#i listened to ribs multiple times while writing this

[mountainsandmayhem]

Wonderful Tonight

Marcus Pike x Pregnant Female Reader - 18+

Summary: Marcus Pike takes care of his very pregnant wife, shaving her legs (and more) and then treats her like the delicious meal she is. CW: pregnancy, shaving, fingering, oral sex (f!receiving), unprotected p in v (you can't get pregnant while pregnant, but all of you better be wrappin it up!), praise, pet names (baby, honey, etc.), multiple orgasms. This is fluffy romantic smut. AN: I write one piece with feelings and suddenly I'm Mrs Romance over here! I gotta say that I'm falling deeper and deeper for Mr Marcus Pike, JUST LOOK AT THAT FACE!!! I feel like their wedding song would have been Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton, hence the title. Thank you @syd-djarin for reading this over for me. @survivingandenduring, I'll be waiting for my edits lol. Dividers by @saradika-graphics Word Count: 3.9k

A faint groan stirs Marcus awake, he takes a few seconds to fully come to, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. Trying to listen for that sound again, unsure if it was a dream or not. He reaches across the plush white bedding of the king sized bed looking for you, his beautiful and very pregnant wife, only to find the bed empty. 

Usually, worry and panic would rush through him if you weren’t in bed, but you appear to be in your nesting phase and it hasn’t been unusual in these last few weeks for him to find you rearranging the nursery or ordering more things off Amazon at strange hours. You also seemed to have the strangest midnight cravings, like mayonnaise on ice cream, or there was that night he walked on you about to take a bite out of a kitchen sponge. 

He sits on the edge of the bed and stretches, looking over at his alarm clock. 2:56 am. 

The sound of you huffing and grunting floats from under the door of your ensuite bathroom. You sound like you’re struggling or in pain and adrenaline courses through Marcus as he hops up and rushes to the door. His mind racing to calculate the number of weeks pregnant you are and if it’s too soon for you to be in labour or not. 

He tries the door handle to find it locked. “Babe?” He calls, rapping his knuckle in the door gently. 

“Sorry. I’m fine. Go back to sleep,” you call back, your voice seems off like it’s laced with discomfort. It immediately sets his teeth on edge, you’re not fine, and according to his quick math you’re also at a point where you could go into labour and even though the baby would be a little early, they’d be past the danger zone and the baby would most likely be ok. 

“Please open the door. You don’t sound fine.” He says softly, pushing the panic down like the trained FBI agent he is. 

You’re quiet for a second before responding in a more stable voice, “Everything is fine. I’m sorry I woke you up.” 

“Are you sure everything is ok?” He asks one more time, he knows your stubborn tendencies and how it usually takes him to ask three or four times before you give in. 

It’s silent again behind the door. Just the sound of you huffing like you ran a marathon before a sad little ‘no’ leaves your lips. It simultaneously sends him into fix mode and breaks his heart. He hears your bare feet pad across the tile floor followed by the click of the lock. 

He cracks the door slowly to come face to face with you in just your sports bra, naked from the ribs down. Your legs are slathered in raspberry and tangerine scented shaving cream and you have a purple razor in your hand. Your cheeks are pink with frustration and the exertion of trying to bend down. Your hair’s piled on top of your head, a few loose strands falling and sticking along the nape of your neck. 

He leans his toned bicep against the doorframe, only wearing his tight black boxers, then crosses his arms and looks at you tenderly. His voice is soft and full of love as he says, “Oh, sweetie. What are you doing?” 

The tears of frustration start to pool along your lash line. “I’m gonna give birth and I can’t be a Sasquatch, but I can’t bend over without feeling like my lungs are being crushed by my giant belly.” 

Marcus cups your face, wiping away the stray tear and bringing your eyes to his. “Honey, you’re not a Sasquatch. And even if you were, they’re doctors. Come here,” his hand trails to the nape of your neck and he pulls you gently into him, wrapping both arms around you and tucking your head into his neck, “They’re not looking at your leg hair. They’re focused on you and the baby.” 

You relax into his arms, belly pressing against his abdomen comfortably. “I can’t go into labour like this,” you say, anxiety wavering in your voice. 

Marcus drops his arms from your body and slides past you, slipping his boxers down before stepping into the large, glass walled shower. He turns the nob that controls the rainfall shower head and crooks his fingers at you as a silent call to walk to him. 

When you reach him, he starts to unzip the front of your sports bra. “What are you doin’, Mr Pike?” You say softly over the soothing sounds of the shower, watching his thick fingers pull the zipper down. 

“I’m shaving Mrs Pike’s legs,” he says as you look back up at him. His chocolate brown eyes soaked you in and made you weak in the knees. 

“Marcus, you -“ he cuts you off as your sports bra hits the floor. 

“I promise to love, cherish and treasure you,” he starts, lightly pulling you into the shower. He always recites his marriage vows when he can sense you’re about to fight off his help. His way of reminding you that he wants to be there, wants to care for you. He continues his speech as he leads you to the wooden bench, “In all circumstances; good or bad. Forever. Without hesitation or keeping score. From this breath, until my last breath, you are my wife, my love, my partner, and my equal.” 

He steadies you as you sit before taking a knee in front of you and smiling up at you sweetly. 

“Thank you,” you whisper. It’s the middle of the night and this incredibly sweet man doesn’t even question or fight you. Just supports and loves you with his whole being. “I don’t deserve you.” 

“Baby, you’re growing a person for us. You deserve so much more,” he holds his palm out and you place the razor in his hand. His other hand wraps around your swollen ankle lifting it to rest your foot on his knee. Before you can say much he starts making slow, gentle strokes of the razor up your leg. 

You’re both silent for a moment, him lost in the sight of your soft skin as he shaves your leg, you lost in him and the way he’s looking at you as he drags the sharp razor so tenderly across your skin. The steam from the shower wraps around the two of you, encasing you in your own little cloud. The rest of the world and all your worries are temporarily blocked out until all your thoughts are just Marcus. Sweet, loving, emotionally available, Marcus Pike. 

He reaches for the detachable shower head and drizzles warm water down your shin and calf, using his free hand to rinse away the excess shaving cream. You go to move your leg away but he grabs your ankle to keep you there. After switching off the water he puts it back and looks up at you, placing a light and lingering kiss on the inside of your knee before placing your foot back on the warm tile floor and grabbing the other ankle. 

The shaving cream has washed away from the steam and backsplash from the rainfall behind Marcus, so he grabs the bar of soap and lathers up your leg. You watch again as he focuses all his attention on carefully shaving your other leg. Using the same little strokes, rinsing the razor more often than you would if you were doing it yourself. 

After rinsing off the excess soap he glances up at you. “Better?” He asks soothingly. 

“Ya,” you say, trying to convince him that your legs were your only worry, but he knows you better than that. He knows that when you flick your eyes away from his and your spine just slightly stiffens you want to ask something but are afraid or nervous to. 

“Honey, what else do you need?” His hand kneads the swollen and sore muscles of the calf that’s still propped on his knee. 

“Well…” you trail off as you start to blush. 

“Mrs Pike. Are you going to ask me to shave your pussy?” He says with a devious little grin. Eyes lighting up like a horny teenager, placing your foot on the floor. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” you say quickly. “I’m just worried that -“

He lightly covers your lips with his palm and Reminds himself to stay calm. he’s thought about how sensual it would be to shave your most delicious areas, but he knows you have some insecurities about body hair, and he didn’t want you to think you had to be clean shaven for him to find you sexy. Because truthfully, you could be a Sasquatch and he’d still want you. “Oh no, baby. I want to. I really REALLY want to.” 

You lightly kiss the inside of his palm as he smiles hungrily at you. Just as your insecurities start to cloud your thoughts Marcus places his hands on your belly and rubs gently. “For the record, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, clean shaven or not. I love the taste of your pussy when it’s like this, it’s sweeter and feels soft against my skin. Plus, I love the way you cry out when I tug on it. So don’t think for a second that my excitement over getting to shave her means I prefer it that way. I don’t. Ok?” 

You crash your lips into his, tangling your fingers through the slightly outgrown hair at the nape of his neck. He tastes like toothpaste still from before he went to bed as you tilt your head to deepen the kiss, his soft wet tongue swiping against yours. The two of you stay like that for a while. Lazily making out in the middle of the night in the shower. His hands trail from your belly to your back, gently massaging the muscles of your lower back and then your hips. 

He breaks the kiss, resting his forehead against yours as you catch your breath. “I’m going to get a new razor and your special shaving cream. Ok?” 

You nod against him. “Are you ok on the bench, honey? Do you need a towel to sit on?” 

“No, I’m ok. We can move if the ground is uncomfortable, Marcus.” He’s always beating you to ensure the other is comfortable. 

“Be right back,” he winks. You watch him walk out of the shower to the vanity. The water droplets on his back run down the toned and slender muscles that line his back, they catch in the curve of his ass before running down his tight cheeks. You find yourself squeezing your knees together at the sight of your naked husband. He truly is so beautiful, inside and out. 

He slips back into the shower and kneels before you, sitting back on his heels. “Slide to the edge, baby.” His hands come to your hips, guiding you forward. He licks his lips and looks up at you through his thick lashes, big brown eyes dancing softly around your face. “Spread your legs for me.” 

Normally, saying something like that would sound dirty, or like a command, but it floats gently over the splash of the shower. Soft, caring, and so sweet that you melt back onto your hands, parting your knees wide for your husband. His eyes glaze over slightly as his lips part, your glistening soft folds on display for him. He blinks a few times and takes a slow breath, reaching for the shower head again, cupping the water in his hand and drizzling it along your pussy. The breath catches in your throat, something about this feels incredibly sensual, and it doesn’t help that Marcus is looking down at your pussy like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

“Is the water ok? Not too hot?” He asks. 

How did you get so lucky, but more so, how did anyone divorce this man in the past? 

“It’s perfect. Thank you,” your voice waves, it’s breathy and full of arousal. He blinks up at you and smirks. He knows this is turning you on, and he plans to make sure you enjoy yourself as much as possible. 

He applies the cream and grabs the razor, popping off the flimsy plastic guard before getting to work. His hand rests above your mound, pulling back gently to make the skin taut. He uses little strokes, rinsing the blade between each swipe of the razor. You close your eyes and let your head fall back as he continues. Once he’s removed all the hair from the top, he rests his hand on the now smooth skin just above your clit and gently pulls back. A soft whimper passes your lips, he’s so close to your most sensitive spots. But he said he’d help you shave, so he continues, swiping the razor in the same short strokes down one lip, and then the other. By the time he’s done, your breathing is rapid and shallow. 

“You doing okay up there, baby?” He asks, placing the razor on the bench beside you. 

You moan a soft ‘mmmmm-hmm’ as he reaches for the detachable shower head. You open your eyes, watching as he tests the water on his hand and wrist before holding the stream over your pussy. You gasp at the feeling of the warm water pressure flowing over your now swollen clit. Marcus smiles up at you, the dimple on his cheek forming and setting you on fire. He clicks the button on the side of the shower head, increasing the water pressure and holding it closer to your core. 

“Marcus,” you whimper, leaning back further. Gravity lolling your head backwards. 

“That’s it. Just relax, honey.” He says in a hushed voice, his free hand gripping and massaging the soft skin of your inner thigh higher and higher until he’s at the top. His thick middle and ring fingers coming to tease around your entrance. 

“Oh god. Please, Marcus.” You say through bated breath. Your swollen breasts and belly rise and fall with your pleas. 

He dips the tips of his fingers inside you, feeling your walls pulse and flutter. Taking his time to slowly fuck his fingers into you, inch by inch. Slowly. Lovingly. All while watching how you react. Watching the way your mouth falls open, eyebrows raising slightly, lips going soft as you moan his name. 

Once his fingers are all the way, he curls them forward just as he clicks the button on the shower head, increasing the water pressure to its highest setting. You let out a long, husky wanton moan that echoes off the black tiled walls. “Cum for me, baby.” 

Your legs start to shake, as your body almost launches you towards your release. Every muscle seems to go slack and it waves through you, pleasure reverberating from your aching clit, spreading to every cell in your body. 

“Marcus. Oh fuck. Don’t stop, Pike. Please.”

You feel lighter, even as your heavy belly bounces as you grind shamelessly into Marcus’s palm and the spray of the shower head. He feels the grip of your slick walled pussy start to relax as you crest over the edge of your orgasm and start to come down. He pulls the stream of water away from your clit, the warmth of his large hand cupping you, his two thick fingers still working you slowly to the bottom of your high. 

“You’re such a goddess, baby.” He says proudly. The praise wraps around you like a warm blanket as he slides his fingers from you carefully. “I wanna take you to bed and watch you do that again.”

You find the strength to arch your neck forward and look at him. You smile sleepily and nod, allowing your beautiful husband to take your hand, shut off the water, and lead you to bed. Before helping you climb in, he moves his hands to cup your face, placing his lips against yours. His chest rumbles with a content sigh as your tongue swipes hungrily along his soft bottom lip. One of your hands scoops under your belly, lifting it to relieve the pressure on your lower back, the other reaches for his hard cock. You grip around the base gently and stroke him slowly, matching the energy of the kiss. 

“Mmmm, I like that baby,” he says between kisses, “But I’m not done with you yet. Let’s get you into bed.” 

You climb in as gracefully as possible, praying silently that you don’t look like those sea lions that you watched on your honeymoon in Alaska a few years ago. You lay down on your back as Marcus climbs on top of you best he can, stretching to keep kissing you, doing his best not to put any of his weight on your bump. This position immediately puts pressure on your body, making you feel short of breath. 

Your hands push at Marcus and you sit up slightly, seemingly fighting for breath. “Ugh,” you groan frustratedly, “I can’t breathe like that. I’m sorry. This is so unsexy.” 

“Unsexy? I’m rock hard for you,” he says, looking down and then back at you with a smile. “You lay how it’s comfortable, how about that?” 

“Pike, I’m only comfortable on my side with that crazy pillow under my leg.” You say, defeated and anxious. “I need you though.”

He thinks for a second, chewing his cheek as he surveys the pillows available. “Ok, what if you lay on your side, bottom leg straight, top leg hooked up and resting on the pillow?” 

You smile at him lovingly, “Is that really gonna be sexy?”

“Honey, I’ve never been more turned on by anyone in my entire life. You’re glowing. I’m amazed by you every day.” He fluffs the pillows around you as you turn away from him, bending your leg up as high as your belly allows. “Is that comfy, baby?” 

His fingers trace up and down your spine slowly as your body starts to sink and relax into the soft mattress. “Yes,” you whisper. 

His lips come to your neck, kissing the soft spot behind your ear, down your neck and then along the top of your shoulder, fingertips swirling along your back and ass cheeks. Your eyes flutter closed, moaning at his sweet caresses. His lips continue to kiss your skin and down your back, as he spins his body so his feet are at the head of the bed. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he says into your skin between kisses. “So strong. So selfless. I love you so much, Mrs Pike.” 

Your whole body seems to tingle with anticipation of where he’s going to kiss next, you feel his hair tickle the inside of your top leg as he maneuvers his head between your thighs. You lift your leg higher, desperate to feel his mouth on your already sensitive pussy.

“Please, baby,” you gasp, arching your back slightly. “I need you to…” 

His warm soft tongue licks a slow and teasing stripe from your asshole to your clit. A tortured moan leaves your lips, hips bucking into his face. Marcus lets out a silent laugh at your reaction. He’s always loved how your body responds to him. The very first time he made you cum, both of you still fully dressed as you made out, hips grinding into his as you shook, he knew that he wanted to see that for the rest of his life. 

“Good girl, let me taste it.” He laps at you again, still just as slowly but with more pressure. Asshole, to entrance, to clit. Once. Twice. The third time his thumb comes to press into your now dripping pussy, tongue flicking around your nub slowly and with perfect pressure. 

“You taste so good,” he moans between licks. “Such a good girl for me. You’re gonna cum soon aren’t you?” 

“Yes. Yesss. Don’t stop, Pike.” He doesn’t stop, he never stops. Not until you’re either begging him to or you’re pushing him away. 

“Never, honey,” he mumbles into your wet folds, and that’s when the tight elastic behind your mound snaps, and you cum hard and loud. Your inner walls grip his thumb tightly, pulling it deeper. 

“M-Marcus…hnnggg…oh my god. Yes.” You’re lost in the euphoria. Every ache and pain from your pregnancy is temporarily erased and replaced with nothing but pleasure. Sparkling, warm pleasure.

It slowly starts to become too much, slipping into overstimulation. “Marcus. Stop, baby.” He’s always in tune with your body, his thumb already starting to slide out, tongue replaced with light kisses. 

You whine as he pulls away, already missing him and the intimacy. “Please fuck me,” you say over your shoulder, his blown out coffee coloured eyes almost black. He slips his body alongside yours, the arm closest to the mattress slipping under your head. He grips his dick with his other hand, pumping it while running it up and down your slit, collecting your arousal. 

“Ready, baby?” Marcus asks, kissing the top of your shoulder. 

“Just fuck me already!” 

If you weren’t pregnant he’d flip you onto your belly and drive into you, probably pull your hair and tell you to cut the attitude. But he knows he has to be gentler right now, so he slowly pushes the thick head of his cock into you. Inching in slowly, almost punishingly. “Don’t be a brat, baby. You know we have to be softer right now.” 

You wiggle your ass back, trying to get more. You need all of him. When he’s finally seated all the way inside of you he holds still, sucking on your neck. “Be good, or I’ll just stay like this all night.” 

“No, please, baby. Please move.” Your belly makes forward movement impossible so you’re just pinned between your bump and Marcus. “Pike, please.” 

He quickly pulls back to the tip and then slides back in. You cry out into his bicep. “Again. Please. Again.” 

“Fuck, I love it when you beg,” he whispers, fucking in and out of you a few more times. It’s deep and slow, always with a little extra punch of his hips at the very end. “Sound so pretty when you moan for me.” 

You reach down to rub your clit, him encouraging you with his words. “That’s a good girl. Touch yourself for me.” 

It doesn’t take long before you’re both on the edge, ready to tumble over together. To get lost in each other's pleasure. He moans deeply in your ear, whispering praises as you cum on his cock, holding off as long as he can before you feel his warm spend fill you. You’ve completely melted for him, unable to move or keep your eyes open. You both lay quiet, his softening cock still buried inside you, breathing heavily together. You both drift off, spent and happy and so unbelievably in love that it’s hard to believe something like this can exist. 

Marcus wakes up a few hours later still inside you. He slowly slips himself out, peels his body away from yours and tucks the blankets around you. He leaves you a little handwritten note that he’s going to get French toast and bacon from your favourite place. 

Ya, it’s definitely hard to believe that a love like this is yours. 

Taglist:

@corazondebeskar @hiddenbabynyc @rainstorms-library @smutsmutslut @sullyrocky44 @keylimebeag

@pimosworld @casa-boiardi @pedritoferg @paleidiot @lorilane33 @pansexual-potatoes

@jessthebaker @jasminedragoon @koshkaj-blog @pedroswife69 @strawberri-blonde  @none-of-this-makes-any-sense

@iloveenya @javierpena-inatacvest @blazeflays @akah565 @pinkiec6-rubi @pedroshotwifey @iluvurfather

@ashleyfilm @mermaidgirl30 @untamedheart81 @littlevenicebitch69

[deadsetobsessions]

Listen, I know it’s not my usual thing, but I just re-read Dark Matter by mysterycyclone (iconic, so good, incredible, I’ve reread this at least ten times) and this newer work, Help Me, I Don’t Feel Like Myself Anymore by Astra_Nova_Kat (it’s off to a really good and fleshed out, very long start- it’s like 20k for the first chapter omg).

I just. Love?? Them??? They’re both, urg, so good. The writing style, the way the story moves, the natural progression of plot and their usage of tropes are so well done that rarely does it feel awkward. Amazing. Anyways, they inspired me to put my two cents into the proverbial offering hat and while this might not ever be a realized fanfic, here it is? This will have multiple parts.

Uh, I’m basing Peter’s personality off of the really tired millennial energy Tobey Maguire gives, the awkward but well meaning disaster vibes of Andrew Garfield, and the sassy acrobatic chaos gremlin of Tom Holland. All kind of mushed together with the hyper competence and maturity of both the PS4 spidey and pretty much most spider people. He’s 22, or something but that doesn’t really matter?? Background doesn’t really matter because I’m basically making my own spider-verse. Spider… past? Eh. New Peter!

Spider in Gotham AU- Pt.1

[Pt.2]

——

Spider-Man swung through the skyscrapers of his city, enjoying the winds and sounds of New York as he kept a sharp eye out for crime.

He remembered doing this without any of the fancy tech his suit had now, when he was dressed in less protective clothing. God, 100% cotton while crime fighting? The spandex was better but god ugly.

His spider-sense blared. Spider-man quickly shot a web to the top of the building, going towards the danger instead of away from it.

He goes in feet first, years of knocking common thugs to legitimate gods to the ground making short work of the people on the roof top. He flips out of the way, dodging a blast of crackling green energy.

“Heyyyy, common robbers! What’s up with shiny lasers, huh? Breaking and entering not doing enough for ya?”

Spider-Man dodges a couple more shots, flipping again to knee a guy in the face, gently. The man goes down in one shot.

“Stay still, you motherfucker!”

“Does that actually work for you guys?? Like I’m down to get killed but, man, I’m not gonna stay still to get downed by some two bit thugs?” Spider-Man kept his words light and mocking, webbing up a laser gun and yanking it out of the woman’s hands. He punches her in the face and knocks her out, using the laser gun like a mildly bulky baton.

“Eat shit, Spider-bitch!”

“Ouch! Oh no, my feelings! You’ve hurt them!” Spider-Man shoots a web at the lady who’d shouted and yanked, before smacking her straight down to the concrete of the rooftop. His hearing picked up two people coming up the stairway and Spider-Man tossed two web bombs, the metal mechanism attached itself to the wall, waiting for their unknowing victims.

