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. I mean… wow.”

“I know, right?”

Shawn and Lilly are sitting up in Lilly’s bed, her sheets pooled around their naked hips. Her phone sits between them, glowing the only light in the room. Her home screen is a picture of Lauren dressed as the Statue of Liberty from Halloween in college.

At first when Lilly checked the time, she was sure it said 5:04 PM. But given the time of year, it was too dark for that to be true. Shawn stirred and they inspected it together, equally bewildered. 

5:04 AM. They slept for a clean 14 hours. By the way they each stretch and groan, neither of them moved a muscle the whole time. Lilly feels like she’s at the brink of atrophy, with a comfortable soreness between her legs. 

She looks over at Shawn. He’s bleary-eyed, extra flushed from all the body heat they produce in the same bed together, with pillow marks on his cheeks and chest. Lilly has a mark across her side from the weight of his arm. It’s like they’ve been asleep for years.

Lilly lets her phone screen go dark. Dawn isn’t coming for a while. They’re alone. Their breathing syncs. Shawn yawns. Lilly follows. The quiet aches.

She reaches over to her nightstand and flicks on the lamp. The orange glow is made warmer than usual with his big brown eyes watching her. It’s different, though, than it has been. He’s not watching her like one of them is impersonating a dog in an ASPCA commercial. It’s curious and gentle, but there’s a confidence there, too. It seems she’s missed it.

“Hello there,” she sighs, coming down onto one folded arm on her side. He follows, mirroring her.

“Hi.”

She’s quiet for a few moments, looking him over. He squirms a little under her gaze.

“Thanks for shaving the gross facial hair.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “No problem. My mum made it pretty clear that she was going to ask me to shave it every time I FaceTimed her, so it was just delaying the inevitable.”

Lilly’s brows lift. “Did you like the gross facial hair?”

Shawn chuckles. “No. I guess I was just curious. I don’t really get to try shit like that most of the time. So.”

She nods, continuing her inspection, as though she hasn’t looked at him in the weeks they’ve been in Mandeville Canyon together. She doesn’t comment on his weight or the pallor of his skin. She has no business, given the way she’s been treating her own body. She internalizes it and moves on.

Timidly, she lifts her hand through his hair. His eyes flutter shut, he nuzzles into it automatically. She feels that ache between her thighs again, more prominently this time.

“But about the hair… maybe I should cut it. If you want me to.”

Shawn’s eyes brighten. “I didn’t know you could cut hair.”

“Oh, I can’t. I mean, I haven’t yet. But I’ll watch a video, we’ll be fine.”

He hesitates only for a moment, surprising her. “Ok. Yeah. It’s probably time.”

Lilly feels an odd sensation getting out of that bed and it can’t be blamed on low blood sugar or dehydration. The writer in her feels a scene ending when Shawn pulls himself up and walks into her shower, leaving the door open when he turns on the water and inspects his hair in the mirror, along with a couple of zits. The finality is an illusion, because life isn’t so neatly told like a screenplay. Even though she feels the scene is over, she has to stand up and find a clean pair of panties and think of some search terms to find a useful hair cutting tutorial on YouTube. There’s another scene and she doesn’t know what it is yet. She doesn’t even know what she wants it to be. But there’s putting the laptop down and walking away. There’s no stopping it.

Lilly wanders into the kitchen in panties and a tank top, too preoccupied to notice the utility scissors when she opens drawers looking for them. His footsteps are house-shakingly loud as they carry him from her side of the house to neutral ground. He arrives with a towel around his waist. His hair looks even more like sad limp noodles when it’s wet. He stops in the doorway, watching her. He waits until she pulls a chair into the empty space between the breakfast table and the island, under a bright cluster of lights. He takes the invitation to sit.

He even smells warm, somehow. Lilly’s urge to lick up the rivulets of tepid water coasting over the mountains and valleys of his back is disorienting.

They watch the tutorial together on her phone. It seems a small concession to make, given what he’s putting her in charge of. He doesn’t have any specific direction to give her beyond longer on top, shorter on the sides. So she goes hunting for some inspiration.

You would think she would know better than to dive into the “Shawn Mendes” tag on Tumblr. The seizing half-hiccup, half-pseudo stroke sensation she gets from accidentally coming upon a hoard of pictures of them together is back. Lilly blames a recent lack of exposure for the completely noticeable, pity-inducing reaction. Her callous has softened. After an awkward few seconds, she pivots to Google.

“I think we’re going for… like… February 2019 hair. That was really good hair,” Lilly insists, plowing ahead, gesturing to photos of him on the red carpet at the 2019 Brit Awards.

“Yeah,” Shawn replies, “That was good hair. Maybe a little longer on the sides though. I liked what I had going, like, before quarantine.”

Lilly grumbles something under her breath about googling photos of that era over her dead body. Shawn relents.

“It’s fine, you should cut it-- just cut it however. It’s fine.”

Lilly begins by balling up a little tuft from the top of his head into a teeny bun. She stands between his legs to arrange it, making sure it’s even on both sides. His eyes remain on his feet the whole time.

She starts at the back of his neck, smoothing his curls out to decide how much to trim. Her fingers are more helpful than the comb, she soon realizes, in keeping them flat enough to judge. She begins by cutting it shorter at the base of his neck so the short curls can do the sproing thing she likes. As she moves up the back of his scalp, she leaves it longer until she hits his funny little man bun. When the silence breaks, she’s so jarred she has to ask him to repeat himself.

“I…” he clears his throat, “I think it’s time that you ask me some of those questions.”

Lilly hates that she knows him so well she doesn’t have to ask which ones. She fluffs out the back of his head with her fingers and decides it’s not completely tragic, so she moves onto his left side.

There are considerations, of course. Is her stuff in a state that she could easily pack and bail in a short time frame if he reveals himself to be dumber than originally feared? Is digging up old dirt to toss it over a wound that won’t heal really necessary?

Is it a good idea to have this conversation while she’s wielding something that could easily be used as a deadly weapon?

Lilly takes a long moment to blink and sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, eyeing the way his hair wraps over the tip of his ear. She brushes it with the pad of her thumb. It reddens.

There’s a preamble in her head, one that lectures him about the absolute necessity of honesty in this situation, the futility of the exercise if he’s not willing to be completely transparent. When she notes the way his knee bobs anxiously, she stops it in its frilly-worded tracks.

She pulls curls off the side of his neck, right over the freckles she likes, and snips.

“When did it start?”

Shawn doesn’t shrink or react in any noticeable way. This isn’t a surprising question.

“I started feeling it when we were in working on Senorita. We weren’t really talking much before that. We started texting a little. It was the first time I felt anything for her since you and me started.”

Lilly sections off the hair above his ear and starts to feel herself working slower. She remembers the first time she heard about the idea of the Senorita collab when he told her over the phone. He sounded tired. Lilly was enthusiastic, knowing he and Camila had been closer before Lilly was in the picture. She felt some guilt for driving some kind of wedge between them, however unintentional. The collab seemed like a nice way to reconnect with a friend.

“The music video.”

Lilly doesn’t phrase it as a question. She doesn’t need to.

“That was when things came more… into focus. She and her ex were in the process of breaking up. I didn’t know for sure then what was going to happen. But it was the first time I thought something actually might.”

Lilly focuses on the way his hair sits above his ear, debating about how short to cut it. She recalls FaceTiming with him from rehearsals. He was so excited. He was nervous about dancing. Lilly teased him. He reminded her repeatedly that he loved her. She wonders if it was more for him to hear out loud than it was for her.

“What exactly happened between you before you broke up with me?”

Shawn flinches slightly. Lilly feels the sick pleasure of it sizzling in her fingers, imagines a tick arriving with a satisfying ping in her nonexistent column.

Shawn takes a deep breath. “It was… at one of the viewing things before the final cut of the video. We got drunk.”

Lilly’s heart slams in her chest like a fish out of water. This was a mistake.

“I knew she and Matthew were done but I asked anyway. We were… we were the last ones there and just fucking around, being goofy. I kissed her.”

Snip. Snip. Snip.

Shawn doesn’t ask to look at whether she’s defacing one of his calling cards.

“Anything else?” Lilly asks coolly, wondering if a fuck might’ve actually felt like less of a soul-deep betrayal. Doesn’t matter, probably. She still lost him.

“Not until after.”

Lilly systematically strokes her fingers through his hair as she switches over, angling to determine if the sides are even. Her stomach hurts.

“Did you tell her you were going to leave me before you did?”

She watches him swallow.

“Yes.”

Lilly remembers the image she had of her sitting in the back of a dark Uber Black, hunched over her phone, waiting outside Lilly’s house for the deed to be done.

The questions are sprouting faster than Lilly can come up with a strategy for dealing with them. She takes a weed whacker to her mind unsuccessfully.

“What did she-- how did she--”

Lilly stalls out and drops her scissored hand by her side. Shawn looks over at her patiently. He doesn’t cower or turn away or guilt her out of this line of questioning with a glance.

Lilly shakes her head and waves her not-sharp hand for him to turn his head back. She gets to work evening out the sides, pinching his strawberry-scented ringlets, making a focused effort not to yank at them.

“All the pictures… the paps, whatever. Did you consider what that would do to me?”

Shawn keeps his head forward, eyes fixed on the refrigerator at the other side of the room. He wets his lips and speaks, “I… didn’t really let myself focus on it. I told myself it wasn’t really my fault, I wasn’t the one calling them and doing all that shit we did in the beginning. I told myself it wasn’t about me and Camila, it was about the single, so anything we did to promote the single was ok.”

“That was a very long-winded no.” Lilly keeps her voice even.

“There’s so much I did that I handled completely fucking wrong. We, I mean you and I, we were hitting this point, this weird, shitty point where we were both really busy and couldn’t be around each other that much. It had been over a year and the, like, giddiness wasn’t there at the time. Like, neither of us was that happy then.”

Lilly’s nostrils flare. Her lips purse and begin to part, ready to unleash hell.

“I used it as a shitty fucking excuse for something I was probably going to do anyway.”

Lilly takes a step back. She drops the scissors beside him and crosses her arms, staring expectantly. Shawn takes the scissors and fiddles with them.

“The honest, stupid fucking truth is that I had this… I dunno, this thing for her. I could never totally let go of it. That’s not to say I wasn’t happy with you, or that I was thinking about her when I was with you… that was never it. But when she started showing interest in me, when she was telling me about the shit with Matthew, I just… I think I felt like it had to happen. Like something I had to get out of my system. I romanticized it at the time; it felt like fate, maybe.”

“I’ve heard the song, Shawn,” Lilly snaps. Shawn blinks hard, but is otherwise still.

“I know. I know you, Lill, I know you’ve been through the whole catalogue, tearing it apart, deciding what was about her.”

He’s not wrong, Lilly thinks bitterly.

“I felt this weird kind of instant relief when I was sure she wanted me. It checked this old box that felt like it was going to stay unchecked forever. I felt so shitty, calling it off with you, but it felt like I was doing what I was supposed to. But it wouldn’t have felt so shitty if it were really what I was meant to do.”

