#im like waiting for the moment where it all falls down and it hasn’t come yer

[hockeyandhrsepwr]

Dancing in the Kitchen

Life Lessons Track 1

*italicized lines are lyrics from the song (or just slightly altered)*

July 2023

Yourusername

Yourusername LL: Dancing in the kitchen

Stream now

Ynsbiggestfan holy shit holy shit!

Fan172 bestie is this because of your tweet?! Ahhh

Teddysphotos proud of you!

Bellababe Here we freaking go!!

fan47 how many tracks?

yourusername 🤷‍♀️ you'll have to wait and see......

May 2020

6 more minutes. The drive from the airport seems to be taking forever, but you know thats just because of where you’re headed. The bright lights of Monaco shimmer as the road curves and you’re home. The taxi pulls up in front of the building and you hop out, heading inside.

“Ms y/n! I didnt know you were coming today, would you like me to call up?” Henri the doorman exclaims as you give him a wave. “No thanks Henri, I’m hoping to surprise him. But here, this is for you.” You pass him one of the bottles you’re holding, “Tell the mrs I say hello and we’ll have to catch up when im back for a bit longer!” The elevator doors open and you bid him goodbye before grabbing the lift.

Knocking on the door, you wait. Joris said he was home, but that was half an hour ago so you’re hoping that hasn’t changed, when you hear music playing and someone singing along. It brings a smile to your face, and you knock again. Of course you have a key, but you think this will be more fun.

“Un moment!” He calls and the lock clicks. The door opens and Arthur’s standing in front of you.

“Damn it. Shh” you whisper.

“Uh, I should leave shouldn’t I?” The younger Leclerc responds.

A smirk graces your lips, “probably”. He rolls his eyes and heads back to the kitchen, telling his brother that somethings come up and he has to head out. As he passes you waiting in the living room he sticks his tongue out. Very mature, you mouth, before heading to the kitchen door to watch.

Charles is so into whatever he’s cooking that he doesn’t look up until you clear your throat. “Arthur, I though you left” he says as he turns. When his eyes lock with yours, he freezes and drops the tray he’s holding.

“Hey champ,” falls from your lips as his brain starts working again and he jumps over the mess on the floor to pull you into his arms and spins you around.

“What, wha….” You giggle as he can’t seem to complete his thoughts.

“We didnt get a chance to properly celebrate your win” you hold up the bottle of champagne in your hand. His hands rise to grasp the side of your face and bring you in for a kiss. You pour all your love into that kiss, all the hours of missing him while you’re on tour and he’s off to the races, all the missed phone calls and uncelebrated moments.

All of a sudden, the fire alarms going off. The two of you break apart and you giggle as Charles starts panicking

“Oh no, the chicken” and waves a tea towel in front of the oven to clear the smoke. He looks back at you and shrugs.

“Pizza?”

“Pizza” nodding, you pull up the number for your favourite place that delivers.

The music changes in the background to something slower, and you grin as you hear the first few notes. He bows and offers you a hand, pulling you in for a dance. Resting your head on his chest, you listen to the sound of his heart.

“I miss you” you whisper, “all the time. I didn’t think it would be this hard”

A single tear rolls down your cheek before Charles is gently lifting you chin so your eyes meet his. “Hey, I miss you too. All the damn time. It feels like my heart isn’t whole unless you’re next to me. But we’re both shooting for the stars, achieving the things we only dreamt of as kids. Doing what we were meant to do. Okay? Je t’aime tellment et mon coeur t’appartient” (I love you so much and my heart is yours)

Nodding, you whisper the sentiment back, before pulling away and pointing to the bottle of Dom you brought. “I’m so proud of you. You finally did it.”

Last weekend, he’d won the Monaco GP in front of all your family and friends. It hurt that you couldn’t be there to celebrate with him, so you made it your mission to find a way home as soon as possible, even if it’s just for the night.

The corners of his mouth turn up, “that for me amour?” Biting your lower lip, you smile “yeah, but….”

His eyebrow quirks like he knows what youre about to ask. “Can I spray it?” You ask sheepishly

He nods, laughing at your request, knowing that you’ve always enjoyed watching that part of the podium celebration and wanted to try it yourself. Grinning, you grab the bottle and pop the cork, dousing him lightly in champagne.

Charles grabs the bottle off you and returns the favour, soaking with you and the kitchen floor before taking a swig from the bottle. You pass the bottle back and forth as he pulls you back in to dance, both of you gradually getting tipsier. Champagne drips onto the floor as you sway to the sweet sounds of La Vie en Rose.

“You’re supposed to be in New York” he whispers, like saying it any louder will make you disappear.

“I’d rather be right here where you are. I took the long way from Singapore since we had a 3 day break. Its just for the night but I had to see you.”

“You know, we always seem to end up here.”

You’re confused, “at home?”

He shakes his head, looking a bit ridiculous “no, we both fly around the world, all over for work, but we always end up back here, dancing in the kitchen.”

Foreheads pressed together, you press a sweet kiss to his lips “I could spend a thousand nights right here. Dancing in the kitchen with you for the rest of my life.”

“As long as I’ve got you, everything will be okay” he mutters against your lips

“I’m forever yours”

Lost in your own world, dancing slowly around his kitchen, you both jump when a knock sounds.

“The pizza” you burst out in laughter as Charles goes to open the door, dripping Champagne all over the living room like a wet dog.

The rest of the night is spent curled up on the couch, talking about everything and nothing before you fall asleep tangled together. The next morning bring a teary goodbye as you head to the airport, unsure when the next time you’ll be together in person will be.

xx

[rowaelinsdaughter]

Can I request no a Rowan fic I absolutely love the last one you did

dont feel pressured tho and write whenever you feel like please put yourself fist

Can I request one where reader has like very bad health and is also like low on all vitamins and is super low on iron like and bc of that she has all these side effects and feels like a burden like she is holding him back and ruining his life and maybe make her like super sick she gets a fever and stuff

I’m mainly self projecting on this one a bit bc im super sick and need a rowan fic and him to just take care of me😭😭 i be lacking in all vitamins ti lol

And please add lots of rowan you can never have to much rowan like he takes care of her snd just pampers her and gives her little kisses and stufd and just the full princess treatment and him just being him like love rowan

SICK

a/n;; i had to do some research for the sintoms but i think it turned out good, so, here you have!!

WARNINGS;; low iron, dizzy, fatigue, burden feelings

her body was aching, her head was dizzy and she was extremely fatigued. she hasn’t felt this way in a very long time, always checking her iron levels and the vitamin levels were normal, but when last night she started to feel tired and her face was pale, she knew something was going to happen. and it did.

rowan had awoken because her hands were cold as ice, something not normal in her, but when he heard her fast heartbeat… he knew what was happening. he had a meeting that morning, but he didn’t care. his mate was suffering, and by the way she was feeling, rowan kicked out graviel the moment he appeared at their door. 

slowly opening the door, making sure he didn’t pour the food, he made his way to his mate.

“babe” he whispered. she moved a little, slowly waking up from her nap “i have the food, come on” she opened her eyes, and rowan felt his heart ache a little at the sight of his suffering mate. before she could incorporate, rowan was lifting her to his lap, his back on the board and an arm around her fragile figure. 

“i feel like a burden…” barely a whisper. 

rowan frowned at that, lifting the fork to her. “why do you think that?”

chewing slowly, he waited  for her to finish. “because you were… supposed to have a meeting… but you are here…” she took a breath. “ i don't like it rowan…”

leaving the fork on the plate, his hand moved to her cheek. “you are not a burden. you are my mate, i dont feel obligated to have to take care of you and will never feel obligated. i love you, that will never change, sick or healthy” a tear “hey, don't cry” a low laugh from him. 

“it's your fault, rowan for saying things like that when i'm at my lowest”

“well, good thing i'm here for lift you when you are at your lowest”

“seriously rowan, stop” 

rowan laughed a little harder, lifting the fork again to her. once she finished all the food, rowan covered her again in the bed and he finished the house tasks. when he finished, he laid down beside her. her face and lips less pale but the fatigue was still present on her factions, laying on their sides, rowan started to leave small kisses on her face, a small laugh falling from her lips.

“ro, stop please, it tickles” he laid his weight on her, trying not to crush her, and started tickling her. crying for him to stop, she was trying to push him apart, but it was impossible. “ro, please!!” another laugh from her was enough for him to stop. 

he laid beside her watching his mate trying to catch some air. she looked at him and punched him in the arm. “i hate you rowan whitethorn” “no, you don’t” side by side, they watched each other and rowan thought he might die from this. from the love for his mate, from watching her everyday and thinking that he was the luckiest person in the world.

“thank you rowan”

“for what?”

“for loving me and for taking care of me”

“always, angel. always”

all rights reserved to ©rowaelinsdaughter. no tranlations allowed. no copy theme. don not copy my work.

tagging;; @shadowdaddies @hellwantfuckme @danikamariemain @thehighladywrites @loneliestluvr @throneofsapphics

[jackharloww]

Everything will be alright part 2 (birth story)

Summary: Here comes the second part of the birth fic. Make sure to read the first part HERE

Warnings: a lot of emotions

The bleeding continued and the doctors were working their hardest to stop it. Emily had to leave the room, and the last thing she saw was you closing your eyes and a lot of nurses running around. She was worried sick as she sat outside in the waiting room just staring at the wall, waiting for someone to give her more information.

Meanwhile, Maggie picked Jack up from the airport and they both rushed to the hospital. Jack wasn't saying much, but Maggie could see the worry on his face. A nurse showed them to the waiting room where they saw Emily sitting there with her scrubs.

“Where is she, what’s happening” Jack said in a panic

“They..” Emily swallowed , “they wouldn’t let me stay, she just blacked out and the bleeding didn’t stop” she explained, her voice was shaking. Jack walked towards the door that lead to the operation room and tried to open it, immediately a nurse came out.

“Im sorry sir, you have to wait in here”

“My wife is in there, I have to go see her” he raised his voice “I have to see her” he repeated, softer this time, and tried opening the door once more.

“Sir you can’t, the doctors are doing their best, please sit down and wait” she answered.

“I have to be by my wife’s side” he said, running his fingers through his hair in frustration.

“There’s nothing I can do sir, you have to wait” the nurse answered him, shaking her head. Jack was ready to speak again when Maggie walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder

“Come here son, let them work” she said and made him turn around, Pulling him into a hug

“I need her to be okay mom” he sobbed in his moms arms as she rubbed his back, trying to keep her own tears from falling. “I can’t lose her” jack cried. They stood like that for a few minutes, Jack crying in Maggie’s arms and her calming him down, before Maggie walked him to the chairs and they both sat down, waiting for someone to come and give them updates.

After 10 minutes Jack couldn’t handle it anymore and stood up and began pacing around, and after 20 minutes Maggie lost her patience as well and walked up to a nurse who walked past them.

“What’s happening in there? Why hasn’t anyone giving us any updates?” She asked with an annoyed expression on her face. Jack was thankful she did that because he did not have the energy to do so himself.

“Let me check and I’ll let you know” the nurse kindly replied and walked away. Maggie let out a deep sigh and walked back to her chair.

After another 10 minutes, the doctor exited the room and walked up to them. All three of them stood up, impatiently waiting for her to tell them something.

“Mr.Harlow, your wife lost a lot of blood but we were thankfully able to locate the bleeding and stop it in time” she gently smiled as Jack let out a sigh of relief before crying into his hands. “She will be moved into a room where she will have to rest and be closely monitored for any complications, And your son has been taken to the NICU for monitoring and care” the doctor explained.

“When can we see them?” Emily asked

“Hopefully soon, we will update you” she smiled and went back into the room. You were taken into a room and shortly after Jack was allowed to come in and see you.

As soon as Jack saw your sleeping body he broke down in tears again, he walked up to you and gently grabbed your hand. Maggie and Emily stayed outside to give him a moment alone with you.

“Please be okay, please” he cried “I can't do this without you” 

After a few minutes, Maggie knocked on the door and told him that the doctor had some updates. Jack stood up straight and walked to sit on the couch, he wiped away his tears and took deep breaths as the doctor walked in. 

“Mr.Harlow I have good news,” The doctor said and gave Jack a gentle smile, his eyes lit up and he waited for her to continue. “You have a beautiful and strong baby boy waiting for you in the NICU.” Jack stood up as soon as he heard that, ready to go and meet his son. He walked up to you and planted a gentle kiss on your forehead before following the doctor.

“His vitals look good but he will need to stay at the NICU for a period of time to receive specialized care, but let's go meet him” The doctor informed him everything, while she showed him the way to where baby boy was. He could barely take all the information in, everything on his mind was you and his son, so he was thankful his mom and Emily were there and took everything in. 

Only Jack was allowed to go in, he had to wash his hands and wear a gown, a mask as well as a hair cap. The doctor showed him where his son was and Jack couldn't help the tears from falling once more. His beautiful baby boy was lying in an incubator, he was so tiny but the most beautiful little boy Jack had ever seen. He walked up to the incubator and stared at his son, awe in his eyes. 

“I love you” he whispered “You are a very strong boy, I know you got this” Jack wiped his tears before continuing, “You have a very wonderful big sister waiting for you at home, and a very strong mother that loves you” he sniffled and put his hand on the glass, smiling gently at his son. He stayed like that for a while, just watching and talking to his son. 

“Mr. Harlow, I'm sorry to interrupt” A nurse came into the room after almost an hour, “Mrs. Harlow just woke up and she’s asking for you”. Jack stood up as soon as he heard that, he glanced quickly at his son and smiled before nodding to the nurse “Of course”. He had no idea why he was nervous, but he was, he just wanted to see your face and for you to be alright. 

He opened the door and saw Maggie and Emily smiling at you, you turned your head when you heard the door open and got emotional as soon as you saw your husband's face. “Hi,” you said as he walked over to you, “Hi” he smiled at you and both of your eyes got filled with tears. 

“I’m so sorry” you mumbled, the tears streaming down your face as soon as you said that.

“hey hey no, this wasn't your fault,” He said and grabbed your hand, pulling it closer to kiss it. You stayed quiet for a few minutes, the both of you crying.  “I thought I lost the both of you” Jack cried and leaned his head on your hand, You wiped the tears away from his face and shook your head. "I was so scared" you whispered under your breath. He nodded and came closer to you, he put his forehead against yours before leaning in and softly kissing you.

"He's really beautiful," Jack said as you both calmed down, as much as possible. Your eyes lit up as you stared at Jack "You saw him?" you asked. Jack got a big smile as he nodded happily "I did, he's so small" You both smiled. Jack walked out and asked the nurses when you could see him and they informed him that they had to take a few more tests and bring you a wheelchair, so in a few hours.

"How's Grace? Have you talked to Clay?" You asked Emily, worried about your daughter. "I did, they had a good time don't worry, she fell asleep an hour ago" Emily walked up to your hospital bed and showed you the pictures and videos Clay had sent her of Grace.

The medication made you very sleepy and as Jack and Emily sat and talked next to you, you fell asleep again. Maggie went to your house to grab some stuff for you and Jack, as you would have to stay at least another day and Jack didn't want to leave your side. You were thankful that Clay and Emily could stay at your place with Grace.

You woke up after about two hours, the room was quiet and only a soft lamp lit up the room. You looked to the couch and saw Jack lying there with his head back, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed. Next to him, you saw two of your weekend bags, and on the table in the middle were yours and his phone. The nurse knocked on your door and Jack opened his eyes and quickly sat up straight, you could tell he was tired.

"Mrs. Harlow, Your vitals are looking good, and we have a wheelchair if you would like to meet your son" The nice nurse smiled and pushed the wheelchair closer to you. "Yes please" You got excited and tried moving, but it was hard for you to do it by yourself. Jack ran to your side and with his and the nurse's help you were able to get up and sit on the chair, very carefully. You were of course very sore from the surgery but you were determined to meet your little son. Jack pushed your wheelchair as the nurse showed you the way, and your emotions skyrocketed.

"How do you feel?" Jack asked as the nurse gave you masks and gowns to wear, "I just want to see him" you whispered, already feeling your eyes getting watery, Jack leaned down and you both shared a kiss before the nurse walked you into the room your son laid in. Jack pushed you to the incubator and you put your hand on the glass, he was so tiny and beautiful, he had tubes all over but he was still the most beautiful baby boy you had ever seen. You stayed quiet for a moment, the both of you just staring and smiling in awe at your son taking small breaths.

“I can’t wait for Gracie to meet him” Jack whispered

“She’s going to be the best big sister” you answered and looked up at Jack, giving him a gentle smile. He bent down and gave you a kiss. The nurse returned with a chair for Jack and the both of you stayed with you son for awhile, before it was time for you to return to bed.

Next day

The sun shining through the blinds woke you up, you turned your head to the side and saw that Jack was still asleep on the bed they had taken it for him. You knew he was tired so you let him sleep longer. You reached for your phone that was now next to you and texted Emily to see how everything was going. After just a few seconds you got a FaceTime call from her.

“Mommyyy” Grace screamed happily as soon as she saw your face on the screen

“Hi my baby” you tried to whisper, not wanting to wake Jack up “did you have a good time with aunty Em and uncle Clay?” You asked her, receiving a nod.

“I did, but I miss you mama” she pouted, you knew she probably got worried seeing you like that. You heard Jack shuffle in bed and saw that he now had his eyes open.

“I know baby, but look who I have here” you turned the phone to Jack and Grace immediately got a big smile on her face “dadaaaa” she screamed. Jack reached out and grabbed the phone from your hand, “hi my Gracie” he said with his raspy morning voice. They talked for a while before Jack got up and stood next to you.

“Guess what Grace” he said as Grace shrugged, waiting for him to continue

“You have a baby brother waiting to meet you”

—————————————————————

The next thing I’m going to write will ofc be when Grace gets to meet her little brother and that’s when you’ll get a name reveal🤭

And thank you to anon for making me go with the dramatic version of Jack storming in haha 🤭🫶🏽

taglist: @hoodharlow , @pianoisland , @harlowcomehome , @itsyagirljaz , @neon-lights-and-glitter , @heavyhitterheaux , @nattinatalia , @harlowsbby

[kyday]

Solace | Kate Bishop

Summary: It's one of those nights again where Kate disappears and doesn't come back until it's early morning. You have finally had enough. warnings: bad writing (sorry not sorry), few swear words. light angst with a happy ending. enjoy!! wordcount: 1200+ ------------------

Katiee 💘: hey love, i know you’re at work right now, but im just telling you that ill be busy the entire day. I have so much to do today so i might not be able to open my phone as often.

You: hi babyyy, its fine. i get it,  just make sure to text me once everything  is over, okay? love you.

Katiee 💘: of course, dont worry. love you too, mwuah! 9:23 am

It was 11:34 pm, the flickering lights of NYC fluttered outside your window, and the constant noise of cars passing by was nothing new. You had been up all night waiting for a reply from your girlfriend, Kate.

Her last reply was in the morning, after that— radio silence. Her silence was unnerving, although you had gotten used to her doing this, it never was this drastic. You kept opening your phone every time it turned on, expecting it was her message, but still; nothing.

You: babyy, are you free noww? if not, i hope you finish up soon. mwuah. 6:02 pm

You:

heyy, i know this is probably just one of your busy days but are you donee? lucky misses you already.  text me when you get this. 7:35 pm 

You:

kate, Im getting worried. you haven't been answering the entire day. is everything fine? please text me once you see this. 9:00 pm

You:

Kate??? Please tell me you’re okay. I'm worried sick. 9:58 pm

You anxiously paced around your bedroom, at the corner of the room Lucky was sleeping on his bed. He was planning on staying up with you but at 10 pm he accidentally fell asleep. You make your way to the dining room, leaving a light on— you’ll wait for Kate here.

You can feel your eyes slowly giving up, trying to keep yourself up— you try to rub your face to stay awake a bit more. 

This hasn’t been the first time Kate has done this. Ever since last year when she hit that large bell tower, she had changed. There were times you often pretended to not know when she had cuts or bruises— she was a bad liar. You can often see her limping or wincing every time she moves.

You never questioned her about it though. You didn't want to overwhelm her especially since her mother got sent to jail for murdering people. But ever since that— it seemed like she was burying herself in her work more and more. The cuts or bruises were more visible, you remember when she didn't come home for a day and she blamed it on her cousin who was in town and wanted some tour around NYC.

Right as you were about to fall asleep, you heard the sound of keys clattering and curses being mumbled as the person entered the front door. You recognized the voice to be Kate. “Fuck, fuck fuck.” 

She stopped in her tracks when she saw you standing in front of the couch. There was a moment of silence between you, “Where the hell have you been?” You questioned in disbelief. She puts down her bow on the nearest table, you watch her intently.

“The company had me go overtime since there were extra projects due. Look, I sorry-” 

She explains but you quickly cut her off. “Oh my god, then why the hell do you bring your fucking bow or why couldn't you even text me once? Do you think I'm stupid Kate?” She sighs, massaging her temple.

