#i’m just saying that holly black did it That Much Better

[criminalgays]

me, watching holly black have jude’s sisters come help her in her time of need even though they fight and don’t get along: so this what sjm thought she was doing with the archeron sisters. alright.

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

the slow night

buttercup, chapter six

a/n: he a hoe and I love him. thank you and goodnight.

summary: as the peck blossomed into something much more ravenous, a soft laugh began to billow out of you, “Mr. Murdock,” you tilted your head back as his lips began to flutter down your neck, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you came over here to seduce me.”

warnings: matt murdock x baker!reader, smut, neighbours to lovers, rape recovery, ptsd, the black daredevil suit, kissing, semi public sex (at the bakery), clothed sex, dirty talk, hair pulling, oral, protected sex, penetrative sex, multiple orgasms

word count: 3244

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Leaning against the doorway to the small bakery bathroom, you watched Walter’s tongue poke out the side of his mouth as he flicked glittery stripes of eyeliner over his lids. 

“You sure you’re okay with closing up on your own tonight?” you heard Howard ask you as he sat on a low stool some space behind you, bending down to tie his shoes. 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” you smiled, glancing back over your shoulder at him, “you two deserve a night off.”

Staring out into space, your uncle leaned his tattooed forearms on his robust thighs a moment as he murmured, “you know, I don’t even remember the last time we went out…” casting a glance past you at the bald man in front of the mirror, Howard raised his voice, “honey, did you find out what queens are performing tonight?”

Popping the lid back on the pencil, the former club kid tilted his head approvingly in the reflection, “I think Holly Day still works Friday nights there, but other than that I have no idea,” he exited the bathroom, only to press a small peck to your cheek as he slid passed.

“Urgh,” you groaned with a smile, letting your inner child temporarily show as you dragged the back of your palm over the faint lipstick stain, “well, have fun you two!”

“Night, night, cupcake,” Howard blew you a few brief kisses as the pair scurried out of the shop, “don’t forget to feed the sourdough starter, oh! And mix a new batch of ginger maple cookies, portion them out and pop them in the freezing–, also–”

“Howard,” you interrupted him with a smile just as Walter pulled open the back door for them to exit, “I know what I need to do. I’ve done this countless of times before, I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“Alright,” he exhaled slowly.

“If it’ll help, I can send you a picture of the place before I lock up.”

A relieved smile then warmed up your uncle’s features, “thank you, sweetie.” 

Half yanking his husband out of the door, Walter offered you one last wave, “bye, Y/n!” before the solid door slammed shut behind them. 

Bending down, you put the last one of the wide and clean bowls away on the bottom shelf of the metal storage system in the corner of the kitchen. 

The skirt of your dress swooshed gently around your legs as you straightened back up, like a summer breeze, fluttering against your skin. Reaching for a clean cloth, you briefly ran it under the tap before wiping down the aftermath beside the sink following your dance with the dishes. One of the tiny puddles of splashed water soaked your apron as you leaned over the steel table to reach deeper, turning it a darker shade of brown right over your belly button. 

Just then, from out of nowhere, “hi,” the voice of your neighbour echoed throughout the kitchen, thoroughly startling you and causing the rag to drop from your grasp.

“Ah!” you jumped, haven not even heard the back door creak open, “Matthew!” pressing a soothing palm to your chest as you spun around, a light giggle flowed from your lips, “oh my god, you scared the crap out of me!”

“Sorry,” he chuckled, leisurely leaning against the far counter close to the back exit. 

You already knew he’d be out on patrol tonight, but actually seeing him stand there before you was something else entirely. The black suit clung tight to his physic, and now that grave injuries no longer distracted and adorned his visage, the vision of the obsidian vigilante that stood in front of you proficiently provided you with a sinful shiver that trickled down your spine. 

“What are you doing here?” you asked, attempting to brush off the tingle that bloomed between your thighs. 

A bold smirk bloomed on his lips, visible below the dark mask, as he slowly stepped closer to you, “it’s a slow night,” gently tugging his gloves off and tossing them to the table he passed, an action you didn’t expect to find as seductive as you evidently did, goosebumps now blossoming all along your arms. 

“A slow night, huh?” you chuckled, tilting your chin as he neared. 

“And I was in the area,” he cocked his head as his hands settled on either side of your frame, leaning against the counter behind you.   

“How convenient,” you smiled, his light-hearted explanations not convincing you in the slightest. Matt’s fingers then found your chin, tilting it further up as he bent down to brush his lips against your own. Your knees nearly buckled as you felt yourself swiftly sink into the intoxicating sensation, your arms gliding up and over the black fabric that hugged him, till they were locked around his neck. As the peck blossomed into something much more ravenous, a soft laugh began to billow out of you, “Mr. Murdock,” you tilted your head back as his lips began to flutter down your neck, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you came over here to seduce me.”

Mirroring your own chuckle, he playfully tested, “and what if I am, huh?”

“Wait, really?” you giggled, your hands seized each side of his face and pulled him back a bit as his hot mouth worked wonders at making you lose your train of thought, “you sure you weren’t just hungry or something?”

“Hm,” his palms slid up to cup over yours as he cheekily said, “something, yeah…” peeling your fingers off of his stubbly cheeks, he placed a few pecks in your open palms, “I would fucking love a taste of something sweet.”

Tearing your gaze away from his onyx visage, you briefly cast a glance around the space, “uhm, I don’t really know what’s left over from today, but there might be someth–”

“Nuh-uh, that’s not the kinda treat I was thinking of,” he smirked brightly as he wrapped his arms around your waist, drawing you in closer to his warmth as his fingers sneaked under the apron’s knot. 

Finally reading his obvious subtext, “o-oh,” you couldn’t help but giggle as he then leaned down to kiss you again, swallowing your laugh till it melted away into a low moan that vibrated against his lavish tongue. 

Scrambling closer, you damn nearly climbed him like a tree with how desperately you clawed at his mass. When his touch slid further down your frame and curved around your ass, he briefly offered you a squeeze that you swore soared all the way to the sensitive nerve endings in your throbbing clit, before he scooped you up and sat you down on the steel countertop. As he slotted his width in between your parted thighs, his teeth playfully caught your bottom lip. 

Fluttering your fingers further up, you cupped the sides of his face as the heated make-out slowly began to ease. The tips of your touch grazed the bottom of his black mask as you gently pulled back.

Blinking back at him through your lashes, your digits ghosted over the material as you uttered, “…can I take this off?” 

A faint smile tugged at his lips as he softly nodded, “mhm,” and let you peel the charcoal mask off of him. Letting it drop to the table right beside where you sat, you gazed back at him for a moment, his chocolate eyes gently crinkled up in bliss as you briefly traced a light caress over a few of his newly revealed features before you sealed your lips with his once more. 

Undoubtedly, your panties must have clung to your core at this point from how soaked they felt. 

Abruptly, Matt’s soft lips suddenly strayed from yours. Fluttering your gaze open, a giggle bubbled out of your lungs as you saw him slowly sink down to the tile floor beneath you. 

“Matty,” you beamed, your touch straying from his cheek as he settled down on his knees. 

Slowly raising a sliver of your hemline up to your knees, his lips grazed against your shin and leisurely roamed further north. 

Burying your fingers in the fabric of your dress, you gently began to hike it up till it, and the brown apron, bunched above your hips. 

Your breathing was ragged, and your mouth hung agape when his kisses neared your centre. One of his warm palms stayed planted on your inner thigh after he’d split your legs further to grant himself better access as you sat there, nearly dangling on the edge. 

A shiver ran through you when he placed a brief kiss to the soaked spot soddening your underwear, before his reach extended and hooked the cotton to the side, a sting of your slick clung momentarily to the fabric before snapping back against your core. 

“Fuck,” he let out a gravelly groan and you felt his breath tickle your cunt before his hand, the one not clutching your soaked panties, curled around your frame and tugged you towards him, closing the minuscule distance between his zealous mouth and your glistening centre.

Parting your petals with dizzying laps, Matt let out a moan as he made out with your pussy, the tickling vibrations caused your thighs to tremble beside his head. 

“God…” spellbound, he pulled back for but a second, “your pussy tastes like fucking heaven,” before he tilted his chin and enraptured your clit, fervently sucking down on it in a way that made your eyes roll in your skull. 

“Oh my god, I–, I–…” you panted, sensing yourself race towards the finish line, but even with how incredible his tongue made you feel, deep down within you rumbled a feral feeling for more. As your pelvis bucked lightly against his efforts, you gasped, “Matt… get up…” unsure if you’d ever felt so empty in your entire life, “get up right fucking now.” When he rose, the lower part of his face glinting with your want, he didn’t get a chance to say anything before you yanked him by his shirt and crashed your lips against his. With the intoxicating taste of yourself lingering on your mouth, your heavy breath fanned across his face as you desperately uttered, “in the corner behind you, on the hook beside where my coat is, my bag, the little front pocket.”

Breathlessly, his expression fogged up in soft puzzlement, “what?” 

“I went to the drugstore earlier,” you said, hoping that you wouldn’t have to spell it out for him. 

It actually took him a second for him to realise what you were talking about, “oh,” as if he hadn’t hoped or expected anything more than what you’d just let him do. Crossing the room in mere moments, a playful chuckle rumbled from his chest as he fished out the box of condoms, “this is a big pack… were you planning on seducing me?”

Rolling your eyes, you giggled, “oh, shut up and get back here.”

As soon as he was back in your reach, your fingers began to fiddle with his belt, impatiently freeing him as you virtually drooled seeing the imprint of his cock strain against the dark fabric of his pants. 

“Put it on, please, please, I wanna feel you so bad,” you begged as he ripped the foil packet open. 

“Oh, yeah?” 

“Yes, please,” your hungry eyes were glued to his breath-taking fist as he offered himself a brief pump before he hastily rolled the condom on, “Matt, if you don’t fuck me right now then I’ll lose my fucking mind.”

Sighs flowed from the both of you in unison when Matt sank into your drooling cunt. You almost felt drunk, that’s how wound up you’d gotten.

“Oh, you feel so fucking good,” Matt exhaled, letting his forehead melt against your own as he rolled his hips, getting impossibly deep before drawing back a bit and finding a rhythm that caused your legs to be like crickets, shakily rubbing against either side of his frame as fucked you, “sweetheart–, christ… you’re about to cum, aren’t you?” his lips tilted up into a smirk. 

“D-don’t you dare stop,” you panted, clawing needily against his torso. 

“I won’t, I promise,” he then sank a hand down between your frames to tickle your puffy pearl, “I could do this all day, baby.” 

You collapsed back on your elbows when your pussy fluttered around him and a lewd cry accompanied the high. 

Panting against the cool table, you hazily blinked up at him as he then uttered in the deepest sincerity. 

“God, I'm crazy about you, Y/n,” his expression was soft and dreamlike, “you know that?”

Your eyes went wide a moment, entirely forgetting how to fill your aching lungs, “really?” you then regained control rather gracelessly as you nearly coughed, “sorry... I forgot how to breathe for a second there,” the grin that bloomed on your lips nearly hurt.  

Snatching one of your hands up in his, he weaved his fingers with your own, “you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m amazing…” you gazed up at him, “I’m also completely and utterly wild about you,” you then tugged on his hand, drawing him down enough for your lips to graze against his. 

His hips instinctively rolled as your tongue flicked across his own, grinding briefly into your sensitivity before he noticed and went back to being completely still within you. 

But when your sloppy kiss then parted, you tilted your own hips a bit, slowly fucking yourself shallowly on his cock. As he gently offered you a tender thrust, gradually pulling out of your clinging cunt just a tad, you glanced down between the shy space betwixt you and spotted the ring of your cream that stained the base of his dick. 

“Fucking hell,” you whimpered as he straightened his spine back out and brought the back of your palm up to his lips, “I don’t get how I bounce back so quickly with you. It’s like you just have to smile and then I’m just–, oh my god!” you moaned as he changed his angle, brushing directly against a spot that sent a delicious shiver down your spine. 

“Oh, you like that? Right there?” he repeated the same lavish motion. 

“Y-yes–,” with your interlocked fingers, he then pulled you back up to a sitting position, the shift leaving you breathless, “fuck. You feel so good right now,” his hand let go of yours as it then snaked around your back, his burly forearm supporting your spine as the fingers reached up to weave within your hair, gently scraping his short nails over the nape of your neck.

Drawing you in even closer, your chest pressed against his as he kissed your cheek sweetly while he kept his pace meticulous and precise. 

Hugging onto his broad shoulders, your head dropped down to rest against one of them as you then muttered, “harder,” your gaze hazy on the kitchen behind him before your eyes fluttered shut. When he then snapped his hips forward a little more electrically, you weakly repeated in his ear, “harder.”

Slamming into your needy cunt so fiercely that the sound of your skin colliding echoed off the tile walls and a bit of drool began to stain his dark shirt as your cheek stayed smooshed against his width. 

“That it?” he growled silkily, “huh?” but when you couldn’t form any coherent words within the mess of moans that flowed from your lips, you didn’t have to see his face to know the grin that bloomed on his face, “aw, it’s alright, sweetheart,” his grip tightened in your hair, “you’re doing so good for me,” tugging intoxicatingly right at the roots, “just relax… that’s it… good girl…”

Keeping his pace rough, he lavishly slid out of you till just his bulbous tip plugged you up, before ramming his cock back in so feverishly that you could scarcely breathe at all, just tremble in his embrace, listening to the pure filth that he murmured in your ear, till you both tumbled over the edge. 

With his spent girth nuzzled against your tender pussy, faint hums of contentment flowed from your lungs as Matt gently stroked your hair, his other arm wrapped around you as well as he kept your sluggish frame close to his long after you’d both regained your breaths. 

As your fingers disappeared below his neckline and softly rubbed against the warm skin, your voice eventually found his ear, “okay, so I know that you didn’t come in here for a late-night snack,” the corners of your lips tilted upwards, “but now I’m kinda hungry.” 

With a gentle chuckle rumbling within his chest, he briskly tugged himself away and untangled himself from you, “one second,” his lips pressed against your hairline before you saw him turn around and wander out of the kitchen. 

As you watched him disappear into the front of the bakery, you tugged your panties back over your mess and pushed your dress back down, “oh, I'm not sure if there’s anything left out there–”

“Do you want a raisin bun or a very seedy one?” he asked and your brows flew up as you still hadn’t gotten used to how perceptive his heightened senses let him be. 

“Oh, uhm,” you blinked, completely blown away, “raisin.” 

Appearing before you once more, he handed you the speckled bun, “here.”

Smiling adoringly back at him, “thank you,” you sank your teeth into the pillowy treat before offering him a small bite, which he gladly accepted as a tender laugh rolled out of him. When you had consumed the sweet bun, a soft yawn promptly flowed out of you, “fuck,” his palms were warm at your waist as your arms briefly curled up beside your head, “I can’t wait to get back home and sleep.”

“How much do you have left to do till you can lock up?”

“Not too much,” your hands dropped back down and rested atop of his for a moment, “how about you? How long do you think you’ll be out there?” 

“Probably not too much longer either,” his head tilted gently before he leaned back in. 

“Alright,” you smiled, tenderly pressing your lips to his before he snatched up the discarded mask and tugged it back over his features. As his feet began to carry him towards the exit, he paused as soon as you said, “hey Matt?”

“Yeah?” the vigilante twisted back to face you. 

A bubble of nerves suddenly fluttered in your belly as you uttered, “when you get back tonight, could you maybe–, uhm… or maybe I could–…”

Swiftly getting at what you were trying to convey, Matt simply marched right back to where you sat and pulled you in for a kiss. Cradling your cheeks a moment longer as he slowly pulled back, he smiled, “there’s a spare key to my place behind the radiator in the hallway.”

Gazing back at him, you uttered, “okay,” feeling like you were floating on a cloud. 

“I'll try not to get home too late,” he breathed, pressing his lips to yours one last time before he backed up again. 

Calling after him, “be safe!” he stopped on the threshold of the back door for a second, silhouetted by the dark city as he flashed you a grin before he disappeared into the night, leaving you in the bakery alone, feet dangling off the table as a bright smile tenaciously lit up your face. 

© 2024 thyme-in-a-bubble 

[marvelobsessed134]

I’m not that innocent

A/n: Set around the events of Iron Man 2. Instead for Natasha spying on Tony, you will take her place. (Love Nat tho don’t get me wrong). This has been sitting in my drafts for *ehem* about 500 years but here it is :)

Warnings: smut, blowjobs, getting caught (not sexually), degradation, reader goes by a undercover name for a short amount of time, reader doesn’t get to cum lol, and I think that’s it let me know if I forgot anything.

Summary: Tony catches onto your act

This mission was simple enough. Go undercover as Tony Stark’s assistant to collect information on him for Nick Fury. Originally your friend Natasha was supposed to go on this mission but unfortunately she got sick with the flu so Fury asked you to take over.

You were nervous since Tony is a powerful CEO, literally Iron Man, and he’s mega hot. But you knew you had to set aside your personal feelings to successfully get this mission done. The CEO was obviously flirty with you, and you couldn’t help but be a little flustered. Everything was going according to plan until one day.

You were caught bent over in his office, looking through one of his file drawers when you heard a door open, close and lock. A grunt filled the room. You quickly looked up to see non other than your target. Standing there like a deer in the headlights, you just stared back at the older (and albeit larger) man.

“What do you think you’re doing Missy?” Tony asked as he slowly started to stalk towards you. “Just looking for these files that Pepper wanted.” You tried to easily make up a lie.

“That’s interesting because Pepper left early today.” Ah, shit. You are so cooked.

“Oh! Um, sorry must’ve slipped my mind um-“

“What were you doing sifting through my private files?”

Quick, Y/n, say something! Your mind shouted at you. But really, what excuse were you supposed to use now? Especially since he called your bullshit on your first one. Without even having to say anything, Tony spoke up, “I have a feeling you’re not really an assistant. You work for SHIELD is that right?” Okay, how the fuck did he get that spot on?

It must’ve been written all over your face because he said, “Yeah, I’ve had an inkling for awhile. I bet your name isn’t really Holly Brooks. What’s your real one?”

You were too scared and stunned to speak and so the raven haired man lifted your chin with his index finger and said in a lower tone, “I said, what is your real name?”

You gulped, “Y/n. Y/n L/n.”

“That name suits you far better than Holly does. And because you’re so pretty, I’ll let you out of this office and I can forget you ever did anything.” You looked at him with a surprised but hopeful expression.

“But you’re gonna have to earn it, sweetheart.”

“Earn it? How?” You had an idea of what this “earning” would entail and it made your panties damp.

“I think you know what I want.” He said cockily before pushing the file drawer closed and walking to his desk chair before sitting down in a leaning position. “Get on your knees pretty girl.” You were quick to obey, getting on your knees as you looked at him with doe eyes.

“You gonna undo my pants or what? Are too much of a dumb spy to not know how to suck cock?” His degrading words sent you spiraling and you let out a quiet, “Sorry sir.” Before buckling his belt and pulling his pants and boxers down allowing his large cock to spring free. Your eyes widened at the size and the tip already leaking of precum. You did wear a revealing outfit today, a white blouse with the first three buttons undone to show your black lacy bra, and a shirt black pencil skirt with just your matching panties under it. Maybe you were waiting for this moment…

You took his cock in your hand and began to jerk him off before taking the tip in your mouth and sinking down his length. “Oh fuck.” Tony hissed as you began to suck him off, bobbing your head up and down and jerking off whatever you couldn’t fit in your mouth. The older man gripped your hair roughly and started to control your movements, using your mouth as his own personal fleshlight.

“Such a slut, you like this don’t you? I know you’ve been waiting for this moment ever since I saw you staring at me a couple times with those fuck me eyes.” He groaned out, enjoying the way tears filled your eyes as you helplessly sat there on your knees being used by him.

“Who knew you were such a good cocksucker? I’m gonna have to keep you around.” His words made your brain short circuit and encouraged you to lick him and help him get to his finish while he was using your mouth.

“Shit, I’m gonna cum. You better take it all or I swear to god-“ The CEO cut himself off when he released his seed into your mouth and down your throat, you swallowed it all and he pulled you off his dick, leaning your head back to look at you. Your mascara was messed up, your face was wet from tears, and your eyes were blissed out.

“Such a pretty girl. Could’ve treated you real nice, taken you out to dinner before I take you home and destroy that little cunt. Too bad you have to be a whore.” His tone was so condescending and somehow that made it better.

“Get up.” Tony commanded and let go of your hair. You stood up and watched him rise as well, taking his blazer jacket off and loosening his tie before unbuttoning his shirt and fully getting rid of his pants. He grabbed you and pushed you against the side of his desk, kissing you hungrily. You kissed him back, hands wandering his sculpted body like it was the best thing you’ve ever put your hands on.

The raven haired man ripped your white shirt open and roughly pulled the cups of your bra down to expose your breasts, letting them pop out effortlessly. He tweaked and played with your nipples, spitting on them, sucking them, making you moan and squeal in the overwhelming sensation.

Then he pulled your skirt up roughly, and cupped your clothed core, “So fucking wet. Just from sucking my dick? Or was it being naughty and getting caught doing something you shouldn’t have been doing? Which is it?”

“Both.” You answered obediently and honestly.

“Fucking slut.” He huffed before ripping your panties off which caused you to gasp but you didn’t have a chance to open your mouth when he turned you around and bent you over as if you were nothing.

He slapped your ass once, twice, three times before lining up his cock to your dripping entrance. As he gripped your hips he slowly pushed in making the two of you moan. Oh god, you thought to yourself, his employees can probably hear this. They think you’re just another one of his conquests. In way, you are.

“Oh fuck! So fucking tight!” Tony growled as he began to thrust and fuck into you faster and harder slapping your ass occasionally. “Such a bad girl, thinking you can tease me all day, make me hard in meetings, just to try and fucking spy on me,” he scoffs, as if the whole situation was pathetic, “but now I have my cock deep your pussy so, at least one of us is winning.” He continued to fuck you senseless, your hands gripping the edge of the desk. You couldn’t hide your moans and cries as the CEO repeatedly hit your g spot.

“Oh god! I’m gonna cum!” You cried.

“Yeah? Do you think you deserve it? After all you did?” Tony grunted.

“Yes! Please let me cum! I’ve been such a good girl so far!” Your cries and pleads were pathetic. You were pathetic, Tony thought. And god was he having the time of his life.

He felt himself getting closer and closer to edge and said, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” And pulled out of you before shooting his cum on your ass.

You whined at the loss of contact and orgasm making him laugh and say, “If you want to cum, you have to let me take you out to dinner. And get rid of any files you might have stolen from me digital and physical copies.

[madockisser]

Why do you wanna kiss Madoc?

not sure if ppl are actually weirded out by my user or not, which most certainly is not my intention, but i feel the need to rant abt my thoughts on madoc! i also don’t wanna deter anyone bc of my user 😭! btw i totally understand if u hate him w all your guts like truly i get it but don’t hate on me for not! my user is mostly a joke! (also i LOVE cardan and jude sm more than madoc obviously just the “madockisser” user is funnier and so few ppl talk abt madoc so i feel the need to 😭)

madoc raised 3 children that weren’t his, was willing to risk quite literally everything to become king so his poor mortal daughters will be treated like princesses in a world where they’re treated like garbage. madoc has his faults(like trying to make poor oakey pokey king), but a lot of them can be chalked up to his redcap nature, being bloodthirsty and power hungry and just not understanding jude and her morals since their morals and life experiences are just SO different

him and jude have the same goal, except madoc and his nature, his morals, make the execution of that goal and the endpoint a bit different. jude is trying to save oak from being king so he won’t have to grow up bloodthirsty and drenched in blood like she did, while madoc is trying to make oak king, which he thinks is obviously the best thing he can do for him since madoc is so power hungry.

in their own eyes, they each think what they have planned for oak is best, and obviously to madoc making his son king after slaughtering nearly the rest of the greenbriar bloodline which solidifies his succession to the throne is a great boon, and in his eyes, jude isn’t trying to keep him from doing that to protect oak, (since he doesn’t understand that jude grew up so miserably) he sees jude trying to take/keep oaks throne from him.

jude says in her inner monologue at some point that she’s sure that madoc would relinquish the throne to oak when he’s of age, since he’s a man of honor or wtv, and madoc obv thinks this is just the best course for oak. why wouldn’t madoc want his children powerful and bloodthirsty? he wants them to be like him, and more than that, he doesn’t want them to slave away for a greenbriar like madoc did to eldred and balekin and dain(which he reveals in the stolen heir duo)

another thing is his morals when it comes to dain. he was livid in a way oriana had never seen when he heard about what dain did to oak and liriope. which makes perfect sense for him because he has honor enough to not slaughter a woman for being pregnant and by extent taking the life of the child inside just to remain in power and in favor.

dain did something that madoc inherently disagreed w. so madocs decision was obviously to betray him and run him through after replanning. it’s just in his nature. he replans, betrays, and resorts to murder when it matters lol. he does the same (sorta) w balekin by using him as a ploy to get oaks throne. balekin who has human slaves treated terribly, while madoc had a human wife and human children. i’m shocked balekin didn’t see madocs betrayal coming.

and even tho jude did something he inherently disagreed w/ and didn’t try to understand (which frustrates me sm) he gives her so many chances to come back to his side, he gives her advice, he gives her chances, betraying his nature for his daughter until qon, when he finally resorts to murder. fucking devastating.

on a lighter note, i do think it’s funny tho that despite it all he was still a better father than eldred and dain, and better guardian than balekin. though i will say that i do NOT excuse so many of madocs actions (bc he causes my poor baby jude so much pain), and when i’m actively rereading esp during qon i do in fact hate that mf, …i just think he’s dilf-y.

unrelated but he’s like the lead of a monster romance. holly black actually has another green sweetheart-chemist murdery bf, in her book valiant, but he’s too niche like nobody knows abt him which is so sad bc he’s sooooo cute and sweet. “ravuskisser” would be my user

i love reading his and jude’s dynamic, i love reading abt him and eva and him and oriana. i love in tpt when he FINALLY says something abt eva, finally understanding why she left him, and him owning up to his mistakes, but then saying , “but if it were not for my mistakes, i would not have the family i have today.” 😭😭😭😭😭

ALSO, the exile. it was so necessary. madoc living amongst humans helps him realize so much about eva, jude and taryn. “since humans have a shorter lifespan, they would risk much for happiness.” he says (not word for word) in tpt when speaking of eva, but ofc it also applies to jude and taryn.

anyway i guess moral of the story i like madoc bc daddy issues ig and also his complexity, holly black is a genius at writing morally grey faeries w diff mindsets! also how jude describes him to be a “tall man” the second he’s on the page like damn i get it eva and ori! anyway even holly black supports madoc kissers like me so don’t judge me!

[schrodingersauthorii]

Natsuyuu Wing fic

Humans are not birds. 

So of course there isn’t any real connection between human and avian wing morphs. However, humans being humans- thus having highly active pattern recognition, and birds being birds- thus having nearly infinite natural variation… certain associations are inevitable.

Takashi’s wings are Reiko’s wings, like her hair and eyes, which passed over his mother to roost entirely on her grandson’s shoulders. 

Pastel grey and white, they are the soft, silent wings of an owl- not the plumage of any natural species, but identical in form and function if not color.

While some children try to beat the demons out of him with prickly, purifying holly branches, others leave mice in his shoe locker.

“Now whooo-whooo could have done that? Did one of your ghosts leave you a snack?”

Takashi’s cheeks burn, as they do when he wakes to a a piece chalk thrown at his head and a disappointed teacher saying “I know owls are nocturnal, but…”

(Girls whisper about the Ice Prince with his snowy wings and piercing glare, but all Takashi sees is their conspiratorially bowed heads.)

Takashi wishes for brown: brown eyes, brown hair, brown passerine wings, brown and brown and normal. Eventually, as the tumult of his childhood ostracization passes, he wishes he had his parents’ wings and coloring instead. 

It settles him, when Nishimura tells him he looks just like his mom. He looks at the photo of his parents, and when he keeps looking past the sadness, he can see them in the shape of his eyes and slant of his jaw. He thinks his mother would have been happy to see her mother’s wings, her husband’s dimples, and her chin.

————

Natori Shuuichi has the wings of a sparrow hawk.

(Natori Shuuichi has the wings of a mimic of the sparrow hawk.)

“Wing typing is such bullshit,” his coworker says. 

He’s missed a few feather inserts in his coal black wings: this director is more particular than most, and insisted their shape must also match the raven’s wings his character’s were supposed to resemble, not just the color.

“If I have a sore throat, I’m a crow; if I sing, I’m a blackbird; if I’m gloomy, I’m a raven- nobody knows! It’s all made up.”

“Yeah,” Shuuichi agrees.

“Like, everyone calls you a sparrow hawk, but a scammer with the same wings would  definitely be a cuckoo. Did you know they mimic the plumage of birds of prey?”

“No, I didn’t,” Shuuichi lies. “It’d be pretty fitting for an actor, if the comparison wasn’t so rude.”

———

Seji’s wings are understated and beautiful, with neatly delineated bands of grey, white, and black when outstretched. Folded, white outlines black flight feathers, and the grey tops contrast with his equally black hair.

Those unfamiliar with wing typing think him a clever corvid or sweet songbird to his sister’s peregrine falcon.

The later is only half-wrong: the grey shrike is indeed a passerine bird, but not a sweet little insect- or granivore. 

“They mimic the song of other birds to lure them in,” their local authority on wing typing whispers after choir lessons.

Her acolytes in wing-based phrenology sneak titillated looks. Lucky them, that they could devote such attention to myths about the butcher bird.

Seji’s actually rather disappointed with his vocal range: his voice settled into a perfectly average pitch for his gender, and even dedicated study only gives him so much control over it. He’s afraid he can’t naturally disguise his voice well enough to fool anyone looking for a glossy black bob under a mask’s headband.

There were spells, of course, he could write around the mouth of a full faced masked. But everyone knew to watch for those. Few remembered simple, physical tricks.

(Like hiding under tables, or even better: up on mezzanines or rafters.)

The tingling numbness of wings bound too tightly to his spine are worth it, when exorcists bark orders at him like a shiki rather than a potential rival in disguise. He’d turned a liability into an asset: a mute exorcist was suspicious, but a mute shiki was ordinary, and could be talked over as he poured sake. 

(If he were feeling whimsical, he might compare it to a songbird evolving a raptor’s beak and using spikes to substitute for talons. Unconventional- but the shrikes ate just as well as the hawks and falcons.)

(If he were feeling whimsical, he might joke about the association between raptors and archery, when an arrow was just a spike one threw at prey rather than onto it.)

For reference: Eurasian sparrow hawk, Eurasian sparrow hawk, Northern hawk cuckoo, peregrine falcon, peregrine falcon, Chinese grey shrike, Chinese grey shrike. For bonus points, all of these species were spotted in Kumamoto, Japan and submitted to ebirds.org.

[olivia091108]

Crimson

Summary:bam gets his heartagram tattoo done

Word count:1.8k

Pairing:bam margera x reader

I have just finished checking out my last client and it has gone quicker than I thought so maybe today I’ll actually be able to go out and meet some of my friends.