“Do you realize how entitled and selfish you sound right now?”

“Yes.”

The tightness in Lilly’s face relaxes, her expression blank. She wasn’t expecting such an easy response. She wasn’t expecting a real response at all.

“I do. It’s ok if you don’t believe me, I don’t really blame you. I haven’t given you any reason to. But if we have a shot in hell, and fuck, I hope we do, I think you need to hear this. I don’t think you’ll ever stop wondering unless I really lay it all out.”

Lilly swallows a lump in her throat and releases the tuft of hair, sliding the elastic back on her wrist. As she ruffles through his damp hair, Shawn’s eyes slide closed.

“Keep talking,” Lilly whispers.

“So I did it. I ignored how fucking bad I felt after that initial relief. Like, not just bad because of our fight, just… bad. I had done the wrong thing. I made the wrong choice. I do still think it was the choice I was going to make because I’m fucking young and stupid. I just--”

His jaw tenses, the muscle in his cheek twitching. Lilly waits patiently, parting his hair.

“I might’ve always wondered. I’m a hopeless romantic idiot. But at least now she’s not the one that got away anymore. She’s the one I tried it with and realized it didn’t work.”

Lilly closes her eyes and exhales through her nose. She waits for the words to hit all the spots they did before when he tried to talk this out with her, the pain points. Spots that made her snarl and retch and wail and slash at him. Instead they feel like a rising tide around her knees.

“So… what happened?” she whispers.

“For a while we lived on the high of the single. Both our teams were so focused on it and on us. The VMAs and everything, finishing tour. By the time the Grammys came around I think we were both so fucking sick of that song. The backlash that came from all the media attention… it didn’t just go away like we hoped it would. I started laying really low on social. She was getting ready for tour and I was working on the album. Not being focused on the same thing, on promoting one song, it helped put things more into perspective I think. Pulling away started to feel… natural.

“And then the pandemic came. It felt like a time to hit reset. I went down to Miami and felt pretty stupid because everything just got so much worse every day and I was worried about not even being able to leave. But… we were on the same page, basically. It wasn’t fun, but it was… right. Neither of us wanted it. We tried it, it ended. I think… I mean, we don’t hate each other. I don’t think we’ll be like, writing friends again. But maybe eventually we’ll talk again.”

Lilly sucks at her front teeth. “You haven’t talked at all since you left?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

Shawn looks thoughtful. “Not… yet. I don��t think I have anything to say that we haven’t said already. Maybe… I dunno, maybe that was part of it. I always felt like I wanted to talk to you, like I always had stuff to tell you, even stupid stuff. Me and Camila ran out of stuff.”

Lilly shifts to stand in front of him, keeping her gaze on his hair, though her eyes are not in focus. She sifts her hands through it while she thinks.

“I still have more questions. I’m just…”

She trails off. Shawn nods carefully.

“It’s ok. I’m… not going anywhere.”

Lilly’s eyes shut. “I think it’s important for you to understand that when you say things like that, my head immediately comes back with “but you did.” You did go somewhere. You didn’t come back for a long time.”

Shawn pauses, then nods again. Lilly sighs.

“I’m not saying this to punish you anymore. I don’t want that. It’s not doing anything for me. But you need to understand that I can’t just turn it back on. Even when you make me want to.”

Shawn’s expression clears. He turns his head slowly as she continues ruffling his hair, snipping odds and ends. She doesn’t look down at him.

“I do understand. I’ll wait, Lill. I’ll give you whatever you need.”

“And what if I don’t know what I need?”

Shawn looks unconcerned. “Then I’ll wait for you to.”

Lilly continues sculpting his hair like a topiary. He looks older with his hair this way. She thinks it’s not a total disaster, maybe.

“I have another question,” she announces. Shawn waits expectantly.

“If the pandemic didn’t happen… when were you going to end it? When were you going to come to me?”

Shawn’s brows raise, but he looks far away again. “Truth is I almost did a few times. A bunch of times after the holidays. I had this countdown clock in my head because I knew as soon as we finished the album, I wouldn’t just be able to spontaneously come see you, not if I wanted to spend any real time with you. I just kept scaring myself out of it.”

She understands that, especially given the way their first meeting went down.

Lilly internalizes the answer, then turns back to her imaginary notes. Each question has a line through it. Nothing new materializes. She frowns.

“I don’t have any more questions.”

Shawn bobs his head, watching her closely.

“I might have more questions later,” she continues. His expression doesn’t change.

Lilly drops her hands to his shoulders. He blinks but reorients himself, slowly guiding his hands to her hips. She steps closer. His knees widen. As Lilly folds herself over him, pressing her face into his hair, he collapses into her, his forehead against her sternum. Her relief is narcotic. Her head hasn’t been this truly empty since… she can’t remember when.

He smells like her. He’s holding her. He’s breathing her air. He’s hers. Little by little, she’s starting to believe it.

Lilly steps around his legs and lowers into his lap. Their eyes are nearly level. Shawn locks his arms around her back. His nose brushes hers.

“Ok,” Lilly murmurs.

Shawn inhales and exhales deeply. “Ok.”

Lilly’s hands rest on his chest as he kisses her. He doesn’t come at her with fire and brimstone this time. He has nothing to prove. He knows exactly how good it feels. He seems to want to slow down and enjoy this as much as she does. He kisses her long and slow because they have the time. His hands remain mostly still. He seems to feel that she needs the stasis, despite their frenzied night.

Shawn’s kisses whisper to Lilly with each pass -- is this ok? How about this? I don’t want to push it. I care too much to push it. They’re the easiest sentiments to believe when they’re said like this.

Lilly drapes her arms around his shoulders, enjoying the breadth of them, plucking her lips away in shorter bursts until they’re pecking innocently, smiling with closed eyes between points of contact.

“Do you want to check out your hair?” Lilly offers, shifting back in his lap. He’s the most marvelous shade of pink.

“Oh,” he starts, pulling a hand up into the still damp chunky strands, “I can look later. I’m sure it’s great. It feels way lighter, actually.”

Lilly is smug. “You just want to sit here and keep kissing.” His smile is megawatt. She’s blinded.

“Can you blame me?”

Kissing him is… completely lovely. Lilly refamiliarizes herself with him in a way she didn’t yesterday. Her fingers find the tendons in his shoulders, the ridge of his adam’s apple, the little hoop in his earlobe. It’s a redundant kind of flirtation, given that she’s already in his lap, but it might be more for her than for him.

His lips skate down her neck as they break for air. He tucks kisses under her hair over marks she doesn’t remember him leaving. Lilly closes her eyes and exhales slowly, letting herself hate them a little for tearing each other to shreds. It wasn’t like them. Even when they were at their most frantic together, it wasn’t like that.

Lilly feels a lump in her throat. He must sense the change in her breathing. But instead of pulling away to check on her, Shawn pulls her closer, fills all the spaces her body leaves until she’s cradled against him, chest shuddering. He presses his nose into her hair and rocks her softly, back and forth, until he feels her tears dripping off his shoulder down his bare back.

“It’s ok,” he murmurs, the vibration from his voice tremoring through her body, “If it feels good to cry, you should cry.”

Shawn has a way of saying things to her that would bring her no relief to hear them from anyone else. Even though she believes him, and she’s pretty sure he’d sit here into the night and let her cry herself dry against him, she pulls back. He looks her over. She stares at his swollen mouth. He sweeps his thumbs beneath her eyes.

“I’m sick of crying,” she tells him with a short nod. He nods back. His eyes are clear and so warm. His hands sift back into her hair and hold it all, scrunching tumbling, escaping strands like he can’t bear to let any of her go. He kisses her breathless.

“Be gentle with me,” Lilly pleads on a sigh, releasing him only long enough to undress. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

He’s always been patient, even when she could barely stand to let herself be touched by him. He waits until every sound out of her chest is nearly a whine and her fingers curl into his freshly cut hair, cajoling him. When their bodies finally connect, he’s slow and deliberate, the tips of their noses together, their fingers clenched together against her thigh. She doesn’t thrash or force or scrape for him. He doesn’t stop until she’s melted for him, draped over his shoulder, panting with need. She clings, he gives. When she’s finished, she cups the back of his neck and whispers until he’s shaking beneath her.

They slither to the kitchen floor, exhausted, reluctant. He tosses tufts of his shorn hair at her. She pretends to put it back where she cut it off. They order from a local cafe for breakfast and kiss until the food is cold.

+

“So when do you want me to cut your hair?”

Lilly looks up from the Instacart order in progress on her phone. His arm is around her shoulders, his fingers sifting through the dry ends of her gold hair. He said it like he’s reminding her of something she had already asked of him. Her brow furrows.

“You’re not cutting my hair.”

Shawn looks down and mirrors her expression. “What?”

“I’m not letting you cut my hair, Shawn.”

He gawps. “But you just cut mine!”

“Yeah, what the fuck were you thinking? Your hair is like half the reason people like you.”

Shawn’s eyes light up. His grin is so big she thinks his face is gonna split. This time, she’s the one mirroring him.

“You seriously don’t trust me to cut your hair? It can’t be that hard, your hair is straight. I just have to keep it even.”

“But I have layers,” Lilly explains patiently, turning to pull her legs up beside her on the couch, “And my stylist uses thinning shears, which we don’t have. And also… you’re not cutting my hair, Shawn.”

He huffs and pulls away. “Maybe not when you’re awake anyway.”

Lilly looks up from her phone. He’s wearing an impish smile. She kisses it until his lips are soft and pliable against hers, and he’s making the little content sounds she likes.

Shawn gets curious and trails his kisses off down her jaw. Lilly’s eyes are shut. She’s getting ready to crawl into his lap for the third time in 24 hours when her phone buzzes with a news alert.

LA County extended shutdown to all but essential business through July.

They stare at the phone together. Shawn’s brows lift. He rubs a hand over his mouth.

“Jesus,” he mutters.

Lilly chews her lip. July?

July.

Quietly, because they’re both in their own heads, they make their way to the kitchen to continue taking stock of the groceries they have and what they need. Lilly’s head is swimming in numbers -- will the bump in unemployment continue? Is she going to have to ask for her parents’ help with rent? Could this go through the end of the summer, or even longer?

She senses him behind her even through the haze of her own anxiety. He places a hand on her hip, his thumb rubbing the worn cotton of her t-shirt.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, more as a request than a demand. Lilly turns and tucks herself into his arms. He rocks her back and forth on their bare feet, which make a soft smushing sound against the cool tile. He’s sturdy enough to rest her weight against. Her hands clamor up only as far as his shoulder blades. It feels good.

“I know it’s really, really bad,” Shawn says into her ear, “Like, really bad, if they’re shutting down through July. But… I’m glad I’m here with you.”

Lilly rolls her eyes and lifts her head as her hands drift down his back.

“Yeah, seems like your plan is working out nicely. Taking me hostage, and all.”

He seems pleased with her teasing. He nods.

“Yep, got ya right where I want ya,” he admits, shrugging.

Lilly shakes her head and dives deeper into false dramatics. “Luring me here in my vulnerable state. You’re like Dracula. This is Stockholm syndrome. I should know, there’s a One Direction song about it. You’re holding me here against my will.”

