#i wrestled with it for a half hour to get two measures out

[kingthunder]

so I was trying to find a piano arrangement of The Power that I vibe with, and this one is half decent but like

THIS IS IN 6/8 PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE TRIPLET PAIRS

[pinkrelish]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶The garage gets slammed with clients, and the clear delineation between workplace flirting and PDA is put to the test when stolen kisses in the storage closet aren't enough, over the clothes touching leads to frustration, and getting interrupted in the breakroom leaves Eddie aching.✶

NSFW — smut, porn with plot, dry humping, oral (receiving), pussydrunk!eddie, horny depravity at work, van sex, masturbation, swallowing, teasing, sexual tension, hickeys (giving), reader and eddie are verbally harassed by a customer, protective!eddie, protective!reader, 18+

chapter: 12/20 [wc: 23.7k]

↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09 / 10 / 11 / 12

AO3

Chapter 12: Satanic Mechanic

The storm triggered rising temps.

————

Monday smacked you awake.

Your digital alarm clock wasn’t worth its price tag when the power flickered, and the blinking numbers of 12:00 seared into your tired retinas, really highlighting the fact that the two fat backup batteries hadn’t been replaced since you lived in a dorm. Whatever—It wasn’t that late, just late enough to cause a sweat when you were half hanging out of Robin’s car, wrestling with a spare umbrella while the sleeves of your light gray Champion college sweatshirt were darkening from ice-slushed rain. Oh, and because that wasn’t enough, the bottom of your pants waded through a puddle in the auto shop’s parking lot, too.

Stupid cursed town.

Swearing under your breath, you sped towards the employee door, and your expectation of a teasing remark from Carl about your tardiness lapsed into stark bewilderment.

You shook off your umbrella, and tossed it in the only available corner inside the cramped garage. Between the shuttered doors were four motley muscle cars parked back-to-back in various makes and models from yesteryears, bright colors announcing themselves amply. As you neared one, a quick shadow passed over the floor from the lobby door opening, widening the men’s muffled voices inside into clear conversation, and closing. You turned to greet them, but the words caught in your chest.

Eddie crowded you two steps backwards, away from the windows, and tucked you to the concrete wall where privacy could be had.

Heat stung your cheeks at the sight of your boyfriend of thirty-two hour’s careful attention on you. Thoughts on thoughts on thoughts wore themselves like a fever under your thick winter scarf. The same fingers he fiddled with to release his nervous tension were once tracing your spine. Not two days ago the big pink tongue he pressed to his teeth licked the intimacy between your breasts. Frazzled curls stood from the rest of his hair as if your hands had been through them time and time again. Soft concern edged the beautiful brown of his eyes analyzing your expression as he did when your bodies were entwined on his couch—yet, in this moment, he idled a measured distance away, guilt weighing heavily on his posture.

The tender rot of apology weakened his tone, “Hey, baby. I’m sorry about not calling. My power’s been out since I got home the other night, and I only just got it back this morning. I hope.. I hope that’s okay.” Reading the quick flit of your eyes falling to his hands and back up, his voice erred remorseful, “I promise I would’ve called.”

“Aw, handsome,” you released. Slotting your fingers into the cup of his palms, you narrowed the space between you in a squishy tennis shoe step. “Our phone line’s down too, and the power’s been going off and on. You didn’t think I was mad at you, did you? Even if something came up and you couldn’t get around to it, I would’ve understood.” The shelf of his shoulders were dotted with rain. “Were you pacing outside?” Meaning: were you so anxious you made yourself nauseous?

“No, no, this is just from dropping Adrie off. Uhm, I actually.. I know I look nervous—couldn’t help it once I saw you, ha,” he broke into a shy giggle, already sticking his gaze on his thumbs engulfing your knuckles. “But uhm, I actually wasn’t worried about you being upset with me. I know you said that when I dropped you off, but I’m getting better at not, ah, freaking out. Thinking of the worst case scenario, shit like that.” A glance through his lashes, and his lips stretched into a sly grin, rounding his cheeks. “I know we’re good. You and me.”

“Yeah, we’re good.” You leaned in, a hint of mischievousness marking your suggestive tone, “More than good.”

“More than good,” he repeated in a smiley mumble. “Just didn’t want you gettin’ the impression I’m some jerk who forgets to call his girl.”

His girl, his girl, his girl.

“I’d never think so poorly of the sweetest man alive.”

Magic happened. There, in his labored swallow, and your fluttery blink. An invisible pull encouraging your bodies closer, sliding your shoulder along the cold wall of your workplace. Seeking heat where it was found against his belly, standing the peach fuzz on your arms at attention from a single brush of your fingertips over his jumpsuit. Want, need; a wish to relieve the burn of pride in your chest, longing to reward him for his progress of keeping a level head when he could’ve spiraled into negative thoughts, yearning to kiss his rosy cheeks aglow with respect. But under the guide of his excessively gentle thumb strokes over your knuckles, a truth was earned. To him, it didn’t feel appropriate to kiss where people could see. Where people could fawn, pry, ask questions, put pressure on something so new. The desire was there. Oh, the desire was there in his gaze dipping to your lips, and staying.

Remembering Saturday, you inhaled sharply. “Oh! I didn’t tell you the good news. Robin got a call the other day, and—”

The voices in the lobby grew. One gruffed out—“Hey, you two?”—and you released each other’s hands, jolting apart. “Wanna get up to date on this shitstorm of a week?” Mr. Moore asked, motioning you both inside with two succinct waves of his clipboard.

A feeble look was exchanged from Eddie to you. The good news would have to wait. Talking would have to wait. Discussing the events from the weekend and all the pretty words he wanted you to hear while his mouth was nurturing the intimate skin beneath your paint-stained crewneck would have to wait.

Following your boss to the circle of employees gathered in front of your desk, Carl and Kevin said hello with raised eyebrows, and Mr. Moore flipped through the sheets on his clipboard, catching you up to speed. “So, lucky us," he said, tone betraying the luck, "the storm hit Springfield harder than Hawkins, so the annual Classic Car Show was moved down here this weekend." Rolling his hand, he grumbled—guy said the ol' historic buildings downtown would look nice in photos—"Anyway, all those uppercrust sons’a are gonna start droppin’ their cars off here for last minute maintenance, or whatever damn hell Roy was sayin'. He sent what parts he had, but we'll have to put in an emergency order, and of course the damn phone is still out."

Mr. Moore targeted you. "We can not," he stressed, "can not accept normal customers this week with all these yuppies comin' in. Unless it’s an emergency, just turn them away, or point 'em towards Thatcher's if they need their tires rotated. Got it?"

So, that explains why Eddie's eyes were welded shut in preparation for the arduous day ahead. The cavity between your hand and his could’ve been filled with a supportive squeeze, maybe a silent assurance in the passing touch, but you tore your gaze from the myriad of grievances wrinkling his expression, and answered your boss, "Got it."

Papers were divvied, sighs were had. With a hard clap of Mr. Moore’s meaty hands on each of your shoulders, he guaranteed a generous bonus for the extra work, and dismissed the group. You pivoted to collecting mail-in order forms for car parts in case the phones didn't work by the afternoon, and the men went off to the garage where hours were lost to the heavy clank of tools making clockwork.

As the day yawned to noon, Eddie’s ears were ringing. He fetched his Walkman from the car, and blasted music through its shitty foam cups in effort to destroy his hearing with something preferable. Amongst the mayhem of cars rolling out of the service bay and being immediately replaced by another, he curled his fingers in a small wave at his favorite Office Administrator, but you missed it on account of the old man at your counter needing the keys for his ‘57 Chevrolet Bel Air.

It was a lonely day. A busy day. An aching day where the itch to connect with each other led to melancholy behind every antsy glance through the windows gone unmet.

Your lunch was a limp sandwich eaten between visiting clients, and when Eddie ate, he did it with his back facing you, bent over the work table on the far wall, mixing cleaning solution for an engine block in between sips of Campbell's tomato soup.

In the wait for a muscle car to be exchanged for a truck requiring new brake pads belonging to the mom with two kids in the lobby who needed it for work the next day, Eddie sought you for comfort in the breakroom, but you had walked to the post office after the rain let up, and by the time you got back, you shrugged off his jacket, picked up a stack of clean rags from the storage closet, and used them as an excuse to enter the noisy garage.

Handing off the rags was the closest either of you had been since that morning. Skin contact was bittered by the barrier of his black nitrile gloves, and the interaction was stained by grime sketching the fine lines of his tired face, stress preying on his mood when you pulled away. He needed you.

Miss you, you mouthed.

Miss you, baby, he returned.

Eddie went back to his project. You went back to organizing paperwork. When you checked the phone line, it wasn’t even joy which influenced your forced smile at him through the window. It was just more work when the dial tone answered.

Busy, busy, busy. No respite for conversation, not even between the mechanics. Kevin’s goodbye was offered as the sun hung low in the sky, touching the tree line. Carl knocked on the hood of the car David was working on to get his attention before clocking out for the night. In retrospect, Mr. Moore was the only one who held a proper conversation with Eddie, telling him he’d be in his office for a bit, and he’d stay late to help on the final set of cars.

In the last slants of daylight dragging through tree branches, Eddie focused on the Mustang Mach 1 in front of him. Sun at his back, wiping sweat from his forehead. Wasting his time on small detail work he wasn’t normally paid to do, yet finding some fulfillment in clearing the nooks of leaf debris and polishing excess grease out of the crannies, salivating at the reward at the end of it: a fat check.

Indeed, he was lost in fantasies of how he’d spend his money when a commotion invaded his mind palace, infiltrating the blank air of his cassette clicking to the end of its tape. Eddie pushed the headphones down to his neck, squinting at the windows to the lobby.

His sweetheart’s face was set with bored malice. An air of disregard, but annoyed all the same. Softly narrowed eyes, loose shoulders, crossed legs. Listening to the man who leaned over the heightened front of your receptionist desk with a pointed finger you didn’t care for, and moving your mouth in a rehearsed response. The man’s voice raised, tanned skin gone blotchy. Spitting mad. You flinched at his irate gestures nearing too close for comfort.

Instant. Adrenaline whipped Eddie forward. Muscles flexed into action, constricted, strained, prepared and loaded, roiling with power ripping open the glass door, sending loose papers flying off the black tool cart, including the one with the man’s name he recognized—

How could he forget?

Square jaw, springy curls cropped close to his skull. Light brown hair extending to the shitty wisps on his upper lip not any better than a grandma could grow. Ditch the letterman jacket for a suit and tie all he wanted, but there was no mistaking Andy, best friend of Jason and player on Hawkins’ High basketball team who helped scar Eddie Munson’s frail reputation after that fateful party he never went to.

Someone he was lucky to dodge at most preschool functions by virtue of his son being nursery-aged.

“—It’ll be ready tomorrow,” you finished in uniform curt.

“Listen better, bitch, I don’t have time for—”

“Hey!” Eddie’s voice packed the tiled room in an authoritative boom with the same fury he entered, commanding the space, possessing the attention as papers floated to the ground behind him. Shifting in his stance, his heart pounded against the strict discipline he leashed himself to, gaining control of his volume for your sake. Quieting to a seethe, he forced out, “You can’t speak to her that way.”

The subject of his ire slid his snakey gaze to him, deducing his long hair, his cheap cassette player, his jumpsuit. Sizing him up. Assessing him. Casting judgements.

Holding reign with a steady pupil on his target, Andy straightened himself from the desk. His expression wore neutral, hands pushing himself away from the ledge and rolling his shoulders with casual controlled dominance. His ugly red tie slipped against his white poly-cotton button down shirt at the motion, following his slow turn towards someone he thought so lowly of. “Figures you’d be here,” he said, jaw jutted in a lax chew as if he were sucking on a toothpick. “This the only place that’d hire a scumbag like you? Hm?”

Fingers stretched and flexed. Veins coursed with heated blood. Sweaty palms were crushed closed.

But it wasn’t Eddie who responded—no—it was his little Mouse.

Jumping from your seat, your chair rolled into the rackety filing cabinets behind you, causing a scene with your hand striking the desk. “You can’t talk to him that way!”

Andy arched an eyebrow at your bark, however, he propped his elbow up in a lazy lean on your binder-clipped manila folders, and held a mutual gaze with the man opposite him. “Sweetie,” he patronized, addressing you with a smug crook of his lips aimed to taunt Eddie further, “this devil worshiper here preys on pretty girls like you. Don’t defend his honor. He’s got none.” With a cocky tongue click, he licked his bottom lip, reveling in the storm brewing in his doormat’s eyes. There was history in the words he chose. They were crafted for The Freak of Hawkins specifically. The rumors he was known for. The lies. Also, the truths.

Testosterone suggested violence in Eddie’s deliberate refusal to blink, but anger did not darken his cheeks in reveals of red as they oft do, nor did he rear a fist like you wanted to. Hard pumps of aggression strained the tendons in his neck, creating shadows along the thick blue vein leading to his strong jaw, but otherwise much of his reaction was reserved, contained in his stoney expression and hidden beneath his biding posture, waiting. Assessing. For years he endured his name being spat on, and he was only beginning to understand the toll of surrendering.

“You’re new here, aren’t cha?” Andy spoke to you, but matched the trained stare across from him. “There’s no need to stand up for this creep. He’s just some lowlife who begs for table scraps, and still can’t coerce girls into giving him the time of day. Kinda pathetic, don’t ya think?” Tone sneering to a scoff, he added to Eddie, “S’kinda miracle you managed to procreate.”

“Shut up!”

This anonymous man regarded you finally. Confusion hung heavy on his brow, curious as to why you were so adamant about protecting someone like him. Then, he dropped his head to the side, enough to see you, and raked his glare over your body, pausing his study on one place in particular.

Your jaw dropped at the audacity, throwing a hand over your stomach on instinct.

Andy involved you with a nod. “This another chick you knocked up?”

Quickfire, Eddie snatched starchy fabric and knotted silk in his fist, dragging him in by his tie, smothering his wet grunt of surprise with a vice grip on his shirt. They were the same height, but when pitted against steel toe boots, leather loafers lost. Not that he needed the extra inch. A different danger lurked in Eddie’s minimal movements, reeling the other man closer without much effort. Enough intimidation lived in his clenched jaw and quivering muscles to show he was not tucking tail and rolling over.

“Hey now,” Andy rasped against the solid threat of knuckles digging into the hollow of his throat, taming him from uttering more. He raised his hands in defense, manicured nails atop soft fingers atop softer palms.

“Watch your mouth,” Eddie enunciated, slow and warning.

Knocked off status by the brave chin challenging him, Andy’s nostrils flared, but his amusement didn’t waver. Under pressure, he wrung the corner of his mouth, lifting his fuzzy upper lip in sly charm while he puzzled out the dynamic between the cool-headed receptionist who’d gone rabid at a bit of joking, and the blue-collar mechanic who abstained from standing up for himself, but sure as hell did when it involved you.

A smirk dared to stretch across his face.

Andy tucked his eyebrows in, and pleaded, “Don’t tell me you already brought more annoying spawn into this world.”

Visions of red gushed over Eddie’s scarred, dirty knuckles, but the reality was ripped from him before he explored the sweet relief.

Dying to get your hands on a ghost from his past, you competed for the shirt on Andy's back. Grabbing his shoulder, you tore him from your beloved’s grasp, slinging him backwards on stumbling feet. You didn’t let the fucker catch his footing before you rammed your shoulder into him with all your scrappy might. “You wish you were half as good of a man as he is!” Growled through bared teeth and trembling with malice. “You’ll never compare. You can’t! I feel sorry for everyone you’ve ever met.” Snarled from darker depths than witless gossip about a man you adored, slapping your hands hard on his chest, shoving him. “Get out!” Shove. “Out!” Push. "And if you ever—ever!—bring up Adrie again, I'll fucking.."

His wild eyes searched for Eddie across the room, but you demanded respect.

Harder shove, striking palms where it hurt—making him cough. “Get the fuck out!”

His steps faltered, disoriented by the polarity of the quiet bitch behind the desk being the one to catch him off guard, attacking him before he could gather his dignity and stop. fucking. tripping. “You little—!”

“Out!” You cut a fierce line with your arm, pointing at the streets. “Leave! Out! Now!” Shove.

Scrambling, slipping on the wet tile, the metal corner of the door handle bit his squishy palm, pulling a hiss from gritted teeth. Shove. Point. Bark. He yanked the door open with a slew of words you’d only tolerate from Eddie when he said them in the heat of your bodies joining in sweet passion, and you let him know with a guttural grunt, pushing Andy out and into the parking lot where a puddle of ice water awaited his shoes. Squish, squish, squelch. He found his footing on the cracked pavement, huffing and puffing with haughty swipes at his clothes, dusting them off on the way to his Cadillac.

You followed his retreat with two proud middle fingers, shouting, “Take that ugly hood ornament and shove it up your ass!” When his shoulders squared like he was going to turn around, you yelped and scurried inside, locking the door only to hear him spit on the ground. Gravel crunched afterwards, and you assumed the tire screech was him leaving.

Dry gulp. Pounding heart. Aching wrists. Loud blood rushing everywhere. Vision vibrating from the adrenaline pulsing between your ears. You got your bearings, and turned to Eddie—except, he wasn’t there. No one was in the lobby. No one was in the garage, either. Down the hall there was a sulking shadow cast across the floor, growing smaller as it sat down.

You went towards the breakroom, passing by Mr. Moore’s head peeking out of his office. Creases from a notebook marked his cheek. Groggy and confused, he asked, “You handle whatever that was?”

“I did.”

“Well,” he shrugged. “Good on ya.” He shrank back into the dark room, returning to his nap.

Approaching the round table with caution, you picked the plastic chair next to Eddie and sat gingerly, noiselessly. Hands folded, upper body turned, waiting for him to speak first. And when he didn’t, you prodded. “Are you okay?”

Eddie unlocked his twined thumbs, and dropped a heavy hand on your knee, patting you. “Yeah, I’m okay, baby,” he replied softly. He didn’t pull his gaze from the wall, blinking only when he brought himself out of his ruminations to pat you again. Blank expression, hollow. Legs spread wide, ruling the space while your thighs were tucked tight together, same as any day you’d share lunch while he brainstormed a campaign idea, writing the story in his head and forgetting to hold a conversation with you. But his silence separated you. You needed more from him.

“Do you want a hug?” you asked.

Pat, pat. “Nah, I’m good, I promise,” he said with a bit more sureness lifting his tone.

Staring holes into the side of your boyfriend's face for far longer than it took to lose faith in telepathy, you swallowed through the scratchy rasp taken hold of your throat after yelling at a customer, and guided him, “Can I have a hug?”

“Oh shit, right, sorry!” The cluelessness jumped off of him as he sat up and wrapped his arms around you, scooping you to his chest. Your cheek picked up a healthy amount of dirt when sliding past his, and his headphones smoothed most of his hair from entering your mouth, but as sweaty and filthy the hug was, his crushing hold on you was everything a platonic coworker could ask for after being verbally harassed. A forearm behind the shoulder blades, a kind splay of fingers on the mid-back. Polite. “I’m sorry he yelled at you.”

Arms trapped against his chest, you bunched the collar of his coveralls in your fists, and he hummed into the comfort of your reciprocation, no matter how covert while your boss was one door down.

“S’okay,” you whispered. Nudging towards his ear, you smeared the sweat at his hairline onto your temple in a blessing. “My first job was at a McDonald’s drive thru. I was fourteen. I’m used to men in business suits yelling at me.” Caught between a sympathy snort and cringe, he offered another apology and pulled his face away.

His eyes and smile went soft, losing their strength from a different emotion trickling in. “Should I have decked that guy? Did you want me to do that? Did you want me to stand up for you, and knock ‘im out?”

“And risk you getting an assault charge on your name? Uh, no. I’m more than capable of standing up to a guy who won’t hit back because I’m a woman.”

Nodding against his ego, he took a moment to mull it over, and dropped into a serious tone, “I don’t want it to seem like I was letting him walk all over me, either. Not that long ago I would’ve freezed up. Probably would’ve sat there, taken it, and fixed his car while he watched. Then I would’ve gone home and cried about it because I’d be so fucking mad at myself for not dislocating his jaw. But,” he paused to run his tongue over the back of his teeth, settling the anger he harbored after the years of unapologetic abuse he tolerated.

He exhaled in a two-count, inhaled on three.

Collecting himself, sincerity replaced the animosity. “But since me and you have started hanging out, I can see how wrong he is, and it just—sorta–doesn’t bother me anymore, y’know? Like, I don’t even have to think about it, I know I’m not those things he said.” He strummed his thumb over your shoulder, soothing the lingering fight shivering through your body, invoking care in his words to calm your racing heart, and his. “I kinda lost it when he brought you and Adrie into it, and I’m glad you intervened when you did, before I did something I regretted, but I’m sorry for what he said. Or what he was, ah, implying about you..”

“Wasn’t really an insult, anyway.”

“Hm?”

“You know, as if it’d be a bad thing to be—uh, uh..” Your stomach clenched from the impact of his gaze falling to it. The sentence would never be finished, and it didn’t need to be. Your mindless chatter proved your subconscious thoughts loud and clear. It wouldn’t be an insult to be pregnant with your child.

Panic prickled your nervous system hummingbird fast. Slews of mortification reached your eyes, urging him not to draw conclusions based on something you blurted on the spot, because—because—just—Jesus Christ, man, please move on.

Shifting topics with more tact than his faintly stuttered exhale would suggest, he shook the stiffness from his posture by clearing his throat, and narrowed his eyes in a curious squint. Dropping his head to you, his fingers skimmed the clasp of your bra band through your sweater, and one of his anxieties was stroked into the relationship with a pivotal question, “Can you tell me, are there cameras in here?”

Without looking, you thought of the layout. “No, there’s just the two outside. One facing the entrance, the other facing the intersection. Why—umph?” He stole the concern from your lips.

Crashing mouth on mouth, he moaned at the relief of having you after a shitty day, and you doubled his vigor, dragging him in by his clothes until it hurt. Spine bent, hips to hard plastic, lips smashed against teeth, joints leading to your strained fingertips twisted above his embroidered name tag. You kissed him until it ached, until he was sated, until lungs burned for breath. It was the best change of subject, because when Eddie flirted his bottom lip along yours after you broke for air and his spit mixed with tangy salt on your tongue and gritty earth between your teeth, you wondered if the primal emotion steeped in his heavy-lidded eyes was the result of the same phrase repeating in his head as yours. Knocked up.

“Do you think it’s okay if we kiss like this? As long as we’re alone?”

“Yeah,” you guessed. “I think it’s okay if we’re alone. Not while customers are out there, or in front of the guys. We should be good, if that’s what you want.”

“Yeah,” he repeated. “I’d like that.”

You accepted his forehead against yours, feeling him sag with a tired groan. Exhausted from responsibilities, emotionally drained and succumbing to the crook of your neck, depending on you to rejuvenate him with tiny, smiley pecks at the top of his ear. Poor man.

As usual, you were the bearer of his weight, trusted to hold him up and be the pillar of strength as his arms fell to your hips, hands at the waistband of your jeans, ambitions decidedly pious as his fingertips explored the ridge of a stretchmark on your lower back. “Ed?” You tucked some loving caresses through the hair at the base of his nape, working circles into his oily roots. “I never got to tell you my good news.”

“Oh!” He piped up, coming into focus, face alight with excitement from your giggle.

“Bobbie got the call, and our apartment is ready!”

There was hardly a predictability to how Eddie would react to things. Sometimes sharing stories about your past in New York would earn his disinterest; sometimes he was eager to listen. Talking about the future was the same. Sometimes his gaze drifted faraway when you brought up the potential of your favorite Chinese restaurant closing before you could have the #4 special again, and sometimes he needled you about learning to drive before he finds you and your bike crumpled in a ditch on the side of the road one of these days.

But worry not, the sunshine grin breaking across his lips warmed you in all the right places.

“No shit?” he released in a breathless, excited laugh. “No more living with the Buckley’s, huh?”

“Mhm! No more competition while solving the Wheel of Fortune, but I think I’ll live. Especially if it means having my own bathroom.”

“Nice, nice, nice. And, uh,” he broke off to trace a pattern on your pants, “And, if I may ask because I’m an upstanding gentleman who wants to lend his strength without the expectation of reward, when exactly do you move in?”

“This weekend.”

“Oh,” he flattened. Voice monotone—Oh. Also known as ‘fuck’ or ‘damn.’ “Corroded Coffin has a gig in Indy this weekend. Drive there Saturday morning, come back Sunday around 3, maybe 4AM, if I rush.” He started mumbling to himself, “But, maybe—if Wayne can watch Adrie on Sunday, I could still— Or if she stays where I can see her and doesn’t get in the way, she can come, and I’ll help bring in big furniture, some heavy boxes. Set up your bed for you, the TV, uh, does the place come with a fridge? I could do that too. Make sure all your outlets work. Could hang some stuff up for you, help you decorate.” You sighed in a way where he’d get the hint to shut up.

He frowned. “What?”

“You don’t need to help us, we’ve got it figured out, but I was trying to tell you the news this morning because—” Quick high-pitched beeps from a Buick made your point. Eddie swiveled around to peek down the hall at Robin’s car parked out front, headlights beaming through the windows. You enunciated for effect, “Because we’re going furniture shopping and packing every night this week, so I’ve gotta clock out early, before the stores close.”

A heavy dose of disappointment jaded his hand falling limp over your thigh. “So, not only do we not get to see each other during work this week because I’m buried under cars owned by dickheads who should take pride in servicing their own vehicles, but you can’t stay late, either?” he summarized to your apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry,” you began, grazing your knuckle along the powdery soot lining his jaw like stubble. Incited by more honks, you picked up the pace, and fit his face to your palms, thumbing his cheeks; collecting him, lifting his chin, guiding him to your lips.

Two hums converged, harmonizing. His handsome nose mashed against yours in order to steal kiss after kiss as two people should when huddled in a private room away from their boss. Sympathetic to his cause, you resisted the urgency of the ticking clock, and worked your hips into his hold, swaying all the closer, consuming the dearness of his prayer when your fully clothed body stood between his legs, melting his stress away.

“Should get going,” you mumbled, brushing through his hair with each subsequent glide of his desperate tongue making it harder to leave.

Instead of a honk, a car door shut, and you pictured Robin stalking up to the door with her lips rolled in, gesturing animatedly at her watch.

Your muscles posed to take a step away from Eddie, but he climbed his hands to your waist, refusing to let go. “Wait! Wait!”

“What? What?” you mimicked.

“We didn’t get to talk about what happened over the weekend,” he insisted, and you took pity on him, raising your brows with a caveat grin telling him he should make this quick. “I wanted to say that our date was perfect. Like, amazingly perfect. Not just the, ah, obvious part, but watching movies and making dinner together was special to me. As dumb as it sounds, even washing dishes together was special to me.”

The bare circles on his cheeks where your thumbs wiped the dirt away plumped up from his grin.

“And then the way you took care of Adrie,” fondness rushed in, eclipsing the fatigue in his voice, “baby, you’re beyond perfect for that. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. You got her to stop crying when I couldn’t—Yes, I can hear her knocking—and you did everything just so exactly right, and I’m so fucking grateful for you, and, wait! Before you go,” he begged you, laughing into another lip-smack on your forehead. You backed away until he stood up, face still wedged between your palms, coerced into following you into the hallway so your best friend didn’t think you’d gone missing without a trace. “I’ll try not to do the whole crying-my-eyes-out and then spilling-my-guts-to-you thing every time we’re together.. No promises, though.”

Almost to the door, you continued to walk backwards, advancing him until the last second when you had to let go. You teased him, “If it becomes a habit, I’ll put ice cream on the grocery list, and we can sob it out together at my place like real friends do. Sound good?” Umbrella, purse, chapstick—check. “See you tomorrow, handsome,” you said on your way out. Eddie filled the doorframe, casting a sharp eye around the parking lot while returning your adoring goodbye.

He curled his fingers in a guilty wave at Robin.

She, with her keen nose, bent to sniff at you, and commented overly loudly, “Your sweatshirt smells like Camels.”

————

Tuesday was a strong, steady build in pressure.

Privacy could be had in the public space between buildings where cars passed on either side, puttering at their leisurely pace before slowing to a stop when the intersection lights flipped red. You bounded up to Eddie carrying two waxed paper cups filled with morning energy, beaming brighter than the dawning rays glancing off the brick alleyway. “Hey! Got you a little somethin’.” That, along with the rocks crunching under your shoes, was his only warning before you were forcing a drink into his hand, and slipping your other arm inside his unzipped jacket, squeezing his middle.

He rocked on his footing and laughed, collecting your head to his chest with a firm palm behind your neck. Your bodies swayed together, ear pressed to the source of his voice; his choppy cadence drawn tight from the sudden rise in eagerness to tuck his chin and mash kisses atop your hair. “Hey, sweetheart,” he breathed, tinted with a stutter from surprise. “You got me coffee?” Spinning it in his hand, he read the shop’s logo stamped onto the cardboard sleeve and put the lid to his nose, smelling the steam piping through the hole. “Mmm, a latte. You didn’t have to go and get me something special like that.”

“I wanted to since I was too busy to call you last night,” you apologized. “Thought you could use the extra caffeine, too.”

Bathed in the teasing glow of sun, you lifted your cheek from the thick scent of burnt tobacco baked into his coveralls, and swam to the heady surface of smoke enriching the crisp air. Raising your nose higher, though, there wasn’t a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Fresh mint followed the thin fog escaping his lips in a visible puff of breath.

Eddie kissed you deep. Wrigley’s Spearmint coated the flavor on his tongue as he dragged it over your bottom lip and across your teeth. The recent ad campaign targeting smokers sponsored his confident lick into your mouth. Lazy and casual, relaxing his arm around your shoulders. Hot coffees tucked to his chest. Pocket below his name tag stuffed with the red and white packaging of foil sticks next to his lighter and Camels, finishing up his morning habit with a clean taste now that he gained certain privileges at work.

“Could definitely do with a pick-me-up from my girl,” he mushed en route to your cheek, pulling away to take the first sip of his coffee and ending with a satisfied mmm.

You vied for his approval. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Another sip, another warm ahh fanning your cheeks. His one-track mind instilled bravery in his hand sliding down from your shoulders to the roundness of your ass, groping your hips flush against the metallic clink of the button snaps closing his jumpsuit, bringing you to him.

Regarding you down the length of his nose, he dipped his smoker’s rasp into something rougher, deeper, resonating from the courage in his chest, “Y’know, I used to worry about making things weird at work if I made a move on you and it wasn’t appreciated–”

“Oh?” you interrupted, pointing above you. “Do you.. Do you not see the flashing sign over my head begging you to ask me out?”

“Hush,” he reprimanded you with a wolfish spank over your back pocket. “What I’m saying is that I’m startin’ to see the perks of workin’ together.” He flicked his eyes up to survey the end of the alley, minding the crawl of traffic passing by. Any Hawkins citizen could turn their head and see you two together; fronts touching in the indecent way coworkers shouldn’t. Stomachs brushing in the intimate way acquaintances wouldn’t. Faces nearing, warmth radiating from his full lips holding steady above your silent plea in the eager way friends might not. Hands taking what they want—smooth and strong alike, improper filth—grabbing in the coarse way sweethearts do.

Eddie’s fingers followed the crease at the bottom of your ass cheek, cupping himself a handful, and drawing you into his nicotine and menthol kiss. You wrung a fistful of the back of his coveralls, using him for weak-kneed stability, yanking until fabric strained against the snap clasps, making gaps to where his shirt showed underneath.

Huddled, coffee cups captured in the embrace, your bodies buzzed drunk on indulgence. 

In the echoey distance, a shutter door rolled open. “Perks gotta wait, I’m afraid,” you moped, falling short of getting swept into the intoxicating trap throbbing between your thighs when he groaned at the heavy chain rattling, locking one door into place before moving onto the next.

He shook his head, sighing in genuine annoyance at the few minutes you had alone, now over. “Guess we’ll have to sneak around if we want to see each other this week.”

“Yeah?” you drew out, thick and sweet like honey, walking your fingers up his chest. “Need me that badly?” you questioned, mawkish and innocent. “Need me to beat up your bullies, and kiss you better?”

Playful spite painted his grin. “Is that too much to ask for? They’re workin’ me to the bone here, babe. I think I deserve a little pick-me-up after replacing a heater core.”

The second service door creaked and clanked at the top of its slot.

“A little pick-me-up, huh?” you repeated, earning a nose-scrunched amusement at the quick peck you offered him. “Like that?”

“Just like that,” he confirmed, already against your mouth for more.

Just like that—

Even footfalls of heavy boots thudded closer.

Giddy kicks of excitement electrified your nerves. The thrill of sneaking around gripped, bound, and knotted your stomach. Eddie, intending to steal one last treat before his fingers and wrists were fatigued from labor, rocked you forward with his strong palm, but he too was spurred by the endorphin rush, hauling your hips in with too much enthusiasm and causing you to discover more than he’d meant to.

Swiftly separating, backs to scratchy brick, the third shutter door dislodged from the dusty ground and began its clattery ascent. Cool, calm, casual. Racing-hearted coworkers.

Hello, Mr. Moore. Fine day, isn’t it? Dotted cloudy sky with plenty of sun, no rain. Yes, I’ll get started on a pot of coffee in just a minute.

Your boss walked away.

You looked at your boyfriend. Waxy to-go cup poised at his puckered lips, eyes nearly closed to mirthful little crescents and twinkling from your collective shared secrets which grew exponentially. Plunging thoughts, yet you kept your gaze high, deciphering his devilish features instead of analyzing the outline below the waistband of his dark gray coveralls leading to his hand was in his pocket, picturing Eddie’s cock in his fist before noon.

Rock hard only from kissing.

He mocked you lightly—teacher’s pet, people pleaser— “Better get goin’, sweetheart.”