Spider-Man ducked and weaved, downing goons as they piled on him while shooting bullets, lasers, and just charging at him with a bat or a crowbar. After eight years of pretty much this exact thing, Spider-Man had gotten the science of breaking up goon dog piles without hurting them too much to an exact measurement. He quipped at them until they got annoyed, which made them sloppy. Spider-Man sighed as another guy came at him with a crow bar and a gun that he was pretty sure was still stuck on safety. He crouched, kicking out their legs and dodging a swipe of a bat where his ribs would have been and webbed the guy to the floor. Yeah, he’ll wrap this up and end patrol. Maybe he still had Mac n’ Cheese at home, or he could stop by Angelo’s for a sub?

Huh. His options for dinner was limited.

“Take this!”

Even without the forewarning of his spidey-sense, Spider-Man would have ducked out of the way regardless.

“Shouting your sneak attacks isn’t actually all that sneaky, you know!” Spider-Man kept his voice cheery and mocking.

“Get him!”

God, why were there so many people trying to break into an insurance company? This definitely doesn’t smell like a regular B&E. With the shit he’s seen in New York, if it smells like a plot, acts like a plot, then it’s probably a villain with a tragic backstory with big, annoying plans.

Great.

Oh, speak of the devil!

“Spider-Man.” His senses blared.

He couldn’t move out of the way fast enough, not without risking the life of the goon he was currently fighting, so Spider-Man took the blast the punched the breath out of his lungs. The wide eyes of the goon made up for some of the pain.

“Ugh!” Spider-Man slammed into an HVAC, denting the metal. His suit, made special polymer blend from Wakanda that he saved for months to get, absorbed some of the shock. Shit, he hoped it didn’t tear. It would be a bitch and a half to dip into the back up stock he had in his hammer space.

The goons left standing quickly rushed him and held him down to face the new boss.

“You’ve been getting on my nerves, Spider.”

“Yeah,” Spider-Man coughed out, letting the two goons think they could hold him down on his knees as he recovered his breath. “I have that effect on people.”

“But you could be an asset, if you’d join me?”

“Uh, I don’t join or sign things without knowing what I’m joining or signing, my guy. My lawyer said so.”

The villain paused, helmeted head cocking to the side.

“You have a lawyer?”

“Yeah. Kind of? He does pro-bono work for the helpless cases. You know, like, a well meaning, crime fighting vigilante?”

“…Does he do cases against insurance companies?”

“Oh man, you too? Dude, this place sucks,” Spider-Man sighed.

“You’ve had trouble too? Then you must see why I’m doing this!”

This was a bit weird, but if there’s anything that brings people together, it’d be corrupt insurance companies. He’s almost tempted to let them break in, just to be extra petty.

“Nah, my neighbor? Sweet old lady. They’re screwing her out of her entire place. I totally get it, man. Hey, if you need a referral, you can tell my lawyer that Spider sent you. He’s real good.”

“How good?” The goons release him and Spider-Man stood up, stretching his limbs.

“Like, Dare Devil good.”

“You know Matt Murdock??”

“Sure do.”

“He… he’ll take on our cases?”

“Dang, all of you?”

“Yes. We can pool enough money to pay him for one or two.”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure he’ll take you guys on for free. But it wouldn’t hurt if you all went to meet him, just so he can decide which one of you has a higher chance to win in court?”

“We will. Uh.” The villain paused sheepishly. Well, not a villain, more like an unfortunately angry and poor decision making citizen. “Sorry about… you know, the blast.”

“It’s cool. I mean,” Spider-Man gestured to the rooftop, the bodies of unconscious people kind of laying around where he knocked them down. “You guys might wanna check on them, yeah? I’ll let you go for now, but if you commit a B&E again, I’ll leave you webbed up for GCPD to find.”

“Got it. Sorry.”

Feeling good about himself, and plotting corporate espionage, Spider-Man went to help pry some people from his webs.

And of course, because Parker Luck kicks in only when Spider-Man felt like life was looking up for himself, Spider-Man’s senses blared once more as he knelt down to pull at some webbing.

“Oh, shit!” He heard, right before a cold blast of something slammed right into his head, knocking him out.

And Spider-Man

F

E

L

L.

——

Larry looked at the the empty space where Spider-Man, the guy who took a hit from his boss’ blaster so he wouldn’t get hurt, used to be.

He twisted.

“Boss, what the fuck?!”

“Shit! That was accident!” Boss pulled herself up from the concrete, where she just ate dirt.

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, Larry! That was the experimental warped mode! Crap!” His boss scrambled with the controls, desperately trying to see if the magic gun her magician friend had handed her years ago had a reverse button. It didn’t.

“Why would you bring a test weapon into the field?!”

“I gave you all of my other ones!” She threw up her hands. “Fuck, I feel so bad.”

Larry paled. “Dude, Dare Devil’s gonna kill us.”

“He doesn’t kill!” His boss hesitated. “I think.”

Larry pointed to the empty space. “Yeah? He might start with us. Spidey was a cool guy and you just disappeared him!”

“I know!”

Larry buried his head into his hands and tried not to hate himself for the entire situation.

——

Spider-man woke up, laid flat on the grimy ground of an alleyway.

“Ugh. Just my luck.” He kept his eyes closed for just a beat longer to allow himself time before having to pull his shit together. Why was his voice high? And a bit squeaky? He pulled himself together.

“Okay.” He whispered to himself, before sitting up and taking stock of the situation.

First thing that hit him was that it stunk to high heavens. Gagging, Spider-Man looked to the right and- yeah, that’ll do it. He stood up on wobbly legs to try to move away from the overflowing dumpster.

That’s when the second, more important and decidedly more troublesome, observation hit him.

He’s short. Shorter. And his suit was hanging off of him.

He could tell he still had his normal by now physiology, with the speeding heartbeat and the feeling of super strength. But he’s shorter. With a mounting sense of equal parts dread and resignation, he pulled at the hidden seam by his nape, relying on his both his enhanced senses and spidey-sense to tell if anyone was nearby or looking at him. He pulled the Spider-Man suit off, blankly folding it neatly as he stared dumbly at his hands. They’re small too. Shit. He stumbled to a nearby mud puddle and stared down, seeing his younger face in the contaminated water. Double shit.

He’s starting to loose his composure. He’d gone through a lot of bizarre things over the last eight years. But getting accidentally Detective Conan’ed by a person he just helped was a new low.

The black under layer of his suit, a slash proof and fire resistant polymer Peter had designed himself in MIT’s lab, was in a similar state.

With one hand, Peter Parker numbly rolled up his sleeves and pant hems. Great. Okay. Now what?

Ah. Shoes. He did not want to walk around in his too-big Spider-Man boots. He looked around. Well, there’s the laces of what looked to be like a pair of dumpster shoes. “Yeah, no.”

Shit. Does he still have access to his hammer space?

Peter reached into his pocket, and tried to reach for a pair of normal sneakers. His shoulder slumped as he produced a pair. Fuck yes. He still has access! And shoes! They’re ones he took off of a power line for a well off kid who didn’t want it anymore. He was going to donate them to F. E. A. S. T. but he’s thanking the stars he procrastinated a bit on swinging by the center. He put them on. They’re a bit big, but it’s better than the giant-in-comparison ones he normally wears. You know, as an adult.

He hesitated with his mask. He should at least figure out where he is. He hoped it was still in the states. His mask blinked, the HUD in his lenses informing him that it was trying to find a connection. “That’s weird.” He paused, grimacing at the sound of his voice. But it is weird, because he had his mask automatically connected to the world wide satellites Tony Stark had sent circling the globe for citizens without internet access as a back up option. So either he was somewhere even the Stark Satellites couldn’t reach or…

Peter swallowed, his mask pinging as it found a connection to piggy back on. He clicked his tongue twice to activate the voice controls.

“Connect to the local maps. Where am I?”

His masked followed the order. [Gotham. New Jersey.]

Peter stared at the words, gut churning.

Good news, he was still in the States. Bad news? He’s shrunk, in a totally different state, and possibly in a different world because he’s not connected to the Stark Satellites he knew operated in New Jersey.

Peter Parker tilted his head back and allowed himself one verbal, panic level six and up, curse word.

“Fuck.”

He took off his mask and leaned against a slightly cleaner part of the wall before hyperventilating.

——

Half an hour later, Peter smacked himself on the cheeks and pulled himself together.

“You’re Spider-Man,” he hissed to himself. “Have a mental breakdown somewhere warm, you dumbass.”

Peter Parker was a champion, world class expert at compartmentalization.

He slipped his mask back on, and pulled up his “So You’re Stuck in an Alternate Universe” list he had made with Ned so many years ago when they were high school kids and going through comic books to make contingencies because Peter was a little idiot vigilante hero.

“I didn’t think I’d actually ever need this kind of thing.” Peter muttered. He slipped his black back up gloves on to connect to his mask’s display in order to type.

“Okay,” he glanced at the side by side screens in his lenses. “Money.”

Five things.

1) The emergency cash he’d stashed on him thankfull matched the pictures of cash he’d found on this world’s internet. Yay!

2) He had $1000 tucked away. Not yay. Not if this might be a long term stay before he got back to his own dimension. Not if he wanted a place to sleep.

3) Luckily, thanks to his earlier search of where the hell he was, Peter figured out that due to the high crime rates- “Dang, that’s worse than New York on New Year’s Eve,” he had marveled- Gotham was dirt cheap and that that meant 1k dollars could actually last him a while and he could afford a room for a month on $250. A whole ass apartment for $550. Peter seriously considered staying in this universe just for the rent prices. So what if there’s rampant crimes? He’d deal with it if the rent was that cheap.

4) Problem? He’s fucking tiny. Who would rent to a person that looked like child? Not anyone upstanding, that’s for sure. He’s more likely to get mugged. Counterpoint: he’s in a city where apparently shady people are all around. Also? He doesn’t have an identity.

5) If the fact that he couldn’t connect to the Stark Satellites didn’t convince him he was either in another universe or an alternate dimension, the visual graphics of the websites he visited would. It was like looking at Windows in the early way before Stark Co. bought them out and improved the design. Nauseating.

Okay, so, money’s not too urgent of an issue. Next on Ned’s list: Places of Interest.

Namely, libraries, homeless shelters, crime hotspots, and the like.

Peter snorted when he came across an opinions article talking about how Park Row became Crime Alley. And then he frowned, because that story was not painting this place to be even remotely nice. Then again, considering the crime rates and the various Rogues this place seemed to have in spades, that wasn’t much of a surprise. Peter marks the place in his new mental map of Gotham as a potential area he could either disappear to or get a new identity at. He then marked the libraries, Gotham City Public Library and its many branches all funded by generous donations from a Bruce Wayne, the Martha Wayne foundations’ shelters and charities, two supermarkets near the library, and a coffee shop he thought looked warm and cozy from the shitty pictures they have uploaded online. He needed coffee, dammit, and he needed it hours ago. Alas, he probably wouldn’t get to go to one until he secured his finances.

Well, it’s not like he doesn’t have practice being poor.

3) Which brings him up to Ned’s next, surprisingly reasonable for a teenager hoped up on a mountain load of sugar, point. Level of Tech.

Peter hid next to the dumpster, melding in with the shadows, as he continued his research.

Tech here was… well, he probably wouldn’t have to worry. The thought of not having a Starkphone, even his older model, was painful considering the new versions of these WaynePhones were really… behind. Peter doesn’t remember the last time he had buttons on his phone or let alone a touch screen that didn’t use facial tracking and biometrics or even have a holographic display mode.

“Ugh. Okay. Not the end of the world, Parker.” Peter muttered.

Now… People of Interest.

This was underlined three times with Ned’s red pens, with extensive subcategories.

Subcategory A? Villains, because “what if they put out a warning for a known villain and you get your butt kicked because you didn’t know about them, Peter? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”

He had replied, half focused on the list and the other on savoring the Millennium Falcon Lego set May had saved up for months to get him for his birthday, “I feel like if I was getting my butt kicked by a villain, I’d probably have better things to worry about than my utter humiliation, Ned.”

“True that,” Ned had snicked and jotted it down anyways.

And… well, Gotham had a lot of villains. The Joker (ew, that’s a crusty man in crustier face paint. This guy could learn so much from the cool mimes busking in Central Park. Like, how to do face paint. Or how not to be a massive murderous jerk. There’s Clayface, Two-Face, a bald guy in “Metropolis” (a name Peter couldn’t help but snort at because a city named city? That’s like na’an bread being bread bread. Or chai tea being tea tea) named Lex Luthor, and Scarecrow. He tabbed all of them and marked them for further perusal at a later date. From experience, he knew villains with a prominent M.O. and themes usually did more damage. Case in point: Rhino, and the million dollars of property damage the guy did everytime he escaped the Raft. Peter was seriously considering petitioning for the Raft to be placed further out just so he could have more warning the next time some assholes decided to free the prisoners and helped them escape.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen, his mask’s lenses following the movement. He’ll have to pick up a gas mask. Apparently bio-weapons are just a regular thing here and he really didn’t want to get dosed with this “fear toxin.” It’d be dangerous for everyone involved. Maybe if he gets his hands on a sample, he could build up tolerance and see how his immune system and metabolic rates affected the normal progression of the toxin. Ah, off topic. He’s gotta focus.

Subcategory B: Local celebrities.

“Why would I need to know local celebrities?” He’d asked.

“If someone came up to you and asked “Who’s Tony Stark?”, wouldn’t you clock that as super weird? You gotta blend in, Peter. Plus, you gotta keep up with the pop culture, dude. It’s important.”

“You just want alternate universe memes,” Peter grinned.

“That too. If you ever go to an alternate universe and come back, you’d better bring me a truckload of memes or I’ll never forgive you.”

Yeah. So. Wayne? Super important. Like Tony Stark levels of important. He found threads about them and the local vigilantes and their charity works. Peter’s brain instantly catalogued the info, all but memorizing the deluge of pictures he found of Bruce Wayne and his kids. Maybe the man had an adoption problem? Conspiracy threads and memes popped up alongside his research. He tabbed one on secret societies, because as Spiderman, he had fought a disturbing amount of secret societies that, on hindsight, had been theorized about on threads he’s read on his free time. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, a conspiracy theorist could be right. Peter’s not about to dismiss that. He also saved like thirty different memes to send to Ned when he got back. If he got back.

Peter smacked that thought away. He’ll get back to his city or die trying.

Subcategory C, underlined and starred: Other Superheroes and Vigilantes.

Yeah, Peter’s excited about this one too. After Matt stopped being Dare Devil (but did he actually ever stop?) and Wade dipping in and out of NY, Peter’s gotten lonely as Spider-Man. He missed training with them. Of course, the fantastic four were still operating, but he doesn’t actually interact with them or the Avengers at all. Miles hasn’t been cleared (by his mom) to go out as Spiderman with near as many hours as Peter cleared a night. Peter stood behind that because he remembered how horrible it was to work as Spiderman and try to balance school on top of it. Also, he was terrified of Mrs. Morales and would never endanger her son more than he already does. He did wave to Black Widow from a rooftop once, spider to spider, and that was pretty much the coolest moment of his life.

So. Uh. The amount of vigilantes and heroes in this world? Amazing. In Gotham? There’s like, a whole team of them.

Batman, Nightwing (who, Username: Draken Draken had theorized, was the first iteration of Batman’s sidekick Robin), Red Hood, Black Canary, Huntress, Red Robin, Spoiler, the “day vigilante” Signal, the current Robin, and whispers of a “Black Bat.”

And their unfortunate “No Meta” rule with the singular exception of Signal. Peter figured their term of Meta was essentially the same thing as his world’s mutants. He’s not sure which term he liked more. Eh, he’ll worry about that later.

And there’s a Justice League! Which, to Peter, is just a bigger Avengers. There’s aliens on this world too. Superman. Martian Manhunter.

Peter grinned from his place crouched next to the dumpster. Yeah, this is awesome. He quickly memorized everything he could find, cross referencing posts and picking out the nuggets of truth or at least popular truth from the posts he viewed. Like, Red Hood operated in Crime Alley and was a crime boss with morals. Cool.

He’ll go down the spiral later. He mentally thanked Ned who was the best guy in the chair a teenage vigilante could ask for. He should really text his friend when he got back.

For now, he’ll head to the library and see if he could use their computers. He might need a card though… Peter quickly pulled up the search engine and found an Internet cafe. Ah, 24 hour internet cafes, the savior of his college days. There first, and then library, Peter decided. He memorized the instructions and pulled his mask off, tucking it away in the hammer space.

He walked out the alley and turned left, only to double take at his reflection in a shop window that was partially boarded up. Holy shit, he’s a baby. He’s like. 10!

Oh my god.

Peter twitched, tearing himself away from the window before the shop owner decided he was less curious and more potential mugger before promptly remembering that he looked less of a threat than ever. Mixed feelings.

Peter hurried his way to the internet cafe, paying the guy at the front a little extra so he’d ignore the obvious minor without a guardian thing Peter hasn’t gotten used to. Ugh. That was going to be annoying. He only paid for two hours and pulled up as many listings for a room as possible. By the end of it, he came out with $1 worth of fliers printed out and having funneled some billionaire’s offshore accounts into a new bank account he’d made by hacking into the bank servers. Does he feel bad about stealing? Yeah. But Peter’s a vigilante. He’s done worse than nabbing a monthly sum of a couple of hundreds from Lex Luthor’s off shore accounts. He’s not gonna get caught, and considering the guy’s rants on meta humans, Peter’s not feeling particularly guilty about it. He’ll do something good later to make up for it. Once he gets his footholds and can prepare his way back, he’ll even return to the rest of the money. Probably.

Peter left the cafe with his sheaf of flyers, stopping by an informational stand with free tourist maps and plucked one quickly from its plastic holder. He’ll pick something up from the food vendors on his way to the apartments. Peter began walking, taking in the sights of the gargoyles and-

“Nope!” He caught the wrist of a pickpocket. It’s a kid and he immediately felt bad.

“Lemme go. I ain’t done nothing to ya, ya Yorker tourist.”

“Okay,” Peter shrugged. “Don’t get caught the next time?”

The kid gaped at him. “Shi’, you must be really good at it. I’ve never been caught before.”

Peter wisely refrained from telling the kid it was due to his spidey-sense. He let go of the kid’s wrist and let a bit more of his accent out. “Why’d you need money anyways?”

“Food, duh.”

“Dude, I’m starving. Tell you what. You show me the best sub shop nearby and I’ll pay for your food. Deal?”

The kid stared at him, wide eyed. “You’re fuckin’ nuts. Why’re you being nice?”

“I’m hungry? Do we have a deal, kid?”

“… Fuck it. Fine. And don’t call me kid, shrimp. You’re like what, eight?”

Oh. Yeah. Peter’s a kid now. He shrugged.

“I’m older than you. I’m twelve.”

Peter blinked, frowning at how thin the kid’s wrists were.

“I’m Peter!”

“… Frank.”

He let Frank lead the way. Stranger danger doesn’t apply to him, he’s a grown ass man. In the body of a ten year old him, but still. A couple of minutes, four sandwiches and a load of chips later, Frank was watching wide eyed as he demolished three four dollar subs.

“Holy shit. Where are you packing that away? You’re a stick!”

Peter took a big bite of the sandwich as an answer. Frank looked down at his meal.

“Uh. Hey.”

Peter made a muffled noise of question, mouth stuffed full of steak and cheese.

“Sorry about. Uh. Trynna nick from ya.”

Peter chewed faster.

Frank continued, looking like he hated himself. “I wouldn’t… normally steal from shrimps like you but I was desperate and… really hungry, so. My bad.”

Peter finished chewing. “All good, dude. Eat your sandwich.”

Peter had the sudden urge to adopt Frank. Unlike Wayne, he’s not a billionaire, so he smacked that urge down. He could use a friend though. Now… how to be friends with a literal child!

“If you feel that bad about it, you could… be my friend?”

Peter took in the wide eyed gaze from the twelve year old in front of him. Abort! Abort! That was too direct!

“You’re fucking weird. But… okay.”

“That was easy.”

Frank scowled, kicking Peter’s shin.

“Ow!”

“Whatever, shrimp.”

Peter scowled. On his baby face, it came out as a pout.

Do not start beef with a twelve year old, Peter. You’re a grown ass adult.

“Hey, you know I’m new here, right?”

“Duh.” Frank took a bite of his food.

“Can you tell me which one of these are legit?” Peter handed Frank the flyers. He took them, an odd look passing his face.

“You’re looking for a place?”

“Yeah? Why?”

Frank stared at him. Looked back down. He instantly got rid of four listings out of the ten. “These are too close to the Alley. They’re probably traffickers.”

Peter hummed in agreement. Frank paused.

“You’re just gonna trust me on that?”

“Yeah? I can tell when people are lying.” Well, his spidey sense could, when he cared enough about the subject.

“What the fuck.” Frank shoved the rest the papers at him and guiltily munched on his food. “Are Yorkers all just like you?”

“Dunno? Probably not.”

“… Whatever. The rest of the places should work. They probably won’t ask questions.” Frank flapped a hand at Peter’s new situation. Yeah, the shortness was getting to him too.

Peter nodded. Obviously, they were the more expensive places, but considering the new found resources he’d… acquired during his time at the cafe, it doesn’t really matter.

“Cool! Wanna go see it with me?”

Frank immediately took on a suspicious glare. “Why?”

“I dunno? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought since you know your way around…”

“Ugh. Fine. But if there’s anything shady, I’m fucking dipping out.”

“Okay!” Peter grinned for the first time the couple of hours he’d been trapped in this new world.

——

They’d found an apartment with a landlord that got a weird, sad face when she was talking to them about the apartment. After like, an hour of walking around and Peter’s spidey sense screaming at him not to even go near the places Frank had left in the pile of maybe’s.

“We walked all the way here. Ya not even gonna go in?”

“The vibes are off. It’s a no.”

And because Peter’s a genius idiot with no self preservation, he’d marked the places to investigate later.

