#i have braces so im every two to three months

[do-angels-dream-of-starry-seas]

Op I feel a fear for you I have never known

[ysljoon]

Love Maze-Chapter 1

pairing: single dad!simon 'ghost' riley x live-nanny!reader wc: 1.8k warnings: slow burn-ish, unexpected pregnancy, abandonement, swearing, afab!reader a/n: trying to do a chaptered fic after so long my god pray for me yall but im really excited i hope yall enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it MINORS DNI (have your age in your bio or you're getting blocked) >next chpt.

Simon stared down at his baby girl with unreadable emotions swimming around his pupils. He loves his daughter with every fiber of his being and would do anything for her. Although she came into this world unexpectedly at a time when Simon was unprepared to be a dad and the mother left as soon as he was born into this world he stepped up for her. All Simon wanted that night was a night to relieve some tension after a particularly hard mission with any broad that was willing to look past the mask and just make him feel good. He didn’t expect her to be at his doorstep two months later with mascara-tinted tears rolling down her cheeks with a pregnancy test in her hands. She was blubbering about a missed period, not being ready for a baby, and cursing her birth control for not being more reliable, but Simon’s ears were ringing and his chest felt tight just from the sight of the pregnancy test. He had to brace himself against the frame of the door to keep himself steady. He needed to stay composed for this poor girl.

He invited her in and they sat over a cup of tea to devise a game plan on how to go about this pregnancy. Simon had half a mind to just tell her to get rid of it and as those words almost rolled off his tongue he heard her utter the words of wanting to keep it as she was already attached, Simon scoffed at that notion, but at the end of the day, he couldn’t tell her what she can and cannot do with her body. Simon’s heart was racing when she started to get ahead of herself talking about the color of the nursery how they should go about the gender reveal and if it should be a big party or a private affair. Simon felt like that was enough for one day and politely ushered her out gave her his phone number and told her they would be in contact.

Simon did try to keep in contact, but two weeks after that meeting he got called on a mission that would send him abroad for over three months. He had a strict rule that he left his phone behind while he went on operations to not be tracked. He knew it was shitty to do after being aware of the knowledge that he has a child on the way, but he favored the thought that the girl would just leave him alone and he would be free of all responsibility for the child.

That was not the case when he came back, to say the least. When he turned his phone back on after his arrival back home he saw 50 missed calls and hundreds of texts from his fling. At first, they started with concern as to why he was not answering and the texts slowly descended into angry texts filled with swears about how awful he is for abandoning a pregnant woman and the child. The last text made his blood run cold.

Since you want to abandon me I can do the same to you.

He stared at it trying to figure out the full meaning behind the cryptic sentence and there were many ways it could be spun. He frantically called her and bounced his leg trying to steel his nerves as the call rang out. On the second to last ring, she finally picked up.

“Nice of you to finally get around to answering my calls.” Simon gritted his teeth.

“I need to know what that last text meant.” She scoffed hearing his words. “It meant exactly what it meant Simon,” The venom in her voice seeped through the speaker of the phone and it was palpable. “Once I have this baby it’s all yours I’m not dealing with an absent baby daddy. I’ve done all the hard work anyways while you were out fucking off to go do whatever it is. Oh right, I don’t even know what it is you do because it’s all classified.” Simon had to roll her eyes at the tantrum she was expressing over his absence. “Can you be fuckin’ rational? We’re not doing that shit.” He was losing his patience as the call went on, but the girl just laughed at his response. “You don’t get to decide when you pick and choose to be a father so I’m deciding for you. I’m done with all of it! You’ve left me here with no support and I’m not going to live like that for the rest of the kid’s life. Oh, and it’s a girl by the way.” And with that, the call ended without Simon being able to get a final word in. In a fit of anger, he threw his phone down on his hardwood floor causing the glass screen to crack, but it was still usable.

The day he was there at the hospital for her baby girl’s birth was a day that will forever be ingrained into his memory. The feeling of holding such a fragile and small human overwhelmed him to no end. When signing the birth certificate he decided to name her Ella. He felt like it matched her perfectly. When he got home and placed her sleeping form into her crib he sat on the couch and took in everything that had taken place. It was now just Simon and Ella and he wasn’t mad about that, but he also realized he couldn’t do this alone and that’s what terrified him. He wasn’t ready to let the task force know about his daughter.

Simon spent the whole night occupied with making a job listing for a live-in nanny. He felt like that was the best option for him to go about his life as normal without worrying about his child at all hours of the day. Once it was posted he rolled on his side and just stared at Ella sleeping peacefully in her crib. He rolled it closer to the bed and closed his eyes hoping to get an hour or two of rest.

You were up late at night straining your eyes against the bright screen of your laptop busy searching for a new job. You had been out of a job for almost three weeks now and your savings were depleting faster than you expected. You had loved being in childcare, but the last daycare center you had worked at was just not the right fit for you. The coworkers were toxic and you could tell management wasn’t in the best interest of the children, but to ensure that administration had their pockets lined with cash. It had burnt you out to be in an environment and you needed a change of scenery. You refreshed the job listing website you browsed hoping a new job listing would miraculously pop up. Your prayers were answered when you saw the new listing pop up of being a live-in nanny for a newborn. You fervently submitted your resume and went to bed wishing you would get a fast response because this job sounded like everything you needed such as a great wage and a place to live. After all, the rent at your current was unsustainable for the salary you were receiving for your past job, and living paycheck to paycheck was draining.

You woke up at noon and were delighted to see a notification from the poster of the job listing wanting to arrange an interview for the position. He gave you his availability and you realized he was available today for an interview. You hastily agreed to meet with him at 3 p.m. to discuss. You frantically searched your closet for your best professional attire and you printed out a copy of your resume just in case. As you got ready nerves started to build up in your stomach. You needed this position and you didn’t need any unfavorable first impressions to ruin this opportunity for you.

The GPS leads you to quite a large and cozy home. You triple-checked the address to make sure you were at the right home before knocking on the door. You rapped your hand thrice against the door and occupied observing your surroundings so as to not look too nervous. The door creaked on its hinges as it opened and you were greeted by a burly man that towered over your frame and had half of his face covered by a mask. You didn’t expect it but still greeted him with a bright smile and a handshake. He stood to the side to allow you in and you followed him into his living room which had a large black leather couch, a fireplace, and a wall-mounted TV. The home was very minimally decorated, but you could still tell that this man was in a different tax bracket from you. He grunted as he sat down and you tried not to make too intense eye contact as you waited for him to begin the interview.

“To preface, my name is Simon and my daughter’s name is Ella. I work in the military and the line of work that I’m in specifically requires me to be gone for weeks to months at a time and that’s why I need a live-in nanny. I already looked over your resume and you seem to be very experienced in childcare which is a great sign. You would be given the wage that was listed in the job description as well as a weekly grocery allowance. You are allowed to pretty much do whatever you want around here to make yourself feel at home. The one thing I will not allow is strangers to be over. I prioritize my daughter’s safety over anything in this world and if you do anything to jeopardize that I will deal with that and that’s one thing you don’t want me to do.”

You took in all his words and this wasn’t even an interview it had already sounded like you had the job. “Do you understand? If you agree to this position we can get to signing your employment contract and you can start Monday so you have the weekend to pack up your belongings.”. “I understand fully sir.” “Drop the sir, we're not doing that here. You can call me Simon or Mr. Riley.” You nodded at that and he stood up from the couch and went over to the dining table where a thin stack of papers was. He brought them over a pen and slid them across the coffee table for you to look over. They essentially reiterated all the rules and expectations of the job and you signed and initialed wherever it was necessary. You handed him back the papers and he gave them a quick glance to ensure it was completed. He nodded and then stood up to help escort you out of his home. You gave him a quick handshake as your goodbye and went along your way. You could practically be skipping to your car with how excited you are to be starting this new chapter in your life and career.

[blackswan446]

worth it. - five

→ pairing: yan!knj x reader

→ wc: 2657

→ cws: drugging, scars, mentions of murder/body disposal

→ notes: i procrastinated this so long and i don't even like it but i just want to get it done 🫠🫠 guyssss im so sorry this story was not planned out in the slightest and i feel like it's so boring and lame and run-of-the-mill but i hope you guys enjoy anyways! truly sorry for publishing this bullcrap but look out for more (and better) work in the future. <3 oh and also if you somehow enjoyed this pls like reblog and comment because it makes my dayyyy!! okay love ya enjoy

--

for the first time in days, you finally felt peace.

when you were shut up in your room, rotting in your bed, jumping at every slam of a car door, and falling farther and farther into the murky depths of your own anxiety, jiwon had tried to make you leave. everyday, he'd sit outside your bedroom, and plead for you to get some fresh air with him, to go for a walk, or to just sit outside in the sunshine.

every day, he'd show up, and beseech you, and stay outside your room, and every day, you'd ignore him. it was starting to become more of an expectation than a chance, that was, until he came back with a new proposal.

one day, after many long days of jiwon's lone voice echoing off the walls of your house and being met with silence, he came to the door with a suggestion that piqued your interest. "what if namjoon went out with us? he said he wouldn't mind. maybe you'd feel better being around more people."

on one hand, you didn't really want to go out yet, you were still too shaken up by the incident to even stomach the thought of facing other people. on the other hand, you felt kind of...obligated. namjoon was offering his free time to hang out with a kid he's only known for a month and his hideaway sister. who would want to do that? he probably just felt bad, you thought. he probably felt like he had to do it. yet when jiwon assured you that it was his idea, and his idea alone, it only set in stone the compulsion you felt towards the whole scheme.

so, you agreed, albeit very reluctantly. it was only when the three of you planned out where to go, and you saw the genuine expression on namjoon's face, did you start looking forward to it. the more you thought about it, the more you realized just how kind he was. he always made a point to ask about your day, and listen to your thoughts, and he even brought over some cookies he made himself, because "you're going through a hard time and you deserve them"(although you couldn't eat them, because you were allergic to the ingredients, it's the thought that counts!)

all was well, until the day of your long-awaited outing, when you woke up to a feverish jiwon, plagued by what seemed to be some sort of food poisoning. "don't worry about me, [name]," he shouted from inside the bathroom, "i still want you to go out. you'll still have fun, i promise." the sounds of him vomiting followed shortly after, and you found yourself sitting on your bed and staring at the wall mindlessly, wondering if you should even go. would namjoon still want to go if it were just the two of you? should you cancel? would he cancel first?

grabbing your phone and biting your nails anxiously, you searched for the contact you had saved as 'namjoon', and took a deep breathing before hitting the 'call' button. putting the phone up to your ear, he picked up surprisingly fast, the phone not even ringing a full time.

"hello?" he said, voice calm and casual.

"hey, so, i have some bad news. jiwon's really sick right now, and he won't be able to go today." you said sadly, bracing yourself for him to call off the plans.

"oh, that sucks. but we can still go, can't we?" he asked, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

surprised, and with excitement running through your veins, you searched for a response. "i..uh, yeah. yes, we can. are you sure you don't mind?"

he chuckled fondly, his deep voice ringing in your ears. "do i mind? i should be asking you that!" all you could do was laugh in response, his willingness to go regardless of the situation still slightly shocking you. "of course i don't mind, silly. trust me, i'm more than happy to go with you, as long as you don't mind either."

you smiled at his eagerness and good attitude. "alright, that sounds good. see you later, then." you concluded, body flooding with relief and a spark of excitement burning in your stomach.

--

all of those events led to now, where you were sitting comfortably on a dock overlooking the inky waters of the ocean, legs dangling off the side and namjoon right next to you. the day was just great, and was nowhere near as awkward as you were anticipating it to be. you started off with checking out some dusty antique shops and second-hand clothing stores, then you grabbed lunch at your favorite place to eat before going to see a new movie that had released last week, and wound down by grabbing some ice cream and heading to relax by the beach. all the while, namjoon was right there, being an absolute gentleman. he didn't complain about anything, didn't let you carry your own bags or open your own door, and didn't let the conversation die down and become bland. all in all, it was the textbook definition of a perfect day.

as for namjoon, he had been on cloud nine since the second he woke up. everything had went just perfectly. everything from his scheme with the cookies (which had effectively kept your brother out of the way - who knew using expired ingredients would work so well!), to the conversations, even the weather, was flawless. and as the day drew to a close, and the sun sank below the horizon and was replaced by it's mysterious counterpart, he knew that you thought the same thing. which is why he felt so confident moving onto the final - and best - part of the day.

letting out a sigh, and turning to look at your relaxed figure, namjoon set out in his mind what he was going to say. "today was..the best day i've had in years. you're a special person, [name]; you're like nobody i've ever met before." his words made your heart race, and you glanced down at the clapping waves below your shoes.

"it was amazing. i can't thank you enough, for everything. i needed this day." you blushed, mind replaying the day over in your head like a romance movie. "i..." he started, stopping as if he were carefully considering his next words, "sorry, i've never really said anything like this before. it's just..." he continued shyly, "you are - i think - you're the type of person i'd like to spend forever with."

at this point, your heart was racing, and the butterflies in your stomach had turned to full-on pigeons, flapping around violently. your eyes met his, and before you could respond, he took his hand in yours gently and kept talking. "come on, [name], think about it. think about everything that happened today. wasn't it amazing? just think. that could be our future. every day, spent together, just like this. doesn't it sound beautiful?" he explained, the look in his eyes falling somewhere between enamored and desperate.

taking a minute to consider your response, namjoon watched you the whole time, his...loving...gaze not faltering for a second. "namjoon, i...i definitely think there's something here, a connection, or something. but we've only hung out alone once. shouldn't we give it more time?" you suggested, eyes downcast and looking at your hand wrapped in his.

this part wasn't in his script. it wasn't part of the narrative he had set in his head for this. no, this was the part where you'd agree, and then he'd take you away from this shitty little town, and you'd live happily ever after. just what went wrong?

namjoon chuckled, a weird look of relief coming across the place. "oh, princess, you don't get it, do you?" he said fondly, heart swelling at your confused face. "that's my fault. i should have been more clear with you. let me try again." he said, shifting to have both his hands on your shoulders, holding you with a grip as strong as iron.

"i. love you. okay? i love you, more than i've loved anything before and more than i'll love anything else, ever. alright? do you understand now?" he laughed. your brows knitted together at his erratic behavior and random profession of love. you shook your head. "no, you don't love me, namjoon. not yet, you don't. we haven't known each other for long enough..."

he scoffed, like the words you were saying were nothing but bitter, poisonous lies. "i don't love you? that's a ridiculous thing to say, darling, of course i love you! if i didn't love you, do you think i'd do this?" he said as he released the grip on your shoulders. if only you had listened to the voice that told you to run while you could.

he yanked at the long sleeve of his black jacket, pulling the cuff to his elbow and bringing his shirt sleeve with it. "this hurt like a bitch, [name], but for you, i'd go through hell and back." he sighed, before turning his exposed wrist to you. and on there, marking his clear skin, were the letters of your initials, scarred on his flesh like a carving made into a wooden table. he smiled as he showed you the mangled letters; he smiled sickly, like he was proud of what he did.

the air was sucked out of your lungs, the glow of moonlight on the water blurring as your head started to spin. a wave of nausea hit your body, and everything in your stomach threatened to come right back up in that moment. "do you believe me now? because if you don't there's something else i want to tell you." he prodded, picking up your chin and roughly turning your head to look at him. "you want to know, don't you? i know you do, i know it'll nag you, and eat away at your brain if you don't." he smirked, the sick smile still plastered on his face.

"don't worry, darling, i'll tell you anyways. i'll still tell you, because i love you." he said, releasing the grip from your jaw and moving his head close to your ear, so the sinner could confess his wrongdoings under the cover of a whisper.

"i killed daekwan, and i fucking loved it."

he leaned back from your ear and smiled proudly. "and i'm going to tell you all about it, alright? don't you want to know how i did it? don't worry, sweetheart, i'll tell you. just look at me, okay?" he said, pushing your chin up to force his maniacal gaze onto your own terrified one.

"so first, i knocked him out, with a big brick to the head. then i dragged him into this alley, right? a creepy old alley where nobody else would dare to go - look at me, baby - and i just went at him with a huge bat, and i'll spare you the gory details, but he looked more like a piece of meat than a human being when i was done with h-look at me. i'm trying to tell you something. and then, alright, i threw him in a big bucket with a bunch of chemicals, and watched him fizzle away into a big bunch of nothing, and then-fuck, look at me. pay attention. then i dumped him out." he paused, waiting to see if you would ask the question, not just any question, but the question he knew was banging on the walls of your brain, screaming to be let out. when you responded with nothing but a scared stare into the water, he knew he had to make it easier for you.

"you want to know where he is?" he finally finished, asking the question like an excited child asks about the whereabouts of a mystical creature. his deep brown eyes still searched for your own, and no matter how many times you tried to look away from the acidic burn of his gaze, the chill that ran down your spine whenever he commanded you to look at him was enough to make you tremble in fear and meet his eyes once again, even if it were only for a minute.

"he's right in front of us."

the words took a minute to process, the meaning behind his cryptic confession not reaching your brain right away. the truth, when it finally hit you, did so like a ton of bricks. clasping your hand over your mouth in shock, the tears that were brimming in your eyes fell heavily and continuously, matching the stormy waves of emotions crashing through your body.

curling up into a closed up form; knees to your chest, arms resting on top of them and head buried in your elbows, you felt his arms wrap around your crying figure. you swatted him away, shouting some variation of "don't touch me". you saw out of the corner of your eye how his arms reeled back gently, resting awkwardly on the dock. one of his hands reached slowly into his left coat pocket.

he sighed. "[name], listen to me. i know you're scared, and surprised, and upset, and i get it. but i did it for a reason, hm? you get that? i did it because i love you. everything i do, is because i love you. you need to understand that. as soon as you do, you won't be afraid anymore. i promise." he explained softly, contrasting sharply with the psychotic and unhinged tone he took earlier when describing his heinous actions.

"i'm telling you this-" he said, swiftly looping his free arm around your shoulder with a tight grasp-too tight for you to break free from, "because what's about to happen probably won't help your nerves. so just stay nice and calm for me, alright? nice and still. i won't hurt you, sweetheart."

with that, namjoon pulled your trembling figure close to him and turned you to lean against his chest, his brawny frame partially shielding your tear-stained face from the sudden chill in the wind. he removed his other hand from the depths of his pocket, only now, it was holding something. a flash of white caught your eye-which only sent you further into your panic.

namjoon stilled your shaky arms and shoulders by moving his hand from its spot on your arm to around the front of your shoulders, pressing you further into his chest. by now, garish sobs were escaping from your lips; what a shame there was nobody else there to hear them. to see you, and swoop in like a superhero.

too bad.

"you're going to have to be quiet, princess, alright? sooner or later someone's going to hear you. besides, the crying won't get you anywhere. your fate was sealed the moment that blade hit my arm." he warned, his tone of voice doing more than enough to tell you that he wasn't amused or affected by your cries.

"i'm going to give you something now, and you're going to get really tired, alright? don't be scared, darling. you're just going to go to sleep for a little while. you'll wake up, and everything will be alright. remember, i'm doing this because i love you. got that?"

before you could flail your arms, or kick your feet, or make any (futile) attempt to wriggle out of his suffocating grip, you saw a familiar flash of white, and felt yourself inhale a sweet-smelling odor that sent a chill through your veins. as the grip on this reality nightmare you found yourself in, the last thing you saw, through blurry vision and a dark night sky, was the face of your unrequited lover, the one whose vines wrapped around the stone walls of your tower, and before you could stop it, fully consumed it, blocking out the windows and locking the door.

--

taglist: @teugiie

[muslim-flint]

singing it to urself hits different fr. healing the inner child and everything

[unicyclehippo]

Hey, if you still want imodna prompts, raise and/or arise? Love your work (especially he most recent ones)!

forgive me, brain broken, im just gonna do a couple real quick things as fast as i can

//

‘do you think we should talk to her about it?’

orym, of course. ever cautious, ever sensible. it’s not a word she used to think synonymous with kind but it is now. it’s sensible to make sure everyone is safe and warm. it’s sensible to protect your friends with your body, if you’re faster, tougher. it’s sensible to make sure they are alright. imogen doesn’t think these things have much to do with sense but orym does; his mind is built so thoroughly on duty and care that kindness is as sensible to him as making sure his sandals are nice and snug.

‘about what?’

‘what she went through. what we went through to get her. literally. imogen, we went through her mind. or her memories, maybe? and—‘ he sighs. ‘i knew most of it already and she told me some, but i don’t think she’d told the others much about it. about what happened to her. she’s private. as - as eye-catching as she is,’ he says with a curl of a grin, ‘she’s private about things that hurt.’

‘i know that.’ imogen doesn’t mean for it to come out sharp but it does. the words have a heat to them because of course she knows. orym has travelled with laudna for all of a month; she’s been with her for two years. of course she knows. tempering her tone, imogen says, ‘i know. but she hasn’t brought it up and i get the impression she wants to forget about it. and unless she tells me otherwise, i’m gonna follow her lead. about all of this.’

orym frowns but nods. ‘i won’t bring it up.’ he adds, with a stubborn set to his chin and thoughts, ‘i still think you should.’

‘orym-‘

‘when it comes to laudna, you’re different. she’ll talk to you,’ he insists.

‘it has to be her choice.’

