#i already spent over $50 on my fucking headphones

[lesboylycan]

my fucking god why is shipping for a pair of forearm crutch cuff pads so god damn expensive. the amount goes from $28 to fucking $42 what the actual hell

i! just want! some protection! for my crutch cuffs! because they're getting scratched to hell and back because they're made of plastic and i often have to lay them on the ground and/or they fall over because there's no stable place to set them down upright!

[chlobliviate]

Wolfstar Microfics - Crack Fic

Words: 986 😅

@wolfstarmicrofic

🌙✨🌙✨🌙

Moony

(13:47) Sirius, I’m going to fucking murder you in your sleep. 😌

Padfoot

(13:48) you can try

(13:48) but

(13:48) i’ve been awake for hours

Prongs

(13:48) What did he do now?/

Moony

(13:48) He knows what he did.

(13:49) I said I shouldn’t go out last night.

Padfoot

(13:49) and yet out you went

Moony

(13:49) And yet, out I went. 😔

Prongs

(13:50) Pretty sure I just heard Moony sigh through the wall.

(13:50) So what did Pads do?

Padfoot

(13:55) O NO

(13:55) o nooooooooo 😬😬😬😬

Wormtail

(13:56) ???

Padfoot

(13:56) i may have given us all personalised ringtones on moonsss phone

Prongs

(13:57) 😂😂😂😂😂😂WHAT WS MNE?!??!!?

(13:57) Moony don’t bang on my wall to punish me for shoddy spelling when Sirius hasn’t used a capital letter since 2008.

(13:57) BUT WHAT WAS MINE

Padfoot

(13:58) do-re-mi from the sound of music

Prongs

(13:58) I am less excied about this now.

Padfoot

(13:59) naturally pete’s was rat-a-tat-tat by fall out boy and courtney love (absolute banger btw)

Prongs

(13:59) Nvm I’m back on board!

(13:59) What about yours?

Moony

(14:00) You Belong with Me.

Wormtail

(14:02) Ah. 🙃

Moony

(14:04) So Benjy suggested we ‘take a break’

Padfoot

(14:04) fuck im so sorry moons

(14:05) i can text him and tell him it was a joke

Moony

(14:06) Nah, it’s ok. I care a lot less than I thought I would tbh.

(14:10) James. Your headphones are unplugged.

Prongs

(14:10) SORRY SORRY FUCK ITS NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE

Padfoot

(14:10) wow moony’s having a crisis and you’re having a wank

(14:11) harsh

Moony

(14:12) I’m not having a crisis. I’m fine. That’s probably not a great comment on my relationship though?

(14:12) JAMES! HEADPHONES!

🌙✨🌙✨🌙

Wormtail

(20:27) Lads, 😱😱 I think Benjy’s on a date

(20:28) Just showed up here with some guy

Padfoot

(20:28) moony sleeping 🤫 wtf we need details

Prongs

(20:29) Nvm, Sirius woke him when he yelled wtf

Moony

(20:40) Yeah, I bet that's David. He’s on Benjy’s course and he may have come up a few times.

(20:41) He didn’t even give it 8 hours. Wow. What a prick. I’m not surprised though, which probably also speaks volumes.

(20:41) Fuck. 😂

Padfoot

(20:41) you have four minutes to make yourself presentable moons then we’re coming in with tea and chocolate and a movie

(20:42) three minutes

Moony

(20:42) 👀👀👀 What’s happening next door?

Padfoot

(20:43) TWO MINUTES dont change the subject

(20:43) new neighbours

(20:43) all girls

(20:43) james is in love already 😂

Prongs

(20:43) I AN NOT

(20:44) BAD PADFOOT

Moony

(20:44) When did you meet them?

Padfoot

(20:44) one minute moony moon also we did not meet them but james spent a lot of time peeking out of his windoe this morning

(20:44) winDOE AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA 😂😂😂😂😂

(20:44) let the record state that i was assaulted with a wooden spoon 😔

Moony

(20:44) 😏😏😏

🌙✨🌙✨🌙

Moony

(10:01) Just met the neighbours.

(10:01) They asked what James’ ‘deal’ is.

(10:01) You were not slick at all. 😂

(10:02) They invited us over for drinks tonight, though.

Prongs

(10:02) It’s not my fault they were so loud moving in that I had to see what the commotion was.

(10:02) There was Beyonce and shrieking. I was merely a CONCERNED citizen. 😌

Moony

(10:02) That’s your story and you’re sticking to it?

(10:03) Benjy and David are already Facebook official. Wow.

Prongs

(10:04) Moony. He is a massive twat. You have terrible taste in partners.

Moony

(10:05) That is not at all reassuring.

(10:06) I’m going to drink so much tonight. 🙃🙃🙃

Prongs

(10:07) oh yeeeeah? Anyone from next door ccatch your eye?

Padfoot

(10:07) moonys only got eyes for me thank you very much 😤😤

Moony

(10:08) Don’t get me wrong, they’re all pretty, but no.

(10:08) Plus, I CLEARLY only have eyes for Pads.

Prongs

(10:17) So… whats her nameeee? 🫠

Moony

(10:18) Who?

Prongs

(10:18) YOU KNOW WHO

Moony

(10:19) Drawing a real blank here.

Padfoot

(10:20) hes just giggling at his phone

Moony

(10:20) Traitor.

Padfoot

(10:20) MOONY EHY MuST YOU WOUND ME SO

Wormtail

(10:20) Did you two sleep together again?

Prongs

(10:21) I mean the red headed, fiery goddess who lives next door and laughs like a witch.

(10:22) Ooooooooooh? 👀👀

Moony

(10:22) Emphasis on the word SLEEP. Yes.

(10:23) No homo.

(10:23) I mean, partially homo, I guess. 😂

Padfoot

(10:23) FULL HOMO BIG HOMO ENERGY IN THIS ROOM ;)

(10:23) get over it wormy

Wormtail

(10:23) I didn;t mean it like that!!!! It’s fine if you want to do that!

(10:24) I only request that you do it in Remus’ room, bc Sirius is next to me and I don’t need to hear his cum noise.

Padfoot

(10:25) let the record state that moonbeam laughed so hard at ‘cum noise’ that he banged his head on the wall and dropped his phone down the side of his bed 💀💀💀

Prongs

(10:25) Is his hed made of lead? That was so loud fuck.

(10:26) That means your cum noise is gonna be loud too. Ew no. go fuk by Pete.

Moony

(10:27) We’re not fucking, wow.

(10:27) We’re all very aware that I’m not Sirius’ type.

Padfoot

(10:28) what is my type

(10:28) fite me

Prongs

(10:28) dumb, obscenely pretty, easy.

Moony

(10:29) One out of three. Damn. 🙃

(10:29) Also you misspelled *bite. 😌

Padfoot

(10:30) which one what moony what wait what 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

[ipuckwithhockey]

Easier Said Than Done- M. Tkachuk

Part 1

Part 2- Can’t stay away from you

summary: Matt knows this is a bad idea but he can’t help himself when the universe keeps bringing you into his life.

a/n: part 2 is here y’all! i hope you enjoy it. let me know what you think!

warnings: cursing

You’ve been settled into a table at a coffee shop for a couple hours with your “time to study” playlist blaring through your headphones and you don’t notice a tall blue-eyed man approach you. When he taps your shoulder unexpectedly you practically jump out of your chair, causing your hand that was writing your beautifully organized notes to knock your cup of coffee off the table, shattering on impact as it hits the floor. The man has quick reflexes though, and is able to jump back and out of the way of the falling cup. 

“Fuck! Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!” The man blurts out as you try to take in what just happened. 

You take your headphones out of your ears so you can hear what he’s saying, “Sorry what? I- I couldn’t hear you.” You stutter a bit when you look up at him and realize who he is. You don’t know him, but you do recognize him. 

He was at the Giordano’s about a week ago for their son’s birthday party. You remember seeing him there, his curly mop of hair and broad shoulders had caught your eye, but you also recognized him from somewhere else. You recognized him from the pictures that Lauren has framed around their home, from the advertisements plastered across the city, and from the TV when you get a chance to watch a Flames game. Matthew Tkachuk just scared the shit out of you and you almost spilt a coffee all over him.  

An employee comes over to help you clean up the mess that has been made and sweeps the broke glass away. You and Matthew do your best to help but end up awkwardly apologizing to the employee and then thanking them when they’ve finished cleaning up. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Probably would have gone for a different approach had I known that was going to happen,” Matthew says. 

“Oh, it’s fine. I was just taking—” You look down at the table and you notice that your once beautifully crafted notes are now splotched with coffee. You can’t help it, you try to control it, but the tears start to pierce the corners of your eyes without your approval. It’s completely embarrassing but your stress over law school is winning over your pride and composure. Matthew can see your chin start to tremble and even though you’re trying to hide it, the look on your face says it all. 

“Are you okay?” Matthew asks cautiously.

“Y-yeah” you choke out. “mfine. It’s fine.” Your cheeks are lightly stained with tears and you’re sniffling between words, trying to get a grip and steady your breath as you start to gather your notes. You try to make yourself busy without looking up, not wanting to make eye contact, and praying that he might just leave you be. Instead, he gently wraps a hand around your forearm to get you to look at him. 

“Hey hey. It’s okay. I’m sure we can fix it.” He says with concern in his eyes. He’s trying to be gentle with you because the look in your eyes says you might just crack again as you shake your head no, looking at your notes. Matt doesn’t really know what to do in this situation but he does know that he hates seeing you upset and will do anything to try to help. “Here, how about we start by sitting down.” He motions for you to sit in the chair you jumped from moments ago, “And I’ll get you another coffee, okay?” He asks, still looking at you with caution. You can’t say anything because you’re afraid you might cry again so you just shake your head telling him okay before he leaves to go order you another coffee.

While he’s gone, you’re able to calm yourself down, taking some deep breathes as you tell yourself it will be okay. You know it will be and you know that your stress is causing you to over dramatize the events that have unfolded. You also know that you have another set of the same notes at home and that you were just redoing them to help you study. A few minutes later Matthew returns with the coffee cup he held earlier in one hand and a new one in his other. He sits the other cup down in front of you and to your surprise he takes the seat across form yours. 

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.” You thank your voice for not giving out on you and for sounding somewhat normal as you speak. Embarrassment doesn’t exactly cover what you’re feeling, and you’re surprised that Matthew has stuck around this long in general, but now he’s sitting down in front of you and doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere any time soon. 

“I think it’s the least I could do considering I scared the hell out of you, broke a glass… and then made you cry...”  He looks down sheepishly as he says the last one. He feels horrible and quite frankly, very out of his league in this situation. Not only did he ignore his promise to Gio to stay away from you, but he’s also managed to get you to hate him in about five seconds. What makes him feel even worse is that you’re still being so nice to him. This is only adding to his growing infatuation with you, and he curses himself for not having the will power to walk away the moment he saw you. 

You blush out of embarrassment, “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you, and they’re just notes, it’s fine. I actually have a copy at home. I’m just stressed, and I freaked out but I promise you it’s totally fine.” You try to reassure him and the concern he’s showing, and instinctively letting your hand rest on top of his. A simple comforting gesture that wouldn’t mean anything to most people, lit a fire in Matthew that he wasn’t prepared for. His eyes are glued to your hand and when you notice you quickly pull it back, but not without noticing how large and warm it was. But before you get a chance to apologize Matt is asking you what you’re studying for and trying to cover up the blush that has settled across his cheeks. 

“It’s for the exam at the end of the semester, so not for a few months but I—“

“You’re already studying for a test that’s months away?” He looks at you like you’re crazy, and you laugh because when you broke down crying a few minutes ago he seemed pretty collected but now he’s downright flabbergasted, “I’m Matt by the way,” he adds quickly, realizing that you might not know who he is and that it would be polite to formally introduce himself. 

You let out a little laugh, “Yeah, most of my grade is based off of the one exam so you have to study for it all semester.” You explain to him as he nods but still looks confused. “…I’m y/n, you were at Gio’s the other day for Jack’s birthday party, right?” you ask him, and Matt is astonished that you even noticed he was there. Every time he looked at you, you were either entertaining the kids around you or having what looked to be very mature conversations with the adults that made Matt feel incredibly of place.

“Yeah I was. I uh- that’s actually why I came over here in the first place. I recognized you.” Matthew says trying not to sound too creepy, and you can’t help but smile because you can’t believe he even noticed you. Being noticed by any cute guy is one thing, but Matthew Tkachuk had that kind of bad boy vibe that made him that much more irresistible. 

“Oh. Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. The kids talk about you all the time.” You say.

The Giordano kids loved Matt and when you babysat on game nights the three of you would sit together on the couch in matching jerseys, all with the number 5 on the back, but whenever number 19 would get into a scrum the kids would go wild. Reese used to get upset every time it would happen, but her brother has taught her to cheer instead now. Jack really admires Matt and sometimes during mini sticks, instead of pretending to be his dad he’ll pretend to be Matt. (You just try to keep the pretend scrums to a minimum.) It was adorable and he is obviously attractive, but you aren’t immune to the rumors that float around town. He’s a playboy who can take a different girl home every time he goes out. Even Mark and Lauren have even made comments about his bachelor lifestyle. 

Despite those rumors and the comments, you’re genuinely surprised by Matt. He stays with you at your table for over an hour as the two of you talk. You expected him to be pompous and cocky and just like all those douche bags that you met in college. He was cocky, but you didn’t expect him to be so nice or sweet, or even funny. You definitely didn’t expect him to flirt with you. It wasn’t anything too over the top, but subtle things in the tone in which he would speak made you think he was trying to flirt.

Over the hour that you spent together he asked you about your relationship with the Giordano’s and he had plenty of questions about law school. It was actually really sweet. Matt hadn’t gone to college, skipping that step, and opting to go to the OHL before signing with the Flames. Most of his knowledge of the university experience came from his brother Brady’s short stint at Boston College, or a few stories he heard from his friends back home. He didn’t know a lick about law school, and he’s fascinated listening to you explain things that are surely going right over his head. 

He gets so caught up in you that he doesn’t realize how much time has passed and when he looks down at his phone, he realizes that he’s going to be late for a meeting and can’t help but feel a little sad. He doesn’t want this conversation to end and if it does, he doesn’t want it to be a singular occurrence, which is what has him asking if he can have your number. 

And despite the little voices in your head telling you no, you end up saying yes. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.” You reply not able to hide your smile. He’s charming and handsome and completely out of your league, but you figure it won’t hurt to give him your number anyway. He might not even use it, right?

*

A few days later you find yourself sitting in a fancy chair in a boutique that sells $50 scrunchies as you watch Lauren try on a dress that probably costs as much as your rent. She insisted that the two of you go shopping before lunch— on her of course, and no matter how many times you told her that you couldn’t let her do that, she stood her ground and insisted it was her treat. It’s been a couple hours of shopping and you don’t know how Lauren can do this for so long.  If shopping was a sport Lauren would be winning gold at the Olympics, you however wouldn’t even qualify.

You let her buy you a new blouse that you’ll probably get more use out of when you get a job at a law firm and a swanky dress that was probably only appropriate for a fancy party. You’re not sure when you’ll ever get to wear it, and would never have spent that much money on something that you would get so little use out of, but Lauren really hyped you up and when she offered to buy it you couldn’t say no. 

“So,” she says as she sits down in the chair next to yours, “What’s been going on in your life that isn’t school?”

You laugh at that. All you really do is go to class and study right now. It’s pretty hard to keep a job in law school so you’re basically just a full time student. You don’t really have a social life unless it’s studying with your friends or maybe an occasional lunch or dinner out. There’s really nothing new on the ‘not school’ front and you tell her that, getting a lack luster facial expression from her in return. 

“You work too much! You’re young! This is the time in your life to go out and have fun!” She exclaims. Lauren completely admires your work ethic and she’s incredibly proud of you but the mom in her wants to make sure that you’re not missing out on some of the best years of your life because you’re too busy studying. She means well and she has a point, you probably could be a little more active in your social life and this in turn makes you remember who you saw a few days earlier. 

“You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.” You say as you wait for Lauren to change back into her clothes. 

“Oh!? Who was it? Is he cute?” She asks from behind the curtain of the dressing room, and without even knowing if it was a guy, but not so secretly hoping it is. 

“It was Matthew Tkachuk. And yeah, I guess he is kinda cute.” you joke. 

You can see the surprise on her face as she pops her head out from behind the curtain, “Where in the world did you run into him?” She asks in reply, but you make her finish changing and check out of the store before you answer her. Lauren may be able to shop until she drops but you’re ready for lunch and if you have to hang this over her head to get there, then that’s what you’ll do. 

The two of you leave the store, Lauren with another bag in her hand, and walk around the corner to the restaurant for lunch. “So, where the hell did you run into Chucky” She asks as you settle into your seat and pick up the sleek menu sitting in front of you. 

“Well, if you must know, I was studying at that coffee shop by my apartment, and he came up behind me and scared the shit out of me. I knocked my coffee on the floor and everything.” You tell her in a little bit of a mocking tone, knowing that she’s a sucker for gossip. “He felt really bad though, and bought me another coffee after he made me cry—“

“He did WHAT!?” 

“Well, the coffee got on my notes and I was just really stressed about school so I kind of started crying...” 

“So he wasn’t mean to you? He didn’t do anything rude, did he?” She asks in her best mom voice. It makes you chuckle, and you tell her no, explaining that it was just an accident. You also tell her about how he stayed and talked to you for a while. “He actually surprised me. He’s not as... I don’t know... dick-ish?” That probably wasn’t the best way to describe it, but it probably got the message across but when you look up you can see something brewing on Lauren’s face and it resembles worry. 

“Listen, I’m just going to be straightforward with you. He’s a good guy, but he lacks... Well, he lacks some maturity on the relationship side of his life. I know he can be very charming, but I can’t promise that he won’t hurt you. The stats aren’t good, and I don’t want to see you get hurt by him.” You haven’t even told her about him asking for your number, and because of this, you choose not to. Instead, you tell her not to worry about it, and that you don’t think that door will be opening anytime soon anyway. There might be a very small part of you that is a little let down because he hasn’t called or texted since you gave him your number, but you push that thought to the side. Lauren had a point too, there isn’t any guarantee that you wouldn’t get hurt and right now you need to be focusing on school, and not on a hypothetical relationship. 

*

The next time that Matt sees you it’s not by his doing. He’s tried his best to keep away from you and has resisted using the number that sits heavy in his cellphone. Instead, he stalks your Instagram and goes through your Twitter likes. He feels like he’s back in middle school again as he begins to pick apart pieces of your life. You apparently read. A lot. And most of your liked tweets are from the Sparknotes account or niche memes that Matt doesn’t understand. He may not understand them, but it doesn’t keep him from reading every single one of them in hopes of gaining some sort of insight into your life. 

On more than one occasion he has sat up at night thinking about texting you, asking what you were up to and hoping you would come over. He never did because he knew that one night wouldn’t be enough. Night after night he could have a different girl come and go from his bed, but for the first time in a long time he didn’t want a girl for just one night. But he couldn’t even let himself pick up the phone to ask you out on a proper date because his captain asked him explicitly to stay away. He couldn’t disobey a direct order. And who knows, maybe he wouldn’t be any good at any of this relationship stuff anyway. Unfortunately, that didn’t keep him from wanting to try. All these factors only added to the list of reasons why he couldn’t let himself pick up the phone and call you. He couldn’t justify it and so he pushed the thought to the side. 

The world works in mysterious ways though, and sometimes it will continue to bring two people together no matter how much they fight it. That’s exactly what happened as Matthew came by to pick up Mark on his way to the arena and you were on your way into the house to babysit for the game. You were just getting out of your car when Matthew pulled up in the driveway beside you. 

You can see that it’s him and you try to rush around his car and into the house before you can experience anymore embarrassment. He asked for your number weeks ago and clearly hasn’t used it.  There wasn’t any obligation to do so, but you figure you can assume that asking for someone’s number implies that they are going to use it, except he never did. So maybe he just asked out of pity or maybe he asked and changed his mind.

“Y/N!” You hear him call out your name following the sound of his car door shutting, stopping you in your tracks as you slowly turn to face him. 

“Matt! Hey!” you say a bit too enthusiastically and like you hadn’t seen it was him in the car.

The two of you are at a standstill, neither one knowing what to say or how to act with the looming fact that Matt has your number in his pocket but hasn’t chosen to use it. He knows that he shouldn’t have even asked for the number in the first place and that he’s gotten himself into this mess but now doesn’t know how to get himself out. 

“Um. So I-“

“It’s totall-“

You both start to talk at the same time but you insist that he finish his statement first, “I’m uh- I’m sorry about not calling. I know that’s a dick move-” 

You cut him off, feeling a twinge of confidence arise, “So why didn’t you?” You ask innocently but knowing that you’ve caught the hotshot off guard. 

“Um- I just I don’t know if this is a good idea.” He replies. 

“Well how can you know if you don’t try? Isn’t that the whole point of going on a date?” You say and then realize that maybe he didn’t want your number to ask you out. Maybe he just wanted to see if you would be willing to crawl into his be one night and out the next morning. 

You don’t get a chance to answer. Gio is coming out the front door and doesn’t seem to even notice that the two of you are in the middle of a conversation. He simply waves goodbye to you and ushers Matt back to his car as he starts to talk about something to do with Johnny. Matt does his best to play it off cool, hoping to god Gio hasn’t noticed, and thankfully he doesn’t mention you at all on the drive to the rink. 

Spending time with the kids was just what you needed as a break from your classes, and you let the kids stay up until Lauren gets home from the game. The Flames won 3-1 and the kids couldn’t have been better for you. You’re in such a great mood that when Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody comes on the radio, you turned it up full blast so that you can sing at the top of your lungs. The earlier encounter with Matthew is long forgotten as you sing and dance to the radio on your way home. With the radio turned up you don’t hear a text come through. You don’t even see until you’re snuggled up in bed, ready to set your alarm for the next morning, and when you click on the unknown number you’re more than surprised when you read what the message says.

Maybe: Matt: Hey it’s Matt. I think you might be right about the dating thing. Are you free Thursday night?

[justwritethatdown]

High school au set somewhere around 2009 - it’s gonna be a multichapter but I don’t have a title for it yet… Avril Lavigne is gonna be the soundtrack for this 💜

Beca is an introverted fifteen years old who loves music and is about to start high school. Chloe is The Popular Girl™ and they meet because their parents are friends. There’s a lot of Jesse but Bechloe is gonna be endgame (obviously) It’s supposed to be a slow burn but i’m an impatient idiot so we’ll see about that…

Words Count: 2K

Rating: T

Read it on AO3 or under the cut ↓ 

Please tell me what is taking place (‘cause I can’t seem to find a trace)

“Bec, can you please be nice tonight? It would mean a lot to Sheila and me" repeated her father for the millionth time. Beca just sighed heavily at that and crossed her arms around her chest. They’ve talked about that ad nauseam, there was no way for her to get out of this stupid dinner at Sheila’s friends.

Sheila – a.k.a. the step monster – was the most irritating being on the planet. Beca was sure she only acted nice to her to make a show for her father and actually hated Beca just as much as Beca hated her.

“Oh come on sweetie, they have a daughter your age, I’m sure you’ll become very fast friends” she promised in that annoying high pitched tone she had “I don’t want to make any friends” Beca grumbled and could swear she heard Sheila whisper something to her father about her being weird and having no friends, but decided to ignore that.

She didn’t need new friends, she had Amy and that was enough – more than enough sometimes – Amy was a lot, mostly to someone as introverted as Beca, her loudness and recklessness were pretty hard to handle, but they knew each other since forever and Amy stood by Beca’s side during her parents’ divorce, which meant the world to Beca.

“Come on kiddo, I’m sure you’ll like her. She goes to Barden high, so you can ask her advices for next year" said her father turning in his seat after parking the car “so she’s older than me!” stated Beca “oh for God’s sake what’s one year, specially at your age?” gasped Sheila, her nice facade starting to crack at Beca’s brattyness “never mind" spat out Beca under her breath getting out of the car.

Her father stopped her when he saw she was about to put her big headphones over her ears “don’t make me take these away from you" he warned her with a glare, so she just snorted and left them hanging around her neck.

__

Beca suffered immensely all through dinner, Chloe – the girl she was supposed to become best friends with to please Sheila – was hideous, she barely introduced herself without stopping pushing the buttons on her Blackberry, obviously more interested in her text than in Beca. Her parents were two pompous idiots – just how Beca imagined Sheila’s friends would be.

As soon as they finished eating, Chloe left the table without even excusing herself, focusing on her phone again.

“Chloe why don’t you show Becky your room, honey?” encouraged Chloe’s mother “sure" answered the redhead without any kind of emotion and left.

Beca gulped, she didn’t know what to do – was she supposed to just follow her? Did she had to wait there for Chloe to come back and invite her to her room? – it was clear that Chloe didn’t want her in her room.

“Beca? Go" pushed her Sheila and the girl found herself following Chloe’s path, she thought she heard someone whisper “that kid is so weird" but she shook it off, too focused on how weird she felt to intrude into a stranger’s room like that.

It turned out that Chloe didn’t mind her intrusion – one could say she didn’t even notice it, if not for the short nod she gave Beca along with a “this is it" before sitting in front of her computer and spending the night chatting on MSN.

After standing awkwardly in Chloe’s room for some moments, Beca decided to sit down on a pink fluffy bean bag sofa and finally put her headphones on. She spent the night with her iPod Classic, as she did most of the times.

Beca had the time to properly look at Chloe, to study her – something she liked to do with people.

The sixteen year old was definitely a popular girl in school – definitely someone Beca would have never wanted to be friends with – she seemed to be coming straight out of Mean Girls – that stupid Lindsey Lohan high school movie Amy made her watch once.

A shiver run down Beca’s spine. She didn’t love the idea of starting high school at all, with all those jocks and beautiful girls who thought they were better than anyone else – Beca could totally see Chloe being one of them.

Chloe was undeniably attractive, the computer light flashing on her face highlighted the perfect traits of her face and the sharp angle of her jawline, her red hair was coming down in large soft waves and her soft blue eyes made her look like a Disney princess. Her slender fingers flew quickly over the keyboard of her computer while she replied to the dozens of beeping notifications blowing up on her screen. Beca had to look away, feeling a weird grasp at her stomach she’d never felt before.