I walk into the back room to say goodbye and grab my things when I heard Holly shout my name in a hurry, I turn around and face her 

“Everything alright”

“ I’ve just thrown up in the bathroom can you take my last customer I feel awful please”

After thinking it through, I can’t really say no if she feels ill, “ alright, hope you feel better”

“Thank you so much. I totally owe you one”

From behind me I hear ruby “girl she is so faking I heard her in the bathroom, talking to one of her friends and they’re gonna go to a club because apparently some famous dudes are there”

“ You’re kidding, at least I can still hang out with you though”

“About that I did overtime yesterday, so I get to finish early today. So here’s the keys lock up as soon as you’re done and maybe you’re still have time to meet your friends.”

“Do you mean I’m here all by myself? What if there’s some creepy dude, an-“

“You’ll be fine, and if anything goes wrong, just call me love you”

“Love you too I call out to her as she leaves the shop”

I walk back over to my station and get my stuff set up and putting on another layer of my crimson lipstick and putting in my earphones, trying to pass the time

BAMS POV

Who into the tattoo parlour not seeing anyone so I ring the bell on the front desk. nothing. I try again. Nothing. maybe they’re in the back. I wander off to the back of the shop and see a girl facing away from me. 

“Hello?”she doesn’t hear me so I tap her shoulder

YOUR POV

I feel someone grab my shoulder and without hesitating i scream so high I’m surprised the glass didn’t break and swung on whoever was behind me feeling my fist connect with a face.

 As if something in my brain switched on, I realised that he is probably my client who I have now just punched in the face and his Crimson blood is dripping from his nose.

“I’m so sorry”

With the hand that isn’t holding his nose he pulls out my earphones and I realise I must’ve shouted in his face s this time I say it much quieter “I’m so sorry”

“Nah your’e fine at least you threw a good punch.” He tries to joke but I feel even worse I grab him some tissues to clean up the blood on his face, and then I realise how handsome he is with his dark, brown, almost black hair, piercing blue eyes, and has a small mole on his face.

“Umm well I’m y/n I’m gonna be doing your tattoo so if you can take a seat.”

“I’m bam”

“Have you gotten any tattoos before bam?”

“Yh a few”

“What were you thinking of getting today”

“A heartagram right here” he points to right above his dick.

The thought of being that close to his dock not just anyone’s but a VERY handsome man’s dick makes me feel a bit shy and awkward.

“Cool super cool” he laughs a bit at my awkwardness “yeah I thought so too”

He lays back on the recliner chair and pulls his top up revealing his torsos and while I was staring eh started to unbuckle his belt and pull down his jeans more showing off his prominent v line.

I quickly snap out of it and draw out a stencil and double check that he likes it. I try to get in a position where I don’t have to lay sideways to do the tattoo but no luck

“Sorry can I just”I squeeze between bams legs and he manspreads more to give me some space so now my face is inline with his dick. Usually in the position I wouldn’t be giving tattoos and he knows that as well since he has a coy smile on his face.

As I’m getting ready to tattoo him I start to make conversation to distract him from the tattoo.

“You doing anything fun this weekend”

“ Yeah actually after this meeting up with a few of my friends at a club and have some drinks but I’m only visiting for the weekend so I’m probably gonna look round and shit” I feel a tinsy bit jealous but continue with the tattoo

“What about you?”he asks staring down at me probably getting a great view down my cleavage but I’m not complaining he’s one of the hotties men I’ve ever seen.

“Well, I was planning to do the same, but the girl who was originally supposed to tattoo you felt ill, so I had to cover for her. And tomorrow, I’m meeting up with my friend bill. I haven’t seen him in awhile because his girlfriend has gotten pregnant.”

I hear my phone pain, but I’m doing a detailed part of the tattoo so I asked them to read it out. It’s not like I’ll be anything weird since I’m undeniably single

“William says sorry I can’t make it tomorrow. Chloe wants us to look for cribs and stuff maybe another time” my face does drop a bit,but just ignore it and focus on the tattoo

“So I get why bill is short for William and Bob for Robert, but how do you get dick from Richard?”He asks sound like it’s been frustrating him for awhile. And without thinking I reply “you ask him nicely”

He breaks into a fit of laughter and I quickly move the tattoo gun off him so it doesn’t mess up. “Your funny y/n”

Can you bring your jeans down a bit lower please?”I say feeling all the blood rush to my face. He shuffles them down even more almost seeing the start of his dick

“Anywhere you think I should see while visiting?”

“There’s a  fair that seems quite good  or you can go to the pier with you’re Girlfriend it might be a bit busy but there’s loads of stuff to do down there”

“I don’t have a girlfriend”

“Oh sorry, I just thought since you’re so handsome that you would have a girlfriend I’m sorry”I whip my hand over my mouth not meaning to say that

“It’s fine it ain’t a big deal”he assured me “wanna know a fun fact” “yeah sure”

“My dick was in the world book of records” my face flushed probably the same colour as my lipstick “oh wow um nice”

“Yeah but then the librarian told me to take it out” he stares down at me, watching me laugh at his joke, and when I look up, I catch him staring down my cleavage, and now he’s the one to blush 

“So, where are you visiting from anyway?”

“West Chester, Pennsylvania”

Oh wow, I have a friend who lived on there. I visited her a couple times,and she tried to teach me to skate but I wasn’t very good but she said that there’s this really annoying famous man who lives down there and destroys things and plays his music so loud till like 5am. People like that are such jackass’

“Yeahh they definitely are”

“Your all done” he stands up to look in the body length mirror and stares at the tattoo. “That’s sick thanks how much do I owe”

“$160” he grabs a wad of cash all in 100s and gives me $200 and tells me to keep the change and leaves the shop

I check the time on my watch 10:34 too late. I start clearing my stuff away and making sure everything is switched off. I look in the mirror and see my lipstick has come off so I reapply before leaving the shop and locking it

I dont get too far until I hear my name being called and I hear bam calling my name. “Did you forget something”

“No I was just gonna see if you wanted to come out for a few drinks tonight.?”

“I really would but I’m so broke right now and I’m not really dressed for a club”

“You look great and it’s all on me” I look down at my outfit my denim skirt that some people would say is too short and my deep cut red top. It will do.

“Ok yeah that would be nice” we walk to the club and when we get there there’s a huge line and a billboard above saying JACKASS APPEARANCE this is probably where holly went too she lives jackass she’s always rambling

I walk to the bcak if the line to start queuing but bam takes my hand and we walk to the first of the line “bam what are you doing we can’t cut in” the bouncer just asks “who’s she?” “She’s with me” and just like that we’re in

“What the fuck hwo did you do that?

“I’m apart of jackass” as he says that I see all his friends come over

“Y/n this is Johnny, Steve o,wee man and Ryan”

“Hi it’s nice to meet you” we chat and have some drinks for a bit before they all separate and me and bam start doing shots and me being a lightweight I’m already drunk.

Over the speakers I hear hit in here by nelly playing. “Omg I love this song come dance with me” I didn’t really give him a choice as I dragged him to the dance floor and began to grind on him. Throughout the song we have been getting closer and closer so now our lips are almost touching.

I reach up and kiss him and pull away just as quick for a second I thought you read the signals wrong until bam pulls me back into the kiss and kisses me even harder and my arms wrap round his neck and I feel his arms snake round my waist. He bites onto my bottom lip which makes a moan slip out and he starts to kiss down my neck and soon enough finds my sweet spot and he nips at it and I already know that there will be a bright hickey tomorrow morning.

I move my head down and catch his lips into a kiss again but we disconnect when we feel a bright light on us and over the speakers we here johnnys voice “there he is he was too busy trying to get laid.”everyone laughs at that including me and in the bright light I can see that my lipstick is all over his face. I grab his hand and drag him out hearing whistles coming from behind.

“You might as well prove him right”

-liv

This acc took so long but I feel like I could have done better

[livvyofthelake]

ok so. there’s cassel. our protagonist, we love him and his richard papen swag (i don’t actually know if he’s really all that much like richard i’m just saying things) he’s a former teen assassin who wasn’t aware he was an assassin because his brother made him forget with memory magic. and he’s not Really an assassin because he killed all those people via turning them into objects. such as a chair. because he does transformation magic (he’s the only transformation worker in the world that we know of yet, because it’s the rarest type of magic in this universe) ok so that’s cassel. he’s also a teen con artist and runs an underground gambling ring but whatever. and then there’s lila, the mob boss’ daughter, the white cat, our girl who kind of sucks really bad but was recently cursed to be desperately in love with cassel (by his mother. who is insane) so she kind of acts weird in this book. due to the curse. and then there’s sam, cassel’s roommate and best friend, he’s cool you guys would like him. he’s a horror movie fan who lovessss practical effects, which was plot relevant when he was helping cassel fake dying last book. and then there’s daneca, sam’s girlfriend and also cassel’s friend, and we JUST found out she’s a worker too (emotion, same as cassel’s mother). stop me if i’m not making sense i would literally loveeeee to explain more. anyway so daneca is like. that girl who’s really into politics as a teenager, think christa american vandal and that’s her vibe. ok and then there’s barron, cassel’s older brother (barron’s the middle child) who took his memories from the assassinations. he’s also the one who kept cat lila in a cage. he has severe amnesia from all the karma from the memory magic and cassel doctored his memories to make him a better person. he lowkey works for the mobsters but not to the extent the oldest brother did. which brings me to philip, the oldest brother, he was best friends with the mob boss’ nephew (lila’s cousin) and they were planning to use cassel to kill him and take over it was a whole thing. again we cannot possibly care if i say spoilers for this. no one has ever read a holly black book at my recommendation be serious. i’ll believe that when i see it. anyway so philip was kind of the leader of cassel’s secret teen assassin career and after cassel got him back at the end of book one he started ratting people out to the fbi and then got murdered for it (his murder is the mystery book two centers around). and then crucially. maybe. there’s philip’s wife who left him, maura, and ok she’s MAYBE crucial later. i don’t remember these books but i think she’s big. she maybe killed him. unclear. i’ll let you know. anyway so that’s the rundown of the big characters i know everyone was soooo interested 😁

[jeagerism]

my top 2022 books

i read a good few this year, but these are the ones that continued to stick with me, so. my books and my favorite quotes from em!

the cruel prince (holly black)

[enemies to lovers W.]

- "most of all, i hate you because i think of you. often. it's disgusting, and i can't stop."

- "but i will not stand in front of your happiness. i will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself."

- "i hate him more than all the others. i hate him so much that sometimes when i look at him, i can hardly breathe."

- "what if the way i am is the way i am? what if, when everything else is different, i’m not?"

- "it occurs to me that if i kill him, i can finally stop thinking about him. if i kill him, i won't have to feel like this anymore."

the wicked king (holly black)

[my favorite out of the entire series]

- "kiss me again,” he says, drunk and foolish. “kiss me until i am sick of it."

- "if you’re the sickness, i suppose you can’t also be the cure."

- "yes, my great villan, my darling god. i will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as i can."

- "and the single last thing in my head: that i like him better than i’ve ever liked anyone and that of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst."

the queen of nothing (holly black)

[enemies to unfortunate allies to lovers to enemies to lovers comes into fruition. i love this series with my whole heart.]

- "come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home."

- "by you, i am forever undone."

- "it’s you i love,” he says. “i spent much of my life guarding my heart. i guarded it so well that i could behave as though i didn’t have one at all. even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. but it is yours.” he walks to the door to the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. “you probably guessed as much,” he says. “but just in case you didn’t."

turtles all the way down (john green)

[this book is so incredibly important to me. i relate to it a great deal, and john green has always been a favorite of mine. his words are ones that stick with you, and there's absolutely nothing that could stop that. this is probably my favorite book i read this year.]

- "your now is not your forever."

- "you're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. you're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. you're the storyteller and the story told. you are somebody's something, but you are also your you."

- "i was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever i was now."

- "i wanted to tell her that i was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: it was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. illness is a story told in the past tense."

- "she noted, more than once, that the meteor shower was happening, beyond the overcast sky, even if we could not see it. who cares if she can kiss? she can see through the clouds."

- "i thought, lying there, that i might love him for the rest of my life. we did love each other—maybe we never said it, and maybe love was never something we were in, but it was something i felt. i loved him, and i thought, maybe i will never see him again, and i'll be stuck missing him, and isn't that so terrible."

- "but what i want to know is, is there a you independent of circumstances? is there a way-down-deep me who is an actual, real person, the same person if she has money or not, the same if she goes to this school or that school? or am i only a set of circumstances?"

- "dr. singh told me once that if you have a perfectly tuned guitar and a perfectly tuned violin in the same room, and you pluck the d string of a guitar, then all the way across the room, the string on the guitar will also vibrate. i could always feel my mother's vibrating strings."

- "when observation fails to align with a truth, what do you trust--your senses or your truth? the greeks didn't even have a word for blue. the color didn't exist to them. couldn't see it without a word for it.

i think about her all the time. my stomach flips when i see her. but is it love, or just something we don't have a word for?"

the girls i've been (tess sharpe)

[it's hard to find quotes from this book, as it's just the act of reading it in general and experiencing it that's so inherently special, so emotionally impacting, that you've got to read it to know. it's a story about girlhood and being a mother and being a daughter to a mother who doesn't know how to be one. it's so good.]

- "practically everyone thinks they’re smarter than a teenage girl. it’s what makes being one so powerful, if you know how to use that giant mistake of an assumption."

love on the brain (ali hazelwood)

[oh god yeah i'm a romance novel gal now.]

- "you don't even have to admit to yourself that you love me, bee. god knows i love you enough for the both of us."

- "i know what she smells like. this little freckle on her neck when she pulls up her hair. her upper lip is a little plumper than the lower. the curve of her wrist, when she holds a pen. it’s wrong, really wrong, but i know the shape of her. i go to sleep thinking about it, and then i wake up, go to work, and she is there, and it’s impossible. i tell her stuff i know she’ll agree to, just to hear her hum back at me. it’s like hot water down my fucking spine. she’s married. she’s brilliant. she trusts me... and i want to tell her. i want to tell her that she’s luminous, she’s so bright in my mind, sometimes i can’t focus. sometimes i forget why i came into the room. i’m distracted. i want to buy her flowers, food, books. i want to hold her hand, and i want to lock her in my bedroom. she’s everything i ever wanted and i want to inject her into my veins and also to never see her again. there’s nothing like her and these feelings, they are fucking intolerable. they were half-asleep while she was gone, but now she’s here and my body thinks it’s a fucking teenager and i don’t know what to do. i don’t know what to do. there is nothing i can do, so i’ll just . . . not."

- "here’s the honesty: i’m in love with you. but that’s not news. not to me, and not to you, i don’t think. not if you’re honest with yourself—which you say you are, right?"

when the moon was ours (anna-marie mclemore)

[this is a book about growing up trans and as a poc in a town full of white cis people. it's so good, it leaves me endlessly undone. it's so special to me. it's about teenage love and family and culture, and it's just the best. this whole book is poetry.]

- "the difference between baptism and drowning is a few faithless breaths."

- "the way he loved her was his, even if she wasn’t."

- "we don't get to become who we are for nothing. it costs something. you're fighting for every little piece of yourself. and maybe i got all of me at once but i lost everything else. don't you dare think there's any water in the world that makes this easy."

[taestefully-in-luv]

Always You | JJK (Seven)

Summary: you and Jungkook have been best friends since freshmen year of college, there’s a lot of unsaid feelings and tension but neither make a move. what happens when his friend Taehyung (also your crush) needs a fake girlfriend?

Pairing: Jungkook x Female reader

Genre: friends to lovers, idiots to lovers, slight slow burn, roommate au, college au, SMUT (starting ch2), fluff, angst (in later chapters) slight crack, lots of drama

Word Count: 10.1k

Warnings: Swearing, alcohol consumption, sexual tension (!!!), mention of erection, heated make out, marking, grinding, mentions of suicide:( (If this makes you uncomfortable pls skip), mentions of cheating, quick blowjob, swallowing,

Notes: sorry this chapter is shorter than the last! But we only have 2 chapters left guys! And they are long!!! Sorry in advance lol. Hope you guys enjoy this chapter:) Anyway feel free to send an ask if you want to be added to the taglist or just want to chat about the story:)

Taglist: @mooniyooni @thisartemisnevermisses @giadalin @kookiebunny097 @cosmosjk @moonchild1 @just-jeon @anpanman-sonyeondan @starlight-night0 @yessii-i @apollukee @mikasaredscarf1 @kaye-rosales @bunnyjeonjk @dyriddle @seagulljk @hass-mich-los @peachy-skz0325 @wonusbitch @not-your-lion @flowersgirl02 @justinetingball @fiantomartell

© taestefully-in-luv

Previous

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

Jungkook runs his finger through your hair, his mouth hot on your neck as he leaves behind what feels like a million, slow kisses. You taste sweet and he’s reminded of the first time he got to do this with you and his heart swells at the memory. He feels you grind against him, making him impossibly harder as he grinds back. Your moans fill his ears and it sounds like a chorus of sweet, sweet music to him, he can’t help but grin into his kisses. Suddenly, the image of him kissing down your throat becomes blurry and the sound of your whines echo in the distance. He must be waking up.

Jungkook feels you hovering over him with shocked eyes and he can’t help but wonder what’s gotten into you. He can feel his head beginning to throb from the inevitable hang over that wishes to visit and he raises a hand over it. You continue to look down at him and that’s when he notices it. Them. The hickeys that spread across your skin and he goes absolutely pale.

He looks back at you with wide eyes but he can’t help but feel pride bloom all throughout his body as he looks at how he has marked you but those petals quickly shrivel up when he realizes how badly he must have messed up.

“Oh fuck.” He says under his breath.

“Yeah. ‘Oh fuck’” you repeat back.

Jungkook lifts himself up, leaning on his arms as he takes another look at the bruises that cover your skin. He releases a shaky breath contemplating what to say.

“Drunk.” His eyes slide to the side, “We were really…drunk.”

You narrow your eyes for a split second then look at him with ease,

“Yeah…right…drunk.” You quickly agree.

Jungkook and you share a moment of a silence, admiring one another’s work on the other. You hesitantly reach out, your fingers coming in contact with the side of his neck, brushing against his soft skin.

“This ones huge…I’m sorry.” You say, not sounding entirely sorry. A slight smirk graces your features.

“Ha, you don’t look very sorry.” Jungkook grabs a hold of your hand, “Plus, you don’t even want to see what I did to you.”

You retreat your hand back to touch your own skin, you shuffle out of the sheets and stand from the bed. You walk towards the little mirror over by Jungkook’s closet and take a look.

You audibly gasp, the purple marks that spread across your neck and collarbone are ones for the books.

“What the hell Jeon! How am I supposed to walk out of here today! Everyone’s going to see this!” you gesture towards yourself. “Oh my god.” You turn back to look in the mirror. “This is horrible.”

Jungkook leaves the bed to join you at the mirror,

“Holy shit.” He looks at himself, “I’m not any better!” he throws his hands up but he’s laughing. He’s fucking laughing! You watch in disbelief as he chuckles the fucking day away.

You watch him and you can’t help but start to laugh too. This is just so ridiculous.

“Wait wait…” Jungkook calms down, suddenly becoming serious. “We didn’t do anything else…right?”

“Why are you looking at me like that? Shouldn’t you also remember?”

“You’re the girl! Can’t you like tell…if we…” He motions his hands between your bodies.

“Oh my god. No, we didn’t do anything else. Do you really not remember everything?” you ask with a frown.

“I feel like I do…but I was just being you know, sure.”

Jungkook wishes he could remember everything in great detail but the reality is he was really drunk and some moments are hazier than others. Which is a fucking shame because he wants to remember the first moment you caressed his skin to his lips on yours.

“Do you remember everything?”

“I remember enough.” You admit.

You were drunk, yes. But the memory of you and Jungkook is almost crystal clear and fresh in your mind.

“Bottom line is…we were really drunk and drunk people do stuff like that all the time.” Your hands go to your hips, “I mean, I’ve literally made out with Trina before. Don’t feel special.” You wink, your tone is light and teasing and Jungkook finds you amusing.

“Just two drunk idiots.” Jungkook grins. “So no acting weird.”

“I won’t be weird, will you?”

“I’ll try my best.” He chuckles.

“I’m serious Jungkook, we can be cool about this…” you give him a smile, “It’s not like we haven’t—”

“Stop…” Jungkook lifts his hand up, “I get it.” He chuckles awkwardly.

Your small smile fades, your heart pinches. He never wants to talk about it, did he hate it that much?

“Right…” You begin walking closer towards him and he steps back, your heart pinching once again. “Well, lend me a fucking turtle neck or something so I can get outta here.”

Jungkook smirks down at you as he walks to his closet.

“Fine. Hopefully I have two…I have a black and a white one right?” he asks you from inside his closet.

“Shit, I think I have your white one at my place…”

“I don’t think Nick owns any…”

“Why do you need one? Just stay home today.”

“I’m supposed to meet Vanessa later…”

Your heart doesn’t just pinch this time, it sinks. Deep down into your lower belly until its falling to the ground.

“Oh.”

“I’ll find a scarf or some shit.”

“I’ll bring you your white one, don’t worry.”

“Really? Thanks y/n.” Jungkook walks out of his closet smiling at you, his black turtle neck draped over his arm. “Here.” He hands it over to you.

“Turn around.”

Jungkook raises a brow at you until realization hits him.

“Okay.” He whispers out.

You quickly change into the long sleeve shirt and let Jungkook know he can turn back around.

“I feel like I should make you breakfast or something…” Jungkook scratches the back of his neck, standing here awkwardly.

“Really Jungkook?” you laugh out, “And what would you make me?”

“I think Nick has some toaster waffles.” Jungkook offers with a grin.

“I’m good. I’m gonna head out but I will be back with your shirt!”

“Sounds good, I’ll walk you out.”

You two nod at one another, exiting the bedroom and walking towards the front door. You stop to say goodbye and Jungkook steps into your space, wrapping his arms around you.

“See you in a bit.” He whispers.

“Yeah.” You pull back and smile at him. “See you in a bit.”

~~~~~

“Why the fuck are you wearing a black turtle neck in the middle of August?”

It’s Trina, if you haven’t guessed. It’s the first thing you hear when you step into your apartment, she is over to hang with Holly you’re assuming.

“I was a bit chilly.” You lie through your teeth, giving her a strained smile.

“Take it off.” Trina commands.

“Trina…” Holly warns softly, she’s got her hand on Trina’s shoulder and you can’t help but giggle.

“Wait, your date was last night, right? With this ‘Min Yoongi’? Ooooh, did things go well?” Trina whistles out.

“It wasn’t a date, I already told you…” you whine as you walk into the living room, sitting on the sofa.

“But it did go well! I had a really nice time.” You admit softly, smiling at the memory of your ‘thank you outing’. “He’s so cool and so sweet.” Your eyes light up, “He owns the record shop a few shops away from the bakery!”

“Owns it? Like it’s his?” Holly asks, she shares a pleased smile with Trina.

“Yes, like it’s his.”

“He sounds like a man. Marry him.” Trina gives you an aggresive thumbs up.

“Chill dude.” You laugh. “I think he and I could become really good friends…and…”

“And?”

“Well, you never know.” Your eyes shift to the side as you smirk. “The world is full of mystery.”

Trina smiles brightly, “So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

“I’m saying that there’s not not a chance…”

“I’LL TAKE IT!” Trina lifts up Holly’s hand and high fives herself with it. “Whatever isn’t Jungkook.” She finishes with a grin and you feel your whole body go stiff.

“Trina…” you frown, “I really don’t like when you say stuff like that. Jungkook is a good person. He just…he messed up, yes. But he’s trying.”

“He hurt you.” Trina’s tone goes serious. “How could you forgive him for that?”

“I’m trying too. But I am able to try because I know him…he wouldn’t just hurt me without him having his own reasons…and I love him, T. Like as friends, of course but also…”

“I know.” Trina goes soft, “I know.”

Holly clasps her hands together, “And that’s that! How about we make some food and chit chat some more over some mimosas!”

“I love that idea.” You say.

“But seriously girl, please go change out of that turtle neck…you’re making me sweat just looking at you.” Trina says.

Right, the turtle neck. You told Jungkook you would drop off his white one…well, you gotta find it first.

“Okay, but I have to run an errand first then we can hang.”

“An errand?” Both girls look at you quizzically.

“Don’t worry about it.” Great, now you sound like Jungkook.

~~~~~

Within the hour you are quickly dropping off Jungkook’s shirt off at his place and going back to yours. He answered the door in nothing but his towel again and you tried so hard not to drool. You recall the night before when your fingers were dragging down his chest and his toned stomach. You felt every ab beneath your fingertips. Fuck, that felt good. You’re home now, you shake your head trying to rid yourself of thoughts of Jungkook’s body. But with a body like that? It’s so so hard. Just like how he was…STOP. You shake off these thoughts and try to pay attention to what Holly is saying.

“—And then I turned it in anyway and still got an A!”

“That’s amazing Holly.” You say, trying to act like you weren’t just having impure thoughts.

“Yeah, you totally kick ass.” Trina says.

You girls are a few mimosas in, you feel the champagne starting to work its wonderful magic on you but unfortunately it is making you start to sweat. You want to take off this damn turtleneck.

“I’ll be right back.” You say quickly before retreating to your bedroom. You find a baggy t-shirt and slip it on. This feels much better! But god damn. These marks on your skin are something else. You rush to the bathroom and try to cover some with makeup but it’s hardly helping. Fuck.

“Welp, maybe they won’t notice.” You whisper to yourself.

You walk back out into the living room and you notice both Holly and Trina’s eyes go comically wide.

“Wow, that date did go better than you thought!” Trina starts whooping and hollering.

“Wow y/n.” Holly really does look shocked.

Okay, so maybe they did notice. You feel so self conscious all of the sudden, your hands flying up to your neck to cover yourself.

“It’s—It’s not what it looks like.” You stammer out.

“It looks like this Yoongi guy is really into marking!” Trina yells out with a grin.

“Yoongi is really into marking…” Holly eyes you with horror in her eyes.

“Yoongi! Yoongi! Yoongi!” Trina begins chanting, she looks over at Holly and lightly taps her thigh to get her to start chanting the name as well.

“Guys…” You whine into your hands, “It wasn’t Yoongi.” You must be admitting that because you’ve had a few mimosas.

Silence. The room falls undeniably quiet.

“Wait what?” Trina asks, her wide grin beginning to fade.

“Did you meet with someone else last night?” Holly begins to pry.

“Did you go to a bar or something and meet a rando?”

“Did you bump into someone on the street?”

“Did you call up and old boyfriend? An old hookup?”

“Guys!” You yell out, “I met up with Jungkook last night!”

Once again, the room goes silent.

“You what?” Trina asks plainly, “What does that have to do with the hickeys on your neck?”

“Really Trina?” your head falls into your hands, “We kind of…”

“You guys fucked? Really?” Trina’s serious tone is back.

“No! We just got really drunk and made out! That’s it!”

“But is that really it for you?” To your surprise, it’s Holly who asks this.

“It’s fine. We were just drunk. We decided not to be weird about it. And we won’t.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Trina asks, her voice gone soft.

“Because I will text him in a few days, he’s going to text back. Or I’ll call and he will answer like normal. I’ll ask to hang out or something and we will just be two friends who hang. It will go just like that!”

Except it doesn’t go like that at all. A few days pass and you decided to text Jungkook in the morning after you woke up. You don’t expect to hear back from him for a couple of hours since he will probably sleep in. But hours and hours go by and it’s the afternoon now and you still haven’t heard from him.

“You have reached the voicemail box of…” You click the end button on your phone again for like, the 6thtime. Why isn’t Jungkook answering? It’s a Wednesday afternoon, you know you remember him saying he had today off for some reason so what is he up to? Even if he was with Vanessa, would he really ignore you like this? 6 calls in a row?

You decide to try Jimin, maybe they’re together. You look him up in your ‘Favorites’ and click clack away to calling him. After several rings the boy finally answers,

“Hey.” He says somewhat out of breath, “I’m working, what’s up?”

“Hey it’s nothing really…” you begin, “But have you heard from Jungkook…? I can’t get a hold of him…”

“Huh? No? Maybe he’s just, I don’t know, busy babe.” You can hear Jimin directing some poor child of his wrong moves on the other side of the phone.

“Look, I gotta go. But just try again in a little while, okay?”

“Can you try calling him for me?”

“Huh? Uh, sure. I’ll let you know later. Love you, bye.” Jimin hangs up and you’re left with your phone to your ear, talking to no one.

It’s Wednesday evening now, you and Holly are sharing a pie while watching some weird show on Netflix that Holly insists is good. You’re three episodes in and you’re starting to wonder when the ‘good’ part happens. It’s mostly just been weird but Holly seems invested in it. You’re trying to keep your mind busy, the thought of Jungkook making you feel antsy. You just wanted to call and see if he wanted to chill together…to prove things aren’t going to be weird between you two. Is he really going to be so fucking immature? Big deal, you made out. But to go this far to ignore you? You can’t help but feel so fucking anxious. He won’t ghost you again right?

You mindlessly stick your fork in the pie repeatedly when you feel your phone buzz. Thank God, some sort of reason to look away from this show, you think.

Jimin 6:22pm

Hey, I got a hold of Jungkook…

What the hell? So he answered to Jimin?!

Jimin 6:22pm

It’s probably best to let him be today babe, today is…not a good day

You click off your phone and throw it on the cushion to your side because what the hell does that mean? Not a good day? If he’s not having a good day then shouldn’t he like, lean on you? Wait, you’re asking for too much right? You mean, you’re the one who set boundaries. But if he’s having a bad day why ignore you? You throw the fork in the pie and set it next to Holly, she looks at you mortified that you would just throw your fucking fork. You stand to your feet and start heading to your room.

“Uh, where are you going? Things are just getting good.” Holly whines.

“I’ll be back in a little while Hol, just gotta do something real quick.” You call out from behind you, entering your room to change into some clean clothes.

Once you’re ready you grab your purse and your keys and head towards the front door, and out to your car.

It’s a really quick drive to Jungkook’s apartment, he lives so close to you it’s ridiculous. He couldn’t find an apartment that was further away from his old one? Well, still…you’re grateful it’s a short drive. You wonder how you’ll confront Jungkook. He isn’t the best at opening up so you have to go about this strategically. But knowing you, you’ll be anything but strategic. It’s just with Jungkook you really have to force it out of him—whatever it is. Even then you may get nothing.

You find a parking spot a little a ways from the building, it’s a nice refreshing two minute walk to get inside to find and ride the elevator. You remember riding this elevator with nick and oh god, cringe. You cringe so fucking hard. Speak of the devil, he’s who answers the front door after your insistent knocking.

“Oh hey y/n. What’s up?” Nick’s eyes dart from you to the rest of the hallway. “Is it just you?” he asks, “Jungkook isn’t here…”

“Can I wait inside until he gets home?” you blurt out.

“Uh, sure…” Nick opens the door wider for you to enter. You breeze past him, taking off your shoes at the entrance and make your way to the couch. Damn, you are a woman on a mission.

“Can I get you some water?” Nick offers as he closes the door.

“Sure.”

Nick comes into the living room with a glass full of water and you couldn’t be more grateful. You didn’t even realize how dry your mouth has gotten, the anticipation of Jungkook’s arrival making you nervous.