‘then give her that choice.‘ he takes a breath. braces himself. ‘now isn’t the time to be a coward, imogen temult.’

for a second after he says that, all she can hear is the roll and crash of thunder in her ears; when it dies down, when she lets her breath out nice and slow, she realises it was her own angry pulse and lets it fade and fade, opens her hands out of the fists they’ve formed at her sides. she turns on her heel and storms away. it’s tempting to glare at him but from the way her eyes feel hot and dry, they might have been without a halfling if she had. better to walk away.

she goes to laudna. of course she does. orym’s question, suggestion, prodding aside, imogen is always wanting to go to laudna. it’s been three days and she’s mostly recovered—physically, at least—but laudna seems to be dealing with it far better than imogen.

each morning, grief loops around her neck, her throat, and only eases up its strangling hold when imogen lays her eyes and hands on laudna. each moment of the day, she’s looking for her. she wants to slip into whatever space delilah hollowed out in laudna’s mind and fill it, leave a portion of her mind tucked away inside of laudna’s, always. it’s sick and wrong and awful. and yet, imogen wants it so badly. feels the want physically, nearly drooling with it, tongue to teeth, hands clenching tight to her skirt to keep from reaching out and taking.

there had been a moment, the day after laudna was raised, when they had been alone and imogen had woken to a cold, still body. terror dropped her walls and she had plunged into laudna’s mind. like diving off the cliffs into a cold lake. she wants to be there always, in the cold and dark and strange stagnant waters. wants to take laudna’s mind into her, open her mouth and drink it, fill her lungs with it. wants to know laudna inside and out—wants to take her apart, set her memories out, chronological, beside scarred skin and bones to look for fractures and breaks, beside organs, blood, gristle and guts, beside whatever form her magic would take. wants to know it all like these physical things might contain every secret every moment of laudna.

she had left laudna’s mind in an instant. hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t looked for anything. she wants to return, always. to her side, to her mind.

so she does.

‘hello!’ laudna smiles brightly when she enters the room. she’s perched on the edge of the bed, packing everything away neatly as she always does. ‘is it time to go?’

the walk has eased most of her fury. a few lavender sparks crackle at the ends of her fingers, in her curling hair. she wills it to stop, and smiles back.

‘no. take your time. i just—‘ she touches her head.

laudna coos, sympathetic. ‘too much?’

‘mm.’

‘sit, sit, let me get you some water.’

not all her irritation has left; it comes out, makes laudna’s name harsh when she goes to stop her from standing.

‘just—you don’t have to do that,’ imogen hurries to say. ‘i should be taking care of you, not the other way ‘round.’

laudna blinks big, black eyes. quietly, she says, ‘i just want you to be alright.’

‘i know.’ imogen steps deeper into the room, and then makes up her mind—damn orym—and crosses it entirely, sitting beside laudna on the bed. ‘it’s important that you rest, though.’

‘y-es, of course,’ laudna demurs, lowers her head.

imogen tucks a finger under it. lifts it, with a smile. ‘hey,’ she whispers. ‘please? let me take care of you?’

‘imogen-‘

‘please.’

‘of course i do, i will,’ she says, and fritters with her skirts, fingers crooked tangling when imogen only looks at her, pleading, waiting for her to mean it entirely. for as long as it might take. ‘such a rotten task, caring for someone like me,’ laudna whispers. ‘dead twice over.’

imogen shakes her head, a tight sharp movement. hardly enough to convey how much she disagrees with that. she’d like to explode everything around them to show the force of her denial.

‘no. no. it’s not, not to me. it’s -‘ she swallows. ‘everything. please, let me.’

laudna nods slowly. holds her hands out for imogen, who takes them. rubs sore knuckles. presses a kiss to those aching joints.

‘i’d like to talk to you about it. at some point. whenever you like. i want - to do it right. and i don’t know what that is. but i want—‘ she shakes her head again. ‘however you feel about it, i want to hear it and know. and help. i should’ve told you that when you - when you woke up. sorry,’ she adds, a little awkwardly.

it’s hard to talk, she finds, when she’s holding laudna and her heart both in her hands.

[watchmegetobsessed]

ASMR

a/n: so im not saying that this is based on anything from the real life.... pls don’tcome after me lmao but i just HAD TO write this, the urge was too hard.

pairing: Harry X pregnant!Reader

warning: smut, kinda breeding kink? idk

word count: 2.5k

masterlist

You thought you were ready for anything and everything about pregnancy. You’ve been bracing yourself for these months years prior, watching videos, reading all the books, learning all the information you need to know about growing a baby inside your body. There shouldn’t have been any surprises about it, but yet your body can still make you go: “Oh, wow. I was not expecting that.”

You’re only nearing the end of your first trimester, the bump is small, not many people know about the news that you and Harry are gonna be parents, but during these three short months, so much has happened. It started with the morning sickness, you threw up every morning clockwise at around six am, as if your body had an alarm in it that screamed at you to put out everything you had in your stomach. Harry was by your side the moment your knees hit the cold tile and you leaned above the toilet, delicate hands brushing your hair out of your face as he gently soothed you, brought you water and a wash cloth.

Then you started to get nauseous at the weirdest smells, like strawberries, honey and then coffee. You couldn’t be in the same room as these things, because the moment you smelled them you were gagging with no control. Harry made sure none of those could be found at your home from that day on and you felt terrible for making him stop drinking coffee, but he didn’t even want to hear about your apologies.

“It’s the least I can do for you, baby,” he smiled, kissing your forehead before simply moving on.

The cravings came hand in hand with the smells, you’ve been eating impossible meals, like pickles with whipped cream or cheese with mustard. There was a new craving every other day and Harry was always ready to run to the grocery store to get whatever his pregnant wife desired.

Your libido has increased as well, but it wasn’t as major as the other symptoms. The two of you were already going at it quite often, a few more morning and shower sex times didn’t change much in your every days. But right when you thought it wouldn’t get weird like your other symptoms, the most ridiculous thing happens.

It’s a lazy Saturday, Harry is in his study, going over some paperwork he has to sign over the weekend as you’re lounging on the couch in the living room, scrolling on your phone. One dancing video after the other, some celebrity exposing, it’s all the same until one particular video pops up on your feed. It’s an ASMR video where a girl does makeup with her long nails, the clicking of her nails on the product captured perfectly by the microphone as well as every other tiny little sound.

You were never really that into ASMR, though you’ve seen a few nice videos before. But this one. This particular video just tickles your senses and nerves in the most unexpected but blissful way that for a few moments you forget to even breathe. You have no idea what it is, the sounds, her comments or whatever, but you can’t stop watching it over and over again, your whole body buzzing from the experience and before you could even realize what’s happening… you’re turned on.

A fucking ASMR video turned you on, how is that possible? No idea, but it happened and when you finally snap out of your daze, you can barely control yourself as you’re practically throbbing. Throwing your phone to the cushion you rush to the study to see what Harry is doing and if he is willing to take a little break to… help you out with your problem. When you walk in, he is still sitting at his desk, his hair is a dazzled mess as he has been probably running his fingers through it continuously, he is wearing an old t-shirt and some workout pants, a stubble showing on his handsome face since he hasn’t shaved this week.

“H?” you ask, voice as tiny as a mouse’s.

“Mm?” he hums, his eyes staying on the paper in front of him. You bite into your lip and walk further inside.

“Harry?” you speak up again and this time his eyes move up to you, taking in your frame in front of him.

“What? Everything alright?” he questions, his eyes scanning over your body, looking for anything odd, but there’s nothing. Except your painful desire to get fucked as soon as possible.

“Yeah, um… are you busy?” you ask awkwardly, finding the situation almost comical. Barging in on your husband while he is working because you can’t keep your legs shut, what is happening to your hormones?!

“Depends on. What’s going on?” he asks, pushing himself back from the desk as you walk closer. He turns himself with the chair so he is facing you when you walk up to him. Chewing on your bottom lip you’re trying to find a way to ask him if he is up for a quick shag, but everything sounds so ridiculous in your head so you just go for it.

Squeezing yourself onto his lap in his chair you straddle him, lips attacking his and you definitely catch him by surprise with your hungry, demanding kiss and it takes him a moment to actually return it, his arms wrapping around you securely as he kisses you back, though you can feel his hesitation. You grind yourself on him, hoping to get him hard as fast as possible and the low grunt that slips through his lips tells you that you’re doing it right. Your hands tug on his locks, then move down across his chest until you reach his waist, fingers hooking into the elastic of his shorts, but right before you could take it further, he pulls back.

“Wait, wait, hold on for a second. What’s—What happened?” he asks, eyes narrowing at you with concern.

“Nothing,” you answer innocently, a little out of breath from kissing him so hard. “Just want you,” you simply reply before going in for another kiss, but your lips barely touch his when he pulls back again.

“Nothing? I walked past you in the living room twenty minutes ago and you didn’t even acknowledge me, now you’re basically jumping at me?!”

“Do you not want to have sex now?” you ask, furrowing your eyebrows.

“Baby, you know I always want to have sex,” he chuckles, tugging your hair behind your ear as he softly stares back at you. “But I’m curious what got you so horny all of a sudden.”

“I just… saw something online,” you mumble, feeling ashamed to even talk about it, so your gaze is avoiding to meet his, even though he is trying hard to break that.

“What exactly did you see?” he asks and you can see the smirk from the corner of your eyes. You don’t answer, just roll your lips into your mouth while Harry’s fingers dance around your waist to your stomach, gently caressing your little bump. He’s been obsessed with your pregnancy, in all means, and ever since you’ve started showing, he can’t stop touching and kissing your stomach whenever he has the chance. Not that you mind it.

Your lack of answer just makes his imagination go wild and true to himself, he thinks of the dirtiest case scenario.

“Baby, did you just watch porn?” he gasp dramatically, your eyes popping wide as you smack his chest.

“I did not! Why would I? I don’t need porn when we are going at it like… fucking rabbits,” you huff, making him chuckle. He can’t deny that.

“Then what was it? Tell me!”

“You’re gonna make a joke out of it,” you mumble under your breath.

“I promise I won’t. Just want to know what turns you on for future occasions when I want to get you into the mood,” he smirks shamelessly as you roll your eyes at him.

“Alright, but you can’t bring it up, ever,” you warn him.

“Gotcha.”

“I’m serious, H. I don’t want to hear you tease me about it later!”

“Okay, okay! I promise!” he nods eagerly, but you can see the tiny smirk tugging on the corners of his mouth.

“It was… It was an ASMR video,” you admit with a sigh.

“An ASMR video?”

“Yeah, you know, the one with the satisfying sounds and all.”

“I know what ASMR is, baby, I was just… not expecting this,” he chuckles softly and you can already feel your cheeks heating up.

“See? I told you! You’re already laughing at it!” you whine, pushing yourself up from his lap, the mood kind of ruined, but Harry is quick to jump to his feet, pulling you back before you could walk away.

“Hey, hey, hey. I’m sorry, I’m not making a joke out of it, I promise! Come back ‘ere,” he murmurs as he pulls you against his chest. His hand cups your jaw, lifting your head to make you look into his eyes. “I’m just genuinely surprised that’s what got you so turned on, that’s it.”

“I know, it’s weird! I don’t even understand!” you whine, feeling yourself growing frustrated with the way your body works these days. “It’s so stupid, I feel like such a creep,” you sigh, but Harry is quick to jump in.

“None of that, baby. You’re going through a lot, your body is just trying to adapt to the changes and you’re doing wonderful. Pregnancy is a lot to handle and if that means that you… get turned on by an ASMR video… then I’m going to help you with that.”

“What?” you ask, surprised how supportive he is.

“Don’t be so surprised, I would be a horrible husband if I didn’t please my pregnant wife, wouldn’t I?” he smirks, before pulling you in for a kiss, his lips melting against yours as you press yourself up against him. The mood is quickly restored, especially when he starts pulling you towards the sofa that he has next to his floor to ceiling bookcase.

He tugs you with himself as he sits down, getting the two of you back into a similar position you were before as you straddle him, kisses growing deeper and hungrier while his hands bunch your shirt on your waist until he takes a handful of it and pulls it over your head. He starts kissing down your neck and shoulder, biting and nibbling on the freshly exposed skin while he easily snaps your bra open and gets rid of it. You can’t stop yourself from grinding on him again, another grunt coming from his lips against your heated skin as you rid him of his shirt, your chest pressing against his naked skin, the feeling of his body against yours truly heavenly. When you reach down and into his pants, palming his erection he smirks against your shoulder, and leaning back his green irises meet your hungry gaze.

“So eager for me, huh? Want me to fuck you good, baby?”

“Yes, please!” you beg shamelessly, knowing well how much he loves it.

“I’m always happy to fuck my pretty wife,” he grunts as he wraps his arms around your frame so he can change your position, throwing you down onto the sofa while he holds himself up above you. Your legs wrap around his waist and your crotch meets his, both of you whimpering from the feeling.

“I need you, Harry! Please!” you whine and he is quick to push your bottoms down along with his, freeing his hard cock which is not pressed up against your core, sliding between your dripping wet lips.

“You want me to fuck you? Like when I put our baby inside you? Huh?” he growls as he grabs the base of his cock, guiding the tip up and down your slides, edging your nerves like he always does.

“Yes, need you to fuck me!”

“Don’t worry, I got you,” he replies and with one swift movement, he pushes inside you, filling you up just perfectly, both of you gasping at the feeling. “Fuck, Y/N! You feel so good! Always so good!”

“Move!” you beg, your fingers digging into his back muscles and he is quick to obey, his hips drawing back before thrusting forwards, over and over again as he fucks you just right.

You turn into a whimpering mess underneath him as he fucks you hard, just the way you like it. He knows what angles are the best and how he can make you cum the hardest, he knows your body like the back of his own hand and he always makes sure to use his knowledge.

“Fuck, I can feel you squeezing around me, baby. You getting close?” he pants, never falling out of his rhythm.

“Yes! Please don’t stop!”

“Never. I’m gonna fill you up, baby, make you feel so good,” he growls, his lips finding yours again in a messy kiss.

You’re getting close to your release, to what you’ve been seeking all along and you tighten your hold around him in every sense. Harry moans when you squeeze your walls around his cock, his thrust becoming longer and more forceful so you know he is close too.

“Come on, cum for me. Cum for your husband, love!” he urges and you start gasping for air, your eyes shutting closed as you finally feel the pleasure washing over your body in waves.

Harry tries to drag it out for as long as possible, keeps thrusting as he comes as well, filling you up just how he promised you.

Coming down from the high he starts peppering you with kisses anywhere he can reach until his lips finally find yours and they smear in a lazy, messy but a lot slower kiss than the ones you shared earlier.

“Mm, if only you could get pregnant again and again, we would be in big trouble with a lot of babies on the way,” he jokes lifting his head, referring to not just this time, but to all the times you took advantage of not having to worry about contraception since you’ve fallen pregnant. Not that you cared a whole lot about it before, you started actively trying for a baby right after you tied the knot and though it took you some time to conceive, it’s all going perfectly fine now.

“What, you don’t want a whole bunch?” you tease him smirking as you push his locks out of his forehead that are a little dampened from sweat.

“I mean, I do, but not at once,” he admits, pecking your lips gently. “One at a time. But… if you keep watching ASMR videos, we won’t be having any problems trying for more later,” he adds with a grin and you want to punch him in the face.

“You promised you wouldn’t bring it up!”

“I’m sorry, I just had to!” he chuckles, before leaning down to kiss you again and though you want to be mad at him, you don’t turn away. “I love you and love your libido. Always happy to help.”

“Keep bringing it up and I’ll look for other help next time,” you threaten him and his eyes go wide.

“Already forgot about it! Video? What video? Never heard of anything!” he quickly replies, making you laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed it!

[peachiimilquetea]

something angsty with tenya leaving fem reader for the event? ty! prompt: “you can’t leave me. i don’t know how to survive without you.”

“𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞. 𝐢 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮.” + tenya iida

a/n: bro… i don’t really like angst without the potential for a somewhat happy ending so i hope you’re ok with the fact that it’s not completely sad. i did pull on the heartstrings quite a bit tho, i hope you enjoy! check out the event here

contains: angst (obviously), iida being heavily influenced by his family, tensei to the rescue lowkey, crying, insecurities, mentions of alcohol, ambiguous ending, miscommunication

length: 2.0k

at first things had started off small.

iida worked long hours as the work of his brother’s hero agency fell on his shoulders. he tried his best to make time for you, but it always felt like your schedules could never line up just right.

you tried to work something out, quick calls on break times and cute messages around the house to remind you of one another, but most efforts fell flat.

then things started to get worse.

long and empty nights were spent building up resentment towards the man you had married. he was always doing something, something that took precedence over the vows you made when you walked down the isle no more than three years ago.

you knew his family didn’t like you that much, feeling that a marriage for love was a waste of such a powerful commitment. a commitment that could built them an empire, and boost the rank of their hero agency, solidifying a legacy for them.

tenya defied them for you, boldly declaring that he would marry whoever he wanted and that you were in it for the long haul. you were the girl of his dreams, he said, and anything that got in the way of his happiness was not something he would subscribe to. that only made them hate you more.

so when his texts of encouragement grew shorter and more sparse, and he began to have more special responsibilities bestowed upon him by none other than his father, you knew it was on purpose.

unfortunately, it was an effective strategy to chip away at a young and unseasoned marriage.

“tenya can you please just check your schedule? i really want to spend more time with you.”

he sighed and rubbed his temples as he sat in his office. why were you bothering him with something so insignificant? you knew how important this transition of power was for the iida family, for the legacy of ingenium, but you still persisted.

he could feel the anger beginning to build until he looked in your eyes and saw the sadness brimming in them. his heart squeezed in his chest as he watched you, his wife, plead with him to spend time together. when had things come to this?

“i’ll try my best, but i cant promise anything.”

at this point, that was better than anything you could’ve hoped for.

with a kiss to his forehead you left him alone to get the heaps of paperwork he had to do, spirits lifted at the prospect of spending time with him again. just like the way it used to be.

you checked the time on the microwave for the 9th time. fifty-seven minutes had passed and your husband was officially late.

you should have seen it coming really, empty promises were becoming more and more common amongst the two of you. he would promise to try harder and you would promise to cut him more slack, the constant push and pull never being enough for either party.

getting up from the barstool at your kitchen island you made your way to the wine cooler to get a drink. not even bothering to pick up a glass you slumped on the couch, kicking off your shoes and splaying yourself out, just wanting the cushions to swallow you whole and dull the aching in your heart.

he wasn’t coming.

he was never coming.

you laid passed out on the couch when iida finally came home 2 hours later. he was only stopping by for a quick break, then going back out on patrol and he completely forgot about the things he said, smiling through tired eyes as he thought, this time i’ll make it up to her.

at the very least he could clean you up and tuck you in. he could brace himself for the impending fight later, but he was concerned about you. you never drank, not unless there was something wrong.

iida easily hoisted you up over his shoulder, discarding the various wine bottles and taking you to your shared room, although he wasn't sure if it was still considered shared anymore.

he laid you on the bed softly, changing you into one of his old shirts. his fingers ghosted over your cheek as he watched you sleep, the reality of where he was sitting heavy on his heart.

he loved you and yet there was nothing he could do to help at this moment. he had to leave for night patrol. he had to leave you.

his gentle touches roused you from your sleep and your eyes felt heavy as you tried to blink them open.

“you came?” you breathed, voice sounding foreign even to yourself.

iida gave you a small smile, “im sorry.”

your demeanor did a 180 at his apology. he was sorry. he was always sorry. but sorry couldn’t fix this. not when it had been so broken.

you winced and sat up, “sorry for what? sorry that you broke your promise for the thousandth time or sorry that you’ve been such a shit husband for the past few months?!”

“______-”

“no tenya. you do this every single time! every time i want to spend time with you theres always something more important! what could be more important than your wife?!”

“______ you know my father-”

you laughed bitterly at the mention of his dad. he always had to be such a good little iida child, always on daddy’s beck and call. it made you sick.

“your father doesn’t even want us to be together! cant you see that he’s doing this on purpose! youre a grown man! not a child permanently tied to his mommy and daddy!” you spat

“hes giving more responsibility for the sake of the agency! for the ingenium legacy! why are you always so selfish when it comes to these things?”

“selfish? selfish?” you asked, incredulous. you couldn’t believe your ears.

“yes selfish. do you know how much i sacrificed to be with you? how much i already have on my plate on top of trying my best to make time for you?”

you stared in astonishment.

sacrifice?

what had he sacrificed for this relationship? he got to do what he wanted, come and go as he pleased with virtually no regard for how you felt or what you did. what sacrifice was there in that way of living?

“fuck you, tenya.”

tenya took a deep breath and ran his hand down his face. he chose his words carefully before finally saying, “i cant do this. im leaving.”

you could hear a pin drop in the room. you felt your blood pound in your ears as you stood up quickly, dizzy from the alcohol but still trying to process the words you had just heard.

leaving?

“youre leaving?”

“yes, i have to go. im not doing this with you, not now.”

your heart felt like it had been smashed by a sledgehammer, as you tried to regulate your breathing. leaving. he was leaving.

“w-wait,” you feebly attempted to cling onto him as he gathered a few of his things.

“tenya you cant leave me.”

“_____ i do not want to do this right now,” he sighed, easily shaking you off and moving to collect more things. his words were buzzing around on the inside of your skull. he was leaving.

leaving without so much of a second thought. he had been planning this. still unsteady on your feet you hobbled after him as quickly as possible, desperation taking over every fiber of your body. you didn't want to lose him, you just wanted your husband back, you happiness back.

“y-you cant do that! you cant leave me! i dont know how to survive without you, tenya, please-”

“_____, just go to bed. you’re drunk.”

you trailed him around the house,“no, you don’t get to decide when this is over. i'm the one whos been hurting for months you cannot just leave me by myself.”

iida spared you one last glance before grabbing his bag, “goodbye, _____”

crushed, you sank to your knees, leaning on the couch for support. you felt like you were dying., hell, you probably were dying. you had never had so much to drink in your life, and you were desperate to make the pounding pain in your chest stop.

you cried yourself to sleep that night, waking up to the sunlight coming through the window with a splitting headache. you felt like your skull was trying to crack itself open from the inside but you shakily got to your feet, remembering bits and pieces from your fight with iida.

you could tell he didn't come home last night; everything was exactly the way you had left it last night. the house alarm was still on, and his shoes were gone.

he actually left.

anger bubbled in your chest as you thought about what had actually happened. you would not let him get the last laugh, or be the last one left, the one waiting on him patiently to pick up the pieces after trying to keep it together. you would leave too, as much as it hurt, and show him just how selfish you could be.

in a flash, you haphazardly packed a bag with essentials and had texted your friends that you needed a place to stay for a few days. you didn’t get into specifics- your heart ached too much to relive the events of the previous night- but you told them you had reached your limit and you needed to take some time to cool off.

alternatively, iida did not sleep that night. after finishing patrols, he stayed at his brother’s apartment out of pure convenience, not feeling prepared to face you after everything that had transpired between the two of you.

the dark-haired man laid staring at the ceiling of tensei’s guest bedroom, wracking his brain and trying to pinpoint how things had gone south so fast. he wanted to fix things, but really didn’t know how. he couldn’t even tell you what was broken, let alone how to begin to fix them.

his brother had tried to give him advice after listening to the entire story, but there was only so much he could do. he knew that you were right, their father was keeping him from you on purpose, slowly making tenya think that he was in the right in an attempt to break you up, but he couldn't be the one to tell him.

tenya had to come to that conclusion himself. he needed to be the one to set boundaries and save your relationship, but from the looks of it, soon any attempts would be futile.