Your features arched to the tune of sarcasm on your tongue, asking him a question he refused to answer with anything but a smirk, “Why? Need some alone time?”

————

Wednesday ripened like boozy fruit.

Thick winter layers were shed for lightweight counterparts; canvas jackets shucked after a cup of coffee, breaking free from the hug of warmth before it riled a worse sweat than the impulses caused.

Just like that—

Treats throughout the day in between vintage cars and pretentious clients. Exploring the perks of a stolen peck in the breakroom after Kevin shuffled out. The favor of a massage along the knotted muscles between his shoulder blades when crouched behind an Impala, where you were changing the trash liners at the workbench, and he was counting lug nuts. Silly benefits like you thanking him in a kiss to your palm, blown from behind your desk after he delivered a stack of invoices, to which he mimed catching it and pressing it to his cheek, walking backwards into the garage in a lazy stride, embracing his dopey grin. “Corny,” he said that time. “Shh, baby,” he said another, when his wandering hand landed in a squeeze on your ass, and your squeal of delight peaked higher than he was comfortable with in the hallway outside your boss’ office, spiking hues of cassis wine across his nose.

Innocent snacks. Quick low-risk indulgences.

That’s how it started, anyway.

“Psst,” you got Eddie’s attention as he strolled past the storage closet on his way to the breakroom for his Chef Boyardee lunch. His elbow jutted a big angle from stretching his tricep, looking like Rosie the Riveter in his royal blue coveralls and red bandana on his head.

When his expression remained exceptionally oblivious upon seeing you peeking out of the narrow room housing dusty metal shelves lined with car parts, you snagged him by his grimey sleeve and dragged him inside. With two people crowding the shoebox shaped space, running into the cardboard boxes of windshield wipers you’d yet to put away was inevitable, as was Eddie ducking around the pull string for the single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Your eyes itched and your throat scratched, but with everyone's breaks being staggered to ensure there was someone out in the bay and someone available to answer customer’s questions at all times, your loneliness was agonizing, and his sly smile accentuating his dimple knew it.

“Yeah, sweet stuff?” Already, the lure. The bait of his tone. Dry rasp in his overused voice, hoarse from yelling over the grind of a powertools.

The heavy door crept closed behind him, ajar enough to catch shadows. You backed to the furthest wall. He trailed, brushing his stained fingertips on his hips to rid them of excess motor oil before touching his girl.

But, before he could lift your chin in an overdue kiss, you stopped him dead in his tracks. “Thought you could use a pick-me-up,” you said, breathy and thin, too high-pitched and fluttery to be sultry. Butterflies had been building in your belly since you first had this idea at your desk, erupting into swarmy impatience as the timing never worked out and you couldn’t get him alone without one of the guys noticing, or a customer leaning over to ding the bell next to your pen cup, breaking you from your daydream.

Eddie was still a step away, raising his arm from his side, when a beautiful sight swallowed his pupils whole.

A shiver grasped your middle.

Sweat met cool air, erupting goosebumps along your ribs, tightening your nipples to stiff peaks. The hem of your thin sweater stayed gathered at the top of your chest, hands splayed to keep it in place, helping frame the generic black bra. You didn’t enter the day prepared to show off your lamest lingerie, but Eddie’s stare was glued to the plain dull shine of polyester stretched over cups covering the full range of your goods as if they were worthy of the French term usually relegated to something not designed for comfort.

He wiped his hands more energetically on his chest.

No pet names, no clever remarks crafted to make you melt. No swoony lines, no verbal compliments from his handsome mouth hung on a dumbfounded gape. No thoughts, wit, or brainpower. Everything vanished the moment you took his wrist, and smoothed his palm to your breast.

Suave, he was not. Eddie giggled like a teenager—elated, ecstatic to be touching a pair of boobs as if it were his first time. You pitied him in a chastising snort, hopelessly fallen for his big grin, and helped his other hand. Large palm, calluses dragging on the fabric. Cups too thick and opaque to ogle what was beneath. But he was mesmerized all the same. He fitted the stretch of his fingers across that which you arched into his hold, and ran his thumb over the softness. His knuckles and tendons flexed as he did so, moving under the pressure of your heavy suggestion, sliding his hand down so he cradled the bottom and lifted, giving him more area to explore—

Your inhale came sharp and sweet.

Eddie throbbed.

He checked your reaction, repeated the motion. Found the hard bud under the layer, and trapped it between the edge of his thumb, rocking it to the long side of his index finger. Your body leaned into the feeling, eyebrows drawn, bottom lip pushed out and freshly licked. He learned to do it again. Again. More. Harder. Shimmery praise collected in the corners of your eager eyes, heavy lids and batting lashes forced open to watch the confidence in his movements grow. Faster rubs, heavier pets. Kneading what you gave him. Drawing quick, simple breaths from your pretty mouth as he concentrated on circling his thumbpad around the point of pleasure, using his nail to skim over it, dragging a lurch from your core.

“Eddie.” His name tipped into a moan hummed through your nose.

The stuffy room heightened your fluster. Eddie burned. Furnace body, ember hands stoking your fire. Ends of his bangs coming to a damp point above his brows. Dewy skin beneath his diligent strokes over the polyester cups. The squish. The yearn. The need for cold metal shelves to be pressed into your backside, positioning himself against your front.

“Like it when I do that, baby?” he asked, deep and husky for no other reason than to hear your voice pitch when he pinched your nipples, elusive as they were from the slippery fabric.

You pushed your sweater higher, flaunting your arms closer. The amount of gratification coming from his thumbing was small, but the fun of doing it in a closet while on the clock had you oversensitive. Anticipation swelled your fat tongue, slurring your question with girlish flirt, “S’it a good pick-me-up? D’you feel better?” you asked for no other reason than to feel him grow hard against your hip.

Cement walls deadened outside interference, isolating his hammering heart in its loudest beats, and projecting the low sound stuck in the back of his throat. His deep rumble of, “Yeah, feelin’ better,” was spoken in the hollow between your chests, stomachs meeting during your feathery inhales opposite his resolute ones filling the planes of his pecs with renewed strength to get through the day.

Eddie’s exhaustion illustrated itself in the bags under his eyes; intense wells of purple beneath deep wrinkles you couldn’t begin to solve for him. However, you could stretch up, brush your lips over his, and make the eager noises which fed his ego.

“Makin’ you feel good?” he asked, grounding his pleasure in what he could do for you.

“So good, handsome.”

“Love it when you call me handsome.”

“Yeah?”

He collapsed into you, “Yeah.”

Sly now, your grin broke the kiss. “You still remember how to unhook a bra, handsome? Or has it been too long?” No surprise—he nipped at the bottom lip he adored so much, shutting you up.

His big, tired body lost its strength from cranking tools all morning, but he still managed to impress you with his firm determination laying against your belly, pulsing eager. He circumvented your taunt with fingertips diving to the bottom of the cups and pushing up, drawing tension on the underwire, tightening the band around your ribs. It teetered on the edge of a great reveal, nipples harder than him between your legs. You begged for the release, for your bra to finally crest the whole, and bounce what you had into his waiting palms, where his thumb and index were shaped to tweak another hot moan into his mouth—full lips mashed gently to your desperate whine—unapologetic confidence staring you down. Doing it all with a smile.

The door opened with Carl’s question, “You get those u-joints for me?”

Violent strikes of shame-induced panic shocked you both into action before thinking.

Thank God you still had a hold on your sweater to yank it down in sync with Eddie’s side-step, the dumbass, exposing you because his priorities laid in fleeing. Well, at least he was a redeemable dumbass who used his quick wit Dungeon Master skills to remain with his back turned towards the door, perusing the top shelf for a box of universal joints.

You acted your part. “Oh! Uh, I couldn’t reach them, so I got Eddie to help,” you overexplained, pointing at your taller platonic friend who definitely wasn’t the reason your clothes bunched weirdly over your chest.

“Hm?” Carl looked up from his invoices, just noticing Eddie. “Could’ya get me some washers too?”

“Yep,” you answered for him, hearing the box slide along with the rattle of the steel washers, taking them and handing them off to Carl who grunted out a thank you, double checking his paperwork as he walked away, none the wiser as to why your gaze was sealed on the floor.

Mouth dried of all fluid, yet body drenched in the same embarrassment which reddened your coworker’s face darker than his bandana, you gulped past your heart lodged in your throat, and idled next to Eddie, pretending to tidy up a container of gloves. Really, you straightened out your bra instead, door wide open behind you.

It wasn’t against the rules to date your colleague, but he was uncomfortable with other people knowing about your relationship. Perhaps it was the prying, the questions, the pressure which bothered him most. Or the loss of privacy. All eyes on the single dad who hadn’t been in a serious relationship since a brief stint out of high school, and finding someone now, for him, The Freak of Hawkins, was such a significant event they’d probably congratulate him, therefore crushing the dignity he worked hard to assemble from the crumbs he was left with.

He had more to care about. More to lose. Always, you followed your boyfriend’s lead when it came to his reputation.

“So..”

“S-So,” he answered. “Uhm..”

“Should we.. Do you want to keep doing this?” you hesitated, trying to figure him out. Eddie knew what you were asking, though. It strained against the last set of buttons to his coveralls. The edge with no relief. Sneaking around, copping feels in dusty closets, stealing kisses behind walls, never having enough time to start, nor end something worthwhile to ease the aches left behind. “Maybe we should relax at work until we have a real weekend to ourselves again?”

“Fuck no.” His blunt response raised your eyebrows. “C’mon, babe,” he scoffed, locking onto you with his sloppy puppy grin and playful nudge on your arm. “This work week already fucking sucks, and you’re the only good I get.”

Checking over his shoulder, he sidled closer to you, and lowered his voice, “Yesterday I got to kiss you, and then go home to my kid who ate her chicken and broccoli without a single complaint.” He cut his hands to his chest, palms up, bouncing them in a shrug. “I don’t see any downsides here.” Aside from the prominent downside in your periphery, you agreed. “We’re just havin’ fun, right? Our weekend’s gonna come. These, uh, close encounters of the romantic kind are just to hold us over until then, that’s all.”

Just having fun. Just like that. Perks, pick-me-ups. No downsides here.

After giving him a long look, you nodded. These were just treats to get you both through the tough week. You could resist the temptation of taking it too far, keeping it casual. He could dial it back, and remain level headed about kissing, and a little over the clothes touching. No big deal.

Casual. Dialed back.

Easy.

————

Thursday was hot under the collar.

Coffee sputtered fat drops into the glass carafe, adding steam to the small breakroom, and filling it with the wake-up scent. Sat in a creaky plastic chair was a man sapped of energy, and behind him was his dearest flame. On the clock, technically, but arriving before other employees dared.

“Had to stay late last night to finish a car on time,” he grumbled to you, neck muscles flexing under your fingertips as he lolled his head side to side. “Wish you didn’t have to leave so early.”

You pulled his hair off his shoulders, and stroked your thumbs from his nape to the underside of his jaw in long sweeps over the tense slope, down, massaging the base where his collar began. “I know, baby,” you gentled, “me too, but we found a couch last night, and made sure it was the perfect size and comfort level for cuddling during a movie marathon.” His groan scratched vibrations along the rub, tugging your heartstrings.

“That sounds so good right now.”

Nothing made Eddie feel further away than the graywash walls surrounding you; lights too bright, vending machines droning too loud, stale odor of motor oil stinking too harshly of motor oil. Too everything—grating. His solid shoulders bowed weak from unyielding tasks. Body tired, brain stuck in problem-solving mode, watching cranky customers like a hawk, never getting a break once he got home; making food, washing dishes, cleaning spills, changing laundry, vacuuming dirt, providing entertainment, being the source of a thousand answers, drying tears, saying he’s sorry he can’t find the missing Barbie brush, worrying about everything, forgetting nothing, trying his best, falling short, perceiving himself as inadequate, disregarding himself as worthy of nothing more. Never getting the validation he craved after a long day. Poor man.

You leaned down and loosened the only button on his pinstripe coveralls, below his throat. Slipped the sky blue plastic from its cotton vice, threaded it through the hole in a languid beat, and kept things slow. You crawled your fingers to the sturdy metal zipper—dull gold—and ground the teeth three stretches down his chest, parting the halves to expose his black tee underneath. Your nails scratched the union of his pecs on the way to pull the collar off his neck, earning a comforting sound of approval from him, inspiring your own hum tickling your lips.

Switching from your thumbs to your knuckles, you dipped under his coveralls, and prodded the chain of stiffness on either side of his spine. Cheap poly-cotton grazed your skin. Mmm—His breath hitched, cheeks puffing at the sore knot you encountered, exhaling hard through the pain of your digging. It was so reminiscent of your second date when you were straddling him on his shit replacement for a bed not fit for a grown man, it hurt. You worshiped him between the bones—a small relief you wished to give him, delaying the restless ache growing more visceral every day you didn’t get to hold him for hours. Eddie reciprocated the yearn. He rested his head on your belly, washed curls swaying from his crown, frizzy strands clinging to the static on your blouse; leaning backwards so the meat between his neck and shoulder rolled under your handiwork. Closed eyes, fanning lashes. Mellow sounds of contentment sung through his nose. Beautiful man.

“Feeling better?” you asked, squeezing his traps in hard pinches, collecting his woes and turning them into sighs.

Mhmm, he said.

Perfect, you thought.

Better meant there’s still room for improvement.

In a fluid motion, you bent at the hips, and he leaned his head to the side, accommodating your arms draping around his front. The angle pressed your ass to the wall in an audible glide of your skirt shifting against it. Eddie, so soft and romantic, hiked his shoulders up and beamed hard at the ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut thinking his sweetheart was hugging him. However, you slipped your hands under his uniform, and his sunshine grin faltered.

His pulse quickened at your descent.

“Whatcha doin’, baby?” he asked, tone floating the river of curiosity and suspicion.

You doled kisses where his bangs parted, down to his temple, his eyebrow, sunk in the hollow of his cheek between the hardness of his teeth. You traveled the smooth grain on his jaw—warm notes of nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla in your lungs—and wandered over his earlobe, nosing through his long hair to the place you wanted. Lips on sensitive skin. Dangerous.

His throat bobbed at the top of a heartbeat, and his chest sank only to fill with a strong breath. The thin fabric of his tee stretched over the firm muscle laying dormant under a sleek layer of fat. Wheat shafts of hair mid valley brushed against the motion of your hands opening his coveralls further, fingerpads skimming his pebbled nipples; golden zipper sneaking to the top of his stomach, enough room for you to flatten your palms to his pecs, and unwind him. Like a good partner, you massaged the width where you laid your head to rest during a long hug, where you set your ear to listen to the rhythmic thump, where the source of his voice ignited when you asked him a question; thumbs joining to stroke the worthy center.

His black tee framed by the baby blue stripes paved a dark arrow to the kick of his hips tilting upwards as he slouched in the chair.

Excessive flattery laced your tease, “Are you hard?”

“‘Course I’m hard,” he pointed out the obvious. “You’re touching me.”

Not that the swollen length rising from his lap could be anything else, but knowing you caused such a standing ovation after a little bit of back rubbing ran you a mighty temperature.

Wicked thoughts pooled at the bottom of your stomach. The stiff outline influenced your thighs rubbing together, rallying hunger in your eyes. You angled your head, and shifted your focus to the goosebumps surfacing from your sigh fanning the shell of his ear.

Eddie’s neck invigorated your appetite.

You opened your mouth wide and grazed the sharp edge of your teeth over the vulnerable column thrumming with life. His body went rigid—”Oh”—then slack in increments. Again, you scraped lightly over the slope of warmed muscle appreciated by you as a result of the physical price he paid to assume the jobs of many, taking on the responsibility of Carl’s workload to ensure he made it to his son’s wrestling practice on time. Your man deserved the world; he deserved your lips forming a ring over his pulse, he deserved his heartbeat darting against your tongue, he deserved to melt under your attention. Your man deserved to have his little groan stolen when he remembered your mouth’s talent.

Despite the animal way you started, you eased him into the pressure, sucking down on his skin until your open bite filled with delicate flesh. A liquid glottal click preceded the faintest catch in his vocal chords. He secured a palm around your shoulder, heaviness drawing your arm forward, enticing your hand to rove down his chest. Shirt wrinkles collected around your fingertips as you reached the roundness of his stomach, and dipped below his coveralls. The change in environment was instant. Humid, sticky pheromones clung to your skin. Damp body heat trapped tacky warmth to your middle finger dipped to his navel while your knuckles prowled beneath his jumpsuit in visible arches. Edging closer, closer. Nearly there.

You arched your wrist to put strain on the zipper, dragging it with you, almost within reach of what he earned.

Eddie’s hand covered your own. “We shouldn’t, ah,” he cleared his throat, “shouldn’t start something we can’t finish,” he asserted, caught between the confliction crossing his face, and the gravelly tug in his vocal chords. He hooked his forefinger under your pinky and lifted your hand to the outside of his coveralls, where the halves parted below his sternum. “With our luck, someone’ll walk in on us.”

Yesterday’s incident in the closet brought fresh memories to his reddened ears; blotching renewed embarrassment along the pinkish skin where your spit dried. You took this into consideration when opposing, “Doubt anyone would walk in on us in the next thirty seconds.”

He’d deflect your implication with a glare if his eyes weren’t closed in disgust at his own actions.

“Just saying,” you sang, words becoming muffled on the stretch of neck he presented to you with a cant of his head, “we could have fun before anyone shows up.”

Teetering an inappropriate boundary neither of you should indulge, especially not in the storage closet or on your sturdy wood desk, his willpower faltered. “Don't tempt me with that shit when you know it’s a bad idea,” he griped without the balls to make it sound sincere.

You raked your fingers into a fist where they laid, pulling his uniform taut. The coveralls went tight over his lap, stressing deep shadows leading to the concentrated swell down his pants leg; made more obvious when he spread his knees wider, scraping his boots across the floor. Jittery nerves, flexed thighs, torn between crossing a line. Treats, perks, pick-me-ups. Hugging, kissing, touching over your bra. It was a dangerous path to tread. Risky. A million reasons why you shouldn’t.

“Want me to stop?”

“No.” Punctual, quick. Answered hoarsely in the breakroom of your workplace. “Keep going.”

His sentence rumbled in your mouth. Permission vibrated past your teeth, words rolled over your tongue, coating your brain in syrupy sweetness. Keep going. Texture of his stubble, then texture of his skin. Nearly invisible bumps matching the taste buds you licked down the sculpt of his throat, following the moody blue vein to where it disappeared under the ribbed collar of his shirt. You nudged the barrier away, and dropped wet kisses on the hilled muscle. His head fell further into the crook of your arm, offering, making the spot more accessible for you to lap at, cherish. The position was perfect. No better vantage point to stare down your boyfriend’s shuddering chest while you sucked a bruise on his neck, and wrung his coveralls a little tighter.

The shadows defining his lap twitched.

Eddie imposed his fingers between yours, and adjusted his grip several times until the sturdy cotton twill restricted his length flat. Without looking, you knew his nostrils flared when he released a rough exhale afterwards. Being so close, you heard the bubbles in his saliva pop before his mouth constricted on the swallow. You listened to the spit travel, saw his throat bob. Felt the hitch in his whine before he ever sank to the edge of the chair, where his hips would lurch and his clothes would drag along the oversensitive temptation begging for more in a hard throb. A short, delicate, and devastating morsel of what his mouth drooled for.

“Am I making you feel better?”

Through the trance of the powerful initiative rushing his blood south, compounded by the many rules and boundaries he broke of his own accord since he met you, paired with the sultry aid of your husky voice, he nodded. His muscle swayed beneath your teeth. “So much better, baby.”

“Love to hear it, handsome,” you kissed his cheek.

Dots of bright candy apple red bloomed amongst the pink where you marked the destination in the passage from his ear to his ball chain necklace. The metal beads were warm on your loving peck to his keepsake. Returning to the raw span beside it, you nursed the bruise along, sealing your kiss-plumped lips to the afflicted area, and bringing forth stipples of violet. Eddie disciplined his moan in the quiet room; coffee pot full, and vending machines clicking to lower hums; yet his weak noise wrapped you in tangled bedsheets, and unset alarms. Strong arms, and a slow cadence between your legs. Fantasies which were lost in the anguish of professionalism, and busy schedules.

Then, he called you back to reality with another sound. Whinier. Hemmed in his shaky breath, and a fluttered ‘oh’.

You broke the heavy-lidded spell over your eyes and fixed your gaze on the reason his grip on your shoulder cinched.

Eddie rocked his hips, and the outline of his cock strained against his coveralls. The entire definition of his head stretched the fabric as hard as it could at the top of the thrust, and fell to his thigh on the descent. Lines amassed on his forehead as he worked the circle again, starting on a pace which favored his next moan. Low, and slow—finding a steady rhythm, and simmering. Like that, accepting the urge and giving in, fuck the consequences. The spontaneity of you suggesting you give him some relief before the work day began spurred him, and whatever reservations he had about not fooling around while on the clock crumbled. Not that his convictions were ever strong to begin with when it came to you.

Approaching something more desperate with each controlled motion scoring the friction he couldn’t resist, another moan—thick, and hot like warmed maplewood sap—rumbled from his braced chest.

With his eyebrows pinched, and mouth slack, he watched himself get off on nothing but his own determination.

Spit flooded your bottom lip. Your palm needed to be filled. You ached for his smooth skin moving up and down while you fisted his shaft. You strangled his clothes at the thought, and yes, you begged, “Can I?” to which he dropped his head back and groaned a soft ‘fuck’.

“Whatever you want, baby,” he released in a jumble of grateful syllables.

Hanging onto his composure, he reached for the zipper, and the action stirred a phantom taste of his salty release on your tongue. Your body fought tooth and nail to have patience. You distracted yourself by placing fervent kisses in his hair as thanks for the wonderful start to the morning, about to pump Eddie’s cock to the same tempo as your racing heart without an ounce of restraint, when you froze.

A near-mute whoosh of air alerted every nerve in your body.

There was no mistaking the gust of the glass door rushing open, its whispered squeak imperceivable to anyone who didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time sitting beside it. But Eddie heard it. Or, he heard the thudding steps leading the jumpstart in his heart.

He freaked.

In a flurry, Eddie kicked up his hips to zip his jumpsuit to his throat, and you spun around to dig through the fridge while metal chair legs screeched across the tile, scooting in until his upper half was soldered to the rim of the table, and you picked out his favorite creamer.

Hot coffee beat out the smell of Old Spice. The fridge’s condenser fan knocked sense into the lapse of judgment. A booming voice penetrated the ringing pitch of bad decisions rushing loud in your ears.

“Mornin’!” Mr. Moore waited for your response of ‘Good morning’ to drive his Thursday mood, “Y’watch the news last night?” he asked, holding the conversation just inside the breakroom door. “Weather lady said the storm over Springfield is just sittin’ there—y’know, just hangin' over the city churnin' out rain like you wouldn't believe! It’s a strange one; the whole system is avoiding us, but it's what's brought on this heat wave. And just a few days ago we were seein’ our breath! The thunderstorm from the weekend dented my new chicken pen with hail, and now I’m turnin’ on the A/C, but that’s Hawkins for ya.” Sucking his teeth, he muttered to himself, “Cursed town.”

At that, you collected Eddie’s mug from the cabinet, and clinked a spoonful of sugar and Coffee Mate in his mug, stirring through the swirl of piping hot beige.

Mr. Moore continued, “Anyway, we should prob’ly dust off that drum fan, ‘nd set it up before the sun turns the garage into an oven.. You okay, Ed?”

You wiped the steam from your fingers onto your skirt, demonstrating an extraordinary amount of strength in resisting looking at him.

“Yeah, I—yeah, I think those fumes from yesterday got to me.”

“Ah, gotcha,” Mr. Moore replied, familiar with the debilitating headaches mechanics frequently succumbed to. “Take it easy today, will ya? And, uh, could you help me with the fax machine?” You perked up at the change in tone, understanding the question was intended for you. “If you got a minute, I need to send out some of these papers.”

Tapping the spoon, rinsing it, putting it aside, you said, “Sure can,” and your boss took that as his cue to walk into his office. Door open.

You set the perfect cup of coffee on the table, and stalled. Eddie’s fingers trembled over his forehead, laced into a shield and only lowered to the bridge of his nose in order to pierce you with all the glare he could muster; bouncing his knee in such a frenzy it quivered the curl of his bangs over his plum face, and shook the thinness of his scorched cheeks.

“Told you this was a bad idea,” he enunciated, wholly vindicated.

Your lips wore a tingle through their numbness as they thinned into a regretful grin. “I’m sorry.” You passed a kiss over top his head where your hand stroked. When the coal of his eyes continued to scold you through his thick lashes, you gave him another kiss, and spoke in softer earnest, “I really am, Eddie. I didn’t mean to, you know.. yeah.” Balls so deeply blue, they matched his jumpsuit. “Thought we had enough time to finish.”

He grunted.

Under the pressure of both time and guilt, you spun your hands into finger guns at the door, and shuffled backwards from him awkwardly, eyes set on the scuff marks on the floor. “I’ll just—” You were already steps away, about to exit.

“—guess I’ll jack off again.”

“What was that?”

Eddie jerked his head up, eyebrows lifting, realization crossing his glazed over stare. The sentence was meant as a vent of frustration, but not where you could hear it. He couldn’t get redder; in fact, he paled around his mouth a little, licking his lips. “I–uh.” He blinked irregularly through his stutter, finding the words which evaded him, scraping his brain for an explanation while he wrung and crossed his arms in a loose hug over his shoulders, fidgeting. “It, well, it h-hurts if I don’t..”

Corroding into an eye-roll only hidden by the very act of closing your eyes, you informed him, “Yes, I am well aware of the biological phenomenon. You said ‘again’, though. Meaning?”

After a moment of deciding how much information he was willing to divulge, he shrugged into his shoulders, dipping his chin to one side, using his hair to shy behind. “I’ve.. had to jack off before,” he answered, being coy with the topic.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“At work?”

“In the bathroom, yeah.”

“How come?”

His intentional avoidance drew your smile, so mischievous and calling his bluff, cornering the affection in his expression until his sneaky glance from beneath his bangs wove more and more of a story into his sheepishness. “Sometimes you wear stuff I like.”

You pounced. “Oh, yeah?” Interposing yourself between two chairs across from Eddie—ignoring the sound of Mr. Moore’s fist beating on the plastic machine in the other room—you drew circles on the tabletop, and pried, “What kind of stuff? When? Do you mean this week, or, like, before we were even friends?”

“I am not telling you that,” he laughed, he choked, he denied—hard—basically confirming he did wrap his hand around his cock at the thought of you, perhaps at work, perhaps yesterday after the closet incident, perhaps at the start of your employment at David’s Auto Repair when he didn’t know how to process the new receptionist flirting with him and his way of shutting down any feelings before they began was by ridding himself of the urge.

The topic itself was eliminated by his arm swinging outward, conversation not up for discussion.

And you, enjoying the attention that made him fold his hands over his lap, laid your upper half across the table, propping your elbows so there was a gap down your blouse if he so chose to ocularly venture.

Your words mushed from your fists beneath your chin, “Is it the skirts?” You rocked side to side. His crows feet deepened, shoulders shaking from suppressed giggles, refusing the allurement of your shapely sway draped in corporate gray. “Or is it the jeans and hoodie that does it for ya? Really getcha goin’ when I’m dressed down? Hmm?” Your eyebrow waggle dueled with his sealed lips.

“‘M’not tellin’,” he defended, hardly able to speak through his fondness for flattering you; as if praising you were its own reward, reflected upon him as a good man worthy of having his dirty boots tucked beside your front door.

From the hallway, a rackety sound strung together with a cuss and muffled call of your name roused the logical side of your brain, awakening you both from the hormonal haze.

Eddie clicked his tongue. “Best get to work, sweetheart.”

“Why? Need some alone time?”

The weight of the ache between his legs burdened his lack of comeback.

Obliging, because he was right, you stretched across the table and waited for him to meet you halfway. But he didn’t attempt to close the distance. He stayed put, committed to his stubbornness, and forced you to stain the muscles down the backs of your legs in order to reach. Fine, you played into his game. You planted your smirk on his mouth, dousing his smug features with your own.

“I was just thinking,” you lead innocently, “I’ve already packed my closet, but I might find the time to go through the boxes tonight, and pick out my outfit for tomorrow.”

“Babe—” It was an instant beg. Your favorite kind. “Don't you dare,” and he couldn’t even erase the intrigue, the thrill, the excitement of stolen youth in his tone. The sneaking around, the perks, the treats—the boundary you both knew you shouldn't cross, because of worse decorum than him sitting stiffly at a table, ripe with embarrassment. “You can’t do that. Are you even—? Baby?”

“By—e,” you sang on your way out.

————

Friday came with an excessive heat warning.

Footsteps came from behind you, lingering at the door. An arduous breath was spent sighing, but his voice was too playful to shame you, hardly traipsing through his throat to chastise, “You’re something else, you know that?”

Every beat of your heart was emphasized by his step forward, dragging his boots until his body heat warmed your backside. Blissfully unaware, you continued washing the glass carafe in the breakroom sink. Staying diligent in your task wasn’t an admission of guilt; rather, diverting your attention was an act of grace, of benevolence, granting him access to feast on your figure. It was obvious from the moment you arrived his hunger grew insatiable. You walked into the garage exactly as late as you planned, arms loaded with two boxes of freshly fried donuts, and the shine in his sharp-set eyes did not match those of his coworkers springing from their circle around the workbench. No, the to-go orders of dark roast coffees did not feed a smile to his face as it did for Kevin, nor did the waft of sugary glaze excite his mouth into watering like it did for the other men.

Eddie’s cravings were of a different breed.

His expression was hard, then. If you’d just met, you’d think your merry presence pissed him off. Now knowing better, you read the initial shock before he schooled it to an intense stare, steely gaze locking you into a match. You provoked him with a golden sunshine grin. His jaw went slack enough to run his tongue along his inner cheek, calming his rise in blood pressure, nose perking pink and eyes flashing dark and lips twitching to one side.

You excused yourself—“I should clean the coffee maker before I leave those grounds in there all weekend,”—and went to the breakroom. Eddie was hot on your trail. He came in not half a minute later. Probably didn’t even make up an excuse, he just left the circle.

“This is too far, even for you,” he maintained, aching and slow, words brushing over your ear.

Anticipation mounted in the sound of his clothing shifting, leather boots creaking. You expected him to do something sweet—run his knuckle down the small of your back, or thumb at the strap along your shoulder—but instead, you gasped.

Water sloshed in the coffee pot, suds squishing from the squeeze you put on the sponge.

He dived under the hem of your dress. The fabric fit tight on your body, snug to your waist, closing your thighs in a hug. He tugged it over the curve of your ass, exposing your bare cheeks to the chilly room. Bold. Risky. Dirty. Nowhere near the platonic workplace relationship he was trying to front. You twisted to look up at him with wide, thrilled eyes, giddy with the boost of flattery knowing your simple clothing choice drove him wild.

Eddie got a sturdy grip on the counter edge, and eased his weight onto you until you were covered by his magnificence, chest to back. He shaped his palm to your hip, and dug his thumb above the elastic band of your underwear, connecting the need of his hand to the yearn of his mouth. You melted in the pocket of his embrace, greeting him with parted lips, accepting his tongue. Never would you tire of his breath overtaking yours. Spit, spearmint gum, oddly metallic. Smoke break. You break. Morning tangle of you and him when the others were enjoying donuts one glass door away.

Fearless fingertips discovered you without hesitation. Polished callouses swept over and around to the front of your thigh, greeting the warm juncture with a smooth trace of his buffed skin, middle finger following the edge of your cotton panties down the seam, and up. Only an inch or so into the crease where your leg met the thong, back and forth twice along the line, enough to skim your nerves awake, and work you into a sweat for his index hovering over the swell where a single graze would have your knees weak. Taking the touch away, he wrapped his arm around your middle, and drew your hips in.

He pressed fat and heavy along your backside, unashamed.

The kiss ended in a juicy smack, finished by your hum against the coarse grain peppering his jaw. Lips were licked, sparkling eyes gazed into their match. Coming down with a lovesickness, your skin fostered a high fever, woozy bliss clouding your head—dreamy dreamy dreamy.

“You know what this dress does to me, don’t you?”

A grin cracked your face. “I might.” You immersed yourself in the comfort of his firm body draped around you, the raw sensation of your bare skin against his rugged coveralls, and lazed in the same memory as him.

The burgundy pinafore clung to the warmth of his taken smile from that night. So smitten, and fond. A dress made of belly clenching laughter, woven together with threads of brave glances, converging and averting when the strikes of nerves teemed on admitting too much. Cinnamon, nutmeg, grape jelly in the slow cooker meatballs. Freshly shed pine needles, and glitter. Significance baked into every fiber of the dress you wore under a lonely sprig of mistletoe, unkissed.

Never again would he let you go home believing you weren’t a treasure.

“Can’t be wearin’ this around me,” he obsessed, and you giggled at the rich confidence in his voice—a prelude to the depth he was willing to go. “Gonna get me in trouble.”

Using the sink ledge as leverage, you muscled Eddie into standing up straight with you, winning his heart with a doe-some blink. Arching, you swayed your hips on the length catching between your round cheeks, though the position flaunted something else which might entice him in engaging in risky behavior. “I’m not wearing a bra, either,” you said. Your voice was girlish—floaty and high—a bit raspy from your neck being turned to admire the handsome amount of approval twinkling in his dark eyes.

“Yeah?” Eddie moved his Stupid Cupid lips over the very edge of your ear, and rumbled through the words weighing down his chest, “Need me to fuck you that bad, huh?”

Thrums of pleasure lit within you.

You nodded the side of your face against the scratch of his chin—a morning, day, evening, night, dusk, dawn without a shave.