“Do you know where he went?” you take the glass from Nick and gulp down like half the glass. “He hasn’t answered me all day.”

“Wait, he doesn’t know you’re here?” Nick asks in panicked surprise. “Should you really be here? He might be with Vanessa or like, coming back with her…”

“It’s fine. I’m waiting, is that okay?” you nibble on your lips, waiting for his response.

“Yeah, I guess.” Nick shrugs, “I’ll be in my room if that’s okay? You can watch whatever on TV or like, whatever.” He smiles at you, gesturing towards the TV.

“I’ll be fine Nick.” You smile back.

More than an hour passes, a god damn miserable hour of you sitting on Jungkook and Nicks couch when you finally hear the front door being unlocked. Jungkook.

You straighten up when you hear the door beginning to open, the soft creak sounding a million times louder in your ears.

Jungkook walks through and you notice he is alone, and you sigh in relief. His shoulders are slumped and his head hangs low as he takes his shoes off and you immediately sink in your spot. What’s with him? So, you stand to your feet and clear your throat and he doesn’t even flinch. He just continues walking inside, finding his way into the kitchen. You watch as he opens up a cabinet and reaches for a glass, next he’s fishing the fridge for some fresh water and filling up his cup. He takes a few sips of his water before his dark eyes find you.

“What are you doing here?” his low voice sends a shiver down your spine.

“You went ghost on me today…I was worried.” You leave the living room to walk into the kitchen as well.

“I…” he begins as he sets the glass on the counter. “I didn’t ghost you.”

“How could I be so sure?” you step closer to him, “How come you answered Jimin but not me?”

Jungkook’s eyes widen at your words, like a deer caught in headlights. He blinks at you repeatedly until he tries forming words.

“It’s nothing personal.” He settles for. “Can we talk tomorrow, y/n?”

“Where did you go today?” God, why do you sound like some weird, possessive girlfriend? You cringe at your own words.

“It doesn’t matter.” Jungkook’s eyes darken again, his voice low.

“It matters to me.”

Jungkook looks down at the floor and you notice him take a few deep breaths, like he is struggling to find a steady one.

“Talk to me, Jungkook.” You reach out to him, your fingers finding his and he flinches at your touch. “What’s wrong? Please talk to me.”

“I….” Jungkook’s voice cracks and you wish you could bring him in to hug you but you don’t. You just let him continue.

“I…have nothing to say.”

Oh. Of course. Of fucking course. Of course Jungkook chooses to stay silent. Of course he chooses not to talk to you.

“Is it Vanessa?” you finally find the courage to ask, “Did you two break—”

“No, we’re fine.” He cuts in. Jungkook frees himself from your hand and looks up at you with a strained smile, “I’m fine, y/n.”

Now, you shouldn’t feel upset. Or angry. But you do, you fucking do. It’s been almost 4 years of this same bullshit where he cannot open up to you and its starting to feel insulting.

“You’re…” you step closer to him again but he takes a step back until he’s backed into the counter. “You aren’t fine. Please talk to me, Jungkook.” You try to say calmly but you think the rage is a little evident in your voice.

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Is it because I’m a girl?”

Jungkook tilts his head to the side, not knowing what you mean by that. Yeah, that was a stupid thing to assume but you aren’t smart right now.

“You can’t confide in girls because you have trust issues? You know, because of your mom…how she left you…”

“Stop.”

“That’s it right?” You volume increases as your anger shows, “Are you fucking serious? When have I ever made you feel like you couldn’t trust me? When have I ever fucking left you?”

“Shut up.”

“No! And yeah your mom left you so you like, don’t trust girls I guess but god damn, Jungkook maybe it’s time to get over—”

“I said shut up!” Jungkook’s voice rises to a volume you have never experienced with him before.

“Have you tried looking for her?” you continue to speak, not realizing you are making everything worse.

“I know where she is.” He states, his nostrils flaring.

You flail your arms around, “Then go fucking talk to her.”

Jungkook looks at you with an unreadable expression, his shoulders to his ears and his fists balled up at his sides. He’s quiet. Too quiet. His breaths are beyond shaky and you finally notice it.

Jungkook’s eyes are glossed over and you think you may have gone too far. His lip begins trembling and he tries to speak but no words come out. He struggles to speak to you and it makes you blink at him like an idiot. Why can’t he speak?

“Jung—”

Jungkook lifts a hand up to stop you from talking any further. He inhales sharp breaths and releases shaky ones. His eyes are full of tears but none fall. He stares down at the ground just trying to do something as easy as breathing, but he falls short.

“Jung—”

“Please.” He croaks out. Jungkook walks to the couch and sits down, his head falling into his hands and you aren’t entirely sure at first but after a few moments you really realize…he is softly and quietly crying. Your Jungkook who never cries in front of anyone is sitting on his living room couch crying. You’re speechless. You also don’t know what to do. Do you try to comfort him? Do you leave him alone? But how could you leave him alone when he sits on his fucking living room couch sniffling away?

You hesitantly walk towards the sofa and take a seat next to him. He doesn’t lift his head to look at you, just continues crying into his hands. You don’t have to think about it, you reach your hand to rub soothing circles on his back and start whispering words of comfort in his ear.

Several moments pass when Jungkook finally lifts his head from his hands, but he still doesn’t look at you.

“Mom…” he clears his throat. “Mom didn’t just leave us. She left everything. She left me.”

“I know Jungkook…I’m sorry… I just lashed out on you, you can heal at your own pace and if she wants to see you again, she will.” You continue to rub his back.

“No, you don’t get it.” Jungkook murmurs. “Mom was hurting a lot. You know?” he begins to get choked up, his throat burning.

“Dad cheated, yes. But he was also neglectful of her and she was in a lot of pain,” he sniffs repeatedly, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“She felt like she had no one, not even me.” Jungkook face scrunches up as he resists more tears.

“She couldn’t even rely on me.”

Fuck. You know where this is going. It is all starting to make sense.

“Mom killed herself when I was 16.” Jungkook finally says, his voice barely above a whisper, like he was too afraid to say it out loud. Like it made it more real.

“Dad didn’t take it well…he started drinking and I rarely saw him around…I had to take care of myself.” Jungkook finally lets the tears fall.

“I hated him. I still do.” Jungkook clenches his jaw.

You sit on the couch unable to comprehend what Jungkook has gone through. You feel like the biggest bitch alive. You forced your best friend to reopen his wounds in front of you and you had the audacity to pour salt in them.

“Jungkook I’m so—”

“Forget it.” He’s quick to cut you off. You stare at him with wide eyes, your own tears staining your cheeks.

“Please leave me alone for a while.” He whispers and immediately you stop him from rising from the couch.

“No!” you pull him back down. He doesn’t even resist, he falls back to your side and you lead his head to rest on your beating chest.

“I’m here for you, Jungkook.”

And that’s it. That’s what it took for Jungkook to scrunch and twist his face until more tears begin flowing out of his swollen eyes. He cries into your shirt, wetting the material.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” You pat his head, your fingers weaving through his dark locks.

Jungkook cries like this for several minutes, until he’s wiping away his tears and snot with his shirt sleeve. He rises from your chest and looks at you with a painful expression.

“Today is mom’s birthday.” He admits.

Fuck.

“I went to her grave today…” he sniffles, “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before. It’s just…” he starts crying again, “Saying it out loud. Makes it real, don’t you think?” His face is swollen and puffy from his tears and you can’t stop your own tears from sliding down your cheeks.

“Jungkook, I’m so, so sorry.” You feel awful. You can’t even fathom what he has gone through…

“It’s okay, this was bound to happen eventually right?” he laughs awkwardly, snot still dripping from his nose.

“I shouldn’t have forced it out of you…God, I am so sorry.”

“I…” Jungkook’s eyes refill with tears as he tries to speak again, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, I really am. I tried so many times but I just couldn’t say it out loud. I just couldn’t.” The tears fall down his face once again, “I tried.” He begins to cry harder. “I really tried y/n.”

You heart breaks. This is a sight you never want to see again but if anyone has to see it you want it to be you.

“Baby…” you whisper. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

“You’d never leave me…right?” Jungkook chokes on his words as he speaks. “I couldn’t handle it.”

You shut your eyes as you think about what Jungkook has gone through. You think about why he’s been so closed off and why he has troubles with people sometimes—especially girls.

“I wouldn’t ever leave you.” You say in promise. “You’re too important to me.”

Jungkook’s face falls back into your chest, he cries into your shirt for several more minutes as you rub his back and play with his hair.

“Wasn’t I important to mom too?” You hear him whisper.

Your heart breaks even more.

“Of course you were, Jungkook.” You try to save, “I know she must have loved you a lot.”

“Then why?”

“She must of thought you were going to be strong enough without her…” Your fingers thread through his hair again, “And you are. But you know, you aren’t completely without her…” Your hand goes to his chest, over his beating heart.

“She’s here too, with you.”

And with that, Jungkook sobs harder. Like, it’s the first time he’s cried over this. And you wonder if it is. He’s gripping on to your shirt so tightly as he releases intense sob after the other. Your heart continues to fucking break.

“I’m here. I’m here.”

It’s been quiet the last 30 minutes, neither you nor Jungkook have spoken. He’s not even crying anymore, just lightly sniffling every now and then. You wonder if he has fallen asleep. You wouldn’t be surprised, all that crying will take out all the energy out of a person…

You lean your head down to get a look at Jungkook’s peaceful face…he is sleeping. You feel yourself relax as you continue to play with his hair. He needs the rest, you think.

You feel your own eye lids getting heavy and you let yourself fall asleep as well. Jungkook snuggles deeper into your side, his face nuzzling in your chest and you hold him tighter. You two sleep like this for many hours until you’re being woken up at the sound of the blender going.

The living room is lit up with sunlight and your eyes blink lazily. You realize Jungkook isn’t sleeping with you anymore and you start to panic. Where did he go? Then the blender goes off again and you decide to stand from the couch, even though your body feels so heavy.

Jungkook is in the kitchen when you walk over, he’s got his back turned to you and you creep up behind him.

“Boo.” You say, wrapping your arms around him.

“When will you realize that will never work on me?” Jungkook lightly chuckles, “Sorry to wake you up. I figure I could make us some fruit smoothies.” He turns around in your hold. You eye him up and notice how puffy his eyes are and you feel your heart drop.

“Fruit smoothie sounds delicious.” You squeeze him tighter and Jungkook laughs a wonderful laugh. It’s loud and full and filled with joy.

“Hug me back.”

Jungkook smiles down at you and circles his arms around your waist, “Sorry, sorry.”

You smile back up at him and lean your head on his body, he feels so warm it could melt you.

“About last night…” Jungkook begins pulling away from you, “I’m sorry I kind of…”

“You don’t have to apologize.” You cut in. “It’s my fault.”

“No y/n…I’m glad things happened the way they did. I actually feel so much better.” He admits, “Lighter, even.”

“Oh? Well, good. But I am still so fucking sorry.”

“It’s okay baby.” He goes back in to hug you tighter. You feel his strong arms hold on to you and you want to stay like this forever. You would if you could. But—

“Shit. What time is it?” You step back from him, digging in your pocket for your phone. “Holy hell, I’m going to be late for work.”

“Then get going. I’ll text you later?” Jungkook asks with hope filling his eyes.

“Yeah.” You smile.

~~~~~~

Work was lame as usual, nothing eventful happened. Yoongi must have been too busy at the shop today since he didn’t come in for cookies. You decide you will go see him at the record shop tomorrow but for now…you’re dealing with something else—someone else.

“Oh? You thought Trina wouldn’t tell me?” It’s Jimin. He’s sitting on the edge of your bed with a popsicle between his lips. “Huh Miss Hickeys?”

“Jimin.” You drag his name out, “It’s not a big deal!” you throw your hands up in exasperation. “We were just really drunk and it didn’t mean anything. Just two drunk idiots.”

“Idiots, for sure.” Jimin sucks on the tip of the popsicle while he speaks.

“Seriously, it isn’t a big deal. We’re both over it.”

“Are you? You like him and he…fuck, this is getting so ridiculous. Promise me, just promise me…you will tell him the truth? You might be sur—”

“Jimin, stop.”

Jimin huffs out a deep, long breath and rolls his eyes at you.

“No.” he says matter of fact. “I won’t stop until you two talk.”

“Anyway there’s something more important we need to talk about…” you begin, “He told me about his mom.”

Jimin’s expression goes from shocked to guilty. He takes a few moments to finish the popsicle, biting the last inch or two and throwing the stick in the trashcan.

“I know. He told me.”

“Oh.”

“He’s been wanting to tell you for a long time y/n…but he just—”

“I know. It must have been really hard for him…all this time…”

“Yeah.” Jimin bows his head, “Me and Tae are the only ones who know because we were friends with him when it happened. That’s the only reason why or else I’m not sure anyone would know.”

“Is that…is that Jungkook’s secret? That you three…”

Jimin’s eyes expand as he realizes what you are talking about.

“N-No.” He admits softly, “That’s something else. That’s something Jungkook will definitely have to tell you on his own and trust me if you guys just talked…”

You tilt your head in confusion. What’s the correlation?

“Anyway, Jimin has Jungkook ever cried to you? About it all?” you ask, curiosity getting the best of you.

“He didn’t even cry at the funeral y/n.”

Fuck. You had a feeling. But knowing for sure is a whole other thing. The way Jungkook broke down in front of you felt like it was his first time and maybe it was and that makes your heart ache.

“Did he…cry? In front of you?” Jimin asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah…”

“Oh… he must really trust you.”

You only nod your head in response.

“If you guys just learned to communicate better…I’m really rooting for you two.”

Your heart swells at Jimin’s little confession and you nod your head again, this time with tears pricking at the corner of your eyes.

“Thanks Jimin.” Finally, you feel supported. And it makes you breathe just a little easier.

“I know things haven’t always been easy with you two ever since the Tae thing…but honestly this goes back even further. Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. We…I don’t know what’s with us.” You chuckle bitterly.

“I do. And I am going to force you two to talk one of these days. I swear on it. I will give you guys some time but damn babe, this is just…” Jimin releases a long breath. “Just don’t give up, okay?”

“Can’t you just tell me?” you don’t mean to sound like you are begging but you kind of do.

“No. It’s truly truly not my place.”

“I can’t just assume what you are talking about, you know? I can’t hope for the best then get crushed. That’s too scary, Jimin.”

“I understand babe.” Jimin scoots closer to you until he’s within arms-reach and caresses your calve. “Just talk to him, please.”

“Too scary.”

“One of these days one of you will have the courage.”

~~~~~~

“And what could be in this little baggy of yours?” Yoongi grins, showing his wonderful gummy smile.

“I brought you 2 cookies Mister Oatmeal Raisin!” You shake the little bag in front of his face in a teasing manner and he chuckles.

“What did I do to deserve your kindness?” He takes the baggy from you and inspects both cookies. “You decided not to be bratty today?” he questions with a smile. “These cookies are perfect.”

You decided to visit the record shop today, on this fine afternoon. It’s one of those days where it’s cloudy and looks like it could rain but it never does. You love days like that.

“This place looks so nice!” you say, bobbing your head around to get a proper look.

“There’s a section where you can sit and drink coffee…it’s not much but its cozy. Wanna check it out?” Yoongi offers, gesturing towards the other side of the shop.

“Yeah.” You say, “Lead the way.”

He guides you to the other side of the shop next to a window. There’s a table for two and he’s right—it is cozy looking.

You sit down and wait for Yoongi as he fetches two coffees, which you are so excited about since you have a fucking addiction.

He sets a cup down in front of you and takes his seat.

“So any new happy moments in life? Anything new to be grateful for?”

“I—”

“That’s a trick question,” Yoongi’s eyes go small as he smiles widely, “There’s always new moments to be grateful for.”

You can’t help but laugh, you bring the steaming hot coffee to your mouth and you blow on the liquid multiple times before bringing it to your lips and taking a sip.

“Yes I guess so.” You smile.

“And what are they?”

“I’m grateful the sun is hiding today, I like the clouds a lot.”

“I love that.” Yoongi takes a sip of his own coffee. “What else?”

“I’m happy you brought me coffee.”

“I’m glad I somehow made it on your list of things.”

“What about you?” you ask.

“I’m grateful my A.C is working again!” he laughs, “It was actually broken for a couple days and I had like 5 fans plugged in around the place. I don’t think anyone wanted to come in here.”

“Oh no! Well, I’m glad it’s working!”

“How are things with your friend Jungkook? You guys were complicated last time I checked.”

You raise your brows in surprise that Yoongi would bring up Jungkook. But somehow you also aren’t surprised, it seems Yoongi takes a genuine interest in your life.

“We’re actually doing okay…” You bring the coffee back to your lips, taking another sip when—

“Have you told him your feelings yet?” Yoongi casually takes a gulp of coffee as you choke on yours.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry…was that too forward?” Yoongi sets his cup down. “To be fair, you both are very obvious.

“What do you means us ‘both’?” You grab a napkin and wipe your chin where coffee dribbled.

“He clearly likes you too.” Yoongi stares at you as you stare back with a blank expression, and he laughs. “You two remind me of myself and someone I used to know.”

“Used to?”

“We were never on the same page…too many missed opportunities that it ruined anything we could have had.” Yoongi frowns for a split second before breaking out into a soft, gummy smile. “I’d hate to see that happen to you.”

“Yoongi—”

“But if it does then better for me?” he whispers with a smile in his voice.

“What do you mean by—”

“Oh. But he has a girlfriend, right?” Yoongi cuts you off with his question.

“Not exactly but basically…”

Vanessa. Your stomach drops at the mention of her and you hate it. Why does she have to have such a strong affect on you? Why does she even have to exist? You mean, she can exist but maybe not in your life—or Jungkook’s life.

Suddenly, the doors bell goes off with a ding and Yoongi is smiling brightly at whoever just walked in. You continue to sip your coffee not giving it much mind.

“Taehyung!” Yoongi shouts out, standing from his chair to wave over his friend.

Wait, Taehyung? He can’t mean the same Taehyung—

“y/n?”

Oh shit. You turn around in your seat and your face falls when you see him. Even on this cloudy day his skin is so golden like the sun is shining down on him, he looks bright and beautiful. As usual.

“Hi Taehyung.” You wave awkwardly. He can immediately tell how uncomfortable you are, his face deepening into a frown.

“I can come by later…” he offers to you.

“No, no. Don’t be ridiculous.” You try smiling but it’s quite tense.

Yoongi looks between you two and he points between your bodies.

“You two know each other?”

“We went to school together, had mutual friends blah blah blah.” You say.

Taehyung only agrees with the nod of his head. Yoongi blinks at your two and opens his mouth to say ‘Ah.’ And heads to the back for another cup of coffee.

“How have you been y/n?” Taehyung asks awkwardly, he shifts from one foot to the other as he stands here.

“Pretty good, I think.”

“You think?” he chuckles. “Hey, sorry if my texts bother you…”

“They don’t.” you say honestly. “Sorry I don’t always reply.”

“It’s okay, I understand. How’s…Jungkook?” Taehyung eyes shoot down to the floor. “He doesn’t answer my texts either. It really hurts to see years of friendship go down the drain…”

“He’s mad at you Tae,” You begin, “But I think one of these days he will chill out.” You laugh and this makes Taehyung ease up.

“He really fucking loves you.”

“Well we are best friends… sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“We kind of stopped talking for a little while but we’re back to being friends.” You try explaining but Yoongi is walking back in with a cup of coffee in hand. He hands it to Taehyung, which he accepts gratefully.

“You’re here for that new Jazz mix record, right? I have it behind the counter for you.” Yoongi says to Taehyung and Taehyung only gives him a thumbs up. He eyes you curiously, wondering what the hell happened between you and Jungkook.

“I have to get back to work boys!” You stand from the table, “Thanks for the coffee Yoongs”

Yoongi smiles at the new nickname.

“And maybe I’ll see you around, Tae?”

“Yeah.” Taehyung gives you his signature boxy grins and you feel like maybe things all around are getting better. Just maybe.

~~~~~

Jungkook has his hands knotted in Vanessa’s hair as she chokes on his cock, her lips wrapped around it fully.

“Fuck.” Jungkook whines out, “I’m so close.”

Vanessa only moans in response, she continues to bob her head up and down on his dick making his orgasm approach quickly.

“Gonna come, gonna come.”

And he does, he comes down her throat and she swallows it all perfectly. Only a drop or two left behind on her lips which she quickly wipes away with her fingers.

Vanessa stands to her feet and Jungkook pulls her in for a quick kiss.

“That was good…” he says, somewhat out of breath.

“Glad.” She says smoothly, going in for another kiss. This time she lingers, her lips lasting for a moment longer on his.

Vanessa’s fingers brush against his neck, she traces the outline of one last bruise left on the side below his ear.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she smiles coyly. “You two sure are weird.” She says flatly.

“Vanessa…”

“It’s fine. I know you know I still see him. It’s not like we agreed to be exclusive.” She taps her skinny fingers on his chest.

“But we are trying aren’t we? To make this work?”

“You aren’t trying very hard, are you?” the amusement in her voice doesn’t go unnoticed by Jungkook.

“He cheated on you, Vanessa. Why are you still seeing him? I thought you said he has a girlfriend now?”

Vanessa pauses her tapping on his chest, her eyes go wide for a second. Like, for a second she wasn’t void of emotion.

“He does.” She says smoothly before she begins tapping her fingers against his chest again.

“He cheated on me with this girl.” She admits, “Little does this bitch know—”

“Is that healthy? Getting revenge?” Jungkook asks, concern lacing his voice.

Vanessa continues to tap her fingers as she narrows her eyes at Jungkook.

“You want to talk to me about what’s healthy?” her empty laugh fills the room.

“I want you to stop.” Jungkook’s hands go to her hips, “Let’s be exclusive, Vanessa.”

“I can’t stop…” she whispers softly, “I can’t let go.”

Jungkook observes Vanessa for a few moments, she looks as vulnerable as she did the first time she talked about her ex with him. He feels sorry for her. He really does want her to move on, for her own sake.

“You can move forward, Vanessa. You have me.”

Vanessa looks into his eyes, studying his serious expression. She can tell he means well but…she doesn’t have him. She never will.

“Please Vanessa, we can make this work.” He begs, yes begs.

Vanessa tilts her head to the side. Oh? This must be his desperation talking, she thinks. His desperation to get over you. She knows this. And she doesn’t hold it against him and instead she decides to help him.

“Okay, let’s make this work.”

~~~~~~~

y/n 8:09pm

On a scale of 1-10 how bad do you wanna watch spirited away right now?

Jungkook 8:15pm

11 girl don’t play

y/n 8:16pm

I thought so, I think this means you need to come over and watch it w meeee

Jungkook 8:20pm

Lemme shower and I’ll be over:)

y/n 8:22pm

Bring beer pllllssss

Jungkook 8:42pm

On my way

y/n 8:45pm

Drive safe bb

It’s around 9pm exactly when you hear soft knocking on the front door. You scurry towards the door and open it, finding Jungkook on the other side. He is wearing your favorite gray puma sweat suit and his hair is wavy and damp. He smiles at you when he sees you eyeing him up and down.

“Like what you see?” he teases.

“Wow, what a classic line Jungkook. Real original.” You scoff, letting the boy through.

Jungkook walks in, setting down a case of beer on the breakfast table.

“I brought our favorite.” He gestures towards the beer on the table. “Let’s drink it while it’s nice and chilly.”

“Agreed. I already have the movie set up.” You point towards the T.V “Ready for our viewing pleasure.”

“Where’s Holly?” Jungkook takes two beers from the case, handing one over to you.

“Her and Trina went out to some bar, I didn’t feel like going.” You take the beer and twist off the cap, Jungkook does the same. You two clank the bottles together in cheers and take a few sips.

“Ah.” You say, the refreshing beer making you feel well, refreshed.

“Because you don’t feel like going to a bar? Or because you would rather hang out with me?” Jungkook smirks, taking another sip of his beer.

“Because I didn’t feel like getting pretty.” You bring the beer to your lips, but you don’t drink from the bottle, just waiting for a response instead.

“You’re always pretty.”

You take a sip of the beer, feeling satisfied with his response. “I know.” You half joke.

“Let’s go to a bar.” Jungkook blurts out.

“W-What?”

“Let’s go in our lounge clothes.” He smiles, “Let’s just do it.”

“No!” you laugh out, “We look like slobs. Well, I do. You look…” your hand motions towards his body, “You know, you look…”

“Are you trying to say I’m hot, y/n?” Jungkook’s sly smile grows as he drinks his beer.

“You know what I mean.” You huff out.

“Well, I think the same of you. So let’s go.”

You can’t help but laugh, you continue to drink your beer back, the liquid settling nicely.

“Okay. Fuck it, let’s do it.” You can’t help but grin, the idea of going to a bar in yoga pants and a t shirt with your sort of best friend sounds so great to you.

“But maybe a little makeup…” Jungkook starts chuckling as you hit his arm with your fist.

“Shut up.”

The bar is mostly pretty casual, maybe not as casual as you and Jungkook but still casual.

Only a small handful of people are actually dressed nicely, but mostly are in jeans and nice shirts. Somehow Jungkook is still the hottest guy here. Even in his sweat suit. You’re surprised you two even got let in, does this place not have some sort of dress code? Guess not.

It’s pretty loud inside, the place has a live band and a decent dance floor. You and Jungkook head towards the bar and take your seats.

The bartender takes a few minutes to reach you two and when she does she automatically nods at Jungkook for his order.

“Two long islands please.” He says, he smirks towards you and you smile back. Long islands? Oh you’re getting drunk drunk tonight.

“You got it.” She smiles at him with all her teeth, and turns around to start mixing the drinks.

“Long islands, huh?” you rest your head in your hand on the bar top.

“I figure neither of us are driving tonight, we might as well go hard.” Jungkook smiles at you. “I’ll buy this first round?”

“Sounds good to me.” You bump fists with Jungkook with a wide smile. “Wanna make a bet?”

“What’s that?” Jungkook quirks a brow at you.

“I bet you $5 that by the end of the night the bartender will hit on you.”

“But I also bet $5 that the bartender will hit on me.” Jungkook pouts.

You stare at him in disbelief at his cockiness and you burst out into giggles.

“Fair enough.” You say between laughs.

The bartender slides two drinks to you and Jungkook, she twists and twirls her hair in her fingers as she asks Jungkook how it tastes. He takes a sip and gives her a thumbs up, you can’t help but snicker.

“Can we also get two tequila shots?” you wave at the bartender. She turns to face you and frowns.

“Sure.” She puts on a fake smile and turns to fill up two shot glasses with tequila. She sets them in front of you a Jungkook and tells you the amount due.

“Tequila shots? Are we trying to fucking die tonight?” Jungkook chuckles from beside you. He grabs two limes and hands you one.

“To us.” You say, lifting your shot in the air.

“To you.” Jungkook whispers as you clank glasses and throw back the shots.

Holy shit, you are fucking wasted. After several tequila shots and a few long islands you and Jungkook are barely holding on. Okay, fine. It’s not that bad. But you guys are really drunk!

His hand hasn’t left your waist for hours, and it feels so fucking nice. It feels perfect. It feels right.

“y/n?” a voice calls out to you. You know this voice, really well in fact.

“Taehyung!” you cheer. You stumble forward and go in for a high five and his drunk ass high fives you back.

“Fancy seeing you again.” You giggle.

Jungkook’s hand grips your waist tighter as he narrows his eyes at Taehyung.

“What do you mean again?” Jungkook asks, his voice low.

“We ran into each other at my friend Yoongi’s” you slur out.

“Hi Jungkookie.” Taehyung awkwardly sways back and forth, his words also slurred. It’s obvious he’s on the same level as drunk as you.

“…Hey.” Jungkook hesitates to respond, he looks between you two. “y/n…is this okay? Talking to him?”

“Hm? Oh? Yeah.” You stare at Jungkook blankly. Why wouldn’t it be, you think.

“Jungkook, maybe we could talk just the two of us?”

You look between the boys and somehow you feel yourself sobering up just a bit.

“Uh. I’ll go to the bathroom.” You say, already walking away.

“You know how sorry I feel.” Taehyung begins, “About everything.”

“What’s everything?” Jungkook mumbles under his breath.

“I’m sorry for what I did to y/n. But I am also sorry for holding your secret over you like that to keep mine.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook slurs out, “That was fucked up.”

“I miss you guys…” Taehyung takes a sip of his drink, “Even Jimin barely talks to me.”

“Shouldn’t have messed with our girl.”

“You mean, your girl.” Taehyung drunkenly corrects Jungkook.

“Whatever.”

“Seriously man, when are you just going to grow the fucking balls?” Taehyung raises his voice just a bit, “It’s clear how you both feel—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about man, plus I have a girlfriend now—”

“You guys are official now?” You walk up to the boys, cutting in. You feel like maybe he’s just saying that.

“y/n…yeah, we just made it official.” Jungkook admits, running a hand through his hair, sighing out in frustration.

Oh. You feel your heart begin to crumble. They’re dating for real now?

“Do you have feelings for her?” You blurt out.

Jungkook shifts from one foot to another, he breathes in and out in and out. He bites on his bottom lip, thinking of how to respond.

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

Well, at least he’s honest.

“Well, I’m going to head back to my friends…” Taehyung butts in awkwardly. “It was nice seeing you two.” And with that he’s slipping away in the crowd.

“Wanna dance?” you say, trying your best to change the subject. You decide you don’t want to know his answer.

“Sure.” Jungkook smiles at you, he reaches for your hand and you squeeze his tightly. You guide him to the dance floor, the song is a slow one. You two look at one another but there’s nothing awkward about this. He guides your arms to wrap around his neck and his hands circle around your waist, he pulls you in close as you two sway to the music.

“Never go 3 months without me again.” You whisper into his neck.

“W-Why are you bringing that up now?”

“I have to keep my eyes on you, Jungkook. Without my supervision you go off and get yourself a girlfriend.” Your drunken words pierce his heart.

“Is that a problem?” He whispers back. “Yes, a big problem.” You lean back to get a look at his face, he’s already staring down at you, he somehow brings you in even closer.

“Whys that?” He breathes out.

“Want you all for myself.” You admit, drunk words are sober thoughts right?

“You want me baby?” Jungkook leans down until he’s so close, like he cannot control it.

“Yes.” You blink up at him, your lips parted.

The song changes but you two continue to dance like it’s a slow song.

“I bet you $5 that some guy will hit on you in the next couple of minutes.”

You tilt your head and drunkenly giggle, “I highly doubt that.”

Jungkook reaches in his back pocket and hands you a five dollar bill.

“What’s this f—”

“You’re so fucking beautiful” and then his lips are just a mere inch away from yours before he’s pulling back with a look of horror and guilt plastered on his face.

“I—I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m with Vanessa now. I’m just drunk. I’m really drunk. You’re really drunk. We don’t know what we’re doing.” He drunkenly rambles.

You feel your heart sink down into your lower belly, you feel it crack and break into a million pieces. That’s right. Vanessa. He’s making it work with that girl.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“You’re my best friend y/n.” Jungkook slurs out, “I’m trying so hard not to ruin that.”

You only nod your head.

