#i feel like... its not really random but it was like the characters that sit in my brain a lot lmao

[eddieslunchbox]

desire

summary: you've never been kissed and eddie has been crushing on you since the day you met

18+ [bestfriend!eddie x female!reader]

contains: hurt/comfort, mutual pining, fluff, friends to lovers, kissing, brief mention of alcohol, swearing

word count: 4k

a/n: this is my first time writing for eddie and I'm excited to share him with you! this is very self-indulgent but I hope you like it. please consider reblogging/commenting if you do, my blog is brand new! enjoy ❤

There’s a romantic comedy playing on the television, something you picked up from Family Video for your bi-weekly movie night with Eddie. It was your turn to pick, and after sitting through a terrible slasher film he claimed to love, you wanted to get him back with a movie you didn’t necessarily have interest in, but knew would make him squirm in his seat. 

He grabbed the snacks while you got the movie, and you met up at his trailer after Wayne left for work, the sun setting beyond the horizon and leaving a cold autumn breeze in its place. A routine that had been kept for almost six-months straight.

A bowl of popcorn sat between the two of you, an open bag of sour patch kids resting against your thigh and a half-empty bottle of beer was clasped in Eddie’s hand, resting lazily on his knee where he sat on the opposite side of the sofa. 

You always looked forward to these nights, but today you felt particularly resentful about your choice of film, the two main characters falling in love mere days after meeting. It’s cheesy and cliche, and not all that realistic. You know that. But it makes your chest ache with longing for something you’ve never had. 

And now, unbeknownst to you, you’ve been watching the movie play out with a pout sitting on your face while Eddie has to bite back his smile each time the male protagonist kisses the girl that looks a little like you if he squints hard enough. 

The two of you had been best friends since high school and now you were spending most of your time in college while Eddie worked at an auto shop, which left your get-togethers pushed to the weekends unless one of you showed up at the other's place without warning after a long day. You’d also been crushing on him practically since the day you met, but had kept your feelings to yourself, ignorant to the fact that Eddie also had eyes for you for longer than he was willing to admit to himself. 

You’ve watched him go through a handful of relationships in the time you’ve known him. 

From hearing the disbelief in his voice when he scored a date with Chrissy Cunningham and seeing her hanging off of his arm around school for four months, before you all graduated and she broke it off with a voicemail left on Wayne’s home phone and headed off to university in Indianapolis; to random hookups from his evenings spent at The Hideout that you encountered in awkward meetings when you showed up at his trailer to spend the day with him, finding girls in his clothes sipping coffee that they helped themselves to while Eddie snoozed for another hour. 

Eddie has been your best friend for five years. Six in only a couple of months. And he has been with a total of nine different women. 

Not that you’re counting or anything. 

His relationships never bother you. Not really. But the nagging thought in the back of your mind every time you think about him, was that you haven’t been with anyone. 

You’ve had nothing more than a brief conversation with boys in required discussion groups in college. And other than the frequent hugs you receive from Eddie, the furthest you’ve ever gone with someone was a kiss on the cheek from one of your girlfriends that was slightly too close to the corner of your mouth, and left your body erupting in tingles. 

But Eddie had game. He knew how to make a girl swoon. How to wrap them around his finger and kiss them until they were weak in the knees and red in the face.

You had seen him kiss a handful of times and were ashamed to admit to yourself that you had crawled into your bed with your hand between your thighs more than once, wishing it was you he was kissing and touching and making crumble with one particularly smitten look on his face.

He glances at you when you haven't said a word in over an hour, seeing the frown on your face and the crease between your brows that he desperately wants to smooth over with his thumb. You never had a great poker face, unintentionally putting most of your emotions on display, and he knows you have no idea you’re pouting. 

“Did you run out of candy?” He asks suddenly, making you turn to him, the wrinkle in your forehead deepening in confusion. “You’re grumpy.” 

“I’m not grumpy,” you huff, plucking your aforementioned candy off the sofa and popping one into your mouth. 

Your knees are pulled up to your chest, body leaning away from Eddie with your legs resting against the arm of the sofa. He knows something is up when your eyes don’t return to the movie, lips pursing as you suck on the candy in your mouth and stare at the bag in your hands, pretending to read the ingredients. 

He quietly sets his beer down on the coffee table, moving the barely touched popcorn off of the sofa and clicking pause on the remote, filling the room with silence. You look up at him and he rests his arm on the back of the sofa, the palm of his hand pressing into his cheek. 

“Are you going to keep pouting for the rest of the night, or tell me what’s wrong?” He asks, brow arching in question and you fight the urge to roll your eyes. 

“I’m fine,” you mutter, dropping your candy onto the table and bundling your hands together in your lap. 

“You’re a liar, is what you are,” he accuses. 

You sigh, slumping further down into the sofa with your cheek resting on the cushion as you turn to meet his gaze. 

His brown eyes sparkle in the dim light of the room, his usually untamed hair pulled back with a bun at the base of his skull, stray pieces falling softly to frame the sides of his face. He looks pretty. He always does, but your current state of mind has you looking away as your heart skips a beat, gaze falling to his chest which is covered with a well-worn Dio shirt. 

“I want that,” you admit quietly, voice barely audible to yourself. 

“You want what?” He questions, brows furrowing. 

You flicker your eyes over to the television and he turns his head to look at the screen, the film paused on a scene of a girl lounging beside a pool with a fluffy dog in her lap, sipping on a bright purple cocktail. 

“A dog? A pool- or do you want a drink? I can try and make you something but I don’t know what we have…” He trails off in confusion and you sigh, rubbing your hands over your face. 

“Just forget it,” you mumble into your palms before crossing your arms over your stomach and tilting your eyes up to the ceiling. 

Eddie feels clueless as he tries to work out your unspoken desire in his head, gaze shifting around the room until he spots the fictional couple on the cover of the rented VHS tape. 

A lightbulb flicks on in his head. 

“You want someone?” 

Your eyes dart to him quickly enough that he knows he’s right before you give him a subtle nod of your head, pulling the sleeves of your sweater over your hands as you feel your face grow hot. 

“You will one day,” he assures you but you just shake your head, that being the last thing you want to hear. 

Eddie knows about your relationship history, or rather, lack thereof, but you never talk about it. So he’s surprised with your next statement, his heart leaping into his throat and the energy in the room shifting. 

“No one has ever found me attractive… or at least not enough to do something about it. It’s hopeless.” 

He keeps a straight face but curls his fingers into a fist at his side, silently cursing himself for never telling you how pretty you really are. He thinks you’re the prettiest and most attractive person he’s ever known, but has never said a word out of fear that you’ll stop being his best friend. 

“It’s not hopeless,” he says quietly. “The guys who haven’t made a move on you are pussies.” 

His partially self-degrading comment was meant to make you laugh, but you don’t. Not even giving him a pitying laugh or a half-forced smile. 

“No one has ever even glanced in my direction,” you say and he frowns. 

“That you’ve seen.” 

“Eddie…” you sigh, unsure of why you start to feel emotion welling up in your chest. 

"Sorry."

“I just… I grew up surrounded by friends who had boyfriends, or flings, or were flirted with- kissed stupid outside of bars or on the bench behind school. And no one-” your words get caught in your chest and you swallow down the lump forming in your throat. “No one has ever even looked at me. Do you know how that feels?”

You look up at him but he doesn’t reply, his eyebrows threading together as he watches you bare your heart to him like this for the first time. 

“To have guys look at everyone around you, but never you? To never have anyone like you enough to say something about it? To… to have maybe had three guy friends who never saw you as anything more, that you haven’t even spoken to in years?” 

You know he doesn’t get it. Not at all. But it doesn’t matter. 

“God, Eddie.” You scrub at your eyes when tears gloss over your vision. “I’ve never even kissed someone,” your voice cracks and falls into a whisper. 

He immediately reaches forward to wrap his hands around your ankles and pull you towards him, swiftly maneuvering you to sit with your legs thrown over his lap and your head buried in his neck. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, running his hand over your waist. You sniffle sadly. “Fuck, sweetheart, I’m sorry.” 

He knows that all of the potentially comforting words forming in his brain won’t make you feel better. Because he doesn’t understand what it’s like to be your age and never kissed. 

You don’t want to hear that it’ll happen one day. You don’t know what you want. 

Maybe comfort isn’t something that words would necessarily give you right now. 

“I know that it’ll probably happen one day but… what if it doesn’t?” You whimper, curling into him as your vulnerability takes over. He holds you tighter to him, shaking his head. “I don’t even know what it feels like to be wanted. I can’t even imagine anyone wanting me. No one ever has.” 

His heart feels like it’s going to crumble into pieces in his chest as he lets you talk out your feelings, his hand gripping your thigh tightly. You’re almost completely perched in his lap, but he can’t focus on how you feel against him when your tears are wetting the collar of his shirt. 

“God I feel fucking pathetic,” you mumble, wiping your hand over your eyes and sitting up. “Sorry.” 

“You’re not pathetic,” he says, making you scoff quietly as you dab at your cheeks with your sleeves, staring down at your lap. “You’re human. It’s pretty human to want to feel desired.” 

“Yeah,” you whisper, sniffling back the remainder of your tears and lifting your eyes to find his pretty brown ones staring back at you. 

There’s something different in his gaze now. Something you’ve only seen a few times. Something loving and soft, and so sweet that it makes your breath hitch in your throat. 

Eddie figures that now is as good a time as any to potentially make a complete fool out of himself in an attempt to make you feel better. To make you feel like you’re worthy of being desired. Because god knows he’s been desiring you since the day you accidentally fell into his lap in the cafeteria after being shoved out of the way with a harsh shoulder by some prissy cheerleader on the second day of school.

“You’re beautiful,” he says so quietly that you almost don’t hear him. 

“Eddie…” you mumble, shutting your eyes and moving to climb off of his lap. 

His hand on your thigh tightens and you pause, his eyes tracing delicately over your features. 

“You want someone to look at you,” he says, the corners of his lips quivering in a small smile. “So I’m looking, sweetheart.” 

His eyes flicker down to your lips and you want to say something. To pull away and turn the movie back on, get off of his lap and pretend like you were never there in the first place. But the way he’s looking at you is something you’ve only ever seen him do with his past girlfriends or someone he’s crushing on. Never to you. 

Your cheeks feel warm as he looks at you and you can almost feel his eyes as they trace over your hairline and down the bridge of your nose, past your lips and dropping down to your chest before meeting yours again. Your stomach twists with nerves as his hand leaves your thigh to rest on the side of your neck, his thumb smoothing across the skin of your cheek. 

“Eddie,” your voice is a whisper, heart pounding in your chest. “Stop.” 

He can feel the nerves radiating off of you but he doesn’t move, one of his brows quirking up in question. “What’s wrong?” 

“I-I don’t… I-” you stumble for a reason why you want him to stop looking at you like that. 

You wrack your brain while he sits patiently for an answer, but you quickly understand that you don’t want him to stop. You’re just terrified. 

You don’t have to speak to understand what could happen, with how he’s gazing at you and touching you so softly as if you’ll break under his palms at any second. Holding you in a way he never has before. 

“Please don’t be making one of your stupid jokes right now,” you say, a plea that has his face softening and his thumb brushing across your bottom lip. 

“I’m not joking, baby,” he murmurs, the pet name making your heart stammer in your chest. “You’re gorgeous. And I was too afraid to say anything in case you didn’t feel the same and left because you were uncomfortable around me.” 

You suddenly feel like crying again, a wave of disbelief washing over you as you realize that your best friend and the person you’ve been silently wanting for almost six years wants to give you everything you were just begging for. 

“I could never be uncomfortable around you,” you say and he smiles, hooking his arm around your waist and twisting you so that you’re facing him, your knees pressing into the sofa on either side of his hips. 

“I mean it,” he said and all you can do is nod. 

The position you’ve found yourself in is foreign in more ways than one, but especially with it being Eddie who has put you there. You feel slightly overwhelmed with your shorts riding up on your thighs and your skin cold where the metal of the chain on his belt presses against you. Rough denim scratching softly at your legs and a subtle heat radiating through the fabric that makes you slightly dizzy as you get a whiff of his cologne. 

Your hands are clenched into fists around the fabric of his t-shirt and he can feel your heart racing where his palm is still pressing against the side of your neck. 

“It’s just me, yeah?” He says and you swallow the sudden dryness in your throat. “There’s nothing to be scared of.” 

He knows you need him to make all of the moves right now and he’s okay with it, even despite the way his heartbeat is quickening to catch up with yours. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

His question makes your head spin and your stomach tightens. “I… I’ve never-” 

“I know.” The gentle reassurance that falls from his lips soothes you and you give him another quick nod. 

There’s still a hint of a smile on his face when he leans forward to brush his lips against yours.

He doesn’t kiss you right away, the tip of his nose nudging yours as he pulls back just enough to gauge your reaction. Your eyes are closed and your lips part slightly with a shaky sigh, hands unknowingly pulling the neckline of his shirt down to grasp for any semblance of reality as you sit in his lap. 

He slides his hand to the back of your neck, guiding you forward an inch to meet his mouth, lips slotting against yours. His lips are soft and slightly chapped, and when a strand of his hair brushes against your cheek, you don’t bother to pull away even when it tickles your skin. 

The hand on your neck is a grounding touch and you think you’ve never felt so safe and comfortable in Eddie’s arms before.

He can feel the way you relax into his kiss, your body slumping just enough to rest your chest against his and fingers untangling from his shirt to drop into his lap. You’re not breathing so he pulls away after just a few seconds, lips parting from yours with a quiet click and you immediately take a deep breath through your nose, your eyes fluttering open. 

You think if your brain was working properly, you’d be worried that this was all a ploy for him to get your first kiss out of the way so you’d stop crying, but the only thing floating through your mind is how nice it felt to have his lips on yours. 

His face is close to yours, lashes brushing his cheekbones as he sits with his eyes closed, the hand on your waist sliding down to rest on the top of your thigh. The tip of his tongue pokes out as he wets his lips before exhaling a long breath through his nose, a tiny smirk tugging at his mouth. 

“Shit,” he breathes, squeezing your thigh before tipping his head back to rest on the sofa cushion. “I really can’t believe it took me this long to kiss you.” 

“You mean that?” You fight the urge to bring your hand up to feel your lips, wondering how long you might have to wait to feel his again. 

He peels his eyes open and looks down at you. “You have no idea.”

You feel a smile begin to form on your face and you duck your chin to hide against his chest, fingers still trembling from clutching his shirt so tightly as you lift your arms to slink around his neck. He chuckles and curls his arms around you, tilting his head down and burying his nose in your hair. 

“Don’t get all shy on me now, sweetheart,” he says, a shiver running down his spine as you slide your fingers into his hair, loosening the elastic holding it back. 

He doesn’t care about his hair as your nose presses into his neck and your breath warms the skin beneath his shirt. “Did I do alright for your first time?” 

Your face goes flush at his choice of words and he fights back a moan when you press a quick kiss to his neck before lifting your head, unable to hold back the coy grin that sits on your lips. 

You nod and he smiles, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on your lower back. 

“Yeah? Think it’d be okay if I did it again?” 

“Please,” you say and he wastes no time in kissing you again. 

Your hands blindly tug the elastic band out of his hair, sliding it onto your wrist and tangling your fingers into the mess of curls at his neck. His lips drag over yours in lingering kisses that make your stomach twist with heat, tasting a hint of the candy he was munching on earlier in the evening. 

You’re consumed by the new sensation of his lips moving against yours and the frizzy curls hooked around your fingers, the thick of your thighs resting on his own with a silent invitation to scooch your hips a little closer to his if you wanted to. 

Eddie is kissing you. Keeping his advances small but addicting, pushing back a smile each time he feels you chase his lips when he pulls back. You can’t get enough. 

So you don’t really notice when he relaxes back against the sofa, resting his hands on your soft thighs with his fingers dipping just below the edge of your shorts. You let out a quiet noise against his lips as your chest comes to rest on his, your arm getting trapped beneath his shoulder and the cushion. His nails press softly into your skin at how pleased you sound, his arms erupting in goosebumps when you unintentionally tug at his hair. 

You’ve been letting out quiet gasps between every kiss he plants on your mouth, your lungs stinging in your chest, yet reluctant to pull away. It’s only when you feel the tip of his tongue nudge against your bottom lip that you pull back, resting your forehead on his and panting to catch your breath. 

“Too much?” He mumbles, sliding his hands over your skin. 

“Not at all,” you breathe, swallowing hard and letting out a soft laugh. “I just couldn’t breathe.” 

Eddie smiles, tilting his chin forward to press his lips to the corner of your mouth. You lift your head and your eyes instantly fall to his lips, now slightly swollen and a darker shade of pink. 

It’s hard for you to think straight, to wrap your head around the fact that you just had your first kiss, and second, and third, and fourth… all with Eddie who is looking at you now like you hung the moon just for him. 

As much as your insecurity is wanting to take you away from this moment, you know that he isn’t that good of a liar, and if he really didn’t want you like this in at least some capacity, you’d be able to see it in his eyes. But all you can see is the sweet, loving gaze of your best friend as he lets you settle, no matter that all he can think about now is kissing you stupid for the rest of the night. 

You’ve gotten further than you ever thought you’d get and you mindlessly pull the tangles in his hair apart, wetting your lips and taking a deep breath. “I like you, Eds. A lot.” 

You figured he might make a teasing comment at your admission, but he just smirks and lets his eyes fall closed as you play with his hair. “I like you too, sweetheart. Have for way too long.” 

You sink your teeth into your bottom lip and slide your hands from his hair to drag down his chest, his stomach twitching beneath your innocent touch. 

“Do you want to keep watching your movie?” He asks, glancing at you and you shake your head. “You sure?” 

You think this is the happiest you’ve ever been, and Eddie feels the same- just happy that he could be the one to make you feel truly wanted for the first time. He wishes you would’ve confided in him about your lack of romance earlier in your friendship so you wouldn’t have missed out on so many years silently pining for one another. But he thinks this will do just fine.

“I want to keep doing this,” you quietly admit and he lets out a soft groan as he brings his hands up to his face. 

“You’re gonna be the death of me…” He drops his hands to his sides. “Wanna get comfy in my room then?”

He chuckles at your eager nod, patting your thighs and moving to sit up. “Hop up then, baby. We can clean up later.” 

You get up and he follows suit, grabbing your hand and interlacing your fingers to drag you down the hallway with an urgency that makes you laugh the entire way into his bedroom.

[dissapointu]

heyy!! can you do how arcane characters would react to a reader with bpd? I have it and its really hard to deal with

I personally don't have Bpd so I hope I was able to write for it- lmk if I got it completely wrong.

Jinx

Arguments with Jinx are a whole event. She’s already impulsive and emotional, so when you’re spiraling, it’s like pouring gas on a fire. She’ll yell, throw something (not at you, but still—chaotic), and storm off dramatically. But the second she sees you starting to crumble, her face softens, and she’s all, “Hey, hey, don’t cry, okay? I’m the crazy one, remember?”

She’ll make up for it with grand, ridiculous gestures—like painting a giant heart on the wall with “SORRY” inside it or showing up with an armful of random things she thinks you’ll like (a half-broken music box, a live rat, some Piltie trinket she swiped). Daily life with her is unpredictable. She’ll match your mood swings and throw in some of her own, but she’s always there to hold you through the aftermath, whispering, “It’s us against the world, baby.”

Vi

Vi has this big sister energy, so she tries to stay calm during arguments, but let’s be real—she’s not a saint. If you start pushing buttons, she’ll fire back, arms crossed, scowling like, “Oh, so this is my fault now?” But the second she sees that shift in your expression, that look like you’re about to spiral, she’ll stop mid-sentence and sigh.

“Come here,” she says, pulling you into a hug even if you’re still mad. “I didn’t mean it. You know I’m an idiot sometimes.”

She’s great at grounding you during bad days—holding your hand, distracting you with dumb stories about Powder or her childhood. Daily life with Vi is full of banter and teasing, but she’s also super protective, always making sure you know you’re safe with her.

Sevika

Arguments with Sevika are INTENSE. She’s not great with emotions, so when you’re on edge, she’s either trying to fix it logically (spoiler: it doesn’t work) or getting frustrated. “What do you want me to do? Tell me, and I’ll do it!” she’ll snap, her mechanical arm whirring in frustration.

But once she realizes she’s made it worse, she’ll sit beside you in silence, waiting for you to calm down. Then she’ll quietly say, “I don’t get it, but I’m trying. For you.”

Daily life with Sevika is steady—she likes routine, which can be comforting when you’re feeling unstable. She’ll bring you food when you’re too drained to eat and let you vent while she works. If you get clingy, she’s the type to roll her eyes but secretly loves it when you hold onto her like a lifeline.

Silco

Silco approaches everything with the cold, calculating precision of a chess player, including your BPD. During arguments, he’s quiet but firm, and sometimes his calm demeanor makes you feel worse, like he doesn’t care. But the moment he sees tears in your eyes, his voice softens.

“Enough,” he says gently, stepping closer. “I’m not leaving. Stop telling yourself that.”