“_____? darling?” iida called as he came into your home. immediately noticing your missing shoes, he moved to the bedroom in a flash, checking to see if you had just moved them or something.

the room was a mess, drawers left open and clothing strewn across the bed and floor. the bathroom had been cleared of almost all your essentials, and a note was left on the dresser. gingerly, iida picked it up and read it, offering up a silent prayer that it didn't say what he thought it did.

i don't know when you'll see this, or if you ever will. if you're reading it, that means you came back home but you will not find me there.

im tired, tenya.

im tired of always being the one to extend the olive branch or bend over backwards for you.

i refuse to be in that position any longer. i love you… i love you so much it hurts sometimes because i know this isn't the way things were supposed to be. but you left, and so i decided to leave too.

if a way to fix things exists, i want us to find it, but right now i need some time to reevaluate us and what that means. i hope you understand, i know you will.

if you want to reach out, im open to talking about this further, but for right now i need to think.

goodbye.

--------

[ironmansuuucks]

The Usual (Part 2)

Hi hello, this is part two of the usual since it was highly requested lmao. So this is actually gonna be a three parter because it was gonna be too long for just two! So we are still extremely angsty right now... let me know if u enjoy!!

Part one

Feedback always welcome!

Warnings: angst, swearing?

You allowed Bucky to visit you late at night, after a ridiculous argument with Katie, two more times before you put your foot down. You had been crying more, pining over your best friend and continuously allowing yourself to get hurt.

You’d had enough.

So you distanced yourself from the super soldier. Stopped meeting him at the gym. Stopped going to bars and clubs with him. Avoided him when you could, mentally picking yourself up from the floor. And most importantly, stopped allowing him to come over late at night.

You had been going harder at the gym, cleaned up your eating. You even started drinking herbal tea and meditating, deciding the best course of action was to work on yourself.

It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination.. but you were slowly getting better. Slowly ridding of the butterflies Bucky owned in your stomach.

That was until you bumped into Bucky and Katie in the Avengers tower, leaving one of the locker rooms at the gym, hand in hand, giggling to one another. His hair was a mess, and her cheeks were flushed. And it wasn’t because they had been in the gym working out, you had just come from there.

You froze, having not seen Bucky for two weeks now. You swallowed thickly and bit the inside of your cheek as it dawned on you what the pair had been getting up to in the locker room. And it stinged, because it was him. All of the feelings you had banished were swallowing you up again as your eyes met his stupid sparkling blue ones.

He went to say something, but it got stuck in his throat when you looked at Katie, who was drawing her eyes off of you. And as your eyes were elsewhere, his roamedyou. Noticing the weight loss and how your skin was glowing. In fact you were glowing.

You stuttered “excuse me-“ you managed as you lowered your eyes, heading to a different locker room as your eyes welled. Bucky’s eyes followed you, a sudden pang in his chest at the realisation that he had hardly laid eyes on you the past two months.

He swallowed thickly. He missed you.

But it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Katie the way Bucky had looked at you. The way his eyes followed you as you passed them.

So that was the story of how you found yourself 6 tequilas deep in your favourite bar with a few of your friends. You had cried three times already throughout the night and you could feel little tears prick again before you got up and ordered 3 more.

Fuck him. and the 3 shots were done.

You’d hardly put the last shot glass down when your phone began to ring. You audibly sighed, wondering who the hell was looking for you at 3 AM.

Of course, the only person who ever needed you at this time of night. Bucky Fucking Barnes.

You suddenly dropped your phone, the final tequila shot taking its toll on you. Your friend quickly grabbed you, stopping you falling as you went to pick it up. When she pulled you up, you were crying, barely being able to hold yourself up.

Looking at your phone, your friend answered, knowing it was Bucky, but not knowing he was the reason you were in the mess you were in.

She asked him to pick you up.

“Bucky’s coming to get you babe..” your friend stammered, half carrying you to the door. “w-what? No” you tried to stop crying “i-im fine” you whined as you tried to wipe the dampened mascara from under your eyes. You did not need to see him right now.

But before you knew it, you were outside and you saw him getting out of his car, ruffling that stupid fluffy looking hair. You sniffled, you couldn’t let him know this was his fault. Even in the drunken mess you were in you would keep your dignity. You wouldn’t give him that power.

It was raining. Heavy. He didn’t bother putting the hood from his jumper over his head, instead just leaping to grab you as your heel caught on one of the tiles outside the club. “fucking clutz” he tried to laugh but you just sniffled, trying to avoid the warmth of his skin on yours. He smiled and nodded to your friend as she left to go back inside.

You tried to struggle out of his grip “I’m fine James I can walk my-myself” you snapped before you slipped on the rain drenched tile, Bucky catching your arm once again. “yeah I can see that” he sassed, helping you to the passenger side of his car.

He jumped in the car, handing you one of his hoodies that he brought with him for you. You felt that lump in the back of your throat as you took it from him, opting to sit it on the floor and look out the passenger side window. That way if tears did spill, he wouldn’t see it.

He sighed a little. “Good night?” he looked over at you.

You ignored him. The rest of the 10 minute journey was in silence as you watched the street lamps light up the inside of the car every time you drove past one. But the darkness that it left behind each time was cold, and continuous. Repetitive.

When the car pulled to a halt you looked at him. Your arms wrapped around your cold, wet frame. “why are you here Bucky?”

He looked down when you asked him, fidgeting with the strings of his joggers. He breathed in sharply before… “I broke up with Katie”.

“UGH” was your loud response, your eyes rolling into the back of your head as you open the car door, attempting to get out, but falling on to the pavement.

Bucky rushed out of the car, to help you up off of the ground. You couldn’t pull yourself up, the rain masking the tears that fell form your eyes from both the sting of your knees from the pavement, and the realisation that Bucky was just here to use you for a little while again.

He knew you were crying. He could see it, but he simply picked you up, fussing over you as he carried you into your apartment building. You silently let yourself cry, bracing yourself for what you assumed was about to happen.

[what-if-nct]

hiiii today's reminder is all three of the nct units coming back within the next two months, and the new unit might be debuting soon, and I'm having a hard time being excited for any of it

127, i just want them to take a nap. esp with the J line being injured enough to cancel smtown recordings, i would feel super weird enjoying a new song knowing that it was prepared in between nonstop concerts while three members were hurt. plus i REALLY don't want a 2 baddies part 2, i still don't understand why that song happened

wayv, they seem straight-up cursed at this point. I'm not gonna believe there's an album until the album is actually out. plus part of me is braced for the possibility of a rehashing of the incident from last year that we don't speak about, or at the very least knowing a lot of the discussion about this comeback will be centred around that, which I'm really not looking forward to

dream… i feel like every time i hear about them outside of teasers, it's just another case of them "playfully" making fun of Haechan, especially Jeno and Jisung, to the point where i just… dislike them, as people. i get that they were raised with the expectation that they'll be famous in a society that places a lot of weight on this shit, and I'm sure that's fucked with their heads a lot, but that's no excuse for grown ass adults not to have basic decency yk? it's turning me off the group, even though i love the rest of them. well, most of them, Jaemin and Chenle also give me those vibes, though i don't remember if they've ever explicitly said anything like that on camera

so… idk it's weird. I've spent more than two years with nct being my main hobby (idk if that word applies but it's the only one i could think of), and now it all feels a bit icky. I'm just holding on because i think new wayv content will bring me back to them

Hiii! And first of all I feel exactly the same way about everything that you've said. Every single word of it. Like 127 has been touring nonstop and are about to go out again plus a repackaged album after three members being injured. Like it's the kpop industry Skz is also extremely overworked. But like imagine the overall well being of them if they just released one album a year with multiple music videos, promote for like a month and one full and complete tour then, then they rest for at least 5 to 6 months. Or do their own obligations to brands and stuff. I know it's nothing like western pop music cause they run off of high engagement but it's just such a ridiculous system that is doing nothing but harm. They need rest. Sleep, and FOOD!! They're overworking on extreme diets. Like something has to give before it breaks

Then we have the complete opposite with Wayv where it's been two years since an album and despite there being a rightful reason for the delay right now. it's just so unfortunate that they're not getting to do anything. And I think we all know why wayv's comeback has been put on the back burner till now. I'm happy they had a break and they've been just having fun. But you see it in them they want to work, they're so excited for this album. Which I'm buying the moment it's released. But I just want everyone to focus on the boys for their comeback and not the situation around them. I'm sure it's been harder on every single member of Wayv then it is for us and we just gotta keep it a joyous occasion when it finally happens.

And yeahhh, like before I get to how I feel I just want to say before anyone says its part of their culture. Being Fatphobic and Colorist are bad things!!! It's a toxic part of most cultures! Colorism runs rampant in every single non white culture. And it's fucking bad! As a black person I can acknowledge the colorism in my culture is bullshit. And I have never thought that shit was funny. Im always disgusted seeing how dark skin women are treated. And don't get me started on fatphobia. I just want to know why we don't expect grown ass men who have access to the internet and global knowledge to go against societal norms like most of the Younger generations all over. Like why can't we expect better from them. Like Jeno saying why does Haechan have so much flesh after Haechan complimented his muscles like thats a strike. But when he said Haechan fits black panther..........my eye is twitching. And Jisung also always saying something. Sure we don't know they're dynamic. But Jisung was saying do you think Haechan will ever get paler alone out with Chenle. Like that's just not a joke like that shit effects Haechan who is gorgeous and perfect and beautiful. And I remember Haechan wanting a regular coke and Renjun insisting he get diet coke that rubbed me the wrong way for awhile. If my friends joked with me like that uh we're not friends anymore. Like it's toxic behavior like. It's bad no excuses. It's just bad. It's not okay to joke about esp in public spaces do they not understand their words effect Haechan and fans bigger and darker than Haechan. I think I have the most hope in Jaemin cause I just get that from him. Luckily I am a grown ass woman and it doesn't effect me the way it did when I was 16 and 17. It's why I took a break around 19, like kpop really fucked up my self esteem that I had just acquired. I totally feel you. Sidenote the skz thing with Changbin isn't apart of this. Felix and Chan were obviously talking about Changbin's muscles, he's a little beef cake they've both expressed envy of his physique. So Chan and Felix are cool.

I really don't want a 2 baddies part 2 either. Love 127 but thats one 127 song I can't defend. But when Wayv blesses us with their talent and beauty it'll be the best day.

[fruitcoops]

OMG IM SORRY BUT CAN YOU PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WRITE FINN AND CAP PLATONIC CUDDLES I WOULD ACTUALLY DIE!!!

Give Finn Cap cuddles 2k21. Sweater Weather credit goes to @lumosinlove!

Finn sighed for the third time in five minutes. “Harzy, are you okay?” Sirius asked.

“Fine.”

“D’accord.”

Two minutes later, there was a soft ping and Finn sighed again.

“Dude.”

“Hmmm?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Finn said defensively, keeping his eyes trained on his phone. Thirty seconds passed; as soon as he heard the telltale deep inhale, Sirius’ patience ran out.

“Oh, my fucking god. Give me your phone.”

“What? No!”

“Then tell me what’s wrong! If you sigh one more time I’m going to hit you with a pillow.” Sirius turned his phone off and faced Finn, who was curled on the other end of the couch. When he didn’t respond, Sirius stretched out his leg and kicked him lightly. “Hey.”

Finn mumbled something unintelligible.

“Pardon?”

“I miss them,” he said miserably.

Sirius closed his eyes. “You’ve been sighing like a Victorian maiden for the past ten minutes because your boys went to a concert without you? You don’t even like country music.”

“I hate it with every fiber of my being,” Finn agreed, though his pout didn’t falter. “I just miss them. They keep sending me videos and they look so good.”

“Do you want some food? Maybe a hug? You look like a kicked puppy right now.”

Finn’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You want to give me a hug?”

“If it’ll make you feel better.”

“I thought you have a ‘no cuddling’ rule,” he said suspiciously.

Sirius laughed. “I was kidding, though you might have to fight Loops for dibs.”

His whole face lit up. “I get Cap cuddles?”

“Come on, Harzy.” Sirius opened his arms and Finn launched himself into them, snuggling up against his chest with a happy hum. “Move your leg, you’re going to break—there you go.” He rested his chin on his head and closed his eyes.

“This is the best,” Finn murmured after a minute as he tucked his hands under Sirius’ back. “Loops is going to catch these hands if he thinks he can stop me from getting my Cap cuddles.”

“Please don’t punch my fiancé.”

“Hmm, no promises.” Finn’s whole body relaxed as Sirius began rubbing small circles between his shoulder blades. “Can I marry you instead?”

“Do you actually want to marry me?”

“I want to marry these cuddles.”

“You have two boyfriends, I don’t think you’re short on cuddles.”

“They’re not Cap cuddles, though. You’re very tall.”

“I’m the same height as Leo.”

“Leo likes spooning best, so this is different. I feel so safe, what the fuck?” Finn tightened his hold. “Your chest gets all rumbly when you talk.”

“Oh?”

“Mhmm. Can I fall asleep on you?”

“Uh, sure,” Sirius laughed.

“Stop laughing, I’m going to get a crick in my neck!”

“Désolee.” He slowed his breathing and tried to control his amusement; a few minutes later, Finn’s arm slid off the couch. “Finn?” A soft snore answered and he smiled to himself, leaning back against the armrest. A short nap couldn’t hurt.

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

Logan knocked on the door to Sirius’ house as Leo stomped his feet in the cold to warm up. The door swung open and Remus immediately put his finger to his lips in a shh motion, beckoning them inside. “Is everything okay?” Leo whispered as he toed his shoes off.

Remus nodded and led them into the living room. Logan pressed his hands over his mouth to contain a laugh—Sirius was splayed on the couch with Finn on top of him, both fast asleep. “They’ve been like this for three hours,” Remus said gleefully under his breath. “Finn’s drooling on him.”

“No.” Logan gasped, creeping around the corner to get a better look. Finn was completely wrapped around Sirius in a koala hug.

“I didn’t know Cap snores,” Leo snickered.

Remus huffed a laugh. “You have no idea.”

“Did you take pictures?” Logan asked as they followed Remus into the hall. “Please tell me you did.”

“I got so many pictures. I’m framing one for Sirius’ birthday next month.”

“You’re my hero.”

“Should we wake them up?” Leo checked his phone for the time. “It’s pretty late. They’re so cute, though.”

“Yeah, probably,” Remus sighed, padding back into the living room with the others on his heels. He leaned over the armrest and smoothed Sirius’ hair back. “Honey. Honey, you have to wake up.”

“Takin’ a nap,” Sirius muttered drowsily.

“It’s one thirty in the morning.”

His face scrunched up and he cracked one eye open, smiling when he saw Remus. “Hey, you.”

“Good morning, sunshine.”

Sirius tried to sit up, only to freeze when he realized he couldn’t move. “What the f—”

“No,” Finn whined, cuddling closer.

Remus stepped around the couch, unable to conceal his grin. “Harzy, time to get up.”

“I called dibs.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I’ll fight you for dibs.”

“Okay, buddy, you do that.” Remus picked up his arm and dropped it back on the couch. “Your boys are back.”

That seemed to do the trick. Finn struggled to sit up, bracing his arms against Sirius’ chest and planting his knee in his thigh on accident. “Sorry, sorry. My boys?”

“Morning, Fish,” Logan laughed as Sirius groaned. “Sleep well?”

“So well, you have no idea. Come here.” He grabbed Logan and Leo by the wrists with clumsy hands and practically dragged them down to the couch. “Cap cuddles are amazing.”

“Did you—did you drool on me?” Sirius shoved all three of them away and sat up, squinting down at his shirt. “Your cuddle privileges are révoqué.”

“You’re revocayed!” Both Logan and Sirius smacked him on the back of the head. Even Leo looked pained. “Hey!”

“Come on, mon rouge, let’s go.” Logan hauled him to his feet and kissed him on the cheek; he was still all sleep-warm and cozy. Leo gave him hugged him from behind and Finn melted into it.

“See, you don’t even need me,” Sirius scoffed as he stood up and stretched.

“I dunno, Cap cuddles are pretty great.”

“I know, right?” Remus said smugly, wrapping Sirius’ arms around his waist. “It’s a bummer you don’t have dibs.”

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in.” Finn leaned up for a kiss. “Did you two have fun?”

“Lots of fun. Lots of banjos,” Leo teased, squeezing his sides. “Let’s go home and we’ll tell you all about it, yeah?”

Interest sparked in Finn’s eye. “Yes. Yes, absolutely, let’s go.”

“Alright, keep it in your pants, you horndogs,” Sirius grumbled as he shooed them out of the living room.

“You can’t even wait twenty minutes?” Remus shook his head in mock-disapproval as they put their shoes on again.

Logan shot him a look. “Like you’re one to talk.” Remus raised an eyebrow at him. “Désolee.”

“Yeah, you better be.”

Sirius held the door open as they headed down the front steps. “Drive safe, there are only idiots on the road this late.”

Leo stopped, frowning. “We’re about to be on the road.”

“I know. See you tomorrow!” The door closed before any of them could fire back with a scathing retort, and Logan flipped him off through the front window.

“So, you managed to get some elusive Cap cuddles,” Leo said as Finn slung his arms over their shoulders. “How was it?”

“A religious experience,” Finn said dreamily. “He’s so tall. It was incredible.”

“Tall? We’re the same height!”

[dramaqueeenamby]

Waves: Wild Hearts

A/N: This is sorta a follow up to Fighter that I’ve had on my computer for months. I have included the ending of that oneshot at the beginning of this one to help refresh memories, but if you want to read Fighter, you can do so here. Yes, there will be a part 2 to this one. 

Warnings: Angst

Words: 2K

-GIF from Google-

TAGS: @babe-im-bi​ @notacamelthatsmywife​ @queenoftheworldisdead​ @tashawar​ @valkryienymph​ @letsshamelessqueen-m​ @lettytheletdown​ @hello-therree​ @toni9​ @kpizzletrash​ @missdforever​ @missyperle​ @mani-lifes​ @koko-michelle @liquorlaughslove​

-----

Previously on Waves

“Now back to the news that broke headlines just last night. Academy Award-Winning Actress Summer Hemsworth was allegedly attacked in her Georgia hotel room last night. Hemsworth suffered two gunshot wounds and reportedly collapsed in the lobby as horrified onlookers called 911 and attempted to stop the bleeding.”

“She was rushed to the local hospital where doctors performed emergency surgery, and as of now, we are hearing reports that she is in stable condition.”

“While details are still unclear, what we do know is that the attacker is now deceased, reportedly at the hands of Summer, who fought him off. In addition, the perpetrator has been identified as Myles Hampton, the same man who stalked and attacked Mrs. Hemsworth almost six years prior.”

“Hampton was sentenced and serving a 15-year sentence which has the world wondering. How did he get out? How was he able to re-traumatize his victim? How--”

“Mommy.”

His son’s voice ripped Christopher from his phone where he was watching the news for reasons even he couldn’t explain. Well, rather, didn’t want to explain.

Elysha glared at her brother, bringing her index finger to her mouth. “Shh. Papa said we gotta be quiet.”

Summer moaned, finally waking up from another nap. They had her on heavy painkillers that made her sleep, much to the chagrin of all four individuals occupying the private hospital room. For the twins, sleep meant she couldn’t talk to them. They needed to hear her voice to know that she was going to be okay.

For Christopher, well, even awake, he still worried.

And for Summer, she just hated to be unconscious as she recognized the concern that it caused her family.

“Did he now?” She whispered, blinking a couple times as she managed to lift her hand, bringing it to Emmett’s cheek. “Well, mama says you don’t have to.”

Both kids responded with a smile, quickly grabbing the sheets on either side of the bed, where they’d remained the entire time.

They wouldn’t leave her side.

“Look, mama,” Elysha chimed as they lifted the papers. “We drew you pictures. Mines is bestest.”

“Nu uh!”

“Uh huh!”

She smiled, ignoring the pain she was still experiencing. It mattered not though. She’d take the pain of survival over the finality of death any day.

“They’re both the bestest,” Summer shared, making both of them grin for a few seconds when she noticed Elysha drop her head. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Elysha took a few seconds, her voice barely above a whisper. “We’re glad you’re okay, mommy.”

“Yeah,” Emmett agreed. “Why’d that mean man try to hurt you, mama?”

Summer closed her eyes. Her pain was no longer a concern. Her priority was the hurt she saw and heard in her children, her beautiful babies prematurely forced to encounter the evils of this world.

“I-”

“Well, it’s about time you woke up, lil’ missy.” Helen spoke with a warm smile as she walked into the room.

Seeing their grandmother raised their spirits just enough to eat away some of Summer’s guilt. Helen walked over and gently felt her daughter’s head. “How you doing, baby?”

Summer, conscious of the watchful set of blue eyes on her, smartly replied. “I’m good, mama.”

Helen nodded. “I see you’re getting some of your color back. Good. You was getting a lil’ pale on me, lil girl.”