Shawn grins again, that same face-breaking grin from before. It warms Lilly through more than the afternoon sun streaming in through the kitchen windows. He presses his forehead against hers.

“Your hands are on my asscheeks right now,” he points out.

She squeezes them. He flinches and somehow smiles even wider.

“Stockholm. Syndrome,” she insists, giggling until his lips meet hers again.

----------

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[ichor-and-symbiosis]

So would the Shig meister ever feel bad for accidentally standing up his crush?

yes yes and yes

_______________________________________________________________________

Rarely did you ever have the chance to enjoy relative normalcy with Tomura. Rarer still was when he made the effort to invite you anywhere at all, much less to your favorite cafe on White Day. You were shocked senseless when he brought it up. The fact that he would fight through his misanthropic tendencies to take you out to a public place meant more to you than he could possibly understand.

If Tomura wanted to put in the effort, then so would you. He would undoubtedly tease you for bothering to wear a nice outfit and putting on makeup, but you were determined to have the last laugh when he got to see the lingerie you were hiding underneath. It would be a lovely day, and you were incredibly excited.

You had waited for a few minutes outside of the cafe, none the wiser for what was to come. He must be a bit busy. Maybe Kurogiri is holding him up. You could wait. Maybe you should go inside and grab a table while you wait.

This naive line of thought continued for twenty minutes. You had texted and called to no avail, and your immediate reaction was one of anxiety. Tomura never mentioned an impromptu meeting with the League. A hasty text to Toga put your mind at ease — we don’t have any missions today, silly! hey, how’s your date? — and now …

Now you were pissed.

You really sat by yourself for half an hour like a naive idiot, tolerating sympathetic looks from the waiter and ignoring all of the couples surrounding you. You really sat there and thought you could pretend your life wasn’t insane and that you weren’t dating an emotionally stunted man. Too good to be true.

And this had to happen on White Day, no less. Not that you ever really gave much thought into commercial holidays, but it was simply the principle of the thing. Tomura wan’t just late or offering half-assed excuses. He never even showed up or bothered to call you.

Well. You were never one to pass up an opportunity for self-care. So what if Tomura ghosted you? Nothing would stop you from ordering an obscene amount of pastries and bringing them back home. You sat your ass down on the couch, fancy clothing and all, and proceeded to binge your favorite movies with the bag of dessert by your side. Sure, you might have spent the first hour crying your eyes out and feeling sorry for yourself, but once numb indifference set in, you finally got comfortable.

You were going to enjoy your evening eating good food and feeling sexy without your boyfriend. Maybe the real boyfriend was the hand you used along the way.

Halfway into a tragically bad zombie movie, Tomura finally graced you with his presence. With flowers, scratching at his neck as he stepped through the portal and staunchly avoided eye contact. The small bouquet of roses was clutched in a death grip, as though he could not figure out if he wanted to immediately disintegrate the flowers from the sheer embarrassment of holding them at all, or if he should bear the brunt of your glare and offer them to you with as much grace as possible.

The silence between you hung in the air, thick and heavy and only slightly funny from the intermittent zombie screeches that emanated from your television. Tomura still refused to look at you, standing awkwardly as he stared at the floor. You sighed and muted the movie.

“I’m going to hazard a guess and assume that Kurogiri thought of the flowers.” Better to break the ice with him. You may be upset, but you were more interested in an explanation. And when Tomura felt like he was cornered, he lashed out. Neither of you needed that right now.

Tomura grimaced and inspected the bouquet with distaste. “He said I needed to show some effort.” He mumbled the next admission. “After my fuck-up.”

“What effort? You went to a flower shop?” He threw you a rueful glare. “Right. The only effort I’m seeing here is the fact that you bothered to shower before coming here.”

“ … but you like when I’m clean.”

You closed your eyes for a moment. This man better not have any intentions of getting near you tonight. “Put the flowers down,” you said exasperatingly, waving a hand towards the coffee table in front of you.

Tomura dropped the bouquet with disinterest. Something about that movement, that zero effort to go out of his way to even find a vase instead of taking the easy way out, reignited your ire all over again. You threw all of your anger into your stare as you examined the bouquet, hoping those stupidly luscious roses would wilt from the weight of your annoyance.

The bag of sweets had dethroned Tomura from his usual spot beside you. It innocently took up his favorite place, and even though he intentionally eyed the space, you folded your arms and refused to move the bag. Your other side was occupied by a mountain of pillows. Let the fool stand.

“Where were you?” you asked, letting him hear the tiredness in your voice. “Toga said there weren’t any missions or meetings today.”

He did not answer. You waited patiently for a response, feeling a twinge of satisfaction as his bangs fell over his face and obstructed his guilty expression. “I got caught up,” he finally replied, raspy and quiet.

“Caught up with what?”

Another period of silence. He rubbed the back of his neck and turned away. “Gaming. Lost track of time.”

Wow. That should not have hurt as much as it did. You knew this was a way for him to forget about reality, to let loose and pretend like everyone in the world was an NPC but him. His tendency to slip away from you was painful. You wanted him to think about you, at least.

“You stood me up to play video games” Tomura opened his mouth. “I dare you to say it’s not a big deal. See how that goes for you.” He shut his mouth. “Thanks for being honest with me, I guess.”

Tomura hovered nearby, unsure of what to do with himself or what to say. You did not want to make it easy for him, and he could feel it. Tension was beginning to build up within him as he scratched at his neck. You stared at the television, letting the muted screen recapture your attention.

“You can leave,” you said, unwilling to look at him.

From your periphery, you could see Tomura flinch imperceptibly. “Don’t be like that, we can still go somewhere.”

“I’d rather not.”

”Why?” he growled, an edge of hysteria coloring his voice. “Why are you being so difficult?”

The words left you before you could stop yourself. “Because I’m really upset, and I don’t want to be around you right now.”

Tomura stilled, hands hovering near his neck. You didn’t need to look at him to know his eyes were wide and panicked. He stepped forward, paused, and clenched his hands into fists, breathing deeply in a bid to tame himself.

A part of you felt guilty for being so harsh. But you said what you said, and it was too late to take it back. Not that you wanted to, anyway. As much as you missed him, you really did feel prickly and unwilling to be near him.

You expected Tomura to call Kurogiri right in front of you and demand to be whisked away. You expected him to throw a tantrum, angrily yelling at you for being cold and cruel.

You did not expect him to march over to you, toss the bag of pastries to the floor, and plop down so close to you that he was practically pressed up to your side as he rested his head on your shoulder. "Tomura — “

“I’m not going anywhere,” he stubbornly said, linking his arm with yours for emphasis.

Bitter words died down before you could voice them. This was all you wanted, to have Tomura spend time with you. You just felt tired at this point. Tired and miffed and in desperate need of feeling wanted.

Neither of you spoke for a while. The television blared on, offering a comfortable buffer between you. Tomura gradually melted into you, until you had no choice but to loosen up your tense posture to support his weight. Every fiber of your being wanted to move away to get a pastry, but even the slightest attempt to shift out of his grasp was met with firm resistance.

He was pouting. You could see the frown lines etched into his face from your vantage point. Several times he would try to shift in such a way that signaled his desire for your attention. He even somehow managed to wrap his arms around your waist and nuzzled his face along your collarbone, hoping for your loving caresses.

“Sorry,” he quietly murmured. And against your better judgement, you felt the last remnants of your anger dissipate. You lightly stroked his hair in answer, enjoying the familiar lavender smell. He had used your shampoo.

Tomura angled his head down just enough to make it obvious that he was staring at your cleavage. You were too amused to stop him from hooking a finger into the collar and pulling it away to give himself a better view. He hummed thoughtfully. “Don’t think I’ve seen this before. Since when do you wear lace?”

“Since I decided I wanted to surprise you after our date.”

He kissed your clavicle in apology, warm lips lingering on your skin as he trailed along your neck and whispered in your ear, “You look really nice.”

A blush colored your cheeks. “I tried.”

Tomura snorted and rested his forehead against your temple. “You could wear a trash bag and I’d still want you.” He ran a hand along your outer thigh, blindly searching for a way to get under your clothing. “The evening doesn’t have to be a total bust, you know. Why don’t you show me your little surprise.”

“Hell no. You’ve got a long way to go before earning that right.”

He sighed, dousing your face with surprisingly odorless breath. “But I showered,” he whined.

“Yup. And your reward is a heartfelt thank you from my nostrils.” You wriggled in his grasp, and before he panicked over the loss of physical contact, you draped your legs across his lap as you made yourself comfortable against the cushions. “Fetch me a pastry, asshole.”

Of course he would be too captivated by the opportunity to stroke your legs to care about your insult. You expected him to ignore you entirely, but much to your surprise, Tomura quickly leaned over to rummage through the bag and plucked out a donut. Your mouth watered in anticipation. He held it between thumb and forefinger as he examined it, then looked at you from the corner of his eyes. “Come here for a sec.”

You sat up out of sheer curiosity. Tomura eyed you for a moment, his expression somehow apologetic and determined all at once. With the donut angled away, he leaned in and kissed you.

It was the tamest kiss you had ever experienced. Just a soft, prolonged brush of his lips against yours, lingering in between interspersed pecks before you finally melted into the kiss. Distantly, you registered his unoccupied hand squeezing your knee. Who knew Tomura could exhibit self-restraint?

You pulled away from each other after one last chaste kiss. His cheeks were tinted red, and you mindlessly reached up to caress the side of his face. Your heart stammered as he leaned into your touch, looking at you with unfiltered longing.

“I’d like my donut now,” you cheekily said.

Tomura narrowed his eyes, brought the pastry between you, and hastily took a giant bite right in front of you.

You proceeded to wrestle him and smother him in pillows for committing what was arguably the worst transgression of the entire day.

And movie night promptly devolved into Tomura figuring out the best way to convince you to show him your surprise.

It took him all but a second to admire the expensive lingerie before he disintegrated everything to dust, and it took him the rest of the week to make it up to you. You were getting that damn date no matter what. And you were going to keep him away from his computer for as long as your body could handle his undivided attention.

And most importantly, you were owed a whole donut.

[klaineccfanficlibrary]

What are your personal favorite short one shots??

LYNNE

I Drove All Night by ItsNotEasyBeingQueen

Kurt and Blaine are back together, but Kurt is in NYC and Blaine is still back in Lima.  A phone call reminds Kurt of a promise he made to never let Blaine feel lonely again, and he hastily makes his way back to Ohio.  See inside for rating details.

~~~~~

Of BFFs and Shoes by  a_simple_rainbow

I decided to mesh together a fuckload of tropes/prompts. From the text to the wrong number, to meeting in an elevator. Mostly it’s funny and stupid. Apologies to anyone who likes high heeled converse all stars.