“Y/n, let's not do this right now.” She mumbles, giving you a tired look. “I'm tired, we can talk about this in the morning.” You shook your head immediately.

You stepped closer to her. “No, we are talking about this now. Because in the morning you’ll be gone even before I wake up. Goddamit, I'm not oblivious! I know that your work isn't from seven am to eleven fucking pm!” Kate is starting to become more irritated with you, trying to bite her tongue from saying anything.

“What the hell are you hiding from me? I was worried sick, I waited up until what? Eleve-” You look at the clock. 12:10 am. “Its fucking midnight!” Kate knows she deserves this, but she's tired, way too tired to fight right now.

“Who said you had to fucking wait for me?” She replies, stunning you.

You let out a sarcastic laugh, “Oh my god, maybe because I'm your girlfriend, Kate! Have you ever thought of that?”

As the tension in the room thickened, Kate's expression softened, and she let out a heavy sigh. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to worry you," she said, her voice tinged with exhaustion. "I know I've been distant lately, and I haven't been completely honest with you."

You can feel your frustration, but you are also worried. “Then why, Kate? Why do you keep shutting me out? Why are you not telling me the truth?” Kate looks down in guilt, her superhero duties have been such a huge thing for her that she forgot her true priority, you.

“I haven't been honest with you..” She starts off.

“No shit Sherlock.” You mumble, earning a smile from her.

She coughs, “I know this may uh- this may seem unbelievable but I've been working with Hawkeye to bring this organization down.” She stopped to see your reaction, but your face was like stone. “And just— today we were so close to getting them but they got away.” Kate continues, her voice turning into a whisper at the end, you can hear the disappointment in her voice.

“But you didn't have to hide it from me, Kate.” You start, tears welled up in Kate’s eyes.

“I didn't want to make you worry, I'm so sorry.” She whispers.

You walk over to her and wipe her tears. “I'm always worrying about you, you know that. It doesn't matter how crazy your story is. Hell, if you told me you were fighting aliens, I would believe you. Because I trust you, Kate. And I need you to put that same trust in me.” You explain, hugging her.

You can feel her nod against your chest. “No more secrets, okay?” 

“Okay.” She mumbles, latching onto you.

You chuckle, “Come on, we can cuddle in bed.” She protests for a second, saying she wants to lie down on the floor. But you manage to convince her into going to the bedroom for cuddles.

She plops down on the mattress, and you follow behind her. “I'm sorry again, I won't do it again, love.” She looks up at your eyes, you smile at her. 

“It's okay now. Just go to bed, okay?” She nods, and she inches closer to you before pressing her lips onto yours. “Goodnight baby.”

“Goodnight love.” Kate mumbles tiredly, cuddling up to you. And for a moment, the loud cars outside quieted down, and the bright city lights weren't so bright anymore. 

Kate realized that she could only have this comfort with you.

[dontfindmerain]

um-

What about-

What about some angst? Like- anything you wants, just angst

ohohoho

you have no idea what you've done >:)

"Hey, it's Wil, can't answer the phone right now, so leave a message and I'll get back to you when I can. BEEP." You hang up the phone without bothering to leave a message.

He’s been on tour with his band for weeks now and hasn’t messaged you or called you once, which was extremely worrying after you had met at the local coffee shop at least once every week for the past year. Maybe you were just being unreasonably worried, but you shot him a text anyway.

‘hey im sorry ive been calling u so much

just worried cus we havent talked since u left

hope u r doing ok :)’

He opened it. He opened it. Your heart beat quickly when the typing bubble popped up, grateful that he was finally responding.

And it sunk to your stomach immediately when his response glared back at you from your screen.

‘ok’

What? That’s it? After all that concern, all the pacing, all the tears, that was what he had to say? ‘Ok’?

What the fuck?

You were furious, and saddened but that didn't matter. How could he ignore you for so long and then respond like that? You had been considering surprising him by flying out to see the last leg of the tour tomorrow, but now…

No. You would still go, maybe he was just busy and exhausted from the constant moving around.

When you get to the barricade, waiting for Lovejoy to come on stage, your heart is racing. And when Wilbur walks out? You swear to gods there is no one else in the world.

He is incredibly happy, glowing in the wave of cheers radiating from the crowd. The only thing you can do is stare in awe the entire concert. You can barely hear the music, only a faint buzz as your mind is filled with him.

When it’s over and Mark leads you backstage to visit Wil, you run up to him, spilling out congratulations and praise for how great he is at this. Sorries falling from your lips for not going to every show. You stop when he gently grabs your wrist and takes you to a private room.

“What are you doing here?” he mutters, his face a mixture of confusion and… annoyance? What?

“I came to support you, Wilbur! And I’m so glad I did because you guys were fant-”

“Okay, okay, stop.” His tone was too firm. Too angry.

Silence washed over you and mingled with fear. Did you really upset him?

“I get that you want to support me and that we’re friends and all but did you have to come here? Especially backstage? I mean, for gods’ sake, you couldn’t have waited until I got back to england?”

You didn’t know what to say, you wanted to see him, to tell him…

“I came here because…

because I love you, Wilbur.”

He just looked at you for a moment, and then sighed. “Goddammit, darli- Y/n. I should've known,” he brought his hands up to his face and dragged them down in exasperation, “Y/n, I don’t… you’re like a sister to me, yeah? I don’t know where this,” he gestured wildly at you, “infatuation came from, but it needs to stop. You’re a great friend really, but I don’t feel that way about you.”

Your heart dropped to your stomach, the evidence of your hurt painted across your face and his annoyance resting on his.

“I… I think I’ll go now,” you whisper quietly, needing to leave before the tears began.

“No- come on now, darling- Don’t go, lets talk about this-” but you were already walking, no, running away from him. You ran out into the dark night, the streets were busy and you didn’t know where you were, you just kept running and running and running-

And you didn’t see that car. It didn’t see you either.

[lastat-iwtv]

hey could you make a fic where klaus visits y/n every night because he loves her and seeing her helps him calm down (even though they're not a couple yet) and she invites him to sleep in the bed with her and klaus becomes a nervous mess and blushed but he is very happy.☺️

This is my first time writing a klaus fic or a fic in general so don’t get your hopes too high, enjoy:)

Summary: klaus comes to Y/n’s room every night to help her sleep but tonight he’s late. Y/n asks him to stay the night and while she’s sleeping he admits his feelings.

Warnings: none, i think? (please comment if you think there is.)

This is not proof read so sorry about the mistakes and sorry it’s short, I’m tired

Enjoy:)

I was sitting on my bed anxiously waiting, he was late, i was beginning to think he wasn’t coming. Klaus usually comes to my room at 9pm to help me sleep, and then leaves when I fall asleep but it was now 10:30pm and he still hasn’t arrived. The familiar tapping sound snapped me out of my thoughts I quickly scurried to openthe window “sorry I’m late sweetheart i got caught up in some Elena drama again, are you okay?” he said softly as he sat on the bed with me “Im okay nik i was just worried something bad happened” klaus chuckled lightly “everything’s fine, now lets get you in to bed love” he pulled the covers over and i climbed under “good night my love, sweet dreams” he said as he kissed my forehead. He sat in his usual spot on the left corner of the bed and me on the right. a few moments later my breath evened out and my heart slowed “your so beautiful when you sleep, so calm and angel like, if only you knew how much I adore you” he stared to get up, but before he could I grabbed his arm “stay, please?” I begged still half asleep. Klaus immediately flushed, glad you couldn’t see his face in your tired state “of.. of course, love” he stuttered still in shock. he pulled over the covers and climbed under with me I instantly rolled on to his chest in my now sleeping state i still wanted to be closer to him. Smiling he said “I will love you until the sun dies, and then in the darkness Y/n.”

Hopefully you enjoyed, love you all

[inahallucination]

au where todd and jeff get into a really big fight over the summer before jeff’s senior year

it probably starts off with something really small, an offhand comment from jeff about todd not caring that jeff’s about to start applying to colleges, or maybe an offhand remark about how todd never hangs out with jeff anymore

and todd just loses it, getting angrier and angrier as he reminds jeff that todd isn’t the one who decided that jeff wasn’t good enough to hang out with him and todd wasn’t the one who listened to his brother be belittled by their parents and turn around and tell todd that he should do better other than comforting him

and jeff’s just standing there, and it’s like his whole world view has just changed because he’s honestly never actually thought of all of this from todd’s perspective. he doesn’t think that todd’s not good enough or anything like that, but he’s never realized that thats how it’s translated over

he had honestly gotten so caught up with pleasing his parents, going to school, keeping up with the extracurriculars that he hadnt gotten around to approaching todd first, and he never dismissed todd when todd approached him because he didn’t want to hang out but he was always busy. he supposed he could have explained that to todd a bit better

and it’s not like he thinks todd isn’t amazing, but he hates how their parents yell at him so he tries to encourage todd to try harder, but he sees how not reassuring todd that he’s great the way that he is can translate. and wow he’s really fucked this all up

anyway

jeff tries to explain himself, and todd (heart of gold, deep desire to be loved that causes him to forgive rlly easily) agrees to try and fix their relationship

come fall, jeff convinces his parents to let todd come visit him when he can

in the mean time they call and write letters, and its all horribly awkward but their trying and that means everything 

obviously jeff’s a senior at fucking welton, so its not like he’s rolling in free time but he’s also the golden child of welton that years after the school will use as an example and claim that they ‘made’ him

anyway

they write letters, have brief phone calls, and jeff convinces his parents that seeing welton will encourage todd to try to make it to welton

//

for neil its a completely normal day - waking up, classes, looking forward to the weekend, listening to charlie’s wild wild plans for the weekend that wont happen, hanging out with knox, meeks, and pitts, waiting for cameron to be done with his work so he’ll hang out with them (work first, fun later - cameron)

and then

and then he’s sitting outside, the summer heat hasn’t left yet, and the poets are all chatting, pretending to work (aside from cameron who’s sitting a little farther away, actually working) when some upper classman yells out

“excuse me ?” the call is so quiet, neil would think he’d imagined it if he hadn’t looked up to see a boy around his age (blond hair, head down a little, avoiding eye contact, still the prettiest person neil had seen) it takes him a moment to snap out of it

“hey, what’s up ?” he asks going for casual, his voice a little pitched. charlie snorts next to him, neil ignores him

“um, my brother uh, um.” neil gets up to move a little closer to the boy in an effort to get him to look less like he wants to dig a hole and die

“yeah ?” he asks, quieter, sending his friends attentions away with a look, the boys cheeks turn pink when he glances at him, but doesn’t hold eye contact

“my um- my brother, he um, he said to meet um at the courtyard, but uh, he’s really bad at um giving direc-directions so im a little um”

“lost?” the boy nods “well just tell me who ur brother is, and we can find him together” a pause “im neil, by the way. Neil perry.”

“todd anderson” todd replies and neil wonders why he feels like he should know it just as todd continues “my brother’s jeff anderson”

“jeff- of the jeffrey anderson” todd grimaces but nods

“wow i didn't know he had a brother” neil says and its the worst thing to say because todd’s face looks even more closed off and he shifts uncomfortably and theres a siren in neil’s mind thats screeching for him to do damage control so he can somehow win some sort of affection from the pretty boy “pr-probably because you’re such a cutie and he doesn’t want ppl to stare at his younger brother hahah” he wants to throw himself off a bridge because what the fuck did he jsut say

todd for his part stares at him wide eyed, red cheeked, and a little bit like he’s considering running away

“um so jeff, lets go ?” neil says even more awkwardly. todd nods hurriedly and the two start walking and the entire time todd isn’t saying anything but neil is rambling and its honestly embarrassing

they finally find jeff and todd and neil say goodbye to each other and neil thinks ‘wow i rlly just embarrassed myself in front of the cute guy’ and tries to not think about it

sometimes, after todd has left, he thinks he can feel jeffrey glaring at him but its probably in his head

//

jeffrey anderson was having a good day, an amazing day, a wonderful day, waiting for his baby brother, who he had recently made amends with, to come to campus so the two could hang out

if today turned out good, he was gonna try to convince nolan to let todd stay a whole weekend (since jeffrey didnt have a roommate)

until of course neil fucking perry showed up

jeff had nothing against neil, was even thankful that he’d helped his brother, until he noticed todd staring at neil’s back as neil left

until he asked todd what was up and he glanced at where neil had gone and blushed

jeff didn’t want todd to be in a relationship (the kid was like 5) but he didn’t want todd to pine (and be miserable - todd was an overthinker) but if neil rejected todd, jeff thought he might just kill him

//

todd is there again the next friday

jeff sees him standing near the entrance awkwardly trying not to look too awkward

“hey todd ! did we plan on meeting today ?” he calls out, feeling awful for forgetting but honestly not being able to remember them agreeing to meet up

todd looks at him, cheeks turning pink “um no we didn’t plan on um”

“so whats up ? is everything okay ?” he walks closer , trying to see if he can see if anythings off. todd turns pinker, jeff wonders if he’s sick

“i um i have a date”

“... a date?”

“yeah um-”

“todd ! you’re here !” perry yells out, jogging over. he greets jeff with a friendly wave and politely doesn’t point out jeff’s dumbfounded look

jeff wants to protest (”todd ur like 5″) but todd looks excited and nervous (but not in the usual, i wanna die way) so jeff forces his lips to curl up into a polite smile, tho the look todd shoots him shows he’s not all that successful and waves at them as they both head out to their date, and fills his brain with plans to keep an eye on neil and plans on what to do if neil fucks up 

//

yeah theres no coherent plot, its just shit happening

im feeling to lazy to tag my taglist sorry guys

[onlyjaeyun]

I think my head is going to explode.

He asked if she was ok.

Lowkey that is huge.

(AND SHE FREAKING KNOWS ITS HUGE. SHE TOTALLY KNOWS.)

And it’s bothering him that she’s not ok. He hasn’t lost interest he’s freaking worried. That’s why he hasn’t been back. But she doesn’t know that. Omg.

What is he going to dooooooo? (Because this Hoon is delicious. He is a man of ACTION always. Nothing simmers in him too long before it comes out one way or another. That’s why he touched her in the first place. That’s why he beat up Jaemin. That’s why he said something to Fuma. His feelings really do drive him and honestly I love it.) Is he just gonna show up? Kidnap her and force her to go get her nails done? My money is on randomly showing up…Like Riki’s at his house for some whatever thing so Hoon just goes down and starts banging on her door and she answers wearing his shirt (because the forgetting him is NOT going well)…

I don’t want to pin all my hopes and dreams on this but like… I’m really rooting for him to do something healing here. I mean maybe he’s not there yet but MAYBE HE IS or maybe he is so high key desperate for her body (at least that’s the excuse he’ll tell himself) that he’s willing to take care of her a little to get what he’s craving.

GAH! I don’t know. I have no idea where you’re going next but MAN am I desperate to get there. Like there is no denying he’s bothered by her pain. It’s there. He’s angry about it—but it’s full there on his angsty little tumblr. Her pain truly upsets him—but forreal that is nothing new (just ask Jaemin).

I know you’re cooking up some way to bring them back together. (And I’m obviously dying to know what it is) I figured (because I feel like you’ve hinted at it?)—though I could be totally wrong—but I figured that they would start to fall for each other again even before they realized that their initial fallout was due to a misunderstanding and maybe I’m delulu but I’m wondering if this particular moment is going to be the start of that like…manifesting? Because I mean I know the hate is there, but there’s also something else—something deeper and it’s so clear and I just love how hard both of them are trying to pretend that something doesn’t exist.

But you can only fight being someone’s soulmate or whatever for so long ya know…

see what i mean? how is this not the most beautiful commentsry on a piece of work youve ever seen?? I LOVE WRITERS SO SO SO MUCH 🥺 thank you for this baby, i really hope you know how much i appreciate your asks, they really make my day :(

i love how you commented I KNEW IT on the last chap bc i knew you'd say smth and i got so gigglybfkenfoemfl ngl i wasn't gonna make him beat them up just warn and scare them a little but this ask and your thoughts inspired me to do more bc it fits his character so well so thank you so much angel 🥺💗

i don't wanna spoil too much but your thoughts and assumptions about his feelings for her changing is definitely quite close to what i have in mind and i love how similar our brains work 🤭🤭 can't wait for your resction when you read the next chapter bc our baby's been a little unsure about herself and well, hoon's the one who might give her a hand or two to desl with those bad thoughts..all im gonna mentionnis a mirror!🤕

[criesinmultifandommess]

A Dragon's Greatest Treasure

sorry for disappearing! i got caught up in schoolwork and yeah :D i started writing this quite a while ago, maybe a couple months back? idk but the second paragraph was going to be followed by an in-depth description of all the parents seeing their kids start acting up, but im too sad about the current arc CUCURUCHO GIVE THE KIDS BACK YOU MONSTER!!!! anyway enjoy :)

There was no warning for what would happen. There was no announcement from the Federation, no appearance from the Binary Code or Cucurucho. It was just a normal day for the residents of Quesadilla Island. Until everyone’s kids started acting…strangely.

No one was prepared for dragon puberty.

In the group chat between all the parents, Cellbit messages them all to come to the adoption center, mentioning that he has information about the sudden changes to their children. A few moments later, the center is flooded with people. Everyone immediately begins crowding around Cellbit, concerned and anxious. 

“Quiet, please, everyone! Silêncio, por favor.” The Brazilian begins shouting over the commotion. As the residents begin to settle, Cellbit finally begins speaking. “Okay, thank you. I know that all of our kids have started doing some weird stuff lately. Mostre a eles, Richas.”

On cue, Richarlyson jumps and hovers in mid-air for several seconds. 

“Yeah! He accidentally jumped into a hole near the Copacabana, but he did not fall down right away.” Forever comments, Richarlyson nodding along.

“Really? Pomme hasn’t done that, but she has—”

Baghera is cut off when purple sparks begin appearing around Pomme, before she vanishes into thin air. Everyone but the French residents begin panicking, beginning to look around for the missing girl. She pops back into view a few feet away from where she disappeared, violet sparkles eventually fading away.

“She disappears like that.” Baghera lets out a tired sigh. “The first time it happened, we looked around for a few minutes, but she appeared right back where she disappeared.”

“When Baghera messaged us saying that she disappeared, I thought it was the Federation or the Code attacking.” Etoiles shakes his head, frowning. “I would have showed them my Code Breaker sword.”

“Oh, well, nothing that exciting has happened to Ramón. He’s just been really hyper, which isn’t like him at all. There he goes.”

Right as Fit finishes speaking, his son begins twitching and starts racing around the room with incredible speed. Eventually, everyone stops watching him once it becomes apparent he’s not going to stop for a while.

“Chayanne can apparently breathe fire now,” Phil laughs and gestures at his kid. In response, Chayanne lets out a little burst of flame, not enough to harm anyone, but it does cause those around him to jump away in surprise.

“Wait, that’s so cool! Leo, can you do that?” They shake their head, and Foolish’s shoulders drop slightly. “Oh, that’s fine. Well, Leo does this.”

Foolish pulls out a piece of gold from his backpack, but instead of just Leo, all of the kids lunge for the nugget immediately. The parents pull their respective child back, but not before the young dragons begin hissing and clawing at each other. 

“Oh my gosh, Dapper, stop it! He started hissing at me too!” Bad says while wrangling with his son. Once they’re all under control, he turns to Cellbit. “So, they all do some things, but some of the kids have special quirks? What’s going on?”

“Pare, Richas! Okay. I was looking around for some kind of explanation, and when I came here, I found this book called ‘The Early Stages of a Dragon’. I will read it.” Cellbit clears his throat. 

“During the early stages of a newly hatched dragon, they do not exhibit any traits of an adult dragon. However, when they reach the age of one, they begin to showcase these traits during a period called the first growth period. These traits include fire breathing, beginning to fly, small instances of dragon magic, bursts of random energy, a tendency to hoard valuables, and becoming physical through biting, scratching, and hissing. Young dragons will experience a week of showcasing these traits, before eventually regaining control and calming down.”

With that, Cellbit closes the book. “That’s it. There’s two other growth periods, but it says it won’t happen for a while, so we should be fine.”

“Does this mean all the eggs are going to start disappearing?”

“And breathing fire?” 

The adults start muttering worriedly, and Cellbit raises a hand to quiet everyone again. “They may, or they may not. But we should all be safe and start carrying around water buckets.”

“And maybe don’t take out shiny things.” Bad turns to Foolish and sighs. “You’re going to have to start covering yourself up, Foolish, I’m sorry.”

“What? That’s crazy.”

Slowly, the tension in the room fades away as they all start cracking jokes. Some break off into groups, but never stray too far to keep an eye on the kids. The children play with each other, parents making sure to keep their kids’ aggression levels low and stepping in if one starts growling. It’s a peaceful kind of chaos. Life on the island may never be the same again, but at least they have each other.