Elysha gasped. “Can I have some of mommy’s color, grandma!”

“Me too, grandma!”

The twin’s excitement and naivety made Summer smile. Their uplifted spirits nursed her soul.

“I don’t know about color, but how about you two come with grandma to the cafeteria, and we’ll see what kind of ice cream they have.”

The promise of their favorite dessert quickly dimmed when they realize it meant leaving their mom.

“But-”

“Ya’ll go. Mama has to talk to papa,” Summer referenced Christopher who’d sat silent while allowing the children time to bond with their mother. “Please?”

Emmett groaned but relented. “I’ll bring you ice cream back, mama.” He looked back at Christopher. “You too, papa!”

“I’ll bring you some too, papa!”

Careful kisses on either side of her cheeks preceded the kids finally walking out hand in hand with Helen.

The sound of tiny footsteps repeatedly diminished until they could be heard no more, replaced by heavy-footed strides and the creaking of a chair. Summer closed her eyes at his warm touch, his hand clasped over hers, the other going to her forehead.

He laid his head against her shoulder, Summer angling her own so that she could kiss the top of his head.

She gently tightened her grip on his head. “I’m fine, Christopher.”

“Don’t.” She licked her lips, concern shifting from her kids to her husband. “Don’t give me that shit, Summer. You are not fine.”

“I’m alive, Chris,” she croaked, wanting desperately to stress how grateful she was. “He shot me. Twice. And I’m alive.”

“This never should have fucking happened. If they’d been watching him, he would have never-”

“Hey,” she forced some bass into her voice. “We can’t do that. It happened, and it-it sucks, but-”

“How can you be so calm about this?” He forced out bitterly, finally lifting his head to reveal glazed eyes that burned with fear and rage. “After everything he did, what he tried-”

She attempted the comedic route, something that typically worked for them. “Well, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve almost died.” The dark joke fell through, possibly increasing his irritation. She swallowed. “I-I think-I still don’t know what to think, Chris. I-It’s a lot to process, but I can’t do that right now. Emmett and Elysha are watching us, watching me, and every time I look at them, look at you, I’m reminded of everything I stood to lose, and I’m just-I’m thankful. And the last thing that I want is to further worry the twins…or you.”

He lifted their conjoined hands and gently kissed her fingertips. Summer recognized the gesture as acknowledgment.

“I love you,” she breathed as he moved his mouth to kiss her inner forearm. “So much.”

He brought his hand to her cheek, their eyes meeting with a burning and moving meeting that conferred the ardent love between them but was now tinged with a new emotion.

Fear

Wild Hearts

“Just a few more seconds. Come on, Summer.”

Face scrunched up in discomfort, the actress swallowed her pain and scraped for every bit of resilience that she had left, successfully completing the set before relaxing as soon as her therapist gave her the okay.

Dropping onto the floor, Summer crossed her wrists and placed them over her head. Deep, relaxing breaths abated her nerves and aching muscles as Rene attempted to offer words of encouragement and praise that Summer was only halfheartedly listening to.

It wasn’t that Rene was bad at her job. No, far from it. She was a wonderful physical therapist who pushed Summer in ways that were both challenging while also welcoming. It was that Summer still hadn’t come to accept that she was back at square one. She felt like she was preparing to become Storm all over again. Relearning suddenly replaced years of maintenance. Her schedule had been disrupted, and it created cognitive dissonance.

Hand unconsciously falling onto her core, her fingers slid over the dark scar that still bled with remnants of trauma and regrets. One of two, it was the most prominent and noticeable. Folks rarely paid attention to feet, but the stomach, it was the area that generally garnered a decent amount attention based solely on the level of flatness.

Rene noticed the way Summer’s fingers stroked her slick skin and cleared her throat. “Why don’t we call it a day?”

“The day has been called, ma’am.”

The ginger grinned crookedly and complimented her client. “You did great today.”

Summer snorted, groaning quietly as she sat up and braced her palms against the mat. “Now you’re just kissing my ass.”

“While you do have quite the ass,” Summer rolled her eyes. “I’m not quite sure how my wife and your husband would feel about that.”

Summer rolled her eyes as Rene reached a hand to help her stand up. “Noted.” Rolling her shoulders, Summer walked over to grab her pink Blender Bottle, downing down the water mixed with lemons and limes. The typically acrid mixture was welcoming because of the addition of ice cubes that quenched her parched throat, assisting in the cooling down of her warm body.

“I think we could even maybe move down to twice a week instead of three.”

Swallowing a couple more ounces, Summer lowered her cup and wiped at her mouth. “Seriously?”

Rene nodded as she crossed her arms. “I meant it. You’re doing great.” A beat. “Physically.”

And just like that, Summer rolled her eyes and turned her body to start packing up her items. “Here we go again.”

Rene already knew that she was going to be met with apprehension, but that didn’t dissuade her. “I can only help you rehabilitate your body, Summer. But your mind—”

“—is fine.”

Rene stilled, her green eyes softening. “You can say that until you’re blue in the face, but it makes no difference if you don’t really believe it, and I don’t think you do.”

Summer stilled, her back toward the tall woman. A part of her, a very small part of her, wanted to switch things up. She wanted to entertain the conversation, just to see how it would play out, but another part of her knew exactly how it would play out, so she did as she’d done a lot lately.

“So, same time next week?” She spun around, swinging her bag over her shoulder. Before the other woman could offer a response, Summer shot her a wink and walked past her. “Thank, Rene.”

As if on cue, Phillip’s large frame appeared in the doorway, and Summer’s grin fell.

Arms clasped in front of him, he nodded in acknowledgment. “Ready, Mrs. Hemsworth?”

An elongated sigh escaped as she approached him and managed to reignite her previous smile. “I told you, Summer is fine, but yeah, I’m ready.”

A grunted response that she couldn’t really make out proceeded him opening the door for her only to quickly move back in front of her so that he was blocking her view. For a man his size, he was impressively quick on his feet.

A few more doors, elevator ride down, and Summer was met with the blistering Australian heat as a firm hand moved to her backside and escorted her out the building. Out the corner of her eye, she spotted the photographers who snapped away, a few inching close to the star but not enough where they were in arms reach of Phillip.

They weren’t stupid.

Phillip had served as a bodyguard for some of the most important figures across the world, celebrities and royals included. His resume was impeccable, and he was damn good at his job, a job that, while she respected, Summer felt suffocated by at times.

The fact that she even had a full-time bodyguard was something that she still hadn’t swallowed. She’d always been vocal and open about the fact that she loathed the whole “barrier” between celebrities and “regular degular” people. Her occupation, in her option, shouldn’t place her on a pedestal.

Plus, she was far from hopeless, and so a bodyguard was something could never get with unless they were provided by the event she was attending.

But a certain husband of hers was absolutely adamant about hiring the 24/7 protection following the attack, and while Summer understood his reasoning, she still wasn’t in agreement.

Not that it mattered…

The drive was short as the outpatient treatment center was only about twenty minutes away from the Hemsworth residence. Once they reached the mansion, Summer relieved Phillip from his duties. She had no plans on going out again. Christopher was picking up the kids from school. She’d maybe take Doggy out for a walk on the beachfront, but that didn’t require the 6”3 giant’s presence.

Not even three seconds into the door, Christopher was in front of his wife, hands on her hips as he pecked her lips.

“Hey, honey.”

Summer faltered only for a second before chewing on her bottom lip. “Damn, waiting for someone?”

“Always.” He winked and smacked her ass, prompting her to try to push him away.

“I need to shower,” she protested with a small pout as he brushed her comment off and slyly lowered his mouth down to her ear.

“I’ll join you.”

Summer grinned, momentarily contemplating his offer. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“We are married, aren’t we?”

“I mean….” She laughed at his scowl and managed to pull away, walking past him to make her way up the steps. “Can you make us—”

Summer stopped and turned around on the second step only to see that was directly in front of her, on the first step.

She lifted a brow. “Sir?”

“What?”

She crossed her arms. “I’m pretty sure that I said n—Christopher!” She squealed as he silenced her by picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder. “Put me down!”

“I am going to put you down,” he responded while continuing their track up the stairs. “On my dick.”

“Christopher!”

————

Summer rolled over on her side and ran her hand over her face, eyes shut as she struggled to catch her breath. Holding onto the pillow, she pulled the blanket up to her neck, depriving her nude body of the chilly air that the AC caused to consume their room.

She smiled softly as her husband kissed her temple. Feeling the bed creak, he peaked and saw him moving out the way as he started to pull on his clothes. Leaning on her back, she grabbed her phone off the nightstand and saw that it was time for him to leave to pick up the twins.

How long were we?

“Phillip will be here in a few minutes—”

Summer frowned. “What?” She sat up, not caring that the sheet fell down, exposing her breast. “Baby, I told him he could go home for the day.”

Christopher stood up, pulling his pants on. “Why would you do that?”

She looked from side to side. “Because I don’t need him? I didn’t plan on going out today.”

“But you knew that I had to go pick up the kids, so you’d be alone.”

Summer closed her eyes. “Christopher….”

The chime of his phone interrupted her as he glanced at the screen to see that Phillip had arrived and entered the house using the key that Chris thought was a good idea to provide him with. “He’s here. I have to get going.”

Summer frowned and leaned back against the headboard. “Okay.”

Looking back over to see that she was still dissatisfied, he walked over and sat on the bed, reaching out to cup her cheek. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Her brows furrowed. “Seriously? Christopher, you’ve already called the man over here.”

“And?” Chris didn’t see a problem. “He’s staying the night—”

“Again?” Summer was no longer so disappointed. She was irritated. “That’s the third damn time this week.”

“Okay?”

Summer scoffed and moved away from him, crossing her arms. “You know, I would appreciate it if you would actually, maybe, communicate with me before you make these decisions.”

“What is there to talk about, Summer?” He watched her move to the other side of the bed as she kicked the blanket off and scurried around to gather her clothes. “You need pro—”

“No, Christopher, what I need is for you to stop treating me like a child!” A beat. “I can take care of myself!”

“Like you did with Myles?”

Summer clutched the shirt in her hand at the same moment Chris closed his eyes. “Fuck, Summer—“

“You can go to hell,” she whispered, yanking her shirt over her head and marching past him, snatching her arm away from him when he reached for her. “Don’t—“ she stopped, eyes closing as she fought the sob in the back of her throat. “—touch me.”

Christopher recognized that tone. It was rare, but when present, he recognized that nothing he could say or do could penetrate the impenetrable exterior that was Summer’s wall.

The slamming of the bathroom door indicated what he already knew. Walking over to the door and placing his ear against it, welcoming it to the quiet sobs of his wife confirmed it.

He’d fucked up.

-----

A/N: So....whose side ya’ll on?

[naturallytom]

Little Things (Tom Holland x reader)

a/n: this is for @rosyparkers​ writing challenge!! italics are flashbacks, bold is the prompt!! again i hope u enjoy this im sorry it’s been like 10 years since i’ve posted something lmao also big thank u to @sunshinehollandd​ for reading this over!!

warnings: a lil angst, scared of opening up/being vulnerable, other than that it’s fluffy fluff 

prompt: “Do you want to know the hardest thing about having a soulmate? It’s not the separation in the beginning, not the endless nights lying awake, hoping and praying that someone was made for you. It’s…it’s the love. It’s too strong, and you can’t fight it. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried…but I’m always going to love you. And I need you to know that.”

“You ready, my love?” Tom held his hand out to you as the dj announced it was time for your first dance, his brown eyes radiating a type of warmth that brought you comfort when you needed it most. You placed your hand in his and allowed him to guide the two of you to the dance floor, his hands going to your waist while you wrapped your arms around his neck. 

“Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?” He asked, his voice so soft only you could hear it. 

“Only a million times.” You smiled, hiding your face in his neck. It amazed you that even after years of dating he still had that effect on you. 

“I’ll tell you a million more times, then.” He smiled, pressing a soft kiss to your head. “You look absolutely beautiful.”

“Not so bad yourself.” You replied, a small smile on your lips as your mind wandered to when you first met Tom and how far you came with him. 

“What are you thinking about?” Tom chuckled. 

“How do you know I’m thinking about something?” 

“You have that look on your face. The one you make when you’re deep in thought.” He told you, pressing another kiss to your head. “Everything okay?” 

“Mhmm. Just thinking about how far we’ve come.” You told him honestly. 

“We have come a long way, huh?” He smiled. “Remember when we first met?” 

“How could I forget?” You chuckled, your mind replaying the day you met him as if it was yesterday. 

The first snowfall of the season and you were in your room studying for an exam. Not ideal at all but you had this big exam coming up that you just couldn’t fail so you had to study as much as you could-

“y/n?” Your roommate poked her head into your room, a hopeful smile on her face. “How much studying do you have to do?”

“Ermm a lot, why?” You asked, flipping through your study guide so far. 

“Was thinking we could go out in the snow, at least for a little bit?” She grinned. 

“I don’t know, I still have a lot of studying to do-” 

“You’ve been studying all day! Come on, you need a break.” She argued, making you sigh. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick break. But only for a little bit!” You gave in, making your roommate cheer as the two of you got ready to brace the cold winter air. 

“It’s so pretty.” Your roommate said, her voice almost a whisper as the two of you took in the scene while you walked to the nearby park. 

Light, fluffy snow fell from the sky, landing softly on the ground around you as well as on your faces. For a moment when you looked up at the night sky, seeing glimpses of the stars and the snow falling, all your worries and obligations washed away, bringing on a sense of peace. 

The two of you arrived at the park, seeing other people there, all enjoying the snow. People were making snow angels and snow men, while others were having a snowball fight. 

“Hey check this out!” You roommate called, laying down in the snow and making a snow angel, sitting up when she was done. “How’s it look?”

“Not bad.” You laughed, bending down and molding some snow into a ball. “But unfortunately this snowball is too good not to be thrown and you’re the target so..”

Your roommate stood up and fortunately for her but unfortunately for you, she moved out of your way right as you let go of the snowball, allowing it to crash into the man right behind her. 

“Oh shit!” You gasped as he turned around, a look of confusion and slight amusement on his face while your roommate was hysterically laughing off to the side. “I’m so sorry!”

“That meant to be for her?” He chuckled, making you nod. 

“I’m so sorry, I tried to throw it at her but she moved at the last minute and-”

“Hey don’t worry about it.” He assured you. “I’m Tom.” 

“y/n.” You replied. “Really is there any way I could make it up to you?”

“Really it’s fine.” He laughed. “But I am getting cold so I was gonna go across the street and get a tea, if you’d like to join.”

“Sure, but I’m paying for yours.” You insisted, making Tom smile. 

“Pretty sure I’m supposed to pay for yours.” He tried, but you shook your head.

“No, no. It’s my treat. I’m the one who hit you with a snowball, after all.” 

“You looked so cute that night. The snow was falling and sticking to your eyelashes and the moonlight was hitting you just right. God, you looked like an angel. Still look like an angel.” He sighed. 

“Yeah an angel who didn’t let you in for a long ass time.” You chuckled. “‘M not sure what you did but you made me open up to the idea of being vulnerable and open to someone else. I hadn’t really done that before you.”

It had been almost eight months since the snowball incident and to your surprise, Tom was your (very caring) boyfriend. It sort of came as a shock to you when he asked you to be his girlfriend. You definitely had strong feelings for him, no doubt about it. But you weren’t good about expressing them. Tom liked to talk about his and open up his heart to you while you liked to keep your heart guarded and show you cared with smaller actions. 

Tom was patient, though. He was patient and caring and understanding and it made your heart swell within your chest to the point that you weren’t even sure if you could keep it to yourself. He didn’t rush you into opening up or being vulnerable, but he noticed the small smile that formed on your lips whenever you showed him a song or meme that reminded you of him. He noticed the way your eyes sparkled with pride when you successfully made his favorite meal to surprise him after a long day. 

You noticed the little things Tom did too. Like how he always took off his jacket and wrapped it around your shoulders if you were out on a date and you got cold. Or how he always offered to walk or drive you home before you moved in and if he couldn’t or if you drove yourself, he would tell you to drive safe and to text him when you got home. 

“All those little things you did just made me fall even more in love with you.” He laughed softly. “Maybe I rubbed off on you a little bit.” 

“Maybe.” You sighed, your head resting gently on his shoulder. “You told me you loved me all the time, it probably rubbed off on me little by little until I said it.” 

A year and a half after a snowball resulted in you meeting the man of your dreams, you and Tom were still going strong, but you were scared. Tom had told you he loved you so many times yet you couldn’t find yourself to say those three little words back. 

“I love you.” He would say. “You’re my soulmate.” 

You loved him, you know you did. But despite Tom telling you all the time how much he loves you and that you were his soulmate, you were still scared. What if you said it and he rejected you? What if the two of you broke up and you were open and vulnerable for no reason? 

It happened one night when you were laying in bed, your head resting on Tom’s chest, playing with hands, lost in thought. 

“What’s on your pretty little mind, hm?” He murmured, pressing his lips to your forehead softly. 

“Nothing.” Lie. You were actually thinking about how much you loved him and how lucky you were to have him in your life, but the thought of opening up like that terrified you. You fell in love the way you fall asleep, slowly and then all at once. 

“Do you want to know the hardest thing about having a soulmate? It’s not the separation in the beginning, not the endless nights lying awake, hoping and praying that someone was made for you. It’s…it’s the love. It’s too strong, and you can’t fight it. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried…but I’m always going to love you. And I need you to know that.” He said softly, as if he could read your mind. 

“How do you know you’ll always love me, though?” You asked. “That’s a long time.”

“Darling I fall more in love with you every day.” He chuckled. 

“It’s just,” you started, not thinking about the words that left your mouth next. “I do love you but I’m scared. I don’t like being vulnerable like that, you know this.” 

Tom paused before he let out a soft laugh, a sense of ‘I knew it’ mixed with confusion taking over your body. 

“What?” You asked, starting to get mildly defensive. 

“Baby you just said you loved me.” He smiled, making your eyes widen. 

“I did?”

“Mhmm. Also said you were scared and didn’t like being vulnerable.” He mumbled against your head, his thumb rubbing over your knuckles softly. “Being vulnerable is what makes us human, lovey. ‘S okay to open yourself up, especially to me.” 

“What if you didn’t feel the same way?” You glanced up at him, a small smile on his lips. “What if we broke up?”

“Neither of those are even possibilities.” He assured you. “I love you too much.” 

You paused before responding. “I love you too.”

As the song came to an end, you found yourself overwhelmed with love and felt tears involuntarily fill your eyes. Tom frowned lightly when he saw the tears, pausing to hold your face in his hands gently, concern in his eyes.

“What’s wrong, hm? Regret marrying me already?” He teased, making you laugh softly. 

“No. ‘M just really happy. I really love you. Don’t think I’ll ever stop.” You murmured, the concern and frown on Tom’s face being replaced with pure love and adoration. 

“Good, darling, because you’re stuck with me forever now.” He replied.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

_______________________________________________________________________

please rb/leave feedback!!

tagging some mutuals: @daydreamparker​ @angelic-holland​ @moonlit-void-to-the-far-unknown​

[citywithchair-blog]

Dwarfism Pride Month

October is Dwarfism Awareness Month! but I really have dwarf pride. So Im calling it Dwarf Pride Month. I am very happy to be three feet two inches tall, I have a very rare form of Dwarfism called Morquio Syndrome type A, in scientific terms I have Mucopolysaccharides IV A.

WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Let me tell you...Ok breathe in and out. It is a bit complex and feel free to ask me to explain in more depth.I have an autosomal recessive genetic disorder caused by the deficiency of GALNS enzyme due to mutation in the GALNS gene.Which causes a large accumulation of Keratan Sulfate in my cells and tissues. This Keratan Sulfate caused me to be short in height, hard of hearing (I wear Hearing Aids), cornea cloudy (I wear glasses), ligament laxity (which means my joints aren't stable and I sometimes wear tape or braces to stabilize the joints) and much more.

How did you even become this lucky person to have Morquio Syndrome? I am so glad you asked.Both my parents unknowingly carried an abnormal recessive gene on their chromosomes. Both my Mother and my Father had to be carriers for me to be affected.

BUT Your older and only brother is six feet tall?... How?...That is because my parents had a 25% chance of their child being affected. I was the lucky one.

When did your parents know they were carriers?Not until I was diagnosed. See When I was born I was slender and tall. Absolutely nothing was alarmed about the birth of me. I fell when I was a year old baby and didn't recover on my own. I needed surgery. It wasn't until I was almost two years old the doctors figured out I have Morquio syndrome. My parents didn't see many signs of this disease affecting me until I was about 3-4 years old. I hit all the milestones that a typical baby hits and was a happy active baby. 

How were you diagnosed? I was diagnosis via skeletal x-ray and urine. In the urine they did a glycosaminoglycans analysis. This is where the extra keratan sulfate was noticed. 

How Rare Is Morquio? It affects about 1 in 200,000 births equally in males and females. Not every person with Morquio syndrome manifests the disability the same way. Some have it more on the mild side and some on serve side.  

I see you mention hearing aids earlier but don't you use a wheelchair? Does that mean you can't move your legs? Great question. I can move my legs, I go to physical therapy every week to stabilize my joints and get stronger. I also use a bicycle and sometimes a walker. I love swimming too so don't let my awesome power wheelchair fool you into thinking I can't be active. Just like I wear hearing aids to help me hear better but I still love listening to music. My glasses help me see but I still love looking at art work in museums. I've a service dog to help me in public but that doesn't mean I can't go out in public on my own. Often times my mother is with me but she doesn't speak for me and I am not glued to her body.

Ask me questions! I am an open book. 

[watchmegetobsessed]

SLEEPLESS

a/n: omg! it's been so long since i last wrote something for harry so it feels a bit weird but in a good way to be back. i've been spending more time offline so writing hasn't been going that fast like before, but im working on a few other stuff too! just please be patient with me, im trying my besti swear! so now enjoy this oneshot of two oblivious and stupid roommates who start sharing a bed...

pairing: Roommate!Harry x reader

word count: 8.1k

masterlist

Living with three boys has its perks but also a lot of downsides too. It’s not how you planned, you were set to move in with one of your friends from second year, but she bailed on you last minute, leaving you with no place to live when most of the houses were already taken for the next at least one year. You were bracing yourself to sleep under a bridge or something already when your heroes came along.