“Let’s go home.” You say.

~~~~~~

Your bed is comfy as ever, especially this drunk. Jungkook takes his shirt off and slips into the sheets, settling next to you.

“Wanna cuddle?” he offers.

“I don’t know if Vanessa would like that.” You slur.

“Right.” Jungkook lays on his back, his arms folding beneath his head. “Should I sleep in the living room?”

“No. I want you here.” You admit between soft breaths. “I always want you here.” You yawn out.

“Good.” Jungkook reaches out to hold you, “I don’t think Vanessa will mind if I cuddle my best friend for just five minutes.”

“Five minutes only” you tease. You shuffle closer to him, his warmth escaping his body and clinging to yours.

You two fall asleep like this. Morning comes slowly, like the world is giving you a chance to really appreciate one another’s company. Like the world knows that moments like this are so hard to come by. Like the world knows that you two need this.

When you wake up the next day, its half past noon. You’re still in Jungkook’s arms while he is dead asleep. You nuzzle into his chest and thank the world for giving you this moment. This moment to embrace him like he is yours, a moment to kiss his cheek like he is yours, a moment to whisper you love him like he is yours.

But he isn’t. He isn’t yours and that’s the reality. But you thank the world nonetheless. Because you need these moments to stay sane. But how do you two always end up like this? Can you keep blaming the alcohol? He tried to kiss you last night and that’s also the reality.

Jungkook wanted to kiss you. Can he keep saying it’s just because he’s drunk?

But he’s with Vanessa now and you have to respect that. And you will respect that.

You thank the world though, that right now he’s in your arms, breathing your air, and sharing this moment. Just you and him.

Finally, after another half hour Jungkook begins to stir in his sleep.

You stare at him as he wakes up and his sleepy eyes find yours.

“G’morning.” His voice is low and raspy and you want to swoon.

“Hi.”

“We…” he looks between your bodies. “Didn’t do anything, right?”

You feel your chest tighten, “No, Jungkook.” You answer calmly.

“Okay…” Jungkook frowns, “We can’t keep doing this, can we?”

Somehow you know exactly what he’s talking about, you can’t keep building this tension between you two. It goes nowhere.

“No” You admit softly, “We can’t.”

You think about Jimin’s words…could Jungkook…? But you don’t want to jump to happy conclusions, put yourself out there and then be wrong. But he tried to fucking kiss you. The girls were right, is this really all for you? You can’t keep doing this. It’s not good for you. “We really can’t.” you say again.

Jungkook smiles, but its soft and sad and makes you want to kiss his pouting lips until he shows you a real smile but you can’t.

“I’m sorry about last night.” Jungkook moves to his back, he stares up at the ceiling.

“I was just really drunk.” He continues, “Drunk me is wild.” He chuckles awkwardly.

“Is that really an excuse anymore?” you feel brave enough to say.

“y/n…”

“Forget it. We’re okay.”

“Are we?” Jungkook moves back to his side, facing you. He gives you a troubled look and you melt. Why are you always melting because of this man?

“Yeah. What’s more important is that your birthday is next week…”

“Oh yeah.”

“Can I be in charge of your party?”

“I don’t want a party, just a couple of friends.”

“Let me host it!”

“Okay, fine.” Jungkook smiles, “I can’t wait.”

“Do I have to invite Vanessa?”

“y/n.” Jungkook groans.

“Kidding!” you sing. Although, you aren’t entirely sure that you’re just kidding.

“It would be nice if you could plan this with Vanessa actually…she mentioned wanting to do something nice for my birthday too.” He sort of whispers out, like he didn’t want you to actually hear.

“Oh.” You aren’t sure what to say. You obviously don’t want co-host a get together with Vanessa but she is his girlfriend after all.

“Fine.”

You and Vanessa? Let’s see how this goes.

[hollyhomburg]

Hi Holly, I think I remember u saying u were thinking about going to teach in Korea and I just came across this video on YouTube, where this foreigner went through so many horrible and traumatizing things working and living there, so I thought to let u know about it, so maybe u could watch and consider some things this person says in her video before moving. If I can recall correctly u said u had a good experience in South Korea and idk when u lived there, but apparently in the past few years the pay for foreign teachers has gone down a lot and the new president as you already know is very problematic and some of the policies like healthcare for foreigners and stuff like will be getting changed and/or taken away now, so ur experience could be different from the last time u were there. Also she is black and some of the things she experienced were racially motivated so maybe if u do go u will be treated a little better or perfectly fine, again every school is different and you could be very lucky. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/j4cTeFFwuJA,, this video does touch on some TRIGGERING things like bullying and violence, brief mention of sa and attempted suicide, so yeah might not want to watch if u are uncomfy with hearing about that,, okay bye now sorry that this is so long. love you and hope ur having a nice evening/night💕✨

Thank you for your concern but I think the biggest issue with people and this whole Korea is good Korea is worse than everyone thinks it is- is that people don’t go into it with the right expectations- and I think the people who have the strongest reactions to the shattering of the halo are the ones who imagine it shining the brightest.

Let me start first by saying that I’d already been a bts Stan for like- 2 years by the time I lived there. The only reason I was going there was for bts, but I still did my research. I think part of the reason why I enjoyed it so much is because I wasn’t expecting all of the issues wrong with the world to just- magically go away, like I didn’t stop getting catcalled or judged and men where still blatant mysoganystist there cuz like...the worlds just like that. Obviously I never had to deal with racism in the same way as she did but unfortunately It’s not going to change just because you go to a different county.

I wish it did, but my experience is that generally things like fat phobia, racism and colorim, misogyny, and classism are kind of universal constants- with a few exceptions.

You can get taken advantage of for your labour in litterally any country, hell teachers in America are paid roughly the same as teachers in Korea- for about 2x the amount of work to be fair and with a cost of living that is like 3x as high.

I had a fair amount of traumatizing experiences when I lived there too, I was drugged, cat called, had photos taken of me constantly without my permission (pretty common in everywhere in Asia unfortunately but no where is as bad as China 😭), had bosses verbally berate me pretty constantly as well as professors treat me like I was lesser because I was an exchange student and not korean like- don’t go there expecting people to call you Hyung and unnie and be besties, don’t go there to get your kdrama ending?

But you know what- even with all of that I never felt safer, there where cameras on every street and I could walk around at any time of day with relative safety. I could sit in a coffee shop and leave my laptop and go to the bathroom without worrying about it getting stolen. I could walk around with headphones on and not be terrified. Seoul is a beautiful city, Seoul at golden hour...theyres nothing more breathtaking and there are so many beautiful parks! So little garbage and rats unlike New York City- it makes nyc litterally look like a 3 year olds scratch painting in my opinion.

My main point is that bad things can litterally happen to you anywhere, and I know you mean well but I’m tired of people pushing the equal and opposite narratives of “Korea is great!!! You should go teach there!” And “Korea is absolutely terrible and everyone shouldn’t set foot there” like...both can be true and that still wouldn’t make it any better or worse than any other American city in my opinion

[hime-memes]

                                                 • A Girl’s Guide To Murder   •  ( Part 1. ) 

These starters have been taken from Holly Jackson’s, “ A Girl’s Guide To Murder “ Book. These are from chapters 1 - 11. 

Recommendations: These starters would best serve angsty or crime fighting muses/plots/timelines.

As always: feel free to change anything within these starters that you see fit to make it work for your muse & the receiver’s muse !

** Any slight wording changes / sentence break ups made to the original text is to accommodate for RP purposes or more clarity. **

Trigger Warnings: Swearing, murder / death, toxic friendships, alcohol mention

“ I ... You don’t know me ... I’m ( Name ). I was a few years below you at school before you left. “  “ I was wondering if I could borrow a second of your time ? Well, not only a second, we’re already way past that ... Maybe like, a few sequential seconds, if you can spare them. “  “ I don’t think your brother/sister/sibling did it -- and I’m going to try to prove it. “  “ ( Name ) ! Why is the dog wearing my shirt ?! “  “ Oh my god, I was trying to do homework ! “  “ That’s because you’re a judgmental prepubescent boy who still thinks little people live inside traffic lights. “  “ Oh my god, ( Name ), stop being so gorge. “  “ I wish I didn’t have to be in pics with you. Give me your face. “  “ Yep. We’re prepared for the tears. “  “ Oh, the calvary’s here. “  “ First, you’re banned from looking at this for the next 24 hours. “  “ He did it over text ! “  “ Boys are dicks, you could do so much better than him. “  “ Massive red flag. “  “ Thanks for coming, guys, I didn’t know if you would. I’ve probably neglected you for half a year to hang out with ( Other Name ). “ “ ... And now I’ll be third wheeling two best friends. “  “ That’s crap we’re all best friends. “  “ Yeah, us and those mediocre guys we allow to bask in our delightful company. “  “ Do you like bunnies too ? “  “ Okay, rom-coms or films where boys get violently murdered ? “  “ I don’t see the logic in putting a nose hole in your nose hole. “  “ ‘ It’s sausage to me ‘ is a German saying; just means ‘ I don’t care ‘. “ “ Oh my god, how many times ? He only did one nude photoshoot in the eighties, that’s it ! “  “ Questionable segue, but yes - and I’m going back to interview him tomorrow. “  “ What do you think I’m going to do ? Pin her down and beat responses out of her ? “  “ But ... honestly ...I thought you were just messing with me. “  “ Like bribery muffins ? “  “ I’ve never trusted anyone who takes their coffee black. “  “ We try not to talk about ( Name ) too much: it upsets Mom. It upsets everyone actually. “  “ It’s that ... well ... we’re not allowed to grieve for him, because of what happened. “  “ Crying already ? We haven’t even gotten to the sad parts. “  “ Should I be nervous ? “ “ Uh, we were just, like, drinking, talking, playing some xbox ... nothing too exciting. “  “ No, they make me look old. “  “ That’s okay, you are old. “  “ I’ll never cross to the dark side. “  “ I remember you were about 5 at the time and always wore a pikachu onesie with a tutu. “  “ Yeah, well, Van Gogh’s work was unappreciated in his own time as well. “  “ Excuse me, ( Name ), I asked if you had a problem. “  “ I’ll deliver my complaint in person. “  “ Look, I don’t need some kid I hardly know fighting my battles for me. “  “ I’m not your problem, ( Name ); Don’t try to make me your problem. “  “ Sorry, he/she is a bit friendly. “  “ That’s no way to talk about your ( Familial Relation ) ! “ “ Sometimes, my mouth starts saying words without checking with my brain first. “  “ I used to want to be a lawyer. “  “ You can’t help that these happen to be the woods outside your house. “  “ My brain hasn’t been able to leave it alone. “  “ Go on - I want to hear your theories. “   “ You think it’s possible that ( Name ) was actually murdered ? “  “ That’s ( Name )’s ? How do you have it ? “ “ Let’s go look at it in my workstation ... uh, bedroom. “  “ Sorry, you’re just very entertaining when you’re this intense. “   “ Stop finding my life amusing ! “  “ Yeah, take a look. Don’t worry, they aren’t sexty or anything. “  “ Then, maybe someone else wrote that text ? “  “ I think they’re terrified of false hope. I am too, if I’m being honest. “  “ That line of inquiry is lost. “  “ What did you tell them about ( Name ) ? “  “ When I asked ( Name ), they just said ( Other Name ) was being a ‘ little bitch ‘ about something. “  “  I don’t like the person I was. The person I was with ( Name ). “  “ I was addicted to her. I wanted to be her. “  “ It was bound to end in tragedy, I think. “  “ Yeah, you’re right - I guess I just still feel protective of ( Other Name )’s secrets, you know ? “  “ Well, let’s hope the camping police don’t check instagram, because I’ve announced it to the world. “  “ Dismantling the patriarchy one tent at a time. “  “ I love camping ! Time for vodka and peach rings until I puke ! “  “ Well, how are you ever going to get a girlfriend ? “ “ With my hot bod and twinkling personality, obvi. “  “ She tells the handsome guy with the flashlight to shut up. “  “ A murdered girl isn’t fair game for your crappy jokes. “  “ I was just about to get to the part about ( Name )’s secret older lover - slash - killer. “   “ That’s way over the scary boundary ! “  “ Stories are fine, but no communicating with spirits. “ “ That was needlessly dangerous ! What were you trying to prove ?! “  “ We’re crying because we got lost and the flashlight broke and we’re DRUNK ! “  “ Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does the note say ? “   

[the-ferocious-kittyrose]

Rewriting Haggar/Honerva’s redemption arc

One of the many things that bothered me about VLD S8 is Honerva’s redemption arc. While I was never fully against the idea of Honerva getting a redemption arc, I just didn’t want VLD to do it because I knew that they would fuck it up if they tried. And low and behold, I was right!

But yeah, I wasn’t against the idea of her being redeemed. And I don’t mean “redeemed” as in “all is forgiven and she’s just a good guy now,” but more like a Darth Vader, “the things she did were inexcusable and she would never be able to right all her wrongs but she goes out on one good act to show that there was still good in her deep down and she at least had the potential to change.”

I know a lot of people don’t like the whole, “redemption=death” thing, which I understand, but I personally never had a problem with it.

Ok, so why didn’t Honerva’s redemption work? Well there are a few reasons but the one that baffles me the most is that, instead of trying to make her more sympathetic, season 8 seemed to go out of its way to show her being more evil and vile than ever.

And because I have nothing better to do, I’m gonna go through Honerva’s story in VLD and explain what I would change to make her redemption more believable.

(Keep in mind I am not a writer, this is just me ranting about my favorite character and how I personally would’ve written her.)

1. Realizing she’s Altean

I always thought it’s was weird that when Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” In the S2 finale, Haggar didn’t seem to react at all, she just kept attacking. It’s as if she didn’t care or already knew, which doesn’t make sense considering in the S3 finale and S8E2 it’s established that Haggar has no memory of who she was before she died. And in S4E3 she seems shocked by her Altean face (which also doesn’t make sense because her blue skin isn’t camouflage that’s just how she looks after the rift) so it seems like she didn’t know.

Wouldn’t it have made more sence if after Allura said “you’re...Altean!?” Honerva looked confused/shocked? If she became defensive and said Allura was lying/trying to insult her? There’s def anti-Altean propaganda in the empire so it would be considered an insult.

After that she starts questioning Zarkon. And when she looks into his mind, it’s out of genuine curiosity and desire to know the truth, not because, “the empire needs him” or whatever that meant.

And isn’t it a bit odd that she doesn’t seem betrayed at all when she finds out Zarkon has been keeping all this from her? She’s just like, “oh, you’re my husband? Cool.” Wtf???

2. Her past relationship with Zarkon

Okay, I love Zonerva, but if we’re being honest, Zarkon was not the best husband. He enabled the shit out of Honerva, even when it was obvious that the rift was doing serious damage to her physical and mental health. To me, it seems like Zarkon was so blinded by the power the rift gave him that he didn’t realize/ignored the negative effect it was having on Honerva. In the same way he downplayed the negative impact the rift had on the planet.

I think that should’ve been explored more. Maybe Honerva notices that she’s been acting differently and is worried somethings wrong (think S5 Kuron). And Honerva tries to tell Zarkon that she feels strange and Zarkon just brushes it off.

And later, when Alfor visits Diaibazaal years later. Things are pretty much the same except when we sees Honerva, she is very obviously pregnant and Alfor’s there when Honerva falls and goes into labor (instead of a random quintessence seizure). Alfor and many Galran doctors try their best to save her and the baby but she dies in childbirth.

Zarkon goes ballistic. He’s yelling, throwing doctors across the room, and Alfor turns to the doctor holding Lotor and tells them to get the baby to safely, fearing Zarkon will take his grief out on the baby.

Zarkon turns on Alfor, blaming him for Honerva’s death and accusing him of letting her die so that he could get his way and close the rift. He lunges Alfor and roars at him to leave.

He spends the rest of the night grieving at Honerva’s bedside, when Kova jumps on the bed and starts gnawing on her finger trying to wake her up. This is what gives him the idea to bring her back with quintessence.

3. Her current relationship with Zarkon

I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’re relationship didn’t get better after the war began. Zarkon hid her identity and her child from her for 10,000 years and essentially used her as a tool of war. It’s pretty fucked up.

I know it’s pretty well established that Zarkon treats Haggar with more respect than his other underlings, but I feel like it would be interesting to see that change overtime. We see that after Voltron comes back, Zarkon becomes very obsessed with Voltron/Black, and he and Haggar start disagreeing more and more.

Remember the moment where one of Haggar’s druids told Zarkon Haggar said he needed to rest and Zarkon hit them with his bayard and told them, “remember who your master is”? What if, instead of a random druid, it was Haggar who he hit?

I feel like that would be a good way to show Haggar and the audience just how much Zarkon’s obsession with Voltron is affecting him, and make the audience feel a tiny bit bad for her.

Then later in season 4, when Zarkon wakes up from his coma and finds out Haggar brought Lotor back to take his place he gets pissed. He puts a price on Lotor’s head and has Haggar arrested for treason. She steals a ship, escapes, and later on meets up with Lotor’s generals.

Her and Zarkon are officially broken up and her quest to reclaim her identity and get her son back begins.

4. Oriande

I never liked the concept of chosen/sacred Alteans. The idea that some Alteans are just born more powerful than others just feels iffy. My idea of Oriande is that it’s an Altean holly land, any Altean can enter it just depends on whether or not you can pass the White Lion’s trial. Passing the trial proves that your intentions are pure and and the White Lion will bless you with power.

I didn’t like how Honerva seemed to force her way into Oriande, I think it would be more effective if she had gone through normally because, at this point, her intentions were pure. She was going there to purge herself of the dark magic corrupting her and reclaim her memories so she could go get her son back.

I also like the idea that Oriande is a sorta link to the Altean after life, and you can speak with people you’ve lost. Allura gets to speak with Alfor, and Honerva speaks with her mother.

You could also have her be confronted by the spirits of the Alteans she helped destroy. Have the weight of her past actions bear down on her. An important part of any redemption arc is acknowledging the terrible shit you’ve done in the past, and that was severely lacking in Honerva’s arc.

Another interesting thing you could do is have Honerva talk to her younger self. The one that died 10,000 years ago. This kinda thing actually happened in 80s Voltron, young Haggar appearing in Haggar’s head trying to convince her to be good again.

5. Her relationship with Lotor

Now this is where the redemption arc really falls apart. I forget who, but one of the writers said after S5 that Haggar/Honerva was motivated purely by love for her son, but man did they do a bad job of showing that.

And it would’ve been so easy to fix that problem, just have her not be horrible to him. Have them have actual civil conversations, have her protect and defend him. Don’t have her reject him as a fucking baby!

Imagine if, after Zarkon destroys Lotor’s planet, instead of immediately deciding to

exile him, Zarkon says that this is the final straw and he’s going to have Lotor executed. But Haggar speaks up to defend Him. There’s actually a scene in DOTU where Zarkon tries to kill Lotor and Haggar gets on her knees and begs for him to be spared. (Though the scene was mostly played for laughs.)

she asks for mercy and justifies it by saying it would be unwise to kill his only heir. It’s a weak argument, Lotor’s a half breed and couldn’t realistically take the throne, but Zarkon does concede, he still loves her after all, and has Lotor exiled.

And Haggar isn’t spying on him because she doesn’t trust him, but because she’s concerned for him. When Lotor confronts Haggar about sending her cronies after him, she says she knows he’s hiding something. Lotor asks if she’s threatening him, thinking she’s going to rat him out, but she says no, she’s not threatening him, she’s just trying to warn him against doing anything stupid because, with Zarkon seemingly on his death bed, the empire needs Lotor’s leadership.

At this point in the story, Haggar is questioning her loyalty to Zarkon, so I feel like it would make sense for her to be silently supporting Lotor from the shadows.

Then at the Kral Zera in season 5, It was weird to me how she was helping Lotor through Kuron while also telling him he couldn’t be emperor and trying to put Sendak on the throne. I feel like it would’ve made more sense for Sendak to just show up on his own without Haggar.

Haggar wouldn’t even be at the Kral Zera, she would just watch through Kuron.

And then we get to S6 when she actually reveals to Lotor that she’s his mom. This scene was just so poorly done. She never actually apologizes to him, she’s just like “yeah I forgot you were my kid and I never loved you, but were cool now right?” I remember when I saw S8E2 and it shows her after Lotor rejects her and she looks like she’s about to cry, I was just thinking, “this would be very emotional and sad IF she had actually apologized and made it clear that she genuinely loved him.” But she didn’t and I don’t know why!

And then we get to season 8, and of course everything in S8 is bad but Honerva’s story is particularly bad. She’s supposed to be motivated by love for Lotor yet she doesn’t act like she actually cares about him at all.

She manipulates his corpse and when she sees his gross melted body, she doesn’t even react that much. When a mother sees her child’s mutilated corpse, how do you think she reacts? Screaming? Crying?? Hurling??? But no. She’s just like, “...”

And then when she goes to the alternate reality and meets baby Lotor and he rejects her, her reaction isn’t disappointment or sadness, it’s anger and entitlement. She immediately decides, “ok, fuck this kid. Let’s destroy this reality.”

It just doesn’t make sense! This is the season you’re trying to REDEEM her! Why are you going out of your way to make her so vile?

6. Her S7-S8 plan

(Keep in mind I haven’t watched S7/S8 since they came out and barely even watched S8 to begin with, so I don’t remember some things and I can’t be bothered to rewatch them.)

Okay, starting with S7, she’s not in this season at all but in “The Ruins” the druid dude says that her final order was to hunt and destroy the Blade of Marmora. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense because she saw that it was Keith who brought Lotor’s actions to light, but that whole plot was really pointless in my opinion. (Was anybody really hoping for a rematch between Keith and that one random druid?)

If you want us to forgive Honerva for her crimes, you really shouldn’t keep adding more unnecessary crimes. It’s established that there were a lot of Galra war lords vying for power and pirates looking for money, just have it be that Kolivan got kidnapped by one of them.

Then you have her season 8 plan and I’m gonna be real with y’all, I have no idea how to fix this mess.

I feel like the basics of her plan could work. She tries to get Lotor and Sincline out of the rift but when she gets him he’s a melted corpse so the plan then becomes to use sincline to go to another reality to find a living Lotor, but opening all these rifts causes problems and the paladins have to stop her.

But all the shit with manipulating the colony Alteans, killing the White Lion, desecrating Oriande, and destroying Olkarion and entire realities, it was all so unnecessary.

Personally I would cut the colony Alteans from the story all together, there are other ways for Lotor to betray the team. It was a lazy way of making Lotor 100% evil and having Honerva manipulate them is unnecessarily cruel, especially in the season you’re trying to redeem her.

Here’s a very basic outline of how I would do this plot.

If we’re going by season 8’s logic that she needs a sacrifice to bring back Sincline, I would’ve had the Galra she killed at the Kral Zera be the sacrifice, not the White Lion. She stands on the pyramid and talks about how the empire stole her life from her and she wants revenge as she absorbs their quintessence into herself and then uses that to bring back Sincline.

Then when she finds Lotor dead she takes Sincline and uses it to go to another reality where she can be with her family.

The danger comes when she opens rifts to the other realities and rift creatures start coming out and causing damage. The paladins fight them and follow her into the rift to stop whatever evil plan she may have. Because the paladins don’t know that Haggar is now Honerva and all this is just to get Lotor back. They think this is all some plan for multiverse domination or some shit.

Meanwhile Honerva has just been rejected by little Lotor and seeing Voltron show up pushes her over the edge and they fight.

But when they find out the real reason she’s doing all this they start trying to appeal to her and convince her to give up and close the rift peacefully. And similarly to how the paladins had to sacrifice the castle to close the rifts created by the fight with Lotor, Honerva has to sacrifice herself to close the rifts.

In the end, I feel like a Honerva redemption arc could’ve worked if the writers were actually competent and actually made an effort to have her be sympathetic, but In canon, her reasoning, “If I can’t indulge in the simple joys of life, why should anybody else?” just doesn’t cut it.

It’s disappointing. VLD had so much potential. I’m thinking of just rewriting the entire series from the beginning. Hopefully putting all my thoughts out into the universe will help me move on.

[permanentcrossfics]

Blurred Lines: A Different Christmas // h.s.

How do we write Christmas fics in a really weird year? I’m still not sure, but I tried to string together a bit of relief for the end of December. I’m shutting myself up now, even though there’s lots I want to say. This is for anyone who wants it, anyone who needs it, anyone who enjoys it (or hates it!) silently and vocally alike. My Christmas gift is the happy and unexpected bonus of anyone reading what I have so much selfish fun thinking of and spinning out. Happy and Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, and a happy and merry end of December if you don’t and are just doing you! x

9.1k

It was the big Christmas tree you’d dragged back home by yourself on top of a rickety shopping cart all the way from a place on Second Avenue that had been your breaking point. Picking it had its own bittersweet undertones, but the smell of fresh pine tickling your nose even through a mask had kept you afloat as you struggled to get it off and onto curbs before traffic pancaked you in the middle of the road. It wasn’t until you were back inside, still wrapped in your coat and struggling to get it upright in the stand the correct way that you burst into a torrent of hot, selfish tears and bowed your head, kneeling next to the mass of needles and branches. He should be here! He should be helping you. He should’ve helped anchor lights in windows, he should’ve had an opinion on the scented candles, he should’ve made you go back for decorations you just weren’t sure of because you wanted them regardless of what he thought, and he should’ve helped pick, and carry, and set up the tree. The whole reason you’d gone out to get a fresh tree – something real in a year that had felt anything but – was to lift your spirits, but instead you were sobbing next to it and it all felt a little dramatically pointless. It was everything you’d avoided last year by flying off to England but that you couldn’t escape this time. What was the point? What was the point of pretending?

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“You coming home with me this year?” 

Again. He asked the same question you’ve been dodging for weeks since plans had started to look uncertain again, not because he was pestering you, but because somehow, some way, you were both hoping for an answer with a loophole. 

“I can’t,” you said softly, regretfully, holding your phone close to your face with one arm as you curled up under the duvet of a bed in an apartment that had somehow become yours together instead of his alone throughout the course of a very new, very different, very unsettling year. “For a few reasons.” 

And he knew that. 

Harry’s deep breath crackled and he dragged his hand down his face, holding it there as he shook his head, the thought processes you’d learned to read so well hidden from view. 

You’d liked going home with him last year -- loved it, even. You’d hardly had time to look forward to a repeat when the world had flipped in the first quarter or sooner, and the sand had just kept slipping through the hourglass until all time for hope of a new and normal Christmas was gone and sucked away into the void of the year. 

So many plans. So many memories that lived only as memories of daydreams now. So much else, so much more important, devastating, and tragic you couldn’t even put it into words and, frankly, didn’t want to. Not now -- you spent too much time thinking about it to think about it now, too.

“Filming’s done soon,” he said from behind his hand. “I can book my flight to New York--”

“Harry--”

“And then go to Manchester after Christmas -- after the New Year, we always take a bit of a longer break. Mum won’t mind--”

“Your mother’s barely seen you since last Christmas,” you said. “Your sister, too, and there’s not enough time to--”

“Course there is!”

“Two weeks quarantine in each?” you asked. “That’s a month of staying put, let alone--”

A split second glance at his face was all you saw before the screen went black and you bit your tongue. He hadn’t hung up, because you’d heard the soft thud when his phone collided with his chest, and you could hear him breathing now, so you waited, suppressing your own urge to snap as he had his. Despite having spent the better part of the year together, it was frustrating to think about not being together for the season. All you wanted was him, though you knew better than to voice it out loud. He’d do it -- for you, he’d do it if you asked him to -- and you’d have to live with the guilt of taking him away from his family at the time of year where family should be together most, if it mattered to them. And you’d been weirdly lucky enough to have him most of the year between carefully navigated business trips. He was only one man with one body. It didn’t -- couldn’t -- matter that you wanted him, too. 

That you wanted to be with the man you loved. 

When he picked up the phone again, his face was drawn, tired, and not just from filming, you suspected. 

“Go home,” you urged, swallowing the break in your voice. “You miss home, and home misses you. I’ll have fun decorating and send you all the pictures you won’t be able to do anything about.” 

His throat bobbed hard, audibly, and his eyes looked dangerously shiny. 

“Next year I’ll go home with you,” you said, burrowing half your face into your pillow. “London and Holmes Chapel both.”

“Next year,” he said eventually, voice raspy. “We’ll have Christmas at home next year.” 

You nodded, forcing the lump rising up, up, and up back down. “You should go to sleep,” you said. “It’s late and you have to be up early.”

“Later for you,” he said and you sighed, noting the 3:08 timestamp at the top of your screen. 

“Let’s go,” you said. “Call me when you can.” 

“I will.” Sad, but resigned. You wanted to reach through the screen and touch the downturned corners of his mouth to push them back upright again. “Sleep well, and I love you.” 

Taking a deep breath, you murmured, “I love you, too,” before hanging up the call and the room descended into darkness and you into a fitful sleep. 

***

At first, you were determined to make the most of it. Your studio had always been small, cozy, and Christmasy to the best of your abilities, but his -- your -- apartment had so many more possibilities. Candles were the first to be set out, with strategic clusters of red, green, and gold-colored wax placed all about and nestled in fake holly wreaths. String lights that cast a pretty glow lined windows even in the bedroom for some last minute holiday cheer, and despite the urge to drive him up a wall, you did your best to only pick out other decorations that you’d both like and want to use in the future. Because as much as you might avoid talking about it in many certain terms the longer the relationship went on (it still felt so funny to think that a one night stand had turned into a relationship), there was a future. He was your future. It wasn’t your first Christmas together, but it might be your last one apart. 

It was the big Christmas tree you’d dragged back home by yourself on top of a rickety shopping cart all the way from a place on Second Avenue that had been your breaking point. Picking it had its own bittersweet undertones, but the smell of fresh pine tickling your nose even through a mask had kept you afloat as you struggled to get it off and onto curbs before traffic pancaked you in the middle of the road. It wasn’t until you were back inside, still wrapped in your coat and struggling to get it upright in the stand the correct way that you burst into a torrent of hot, selfish tears and bowed your head, kneeling next to the mass of needles and branches. 

He should be here! He should be helping you. He should’ve helped anchor lights in windows, he should’ve had an opinion on the scented candles, he should’ve made you go back for decorations you just weren’t sure of because you wanted them regardless of what he thought, and he should’ve helped pick, and carry, and set up the tree. The whole reason you’d gone out to get a fresh tree -- something real in a year that had felt anything but -- was to lift your spirits, but instead you were sobbing next to it and it all felt a little dramatically pointless. It was everything you’d avoided last year by flying off to England but that you couldn’t escape this time. What was the point? What was the point of pretending? 