Frank had blinked at him, mildly offended and nonplussed. After a while of spluttering, he just gave up. Eventually, they got here.

“I don’t normally rent to kids,” the landlord lady said. Peter immediately liked her. “But I’ll make an exception if you’ve got the cash.”

“I’d like to see the unit first, please” Peter said. He’s not stupid, and Gotham’s renting scene is both easier and harder than New York.

They toured it. Peter? He’d seen worse. He’d lived worse. Also, it had two bedroom and was $620. Yeah, Peter was really considering just staying here full time and commuting to his New York when he wanted to be a vigilante.

“I’ll take it, ma’am.” The landlord and Frank both snorted, sharing a Gothamite look.

“It’s Georgie, to you, brat. You just need the first month’s rent, since I’ll wave the deposit for you shrimps. Utilities included. Your friend stayin’?”

“No-” Frank had started.

“Yep!” Peter beamed, interrupting his new friend.

“What?” Frank turned, gaping again at this weird little kid who had enough money to rent a place and then invited a whole ass street kid he just met to live with him. “Are you stupid?! What if I rob you? Huh? I don’t need charity!”

Peter slowly looked around the empty unit.

“Uh.”

“No, that’s not the point!” Frank pointed a finger at Peter. “That’s how you get yourself killed!”

“But that’s why you should stay! I don’t know my way around Gotham so…”

Peter looked up at Frank, using his shortness for maximum devastation. “Please?”

Georgie leaned back on the heels of her feet, silently laughing. It’s not every day she sees a Gothamite street kid get out stubborned by an outsider, but she knows better than anyone that Gotham is weak to genuine kindness. And this Peter kid, the one that reminds her so much of her own? He’s practically filled with it.

“Yeah, kid,” she said to Frank, snickering. “Look at him. He’s gonna get mugged two steps into the Alley. Or anywhere.”

Frank flailed, but eventually, Peter handed over the money to an amused Georgie who gave them two keys in return and a move in gift of a pot pie.

“I gotta. Uh. Go get my stuff.” Frank had mumbled, dazed at whatever the hell just happened.

“Okay! I’ll see if I can go get furniture!”

“And lift them with your shrimpy arm? You wish.”

“I can use a cart.”

And really, he could, because Gotham had a lot of abandoned carts laying around. Like a concerning amount.

“Can you even reach the handle?”

“I’m not that short!”

Frank snorted, Georgie’s own chuckles following a beat after. Peter scowled at them.

“Be right back,” Frank promised, holding the key like it was treasure. He had been homeless for two and a half years now, so in his eyes, that key was as good as gold. He had somewhere warm to stay. Trying to pickpocket Peter was the best mistake he’s ever made in his short life. But he didn’t want to take advantage of that, well, no, he did want to, but he doesn’t want to take the genuine kindness for granted so he’ll see if there’s any street furniture he could haul back on his way.

“Okay!”

Georgie watched him go and turned to Peter.

“If you need stuff, there’s a thrift store and a grocery store that way.” She gave him the directions.

——

As soon as Frank and Georgie left, Peter immediately left his new place (and holy shit, he really didn’t expect things to be this easy. In New York, he had to spend at least a week checking out places because he had to figure out whether the problem that cause subtle twinges with his spider sense was worth living with. Here? It’s too obvious.) to buy supplies. He had $400. Until his new card came in, at least. He’d put his new address into that bank account addressed to a “Anthony Benjamin” before ordering a “replacement card.”

Peter ran to the thrift store, hurrying before the last traces of the sun dipped below the smog of Gotham. A frankly absurd amount of blankets, towels, pillows, clothes, packaged boxers, socks and shoes around his size went into the cart. To his chagrin, Peter couldn’t actually see much over the cart. Why the hell was he such a short ten year old? He blasted through the store, also guesstimating Frank’s sizes. He tossed in curtains, a used set of glow in the dark stars, and a lamp.

He also grabbed mismatched mugs, bowls, a bundle of cutlery, and a dented microwave he casually pretended to struggle getting onto the bottom part of the cart. It’s like lifting grapes for him, but he looks like a ten year old so…

He, guiltily, bought a mildly fancy camera in a set, with two separate lenses, even if one was cracked.

Not bad, for $150 total. Peter is going to definitely seriously consider commuting to New York. They didn’t even care when he walked out with the cart! Well, that might be because of the cashier who gave him a pitying glance.

He stopped by a general store on the way back, parking his cart in a rapidly shadowy alleyway. He swung by the new section of the store that reminded him of a Dollar Tree and got cleaning supplies, toiletries, and two pans and a pot. He grabbed some canned food and a couple of frozen meals in the back. Seasonings, ramen, general pantry staples went in. A role of paper towel. Nice. Venom would have loved this store. With half of his budget blown for essentials, Peter quickly cut his spending off and

He quickly gathered his stuff and went back to the apartment, using his strength a bit to lift the full cart up the stairs at the front doors and into the elevator. It creaked like the first time they used it to go see the apartment, but it worked. Peter set everything up in the living room, pillow and blanket wise, and put everything in its proper place. The lamp was put up, giving more light than the old bulb in the ceiling light.

All Peter wanted to do was pass out, but since his dumbass took in a child, he couldn’t sleep until this place was relatively fit for a kid to live in. He also wanted to wait for

So, that’s what he did. Taking a sponge and the cleaning supplies he’d picked up earlier, Peter tackled the living room, scrubbing away at old stains and spraying mildew. He marked trouble spots- like that splinter worthy piece of floor next to the doorway leading to the hall between the bedrooms. Then the kitchen. By the time Frank cautiously peeked his head in from the front door, Peter had already finished scrubbing the over.

“Hey.”

Peter turned, grime on his face but grinning. “Hey!” I bought some stuff!”

Frank snorted at his face before glancing around the living room, eyeing the cart parked neatly on the side.

“So you did. Didn’t get mugged, did ya?”

“Rude. No, of course not.”

Frank gave him a… frankly… unimpressed look and dumped his bag next to the pile of blankets and pillows Peter had piled onto the floor. Sue hi’, they didn’t have beds yet.

“Got somethin’ for ya,” Frank said neutrally before dragging in…

“A coffee table!” Peter bounced towards Frank, hugging him before lugging in the heavy wooden table in. “You’re the best! Where’d you find it?!”

The tension, anxiety about Peter’s reaction, in Frank’s shoulders relaxed and the kid grinned. “Alley. Some asshole just left it there for anyone to hit with their car so I took it.”

“Nice! We can eat on this!”

——

When they were getting ready for bed, Peter insisting on showers for both of them, Frank had reared up at the clothes Peter bought for him. Peter pretended like he didn’t see anything and shove a whole tube of toothpaste and a new toothbrush at him.

“Ew. Do I have to?” Frank asked, wrinkling his nose but taking the items anyways.

“Yeah.” Peter said seriously. Frank gave a moment to wonder why he was taking orders from an eight year old before shrugging. He could brush his teeth in exchange for a roof over his head, food, and clothes. It’s not even a fair trade, for Peter, anyways. Frank was enough of an alley rat to take advantage of that.

——

When Frank passed out, Peter couldn’t sleep. He’s exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep.

So he took his new camera and climbed the fire escape to the roof top.

An hour later, he met his first vigilante.

“Hey, kiddo. I’m gonna need you to back away from the edge.”

“Woah!” Peter startled, jolting slightly off of the ledge he was balanced on. He twisted around to see Red Robin, hand outstretched and panicked look in his eyes.

“Dude. Warn a guy!” Peter said, even though his spider sense warned him of an approaching person that was actively watching him.

Red Robin held his hands up. “My bad. Would you- uh, not be on that ledge?”

“Yeah, sure. My bad, bro.” Peter obligingly stood up and stepped away from the ledge. Red Robin relaxed then did a double take. Peter frowned. Is there something on his face?

“What are you doing up here, kiddo? It’s late.”

Peter decided to scope out the vigilante. “Couldn’t sleep,” he held up his camera. “I’m taking pictures.”

“Oh. That’s cool! Can I see?” Red Robin approached warily, but relaxed when Peter didn’t spook and try to take a shortcut to ground floor.

“Sure! It’s a new, well, not new but new to me, camera so I haven’t had all that time to mess with the specs but the pictures turned out pretty good-”

“Oh, woah. This one’s great. That composition? Amazing. You caught the light perfectly,” Red Robin complimented. Peter brightened, knowing a photography fan when he hears one.

“Photography buddy!” He cheered.

They talked for an hour after that, but Red Robin quickly sent him to bed once he remembered the time.

“Ah, shi- crap. It’s like 2AM. You’ve gotta go to bed.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry if I interrupted your patrol, Mr. Red Robin!”

“No problem, kid.” Peter slipped back down the fire escape, not caring if the vigilante saw where he lived.

——

Up on the rooftop, Red Robin pressed a hand to his comm.

“Red Robin to Nightwing.”

“What’s up, Red?”

“Do you have a kid you don’t know about?” Tim said, bluntly.

“… What?”

“Oracle, can you share my cowl footage?”

“Copy. Oh, that kid…”

“Looks exactly like Wing?” Tim said, peering down at the empty fire escape. “Yeah. Talked like him too.”

“Oh my god, he’s adorable.” Oracle said. Tim agreed. That curly hair? Baby face? Adorable. A bean. “Did you get DNA?”

“Ah, shit, I knew I forgot something.”

“Do not break into his place and nab a hair,” Nightwing reprimanded, but his voice sounded distracted.

“Holy shit, you guys nerded out about camera placement and lighting for an hour?” Hood piped up.

“Get some rest, Red Robin. You’ve been working too hard,” Batman grunted through the comms. Awkward… but he’s been getting better at communicating his worry for his kids.

“Sure thing, B. Heading back to the main cave. Red Robin out.

——

Peter: lay low and get home

Also Peter: talks to a vigilante

None of them think Peter’s Nightwing’s yet. Peter will know before them… eventually. Once this world’s version of him gives up his memories to be absorbed by AU Peter.

[ncstalgicz]

❤️‍🩹 HEALED WOUNDS ❤️‍🩹

miguel o’hara x reader

BEFORE ATSV

sypnosis: miguel meets you after injuring himself fighting an anomaly which he gets thankful for in the end. plot: fluff, heartwarming miguel, the famous upside down kiss. warnings: blood mentioning, cursing, cursing in spanish, not proofread, too much fluff. music: see you again - tyler, the creator ft. kali uchis. a/n: sorry I haven’t updated in 3 days, I couldn’t upload because my stomachache got worse but now I feel better. as a reward I decided to write a little extra loll. (´ᴗ｀‘) also the gwen stacy in this story, isn’t the same one as itsv or atsv!! words: 5.5k

The rain was pouring heavily on the pavement. From afar a man seems to be heaving as his breath was stuck on his throat, too tired to let out a grunt or to be able to clear his throat. Miguel O’Hara was at his limit from being really tired of handling the anomaly. “You look really pathetic down there.” The anomaly told him, wanting to reach over his limit. He spread his wings getting ready to use the sharp part to make another injury. The rain hit his mask as Miguel eagerly wanted to take it off to help him breathe. The rain hit his muscular shoulder as he held onto his arm that was bleeding due to the multiple attacks.

The anomaly let out a laugh before being able to leave the universe noticing a portal, trying to find a new one to play around with. Miguel let out a growl, blaming himself of letting the anomaly go due to his weakness. Using his gadget on his wrist, Miguel opened a portal back to headquarters immediately grunting when the pain on his arm cam back. “Lyla, track the anomaly.” He mumbled as he got out a grunt holding his arm. “Uh, ok.” Lyla looked at the man noticing his defeated state.

“Anomaly at Earth-2113.” Lyla informed him logging out of the gadget. Miguel sighed as he ran a hand on his hair. He immediately opened a portal and headed inside. Once he made it, he looked at the city in awe, as the sun was setting. While he was memorizing down below was your apartment, unknowingly to you, you heard the sound of a loud thump on your roof. Not paying any kind to it, you continued scrolling through photos recognizing the memories you’ve made. You sighed as you looked at one in particular, you were with Peter and Gwen. Always having a crush on Peter, he would always seemed to be busy with Gwen even though you were his first friend. Trying not to be jealous you always helped him in anyway you could even though it would hurt you.

Miguel was scouting at the city with his mask on as he felt the sharp pain on his arm again. “Mierda. (shit)” Miguel cursed noticing the large amount of blood on his arm was weighing him down. He saw the anomaly that caused him the gash on his arm as he pounced on him. The anomaly was too distracted until he saw Miguel. “Back from the dead?” He remarked. Miguel growled as he was about to bite down on the neck until the anomaly sent a kick to his ribs. Miguel clawed on his back trying to not falter the mission this time, if only he could’ve listened to Jess about bringing backup.

Miguel hissed when the anomaly grabbed onto his injured arm and punched him in the face. Miguel was sent to another roof as the blood continued gashing out. He noticed his blurry vision as he tried to spot the anomaly. Trying to stay focused he would’ve been caught if he wasn’t focusing. The anomaly grabbed him again, this time gripping him by the jaw as he made Miguel look at him. “Too tired to play? How sad.” He let out a laugh as he began teasing the man he was holding. Miguel let out a growl as he grabbed onto his wing and clawed at his face. The anomaly took the chance and kicked him towards the roof where you lived knocking Miguel unconscious. The anomaly let out a cackle as he noticed another portal opening. Using the chance he went through the portal and bid farewell.

Hearing another thump on your roof for the 3rd time, you finally went upstairs to inspect the noise. Once you made it outside, goosebumps littered your body due to the cold breeze. You looked around and saw a figure on the floor. You squinted your eyes to see if the body was a homeless. “What the hell.” Your eyes widened when you notice the muscular of the body, wearing some type of Spider-Man merch?, and the blood on the roof floor. You got closer as you tried to inspect if the body had more injuries than his arm. You approach the body slowly to not wake him up. You tap the shoulder quickly backing away as soon as you touched him. You tap him again only receiving no response. ‘Oh my god. I have a dead hot man on my roof.’ You panic trying to find a way to explain this to the police. While you were panicking you didn’t notice the slight movement of the man.

You try picturing your jail photo, pondering your jail friends, and maybe even planning an escape plan. The Man got up slightly as his vision continued getting blurrier, he looks at you wondering what you are since his eyes fail him. “What?” He mutters as he rubs his eyes hoping it might help. You shriek once you saw the man, “A ZOMBIE!!” The man deadpans as he looks at you. “Mierda, I need to get out of here.” He tells himself before he starts glitching. ‘What?!’ He Looks at his wrist to only notice the gadget was gone. ‘This day has just gotten worse.’ He told himself. All you do is stare at him until you notice his wincing. He glitched again as he gets down on the floor holding his arm in pain.

You grab onto his arm trying to help him get up. His vision gets blurry again as his crimson eyes stare at your figure who was holding his arm. He immediately snatched his arm back. “Rude bitch.” You mutter as you try to help him again, this time he allows you. You grab his arm as you lead him towards your apartment which was a floor down. You notice the trail of blood he leaves, ‘Gonna have to clean that up later.’ You thought to yourself. You continue dragging his arm almost falling due to his weight. Sometimes he even stops for a little break even though you were almost there.

“C’mon big guy. Just a few more steps, it’s literally just right there.” You remark getting annoyed easily. The man grunts in pain as he tries to hold the railing. Once you two get inside you shut the door as you guide him to your bathroom. “Now just stay here for a while. I need to go get the med-kit.” You Tell him as you leave the bathroom. ‘How did I end up here? And the anomaly.’ He finally gets out of his weakens daze as he starts panicking. ‘The gadget too. Oh Mierda, Lyla will never forgive me for that. I can’t go back, I have to find a way.’ He thought to himself. His thoughts finish as you enter the bathroom with some gauze, the med-kit, alcohol, and some hydrogen peroxide. You set everything on the counter as you look up at him. “Now sit.” He obeys and sits on the toilet making sure the lid was down.

You grab the med-kit and open to put on some gloves. ‘Esta chica (this girl). Acts if she’s doing surgery.’ Miguel thought to himself. “Um- I need you to remove the suit.” You look away from him. “I won’t look don’t worry.” You felt a touch on your shoulder as you looked at him. His suit fades off starting at his shoulder to the hand. You gasp at the animation of his suit, amazed. You quickly pour some alcohol on a towel as you put it above his arm getting ready to dab it. “Now, this might sting a little.” You tell him looking at his mask. He backs away for a moment, you grab his arm putting the towel. He hissed in pain, you see claws coming out of his fingertips. “Impressive.” You exclaim. You dab the towel on his arm as he gets used to the pain, “You’re finally used to the pain after having a gash on your arm.” You remark. “Let’s see how you feel when you get one.” He answered back. You look at his mask in awe of his deep and husky voice.

You quickly put the towel in the sink letting the hot water on. You let the skin dry for a moment before using a cotton ball, pouring hydrogen peroxide. “This shouldn’t sting at all. It’s just so you won’t get an infection.” You tell him. Your dab the cotton ball on his arm as he doesn’t since at all, he seemed…calm. “Por fin, ya te calmastes. (Finally, you calmed down)” You Tell him. He seems shocked, not knowing you knew Spanish. He grunts as he felt something on his arm. You put the hot towel on his arm. “Thanks.” He thanked you. Miguel never asks for help even when he was tired or stressed about something. But something about you made him want to know you more, even make you help him more. “Your welcome.” You put some Vaseline on his arm before putting a bandage around it. You finished and you looked at your work. “Seems good enough.” You tell yourself. “Thanks uh..I’ll take my leave now.” He gets up from the toilet seat as he tries to leave.

You block his way. “You’re not leaving, mister.” Miguel looks at you confused, it was as if you were able to block his way without moving your figure. “Yes I am.” He starts getting annoyed as he tries to move you out of the way without hurting you. “No. You look tired. At least stay for a while, either way. If you move around a lot, you’re wound is gonna open back up again, which will mean all that hard work I did, would be for nothing.” You scold him. He observes your action as he sighs and doesn’t budge any further. “Fine.” You Look at him surprised for him not using his body to push you away. Somehow Miguel did want you to take care of him until he could find a way to get back and defeat the anomaly. “You should take a break, you look tired.” You glance at his eye bags. “C’mon.” You guide him towards your bed as you drag his uninjured arm. “No- I can’t take your bed. What about you?” He asks concerned noticing the fact that it was nighttime. “Don’t worry, I have a nightshift I gotta do.” You assured him. “Now go to bed, you look horrible.” You tell him smiling. You watch as he lies down on the bed, making sure he would actually sleep.

Miguel seems confused at his emotions. Deep inside him he wants to know more about you, he wants you to take care of him some more, he wants you in general, but he also wanted to go back to headquarters to defeat the one who gave him the injury. He drifts into a deep slumber as you look at him. You sigh in content as you go over to the bed and put the covers over him. You get your purse and head out the door.

A couple of hours later, Miguel wakes up due to the glitching. ‘I need to find that watch.’ He tells himself. He gets up from the bed feeling relaxed. Maybe he did need that rest after all the hard work. Miguel immediately took off his mask running his hand through his hair feeling crusty. He quickly put on his mask after he heard noise outside the door. He walked towards the door and opened it just to see your figure. You look at him as you smile sheepishly, “I made some breakfast.” You gesture towards the plate of eggs and bacon, with an empanada, and a glass of orange juice. It seems to be a lot for you to hold so Miguel grabs the plate of food and the glass of juice and immediately digs in, sitting on your bed. You stand there awkwardly as you take the chair from you desk and sit.

“I have a few questions.” You tell him as he looks up from his plate. He munches as he gestures for you to continue. “Well- How did you end up on the roof with an injury? The injury seemed to be old since the blood was drying but why didn’t you go to the hospital when you had the chance, or maybe you could’ve cleaned it up yourself.” You scold him as Miguel stops and analyzes your face as he notices the look of concern coming from your face. “There wasn’t any time.” He muttered but you heard it. “You don’t know me, You shouldn't really be asking these type of questions after one night of you helping me, I didn’t ask for your help.” he uncontrolled his words. You just looked at him annoyed, “Well maybe I could’ve just left you there on the roof to die, this world has enough cruel people already.” Your words seemed to have hit a nerve on the man as he gets up and starts leaving the room.

You don’t stop him as you watch his figure leave through the door. “Pinche puerqo. (Fucking pig.)” You curse at him. You look at the plate he left on your nightstand as you immediately clean up after him with a roll of your eye. Miguel goes back to the roof as he notices a portal opening. He was relieved to finally be able to go home until he spots the anomaly came back. “Mierda, can’t you go home already?!” Miguel exasperated tired from fighting the same anomaly. He immediately dodged his attack as he saw The Gadget on the balcony of your apartment. The anomaly seems to notice Miguel’s gaze as he looks at The Gadget as well, he goes towards it. Miguel reacts quickly as he followed. You were to busy washing your dishes that you didn’t even notice the fight that was going on in your balcony. Miguel grunts as he felt another scratch towards his eye due to the wings of the anomaly.

The anomaly continued attacking the man as he was getting tired of his attacks and immediately started attacking as well. “How much does this piece of shit matter to you?” The anomaly curses. “As much as it matters to me, I need it to go back.” Miguel immediately kicked the man away, which turned into a mistake when the anomaly hid himself inside your apartment. “Shit.” Miguel cursed as he was able to grab the gadget and puts it on his wrist. He goes inside your apartment as he notices the broken glass on the floor due to the window breaking when he kicked the anomaly inside. He heard a muffled scream as he looks towards the noise as he looks towards the noise and notices your mouth being covered by the hand of the anomaly. “Let her go.” Miguel warned him as he gets closer, but the anomaly immediately backs away using his wing to point towards your neck. “Give me the weird-looking-watch and I’ll let her go.” You noticed that his hand was sliding off your mouth as you bite into the anomaly’s hand. He screamed in pain as you were tossed off of him, Miguel uses his chance as he immediately lunges towards the anomaly taking him outside of your apartment.