~~~~~

Is This Love by @hazelandglasz

Prompt: Hi dear, how are you? May I prompt a silly thing? I saw Magnum's commercial, so: Kurt and Blaine first met at the beautiful wedding of a couple of girl friends of theirs (idk why, but they never actually got to be introduced to each other before... and maybe they're the bridesmen? eh, what a coincidence!). Of course, each of them catches a bouquet... *wink wink*

~~~~~

I Scraped My Knee Falling For You by TheNameIsBritney

Middle school music teacher Blaine Anderson meets the new school nurse, Kurt Hummel, in a rather unfortunate way and develops a big crush. Kurt is perfect in every conceivable way, smart, witty, gorgeous... and married.

Or is he?

~~~~~

Covered in Rain by oncetwiceforevr

Blaine plays guitar in a cafe, Kurt’s there one day and Blaine’s smitten.

Can also be found on LJ  or download the [PDF]

~~~~~

MARJAN

I love short one-shots, so it’s hard to choose... Let’s go with some recent one-shots I really enjoyed reading and definitely plan on reading again:

Need me to unzip your files? by daffodilkurt

Blaine’s usual afternoon watching porn doesn’t quite go as planned, and when he goes to get his frozen laptop fixed the universe decides to punish him even further by making the only available assistant both handsome and exactly Blaine’s type...

~~~~~~

The NYADA Vegans Club by @xbeautifulunseenx

A cute guy catches Blaine’s eye and draws him to a meeting of the NYADA Vegans Club. Except Blaine is very, definitely not a vegan.

~~~~~~

Tying you to me by hippohead

It’s been five years since Blaine kissed him goodbye at the airport, and he hasn’t seen him since.  

Somewhere within those five years, though, Blaine became an international pop star. Which is... not exactly ideal; not when you’re trying to neatly pack away your feelings and the fact that you’re still desperately in love with him, and his face is on every billboard in Times Square.  

~~~~~~

Pillow Talk: 6 Moments in Time by InsightfulInsomniac

Six times, in a timeline of Kurt and Blaine’s relationship, that they’ve shared a bed. Six soft little moments in the most private, intimate instances of their relationship, especially surrounding major milestones.

A survey of soft Klaine moments in bed throughout their relationship, from the beginning to marriage and everything in between.

~~~~~~

(Not) just a fling by dizzywhizz

Kurt and Blaine grew up childhood friends, but the summer before senior year, everything changed. Blaine met someone, and Kurt pulled away, and Blaine never understood why. He wanted to talk to Kurt, but Kurt hid behind his Cheerios uniform. Blaine thought it was a lost cause until graduation came around, and he decided to show up at Kurt's graduation party - one last chance to find out what went wrong.

Childhood Friends!Klaine AU with a healthy dose of Oblivious!Blaine and some Cheerio!Kurt

HKVOYAGE

Four times Blaine tried to be a bad boy and one time he succeeded by pavementchaser

It’s in the name, really. Blaine tries to be a bad boy. He's not very good at it.

~~~~~

Four Times Blaine Anderson was Oblivious About Someone Ogling His Ass—and One Time He Wasn't by GSJwrites