Right?

[quietwingsinthesky]

AO3 may be down but that doesn't stop the samifer train from rolling.

Here's an old wip that i finished up just now. probably not perfect given that it's currently midnight and im half asleep, BUT. it is sweet.

So uh. nothing worth more than a PG-13 rating here. contents include cuddling. so much cuddling. gentle kissing. praise. lucifer getting loved on a ton. but also this is all sort of framed in the context of a non-sexual soft CNC scene. (aka Lucifer tells Sam to stop/says no and is ignored. Safewords are pre-established, used, and respected later on though.) This is peak 'fic that appeals only to me' moments.

There are rules for a reason. Lucifer’s not supposed to mess with them when they’re hunting because the power imbalance here is already well and truly fucked, and Sam isn’t about to invite Lucifer to interfere where he shouldn’t. Although, maybe he should have been less focused on Lucifer hypothetically being too helpful and making their efforts obsolete and more on the fact that Lucifer can make himself into a nuisance when he really wants to. Between him showing up when they were talking to the survivors, and distracting Sam when he was trying to research, and what happened at the morgue (which he is not thinking about ever again,) he’s more than proven that he can be a pain in the ass.

And where Dean took it at face value that the devil was getting his kicks pissing them off, Sam’s not angry. He’s worried. Lucifer is, without a doubt, arrogant and difficult and petty, but he doesn’t act without reason. Sam takes a step back, breathes, looks at how he’s acting. Only then does he approach Lucifer with the knowledge in hand to take care of the problem.

Or, maybe more accurately, Lucifer comes to him. Sam’s in the shower when he hears something in the other room fall and shatter on the floor. He nearly slips when he snaps towards the noise. He’s barely gotten out of the shower when he hears it happen again. A third time as he’s pulling the bathroom door open, on edge and expecting a fight. All he gets is Lucifer sitting at the tiny table the motel provided them with, staring at a pile of glass on the floor. Sam’s about to ask what’s happening when Lucifer blinks, and the glass reforms on the table. Lucifer looks up at him. Makes eye contact.

He knocks the glass off the table again. It shatters.

Sam sighs.

“Clean that up,” he says. Lucifer looks at the shards on the ground.

“Why should I?” As though he hasn’t broken and remade the same glass three times now. Sam goes to his bag to start getting dressed. He feels uncomfortably damp, but he’s got the sneaking suspicion that if he leaves the room now to go get a towel, more things are going to start breaking. Things that are more valuable than a cup.

“Because if you don’t, I’m probably going to forget about it and step on a shard.” Sam has had glass pierce his skin more than enough times in his life, thanks. When he turns back after having pulled on his pants, there’s no more glass on the ground and Lucifer is frowning at nothing. He turns his gaze on Sam like it’s a challenge. Sam doesn’t falter. “Is there a reason you’re being a brat?” Lucifer doesn’t answer, only narrows his eyes. Sam shakes his head and tries to approach him.

“Are you going to punish me?” Lucifer says, glib and sharp, but the way he tenses when Sam comes closer betrays him. Sam can’t hurt him, except in the ways that matter. Lucifer waits for rejection like it’s a blade against the back of his neck. This is him goading Sam to swing.

“Yes,” Sam says, and the way Lucifer actually relaxes at that breaks his heart. It's as though one of these days, he thinks Sam will actually follow that up by trying to hurt him. Sam reaches out to touch him instead. Lucifer looks confused when that’s all he does, hand resting against the curve of Lucifer’s jaw, feeling stubble prick against his palm. Sam lets it stay there for a minute. Lucifer remains frozen under the touch. He will understand that this is how Sam will punish him. Sam strokes his cheek. “Come lay on the bed with me.” Lucifer tilts his head away from Sam’s hand, but Sam follows, pressing warmth into Lucifer’s chilly skin.

“What?” Lucifer asks.

“Come lay down,” Sam repeats, slower. If Lucifer feels condescended to, then tough, Sam has to be as clear as possible to get through to him.

“That isn’t a-”

“You don’t get to decide.” Sam withdraws his hand. For all that Lucifer was trying to lean away from it, he still looks miserable that Sam’s not touching him anymore. Sam turns and walks back to the bed. He always gets one big enough for Lucifer and him to share, now. (And Dean gets to have a whole room to himself. It’s a win-win.) For a minute after he lays down, he’s not sure Lucifer will follow him. He’s stuck sitting across the room, staring at Sam like he’s lost it. He stands slowly, unsure, and he stills again.

Sam pats the empty space next to him. Lucifer jerks forward like Sam just-

Yanked on his leash is not a thought Sam should be having about Lucifer right now.

He far more dressed than Sam is. The first step is getting him on the bed. The second is getting his coat and over-shirt off. His jeans have to go, too, and that leaves Lucifer half-naked and kneeling in front of Sam on the bed, fists clenched against his bare thighs. Sam reaches up and touches his face again. Lucifer’s confusion returns, though now there’s a touch more panic in his eyes. Sam holds back from shushing him like he’s a scared animal. Instead, he lets his hand slide back, under Lucifer’s ear, brushing the short hair at the bottom of his skull, and then holding firmly onto the back of his neck. When Sam pulls him down, Lucifer resists. Sam pulls him down anyway.

Sam keeps his hand on the back of Lucifer’s neck, firm and unbreakable. If he really wanted to leave, there’s no amount of force Sam could exert to stop him, but when Lucifer struggles, he doesn't make Sam's hand budge an inch. Eventually, he stops. He stays tense against Sam. Sam promised punishment, and punishment for Lucifer has only meant pain and isolation for a long time. This, Sam knows, will be much harder for him to bear and far more effective. Sam settles back.

I want to be kind to you. I want to be gentle. I know you can’t believe this because you don’t know what it looks like, but that’s all I want for you, forever, but Sam can’t say any of that. Lucifer will lash out at it as a lie or recoil from it as pity, and so this is the only way Sam can get him to accept it. They dress it up at a struggle and ignore how badly Lucifer wants to let him win. He lets the hand at Lucifer’s neck drift up through his hair and then back down again, one slow stroke. Lucifer doesn’t make a break for it, and so Sam does it again and again.

“Stop,” Lucifer says. Sam can barely hear him, even though there’s not an inch between them. He keeps petting Lucifer’s hair.

“It’s a punishment,” he says. “You don’t choose when it stops. I do.” Lucifer breathes. It’s unsteady. Sam keeps petting him. He drinks in Lucifer through every sense, feels the coolness of his skin under his palm as he smooths his hand a little further down to his spine, smells the overwhelming scent of magnolias mixed with something that leaves an aftertaste like pennies on the back of Sam’s tongue, hears the way Lucifer struggles to keep himself breathing slowly.

“Stop,” Lucifer begs a second time, even softer.

“No.” Lucifer shudders. Sam wraps his hand over the back of Lucifer’s neck again and squeezes. “You want me to forgive you for being frustrating all day, right?” Lucifer doesn’t answer, but his head is bowed, his forehead pressed to Sam’s shoulder. Sam shifts to move his leg before it cramps from the odd position he put it in, and he bumps Lucifer’s, dropping his hand down to Lucifer’s thigh to help him get comfortable. As he moves Lucifer, he feels the devil go limp like a ragdoll in Sam’s arms. He’s soothingly heavy. (Angels are dense, in more ways than one.) “This is how you earn that. Be good for me, Lucifer. Hold still while I touch you.”

Lucifer makes a strangled noise, muffled against Sam’s shoulder. It sounds like no.

He needs more if Sam is really set on breaking him down. Sam massages behind Lucifer’s shoulders as he turns his head to kiss him. They’re only soft butterfly kisses that Sam lands on his temples and the top of his head. Even that makes Lucifer squirm, reeling back against the barricade of Sam’s hand. Like it’s nothing, Sam’s touch stops an archangel in his tracks. Seeing Lucifer’s face lets Sam know how well this is working. He still looks confused, but he’s relaxed, eyes glassy. Some part of him knows to trust Sam. In return for that trust, Sam leans in and places kisses all over Lucifer’s face. His nose deserves a few, and so do his cheeks, and his eyebrows, and his forehead, and finally, his lips. Lucifer doesn’t have the time to kiss back with how quickly Sam leaves a smooch there and backs off to find a new spot for his next one.

“Good,” Sam praises between kisses, “good, so good...” and though it’s simple, it’s effective. Lucifer tries to escape from the praise, but he has nowhere to go and looking away only exposes more untouched spots for Sam to kiss. Sam trails kisses over Lucifer’s chin and jaw and down his neck.

“Sam, please.” Sam has fucked Lucifer harder than anyone else he’s ever been with. He’s pulled his hair, bitten him raw, bruised him black and blue until his vessel heals. He’s spanked Lucifer over his lap, and he’s tied him up, and he’s used every other trick in the book to make him behave. None of those punishments could make Lucifer sound like he does right now.

“I think you deserve more,” Sam says, merciless. Lucifer exhales, overwhelmed and as desperate for this onslaught of affection to end as he is to never be let go. Sam starts kissing him again, but he lingers on each kiss now and he varies up his praise, sprinkling in more and more specifics, like “You’re such a beautiful angel,” and “See how lovely you are when you’re not trying to pick a fight?” He kisses just next to Lucifer’s ear and whispers to him, “Next time you want attention, I expect you to say something and not start breaking things. Understand?” Lucifer swallows. “If it happens again, I’m going to punish you even worse next time. How would you like me to massage your wings and groom out all the messy feathers?”

“I’m sorry,” Lucifer says, and there’s a lilt to it, like he’s wondering if all it’ll take to get out of this is to admit his guilt. Sam doesn’t plan on letting up any time soon.

“Apology accepted. You still have to earn your forgiveness. We’re almost done.” Sam begins running his hands over Lucifer’s entire body, seeking vulnerability and since he knows exactly where to look, he finds it. Angels wear vessels strangely, connect to nerves in odd places more than others. Lucifer has patches of skin at his hip and his belly and the back of his calf that are more sensitive than anywhere else on his body, excluding right between his shoulderblades, which Sam is already using to make him melt in his arms. Lucifer isn’t trying to get away anymore (if Sam could even call it that with how little effort he put into it.) He’s shaking like he can’t help it, full-bodied tremors every time Sam grazes a sensitive spot, accompanied by gasps that rush Sam’s ears.

He wraps his arms around Lucifer in a hug and pulls him in tight.

He squeezes and squeezes. Lucifer makes little noises like he can’t stand it that slowly quiet as Sam’s body heat radiates into him, his soul drawing in Lucifer's grace. Sam feels himself calm down, too. Lucifer’s grace always has that effect on him. Sam savors it, and the way Lucifer finally gives in. This is exactly what he needed. “I love you,” Sam says. “I forgive you. You’re so good for me.”

Sam holds him for a few long minutes. This, plus what they’d done beforehand, was the longest Lucifer had ever gone.

So it doesn’t surprise Sam when Lucifer finally says, “Cage. Sam, cage, now.” Sam instantly releases Lucifer, no hand on the back of his neck, no arms around him, nothing keeping him still. He looks extremely overwhelmed as he falls back out of Sam’s lap, and for a moment, Sam thinks he’s taken it too far.

“Lucifer-” Without thinking, Sam reaches out a hand to touch Lucifer’s arm. Lucifer flinches, withdrawing his arm, and Sam makes a soothing noise. He doesn’t try to touch Lucifer again. That’s not the kind of comfort he needs right now. Sam gets off the bed, giving Lucifer a minute alone to reorient himself. He searches around in his packed bags for first, a blanket Sam bought for Lucifer, one he showed interest in because of the texture, and second, one of Sam’s shirts. It’s washed, but it still smells like him from being tossed in with the rest of his clothes. Sam offers them to Lucifer, and they’re taken gratefully. Lucifer wraps the blanket around himself, but he doesn’t put on the shirt. He holds it close to his chest instead. With that, Sam gives him space.

He just put Lucifer through a lot. He needs a minute to recover.

“The hug was a nice touch,” Lucifer says when he’s a little more put together, though Sam still doesn’t put a hand on him, wary of setting him off.

“It wasn’t too much?”

“No. It was nice, until-” Sam grins at being reassured that he did the right thing for Lucifer.

“Until it wasn’t?” he asks.

“Exactly.” Sam sits down on the bed near Lucifer. He still leaves a firm boundary of personal space between them. Touch will be overwhelming to him right now, but even having Sam’s soul too close, automatically trying to tangle up with Lucifer’s grace, might be too much. “You were right. I should have asked for it.”

“You’re forgiven,” Sam reemphasizes, and Lucifer hmphs. “If we’re trying to set more realistic standards for you to meet next time, than I’ll settle for you not disrupting a hunt. You can’t do that.” Lucifer pouts, clutches Sam’s shirt closer to his chest.

“I... will try not to. Next time.” Sam gets the urge to lean over and kiss him. He doesn’t, but he lets his gaze linger on Lucifer’s mouth and stores it away to do later, when Lucifer’s more open to touch.

“Good,” Sam says, “because I will do worse to you. I don’t make empty threats.”

“How terrible. You’re going to pet my wings if I misbehave.” Lucifer’s words are flippant, but his tone is a little more unsure.

“You can handle it,” Sam reassures. “If you can’t, one word and we stop, but I know that you can. Trust me.” Lucifer smiles.

“I do.” Sam’s already got plans spinning in his head for the next time Lucifer needs Sam to be gentle with him and can’t accept it. He’ll really get Lucifer squirming. Maybe Sam will even get him to beg for it to stop as his wings flex and beat and submit. All while knowing that if Lucifer wanted it to actually end, he’d safeword. There is something so intoxicating about having the devil under him, pleading for Sam to stop showing him how much he’s loved. Sam is never going to get over it.

It’s a good thing he doesn’t plan to stop loving Lucifer anytime soon, than.

[turtleboi11037]

finally feeling brave enough to post my first Ámbina oneshot --

⚠️ **FOR CONTEXT!** ⚠️ **Location and time:** this takes place at the party during S3 ep 1 (or episode 161 overall). Also in my story of events, Gastón and Nina are best friends, rather than dating. Also, because im lazy, I set up my oneshots more like scripts. With indicators on who is speaking as well as actions. ------------------------------ Nina looked all around the room to see happy couples dancing arm in arm. Smiling faces everywhere she looked. She couldn’t help but smile herself, being surrounded by it all. But deep down, she missed Gastón. With Luna always off dancing with someone, Gastón and Nina always promised to be each other’s dance partners when they had no one else. But with him at school, she stood against the wall, her arms and heart empty. Not to mention the person whose arms she REALLY wanted to be in was nowhere to be found. Nina hasn’t seen Ámbar in weeks. After her godmother left, Ámbar wasn’t really on speaking terms with anyone. Nina wished there was something she could do to help, but wasn’t even sure where to begin. But then, as if she had read her thoughts, a pair of platform boots walked down the main stairwell. Nina looked up, and could feel her heart skip a beat. There was Ámbar, but in a way she had never seen her before. Her eyes painted with black eyeshadow, pink streaks danced through her hair, and a black dress matched with black lace leggings. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. She had known Ámbar for years, and never forgot an outfit she wore. This, was something totally new. And Nina loved it. As she made her way down the stairs, their eyes locked. And now Nina could REALLY feel her heart pounding. Ámbar let the smallest of smiles slip out as she slowly made her way over to her. Nina couldn’t pull her eyes away from hers. They looked like endless blue pools, with so so much to tell. Á: “hey” N: “hi Ámbar” she said the name out loud as if to make sure it was really still the Ámbar she knew. Ámbar nodded. It was her. N: “you look…” she tried to find the right word. But all she could say was, “…different” Ámbar shrugged Á: “yea well, get used to it. This is the real me.” N: “no no I…I like it. I meant like- different good.” Ámbar raised her eyebrows “I-If this is the real Ámbar…then I can’t wait to learn more about her.” Á: “that so?” Nina nodded. For a moment. They were silent. Ámbar too scanned the room, but she lacked the same joy Nina got. Á: “how come your not dancing?” N: “oh um…I always dance with Gastón and…you know heh.” Á: “ah. Right…” she trailed off, seeming like she wanted to say more, but was too embarrassed to do so. Nina watched her eyes yet again, as they went from group to group, as if she were trying read everyone in the room. N: “Á-Ámbar?” in a moment, Ámbar's eyes met her again. And Nina wasn’t sure what to do from here. Sure, she knew what she WANTED to say, but wasn’t sure if she’d work up the courage to say it. She raised a hand out before quickly using it to fix her hair. N: “would you maybe want to-“ E: “Yo! Ámbar!” a voice shouted through the crowd. The two of them directed their gaze to the voice, to see Emelia. And Nina could feel her stomach drop in anguish. Ámbar looked back to her. Á: “gotta go. Have a nice night Nina.” she said before walking to meet her friend. Nina wanted to shout to her. Tell her to have a nice night too. Ask her to wait just a moment so the two of them could dance. Tell Ámbar that more than anything, she hoped this ‘real her’ still had all the things that made her fall in love with her again and again. But now, with her too far to hear, all she could muster was a tiny voice under her breath. N: “you too, mi amor.” ------------------------------

[floralbfs]

so i crashed my car on friday;;; sjdbsjdjsj

[nctsworld]

two nights, one you

✩‌ jaemin ‌x‌ ‌reader‌ ‌|‌ fuckboy!jaemin | strangers (who f*ck) to (brief) enemies to lovers | ‌10.9k 

SUMMARY‌ ‌⇾‌ a last-minute one night stand gone awry is extended into two nights when you’re snowed in at the cute (but rude) stranger’s apartment on christmas eve. [loosely based on the movie, two night stand] // part of the x-mas in ncity collection  GENRES ⇾ crack | smut | fluff  WARNINGS‌ ‌⇾‌ ‌lots of bickering and dialogue, smut, oral s*x (f and m receiving), fingering, mentions of alcohol/drinking, swearing, bit of angst before the end, jaemin’s an asshole... or is he? RATING‌ ‌⇾‌ explicit TAGLIST ⇾‌ @infnteen​ 

AUTHOR’S NOTE ⇾ it’s late (and long fsldkm), srysry but here it is! i hope the humour comes out in this and look away if falls flat zzz fingers crossed that i can finish the last two installments for this collection asap! 

⇾ gif created by me, please don’t repost or share without credit!

Maybe it’s because it’s the evening of Christmas Eve Eve and you’re feeling more lonely than usual.

Maybe it’s due to the two glasses of wine you guzzled down in the span of fifteen minutes that get you buzzed.

Maybe it’s your prominent six-month dry spell and you’re in desperate need for some much needed rain in your drought.    

Or maybe it’s just pure impulsiveness.

Regardless of the reasons, you’re aiming to get laid tonight.  

It’s 9:45pm as you make the rounds on Tinder. You’ve used it in the past, searching for a relationship in vain, but haven’t used it much since you broke up with your last partner. Bringing the app alive again, you’re already bombarded by distasteful messages, off-putting one-liners and jokes, and swiping left more than you’d like.

You haven’t had a one-night stand before, but isn’t there anyone on here that is just a little bit attractive, nearby where you are, around your age, and is somewhat chivalrous about the topic besides saying DTF? Maybe you need to lower your standards if you want to get dicked down tonight.

But then, you land on him.

One Na Jaemin, 20 years old, and only four miles away from you.

Scrolling through his profile pictures and Instagram feed, you assume that he’s into photography, is on the athletic side from the various hobbies he partakes in, and he must be at least half-aware of his beauty because there’s the occasional pic that shows off his lean, toned arms, which, if you can be frank, is more flattering than the shirtless ones you constantly see. Oh, and he attends the same university as you.

The cherry on top? His bio is simple and upfront:

“Not up for anything serious, but always down for a good time ;)”

You swipe right without hesitation.

“It’s a Match!” flashes instantly at you. Your mouth swings open in disbelief.  

Usually, you’d wait for your matches to message you and play hard-to-get, but not tonight. Tonight, you’re initiating and leading all the conversations, completely driven by your thirst.  

Messaging Jaemin is a breeze. He types with more than half a brain, and he flirts, but it isn’t overwhelming or repulsive. Segueing the current topic, you drag your bottom lip upward as you send the following message:  

so, hypothetically... if one were to have good time with you would tonight work?

Not even twenty seconds later and he replies with:

-wow, dont you go straight to the point -im impressed -but yeah -tonight works ;)

He’s quick to send his address.

-let me know when ur here and ill come get you out front!

Smacking your lips together, you squeal to yourself in the comfort of your home, excited to meet with him, but then a thought hangs over you—this feels a little too good to be true. Horrible scenarios run through your head, so your fingers dash across your phone’s keyboard:

tbh i haven’t really done this b4 so im kinda new to this is it ok if we video call or smth? gotta make sure you’re real and not a serial killer i’m sure you understand 😛

-for sure for sure -totally get it -ive had my fair share of fake girls and serial killers so i feel u 😛

Grateful for his consideration, you rush to rearrange your hair after you send him a Zoom link, hoping you look decent enough to not have him back off from his initial offer. He appears in the video call on his phone with the front-facing camera on a few seconds after you connect.