Wiping your nose, you stood, eyes heavy, swollen, and itchy. With your coat gone, you heaved the tree up until it was sitting securely in its stand, needles scattered in its wake but branches full and outstretched, enveloping you in the warm smell of Christmas in a way the cedar- and balsam-scented candles couldn’t. Stepping back with your hands on your hips, you looked up at it, the swell of your anxiety simmering, thanks partly to your crying fit and partly to succeeding at the task. You’d decorate it bit by bit to draw the season out, and then on Christmas Eve, you’d call him and you’d both sit by your own trees and talk until it was Christmas Day for him. It was just for now -- this wasn’t the way of all ways for all time. 

Click.

You nearly passed out cold from the rush of fearful adrenaline shooting through you when the lock on the door clicked. In three seconds, you ran through whether or not you’d locked the door, determined that you had but then had forgotten, and figured out that somehow, someone had gotten in and they weren’t supposed to. You spun, frozen, brain zooming to determine if you dove behind a sofa or if you charged, but you didn’t get the chance before the door opened. 

A duffle bag, a foot, a body, in that order, and then a pair of wide, green eyes rimmed with circles just above a cloth mask.

“You do not get to be mad at me,” he said, voice muffled. He grunted and pushed the door open wider to bring in the rest of his luggage as you stood there, as equally speechless as you were breathless. “I tested before I came here,” he said, speaking with a loud if exhausted sort of authority, like he was trying to get the words out before you could protest. “But I’ll take the guest room, and I’ll get my own food, and we’ll keep out of each other’s space until the two weeks are up.” 

He brought his bags in the rest of the way, and it was only when he was halfway by you that he stopped in his tracks. “Y’haven’t moved,” he said, eyebrows furrowing as he narrowed his eyes on you. “Are you all right?” 

Lightheaded, you nodded. 

“O… kay,” he said, stilted, still eyeing you. “M’just gonna go get settled and showered, then.” 

“What are you doing here?” you asked, the words finally forcing themselves from you. 

“S’Christmas.”

“You’re supposed to--”

“Mum knows,” he interrupted. “M’taking Christmas here this year. Gem’ll have Christmas with her and I’ll go along after. She’s excited about having two. ‘Scuse me….” 

Nodding, you waved him away to hurry, shoo, because you could feel the emotions rising in you again and your confusion wasn’t enough to quell them. Fifteen minutes ago, you’d been kneeling on the floor with aching knees, crying, and now here he was. 

You’d wrestle with the confliction of doing what was right and doing what you wanted… later. Later, when you could wrap your head around it and the choice he’d made. 

Two weeks. That would put you just on Christmas Day, basically. Just two weeks.

***

Dodging him around the apartment was a lot more difficult than you would’ve guessed for how big it was. More than once you nearly slammed into him in the kitchen, and someone was always in the favored bathroom. For his part, he’d taken to wearing a mask when he roamed, and even though you told him he didn’t have to do that, all he did was hum behind it. You got it -- the positive result from the crewperson on set had spooked everyone, and he was being safe. You both were being safe, but for as mindful as you’d been throughout, all you wanted to do was hold him, hug him, kiss him. Video calls were ridiculous when you were in the same house and you could hear his laugh through the walls. But you got it, and if you kicked too much he’d book a hotel to quarantine away from you, so you’d rather have him here, as selfish and risky as it was. 

It was three days into your little bubble that he finally dared to get within arm’s reach of you. You were mulling over where to put the chimney sweep ornament when he shuffled over to the foot of the ladder you were leaning on, and you raised an eyebrow, arm outstretched.

“Can I help you?” you asked.

He shook his head, the lights from the tree reflected in his eyes. “Just watching,” he said from behind his mask. 

“You’re standing a little close, aren’t you?” you teased. Jokes were all you had -- all anyone had this year, if they were lucky. 

Immediately, he scowled -- how funny you could tell what his face looked like so clearly even with the cloth stretched firmly across it -- and you giggled. “Watch what you’re doing,” he said, taking his hands from his sweatshirt pocket to grab the ladder legs, and with his support, you held on tightly and leaned over to place it on the prime branch. 

“Thank you,” you said. “Do you want to pass me that box?” 

He did so and you murmured your thanks, resting it on the top step as you pulled ornaments out to hang them. 

“Not there,” he said before you could drop a hook over a branch with a snowflake. “Give it… thank you.” He took it carefully from you and placed it on a different one closer to him, lower than where you were placing it but slightly higher than you could reach without a ladder. 

“Thank you.” 

Together, slowly, ornaments were hooked and rehooked (and rehooked yet again when one of you noticed the other had moved them from a spot you each thought was perfect) until the tree was trimmed, each branch heavily laden, bearing the weight of ornaments and of providing joy after the year behind. 

“How’d you get this home?” he asked, looking up at it with you once you were off the ladder. 

“Carefully,” you said dryly. “Oh! The top.” You turned, but he cut across your path.

“I’ve got it,” he said, grabbing the box from the precarious stack next to the coffee table. 

“I want to,” you whined and he snorted.

“You’ve done the whole bloody thing,” he said without venom. “Let me do just the one.” With it in hand, he climbed the ladder as you held it steady, and he set it on the topmost branch, prodding it until it was tall and straight up, all five points outstretched and shining. 

“That’s perfect,” you said under your breath, resting your head on his leg, and he patted the top of your head gently. You stayed like that for a minute, two, three, and more, with your arm curling around his calf, embracing as much physical contact as he’d allowed since he came home. “How many more days?”

“Eleven.” He sounded thoughtful, resentful, and exhausted all in one go. You squeezed his leg and kissed his knee through his joggers. 

“Then it’s Christmas,” you said.

He exhaled slowly, still patting your head. “Christmas morning.” 

***

Eleven. Whole. Days. 

Eleven days of more of the same. He’d eased up, thankfully, and dared to venture a little closer with a mask on, because, as you’d reminded him, he had tested negative. You sat on opposite ends of the couch, enjoying the Christmas tree and decorations together, laughing, talking, planning, and exchanging stories about everything that had happened while you were apart. His, of course, were wildly more interesting, but he somehow managed to hang onto every word of even your most droll and mundane ones, and always with the right questions and supportive murmurs of agreement as necessary. 

Eleven days of saying goodnight and crawling into a bed that was too big for one when two was next door. 

Eleven days of not being able to share meals properly or touch each other -- sex aside -- and eleven days of Hell.

“It’s your fault,” you said one night from your end of the couch, scowling with your arms crossed. The tree twinkled happily despite your sour mood, and music that was too merry and bright played from the television. 

“Me?” he asked indignantly. 

“Yes! You had to do that stupid film.” 

“It’s not stupid.”

“You’re wearing a mask in our home,” you said, burrowing into the cushions. “If I want to call it stupid, I will.” 

He groaned, dropping his head forward. “Baby….”

You grunted. 

“It’s only a couple more days. A couple more days, and then it’s Christmas. Think of it like a present you’re waiting for.”

Despite yourself, you snorted. 

“I’m all you want for Christmas, aren’t--?”

“Shut up,” you said, kicking his thigh with your extended leg. He snickered, eyes crinkled and full of light all their own. 

“Couple more days,” he said, patting your ankle. “Couple more days, and then you won’t even be able to get rid of me. We’ll be in bed all weekend.”

“I’m not calling your mother from bed.”

He waggled his brows with some exaggeration and you rolled your eyes. 

That had been around day five, maybe six. Suffice it to say, by Christmas Eve, you were done. 

“It’s one day!” you said over breakfast in the kitchen. “One day, Harry!” 

“We made it this long,” he said, pouring hot coffee into a mug that had his face printed onto the head of dancing elf -- a gift from his mother shipped along with a matching one for you that she insisted you both open ahead of time to enjoy for as long as possible. “We can make it a couple more hours.”

“If I stripped naked, what would you do? Stand there and watch me?” 

He froze and looked at you over his mask, the heated warning pinning you in place. Huffing, you pushed the stool away from the counter and hopped off it.

“Where are you--?”

“Out,” you said. “I’m going to get--” You floundered. “Coffee.” 

A beat passed and his eyes dropped to the mug in his hand.

“We literally have--”

“I’m going out!” you said, wrapping your neck and half your face up in a scarf to keep warm. You were going out, because you were mad, and the tantrum was burgeoning. That poor man had seen more unreasonable tantrums from you this year than he had in the entire two and a half you’d reciprocally acknowledged each other’s presence, and you hated it. But he’d hate it, too, if you’d gone on a trip for work and come back and things were off.

Could be worse, you reminded yourself. It could be so very, very much worse.

“I love you,” you said, calmly, firmly. “I’ll be back. I’m only going around the block. Take that--” You waved at his mask, “--off. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way in..” 

When you returned, he was in the guest room, but a fresh cup of coffee in your own dancing elf mug rested on a mug warming plate. The last of your frustrations that hadn’t melted with the walk deflated and you picked it up, enjoying the aroma before taking a deep sip. 

He always made it better. And the coffee was nice, too. 

His mother called in the afternoon and you hardly noticed he was at your side until the phone was in front of your face and you gave a startled hello. 

“Has he been wearing that the whole time he’s been home with you?” she asked, her gleaming eyes and wide, genuine smile matching her son’s own warmth. 

Home. With you. 

“He has,” you said. 

“S’posed to be proud of me,” Harry said and Anne laughed.

“Of course, sweetheart. We’re still calling tomorrow?” she asked you. 

“Yeah,” you said. “We’ll be here.”

“Next year will be different, won’t it?” she all but clucked. “Did you like your mugs? I got one for me, Gemma, and Michal, too.” 

“Used them just this morning,” he said, squeezing your hip and wandering away. “Won’t be posting them anywhere for people to see, though….” 

Eventually -- finally -- the day drew to a close, and you crawled into bed with the knowledge that it was just one more night. One more night, and then in the morning you could say hello like you wanted to. One more night and you wouldn’t want to bite his head off. One more night and you wouldn’t feel so mental, as he would put it. 

And yet, lying there, the minutes dragged. Ten? No, just one. Fifteen? Five. 

It felt like Christmas, though. As much as this was pure torture, this was what Christmas was supposed to feel like -- like it used to feel when you were a kid and you’d wait for weeks tingling anticipation, counting down, hoping that you’d find what you wanted under the tree, bursting with more energy than any amount of sugar could give you. Except instead of presents, or money, or sweets, you were waiting for the man who’d been under your nose for two weeks by this point. You got to kiss your boyfriend tomorrow. You got to see your boyfriend, hold your boyfriend, and celebrate Christmas with your boyfriend. 

Twenty minutes? Two. 

12:02.

Two minutes after midnight.

Christmas.

Fourteen days. 

Oh!

You sprang from the bed before you could think about the matter and darted to the door over the cold wooden floor, but when you rounded the corner in the hallway, out of nowhere, something all but slammed into you. Sucking in a sharp breath with a screwed up face, you squeaked when you collided with a very warm, very sturdy frame. Belatedly, two arms shot out to grab you by yours to steady you. “Oh my God, I--”

Hair, forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth, too. No mask. 

“Are you o--?”

He didn’t get to finish his question. You clapped your hands over his cheeks and kissed him soundly before he could kiss you first. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d laugh -- you both would -- but rather than that, he locked both his arms around you tightly and spun you, teetering precariously with you in tow until you got to the guest bed. Tackle was an apt word for how he delivered you to it, but you were the farthest thing from upset at finally having not even an inch of space between you. The bed smelled like him and it was warm, he was warm, and you were kissing again, and again, and again, cold noses smushing together as you found new angles. 

“Christmas,” he mumbled between them.

“Mmhm,” you returned against his mouth, legs interlocking with his. “I missed you,” you whispered.

“Missed you, too.” 

Shivering, you both pulled the duvet up over your shoulders, and you curled up against him. Cologne, skin, and laundry detergent, with a bit of his minty toothpaste. There was no scented candle for that. You pressed your fingers against his chest and scratched lightly through the smattering of hair there. “We could go to our bed,” you reminded him, but he shook his head.

“Y’here now,” he rasped, leaning in to press his lips comfortably to your hairline, one arm draped over your back. “Let’s stay here tonight and we can change things later.” 

“Were you coming to get me?” you asked, voice shaking as the last of the shivers left your bones. 

“Yeah,” he admitted. You laughed, teeth chattering, and he pulled you closer. “Don’t laugh!” he said, rubbing your back and warming you. “S’been two weeks for me, hasn’t it?”

“For you!”

“You try bein’ home with you for that long,” he mumbled. 

Shaking again, but less than before, you kissed the underside of his chin. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, darling.” 

***

When you woke up, his back was to you, and his one shoulder was rising and falling with the rhythm of his sputtery, wheezy snores. You smiled, closing your eyes, and snuggled into the pillow. Better -- much better. You dozed on for an unknown amount of time, and you were walking the line between sleep and consciousness when featherlight kisses across your brow startled you and you jerked awake.

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled, only sounding slightly truthful. You made a noise and stretched, shaking from head to toe before curling up into a tight little ball next to him and opening your eyes fully. His own were puffy with sleep, but he grinned radiantly as if he’d been awake for a while.

“What?” you asked in a croak.

“Nothing,” he said. “Mum’s gonna call soon.”

Groaning, you halfheartedly turned your head to look over your shoulder. “What time is it?” you asked, straining to see the window and get a gauge. 

“S’ten,” he said. “So about three for them. Sure you don’t want to call from bed?” 

You glowered at him and his lip twitched. “I’ll put the coffee on.” 

When you finally managed to leave the warm nest of the bed, the living room had been transformed. The tree was on, twinkling under the streams of light pouring in through the windows, and he’d lit the fireplace, too, flames licking up and up behind the glass. Soft, melodic Christmas music floated from the far corners of the room, and the smell of coffee tickled your nose. 

“So,” he said from his spot at the island as he unwrapped cheeses and opened jars of olives, and jams, and honeys, and other goodies. “What time do we pop the bubbly?” 

Laughing softly, you shuffled over. “It’s ten.”

“Little after ten now,” he said, lips pressed tightly together and arms flexed until the lid popped. “And somewhere in the world it’s five o’clock.” 

You pulled a grape off the bunch lying on the counter and popped it into your mouth, chewing not so delicately but enjoying the sweet burst of freshness. You’d no sooner swallowed than his phone started buzzing and you grabbed it, sliding your finger to answer the call from the incoming Mum and pointing it at him.

“Happy Christmas, honey.” Anne’s voice was warm even through the phone, and Harry’s head whipped up.

“Wh-- Happy Christmas-- didn’t know you were-- ‘scuse the mess,” he said as you giggled behind the phone. 

“Having a good morning so far?” 

“Goin’ ok, yeah,” he said. “Just getting started, heating up the coffee.”

“Where’s your better half gotten off to?” 

Trying not to melt, you waved your hand in front of the camera. 

“Hello, love,” she said. “Happy Christmas.” 

“Happy Christmas, Anne.”

“Are we going to get to see you today?”

“Fair’s fair,” Harry chimed in. “Turn that thing around, why don’t you?” 

Rolling your eyes, you flipped the phone and waved, sliding around the counter to stand next to him. 

“That’s better,” Anne said with a firm nod. She had a red top on with a festive, sparkly necklace, and looked a good deal more put together than either one of you.

“Where’s Gem?” Harry asked, taking the phone from you so you could unbox the crackers. 

“Upstairs napping off the morning,” she said. “She’ll want to call again later.” 

And that was how the morning went, with each of you passing his mother back and forth while you carried plates and trays full of snacks to the coffee table and couch in front of the tree to nibble while tearing into gifts on camera, including a box full of chocolates for you, Branston pickle for him, and Christmas crackers for both of you to have, “A little bit of home this year.”

“Thank you,” you said, clutching your sweets close. “And thank you for--” Unbidden, you choked up, and Harry glanced at you sharply, his inquisition vanishing with his understanding. For sharing him -- allowing you to steal him away during the holidays in a year where everyone needed family, either by blood or choice. He squeezed your shoulders and his mother, as adept as he was at redirecting a conversation, piped up. 

“Promise you’ll come see us again next year,” Anne said. “It’s been too long.”

“It has been,” you agreed, resting your cheek on his shoulder. 

“Maybe sooner.” Harry looked down at you. “If things ease up?” 

You nodded. “Summer in London,” you mused. “That would be nice.”

“And then a bit of time back home. We could go before things pick up in August.”

Summer in London. A beacon of hope you couldn’t erect just yet, but a beacon nevertheless. A bit of time with him before he, hopefully, went back to work and you got to revisit adjusted and postponed plans. 

The rest of your Christmas Day was quiet -- different from the year before when you’d been overwhelmed with names, faces, screeches of Uncle Harry, and not being sure how to break your way in. You kept trays of cheese, crackers, and other snacks within an arm’s reach, and by the early afternoon both of you had a comfortably steady buzz from the bubbly he was good at topping off both your glasses with -- never sloppily drunk, but enough to be warm in your fingers and toes and to seek out cuddles from him under the blanket you were snuggled in on the sofa with paper crowns on both your heads. 

“Can I tell you something?” you asked, ribs crunched from how far you’d slid down on the sofa to nestle into his side, all but eye-level with his chest. “And have it not be as awful as it sounds?” 

You felt his laugh before you heard it. “Sure,” he drawled. “What is it?” 

Squeezing his wrist, you turned your mouth into his forearm, eyes on the television as a snowman leapt and bounded over a wide, snowy plain before jumping into the air. “I like this Christmas,” you admitted into his skin. 

Harry snorted. “S’not awful, s’the point -- Christmas is supposed to be likeable.”  

“You know what I mean,” you said, sighing. “I know it’s just us and there’s no family or anyone around, but… I dunno… it’s not all bad, is it?” 

“Like having me to yourself?” 

You groaned and rolled your eyes, shaking your head. “Shut up,” you mumbled. 

He kissed the top of your head, crown crunching under it, and you grunted. “S’not so bad,” he said into your hair. “Like having you all to myself, too, y’know.” 

“You’re just saying that because you have to because you’re stuck with me,” you said and he laughed with another smacking kiss. 

“Not stuck with me yet,” he crooned. “Can leave any time you want.” 

“Maybe I will….”

“Oi!”

Giggling, you untangled yourself from him and squirmed out from underneath the blanket. “More bubbly?” 

***

Boxing Day was a Christmas redux, with more cheese, sparkling wine, music, and calls with family and friends. Long distance versions of old favorite games were adapted and adopted, and you snickered quietly from the corner of the couch, staying out of his way when he shouted about how he had hit the button, it was his trackpad that hadn’t worked. 

The late afternoon and on, though, was yours together and alone with the time difference breaking up the party earlier than it normally would be. The bittersweet cloud vanished, though, when you at some point you separated even further into your own activities -- him with his stack of new books and you with a film you played quietly on your laptop. Able to be near each other without having to be wrapped up and begging with your bodies for sorely missed attention, it finally, really, felt like home again. 

“It’s so pretty out,” you murmured, nose pressed to the windowpane to see as much of the light-lined streets as you could. It got dark earlier and earlier these days, and yet later than it had even a few days ago. “I love Christmas in New York. I wish--” You caught yourself ahead of finishing the sentence, thinking better. 

You wished it was a normal year -- for many reasons -- so you two could go out and see the city. So you could show him your favorite places, so you could make memories together like you had with him last year. It wasn’t anything life altering or new, but it was different when you were with someone you loved. You wanted him to know you -- all of you, even the unknowable parts. 

“Y’know,” he said next to your ear, hand on the back of your neck as he slunk up behind you, “it’s getting pretty late.”

You turned your head slightly, looking at him in the reflection of the glass. “Do you want to go to bed?” 

Too early for sleep. Was he asking for sex? 

Harry hummed and shook his head. “How ‘bout you get your coat on?” he murmured. “Let’s have that Boxing Day walk we didn’t get last year.”

“Now?”

“When else?” he said. “Haven’t been out yet, and it’s late. Streets’ll be empty. We can go wherever, do whatever, see whatever.” 

“You’re serious?” 

Nodding, he pulled you by the arm and you stumbled with him, still processing it even as you pulled beanies on with masks and (winter) gloves.

“Where are we going?” you asked.

He shrugged, calling the elevator. “Dunno,” he said. “Figured you’d lead the way. Show me your favorite bits. Seem t’remember summat about Bryant Park last year.” 

There were sobering realities at the street level, too. Gates were down on storefronts that hadn’t been pulled up since March, awnings above them tattered from months of neglect and ‘For Rent’ signs flapping against them in the wind. The usual post-holiday influx of tourists was thinned, with hardly a white sneaker in sight, and everything was just a little quieter than it should be and would be in a usual year.

But there were lights. Broadway’s may have dimmed for the time being, but endless, endless displays of lights, brighter without the ambient light pouring from storefronts diminishing their power, offered beacons of hope -- literal lighthouses in a storm of a year -- and led you uptown like a trail of breadcrumbs. 

You pulled him this way and that way, weaving through side streets to look at any display that looked bright enough from a distance, fingers locked tightly with his in a way they never were outside of the house. As bittersweet as it was no one was out, it afforded you a level of privacy you never had, anywhere. Not even Holmes Chapel. You couldn’t remember a time where you’d ever held his hand for this long at one time, if you were honest, and while you didn’t need it, you enjoyed the option. 

In between zigs and zags, he mumbled stories to you about this time, and another time, and a time after that, pointing at buildings, venues, restaurants, and hotels, and you listened half in awe and half in earnest. It was a whole other life he’d lived without you before, and you’d only been aware of the surface of it. Nobody knew what he was telling you except the people he’d lived it with, and you didn’t think you’d ever get over or be able to thank him for trusting you to be someone he chose to share it with. 

“I love Sixth,” you said, sighing as you walked past giant red Christmas ornaments three times the size of you both, the reflection of the string lights wrapped around tree branches bouncing off their shiny surfaces. Radio City’s electric red script beamed at you both from a distance, and traffic lights winked and waved in the wind up and down the avenue. “They do a lot with it.” 

“It’s pretty,” he said, squeezing your hand. “Tree’s this way, isn’t it?” he asked. 

You raised your eyebrows. “Yeah,” you said. 

He jerked his head and you blinked. 

“You want to?” you asked. 

“Just a bit,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

“There’s people!” you warned him, because even from here you could see the trickle of people with the same thought. “And I saw online they have a schedule--”

“We don’t have to get close,” he said, pulling you firmly. “S’big enough we don’t need to, just wanna take a peek.” 

He was so certain, but you were less so, because all you needed was someone to see him to break the serene bubble you’d blown around yourselves. Despite that, you shuffled with him until the tree was visible, a bright, glowing ball of multi-colored lights stretching towards the sky. “Wow,” you whispered under your breath. 

“S’nice,” he said and you nodded your agreement. It was nice -- despite the sad press it had gotten, the tree had turned out very nice at the end of it all, tall and impossibly beating all odds. What a metaphor for the year.

“It’s beautiful,” you murmured, squeezing him around the middle. 

“Come here,” Harry said next to your ear.

“Hmm?” Reluctantly tearing your eyes from the tree, you gasped when he pulled your mask down first and then his own in two swift tugs, revealing a cheeky grin with a face cradled by the fabric. “What are you doing?” you asked, eyes darting around. 

“Getting a kiss by the tree with my girlfriend,” he said. “Now, come here,” he repeated. This time, you obliged and allowed him to steal one, two, three kisses, each one of them smashed against your lips with a palpable sort of eagerness that made you think he would drink you if he could. This felt… normal. Normal, safe, and free. 

You couldn’t remember the last time you’d felt like that. 

When you broke and burrowed against his neck, he covered the back of your head and wrapped his other arm around your back, cocooning you in the shell of the most protective embrace he could give. Just a man -- any man, a regular man -- holding the person he loved, and, after his decision to stay with you through Christmas and New Years, he arguably loved you most. 

Through the thick knit of your beanie, you felt him kissing your head, and you nuzzled into his scarf. “Thank you,” you said, face safely out of sight. “For coming here.” 

“Not mad a’me for it?” he mumbled and you shook your head. “‘Kay, good.” 

Shivering, you huddled closer and he tightened his arms, shielding you from the brisk wind. 

“People will see,” you said, but despite that you held him closer. 

“Who cares?”

He did, despite his quiet rasp. He did, and you knew why he did, but right then, you could pretend that it didn’t matter at all. 

***

It was simultaneously the longest and shortest week of your life. 

The longest, because time didn’t exist, much like it hadn’t for most of the year. Days, afternoons, evenings, and nights blended together, blurred by a happy holiday haze onset by too much of everything good -- sleep, sustenance, and spirits. The weird, if nice, part of all the extra time was having the chance to do things you’d enjoyed over the course of the year all over again. Nine times out of ten, when the two of you were together, it was rushed even on the long layovers. You’d watch one series or a film the whole way through, and next time you’d have to be on to the next one you’d agreed to hold off on until the other was there, but after having spent most of the year under the same roof, the typical race to the next one was paused. Instead, you settled in for old Christmas films and other ones you hadn’t seen since you first started properly dating, lending a timeless sort of quality to the week. 

The shortest, because he’d only just gotten there. How had it been three weeks since he’d walked in the front door with a mask on and a warning? Three weeks, two of them masked, and now it was over and done. The whole year was over and done, with 2020 coming to a slow close after feeling simultaneously like it never would and like it was moving much, much too fast. Who would’ve known this would be how it would turn out after kicking it off in the back of his car with a paper plate full of snacks and the countdown on his phone? You’d made it through another year, together. 

“Do you know what I just realized?” you asked as you unpacked the bag from El Diablito at the kitchen counter. In the background, the low hum of commentators on the TV remarking about how different this year was provided a steady buzz amidst familiar scenery of lights in different cities. Berlin had gone first, then London, and now, gradually, the new year on the east coast was gliding ever closer. 

“What?” he asked over the noise of him unfurling the bag of tortilla chips. 

“This was our first year together,” you said. “Full--” you drew an arc through the air-- “year, I mean. Saying it and all that.” 

He didn’t say anything, but when you looked at him the corner of his mouth was lifted up slightly. “S’pose it is, yeah. Feels like longer.” He fished a chip out with his index and middle fingers before crunching into it noisily. 

“Almost three years of everything else,” you murmured, unwrapping a taco to inspect it. “This one’s yours.” 

“‘Everything else’?” he teased, snickering when you slid the taco across the counter to him. “Watch it, it’ll fall apart….” 

“Shut up and eat,” you said and he barked a laugh, grin permanent and eyes sparkling as he unwrapped it to peek.

“In a minute,” he said, setting down his food, satisfied it looked right. “Come here,” he said.

“Why?” you asked, smiling slightly though you eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

He motioned with his hand. “C’mere a minute,” he repeated, voice light but eyes tight, and he swallowed hard. A cold wave washed down you from head to toe. You didn’t know why you were suddenly so nervous, but the nerves themselves spiked your anxiety and made your scalp prickly and your palms sweaty, and they got worse when he grabbed one of your hands -- your left hand -- to hold between his. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about summat.” 

Oh, God. 

“Harry,” you said, but he shook his head.

“Lemme do this.” 

Five seconds. Five seconds was all it took to imagine the words coming out of his mouth, quietly, with soft, trusting eyes waiting patiently, hopefully for an answer. Five seconds was all it took for you to imagine mucking it all up with a twisted tongue, not because you weren’t sure what to say, but how to say it. No, no, no -- you didn’t want to hurt him, not even temporarily, not even by accident. 

Clearing his throat, he squeezed your hand. “I dunno how to do this,” he said, and for the first time ever, you were pretty sure he laughed without his eyes. You made a noise in your throat and curled your fingertips into his palm. “I love you,” he continued, Adam’s apple bobbing, lips trying and failing to form a smile. He was terrified, but determined, and you held his hand tighter while pressing your opposite one into his cheek.

I love you, too. You couldn’t say it, but you felt them swelling in your chest, growing your heart not two, not even three, but six times over. 

He opened and closed his mouth a few times before saying, “M’going to spend the rest of my life with you,” with a thoughtful quality in his rasp. “I think, if-- if that’s somethin’ you….”

You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t, you were trying, but it was like sucking in helium. 

“So, m’kind of wondering if--”

“Harry--”

“I’m not,” he shook his head. “I’m not asking you anything right now, because we’re not ready.” He rubbed the back of your hand assuringly. “We’re not ready, you have… and I’m….” He exhaled sharply, dropping his head, and your hand moved from his cheek to his hair and you rubbed the back of his neck. “I just want to know,” he said, breathing heavily, with his voice muffled into his chest, talking very fast, barreling through and tripping over words, “if I’m totally off base here. Cause m’not gonna now when there’s so much shit happening, but like… I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth when-- if I do, so if I could just get an idea of what you think, because we had a talk once but now every time you cut me off at the knees and--”

He sputtered, stopping short, and you pressed your face into his short hair. 

“I want it,” you said, sounding braver than you felt admitting wants out loud. “I do. I will.” 

His shoulders fell with his slow, deep breaths, and you rubbed your fingertips into his scalp gently.

“I will,” you say. “Promise,” you added, voice cracking. “You’re not off base.”

Neither of you said anything for a while. You couldn’t -- you quite literally, physically couldn’t -- and he was gulping for air as quietly as he could. 

“Okay,” he said into his chest finally, sounding inexplicably embarrassed. “S’good to know.”

Silly, silly man. Did he really think… did he doubt…? “I love you,” you murmured. 

“I know,” he said. “I know y’do.”

“No, you don’t.” You kissed his head. “I love you, I-- you’ll never know.” 

Harry took a deep breath before straightening up, head high and curls falling over his forehead above the weariest, most agonized eyes you’d ever seen. His cheeks were bright red, and he might as well have just run a marathon for how spent and miserable he looked. 

“I promise,” you repeated. “I promise, honey.”

He nodded slightly, mouth still set in a thin, grim line, and, instinctively, you stepped in to kiss him, because no. No, that wouldn’t do. Stiff and unmoving at first under your lips, gradually he warmed and softened, releasing your hand to grab your hips and you moaned softly, hands running across his shoulders over his hoodie. You promised -- when it was right, when you both could, if he asked and it was what you both wanted? There was only one answer you’d ever give. 

The stool scraped against the floor when he stood, but he never broke the kiss, and you squeaked when you stumbled back against the counter. You opened your mouth wider when he coaxed you to, dizzy behind your closed eyes, and you let your hands wander freely, pulling him into you as the intensity behind the kiss escalated from comfort to need.

Two weeks. Two weeks -- three -- of pent up energy. Of hardly being able to touch each other, of being close but not close enough. 

