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wh6res · 4 years ago

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three's a crowd | nomin

synopsis. picking favorites is impossible when you like neither of them.

warning. read at your own risk. abuse, bullying, poly relationship, yandere themes, manipulation, nonconsensual touching, noncon, degradation, smut threesome oop

disclaimer. i do not condone whatever tf i wrote in this nor does it reflect my beliefs or values or morals and such. it is all pure fiction and i also dont think jaemin or jeno would act like this in real life.

note. this was meant to be a new year's gift lmao i obviously got a lil carried away 👀 anyway a late happy new year to you all! we survived 2020, let's start living in 2021, yeah? lmao if covid lets us grr mwah!

the relationship you had with the two of them was a weird one, bordering on taboo, but it wasn't as if you willfully chose to be who they wanted you to be and it took jaemin's unwanted pining and jeno's intimidating demeanor for you to fall right into their arms.

it was a joint effort on their part, you couldn't've possibly stood a chance.

"this many?" the cashier asked. "are you sure?"

stepping back and studying the whole situation, you figured you only had your addiction to caffeine and procrastination to blame. it was a chain reaction you didn't even know will lead up to your inevitable doom.

if you hadn't been slacking off during your first semester of junior year college, you wouldn't be forced to overwork yourself trying to catch up to the looming deadlines, but to be able to 'work yourself to the bone' you need your boost of energy… and that was when you met one of them.

"uhm," you scratch the back of your head sheepishly as you eye the six glass bottles of iced coffee. sure, it looks bad and you kinda appreciate the look of concern the cashier throws your way but it was none of his business.

"yes. now could you, like, you know… hurry up? i'm in a little bit of a time crunch right now."

screw it. although you hardly snap like that with other people on a daily basis, it'll be a whole different conversation if you were under a significant amount of stress and today, unfortunately, is one of those days.

now can he just fucking stop asking questions and give you your six bottles of death drink to keep your fucking brain going so you can pass an eight-page essay tomorrow? thank you very much!

the guy snickered, the beeping sound of a barcode being read sounding a thousand times more annoying than it usually sounds as he keeps his hand busy by punching your items out.

you fail to notice how he studies you through the gaps of his lashes, finding you interesting rather than threatening as you stood before him with your messy hair and oversized hoodie.

"haven't seen you around university grounds 'till today," he tries striking another conversation with you. "you new? i'm jaemin."

this was your first mistake, you shouldn't have been so… downright rude when you met him. if you were granted the miracle of meeting him a 2nd time, you would've acted more nice, throwing yourself at his feet even to blend in with the rest of his fangirls you didn't even know about at the time. you would've done anything to make sure he never gives you a second glance, to never pique his interest.

jaemin is the pep squad captain. flying over colored blue mats and doing tumblings in the air with no ounce of fear. he was the best in his team, that much was evident when your friend dragged you into watching a pep rally practice. his landings were clean, balanced, and executed to the best he can at all times.

no wonder he was popular, his talent is outstanding and his looks are a bonus. his killer combo of a smile and wink after pulling off a tough flip is enough to send them squealing in their seats.

he spotted you that day and since then, he snuck the quickest glances at the bench during practices. recognizing you as the coffee girl he met during his convenience store shift. jaemin tries not to let his disappointment show too much when he doesn't see you, but of course, a pair of cold calculating eyes could see right through him.

"i saw that," his boyfriend said, hand darting forward to hold jaemin's gym bag for him. "you kept looking at the crowd. do you want to see her that much?"

"but she reminds me so much of you, jeno!" he retorts, pouting at the slight grumpy tone the other boy used. "i can't help it. she doesn't seem to give a fuck around me so she's quite interesting. maybe she can even be a great addition to our relationship!"

"well," jeno replies after a beat of silence, plastering a small smirk on his face before slinging an arm around jaemin's shoulder.

"convince me?"

you don't like jaemin's attention. not in the slightest. and it seems that was enough reason for the reign of terror his little fanclub has subjected you too.

it wasn't the petty elementary forms of bullying like pulling at your hair or calling you names. they pale in comparison to the other things they do to you—beating you up, messing with your homework, "accidentally" dumping their food trays on you.

and you weren't stupid.

you knew exactly who was behind it, knew how jaemin spectates the whole thing from afar so that he can swoop in at the end to play your knight in shining armor.

"oh, you poor thing. do you need help?"

the first time you accepted his "help" you ended up in a supply closet near the gym during your free period, cornered and weak as your cries for help drowns under the squeaking of shoes and the booming sounds of rubber balls hitting the floor.

if it weren't for jeno appearing out of thin air and prying the boy off of you, you would've been painted blue and red from the death grip he had on your wrist, neck, and waist.

you can still remember feeling the soreness of your scalp from when he pulled your hair too hard. remembered feeling his teeth gnawing at your lips as if he wanted to tear them off.

that time hadn't been the first time you saw jeno. you've shared a few classes with him and it strikes you how polar opposites they are with one another.

while jaemin likes to bask in his professor and classmates' recognition by confidently reciting his answers, jeno would rather keep to himself. liked sitting at the last row, near the window, so he'd be the first to go once the professor ends their lecture. while jaemin loved the attention of his fangirls, jeno preferred solitude. while jaemin is impulsive and wild, jeno liked to think things through.

it was within these reasons that you decided to do what you did. but your judgement of character has never been more wrong.

you approached jeno one day in the library, tried to make yourself appear as stoic and confident as possible. but your constant slouching and averting eyes was a dead giveaway.

you came to talk to him about what jaemin has been doing, hoping there's one person left in this entire school that isn't under the cheer captain's trance. the one reasonable person that has already saved you once and (hopefully) is willing enough to save you again. the only one that probably has a certain level of control over jaemin, if the supply closet incident is anything to go by.

but you've overestimated lee jeno.

"you should've just given jaemin what he wanted."

"but—but aren't you two lovers? isn't it bothering you?"

you try baiting him, only for an uncomfortable shiver to start crawling down your spine when he chuckled humorlessly, pushing his school materials to the side while pinning you with an unreadable stare.

how can a person make someone feel so small just by a gaze alone? it was nothing like you've felt with jaemin. this is way worse.

"the only thing that's bothering me is why you're not ours yet."

you feel cold fingers creeping their way under your shirt, going higher and higher until it brushes against your bra. and when your eyes meet, the look on his face was unmistakable—what are you going to do about it, huh?

you stood up in lightning speed, the chair you've been sitting on scraping loudly against the floor.

you've never ran out as fast as you did.

and jeno swears it'll be the last.

you tried everything in your power to ignore them for the next following weeks but it soon became useless when the two boys took it upon themselves to give you your space.

although judging by the pinpricks you feel on your back, and the constant weight of a stare you feel on your shoulders, you knew they weren't done with you yet. far from it. and for some reason, you just knew they wanted to lull you into a false sense of security first before striking again.

and while they continued to ogle at you from afar like a hawk circling its prey in a desert, you took it upon yourself to return the favor. not because you were the slightest bit interested in those creeps but maybe, just maybe, if you look hard enough you'll find a way out, a weakness.

but what you realized made your insides churn in great discomfort—although it may seem that jeno holds the reins in the relationship since his reserved nature fits the role, it's actually the other way around.

jaemin might appear too self-centered, too focused on himself to give a fuck about his surroundings but in actuality, he has quite a knack for reading people. even more so than jeno. and it was scary how he used it to his advantage, and paired up with his devoted fangirls? it was hell on earth.

you found it alarming how the two seem to magically appear wherever you are.

although you weren't in the least bit surprised. for some reason, you can't take your eyes away when jaemin's devotees flock around him (and jeno) in a circle.

it almost reminds you of a shoal of piranhas, waiting for their meal to drop into the water before ripping it to shreds with their teeth. only their "meal" isn't actual flesh but the carefully crafted words jaemin says that drive them into a sick frenzy.

one that has them doing everything in their power to satisfy him like the loyal dogs they are.

so this was how he got them to bully you?

"oh, that? don't worry! yangyang just ran into me during cheer rehearsal. no biggie. my cheek stung a little bit, though…" is what he said but really he's telling them "scruff him up a bit for me, why don't ya?"

"of course, i can't be the best all the time. haechan is just too good, maybe even better than me…" is what he said but really he's telling them "can you remind him where his place should be?"

all the while jeno did nothing to hold him back.

no matter how wrong jaemin is, how much of an asshole he is, jeno will stick by his side through and through. so as much as jaemin is a puppeteer that gets a kick for controlling people, jeno is as much at fault for looking the other way.

because in jeno's perspective, why the fuck would he do shit when he can just get off from the entertainment that comes with jaemin's sweet little mind games?

we lost :(

you had been busy sorting through paperwork for one of your professors in the faculty when your friend texted you the results of the intercollegiate cheer dance competition. a frown paints your face, heart feeling heavy at the bad news.

in all honesty, you still supported the pep squad—you just hated the captain and his boyfriend. they've been practicing non-stop for this and prior to the weeks of the competition, jeno looked a lot more tense and jaemin less smiley than usual. you swore you even saw the latter snap at one of his fangirls.

not to mention, they paid less attention to you, too, and it was the best three weeks of your life.

tension starts rising in your shoulders, fingers absentmindedly running through the edge of the papers you had been sorting until you became immersed with your thoughts.

jaemin must be in the worst mood yet.

and jeno too, probably. if anything, that guy gets triggered the most when something bad happens to jaemin or when he catches snippets of people talking shit about his oh so "perfect" boyfriend.

jeno is a lot scarier when jaemin is in one of his mood swings, you noticed. he steps up in the relationship to offer comfort to the other boy and for outsiders? it isn't a great experience to go through—being on the receiving end of jeno's ice cold stare is a position you don't want to find yourself in after that time in the library.

he is still as much a threat to your peaceful life like his lover.

you snap out of it when the blinding headlights of a vehicle seep through the closed blinds. you hear the gentle hum of an engine switching off as the headlights vanished as quick as they had appeared. that must be the cheer squad's bus.

as you look around the empty faculty room, something in your gut tells you to ditch file sorting duty for professor kim tonight and fucking get the hell out of campus grounds as quick as you can.

after haphazardly throwing the unsorted papers back into the cabinet, you groan aloud when the keys to the office drop out of your skirt’s pocket.

the indoor gym where the cheering squad practices is right across the hallway. you sure as hell don't want to bump into jaemin. or jeno, too, if he had decided to ride along the cheer squad's bus on the way home.

you kept looking for the keys underneath the cubicles, cursing aloud when you heard the telltale squeaks of shoes rubbing against linoleum. you almost hit your head against a table when you quickly got back up your feet, darting forward to shut the lights for the faculty room.

they can't know you're here. alone. and if it meant sitting in the dark for a few hours 'till they leave, meant going back home a little later than usual is what you have to do then so be it.

you try not to react so violently when the door you're leaning on jolts when someone from outside slams their back against it.

"it's not like we didn't do our best, right guys? i don't have regrets. it might sound fucking cheesy and although i'm sad myself, atleast we did what we can."

it's jaemin. his voice clear as day.

you try peaking, craning your neck up from your place on the floor. only to see the back of his head leaning against the glass section of the door. someone else joins in on the conversation, followed by coach park himself, and you slowly tune out whatever they're saying as you stealthily start scanning the faculty room.

you curse under your breath. is there no other exit other than this door? jesus christ! even classrooms in this university had two doors—

"what are you doing here?"

the switch flickers on, basking the once dark room with light. only when you hear an echo of your name being called, did you snap out of it and quickly picked yourself up from the floor.

"i said, what are you doing here?"

their coach asks, drilling the question as he looks at you skeptically with his arms crossed. you try not to look at the people behind him.

particularly, not at his cheer captain standing on his right.

particularly, not at jeno, who stands out like a sore thumb with his blue hair, a protective arm snaked around jaemin’s shoulders.

this isn't your lucky day, too, you guess.

"i was…" you cursed yourself for stuttering. "i was, uhm, i was file sorting for prof—professor kim, sir."

coach park looked like he didn't believe you as he narrowed his eyes in scrutiny. your nerves are going haywire and you can feel the sharp pins of their stare with how close they are.

you kept juggling your weight with the balls of your feet, hands fisting and unfisting behind your back. you want to leave. you have to leave.

"file sorting… in the dark?" he asked incredulously.

fuck this.

"uhm, you can ask professor kim himself tomorrow, coach. for now, uh, i'll be going now. i'm sorry you guys lost…"

originally, the exit is on the right side, at the end of the hallway. but no, you are not going to pass by those two while on your way out so you ducked behind a random student standing on the coach's left instead and practically ran away from the scene.

everyone had been too busy. too busy looking at your retreating form to even notice jaemin and jeno exchanging glances, too busy to notice the latter untangling himself from their captain to slip away unnoticed, his hurried steps filled with a burning purpose.

you didn't know why you ran, but you did. your shoes practically booming against the floor as you sped away through darkened hallways. you're sweating profusely, heart hammering in your chest. you can worry about professor kim tomorrow but right now you just had to—

"why are you in such a rush, pet?"

crashing into jeno felt like crashing into a wall. if it hadn't been for his arm quickly wrapping around your waist, then you would've landed on your butt before him.

with the small distance between the two of you, jeno could see as clear as day through your eyes.

jaemin was right.

it was addicting to stare into them.

especially when he can see every single one of your thoughts flying through your pretty little head. but hey, it wasn't their fault you were so easy to read.

jeno barely conceals the wicked smirk on his lips when your hands come up to his chest, trying to push him away but to no avail.

he can see your eyes shifting from shock, to confusion, until it finally settles on fear—to which it's slowly becoming a favorite emotion of his to see on your face.

"you know, jaemin is in a really shitty mood right now. and we were wondering, maybe you can cheer us up?"

no. this can't be happening.

"jeno, please." your dilated eyes and disheveled hair made his blood run south. "let me go. you don't want me. you don't need a third party in your relationship."

you yelp when he lets you go, literally shoving you against a wall—which you found out is actually a door, as it swings open as soon as your body crashes against it.

with jeno looming unforgivingly before you in his full height, the tears stung extra hard but you won't let them fall.

if he wanted to bask in the image of your weakness then it'll be something you'll deprive from him for as long as you can.

"i don't need a stupid bitch like you to tell me what i feel." he scoffs. "don't fucking kid yourself, you little whore—i don't want you. i'm not jaemin."

the echo of the classroom door shutting closed surged through you like a wake up call.

this is really happening.

you've always led a decent life, had done nothing too questionable and you've always thought maybe life will spare you if you lived quietly enough. but the feel of jeno's freezing hands crawling against your skin felt like life itself had spat at you in the eye and left you to rot in a ditch.

"i've always liked how you wore skirts," he comments. playing with the ruffled hem of the soft fabric as he purposely grazed his knuckles against your supple thighs. "gives me easy access, don't you agree?"

you scream when he flips your skirt up to reveal the innocent pink of your cotton panties. it was as if a switch had flipped inside of you and the will to fight started coursing through your veins.

"stop! jeno! i don't want this!"

his brows furrow, grunting as he struggles to push the waistline of your skirt up higher with how much you're thrashing underneath him. you buck your hips, tried curling in on yourself, anything to prolong what he wants to do to you.

with your legs trapped underneath his, you blindly reach forward, relying on your upper body instead to push and scratch whatever your palms and nails reached.

you continue screaming like a banshee until he shoved two fingers into your wet cavern.

"stop fighting me," he sounded strained, as if he's holding himself back. you feel him fisting the fabric of your skirt and you fear he's simply going to rip it apart.

you tried responding to him, only the sound had been muffled, gurgled by the flat of his fingers pushing down against your tongue mercilessly. when you reach forward to push him away, your hands land on the apple of his cheeks, nails digging through skin.

until it slips and—

you lie rigid when red scratch marks in the size of your fingernails slowly appear on jeno's skin, his head turned to the side as he paused. your actions slowly start sinking in to him as he shuts his eyes and bit his lip 'till it looked like it was about to bleed.

oh no.

"jeno—"

the slap he planted on your cheek left your ears ringing. all those hard earned muscles of his put to good use—if the tears hadn't fallen for the last few minutes, then it definitely started falling now.

the hit had been so strong, a few of your hair flew astray, the buzzing feeling of your skin tempting you to reach a hand up to soothe your abused cheek.

until jeno let out a low growl and your hand immediately drops limp against your body, afraid of whatever else he can do to you other than a slap.

"that's more like it," he whispers under his breath. you let out the tiniest of whimpers when his hand darts forward to fist your hair. "do you know what happens to bad girls? they fucking get busted up. do you understand me?"

his patience is nonexistent.

jeno slams your head against the floor when you don't answer because you thought his question had been rhetorical. it felt like your skull had been split in two as you wail in pain.

"are you fucking deaf—i asked you a fucking question!"

the hand that cups your jaw is painful as he squeezed your cheek with his blunt nails. your hand shoots up to wrap around his wrist, silently pleading for him to let up as you sobbed out loud. you started nodding as best as you can despite his firm grip on your face.

your reply was nothing short of pathetic. with lips forcefully pursed and the steady stream of your tears and snot rolling down your face, your response is gargled and hardly incoherent and jeno seemed to thoroughly enjoy your anguish if the condescending curl on his lips is anything to go by.

"look at you," he whispers, his face coming close to yours as he holds you down. there was something in the way jeno stared so intently that it made your skin crawl.

"i think you're prettiest when ruined like this."

with his nose touching yours, he felt too close, bordering on intimate as you felt his hand creep back up your thighs, trailing up with feather-like touches that made goosebumps appear on your skin.

you tried wiggling your legs underneath him but one sharp look from jeno is enough to make you stop.

the hand holding your face moves. coming down from gripping your face to encircling his hand around your neck.

"do you like it when i touch you? freaky bitch."

his hands trail further up, up, up until you felt him slotting a finger underneath your panties.

jeno didn't like how frozen you were underneath him as he pulls at the hem before letting go. the elastic snapping back against your skin.

the action evokes a strong feeling through the young male, promising to have you writhing and screaming and begging because by the end of all this, you'll be so needy and frustrated that you will have no choice but to give in to what your body wanted.