“Need me here?” he asked, slipping his fingers inside your dress. The fabric over your chest struggled to accommodate his circle around your nipple. You sucked in a breath—released in a moan—and grabbed onto his arm for stability, already falling backwards into him. The direct blessing of his prod to the bud was too much. Your toes curled at his pinch. He flicked the tip of his smooth finger pad over it faster. “Yeah? You like that?” You whined a croaky sound, resting your head on his chest, unable to keep your eyes open to admire the way he watched himself do this to you, chin hooked over your shoulder to view his own hand groping his girl beneath his favorite dress.

“Need me somewhere else?” he asked, and your hips began to mimic the circle he stroked as an answer.

With the ease of a man who’d pictured this scenario more times than respectful, Eddie seized the permission. Middle, index; his two thickest, longest, dexterous. Divine, and unholy. At the bottom of your dress bunched over the top of your thighs, he crooked those two fingers under the hem intentionally, while your hand combed through his hair at the suggestion. “Yeah? Want me to touch you there?” There—a base he’d yet to run even when you were alone on your second date. “Need me that bad while we’re at work?”

You verbalized your desire, as weak as it skirted past your sigh, “Please, Eddie.”

One plea, and it was Love Potion No. 9. His lean frame blanketed you, cradled you, collected you to his height, corded muscles gone solid with restraint. Large nose pressed to your ear, including you in the deep draw of validation into his lungs. Hugging you to the pride inflating his firm chest. The full throaty rasp of desire, and being desired, intimate and close. Two fingers ventured under your dress. You twirled his hair, teething your bottom lip in anticipation for the touch. They were shaped to claim his prize locked behind a fine layer, but he teased you first. He curved the breadth of his palm to the stretch of cotton, width of his calloused reach forcing your feet apart, and brushed past your deepest craving to cherish the place he craved.

“Jesus,” he wept.

His fingers glided along the wet patch on your thong, fabric sticking to your wet heat. It slid along you in a sticky lick, and he sank his teeth to the base of your neck, beyond help. A noise tripped in your throat at his simultaneous pinch on your nipple. He was a goner.

In a few circles around your entrance, he had you melting into his arms. A tweak on your nipple gained your fingers at the root of his hair. He squeezed your slick lips together, and your neglected need sang at the stimulation, begging him in a gasp to do it again. He did. He did, he did, again, however many times it took to have your sighs dive into moans.

Two devilish fingers began their journey upwards, intentions set and clear. Smarmy with ego, he goaded, “Let’s see how long it takes you to cu—”

The near-mute whoosh of the glass door was made obvious by the chorus of men’s laughter bouncing in.

Cold fear licked up your spine. You scrambled for the abandoned coffee pot in spectacular fashion, struggling to get hold of its soapy body in the fret of stress induced tunnel vision—but Eddie? Eddie took his time hitching your dress hem where it should be, flattening it to your thighs. The telltale gait of your boss was nearing, and he was in no rush to jolt to the opposite end of the planet away from you. Oh, no. Your boyfriend brushed his hands in methodical sweeps over the fabric, smoothing it to your hips, mirroring the same cadence as the steps which sent you into a panic. He even gave you a hard pat after he was done. Kissed your cheek to seal the deal, only stepping away to peruse the vending machines the moment Mr. Moore rounded the corner.

“Can’t resist havin’ a little sugar in my coffee,” he informed from the hallway, chipper as can be, strutting in while you were rearranging your dumbstruck stare into something pleasant. He swiped three Splenda packets. “We’re ‘boutta start the meeting, by the way.” You nodded at the coffee pot you washed to a shine. Mhm! you replied after an anxious attempt for anything better, tight-lipped, and dodging his prying eyes by enacting a coughing fit into your elbow in the other direction, willing to bolt if he even so much as thought about voicing his concern over your strange behavior.

Ka-shink, ka-shink, ka-shink. Eddie fed quarters into the Pepsi machine. “Be right there,” he announced, jamming one of the rectangular buttons on the side.

Mr. Moore paused for the longest .02 seconds of your life. No amount of money could bait you into turning around. Whatever expression he was making—if he knew what you and Eddie were doing—that was between him and God. Your shoulders were squared, muscles ready to flee in panic, heart racing beyond what it should be capable of. All the while Eddie crouched for his drink clunking to the bottom slot.

“Well,” was your boss’ succinct response on his way out, underscoring the end of his thought.

There should’ve been some relief, but your breath stayed in your lungs, and your hands shook horrendously, smacking the handle for the faucet too hard on accident, shooting the stream out on high. And, of course, the closed coffee pot lid was the perfect shield, sending water everywhere.

You screwed your eyes shut and defended yourself from the onslaught, worrying about your face and dress first, and your wimpy shriek second.

Eddie came to your rescue.

Ever the hero, ever the gentleman, he shut off the water for you. A ‘thank you’ had been earned, but one peek between your lashes had you quirking your brow in question. He was too close. Standing univinted beside you, almost touching, invading your personal space in a show of ownership. Shadows attempted to temper his smirk, but they cut harshly around the devious apples of his flushed cheeks. You opened your mouth to ask why he was looking at you like that, when—

The explanation came in your stolen yelp.

“Ed!”

“Shh,” he taunted, taking charge of his bubbling laughter at your reaction.

Goosebumps erupted down your legs, pebbling harder where he rolled the freshly dispensed can of Mug root beer across the back of your thighs. The chill bit into you, and you bit into your bottom lip. Squirmy noises squeaked from your throat. He reached under your dress and held the soda to your ass cheek, replacing the warmth of his cock with a bitter lesson. A stinging—fucking—cold lesson. He pinned your options between him, his arm, and the countertop. There was no escaping his revenge. You saw no other choice but to cling to his coveralls, let the shiver run its course, and scold him in a failed whisper, “Eddie—!” He loved it. Enjoyed every crinkle of your pathetic glare when you realized why he was doing it.

His length was softening against you. An old technique, rubbing vigorously at his sensitive head until the evidence of his arousal went away without repercussions. And now you were the one all worked up with no release.

Grinning like a menace, his cockiness eclipsed your vision, putting his forehead to yours so his snarky giggle vibrated in your skull. He wrangled you into his embrace, manipulating you with ease. Layers of implied strength snapped your hips forward. Years of unassuming muscle beneath his humble clothes locked you to his body without trouble. Strong arms you recognized the power of when they snatched a man by his tie, seasoned hands equipped for ripping out rusted axle shafts, fingers which threaded elastic string through plastic beads with the same finesse as soldering spliced wires together. They all joined in consecutive evil to slide the can between your round cheeks, down to where your yearning sprung.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” You picked up his vocabulary at some point. “I swear, Eddie Munson, if you don’t move that right now.”

“I’m just coolin’ ya off, sweetheart.” He sounded so pleased with himself, the jerk. He also sensed the impending handprint on his cheek, and apologized with a bit of earnest effort, “Sorry.”

Not betraying his newly actualized cavalier attitude towards urgency, he utilized his afternoon drink against your needy core as a way to hike you onto your tiptoes, and bless you with an offensive smirk kissed onto your slanted grimace.

Pussy numbed, he took his root beer away, and moved past you.

“Did you plan this?” you asked, assumed, accused. Mellow in anger, harsh in disbelief. “Is this payback for yesterday?” And the day before that. And the day before that. And maybe the day before that, too.

“Well, yes and no,” he resolved, sorting his explanation while opening the fridge. You crossed your arms, and stuck your hip out. The sensation between your legs was dull and cold. “With our luck, I knew we’d get interrupted before we could finish—and I did intend to give you a taste of your own medicine—but, yeah, uh, then you showed up in that dress, and all my plans went out the window,” his voice tumbled silly with self-deprecation, gestures as big as his eyes. “I was planning on just coming in here, and letting you know how hot you were. Make out with you some, maybe get a lil’ handsy, y’know, make you feel good like you make me feel good. But, uh.. Yeah. Didn’t mean to get carried away like I did.” He prized you in another look over. A damning amount of awe sat in his simper, like he was experiencing his crush flirting with him for the first time all over again. That is, before he hung his head back, and opened his throat to release a hoarse groan at the ceiling.

Eddie held the cold can to his lap, rolling it over the swell, taming the last of his biological drive from showing. “Trust me, baby, I’m chewing through my leash to get to you.”

Too charming. A flustering rush of flattery washed over you—warm, fuzzy, prickly heat of the back of your neck. Your annoyance at him was never genuine, but it certainly wasn’t after watching him speckle his jumpsuit with condensation in effort to resist breaking a code of conduct. Though, you were still strategizing how long it would take with your deft fingers down your underwear in order to rid your own need, and sit at your desk without chewing through the particle board, too.

Reading your mind, he put the soda away, and approached you with two palms on your nape, frigid fingers laced behind your neck and cold thumbs stroking your jaw. He dropped his head to the side, and maintained unblinking eye contact through his slow disapproving shake, resentment festering in his desperate gaze. “If I don’t get a few minutes alone with you today, I’m gonna go insane,” he stated. You believed him. “I’m serious, you better scrape together a few minutes to come kiss me on my smoke break, or else.”

There was no elaboration on what ‘or else’ meant.

“I will,” you promised, weak to his kiss on your forehead.

Figuring you’d both been stalling long enough, he trailed his last goodbyes for the foreseeable future on the line of your cheek bone, your chin, bridge of your nose, corner of your lips. Wherever. He swept his hand into your own, and brought it to his mouth, hiding the beginnings of his smirk in the smooches to your knuckles. “Was the soda thing too much?”

Grinding dullness to his sharp intrigue, you rolled your eyes. “It was kind of hot, I guess,” you forced out in a monotone droll, feigning harder exasperation when his expression squinched too mirthful.

“Don’t you mean cold?”

You soured, distaste in every syllable, “Criminally unfunny.”

“I know you liked that one, sweets,” he shot back, waggling his eyebrows. “Now, let’s get to that meeting before they get any ideas about us, pretty girl.” He finished with a wink, and two giddy-up clicks of his tongue.

“I hate you.”

“That’s too bad, ‘cause I adore you.”

~~~

A few kisses in the alleyway, that’s all either of you asked for. Two minutes alone. Maybe more than three sentences exchanged about matters not pertaining to work. But, no. Even when you escaped the two men at your desk reciting an encyclopedic amount of knowledge about some type of engine you didn’t care about, you were roped into giving directions to the shop over the phone while shuffling through invoices in Mr. Moore’s office. And when Eddie got you pressed against the wall in the storage room, someone yelled for him to help with a rush job, killing the mood. To make matters worse, the grueling week ended with you and Eddie being scheduled on the same lunch slot, but with the approaching deadline for expense sheets being due at the end of the day, you were planning to eat yours at your desk, and avoid the torture of sitting next to him without being able to touch him like you wanted.

You opened the fridge and took out the Buckley special. Yellow squash casserole with a side of Shake ‘n Bake chicken. Eddie’s teal and purple lunch bag contained an extra helping of both. It’d become customary for Robin's mom to cook extra, and pack it away for you to bring for him. His actual lunch was in a paper bag next to it. Big spoiled man.

Speaking of, he was at the sink; sleeves rolled up his wrists, scrubbing himself clean with Fast Orange. Bitter citrus stung your nose as he lathered up his hands, working the pumice into the smudges of grease around his knuckles.

Mr. Moore got your attention without introduction. “I’m taking the wife out to that new Italian restaurant. Should’a asked her if she wanted Italian food, but oh well. We’re swingin’ by the sign shop next to it, and makin’ real sure our logo’s nice and big on that banner for tomorrow.” He accentuated the importance of David’s Auto Repair with high brows, and a canted head. He also managed to pronounce it both Eye-talian, and Uh-talian in the same thought. “Be back in, uhh—hour ‘n a half, maybe?” He swung his keys into his fist on his way out.

The group for lunch would be smaller, then. Maybe you could do your paperwork at the table, and get away with playing footsie with your favorite mechanic. Yipee.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Kevin announced, and you both looked at him over your shoulders. You were sorting the lunches to get the casseroles in the microwave, and Eddie was rubbing an extra squirt of Dawn between his fingers. Exceptionally mundane. “I was so impressed by that coffee this morning, I’m going down to the diner and ordering myself a sandwich and dessert. Prob’ly finish it up with another cup’a coffee after. Gonna make it a whole forty-five minute ordeal,” he sold the significance with several nods.

His immediate disappearance out the lobby door after his statement was strange, but you shrugged at each other, and went back to the lunches and hand washing.

“D’you know where those bottles of wax are?”

You shook your head. Eddie shook his head slower. A heavy thread of tension bred awareness between your two bodies strung taut from pent up urges.

“Weird,” Carl huffed. “I swear I just had ‘em. Well, shit. Can’t finish this car without at least one. I’ll go pick some up at the hardware store. Be back in a few,” he let you know, voice echoing off the hallway walls on his way to his truck.

Cold, warm, hot. Your blood buzzed. The bell above the front door dinged as it latched closed. Left behind was a lobby empty of people, garage paused in limbo, and a building cast in silence. You turned to Eddie. Dawning comprehension overtook your faces, wide eyes fixed on each other.

“Holy shit,” he exhaled, and you were already shoving your food back in the fridge, smashing his bologna sandwich in the process. Eddie cursed again, “Holy shit!” and snatched the hard bristle brush, scouring the dirt from under his nails, between his fingers, up his arms until the water ran clear and his skin burned pink. The same could be said for the grime on his cheeks. His light blue coveralls were soaked from the water dripping down his neck, but his face was spotless. Only the best for your lips.

“Oh, fuck, Eddie,” came your relief.

He accepted your willowy clutch on his sleeves. “It takes—It takes four minutes to get to the hardware store,” he stuttered in excitement, counting on his fingers behind your back, “so eight minutes roundtrip, factor in another eight for parking, looking for the wax, and checking out. That gives us sixteen minutes!”

Sixteen minutes where? Behind you was a plastic table which wobbled from an uneven foot. In the lobby was your desk in full view of the windows. In the bay were cars neither of you were quite brave enough to chance a stain on a seat.

“Um, um,” Eddie’s quick thinking trembled, about to suggest he take you there on the unforgiving tile floor, when he remembered, “Oh! My van! I brought my van.” He grasped you by the shoulders, shaking passion down to your toes about the hunk of metal parked outside his trailer when you visited. “I brought my van! I brought my van to drop off some amps at Gareth’s before the show!”

Rattled, you went to give him a thumbs up in full agreement, but he grabbed your hand, and bolted. You half-complained, half-shrieked, “You don’t need to drag me!” Reckless youth inspired him, broad grin loud and clear in his unadulterated sprint towards the OPEN sign and flipping it to display CLOSED. You skidded and bumped into him, bodies converging in true laughter. He caught you, he always caught you, and hauled you to the glass door, slowing in a smooth stride to open it for you. Always opening it for you. The garage was baked in sunshine, streaming through the warehouse windows on the bright day. Eddie’s boots clunked loud on the floor. A rock in the alleyway ricocheted off his shoe, bouncing off the tire of your temporary five star hotel.

The covert brown and cream van sat parked amongst the brick, gravel, and curls of dead leaves playing in the gentle breeze. It sat in full view of cars passing on either end of the back street. You hoped they were watching.

He wrenched one half of the creaky back doors open, and ushered you in the hollow between him and the carpeted floor, engulfing your face with his citrusy palms. “Don’t wanna waste a second,” he asserted in a winded breath, blurring your mind with a heady kiss, and impatient pat on your backside.

Rocks crunched under his boots. Two sturdy hands cupped the back of your thighs, helping you hop up onto the back of his van in a thrill of flirty giggles, weak for how bad he wanted you. Your calves slid against the warm metal bumper, your feet dangled by the exhaust pipe, your knees trapped his hips between your legs. His thick fingers sank into your fat, thumbs particularly bruising. Being everything he wanted, you snagged him closer by the collar, mouths almost meeting, and tilted yourself on the outline straining his coveralls, looking into his big brown eyes with a plea when the lone impact sweltered under your skin.

He hiked your knee to his waist, exposing you more to his packed heat aching to see you again. “C’mon,” he said, lips loaded with devilishness, “can’t stand to spend another second out here where I can’t have you.”

Anyone cruising by could bear witness to Hawkins’ number one Satanist loading a pretty young thing in the back of his ice cream sandwich colored van, and make assumptions.

Bless them.

You scooted backwards into the belly of the dragon’s lair. For an old beater used for transporting band equipment, he took good care of it. The carpet was clean. The wood paneling up the sides remained unscuffed. The back seat was taken out to make room for a hard case for a guitar, and two large amps wrapped in a spare comforter to prevent damage on either. And that’s where your observations ended.

Eddie’s indecent gaze was set on the stretch of white cotton under your dress. Nothing could break his stare as he threw his hair in a low bun, grabbed either side of the metal doorframe, stepped one foot on the edge, and bounced the van twice before hauling himself—and his manic smile—inside.

The acoustics amplified the door slamming shut.

His boots made for two heavy lovedrunk steps. Bruises were earned on his knees, dropping to them where your hem had ridden up, keen eyes traveling the valley between your thighs, up to the soft round of your nipples. Expecting his imminent weight, you laid back. Heat from the floor warmed you through your clothes. He crawled over you; one hand by your hip, the other next to your shoulder. You were lying beneath him for the first time, and he behaved long enough to memorize your gentle grin, and adoring squint.

“Oh, you’re gonna be the end of me,” he said, accent thick in his throat, ripe with lust. The gravel alone had your hands on the back of his neck, attempting to pull him down, to continue the momentum. But he didn’t budge. Distant in the blood rush, he found a bit of sobriety to ask, “D’ya mind if I get you dirty? I’m kinda gross.” His coveralls were marked with grime, dusted with dirt, splotched with oil. The overt blue collar status of his job opposed the unblemished burgundy and stark white tee of yours, sitting at a desk and answering phones in semi-working A/C.

You admired the mental fortitude it took to ask you first, but now was not the time to be a gentleman.

“So get me gross,” you replied, and a flicker of revelation stirred in his features. “I want to be gross with you.” You, Munson, The Freak of Hawkins, the one who everyone avoided; he who was rejected for being unapologetically himself. Taking advantage of his solid shoulders, you peeled yourself off the floor, and from the depths of belonging, you set fire to his kindling. “Make me fucking dirty.”

Eddie’s mouth pursed, then stretched thin, cheeks high, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “My pleasure.”

Plush lips crashed onto yours, body covering you in desperation, touch starved. His weight hugged you, pinned you. He flattened his arm alongside your head for support, and welcomed your legs bent around the length of his backside. Playfully suggestive hums followed his greedy hand scaling your thigh. Short layers of his hair fell forward, tickling your cheeks in summer innocence, while down below his thumb grazed the narrow string of your thong strapped over your hip in a fraction of the hunger he had for you. One trace under your panties, and the kiss went sloppy with tongue; slick mouths mashing, teeth knocking, jaws aching, and lips swollen. Aggressive, possessive, and dizzy. Your dress bunched around your waist. Rugged fabric rasped where your chests met. Smears of grime, dust, oil dirtied you.

Because the clock was ticking, you sped things up with a squeeze around his ass. Eddie listened. Oh, Eddie listened. He took the thrust in stride, pressing down on your need, and catching your forehead with his. The pain was negligible. A gift, even, to hold your gaze when you clawed for the waist of his coveralls, and harnessed a hotter tension on your underwear. A concentrated craze blunted by the thick layers separating you. You lifted your hips for him, spurring more, faster, pouring your strength into earning a faint squeak on the van’s suspension.

He nosed your chin up, and slipped painful kisses over your jaw, finding the spot below your ear to laud, like you did to him, sucking and releasing when your whine doubled. “Pretty,” he moaned into a harder kiss along the trail of spit his breath cooled. The edge of his teeth scraped another fragile gasp. He rocked his hips for a better one. “Love the way you sound.”

Grasping for clarity in the haze, you reminded him, “Just for you.”

“Fuck” —his voice cracked in the sprint to recover what those three little words did to him— “that’s fuckin’ right just for me.”

Copying what you did in the breakroom, he brought his hand up from your waist to move your shirt out of the way, exposing the meat at the base of your neck. Too excited, he left a map of his teeth. The bite stung your nails into his back. “Sorry,” he regretted, but you denied your pained gulp of air, rubbing your cheek along his temple in a head shake, S’okay. He ran his tongue over the grooves as an apology, anyway. Tracking the dips and curves, licking, suckling, and nipping however hard he could to make you scratch circles on his scalp while struggling with the two syllables of his name.

His hair smelled of fertile soil and charred earth, a tang of metal and new tires.

You gave yourself over to the garden of his scent, sunshine against your eyelids. Beyond the fatigue in your inner thighs was his constant, eager, chase. Chewing through his leash. Gnawing at his restraints. You focused on the long graze of friction, and forgot your surroundings which did not serve the fleeting jolts of pleasure between your legs, or the groping at your tits. You didn’t know there was an issue until Eddie’s frustrated grunt led to a harder tug at the unforgiving neckline of your dress, and finally, he shoved himself upright.

“How the hell do I get this off you?”

That explains why he was grabbing at both sides beneath your arms in search of a zipper.

Blinking, suddenly coming back to Earth, you contained your snort at his distressed motioning at the offensive garment enough to tell him, “It’s in the back,” and added, “like most dresses made in the last two, or three decades.”

He beckoned for you to sit up—a sharp gesture, but not without reason—and with your arms around his neck, he unzipped it with such speed, the plastic teeth should’ve melted from the traction. As he lowered you, the straps slipped from your shoulders, thick fingers inviting the release down to your elbows, breadwinner fists folding the top of the dress over on itself, joining where the bottom was scrunched around your middle. You’d only shaken the straps from your wrists when your body rocked side to side; a victim to his fumbling way of untucking your shirt, dying from suspense.

Stale air struck you from navel to neck.

His warm tongue was on you. “Oh—mm!” your voice raised a girlish notch. Two fat laps into coaxing your nipple tall, and fresh embarrassment ramped up your cheeks from the choked noise you made. You arched into his mouth for more, seeking foundation on his hands when an accidental skim of his teeth piqued your nerves alight. Rolling your head back, you found him through touch, starting with his wrists, working up to his knuckles, and curved squeeze cupping your tits together. He showed you how his mouth watered at the sight. Switching sides, he gifted the other stiff bud with a wet swirl, slipping over it again and again, gaining a squirm in your hips when he changed the speed—and without a break, he went back to the first to suckle, and his unintentional moan slipped out louder than yours when he pulled off.

He released a ragged breath into the valley between your breasts, “Couldn’t help myself.”

His determination throbbed impressions along your body even after he sat on his knees, leaving aches behind as a result of the sixteen short minutes he had with you. The adrenaline stayed in his shaky fingers. The top button of his coveralls dodged his pinch, eluding him. Another attempt, and a darker shade of red crept up his throat. “God fucking damnit, why’d I wear the ones that fucking button all the way down,” he fumed, wishing he could rip it open like the metal snap pair. You peered at his predicament through your lashes, and helped him out.

You tucked your chin to your shoulder in a pout, and competed for his attention, “Hurry up.”

“I know, sweet—” he verbally hit the brakes.

All too pretty, you pushed your tits together and strummed your fingers over your nipples in easy flicks, using his spit to skate over the peaks. You opened your legs wider, feeling his eyes devour you between the thighs. “I’ve missed you all week,” you said. His pulse jumped at the tiny excuse for underwear wedged further into the split, trimmed hair growing on either side.

Too long of a pause passed where his expression was slack. “Jesus Christ.” Working faster, he tore through the rest of the buttons, possibly losing one in the process, and shucked the jumpsuit over his shoulders. He flapped his arms to get the sleeves off, and his stark black tattoos made an appearance. The clumsy way he undressed shouldn’t have an affect on you, but when he took hold of the stuck cuff and the plastic beads clicked together on his bracelet, fresh roots of attraction thrived. Underneath his workwear a white ribbed tank top stretched over his chest. It must’ve been bought long ago when he was a size smaller, the bulk he’d packed on at the garage filled out the seams to their limit. Soft definition contoured the sun around his muscles. Veins strained the surface of his forearms, streaking shadows through the golden rays. Sparse curls fanned over the top of the neckline, thicker under his arms, and dark where his shirt rode up.

The jumpsuit hung loose around his hips, giving a peek at his boxers.

“You don’t wear jeans under those?”

“No? Did you think I did?”

The thought never crossed your mind until it was the only thing on your mind. You just assumed he would, so you shrugged, thinking of quickies in the future.

Eddie’s tolerance for conversation was low. A shuddered exhale blew past his lips, easing his hand down the front of his coveralls, pumping along the length fighting for his attention while he obsessed with what laid before him. Irresistible temptations which would forever change the way he looked at you were created the moment you touched yourself for him. Two fingers, two little circles over your underwear. You lured him, hypnotized him, sighing sweetly at the satisfaction. His bicep jumped in strength to restrain his pace, forearm pulsing from the choke he had on his base.

“Better calm down,” you teased in a slow lilt.

He scoffed—shallow in mockery, but burdened by the truth of the lines softening around his eyes. Shoving his coveralls low enough for his ego to stretch freely against his boxers, he walked his hands beside your body until his mouth was posed above yours. A suggestion of touch hovered over your knuckles rolling in a rhythm to honor yourself. “I haven’t known calm since I met you.” Your face scrunched cutely at the compliment, and you stopped adding fuel to your fire by bringing both arms around his neck, preparing your lips for a kiss which would not come. “I haven’t known calm since I met you,” he repeated. “So why start now?”

Unexpected pleasure consumed you. Eddie rocked his hips forward, and the raw glide of his cock with the thinnest separation of fabric possible stole anything that wasn’t animal instinct. You locked your ankles behind his thighs, drove the thrust deeper, and he answered by grinding down, working his base between your lips, loyal to you and the sweat beading on his brow.

You wrenched his tank top in your fists and felt it go tight where your chests merged, grazing over your nipples harsher with each rut. His shoulders shifted under your curious roaming, bulk of his body withdrawing. He didn’t stray far, only to tuck his forehead to your neck where he could hear the catch in your throat and the beat of your heart. Cozying to a place so near, you heard his guitar pick schlink past the beads of his necklace. Adjusting, he slipped into a deeper position between your legs, and a kiss was dipped to the top of your collarbone, long lashes brushing your skin as his eyes fell closed.

Cradled as one, Eddie dragged his cock down your heat, and followed the new angle up. Pitiful begs broke faster than his jagged groan. His fat tip notched itself at the top of your tender lips, nestled where your thong gathered, and he kept you on the precipice of your moan—of which you crashed into splendidly.

“That’s—god, Eddie, right there,” you babbled into a whimper.

“Fuck, such a pretty sound, baby,” his voice faltered on the endearment, panting hot and sticky on your throat.

The damp spot on his boxers grew. His unrelenting strokes over your clit fast-tracked you both towards the edge.

“Did you—condoms?”

Perking with interest at your hitched whisper, his stubble scrubbed your jaw in a delight of scratches on his way to nose at your cheek. “Picked ‘em up on my way home last night.” The suggestive rasp in his voice took residence in your rib cage, smitten by the thought of him going through a checkout so he was prepared to fuck you the next day. “They’re in the.. the..”

The rate at which his soul left his body would surprise grim reapers.

“Where’re they?”

Understanding your concern, he kept his eyes screwed shut and whittled at the knot between his brows with his knuckle, drilling away the irritation at himself. “They’re in the glove compartment.. of my car.”

“Oh.” The disappointment was brief. Your body clung to the fever he set, knowing you were both close, and paradise was another weekend away. Thinking quickly, you cupped his cheeks and put a swing in your tone, “We can do other stuff!” Hoping it was good enough, you scrutinized his expression, watching the words register, sink in, brighten his pupils into unholy territory at the idea.

The charm of his dimple was the cherry on top of his two front teeth emerging from the leap of his lips. Earnesty from a thousand endless wells poured out of him, “I love other stuff,” he said, imbuing each round word with a secret.

Jumping up, his enthusiasm was hampered by the roof. “Close call,” he commented to himself, narrowly dodging a concussion. He crouched to some degree, and made his way over to the amps, hiking up his coveralls to his hips as he went. The sheer lust in his weight pressing you to the floor was sorely missed, but you sat up to watch him waddle the amps to the center of the van and tip them, guiding their front plates down flat.

You puzzled out why he would line them up like a short mattress, and began salivating at the thought of him sitting on the additional height, and having his cock better in line with your mouth. “Are those for you?” Eagerness lifted your voice, swam in your glossy eyes. Eddie should be thanking the stars he landed someone so enthusiastic about drinking him whole after putting in hours around the shop, but instead of getting his brain-stopped-working glazed over stare, he slapped the amps twice.

“These are for you, pretty girl. Come sit down. I gotta thank you, remember?”

A memory of torn nylon and unfulfilled promises sparked at his phrasing.

Gotta thank you.

Getting to your feet, you arranged your arms for a bit of modesty, and snuck past the back windows, walking on shaky legs to where he kneeled at one end of the makeshift bed. Pure affection spotlighted you as the sole receiver of his enraptured smile, face aglow. He squeezed the tips of your fingers as you sat, and his lips were the softest thing to grace your cheek. It was the sweetest you’d seen him, especially when he anchored his palms to your hips, and his nerves crept in.

“Just, uh, tell me—or, let me know if I’m doing something you don’t like, okay?”

You tittered, “Okay,” as if you weren’t on the brink of unraveling regardless of skill, or even effort.

Putting faith in the durability of the hard shell encased amps, you leaned back on your hands, lowering to your elbows on the texture plastic, relaxing through the suspense of being on display for someone for the first time—and in broad daylight, too. Dim bedside lamps and flattering angles could obscure much, but why hide anything when your boyfriend spent the better part of his week biting at the cage of adult responsibilities keeping him from you? He’s the one who hid the new order of car wax for an excuse to fuck you sloppy in the back of his van. You basked in his reaction.

Eddie’s hands wandered the curves spread on the pedestal before him. One palm cupped your chest where his spit dried to a sheen, teasing your nipple lightly; juxtaposed, the other shaped itself over your waist and hips, clamping on your knee and smoothing his muzzled grip up your thigh. They joined to ruck the hem of your dress higher. But before the reveal, he bent over the slope of your body to cherish the glitters of sweat sparkling across your sternum. The minutes working against your escapade were unforgiving, but he chose to dedicate a few moments to your natural salt as he hooked his fingers under the stretch of your underwear. The cotton stuck to the praise he’d given you thus far, damp and tight, a work of art. Moving them aside, he stayed kissing the curve of your belly.

Intense, hot-blooded throbs of desperation concentrated on the immediate relief of your wet heat being exposed for appreciating. Fingertips caressed into a curl for his knuckles to adore your puffy lips plumped together, tracing up the other side with his thumb, and cresting the short curls at the top. A tortured lurch in your hips followed his touch when he took it away. Not a strong enough man to deprive his girl for long, he allayed you in kiss down your antsy chase, and sat back on his calves, landing his gaze where his fantasies only imagined.

He didn’t do anything for a few seconds.

Sunlight streamed from the window over his shoulder, shining radiance on the glisten made for him.

His lungs emptied in a thin, wispy breath.

Manners vanished when it came to a starving man. Your excited gasp lapsed into a spell of stunned giggles, which shot into an open-mouthed ah! No composure to spare, he dove in, shouldering one of your legs and hooking an arm around to pry your thong out of his way. Fat tongue, longer than you knew, buried between your lips. Insistent mouth framed by your pussy. Jaw slack to lap up his reward. He leaned his entire being into licking inside you, and dragging upwards, mixing your arousal with his spit and swirling it in a heavy circle. A single direct graze, and your chest rose and fell in stuttered bursts, shaking through the beginning of a sweet whimper. A light suckle from him pulling off to swallow the taste, and escaping your throat was a noise capable of convincing him God was real.

Attentive eyes connected over your mound. Big, brown, and pleased. Pupils inundated by curiosity, yet abundantly aware. Respecting you to the highest degree, he edged his fixation, surrounding your swollen clit with his full lips to feel you throb through the contact. “Eddie—” Your nipples hardened through the helpless pant of his name at the first true suction. Increasingly mesmerized by the response he earned when he added pressure, he stamped his tongue to his top lip and dropped it to his bottom, adding the sort of strokes that had your hand in his hair. “Eddie, you’re gonna make me cum so fast,” you rushed out. The shame in your whisper felt less like shame and more like a compliment when you held the back of his head, and tilted yourself in offering.

In one solid action, you were yanked to the edge of the amp by his grip twisting around your dress, and he looped his arms around your hips to hug you closer still, sealing your gift to his mouth. Muffled whines of gratitude came from his throat, so thankful for the opportunity, eyelashes batting heavily at the privilege of your inner thighs squishing his cheeks. Too beautiful. Could watch it for hours if you had the time.

You stretched out on your five star hotel bed, and closed your eyes, focusing on the articulation of his tongue against your need.

Steady licks devolved into wet kisses sucked between your lips. Pleasure bloomed from the place he persisted, weaving warmth from your stomach to your fingers in his loose curls. You swept his bangs from the beads of sweat plastering them to his forehead, raking them back with your fingernails on his scalp, luxuriating in the connection of your honeyed caress and his moan rumbling against your core.  “Feels so—so fucking good,” you gushed.

The weight of one of his arms let up. Smooth calluses swept to your knee, rubbing the spanse of your thigh before shaking a handful of your fat, and leaving a sting of his handprint behind. Your body rocked from him shifting under your legs. Bumpy actions led to his mouth withdrawing, and the sounds of him making out with your cunt were replaced by your heartbeat hammering in your ears. He sat up to his knees briefly, and came back to tend to you in a distracted rhythm, clothes rustling in the process. A question formed in your head, but before you could ask it, he latched his pout around your clit, and worked you into a frenzy.

Pressure prodded at your entrance. One finger glided in without trouble. He fucked you with two, then. Two crooked inside, knuckles shoved against the hypersensitive skin running slick with arousal. He strove for a response until your heels dug into his back, and he knew the sensations were linked—inside and out, mouth and fingers.

Then he took his hand away.

You were left feeling empty when there was nothing to clench around, but his devotion didn’t waver. Your muscles twitched at each immaculate lick, thighs closing in on him, too close to care about whatever else he was doing. You concentrated on yourself, arching into your hands, spoiling yourself with fluttery traces over your nipples, rolling the buds in light pinches at the enthusiasm he had for savoring you. The constant vibrations of satisfaction he hummed on your pussy were enough to have you dripping, and when his big fingers stretched you open again, pumping you full in a few thrusts along the base of nerves which burned your cheeks, the van echoed every indecent soppy smack.

And again, there was a sensation of him curving his fingers deeper than normal before his shoulder dropped, and viscous yearning flowed after the emptiness.

A repetitive soft thumping noise blended to the back of your consciousness.

Eddie committed his sense of self to making you cum. Learning the unambiguous signs of your release, and being the reason they manifested, became his purpose. Sucking ceaselessly, investing the curve of his lips, his agile tongue, his entire mouth to heed the steady motion. Fingers still coated in sticky lewdness, they returned to fuck you too. Your deep breaths turned shallow, stomach seizing on moans and releasing them in trembling gasps. Waves on waves on waves of bliss crested under your hot skin, and your voice went too tight in your throat to not drive him crazy, “Eddie, I’m gonna—!”

Groans in the lower octave of a man enjoying himself shaped your release crashing over you.

The intimacy of his tongue on your oversensitive clit was incomparable, sending you into shamelessly grinding on his mouth, huffing out tiny whimpers as your muscles braced around him. Tighter, and tighter, until the tension became too much, and you were shivering for his mercy, riding the last jolts of your climax snug against his nose. “Please,” you squirmed for less, then when he gave you less, your ankles locked behind his back through the torture of a few more.

Doses of euphoria swam in your veins. Sinking from your high, heaviness blanketed your limbs. Bonelessness seeped from top to bottom. Tingly warmth took over, relaxing you to a state of clarity, flourishing in the scratch of Eddie’s five o’clock shadow on your inner thighs. He let go of your underwear, issuing an apology for where the material cut into your skin with a gentle roam over your hip as both hands left you.

The bend where the underside of your knees draped his shoulders bounced at an impressive speed.

You peered over your curves to sate your curiosities. Eddie’s temple rested on your leg, bangs askew and hair a mess of frizz and curls stuck to the sheen on his neck. He’d yet to move from his position, laying his head where he could, face angled to admire his work, eyes heavy-lidded past the point of inebriation. Ambient sun decorated the glisten around his mouth. A gleam of drool wet his red lips, flushed darker than his cheeks, which he pressed into a slow swallow over your tender cunt.

His exhale cooled the wetness before his tongue warmed it up.

A sharp hiss jumped into a whine of his name. “S’too much,” you strained. A wrecked man, Eddie couldn’t hear you through the pride you afforded him, flirting delicate kisses on your overworked clit, surrendering to the hold you had over him, and reveling in the aftermath of making you cum. Gradually going limp, his nose mashed to your mound, mouth hung open, pushing your orgasm in lazy laps. Another cry, beg, aftershock of his name and the burden of his forehead fell to your hip crease, filling his lungs in uneven drags. The break in sensory overload was appreciated; a sigh of relief.

You sat up and dropped your legs from their mantle, intent on clearing the fuzz from your mind, but—Eddie’s elbow rubbed a fierce tempo along your calf. The motion synced with the fast-paced squelch you heard earlier, before it faded to the background along with the soft thump and rustle of clothes. All of it came together in an echo of answers. Straightening up further, you witnessed exactly how worked up he was over your pussy.

Speechless awe overrode your ability to form sentences 

In the gap framed by your thighs, his body shuddered through the fervent strokes focused over his lap. With his coveralls slacked to the tops of his thighs, he cupped his balls over the waistband of his boxers, skin bouncing in his palm, soft grip protecting their load while his other hand worked his length. Clear slick trickled over his knuckles, fingers slipping over the cream gathered at the head and guiding it down. Absolutely candid in his attraction, he fucked his fist using your arousal as lube.

In just a few twists over the blushy needy tip, he pumped the base in effort to make himself last, and peeled his sticky cheek off your thigh, looking up at you. Whiskey eyes awfully honest, awfully clear and round, he said, “You’re about to make me cum so hard.” In the vocal pause, the wet glide of his palm drove him to the edge, and his tone grew pointed as he went beyond the point of slowing down, “Like, now.”

The reason behind his direness took a moment to register, but when it did, panic flickered through you.

“Oh—shit��uh,” you stuttered. He needed a place to cum, and in your post-orgasmic daze you dropped your chin to think of your tits first, but had the wherewithal to decide against the possibility of him misaiming onto your dress. Beside you, the blanket was mostly stuck under the amps, and there wasn’t an extra rag in sight. His tank top was an option, but you thought of a better one. “My mouth!” you insisted with a gesture. “I’ll—” swallow.

Eddie was already to his feet. The van rocked with his heavy boots, wide stance stretching his coveralls tight around his legs, and undershirt pushed up out of the way. He braced one hand on the roof, cushioning his head bent to the metal in order to stand, and resumed his pace. You stuck your tongue out. The immediate pressure of his cock prodded the flat middle. Tasting yourself for the first time, the tang was surprising, but welcomed by the familiar salt leaking from his tip mixing with your spit. Warming up to the blend, you swirled sultry licks on the sensitive underside he avoided, and his tattooed stomach clenched.

Sitting pretty, you knew what he liked and cupped your tits together, gazing up at him with a submissive pinch between your brows. “So goddamn hot,” he grunted out, jaw clenched as if he were mad, stroking himself faster. His middle finger rammed over your lip on every pass. It might swell. It might bruise. “So—mmm—f’king hot.” Breaths jagged, his thighs flexed from the buckle in his knees, staggering him a step forward enough to put tension on your gag reflex. You clutched his jumpsuit into your fists. His rough groans shook through his stature. Building cusps of his release stuttered his hand flying over his cock, jerking himself off in bursts as pleasure peaked under his skin. The scrunch of concentration above his nose deepened. His stomach tightened in pulses, pecs jumping with his gasp, “Gonna,” and he was spilling into your mouth.

A moan made its way through your throat before it closed in a quick swallow. Tongue out, he trembled as he coated you some more. The first two shots were heavy, the rest followed suit, filling you for another round which you accepted with your lips snug around his fat tip. He doubled over at the achy raw sensation of your cheeks hollowing. Baby, he throbbed into you, flinching, yet giving. Allowed, you polished swirls over the throbbing head, lapping up any remains. You sat there with his clean cock in your mouth, meditating on the line drawn from the tattooed dragon wrapped around the sword pointing at the trail from his navel to the thick patch of curls at his base, which you could only reach when he was going soft, as he was then.

He tucked himself into his boxers after you pulled away, and sank to his knees. The sweat on his forehead merged with yours, oily noses pressed together, eyes hardly open as he trusted you to hold him up. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” his voice came hoarse with sincerity, anchored by the current of true longing flowing from the depths of his past. “How much it means to me, making you feel good like you make me feel good.” For Eddie, having proof of the good he could provide for you validated parts of himself he hadn't acknowledged for years. “Sorry I made it about myself in the end there. I, uh—ha—I couldn’t help myself when you were getting into it, and saying my name, ‘nd stuff.” Your bark of laughter encouraged his shy giggle, all bashful and humble.

Kissing his smile, your lips connected on the fated scents of each other after a hot and heavy day at work, and he sighed into palms fitting themselves to his jaw, mouth fixed in a taut smile as he worked through the happiness welling in his throat.

You told him, “Make me cum like that, and you can do whatever you want, Munson.” He snorted at his name, and played with strands of hair over his face, hiding his stupid grin. “I’m serious. Not that I thought you’d be bad or anything, but that was beyond good. Like, really good.” You should stop talking. “And it was flattering. Like, hot. It was really hot,” you decided, “knowing you couldn’t stop touching yourself—”

“Stop,” he complained in an embarrassed whine. Unable to take praise outside the heat of the moment, his gaze made friends with the floor while he mumbled about how he was a motivated learner and pulled out all his tricks to impress you, tucking his chin to avoid owning his skill. He dropped the act on a dime. Pointing, an overabundance of pride entered his tone once more, “You, uhm.. you christened my amp.”

“Huh?” You spread your legs to see. Utter mortification stung your nerves at the sticky stream of arousal, spit, and climax drying down the side of the plastic, wetting his piece of expensive equipment. “Oh god, I’m so sorry! Is it okay? Did I damage it—?”

“I got it,” he said with a firm hand to your sternum, laying you flat.

The low rumble in his throat drew near. Staying gentle, he parted your slippery split in a deep lick to your inner heat, running his tongue in broad strokes up the extra passion made just for him, quenching his thirst before your lunch break rendezvous was over. An appreciative kiss was bestowed on your clit before he smoothed your underwear into place. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, and helped you up. The amp was left how it was.

Eddie opened his arms, and you understood. Moving slow through the syrup in your limbs, you straddled his lap, settling yourself over his softened cock, sensitive selves brushing through clothes. He reached behind him and popped open the door. Fresh air smacked rivers of sweat, cooling and calming. You melted into the other’s embrace, bonding in the last moments of your time together.

Sun glanced off the wood paneling, casting a glow on his puffy face. Sleepy eyes, messy hair, unbearably adorable grin—the type of candid expression showing how honored he was to share the same breath in the limited space between your chests. Lovesick eyes, bed head, face he’d have to wash in the bathroom sink with hand soap. So handsome. You combed the delicate hairs at his nape up into his bun, scratching tingles through his body. The threat of being caught was ignored for one minute longer.

Traces of humor rounded his clipt tone, “I need you next weekend. ‘Kay? I don’t care what we gotta do—if we gotta send Buckley off on some island vacation—I want some real alone time with you.”

“What? Is the van not good enough?”

“No,” he answered your tease with a serious drawl, raising his eyebrows. “This was just to hold us over until then. I don’t wanna make a habit of this, ‘cause then this? This is all I’ll think about when I’m supposed to be, y’know, working. Fixing shit. Not.. picturing you with your tits out.” Speaking of the distraction, he tugged your shirt down, and you fell into a fit of giggles, snickering against the crook of his neck as you stuffed the hem in your dress, and he crawled the straps up your arms, managing to zip the back up without looking.

Of which your good mood dwindled when you collected yourself. “Aw..”

“Yeah, it’s kinda worse than I thought it’d be.. Sorry.”

Dirt, motor oil, grime. Streaks, smears, smudges. And plenty of it. The burgundy dress he adored was visibly ruined, and only half way through your clocked-in hours.

You found the silver lining. “Guess I’ll wear black from now on.”

“Black looks good on you,” he assured. You reared back to assess the damage, and he filled the stretch of his palms with two handfuls of ass, ensuring you didn’t lose balance. Always willing to be of assistance, of course. “Oh, and may I say, genius planning on your part with the car wax,” he stressed his admiration of you. “Can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself.”

Not following, you stopped scraping your nail over a patch of dust clinging to your white sleeve. “I thought you hid the car wax?”

“No..”

The next line was predictable. You would meet eyes, wait a beat, and deliver ‘Then.. who did?’ However, Eddie proved his impulsive thoughts won when devious shadows crowded the hook of his smirk, dimple arising. He opened his mouth, and you knew no good would come from it.

“I didn’t even fuck you, and you already can’t remember where you put the—Gah!” He shrieked at your pinch on his nipple, and the van rocked harder with your combined laughter, obnoxious in every organic way.

Casual wasn't an option when you wore this dress. Dialed back lost its meaning one root beer ago. The afternoon delight would live in the fibers of your unspoken language every morning when you looked at each other; coffee, cigarettes, spearmint. Goodbye normal workplace relationship, and good riddance.