He’ll sit with you until the storm passes, stroking your hair and murmuring reassurances in that low, gravelly voice of his. Daily life with Silco is structured—he thrives on stability and will gently encourage you to find your own, whether that’s a routine or a grounding technique. He’s not the best at expressing love, but his actions—bringing you tea, remembering the little things—say everything.

Vander

Arguments with Vander are rare, but when they happen, it breaks both of your hearts. He hates seeing you upset, especially when you’re directing all that anger at yourself. “Hey, don’t do that,” he says, his voice full of worry. “You’re not a bad person.”

He’ll pull you into a hug, even if you’re still yelling, and just hold you until you calm down. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers. “We’ll figure it out.”

Daily life with Vander is comforting—he’s patient and steady, always making sure you feel loved. He’ll cook for you, listen to your rambles, and let you cry into his chest when it all feels like too much. He’s your rock, and you know he’ll never let you fall too far.

Ekko

Ekko’s a sweetheart, but arguments can get heated because he cares so much. “Why do you always think I’m gonna leave?” he’ll ask, frustration lacing his voice. But then he sees you breaking down and immediately softens.

“Hey, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, pulling you close. “You’re stuck with me, okay? Forever.”

Daily life with Ekko is fun and supportive. He’ll crack jokes to make you laugh on bad days and bring you little gifts—flowers he found, gadgets he fixed—just to see you smile. He’s great at reminding you of your worth when you can’t see it yourself.

Jayce

Jayce doesn’t get BPD at first, but he’s trying, okay? Arguments can get messy because he’s such a fixer. “What do you mean you don’t want advice? I’m trying to help!” he’ll say, running his hands through his hair.

But after a while, he learns to just listen. He’ll apologize quickly, his voice soft and full of regret: “I didn’t mean to make it worse. I just want to be here for you.”

Daily life with Jayce is full of love and enthusiasm. He’s always hyping you up, reminding you how amazing you are. If you’re having a bad day, he’ll drop everything to take you out for a walk or snuggle up with you on the couch.

Viktor

Viktor is SO patient. Arguments don’t happen often because he’s great at de-escalating situations. “I understand,” he says softly when you’re upset, his voice calm and measured. “I know it feels like that right now, but it’s not true.”

He’s the king of quiet, steady love. Daily life with Viktor is peaceful—he lets you sit with him while he works, always making sure you’re comfortable. On bad days, he’ll bring you tea and remind you, “You’re not a burden. Never.”

Caitlyn

Caitlyn is a problem-solver, so arguments can get frustrating because she wants to fix everything, even when you just want her to listen. “I’m sorry,” she says eventually, taking your hands in hers. “I’ll try to do better. Just…tell me what you need.”

Daily life with Caitlyn is filled with small acts of love—she’ll leave you little notes, bring you flowers, and make sure you feel secure. She’s incredibly understanding, always willing to talk things through when you’re ready.

Mel Medarda

Mel is the definition of grace under pressure. During arguments, she stays calm, even when you’re spiraling. “I know you don’t mean that,” she says firmly, but her eyes are full of understanding.

She’s amazing at making you feel grounded—pulling you into her lap, stroking your hair, and whispering, “It’s okay. We’re okay.” Daily life with Mel is luxurious—she spoils you with gifts and quality time, always making sure you feel loved and valued.

Ambessa Medarda

Ambessa is a bit of a bulldozer during arguments, but not out of malice—she’s just used to being in control. “You’re stronger than this,” she’ll say, her tone sharp. But the moment she sees your tears, she softens.

“I didn’t mean to push,” she says, placing a steady hand on your shoulder. “You don’t have to fight this alone.”

Daily life with Ambessa is protective—she’s always making sure you’re cared for, whether that’s bringing you food, making sure you rest, or just standing by your side like an unshakable force.

TL;DR: Everyone loves you in their own messy, flawed way because you’re worth every bit of the work. <3

[floralpowders]

Various HSR Casts vs Escape Rooms

Summary: Some of the Star Rail characters vs how they’d do in an escape room.

I went to an escape room recently and thought “Sure let’s put characters in an escape room and see what happens”. Also this isn't edited at all. Sorry lol  

Trailblazer (Stelle/Caelus) 

The few times that I’ve been to an escape room, there’s always a reminder and rule that the game is about “brains not brawn!” 

…And the Trailblazer is the reason why

Is somehow a little too convinced that if you just pull harder, maybe it’ll finally open (you’re not supposed to open it) 

HOWEVER, because they are really nosy and like digging around a lot, they’re actually pretty good at finding hidden things that may be the key to a puzzle you’re trying to solve

I can see them just throwing ideas out and shooting their shots until something clicks for someone else to solve a puzzle 

If you didn’t already get booted out of the room for property damage, I’d say you have a chance to make it out of the room together 

8/10 — You just really have to make sure they don’t just. Destroy everything. 

Dan Heng 

A little rough to cooperate with because of how quiet he tends to be, but he’s smart and can solve puzzles 

He’s really good with the puzzles that require attention to details, so two things that don’t seem associated but actually are? He can get that down for you 

Will more likely start in his own corner without being told and figure something out on his own while you handle another corner

If he notices you’re struggling with something, he’ll help and offer suggestions and that’s mostly how the both of you would wind up working together for the puzzles at all 

Also another person you have a chance to make it out with, but really depends on whether or not the two of you manage to overcome the silent barrier 

7.5/10 — Generally good but you know—

March 7th 

Another memory to record down! 

She would have tons of fun with the escape room; it’s just like being a detective from The Angler Mysteries! 

….But admittedly, she leaves you to do the puzzles yourself. You’re the sidekick after all! 

Will cheer you on while you do the puzzle, and more or less take the credit for when you solve it, saying “Of course you got it down! You’re the sidekick to a genius detective!” 

Good at bouncing ideas off each other though, so that’s a given! 

If she does solve anything, it's pure accident BUT she'll act like she totally did it on purpose. 

7/10 — She’s great at support and she just has good energy as a partner! Just not good at puzzles herself. 

Welt Yang 

He’d love the chance to try and do all the puzzles himself if given the chance but of course, with time ticking, he relents to splitting the work up. 

Very good at cooperating that tbh, you’d probably want to work alongside him to the puzzles but…inevitably winds up turning into him doing the puzzle instead BUT HEY WE CAN CALL IT TEAMWORK SURE 

Honestly a good sport in escape rooms, but unfortunately because he takes his time with the puzzles, you either run out of time or nearly run out of time before you make it out 

If you don’t finish, Welt’s more likely to ask for the solutions which. Um. then you can’t come back to the game after unless you really forget how to do the solutions, but I don’t think Welt’s really one to forget 

9/10 escape room partner with a -1 because Slow. 

Serval

Oh you know she’s going to be such a great partner for these 

She’s smart. She’s friendly and warm. The two of you are definitely going to make it out of here and it’ll be extra fun!

She'll hype herself up when she manages to complete a puzzle and she'll definitely hype you up too when you complete one

If the two of you stumble on a puzzle you can't solve, she’ll definitely have both of you try to put your heads together to figure it out. 

She's also the one I bet could have a chance of getting the both of you out in record time

10/10 partner but maybe because I'm biased and you can't go wrong with Serval

Gepard

Even despite it being all fun and games, the diligent and responsible face of Captain Gepard Landau is a tough one to break.

He's a little too serious about this because he focuses too much on trying to finish on time rather than the fun of the game

Starts delegating the work between everyone and is constantly the one trying to regroup and fill everyone in so everyone's on the same page about puzzles and everything

Very much continues being captain. In the escape room. 

Please help him ease up a bit he's probably stressing himself out more than anything 

7/10 He gets it done and you manage on time but again. A little too serious even for his own good

Sampo

What are the chances that he leaves you to do the puzzles on your own?

You know him: with the number of times he’s been in trouble there comes an equal amount of times he’s escaped

So to speak: he’s good at escape rooms

…Except he uh. Doesn’t exactly…. Solve the puzzles that the escape rooms set up.

Maybe if you push him, sure, but chances are he’ll play dumb and pretend he’s stuck on a situation and then you wind up having to do all the work

You probably have to keep a careful eye on him because I can imagine this guy possibly leaving out the entrance and leaving out there if you don’t notice soon enough and well. Now you’re on your own in the escape room 🧍🏼

Force him to stay and he might actually give you a winning chance to get out of the escape room on time because of how fast he works. You’ll start wondering if he’s done these before and what kind of situations caused him to say things like “oh yeah I’ve seen this one before.” But hey you’re winning 

Also with how fast he is, there's a chance you could get out record time. But. You know.

6/10 — Seriously. Have a leash on him so he’d stay and solve it. Otherwise he’s out within the first 3 minutes or something. Without you. 

[fruitsyrups]

every now and then i'll get a little phrase stuck in my head but it's not really words, just a collection of sounds, and i'm like wtf is this even from ???

and every time, without fail, it's from adventure time

[hundredowls]

silly oc doodle..... ballroom yuri

[trans-xianxian]

I'm enjoying the fontaine storyline so far I feel like it's progressing the plot forward a good amount and we're getting some rlly cool and important lore info but I Am sort of like. can we solve an insane crisis now. can we have a boss fight please. I enjoy that we're learning a bunch of stuff but it feels like we're Only learning a bunch of stuff and not actually Doing anything of monumental plot importance we're just sort of watching all of the other characters do it

[stoopidpigeonxx]

⋆˚｡⋆୨✧୧˚ 𝑶 𝑪𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏, 𝑴𝒚 𝑪𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏. ˚୨✧୧⋆｡˚⋆

CAPTAIN CURLY SMUT HEADCANNONS !! NSFW under the cut. MDNI.

(These are all completely random, not tied to any prompt. I just want more stuff about this guy cuz I love him) Fandom/characters: Mouthwashing, Captain Curly, other characters briefly mentioned.

Content warning: Smut (obviously), p in v, curlys packing, title kink, thigh-riding, face-sitting, size difference, manhandling, reader is AFAB, creampie, multiple rounds, riding, cursing, J*mmy.

-He's a grower, not a shower.

I firmly believe Curly is a distinguished gentleman, unlike J*mmy who would most likely brag about how big he is and end up only being like, 5 or 6 inches. Curly, however, will not mention his size until you see it for yourself. And when he sees your face, he panics. "Oh-shit, uh- i-is it gonna be too big for you? It's okay if it is, I should've warned you.."

He's four inches soft, uncut. I think he keeps himself decently groomed. He's not completely bare, but it isn't a forest. He's got a little v-line that's only visible when he wears sweatpants that you go absolutely feral over. When he gets hard, whoo boy. 9 inches, throbbing. He's got a cute little vein near his tip that you like to attack when you're sucking him off because it makes his thighs shake. He's got a little bit of a mushroom tip, maybe more rounded. Perfect for hitting all those good spots inside you. In short, he's big. (he tucks it, that's why he doesn't have a bulge in his sprites. Also I'm sorry trans-Curly headcannon people ;-;)

-"Need a seat? I'll volunteer."

VEEEEEERRRYYY into face-sitting. Very. Like, the first thing he wants when you guys get freaky is for you to sit on his face. He's not exactly sure why he likes it, to be honest, he just loves the feeling of you absolutely lose yourself on his tongue. He isn't worried about suffocating or anything, since he's a lot bigger than you, so don't be afraid to ride his face! he can handle it! But seriously, use this guy as a seat. He'd give you a few licks up your slit at first to warm you up (again, gentleman) before going for your clit. And when he gets it, he sucks. Hard. He'd also probably sneak a finger or two inside you to add extra stimulation, because he really wants you to come on his face. He desperately yearns for the sound of you screaming his name as your juices cover his face and tongue, letting you ride your orgasm out before lifting you off his face and setting you down. "Alright, sweet-stuff, my turn. On your knees, please."

-Save a Polle, ride his big ass thighs.

So... we've all seen his sprite. He's thick as fuck. He's got a booty and bigger tits than me. But he also has deliciously large thighs.. so use that to your advantage, because he's totally down with it. He likes using it as foreplay to get you wet enough to take him, and he just likes the feeling. He'll probably give himself a hand while you're doing it, or he'll just watch and leave the touching to you.

He isn't much for public sex, but if you're really horny, he'll let you get high on his thigh over his uniform and gently praise you when you come. It gives him a little buzz to be doing something like that in a risky situation, like while he's in the cockpit sitting at the control panel, or even in the commons of the ship with Daisuke in a few rooms away. When you do come, which isn't that long after, he'll kiss you all over your face and head and twirl your hair in his fingers, using his other hand to rub your ass or back.

"There you go, sweetheart, that's a good girl. Good job."

-Sir yes sir.

I know, I know. He gets called 'Captain' and 'Sir' for his job. But if its coming from you when he's balls deep in you.. It's an entirely different reaction.

"D-did.. you just call me- mgh..- Captain?"

It makes him ferociously horny to hear that title slip from your lips, so pray you'll still walk tomorrow. "Ooh, fuck, yeahhh. Call me that again, baby. Call me that again.. Uh-huh. Captain takin' care of this pretty lil' pussy, huh.."

He doesn't dirty talk that explicitly, but you calling him captain gets his creative juices flowing. Oh, also his come. Yeah..

Its also perfect teasing material. You two couldn't even be getting it on, you'd just sneak up behind him and kiss him on the cheek and say "Morning, Captain!" In that tone you know drives him wild. Boom, hard. Poor guy.

-Yeehaw!

favorite position? Cowgirl. For many reasons. One, he loves looking at your face while you ride his cock. The noises, the facial expressions you make, the way your tits bounce up and down with your hips.. He wishes it was a renaissance painting to look at every morning. He also just likes being able to hold you easily. When you're on his lap, its easier for him to snake a hand up and hold your hair out of your face, or to give your ass gentle love taps (he would never spank you, unless asked to). He's a very hands-on guy and wants to touch you, everywhere he can.

Of course, he doesn't mind the occasional doggy, or missionary, or hell, even a Full Nelson, because you KNOW he's able to hold you like that. Manhandling comes naturally with Curly. Gently, of course. He would never hurt you.

-Gets a little messy.

Curly's no one pump chump. He'll go for hours. Even if he's came inside you at least five times, he'll keep going. He's got hella impressive stamina. His motivation? Seeing your cunt leaking his seed when he pulls out. He wants you to still find it in your underwear 3 days later. No hole goes unfilled. He's not exactly a breeder, per-say, though he definitely wouldn't complain about getting you pregnant, he just likes seeing you in a state. He thinks of it as artwork, leaving you so stuffed to the brim. The next day, he'd pull you aside and give you a quick finger-orgasm, just to see if his come's still in there. When it leaks onto his fingers along with your own, he's a very happy man. "Ahh, look at that. Still got it in ya. Should fill you up even more later, hm?"

oof. my hands hurt. ;-;

[whiteeyes-is-a-mad-scientist]

Turtle

Wings of fire au where everything is the same except turtle is hiding away on an island just surfing

While I enjoy a good nervous character I think it would be so cool if turtle was more of this "the world is harsh and mean but out on the water none of it matters. Its just me."

in this au of sorts I imagine he left in his teen years feeling overwhelmed from his powers and status yet undersupported due to the lack of attention from his mom. Hitting a point of still loving and caring for those around him but recognizing that in this spot he'd be stuck being unhappy.

He left to a secluded island enjoying the peace of solitude and finding a love of surfing. time passes and kinkajou and moon get washed up on his island probably chasing a mystery or somthing idk. Moon of course is wary of this random seawing while kinkajou is thrilled. Moon figures out who he is, to his dismay, and they have a chat about powers n such

"Your a prince and an animus... you have the power to do so much yet you just... sit here doing nothing... sorry that sounds harsh.."

"No need to apologize I see your point... I could do so much but I could also damage alot.. including myself. I dont want to loose myself for others who could care less about me. For now... taking care of me is all I need to do."

Moon would eventually be understanding. Kinkajou on the other hand is having too much fun learning to surf and enjoying the flora and shells Turtle finds on the beach.

(imma be 100% here and say I didnt really think too deeply about this au, I really wanted to draw turtle surfing lol. so excuse its messy nature and the fact that if turtle was like this half of like arc 2 wouldnt exist 💀 )

[zwei-rhunen]

-crawling thru the Thanalan deserts like a parched creature -

I've finally done it.. I've finished Hildibrand 2.0 (and leveled MCH to 50) ....

Now I can work on the rest of Heavensward (and try out BLU) 😋

[dearsnow]

A WAITING GAME

- coming from a broken family, you often had to wait for next time you would be loved. meeting your new neighbor changed that. (robert “bob” floyd x fem!reader, angst and fluff, SLOW BURN, essentially just scenes of you growing up with our favorite WSO, slight prequel to the events of top gun: maverick, includes random original characters to drive the plot ⚠️ alcoholism is a major theme, some instances of harassment from a bully, and like one sexual innuendo but nothing graphic)

word count: 20,135

a/n - ohhhh my gosh, it’s finally here 😭 it’s genuinely the size of a novella, which is insane. i really hope you guys like this bc it took so much time and effort. it’s also the longest thing i’ve ever written, which is amazing in its own right. if you’re the type to listen to music while reading, i suggest a steady stream of hozier, noah kahan, phoebe bridgers, and leith ross <3

Your whole life was a waiting game. Waiting for school to end, for school to start again, for the house across the street to finally have new occupants, for your mother to put the bottle down, for the fairies you were so sure existed to appear in your popsicle stick fairy house, for your stones to finally skip across the creek, for something, anything to happen before you drove yourself insane. And, above all else, you waited for love. It was a pitiful way to grow up, really. Just sitting and letting the days pass by so you couldn’t feel the burning ache of loneliness that writhed and spat in your stomach. You never thought that you could cease this pattern of waiting for something that would never fulfill you, until, inevitably, things changed.

The “for sale” sign that you could see so clearly from your second-floor bedroom window had been replaced by a cheery “sold” sign. Something about it excited you; new neighbors, new people to talk to and play with and bother with your incessant imagination. There was also fear, too. The fear that they would turn a blind eye to the scent of cigarettes woven into your papered walls and the nail marks on the insides of your palms. You took your mind off the notion when you saw a boy right around your age step out of the moving van.

He had glasses, sandy brown hair, a cast on his foot, and a scared little frown. You slid off your bed with a small huff, your socked feet hitting the dusty carpeted floor. This was something new, for once. The stares of the stuffed animals strewn around your room comforted your mild anxiety as you walked through your door frame and down your rickety wooden stairs. You had to move one foot down and then pull the other to match. You were too afraid of keeping just one foot on a single step, even while you clutched the peeling handrail. You hit the bottom and opened the unlocked front door, peering out into the hazy, sunny day.

You were still in your socks, but you figured it didn’t matter. They were pink and yellow striped, just a bit too small. You traipsed across your dying front lawn and across the street, cautiously watching for cars. There were none. The boy turned, his blue eyes locking with yours, and you froze. It was the middle of a hot Montana day, the dry, summery kind that makes your mouth shrivel up, but all you could focus on was how he looked at you with curiosity. Gone was the frown. You peered down, staring into the black asphalt. Oh. You were still on the road. Your feet moved on their own, and you found yourself on the sidewalk, toeing the grass of his lawn. It wasn’t dying.

“Your socks are inside-out,” was the first thing he said. His voice was quiet and kind, like he was trying not to embarrass you. He pointed at the threads hanging off of the seams.

You nervously tucked your hands behind your back. “I know. I like them to be.” He accepted the statement, pulling his hand back and planting it nervously on his hip. His one sock was right-side-in and tucked into a little orange shoe.

That day, as mundane as it was, became one of your favorites to remember.

The next day, after your introduction, you and the boy (who you quickly came to know as Bobby) went down to the creek. His mother had supplied you with sandwiches and cookies in little brown paper bags, folded neatly and marked with your names. You had never eaten out of a brown paper bag before.

Bobby was careful in how he scaled down the small, rocky hill that bordered the creek. He smartly put your lunches on a safe outcropping, to be eaten later. While climbing, he put all his weight on his non-injured foot and was sure to not step on any stray branches. You, having been down this path many times, guided him.

“Don’t step there, Bobby. That’s where the snakes are.” You said, eyeing the little gathering of rocks. He hummed gratefully and adjusted his path.

As you both made it to the bottom, he made sure to stay far enough away from the water so as to not wet his boot. You, however, didn’t really care. Your feet plunged into the soggy ground; it’s not like your shoes weren’t meant to get dirty. He picked up a stick and poked at the rivulets of water in front of him, squinting into the glare. “So, how old are you anyway?” He asked. He was crouched down to help the slightly too short stick prod into the mud.

“Seven.” You responded. You had picked up a stick of your own. “How old are you?”

He watched your movements with careful eyes. He was always watching, you noticed. Always planning. It’s like he was trying to predict every movement of the creek, every motion of your arms. You felt a shiver run down your spine. You didn’t think you could ever be so observant. “I’m eight, been eight for five months now,” came his steady voice. He furrowed his eyebrows as you waved your stick into nothingness, jabbing at something he couldn’t see. He gazed at the air like whatever you were so focused on would materialize if he stared hard enough. “What’cha fighting?”