"jeno, didn't i tell you to play nice?"

someone stands by the door, the minimal light from the hallway creating a silhouette with his form but you knew who he was. that deep voice, with the same annoying flippant tone, is a dead giveaway.

you didn't know why you even hoped in the beginning. as if there'll be someone who can save you from these two.

you thought the flash of hurt in your eyes was quick to disappear but jeno noticed it quicker.

in a span of seconds, he pulled you up from your position from the ground and tugged you towards his lap. you haven't even gotten the time to settle on your new position when he already smashed his lips against yours.

it was messy. too much saliva. too much teeth. no tenderness to it at all.

the fabric of his jeans felt rough, not to mention the ice cold belt buckle made you severely uncomfortable as it seeps through the thin fabric of your skirt.

when you attempt to hover over his lap, jeno grunts as he snakes an arm around your waist, pulling you back down without your lips breaking away from each other. you didn't know why he let out a whine, but you understood the moment you fully sat down on his lap and you felt a tent on his jeans hitting your clothed entrance perfectly.

in a normal circumstance, you would've found everything hot and might've actually gotten off from it but not when it's him who’s doing this to you and you didn’t consent to any of this.

you start squirming again. palms lying flat against jeno's chest as you attempt to push him away and jaemin sees this as the opportune moment to slot himself behind you, caging you in between them.

“i want my turn,” he hisses and without an ounce of hesitation, jeno stops to do what he's told.

jaemin doesn't waste any second to grab your face, awkwardly craning your neck up to meet his lips in the same feverish kiss.

while jeno had been all teeth and aggression, practically forcing you to open your mouth and kiss him back, jaemin on the other hand is more soft, more romantic, you daresay. he seemed to like taking his sweet time by clutching your face, kissing you like he actually meant it.

he pulls away slightly, resting his forehead against yours as he murmurs something incoherent under his breath and then he's kissing you again.

you think you heard something along the lines of, "finally."

you've been too distracted by jaemin to notice jeno's nimble fingers quickly fumbling with the buttons of your blouse. it was only when you feel the sensation of his tongue laving against the swell of your breast did you turn away from jaemin, jerking backward in surprise.

"no—!"

your scream is cut off by a hand cupping your mouth. jaemin pulls your back towards his chest, molding your body against his as jeno licked and suckled all he wanted, thankful to have the other boy there to not worry about restraining you and keeping you quiet while he has his fun.

"ah, ah, ah," jaemin teases, going hard over the pleading and teary look you sent his way. it looked pathetic, he wasn't going to lie, but it doesn't mean he didn't love it. "just keep still and appreciate jeno's efforts to take care of you, alright baby?"

you don't like how he talked as if this was all a mutual thing, how he talked slowly like you were some toddler who didn't understand anything.

it's cruel how jaemin giggled and basked in your vulnerable state as he kept his eyes pinned on you while undoing the zipper of your skirt. your muffled cries of his name only serving to egg him on.

the way he stared was similar to jeno, too intently and intrusive, like he wants to burn your image of despair in the back of his head.

you whined involuntarily when jeno got bored of all the licking and thus decided to start biting and nipping at your chest instead. he was hypnotised by how responsive you were, how every little bite and nibble made you shudder.

it was a shame that jaemin had to cover your mouth. he didn't get to hear your pretty mewls but it wasn't as if he'd let the night end without hearing them loud and clear.

jaemin is fast in undressing you, feeling slightly betrayed by how quick your skirt and blouse fell under his hands.

you know what he wants, what he's going to do, and the tears fall harder when you can't dodge away from him. forced to endure and accept whatever they give you.

"you act like you don't like it but look how fucking wet you are," you bit your lip hard when jaemin starts circling the pads of his fingers against your clit, fascinated by how more juices streamed down your thighs.

"jeno, do you see this? fuck."

you can only blink in defeat, staring off to the side as you force down any noise bubbling up your throat, forcing yourself to think of anything else other than what's happening right now.

you try not to think about how they managed to tear all of your clothes off while they're left completely dressed. tried not to think about the fingers lazily drawing up and down your slit to collect your essence.

if they're doing this as a way to further humiliate you, it's working.

"slut," jeno mocked, a wicked curl on his lips when he wraps his fingers around your throat. the moment he dives down to claim your lips again is the same time jaemin pushes two fingers inside you.

"look at how wet you are because of me," jaemin whispers hot against your ear and you feel a sick churn in your stomach when you feel his smile against your skin.

he purposely drives his fingers in and out quicker, settjng a brutal pace, wanting you to hear the lewd squelching sounds. "hear that? do you hear that, darling? that's because of me—"

"don't go talking big now, jaem," jeno retorts, pulling away from your lips to start nibbling on the back of your ear. "i was here first. did you see how she fucking reacted when i sucked on her tits?"

you're quick to catch how jeno particularly loved degrading you. but how he talks about you as if you're literally not in front of him naked made you hit a new all-time low.

you felt… filthy.

his hands find purchase on your butt—only because jaemin has already claimed the front. for now.

you close your eyes tight when he painfully squeezes the flesh of your ass. you swear, his blunt nails will paint your skin black and blue.

"i'm the favorite!"

as someone who's part of a varsity team, you already knew a competitive nature runs through jaemin's veins. but never had you thought jeno would share the same sentiment. once again they prove that they're cut from the same cloth.

all of a sudden it wasn't all about claiming you as theirs anymore rather it was all about who can make you moan the loudest, who can make you cum the most, who can make you feel the dirtiest you can be.

you're absolutely terrified for the hours to come.

thankfully, they have yet to ask for your verbal opinion or validation. they let your body do all the talking—every repressed shudder and sharp gasp is enough.

but it's game over once they pop the million dollar question.

"who do you like best?"

you don't want to find out the consequences if you actually answered their question because you didn't know what could be worse.

jaemin's manipulation or jeno's aggression?

but it was all normal. trial and error is inevitable in order to build and mold you into the ideal lover for the both of them.

because adding someone new to the mix has never been easy—after all, three's a crowd.

#nct imagines #yandere nct #yandere kpop #nct smut #nct scenarios #yandere jaemin #yandere jeno #jaemin imagines #jeno imagines #jaemin scenarios #jeno scenarios #jaemin smut #jeno smut

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the32ndbeat · 4 years ago

Text

𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮 | 𝐣.𝐲𝐧 - [ 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟛 ]

pairing: stalker!jaehyun x fem!reader ( ft twice’s tzuyu, loona’s haseul )

word count: 2.4k

warnings: swearing, mentions of alcohol, alcohol consumption, mentions of sexual harassment, mature themes, mentions of drugs, smoking, extreme views, misogyny, yandere themes

a/n: unedited! it’s been forever since I updated this but also considering if I should turn this into a tbz series at my tbz writing blog so we’ll see how this goes.

taglist: I don’t have one yet and I’m seeing how this does since I’m thinking whether I should convert it into a tbz series. Please do lemme know if you guys want to see this continued!

disclaimer: everything written here is FICTIONAL and I am in no way saying that the mentioned characters act like that irl!

masterlist

(inspired by netflix’s you and the book of the same name by caroline kepnes)

The first thing that registers in my mind is how fucking loud this place is. Seriously, what is it with college parties and their inherent need to blast music loud enough to wake the entire neighbourhood within a five mile radius? Before I even step within the premises or even make it to the front yard, the whole fraternity house seemed to shake from the loudness of the bass-boosted music when viewed from a distance away. I even had to squint as I approach, the strings of fluorescent party lights draped all over the place glowing so brightly it almost hurt to look straight.

A few drunk college frat boys stumble past me, their hair sticky and messy with sweat and their breaths reeking of cheap alcohol. Their steps are wobbly and I can even see drool and remnants of vomit hanging at the corner of their mouths. My heart clenches with pure disgust and I grit my teeth as I watch them laugh out loud over nothing, their brains a pink, unintelligent mush in their skulls, probably rotted by endless drinking and fucking. All part of the college frat experience.

I wonder if they enjoy being a complete waste of space while wasting mummy and daddy’s money to put them through college.

I look away and ignore the growing irritation in me. This is the sort of party your friends wanted you to go with them to? I thought your friends were bad influences but scratch that, they’re fucking horrible. They taint you, taint your innocence and put you at risk around such dangerous men who do not deserve to be even a mile within your presence. As I walk closer, the house looks even more hideous up close.

It’s decorated in the worst way I’ve seen a house decorated. It’s as if someone threw a bunch of random fairy lights bought in the brightest, blinding neon colours that simply do not go together over a sloppy looking house and the front yard is littered with empty, red plastic cups and is that a discarded bra I see over there?

I tiptoe over the trash laying around on the grass and try to avoid the gyrating bodies of college students who clearly have no sense of rhythm. My skin feels grimy within just a few minutes of being here and I can’t wait to leave but there is no way I’m leaving when I know that you will be here. The thought of you being surrounded by such vermins makes me sick to the stomach and I want to get you out of here. The only place you should rightfully be, is at my place where there are no revolting men who only love to drink cheap alcohol, party till sunrise, get high off smoking a blunt, yell ‘turn up!’ every few minutes as if it’s muscle memory in their tiny, almost non-existent brains and do anything but be a productive member of society.

As I push through the double doors, the nauseating smell containing a mixture of intoxicating alcohol, smoke and cheap cologne almost knocks me backwards. My hand grips tighter to the wooden door and I force myself in. Inside, the house is dim but bright at the same time with disco and laser lights. A massive boombox and a pair of equally large loudspeakers sit at the corner of the room and some hip hop tune is being played while people dance and drink and smoke to their hearts’ delight. You’d never believe these kids were supposed to be the future.

Oh, how disappointed their parents must be.

A girl in skimpy shorts and a tube top looks at me with unadulterated want and beckoning in her eyes while staring at the varsity jacket I’m wearing, no doubt replaying fantasies of fucking a college athlete in her mind and trying to guess which sport I supposedly play. I gaze blankly at them before turning away and I can see her shift from the corner of my eye, obviously bothered by the lack of attention. It’s like I can almost see the gears whirring in her brain. Did she not show enough cleavage? Is more skin needed to get my attention? Sometimes people are so predictable and readable that it’s almost pathetic.

Other times, I might have lowered my standards and settled for a casual fuck with someone like that but not today. Today, I’m a man on a mission. A mission to look out for you.

My eyes scan the room but it’s too dim to see anything within four feet in any direction. The flashing lights threaten to overwhelm me along with the stink of the place and booming music and I can feel my annoyance evolving into anger. I repress the urge to slap the shit out of a guy in a red bandana who screams ‘turn up’ all of sudden, practically effectively bursting my eardrums.

I almost bump into a couple eating each other’s faces out when someone yells out at me.

“Hey, you!”

The music is so loud that I almost don’t hear it. I whip around and sure enough, it’s tube top girl making her way over to me. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Not only do I have to find and save you from this sleazy place and have to squeeze in with a crowd of sweaty, brainless college kids who know nothing but party in a tiny, dirty, smelly frat house but now I also have tube top girl hot on my heels?

The things I do for you, y/n and we haven’t even properly gotten to know each other yet.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Tube top girl smiles and up close, I can see that her mascara is smudged and her hair is slicked back with an unholy amount of gel into a tight little bun which only makes her face look wider and her forehead exposed with a sheen of sweat covering it. Her lipstick is reapplied and I know for a fact that she has done it to impress me. Her top is also inched a little lower, as if that makes her anymore appealing.

I smile in a dismissive way, in a way that showed that I cared, but not really.

“Hey,” I reply flippantly.

“Crazy party huh?” She grins, satisfied that she’s got my attention now. Women.

I let my eyes drift to her breasts and look back up at her expectant, puppy dog eyes that are so eager to please it’s actually embarrassing.

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name? I’m Meg.”

“I’m Jaehyun.”

“You part of any sports team in school?” And just like that I know that tube top girl must have had fantasies of fucking a college athlete.

So predictable.

“Yeah, I’m on the swim team.” I say and her smile widens, a playfulness in her eyes as she leans her chest in closer in what was meant to be a sexy gesture.

“Oh, is that so? I’ve never really talked to a competitive swimmer before,” she replies in a sultry voice and I smirk.

“Well, here I am. Am I every bit of the guy you imagined a college swimmer to be?” I whisper in an equally sultry voice. Let her think she has me wrapped around her finger. It’s easier that way. Better for her to think I’m enthralled with her and her breasts than let her cling onto me the entire night.

“Mhm,” she says, “of course.”

I’m about to reply when something catches my eye. From the window, I see you and your friends stumbling and swaying down the sidewalk, away from the party. Internally, I feel my rage simmering again but not at anyone. At myself.

How was I so late that I didn’t manage to stop this from happening? How are you already drunk? How did this happen?

A million questions are racing through my mind and my vision almost blurs with white hot anger as I imagine a slimy frat guy placing his greasy hands on you while you sit there, drunk and uninhibited in that dress that seemed to accentuate your every single curve. You look simply gorgeous in that dress and I fucking hate to think that other guys in this whole house may have made a pass at you. Why was I so late? Would I have been just a little bit earlier if tube top Meg didn’t stop me? I should have left the moment she decided to strike up conversation. This is my karma for letting other temptations get in the way. I vow to myself that this will never happen again as I extricate myself away from Meg’s clutches (“Hey! Where are you going?” She calls out and I ignore her).

I shove people out of the way and do not care for their protests and yelps. Fuck them and fuck this entire shithole of a house. I scramble through the door and maintain my distance as I follow you and your friends down the pavement and past the buildings within the campus. I watch and cringe as you seem to crumple under the weight of your friends’ arm and quickly realise that you aren’t drunk. Your friends are. Stupidly drunk.

I feel my heart relax and my stomach unclench. Of course, you wouldn’t be. You are good. And smart. Too smart to get drunk in a place like that. You know what are the risks and you are above such parties. Your friends though, I couldn’t say the same. Which brings me back to why you need better friends but that’s besides the point. I can see a few guys hanging at the other side of the street who leer at the group of you, clearly getting their dick hard at the thought of a group of vulnerable girls roaming these empty streets at night.

It’s dangerous. But that’s what I’m here for. They see me next and they look away.

I will do what I can to protect you, y/n. Even if that means protecting your good for nothing friends in the process.

All of a sudden, I see you trip and it’s like everything is in slow motion. You fall forward and I take long strides over, my legs stretching out and rushing to help you. Before your knees can hit the rough ground, I have you in my arms, encircled around your waist as I hold you up. I have your other friend, Haseul upright with my other hand tugging at the collar of her jacket. Your friend Tzuyu is not so fortunate and falls flat but she barely notices it, smiling tipsily to herself instead.

You glance up at me with those large eyes and I could get lost in them right there and then. But as quickly as we have our moment, you move away and I see a hint of suspicion in your eyes. We separate and the moment you extract yourself from my arms, I already want you back. Your touch feels addictive already. What have you done to me?

“Thanks.” You say curtly and I admire the fact that you have boundaries, not like Meg. You are hard to get and that’s what makes you so appealing. You are to be earned and respected.

You help Tzuyu to her feet and as you turn to leave with your friends, I call out, “is there any way I can help?”

You regard me with caution and open your mouth to reject me but then suddenly, the tenseness in your eyes relax.

“Do I know you?”

You remember me. Halle-fucking-lujah! I want to wrap you in my arms again but I play it cool.

“I… don’t…?”

Your eyes grow wide and the recognition seeps in.

“Wait! You’re from that hardware store right? Jaehyun?”

I pretend to be surprised when I’m actually fucking overjoyed.

“Yeah, wait… You’re that girl with the rope right?”

You laugh and it’s the most melodious thing I’ve ever heard in forever.

“Yup, that’s me. Kind of mortified that’s how you remember me but sure,” you say and your eyes twinkle but then you continue with a more subdued tone, “what are you doing here?”

I pat my chest good-naturedly.

“Friend of mine is a student here. I just came over to visit and he gave me his varsity jacket so I could try feeling like a college student for once. Never been to college so… yeah. I thought I’d like to try it out for fun.” I reply and shoot you an awkward smile, the kind you do when you try to get someone to favour you and think of you as ‘adorable’.

It works and you smile gently.

“That’s pretty cool, you’ve got a good friend.”

And you haven’t, I think but don’t say.

I gesture towards you and your friends.

“Need any help?”

You look at your drunken friends and back at me and I sense you thinking. Finally, you decide that you do need my help and chuckle, “We live right at that block over there and I think I might die halfway there. I’m not fit enough to hold 2 people.”

That’s so like you. So compassionate over friends who clearly didn’t give a shit that you didn’t want to go to some god forsaken party, so caring over friends who get drunk and don’t take responsibility, so helpful to take care of friends who literally do not give a fuck about you. You are not beautiful on the outside but on the inside too and as I loop Tzuyu’s arm over my neck and hold her, I wish I was holding you instead.

We amble over to the front of your block and we part, you thank me and we say our goodbyes and it’s all too soon. I want to be with you for longer, I want us to talk and I want you to invite me to your room but reality is often much less exciting and more boring.

“I’ll see you!” You call out, smiling as I walk away and I wave back, my heart soaring.

Today is a good day, I think and as I round the corner to the next street, I slip the keycard out of my pocket and feel the hard plastic under my finger.

Wasn’t difficult honestly. Your friends should really learn to keep their valuables in safe places, not the back pocket of their jeans.

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coeurdastronaute · 4 years ago

Text

Essays in Existentialism: Plus One, Ch. 2

Previously on Plus One

It oscillated every other minute between being an amazing idea, but also being the worst idea of all time, and Lexa was mostly exhausted of bouncing back and forth. It might be easier, she decided, if she just got herself on board with it being a good idea, but a deep, gnawing hole seemed to manifest itself in her gut at the very thought of seeing her ex.

As she went through the motions of finishing the day, of doing inventory because it was Wednesday, Lexa tried not to distract herself with the thoughts of her impending trip. In just forty-eight hours, she’d be face to face with Costia, who she hadn’t seen in months, who she avoided before occasionally running awkwardly into each other at mutual friends’ events. She’d come face to face with her ex who was getting married.

And she was going to do it with a complete stranger on her arm.

With a heavy sigh, Lexa tossed her clipboard on her tiny desk in the storage closet and plopped down in the squeaky chair, tipping it back with a wail. Her sister was the worst.

It was quiet in the shop, closed for just a handful of hours, Lexa always took a day to inventory and repair the damage of the week. She enjoyed the late evening work, when her workers were gone, and the shop was empty and full of dreams. No one knew how the cabinets stayed so clean, or how the scratches on table tops got sanded and fixed, or how the wobbly table by the window was miraculous cured one day, or how the ceiling fans got dusted, just that it all happened, and Lexa was off, meaning she didn’t come in until at least ten, the following morning.

But Lexa sat in the chair and let her brain do the same mental gymnastics it always seemed to do in the new quiet she found herself craving. She opened her laptop and ignored the awaiting spreadsheet, and instead opted to look over the answer Clarke had given her to the “Know your partner” quiz Clarke googled and made them both do. A mix of basic information and Newlywed Game style innuendos, Lexa filled hers out after a bottle of wine and anxiously waited for Clarke’s.