Miguel continues fighting as he takes off his mask and bites down onto the anomaly’s neck knocking him unconscious. He quickly puts on his mask as he saw you on the roof, he felt the pain on his arm again as he instantly regrets it, making you help him for nothing. He puts the anomaly in a barrier to make sure he doesn’t escape. Miguel quickly uses his talons to climb up to the roof as he looks at you, you look back at him with your eyebrow raised. “You opened Your wound up again didn’t you?” You examine his face as he had led a guilty look. “Sorry, I had to take care of him, are you hurt?” He asks softly. Your bossy attitude turned into a caring one when he asked. “I���m fine, thank you for saving me.” You Look at him with a smile. “Are you Spider-Man by any chance?” You ask Holding the question back for a long time as you look at his suit which resembles the original Spider-Man.

“Um..Yeah, something like that.” He awkwardly states. You look at him as he looks at you back. It’s as if time had stopped while you were looking at him. “I have to go take care of him.” Miguel gestures towards the beaten up anomaly who seemed to be groaning. You get out of your daze, “oh yeah- of course.” You laughed as You bid farewell. “You can fight as much as you want, just don’t beat yourself very badly.” You point at him as you scold, starting to go back towards the roof door. Until a question pops in your head. “Oh wait. What’s your name my hero?” You joke. He hesitates as he doesn’t want to tell you the truth about his identity. “That’s classified.” He tells you, slapping himself inside his head. “Oh right, I forgot.” You laugh sheepishly as You bid farewell again and head downstairs towards your apartment.

“Estupido. Estupido. Estupido. (idiot/stupid)” He continued rambling as he hits himself on the head. Miguel sighed as he looked at the winged-anomaly. “Lyla.” He taps on his Gadget as a mini Lyla appears on his watch. “What happened to you? Your gonna be in serious trouble you know.” She remarks as she seems to be nail polishing her nails. “Take him.” He orders as a portal appears. He walks towards the portal as he looks at the roof door where you left. Miguel sighs as he leaves with the anomaly. You head inside your apartment as you sigh in defeat and immediately look at the clock. 4 pm. Your night shift doesn’t start until 7 pm. You use the time to clean up the mess the anomaly made when he grabbed you. You look at the broken glass on the floor, careful not to cut yourself. Once you were finished with cleaning up, you sighed as you looked at the time. 5:10 pm. You had another 2 hours left so you used the tome to take a rest.

Back at headquarters, Miguel was scolded by Lyla and Jess for losing the gadget. He resumed his work but got distracted by another mission. He thought back to you, the way your delicate fingers were careful to not hurt him in anyway while you nursed him back to health. He needed that, the rest. He would’ve told you his name if he could, but he didn’t want to danger you more after what had happened. In fact, you never mentioned your name either. Miguel had an idea. He immediately alerted Lyla that he was taking the mission. “Suit yourself.” She told him as he used his gadget to open a portal. Before he was able to enter Lyla scolded him, “lose that gadget and see what happens.” She logged off. Miguel used his hologram suit to put on the mask as he tried looking for the anomaly. Before he was able to scan the anomaly immediately attacked him. Getting ready for the fight, Miguel used all his strength to defeat him.

You woke up due to the ringing on your phone, you groggily opened your eyes as you heard the sound from your phone. You groan as you grabbed it, turned off your alarm and looked at the time. 6:51 pm. “Shit!” You cursed as you immediately got up quickly to put on your appropriate clothes for the job, your hair looked messy so you quickly brushed through the knots and ties. You heard a noise in your room, you froze. ‘What do I do? Usually people would take a peak but that’s how people in movies usually die.’ You anxiously thought to yourself as you held a breath. You glanced at the door knob to your room as you hesitated. Before you could grab it, it opened itself. Miguel was at your door huffing and panting nervously, holding onto his abdomen.

You looked at him with wide eyes, not expecting his attendance. “I need your help.” He huffed out as he walked to the living room and sat on the couch. You continue looking at him, your eyes not leaving his figure. He looks at you noticing your shocked gaze. “Que paso? (What happened?)” He asks you confused. “Why are you here?” You ask him. You looked at yourself as you forgot about your night Shift. You took our your phone as you looked at the time. 7:02 pm. ‘Shit! I’m late, my boss won’t like this.’ You cursed inside your head as you were thinking what to do. Help the bleeding man on your couch, or go to your job without a hot-headed boss loosing his temper with you. You sighed, “Fuck it.” You immediately grabbed your med-kit, a towel, some bandages you bought at the store (hoping he would come back), alcohol, and some hydrogen peroxide. “You missed me that much you got yourself injured just to see me?” You tease as you looked at his toned abs. “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart.” He teases back as you rolled your eyes playfully at the nickname.

“I need to see the wound.” You tell him. Miguel uses his hologram suit to be able to show you his abdomen. You immediately got to work, hoping to not get distracted by his toned built. You finished by compressing a hot towel to his abdomen. He sighed in relief as he laid back in the couch, facing the ceiling. “Thanks for the help.” He looks at you. You smile, “You’re welcome for the second time.” You look down at your fingers feeling awkward about the situation. The air around you gets tense until he speaks up, “Miguel O’Hara.” “What?” You ask confused. “My Name, is Miguel O’Hara.” “Miguel..” His named rolled off your tongue, the name suit him. You tell him your name, ‘The name suits them.’ He thought to himself. “You should rest after your fight.” You tell him taking the supplies to get put back. “Thanks, again.” He immediately closes his eyes in satisfaction. “Goodnight, Miguel.” You tell him. His idea worked.

You quickly try to find some blankets for him until you drop a familiar looking photo. It was a photo of you and Peter before Gwen. You notice the way your eyes sparkled in the photo as you looked at Peter who was looking at you back. You sighed as you picked up the photo and you put it away. Going back to Miguel who was fast asleep on the couch, you put the blankets over him as he started to snore. You sigh in content as you wondered how he would look like without the mask. “Maybe another time.” You muttered as you went inside to your own room, heading to bed as you drift into a deep slumber.

For the past few weeks, Miguel has been visiting you to help with his injuries. It was as if he used the missions he got just to visit you. Of course you helped him but not without a scolding. He would always come visit you asking about your day, while you asked him about his. During those past few weeks you’ve gotten a lot closer with Miguel, although he wouldn’t tell you certain things, one of them being his identity or how he looked like behind the mask. Your friend Peter seemed to have distanced himself with you, getting closer to Gwen, although you didn’t want to be those friends who get jealous easily so you never minded it. Although the only time he did ever talk to you was when he invited you to parties which you were never fond of. For once you actually decided to go. “Hey, wanna come to the bar tonight?” Peter asked you looking over your desk. You seemed to be spacing out, thinking about a certain someone who came over the other day. “Hm? Oh, um. Yeah, sure.” You finally got out of your head as you decided to go just for this one time.

“Alright, you have your Night Shift right? We’ll meet you there at 11 pm.” Peter tells you. “We?” You ask him confused. “Oh yeah, I invited Gwen.” He tells you. “Of course you did.” You muttered as you bit your pen trying to focus at something else besides the man who was continuously talking to you. “…Is that fine?” He asks you but you weren’t paying attention. You just hum in agreement as he goes back to his own desk. Once you got home from work, you immediately got to work to find a perfect outfit for the bar. One that would be very perfect but not to perfect that you could possibly get the attention of perverts. You found one as you looked at the time. 6:32 pm. You started putting on your night shift outfit as you look at the mirror and noticed your hair was still perfect and you left. Unknowingly to you, Miguel visited your apartment as soon as you left. “Where is she?” He asked himself as he looked all over your apartment. He looked at the clock on your wall that read 6:54. ‘She must’ve left for her Night Shift already.’ He thought to himself.

Miguel received a mission which was informed to him by the gadget on his wrist. It was this Earth, Earth-2118 where the anomaly was. He sighed as he immediately went up to your roof, he looked up at the sky as he noticed the dark clouds that were finding its way to the city. “Looks like It’s gonna be a rough night.” He told himself getting ready for the heavy rain. You were on your last minutes of you shift as you looked at the clock. 10:34, just six more minutes for your shift to end. During that time you looked at the window as you saw a rain drop fall against your window, a rainy night seemed to calm your nerves as you decided to leave your work quickly to not be able to catch the rain. You got home and immediately started looking for your outfit as you put it on. You looked at the mirror, your red simple, short pleated dress looked good as you checked yourself out. You were satisfied as you went outside your apartment and stopped a taxi. You got inside as you headed towards the bar that Peter mentioned.

Once you got there, you were greeted by Peter who seemed to be waiting for you or Gwen. “Am I late?” You asked him as you got off the cab. “Earlier than Gwen that’s for sure.” He teased. You felt heavy raindrops on your head as you decided to head inside, but not before telling Peter who decided to come with you. Back with Miguel, he seemed to be panting as he felt the misty rain get to him, having trouble breathing with the mask on. He was currently fighting vulture as he took off his mask with the holographic suit and bit the anomaly on his shoulder. Back with you, you were bored as Peter was conversing with you about he and Gwen met and how he gives his thanks to you. “If it wasn’t for you, me and Gwen wouldn’t have met.” He told you. You just nodded at whatever he said, not seeming to care. “Sorry I’m late guys.” You looked towards the voice as you saw Gwen who seemed to be shivering, wherein g a white mini dress with some ribbon straps. You gawked at her as Peter did the same.

“You look good.” You compliment her. “Good? You look amazing!” Peter emphasized as he immediately put his coat around Gwen who thanked him. “Now the party just got a whole lot interesting.” Peter joked as he asked for some beer while Gwen just asked for some water. You were sitting at one of the booths as the waiter looked at you. “You want anything?” He asked you seemingly concerned. “Oh no, thank you.” You tell him holding back a smile. He nods as he went to go ask another costumer. “Gwen, lets go to the dance floor.” Peter sheepishly asked her. “I don’t dance.” She told him. “Not unless you haven’t tried, come on.” Peter grabbed Gwen’s arm as she started laughing. You looked at them as they started dancing together seemingly to be happy. You wish you were happy at that moment, only seemingly to be a third-wheel at the party that Peter invited you. You could've been at home, seemingly to go to sleep or maybe even talking to Miguel who always came to your apartment. You wished he was here right now instead of being here lonely.

The music started blaring into your ears but it suddenly got quiet, you imaged Miguel next to you, you would be making fun of the lovebirds and cheesy couples who were in here, maybe even getting drunk as hell. But you felt your imagination go away as you looked at the empty booth next to you. You sighed angrily. “What am I doing here?” You asked yourself as you got out the back door. You felt the misty, heavy rain as you looked down at your red Tess that seemed to darken due to the rain. “What are you doing here by yourself, sweetheart?” He asked you. You looked up from the floor as you heard the familiar voice. He seemed to notice your sadden state as he used his web to go to the building next to the bar. Using his webs he got a hold himself as he was hanging upside in front of you. “Oh nothing, just thinking to myself.” You smile at him. “Outside? In the cold rain?” He questioned you as you just looked away.

“Its better than being in there.” You muttered. “How come?” He asks. You didn’t expect him to hear, might as well tell him. You first told him about Peter how he was you first best friend after middle school, how later he met Gwen and started being close, you even told him how you didn’t want to be those type of friends where they get jealous easily, you didn’t want to lose Peter if he ever found out. Miguel listen to every word you told him, listening attentively.

“Sounds like a bitch.” He muttered to himself. “What?” You ask. “What?! No dije nada!” Miguel Looks away from you avoiding your gaze. You creep towards him while he still doesn’t catch your gaze. You hold both of his cheeks making him look at you. Miguel observes your face while he had the chance, the way your eyebrows raise softly at him, the way your nose inhales softly in the rain, the way your mouth smiles while you scan his face mask, the wet hair due to the rain, and those eyes. The way your eyes sparkle even during the night.

Still being upside down, Miguel hesitates as he would want you to observe his face as well. He removes his mask with the holographic suit as you gasp at his features. His sharp noise, the strong jaw, his dark brown hair, those red crimson eyes, you could stare at those eyes for a long tome and never look away. He looked around his twenties for such a beautiful face. “You’re so pretty.” You mumble as you use your hands hesitating to touch him. As if you were asking Miguel nods in approval as you softly touch his hair, and every part of his face, you stop at his lips. You lean closer to his mouth as he stares at you coming closer, when your lips touch it felt like heaven as you grasp his cheeks. Miguel bites down onto your lip as you started making out, never letting go of each other. It felt as if tome stopped, never letting go of each other, feeling like all your problems had faded away. Once you gasp for air once your lips leave his, you smile at him as he just looks at you, mesmerizing your face.

You two stare at each other for quiet a while until Miguel’s gadget beeps, signifying another mission. “I’ll see you later, mi amor.” He softly kissed you again as he uses his claws to climb up the building. You look up at him as his figure leaves. Miguel looks down at you as you look up at him on top of the building. You smile up at him as he leaves. For once you were glad you came to the party, otherwise nothing would have happened. For once in his life, Miguel was glad to have met the anomaly, if he never did, he never would’ve met you.

[skyward-floored]

Whumptober Day 18: Blindfold, Tortured for information

So today’s is actually a little goofier, and a bit of zelink snuck in, but hey! It’s nice to mix things up 👍

I also had the prompt “I tend to deflect when I’m feeling threatened” in mind while writing this and you can tell lol

Read on ao3

Warnings: injury, blood, concussion, torture-y elements.

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Warriors couldn’t see.

He grunted in frustration, trying to rub his face on his arm so he could knock his blindfold loose, but no matter what he did, the coarse fabric stayed where it had been tied while he was unconscious.

He was sore, his head ached from where it had been struck, and his arms hurt where they were bound behind him, but the lack of sight was what was bothering him the most, not being able to see making his skin crawl.

It... bothered him more than he would prefer to admit.

“Hero.”

Warriors stiffened, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. Multiple sets of footsteps echoed around the chair he’d been tightly bound to, making the sound difficult to pinpoint, but he could tell when a pair of them stopped right next to him.

“You have something we want,” the voice continued from much closer, and Warriors let out a chuckle.

“Oh yeah? Well you already took all my stuff, if you can’t find whatever it is, then that’s on you.”

Something connected with his ribs, and Warriors let out a grunt, unable to brace himself since he couldn’t see the blow coming. So it’s going to be like that, is it?

“What we want isn’t an item,” a different voice said, sounding annoyed. Good. “It’s information, that only a select few are in possession of.”

“Are you going to just keep me in suspense, or tell me what you want already?” Warriors drawled, and he expected it this time when he was struck again, even harder.

It still hurt though.

“Listen well, Hero, I will not repeat myself,” the first voice growled, and Warriors froze as a hand grabbed his face. Nails dug into his chin, and he hissed in pain. “We want to hear everything you know about Princess Zelda.”

Warriors felt his blood run cold.

“...What?” he asked, and bit back a cry as another hit landed on his middle. At this rate they’re going to break something.

“Princess Zelda. You work closely with her, you must know all of her powers, her weaknesses,” the voice snapped, releasing his face. “We want to know it all.”

“And why on earth would I tell you anything?” Warriors growled, and the voice went silent.

“Because you have no choice.”

Warriors’ head snapped back as a blow hit his face, and before he could even begin to recover, something sharp was pressed to his cheek, the tip of what had to be a dagger sending a little spark of fear through his chest.

“Fine! Fine you want to know about Z— the princess?” he said, and the knife eased a bit. “Okay. Well first of all, she’s great with basically every weapon she picks up, sword, bow, spear, she can do it all. She always wears pink but her favorite color is actually blue, about the color of my scarf which you’ve so kindly taken from me actually, she’s one of the best musicians I’ve ever heard, her eyes sparkle like Lake Hylia on a clear day, and when she sings, wow you fellas are missing out, oh, and Zelda isn’t her full name, it’s actually Princess Zelda Artemisa Lyra—”

“Shut up!” Someone roared, and the knife dug a line right below the blindfold across Warriors’ face.

He cried out in spite of himself, pain burning across his cheeks and nose, and the hand grabbed his chin again, sharp nails actually digging into his skin this time.

“That information is useless,” the voice hissed, and Warriors smirked, despite how badly his face hurt.

“You wanted to know about Zelda. I delivered.”

“Not her eye color,” the voice spat, and Warriors shrugged his aching shoulders.

“Well you should’ve been more specific then,” he said easily, then yelled as something hit his ribs, hard.

Something cracked, and Warriors doubled over as much as he could with how he was tied up, gasping as his chest lit up in pain. That had definitely broken something that time.

The hand was back at his face again, and Warriors coughed, feeling blood trickle down his cheek.

“Tell us your Princess’s weaknesses,” the voice said more calmly, and when Warriors didn’t say anything, the knife was dragged along his cheek again without warning.

Warriors bit back a cry, and felt his breathing speed up as the knife let up, then sliced him again in a new spot.

“Or we will cut you up until the only part of you that can move is your mouth, so we can hear every single way your cursed princess can be defeat,” the other voice hissed, and Warriors coughed out a laugh.

“Nice. Very... very dramatic. Only one problem with that,” he breathed, tasting something metallic on his tongue. “Zelda doesn’t have any weaknesses.”

His head was slammed backwards into the wall.

Sparks of light shot into his vision, and he might’ve cried out, but he wasn’t sure through the odd high-pitched sound that had filled his head up like one of the Champion’s octorock balloons.

I wonder how he’s doing... he thought blearily, wondering vaguely if the nausea that had suddenly made itself known was going to make him sick. Since he was closest when I got caught...

The high-pitched sound began to die down, and Warriors heard some other sounds through it, talking sounds.

Right... right. Right. He needed to focus.

Zelda might be in trouble.

He strained his ears, trying to focus through the pain pounding across the back of his head, and breathed in a little unsteadily. For some reason, breathing was awfully tricky.

“...hear how he called her Zelda?” one voice said, and Warriors tried even harder to focus through the ringing in his ears in order to listen. “I think perhaps the Princess has a weakness after all... the Hero.”

Warriors felt a bright ball of fear drop into his stomach.

“Sh... she cares nothing for me!” Warriors tried to shout, but his voice caught on the words, and he coughed out something thick in his throat. “You won’t... it won’t...”

The spinning and pain in his head and the ringing in his ears was suddenly too much, and Warriors felt a darkness sweep over him, despite how he resisted.

Something might’ve grabbed his face again, but Warriors slipped away before he heard any of the words they spoke.

Zelda... don’t do anything stupid for me...

(...)

He wasn’t sure how long it was before he came to, but when Warriors opened his eyes, he was still blindfolded.

And his head still hurt like a moblin had been using it as a set of drums.

He let out a low groan, and realized he was on the ground somewhere now, his cheek pressed against grass. The fact that there was grass against his face and not something else was important he thought, but he couldn’t remember or focus enough to figure out why.

He wished he could see.

A boot suddenly set itself on his side, and Warriors’ breath hitched a little, the action sending a pang through the sharp ache in his middle. Why did his head and middle and everything hurt so much?

It was as if the answer was hovering just out of reach, and no matter how he jumped for it, he couldn’t grab hold.

...Was somebody talking?

Warriors strained his ears, and heard several different voices, some lower, and higher, and scratchy, and more commanding...

They went quiet suddenly, and Warriors frowned. Why had they stopped?

The boot sitting lightly on his side suddenly stomped down, and a scream was ripped from Warriors’ throat, pain flashing up his entire side and middle and making his vision white out with stars.

The talking might have started up again, but Warriors couldn’t hear it over the agony burning through his chest, worse than his head, worse than his face. A loud noise sounded nearby and the weight of the boot disappeared, but Warriors couldn’t even focus enough to wonder why.

His world had narrowed down to pain, slow and freezing and hot and fast, switching back and forth so quickly he could barely stand it.

He coughed, something warm spattering on his cheek, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

A sudden crashing sound came from nearby, one oddly familiar. Despite how it made the pain increase, Warriors listened carefully, trying to identify it. It kept happening, over and over as Warriors listened, and he suddenly realized it was two swords, hitting against each other.

But who’s swords? Who’s fighting? he wondered desperately, and winced when a much louder crash rang out.

He really wished he could see.

“Link!”

A couple sets of footsteps sounded by his head, and hands tugged at his bound wrists and ankles, then near his hair, pulling at the coarse fabric. He froze, and all of a sudden the blindfold fell away, Warriors finally able to see again.

He blinked in the nearly blinding sunlight, squeezing his eyes shut before slowly cracking them open again. Something shaded his eyes, and Warriors looked up at golden hair and blue eyes the color of Lake Hylia.

“Arte... Zel..?” he said dizzily, and the worried look she’d been giving him was replaced with a small smile.

“Yes. We’ve got you Link, just hold on while somebody grabs a fairy.”

Warriors blinked up at her, his vision swimming a little. Wow. Had Zelda’s voice always been that pretty? He wasn’t sure. He should probably tell her.

“Oh geez, yeah that’s a concussion,” somebody who wasn’t Zelda commented, and Warriors honestly had no clue who it was. “Unless he usually goes around complimenting your voice?”

“Not normally, no,” Zelda replied, a bit of her hair falling in her face. The sun caught it and made it light up into a brighter yellow, and Warriors tried to raise a hand and touch it. It didn’t really work.

“Hair’s glowing?” he mumbled, and heard a stifled laugh. “‘S pretty. I ever tell y-you... Arty... you’re pretty?”

Artemis blinked at him in surprise, and this time there were a few ooohs along with the stifled laughs that went up from the people he couldn’t recognize.

“Why don’t you tell me later, Link?” she said, and Warriors furrowed his brow as she carefully turned his head. Later? Why later? What was so bad about right now?

“Now, no, why wait?” he managed to get out, his chest aching again as somebody touched it. “You’re beautiful, you... your hair... Hair looks kind of... butter,” he said, confusedly, squinting. The color was pretty darn similar in his opinion, had Zelda ever noticed that? “...Butter color. ‘S butter in your hair?”

There was laughter that was much less muffled that time, and Artemis had an odd look on her face as somebody appeared next to her, something pink in their grasp.