You smiled crookedly. You could see the scene so clearly in your mind. You and him on a pirate ship, fighting off the attackers who were trying to claim your ride. You were balancing on the plank, sword ready. “Pirates. It’s real fun, you should try.” You slashed the air and saw clothes tearing, blood pooling at the wood under your feet. 

“How do I try?” He asked curiously. He stood up fully and held his stick in both hands.

“Just imagine. They’re coming from a ship across the creek, and our ship is here. I’m… I’m fighting the one with a big axe, and the one comin’ after you has a shiny sword.”

Again, he raked his gaze over the creek in front of him like he was trying to see exactly into your mind. He gave his sword an experimental swing, and you laughed from beside him. “You hit him! Keep going, we’ve almost won.” His eyes lit up, and he began fighting like he saw it too. 

He smiled, and you cheered him on, making sure to fend off your own opponent. The creek bubbled, and he could hear the ocean roaring. He could see the flag flying high above his head, the ship across the ocean, could hear the ‘shing’ and ‘swish’ of his sword. And he saw you, warm and full of life, immersed in this world you had created. He didn’t think he had seen anything quite so pretty.

In the days after that, you saw Bobby often. He never went inside your house, though, that was off limits. Instead, you went to his.

His mom was kind. She was the type of woman to greet you with a hug, the smell of warm food simmering on a pot behind her. Her apron was stained with food and love and tiny paint handprints. When you ran up to his door and knocked (you were too short to reach the doorbell), she would open it kindly and invite you in.

Bobby’s room became a kind of utopia for the both of you. For the first few days, you would help him unpack his toys and crafts and other things of the sort. He had a lot of green army men, you noticed. But after that, you played and played until his mom had to kindly remind you of his bedtime. Your favorite games were imaginary.

He would be a merchant selling his toys, each with a special magical power. You’d assume the role of a traveling knight and barter with him, finally picking out what you believed would help with your quest. Then, in a twist of fate, Bobby would invent some sort of way the magical item went wrong, leaving the both of you to dream up new methods to best your foe. Or you’d be a mermaid and he was the sailor you were friends with. Sometimes, and this was his favorite game, he would be a pilot in the military, and you would be the person giving him instructions on the ground. He would shoot his arms out like airplane wings and soar, causing you to collapse into giggles on his soft rug. You formed a bond with him like no other. By the end of the summer, you knew him inside and out, and he knew you too.

You knew he liked blueberry syrup instead of maple on his pancakes, that his favorite subject was history, how he had a little sister three years younger and an older brother who was in middle school, and the exact expression he made when things went a awry; this sort of half-pout, where his bottom lip would jut out a bit. You knew that he got his cast from slipping on a stone in a big river during a camping trip, and even though he hates not being able to move, he thinks the scar on his ankle is pretty cool. And he knew that you were the most creative person he’d ever met, there was a monster that lived in your house, you had never broken a bone, and your eyes shone if the light hit them at the right angle. 

When you finally left, as the sun was dipping down the horizon, you felt lighter.

The days without his presence were much harder.

Your mom was a hard person to pin down. She would leave early in the morning, dressed in her work clothes, and return late at night, stinking of the bar. Sometimes you’d see her periodically throughout the day, between her two main events, but she was elusive. She would stroke your hair during moments like this, eyes filled with something you only later realized was regret. 

You loved her too much to notice that the way you were living was not at all how a child should grow up. You survived off of your dingy little microwave and frozen food when you weren’t with Bobby and his family. The nights, however, were worse than being alone all day.

You would pretend to be asleep more often than not, but you couldn’t really be asleep with how much noise she made. Shouting words you didn’t recognize into the phone, slamming doors, crying, pulling the magnets off the fridge and shattering the few framed pictures that were scattered around your house. It made the pit inside of you grow larger and larger.

Afterwards, when she was done with her rampage, she’d sweep up the pieces and put everything back together. She would spell out notes for you in the fridge magnets. She would open your door, just a crack, and whisper, “I love you, baby. I’m sorry.” with a blown kiss. You knew she was sorry. You knew she loved you, that she kept the cabinets stocked with the snacks you liked from two years ago, around the time she first started drinking. There was nothing you knew more than how bad she felt for treating you like she did. In your mind, you forgave her. She was doing her best. That didn’t stop you from wishing you lived in Bobby’s little house, with his kind and loving mother and stern but kindhearted father. You wished for pirates and pilots and blueberry syrup. 

Sometimes, you just imagined you were there, tucked under his navy blue comforter. That thought filled the pit just enough to let you drift off to sleep.

As the days grew shorter and the weather chillier, school started. School was fun until it wasn’t.

The first day was always the best, in your opinion. You never really had any friends to miss if they were placed into other classrooms, and some of the other kids didn’t even know who you were. It was scary, sure, but it was new. It was a fresh start. This year, though, you had Bobby.

Luckily for the two of you, you were both in Mrs. Moore’s class. Even luckier for you, Brady was not in Mrs. Moore’s class. 

The boy had a tendency to pick on you in school. Ever since first grade, when he caught you whispering to a dandelion, he made every day in school tougher.

He would knock your books out of your hands, scribble on your drawings, and tear your flower crowns apart. You didn’t know why. He just didn’t understand your far-eyed expression and your tendency to bury your nose in books. He was loud, with a grating voice and windswept blond hair, and people liked him. He played sports and shared his lunch. That made him very, very different from you, in a way that was hard for child brains to accept. 

You were scared that Bobby would find his own trouble here. He was quiet, and that made him a target. He was too kind, too caring, too good at blending into the background. 

You walked up to classroom B8, holding your little dirtied backpack on one arm. The door was painted a sort of industrial teal, with a chipped but cheery sun done in acrylics in the middle. The title, a magnet, read “Mrs. Moore fun!”. Bobby hesitated from next to you. He held out a silent hand, and you gripped it in yours. His hands were bigger, warm and slick with a thin sheen of nervous sweat. Knowing someone else was going through the day with you was a quiet comfort, so you met his wavering eyes and smiled. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

The door swung open, and a woman with a brown bob ushered you inside. She had big pencil earrings and a pretty patterned dress. She showed you to your seats, and you were happy to learn that you were just one person away from your friend. In between you was another girl with bouncy auburn curls and freckles, whose name card read “Margaret”. You didn’t know her, but she offered you a kind grin.

“Hello, class!” Mrs. Moore began. “I know you saw my name on the door, but I’d like to learn all of yours today. How about we go around and say our names and favorite colors so I can take attendance?”

Your time in the quaint little classroom sped by like a whirlwind, barely giving you enough time to adjust to everything before you were ushered out to be served lunch and play on the sun-faded playground. Bobby’s mom had packed you both lunch today. It was like she knew that your mom couldn’t, and that you never had the money to buy the school lunch. It gave you this warm sort of emotion, like a fuzzy sweater. You and he sat on a bench shaded by a rickety old tree.

He chewed his sandwich thoughtfully as you went for the little bag of Oreo cookies first. “How do you like it here?” You asked, biting into the crumbly treat.

“It’s okay. Back in my old school, our playground had wood chips instead of sand,” he commented simply. “I like being here with you, though.”

You beamed. Bobby had lived in the town adjacent to yours before he moved, still in Montana, but with a different atmosphere. He often noted the differences, like how the cars here sputtered more and there was never quite enough shade. This, however, was all you had ever known. It was all you ever thought you could know. Your world ended after the big road that cut you off from the rest of society. Bobby made you want to wait for the day you could cross that road, in your own car that hopefully didn’t sputter, and see the world that he had known. “Me too. Most everyone is pretty great here, you’ll see. Just watch out for Brady, the one on the monkey bars. He might try to tease you.”

“Why would he?” Bobby questioned. He studied where you gestured, light eyes straining against the bright sun and wavy heat coming up from the asphalt. 

You started on your sandwich, which was beginning to warm. You didn’t mind. “I dunno. He’s just like that, I guess.”

“He must be mean,” The boy beside you said, finishing off the last bite of his sandwich. He never chewed with his mouth open, you noticed. He kept it neat and tidy. “Anyone who picks on you has got to be.”

You felt your cheeks warm at his words, so you buried yourself into eating your sandwich. “Thanks. I hope he doesn’t pick on you, ‘cuz you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Bobby’s face turned a shade of red you had never seen on him, and suddenly the hand that was underneath yours was fidgeting against the wood of the bench. “You really think so?”

“I know so. You’re nice, and you let me play with your glasses. And you’re really good at climbing, even with your boot. And you make me feel good.”

The corners of his mouth tugged up impossibly high as he handed you his bag of Oreos. He liked sweets, sure, but he liked giving them to you more. He could sit there and watch you eat forever if it meant you smiled like you were doing now. “You make me feel good too, like I can’t stop being happy.”

“Ex-act-ly!” You punctuated each syllable with a little tap of your finger on the back of his hand. When he was around, you felt like you could fly. Every dandelion, 11:11, shooting star, fallen eyelash, they all went to trying to keep him in your life. Without you knowing, he did the same thing. “Oh, do you want to see what I drew during art time?”

The conversation carried on, although there are snippets you don’t remember. Something about the stray cat that you saw down at the creek and the field trip the older kids bragged about going on. Looking back on it, that era seems so far away that it could have been another life. You were so small then, so hurt, and so innocent. You just had your neighbor and dreams, both waking and asleep.

School continued, and you and Bobby began to fall into a sort of rhythm. You would pass notes to each other through Margaret, play hopscotch and four-square and wall ball until you were tired of running around, learn until you thought your brains would explode, and walk home, laughing and bright-eyed. Even Brady couldn’t dull the shine. Bobby was, surprisingly, a hard person to make fun of. Despite being quiet, he would puff up his chest and stand strong in the face of any adversity. Mostly, though, he stood up for you. He would pick up your books, help you turn scribbles into twisting dragons, and make you new flower crowns when Brady tried anything during recess. Bobby cared. In a sense, though neither of you knew what the word really meant, he loved you. So he took care of you, and you filled his life with so much wonder and joy that he wished he could be with you forever. It was like that for a long, long time. 

The years came and went in elementary school. For once, you accepted every day that came to you as a new era, a new chance to prove to yourself that life is more than crumbling foundations. You experienced growth; you no longer waited for things to be over. Instead, incredibly, you anticipated each coming event, no matter what it was.

It took you a while to realize that Bobby was the catalyst of your change.

Your 5th grade promotion was a blur of smiles and hugs and tears from Bobby’s mom, coral colored fabric, and paper confetti. You posed for pictures, sang a song, and received a little certificate to display in some homegoods frame that most mothers buy. Other than that, it was just another day. You went home and played with Bobby some more, like you always did. 

That certificate, crumpled and browned around the edges, is now sitting in a box, deep in your closet, paper-clipped to a photograph of you and Bobby. It rests against a snapped wishbone, one whose exact wish you have entirely forgotten, but it more than likely had to do with him. There is also a crushed penny, a number of birthday cards, and a wooden rose, among other things. It’s silly, you think, to keep them after so many years, but something in you begs to keep them safe. You suppose that you can’t be rid of every memory, not when the Floyds made so many good ones for you. 

Middle school was another stage in your life, one that swirled your emotions while all you needed was stability. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it was the beginning of years of confusing feelings.

Bobby stopped being Bobby during the 1,095 days between elementary and high school. He wanted to be called Robert, and he combed his hair back, and his voice started cracking. He listened to rock and metal instead of whatever his mom found on the radio. He didn’t turn into a bad person like some of his peers, no, but he changed. You remember the first time he put in contacts instead of his big, thick-rimmed glasses.

You were sitting on the edge of his sink as he pulled his eye wide open, his fingers trembling slightly. “I can’t do it. I don’t want to poke my eye out,” he whined, setting the finger that held the contact down. “But I don’t want to wear glasses, either. I’m too old for that.”

He stared at you while you let out a short, stifled laugh. “Don’t laugh, I’m trying my best,” he groaned, but his mouth was curving into a smile, too—it just always happened when you laughed, like how he couldn’t help but smile at wedding bells. 

“Can you even see what you’re doing?” You asked. You tapped the glass reflection to the side of you, sending out a soft clink. His vision had never been the best, but his optometrist just upped his prescription. He didn’t want to be seen with the thickness of the glass he was given, no, he wanted to “look cooler”. So there he was, with blurry vision and a nearly invisible contact balancing on the tip of his finger. 

“Yeah.” He paused, considering his options, before looking down with a sigh. “No. I can see the blue, but I have no clue if my eyes are two inches or two millimeters away.” He sounded so disappointed that it sent a twinge of hurt through your heart. He liked dealing with problems on his own, namely so that no one else would have to go out of their way to help him, so that must have been a humbling experience for him.

“Let me guide you, then,” you chirped. “I’ll use your hand to put the contacts in so you can get a feel for where to stop next time.” You let the tips of your fingers brush over his hand, ghosting over the raised hairs just enough to let him sense it. Robert squinted at you.

You seemed like an angel perched on the tile counter. He couldn’t see the exactness of your details, like the curves of your lips, but you had a form that he could recognize anywhere. The shade of your hair, the sparkle in your eye. He would carry those memories for as long as he lived. What worried him was that he didn’t know exactly how far away from him you were sitting. So, because he didn’t trust himself to not miss his eyes, and because he trusted you like he trusted his heart to beat, he agreed. “Okay.”

You took his hand in yours, careful not to knock the precariously balanced contact off, and he widened his eyes. You weren’t sure if it was because of your touch or because he wanted to assist with the contact placement. You slowly brought his hand up, towards his eye, feeling his pulse under your fingers. His lips were pursed, a testament to his nervousness. He never did like things touching his eyes, but he would brave it until he unavoidably went back to glasses. With a gentle, caring motion, you helped him rest the contact on his eyeball. He flinched at the initial touch, but accepted it, blinking rapidly to shake off the contact solution. His eyes were pretty, you noticed. As messed up as they were, they had the most intoxicating shade, like a stormy ocean. 

“Want the next one?” You were already unscrewing the contact holder as he nodded slowly. He closed the eye without a contact and gaped at you.

“I can see!”

“I think that’s what contacts are for,” you quipped. He pretended to roll his one eye, but you could see the humor bubbling up from within him. The lighting was nice, he thought. The way it shone around the edges of your hair was heavenly.

“Well, yeah. Could you help me with the other now?” He probably didn’t need much help this time, given that one half of him had 20/20 vision, but he liked feeling your hand on his. He liked being helped by you. It was a revelation for him, who had always been a bit of an independent spirit. Don’t get him wrong, he liked being around people, and as a kid he would clutch at his mother’s dresses, but he preferred to do certain things on his own. You changed that.

“Definitely.”

Things took a slight turn after that. School became harder, more work and less play. Your middle school was bigger than your previous school, so it came to no surprise to you that Robert made his own friends. Namely, he hung out with a tall, dark, curly-haired boy named Aaron and a shorter, sturdier, pale as snow boy named Samuel. They were alright, in your opinion. You liked Aaron much more. Sam became bossy and annoying when you let him ramble for too long, and though both Robert and Aaron were too polite to say, it annoyed them. It’s Aaron that you still talk to now, while Sam moved to upstate New York during your freshman year of high school.

The boys were not the most popular group in school, though you knew you weren’t either. But, to your surprise, your good friend Margaret was.

You didn’t really expect to become friends with her. She was loud, happy, excitable. She was always polite in elementary, but she truly took you under her wing as Robert started spending more time with his group. She introduced you to Sarah, Charlotte, Elizabeth, anyone that you could even remember the names of. And, along with her constant joviality, she wasn’t a bad friend.

The only problem was that she was deeply in love with Robert Floyd. 

“You don’t even get it ‘cuz he’s like your brother at this point, but he’s gorgeous. He’s basically perfectly my type,” she sighed, falling back onto her plush pink bed. Her legs kicked up just a little, and her curls fanned out around her head like a halo. “I want to ask him out soooo bad. Do you think he’d like me? Wait, do you know if he’s a good kisser? That’s important, I think.” You threw the pillow you were holding on top of her face, and her laugh rang out like the chime of a bell. She was perfect. She deserved someone like Robert, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

You didn’t know why it hurt at the time. Just the idea of him dating someone else, holding hands with someone else, loving someone else, made you sick. You chalked it up to being jealous that eventually another person would take up your best friend’s heart. It was only much, much later that you realized you were in love with him, too.

Margaret tossed the pillow to the other side of her bed. “Really, you need to tell me.”

You gave a tight-lipped smile. “He'd like you, Margie. I mean, who wouldn’t?” Her smile was genuine. It hurt you to say, but you weren’t lying. You didn’t think you could ever lie about something like that.

“But is he a good kisser? Please, I need to know, I’m dying!” She prodded. You rolled your eyes, glancing up at the perfectly painted ceiling. Like everything about her, it was pristine.

“No idea. He’s never kissed anyone.” He could be good, maybe. Everything he did was soft and methodical, so just the idea of him capturing a person’s lips with his own, his calloused hand resting on the back of their head… no, you couldn’t think about it. Your eyes snapped to attention.

“I’ll have to change that.” Her tone was sing-songy, and to you, it sounded almost mocking. It couldn’t be, because neither of you knew your actual feelings, but it struck you the wrong way.

“I’m sure you will.”

Margaret tried everything to get closer to Robert. She flirted, she downloaded songs from his favorite bands, she begged and pleaded for you to invite him to every outing the two of you planned, and she talked to him constantly to try and worm her way into his heart. She never knew him like you did, though, and she hated it. 

When it was just you and him, things were different. You were the only one he let call him “Bobby” and play with his fingers when you were nervous. He even let you ruffle his hair, despite him spending half an hour in his bathroom trying to get each strand to lay perfectly. He would open his closet and pull out his comic collection without a hint of embarrassment, and you and he read them together underneath a blanket tent in the middle of the night—after his parents started letting you sleep over, of course. They gave you both “the talk” before you spent your first night there, and Robert was rolling his eyes and blushing the whole time. He would never do that with you, he assured them. You were just friends.

Friends who ultimately ended up falling asleep on the same bed, paying no attention to the blow-up mattress on the floor of his room.

In any case, you tried to get Robert and Margaret together. The time you tried the hardest was the start of your seventh grade year, when Margie insisted that she needed a boyfriend before Christmas. You, being a good friend, invited them both to go to the mall a short drive away from your houses. 

Margie’s mom drove, because she was always up for helping her daughter with her romantic interests. She knew about Robert, sending you and her daughter knowing smiles whenever he would politely answer Margie’s rapid-fire questions. You felt a little bad for the boy, who wasn’t used to so much attention.

The little car (too little, in your opinion; Margaret took the middle seat and was pressed against Bobby for the whole ride) finally arrived at the mall after a few minutes of slight awkwardness. You all stepped out, and Margie’s mom kissed her on the forehead and said she would be back in two hours on the minute. Two hours was a lot at that time. 

Your friend immediately pointed out a clothing store, pulling you along to look at flouncy dresses and colorful tops. You could tell that it made Robert a bit uncomfortable, but he went in anyway. During your usual mall trips with him, the both of you made a beeline for the comic store, or simply shared some pretzels while walking and talking. It was only rarely that you wandered into the clothing stores, and most of the time, you just looked and walked back out. You never had the money on you to buy anything more than a volume or two of a comic. “These shorts are just perfect, don’t you think?” She asked you, but her eyes were staring pointedly at Robert.

“They’re nice,” you said. He nodded in silent agreement, slipping his hand into the pocket of his jacket. He didn’t ever really have an opinion on clothes. Someone could wear the most awful outfit and he’d shrug, offering the notion that people should wear what they want, while Sam laughed at the silly combination. Margie tore through the rest of the store, giving you hanger upon hanger of clothing to hold while she rifled through the racks. Robert trailed behind. 

Just as the weight of the tops you were holding on your left arm accumulated into a painful soreness, you spotted something out of the corner of your eye. It was a dress.

Robert silently grabbed the clothes from you, following your line of sight. The dress was as close to perfect as a dress had ever been to you. The color, some variation of your favorite, complemented the tone of your skin perfectly when you held your arm up to it. The cut, the stitching, the little details sewn on—it was gorgeous. As you reached out to touch it, Margie squealed.

“That dress! I need it, grab it for me, would you?”

 You hesitated. It was the only one like it on the rack. Instinctively, you glanced back at Robert, and he had this confusing expression on his face that you had only seen once or twice; furrowed brows, tight lips, and a burning in his eyes. You looked away and took the dress down.

You probably wouldn’t be able to afford it. Checking the tag, you were right: thirty-eight dollars. Even after doing yard work and tutoring the little boy down the street, you hadn’t been able to keep that sort of sum. “Thanks,” she purred, “I’m gonna try everything on now. Wanna watch the fashion show?”

A part of you didn’t. You were envious, glowing green at the amount of things she could pick up without even checking the tag, but as a good, people-pleasing friend, you pushed it aside. So, you followed her past the door of the spacious dressing room while Robert waited outside with the clothes that didn’t fit into the ten item dressing room limit. 