~~~

Carl entered the lobby with confusion on his brow. He eyed the CLOSED sign on the door, and shuffled the bottles of wax loaded in his arms to turn it around, almost dropping them in the process. Earsplitting guitar licks and shrill vocals belonging to Iron Maiden beat on the windows to the garage, drawing his attention to the half-dressed mechanic ripping a bite out of his bologna sandwich, and flipping a socket wrench in his hand, head banging along to his music. Carl slid his side-eye away. Questions were not asked on his walk past your desk, merely serving a glance at your forkful of perceptibly congealed squash casserole which hadn’t been microwaved. Better yet, he didn’t address the canvas jacket you wore despite the visible shine dotting your forehead, nor your wheezing breaths as if you’d sat in your chair approximately thirty-nine seconds ago. He continued down the hall in silence.

The hair on your nape stood on end from someone’s gaze on you. The correct choice would be to ignore it, keep your head down, and finish the expense reports due by the time Robin picked you up. But like a good bitch, you submitted.

Waiting for you was Eddie’s cocky grin. Through the dusty glass pane indulgent curves of mischief edged his eyes into smug little crescents glinting from the secret between your bodies. Boundless amounts of vanity broadened his chest, pecs jumping as he tightened the sleeves of his coveralls tied around his waist. He peacocked in a slow turn to bend over the engine he was working on, shifting from foot to foot and leaning his hands on the car, flexing through the motion to catch swathes of shadows on the swell of his triceps leading to his hardened shoulders, strong back taking shape under his tank top. Mesmerizing. You couldn’t begin to imagine a world where you could keep the dreamy sigh out of your voice when Carl’s bewildered question arose.

“Wait—Were these here the whole time?” Judging by the plastic bounce and cardboard scramble, he had dropped one of the bottles, and when he dropped to his knees to grab it from behind a mop bucket you forgot to empty, he spotted the box of car wax you ordered at the start of the week and misplaced amongst the chaos in the storage closet.

“Oh? Were they?” you wondered. Stuffing the casserole in your mouth, the fork tines scraped across your teeth on its way out, chewing with your cheek propped on your fist. Blinking sleepily at the purply blue bruises you left on Eddie’s neck the morning before, you replied from faraway, “Weird. Thought I left them on the shelf.. Maybe the garage is cursed like Hawkins, too.”

[p0orbaby]

As We Plunge into the Ocean

summary: snapshots of your pregnancy journey with leah by your side

warnings: pregnancy and its potential symptoms, duh !

a/n: thank you for the request !

word count: 1.8k

-

You have to hand it to Leah, she's really leaned into this whole pregnancy thing. Not that you’re surprised. She’s always been a bit of a control freak. Actually, no, she’s a lot of a control freak. But now, it’s like she’s running drills for motherhood, and you’re the center of her training program.

Month 2: The Overprotective Phase Begins

“You’re glowing,” she tells you one morning. It’s sweet until you deduce she’s actually staring at the sweat on your upper lip. You’re clammy, nauseous, and you smell like day-old toast, but sure, you’re glowing.

Leah’s taken to hovering. She’s always been protective, but now, it’s like you’re made of glass, or maybe like you’re the last good avocado in Waitrose—precious and prone to bruising. She watches you closely, eyes narrowed, as if you might spontaneously combust into a pile of hormones and ash at any moment.

“You’re going to be late for training,” you remind her, trying to shoo her out the door with your tea bag as if you’re some sort of British Gandalf.

She glances at her watch, sighs, and then gives you that look. The one that says, I’m going to worry about you while I’m gone, so don’t do anything stupid like trip over air or suddenly decide to juggle knives.

“Don’t lift anything heavy,” she warns, pulling on her jacket, but making no move toward the door. “Or stand on anything taller than a pancake”

Close enough.

“Okay, Mum,” you say, deadpan. You’re both amused and slightly exasperated because Leah’s version of protective involves a lot of hovering and unnecessary life advice.

She kisses you on the forehead before leaving, like she’s blessing you for the day ahead. Or maybe she thinks you’ll forget how to breathe without her around. Either way, it’s oddly comforting.

When she finally leaves, you flop on the sofa, determined to enjoy the fleeting freedom before she comes home and starts fluffing your pillows like you’re an elderly Victorian woman with consumption.

-

Month 4: The Hormone-Palooza

Leah walks in from training one afternoon to find you sitting on the kitchen floor, crying over an empty jar of pickled onions. To be fair, they were really good onions. You’d eaten the last one two hours ago, and now the world feels like a cruel, onion-less void.

“What happened?” Leah asks, dropping her kit bag and rushing over like there’s been a national emergency.

“The pickled onions,” you sob, pointing dramatically at the empty jar as if it’s committed some unspeakable crime.

She stares at the jar, then at you, and you can see the mental maths she’s doing to figure out if this is worth her calling 999. But then she just nods, like she’s made peace with your hormonal breakdowns.

“I’ll get more tomorrow,” she says, like she’s promising to fetch water from a well three villages over.

You look up at her, eyes wide and wet. “Really?”

She nods. “Really. And I’ll get the sliced red ones this time”

You sniff, feeling vaguely stupid but mostly just grateful. “You’re the best”

“I know,” she says, deadpan, and helps you off the floor like you’re a drunk at a party who just tried to wrestle your reflection in the mirror.

But Leah doesn’t make fun of you for your hormone-fueled tears. She’s too busy making sure you’re okay, which is annoying and endearing in equal measure.

-

Month 6: The Nesting Madness

You wake up one morning to the sound of power tools. In your half-asleep state, you briefly consider the possibility that Leah’s decided to open a B&Q in your living room.

When you manage to roll out of bed, because rolling is now the only way you can get up, you find Leah assembling a cot in the nursery. She’s wearing a headlamp like she’s about to go spelunking. Her tongue is sticking out in concentration, and there’s a distinct air of “I watched this on YouTube once, so I’m basically an expert” about her.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” you ask, leaning against the doorway, trying not to laugh.

She pauses, mid-screw, and gives you a look. “I’m following the instructions,” she says defensively, even though the manual is open to a page that looks more like IKEA hieroglyphics than anything else.

You decide not to mention that the cot is currently upside down. Instead, you settle in to watch Leah’s one-woman DIY show. It’s honestly better than whatever’s on terrestrial right now.

After a good twenty minutes, she steps back, admiring her work. You both stare at the crib, which is somehow missing two legs but is otherwise a valiant effort.

“It’s... something,” you say diplomatically.

Leah sighs, rubbing her temples. “I’ll call my dad”

You nod. “Good idea. He’s got that handyman vibe”

She gives you a mock glare. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t help”

“I’m in charge of moral support,” you reply, patting your stomach. “And the baby’s supervising”

“Lazy,” she mutters, but there’s a smile tugging at her lips.

-

Month 8: The Belly and the Beast

By this point, your belly is so big that it has its own gravitational pull. Leah has taken to treating it like it’s a small planet she needs to orbit. You’re the sun, and she’s some overzealous moon that won’t give you any space.

“Do you need anything?” she asks for the fiftieth time that day, hovering like a helicopter parent who’s misplaced their child in a crowd.

“No,” you reply, staring at the TV, which you can barely see over your stomach.

“How about water? I could get you water. Or juice. Or something with electrolytes. Do you want electrolytes?” Leah’s pacing now, clearly itching to do something.

You eye her, bemused. “I’m fine, Leah”

“Are you sure? I could fluff your pillow, or I could—”

“Leah,” you interrupt, trying to keep a straight face, “the baby and I are okay. You don’t need to, like, feng shui the living room or whatever”

She stops pacing, looking slightly sheepish. “I’m just... I don’t know what to do with myself”

You reach out and grab her hand, pulling her to sit next to you. “You’re doing great,” you tell her, squeezing her hand. “Now, just relax. Let’s watch something. Maybe something without pregnant women, though. I can’t deal with seeing anyone else going through this”

Leah laughs, finally settling in next to you. “Deal”

Five minutes into the show, she’s already got a hand on your belly, her protective instincts kicking in even during a Netflix binge. You roll your eyes fondly but let her be. At least she’s not trying to rearrange the furniture again.

-

Month 9: The Home Stretch (Or, The Last Nerve)

Leah is a bundle of nerves, more wound up than a cat near a cucumber. It’s almost cute, except when she insists on triple-checking the hospital bag, which she’s already checked twice in the last hour.

“Leah, seriously, if you add one more onesie to that bag, it’s going to explode”

“I just want to make sure we have everything,” she mutters, rummaging through the bag as if it’s one of those cursed Hermione purses from Harry Potter.

“We have everything. And then some,” you assure her, eyeing the ludicrous pile of baby supplies that could probably last through an apocalypse.

She finally zips up the bag and sits down next to you. For a moment, there’s silence, and you think maybe, just maybe, she’s finally going to relax. But no. She starts tapping her foot, glancing at you every few seconds.

“Do you think—”

“No,” you cut her off, knowing exactly where this is going.

“But—”

“Leah,” you say firmly, “I love you, but if you ask me if I think the baby’s coming today one more time, I might actually lose it”

She opens her mouth, then closes it, looking like she’s physically restraining herself from speaking.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, sighing. “I’m just... I’m excited and nervous and I feel like I’m waiting for a bomb to go off, but the bomb is cute and we’re going to love it and—”

“Leah,” you interrupt again, “you’re doing amazing. But you need to chill, or the baby’s going to think it’s coming out to meet a drill sergeant”

She cracks a smile at that. “Okay, okay, I’ll try to relax”

She doesn’t. But she does stop asking you if you’re in labor every fifteen minutes, so you’ll take that as a win.

-

The Grand Finale: The Delivery Room Circus

The day finally arrives. Naturally, it’s at three in the morning because why would your body ever do anything convenient? You wake Leah up by shaking her arm like you’re waking a teenager for school.

“Leah,” you say, trying to stay calm even though your insides feel like they’re being twisted into balloon animals. “It’s time”

She’s up in an instant, wide awake like she’s just heard the starting whistle at the World Cup final. She starts pacing, half-dressed, muttering about the hospital bag.

“We need to go, we need to—oh my god, where are the keys? Do we have the car seat? Should we call an ambulance? No, wait, we’re not calling an ambulance, that’s for emergencies, this is an emergency, but not that kind of emergency—”

You grab her shoulders, trying to steady her. “Leah, breathe. We’ve got time. But we do need to go”

She takes a deep breath, nodding like she’s trying to calm down a very excitable puppy. Then she’s off, running around the house like it’s an obstacle course, grabbing everything and nothing at once. You watch her in bemusement, one hand on your belly, wondering if you should tell her that she’s just thrown her shoe into the fridge.

When she finally gets it together, the drive to the hospital is an adventure in itself. Leah’s driving like she’s on her way to rob a bank, weaving through traffic and swearing under her breath at every red light.

“Leah, the baby’s not going to fall out if we don’t get there in ten minutes,” you say, trying to keep a straight face as she mutters something about the stupidly long red lights.

Finally, you make it to the hospital, where Leah practically drags you to the entrance like a deflated balloon on a string. Once inside, she’s all business, directing the nurses like she’s running a tactical operation.

The actual labour is a blur—hours of pain, and sweat, and Leah alternating between holding your hand and looking like she might faint. But she doesn’t faint. She stays with you the whole time, even when you scream at her that she’s never allowed to touch you again.

When the baby finally arrives, Leah’s expression is one of awe, relief, and sheer, overwhelming love. You’re both exhausted, but when you see her holding your baby, all of her earlier madness makes sense.

She was never just overprotective or anxious. She was just ready—ready to love, ready to care, and maybe, just maybe, ready to stop checking that bloody hospital bag.

Maybe.

Probably not.

But you love her anyway.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Crewel-sensei…do you wear that fur coat even in hot weather? How do you not die of heatstroke…

We were robbed (ROBBED, I say) of spring/summer and winter variants of the NRC uniforms :((

If he doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will.

The classroom was sweltering, having been steadily heated by the sunshine that fed in through open windows. (Crowley had bemoaned the costs of air conditioning, then insisted that the school “conserve energy”.) An errant spring breeze was the only hope one had for relief.

Today, there was no such luck.

Crewel had shucked his fur coat off, using his chair like a coat rack to suspend it. He looked less intimidating without the extra bulk—just a handsome older man in a suit, grading tests at his desk.

He snorted, fanning himself with a few papers. “Then I would be a fool with a death wish.”

Crewel had rolled up his sleeves, revealing a rare glimpse of his forearms, sticky with sweat. His tie had been loosened and now draped like a lazy snake around his neck. His dress shirt, unbuttoned—one or two, nothing too scandalous for a school.

He reminded you of a defeated dog, damp and deflated by the oppressive heat.

“The laboratories are even worse off,” Crewel groused, wrestling with his collar. He flapped it aggressively, trying to get some cool air circulating to his skin. “With the cauldrons boiling all day! You pups cannot pay attention to the lesson.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” you agreed sympathetically.

Us students are only in there for an hour, tops. Crewel-sensei is stuck there for most of the day to instruct each section…

“Is there anything I can do to help?” you offered. “Like, get you a glass of cold water or something?”

He gave a bitter laugh. “I appreciate the sentiment, but you’ll find that I can handle myself.

Crewel glanced at the clock. He shuffled his papers together and rose, grasping his fur coat off of his chair.

“I have a meeting scheduled with the headmaster to discuss the implementation of uniforms more fitting for the season—and this nonsense about ‘saving money on the air conditioning’… I will sort him out. It would benefit students and staff alike to invest in these measures.”

“Good luck trying to get Crowley to do anything. I’ve tried, and it usually doesn’t go well.”

“Hmph, we’ll see about that.” Crewel’s smile was brimming with challenge. “I have my ways of getting what I want… and the headmaster is, or course, a man who would not dare to work against the interests of those under his care.”

Sounds like an argument is about to break out in the teacher’s lounge. Crowley is stubborn, but Crewel-sensei is the type to fight fiercely for what he believes in.

For students and staff alike, he had said.

The thought soothed you as you watched him depart. His sweat-soaked back half obscured by a cloak of fur—it was the cape worn by an unsung hero.

[incorrectbatfam]

dickie and jason headcanons pretty please

Everyone thinks Tim and Damian are a nightmare to have in a room together, but it's actually Dick and Jason. Tim and Damian still need to work through a thing or two and subconsciously pull their punches because of that, but Dick and Jason have no such thing. They've been siblings the longest and at this point it's an undisputed fact that they love each other, so there's zero limit to them being absolute menaces

They've been in a Toy Blast standoff since last year. Dick keeps speedrunning the levels and Jason keeps deleting the app from Dick's phone until he catches up

The bathroom switch in the Bludhaven apartment is outside the bathroom. Barbara kept telling Dick to get it changed and he kept procrastinating, so when Jason broke in and turned the lights off in the middle of Dick's shower, all Babs said from the other room was "Told you so"

Jason: "Alfred, tell Dick to quit breathing over my shoulder"

Dick: "Tell Jason to quit blocking the screen with his big helmet"

Alfred: "Sort it out yourselves, this is not in my job description"

Dick wrestled Jason for an Oreo but also gave him the comfier sleeping bag in the span of five minutes while they were on a stakeout

Jason is absolutely the sibling that chases Dick around the house with a knife for fun when Bruce and Alfred aren't around

Dick: "Get out of my room"

Jason, lurking outside the windowsill: "I'm not in your room"

Dick's outfits aren't truly considered nice until they pass the Jason Test, which is getting a "meh" instead of "you look like you were drawn by a fourth grader"

To brag that he got the last slice of pizza, Jason slapped it across Dick's face

The most accurate ruler in the world is the one they use to split the last candy bar (but Dick secretly lets Jason have an extra millimeter)

And the most accurate measuring cup is the one they divide the last of the apple juice with (though Jason generously gives Dick a few drops more)

The tension is palpable—even the Subway guy cutting their sandwich can feel it

Alfred sends them out to do yard work and they start sword-fighting with increasingly bigger sticks until Dick grabs a rake and Jason whips out the All-Blades

Jason: "I was here first!"

Dick: "I was born first!"

Jason: "I was adopted first!"

Dick has two Instagram accounts—Dick Grayson and Nightwing. Jason has three—Jason Todd, Red Hood, and the verified Nightwing

When the Cave is colder than usual, Jason brings Dick his favorite peppermint hot chocolate but always takes the first sip

Together they stole the bat-plane, flew to Lebanon for food, received a hefty fine after nearly colliding with a fighter jet, got a huge scratch on the side, paid someone under the table to fix it, and put it back where they found it in the span of Bruce debriefing the Justice League

Dick will go through Jason's leftovers, pick out what he likes, and leave the rest. Later he'll hear Jason walk out of the kitchen shouting "Who the FUCK took the shrimp out of my shrimp fried rice?!"

When they were kids Jason's bedtime was half an hour later than Dick's. Dick still has beef with Bruce about that

Dick is Player 1. Jason is Player 6 because the first time they played he grabbed a random controller from a box of dozen

Jason: "Help me bury this body"

Dick: "Sure"

Jason: "Also I need to delete all record of this guy's existence"

Dick: "Will do"

Jason: "And can you get me a drink?"

Dick: "Get it yourself"

When he first arrived, Jason was resistant to the idea of having an older sibling until he realized he has Younger Brother Privilege

Dick hides the remote with a sword swallowing trick and Jason hates it

They use texts for personal conversations, WhatsApp for vigilante business, and Snapchat for unhinged memery. It's like talking to 3 separate people

They also have their own text abbrevation: DTB (Don't tell Bruce)

They don't apologize, they just sulk in their rooms for a couple hours until Alfred calls them down for dinner and they forget all about it

Goon: "Who's that blue fella? Youse was fightin' real loud"

Jason: "Nightwing. He just pisses me off sometimes"

Goon: "I can take care of him"

Jason, lighting a cigarette: "Go ahead, I'll be here when you get your ass handed to you"

[waytooinvested]

Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 26

This and previous chapters are also on AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lena was perhaps unreasonably proud of the small cup of lime jello she had managed to get her hands on, and bore it back to Kara with the air of a conquering hero bringing home the holy grail.

In her defence, it had been a mission to find. At L-Corp all she would have to do would be to buzz the request through to Jess, and within 15 minutes she would have had half a dozen different brands and flavours on her desk to choose from, but here at the DEO she had to do it the hard way. It turned out that surprisingly few of the very serious field agents, scientists and tech geniuses that worked at this particular top secret government organisation brought jello to work with them for lunch, and even fewer still had it untouched at 2.30pm. In fact, this applied to exactly one person in the entire building, as far as Lena had been able to ascertain: Ms Ewa Jagoda, alien toxicology specialist, jello enthusiast, and Lena’s official new favourite DEO lab technician.

She had intended to present the jello with a dramatised retelling of her misadventurous quest, both to keep up her own distraction and to make Kara laugh, but in the time she had been gone it seemed visiting hour had opened up. On one side of the bed J’onn was talking to Kara with a paternal expression that mingled stern and concerned in equal measure, while beside him Kelly gently combed the last traces of dried blood and street dust from her hair. Across from them Nia and Brainy were good naturedly bickering over the ideal placement and wording for a leg cast signature, passing a marker back and forth between them without stopping their debate long enough to actually write anything down. It was such a familiar scene, all of them talking over each other and cracking jokes, that it took a moment for Lena to work out what was wrong with it. Then it hit her: Nia, Brainy, J’onn, Kelly, Kara, but no Alex.

She was here, in the room, but rather than being gathered in by the bedside she was standing off to one side, leaning up against the wall with Kara’s chart in her hand. She had washed the tear tracks from her face at some point since they’d talked, but it did nothing to disguise the lingering redness around her eyes or the ragged scabbiness of a lower lip chewed to the point of bleeding one too many times. She was ostensibly making medical notes, but the fact that her gaze remained fixed on one point and she never actually put pen to paper suggested otherwise. Alex was clearly not okay.

Lena glanced briefly over at Kara, the part of her heart that always tugged in that direction urging her to move towards the bedside, to claim a place beside her, take hold of her hand and never let it go. Today of all days with her fear and shock still roiling just below the surface the instinct was difficult to ignore, but Lena managed to hold back. Kara was in the midst of a game of tic tac toe with Kelly on her otherwise still unsigned cast, and seemed happy with the company of her friends. She didn’t need Lena right now, and after a second or two more of silent internal wrestling, she made her way over to the elder Danvers sister instead.

‘Hey. All okay?’ she murmured, keeping her voice low enough not to draw anyone else’s attention to the question.

‘Huh?’

Alex stopped tapping the end of her pen against her teeth and looked at Lena distractedly, blinking slowly back from whatever thoughts had been absorbing her.

‘Oh, yeah, it’s all fine. She’s doing as well as we could reasonably hope for at this stage without you-know-whats, and there’s no internal damage to speak of. She should make a full recovery.’

‘That’s great news, but I actually meant you… no offence Alex, but you look awful.’

Alex snorted.

‘Thanks a lot Luthor. Do you actually know what no offence means?’

For once Lena hadn’t actually been trying to be provoking, but Alex had clearly taken the comment as part of their usual banter and huffed back at her, giving her a little poke in the ribs with the chewed end of her pen as if the comment had been a dire insult. Lena briefly considered apologising, but it was good to see the vague, distant expression transformed into Alex’s comfortably familiar trademark Luthor v. Danvers snark-battle scowl.

If she had been talking to Kara, or Jess, or even Sam, Lena probably would have gentled her approach at this point even so. She was concerned for her friend, and wanted to take care of her as best she could in their current circumstances. But she suspected that despite her protestations Alex, like Lena herself, would not want to be coddled right now. Breaking down in a roomful of people (even people you loved) was humiliating, and there was nothing that could bring down walls so effectively as someone being sweet to you when you were trying to be strong. So Lena wasn’t sweet. She folded her arms and met Alex’s glower with an unyielding look of her own.

‘Well, I’m not wrong.’

Alex narrowed her eyes, preparing to argue, but then apparently decided she didn't have the energy for it. She hugged the chart to her chest like it might somehow shield her, and let the scowl drop.