“Alright Captain, here’s a fairy, hold still.”

“Hold who?” he said dizzily, but then the pink swirled all over his vision, sparkles like snow drifting over him. It moved so fast he could barely watch it, but the steady pound in his head began to fade, and the horrible burn in his chest eased considerably.

What felt like a soft wave washed over him, and it took with it almost all the fuzziness that was clouding his head.

He opened his eyes (he’d closed them?) with a sigh, and met Artemis’s eyes, a tiny bit of blood on her chin.

“Oh. Hi,” he said a little dizzily, and made to sit up. He couldn’t quite made it though, his head still a little heavy-feeling, and Artemis’s arms pulled him up, along with somebody else’s.

“Hi yourself,” Artemis said with a bit of exasperation, and as Warriors stared at her. Suddenly everything that had happened while he’d been tied to a chair came back, the questions and blows and a knife dragged along his face—

“Artemis,” he startled, and lurched forward to frantically study her face. “Are you okay? Those men were trying—”

“We know Wars,” Wind’s voice said kindly from nearby. “We took care of ‘em.”

Warriors blinked at him. “Really?” How much had he missed?

“Really,” Time said with a hint of amusement. “They are no longer a threat. You pretty much missed the entire battle.”

“...Oh.”

Warriors rubbed his head with a wince, trying to sort through his memories of the past half a day or so. His head throbbed unpleasantly, and he made the decision it could perhaps wait a bit until his headache died down. The others could probably fill him in... right?

“So, you gonna tell her highness she’s beautiful again?” Legend said innocently, and Warriors stared at him.

Maybe that’s not a good idea.

“...what do you mean again?”

Several snickers went up from the group, and Artemis gave his shoulder a careful squeeze, her hand still on his arm.

“You had a concussion,” she explained, and Warriors could swear she was blushing a little. “Still do, I believe. You... rambled a bit.”

Warriors felt heat rise in his own cheeks. “...What about?”

Artemis smiled, and she squeezed his shoulder again, sending a pleasant warmth up his arm.

“Nothing bad. I’ll tell you later,” she said with a mischievous look, and Warriors felt his cheeks darken even further for some reason. “But we should get you inside. The fairy helped, but I really don’t think you’re all the way healed yet.”

Artemis helped him stand then, and Warriors leaned heavily on her shoulder, his head spinning a little at the change in altitude. They began to walk, and Warriors drifted along in a bit of a haze, the others’ conversation floating around him.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” Artemis said suddenly, voice quiet enough not to be heard by the others. “When they dragged you out, we... we thought the worst.”

Warriors blinked back the ache behind his eyes, and smiled over at Artemis, trying to focus on her face.

“I’m alright,” he reassured, and squeezed her arm. “Glad you’re okay too.”

She sighed, and brushed some hair out of her face. “I was never in as much danger as you, Link. But thank you.”

A smile twitched onto her lips.

“And I think your hair looks a bit like butter as well.”

Warriors stared at her, and Artemis stifled a laugh as he spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out what on earth she meant by that.

[candlecove-weaintdeadyet]

Random-ass Laughingstock crew headcanons because why tf not

Will I do this for the other main crews? Who knows. Not me.

hc's under the cut because this thing is LONG

Percy

Around 12 years old. Before Janice showed up, he was the baby of the crew. That is to say, he was less 'hired' and more 'adopted'.

Has a simultaneous crippling fear of and intense fascination with fire. Like on the one hand if a fire were to get out of control, he'd immediately start panicking, but if it is controlled (a campfire, contained inside a lantern, etc) he'll just stare into it until someone actively gets his attention. He's been caught multiple times trying to touch burning candles or dropping various substances into campfires to see the colors change.

Borderline-obsessed with ghost stories, fairy tales, and silly, badly-written adventure novels. He'll do whatever he can to get his hands on a new book and sometimes tries writing his own short stories.

On that note, despite his anxiety, he LOVES things that are typically considered 'creepy'. He'll sit and listen when one of the others is telling a scary story, almost entranced. Also, he thinks spiders are cute.

His coat was stolen from an Imperial Navy soldier, specifically one working for the NPHC branch. He wears it like a badge of honor, even if it is a bit too big for him.

Mimics some of Poppy's mannerisms (getting people's attention/figuring out where they are by calling their name at the top of his lungs, picking Janice up and spinning her around when he's happy/excited, things like that).

Owns a small box full of wanted posters for more famous pirates that he admires. He has a bit of a celebrity crush on Milo for a while.

Janice

Older than she's stated to be on the Wiki. Like 10-11 when she gets Isekai'd.

Kind of a weird kid. She's REALLY into horror, urban legends, and 'creepy' things (much like Percy), and enjoys poking around in abandoned buildings-usually with a camera in hand. Tends to drag Melrose into her antics.

Turns into a battle junkie the longer she stays in Candle Cove. Like, she has to be physically held back from charging into a fight unarmed. She's eventually given a sword.

Ends up working with Nathan and Edward (OC, master-at-arms) a lot. Nathan may or may not have contributed to her battle junkie gremlin tendencies.

Diehard Rolling Stones fan. She decided to teach Percy a few of their songs at one point and quickly regretted it upon having to hear an awful sea-shanty rendition of 'Paint it Black'.

Didn't spend much time with her dad prior to getting Isekai'd, since he threw himself into his job to avoid thinking about the whole dead wife thing.

Poppy

Used to be in a relationship with Horace. It was a mess and he wants to forget it happened. Dr. Heartfelt is his rebound and their relationship is significantly less toxic.

Always wanted to have children, but was more enamored of the idea of being a father. Man's in WAY over his head.

Makes insane bets when gambling. He once bet a member of his own crew in a game of Lanterloo.

VERY physical in how he shows affection. He'll pick people up and twirl them around (something Percy started doing as well), his idea of a friendly greeting is a hard clap on the shoulder, any romantic partner of his will very quickly get used to having their entire face peppered with kisses, things like that. He has very nearly cracked people's ribs by hugging them too hard.

Has a very bad habit of assuming that if he has good intentions (like trying to protect his loved ones), then that justifies anything he does in the name of said good intentions, no matter how horrific. It's how he was able to justify flaying Thade/Skin-Taker alive-he convinced himself that since his actions were spurred on by Thade being dangerous, then that meant what he was doing was good. And besides, the punishment fits the crime in this case, doesn't it?

Doesn't understand Percy's love of adventure novels in the least. He can't for the life of him figure out why (in his mind) such a smart, mature boy would be so invested in what he sees as nothing more than bedtime stories for much smaller children. Percy's given up on trying to explain it to him.

Dr. Heartfelt

Given name is Alois. That said, most people don't actually call him by his real given name-most of the crew just calls him 'Dr. Heartfelt', Sea-Dog gave him the nickname 'Herr Doktor' (which Milo later started using), and Poppy calls him 'Al' or 'Allie'. Percy will sometimes call him by his real name, but more often defaults to 'Dr. Heartfelt' or, in moments of extreme stress, 'Vati' (an older German equivalent to 'Dad' or 'Daddy')

Used to work as a medic for his home country's military. He does NOT like talking about it.

His soft, sunshiny demeanor is about 50-60% his genuine personality and 40-50% a coping mechanism/stress response. He doesn't usually display 'negative' emotions around others, preferring to wait until he can cry or vent his anger/anxiety/etc. in private.

Gives extremely good hugs. Being a ragdoll (which means he's incredibly soft) very much contributes to that.

Around Poppy's age-so mid-late 30's-but looks more like he's pushing 50.

Taught Percy German (or rather, the in-setting equivalent thereof). He will sometimes call him 'kindchen' (dear child/sweetheart) when comforting him.

I know the wiki says that when he does fight he uses like. Needles. But I thought it'd be fun if he primarily uses a rapier in combat. It's basically a bigass needle with a hilt. Close enough. Where'd he get it? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don't know so he doesn't remember.

Sea-Dog

Has a nickname for basically every single one of his crewmates, including Poppy. Of note are 'Sugar Cookie' (Janice), 'Guppy' (Percy), 'Ms. L' (Laughingstock), 'Bossman' (Poppy), Herr Doktor (Dr. Heartfelt), and 'Casanova' (Milo). The others tend to start using these nicknames for each other after a while.

100% sounds like Keith David.

MASSIVE alcoholic, often seen carrying or drinking from a hip flask.

Can be distracted by things that ordinary, non-sapient dogs would be, such as throwing a stick. Or salt pork. This is used against him by Horace and co. on at least a few occasions.

Along with not believing in sea stories, he's also agnostic, being of the opinion that there probably aren't any gods out there, but if there are they have a sick sense of humor.

Tends to rest his head on other people's legs when tired or stressed.

Smol. As in, he only stands at 3 feet tall. He also weighs like 5 pounds and HAS gotten flung around due to high wind/choppy waters. Poor guy has straight-up had to tie himself to the rigging in order to keep working during storms for fear of ending up overboard.

Banana King

Comes up with some creative, often incredibly wordy insults/profane statements, Karkat Vantas-style. I can imagine him saying something to the effect of 'what in the wet bag of horse shit to the face am I looking at here'. Yes I stole that from 'Karkat Sings Opera', fight me.

Doesn't just hate bananas as a food item. He genuinely can't be anywhere near them after his death, and even the smell of banana is enough to make him lose it. One of the others once saw him huddled in the hold muttering about banana peels and teeth.

Owns a female African Grey parrot named Guava. Guava is somehow more crass than her owner. Guava is also represented by a little hand puppet and sounds like Gilbert Gottfried.

Gets along well with Milo. Like, scarily well. They pretty much share a brain cell.

Can be invisible like any other ghost, but you can still tell he's there by the smell of cigar smoke and-you guessed it!-banana flowers.

Calvery

Some flavor of Eastern European (again, in-universe equivalent). I can't put my finger on why, but his name just sounds really aggressively Slavic.

Pretty much EXCLUSIVELY targets Horace during skirmishes/run-ins. He would wring that man's neck given half a chance.

Actually has a soft spot for children (directly contradicting the Wiki ik ik), but is veeeeeerrry twitchy about Janice working with Nathan and Edward specifically. He'll occasionally make comments about how one of these days the poor girl's going to get herself killed.

Drinking buddies with Sea-Dog.

Milo

He's had many faces and gone by many names over the years (a reference to the SEBTAW weirdness with his hair color and his abundance of conflicting fanon designs). This effect is usually achieved with the power of facial accessories, makeup, and Ye Olde Hair Dye (that is to say, henna and squid ink). His most recent persona before he joined the Laughingstock crew was the first time he'd used his real name since childhood.

Once got ahold of a hurdy-gurdy and actually learned how to play it.

Actually, I hc him as musically talented in general, and having a singing voice that sounds a lot like Aurelio Voltaire, aka this guy:

Basically he kinda has DnD bard vibes.

Treats Danny (his dragon) about the way you'd treat a cat. He coaxes the little guy out of enclosed spaces with treats and goes 'pspspspspspspsps' to get his attention and baby-talks at him, all that fun stuff. He used to play with him with a homemade feather-on-a-string toy until Danny got too excited and set it on fire.

He's lost track of how many times he's been arrested/imprisoned. Putting him in Tartar Prison was a desperate last resort. You may ask, 'why not just have him executed?' but he has to be kept SOMEWHERE before his death. He once managed an escape minutes before being hanged, which he counts as his greatest achievement that he doesn't think he'll ever be able to pull off a second time.

Massive liar. He will just make shit up to make himself look more impressive if he thinks it'll get people to pay attention to him.

Plays five finger fillet when he's bored, and is sometimes seen with bandaged fingers as a result.

Occasionally seen smoking what look like cigarillos.

Nathan

Significantly older than his Wiki counterpart, at around 16-17 years old. Obviously doesn't have the feelings for Janice that his canon self has, but does enjoy her company (he likes that someone looks up to him, it makes him feel special).

Idolizes Schott Weiss (Percy's father). Percy doesn't exactly know how to feel about that.

Grew up on the Firelight Islands (Burnt Wicks equivalent of the Candle Islands) as the son of a dockworker. He's never properly explained how he ended up working for a pirate crew, but has alluded to the fact that it involved a hostage situation and a changing of hands by way of being auctioned off in Goldshore (a location in the Burnt Wicks version of the Cutlass Islands). He jokes that he was taken in because Poppy and Anne (the previous captain) took pity on him.

Bites as a fight-or-flight response in combat.

Mixed-race, with one parent being effectively white British and the other one being the equivalent of Southeast Asian

Salty Jojo

Real name is Joseph Blaine. Not that anyone knows that. He was 'Salty Jojo' for 30 years before meeting the Laughingstock crew and he will be remembered as 'Salty Jojo' when he dies.

Often pulls the 'when I was your age' card, including on the adults (which he can feasibly do because he's old as hell). He did it to Poppy once, leading to the first time any of them had seen the man at a loss for words.

He's just...so used to weird shit happening at this point. His reaction to seeing the Skin-Taker for the first time is mild surprise, and during an encounter with Gorger/ManBearPig, he responds to it roaring in his face with a casual 'Sorry, what was that? I don't speak feral."

Idk I haven't got much on this guy, sadly.

Ms. Laughingstock

I do not CARE that the Wiki retconned her to be male, that boat is a woman. This is the only character I'm willing to misgender.

Possessed by the spirit of the former captain, Anne Davies.

Has a voice that sounds like Angela Lansbury around the 1980's-90's. My specific point of reference is Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd

Just as stubborn as Poppy, leading to the two often arguing over what course of action to take.

Doesn't speak through a face on the prow, but rather a figurehead. Yes this directly contradicts both the Wiki AND the original creepypasta, but I didn't know how to make it work from a structural standpoint.

Had a habit of hiring people on who are at their lowest-the running joke among the crew is that she pitied them. It's not clear if that's really the case, but it is a pattern she's displayed. This trait carried over to Poppy, leading to the crew including a traumatized "orphan", a preteen Isekai protagonist, a child hostage, a literal ghost, a military deserter, and Milo.

Jesus Christ that's a lotta words.

[99monochrome]

Ramble I wrote about “what if Stanley was deaf” taken from my Instagram and copy pasted onto here so I can look it up later

Anyway whenever I think about Stanley being mute I always think about the fact(? Could be wrong in this) that most people who are mute are actually deaf...

And I keep thinking oh how fun it would be if Stanley was also deaf ?? Like the narrator tries to speak to him for ages, like multiple days only for Stanley to fuck around and be confused as he walks wherever he wants to.

The narrator obviously gets peeved, so has to actually go down there and sign directly to Stanley for him to hear his monologues!! It's an excuse for them to both be in the same physical space me thinks.

Just like, the narrator angrily signing at Stanley, and they guy just closes his eyes, or he just starts turning away in a circle as the narrator turns with him trying to make him see his signs.. it's a silly idea to me. I don't think I'll have it in my little version of them but I do THINK about it a lot

On a more homosexual note, I can imagine that Stanley would one time be pressed against the narrator and feel the nice rumble in his chest while he spoke, how he can distinguish the different vibrations when the man is speaking lowly, and when he's speaking normally.

Probably interested in it, presses his hand to narrators back just to "listen" to it as they walk through the office, presses his hand against his ribs to feel it better maybe. Makes Stanley’s fingers feel numb and a slight buzz in them when he takes his hand away from the older man.

Just a silly idea I had to FINALLY write down after thinking about it for ages phew...

[cleverthylacine]

Tag 10 People You Want to Get to Know Better

Relationship status: Extremely divorced. Prowl levels of divorced. Four times! Multiple genders! Still hopeful though!  I would like to be in a relationship but probably nobody who is not a quadruped should live in the same house with me; while the other parties involved definitely had contributing issues and one was an honest-to-G-d abuser, I’m the only one who’s done it 4 times.

Favourite colour: This varies; it’s usually pink, but can also be purple and various shades of light blue, teal or peach.  There are shades of yellow and yellowish green that are deeply, almost physically unpleasant and painful for me to look at. I’m very autistic that way.

I always get the highest scores possible on those colour sensitivity tests, and was almost broken as a kid by my mother telling me I had to match colours because to my eyes almost nothing matched so I just wore whatever I personally thought looked good.  Turns out everyone other than my mother thought so too. I was really good at “matching blacks” during my goth stage.

Something I want right now: universal basic income and to quit my job so I can write and dance and learn how to draw again. Song stuck in my head: Oh No!  by Marina and the Diamonds (it’s one of my Starscream songs)

Three favourite foods: My three easiest to obtain favourites are: 1. Rib eye steak, particularly the outer part, rare but not cold. 2. Salmon and asparagus with brown rice farina and cheese. 3. Haagen-Dazs butter pecan ice cream. I’m autistic.  Other brands are close, but for me close but not quite as good is “nasty” not “acceptable”‘ -- if the brand isn’t available, I’ll get some other gluten free flavour.  Too close is deeply disappointing. Something that doesn’t sound awful can only be mildly disappointing and might be good.

Last song I listened to: “You Better You Bet” by the Who.  I always imagine Grimlock singing this to Howlback.

“I don’t really mind how much you love me--oooh, a little is all right When you say, come over and spend the night, tonight!”

(He is demiro, she is aro. She loves him to pieces, but despite the fact that they are so hot for each other they fuck rather than hug hello, she has never been In Love in her life and is grateful for that because she thinks being In Love makes people of every species act crazy AF.)

Last thing I googled: 1960s brutalist jewellery. That’s what @legendtrainer, who tagged me, googled last, and I, who have only ever heard “brutialist” applied to architecture, wondered what the fuck that was. It turns out that I own a fuck ton of it, though it’s all from the 70s and early 80s. I bought it when I wanted to cosplay my Star Trek: TOS OCs.  I thought it would look like Klingon or Vulcan stuff. I wonder if the ones I haven’t taken apart and strung together with other things are worth anything.

Dream trip: I want to go back to Japan with more time and a lot more money.

Aside from that, though, in terms of practical dreams:  I was supposed to go to TF-Con LA but my brother got cancer and I bought him some of his meds while waiting for his coverage to kick in because, you know, I don’t want him to die. And his special food that insurances just don’t cover.

Don’t live in America.  We’re a beautiful country but we’re a cruel one.

No pressure tags (seriously, NO PRESSURE): @bitegore (who I know very well but not about this kinda thing); @byzantienne (who I was very close to for years but rarely see now because she is Married and writing really good books and it’s Ninety-Three Thylacine, I know animals are weird choices but when have I ever not been weird); @stuffbyshelby2; @guesso13; @inktheblot (who I wanted to be friends with for years because of the videos and finally met in TF-land); @satellitesoundwave;  @shychangling; JD (you keep changing blog titles); @jariktig; @cybervillainess.

[vixey-chakraborty]

On the Farm -- a playlist for farm chores

listen here!

Vixey’s Farm Life Playlist: 10 Songs Vixey Listens to While Doing Farm Chores, make an aesthetic and write 50 words about why each song is included

9 to 5 by Dolly Parton – A classic. I couldn’t not start this playlist with this song. It’s the perfect chore song, no matter what your job is. Working on the farm, it definitely is a jam though. Except that working on a farm is more like 5 to 9, lol. Ask my dad, he never stops talking about how he woke up at like 4am every morning.

Any Man of Mine by Shania Twain – I know that realistically Vixey probably doesn’t know a lot of country music but that’s not gonna stop me from pretending and putting it on all of her playlists. It is just her vibe. And this song is just fun and will keep you awake when you’re up super early and just trying to stay on your feet.

Cowboy Take Me Away by The Chicks – Another classic, I feel like this song is just good for doing chores and daydreaming. Putting up your laundry while singing about a handsome cowboy coming and sweeping you off your feet. It’s about the vibes. It’s about keeping yourself entertained during long hours. This song definitely does that, it’s one of my faves.

Born to Fly by Sara Evans – This is my fave. It’s also great for chores because the music video is so fun (look it up). It’s basically Dorothy from the beginning of the Wizard of Oz when she is—you guessed it—doing farm chores! So, this song in my head has always been associated with farm chores. I used to love this music video as a kid.

Texas Man by The Chicks – I told Vicky that I barked laughing putting this song on this playlist because I realized that DRAKKEN is a Texas man. Hilarious. I love it. Amazing. 10/10. It’s also funny because the song is about someone who feels a little used up, already passed her prime, which is how Vixey does  feel sometimes, since she’s already done the whole marriage thing and grief thing. Anyway, this is a new addition to the playlist but so good.

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) by ABBA – Why are all these songs about men? Honestly, that tracks for Vixey. She’s not boy obsessed by any means, but she’s always been one of my more romantic characters. And all these songs are just kind of fun. Kind of ribbing yourself when it comes to longing. So, I’m not mad about it. This song is so fun and upbeat.

Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet – Just a good groovy song, could see someone dancing around in a dairy parlor to this song. Doing air guitar with the milk machine. Yeah. It’s a vibe. Plus, a fun song to sing out loud to yourself when you’re just vibing and doing these really repetitive sorts of chores that farms need to run.

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye – One of my all time favorite songs. I feel like Vixey would really like this song too. Super upbeat. Great song to sing along to. If you couldn’t tell, Vixey is definitely a sing-a-long kind of person. She’s not a great singer, really, but she has fun and that is what matters. Plus, the animals don’t usually care. So non-judgmental.

My Girl by the Temptations – Vixey likes to sing this song to the animals. After all, farms are run by girl power! You gotta milk the cows. You gotta get eggs from the female chickens! And Vixey likes to think if you sing nice songs to the animals and make sure they are happy, they will produce better products, so she will sing this song to them and love up on them. Which is very cute of her.

Sunday Morning by Maroon 5 – This is a specific song from her rainy-day playlist, because Vixey definitely has multiple chore playlists. That’s the kind of person that she is. This song is so soothing, and it is also on my rainy day playlist because it just gives off grey skies and chill vibes. Even though farms don’t stop running in the rain!