The title is pretty self-explanatory. Shameless fetishizing of Blaine Anderson's bodaceous booty.

~~~~~

GROOMZILLA! Or the Five Times Cooper Threw a Groomzilla Fit and the One Time Blaine Did by Petalene

All Cooper wants is for his little brother's wedding to be perfect even if he has to plan the whole thing himself, goddamnit. Fill for the GKM. http://glee-kink-meme.livejournal.com/50716.html?thread=64510236#t64510236

[the-creative-lie]

Friday Nights

pairings: steve harrington x reader

genre/warnings: friends to lovers. idiots in love. some curse words?

word count: 2k

summary: every friday night Y/N helps steve get ready for his dates. what are you talking about of course she’s not jealous

notes: just a small cute fic for my man steve

  You watch amused as Steve fidgets with his clothes, his hair, everything. He keeps his gaze fixed on the reflection in the big mirror in the hall, and you can help but wonder how many days could he go without looking at himself. Maybe you should turn that into a bet.   “Can I ask, once more, why am I here?” you let your head hit the pillow, dropping yourself unceremoniously on his bed and grabbing an old magazine from his nightstand. He turns to you and scoffs when he notices you’re not paying him attention.   “Because,” he sprays some more Farrah Fawcett around, making you cough, “you’re supposed to be helping me get ready for my date with Allison.”   “I still can’t believe you’re going out with Allison Daniels. She 's so boring.”   “She’s not boring. She’s nice,” he complains, the bed dipping down when he sits next to you. He starts putting on his sneakers, the nice ones.   “I’m not saying she’s not nice. But last time I tried talking to her in Math it was like speaking with a piece of wet cardboard.I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said she doesn’t like music. Like, in general. She only listens to the radio because of the weather. The weather, Steve.” 

  “Whatever. At least I have plans. What are you gonna do on this lovely Friday evening, huh?” he finishes tying up his shoes and gives you a pointed look.   “I’m, huh. I’m hanging out with the kids.” You lied. Well, he kinda had a point but he didn’t need to know that. Steve gets cocky when he knows he’s right. Because it never happens.   “Liar.” Oh, no. Busted. “I know that’s not true because Henderson told me they're busy with some nerdy science project tonight.”   “Yeah, I’m helping them.”   “Y/N, you don’t know jack shit about science.”   You grunt, covering your face with the magazine. “Ugh, fine. I’m staying in, okay?”   You wish you could punch that stupid smile off his face. He stands up, doing a ridiculous little twirl like he’s in the middle of a fashion show and poses with his hands on his hips.   “How do I look?” he asks you, flashing a smile and popping up the collar of his denim jacket.   Good, you want to say. Oh, so good.   Forget-about-your-date-and-take-me-right-here-on-your-bed good.   “You look like shit.”   He lets his hands fall at his sides and glares at you. You laugh, wondering if you should end his misery.   “You look great, Harrington. She won’t know what hit her.” You put the magazine down and start putting on your jacket. You know this routine like the back of your hand, because it’s been going on for a couple of months now.   First, Steve calls you saying he needs your help getting ready. He doesn't. Usually you just lay on his bed shit talking whoever it is he has decided to take to the movies or to a diner or whatever his plans are for the night. Meanwhile, he gets his hair puffed and tries to argue with you. He asks you how he looks. You tell him he’s good.   And now, he’s gonna offer to drive you home, because hey, he has to pick up Allison or Megan or whoever anyway, and it’s not like it’s out of his way. And then you’re going to say no, thank you. And walk home. By yourself.   “Hey, you want me to drop you off? It’s on the way.” So predictable, dear Steve. You shake your head.   “I’m good, thanks. It’s a short walk.” You’re not lying. You only live a couple of blocks away. And usually walking by yourself helps you get rid of all the thoughts that plague your mind every friday night after leaving his house.   Listen, it’s not like you were jealous. You’re not Steve’s girlfriend. You’re just, well, his girl-friend. And it’s not like anything will ever happen between the two of you. He sees you as one of the gang, one of the kids even, despite being the same age as him. Steve is protective and he has a big hero complex, you know that. After everything that happened at Starcourt, and that other time with the demodogs, there’s no way he’ll see you as anything else than just someone he has to protect. You must admit though, that you have kicked your fair amount of butt, so you think you can defend yourself, thank you very much.     You wave at Steve as he gets in his car and watch as he drives away, to Allison’s house. You start walking home, turning on your walkman and placing your headphones in your ears. When his hair and his laugh and his face, his stupid face, don’t leave your mind, you have to concede to yourself that, hey, maybe you are a little bit jealous. You often find yourself imagining what it would be like if, just once, you were the girl Steve’s getting ready for, the girl he picks up on his shiny car, the one he takes to the movies.   But you’re not the kind of girl Steve is looking for. You’re just his friend. In front of you, he can be gross and stupid. And you can be the same in front of him. Why would he want to date you when he’s seen you put chopsticks up your nose? You’ve seen the girls he takes on dates. They all look like something the printer would spit out if you were trying to clone Nancy Wheeler and it ran out of ink.   You got home, noticing your dad’s car gone from the driveway. Your parents must have gone out for dinner. They left you a twenty on the counter for some pizza underneath a note with a smiley face.   “Dirty Dancing it is.” ****   Across town, in what's basically Hawkins only slightly fancy restaurant (in reality, an old italian place with shitty lighting and very uncomfortable chairs), Steve is trying his best not to fall asleep. Allison has been going on and on about something for the last twenty minutes, but his mind is elsewhere. 

  "So I ended up buying the same shirt in three different colors." God, she really is boring. He should have listened to Y/N. Y/N is somehow always right about the girls he dates. It would piss him off, but honestly it's a bit impressive.

  "Huh. Smart." He spots Y/N's parents a couple of tables over and waves back at them with a smile. At least someone in this god forsaken restaurant looks like they're having fun. Steve perks up a little and nods at whatever Allison is saying. How is it every word that comes out of her mouth just sounds beige?

  "This pasta is really good. I'm glad I could order it with no sauce, it upsets my stomach, you know?" 

  Wait a minute. If Y/N's parents are here, then that means she's spending friday night by herself. Again. Locked inside, watching some movie. Probably Dirty Dancing. He rolls his eyes at the thought.

  "Have you seen any good movies lately?" he asks, in a last desperate attempt to salvage the wreckage that is this date.

"Hm, I don't really watch movies. I did see a commercial while I was waiting in line at the farmacy the other day. I guess it was funny."

  Oh. My. God. Steve just wants to hit his head against the table. Curse the moment he decided to do this. Oh, how he wishes he was just hanging out with Y/N and the kids now. Or maybe just Y/N, if the little shits are too busy with school. He can't wait until he gets home so he can call her and tell her everything about this new disaster, just like every friday night. Of course he can already hear her smug "I told you so" in his head, and he knows he has a full week of jokes at his expense waiting for him.

  Maybe if the date doesn't drag on for too long he can stop by Y/N's house with some ice cream or some snacks. Give her parents some more alone time. They don't mind him staying over, really. Y/N 's parents adore Steve. That's part of why he loves spending time at her place.

  "Hmm, Steve?" he suddenly snaps back to reality and stares back blankly to Allison, who doesn't look too happy, "Are you okay? You're very quiet."

  "Uh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, you were saying?"

  "Listen, I don't think this is going to work out," she says, standing up. He blinks up at her, dumbfounded.

  "It's just that...you're a little bit boring. Sorry. Thanks for dinner, though. And the ride. Don't worry, I'll just get a cab home." With that, she places the napkin back on the table, grabs her purse and her jacket and leaves. Steve  just sits in silence, confused. 

  Oh, Y/N's definitely going to laugh at him so much after this.

  Something suddenly clicks in his brain. Y/N. Oh Lord, he's so stupid. How could he be so stupid?

  He throws some money on the table, waves at Y/N's parents and practically bolts out of the door and into his car.

***

  The doorbell rings one, two, three times. Gee, when did the pizza delivery boy get so insistent? 

  You open the door to find a very upset looking Steve Harrington. And by upset, you mean angry.

  "Steve, what the hell are you doing here? What happened to your date?" you ask, moving out of the way when he comes inside and drops his car keys on the side table with a loud bang.

  "You ruined it."

  "Excuse me?" you furrow your brows, confused.

  "You heard me. You ruined my date," he waves his hands through his hair nervously a couple of times, all messy and sticking out, long gone the perfectly curated Fawcett hairdo.

  "How exactly did I ruin your date all the way from my couch, Harrington?" you ask, getting angry yourself. This is definitely the last thing you needed tonight.

  "I didn't listen to a thing Allison said."

   "That's hardly my fault, she has the charm of an expired vinegar bottle."

  "I didn't listen to a thing she said because I was thinking about you! I was too distracted thinking about you, and your stupid laugh, and your...your…" he freaks out, pointing at the tv, "your stupid movies. I knew you'd be watching Dirty Dancing! Why do you like that movie so damn much!?"

  "I'm sorry, did you come all the way here to insult Patrick Swayze to my face?"

   "And then she walked out on me. She walked out on me, Y/N."

  "Woah, bruised your ego a bit?"

  "I'm not joking around, Y/N!"

  You blink and raise your hands in surrender. Gee, someone's touchy.

  "I just don't know why you're here, Steve."

  "Don't you get it, Y/N? It's you. It was always you." He takes a few steps forward, dangerously close now. Your breath hitches a little bit, and your mouth refuses to speak. "I am so stupid. I can't believe I didn't realize it until now. Every night I was out there, the only thing I could think of was going back home, picking up the phone and calling you to tell you all about it. You get me, Y/N. And I get you. And I understand if you don't feel the same way but I think we make sense, this makes sense. Of course it's you, and your  dumb jokes and that laugh of yours that breaks me every time I hear it." 

  You're nearly touching now, and all it would take is one more movement. One more step and then-

  "Steve." He closes his eyes, anticipating the worst. He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't know. "You really are stupid. I've been in love with you ever since we met."

  His eyes open in surprise, shocked but delighted, and they close again when you crash your lips against his and he melts into the kiss. You grab him by his t-shirt and pull him down, your heart beating faster and faster. 

  When you finally pull away, you're both out of breath and smiling like idiots. You punch him in the shoulder and laugh.  "So, Harrington, where are you taking me next friday night?"

[maddiethebull]

May I request a scrnario with leviathan with an s/o who's a closet otaku (like she rlly tries hard to hide it from him lmao) and how would he react when he manages to discover her otome/male idol merch (like enstars, tsukiuta or a Idolish7 lololol) hidden in some part of her room/closet

Levi (Obey Me!) - Prompt - Being with a secret otaku MC

Sorry that this took fucking forever, I had my Mid terms which was a ride and a half, but heres the story. I used the power of my own weeb knowledge to write this, hope you love it!! Thank you for making a request

You, Satan, and Asmo were sitting in the living room watching The Real Housewives of Devildom when you all heard an ear shattering seemingly female scream. Asmo jumped like a baby into your arms while Satan, who was off in his own world reading a detective novel since you got so caught up in the show that you weren’t even looking at your Spells notes anymore, looked up and straight to the source. It came from your room. The biggest problem was that you guys had no idea where Lucifer fucked off to so you couldn’t ask him to go check it out. 

Asmo quivered in your arms, saying, “M-MC, go check it out.”

“WHAT? Me? You want me to check it out?” You? The weakest of the bunch??

Satan spoke up, “why don’t we all go check it out, that way we’ll have MC with us to make sure she’s okay and have two demons to protect her.”

Reluctantly, you and Asmo got up to follow Satan’s lead.

-Five hours ago-

Levi was so far ahead of you in Mario Kart : Journey into Devildom ™ that he passed the finish line nearly a minute before you. 

“Hah, normie!!” he said. 

You had been not only defeated, but defeated so badly that you silently declared Mario your arch enemy. You looked to Levi, 

“Hey, that level was really hard, okay?” you said with puppy dog eyes, hoping to avoid his taunts about your gaming abilities. 

“Nahhhh it wasn’t you’re just such a normie that you couldn’t finish it in first place like me.” He said it with a taunting smile and a sly look in those orange eyes. 

You decided to repay his taunts; you stood up and then kneeled, your hand on your heart, 

“Forgive me, your weeb highness.”

You grabbed his hand, you were going to kiss it to really drive the whole weeb highness joke in but he tugged away immediately. He was blushing the color of a fuji apple. He put his wrist over his mouth and avoided eye contact, he was slightly embarrassed from your joke, but it was you grabbing his hand that sent the flush to his cheeks. Of course, he would never admit that to you, so he said, 

“H-hey, you don’t have to make fun of me.”

“You just called me a normie, Levi,” you said, looking up at him with a beaming smile. 