That was what started the daydreaming. She scrolled through Clarke’s answers and furrowed, doing her best to memorizing all that she could, as if she’d be tested on it all, as if it’d be impossible to believe she could be happy with someone like Clarke.

And when those thoughts started to seep into her brain, Lexa leaned back again and dug the tips of her fingers into her eyes.

In a week it’d be over.

And with that and a deep, heavy sigh, Lexa looked at the screen again and went about learning Clarke.

She started professionally, of course, looking at her corporate page and resume, because this was, if not anything, simply a business transaction and Lexa thought it was easier to parse a person if she didn’t actually have to fall for her.

A graphic designer at Anya’s firm, Clarke held accolades and a long list of references. The link to her work showed a wide range of commercial campaigns and a certain amount of talent evident by her list of upcoming projects. A graduate of a small, private, liberal arts university, her academics leaned heavily scientific, which was a surprise until Lexa read some of the answers in the survey about a degree in physics given up for art.

Lexa promised that she wouldn’t have looked at Clarke’s Instagram if Clarke hadn’t requested her first. She wasn’t someone who lurked, or at least she thought she wasn’t. She didn’t want to be someone who snuck around, digging through someone’s past, analyzing every filter and caption like a private investigator. But then Clarke appeared.

And there were pictures of Clarke with friends getting drinks on a rooftop. And then the one with her laughing and baking. Or the Christmas party where she was on a corporate Santa’s lap, smiling so wide her eyes were shut. Despite herself Lexa found herself smiling along with the girl in the pictures. The one who went hiking with a pack of dogs, and the one who seemed to always be eating something. The one who had a lot of friends and enjoyed making them smile and laugh. The girl who posted storie about her morning run, and the girl who seemed to have a healthy work life balance.

Lexa closed the webpages and stared at her inventory for exactly two seconds before curiosity won again and Lexa started looking at Costia’s account. There were the standard pictures of her pre-wedding planning. There was Costia working out. There was her new bride-to-be, happy and smiling at a gift for her birthday.

And then a throwback that made Lexa’s stomach drop as she stared at a familiar image of Costia smiling in a bikini on a beach. It was from the last trip they took. Lexa was the one behind the camera.

Three weeks after that picture was taken, Lexa walked in on Costia and a girl in the middle of the afternoon. Right in their own bed. Only to then discover it’d been going on for months. And it wasn’t the first. And then, Lexa didn’t remember much except that she moved into the apartment above her coffee shop and woke up one morning alone on sheets that weren’t familiar, in a room full of boxes.

It seemed even more difficult to start inventory after that shot to the gut.

But her phone went off, and Lexa leaned back in her chair after shutting the laptop again, wondering if that sinking feeling ever went away when it came to someone you love, or loved, or once loved, even for a moment. She didn’t have anything to compare it to, and she didn’t have any idea what love really was.

It felt like a deep wound was scratched open, the scab pulled back, and a burning numbness gnawing at the bottom of her spine. It felt like it would swallow her whole, and Lexa hated, more than anything, giving anyone the power to do anything as such over her.

Hey! Do you think this will go with your outfit?

An image came next, of Clarke in a dressing room wearing a very pretty dress, with very messy hair with her tongue sticking out. Lexa didn’t notice the gnawing feeling disappear.

We don’t have to match completely.

We do! Don’t you know how to date?

Not really.

Another picture of another dress came a moment later. Clarke was pretty. She was happy and silly and kind. It felt oddly normal, for as crazy as the whole scheme actually was.

I like that one, Lexa wrote, making sure to add a heart-eyed emoji to emphasize her point. Maybe that was flirting. Maybe she was allowed. She definitely needed more rules.

Good, I do too. It matches your tie, you know? And these heels will still leave you a little taller than me.

Sounds good to me!

Kind of excited. I guess I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow.

I’ll be the one at the bar.

I’ve heard it’s possible to find your soulmate at the airport. Something about the crossing of paths and time and space.

If my soulmate is a bottle of wine, then I reckon I might.

A love story for the ages.

Lexa smiled once more at her phone before tossing it to the side and letting her head drop to the desk. With a groan she growled into her hands and broke it down. She just needed to make it seventy-two hours. That was it. She could sleep for about twenty of those. She could drink for another twenty or more, if she really tried.

But this was it. This was the end.

And regardless of the weight of everything else, there was something satisfying about knowing it was almost over.

XXXXXXXXXX

The airport was absolutely teaming with bodies and people, weaving their way through the swelling crowds, loading and unloading the terminals at a constant, steady thumping rate, so regular one could set a watch to the heartbeat of the building.

Clarke adjusted her bag on her shoulder and tapped the ticket against her thigh as she moved through the security line. The nerves were coming for some reason. That was why she was at the airport three hours before the flight. She was anxious and needed a stiff drink and a few moments to catch her breath. She needed to escape the whirlwind she’d allowed herself to create.

Carefully, she made her way through the airport, checking the boards and finding her way to a seat in the empty waiting room. Not even an attendant waited at the kiosk.

Once again, she let herself awkwardly scroll on her phone, learning everything she could about her future date and weekend plans.

Lexa was nearly non-existent online. She didn’t have any pictures of herself. She rarely posted anything on her personal account, and when she did, it was just a book or a coffee or from a trip. She wasn’t one to enjoy being the center of attention, but when it came to her shop, she made sure to post almost daily, highlighting her employees and their recommendations, she made share to highlight events, she made sure to be as active as possible.

Anya had already warned Clarke that her sister was devoted to her work. She’d poured all of her effort into being successful and part of the community, and Clarke admired it, she just wished that there was more for her to see.

And so, once more, she flipped back to the long line of questions they’d filled out before giving up and gazing out the window at the planes coming and going.

For a moment, she allowed herself to think that she was doing something nice and good. It was an act of charity. It was the shake up Clarke needed and was selfishly trying to package as benevolent.

“You beat me, and I’m usually the first one here for a flight,” Lexa observed, walking up to Clarke, stealing her from her reverie.

“I like airports. Just waiting for true love to stroll up and introduce themselves.”

Lexa shoved her hands in her pockets, her bag balanced on her shoulder as she cautiously looked around, surveying the empty terminal slowly. Clarke watched her look around, smiled at the innocence of it. Enjoyed the way she ran her hand through her hair, mussing it up a bit and tossing it to another side.

“No one likes airports,” Lexa shook her head before taking the seat beside her.

“I do. They’re romantic.”

“Romantic?”

“You can get onto a plane, and a few hours later, you’re hundred of miles away, and it’s different weather, and it’s a different time zone. You can go to sleep in a different state. How can you not be romantic about that.”

“It’s a tin can filled with recycle air.”

“But there are peanuts.”

That did it. Lexa cracked a smile to herself and relaxed a little.

“I was going to be the first one here. Surprise you with coffee, but you beat me to it.”

“You are quite a good girlfriend. Someone clearly trained you well.”

Lexa shook her head, somewhat bashful, somewhat reserved. There was always something right there, just below the surface, obfuscated by a kind of resolve to never give anything away, not at any price. Clarke read it between words in their texts and emails, a glaring finality in the simple pixel of a period.

“Can I get you a coffee? Two creams, two sugar right?”

“You don’t have to--”

“It’s early and I’m trying to be charming. Allow me to somewhat repay you for this whole endeavour.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, darling.”

With the term of endearment, Lexa nodded, grinning into her chest as she stood and made her way across the terminal in search of sustenance. Clarke watched her take out her phone, texting her sister no doubt.

Once more, Clarke resumed the digging on her own, scrolling on her own phone at old pictures on Lexa’s profile. She was ready for fun, and she was ready to crack at that facade.

“I don’t know if this will help,” Lexa sighed as she sat down. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

“Oh this won’t be good for me either,” Clarke said as she took a sip. “I’m a fairly nervous flyer.”

“And yet you let me get us both coffee.”

“You made a good point, and I’m prepared to be paid back all weekend.”

With another grin, Lexa leaned back, her arm going on the back of the chair that Clarke inhabited, naturally, with ease, with a level of comfort.

“Are you ready to tell me the story?”

“Which one is that?” Clarke turned to look at her date, returned from an absent moment.

“How we met.”

“How we met,” she nodded, her smile bordering on mischievous. “That’s simple. Don’t you remember? It was a very blustery Tuesday, and I was trying to escape the wind and rain. I almost tripped coming into your coffee shop, but you happened to be sweeping, and were kind enough to catch me.”

“You’re severely overestimating my reflexes.”

“Fine. I ran you over and we both ended up on our asses in the middle of the coffee shop. Coffee everywhere.”

“Sounds pretty likely.”

“And I knew right there, I was hooked. Those eyes, all angry and annoyed at me for not looking where I was going, despite my persistent defense that I’d been assaulted by the weather.”

“Why do I have to be the angry one?”

“Wouldn’t you be though?” Clarke returned, daring her to be contradicted.

“Maybe,” Lexa agreed over the lid of her cup, fretting with it nervously.

“So I crashed into you, and you bought be a coffee. I turned up every day after that until I finally asked you out. You took longer than I would have liked to answer me, but I accepted it anyway, and we’ve been madly in love ever since.”

“And when was this?”

“About eight months ago.”

“How’s it going so far?”

“Splendidly. I’ve already met your sister, who it happens that I work with, which is super convenient for everyone.”

Quietly, Lexa sat there, going over the story, going over all of the past eight months of apparent bliss in her head. Clarke watched her furrow before softening, her eyes not seeing, but rather looking through the window as a plane took off and another landed. The softening of her features was soon met with a perplexion, a slight, gentle contortion of the brow and the lips, a tightening as a kind of confusion overtook the ease of the entire story.

“Is it that easy?” Lexa asked quietly, turning her head toward her date. Clarke cocked her head, waiting for more. “Is all of it… just… a wind? Waiting for someone to just ask you out? Is it that easy? Does that happen to people?”

“It can. How does anything happen in the world? It just… does. The universe is just a series of things happening, all of the time, right?”

“But is it that easy?”

To her credit, Clarke thought about it. She flexed her jaw and took a deep breath before slowing letting it go as she wondered if it really was.

“I don’t know. Maybe it can be.”

“How?”

“I guess there has to be a balance to making things happen and letting things happen.”

“I don’t know if I’m good at either of those things,” Lexa confessed. She sat up straighter a moment later, afraid of her honesty, and surprised more by how easily it came out.

“I think you can be.”

“That’s probably too kind.”

“We’ll see.”

Clarke rubbed Lexa’s shoulder, rubbed the middle of her back between her shoulder blades until she reached the collar of her shirt, where she massaged her neck. She tensed before relaxing, and Clarke didn’t stop, just rubbed there gently, slowly until she knew it was enough and she trailed her palm back toward the seat.

It was right there, they just didn’t know it.

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forthehpfanboys · 4 years ago

Text

Admirable

Pair: Harry Potter x Reader; he/him.

Summary: Harry convinces you that you’re worth it.

Warnings: Kinda Smutty (MDI), kinda fluffy, swears.

Fluff Prompt 21 and Smut Prompt 44: “Say one more bad thing about yourself! I dare you! Go on! Do it and I’ll give you the biggest fucking hug!” and “I wish you could see just how beautiful you are.”

~DO NOT REPOST ANYWHERE~

Harry strolled out of class, happy for it to finally be over. The bickering of his friends had him rolling his eyes so hard he wondered if they’d pop out of his skull. Personally, he didn’t care enough to argue over the importance of stirring a potion in the correct direction, so he left them be. He looked behind him, noting how Ron and Hermione were still packing their stuff while chewing each other out, before looking down the hall to the many students heading to their next classes. That was when he noticed the figure on the floor through the reflection of his glasses.

You were sitting on the floor, across the hall from the entrance to the classroom. His green eyes followed your gaze, which was casted down to your hands that were fiddling with the sleeves of your robe. Harry found himself wondering what caused you to sit on the cold tiles of the dungeon, clearly battling with the thoughts plaguing your head. He knew you had a free period while he had potions, so it must’ve happened within that free time.

When Harry turned to his friends, who had stopped bickering at this point and stood just beside him, they gave him an understanding nod, to which he returned with a soft smile and a wave. The pair hurried off to give you guys your space, both hoping you were ok. So, with a deep breath, Harry took the last few steps to stand in front of you and sat down to your right. When you didn’t look up, he reached out for one of your hands and separated your hand from your sleeve and held it gently.

“Love? Are you ok?” Harry asked, a soft grin on his face. He didn’t want to be too intrusive, but he knew something was up. He let out the breath through his nose when you looked at him. He noticed the puffiness of your eyes and the redness of your nose.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just um,” you paused to lick over your lips, “Malfoy starting stuff, like usual. I’m fine.” Your voice was nasally. You’d been crying. Harry gripped your hand harder when he realized you’d been alone when you were at your most vulnerable.

“That’s why the weasel wasn’t in class.” Harry grumbled to himself. He gently gripped your chin with his other hand and began looking for any cuts, bruises or hints of damage to your profile. “He didn’t touch you, did he? Merlin, if he did, I’ll kill him.”

You couldn’t help but give him a small smile. He was always protective of you. He loved you, he needed you and longed for the day the two of you could be safe and happy and sharing an apartment somewhere and getting a dog and-

“No, no. He didn’t touch me, Harry.” You gently pulled his hand from your chin to plant a soft kiss against his palm that made his heart flutter in his chest and a blush to spread across his cheeks.

“Then what did he do?” Harry tilted his head, but immediately regretted it when his hair fell into his eyes. He tried to shake it out of the way, but stopped when you reached up to move it for him.

“Just started talking shit. Said I was worth less than the gum on the floor of muggle bathrooms, said you deserved better than a mudblood.” You shrugged like it was no big deal. “Said the Chosen One should be with someone of a worthy status and that you’re wasting time on someone as low as me. It just got me thinking.”

Harry’s eyebrow twitched during your short story. His hand not holding yours clenched tight enough his dull nails dug into his palms and his knuckles turned white.

“Thinking what?” He hoped his voice didn’t give way to his frustration, but it still managed to show it’s way in. He dug his teeth into his bottom lip when your eyebrows furrowed together. He didn’t want to make you feel worse. He swallowed thickly when you hesitated to answer.

“Thinking he might be right. I mean- I’m no one, Harry. Why do you love me? I’m not the brightest, or the funniest, or anything special.” You leaned your head back against the rough bricks of the dungeon, ignoring how it caught and tugged on your hair. You chewed on the inside of your cheek before continuing. “I mean, even Malfoy has better grades than I do, and if that twat can ace deviation, I’m fuc-” Before you could finish, Harry all but exploded.

“Say one more bad thing about yourself! I dare you! Go on! Do it and I’ll give you the biggest fucking hug!” Harry shouted, his finger jabbing into your chest. This fucker was challenging you and it managed to lighten your mood a smidgen. You looked between his finger and his challenging eyes. “No, don’t you dare!” He shouted when you slowly opened your mouth to say something.

“Mr. Potter! Would you like to explain why you are shouting in front of my classroom?”

Harry looked up at Snape, blinking dumbly a few times before he responded.

“Well, for starters, they don’t exactly keep chairs in the hallways, so we must sit on the floor, professor.” He spoke smugly while you hid a laugh behind your hand. “And I’m only shouting because it’s necessary. My boyfriend doesn’t quiet understand he’s the best thing that has every happened to me and it’s hurting my feelings.”

“I could not care less about the complications of your relationship, Potter, but must I give you another detention for your insufferable lip necessary?” Snape raised an eyebrow at the silence. “I thought not. Please leave my classroom alone and handle your,” his nose crunched up, ”love life else were.” He shut the door behind him dramatically as he turned and returned to his classroom, flinging the door shut behind him.

“Arse.” Harry muttered, standing up. He held a hand out to you after dusting himself off. Once you took it, he helped you stand up. The noirette wrapped an arm around your waist as he led you down the hall. “Seriously though, don’t focus on what Malfoy said. He’s got less brain cells than the boulder holding up Hagrid’s hut.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the comparison and lean into his side. You slid your hand through the opening of his robe so you could rest your hand against his rear as you walked side by side.

“You’re not wrong, hun.” You said, giving his butt a few playful taps before wiggling your hand into his back pocket. You didn’t have to look at him to know he was gawking at you. A satisfied grin stretched across your lips.

“Oh, so you’re feeling better, yeah?” Harry’s sassy tone had you breaking out into a fit of giggles again. “Then how about we head up my dorm? We could do a bit of snuggling or snogging-”

“Why does British slang always involve an s?”

“Hush! I’m trying to be romantic!” Harry whined, bumping his hip against yours. You were worried for a second you’d actually pissed him off, but his beaming smile countered his whiny tone easily. With a roll of his eyes, he continued. “I could show you how much I just- I adore you.”

“Yeah, that isn’t cheesy at all.” You sassed, your eyes rolling dramatically. Before long, the two of you passed by the dinning hall and straight up the moving staircases to the Gryffindor common room. You spoke the password, barely giving the women in the portrait a second to begin her famous rants.

Once you stepped in, Harry grabbed your wrist, tugging you against him and slamming his lips against yours. His hand cupped your cheek gently, a stark contrast to the way he nipped at your lip, not caring who saw. You fell into the kiss easily, much like you always did. Your arms wrapped around his waist while he slowly backed you up against the wall just in front of the stairs.

Your hands gripped solely onto his school robes when his hips began to grind into yours. A hum vibrated between your lips before his tongue managed to slip between your teeth. He could feel your cheeks heating up from the very, very short distance and, after dominating your mouth with his tongue, he slowly pulled back.

His emerald eyes ran along your now swollen lips and half lidded eyes and lazy grin. He reached up, gently swiping his thumb along your lips to wipe the saliva away from the messy kiss.

“Are you feeling better?” Harry smiled when you nodded your head and planted a soft kiss against the pad of his thumb before taking it into your mouth. The Chosen One shivered when your tongue slid against his skin. “Godric, I wish you could see just how beautiful you are.” His voice was a lazy purr, his eyes getting darker the longer he watched you have your fun. “Come on, let’s head up so I can show you.”

#Ronny Writes #harry potter x male reader #harry potter imagine #Harry Potter Smut #hp imagine #hp x male reader #x male reader #hp drabble #hp male drabble #drabble #Harry Potter #male reader #not a story

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boredoverlord · 3 years ago

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Bucky X Reader - Hold the Line

I came in here to show you a good time, so here's my personal work and my very first fanfiction of all time. And because I'm a thirsty bitch, of course it's smut.