“Come here,” he demanded in a mumble, the firm hold he had on your jaw to hold you in place as he kissed you the way he wanted leaving you breathless. Rarely did he ever do that; usually, he guided you into what you both wanted to build it until the bubble of tension popped. There was something thrilling about being told though -- something that reminded you of when you were new, three months instead of almost three years in. Something that was like when time was limited and you had to be efficient to learn each other and what would feel good and do good for the other and yourselves, and telling was sometimes all you had. 

Harry broke away with a wounded little noise and you blinked, dazed. “M’just….” He grabbed two tacos with one hand and threw them back into the paper bag. “M’moving these.” Tacos, nachos, and burritos all went back in, topped off with the chips, and he shoved them aside with some impatience. You laughed breathily and lifted yourself up onto the counter with his help, but it faded when he stepped between your legs and cupped your cheek and jaw and you caught a glimpse of the blown pupils and flushed cheeks that gave him a wild, primal look before your own eyes shut. 

Each and every tender sponging of his lips across your jaw and down your neck made you ache, and it was all you could do to stay upright and not collapse back, limp from how weak you were. His needy, mesmerized groans made your belly tighten, and when he tugged the hem of your shirt you nodded. 

Shirt, sweatshirt, bra, and undershirt were the first to go, and the straps had no sooner fallen down your shoulders than you let out a wordless, guttural shout from deep in your chest when Harry latched on and sucked your nipple with greedy enthusiasm, moving with you when you squirmed, his stubble scraping the soft skin of your breast. 

“Oh my God,” you gasped, eyes watering and elbow nearly buckling underneath you in your effort to hold yourself up. “Yes, please,” you said when he pulled the strings on your sweats. 

“That’s my girl,” he said, releasing with a pop and latching on again. “That’s my girl… gonna make it better for you.” He stood tall again when he pulled by the waistline, and you wriggled until they were at your knees and you could kick them off the rest of the way with your underwear as he dropped his own to his ankles. 

With nothing left between you, you shivered, shrinking into him when he stepped closer and drew his hands around your body in a circuit. Legs first, stomach, back, breasts, shoulders, arms, and repeat, each squeeze and dig of his hands and fingers just a little restrained and not as zealous as his groans and heavy breathing made him out to be -- like he was trying to be good, or patient, or….

“It’s ok,” you murmured between kisses. “You don’t have to wait.” They’d done the waiting -- more than enough of it. You just wanted him now.

“Sure?” Harry rasped and you nodded, eyes rolling up when he slipped his fingers between you both and they slipped up and down your folds. “Sure,” he confirmed under his breath. “Open a little more for me, love-- there we are, thank you.” 

You folded your arms around his neck and over his back and locked your ankles loosely just under his ass, heart racing in your chest. 

“Breathe in--” Harry murmured and you squeezed your eyes shut when he fit his head against your entrance. It slid and you laughed, kissing his jaw when he kissed your brow through his grin. “Deep breath for me.” 

Every time. He did that almost every time with you, first asking for a deep breath and then, invariably, pulling a long exhale from you when he thrust into your warm, wet cunt. “Oh, fuck,” he whispered in awe, holding still. You could feel the tremors pulling each fiber in his muscles, and when he throbbed inside you, you bit your lip. “Holy shit, you’ve got me good,” he groaned. 

You laughed once. “Yeah.” Yeah, something like that. Wincing, you rolled your hips forward and gasped softly from the stretch before tightening your arms and pressing your face against his hot skin. You nuzzled in between your own slow, lingering kisses, taking deep, grounding breaths. He was soft, and smooth, but firm, and hard, and he smelled amazing. Clean -- all soap and cologne with some detergent that smelled even more from the warmth of his skin. 

“Oh, God,” you whispered. “Oh, God, I--” You sucked in a harsh breath, abdomen tightening as you pulsed around him, feeling wetter, and you moved your face higher, nose pressed into the base of his sheared hair as you moaned quietly. “Oh my God, I love you.” Pitchy, bordering on hysteria, but you’d be hard pressed to remember a time you felt it as much as you meant it like you did right then. “I love you, I love-- I-- you feel--” Good. Better than good. No one had ever fit like he had -- too much, but just enough, physically, mentally, emotionally. 

“I love….” Harry gulped. “Shit, ok, m’gonna….” He made to pull his shoulders back, but you shook your head. 

“No, no, stay,” you begged, wrapping your arms and legs tighter. “Stay, please,” you murmured. 

“I can’t-- ok,” he panted. “Lemme….” He gripped your ass and pulled you closer and your back arched as you opened your thighs just a little more. “There we go,” he grunted, hips snapping forward as he finally moved. “That’s… fuck, that’s better now.” 

You could hear the effort you could feel between your legs -- each sharp pull of breath between his teeth, each muted grunt between his driving thrusts, and the pants he let out when he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. “M’ok,” he said every time between labored gulps for air. “M’good, I just need to--” and he grit his teeth before he began again, and again, you gasped and whimpered, shrinking closer to him. 

You didn’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else, now or ever. You didn’t want to be this close to anyone else again ever. This was never supposed to happen. He was never supposed to meet you, know you, fall in love with you, nor you with him, but now he had, and you were, and you couldn’t imagine it any other way. You couldn’t imagine a world in which he didn’t come home to you, for you, and where you weren’t there. Not waiting -- never waiting on a man, any man, but ready for him when he returned and ready to move forward together. 

He was yours. He was yours, and you were his, and the mere thought pulled something behind your belly button, making you groan.

“What?” he asked, kissing the side of your head. “What, darling, what?”

“I’m gonna cum,” you whispered and then whimpered, tightening your hold around his neck and in his hair. “Harry--” you choked, shuddering with your deep breaths.

“I know.” He grunted, thrusting with slightly more power. “Fuck! Tight little--”

“Don’t stop,” you begged. “Don’t stop, I’m close, I’m so-- I just need--” Faster and faster you rolled your hips against his, crying out against him when he wedged his thumb between you both to catch your clit, a stream of mumbled, “I’m gonna cum, you’re making me cum,” confessions hidden in his neck. Deep breaths. Long, slow, and deep, with your toes curling behind him until you were barely breathing in your efforts to concentrate, because you were right there. And then, you did cum, hard, convulsing and sucking in harshly as you trembled your way through whimpers of his name, immediately and thoroughly exhausted. 

Both his arms locked around you, then, all but crushing you to his torso in his efforts to hold you up, and he thrust hard, fast, deep, getting the right rhythm and stroke he needed. Barely able to keep your eyes open, your mouth moved soundlessly around the demand -- request -- to cum. Cum, Harry, cum, baby, please. Wordlessly, he sputtered through a sharp exhale, and it was the only indication before you felt the hot, wet release accompanying his groans.

“Fuck,” he choked, one of his hands landing hard on the counter to prop both of you up. You laughed, eyes rolling up, and you held on tightly through his turn to shake. 

“Happy New Year,” you said, still feeling a little punch-drunk from your orgasm.

He nodded. “H-Happy--” he gulped. “Happy New Year, darling.” His shoulders slumped. “Reckon this was the problem,” he said. “Should’ve fuckin’ rung the year in right last time, y’know?” 

“Right,” you breathed even as you shook your head, not quite caught up with what he was saying. 

“M’only sayin’,” he said. “We had sex the one time last Christmas. Should’ve had… a bit more,” he said indeterminately. 

“We haven’t had sex since you’ve been home.” 

Sighing heavily, he kissed your shoulder. “S’pose we’d better start,” he slurred. “S’not the new year yet.” 

[kenganparadise]

Hi! first I wanted to say that I love your blog, I am very happy to see that there is content for this anime. Did I want to request some headcanons? Like, dating Raian. If you don't do headcanons, maybe a drabble of him introducing his s/o to his family.

I decided to write Raian’s S/O meeting his family for the first time!! I was feeling a little fluffy today! I hope you enjoy!! ❤️

Raian was actually in a very sour mood. He peeked behind the corner to see you checking yourself in the mirror again. You made sure all the wrinkles were out of your clothes and all the pieces of lint and pet hair were cleared away. You check your hair again. Fluffing it and trying to fix it. “UGHhhh. I already told you 1000 times- you look fuckin’ HOT.” Raian yelled from the other room. You paused in surprise then sighed. “I don’t want to look hot. I want to look respectable and.... honorable.” You say. You look down at your feet. There was a pit in your stomach. You were very nervous. But Nervous wasn’t a good word to describe how you were feeling. You and Raian have been dating for a long time. He’s met all your family and friends. You have yet to meet his. You had heard rumors and the legends of the Kure clan. A tight knit family of assassin, literally bred to kill. You just so happened to be dating the most powerful one. You heard of their selective breeding. You wondered if they’ll deem you good enough. You wondered if you’re good enough yourself. Raian noticed your mood dampen. You look smaller. He clicks his tongue. You sigh deeply as the thoughts swim in your head. What if they didn’t like you? You jumped feeling strong arms wrap around your waist. Raian’s forehead was in the crook of your neck and shoulder. Your heart leaped at the affection. This.... was very very very rare. Raian barely ever reciprocated your affection, let anyone be the first to act. Your breath catches in your throat. You know he’ll never say the words out loud, but this was enough comfort. Raian sunk his teeth lightly into your skin. It didn’t hurt, but it was enough to leave a small mark. He pulled away from you then. Maybe he was feeling sheepish. “Come on! We don’t want to keep those fuckers waiting.” He snarls over his shoulder. You miss the feeling of his warm arms around you, but it was enough to leave a smile on your face. You followed behind him.

The journey to Kure village was mostly silent, apart from Raian complaining a little here and there. Stepping into the village was nerve wracking. So many people with black scleras, you knew the majority were assassin. Some of them gave glances to Raian. He seemed bored- almost like he didn’t want to be here. “Raian?” You look at him. “What?” He replies not even looking your way. “Can I hold your hand?” You ask in your sweetest voice. “Fuck no.” His reply was a little quicker than you’d like it to be. “Come on Please.” You bat your eyelashes. “Fuck. No.” “Pleaseeee Raian.” You beg sweetly again. He growls under his breath. “Fuck no. I don’t want the fuckers thinking I’ve gone soft to something.” His nose curls at the thought “I’ll make it up to you later~” you purr. His ears perk up a little. His lips twitch into a Frown. “Fuck. Only for a little bit.” He agrees begrudgingly. He takes your hand roughly into his. You’ve got a goofy grin on your face and Raian is feeling completely and utterly embarrassed and slightly humiliated. Unbeknownst to you.... deep down in Raian’s heart he feels warmth. If eyes weren’t on you already they definitely were now. It made you even more nervous. Everywhere you looked black eyes were stuck on you, People whispered amongst themselves. You’re anxious now. You tried to catch whispers and the mutterings but you weren’t able to. “Hey! Bro!!” You heard from behind you. You spin around to see a young woman running towards you. “I heard you arrived! I’ve been looking all over for you!” She chuckles and catches her breath. She’s a petite you’ll girl with short black hair. she looks straight at you. “You! You must be Y/N!” Her face beams. “Oh! Yes-“ you’re cut off by the woman bear hugging you. You gasp and awkwardly return the hug. She takes your hands in hers. “You have no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to meeting you!” She says with a smile. “I’m Fusui! I’m Raian’s sister!” She beams. You knew Raian had a sister, he’s talked (complained) about her before. Now here she was standing before you. “I’ll walk with you guys to Erioh!” She says with a smile. You intertwine your fingers with his again. Raian clicks his tongue. Fusui had a gleam in her eyes watching the two of you. Fusui struck up a conversation with you while you walked. She was kind, and genuinely excited to be talking to you. The three of you walked past a building. There more people called for your attention. You looked to see three strong looking men. They introduced themselves politely, Hollis, reiichi, and Horio. You noticed there was a stark difference between Raian and the other Kure members. They were polite and quite kind to you. Most of them were actually excited to meet you. After a brief conversation with the three men you decided to make your way to the main building. Erioh was there- the head of the Kure clan. You were the most nervous to meet him.

Heading into the palace-like building your heart started skipping beats. Raian and Fusui lead you through the building to the room where the head of the Kure was. He was sitting at a table alone with tea. He looked up at you from his teacup. “Hello, you must be Y/N.” He spoke calmly, with a small kind smile. You nodded. “It’s very night to meet you.” You reply. Erioh motions you to sit next to him. You and Fusui join him at the table. Raian goes and sits on the far side of the room, away from the conversation. Erioh pours a cup of tea for you and Fusui. “What do you do for work, Y/N?” He begins. He asks you question after question, about your family, hobbies, even your political beliefs. You can’t help but feel as though you’re being interrogated, the only thing that helped was Fusui lightening the mood with her quips. You were nervous, but answered truthfully. You hoped your answers would suffice. You heard the door open behind you. “Hi grandpa!” A young girl walked in. “Oh hello Karla my dear!” He says. His mood significantly changes. She sits down at an empty space next to you. “Karla this is Y/N, they are Raian’s mate... his remarkably better half!” Fusui jokes. Karla’s attention turns to you. “Oh wow! So when are you guys getting married!!” She says beaming. You nearly choke. Raian does as well behind you. “How many babies are you gonna make?” She radiates with wonder. “Now now Karla, those may not be questions Y/N wants to give to a stranger.” Erioh chuckles. You laugh awkwardly, not knowing what to say. You downed the rest of your teacup. Then you felt a presence behind you. “I’m tired as fuck of this. We’re going home.” Raian said gruffly. Fusui sighed and stood with you. “It was very nice meeting you, Y/N. I hope to see you again soon.” Erioh says with a tender smile. “Bye bye Y/N!” Karla says waving. Fusui walks out with you but Raian hesitates a moment. He knew Erioh had something to say. “You’ve found a good one... don’t lose them.” Erioh says as Raian huffs and walks away. “Shut the fuck up gramps.” Raian growls, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Fusui walks with you out of Kure village. The two of you laugh together, you’ve felt a bond grow between you two. You end up exchanging numbers. You hugged her again goodbye, promising to call. Then you and Raian left. The journey back was once again quiet. But you felt an overwhelming feeling of relief. Raian’s family had welcomed you. They too, we’re finally relieved to meet the only person who was able to tame the devil himself. Your name will go down in Kure history.

[gladdygirl18]

An Emerald Surprise

Summary: While watching a movie at Jotaro’s, Kakyoin decides to annoy his friend. Jotaro saw this as a challenge and ran with it. He just wasn’t expecting Kakyoin to giggle when he poked his side.

Word Count: 2132

⚠️Warning⚠️: Mild swearing (from you know who)

Let’s get one thing straight. Jotaro Kujo is by far the most serious young man you will ever meet. His calm demeanor towards tough situations is honorable and acknowledgeable. To his enemies, it’s scary as hell. They could never tell what he’s thinking. No one can, for that matter. The only one who really knows him is his ever-so-sweet, happy-go-lucky mother, Holly. Holly is the only one who can see past her son’s cold attitude.

It was a warm, summer afternoon in Japan, and school was out for everyone. Kakyoin had come over to Jotaro’s house to hang out. Luckily for them, they didn’t have any work to do over the summer. Holly and Kakyoin’s mother were close friends, so they didn’t mind their sons visiting one another every now and then.

“What movie do you wanna see?” Jotaro asked.

“Any movie is fine, JoJo.” Kakyoin said from the couch.

Jotaro hummed as he scanned through the movies. He soon picked up a VHS tape that read “Never Cry Wolf,” his favorite film. Sliding the film in the player, he walked back to the couch and plopped down next to Kakyoin. The black-haired teen picked up the remote and started the movie. Even though Jotaro had seen this movie a thousand times, he still enjoyed watching it. Kakyoin eventually found enjoyment in the film once he got a grasp of the plot.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Jotaro asked suddenly.

“Some water would be nice, thank you.” Kakyoin said with a genuine grin.

Standing up, the black-haired teen patted his friend’s shoulder before heading into the kitchen. Kakyoin slumped into the couch as he let out a content sigh, watching the men move across the screen. The redhead soon sat up when he came up with a cheeky idea. It’d probably cost him his life, but it would be worth it.

“Let’s see how much it takes to really annoy the shit out of JoJo...” Kakyoin though, a sly smirk forming on his.

Jotaro soon came back and handed Kakyoin a cup with ice water.

“I didn’t know if you wanted ice or not.” Jotaro said as he sat down.

“It’s fine,” Kakyoin said with a kind smile, “Thank you!”

Jotaro gave his friend a small grin before turning back to the movie. Kakyoin waited a few minutes before putting his plan into action. The redhead let out a dramatic yawn and rested his feet across Jotato’s lap. The black-haired teen glanced at his friend before looking back at the TV. Kakyoin often forgets that Jotaro is a patient, young man, and it doesn’t take a lot to piss him off. Kakyoin knew this and used it to his advantage. Kakyoin pretended to stretch and dramatically crossed his legs. Jotaro continued to watch the movie as if nothing happened.

“Yeah, this is gonna harder than I thought...” Kakyoin thought, “No matter. He’ll crack soon.”

What Kakyoin didn’t know was that Jotaro had caught on to his intentions to annoy him. He knew his redheaded friend like the back of his hand, and if he was going to annoy him, he at least wants to give him a run for his money. Kakyoin sighed and placed his heels and Jotaro’s shoulder, playfully tapping the side of his head with the tip of his shoe. No reaction. Now, Kakyoin was getting frustrated. Jotaro noticed this and let the corners of his lip curve upwards.

“Is something wrong, Kakyoin?” Jotaro asked casually, allowing his grin to fade to mask the facade.

“No, no. Nothing’s wrong,” Kakyoin lied, “Nothing at all...”

Jotaro nodded and his attention back to the TV.

“Don’t worry, Kakyoin. I’ll annoy you when you least expect it and see how you like it...” Jotaro thought, glancing at the redhead.

After a few minutes of trying to annoy the crap out of Jotaro, Kakyoin let out a defeated sigh and sat upright. Jotaro smirked when he did this. Leaning back into the couch, Jotaro glanced over at Kakyoin to see his annoyed and defeated look.

“He annoyed himself.” Jotaro thought, “Let’s help him with that...”

Jotaro sat up and saw that Kakyoin was completely engulfed in the movie; it almost looked like he was sleeping. Making sure, the black-haired teen poked the redhead’s side, causing him to flinch away with a giggle. The two teens glanced at one another and Kakyoin’s cheeks turned red.

“What was that?” Jotaro asked.

“N-Nothing! It was nothing!” Kakyoin said quickly, “Nothing to worry about!”

Jotaro knew exactly what was going on and Kakyoin was praying that he didn’t. The black-haired teen shrugged his shoulders and went back to the movie. Kakyoin breathed out a sigh of relief and placed a hand on his side where Jotaro poked him. That’s when Jotaro pounced on top of him, causing Kakyoin to let out a surprised yelp. The two wrestled on the floor until Jotaro was finally on top.

“What the hell, Jotaro!?” Kakyoin asked, “What the hell was that for?”

“Good grief, Kakyoin. You really thought you could hide your secret from me?” Jotaro asked, raising a brow.

Kakyoin swallowed hard and looked away from his friend.

“W-What secret...?” Kakyoin asked with a nervous smile.

Jotaro groaned and shook his head. Not wasting any time, Jotaro raked his fingers up and down Kakyoin’s ribs and sides. Kakyoin let out a giggly yelp before dissolving into adorable giggles.

“Jotarohohohohoho! Stohohohop!” Kakayoin giggled out, “What are you dohohoihihihing?!”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Jotaro asked casually.

Kakyoin twisted from side to side, giggling his heart out.

“You didn’t think I wouldn’t catch onto what you were doing?” Jotaro asked, “Trying to annoy me the shit outta me, huh? Well, now I’m gonna tickle the shit outta you!”

“How are they relevaahahahahahant?” Kakyoin asked.

Jotaro shrugged his shoulders and moved his hands down to Kakyoin’s belly and hips, moving one of his thumbs in a circular motion on the bone itself and the other vibrating on his belly. Kakyoin bucked upwards, sat up, and latched onto Jotaro’s wrists to make him stop, all while giggling wildly.

“Nohohoho! Don’t do thahahahat!” Kakyoin cried, shaking his head, and trying to pry Jotaro’s hands off him.

“Why? Too much for ya?” Jotaro asked.

The black-haired teen then started vibrating his hands all over his friend’s belly. Kakyoin wheezed before falling back to the ground, letting out louder giggles.

“Oh, my Gohohohohod!” Kakyoin cried, “Stahahaaaaap!”

The redhead flopped around like a fish out of water, his giggles gradually getting louder.

“Stahahahap! Jotaro, plehehehehease!” Kakyoin pleaded, trying to wriggle away.

“You’re not going anywhere...” Jotaro said.

That’s when the black-haired teen manifested his Stand and had it hold down Kakyoin’s hands above his head. Kakyoin’s struggling soon started into frantic thrashing, but he wasn’t getting out of Star Platinum’s titanium grip anytime soon.

“Nohohoho! Let me gohohohoho!” Kakyoin cried.

“Quit your bitchin’ and just take it.” Jotaro said in an annoyed tone.

Kakyoin could barely move. With Jotaro straddling his waist and Star Platinum holding down, he was practically bolted to the ground, and he couldn’t do anything but laugh and plead for mercy that probably wouldn’t be coming anytime soon.

“Jotaro, plehehehease! Stop ihihihit!” Kakyoin cried.

“Good, fucking grief,” Jotaro sighed, “You’re too ticklish for your own good, ya know that, right?”

Kakyoin could barely form a proper word. When Kakyoin didn’t answer his question, Jotaro groaned in mock annoyance and reached a hand behind him to squeeze his friend’s inner thigh. The redhead squealed and kicked his legs out.

“NOT THERE! NOT THEHEHEHEHERE!” Kakyoin cried.

“Weak spot?” Jotaro asked.

When Kakyoin didn’t answer, Jotaro sighed and used his other hand to squeeze his friend’s other thigh. Kakyoin wheezed and shook his head in defiance, the only part of his body he could move beside his legs.

“Next time, you better fucking answer me, understand?” Jotaro asked, “Is this a weak spot?”

“OBVIOUSLY! WHAT DO YOU THIHIHIHIHINK!?” Kakyoin asked.

Jotaro didn’t like Kakyoin’s sass, and to punish him, he started massaging one of his thumbs into his friend’s hipbone again, causing the redhead to give a wild buck and let out a new stream of laughter.

“Ya better watch it,” Jotaro said in a low voice, “Do you have any other weak spots you’d wish to share?”

“LIKE HEHEHEHELL I’D TELL YOHOHOHOHOHOU, YOU AHAHAHAHASSHOHOHOHOLE!” Kakyoin laughed.

Now, this was the sentence that sealed Noriaki Kakyoin’s fate. Jotaro stopped his attack and glared down at his panting friend.

“Thank... Thank you...” Kakyoin panted.

“Who said I was done...?” Jotaro asked.

Kakyoin looked up at his friend and felt helpless the minute he looked into Jotaro’s eyes. He was already shorter than him in height, but now, having Jotaro loom over him like this, Kakyoin felt as small as a mouse.

“I don’t appreciate your shit-talk, Kakyoin. So, until you’ve learned your lesson about not being a shitty bitch, you’ll just have to take your punishment,” Jotaro said, “Now, are you gonna tell me where your weak spot is, or are you gonna be a bitch about it?”

Kakyoin scoffed and rolled his amethyst eyes.

“You don’t scare me anymore, JoJo,” Kakyoin lied, hoping his voice wasn’t too shaky, “I have no other weak spots than my thighs, so good luck, JoJo.”

Kakyoin was just digging a deeper grave for himself. Jotaro chuckled and grinned down at his friend.

“Was hoping you’d say that ‘cause I already know where your other weak spot is.” Jotaro said.

Kakyoin stared up at his friend with wide eyes.

“How...? That’s impossible! H-He’s just bluffing! He’s gotta be...!” Kakyoin panicked.

Kakyoin prayed that Jotaro was bluffing. One thing about Jotaro Kujo that Kakyoin has forgotten in this kind of situation: Jotaro rarely ever bluffs, and at this moment, he isn’t! Jotaro started squeezing his friend’s thighs to get him laughing.

“NOHOHO! JOJOHOHOHOHO!” Kakyoin laughed.

After a while, Jotaro shot his hands into Kakyoin’s armpits. Kakyoin literally screamed with laughter, thrashing in Star Platinum’s unrelenting grip.

“NOOOHOHOHOHOOO! ANYWHERE BUT THEHEHEHEHEHERE!” Kakyoin cried.

“Thought so. I figured this would be your weak spot.” Jotaro said casually.

What Jotaro said startled the redhead.

“YOU MEHEHEHEAN YOHOHOHOU DIDN’T KNOHOHOHOHOHOW?!” Kakyoin asked, “HOHOHOW DID YOU FIHIHIHIND OHOHOHOHOUT?!”

“Pretty simple, actually. I tested every other part of your body except here,” Jotaro deadpanned, “Truth speaks for itself if you ask me.”

Kakyoin was laughing like a lunatic. Kakyoin could barely move his upper body, and to have one of his worsts spots tickled, you can imagine how torturous it must be for him.

“JAHAHAHAHAHAAAAH! JOJO! PLEASE, STAHAHAHAHAP!” Kakyoin cried.

“Have you learned your lesson about not shit-talking towards me?” Jotaro asked.

Kakyoin let out a new stream of laughter at that question.

“YOU DO IT AHAHAHALL THE TIHIHIHIME TO MEHEHEHE! WHY CAN’T IHIHIHIHI DO IT TO YOHOHOHOHOU!?” Kakyoin asked honestly.

“’Cause it’s fucking annoying.” Jotaro answered.

Kakyoin was able to growl through his gales of laughter.

“YOU DOHOHOHON’T THINK I DON’T GEHEHEHEHEHET ANNOHOHOHOHOYED!?” Kakyoin asked.

“You never say anything.” Jotaro said nonchalantly.

Kakyoin threw his head back and let out a louder stream of handsome laughter.

“OH, MY GAHAHAHAHAHAD! YOU’RE FUHUHUHUHUCKING RIDICULOHOHOHOHOUS!” Kakyoin laughed.

“What was that?” Jotaro asked, moving one hand down to squeeze Kakyoin’s thigh.

Kakyoin fell limp with laughter. He felt tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks.

“OKAY, OKAHAHAHAHAY! I’M SAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! I’M SOHOHOHORRY!” Kakyoin cried, “PLEASE STAHAHAHAHAP!”

“Did you learn you’re fucking lesson?” Jotaro asked.

Kakyoin threw his head back when Jotaro hit a sensitive part of his armpit, causing the redhead to squeal once more.

“YEHEHEHEHES! OH, GAHAHAHAHAD YEHEHEHEHES!” Kakyoin laughed, “JUST STAHAHAHAHAP!”

Staying true to his word, Jotaro stopped the ticking and called back his Stand. Kakyoin panted underneath Jotaro, sweat, and tears dripping from his face.

“You suck... so hard...” Kakyoin panted.

“Watch it, jackass.” Jotaro said pointing a finger at him.

Kakyoin rolled his eyes with a wide grin on his face. Jotaro did the same and proceeded to place a kiss on Kakyoin’s quivering lips. The black-haired teen got off the now flustered redhead and offered a hand to him. Kakyoin wanted to question the action displayed upon him, instead, he took Jotaro’s hand and stood up.

“Never tickle me like that again...” Kakyoin said, even though his cheeks were redder than before.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Jotaro asked, “I’m not ticklish.”

Kakyoin glared at his boyfriend and poked his side. Jotaro didn’t even flinch.

“Shit...” Kakyoin muttered.

Jotaro chuckled and pulled his lover into his chest.

“Don’t worry. You’ll have the whole summer to try and get me back.” Jotaro said.

Emphasis on try. And try Kakyoin will. He didn’t care if his boyfriend was built like a brick wall. After all, every wall has a weak point, and Kakyoin was determined to find Jotaro’s.

[puckinghell]

Not A Typical Christmas Story | Elias Pettersson

Summary: You’ve never loved Christmas, and there’s nothing that can change that; especially not your best friend’s grumpy Swedish friend who you don’t even like. However, when you’ve gotta be forced into the Christmas spirit to write a Christmas story for class, there’s only one person who is willing to try and help you. Words: 14k (I’m SO sorry) Note: Here it is, a Christmas story in November. Honestly I’m nervous to post this, I’ve never put so much of myself into a story, but here we go. I loved loved loved writing this and I hope you guys like reading it. Also, the cliche scenarios were stolen from a random blog post. 

--

“You’re such a fucking Grinch.” Brock takes a sip from his hot chocolate. There’s murmur in the bar around you, and he’s muttering, but you still hear him clear enough.

“Hey,” you protest, lightly hitting him on the arm. “I’m not a Grinch. Just because you put up your Christmas decorations in October and have been singing All I Want For Christmas Is You since July, doesn’t make me the Grinch for not doing that.”

Brock raises an eyebrow. “You literally just said you hate Christmas.”

“I did not.” You stubbornly cross your arms. “I said I hate Christmas stories.”

“That’s basically all there is to Christmas,” Brock brings in, and that’s probably fair enough.

Apart from the food, presents, family time, decorations…

Fine. Maybe you don’t like any of those either. But not liking Christmas is not the same as being a Grinch: you’re completely fine with letting everyone enjoy their festive December, as long as they leave you out of it.

Which is exactly why you’ve been complaining to Brock. And as your best friend, it’s literally his duty to listen to you; unfortunately it also means he’s gonna make fun of you. Just a little bit.

“I just don’t get why I have to write a Christmas story,” you mope, a little pathetically. “There’s so many Christmas stories in the world already, Boes. And they’re all the same! The foreign sports car breaks down in a blizzard and the city slicker gets stuck in a bar with a bucktoothed chicken strangler with an IQ of 7 whom he decides, through love or delirium, he cannot live without. Or the sadistic Christmas-hating miser of the pathetic backwoods town, who makes his money grinding the faces of the poor, is inspired to a change of heart by a teary-eyed child who bears a striking resemblance to his dead daughter, and donates all his money so that the ghost town can continue its wretched, grimy, poverty wracked existence.”

At that, there’s a muffled snicker from the side of the table. You’d almost forgotten that Elias was there, to be honest.

You raise your eyebrow at him. “What? You’ve got a better Christmas story?”

Elias raises an eyebrow back, but doesn’t answer. He usually doesn’t. Brock says he’s talkative enough when you’re not around, although you for the life of you do not know what you’ve done to earn his judgment.

“Don’t bite Petey’s head off,” Brock chides. He’s always trying to keep the peace between you two, and sometimes you feel bad that he has to police his two best friends.

Today is not one of those days.

“He’s laughing at me!”

“Because you’re being ridiculous.” Brock sighs. “It’s just a Christmas story, Y/N. You’ll write it, you get a grade for it, it’s done. How hard can it be?”

It’s clear that Brock has no idea how hard it can be to write a decent story. Sometimes, you wonder if he can even really write or read: maybe he’s just memorized a bunch of words and called it a day.

You let out a grumble and drop your head on the dingy, sticky table in the rundown bar that Brock and Elias are so keen to go to, probably because they never get recognized there. Not surprising, considering the fact that the age of the average customer is above 85.

Normally, you like your creative writing course. People told you to get electives you thought were actually fun, as your normal college courses are taxing enough, and you’ve always been a writer.

Or, well, been a writer… You write. You wouldn’t call yourself a writer: you’ve never published anything and you can’t be a writer before you make money from it. But you like writing. There’s at least a hundred half finished Word documents sitting on your laptop at any given moment.

But this project isn’t fun at all. All the students in your course were excited to get to write a Christmas story. It is December, after all, and most people have gotten properly into the Christmas spirit by now. However, you’ve never liked Christmas – for reasons that you will not think about with Elias’ judgy eyes on you – and you usually write scary stories, so this is not up your alley.

“Hey,” Brock’s voice sounds, and it’s gentle now. He’s probably noticed you’re actually having a mental breakdown over this. “It’s just one stupid story, and it doesn’t even have to be good. Just write about like, animals that can talk.”

Elias snorts again, and this time you can’t even blame him.

You lift your head only to shoot Brock a glare. Brock raises his hands in helpless manner, rolling his eyes as he goes.

“I’m trying to help.”

“I’m going to get beers,” Elias says suddenly. It’s the first thing he’s said all hour, you think, and the sound of his voice almost startles you. “I think you’re more helpful when you’ve got a beer, Boes.”

He’s not wrong, but you won’t tell him that. Instead, you stare at his retreating back, disappearing towards the bar.

“Why do you hate him?” Brock says, and he sounds a little accusing.

“I don’t hate Elias, just as much as I don’t hate Christmas,” you tell him, before you realize that that technically doesn’t speak of your innocence, so you try a different tactic. “He doesn’t like me either! He never talks when I’m around.”

“Cause you make him nervous!” Brock exclaims. He pushes his now empty mug towards the side. “You’re always making snappy remarks at him.” He stares at you with big blue puppy eyes, his bottom lip pouting out. “I wish you would just get along. I love you both and it’s very annoying to have to always be in the middle of you.”

In reality, it’s not like Brock really has to be in the middle of anything. If it was up to you, you would simply not ever see Elias, and you’re pretty sure that’s the only thing you and Elias would ever agree on. But Brock somehow always brings you together: like how today he’d forgotten to mention his teammate’s presence when he asked you to come out for a drink.

But you don’t blame Brock, not really. You think there’s another universe in which Elias and you could be friends. You’re very similar, in a way: you’re both not from Vancouver, both don’t have your family around, and you share a similar sharp sarcastic humor and a love for teasing Brock.