__

To Beca’s displeasure these stupid dinner dates became a thing, and she was forced to see that girl at least a couple of days per month, even if Chloe seemed to have the power to defect those events, since she never showed up when the dinners were at Beca’s father’s.

Beca wasn’t sorry about that, she was just upset she didn’t have the same luxury.

Chloe smiled at her once, greeting her with a soft “hi" when the brunette went to her house to yet another dinner, and Beca kept thinking about how warm that made her feel for a long time – because it caught her off guard obviously, she wasn’t expecting that, it’s not like she stopped thinking about how beautiful Chloe looked when she genuinely smiled or why she smiled at her anyway.

__

Months passed and it came the time for Beca to start high school. Amy was out of her mind excited about that and it only made Beca more nervous.

Her first day – the first month even – could have been described with one word, better yet a name: Jesse.

Jesse was in most of her classes and for some reason he was obsessed with her. He managed to learn more about her in only the first week than most people have ever tried to know in her life – he asked so many questions.

At first Beca was annoyed by him and tried to avoid the guy every time she spotted his stupid face in the hallway or at the cafeteria, but it was pointless because Jesse always managed to find her. Amy even started to tease her about her new boyfriend and Beca hated it.

She started to get used to his intrusive presence somewhere during week two, when he casually mentioned a concert of a Sum41 cover band he was sure she would have liked.

It opened up a crack in the big wall she spent so long building up – obviously what Jesse was trying to do since day one – but she didn’t push him away like she would have done with any other intruder trying to tear her defences apart, she instead decided to show him something she considered super intimate and private, something she had never shown to anyone before, she decided to show him one of her playlists.

She even agreed to go with him to the concert – telling herself she really wanted to see the band and couldn’t go without the fake ID Jesse had promised her.

Thinking about it, it didn’t take a genius to understand Beca would have liked such topic. After all, the girl always wore her headphones and from her style – heavy dark eyeliner, pierced ears, studded bracelet and dark boots – it wasn’t that hard to guess her musical tastes either.

“I knew you liked Avril Lavigne” was his first reaction scrolling through the titles in her iPod, Beca blushed at that; there were many other artists on there, such as Linkin Park, Green Day, Evanescence, Blink182… and he decided to point out the one that meant more to her.

“I love her, I think she’s great" he added pressing play on Sk8er Boi “you kinda remind me of her" he shouted over the sound filling his ears. Beca’s eyes widened for a moment and she looked around the schoolyard to check if he had drawn any attention towards them, she still couldn’t believe she was letting him use her headphones.

__

“It’s Be c a, with one c" she repeated to the guy who was paying very little attention to her anyway – Luke apparently.

“All right guys, it’s gonna be 50 bucks each and it’ll take a couple of days” he said looking at them with a charming smile “to pay now" he clarified clearing his throat and Jesse rushed to pay him “thanks Johnny. I’ll reach out to you when I got them" he said before leaving.

“It’s Jesse…” sighed Jesse when Luke already had left.

“Dude, I’m giving you the money first thing tomorrow, don’t think I’m letting you pay for my ID" “I could’ve never thought something like that" he joked smiling at her.

Okay so maybe Jesse became her friend and maybe Beca liked that – not that she would admit it.

__

After a month Beca thought she was starting to get used to the whole high school thing and she had to admit it wasn’t as bad as she thought, classes were boring and had nothing useful to form her regarding what she really wanted to do in life, but at least she had Amy and Jesse to lighten her mood.

The brunette was walking down the hallway, headphones on as usual, when she saw Chloe. Beca’s breath caught in her lungs at the sight of the redhead leaned against her locker animatedly chatting with a group of friends. She looked so different from the girl she was used to see at dinners; she looked radiant, like a ray of sunshine. Beca could tell all her friends were hypnotized by her energy and enthusiasm.

The sudden collision with a guy running in her opposite direction brought her back to reality “Dude! What the fuck?“ she hissed, but the guy didn’t bother stopping to check on her, so Beca shook her head and walked to her classroom. She didn’t notice Chloe looking at her.

From that moment Beca’s high school experience became a little different, she was always looking out for any signs of Chloe, she turned her head at any glimpse of red hair around a corner or every time she heard a particular kind of giggle – yes, she stopped wearing headphones in the hallways just to hear that – she’d even learned the faces of those she believed to be Chloe’s best friends and, obviously, her boyfriend – Tom, or something.

During the course of the first semester there had been almost zero dinners and her father told her she didn’t have to attend them because he was sure she was busy with homework, so the only occasions she had to see Chloe were those when she ran into her at school – not that she cared – they never interact and Beca understood, Chloe was a popular girl and with that role you have to maintain the appearances, she couldn’t risk to be seen interacting with some freshman alt girl just because they ate at the same table a couple of times, it wasn’t like they were friends anyway.

__

Beca was nervous. She would have never expected to open her front door to find Chloe Beale standing in front of her. She felt her ears heating up when the girl smiled at her “h-hi… you’re here too” she babbled hating herself immediately, but Sheila appearing behind her to greet the Beale family gave her enough time to disappear into the kitchen.

Now they were in Beca’s room after dinner. Chloe didn’t feel as awkward as Beca did entering her room all those months ago – or as awkward as she felt right now, for what is worth – she immediately made herself at home sitting on Beca’s bed, bounching on it a little while looking around.

Beca blushed at the amount of posters – mainly Avril posters – hanging on her walls. Her room was much darker than Chloe’s and she was sure the redhead must have thought she was a freak.

“I like your room, it’s pretty cool" “…you do?” asked Beca in shock “yes! And your bed is so much softer than mine" added Chloe lying down. Beca was silent for a while, her brain was filled with so many thoughts she couldn’t speak, she’s never been good with words anyway.

Beca gasped when she saw Chloe stretch to reach for the iPod and headphones resting on her bedside table but couldn’t stop her from taking them.

“What do you always listen to anyway?” asked Chloe sitting back up “beside Avril Lavigne” she added with a giggle that made Beca feel more attacked than she should have, the brunette moved to sit on her bed next to Chloe and took the device from her, holding it protectively against her chest “stuff… you wouldn’t like it" she scoffed “try me" said Chloe tilting her head, smile still in place.

Beca couldn’t find it in herself to say no.

They laid on her bed with her headphones placed between them, listening to Beca’s playlist until Chloe drifted off to sleep. Beca kept laying beside her, looking at the redhead sleep on her pillow and completely ignoring the weird feeling she had in the pit of her stomach that was starting to be something not unusual when it came to Chloe.

[rise-above-the-grave]

beware stained glass shards

for @dekusmynamecryingsmygame​. you said angst was fine, so uhhhh have some mf-ing erasermic angst I guess. please note that a) I am brand new to this fandom and am still figuring out headcanons and characterizations. hopefully I didn’t screw anything up too bad in that regard...but if I did, please at least be gentle in your critique :’)... b) I wrote this in...about 4 hours, all completely after midnight. it’s not gonna be my best work :/ but I did my best! and I wanted to get this up asap so you could see and read it sooner rather than later.

tw for: canon-typical injuries, hospitals (and everything that goes along with hospitals like doctors, nurses, surgeries, etc.), some implied (it’s only implied!! and it’s super duper uber vague) nsfw stuff, and an off-screen (debatable; maybe-it-was, maybe-it-wasn’t) suicide attempt. (was it a suicide attempt or a villain attack? I don’t even know myself! - at least not yet. read it however you wanna read it. I purposefully leave it open for interpretation.)

and if you don’t wanna read it because of that even potential suicide attempt, lemme know and I’ll write you something else, Peachy... alkdsjflkjdsf unfortunately I have a bad case of “I didn’t think this through” after midnight, and I didn’t even think of that possibility until I was basically done writing it. at that point I was like “It’s 5:30 and I need to sleep, I might as well post this on the off chance they do want to read it...” if you don’t wanna read it tho lemme know and again, I’ll write ya something else tomorrow <3

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

He falls.

There is lightning, there is thunder, there is rain—and for an instant (a second, a heartbeat, a breath), he is a swallow, a sparrow, a falcon. He flies with invisible wings, the air is caught beneath him and above him and before him, the world spreads out into infinity below the raindrops hanging suspended in the air. The lightning gilds his dark hair in quicksilver, the thunder that follows an instant later shakes his bones, and the rain that drives him to the earth soaks his clothes into a second skin.

He falls, the asphalt of the alley that runs beneath the comet of his body rising nearer and nearer in a rapid sequence that he thinks, distantly, should be alarming.

I should be afraid, he thinks.

This is going to hurt, he thinks.

Hizashi—

And then there is pain, and there is fear, and there is darkness gilt by lightning, silence shrouded by thunder, blood watered by rain.

---

Yamada Hizashi is 22, desperate, and dangerous.

He is older than he thought he would ever be. When he was young, he had imagined himself living to the infinite age of 50. He would look at himself in the mirror hanging in the bathroom, fingers combing through hair he imagined going silver, palms smearing smooth skin he imagined going wrinkled and weather worn. He would pluck at the band t-shirts he’d wear under too-hot, too-heavy jackets with fidgety hands, wondering what he’d wear then.

I’m gonna be a hero! he’d told his moms, and when they laughed and hugged him and told him, You’re going to be the best hero there is!, he believed himself immortal, invincible, inevitable.

And he was. He was immortal, invincible, inevitable. He could be hurt, he could be beaten, he could be knocked down. But no matter what—no matter the pain, the struggle, the difficulty—he healed, and he fought until he was victorious, and he stood back up. No one could keep him down. No one could diminish him. No one could threaten his impenetrable view of the future.

And then—and then Oboro. And it had all crashed down around him, like so many shards of shattered stained glass.

With Oboro goes his heart. His future. His eternity. He is taught, with the sharpness of stone, with the heaviness of rubble, with the choking taste of dust, that death lurks in the most innocent of shadows, that pain waits in the wings of the theater, that certainty is a lodestone chained around your neck.

Nothing is certain. Not everything can heal. No one is invincible.

He stops thinking he’ll live to 50.

He stops thinking he’ll live past 20.

“Fuck you,” he spat, and Shouta flinched as if he’d been struck, the Happy birthday that had been on his lips dying a silent, painful death. “Fuck everything.” Without warning—without even fully processing what he intended to do; he just hurt, and he needed something, someone, to hurt with him—Hizashi threw his tumbler against the wall behind the bar. The shelf the tumbler hit broke, and a cascade of bottles and liquor crashed to the floor in so many shard of glass and fragments of dreams and spreading rivers of blood.

There was a shout, and then Hizashi felt Tensei’s and Nemuri’s hands on his shoulders, heard Shouta’s voice sounding unusually placating and apologetic as he spoke to the bartender who had rushed over.

“Get him out of here,” Shouta snapped a few seconds later, turning and looking straight at him with death in his eyes. For an instant, Hizashi almost felt guilty. Then Tensei and Nemuri were dragging him away from the counter, away from the gathering crowd, away from the bar.

“Idiot,” Tensei muttered as Hizashi listed against him in the alley behind the bar, all at once too drunk and too sober to function.

“Idiot,” Nemuri sighed, guiding him into the cab, buckling the seatbelt across his chest and waist and then letting him collapse against her shoulder.

“Idiot,” Shouta hissed at him as he undressed him and shoved him unkindly into bed.

He stops thinking he’ll live—and so he stops caring. He drinks too much. Eats too little. Throws himself into his work with a single-minded mania.

His relationship with Shouta suffers. They grate, like two broken ends of a once-whole bone, the nerve that is Oboro’s death still laid bare between them. Shouta can’t sleep without Hizashi in his bed; Hizashi can’t sleep unless he’s alone. Hizashi drinks to drown his memories, his emotions, his pain; Shouta tries to starve his out. They argue about it, until Shouta erases Hizashi’s quirk and Hizashi throws a punch—about Shouta’s energy pouches, about Hizashi’s whiskey. About the lights Hizashi wants to leave on at night. About the socks on the floor inside the door. About the uncapped toothpaste left by the bathroom sink. About the half-eaten takeout sitting in the fridge. About the nights Shouta will disappear without warning, without a trace. About—

Hizashi wonders if it is his fault the day Shouta walks out, slamming the door behind him.

Shouta doesn’t come back.

Hizashi drinks more. Eats less. Works harder. Does anything, anything to distract himself from the event horizon opening inside his chest.

I’ve lost my best friend, he thinks, curled up alone and unable to sleep in a bed that had once held two.

For the first time in years, he wishes someone was sleeping beside him.

It is dangerous. He knows this—knows the risks, knows that the rewards are negligible compared to the ruin it could bring him. His career is on the line. His future hangs by a thread.

Hizashi doesn’t care.

He isn’t going to live past 21 anyway.

Only a few of his partners know who he is. Those that do keep silent. It is never wise to paint a target on your back, and Hizashi makes it clear that he doesn’t want a relationship, isn’t looking for a connection—that there is no reason for them to think there is anything between them but drunken carnality.

He learns fast how to duck cameras—and how to attract them. He learns how to avoid reporters, except when he wants to talk. He learns how to sidetrack paparazzi with glamour shots. He finds he is good at this game of chess, of Russian Roulette, of cards built into fragile palaces. He is good with people, good with crowds, good with playing the symphony’s strings.

I’d make a damn good villain, he thinks one night before he drifts off to sleep, a cute blond whose name he can’t remember already asleep beside him.

And then he thinks of Shouta—of Eraserhead—and the guilt he’d swallowed eight months before, when Shouta had walked out and left nothing but empty shadows where he’d been, threatens to choke him. He barely makes it to the bathroom before he vomits, bile tasting of too-much alcohol and too-little food, of regret and shame.

What am I doing? he thinks, leaning his forehead against cool porcelain.

“Are you okay?” the cute blond asks. He stands in the door to the bathroom and looks down at Hizashi with concern in his pale eyes.

“Get out,” Hizashi says, not looking up.

“But—”

“Just—just go.” And then, softly, voice breaking halfway through the only syllable that matters, “Please.”

The cute blond leaves, and Hizashi is left totally, utterly alone.

---

“You’re listed as his emergency contact.”

Hizashi stares at the window overlooking the city and sees nothing but smears of too-bright light against a stormy night. Sees nothing but the unknown caller ID flashing up on his phone screen after its ringing had woken him. Sees nothing but the memory of Shouta’s face just before he’d turned away and stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

What had they even been fighting about? Hizashi can’t remember.

“I’ll be right there,” Hizashi says, unsticking his throat just long enough to remember what he’s supposed to say.

The line clicks dead, and Hizashi stumbles blindly out of bed and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He throws on a jacket, a pair of boots, a set of headphones. Ties his hair up in a bun to keep it out of his face and, hopefully, dry once he pulls the hood of his jacket over his head.

The trip to the hospital is spent in a haze of emotion, fear, and dread. He can’t parse any of it, though. Can’t understand it, give voice to it, give structure to it. All he knows is that he is feeling, and that he is afraid, and that he is certain that the scythe has finally fallen once again—only once again it hasn’t come to reap his life.

The hospital is bright against the rain-swept night, clean and sharp and stinging. Hizashi feels bad about the mud he tracks in, feels bad about the water he drips on the floor, feels bad about the lingering scent of gel and hairspray that seems to hang around him no matter what shampoo he uses.

He tells them who he is, who he is here to see. The nurse helping him looks at Hizashi with a curious expression that he is too strung out to try to interpret, and then leads him down a maze of white corridors that he knows he will never remember. They stop outside a door in the ICU, and the woman rests a hand on his forearm and says something Hizashi does not hear. Then she opens the door, and Hizashi steps into the room.

Shouta is unconscious on a bed, surrounded by machines. His chest rises and falls with intubated breath, and two IVs are hooked into the backs of his hands. His eyes are closed beneath the purple and black bruising shadowing his face, and Hizashi can just see more bruising peering out above the bandages swathing his chest.

“How—” He chokes, unable to form the words that he needs to say.

“We don’t know,” the nurse says. “He was found in an alley by a couple of drunk college students. We think he fell.”

“Fell?” Hizashi repeats dumbly. “But he never falls.”

The nurse is silent. Whatever she is thinking, she does not share with Hizashi.

For that, Hizashi is grateful.

“Is he going to make it?”

“We don’t know,” the nurse admits. “He has to stabilize before we can use any healing on him. If he survives the night, his prognosis will be good—but it’s a big “if”.” She hesitates, then says, “It’s a good thing you came.”

Hizashi moves to sit in the chair pulled up to Shouta’s bedside and sinks into it. He does not see the nurse watch him with concern—does not hear her pager go off a few minutes later. He does not even notice when she disappears through the door, or when the door clicks shut behind her.

For a long time, Hizashi is silent. There is too much to say—too much he needs to say, too much he wants to say, too much he can’t say. The words sit heavy on his tongue, in his throat, behind his teeth. They are stones in his stomach, glass in his lungs, thorns in his heart.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

He laughs weakly.

“You always did have a way of leaving me speechless, Sho,” he says at last. His voice is a clap of thunder in the silence of the room.

Hizashi sighs and buries his face in his hands.

“Please wake up,” he whispers through his fingers. “There’s so much I have to tell you. So much you have to know. Like, you have to know that I—I’m sorry. For…for everything.”

He swallows. His throat constricts, and his breath comes in shaky gasps.

“I can’t lose you too,” he says to his palms, because looking at Shouta is too much. His voice is hoarse and barely audible and pleading. “Please, Sho…”

The machines beep. The vents rattle. Shouta’s false breath hisses.

And Shouta doesn’t wake, even when Hizashi begins to cry.

---

Hizashi is asleep when the doctor comes in, just after dawn. He startles awake at the sound of the door closing, blinking blearily and turning his head to stare at the tall, dark man. The doctor smiles at him, and goes to check on Shouta.

He had survived the night. That much, at least, is a relief.

“We still don’t know,” the doctor warns Hizashi. “But we can start to be hopeful.”

They take him away for another surgery. This time, they promise Hizashi, a healer will be involved.

Hizashi stands, stretches, and goes in search of food. He finds the cafeteria, and buys a meager breakfast that smells bad and tastes worse. When he looks at his phone, he sees that he has missed calls from both Tensei and Nemuri. He shuts it off and shoves his phone back into his pocket to deal with later.

He’s going to have to call his agency soon, too, but he has a few minutes until that call is critical.

He spends a quarter of an hour sitting at the hard, plastic table in the cafeteria, staring out of the window at the overcast morning and thinking. He thinks about what he is going to say if—when—Shouta wakes up. He thinks about what he is going to say to Nemuri and Tensei. He thinks about his choices, and about the certainty of death, and about the possibility of life.

He thinks about Oboro, and about Shouta, and about how he lost one and how he might lose the other.

Hizashi stands, shoving his chair back so hard it topples onto the floor with a bang. What few others are in the cafeteria stare at him with varying degrees of irritation and wariness, until he rights the chair and walks away with a casual wave of apology.

He calls Tensei.

Tenya is running around in the background, laughing maniacally, and Tensei is distracted during the call in spite of his concern. He promises to come by the hospital when he can, though, and tells Hizashi to call Nemuri. Hizashi promises he will, and hangs up.

Nemuri is unusually quiet as Hizashi tells her what he knows of what happened, and while he tells her that Shouta is back in surgery. When at last she speaks, she only says, “You were still his emergency contact.” It is not a question. It is barely an observation. More than anything, it is a revelation.

“I guess so,” Hizashi says, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he feeds a bill into one of the vending machines. His breakfast had been bland, and he wants sugar.

They talk for another few minutes about nothing in particular, and as Hizashi unwraps his candy bar and begins to eat, he is struck with the notion that Nemuri is just trying to distract him. He appreciates it. Before long, though, she hangs up with a quick goodbye, and a promise to come to the hospital after her last patrol.

Hizashi crumples the empty wrapper and tosses it into a trash bin, and wanders his way back toward Shouta’s room.

He calls his agency once he is seated by Shouta’s still-empty bed. He tells them there was a family emergency, and that he will not be able to patrol today. They are surprisingly accepting of his feeble excuses, and Hizashi wonders if someone else had already contacted them. Probably Tensei, he decides. That was always the kind of thing Tensei thought of.

His phone calls made, Hizashi settles uncomfortably into the hard, plastic chair to wait for Shouta to be brought back. He tries not to think. He mostly fails.

He thinks of Shouta. He thinks of Oboro. He thinks of invincibility, and of shattered stained glass, and of birthdays. He thinks of a broken shelf of liquor bottles. He thinks of screaming at Shouta in their apartment, so angry he’s lost control, and of Shouta silencing him with a red-eyed stare. He thinks of broken promises, and broken hopes, and broken dreams.

They bring Shouta back in sometime around noon. He is still unconscious, but he looks a little better than he had the night before. The bruising is lighter—more red and purple than black and purple—and he is breathing on his own. Some of his color has returned as well, though he was never anything but pale.

The nurses leave again, after telling Hizashi things he does not hear, his attention fixed on Shouta to the exclusion of all else. He wonders, vaguely, as he feels them leave the room, if they had figured that out, or if they had just finished telling him what they had to say.

The seconds drag into minutes as Hizashi waits, the minutes into hours. Hizashi sits, stiff and sore, in the chair by Shouta’s bedside, watching his chest move beneath the bandaging, watching his eyes flicker beneath his eyelids. He wonders what Shouta dreams of.

The doctor comes in again. Leaves again. Hizashi ignores him.

Nemuri comes, but does not stay long. She talks, and Hizashi listens with half an hear, saying nothing as she tells him about her day, about her night, about everything but her worry over Shouta. It’s there, though, lurking beneath every strained story, every forced laugh, every brittle word.

Nemuri is older than him and Shouta and Tensei—but, like Tensei, she had found them adrift in the wake of Oboro’s death, and like Tensei she had decided, “These are mine, now.” Hizashi is grateful for it most days.

It is only after Nemuri stands and presses a kiss to Hizashi’s cheek in farewell that he speaks.

“They think he fell,” Hizashi says, not looking anywhere but Shouta’s face. Nemuri freezes.

“But he never falls.”

“I know.”

“Do you think—”

“I don’t know what I think,” Hizashi says, short and sharp. “And neither do you.”

Nemuri hesitates. Then says simply, “Okay.” She leaves without another word.

---

Tensei visits for an hour, and when he leaves he promises to return later in the evening so that Hizashi can run home to shower and change clothes. Hizashi agrees without really knowing what he’s agreeing to.

Night has just well and truly fallen when Shouta’s eyes flicker, then open. He looks around, taking in the lights and the ceiling and walls—and then his eyes fall on Hizashi, and he freezes.

“Hey,” Hizashi says.

Shouta turns his eyes away and stares up at the ceiling.

“Uh,” Hizashi says, feeling suddenly awkward and tongue-tied. “Thanks for leaving me as your emergency contact.”

Shouta grunts. Hizashi wonders if he can even talk right now, or if it’s too painful.

“Look, Sho…” Hizashi grimaces. “Shouta,” he corrects.

Shouta looks at him again, eyes flicking over to his face. Hizashi rubs the back of his neck, and tries to figure out how to say what he wants to say.

“I know this is a bad time,” he says finally. “But I have to say this before the doctors come rushing in, and before you get up the strength to kick me out.” Shouta’s eyes narrow at him, but Hizashi isn’t looking at him anymore—is staring, instead, at the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “For…” He takes a deep breath. “For everything.”

Shouta looks back at the ceiling, and does not speak.

Hizashi calls the nurses. They come quickly, and Hizashi excuses himself from the room so that they can fuss over Shouta in peace. By the time they are done, Tensei is back, and Hizashi finds himself kicked out of the hospital until he has showered, changed, and eaten a full meal. He agrees to the terms grudgingly, but only because the memory of Shouta not even being willing to look at him is still fresh in his mind.

It haunts him as he showers, as he changes, as he walks to a small take-out restaurant a few blocks from his apartment and places his order. He wonders if he should even go back to the hospital, or if Shouta would prefer it to just be Tensei there.

He almost decides he would.

Tensei calls him just as he’s finishing his dinner, though.

“You on your way back?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Hizashi says, because he can’t quite bring himself to be selfless enough to say no.

---

Shouta is still awake when Hizashi walks into the room again. He looks at Hizashi when he opens the door and steps inside, then looks away again before he can close it. Tensei notices the silent exchange with a pensive look, but says nothing.

“Well,” he says, standing, “I have to go. I’m babysitting Tenya again tomorrow morning, and that little monster drains more out of me than twenty villains.” The soft smile on his lips belies the cutting words, though, and Hizashi knows that Tensei would give the world to his little brother if given the chance.

“Thanks,” Hizashi says, and claims the chair Tensei had just vacated.

Silence fills the room in the wake of Tensei’s departure, heavy and awkward and uncomfortable. Hizashi looks everywhere but at Shouta. Shouta stares at the ceiling.

“I…” Hizashi begins at last, entirely uncertain where he means to go with his next sentence but knowing he can’t bear the silence any longer.

A sigh cuts him off. Then, abruptly, in a ragged voice, Shouta says, “I’m sorry.”

Hizashi finally looks at him, startled. “For what?”

“For…everything,” Shouta says. “For walking out. For not being there for you. For ignoring you when you needed me.”

“Shouta, I…” Hizashi swallows hard. “I dug my own grave. I don’t expect you to dig me out. I never have.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Shouta whispers. “Our problem.”

Hizashi frowns. “What happened, Sho?” he asks suddenly. “How did you fall?”

“Someone pushed me,” Shouta says without hesitation. “I didn’t see them until it was too late.”

For the first time in seven years, Hizashi isn’t sure if Shouta is lying.

“Okay.” The word tastes like ash on Hizashi’s tongue, but there is nothing else he can say. Not now, anyway. Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Shouta is silent again, but it is a different kind of silence. Hizashi waits, knowing he is preparing to say something. At last, after a few heavy moments of pregnant waiting, Shouta says, “Can we start over?”

Hizashi looks at him, surprised. “I’m not sure that’s going to be possible,” he tells Shouta.

“Maybe,” Shouta agrees. “But…try again, then.”

For the first time in over a day, Hizashi smiles. “Yeah,” he says. Then, again, “Yeah. I’d…like that. I’d like that a lot.”