Summary : As a young and talented psychologist specializing in difficult people in prison, you believed in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with the SHIELD. Turned out you were tricked to work for HYDRA.

For three years they made you do horrors in the name of an ideology you despised, but you may have found the occasion to finally make a change for the good, when they introduced you to your new patient.

The Winter Soldier.

Rating : Explicit, please kids, look away ( of course you won't because you're cute little rebels, but please do it)

Word count : 6.4k (chapter 1)

TW: Light BDSM (for now) Because Bucky is a massive Sub and it seems nobody agrees with me, so I have to do the lord's work here.

Foul language, mention of violence and murder, Masturbation, male orgasm and a tiiiny bit of choking. I started lightly

Please consider reading this on Archive of our own or read it below the cut. Lemme know what you think !

Chapter 1: A Story of Almost Everything

You never were the type to brag. But one thing you know is : you’re damn good at your job. Years and years of psychology studies, you barely got to parties, you hardly made any friends, and your sleeping schedule is still a nightmare. Those were sacrifices you did for one sole purpose : helping others. To be the last resort for people who have lost everything. You always firmly believed that you could make a change in the world, even the slightest, even for just one person. That would have been enough to make your lifetime worthy. What's more noble than just a genuine try to make it better, after all ? So you wasted your youth on studies, without a damn blink. And never one ounce of regret. You did it because it felt right. You’re not very brave, but you decided to face your fear a couple of times. You even were an intern in a high security prison, talking to broken men and women who hated your guts. Trying to lead them to another path of life. You heard stories that could break any mind. Only time could tell if you actually helped them. But that’s part of the job. Hope. And hard work.

That’s why when you started to have a growing reputation, at 26 after five years of studies and several years working in prison and rehabilitation, you were ecstatic when S.H.I.E.L.D contacted you. You quit everything, starting with your homeland in Europe, to fly to Washington DC, to visit the headquarters. The new building, the thrill of novelty, the clean rooms, the medical wing, and Alexander Pierce himself coming to shake your hand and telling you personally the wonders they have in mind for the psychology field. You could prepare people to save the world, you could have all the resources to make research, and fix minds that were supposed to be beyond repair. It was supposed to be just a quick trip, but the visit wasn’t even done when you looked at your guide with enthusiasm : you weren’t going home. Just cancel the fly. You’re taking the job immediately. It was three years ago.

Enough to understand how fucked you are.

You didn’t save anyone, you didn’t even work to make the world a better place. Oh but you did work to make a change. A change for HYDRA. They tortured you to make you swallow their ideology, but even if your body surrendered, your mind didn’t, even if it was still a perpetual work on yourself. You never believed in this masquerade, but you know it doesn’t matter. Because HYDRA knows how good you are at your job, and you’re a precious asset. So precious that they pushed all your buttons to make you obey. You tried to act and escape. Their last resort is the Damocles sword they put over your family’s head. Next act of rebellion, heads will roll. And it won’t be yours : no, no. HYDRA won’t give you this relief. It will be your loved ones. So you’re doing what you have to do. It’s the most cowardly choice, you know it. And you’re ashamed. But you’re too terrorised to make it otherwise. So you’re here to twist people's minds to swallow whatever Hydra wants. You make them understand the importance of the organization, when they can’t take it anymore, you make them understand that not only they can, but they must . You saw vulnerable people giving their life to this awful cause, and you are the person to make them understand it was the right thing to do. They gave you kind people with dreams, morals and passion, and you turn this into anger, hate and war, worshipping a crazy doctrine that spoils everything you believed and fought for. You have blood on your hands. You’re THAT good at your job.

So when they called you for a highly secret mission, you weren’t exactly surprised. Just disgusted by them, and mostly yourself. In the guts of what was called the Ideal Federal Saving Bank, you’re obediently following the chef himself : Alexander Pierce, to your next place of action. “I believe you have read your mission’s order, Y/N ?” “Yes Sir.” You said. “It did mention I will have the whole file today, though. I need to take a look at my patient so I can work in proper condition.” “Whatever you call it.” He said, opening the door of the clandestine laboratory in the now abandoned bank. If not for the machinery, we could still believe that those art deco walls filled with safes would still contain treasures of a lifetime for some people. Now there is nothing of value in here, not even the very skin of every PoS present. And you were including yourself. Making your way in the middle of the heavy set up, you slowly reach the pod in the middle, chewing secretly the interior of your cheeks. You know what’s inside, and it makes you want to puke. Mr Pierce continued “Doctor, as your mission was presented to you, your one on only assignment will be the physical and mostly the psychological perfect condition of the Winter Soldier, for the entire length of this mission on american soil.” Basically, be sure his brain is a fucking slushy. You reluctantly nodded and drew closer. “What’s his condition ?” At the top of your height, barely 5’3, you tiptoed to actually look at him by the window of the cryostasis chamber, since you never got this close of a look, not without the file and basically crumbs of info that were thrown at your face. They expected you to keep a dog on a leash, not making actual work on him, and it shows. White man, late 20s to early 30s, approx 5”7, long dark messy hair, not shaved, geez, it seemed like the poor guy was barely cleaned up before being pushed here. Good physical condition, breathing was steady. You could see the steam of his breath on the glass. He may be clinically asleep, but she highly doubted he would be in his best shape. He looked uncomfortable, and tired. It wasn’t a restorative sleep. It was a prison. You couldn’t help but notice his prosthetic arm, even if that was the only thing you knew about him. It’s a fascinating work of science, that’s for sure. And even if transhumanism and biomechanical wasn’t your forte, you wanted to have a closer look, to satisfy your curiosity. One of the scientists watching his screen responded : “He’s gently defrozing, should be half conscious in 5 minutes. You may want to take a step down.” You ignore that, and lean your hand to your superior. “May I finally have what I have been asking for ?” With the most irritating smile, he gave you the Winter Soldier’s File and you quickly opened it to have a first look at all the fuss. Basic physical information, previous missions report, date of entering and ending of cryostasis, bare minimal medical record, notes by her predecessor, fucking trigger words to make him kneel like a 12 years old in front of any boysband... nothing about his previous life, his antics, his name, actual disorders, no name, nor adresses… You glaced a bit at Pierce and threw a polite smile. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows you know. You’re extremely good with very violent patients. You have endured rapists and murderers spiting in your face and swearing to bite your head off and fucking your skull. You were traumatized and you cried yourself to sleep, but the following day you did your job again. You’re just here to handle the worst of the worst. And you’re going to do it.

Or he’s going to break your neck and fuck your skull. You’re fine with that.

“Thank you it’s going to be very helpful.” As helpful as a band-aid on a wooden leg. “What’s this device ?” You point your chin to another machine not far away from it. One of the two men finishing installing it, raised his head to look at you. “A memory suppressing machine. Usually he doesn’t need it as much as he used to, but it’s mainly for safety. He must be prepared.” “He’s in a state where he willingly takes it. So don’t hesitate if he’s starting to be annoying, or excited. That can happen. But that mean you would probably have to work more with him to make him fully ready for his mission,” “Understood, thank you for clarification gentlemen.” You smiled and they smiled back. You’re a woman, so you’re used to it. Basically this shit was supposed to hack his brain, and it must be painful. “I would strongly recommend not using it at such a time. From what I quickly read he needs stability and time. Wiping everything out will more likely create more confusion.” You took a look at the file again and took it upon yourself to not have your eyes double in size and screaming at this bunch of idiots. “... and it does seem he’s using it a lot.”

“We want the asset to be as focused as possible.”

“I understand that, but that's a temporary solution at best. He’s got a brain, not a harddrive. We still don’t know how it can store information, and if it can…” “The last time we used him was five years ago…” Started Pierce, with diplomaty, but also with a tone that wasn’t allowing any more debate on the matter. “And this mission is an absolute priority. The asset is strictly under cryostasis procedure as soon as he’s not needed anymore. The machine will be used if needed.” “I understand your point.” You absolute psychopath. “Then my request is simply to be here if it happens, and to be able to control the shocks. Also, I insist that he must be in perfect condition when you launch the procedure, I’ll personally make it happen and give you a green light.” “Thank you for your hard work.” He said, raising his hand, that you promptly and politely shook. You could feel the angry grasp. “I know you’re the perfect woman for this hard job. Your work is an inspiration for us all.” You wish you could end your life right here right now, instead of being told such atrocities. But you think about your mom and dad. At this time of year they start to prepare the pool for the summer, for the future neighborhood barbecues where they will brag to everyone about their incredible psychiatrist daughter who is doing secret stuff over sea to help save the world. You have to be strong. At least for them. At least for now.

“Hail Hydra.”

“Hail Hydra.” You responded, while your tongue feels like sandpaper.

“Ok he’s starting to wake up…” Someone warns, as Pierce leaves the room, unbothered. The pod opens before your eyes, as the asset -you hate this term- is being roughly handled and carried away by two dudes to his seat. The one dangerously close to the memory suppressing machine. You squatted in front of him, the time for him to blink several times and look around him. Confused, but it’s not exactly his first rodeo either. His eyes are quickly focused on the first thing in front of him : you. He looked like he was trying to remember who you are, but quickly realized he didn’t know you. Two blue spears digging right into your soul. That’s making you a bit uncomfortable. The same weird feeling of unease you have when a cat is watching you taking a shower. “Hi.” You started, in english, even if he could be from italy you had no freaking clue. You guessed that he was probably slavic. But the file says he’s speaking more than ten languages. And it wasn’t specified when and how the hell did he learn that. “Can you hear me?” He took a few more seconds to look at you, probably the time to finish reading every embarrassing moment of your life, right into your eyes, like your drunk 18th birthday when you finished in your panties swimming in a city fountain, but he nodded eventually. You actually know this look. But it’s the first time you have a super soldier in front of you so it’s of a rare intensity. He’s dissecting you. Gathering information. His eyes moved slightly down : a recent scar on your neck. Right : an ex piercing on the top of your ear, now unusable. Down left : he just realized you’re slightly unbalanced so he knows you have a hip issue. And down right : he’s looking at your hand, you don’t really know what he saw here, maybe calculating how to break them ? You were literally a foot in a viper’s nest. Were you terrified ? Absolutely. Will that forbid you to do your job ? Nope. “Can you follow the light ?” You asked, moving slowly your phone’s lamp from left to right in front of his eyes. He did it without questioning. “Ok good.” You tried a smile, not really knowing why. If he was at least a tenth as clever as the file said he was, he perfectly know that you’re here to fuck him up. But you couldn’t help it. Poor dude. He was visibly more or less your age. He could have been a prince, or thief, a womanizer, or a priest, whatever, HYDRA took everything from him. From his free will, of his right to grow old, to his sleep. “Can you tell me your name ?” He frowned, perplexed. “Winter Soldier.” Shitty answer but at least he was fully aware, and his tongue was working properly. “Nice to meet you, I’m doctor Y/N. We’re here to work together in preparation of your next assignment. Do you understand ?” He nodded, unimpressed. “Good, can you get up ?” He did, so you did it too. And he realized that you were… very short. His eyes literally went up and slooowly down. That was a bit mean, actually. You carefully took a glance behind you, and your eyeroll could probably trigger an earthquake. “Can you all nice gentlemen let down a bit of their weapon ?” You said at the 6 dudes with rifles literally fixed on him, ready to shoot at the wrong twitch of muscle. No wonder he wasn’t talkative. “You won’t say that when he will break your neck with two fingers, ‘mam.”

“He’s pretty stable for now. Plus he’s not fully awake, let’s give him time before threatening him, shall we ?”

Nobody moved for ten seconds before one of them complied, since you didn’t move. The rest of the bunch reluctantly followed . You looked at your patient, hoping that that would have made him a bit more relaxed. Nope, he didn’t give a shit. He wasn't even looking at them. He was looking at you. You’re the mystery of this room to him. But you didn’t need extra vision to understand that Docs treated him like a guinea pig, so he was very understandably extra careful with you. Standing on his feet, all his muscles ready for action, that’s the exact moment you realized how close you two were. Indeed, if he decided to, your jaw would fly across the room in a single move. You never had such a display of sheer raw strength, and you could feel the heat of his body radiate.

“He needs a shower, and clothings.” You said, having a look at his 5 years old combat suit still reeking the smell of his sweat. It was intoxicating. They didn’t even allow him to clean himself. Poor dude was frozen in his own filth for the last five years. And you didn’t know why you took an even deeper breath. “And I’m talking about comfy workout clothes, no combat suit. Please escort him and handle him with care, before bringing him to my office.” You actually decided to be sure he wouldn’t be mistreated, by waiting outside the man’s bathrooms. You weren’t certain of how he could react, and you didn’t trust anyone here. If one of them decided to do a piss contest with your patient, it could end badly. So you put your hands in your pockets, looking at the two armed men waiting for the most dangerous assassin in the world to finish scrubbing himself with soap. The atmosphere was heavy and the silence was loud in itself. Even the sound of the shower was stressful and menacing.

When the Soldier was escorted to your improvised office into the archive, directly linked to a storage room that will be your bedroom for the next weeks, you let him take a seat and promptly blocked the access to the room of the two escort members. “Thank you sirs, that will be all. Please wait here.” They look at you like you just told them you were dating their daughters. “Sorry Miss, but we can’t…” “Sorry Doctor , and I can’t work properly with weapons in my office.” You raised your hand, showing your device on your wrist. Something that would not only call for aid by a simple pressure, but could stun an opponent. Neither them nor you were stupid : it wouldn’t stop The Winter Soldier, maybe he would blink a second at most. But you really wanted to be alone with him. Was he dangerous ? Yes. Were you absolutely certain that you would leave this room alive if you closed this door to their face ? No. But it’s been three years since your priority wasn’t your survival anymore. So you forced a smile and slapped the door. They needed you more than you needed them, so they will obey.

“Douchebags.” You muttered to yourself while coming back to your desk. Your patient didn’t even move a muscle at your little argument. He wasn’t totally inexpressive actually, mostly terribly broody. His hair was still wet from the shower he took, wearing cargo pants, heavy boots and hoodies, generic clothes by HYDRA. You got those too, since you’re not allowed to carry anything personal for mission to mission. You had a tablet for books, music and movies, but that was it. You haven’t opened your shelves yet, but you know it’s full of ugly clothes and generic black panties of doom.

You took a large inspiration, sat on your desk in front of him, and started : “Ok ‘Winter Soldier’... how are you doing ?” He didn’t even flinch. He was staring into your soul with his eyes lost into dark circles. Depriving someone of proper sleep is a basic rule for brainwash. “You enjoyed the shower ?” Nothing. You waited for a bit to see if he would finally respond. Ten seconds. Twenty. fourty. a minute. When he gathered that you were actually looking for an answer, visibly a first one for him, he finally gave you the courtesy of one. “Yes.” “Perfect.” You didn’t hide your slight smile and tiled your head. “I’ll be sure you’re in your best condition for your next mission. If something’s on your mind, I need to know about it. Nothing will get out of this room. Both of our priorities are your goal, and your condition is the key to success. Which makes you , my high top priority. Do you understand me ?” “Yes.”

“Ok so let’s get going.” You took another file, and took a picture out, ready to handle it to him. “Is the name : Nicholas Fury, ringing some bells to you?” “Yes.” He took it inside his titanium fingers and finally moved his piercing blue eyes away from you to look at the picture. “In two weeks, you’ll be in Washington DC. An entire squad will be deployed to assassinate him. Fury is the leader of the S.H.I.E.L.D, not a mere target. He will break free and fight back. That will be when you’ll show up.” He wasn’t looking at the picture anymore. One thing for sure : at least he was paying attention to you, and what you were saying. And that made you actually kind of proud of yourself. “That was part one. I’ll personally supervise your training with the VR machine and your physical health and condition. I really need you to communicate with me all the time about anything that could be in your mind. The more focused you are, the more Hydra’s plan will succeed.” And what’s that plan ? You have not a single clue. You were a cog in the machine, disposable. Not much more than him. “Do you understand ?” “I understand.” Oh shit, two words this time!

“Good.” You smiled. He didn’t. You move your hands closer to him, to take a grip on the picture. He opened his prosthetic hand, leaving you to take it back. Nothing in his gesture seems dangerous. Just normal, somehow cordial. “I must ask : are you in any pain right now ?” His eyes significantly get from right to left. He must probably wonder why you are asking him that. Did nobody ever ask him such basic questions like : ‘are you in pain?’ This man's sole purpose was to fight, that made no damn sense for you.

“Sir ?” You insisted for an answer, even if the ‘sir’ sounded absolutely ridiculous to your ears. You didn’t know his name, and you don’t feel comfortable calling him “Winter Soldier” , “Soldier”, “Sir De Winter”, “Hey you,he soviet assassin” so it will be “Sir” for now. “Sir are you in pain right now ?” “I’m not in pain.” A complete sentence, that’s progress. You breathed a bit better “Ok good.” You got up from your desk, which was honestly barely taller that him remaining on his chair. He didn’t let go of your eyes and you decided to make a bold move. For now, he was always being responsive so you slowly moved your hands toward him. To his prosthetic hand. “May I take a look, please ?” You glanced at each other, nobody made the first move. In complete silence, if it wasn’t for both of your breaths. You’re almost sure that it has been at least 5 minutes since you decided to speak again. Slowly, and gently, with no signs of confrontation in your body language or speech. “I will not do it until you comply. And you can refuse the contact.” He didn’t answer right away but he finally nodded.

Slowly, you took his hand into yours, lifting it from his thigh where it was resting. At the beginning it was just taking a look. But he wasn’t making any moves, so you decided to take your observation a little further. You used your other hands to start to move each finger separately, taking a step closer to him. Finally, you made one of your hands slowly sliding into the hoodie, to feel the muscles, the nerves, how it feels like a real arm. It was cold, but you felt it shudder to your touch. That was the line you decided to not take it further.

“Thank you, Soldier.” You said with a smile, taking away your hands from him. You moved behind your desk, opening your notepad to take a bunch of notes, breaking the contact with him. Just a second. But when you raised your eyes again, The Winter Soldier wasn’t in sight.