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about, really. It just- it feels different this time, you know? I’ve been here so many times before it should just feel like another day at the office, but it never does, and somehow this one’s worse than usual. For all the… incidents… we’ve had, they’re almost always in the midst of world ending fights where a certain amount damage is expected, and most times the injured party is back to normal within a few hours. But this- it’s not meant to be like this. I know we’ll find a way to fix it eventually, but what if-’

Alex broke off, unable to say more with the risk of being overheard so acute, but Lena didn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence to know what came next. Alex was scared that Kara would hurt herself again before they found a cure to return her invulnerability, and that next time this happened she wouldn’t be so lucky. Lena was scared of that too.

‘I know.’

They stood together in silent solidarity for a few moments, then Alex nudged her again.

‘I was going to return the compliment and point out in great detail all the ways you look awful, but you actually don’t. You look… weirdly unruffled. Like, unnaturally so. And as much as that makes me want to rough you up a little to even things out, I’m guessing this is just that thing you do, and at some point it’s going to break and become a full on freak out?’

Lena could have denied it, insisted that she really was totally fine: another day, another near death experience for herself or a loved one; but at some point in their re-aquaintenceship and without her noticing it happening, things had shifted so far with Alex that bluffing would have been pointless. She knew her too well for that now. Besides, after their afternoon of breaking things together there was an element of camaraderie to their shared turmoil, and Lena found she didn’t even want to lie about it. So she shrugged.

‘That’s the plan, yes. It’s on my to do list for when I leave here, actually.’

‘On your- y’know, if anyone but you or Brainy said that I’d assume they were speaking figuratively, but-’

Lena pulled out her phone and navigated quickly into her personal calendar, smirking as she held it out to show Alex the 15 minute block labelled ‘Feel Things’ she had entered for this evening. It wasn’t serious, obviously. She might be a Luthor, but even she couldn’t plan her emotional breakdowns quite so precisely. It was more like a promise to herself, and a reminder that while she needed to keep a handle on herself right now, maybe putting everything into a box and never looking at it again wasn’t how she wanted to deal with things anymore, and at some point that meant she was going to have to feel it (later though. Much later. And alone). It had also been a whim that she had only indulged in order to kill a few extra seconds while she waited for the elevator to carry her and her newly acquired jello back to this level, and one she probably would have deleted in embarrassment given another hour or so. Now though, as Alex choked on her laughter at the sight of it, she was glad she hadn’t.

‘You actually did. Jeez Luthor, the inside of your brain must be really-’

‘Lena, hey!’

Up until now they had been conversing barely above a whisper, but at the bright peel of Alex’s laughter Kara had looked up from her game and at last realised Lena was back in the room. Her bruised face lit up with a lob-sided, swollen lipped grin that could equally have been for Lena or the vibrantly green dessert she was holding. It was painfully endearing, and like a moth to a flame Lena took an automatic step towards it, then paused and turned back to Alex.

‘Hey… if you want to get drunk about this later, I have a $2000 dollar bottle of scotch with our names on it. Just say the word.’

Alex blinked at her – she was usually the one to reach out to make plans, while Lena was the one being coaxed into them, it had never happened this way round before. She smiled, a quieter version of Kara’s surround sound beam, and a little of her weariness seemed to fall away.

‘Yeah, okay... I’ll text you.’

‘Do.’

Then Lena gave in to Kara’s magnetic pull and made her way swiftly to the bedside, jello cup held out in front of her like an offering.

‘I can’t believe you actually found this for me! I realised after you were gone that the pain meds were maybe making me a bit loopy and there was no way you could actually get jello without trekking a mile out to the nearest grocery store. But you did! You are officially the best.’

Kara balanced the pot on the edge of her cast, freeing her good hand long enough to give Lena’s a grateful squeeze, their fingers curling together so naturally that the idea of letting go seemed impossible. But then Brainy held out the spoon that he had apparently (inexplicably, since no one had told him Lena was off looking for jello) thought to bring with him into the room, and the moment passed.

It would have been ridiculous to feel a little pang of loss as Kara withdrew her warm fingers from hers, so Lena didn’t. She looked round at everyone else and used her empty hand to wave at them all instead, as if that was why it had been held out in the first place.

‘Hi.’

J’onn and Brainy responded with smiles, nods and murmured greetings, and Kelly pulled Lena into a quick hug. She was just relaxing into it when Nia followed up her friendly ‘hey’ with ‘aren’t you meant to be out of town until tomorrow though? Did you cancel your big press thing?’ and Lena stiffened.

As one everyone in the room turned to look at her, Kelly’s arm going slack around her tense shoulders and Kara freezing with a heaped spoonful of jello quivering just outside her open mouth. The question was clearly well intentioned, but Lena still wished Nia hadn’t asked it. It made it hard to keep ignoring the twisting in her insides that was determinedly trying to remind her just what a big deal this might have been for L-Corp.

‘I didn’t cancel. They didn’t need me for the product demo anyway, and I had someone step in to give my speech. It’s all taken care of... But if anyone asks, I’m currently recovering from an emergency appendectomy.’

She forced a chuckle, trying to break the tension and make it a joke, but it fell flat, and Kara dropped her over-laden spoon back into its pot with a soft, dismayed splat.

‘You told them you had appendicitis? I’m so sorry you had to do that for me when I’m not even badly hurt, and it was all my own stupid fault. I feel awful.’

‘Oh no, Kara, this one was all me.’ Alex finally abandoned her post by the wall to reassure her sister, stepping in to stand beside Brainy and casting guilty glances between Kara (bruised and now slightly jello spattered but very much alive and more or less well) and Lena (still dressed in her presentation outfit and probably wearing a fixed grimace of discomfort from all the attention, though apparently not enough of one to divert it).

‘Lena, I’m the one that asked you to come back without thinking about what else you were in the middle of. I’m sorry for putting you in a difficult position when we didn’t even know how bad it was yet.’

Lena frowned. ‘If you hadn’t told me I would be plotting where to bury your murdered body right now, as I’m sure you would me if our positions had been reversed. It was my choice to drop everything and I’m glad I did, so please, don’t worry about it.’

She meant what she said, but it didn’t diminish the unease that still writhed in her belly at the reminder of just how abruptly she had abandoned the press conference. She wondered how Jess had gotten on without her, and whether Raj and Amanda had managed the product demo as smoothly as they had in previous events. Had there been questions they couldn’t answer? Had anyone pressed the issue of Lena’s sudden non-attendance? She hadn’t talked to many people ahead of the event, but enough of the staff had seen her looking not at all like someone about to collapse with a ruptured appendix that it was possible her story was going to be interrogated.

Still, there was nothing she could do about any of that right now. She needed to focus on Kara for the moment, and when she got home later she would start on damage control. She’d call Jess to check she was alright after being thrown to the metaphorical wolves. She’d make sure her bonus was processed right away, and maybe order a muffin basket or something as an extra thank you. Then she would go through the conference footage and draft something for the press to smooth over anything that needed smoothing. Whatever had happened, Lena could deal with it. And even if the whole thing had been the worst PR disaster imaginable, she was still glad she had made the decision she had. If Kara had been more badly hurt, if she had died without her while Lena was off talking to the press, she would never have been able to forgive herself.

She did her best to focus back in on the conversation the others were having, which had thankfully moved on from Lena to the best flavour of jello (black cherry, or else anything with a bit of zing to balance out the sweetness. Strawberry was also acceptable, but Brainy’s assertion that it was berry blue was preposterous, and frankly objectionable), and what exactly it was about it that made it so satisfying to eat (the jiggles, obviously).

After twenty minutes or so Alex said that Kara was looking tired, and as her doctor she thought they’d better all leave her to rest now, so one by one the others hugged her (carefully), told her how glad they were that she was alright, then filed out the room. Lena reluctantly made to do the same, but Kara held on when she moved to straighten from the hug.

‘Stay with me a little while longer? I’m not too tired for you.’

She shuffled over on her mattress as best she could, patting the space beside her invitingly.

‘I should probably at least sit on the chair, I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You won’t hurt me. Besides, being in pain makes me kind of needy, and I want to be held… if you’d be okay with that?’

Lena felt her lower lip tremble slightly with the request. There was nothing in the world she wanted right now as much as she wanted to hold Kara, but it wasn’t going to make keeping her feelings in under control any easier…

But maybe it didn’t matter.

Maybe she didn’t care anymore.

Screw her carefully scheduled slot to feel things only once she was safely alone. Kara had nearly died today, and they both needed this too much to deny it.

Lena kicked off her stilettos, taking a beat to savour the sudden reduction of pain as her feet dropped back into their natural position and her toes wriggled gratefully against the cold linoleum. The small concession to comfort felt so good that after a moment’s consideration she followed it up by shrugging out of her blazer, untucking her shirt and loosening her tight chignon before finally easing herself into the space Kara had made for her, moving slowly to avoid jostling any injured parts. As soon as Lena’s arm was in place around her shoulders Kara relaxed into the embrace, a long, quiet breath escaping her lips in a sigh that could have been pain or relief or simple exhaustion.

‘Thank you. I know you probably have other places to be right now, but I’m really grateful for you staying here with me like this.’

Lena pulled her in a little closer, the physical contact making her feel suddenly, absurdly protective, as if she could somehow retroactively keep Kara from getting hurt just by holding her close enough.

‘Forget other places to be, I don’t want to let you out of my sight. Look what happened last time.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’m very likely to get in much trouble from here.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past you after what happened today. What if you decide hospital bed stair surfing would be a good idea next?’

It was meant to be a joke, but the tone came out all wrong and it didn’t feel like one to Lena. At this point she wasn’t sure she could put anything past this version of Kara who seemed to have all of Supergirl’s recklessness and none of her invincibility, and the thought made her simultaneously sick with worry and hot with anger that Kara could treat her life so casually. It was one thing when she was saving the world, but this risk had been so pointless.

Kara however either missed or willfully ignored her tone, taking what she’d said at face value and grinning the mischievous grin that would usually make Lena melt, playing along as if their situation was perfectly normal.

‘Now there’s an idea. I bet if you took a run up and pushed I could get up enough speed to make it all the way down without rolling.’

‘KARA!’

Lena’s voice cracked, and Kara’s smile faded as she finally noticed the tears glimmering on her lashes.

‘Hey… Lena, I’m just kidding.’

She knew that, of course. Downplaying and making light of traumatic events was Kara’s default coping mechanism, and she hadn’t even really been the one to start it this time… But still, it tore at the walls Lena was maintaining around her feelings and grated at her frayed nerves. The anger she had been trying so hard to tell herself wasn’t there stirred again, hot and desperate insider her, and she snapped:

‘Don’t. Not about this.’

She met Kara’s eyes as the expression in them finally began to lose its playful twinkle, but it wasn’t enough. She needed her to feel it, and Lena poured every ounce of sincerity she dared to express into her next words.

‘Kara... I’m furious with you for jumping off that roof. You understand that, right? I’m too relieved and you’re too hurt for me to yell at you about it, but I also can’t listen to you joke like it’s nothing. If you died it would break me. And if you died because of something so stupid-’

‘I won’t.’

Kara’s interruption forestalled the rest of Lena’s admonishment, but she wasn’t quite ready to leave it at that. She needed to hear her say it properly.

‘You won’t what?’

‘I won’t joke anymore. You’re right, it’s not fair on you. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if it was the other way round, if it was you who had-’

Kara broke off with what probably would have been a shudder if not for her sore muscles, and nudged in a little closer against Lena’s side.

‘I promise I won’t do anything like this again. I really am sorry for what happened, I swear I never meant to cause all this trouble.’

‘So... why did you do it? I know you’ve been enjoying climbing and paragliding and the rest, but you must have known how reckless this was. What got into you Kara?’

‘I’ve been asking myself that ever since I woke up here, and the answer is… I honestly don’t know. Looking back I can see that it was a stupid thing to do, but it didn’t feel reckless to me at the time. I can’t explain it in a way that makes any sense, but when I was doing it, it just felt like I couldn’t fall. Like gravity wasn’t even an issue for me, and the air would catch me and carry me where I needed to go. Up on that rooftop I felt so close to- I don’t know, something. It was like if I just went on a little bit longer, jumped a little bit further, everything would click, and I wouldn’t need to keep chasing that feeling anymore… Urgh, that sounds so crazy. Maybe I am crazy.’

Lena softened at once.

‘Oh darling, of course you’re not.’

Actually, the explanation made far too much sense, and she couldn’t even really blame Kara for it (well alright, she could. Kara was still an adult supposedly capable of rational decision making who had jumped off a damned roof. But maybe it wasn’t just her fault). After all, Lena was the one that had poked a hole in her mental barrier without understanding how it worked and let just enough of Supergirl leak out to make Kara feel like she could fly without any of the actual accompanying powers to back it up. She was also the one that had made Kara promise to wait until they’d researched proper abseiling techniques, then failed to follow through and help her find a safe outlet when it was obviously something she badly needed. And she was the one who still, after months working on the problem, hadn’t found a way to bring back Kara’s memories and physical invulnerability to make sure something like this couldn’t happen to her in the first place.

Kara must be so confused...

‘It was probably just the adrenaline high, you got carried away. I’m sure you’re not the first person to experience that, and you won’t be the last. And as long as that was your last, I won’t keep going on about it anymore. I’m just glad you’re going to be alright.’

‘Me too. And it’s definitely the last, I’ve learned my lesson.’

The remains of Lena’s anger at her best friend drained away, and she let her head fall back into the pillows behind them in relief.

‘That’s okay then.’

[phoenix--quill]

Prompt 10: First time(s)

Characters: Aaron Hotchner, Helmut Zemo, Lazslo Kreizler, Raymond Reddington, Tywin Lannister

Rating: 18+ (minors DNI)

Notes: I wanted to post this yesterday as a sort of round-up for the month but I was caught in a writers block over that Tywin story I promised (which is now over 2.000 words and people are barely boning yet!). Sooo you’re getting it today, sorry.

Anyway this is more headcanons than fics but I hope y’all will still like it and as always the ask is open if there’s something you would like to see more of.

Aaron Hotchner

In my head there’s two possible scenarios with Aaron:

Sweet and soft in a candlelit room, him constantly holding your hand and looking you deep in the eyes. This comes after a series of dates and probably a conversation about intimacy and what you’re comfortable with. It’s romantic, slow but powerful – this man doesn’t do half measures.

OR: the two of you are working together in whatever capacity and he’s trying so hard to be professional and distance himself from you but something happens and he just can’t hold himself back any more. He would probably be even more nervous in this case than if you’ve been dating: what if he read the signs wrong? He would never want to hurt you or make you uncomfortable but you’re so beautiful to him, so special. And so when something happens – maybe either of you get injured or he gets a little too jealous of how you laugh at some police officer’s flirtatious jokes – he snaps and as soon as he can manage to get you alone, he’s moves oh so close to you, cornering you. In hushed whispers, his voice going even deeper than usual, he tries to make you admit that you want him too; he would immediately back down if you said no but if you said yes, he’s all over you, all of that pent up frustration, lust and emotions, spilling out and you’re in for a ride. He would never be aggressive but he’s a strong, physically large man and could get a little forceful if he’s particularly desperate. He’s lifting you up, taking you against the wall, or pinning your legs to the mattress as he eats you out on a hotel bed.

In any case this is a man who’s all about your pleasure – and with his profiler training he’s very quick to pick up what you like. He will spend hours with his head between your legs if you let him and those thick fingers of his will have you moaning and whimpering in seconds. He’s quite athletic and I could see him lasting for a while but he’s not a several rounds kinda guy – not without a long break in between at least.

Helmut Zemo

I think I already wrote this?

After getting out of prison (and I don’t really see him getting with anyone before that but that’s another matter), he would be so touch-starved and run extremely hot-and-cold on you as he wrestles with his own pride. He’s quick to flirt and would definitely take pleasure in how frazzled he could make you with a few suggestive whispers and the smallest of touch but if you tried to turn the attention onto him? He’s shutting that down or would at least try to deflect attention back on you.

He would happily go down you, mostly (but not exclusively) for the huge boost to his ego as you flail and moan his name over and over again.

He’s prideful but not necessarily selfish in his attentions to you: he would gladly make you cum four times in half an hour, just as well as he would buy you expensive clothes and jewellery. It would make you happy which in turn strokes his pride and ego.

Lazslo Kreizler

Sweet, sweet Lazslo. He would be so nervous and ever so slightly awkward the first time. Nervous because he doesn’t want to taint you with the darkness he thinks lives in him, he wants you to remain pure, unspoiled (this would be his thoughts no matter your line of profession or background).

The awkwardness would definitely come from his lack of experience; I don’t think he’s a virgin, even when the series starts, but he’s not had a lot of physical encounters but the main thing would be the actual emotional intimacy. To actually let his guard down and let someone see him, fully, for who and what he is, that would be nerve-racking for him.

He would be sweet, though, and very gentle – again to not scare you off or “taint” you in some way. The main focus would definitely be on you and I could see him try to hide his own body for as long as possible. He would also rely heavily on his academic/clinical knowledge of your anatomy and what (he thinks) will bring you pleasure so you would possibly have to quite forcefully tell him if you wanted something more specific (read: kinky or just out of the norm).

With his physical disability, there’s definitely positions that would not be possible or at least painful for him to sustain for any period of time – which would only add to his apprehension and nervousness – and it would be up to you to reassure him that it’s not an issue. Thinking about it (which I definitely have) I don’t think missionary would be comfortable for him whereas you riding him would quickly become a favourite as it also has the added bonus of him getting to see you in all your glory.

Raymond Reddington

Even though Raymond flirts with just about anything and anyone and has a general love for beauty, luxury, and all things pleasurable, it would be a HUGE step for him to actually be with someone physically. Sure, there would be suggestive whispers in the backseat of the car, his voice barely more than a rumble in his chest, his hand gently creeping up your thigh or softly down your spine but actual sex? That could take a while. The emotional part of a relationship might come first, he’s fiercely protective and cares so deeply about most people he surrounds himself with that you could easily fall into a routine of being in a relationship but without some of the physical parts.

He would feel bad about it, though, like he’s stringing you along or holding you back. All these thoughts, though, he would keep to himself until one day he would whisk you away to some remote cabin or small apartment that he bought years ago using seven different aliases to keep it completely hidden.

Once there, though, he’s not holding back. He’s pulling orgasm after orgasm from you, whether it’s with his clever tongue, his thick fingers, or his glorious cock, from the moment you enter the premises. It’s not so much of a first time as it’s a first few days, as he takes you in every room and on every piece of furniture. Languid breaks in between rounds will be with him feeding you specially imported treats from all over the world – everything from caviar to indulgent cakes from small bakeries in countries you didn’t even know existed – or him cooking you simple but delicious meals.

In short, he will spoil you rotten and no type of pleasure is off the table.

Tywin Lannister

Sorry to say but the first time with Tywin would not be sexy (if we’re going with the common trope of reader being his wife). He wouldn’t force himself on you but would see this as a transaction and would expect you to have the same understanding; both of you need the marriage consummated and he needs (male) heirs. He would not be concerned with giving you pleasure but would make sure you’re not in undue pain and that the act was over as quickly as possible.

I think, though, that over the course of a marriage to him there would be many “firsts”: your first kiss (which would definitely not be on you wedding night), the first time he made you orgasm, the first time he spent the night in your bed instead of immediately returning to his own, etc. And all of those would be far more impactful than the first night.

[sunder-soul]

Nox Part II

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. 

Lumos

Summary: Everything comes to light eventually... Wordcount: 3.1k Content warning: explicit sex scenes, oral sex (male-receiving).

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

PART I HERE 💖

You try to stop thinking about it. You try very hard not to think about Tom’s lips in the dark, warm and soft on yours, moving hot on your neck, the sound of him exhaling through his nose as you slide your hands under his shirt, his heady intoxicating aroma, musk and bergamot, his hands holding you to him tightly as he kisses you, the burning way he’d looked at you afterwards, dishevelled and raw, his tongue his hair his fingers his warmth –

You try very, very hard.

“What’s going on with you?” Ruth frowns after you’ve zoned out during Herbology again.

“Sorry,” you sigh, frowning down at the baby Venomous Tentacula you’re supposed to be pruning. “Just tired.”

Technically it wasn’t a lie – you’d been struggling to fall asleep all week, the memory of a particular seven minutes on repeat in your mind.

“Tired?” Ruth repeats, looking supremely unconvinced.

You shrug. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Ruth leans closer. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with Riddle would it?” she asks slyly.

Your head whips around. “Excuse me?”

“He’s looking pretty tired himself,” Ruth smirks, arching a brow and shooting Tom a conspiratorial look across the Greenhouse, and you can’t help but look over, too.

She’s right. Tom’s eyes are visibly shadowed, levelled on the Venomous Tentacula in front of him, his movements reserved and muted and his expression subdued even as the boys on either side of him wrestle furiously with the fronds curling tenaciously around their pruners.

“He always looks like that,” you mutter, frowning at your own plant.

“Does he now?” she says smugly.

You give her a look of warning. “Ruth...”

“Did you really just talk in that closet?” she whispers, leaning closer.

“Yes, for the hundredth time, nothing happened,” you sigh, “we’re talking about Tom Riddle, for Merlin’s sake, he’s not exactly the type to –”

“He’s looking at you.”

Your head snaps up so fast that your neck audibly cracks – only to find Tom’s downcast gaze is still on his plant, trimming it calmly. You glare at Ruth who now looks (somehow) even more smug.

“Nothing happened, huh?” she snickers.

“You’re mean,” you grumble. “Don’t do that…”

“Do you like him?”

You press your lips together. You’ve been asking yourself the same question all week. On the one hand, you didn’t really know him that well and you could probably count the conversations you’ve had on one hand. On the other…

Tom’s fingers brush your cheek, achingly gentle as he tucks your hair behind your ear and you can’t look away from the heaviness in his eyes, his voice barely above whisper but you can hear it in your chest –

“I don’t know,” you say quietly. “Maybe.”

Ruth claps you on the shoulder sympathetically, looking significantly more sombre.

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

When you hear about the Slugclub afterparty, it takes no convincing at all to get you to agree to go – Ruth gives you an extremely knowing smirk, but thankfully she says nothing.

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

“You look nice,” Ruth grins, linking her arm through yours as you hurry towards the entrance to the party – whilst Slughorn hosted his elitist little gatherings in his office on the sixth-floor, the real fun began when he finally had one too many glasses of brandy and sent everyone to bed, only for half of his guests to sneak a few doors down into the Glanmore Peakes Corridor and invite the majority of their year to join them. “Hoping someone in particular is in attendance?” Ruth adds, shooting you a sly smile.

“Stop,” you mutter, but your face feels warm.

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

He’s not at the party. You keep looking around, but he’s not there.  You suddenly feel ridiculous for having expected him to be.  

You last a good two hours before the shouting horde of students and the deafening music gets too much. “I’m tired,” you shout into Ruth’s ear, “do you want to go?”

“I’m staying!” she bellows back over the thrum. “I’ll see you in the morning!”

You nod and duck away, weaving through the crowd and only just manage to avoid Jasper Crockett spilling his Butterbeer all over you, but the swerve nearly sends you stumbling back directly into –

“Careful,” Tom says in your ear, his warm hands catching your arms.

You freeze, your heart thudding hard. You can feel warmth on your back like his chest is almost touching you and your head is suddenly filled with that achingly familiar, ridiculously attractive aroma –

Tom lowers his hands and you turn to look up at him, a mix of nerves and excitement battling in your stomach. He’s just as refined as ever, tidy jumper, black slacks, the dark waves of his hair impeccable, and suddenly you’re desperately trying to avoid thinking about spreading your fingers through it, tugging up the jumper and pushing your hands beneath the hem of his shirt, kissing him hard, resuming where you’d left off –

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” you say loudly, leaning slightly closer so he can hear you. Again, technically not a lie… ‘hoping’ isn’t the same as ‘expecting.’

Tom’s eyes slide thoughtfully across the crowd. Up close he looks even more tired, shadows under his eyes and something drawn to his face. “I didn’t expect to be here,” he says quietly.

Somehow, despite the music and the shouts, you hear him effortlessly.

“I was just leaving,” you say, gesturing at the door.

Tom’s eyes snap to yours. You half-expect him to say something, but he doesn’t.

“I… I guess I’ll see you in class,” you add, feeling awkward.

He nods, expression blank.

Wondering exactly what you’d been expecting (and why you’d been expecting anything in the first place), you turn and speed away, feeling extremely embarrassed.

Idiot. He said he wasn’t a romantic, didn’t he? What exactly did you think would happen?

You shove the door open and hurry outside, walking as fast as you can towards the hidden staircase that led down to the dungeons so you could loop back up to the Hufflepuff common room, avoiding the prefects and the professors patrolling the main staircase. You yank the door to the stairs open when –

“Wait.”

You freeze, heart pounding, and look back over your shoulder. Tom is striding down the corridor towards you, calm and patient, and your heart skips a beat as he comes closer and closer, showing no signs of stopping.

“I’ll come with you,” he says quietly, reaching out and placing a hand above yours on the door.

“Not staying?” you ask as you nod back down towards the party, sounding so casual that you impress yourself.

Tom’s lips flicker like you’ve told a joke. “No,” he says softly. “I’ve had quite enough of parties, I think.”

“Didn’t you just arrive?” you smile as you step lightly down the stairs.

“Yes, I did,” he muses as he follows you, the faintest brush of humour in his voice. “And how exactly did you know that?”

A wave of hot panic washes through you. “I didn’t see you there earlier,” you say quickly, eyes on your feet.

“Were you looking for me?” Tom asks, still sounding amused.

You glance at him, frowning uneasily. You can’t tell if the amusement is at your expense or not – but he only looks back, expression smooth and imperviously casual. “I would have noticed you,” you say diplomatically, lowering your gaze back to the steps before you. “You’re not exactly a common face to see at something like that.”

“Neither are you,” he says quietly.

Your pulse speeds up a bit. “And yet we were both there,” you smile.

Tom looks at you and for a moment you’re trapped in his gaze, and it drags on for just a second too long before both of you look away. You both fall silent, not a word spoken as you finally reach the bottom of the stairs and sneak through the door into the dungeons. You both stop, Tom turning slightly in the direction of the Slytherin common room, and you towards the main stairs. There’s a strangely weighty silence.

“Well,” you say bracingly, forcing a smile. “Thanks for coming with me, I guess I’ll –”

“Have you been thinking about it?” Tom interrupts calmly.

You stare at him. His face half-illuminated by the dull lanterns, his expression still unreadable but with an unignorable heaviness to his gaze and you feel like you’re falling, your stomach jolting like you’ve missed a stair, leaned too far back in a chair –

It’s pointless to pretend like you don’t know what he means. “Yes,” you say quietly.

Tom’s expression shifts slightly, such a small difference that it’s barely noticeable, but he looks like he expected your answer. He looks like he knew he’d be right.

“Have you?” you ask evenly.

Tom’s dark eyes reveal nothing. In the long silence before his reply, you get the distinct impression that he’s measuring you somehow.

“Yes,” he says softly, and you hear it like he’s saying it right in your ear again. “I have.”

As you look back at him, suddenly all you can think about is the fact that the corridor is deserted except for the two of you, that most of the school is still at the party a good seven floors away and the rest will be in bed.

That there’s an empty classroom through the door inches to your right.

You take a step towards him, and another, and another, holding his gaze, watching for a reaction – but you find none. He simply watches you draw nearer, silent and even. When you stop, you’re much too close for your intentions to be misinterpreted.

“And what exactly have you been thinking about?” you ask softly. The flickering lights are casting deep shadows under his cheekbones, turning his hair blacker, his features sharper – but none of it makes his appearance so striking as the heat building in his eyes.

“I think you know,” he says smoothly, barely above whisper.

You slowly reach up and place your hand on his cheek, watching his eyes flicker before you step in closer still. You lean in close, bringing your lips mere millimetres away from his jaw, and the space between your mouth and his skin aches like it wants to be closed. “You’re not going to tell me?” you murmur, breathing him in and feeling dizzy at once.

Tom swallows, his head falling slightly as your lips very nearly graze his skin. “Are you going to try to order me around again?” he says quietly, voice impressively even.

You gently push on his cheek, bringing his face around to yours. His gaze locks onto you at once, still burning, so close –

“Are you going to pretend like you don’t want me to again?” you smile against his lips.

Tom’s eyes flicker and without a second of warning he kisses you hard. His lips move hot, unrelenting, hungrily on yours, his hands press against your cheeks and his fingers card into your hair, pulling you into the kiss even harder. You’re trying to stay balanced as dizziness, pleasure, and relief crash over you in equal measures, desperately leaning up into the kiss and trying to match his fervour, but it’s not enough.

Tom steps back quickly, his hands against your face drawing you with him without breaking the kiss – you hear the door swing open without being touched and the second you’re through it slams shut behind you. Tom immediately pushes you against it hard, crowding in close, kissing you ravenously and you can barely breath for the tightness in your chest, tangling your fingers in his hair to draw him closer. He pulls away and you barely have a second to think before his lips sear burning hot on your neck, your head falling to the side as stars erupt across your vision, and then Tom presses his teeth against your skin and you moan, barely aware of the sounds you’re making as the pleasure spreads.

Tom exhales hard, a hand dropping from your face and sliding slowly down your body – his touch is firmer than last time, hungrier, and as his lips linger on the slope between your neck and your shoulder, his fingers slip under your dress. His teeth graze your skin again, achingly delicate, and your eyes fall shut, breathing hard, your hands balling into fists of his jumper because it feels so good –

His warm palm slides up the inside of your thigh and a dizzying wave of anticipation and desire courses through you, a noise escaping your throat only to be muffled by his lips.

Tom pulls away and leans his forehead to yours, his fingers tracing along the top of your underwear making you arch reflexively. “Let me touch you,” he breathes, so close that his words sweep warm across your lips, his hand on your face gently pushing your hair back. You can only just see him in the moonlight streaming through the little barred windows around the very top of the far wall, but you see enough to recognise the heat in his eyes, the hunger and the intensity. You nod quickly and kiss him hard, and Tom pushes his fingers into your underwear.

His breathing audibly quickens when he feels you, feels your desire for him, and your eyes squeeze shut as his fingers begin to move, slowly, ceaselessly, torturously even, edging you further into the heat spreading low in your stomach.

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” Tom murmurs against your lips. “About my fingers doing this to you.”

You manage to nod, trying to keep yourself together – but as he kisses you very, very softly, a moan escapes unbidden from your lips.

“I’ve thought about it too,” he breathes, and you open your eyes to meet his dark, burning gaze, watching you. “I’ve been thinking about the sounds you made, and the way you moved –”

You choke on your moan, barely able to breathe as his fingers press a little harder and pleasure blooms and coils –

“But I’ve been wondering,” Tom whispers, his lips just barely brushing yours, “what you look like.”

“Tom,” you gasp, your hands curling tighter on his jumper.

He kisses you hard, and as you desperately kiss him back as the heat in your core swells, head spinning, arms sliding around his neck as you spiral out of control –

He pulls away right as it hits you, as your head falls back against the door, gasping as his fingers coax you through it. When you can finally open your eyes, Tom’s gaze is ravenous again, roaming across your face hungrily, insatiably.

Your hands flatten on his chest and you push him backwards, stepping with him as surprise falters on his face.

“What are you –” he says quickly, but you push harder and the backs of his legs hit one of the empty chairs behind him. He falls into it, the breath knocked from him as he looks up at you in shock.

You take his face in your palms and kiss him hard, bending to him, stepping in close – Tom’s hands come up seemingly reflexively and linger on your waist, but the second he tries to pull you closer, you break the kiss. He stares up at you, visibly stunned, unsure what you’re doing – and then you kneel.

Tom’s eyes widen as you lower to your knees between his legs, as your hands curl under the bottom of his jumper, push it up forcefully, tug his shirt free and exposing a strip of his pale stomach –

“Your turn,” you whisper, leaning forward without hesitation and pressing your lips against the warm skin you’ve revealed.  

Tom’s breath stutters, his hands going to your face as your lips graze his hipbone, and you look up at him as your fingers undo the button of his trousers, your mouth restless against his skin. Tom’s eyes flicker in exactly the way you’ve been daydreaming about and you don’t bother holding back your smile as you pull down his zip.

“You’re…” Tom says, but he trails off because you’ve pushed down his trousers, your lips not leaving his skin, holding his gaze the whole time. He’s hard but you press your mouth instead down the angle of his hipbone, gently grazing your teeth against his skin and watching his stomach muscles flex with strain.

Tom swallows, his lips a hard line before he tries again. “You’re teasing me.” His voice is hollow.

“I am,” you murmur against his skin, and when your lips start to trail back down his stomach, you hear Tom’s breathing quicken, his hands on your face restless as you inch lower, closer –

You look up at him as you run your tongue up underneath his whole length from base to tip and then you wrap your lips around him. A sound half-way between a choke and an exhale slips from between his lips as his eyes fall shut and his head cants forward, and you push a little deeper, arousal carrying you, letting your tongue work as you move slowly, as Tom’s fingers slowly curl tighter in your hair like he doesn’t realise that he’s doing it.

You take your time, letting your own eyes close, listening to his stilted breath to guide you, feeling his hands get tighter and tighter, and soon he starts holding you there more firmly, his head lifting and his dark eyes opening.

“You… should stop,” Tom manages to say, but even as he says it he’s pushing his fingers through your hair, staring down at you between his legs as you look right back with him in your mouth.

You smile and hold his gaze as you let your tongue curl around him and sink your lips back down. Tom’s eyes flicker and fall shut again, his breathing ragged and getting faster and faster as his grip in your hair goes so hard it hurts, and then suddenly you’re swallowing around him as a choking breath falls from his lips.

When it’s over, you sit back on your knees and assess him.

Tom’s chest is rising and falling a little more than usual as he tries to slow his breathing, his eyes still shut, his hair a mess and slightly stuck to his forehead where a slight sweat has formed. You’re leaning up and brushing it to the side without thinking, and his eyes open at the feeling of your fingers against his skin. You freeze, staring at him, your hand lingering on his cheek like you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t.