You went to high school with Harry Niall and Louis, but you weren’t exactly in the same friend group, just knew about each other. Then you ended up in the same Lit class freshman year with Harry and he was basically your pass into their little group. You hit it off pretty easily and you always wondered why you didn’t become friends before college. Later you had two more classes with him in the second semester and it was just all a coincidence that he found out about your living situation.

“Why don’t you move in with us?” he prompted one afternoon when you were studying together in the library.

“I’m not sharing a room with any of you, Harry,” you sighed, shaking your head.

“You wouldn’t have to. We had a fourth mate living with us but he dropped out about a month ago. You could take his bedroom.”

“Are for real? You should talk about it with the boys first, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind it. They like you too and if I’m being honest, the place could use the touch of a woman,” he smirked and you just rolled your eyes, but you were incredibly thankful for the offer.

So after talking with Niall and Louis about it and once they gave their amens on the situation, you officially moved in with the three of them.

You’d be lying if you said there hasn’t been times when you thought about choosing the bridge, living with boys is not exactly a dream. They are messy, sometimes loud and oblivious about certain things women do and need. You’ll never forget Niall’s face when you packed the shelf above the toilet with your tampons and pads. The horror in his eyes as he examined all the different sizes and types.

“But why so many? I don’t get it why you need the large ones and the mini ones too,” he huffed.

“Because I vary them according to the strength of my flow.”

“Bless you,” he scoffed and just walked away.

They tend to leave their clothes around the house and they don’t always realize when it’s time to let some fresh air into the place either. Harry has a sixth sense wanting to use the bathroom when you’re in and Louis always forgets to get rid of his spoiled food from the fridge. Tini things that surely got you thinking if it was a good idea to move in with them. But then there are times when you can’t even imagine sharing a home with anyone else than these three idiots.

The way Harry always leaves you a cup of coffee on the counter when he has an early class on mondays and wednesdays, how Niall always waits for you to get home after your night shifts at the restaurant you’ve been working at, but he always just says he was watching Supernatural on TV. You love that Louis goes out of his way to get you your favorite pastry for breakfast on sundays when he goes for his morning runs. But the absolute best is that you never feel alone or bored with these three around. Something is always happening and they make sure to involve you in everything, making you feel like part of their little pack.

Tonight is Thursday and Thursdays are movie nights in your home. It’s been a tradition since the first week and you haven’t missed any of them. Sitting on the couch at your usual spot, you laugh as Niall growls in annoyance when you suggest to watch another rom-com.

“Not again!” he protests, sitting on the floor by the coffee table you and Harry thrifted a few months ago after the previous one was broken at a smaller party held in the house.

“Why? I bet Harry would love it!” you grin, glancing at the guy in talk who is now entering the room with a big bowl of popcorn.

“Of course he would, because he is a pussy! And the two of you always team up, dragging Louis with you so I can never watch something I enjoy!” Niall whines as Harry sits next to you, not too bothered by his friend’s cries.

“Come on, I bet you enjoyed Crazy, Stupid Love last week!” you laugh, remembering how he whined for the first part, then fell asleep at the end.

“Love, if you think that was enjoyment, I wouldn’t want to be your boyfriend,” Niall scoffs and you gasp at his reply.

“Hey!” you snap at him, but can’t help laughing. This is how it always goes with you and Niall, the non-stop bickering can sometimes drive Harry and Lou insane.

“Okay, so what do you want to watch?” Harry asks, throwing some popcorn into his mouth as he gets comfortable, an arm resting on the back of the couch behind you, the other one busy with the snack in his lap.

“There is this new horror I’ve been dying to see!” Niall’s blue eyes light up right away, but you’re fast to break that shine.

“Nah, no way. I’m not watching a horror movie.”

“Why not?”

“Because I fucking hate them and they scare the shit out of me.”

“That’s like the whole point!” he protests, but you shake your head no again.

“What are you fighting about again?” Louis asks, walking into the room after his quick shower, the smell of his body wash filling the room for a few moments.

“I want to watch a horror movie, but Y/N is a little baby and she doesn’t want to.”

“I’m not a baby! I just don’t enjoy watching people get killed or demons sucking the life out of someone!” Niall just rolls his eyes at your response.

“But it’s always what you or Harry wants to watch, why can’t I choose just this once?”

“That’s not true, we watch movies you like too!” you retort, but Niall gives you an unimpressed look. “We watched that crime thing, that was your choice!”

“That was three months ago, Y/N,” he sighs and as you do some quick math you realize that he is right.

“Hey, he has a point. Let’s just watch what he wants this one time, yeah?” Harry curls his arm that’s been on the back of the couch around your shoulder and he pulls you to his side, squeezing you gently.

“But I hate horrors,” you pout, knowing well that it’s already kind of settled, you lost this battle.

“It’s just a movie. And if you get scared in the night, you can sleep at mine,” he offers with a wink that surely makes your heartbeat fasten a bit.

If you’re being honest, you’ve always had a tiny crush on Harry, even back in high school, when you didn’t really know him. He was the cool guy, but not the douchebag type, more like the one that was nice to everyone and earned their respect and liking. Getting to know him just proved that he really is a great guy, but you figured he would never feel the same way about you. These three guys only saw you as their sister and that was in a way kinda worse than being friend zoned, but there’s nothing you can do about it, so you just decided to come to peace with your situation. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get flustered when you see him wander around the house in just his boxers or when he gets a little touchy with you, which happens a lot, because that’s just how he is. Hands on your shoulders, a little squeeze on your hips, the gentle touch of his fingers on your back, they happen all the time and they get your pulse up every time. You can only hope it’s not that noticeable.

Niall finally gets what he wants and you agree to watch that stupid horror movie. It doesn’t start off too bad, but it quickly escalates and makes you shudder every time the screen gets a little darker or the music is foreshadowing that something is about to happen.

“Jesus fuck!” you jump a little when the killer appears out of nowhere in the scene.

“You alright?” Harry asks, peeking down at you.

“I fucking hate this dude,” you mumble, rubbing your face with your hands, to get your shit together. Harry chuckles lightly next to you, his arm pulling you to his side close and you gladly sink against him, the warmth of his body giving you some comfort and a sense of safety.

Your eyes are on the screen, but your mind is dancing around how his fingers are delicately running up and down your arm, drawing circles and little shapes on your skin. It could put you to sleep easily, even with the woman screaming on the screen after seeing her husband get killed.

“Just imagine the guy with a funny mustache,” Harry murmurs, leaning closer to you so he doesn’t bother the other two guys with his comment. “Or maybe in a ridiculous outfit.”

“Like… in a onsie?” you ask, squinting your eyes at the screen.

“Could be, yeah,” he chuckles quietly. “Just imagine him running through the woods in a onsie with bunnies all over it.”

You can’t push your laughter down, covering your mouth with your hand so you don’t bother the others. Harry just smirks, giving you a squeeze as you’re still melted against his side on the couch, legs pulled up to your chest, while his are spread out in front of him.

“Definitely not that scary,” you giggle and Harry hums in agreement.

“Would you mind getting a fucking room, you guys? You have two, in fact!” Niall snaps at you playfully, when you start laughing again.

“Sorry, sorry!” you clear your throat, your cheeks heating up at the comment, but luckily it’s dark enough to hide your embarrassment. Niall is always quick to make dirty jokes and tease you in a way that makes you nervous, especially when it involves Harry as well. He has made plenty of comments about you and Harry since you’ve moved in, implying that the two of you sometimes act like a couple or that you should hook up. Harry is always quick to shake them off, that’s how you know he couldn’t even take the thought seriously.

At the end of the movie you feel like it wasn’t bad, not with Harry holding you close at least.

“Will you be screaming tonight, Y/N?” Niall teases you, making you roll your eyes at him.

“Either way it’s gonna be your fault.”

“I can live with that!” he laughs, bidding his goodbye before he shuts the door of his bedroom behind him.

You do your usual evening routine, get ready to bed and by the time you’re done in the bathroom all the boys have retired into their rooms. The hallway stands dark in front of you, only a tiny bit of light coming from your bedroom since you left your bedside lamp on in there, but you still can’t help the eerie feeling that washes over you. That movie didn’t sit right with you and now you have to face the aftermath of it.

Switching the lights in the bathroom off you sprint into your bedroom, pictures from the movie flashing in your mind of the killer just jumping out of nowhere. You shut the door and lean your back against it for a moment, taking a deep breath. Tonight is going to be long.

No matter how hard you try, you just can’t fall asleep. You’re way too alerted, opening your eyes at the tiniest of sounds around you, which is unfortunate, because your window is looking over the main street, unlike two other rooms in the house, that are facing the small backyard. Harry and Louis have the luck to have those rooms.

Every time you’re about to fall asleep something from the movie sneaks into your thoughts and you get scared to death. Soon, you realize you won’t be able to sleep on your own tonight.

Sitting on the edge of your bed, you wonder if Harry really meant that offer that you can sleep with him or not. Part of you is convinced it was just a joke, but when you hear someone shouting down the street you push your doubts aside and you quickly find yourself making your way to Harry’s room.

You knock on the room lightly, not wanting to wake anyone else up. The last thing you need is Niall seeing you go into Harry’s room in the middle of the night.

No answer comes from inside, but you won’t just leave it at that. Opening the door you’re facing another dark room, barely making out the furniture, but you already know the route by heart. Making it to the bed your eyes finally adjust to the darkness and you can see Harry lying on his side, sleeping peacefully. Squatting down you place a hand to his shoulder and give him a tiny shake.

“Harry?” you call out quietly, but his answer is just a huff. “Harry, it’s me,” you try again, squeezing his arm. He furrows his eyebrows before slowly blinking his eyes open, finding you in his sight.

“Y/N? What’s wrong?” he asks in that groggy, low voice you love hearing in the morning so much.

“I can’t… Did you mean that I can sleep here if I’m scared?” you ask, afraid that he might just have a good laugh and send you back to your room. For a long moment, he just blinks at you before nodding his head and you feel relief washing over you.

“Sure,” he hums.

“O-okay then I’ll bring a blanket and take the floor and--”

“Shut up, you are not sleeping on the floor,” he growls, grabbing your wrist and pulling you into bed with him as he scoots over, making you space on the mattress.

It’s a bit weird at first, lying in bed with Harry, especially because it’s just queen sized, so there’s not much space between the two of you, but it seems like Harry doesn’t mind it so why should you?

Your nerves are a lot calmer with Harry next to you, but maybe it’s still because of the movie or because you’re a bit anxious about the whole situation, you just still can’t relax enough to fall asleep.

“Y/N, no one is gonna kill you here,” Harry speaks up surprising you because you thought he has already fallen back asleep.

“I know, I know,” you whisper, trying to sound convincing, but you can’t fool anyone, especially not him.

He huffs deeply and before you could realize what’s happening, Harry’s arm is curled around your waist, pulling you against him, spooning you from behind, the warmth of his body wrapping your figure almost entirely.

“If a murderer comes, they will have to fight me first, alright? Now sleep,” he mumbles against your hair, squeezing you gently. All at once, you couldn’t care about killers and dark shadows around you, because Harry was right there, holding you tight and there was nowhere you wanted to be more than right there.

You slept like a baby. Harry’s closeness kept every nightmare away from you and the morning came with ease. Harry’s phone wakes the two of you up at eight, because he has a morning class at 9.30. The two of you are completely tangled up in each other, lying on your side facing each other, Harry’s arms are wrapped around you, while yours are hugging his waist. Groaning at the sound of his alarm, he rolls to his back to reach for the phone on the nightstand and then he finally turns it off. It’s bright outside, the darkness of the night finally long gone. You’re still groggy when Harry rolls back, his arm coming back around you like it’s the most natural thing in the world and in a sense, it feels like that. But as you both slowly wake up, you realize that you might be a little too close. Slowly but surely you let go of each other, rolling to your back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Hope I didn’t kick you in my sleep,” you smile at him, peeking over at him, hoping to break the awkwardness of the situation.

“No, don’t worry about it,” he chuckles, rubbing his eyes, before pushing himself up and off the bed. You follow him with your gaze as he steps to his dresser and grabs a pair of clean underwear. “I’ll put on a coffee while I shower, want one too?” he asks, though you know he could make one for you anyway.

“Sure, thank you,” you nod and he nods back, yawning as he walks out of the room, leaving you lying in his bed, a bit confused and kind of aching to be held by him again.

Two days pass by, everything is going as per usual, neither you nor Harry brings up that you spent the night in his bed that one particular time. Now it’s saturday and you all were planning to go out, but a sudden storm has cancelled your plans, so the evening turned into a cozy, lazy hangout instead of a wild party at some frat house.

Louis decided to work on a paper that’s due in two weeks, Niall has been relentlessly swiping on Tinder while you and Harry are spawled out on the couch, watching some shitty action movie that was on TV, since you both were too lazy to choose one and put it on. Deep down you’re a little happy you don’t have to spend the evening in a crowded, smelly house, drinking cheap alcohol.

Harry gets up from his seat to grab himself a drink just when Niall growls in annoyance.

“What is it?” you ask.

“They keep unmatching with me after we’ve talked a little!”

“Have you thought about the reason?” you smirk at him, knowing well that Niall probably isn’t the easiest to talk to, he surely takes it too far too soon.

“Well they probably don’t like that I ask them if I can go over,” he shrugs, making you laugh.

“You’d go over in the pouring rain?” Harry asks, returning to his spot on the couch. He puts his drink to the coffee table and instead of sitting into his previous position, leaning against the arm of the couch, he lies down, laying his head to your thigh, making your breath hitch for a moment.

“Of course not!” Niall rolls his eyes. “But I thought it would make them think I would do anything for them.”

“It makes you seem desperate,” Harry retorts, earning a questioning look from his friend. “What? It does!”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes it does,” you nod in agreement. “Going over in the middle of a storm just to fuck? Sounds like you’re having a hard time finding someone.”

“Women are so fucking complicated, and for what?!” he growls, before storming off to his bedroom, like an angsty teenager, leaving you and Harry alone.

He doesn’t move, his head stays on your thigh using it as a pillow. His curls are tickling the soft skin on your thigh and you have to fight the urge to play with his hair or scratch his scalp. You stay like this for the rest of the movie and when he gets up you almost want to pull him back.

“Alright, I’m fucked, I’m gonna go to bed,” he yawns, stretching his arms out into the air as he heads into his bedroom. “Good night, Y/N.”

“Night, Harry!” you call after him as you watch his frame disappear down the hallway.

Sighing, you slide down on the couch, cursing under your breath that you’re still so hung up on Harry. You really thought that you had it under control, but lately those damn butterflies are acting up in your stomach at everything he does.

“I’m pathetic,” you mumble under your breath just as the sky rumbles outside with a blinding lightning, making you jump with a squeak. “Shit,” you huff, already knowing that falling asleep will be a pain in the ass. Again.

You’ve always hated storms, they make you think that something bad is about to happen, a tree is about to fall into the window or a lightning will blow up the building. It’s kind of stupid, you know it, but you just can’t help it.

Tossing and turning, you jump every time a lightning flashes somewhere outside and a few seconds later the thunder rips through your whole body, almost making you fall off the bed.

“Oh God,” you let out a shaky breath. You have no idea how long it is until the Storm finally stops and you’d really like to have a good night's sleep. So pushing your anxious thoughts to the side, you get out of bed and head over to Harry’s room once again.

It’s such a deja vu from a few nights ago, as you gently knock on the door you wait again, but this time you actually get an answer.

“Yeah?” you hear him call out from inside and you slowly open the door, peeking your head inside. Harry is lying in bed, his head propped up against the headboard as he is scrolling through his phone. “Y/N? What’s wrong?” he asks, putting the phone aside as he sits up.

“I just, I-I know it’s stupid, but I was thinking… I don’t know--”

“Y/N, just tell me, alright? Come on in,” he gestures for you and you slip into the room, closing the door behind you before sitting to the edge of the bed next to him. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t sleep during storms…” you admit, looking into his eyes, hoping he gets the hint where you want to head with it. He stares back at you for a moment before he scoots over, lifting the covers up, giving you the green light to join him.

Relieved, you climb over to him, making yourself comfortable as he wraps the blanket over you, his arm immediately coming to cradle you, this time pulling you to his chest so your head is laid upon his shoulder, a hand gently placed onto his hard chest, probably right above where his butterfly tattoo is adorning his abdomen.

This is now easily your favorite place. Safe and tight in Harry’s arms, protected from anything and everything, like you’re in a little bubble as soon as you get on his bed.

Lightning strikes outside again and you shiver a little. Harry probably notices it, because he tightens his hold around you, as if it’s his way telling you that he is here and nothing bad is gonna happen. Eventually, you’re able to shut the outside out and only focus on Harry’s warmth, the touch of his hand on your arm and his even breathing. And then finally, you drift off to sleep.

This morning is different from the previous one you spent here. There’s no alarm since it’s Sunday, neither of you have anything in particular to do, so you wake up feeling rested, the Sun shining through his half drawn in curtains, no trace of last night’s storm can be noticed from where you’re lying in bed, the sky is as clear as ever. Sometime during the night you got tangled in a way where Harry is the one now cuddling you, his head lying on your chest, hugging you as if you were a giant teddy bear, his leg thrown between yours, lightly snoring against your sleep shirt. You can only see his mop of hair and the urge to play with them is back, but this time, you give in.

Leaving one hand on his back, you move the other one to his unruly locks, gently playing with one before you comb your fingers through it, lightly scratching his scalp. Harry hums in pleasure, shifting from his dreams back to reality, but he doesn’t move, just keeps humming as you massage his scalp.

“It’s not a good morning, it’s the best,” he mumbles groggily, making you chuckle at his words.

One of his hands is flat against your ribcage and the damned butterflies start dancing when you feel his fingers gently stroke your side as you keep playing with his curls. This feels so idyllic, as if you’ve been like this forever. You wish that was true.

Groaning as he stretches, Harry rolls to his back, making you instantly miss his body pressed against yours. He rubs his eyes, sighing deep as he blinks up at the ceiling a few times, then he turns his head to the side, looking at you.

Just when he is about to say something, outside his door it sounds like someone just broke a pile of plates and it’s followed by Niall’s usual annoyed growl. You both get out of bed to go and check what happened, not even thinking about how it might appear that you both are coming from Harry’s room in the morning.

Harry flings the door open and there is Niall, collecting pieces of a plate from the floor, his breakfast scattered down the hallway as well while he curses under his breath.

“What happened?” Harry asks, picking up a bigger piece from the plate.

“Fucking tripped,” he growls back, glancing up just for a moment, then back down, but then he processes that you’re standing behind Harry, in his room, in the morning. “What the fuck are you doing in Harry’s room?” he bluntly asks, quickly forgetting about the mess he just made.

“What?” you ask nervously, your pulse quickening in an instant. Harry stands up, seemingly not too bothered by Niall’s question.

“You slept in his room?!”

“She did,” Harry answers, leaning against the doorframe.

“Wait, are you two fucking?” Niall’s eyes widen, snapping back and forth between you and Harry.

“Just because two people sleep in the same bed, doesn’t mean they are fucking, Niall,” Harry chuckles, seemingly amused by the situation that’s got your stomach knotted. Louis’ door opens and he walks out, his hair a little messy, but already dressed, a mug halfway filled with coffee in his hand.

“Wha’s this circus out here?” he asks, looking around, his eyes scanning over the mess on the floor.

“Did you know these two are fucking?” Niall asks him and Harry lets his head drop back at his words.

“Are you?” Louis simply questions and you shake your head no.

“We are not. Y/N can’t sleep in a storm so she came over to mine.”

“Funny, she doesn’t come to me when she’s scared,” Niall scoffs.

“I never came to you because you don’t understand that sleeping together doesn’t mean sex,” you retort, though your ears are practically burning from the rising anxiety inside you.

“Wait, whoa. This wasn’t the first time you two slept together?”

“She was scared after your stupid horror movie too,” Harry shrugs.

“Wow, so are you guys a thing now or what?”

“Niall!” Harry growls and you’re not entirely sure what bothers you more. Niall’s shock and interrogation or the way Harry seems so cool and unbothered, like it’s no big deal. Maybe because for him it really isn’t, it’s only about the sleeping, nothing else, even though the cuddles are a little beyond the lines of friendship.

“What? I’m just asking the important stuff! Am I not allowed to tell dirty jokes to Y/N because you’ll cut my prick off?”

“You shouldn’t tell those anyway,” Louis chimes in and you nod in agreement.

Seeing that the conversation is just getting more and more awkward with each passing moment you decide to pull yourself out of it. Pushing yourself past Harry you mumble an excuse me before rushing back into your room, the three boys eyeing you curiously as you shut the door behind you, finally putting a physical barrier between you and them.

You shouldn’t be this offended, it’s not like any promises were made and you should have known better and not fall for him more than you already did. It was silly of you to think that there was anything more behind these nights spent curled up against each other, or when you woke up tangled and melted together. It was never what you hoped it to be.

Then and there you decide it’s better if you distanced yourself from him, or at least go back to how it was before. No bed sharing, no cuddling and preferably no bitter feelings.

It all goes well, because you have a pretty busy week after that day, you always have something to do and it’s not like you spent the night with Harry randomly, so it was evident that you stayed in your room so far.

But about a week later another storm was threatening to strike. The sky was gradually darkening all afternoon and now it’s only five o’clock, but it feels like eight. It’s Sunday, you’re quite exhausted since you were working until three. Niall was out somewhere with some of his coursemates and Louis went home for the weekend, won’t be back until Tuesday. It’s just you and Harry, who’s been sprawled out on the couch in only his sweatpants while you’re making yourself an early dinner so you can go to bed soon and have a good night’s sleep.