Shouta nods, just a little, against the pillow behind his head. He closes his eyes.

“Will you be here?” he asks, voice already thick with sleep.

“Yeah,” Hizashi says, knowing what he’s asking. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Shouta nods again, eyes still closed, and in seconds his breathing evens out into a soft, sleepy cadence.

Hizashi settles back into his uncomfortable chair, preparing for another long night of half-conscious sleep. It’ll be worth it, though, he thinks. Anything is worth having my best friend back.

And for the first time since the stained glass of his invincibility shattered, Hizashi thinks that maybe, just maybe—if Shouta is at his side—he’ll see his 25th birthday. Maybe even his 30th.

Maybe even his 50th.

[thesaltyace]

big rant/ramble below, you can safely ignore and move on to the next post in your feed.

Urgh

I shared the results of that autism screener with a quasi-friend who I thought would be "safe" (we used to work together and we connected over his being gay and me being visibly queer) but his response was blergh

Everyone has hints of autism.

okay yeah but this isn't just *hints* of autism. I'm answered yes to symptoms I've had since I was a kid that I've learned to mask or work around as an adult. But I still struggle with them.

He pointed out that he sees me as more ADHD than ASD.

Yeah, fair, and I'd need to see a professional to try to distinguish if my symptoms are ADHD, ASD, or both.

You don't hit the three prongs needed for a diagnosis.

But.... but I do. And the stuff I dealt with as a kid is still stuff I deal with today. I just mask it better. A short and not exhaustive list:

As I kid I had trouble interacting with peers. I didn't have friends, really. I didn't know how to make friends and I didn't try terribly hard to. I acquire friends when someone else "adopts" me and decides that we are friends. And once I became an adult, I have almost never had friends of my own - I share a friend group with my spouse who we're primary connected to through him. I'm okay with that. Maintaining a friendship entirely on my own power sounds impossible and exhausting.

I was okay with not having friends, I liked being alone, but my mom insisted on me being social. She made me join things so that I would have a list of people to invite to parties. I'd honestly have preferred a day of doing stuff I like or just a couple friends. As an adult, I want to be alone on my birthday. I will celebrate with certain friends, separately, usually over a quiet meal. That's it.

I had trouble understanding sarcasm and figurative speech. Like, I understand it now but I still think most figurative speech is annoying. I've been told the way I deliver sarcasm is weird, too.

I liked memorizing movies and quoting them start to finish, I thought it was fun but everyone else thought it was weird. I continued to do this into adulthood but I only quote aloud when I'm alone. Alamo Drafthouse quote-alongs are the BEST. I don't do this with every movie, either, just ones I really like.

Okay actually I also liked to listen to the same album or, in some cases, the same song over and over until I was sick of it (and sometimes even after that point). I mean, just endlessly looping on repeat. Not interspersed with other songs. I do this as an adult a LOT because it's easier with headphones to do this without annoying everyone else around you. Like, often it's fine for me to just put a playlist on shuffle, but I get into Moods where I just want the one album/song over and over. Yesterday I listened to Wellerman about 50 times in a row and only stopped because I had to get up and do something else and that song wasn't "good" for whatever I got up to do.

My special interest as a kid was cats. Literally everything cats, all the time - I sought out obscure facts and could tell you the difference between similar species, and wanted cats involved in literally everything I did. Adults laughed it off as childhood obsession. I was also pretty obsessed with the solar system. I thought asking my peers, as a trivia question, which of Jupiter's moons had its own asteroid (Io, in case you were wondering) was appropriate and interesting and was confused that they didn't know that. That was in fifth grade.

I watched the weather channel for fun. I would watch it for hours and absorb the weekly forecast info just... for fun? I never used it, could never tell you if you should dress a certain way or bring an umbrella or whatever. Everyone thought it was weird.

I was a know-it-all and literally could not stop myself from bluntly correcting people who were wrong. Didn't know or care that it was "rude". I'm still that way but I've learned how to sometimes swallow the urge long enough to find a more tactful way to point it out (but often fail).

I could read on my own before kindergarten, used vocabulary beyond what one would expect for my age, and had a special interest in spelling and grammar throughout my school years. I did not understand how other people weren't interested in learning about it and getting it right. I read at an undergrad level by 4th grade.

I hated loud noises and often covered my ears to block out irritating sounds. I could also hear high pitched noises that even other kids didn't seem to hear (or at least weren't bothered by them). Too much noise sent me into an internal meltdown, I'd just kinda shut down because I couldn't deal with it.

Textures and pressure on my skin bothered the absolute fuck out of me - sock seams, certain fabric materials, socks that weren't equally elastic, one shoe tighter than the other, tags.... all of that. (Also, fun anecdote I just unlocked - when I was 4 or 5 my grandmother started letting me use the soft silk sleep shirt she had as a young woman because I preferred it to anything else. Soft, smooth, no irritating qualities. Bliss. I wanted to wear it all the time.)

Don't get me started on food. Until I was in COLLEGE I mostly subsisted on pasta with either butter or alfredo sauce and chicken. I would eat other things, but pasta and/or chicken was (and still is) my biggest safe/comfort food. I'd eat other stuff mostly if I could control the balance of ingredients, get it made plain, or could confirm the texture wouldn't be offensive (so, like... plain burgers, plain cheese pizza, grilled cheese, mashed potatoes, etc.) I cannot stress this enough - from childhood through COLLEGE I did this. As a kid my mom had to make me a completely separate dish most nights to get me to eat something. My spouse was horrified at what little variety I ate. The only reason I eat so much variety now is that he knows what I do/don't like and tells me in advance if I'll find a texture or taste offensive. Of course, rather than wanting consistent texture like I did when I was younger, I now seek as much texture as possible (so long as they aren't Bad textures) so.... that's fun. But yeah most of my objections to Yucky foods is due to T E X T U R E. Even if I like the taste, the texture overrides it all.

I prefer animals to people. I will seek out animals and interact with them instead of people in the same room. And will pointedly focus on the animal to avoid interacting with people.

I'm perfectly happy with only myself for company. Being with just my spouse counts as me being "alone" though. Always has. I just realized last night that it's because I do minimal to no masking around him because he's a safe person to unmask with and always has been. Never batted an eye at the weird shit I do beyond asking questions about what I was doing or why. And then just "Okay."

Okay honestly just the fact that I want to vent into the void of tumblr instead of actually discussing this with a person - even my spouse! - pretty effectively shows how little it occurs to me to interact with other people directly. o_0

And there are so many more things that I won't list here because I could just go on and on. And like, sure, some of this may certainly overlap with ADHD but my point is that I have enough to point to ASD that it doesn't feel like having a "hint" of autism. And who knows - maybe it is mostly just ADHD and CPTSD stuff interacting in weird ways. Could be!

But just because I can make small talk and make eye contact and do the "normal" shit and I can interact "normally" doesn't mean I LIKE it. I had to LEARN to do those things to avoid having bad social interactions. When I'm by myself or with my spouse, I behave very differently than I do around anyone else. ANYONE. It's not just slightly changing my behavior depending on who I'm with - it's completely suppressing how I naturally would do things if left to my own devices.

Like, the things we recommended to our autistic students who wanted to know how to interact in ways that would help them blend in/be accepted by others ARE THE EXACT THINGS I ALREADY DO. Like, it did not occur to me at the time that neurotypicals literally do not have to think about doing those things. I thought, ah, these students just need to be told what the tricks are. Other people figure these tricks out on their own. It did not occur to me that other people, in fact, do not learn these tricks because they naturally do that behavior. They do not have to actively think about learning the trick, period. I literally thought other people also have to think as hard as I do about interactions. Evidently not.

So yeah, I'm feeling a little upset about the reaction I got from him because I'm like.... honestly, a diagnosis of ASD wouldn't change a lot about how I do things or think of things. But it would make me feel better about interacting with and participating in autism-related stuff if I am actually autistic. I realize I can use the resources and supports meant for ASD regardless, and for formal supports anything I can access due to my ADHD diagnosis likely covers anything I'd need for ASD. But having a diagnosis opens up more community. Right now I'm like yeah I'm ADHD but I totally relate to this ASD content. But I'm not going to interact much because I feel like I don't have the right to join in since idk if I do have ASD.

idk I have a lot of feelings. I had a bad email about the trans insurance coverage thing yesterday and I'm not in a great headspace, but finding out me and my spouse both scored very high on the autism screening stuff was honestly a high point because we ended up sharing a lot of how we view and interact with the world that was very eye-opening about why we interact the way we do, how we relate to others (and how other people think we're weird for how we relate to others), and just...everything. And having someone be skeptical after I've spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that I DON'T have ASD only to conclude that at the very least, I should probably be evaluated because I can't reasonably rule it out. Like, most people do not wonder if they have autism. The fact that I am spending this much time looking into it and trying to find examples to disprove it only to find I overwhelmingly can't in virtually every single diagnostic category.... just..... dismissing it outright is kinda hurtful.

Like, I recognize that ADHD symptoms overlap a fair bit, but seriously. My spouse (who definitively does not have ADHD) scored almost identically to me and we vibed on almost everything when we compared answers. We see most things similarly. We have similar areas of confusion about other people and for fundamentally similar reasons. I can't imagine all of the stuff that points to ASD for me is just ADHD in disguise, not when I vibe THAT HARD with someone else. Spouse does not vibe with me on ADHD content. At all. He can appreciate it since he does live with me, after all, and observes whatever's being discussed. But he doesn't vibe with it. He vibes with autism content, though. And I vibe with both.

idk this rant ended in rambling and I'm just going to go listen to Inside on repeat for a couple hours while I try to calm down a bit. o_0

[spaceskam]

The kissing booth (part 2)

part 1

"I can't stop thinking about him."

"God, you're such a sap."

Michael ignored the pillow to the chest that Isobel threw, happily focusing on the man in his mind. It'd been hours since the kissing booth ended and Michael had kissed 50 girls after that guy, and yet he was the only one he could think about. He didn't even know what he looked like.

"You don't get it, Iz, he was amazing."

"He talked to you for two seconds, made out with you, and then left, how amazing could he be?" Isobel asked. Michael just hummed. "I still can't believe you manage to kiss a guy in the 5 minutes I left you alone. You were blindfolded and you still found a guy."

"My skills are unparalleled."

"Shut up," she laughed. Michael hugged the pillow tight and tried to construct a face in his mind by the way it felt. It was much harder than it sounded. He rolled onto his stomach and looked up at her.

“Do you think you could find him for me?”

Isobel scoffed, “How on Earth would I do that?”

“I think I could probably know him if I heard his voice, you know, so... Help me find guys that go to your school who it might be,” Michael suggested. Isobel rolled her eyes. “I’m serious! He had this, like, really soft voice. His hair was kinda short-ish, super soft. Had great cheekbones. Maybe he’s athletic? He had a great body.”

“Oh my God, Michael, you are insane,” she groaned. He gave her a wide smile anyway. “What if he doesn’t even go to my school?”

“He has to! He was at the fundraiser,” Micahel insisted, “Please? Please, please, please, please.” 

“Jesus Christ, fine! I’ll try to talk to all the out guys at my school,” she caved. He almost jumped on her bed to give her a hug, but he decided against it since she had a gross facemask on that he wasn’t really eager to get on his shirt.

“Thank you! You won’t regret it!” 

-

“You owe me your life for this illegal shit I did for you,” Isobel said as she made her way into Bean Me Up. Michael always made it there first since it was closer to Roswell High, but they never failed to have their after-school coffee.

Where they went after their after-school coffee depended on the day.

“Ooh, tell me,” Michael said excitedly. It’d been three days since the kissing booth incident and Michael was still stuck on that mystery man. But, since it was now Monday, Isobel finally had some feedback from her explorations.

“I was talking to a few out guys around school and probably coming off as super creepy, but I was talking to one and he had the high cheekbones and was kinda thin and was soft-spoken... so I recorded him,” Isobel admitted. Michael smiled widely.

“You’re the best sister I’ve ever had, let me see!” Michael insisted, leaning over to see. She pulled up a video of a guy with pale blonde hair that was shot from a very unflattering angle.

“I swear, he’s cute in person,” Isobel promised. Michael held the phone to his ear and listened to the guy talk. “Well? Is it him?”

“No,” Michael said, pausing as he listened closer, “I don’t think?”

“You don’t think?”

“I’m pretty sure my guy has a deeper voice,” Michael said, frowning. But, the problem was, he wasn’t sure. The guy had only spoken a few sentences and then kissed him senseless and three days had passed, so the memory of that voice was fading. “Fuck.”

“Caramel macchiato for Michael,” a barista said. Michael stood with his frown still in place.

“Look, if you don’t remember his voice, we’re kinda stuck,” Isobel said. He sighed and turned to go grab his drink, smacking straight into another body.

“Oh shit, sorry,” the guy he ran into said.

“Sorry,” Michael said at the same time, looking over the guy to make sure he didn’t spill his coffee. He was in the Atherton uniform like Isobel with his coffee safe in hand. Michael got to his face and saw his bright smile slowly fade as recognition set in. Which was wild because Michael had never seen the guy before. “Sorry, do I know you?”

“Uh…” he trailed off, “No, I don’t think so.”

For a moment, Michael wished he did. He was fucking gorgeous, tan skin and dark hair adding to his stunning face. Michael slipped on his charming smile.

“That’s too bad,” he said. The guy gulped visibly and his cheeks started tinting a little red.

“Right, well… See you around, I guess.”

Michael turned to Isobel without even getting his coffee. “Who was that?”

She rolled her eyes. “His name is Alex and, before you ask, he’s straight. You got over mystery kiss man awfully fast.”

“I’m not over him,” Michael protested, looking out the window to see Alex stopping to put his headphones in. He was even pretty from afar. “I’m just… exploring my options.”

“Yeah, well, go get my coffee, Zeus.”

“Oh, that’s just cold.”

Michael got the drink and waited a few seconds for his own drink to be finished, bringing them both to the table. Isobel grabbed her macchiato like it was a lifeline. Which, knowing her, it kind of was.

“So, like, how do you know that guy is straight?” Micahel asked, his eyes drifting to the window again to see if Alex was still there. He wasn’t.

“He’s on the football team,” she answered simply. Michael raised his eyebrows.

“Are you telling me queer dudes don’t play football? Izzy, that’s just plain willful ignorance,” he said. Isobel snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Look, it’s not about him. I just spent all day talking to all the out guys in my school and I don’t know how we’re even going to find him if you don’t remember his voice,” Isobel said. Michael pursed his lips and got to thinking. There had to be some way to identify him. “Is it possible he’s not out?”

“If he’s not, then it’s pretty ballsy of him to just kiss a stranger from a different school who was blindfolded and--” Michael paused as the event started sounding less sexy and more like a crime of opportunity, “I”m beginning to think he might not be out.”

“Then I don’t know what you want me to do,” Isobel said, “I can’t hunt down people and out them.”

“Well, no, but maybe if he knows that I’m looking for him, he’ll come out on his own,” Michael suggested. Isobel didn’t seem to buy it. “Listen, if I kiss him again, I’ll know it.”

“Michael. No. You can’t go kissing random guys,” Isobel scolded. He rolled his eyes.

“I can hold another kissing booth for guys!”

“If he’s not out, he’s not going to go to a kissing booth,” Isobel pointed out. Michael sighed and slumped into his seat. Before he could come up with anything, Isobel got a bit serious and leaned closer. "Where are you sleeping tonight?"

"Don't worry about it," Michael replied, giving his sweet smile. She eyed him but nodded without another word.

They stayed and talked for another hour and a half before Isobel had to go home. The sun was in the beginning stages of setting, the sky turning pretty shades of pink and purple. He sat in his truck in the parking lot until it got dark completely.

Then he drove to the Crashdown, parking on the side of the building as a semi-decent way to hide the fact that his truck would be there all night. He knew Mr. Ortecho had probably noticed it, but he never said anything. Michael walked in and saw Liz behind the counter. She'd gone to Roswell High through her freshman year before getting a scholarship to Atherton. Michael had been offered one once upon a time, but then he got in a couple fights and surviving became a lot more important.

"Hey, Ortecho," he said, walking up to the counter. Surprisingly, Alex from the coffee shop was already sitting there. Michael gave him a smile. "And guy who I ran into."

"Michael, this is Alex. Alex, this is Michael," Liz introduced. Alex gave a two finger salute.

"Hey."

"Hey," Michael said, "I've never seen you before and now suddenly I see you twice in one day. Must be fate." Alex's neck and his ears slowly started turning red, his attention going to the basket of fries before him.

"Stop harassing my friends," Liz laughed. He just grinned even wider. "Rosa's upstairs, go around back though because my dad's in the kitchen."

Michael shot her a pair of finger guns. "Gotcha. See you around, Alex."

Michael gave him one last glance before heading out the door and going around the back of the building. He quickly scaled the fire escape that led straight into Rosa Ortecho's bedroom. He wondered how thought-out that placement was.

He felt through the window with ease, landing on a pile of clothes. Rosa was sat on her bed with a sketch pad in her lap and didn't even look up at the commotion.

"If you break something by climbing that one day, I'm not gonna help you," she said. He just smiled and stood up, flopping down on her bed. She kicked him, scolding him in Spanish for fucking up drawing.

"You'd help me," he said, pulling her pillow beneath his head, "You like me too much."

"Don't get it twisted, I like that you punched Jake Thibodaux for grabbing my ass two years ago. Doesn't mean I like you as a person," she told him, but the smile on her face said otherwise. Hell, the fact that she gave him a place to stay three times a week said otherwise. He made a personal rule not to stay more than three times a week with her or the Evans' strictly so he wouldn't overstay his welcome. That meant only one night a week in his truck which, at this point, wasn't the end of the world.

"So, I met a guy at the kissing booth I told you about," he grinned. Rosa raised her eyebrow, putting her sketch pad to the side.

"Spill."

"So I was on break and I still had my blindfold on and he came in back and kissed me. Like, really kissed me. Like, I forgot my name for a minute kissed me," he said. Her eyes widened and she grinned, teasingly prodding his ribs with her socked foot.

"Who is he?"

"I don't know," Michael sighed, "I was blindfolded and he just left. And now I have no idea how to find him. All I know is he goes to Atherton."

"Ah," she said, her smile fading, "Then maybe you don't want to know him."

"Why not?"

"Most of the guys there are assholes, trust me. They think they deserve the world because of their parents being rich. They have no fucking respect for anyone," she informed him. Michael frowned. "The only one I've ever met that I didn't want to punch was Alex."

"Oh, that guy downstairs with Liz? He's unfairly hot."

"He's sheltered as hell," Rosa said, "Sweet guy and super smart, but his dad is on his ass. His curfew is 8 PM and he's got, like, concerningly low self-esteem. I asked him if he'd ever had a girlfriend and he's just like 'girls don't like me'."

"Maybe he's not straight," Michael offered. She rolled her eyes just like Isobel.

"He's on the football team."

"Why do you guys think that's a straight indicator? Your gaydar is severely flawed," he said, "He blushed when I talked to him."

"Yeah, because he's sheltered. He blushes when anyone talks to him."

"Crushing my dreams one hot guy at a time."

"Hey, your mystery kisser might not be hot."

Michael gasped dramatically, "How dare you insult the love of my life like that?"

"You're ridiculous," Rosa laughed, shaking her head, "You don't even know him."

"I will," Michael insisted, "I can't pass that up."

"Well, go to sleep and dream about him. The bags under your eyes have bags," she said. He stuck his tongue out, but didn't retort as he let his eyes close. He'd spent the night prior camped out behind the public library. The ladies there never checked. However, he still only got a couple hours.

"Thanks, Rosa," he said, kicking off his shoes. She threw her blanket over him, engulfing him in darkness and her distinct scent. He didn't mind.

"No problem, papi."

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

The Untimely Downfall of Strangers - Part XVI

The Untimely Downfall of Strangers

THEN - Day 1165

I stared across the room at him as Niall’s voice seemed to drown out my thoughts. I stifled a yawn and wondered when I’d get to march down the hall to my own hotel room, lock the door, take a bath, and get to sleep. 

It was their last album release week--maybe ever--and my job was to tag along to events. Look good. Smile wide. Say that I was excited.

I was feeling anything but.

The vacation that Harry and I had planned for after the album was quickly approaching--but the mere thought of it sent a wave of nausea through my stomach that I couldn’t quite ignore. 

Now, he was staring at his phone. His eyes fixated on whatever it was that he typed. A joke to his sister. A message to a friend. I didn’t really care. These days, it felt like his eyes were anywhere but on me. 

“So, everyone will be up at in the hallway for 7am tomorrow?” Their manager looked around the room, waiting for nods of confirmation from all of us--including me. 

Liam was next to me, his arm on the back of the couch as he let out a monotonous ‘yes,’ but then he looked over to me and raised his eyebrows. “A week right?”

“One week,” Harry replied for me, his tone much less enthusiastic than Liam’s. He brought his eyes to mine, offering what seemed to be a hopeful--yet timid--smile. 

But I didn’t know if I’d make it. 

I didn’t know how many more times I could wake up and wonder how to convince him that I was still here--I was still in it. I’d spent years acting on TV and now I didn’t have an ounce of pretending left in me. 

Which is why, later that night, I called Sinead and I called Cara and I told them that I couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to--it’s that I couldn’t.

Neither of them knew what to say. They wanted me to be happy, but they both felt that my happiness meant a life with Harry by my side. At this point, I disagreed.

NOW  - Day 1834

I sat across from Nick Grimshaw with a microphone in front of my face. It’d been a while. I only had one condition--which Grimmy was happy to hear: don’t ask about the guy from Tennessee. 

Claire and Nick had worked hard to make it blow over. A few photos of me out to dinner with famous friends created a decent buzz that seemed to lessen the blow of my biggest scandal to date. I mean, that’s if you don’t count me disappearing for a year and a half and breaking up with Harry.

But Grimmy was okay with it--such an off-limits question meant that he was free to ask what he wanted about Harry. But he also knew that it meant I was free to answer however I’d like. 

He asked about the album, my decision to drop it with minimal promotion, my time off, my writing process. But it didn’t take him long to get the to key points. 

“So, I mean, let’s face it. You’ve been spotted back with Harry Styles and now you’ve got this new album--with a lot to say on it,” he prompted. 

“Yeah,” I nodded--Sinead watched from her seat from behind a glass window. Nick was standing beside her and Hilary was in the back. 

Harry was a thirty minute drive away, still at home, likely in his pajamas and maybe drinking a cup of tea. I wondered if he was listening. 

He’d begged to tag along but I wasn’t up for dealing with the optics, as Hilary would say. I didn’t have the energy to deal with the questions and the photos and the rumors. There were enough already,

“So is it safe to assume that you and Harry are back together?”

Nick knew the answer--but his listeners didn’t. 

“You know--sometimes people need time apart,” I laughed. “And I think there are songs on this album that really explain where I’ve been and where I am now. So I’m happy to be spending time with Harry and to have had time to reflect on my job and my life.”

“A nice, vague answer from Miss Margot Jones, a classic Friday morning special we’ve got here, folks!”

Everyone in the room laughed, and when I rolled my eyes at Nick, he only egged me on more. “But seriously, we’re all excited that you two are back together--the fans are wild about you both. But this album must have been hard for him to hear.”

I didn’t quite know what to say. Yes. It was. He was mad at points and we talked a lot about it  and there were moments when I feared that it wouldn't work out this time, either. 

I opted for something more concise, a need to defend myself bubbling in my chest as my thoughts became words. “Well, you know, I wanted this album to be honest, if anything. I wanted to explain my side of things and, I mean, he got to tell his side, which wasn’t easy to hear either.”

“What’s that life like? Hearing your significant other’s album and then writing one in response?”

“Exhausting,” I laughed, setting us up for a commercial break. Nick took us out and smiled when he removed his headphones. 

“Can’t hide it for long, love.”

THEN - Day 1155

Harry wasn’t really one to get mad. He never raised his voice or called me names. Instead, he shut down. 

His assistant, Emma, stood by the door, her voice calm and steady as she read over his schedule. She knew that neither of us were listening. I’d asked a question about whether or not I really had to go to one of their events. Harry said yes, I said no. Emma stayed silent. 

Now, as her eyes scanned down her phone and Harry’s seemed to glaze over as he looked out the window, I wondered if now was my moment. 

Emma would leave the room, I could tell Harry that this wasn’t working. I could use this as an example. A simple question, a small disagreement, and we were staring in opposite directions as if our lives depended on it. 

I didn’t know how he expected us to have a whole week together, uninterrupted. Nothing but the beach and the sun to ease the tension. 

After a few more minutes of talking, Emma excused herself and told us she’d be back in 15. I wondered if that was her way of giving us a time limit to whatever was about to explode. 

“What’s wrong with you?” I finally asked--likely the most direct I’d been in months. 

“What’s wrong with me?” He turned around suddenly, his eyes wide with confusion--his phone limp in his hand when he abandoned whatever he’d been staring at. “I should ask you the same thing. You’re the one who’s been--I dunno--weird for months now.”

“I’m not being weird,” my voice was quieter now. I wasn’t any good at responding to remarks about my mood. I didn’t need him to remind me that something was seriously wrong. I had the aching in my chest to remind me every night. 

“Margot--what is going on between us?” He stood from his spot on the couch and made his way towards me, his pace slowing considerably when he got closer. He looked me up and down, almost as if he didn’t quite recognize me. 

“Nothing, I don’t know,” I lied. He knew it was a lie. 

He was quiet for a moment. 

His eyes were distant and he looked tired. Tired of traveling, of performing, of smiling, of singing, of me. He’d admit all of that. He was weeks away from the end of an era. His band was done. He didn’t know it yet, but we were, too. 

He kept his eyes on the ground, his hands clasped together as if he were about to suggest a company merger. 

“Margot, I love you, and I want to make things okay, but I can’t if you don’t let me.”

I thought on his words for a second. Where did I start? How did I tell him the secrets I’d been keeping for a year?