“Too romantic?” you ask slowly, tilting your head to the side a bit. There’s a bit of humour in your tone, a safeguard, a way to turn it into a joke and disregard it if he wants to –

“No,” he says quietly, and his hands come to rest against your cheeks as he leans his forehead on yours again, still kneeling between his legs. “No, it’s not.”

 ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

TAGLIST: @jujugentle​ @original-coffee-addict​ 

Feel free to message me to get tagged in sequels/be on my permanent taglist!!

PART I HERE 💖

[foli-vora]

happily ever after

A/N: inspiration hits in the most bizarre of places for me lately. I do apologise for my grammar/spelling—I’m writing this half drunk in the car on the way home from a night out in the city hahah. I’ll check it in the morning. (disclaimer so people don’t think I’m not taking the pandemic seriously: where I live in Australia, we’ve achieved a ‘covid-normal’ after a very long, very intense lockdown - everything is mostly back to normal, or as close to, as we’re down to 2 active cases and they’re both in quarantine)

Pairing: Marcus Pike x f!reader

Warnings: alcohol, reader’s drunk, Marcus is a complete sweetheart that would absolutely look after you like the certified soft boi he is. I just want him to look after me okay?? 

+

“Mmm... Mar—Marcus! Baby—my love... I—fuck—you’re so pretty.”

His chuckle is warm in return, and full of fond amusement. You whine gently when it floods your ears, dancing a little more on your aching feet. God, you missed him. When was the last time you saw him? Four... five? hours ago? Much too long for your drunken mind to wrap it’s head around.

“Are you ready to come home?”

You gasp, leaning on the railing outside the club, “Will you be there?”

He laughs again, and you hear his keys jingle in the background as he picks them up, followed by the soft thud of a door closing. “I will.”

You’ve been together for almost two years, living together for one and half of those years, but that seemed to be yet another fact your mind was having trouble remembering at this point.

“Then yessss. I miss you. Do—do you know that?”

“No,” he replies softly, smiling as he slides into his car. Of course he knew that. He knew you loved him more than anything, but hearing you drunkenly slur it so sweetly just had his heart fluttering in his chest.

“Well you should know that! That’s my—that’s my fault. I should tell you every day. I will. From right now, I’ll—tell you that you’re pretty and that I—that I miss you and that—shit—I feel sick.”

“Hold on for me, honey. I’ll be there soon.”

“Oh yay! I’m gonna give you a big, big kiss.”

“Yeah?”

“Huge. Um, honey, can we please get food?”

Your heart beats wildly when he chuckles again.

—

There’s a step at your door.

Since when was there a step?

It was lucky Marcus had such quick reflexes - you weren’t even halfway to the floor before he’s snatching you up, arms quickly wrapping around you and saving you for from meeting the hard ground. Your stomach starts to hurt from giggling so hard. 

His hands are on you when you eventually make it to and stumble up the stairs, staying just one step below you the entire way just in case you slip, which you do. Several times.

He eventually gets you into the bedroom, hands gentle as they lead you into the room and perched on the end of the bed.

“Come here, baby.” He kneels in front of you, hands reaching for your ankles and gently removing the strappy heels from your feet. His fingers dig into the sore flesh and you groan quietly, falling back onto the mattress and closing your eyes in bliss. Whoever invented heels needs a serious talking to...

“Roll,” his hands gently ease you on your side and you hum tiredly as he pulls down your zipper and gently works your dress off of your frame. You’re probably making it hard for him to undress you, laying on the bed and unmoving, heavy with drunken exhaustion, but if you are, he doesn’t comment on it or get impatient with you. 

The patience continues, even when you put up a half fight when he tries to wrestle a t-shirt onto you. He pins you easily, of course, and at your playful cry of defeat, he melts over you with a smile and kisses your cheeks while you laugh hysterically at the feeling of his beard scratching your skin.

The pillows feel fucking heavenly when you eventually move yourself around on the mattress at his gentle coaxing. What were they made out of - marshmallow? He laughs at your comment while pulling the sheets up, and tucks them softly around your frame before perching himself on the edge of the bed beside you.

He starts to dig around your side table, making a quiet noise of success when he finds whatever he was looking for. He pulls out your makeup remover and some cotton pads, and gets to work, tongue peaking out and brows pinching in concentration when he soaks the pads, careful not to make a spill.

You smile sleepily at him as he rubs a pad across your skin, softly rubbing at your eye until it turns black from mascara. He repeats it with the other eye and a fresh pad, before going once, twice, and once more for good measure, around your face and making sure it was thoroughly clean.

Lifting a heavy hand, you trail your fingers along his neatly trimmed beard, chest tightening when he turns his face into your touch and kisses your palm, curved nose brushing lightly against your skin.

How could one person make your heart hurt in such a wonderful way?

“I love you.”

He grins shyly, brown eyes gazing at you softly and tearing at your insides with a flood of overwhelming adoration. “I love you, too.”

“I’m so sleepy.”

“I know, honey, but first—hydrate.” He holds a glass out and grins at your scowl of disgust, gently pulling at the blankets you had hidden your face with. “I know, but you’ll thank me in the morning.”

“You’re lucky you’re so pretty, Agent Pike.” You grumble, moving to sit up, and opening your mouth when he brings the glass to your lips. It’s cool, and surprisingly exactly what you need? It’s gone before you even realise. 

You don’t even realise you’re eyes are closed until a warm body is wrapping around yours, and then you’re blinking tiredly up at Marcus as he makes himself comfortable cuddled up to you, fluffing his pillow before letting his head rest on it with a content sigh.

“Hey,” you whisper, catching his attention immediately. “Guess what?”

“What?” He whispers back, fingers softly caressing along the side of your face and across your nose. Your legs tangle with his under the sheets, and you soak in the immediate heat his body provides, melting into the soft mattress and the feeling of strong arms winding around your waist.

“We’re gonna live happily ever after.” Your eyes close and you pass out instantly, completely oblivious to the look of utter delight that brightens his face. He cuddles you closer, lips pressing gently to your forehead as he watches your face relax and breathing deepen.

“We sure are.”

+

Tags: @anu-simps @seasonschange-butpeopledont @withasideofmeg @you-got-me-starry-eyed​

[novelconcepts]

FOUND IT!!! Consider this an official ask for 3 and 14 combined! #wheee

smiling into a kiss and play wrestling

Having a best friend again is strange. She’d gone so long imagining the phrase as a sort of neon sign staked firmly in the past: Best Friend, already spoken for. Eddie had always been it; no other volunteers need apply. 

But Eddie’s gone now, out of her life, living out wherever his might go in another country altogether, and Dani finds the position has--slowly, without really planning for it--been filled once more. Not that she planned for it. Not that could ever could have. 

She didn’t come to Bly looking for Jamie, and if you’d told her the gardener who refused to so much as meet her eyes, much less introduce herself, would become the most important person in her life--well. Life is full of surprises.

There is so little of Eddie in Jamie, she sometimes wonders how both could have occupied the same shape in her heart. Sometimes wonders how Eddie--who prized cleanliness, routine work hours, dinners at his mother’s once a week--would look at Jamie, if he could see her. Jamie, all tousled hair, happiest with a cigarette between her teeth and both hands buried in soil. Jamie, who has never kept a nine-to-five, never craved Sunday afternoons with her parents, never looks at Dani like she expects firm posture, bright smile, neat clothes. 

They couldn’t possibly be more different--and yet, somehow, Jamie is her best friend. Unfair to think it, maybe, but she might be the best friend Dani’s ever had. Her sense of humor is dark, her vocabulary wallpapered with curse words and shorn letters; she smells of nicotine and sunscreen, dresses in wrinkled flannels and torn jeans. Where Eddie looped an arm around her shoulders, Jamie nudges her with bony elbows; where Eddie pressed his lips to her temple, Jamie leans carefully away. Different, in every measure. 

And it isn’t that she likes Jamie more. That wouldn’t be fair--not after so many years in Eddie’s company. It’s just that when Jamie looks at her, eyes bright, dirt smudged on one cheek, sometimes, she feels...

“You’re thinking,” Jamie observes. She doesn’t say it the way Eddie would--the way he always pointed out when she was clenching her fist under the table, or picking at her nails, his voice edged with concern bordering on condescension. Her voice is light, her lips curved in a small smile. 

Eddie never quite smiled at her like that. Or, if he did, it didn't pluck the same chord in her stomach. Not that that matters. Not that that affects the sincerity of friendship. 

Not that it’s making her feel weirdly flushed this afternoon. 

“Am I not allowed to think?” she asks. The sun, she thinks, is responsible for the goofy smile on her face. The heat of the day, which stretches on and on the way only early July knows how.

“Not arguing,” Jamie says. “One of us ought to.”

She’s on her knees, pulling weeds, her face shining with sweat. There’s something about days like this--afternoons where the kids are occupied helping Owen bake cookies, leaving Dani to nurse a glass of water and pleasantly-meandering conversation--that feels almost too good to be allowed. Eddie would have wanted to do something with a day like this: hike, or clear up the yard, or go visit family. 

Jamie, on the other hand, pushes to her feet and surveys the bed she’s spent all day working. “Think that’s good enough for a break. Here, budge over.”

Dani obediently scoots to the edge of her seat, amused when Jamie flops down half in her lap. A year of working at the manor, and Jamie’s gone from a woman who couldn’t make eye contact to save her life to this: gangly limbs tossed haphazardly over Dani’s, sweat-slick skin sticking where it lands against Dani’s shoulder. It’s too hot for cozying up like this, but she can’t seem to convince herself to push Jamie away. 

“There,” Jamie sighs, tilting her head back against the plastic of the lawn chair. “Christ, feels good just to breathe.”

“You breathe,” Dani says, “and I’ll think. Together, we make an almost-functional human being.”

“Almost,” Jamie says wryly. Her hand loops around Dani’s, teasing the sweating glass out of her grip long enough to take a sip. Dani nudges her. 

“Could get you one of your own, if you ever learned to ask politely.”

“Don’t like me polite,” Jamie says with a shrug. “My brand is prickly-yet-charming, and we both know I’m your favorite for it.”

“Technically,” Dani corrects, “Flora is my favorite. Mainly because she doesn’t make me remind her to say please.”

“Please,” Jamie says without missing a beat, “keep pretending you aren’t captivated by my winning personality.”

Dani laughs. “Oh, is that what I am?”

“Mm.” Jamie takes another sip, reaches over her to set the glass down on the table, closes her eyes. “S’what you were all pensive about just now, I’m sure. How entranced you are with my witty banter.”

“Entranced,” Dani repeats.

“Beguiled. Mesmerized. Drunk with adoration.” Jamie’s face is pink, a bead of sweat neatly lining her upper lip. Dani only realizes she’s staring a fortunate beat before Jamie rolls her head to the left, peering at her with lazy amusement. “Go on. Tell me how much you love me.”

“Love how ridiculous you can be, maybe.” And how sweet, and how unquestioningly soft, though she doesn’t see a need to put that into words--or a way to do it without sounding entirely out of her head. The heat, she thinks, is absolutely getting to her. 

It’s the heat, making her want suddenly to slide an arm between the plastic back of the chair and the cotton of Jamie’s tank top, pulling her even closer. The heat, making her want to displace the normal back-and-forth ease of friendship with something else entirely. 

She’s had a best friend before. She’s never quite wanted to do with Eddie what she is, more and more, thinking about with Jamie curled up beside her. 

Distract, she thinks, because Jamie is still watching her with that half-lidded expression she gets when the sun is particularly bright, the day’s work has been well-tended, and Dani’s shoulder is a cushion beneath her head. More and more, it’s been feeling like a dangerous sort of moment, Jamie’s face lingering near the crook of her neck. Jamie’s breath coasting down the neckline of her dress. Jamie’s smile sweeter than should be allowed, given the grumpy way she slouches around the grounds. 

“Thinking,” Jamie says, her voice almost soft. Dani shakes her head. 

“It’s not illegal.”

“Is,” Jamie says, “if you’re gonna just stare at me all googly-eyed while you do it. C’mon, what gives? Is today some holiday I’ve forgotten?” She sits up a little straighter, her face comic in its sudden concern. “Shit, Poppins, it’s not your birthday.”

She almost wants to say it is, just to watch Jamie turn fascinating new shades of maroon. “No--just--it’s hot.”

Jamie sags back with palpable relief. Her arm is freckled, Dani notices, beyond the norm; the summer is drawing all sorts of secrets from her skin, and it’s suddenly painfully tempting, the urge to trace her nail along these newfound constellations. 

Distract, she thinks again, more urgently this time. Without thinking it through, without considering the consequences, she dips two fingers into the glass of water and flicks the still-cool moisture directly into Jamie’s face. 

Jamie, to her credit, hardly jumps. She’s just blinking at Dani like their conversation has taken an unanticipated left turn into another language, water dripping from the end of her nose. 

“Okay,” she says. “If that’s how we’re playing it.”

Her arm reaches across without hesitation, replicating Dani’s playbook: two fingers dipped, flicked, landing back in her lap as Dani sputters. 

“You got me in the eye.”

“Cooled you off, though?” Jamie asks, almost politely. Dani laughs, and suddenly, it’s war. There’s barely enough room on the chair for the both of them to sit like adults, much less to squirm around, hips knocking, legs tangled up as the remainder of the glass finds its way--droplet by droplet--into Jamie’s face, down Dani’s neck, sometimes missing entirely and disappearing into the sizzling summer air. 

Dani is ultimately the victor, an upset decided when she grasps the glass--now containing maybe two inches of water--and upends it directly over Jamie’s head. She’s laughing almost too hard to breathe, particularly when Jamie gives a firm shake of her hair, looking like a rumpled dog after a bath.

“That,” Jamie says in a low, dangerous tone, “cannot stand.”

She’s up before Dani can stop her, sprinting toward the garden hose uncoiled in the grass. Dani twists in her seat, knees drawn up to her chest, arms extended.

“Don’t you dare!”

“All’s fair,” Jamie says, almost apologetically, depressing the trigger. 

They are, Dani notes somewhere in the back of her mind, full-grown adult women. They are thirty years old, gainfully employed, responsible for the upkeep of an entire house and the well-being of two small children. 

They are also now chasing one another across the lawn, Dani sopping wet, Jamie laughing so hard she nearly trips over her own feet taking a corner too fast. The hose is growing more and more tangled by the minute as she dashes in a zig-zag pattern, periodically firing a jet of water over her shoulder, and Dani has no prayer of catching up--not with her shoes squelching, slipping on wet grass, her lungs clenched around a soundless jag of laughter. 

Adults, she thinks, as Jamie makes the insurmountable error of trying to bolt past her like a quarterback dodging a tackle; she makes a successful leap over the tangled hose, but forgets at the last second to factor in the edge of the lawn chair. Dani has her around the middle before she can dart out of reach, the both of them tumbling over in a cackling heap of grass clippings, puddled hose water, freckled limbs. 

They’re rolling, shouting wordlessly around giggles, Dani struggling to pry the hose out of Jamie’s hands. It’s harder than it looks; Jamie is small, but strong in an annoyingly wiry sort of way. Even when Dani manages to get her onto her back, the water is inescapable, dousing in short jets across her chest, down her arms, pooling awkwardly between them. 

“You are,” she laughs, “a child.”

“Could a child do this?” Jamie replies, jerking upward at the hips with unexpected force. Dani rocks up with her, one hand grasping the sodden front of Jamie’s shirt for balance, and drops back down without budging from her seat. Jamie releases an oof as her back makes rough contact with the ground again, giggling too hard to successfully shove Dani over.

“Yes, actually, I think a child would be exactly that effective,” Dani informs her. Her body has never felt quite this alive, her muscles aching with the effort of an unplanned run. Jamie, chest heaving for breath, is practically glowing. 

“Just want to remind you,” Jamie says, “you did start this.”

“Does that mean I win?” If she hasn’t, she can’t imagine it would feel any better than this: straddling Jamie’s hips in the soft grass, cool water seeping down her back, her dress sticking pleasantly to warm skin. Jamie allows the hose to drop from her grip at last, her head tipped back, eyes closed.

“Call it a draw.”

“What if I wanted to win?” She slides a hand up without thinking, pinning Jamie by the wrist before she can decide to take up her watery weapon again. Jamie draws a deep breath, face flushed, grinning. 

“Guess you’d have to work harder for it.”

Children, Dani thinks--but suddenly, it doesn’t feel childish anymore. Suddenly, she’s overly aware of her dress rucked high around her thighs, of how short Jamie’s shorts really are, how her body is considerably less obscured than usual with her shirt plastered to her frame. Suddenly, she’s aware of Jamie’s hand flexing against the grass, pinned beside her head with a loose enough grip to break--though Jamie isn’t breaking it. Isn’t even trying.

Jamie is, instead, gazing up at her with hair mussed, eyes bright. Jamie, whose free hand is sliding up to rest along the curve of Dani’s hip. 

She’s Dani’s best friend, like he was, but this doesn’t feel like it belongs in the same category as late-night stories swapped by the fire, or letting each other steal the vegetables the other doesn’t care for off their plate. This feels like a category all its own: the way Jamie licks her lips as Dani’s head lowers, the way Dani’s fingers graze the freckles painting her wrist on the way up to notching her palm against Jamie’s. 

Her hair is wet, and Jamie’s face is sweaty, and there’s so little romance to the whole picture, it takes her by surprise. She’s always thought there should be talking before a thing like this, at least--a decision made on equal footing. 

“I don’t have to,” she says, even as Jamie is saying, “Do you want to?”

Children would laugh again, go back to wrestling, go back to how it all felt just a few minutes before. They are not, Dani notes as she lowers her head--as Jamie shifts up at the shoulders to meet her--children. 

She’s hyper-aware of all of it now: the sun beating against her shoulders, the hand Jamie is using to grip the back of her dress, the exact angle of Jamie’s mouth parting beneath her own. Her tongue is gentle, brushing Jamie’s, and the sound Jamie makes into her is anything but. 

She’s smiling, she realizes, so hard, it hurts--that deep, wonderful hurt of laughing too hard for too long, of slipping in the grass and landing in a heap with someone who couldn’t help catching her on the way down. She’s grinning into Jamie even as she’s kissing her, even as she’s letting her body stretch out to press Jamie more firmly against the damp ground. 

And Jamie, fingers curled between her own, making soft sounds of appreciation into the kiss, is grinning right back. 

“This was your plan all along,” she accuses, brushing the hair from Dani’s eyes when they break for a breath. “Awful lot of work, for a kiss.”

“All’s fair?” Dani suggests--and she genuinely, honestly cannot decide which she likes more: the way Jamie kisses, or the way Jamie kisses and laughs at the same time. All of it, she feels, goes a country mile beyond best friends. All of it goes a country mile beyond anything she could ever have dreamed up, walking away from him the way she did. 

It couldn’t possibly be more different.

[julesnichols]

Prompt: Mel/Ben “we should skinny dip.”

NSFW. Post freeze pre season one (earlyish days).

Crackfic as well as smut.

Under the cut.

There were definite perks to both running the train and being friends with Jinju, who knew the first bit too, Melanie mused. She’d managed to convince the woman to leave her and Bennett alone with their food in the aquarium for a bit. Jinju had even faked a technical issue preventing anyone else from walking in for good measure. Melanie knew she’d owe her one, but she definitely didn’t mind. It was rare she’d allow herself to take time to do things like this these days, but Bennett had seemed worried about her for weeks and she’d finally been able to make time to relax. She knew he wouldn’t have minded if relaxing didn’t involve him, but she liked pretending that things were normal sometimes. That they were just two people on a date, no apocalypse to be found.

A few cups of sake in, their dinner finished, half an hour or so left until Jinju came back, and Melanie and Bennett found themselves resting on the floor in the tunnel under the aquarium, their backs to it.

“We should skinny dip,” Melanie declared, finding herself somewhat bored.

“Mel,” Ben lolled his head towards her, “We’re both drunk. That is a terrible idea.”

“Tipsy,” Melanie insisted, “I can just go in on my own.”

Bennett rolled his eyes at her, exasperated, but he was the one to stand up first. He extended a hand to her, pulled her up, and reluctantly dragged her to the back where they could enter the tank.

They undressed in silence, Bennett unzipping the dress Melanie was wearing (one of only two that she owned) to let it pool at her feet. She turned, smirking at him and the way he’d clearly been ogling her. It shook him out of his trance, and he removed the rest of his clothes quickly to follow her as she climbed up to enter the aquarium.

Melanie was no diver the way Jinju was, but she managed to sink herself a bit. Enough, at the least, to get her body used to the temperature of the water. When she came back up, Ben was watching her in quiet amusement. She couldn’t help herself, splashing him. She swam closer, hands on his shoulders, and then pushed down—

“Hey!” he spluttered when she let him back up.

She laughed at the disgruntled look on his face, biting her lip, “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”

He didn’t reply with words. Instead, he dunked her back, though he kept her submerged for a shorter period of time. When she came back up she found herself half wrestling with him. His arms wrapped around her, holding her still as their legs tangled together.

“Hey,” he murmured, a low sound that made her shiver.

“Somebody’s happy to see me,” she taunted, registering his erection brushing against her thigh.

He raised his eyebrows at her, “Can’t help it when you’re naked and wet against me.”

Her eyes widened, delighted, “There’s other parts of me that are wet, if you know what I mean.”

Bennett snorted, “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“You did,” she grinned playfully, wiggling her eyebrows as she whispered conspiratorially, “You know… I’ve never had sex in water before.”

“Really?”

“Mhm,” Melanie bit her lip, nodding sagely, “Well. Okay, so I had sex in a bathtub. Once. And we’ve had sex in the shower, too. But I’ve never done it in a pool before.”

“I’ve never fucked anyone in an aquarium either,” he admitted.

“Want to change that?” she asked.

“Is that safe for the environment?”

“People used to fuck in lakes and rivers and the ocean and shit all the time before the freeze,” Melanie pointed out.

“Okay, one,” he snorted, “‘And shit’? Are you sure that you’re just tipsy?”

“Yes,” she rolled her eyes at him, “What’s number two?”

“It’s a far more delicate ecosystem, Mel,” he pointed out.

“If you don’t want to then we don’t have to,” she reminded him gently, “But if you want to and you’re just being a chicken…”

“I am not scared to have sex in an aquarium with you!” he declared.

“Prove it,” Melanie goaded him.

He managed to maneuver them against the wall of the tank, pressing her against it. His mouth found hers, finally, as she took his already hard cock in her hand and lined him up. They broke apart, both moaning, as he slowly entered her. He gripped one of her thighs to bring it around his waist. Bennett wasted no time moving, fucking her good and fast. Melanie wrapped her other leg around him, too, arms around his neck for leverage. She gasped into his ear with every thrust, nails scratching his upper back.

Alcohol tended to make her horny and she knew she wouldn’t last long, but she was pretty sure that that was mutual. She quickly lost track of time, relishing the feeling of Ben buried inside of her, both of them tangled together so closely that every hard thrust reminded her of it. She was so close, letting one of her arms go from around him so that she could snake it between their bodies to touch her clit to get her there faster, and it wasn’t long before she came with a shout of his name, body jerking from the intensity of it. He followed soon after, groaning her name into her ear as he fell against her, both of them panting heavily.

Melanie was euphoric, lost in the afterglow, and was just about to ask Ben if he wanted to take her home and maybe do this properly, when a voice rang out—

“MELANIE CAVILL!” Jinju shrieked, and both of them jumped, Bennett slipping out of her.

Their panicked eyes met; Melanie hadn’t even known that Jinju could shout like that. Trembling with sudden nervousness, she managed to squeak out, “…Yes?”

“Get out of my aquarium!”

They wasted no time doing as ordered. Apparently Jinju could yell, and apparently she was scary when she did. Jinju met them with arms crossed when they came out, heedless of the fact that they were both naked. Bennett offered her a sheepish grin as she tossed towels at both of them. Melanie’s smacked her in the face, but they both dried off quickly before wrapping them around themselves.

“Jinju—” Melanie started.

Jinju cut her off, “You know, when I let you two have the car, I didn’t expect to come back to the two of you fucking in the fish tank. I definitely did not need to know what you sound like when you come. Plus, it’s a delicate ecosystem, Mel.”

Melanie turned to Bennett then. Their eyes met and she snorted, breaking into laughter. After a moment he joined her, but when he looked at Jinju he quickly sobered under her intense scrutiny.

“Out. Now,” she hissed.

“I’ll make it up to you!” Melanie promised as they both gathered up their clothes.

They ran, relieved to find that the next car was empty enough to get dressed fast. They locked eyes again, and laughed. The adrenaline was wearing off, and they both found that the alcohol was, too.

“Well,” Ben started.

“Well,” Melanie agreed.

“That could have gone better,” he scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Yes,” she nodded slowly, “It could have.”

They both laughed again. They knew that this meant they’d never be allowed unsupervised in the aquarium car again.

But damn, if it wasn’t worth it.

[olivinesea]

A Mixed Blessing

prologue: we’re better than this

a/n: A rather soft start. No warnings for this bit. Having a real weird day so I honestly can’t gauge this at all. Enjoy? ~1.3k

An unseen hand fumbled with the half dozen locks on the door, scraping the key uselessly against the metal, locking some that had already been unlocked. This had been going on for several minutes with minimal progress made. Hotch and Emily were sitting at the dining room table watching the struggle. He almost stood up to help, the sounds vibrating through him creating a hum of anxiety. Just as he had lost his patience, the door burst open. Jack stood there, one hand on the door frame, breathing hard as if he’d just battled a giant. In some respects he had, finally overpowering the beast of his father’s paranoia. It had been more than a decade since Foyet’s attacks but Hotch still engaged each lock religiously whenever he closed that door. He only left the chain off when he knew Jack would be coming home.

No one moved as father and son stared at each other, Jack’s eyes red and unfocused. The fact that Jack should have been home two hours ago was not lost on any of the room’s occupants. Hotch pressed his lips together, his mouth a grim barrier trying to hold back the many things he wanted to say. None of them would do any good and he knew it. They’d had this conversation over and over, the scolding and the threats. He was angry but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t understand. Still, this behavior scared him and he wished he could convince Jack that he just wanted him to be safe, wanted to spare him from the things he knew were waiting just along the edges of the life he was sinking into.

“You’re late,” was all he managed to get out.

Jack huffed in response, swinging the door closed with a little too much force. Emily winced at the noise, the crash ringing in the early morning hours. Hotch stood up, not sure what he meant to do but impelled to move. Jacks eyes darted from the chair that scraped along the floor with the movement back to his father’s face. He’d never had a reason to fear his father, the man had never even raised his voice at him. He couldn’t make out the emotion there through the chemical fog in his mind. For a brief moment, he was a child again, studying his father’s expression for hints to explain the sadness he perceived but was never vocalized. Something to help him understand the secrets he felt hanging heavy around them but held so tightly he rarely got a glimpse of what they contained.

“Did you hear me?” Hotch sounded stern. At a loss for how to proceed, he switched to his work voice.

This shook Jack from his meditation, snapping him back to the present and reminding him of just how irritating he found his father’s refusal to treat him as an adult, to treat him like he was capable of handling difficult truths. He’d been there too after all, hadn’t he? Who did his dad think he was protecting, pretending the ghosts haunting them didn’t exist?

“Whatever,” his only response, rolling his eyes as he stalked down the hallway. He slammed the door to his room as well, just for good measure.

Hotch sighed heavily, sinking back into the wooden chair. Emily frowned, she’d seen him tired, seen him injured, seen him in his worst moments and yet this, this defeat was hard to see. She wanted to lighten the mood. Surely it wasn’t so bad as he was making it out to be. The kid came home in one piece, certainly better than she had many times in her youth.

“C’mon, you remember being a kid,” Emily said playfully, trying to soothe him.

“I do,” Hotch replied, his tone dry. He pressed his fingertips against his temples, willing the looming migraine to pass him by this time.

Without being able to see his face she thought they’d moved past the tension. “A little partying never hurt anyone,” she teased.

He raised his head and gave her the look. His glare cut through her lightness, reminding her how scary he could be at times. He felt bad when he saw her shoulders slump. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know, it wasn’t like he’d ever been one to share. What Emily knew, what anyone knew, had only been picked up through the odd slip, a picture built completely on inference and conjecture. He hesitated, feeling like he needed to make up for his behavior. She was only here because she was his friend, because he’d asked.

There had been one too many of these late nights, anxiously waiting on his sullen child to return (or not) and in a weak moment he had called her. Had asked her to come over without explanation and she had, no questions asked, able to tell just from the way his clipped words stuttered out that he shouldn’t be alone. She didn’t mind, she’d do anything for the big idiot. Sometimes it was just hard to tell what he wanted, seeming to prefer space and silence—so that was what she gave him.

She could tell he was wrestling with his thoughts and reached out a hand, wrapping it around his fingers. “I’m sure it’s stressful. I—I can’t imagine being the parent of a teenager.”

He huffed out a little laugh. It wasn’t funny, neither one of them was amused.

“Emily…” he started but didn’t know if he should continue, if he could continue.

She looked at him carefully, still holding his hand. She’d wait as long as necessary, all night if needed, for him to finish his thought.

He shook his head and stood up, gently pulling his hand from hers. He was going to need a drink for this. He didn’t ask her if she wanted one too, returning with two glasses and the bottle she’d given him for his fiftieth birthday. She smiled upon seeing it and gave him a slight nod as he paused, the bottle hovering above her glass.

Drinks sorted, he sat back down and spun the glass slowly between his fingers. He’d always been a thinker, far more thoughts running through his mind than could ever make it into conversation. He tried to catch one, to find the right place to begin. Emily sipped her bourbon, keeping an eye on her friend. Eventually he looked at her, his dark eyes searching hers, needing confirmation that she was here for this. That she wouldn’t turn away from him when his heart was bleeding on the table. She felt a seed of fear sprout deep in her gut but she only smiled at him encouragingly. He took a shaky breath.

“There are some things about my past that I don’t like to share.”

She could laugh, thinking about all the gaps and the silences, the code of secrecy they were all unwittingly sworn to upon becoming friends with Aaron Hotchner. But she didn’t, she could feel how serious this was, how delicate. She was probably the only person who could do this dance with him well enough to get the story out. She waited.

“I know I shouldn’t be so worried about Jack, it’s just…I had some trouble when I was his age.” He paused to take a drink, more gulp than sip. A drowning man swallowing seawater.

“I’m afraid.”

The admission was barely more than a whisper. Hearing the way his voice cracked, she wasn’t sure she really was strong enough for this but her poker face remained steadily in place.

“I’m listening.”

chapter one

[pkg4mumtown]

Consign Me Not to Darkness (Ch. 1)

Summary: Being trained by the maverick Jedi meant you had a looser view of the code than most Padawans did, but how well would that serve you when no Jedi were taught how to love?

Pairing: Qui-Gon/Reader (Gender Neutral)

Rating: M (to be safe)

Warnings: Age Gap, Angst, Fluff, Gender Neutral Reader

A/N: First Qui-Gon centered fic! It’s finally here and I hope you all enjoy. Thank you, Nura, for the request <3.

For some context, Reader is Qui-Gon’s Padawan before Obi-Wan, so Qui-Gon is about 45 in this chapter. Reader can be any 18+ age you want, just know that they’re still his Padawan, should you imagine them older.

Chapter 1

Qui-Gon's eyes fluttered open just before the sun fully rose, giving just enough light to illuminate the side of your face not pressed into his chest. He knew well that you wouldn’t wake until he forced you up, a bad habit you had yet to break but he knew that would right itself when you were on your own. You had already started rising earlier than you did as a teenager, especially now that Qui-Gon usually jostled you enough to wake you on accident as he prepared for the day.

While you slept blissfully, his eyes wandered over your face, the youthfulness replaced long ago with something more mature, but nowhere near as weathered as himself. The stark contrast plagued him daily, but he couldn’t help himself especially when he saw the way your face lit up at his presence. Of course, his doubtful self continued to tell him it was because he’d practically raised you and you admired him, at least in his eyes. He brushed his thumb over your cheek as your face nuzzled closer into the graying hair that tangled on his chest. He sighed softly and brushed his hair out of the way so he could see you better, not wanting to see the speckles of gray starting to come through, contrasting your own hair so full of life.

Qui-Gon flicked his eyes away from you and grumbled softly, focusing where your hand laid over his heart. He traced over your fingers, so calloused and strong at such a young age, but indicative of a life of training. He felt his jaw clenching as the emotions he buried deep down— away from you—began to surface, always when he let himself get too far into his head.

You’re so selfish.

Qui-Gon growled at himself and dropped his head back into the pillow, letting himself stare off into nothingness. He startled when he felt something brush his chin, before realizing it was your fingers threading through his beard.

“Your mind is being very loud, Qui,” you mumbled grumpily. Not that you could decipher anything, but his force being so active was enough to bring you into semi-consciousness.

“Sorry, dear one,” he closed his eyes and willed himself to calm the storm in his mind.

“Shall we go meditate in the gardens today? The council hasn’t called yet,” you offered, noticing a distinct lack of beeping from both of your comms.

“You know me too well,” Qui turned and gave you a half smirk, one you couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to.

“It doesn’t take knowing you well to know that’s your favorite place, love,” you shake your head and kiss him once more. “I think all of Coruscant knows.”

“You insolent—” he cut himself off with a low, playful growl and kissed you hard, despite his better judgement.

Your hands tangled in his locks, free of his usual hair tie, pulling him impossibly closer. He shifted onto his side so he could leverage his weight over you and take back control. You licked into his mouth, pulling a groan from his throat. Both of you froze, however, when you felt Qui's hips shift against you and his hard cock press against your stomach.