[puppy-wife]

multiples of 8 for the nsfw asks :3

im so sorry I'm only just getting around to this, but I am SO happy to have the opportunity to yap lmao gives you so many head scritches and cheek smooches (w/ consent)

8. Describe your crush. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 listen okay I am not here to put myself on blast 🙈 I'm not like, in a place where I'm necessarily ready for a whole relationship but shutup I have a couple don't worry about it

16. Do you have any tattoos? I do! I have I think 12 in total, ranging from a couple of small line arts to color pieces across my forearms and ribs. I can do a tattoo tour if there is interest in seeing them all!

24. Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years? gosh, it's a strong possibility! vi and I have already talked about getting married, and it's something we want to do, but not til we're ready. But somewhere between our 5-10 year mark, yeah :3 after my first marriage (disastrous) I said I wouldn't marry again, but I fell in love with them and that changed my mind.

32. Have you ever experienced unrequited love? oh, fuckin yeah, are you kidding me? I'm such a hopeless romantic who falls for people WAY too easily and eagerly, I've been in that position a few times.

40. Have you ever written a song or poem for someone? I have! I write/have written many poems for others, I'm a writer and it's one of my fav things. I haven't done much of any writing in a while, but if you're every curious to see my work, I'm happy to share 💕

48. If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say? oh shit?? tell me about them!! im poly/ENM, so that wouldn't bother me at all. I love feeling compersion, begging my people to tell me all about their crushes and dates and sex and yes!!!!

56. State 8 facts about your body. you got it, dude! I'm 5'9", I have deep brown eyes that turn semi golden in the sun, I wear a size 11 in shoes, I'm a 34B, I have a scar on my wrist where I got hit by a truck while i was riding a bike, I've had my right eardrum replaced twice, I have pointy ears like an elf, and I have tgirl tummy problems (IBS lmao)

64. What is your definition of cheating? anything that breaks the predefined boundaries of the relationship, and anytime you purposefully hide your activity from your partner.

72. What words do you like to hear during sex? I already answered this one, try again 😜

80. When was the last time you told someone you loved them? This morning, as I was leaving and saying goodbye to my lover 😘

[yousaydisco]

FANFIC IDEA: (I'm in bed and I want to write an outline. I'll possibly write it fr fr)

Jean/Judit, pre-relationship and while Judit is still married,

Doing a patrol Judit gets pretty severely injured. Not shot, unless it's while wearing a vest, but I'm imagining more like she got body slammed into a wall. What's important is that her chest gets pretty bruised and possibly her ribs get hurt. She's ordered to be on bed rest for at least two weeks.

Jean, because he's a helpful guy in general but also has just been low-key In Love for a fucking while, shows up at her place when he can to help do shit. Pick up the slack. Because as a mother of two and half a husband, bed rest is generally impossible. I think her kids are like. Like 9 and 5, ish.

(her husband isn't like. Scum of the Earth. He's doing stuff. But it's me and I've always written him as shitty so he's probably checking in every 20 mins like "tell me how to do this chore you always do" and only technically helping)

Anyway. Blah blah plot stuff Jean is there and he's like. Doing way more than her husband ever volunteers to do. Like sure yeah Richard is now doing the laundry and making sure the kids are fed but Jean notices her trying to get up on her own to use the bathroom and he's like WTF WAIT! and is carrying her down the hall. And he'll probably do the dishes (even though his own are rotting away in his sink back home). But most importantly he's just TALKING to her and that touches her the most bc her husband just comes in to ask for advice or to go to bed and she's just been in her bedroom all day and just reading or catching up on paper work or whatever. Her kids probably come in sometimes but they want to play. Bed rest makes her really lonely!

That's the romance of it all. But I'm me and have been writing a lot of porn so to turn it horny, Judit and jean would just be talking and Judit would be like. Complaining. Bc it's so nice to complain and she's usually like Positive but she also has a Broken Rib so fuck it. And she will say something like it's hard to jerk off rn (and it's effecting her sleep!) and that's something else Richard isn't helping with and Jean, in a moment of pure "I'm in the bedroom of the person I secretly love and believe I'm too shitty for them to love me back and also I'm someone that needs to be used until there's nothing left" blurts out I could help with that

Then panics.

But Judit is calm. She's like.

Okay.

And he wants to be like um ur married. And also ur husband is at the store (or maybe even listening to the radio in the living room!) and could walk in.

And she's just like. But he won't.

And he can't argue with that! So he eats her out and then is like okay hope that helps you sleep. Literally don't even think about me or doing ANYTHING this was for you, with your broken rib. Just go to bed.

I think after that jean would just. Offer that service multiple times. Hey she said it helps her sleep! She's gotta do that once a night! And he's literally so in love he's doing crazy shit but he doesn't even care bc this is more than he could ever dream of.

Anyway there's an idea for y'all.

[mazegays]

could've followed my fears all the way down

i have been listening to ttpd on repeat since it released and like. i thought listening to this is me trying on repeat while writing multiple sections was as angsty as it could get, but i was wrong. this could have been worse than it is, and depending on who you ask it's already too whumpy lmao

Chapter 24

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25

“Thomas, you need to eat something.” Minho shares a look with Gally. Thomas isn’t doing it on purpose— he’s thrown up everything but applesauce for the last week— but they don’t have any left and he needs to get something other than water in his system.

“Don’t want to throw up again.” Thomas hasn’t moved from the bed much in days. With the vomiting he’s been doing, he’s at risk of re-damaging his ribs and diaphragm, and no one wants that.

Thomas might know the risks better than anyone but Anya. Someone’s been bringing him the extra tablet they picked up, and when he’s not sleeping, reading on it is all Thomas has been doing.

Minho doesn’t want to take Thomas’s only source of entertainment away, but he’s not sure it’s a good thing that Thomas has daily access to all this information. What if he just stresses himself out more?

“Try a slice of bread. Please.” Gally tries, and Minho knows that he’s remembering when he had to feed Thomas to a mostly-healthy weight. He’d never quite gotten there, and now he’s starving.

“Okay.” Thomas eats the bread slowly, taking nearly twenty minutes to finish the whole thing, but Minho doesn’t care how long it takes, he just wants Thomas to be able to eat again.

Not being able to eat will affect the rest of his recovery as well, and Thomas has already complained about  how  he’s going to be in bed for a few weeks already, just to be on the safe side. 

At least during Gally’s few weeks in bed, Minho had been there with him most of the time. And now Gally can move around, as long as he uses his crutches.

Thankfully, it stays down long enough for Thomas to fall asleep.

“How long has he been sleeping for?” Anya asks, holding the tablet that’s been dedicated to medical records. Including their old WCKD files, though Minho’s still not sure how he feels about that.

She’s been adding to them. WCKD shouldn’t be able to access those additions, and it’s good to have records.

“Maybe fifteen minutes? He managed to eat a slice of bread and keep it down before he fell asleep. It’s more than he’s eaten lately.” She types it in and then checks Thomas’s pulse and breathing rate, and draws some blood.

“I’ll check to see if there’s an electrolyte imbalance. Hopefully, it’s not too big, because we don’t have supplements here.”

“What else can we try? This is the first time he’s been able to eat the bread,” Gally asks. Minho knows he’s been going through Thomas’s file, trying to figure something out. He still spends time in the kitchen, but not nearly as much as when they thought Thomas was dead.

Minho  hasn’t been working much, either. If he could work up some emotion other than relief, he might be a little upset about it. Not too upset, though. He’s perfectly fine with not having to work hard another day in his life.

He will eventually, he’s sure, but since they’re here, it’ll be something he enjoys. Hopefully.

Thomas had told them both to take on lighter tasks here and there, though, so that’s all Minho’s been doing. He doesn’t want Thomas to feel crowded or too closely watched.

“The bread is a good idea. If he handles that well, a little jam might not be such a bad idea. Water, of course. Nothing significantly solid for a while. I’m concerned about his throat and esophagus getting damaged with all the vomiting he’s been doing. His lips and mouth are already showing signs.”

Gally nods. When she leaves, though, his shoulders slump and he lowers his head.

“Minho, how can we help him with this? It’s not something we can fight. I’m scared that he’ll start thinking it’s better not to eat again.”

“We’ll make sure he doesn’t.” Truthfully, Minho’s not sure those thoughts have really left Thomas’s mind, but he had been gaining weight and was better about eating— at least around them.

He’s not sure that there’s been a time Thomas hasn’t had those thoughts. Minho still doesn’t know the full story about what happened with the storm and the river and everything, but he knows Thomas has scars that don’t come from the Maze.

When did he make those? How old was he when he started?

Chances are, he’s never going to know the answer. He doesn’t think he wants to.

“I’m worried too. I think there’s something he’s not telling us.”

“Like what?”

“Not anything too big, but I noticed he was a little weird after Rosa visited. She might have said something to him.”

“I didn’t even notice,” Gally mumbles, likely not intending for Minho to hear. “I should have noticed.”

“Gally, you’re still healing yourself. It wasn’t a crazy difference, I just… I’ve been watching Thomas for a long time.”

Gally at least laughs at that. “Sounds creepy when you put it that way.”

“Maybe a little, but it’s true. I knew after he announced that he was going to sacrifice himself that I either wanted to strangle him for saying that or kiss him so he couldn’t. Never decided which I wanted to do more.”

“He told us he’d built the Maze and you wanted to kiss him?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t have done it. Especially not the way he did. Alby was acting all weird from the Changing, still, and Winston wouldn’t shut up. And then he goes and says he should be the one to go in, all noble-like. But then when he said why… that’s when it got really heated.”

“I don’t think anyone liked that one.” Gally agrees. “Newt was pissed.”

“Yeah, he pulled me aside later and told me to keep an eye on him. Didn’t want Thomas going off and doing it anyway because he felt guilty about it.” Minho had been kind of tempted to make Thomas stay in the Slammer so he couldn’t pull a stunt like that again, but if he’d said that to Newt, he would never have heard the end of it.

“He still does. He told me a little about it, how if he hadn’t built the Maze we wouldn’t all be here. Like a kid could control any of that.”

“He wants to save everyone.” Minho figured that out when he ran into the Maze for two people he didn’t even know. At the time, he’d just thought Thomas was an idiot, because he had also been that. But then he’d put more work in to save Alby than Minho had, and managed to keep himself alive, too. “Sometimes it works. Most of the time, it doesn’t.”

finish on ao3 or keep reading

Minho kisses him on the forehead— something he’s still trying to get used to— before he heads out for the day. Gally is learning to make bread (or trying to), so he’s going to be gone most of the day; despite rising times, he can’t risk his leg by moving back and forth a lot.

So really what Gally is going to be doing is sitting.

Thomas is left alone a lot more than he’d thought he would be. Sure, Harriet or Anya pop in every few hours, but now that he’s out of danger and healing well, they don’t have to come by as frequently. Sonya visits, too, but she’s busy running the greenhouse.

Minho left him some strawberries, but he’s not sure he wants to risk it. As horrible as throwing up in front of other people makes him feel, if he gets sick while no one’s here and hurts himself, he’s out of options.

He’ll just wait for someone to come and visit. That’s his best option. Jorge had mentioned coming again this week, if he wasn’t too busy, and he knows he’s due a session with Jamie. She’ll insist on talking about this, even if he doesn’t want to.

(He really doesn’t want to.)

“Hey, Thomas, you up for us?” Rosa knocks on the door. Frankie’s with her, probably.

Now, he doesn’t think he wants visitors anymore.

“Yeah, but I might fall asleep on you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that!” Rosa takes the seat closest to the door— Gally’s chair, though Thomas knows he’d prefer to be able to see the door— and Frankie takes the one on the other side of the bed.

Thomas is very glad she doesn’t take Minho’s chair. Only Sonya and Minho have actually sat in it so far, and he doesn’t know why but he wants it to stay that way.

It would feel wrong to have someone other than them sit there.

“What have you been doing, all cooped up in here?”

“Reading, mostly.” Some of the WCKD files weren’t files, but books. Thomas knows he’s read some of them before, but he’s bored. “Sleeping. Eating what I can. Minho and Gally are good at keeping my mind off of things.”

“Thomas, you know they moved you, right?”

“Yes, I do.” He’s in his cabin— their cabin, now, but they haven’t actually talked  about that— and not the medical cabin. “It’s perfectly fine with me. The medical cabin is smaller and I’m going to be in bed for a while, others need to use it too.”

He eats a strawberry to avoid saying anything else.

“Thomas, you don’t have to stay here.”

“Again, Rosa, I’m not scared of them. They don’t hurt me, and they’re not going to.”

He can tell that Rosa is still convinced that the bruises she’d seen, even with explanations, are from Minho and Gally.

Of course, his not being found earlier didn’t help Minho’s case at all. Maybe she’s going to try and say that Minho missed him on purpose.

As if Minho would do that.

“I mean it, Thomas. Frankie and I can handle it for you if you want.”

“No, Rosa.” He eats another strawberry.

He should really tell Minho and Gally about this, or at least Jamie.

“I know you’re trying to help, but you’re really not helping at all. If this is all you want to talk about, then leave.”

Maybe they’re good for something, though, because Thomas is on his fifth strawberry now.

“Thomas, I’m not leaving. You might be safe for now because Anya is monitoring you twenty-four/seven, but you’re not always going to be safe. If I have to, I’ll take extreme measures to make sure you are.”

Miyoko’s actually been talking to him now. Maybe he’ll tell her, and she can decide to tell Harriet and Sonya if it’s bad enough. 

She used to be their leader, after all. Thomas doesn’t know what WCKD did to her, only that the others were surprised to see her alive.

He'd like to think that that means that maybe more Gladers survived than they know about, that they're safe somewhere.

“Frankie, please tell her I don’t need help.” Frankie reaches out to take his hand.

“You do, Thomas. You can’t see it yet, but we’ll help you. Even if it means we have to kidnap you and take you into the forest.”

Are they… threatening him?

That feels like a threat.

He pulls his hand away and eats another strawberry. He might get sick later, but probably not because he eats too much: the rising panic at the thought of going into the forest again isn’t going to be something he can ignore for long.

“I don’t really want to go to the forest anytime soon. If you’re going to mention that again, just leave.” He can’t force them out, he can’t even get out of bed. What is he going to do if they refuse?

He can’t do anything.

He’s helpless, and there’s probably no one close enough to hear him if he screams.

Well, if they do kidnap him, they won’t get away with it for long. Someone is always coming to check up on him.

He eats another strawberry and fumbles the bowl on purpose when setting it down.

“Are you okay? Should we get someone?” Frankie asks. He thinks she’s just going along with Rosa at this point, but he isn’t sure.

“Just tired.” Thomas has been using that excuse a lot lately. (Usually he’s not faking, either.)

“We’ll come to talk to you later, Thomas.” Frankie stands up first, and she has to pull Rosa out, but at least they’re gone.

He really has to tell Minho and Gally about this.

<- 23 25 ->

[hyukascampfire]

OKAYYY FINALLY I GET TO RN THIS. first of all, thank you so much for reading :,) just know that i read this so many times over. this was just the best notif to receive.

MC is also SO me. which means we are TWINSSSSS. i’m around the same age as her, and also just so sad to be letting childhood go. i tried writing that sadness out in MC, and i think the best thing ever is getting multiple messages abt how so many people relate to her. it means we’re all in this together. we’re not alone in our feelings, which is honestly the biggest comfort to me.

COMPLIMENTING MY MUSIC TASTEEE. you are the loml. AND you listened while reading. as intended. i literally could not be happier. i was feeling that playlist while writing🤤

and then you compiled all your favorite quotes here 😭 stop. i am so giddy. those are some of my favorite from the fic as well. especially “you clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. you refuse to acknowledge its end.” that one i am so proud of, for how incredibly powerfully it illustrates how i feel about this stage of my life. im glad that the stars aligned and my brain was in the right mood to put that on paper.

and oh my god, if that’s the same erin morgenstern as the night circus, i will absolutely be reading it. ABSOLUTELYYYY.

I LOVE FLORENCE + THE MACHINE. and ALSO dog days. i think our music tastes are lovers. dog days is so so so perfect. thank you so much for reading, kipo. i think you’ve made my whole life with this rb. i’m so deeply in love with the way this story came out. at first, it was just a few bare bones scenes, and it just kept on growing and growing and i really knew i had to see it out. i think it flourished so beautifully:,))

THE BLOCK OF TAGS hell yeah.

ribs playing at the ending and scott street and more than this during the confession oh shuffle had it OUT for you 😭 but i also think those songs at those specific scenes are PERFECT.

and yeah FUCK yeonjun!!! it was tough writing him like that 😕

IM SO PROUD OF THE MOTH SYMBOLISM. i wanted it to feel like, even when kai and MC were lost and confused and apart, they were never really alone, and there were perhaps bigger things at play here. or maybe even the instances of moths appearing were nothing more than coincidence (of course except for at the creek and during the confession). i want to leave it up to the reader to decide that.

OKAY I GOTTA CUT THIS RB OFF because it’s lagging to even type because it’s all so long. i wish i could say more omg i could talk about it forever with you. thank you so much for reading, like really so so so much. T^T

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, creampie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gives him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation for him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late July or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it, slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and eighteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms.Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face. Though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.” 

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,” you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads of rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlights pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

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[ssidesblog]

we’re reeling through the midnight streets

royality, multichapter, ao3

roman and patton have grown up in small town maryland, where people are shitty and the only people they really have is each other. one, fleeting night they decide to runaway together and even if it is a horrible idea, neither finds it in themselves to care because they're together. and when they're together, anything is possible.

chapter 1: you’re a werewolf and i’m a full moon (3,754 wc)

warnings for this chapter: underage drinking, drunk driving (nothing happens but still), use of the q slur and the f slur (shitty football player :/)

Patton could say, with full confidence, when Roman walked into his freshman year English class in the middle of the semester, that was the moment he started to believe in the idea of love at first sight. 

 Roman Prince stood at 5 feet 10 inches tall, wore a flannel too big for him that screamed ‘i stole this from my dad’s closet’, had an award winning smile, eyes like a forest where the sunlight leaks in through the leaves and there’s a house calling out to you that is oddly welcoming . 

“I’m Roman Prince, what’s your name?” And his voice warmed the skin like the sun on a beautiful autumn day. Patton could feel his heart skip a beat. Roman tilted his head and Patton remembered he’d asked for his name. 

“Patton,” He sputtered, “Patton Sanders.”  

“It’s nice to meet you Patton.” Roman said, grabbing his book from the bag at his feet.

“The pleasure is all mine.” Patton mumbled, head in a daze. Roman eyed him then leaned in. 

“Do you want to show me around? I get lost fairly easily.” Roman asked, the smile on his face was easy, effortless. Patton only nodded. After class, Patton showed Roman around campus and where each of his classes were. During lunch, Roman found Patton and decided then and there they would be friends. 

 Three years later, as fall break approached for their Senior year, Roman and Patton were best friends. Really, they didn’t have any other friends but neither saw why they would need to be friends with anyone else, they had each other and that was all that mattered. 

“Two weeks off, what are we doing?” Roman asked Patton, who sat in the driver's seat of his old pickup truck. Roman sat in the back, the top half of his body hanging in through the little partition window that separated the trunk and the cab. 

“We could go to the drive in.” Patton answered, chewing on the straw of his Capri Sun. 

“We always go to the drive in.” Roman whined, “We should do something fun, something we haven’t done before.” 

“There’s not a lot to do here, Ro.” 

“There has to be something…” Roman said, his sentence trailing off. He brought his thumb up to his mouth and gnawed at the skin around his nail as he thought. His face lit up with a realization. 

“Halloween is this weekend, there has to be somebody throwing a party!” Patton furrowed his brow. 

“How are we going to go to a party when nobody invites us?” Patton asked, folding his arms over the back of his seat and resting his chin on top. 

“I’m sure people will post the address on their Snapchat, I’ve seen people make stupid flyers and put them on their story.” Roman said. Patton opened his mouth and then stopped himself. Roman softened his expression. 

“What’s wrong, Pat?” Roman asked while moving Patton’s hair from his face.

“It’s nothing.” He answered quietly. 

“If you don’t wanna go that’s fine.” Roman told him, but Patton could notice the way his friend’s face dropped a little. Patton would do anything for Roman, even if it included driving him to a stupid Halloween party where he knew they’d stick out like a sore thumb. It made his friend happy and that was all Patton wanted. 

“No, it’s fine I think we should go.” Patton said with a smile. Roman gave him a questioning look. “Seriously, it’ll be fun going to a real life high school party.” Patton reassured him. Roman shone his thousand watt smile and Patton knew there was no way he could ever say no to him. 

That Friday, quarterback of their objectively awful football team, Tyler Smith posted a horribly made flyer advertising a Halloween party at his house. Roman excitedly showed Patton who had honestly warmed up to the idea. There was no harm in some stupid, stereotypical teenage fun every now and again. The advertisement stated it was a costume party, which meant people would vaguely dress up as something while looking hot as fuck. Roman insisted on wearing matching costumes, which meant he went as a vampire and Patton went as a werewolf. The vampire costume consisted of fake fangs, a white button down shirt with poofy sleeves that had the first three buttons open, black, skinny pants, and an air of seductive, homo eroticism that all vampires seem to have. Needless to say, Roman pulled it off well, a little too well in Patton’s opinion. Meanwhile, Patton wore one of Roman’s huge flannels that had rips in weird places, a pair of loose, black, torn to shreds pair of jeans, hiking boots, and black eyeliner on his nose and upper lip that semi- resembled a muzzle. 

“You look so much more attractive than me.” Patton complained as they looked at themselves in the mirror. Patton was already a pretty small kid, measuring up to 5 feet 6 inches (sometimes when he measured himself he swears there was another half an inch, Roman says it's just wishful thinking). He looked even smaller swimming in Roman’s clothes. 

“It only seems that way because I’m hot, you’d be described more as cute.” Roman said and pinched Patton’s face. He pouted and crossed his arms, which Roman argued made him look even more cute, and his face went a little red at that. They left Roman’s house and arrived at the party around 8. They walked; there wasn’t that much distance between houses and they both planned on drinking, so no driving.