“Hi,” you chirp.

A corner of his mouth lifts. “Hey.”  

Okay, he’s definitely cuter in real-time than in his pictures.  

“You know, I’m not gonna lie, but I lowkey expected to see a dick or something,” you joke in an attempt to dispel your nervousness.  

“Same,” he chuckles, running a hand through his black hair.

Oh God, he’s not just cute—he’s devastatingly gorgeous.

“So, this is my place...”

Jaemin moves around with his apartment in the background, revealing his living room first. Envy prods you as you note the brick walls, high ceiling windows, and well-appointed furnishings.

Recalling his address, you ask, “How’d you get a place in the heart of the city?”

“Lucked out,” he shrugs. His phone shakes a bit as he’s still moving. “My friend slash roommate—who is at his girlfriend’s place tonight, so we have the place all to ourselves—his parents own the condo and they gave me a friend discount on the rent.”

He finally stands in one place and turns the light on to reveal a room. “And this is my bedroom.”

Nothing out of the ordinary. A desk table with a gaming set-up, in tow with a gamer chair, and a decently-sized bed beside a nightstand.

“Oh, and here’s my closet.” Jaemin’s on the move again as he opens his closet doors. “Just to make sure you don’t think I hide the skins of my past one-nighters in here.”

A bubbly laugh rises from you. “Okay, I didn’t think of that before, but now you’ve planted the seed in my head. Maybe you hide them in the other rooms.”

“Nah, my roommate would kill me if I did.”

Both of you laugh in unison, and you bob your head with puffed cheeks.  

“Okay, it all seems very promising. I’m going to get ready and I’ll guess I’ll see you in a bit, Jaemin.”

“Sounds good,” Jaemin nods, then winks. Although you’re sitting down, he’s still able to get you weak in the knees. “See you soon.”

You end the call and rush to bundle up for the snow starting to come down outside. A twenty-minute train ride later, you’re at the front door of a rustic, industrial apartment complex. After informing Jaemin you’re outside, you glance up at the snowflakes falling from the dark pink-grey sky, anticipating for what comes next.

Sex with a hot guy, what can go wrong?  

So, you must’ve jinxed it because the sex is...  

Unsatisfying. Finished faster than you’d like it to be. Sadly, overall disappointing. If you had to rate it, three out of five stars, at best.

But hey, he came, and you sort of did, and it wasn’t the worst sex you’ve ever had. It half-quenched your dry spell.

And enough happened that it tired you out, leaving you passed out in the handsome stranger’s bed until morning.

In the morning, your eyes slowly flicker, unused to the foreign, sweet scent engulfing you in your bed. Correction: Jaemin’s bed.

Your eyes flicker faster as you glance through the almost wall-sized window. The snow hasn’t let up from last night. On the contrary, it seems like it’s snowing non-stop. You groan at the thought of going home in this weather.

The bed is without Jaemin’s presence as you reach for your phone on the nightstand. 10:36AM and a few notifications greet you. You rub your eyes and start combing through them, rising upward to sit up on the bed.

“Morning. You’re finally up.”

Peering up from your device, Jaemin’s standing by the door with folded arms. His plain sweater and sweatpants match the colour of his hair. The dazzling smile he gives is so contagious, you’re not even conscious of catching one too.  

“Out you go.”

You blink.

Once, twice, and then you tilt your head as you stare blankly at him, uncertain if you heard him correctly.

After a few moments, because you’re not moving an inch, his smile dissipates and he cocks an eyebrow in expectancy. A serious expression rolls over his face.  

Suddenly, Jaemin strolls to the side of the bed and hitches his thumb towards the door.

You definitely heard him right.

And he’s dead-serious.

You replay the video call from last night, dissecting how you thought he was nice and funny and—

Realization dawns on you.

Why would you expect anything more from a two-faced fuck boy?

Still awestruck by the situation, you’re still solid as a statue, so Jaemin takes matters into his own hands and grasps you by your elbow, casually dragging you from his bed like he’s taking out the trash.  

“What the fuck?!” you screech.

“C’mon, let’s go. Out out.”

“My clothes, though!” you protest in the middle of the hallway. He sighs in frustration, scurries to the bedroom, and returns with a small pile in his arms, then continues to drag you to the front door.  

“Are you always this pleasant with your guests the morning after?” you rage, putting on the rest of your clothes by the door. “You don’t even have the decency to offer me tea or coffee?”

“This was a one-night stand, not a bed and breakfast, sunshine,” he says as he watches you put your shoes on. He’s folding his arms again and leaning against the wall, his attitude dripping with smug. If he wasn’t a stranger, you’d punch it off his face. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were new to this, huh?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!”

“It means you’re a borderline virgin who needs to toodle-loo, get going and gone because you’re overstaying your welcome as we speak.”

Finishing putting on your coat, you’re fuming as your jaw hangs at the personal jab over your skills in bed. Jaemin swings the door open and shoves you through it.

“But I’ll admit, it was still nice having sex with you!” he chimes with a sickening grin and a hand on the door.  

“Aw, thanks asshole, wish I could say the same,” you sarcastically reply, resting a palm upon your chest.  

He scoffs. “From what I heard last night, I think I can confidently say that you had a great time.”

Flashbacks replay in your mind of your screaming fest from underneath him. Little did Jaemin actually know—

“You know, for someone who I assume has many one-night stands,” you spit with squinted eyes. “I’m surprised you can’t tell when girls fake it.”

You must’ve hit a sore spot because he grinds his teeth and you could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.

Oh yeah, you’re definitely the winner in this fight.

“Okay, you know what, Merry Christmas and fuck you. Have a great life!”

“Fuck you, dickface. Wishing you a miserable Christmas!”

With a bitter smile, you flip him off as he slams the door in your face.

Carrying a basket filled with dirty clothes, Jaemin’s on the way down to the laundry room in the basement of his apartment with his shoulder scrunched up, squeezing his phone to his ear.

“Bro, she had the audacity to say that I didn’t make her come when she was screaming my God damn ear off—”

As he steps down the short flight of stairs and passes by the foyer area by the main entrance to the building, he notices you’re still here.

“Shit, uh, Jeno,” he mumbles. “I’m gonna have to call you back.”

He stuffs his phone into the pocket of his sweats and calls out to you as he strides closer. “Are you resorting to stalking me by my front door now?”

With crossed arms, you peer over your shoulder, eyes full of bitterness.

“Like I wanna be anywhere near you right now,” you grumble. You jerk your head towards the thick, wooden door. “It’s jammed from the snow.”

The laundry carrier shakes his head and places the basket onto the floor. “A little snow never hurt anyone. You’re probably just too weak.”

Stepping aside and holding out an arm, you signal for him to give it a try.

Jaemin twists the handle and, lo and behold, it doesn’t open. His forehead crinkles as he tries again and again, using more force each time.

Glancing through one of the partially frosted windows adjacent to the sides of the door, he notices the snow has piled enormously high, almost to the height of his chest.

“Well, shit.”  

Reluctantly, Jaemin brings you back to his apartment. You’re technically his guest and if he left you in the foyer to freeze, trouble would surely come his way, whether it be in the form of his landlords (also known as his roommate’s parents) or the police.

Without a word, he settles a spoon in a bowl, a carton of milk, and a box of cereal onto the small kitchen table.

At first, you stare at it venomously in rejection, thinking you can easily last a day without any hand-outs from this son of a bitch, but your stomach roars ferociously three seconds later.

As you chew across from him, you enjoy the company of your phone over him, while he does the same but with a cup of coffee in hand.

After finishing your food, you adamantly place your phone down and lean back into the chair, boring holes into his head.

“Why are you such an asshole?” you seethe observantly.

“Why are you such a bitch?” he retorts, not pulling his gaze away from his phone.

“Because you started it,” you say slowly, stating the obvious.

“No, you.”

You sigh defeatedly at his childish behaviour. The weather apps predict the snow will (hopefully) die down by tomorrow morning, thus you’re officially stuck with him for the next twenty-four hours or so. Your hands rake through your hair.

“Whether we like it or not, the snow isn’t going away until tomorrow. Merry Christmas Eve to us, I guess.”

He’s still glued to his phone. You exhale another sigh.

“Since we’re not getting out of this until then, can we just...” You soften your voice. “Start over?”

His eyes are still on the screen, but from the way his shoulders tense and how he stops scrolling, you know he’s considering your proposition.

“At least call a stalemate over this.” You drift your hand in the air, gesturing between you and him.

Blowing out air and shaking his head, he rests his phone onto the table.

“Fine.”

He crosses his arms, imitating you, and the two of you sit there, staring at each other in a long silence.  

One minute, to be exact.

You’re the one to break the silence game by running your hands over your face, letting out a hybrid of a groan and laugh.

“God, the fact that we had sex makes this kinda awkward, huh?”

Jaemin’s exterior melts slightly, letting out a snicker. He shrugs, “Then let’s just pretend that we didn’t have sex.”

“We can’t just pretend that we didn’t have sex,” you say, holding two upturned palms near your face.

“We did it, it’s done. I’ve seen your penis, you kicked me out, and you labelled me a prude—” You dart a finger towards him. “—which I am far from, by the way. All of those are pretty huge things.”

One of the corners of his mouth raises high. “Are you saying my penis is huge?”

“No, the implication of said penis is huge. Wipe that smirk off your face.”

He stretches an arm, holding an imaginary microphone to your face. “Do you deny that my penis is huge?”

Rolling your eyes, you swat his fist away. “What am I, on trial here?”

“Do you plead the fifth then?”

Annoyed, you roll your eyes again. Why do you get the feeling that you’re probably going to be doing this a lot more today? Another feeling tells you that if you don’t answer his question, he’ll probably pester you until you do.

You tilt your head side to side. “It’s... decently sized.”

“Bigger or smaller than average?”

“Perfect...” His eyes light up. “...ly average.” And a frown rolls over.

He squints his eyes accusingly at your sneer. “Are you lying like you did before about faking it?”

You scoff. “I wasn’t lying about faking it, and I’m not lying now about your average sized dick.”

Jaemin releases a disgruntled grumble and lifts his cup to his face. You notice he likes to take his coffee black and bitter, presumably like his heart.

“So, Miss I’m-Not-A-Prude-and-I’ve-Definitely-Had-Sex-Before.” His eyebrows perk up on the word definitely. “What’s your story? Why the last minute one-night stand?”

Shrugging your shoulders to your ears, you reply, “Haven’t had sex in a while.”

“When’s the last time you had sex?” he asks mid-sip.

“Half a year ago,” you respond nonchalantly, perching your chin into your palms.

Jaemin immediately chokes, almost spraying the coffee through his nose.

“Half a year?!” he gasps. It takes him a few hits to his chest to dispel the coughing. “Six months?!”

“Wow, you can count!” you exclaim in a condescending tone. You change the position of your hands so that your chin is now atop of the back of your curled fingers and tilt your head. “Can you also spell?”

“As a premed student, I can assure you that I am capable of doing both,” he says with a slight strain due to the coughing fit. The humble brag brings on another eye roll. Of course he’s a premed student with the attitude he wears.

“It’s just—” He clears his throat and swallows the last bit of coffee stuck in his windpipe. “—The last time I had a dry spell was for like, a month, tops.”

So the fuckboy gets laid way more on the daily than you expect. You’re torn between being envious over how much action he gets in comparison to you, or remorseful, since you’re now just one of the many notches on his bedpost.

No matter, sarcasm is always the best defence mechanism.

“Good for you, Jaemin. I’m sure you’re very proud of that.”

There’s an awkward beat. His head hangs for a moment while his thumbs stroke the sides of his cup. A strange pinch of guilt occurs. Did you overstep an unspoken line? But then he drags himself back to reality in a heartbeat.

Jaemin brings the cup to his mouth again, mumbling, “At least the sex on your part makes more sense now; you’re rusty as fuck.”

Completely aware of what he said, you trash your guilt entirely and narrow your eyes. “What did you just say?”

Following a long sip, he hums, “Mmm, nothing.” Soon after, he stands up with his cup.

“I’m gonna go game now. Feel free to watch Netflix on the TV and stay in the living room.”

As if you had anywhere else to go...  

He begins to walk towards his room as you mutter under your breath, “I’m not a dog.”

“Says the bitch,” he pipes up, taking you by surprise.  

“Thought we had a stalemate?!” you shout, leaning your head forward as you watch him entering his room.  

“Doesn’t mean we’re on peaceful terms!” he sing-shouts.

The flinging of the closed door echoes throughout the apartment.

Regret surges through you. You just had to choose a fuckboy fluent in assholery and end up incidentally being isolated with him during a snow storm on Christmas Eve.

You wonder if you can handle being around him for the next twenty-four hours without killing him first.

During the afternoon, you’re on the living room couch, playing a show as mostly background noise while you’re on your phone. At one point, your phone unsurprisingly begins to die and you tread over to Jaemin’s door to ask for a charger and if you can also take a shower. He’s still annoyed by your existence, but at least he hands you a charger and lets you know where the extra towels are.

Stepping into the living room with the towel in your hand as you dry your hair off, you peer out the large living room window and see nothing but white engulfing the streets and buildings as far as the eye can see.

You pray the snow will eventually stop as soon as possible so you can head back home.

By the middle of the afternoon, Jaemin emerges from his bedroom and shocks you by plopping down on the opposite end of the living room couch from where you’re sitting.

“Bored?” you ask, eyes fixated on the TV screen.

“Nope,” he replies, popping the p as he says it. His slings his arm around the top of the couch.

“Gotta keep an eye on you in case you do something.” Turning away from the screen, he faces you and motions circles with his hand. “You’ve got a little crazy in you, I can feel it.”

You quickly glance over at him, but try to refocus on the TV. “Need I remind you that you’re the crazy one, dragging me out of the apartment right as I woke up.”

That compels him to turn his whole body towards you. “Well, you’re the one who wanted a last-minute one-night stand.”

You match his stance. “As if I’m the first girl in your bed to stay in the morning?”

“Actually, yeah.” He aggressively tilts his head to one side. “Most girls leave before I even get up. The other percentage don’t fight me when I ask for them to go, so it looks like you’re the odd one out.”  

You press your lips together, refusing to admit that maybe he has a point, under the assumption that he’s telling the truth.

Jaemin twists his body back to the screen and adds, “I make it very clear on my profile that I don’t do morning afters, sweetheart.”

And you agree that his profile is clear about his intentions, but that doesn’t mean you can condone his shitty behaviour.

“Well, sorry that I expected just an ounce of respect instead of getting kicked to the curb after you stuck your dick in me,” you grumble, shifting back to the show and crossing your arms.

“Morning afters lead to attachments, and attachments lead to feelings, and feelings lead to relationships,” he says the string of words clinically, as if it’s a mantra that he lives by.

Your eyebrows knit together as you whip your head towards him once more, studying him.

“And what’s so wrong with that?”

Deliberately averting your gaze, Jaemin grates his tongue between his teeth, a slight tsk audibly heard, and his chin juts out. There’s definitely a story behind his ways. He huffs and changes the subject.  

“Seriously?” He holds a hand out. “You’re watching this trashy show?”

Squinting your eyes at him, you could probably interrogate him further, but you decide otherwise.  

“It may be trashy,” you concur, looking at the TV. “But it’s my trashy comfort show.”

Following an over-the-top acted out scene between the show’s main love interests, Jaemin shoots up from the couch.

“Yeah, no, I can’t handle this. Can we either put on something else or game or something?”

“Why don’t you go back to your room to game, Mr. I’m-Not-Bored?”

“Like I said, I gotta keep an eye on you,” he says while bending over in front of the TV, already setting up the Playstation. He tosses you a controller as he strides to his side of the couch again.

He mumbles to himself, “Need to make sure you don’t go crazy from the lack of human interaction.”

Either Jaemin is selfish and only looking out for himself, or he wants to make sure you’re not feeling lonely in a stranger’s home.

Likely the first reason, you deduce—because why would a guy like Jaemin care about a mere one-night stand?

Admittedly, you’re not the best at games, especially at fighting ones. You can comprehend the move lists, but you like to live by button smashing the controller and repeating moves over and over.  

So it’s hilarious when you beat Jaemin every round with your surprisingly fruitful technique.

“Okay, this is bullshit,” Jaemin complains, sticking his tongue out in irritation. His ass is currently being handed to him on a plate again since you’re almost done killing his character off. “You must be lying to me; you have to be a pro player or some shit.”

Jaemin’s health bar is dangerously low as your character jabs his with a sword. He winces out loud and you snicker.

“Why do you think I always lie about everything?! Dude, you have serious trust issues,” you joke before you steal the opportunity to slice his character. One more hit and he’s done for.

“I do not! I just—nooo!”

You rise to your feet and pump your arms in the air, turning in circles in joy over yet another win.

Sulking, Jaemin eyes your little dance from his end on the couch, but as he watches you more, a feeling balloons in his chest. Something he hasn’t felt in a long time.

Finally coming down from your post-win high, you spot an emerging grin from the corner of your eye, making you pause.    

“What?” you eye him suspiciously.

Your suspicion pops the sensation in his chest and, like a fish out of water, his eyes widen and his grin melts away.

“Nothing, uhm.” He ruffles his eyebrows and palms the back of his neck, quickly facing the TV. “Let’s go one more round and then we can switch to another game—”

Suddenly, the TV and surrounding lights switch off. Both of you waver your eyes, anticipating for them to come back on, but they unfortunately don’t.  

Jaemin rushes over to the window. When he swivels his head towards you, his face darkens.

“Looks like it’s at least the whole block. The streetlights are out too.”

Without another word, he dashes to the linen closet and brings back several blankets. He calmly explains that there won’t be heat since it’s connected to the electricity, so it’d be best to keep warm with the extra layers.

Not wanting to scare you, he doesn’t add the fact that due to the huge windows in the apartment, more unnecessary cold air will come in, but you’re already cognizant of it from your own logic and since the remaining heat dissolves rapidly.

You groan and retreat into the massive blanket over your shoulders, turtling your head.

You can’t believe you’re going to fucking die in this asshole’s apartment on Christmas Eve.

On the ends of the couch in your makeshift blanket jackets, both of you attend to your phones for a while.

From what people and the news outlets are saying, it’s not just the block, but the whole city grid is out. You frantically text your friends, giving updates on how you are and half-jokingly telling them that you’re going to die with your dreadful one-night stand. Some time passes and Jaemin tosses his phone  off to one side.  

“Well, since there’s nothing else to do and we should probably conserve our phone batteries—” You glance up at him from your phone and pout. Slowly nodding in agreement, you toss it aside too. “—why don’t we play a game of ‘I’ll-Give-You-Pointers-on-How-to-be-Better-in-Bed’?”

A smile burgeons on his irritatingly handsome face and your eyes roll. At this point, you wonder if the reaction is conditioned into you. “It’ll be my early Christmas gift to you.”

“Wow, so thoughtful, how could I ever thank you?” You drag the blanket closer to your chest in false gratitude.

You think for a serious moment if you really want to go through with this. Hearing Jaemin run his mouth on you unwarranted is already painful, but to give him the go-ahead to do so? Especially criticizing your skills in bed?  

You blow out a sigh, noting the slightly visible cloud. You’re grateful Jaemin has thick, downy blankets.  

Well, if you’re going to die, may as well know what went wrong, right?

“Fine, but if we’re playing this game, we have to say everything honestly and take the criticism we get.” You point a stern finger. “No rebuttals, just acceptance.”

“Wait.” Jaemin crinkles his face in genuine confusion as his hand peeks out from his blanket.

“You have things to criticize about me in bed?”

Your lips tremble before you burst into laughter. Displeasure is on Jaemin’s tight-lipped face as you laugh for a while, almost keeling over in your blanket ball onto the hardwood floor. “How conceited are you, oh, my fucking God?”

He slices his hand through the air. “I’ve never had any complaints—”

“Because you’re too busy focusing on your own orgasm, you selfish dickwad,” you say as your laughter dies down.  

He sits in his snit for a few more moments until he gets over it.

“Fine, fine,” he huffs. Jaemin knows he’s not going to enjoy this, but he’s the one who suggested it. He can’t back out now. “Let’s just get this over with, you go first.”

With your blanket held by your chest, you hop off your end of the couch and shuffle over in front of him where he’s seated. Beaming, you begin.

“Let’s start with foreplay.” Jaemin’s eyes light up with confidence, thinking he’s at least decent with that. You crush his expression as your lips purse and you shake your head.

“Non-existent.”

“What do you mean?! I kissed you as you took off your clothes.”

You stick your free hand out from your blanket, extending your index finger.