She looked stunning in every outfit, but she threw most of the pieces off with a frustrated sigh. The waist wasn’t cinched enough, or the color clashed with her hair, or the pant legs were too short to cascade over the top of her shoes like she wanted. If you had the money, you didn’t think you would care. 

Then came time for the dress. It was one of the last things that she tried on, and she slipped it back over her head almost immediately after putting it on. “It just doesn’t work for my figure,” she muttered. 

You picked it off the floor gingerly, holding it up to yourself in the mirror. “Can I try it on?” You asked. She lit up with surprise, a happy glint dancing in her grin. 

“Of course! Go ahead.”

You undressed in the corner and stepped into the dress. Margie helped you smooth it out and fasten it just right, her fingers ghosting over your shoulder blades. When you looked in the mirror, your jaw almost fell open. 

It hugged you perfectly, the length stopping just where you assumed it was meant to stop. It was casual enough to be worn normally, but it had that fancy touch that made it suited for a romantic dinner date or uppity party. You almost looked like royalty. You could just imagine it, waving to crowds with a slow hand from a horse-drawn carriage. Bobby would be beside you, as always, and Margie and Aaron in the carriage behind you. Sam would be dealing with the horses. 

You were shaken out of your thoughts by a faint knock on the door. “Hey, are you guys ready? There’s a bit of a line out here,” came Robert’s voice. Margie was dressed by that point, so you opened the door, still clad in the dress.

“I just gotta change out of this and then we’ll be ready.” You gave a small twirl, and Robert choked on air. “It’s too expensive, but it’s nice to dream,” you said with a small grin. You didn’t know if it reached your eyes or not, but you knew the boy wouldn’t call you out for it. Not in public, at least.

You looked beautiful. That’s all that he could see, all that he could fathom. You slipped back into the dressing room, and he was left stunned. 

Before anything else, though, you looked happy in the dress. Sad that you had to leave it, but it made you happy. Robert was nothing if not a sucker for seeing you happy.

Your group finally checked out after a few minutes of the cashier ringing up Margie’s clothes. It was nearing the end of your mall trip, but you managed to visit the comic store and pick up a bite to eat along the way. At some point, while you were flipping through a comic book, Robert slipped away and returned with a grocery bag. It was something his mom wanted him to pick up, he said, and you didn’t feel the need to question him. You just mumbled a conversation starter into Margie’s ear and slipped away as she excitedly whipped around to relay it to him.

She never did win him over. She tried and tried, and you helped and helped, but it seemed he didn’t have an eye for her. 

Everything came to a sort of explosion near Christmas. The ground was powdered with a thick blanket of snow, the trees were bare, save for dripping ice, and houses put out beautiful, twinkling lights. There were even singing decorations from your neighbor to the left. When you breathed, the air would puff out in gentle clouds. It was, in essence, a perfect, picturesque winter. It was also one of your favorite times of the year.

Your mom always made an effort during the winter months. She came home earlier to hide in the bathroom, trying to muffle the sounds of wrapping paper and scissors. In the morning, you would see the fruits of her labor tucked under your little plastic tree. It wasn’t perfect, but she wanted you to experience some sort of joyful Montana holiday. You also spent more time indoors, snickering with Robert in the library or blowing on sweet hot cocoa by his crackling fire. It was times like these that you really felt at home.

His family knew about your situation. They didn’t make your mom feel like a villain, no, but they knew she was struggling, and they did their very best to help you out. That’s why you were bundled up on their couch on one frigid day, when Robert came home with a pinched frown.

He wasn’t mad, exactly. You had never known him to be mad. But he was uncomfortable in a way that made you want to throw your blanket over him and make him whisper his troubles to you. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked. He wasn’t surprised to see you in his home—he never was. He sat down next to you with a heavy sigh.

“Margaret asked if I wanted to date her,” he murmured, throwing his head back against the couch cushions. This piqued your interest. You knew something like this would happen eventually, but you didn’t expect him to be so uneasy about it. Margie had been talking about asking him out for ages, and you just smiled and nodded. Her bright, bubbly personality was a large contrast to his, but you figured that opposites attracted. He had never shown a hint of distaste at being around her. No distaste that you had seen, at least.

You looked at him, confusion creasing your face. “What did you say?” Maybe it was just the wrong time. If he were to crush on anyone, it would be her, not that he had ever talked about his crushes to you. That seemed like something he would only tell Aaron, despite you being his closest friend.

“I said no. I just… I don’t like her like that.” His voice came out as an almost groan as he rubbed at his eyes. He turned his head to rest it on your shoulder. The weight sent a heavy warmth through you, but you were still so bewildered that it hardly even registered.

“I thought you would. Did she do something wrong?”

He shook his head, looking up at you, and then back down at the fire blazing away in his fireplace. Slowly, he wrapped your blanket around himself, as well, sharing your heat to ward off the cold. “No, she’s nice, but I don’t feel that way about her.” You still didn’t get it. If you were him, you would jump at the chance to date her. She was pretty, funny, and her family was well off. However, something in you uttered that it takes more than that to make someone love you. And that something was a bit happy, because Robert rejecting Margie meant that you could have him all to yourself again. 

“Oh,” you breathed. “Do you feel that way about anyone else?”

That question breached the sanctity of your relationship in a way. You had never asked him about his love life, and he had never asked about yours. It was unspoken. You knew, deep in your heart, that if he asked you, you wouldn’t be able to say anyone’s name but his. 

His face was tinged with red. It was hard to see, but you knew it was there. “I dunno.”

You lapsed into a subdued silence, not knowing whether to press forward or not. You decided on the latter, just listening to the near-silent spitting of the fireplace. You knew that Margie wouldn’t be happy, and you would get an earful over the phone that night, but you knew that, like all things, this would pass.

Bobby would be your closest confidant for another Christmas.

You were right when you assumed that Margie wouldn’t take it well. You spent night after night listening to her laments, rubbing a soothing pattern on her back as she cried. You didn’t even know if she was upset that Robert didn’t like her or if she was upset that she got rejected, but you gave her a listening ear no matter what. The calls and in-person interactions only ceased when she went to spend the week of Christmas with her family in Utah.

You, naturally, spent most of your time with Robert. For the entirety of winter break, it was just you and him, which was something that hadn’t happened since elementary school. It gave you a chance to think about things—your feelings in particular.

You slowly realized that you didn’t want to just be his friend. You didn’t know it was love, not yet at least, but your heart beat faster when he was around, and you felt the need to keep him around for as long as possible. It was something further than platonic. A crush, maybe, that was only furthered by the events of Christmas day. 

You spent the rare morning with your mother, who had been given a single day off by her boss. It was odd to have her around to make breakfast, not smelling of the bar, and humming around a piece of toast. “It’s almost ready, honey. Why don’t you start on the presents while we wait?” Her voice was only slightly muffled by her food. You nodded silently and pulled out one of the three little gifts wrapped up under the tree. Two from her to you, and one from you to her. It didn’t disappoint you to not receive the dozens of wrapped boxes that your friends did; from a young age, you had realized that any gift at all was precious. You slipped your fingers beneath the wrapping paper and pulled the taped folds away gently, careful not to rip them. 

As you unfolded the creases, the box underneath revealed itself to you. It was a shoebox, and within were a pair of shoes that you had been eyeing for a while now. Your face lit up with surprise. She had really remembered? “Thank you, mom.” You grinned. She laughed, turning the heat off from under the scrambled eggs she was tending to. 

“I’m not a bad gift giver, hm?” she hummed, sitting down next to you. You pushed the gift that you wrapped for her into her grasp, and she looked down at it with a guilty expression. “I didn’t notice you got anything for me, sweet thing. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be the type of mom that doesn’t deserve a Christmas gift.”

You took her hands off of the present and wrapped them around your shoulders, her normally cold fingers giving off a soft heat. “You aren’t. You do your best, mama, and I love you all the same.” You couldn’t bring yourself to be mean to her when she had spent an important part of her paycheck on you. It was true, that she did all she could think to do, but some part of you wanted her to be better. You still hoped that she could pull herself together and make breakfast for you every day, so you wouldn’t have to microwave pizza pockets or slump over to Robert’s house for a bite to eat. But you were her child, not Georgia Floyd’s, and hoping and wishing couldn’t change that. You had come to terms with it when you saw her watery eyes undoing your sloppy wrapping.

It was a jewelry tree that she said she wanted nearly five months ago. It was expensive, sapping your meager funds, but you knew it would make her happy. 

Your mother was one for jewelry and pleasantries, when pleasantries were made to be found. You figured that she liked to feel fancy, with glass diamonds and greening gold. It was the best gift you could think to give her.

She looked up at you as tears began to stream down her face. She wiped them away hastily. “Thanks, baby. I appreciate you more than you know, more than I could ever tell you.”

Your next gift was a book you had wanted for a while but could never seem to find at the library. You thanked her profusely, and spent the next half hour eating with her and talking. Like normal families do. Normal families with normal moms. You could almost picture a man, your father, coming in from the cold outside with the mail in his hands. A roaring fire, a sibling, a pet. Maybe a beagle like Bobby had. But the illusion was shattered when she pulled herself up and wrapped her scarf around her neck, muttering apologetically about having to pick up a Christmas shift after all as she hugged you close. You needed the money, she said. That didn’t make it hurt any less.

Nearly as soon as she left, there was a quiet knock on your door. You opened it slowly, not excited about hearing from the Jehovah’s Witness that frequented your neighborhood. Instead of him was Robert. And he was carrying a gift bag.

“Hi,” he blurted, “this is for you. Merry Christmas.” He handed you the bag, careful not to put his foot through the threshold of your house. You opened the door wider, a pleasant grin spreading onto your face. 

“Come in, I have something for you too.”

He hesitated. He had never been inside your house before. You had never explicitly told him he wasn’t allowed, but you usually had some excuse as to why he couldn’t stay over. Over the years, he had learned to just stop looking past the barely cracked-open door and pull you away to his place instead. But, with your insistence, he breached the unknown.

Your house wasn’t as furnished or comfortable as his, but it didn’t really matter. There were two brooms laid against the kitchen wall and a dustpan between them, and your small couch had a tear on the seam. The cabinets didn’t exactly close right, and your faucet leaked. Other than that, it was a normal house. He marveled at a picture of you and your mom stuck to the fridge with a magnet, with the edges folded over like it used to be in a frame. You let him wander for a minute or two before pulling him into your bedroom.

It was completely and utterly you. Books, comics, and little craft projects filled much of the shelf next to your bed, and the sheets were messily crumpled on your mattress. You had a little closet and a mirror that rested against it, slightly smudged with fingerprints. There was even a poster from some movie you liked hung above your headboard. You opened your closet and pulled a small wrapped parcel out from the depths. 

You handed it to him with a shy look. “I hope you like it.”

As he took the gift from you, he could feel a significant heft to the package. “I’d like anything if it was from you. It’s the thought that counts, right?” He sat on the edge of your bed as you nodded slowly. You were still a little worried that he wouldn’t be happy, but you knew him. He would thank you profusely if you had wrapped him a lump of coal. He might have even displayed it proudly on his shelf. The thought was enough to have you stifling a laugh. “You should open yours first.”

You obliged, pulling out the tissue paper delicately. Your fingers closed in around something soft, like fabric. Through the gaps of your hands, you could see your favorite color. Your heart leaped out of your chest. “Is this…?”

Bobby nodded, beaming. You took the article of clothing out fully and almost cried at the sight.

It was the dress you had wanted at the mall. The one that had fit you perfectly, and the one that Margie had almost taken from you. You hugged it to your chest. “Thank you, Bobby, thank you. I love it so much.” Your voice was quiet, brimming with emotion. He just opened his arms, and you dove into them, the both of you uncaring of the tear marks that would form on his thick jacket. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” You exclaimed, louder this time, but still muffled by his chest. He just laughed and pulled you in closer.

“You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome.”

That meant more to you than anything else could have. Not only did he notice what you liked, he bought it when you couldn’t. It was more than just a gift. 

Robert would’ve given up his entire stash of money, carefully tucked away in his dresser drawer, to make you react like that. It was no contest.

He opened his gift next and had to scrub the wetness away from his own eyes. It was a model plane; more specifically, a version of the Super Hornet. The plane he had heard about entering service years ago, and the plane that he dreamed of flying. He ran his hands along the wings in wonder. “It’s perfect.” He choked out. “Thank you. I’m gonna put it on my shelf as soon as I get home.” You knew he would say something like that, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling good.

He stayed for a bit, after that, talking to you about anything and everything, as you usually do. It was nice to see him lying on your bed, staring up at your ceiling. And it was nice to have this sort of alone time with him. When he reached up to pick a piece of fuzz off of your shirt, you almost melted in place. You never thought your heart could beat that fast.

After he left, you felt your joy walk out the door behind him. All you could think was that you couldn’t wait to see him again. 

You never had to wait long.

The rest of middle school went by fairly quickly, as did Margaret’s sadness. She got over her affections before moving on to the next poor sap, dragging you along with her. After eighth grade, she would always mention how nice Aaron looked in his church clothes and how pretty his eyes were. Not having to worry about someone taking Bobby away from you was just another weight off of your shoulders. You also grew a lot during that time, physically and mentally. You were taller, happier, bigger, stronger. It was in part due to Rob, as he liked to be called sometime during your freshman year, and in part due to your mother finally going to rehab.

You didn’t know it was rehab. You didn’t know much at that age, not of yourself or other people, so it was just one more thing to add to the list. She just told you that you would have to stay at Rob’s for a few months, and they accepted your presence with kindness. His mom seemed to look at you sadly during that time. You chose to ignore it, focusing on how grateful you were to have a home while your mother was away. 

High school was better. Much better, in your opinion. You felt like things were finally coming together.

You had a small, quaint, stable friend group, consisting of you, Margaret, Rob, and Aaron. They were fun. You didn’t think you could enjoy going to football games or pep rallies until they were there with you, cheering and joyful. Even studying was full of inside jokes and nudging each other with your elbows until the flashcards were forgotten and the air was thick with laughter. You started to enjoy your classes, too, because you had a clearer goal in your mind. You were going to apply to your city’s college and room with Margie, considering you both got in. So you threw yourself into school with full force, hoping that your future would be just as great.

Rob wasn’t planning on going to your college. He hadn’t told you, not yet, but he was applying to the Naval Academy. He was finally going to achieve his dreams, even if he felt endless guilt about leaving you to be on your own. He didn’t want to lose you, but the temptation of the sky drew him in until he couldn’t escape the magnetizing force.

The first year was, other than a few football games and watching Margie perform in the school play, relatively uneventful. 

Dungeons and Dragons began to reign supreme as your group’s favorite pastime, although Margaret didn’t quite understand the story that Aaron concocted. To her credit, she tried. She played an elvish ranger with long flowing hair and a past of tortured princesshood, while you decided on a sweet halfling druid, and Rob a powerful human wizard. Nothing was more fun than losing yourself entirely to the tale, drawn in by Aaron’s dark voice impressions and the little figures that danced across the map he drew. It was a more grown-up form of playing pretend, and you were entranced by every second of every session.

By the time your mother returned home, fidgety yet quiet, you had established a nice sort of life. You moved back to your house, bittersweetly thanking Rob’s family for taking you in, and you spent the rest of the school year and the summer that followed with her. 

She was different. She wasn’t like she was prior to the drinking or during the drinking, but  a new person entirely, like she shed every part of herself and started fresh. She slept in, but got ready for work as you were walking out the door. She cooked, but with a tremor in her hand that was never present before. There were no more midnight rampages, but you got the feeling that she didn’t fall into her bed until very late hours. It was odd, at best, but like always, she did what she could with what she had. You continued to support her every step of the way.

Starting your sophomore year was less exciting than transitioning to a whole new school, and the nerves that had preceded every other year had faded into the background. You were more sure of yourself. Still naive, but there was some confidence in your step. The classes were tough, but you were tougher. Of course, the people who picked on you in the past were still jerks, but it was nothing you weren’t already used to. 

You finished the year with a smile on your face and a finger linked with each of your friends. 

Summer was the same as it always was. Fun, lazy, anything you wanted to make of it. You and the rest of the group frequented the lake closest to Aaron’s house, as his older brother was no stranger to driving you around in the car he had fixed up the summer previous. It was during one of those trips that you discovered quite a few things about the people around you.

Margaret was splashing around in the lake, completely unfazed by the freezing water. Well, she was fazed at the beginning, but she quickly adapted. “Come in, it’s so nice!” she called, flicking a drop of water towards you. You blocked it with the edge of your towel, not keen on getting your book wet.

“Later, I’m still reading,” you grumbled. Rob was perched behind you, reading over your shoulder as the pages flipped. You had just returned from the water and were trying to wait out the little kids that were flailing around in the shallows. 

She made a face until she spotted that Aaron was also out of the water. Shrugging, she stepped closer to the shore, and tugged on his arm. That action sent him stumbling into the lapping waves, to her delight. 

He let out an indistinct shout before resigning himself to being wet once again. “Warn me next time, geez! I could’ve died,” he moaned, pushing a wave of water straight into Margie’s face. She just laughed in delight. 

You ignored the two as you worked on your book, delving further into the story of a girl on a mountain, traversing through the thick forest in an attempt to wake her comatose father. Rob read right along with you, keeping your pace perfectly. You never needed to ask him when he wanted you to turn the pages—it was like your eyes read at the same speed, your brains processing the same things. Among other things, that was convenient. 

The air began to grow colder as you began the second-to-last chapter, the sun casting longer and longer shadows. It wasn’t evening quite yet, but the blazing afternoon sun had softened. You looked up with a start. It had clearly been a couple hours, but where were the other two members of your group?

You turned around to face Rob. “Have you seen Aaron and Margie recently?”

He quickly scanned the area with a slight look of panic sewn into his features. The lake was empty, the shore was clear of visitors, and even the sky was barren. “No, but we really need to find them before Marcus comes back with the car.” They were simply gone. “Here, why don’t you stay with our stuff and I’ll go look?” he suggested, standing to wipe the gravel off his shorts. 

“I don’t want to split up.” You were wary of the quiet, unsure if something would come out of the land around you and take you, too. “We can hide the bags in that dry spot under the dock and come back for them later.”

He just nodded in agreement, taking the larger share of your things and helping you conceal them within the rocks and overgrown water weeds. The two of you then set off to find your friends, calling their names into the sound of sloshing water and twittering birds. 

It was almost twenty minutes later when you began to hear someone sniffling and a distinctly feminine voice trying to calm them down. Margie and Aaron. You and Rob looked at each other, then swiftly moved towards them.

Aaron was crouched down in the middle of a little clearing, his head in his hands. Margie was sitting and whispering to him, something you couldn’t quite make out. You had never heard her whisper before. It didn’t matter, though, because they quickly spotted you.

“Guys, I’m not sure it’s a good-”

“No, it’s okay.” Aaron cut Margaret off. “They can hear it.”

You dropped to your knees to get on their level, Rob quickly following suit. “What happened?” you asked, gently reaching out to brush Aaron’s hand. His face was slick with tears, his normally neat hair lopsided like he had tried to run his fingers through the thick coils. 

He hesitated, slightly, but Margie patted him encouragingly. “Margie told me how she felt.”

Okay, another confession within the friend group. That wouldn’t explain the running away or the crying, at least not him crying, so what else? Rob spoke up, voice restrained. “How did that make you feel?”

“Bad,” he muttered, looking up at the girl with guilt in his brown eyes. “Not because I don’t like her, but because I can’t.” His voice trailed off into muffled sobs once again as he sunk into Margie’s arms.

Oh. You exchanged glances with Rob.

That wasn’t exactly news to you, but you had never been able to voice your suspicions out loud. It just made sense. Margie liked Aaron, and Aaron didn’t like girls. He didn’t even have to explain fully, you and Rob just hugged his shaking form. 

There was a very hushed, heartfelt talk after that. The fact of the matter was, you and your friends loved Aaron, and that was just a new fact about him for you to love. It also surprised you a little.

You knew you would be okay with it, but Rob and Margie grew up with you. They knew your area and the opinions that floated around. You never expected them to be hateful, no, but putting aside the thoughts that were so instilled in your hometown would be difficult for anyone lesser than them. It showed you that your friends wouldn’t dream of hurting the people around them, the people they loved.

When anyone, you included, presented the group with a new side of them, they were accepted with open arms. 

Junior year was tougher than the previous. Your rocks remained by your side, but certain people pulled at the strings binding your sanity like a child with a ball of yarn. One of those people ended up being Brady, who after a couple years of a mild hiatus, began making fun of you more than ever.

He was in all the same rigorous classes as you and your friends, leading him to be able to torture you during lessons. In addition to that, his last name was similar enough to yours for him to be placed behind you in most of those classes.

The vast majority of the torture involved stealing your belongings, throwing things at the back of your head, making fun of your looks, hobbies, anything, and passing you notes that read like a stupid teenage boy’s jeers. Sexual innuendos, frankly abhorrent pick up lines, and gross questions crumpled under your fist almost every day. 