 As soon as they walked into the house they heard the dull pounding of some song with the bass too high. People crowded each other, leaving almost no room to walk. Patton grabbed Roman’s hand instinctively, making sure they wouldn’t get separated. Roman still had a problem with getting lost even after three years. They quickly maneuvered their way into the kitchen where plastic cups the perfect size for shots sat next to way too much alcohol. Mixers were set out along with normal plastic cups. Roman poured two shots of Smirnoff and handed one to Patton. They downed the shots and each made a face of utter disgust. Patton coughed and grabbed a water bottle that sat on the counter. Roman rubbed his back as he sipped on some of the water. Patton poured himself half a cup of Orange Juice and filled the other half with some kind of vodka while Roman poured himself another shot. This wasn’t their first time drinking but it was the first time so many people in the room were drinking alongside them. The two left the kitchen, Patton holding his Screwdriver with both hands and Roman nursing a White Claw. They moved to the music and talked about something stupid. 

“Woah, never thought I’d see this.” Someone said next to Patton’s side, “The Patton Sanders at a house party?” Patton looked over to see Remy Sullivan, the closest person to a friend he had outside of Roman. 

“Hey Remy!” He yelled over the music with a grin. 

“Sup Babes.” They greeted, placing an arm around his shoulder. Roman eyed them up and down, he never did like Remy, Patton never quite understood why. 

“I’m drinking.” Patton informed them, holding up his drink as proof. 

“That you are.” Remy responded with a chuckle. “How much has he had?” They asked Roman. 

“Not a lot, but he’s not very tolerant.” Roman replied and took a long sip of his drink. 

“Are yall gonna be ok getting home?” They asked. 

“We walked, and I’m not drunk so yes I’m sure we are.” Patton responded. Remy gave a nod. 

“I’ll be right back.” They said before leaving in the direction of the kitchen. 

“Why don’t you like them?” Patton asked Roman, who choked on his drink by surprise. He hit his chest as he got done coughing. 

“What made you think I don’t like them?” He asked, looking away from his friend. 

“You always get annoyed when they’re around.” Patton said and leaned against him, “Are you just jealous someone else likes talking to me?” He teased. Roman knocked him with his shoulder. 

“I’m not used to sharing you.” Patton looked up at Roman’s face, which held a redder hue than usual. Patton smirked and hugged the blushing boy’s middle. 

“You love me.” Patton said, drawing out the word love. Roman rolled his eyes and pushed Patton off. 

“You’re impossible.” He said with a smile as Remy walked back over with six jello shots. 

“Two for each.” They said, handing Patton and Roman their two. Patton clinked his with Roman’s, then Remy’s and took them at the same time. He shook his head as they traveled down his throat in an uncomfortable way. He stuck his tongue out once they were fully swallowed. He downed the rest of his Screwdriver as a sort of after wash that just added to the gross taste in his mouth. 

“You’re gonna be miserable in the morning.” Roman said and plopped his chin down on Patton’s head. 

“But I’m gonna have fun tonight so it’s worth it.” He retorted and grabbed Roman’s White Claw, taking a sip before he could stop him. 

“Get your own.” He said, snatching the can away from Patton, who walked into the kitchen to do just that. 

 One White Claw later, Patton stumbled when he walked into the backyard with Roman, who was on his second can after finishing his first and three more shots of straight vodka. Suffice to say, both boys wouldn’t even come close to passing a sobriety test. They heavily sat on the back porch and leaned on each other for support. Patton laid his head on Roman’s shoulder and wrapped his arm around the other’s so they could hold hands. 

“You’re my favorite person.” Patton said matter of factly. Roman tilted his head so it was resting on top of Patton’s. 

“What a coincidence, you’re mine too.” Roman said, closing his eyes. They sat in silence, soaking up the night air that cooled down their faces. Alcohol and a full house made for a very sickly warm feeling. Patton looked around at the surrounding people. There weren’t too many people outside, mostly couples who came out to get some privacy. He rubbed his thumb across Roman’s knuckles, his way of communicating that he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Roman placed his free hand on top of their intertwined fingers. His way of saying ‘i feel the same’. There were many things unspoken between them; the longing glances, the way their hands ached if they were not being held together, the way Patton’s face warmed if he looked into Roman’s eyes for too long, the way Roman couldn’t sit still until his touch was on Patton in some way; all of this was to never be acknowledged, in the same way an eclipse is to never be looked at with the naked eye. Their love too precious to be recognized, as if noticing it would scare it away like a rabbit in a flower garden. Patton didn’t mind, he could be content just admiring from afar. 

“It’s those fucking weird gay kids.” Patton’s ears perked up at the sound of someone doing an awful job at whispering. “How the hell did they even get in here?” 

“I don’t know but they need to leave.” Someone whispered back. Patton felt Roman’s hand tighten around his own. 

“Excuse me?” A girl’s voice grabbed their attention. They looked up to see Tyler’s girlfriend, Katie, standing above them, a very forced smile on her face. 

“How can we help you?” Roman said, his voice painfully fake. 

“We’d appreciate it if you two wouldn’t do that.” She said, making a face and gesturing to their hands. Roman rolled his eyes. 

“And why is that?” He asked, voice full of annoyance. 

“Because it’s not pleasant to look at.” She said. 

“Seeing you and Tyler make out at lunch is also not pleasant to look at but yall don’t seem to care.” Roman argued back. Tyler stepped in. 

“Listen guys, I don’t want a couple of queers at my party.” He said, getting straight to the point. Roman stood up, dragging Patton up with him in refusal of dropping his hand. 

“What the fuck did you just call us?” Roman stood face to face with the football player. 

“Would you rather I say faggots?” He said, leaning close to Roman’s face. Patton yanked Roman back just as he was about to headbutt him. 

“Roman, come on let’s just leave.” Patton said, pulling him towards the fence that led to the sidewalk. 

“Patton I can’t just let him talk to us like that.” Roman said, pulling back. 

“Roman, please it’s not worth it, the dude is a football player.” Patton pleaded. Roman gazed over at Tyler then back at Patton and sighed. 

“You’re right.” He conceded, letting Patton lead the way out. They walked along the sidewalk, stumbling every now and again. After wandering for a bit, Patton pulled Roman over to a little park and set him down on a swing and hopped onto the other. They sat in silence, the breeze causing them to sway. After a few minutes Roman spoke. 

“I hate this stupid hick town.” He kicked the wood chips underneath his feet. Patton nodded in agreement. 

“This place sucks, I can’t wait to leave.” As Patton said this Roman’s face lit up and he looked over at Patton. 

“I have an idea.” He said eagerly, twisting the swig so he was facing Patton more. 

“Another one of your brilliant ideas?” Patton said in amusement. Roman bumped his swing to his. 

“Yes, another one.” He paused, probably for some sense of suspense, “I think we should run away!” He said wildly. Patton let out a nervous laugh, which Roman scowled at. 

“You’re serious?” 

“Deadly.” Patton bit the inside of his lips. 

“Where would we go?” He asked, humoring the other. 

“New York, of course.” Roman replied as if it was a ridiculous thing to ask. 

“Money?” 

“I’ve got a lot saved up! All the money I earned from that stupid lifeguard job I worked over the summer went right into my savings.” 

“How would we get there?” Patton asked desperately. 

“We could drive your truck, she may be a bit beat up but she’s still got an adventure in her.” With each question Roman answered more and more passionately. 

“Our parents?” Patton grasped at one last straw, one reason to stay. 

“My parents don’t give a shit about where I go,” Roman pointed to himself and then to Patton, “And your dad wouldn’t even bother.” Patton mumbled an ‘ouch’, because even if he was right it still hurt. Patton wracked his brain for some reason to say no, but a look in Roman’s eyes, which pleaded for him to say yes, made him stop. He knew there were plenty of other reasons; their education, shelter, where the money would go. But Patton ignored those and grabbed Roman’s hands. 

“Let’s do it.” He said and before he could take it back Roman jumped up and hugged Patton as tight as he could. He pulled away with the biggest grin Patton had ever seen. Despite logic pointing in the opposite direction, Patton felt like he made the right decision. They ran to Roman’s house, where they snuck into his room. He took out his dumb fangs and slipped off the shirt, replacing it with a big t-shirt. He opened his closet and emerged with a suitcase. 

“How long have you been planning this?” Patton asked, a little breathless. 

“Too long.” He said before pushing Patton out of his room. He closed the door behind him and they carefully exited the rest of the house. They walked a few blocks over to Patton’s and climbed into his room from his window. He gathered up his essentials; his most worn clothes, a toothbrush, a couple books he’d been meaning to read, and his electronics. He stuffed them into a duffel bag he used mostly during play season to bring in extra costume pieces or props. He went over to his piggy bank and shoved it in, they’d count the money up later. He snatched his car keys from his desk and they slipped back through the window. They stuck their bags in the small space between the seat and the back of the cab. Patton wiggled his body out before starting the car. 

“Let’s stay at that Motel 6 just outside of Mayberry.” Roman said. Mayberry was a few towns over from where they lived, which wasn’t too far from the Maryland Pennsylvania border.

“We’re gonna stay in a room you’ve definitely had a hookup in.” Patton said with disgust. 

“Yeah, probably but it’s familiar.” Roman said, plugging in his seat belt. Patton made a face but turned on the car and reversed out of his driveway. Roman connected his phone to the aux cord and put on songs that could only be described as ‘coming of age movie’ music. Roman sang along to most of them and Patton tapped the rhythm on the steering wheel. Within an hour they were in Mayberry. Patton stopped at the first gas station they found. He unclicked his seat belt and grabbed some money from Roman. 

“Be safe.” He said as he handed the money over. Their hands lingered longer than they needed too. They pretended not to notice. Patton walked into the little building where a man around the same age as his father sat behind the counter. He walked over to the cold drinks and grabbed two waters, they needed it. He placed them on the counter. 

“Just this?” The cashier asked. 

“20 on 2 please.” Patton said and handed him the money. He grabbed his change and stuffed it in his pocket before he could put it in the little charity jar that sat on the counter like he would usually do. They would need to keep as much money as they could. 

“Thank you.” He said in lieu of a goodbye and grabbed the water bottles. He walked over to his truck and threw the waters inside. Roman grabbed one and drank about half of the bottle in one go. Patton filled up his gas tank. The night surrounded him and even though he probably should have been scared he wasn’t. Things felt strangely right. Maybe it was the stars that shone in the sky above them that could actually be seen, or the shadowed silhouettes of the trees, but Patton felt calm. He hung the gas pump back up and entered the car. 

“Do you want me to drive?” Roman asked. Patton looked over at him. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, along with the effects of the alcohol, Roman looked extremely tired. He was sure he looked just as worse for wear. 

“Nah, I’ve got it, it's only a few minutes away.” Patton said and turned on the car. Roman relaxed back in his seat and sipped the rest of his water. Patton opened his own bottle with one hand while he pulled out and onto the road. Roman didn’t turn on music, letting the radio play on whatever station it was set to. They shortly pulled up to the parking lot of the Motel 6 and Patton parked right in front. They each unbuckled and walked into the main building. A woman sat behind the desk. 

“Hello.” Roman greeted, “We’d like a room please.” He said with that lazy smile that Patton couldn’t get enough of. She looked between the two of them and then turned around to grab a key from the wall. 

“Room number 5.” She handed them the key, “That’ll be 25.” She said as she typed something into a boxy computer. Roman slid over the money and grabbed the key. She took the money and placed it in a makeshift cash register. The two muttered thanks and went to the car. Patton pulled around to their room. They grabbed their bags and opened the door to their shelter for the night. Motels always get a bad rep for being gross but their room was actually very clean. Of course, there were probably a million unseen germs on every surface but Patton couldn’t find it in himself to care. He dropped his bag on the side of the bed and plopped face down onto the mattress. He lazily kicked off his shoes and shimmied his way out of his pants, only using his legs. They got caught at his feet and before he could slip them off by kicking, Roman pulled them off for him. He joined him in the bed, laying on his back. Patton turned his head towards his friend. His hair was growing out, and looked like a mop on his head. His face looked calm, relaxed. He still held a small smile on his face. 

“You know how you said you were hot earlier, like before the party?” Patton asked. Roman looked over at him and smiled wider. 

“Yes, are you going to say you agree?” He winked. Patton rolled his eyes. 

“No, I was actually gonna disagree.” He said. Roman let out a noise of offense. “Ok yeah, that sounded bad, what I mean is I think you’re pretty, not hot.” Patton corrected himself. Roman’s face turned red and he turned his head back to the ceiling. 

“I disagree.” He said, hands fidgeting as they rested on his stomach. Patton reached over and hooked their pinkies together. They laid like that for a while, letting the exhaustion of the night catch up to them. 

“This was a good idea, right?” Roman whispered. Patton looked over and saw Roman already staring at him. Patton looked into those eyes; they seemed to say you’re safe, I’m here and nothing will hurt you. Or maybe that was just Roman’s entire presence. 

“I think it is.” Patton replied in a similar hushed tone. They slept on that bed that night, so similar to the way they would at sleepovers, but just different enough to be noticeable. Roman had turned on the shitty, old TV as some background noise to fall asleep to. Patton looked around the room until his eyes landed on Roman’s sleeping form. In this entirely foreign place, with Roman curled up next to him, an old rerun of Friends playing from a low volume from the TV, Patton had never felt more at home. 

[bambinella]

Sweet giggles

A/N: this is a request for @tickle-beans​, sorry it took me so long to write! I hope you enjoy!

Summary: Kate and America decide it’s a good idea to steal Wanda’s candy, until Wanda makes them realize just how bad of an idea it actually was.

Word count: 2070

“Are you sure we won’t get in trouble for this?” America asked, looking at the huge pile of candy sitting in front of her on the couch in Kate’s apartment. Kate had urged the young girl to follow her into her room five minutes earlier, and while America had been confused, she couldn’t help but drool a little the moment she had seen the overload of sugar.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll be fine!” Kate promised with a wide grin, looking at it with pride. She and America were well-known for their love for sweets, and the others had quickly learned the hard way to either hide away their stash of snacks or lose it. And since it hadn’t been stashed away, that meant that she could take it, right? Exactly!

“But what if it’s not meant for us?” America insisted, yet didn’t look that sorry either as she sat herself down on the couch, taking one of the gummy bears in her hand.

“Well in that case, I’ll go buy them new candy tomorrow or something! Don’t worry so much, have some candy!” Kate urged, playfully jabbing the young girl in her ribs several times to make her giggle. This was all the motivation America needed, apparently, as the two of them started diving in. Kate knew that she was gonna have stomach issues later, because of the ridiculous amount of sugar she was eating, yet that was simply something future Kate would have to deal with. The more candy they ate, the more they started giggling, feeling giddy from the sugar rush. Candy, music, friendly company, everything seemed perfect at that moment.

That was, until they heard loud footsteps stomping down the hallway, in their direction. Seconds later, the door of Kate’s apartment flew open, revealing Wanda. The Scarlet Witch looked at the duo with her hands on her hips, immediately noticing all the empty candy wrappers spread over the floor, and just how little of the original pile was left.

“I knew it! Kate! America! I turn my back for five minutes and you two go running with my snacks!” She said, sounding rather annoyed. Kate and America looked at her, looked at each other, and finally burst out laughing. Wanda shook her head and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Oh no! I’m sorry!” America managed to say between her giggles, actually feeling sorry but being unable to stop herself from laughing as she looked at Wanda. With her hands on her hips, she DID look like a mom.

“S-sorry!” Kate giggled, covering her mouth with one hand as she laughed. The witch shook her head and let out a deep breath. 

“I told you!” America hissed to Kate, who just started giggling faster. Wanda could tell that they were very high on sugar, obviously from eating all her candy. And while she tried to stop it from happening, she could feel the corners of her mouth tug upwards as she listened to those giggles. Still, she couldn’t just let them off like that. 

“Now who thought it was a good idea to steal all my candy I placed in the kitchen? Hm?” Wanda questioned, raising an eyebrow at the duo. They instantly pointed at each other, which earned an eye-roll from Wanda and a gasp from America.

“Hey! You literally dragged me in here with the candy!” The teen cried out while looking at Kate with a look of betrayal. When said archer merely shrugged with a grin, America reached out to squeeze at her side, making Kate snort and curl up. And it gave Wanda the perfect idea. With a swift move of her hand, she lifted both Kate and America into the air, making them squeal in surprise.

“Woah hey! What are you doing?!” Kate cried out in giggles, still not quite used to the sensation of floating mid-air. America on the other hand, who had requested Wanda to make her fly multiple times already, was pretending to be an airplane, now fully comfortable with Wanda and her magic.

“You two stole my candy, so I feel like I need to punish you for it… and since you’re already giggling so much, what better way than to tickle you?” Wanda suggested, a mischievous smile creeping onto her face. She couldn’t help but smirk evilly at the way Kate’s and America’s eyes widened with anticipation, immediately squirming in her grasp.

“No! No wait, I’ll get you candy tomorrow! I promise!” Kate said, squirming in the invisible hold, unable to hold back a nervous giggle. Wanda held her chin and pretended to think about it, before shaking her head at the brunette.

“Hmm… nope, sorry, no can do! I wanted to eat candy today, but now I can’t. You ate my candy, so I tickle you to death,” She chuckled, noticing right away how America hid her face in her hands.

“Stop saying it out loud!” The teen whined with a giggle, obviously trying to hide her embarrassed blush. Wanda couldn’t help but chuckle as she looked at her young friend with a fond expression. She knew that Kate was the real culprit in this scenario, yet she’d take any excuse to mess with America.

“Stop saying what? Oh you mean tickle? Stop saying tickle?” Wanda teased as she walked up to her, scribbling her nails against her sides. The teen shrieked and immediately brought her arms down, only to find them immobile in the air.

“No! NohohohohoOHOHO! NO WAHAHAHAIT!” America cried out, a steady stream of giggles filling the room as Wanda focused on one of her weakspots. Unable to move her arms or legs at this point, she merely threw her head back and let out her laughter. Kate, also suspended in the air, could only watch in anticipation as two of Wanda’s red wisps floated in her direction.

“Wait? Wait for what?” She questioned with a raised brow, smirking widely as Kate started giggling hysterically when the wisps tickled her stomach. The archer started patting her own belly, as if trying to stop the magic, while her giggles grew faster and louder with every second. Wanda continued scribbling her nails against America’s sides, occasionally scratching them against the middle of her stomach.

“Nohohohohohoho! Ahahah! S-stop! IHIHIHIHIT TIHIHIHIHICKLES!” The teen squealed, her eyes closed shut and her nose curled up from laughing as she tugged at her limbs.

“That’s kind of the point, you know, since I’m tickling you,” The witch teased, suddenly moving her hands upwards as she started vibrating her fingertips into her ribs. America howled from the ticklish sensations, arching her back as far as she could before letting out a scream of laughter when Wanda tickled her stomach again with both hands.

“WANDAHAHA PLEEEHEHEHEHEASE! I CAHAHAHAHAN’T!” The poor teen cried out, and Wanda could tell that she needed a break. Deciding to be merciful, the witch pulled her hands away to give America a breather.

“You really are too ticklish for your own good,” Wanda chuckled while ruffling her hair, leaving America hanging in the air to walk towards Kate, who was still giggling madly from the wisps teasing her stomach and sides.

“Plehehehehease! Mahahahake it stohohohohohop!” Kate giggled, curled up into a ball into the air. Wanda smiled widely at the cute sight, yet ignored her plea for mercy completely. Instead she waved her hand, causing Kate’s arms to be stuck in the air next to her body.

“Now, I know that you’re actually the one that took the candy here, and just for that little lie I’m gonna punish you a little bit more,” Wanda teased with a wink, earning a giggle and a whine from her friend. The wisps disappeared, causing Kate to let out a sigh of relief. However, when Wanda rolled up her shirt to expose her bare stomach, the brunette started squirming in the air.

“No! Noohohoho plehehease! Wanda! You cahahan’t!” Kate pleaded, giggles from anticipation escaping her lips as she looked at her friend. Her stomach was her biggest weakspot, and to her dismay, literally everyone knew about it. Wanda winked again before gently fluttering her nails over Kate’s toned stomach. It took less than a second for the brunette to throw her head back with a squeal, loud giggles filling the room again.

“I can, and I will,” The witch grinned, fluttering her nails all over her stomach while keeping the touch light and gentle, knowing it worked best against Kate. The red wisps came into existence once more, this time floating towards her neck, and by the time they touched her skin Kate was an absolute giggling mess. America looked at her friends with a wide smile, the contagious laughter making her giggle as well.

“That’s what you get for throwing me under the bus like that,” She said teasingly to Kate, before shrieking loudly in surprise as one of the wisps started tickling her ribs. “No wait! Nohohoho!”

“Giggle some more for me,” Wanda grinned, turning her attention back to Kate as she wasted no time in tickling the archer to death. Her nails fluttered against her sides, lightly poked all over her front ribs and gently scratched against the center of her stomach, sending Kate straight into hysterical laughter. 

“YOU’RE KIHIHIHILLING MEEEHEHHEHEEEE! WAANDAAHAHAHAHAHA!” Kate squealed, sucking in her stomach in an futile attempt to escape from the nails, knowing that there was nothing she could do to escape her ordeal. She could only float and suffer.

“Now now, no need to be so dramatic, I’m only mildly torturing you,” Wanda chuckled, yet pulled her hands away to grant her younger friend a break. Kate let out breathless giggles from the gentle tickles on her neck, slowly catching her breath as she looked at Wanda.

“I’m sorry for eating all your candy,” She managed to say between giggles, causing Wanda to blink. She had temporarily forgotten about the candy and had been tickling her friend because it was fun. And she could tell that Kate was being genuine, so with a wave of her hand she made the wisps tickling her neck disappear.