“One: you only kissed my lips. You know, there are other parts of me to kiss, like, I don’t know, my neck, my arms, my shoulders.”

You extend another finger. “And, two: it’s weird to not help someone take off their clothes. Like you’re in a super rush to get somewhere or something—”

“We’re fucking!” he cuts in sharply. “This is a one-night stand, not a relationship.”

Closing your eyes and dropping your head, you pinch the bridge of your nose. You sigh in exaggeration.

“Thought we agreed no rebuttals...” you softly sing-say.  

Jaemin’s head sinks a little into his blanket. “Sorry.”

Removing your hand, you shrug. “Maybe there’s some rule that I don’t know about one-night stands, so this could be on me.”

You start to aimlessly tread back and forth in front of him, dragging the blanket along too. “But fuck, foreplay is foreplay for a reason. You work your way up to the heat of the moment and it makes sex much better, regardless if you’re in a relationship with the person or not.”

“Next point.” You stop walking and direct your focus on him. Pointing your finger and looking him dead in the eye, you ask, “Do you know what a vagina is?”

He snorts with a simper. “Uhhh, is this a rhetorical question?”

“No, I’m legit asking,” you say with a raised eyebrow and snarky smile. “Because when you went down on me, all you flicked your tongue at was the outside of it, also called the labia if you didn’t know.”

“I’m premed, of course I—”

“Which is great! But you didn’t go any deeper nor did you go near my clit.”

You thrust your finger again. “Do you also know what that is?”

“Yes...” he groans with the flickering eyelids.

You swipe your arm through the air. “Maybe make use of it, and not only when you go down on girls. Even during sex, touching it is great.”

“And lastly,” you continue. “I’ll be honest here, you have a decent dick.”

Jaemin waggles his finger. “So you were lying before—”

“I wasn’t lying,” you retort firmly. “But anyways, you’ve got the stuff, but why don’t you put it to better use?”

With the following words, you attempt to gesture with your body and execute moves as graphic visuals. Jaemin giggles at the sight.

“Vary the speeds and the angle, don’t just slam it in me and go crazy fast from the get-go. Build up to the climax. Jesus, I couldn’t even get close to coming because you’re like a jackhammer from start to finish.”

When you finally finish, Jaemin’s giggles morph into hollow laughs. Frustration is blatant on your face, pondering if he even absorbed a single word you said.  

After he calms down, he asks, “Are you done?”

You mumble, “Yeah, I think so.”

The two of you switch places. He shuffles onto his feet with his blanket while you sit back on the couch.

Jaemin pulls the blanket across the floor as he ambles. “Okay, your head game is decent—”

“Excuse you, my head game is strong.”

“Uh-uh, rebuttal,” he points out.  

You sigh. Pinching your fingers together, you drag the invisible zipper across your mouth, then wave your hand, allowing him to resume.

“Your head game is decent. You definitely can deepthroat, but—” He mirrors you from before and extends his index finger.

“One: this happened only a few times, but your teeth scraped against my dick, which is why I assumed you were a borderline virgin.”

You fume silently at the accusation, attempting to not speak up with a heap of rebuttals. But he wasn’t wrong—if you teethed on his dick, that’s a classic virgin move.

“But that’s okay, because we already established that you’re just rusty.” Jaemin flashes you a fake comforting smile as he continues to pace. You flash him one back.

“And two—” He holds another finger out. “Don’t be scared to use your hands and stroke me. Give my dick some love. If it’s too wet, just wipe your hands on the bed or something.”

“Okay, duly noted,” you hum. “Next.”

“Don’t be scared to touch me.”

“I touched you so much during—”

He shoots you a glare. You roll your mouth inward, your lips disappearing instantly.

“Your hands were mostly on the sheets, which is hot, but guys like to be felt up too.”

The attractive individual peers up for a second, thinking to himself. “Even hotter when a girl feels herself up during the fucking, but that’s beside the point. Baby steps, just remember to touch the other person.”

Jaemin does a full-stop and faces you.

“And just... don’t fake it.” Distress is evident in his pout. You hate to admit it, but it’s a little cute. He raises an arm and jerks it in the air. “Why do girls fake it?”

“Because guys with egos like you can’t handle criticism,” you reply bluntly.  

“What are we doing, having this conversation, hm?”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it didn’t snow in and keep us here together.” You peel a hand away and gesture to the window. “If I walked out of here this morning, you would’ve just fucked the next girl the same.”

He defends himself, “Faking it just feeds our egos.”

“Yeah, well, if I told you afterwards that I didn’t come, what would you do?”

“Try to make you come in other ways?”

Shaking your head, you scoff. “Guys like you aren’t that considerate.”

“You’re right.” He assents, holding his pointer finger against his chest. “Because guys like me aim to please.”

A brilliant thought leaps in his mind and Jaemin gasps. You can only assume bad things from the wicked smile he sends your way.  

“Why don’t we try it again?”

Perplexed, you squint at him.

“Try what again...?”

“Sex,” he says enthusiastically.

You blankly stare at him.

“You’ve gotta be joking,” you deadpan.

“I mean, there’s nothing else to do and it’ll keep us warm.” 

You continue to stare at him until you groan.

“Oh, my God...” Your blanket droops a bit off your shoulders as you drag your palms across your face. “I cannot believe I’m stuck in this snowstorm with you out of all people...”

Sitting next to you, Jaemin persistently reasons with you. “Think of it also as another learning experience for the future partners we’ll have.”

“Yeah, if we don’t die first!” you shriek.

“We’re not going to die,” Jaemin replies in a mocking tone and a dart of his tongue.  

Outside the window, the snow seems to have slowed down, but not by much.  

God, Jaemin better be fucking right because you want to live to see another day.  

“Fine,” you mutter and match his gaze. “But we have to be vocal throughout the whole thing. Say whatever’s on our mind.”

“Fine,” he agrees to your terms. He produces the same wicked smile again. “But can we film it then? So we can study it after?”

You fire him a death glare that melts his face off, even in the frigid atmosphere.

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” he says, waving his hand.

They say that jokes are half-meant true, but you think Jaemin fully meant it. Still in your blanket jackets, Jaemin snags your free hand and leads you to his room.

“You gotta give me credit for trying, though.”

“No.” You shake your head with an unwilling smile creeping on the edge of your lips. On second thought, maybe the joke was a little funny, but you still stand by your opinion that he’s the most annoying person in the world. “I don’t think I will.”

“Thank God Chenle has so many scented candles...”

On the edge of Jaemin’s bed, huddled by the blanket, you watch him light up several large jars, placing them on his nightstand and desk in hopes to brighten the room. It’s already late afternoon, but one could mistaken it for nighttime with the muddy sky due to the snow.

“Is Chenle your roommate?”

“Yeah,” Jaemin answers with a slight shiver, igniting the last candle near the bedside. He removed his blanket when he went to nab the matches and candles. “His girlfriend gets free ones from work, so she always gives him a shit ton, even though he never uses them.”

With a glowing hue against his face, he blows out the match. He makes his way to you, a cocky grin plastered on him, as he says, “Guess we’re making use of them now, though.”

Before you can even respond, Jaemin gets right down to business—sitting beside you on the mattress, he palms your face and drags you in for a kiss. You softly yelp, but immediately reciprocate.

The cover falls off your body as you reach to touch him, fingers drifting over his solid arms.

You don’t want to stroke his large ego, and maybe it’s because you haven’t had anyone else on you in a while, but Jaemin’s kisses are something else.

The cushiony pair of lips always executes enough pressure against your mouth, increasing and decreasing on command in perfect tandem and timing. His hands hover over your waist and the nape of your neck, fingers sinking into your hot skin.  

His mouth trails downward the side of your neck. You crane your head back, indulging in his caresses as soft moans trickle out.

He gently signals for you to recline back and lay onto the mattress, moving the sea of blankets aside. Inclined on his elbow, almost atop of you, his cool fingers glide under your top layers, his thumb stroking against your stomach.

Pulling away from your body, he tugs on the ends of your clothes. You rise from the bed to better the angle for him to discard of them.

The hairs on your skin are standing on end from the frigid air, but you’re too focused on Jaemin’s mouth migrating over your upper arm and your bra-covered chest to care. Without notice, he stuffs a cup of the bra to one side and takes your bosom into his mouth.

Air’s seized from your lungs and your core contracts from the pleasure. Your fingers tug on Jaemin’s luscious locks and his free hand squeezes your unoccupied breast.    

After a few twirls of his tongue and a gentle drawing of his teeth on the pointed tip, he mumbles hotly into your chest while he thumbs your other nipple, “Foreplay still non-existent?”

“It’s better, I guess,” you sigh with fluttering eyes. His chuckling reverberates against your cleavage, a sign of amusement from your obstinacy. A gasp pierces the room as Jaemin repeats his actions onto the other breast.

He aids you in taking off the rest of your clothes and, obviously aware of your goosebumps and shuddering, tells you to get underneath the blankets while he strips himself.

Under the toasty ocean of layers, despite how both of you are bare-boned and how easy it is to jump into the main act, Jaemin purposefully continues to prolong the foreplay. Side by side, your lips meld endlessly; your legs and hands are intertwined in an amorous pretzel.

Jaemin ensures he doesn’t leave any part of you untouched—the pads of fingers virtually graze over every inch of your body. Each grip and drag of his digits sends you in a frenzy. Your chest is pressed into him and your eyes are blinded with desire.

In the back of your mind, you think about how you were right about foreplay working up to the heat of the moment—literally, because you’re dripping, he’s hard, and you two have embraced so much that you don’t need the blankets anymore.  

On the other hand, you wonder if Jaemin was right about skipping foreplay, because with every whisper of each other’s name, the intimacy rises immensely. You don’t know him, and neither him with you, but you’re both freely drowning in one another in a plane beyond the lust.

Although the room’s beginning to smell of a mix of all the scented candles, Jaemin hones in and drinks in your sweet aroma and your entirety behind his hazy eyes and already tousled hair. All of a sudden, one drag of his fingers over a particular sensitive spot on your body makes you giggle.

“I’m ticklish over there.”

“You mean right—” He drums his fingers over the area again. “—here?”

With a toothy grin, he generates more suffering from you and you begin to lively howl. Soon enough, you beg him to stop.

“You’re such an asshat, c’mon, let me live!”

When he ceases, his head hangs over yours and your gazes connect.

The same feeling blooms in his chest from before in the living room.

He gulps as his eyes waver over your face, unknowingly tracing your beautiful features and etching them into his memory.

Your starry eyes. Your glowing aura. Your everything.

You barely register the change in his expression because he quickly tramples on his moment of weakness by kissing you passionately.

Jaemin whips the blankets aside as he lowers himself between your legs. Your eyes are fixated on him, matching his stare, until he starts to devour you by swiping against your lustrous folds. Your back bows, and, following a few more licks, Jaemin makes a point of his knowledge of the vagina by spreading your lips and ravishing your pussy, tongue penetrating deeply.

Rippled moans release in harmony with your undulating chest. You swear you’re getting more wet, too wet, likely making it overwhelming for Jaemin, but he’s eagerly lapping every drop up.  

“How’s that?” he inquires with a grin, hovering over your trembling nether lips. His mouth is evidently glossy, even under the dim lighting.

“Good,” you pant in the most nonchalant tone you can muster up. “Very good-ahhh—”

Jaemin kindly interrupts you by tonguing your clit as he fingers your sex deeply, shattering your fake indifference.

“Move your tongue up more,” you direct, creasing your eyebrows in despair. He follows your direction, and droning moans ensue.

Jaemin’s immersed in your pleasure, but also adding to his own. The more he laps up your wetness, the more he grinds his length against the bed, aching to be inside of you.

Your desire pulses faster, contracting tighter against his fingers, body winding tensely by the second.

“Fuck, Jaemin,” you whine, leaning your head to one side with a parted mouth. “I’m close.”

He draws back and temporarily replaces his tongue with his thumb.

“Good,” he pants, cocking his head to one side. His eyes are filled with determination. “Because I’m not stopping until you come at least two more times tonight.”

You exhale a light laugh. “That’s ambiti-ohgodohgod—”

His tongue works wonders on your clit once more, so much that he has to brace your bucking hips.

Okay, maybe Jaemin did learn a thing or two and actually listened to what you said during your critique.

But now it’s time to demonstrate to him what you’ve learned.

You don’t need much of a break to catch your breath, nor do you want to immediately freeze due to inactivity, so you pull Jaemin in for an intense kiss, tongue dipping into the remnants of your own nectar, then beckon for him to take your former place on the bed.

Perched on the bottom of your feet, you’re on one side of Jaemin, lackadaisically fisting his prominence. After a few strokes, you gradually swallow his inches, keeping in mind to relax your jaw and to not rush in order to avoid any potential teething. You do this to prove yourself worthy of giving head, but also in spite, because you absolutely do not need Jaemin to brand you a virgin again.  

You read his quiet groans and his long fingers running lazily through your hair as a positive sign and advance further.

Carefully, you rest your tongue beneath the underside of his cock and bob your head, licking him until he’s sopping with your saliva. His grip in your hair grows in strength as his length reaches the end of your throat, his groans becoming more and more drawn-out.

A needy whimper leaves him as you suddenly withdraw. Dribbles of your spit follow, and you wipe it off with the back of your hand.  

“How am I doing?” you glow in a pant, lazily stroking the doused shaft.

He simply nods with half-lidded eyes, barely able to look at you. “Yeah.”

You snicker at him in his breathless position, a prickle of pride running through your spine over the fact that you blew his mind as much as you blew his dick.

“Use your words, Jaemin.”

Teasingly, your fingers curl around his blunt head, soothing the sensitive tip and sending jolts throughout him.

“Fuck—” he pulls his bottom lip upward. “Awesome. You’re doing awesome.”

“Anything to critique?”

“Mm-mm,” he shakes his head restlessly. You revel a bit more in having the upper hand on him a little while longer. You grip him tighter and hasten your speed, leaving him gasping for air.

“Am I still rusty?”

“Nope, nope,” he croaks, voice rising to a whine. “Definitely not rusty.”

“You sure?” His cockiness has transferred over to you.

“Yes, yes—fuck, slow down, please,” Jaemin begs.    

Granting his wish, you abate your rhythm and free his inches from your touch.

You wipe your hands on the sides of the bed while Jaemin rummages through the drawer of his nightstand and hastily rolls over the rubber over himself before he prepares to enter the body beneath his.  

Recalling your advice, Jaemin mindfully starts off slow. You sigh blissfully in sync to his thrusts. He adjust himself, attempting another angle, and you draw in air between your teeth.

“There, there—“

Jaemin’s quick-witted and keeps at it, plunging a bit more vigorously. Out of habit, your hands grasp onto the bedsheets, but you wittingly attach them to his frame. Hands grazing his neck, his firm pecs, and his taut muscles.  

“Touch-touch my stomach,” he orders in a hush.

You hands follow through and feel up the flexed valley of his abs. Feeling up evolves into desperate gripping and even the slight dragging of your nails.

“Your abs are so fucking hot,” you state thoughtlessly, eyes eating up the view alongside his cock disappearing in and out of you. “Jesus, fuck.”

“Yeah?” he rasps with that devilish smirk of his. God, you want to smack it off him, but not right now—not when you’re reaching euphoria. “You’re not just saying that?”

Oh, you’ve definitely stroked his ego now, but there’s no turning back. Truth spills from you on a whim.

“You’re a fucking masterpiece,” you gasp acutely.

You’re starting to wither away, yet, as if they have a life of their own, your hands drift away from him and find a new home atop your breasts.

“You make me feel so good, Jaemin...”

Jaemin’s eyes go wide. His mouth hangs at the lewdness of you touching yourself.

“Fuck, holy shit.”

His gaze doesn’t leave your ecstatic face or humming body for a second as you knead your breasts and tweak your nipples between your fingers. Your back arches further when Jaemin deepens his sweet, fulfilling thrusts. He’s holding himself back, not wanting to end this beautiful deed just yet.

The stimulation bursts over your body, both from your own doing and Jaemin’s.  

You plead, “Faster, please, faster.”

And he complies, but he also rubs your bundle of nerves, causing a tight knot in you to build up and your shallow moans transform into heavy screams. You clasp onto his back and claw at the protruding shoulder blades.  

“I’m-I’m—”

You clench, both with your core and your nails digging into him, but Jaemin’s unrelenting, capturing your second peak for the evening.

Instead of coming after you, he shockingly veers lower and closer to you and curbs his pace.

“Was that real?”

You respond with an exhausted nod. Oddly, the smile he shows this time isn’t arrogant, but warm and teetering the line of tenderness. His lips fuse with yours before they stray towards your neck. The passion stews as he sucks your tits, all the while lunging laxly into you.  

With an obscene pop!, Jaemin removes himself from your nubs.

“Ready for the last round?”

His fast thrusts, hitting you precisely in the best spot, cloud your already weakened logic, deterring you from making any response.    

Perspiration is blatant on both individuals. For him, his forehead glistens gorgeously with his damp hair. For you, the back of your bent knees are gluing together. Your bodies are about to pass out, but you both persevere until the end.

As you convulse and perish together in beautiful agony, coincidentally enough, the bulbs in the room and in the streets leap to radiance.

Together, you collapse onto the bed side by side, panting heavily and laughing.

“Told you we weren’t going to die.”

You turn your head to see Jaemin looking at you with a cheeky grin. In retaliation, you stick your tongue out.

By nighttime, it’s finally stopped snowing outside. However, the streets won’t be cleared until morning, at the very least.

But... you’re surprisingly okay with that.

In a turn of events, the sex inexplicably makes the two of you warm up to each other. There still is targeted banter and tension between you, lingering from before, but it’s less hostile and more playful.

During a fancy Christmas Eve dinner of microwavable pizzas, you poke fun at each other’s majors and discuss your respective hobbies in depth, especially his love for photography. Jaemin even asks if he can take a picture of you, claiming that the kitchen lighting actually looks nice on someone for once.  

“Is that how you collect the memory of your one-night stands? Instead of hanging their skins in your closet, you sweet-talk your way and keep all the photos of them?” you joke, referring to the video call from yesterday night. It feels like an eternity ago, but snowstorms tend to do that.

He chuckles behind the camera as he snaps a photo of you scrunching your face cutely.

“Yeah, but you’re the first one who has clothes on,” he says, glancing down at the photo on the camera roll.  

“Ugh, gross,” you cringe and take a sip of tea.

Jaemin doesn’t add anything further. He leaves out the fact that he never keeps any traces of his one-night stands, that you’re the first girl he’s taken a picture of in a while.  

After a few hours of more talking and even some gaming with one another, sleep is much needed. Jaemin offers an extra toothbrush and a sweater and pair of sweats to sleep in. You’re facing each other on his bed, noses almost touching.  

“It’s been a while since I haven’t had sex with a girl before I slept next to them,” he whispers, adjusting himself comfortably. The side of his face rests on his piled hands. “It’s kinda nice.”

You cover your mouth as you yawn, then lay your hand back under your head, reflecting the same position as Jaemin.

“You know, it might be my sleepiness talking, but maybe you’re not the worst person in the world to be stuck with during a snowstorm.”

A lovely chuckle echoes in your ear. “I’m glad you’ve had a change of heart.”

After a few moments, your eyes are fluttering to a close until he softly calls out your name.

“Hm?” you stir awake, but not by much.

“Do you...?”

Jaemin doesn’t know what’s gotten to him, doesn’t quite understand why the defences he built for so long are crumbling down in only a day of knowing you.  

And yet, something urges him to give it a chance.

Blowing out a shaky sigh, he anxiously intertwines his fingers with yours. You hum softly at the action and a small smile blooms on your face.

“Do you want to go on a date with me sometime?”

“Hm?” His question doesn’t take you aback as much as you would be if you were fully awake. But even in your drowsy state, you have quips in hand. “Jaemin, the notorious fuckboy and serial one-night stander, wants to go on a date?”

“Yeah,” he replies gently, brushing your loose hair out of your face.

Another yawn. “I thought you said you don’t want feelings and relationships and all that shit.”

His fingers trace your pretty jawline and shrugs. “One date doesn’t mean we’re going to be in a relationship, I’m sure you know that.”

You pause for a good two seconds, but the two seconds feel like forever for Jaemin.

“Mmm, fine. One date, just one.” You barely hold up your pointer finger. “And only because it’s Christmas tomorrow. ‘Tis the season to be giving...”

Relief washes over Jaemin in the form of a smile. Embracing the blatant feeling in his chest this time, he plants a light kiss on your nose and wishes you sweet dreams, even though you’ve already fallen soundly asleep.  

Sunlight pours over your eyes on Christmas morning.

Déjà vu peculiarly creeps up on you, but the only thing that’s the same as yesterday is waking up in Jaemin’s bed.