I’m tired. I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m bored. I’m scared. I’m anxious. I’m depressed. I wonder what it’d be like to quit and move to upstate New York and buy a small house with a field. I can’t handle the attention, I can’t handle the pretending. I can’t handle your fans who love me and hate me and want nothing to do with me but want to know every single piece of our lives. I hate your job. I hate my job. I don’t know what else I’d do. I don’t know if you’d love me if I wasn’t the girl in the poster. What if I’m broken? What if I’ll never be the 17-year-old in the driveway that you fell in love with? What if I’m washed-up? What happens when people stop buying my albums? What happens when you leave the band? What happens when I’m 30, 40, 50? How do you know that you’ll love me forever?

He let a gust of air escape his lips when I didn’t reply. He got up from the couch, headed for the door, and closed it behind him. That’s when I knew he needed space. 

THEN - Day 1155

Margot had a temper. That was never news to me. She was loud and energetic and she had no problem letting me know when I fucked up. 

Maybe that’s why things felt so out of whack. 

She wasn’t saying anything. She didn’t seem to have anything to say. 

Emma slipped out of the room and I counted the seconds it took one of us to say something. She spoke first. 

“What’s wrong with you?”

I turned my head at record speed, my eyes wide as they met hers. She had deep circles under her eyes--her skin was pale and she made minimal effort to smile these days. 

“What’s wrong with me?” I stared at the girl I once knew--the girl who had turned into a shell of herself before my own eyes. “I should ask you the same thing. You’re the one who’s been--I dunno--weird for months now.”

I didn’t know how to be more direct. I’d asked what was wrong. I asked how she felt. I asked if she was sick. I asked if she needed help. I asked if she wanted to hurt herself. 

I tried and tried and tried to figure out how to help the girl with a big smile and make her feel okay. I knew she knew how. I’d seen it. 

My question startled her. She did the thing where she tried to retreat into herself--if she were a turtle, she’d be gone inside her shell until she knew it was safe to reappear. 

“I’m not being weird,” her voice was quieter now, the usual tone of defense replaced with one of fear or uncertainty. 

“Margot--what is going on between us?” I stood from my spot on the couch and made my way towards her. She flinched a little at this, sinking deeper into the cushions in the hotel room that she refused to sleep in. 

There was once a time where we got one room. One bed. One bathroom. Just us. Now she seemed to bruise under my touch and watch me with eyes that were constantly teary. 

“Nothing, I don’t know,” she shrugged her shoulders, reaching for her phone as if the conversation was that simple--as if a quick redaction of her words would undo the last few months. 

The new year brought me a new Margot. One that was sad and cold and distant. It’d been eleven months with the new version of her, but I still couldn’t pick her out of a crowd. 

I didn’t know how much longer I could take it. I could ask as many questions as I wanted. I could try to have a conversation and offer support. If she didn’t want it, she wouldn’t take it. It was that simple. 

So I’d get mad. I’d get mad and drop it and pretend--just like she was--that everything was fine. Maybe that wasn’t the right choice. Maybe I didn’t care. Maybe I just didn’t know what to do or who to be or what to say or how to love her. 

She stared at me with cold eyes now--more angry that she’d been a few moments earlier.

I wanted to tell her I knew. I wanted to tell her that I knew how she felt even if she didn’t have the words.

This is hard and scary and miserable, at times. We’re up early and up late and we’re tired and sick of doing this but what else do we do? Who am I without the band--who are you without your music or the show? Who are we without each other? What comes next? What comes in 10 years? Where do we go from here?

I didn’t know how to say all of that to her, and I wasn’t about to lie. 

So I decided to go with the truth. “Margot, I love you, and I want to make things okay, but I can’t if you don’t let me.”

She dropped my gaze when I spoke. I gave her a minute. Sixty seconds of silence to see if she’d say something. 

She didn’t. 

So I left. 

NOW - Day 1840

Margot shifted on the cushion beside me, turning her head slightly to signify that she wanted me to answer the therapist’s question: when did you know the honeymoon was over?

I cleared my throat and shrugged my shoulders a bit. When did I know? Had it ever begun? I didn’t really know the answer, and even if I did, I’d be worried about saying it in front of Margot. 

But my skull must have been transparent, because Margot let out a laugh and shifted again beside me. “Just answer, Harry, it’s okay.”

I blushed at this--embarrassed that I was so predictable and embarrassed that she’d called me on it. “I mean--I know they don’t typically last two years, but, I guess in 2014. We had a great summer, but we were both on tour.”

She nodded and the therapist did, too. “That was your second summer together?”

“Yeah,” we both said at the same time. 

“Mine was seventy-something different cities from May to October. Yours was…” she trailed off when she looked towards me for my answer. 

“Sixty-something spread out from April to October.” 

“It was fine at first,” Margot said, she stared out the window in Hilary’s office and a small smile came over her face. “Busy and a lot of travel but I think we were both excited to be on the road and visiting each other and whatever. It was kind of a high point in both our careers, I think.”

“So what changed?” Hilary asked, her question was directed towards me since I was the one who’d pinpointed that summer. Margot brought her eyes to mine again and waited. 

“I mean, it just wasn’t as easy. The summer of 2013 we were both still so excited, I think. I was just in love with her and nothing could really bring me down.”

Margot’s eyes stayed on my face even though I didn’t look at her. Hilary nodded for me to continue. “But by the end of 2014 I think,” I paused, unsure how to label the look of defeat in Margot’s eyes that winter. “She was tired. Emotionally, physically, all of it.”

“And you didn’t know what to do,” Hilary spoke for me, her eyes curious as I tore mine away. 

Instead of looking at either of them, I stared at my hands. I twisted the metal on my fingers and shrugged my left shoulder. “Not a clue. And when 2015 came it just got worse I asked and I tried to understand but,” my voice was higher pitched now, a desperation present that I hadn’t quite expected. 

It caught Margot off guard as well, she’d turned her whole body towards me on the couch and waited for me to continue. I could feel the water blur my vision, but I wiped quickly at my eyes to dispose of the evidence. 

You’d think I’d be okay crying in therapy. Margot said she’d done plenty.

“She wouldn’t tell me, she didn’t want my help and she didn’t seem to care that seeing her crumble was breaking me, too.” 

I wasn’t sure if I’d said it so pointedly before. The air in the room didn’t seem to shift like I’d expected. Instead, I heard Margot draw in a deep breath and then exhale. Hilary, who sat in her brown armchair across from us, turned her attention to Margot. 

“What does that bring up in you, Margot, hearing that?”

She mirrored the gesture I’d made ten times already--a shrug of her shoulders and another deep breath. “Bad, shitty. I didn’t mean to be so--difficult. I didn’t know what to do either. I was losing my mind and had no clue if anyone around me could handle that.” 

Her voice became more emotional as she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “I thought if I told him that I was depressed and anxious and having a mental break down that he’d just leave.”

“I wouldn’t have done that,” I said--the words had been said a thousand times before, but this time she nodded and looked up at me. 

The last time I said those words to her she got upset. After a glass of wine at her house I’d brought him up--the kid at the facility who touched her skin and knew how she tasted. I hated the thought of it, but then the guilt washed over me when I remembered that I’d taken things a step farther in Jamaica. 

She defended her secrecy regarding the incident and told me that she was afraid it’d do this: make me upset and create more space between us when we were just learning how to build a bridge. I told her over and over that I needed the truth from her, no matter how tough it would be. 

If we were going to do this, we needed to be honest. This time, she seemed to understand that more.

“I thought I was going to bring you down with me,” she said quietly. “I got it in my head that the only way to save you was to break up with you and spare you from my tragedy. But I just--I didn’t know how to communicate all of that.”

Margot didn’t know what to say or how to tell me she was miserable. I didn’t know how to tell her that I saw through her lies and that she needed help. We’d spent hours in studios writing lyrics, yet both of us had lost the ability to use our words when we really needed them.

I didn’t have to say this, though, because Hilary said it for me. 

She adjusted in her chair and offered a sympathetic smile. “Sounds like you both didn’t know what to do. And that you both wanted to help the other but wires got crossed.”

THEN - Day 2

I walked onto set the next morning and didn’t know what to expect. A part of me felt like I needed to apologize for how obnoxious my family had been. 

Sorry that Pete makes dad jokes. Sorry that Maya is so excitable. 

Maybe I needed to apologize for even thinking they’d want to eat dinner with my family and be entertained by pick-up games of driveway basketball. They were in a band. They had all the girls they wanted. They probably would have preferred a club downtown and hot models. 

So when Harry showed up in my dressing room as I on the couch with the script in my lap, I offered him an apologetic glance. 

“Came to say thanks for last night,” he smiled a bit, an air of nervousness seemed to come from his figure in the doorway. 

I closed the book and squeezed my eyes shut in embarrassment. “Sorry it was so lame--I hope you didn’t feel pressured, I know Maya was super excited--it was probably sort of be like hanging out with a fan.”

“It wasn’t lame,” his eyebrows dropped as if he were confused. “I really do love a good burger and I got to watch Niall act like an idiot.”

I laughed at that, wondering about the space between us. There were probably ten steps between where he stood and where I was on the couch. I heard voices from the hallway as production assistants passed. There was enough buzz by the coffee table when I’d arrived that I’d headed straight for the safe reprieve of my dressing room. 

“So when does the sightseeing begin?” He asked casually, taking three steps forward and standing directly in the center of the room. The makeup counter behind him was a mess. I had books on the coffee table and an array of sweatshirts sat atop a chair in the other corner. My laptop was on the cushion beside me, haunting me with the leftover homework from my on-set tutoring. It felt, for a second, like he was in my bedroom. My work bedroom. 

I had an idea of where he was going with it, but I didn’t want to seem too eager. “What do you mean?”

“Your hidden gems. You’ve talked them up quite a bit.”

I tried to hide the smile on my face--he seemed intrigued and interested but casual and confident. Dating at my age was hard enough. Add my job and life on top of it and it felt next to impossible. 

I would look at someone on the street and then there’d be an article about our raging romance. A previous break up in the spring had left me reeling, and I decided that I wasn’t about to date another person of notoriety. Something about Harry felt different. 

He seemed normal. Nice and human and suddenly thrust into the world that I was trying to stay afloat in. I felt like he would get it. 

NOW - Day 1908

Making an appearance in public with Harry wasn’t a new thing. There’d been plenty of red carpets and award shows where we’d walk arm in arm. 

There were more pictures of us on the internet than I could count--and whether they were actual shots of us at events, paparazzi grabs, or leaked selfies, it didn’t seem to matter. The world wanted more of us and so did we. 

Except for now. 

The car was being pumped full of cool air--the winter day in LA was hotter than either of us expected, and the heightened heartbeat in my chest didn’t help. 

“You’re actually shaking,” he laughed a little, his voice loud enough that Sinead lifted her eyes to check on me. 

“I’m fine,” I told him, my knee bouncing up and down beneath the red fabric of my dress. 

I was fine. I was nervous, of course, to be making our first appearance at an event together since 2015. Being seen going in and out of a coffee shop is way different than posing on a carpet and walking by old friends and new friends and seeing all of the people with cameras elbowing each other beyond the metal barricade. 

The Jingle Ball was being hosted at The Forum. I was only glad that it was a familiar location. 

“It’s okay to be nervous,” Sinead said quietly, her eyes still on her phone as the car slowed in line behind other black SUVs. We were in the drop off line--only a few cars in front of us until we’d climb out and smile, a motion that still seemed so robotic. 

But I was excited. I was just nervous, too. 

“S’gonna be fine, really. It’s not like people don’t know we’re together.”

“I know,” I said quietly, my eyes flickering out the window as I saw event managers pass by our car. “Just hope people don’t ask shitty questions or make things more awkward than they need to be.”

“So we divert and give them a vague answer,” Harry shrugged, his hand coming to rest on my thigh, his fingers gave me a quick squeeze before Sinead spoke. 

“Or you tell them to fuck off,” she laughed.

“That too,” Harry looked down at me, fighting a toothy grin. He ran a hand through his short hair and seemed to break eye contact for a second before looking down at me again. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I told him. 

“I’m proud of you.”

“For what?”

Sinead buried her head in her phone, pretending to give us privacy. 

“For doing all of this. For coming back even though it was hard. For going to counseling, for working things out.”

I didn’t have snarky or sarcastic reply. I didn’t have a negative thing to say or a worry in my brain that he didn’t mean it. 

“Thank you,” I said quietly, leaning into him when he pressed his lips to my forehead. Our car had slowed to a stop now, a woman with a headset stood by Harry’s door as Sinead climbed out. When the door was shut behind her, a moment of comfortable silence passed between us.

“Niall will be inside,” Harry nodded his head in the direction of the venue. “Probably has a snack waiting for you.”

“Didn’t we eat those ridiculously good corndogs here a few years ago?”

“Yeah--they’re out of this world,” he nodded seriously. The woman with the headset knocked three times on the door, giving us a signal that she’d soon open it. 

“Hey,” I said, pulling on his arm to make him look back at me for a second. “I’m happy we’re doing this.”

“This?” He motioned out to the crowd again, but then motioned a hand between us. “Or this?”

“Both.”

NOW - Day 1963

January was mild in Malibu and the sun rose like pink flower petals across the sky. Harry’s tour was on pause for a bit--a deserved break from the madness that had consumed our fall. We’d decided, right after Christmas (with the help of Hilary), that it would be the perfect time for him to bring his things to my house in boxes, a certain sign that we were on the right track. 

Sinead stood in the foyer with a clipboard like she had the day I moved in. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was dressed casually: leggings, a t-shirt, Nikes. “Where are you putting that one?” She asked some of the movers who left dirty footprints on the marble floor. 

I wasn’t completely involved. Harry was in the driveway as the first check point. He asked what each box was labeled as, then told whoever was carrying it which room to put it in. 

Sinead was serving as back-up, which I think gave her more anxiety than anyone else. 

So I was in the kitchen, sat at the counter on my laptop going over possible wardrobe designs for an upcoming endeavor: a fifteen-date tour. 

It wasn’t really my idea. I mean, it was, and it wasn’t. Nick was patient and kind and told me that I didn’t have to do one at all for this album if I didn’t want to. And at first, I didn’t know if I would. I needed time to see how people would react. I needed to see if they’d be as patient and kind as everyone close to me was. 

The fall was busy and the holidays came and went with home-cooked meals and mulled wine at Anne’s house. We took a trip with Gemma and her boyfriend and even let Ben and Sara tag along. Maya was super jealous but claimed she’d get us back one day by going on a trip of her own without all of us. 

I think it was good for us to spend some time away from Malibu and Los Angeles altogether. Even though I’d been relatively inactive, I was still accessible just by being here. Even when I was quiet, my name was making headlines for just that: No news is bad news from Margot Jones?

So being in the UK was a nice break and spending time with our families felt safe and secure.

“Okay, we have one problem,” Harry appeared in the kitchen, his arms folded over his chest as he leaned against the doorway. 

I looked up, raising my eyebrows as a non-verbal cue to go on. 

“I brought three acoustic guitars--you’ve got four up there as well as that electric that Nathan got you one year.”

I laughed, closing the colorful designs on my laptop and shutting the computer altogether. I let my elbows rest on the counter. 

Those weren’t even all of our instruments. The baby grand that slept in the music room took up most of the space--scattered guitar stands were likely the least of our concerns. “I can keep some at the studio, s’fine.”

I walked over to him and let him drape his arms around me, my head fitting against his chest with ease. He smelled like cardboard and laundry detergent--a fitting Saturday around the house mix. 

“Or, one day, we just buy a house big enough to keep all of our shit.”

My lips twitched up at that. He’d been using more future-focused language--a term that made us giggle every time Hilary used it. “Yeah, that’s a good plan.”

My house wasn’t big enough for us forever. It was fine for now, especially seeing as the next few months it’d still be just me. Harry would be on the road and then I’d head off on my own tour, flying home for low-key weekends and take-out on the couch. 

It made more sense though, for us to label the same spot as home, seeing as he’d already been sleeping here more than anywhere else in LA. 

So he went back to unpacking and I went back to wardrobe questions via email. I headed to my mom’s that afternoon for a while when I got sick of all the people in my house. Harry and Sinead could handle it, and I think the fact that I was willing to let them handle it was a sign of growth. I listened to Maya talk about her upcoming Spring semester and I laughed at obnoxious pictures from our trip that Sara had finally uploaded to her computer. 

When I came home that night and keyed into my front door, I was greeted with music floating in from the kitchen. Beside that was the smell of something delicious--lemon chicken? Maybe even veal? I could hear Harry humming along to the song, and when I dropped my keys on the counter and rounded the corner, he wiggled his hips next to the stove as he used a spatula to move things around inside the pan that he watched closely. 

The house was quiet--the dust settled after a busy day with a lot of commotion. In the corner of the living room, his favorite guitar sat on a stand near the window and the two books he most recently read were on the coffee table between the two couches. 

I didn’t know it yet, but his toothbrush was beside mine in the master bath upstairs and a framed picture of his family was on the nightstand by the bed. Our bed. And something about all of that felt right. 

NOW - Day 2049

New York was beautiful in the spring, the green leaves a sign of triumph. The scene of our wintry break up had blossomed into a colorful portrait of ings. Trying. Talking. Hoping. Working. Doing.

Harry and I couldn’t promise each other the moon or the stars or the sky. We couldn’t avoid fights or disagreements like we couldn’t avoid the puddles on the sidewalks on a rainy day. 

But we could promise the ings. Talking. Trying. Making it work even when it felt like things were broken. After all, that had been the entirety of 2017. 

So 2018 felt different. He was on tour and I was on tour and both of us knew that our living room on the cliffs in Malibu was a sanctuary we’d always return to--no matter how dark the night seemed. 

But this weekend, one that we both had off, was the perfect time for a trip back to the city we’d ended things in. The sidewalks were still stained and sirens still blared. Cars clogged the intersections and the skyline stretched up to the sun. Nothing had changed in New York, but everything in us was different. 

He didn’t tell me where we were having dinner. Instead, he told me to meet him after I got off my flight, the wings of the small plane dipping as we circled the busy island below. An address flashed on my screen when my phone reconnected to service--somewhere in the Village. 

So I sat in the backseat of a car excited to see him. I watched the scenery change from the suburbs of the airport to the crowded streets, and when I got to the address he’d sent, I recognized it. 

A small boutique hotel I’d mentioned three months earlier. Owned by a family that we knew. The elevator in the lobby brought me and the security detail trailing behind up to a rooftop garden. 

“I’m fine,” I told man in a dark grey suit, allowing him to hang back when I noticed the rest of the roof was empty. Just Harry, peonies, and a bartender behind mahogany counter. A table near the edge of the roof, his back was turned to me as he looked out over the city. 

“Very chic,” I said, slowing my pace a bit when he turned around. His lips faltered for a second, a smile overtaking the hesitation when he let his eyes meet mine. 

“You look beautiful,” he said, his hand finding the small of my back when he closed the distance between us, meeting me in the middle of the empty rooftop. 

“S’quiet up here,” I said, looking around at all of the colors. The blue and pink sunset, the different reds and oranges of flowers. Green leaves and shades of grey below. “Just us?”

“Just us,” he nodded. 

A waiter brought us champagne--two flutes with bubbles clinging to the sides. There was dinner and conversation and he told me about the past week. He told me about the ways he missed me and when we finished dessert, I pointed north and asked if he saw it. 

“See what?”

I pointed a finger and closed one eye, the shine from the windows in the distance blurring into an orb of light now that the sun had sunk below the horizon. “That’s The Langham.”

He leaned his head over to rest on mine, I wondered if he was thinking about the interior of the room. The words I said, the way he looked so distant, the sound in my voice when I told him to leave. 

If he was thinking about that he didn’t say it. Instead: “We’ve come a long way.”

I nodded, thankful for the separation from the city below. Twenty-two floors stood between us and the rest of the world--like the rooftop was a private space where we were untouchable. At least I could pretend that we were momentarily. 

“Marg,” he said suddenly, pulling away from me slightly. He shoved a hand in his pocket and fished out a black velvet box. 

“I, uh,” he lifted the box and set it down twice, a thumping in my stomach had me hanging on his words. “I have this.”

I looked down at it, his left hand reached up to open it, a small light inside reflected off of the stone, my eyes flew up to his for an explanation. 

He sunk to one knee, the way you do when you tie a shoe or pick something up from the ground. He told me he loved me, his voice soft enough for only me to hear, and he asked me to do this forever, as messy or as hard as it might be. 

I muttered out some type of yes of course oh my god are you serious I had no idea I’m so excited I love you so much yes. 

He hugged me and brought his forehead to mine and we swayed like that in the dark--I wondered where the rest of the people were, inevitably watching but pretending they weren’t. Two more bubbly flutes, phone calls to important people, then more staring at the skyline that blinked and buzzed--but this time, in a hopeful way.

It wasn’t about the ring. It wasn’t about the people on sidewalks below who’d soon know. It wasn’t about the champagne or the rooftop or our tours or the hotel that was fifteen blocks away where I’d watched him walk away. 

In fact, it wasn’t about the past at all. 

It was about now. Forward motion like the changing tide in Malibu that rocked me to sleep when I was alone. Like the sunrise I’d watch on the deck while I wondered where he was. 

The best part of now was that I didn’t have to wonder: he was right beside me.

AN: this story took a year to write and will always be one of my favorites. sorry it took so long for this last chapter, but I’m glad to finally have it finished. Margot and Harry will always have a place in my heart :’) 

[writingsofmyimagination]

Conjecture |7|

Yoongi x Reader

Idol Reader Au, Enemies to Lovers AU

Summary: Your management refused to renew your contract unless you collaborated, so you ending up working with Min Yoongi. A guy you’d disliked from before both of your debuts. There is more to their past than meets the eye.

Links to all other parts in my masterlist :)

Words:3293

Warnings: SMUT!! Domme ReaderxSub Yoongi. BDSM themes.Oral (F receiving). Slightly Soft Yoongi.

if you want to be tagged let me know :)

Reblog, Like, Comment pwwwweeasse :)

//For the second time that day you made Yoongi choke on his drink.

“You just look like you’ve received the filthiest message” Jin teased observing the pink flush Yoongi’s cheeks framing the grin plastered on his face.

“And who exactly would I receive those messages from?” he returned without hesitation with Jin going back to checking his own phone in defeat. Observing the proximity of the other boys around him he re-read the message taking more time to hang on to every last word before his concentration of his surroundings dropped completely off the radar and painted himself in your picture.

 His chest already falling and rising in rapid tides trying to recover from practice, his skin slick with sweat hoping the next time it was at your doing. Your delicate fingertips tracing his every outline, down his side, up his thigh…Your nails marking his skin as you came around him.

Stop! He scolded himself feeling the stirring of his cock.

His pulse skyrocketed.

“Hey breaks over” Jungkook nudged him.

“Yeah, one sec” Yoongi replied typing in the only response he had.

-Fuck-.

Your message completely knocked the sincere talk he’d been rehearsing nervously in his mind straight to the back burner.//.

 Your insides where a whirl of excitement they had you nauseous, the vocals were done and edited. You had the overwhelming excitement of a puppy; as an artist to get this rush without any clouding of doubt was rare and it was to be cherished in its entirety. You’d rushed round the apartment rendering it acceptable. The large open plan living area enabled you to observe your handiwork from all angles. Charlie’s toys were chucked into a box in the corner by the window next to his excessively large bed you’d thought would be a good idea even when the little guy lives curled into your legs or next to you given every opportunity; you spared a thought and wondered if Charlie would approve of Yoongi. You had the largest TV that would mount on the wall opposite the just as large 8 seater deep corner sofa that was worth every penny of the 3000 pound you’d spent on it. It still looked brand new apart from the corner seat which was blanketed with one of Charlie’s blankets; you didn’t have an issue with his fur anywhere but if it was at least localised it made cleaning slightly easier.

It was gone 10pm by the time the knock kick-started your heart at 50 miles an hour. It soon stopped dead when he walked in looking as equally comfy as he was gorgeous. The grey-blue hoody sat loosely on his frame, his phone weighing down the front pocket. A long lighter blue shirt peaked out over running the length of the hoody resting mid-thigh and longer at the back; his pale knees drawing your eye through the slits in the black skinnies accessorised with a red bandanna. His dark hair sat fluffy and slightly damp strands holding on to his forehead and shading his eyes making them all the more endearing. There was something off in his expression which sunk your heart to the bottom of your stomach.

You beckoned him with a graceful gesture, he slumped the large holdall which had been clinging at his side.

“The drive was okay?”

“Yeah, the hour flew by” he responded

“Because you had something good at the end of it I bet” you slowly encroached on his space.

“Mmhmm” he mumbled past the kiss he received, his lips weren’t quite as responsive as they had been.

“You okay?” the pang of concern hitting your chest harder than it needed to.

“Yeah, just can we talk a minute” the words that left him were hesitant, his hand rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish eyes unable to settle anywhere.

“Sure, go make yourself comfortable, want anything to drink?”

“No I’m good thanks” he made his way and perched on the sofa and watched you sit beside him, you tucked your legs under you and rested your palm at your temple, elbow resting on the top of the chair. He didn’t say anything, the silence stole the oxygen from the room, you decided you hated seeing him nervous or in any kind of emotional turmoil. You placed a supportive hand over his, he squeezed it and then stood and proceeded to pace in small shuttles.

“Okay so…” he began and then paused rehearsing the words in his mind for a moment. “I just have something to say before anything more happens between us, for my own sanity I need you to hear it and I don’t want to keep anything from you”

He paused again, you did nothing but wait patiently for him to continue with reassuring eyes.

“Like I really like you, and I have for years. When you stopped talking me and made it more than clear you hated me it destroyed me; there was nothing in my mind I could think of that I did and I had no idea how to fix it.”

You’d never thought until now how he’d felt after you’d so harshly cut him off, and now you did and it hurt, it hit you like a steam powered engine.

“I’d never stopped thinking about or wishing you all the success in the world that you truly deserve. When you finally agreed to collaborate I was ecstatic, I didn’t care that you’d be difficult or awkward I was just happy to get to see you up close again.” The words were rushing out almost in a babble.

“I can’t even begin to explain the relief when we realised it was a horrible misunderstanding, things became so much more natural between us again. I guess I just wanted to say how I felt before anything else happened because I can’t really do casual, I need real connections and the thought of sharing you with Wonho or anyone else destroys me. I guess I just wanted to know where you stood or if you feel…” You crashed your lips to his, eyes scrunched and weeping tears at their sides.