You shuddered and didn’t make a single move. If it wasn’t for your fingers grasping your desk. You did your best to have a steady respiration and not start to panic. Your throat dried up immediately. You took a deep breath and say : “Please, get back to your seat.” You slowly moved your head to look right back at him. He was standing. His eyes were black, taking loud deep breaths, fixing your behind your shoulder. Tall. Dangerous. You were terrorised. And he could smell it. He didn’t move so you stood up as well, and slowly faced him. You try to remain in total control of your body and not start to fidget. You could scream for help, but for whatever reason, you still had the feeling you could handle the situation. Trying to convince yourself that it wasn’t the first time a patient was disobedient. The only difference was that this one could crush your skull in a bat of an eye,

“Get back.” You said once again, bearing his piercing eyes, but he didn’t budge. So you took out your hand and put it on his chest. You felt like an ant against a mountain, but you pushed him a bit. “We will go nowhere this way.” You resumed trying to get a step closer, even if it will be creating a proximity that could be even more lethal to you. “So please, get back to…”

Something happened. It was obvious, and clear as day : you felt the bulge between his legs. Right above your navel. Hardening even more now that he could feel your body. You decided immediately to repress the shameful feeling of your very inside warming up and tickling you. “Winter Soldier.” You growled, angry but trying your best to remain as professional as you could. Of course, of fucking course. This guy was gorged on serum and hormones, quick, violent actions, and adrenaline. Pumping in his veins, burning 24/7. His body was on the edge all the time, and he just awoke from a dreamless slumber. He was a human, whatever all these idiots were thinking, not a freakin’ cyborg. When was the last time he saw a woman that he didn’t smash the head on a wall ? You even suspected that Pierce was counting on it. Nonetheless, you were alone in an office, literally glued with the world's most dangerous assassin, who was having a massive hard-on. Throbbing against you. You had your share of very awkward situations in your short life time. But nothing, nothing prepared you for this. And you had even less of an idea of what to do because he was doing nothing . He was feeling uncomfortable, that you could say, but he wasn’t really doing any moves to attack you, or even take you. He was standing here, with heavy breathing, his eyes still piercing you. And you slowly slided your gaze to his lips, finding the vision of his hard laboured breath strangely mesmerizing.

Short of ideas, your reflexes took the best (or the worst) of you, and without you realizing it, your hand was around his neck. Your palm pressured on his glottis, and you clearly felt him swallow. As clearly as you felt him becoming even harder. Your breath was starting to shake, as you felt a not-so subtle chill coursing your spin. You drew his face and your face closer, as you finally moved forward, forcing him to move as well. Forcing was a strong word : the last time you hit a punching bag, you hurt yourself and sobbed for an hour. But for whatever reason, he did whatever you wanted. As if he was testing your resolve to make him obey. But there was nothing on his file about this behaviour. He tried to attack, kill and escape. Nothing about testing the limits of anyone.

“You. Will. Sit. Down!” you spat, through your teeth, forcing even more your grip around his neck, as your other hand was reaching for his hair. You pulled it, not too harshly, but you could definitely smell the musk, and the wetness of what stayed of his shower.

You did it. He was sitting down again. And your bodies departed for one another. For once he tried to escape your gaze, which was a strangely human reaction. You both managed to get your breath back, before you decided to call the guard to adjourn your observation.

As soon as the door closed behind them, you felt your legs giving up and you sat on the ground, back against your desk, a small wimp leaving your throat. You felt your eyes starting to wet, and your teeth rattled a bit so you tried to cuddle yourself to try to retake control on your body. Your hands were shaking uncontrollably as his intoxicating smell was still all around you. It was by far one of the most terrifying experiences you ever felt, and it was all clouded by the phantom feeling of his body against yours. You could still feel his gaze, his heat, his… well, his cock against your belly. You were still chilling, trying to repress whatever you were feeling at this instant. Because it wasn’t right, for you. Nor him. Everyone in this godforsaken organisation was treating him like a dog, just here to attack and do tricks, but you swore to yourself not to do the same. You will succeed at your mission, but you’ll do it from the crumbs of humanity and morality that HYDRA left you. You will do anything possible that the mission will be complete, the most painless possible for this broken man you just saw. Wait a second.

Painless .

You jumped on your feet, ignoring the numbness of your legs caused by the shock, and you ran at the door, screaming at the three men at the end of the corridor. “HEY !” The guards startled a bit and looked at you “I changed my mind. Bring the Winter Soldier back to my office.” They briefly exchange what seems to be a bunch of insults about you, but they comply to bring the Soldier back. Him ? He seemed absolutely unbothered.

You closed the door behind the both of you, to the face of the guards yet again. He was standing here, showing his back as you slowly got back in front of him. Hands in your pocket, not really sure of what to do nor how to do it. He was looking at you, this same feeling of unease than before. And for reasons : a small glance confirmed that he was still rock hard. You didn’t make any move for a long time, until you finally put your hand on his chest. You felt his breathing becoming slightly quicker. “You’re not in pain.” You whispered, and he shook his head, negatively. “That was the wrong question. I’m sorry... “ Without you noticing, you had the palm of your hand on his cheek, scrubing lightly his stubble with your thumb as an apology. You breathed in, just couldn’t believe what you were about to say. “Do you need help ?” His expression didn’t change, but his eyes ? They became a bit brighter, you could even see a bit of relief when you saw him nod.

You swiftly move your other index on his pillowy lips as you still lower your voice. “They cannot hear us.” He nodded again as the only feeling of your finger as close to his mouth made him shiver with anticipation. He was literally dying of anything that could relieve him. And for what you understood, as your conversation continued, he trusted you with his body, to provide him with the sweet touch he has been totally deprived of. You slowly push away your index to gently slide your thumb between his lips, and he sighed with pleasure as he took it with an eagerness you would never have believed possible. The most deadly assassin in the world, the legendary Winter Soldier that everyone wishes he wasn’t real, was purring while sucking your finger. If you weren’t the shrink, you’ll be needing one immediately. You gently moved him to make him sit in his chair, he was way too tall for you to handle this with ease. “What about the showers?” You asked him, as you removed your thumb to make it gently slide on his lips, your other hand crawling across his chest to his pants. He swallowed before whispering. “I could but... “ his well built square jaws started to tense, with a visible revulsion. “... They can watch.” Disgusting. He couldn’t even close the damn door of the shower. “You’re safe here.” You said as your hand was finally reaching the bulge behind his Hydra cargo pants. You didn’t know what you expected but… it was way beyond that. He hissed a bit at the feeling of your hand as you started to touch it gently over the fabric.

Now he was panting, looking at you as you were a single oasis after years of thirst in the desert. “Please…” You heard, barely audible when he was starting to lose it. “I got you, but you have to promise me to be good.” “Anything. Please…”

And at your very surprise, you obliged him. Using your hand to plunge into his pants, while the other fast pressed into his mouth, muffing the immediate deep moan that escaped at the very second you touched his pulsing penis. He started panting even more, as he used his flesh arm to drive you onto him. His forehead against yours. You couldn’t stop yourself from getting closer and closer. Actually you let go of his -massive- erection a second to just drop out his pants, and his breach. You stopped a second, only to watch him begging you with his eyes, as you could feel his saliva at the palm of your hand while you muzzled him. It was it. You realized what kind of power you have over this man. He has been used and abused in every single way, but for once : someone’s finally doing what he wanted. You had his pleasure in your very hands, and for once in years, you could finally help someone. So you’re gonna do it, you’re going to make him feel good. Very good. “Good boy.” You muttered, without knowing where the hell that could come from, and you reached him again. Stroking your hands up and down his shaft, nourishing yourself over the vibration of his muffled moans against your hand. His eyes weren't leaving yours, if it wasn’t for when they seemed to roll to the sky. His vision periodically blackened by the waves of forbidden pleasure he was feeling over his body, who was barely him anymore. Your eyes were gorging on the vision of his handsome muscular man, surrendering himself to your touch, sweating, trembling and panting for you. You were saluted by an utterly satisfied noise the moment you decided to lean over his manhood to drip a large amount of your own saliva moist what was already on the edge of ruin. You rolled your thumb against his tip, massage his veins with just one finger… anything to make him feel something. Anything that wasn’t pure anger, hatred or apathy. You were inclined to believe the file saying that he was nothing but a perfectly built weapon for HYDRA to command. But now, when you tickled, teased and made him shiver, and you felt all his sincere gratitude, you were certain : There is a man in here. And he was finally feeling good .

But soon, it wasn’t enough anymore. Seeing his bare thighs, powerful, thicken by years of training and super soldier serum, tensed by all the nerves and muscles deliciously answering to your call, made your inside warmed up. Your core was aching, screaming for proximity and intimacy, and before you understood what happened, you sat astride on his left thigh. The soft flesh between your legs immediately responded with delight, making you shiver. Almost instantly, you felt his grip on your hip, of the cold metal digging into your flesh with despair. It was a super soldier, with the stamina of several dozen men, but it’s been so long, and you were touching him with perfection. You felt his head on your shoulder, and slowly you started licking his temple, tasting the very fruit of your hard work : his sweat.

Galvanized by his intoxicating smell, and the thrusting he started giving to your hand, you started to move like a snake, rocking against his skin, looking for some pressure despite the fabric of your pants, mercilessly acting like a barrier of your own pleasure. You could get it off, but it was a limit that you forbid yourself to cross. But it’s true, as you were working him, you couldn’t stop yourself to think of how this would feel. Sliding inside you. You were so very short and fragile, and compared to your hand, his phallus was gigantic. He could ruin you, split you in half, using his bare hands and make you do anything. But the only person in control here, were you. And only you. You never felt anything like this before. And it’s highly probable than neither did he. You tried to vanish the thought, but the more you could feel his thigh between yours, the more you became obsessed.

The more he was approaching, the more eager the soldier became. Both of his hands firmly gripped on your behind, almost certain that it will leave bruises, but you didn’t care at this very moment. His grunts against your hands became more and more intense, and you started to feel he was about to give in. In between your fingers, small drips of salivas were started to escape. You couldn’t give up your grip now, so you made it even more tight, drawing your lips closer to your hands, you whispered as your sore wrist fastened its path “I’m here for you. Give everything to me.”

His panting became incontrolable, his eyes rolled out, his head dropped back, before he finally reached his peak. You felt the deep vibration of his ultimate cry on your hand, as your other hand was dripping of hot seed. You slowly removed your other hand from his face, and could contemplate your masterpiece : the Soldier absolutely looked like a mess, with his red face, his eyes blinking furiously, covered with his own saliva. You left his leg, both your hands dripping of his bodily fluids. You used the one that was on his lips to pick his head and forced him to look at you. You ravished your vision of this man who absolutely surrendered to your good care, deeply satisfied with your attention. You cradled his face, and you took a large lick of his spit from his chin to his mouth. Where he leaned for a wet and warm kiss. You took a good taste of him, intoxicated by whatever pheromones he could diffuse around you.

You look at him another few seconds, before recluandly moving away, to the bathroom where you not only washed your hands, but came back with a wet towel. You first cleaned with infinite care his face, and then his genitals, making sure he wouldn’t have any kind of unpleasant sensation as he had a big day ahead of him. You were his doctor and caretaker, and he had a mission to prepare. He seemed to respond well to the cleaning, not really expressive, but he made no sudden move. You could see him sighing with ease, closing his eyes as he rubbed his cheek in your palm again, when you were caressing him with the wet towel. You could still hear a loud satisfying purr. If you didn’t specifically ask him to kill someone less that an hour ago, you would actually find this absolutely adorable.

You breathed in and out, making sure he was okay. “Are you feeling better ?...” He nodded, visibly relaxed, as he was closing his pants but not much more expressive than before. He stood up, in front of you, like nothing happened. “Yes.” But to your surprise he added a second later. “Thank you, doctor.” You smiled at him as you couldn’t keep yourself from making your knuckles caressing his cheek, and finally tracking the shape of his jaws. “Good boy.” You heard yourself say, wondering what the fuck was wrong with you.He didn’t react. All the shivers, purring, sighing, and moans disappeared as soon as his pants closed. It was for the best, and you quickly took your hand back, clearing your throat. You call the guards. The Winter Soldier was fully ready for his mission preparation, and you asked them to give him some time to recover from… his cryostatic, before you would start the procedure.

In the meantime, you need a shower. A long, hot, steamy, shower.

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yeojaa · 4 years ago

Note

so maybe another devil in a new suit drabble 👉👈 maybe jk meeting oc parents or like more interactions w oc and jks parents/sister

[ read devil in a new suit ]

pairing. jjk x f!reader. rating. pg-13. tags. mentions of coconut!kook dancing (and the whole reason i wrote this tbh), cute banter, idk. just a lotta fluff, a lil bit of grinding, y’know. wc. 2.7k. beta reader. none other than @hobi-gif. i love you always! author note. oh look... it’s me... posting something... after sixteen hundred years. womp womp. this truthfully didn’t go the way i planned it to but i hope you enjoy regardless!

It really shouldn’t surprise you. Frankly, it doesn’t.

But it is a little funny.

There are about six girls gathered in a gaggle around your boyfriend, all desperately vying for his attention as he presents a neatly gathered bouquet to his little sister. Jisoo’s all smiles, completely over the moon with pride and riding that high as she rightfully should. (She’d done incredibly well, closed out the showcase with a fluidity you could never even dream of.) She doesn’t even notice her friends staring at her brother with hearts in their eyes, each one red in the face and not from exertion.

(That, or she doesn’t care. Maybe she’s grown used to it - the whole having-a-heartthrob-for-a-brother thing.)

It’s actually quite cute, if only because you know Jungkook doesn’t have eyes for anyone but you. Can feel it in how he keeps bouncing his gaze back towards you, dimple winking from deep within his cheek each time your eyes meet. He’s like a child going back to his favourite toy, momentarily distracted by tittering laughter and his sister’s sunny smile but always coming back to you. The knowledge warms you from the inside out, drags a satisfied smile across your lips.

You wonder whether he notices the attention or if it’s just another part of his life. (You think he must know. These college students don’t really hide it well, too handsy for their own good, years of growing up in semi-close proximity instilling a certain confidence in their motions. That, and because Jungkook is quite possibly the least intimidating person you’ve ever met.)

“Thank you for coming!” It’s Jisoo, flushed and excitable, round eyes as bright as her brother’s as she crosses to you. This had been her moment - her time to shine - but you appreciate the effort she makes to include you, finding you within the crowd. “I was a little nervous but…” A shrug rolls her narrow shoulders, shakes her dark hair from its loose coil.

You’d seen her practice before this - watched the long videos she’d regularly send to Jungkook - but seeing her in real life motion was an entire league of its own. Dancing was her calling, every bit of her made for it. There was just something lyrical about the way she moved, how her hips rolled, limbs seemingly guided by the rhythm of the music. A grace you’ve never had, even on your best day.

“You shouldn’t have been.” You’re beaming right back at her, sisterly reassurance on your tongue. “You were amazing.”

Whether she believes you or not - you think she does by how her cheeks grow ten sizes and her eyes are all but swallowed whole by the expression - she’s gracious, accepting the compliment with her blinding smile. (She really was like Jungkook like that.)

“You guys should come to a class one day.” By that, she means a class she helps teach every once in a while. You’ve heard about it on more than one occasion, seen the choreography posted on Instagram and YouTube.

Still, you don’t expect that, brows shooting high. Laughter filters past your teeth, springing off your tongue. “I am not a dancer and I doubt your brother—”

Now it’s Jisoo’s turn to wear surprise like a neon sign, expression splitting with giggles of her own. “Wait— have you not seen Kook dance?” The way she says it is incredulous, Bambi eyes sparkling with what looks like mischief.

“No?”

“Your sister told me something.”

You’ve never seen this particular brand of worry on his face, eyes even more comically wide than usual, whatever words he’d originally meant to speak dying on his tongue. He looks like a literal deer caught in the headlights, one of his nicknames suddenly very apt.

“What did she say? She likes to embarrass me.” True. Jisoo and Jungkook had a textbook sibling relationship, full of teasing and mockery and copious amounts of love. “Whatever she said, don’t believe—”

“She said you used to dance.”

“Oh.” Oh? You hadn’t expected Jungkook to deflate so easily, relief flooding his features. “Yeah, I did. In university.” He’s utterly unbothered by this knowledge, attention back on the soondubu jjigae he’d been shovelling into his mouth. “I had some friends who were dancers, so it was good exercise.”

“I want to see.”

His answer is immediate, despite the heaping bite of rice and stew in his mouth. “No.”

You whack him across the shoulder, startling him into clattering his spoon on the countertop. It leaves a messy red streak across marble but you’re dragging his attention back to you with a firm glare, fingers cradled under his jaw. “I want to see.”

Talent apparently runs in the family, you realise halfway through the third video. Jungkook moves with the same assured movements his sister does, with power and grace and a confidence that frankly baffles you. He treats the practice room like a stage, running through the motions so fluidly you almost have trouble believing it’s your man on the screen. (Not that he’s particularly ungraceful. It’s just surprising, like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.)

“So, what happened?” You say it so conversationally, innocently, with eyes that mimic his own. From the corner of your periphery, your boyfriend shifts, hand flexing over your knee. There’s the furrow between his brows, the subtle tension in his jaw. Worry.

“What do you mean?”

Your own hand waves toward the screen, where the image of Jungkook from over half a decade ago sits paused. “You were so…” You’re not sure what you mean. There are just so many options to describe the literal baby boy on the television. Young? Confident? Round? (You can’t get over his haircut, though you suppose you can’t hold it against him.)

Jungkook simply stares at you, waiting for you to find whatever words you want to use. Despite the uncertainty that swims somewhere in the depths of his eyes, he’s endlessly patient. Always so soft when it comes to you.

“You had a coconut head.”

Laughter explodes off his tongue, entire face screwing up with amusement. “Are you serious?”

“You did!” Admittedly, the cut had somehow worked on him but it’s so reminiscent of grade school haircuts you can’t help but focus on it, too distracted by the glossy sheen to offer much else. “I guess I get it, though.”

“What do you mean? Everyone had that haircut—”

“In first grade, maybe.” He sticks his tongue out at you then; you scowl in response.

“What do you get?” As always, he’s perceptive, immediately aware of your carefully knit brow, the thoughtfulness that fits itself around your teeth like gleaming white veneers and holds his attention hostage. He’s grown used to it over the months you’ve been together - knows you cling tight to things with an iron grip, turn them over and over until you’ve made sense of it in that brain of yours.

“The crushes.” You look affronted, almost appalled at the realisation. He bursts out laughing, broad palm coming down upon your bare leg in a smack. (He apologises profusely when you complain.)

“What’re you talking about?”

Your nose is wrinkled, velvet strands dislodged by the shake of your head. “All your sister’s friends. They’re in love with you.” Jisoo had even agreed, laughed about it when you’d commented on it at the recital. Something about them having grown up with Jungkook, obsessed with the image they’d retained of him since university. “But you were a coconut. You wore Timberlands and drop-crotch pants. You weren’t even that cute.” An exaggerated shudder slips over your shoulders.