He’s next to you this time, deep in his peaceful slumber, instead of waiting for you to leave by his doorframe. The snow has finally stopped, and you think you hear the faint noises of snow plows outside. You inhale deeply and also notice the faded aroma from all the scented candles from last night.

The scenes of yesterday flicker across your mind. The incredible sex. The talking. The dinner. The interlocking of his fingers with yours.

The date he asked you out on.

You stare at him, watching him sleep with a sense of content.

Turning your body, you routinely check your phone, which is charging beside his. You have a slew of Merry Christmas texts from several chats and a few private messages from your friends.

Your attention falls on Jaemin’s phone when it lights up with a notification, likely texts from his friends and family too.

But that’s not what you’re focusing on.

Your heart sinks at the sight of his lockscreen.

It’s a picture of him and a girl kissing.

A twinge emerges in your chest and twists harder and harder.

Jaemin being a fuckboy, you can respect. People can do whatever they want with their lives.

But to cheat?

That’s unforgivable, and a true sin if there ever was one.

You scramble to dash out of there, careful not to make any noises in fear of waking Jaemin up. However, Jaemin’s sensitive to the sounds of the front door, so he rouses awake. His eyes flit open, noticing how you’re gone. He then sees his phone blowing up and adds two and two together.

With his phone in hand, Jaemin rushes to get on a coat and stuffs his feet into his boots, not giving a shit that he’s wearing his thin pajamas in the coldness. He’s bounding down the flight of stairs and onto the bright, white wonderland of the streets.

He swivels his head and catches sight of you almost past down the block, slowly trekking through the thick snow. Jaemin sprints, as much as he can, and hops towards you.  

He yells your name, making others on the street turn, but you don’t. You continue forward without looking back.

“Wait! I can explain!”

You’re trying to gain speed, but cardio isn’t your friend. Thankfully for Jaemin, it’s a close friend for him.

“I don’t wanna fucking hear it, Jaemin,” you grunt, hearing the rapid crunching of his shoes coming closer. “Get lost.”

“No, listen to me for a second.”

The boyish man grasps you by the arm and turns you around. You throw his arm away from you and he holds his hands in the air, letting you know that he respects your space. He drops his hands and sees that you’re seething, even worse than you were when he kicked you out yesterday.

“How are you going to explain your lockscreen with you kissing your fucking girlfriend?! Hm?”

“Ex,” he pants in clarification. “Ex-girlfriend.”

Your eyebrows mesh together in utter confusion.

“Okay? That doesn’t make me feel any better, knowing that you’re still hung up on your ex.”

Jaemin shakes his head and rakes a hand through his hair. You note the large clouds he exhales and how he’s barely wearing any clothes. A tinge of sympathy passes through you, wanting to give him some of your clothes for extra layers, but you smother that quickly in your state of rage.  

“I’m not hung up on her. Remember you asked me yesterday why I don’t want girls to stay the next morning?”

You cock your head impatiently, as if saying, “Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t want to attach myself to girls. I can’t. I...”

He lowers his head to one side. Shutting his eyes, a long puff emits from his mouth.

“She cheated on me.”

The snow plows in the distance can’t compare to the pumping of your heart in your ears. All the feelings you felt in the last day, but especially in the last fifteen minutes, jumble together in your head, making you feel uneasy and unsure of what to exactly feel or comprehend of the situation.  

But you do know one thing, despite the fact that you two barely know each other, the pained look on his face is real—that this is the untold story behind his ways.  

Jaemin lifts his head and holds out his phone for emphasis. “The lockscreen serves as a constant reminder that dating and feelings will and can fuck me up.”

Carefully, he steps a little closer to you and slowly cups your face in his shaking hands. You don’t pull away nor is there the same anger from moments before, so he daintily runs his thumbs over your cheeks.

“Until you showed me yesterday that maybe I’m willing to give it all another shot. Risk it all for fuck knows what, but you make it look like it’s worth it.”

He continues his ramble after adjusting some of your hair from the ongoing breeze.

“Sure, it’s Christmas today, but I don’t want you to say yes to going on a date with me just because it is. I want you to say yes because maybe you like spending time with me just as much as I like to spend it with you.”

You’re completely disoriented—your eyes are shifting everywhere but his eyes and your lips are quivering with no words coming out. He sighs understandingly. 

“Look, I know you’re probably having second thoughts and you don’t have to give me an answer right now. Think on it for as much time as you need, but I want you to know that I genuinely like you and I want to go on an actual date with you.”

He peels his hand away from your face and raises it into the air as if taking an oath.

“I, Na Jaemin, the notorious fuckboy and serial one-night stander, will devote to monogamy once again if it means I can date you.”

His hands grab yours, kisses the back of them, and then he presses one kiss onto your icy cheek prior to walking away.

“Merry Christmas,” he says with a sad smile. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”

Later that evening at your large family’s Christmas party, you take another dreadful gulp of your wine.

It’s the happy holiday season, but why does everyone feel the need to stick their nose in your dating life? Well, really, a lack there of.

“Why are you still single?” Layers of their voices resound the same question in your head. You take another swig.

Potential unsaid answers that you kept to yourself fly around as you swish the drink in your glass.  

Because you choose to be.

Okay, not really, but it’s the easiest answer.  

Because you haven’t found the right guy to get you back in the game.

What does that even mean? What makes the right guy even right?

The right guy? It’s someone who makes you laugh, someone who gives as good as they can take it, someone who wants you just as much as you do.

The cogs move in your head as you take one more sip before you finally come to the conclusion—  

Because you didn’t find the right guy until last night.

Despite the mess of today and yesterday morning, you realize that Jaemin is... actually sort of sweet. Annoying, yes, but he keeps you on your toes. It’s a plus that he’s easy on the eyes, but it’s a bigger plus that he’s even easier to talk to.

And if he can find it in his scorched heart to trust you, you can find it in your heart to trust him too.  

You quickly say your good-byes to your family and let them know you have other plans with friends tonight.

As the Uber rolls up to his apartment building, you realize you probably should’ve messaged him on Tinder, but it’s worth a shot to see if he’s home. Anyways, impulsiveness is a controlling entity, as evident from your Christmas Eve Eve’s adventure.

And in retrospect, perhaps Jaemin was the perfect pick of the crop after all.  

Someone’s entering the building and lets you in behind them. You take the stairs two at a time and hear booming music coming from his floor. At first, you assume it’s from other apartments, but it’s all coming from one—his.

Without a thought, your knuckle taps the door.  

A handsome figure that’s definitely not Jaemin opens the door. Behind him, you see a group of young men scattered around the living room, and some have a few girls tucked under their arms.

The man eyes you up and down with a spark in his eye. He’s not Jaemin, but he surely reminds you of him.

“And who might you be?” he asks.

“Who’s at the door, Jeno?” An unknown male voice hollers in a high pitch from the couch. He’s one of the guys with a girl attached to him.

You blink. “Uhm, I’m—”

“She’s with me!” Jaemin shoves the flirty stranger aside and tugs you by your wrist, making headway to his bedroom. He flips the light switch on and the door clicks shut.

“What are you doing h—”

You cut him off with a kiss.

An innocent one, at first, with hints of alcohol on each other’s lips. Your arms wrap around the other and the passion increases with the mingling of your tongues, each party tasting and confirming the specific drinks you both consumed tonight.  

Jaemin forces himself to pull away and presses his forehead against yours. “Did you just come all the way here to kiss me, or...?”

“Maybe I came over to ask... if I can stay with you for another night?” you playfully ask, fingers intertwining behind the nape of his neck.  

He chuckles heartily. His fingers sink into the sides of your waist. “Is my dick that great? The sex with me that amazing?”

“Mmm, that’s definitely a benefit,” you agree, fluttering your nose against his. “But I want more than that—“ You poke a finger to his chest. “—I want the man behind the dick.”

Your gazes converge, bringing you together as one.

“I want to go on that date with you. I want you, Jaemin.”

He flashes a megawatt smile that could compete with a million Christmas lights, but it fades suddenly and you’re unsure why he seems like he’s about to bawl his eyes out.

“That’s so beautiful, I might cry.” He brings a finger to his eye, pretending to shed a tear.

Oh, yeah—you’re definitely going to need to hire someone to constantly shove your eyeballs back into your sockets if you’re going to date Jaemin.

“Oh, shut up,” you whisper, yanking him in for another kiss.

Three dates later, including a memorable New Year’s Eve, you finally decide to rid of the Tinder app for good.

With his arm around you on his living room couch, Jaemin glances over your shoulder.

“Really? You’re finally deleting your Tinder?”

You snort in disbelief. “That’s gold, coming from the King of Tinder himself. When did you delete?”

He turns to face the television and shrugs coolly.

“Maybe I didn’t.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” you nod, eyes still on your phone.

“Nah, I’m kidding, I did.”    

You sharply turn your head.

“No way. When?” you press with narrow eyes.  

A shy smile emerges on Jaemin’s face as he picks his pants over his thighs.

“On the night of Christmas Eve, after you agreed to go on a date with me.”

[watchmegetobsessed]

Grammy Winner Husband - Harry Styles

a/n: okay, yall know im a suckr for dad content and i just needed to write this little fluffy thing. also MY BABY IS A GRAMMY WINNER IM SO PROUD OF HIM and also, Sarah and Mitch are gonna be parents???? my heart can’t take all this *sigh*

pairing: Husband!Harry / Dad!Harry x Pregnant!Reader

word count: 1.3k

masterlist

“Congratulations once again, Harry. This Grammy looks great on you,” the interviewer compliments the grinning man who still very much feels like he is in a dream and his phone could start ringing anytime, ending this ethereal feeling of becoming what was only a dream when he was just a boy.

“Thank you,” he cracks a humbled smile.

“How are you gonna celebrate? Popping all the champagnes?”

“Honestly?” he sighs. “I just really want to kiss my wife, that’s gonna be my celebration,” he chuckles shyly, making every woman close to him swoon at his sweetness.

He accepts all the congratulations, the little shiny golden award weighing in his hands, not letting it out of his sight as he makes his way to the back to change his outfit back to something casual instead of the bold statements he has been making all night with his boas.

“Good night, Harry. Tell Y/N I said hi!” Sarah runs a hand down his back, grabbing his attention immediately. She’s gotten rid of her leather bodysuit as well, wearing just jeans and an oversized t-shirt, but her bump is making an appearance in it regardless. Mitch is holding his girlfriend’s other hand, their bags occupying his other as he smiles back at Harry with proud, shining eyes.

“Good night, you guys. Drive safe and thank you for tonight.” Harry pulls her into yet another hug, careful not to hold her too tight.

“Good night, see you soon,” him and Mitch share a quick hug as well, patting each other on the back before stepping back. Sarah’s hand runs down her belly, an instinctive motion Harry has seen quite often lately and not just from her and it reminds him how badly he just wants to get home to you finally.

While most performers and winners are probably out for some celebrations, champagnes must flow all directions, Harry quickly loads his things in his car and heads home to the one person he would ever want to celebrate with. It’s late, way past midnight by the time he arrives home and he has a guess where to find you.

Being the angel that you are, you left the lights on for him so he doesn’t have to blindly make his way to the bedroom. He kicks off his boots, drops his bag to the couch in the living room, placing the award on the dining table before padding down the hallway, the muffled sound of the TV and the strobbing lights of the screen still on in there, illuminating the doorway. He pushes the door that’s ajar open more, his smile immediately widening as he sees you curled up under the sheets, the TV remote still in your hands, your phone lying on the pillow next to your head while you’re fast asleep.

You swore you wouldn’t have problem staying up this late, but Harry knew it was not gonna happen, especially because ever since you’ve reached your third trimester bedtime was moved to seven o’clock, no exceptions.

Harry takes a second to adorn the beauty he has the luck to call his wife, before he quietly tiptoes into the bathroom connected to the bedroom to quickly wash up and get ready to his way of celebration: holding his pregnant wife in bed, falling asleep smelling your shampoo and maybe feeling a few tiny kicks under his palms.

Following a speedy shower he brushes his teeth, washing away the taste of that one glass of champagne he allowed for himself, he has been very restricted when it comes to alcohol ever since you found out you’re pregnant. Partially because he wants to take solidarity with you, having to say no to a good wine whenever you’re out for dinner, or a beer you occasionally drank with him while watching a movie. But he also feels like alcohol would just take away memories from his brain he wants to cherish forever.

Lifting the covers he tries to slip into bed next to you as gently and quietly as possible so you don’t wake up, but the moment the mattress sinks in under his weight, your eyes flutter open, blinking up at him sleepily as you register what’s really happening.

“Oh shit, you’re back! I really wanted to be awake when you arrive!” you pout at him as his arms curl around you, pulling you to him gently, his smiling lips pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“It’s alright, baby. I know how tired you always are.”

“Yeah, but my man won a fucking Grammy! I wanted to jump at you the moment you walk in,” you giggle, nuzzling your head into the crook of his neck. “I’m so proud of you, baby. Congrats!”

“Thank you,” he smirks blushing softly. He is still not used to the title he has earned today.

“You looked so hot on stage, that leather suit was awesome,” you grin, cupping his face, turning it towards you so you can see his bright, shining eyes.

“Yeah? You liked it?” he shyly asks, his finger grazing on your belly, tickling you a little in hopes the little one inside is still up, or went to sleep just like his mommy. “Mm, loved it,” you grin, pulling him down for a sweet kiss, one he was waiting all night to finally get. “And I love you.”

“Love you too, baby,” he hums against your lips, his palm coming to connect with your bump. “How are you feeling?” he asks, nuzzling his nose against yours.

He knows how this third trimester has been on you, the swelling and back pains killing you but you never complained as much as he knew you could have. He admired your strength all through this pregnancy, from the way you handled morning sickness, all the mood swings and changes in your body to the point where you are now carrying a literal watermelon at this point, having left only three more weeks until the baby arrives.

“I’m good, a little hungry maybe, but what’s new,” you chuckle.

“You want me to make you something?” he asks right away, ready to get out of bed to make you a sandwich or bake you cookies even if that’s what you wanted. But you push him down back shaking your head at him.

“It’s fine, I can wait until the morning. I just want to kiss my Grammy winner husband stupid right now,” you grin before leaving a sloppy kiss on his chest, chin, nose and finally, his lips. Pecking your lips a few times he makes you lie on your back as he slides down and pushing your shirt up, his adorning eyes fall to your belly, hands coming to gently cup it.

“Hey there, little one,” he murmurs as he leans closer and kisses your stretched out skin just above your belly button.

“He hasn’t moved in a while, think he’s asleep,” you smile, fingers running through his curls as you watch him pepper your belly with more feather-like kisses. Harry has been ecstatic since you found out you’re having a boy, though he would have been just the same if it was a girl.

“S’alright, I’m just gonna wish him goodnight,” he smiles, pressing his cheek against your bump before he kisses it one last time, pulling the shirt back down over it. Climbing up he pulls you back into his arms, knowing how much you like being held normally, but since you’ve fallen pregnant, you’ve become especially cuddly, which he doesn’t mind a bit.

“I love you, H. So proud of you,” you huff, feeling your eyes closing. Harry grabs the remote and turns the TV off, placing it to his nightstand along with your phone before kissing the top of your head.

“Love you too. Thank you for being here for me,” he huffs, the smile never leaving his lips. He has never felt happier and more complete ever in his life.

“Always,” you whisper before drifting back to sleep.

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

[tmntxreader-fics]

TMNT Raph x Reader: Implosion

Summary: Anger and sadness are two sides of the same coin, who has a better understanding of that than Raphael?

Requested by Anonymous: Ciao amico! May I please request a platonic Raphael x gn! Reader where they come over to the lair one day and ask if they can borrow the punching bag to let out a lot of pent up anger before that anger gradually turns to sadness and they break down in front of Raph, and it turns out the anger was directed at their old landlord who sold their childhood home, forcing them to move away and Reader is just really tired and homesick. Comfort ensues, maybe some soft Raph?

A/N: THIS FIC IS LITERAL T R A S H IM SO SORRY I CANNOT PHYSICALLY EXPLAIN HOW BAD MY WRITING IS IN THIS 

Warnings: Cursing, Angst and typos.

The new apartment smells like rotting wood.

Aerosols, candles, diffusers, air refreshers- nothing fucking works. It's not as if that's the only issue, if only it were. There's the bathroom, the shower head leaks. The carpet in your room has staples to hold it.

The window doesn't lock.

The air conditioner spits out dust.

The kitchen shelves wobble.

This place is a structural nightmare and while you can bandaid the shower, step carefully in the bedroom and be cognisant of where you store your groceries- the fucking smell never goes away.

"Stupid fucking landlord," you mutter as you unpack this weeks shopping. "Stupid, stupid fucking idiot."

It's not as if you chose this place for yourself, being forcefully evicted from your home doesn't leave you with many options. If you had your way you would've fought to keep the house. You were born there, you had been raised there and your intent was to die there.

Not in this shack that's likely to kill you before you even manage to reach old age.

Reaching the bottom of the bag, you lean down to pack the last of the items. You were better off living in a shared house, it's cheaper and at least there's joint maintenance.

Before you can finish pondering your options for the eighth time today, a clatter and a searing pain in your foot interjects.

"You're joking."

The drawer you had opened and all of its contents are now haphazardly sprawled out across your feet.

Dropping everything in your hands you take a step back and stare.

And stare.

And stare.

"I'm coming over."

"Desperate to see me?

"I need your punching bag."

You glare at the familiar alley way, gritting your teeth at the darkness stretched out ahead. You've always hated this road, anything could be waiting in the shadows for an unsuspecting victim. It's not as though your fears are unfounded, it's not as though it hasn't happened to you.

There's a short silence, "you know my shit's yours too, when are you coming?"

"Now."

"I'm on my way."

You'd usually ask one of the brothers to wait for you by the grate, just to make sure it's clear. Of course they'd make fun of you, or at least Raph would, but you'd rather the brunt of his amusement than being snatched by one of his enemies. Again.

This time, it seems, Raph is late.

But you're not going to wait on him.

You push forward and the shadows consume you, swallowing sight and security. You’re not afraid, you can’t be. Not when such fury simmers beneath your skin. Not when you’re so volatile. 

Gripping the grate by the handle, you heave backwards. The scraping of metal on cement is both familiar and torturous. The smell that wafts up is even more so. 

At least it’s not the smell of rotting wood. 

You begin the climb down the ladder, ignoring the moisture spread across the iron. The pungent scent of the sewer never gets less disgusting, no matter how many times you’re exposed to it. 

“Couldn’t wait, huh?” 

Your heart leaps into your throat and in the next moment there’s the sensation of falling. 

A strong hand presses against the small of your back, keeping you suspended mid fall. There’s a pregnant pause as you catch your breath but you don’t say anything as you reach for the ladder and neither does he. 

With shaky legs you touch down on solid ground and look up at the grate. 

“How were you plannin’ on closing that?” 

You turn to scowl at him, taking in his shadowed image. There’s splatters of chalk across Raph’s cheek and smeared along his thighs. You assume he had been in the middle of a gym session and an intense one at that.

He clears his throat, ducking his head a little beneath your heavy gaze. “I’ll do it.” 

___

Upon arrival to the lair, you bee-line straight for the bag in his gym.

Raph watches you warily from behind, you’d barely spoken a word to him the entire way there. It’s unlike you and he hates the uncertainty. There’s no safe way for him to approach this and he’s not exactly the most comforting figure in the household. 

For a brief second he considers calling for back up. Leo, maybe? His level-headed nature soothes Mikey when he’s having a rough bout of sadness. 

A sharp grunt resounds across the top floor and Raph immediately quashes the idea of his brother. 

You aren’t just sad, you’re angry.  

He can help with that. 

But first, he needs to get you to talk. 

___ 

“Why’re you being a moody dick?” Raph snarks, leaning against the wall beside you.  

You can feel the amusement rolling off of him in infuriating waves. 

“Fuck off, Raph,” you pant, drilling another right hook into the bag. It absorbs the impact, jolting against the chain it hangs from. 

“You’re punching my bag,” the red-clad turtle reminds you smugly. 

“It’s about to be you in a second,” you snarl. 

He only laughs and somehow that irritates you more. What does he know? He’ll never be forced to leave the lair, and even if he did he’d have his family with him. 

What do you have? 

A shoddy apartment that smells of wood rot. 

Left, right, left, right, left, right. 

The landlord had no right, no fucking right. That was your home, it had been for years. You have nothing else, no one else. You’re a stranger in your own bed, a visitor in your own living room and a guest in your own kitchen. 

Left, right, left, right, left, right. 

You don’t know what to do, what can you do? Someone else made a decision and you have to deal with the consequences. Someone else had the power to turn your life on its head and it’s you job to grin and bear it. 

Left, right, left, right, left, right. 

You just want to sleep a full night without feeling lost. You want to be happy again. You just-

“I want to go home.”

Raph blinks. You’re panting, the words were so breathless he thinks he might have misheard them. 