He blushed more, “G-get up MC, it’s w-weird l-looking at you like that.” In a desperate attempt to hide his blushing cheeks, he wasn’t even looking at you now. This is why you loved teasing him back, he would always become so flustered when you teased him back and seeing him blush was the cutest thing you could ever imagine.  No matter how much Levi called you a normie or made fun of you for being bad with the video game controller, you never turned down a chance to give him a taste of his own medicine. He didn’t even know the best part. You were totally an otaku! Just like him – well, maybe not just like him, you left your room much more than him and another tiny detail is that you had gone to the ends of the earth to hide your otaku side from everyone you came into contact with. 

“Hah,” Levi laughed, “when you were being all butthurt about being a normie, you sounded like Suki from My Heartless Father Threw Me Out At Birth But It’s Fine Because He Died and Left Me With A Fortune But My Angry Mother Tried To Kill Me But I Killed Someone, Who Is It? When her heartless father threw-”

“I understand Levi.”

Realizing that maybe the name was a little too forth-giving to the plot, he tried a different reference just so he could see you not understand it. 

“Okay what about this one, you sound like SHEba at the final battle when she gave a speech to the dog-humanoid overlord.”

“Pfft, no I didn’t, she was way more worked up okay. And that was the same day that she found out her father was the villain so that’s two people betraying poor SHEba. Also, what was with the ending, was that a set up for a sequel or something? I think that a sequel would be dragging it on too much just like when ‘Did She Do It?’ came out after ‘Do What I Say! : Should We Have A Courtship?’”

Levi was looking at you, mouth hanging open, “Uhhh MC, you’ve seen ‘Bone Catcher: The Planet of the Dogs’? AND ‘Do What I Say!’????”

“Oh, uh, no, not really, only a little bit of it. Just some snippets because you were talking about it so I watched like five minutes, not really my thing………”

“ASDFGHJKL only this meme can describe how I’m feeling.” It was a deep fried meme written in ancient devildom language over the picture of what seemed to be a demonic pikachu with its mouth open. 

You sigh, “Levi I can’t read that.”

“Hm, maybe a NORMIE (lolololol)  like you shouldn’t read it!”

You laughed, “okay, Levi.” 

To this he smiled, you didn’t know why but he smiled nonetheless. In truth, he was just happy that he could have a conversation with you like this. You were the only person he’d ever met that went to such lengths to hang out with him, I mean Satan sometimes came around to watch dramas and Mammon came around to ask for money, but you didn’t want that. You wanted to hole up with him, hear his voice, see his smile, play the games you weren’t accustomed to. You just wanted to be with him and that was the most profound realization that came upon Levi after you two first began hanging out like this. You were his first best friend and his first romantic interest that wasn’t 2D, so it was a big deal when you came to hang out in his room.

He didn’t want you to leave so he spoke,

“So, wanna play another game so you can lose?”

“Very funny,” you said, giving him a smirk.

“For reals though, I have this new game and it’s a two player.”

You stretched your arms out as you stood up from where you were sitting on the ground, “maybe tomorrow, I have a big test coming up in Spells class and I really need to study for it.”

He looked down to the controller that was still in one of his hands, “oh, okay, just do your normie studying but tomorrow you have to be here to play it with me, like blood oath promise me.”

“I feel like a blood oath is a little too serious for this situation, pinky promise,” you said holding out your pinky.

He couldn’t help but blush at the thought of touching your hand again. 

“Pffft, w-what a lame normie thing to do, l-let’s do a pinky promise t-then.” 

“Okay,” you linked your pinkies together and looked into his eyes that were surrounded by a rose color that crept up to his entire face, “I pinky promise you that I will be here tomorrow so I can be your player two.” 

He blushed even harder, “okay, w-whatever.” And you were on your way out, but just before you opened the door, “oh, by the way, I lost my headphones at R.A.D., can I borrow some earbuds for tonight?”

“Hmph, okay but JUST for tonight, the premiere of Generic Anime Name is gonna be on Devflix tomorrow morning and I can’t miss watching that.”

And with that, you were off to study in your room until Asmo yanked the headphones from your ears,

“Hey MC, guess what show is on?”

“Asmo I’m trying to study,” you put Levi’s headphones in your pocket as to avoid further ear pulling. 

“But it’s ‘The Real Housewives of Devildom!’ Remember how you promised me last week that you would watch the new episode with me?”

“Asmo, not now, I need to study for this test

“MCCCC, you SAID you woulddddd you prommmisssed”

“Ugh fine but only if we bring Satan along to help me study during commercials.”

“Yayyyy!” 

Meanwhile notification beeped on Levi’s D.D.D.,

“As a present we’ll be releasing the premiere of Generic Anime Name a little early for our loving fans

Levi rushed to your room and walked right in, not bothering to knock. It was a good thing you weren’t there because you would’ve punched him in the face if another person had come in while you were studying. He wondered for a second where you had gone, but that wasn’t the issue at hand, he HAD to find his headphones. He rummaged through almost your entire room. ‘Where would they be?’ ‘Maybe she dropped them and kicked them under the bed?’ So, he went looking under your bed and found tons upon tons of anime and otome merch. He saw a body pillow of Gavyn from Mr. Passion: Monarch’s Decision and that’s when he lost all composure and let out a scream. About five minutes of digging through your stacks of posters and T-shirts and yet another body pillow, the door was nearly busted open by you, Asmo, and Satan. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He was hurt, really hurt you could tell because he didn’t even have the strength to call you a normie. He figured you didn’t tell him because you didn’t think he was cool enough or hot enough like Gavyn. Maybe you even didn’t like him at all. 

“Uhhhhh, I’m going to leave now, bye,”Asmo said, sprinting out of the awkward situation and Satan soon followed seeing that there wasn’t some ghost wandering about in your room. 

“Levi-”

“Are we friends?” This caught you off guard, why the hell would he think you weren’t friends? He was your best friend and at the same time your biggest crush. 

“Of course, Levi, we’re friends,” your head hung low, you felt slightly ashamed of hiding this side of you from him. 

“Then why did you hide all of this from me?”

“Because I was scared of how you would react. In the human world, there was a guy I used to really like, he was my only friend at the time, but when I showed him these things, he stopped talking to me; he wouldn’t even look at me in the hallways. I felt so alone. He thought it was weird and childish and- and he said I was creepy. I just-” tears began rolling from your eyes from remembering this and realizing that Levi was nothing like that guy. Levi, even though he didn’t show it much, actually cared about you and he was even into some of the same things you were but you were just too damn scared of something like that happening again.

You choked back your tears, “I just didn’t want to lose you.” 

He stood up and walked over to you, “MC, you don’t need to hide from me… I would never stop talking to you, even if you were into stuff I didn’t like. I just like being around you and having a friend to play video games with and watch anime with and you listen to me talk about Ruri-chan and- and,” his voice shook. Now both of you were crying as he pulled you in for a hug, you were both such softies that you couldn’t help but get worked up over your emotions. Neither of you wanted to lose the other, and Levi didn’t want you to feel like you needed to hide any part of you from him because, after all, you were his player two. 

“Y-you should never leave your player two behind,” he said with his face buried in the crook of your neck. Lucifer gave a passing look in your room when he got back to see that you were alright but saw two emotional weebs crying and hugging instead. 

“MC, Levi, I beg of you, whatever it is that you’re doing, just finish and go to sleep.”

You and Levi separated but instead of going to his room, Levi stayed with you to watch that new anime premiere episode. You shared the headphones even after you nodded off to bed and Levi was just sat next to you, listening to whatever was on his computer while smiling gently at you, studying your features as you lay peacefully asleep. Finally around five in the morning you were both asleep as Levi unconsciously held you close, in his arms, never wanting to let go of his Player Two.

—————————————————————————————————-

[babyspiderling]

The Moonwalker and the Time-Traveler Prologue

California, 2020

 “Ms. L/N, I suggest you wake up for my class if you want to pass this course.” I blink up at my professor, it seems that I fell asleep during history class again. “I’m sorry Professor Berkley, I was up all last night with my roommate tinkering all night.” At that he softens, a grandfatherly look in his eye. “Oh Y/N, I understand, but if you truly want to be a history major, you have to stay awake! I will not simply give you a free pass while trying to adjust, just please, try to stay awake in my class.” Standing, I nod. “Yes sir. I’ll do my best.” After this, I am dismissed and head back to my dorm room to hopefully catch a nap. 

Kicking the door shut, I move to collapse onto my bed, but am blocked by whatever my engineering major roommate has built in the dorm for his latest project. “Seriously dude? Don’t you have a lab for this kind of stuff?” I kick off my shoes and do my best to move around it, finally, truly collapsing onto my bed. I fall asleep quickly, hopefully revisiting the dream I had during class. 

Lord knows how much later, I wake up to my roommate continuing to tinker on his project. Grumbling under my pillow, “Danny, don’t you have a lab for this shit? Why do you have to do it here, I’m sleeping in classes because of this!” He sheepishly lifts his head up to respond. “Uh, well, I uh… It’satimemachine.” Snapping my head up, I question “It’s a what?” Once again he looks shy and guilty. “It’s a, uh, Time Machine. Or at least that’s what I’m wanting it to be. I’m still working on it.” Well, I’m definitely awake now. “So, like, what’s the problem?” Finally putting down his tools, Danny turns to me, “It should work. I ran the simulations and used the one that worked. It’s just… not connecting I guess.” Glancing at the clock, it’s getting late. “Look Danny, I’m going to clean up some of my stuff. Go get some food. I know you haven’t eaten yet.” With a defeated sigh, Danny agrees and leaves the room. I slip into a pair of shorts and an old David Bowie tour shirt I had found at a thrift store. Picking up things here and there, folding abandoned pieces of laundry, I hum and bop around the room, dancing along to “Working Day and Night”, practicing turns and isolations to the beat. Taking a deep breath I prep and spin as fast and as long as I can, but my foot slips out from under me. I tumble to the floor, tripping over some cord. Oh well, it’s probably Danny's “mood lighting”, I plug it in and decide to check out the “Time Machine”. “Ground Control to Major Tom! Prepare for lift-off!” I press random buttons, dicking around and typing 1984, then some other buttons. “Huh, sucks it really doesn’t work. It’d be cool if you really could time travel.” Once again I trip over Danny’s junk on the floor of the project and slam into one last button I had yet to press. On the way down I hit my head, and the world went black as a whirring sound filled my ears. 

Waking up, I find myself in a room about the size of mine, decorated much like my side of the dorm, with a funky retro feeling to it. “Danny, this isn’t funny, I get it, I’m gullible for believing the machine was real. Now how the Hell did you change all this so quick… and get rid of the machine?” I continue searching the room for Danny, and realise that the sun had already risen hours ago. I may have been out for longer than I thought, and come crashing into a body. Awesome! Now I can really teach that boy a lesson for pulling that. “Hey, what are you doing in my dorm? Nice shirt by the way, I was at the Anaheim show a couple months ago. That’s where you got the shirt, right?” I blink at the guy my age, still processing the amount of denim and hair products he has decided to use for the day. “What? Oh, uh, my shirt. Wait, did you say you saw him in Anaheim a couple months ago? What year are you from?” He knits his brows together. “1984. Are you ok? Did you get a bad hit or something? Do I need to call someone for you?” I space myself from him, the stimulation of this whole situation too much. “No, no I’m ok. What’s today’s date?” His eyes are still filled with concern as he replies with January 26th 1984, and that I’m still at University of Redlands, just 36 years before I attend. “Wait, January 26th, why does that sound so familiar? I hear Beat It blare down the hall and I can practically see the light bulb above my head. “Do you know how to get to the Shrine Auditorium?” 

We zip down the highway on Tyler’s motorcycle, making a trip down to L.A. He had me explain my whole ordeal to him before he just drove me to a random concert venue. It took a bit to convince him, but the second I pulled my smartphone out he was on board. He pulls off to a strip mall and helps me dismount. “Wait, why are we at a mall? I need to get to that venue before security secures it.” He just rolls his eyes. “If you want to get in and stay in without too much attention, you need to look a little bit different. Time to fit in.” He drags me into store after store, and I finally piece together a “Bad” inspired outfit. A black crop top slips off one shoulder, leather pants pull tight around my legs and hips, a blood red leather jacket drapes my shoulders, and matching leather boots clutch my feet. “Tyler, this is too much. I can’t even pay you back.” He rolls his eyes and pays for the clothes, letting me keep my own hoops and rings. “Look, just meeting a time traveler is cool, dressing one is even better. When you get back home and you still want to pay me back, we’ll figure it out. Let’s get you to the moonwalker himself.” 

As we pull into the parking lot for the venue, there isn’t another soul in sight. “Hey, here’s my address, if you ever want to mail me, or just let me know that you’re doing ok.” He hands me a slip of paper, and I hug him tightly. “Thank you Tyler, I am forever in your debt. If you’re anywhere near the university in 2020, let me know.” With that, he rides back home into the sunset, and I sneak into the venue before security shows up. 