“I was nineteen.” As if that makes it better. Your judgment doesn’t lessen, the lines running the bridge of your nose only deepening.

“Still. Embarrassing.”

Your boyfriend truly is the best sport, rolling his eyes at you in the same instance he reaches for you, tugs you closer with broad palms, affection searing into your skin. “Well, luckily, no more Timbs. No more bowl cut.” He nuzzles into the warmth of your neck, spreads your knees wide over his hips. The sound of his laughter melts into your throat, dresses it in heat deposited by your breath. “Are you jealous again?”

He doesn’t even get a verbal response to that. Just a heavy glare and two hands squishing his cheeks. “Absolutely not.”

It comes up again in bed, your head on his chest, his hands on your hips. He asks it quietly, conversationally, with a twinkle in his eye that makes you want to smother him with one of his many pillows.

“You’re sure you’re not jealous?”

“I’m not,” you grit, paired with a roll of your eyes and a little snort from your nose. You really aren’t. Those girls are inconsequential, irrelevant. They’ll never amount to what you are to him and that’s just a simple fact. He’s yours - something he reminds you of day in and day out, both verbally and in action.

(You love him for it, appreciate it more than you can possibly begin to explain. There’s a certain bliss to be found in the knowledge that you’re loved. A warmth that rivals even that of the sun on the summer’s hottest day.)

“Then why’re you pouting?” What he really means is why aren’t you smiling. You don’t pout often - at least not in the same ways he does.

“I’m not,” you repeat for what feels like the sixth time.

“Smile for me.”

You do the opposite - throwing your eyes in an exaggerated circle. It earns you a pinch to the side, a tender sting blooming beneath ink-strewn fingers.

“Really—“ When he looks this earnest, it’s hard to deny him, “you’re sure everything’s okay?”

At most, you can sigh perhaps overdramatically. Fold your awkward limbs upon his and bury your face into the crook of his neck. You’re not jealous of those girls, no.

You’re envious of his talent - the simple fact that Jeon Jungkook is, by all definitions, a golden boy. God’s favourite, with his heart wrenching smile and easygoing charm and grace that seems almost surreal. There’s not a single thing wrong with him - okay, except for his bad habit of never answering his phone and always messing up the top sheet and the fact that he absolutely never ever puts the cap back on the toothpaste tube - and it’s absurd. Utterly, absolutely unfair.

But you can’t say that.

“Baby,” he hums, threading the sound of his voice among your hair, tucking the soft syllables behind your ears. “Talk to me.”

You relent - a little. “You’re too good.”

“Too good?” The depth of his laughter rumbles your bones, tickling your insides when it vibrates out of his chest. “At what?”

A hand gesticulates wildly. You’re not sure what it looks like, how close it is to hitting Jungkook in the face. You’ve still got your face pressed to the warmth of his skin, greedily siphoning his sunny radiance with your cheek. “Everything.”

Despite how he laughs - cackles, really, so adorable and high pitched it’s breathy - you know he knows what you’re talking about. You’ve given him a hard time about it before.

“I’m not good at everything, ____.”

He’s somehow even good at making you believe you’re wrong. That’s a feat in and of itself.

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“Whatever!” Whether he acknowledges it or not, he’s stupidly gifted. Everyone and their - even his - mom knows it. “Don’t believe me then. I don’t care.”

“Then why’re you making that face?” It’s almost comical that he’s calling you out for your expressions when he’s the king of funny faces, throwing his features into exaggerated (and adorable) masks. (Maybe he’d just rubbed off on you?)

“I’m not,” you huff, exasperated but not quite. Still soft over his skin, velvet on silk.

“You’re so cute.” Sometimes, you think he really is just a child - too happy with putting you on a pedestal and praying at your altar. Devoting himself to you when you’re nothing but a bag of flesh and bone, dressed in designer fashion and wrapped up with a satin ribbon made from sarcasm and candor. (Not that you mind. Who would argue if they were offered such love?) “I still think something’s wrong but…”

It’s a smart tactic. He doesn’t press you for an answer, opting to let it linger between you. Settle like bothersome lint until you offer it yourself.

When you relent - because you always do, unable to shut out the sunshine that practically pours out of him - you’re quieter. Not shy, but bashful. Uncertain in a way you very rarely are. “I’ve always wanted to dance.” So much so, you’d begged your parents to enroll you when you were younger. Demanded lessons upon lessons - only to fail at all of them. Rhythm simply didn’t exist anywhere in your body.

“Really?”

You’re pulled from your safe haven, shifted until your entire point of view is filled with Jungkook, his starry eyes and his fluffy fluffy hair. There’s that look he sometimes gets - full of wonder and adoration - when he learns something new about you. As if just the smallest tidbit of knowledge opens up a whole new world.

“Yes?” You’re half regretting the admission. He looks like he’s up to something, all the cogs in his head turning in perfect tandem.

“I’ll teach you.”

“Hard pass.”

Like a hot air balloon, he deflates, mouth rounding sweetly. (If you didn’t know better, you’d assume the man was made of cotton candy, semi-sweet chocolate heart where the real organ should be.) “Why not?”

“I do not dance.” It’s nothing but a statement of fact, firm and unyielding.

The pout evolves, swings down into a frown that drags his eyebrows with it. “You could dance.”

“No, baby—“ So you’re a little frustrated, all your childhood memories pricking beneath your skin. “I do not dance.”

“Why?” He’s upright now, tugging you with him as if you weigh nothing. His way of turning the conversation serious, pulling you from the warmth and comfort of the bedsheets to this. (He’s still holding you, hooking his big broad hands over your hips, so you don’t mind.)

“No rhythm.” Unable to keep a beat. Two left feet. The list could go on and on, according to your ballet instructor.

“Not true.”

Your brow quirks, mirrored by his as if in challenge. You almost swat at him - so close your hand twitches on his shoulder. “Very true.”

(Why does this conversation feel so familiar? It’s déjà vu.)

“Is not.” Your boyfriend seems insistent, as if he knows better than you. (He doesn’t.) Stares up at you with those pretty eyes and has the audacity to grin when you roll your own, ready to rebuff him.

Because you’re in bed, the one place where you defer to him whether you like it or not.

(You do like it, though. Love it, in fact. Just like you love him.)

“You’re graceful,” he hums, bridging the gap between you with a forward roll of his shoulders. “You’ve got rhythm.” The hand on your hip grows firm, guides your knees to spread wide on either side of him. With each brush of his lips - tender little brushes, endlessly sweet and reassuring - he pushes and pulls, dragging you across his lap. “You can do anything you want.”

You’ve almost forgotten the topic of conversation, preoccupied by how he guides you in languid circles. How the cotton of his boxer briefs feels against the sensitive inside of your thighs. The weight that grows between your legs and nudges indelicately against the soft fabric of your thong.

All part of his plan, of course.

“Your body’s the most beautiful thing in the world, ____.”

When he looks at you like this, you think he might be right. You’d believe it if he kept saying it, sparking desire through your limbs until they’re jellied and loose.

(How he sees right through you - cuts straight to the core of your insecurity - you’re not sure. It feels almost like a superpower, something unquantifiable, unbelievable. He’s too good for you, always. So kind and loving, pressing his belief in the form of his mouth, the tender edge of his teeth when he kisses you slow slow slow.)

“You’re perfect just the way you are.”

#anon.eml #incoming.eml #jungkook.doc #work.zip #drabble.zip #jungkook au #jungkook drabble #jungkook imagine #jungkook fluff #jungkook x reader #jungkook x oc #jungkook x you #devil.doc

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liv-laugh-die · 3 years ago

Text

||Admiring|| 💖Miya Osamu x Gn!reader

trope: strangers meeting in the park (ik its random bear with me😭)

warnings: its not proofread all the way through (im sorry im tired), so theres probably grammatical errors or typos but other than that none

genre: fluff pretty much just sappy stuff

pairing/s: osamu x gn!reader

wc: about 2.5k

a/n: oh my god idk where i came up with this but i think its cute so :p i hope you enjoy!!

You stared at your blank computer screen, hope of finishing your assignment before its due date at midnight slowly vanishing.

The clock on your desk read 11:27pm, the green lines wavering in your vision as your eyes slowly drooped, trying to drag you into the depths of slumber. You wanted to sleep, you really did, but you knew there was no way you could give up writing your essay, even now, knowing you weren’t going to submit it on time, because you would stress too much about it if you didn’t at least try to complete it before the due date.

Pushing yourself away from your desk, your chair squeaking against the floor ever so slightly in your dead silent dorm room, you tried to think of some excuse that your professor might believe. You doubted there was anything you could think of, but hey, your professor was better than what your roommates’ had mentioned theirs being, and you were grateful for that. Maybe you could tell him that you were exhausted from working extra hours at your job since you had had to cover your coworker’s shift and that’s why you couldn’t complete your essay on time? Or, maybe you could get away with a simple “I was lacking interest in the material, and couldn’t understand anything, and I didn’t ask for help because I knew that you are such a busy man trying to do so many things at once. Another hopeless near college drop-out wasn’t something I thought you needed on your hands.”

....Maybe not the latter.

You sighed, running a hand through your tangled hair, practically feeling it screaming at you to wash it. You barely had time in the mornings to take showers anymore, and when you took them at night, you never had the strength to wash your hair, always knowing that putting a hat on overtop or throwing on your hoodie would make it seem fine on the outside, and that was good enough for you. As long as you looked at least decent and somewhat presentable.

Your dorm room was fairly small, like every other one, but the lack of furniture made it seem larger than the rest. Nothing more than you and your roommate’s joint desk, the mini fridge in the corner, and the beds filled the space. You almost tripped over your backpack lying next to the bunk bed pushed up against the wall, falling to what would’ve been inches away from your roommate’s sleeping body.

In an attempt not to disturb them, you tiptoed through the room, stepping over the occasional heap of clothes or homework, until you reached the bathroom. You fumbled over the door knob before almost tumbling into the small space. Glancing in the mirror, you didn’t fail to notice your messy hair, the dark circles tracing beneath your eyes, or the way you looked like you were seconds away from passing out. The sound of running water rang in your ears as you turned on the sink faucet, cupping your hands together and bringing your face down to meet them, rubbing the cold water all over you in an attempt to keep you awake for just a few moments longer.

Your eyes returned back to the mirror as you sighed at your dripping wet face. There was no way possible you were going to finish your assignment on time. You knew it, your roommate knew it before they passed out, and you had noticed your professor’s wary glance this morning in class as a sign that he knew it too.

An idea sprang into your head, part of you dreading the optimism that seemed to seep through your brain slowly. You didn’t feel like being energetic right now.

---an hour later---

You weren’t exactly sure how, when, or why you decided it would be a good idea to take a shower (you did end up washing your hair, thank god), get your things together in your bag, and head to the off-campus coffee shop (since the one on-campus had already closed), but you found yourself with a warm cup of coffee in hand as you exited the shop, the cold midnight air enveloping you in an unwelcome embrace.

You shivered. The only thing your spontaneous brain had forgotten had to have been your jacket, the one thing your normal brain would’ve remembered if it weren’t already past midnight and if you weren’t majorly sleep-deprived.

You most certainly weren’t done with your essay yet, nor was there any possible way for you to finish it on time since it was now approximately thirteen minutes past the due time, but you let yourself breathe for now.

There weren’t many people out at this hour, and it made the usual busy city streets seemed like a ghost town. There were a few restaurants still open as you strolled along the sidewalk, their lights responsible for illuminating more than half the area in front of you. You passed by an onigiri shop your friend had recommended to you, but you just weren’t that hungry. Most nights, you’d kill for a midnight snack, but your single shot of espresso coffee was satisfying your needs for now.

You decided to head to the park after seeing a rabbit hop its way across the vacant street and into the bushes in that direction. The fresh air was nice and cool against your dry and croaky lungs, and your ears needed a different sound than that of you miserably attempting to touch type quickly, your fingers rapping against the keyboard with vigor.

A stream nearby flowed softly, the dripping of the water against the rocks complimenting the noise of the crickets chirping in sync just downstream. Your footsteps cut through the grass slowly, not bothering to follow the stone path. The park was a nice change of scenery. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been here by yourself in peace, it was always you and your rambunctious friends who ran through every now and then just to see the dogs running through the sprinklers, or the occasional poor cat whose owner dragged them out into the daylight for exercise. This was peaceful, though, and you appreciated that.

A few more rabbits crossed your path, giving you that wide-eyed, side glance before darting off into the darkness, outside the reach of the lampposts emitting light. The sound of the stream soon faded out as you continued to walk through the park, sipping your coffee every so often. The warmth from your cup was soon dying out, and you figured you’d have to start walking back to your university sooner or later. Maybe you could crash at your friend’s house who lived just off campus, though you had forgotten your phone back at your dorm and had no alarm, no laptop to complete your work, and no contact with anyone else who might worry where you’d be. You had really no choice but to trek back to your dorm in the darkness, cutting your peaceful visit to the park short.

You let yourself have a few more minutes of stress free relaxing as you sat down on a bench just before the ground let out into a downhill slope overlooking the rest of the city below. The trees around you swayed in the breeze, and for a moment, you thought it was the wind talking, and not an actual human being who had somehow made his way beside you without gathering your attention.

“Didn’t think anyone else would be up at this hour,” the stranger mumbled. You glanced up, almost startled that, indeed, someone else was actually awake and strolling through the park.

The boy couldn’t have been much older than you were, maybe the same age. He had his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, the wind tousled his dark hair ever so slightly, and the moonlight played along, illuminating his face just so you could actually see how gorgeous he was.

You cleared your throat, averting your eyes back to the ground as you shifted over, creating more space on the bench in case he wanted to sit down beside you. “I decided to actually take care of myself for once and give myself some time to breathe before facing the wrath of my professor tomorrow when he finds out I didn’t turn in my essay on time.” You let out a low, breathy chuckle, not exactly sure of what would happen next.

The guy sat down on the bench next to you, though he made sure to give you some personal space, which you were grateful for. He laughed along with you a bit, and you could tell just from his tone just how tired he really was.

You gave him a side glance, raising an eyebrow. “So, what the stressful thing that brought you here in the middle of the night?”

He smiled half-heartedly, eyes trained on the moon. “Work stuff. Jus’ been busy, I guess.” He shrugged.

You waited for him to continue on, but he stayed silent. You didn’t complain, though. Wasn’t your whole reason for coming out here in the dead of the night for some quiet? Plus, it wasn’t awkward either. You were comfortable sitting next to this stranger.

“What do you do for work?” You waited a little longer than necessary to ask, but he didn’t seem to mind the long pause.

“I own a restaurant a few blocks away. I love the job, it’s just tiring havin’ to deal with rude customers like my brother who won’t get the hint and get out sometimes. I got into an argument with him earlier today and he just wouldn’t shut it.” He rolled his eyes and took his hands out of his pockets, making eye contact with you as he went on about his day, and you couldn’t help but smile at his passion. “The guy thinks he can just walk in when I’m working with a new employee and just act like he runs the place! Quite stupid if you ask me. Such a jerk, he is. Thinkin’ about just banning him from the place, really.”

You snorted. “He really bugs you that much, huh?”

The guy smirked at your laugh, admiring it, though you would never had guess that was what flashed across his face in a million years. He nodded. “Yeah, ‘course I love ‘im ‘cause he’s my twin and my best friend, but he really knows how to annoy the hell outta me.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll just get a sign in the window that says “no shirt, no shoes, no service” and cross it out and write my brother’s name instead,” he reasoned, and the pondering look in his eyes made you wonder if he was actually considering the idea.

You smiled. “You’re funny.”

“You say that like ya weren’t expectin’ it.”

A laugh made its way out your lips. “Well, when you’re approached by a stranger in the middle of the night you sort of expect the worst.”

The guy glanced off in the distance, away from you, furrowing his eyebrows. “Sorry, didn’t think of that comin’ off that way.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m funny then, and not some creep, eh?”

You nodded, the smile on your face not fading as he changed topics.

“So, what’s your essay on? Any way I can help ya finish it?”

You shook your head dismissively. “Oh, no. It was due thirty minutes ago.” You quickly explained the topic you were writing about in class before getting side tracked. “My professor had said he would allow it to be turned in the next morning, but I doubt he actually meant it.”

He smiled a wide grin, making butterflies flutter in your stomach. “You go to the university nearby, right?”

You nodded in confirmation, raising an eyebrow. “If I’ve got any luck, there’s a chance you go there too?”

He laughed a little, shaking his head. “Nah, I don’t, sorry. I’ve visited campus a few times because some of my friends go there, but I just usually focus on work.”

His gaze was tilted upwards towards the sky, and you couldn’t help but admire how the exhaustion still shone in his eyes, but somehow that same passion gleamed there too just mentioning what he did for a living. You wished you were that passionate about something that would actually support you financially in the future and make you happy.

When he glanced back at you, you were still taking his essence in, and he made a look of confusion. “What?”

You shook your head, chuckling. “Nothing. I just admire that you can dedicate yourself to something and make it seem so easy.” He looked at you, interested to hear what you had to say, even though you were sure you couldn’t be the first person to tell him this. “I haven’t even known you for more than ten minutes and I can already tell you’re passionate about what you do and if you’re stressed about it, it must mean you’re dedicated to seeing your work through, and that’s more than enough to admire and appreciate, especially when that can be so difficult sometimes.” You finished your short tangent, looking back up at him to see him staring intently at you, seemingly in awe of what you’d just said. You felt a blush creep onto your face as you quickly blurted out, “Sorry- I didn’t mean to be so straightforward and weird like that- I sound like some crazy secret admirer or something...”

The crickets chirped in the silence between the two of you, and it felt like it would never end.

“Y’know, I wouldn’t mind havin’ a secret admirer. I mean, wouldn’t be so secret, but...” You saw the smile creep up onto his face. “It’s nice being appreciated. Nobody really tells me that kind o’ stuff, so... thanks, I guess.”

The heat on your cheeks didn’t go away by any means, but you grew more comfortable with it as you mumbled, “Maybe I wouldn’t mind admiring you.”

Now, it was the boy’s turn to blush, and you smiled at how his cheeks grew redder with every passing second, and how his subtle grin spoke a thousand words he didn’t need to say.

“Miya Osamu.” The boy’s hand came into your view as he extended it for you to shake. “I own Onigiri Miya across from the grocery outlet.”