You tried to tell the teachers, the principal, anyone that would listen, but they all said the same thing: boys will be boys. Brady was too good of a student and too important of an athlete to punish. Hell, the most he got for cutting off a section of your hair was a verbal warning. Every day, you and your friends got closer and closer to punching him in the face. None of them liked him, for good reason, but even their protection couldn’t fully stop him. Everything exploded in the spring, right before your junior prom.

You sat at your desk during your English lecture, desperately trying to pay attention to your teacher who was droning on and on about The Great Gatsby. You shifted your leg a bit, just enough to feel a piece of paper pressing into the underside of your thigh. You pulled it out, confused. 

It was a thick, decorated section of stationery with a few words scrawled on it in cursive. It read, “Meet me by the gym after school,” signed by someone who called themselves your secret admirer. You looked down at the prose. It didn’t look like Brady’s handwriting, something you were quite sure of. But who else would’ve written it? You tucked it in your pocket, not wanting to decide whether or not to go right then and there.

You did end up going, which was your biggest mistake. You sat on the edge of a planter near the entrance of the gym, picking at the seam of your shirt. It wasn’t long before everyone who had gym class last period filed out of the school, leaving you utterly alone. It also wasn’t long before Brady appeared, walking towards you like he was on a mission. 

You stood up, poised to leave if he did anything other than walk right on by. Unfortunately for you, he held up a hand as if to tell you to wait. “Hey,” he grinned, “you got my note?”

You paused. “Your note?” You didn’t think he even knew how to write in cursive, much less make it as neat as it was on the stationary. You wouldn’t be surprised if he paid one of the artsy girls to write it for him.

“Yeah.” He stared down at you. There was a gleam in his eye that you didn’t like. “I wanted to ask you to prom.”

Prom? He wanted to ask you to prom? You were baffled. There were a million better fitting people at his disposal, ones that didn’t hate him with a passion. He had made your life hell that year, and multiple years previous to that. You almost scoffed at his words.

“Well, I would rather you didn’t.” You said. You turned to leave, but his hand caught your wrist in a vice-like grip. His eerily green eyes burned holes into yours. 

“What, you’re just going to leave? After leading me on for so many years, playing hard to get?”

You were stunned. You weren’t aware you were playing anything. Everything he did just seemed mean, and you responded to it like any victim of bullying would. You just balked, uttering a quiet “huh?” when he wouldn’t let go. Try as you might, you couldn’t break his grip as he ranted about you being so obviously into him. He even tried to pull you closer, until two familiar hands grabbed his arm and shoved him back.

It was Rob, and he was furious. “What the fuck? Leave her alone,” he snapped, forcing himself into the gap between you and Brady. You rarely heard him curse, and you had never seen him as mad as that. Brady just rolled his eyes with a psychotic little laugh.

“Oh my god, did you think I was actually into your little girlfriend? Shove off, dude. I was joking. Who in their right mind would want that thing hanging off them in public?” he scoffed. You couldn’t tell if he was serious about anything right then. He was contradicting himself constantly. If the prom thing was a joke, was he just making fun of you again? Or if the prom thing was serious, was he deflecting? Your mind was reeling, and you just wanted to sit down and get your head straight. The place where Brady had grabbed you was pulsing, sure to form a bruise during the night.

Rob said something you didn’t remember before he put a protective hand on your shoulder and ushered you away. All you could hear was laughter, Brady’s and a couple other boys’. You didn’t even see the other boys arrive, and if they were there the whole time, you weren’t aware. The whole walk of shame just felt like a fever dream, with you fading in and out of reality until Rob sat you down on the edge of his mattress. You couldn’t even tell how you got there. Rob tilted your face towards him, concerned, and you realized you were crying.

“Don’t let him get to you.” His voice was soothing, like he was speaking to a scared puppy. “He was just being an asshole.” 

“Did you hear everything?” You sounded pathetic, but you didn’t care.

Rob shook his head. “When I came over, he was in the middle of some spiel. I was just on my way to lacrosse practice before I saw you.” Ah, yes, he was in lacrosse. And he was usually early. The things you remembered after dissociating continued to surprise you. He wiped the tears off your cheeks with the pad of his thumb.

He hated seeing you like that. Brady didn’t deserve to make you cry. No one did, not even yourself. He wanted to pull you under his covers and let you sigh into his shirt, like always. He wanted you to forget about everything and just hold on to him.

You wrung your hands in your lap, trying desperately to process everything. The situation was just so… bizarre. You didn’t know what to believe, but at the end of the day, you figured it didn’t matter. Brady will be Brady. Out of nowhere, you started to laugh. Rob’s eyes widened, but he cracked a smile too.

You devolved into cackles on his bed, with him doubled over next to you. Hysterics, some might say. But it was all you could think to do at the time, all your tired mind could handle at the moment. Of course, you talked about it after, but the laughter was the key to getting you through the situation. 

You had waited all your life for a big confession of love, and your “first one” went to shit immediately. Luckily, like always, Rob was there to pick up the pieces. 

Prom came and went without another word from Brady. Instead of going to the dance, however, you and your friends spent the night at a diner. The place had a playplace definitely designed and designated for little kids, but that didn’t stop you from climbing up the sides and playing a good old game of tag. You were winded by the end, a cramp crawling its way down your side, but it was more fun than sitting around a bowl of punch would be. The dances were never your thing, anyway. 

Both Margie and Aaron had a curfew as the night marched towards 10:00, but you decided to go back to Rob’s house for a movie or two. He could drive, and it was the most amazing excuse for him to ferry everyone everywhere. He never minded. So you got in his car, and he let you choose the music, and you talked the whole way home. 

As you finally arrived, your voices fell to hushed whispers. His family was more than likely asleep—save for his brother, who was spending his first year in college on campus. Rob locked the door and fumbled for the TV remote in the near-darkness as you thumbed through his DVD collection.

There wasn’t much selection. His family encouraged spending time with each other instead of spending time staring at a screen, so their DVDs consisted of old children’s films, a few action movies, and The Princess Bride. You had seen every one of them countless times, but the action movies more so. Frankly, you were tired of Men in Black and The Terminator, so you pulled out The Princess Bride. It was his sister’s favorite, but you liked it enough.

Rob raised his eyebrows at the selection but accepted it, popping the disc into the player and tugging a blanket over your body, already nice and comfortable on the couch. 

The first few times you watched movies together, Bobby would be silent. He stared at the screen with rapt attention, losing himself in the plot and acting. Over time, as you both learned to remember each twist and even a few distinct lines, you started talking while the movie played. It went from movie discussion to just anything, with the film serving as background noise to your conversation. A bit of you wondered why you didn’t just pause the video or talk somewhere else, but it was familiar, and somehow far better than conversing in silence. This time, you were discussing how far you could go in your friendship before Rob would stop metaphorically saying “as you wish”.

“I feel like you would say no if I, like, asked if I could pick your nose. Which I wouldn’t do, but you wouldn’t let me, right?”

He considered it for a moment, shrugging noncommittally. “If I had a reason to believe there was something in it, I might.” You scrunched your nose in response, shaking your head to the thought of it.

“Well, I’m not sticking my finger up there any time soon.” You pushed his face away from yours with your finger, pressing lightly into his forehead. He fell back, settling into the couch cushions.

“Thank god. I really think I’d let you do anything, though.”

You sat up, following him onto his side of the couch. There was a playful smile on your lips. “Anything?”

He nodded, face flushed in the dim lighting. He blushed so easily at the slightest provocation—it would be funny if you hadn’t already teased him for it hundreds of times. “That’s fair. I’d probably let you do anything too, but within reason.”

He tensed, eyes flicking across your face. He seemed like he was considering something. He had a concentrated look on his face, weighing the pros and cons. You had seen that face numerous times in the past, but right now, it confused you. Before he could think any better of it, and before he could get in his head about his newfound impulsivity, he opened his mouth. “Is kissing you within reason?”

You paused. Don’t get ahead of yourself, you thought. It’s for the sake of the conversation. Right? It wasn’t like he thought about kissing you as much as you thought about kissing him. He was just so handsome, every day, all the time. It only got better with the years developing his features. It wasn’t like he had a major crush on you, too. “Sure.”

“Then…” His gaze dropped to your lips. He was hesitating, like you were going to shove him away and call him disgusting. But it was finally happening, and your heart beat faster and faster in your chest. 

“As you wish.” 

Your lips connected, and his hand cradled the back of your head. It was like nothing you had ever experienced before. 

Warm, soft, a bit of teeth, but that didn’t matter. You felt like you were flying. Your dream finally came true—the one where you had his loving touch, where you melted into his arms like he would be able to hold you together. You prayed to anyone that would listen to never let you wake up.

When you pulled away, Rob’s face was red and dazed. He could hardly believe that he did that, and that you let him. He had been harboring so many feelings, ones that he himself had only realized in middle school. He tried everything to deny them, to push them to the side, because he didn’t think he could make you as happy as you deserved. But he couldn’t deny himself enough to not kiss you, not when you looked so perfect, lit up by the television screen. He was a strong person, but not that strong. 

You were utterly flustered. A short silence filled the air for a moment before you opened your mouth, closed it, and then opened it again to speak. “So…”

“Can I be your boyfriend?” He blurted. That was quick. “I know it’s… weird, but I really love you, and I have for a while.” He looked away shyly, blue eyes pointed towards anything but you.

“Yeah. I’d like that,” you smiled. 

Your school year finished with an absolute flourish. You had a boyfriend for once. Margie was delighted when she found out. 

She squealed so loudly that you thought she would collapse the walls of her room, her hands immediately finding a place on your shoulders to shake you. “You and Rob, oh, I knew it! You’re perfect together.” She had matured so much after middle school, and the thought made your lips curl up into a smile.

Telling Aaron was easier. He looked at you with a knowing smile and then nodded, satisfied that you had both pulled your heads out of your asses long enough to realize you were in love with each other. As Margie was your victim while you were contesting your feelings, he was Rob’s. He knew that everything would work out better than any of you. 

Bobby didn’t quite know how to go about informing his family, so he decided on inviting you over for dinner and giving a whole, uninterrupted speech about how he wanted to let them know that you were more than just a friend now. His little sister, Jodie, just rolled her eyes and said, “We know.” He reddened under their laughter, but his hand was firm in holding yours under the table. 

Your mom was the person you were most worried about. She liked Rob, but you had never really been able to talk to her about those things. In the end, you casually dropped it during a conversation, she made some little comment about it, and you moved on. It wasn’t much of a big deal.

After the initial reactions, your relationship with him didn’t change much. You still did everything together, and you still spent hours talking with him, but there were a few sneaky kisses in between words and a few instances of hand-holding. It was heaven. 

Despite you having a similar dynamic, it felt more real, like you weren’t skirting around a touchy subject anymore. You were fully immersed in said subject, and Rob was the perfect accomplice. 

You knew him to be kind, gentle, and smart, but everything was amplified tenfold over the summer before your senior year. He held you with a special determination, never hiding how much he loved you through touch alone. He pulled you away from Brady whenever he approached, letting you hold his hand instead of looking at him. You saw a side of him that he kept carefully locked away.

 He never left behind his love of comics and flying, but he let you in on those secrets. He finally told you that he was applying to the Naval Academy (which you realized was the reason he was spending so much time at the gym, and why he was an Eagle Scout, and captain of the lacrosse team, etc. etc.), and even though he was worried that you would react badly, you tried to support him. It lifted a kind of weight off of his shoulders and let him be fully honest with you about everything. 

You had never been in a better place. He kissed you, brought you flowers, held your hand, and walked on the outside of the sidewalk. A gentleman, as he always had been. 

One of your favorite memories during that time was when he took you out to eat with his first ever paycheck. It wasn’t any place particularly fancy, as he worked a minimum wage job flipping burgers, but it was special all the same.

Rob was dressed in a polo, hair smoothed and combed (which was a whole lot better than his style in middle school, in your opinion), and glasses perched on his nose. He had taken to wearing them again as he hated getting dry eyes while working out. And, man, did he work out. He was getting a bit big for his clothing, his arms pushing against the fabric of his shirt, and chest noticeably straining against the cloth. You pulled your eyes away from his body, face a little warm when you noticed he noticed.

For once, you didn’t know what to talk about. It was your first real, proper date, and the pressure left your mouth dry. You drummed your fingers on the table before deciding to end the tension. “Do you remember when we first met?”

He blinked, but smiled fondly at the memory. “Yeah. I still had that big cast, and you didn’t have any shoes on. I was jealous, you know,” he laughed lightly, “you got to feel the ground with both your feet.”

He reached out to take your hand, but stopped just short of your digits. You closed the gap and linked your fingers. “I was jealous that you had a cast with signatures on it. Apparently breaking a bone was cool to me, until I realized it meant you couldn’t go splash in the creek or roll down a hill.”

“That was awful. I think I cried once because I couldn’t chase a newt into the water.”

“And I had to sit by the edge of the stream and hold your glasses so you could wipe your eyes!” It was like yesterday for you, hand resting on his shoulder and mouth whispering soothing words until he could pick his glasses from your outstretched hand. He didn’t cry often, but you supposed that particular day took a toll on him in a way that you could not recall.

“You’ve always been great at comforting me.”

“I haven’t done it in a while, though. Hey, maybe you should get that boot back so I can see if I still have the magic touch,” you teased. He shook his head vigorously.

“Are you kidding me? I never want to see another medical boot again.” He paused. “Well, actually, it wouldn’t be so bad if you were there. Y’know, for moral support.”

You rolled your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you as it formed a smile. “For sure. I would dote on you—cucumbers on your eyes, a warm towel wrapping your hair, anything you want. Maybe I could even carry you down to the creek and find a few newts for you.”

“Carry me? You would probably break your back.” he scoffed, somewhat shyly. You didn’t even know a person could scoff shyly, but he was the king of consistency; he did everything with that little bashful tilt of his head.

“You never know. I’ve gotten pretty strong lately.”

“Show me sometime, then we can discuss the ‘carrying me down to the creek’ thing.”

“...give me a few more years and we’ll see.”

You talked about memories for hours upon end, until the restaurant workers had to gently push you out the door. The time you accidentally ate a fly while swinging, and he consoled you as you washed your mouth out a million times. When Margie accidentally left you two locked in her closet because she didn’t want her parents to make you leave. Even when Rob’s parents sat you down and said it would be okay with them if you two dated—which was met with outward disgust and internal hope. Throughout the reminiscence, his hand was held tightly in yours, and his eyes sometimes watered. It took everything in you to not sob at the idea of not being able to form these kinds of memories with him. It was kind of your last-ditch effort to truly be with him, in a way that no one else could be, before school started up again. You knew that soon, you would be stuck in class, and after that… after that, there were but a few brief weeks until he had to leave. You hadn’t been apart from him since you met, and each new day ticked down like a massive, ominous clock. You would just have to wait for him to return, as you waited for him to arrive in the first place. 

Just like you assumed it would, time passed quickly. Senior year was packed with homework, tests, college applications, more homework, more tests, watching lacrosse matches, cheering and whooping at football games, club meetings, swinging on the local park’s swings until you got sick with laughter, driving, and breaking curfew. It was fun. Everything could be fun if it was with the right people.

After things had died down, you discovered that your college and Naval Academy decisions happened to align somewhat perfectly with each other. Margie, Aaron, and you all got your letters a few days before Rob did, and you waited to open them together. Even holding the envelopes was stressful, like your entire future rode on a few printed words. They did, actually. That made it even scarier.

“Okay, we’ve all actually got to open them this time,” Margie groaned. She had counted down from three at least four times at this point. You and the boys were too scared to rip open the seals. It was amazing that she had held back from tearing them apart herself. “Three, two… one!”

The sound of tearing paper filled Rob’s bedroom, and you all eagerly held up the letters to the soft, warm glow of his overhead light. 

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

…pleased to offer you…

You did it. You all did it. A beat of shocked silence filled the air as you took glance after glance at your own and everyone else’s papers, but it was quickly broken by Margie’s scream. She threw her arms around you, tackling you to the floor, as she yelled, “Everyone got in! Everyone got in! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” You laughed in her grasp, everyone releasing a breath of relief that they didn’t know they were holding. Margie pulled Rob and Aaron into her bear hug as well, until everyone was in a big, happy pile. A twinge in your heart knew that these letters meant nothing would ever be the same again, but you pushed it aside for the joy of now.

Rob grinned, his glasses crooked on his face. “Good job, guys. Congrats. You all really deserve it.”

“You deserve it too, Bobby. Getting into the academy is hard, but I know you worked harder.” You gave him a peck on the cheek as Margie swooned and Aaron gagged. 

It took about two more seconds for the moment to devolve. Aaron folded his acceptance letter into a boat, which he then got stuck in Margie’s hair. Six pairs of hands worked to detangle it, but she didn’t make it any easier with the amount of giggles she was releasing. It was going to be okay, you thought. High school would end, and college would begin, but you could deal with everything coming your way. Your best friends would be with you, and your best-est friend would be an email away. An email and a million miles, but an email nonetheless. He had already created a folder just for you. 

Things changed, as they always have and always will. You would cry, and yes, you were stuck biding the time before your soon-to-be long distance boyfriend returned, but that change was beautiful.

After packing your meager belongings into a duffel bag and a half-wheeled suitcase, your mom drove you to your college dorm for move-in day. She was sad to see you go, but she joked that she could host the A.A. meetings in your room during your absence. She was okay to live on her own, she assured you. For the first time in a long time, you fully believed her.

She helped you set up, greeting Margie as well, then gave you a squeezing hug and walked back to her car. You likely wouldn’t be able to see her for a while, considering that you didn’t have your own car, but you had survived without her in the past, and you would again. 

Everything felt new and exciting, the world alight with opportunities. Every class prompted a discussion within yourself, and every party forced that discussion to present itself. You found that enjoying reality had a sort of grounding effect, even when you were clinging to a wall during a wildly chaotic frat house rager. Margie had joined the adjoining sorority, so those things were often places you could hang out. Man, did you hang out.

With (almost) complete and utter freedom, you could do just about anything. You worked at a Jersey Mike’s on campus, so you had access to free sandwiches and money; that meant the world was your oyster. You and your friends dabbled in school organizations, danced to loud music, stuck your heads out of sunroofs, and edged your way into the campus culture. The librarian ended up kicking you and your English 101 classmates out of the library after you violated the “quiet study” rule a few too many times. 

The school part was, admittedly, less fun, but it was a good experience nonetheless. You ended up switching majors twice during your first two years of college, as you were not exactly sure what would be useful or even what you wanted out of life, but you settled on something eventually. Aaron stuck straight on his path to pre-med with biology, while Margaret switched from political science to education. As the general education requirements were fulfilled and the more targeted classes began, your hangouts dulled down a little bit. Aaron was constantly stressed and no longer had time to roll down the sunroof, and even Margie had things to do. She was interning at a school district a few miles from campus. The new friends you made had less and less time to talk. It left you feeling a little disgruntled, but between harder work and dictating your newly boring life to Bob, there was no time to spare.

He started signing off his emails as Bob; whether it was to sound professional or because it was what everyone in the academy called him, it didn’t matter. You accepted it, like you did so many things about him.

One email chain in particular is now printed out on thick, bordered paper, stuck in one of your million half-filled-in photo albums. You thumb through them from time to time, just to look at the memories. 

From: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Hello, my love!

I haven’t had a chance to read your past emails, sorry! They keep me busy here (not as busy as plebe summer though haha) and downtime is a thing of the past. I will read them in a few days, if all things go well. I’ll tell you about my past few weeks in the meantime. Well, my past few weeks haven’t been all too interesting, but I figured I’d write it down anyway.

Mickey and I have been going through the motions. The classes can be tough, but nothing compares to Ms. Norton’s gov assignments. There’s workouts, class, and a little downtime before it all starts up again. Luckily, I’ve been getting more freedom lately. That’s the perk of being a responsible student ;)

Yesterday, I saw this guy flick peas at his friend (were they friends? Possibly, maybe, I’m not sure) and get absolutely torn apart by an instructor that was watching. I had to cover Mickey’s mouth before he laughed so he wouldn’t get reprimanded. That’s the kind of “exciting” thing that happens here, by the way; I’m sure the others get up to mischief, but with the hawks watching and the stakes so high? I’d rather imagine all the trouble you get into at college instead. It softens the blow.

That being said, enough about me. I want you to send me a million (ok, maybe not a million, I’d be fine with a couple thousand) emails about everything you do. I hope that wasn’t super creepy. I just miss you a lot.

I miss your humor, your laugh, and your smile. I miss feeling your thumb rubbing the back of my hand when you get bored. I miss smelling your shampoo, and I miss kissing you. I wish I had snuck some of your perfume in with me along with the photos, but that might be too sappy of me. I’d get made fun of relentlessly if this email were to fall into the wrong hands, but I don’t care anymore. Oh, I miss home, too, so visit my family when you have the chance. Tell me everything.

Anyways, I hope this email finds you well. I’ve got to go to bed now, but I’m sure I’ll be dreaming about you. Catch you at midnight!

Love,

Bob. 