The first time you met Elias, you were hopeful. Brock was, at that point, your only friend in Vancouver, and the two of you had become best friends like you’d grown up in each other’s pockets. If Brock liked this guy so much, you figured you’d like him too.

But Elias hadn’t seemed to feel the same way. You met at one of Jake’s parties and Brock had introduced you with the statement that you were going to be beerpong buddies, because he’d already promised Troy.

Elias’ eyes had been a little too intense, as they traveled across your face. You could feel them burn into your skin like lasers, and when his eyes finally met yours it had felt like being hit by the entire universe at once.

“Oh,” he’d said, and it had been filled with… not even disdain. You could’ve handled disdain, because you could’ve called him out on that. But this had been indifference, that you’d heard in his voice, and that was something you didn’t know what to do with.

He’d not said anything else all evening. 

Ever since then, you’d put stone after stone into the wall you build between you and the quiet Swede, every single time he so much looked in your general direction. Nothing big ever happened between you: you hadn’t had any huge fights or massive blow outs.

It was just indifference, that ate at you until it became reluctance and then annoyance, and it’s that same thing you can read on Elias’ face now when he quietly sits in a corner, listening in on your conversations with Brock.

Yes, it would be easier for Brock if you and Elias could become friends, or at least friendly enough.

“Sorry, Boes,” you tell him with a sigh. “I just don’t think it’s ever gonna happen.”

--

“Is there a reason you’re not wearing a shirt?”

You raise your eyebrow at Jake, who opened the door wearing black jeans, a Santa hat, and literally nothing else.

"I lost a bet,” he says solemnly, opening his front door further. You stomp the snow off your boots on his porch, then move past him into the house.

It’s freezing cold outside and Jake’s house is lovely and warm, which makes you happy to be there if only to enjoy the heating. It’s not like you don’t have heating at your flat, but the electricity bill is high enough every month without you turning the thermostat up as high as it goes, so usually you try to keep warm with sweaters and blankets.

Brock told you to dress pretty though, so you wore a dress to Jake’s party. Which means it’s a good thing he’s got the heating going.

“You look lovely,” Jake smiles, taking your coat from your hands. Having him act like such a perfect gentleman in the outfit he’s wearing makes you laugh, and he shoos you inside when he notices.

You like Jake. In fact, you like all of Brock’s friends – except the one, of course – and that’s the only reason you said yes to coming to this party. It’s not like you’re against parties, but it’s a Christmas party: and despite the fact that it’s the first week of December, you’ve already heard enough Christmas music to last a life time.

“There she is!” Brock hoots, when he spots you. He opens his arms and you give him a quick hug, saying hi to Bo and Holly, who he’s standing with. “I have a brilliant idea,” Brock says however, before you can even ask the Horvats how they’re doing. “And you can’t say no right away.”

That definitely means you’re gonna wanna say no right away.

“I’m not promising that,” you hum. Just at that moment, Jake appears with a glass of prosecco that he hands you, and you send him a grateful smile. He disappears just as quickly, which is probably the better option considering what Brock’s about to say.

“I think you should make an actual, real effort to get into the Christmas spirit this year.”

“I don’t think so,” you immediately answer, but Brock waves away your protests with a wave of his hand.

“That’s not the part you’re gonna wanna say no to.”

“Oh dear,” Holly laughs, and you glare at Brock.

“What, then?”

“I think you and Petey should get in the Christmas spirit together.”

The sentence is bizar enough that you burst out laughing. Surely he’s kidding.

“Are you drunk?” you ask, then, turning to Bo: “Is he drunk?”

Bo shrugs. “Not yet, I don’t think. Tipsy at most.”

“Think about it,” Brock says. There’s a glint of excitement in his eyes, which promises nothing good for you. “You’re staying in Vancouver this Christmas, right?”

You don’t say anything: the answer is yes, and Brock knows that, because he’s been trying to convince you to come back to Minnesota with him for a month. However, as you’ve told him every time, there’s no way his girlfriend would appreciate that, and you don’t like being a third wheel. Or - but you haven’t told him that - a charity case.

“And so is Petey!” Brock proclaims. He motions somewhere to the left, where the Swede is probably hiding between all his teammates, trying to stay as far away from you as possible. “So both of you have to stay here in Vancouver, alone, during Christmas. And he loves Christmas, and you don’t, but you have to write that Christmas story and it would be so much easier to do that if you actually celebrated Christmas, so he can teach you how.”

Your best friend isn’t making a lot of sense, and there’s too much information to process so quickly. First of all, you didn’t know Elias would be alone for Christmas, although you suppose it makes sense that he can’t go back to Sweden just for 2 days of Christmas. Secondly, you don’t need someone to teach you how to celebrate Christmas: it’s not like you don’t know, and much more that you choose not to.

And third: fuck. You’d basically forgotten about that Christmas story.

“It’s a brilliant idea,” Brock says proudly and a little smug. “And I haven’t told Petey yet but I know he’ll be down.”

This time, you respond: you start laughing hard enough that Brock’s smile slips off his face.

“I really don’t think he will,” you giggle. You reach out, patting Brock’s arm with a smile. “Boes, you’re a sweetheart, but stop worrying about me. My life isn’t bad because I don’t like Christmas.”

It’s bad for some other reasons, like financial debt and family misfortunes, but not because of a lack of reindeer ornaments and bad mulled wine.

Brock pouts. “But…”

“No,” you cut him off. “I can write that Christmas story just fine on my own, thank you. And if you’re worried about Elias, you can ask him to Minnesota.” You take a step back, glancing at your empty prosecco glass. “I’m gonna get another one of these.”

As you’re making your way to the kitchen, you can still hear Brock’s sputtering.

Although Jake’s house is filled with people, the kitchen still seems quiet. It’s not until you’ve let the door fall closed behind you though, that you notice movement in the corner.

“Oh,” you say, a little annoyed to be caught off guard. “It’s you.”

Elias barely glances in your direction. “Just getting some water.”

Elias’ style is always a little funky, and if you didn’t dislike him so much you would’ve appreciated how daring it is. This time, though, you literally can not help but laugh at him.

“Nice sweater,” you say, and it doesn’t even come out as sarcastic.

Elias looks down at his sweater like he didn’t even notice he was wearing it. It has a reindeer stitched on, except the reindeer looks… Well. Baked.

“Quinn got it for me,” Elias says, and he sounds a little sheepish, which is not a tone you hear from him often. “He’s got the same one.”

“A little co-dependent,” you tease, and it comes out too light and easy for it to be directed at Elias. He looks a little surprised, too, at how jovial it sounds.

“You look nice,” he says, then. He’s looking at you now, and you can feel the weight of his eyes press against your skin.

There’s something about Elias’ gaze that makes it feel like your lungs are constricting, and you don’t know what it is. You could blame it on the fact that his eyes are the kind of piercing blue that authors would compare to the ocean or maybe the summer sky, but Brock has blue eyes too, and you never feel like that when he looks at you.

“Uhm, thanks,” you bring out. The awkwardness settles over the kitchen like a heavy cloud of fog, but for some reason your first instinct isn’t to just run out of the kitchen, like you usually would.

This is definitely Brock’s fault, for making you feel bad about Elias being alone in his sauve but empty apartment in Vancouver on Christmas, when he apparently loves the holiday so much.

“Brock thinks you could teach me how to love Christmas,” you blurt out, and Elias looks nothing short of utterly baffled by your statement. You sigh, and explain. “We’re both in Vancouver around Christmas and apparently you love Christmas and I don’t, so he thinks you should teach me how to love it. He thinks it would help me write my story.”

Elias seems to ponder that for a second. When he speaks, his voice is tentative. “Do you think it would help?”

Your first instinct is to, once again, call out no and laugh it off, but for some reason you don’t. Elias sips his water like he’s prepared to wait for your answer, and you give yourself some time to think.

Realistically, getting into the Christmas spirit, or at least getting an idea of what other people feel when they’re in the Christmas spirit, could really help you pull off this story. You’re good at putting yourself in other people’s shoes, which is how you manage to write characters you don’t necessarily see yourself in.

When you wrote a story about a doctor, you talked to your friend who’s in med school about it for a week. Now, you wanna write a Christmas story. It wouldn’t be an awful idea to be around someone who loves Christmas.

“Maybe,” you admit. “But you don’t have to do it, I know you’re probably busy…”

Elias shakes his head before you’ve finished your sentence.

“When hockey goes on break, and all my teammates go home for the holidays, I won’t have anything to do.” He shrugs: it looks careless but in the most forced manner, like he’s trying to hide just how much it does matter. “We could do something, I guess.”

I guess. It’s not really the most enthusiastic response you’ve ever had, but then, this is not normal for you and Elias.

“You know what the ultimate Christmas plot is?” Elias says then, a little hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “A Christmas party is in fear of flopping thanks to a lack of Christmas spirit, but is rescued by some energetic soccer mom with no life.” He grins. “I could be the soccer mom.”

To your own surprise, you burst out laughing at his description. You didn’t think he was really paying attention when you were describing cliché Christmas plots in the bar with Brock, but maybe Elias pays attention to more than he admits.

“Fine,” you hear yourself say, and you honest to God have no idea where that came from but you know Brock is gonna shit himself with excitement when he hears. “When hockey goes on break, you can be the energetic soccer mom and try to bring me into the Christmas spirit.” You smile. “It won’t be an easy task, Pettersson.”

Elias raises an eyebrow but there’s nothing judgmental about it, this time.

If anything, it’s a challenge.

He sticks something out to you: it’s your glass, now filled again with prosecco, which he somehow managed to fill up without you even noticing.

“It’s on,” he says simply, and when he raises his water glass in the air, you don’t even hesitate to clink it.

--

“Shopping is not a Christmas outing,” you say, stubbornly crossing your arms. “And I really don’t think this is gonna get me into the Christmas spirit.”

“What do you mean?” Elias deadpans, as he yanks a shopping cart free from all the others. “Middle aged housewives fighting over discounted wreaths? There’s nothing more Christmassy than that.”

You snort. “Right. It’s just gonna be spoiled crying kids who want toys that they already have and parents pretending it’s Santa who spoils them so they don’t have to take responsibility for their kids being rude drama queens.”

Elias laughs. He pushes the cart into the department store, and you reluctantly follow him.

“That’s another storyline,” he says.

“The unexplained dilemma of parents who do not believe in Santa, and yet we, the wise audience who knows better, are left to wonder where they think these toys came from? ‘Psst, honey, Santa’s not real, so from whence came these marvels?’”

“I don’t know half of what you’re saying.” Elias holds up a string of Christmas lights. “But we’re getting these, honey.”

It comes out sweet like caramel and too serious to be anything but sarcastic, so you push the cart into his heels. Elias simply laughs and continues on his way.

The department store is busy, which is exactly why you usually try to avoid going there in December. You’d think Elias, being Elias Pettersson, would also try to avoid crowds, but it’s like people don’t see anything but Rudolph; nobody recognizes him as he skillfully pushes his way through the crowds, putting stuff into the cart that you barely know what to do with.

You’re thankful for it. It would be awkward if people did recognize him, and it’s strange to notice that that would be the thing to do it; there’s no awkwardness now, with him making snarky remarks at the quality of the ornaments or the fact that Canadians apparently love what he calls the ‘tacky’ side of Christmas.

In fact, you almost find that you’re enjoying yourself. It might as well be a Christmas miracle after all.

“When was the last time you had a tree?” Elias asks.

Your brain short circuits for a full five seconds, and then when you answer Elias stares at you as if you’ve grown a second head.

“Uh, probably when I still lived with my parents and they got it?”

“We’re changing that right now.” He spins on his heels and speed walks in the direction of the trees, too fast for you to protest.

You think of the last time you got a Christmas tree and an involuntary shiver makes its way down your spine. There’s a good reason you don’t like Christmas, and the tree plays a crucial part in it.

But Elias doesn’t know that. So you can’t even blame him for looking excited when he somehow manages to find you the perfect size tree for your apartment – even without ever having been in your apartment.

“This one,” he says smugly, but when he notices your expression, his face falls. “What’s wrong?”

You swallow. You could tell him, now, tell him about the last time your dad went to get a tree and never came back.

But that’s a long time ago and there’s no reason for Elias to know that. He’s not your friend, and he’d probably not even care. If anything, he’d feel sorry for you, and that would be even worse.

“That one is fine,” you tell him, and you promise yourself you just won’t put it up.

The tree gets your mood down but Elias doesn’t seem to notice. He collects some more stuff, like a throw blanket with Christmas pattern that you actually don’t mind, because you’re always cold and a person can never have too many throw blankets.

He also puts in an ornament with the Canucks logo, which you want to use to slap the smirk off his face, and a Rudolph pluche toy with a red light up nose.

“Like you, when it’s cold,” he teases, flicking your nose, and you wonder if you could use the Christmas lights to strangle him.

Finally, when you approach the end of your trip, you realize a teeny tiny problem.

“Uhm, Elias?” you ask, “I think we may have gotten too much.”

Elias rolls his eyes. “Brock said you don’t have any decorations, so this is the perfect amount.”

And it would be – if you wanted Christmas decorations – except…

“I can’t afford this,” you snap, and you can feel your cheeks heat up, and maybe the tips of your ears as well. God, this is embarrassing.

Elias’ face softens, and that kinda just makes it worse.

“You’re not paying for it,” he says, not unkindly. “This wasn’t your idea.”

“It wasn’t yours either,” you remind him. Granted, a bill like this would hardly break the bank for Elias, but you’re not about to let him pay for you just because he feels bad. You let Brock buy you dinner sometimes but that’s it, and only because he actually likes your company and because he always wants to eat at stupid fancy restaurants.

This is Elias. He doesn’t value your company, and he’s not your friend, and you won’t let him pay for you.

Elias doesn’t say anything, eyes searching your face for something. You’re not quite sure what he finds, but finally, he speaks.

“Consider it my Christmas gift to you,” he says. “You can pay me back by making me lunch, cause I’m hungry.”

And strangely enough, the thought of spending another two hours with Elias doesn’t make you wanna hurl, or throw yourself in front of oncoming traffic. In fact, you’re surprised to note that you actually had fun on this trip, and it was mostly thanks to Elias’ dry commentary on the other shoppers, of which not one sentence failed to make you laugh.

You don’t believe in Christmas stories, like the one where some weird technical glitch in the matrix gets fixed just in time for the Christmas tree in the center of town to light up, just as the guy and girl figure out their complicated emotional differences.

But maybe you can allow yourself to not actively dislike Elias’ company, at least while you’re stuck with it.

--

There’s exhaustion settled deep inside your bones, like your feet are made of concrete as you somehow manage to drag yourself up the stairs. You don’t usually mind living in a bit of a shit hole building, considering the fact that it’s very cheap – but on nights like these you wish there was an elevator you could take.

Working out in the morning before taking a double shift at the coffee shop you work at was a bad idea.

It takes you a few seconds to find your keys in your bag. It’s late enough at night that you can’t really see much; there’s lights in the hallways but most of them don’t really work, the flickering glow of them barely enough to illuminate the ceilings.

When you open the door, you instantly notice there’s something wrong.

Or, wrong… That might not be the right word. The word that comes to mind, actually, is fuck.

You’d forgotten all about Elias.

After buying all the Christmas decorations, he kept bothering you about putting them up. You hadn’t really been planning to, and unfortunately Elias knew you well enough to somehow know that.

Nobody reads you as well as he does, like his blue eyes pierce right through your skin and stare straight into your heart. It’s one of the things you find most unsettling about him. Keeping things close to your heart has always been your way to cope, but it felt impossible to do that with Elias around.

He’d kept asking you if you were gonna put up the decorations and you kept waving him away, until he finally decided he had enough.

“I’m coming over tomorrow,” he’d said – or, threatened. “Brock gave me your spare key, so you don’t have a say in this. I’m putting up the tree.”

“Don’t you dare,” you’d answered, making a mental note to deal with Brock’s traitorous ass later. “I can put up my own tree.”

You could, you just weren’t planning to do it.

“You could, but you won’t,” Elias had said, unimpressed. “So be there or don’t be there, I’m doing it.”

You had totally meant to be there. You weren’t as much of an asshole that you would let him do all the work after he also paid for it, and he was technically doing you a favor. But then your colleague asked you to cover her shift, and, well…

You forgot. And clearly, Elias hadn’t.

In the corner of your tiny little living room is a pine tree. There’s no ornaments in it except for the Canucks one that Elias bought you, but there’s what seems to be about a thousand lights in it, and it must’ve taken him hours to put those in.

It’s not even just that. The Rudolph toy is sitting on your bookcase, there’s candles on your dining table and on the couch is the Christmas throw blanket.

Under the blanket is Elias.

His head is resting on the arm of the couch, blond hair a little messy. His eyes are closed, eyelashes fluttered against his cheekbones, and he looks strangely peaceful.

You feel something settle in your stomach.

You imagine him sitting on your couch, waiting for you to come home because he wanted to see your reaction. You can imagine his little smug grin as he took in his work, way too proud with a simple string of lights in a Christmas tree. And maybe, maybe, he even thought about you celebrating Christmas here with the place looking exactly like this, and maybe that made him smile.

And then you didn’t show up. 

You wonder if you should wake him, to kick him out of your apartment, tease him for waiting for you, or even to say thank you. But his chest is rising slowly with every steady breath, and you’ve never seen Elias look so tranquil, so at peace.

For some reason, waking him feels like a crime.

So you step closer and tug the blanket a little more over his shoulders. You tell yourself it’s because the place gets so stupidly cold at night, and you can’t have him get sick and have a miserable Christmas because Brock would kill you, but you know it’s not about that at all.

It’s about the fact that coming home to a cozy, decorated apartment after the exhausting day you’ve had was actually pretty nice. And it’s about the fact that for some reason, Elias’ sleeping figure on your couch makes the place feel more like home than it has ever before.

And maybe it’s because the night is dark, and Elias can’t hear or see you, but when you whisper: “Goodnight” into the quiet living room, it sounds a lot like thank you.

--

When you wake up, there’s the smell of pancakes in the air. It’s a smell you would recognize anywhere, and it startles you awake too quickly for it being so early in the morning. You nearly jump out of bed and follow your nose towards the kitchen.

If anyone would’ve asked, you would’ve bet money on it that Elias would’ve woken up on your couch annoyed as hell, and booked it out of there as soon as his legs could carry him. But somehow, like a mirage, he’s standing at your stove, making pancakes.

Are you dreaming?

“Am I dreaming?” you ask out loud, and Elias swirls around on his heels.

“Don’t scare me,” he snaps, annoyed, but the annoyance flows away within seconds. “I was hungry.”

“So you made pancakes?”

Elias laughs softly. “I can’t make much else with what’s in your kitchen. You need to go grocery shopping.”

You really do, but you can’t think about that right now. Not when Elias is standing in your kitchen like he owns the place, like it’s normal for him to be there.

It very much is not. So why doesn’t it feel wrong?

“Uhm.” If he’s here, you figure you should at least be polite. “Do you want coffee?”

He waves towards your coffee machine. “I already put it on.”

You stay quiet as you make the coffee, a little too aware of the way Elias moves pancake after pancake from the pan to the stack, movements relaxed and almost lazy. It’s Sunday morning and it’s not that late, but it feels like it could be one of those mornings that stretches out endlessly, dark grey clouds outside your apartment as Vancouver slowly wakes up.

Neither of you speak until you’ve sat down at the table, pancakes and coffee in front of you. It’s awfully domestic and you don’t know what to do with it: it’s become easy to snap or snark at Elias when Brock’s there as a middle man and Elias looks like he’d rather cut off both his legs than spend another minute in your presence, but it’s not like that now.

Now, Elias seems quietly content to sit in your kitchen eating pancakes that he made on your stove while you were asleep. Now, Elias seems completely comfortable scrolling through his phone while you stare at him. And this Elias, you have no idea what to do with.

“We’re gonna do something Christmassy today,” Elias says, between two bites of pancake. “I’m just trying to figure out what.”

You raise an eyebrow. It’s been only a week since Brock had the awful idea to make Elias teach you how to be in the Christmas spirit before booking it to Minnesota, and so far Elias has seemingly put way too much time and effort into it, while you haven’t even put one word in your empty word document, that you ironically titled ‘Not a typical Christmas story’.

Then you remember the night at Jake’s party, and how Elias said he wouldn’t have much to do once all the guys went home to their families.

Suddenly, you feel for him. You know what it’s like to be lonely.

“The Christmas market isn’t on today,” Elias continues, oblivious to your mental dialogue. “But we’re going there soon. And we need to watch a bunch of Christmas movies.”

You hesitate. Are you really going to do this?

“I might have an idea for today.”

Apparently you are.

Elias’ eyes finally focus on you, expression curious. He doesn’t say anything but he’s clearly waiting for you to continue, so you take a deep breath and go for it.

“I’ve never gone skating.”

An hour later you’re at the local outdoor ice rink, and it’s not until you see the crowd that you realize this might’ve not been your smartest idea. It’s Sunday, it’s December, it’s not awfully cold: you think at least 1/3rd of Vancouver is at this rink.

“Uhm, I might not have thought this through,” you state a little bashfully. You can already see a few Canucks jerseys on the ice, and although you can’t see the back that well you wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of them carried the number 40.

Elias shrugs. He seems unbothered, but then he mostly does. You can never really read him, and it’s one of the things you find most unnerving about him.

“It’ll be fine,” he says. “I’m wearing my glasses.”

He is wearing his glasses, which he rarely does. You’re not even sure he needs them or if they’re just a fashion statement. He’s also wearing a hat, so maybe he’s thought this through more than you.

But surely just glasses and a snapback won’t stop Vancouver from recognizing the Canucks biggest star?

Apparently, it does.

Elias goes to rent the skates, because he couldn’t be bothered to go back to his apartment to get his own. He’s put them on within 20 seconds, while you’re still struggling to wiggle your foot into the first one.

He laughs and you shoot him a deathly glare.

“Don’t laugh at me! We can’t all be professional hockey players.”

“I don’t think you need to be a professional anything to lace up a skate,” Elias answers dryly. He turns to face you, then pats his leg. “Give me your foot.” 

It’s embarrassing to make Elias tie your skates, but it would be more embarrassing to ignore him and then spend 20 minutes struggling with them. So you swing your foot into his lap. 

Long fingers work swiftly around your laces, and suddenly your skate is tied, fitted closely around your ankle. Elias pats your shin, then holds out his hand for the other foot. 

You swing your second leg into his lap. 

“I don’t know how you do this so fast,” you mutter. You can feel the flush on your cheeks and you hope Elias assumes it’s because of the cold.

“I’ve got many talents,” Elias deadpans, and you can’t stop yourself from laughing. 

“Juggling, unicycle riding, and lacing skates?” 

Elias nods. There’s a smile tugging at his lips. “All very important skills.” 

Finally, you put your skates back on the floor and waggle towards the door to. the rink. Elias has jumped onto the ice before you can even think about moving. 

You stop. Is this really a good idea? You could break both your legs here.

“Don’t be scared,” Elias says, correcting guessing the root of your hesitation. He’s gliding on his skates with ease, shuffling back and forth the way hockey players always do during the anthems.

Because he’s waiting. For you. Because you’re going skating together.

This is the weirdest fucking thing that’s ever happened to you, kinda like a fever dream; and that’s enough motivation to step onto the ice.

You stumble a bit, and Elias reaches out to grab your elbow to steady you.

“Careful, it’s slippery.”

“Unsurprisingly,” you mumble beneath your breath, and Elias’ grin goes a little wicked before he promptly lets go off your elbow and slides back.

Bastard. But the ice is slippery and you’re not steady on your skates, so you scramble forward only just enough to reach Elias again, wrapping your hands tightly around his arm.

“Do not let go,” you hiss.

“Do not be a smartass,” he shoots back, but thankfully he doesn’t move away again. Instead, he carefully takes both your hands away from his arm and takes them into his own, turning so he’s skating backwards and pulling you along.

If you don’t have to move your own feet, moving is a lot more fun, and you feel yourself loosening up. Every now and then you stumble, but Elias’ grip on you is firm and he never wavers, even when you yank on his hands to pull yourself upright again.

You’ve always noticed how graceful Elias is on the ice. There’s something about him when he skates that has always caught your attention, even if you would never admit that to him. But without the hockey gear, it’s even more clear how elegant he moves.

You, not so much.

“You better not be laughing at me,” you grumble, a little annoyed that you have to cling onto Elias as a lifeline in order not to break your neck. 

Elias raises an eyebrow. “I never do that.”

It should sound sarcastic but it really doesn’t, and you wonder if he’s momentarily forgotten every single interaction you’ve had with him over the past year.

Your expression must speak volumes because he rolls his eyes. He swiftly moves, so he’s skating next to you instead of in front.

He’s still holding your hand.

“I never laugh at you,” he clarifies. “I laugh because you’re funny. It’s different.”

And, oh. That does something to your stomach, something that you probably shouldn’t be thinking about right now.

Elias doesn’t seem to want to dwell on it either, because suddenly he pulls his hand away, skating a bit to the front to where you can’t reach him.

“You can do it on your own,” he calls over his shoulder, a cheeky smile playing around his lips.

And it turns out you can: you don’t fall, you keep moving – albeit a lot slower than Elias – and it’s actually kinda fun.

You can do it on your own, but. It was more fun with Elias next to you, anyway.

--

When Elias texts you to tell you you’re going to the Christmas market that night, you haven’t seen him in three days.

But you’ve been texting. He’s been sending you stupid Christmas songs that you mostly don’t listen to, and Christmas movies you’d prefer to never see. You send him ideas for cliché Christmas stories that you can almost hear his disapproving snort for. 

Santa becomes a prima donna and holds Christmas hostage until his ego is stroked in the form of songs written in his honor by reindeer who are willing to give their very lives for the cause.

Elias’ answer comes swift.

No. That has definitely been done before and also, someone could call animal services.

When Brock asks you how you’re liking your time with Elias, when you FaceTime him during dinner, you fall into silence.

What are you gonna tell him? That you smile every time you see his name pop up on your phone? That you have no idea anymore why you didn’t like him all that time? That you now understand what he meant when he used to say “Petey just needs a little time”?

“It’s going,” you hum noncommittally, chopping another carrot.

Brock laughs. “You’re so full of bullshit. I can literally see you trying to hide a smile. You realized I’m right, didn’t you?”

“You need to shut up,” you tell him without any heat. “We’re civil. He’s bored, I’m in the middle of writer’s block crisis. We’re not getting married, Boes, it’s just better than doing nothing the whole week you’ve deserted me.”

“Sure,” Brock drawls, and it doesn’t sound like he believes you at all.

“How’s the pups?” you ask, and Brock laughs because that wasn’t even slightly subtle for a topic change. He clearly decides to let you, however, starts talking about Milo’s new habit of burying people’s gloves in the yard.

The thing is, you don’t really wanna talk about Elias with Brock when you don’t even know yourself what you think of him yet. Fine, you don’t hate him, that’s clear. You’ve realized his air of indifference is just a shield, a wall that crumples as soon as he laughs. His teasing remarks are familiar now, feel friendly the way they feel when they come from Brock, and you’ve realized he’s one of the funniest, smartest, and kindest people you know.

But Brock would just push it into something it’s not. When he comes back, you’ll probably go back to being ‘Brock’s friend’ instead Elias’, and you wouldn’t be surprised if everything goes back to the way things were. Maybe with less animosity, but when Elias has a bunch of different people to choose from, why would he choose to hang out with you?

But for now, he doesn’t have any other people to hang out with and he does choose to hang out with you, and you’re hit once again with how weird that is when you step into his car the next evening.

“Dude, it’s way too cold to be going outside,” you grumble, shutting the door of his car behind you. Inside the car it’s warm and cozy, and Elias has an amused expression on his face when he turns to you.

“Good evening,” he deadpans, “I’m good, thank you, how are you?”

“Right.” You can feel your cheeks flush and hope he thinks it’s because of the heat in the car. “Sorry.”

Elias laughs. “It’s not that cold,” he chides, pulling the car into the road. “You just didn’t dress properly.”

You look down at yourself. You thought you’d dressed quite warm, but there’s an icy chill in the air that promises a chance of snow, so maybe it’s not warm enough. You didn’t even take gloves, you realize now, or a hat.

Well.

Elias is grinning while he stares ahead at the road, and you kinda wanna smack him except for how it also makes you smile. He’s dressed a lot warmer than you, and with the scarf almost up to his chin and a beanie on his head there’s not much risk of him being recognized anywhere.

“I brought extra gloves,” Elias says, then. “You’re not gonna be able to enjoy it if your hands are cold.”

You can’t help but laugh. “Elias, not to be a downer, but we’re going to a busy market that revolves entirely around Christmas, and I don’t like Christmas or crowds. I don’t think I’m gonna enjoy myself either way.”

“We’ll see,” Elias says simply, and it sounds like a promise.

It’s easy to keep up the conversation on the way there, light teasing from you and genuine interest from him. It’s comfortable, both the warmth in the car and Elias’ laugh next to you, and when he parks the car you almost don’t wanna get out.

At least he does have gloves for you, and he gives you a scarf, so you’re not that cold when you step out into the night air.

The Christmas market is busy, hoards of happy people looking for some Christmas cheer. You stick close to Elias’ side: if you lose him in this crowd, you’ll never find him back.

At least it’s pretty. The sky is already dark but the Christmas market has been lit up with seemingly millions of lights in every color imaginable.

“I don’t think purple is very Christmassy,” you say, flicking a purple light hanging off the stall that Elias is browsing.

“I prefer the white ones,” he answers, eyes kept firmly on the handmade ornaments in the stall. “They look like stars.” He turns, holding out an ornament. It’s a glass star, and it reflects the lights like a kaleidoscope.

It’s, objectively, beautiful. You don’t have to like Christmas to love it, but when you reach out for it, Elias laughs and pulls it out of your reach.

“I thought we decided you’re not to be trusted with glass.”

He’s referencing a time long ago, when you were hanging out with Brock and he happened to be there, and you dropped a glass and Brock had made a whole spectacle of it.

To be fair, you hadn’t really put Elias in the memory you keep of that day, because he was simply there: as Brock’s friend, as someone who happens to linger in the background. He’s lingering in the background of many memories, you realize now, but you’re starting to realize you prefer the ones where he’s front and center.

You walk past more stalls, filled with either tacky Christmas stuff – you buy Brock some socks with Santa on them because you can’t not – or handmade things, which you actually like looking at. Elias buys some things for his parents – “I’ll send them to Sweden,” he says, and he looks a little too sad so you start chatting about how Rouss kinda resembles a reindeer, somehow.