You smirked, grasping his hand in yours as you said, “L/N Y/N. I own an official license for being a horrible driver and an ID that proves I’m a sleep-deprived college student and that’s about it.”

He laughed, shaking your hand and standing up, letting go too soon for your liking.

Because for some weird reason, his hand felt right in yours.

Osamu said a quick goodbye, mentioning something about how he should get going and how you should get some sleep before he disappeared down the stone path back into the darkness.

You stood up not too long after he’d left, your coffee now entirely cold as you plopped the half full cup into the trash can on your walk back to your dorm, not needing the pathetic warmth anymore. Your heart was beating fast and the feeling of Osamu’s hand resting in yours lingered on your palm, and that kept you warm enough.

Maybe you’d be visiting that onigiri place your friend recommended to you a little sooner than you’d originally planned, and maybe more often than you would’ve expected.

#osamu miya x reader #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fluff #hq fluff #hq #miya osamu #osamu #osamu x reader #oml i actually like this #ahhhh its cute #since when have i been motivated #i hope this doesnt flop *sob*

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kpopboysreact · 4 years ago

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Hanse - Victon A-Z NSFW

A - Aftercare

Aftercare with Hanse is very sweet and loving. He can savagely wreck you or tenderly care for you during sex. But regardless of his treatment during, he’s always soft and gentle with you afterwards.

B - Body Part

The eyes are the gateways to the soul, that’s something he truly believes in. Hanse would definitely like eye contact during sex, so you know just how deeply you touch his soul.

C - Cum

Very VERY messy. He likes to pull out of you at the last second and cover as much as he can of you with his cum. He’s like an animal, marking what’s his.

D - Dirty Secret

He’s had a fantasy about recreating the set for his solo Black Dog and taking you on the couch. He loves letting out his primal side with you.

E - Experience

Hanse waits until he has an emotional connection with someone before they have sex. He’s a sweetheart. That being said, I think he’s definitely had a couple of partners in the past. He knows what he’s doing.

F - Favourite Position

I see Hanse as a dominant switch. That is, he’ll totally let you take control if you want it...or so you think. Even if you don’t know it, he’s always in control of you. That being said, any position is fine with him. You’ll have a good time.

G - Goofy

He’d never ruin the mood, but he knows how to have a good time. Hanse doesn’t want sex to feel awkward at all, so he appreciates any weird sounds or awkward movements and rolls with them.

H - Hair

I see Hanse as someone who does groom and trim himself. He’s constantly caring for his hair up top so I see him being the same way down low.

I - Intimacy

Always. It’s a must. Intimacy and love go hand and hand, even when he’s screwing your brains out.

J - Jack Off

If you’re around, he’d much rather you come over. But when he’s in the mood, he can get a bit impatient! If you don’t come by fast enough, he’ll be done before you get there.

K - Kink

He LOVES collars. He loves when you wear them and he can leave marks all over your neck around the fabric, but he loves it even more when you pull in his collar to get him closer to you, a silent beg for more.

L - Location

His favourite thing in the world is studio sex. On the couch, on the chair, wherever. He just loves to take you in there.

M - Motivation

What’ll really get Hanse going is his jealous side. When he sees you with another man, a part of him snaps. You’re his, and he won’t hesitate to remind you. (That being said, he’s all for you having friends both male and female! He trusts you!)

N - NO

I honestly don’t think there’s something he’d be TOTALLY against doing. It’s not that Hanse’s a freak, he’s just very open minded and willing to go to whatever lengths satisfy you. If you like it, he’ll find a way to.

O - Oral

The memory of him going down on you will be burned into your mind for the rest of your life. He’s one of the best if not THE best you’ll ever have. He goes into it lip rings and all, ready to draw your orgasm out of you.

P - Pace

His favourite is slow and deep. He can do it rough or gently, making your whole body quiver under or over his.

Q - Quickie

Not a fan! He wants to take his time to really appreciate you and your needs when you’re having sex.

R - Risk

Nonono someone save Hanse no no he does not take risks. If he got caught he’d get so embarrassed and shy. He’s not shy about PDA, but THIS is different.

S - Stamina

Honestly, he doesn’t have the MOST stamina. But the round you’ll get through will be incredibly meaningful and he can make it last.

T - Toys

Collars. Just...just do it.

U - Unfair

Hanse really isn’t much of a tease UNLESS (and this is a big unless) he’s giving you oral. When he’s going down on you, he’ll keep you on the brink for as long as he wants to.

V - Volume

More on the silent side, but he picks up in volume the closer he gets to cumming. When he does cum, he groans your name in a low voice that’ll send shivers down your spine.

W - Wild Card

Hanse has a HUGE thing for gothic Lolita. He wants to rip stockings off you and tear the lace of your corset before taking you roughly.

X - X-Ray

I think he’s average to a bit smaller than average in length, but very thick.

Y - Yearning

Actually not in the mood too often. Looooves giving you oral though so if you’re ready to go when he’s not, you know you’re still in for a good time.

Z - Zzz

Sleepy baby. He’ll tuck you under his arm and go right to sleep.

#victon #victon reactions #hanse #victon smut #hanse smut #kpop reactions #kpop

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padfootagain · 4 years ago

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A Very Rose Mistake (I)

Part 1: How It All Began

Here we goooo!! New series! This is from a request from my 4.7k followers event, with the prompts 22 and 23 (I won't put them here, cause I don't want to spoil too much… you can check them on my post for the event if you want by doing a quick research.) by @paniconthepitch .

It's a fake-dating AU with the best friends to lovers trope, and it's gonna be a wile ride!!! There won't be any warnings in this fic except for some angst and tooth-rotting fluff, as usual for me :)

So, I hope you like it! I'm gonna structure the fic a little differently compared to what I usually do (even if it's nothing extraordinary), so tell me if you like this first chapter, so I know if you like how I've organized the fic!

Tell me what you think, please! I'm very excited and nervous to share the first chapter with all of you!

Oh, also, I don't like talking about the whole covid crisis in my fics (I write to mainly escape from it), so even though the fic happens this year, there isn't any virus around, so no one is breaking distancing rules or anything.

Pairing: Harry Styles x reader

Word Count : 4516

Holmes Chapel

1999

It was a warm summer in Northern England. Sun high and warm and skies bluer than blue.

Your parents were unboxing some of your stuff in your new home, but it was the afternoon, and the weather was way too nice for you to stay inside. Instead, despite your tiny body, you had managed to climb on top of the stone wall that enclosed your garden and separated it from the street. Just a little patch of grass on the front of the house, but it was nice. You looked at the cars driving across the street, a thin layer of sweat making your forehead glisten in the sun because of how warm it was. You could hear your parents' distant voices through the open window of the living room. The air smelled of gasoline and blossoming roses from your neighbours' house. From time to time, a dog barked in one of the tiny gardens further down the street.

You were eating an ice-cream, that your mother had prepared for you by putting it in a paper cup. Some of it was sticky on your chin, but you didn't mind. It was good, and you were having fun looking at the new neighbourhood.

A little boy pranced out of the house on your right, carrying a bag to put in the bin outside the house. He seemed to be around five years old, just like you.

As he saw you sitting on the low wall, a curious expression settled on his features, and he tilted his head in wonder. He had never seen you before, and it was very surprising, as he knew all the children living in the street, even the ones who were older than his sister.

He thus decided to walk over to you and investigate.

You beamed at him as he approached, hoping to make a new friend already. It was your first day in this town, you reckoned it would make a great start for the life in your new home.

"Hi!" You waved at him, and his cautious behaviour slightly faded as he smiled back at you.

"Hi. Who are you?" He asked bluntly, a frown wrinkling his round face, chubby cheeks turned pink by the heat, and a bundle of dark blonde hair getting messy as he pushed a few locks out of his green eyes.

"I'm Y/N. My parents and I are moving in this house. Do you live there?" You asked too, pointing at the house he had walked out of.

He nodded slowly, seeming satisfied with your answer.

"Yep," he answered, popping the p at the end. "Why are you alone?" he went on, a lisp making him trip over his words a little.

"My parents are cleaning stuff inside. And I don't have friends here yet."

Again, he nodded at your explanation.

You remembered your grand-mother's advice about making friends, and reckoned that if you wanted to make the little boy your first companion in the neighbourhood, you needed to offer him something. So, you handed him the rest of your ice-cream.

"Do you want some?" you asked with a bright smile.

The boy decided that he liked seeing you smile. You were missing a couple of baby teeth, and it was such a happy gesture that he wanted to make you laugh instead.

He remembered the joke that his sister had played on their cousin that had made the whole table laugh. He reckoned that it should do the trick.

So, instead of taking the ice cream you were offering him, he jumped up and pushed it against your face.

And indeed, your face covered in vanilla ice-cream was hilarious, and he exploded with laughter.

But you weren't laughing at all, as the boy laughed at you. Instead, hot tears started to form at the corner of your eyes, and you looked at the little boy with so much hurt and betrayal on your features that his laugh died in his throat as quickly as it had formed in the first place.

When you started to actually cry, he was panicking.

"Hey, don't cry," he said, as if asking for a favour. "I... I didn't want to make you cry. I thought it was funny."

But you just kept on crying, and he felt so terribly awful seeing you like this that he found himself on the verge of tears too. Your eyes were turning puffy and you were sniffing, and seemed so miserable... he didn't want to see that look on your face, ever. He liked your face too much, actually.

"I'm sorry. It was a joke. Don't cry. Is it because you dropped the rest of your ice-cream?"

You didn't answer, quietly crying still, and he rushed to his house, running as fast as his little legs could carry him. And you were even more miserable than before.

So much for making a friend...

You were about to go back inside, finding no fun in being out anymore and wanting to clean up your face when you saw him running out of the house again.

He was carrying what seemed to be a container full of ice-cream and a spoon.

"Here!" He handed you the two objects, struggling to catch his breath after his run. "You can have mine instead. I'm sorry you didn't find my joke funny. Please, don't cry anymore."

Hesitantly, you took the objects from him, awaiting a new trick, but none came. You opened the box to discover some chocolate ice-cream, as promised.

"I'm sorry. I don't have vanilla one. But maybe Mrs. Richard has some... she keeps this kind of stuff all the time for when her grand-children come visit... do you want me to check for you?"

He seemed earnest, and his green eyes were full of concern. But you shook your head, eating a spoonful of his ice-cream.

"It's good. Thank you," you quipped, making him beam up at you.

He noticed that you weren't crying anymore, but you were pouting still, and he didn't like that look on you either. He wondered what more could he do to make you properly smile again.

"Why did you do that in the first place though?" You asked, interrupting his train of thoughts as he considered running to his room to get his new toy, thinking that maybe if he let you borrow it, you would feel better. But only on the condition that you didn't put ice cream on the red plastic car, of course...

"My sister made that joke to our cousin once, and it made everybody laugh, so I thought it would make you laugh too. I don't know why you didn't think it was funny, I thought it was fun!"

"You're not the one who got covered in ice-cream," you answered with sadness in your voice.

He bit down on his lip, and sheepishly shook his head.

"No... You're right. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I like your ice-cream better," you admitted, and he beamed at you again.

"It's some very good ice-cream! My favourite!"

"Mine too. Want to share?"

He enthusiastically nodded. Climbing on the wall by your side. He handed you the tissue his mother always forced him to have in his pocket at all times. Maybe she was right, it was handy.

You took it with a quiet thank you, trading the tissue against the spoon and you cleaned up your face while he ate some ice-cream too.

And as you looked at him again, you reckoned that maybe it wasn't too late to make a friend, after all.

But you couldn't be friends if you didn't know his name. That would be rude.

"What's your name?" You asked.

He swallowed his mouthful too fast, making his brain freeze and you laughed at the silly face he made as a reaction. He had chocolate all over his mouth, but you reckoned that it made him look even happier.

"Harry. I'm Harry."

Malibu

2020

"What do you mean lying to your family about us? What do you mean you need a 'plus one'?"

You heaved a trembling sigh. You knew that you were asking an awful lot out of your best friend but you simply had no choice.

Your cousin's wedding was in two weeks, and if you went alone you would spend the entire day hearing about how sad it was that you were single, and everyone would try to plan a date fpr you with this cute colleague they had. It wasn't helping that you had decided to move back to England after you would complete your PhD in California. You could not even begin to think about the people at the wedding who would actually make a move on you as the night advanced and veins were slowly filled with more and more liquor.

No, you most definitely did not have the strength to go through this. And all you needed was a tiny lie to escape it all. One tiny lie that would last only for a day and you could actually enjoy the wedding instead of trying to escape from it. You liked your cousin, and knew she would be devastated if you didn't go, so you really had no choice at all.

And all your hopes of spending a decent day relied on your rockstar of a best friend.

Harry was frowning at you, sitting across from you around one of the tables of the Cafe Habana, his pink cocktail since long disregarded as he struggled to understand what was it exactly that you were asking from him.

It was unbelievably warm in Malibu, and your table outside was only salvaged by the weak breeze blowing from time to time. You were nervously fidgeting, your hands resting on the wooden table between you and Harry.

He rubbed his eyes and readjusted his sunglasses upon his head, his green eyes piercing right through you as you explained the situation one more time.

"I need you to accompany me to my cousin's weeding and pretend you're my boyfriend, so I will escape my family's disappointment and all the drunk single guests who will try to dance with me."

"You want us to pretend that we're together. Like... romantically together?"

"Yes."

"During your cousin's wedding. In front of your entire family?"

"Yes."

"And you think that I'm the best man for the job because...?"

"You're my best friend. You've known me basically all my life. You know me better than anyone else on this Earth, it won't be hard for you to pretend like you know all the useful details about me because you actually know them. You get along so well with my parents. Plus, you're an actor now too! Even if it's part-time... You'll do great! Consider it like a training exercise for your career in the movie industry."

"Absolutely the fuck not."

"Harry! Please! I need your help!"

"It's a terrible idea! No... no actually, it's worse than that. It's the worst idea I've ever heard! I can't pretend to be your boyfriend! In front of your whole family! I know your whole family!"

"Harry... please... I need your help, okay? You don't know how they are, it's going to be hell... Half of my family considers that I am a failure because I was not married by the age of 22, and the other half begins to think that the reason I am still single is that I am insane!"

"For their defence, you do sound a little bit crazy right now."

"HARRY!"

"Alright, alright... calm down," he mumbled, raising his hands before him in a gesture of peace. "I was just joking."

"Look, my family is... on that particular point, they're a pain in the arse. I need your help. I will not make it through the day without punching someone if I try to go on my own. And Cassie is so excited at the idea of me going to her wedding! And it's in Scotland! It's gonna be so pretty! Harry, please. It's just for one day."

He heaved a sigh, but you could read in the way that his eyes travelled back and forth from left and right and the way he tugged on his lower lip in between his fingers that he was hesitating.

It was all because of your cute little pout and sad eyes. He couldn't resist those. Never had been able to, even when the two of you were just five years old. Damn you and your adorable face…

"I'll let you eat all the cherries I get from my grandma's orchard this year," you offered, making him smile and shake his head at you.

But you read in his body language that you were winning.

"H, pretty please... just one day... one day... I'll go to all your shows for your next tour. I won't ever tell you again when I don't like one of your songs."

He laughed properly this time.

"Liar, you're too honest. You'll never manage to keep that up. That's why I like you so much."

"Okay... but I will go to your shows. And I'll give you cherries..."

He heaved a final sigh, but nodded this time.

"Alright, I'll do it," he agreed.

"YES!" you cried, jumping to your feet to walk around the table and hug Harry so tightly he could barely breathe. "I knew I could count on you!"

"I mean... if I get cherries..."

"As many as you want!"

You kissed his cheek, loud and ridiculously enthusiastic, making him force a wince to hide the way he longed to grin at the gesture instead.

"Alright, alright, calm down," he gently pushed you away and you sat back down into your own chair. "I have a few conditions though."

"Sure, fire away!"

"Rule number one: no kisses, nothing happens during the day."

"Of course! That would be frankly disgusting!" you teased him. "I'd never want to kiss you!"

"Hey! No need to turn it like that! Careful, or I'll change my mind!"

You rolled your eyes, but waited for him to go on, counting on his fingers.

"Rule number two: I won't sing or do any kind of performance at the wedding."

"She already has a band and everything, no worries. Besides, my aunt doesn't like your music, so she would never let that happen."

"That... was the second blow to my ego in the span of two minutes..."

"It's big enough, it can take it."

He playfully stuck his tongue out at you, and you replied with an adorable giggle.

"Rule number 3: if some elderly member of your family starts being all mushy about us, we drop the act and reveal the whole thing. This only stands as long as it doesn't hurt anyone's feelings."

"Sounds fair."

"And last but not least," he added, shooting you one of his annoyingly charming cheeky grins, "You can't fall in love with me for real."

You scoffed.

"As if! Don't get over yourself! You might have pretty dimples and a nice voice, but you're not half as charming as you might think."

"So… it's all safe! Deal?"

He offered you his open hand, and you shook it with a grin on your lips.

"Thanks, H. You're a real life-saviour."

"HI!!!"

The sound of your cousin's happy shriek was so loud, you had to pull your phone away from your ear. It seemed safer to put it on speaker.

You were back at your place, alone, and had decided to call Cassie to let her know that you would attend her wedding, and would bring Harry along. You were cutting tomatoes to prepare a salad for diner whilst on the phone, the device set on speaker resting upon the counter by your side.

"Hi, Cass! How are you? How is the planning going?"

"It's almost ready! We've just found the flowers and they're perfect! But I wanted to call you actually, you haven't replied yet to the invitation. You're gonna come, right?"

"Of course, I'm coming. That's why I was calling right now. I just..." you cleared your voice before finishing your sentence, your heart rushing as you lied. "I just had to check if my boyfriend was available too, so I could come with him as my plus one. And he can come so..."

Cassie let out another cry full of excitement, interrupting you mid-sentence.

"Your boyfriend!? How come you've never mentioned him before?!"

"Hum... we like our privacy, let's say. But we'll have more time to talk about that at the wedding."

"Of course! We have a whole week to catch up!"

You frowned hard, feeling panic rise into your chest.

What did she mean by that?

"A week?"

"Well, of course! You're coming to the family event, right?"

"The family event?"

"Haven't you received my email?! For the whole week leading to the wedding it's gonna be our closest family members and friends in Scotland! We'll finish getting ready and have lots of fun! I've planned so many activities! You're coming to that, right?"

"I..."

"Oh dear, I can't wait to see you there! It's been ages! Did you really have to move to the States? I've already asked Amy to get your favourite pastries, I know how much you love those snacks. I can't wait to see you... so, you're arriving on Friday or Saturday then?"