P.S.: Mickey wanted to say hi, so I let him have the keyboard for a few seconds. Bob is such a sap about u, Hometown Girl, I send my deepest sympathies. Also HELLO! -That was Mickey. Expect a message from him every email from now on, because he won’t stop threatening to tape my socks to the ceiling??

To: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Hi Bob!! And hello Mickey. I hope he hasn’t been bringing me up too much.

Don’t worry about reading all my emails all the time—nothing too eventful ever happens anyway. And if it did, I’m sure Margie and Aaron would let you know as well. 

All the work you guys have to do sounds insane, like crazy insane. I don’t think I could ever work out and then go through a million tough classes. I die after 30 minutes at the gym. You’re lucky all the instructors like you, because I’m sure the others get a ton of flack. 

The most trouble I’ve gotten into this week was forgetting my homework and having to lie to my teacher. I told her I got frat flu and couldn’t get out of my dorm to go to the library… which was highly unethical, but you do what you have to do. As for the others, I haven’t seen Aaron in weeks because he’s prepping for his finals. We just finished midterms. He’s so studious it actually shocks me. Our favorite roommate is asleep at 7:49 PM, and I have to shield my laptop screen from shining too close to her. I’m sure she gets into trouble that I don’t even want to think about… she brought two separate guys to the room within four hours. TMI, but you’ve heard it all anyway.

Instead of a million emails, I hope a few long ones will suffice. I miss you too, so much. I hate having to wrap my arms around a pillow instead of you—it should be classified as a deficiency, honestly. A Bobby deficiency. I’m the sickest patient imaginable. 

I visited the fams on Sunday. Jodie is doing really well in high school! She’s in all the advanced art classes and is enjoying her schedule immensely. Chris was there too, with his fiance. Which reminds me: even though the wedding hasn’t even been planned yet and probably won’t be for a couple years, he wants you to be his best man!!! He asked me to warn you before the fancy wedding court invitations go out. Brotherly love and all that. You don’t have to say yes, he said, but he wants that unfortunate little buzz cut by his side on his big day.

Your parents are doing well, and so is my mom. We’re all getting together this weekend to prep a giant care package, which I hope will be well enjoyed by you and your friends. I need to finish up my stats homework (ugh), so I’ll cut this message short, but expect more after I close my textbook. I hope to see you in dream world too <3

Love,

Hometown Girl.

From: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Good morning, Randle,

I was wondering about placing a hold on the item we spoke about over the phone. I can call again on Saturday, sometime during the afternoon. Please reach out if it’s still an option.

Thanks,

Robert Floyd.

From: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

Sorry about that last email, honey! That wasn’t meant for you. I’m just looking at a lock for my bag. Mickey likes to rifle through my things. I’ll email you more later.

Love,

Bob.

To: robertfl0yd444@gmail.com

It’s alright, enjoy your lock lol.

Love,

Not Randle.

You didn’t have any reason to question his words at the time. Well, you never had a reason to question any of his words, because he could beat George Washington in a telling-the-truth competition. Now, you know that Bob’s a damn good liar—not that he would ever lie to hurt you. It’s just the nice secrets he keeps, like the one he kept the entire time he was training to be a naval aviator.

As his education progressed, though, his eyesight kept him from doing the one thing he truly wanted to do: be a pilot. He just missed the requirement, as he explained in a short, sad email after his eye test. It was crushing, to say the least, but Bob bounced back quickly. He always did. He was never one to sit and mope about a problem, no, he took the next best thing. He began training to be a weapon systems officer, and he was damn good at it.

His graduation, adorned with the markings of a star student, came with no surprise, and neither did his transition to the actual Navy. He did flight training, conditioning, and every other rigorous step to climb his way to the top; by the end, he was a new man. He graduated from Top Gun for god’s sake. Documenting his development were emails, short visits, letters, the whole shebang. 

The one thing that didn’t change was his love.

He was still goofy, nerdy, and kind. His skin may have been tougher, after years of being hardened by the world around him, but he took the time to care for the people in his life. He people-watched, just as he always did, and called you every sweet nickname that would get anyone lesser embarrassed. He still blushed like a madman, whether it was from pulling Gs or your tight hugs. And, which may just be the best thing he kept, he maintained his loyalty to the people in his past. He was a Montana kid, through and through.

You changed, he changed, the world changed. Everything was constantly moving. You maintained consistency in your waiting, though. That was the only thing that didn’t budge. You marked the dates that Bob would come back home in your calendar, counting down every second like you would miss him if you didn’t. One of those dates ended up being Margie’s wedding.

The year of weddings was upon you; Bob’s brother had just gotten married half a year before, and three of your other friends got married between then and Margaret’s wedding. Even Aaron was eyeing rings, constantly emailing you pictures from catalogs in an attempt to find the “perfect” band for his boyfriend. It came with being full-fledged adults, you assumed. Everyone was settled in their grown-up jobs or grad school, and therefore had more time to spend with their respective partners. Except for Bob, of course. He was sent everywhere under the sun. From Virginia to Hawaii, Hawaii to Texas, Texas to Nevada, and, most recently, Nevada to California. The last in-person interaction you had with him was four months ago when you flew to Lemoore to visit. There was no time for proposals, even if you had been with him long enough to be considered married in everyone else’s eyes. 

You were Margie’s maid of honor. You helped with planning, invitations, booking, buying, organizing, setting up, and pretty much all the details since she showed you the large, sparkling diamond on her ring finger. You even helped pick out her dress. It was a classic ball gown-style beauty, with delicate lace and heavy frills. It was exactly her. 

Bob was a groomsman, even though he and the groom weren’t particularly close. It was your closeness to both Margie and her fiance that brought him to the bachelor party in the first place. In the days before the wedding, you and Bob shared a room close to the wedding venue.

Being with him again made you the happiest you had been in a long time. You felt complete, like when he was gone, your heart just ached and ached until he could come plug up the holes again. Living in that small motel room was a breath of fresh air, and sharing a bed with him in complete privacy was amazing in more ways than one.

It was strange, in a way, like you didn’t really know him anymore. He had friends you had never met and a job you knew nothing about in a place you had only visited once, but he was intricately tied to your hometown through a series of souls and bonds. He was balancing between two worlds, and a part of you wondered where he would fall if the beam were to become unsteady. And another part of you hoped he would take you with him when the time came.

During the ceremony the next day, you thought that you wanted to be the one walking down the aisle next. 

The wedding went well, as most weddings did. There were tears from you, tears from the audience, tears from everyone except for the children Margie taught, as they were too young to really understand the beauty of two people devoting their lives to each other. The cake was cut, frosting smeared on the newlyweds’ cheeks, the dances flowed flawlessly, the pictures turned out perfect, and even Margie’s mother-in-law was happy. It was honestly the most beautiful wedding you had witnessed in your life.

When the time came for the bouquet toss, you were so far back in the crowd that it didn’t even have a chance of landing in your outstretched hands. You stood there for moral support, really, as the girls around you pushed their way to the front. There was a countdown, a little shove from the person next to you, and a bouquet of poppies tossed high into the air. It sailed in an arc, red and orange streaking through the air. Despite everything, despite the odds being stacked against you, it was heading right in your direction.

You reached one arm out, squished between bodies, and caught it.

The uproar of the people around you filled your ears as you pulled the flowers to your chest. The crowd parted, and Margie came barrelling towards you, wrapping you in her lacy arms. “Yes! I just knew you would catch it, I always do. You’ve got to help me plan the wedding when it happens, because I know it will, and you’re going to need the perfect dress and the perfect venue and the prettiest invitations and…”

She carried on for a while, and you smiled into the soft, decorative leaves. 

You saved the flower petals, pressed in a big dictionary under your desk. You saved every flower you had ever been given. Parts of them, at least. Your corsage from senior prom, the bouquets Bob had shipped to your door, and the marigolds your mother grew in her new garden are spread out across your bedroom. Most of your memories are tucked away in secret places, only noticeable if you know where to look.

After the wedding, you returned to your little apartment, smack in the middle of the busiest part of your town. The cars speeding by were significantly worse than Bob’s light snoring. It was the first time you had lived on your own, though, which was supposed to be important. You were free.

You could eat ice cream for breakfast, or in the late hours of the night, and you could sing loudly in the shower. You could even buy most of the clothes you saw in stores on your brand new salary and organized savings. However, you found that you didn’t necessarily want to do all that. You just wanted every day to be over already. Work was too much, waking up to an upset stomach was too much, checking your email every thirty minutes and seeing nothing was too much, and those goddamn people in the room above yours were too much, constantly blasting music and stomping around. Like always, you found yourself waiting for things to change again. You imagined you were anywhere else with anyone else, finding a sick sense of comfort in the fantasies. You thought you put those little phases behind you, but being an adult alone was so frustrating that you found yourself going back to old patterns.

Margie was caught up in the married life, Aaron was constantly working, and your frequently long-distance boyfriend was states away. The only comfort you got was periodic visits to your old neighborhood, checking up on your mom and Bob’s family. 

You stood in the middle of Georgia Floyd’s flower bed, tugging at a weed, hands adorned with thick, weathered gloves. The thing just wasn’t coming out. The little thorns were sticking to your sleeves, and you were drenched with sweat. It was the beginning of fall, and the leaves were turning all shades of fiery reds and somber oranges, but the sun was still high in the sky. The thriving asters and dahlias next to you taunted you with their beauty, bending in the slight breeze. Georgia stood in the shade of her doorway, one hand on her hip and the other holding a glass of lemonade. “Sweetheart, you’ve been workin’ so hard here. Take a drink, go home, be merry. I’ll get B… I’ll get someone else to pick up where you left off, ‘kay?”

You sighed, wiping the perspiration away from your brow with your forearm. “Yes ma’am. Thank you.” She handed you the glass and shooed you away from her flowers, making sure to take the gardening gloves you had peeled off and tucked under your arm. 

You hadn’t expected to be weeding today, but with Jodie at a friend’s house, Chris a state away on a work trip, and Bob’s father, Harold, off somewhere, she needed a helping hand. She had gotten a bit weaker over the years, no longer able to bend as well as she needed to in order to clear away the low-growing weeds, and you loved her more than enough to help out. You were her second daughter, she always said. A part of the family, no matter what. You walked across the street to your mom’s place and opened the door with your key. 

She had to go grocery shopping a while earlier, leaving you alone in the house. Given that the grocery shop was less than five minutes away by car, she should’ve been back by then. You didn’t pay it much mind, though. You just stepped into your bathroom, hung up your clothes, and took a well-deserved shower. 

After a good forty-five minutes of steam, hair dryers, and other pampering, you were ready to do absolutely nothing. The chair on your small front porch was all set up, and you held a book in your hands, ready to sit and see the yellow and orange sky cascade over the pages. When you stepped through your doorway, however, someone was waiting for you.

Bob. His hair had changed since you last saw him. It was longer but still military-issued, combed neatly, not a lock out of place. He was dressed well, too, with slacks and a slightly open button-up. You were suddenly glad that you had put on the prettiest dress in your arsenal—one he knew very well. He opened his mouth and then shut it with a look of determination.

“Bobby? What are you doing here?” you asked. He wasn’t expected back for months yet, and you certainly didn’t think he had time to visit. You were happy to see him, of course. Hell, you were overjoyed to be in his presence. But what was he doing?

He stepped forward, shined shoes crunching on a bit of gravel, and you met him in the middle. As he pulled you into his arms, hugging you tight to his chest, you breathed him in. He was really here, back home, after all that time. You finally pulled away after what seemed like eons and a millisecond all at once, and he clasped your hands in his, your book forgotten on the ground. His eyes were stormy, brimming with what looked like an onslaught of tears. You rubbed your thumbs up and down his hands worriedly. 

“Is everything okay?” Your voice came out as a tremble, slightly terrified at the prospect of something having gone wrong. Did someone die? Did he almost die? It didn’t help that he cleared his throat like he was steeling his nerves.

He put one of your hands on his chest, over his fluttering heart, and pressed a gentle kiss to the other. “There’s something I need to ask you.” You nodded, too concerned to speak. “I’ll… I’ll start with this. I love you so much it hurts me. When I first met you, years ago, I knew that I wanted to be around you forever. Your kindness, curiosity, your heart, everything just pulled me in and never let me go—not that I ever wanted to go, no, I knew you were too special to leave behind. I had to put so much in the past, but not you. Never you. I grew with you, and laughed with you, and loved you in a million ways. Throughout all that time, you waited and gave me your utmost support when my dreams took me a thousand miles away. Now, I’m still living a thousand miles away, but I don’t want you to wait here anymore. I want you to come with me and stay.” He took a breath, and his heart hammered under your fingertips. “What I’m really trying to get at is that I want to have a future with you. I want to be your husband.”

The world stopped in that moment. Did you hear him correctly? His eyes searched for a response on your face as he slid a black, velvety case out of his back pocket. He slowly lowered to one knee, keeping eye contact, and opening the box to show you the shiny contents.

“Sweetheart, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

You brought your hands up to your mouth. After all this time, the moment you dreamed of as a kid was finally happening. You nodded once, dropping down on your knees and nodding a million more times. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you,” you breathed, voice loud and quiet at the same time. Your arms found their place around him, like they had many times before, but something was different. New, in a good way. Like you were safe, completely safe.

Like while his ring was on your finger, you would never have to wait to be loved again.

You smile at the printed digital photos spread out on your bed. Bobby hugging you in 5th grade, the both of you in matching witch and black cat costumes, pumpkin buckets dangling from your fists. A snapshot of “the shaving incident”, in which you had come out with cut up legs and Robert with a cut up face. There was even a silly photo of him carrying you bridal style on your prom night, with your arm thrown over your face like a swooning princess. Your favorites, though, are the proposal photos.

Your mom hid around the corner to take pictures of your silhouettes in the sunset, while Bob’s mom pulled out her camera from across the street. They had coordinated everything perfectly, down to the fake shopping trip and weeding break. It was no coincidence that your mother washed the load of laundry that contained your favorite dress first. The meticulous planning from the people who know your routines best still makes your head spin when you think about it. They all knew about the proposal for at least a week before it happened, and they made sure it was absolutely perfect, down to the manicured background and time of day. Bob even managed to get away from work for a couple days to propose.

The ring is beautiful too. It’s the perfect mix between flashy and subtle, the main stone is cut exactly how you like it, and the band is the right amount of tight. When you asked your fiance about how he got it so exact to everything you had dreamed of, he said, “research”. You later found out from his mom that he had bought the ring while he was still at the Naval Academy from the best jeweler he could find: Randle Montgomery. Knowing that he was planning on proposing all those years ago makes it a different kind of special.

Your closet is open, the boxes and boxes of memories all pulled out and scattered around your room. The dictionary under your desk has been opened, and the flower petals and other flower material placed carefully into a container. A few minutes earlier, you even stumbled upon a written agreement you and Bob signed in middle school, agreeing to marry each other if you weren’t taken by 30. The wooden rose he gave you, also in middle school, was halfway sticking out of a cardboard holder, leaning on a series of first day of school photos Georgia took. You’ve taken to calling her Mom now, at her request.

All of your photo albums are open, with most of the pictures taken out. You’re trying to compile everything, every memory, into a new, large album. The new album is brown leather, stamped and embroidered with little inside jokes and important moments. Inside, you’ve documented every single stage in your life with Bob.

Some of the pictures even feature Margie, her husband, Aaron, Jodie, Chris, Georgia, Harold, your mom, Mickey, and everyone you’ve met along the way. Seeing the compilation of every person, every moment, that made you who you are brings tears to your eyes. 

You spend the next two hours tucking pictures, flower petals, and anything flat enough to fit into the album. By the time you’re done, your hands are coated in a fine layer of dust, and your front door is opening. 

“Honey, I’m home!” the intruder calls, and you hear the telltale jingling of him placing his keys on the bookshelf in your living room. You stand up, wipe your hands on your pants, and walk out of your shared bedroom.

Bob unzips his flight suit to the middle, letting it hang around his waist for the time being. His boots are neatly placed with the rest of his shoes; he’s tidy even when he’s tired, which is a phenomenon you don’t understand whatsoever. His hair is messy, his glasses are crooked, and he’s giving you a tired little smile. It was surely a long day for him. You open your arms, and he slouches into you like he was meant to be there.

“I was just about to get dinner started. Go take a nap, and it’ll be done by the time you wake up,” you murmur, kissing through his undershirt. He shakes his head softly. His hands hold steady on your waist, his pulse humming through the contact. 

“I’ll help. What were you thinking for tonight?”

You lead him into the kitchen, pulling out various ingredients from the pantry on the way. Pasta sauce clinks on the tile counter as you say, “Pasta. It’s quick enough. I’ll put mushrooms in the sauce, too, as a treat. You deserve it after the day I’m sure you’ve had.”

“You read my mind, baby,” he sighs, resting his head on you. “We had some rough ejections, but nothing too scary. And there’s talk of calling a few people to San Diego for a Top Gun mission, so every little mistake pulls people further away from that opportunity.”

He steps away from you for a moment. The absence of warmth sends a chill down your spine, but after he opens the box of spaghetti and turns up the heat on the pot of water you’ve placed on top of the stove, he stands behind you again. You look up from your place chopping vegetables. “Do you want to go back to San Diego? I feel like we just got settled in Lemoore.”

“Well, I’d like to marry you before moving, but I’d be honored to be a part of Top Gun again. Those missions are… dangerous, though, to say the least, so I want to have a wedding ring with my dog tags.”

You tap on his chest lightly, eyebrows furrowed. “If you do get chosen, you’d better be careful. I’m not prepared to be a widow.”

He smiles, a little sadly and a little reassuringly. “I’ll do my best.” 

When you hear the pot of water boiling, Bob drops the pasta in, and you turn your attention to the sauce simmering in your saucepan. You add mushrooms, onion, some ground beef, parmesan, and a lot of love. Before long, both parts are done, and you put a heaping portion on your fiance’s plate.

Your dining room furniture is basic, just a wooden table and two chairs. Neither of you have been able to decorate the house to your standards, considering you’re both working and you just moved in a month ago. It’s nice, though. Not permanent by any means, but nice. 

Not having any big decorations make it easier to move, you figure. By now, you know very well that living with a Naval aviator means moving from place to place until he gets a permanent station. Even then, there’s a chance they could change their minds and slap him onto the opposite side of the country. You’re just hoping that you can get married by a beach before that happens.

Speaking of the wedding, you need to do some serious planning. You swallow your bite of pasta. “I finished the photo album today.”

“Really? That’s great!” Bob beams. “I’m going to call the venue after work tomorrow to see if the date we picked out is possible. If it is, I think we can put the album by the entrance so people can look through it.”

“That sounds really good. Margie’s coming down next week to help me pick out decorations and stuff, so we need to decide on a color palette.”

“Hm… what do you think about our favorite colors? So we can represent both of us together.”

All the wedding talk makes you both excited and tired. You want to marry the love of your life and have a great time doing it, so every detail needs to be looked over again and again to ensure it goes according to plan. Bob’s a great help, despite him having so little time during the day. Living with him, finally, is like a dream come true. 

Everything is like a dream come true now. When you were little, before the Floyds appeared in your life like a fairy god-family, you prayed for something like this to happen. You begged and pleaded for your mom to get better, for you to have friends, for you to fall in love. Every part of that, miraculously, happened. Your life changed from miserable to joyous in a matter of days.

You’re going to marry the boy next door, and you’re going to be happy doing it. As you settle into bed, with his arm around you and a ring carefully placed on your bedside table, you think that all you’ve ever waited for has finally come to lull you to sleep.

Taglist: @withahappyrefrain @seitmai @winelover27 @shinzowosasageyoooo

[virq-qgo]

Wolverine x reader

Uh, yeah i know its been like two years LOL. Literately after posting my last fanfic my dog died of cancer. Got like super depressed lmao.. anyways i watched the new movie and i creamed my pants so i had to write the absolute worst fanfic ever. So like this is a warning, its been two years since ive touched my computer and my skills aren't that good anymore.

summary: going to the bar undercover with the man you hate the most had a twisted turn, not expecting to get shot or telling him your feelings.

warnings: cussing, bad writing, random character death, bad writing, not proof read, and this is really long for no reason..

You didn’t quite understand why you were being dragged along with this so called “mission”

It was just one bad dude who robbed a place, so why were you at a damn bar with the person you hate the most. Everyone was aware of this. You two couldn’t be in the same room together without an argument that almost leads to a fight. So why are you here?

So sitting on the bar stool with a glass of water in your hand, a skirt you were wearing too short and a top that left the mind to wonder. What made the whole situation worse was that your worst enemy was sitting next to you, the wolverine aka Logan Howlett.

You knew he was enjoying this by the way he was ordering shot by shot, it was disgustingly attractive the way the man could pour down the hardest liquor down his throat. Rolling your eyes, you focus back on the bartender, watching him make drinks and showing off to the drunken girlfriends or wives. Obviously ignoring the wicked glares he received from their partners sitting next to them.

“Hey, bartender.” you hear Logan call out. “I need something a little harder than this.”

“Nothing for the beautiful lady sitting next to you?” the man behind the counter smirks as he poured a drink for another customer. Totally ignoring Logan's request.