It’s a good thing I like the song Billie Jean, because I have heard it about 72 times in the last hour. During sound check alone I almost lost my mind, with just the baseline intro playing for 30 minutes. As I hear the cue from the director that it is time to actually film the commercial. I hear “Take One!” in the distance and I ditch my jacket behind a stack of crates, my phone hidden in the pocket. I find the side entrance of the stage as take 3 is anounced. I crouch down in a runners position at take 5, launching myself at take 6. Michael nears the pyrotechnic and I slam my body into his as it goes off, now missing him by inches. There are screams of terror and shock as we fly through the air, now spun so that I land on my back, Michael on top of me. His brothers quickly help him up and off of me as I am seized by security, doing my best to put as little weight on my now injured ankle as possible. I raise my hands in surrender, trying to think my way out of this. “Look! Look, I can explain all of this, including how I knew that this take wasn’t going to go well. Let me explain and I will never try to contact any of you again!” Everyone around me exchanges glances, deciding whether to trust me or not. Tito steps forward, his eyes full of scrutiny. “Alright girl, explain.” I sigh and grimace in pain. “I can’t do it out here. Too many people. And my evidence of my claims are in my jacket backstage.” He glances back at Michael, nodding in response to his younger brother. I am escorted backstage, am allowed to sit down to relieve my ankle, and I start my story. “I’m from the future, 36 years in the future to be a bit more specific. I’m not crazy.” Michael crouches down in front of me, “If you’re really a time traveler I would love to talk about the future with you!” He’s nudged and given a look from his older brothers, and his smile is dimmed a bit. “But if you’re from the future, wouldn’t you know songs I haven’t released yet?” I nod my head, but I get hit with the issue of Thriller already being released and the “Bad” sessions not yet started for at least another 6 months, if not more. I flip through the collection of Michael songs I know by heart, trying to find one he’s recorded but not yet released. “Oh! I know about “Love never felt so good”! The one you recorded with Paul Anka! I can sing it for you!” I start at the chorus, my brain too frazzled to remember it’s entirety. Everyone else who knows about the song exchanges looks, one brother even shouting questions of how I knew it. “It’s on my phone, and I’m from the future. All your music’s been released. Well, almost all of it. There’s still tracks from your upcoming session that I have yet to find. Here, I can show you.” Lifting myself from my seat, I reach to retrieve my jacket from behind the crates. Everyone watches me with baited breath, wanting to see what the time traveler will pull out next. I pull out my phone and search for the Xscape album. I press play on the original track and Michael's voice rings out from the speaker. I switch it up to “Working Day and Night”, what I was listening to before I got here. 

“Look, I can play you anything you’ve already recorded. I just can’t play you anything you haven’t done yet. Those are the rules.” Michael escorts me back to his dressing room to ask me questions about the future since I am no longer seen as crazy. “Are there flying cars ? What about people living in space? Are there aliens?” I giggle at his excitement. “Well, we do have people living in space, it isn’t commercialized yet, so you and I couldn’t go. We don’t have flying cars, but we do have self driving ones. And there are no known aliens yet. Music is accessible though. If I had any service in 1984, I could play you any song any time from anyone. I could listen to “Wanna be Startin Somethin’” for 3 days straight if I wanted to. All I’d have to do is type it in and press play.” His eyes sparkle in awe of the future. He opens his mouth to ask more questions, but Jermaine and another man enters the room before he can get a word out, “Come on Mike, we need to finish the commercial. This is an EMT we had on site, he’s here to fix her ankle.” As Michael leaves his seat, I grab his hand. “Please, don’t let them turn the pyrotechnics back on. Please.” He nods and pats my hand before leaving the room. The EMT removes my new boots and my ankle swells before my eyes, no longer constrained in the tight leather. We make small talk as he works until the commercial is done recording. 

[princesscaliban]

On Set with Sam | ♥

I had 3 different ideas for this but this one got the furthest. I must tag @mschfavngz​ ♥ 

I guess there could be a part 2 if anyone wants it. I’m SUPER into this.... subject. 😉

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

The Sabrina Netflix Instagram was updated with one story: a picture of Kiernan and Gavin both kissing Sam on the cheeks with a little red font ‘LOOK WHO’S BACK ON SET’.

The fandom went crazy with Caliban back on set right at the beginning of filming the next part. Every theory was brought to life but every Sabrina cast member kept silent.

Kiernan’s story was then updated: a picture of her sad with Sam behind her, also sad ‘I just miss @kleoshane_mua & wish she was here’.

“She’s at my apartment, she’s just sleeping.” Sam explained, “The jet lag and she hasn’t felt good.”

“But I got her a gift.” Kiernan smiled, “A super, special, surprise gift.”

“I told her to come visit today.” He shrugged, “She said she was going to sleep.”

“I will facetime her until she comes to see me and only me.”

Sam laughed, “I told her that you would want to see her.”

“And she naps? While I have a GIFT?”

“She has a… surprise too…” He smirked, heading to wardrobe as Kiernan was called to set. “I’ll try and get her here later.”

Kiernan: WOW I am so lonely on set it would be neat if you were here.

Kleo: There’s 80 people on set, I highly doubt you’re lonely. 😉

Kleo: We’re in the same apartment place as you, so just come by on your way home.

Kiernan: WHY DIDN’T SAM TELL ME THAT? I’m offended. Tell me the room and I’ll be there right when I’m done.

Kleo: Because he���s a guy and he doesn’t think it’s important.

Kleo: When it’s very important because this means SO many pizza parties while rewatching Lizzie McGuire with Abbey.

Kiernan: On another note, I told him I have a gift for you (I’ve ruined the surprise) but he said you have a SECRET SURPRISE FOR ME. 🤔

Kleo: 🤷‍♀️

Kiernan stood impatiently behind the cameras watching Sam film a scene with Gavin. The director couldn’t even cut the scene before she started questioning him.

“You’re at the same apartment place as me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Both guys were wrapped with towels and handed robes as they were soaked from the previous scene. “I don’t know.”

“Well you’re not invited back to your own apartment after this because I’m going there.”

“I’m going on lunch.”

“And I’m going on lunch and you’re not invited.” Gavin pointed at her.

“I’m invited over you.”

“I’m invited over everyone.” Chance chimed in, not even knowing what he was talking about. “Where are we going?”

“Sam’s apartment on lunch. Kleo is there and I need to see her.”

“And I just want to go because Kiernan wants to go.”

“And I’m going because it’s my apartment?” Sam laughed, “I’m also going to shower off this… goo.. and change into dry clothes.”

“Me too and you’re definitely not invited to that.” Gavin joked, smacking Sam’s butt as they ran to the trailer area.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Kiernan: There’s an entire van of people headed to your apartment right now because I said I was going and everyone else said they were too.

Kiernan: So I hope you’re awake.

Kiernan: We also brought Chinese food.

“I told you, she’s asleep.” Sam repeated, “You’re all in for a surprise now.”

“I thought it was just a surprise for me?”

Sam shrugged, pulling keys from his pocket, “It’s a surprise for everyone.” He unlocked the door and an apartment mirroring Kiernan’s was there. No decorations, just furniture and luggage. 

Cuddled up in a ball on the couch was Kleo, fast asleep, covered in a huge blanket she had bought Sam for set but soon after kept for herself. 

Kiernan, Gavin, Ty, Chance and Abbey not-so-quietly followed him in; putting bags of Chinese food on the empty table. 

“Kleo, babe. You’ve got visitors.” Sam said, sitting down on the couch next to her head, “Might want to wake up.”

“Who?”

Five different people said, “me” before she opened her eyes and smiled, “Hi guys.”

“Oh my god I know your secret.” Abbey almost screamed before covering her mouth. “I just saw something.” She mumbled between her fingers.

Everyone began looking around before Kleo started talking, “Ignore the fact that I’m in workout clothes and I haven’t been working out.”

“As if we all wear workout gear to workout.” Kiernan laughed.

“I also have gotten sick all morning and haven’t showered since we left Aus.” Kleo reached for Sam’s hand and he pulled her to stand up. “But—“

The blanket dropped and everyone gasped at her stomach, sticking out, clearly showing she was pregnant.

“Surprise.” She smiled, unintentionally grabbing her belly. “This is why I’m tired and sick.”

“Oh my god.” Was all Kiernan could get out before running across the room and hugging her.

“I saw the prenatal vitamins on the kitchen counter.” Abbey laughed, lining up to hug her next.

“How the hell did you two keep this a secret?” Gavin asked, “You’ve even posted pictures and stuff.. how..”

“A lot of old pictures that had never been on Instagram.” Kleo laughed, “I just got past the point of looking like I gained weight. I finally look like I’m pregnant. Some pictures I can get away with an oversize hoodie and still post it.”

“Oversize hoodie..” Sam laughed, “She takes my clothes.”

“Because you’re half of the reason I need new clothes.” She grinned, making her way to the table full of Chinese food. “Please tell me this was intentional.”

“Sam kept suggesting it…” Chance said, “I just thought he was craving the Chinese food.”

“Fried rice and eggrolls are all I ever want.”

“And anything with cheese.”

“Anything. With. Cheese.” She agreed, “The heartburn is worth it.”

“Were you just planning on keeping this a secret for as long as you could?” Ty laughed, “Because it’s.. obvious..”

“I was going to go to set tomorrow and see who noticed.”

“Everyone would notice.” They all laughed, “Miranda, Lucy and Michelle are going to freak out.”

“Lucy joked about it today when I said you were sick.” Sam remembered, “She said I had probably knocked you up. And I laughed… and then left the makeup trailer because I didn’t know what to say.”

“You should have just told her she was right.” Kleo laughed, “Imagine the look on her face.”

Kiernan tried to mimic the face the all knew Lucy would have made before they all burst out laughing.

“Little bean is the size of an orange now, weighs two ounces and is growing hair and eyebrows.” Kleo read off her app that she checked every day, “Five months to go…” She groaned, “Less morning sickness and trips to the bathroom. Thank god.” 

“She peed fourteen times on the flight here.” Sam said, “She finally had to just tell the flight attendant she was pregnant because she seemed like a psycho.”

“I had to beg the last time because we were about to land but I was also about to pee in a water bottle.”

“She had an actual water bottle out and told me she was going to use it.”

“It’s not like you can hold it. It’s there and it has to come out. There’s no muscles to hold pregnant pee.” 

Sam laughed to himself and it seemed like Kleo immediately knew what he was thinking about, “Don’t…”

“We were leaving dinner one night and she.. she…” He could barely talk as Kleo just covered her face, “I made a joke about something dumb, it wasn’t even funny. And I got in the car and she never got in the car.”

“I was peeing by the car.” She told on herself, “I squatted down right there, in the parking lot, thankful I had a dress on and I peed.”

Sam turned his phone to everyone and pushed play, “Kleo babe, what just happened?”

Kleo tried to push him away as she got into the car, laughing at herself as she had just had to take her underwear off. “Sam I want to kill you.”

“What happened though?” He held the door open and she sat in the passenger seat with her arms crossed, “Just tell me.”

“I peed in the parking lot.”

“The parking lot of a restaurant.”

“It’s your fault.” She pushed him away and closed the door. He filmed the small wet spot of pavement before going to the driver seat to pester her more. “Stop filming me, drive home.”

“Babe, babe, babe. Just. I can’t. You just went down and peed.”

She rolled her eyes at him, “Because your pull out ga—“ the video cut and everyone laughed. 

“There’s so many videos and pictures I wish I could just post everywhere.” He scrolled through his camera roll: Kleo crying at a coffee commercial, Kleo eating french fries dipped in mustard, Kleo asleep on the bathroom floor, Kleo using his legs as some sort of pillow to go to sleep, a video of her holding a little pair of Converse and crying, her weird clothing selections and ways of falling asleep and the last sonograms they had gotten.

The black and white pictures were barely recognizable aside from a head and a body. “But we don’t know if we want to find out what it is.”

“I have thought about that a lot. But I don’t think I could do it.” Abbey said, “I’m too crazy about things. I would want to organize and have everything set and ready to go.”

“Same.” Kiernan agreed, “But for some reason, you two are the perfect people to not find out.”

“You’re so quirky.” Gavin joked, “So hipster.”

“Everything white.” Ty said, “No color.”

“No color at all.” Kleo laughed, “White and maybe ivory. Wooden toys. Gender neutral names. No pain medicine. At home birth. In the bath tub.”

“Cloth diapers. Organic food. All recycled everything.” Sam added, “Except for the fact that you want to be at a hospital and you want medicine.”

“Oh drug me up, I don’t want to feel a thing.” She laughed, “My cervix becoming the size of a bagel is something I don’t want to feel, ever.”

“A bagel?!” Kiernan asked, “I knew it would stretch but a bagel!?”

“That’s what the birthing coach said.”

“Awww, little Sammy and Kleo at birthing class. That’s precious.” Abbey said, “Did you do the whole breathing thing and stuff with a workout ball?”

“Actually, yes. It was really boring, then gross when they showed the video and then I couldn’t stop thinking about Cinnamon Toast Crunch so I told Sam to listen.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

One by one they surprised the rest of the cast and crew. They were the only ones to know aside from their families and the last person Kleo toured with as a makeup artist.

Sam got a punch in the shoulder from Lucy for not telling her she was right earlier in the day. 

Miranda couldn’t stop hugging Kleo, kissing her head and telling her she was, “glowing.”

Michelle thought it was a joke and so did a few others. Kleo proved them wrong by pulling up her oversize shirt to prove it was her real stomach. She almost peed on set once from Gavin shoving pillows in his shirt and claiming he was also pregnant by Sam, but she made it to a bathroom just in time.