“I’m soo sorry I put you through all that, I had no idea. I was such an assuming jerk.” His eyes has glazed over as he willed no tears to fall. His hands were holding yours at your sides, you never wanted him to let them go, they felt so warm and perfect, interlocking fingers to their rightful place. “I’ve always liked you too” you admitted.

He eyes narrowed a sarcastic ‘really’ look.

“Okay, obviously before I hated you like a dick for years” you corrected.  The pair of you sat bleary eyed gazing at each other with such focus. “Remember that night of your accident?” you asked, he replied with a small nod.

“You fought me hard on not telling your parents or anyone remotely to do with BigHit. I saw a guy who was literally willing to hide a serious shoulder injury out of fear of not being able to carry on being a trainee. For one that was incredibly stupid, but two the passion I empathised with and I saw myself in that. I wouldn’t have stayed with you the whole night at the hospital if I wasn’t fond of you and even then you were more worried about what my mum would say. From then I saw nothing but this sweet and passionate guy what wouldn’t I like about that?”

“Your mum is terrifying!” Yoongi added, his cheeks were flushed an adorable pink colour.

“You say that, she has a right soft spot for you. She calmed right down after I told her what guy I was out all night with. I’ve always wondered how you managed to get on that woman’s good side.”

“Remember your dads face” Yoongi chuckled, his laugh was infectious and you became symptomatic immediately.

“Yeah, he didn’t believe me for one second until he saw us at the hospital”

“Well you’re his little girl. What dad wouldn’t be a bit defensive at their 18 year old staying with a boy all night?”

Yoongi was right of course.

“Yeah I know, anyway back to now, of course if we’re going to do ‘us’ properly of course I wouldn’t see Wonho in that way anymore, I told you we’re just friends. I’d be yours and yours only”

A content peacefulness overtook his aura, the sweet smile that ached to be kissed. You were powerless and kissed him softly saving him from having to talk anymore about his feelings.

“Shouldn’t you be super smiley right now?” you asked perplexed as his expression had grown thoughtful and pensive.

“Sorry, just thinking of all the time we’ve missed out on, we could’ve been together all this time”

“Well I can tell you we haven’t missed anything” his gaze puzzled.

“I had a no dating clause for 2 years when I first signed and at 18 it should've bothered me but after what happened there was no way I wanted anything to do with guys” He didn’t seem to surprised at this revelation.

“Come on, come and see what I’ve worked on today! I’m sooo happy with it. Just our duet to record now.” You beamed switching back to non-serious mode and dragged him into the studio.

“It’s incredible, I love it so glad you put the vocals in from the other day” you shot him a look feeling defensive of his tone.

“But?” you asked, you were in the chair dials and knobs at your fingertips, Yoongi was leaning over your right shoulder a headphone to his ear. You tried not to get too lost in the scent of soap and just him radiating of his body; it enveloped you in cotton wool and you wanted it to be home. He leaned closer to you turning a few of the dials and clicking away with the mouse.

“Here” he handed you the headphones back and you slipped them on and listened to the edited section. It was even more incredible than before.

“Okay, okay you’re a genius. Now it’s done”

“Now it’s done” he affirmed. You wasn’t sure if it was the way his eyes swamped over with a playful, needy sparkle or the way he bit his lip under a smile but you were done, he was yours. His mind must have had the same thought process driving his actions when he yanked you out of the chair and pulled you flush against his chest, his hands finding their way underneath your tank top to knead at your chest. Blood rushed southwards as the air around you became saturated with hot and heavy breaths.

You grappled at the hem of his shirt until he let you pull it over his head exposing the opalescent skin of his own chest which felt like heaven underneath the trail of your fingertips.

“Wait…wait” you breathed “not here” you directed as much as it pained you to break up the atmosphere.

You pushed him on to the bed and straddled his waist, pulling the back of his hair exposing his neck for you to mark lightly, his quiet moans conducted the grinding of your hips into his groin. You stripped off your shirt and unhooked your bra and disposed of them somewhere on the floor. Yoongi’s head turned side to side trying to take in the surroundings, you redirected his face forward to yours.

“Let’s play a game” you pulled the bandanna from his belt loop and blocked him from seeing your grin grow anymore wicked. You stroked under his chin his head obediently followed the direction to your lips.

“If you want to stop at any time for any reason say ‘Red’ okay?” he nodded. You ground in to him, hard and pulled the back of his hair eliciting a groan which spoke directly to your core.

“You will also always use words when spoken to or asked a question okay?”

His grin returned “Yes, I got it. Can I call you noona please?” his words escaped as a whine. You halted your movements of unhooking his jeans and just took a moment to adore the view beneath you with an un-received warm smile.

“Look at you being all good for me already” the jeans ended on the floor in a heap. “I like my queen, I’ve never let anyone else call me that but honestly the thought of you calling me noona … so yes you can” You left him pouting on the bed as you went over to you walk in wardrobe, doors doubling as body mirrors, immediately on the left beneath your jackets and coats you went into the draw and retrieved what you needed.

“So we’re going to play a traffic light game. I’m going to give a sensation on the palm of your hand and If you like it you’re going to tell me where to put it on you, your cock is not included. If you don’t like it just say also you must keep your hands to yourself, no touching” You watched his face become the epitome of excitable anticipation.

I can’t even, when he bites his lip

“Aren’t you going to restrain me?”

“One thing at a time, besides I want to be cautious of your shoulder and I want to see how much self-control you have without the assistance of restraints” You noticed the slight sulk and exhale of air  through pouted lips. You’d let the sulk go, this time.

You started with a simple kiss at his palm

“Neck”

Good choice you thought. As directed you sauntered your lips around his neck delivering heavy kisses, his chest hitched upwards as he swallowed hard. You loved how reactive he was.

“Sides” you danced the delicate feather in elegant brushes at his sides, flicking the end gently towards his hips bones.

His face creased slightly as the spikes of the pin-wheel dragged across his palm. He paused a beat, lost in thought.

“Ne..no thighs” he requested

Necks a weak point then you noted for further utilisation

Towards the apex of his thighs you increased the pressure of the wheel, you took the reaction of his fisting at the sheets as a positive one. You battled with the urge clawing at you to just take him as he was, riding him until you both stopped being able to form words.

“You look so beautiful for me, it’s hard to not just fuck you right now” you admitted. He fidgeted ever so slightly at your words. “Bet you’d like that though right?”

“Yes noona” he pleaded.

Fuck

You’d never been much for the noona thing but holy hell coming from him in the deep husky whine.

The bullet reverberated against his palm.

“Chest…please” he struggled over the last word, apparently your mouth encircling his cock took him by surprise.

“You asked so nicely”.

You rearrange yourself, at his waist again, your restraint was tested with his cock so close. It twitched when the buzzing and vibrations toyed with the skin at his chest, his hips bucked.

Your hands flooded to grip at his hands to stabilise yourself as his cock went straight to your spot. The volume of your cry amplified from surprise almost shrouding the groan tearing from Yoongi’s throat.

“Did I say you could fuck me?” you warned when you’d adjusted to him.

God he felt so good

“No, but…” he tried, while forcing himself not to move anymore even though every fibre of his being was telling him to do so.

“No buts!” you scolded testing your own will power to not move, you waited and waited. The frustration quickly built up to be unbearable, you took yourself off him, leaving you feeling empty.

“I think you can wait a bit longer for that now and I was so looking forward that, but you had to be impatient”

He squirmed beneath you “I’m sorry, please don’t make me wait I can’t…”

“You can and you will, there’s only one more round left ready?” he surrendered the fight and his body sighed sulkily.

“Yes I’m re…”

“My tongue” he managed as he gasped, his fingers guided by yours stroking at your arousal

Keeping your breathing calm, filtering the strong breaths past your lips.

“Well, I was hoping you’d say thighs but I mean that’s much better” His lips creasing at your approval. You slipped the blindfold off him and were met with famished eyes. You let him sit up

“You can use your hands now”

You were victim to a hard drawn out kiss which threatened your capacity to breathe, his hands desperate to make up for lost time glazed everywhere they could as you laid back. Your neck and chest were quick to break out in small petal blemishes; he had you twisting your fists at the sheets. The amount of times his lips ghosted past where you needed them the most creased your brows and the frustration translated into ignored whimpers and writhing for literally any contact.

“Now who doesn’t have self control” he teased looking up at you, eyes not yet content.

“Trust me if I didn’t self-control you’d be in a whole different situation right now” you replied strongly.

“Lucky for me then”

Your hand shot to grip his hair when his lips finally answered your need for contact. His arms hooked under your thighs, palms securing your hips. The way his tongue adeptly caused your undoing, dipping into your entrance in between firm circular swipes of his tongue. The aesthetic of his head between your thighs deepened every time his eyes snapped up to lock with yours, it was becoming harder and harder for your eyes to stay open, your eyes were forced closed as you neared your end.

“Come up here” you panted, he replied with a hesitant look before moving, you pulled his lips hard to yours and guided his hand desperately back to your clit.

“I just like to be close” you explained as his head nestled at your neck; the hot breath skimming your skin. His needy cock pressed at your thigh. His fingers navigating to your g-spot with blissful accuracy, palm applying pressure to your bud. Your hips took a moment to fall in sync with the movements of his finger, when they did, every muscle below your waist built tensed. Your nails locked onto his shoulder blades as you stilled under him, body convulsing whimpering his name. The heat completely engulfed you both, his lips also spilling out moans as hips jerked against you, the humidity leaving a pair of breathless bodies.

“Did you just cum without me doing anything?” you enquired with nothing but a triumphant smirk etched on your face.

“Hearing you like that just fucking did me over, sorry” he admitted rolling over slumping back into the mattress.

“Hmm well I don’t remember giving you permission but if you go and make me a drink I’ll forgive you”

He planted a kiss on your cheek

“You got it”

Your drink was gone in seconds, your body was crying out for some serious hydration.

“So what do you want?” you asked Yoongi your fingers tracing a delicate pattern across his chest.

“What do I want?”

“Yeah, you’re always entitled to some form of aftercare after you’ve subbed for me”

“Is that so?” you nodded.

“Like what?”

“Whatever you want, massage, bath, cuddles, watching tv, food”

“Can sleep be on that be on that list?”

“If that’s what you want” you laughed, internally kicking yourself for not suggesting that to the guy who happily wants to be a rock in his next life.

“Can I hold you?” he asked, smile drowsy and satisfied.

“You don’t even need to ask”.

[shortqueershakespeare]

Gonna take a page out of the other anon's book and ask you to do all the harry potter questions...

so this took forever, but i’ve finally finished them all (and of course pasting them fucked up the formatting fml) Amortentia: Talk about 3 things you love. 

- I love languages, I love being able to see into someone’s soul by talking the language of their heart. I love the different sides of my identity that emerge with different languages, how you can only see fragments of my whole soul without comprehension of each language that forms a part of my heart.

- I love the LGBT community, love feeling free and whole and myself. I love seeing people realise who they are and seeing unabashed, queer love in the face of a world that does not want us. I love seeing that we are stronger together and that no one can take our identities away, no matter how much they try. I love seeing boys fall in love with boys and girls fall for girls for the first time. 

- I love the pure, unadulterated joy of learning, of education and finding out something new. The feeling of discovery and the sensation of having accomplished something when you understand a new concept is incomparable.

Ageing Potion: imagine yourself 50-60 years from now. how would you like a typical day to go? where do you see yourself? 

In fifty years, my body would be my own, covered in marks from misadventure and splashes of colourful memories. At 61, my kids would be grown up and moved out, my house would be filled with a different kind of sound, with puppies and bunnies and any other pets that fit. I hope I’d have a man to share this life with, we spend our weekends baking and devising obstacle courses for the pets to fall over, getting calls from our kids on how to be an adult (as if we’ve figured that out, even at our age). My sisters still haven’t let go of the habit of calling me a kid, and I try to see them when I can. The seasons change, the leaves fall, and I spend them all, content.

Alihotsy Draught: name and write about a few topics you’re really passionate about. 

Oh god we already did things I love though

Lets go specific instead and say fictional characters/ships

Drarry - The lion and the snake clash together, fire and ice raging a passionate war against each other, until they manage to blend their voices into one harmony. 

Wolfstar - the dog and the wolf, the moon and the star. Something poetic about their love. Sure, they’ve pushed against it, shouted angry words and slammed doors, but through it all, they gravitate back to each other. 

Ballum - by all accounts they shouldn’t work. A criminal and an aspiring cop, they’re a recipe for disaster, doomed to fail. But no-one, not even them, thought that they would become their own priority, above parental expectations, above the world they grew up in. they hold on tight, breathe each other in, relish in their found family. 

Antidote to Veritaserum: what is the biggest/most memorable lie you’ve told? 

I genuinely can’t think of one at all?? Oh lol not a lie but lie by omission i guess?? The fact that my gran still thinks i’m cishet lolll

Babbling Beverage: what kind of person are you when you’re drunk/hyped up on caffeine? 

I’m so fucking affectionate and talkative, i wanna cuddle everyone and I will absolutely tell you my opinions on/feelings about people. I’m a drunk disaster, but a fun drunk disaster. I also find a lot of things funny when drunk, and buy lots of presents for people.

Barufflo’s Brain Elixir: if you could master one skill instantly, what would it be? 

Right now the goddamn Russian language so my degree would be easier lol. I’d love to be able to whistle actually, or draw. 

Bloodroot Potion: describe a time you felt heartbroken. 

Well we’re gonna stick with creative writing so: I had a dream about us, both in matching suits. We were dancing at sunset, holding each other close as the songs played on. I woke up happy and content, and then I remembered that you weren’t mine anymore. You’re dancing with someone else while I sit, sobbing in my bed, longing for what should have been our future. I went through my room, finding every little thing that belonged to you, and put them to one side, in case you ever wanted them back. Holding on to the hope of one last conversation I guess. I miss you, and I hate you. And I love you. It hurts so much, like my heart stayed with you and I won’t last long without it.

Bruise removal paste: after you were heartbroken, what healed you?

The first time, it was love from family and friends and eventually falling in love again. And time. Now, i don’t know what’s gonna finish healing me, but love from other people and the promise that I’m worth more has done a lot to get me there.

Burn healing paste: are you cautious or are you impulsive? 

Both I think? I think I could do with being a lil more spontaneous though.

Calming Draught: what do you do on a rainy day?

I like to sit with a cup of tea or coffee, legs under a blanket, watching TV or writing or reading.

Caxambu: Style

I don’t think I have a recognisable style that can be described as anything other than gay. 

Borborygmus Potion: what’s your favorite food?

Right now I could really go for roast dinner tbh.  Confusing Concoction: What do you struggle most with? 

Prioritising myself and believing in my own worth. Cough Potion: What do you do to get better when you’re sick? 

I sleep a lot, and I like to eat chicken soup and have lots of warm drinks. Cure for Boils: Write about three pet peeves. 

People NOT WEARING HEADPHONES Hypocrisy Not respecting personal space Death potion: If you were told you were going to die in 24 hours, what would you do? 

Depends if I knew the cause of death/if i was infectious or not. If I wasn’t infectious I’d visit as many friends and family as possible, and probably get drunk. Deflating draught: Would you call yourself arrogant/modest? 

I like to think I’m modest but then again I don’t think that’s a super modest thought. Developing Solution: What’s the best photo you’ve taken? Which one’s your favorite? 

I took a nice one of my uni room, and some good ones at pride. Dogbreath Potion: What superpower would you have and why? 

Shapeshifting because my god would that make being trans more bearable. Doxycide: are you more clean or messy? 

Messy, but I do like to clean sometimes. Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction: are you critical of yourself? if you are, how do you want to work on it? 

Yes I am, and I try to work on it by talking to myself as I would to a friend or my puppy. Draught of Living Death: How would you like your funeral to go?

I’d like it to be a reflection of me, but equally I’d want it to be good for the people I’m leaving behind - I’d like Bye Bye Darling to be one of the songs though. Draught of Peace: What relaxes you? 

Watching familiar TV, listening to dodie, Maisie Peters, Orla Gartland, the puppy sleeping on me, hugs from friends. Drink of Despair: What’s your biggest regret? 

Not breaking up with my exes sooner, it would’ve been so much less painful and better all round. Drowsiness Draught: What’s your bedtime routine? 

So after my sister and dad go to bed, I stay down with the pup, take her out to the loo, and then sit on the sofa with her sleeping for a bit. Then I put her to bed and tidy a bit, I go up to my room and get into pjs, brush my teeth and wash my face, I put on my dim fairy lights and put on a chill playlist, then sleep.  Elixir of life: Would you rather live five ok/mediocre years or one incredible year? 

I think it kinda depends, like it its five mediocre years where each day is mediocre, then definitely one incredible year. Elixir to Induce Euphoria: What makes you feel alive? 

Dancing, love, running with the pup. Essence of Dittany: what’s the worst scar you currently have?

I scar quite easily, but they also fade quite well - at the moment I have one on my elbow from catching it on chicken wire. Exploding Potion: Do you like fireworks?

Yeah! They’re super pretty - I prefer the ones without a bang though. Fatiguing Infusion: Describe a recent/memorable dream.  

I had a dream about being physically back at uni, it wasn’t super eventful but it was really calming and nostalgic. Felix Felicis: Do you believe in luck?

I guess?? Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent: How do you keep bad thoughts away? 

Antidepressants lol. No but if I’m anxious I’ll write out everything I’m stressed about to get it out of my head. If I’m depressed I try to distract myself. Forgetfulness Potion: What is your favorite memory?

Maybe my first time getting drunk, it was the cast afterparty for my favourite show and it was so fun being able to chill with all my friends and being treated like an adult. (Plus it was fucking hilarious watching everyone come to the set strike the next day where most people were hungover as all hell)

My first gay night out was also pretty memorable, if only for the amount I drank lol. Fungiface Potion: What’s the greatest prank you’ve pulled? 

Legitimately don’t know if I ever have pulled one? At school we once turned our whole classroom backwards, and at uni my friends and I spent about two years putting any spam mail we got into our friends pigeonhole after he proudly told us how empty he always kept it. That was fun. Gregory’s Unctuous Unction: Describe your best friend(s).

Okay we’re gonna go for 3 people (all of whom have featured in poems of mine) - I started off writing about 5 and then got bored (and also vaguely embarrassed about calling people best friends) so we’re going down to three I’m also gonna make it vague ish So the first is a friend I’ve known for ten years and we’ve been equal parts immature and grown up throughout those ten years - last time I saw her we went to a inflatable park and then to spoons. She’s funny and sweet and chaotic and a lot shorter than I think (she used to be a head taller than me but hasn’t grown since we met, so even though we’re the same height neither of us quite believes it). She’s talented and reliable and So very committed to being a good friend (she drove to pick my ex and I up from a festival so she could meet him and took a 3-4 hour train to come celebrate my 21st). The second is possibly the first friend I made at uni because we bonded over being terrified of going to Russia and now we communicate almost solely through animal crossing. I love her, she’s hilarious, about as much of a mess as I am and an incredibly sweet person. She’s the first person I text in a crisis because she knows the exact right balance of taking the piss and actually helping and is always available to talk in foreign when I need to forget about the people I’m with or avoid an ex lol. The third is one of my favourite people at uni, he’s super supportive and understanding but also the best fucking person for a night out or a laugh. I used to think he was intimidating but honestly he’s just so sweet and has always made me feel welcome in my new year groups and always makes sure I have someone to pre with. Hair-Raising Potion: What scares you?

Fucking clowns man. Also not living life to the fullest, I’m really trying to put myself first nowadays and make sure I’m not staying in bad situations out of anxiety. It’s definitely helped me feel better about myself and have more energy to think about other people as well. Hate potion: If you had to name your worst trait, what would it be? 

Either stubbornness or being too self-sacrificing. It’s not a good combo tbh. Herbicide Potion: do you have a green thumb? 

I have owned (1) plant and I think I killed it so no. I am absolutely terrified every time my dad asks me to water the garden because I feel like I can only over or under water. Hiccoughing Solution: what’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you? 

Funny situations involving me tend to end in injury, maybe when I fell over the tennis net that didn’t even come up to my knees and got stuck in it?  Or when I fell over skiing and couldn’t get up because I’d done a roly poly which ended up with my skis trapped under my back.  Invigoration Draught: how do you wake up in the mornings? 

Lately my sister brings the puppy up to wake me up which is nice. Invisibility Potion: What would you do if you were invisible for a day? 

Ooh that’s a good question, I think I’d probably take a bunch of photos of me holding stuff and probably scare the shit out of my family. Jawbind Potion: Are you talkative? What do you like to talk about? 

Yes, very. I like talking about anything and everything, I love finding stuff out about people, which is part of the reason I do so many of these things. Laugh-Inducing Potion: Tell a funny story.

I am not a very funny person. I don’t have many funny stories!! When I was younger and my mum would get milkshakes and stuff, we were only allowed a glass each (I have 3 siblings) so that we each got the same amount and my sister was being sneaky, tried to drink from the carton to cheat the rule, ended up drinking mouldy milk. Karma. Mandrake Restorative Draught: How long can you stand still? 

Probably quite a while, I’ve never thought about it to be honest. Manegro Potion: How do you like to cut your hair? I cut mine myself, I usually leave the top a few inches long, and the back and sides are usually tapered from a 3 to a 1. Mopsus Potion: What do you want to be doing 5 years from now? 

Hopefully be working in translation or LGBT activism, living with a flatmate or partner. I’d like to have had top surgery and be acting or stage managing again and playing tennis and maybe football again. Muffling Draught: Favorite genre of music? 

Idk, indie pop maybe? Or alternative? Oculus Potion: would you rather see the distant past or the distant future?

Distant future. Pepperup Potion: what makes you feel alive?

Sport, playing with the puppy, talking to friends. Polyjuice Potion: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would remove my chest lol.  Quodpot Solution: What’s your opinion on sports (are you a fan of any specific teams/sport)?

Tennis is my favourite sport, I also like football, judo, rounders, swimming, sailing and skiing. Rat Tonic: Do you have any pets? 

Yes! I have a tiny bunny called Teddy, two chickens called Miss Sussex and Babs and a boxer puppy called Pickle. Shrinking Solution: How tall are you? Do you like your height (why/why not)?  

I honestly don’t know, I think I’m 5’ 3” ish?? After 5’ I just kinda stopped paying attention. I’d like to be taller because it would help me pass better, but I also kind of like my limbs the way they are?? Like additional muscle from T is already making tennis weird to adjust to so I don’t wanna make that worse tbh. Skele-Gro: What helps you feel better? 

Hugs, alcohol, chocolate, familiar TV, reading my favourite books. Sleakeazy’s Hair Potion: Describe yourself in 6 words or less.

Queer, loud, chatty, empathetic, caring, stubborn. Veritaserum: What is one truth you’ve wanted to get off your chest? 

I wish I had broken up with my exes sooner/not got together with the last one at all. We weren’t a good fit and I like to think we’d still be friends otherwise. Volubilis Potion: Can you/do you like to sing? 

I love to sing, I’m decent but struggling to adjust to my voice drop tbh. Wide eye Potion: What time do you usually go to bed? 

12/1am, depends on when I take the dog out. Wolfsbane: What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced in the past year? Going on testosterone!

[acrobaticcatfeline]

You Can Dance if You Want to, Don’t Dare to Leave Your Friends Behind!!! 12 days of logince day 10!!!

Word Count: 1311

TW: Cursing, alcohol mention, deceit, cats

Notes: Sorry this is late but this got away from me and became much longer than I expected. thanks for waiting!!!

Pairings: Logince, moxiety, sleepceit

Summary: “Logan we’re going dancing and you have no say.” Logan is not excited to go dancing when he could continue testing his hypothesis, but he couldn’t deny his boyfriend and his friends that fun at this point.

“Logan we’re going dancing and you have no say.”

Logan was not keen on leaving mid experiment, but it seems like he was going to be dragged to a dance hall and forced to dance with his friends in the freezing cold around teenagers, drunk college students and professional adults. He might as well look the part he supposes. He gets dressed up, a black button up loosely tucked into black slacks with the cuffs rolled up past his elbows, adorned with a matching fedora with a simple ring of blue ribbon around the base that left a part of his hair out and covering his left eye. He enjoyed dancing truly! In his own home. With Roman and YouTube. But when Roman did manage to drag him out of his cave, he had a reputation to uphold. Whether it be depressed nerd on campus or flaming romantic nerd in town. So as soon as he had tied his dancing shoes, he went to do some “simple” makeup. When he was done, he had another face on, lip tint, bright blue to black eyeshadow with glitter highlights, eyeliner and mascara on point, with a gorgeous contour to wrap it up. He pushes his square glasses up his nose as he grabbed his messenger bag that usually held his school supplies and filled it with the makeup and his headphones, cellphone, and speakers.

When he entered the living room there was the sound of someone spitting water and otherwise absolute silence, when he looked over to the others, he saw 4 sets of eyes trained on him and he smirked. He loved to grab the attention of a room, it was something him and Roman had in common. Virgil stood and dusted off his clothes before giving him a look.

“fuck man warn a dude before you literally murder them? What the hells this all about? We’re going dancing, not joining the Italian mafia?”

Logan burst into loud laughter, Virgil’s way of explaining things always had him in a heap of laughter. Virgil stood there with his hands on his hips.

“we’re going to a nice dance hall, and I have a reputation. Plus, this is nothing compared to what Roman usually wears. He’s a bad influence remember?”

“viiiiiiiiirge!!!!!!!!!!! We should fancify toooooooooo!!!!! We have the stuff!!!!!!”

Virgil looked at his boyfriend, then to his best friend, then back again. He cursed under his breath then glared at Logan before tugging an outfit out of his suitcase and scurrying to the bathroom. Patton grinned and grabbed his own outfit before rushing into Logan’s room. Remy was getting dressed in pure daylight because he had no shame what so ever, and Cam was hiding under his blankets, obviously embarrassed.

Patton came out in golden pants and a sky-blue button up matched with a little white bowtie. His shoes were a floral print and he had 6 friendship bracelets on his left hand and a few rubber band ones he made himself on his right. On his right ring finger, he had a dark purple promise ring from Virgil last Halloween. His hair was fluffy, showing his shaved sides and making a big floof of bangs that hung over his right eye. His round glasses hung low on his nose and there was a bit of shine to his lips and a bit pinker in his cheeks. He bounced on the balls of his feet and smiled brightly as Virgil exited the bathroom.