A soft polite smile sits on your face while trying to stuff down the unpleasant feeling you got from the bartender. “Only if it's on the house.”

“For you?” he smiles, “you can have whatever you like.”

Your eyes crinkle from disgust but to the bartender it was from joy. “Oh, you know how to touch a woman's heart.”

You hear Logan scoff while feeling his dark eyes on you. It’s been 10 minutes since you two have been here and you're already getting underneath his skin.

“Something wrong Logan?” you call him out, turning to face him instead of the creep you call bartender.

Logan rolls his eyes as he tosses his head back and downs his shot. “Show a little boob and wear a tiny skirt, and you get anything you want.” 

“Yeah, I would say you should try it. But you don’t have much to show..”

“Is that how you got here, getting passed around the team?”

 “Yup,” you say with a sarcastic smile on your face while pretending to count to the number 8 on your fingers. “Just gotta get into your pants and then I get my reward.”

Logan looks at you with a face of disgust not sure if you were messing with him or not. “Excuse me?”

Just as soon as you open your mouth to make a smartass comment. A sudden yell echoes across the room then the sound of wood breaking. Both you and Logan twist around to see the scene. There you see the “bad guy” you guys were supposed to be after. He had just brutally smashed someone's head into the table, successfully breaking the table in half.

“That a murder.” the words fall from your lips when you see the broken piece of the table

through the poor soul's head.

“Shut the fuck up you fucking clown. That's our guy.” Logan responded in a whisper. But when he didn't hear a snotty response he twisted his head to look at you, only to find your seat empty. Instead he saw you walking towards the scene, causing a deep growl to fall from his lips. Finding himself to chase after you.

Typically, you would leave this stuff for logan. But the guy was instantly on the run. And you didn’t really have a choice but to chase after him. “Hey excuse me!” You yell at the bad guy, instantly frowning as you see the blood cover his hands and shirt.”where do you think you're going, dude? Breaking that table and killing that poor guy? What an asshole!”

The bad guy looked at you, his brows furrowing. His body filled with rage. Who do you think he is and calling him “dude”. If you were here to stop him, then so be it. But you were just a girl, and women are weak. You were easy to dispose of. “Listen lil’ lady. I'll give you a quick death if you leave me alone.”

“I don’t think so, I need you to come with me anyways.”

The man sighs as he hears the words fall from your lips, “How annoying.” he thought.

“Hey, don’t you fucking run off on me like that.” You hear Logan say as he walks up next to you. Making you roll your eyes and turn your head to face him. 

It was so quick to happen you couldn’t even process it, the only thing that processed that very moment was the ear ringing bang that echoed through the air. Then Logan shouting your name. You remember seeing him running away, his face looking angry. It felt like you were standing there for hours, like you were zoning out. Then you remembered him, the guy you were supposed to get. But as soon as you took that first step, that's when you felt it. Burning pain spreads through your body making you want to cry out. Your hand instinctively reaches out to where you feel the pain, not expecting your hand to be bloodied when you pull it back to inspect it. 

You got shot. 

Now you remember why you guys were supposed to basically kidnap this guy, he was a mutant. His abilities were dangerous. The way he fought was with guns and his bullets being made by his blood, it's how he killed people. It was poisonous.

Soft curses leave your lips as you press your hand tight against your wound, but your blood was still pooling out. You felt weak, like you could barely stand and keep your eyes open. You felt as if you were gonna drop dead at any given moment. But you had to help Logan, you two were supposed to do this together. 

The first step you took, you felt your knee give out. Sending your whole body to the ground, but the impact never came. Instead you feel a strong pair of arms lift up your weak body, your eyes see logan. But you refuse to believe it was him. He wouldn’t do this. Why was your body seeing things?

“You idiot! Why did you run off and chase after him like that? You know you don’t have any special abilities to protect you if he attacked you, so why?” He yelled, Logan was truthfully more scared and worried than angry. He was running as fast as he could to the jet to get you medical aid. But he only had so much time to spare before your body was consumed by the poison.

“What happened?” your voice was soft when you asked.

“You were shot in your chest! I can see the huge fucking hole!”

“I can feel it.” Even though you were basically dying, you couldn’t help but make a simple joke. “Y’know, even though you’re a total dick. You have good arm muscles. I like the way they can hold me so tightly. I feel like a princess.” you smile “If it takes getting shot and dying for you to

care, then maybe i should get shot more often.”

Logan frowns as he hears your comment, still rushing to get you to the jet as fast as possible. “You’re so fucking stupid, you’re not dying. If you wanted me to hold you in my arms then all you had to do was ask bub.” 

A weight of relief went off his soldiers once he saw the jet, he was right there. But when he looked at you, he saw that your hand was pressed against his chest and your eyes were on him. Barely opened. “Hey, stay with me.” he comments. “Keep your eyes open, please. We're almost there!”

Your eyes scrunch together as you see his lips move but no words come out, it didn’t help much that you were fading in and out of consciousness. Growing up, you were told not to be afraid of dying because you could die at any given time. Despite all the missions you’ve been on and how many times you were knocking on death's door. You were never afraid. But today was different, why were you so afraid? Maybe it was because you're dying pathetically, or the fact that you're in the arms of a man you’ve fallen in love with.

“I’m sorry.” you tell him, your voice soft and weak. Blood drips from your lips and down your chin. Your hand grabbing his shirt. Everything was going by so fast. In the middle of a deep silence, you look up into Logans eyes, knowing these might be your last moments together. Pain rushes through your body and words fly out of your mouth before your brain can catch up, and you’re saying what you’ve always wanted to say. “I love you.”

He freezes, shocked at your words. He looks down at you, taking in your face, and the pained look on it. You can see his brain racing like a speeding train, and his breath catches in his throat. “You’re an idiot. Why did you wait till this point?”

“I- I thought I would have more time.” was all you managed to say before shutting your eyes.

Finally, Logan runs up the rail of the jet and sets you on the cot. Watching the aids surround you, immediately taking quick action. With the flight there and taking you into emergency surgery. They finally came up to Logan, who fell asleep in the infirmary's waiting room. Telling him that you were okay and would make a good recovery.

Without wasting a single second, Logan rushed to your room. His heart dropped once he saw your frail, weak body. Connecting to different types of wires and IVs. He felt terrible, guilt consumed his body as thoughts raked his mind, he could've prevented all of this, all of your pain. Only if he was faster.

Logan found himself staring at your body, wanting to reach out and take your hand. He pulled up the chair by your bed and sat down, his eyes switching from your resting body to the monitor. Finally mustering the courage to take hold of your hand. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t quick enough, I should’ve been the one. But I was so fucking slow, in my own god damn bloody mind.And  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I love you back, I was just so scared. Scared that if I told you, I would never get to tell you so again. I was so fucking selfish. But holy shit, I'm so in love with you. It hurts so much. But I'll make sure to tell you every single chance I get. I love you.”

“You better get started.” you say with a smile on your face. 

Logan looks at you in a state of shock, not expecting you to be awake. Without holding back, he basically launches himself onto you. Wrapping his arms around your weak figure, wanting to hold you tight but being so gentle with you. “You’re okay” he breathes out of relief, “You’re an idiot, but you’re okay.”

“I love you too by the way.” The smile on your face was wide, you were in so much pain. But you were so happy. Never in your life did you think you would be here, but here you are. In the arms of the man you’ve pretended to hate for so long.

“Oh shut your pretty little mouth.” Was all he said before pressing his soft warm lips against yours. 

If someone had asked you what it was like getting shot, you would probably tell them it hurt really fucking bad and wouldn’t recommend it. But if they asked you on a personal level. You would tell them that you would do it again if it meant that you got to see Logan care for you. But it still hurt like a fucking bitch.

[tangerinesilk]

－ DISTRACTION : DAVE LIZEWSKI

dave was a great study buddy, but there's no doubt he was a distraction. he constantly made you turn your head twice at whatever he said or did whether it was some comic book character he rambled about or how his pale blue eyes shined under the warm lighting of his desk lamp.

pairing ✷ college!dave lizewski x college!fem!reader

rating ✷ r (18+ minors dni!)

tropes ✷ friends with benefits, spicy but no / little plot, unspoken love, domestic toward eachother but no dating, dorky and awkward people in love who just wont admit it theyre in love (sort of) | nsfw warnings below!

word count ✷ 1.7k

a/n ✷ um this was a random thought and it just sort of happened. stg it feels like i blacked out while writing this KSKFFKS what is going on with me. anyways been wanting to write about this cute dork for a while and why not make it really hot. posting now so i dont chicken out but ill edit later.... i always love feedback! xo

[ steamy warnings: mentions of public sex, dom & sub switches, p in v without protection, nipple play, hj + bj, f receiving oral from m, praising + heavy dirty talk, face sitting, finishing inside v ]

typical weekends: saturday night at dave's apartment.

dave was explaining something... it was something. something important, but all you could focus on was his pretty eyes and how soft his lips looked today. he pushed his glasses up more on his nose bridge again, looking down at his book for one of his college classes.

he was so into the subject, you didn't even have to nod. you were occasionally tapping the eraser end of your pencil against your blank notebook, only listening to every other word.

suddenly, your mind wanders to when you two were doing laundry at three in the morning and got a little spontaneous. then getting a bit handsy on the top floor of the library where no one usually was. maybe even the time when you were visiting him back home for one weekend and you both could barely keep it together with company downstairs.

ever since you both agreed on this friends with benefits agreement, your dry spells were no longer an issue. it seemed like both of you were touched starved, but not wanting to meet other people, strangers you didnt want or need to know.

so, after becoming lab partners in your fall semester of senior year, its been nonstop seeing each other. not just for sex, but hanging out to study, going to local comic book stores and libraries, even the occasional dinner and sleepover combo at his apartment or yours.

it seemed like a wild card at first, but you would never admit (outloud) to dave lizewski that you underestimated how great his tongue felt inside your pus—

"y/n, are you even listening?"

you cleared your throat, "hmm?"

he chuckled, "so you weren't... i know, its kind of boring."

now you felt bad, caught up from going down memory lane and he was excited about his new class.

you ran your hand over his curls, "im sorry, dave. my mind was wandering."

he turned, seeming interested, "about what?"

you felt the heat rise to your cheeks, "about... you know..." you trailed then shrugged, "stuff."

dave smiled, "oh yeah? you weren't, i dont know, thinking about me?"

you had seen this confidence grow inside dave as more time passed, and you weren't sure if it was cockiness, but you couldn't deny how cute yet attractive it was on him.

"why dont you go back to what you were rambling about? please. im all ears now." you lean in, placing your hands underneath your chin with your elbows on his desk.

its ironic how his full size bed was behind the two of you yet here you are, acting like this was the first time you've hung out.

he pressed wet kisses against your inner thighs, your clit aching for his mouth as his nose brushed against your skin. he'd let out a nervous chuckle as he noticed the wet spot forming on the center of your panties. you'd bite your bottom lip as he licked his lips, in awe of the mess you were for him.

dave pulled down your panties, shuffling them down your ankles before tossing them to the side. his strong hands run up the top of your thighs before holding your hips, pulling your core closing to his mouth. after his first, yet hesitant, kiss on your clit, you let out a faint moan.

soon his tongue was running over your open slit and tasting your sweet wetness. you arched your back, leaning back on his desk as he flicked your clit a few times. when he pushes his tongue inside you, a rush of heat runs over your entire body. you caress your own breasts and pull at your own nipples as he picks up his pace.

"fuck... god, yes. eat my fucking pussy." you whimpered. he got so weak when you uttered your sweet nothings. as dominant as he thought he presented himself, dave was a sucker for you.

just when you thought it couldn't get better, he slide his two fingers into your slit as his tongue flicks your swollen clit. you told him how you love when he curled his fingers inside you, knuckle deep and gathering your wetness every pump as he brought you closer to your orgasm.

your hips grind against his mouth and hand, painfully near your climax. he cursed under his breath as he felt your pussy clench around his digits. he pulls his mouth away from your clit, trailing more kisses over your stomach then rolls his tongue against your right nipple.

his hand still worked your slit, thrusting so fast that your head was spinning along with the pleasure of him sucking your erect nipple. you glanced down, seeing how his hard pressed against his khakis. just the thought of taking his cock into your mouth made you dizzy, bucking your hips against his fingers.

"yes... make me cum. i wanna fucking cum on your fingers." you muttered under your breath, pulling at his curls. dave's knees were giving out as he held his position but he loved to hear your continous begging.

he was about to see if he could pick up his pace before your hand reached down, sliding into the front of his stained pants and caressing his hard cock. he grunted against your chest, instantly weak from your touch which made him pause.

"hmm, what about i cum on your cock instead?" you giggled as your lips met his, "it's so hard... bet you've been thinking about cumming inside my tight pussy, huh, dave?"

he sighed, "shit..."

"that's what i thought, baby." you say before taking his fingers into your mouth, tasting your own cum. he takes a mental picture even though you've done this in your previous hookups.

you hop off the desk, playfully pushing him on his twin size bed. you slowly get on your knees, running your hand over the crotch of his pants that were already unbuttoned and half unzipped. it's easy for your pull his cock out, practically springing from his briefs.

his eyes are glued to you as your tongue runs up and down the base before wrapping your lips against his red tip. you half-giggle when you taste his pre-cum, then carefully take him all in your mouth. you gag a bit as his tip pushes further in, and he groans when your throat tightens around him.

you push your tongue out to make sure your teeth dont graze his cock as you deep throat him, incredibly slow, so he can watch in awe. he leans up on his elbows, falling apart as you take him in your mouth so easily and your hand pumping the rest of his base.

"fucking christ... fuck." he muttered, his dick twitching inside your mouth as your salvia runs down when you gag on his hard.

his hand runs over your hair, gathering it together to keep it out of your face— also to have a better view of him receiving one of the best blowjobs you've given him.

when you pull your mouth away, you giggle as you pump his cock with your spit lubricating for better motion. his face screws together the faster you pump, and he can barely take the pleasure.

"hmm, i bet you wanna cum on my face... and tits. but, i want you to cum inside me." you say as you but your bottom lip, running your thumb over the cum leaking from his tip.

"me too, baby. fuck!" he grunts, and it makes you smile at how much of a mess he is too.

you rise from your knees, relieving the pressure on them before straddling him on his bed. you pull off your top, tossing it on the other side of the room as he quickly peels his shirt off as well. his big hands run up your body, over your breasts once more as his thumbs move against your nipples.

"god, i want to feel every inch of your cock... so, don't stop until you're finished." you tell him as you run his tip agaisnt your slit before slowly sinking down on him.

"babe, shit... fuck." he whimpered, his fingers pressing into your hips as you arch your back.

"god, im so tight." you moan, "your cock is so big... can barely fit you inside me." you huff, your eyes closed shut as you slowly move your hips.

soon, you meet a nice pace of bouncing on his cock and he loosens up as he watches you move up and down. his bright eyes keep moving between looking at your tits and your face, completely amazed by your beauty.

you run your hands over his toned chest and abdomen, leaving light scratches on his skin from the waves of pleasure coursing throughout your body.

"dave, im gonna cum. oh, oh! i'm gonna cum." you announced to him and he was holding off anyways, his jaw clenched his much that it was beginning to feel painful.

as you arch your back and let out a long whine, he stills his hips as his warm cum fills you up. it was the first time he was fully inside you, and you were aching around his cock, feeling it throbbing against your walls.

he leans up, leaving a soft kiss just above your breasts before you two share another kiss. you can't help but giggle, both of you feeling that sudden hit of exhaustion.

you lift yourself from your cock and cum runs down your slit, letting him see the mess he made. dave smirks, expecting him to say that he'll get you a towel but instead licks his lips and starts to lean down between your legs again.

it was like deja vu. his tongue presses against your swollen slit, tasting your mixed cum before sucking on your sore clit. now you're so sensitive to the touch, you could orgasm again at any moment. he was so in tune with your body that he knew what pace to go and how long you could actually lasts.

you run your hands over your breasts, his tongue moving so perfectly between your slit and clit. you feel his press a light kiss against the area above your pussy before trailing more kisses up your body. then, you two shared another kiss, tasting each other's tongues once more before he laid next to you.

"you know, i've never had a study partner like you." you jeered, pressed a kiss against the start of his jaw.

he blushed, "me neither..." he raised his eyebrows, "trust me."

[nanowrimo]

4 Tips for Autistic Writers

Autistic writers can face unique challenges when it comes to writing. NaNo Participant Auden Halligan has tips to handle some of those challenges!

So, you’ve just sat down at your desk, all ready to work on your next chapter, but you just can’t seem to start. Something is itching at your brain, and no matter how hard you think, you can’t figure it out. For autistic writers, that itch might be even harder to get around when compounded with autistic inertia, introspection issues, and sensory processing disorder — even if we were super excited to get started, sometimes the stumbling blocks are enough to keep us from going anywhere at all.

Here are four tips to identify your struggles and work around them rather than against them as an autistic writer!

1. Schedule your writing time appropriately

While keeping a schedule can help you stave off unwanted change in your routine, the need to switch to another task when the clock strikes the hour sometimes feels like a monumental task, one that eventually becomes detrimental to your creative pursuits.

If switching tasks is the biggest hurdle to your writing, setting a designated writing time with no other plans around it could do the trick. Oftentimes, just one hour of time to transition from doing dishes to sitting down at your computer to write is exactly what you need to get past that point and find your writing headspace.

2. Make sure your sensory environment is right

Sometimes getting into that writing headspace is harder than normal, but you can’t put your finger on a reason. Chances are, you’re not quite ready until you have your sensory needs met and you can fully focus on your story.

Personally, I like to be on the couch with my water bottle, a playlist at just the right volume, and a comfortable jacket or hoodie on. For you, the ideal sensory space might involve a desk and a snack, a pet nearby, and a quiet room. For others, it could be outside or even at a library or coffee shop. Autistic people are all different and so are their sensory needs, so this one is super subjective — do what works best for you!

3. Take breaks often

Writing can be exhausting, and if you’re struggling to keep going, you might need to take a pause. If you’re like me and struggle with remembering to hydrate and eat once you’re deep in a task, use your break to get some water and a snack. If you’re having trouble staying focused, get up and move around and stim or go outside to give your brain a reset. If you feel like you’ve gotten some good progress done, however small, reward yourself — do something related to your special interest, dance with a pet, and celebrate your little (or big!) win!

The pomodoro method is a good way to keep yourself from working too long without a break, and if that doesn’t work for you, methods like the Eisenhower method with breaks interspersed and even simply inserting breaks into your scheduled writing time are just as valid.

4. Don’t be afraid to skip around

Another thing that often trips us autistic people up is needing to follow the story down its natural progression, from start to middle all the way to the finish. But inevitably, once we’ve gotten past the initial excitement of having the project started, we hit a stumbling block…and the project gets abandoned. I’ve left behind countless projects because I lost interest after hitting a scene I wasn’t excited for after just a few chapters.

To combat this, try writing out of order! Skip ahead to the scene directly after your stumbling block. You could also skip to the next scene your favorite character is in or even to the climax if it helps you move forward. If you’re having trouble putting your first words down, try writing a random scene in the middle of your story to get into the groove of writing your characters.

Alternately, if you can’t abide by the out of order method and really need to get your characters from Point A to Point B, try putting the scene you’re stuck on in brackets. For example:

[Character 1 and Character 2 fight over the decision to kick Character 3 off the team. 2 leaves in anger.]

It’s simple, efficient, and gets you out of that particular rut so you can keep moving toward that sweet, sweet conversation you’ve wanted to write since Day 1.

Now go forth and write, my friends!

Auden Halligan is a creator through and through. She’s been writing her entire life, but didn’t start participating in NaNoWriMo until 2017–right now she’s working on developing a TV series (or two!) and has several novels and short films in the drafting phase. Auden is currently a college student studying film production and hoping to minor in disability studies. You can find her on her very sparse Twitter at ink.and.spite. Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels

If you’re an autistic writer, check out the Pillow Fort in the NaNoWriMo forums! It’s a group for people who are neurodivergent, have disabilities, mental health concerns, or physical challenges that affect their lives.

[bkd-b3ans]

You try to repair a watch, Boothill is being annoying as usual, you end up discovering his neurolink perfectly mimics human emotions.

-> Ship: Boothill X Mechanic!Reader (or just tech savvy idk the term really)

-> Rating: Safe for All

-> TL;DR: Boothill visits you after closing hours, nearly ruins a 5 million watch repair commission, stares for a bit too long while you work and overheats for a bit, ends up learning you live above your own workshop and you learn he gets flustered easy.

-> Extra notes: No idea where I will go with these, I just love writing stuff. Next one is going to be more about touching / feeling, but until then, you too can experience casual chatter. I do not proof read, whatever is written is in accordance to Ellios script, go meow at him. Take this "2nd" part as pure world-building.

-> Word count: 2k~ ish

-> First part: here

Thank you for reading and bearing with my awful English. If you have any prompts I would be more than happy to hear them.