It doesn’t take long for the rain to start pouring, you’ve just gotten out of the shower when the first thunder rips through the place, making you gasp in fear. Harry’s head snaps around, looking in your way where you’re standing at the bathroom door, a questioning look in his eyes, but he doesn’t say a word. Ignoring his gaze, you just make your way into your bedroom, not even thinking about what could be on his mind. Is he thinking about whether you’ll ask to sleep with him again or he doesn’t care about it at all?

By the time you are ready to go to bed, the storm is fully raging outside, making your insides tremble every time you see a lightning or the thunder breaks the quietness in the house. You make one last trip to the kitchen, finding Harry leaned against the counter as he eats an apple.

“Going to bed early?” he asks as you pour yourself some water.

“Mhm,” you nod, avoiding looking at him.

“Everything alright?”

“Sure, I’m just tired,” you force a small smile onto your face just when a thunder rumbles outside, making you jump. Harry is watching you curiously and kind of expectantly, but you’re doing your best ignoring it. Instead, you just grab your water and head back to your room. “Good night.”

“Night, Y/N,” he calls after you, and you can feel his burning gaze on your back right until you close the door behind you.

Your plan to sleep a good ten hours goes right out the window. It doesn’t seem like the storm is about to calm anytime soon, so you’re stuck to suffer through it on your own. You’ll be damned to go to Harry’s, that would be an instant heart break and you just can’t take that right now. Long, torturous hours pass by with you lying awake in bed and part of you wants to go running over to Harry, but you force yourself to stay. It’s not happening tonight.

You fall asleep sometime after two in the morning when the thunder and lightning have stopped. Unfortunately, you need to wake up early in the morning, so when your phone’s alarm shakes you out of your sleep, you feel like absolute shit. Dragging yourself out of bed appears to be the hardest thing right now. As you make your way out, you are met with an all too familiar figure sitting at the small dining table, two cups of coffees in front of him, one obviously made for you.

Harry’s eyes snap up at you curiously, taking in your terrible looks as you head to the bathroom.

“Morning,” you mumble under your breath.

“Good morning’,” he nods in your way and though he doesn’t say anything else, you can tell he has a few thoughts about your current state.

Once you’re done with your morning business in there you join him at the table, barely able to keep your eyes open.

“Rough night?” he asks, eyes examining your face.

“Kinda.”

“The storm?”

You don’t answer, just nod your head. He remains silent, but you can feel that he is dying to ask another question.

Why didn’t you come over?

You’re glad he doesn’t actually asks you, because you wouldn’t be able to give either a normal answer or say anything without starting to cry. Instead, you just grab your coffee and head back into your bedroom to get ready for the day.

That week on Friday all four of you are invited to a party. At first you want to cancel, but some of your friends from classes will be there too and it’s been ages since you’ve been to a great party, so you decide to tag along with the boys.

For the first half of the evening you go your separate way, spending time with people you don’t actually live with and see every day. One drink follows the other, though you make sure you don’t go farther than getting tipsy. You’re not in the mood to deal with a nasty hangover in the morning.

Sometime after your third or fourth drink you run into Niall and he pulls you into their little circle that also involves Harry. When he sees that you’ve joined them, his eyes light up and goes out of his way to get next to you.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” he whines, slurring his words as he wraps an arm around your shoulders to keep you at his side. He is definitely drunk, that you’re sure of.

“It’s been just about two hours, Harry,” you roll your eyes, but can’t push your smile down. You’d be lying if you said you’re not enjoying having him so close. Your dynamic hasn’t been the same since you stopped sleeping in his bed. Not that it was such a regular activity, it only happened two times.

“But I missed you, I feel like we haven’t… haven’t talked in so long!” he huffs, knitting his eyebrows together. “Have you been avoiding me?” he asks leaning closer, so your conversation can somewhat be private.

“That’s silly. Of course I haven’t!”

“But it feels like that,” he pouts with glossy eyes. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”

“Sure,” you nod, the bitter taste of lying filling your mouth.

“Alright, cool,” he smirks and pulling closer he kisses into your hair before he engages with the rest of the group again, keeping his arm around you as if it wasn’t a big deal.

For the rest of the evening you simply don’t leave his side and not because he doesn’t let you, but because you don’t want to. Harry is not the only one missing the other, this week you’ve noticed that even though you’ve been keeping yourself busy, your thoughts always took you back to one particular, curly haired boy. Despite everything that’s been going on, he is your friend first and foremost who you love spending time with and talking about anything and everything.

Both of you are intoxicated, Harry a bit more than you, but you’re having a blast playing beerpong or ruining Niall’s chances with girls he is trying to pick up. You’re genuinely having an amazing time and it wouldn’t be the same without Harry.

Arriving back home your little group splits, everyone using the bathroom after the other and you’re the last one in line, because you always take the longest. By the time you’re finished, Louis and Niall are both locked up in their rooms, but Harry’s door is still open, some dim lighting illuminating the hallway. As you approach it, you find him throwing his dirty clothes into the hamper, but his head perks up when he sees you.

“Good night, H,” you sigh, quite tired and in need of a good sleep, but before you could head into your own bedroom, Harry grabs your wrist and pulls you into his. “What is it?”

“Sleep here,” he simply prompts, already leading you to the bed.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to.”

“I-I… I don’t--” you stutter, feeling flustered from his offer.

“Come on, you can’t say no,” he tells you, already crawling under his covers and then he holds them up as the invitation.

Taking a deep breath you follow him and make yourself comfortable in your almost usual spot. Harry’s arm falls over your waist in an instant, spooning you from behind as he hums pleased. But a few moments later he lifts his head, looking at you with concern in his eyes.

“You know you can say no, right? I was just joking.” Looking back at him you give him a small smile. Even drunk he makes sure you aren’t doing anything you don’t want to, but how could you not want it? You’ve been aching to sleep next to him all week, especially after the last storm when you suffered alone in your room.

“I know, Harry.”

“Alright, okay,” he nods, his head dropping back to the pillow. “I missed this,” he mumbles with a sigh.

“Yeah?”

“Mm, sleeping alone sucks,” he hums and in a split second, your heart breaks.

Harry didn’t want to sleep with you, he just wanted to sleep with someone and you were the one there. It has nothing to do with you.

You want to blame him, you want it to be his fault that your chest is now aching, knowing that it truly doesn’t mean the same thing to him it does to you, but you know you can’t. It wouldn’t be fair, so once again, you’re left with a sinking heart wrapped up into Harry’s embrace that suddenly feels burning.

“Good night, Y/N.”

“Good night, Harry.”

When the morning comes Harry is still sleeping deep beside you, an arm thrown over your waist, puffing warm air against the side of your head with every breath he exhales. Seeing him so peaceful warms your heart, but then you realize everything that happened last night, how he only used you because you were available and not because he wanted you.

You don’t want to wait for him to wake up and face him, your emotions would surely bring the best out of you. So carefully, you unwrap yourself from his hold and sneak out of his room, back into yours.

There’s no way you can face Harry right now, so before he could wake up you leave, planning on spending the day in the library, working on your assignments, hoping the school work will take your mind off of how badly you’ve been friendzoned.

Sometime after eleven Harry actually texts you asking where you went and you just tell him you have a shitload of school stuff to deal with. He asks if he can join you, but you tell him you’re with a group of your classmates, even though you’re sitting in an almost entirely empty library. He luckily doesn’t push it and leaves you to be. Hopefully he’ll be fine when you take another step away from him for a while to get your head straight and sort your emotions out.

You get home quite late, but not late enough, apparently. Because walking into the house you find the boys clearly getting ready to watch a movie.

“Just in time!” Niall beams. “Join us, Princess!” he laughs, grabbing himself a cola from the fridge.

“Oh, no, I have some things to work on--”

“Come on, you’ve been in the library all day, you can have a break!” Louis tells you and you know you won’t be left alone, they are just so persistent.

So you join them in your usual spot, which is of course next to Harry, though you’re trying to avoid his gaze that hasn’t left you since you arrived and by now you’re certain he knows you’re avoiding him. There’s a reason why he asked you last night if you’ve been doing it lately, he is not stupid, but this is not the time to deal with it.

With your inner crisis bubbling inside you, you completely forget to ask what you’re watching. A few minutes into the movie it becomes quite clear however.

“Is this a fucking horror movie again?” you ask, snapping at Niall, who just starts laughing.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure Harry will gladly let you sleep in his bed tonight,” he teases, making your whole face heat up at his comment. Harry slaps his chest before he turns to you with concern filled eyes, but you pretend like you see nothing, turning back to the screen with your jaw clenched.

You’re fucked.

The movie is a fucking shitshow and leaves you traumatized. When it’s over, you think about why didn’t you just stand up and go into your room when you realized it’s another horror. For a change, this one was filled with demons and monsters that hide in the shadows, just what you need before going to bed. In the night. In a totally dark room.

Exiting the bathroom you’re already planning on watching something lighthearted and cheerful in your room, hoping that would make you forget the movie you just saw and give you the chance to actually sleep.

Walking past Harry’s room you see that it’s still open and you catch him expectantly looking at you when you appear in the doorway as you walk down the hallway, your eyes meeting for just a split second before you disappear from his sight and shut your bedroom door without a word behind you.

No matter how many random videos you watch on YouTube, some scenes from the movie are just imprinted into your mind and they have you trembling in fear. Every shadow looks like a demon or ghost, hiding in your room, ready to haunt and kill you and you’re on the verge of actually crying. It might not be only because of the movie, more like everything else that’s been bottled up inside you, added to the fear the movie has brought to you.

Shutting your eyes closed you try to take deep breaths and for a bit it actually seems to help, but that is until you hear the door opening. It gives you an instant heart attack and you can’t keep your tears back anymore.

A whimper leaves your mouth as the door opens and you can only see a shadow entering the room, totally not recognizing Harry in the dark.

“Y/N, hey, it’s just me! It’s okay!” he quickly clears, seeing how shaken up you are. He rushes over to the bed, one hand cupping your cheek, the other one finding your hand and before you could think, you grip it hard.

“You scared the living hell out of me!” you cry out, sobbing.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to check on you.”

Silence sets between the two of you that’s only momentarily broken by your shaky breaths as you try to calm yourself down.

“Why didn’t you come to mine after the movie if you were so scared?” he then asks, surprising you with how straightforward he is.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” you mumble, blinking the remaining of the tears away as Harry stares down at you intently.

“Why would you think you’d bother me? I like having you there.”

“But it’s… Doesn’t matter,” you sigh in defeat, but it just concerns him even more.

“No, tell me!”

“Harry, just go back to your room. I’ll be fine.”

“You definitely won’t and I’m not leaving until you don’t tell me what’s going on,” he protests firmly and you lose your patience to keep lying to him.

“You just wanted someone to sleep with yesterday, okay? You didn’t need me. And… I don’t want to depend on you more than I should.”

Harry stares back at you with a blank expression and you feel like this is going to be the end of your friendship. You have to come clean about your feelings and he’ll tell you that he doesn’t feel the same way. But then he speaks up and the tables turn faster than ever.

“Y/N, I wanted you to sleep with me last night. Not just anyone. You.”

“What?”

“I really thought we have been on the same page, but apparently, we’re not even in the same book,” he sighs, confusing you even more. “Wasn’t it suspicious how things have been between us lately? The way we slept, the mornings, did you think these are normal things to do?”

“I-I thought that… it didn’t mean anything to you.”

“Well it did,” he replies and you breath hitches in your throat. “I was trying to take it slow, see how you’d react to everything and I thought you were feeling the same way. But then last time you didn’t come to my room when there was a storm and I thought that was your way of telling me that you want to pause whatever’s been going on.”

You’re just blinking in shock, listening to his words. This is nothing you expected.

“But then you seemed like you opened back up last night and you agreed to sleep with me, thought we were back on track, but then you were nowhere to be found in the morning, avoided me all day and now you would have rather spent the night crying here alone than to come over to me. What did I do? Just tell me, because quite frankly, I have no idea what we are doing anymore, Y/N,” he sighs, clearly tired of this insane game you’ve been playing without even knowing.

“So… you did all of this, because… you…”

“Because I like you, Y/N. But there’s a possibility it’s already way more than just a strong liking,” he admits with a soft chuckle that melts you in an instant.

“Oh god, I could cry again, but not out of fear this time,” you tell him, making him laugh as you scoot closer to him on the mattress. “I feel the same way, Harry,” you softly tell him, your hands finding the base of his neck while his hands have wandered to your waist so now he is pulling you towards him until he ends up in his lap. His face is now so close, and even in the dark, you can see the cheesy smile on his pink lips.

“You’re not saying this just to keep me here because you’re scared to be alone, right?” he asks, clearly joking, earning a wholehearted laugh from you.

“No, but I guess that would be a major benefit of it.”

“I’ll protect you from all the demons and killers under one condition,” he smirks, his face already inching closer, his nose is already touching yours.

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“I get to kiss you.”

“Deal.”

You barely say this one little word, his lips are already on yours, kissing you in a way that almost knocks all the air out of your lungs. You press yourself up against him, his arms curling around you, holding you tight as if he is already protecting you from everything that scares you, though you can’t really think about the stupid horror movies now that you’re kissing Harry.

He pulls you down with himself making you lie on your back as he holds himself up above you, his lips parting from your just enough so he can look into your eyes.

“How about I kiss you every time you feel scared?” he prompts, pecking your lips gently as you pull your legs up and his hips settle between your thighs, while your hands dance down his back.

“Alright, I’m in,” you smirk at him and for a moment he just stares back at you, smiling wide, in complete awe that it’s finally happening. Then he cocks his head to the side before speaking up.

“Are you still scared?”

“Very,” you nod. “I’m shaking.”

“Good,” he grins before his lips press onto yours again.

Thank you for reading! Please like/reblog if you enjoyed!

[harrysweasleys]

Little Malfoy

Synopsis: You and Draco are both purebloods and arranged to marry, but you’re are already dating and in the 7th year, you find out you’re pregnant.

Warnings: teenage pregnancy, language

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: sorry this took so long! also, im thinking of making a new account and transferring my work bc currently this is a side-blog and i can’t answer your sweet comments. :( ALSO! There is no Voldemort, war, or anything from Deathly Hallows in here! 

-

Your seventh year was probably one of the roughest years of your life. With the whole figuring out your future, passing your courses, making sure you keep in touch with friends, so forth.

When you started dating Draco in fifth year, things seemed as though they couldn’t go downhill. The two of you were inseparable and your love grew more and more as months went by. Your friends in Slytherin practically adored you guys. 

Pansy called you two the ‘Hogwarts dream team’ and even Blaise was fond of the two of you. Crabbe and Goyle were thrilled that Draco wasn’t shoving them around like they were his slaves anymore, so they came around pretty quickly. All in all, everyone had won. First years weren’t veering away from him in fear of being taunted, and you finally got your parents off your back about finding the perfect pureblood match for you.

Luckily for you, your parents completely adored the Malfoy family (and their status) so over the summer, they had agreed to arrange your marriage to Draco.. You were getting married in two summers, so as long as the two of you stuck by each others’ sides, there shouldn’t be an issue. 

But, unluckily, you had hoped too soon. 

That’s how you ended up pacing back and forth in Professor Snape’s office with tears cascading down your cheeks at five o’clock on a Friday morning. You hadn’t been able to sleep at all last night because right before going to bed, you had checked your personal agenda and realized you were nearly two weeks late. You were always pretty regular, so this could only mean a few things.

You had really hoped it wasn’t the one thing you were thinking, but with your luck, it probably was. 

About a month back, you and Draco had stayed back in the Slytherin dorms by yourself during supper hour since you had to work on an assignment, and the two of you had ended up in his bed tangled in the sheets not long after that. So, naturally, when you realized you were two weeks late, your mind swung back to that night immediately. 

“Will you stop walking around in circles?” Snape snapped, scavenging through the shelves in his office for the one thing he probably never thought he needed.

“Sorry, Professor,” your voice came out shaky as you stopped in your tracks, looking over at him with wide, fear-filled eyes. You raised your hand, biting at your fingernails to keep your mind off of the thumping of your heart against your ribcage.

Sure, Snape had been quite agitated by your rude awakening at nearly four thirty in the morning, but he seemed to be better now as he cursed at every tiny bottle that fell over. As head of Slytherin house, he knew he had to be there for the students at any hour they needed him, no matter how much he hated it.

“Alright, uh, here,” he handed you a tiny box, inside it was the pregnancy stick. Despite housing some of the most powerful witches and wizards in the world, Hogwarts still kept Muggle pregnancy tests. 

He tried avoiding your eyes as he gave it to you. You’d probably be feeling embarrassed if it wasn’t for the swarm of nerves in your stomach. 

“T-Thanks, Professor,” you nodded at him and rushed out of his office. You bolted down to the Slytherin common room, sneaking in as quietly as possible and into the bathroom. 

Shutting the stall quickly and quietly, you took the tiny stick out of the box with shaky hands and sat down on the toilet, trying your hardest to control your breathing. Not very successfully though, as you needed to remind yourself to actually exhale every now and then.

Maybe it’ll be negative, the naive side of your mind taunted you as you started doing your business, shutting your eyes to avoid seeing what it would say even though you knew you’d have to wait a few minutes. 

As you finished, you placed the stick down on the back of the toilet, and waited. 

And waited.

And waited.

And... waited. 

Finally, after what felt like three hours — but was only three minutes — you picked up the stick, only to nearly drop it again.

Positive. 

“Holy shit,” you muttered, placing the stick down on the back of the toilet and leaning against the wall, suddenly feeling like you wanted to cry, scream and vomit all at once. 

Why?

You screwed your eyes shut, trying so hard to hold back the tears. You were only seventeen. You still had nearly six months left at Hogwarts. You were so young, what were your parents going to say? What was Draco going to say?

Holy shit, Draco. 

There was no way in hell Draco was ready to have a kid. If you were certain of anything, it was that. Sure, you two had spoken about kids, but he had never really mentioned actually wanting to have any. Especially not at this young age.

You leaned your back against the wall of the stall, sliding down and clutching your knees to your chest. You leaned your forehead against them, cursing yourself for not being safe enough. Yes, you and Draco had used just about every safe measure there was, but they were never one hundred percent effective.

You let the tears flow freely by now, not even bothering to try silencing your sobs as they echoed dully around the bathroom. This was the worst way to spend your last year.

You placed a hand on your lower belly, knowing nothing had really started to show or swell yet, but within a few months, it would definitely be visible. You tried not to think about what other students would say about you, what the Professors would think of you, or how Draco would react, but it was nearly impossible not to. 

A forceful knock sounded at the door to the bathroom and Snape’s dull voice came flowing in, “Miss Y/L/N, I’m going to guess by the fact that you’re still in there that this isn’t the result you wanted. Come to my office.”

You wiped your tears with your sweater, wiping off the pregnancy test with toilet paper and placing it in your pocket. Not that you wanted to, but Draco would probably assume this was a prank and you needed proof.

You ducked your head and walked out of the bathroom, not even bothering to look at yourself in the mirror. Snape stood outside, arms behind his back, and hair hanging in his face.

“Come,” he took off down the hall and turned into his office. You followed closely behind, not wanting to be seen by anyone, even though it was still five in the morning and no one was up at this hour, but you were ashamed enough as it was.

“Sit,” he pointed to a moth-eaten leather chair in the corner and you walked over to it, sitting down gently and looking up at him, “Now, I don’t think I need to tell you how reckless you’ve been, so I shall skip that part.”

You weren’t sure why you expected him to be somewhat comforting, but the judgment and disappointment in his voice stung. 

“Now, I have this little bottle here,” he shoved a tiny, tear-shaped bottle into your hand, “Take a drop of this every morning in your pumpkin juice, or whatever beverage you wish to have, and it will help with nausea, cramping and.... irregular moodswings.”

You nodded, gripping the bottle with your sweaty hands and placed it in your lap, “Do I, uh, stay? Or am I expelled?”

Snape sighed, sitting across from you and intertwining his hands on his lap, his face a tell-tale sign he was very uncomfortable with the conversation, “You are not expelled, but you will indeed be asked to exclude yourself from certain activities.”

“How do I tell Draco?” you found yourself asking, regretting it once you knew you had overstepped your boundaries. 

He held back an eye roll, “That is none of my concern.”

“Right, sorry,” you mumbled, fumbling with the bottle he had given you moments before. 

“Now,” he spoke up again, “I will need to alert Dumbledore, along with the Heads of Houses, but please try to keep this as secret as you can for the time being. We don’t need rumours and whispers flying amuck, what with all the chaos that seventh year brings already.”

You nodded again, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear and feeling your breathing return to normal, “Thank you, Professor. I should probably go tell Draco.”

“Probably.”

You stood up off the chair, avoiding eye contact once more, but right as you were about to walk out of the room, his voice cut you off.

“As Head of Slytherin house, it is my responsibility to attend to the needs of my students,” he spoke almost regretfully, “So if ever you need assistance... don’t be shy. However, I am not here for you to wake up at three in the morning because you are having trouble sleeping, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” you smiled at him, “I’ll avoid waking you up as much as I can.”

He nodded at you and waved his hand, motioning that you were free to go. You walked back to the common room, legs shaky and the bottle clutched tightly in your hand. You stepped quietly through the entrance and let out a sigh, bracing yourself for what was going to come.

You couldn’t overthink it too much or you’d never end up telling him, so you had to just go up and do it. 

You walked up the stairs to the dorms and knocked on Draco’s door, opening it slightly to make sure you hadn’t woken up anyone else in the room. You peeked your head in, noticing that no one was awake.

Tiptoeing in, you passed Crabbe, then Goyle — who was snoring so loudly you didn’t have to worry about the creaking floor — and reached Draco’s bed. You placed your hand on his head, trying your best to avoid startling him and waking up everyone else.

“Hm?” he mumbled, pulling the blankets up higher, “I didn’t. It’s only blue...”