“Hmm… okay, you’re forgiven. But! I’m not done with you yet,” Wanda smirked, giving her another wink. Kate’s eyes lit up at the first part, before letting out another half-hearted groan at the second part.

“Oh come on!” She giggled, yet it was obvious she didn’t really mind. Her love for tickles was well-known among her friends, something they all loved taking advantage of.

“Ah, none of that, you know what you did! My candy is still swimming in there!” Wanda said, playfully raising an eyebrow as she poked the middle of her stomach several times. Kate started cackling loudly again, giving her a pleading expression.

“NO! Plehehease not thehehere!” She nearly begged, clearly unable to handle more tickles on her stomach. Wanda pretended to think about it, before suddenly wiggling her nails into the brunette’s underarms.

“Alright, I’ll go here instead~” Wanda said with a mischievous smile, knowing that she switched a bad spot for another, just as bad, spot. As expected, Kate let out a shriek of laughter from the tickles under her arms, desperately trying to pull her arms down.

“WANDAAAHAHAHAHAHAA!! PLEEEHEHEHEHHEASE!” She cried out, arching her back while closing her eyes shut. Being immobile made it tickle that much more.

“Please tickle your armpits a bit more? Yes?” Wanda teased, sending the archer in another fit of loud laughter. She knew that Kate could take a lot of tickles, which made it all the more fun to torment the young archer. She continued scribbling her nails into her hollows and over her biceps until Kate fell into silent laughter, cheeks a bright red, before finally pulling her hands away. Wanda let out a chuckle and lowered both girls to the ground, pulling the remaining wisp away from America. The duo let out their remaining giggles while catching their breath while laying on the floor, defeated.

“Now, Kate, you’re gonna go get me candy tomorrow. And if I don’t get the exact same pile that I bought today… well, I think you can figure out what will happen to you both,” Wanda said with an evil grin, before waving them off. The two girls waited until the witch had left before letting out a collective groan. Kate looked at America for a second before letting out a second groan.

“Don’t even say it.” 

“I told you so!”

[messers-moony]

Secret Boyfriend | R.B

Paring: Regulus Black X Lupin!Fem!Reader

Summary: Keeping secrets seem to run in the Lupin family but one of the two twins has a bigger secret than the other can imagine. 

Pitter-patter could be heard inside the Gryffindor Common room. The Scotland weather never really seemed to make up its mind during the period between winter and spring. Nevertheless, it brought a calming atmosphere to the red and gold common room. The five Marauders sat in front of the fireplace, speaking to one another. Remus, Y/n, and Sirius sitting together on a couch. James on an armchair, and Peter sitting on the ground in front of the sofa. 

“So, Little Lupin.“ James drawled, “When are you getting a boyfriend?” 

Remus chuckled, quickly putting an arm around his twin sister, “Hopefully, never.” 

“Maybe I already have a boyfriend, and you lot just don’t know.” Y/n snipped as she elbowed her brother in the ribs slightly, “Oh, come on, paws!” James exclaimed teasingly. 

Paws was Y/n’s Marauder name. Her animagus was a Siamese cat, which resembled her personality quite well if you asked Remus. Y/n was quick-witted, independent, intuitive, curious, and affectionate when comfortable. She and Sirius were known to flirt all the time but recently - meaning a couple of months - they hadn’t done it at all. Perhaps Y/n was actually avoiding his flirtatious remarks. Nevertheless, Y/n’s animagus was a direct correlation with her personality. 

“Yeah, paws, you’ve been neglecting me recently. I’m not too happy with it either.” Sirius added with a fake pout, “Oh hush it, you two. Leave my sister alone. She’s got no hidden boyfriend.” Remus defended, looking at his sister. 

“Right, Y/n?” Remus coughed, and she jumped out of her daydream, “Mhm! Of course.” 

Conversation went on as usual. They began discussing new pranks, but Y/n’s jumper pocket felt heavier than usual, knowing what’s inside. It was a cream-colored envelope with the Black family crest as a seal. Y/n knew more than anyone that Sirius wouldn’t be happy to see the familiar logo, but this wasn’t from his parents. It was from his little brother, and Y/n was anxious to give it to him. So when James, Remus, and Peter went upstairs, Y/n pulled him aside before he could leave. 

“Padfoot, wait.” Y/n called, and he turned back, “What's up, paws?” Sirius queried, turning to face her. 

She sighed and pulled the envelope from her pocket, “Please, read this. It isn’t what you think it is despite the seal.” Y/n stated, handing him the parchment. 

“Where did you get this?” Sirius asked as he opened the packaging, “Regulus.” Y/n’s answer was firmer than expected. 

Nonetheless, the letter inside seemed essential to his fellow Marauder, so he opened it. Inside he was met with his little brother's prominent handwriting. The black ink treaded so seamlessly across the brown paper. Y/n remembered watching him write it at his desk, desperately trying to collect his thoughts while his hand shook relentlessly. She couldn’t do anything but sit from his bed and watch. Regulus needed to do this alone. 

After reading, Sirius slid the letter back inside its packaging, “Well, it’s his fault.” 

“Actually, it isn’t.” Y/n quipped, “Listen, Sirius, Regulus is trying. He really is.” 

“You would know this how?”

“Because we’ve been friends for a long time.” 

“Oh really?” Sirius questioned sarcastically, crossing his arms, “Since when did you and Reggie become so close?” 

“He began tutoring me in third year for Potions.” Y/n answered, “You couldn’t have asked Remus?”

“No. “ Y/n shook her head, “Slughorn wanted Regulus specifically.” 

“Well then. Full moon tomorrow, hope you’re prepared.” Sirius chirped as he began walking up the steps to his dorm, “I’m always prepared.” Y/n replied to essentially no one. 

She sighed. It was apparent Sirius didn’t want to believe what Regulus had written. It would’ve been hard on anyone. But Regulus wanted it to come from him instead of Sirius finding out. Since Y/n’s third year - Regulus’ second year - she felt attracted to him. He always made time for her. It wasn’t until their fourth year when she realized it. In her fifth year, they made it official. Regulus Black and Y/n Lupin were a couple but hidden beneath an invisibility cloak. 

Seventh year wasn’t easy. The upcoming war, her brother's lycanthropy, N.E.W.T.S, and Regulus getting the dark mark. Nothing seemed to be working in her favor. Books didn’t even seem to please her anymore. Her eyes wandered while she began to daydream about anything rather than reality itself. People began to notice how lost the girl appeared. 

Especially her brother. 

Study sessions with her weren’t the same. Some days her eyes would appear glossier than usual as if someone put a coating of lip gloss over them. Maybe they were rimmed with a pastel pink seeming tired and unhappy. The tremors in her hands were hard to ignore as she wrote with her quill. If there’s one thing Remus Lupin was good at, it was being observant; however, there wasn’t time, and he didn’t have the patience to deal with this right now. The full moon approaching meant that Remus’ patience tolerance was down to about none. 

There was one thing that brought her clarity. Regulus Black. The Gryffindor common room was always a warm and welcoming atmosphere. In contrast, the Slytherin common room was cold and damp, but it brought her comfort because of the person inside. Y/n padded quietly inside of his prefect hallway, which was beside the Slytherin common. She walked into his bedroom, which was dark. 

No candles lit. Just dark. Regulus always felt comfort in the dark, but it wasn’t dark because of that. It was dark because he was absent. Y/n peered over to his desk, where letters sat from his mother and some cousins. Andromeda seemed to try and reach him, but the letter looked unopened. There was one that caught her eye. It was Remus’ handwriting, and it was from him. It was also opened. Y/n knew she couldn’t stay all night. The full moon was due to rise in just two hours. 

Picking up the parchment, she began to read:

“ To Regulus Black, 

You need to step up. I get it. Sirius has been disowned, but he tries to make an effort. Can’t you see that? Sirius really needs you, and I know that you miss him too. This whole stubborn game of not wanting to talk to each other has gone on long enough. 

I know what it’s like to argue with a sibling, and it isn’t pleasant. Suck it up, swallow your pride and talk to Sirius. You don’t have to ultimately make up, but please, he’s trying. 

From, Remus Lupin. “

Y/n swallowed down her anger. Who was Remus to get involved in their affairs? If Sirius and Regulus didn’t want to interact, that was their problem, not his. It infuriated her. But she didn’t have time to babble around. Y/n pointed her wand at her and became a cat. Perks of her animagus being allowed at Hogwarts, she could roam around freely without suspicion. Quickly she sprinted down to the Whomping Willow, where she was met with her three Marauders in human form. Y/n transformed back. 

“Where were you! I was worried sick!” Remus scolded, “Nowhere, but we need to talk later.” Y/n answered. 

They got Remus in the shack and changed into their animagus forms. A stag, a rat, a dog, and a cat. The dog and the cat had the most interaction with the werewolf. Sometimes the dog and werewolf would cuddle up beside each other, whereas the cat would sleep on its own along with the other two animals. The following day Y/n and Sirius lugged Remus up to the hospital wing. Y/n sat beside him the entire time while the other three went off. Sirius and James were off to Quidditch practice. Peter was off to see his girlfriend in Hufflepuff. 

Y/n tapped aimlessly on Remus’ hand, “M- Morning.”

“Morning, Moony.” Y/n greeted, “How are you feeling?” 

“Phenomenal.”

“Sorry.”

“What did we need to talk about?” Remus questioned, and Y/n tilted her head, “You said we needed to talk before going to the shack.”

“Yes, I did. Um- uh- did you send Regulus a letter by any chance?” Y/n stammered, “I did. Why?” 

“I saw it.” Y/n replied shortly, “You saw it?” Remus repeated incredulously. 

She nodded, “How did you see it?” 

“Regulus and I are friends. Sometimes we hang out in his dorm.” The words seemed like nothing as they rolled off her tongue, “You hang out in the Slytherin dorms? Is that why you always know the password so we can do pranks?” 

“Of course.” Y/n chuckled, “I use my privilege to its advantage.”

Remus began to get up but grimaced, causing Y/n to jump up to help him. Gently she eased him to a sitting position. A new scratch on his cheek and multiple on his arms. It’s evident that the cat and the dog had to stop him. The thin scratches on his arms were a cat's nails. The thicker scratch on his cheek was a dog's nails. Remus looked down at his arms. 

“I’m sorry.” Y/n muttered, “Not your fault, paws. Who was it this time?” Remus asked. 

“Prongs. Apparently, you wanted Prongs.” Y/n answered, and he kissed the top of her head, “Thank you for stopping me.” 

“Anything for my brother.” 

“Just like anything for our Moony?”

Y/n laughed, “Yeah.”

Paws began to tap on his hand again, until a voice echoed through the hospital wing, “Y/n?” 

“Y/n?” The voice called again, and Remus quirked his eyebrow at his sheepish sister, “Y/n!” 

Suddenly a black-haired, grey-eyed, pale figure was beside her. He didn’t realize what he was doing until he had already kissed the top of her head worriedly. Y/n turned pink at the affection and the embarrassment of it happening in front of her brother. Remus coughed, and the male stood straight. 

“Regulus, what a surprise.” Remus retorted, “Didn’t think you’d ever visit me in the infirmary.”

“Remus, please-“ 

“I wouldn’t.” Regulus snapped, “Then why are you here?” Remus inquired. 

Regulus’ hand was playing aimlessly with the ends of Y/n’s hair, “Moony….” Y/n began at a whisper, “Regulus is my boyfriend.”

“This-“ Remus pointed at them both with a laughing smile, “Is funny.”

“Nice prank, paws, but it isn’t going to work.”

Y/n sighed, “It isn’t a prank, Rem.” 

“We’ve been together for about two years now.” She confessed, and Regulus stiffened, “Friends, my ass.” Remus scoffed bitterly. 

“Remus, please-“ Y/n began, “No, please just leave. We can talk about this later when I’m in the right frame of mind. Because if you don’t leave, now I might throw a punch.” Remus replied. 

She sighed and reluctantly left with Regulus trailing behind her. Y/n didn’t want to cry. It was pitiful. Regulus never had a good relationship with Sirius since Hogwarts, yet he didn’t seem to care. Thankfully, after building the Marauders Map, she knew every little crevice and hiding spot. Pulling back a tapestry, she sat down on the cement floor. Regulus doing the same beside her. Hesitantly he pulled his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his chest. 

“This is pitiful.” Y/n chuckled bitterly, “I’m sorry, Reggie.”

“It isn’t pitiful. You and Remus have a close relationship. It’s okay to be sad about him telling you off.” Regulus replied, placing his chin on the top of her head, “Sirius and I are different. Don’t compare you and Remus with us.”

Y/n nuzzled into his chest, “I saw the letter Remus sent you.”

“I- I saw the way he spoke to you, and I’m sorry.” Y/n stated, “I hope he comes around.” 

“I do too, love.” Regulus kissed the top of her head, “ I do too.”

It was quiet for a moment until two figures pulled back the tapestry, “Oi! Get off, little Lupin!” James exclaimed, and Y/n sighed, “Sirius, James, please just leave.”

“What are you doing with my mate's little sister, Regulus?” Sirius interrogated, “Comforting her. She needs me.” Regulus retorted, tightening his grip on her shoulder. 

Y/n stood up and pulled Regulus with her, “Come on. We four need to talk.” 

The four of them walked into a broom closet. It was a quiet walk. Eerily quiet. It brought shivers down Y/n’s spine at how silent the walk was. The tension was so thick you couldn’t cut it with a knife. The pressure felt like sludge. It was thick and mush. But when Y/n opened the door, the lot of them walked inside. James and Sirius stared expectantly. 

“Regulus and I have been dating since my fifth year.” Y/n began, and Regulus intertwined their hands. 

“Little Lupin!” Sirius exclaimed, “You weren’t lying when you said you had a secret boyfriend!”

“You scandalous little thing!”

“I can’t believe this.” James stated after running his hand through his hair, “How did Remus take it?”

“Not very well.” Y/n replied, “He kicked me out of the hospital wing when Regulus showed up. “

“He’s- He’s not in the right mindset, though. He’ll come to. I know he will. He has to.”

Sirius’ eyes softened, “Moony will come around. It might just take him a minute.” 

“Regulus.” James called, and grey eyes stared at him, “Y/n is a Marauder.”

“I know that.” Regulus interrupted, “She is my little sister as much as she is Remus’” James continued. 

“And mine!” Sirius added, smiling brightly, “Y/n is our little sister. The lot of us depend on her. We can’t, and we won’t have her heartbroken.” James explained sternly, suddenly looking a lot like Mrs. Potter. 

Regulus’ cheeks flushed with pink, “I love her, I really do. I don’t plan on breaking her heart anytime soon.” 

“You’re gonna be my sister-in-law!” Sirius squealed, hugging Y/n forcefully, almost knocking her over, “Oh, little Lupin.” He cooed. 

“You’re all grown up!” 

They laughed, and Sirius kissed her forehead, “Take care of him, will you?” He whispered so only she could hear, “Of course.” Y/n smiled. 

“Alright, alright, I’d like my girlfriend back,” Regulus replied, taking her away from Sirius’ arms. 

Sirius gulped, “How’s mum going to take this, Reggie?” 

“I don’t care.” Regulus retorted, “Mums gonna have to deal with it.” 

The smile on Sirius’ face was brighter than the sun, “Oh, Reggie!” He wailed, pulling Regulus into a tight hug. 

The two brothers smiled as they hugged each other. Regulus sleeve slipped up, and James stepped back, pulling out his wand. The two Black brothers pulled apart, and that’s when Sirius saw it. The dark mark on his brother's sleeve. Y/n stiffened as Sirius lifted his sleeve up further to see it clearly. 

“Reggie…” 

“Sirius, please, I didn’t want it.” Regulus pleaded, “She- They- Please.”

James watched intently at them. Sirius’ eyes had filled with tears as he embraced his younger brother. For the first time in a long time, Regulus felt protected in his brother's arms. James walked closer and joined them. Hugging both Black brothers as close as he could. James Potter, the man who never stops giving. They pulled apart, and James took Reggie into his own arms. 

“You need anything, you come to me, okay?” James informed sternly, and Regulus nodded, “Ye- Yeah.”

“Remus and Y/n always come for the holidays. You won’t be alone.” James stated smiling, “My parents already have one Black; they won’t mind another.” 

The Black brother smiled, “Thank you….”

The days went on, and Regulus still avoided the Marauders altogether. Remus glared at him from the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. Deep emerald green eyes were flashing at the grey ones that sat at the Slytherin table. Until Y/n jabbed him in the ribs, taking his attention away from the younger Black brother. 

“Remus.” Y/n scolded, “Stop it.”

“I think you’re too hard on him, Moony.” James began, “He loves your sister. Maybe talk to him.” 

“No.” Remus snapped, “You guys can accept this, but I can’t.” 

They didn’t push any further. Y/n and Remus had been distant from each other. It was weird to watch the twins who were typically attached at the hip to be so - abroad. Regulus didn’t like that he was now the cause of their fussing. After all, they were the reason Sirius and him were on speaking terms now. So Regulus and Sirius made a plan. It involved them being locked in a broom closet, and so it happened—one night after dinner. 

Remus was shoved into a cupboard, not by his own liking either, “Come on, Sirius! This isn’t funny. I have prefect duties to do!”

“Actually, someone else has taken them over.” Regulus informed, and Remus whipped around, “What are you two doing here?”

“Remus, explain it to me.” Regulus began, “Why you don’t approve of me with your sister.”

“Because! You’re a bloody death eater! You probably forced her to be with you.” Remus exclaimed. 

Y/n scoffed, “A pureblood forcing himself with a half-breed? Doesn’t seem likely.” 

Remus ran his hand through his hair, “Okay, he’s still a death eater!”

“I was forced!” Regulus exclaimed, “They strapped me to a chair and embedded the mark into my forearm. You don’t think I wasn’t thinking of her the entire time?! I was scared out of my mind!”

“The entire time, all I could think about was ‘How is Y/n gonna take this.’” Regulus admitted, “My heart aches for her. I didn’t want her to be scared.”

Remus’ green eyes turned soft, “Does she accept you? Does she love you? Do you love her?”

“Yes, Remus. I love him for who he is. James offered him a place to stay at the Potters.” Y/n replied, “And yes, I love her.” 

Tears filled her eyes, “Remus, please. I don’t want to lose either of you.”

Remus held out his arms, and she walked right into them. He placed one hand on the back of her head and one on the small of her waist. Holding her close to his heart, rubbing his thumb through her hair. Regulus’ grey eyes stared at the two siblings before him. Remus’ heart softened at his crying sister. He never wanted to hurt her, ever. 

“Paws.” Remus began as he pulled away slightly, “Does he make you happy?”

Y/n sniffled and nodded; Remus wiped her cheeks, “Okay.”

“Does he know you, for you?” 

“Mhm.”

Remus turned to Regulus as Y/n parted with him, “Where’s paws favorite place to be scratched?”

Regulus chuckled, “Behind her ears.”

“Take care of my little sister.” Remus pleaded, “Please, Regulus.” 

“Of course. I wouldn’t expect any different.” Regulus answered. 

Remus walked forward and put out his hand. Hesitantly Regulus shook his hand. Grey eyes met green ones. Remus couldn’t help the smile that placed itself on his face. Without hesitation, he pulled Regulus into a tight hug.

“Take care of my sister, and I’ll take care of you.”

“Always.”

[rjalker]

4 hours in it's fine. Some of the narration for the second reader is unintentionally hilarious because of the way it's being read. Making every word so intense even when it doesn't need to be and it's making scenes that are supposed to be serious unintentionally really funny.

lazily casually ableist though because the male protag lost his leg but then apparently instantaneously got it replaced with a prosthetic sooooo high tech and expensive that you literally can't tell he is missing a leg and he like. immediately started being a vigilante superhero and outrunning cops and doing parkour like. apparently instantly offscreen despite saying he had to relearn to walk.....like,,,,,,when? we just got told it's only been "A few months" since you lost your leg. And you've been a superhero this whole time. When did you have time to relearn how to walk. What was the point in the writers having your leg get bitten off if I can't even remember you're an amputee 90% of the time because your fancy rich person prosthetic magically does literally everything a regular leg does with zero problems at all????

he's literally doing parkour well enough to evade dozens if not hundreds of cops all at the same time. Just "a few months" after losing his leg. With no gap of time available for him to ~relearn how to walk~ despite the story telling us that's a thing he had to do....

Like come on people. The only time his amputation affects the story so far is to cause Relationship Drama™ because he has no prosthetic for his wolf form so his ~Soulmate~ saw that he's missing a leg and he's ashamed of it.

His missing leg also has absolutely no impact on his wolf form, either.

The fact that he also broke multiple ribs in the fight where he lost his leg has not affected a single thing, despite the fact that the authors have gone out of their way to tell us that healing magic is not really a thing, which is why they won't heal the female protag's chornic illness.

Like. Great. You're not gonna magically cure her chronic illness. That is genuinely good. But you kind of defeat the entire point by giving him a prosthetic so amazing that you can't tell he's am amputee at all. That may as well be a magical cure.

It's also another one of those worlds where women don't get to be shapeshifters, only men. I don't understand the appeal of writing worlds like this. Why don't you let the girls become epic giant wolves and dragons and griffons and alicorns? Why? You could have just made it so that whether you can shapeshift or not is random, and that our female protag just happens to not be able to do that, while still having female friends who can. Like come on. It's so easy.

apparnetly the entire series is on youtube, not just this book????

so uh yeah if you want a free audiobook to listen to, you can go listen to this whole entire series.

you can tell its modern because the protag is like ugghhh no why would I want to go to a magical school across the world???? and then is like Wait free healthcare?????????????? sign me up holy shit!!!!

I'm randomly listening to this now because it showed up when I looked for The Wolf Leader audiobooks and it's free from the actual author and I want to support other people, besides me, who are nice enough to do this.

it'll just be tagged "Rjalker reads The University of Sorcery" even though it's an audiobook because I don't feel like having to use multiple tags if they also offer free ebooks.

I have absolutely no clue what this is about besides what's on the cover.