This was something off limits as soon as this affair had begun. Qui-Gon set the parameters for both of your safety. One, to eliminate the dynamic of him having a superior role over you while you were his apprentice. And two, to eliminate the risk of you both being distracted, or worse, caught. He’d wanted you to finish your apprenticeship before anything progressed further and you wholeheartedly agreed. Not that that prevented you both from getting carried away like this once in a while.

Qui-Gon took a deep breath and dropped a final kiss to your lips, “Meditation…”

“Agreed.”

After a quick morning tea and snack grab in the mess hall, you were both on your way to the gardens to escape into the living force for a while. You felt Qui-Gon settle almost immediately as you entered, his mind no longer swimming with thoughts like earlier. Having him as a Master meant you were used to obscenely long meditations here, though you never lasted as long as he could, despite your efforts. His connection to the living force was just that much stronger here and you swore he’d spent all of two days here once, before you dragged him out.

You both settled in his favorite place, a small clearing surrounded by plants on almost all sides except for the entrance, and even then, the entrance was quite small.

Only a few hours had passed, not nearly as long as Qui-Gon would have liked, before your name was being shouted from the garden entrance.

“I knew you’d be in here! Are we sparring or what?” another Padawan around your age shouted, peeking through the plants until he could see you clearly.

Your eyes flew open in excitement, turning to see your friend Byrn waving you over. You completely missed the way Qui’s eyebrow twitched at the other masculine voice.

“Can I go, Master?” You asked excitedly.

Qui-Gon sighed loudly, obviously not happy with being brought out of meditation or with the idea of you spending time with Byrn, “Fine,” he uttered, not bothering to open his eyes.

“You should come, Master Jinn, you’re going to need to see what your Padawan still needs to work on,” Byrn called out in a feeble attempt at trash talking.

You could sense Qui-Gon's growing annoyance through your bond, slightly deeper than a training bond but no more than that. Qui-Gon was adamant about that, too, until your apprenticeship was over.

You made haste and stood, bowing to him in respect, “I’ll see you after?”

Qui-Gon hummed back, seemingly slipping back into meditation. You felt a pang at his lack of a proper response but brushed it off as him wanting to relax today. It wasn’t until you left the gardens that he let his eyes open and his shoulders sag.

Why am I acting like this? He chastised himself.

Qui-Gon wrestled with himself on going to watch, knowing he’d just be glaring the whole time, but he knew you wanted him to watch you and be proud of you. Relenting, he stood and righted his robes before following your force signature to the training salles. As he neared, the hum of training sabers had already begun.

You felt Qui’s nearing presence before you saw him out of the corner of your eye, but pushed it away to focus on knocking Bryn down a peg or two. You recognized his stance immediately as Ataru, and having a Master who favored it, you smiled instantly. You knew how to counter it with practiced ease, now, especially since Byrn was nowhere near as precise and measured as Qui-Gon. The only thing he had a upper hand on over your master was the stamina to keep up the aggressive hits for a little longer.

Byrn had locked his saber with yours near the end, a clear sign that he was tiring out from the acrobatics, Qui-Gon no doubt counting all the mistakes Byrn was making. Still, your arms shook with the force to keep his saber at bay, not even paying attention to the way his legs were fitting in between yours or his flirtatious smirk. You were determined to win for Qui, and that was all you had on your mind.

Qui-Gon, on the other hand, couldn’t stop the bubbling jealousy as he watched Byrn tease you. You might have been oblivious to it all or actually enjoying it, he didn’t know, but he needed to leave to calm himself before he caused a scene. Or worse, before someone else sensed his feelings through the force.

You were able to shove Byrn back and stagger him long enough to parry his saber from his hand. You caught it before he could and held both sabers in an “X” aimed at his neck, a clear win. You both relaxed, your first instinct being to look over for Qui-Gon’s proud smirk, but with your focus back on your surroundings you realized you couldn’t feel him anymore.

Your shoulders sagged, he was here, you swore it. Did he not have faith that you’d be able to win in his presence?

With a passing, monotonous farewell to the other Padawans, you took off in the direction of your shared room. Qui-Gon rarely ever blocked his presence from you or closed off the bond, so this made you anxious. You stepped into your rooms, calling out to him but received no response.

So where was he?

You searched, hitting all of his known hiding spots for most of the afternoon and well into the evening. You didn’t have a comm from him, no note, just a distinct lack of presence. Maybe he had a meeting that you weren’t aware of? Surely, he would have mentioned it…

You couldn’t stay up all night and wait for him, you knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t be pleased if you did that. You curled up on his bed that night, the bed you shared with him for a little over a year, too exhausted to wake when he arrived well after midnight. Too exhausted to wake as he packed a small bag and left with only a longing glance in your direction.

Thanks for reading!!

Chapter 2

[liquorisce]

reading between the lines (High School Years, Ch 2)

pairing: eren x mikasa (shingeki no kyojin) // mild erehisu, yumihisu

rating: t

summary: (modern au) Junior year is difficult, especially for Mikasa, because it turns out Eren’s decided to test the dating scene. 

(banter, jealousy... and lots of feelings)

part 1 | read on ao3

A/N: this chapter has been a long time coming (5 years omg), and tbh I have a lovely anon to thank, who messaged me asking for a sequel to hsy, which made me actually want to put down my scrambled headcanons on paper. if you're reading this anon, i'm truly grateful for the push you gave me. 

NOTE: although i intended a sequel, this is a COMPANION fic to chapter 1, it is meant to fill up the gaps in the story that the previous chapter didnt tell you. i hope you enjoy :)

Today was not one of Eren’s favourite days, for 2 reasons. For one, the day started off with … an encounter. Two, today they would be getting the results of their final trig assessment, which Eren knows perfectly well he didn’t have a chance of passing.

The ‘encounter’ happens pretty much without preamble.

…

i.

“… Hey, it’s Eren, right?” He turns around from his conversation with Armin, to see the same guy from a couple of weeks ago, the one who was talking about Mikasa, and her pretty hair. (he wasn’t wrong)  

“Yeah?” He does his best not to let the subconscious irritation seep into his tone.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot the other day,” the guy with the oddly horse-shaped face says, “… My name’s Jean.”

“… Nice to meet you,” he says awkwardly delivering his dishonest words.

“… So, I wanted to be straight up with you,” Jean says, cheeks oddly pink. “About Mikasa… and you. I’ve heard some rumours, and I thought it best to address it with you directly, because I really don’t want to cause any trouble.”   Clearing his throat, he says, “Are you guys… y’know, together?”

It’s in the way Jean speaks, he thinks, or the way he talks about Mikasa (or even thinks of her?) - it makes him want to ram his fist right in the middle of his ugly face. And because he was too busy clenching his fists to actually respond, Armin says with a laugh, “… Ah, don’t worry, Mikasa is totally single.”

And then proceeds to wink at Jean.

Eren can barely believe his eyes and ears. And once Jean is out of earshot he hisses, “… what the fuck, Armin?”

Armin blinks up at him innocently. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

 “… You didn’t have to encourage him,” Eren mumbles petulantly, when he admits to himself that Armin did, in fact, say nothing wrong.

 “Erm, why not?” He sighs, “Look, I know you… worry about Mikasa,” Armin keeps his tone as neutral and veiled as possible, because worried is definitely not all Eren feels for Mikasa, “… but Jean is a good guy! And if anyone deserves attention from a good guy, it’s her.”

…

 ii.

 She finds him lurking near his locker, stuffing his crumpled papers in, probably wishing away their existence.

“That bad, huh?” She asks, hiding away her grin at his predictable reaction. Eren has always been predisposed too sulking - whether he was a 7-year-old who wasn’t the fastest on the field or 16-something and having just received his trigonometry results.

“… You look like you did just fine,” he mutters, not having to see the A+ on her paper to know that Mikasa had no problem acing the trig test (or any other test).

“You could just ask me for help, Eren. I could help you out for the retakes,” she offers softly, not for the first time.

He sighs. When he glances at her, dark eyes offering earnestly, he knows she means it without any pride or arrogance, but he isn’t able to suppress the prick of his own ego that has him mumbling, “… the mandatory remedial lessons should do just fine.”

…

iii.

When he shows up for class, he sees only a couple of others unfamiliar faces, so he curses under his breath at his own ineptitude towards mathematics for getting him in this situation and takes a spot at the back of the class.

The Support teacher - Erd, he calls himself, apparently too young to be addressed ‘Mr.’ or any of that - seems just as tired as the rest of them, sighing at the lack of answers, obviously frustrated at the complete lack of interest or gratitude of the teenagers in front of him.

So, 20 minutes into the 1-hour lesson, when the short blonde walks in, out-of-breath and apologetic, the sarcasm in his tone is biting. “You’ve already missed 1/3rd of this class, you might as well have stayed out entirely and practiced your cheer routines.”

Eren watches sympathetically at the visible cringe on Krista’s face and offers her an empathetic smile as she takes the seat next to him.

Later when they’ve been informed that the retake is just an assignment filled with proofs and average difficulty problems that they can do in pairs, he looks at Krista, the only known person in the room.

They weren’t that close, but they had quite a few mutual friends what with him playing basketball and her being part of the cheer team. So, when she says, “… see you at the library tomorrow evening?” with a pretty smile across her pretty features, he grins gratefully.

..

She doesn’t struggle with trig even half as much as he does. In fact, she seemed to be happy to do most of the work herself and explain her solutions - if he actually had the interest to understand them.

“I don’t understand,” he admits after she solves the 5th problem in a row effortlessly, “you seem to have everything down already. How come you didn’t pass the test?”

Her eyes skittered nervously away from him. “I was… sick,” she mutters. “I couldn’t really focus.”

He eyes her closely, observing the sudden change in her countenance. Usually Krista was all easy smiles, twinkle in her blue eyes. Now, she looks uneasy, unwell almost. Deciding it wasn’t his place to pry, “… Well, I guess I turned out to be the lucky one in all this,” he grins, “… I get to hang out with you and have you do my assignment.”

She rolls her eyes. To be honest, she’d enjoyed the past couple of evenings with him. Eren was easy to talk to, despite being somewhat of an airhead and being completely incapable of anything remotely math related. But regardless, he made her laugh and just about forget what happened the morning before she showed up for this test, with fresh tears choking her throat, and purpling bruises on her thighs.

“I guess you owe me then,” she quips back, smugly.

“… I definitely do,” he says smoothly, green eyes watching her in a way that makes her feel warm. “How can I make it up to you?”

Flustered, because she hadn’t expected his easy response, she mumbles, “… Dinner?” And with red cheeks hidden by her blonde bangs, she whispers, “I like pizza.”

…

iv.

She finds him at the end of the day, on one of the wooden tables outside the basketball court, chin resting in his hands, eyes glued to his laptop.

“… Hey,” she breathes, giggling when startled green eyes flash up to her, body jerking in surprise.

“Damn, you got me,” he grins, pushing his laptop away and leaning up for a brief kiss. She’s happy to return it, and she lets her fingers wind into his hair, enjoying it for a moment longer.

“Mmm,” she mumbles, “I saw you closing that browser window,” she teases, wrestling control of his laptop, “watcha lookin’ at?”

When she manages to open his browser history – much to Eren’s protest – her eyes widen. “Women’s dresses, spring collection??” She waggles her eyebrows at him.

“… It’s not for me,” he grumbles, deciding to make it painstakingly clear before Krista enthusiastically begins to tell him what dress would suit him the most – he knows his girlfriend, crossdressing would be absolutely acceptable, if not encouraged – and he watches her eyes feign disappointment.

“… Boring,” she sighs, rolling her pretty blue eyes, “I don’t see how you’re not curious about how you look in a dress,” – she gasps, hand flying over her mouth, “Wait… was that… a surprise… for me?”

“… Um,” Eren starts, intelligently, because the situation that was already awkward in his opinion, just became even more so. “Well,” he gulps, taking in the sparkle in her eyes, knowing fully well just how much she likes surprises, feeling guilty even thought he needn’t be, “itsformikasa.”

He hangs his head in apparent apology, but more so because he doesn’t want to see the disappointment flit across her features.

“… Oh.”

He chances a glance at her, and there’s no particular emotion per se, and it worries him, because she gets this faraway look in her eye sometimes, and he can’t really tell what’s going on, and they’ve only been together a few months and he’s not an expert in reading her silences –

“I see, is it for her birthday or something?” Her tone is measured, and she’s looking pointedly at the screen.

“Um… yeah.” Eren sighs, wondering what the hell was up with his own reaction. He had nothing to feel guilty about – where did that even come from anyway? – Mikasa’s his… family (or something). Shopping for her was normal. He did it every year. This isn’t something he needed to hide.

“Yeah, it’s next month,” he says, giving her a smile. There was no need for this to be awkward if he didn’t make it so. Besides, it wasn’t like he was buying her lingerie or something! (he brushed this thought aside faster than the red blush crept up his neck)

“Do you think, you could help me with it?” He blurts this out, partially in an attempt to distract the weird atmosphere, and also partially because he could really use the help.

Krista blinks. “Err, yeah. Sure.” She pulls up Mikasa’s profile on Instagram. “Let’s see,” she murmurs… Turtlenecks… Jeans… a ridiculously modest swimsuit that she wore to a pool party two years ago. The sexiest outfit on her entire profile was probably her in her tennis shorts and that had more to do with Mikasa’s undeniably ripped body than anything else.

She looks up at Eren, who’s still looking at her tentatively, green eyes unsure.

This whole thing was silly anyway, she thinks, offering him a genuine smile. He and Mikasa were close (and they lived together, which she did her best not to think about), but this wasn’t a surprise so it’s about time that it came up in some way in their relationship. In any case, she hadn’t felt any hostility from the raven-haired beauty and Eren was usually quite forthcoming about everything, so she didn’t really have anything to worry about.

“So, um, does she have a favourite colour or something?” She’s eager to kill the awkward mood and is grateful to see his shoulders visibly relax as he ponders.

“… Red, I think. Maybe, like, a darker shade. Sort of… maroon, y’know?” He thinks of the scarf he gave Mikasa when they were younger. It was a ratty, yet fluffy maroon thing which she was absolutely terrible at tying, but she wears it everywhere during the winter, even though his father had a bought her a better one at some point.

They peruse their options for a bit, and Krista picks out a deep red number, a shimmery satin one, with slinky straps and a slit that travels up an already high hemline. It wasn’t really a spring dress but more of a cocktail night outfit, and Eren is weirdly embarrassed thinking of Mikasa in it.

He eyes the screen incredulously. “… Somehow, I just can’t picture Mikasa wearing something like that.” He opens up another link, to a denim overall dress, “… now this, she would wear.”

“And that,” Krista retorts, “is why she’s still single. She has an amazing body; she should flaunt it.”

“… What would she wear it to?” Eren asks, unconvinced. (Also, what was wrong with Mikasa being single?) “… Student council meetings? Debate competitions?! I just,” –

“Parties, Eren,” she says, exasperated, “… it’s high school!”

“You know she doesn’t” –

“Drag her to some! C’mon, we’re going to be seniors soon. She’ll thank you for it!”

…

v.

Six hours later, she’s closing up her shift at her part-time job. It’s a job she’d rather keep hidden – from her friends at school and the law – because she isn’t sure what the age policy was in these kinds of establishments. It worked out because it was close enough to home, and between her and the bartender, the tips compensated the poor wages. Plus, the bartender – a slightly older girl named Ymir with a pretty fringe and a sharp tongue – was genuinely fan to hang out with. And she was surprisingly protective of the small blonde, particularly with the rougher customers, whom Ymir scared off quite effectively with her glares.

“So,” she says, as she scrubs the counter clean, “… I helped my boyfriend buy a dress today.”  

She doesn’t turn back to see her, but she can hear Ymir’s raised eyebrows as she says, cheekily, “… I didn’t realize you guys were into that stuff.”

Snorting, she replies, “Well that would be interesting. But no, it was for his, um, friend. Or something.” Or something, because sometimes Eren refers to Mikasa as his best friend, sometimes his family, and sometimes it just felt like… something else, basically.

She turns around to look at Ymir, who says nothing, continuing to rinse the rest of the glasses. “Her name’s Mikasa,” she continues, her voice getting oddly unsure, “They’ve known each other forever. They even… live together.”

“… What,” Ymir stares at her in disbelief.

“It’s not like that,” Krista finds herself sounding defensive, “Eren’s dad is her guardian… or something. Has been for some years. So, it’s not like they moved in together…”

She elects to skip the part where Eren’s dad is a doctor with Doctors without Borders and is barely home for more than a couple of months a year. She didn’t like the look Ymir was giving her anyway.

“So… they’re like brother-sister or what?”

“No,” she says, realizing that the word came out more vehement than she intended. But she knows that was definitely not the way Eren saw their relationship.

“… Krista,” Ymir starts, and the blonde can tell by the tone of her voice that she’s going to get all protective on her, “… I know you’re in high school, and… you’re dating – as you should – but you don’t have to waste your time on shady boys.”

At this she laughs because, “Eren’s not shady, he’s a nice guy,” –

“… You could get anyone you want; I mean look at you, you’re beautiful.”

The defense that was bubbling up in her throat suddenly stilled, because there’s something about the way Ymir just said that – called her beautiful – earnestly, quietly, and it made her feel funny. It took her breath away for a very brief second and replaced it with a warm flush that creeps up her neck.

It’s strange, she’s heard it before from so many boys with obvious motivations; Eren’s always calling her pretty, and complimenting her eyes or whatever… But when Ymir said it, and looked at her like that, honey brown eyes, deep with unnamed emotion, all she could do was avert her eyes.

…

vi.

It’s 7pm and the library’s home only to the nerds by now. The librarian is lax (and underpaid) enough to ignore the low buzz of two over-enthusiastic AP chemistry students that grates on Mikasa’s ears.

Ordinarily she’d just plug her earphones in and ignore the world to focus on the assignment at hand. But today she accepts anything to distract her from the scene earlier at home. And even though Armin’s sitting right next to her, supposedly doing his own thing, she doesn’t miss the worried glances he sends her every now and then, which she really doesn’t want to address.

Her feelings for Eren were a well-known secret by now, just as well-known as the fact that he clearly didn’t return those feelings, so she wasn’t particularly in the mood for Armin’s indulgent pity… regardless of how well-intentioned it was.

So, when its 8pm and the librarian is shooing them out, and she bumps into Jean, she’s grateful for the few extra minutes of conversation surrounding absolutely nothing important.

When they continue to the parking lot, their conversation having progressed from awkward conversation starters to an animated discussion on Jean’s tennis form, Armin’s well and truly realized that he has no place here.

After Armin’s said his goodbyes and Mikasa recognizes that she doesn’t mind staying away from home and possibly Eren and Krista in the middle of their 5th round, she asks Jean, “… so do you like Chinese food?”

…

When she walks in a little after 10 pm, cheeks cold from the night air, there’s a small grin on her cheeks, because she’s made a new friend today, whose company she genuinely enjoyed.

But when she enters the living room to see Eren fast asleep on the couch, she finds herself staring in the face of the reality she’d tried so hard to escape. It’s difficult to ignore the ruffled quality of his brown hair, mussed up in a way that could only have been achieved by someone (a very blonde, very beautiful someone) raking their hands through it.

She can’t help the wave of irritation that sweeps through her - so she doesn’t bother to soften her footsteps as she walks up the wooden stairs.

Minutes later, she hears his sleepy voice at her door. “Hey,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice, “you were out pretty late, so I left you some dinner. We made pasta, it’s not as good as yours but,” -

“… I ate already,” she says, tone clipped.

“Oh.” He’s quiet, just watching her put her things away, and there’s irrational tears pricking at her eyes, anger, and frustration that she knows she doesn’t have the right to, so she doesn’t turn to acknowledge him. “… Mikasa, are you…,” he clears his throat, “… is something wrong?”

When she says nothing, he sighs, turning, “… Well, if you want to talk about it, you know I’m always here,” -

“… Could you please go over to Krista’s house next time?”

She colours, surprised at herself for her outburst of honesty. But her blush pales in comparison to Eren’s as he processes what she’s saying. “… This is my house,” he sputters, “… I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to want to bring my girlfriend over.”

“Well, it’s not just ‘bringing her over’, is it?”

His eyes widen in disbelief. “… What I do with Krista, in my personal space, is definitely not your business, Mikasa.”

“It is when I can hear it, Eren,” she retorts, as he shuts the door forcefully behind him.

…

vii.

It’s been two weeks since that… confrontation, and Mikasa’s barely spoken to him since.

She leaves before he does, makes sure dinner’s left out on the stove for him, whether he needs it or not, and locks her door when she’s done. And although he’s found himself staring awkwardly at that shut door multiple times, he’s never had the courage to actually knock.

He simply cannot comprehend this situation because despite the numerous arguments they’ve had in the past - it was always him, whining about something like a petty child and sulking till he got his way - she’d never truly been mad at him. And she’d never, ever, gone days without talking to him. And as he stares at the locker next to his (it was Mikasa’s) with a horrible ache in his chest, he is well and truly sure that he loathes this situation.

So, when small hands reach around his waist, enveloping him in a tight embrace, his subconscious reaction is to jerk back in annoyance. “I didn’t realise it was you,” he murmurs apologetically, rubbing her hands softly.

“… Who else would it be?” Krista asks, somewhat thrown off by this mood that had been festering for days now.

“You ask some very valid questions there, babe,” he mutters, a distracted half-smile on his face.

Taking a deep breath (determined to shake him out of his pensive aura), she whispers, “… You know, I don’t have work today.” She leans against him, reaching up to murmur in his ear, “we could hang out at yours for a while, if you want?”

She makes it clear what she means by “hanging out” by the way she presses up against him, and even though he’s responded with fervent enthusiasm to a similar invitation in the past, today he just averts his gaze, awkwardly.

Swallowing the rejection with a graceful exterior, she puts an arm’s length of distance between them. “… What’s going on, Eren? Your head’s been somewhere else all week.”

And before he starts to stay that it’s nothing, just that he has some stuff going on, she says, “… does this have something to do with Mikasa?”

His green gaze jerks up at her, startled with unfortunate honesty. “… I haven’t seen you talk to her all week.”

“…I,” he starts, but his throat closes up, for some reason, unsure whether he should really tell her what happened. He doesn’t want to put her in the middle of something that was clearly between him and Mikasa.

But with every passing second, the guilty look on his face only begins to feed the fears that she had successfully kept dormant all this while. “… Did something happen between the two of you?”

And when he looks into her eyes, bright blues seeping insecurity, he says, hurriedly, “… wait, I hope you aren’t thinking that we,” - he inhales sharply, wondering how he manages so successfully to upset the women in his life - “God, no. We had a misunderstanding, that’s all. She said something, I was pretty rude to her, and I shouldn’t have been.”

“And,” he murmurs, admitting it to himself, finally, “I’ve just taken too long to apologize.”

…

She’s barely finished washing the vegetables for dinner, when she hears the thud of the front door closing loudly.

(She remembers Carla reprimanding him every time, for not being gentler)

Mikasa has managed to avoid Eren successfully these past days, because she knows his schedule, knows that despite his complete lack of organization, he’s fairly predictable. And with his recent interest in a particular cheerleader, he almost invariably never comes home before 8.30 PM. So, when she hears him enter their kitchen at little over 7, she isn’t prepared.

She isn’t prepared because she’s been quite cowardly, saying things that she had no business saying, and then being unable to own up to it, unable to apologize to him. Because she knew that when she looks at him, she’ll feel the way she feels right now - taking in the sight of him, drizzle droplets fresh in his brown hair, as he runs a hand through it, his mouth twisting into an awkward grin. She knew she’d realize that her feelings for Eren were never really much of a choice, they just were.  

“… I brought your favourite dumplings from Li’s,” he announces. “And I brought an extra serving of the spicy soy sauce so we don’t have to fight over who gets the last bit.”

…

He’s grateful for the small smile that forms on her face when she accepts the dumplings (the peace treaty as he calls it in his head), and for the small banter that she indulges him in as they eat.

After they’re stuffed with dumplings and inconsequential conversation, he clears his throat, because he remembers he came home early tonight with a certain conviction.

But as she does with most things, she beats him to it. “… Eren, about the other day,” she looks at him earnestly, “… I had no right to demand that of you. I’m sorry.”

And when he’s still quiet, she mumbles quickly, “I don’t know what got into me that day, honestly, I,” -

“Don’t apologise, Mikasa,” he says, a strange disquiet taking over him as he replays her words, “… the last thing I want, is to make you feel uncomfortable.” Or to make you feel like you can’t demand what you want from me.

This is the part that settles into him slowly, that somehow, the one person in his life that he’s always felt he could ask anything of, could demand anything of, and actually receive it without fail… she didn’t feel that she could count on the same from him. And it twisted painfully inside of him.

“I appreciate that, Eren. But honestly, I’ll get used to it… so don’t worry.” She smiles, in that genuine way of hers, small lips, curving shyly, “… and who knows, maybe someday I’ll want to ‘bring someone over’ too.”

She laughs as she does the air quotes and even though he manages a small grin in response, all he can say, without really meaning it, is –

“Yeah… Of course, yeah.”

…

 viii.

 She takes her frustration out on the cash register. “… Damn thing doesn’t open when I need it to, and doesn’t close when I want it to,” she mutters under her breath.

 “You just need to show it some love,” Ymir says, amused, promptly closing the problematic register without any difficulty. “… Go sit, I’ll close up here.”

 She does as she’s told, pouting slightly, but she’s grateful for the older girl’s help and understanding. “So… want a beer before I close the tap?” Ymir asks with a wink.

 “You need to stop offering underage girls alcohol,” Krista whispers, scanning the room hastily.

 The brunette rolls her eyes. “You need to stop with the innocent act every time. You’re a hot cheerleader for god’s sakes, everyone knows what goes on at your high school parties,”  -

 “Ok ok,” she acquiesces, suppressing the blush at Ymir’s offhanded compliment and deciding that that there was no point in panicking every time they did this, “… but only if you join me.”

 “Cheers,” Ymir says, offering her glass to Krista’s and taking a generous gulp. “So, tell me. Boy trouble, again?”

 Krista nurses her drink slowly before taking a sip.

 To Krista, Eren was a breath of fresh air. He didn’t hover, he didn’t foam at the mouth every time she spoke to another guy, didn’t hound her if she didn’t pick up his phone call.

 Does he even care? Ymir had asked her once scathingly, but she had disregarded it, grateful for the freedom she felt in his embrace. Freedom from toxic attachment, from past trauma or unresolved baggage like the one she was destined to carry. When she was around him, she had felt different. Lighter almost, as if this persona that she had created for herself could actually have a shot at happiness after all.

 But lately she’d begun to wonder if she’d just been fooling herself… again. She’d begun to question if she had just convinced herself to see the promise of something that was never there.

 “… I thought this guy was one of the good ones,” Ymir says, watching Krista closely.

 “He is…” she sighs, “He is one of the good ones. It’s just…” she trails off, unsure if she should give voice to her thoughts. “Ah fuck it, I’m just feeling a little insecure, it’ll be fine…”

 “… Is this about that sexy flatmate of his?”

 She winces, feeling exposed. It often felt that way with Ymir. Like there was no point to any of the barriers she had worked so hard in constructing.

 “She is attractive,” Krista admits, begrudgingly. “… I’m only surprised Eren hasn’t noticed that.”  

 “… But that’s what you’re worried about, aren’t you? That he has noticed that of late?” Ymir narrows her eyes at Krista. “You should just ask him about it!”

 “I did,” she states defensively, “… and he said there was nothing,” -

 “… Oh, sure there’s nothing. I can’t believe he thinks he can lie to you and get away with it,” -

 “Ymir, I trust him, he’s my boyfriend,” -

 “But that’s the problem with you. You just trust everyone, and you let them walk all over you. You did this with Reiner and now with,” -

 “Ok,” she whispers, “Stop it, Ymir.”

 “… Krista, you need to trust your gut about this sort of thing. If your gut is telling you that he’s a lying asshole, then you should just dump his ass and,” -

 “… See this is why I didn’t want to tell you about this,” she cries, her voice rising In frustration. Because this is how it’s always been with Ymir, no one she dates is ever good enough, no decision she makes is ever smart enough.

 “You’re always shitting on my boyfriends. And I know you were justified about the last one, but,” her voice cracks just a little bit, because at the end of it all, she just feels weak, “… it feels like you’re just taking a massive crap on me as well.”

 “I didn’t mean,” Ymir starts apologetically, brown eyes remorseful, “… look, that wasn’t my intention.”

 She takes her hand, slowly, lets her long fingers intertwine with Krista’s smaller, dainty ones.  The crumpled expression on Krista’s features has her regretting ever opening her big mouth. But she was tired of seeing one person after another, enter her Krista’s life, and undo the progress she was trying so desperately to make.

“… The truth is,” she takes a deep breath, ready to unleash a truth that’s been stifled for so long, she can’t even remember when it first sprouted, “I think you’re pretty fucking amazing. And I see you wasting all your time and your feelings on these stupid boys who don’t deserve you.” The words come out quickly, rushed almost. A sharp contrast to how long they’ve festered in Ymir’s chest, growing and growing until these feelings knew no reason.

 Ymir doesn’t look at her, she keeps her gaze focused on Krista’s hand, afraid of what might happen if Krista understands the depth of feeling behind her words. But more important than her feelings, there were some things she wanted Krista to see clearly.

 “Did you tell him about your father, Krista? What he does to you when his wife isn’t looking?”

 Krista tugs on her hand, a wave of unbridled panic spreading at the mention of her father. “I trusted you with that information, Ymir, you promised you’d never bring it up,” -

 “… Did you tell him your real name?”

 She can’t answer this question, even though she knows the answer, knows it’s an emphatic ‘no’ - but she cannot answer because there’s an overwhelming lump in her throat, and it’s taking everything from her to barely keep it together.

 “… Let go of me, Ymir,” she pleads, and that’s when Ymir loosens her grip.

 “… You trusted me to keep quiet about your secrets - and I’m fine with that. I’m fine with doing anything you ask of me,” her teeth grit together, because she doesn’t know, Krista doesn’t know just how much she would do.  

 “You asked me not to do anything about the fact that your father is hurting you, and it even though it kills me, I listened to you. But now I see you hurting yourself in this farcical relationship with fabricated feelings for some boy who doesn’t treat you the way you deserve, and I don’t know if I can be quiet about that anymore.”

 And because it’s grown too large, too much to keep inside of her anymore, she whispers, “I love you, Historia. And if you want me to let go of you, I will. But,” she brushes her lips gently against Krista’s cheek, “… You can trust me with your secrets, and your heart, if you’d let me, because I could take care of you.” She feels a warm tear roll down Krista’s cheek and her heart clenches, “… I could make you happy.”

 …

ix. 

 “… I really appreciate you making time for this,” she murmurs, as she watches him lay the white lilies at her parent’s grave.

 He always remembers, without her prompting, because the first time he’d come with her, she’d spent hours crying at their gravestone, telling him tear-filled anecdotes of the dishes her Mama cooked, the bedtime stories her Papa told, the flowers that they used to grow in their garden together (white lilies).

 “C’mon Mikasa,” he rolls his eyes at her, “… we do this every year. Why wouldn’t I make time for this?” And why the hell are you thanking me?

 She can’t really explain it to him, the possibly childish notion that she thought he might be too busy with his girlfriend to remember the death anniversary of her parents. She regrets doubting him, regrets that of late she’s been so clouded by petty jealousy, that she hasn’t truly appreciated how little he’s changed around her.

 “It’s ridiculous,” she confesses, softly, “… you’ve given me everything. A home… A family.” She smiles at him, somewhat blurry. “But I can’t help it, every year on this day, my mind always goes back to that… moment. I lost them… in what felt like the blink of an eye.”

 He tenses, as he always does when he sees her upset, or shedding a tear. There is a fundamental part of him that deeply despises the sadness on her features; it makes him feel helpless. So, he does the only thing he can - he wraps an arm around her, tucking her face into his shoulder as she snuggles into him.

 “I miss them every day. But you saved me, Eren,” she whispers, dark eyes looking up at him with a gratefulness that he has never known how to accept, and never felt worthy of. “… and now I have you.”

 Her voice trails off, almost wistful. “… I guess the world really can be cruel but beautiful at the same time.”

 …

 x.

 When he stops to think about it, he supposes it really is ridiculous it took them so long to get here. And by here he means - Mikasa wrapped securely in his arms, in his lap, on their couch, taking advantage of the privacy they’ve had all along.

 He feels her tongue flick against his - it makes him shiver - and he can do little more than just wrap himself around her tighter, and sigh into her kiss. Her fingers make their way into his hair, cradling his head, pressing sweet kisses on the side of his mouth, on his jaw, and on the sensitive spot beneath his ear.

 And because Mikasa’s always been a quick study (she’s learnt what he likes, what he’s weak for), he stills her exploration (very reluctantly) before she goes too far.

 “Are you okay…?” He whispers, rubbing a thumb along the dried tear stains on her cheek – a reminder of her tears, of knowing the pain that he’d caused her, bubbled quietly within him, having been quelled temporarily by the glorious feeling of having her in his arms.

 She laughs, shaking her head, “… I love you. I can’t believe I finally get to say it.” She rests her forehead against his, a happy smile forming on her lips.

 “… You could have said it ages ago; you know. No one asked you to keep it inside for this long.” Even though he teases her with his words, his lips drift back to hers, brushing softly, unable to stay away for too long.

 “… Well, you never know, I actually might have said it. If it wasn’t for, you know, you having a girlfriend.” He senses the eye roll, the teasing lilt of her voice, but he can’t help but regret the time he wasted. Because even though Krista was a dear friend, and there were no ill intentions there, now that he is here, chest to chest with the girl he loves, he only wishes he’d been here sooner.

 “You’re going to use that against me forever, aren’t you?”

 She grins in response. “… I have a question though.”

 “Shoot,” he murmurs, nibbling against her lower lip.

 “… Why’d you guys break up?”

 He groans, kissing her jaw testily. “… Do you really want to go into that right now?”