“Draco!” you hissed quietly, poking him in the cheek. His habit of sleeptalking made it hard for you to get him to wake up.

His eyes fluttered open slowly, and he scanned you up and down with a confused expression, “Y/N? It’s not even six o’clock, what’s wrong?”

You felt so bad, you knew you were about to completely change his world and he had no idea. You watched him for a good moment, tuning out what he was saying. 

“Huh? Oh, right, we need to talk, come downstairs,” your voice shook once more, but you didn’t let him question you as you walked out of the room and down the stairs.

Your heart was beating so fast you thought you might need to go see Madam Pomfrey and check for signs of a heart attack. You sat down on the velvet couch, staring into the flames of the fireplace and trying to calm yourself down.

Eventually, Draco’s quiet footsteps came down and he appeared at your side, sitting next to you on the couch.

“You’re worrying me,” he admitted, running a hand through his messy morning hair, “You’re never up before eight. This has to be serious.”

“It is,” you looked over at him, wanting so badly to tell him and have it be a prank, but the reality of it was washing over you in waves of guilt. 

“Tell me,” he whispered, tucking a stand of hair behind your ear and gazing into your eyes with such intensity, you felt a tear slide down your face.

“Draco, I’m pregnant,” you mumbled, keeping your eyes locked on his. 

The colour completely drained from his face, causing him to become paler than usual, until a small smile formed on his lips, “Good one.”

“I’m not joking, Draco,” you sighed, taking the pregnancy test out and holding it in front of his face, “I’m as serious as Sirius.”

“Wait—,” he looked down at the stick, eyes wide, “This is for real? You’re actually pregnant?”

You nodded, looking down at your lap. You heard him let out a long, exhausted sigh, and then he leaned back against the couch, muttering to himself about ‘stupid condoms.’

“Well, then, I’ll be by your side and I’ll take care of you every step of the way,” he placed a cold finger under your chin, tilting your head up to face him.

Your breath hitched in your throat and you could feel more tears threatening to fall, “Why aren’t you reacting more... I don’t know — panicked? This is scary as hell.”

“I never said it wasn’t,” he spoke quietly, completely contrasted to the swarm you were feeling inside, “But what good is panicking going to do? You need to be healthy, I need to take care of you, and we’re going to get through this together.”

Despite the fact that you were indeed freaking out on a whole new level, Draco’s words made a comfortable feeling settle in your chest. You knew damn well that having a baby at seventeen while attending school was going to be the biggest challenge of your life, but somehow, he seemed to make you feel as if it was going to work.

“Are — Are you sure? I mean, this is huge,” you widened your eyes, waving your hands as if to show him how big this was. 

He chuckled, placing a kiss on your cheek, “I’m sure. Hey, we’re getting married in two years, so what’s the worst that can happen? We already know we’re gonna be together for a long, long time. We’re the ultimate team, we got this.”

You smiled, wiping at your tears for the third time that morning, “Draco, this isn’t like getting matching tattoos, this is a baby. A child. In a few months, I’m going to start getting big, and by this summer I won’t even see my feet, and at this time next year—”

“—we’re going to have a little Malfoy,” he cut you off, silencing your rambling, “I got that, yeah. Doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen. I always knew I wanted kids with you. Hey, if you decide to straight up drop out of Hogwarts right now, I’ll be right by your side, helping you carry your bags and figuring out where we’d go from there.”

You were speechless. This was not the way you thought he’d react to this. You had expected silence, worry, and of course, a whole bunch of tugging at his hair while he swore his head off. That’s how you were feeling inside. You never thought he’d end up being okay with this. He was being so calm. 

You let out a breath and nodded your head, “Right, okay, so we’ll be okay then?”

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t be. Yeah, being pregnant won’t be easy, but we’ve got some good people around us here and our families will help us out,” he shrugged, trying to hold back a smile, “I still can’t believe it.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” you let out a soft chuckle, placing your hands over your belly. You leaned your head back on the couch, shutting your eyes and listening to Draco’s slow breaths. 

You nearly jumped when you felt his hand on top of yours, rubbing slow, soothing circles over your still-flat belly. 

“This is crazy,” he muttered, leaning his head against your shoulder, “We’re having a baby.”. Nodding, you let out another small giggle, placing a kiss against his forehead.

You were too focused on your peaceful moment with Draco to realize Pansy and Blaise walking into the room, overhearing your conversation and smacking each other with wide eyes.

“Sorry — you’re having a what now?!” Pansy shrieked, gripping Blaise’s sleeve with shock and startling you out of your skin, “You two lovestruck idiots better name it after me, boy or girl.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 14: Love Keeps The Monsters From Our Door] [Series Finale]

A/N: Thank you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, laughter, rants, screeches of anguish, and unapologetic thirsting for “sexy undead Italian man” Joseph Francis Mazzello. I hope you love this conclusion more than Baby Swan loves pineapple pizza. 💜

Series Summary: Potentially a better love story than Twilight?

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. (The #1 song I associate with this fic!)

Chapter Warnings: Language.

Word Count: 7.7k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk @rhapsodyrecs​

Mercy

We have to stay in the Vladivostok palace until her transformation is complete, and I hate it.

The floors are cold and sterile and every clang of noise ricochets off them like a bullet. The earth outside is stripped bare and hibernal. There is no green to interrupt the bleakness of the sky, the cruel absence of color: no spruces or hemlocks or bigleaf maples, no evergreen forests, no verdant fields, only a grey that bleeds from the sky in sheets of hail and driving rain. This land is a stranger. So many of the faces, too, are strangers, although they try. Honora sits with me—her large dark eyes, like mirrors of mine, polished and wet with aching pity—and braids my hair. Morana invites me to bake homemade bread with her. Austin tries to make me smile. Cato visits me as much as he can, because he feels responsible; or maybe he would do it anyway, maybe lessening suffering is as instinctual to him as bloodshed is to so many of our kind. And when Cato is with me, I do feel a little better, like my story might belong to somebody else, like it’s a name I can’t quite remember, like it’s a transitory moment of déjà vu I can catch glimpses of but never touch. And yet, still, I send him away.  

I don’t want to be with Cato. It’s painful for him to be around me, I can see that. It’s painful for Rami, and for Ben, and for Joe, and for Lucy and Scarlett. It’s even painful for the Irish Wolfhounds that Cato found locked up for safekeeping in Larkin’s study; they skulk around the palace vigilantly but leave great swaths of uninterrupted space around me like open water. So I conjure up a mask of brave, hopeful acceptance and wear it everywhere I go.

Joe says very little, never leaves the girl he calls Baby Swan’s side, dabs her scorching skin with washcloths soaked in ice water and murmurs in sympathy when she screams through the unconsciousness, from beneath the ocean of fire we all know so well. He nods off sometimes, snatching minutes of sleep like fireflies in a jar, before jolting awake to make sure her heart is still beating. When Ben isn’t checking on them, he’s with Cato, helping to draw up plans for the future, reminiscing about the past with slick eyes and clinking midnight glasses of whiskey. Scarlett sprawls across the desk in what was once Larkin’s study and spends hours on the phone with Archer as she gazes up at the ceiling, telling him how to care for the farm animals and the garden, reassuring him that we’ll be home soon, whispering things to him that I try not to hear; and I know she wouldn’t want me to anyway. Lucy weeps delicate, ceaseless tears as she perches on the staircase landing and Rami entombs her in his arms, never having to ask what she needs from him. And I wander meaninglessly through the echoing, unfamiliar hallways like a moon without a planet.

I know what they all think about me, perhaps even Rami, for I keep it buried as deep as all skeletons should be: that I’m irrevocably kind, effortlessly forgiving. That I’m as incapable of bitterness as I am of aging. But they’re wrong. It’s a choice, and it always has been, ever since a late-November dusk in 1864 when madness eclipsed mercy. Every day I choose whether to surrender to the beckoning, malignant hatred that lurks in the back of my bedroom closet, in the dusty and ill-lit loft of the barn roped with cobwebs, in the twilight tree line of the western hemlocks crawling with shadows that whisper through fanged teeth. Every day I decide whether to become a monster. And it has never been harder to remember why I don’t.

My future is unimaginable. The nights are endless. I feel black, razored seeds of what I am horrified must be bitterness burrowing beneath my skin and taking root there. I am consumed by infected, fruitless questions that I can’t silence: Why Gwilym? Why Arthur? Why Eliza and Charlotte? Why is it always fire?

The first words that Gwilym ever spoke to me, as I unraveled from unconsciousness under a grove of sycamore trees with smoke still clinging to my unscarred skin, rattle around in my skull like windchimes beneath thunderous skies. His voice was colored with an accent I couldn’t place, and yet it sounded like home: You’re in a dark place right now. But you don’t have to stay there.

That might have been true once. That might have been true in the ruinous autumn of 1864. But now I can’t find my way out.

Seventy-three hours after our arrival in this barren corner of the world, Charlie Swan’s daughter  wakes up as a vampire. Her heart is perfectly still, her skin faultless, her senses sharp, her mind as impenetrable as ever; at least, that’s what Lucy says when she finds me. And Lucy tugs at my hand, wearing her first smile in days, insisting that I have to come meet the newest member of our coven, to welcome her. I don’t know how to tell Lucy that I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to love this girl, that I don’t have it in me to love anyone but ghosts. And yet—compliantly, yieldingly, expecting nothing but disappointment in the monster I have become—I follow her.

The door is already open to the Swan girl’s room; chattering, beaming vampires flood in and out like the tides. I step inside. And I see the way that Joe looks at her, the way that Ben does; and all those seeds that I had feared might be bitterness blossom into nothing but open air.

It’s Not A Fucking Wedding (A.K.A. 13.5 Months Later)

The ocean is a universe. Its arms are not ever-expanding, spiraling galaxies of suns and planets and nebulae and black holes, this is true; its belly is not a vacuum of inhospitable oblivion, its bones are not invisible strings of gravity, its language is not a silence older than starlight, older than eternity. But the ocean is a universe nonetheless, its borders tucked neatly around the seven continents, slumbering there until the next hurricane or tsunami or ice age comes conquering; and inevitably equilibrium is restored—like defibrillator paddles to a heart, like naloxone to an addict’s blood—and our two worlds can coexist side by side once again.  

The ocean’s arms are sighing waves, bubbling and brisk, grasping and retreating in the same breath. Its belly is swollen with life from immense blue whales down to swarming clouds of single-celled, sun-hungry phytoplankton. Its language is ancient whispers; not parched and blistering and brittle sounds like the desert’s but cool, serene, supple, engulfing. And I can hear them all, if I listen closely enough. I can hear the sentient whistling of orcas, the breaking of waves against rocks, the scrabbling of sand crabs beneath the earth, the gruff distant barks of sea lions, the rustling of evergreen pine needles in the breeze. And I understand now why it was always so easy for vampires to be introspective, to lapse into thoughtful, unhurried silences. I could imagine spending decades just sitting here with my knees tucked to my chest and my hair whipping in the brackish wind, watching the seasons roll by like a wheel.

Joe was coming back from the gravel parking lot. I turned to watch him: red U Chicago hoodie, messy dark auburn-ish hair, a pizza box clasped in his hands. The GrubHub delivery driver was returning to his car with the toothiest of grins.

“Buon appetito!” Joe announced, dramatically presenting me with the pizza box. It had become our post-finals tradition each semester: pizza at La Push beach, half-pepperoni, half-pineapple.

“Grazie, sexy undead Italian man. Your accent is getting so good!”

“I know, right?! I’m on a twelve-day Duolingo streak. I can’t let that little green owl dude down.”

“I’m impressed, I’ll admit it. I gotta brush up on my Welsh. Why’s the GrubHub driver so cheery?”

“I tipped him $500.”

I smiled, opening the box and lifting out a semi-warm slice of pineapple pizza. Elastic strands of mozzarella cheese stretched like rubber bands until they snapped. “Aww, really?”

Joe plopped down onto the cool, damp sand beside me. “No. I lied. We’re actually having a torrid love affair.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “How could you possibly have time for all that?” Between school, business ventures, family activities, and me, Joe was very rarely unoccupied. And he preferred it that way.

“I’m so glad you asked. I’m very speedy, if you recall. And that’s just one of the exclusive services I offer. I am a man of many talents. I make people’s wildest dreams come true. Who am I to deny the GrubHub delivery man the wonderland that is my spindly, annoying body?”  

“You are the fastest,” I said, winking.

“Oh shut up! I mean, uh, uhhh, silenzio!” He pointed his slice of pepperoni pizza at me reproachfully. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not the fastest at everything.”

“Whatever you say, mob guy.”

He lunged for me, pinned me down in the crumbling sand, both of us laughing wildly as the crusts of our pizza slices bounded off and were snatched up by diving, screeching seagulls. He growled with mock savagery, braced his hips against mine, kissed his way from the corner of my jaw to my lips. That oh-so-familiar commanding, craving ache for him came roaring to the surface; and now there was no bittersweet edge to it, no inescapable backdrop of lambent numbers ticking down from five or ten or fifteen years to zero. Now there was only the calm, unurgent promise of forever.

“Joe—!”

“You have besmirched my honor, Baby Swan. I am left with no recourse but to refresh your clearly flawed memory and prove you wrong.”

“Public indecency? That’s illegal, sir.”

“Okay, you gotta stop stealing my catchphrases. It’s extremely difficult for me to come up with new ones. I’m almost a hundred years old, you know.”

“Alright, I guess you’re not bad in bed for a basically-centenarian.”

He smiled down at me, his dark eyes alight, the wind tearing through his hair, one palm resting on my forehead, uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad we’re a thing.”

“You better be. You’re kind of stuck with me now. You’ve stolen my virtue, you’ve made me fall in love with your entire demented family, you’ve forced your torturous immortality upon me. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you ever stop funding my pineapple pizza addiction, of course.”

Joe chuckled as he climbed off me and took my hand in his, pulling me upright. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Your insistence on being a sort-of vegetarian. It’s embarrassing. You’re the wimpiest vampire ever. You’re a disgrace to the coven.”

“I eat animals!” I objected.

“Yeah, when you have to.” And Joe was right: I steered clear of flesh outside of the two or three times a week when I hunted. For environmental sustainability reasons, I mostly consumed deer or rabbits; although the very occasional shark was my guilty pleasure. Joe gnawed on his second slice of pizza and peered out into the overcast, dusky horizon, wiping crumbs from his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “We only have one more of these left,” he said at last, a little sadly. “One more finals season at Calawah University. One more celebratory dinner at La Push.”

“We’ll just have to get used to a new view. Pizza by the Chicago River, maybe.”

Joe looked over at me, thoughtful again, smiling. He had received his acceptance letter to the University of Chicago three weeks ago. I got mine eight days later. “It won’t be hard for you to leave Forks?”

“It will be. Once upon a time I didn’t think that was possible, but I will miss Forks. And not just because of Charlie and Archer and Jessica and Angela and all the Lees. But it was hard to leave Phoenix, and I’m sure one day it will be hard to leave Chicago. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”

Joe nodded introspectively. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

“Don’t quote classic rock songs at me, mixtapes boy.”

“You love my mixtapes,” he teased, circling his left arm around my waist, pulling me in closer, touching his lips to my forehead. Mint and pine and starlight sank into my lungs like an anchor through the surf. “And that saying actually goes all the way back to Seneca, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still philosophizing in some cloudy corner of the world somewhere.”

“Not to my knowledge. Although that’s an intriguing thought. We need more famous vampires. Caligula would have made for very interesting conversation. Lincoln, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Dante...I guess it’s possible that anyone is still around. Maybe we should turn Meat Loaf. You know, for the good of posterity.”

“Is it not enough that they’re already cursed with student debt and global warming?”

Joe cackled, took my face in his palms, kissed each of my cheeks one after the other, then nudged my nose with his. “You ready to go, Baby Swan? I suspect we’re expected to participate in some holiday festivities tonight.”

“I’m ready,” I agreed. We threw our leftover pizza to the seagulls, disposed of the grease-spotted cardboard box, and walked back to my 1999 Honda Accord with our pulseless hands intertwined.

The evergreen trees along Routh 110 fled by beneath a sky freckling with stars. Sharp winter air poured in through the open windows. And I could feel that it was cold, in the same way that I could feel the warmth on Forks’ rare sweltering days; but there was no discomfort that accompanied that knowledge. Pain only came when the sky was unincumbered by thick clouds churning in off the Pacific, and then it felt something like staring into the sun had as a human. Sunglasses helped, but the surest remedy was avoidance, was surrender. And what an inconsequential price to pay for forever.

“Wait,” I said, spying the mailbox that marked the start of the Lees’ driveway. “They still deliver mail on Christmas Eve, right?”

“Uh, I think so, why...?” And then he remembered. “Oh, yeah, let’s check!”

I pulled up beside the mailbox and Joe leaned out, returning to his seat with a mountain of Christmas cards and business correspondence and advertisements from Costco and Sephora. He sifted through them until he found a single white envelope from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. It was addressed to a Mr. Benjamin August Hardy. Joe held it up to show me as we drove down the driveway, the Lee house coming into view and ornamented with a frankly excessive amount of multicolored string lights and inflatable reindeer.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, drumming the steering wheel.

“You want to be the one to give it to him?”

“Are you serious?! Yeah, can I?”

Joe passed the envelope to me as I parked my geriatric Honda, which Archer had pledged to keep alive as long as physically possible. In return, Ben let him and Scarlett borrow the Aston Martin Vantage no less than once a week. I dashed out of the car, up the steps of the front porch, and into the house that bubbled over with the sounds of metallic kitchen clashes and frenetic voices and Wham!’s Last Christmas.

“Ben?!” I shouted.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy called from the living room, where she and Lucy were putting the final touches on Scarlett’s gown. Scarlett was playing the part of semi-willing victim, wearing gold heels and an impatient smirk and her hair out of the way in a milkmaid braid; her train of vivid red lace billowed across the hardwood floor. From the couch, Archer and Rami were playing Mario Kart on the big-screen tv and nibbling their way through a tray of homemade gingerbread cookies.

“Oh wow,” I said, clutching the envelope to my chest, mesmerized. I kept waiting for Scarlett to start looking like a normal person to me, and it never happened. Tonight, in the glow of the flameless candles and kaleidoscopic Christmas lights and draped in lace the color of pomegranate seeds, she was Persephone: a goddess of resurrection, a face that death himself could not pass by unscathed. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lucy. Seriously.”

“One day I’m going to get you out of those thrift shop sweaters,” Lucy threatened me, placing a pin in the fabric at Scarlett’s waist.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when that shows up in one of your visions.”

“Bitch,” Lucy flung back, snickering, knowing how improbable that was. I still appeared in her visions extremely infrequently, and then only when I happened to be standing next to whoever the premonition was actually about.

“Language, dear,” Mercy tutted, inspecting the hem of Scarlett’s gown.

Joe arrived beside me, his arms still full of mail. “ScarJo, I almost didn’t recognize you! Why do you have, like, no cleavage or fishnets or thigh slits?”

“Why do you have like no eyelashes?” Scarlett replied. “See, I can ask unnecessary and invasive questions too.”

Joe frowned, wounded. “What’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“Lucy, darling, I think it’s just a tad uneven on this side,” Mercy said, showing her. “Maybe by half an inch...?”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong with my eyelashes?!”

Mercy replied distractedly: “Nothing, honey, you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Mom!” Joe groaned.

“It really is gorgeous,” Mercy marveled as Lucy flitted around her to investigate the hem situation. “And so Christmasy. So perfect for the season. Scarlett, dear, you were right after all, and I’m so sorry for doubting you. I’d just never heard of a red wedding dress before.”

“Mom, it’s not a fucking wedding!” Scarlett exclaimed, for probably the thirtieth time since Thanksgiving. “It’s a nonbinding, informal celebration of an egalitarian romantic partnership. Will somebody please inform this woman that it’s not a wedding?!”

“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want, sweetheart,” Mercy conceded dreamily.

Joe pointed to Archer. “Isn’t he supposed to not see the dress until the day of or something?”

“What a great question!” Archer replied, still deeply invested in Mario Kart. “You see, that would be the case if this was a wedding. However, I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not.”

Scarlett grinned triumphantly at Joe. “There you have it.”

She might snap petulantly, and she might complain, but Scarlett wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t want to; we were all intimately familiar with the futility of trying to force Scarlett into anything. The not-wedding, as improbable as it seemed, had been her idea from the start. And she wasn’t doing it for herself. She wasn’t even doing it for Archer. Scarlett was doing it for her mother.

The first six months had been hell for Mercy. She didn’t resent me, as I had feared she might; Mercy made that clear, and Rami confirmed it. But she was gutted. She wouldn’t speak of Gwil, wouldn’t listen to us talk about him, locked every photograph of him away in dark drawers, wandered around with a remote, uncanny, unseeing smile until she walked straight into walls; and then she would blink inanely up at them, as if they had dropped out of the sky rather than been built by her own hands. She baked hundreds of cakes and almost never slept. She told us she was fine every time we asked, which was more or less constantly. But on the very rare occasions when she was left alone, Mercy would unfailingly end up in the field behind the Lee house, gazing out into the forest of western hemlock trees with tears snaking silently down her cheeks, the muted light of the cloud-covered setting sun flickering red and furious on her face like wildfire.

And then one afternoon, a package had arrived from Arviat, Canada, where Cato and the rest of the surviving Draghi had relocated shortly after the rebellion at Vladivostok. It was five feet tall and another three wide, and what we found after carefully peeling away all those layers of foam padding and packing tape was a portrait of Gwilym so skillfully painted that it could have been mistaken for a photograph. Mercy had stared at it for a long time—ignoring Lucy’s attempts to guide her away, deaf to any of our concerns—until she at last picked up the portrait herself and said, quite evenly: “I think we should hang it in the living room, don’t you?”