You’re walking past the food stalls when Elias asks: “How’s the writing going?”

You freeze. That’s not a question you were ready for, and it leads to the inevitable urge to blurt out the truth. “I haven’t started. I just don’t think I can.”

Elias’ eyes on you are thoughtful, like he’s searching for something in your soul. If he tries hard enough, you think he’ll look right through you: nobody has ever made you feel so open, so visible, as he does.

“Brock didn’t tell you why I don’t like Christmas, did he?”

“No,” Elias admits, “but I figured it was a better reason than red is not your color.”

“Hey!” you protest, stepping to the side so you can bump your shoulder against his. “Red is totally my color!”

It’s not, but Elias doesn’t push it. Instead, he smiles warmly, and suddenly you want to tell him.

“When I was young, my parents used to fight a lot. One day, two weeks before Christmas, they got into a massive fight. I listened to them from my bedroom and then my dad came upstairs and told me he was going to find me the perfect Christmas tree. He got in his car and went to get the tree, or so I thought. I never saw him again.”

You sigh. “It’s not, like… I’m over it, mostly. I just can’t help but feel that same feeling every year around Christmas. It’s like hoping for something you know will never happen. Like you’re reading a book and the happy ending never comes. ”

“That’s why it’s hard to write the story,” Elias hazards a guess. He looks curious, but he doesn’t look like he feels bad for you, which is what you would’ve disliked the most.

He points to one of the stalls, then. “They make the best hot chocolate in town. Want one?”

You nod, following him towards the stall as you continue talking. “It is. But I do also find Christmas stories boring to write. It’s always the same concept, just in a million different ways.”

Elias smiles. “That’s the fun of it, no? You know the happy ending always comes. It makes you feel good.”

“It’s boring,” you repeat, stubbornly. “The girl from the big city with a job paying upwards of 8 figures goes back to her hometown for Christmas and somehow falls for some high school fling who still lives in a basement, but makes a mean cup of hot chocolate and says thing like ‘What can I say? I was stupid.’” You cross your arms. “You can’t tell me if we took the Christmas element away you would voluntarily read that story.”

Elias laughs. “Some people would. Isn’t that basically the story from The Notebook?”

“Have you ever watched The Notebook, Elias?” you frown, and he shrugs.

“No, but Brock said it made him cry.”

Which isn’t surprising, because a lot of movies have made Brock cry. You wonder what Elias would do if you put on The Notebook on your upcoming Christmas movie night.

Elias turns around, then, two steaming cups of hot chocolate in his hands. He smirks when he hands it to you.

“What can I say? I was stupid,” he quotes, and you can’t help but giggle as you take the cup from him.

“You didn’t make this, you just paid for it. It doesn’t count that way.”

“After this we should probably go,” he says then, glancing at his watch.

The words sink into your stomach like a heavy stone of dread; you don’t really want to go home, and the realization hits you like a ton of bricks. You’re happy, right now, and if ‘feeling Christmassy’ basically translates to feeling happy, well…

It’s not Christmas, though, that’s got you feeling this way. You could care less about the pine trees and the tacky music and the reindeer and the big man with the white beard and red hat.

You care more about the blonde man beside you, staring into the distance with the brightest blue eyes, and the way he somehow always makes you laugh.

Damn it. How much you hate it when Brock is right.

--

With Brock telling you how much Elias likes Christmas movies, and Elias having pushed you for this Christmas movie marathon for days on end, you were expecting a bit more excitement from him when it finally happens.

You can tell something is wrong from the moment you open the door. He’s standing with his hands in his pockets, and when he smiles at you it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hey,” he says softly, moving past you into your apartment.

“I hope you’re ready to rewatch the same exact movie with only minor differences all night,” you joke, but Elias doesn’t even look up as he methodically pulls off his coat, kicks off his shoes and pitter patters into your living room.

He scoffs when he sees your tree, still empty except for the Canucks ornament that he got you.

“Really?” he asks, and for the first time in a while you can’t tell if he’s joking or actually upset with you.

This is the Elias that you knew before, the one that you didn’t like because you could never reach him, guarding his heart like a fort. But this time, you know what it’s like to have the other Elias, and you already miss having that Elias in your life.

“Sorry to disappoint,” you bring out, and it comes out a bit shaky. Elias turns around and his face softens slightly.

“I didn’t mean that.” He sighs. “I nearly canceled this.”

Your heart sinks.

“I get grumpy when I’m not feeling good and I don’t want to take it out on you.” He sinks down onto your couch, kicks his feet up on the coffee table like he’s been there a million times before. “But I didn’t wanna cancel, so. I didn’t.” He sounds almost helpless, like he’s not sure if he should be saying what he’s saying.

But your traitorous heart lifts immediately. If he didn’t want to cancel, it means he wants to be here, and that’s really all you need to know.

“Well, I’m gonna make popcorn, then,” you say, keeping your voice light. “You pick the movie. I don’t care. They’re all the same anyway.”

Elias rolls his eyes, but it’s good natured. “They’re not the same!” he calls after you as you disappear into the kitchen.

“Every Christmas movie ever was written by someone who didn’t know what to write,” you tell him, knowing he can still hear you from the kitchen – the benefits of living in a tiny apartment. “Writer’s block? No problem. The solution: a little bit of Christmas magic. ‘We can’t pay the rent’, ‘I’m sick’, ‘My boss is making me work on Christmas’. Poof, with a jingle of bells, problems solved in the form of a generous benefactor, aspirin, or a hit man.”

“If that’s the case, why can’t you write a Christmas story?” Elias calls back teasing, and you give him the finger through the wall.

He might not see it, but you’re certain he can feel it.

You take the popcorn and walk back to the couch, letting yourself drop onto it next to Elias. You misjudge the distance a bit, causing you to sit a little too close to Elias for it to be strictly friendly; but Elias doesn’t budge, so you don’t move either.

You’re pressed against Elias shoulder to thigh, and you can feel his body shake when he laughs.

“I like this cliché,” he says, nodding towards the television. “Let’s see if you can guess it.”

You watch the movie in relative silence, eating popcorn and enjoying the warmth of Elias body against yours. You have to admit you lose focus every now and then: the movie isn’t that bad, but it’s hard to focus on anything with Elias so close. Every now and then, when something funny happens, he exhales a sharp breath of laughter, and sometimes he hums as if he’s agreeing with what’s happening on screen.

He smells nice, too, and finally you get tired enough that you get a little brave: you let your head drop against his shoulder, tugging your feet under yourself.

“Figured it out, yet?” Elias asks softly.

“Yep,” you answer. The movie is nearing the end but you figured it out within the first ten minutes. “Basic physics, not to mention common sense, are thrown to the wind as Christmas repeats every day, disappears from the calendar, or is hurled into the past or future.”

Elias doesn’t respond, and suddenly you wanna know.

“Are you okay?” It’s probably a weird question, and very out of the blue, so you hurry trying to explain. “Cause you came in very sad, and like, if you don’t wanna talk about it with me that’s fine but I think it’s good to talk about things sometimes so if you wanna…”

“I’m fine,” Elias says, cutting you off, but it doesn’t sound dismissive. It sounds a little amused, and when you turn to look at him, you find him smiling. “Worried about me?”

And it’s the strangest thing, but you are. “A little.”

Elias’ face softens. “I promise I’m okay,” he says. He reaches out, then, places his hand on yours and squeezes. “I just talked to my parents before I came here, on Skype, and they were talking about Christmas and it sucks that I can’t see them for the holidays. But it is what it is.” He shrugs. “I sulk for a bit and then I move on.”

You never really go home for the holidays, but you understand how awful it must be to be stuck alone in Canada with your whole family in Sweden.

You blame the quiet, late night energy for what comes out of your mouth next.

“I think I could be convinced to make you a Christmas dinner if you ask nicely.”

Elias laughs, and his hand is warm when you turn your palm up and he laces his fingers through yours.

“If I ask nicely, will you watch another movie with me right now?”

You pull the Christmas themed throw blanket over your legs before letting your head drop against Elias’ shoulder once again.  

“You don’t even have to ask.”

--

“I have an idea,” Elias says through the phone, and you don’t quite recognize the tone in his voice at first. “Well, it was Brock’s idea, but I think it’s a good one.”

Anything that was Brock’s idea immediately fills you with doubt, and you frown. “What?”

That’s when you realize: Elias sounds excited.

“Brock knows someone with a cottage, about two hours from here. It’s in the forest and it’s supposedly very Christmassy. We should go for a night.”

He sounds quietly pleased, and you don’t have the heart to tell him no.

“Okay.”

Objectively, though, it’s an awful idea. A Christmassy cottage in the forest also sounds like it would be very romantic, and you’ve finally come to terms with the fact that what you feel for Elias is definitely not just friendly comradery at this point. Feeding this feeling would not be smart, considering the fact that it’s almost Christmas and after that you’ll most likely never spend time with Elias like this again.

Sure, he might be at parties with the other Canucks or Brock might invite him for drinks with you, but it won’t be like this. You’re not stupid enough to think this will last: that would be a real Christmas miracle, and Christmas miracles don’t exist.

“Sometimes I wish I could read your mind.” Elias’ voice startles you despite the fact that his words come out softly. It’s been quiet in the car, apart from the low murmur of the radio in the background, for a good fifteen minutes.

You’re on your way to the cottage and your thoughts are going a million miles per hour.

You look over at Elias. He’s staring ahead at the road, one hand on the wheel and the other in his lap. He looks relaxed. Comfortable.

“It’s usually nothing interesting,” you say, and you thank the universe that he can’t know what’s going on in your mind.

“Are you thinking about your story?” he asks, and you weren’t, but it’s as good an excuse as any.

“I’ve gotta email it to my professor in four days,” you admit. “And I haven’t put a single word on paper yet.”

You’ve tried, that’s for sure. You’ve spent hours on your laptop, staring at a Word document. You’ve typed sentences and deleted them, tried to outline the story or just wing it while typing. Nothing works, nothing feels right when it stares back at you from the screen.

Elias hums noncommittally. “I think you think about it too much,” he says. “Just don’t worry about it. And write what you know.”

You scoff. “I don’t think anyone wants to read a Christmas story about a father who bails on his family, Elias. Nobody likes sad Christmas stories.”

He smiles. “Any sad Christmas cliches on your list?”

“Each and every event, whether holiday related or not, is tainted through the loss of a dead relative. Example: “Can I have a glass of water?” “Your, uh, *swallow*, your grandmother used to drink water.””

Elias laughs before reaching for the radio and turning up the music. You never listen to Christmas music, as a rule, but somehow you don’t hate it now that it’s blasting through his stupid sports car, the world flying past you through the window.

The drive is filled with Elias humming along to Christmas music and you laughing whenever he pulls a face at one of the lyrics. You spend at least 30 minutes debating if ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ should still be allowed on the radio – no – and whether or not Michael Buble is the king of Christmas – in Europe, apparently yes.

By the time you reach the cottage, you feel a lot more positive.

Until you see it.

“Uhm,” you bring out, staring at the place in front of you. Elias barks out a laugh, but it sounds mostly disbelieving.

“When Brock said ‘cottage in the forest’, I pictured something different,” he says sheepishly.

“I guess this shows the power of speech?” you offer. “Like, ‘cottage in the forest’ and you think of this beautiful rustic romantic getaway. But this is more ‘cabin in the woods’: I think we’re about to get murdered.”

Elias raises an eyebrow. “Romantic?” he repeats, an amused tilt to his voice, and you nearly get back in the car.

Way to put your foot in your mouth.

Luckily for you Elias doesn’t dwell on it. Instead he wanders inside, where at the very least it looks a little better.

It’s cold, and there’s no working electricity, but there’s a fireplace and a billion candles, and it’s decorated quite cosy. Maybe even Christmassy, if you really squint: although you’re happy to notice there’s no tree.

It’s easier than you thought it would be, to spend an evening in some dodgy cabin with Elias. It’s easy to chat about everything and nothing, to cook dinner with him. How domestic it feels to tease him about how slowly he chops the mushrooms, while he somehow makes sure your wine glass is always full.

Silence doesn’t fall until long after dinner. The fireplace is on, fickle candle light giving the room an orange glow. You’ve somehow ended up with your feet in Elias’ lap, although you can’t remember how they got there: you’re painfully aware of the heavy grip of his hand around your ankle.

The wine has given your brain a nice fuzzy feeling, has softened up the edges around your thoughts. And all you can think, now, is how nice this is: to have Elias right there next to you, blue eyes fixed on the ember flames burning in front of you.

“I’m glad that Brock kept forcing us to hang out,” you say, without thinking. Elias glances over at you.

“Forcing us?” he repeats, as if he’s not sure what you mean.

You shrug. “Come on, Elias, we didn’t like each other before this. You probably didn’t want to hang out with me as much as I didn’t want to hang out with you.”

The words hang heavy in the air for a second. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear you saw Elias flinch.

“Actually,” he says tightly, and your heart does a traitorous swoop. “Brock never forced me to come. I always asked. If I knew he was gonna see you, I asked to come along.”

The words hit you like a freight train. You can feel your heart beating in your chest. But surely there’s no way you’ve been wrong all this time?

Brock did say Elias didn’t hate you.

“But… I thought you didn’t like me.” Your voice sounds small in the quiet room. It feels different here, so far away from the city: when the night is so silent all your thoughts sound so loud.

Elias shrugs. He doesn’t look upset, per se, but his face is carefully closed off and you know now that’s not a good sign.

“I know you thought that,” he says, voice flat. “I know that first night I came off as rude.” His smile is wry. “I was nervous, I didn’t really speak English, and you’re very pretty. I guess it was a recipe for disaster, on my end, so it doesn’t surprise me you didn’t like me.”  

You can feel the blood rush to your cheeks, your heart pounding in your throat. You’re hearing his words but they sound almost foreign, and you can’t quite believe he’s really saying them.

“I’ve always liked you, though,” Elias adds, almost as an afterthought, carelessly like it doesn’t matter. Like he doesn’t know what that does to you, your mind going into overdrive.

You’re not an easy person to like. That’s not you being hard on yourself, you just know you judge too harshly, react too quickly. You go into downwards spirals of negative thoughts, you put opinions into people’s mouths, and most of all, you don’t believe in happily ever after.

People, in your experience, don’t stick around for people who won’t promise them happily ever after.

But Elias is here, having brought you to this cabin, having pushed and pushed to be around you: and you didn’t even notice. You thought he was just doing Brock a favor, you thought he was just bored. He’s not been very outgoing about his affections, but you can tell that they’re there; from the way he’s put up your Christmas tree to how he always listens to every word that falls from your lips. No, he’s not been very outgoing about with his affections but he’s been plentiful with them, and you just didn’t notice.

“Elias,” you start, but the sentence dies on your lips when he turns to face you, suddenly a lot closer than he was before.

“What about now?” he asks. You must look as confused as you feel, because he clarifies right away. “What do you think about me now?”

There’s nothing unsure about the question, and you think the answer is been pretty clear. You wouldn’t be here if the answer wasn’t clear. But despite that, despite that he seems to already know what you’re gonna say, you wanna say it anyway. You think you have to say it anyway.

“Now I like you,” you tell him, sitting up straighter. “I really like you, Elias.”

The last thing you register is the pleased smile tugging at the edges of Elias’ mouth, and then his lips are against yours.

The kiss is soft but not hesitant. Maybe he’s giving you time to think about it, this way, if this is what you want: but in that moment there’s nothing you want more, nothing but a fierce desire to trace your hands down his body.

As soon as your fingers touch his arm, Elias deepens the kiss. He kisses exactly how you would expect him to; giving you everything, no trace of doubt or hesitation.

There’s nothing frantic about it, nothing scary. With every second that ticks by you fall a little further into it, your mind a lovely shade of blank – with the exception of the boy in front of you, like all your nerves screaming his name.

“Hey.” Elias’ voice is soft as he pulls away. He doesn’t take his hands away from where they’re laying against the bare skin of your back. “We don’t have to go further.”

He’s giving you an out, you realize, a second to gather your thoughts. You could pull away now, you could put some space between the two of you.

You scoot forward, moving even more into his lap, and carefully curl your hand around his jaw. He leans into it slightly, and your heart screams with how much you want him.

You don’t answer. Even as a writer, you realize that words are sometimes overrated. Instead, you press your lips against his, placing your heart in his hands as you kiss him once more.  

--

It takes about two hours after you get back to your apartment for the reality of it all to comes crashing down at you.

The night at the cabin was wonderful; magical, even. If you would write the perfect Christmas story, it would be a lot like that.

Except you’re not writing a Christmas story – you should, of course, but you haven’t started and that’s because Christmas stories are unrealistic.

You and Elias, your story - no matter how wonderful – is unrealistic. What were you thinking? That Elias, being who he is, would simply… What? Become your boyfriend?

He’s Vancouver’s biggest star, everyone’s favorite person. You’re just another lonely writer who lives mostly in their own brain. You’re just someone else who is hard to love; like your parents, like your sister, like all the friends you’ve seen get their hearts broken.

You call Brock.

“Wow, calm down,” are the first words that come out of his mouth when he finally speaks. You’ve told him most of the story by then, sentences coming out in shallow breaths and tears already burning in the back of your throat. “What the hell do you mean ‘hard to love’? That’s bullshit.”

“It’s not.” You swallow. “Brock, it’s not real. What I’m feeling. People fall in love all the time and they all believe that’s it, their perfect story, but how often does that story end up a tragedy?”

“Y/N…” He sounds mostly sad. “You can’t live like that.”

But your mind was made up long ago, so long ago when you were just a child. When you saw the tragedy that was your parents love story, and then later it was only settled deeper, when you saw your friends get hurt, when your sister got cheated on.

“I can’t make myself the protagonist of my own tragedy.”

“Petey isn’t going to break your heart.” Brock’s voice is sharp, and you realize this is not a fair position to put him into: how can he be honest to you when that means breaking Elias’ trust?

“He won’t mean to,” you whisper. “But it’ll happen. It might not even be his fault. I’ll probably break my own heart somewhere along the line. But happiness doesn’t just come along this suddenly, Boes.”

“What is it does?” Brock asks, and you don’t have an answer.

What if it does is less scary what if it doesn’t, and the next few days when Elias calls, you don’t pick up the phone.

--

You shouldn’t have opened the door.

“You’re avoiding me.” Elias sounds... hurt. You don’t think you’ve ever heard him sound like that. You’ve learned that when he’s upset, he mostly sounds indifferent; locks his emotions behind a wall for nobody to see.

And maybe it’s a testament to how well you know him, now, that you can pick up on the change in his voice. Or maybe it means he’s decided to let you in.

God, you hope it’s not that last one. Hope he didn’t make that mistake.

You sigh. “I’m sorry, but…”

“Don’t.” Elias cuts you off by pushing past you into the apartment. He stands glaring at you in the middle of the living room, arm crossed. “You’re not doing this.”

You have to.

“It’s just not gonna work,” you try. There goes the crack in your heart, bursting open like someone squeezes it with an iron fist.

You’re doing this to yourself. But that’s better than the alternative: better than having Elias do it way further into the story, when there’s something to destroy.

There’s nothing to destroy, now. There’s only the prologue to the story, and now the epilogue. A story with no middle won’t be remembered.  

“That’s not true.” Elias isn’t backing down. “You can’t tell me nothing this past month has meant anything to you.” He frowns. “Does this have anything to do with your Christmas thing? Would it be different if this had happened in January?”

You laugh, but there’s no humor there. If only it was that simple.

“This has nothing to do with Christmas, Elias. This just isn’t real. There’s no happy ending to my storyline, and I’m not dragging you down with me.”

You let your eyes fix on him, on the way he stands there stubbornly, still fighting for something. For you. If only it made a difference.

Elias doesn’t say anything, for a while. Finally, voice timid, he says: “You’re gonna throw this away because you’re scared.”

You are scared. But that’s not why you’re doing this.

“Damn it, Y/N.” Frustration rings clear in Elias’ voice, now. “I know you feel what I feel! You can’t just ruin that because you’re not brave enough to say what you want!”

“It doesn’t make a difference, Elias!” You’re hurting too, and you can hear your own voice getting too loud.

“I wanna live in a world where people don’t get hurt, and everyone’s got enough money and nobody ever has to skip a meal!” You swallow, hot tears pricking behind your eyes. “I wanna live in a world where people don’t get in the car to get a Christmas tree and never come back, and I wanna live in a world where Santa’s real, Elias, but that’s just not reality. That’s not how life works.”  

Elias’ eyes are dark, his jaw tense. You know you’re not gonna like what he’s got to say before he’s even opened his mouth.

“Maybe not,” he says tightly, “but you live in a world where people can choose to love each other. It doesn’t have anything to do with Santa, or magic. None of those things are real, but love is real, and you can choose to believe in that.”

He grabs his jacket, is walking towards the door before you can even comprehend what he’s saying. At the door, he turns around. His eyes shine with sadness.

“I want to love you, but you have to choose to believe that, too. And if you can’t, then I guess it won’t ever be real.”

When the door closes, the last piece of your heart breaks in two.

--

“Merry Christmas!”

Brock’s voice is bright and cheery. He’s clearly only just woken up, his blond hair a mess and Milo passed out in his lap.

“It’s not even Christmas yet,” you tease. You curl your legs closer to yourself, your coffee in one hand and your phone in the other. It’s nice to see Brock, even if it’s just over FaceTime.

Getting your heart broken is even worse when you can’t really talk about it to your best friend, because you also broke your best friend’s other best friend’s heart.

It’s a complicated issue, is the thing.

“It’s Christmas Eve tonight,” Brock says, rolling his eyes. “That’s basically Christmas. Are you still moping?”

“Hey,” you protest. “I’m not moping. I’m sad. It’s different.”

You have been moping, a bit. The first two days after your final talk with Elias, you didn’t even really come out of bed. You just sat there and you wrote.

That’s the only good thing to come out of this, you think. You somehow not only wrote your story, it’s maybe the best story you’ve ever written.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Brock’s voice is gentle. “You can talk to me, you know? I won’t use anything you say against you or tell Petey or whatever. He’s been talking to me too.”

Your heart does a somersault. If Elias has been talking to Brock, Brock probably already knows everything; in a way, you can’t believe he’s still talking to you if that’s the case.

More than that, though, it brings an opportunity. To find out what you’ve been wondering since Elias stepped out of your apartment.

“Is he alright?”

“Are you?” Brock counters, like that matters.

You stare at the coffee in your cup. It’s too hot to drink still, little puffs of steam climbing through the air.

You’re not doing so well, admittedly, but that’s probably fair. You were the one to broke off the story, in the end. And you hate to admit it to yourself – and you definitely won’t admit it to Brock – but you’ve been wondering if you made the right choice.

“I wrote my Christmas story,” you say, instead of answering his question. “Handed it in yesterday.”

Brock lets you change the subject. “Cool. What did it ended up being about?”

You sigh. “It was about me.”

Brock raises his eyebrows, interest clear in his eyes. He doesn’t push you, and you’re glad for it. You need a moment to find the words.

“I wrote about a girl who hates Christmas because it reminds her of things that she’s lost. And I wrote about how scared she is of gaining something because that means she can lose it again.”

Brock’s voice is soft when he speaks. “But someone teaches her? In the story?”

He knows you too well. You laugh quietly. “Yes, someone takes her through all these Christmas cliches to make her realize why they’re cliches. It’s not because of the act itself. It’s because you spend time doing it with someone you love.”

“She loves this person, the one that teaches her,” Brock hazards a guess.

There’s no longer any doubt that he knows exactly how you feel about Elias.

“She loves him but that scares her even more. Because if she loves him, she could lose him. And Christmas has always been the time to remind her of loss and heartbreak. So she assumes it’ll just end in hurt this time too.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Brock says.

And you know. Somehow, writing the story, you realized that. Because as you wrote about this girl, that was exactly like you, you found yourself not wanting to give the story a realistic ending. You wanted to make it right, wanted her to end up with the person who taught her how to love Christmas and how to love him.

So you did. You gave your story a happy ending. And in doing that, it’s like you gave yourself permission to want a happy ending for yourself, too.

But there’s just no way. Life isn’t a fairytale, and the Christmas cliché where the girl who throws it all away gets back her perfect boy by stealing Santa’s microphone in the mall and making a grand speech about how pushing him away was the biggest mistake of her life, simply isn’t real life material.

“It’s not too late, you know.” Brock’s sitting up straighter, almost as if he wants to come through the camera and tell you in person. “If you wanted to change the ending. You could. He’d let you.”

Your heart starts beating faster and it has nothing to do with the caffeine you’re drinking.

All this time, you’ve been wondering. Wondering if it’s too late.

“How would I do that?” you ask. “Hypothetically.” 

Brock’s grin is so bright you nearly have to close your eyes. “Send him the story,” he says, without thinking about it; the jerk probably has been thinking about this since you started telling him what it’s about. “You should send him the story. Kinda like a message in a bottle.”

When you say goodbye to Brock, his eyes are fond when you tell him “Thank you” and mean it. Without him, you don’t think you would’ve had the courage, but now it feels like the only possible ending comes with you taking your Word document and putting it in an email.

--

To: e.pettersson40@hotmail.com

Attachment: Not a typical Christmas story.pdf

Message:

Elias,

I’ve tried to write this letter a million times, to tell you what I should’ve said that night. I can’t say I’m not scared what you’ll think, but who am I to know what the future holds? If my heart was paper I’d fold it, throw it to the wind and hope it’d end up in your arms. So here it is, my paper heart, in the form of the most cliché Christmas story of them all. The one where everyone ends up with their perfect happily ever after.

Signed with love from me to you,

Y/N.

--

There’s three rapid knocks on the door, and then silence.

Your heartbeat speeds up like you heard gunshots instead. Within seconds you’re on your feet, almost running to the door.

There’s only one person that could be at your door on Christmas morning at 9am, right?

When you open it, something heavy dissolves in your stomach, a sense of comfort falling over you like crawling into bed after an exhausting day.

“Elias,” you breathe.

For a second, you just stare at him: he looks like he’s barely slept at all, dark circles surrounding his eyes, which somehow seem more blue than they ever have before.

“Merry Christmas,” Elias says then, thrusting something forward. You grab it in reflex.

It’s the glass star, the ornament from the Christmas market. The one that you had told Elias you found beautiful, the one that reflected all the lights like a million little stars. The one that reminded you, even, of Elias’ eyes.

It’s still beautiful. And suddenly there’s tears running down your cheeks, warm against your skin.

Elias frowns. He looks a little worried, unsure; as if he shouldn’t be here. But God, he is here, on your doorstep, and he brought you this ornament, and you know that it has to mean what you think it does.

“I’m sorry,” you bring out. “For everything, I…”

You can’t finish your sentence, because Elias steps forward, his arms outstretched, and you launch yourself at him like a missile. He catches you easily, presses you against his chest and buries his face in your shoulder.

“I read the story,” he mumbles. You can barely make out the words, but they hit you like a ton of bricks anyway. “You believe in Christmas miracles now?”

You can hear the smile in his voice as he asks, because he already knows the answer.

“I don’t know,” you admit. You pull away a little, but keep your arms firmly locked around Elias’ waist, and his hands remain on your back. “But you’re here, so. I think I might have to start.”

Elias laughs, moving closer again to press a kiss against your head. You can feel his lips move against your hair when he speaks. “What about us? You believe in us, now?”

You don’t answer him, but you think he can tell from the way you kiss him, anyway.

--

You tug the blanket tighter around your shoulders, smiling down at the opposite end of the couch. Elias is talking in Swedish and you don’t understand a word he’s saying, but you can tell that he’s happy, smile bright and eyes fixed on the laptop screen in front of him.

He’s been talking to his family for the past hour, and watching him has been a great source of entertainment for you. He blushed when his brother mentioned your name, and finally he did introduce you to them.

“This is Y/N, I’m forcing her to watch Christmas movies with me all day and then bake cookies,” he’d laughed, and you didn’t tell him that there’s nothing you’d rather do.

“Jag älskar dig, hejdå,” Elias says, and then he finally closes the laptop. “Hey,” he hums, poking your thigh with his toe, “my mom said she can’t wait to meet you, so. Be warned.”

You laugh. “I would love to go to Sweden. I read something about cakes.”

It feels natural, to crawl over to the other side of the couch and lay down between Elias’ legs, head resting on his chest. You can hear his heartbeat under your ear and it’s enough for your eyes to close on their own accord.

It’s not like you’ve had much sleep the past few nights. But now, you think you could finally sleep peacefully, knowing that Elias is here and he’s not leaving.

His hand moves down your side, sneaking under your sweater, fingertips soft against your skin.

“It’s snowing,” he says, suddenly, and you open your eyes to look out the window.

Indeed, there’s little flurries of white powder fluttering through the grey Vancouver sky.

“That’s too much,” you roll your eyes. “The great grandmother of Christmas cliches.” Elias raises a questioning eyebrow, so you explain. “As the final crisis is resolved, everyone runs out in the street on Christmas Eve to discover that it’s snowing! In Nigeria! During a drought!”

“We’re in Vancouver,” Elias deadpans, and it’s only because you know him so well that you see the mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “And it’s not Christmas Eve, it’s Christmas Day.”

“Minor details,” you shrug, placing your head back on his chest and closing your eyes again.

“We’ve gotta decorate this sad excuse of a tree.” You can hear the smile in Elias’ voice as he talks. “Two ornaments does not make a Christmas tree.”

“Later,” you hum, curling your fingers into his sweater. “We’ve got all day.”

Elias laughs. “The tree is supposed to be decorated before Christmas, typically.”

You can’t help but smile at that. “We’re not a typical Christmas story, though.”

“Maybe not typical, but still pretty good.” His arms tighten around you and you can feel him press a kiss into your hair.

“Pretty fucking good,” you agree. “If you get me off this couch today it’ll be a Christmas miracle though.”

You shouldn’t have said that: no sooner than the final word leaves your lips you’re being lifted into the air, legs dangling helplessly as Elias throws you over this shoulder. Your giggles come out a little hysterically. 

“I told you miracles are real,” he grins, unceremoniously carrying you towards the bedroom.

You’ve just come from there, but you’re really not against the idea of going back.

“What about the tree?” you squeal, lightly slapping his shoulder.

“Tree can wait,” Elias decides, as he dumps you onto the bed and lets himself fall over you, leaning on his forearms so he doesn’t crush you.

“Tree can wait,” you echo in agreement, and you let your body relax into the mattress as Elias kisses you. When he tries to deepen it, you turn away just slightly, keeping your nose pressed against his cheekbone. “Hey, Lias?”

“What?” Elias mutters, sounding a little annoyed to be denied another kiss.

You smile. “Merry Christmas.”

His laughter sounds bright.

“Merry Christmas, babe.”