“What?” He laughs incredulously. 

“I want to go home.” 

He can’t mistake them now. 

“I mean,” he shrugs, uncrossing his arms. “I can take you home if you want-” 

“No,” you snap, chest heaving as you glare up at him. Why doesn’t he understand? Why doesn’t anyone fucking get it? 

His golden gaze narrows instantly. “You got a problem, Short-Stack?” 

The words have an underlying threat beneath them, a barely restrained temper. You don’t care. You don’t care that you’re taking it out on him. You don’t care that it doesn’t make sense. You don’t care that you’re irrational. 

It’s not fair to him but nothing is fair. You’ve learnt that more than anything. 

“I said,” he pushes off the wall, “you got a problem?” 

Squaring your shoulders you open your mouth to respond, to yell. Obscenity after obscenity come to mind but nothing comes of it. Instead, it’s a breathless sob. It starts off small, akin to a hiccup. 

Raph’s eyes widen just as yours do. 

You don’t want to cry. Not here. 

You turn your head and your chest seizes in an attempt to suffocate the noise. Reaching for your bag you curse internally as your vision blurs. You need to leave.  

Before his mind can convince him otherwise he lurches forward. His grip is gentle but unyielding against your wrist. You look back at the fingers wrapped around your arm, then to Raph. 

“Stay,” He blurts, eyes pleading. “You’re okay.”

With that, you exhale shakily.

Then you break. 

But now, somehow, it doesn’t seem so bad. Not when someone is holding you, not when they let you cry. Not when you can see in his eyes that you were wrong and he does understand. 

He always does. 

[harry-writings]

The Happy Years

- The one where Y/n is unhappy in her engagement and finds an escape with her former lover

Part 1

Masterlist

(A/N) IM SO EARLY IM SORRY I KNOW I SAID 9PM BUT IM DONE SO MUCH SOONER THAN EXPECTED OKAY IM SORRY LOVE YALL <3333

-

Three years later.

The heaviest of thunderstorms hit the city of London by early morning, the loss of the sun and the gloom of the day leaving Harry bedridden for the first time in weeks.

He always tried his best to avoid days like this — trapped within his home, caged in memories that make every step he takes heavier than the last, wishing for just the smallest taste of salvation — because it’s when he’s left alone between these walls that the darkest parts of him come out, ravaging, feeding off of what’s left of him.

Rain reminds him of the day Y/n left. Thunder reminds him of Malibu. Malibu reminds him of all the things he ever used to do with her — on the bed, on the couch, in the hallways.

There’s no escape from what he’s done.

But when the time hits two in the afternoon and Harry still hasn’t gotten up from under his blankets, he decides that doing even the bare minimum with his day would be some sort of accomplishment.

He decided to get the mail.

And what a terrible decision that was, Harry thinks, as he sees an envelope addressed to him in unfamiliar handwriting by an unfamiliar name. Something about it upsets his stomach and throws him off key, knowing in his heart that he shouldn’t open it, but it’s heavy in his hands and he can’t ignore the temptation of it all.

Another terrible decision he’s made.

Please join us for the wedding of Alfie Lexington & Y/n Y/l/n.

Saturday, September 25, 2021 at 3:00 PM.

Dartmouth House. Mayfair, London.

The downpour feels like a drizzle compared to the cries Harry lets out as he reads the wedding invitation, his worst nightmare playing out right before his very eyes and if he wasn’t already so fucked up, he’d try his best to ignore it.

Y/n played her move. She wants him to strike back. She wants to win and watch him lose more than he already has. That’s all she has left of him.

His lips tremble as he sniffles, the invitation shaking between his palms as he lets reality sink in.

Y/n is getting married.

Y/n is happy.

Y/n is going to spend the rest of her life with somebody other than him — somebody that was once his friend.

It's unfathomable to him. The connection him and Y/n shared was unlike any other. They were drawn to each other instantaneously, their feelings of infatuation never once dying down because it was simply incapable of doing so.

They put each other first. They made each other better people, helped each other grow through all the droughts and winter days, and continuously found ways to become closer to one another. They were so comfortable and confident in their company, and so every day they spent together within those four years had never been anything less than pure happiness.

They were meant to be. He didn’t see it then, but he sees it now, and now that’s all he sees because everything he sees is her. 

To know that it’s no longer the same for her kills him from the inside out, because now she really doesn’t belong to him.

He lets out a sound that can only resemble what would be a whine and a groan made together, sobbing as he flips the invitation around, only to find another saved date he just doesn’t have the heart to see — an engagement party for all the invited to join.

He’s so overwhelmed with devastation that his brain becomes fogged, his body disassociating from itself as he rips the invitation apart, growling and screaming and wailing as he just keeps ripping it and ripping it and ripping it.

He’s destroying it in the same way it destroyed him until he gives up, slamming his fists down upon the counter, losing control of himself beneath all his pain and regrets. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to happen. This isn’t what was supposed to come from this life.

He’s barely surviving as it is.

And he just needs to see her again.

But he doesn’t know how he’d react once he does. Whether he’d want to kiss her, to hate her, to love her all over again, he doesn’t know. His entire world is collapsing and he doesn’t know how to save it from falling apart. He can’t take any more risks when it comes to her.

But what is love without fear and danger? What would it say about him if he were to walk away from this now instead of trying just once more with her?

So with a heavy heart and a sobbing chest, he doesn’t take his chances.

And Y/n simply just couldn’t believe the sight in front of her.

Harry is standing at her doorstep, soaked head to toe, shaking in his bones. His lips are a light shade of blue and his eyes an alarming shade of red, somehow wetter than the rest of him. And as the thunder rumbles beneath her feet and nearly sends her to her knees, it goes to show her that he really is here, standing at her doorstep, and it’s not just a dream.

And she must have been struck by the shock of his presence because her tongue is suddenly tied, her throat dry, her lips fallen open yet forgetting how to breathe.

She just looks at him, soaking him all in, trying to understand what exactly led him back to the biggest mistake of his life.

“Harry?”

“So that was your way of getting back at me?! After three fucking years?!”

Her mouth falls open in disbelief, her eyebrows furrowing in defense. How he could possibly accuse her of something she didn’t even do — considering she hadn’t made any attempts to reach out to him since the moment she left Malibu — makes her feel even more betrayed than before.

He should know her better than this. He should know her from the inside out at this point, but she supposed three years really is a long time, because she’s never seen this side of Harry before. He seems so different to her now.

“Don’t you dare come to my home and try to make an ass out of me! Since when have I ever been the kind of person to get back at somebody?!”

Harry stutters for a moment, his anger and jealousy and hurt blinding him from the truth that Y/n never goes out of her way to get even. Her heart is too big, but he can’t shake this feeling that the person who sent him the invitation was out to do him harm.

And nobody had more of a reason to hurt him than Y/n.

“So the wedding invitation, then? You had nothing to do with that?”

He speaks it condescending, as if he didn’t believe a word she said, but that’s not what it comes down to. It comes down to the fact that she has moved on and found herself somebody so much better than him, and he has no one.

She shakes her head as if to gather her thoughts, confused about how he even found out about the wedding considering Harry quit the firm just hours after he left Malibu, leaving him with no contact to anybody that had any string tied back to her.

“Of course I had something to do with the wedding invitations! I’m the one getting married!”

She pauses then, her cold demeanor dropping into something Harry wants to say resembles a hint of relief, but it’s much more cross than that, much more serious, and he doesn’t expect what’s coming next.

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Me getting married?” She speaks it through a small, bitter laugh. “I should have known the only way you’d fight for me was by being with somebody else. You never could stand being second to me, as ironic as that is.”

“I could give two shits about you getting married.” He lies through clenched teeth, his stomach sick at the mere thought of it. “But I do have an issue with you inviting me to your wedding after walking out on me.”

Her head snaps back up to him.

“Wait, Harry, what are you talking about?” She frowns, trying to make sense of it. “I didn’t invite you to the wedding.”

Why would she?

They are no longer friends, no longer much of anything, so for her to take time out of her day to sabotage anything but herself wouldn’t feel right to her. Besides, it was her decision to never speak to Harry again, she wouldn’t ever take her word back.

Harry frowns then, too, because she isn’t faking her emotions. She’d always been terrible at doing so, and the way her eyes scream and beg for answers can’t go ignored. He, again, feels like the absolute worst person in the world.

“Then who did?” He whispers.

There’s only one possible answer.

-

Seven months ago.

Alfie insisted that he and Y/n had a New Year’s Eve party. They’d never had one before, as Y/n much preferred staying in with a bottle of champagne and celebrating with a lobster dinner and late night reruns of The Honeymooners.

But Alfie was persistent. Very persistent. Too persistent. So persistent she had no choice but to give in, and she just didn’t understand why.

She didn’t understand it as days passed and all Alfie talked about was the stupid party. She didn’t understand it when he rented out one of the most expensive venues. She didn’t understand it when he laid awake the entire night before, too anxious to fall asleep. She didn’t understand it when he asked her to wear his favorite dress.

She wished that she did the moment it happened.

The clock was ticking.

“Five!”

Alfie reached for Y/n’s hand.

“Four!”

Y/n noticed something shift in the air.

“Three!”

Alfie reached his other hand into his pocket.

“Two!”

Y/n knew what was coming.

“One!”

Alfie dropped to one knee.

“Happy new year!”

It was every girl’s dream — the fireworks, the balcony, the view, the prince charming that would whisk her away to spend the rest of eternity together — yet it couldn’t have felt any more like a nightmare.

It wasn’t what she wanted. Not then, not ever before, not once during the span of their relationship, and time seemed to have stopped moving forward.

There she was, in the center of the universe as everybody stopped and stared, gasping and gushing at the sight of a man on his knees for a woman. An act of vulnerability, of love, of submission, yet it didn’t feel like any of those things.

It all felt so wrong.

She began to cry.

To everyone else, it seemed as though she was crying from happiness. Her devoted boyfriend of two years finally asked for her hand in marriage, to be the mother of his children, to spend the rest of their lives tied together by a vow, unable to be broken. So it was no surprise when everybody let out an awe of endearment, nobody (not even Alfie) knowing her well enough to distinguish the difference between her happiest and saddest cries.

Harry would have known.

And that was all it seemed to come back to in that very moment in time.

Harry.

What she would have given to feel his hands on her waist, blocking her body from view with his, taking her away from all the unwanted eyes on her fragile body. He would have done it in a heartbeat because he always did — he always found a way to help her escape her horrifying realities, even the sweetest of ones.

What she would have given for it to be him kneeling in front of her… this all would have been so different.

Her lover of two years was promising her a future, yet all she could think about was somebody stuck in her past, yet so heavily prevalent in her present.

But she couldn’t say no. How could she when everybody expected the answer he was looking for, ready to toast to the bride and groom? How could she when phones captured the beginning of the rest of their lives, ready to share for all to see?

But she couldn’t say yes, either.

She settled for a nod of her head.

The crowd cheered, some clapping, others clinking their glasses, lovers kissing. She only caught a glimpse of those celebratory moments before everything around her drowned in her tears, voices of congratulations so distant beneath her heavy, hyperventilated breaths.

Alfie embraced her, then, and she felt his laughs of euphoria rumbling in his chest as hers met his, and she couldn’t even pretend.

She rested her chin on his shoulder, her expression void of everything that she should have been feeling. And her eyes went blank as they caught a reflection of her through the balcony windows — the last time she ever saw herself for what she truly was.

-

That same day.

Y/n was a mess waiting for Alfie to get home.

Seeing Harry again filled her with so many different emotions, she didn’t know which one to start with. She wanted to cry, wanted to scream, wanted to destroy everything and everybody that dared get in her way, she wanted to disappear. Yet she had done none of it. All she could manage to do was pace around her bedroom, biting at her nails and getting lost in her scrambled thoughts, her mind and body moving at a million miles an hour, unable to be tamed.

This is precisely the reason Y/n never wanted to see him again.

He does things to her, he always has. She hardly has any control over herself whenever it comes to him and she fucking hates it. No matter how sad, how mad, how hurt or how upset, there was something about his presence that made her see past all of that. It saddens her how much she used to love it.

But her moods swing at her relentlessly, the sadness turning to anger because yes, she is angry. She’s angry that he still has this much of a hold on her, especially after everything he’s done, and she’s even more angry that he hasn’t yet apologized for it.

Because it was all getting better. The constant wondering about what he’s doing or who he’s with and the continuous string of thought always leading back to him was all finally falling into its place. She was finally finding her place.

And then her fiancè did this.

When she hears the bedroom door open, she hardly gives Alfie any time before she starts a fight, wishing nothing more than to take it all out on him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Y/n fumes, everything tainted red with anger as she looks into his eyes and feels nothing but hurt and betrayal. “Inviting Harry to our wedding behind my back?! Do you not remember what he did to me?! Do you not realize what you just did?!”

He frowns, not sarcastic or menacing, but he genuinely seems upset that she’d ever even ask him such a question.

“Y/n…” Alfie sighs, and she suddenly hates the way he’s always managed to remain calm in the most heated of arguments. She wants to start a war with it, to go for the kill, to make him crawl and beg and bleed for her forgiveness. “Of course I remember what he did to you, which is exactly why I did it.”

Her hands turn to fists.

“Are you kidding me?!”

“I wanted to hurt him for hurting you! God damn it, Y/n… after finding out what he did to you all I could think about was ripping him to pieces and that urge never left me, especially after we got together.”

He slumps himself down at the foot of the bed, loosening the tie around his neck, almost too aggressively. And if she wasn’t so out of her mind enraged, she would try her hardest to understand his side.

But there is no excuse for this. There’s no excuse for any of it.

“So now you use our marriage as a way to get back at him?!”

Y/n may not love Alfie the right way, but she had never stooped so low to treat her marriage like a weapon, ready to strike at any moment in time. It wasn’t something she used to inflict pain onto anybody else but herself, no matter how hard it had gotten.

And though she once believed their engagement meant more to him than it ever meant to her, she can’t help but feel as if that’s just another lie she’d been forced to live with.

He went behind her back deliberately to hurt somebody even she never intended on hurting. He knew what was to come of this and yet here he is, letting it all happen for satisfaction’s sake.

It feels like all she will ever be is used.

“Is that what this is to you?! A point on your scoreboard?! A big ‘fuck you, i won!’?”

“Isn’t that what this is for you?”

“Don’t you dare turn this into my problem.” She spits through clenched teeth, punching at the dresser beside her with the side of her fist, face burning with fury. “I’m not the one sending him our wedding invitations!”

“And I’m not the one staying up past midnight scrolling through pictures of him on my phone!”

Her mouth shuts then, her hard and pressed features softening at the unexpected turn of the conversation.

She had been looking at pictures of Harry almost every night since Malibu, she just never expected to get caught. She could physically feel Alfie fall asleep against her, so she always waited thirty minutes before she took her phone out, looking back at everything that once was.

It was the only thing she ever truly wanted.

It’s what she kept going back to — a habit that came as naturally as telling her best friend about her day, about her perspectives on the world, about the lack of guidance in her life — like a phone call at the end of the day as a way to unwind.

She had make believe conversations with him as she scrolled endlessly through her favorite photo album, the thickness of his accent engrained in her mind as she thought of everything he’d say to her if he were still around. And if that wasn’t enough, she’d live vicariously through the memories they made together and replay those moments all night, until they lulled her to sleep.

“I told you from day one that —”

“That you’re never going to let him go, I know. I know that he was the love of your life at one point but this is just pathetic now, Y/n. Absolutely nothing short of pathetic.” She frowns, his choice of words making her heart sink because he knows exactly how to do it. And he sighs, rubbing his hands up and down his face as if he were in agony. “I didn’t know this was the kind of shit I was signing up for.”

Her eyes brim with tears but don’t offer anything more, only upset that he couldn’t find a way to understand her when she’s trying so hard. But he never has and he never will — not in the way she needs him to and not in the way that could ever make this work.

“I’m not sorry for what I did.” She confesses sadly, her bottom lip between her teeth and fingers picking the skin around her nails as she tries, yet again, to make him see. “He was my best friend before he was anything else to me. There was a time in my life where he was all I had.”

And though her heart is still with Harry in every aspect of every way, it’s true. He was her best friend and that’s what she misses the most. There was so much to him that meant so much to her and none of it could ever be replaced, not even by Alfie.

“You know I love you but you also know I'm not the same woman you fell for in Malibu. I’m my worst self when I don't have him around and your favorite parts of me don’t exist without him. Don’t pretend like you don’t see that.”

His hands twitch against his lap, his shoulders slumping because it’s true. The most lively and brightest parts of herself had died the first step she’d taken away from him that night. Sure, she’s still the most resilient and beautiful woman Alfie had ever known, but she’s never been the same since then.

She’s still in love with him and there’s nothing for him to do about it. He didn’t see it until he saw the way she sulked over Harry that night, all those years later, with a diamond ring on her finger that just seemed to weigh her down even more.

None of this means anything to her.

“It’s been three years, Y/n. Just find yourself a new best friend and move the fuck on already. I’m getting sick and tired of this.”

What he doesn’t understand is that she is, too.

-

Two weeks later.

Y/n shouldn’t be this alone at her own engagement party, but it’s the impossible things that always manage to find their way to her.

The party consisted mostly of Alfie’s friends, considering Y/n is much more of an introvert than he is and the small number of friends she does have seemed to have disappeared within the sea of unfamiliar faces. She felt lost for a moment, but when she finally found her fiancè, he had been too invested in his own friends to spare her a single one of his glances, and it soon became disheartening to wait for him to acknowledge her when the thought of her never once crossed his mind.

So she ends up on the steps of their back porch, sipping on a glass of champagne, overlooking the garden, breathing in the silence.

She closes her eyes and succumbs herself to the summer breeze, wondering what she has to do to find a single glimmer of happiness. Her life is just so sad, a labyrinth of betrayal and hurt and heartbreak she can’t ever escape.

Darkness is all she sees when she thinks about her future. There is nothing for her to look forward to. Every day will come and go the same way it has been — unwanted, dreaded, wasted, another failed attempt of contentment. It all seems so hopeless to her now.

The champagne doesn’t stand a chance when it comes to a lonely Y/n, and it isn’t nearly enough to curb her mood, either as she huffs at her empty glass, wishing she had taken another.

She sets it down next to her, placing both her elbows on her knees, getting lost in her world of sorrow, long forgotten by her lover.

Harry is the first one to find her.

He had parked his car across the street from her shared home with Alfie, and even from his distance he knew Y/n wouldn’t be inside. He knows her too well to know she wouldn’t find her place in crowded rooms where the attention is all on her, even if it was all in the comfort of her own home.

And the fact that Alfie didn’t know her senses of belonging well enough to accommodate them made him seeth. She is an independent, a lone wolf, a woman who moves solely in her own way and anybody who’s ever loved her knows that above all else.

He doesn’t care for her.

And he doesn’t need to go looking for her because he can feel her, as if the universe somehow bent its laws of gravity and pushed him straight to her back porch steps, where he finds her all alone.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when she feels a hand fall softly on her shoulder, but immediately sinks into comfort when she sees that it’s Harry moving to sit beside her, his hand refusing to pull away.

Finally, she has a friend.

“Hey.” She says softly, one of the corners of her lips turning slightly upward at his unexpected visit. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

He smiles briefly at her before he overlooks the garden, his fingers squeezing at her shoulder before resting his palms over his lap. And there’s something about being next to her again that makes everything around him fall back into place. This is where he’s meant to be.

“Honestly, neither did I, all things considered.” They both let out a chuckle, the atmosphere between them so horrifically sad yet so incredibly right. “But I just really felt like I had to be here for you tonight.”

Despite the years that had passed and everything that drove them apart, Y/n remains who he loves most in this world. His connection to her never died, so the sudden gusts of off and disturbing feelings Harry used to get whenever Y/n was troubled had never left him. He felt it all just as strongly — her anxieties, her fears, her tears and everything in between. And he’s glad that part of them never died because the look in her eye tells him everything he needs to know.

She’s absolutely miserable.

She sighs, the corners of her lips falling as she stares at her engagement ring, her thumb and pinky twisting it around her ring finger, itchy and heavy no matter which way it's worn.

“Me and Alfie aren’t doing so well.”

She didn’t have to say it because he can already see how treacherous they are together, but that doesn’t make it any easier for him to hear.

He lost his right to be selfish with her in Malibu, and though he does gain a sense of happiness knowing he may have a chance with her again, it’s significantly outweighed by her sadness. Nothing had ever pained him more than that.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shakes her head, her fingers reaching up to tuck fallen pieces of hair behind her ear.

“Don’t be. I don’t really know why he decided to do this, anyways.”

Harry’s lips fall.

“Marry you?”

Y/n’s leg begins to shake, her greatest and most absentminded nervous habit. And Harry had always been quick to place his hand over her thigh and rub at the surface, meeting her eye halfway and taking a deep breath in, to which she would always follow. He hesitates to do so tonight, but settles for it anyway.