Virgil wore a dark purple button up with black slacks and a black vest adorned it with a blue corsage stuck in the pocket. He had black knee-high converse and a matching friendship bracelet to Patton and a little chain with a raven, lion, 3 badgers, and a snake charm. He also had a separate Slytherin band on the other wrist. He had black gages in, a black choker around his neck as well as a half a heart locket, and an ice blue promise ring on his right ring finger. His hair hung flat over his left eye and you could see the smoky eye he was constantly seen with and an MCR beanie. He smirked at his nerdy brother Remy who stood in a similar outfit and was glaring at him.

“god it feels like we’re 10 again.”

Remy had essentially the same outfit as Virgil but different colors. Instead of purple he had orange, instead of blue he had yellow. Some things were different though. His hair was over his right eye, and his beanie was for panic! At the disco. He had rust colored eyeshadow only half covered by his sunglasses and a black lipstick on and had his snake bites and eyebrow piercing in. He had a matching locket and had a matching chain around his wrist. It was safe to say that Remy hated his twin.

“yeah. Thanks, I hate it.”

Then it was Cam. When he got up, he was wearing black and white slacks and a matching vest over a golden button up with a black bowtie. He had heeled black boots and a copper promise ring as well as his septum and lip piercings. His hair hung over his left eye and was half shaved, and he had foundation trying to make the hand shaped vitiligo less obviously hand shaped. It ended up looking more like a spade at the end.

Finally, they heard Roman’s door open, and Roman decided to show up. Roman was decked in red white and gold. He had a red button up rolled past his elbows and white pants with gold suspenders. His hair swept over his right eye and he had glittery gold and red eyeshadow with a red lipstain. His white dancing shoes complemented the look wonderfully. He had a locket hanging low that was a simple circle and he had small hoops in his ears. His sash was tied around his waist and he held a white and red fedora matching his outfit that sat on top of his cane. His glimmering Cheshire grin dazzled them all. Not too long after they were on their way.

  The party was in the dance center located in the center of the square. They walked, the campus apartments were a short walk away and they were reveling in any time together. The past half year they hadn’t seen each other at all. Skype calls, Tumblr, Instagram and snapchat were the only ways they could all communicate, and they all missed just being with each other and having silly fun. They stopped in the square to admire the bright lights that covered it. When they reached the hall, they could hear the booming sounds of 50s music playing loudly through the doors. Roman’s smile grew as he led his friends through the doors. As soon as they were in three girls tackle hugged Roman.

“ROMAN WE’RE SO GLAD YOU COULD MAKE IT!!! Ohhhhh!!! Is that your hubby??? Those four look new, want us to show them around?”

“aw girls of course I came I wouldn’t miss it for the world!!! Yes, this is in fact my true love Logan I told you he was radiant didn’t I? I actually plan to show them around myself, they’re only here for break and I miss my partners in crime! This is Remy, Camora, Patton, and Virgil, these are my best friends from back in Florida! Virge and pat actually go here, but they’re on a campus a while away, but rem and Cam are visiting from home. We’re gonna have a hell of a time though, I can already tell.”

The six of them spent the rest of the night dancing with no cares in the world. By the time they got home it was Christmas eve and they were maybe half sober. Queenie sat on the counter completely unamused.

Taglist: @voices-and-stardust @blanket-fortress (this is for you appreciate it) @puer-mare @wolfishhel @cotton-candy-soda

Let me know if you want to be tagged in later days or my writing in general!!!

Thank you for reading I will see you later ladies lords and nonbinary royalty!!!

[prettyyoungtragedy]

You and I, Just the two of us - Chapter 3

You and I, just the two of us - (AU!) 3

James (Bucky) x reader,  – Steve x reader (Later in fic)

Summary: The reader is reeling from a life changing event; a year later can she finally move on? Or will the past come tumbling down like an avalanche…

 A/N: Sooo I decided to do an AU! Its my first time writing one, I am rather excited so I sinceeeerely hope you all drop me some feedback, because I god damn love writing!!

 Word Count: 5293

 Warnings: Nothing bad…

1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10

It was 6am Monday morning, you were rushing out the front door of your apartment, balancing your handbag, laptop case, and research files. You were going to be late for a meeting with Tony if you didn’t rush, and he hated tardiness.

Your phone was buzzing in your pocket repeatedly, you had to ignore it as you rush outside into the cold December morning air, and head towards the subway. Tony had offered you a company car multiple times, but you turned it down, you hated being stuck in the New York morning rush hour and the subway was more efficient in getting you to and from work.

Twenty minutes later, you walk into your lab at Stark Tower, and dump all your items on your desk.

“You have 10 minutes” Maria Hill your colleague called out to you as she walked passed, knowing you had a meeting at 6:30Am,

“Thanks Maria,” you call after her sarcastically and quickly gather up all your files and head to the elevator. When you arrived at the boardroom, Tony and Bruce were already there, discussing their latest project.

“Just in time!” Tony says when he sees you,

“Morning,” you greet them and take a seat at the table, knowing Tony had a million other things to go over so he would want to make this snappy.

Tony went over budgets and other developments with you and Bruce, and he informed you that he would be joining your divisions from the new year, saying it only made sense to have his two top researchers working in the same field just work together. You were delighted by this as you couldn’t wait to work with Bruce, he was fantastic at his job.

The meeting ends and Tony excuses himself, Bruce walks you out and back to your lab.

“So, how was the rest of your night with Steve?” He asks you,

“It was surprisingly fun,” you reply, thinking back to the lovely night you had with Steve. You had gone home and felt giddy all weekend because of you time with him, it was annoyingly fun.

“Good to hear, will you see him again?” Bruce pried

“I might,” you throw him a look, “Are you asking for Natasha?”

Bruce laughed, “ah you know how she is, she needs all the details, give her a call or she will hound me for information,” he said, shaking head,

You sighed, you loved Natasha, but she was so insistent sometimes. “I’ll text her sometime today,” you say to Bruce as you walk into the lab, “Hey, did you meet Steve before?” you ask Bruce,

“Yeah, I have met him, a few times,” Bruce replied taking a seat,

You frowned, “How come Nat never introduced us before?”

“Well with everything that you were going through she didn’t know if it was the right time,” he explained,

“Makes sense, I guess” you say,

A few more minutes of conversation with Bruce and then he excused, himself to work and you sat at your desk going through some research. You plug in your iPod and turn the volume up, whenever you worked you would immerse yourself in music,

The lab was empty as most of your colleagues were out on assignment or had stepped away from their desks. So, you hadn’t heard Maria come bustling in, practically squealing with excitement,

“Y/N, oh my god” she almost shouted in your face,

Startling you, you pull your headphones out and look up at her in confusion. She held a massive bouquet of almost 50 white roses, waving the card in your face.

“These are for you!” Maria said excitedly, handing you the card,

You hesitated for a moment, there was only one person who knew how much you loved white roses and you silently prayed that the flowers were not from Luke. Taking the card from Maria you looked at it, and immediately smiled,

‘Thank you for an amazing evening, you haven’t left my mind since’

S Grant Rogers.

“Oh my god! Y/N did you go on a date with Steve Rogers?!” Maria gasped excitedly,

You smiled wider, and just looked at her, not wanting to give anything away.  “You did, oh my god, oh my god, I am freaking out for you!” She squealed grabbing your hands and jumping around with you,

“Maria, relax” you laughed, “It was a few drinks, Natasha and Bruce were there, it wasn’t a date.”

“Good god, don’t down play this! He was number 1 on Forbes list, and he is so incredibly gorgeous!” she gasped, being overly dramatic.

You laughed at her dramatics, “I don’t even know if he likes me,” you shrug, you weren’t sure if you were ready to let someone new into your life. You had only just now begun to get try and get over Luke.

Maria looked at you like you were crazy, “The man sent you 50 white roses and basically said he can’t stop thinking about you, and you aren’t sure if he likes you.” she said grabbing the card from you hard, “This is like shouting it from the rooftops!”

“Okay, okay let me get back to work,” You reply not wanting to get into this with Maria, who just sighs and then picks up the flowers

“I’ll put this in water for you,” she says, “I am so jealous!” and then she leaves.

The rest of the day goes by rather quickly, but you are unable to concentrate on work. The beautiful bouquet of white roses now displayed on your desk in front of you, all your female colleagues gushing over it when Maria told them who it was from, everyone asking relentless questions. They all knew about what had happened with Luke, and had been cautious around you since it happened, in a small way it finally felt like your life might be able to go back to normal.

As you were leaving the lab, your phone buzzed, without looking you answered it. It was James.

“Hey Y/N,” his voice sounded,

Your heart rate spiked, and you had an immediate flashback to the Sunday morning you spent in his kitchen, almost fucking.

“Oh, Hi James” you mutter,

“Well, don’t act too excited,” he said, clearly hurt by your reaction to him calling,

“Sorry, I am just leaving work, a little distracted.” You quickly apologize hiding the nervousness in your voice.  

“Can we talk?” He asks solemnly over the phone,

You sighed, you couldn’t avoid him forever and you missed having him around. “Sure, meet me at my place in an hour?” you respond,

He agrees, and you end the call, the cold evening breeze blows gently on your face as you made your way to the subway station. Thinking about the past year of your life, your heart missed Luke terribly but in the last week things had changed so much, you were finally opening yourself up to moving on and it felt good, but you knew you weren’t entirely ready to jump into a new life.

When you got home, you ordered in pizzas, knowing James was going to want to get some the moment he arrived. You grab a beer from the fridge and sit on the couch flipping through the Netflix selection, mindlessly.

Half way into an episode of MindHunter, you hear the buzzer go off and you know its James,

“It’s open,” you call out,

James walks into the living room, placing his outwear on the coathanger as he does, “Hey” he says, coming over to greet you by giving you a kiss atop your head,

“Hello James,” you reply, giving him a smile, “I already ordered the pizza”

“I brought the beer,” he says, placing a 12 pack on the coffee table and taking a seat on the couch with you,

“Good thinking,” you high-five him,

It felt a little awkward between the two of you, and you could both feel it.

“So, stranger” James said looking at you with a smirk, “Why are you avoiding me?”

“I am not avoiding you,” you laugh nervously, “I have just been busy with work”

“Too busy to reply to my texts?” He quizzed raising an eyebrow,

You sighed, you couldn’t lie to him. As much as you wanted to avoid this talk you had to have it with him. Before it got any more awkward,

“Okay, look we both know what almost happened last week, and it was a moment of weakness on my part, I was lonely and sad because, well you know why, and I wasn’t thinking straight.” You say

“I was,” he replied straight-faced,

“What,” you say confused,

“I was thinking straight when I kissed you,” James said, staring you down

You shifted in your seat, your heart hammering in your chest at his confession. “Why did you kiss me,” you ask softly,

James shrugged, “Seemed like the right thing to do in the moment,” he said sort of nonchalantly,  

Your mouth fell open, and you threw a pillow at him, exasperated. “Are you fucking joking?!” you yelled at him,

James chuckled, “Stop making it such a big deal Y/N, friends can kiss and fuck sometimes,”

“Oh my god, James just stop.” You groaned, covering your face with a pillow

“Why are you over thinking this, you clearly need some release, and I adore you enough to help you out,” He said heartily,

“Oh, so you are just throwing me a free bone then?” You said, glowering at him,

“Exactly, think of it like a stress reliever.” James said,

“You are making this whole situation so fucking weird,” you said, shaking your head, he was offering to sleep with you as a friend helping another friend. Were you that pent up that he noticed it, thinking about it, the last time you had sex with anyone was almost 15 months ago, before you and Luke even broke up.

“How is this weird? We have known each other for years, plus I have seen you naked so many times over the years, it’s basically the same thing,”  He pointed out, “Except this time I’ll be inside you” he grinned widely, James laughed at his own comment as usual.

“Ugh don’t be vulgar, also you slept with Natasha, that is breaking the girl code.” You retort,

“Why would Natasha have to know?” he challenged,

“How can I keep this from her? You are her ex-boyfriend!” you exclaimed, “I would be a terrible friend, if I did this.”

James looked at you, a wicked smirk on his face. “Ah but you are thinking about it,” he said huskily, biting his lip.

You couldn’t help but smile at him, He was so obnoxious and carefree, it made you feel the same way. James always found a way to make light of a situation, you knew this would have serious implications, and it was a terrible idea. Something inside you wanted to sleep with him, even if it was just once, just to feel what it would be like. James looked like a spectacular lover, or so you thought.

But on the other hand, Natasha was your best friend, and this was her ex-boyfriend, even if there were no feelings involved, it would still be a disaster. You felt like you were being a really terrible person in this moment by even considering it.

Thankfully you didn’t have to respond to him as the doorbell rang. It was the pizza,

You spent the rest of the evening with James, catching up on the week you hadn’t spent together.

“Wanda is still on my case by the way, she wants to go on a date, ugh” He said grabbing another slice of cheesy pizza. He ate like a fucking horse and still looked like a Greek god.

“Why don’t you just go on the damn date,” You asked, taking a sip of the cold beer, you had just opened. You were on your fourth drink for the night, James had well surpassed you and was drinking his 6th.

“Because I don’t date,” was his reply,

You rolled your eyes, “That’s bullshit, you dated Nat and that girl from your dad’s company for a while,”

“Yeah and look how well both of those relationships turned out,” James said,

“So is the plan to just sleep around until you die?” You asked him,

James paused and took a sip of his beer, he seemed to really contemplate his answer. “Nah, when I find the right person, I’ll settle down.” He said thoughtfully,

You snorted at his comment, unable to picture him being in a serious relationship with anyone.

“Well here is to both of us finding the ONE, in the new year” You say, raising your bottle in a cheer,

He clinks his bottle against yours, “Merry fucking Christmas,” he adds for good measure, making you laugh.

______________________

The weeks went by faster than expected and it was Christmas Eve. Steve had tried to see you twice but his bust work schedule kept him travelling often, he texted you on the regular though and sent you different gifts from every location he was at.

The girls in your lab were all swooning over his gestures, weekly there were fresh flowers being delivered, and a bottle or the best prosecco when he was in Italy, Chocolates from Belgium, Cheese from Switzerland, Donuts from Canada. It was all rather excessive but nevertheless you enjoyed the attention.

Natasha had gone into full bride mode, as her wedding was now 4 months away and she needed to buckle down on the planning. She had asked you to be her maid of honor, so you had to help her shoulder the burden of planning her wedding.

Christmas Eve, you sat in her living room looking over a hundred different types of fonts, napkins and color schemes trying to help her decide.

“I really feel like we should be going the classic red roses and white way,” Nat said holding up a red rose and a white napkin, “But then I paid peach, gold and dusty pink together and suddenly everything changes.” Then lifts another trio of colors, roses and napkins to show you.

“Classic is always good,” you offer your opinion, you were so tired by now. The two of you had spent the whole day doing wedding chores and all you wanted to do was drink by this point.

Natasha examined both options, “Ok I have decided, its this one” she says holding up the peach, gold and dusty pink trio.

“Oh thank god,” you sighed,

“I know this is tiring but its my wedding, I want it to be perfect” Nat said, topping up your glass with the prosecco you had brought over,

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” you reply, thankfully drinking the crisp alcohol.

Nat examined the bottle of prosecco, “Damn, this is some seriously good prosecco,” she noted, “Steve has good taste,”

You nod in agreement; the gifts were all in wonderful taste. “So, are you going on an actual date with him ever?” Natasha asks,

“I would like to at some point, but he is always travelling”

“You better lock that down before some other hoe comes along and takes him,” Natasha joked,

“Oh god Nat, I am not looking to marry the guy,” you say swatting her shoulder

“I bet he would make a fine husband for you,” she giggled,

“That is the furthest thing on my mind right now,” you said, “My focus is finding a new apartment.”

This comment made Natasha drop her phone into her lap, and she screamed in delight. “OHMYGOD Y/N!” she practically jumped over the couch and onto you. It might not have been significant to anyone else, but you finally moving out of the apartment you and Luke had lived in together for almost 3 years meant you were finally moving on.

“I am so happy for you babe!” She said, choking back tears,

“Natasha,” you laughed, “Why are you crying?!”

“Because, I am just so happy that you are finally coming back to us,” Natasha replied wiping the tears from her eyes, “Luke really hurt you and you were so changed and I am glad that you are moving on, its time.”

You smiled at your best friend, she had always been there for you and you hadn’t realized just how much, Luke breaking up with you, affected her as well. She had been the one trying to put the pieces he had left you in back together, and it hadn’t been easy for her.

“So, apartment hunting soon?” You offer,

“Yes yes and yes!” She yelped in delight,

Just then Bruce walked in,

“What are we excited about?” he asked, placing the tray of snacks on the table. It looked amazing, Bruce always made the best food whenever you were over, he was an amazing cook.

“Y/N is looking for a new apartment!” Natasha said excitedly,

Bruce looked at you, with a stunned expression, then quickly came over and hugged you tightly. “That is amazing news Y/N!” he said happily,

“Oh shit is that the time?” Nat suddenly exclaimed looking at her watch, “Come on, we have a party to get ready for,” she said to you, dragging you to your feet and out of the living room.

You were spending Christmas Eve with Bruce and Natasha, as your family was on vacation in Bora Bora and you rarely ever saw them anyways. The couple had outdone themselves with the gifts and the food, and the company. A few friends from the office, and friends from university had shown up and you were all mingling, enjoying the alcohol that flowed freely.

You weren’t expecting James to be there as he always spent Christmas with his family in the Hamptons, but just after dinner, you saw him walk in.

“Buckyyy!” Natasha called in a sing song voice over the blaring music when she saw him, she was a little tipsy, but she looked ever so stunning, in a maroon dress that hugged her figure. Her blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders like honey.

“Hello beautiful,” James smile at her, kissing her on the cheek and falling into her embrace. He wore grey slacks, and a crisp white shirt, holding his suit jacket over his shoulder.

“Don’t you look handsome, Buckyyy” You say walking over to him, imitating the way Nat had just said his name,

James undid a few buttons on his shirt, making a face “My mother, made me dress up” he explained,

“Yeah, I am not used to you looking so…clean,” Nat said touching his hair,

You laughed, “You still look great, don’t fuss over it” then grabbed a glass of champagne off a tray of a waiter passing by and handed it to him, “Come on, you will never believe who is here,” you say to him grabbing his hand and dragging him into the party.

“Sam!” you called loudly, “Samuel Wilson!”

Sam turned around to face you, his whole face changing when he saw James, a broad smile plastered on his face.

“Well, Well Well, If it isn’t James Buchanan Barnes,” Sam said, clapping James on the shoulder and pulling him into a hug,

“No ways!” he responded, hugging Sam back, “When did you get back?”

“A couple of months back,” Sam answered, “Yeah, I’m staying in the Bronx, its feels weird being back.”

Sam was in the military, him and James used to be best friends from way back in high school. Sam was deployed 3 years ago and hadn’t been home since.

“What are you doing now? Where are you based?” James asked,

“I live here in the Bronx now,” Sam answered, “Yeah, I’m working down at the VA”

James grinned, and grabbed his friends shoulder, “Its good to see you again, Sam” he said sincerely,

You left the two of them to catch up and went to find Natasha. She was standing on the balcony talking to Bruce, they looked so in love with each other, standing in the cold moonlight. Bruce’s arms wrapped round her waist lovingly gazing into her eyes with a warm smile on his face, Nat wore a similar expression. As you watched them, you felt a dull ache in your chest, flashing back to when Luke would look at you like that.

“They’re good together,” a voice sounded right beside your ear, startling you.

“Geez, I didn’t see you there James” you hissed, swatting him away

“You smell great,” he said, smirking at you.

“Oh my god, can you not,” you hit him upside the head,

He laughs and throws his arm over your shoulders, neither of you noticed Natasha watching the two of you.

As you look around the party, your heart suddenly stops. You see Steve standing in the doorway, looking very out of place and incredibly handsome. You pull yourself out of James’ embrace and quickly make your way towards Steve, whose face lights up when he sees you. As you walk away from James’, he scowls at the man you’re walking towards, feelings of jealously unfurling in him.

“Steve! What are you doing here?” You exclaim, hugging him.

“Natasha invited me,” he replied, “wasn’t sure if I was going to make it really, I missed my flight”

“Well I’m glad you came,” you smiled at him, “I was getting a little tired of not seeing your face and only texting,” you joked,

Steve chortled, “I guess it’s a good thing I’m here then,”

You grab two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, and hand one to him, “Come lets go say hello to Natasha before I keep you all to myself,” you kidded.

Natasha was well passed tipsy when you and Steve finally found her, Bruce was giving her water in the kitchen, attempting to sober her up a little.

“I can’t have you passing out before all you guests leave,” you hear him chastise her,

“I’m finnnnne” Natasha muttered at him, “I just won’t drink anymore champagne,”

When Bruce saw you, he sighed, relieve. “Oh thank god, Y/N, we need to sober her up, its not even midnight yet and she is wrecked.”

Natasha looked up at you from her seat, “Steeeeveee” she said loudly opening her arms for a hug,

To which Steve obliged and exchanged hello’s with both her and Bruce, “I think we should maybe get her upstairs Bruce,” you said, “She needs to just sleep this off, there’s no coming back from this level of drunk.”

“Maybe give her some more water and let her eat something?” Steve offered, and then went to go and get some for her.

Bruce sighed, knowing that he would now have to host their guests until everyone leaves, and he hated it. Natasha was always better at hosting than he was.

Just as Bruce was about to help Natasha up, Sam and James walked into the kitchen. “There you are! We’ve been looking for you,” Sam said, then he saw Natasha sitting on the floor holding her head, and looked at you and Bruce,

“She okay?” he asked,

“Yeah, she just had a little too much champagne,” you explained,

“Buuuckyyy,” Natasha crooned when she saw him, “Come sit with me,” patting the spot beside her,

James walked over to Nat and took a seat on the floor, in front of her. “Tasha, do you need a BnR?” he asked her quietly,

Bruce looked at you confused and mouthed, “BnR?”

“Boot and rally,” you explained to him,

Bruce was still confused, “Its when you throw up, get rid of the alcohol in your system so you can sober up faster,” Sam chimed in,

Bruce mad a disgusted face, “Oh god no, please don’t throw up and then go back to the party, rather just let her sleep it off.” he said,

“I just want to have fun,” Natasha grumbled, “You’re all being boring,”

Steve walked back into the kitchen holding a plate of food and a big glass of water and handed it to you,

Sam being the polite guy that he was stuck his hand out and introduced himself, “Sam Wilson,” he said, “And this is Bucky Barnes,” pointing to James

“Steve Rogers,” Steve replied shaking his hand,

“It’s James,” said James, not bothering to shake Steve’s hand or looking up from sit seat by Natasha,

You couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed with him for being so rude to Steve, but you knew that was the way James was, and nothing anyone could say would ever change that.

“Alright, lets get her to bed,” you say, thanking Steve for the food and water

James helped her to her feet and Bruce took her from him, “Come on darling, I got you.” Bruce said grasping her firmly around the shoulders and leading her out of the kitchen, hoping none of their guests would see them go upstairs.

You followed them upstairs, and helped Bruce put Natasha to bed then headed back downstairs. The party had quieted down by now, a lot of people had evidently also plied themselves with champagne and had gone home.

James, Sam, Steve and unfortunately Wanda whom you had been avoiding all night all sat in the living room now, chatting amongst themselves.

“She okay?” James asked, when you and Bruce walked back into the living room,

“Yeah, she just needs sleep,” Bruce sighed, “Let me go and say goodbye to the rest of my guests and pay the staff,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair and then walked back out.

Wanda sat next to James, trying to keep a conversation going with him while Sam watched with intrigued delight at James’ face while she did so.

You took a seat next to Steve, “So that was a short-lived party,” you say quietly to him,

“Those are the best kinds of parties,” he responds jokingly, “Natasha can really knock them back, respect to her for that.”

You can’t help but laugh because that was Nat, since high school, always the first one to pass out a party.

“So, what are we doing tonight?” Sam asks everyone looking around the room,

“Drinking,” James muttered downing his drink in front of him, Wanda was still forcing a conversation and you could see on his face he was getting impatient. You felt like of bad for her but you she was kind of annoying,

“Here here,” Sam says, downing his drink,

“I’m down with that,” you agree, downing your glass of champagne as well,

Steve looks at you with a surprised look on his face, then he grins, “I guess I have some catching up to do” he says then gets two glasses of champagne and downs them in quick succession,

Wanda not wanting to be the odd one takes a few sips of the drink in front of her, “Sorry, I can’t down my drink, I’m a bit of a lightweight.” She said,

You stand up and walked over to the bar that Nat and Bruce had, it was always fully stocked, “I think they have shots somewhere here,” you say, opening the cupboard and scanning it. Your eye fell on the bottle of tequila and you grabbed it,

“Anyone keen?” you ask them, putting the bottle on the coffee table along with a couple of shot glasses,

James was the first to agree, you poured a couple of shots and handed them to everyone, “Merry fucking Christmas,” you said, looking at James with a smile, it was an inside joke, but he got it and it made him smile.

The conversation picked up between the group easily after a few shots in, James, Sam and you reminiscing on your college days, talking shit in general.

“I’m sorry, I have to ask,” Wanda said, looking at Steve “But you’re Steve Rogers, right?”

Steve nodded with a smile,

“I am such a huge fan of your work,” She gushes excitedly, “Your Forbes cover was fantastic,”

Steve awkwardly thanks her, and Sam and James just sit back looking confused by the whole exchange.

Wanting to draw away from Wanda’s now rambling to Steve about his work, you jumped up “Let’s play some music,” you say, walking over to the Bluetooth stereo,

Surprise flits across James’ face, he knew you well enough to know you only ever danced with one person, Luke. Sam hadn’t been around during your break up, so he still knew you as the fun-loving person you used to be, and Steve didn’t really know you well enough to know how much you loved dancing.

That part of you had kind of disappeared when Luke broke up with you, and you missed it. For some reason tonight, all you wanted to do was dance.