 She hesitates, torn between potentially ruining the mood and needing to know what happened. God knows, she had spent countless nights losing sleep over the details anyway. “If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay, I guess…”

 “It’s fine,” he says quickly, realising that if he wanted to set a precedent where she could ask him anything, then it‘s best he starts now, “… She’s in love with someone else. A girl, actually.”

 Her eyes widen, not having expected that turn of events. “… Please tell me you didn’t ask for a threesome.”

 “What the fuck, Mikasa, of course not!” He pulls back, offended.

 “Good,” she murmurs cheekily, “I’ve raised you well.”

 “Hmm,” he hums, “Speaking of ‘raising me’, you should probably stop saying stuff like that. Do you know that Connie asked if you were like a ’sister’ to me?”

 He grins, seeing the shocked expression on her face. That’s exactly how he had felt when he was posed that question, with a little mortification added to the mix. “… Is that really how everyone sees our… relationship?”

 His fingers drift to hers, where they rest on his chest. “We’ve been living together for a while now,” he caresses her knuckles absentmindedly, “Kids our age… they don’t really understand it, I guess. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

 “My turn: I have a question for you,” he murmurs. This is a question he’s long considered, stopped only by his embarrassment, fielding it from others only to put the vaguest labels on it.

 “… What am I to you, Mikasa?”

 The question throws her, because even though she’s told him candidly how she feels, that she loves him, she always has, he is asking her, right now, to define their relationship.

 The very notion, the expression that flits on her tongue, bubbles up in her heart with an exciting warmth, even though she hopes this is just temporary, that it will grow, that Eren is so many things and will be so many things to her that she cannot possibly define right now - “… My boyfriend, of course.”

- fin - 

A/N:  i've been really nervous to post em, because its just been so long, and the writer that wrote chap 1 is different from the one that wrote chap 2, and honestly i dont even know if there are inconsistencies. so my request to you, dear reader, is to please let me know if i have made any fuck ups in writing this - or if you have any ideas for pacing, or storytelling that could possibly help me improve.

also there will be a chapter 3 focusing on eremika’s sexual exploration~

[heychangbin]

Ten Rounds, All Bullseyes

Wordcount: 1963

Warnings: None really.

A/N: so this was another writing exercise that kinda got away from me and thought was good enough to post. 

Billy picked up the rifle, the pressure of the butt against his shoulder and the feel of his index finger of his right hand resting against the trigger guard felt effortless, second nature, like breathing or coming home from a long day and plopping down on his couch. He lowers his head, the slight tension he had felt dissipating as the apple of his cheek presses against the cool metal of the safety mechanism housing. He grips the forestock, elevating the barrel as he lines the sight at the end with his target.

He feels his military training kick in as his eyes zero in on the center of his target, his mind blocking out everything around him, the sound of blaring sirens, kids laughter, grown up chatter, and the hot sun hitting the back of his head and neck; nothing else exists in this moment, nothing but the bright red center at the end of his barrel.

He takes a breath, then another for good measure and takes his finger off the trigger guard, the edge of the thin metal scraping against the callous that never seems to completely fade as he slips his finger between the guard and trigger, then pulls. 

His eyes darted to the next target and with practiced ease lockson and fires again. He could faintly make out a scream but the sound is too far away and there are more targets he needs to take out. With lighting speed he shifts and adjusts his stance, rising and lowering his aim before firing again. And again, and again. 

Billy aims and fires until there aren’t any remaining targets and it's only then that he allows his senses to come back, the space around his erupt in a cacophony of sound, screaming children, too loud music, blaring sirens and vendors calling out prizes or taunts. The air once again has the scent of deep fried foods, butter, too sweet lemonade, burnt bread, boiled hot dogs, spilled beer and he could make out the acrid smell of vomit in the air, making him wince as he feels everything wash over him.

“That was some nice shootin’ there son,” says the man behind the low wooden bar, walking over to the back of the stall, gripping and rising the top of his black pants through his light blue t-shirt  before reaching for one of the larger bears prizes he has hanging on the back corner of his game stall. “Hang aroun’ the shootin’ rage a lot?” he asks as he plops the bear down in front of him. 

“Not really, no.” Billy says with a small chuckle as he gently lowers the rifle but the smile on Billy’s face disappears when he picks up his prize, the back of the bear is slightly faded on one side, the tails of the red ribbon around its neck fraying, and the black bead that serves as its left eye looks like it’s hanging on by a single thread.

He lifts his head and the glare he shoots at the vendor has nothing to do with the reflection of the sun on the small laminate IDing him as Jeff hanging around his neck. 

“Pay for another round or take your prize and walk.” he says, crossing his arms as his eyes looking out at the crowd that's passing behind Billy

Is this guy really tryin’ ta …. Billy scans the prizes hanging around the small game stall, zeroing in on a pristine giant multi colored monstrosity that he would never give a second look at, let alone walk around a fair with for five minutes let alone the next two hours, but you, you might like it and that was enough for him.

“How much for that one?” he said, nodding in the direction of the giant prize.

The vendor looked in the direction that Billy’s eyes were trained on and chuckled, shaking his head before looking back at the passersby.

“That one there is ten rounds sonny, all pellets hittin’ the bullseye.”

Billy felt his nostrils flare,he knew the guy was trying to scam him, he had been to the fair with the Castles and won his fare share of prizes for Lisa, Frank Jr., Maria, and, on one memorable birthday weekend, for Frank to know the guy was pulling something. He tossed the bear on the low counter and reached for his wallet, taking out a few bills and slapping them on the counter, just out of the man's reach before picking up the rifle and positioning it loosely against the crook of his shoulder again.

Jeff looked at Billy for a moment before uncrossing his arms and walking over to where Billy was standing and picking up the money Billy had tossed on the low partition before fiddling with the chain that kept the rifle linked to the game stall.

“You gotta walk back the length of the chain.” he said before turning and walking to the side of the cut out wall that had the little targets.

Billy arched his right brow questioningly as they stared at each other for a beat before Jeff raised his hand and made a waving back motion.He grit his teeth and took a deep breath before taking a careful step back, then another and another. He was more than a couple feet away from where he was standing originally before the thin chain tensed and the guy nodded and flipped a hidden switch, starting the game back up. 

Lights flashed and an annoying western type tune began playing making Billy pick up the rifle and press it against the crook of his shoulder, his senses focusing and zeroing in when his eye aligned with the sight at the end of the barrel, 

As soon as the first target popped up, Billy took aim and shot it down, his eyes darting to the next bullseye, pulling the trigger and the target going down with a dainty clink, the next popping up almost instantly. Targets continued to pop up and Billy kept shooting, each going down with a clink that made Billy smile internally.

He was halfway through the third round when out of the corner of his eye he saw Jeff’s hand flip a switch making the targets pop out two at a time, he was expecting it and if he was being honest he had been expecting it sooner.

He quickly adjusted his speed, shooting the targets just as quickly as they were coming up, vaguely aware of the small crowd that was forming around him. 

When the last clink sounded Billy couldn't help the self satisfied smile that spread across his lips when he saw the look of defeat cross Jeff’s face and a few people clapping behind him and commenting on his shooting skills as he lowered the rifle and strutted back to the edge of the bar, placing it on the bar and nodding in the direction of the giant prize he was going to be walking around with until he meet back up with the Castle brood. 

Jeff scratched at his chin for a beat, staring at Billy the whole time but Billy just continued to smile and wait going as far as bouncing a few times on the balls of his feet.

“I can wait for my prize for as long as you want Jeff.”

It was then that Jeff moved and plucked the giant multi colored mess and handed it to Billy, it was heavier than he expected and the bright colored fur felt softer than it looked.He said a quick and polite thanks before wrestling the stuffed animal under his arm and started in the direction of the burger stall he knew he’d find the Castles and you.

He smiled at the thought of the look that would cross your face when you saw him walk up with this thing under his arm and hand it to you. 

He spotted you and the Castles a few minutes later, gathered around a ring toss game, throwing the small red rings half haphazardly at the different colored glass bottles, the majority of them bouncing off the lip, others missing their mark completely. 

He watched you from afar for a second more, wincing when one of your rings bounced off the single dark blue bottle at the very center of the table. 

He saw you take the last of your rings, aim and toss, the ring bouncing off the lip of a yellow bottle and land around the neck of a clear one. He chuckled at your excited squeal at having won, you and the kids jumping as you pointed to your ring, your hands shooting up to catch the large dark sunglasses resting atop your head  as they fell onto your face in your excitement.

He walked over just as you pointed at and claimed your prize, a small lion you handed to Lisa as soon as it was in your hands.

“Where’d you get that Bill?” asked Frank when he turned and saw Billy a few steps away, his face barely containing the teasing smirk that pulled at the corners of his lips as everyone turned in his direction, eyes going wide as they took in the stuffed animal he held.

“Won this bad boy doin’ what I do best Frankie.” 

“Talkin’?” sassed Maria from beside Frank, making everyone chuckle

“Oh, ha ha.” he deadpanned back at her.

“Alright, come on guys, lets go get some lunch.” said Frank, tossing his arm around Marias shoulders, bringing her close to his side, turning them around and heading towards the carousel at the center of the fair that was in front of their favorite burger stall; Lisa and Frank Jr. looking at each other and saying a quick “race ya!” before going around them and breaking out into a run, leaving you and Billy behind to catch up.

Billy smiled as he took the few steps needed to stand in front of you, taking the stuffed animal from under his arm and held it out for you, you reached out your hands and took it from him, letting out a little “oof” when you felt the complete weight of it in your arms.

“More of a big boy than a bad boy.” you said, raising it enough so that its face was in front of yours, “how many games did you have to win to win this?”

He smiled as you brought the stuffed animal closer, hugging it close to your chest with a muttered so soft as you rocked your body from side to side.

“Not nearly enough,” he whispered as he looked at the smile that threatened to split your face in half. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his jeans as the reality of his words sank in, there wasn’t anything Billy wouldn’t do or no amount of money he wouldn't pay to see your eyes light up with happiness.

“Thank you Billy, I love it.” you said, turning your body just enough so that the stuffed animal was out of the way, rose on the balls of your feet and pressed your lips to his for a quick kiss that ended sooner than he would have liked. 

You lowered the heels of your feet to the ground, shifting the stuffed animal under your arm, freeing your right hand and holding it out to Billy.

“Come on Russo, we better catch up to Castle and the rest of them before Frankie eats all the fries they have. It’s the only thing the kid’s been talking about for the past hour.”

Billy smiled as he took your hand, his fingers slotting between yours as you walked in the direction of the burger stall.

Gen Taglist: @juguitos @something-tofightfor @suchatinyinfinity @the-blind-assassin-12 @its-my-little-dumpster-fire @bts-smolarmy @elanor-of-imladris @pheedraws @obscurilicious @fific7

Billy Russo Taglist: @nananananananananananabatman @shinebrightlikeafanbase @emyyjemyy

[whentommymetalfie]

Breathe Again -Chapter 26

-By your side-

prologue//one//two//three//four//five//six//seven//eight//nine//ten//eleven/twelve/thirteen/fourteen/fifteen//sixteen//seventeen//eighteen//nineteen//twenty//21//22// 23 //24//25//

Chapter Summary: Alfie gets Tommy home.  

Wordcount: 4,7 K

Warnings: suicidal ideation, hypothermia, discussions of attempted suicide, hallucinations, mental health issues, 

Tommy doesn’t wake up. All the way home he hangs limply in Alfie’s arms, cold, much lighter than he should be, even in his large wool coat. The wind tears at him as if it wants to rip him from Alfie’s grip and he can barely feel the tiny puffs of warm breaths against his neck. But he focuses on that, only that. Tommy is alive and that’s all that matters. One step after the other towards the house, where warm light is flickering in a few of the windows now. Esther must’ve come back, she’ll know what to do. He can’t bring himself to think of that, what he’ll do what he’ll say when he gets back, all he knows is that he has to get Tommy home, to safety, to a warm bed-

He’s left the glass doors open and Esther meets him in the living room when he stumbles over the threshold. Hair sticking out of her long, grey braid and with distress etched into her face she’s not the usual picture of calm, but she still installs a sense of safety. He’s never been so fucking happy to see her. She breathes something out as she runs across the room to meet him, hands reaching for Tommy. Oh god, perhaps.

Yeah, they could use having God on their side tonight.

“Found’im in the water. He’s alive,” Alfie breathes out and fuck is that his voice? “Fuckin’ barely- and he’s so cold.” Like a scared child, he sounds, but Esther just nods, reaching and cupping Tommy’s face between her hands, mouth pulled back in a pained grimace. But it only flashes by, then determination settles across her features.

“We need to get him out of those wet clothes and into bed.”

She pulls him forward because he just stands rooted on the spot. Alfie readjusts his hold on Tommy and follows towards the bedroom-

never letting him go again, can’t let him go, if he lets him go Tommy’s heart will stop beating, those trembling little breaths will stop-

Esther flicks a switch and the room floods with light. Alfie blinks, dazed.

“Mister Solomons, you need to put him down.” She looks sternly at him over her shoulder as she lays out the towels that have materialised in her arms and yeah, he knows, fucking knows, but it feels like his arms are frozen around Tommy’s frail body. Needs to feel his breath against his neck, feel that he’s alive, he is okay, Alfie got to him in time, he is alive- suddenly the icy fear grips tighter around his heart and he pulls Tommy closer to his chest, fingers on his pulse again, feels that it’s still hammering like the pecks of a tiny bird underneath his icy skin.

He’s okay, Alfie got him home, everything will be okay

“Mister Solomons-“

But it’s so weak, as if his veins have frozen and his poor heart is struggling to pump the blood through them.  

“Sir!” Esther’s raised voice and a grip around his arm wakes him. She fixes him with a stern gaze as she very slowly says, “Put him down and let me get him out of these wet clothes, or he’s going to die.”

And he nods, carefully placing Tommy down on top of the towels. The panic grips him tightly the second he lets him go, and he takes a step back to keep himself from pulling him back in his arms.

Seeing him in the light is worse, much worse. There’s so much goddamn blood, clumping in his hair, running in stripes down the side of his face. And his right foot is an alarming shade of blue, swollen around the ankle with dark blotches blooming all the way up his chin. The light makes fucking everything worse. Tommy looks so small and so fucking cold-

“I don’t know where his blanket is,” Alfie says.  

It feels like the most important thing in the world suddenly. Tommy needs that blanket, he needs it and Alfie can’t remember where it is, he left it down on the beach, couldn’t even get that right-

Esther ushers him gently towards the door.

“We’ll look for that later.”

“But he needs it.”

“Yes, but he’ll do fine with another one for now. Go to the kitchen and put the kettle and the oven on. Put the lids to the cast iron pans in there. And then get yourself out of your wet clothes before you catch your death.”

Alfie forces his mind to just repeat the tasks over and over on his way to the kitchen, to keep all other thoughts away. Fills the kettle with water and realizes his hands are shaking. Puts more wood into the oven along with all the iron lids he can find in the kitchen. They feel heavier than Tommy as he holds them

When he returns to the bedroom, Esther has already gotten Tommy out of the wet shirt and tucked in under all the blankets the house has to offer. He rips off his own wet clothes and leaves them in a pile, wrestles himself into dry ones, blows hot air onto his frozen fingers, rubs his hands over his face trying to fucking focus but the edges are still so blurry. Thank fuck Esther takes charge, as if she’s the former captain and not him.

“We have to call a doctor,” she says and it’s a statement with no room to argue and still Alfie wants to, doesn’t want anyone close to Tommy, it’s not safe, Tommy is afraid of doctors now, he’ll -

Esther senses his hesitation before he can voice it and says, “He could have water in his lungs-”

“Then he’ll be fucking dead before the doctor-”

“-And even if he doesn’t, that foot doesn’t look good. Neither does this,” she says as she wraps a bandage around Tommy’s head. “I’m calling doctor Adelman and telling him to come here as soon as he can. Light a fire and then sit with him while I fetch the hot water bottle.”

Somehow he manages to get a fire going even without feeling his hands. Then he slumps down on a chair, pulled close to the bed. Reaches out to put a hand on the side of Tommy’s neck. Counts the slow beats, one after the other, anticipating the next with his own heart lodged in his throat.

Esther returns with three cast iron pans wrapped in cloth and the bottle tucked between her shoulder and head.

“No, no, it’s fine, Sir,” she says when he makes a half hearted attempt to stand. She tucks the lids in at Tommy’s feet and the bottle at chest, under the mountain of blankets. “The doctor is visiting a patient in Portsmouth. But I told his wife it was urgent and was promised he’d be here as soon as he could. This afternoon at the latest.”

“Right.”

“Until then we’ll have to get him warm.” Esther hangs more blankets before the roaring fire. Since when does he own so many fucking blankets? “One thing at a time.” She comes to stand next to Alfie, leans over to tuck the blankets closer around Tommy.

“He’ll pull through,” she says and nods to herself. “He’s as stubborn as you. He’ll be okay.”  

Alfie nods. Because he wants to believe her.  

…

The following hours are a blur of repetitions activity: replacing the hot water bottle, hanging blankets in front of the fire and tucking Tommy in with new, warm ones, over and over. Esther is in and out of the room with newly warmed cast iron lids wrapped in towels. At some point Alfie asks lamely if he shouldn’t- No, she says. You stay with him.

It doesn’t feel like he could’ve gotten up from the chair even if he tried.

Tommy remains motionless in bed, ghostly pale, his breathing quick and shallow and his pulse slow underneath Alfie’s fingers whenever he takes it.

At some point Esther tells him to go sleep in the guest bedroom but that’s where he draws the line, no matter how she argues.

If Tommy is going to die, he’s not going to do it while Alfie is asleep in the next fucking room.

…

Sometime during the night’s darkest hours -always darkest before the dawn, innit?- they’re both sitting there next to the bed, him and Esther, watching the slight rise and fall of Tommy’s chest. The blankets have all been changed, the hot water bottle is refilled and suddenly there’s nothing to do but wait.

Tommy hasn’t shown any signs of waking up and the only sounds in the room are the crackle from the fire and their breaths.  

“I found him in the water,” Alfie says when he can’t stand the sound of his own thoughts anymore. Perhaps he told her?  “Don’t know if he… if he wandered out there because he was confused and didn’t know- or if he-“

He rests his head in his hands and grips at his hair until it stings. Tries to wipe away the image of Tommy lying there in the water-

“There’s no use speculating,” Esther says softly. “We’ll know more when he wakes up.”

-Holding him in his arms and feeling nothing. Like holding a corpse.

“And then what?”

And then fucking what?

The guilt threatens to suffocate him. If Esther knew what he did, what he said- He’s done many awful things and somehow none of them seem to measure up. Fuck. He should’ve known from the second Tommy showed up at his doorstep that this would end in fucking tragedy.

“And then, Sir,” Esther says and pulls him out of his own head. “I’m going to make him tea. And you’re going to read him a story. And everything will be okay. Eventually.”

He nods again.

Because he wants to believe her.

…

Suddenly it goes from bad to worse.

Sometime after Esther’s changed the blankets again, Tommy starts making noises, hurt, panicked sounds in the back of his throat, struggling against the mountain of blankets. The swell of relief in Alfie’s chest at those first sounds dies down just as quickly when he leans over and attempts to soothe him and he’s met with nothing but more of those noises.

“Shh, Tommy, shh, ‘s alright,” he mutters and cradles his cheek. “You’re safe, it’s fine-“

Tommy whimpers and writhes under the blankets, trying to push them off, eyes still screwed shut. Alfie thwarts his weak efforts.

“No, silly boy, you’ve got to keep these on, see? ‘s for your own good.”

“What’s wrong?” Esther asks from the doorway, hurrying up and dropping the hot water bottle on the bed as she takes in Tommy’s evident distress.

“He just started fussing. Seems like he’s uncomfortable,” Alfie says and pulls the blanket up again where Tommy’s managed to rip it off. Esther puts a hand on his forehead

“He doesn’t have a fever, so it might be a good sign,” she says. “Means his temperature is getting back up. We’ll just have to stick it out.”

“Yeah? Getting really bloody sick of that. Not being able to fucking do anything.”

Esther ignores him and puts the hot water bottle back under the blankets, resulting in more wordless protests from Tommy. Alfie steels himself and holds him down.

….

Thank God Tommy stops making those pained little noises rather soon after that. He reverts back to being completely dead to the world, motionless and silent underneath the blankets that only moments ago he was so adamant to get rid of. Alfie slumps down on the chair. Rubs his hands over his face and takes his first breath in what feels like hours.

But when only minutes later, Alfie has to check that he’s still breathing, he begins to miss those noises.

…

The night passes at an ever slowing crawl. Once those first hours of frantic activity passed, with Tommy’s breathing finally becoming deeper, his heartbeat less of a weak flutter, Alfie feels the weight of exhaustion settle on his shoulders, along with a persistent ache in his joints. But he still can’t sleep. Not until Tommy wakes up.

Esther is out in the kitchen boiling more water and heating the cast iron again while he is sat next to the bed. The morning light is washing the room in grey tones.

And that’s when Tommy stirs again. Only a tiny little shift but it resonates like a shockwave through Alfie’s body and he pitches forward off the chair, sending it toppling over.

“Tommy?”

Long, long lashes flutter over the blue spidery web of blood vessels under his eyes and Tommy looks up at him, no, through him, eyes glazed and distant. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he manages any words. And his voice sounds fucking awful when he does, raspy and broken,

“Dad?”

Alfie barks out a laugh and it sounds fucking crazed even to his own ears.

“Nah, nah, mate. And fuck, I’m only a few years your senior I bet, even if you’ve fared a lot better in the face department. But I’ll forgive you because I am nothing if not a benevolent God, am I?-”

He cuts his relieved stream of words short because Tommy looks so heartbreakingly confused and tired, furrowing his brow. Alfie runs his fingers through his hair above the bandages, cups his face and it’s finally not ice cold anymore.  

“It’s just me. Just Alfie,” he says. “You’re home now. You’re safe.”

Tommy blinks slowly, eyes drifting across the room as his breathing grows quicker. Alfie holds the hand firmer to his face.

“Home?” he rasps out and Alfie nods.  

“Yeah. Home.”

Tommy shakes his head at that and lets out a quiet whine, moving as if to sit without any success. Alfie keeps him down.

“Shh, shh, nothing to be afraid of,” he coos. “Look, look here’s your chestnut, the one you’ve been carrying around, remember?” he presses it into Tommy’s hand and closes his bony fingers around it, enclosing Tommy’s hand in both his own. “You’re home, and you’re safe. That’s all you need to know for now.”

Finally, Tommy relaxes back against the pillows with a defeated little sigh, and soon his eyes slip closed again. Alfie strokes his hair with one hand, holding onto his hand with the other. Then Tommy’s hand goes limp in his when he falls back asleep.

It becomes difficult to stay awake after that. The relief of having Tommy wake up mixed with the new worry of his confused state makes the exhaustion settle over him like a blanket made out of sand.

“You’ll be more helpful to him if you sleep, Sir” Esther says when his head snaps up from yet another involuntary nap. “He’ll probably sleep for quite a while. I can wake you up in a few hours.”

“One hour,” Alfie grunts as he heaves himself out of the chair.

“One and a half.”

“You drive a hard bargain Miss.”

“One of the reasons you hired me, Sir.”

Alfie goes to sleep in the guest room. If he’s going to succeed in sleeping at all he can’t be there in the room listening to every little sound Tommy makes, waiting for him to wake up again. Waiting for a sign that he’s still there and that he hasn’t broken him beyond repair this time.

Somehow, he falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

As promised, Esther wakes him up no later than one and a half hour later. He’s wide awake the second the door creaks open.

“Tommy is still asleep,” she tells him before he can even open his mouth. “He’s exhausted, poor thing. But he’s warmer now, at least. I think he might be out of the woods for now.”  

“He was all confused when he woke up.” Alfie sits up and rubs the bridge of his nose. His body aches. “Didn’t even recognise me.”

“It’s to be expected, both from the cold and what he’s been through. But I suppose… well, we won’t know what state he’s in until he wakes up and can stay awake for a bit longer.”

“And what if that state is that the cold fucked what’s left of his head, eh?”

“Go sit with him,” Esther says.

And Alfie does.

…

It’s mid day when Tommy wakes up again.

Esther has dragged one of the armchairs into the room, firmly ignoring Alfie’s protests, (You’ll do him no good if your back in such a bad state you can’t even walk, Sir) and that’s where he’s sat now, today’s paper splayed in his lap and with a cold cup of tea is tilting in his grasp. He’s staring at one of the pages trying to somehow make words out of the jumbled mess when the mountain of blankets starts moving and a pair of blue eyes bat open.

“Morning sleeping beauty,” he says and attempts to smile. “Finally decided to join us in the land of the living again, have you?”

Tommy quietly takes in the room and eventually fastens his gaze on him.

“You’re in Margate,” Alfie reminds him. “You- well, you went on a bit of an adventure last night but everything’s going to be just fine, yeah? Don’t you worry.”

Tommy nods slowly at that, and his gaze seems clearer now. He drags the armchair closer to the bed and hunches over, elbows resting on his knees.  

“How much do you remember?”

That just earns him a slow blink.

“Do you remember-“ Where to even fucking start? “Well, we had a bit of an altercation one might call it, for lack of better words. Last night.” He rubs a hand across his mouth. “I upset you. Said and did some things I wish I could take back and- well, you disappeared. Climbed or fell out the bedroom window. Suppose that’s how you hurt your foot.”

Tommy nods again and furrows his brow. Alfie lets him have a moment to process. Silently prays he doesn’t remember the kiss. Asking God for a lot of favours today, isn’t he?

“I found you in the water,” he finally says when the silence has stretched on for longer than he can stand. “Thought you were dead at first. Gave me a right scare, you did. But by some fucking miracle you weren’t. And I took you back here. That’s… that’s pretty much it.”

It’s not fucking ‘it’ though, is it? But what the hell is he supposed to say? Tell him in detail how it fucking felt to find him lifeless in the water? How he screamed and shook him and begged for a fucking miracle and how it felt as if his ribcage was caving in when he thought he’d lost him?

“Yeah,” he says instead. “That’s… that’s pretty much it. ‘s far as I know.”

Tommy rubs circles over the chestnut still firmly clasped in his hand. Alfie looks at his hand, at the web of blue veins and the scratches over his knuckles. Tommy pulls the sleeves down over both of them. Shrinks before his eyes until he’s so small he might disappear entirely.

“They were so loud,” he whispers. Quiet, so quiet, as if the sand and the salt water has chafed at his vocal cords. “I just wanted them to stop.”

Alfie wants to reach out, take him into his arms, but the night’s events wrap around them like a vice and keeps them down.

Tommy fidgets with the sleeves, stares at them and swallows around the sand in his throat.

“Grace was there. In the water. I didn’t want to be alone.”

“So you went to her?”

Tommy nods and looks up at him, this time. And he’s there. Still there, behind the icy blue surface.  

“But Grace is dead,” he says.  

“Yeah.”

“I tried to get back to the shore. But it was so cold. The water.”

Alfie reaches out and brushes his thumb over his cheekbone.

“You did good,” he says. And then: “And I never fucking called your family. Turns out I’m a selfish fucking bastard and I can’t let you go. I’d be a fucking fool.” And it’s not until he says it out loud that it suddenly dawns on him that maybe Tommy doesn’t want to stay. After last night. “But if you want to leave I get it- I can still call someone.”

“No.” Tommy untangles a hand from the blankets and closes the icy fingers around his wrist as he frantically shakes his head. “Please.”

Alfie cradles his face underneath his palm, holds it steady.

“Shh, ‘s fine. Up to you, innit?” he whispers and leans in a bit, letting Tommy hold on. “Just thought that after everything you might… yeah, that you might feel safer with them ‘s all.”

Even if they don’t deserve you.

Tommy lets him go, pulls away, and curls up tightly under the blankets. For once, Alfie has the sense to stay fucking quiet and his hands fall uselessly into his lap as he holds his breath and waits, waits-

“They were having me committed.”

He straightens up in his seat and furrows his brow, confused by this turn of the conversation.

“What?”

“I heard them -“ Tommy rasps, breaths coming quicker as he fidgets with the blankets, and then the words just start pouring out, “Heard them come and I know… shouldn’t wander around but- I just had to know if they were real. I’m too much trouble, it’d be better if I wasn’t here. They’re tired of me. People like me belong in- in places like that.”

Something that should’ve clicked long ago in his head finally does. And he’s a fucking idiot for not realizing sooner, not even considering- But how could he have guessed that his own family, that his own flesh and blood would- fucking hell-

“They were sending you to a fucking asylum?”

The deafening silence is enough of an answer and he gets off the bed, has to move. Paces across the floor as he clenches his hands into fists over and over, rage quickly building into a storm.

“And that’s why you left?” he growls. “God this is fucking- Just fucking like them. Locking you up and forgetting about you the second, the bloody second you’re not useful anymore. Who suggested it, hm? That brother of yours? Fuck he’s the one to fucking talk-“ his voice has risen involuntarily and he’s far louder than he should be. Searching for something to throw, grab, crush beneath his fingers- The anger makes his skin crawl, makes his fucking brain feel like it’s swelling out of his skull and he huffs out a harsh breath as he kicks the bedside table.

“Are you going to?”

He stops mid step, finding that Tommy is watching him with tired eyes.  

“Going to do what? Have you locked up in a bloody asylum?” Alfie hisses. “Why the hell would I do something like that?”

“Because my head is broken. I’m broken.”

As if it was obvious. As if it’s clear that Alfie must’ve thought it. But those are his words, aren’t they? Things he said just last night, words he put into Tommy’s mouth.

He sinks down onto the mattress, grabs Tommy’s face between his hands and holds it tightly.

“I’d never do that. You hear me? I’m never letting you end up someplace like that. Do you fucking hear me, yeah? I need you, right, I need you to tell me that you fucking understand.”

Tommy tries to nod but he’s holding on too tightly. He takes a deep breath and forces his hands to soften slightly, leaning down until his forehead rests against Tommy’s.

“And you are getting better,” he whispers. “You got yourself back to dry land, didn’t you? Yeah, you did so good. So fucking good.”

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut and takes a shaky breath, holds it in, and when he exhales it comes out in a trembling sob.

It’s followed by another, and another, and he hides his face beneath his hands as pulls himself away from Alfie and curls into a ball underneath the blankets. The tension that’s been building for God knows how long snaps like a violin string. The quiet sobs grow into howls. Tommy cries so hard his entire body wracks with it, curling inwards on himself as they tear through his fragile frame.

Alfie has never seen him cry like this.

Sometimes he’ll cry when he’s having a nightmare, quiet little sobs and whimpers. Or have tears running down his face when he bolts upright in bed screaming in terror. But never like this, never with this kind of bone deep desperation and never when he’s awake. Never in front of Alfie.

At first it leaves him paralyzed, terrified of touching him, of doing anything to make it worse and it feels like Tommy will shatter completely beneath his hands if he touches him the wrong way. But then he lays down and wraps him in a tight hug and Tommy doesn’t break into little pieces; he buries his face in his chest, wetting his shirt with his tears. He can barely catch his breath in between the sobs, choking on them. Alfie suppresses the urge to tell him to stop, calm down, because this, this is too fucking painful and fuck it does feel like he’s falling apart there in his arms.

But he accepts that all he can do right now is hold him.

Tommy cries and cries, deep and heart wrenching.

And Alfie holds him.

It seems to go on forever. Like a dam that has broken and let loose a flood.

Esther opens the door at some point, giving them a worried look before closing it again. The next time she returns she’s carrying a bowl of water and a rag that she places on the nightstand before leaving as quickly and quietly as she came. Alfie reminds himself to give her a raise.

Finally Tommy has cried himself to exhaustion. Sobs turn to quiet whimpers. Alfie reaches for the cloth and carefully cleans his face, dabbing gently at pale skin and the long, wet lashes. Tommy sniffles. And Alfie doesn’t say anything. Instead he just lays the rag in the bowl and wraps the arm around Tommy’s back again.

They lie in silence for a long time.

The wind outside has stopped tearing at the house, leaving the gentle crackle of the fire as the only sound. Save for that of Tommy’s shaky breaths.

When those breaths have finally evened out and the tension has melted from Tommy’s body, Alfie says, “I’m not letting anyone take you away. Whose head isn’t a little broken these days, eh? Always thought it was overrated, this fuckin’ sanity thing.”

Tommy curls further into his embrace and peers up at him through wet lashes.

“You kissed me,” he whispers. “Last night.”

Alfie clear his throat and wills the heat down from his face.

“Yeah, yeah, was drunk and… fuckin’ stupid. I shouldn’t have.”

“I kissed you back.”

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t have kissed you. Didn’t mean I didn’t want to, but you’re not… you’re not ready for something like that.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Tommy says with unexpected clarity and shoots him a look akin to a glare. He fidgets with the buttons on Alfie’s shirt and adds softly, “I still want things. That… feel nice.”

Alfie leans his forehead against his. Thumbs stroking along his sharp cheekbones, tracing the pale freckles.

“And you’re still allowed to have things. That feel nice.”

“Show me, then,” Tommy whispers and there, there it fucking is. The hint of a challenge in his voice.

Alfie kisses him.

Maybe it’s not the right thing to do but it fuckin’ feels like it. And who’s to say what’s right in this foul world? If things were right, Tommy wouldn’t be here with a gruesome scar from bullet and a head full of ghosts.

He keeps the kiss soft, doesn’t ask for too much, even when Tommy opens his mouth for him and is pliant and willing in his arms and even if the urge is there to roll him onto his back, press him into the mattress and have his way with him right then and there, because fuck Alfie is a mere mortal man, and a bad one at that. But they have time. For now this is enough; Tommy’s lips, soft and warm and open against his, feeling him relax and melt against him, giving himself to Alfie. It’s enough. It’s fucking everything.