Things had been better since then—very, very gradually, and yet unmistakably—and Gwil’s portrait remained mounted above the living room couch like a watchman, his eyes sparkling and blue, his faint smile stoic and fond and omniscient. But even in the wake of Mercy’s continued improvement, none of us kids were about to risk another agonizingly despondent Christmas. So the solution was obvious. We would keep Mercy preoccupied with what thrilled her more than absolutely anything else: the pseudo-weddings of her children. Rami and Lucy had already secretly volunteered to go next year...and after that, who knew? And there was one other thing that was making Mercy’s burden a little lighter these days.

Charlie sauntered into the living room, wearing an apron covered in cartwheeling Santas and wiping white dust like snow—powdered sugar? flour? baking soda?—from his ungainly hands. He was palpably proud. “The sugar cookies are officially in the oven. And I managed to fit them all on one baking sheet, isn’t that great?! Cuts down on dishes!”

“Why, yes, I suppose it does!” Mercy said, alarm dawning in her eyes. Had my beloved father placed the globs of dough too close together? Would we end up with one hideous, giant monster-cookie? Only time would tell. Providentially, Archer and Joe could be counted on to eat just about anything.

Joe sniffed the air, his forehead crinkling. “What’s burning?”

“Nothing should be burning,” Mercy replied, almost defensive, forever protective of Charlie and all of his profound, incurably human imperfections. Sometimes I thought that she preferred him that way, that he was a link to a simpler world in the same way I had once been, that he was a puddle of memory she could drop into, that maybe he wasn’t so unlike her first husband Arthur. “Not yet, anyway. The cookies need at least ten to twelve minutes at 350.”

“Wait, 350?!” Charlie exclaimed, horrorstruck. “I thought you said 450!”

“Oh, this is tragic,” Scarlett said.  

“I can fix it!” Mercy trilled buoyantly, breezing off to the kitchen as Charlie followed after her with a fountain of apologies. She shushed them away affectionately, patting his chest with her soft plump hands, chuckling about how luckily they had fire extinguishers stowed away in almost every closet just in case. And there were other reasons for that besides Charlie’s perilous baking attempts, but he didn’t know them. Now the record player was belting out Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.  

Archer lost another round in Mario Kart and exhaled a great, mournful sigh. “Hey, Baby Swanpire, can you do something about this guy?” He nodded to Rami. “This is criminal. It’s nowhere near a fair fight. He knows every freaking time I’m about to toss a banana peel.”

Rami smirked guiltily up at me from the couch, not bothering to deny it.

“Do you mind?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” Rami replied. “I want to show this loser I can beat him even without the benefit of mega-cool extrasensory superpowers.”

“Rude!” Archer cried.

“So rude,” Scarlett agreed, smiling.

“Okay, here we go.” I sat down beside Rami, still holding Ben’s envelope in my right hand, and laid my left against Rami’s cheek. And I felt a fistful of numbness—like instant peace, like milk-white Novocain—pass from my skin into his, rolling into his skull, deadening whatever telepathic livewires had been ignited there in the August of 1916. The effect would last anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours; and it worked on every vampire I’d met so far.

“Whoa, trippy,” Rami murmured. “It’s still weird, every single time.” He peered drowsily around the room. “It’s...so...quiet?! You guys really live like this? No one is constantly bombarding you with sexual fantasies or romantic pining or depressive inner monologues? How do you function?! Now I’m alone with my own thoughts, that’s actually worse!”

“Hurry up and beat him while he’s all freaked out and vulnerable,” Scarlett told Archer.

Archer laughed, picking up his Nintendo 64 controller, radiant with the promise of vengeance. “Yes ma’am.”

“Any good mail?” Lucy asked Joe.

“Yeah. Coupons and a ton of Christmas cards from random people. The vet sent us one with alpacas on it, so that’s cute. Oh, and here’s one from our favorite Canadians.”

Joe held up the card so we could all see. The picture on the front showed Cato and Honora sitting on a large velvet, forest green couch with a hulking Christmas tree illuminated in the background. The others were arranged around them: Austin, Max, Ksenia, Charity, Araminta, Akari, Morana, Phelan, Aruna, Adair, Zora, Sahel, and a few new faces I couldn’t name yet. They were all wearing matching turtleneck sweaters. And every single one of them was smiling.

Joe cleared his throat theatrically and read the text on the inside of the card:

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and Scarlett, congratulations on your not-marriage.)

- Cato Douglass Freeman”

“That bastard,” Scarlett muttered.

Rami offered me his controller. He had just slipped on a banana peel and rocketed off a cliff. “You want a turn?”

“No, thanks though. I have to talk to Ben. Is he around?”

Rami shrugged ruefully. “I would help, but my brain is temporarily broken.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, taking a gingerbread cookie from the tray and biting into it as Lucy batted crumbs from the red lace dress, exasperated. “I think he’s out in the hot tub.”

“Cool. I shall return.”

Joe took my spot on the couch as I departed, shoveling cookies into his mouth, seizing Rami’s controller and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

I opened the door to the back porch, and frigid December air rushed in like an uninvited guest. The field was coated with a thin layer of snow, the animals safe and warm in the barn, the garden slumbering. And in the spring and summer, when blossoms of a dozen different varieties came open beneath the drizzling grey skies, Mercy’s calla lilies didn’t bother my allergies at all. Nothing did anymore. Ben was indeed in the hot tub, puffing on his vape pen, wearing only a beanie hat and swim trunks.

“What flavor is that cartridge?” I asked as I approached. “Gummy bear?”

“Close. Strawberry doughnut.”

“Ohhhh, yum!” Ben passed me the vape pen, and I took a drag as I kicked off my boots and sat near him on the rim of the hot tub, slipping my bare feet beneath the steaming, roiling water. Then I handed his vape pen back. “So. Guess what I have for you.”

“Uh.” He glanced at the envelope. “Jury duty.”

“Better.”

“Someone I hate has jury duty.”

I flipped the envelope around so he could see the University of Chicago logo on the front.

“Oh god,” Ben moaned.

“Don’t you want to see what it says?”

“Not really,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Come on, Ben. Open it.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

Ben sighed. “Look, if I open it and it’s bad news, it’s gonna make Christmas weird. Rami will know. They’ll all know. They’ll all feel bad for me and it’ll be pathetic and depressing and awkward. You can look if you want to, just don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“It’s not going to be bad news,” I said, tugging at the floppy top of his beanie hat. He swatted my hand away, but he was smiling grudgingly.

“You have positively no way of knowing that. Unless Lucy’s had a vision I’m unaware of.”

“She hasn’t. You know she never sees anything important.”

“She saw you coming,” Ben countered.

“She saw human-me and Joe in love and gobbling down pretzels at a Cubs game. So I’d say there were at least a few minor details missing.”

“There’s no way I got in,” Ben said, his green eyes slick and fearful and now fixed on the envelope. “We can’t all be geniuses like you.”

“That’s an unfair accusation. I’m far from genius. I’m just obsessed with the ocean.” I’d written my senior thesis on the feeding habits of Pacific angelsharks, and my advisor was still trying to figure out how I, an amateur scuba diver at best, had managed to get so many quality photographs with my underwater camera. The secret, of course, was superhuman agility and not needing to breathe.

“I fucking hate calculus. The MCAT wrecked me. I got a 517.”

“And their median score is a 519, so I’d say you still have a fighting chance. Plus you have like eight million volunteer hours.” Ben had spent the vast majority of the past year either in class or at the hospital. The psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. Siegel, had been more than happy to take one of Gwil’s foster children under her wing. Every human in Forks except Archer believed that Dr. Gwilym Lee had drowned in a tragic boating accident while he and Mercy were on vacation in Southern California, and that his body had never been recovered. The town had held a wonderful remembrance ceremony and dedicated a free clinic at the hospital in his honor. “Now open it.”

“You do it,” Ben relented finally. “My hands are wet. Go ahead, open it up and tell me what it says. And then kindly euthanize me to end my immortal shame.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I pointed out, tearing open the envelope. I pulled out the tri-folded piece of paper inside, flattened it against my thighs, and read the typed black text.

“...Well?” Ben pressed, vaping frantically.

I looked up and smiled at him.

“No way,” he whispered.

“I hope you like pretzels and bear-themed baseball teams, grandpa.”

And for a second, I thought he might bolt up out of the hot tub, hooting victoriously, splashing water all over the back porch as he danced around bellowing that he’d gotten into one of the best medical schools in the world, that he would be following me and Joe to Chicago. But that wasn’t Ben. Instead, a slow smile rippled across his face: it was small, but perfectly genuine. Pure, even.

“Goddamn,” he said, watching me. Venom doesn’t just resurrect or ruin; it forms a bond that is simultaneously intangible and yet immense. It’s an evolutionary adaptation, a way to facilitate stability and the building of covens in an often violent and ruleless world. And now that he had turned me, Ben had family here in Forks in more ways than one.

“Gwil would be so proud of you, Ben.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

The back door of the house opened, and Joe stepped outside. He studied Ben for a moment, and that was all it took for him to know. “Benny!” he shouted, elated.

“I know, I know. Fortunately, I look amazing in red. Thanks, supermodel genes.”

“This is going to be so fun!” Joe said, sprinting over to wrap Ben—who was characteristically lukewarm on this whole physical displays of affection business—in a hug from just outside the hot tub. “We’re going to go furniture shopping, and eat deep-dish pizza, and find apartments right next to each other, and mail home Chicago-themed care packages, and get you hooked up with some gorgeous Italian woman...or whatever you like, I guess I shouldn’t assume. Women. Men. Gang members. Marine mammals. Jessicas. Whatever. There are options.”

Ben laughed as he playfully shoved Joe away. “Sounds like a plan, pagliaccio.”

“Oh my god, stop learning Italian without me! You realize you have to tell Mom now.”

“I will,” Ben agreed, with some trepidation. “I’ll wait until after Christmas.”

“It’ll be hard for her,” I said. “But she knows it’s what you want. She knows it’s what’s best for you. So she’ll get through it. I think it would be worse for her if you didn’t get in, if she had to see you unhappy.”

Ben nodded, exhaling strawberry-doughnut-flavored vapor, gazing up at the stars, Orion and Auriga and Lynx and Perseus reflected in his thoughtful jade eyes. “She’ll still have Rami and Lucy and Scarlett here with her. And Archer. And Charlie.”

“Especially Charlie,” Joe said, grinning.

Mercy would have to leave Forks eventually, of course. The Lees had already been here for nearly four years; they could stay another ten, perhaps fifteen at the absolute maximum. And there had been a time when ten or fifteen years seemed like quite a while to me, but now it felt like I could doze off one afternoon and wake up on the other side of it, like swimming a lap in the sun-drenched public pool back in Phoenix. We would find a new home somewhere after Joe and I finished our PhDs, after Ben finished medical school, maybe Vancouver or Buffalo or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Dublin or Reykjavik. Wherever we went, I hoped it wouldn’t be far from the sea. But Mercy couldn’t bear to leave Forks yet. It was the last home she had shared with Gwil, the last house they would ever build together, and leaving it would make his loss all the more irrevocable. She would be ready to leave someday, but not today.

In the meantime, there would still be visits for breaks and holidays. Scarlett and Archer had the shop to keep them busy, a brand new eight-car garage that held a virtual monopoly on both the Forks and Quileute communities. Lucy had opened a bohemian-style clothing boutique downtown, which confounded most of the locals but attracted more adventurous customers from as far away as Seattle. Rami was interning for a local immigration lawyer and entertaining the possibility of applying to U Chicago’s law school in another few years. And Mercy had the farm; and she had Charlie. He had asked her for cooking lessons to try to help rouse her a few months after Gwil’s death, and it had grown from there. If it wasn’t romantic just yet, I believed it would be soon. And there were moments when I thought my father might have figured something out, when his eyes narrowed and lingered on me just a little too long, when his brow knitted into suspicious, searching lines, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck and some innate insight whispered that we weren’t like him and never could be again. But then he would chuckle, shake his head, and say: “You’ve gotten weird, my gorgeous, brilliant progeny. But Forks looks pretty good on you.”

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Joe asked me suddenly; and did I see restless nerves flicker in his dark eyes? I thought I did.

“Sure,” I replied, climbing down from the hot tub. “Ben, are you coming inside? My dad is trying to bake Christmas cookies and failing miserably. It’s pretty hilarious. Not that you should be the one to critique other people’s kitchen-related accidents.”

“I do enjoy your company a lot more now that I don’t want to murder you and slurp you down like a Chick-fil-A milkshake,” Ben said. “Yeah, give me a few minutes and I’ll be there.” And as Joe and I headed into the house, I saw Ben pick up the acceptance letter that I’d left on the rim of the hot tub and read it for himself with incredulous eyes, grappling with the irrefutable fact that it was his name on the opening line, that he had somewhere along the way become the sort of man who dedicated his immortality to saving lives rather than ending them.

In the living room, Scarlett was back in her yoga pants and absolutely brutalizing Archer in Mario Kart. Rami and Lucy were entwined together on the loveseat, murmuring, giggling, feeding each other pieces of gingerbread cookies. In the kitchen, Charlie was leading Mercy in a clumsy waltz to Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love, and each time he fumbled his steps or mortifyingly trod on her feet she would cry out in a peal of laughter brighter than the sun she had learned to live without. Joe spirited me up the staircase, into his bedroom—which, honestly, was more like our bedroom now, in the same way that my room in Charlie’s house had become Joe’s as well—and closed the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Your dad totally ruined our song. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about some moustached guy in plaid trying to seduce my mom.”

“It’s the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Meat Loaf is vanquished. Oh, just so you’re aware, Renee and Paul are getting an Airbnb and coming up for New Years.”

“Cool. Do they still think I have a super embarrassing sunlight allergy and will break into hives and asphyxiate and that’s why we can’t visit them in Florida?”

“Yup.”

“Spectacular. Also, can you please tell me what’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“They’re just a little sparse, amore. But I still like you.”

“Well, I am only moderately attractive, you know.” Then Joe steeled himself, taking a deep breath. Uh oh. He was definitely nervous. I still couldn’t believe I had the power to make him that way, but here we were. “So I get that we’re doing presents with the whole family tomorrow morning, and you do have some under the tree, so don’t worry about that. But there’s one I wanted to give to you alone. You know. With just us. Without an audience. Or whatever.”

“...Okay...?” A secret gift? A naughty gift? “I hope it’s a new vibrator.”

“Shut up,” Joe begged, laughing. “Here.” He reached into the drawer of his nightstand—our nightstand—and produced a small blue box topped with a turquoise bow. It wasn’t a ring, I was sure of that; I didn’t feel especially attached to the idea of marriage, and neither did Joe to my knowledge. How could rings or papers seal commitment when you already had eternity? I was right: the mysterious present was not a ring. When I removed the lid and emptied the box into my palm, what appeared there was a small plastic airplane.

“What is this?” I asked, amused but puzzled.

“Are you not college educated? It’s a plane.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But it’s also like two inches long.” I scrutinized the plane. “Are you magically transforming me into a tiny, tiny, little plastic person? Is that my gift? Because I actually got you something good.” And I really did: there was a collection of vintage Chicago Cubs photographs from the 1910s and 20s downstairs under the Christmas tree, packaged in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wrapping paper.

“We’re going on a trip,” Joe said, grinning. “The day after Christmas. It’s just a short trip, nothing huge, don’t get too excited, we’re not going to Mt. Everest or Antarctica or anything. I think you’ll still like it. But I don’t want you to know where we’re going until we’re there.”

“How will that work? Considering the tickets and signage and pilot announcements and obnoxiously noisy other passengers and all.”

“ScarJo’s going to fly us.”

“Really?!” We were taking the jet. We almost never used the jet. “What’s in it for Scarlett?”

“She found out that Archer’s never had In-N-Out Burger before and is very much looking forward to initiating him into the cult of deliciousness.”

“Oh nice. I could go for a vanilla milkshake myself, now that Ben mentioned them.”  

“Obviously I’m gonna buy you all the milkshakes and animal-style fries you want. Bankrupt me, bitch. But we have to get one other thing taken care of first.”

“So it’s somewhere they have In-N-Out Burger...” I pondered aloud. California? Texas? Las Vegas? I felt a brief but unambiguous pang of homesickness for Phoenix. But there was nothing there for me anymore.

“Stop,” Joe pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Please forget that. Get a traumatic brain injury or oxygen deprivation or something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m rather indestructible at the moment.”

He smiled wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

There was laughter downstairs in the living room. I could detect the aroma of a fresh batch of sugar cookies baking in the kitchen, mingling with the cold night air and pine trees and peppermint candy canes. I loved Christmas. The entire world smelled like Joe. The U Chicago décor, classic rock posters, and Italian flag were now interspersed with National Geographic pages and photos of the two of us together. The Official Whatever You Want Pass hung in a small, square picture frame on the wall above Joe’s bed. Our bed.

“How real is it, Joe?” I asked quietly. I climbed onto my tiptoes, linking my hands around the back of his neck with the tiny plane still tucked between my fingers. “Seriously. The wishes thing.”

“The world may never know. Akari never met me as a human, so she wouldn’t be able to say. But if I had to place a bet...” He shrugged, grinning craftily. “Kinda real. Kinda not real. Just like vampires, I guess.”

“I am alarmingly glad that you’re real, mob guy,” I said, abruptly somber. “I never thought I’d meet someone who saw me as remarkable, who could make me see myself that way. And it’s miraculous. And it’s terrifying too, honestly. Being a thing with you. Falling for someone you could have for centuries and lose in a second.”

“It’s the scariest thing there is,” Joe concurred, taking my hand to lead me back downstairs.

Joseph

Scarlett looks like a goddess, and she knows it. But she’s not one of those magnanimous, fragile, harp-plucking, pastel-colored goddesses. She’s ferocity and wildness and crimson like blood, and that’s exactly why Archer loves her. And as they stand in front of the Christmas tree with their hands clasped together—ivory on bronze, snow on sun—with matching sprigs of holly in Scarlett’s hair and pinned to the jacket of Archer’s suit, reciting truths but no promises, I can’t help but watch the other faces in the room: Rami, Lucy, Ben, Charlie, Mom with her beaming smile and shining eyes, the woman I met sixteen months ago and now can’t fathom life without. And it occurs to me for the first time that love, in its cleanest form, isn’t something that changes people as much as it allows them to become who they truly are.

On the evening of December 26th, as soon as the sun dips beneath the western horizon, we board the jet in the Forks Airport hangar. It’s much easier for Scarlett to fly at night; otherwise she has to wear two or three pairs of sunglasses on top of each other, and even then it’s still painful, it still feels like blinding needles burrowing into the jelly of her retinas. That’s not a wrench in my plans or anything. It needs to be night where we’re going, too.

Vampire hyper-acuity notwithstanding, FAA regulations require Scarlett to have a copilot, so Archer joins her in the flight deck with his newly-minted license and spends most of the journey flipping through the latest issue of Motor Trend. As we begin our descent, he peeks back at us and teases: “It’ll be your turn eventually, guys. Scarlett and I did our time. Rami and Lucy can go next year. And after that...unless Ben happens to find someone worthy of a not-wedding...” He wiggles his black eyebrows.

“Bring it on,” I reply casually. “Fake wedding are my jam. It’ll be ocean themed. Or Roaring ‘20s themed. And we’ll all do the Cha-Cha Slide in the living room and shame Ben as a bonding activity.”

“Mercy can set up a mashed potatoes bar,” Baby Swan adds.

“Yeah. With pineapple.”

“No. Not on potatoes.”

“Yes on potatoes.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Too late,” I tell her, touching my lips to the knuckles of her cool, steady hand.

We touch down at a small noncommercial airport just outside the city, and Scarlett and Archer stay back to secure the plane as Baby Swan follows me outside. And she realizes where we are as soon as the wind hits her, as soon as her eyes soak up the sand and cacti and cloudless night sky like rain swallowed up by parched earth.

“Phoenix,” she whispers, smiling like a child.

“But wait, there’s more!” I announce in my best Billy Mays voice. I take the little glass bottle from my pocket, walk across the runway to the naked desert, crouch down when I find a suitable spot, and fill the bottle with dry, sandy earth that crumbles in my palms. Then I seal the bottle with a tiny cork and bring it back to give it to her.

“I know what it’s like to have to leave home,” I say. “You’ve had to say goodbye to Phoenix, and soon you’ll have to say goodbye to Forks, and next will be Chicago, on and on forever. You’ll always be leaving the places you learn to call home. Every five or ten or fifteen years, we start over again. Like a snake shedding its skin, like a hermit crab swapping shells. Like the water that travels from rain to seawater to mist and then back again. But now you can always have a little piece of home with you, and maybe that will make it easier.”

She takes the glass bottle and shakes her head in disbelief, in wonder. Because this is exactly what she wanted, what she needed, even if she didn’t know it yet. “Joe...how did you...?”

“What’d I tell ya? I’m a talented guy. Now you have to dance with me.”

She laughs. “Oh no. Hard pass. I don’t dance.”

“When we’re alone in my bedroom you do. So just pretend we’re alone now. In, like, a really really spacious, sandy bedroom. With probably some lizards.”

“Fine. But only because I’m willing to degrade myself for milkshakes.”

She slides the glass bottle of Arizona earth into her pocket and takes my hands. She’s still a pretty terrible dancer, honestly. She hasn’t lost that. And I love that about her. I love damn near everything about her. And it took me a long time to figure out what exactly her subtle yet peerless cocktail of fragrance is, because it wasn’t somewhere I’d ever been. The scent that drifts from her pores—the scent that now lives in my bedsheets like a shadow or a ghost—is sunlight and heat and clarity and resilience and wisdom older than the pyramids. Her scent is the desert.

Now she’s mischievous, her eyes gleaming with the reflections of the Milky Way and the full moon and the stars that are dead and yet eternal, just like us. “So what, you think you’re Vampire Boyfriend Of The Year material now or what? Some dirt and In-N-Out Burger? That’s the height of your game? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my perpetual existence? I totally should have pursued that polyamorous triad with Scarlett and Archer when I had the chance—”

“Yeah,” I say, very softly, smiling, tilting up her chin to kiss her beneath the universe and all its eccentricities. “I love you too.”