Wanda stands up excitedly, “Yes! Please!” she enthusiastically agreed,

Sam and Steve had struck up a conversation and we heartily engrossed in it, which you were appreciative for because Sam was the only person treating Steve like a normal everyday guy.

You flip through the selection and find the song you are looking for, and hit play.

The song starts over the surround sound speakers, and you immediately loosen up, the alcohol helped. you strolled over to the bar, taking off your shoes and started making yourself another drink, swaying slightly to the beat of the music.

James came over to the bar, and began to dance with you. The two of you were so engrossed in dancing to the song you hadn’t noticed, Sam, Steve and Wanda watching you.

You had a routine with James that you used to do way back at college parties, as a party trick. You hadn’t done it in a long time but both of you still remembered it step by step, James picked you up and basically tossed you in the air, to the beat, catching you. The moment your feet touched the ground he twirled you around and then dipped you, your breath catching in your throat when you look into his ice blue eyes.

Sam and Steve both start clapping when the song ends,

“Holy shit, I can’t believe you two still remember how to do that!” Sam exclaims coming over to high five you and James,

You laughed, feeling the happiest you had felt in a while, “I haven’t done that in a while,” you mused,

“That was fantastic, you’re a great dancer,” Steve said, “Learned something new about you tonight,”

The night wore on, and the five you, Bruce included, hung around the house, chatting and enjoying each other’s company. By the end of the night, you had decided to stay over to Bruce and Natasha’s as it was almost 3 in the morning and didn’t want to take a cab home,

You stood outside saying goodnight to Steve, while Sam and James were at the door waiting for you.

“It was really good to see you again, Y/N,” Steve said, touching your shoulder.

“Likewise, we should do this again sometime,” you reply,

“Maybe with less people?”

You smiled at him, you really liked Steve, but you knew it would never work between the two of you. not with his lifestyle, at best it would be a really great fling to tell at parties some day you thought.

“Yeah, text me.” You say, then he kisses you on the cheek and bids you goodnight.

As you walk back into the house, Sam starts teasing you almost immediately, “Ooooh he’s got a crush on youuu” he mocks,

“Shut up Sam,” You said whacking him on the arm, James is silent on the matter.

He laughed and the three of you headed inside, to a respective room to catch some much-needed sleep.

This had been one of the best Christmas Eve’s you’d had in a long time.

Tags: @addictionmarvel

[markonasurface]

5/50 - “There’s blood on my/your hands.”

Fandom: All for the Game Characters/pairings: Neil, Andrew, Kevin, Wymack, Abby, Betsy/andreil, kevineil friendship Summary: The year after his 19th birthday, the other team decides to recreate the bloody locker scene complete with a ‘Happy Birthday, Jr.’ Instead of stuffing everything down, Neil has a complete freak out and sinks into a depression. A/N: I wrote this before I posted my first ever tfc fic.

Neil laughed at something Matt said and pulled open his locker. He felt a bit of resistance and heard a pop and was overwhelmed with the sense of deja vu.

Blood pooled around his feet and he immediately choked on the smell. The roaring in his ears made it hard for him to hear his teammates. He couldn’t hear Matt calling his name.

“No,” Neil uttered. Ice filled his chest. He grabbed his jersey just as someone grabbed his elbow. He managed to pull out of their grasp but slipped and fell to his knees. “No, no.”

He gagged and choked and tried to pull everything from his locker into his arms. He felt an arm around his chest and instinctually shoved an elbow back.

Everyone in the locker room heard the pop as Neil opened his locker. It was the loud gasp that drew their eyes toward him though.

Kevin, Nicky, Andrew, Aaron and Matt all waited a second to see how Neil would react. The three freshmen started shouting.

“What the hell?”

“Whose blood is it?”

“Neil?”

When Neil lurched forward, Matt reacted. He reached out to try to grab Neil’s arm much in the same way he did last year when this happened. Neil jerked and Matt lost his grip.

They watched as he desperately tried to grab what he could, a lost cause. He retched and Matt wrapped his arms around his chest to try to get him away from the mess but Neil’s elbow came back hitting his nose.

Last year, Neil had reacted similarly at first but was able to pull himself together to try to keep his secrets a little longer. Now that everything was all out in the open, he was giving into this panic attack.

“Go get Coach, Nicky,” Andrew said, already walking over to where Matt was struggling to keep a grip on Neil. “Let him go.”

Matt did as he was told and Neil immediately went back to his locker, repeating one word over and over until he was just gasping for breath. He fell onto his butt, holding his jersey and Andrew crouched next to him. He put a hand on the back of Neil’s neck and forced his head to his knees.

He kept gasping.

“Breathe, you idiot,” Andrew said and fell to his knees when Neil’s hands grasped at his, his jersey still clutched in one.

Wymack entered the locker room then and said, ”Get your things and wait outside the girls’ locker room.”

Andrew ignored him and told Neil again, “Fucking breathe, Neil.”

He let out a dry sob and Andrew repeated, “Breathe, dammit,” impatience leaking into his tone.

Finally, Neil gasped a shuddery breath. Each subsequent breath was less harsh and less ragged but sounded just as painful. He coughed once.

He tried to lift his head and Andrew let him. He kept both hands grasped around the one hand that had been on his neck.

Neil looked haunted as he said, “There’s blood on my hands.”

Andrew used two fingers to push Neil’s chin up so he would stop staring at his hands.

“Neil?” Wymack stepped closer.

He obediently looked up at his name. His eyes were wide and unblinking.

“Are you okay?”

Even if Wymack always worried about his Foxes, it was rare to see the concern worn so blatantly on his face. Neil shook his head. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“I’ll call security. We’ll cancel the game. Both of you go shower. Kevin went to get clothes for you guys and Matt.”

Andrew waited for Wymack to leave before he pulled Neil up as he stood. He had to pry himself from Neil’s grip. He pushed him gently and Neil unsteadily put one foot in front of the other.

He stopped abruptly and Andrew stopped just in time to avoid banging into him from behind. He looked up at what he was staring at and kept his hands on Neil’s shoulders to guide him past the familiar “Happy birthday, Jr,” written in blood on the wall.

“It’s not my birthday,” Neil murmured absently.

Andrew turned the water on, then pulled Neil underneath. At first the water was deep red as it swirled around their feet and Neil couldn’t stop watching it.

“Stop it.” It was a demand and Neil was usually so good at following Andrew’s reasonable demands. Tonight, he just looked at Andrew, unable to wipe the wide-eyed shock from his features.

“Yes?” Andrew lifted the hem of Neil’s shirt and he nodded. He slowly helped him undress, waiting for consent every step of the way.

He ran a hand through Neil’s hair and used a thumb to rub at the blood on his forehead and the back of his neck. He used soap to wash his hair and his body. Then he repeated the process two more times, hoping that would be enough.

A knock on the stall door made Neil jump.

“It’s me.” Kevin’s voice was quiet but angry. He paused briefly then said, “I brought extra towels.”

Andrew put a hand on the side of Neil’s neck and told him, “I’m giving you to Kevin, okay?”

Neil couldn’t find his voice but he looked straight into Andrew’s eyes. The corners of Andrew’s mouth turned down when he noticed the shock had finally subsided to complete exhaustion. “Hand me a towel,” Andrew told Kevin and waited for him to drop it over the door. He wrapped it around Neil under his armpits and opened the door. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Neil stood in front of Kevin. He seemed to look through him. Kevin held clothes out to Neil but he didn’t take it. His eyebrows raised slightly but he didn’t say anything. He draped a towel over the stall door, then guided him back toward the lockers and took him to a corner where he wouldn’t be able to see the blood.

Still, he glimpsed a flash of red and imagined he could smell it - metallic and smoke and burning - and gagged.

Using another towel, Kevin dried Neil’s shoulders and rubbed his hair. He slipped an extra baggy long sleeved shirt over Neil’s head and over the towel still wrapped around him.

He handed him boxers, sweatpants, socks and shoes. “I’ll help you if you want,” Kevin spoke to him in French and Neil’s eyes finally snapped into focus. Shock returned to his face but just as quickly his features melted back into dazed as he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the Ravens’ locker room; he was surrounded by orange. Jean wasn’t putting him back together; Kevin was helping him get dressed. He nodded.

Kevin was gentle but firm and first he pulled Neil’s boxers over his feet, then got him to stand to pull them up the rest of the way. Only then did he pull the towel off from under Neil’s shirt.

Andrew came around the corner fully dressed and watched Kevin put on Neil’s socks and shoes. Without turning he said, “The team is playing tonight.”

He stood up and faced Andrew. “Coach checked the surveillance tapes and it was definitely Breckenridge players. We’re going to beat them, then we’re going to call security and have them make an official report. You two go home.”

“But -” Neil choked out.

Kevin looked at him expectantly. When he didn’t continue he said, “If you want to go out there, I won’t stop you tonight. But you and I both know you’re not in the right state to play.”

He waited for Neil to at least protest Andrew leaving but he didn’t. “I’ll see you guys at home.”

Andrew pressed his back against the wall. He wouldn’t get much sleep sharing a bed with Neil but he would stay as long as Neil needed him to.

The first day, it was noon when there was a knock on their door. Andrew listened and heard Kevin putting his headphones on the desk before answering the door.

The voices were too muffled for him to understand what they were saying but not even a minute later the door closed again. A couple of hours passed and he heard Kevin answer the door again. The conversation lasted a little longer this time until eventually there was a soft knock on the bedroom door before it was pushed open.

Andrew sat up as Matt, Dan, Renee and Allison came into the room. The blinds were drawn but gray light still made its way into the room. They could see Neil staring blankly at nothing.

The upperclassmen had brought balloons and a cake which was set on a dresser. Dan got onto her knees and spoke quietly. “Hey, Neil.” She pushed his hair off of his forehead. Her touch was soft and light. “Happy birthday. We know you have Andrew but we wanted to remind you that the rest of us are here if you need us.”

She met Andrew’s eyes and held his gaze for a moment. She stood and the other three followed her out.

Kevin answered the door three more times that day but only allowed one other person in to see Neil.

Coach Wymack sat on the edge of Kevin’s bed and sighed. “We won 8-5. While the game was going on security took a look at the locker room and got fingerprints. The Jackals have been disqualified.”

They spent all of Saturday and Sunday unmoving. Monday came and Neil still didn’t get out of bed. Kevin, Aaron and Nicky had to ride in the back of Matt’s truck to morning practice.

“One of you needs to shower, Andrew.”

Kevin waited til he heard the shower turn on before coming to stand next to the bunk bed. He leaned down and asked, “What’s going on?”

Neil stared back at him, dark circles under his eyes.

“What do you need?”

Kevin sighed. He waited for Neil to answer. “Neil.” He waited a few more minutes. He sat with his back to the bed.

“I want to die.” Neil’s voice was hoarse from disuse.

The room suddenly felt too cold. His blood ran cold. Kevin’s eyebrows furrowed and he said, “Get up. You’re coming to the court tonight.”

He stood and pulled Neil’s blankets off of him as the bathroom door opened and Andrew reentered the room. “Get up.”

Kevin turned to their goalie. “He needs this, Andrew.”

It might’ve been his tone or the look in his eyes or just the knowledge that he was right but Andrew didn’t argue. He grabbed Neil’s arm and sat him up. “Let’s go.”

Jack was outside the room and he looked more surprised than annoyed when he saw Neil and Andrew with Kevin. “You can’t come tonight,” Kevin told him.

“You guys said I can come to Monday night practices,” Jack argued.

“Not this one,” Kevin stated, not unkindly but without any remorse or sympathy. He walked past Jack and headed to the stairwell.

In the car, Kevin handed them both water bottles. “Drink,” he commanded. “You’re both probably dehydrated.”

He stopped them in the lounge and they all sat. Kevin dug out a bag and gave each of them individually wrapped sandwiches. “Eat.”

Andrew peeled off the saran wrap and lifted his eyes to give Kevin a look. The sandwich was cut in a grid, twenty-five bite-sized pieces.

Kevin crossed his arms over his chest and stared for five minutes before Neil finally took a bite. He only took two more bites after that but Kevin deemed it enough and allowed them to continue to the locker room to change out.

“Where’re the fags?” Jack questioned when Aaron, Nicky and Kevin arrived with the upperclassmen again the next morning.

“Hey,” Wymack said.

“They came to the court last night with Kevin,” Jack’s tone was accusatory.

Kevin shrugged and Nicky answered, “They didn’t want to see your homophobic ass. We barely made it here ourselves; the thought of seeing your ugly face made us want to light ourselves on fire.”

“I thought practices were mandatory,” Sheena complained.

“They are,” Wymack said. “Minyard will be at afternoon practice today.”

“What about -”

Wymack held a hand up. “Attendance is between me and each of you individually. Stay out of it. Mind your own business.”

The freshmen shut their mouths at that and he said, “Hurry up and change out. Stop wasting my time. Last person to the court is being signed up for a marathon. Kevin.”

They waited until everyone else had filed out before Wymack told Kevin, “Dan’s worried. She didn’t like the look in Neil’s eyes and I don’t disagree with her. What do you think?”

Kevin studied his face and considered. He pursed his lips looking conflicted, then admitted, “I don’t understand it. Ten years fighting to stay alive and last night he tells me he wants to die.” 

“But he came to court with you?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“It took him awhile to get into it. He was weak. Andrew put in no effort and Neil still didn’t score on him.”

Wymack allowed himself a minute to think. “Have they been eating?”

“No. I made them both drink water and eat something before we began but Neil only took a few bites.”

He was silent, thinking over the new information. “Okay, then. You remind Neil that Andrew needs to eat and I’ll call Betsy.”

“I thought you said the psychotic midget would be here,” Jack couldn’t leave things alone.

Wymack glared. “What did I say? Mind your own damn business. Go run some laps until I tell you guys to stop.”

After what Kevin had told him, Wymack decided it was better if Neil wasn’t left alone. Better safe than sorry. He had called both Betsy and Abby and made arrangements for Neil so that at least Andrew would be able to start coming to practice and going to classes by Thursday.

When Wednesday Neil and Andrew skipped both morning and afternoon practices again, Wymack came to see them. “You have an appointment with Betsy tomorrow at six. Andrew can drop you off on his way to morning practice. If you don’t go, she’s coming here. You can spend the day in her office or go to class. It’s up to you. Abby will be by at three.” He stood up to leave and said, “Eat something, would ya both?”

Kevin’s alarm woke them up as it did every morning. He didn’t look at their bed as he pulled a shirt over his head and started putting on his shoes with his eyes closed.

He walked out of the bedroom and they could hear the suite’s door open.

Andrew crawled over Neil and started putting on his socks when footsteps started down the hall again. Kevin stuck his head into the room. “Coming?”

Andrew fixed him with a bored look as he tugged on his shoes. He looked down at his feet before he stood up. “No.”

“Coach said -”

“Leave already.”

Kevin walked away and slammed the suite door behind him.

When Andrew was satisfied he wasn’t coming back, he dragged the covers off of Neil and tossed his shoes onto the floor beside his bed. He went over and yanked Neil into a sitting position and stared until he put his feet in his shoes.

He followed Andrew out and down the stairs to the parking lot. They didn’t speak as Andrew drove him to Reddin. Neil hadn’t spoken to anyone, even Andrew in the past week.

He pulled up to the curb and looked at Neil. After a couple minutes he got out and went around to open the passenger side door and pull Neil to his feet. He walked him in and past the check in desk, down the hall to where Betsy’s door was open.

Betsy smiled. “Andrew, Neil, hello. I’m glad you’re here. Are you staying?”

“No. I’ll be back after practice though,” Andrew said.

“Hot cocoa?” Betsy offered both of them.

“Later,” Andrew said. He turned to look at Neil and tugged his coat off of his arms. He pushed him to sit on the couch and dropped his coat by his feet. He left without another word.

“Cocoa?” she offered Neil again. He didn’t respond. All he did was stare at the ground by Betsy’s feet.

He startled when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at Betsy, confused. “Go ahead and lie down,” she encouraged. “You were about to tip forward.”

Neil could tell Betsy was put off by his face. She wasn’t used to him without a fake smile or guarded expression. He couldn’t find the energy to try.

“It’s quite early,” she smiled. “Perhaps we can talk later. My schedule is all cleared today.” He curled up on the couch and let Betsy place a blanket over him.

He drifted in and out of consciousness until Betsy’s office door slammed open. Neil didn’t bother to look at who was there.

“Hi, Kevin,” Betsy looked and sounded surprised.

Kevin stood in front of Neil and he recognized the furious and frustrated look on his face. “You don’t want to get up for yourself?” He glared. “Fine. But your boyfriend refused to leave your side for the past week. He hasn’t eaten, he’s barely drank water, and he hasn’t gotten much sleep either.

“Sheena scored on him at practice today. She’s a backliner!” Kevin hissed. “Then he passed out in the middle of our scrimmage.”

Neil heard Betsy make a sound but he only furrowed his brows in confusion. He knew he should feel something and he did, but it was muted.

“Is he okay?” Betsy asked.

Kevin’s eyes didn’t leave Neil. “Don’t you want to know?”

“Kevin, please, tell us,” Betsy said quietly.

He made a disgusted sound and finally turned to look at their therapist. “He’ll be fine. He’s hooked up to an IV right now. He needs to start taking care of himself or he’ll make himself sick.”

He spun on his heel and closed the door harder than necessary on his way out.

Neil closed his eyes and took an unsteady breath. He frowned when it felt like no air had gotten to his lungs. He tried again and again, clutching at the pillow in his arms.

“Neil?”

Betsy hurried over and forced him into a sitting position. She pried the pillow out of his arms and he grasped one of her hands too hard.

She put a hand on his back and pushed until he leaned forward, his head resting on his knees. “Breathe, Neil. Come on. I know you can do it.”

He couldn’t. His vision was already spotting and his lungs burned.

He didn’t hear the knock on the door or Betsy’s panicked, “We’re busy!” or the gruff, “It’s me.”

He did feel the hard thump on his back and the first harsh woosh of air to his lungs and the sharp tingling sensation in his throat as his breathing slowed. Finally, he could hear over the thudding of his heart and hands pulled him so he was leaning back against the couch cushion.

“Jesus, you’re blue,” Wymack said.

Neil closed his eyes, exhausted.

“You still with us?”

Neil opened his eyes to slits and closed them again.

“I saw Kevin running away from here so I assume he told you about Andrew?”

“He did,” Betsy responded.

Wymack walked around the couch to look at Neil. “You both need to start taking care of yourselves, Neil.”

Neil kept his eyes closed. Tears leaked out the corners.

“Abby will be by later.” He patted Neil’s knee before leaving.

Abby gently prodded Neil awake and led him to her car. Although the drive to Fox Tower was short, she had to wake him again when she parked.

He was unsteady on his feet and Abby grabbed his arm to make sure he didn’t slip on ice. She didn’t let go until they were inside his suite and he was sitting on a beanbag chair.

“Do you want to watch something?” There was a forced normalcy to her voice.

Neil closed his eyes. He heard Abby sink into the other beanbag chair and sigh.

“Will you order food for Andrew?” It hurt his throat. Speaking after a week of silence.

He knew without looking Abby was stunned. She tripped over her words in her excitement, “Yes, of course.”

With that he drifted back into unconsciousness.

Andrew and Kevin came home a bit after eight.

“Will you be able to play tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew responded, bored. “Maybe they’ll just let me study for eight hours instead of practicing again.”

Kevin stopped and took in the scene before him. Abby had set up their take out containers in front of the beanbags. She had already made herself and Neil plates and had set two empty plates across from them.

“Hi, guys.” She waved. “Join us?”

Neither of them said anything but they sat down across from Neil and Abby. She asked them a few questions while they sorted the food onto their plates. Abby had only put rice and plain chicken on Neil’s plate, explaining that hopefully the bland food wouldn’t upset his stomach but let Andrew grab whatever he wanted.

They sat in silence as Abby and Kevin ate. It took Neil awhile to realize Andrew was waiting for him to start eating before doing so himself. He forced a bite of rice into his mouth and chewed slowly, resisting the urge to spit it out and go to bed. Only when he swallowed did Andrew start tearing his food into messy pieces.

There was a loud knock on the door and Abby immediately put her plate aside to go answer it. Allison strode in and put her hands on her hips.

“I’m not driving the rest of the monsters to practice anymore,” she said. “Either you can bring them since you’re coming to practice now, or they can sit in the snow in Matt’s truck bed.”

“Hm,” Andrew replied and Allison glared before leaving them.

He piled more food on his plate and pulled it to pieces before stuffing it in his mouth.

“Slow down,” Kevin warned him.

“First you want me to eat and now you want me to stop. Make up your mind, Kevin.”

“You’re impossible.”

Andrew stared Kevin down as he finished his second plate, daring him to say something else. Neil continued pushing his food around, taking the occasional bite whenever he noticed either of them giving him an expectant look.

Abby left an hour later. When Kevin grabbed his keys and headed for the door, Andrew and Neil followed. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

They only made it down the stairs before Andrew hastily pushed open the door and dinner made a reappearance on the sidewalk. He straightened and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, then continued to his car, refusing to acknowledge Kevin’s condescending look that screamed, ‘I told you so.’

Outside of the Foxes’ Exy stadium, Kevin and Neil watched him vomit again.

“Don’t puke on the court,” Kevin said.

Andrew went straight to the bathroom so Kevin and Neil changed out and started their night practice without him.

The next morning when Kevin’s alarm went off, Andrew climbed over Neil and pulled on his socks, shoes and coat before forcing Neil out of bed. They followed Kevin into the hallway and Andrew locked the door behind them.

“Neil?” Dan stepped toward them looking a bit relieved.

That got the others’ attention and they all turned to look at him. Andrew grabbed the back of his coat and he didn’t know whether it was to stop him from going back inside or to make sure he didn’t fall on his unsteady feet.

“You look like shit,” someone said. “Ow.”

Matt retracted his elbow from someone’s ribs and smiled tiredly at Neil. “Good to see you.”

Aaron rolled his eyes and walked past everyone to the stairwell. Kevin, Nicky, and Andrew pushing Neil, followed without another word. The others realized they should go, too, and the sound of fifteen pairs of feet echoed on the stairs.

“Ugh,” Aaron stopped walking and the others bumped into each other. He had stepped in a mess of regurgitated noodles and meat.

Andrew said nothing and guided Neil around Aaron while the others voiced their disgust. Kevin was close behind.

Andrew only waited for Aaron to finish cleaning his shoe off in the snow before starting his car, forcing Nicky and Aaron to run if they didn’t want to be left behind. “Are you guys playing tonight?” Nicky asked and Kevin flicked him an irritated look.

Neil pretended to doze until they got to Reddin. Andrew left the car running as he escorted Neil to Betsy’s office.

There was a genuine smile on her face when she saw Andrew. “You look like you’re doing better.”

He didn’t acknowledge her comment and spoke as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “I’ll be back after practice.”

Neil sat down.

“Would you like to talk today?” Betsy asked.

He reclined back and Betsy said, “Hm.”

She got up and placed a blanket over him.

When they joined the others on the court, Wymack fixed them with a disgusted look. “If you’re puking, go to sleep. Don’t come practice for an extra two or three hours.”

“Wasn’t me,” Kevin shrugged it off.

“You guys told me to eat,” Andrew twirled his racquet.

“I told you to slow down,” Kevin reminded him.

This time Andrew shrugged and went to join the others in their laps.

“Start running,” Wymack directed at Nicky and Aaron. He waited for them to leave. He kept his eyes on Andrew but asked Kevin, “What do you think about him playing tonight?”

“He’ll be fine. Only let him play the first quarter. Maybe the last quarter, too.”

Wymack didn’t ask but Kevin told him anyway, “Neil can still barely stand without help. Throwing a ball leaves him breathless.”

He pursed his lips. “Abby said he asked her to order food for Andrew yesterday.” It wasn’t quite a statement but it wasn’t a question either.

“He ate some rice and chicken. Andrew ate two and a half plates of everything else.”

“I saw.”

Kevin left him and started jogging around the court. The others had already finished their laps and were stretching.

After practice, Andrew picked Neil up from Reddin and drove him to Abby’s house. Wymack was waiting with her on the porch.

Abby looped an arm through Neil’s and guided him to the dining room table. He heard Wymack stop Andrew from leaving and they all sat down to eat breakfast together.

Toast and oatmeal.

Andrew lifted his spoon and watched the mush drop back into his bowl. He covered the top with sugar then started eating.

“Eat.” Wymack commanded and Neil nibbled at his toast.

He drained a cup of coffee before telling them, “I talked to your professors. You both have the next week to catch up on the work you missed. That means extra hours with tutors this week. Andrew can’t miss any classes. Tell me you hear me.”

Andrew looked up momentarily from tearing his toast to shreds. “Can’t miss any classes.”

“I got your work from last week and this week from your professors.” He turned to Neil. “I’ll give you the rest of the weekend but starting Monday you need to start getting back into things. There’re only so many exceptions that can be made. I made schedules for both of you and you need to follow them to get back on track.”

Andrew glanced at his, then crumpled it up. He probably already had it memorized.

Wymack glanced at his watch and took another gulp of coffee. “I have to get back to campus. Andrew, meet the rest of the team at the usual time. You’ll play the first quarter. Then I’ll decide if you get anymore playing time.”

Because I saw this post and all I could think of was tfc/aftg.

http://maelerie.tumblr.com/post/135803922052/send-me-two-characters-or-more-and-a-prompt-and

[katrandomtiger]

We’ll Meet Again

Listen. I don’t know either just take it. Read it on AO3

Jack is visiting his grandma in Kentucky when he learns an important lesson about listening to your elders.

Warning: It’s got ghostys. 

Visiting grandma Lori in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere Kentucky was most definitely not at the top of Jack’s to do list. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his grandma, oh no, he adorned the woman, it was just that spending the first week of summer vacation at grandma’s house with mom is not a 17-year-old boy’s favorite thing to do.

Jack sighed melodramatically as he hefted the last of their suitcases out of the suburban. His mom had, of course, decided to take everything but the kitchen sink with her making the unloading process more difficult than it needed to be. Slowly, he slogged up the driveway to the front door of the house.

Grandma’s was just what you would expect from a small rural town, a well-cared for lawn and garden, and a pristine looking house from the 50s. Against the sides of the house were flower beds that were almost choked with ornaments; pinwheels, signs, flags, and most notably was a rather terrifying cement gnome statue that had been sitting by the steps for so long that the paint had almost completely been weathered away. His name was Herbert.