"Pardner? Yoohooo~" Boothill was waving his arm like a manic from the front of the counter, trying to catch your attention, but you were too engrossed in your work, tinkering away with some expensive watch you were paid to fix, the tiny gears and springs neatly organized in your table in tiny boxes with labels, while you were hunched over the table, looking through a magnifying glass and listening to music, tongue almost sticking out like some cartoon character while you were trying to place the gear in its place carefully using some precise tweezers.

For all you cared, your shop was closed for the day, so why would anyone in their right mind, or that knows how to read a sign, would even bother you? Of course you didn't take into account a Galaxy Ranger that had a passion for annoying you at random times.

"Psst, hey, over 'ere..." he sighed, "Fudge this". Impatient as ever, Boothill just helped himself with one of the expensive motor oil cans in the counter and stepped around it, taking off his hat and placing it on your head.

The whole motion made you jump out of your skin, dropping the tweezers together with the very important, one of a kind gear, that you could barely notice while it was on your table, let alone on your floor, rolling off into the void like all of the pens you've lost throughout the years.

"WHAT THE FUCK, MY FUCKING WORK OF MY AEONS-" you took off the hat annoyed, hand still shaking from the scare and heart running laps in your chest. Shoving the hat into Boothills chest, you couldn't help but be angry at the man, sighing.

"Damn sugar-cube, didn't know ye were this jumpy. Ye should be more aware of yer surroundings you know?"

"What the hell does that mean. MY SHOP IS CLOSED BOOTHILL, CAN'T YOU READ??"

"Well, not your language no, it's all a bunch of jumbles and lines"

You looked confused for a moment before realizing that neither of you were from the same planet. You rubbed the bridge of your nose, trying to get rid of your furrow.

"Just, shut up and help me look for that gear. AND PUT THE DAMN CAN DOWN"

He raised his arms in defeat, putting down the can of motor oil and looking around your workbench while you were painfully looking for the gear with your magnifying glasses.

"Lotta' shiny pieces you have on the table. Are these really more important than your good old buddy, Boothill?"

"Unless you're willing to give me 5 million, then yes"

Boothill choked

"5 million?? For some beautiful watch?"

"What can I say, some people have more than they know what to do with. Now stop yapping and get on your knees, I can't see shit."

"Is that an invitation, darling?"

"... BOOTHILL!"

"Aye aye, don't get your feathers ruffled like this darling, just sit there and be pretty"

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

You couldn't help but be annoyed still, slumped in your chair, fiddling with your pen, while Boothill was looking around. How long has it been already, maybe a few minutes? Hours? Days??? Your work couldn't wait that much, and each ticking second felt agonizing. You were so close too, getting interrupted was the last thing you needed right now. You always had plans, a schedule, deadlines, you couldn't afford the unpredictability that is Boothill sometimes.

You almost got too lost in your thoughts before you heard a sudden thud, metal against wood, and a proud exclamation.

"Here it is sugar-cube, your pretty little thing... Cogwheel whatever. Now can you stop looking like someone spat in your food or do I need to repair this watch myself to make you happy?"

You could swear sometimes he was like a dog, a big doberman. For as scary as he could look sometimes, you couldn't help but be unable to push him away. All you could do was just let out an amused scoff, taking the gear piece in the palm of your hand, and gently placing it in it's box.

"No, no, you've done enough damage already. Why are you here even?"

"Just wanted to pay my best buddy a visit? What, a man can't do that no more?"

"No fixing your body? No maintenance work? Really nothing? Just a visit? Odd, thought you were a busy man"

"Oh I sure am sugar-cube, but sometimes even I need to sit down and relax."

"... In my workshop"

"In yer workshop, yes."

You sighed

"Fine, fine, stay for as long as you need, but don't touch anything that is in this-" you motion around your workbench "general area"

He tipped his hat in acknowledgment

"Aye aye, I'll stay put, fudge me, you can be very serious sometimes."

"5 million"

"Right yes, that's understandable."

You went back to work, trying to finish placing the last pieces inside that damned watch, headphones back on your ears. Boothill was simply slumped on the couch you kept around the waiting area, that barely saw any use to begin with. He was just looking around, bored out of his mind, the silence really starting to get to him. On occasion he's throw you glances, looking like a kicked puppy only to be met by your back either way. Yet he couldn't help but notice the few tics you had, tapping your foot, humming to yourself from time to time, arranging your hair by shaking your head around, and just how damn beautiful you looked in that dim warm light.

By no means we're you prettied up and groomed, after all, working with machinery all day will just lead to one always being covered by oil or sutt, clothes messy, the tools around your belt loud and heavy, but to him, it was part of the charm. The passion you had for what you did, the care you treated everything with, even his own body when it needed repairs. Sure, you two may butt heads more often than goats, but you were the reason he kept making his trips back to your workshop for any needs. He trusted you, felt comfort in your presence.

He could feel his insides start to heat up, his mind trailing off. Sure, he couldn't blush for the love of him, after all blood stopped flowing through his body long, long ago, but his body still reacted from time to time to strong emotions, and now it was no different. It felt, uncomfortable almost, a strange emptiness in his metal gut. Maybe it was the bullets he snacked in like some chips, or maybe it was more than that. He just simply pulled his hat over his eyes to focus and calm down.

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

Finally, after so many hours, you were finally done, the watch ticking gleefully, almost as if happy with it's new look. You sighed in relief, finally placing down your headphones and slumping in your chair, pulling your glasses up.

"Finally... I swear they are trying to drive me insane with all these new 'trinkets' that have way too many small pieces for their own good. How you holding up, Boots?"

"Fine as ever sugar, bored out of my mind, but rested"

"Yeah, I can see that, you've already made a dent in my couch"

"Hey, I helped ya find that gear for free, can't I get some more respect"

"And who's fault was it that I dropped it?" You said, raising your eyebrow.

"Aye aye, sorry 'bout that."

There was a moment of pause

"Say, partner, you've messed around inside my body for a while now. Do you know if there's any functions that might mimic proper human emotions?"

"Human emotions? Hmmm"

You thought for a moment, trying to remember if you've seen any kind of code that might do that.

"I don't think I've seen anything like that, but I've also never like, actually paid attention. There may be some functions that mimic that, after all, you might need them to think and work properly. Why?"

"Ah, nothing important, was just wondering."

"I can always check if you want. Of course, for a price"

He couldn't help but scoff, amused "You were never free eh?"

"Someone has to eat"

"Sure, sure. I mean why not, might as well get this mystery solved, since I'm here and have nothing better to do."

"Then come with me"

You both went inside your garage, Boothill already used to all the steps, laying down on the weird table chair as he put it while you connected the cables to the back of his neck, opening the hologram screens.

"Let's see..." you rubbed your chin, pacing around while moving around screens, trying to find anything remotely similar to what Boothill mentioned, but it was rather hard. Every line kept changing dictating different functions every moment.

"Hmm...."

"Anything the matter?"

"No, I just realized why I might have never seen that kind of function. Your neurolink is adapting to everything you do, so it's changing constantly. I think the only way to spot anything us to trigger whatever made you so curious about your 'emotions'"

"Trigger em? And how the fork do you plan on doing that?"

You thought for a moment, moving next to Boothill, dragging the screens along with you. You didn't really give a warning as you poked his chest with a screwdriver, noticing some changes.

"What in the beautiful sky are you doing?"

"There it is" you just pointed at the screen at the suddenly changing lines.

"Your body reacts to your mental state. Right now you are confused"

"I sure as warm lake I am, you're poking me around with a screwdriver."

"What else would have you wanted me to do? Touch you with my own hands?"

He was about to say something, but you grabbed one of the screens, squinting at it.

"Getting flustered, Boots?" You could almost feel your own smug smile forming on your face.

"Flustered? Please, you'd think I'd get 'flustered' from just a check-up?"

"Bashful... Interesting"

"Hey! Stop saying things and answer me, sweetheart"

"And annoyed. Yeah, you do seem to have those functions, and they're damn advanced to mimic human emotions. Guess you aren't just metal after all. You still have the ability to feel. It's interesting how this changes..."

You got too focused on the lines of code, not paying attention to how you started leaning against the table, your hand extremely close to Boothills, fingers almost touching. Sure, you were just staring at the lines changing, but Boothill was staring at your hand, annoyed almost that he couldn't just grab it, only to be confused over why he was annoyed. You just chuckled to yourself and pushed the screen away, unplugging the cables.

"Well, mystery solved, your neurolink functions exactly like a brain and it sends the proper signals, so your body will be affected by your emotions."

"Great-" he rolled his eyes, standing up and scratching the back of his head "You need a new table, this one is forking uncomfortable."

"I don't take feedback"

"Yeah yeah, whatever you say darling." he just hopped off the table, adjusting his hat.

"H-"

"1k credits"

"Damn, let me finish at least. Fine, you know the drill"

"Nah, I'll let it slide this time. Getting to check your internals can be fun sometimes" you patted his back

"I'll go home, unless you want to guard my shop, you should leave too."

"You don't just live in your workshop??"

"...what...?"

"You know, like, I've always only seen you here, where is your home even."

"Oh... Oh! I guess you can say that? My home is upstairs, I bought the whole building when I opened so everything on the ground floor is the shop, upstairs is my place."

"Ok that makes sense... Can I-"

"No"

"Fine fine, I'll go my merry way then. I'll see you next time partner, and thank you for the free check-up"

"Don't get too used to them"

He nodded, tipping his hat and leaving.

[redr0sewrites]

Sub!Jayce x reader Hcs

incredibly influenced by this convo i had w ellie ( @bigfatbimbo ) urgrhgrhrhrhr hes soooo

🥀Cw: smut!!!, sub!jayce, dom!reader, humiliation, sub top, exhibitionism kink idk what its called

🥀minors dni

🥀Character(s): Jayce Talis x reader

this man is suuuuch a sub, but he wouldn't admit it, at least not until he meets you

jayce is a very confident person, and you'd assume that would carry over into the bedroom, but nooo. the first time you were both intimate he was so pathetically unsure of what to do that you just had to take control for him. he tried to act dominant and in-control, but the second he started thrusting into you he was a needy mess.

he was so confident leading up to it, but he just gets so flustered :(

jayce is so embarrassed about how submissive he is, and is probably a little shy at first. he definitely needs some coaxing to "get out of his shell" per se, and would probably muffle his moans and be a little awkward in general

this man is a WHINER i just know he's so loud in bed and he can not control it. his voice gets all hoarse and raspy from panting, and he has the neediest wanton moans, it genuinely sounds like he's in a porno because of how loud and lewd they are

his volume has probably led to you two almost being caught on multiple occasions, he genuinely has no control but gets SO embarrassed about the thought of getting caught. it turns him on a little, and the fact that it does only makes him more embarrassed

more than once he's fantasized about you fucking him in the council room, risking it all just for the thrill of possibly being discovered

jayce would be SO flustered if you teased him about it, if you began whispering in his ear about how you coincidentally forgot to lock the door to your room, and how just about anyone could just walk in? he's already whining, and he'll cum within seconds

"aw, how would the council feel if they saw you being fucked like this?imagine if they could all see you like this, all needy and pathetic for me," type of shit, he'd fold in seconds

jayce is definitely kinky too, but he takes his time discovering himself. he isn't super willing to try new things at first, however over time he becomes more and more confident in doing kinkier shit, especially with someone he trusts

guys. sounding with jayce. HEAR ME OUT. he'd be SO embarrassed, like he knows how anatomy works and all, but he never really thought of something like that, and he'd probably be cocky too, thinking that it wouldn't even feel that good. imagine using a vibrating sounding rod on him and double tapping him too, irgrhrrhrgrhrrh he'd be so needy and fucked dumb

he never tried anything with anal/pegging before you, but he can't deny that he isn't at least curious. he'd mention it offhandedly, hoping that you'd get the hint, but don't make it that easy for him. fluster him, make him say it aloud and admit that he wants you to fuck him like that, and then praise him for being so sweet about asking while fucking him absolutely senseless. whether you have a dick or a strap he doesn't care, jayce would love it regardless

this is kind of a random hc, but he probably masturbates a lot. i mean, it's natural, he's pretty stressed most of the time, and even when he's with you he has an insane libido and would probably still masturbate a lot. however, his favorite form of getting off? pillow humping. don't ask me how i know, i just do, because i'm right. imagine the mighty councilman talis, the man of progress himself, humping a pillow like a bitch in heat because he's too needy to wait. sometimes he'll imagine that it's you beneath him, and he'll moan your name as he cums, thinking you can't hear. this leads to you both discovering that this man has a major kink for dry humping, he loves either sitting in your lap or having you sit in his and just getting off fully clothed. i also think he'd enjoy lap dances too, and would ride your thigh too. i ALSO think jayce would enjoy it if you rode his thigh, i mean.... c'mon who wouldn't want to

ok but like... sub!top jayce. me thinks yes. making him top you as a punishment and forcing him to fuck you. you take care of him all the time, shouldn't he return the favor? jayce desperately wants you to take control, flip him over and fuck him senseless, but your silky words and sweet praises make him want to make you cum even more. he would definitely manage to make you cum, he knows what he's doing, but he's really whiny and needy about it and would need some reassurance

look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't like being manhandled a little. you can't because your wrong. he totally would. jayce is used to people giving him what he wants and he's absolutely the type to get off to being pushed around. he wouldn't mind being folded into deep sex positions or even being slapped a bit, as long as you praise him afterwards

PRAISE KINK!!! i do think he has a degrading kink too, but it's definitely mostly praise. he gets a bit insecure sometimes, and the only way to get out of his own head is to be fucked silly and senseless by you while you whisper the sweetest words in his ears. he wouldn't mind a healthy mix of degrading/objectifying and praise tho, if you called him your "pretty slut" he'd think it was hot but if you started genuinely degrading him he would probably cry and get really clingy afterwards

i think his biggest kinks would be PRAISE, oral fixation (absolutely will elaborate if asked. please ask.), hair pulling, DRY HUMPING, somnophilia/sleepy sex (again, ABSOLUTELY will elaborate), breeding kink (👀), and obviously exhibitionism. i also think he'd have a little bit of a hand kink/fetish but would not admit it. if he saw you wearing a lot of rings, or if you're hands just look really nice in general, he would get a little turned on but won't say why. he thinks your hands look really nice around his neck too... 😇

"fuck- hngh-" Jayce bit down hard on the back of hand, attempting to muffle his moans as you rub his cock. you were seated on his lap, your hand wrapped around his thick girth as you jerked him off. within the confines of your shared bedroom you could be as filthy as you liked, yet it seemed Jayce was still too shy to fully let out his moans yet.

"aw, poor baby," you croon, speeding up the pace ever so slightly and paying attention to the tip of his leaky cock. his dick twitches against your palm as your thrusts quicken, Jayce's hips jerking upwards in response to the stimulation.

"hic- plea- please," he gasps, his hand hovering over his mouth as he throws his head back. "well, since you asked so nicely~" you tease, slowing down to painfully slow thrusts. Jayce lets out a sob, tears prickling at the corner of his eyes with each of your ministrations. he had lost count of the times you had teased him to near-release, only to ruin his orgasm at the last second. his abs clench with each stroke of his cock, and you can tell your pretty boy's patience is wearing thin. he really was too cute!

"Jayce," you murmur, speeding up again to catch his attention. his glossy, fucked out gaze meets yours, and you begin to jerk him off faster. with a gasp, his hand flies to your wrist, whether to push you away or to hold you there you were unsure. "s'too much!" he babbles, a few tears streaming down his cheeks as the coil in his abdomen tightens.

"aw, don't you want to be good f'me? you can take it, can't you?" Jayce nods, his dick twitching eagerly witth each thrust against your palm. you can tell he's close, and you decide to reward him. "can i- can i please-"

"you can cum, Jayce." with your reassurance, Jayce throws his head back, not even bothering to smother his moans as he cums so hard he swears he sees stars. his thighs shake as he coats himself in his own cum. as he comes down from his high, you gently massage his shoulders, tethering him back to reality as he steadies his breathing.

"you still with me, Counselor Talis?" Jayce grumbles, pulling you in close. "don't call me that. to you, 'm Jayce. nothing to else." you giggle, melting into his embrace. "lets get you cleaned up, hm?" you ask, and he nods, wordlessly following you like a lost puppy towards your shared bathroom. you both know damn well that this is probably going to lead to another round of steamy shower sex, yet he follows you in with the smallest smirk on his lips. what a man.

i will always be the number one jayce defender i do not CAREEEEE he's trying his best. i know nothing about leavue of legends lore and im basing this solely off of arcane, but i genuinely sympathize w him and idk why people hate him sm

[amathslutsguidetofandom]

I have something fluffy to give you🥰🩷

Bucky sees Single Mom!Reader at the local grocery store and Bucky being the gentleman he is offers to help her with her crying baby🥺

"Guess I'm Just Good With Them"

PAIRINGS: James "Bucky" Barnes x SingleMom!Reader

WARNINGS: Bucky being good with babies.

WORD COUNT: 867

*not proof-read*

ENJOY!

"Leila, honey. I know, but- Shh, shh," you pull your cart over to sit next to the toy aisle as you bounce your, now wailing, one-year-old girl on your arm.

"My love, I know, I know. But we gotta keep quiet," you wince as you feel the glares of the other ongoing shoppers on you and your child.

Being a single mom has its ups and downs, the ups are the highlights of your life. Witnessing the mini-you walk for the first time, saying "mama" for the first time, seeing her give you that gummy smile you love so much.

The others aren't your defining lows, but they hover in that range. The late nights, the screams, the tantrums, the picky eating. You had to do it yourself because your ass of an ex left you immediately when you said that you were pregnant.

"Leila, baby. Mama doesn't know what you want, honey," you have tried everything, but your girl wouldn't calm down to anything and nothing works. Your anxiety just increases as the number of glares doesn't stop rising.

You're on the verge of tears when suddenly you feel a tap on your shoulder.

"Ma'am, do you need some help?" a rough voice says behind you.

You turn and see this big, broad man with this sheepish look on his face, and the bluest eyes.

"I- uh," you stutter unsure what to do, you can't randomly dump your baby on some random stranger.

He shifts his weight from side to side, looking at your baby with a small smile. Leila whines harder and it slightly pierces your ears, you cringe and bounce her quicker than before.

The man picks out a Piglet stuffed animal from the toy aisle and shakes it in front of Leila. Her wail quiets down, and she reaches for the stuffed cartoon character.

Soon, it's just her flushed puffy face and dried tears on her cheeks as she holds the toy close.

"I-oh my god, thank you," you tell the stranger, he gives a tight-lipped smile and nods at your words.

"I can hold on to her and follow you around, while you do your shopping," he suggests, and you hesitate slightly but give in eventually knowing that this won't go anywhere if you don't take action now.

You hand Leila to the man, and he softly coos at the little girl. Leila seems fascinated by his gold and dark green metal arm.

"What's her name?" he asks, looking at you. "Oh uh, Leila," you say, pulling your cart closer to you. "And your's?" You blink at his question, before offering your with a timid voice.

"I'm James," he smiles softly.

-----

You finally paid for everything in your cart, and the tension in your shoulders seems to ease at the idea of you finally being able to get home.

Putting everything in the trunk of your car was easily done, with the weight of your child in James' arms.

Turning back to James, you see Leila still holding the stuffed Piglet.

"Leila, no, we didn't pay for that," you try to reach for the toy, but your stubborn little girl refuses to budge.

James chuckles, and he shakes his head, "it's alright, I paid for it. She can have it."

You're silent.

You're gobsmacked.

Did this man, this random stranger buy your child a toy?

That's more than your ex ever did.

"I-huh?-wha- James, you didn't have to do that," you quickly reach for your wallet, adamant about paying him back.

He grabs your wrist with one hand, his metal one carrying a tired Leila, "really, you don't have to."

You sigh and smile tiredly at him.

Sometimes, you underestimate the kindness of strangers. And as a single mom, you really are grateful for anything that comes your way.

You take Leila back into your arms and she's whipped. She immediately finds comfort in your arms and closes her eyes.

"Well, I guess we should get going."

Why did you say it like that?

Why did you say it like you didn't want to leave yet?

Like you didn't want to leave him yet.

You can see a sadness flash through James's face as he nods slowly, "yes, guess I should go too."

You both nod but remain standing at the Walmart parking lot.

"I should really go," you nod your head over your shoulder.

He nods as well.

As you turn to leave, he calls out your name.

"Is there a chance that I could grab your number?" He scratches the back of his neck. "I would like to see you and Leila again."

You blush at his words.

He wants to see you again?

You nod slightly and type your number into his flip-phone, you laughed when he first pulled it out.

You chuckle unable to wrap your mind around the idea of this gorgeous man wanting to ask for your number, "I still don't have a clue on how you managed to get her to quiet down back in there."

He laughs lightly and saves your name with a small heart next to it, you don't have to know that he did that. "Guess I'm just good with them."

💌💌💌

ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS PROMPT, BABES!!!

Bucky + children = me being super horny

I just wanna have a life, where this man is really 😩😩

Till' then

Stay Coquette-y,

Anya 🫶🏽🕊️🎀