She looks appreciative beneath it all.

She’d forgotten about Harry’s subtle favors over the past three years, so to feel it all again when she has been so low and neglected feels like a blessing to her. It feels like somebody finally cares for her, and that’s all she had been wanting all along.

Harry, she feels, is the only one who ever truly has.

“We just never talked about it. It was this big, ginormous, unavoidable, life changing question thrown at me with no warning at all.” Her forehead falls to her palms, as if humiliated by the memory. “In front of everybody.”

Harry’s heart crumbles from within him because nothing Alfie has given her has been anything she’s wanted, and that’s not what she deserves.

He remembers it so distinctively now — the way she poured her heart out to him just a few months before Malibu. It was the third Valentine’s Day they’d spent together and Y/n got so drunk, she spent nearly the entire night venting to him about everything she’d feared when it came to her future relationships.

With her head on his shoulder and her leg slung over his hips, Y/n’s thoughts were so destructive, she couldn’t bear to entertain them any longer, so she decided to let it all out.

“And what if my boyfriend proposes to me in a room full of people? I’d drown in sensory overload. And what if I want to say no? Or maybe? Or yes, just not right now? With all those people looking at me? I think I would pass away.”

Harry looked down at her in subtle curiosity, his fingers playing with her hair in the way they always liked. She was the only thing in his sight that wasn’t spinning out of his control.

“So how do you want to be proposed to?”

She hummed, as if contemplating her answer. But she knew. She already knew.

“In bed, probably. It’s so intimate and private there. So non-traditional. You’re the most done down at your first hour and something about someone wanting you at your worst, forever, is so poetic.”

She looked up at him with doe eyes merely seconds after.

“Will you make sure he does that for me, please? Promise me you’ll try.”

He smiled the best he could at her, pressing his lips down to her forehead. They lingered there for a moment, and Y/n’s breath was taken away.

“I’ll make sure of it.”

What makes the memory even worse was how much he really did love her and how blinded he was to it. He kissed her. He held her. He played with her hair. He slept beside her that night. He kissed her again goodnight. He brought her breakfast in bed the next morning. He did it all over again.

It couldn’t have been any more obvious.

But there’s something about the way she hasn’t expressed any of those concerns with Alfie that doesn’t sit right with him. It just doesn’t make any sense to him.

“Been with him for how long now, two years? And you really didn’t expect him to propose to you? Have you met you?”

She sulks herself deeper into her knees.

“I don’t know. I guess — I guess I just never really thought about it.”

Never thought about it?

“But you’ve always wanted to get married.” He says it more like a question than a statement, genuine concern and confusion in his tone of voice as his eyebrows furrow, trying to comprehend it.

She looks up at him with a void, empty expression.

“Yeah, but never to him.”

Her eyes linger on Harry’s for just a beat longer — just long enough to catch a glimpse of the way his lips fall and the way his face drains of color — before she blinks away from him, turning her gaze back toward the garden. The flowers have never looked so lifeless.

“Y/n… if I had known how you felt, I —”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Y/n shakes her head, looking back down at her trembling hands, tears now burning in her eyes as the sudden sadness of the conversation starts to weigh down on her. “You had four years to feel the same for me and you never did. My feelings would have done nothing to yours.”

“And I never did?” Harry asks incredulously, his voice low and faltered behind the heaviness of her words. “Is that really what you’ve been living with the past three years?”

Loose tears begin to fall down her cheeks because yes, she has been living with his unrequited love for six years and no, it’s never gotten any easier. It’s pathetic and ridiculous and the most unexplainable form of grief she’d ever carried, but it’s the most devastating kind. “How could I think any differently?”

“Because it was real, Y/n. Fuck.” He lets out a strangled, dry chuckle upon his words as he runs his shaking fingers through his hair. He’s nervous, absolutely terrified because if he fails to show her how deeply he feels for her now, he may never get the chance to again, and losing her is no longer an option for him. Not when she’s so close. “Because you know me better than anybody else and you know I wasn’t faking it with you. How could I have been? You would have seen right through me and you know it. You always do.”

Perhaps the love blinded her. Perhaps her heart was so invested it deceived her to see only the things she wanted as a subconscious form of self-preservation. It’s not an impossible possibility, and it’s certainly one she believed in throughout all this time, but a part of her can’t help but find a hint of truth stuck somewhere between his words.

The kissing, the touching, the tasting, the laughing and the loving did feel real to her. It felt real when she saw the way he smiled after every one of their kisses, and the way he reached for her when it was just to two of them, like he couldn’t get enough, and the way he moaned against her, and the way he told her he loved her, like he meant it.

She knows all of his movements and all of his habits — knows all the signs of his stress, his sadness, his tension, his ease. She knows the emotions he wears and the ones he doesn’t, notices everything he does and doesn’t do, and never once did anything he did with her seem anything less than genuine.

She hates that it’s taken her so long to see that, but it doesn’t fix all that he had broken now that she does. She wishes that it could, this life would be so much easier for her to live.

“You really hurt me.” Her voice quivers, low and quiet as she speaks her truth, and it breaks his heart all over again. Never has he heard her sound so sad in his life, and it’s all because of him.

“You think I don’t know that? I hate myself for everything I put you through because you didn’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve any of it.”

He pauses, waiting for her to say anything else, but it doesn’t come. All there is for her to offer are her silent cries and waterfall eyes.

“That night with Lydia… nothing happened. She caught me off guard and I panicked because how could I not? She was giving me everything I thought I wanted yet all I could think about was how I wanted it to be you.” Y/n’s breath falters then, a knot forming in her chest as she revisits the sight of that horrific night. “I tried so hard to talk it out with her, but she wouldn’t let it go. She kept persisting and persisting and she didn’t give me the chance to explain myself before you walked in on us.”

She didn’t truly know what happened between him and Lydia, but she had her ideas. Whether they kissed, touched, confessed their love or crossed bases, the truth would have only made it worse for herself. Ignorance was bliss when it came to them.

But she didn’t think nothing happened, either, especially when the first words that Y/n heard Lydia say to him that night was I love you, too.

Too.

Too.

Too.

Like he said it first.

She really hopes he didn’t, but she’s so afraid of his answer that she doesn’t ask.

But she doesn’t say anything else, either, because there’s so much more she needs to hear from him but she doesn’t know where to start. She doesn’t know what to do, yet she wants to know everything.

“You were all I ever wanted and I’m so sorry for the way I had to find that out. I’m so sorry that I had to hurt you to realize how ridiculously in love I am with you.”

And how ridiculous it’s gotten.

“It haunts me. It follows me everywhere I go. Every morning, I think about the way you slept beside me in Malibu and how perfect you looked before you even had the chance to wake. I still reach for you even when I know you’re not there just so I can say I tried. Every time I walk the street, I somehow convince myself that I see you walk past me and I always turn back just in case I missed you. Then I spend the rest of my day wondering where you are and how much happier I’d be if you were with me.”

And it’s all so true.

She is around him at all times. Her spirit lingers in the air he breathes, her shadow alive in every ray of sun that touches his skin, unable to be soaked away. The ghost of her is everywhere he is, always, and it pained him just as much as it comforted him.

“I come across all these women and go on all these dates in hopes to find someone that makes me feel half the things you do, just to go home hours later and watch all the stupid videos and photos I’ve taken of you throughout the years because it’s you that my heart is after. Nobody else.”

She melts into herself at his confession.

To know it wasn’t one-sided — the longing, the missing, the wanting so bad that he couldn’t help but look back at all their memories together. Whether he was beside those women or not, she had done the very same thing, and it’s almost as if those hidden moments of desperation were a silent call to one another.

He reaches his hand to her thigh again, his skin warming her to her bitter core, setting a fire in her that had burnt out many years ago. And she doesn’t stop staring at it.

“I love you, Y/n. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything else in this world. I love you so much that it drove me crazy to think about you spending the rest of your life with somebody else because I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of mine without you. But that’s my heartbreak to live with, not yours.”

But it is. It is because he’s the only one she’s ever wanted and living her life with someone else was once unimaginable. It still is. Even through her relationship with Alfie and everything they’ve built together, it wasn’t ever the same.

And it’s not a matter of her not loving him, because she does, just not in the way she loves Harry. He is a high she constantly fiends for, an intoxication that keeps her wild and free, an addiction like no other. Being without him makes her feel sober — in a constant state of withdrawal, falling down deeper into her urges, dependent solely on her relapses — and Alfie is just the mild distraction.

All of this is her heartbreak.

His fingertips rub softly at her leg.

“You’re the best person I’ve ever known. I don't know how I’m ever going to find a way to move on from you, and I don’t know if I ever will, but at least I had the chance to tell you everything you deserved to know. I didn’t think I’d ever have it.”

She still doesn’t answer him, but he didn’t expect anything more.

He wishes he could stay with her for just a bit longer, but he doesn’t want to overstay his welcome (if he could even call it that). And he starts to cry as he thinks about leaving her alone again.

She’s forever going to be his hardest loss.

“I have so much more I want to say to you, but this is your night with Alfie. I don’t want to be the one to hold you back from it.”

He squeezes the top of her thigh, dreading the let go. This may be the last time he sees her or speaks to her for a while, and that in itself is enough to make this so much harder on him.

“I’ll miss you everyday.”

He can’t even look at her as he says it.

His eyes are flooded with sadness as he stands from where he sat beside her, shaking fingers wiping at his tears, his heart the emptiest it’s ever been yet his chest heavier than ever before.

It suddenly dawns on her that she never wants to see him walk away from her again. She doesn’t want to go another dreaded day without him beside her, or go the rest of the night thinking of everything she could have said, but didn’t.

She wants him. She loves him. And she doesn’t want him to go.

“Wait.” She grabs his hand in both of hers before he can make it too far, her eyes wet but the brightest he’d ever seen them. “The party doesn’t end for a while and — and Alfie hasn’t come looking for me since it started, so…” She hesitates, his hands still in hers, and everything is right in the world again. “Do you want to take a walk with me? It doesn’t matter where just, please stay here with me?”

And how could Harry ever say no to her?

He lifts her up from where she sits, the first real and genuine smile he’s seen out of her since they’ve reunited spreading on her lips, and he wouldn’t trade this for the world.

They stray further than expected, catching up on everything they’ve missed throughout the years. It all feels so easy and so right, as if time had hardly passed between them, yet they’ve never felt more apart. Never once did they expect to live in each other’s world through late night storytelling and clandestine getaways.

They laugh. They cry. They reminisce. And they don’t let go of each other’s hand the whole night through.

-

Y/n returns to the back porch a couple hours later, grabbing the finished champagne glass she’d left on the top step to seem as inconspicuous as possible. Not that she necessarily has to, she doesn’t feel as though she’s done anything wrong, she just couldn’t imagine what would come from this if Alfie was to find out.

She slides the back door shut quietly behind her, the remaining guests only giving her a small smile of acknowledgement, none at all suspicious. Some offer her hugs and mingle with her, congratulating her as if it were their first time doing so, telling her how perfect of a marriage she and Alfie are going to have.

If only they knew.

But it isn’t until the last of the lingering guests make it out the door that Y/n and Alfie are left alone — the most dangerous place for them to be. And neither of them speak a word to each other, just meeting eyes for a brief moment in time, as if avoiding everything else that came with the night.

The air is heavy, the chill brutal, but it’s what Y/n is so used to. This is her normalcy.

“I’m glad you had fun tonight.” Y/n says plainly, gathering all the littered champagne and wine glasses floating around the kitchen.

In any other circumstance, she would have stood her ground much more strongly, but the bitterness inside her subsided to something much sweeter after her time with Harry. The weight of the world is gone, it seems, the moon and sun and stars aligned perfectly in her universe. She is weightless, floating, her spirit dancing along the edges of her own personal heaven.

The silence Alfie responds with doesn’t strike a nerve like it usually would. It rather goes unnoticed, only furthering her into her illicit dreamland.

Harry’s touch lingers on her skin and she can feel it all the same even though he’s gone. A shiver runs down her spine as she thinks back to the way his lips pressed against her cheek before parting ways, muttering the quietest goodnight, lovie against her skin, leaving her breathless.

She is endlessly hypnotized by him, forever under his spell, as if his lips were made of magic.

And Alfie’s heart sinks when he sees the look on her face. It’s been years since he’s seen it, yet it’s all so familiar once he does. It’s the same look he fell in love with when he first met her in Malibu.

It’s all so clear to him now.

“So we’re just going to pretend that you didn’t leave our engagement party with Harry?”

Y/n lifts her head to look at him properly for what seems to be the first time tonight, his question catching her off guard since she had so rightfully assumed he wasn’t concerned about her whereabouts, and Harry didn’t make his presence known to anybody but her.

But she doesn’t fight it, doesn’t deny it, doesn’t try to scrape for excuses that’ll only dig her in deeper because she doesn’t regret what she did or why she did it. She has no reason to.

“And we’re just going to pretend that you didn’t completely exclude me from our engagement party?”

Alfie’s hands slam against the kitchen counter, a bitter and sarcastic laugh falling from his lips, as if she had said something untrue. “So I don’t give you attention for two minutes and you decide to run off with some other guy?”

“Two minutes? Try two hours on a night that was supposed to be for us.” It’s her turn to slam her hands down, except hers land on her thighs. “I was sitting on our back porch all night and nobody, not even you, came looking for me.” She sits down on the island stool with burnt-out eyes and heavy shoulders, drained from the reality of their relationship, tired of trying for somebody that’s never held her heart the right way. “Harry was miles away and even he found a way to find me.”

And just like always, it all circles back to Harry.

She’s never been one to compare — verbally, at least — so there is a gloom that hovers over her after she says it, the guilt settling in her bones, but it’s the reality of their situation. An old lover held his hand out to her while Alfie refused hers, and it ended up exactly where it had always belonged.

“All you had to do was ask me to be with you.” He sighs, depleted, because it’s true. He would have been there the second she called his name. It’s the fact that she didn’t that shows him how incompatible he is with her wants.

“I shouldn’t have to.” She frowns, fingers fiddling with the skin around her nails as she contemplates what there is to say next. “Is that how this marriage is going to work? Me begging you to be there for me all the time? Because I’ve never been that kind of person. I will never be that person.”

Alfie breathes heavily in response but doesn’t know what else to do or say to get her to stay. She’s slipping right through his fingers and he can physically feel it — can feel the way she feels for another man, can see the way her eyes refuse him, as if hiding away from something.

But this isn’t about him, it can’t be because it was all going so well, so much better than ever before and nothing ever pushed her away, until Harry.

This is all him.

“You know he doesn’t love you, right?” Alfie breaks the silence, her heart along with it, because she needs to be reminded how badly he had done her wrong. She wouldn’t be turning him into the villain if she did. “He lied to you. He used you to get what he wanted. He —”

“He does love me.” She interrupts him because she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want him to talk her out of this, no matter how much she should. But it’s on the tip of her tongue, almost breaking from its resistance, and she can’t swallow it back down now. “He was there for me more than you were tonight and he’s not even the one I’m engaged to.”

Another deafening silence.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He understood her, loud and clear, but she’s speaking between the lines. There’s a part of her that’s holding back from something and he already knows what it is, he just needs to hear her say it.

So she does.

“I’m in love with him, Alfie.”

If the confession of her disloyalty wasn’t enough to tear her apart, the choked back sob she heard from Alfie undeniably did so.

She shuts her eyes, pained, unable to take it.

He doesn’t deserve this, but she’s left with no choice. She’ll only hurt him more if she stays.

So she doesn’t.

-

The morning after.

Harry didn’t know what was to come after he confessed his love to Y/n — whether it be a new day of a new life away from her, or the beginning of something so beautifully timeless, he had no idea.

The closure warmed him enough to lull him to sleep, to keep him deep in a dreamstate where all he envisioned was sunny days and the touch of her hand in his. He had never felt so light, so free, so liberated from the cage of guilt and unspoken truths that even if he were to never see or hear from Y/n again, it would have been okay.

He said what he needed to say, she heard what she wanted to hear and that’s all he could have done without interfering with her relationship.

But what he wakes up to is far from anything that ever crossed his mind.

Seven missed calls and five text messages. All from Y/n.

H, please tell me you’re awake. I need you.

I ended it with Alfie.

I don’t have anywhere to go and you’re the only person I want to see right now. Can you meet me at the coffee shop? I really need to talk to you.

Please wake up.

H?

Harry sits himself up in a state of panic, his eyes jumping between the time she had messaged him last and the time it is now. And he springs himself out of bed when he realizes that he hasn’t missed out on her yet, planning to get to her as fast as he can as he throws yesterday’s outfit, not at all caring about how it makes him look.

She ended it with Alfie.

He’s the only person she wants to see right now.

She needs him.

That’s all he can process as he scurries down the street, thinking of everything he has left to tell her to try and win her heart again. He knows he’s undeserving of it, and she does too, but that doesn’t stop him from loving her the way that he does.

His life is meaningless without her, so dry and bleak and depressing he can’t live another day like it. He can’t and he won’t because he’s going to fix this. He has to fix this.

And it doesn’t take him long to find her because there she is, sitting at their usual outdoor table, a large hot tea held between her hands, her leg shaking, her eyes distant. It's such a heartbreaking sight, and he suddenly wonders if she ever sat there after their breakup, waiting for him, hoping he’d do the very same.

The thought makes his head twitch to the side and fingers twist with guilt because no, he never did. He never went back to that coffee shop since the goodbye. It would have hurt too much, it would have reminded him of everything he’d ever done wrong and he couldn’t bear to face the person he once made of himself.

That person died along with her.

She stands from her seat when she sees him walking toward her, exhausted mentally and physically enough to nearly fall from her feet in the process. But her heart is racing a million miles an hour, her stomach fluttering as he grows nearer, her senses of anything but the love she has for him disappearing to nothing, as if it were just the two of them.

And she just needs to know if it feels that way for him, too.

“Y/n —”

“Did you mean it?”

Harry hesitates then, stopping in his tracks, his head tilting at her in curiosity but his features are softer, sadder, as if the question somehow broke him down further than before.

She doesn’t need to elaborate because he already understands what she’s asking. It was his mistakes and his selfishness that led her to question all his intentions, to doubt every sentiment he’s ever given to her, to wonder what was real and what was pretend.

But he doesn’t know what to start with, he doesn’t know what she needs to hear from him to be satisfied with his answer, or know if what he doesn’t say is what breaks this relationship.

“I need you to look at me and tell me that you meant it.” Y/n demands when he fails to answer her, tears flooding yet her face pressed and hard, committed to hearing every last bit of truth he has left. “Because I gave up everything I had for just the smallest possibility that you did. And that may make me weak, that may make me pathetic, and I may hate myself for the rest of my life knowing I made that decision but I can’t help feeling the way I feel for you.”

This is his last chance.

The window of opportunity is open and he is more than willing to dive head first out of it, but he can’t get ahead of himself. One wrong move, one wrong word, one wrong anything and he will have to endure an eternity of misery without her.

So he gives her more than she demands.

He grabs her face between his two hands, gently stroking her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs, his gaze set on hers so that she can see how deeply he feels for her and how desperate he is for her forgiveness.

“I meant it.” He breathes out, his lips so painfully close to hers, she can feel his breath as he talks and it makes her legs shake from beneath her. “I’m in love with you. You’re all I think about. You’re all I want.” He leans in closer, ever so slightly, just so the ghost of her lips can meet the ghost of his. “There’s never been anybody but you. Just you. Only you.”

Her breath stammers, quivering and cracking as she flutters her eyes shut at his words, unforgiving tears pouring down her cheeks. And she doesn’t know why she’s reacting this way — the love of her life is giving her everything she’s ever asked for and yet all she can manage to do is break down from everything she’d been keeping inside for so long.

He knees buckle as a particularly violent sob nearly takes her down, and if it wasn’t for Harry’s strong hold on her, she’s sure she would have collapsed to the floor.

Her tears, his shirt, his hands, her back.

This is the closest they’ve been to each other in so long, his heart nearly shatters along with hers. He missed this more than he missed anything else in this world.

“Don’t cry, baby. It’s alright. You’re alright.” Harry shushes her, his lips settling on the top of her head as he presses chaste kisses on it, his fingers combing through her unbrushed hair. “I’m with you, okay? I’m never leaving you again.”

And he holds her for a while, tying her together as she falls apart in his arms, vowing to her over and over again that this is all over. All the pain is over. Everything will be different now.

And it was.

It felt different when Y/n and Harry spent the rest of the morning sitting in their favorite coffee shop, at their favorite table, drinking their favorite lattes. It felt different when Harry reached his hand over to hold hers, this time with no ulterior motive.

It felt different when she held his hand back, and when she smiled down at where they were intertwined, as if they were an extension of each other.

And unlike the last time they were there together, he doesn’t have to let go.