The garage was packed with grandpa Jeff’s old tools and workbench. Cabinets that lined the plain plywood walls were covered in vintage collectables and filled with out-of-date chemicals and potting soil. An old stove sat in the corner next to the cabinet of assorted junk. Grandma’s van took up one half of the floor while the area grandpa’s truck once took up was now occupied by an ancient grill, the picnic table, and an assortment of lawn chairs.

Jack trudged up the stairs and into the kitchen where his mom and grandma were already gossiping as they started supper. Names of people he had met maybe once in his life were being thrown around as he dumped the luggage into the guest room and collapsed onto the couch in the living room. He listened to their banter before he finally fell asleep.

--

A figure watched the blond boy walk up the driveway. Brown eyes skimmed over the familiar broad shoulder and gold hair. A tear escaped as the figured turned from the window and walked into the kitchen.

--

The trip was going better than Jack had anticipated. The trio had spent the day a few towns over shopping in various clothing stores and shopping centers. They met up with one of Lori’s old friends and Jack was treated with some high quality old lady banter over lunch. The women folk had ended the day with a few bags stuffed with their treasures and Jack had also come away with more than a few items for himself. He was inevitably dragged off to church and a meal at the golf course that he was hard-pressed to say was ‘ok’ before they finally returned to grandma’s.

Jack collapsed on the recliner as soon as they made it in the house and pulled out his phone, desperately sending Terry and Russell pleas to save him. He was met with sarcastic replies and a gif of a man running out to his car and running face first into the door. Jack snorted before sending sad face emoji’s and opening a random puzzle game app.

“Jack, we’re going to Carroll’s house,” mom called from the kitchen.

“OK,”

“You coming?”

“No,”

“Jack.” His mother drawled his name in a warning tone causing Jack to sigh.

“I’ll walk down in a few minutes, I need to finish a couple things, ok?”

Mom shook her head before grabbing her jacket and making her way out to the garage. Jack listened for the van leaving the driveway before bolting upright and making his way into the bedroom where he proceeded to dig through the mess in his suitcase.

“Where the hell- AHA!” Jack exclaimed as he pulled out his headphones. He flipped them around and turned the power on as they synced the Bluetooth to his phone. The headphones beeped softly before music began blaring out of them, Jack paused it before meandering out to the kitchen. He walked over to the ancient looking radio that sat on the baker’s rack next to the counter.

For as long as he could remember, even before grandpa passed away, the radio played in the kitchen almost 24/7. The only exceptions were when a lot people were over, when the TV that sat below it was on, or at bed time. Even when they were in the living room watching TV or when they left, the radio stayed on.

Jack glanced out the window that sat over the sink to see if the van was gone, even when he was younger, grandma would warn him not to touch the radio, if anyone turned it off she would go right behind them and turn it back on. That was just the way it was.

He shrugged to himself before hitting the power button and sliding his headphones on. Jack worked his way around the kitchen, tidying the table, washing the few dishes that had collected by the sink, and hunting down his travel mug (it was in the garage). All the while, not noticing the fog building in the corner.

After a while Jack went back to the bedroom and took off his headphones. He ruffled his hair as his stepped out into the living room. It was dead silent apart from the windchimes ringing out front. All the lights had been switched off, leaving the dying sunlight to light the house. Jack stopped abruptly; something wasn’t right.

He stood in the doorway a moment, unease working through every line of his body before he noticed something sitting on top of the TV that hadn’t been there before. Cautiously, he stepped forward picked up the ancient cardboard picture frame. Two men in WWII uniforms stood with their arms wrapped around each other, their features were obscured by age.

Static from the TV broke the silence, the silver light from the screen was suddenly the only source of light in the house. The radio squealed from the kitchen before crackling to life. Jack dropped the frame as he spun around to face the kitchen doorway.

“~We’ll meet again, Don’t know where, Don’t know when~”

“Hello?”

“~ Till the blue skies, Drive the dark skies, Far away~”

“Grandma?”

“~They’ll be happy to know, That as you saw me go, I was singing this song~”

“HELLO? ANYBODY?” Jack’s calls bordered on frantic, he didn’t dare move from his spot in the only bit of visible light.

The light in the china hutch flickered to life before a horrendous screeching flooded the room, forcing Jack to drop to the carpet with his ears covered. He closed his eyes tight and yelled in pain before he passed out.

“~Next take, Billy, have the trumpets stand at uh- uh- at 37 as well as uhh- in the introduction~”

The sudden lack of harsh noise brought Jack back to consciousness. Jack laid there a moment, unwilling to open his eyes until he heard shoes shuffling past him. He looked up hesitantly only to find the room around him in brown and white, like the vintage photo. A man in slacks and a dress shirt stood in the archway between the kitchen and living room.

“~E 30000 211 take 11~”

The man was beautiful. Dark skinned, goatee, perfectly brushed curls, and a wicked grin curling his lips. The man’s face softened as another person stepped out of the bedroom. The new arrival was barely colored by the browns of the room, something about him was familiar. Jack stared wide eyed at him; he had no face.

“~I found you just in time, I found you just in time, Before you came my time, Was running low~”

They turned to each other and the darker man smiled as he slid an arm around the other’s waist and slowly pulled him into a dance.

“~Now you’re here, And now I know just where I’m going, No more doubt or fear, I’ve found my way~”

Jack watched in fascination as the two shuffled around the kitchen to the sounds of the ancient radio. He slowly stood and followed them into the room. The kitchen was different than the one he remembered, it was smaller, the carpet had been replaced by laminate tile and the appliances were even older than what his grandma kept. Jack glanced at the corner and dread filled his chest; the radio was the same.

“~For love came just in time, You found me just in time, And changed my, Lonely life that lovely, Lonely life that lovely, Lonely life that lovely day~”

The world twisted under Jack’s feet, the walls warped, the painting over the table seemed to melt down the wall, the only thing not affected by the sudden corruption was the radio. The dancers continued across the rolling floorboards as Jack scrambled across what was left of the floor, wood splintered and broke under his feet as he ran for the radio. He managed to grab the counter just as the floor dropped out from under him.

Desperately holding on for dear life, he looked over his shoulder to where the dancers had been only to see the darker man in the corner sobbing over the bloody corpse of his partner, a gun in his hand. Jack scrambled up the cabinet when the man spotted him, an inhuman scream escaped his throat as he fired at Jack.

Blood spattered Jack’s vision and he dropped into the void below, he fell for what felt like an eternity before he landed with a thud in the middle of the living room again, the radio still playing. He shot into a seated position and frantically patted himself down, checking for bullet wounds.

The radio crackled as the music warped and cut out. Jack hesitantly stood and tiptoed back to the kitchen, fear coursing through his body. The fog that had been building in the corner spit static and buzzed when Jack poked his head through the doorway. Jack jumped and stared wide eyed as the fog contorted into a semi-human shape, hissing pitifully as it went.

Sinatra sputtered back to life on the radio as the figure approached him. Jack stood frozen in fear as the foggy creature wrapped a gaseous arm around his waisted and tugged him closer. He couldn’t make out the song through the ever-warping speakers of the radio.

“J-Jaj-Jaaaaaaaaahhhh- CK-,” the creature spit as it forced him into step with the nonexistent tempo.

Tears spilled down Jacks cheeks as he was dragged through whatever dance the thing was trying to do. He shook violently in its arms, trying to keep in step for fear of the repercussions. They made their way around the kitchen until they were back by the radio.

“J-Jaaaaahh- C- Ck- ieeeee,” it screeched, “L-l-oOOoo-vve yOooU. S-s-sooorrRyyy,” a staticy sob burst from the cloud, “FffforrgiVe g-gaabbi?”

Jack gawked at it, trying to understand it’s words, before he nodded jerkily, “Y-yes, I forgive Gabi.”

The fog screeched again and Jack found himself face to face with the dark man. His body was slightly transparent and his legs disappeared below the knee. Tears ran down his face as he gripped Jack’s arms and pulled him into an embrace.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jackie. Jack. I love you. It was an accident. Jack, I’m so sorry,” the man repeated over and over, burying his face in Jack’s hair.

“I-it’s ok,” Jack stuttered, awkwardly patting the man’s back, “I forgive you. I’m sure your Jack forgives you too. You should go to him. Please, go.”

The ghost pulled back after a moment and looked him in the eye, “Thank you.”

The room blurred and Jack woke up on the floor in front of the TV. The house was quiet and the kitchen light was on. He crawled out to the kitchen to turn the radio back on, only to find it was gone. A small carving of a barn owl with two rings around its neck sat in the radio’s place.

Jack stood and picked up the carving and turned it over, reading the inscription on the bottom.

Jack Morrison & Gabriel Reyes ~ 1954

He slumped into the chair next to him and rubbed his eyes. After a moment, he got up and put his shoes on before heading out the door to Aunt Carroll’s house.

[bloodandrosesarenofun]

Landrymat - The Reincarnation Series

(After a long time out of commission I am back to writing! I thought I'd share the excerpt of the first chapter of my novel, inspired by the last two pictures I posted. Let me know your thoughts. <3

Tag list:

@luna-evans-writes )

I feel the night air push at my hair and flannel as both stir up at it's touch. The clock on my cellphone says it's only four-thirty but the sun is already on it's way down for the night, early as every winter. It's taken a while for me to actually feel the winter. Strangely enough it's actually just starting to get warm in Jacksonville again but at the same time all of the typical winter shit is just starting to happen. People ringing bells for charity and lighting up random palm trees in an attempt to be festive, and complaining about seeing people's breathe as though breathing doesn't really happen till it's cold out.

The bus thankfully drops me off only maybe a two or three minute walk from my destination so I don't have to deal with it that much. The being outside. I hate this neighborhood, sort of. It's not like it's particularly bad, and I know I grew up better than my mum did, but it is still pretty ghetto and run down. The laundromat is not so cleverly named 'Landrymat' but the word looks cooler to me on the marquee so I chuckle at it, glowing like an old school neon sign in some Tumblr kid's bedroom. I feel my face warm up as I go up to the door, pausing as anxiety creeps it's way up the back of my neck. I doubt anyone'll know what they are, or even care what I'm washing, but I still feel that despite the logical side of my brain arguing against it.

'CLEANERS AND DRY CLEAN

WASHING MACHINES ONLY 50 CENTS PER LOAD

COME IN AND ASK ABOUT OUR SPECIALS'

I question what kind of specials a laundromat could possibly have but I suppose they mean deals on multiple loads? I glance at my backpack's strap and realize I'm not sure if I need to wash anything separate. The idea of asking up at the desk makes my heart go number than all the years of abuse so I decide to just go in and figure it out myself. "I'm only carrying somewhere over a hundred dollars worth of material in my bag, what's ruining a couple of them," I mutter. 

Walking into the laundromat the first thing I see are all the washers and dryers so it takes me a secound to find the desk. 

I hold my tongue about how stupid I think it is that it's in the back of the room (which it is about the size of a large master bedroom) as I walk up to the counter, I'd never been to a laundromat before and my anxious ass wants to eliminate as much risk of my looking stupid as I possibly can. "Hey," I try and lower my voice, standing straighter than I usually do. It's an effort given I've spent years training my voice to be high when I wanted something from people since mine was too low to be as quickly helped as the prissy tea kettle sounding girls, of course the years of manipulation would bite me eventually. I always hated that voice. "I need to wash, um, two loads of laundry."

"Do you need a dry clean?" Asks the burly desk lady, her hair braided back in a frizzy mess that said she probably didn't care much about work appearances and her tone suggesting she didn't really care about work. I shake my head 'no'. "Then pick a machine and just let me know if you need change." 

"Oh. Okay. Thanks." I walk over to the wall that obviously has machines with wet clothes and soap tumbling in them and want to scream at the lack of signs. I survey the room, finding that there aren't really many people in here, thankfully. One woman sits on her phone in a waiting chair, charging it in the wall and speaking about as loudly about her divorce as it takes to let the whole entire room know her life story. A man strikes out with a red head a couple machines down from me, and an Asian lady who might be the manager talks with one of the employees apparently about the detergents. I pick a machine near the end and set my backpack down on a miscellaneous chair at the last machine. All of my binders are bundled up and shoved unceremoniously in the bag. I grab my wallet out and go to figuring out starting up the machine before I take them out, zipping back the backpack. 

Living in a house where either your grandma or your father do all of your laundry (mostly because they insist) is feeling much less convenient as the feeling of intimidation from trying to figure out a new basic skill sets in. I stare blankly at the space beside the laundry machine, feeling fog set in, when the beep of the woman on the phone's laundry being done sets me off I jump, my heart thudding erratically in my chest. I don't know why I feel this way, and I can't find a rational way to deal with it. I try to do the breathing and focus thing but with nothing to focus on I panic, I dig my nails into the skin just under my wrist, grabbing my hoodie to try and hide it underneath as I claw at myself. It helps me. I feel dizzy but after a moment I'm back on the ground, almost like getting off something unstable for the first time in a while. My mind felt like it was still thinly veiled but I find myself able to lean against the washers. Shaking my head, I nod at my reflection, fixing my t shirt and going to figuring out the laundry. When I get it together, tossing everything from my backpack and quickly shutting it seems more discreet and I contemplate only doing one load just for the convenience of it, but I decide against it thinking about my lack of a job and money to replace for that. The machine turns on with a loud sound and I shut my eyes against it. Feeling physically sick I hastily take out my headphones again from where I've shoved them into my backpack's pocket and begin playing a song from Quietdrive, thinking the guitar and easily placed sexual lyrics will help me take my mind off my mental breakdown. The seats in the 'Landrymat' are cheap but they aren't as uncomfortable as I thought. I sit with my legs up weirdly crooked in the seat, looking around to see if anybody will care about it. The red haired girl from earlier is looking my way but her expression doesn't look irritated so I ignore it. The air is clean smelling, and the chemicals burn my nose, but it's all something to focus on as I zone out, inconsequentially digging my nails into my skin again, my hoodie wrapped inconsequentially around my hands like I was trying to bide off the cold. I feel alittle less stranded with the music blasting. It drowns out the other sounds. It takes a little while for my darks to be done, and I find myself way too intrigued by the fact you could never tell what the mass of black fabric is. It looks so inconsequential when it feels like if anybody saw it, knowing what it was, it would ruin my life.

I remove the clothes and set them in the dryer, taking a secound to pick the right cycles and having to google it to be sure, then put my lighter binders in for the same cycle. Feeling eyes on me, I turn and glance around the laundromat. The manager is nowhere to be seen and the employee is sweeping, the woman on her phone is talking to the man from earlier, and the red headed girl is staring at me. I turn to glance at the counter, and turn back to find her still watching. 

I check my chest, making sure my shirt is on right and you can't see my binder through it or peeking over the top. I haven't said much since I got here and since I know my voice is the least passing thing about me I find it difficult to pinpoint what could be wrong with me. Is she really clocking me? Or trying to figure it out maybe? The girl doesn't seem deterred by the fact I've noticed her staring at me and I can't tell if I find that more unsettling. I get a strange vibe off her, almost like I've met her before, maybe a few times. My head tilts to the side as I study her. She has tan skin, and I can tell she doesn't use as much lightener as most Asian girls. Her face and eyes remind me of a wolf (and I'm not sure if that's crazy to say but) despite her not coming off as intimidating at all to me. Something about her's intriguing, and I find myself wanting to talk to her. She's dressed in all guys clothing, stuff you could probably find after a few minutes of digging through the small grungy punk section of Walmart or the closet of you dad's old teenage bedroom, but she wears it like a model on one of the magazines on the table. Her makeup is carefully done and her eyes are piercing as the stare into mine. "D-Do you need something?" I question, being conscious about my voice as I hear it waiver with nerves. I figure either she'll let me know where I know her from or maybe my saying something first will keep her from outing me, even if there aren't that many people in here. I don't think my heart can currently take being called out as trans* or gay.

Her eyes cut from mine to something behind my head and I turn around with an eyebrow raised in question. In the top right corner to the room is a little TV monitor playing the news on mute. Headlines role over the screen as they talk about the state of the world. I knew things have been bad, but the newscast for the day just seems to be 'The world is fucked pretty well' and I'm shocked at how little I've heard people talk about change despite even the holiday season's passing by. I turn back to find the girl grimacing at the screen. She looks down at me then shakes her head, "No. Nothing at all."

I make a face, closing the washing machine I hit start. She doesn't stare directly but I still catch her looking. "The world's pretty shit for just past the holidays isn't it?" Mentally, I kick myself for talking. If she chose to leave alone why wouldn't I let her? 

She looks at me and nods slowly. "Yeah," she says, "Yeah it is. I don't think anyone gives a fuck." Her worlds hold a specific malice and she grits her teeth, looking back at the screen like she's thinking of someone specific. "Did you really think they would? Are you really into rights or something?" I realize that's a stupid question. "I mean, um, like activist work? Specifically."

She shrugs. "Yeah, no, but I guess you could say I work closely with someone-" she stops herself, "who has a pretty good hand in this business."

"You work for weather station?" I ask.

She smiles, shakes her head. "No. Don't worry about it, I'm probably just over reacting as always. Thinking people have more power than they have. Nobody was gonna pay attention to this," she gestures to the screen and crosses her arms, "anyway."

"Well maybe it'll blow over with at least as little damage to people as it can manage."

"Yeah, I doubt it." She goes up to a machine and pulls out her dry clothes, beginning to fold them for a wicker basket.

I look down at my phone, my mum's texted me and I groan inwardly as I text to let her know I'm okay. "What about you?" I hear the girl ask. 

My eyebrows furrow. "What about me?"

"What do you care about?" She asks. 

It's a strange question. What do I care about? "I guess the environment."

"You guess?" she pauses.

"I mean, yeah."

"That's not a lot of caring." She continues to fold her things into her basket without looking at me, reminding me of an old movie scene. "There's no passion in you guessing."

"I guess-" I stop, then shrug. "I don't care much about a lot of things right now." I admit. Something about the girl's demeanor changes, and I try but I can't read her expression. She seems weirdly different then and I try and find a time when I may've seen her like this. "That's a sad way to live. But I guess I get it."

I shrug awkwardly, shifting my weight on one foot. "I just can't find that passion I suppose."

"You know supposing is just guessing with a different style?"

"I'm surprised someone else does."

"Well. My advice. Find something worth fighting for. Fast." The jokingness fades from her eyes and she suddenly looks very serious, her tone almost a warning.

"Okay." I say. "I'll work on it."

"Good." She smiles, grabbing her basket and heading for the door. "I suppose I'm just not gonna get a name after that." I turn back to my wash and see there's still five minutes to wait for the dryer.

"It's Rosé." I hear a girl say. Turning around, I see the red head walking away without getting an answer from me. "Scorpious," I doubt she heard me. 

When I'm done with my laundry I'm happy to fold my binders back into my backpack without incident. The laundromat is only a short walk and an even shorter bus ride from my house, but considering the fact that the next bus is an hour away I take my phone out and do the next best thing.

"Hey, George. You wanna get pizza with me? I'll pay if you drive."

[twistedstorm]

13, 33, 34, 35, 40, 44, 46, 47 and 50 for the writer ask meme

Whoever you anon(s) are who keep sending me in these questions from my ask memes I love you so much! Here we go!

13) What’s your favorite writing quote? I don’t actually know…but the best thing I’ve ever read about writing is something like “Don’t be afraid to write what you want even if it’s been written by someone else before because while it may have been written it’s never been written by you” and I love that because it’s true, nobody writes exactly like anyone else so no matter what you write it will always be unique to you regardless if the same idea has been done before. 

33) Are you interested in having your work published? Maybe someday? I think I’d like to have something I write whether a poem or a short story or a novel or whatever published one day because I’m pretty proud of a lot of my writing and I’d like to know what people think and I’d love for people to connect with my words or my characters and I love to hear about their interpretations and stuff like that because I love it when people feel something, anything after reading what I’ve wrote. Right now the list of people to have read my work is limited to some teachers (one really awesome one who encouraged me to keep writing no matter what who is a huge reason why I still write), my mom, and some of my friends and as much as I love hearing their reactions I think I’d like a bigger pool of people someday.

34) Describe your writing space. I write in my room, on my bed with usually my fan going to provide white noise. I used to play music or a movie or something but I end up pausing it whenever I’m actually putting words down because it distracts me so the fan is better. If I’m writing by hand then I’m surrounded by notebooks (because I write different things in each one so I don’t have to be flipping through the notebook I’m actually writing in to try and find that one date or one character detail I need for this one scene because that’s hella annoying) and pencils and stuff and if I’m writing on my computer I’ve got google docs open to save whatever I’m writing in a separate place (copy and paste are my best friends I swear) because I’m paranoid about my computer freezing or something and me losing everything I’ve written because it’s happened before and it’s the worst (I still have a million notebooks open around me but less pencils) and sometimes I write with headphones in just to block out the noise from everywhere else because I’m very easily distracted and random noise genuinely pisses me off if I’m writing. Oh and I always have chocolate and at least one full water bottle because they are both very important to my writing process of course. 

35) What’s your favorite time of day for writing? Honestly I don’t think I have one…I do most of my writing really late at night though since that’s usually when I have the most energy because my brain’s a dick but otherwise it’s pretty much a whenever I feel like it sorta thing. When I was still in school it was usually first thing in the morning or right after lunch in the afternoon though…I have no idea why those times but I did a lot of writing then. 

40) Which is your favorite original character, and why? Okay this is really hard because I love all my ocs for different reasons, even ocs I made up as a kid are still important to me. So I could pick the very first character I ever made I guess. His name is Darius and he’s a white haired red eyed vampire with an accent I dreamed up (literally by the way, he showed up in a bunch of recurring dreams I had as a kid) when I was like 8 and I still use him in stuff today (and yes he sounds just like Soul from Soul Eater and I’m pretty sure that’s why I like Soul so much) and I honest to god talk to Darius when I need someone to be my voice of reason, I just picture him and he gives me advice and reminds me to breathe (yes I talk to my ocs as if they were real people in the real world, I have conversations with them really often actually. I know they’re not real and it’s just me talking to myself but it helps me a lot) . Or I could pick my current favorite characters to write at the moment which are two characters in my new story named Sil and Holt. One is a sarcastic phantom with emo hair who makes jokes like “Oh no we’re all gonna die!!! Oh wait…I’m already dead…never mind guys I’ll be fine, you guys on the other hand…not so much…” and I love him so much and the other is a half nymph half siren and he’s literally just me but cooler and with white hair and cool powers who get’s flustered easily and likes sea shanties. I love them both for the weirdness that is their personalities and how fun it is to write dialogue for them 

44) What’s the weirdest character concept you’ve ever come up with? The time I made Alice in Alice in Wonderland an evil zombie (species called a Queen) who could raise the dead and infect others with her own special mutation of the zombie virus and then wrote out a detailed explanation of how Queens were created when the zombie virus interacted with a recessive mutation only active in xx chromosomes but was carried by people with xy chromosomes and could be passed on to their children and activated if the mother was a carrier as well and the disease was incapable of effecting xy chromosomes at all, and when the disease/defect interacted with the zombie virus it creates a species of zombie capable of in-depth thought and calculation who was equipped with a new version of the virus that is specifically hers so every Queen had her own specific virus unique to her that allowed her to turn and control other people and also raise the dead maybe. I wrote out the entire backstory of how the disease was discovered and the entire list of symptoms it presented with and how it progressed over time and then I named it after my cousins because I decided that the disease was first studied by experimenting on and observing two little girls in an asylum who were there for killing someone as small children because the disease drove them crazy. So basically I turned Alice evil and crazy and spent months creating and writing about a disease to explain why she was so fucking crazy and murderous even though she wasn’t even my main character…yeah that was pretty weird. Not the only weird one though…my mind is a strange place.

46) Describe your perfect writing space. Comfy office-like space with a desk for my laptop or my notebook or whatever with a comfy swivel chair and footrest but also a big bean bag chair and big pillows and a daybed type thing so I can move around and write wherever. There would be a big window with a window bench seat thing so I could let light in or open it to feel a breeze but it’s never loud outside so there’s no stupid noises to distract me. Magically I have speech to text that works perfectly so I can pace and stuff and just speak my story out loud when I need a break from typing. Covering one wall is just a total story line of my story in pages and sticky notes and pictures all connected with different colors of string that mean different things so I can keep track of everything without a million notebooks. There’s a cabinet for my millions of notebooks that I’ll have anyway because it’s me and I love notebooks. I have just a huge pencil case with like those pull out parts like in a makeup case and it’s just full of pencils and pens and sticky notes and highlighters and stickers so I don’t have to always search for them when I need them. There’s a mini fridge for my water bottles and snacks and I have a fan that makes the perfect amount of noise and surround sound speakers with voice control so that if I decide I want music I can have it right away and the entire room is sound proof so I don;t have to hear anything from outside the room and there’s a light up sign on my door that I can turn on with a remote or a switch or whatever that says “Writer at Work” so that people know not to come in and disturb me. The room is painted blue because I like it the best and there’s a big soft rug in the middle of the room because I like fuzzy things and there’s also a fuzzy blanket for if I get cold.     

47) If you could steal one character from another author and make then yours, who would it be and why? I dunno…I don’t think I’d take anyone really…actually scratch that, there’s a lot I would probably take because I’d want to give them a better life or a cooler story or a better relationship or a better family and friends, but I won’t pick a specific one.

50) If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be? Dark Hunter novels by Sherrilyn Kenyon, I’d love to meet my favorite characters and have cool magic powers and give my precious tortured babies (*cough cough* Ash and Nick *cough cough* and everyone else *cough cough*) a cookie and a hug…and high-five Simi. Or alternatively any universe where I could have shape-shifting powers (so maybe X-Men?) or my own created universe where I’m still me but with shape-shifting powers and magic and way cooler clothes and stuff but like my friends and family are still there because I’d miss them a lot if I was in some other universe. (Also acceptable is Batman/ Justice League universe provided I’m a hero with powers) 

Thank you kind anon for sending this in, I love you and have a fantabulous day! Feel free to send in more (that goes for everyone)!

~ZZ

I’m gonna go write something…