As they all filmed she fell asleep everywhere. In a dressing room, back stage, on a set they weren’t using and on Sam’s lap while everyone played cards.

@kleoshane_mua: Sam + Kleo = ❤️

-@kiernanshipka: I can’t wait to meet the little demon baby of hell. 💕

-@gavinleatherwood: I’m mad that @samcorlett didn’t get me pregnant first.

-@ty_cotton: I have high hopes that #Mabrina follows in your footsteps.

-@tatigabrielle: I am obsessed with your new outie belly button. 😍

-@chance_perdomo: A little Duke or Duchess of Hell. Perfect. 😈

“I posted a picture and I’m putting my phone on do not disturb.” Kleo yawned, crawling on the couch.

“That would be why my phone is going off every thirty seconds.”

“Yes, Daddy.” She nodded into his chest, wiggling her way to get comfortable on top of him. “You smell good.”

“I showered?”

“I like it.” She shoved her head into his chest, “You’re comfy.”

“I’m glad?” He just watched her as she finessed her leg between his, her hand up his shirt, “Better than when I was covered in goo?”

“Way better.” She snuggled against him, her face in his neck, “You smell so good.”

“You said that.”

“I know but.. “ She took another sniff, “It’s different. It’s the pregnancy nose. Second trimester. I also haven’t felt sick in a while but my boobs hurt so bad.”

“They’ve grown.” He laughed, “Are you comfortable yet?”

“No.” She giggled into his neck, “I’m not.”

“Okay?”

“Second trimester.”

“Second trimester?” He repeated after her, “Do you have to pee?”

“No, that hopefully will go away for while.”

“Is the baby moving a lot?”

“Well not right now.”

“Does your back hurt?”

“No.” She kept giggling, her hand wandering around his chest, down to where his sweatpants began. “They call the second trimester the Honeymoon Period.”

“There’s no way anything is happening like that.” He stopped her hand, “You could, wait.. couldn’t you cause contractions?”

“Not this early.” Sam looked down and her bottom lip was sticking out, “Nothing bad can happen, I promise.” She shook her hand from his grip and ventured further down, “And there’s no way you’re telling me no right now.”

“No.” He tried to push her hand off of him but she gripped onto the top of his pants.

“I’ve had to look at you all day shirtless…” She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, “..wet…” She pushed herself up to straddle his lap, “…and being all moody with your lip biting and eye rolling..” Her nails dug into his scalp, “And the groaning when you were tied down…” 

Kleo was in his face, biting her own lip just thinking about the sounds he made all during that specific scene. “There was a reason I left early.”

“Oh do tell..” He smirked up at her, grabbing onto the back of her legs. 

Without missing a beat, “I was so turned on.” She said, sitting up, intentionally resting her weight on his hips. 

“Don’t say stuff like that around the baby.” He joked, rubbing her stomach. “But it is a little in the way.”

“I don’t think. You understand.” She took a deep breath, squeezing a part of his t-shirt in her hand, “That I will do anything. And I mean, anything, right—

“Woah, woah, woah, calm down momma bear.” Sam laughed, “You tell me what to do and we can do it.”

Without even answering she grabbed his face and pulled herself down to kiss him, baby bump slightly hindering how close she could get but she didn’t even care. All that mattered was that she could feel him pushing his own pants off before he grabbed onto hers.

[sleepypanda27]

Accidents

Bucky Barnes x reader Summary: It's a calm night at the compound, but suddenly the peace and quiet is disturbed by your scream. Thinking you are in danger Bucky runs into your room. After that night you’re escaping him. Sam is determined to resolve this ridiculous situation between you and Bucky. Will he make things worse or will it actually help? Warnings: Nudity, fluff, it’s just a silly fic Words: 2,022

It was a calm night at the compound. Everyone was doing their own things. Some were in the living room, watching movies and catching up on the series, others were in the gym or their own rooms.

Bucky was on his way to his room when he suddenly heard a blood-curdling scream coming from your room. Not thinking much he ran into your room, convinced someone was in there and you were in danger. The room was empty, but then he saw a light coming from the bathroom and went there.

“Y/n, are you alright?” Bucky burst into the room, frantically looking around it. Ready to fight whoever was there. His gaze stopped at your naked body standing near the shower, understanding that maybe he made a big mistake and you weren't in actual danger.

“Bucky?” Your head spun around so fast you got dizzy.

“Y/n?” He looked down your body, slightly tilting his head, confused by the whole situation. His mind going completely blank.

“Bucky!” You tried to cover your body as much as you could. “Get out!” You screamed, quickly wrapping yourself in a towel.

“Sorry,” He closed his eyes with his palm turning around, bumping into the door frame before scrambling out. “I'm so sorry. I heard a scream and thought you were in danger.” He tried to explain from your room. “It sounded like someone was about to murder you.”

“Well, I'm not in any danger. There's a big spider in my shower. I hate spiders.” You walked out of the bathroom, bright red from embarrassment, tightly clutching your fluffy robe to your chest.

“Do you want me to take care of it...since I'm already here?” He asked still turned with his back to you.

“Yes, that would be really helpful.”

“Can I turn around?”

“I'm not naked...anymore.”

He slowly turned around to face you, light crimson tinting his own cheeks. “If that makes you feel better, I didn't see anything. Everything happened so fast my mind blacked out.” He tried to make the situation less awkward.

“It's alright, I'll somehow try to live it down.”

He took care of the spider taking it out of the shower and carried it outside. You fell down in your bed, feeling embarrassed you screamed in your pillow, considering never leaving your room ever again and not seeing anyone for the rest of your life.

Next two weeks were awkward, to say the least, you didn't know how to look Bucky in the eyes again or how to talk to him. Whenever you two were left alone in a room you made an excuse that you had to go somewhere or do something urgently, sprinting out as fast as you could.

“What's with you?” Sam asked, noticing Bucky being more quiet than usual. They had finished their daily run and were walking back to the compound.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, you can tell us. What's bothering you?” Sam didn't let go, urging him to talk.

“Ugh,” Bucky dragged his palms over his face in frustration. “That incident with Y/n and the spider in the shower.”

Sam started laughing remembering it. “That was gold.”

“Yeah, that one. It was two weeks ago and since then we haven't spoken like we usually do, it's awkward. I think she's escaping me.”

“Dude, of course, she's escaping you. She's embarrassed. You saw her naked and didn't do anything.”

“Like what? What was I supposed to do? ”

“I don't know, tell her about your feelings. Confess your undying love.”

“Are you on something right now? That would be the most inappropriate time to do that.” Bucky frowned.

“I know, but wouldn't it be funny though?” Sam laughed, earning a punch from Bucky. “Ouch.”

“Have you tried talking to her about it?” Steve asked.

“I tried. Whenever I start a conversation with her, she says she has to go somewhere. Like for instance, yesterday she said she has to go walk the dog. She doesn't even have a dog. I don't know what to do.”

“Maybe she's just busy.”

“Don't be so gullible Stevo. She probably doesn't know how to act around you now. She's confused. You two need to talk it out. We all know you saw everything. You walked out of that room all red and baffled and when we asked what happened you just held up your hands and said 'spider' and walked away.” He stopped in his tracks gripping Bucky's shoulder like he received some kind of revelation. “I know what you have to do to get everything back on track.”

“What?” Bucky and Steve asked looking at him skeptically.

“You need her to see you naked. You'll be even, therefore no more awkwardness.”

Bucky just blankly stared at him. “That's the worst advice I have ever heard in my entire life. And that says something.”

“Yeah, I don't think that would work. That could even worsen the situation as it is.” Steve added.

“Guys, listen it will work...”

“No Sam, swinging my dick in front of Y/n won't help in any way.” Bucky angrily shut him down. Disappointed that his friends won't take him seriously, he went to his room to wind down.

“Did you really had to do that?”

“What? I'm trying to help here.” Sam defended himself. He waited till Bucky was in his room and went to find you.

“Hey, Y/n, can you help Bucky with something?” Sam asked you entering your room.

“With what?”

“I don't know, some stuff. He wasn't very straight forward, but he asked specifically for you.”

“I don't know...” You hesitated.

“It sounded serious.”

“Okay, where is he?”

“In his room, but hurry up.”

You took a deep breath, “It's time to deal with it. You can't escape him forever. He's your best friend for crying out loud.” You whispered to yourself on the way to his room.

“Welp, time for me to go,” Sam said when he saw you going to Bucky's room.

“Where are you going?” Steve asked.

“Out, in case my plan backfires and they both want to kill me.” Sam said already almost out of the door.

“What did you do this time?” Steve shook his head like a disappointed parent.

Sam just wiggled his eyebrows in response with a wicked grin on his lips.

“Oh no, you didn't.”

“Oh yes, I did. Let me know how it goes.”

You softly knocked on Bucky's door and slowly opened them walking in the room. It seemed like he wasn't there, but you heard running water in the bathroom, probably shower. So you decided to wait while he finishes. Anyway, you should deal with this situation, it was getting ridiculous. It's not like he hasn't seen anything before. Right?

You picked up the book you found on his table. Sitting down on the edge of the bed you started reading it. The shower stopped and after a few minutes, Bucky walked out in all his naked glory, head tilted downwards drying his hair with a towel. You glanced up from the book, ready to ask what was so urgent that he called after you when he was in the shower, but found yourself not being able to utter a single word.

Was he walking in slow motion? He looked like he just stepped out of a shower gel commercial. “Oh. My. God.” You murmured under your breath not being able to take your eyes off him. The book fell from your hands and landed on the floor with a loud thud.

Bucky stiffened from the sound, looking up shocked. When he saw you sitting on his bed wide-eyed. He quickly wrapped the towel around his waist, but it was too late, you saw everything. And what a view that was.

“Y/n, what-what are you doing here!?”

“I-I Sam told me that you told him you needed help with something...forget it, I'll better leave. Sorry.” You headed to the door, grasping the handle barely opening the door.

“No, no. no, wait a second.” He slammed the door shut, standing in front of it. Small water droplets run down his skin, making you lick your lips. That didn't go unnoticed by him. “Please don't leave. I want to change this whole situation between us. We haven't talked like we used to. I know you're escaping me and it's killing me. Can we please talk it out?” You finally force yourself to look him in the eyes. There was fear in his eyes that you would storm off, but there was something else you couldn't quite figure out.

“Okay, but can you please put on some pants. It's really distracting.” You stepped away from him.

“Sure thing.” He smirked walking past you, throwing the towel somewhere on the floor and grabbed his worn sweatpants pulling them on. “Better?”

“Mhm.” It wasn't better, not at all. You looked everywhere but him.

“Listen, I know we saw each other naked...”

“I thought you didn't see anything.” You interrupted.

“I may have lied about that a little.” He shrugged. “Can we forget about it, pretend that never happened? These past days without you...It made me realize I need you in my life. I need you, but you're avoiding me, it's killing me Doll.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I'm in love with you and I can't hide it anymore.”

You just stared at him processing everything he said.

“Please say something. Anything at all.” He stepped closer, desperate for some kind of answer. Anything would be better than silence. He was ready you would say you didn't feel the same way about him or just walk away.

Instead, you grabbed his cheeks, pulling him closer to you, crashing your lips with his. His eyes went wide from surprise before they fell shut and he kissed you back. His hands roamed up and down your sides.

“Or you could do that.” He smiled, tracing circles on your hips with his thumbs. Your skin felt like on fire under his touch.

“I love you too.”

“Then why were you escaping me?”

“I don't know. I felt awkward... self-conscious.”

“Let me tell you something, that I will tell you every day if you let me. You are beautiful.” He closed the distance between the two of you with a loving kiss, wrapping you in his arms. Your hands went on their own quest, exploring his body. When your hands slid over his pecs he flexed them, making you laugh, retracting your hands.

“What?” He chuckled at your reaction.

“I like your pecs.” You smiled, placing your hands back.

“Yeah, you do?” He murmured against your lips.

You hummed in agreement, returning to kissing, wrapping your hands around his neck tugging his still slightly damp hair. You parted your lips, allowing him to deepen the kiss. He growled kissing down your jaw and neck, leaving open mouth kisses on his way. He found the one spot that made you moan, making sure to remember it for the future.

“Bed.” You blurted out, your eyes falling shut when his teeth grazed over your skin.

“Are you sure?” He pulled back to look at you. Your pink-red lips and rosy cheeks.

“Yes, Bucky I want you.” You almost moaned.

That was all he needed to hear. He effortlessly lifted you up, making you wrap your legs around his waist. Carrying you to bed, he dropped you onto it. You bounced on the mattress before he settled between your legs and found your lips again.

Meanwhile, Steve walked by Bucky's room on the way to his own room. Hearing borderline pornographic sounds coming from behind the door, he backed away texting Sam.

It sounds like your plan worked.

“Hell yeah, I knew it!” Sam excitedly shouted from the living room. “And they didn't believe me.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you left.” Steve questioned.

“Forgot my phone, but looks like I can stay.” He stretched out on the couch, placing hands under his head with a satisfied smirk on his lips. After this day you and Bucky wouldn't hear the end of it, how Sam brought you two together.