You had to tell her the truth. Had to tell her that you had only asked Harry for one day and not a whole week. He was so busy these days working in the studio, there was no way he could clear a whole week for you being notified only a couple of weeks in advance. A weekend could be done but over a week?!

You heaved a sigh. You would have to spend the week on your own, but at least, the news of a boyfriend coming for the ceremony would ease your family's mind. You could still escape most of their terrible comments about your love life.

"I haven't booked my flight yet. Not sure if I'll arrive Friday or Saturday. I'll keep you updated. My boyfriend will be working though, so he can only come for the weekend of the wedding."

"Oh, of course, I understand. What does he do?"

"Hum... he's in the... music business."

She heaved a sigh.

"Oh, Y/N, please, tell me you didn't fall in love with a penniless drummer again, like you did in high school. Not again, sweetie."

You laughed at the memories, shaking your head.

"He's not a drummer. And he's not penniless either. It's Harry."

"HARRY?! Wait… You mean… HARRY HARRY?!"

"I don't even know anyone else called Harry," you laughed. "Yes, Harry Styles, from Holmes Chapel."

"I thought the two of you were just friends."

"Hmm… We… decided to give it a try."

"Wow… Oh. My. God… wait until your mum finds out. Have you told her yet?"

"No, not yet."

"She's gonna freak out."

"Why would she? She knows him! She likes him."

"As your friend, sure! As your boyfriend… Your dad will chop his head off."

"Yeah… I'm a bit worried about my dad."

"You'll have to tell me everything about it, but I have to run now... There is apparently an emergency with the napkins."

"Good luck with that. See you!"

"See you!"

"Hmm... H?"

"Hmm?" He looked up at you from the cup of tea he held in his hands, his long fingers encircling the porcelain to warm his hands.

It was a little chilly, or as chilly as an evening in early autumn could be in LA, at least. You were enjoying a quiet evening with him, spent in his garden. You sat in the grass, with stars and torchlights shedding just enough light for the two of you to keep on playing scrabble. You had stolen his multicolour cardigan when the sun had set and the breeze had turned colder. Harry wore one of his Treat People with Kindness sweaters.

In the distance, a siren rang and then passed Harry's neighbourhood. You could hear muffled laughter coming from children playing in a garden nearby.

It was quiet still, the whisper of the busy city shushed for the most part. Time seemed a little slower now, an effect of the night and the lack of constant busy flow of people around you.

"About my cousin's wedding I told you about the other day... have you booked your flight yet?"

He shook his head, blowing upon his too-warm beverage.

"I figured we should book the same flight," he answered.

"Oh no! I'll be going a week early."

"I thought you were only staying for the weekend," Harry frowned before taking a sip of warm tea.

You could have walked back inside to finish your game now that the weather was cooler. But it was such a precious moment you were sharing that you were too scared to break your bubble if you did move.

After all, evenings spent alone with Harry were too rare to be wasted away.

You didn't blame only his busy schedule and his numerous friends though, you were a busy bee yourself. Entering your last year of PhD and getting ready to write your thesis to become a doctor as an history major was a lot of work. You also had friends of your own that you enjoyed spending time with, and if Harry sometimes joined you at a bar, it just wasn't the same as spending time with only him.

So, you didn't ask him if you could move in the house when you shivered as the wind blew with more strength. Instead, you enjoyed the way his hands moved across the board as he placed his letters to form a new word, his fingers bare, for once not wearing any piece of jewellery.

"No, my cousin is actually inviting the close family a week in advance to spend a few days with us. She has apparently prepared tons of activities and stuff."

"Oh... shouldn't I go to that too, then? As your plus one?"

But you shook your head, a little embarrassed.

"No, I told her you might not be able to attend that but you would be here for the actual wedding. It's alright. You have enough work as it is."

"You're telling me that you're gonna get a whole week alone with your entire family?"

"Only the close circle but... yeah. It's alright though... they're not that bad. Just annoying with the whole 'being single and soon 30' thing."

Harry groaned.

"We're only 26, don't make me older than I am, I don't need a reminder."

He seemed lost in thought for a moment, before he would ask another question.

"Won't they bother you for that week if you go alone?"

"I guess... they're probably gonna pretend like I'm not actually bringing anyone, criticize you a lot for not coming for the whole week, especially as you're a musician and they consider that you don't have a real job..."

"For their defence… I don't have a real job."

You rolled your eyes at him but couldn't refrain a smile.

"Anyway... as long as you come to the actual ceremony, I should be fine."

"Nah... that sounds horrid. I'll come with you to the whole thing."

"H..."

"It's alright! It doesn't bother me at all! Besides, I haven't seen your mum in a long time..."

His eyes grew round all of a sudden.

"Wait... we're gonna have to lie to your mum..."

"And to my dad."

His worried expression turned into one of fear.

"Oh fuck... your dad is going to kill me."

You laughed at him, but it was hard to hide your own fear at the idea of the two of you facing your father.

"Of course not! He likes you!"

"Likes me? Have you forgotten the closed-door incident that summer when we were 14? Cause I haven't... I thought he was going to strangle me or something..."

"We're not 14 anymore."

"Yeah, but we're going to tell him that I am really fucking his daughter this time. It's much worse..."

You couldn't refrain a bright wave of laughter, despite the genuine fear in Harry's eyes.

"It's not funny!"

"It is. It is kind of funny. Don't worry, he won't hurt you. You know my dad, lots of barking but no actual biting."

"What about when we mysteriously break up right after the wedding?"

"We'll just wait a few weeks before I break the news to them. I can even pretend that I'm the one who called it quits, if you'd like."

"I better hope so! Or I'm going to earn a good old sermon from my mum."

"Anne can be terrifying at times."

"That's because she's the sweetest the rest of the time. It's too rare, we can't get used seeing her angry at us."

"Hmm... I agree."

There was a short moment of silence while you played, placing letters on the board too and counting your points.

"So... when is your flight?"

"Friday in two weeks."

"Alright, I'd better check if there's some room left for me too then."

"Harry... you really don't have to do that..."

"I said I'd be your plus one for the event, and I will. It's alright. I'll come to the whole thing. But know that if your father ends up beating the shit out of me, you'll be the one responsible! If you weren't a broke student, I'd make you pay for my hospital bills too, but I'm not that cruel. The weight of my suffering and broken bones on your conscience will have to be enough."

You laughed, and he soon joined you, enjoying the way your happy features made crinkles appear at the corner of your eyes.

"Poor chuckaboo..."

"Oi! Don't start with that, lambkin!"

"Why not? You've been teasing me with that stupid nickname since we were 12, I can tease you with your own too!"

"Actually, they're pet names, not nicknames. Terms of endearment."

"Oh, sorry, Mr. Dictionary."

"Well, I guess I should have the title, as I am properly kicking your pretty arse at scrabble right now, lambkin."

"Considering that my boxing skills are far superior to yours and that I could actually kick your pretty arse if I wanted to, I would tune the narcissist down a little bit, chuckaboo."

"You've always been a terrible loser."

"You're even worse than I am!"

"How could you know? I always win against you."

You threw a few letters at him in response, making him giggle in the most adorable way.

And as he struggled to calm down and stop his snickering, you reckoned that you truly were lucky to have a best friend like him.

And if he wanted to come with you to Scotland then... how could you say no? After all, you did need all the help you could get to survive this week with all your relatives.

After all, Harry would be there, pretending to be your boyfriend. What could possibly go wrong?

*********************************

Taglist : @emcchi @fishstick-knows @eldahae

@ponycake27 @horsesreign @xinyourdreamsx @jbluevelvet@notkeppeki @daynigt-dreamer-stuff @fudgeflyss @stuckupstucky@snek-shit @suchatinyinfinity@i-padfootblack-things @buckybsarmy @heyohheyitsgabi@jigsawlover10 @emyyjemyy @addictedtofictionalcharacters @staringmoony@madamrogers @cronias13 @stylesfics-xx @mellamolayla @mariaenchanted

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x reader #harry styles series #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #imagine #series #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #4700 followers #event #writing prompt

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starkeristheendgame · 4 years ago

Note

Tony hadn't been the same since pepper died in a car accident and leaving him with their daughter, morgan. Then everything changed when he and morgan goes to a flower shop and meets florist peter.

I loved this one! Gosh, there were so many ways I wanted to take this. Thank you so much for the prompt, Non! I hope that this satisfies you. I was so tempted to make this a two parter 😅 If you enjoyed this, please consider giving it a reblog!

TW: Mentions of grief | Grief processing | Allude to depression SFW

This time of the year always rolls around quicker than he can prepare for it. Her birthday is hard. Their wedding anniversary is harder. But this...The death date...It hits like a freight train, an unstoppable force of grief and nostalgia that if not for Morgan would render him useless.

As it is, dates outside of Halloween, Christmas and her own birthday don’t really mean much to her at this age, so where he wakes up immediately wanting to go back to sleep for the next week, she wakes up and begins bouncing on his head, shrieking about cereal and flowers.

“Wh’was ‘ah ‘bout flowers?” he grumbled, rolling away out of the danger zone of her spindly little legs. This was a day of shit-pot luck, though, and no sooner had he settled on his side away from her did a flailing elbow strike him across the temple.

“Flowers! You left a note on the fridge that said we needed flowers today,” she chirped, planting her tiny hands on his bare shoulder and shaking him with strength no six year old should possess. When his brain had stopped rattling around like a marble in a bean can he grumped and groused his way into sitting upright, rubbing at his temples.

After Morgan had gone to bed he’d stayed up, drinking the whiskey he’d promised himself he wouldn’t buy and looking at the photographs he’d promised he’d never unbox. It was the same every October 11th, a habit harder to break than being addicted to crack. It left him worse for wear each time, doubling his misery.

“Alright, bug. Go make yourself cereal. Daddy’s gonna shower and get dressed.” Her bony little heel caught him in the kidney as she scrambled off the bed and he wheezed as he pulled himself upright, staggering into the bathroom.

Not for the first time, he considered enrolling her in a martial arts class. She could be a champion by the time she was ten, if not just for the fact that all her opponents would be in the accident and emergency room.

He ran the shower too hot and stayed until his skin felt over-hot and numb, and forced himself to dress in a semi-nice shirt and the cleanest pair of jeans he owned. When Pepper was alive he’d always dressed to impress, loving the way she’d tease him or grab him by the shirt to drag him back into the bedroom, but these days the outside world was lucky to see him at all.

Morgan was on her second bowl of Lucky Charms when he dragged himself downstairs, and she looked at him intensely for a moment. “It’s Mommy’s death birthday, isn’t it?” she asked after a moment and he forced himself to contain the flinch, wandering over to her and soothing a hand over her hair, before he tugged her against his stomach in a hug.

“It is,” he confirmed roughly. It’d been five years but it was still like rubbing citrus over a fresh wound. He hugged her tighter for a moment, then let her go. “That’s why we have to get flowers today. We have to take them to Mommy’s grave.”

He reached for the lopsided note on the fridge and crumpled it, then threw it in the waste bin.

Pepper had wanted an ‘environmentally friendly’ burial and had been one of the first people in Manhattan to be buried in a ‘grave pod’, a hemp pod filled with seeds and fertiliser and her body. Over the past five years her burial had birthed a small silver birch tree with a sprinkling of wildflowers at its base.

The stupid tree made him smile each time he saw it, no matter how much his heart hurt. It was just the type of person she’d been, to do something so out-there and environmentally conscious, even in death. He was smiling now just at the thought of it, a quirk of his lips chased by bitterness as he let Morgan pull him down the street.

He always let her choose the flower store they went in it, and today she steamrolled other pedestrians out of the way on her mission to reach a gold and blue fronted store that proudly proclaimed itself as The Natural Gallery.

The store front was covered in various bushels and bunches, and even had a small stand full of singular flowers that were clearly left overs or on their way to wilting with a sign say ‘take one and spread some happiness!’

The scent of flora and soil was rich when Morgan yanked him through the doorway, and Tony breathed it in deeply as he looked around. The store’s arrangements inside had been organised like a rainbow, a solid curve of shelves that ran in a horseshoe shape from one wall to the other and behind the service desk.

Morgan immediately abandoned him to peruse the selection and Tony wandered up to the desk, peering with vague boredom at the unorganised mess that covered the desk as he waited for them to be served. There was a rustle from an open doorway just off to the side, a dull thump, and then what looked to be a teenager came staggering through the open space in a cloud of glitter.

Tony took a wary step backwards and was prepared to make his excuses to leave when the teenager turned around, and he suddenly found himself utterly disinterested in speaking at all. The young man was a touch on the shorter side but leanly built, with a chiselled face clinging to the last of its baby fat and the most doe-ish set of brown eyes he’d ever seen, shade matching the glitter-dusted mop of curls that sprawled over his temples.

Pretty. That was the word for it.

“I knew I heard you guys! Hey, I’m Peter. Sorry about the carnage, it’s a birthday thing,” the young man gasped, shaking off his shirt and bounding up to the desk with energy that could rival Morgan’s.

“What can I do for you today?” the florist asked, leaning against the counter in a casual pose. Tony noticed for the first time then that he was wearing a women’s style wifebeater, a shirt that proclaimed in glittery pastel letters Nazis deserve to be punched.

“I uh, I need flowers. For a grave.”

The florist’s cheery face immediately morphed into something softer. Tony hated that so he looked away. Hated the stupid expressions of pity and sympathy that people cast him every time he mentioned Pepper or her death. But when he forced himself to meet Peter’s eye again, it wasn’t exactly pity that he was met with. It was just something...Gentle.

“Of course. Are there any flowers in particular you know they liked, or any arrangements you had in mind?” the florist was already reaching for a notebook and the sample book as he spoke. Tony glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself that Morgan was still mooning over the pretty flowers, then turned back.

“Colourful. None of that... Sad, plain crap,” he breathed after a moment, keeping his gaze off to the side. Morgan had found an abandoned flowerhead on the floor and was cradling it carefully in both hands as she waddled towards them.

“Alright, I think I have an idea for an arrangement. And when are you looking to pick up?” Peter continued, flipping to a blank page in his notebook and immediately beginning to scrawl in slightly messy cursive.

“Today. Any time.”

The florist seemed surprised, pausing and chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip, but then he nodded and jotted down another note. “I can get something done in half an hour? I’ll just need a $10 deposit, and-- Oh, okay.”

Tony held out his bank card, gaze dropping down to Morgan as she approached the counter. “Take the full cost now,” he instructed blandly as she set the flower down on top of the counter.

“Mister! This one lost his friends. And his body,” she greeted, pushing the flower across the counter towards the florist, who cast her a warm smile and picked up the flower head with the same careful cradle of his palms.

“Oh dear, so he has,” he agreed, inspecting the flower carefully. “But that’s okay, because I know of a special job he can do even without a body.”

Morgan appraised him for a long moment before speaking. “Flowers don’t have jobs. They don’t need money,” she informed him seriously, before he turned to look up at her Father with pleading eyes. “Can we get cheeseburgers?”

Weak as he was, he couldn’t deny her anything even when he felt like this, and once the florist had rung up his card and handed him the receipt they left the store and headed to the nearest burger van.

Morgan chose her customary single cheeseburger with so much ketchup it dripped out of the sides, and they sat down on a nearby bench to people watch as they ate.

“I think his shirt is right,” she piped up after several bites, and he cast her a weary, wary gaze, reaching out to rub ketchup off her mouth with a napkin.

“Who’s shirt, bug?”

“The pretty flower man. His shirt said we should punch Nazis. I think it’s right.”

Tony blinked at her and wondered where she’d even learned about Nazis (perhaps he should have paid more attention to the curriculum sheet her elementary had mailed him) before he bit into his own burger, watching passively as a particularly bold pigeon chased after a small, fluffy dog.

They’d passed almost twenty minutes by the time they threw their wrappers in the bin, and Tony let Morgan tow him along back to The Natural Gallery.

Peter was ready for them when they stepped inside, despite the fact that they were five minutes early. The young florist was half-hidden behind a large arrangement of colourful flowers that made Tony’s chest constrict when he saw them, and he weakly let go of Morgan’s hand so she could power on ahead to the counter.

Peter looked over to greet them and seemed to realise that Tony needed a moment, because he immediately began to talk to Morgan about the flowers.

“The tiny blue ones are called forget-me-nots. Your Daddy didn’t want anything plain, so I used these instead of a flower called baby’s breath, which are tiny white flowers. These big ones are sunflowers, these are roses, and look, here’s the flower you found on the floor!”

Tony forced himself to wander closer. The arrangement was an artful splash of primary colours tied together with what looked like coloured rope, and the slightly rumpled flowerhead had been sewn into the front of the front of the rope, almost like a brooch.

It was the exact kind of simplistic yet artistic thing that Pepper would have loved, and Tony could feel his throat start to close up the longer he stared at it.

Peter didn’t do him the indignity of offering any pandering sympathies or well wishes, the energetic florist simply explained the meaning behind the flowers used, explained the rope was hemp dyed with red wine so it was all 100% biodegradable, and gave Morgan a pretty, yellow flower to tuck behind her ear.

Tony left him with a $10 tip for being a ray of sunshine despite the fact that he’d undoubtedly been a prickly, unapproachable customer, and that was the end of it.

Until a few months later, when Morgan hauled his ass straight back to The Natural Gallery like a greyhound after a rabbit for Pepper’s birthday.

Her birthdays were probably the ‘easiest’ of all the dreaded dates. It was more nostalgic than painful, and he often passed the day away looking through old memories and thinking of all the birthday plans they never got to do together.

This year, however, Morgan insisted on getting Pepper flowers as a present, and hadn’t even hesitated between the car and her single-minded charge to the florist. Tony was beginning to suspect this was premeditated.

The store hadn’t changed much since they’d last been here, and the florist was already at the counter with another customer when Morgan barged through the door.

“Hello again, little Miss. Stark,” he waved at her as she hauled Tony towards a display of pink flowers, and he frowned before remembering his name had been on his bank card and he’d told the florist to hold the arrangement under ‘Tony Stark’. It was painfully obvious Morgan was his daughter, so it was also easy to denote that her name would be Morgan Stark.

Still. The kid had remembered, out of all the names and people he’d seen in the months since.

It didn’t take long for the young man to finish up with the customer, and then the florist stepped around the counter, coming towards them with a broad smile. Tony desperately tried to remember the guy’s name, even as he found himself distracted by the lazy-casual outfit the teen wore.

His nails were painted purple.

“Peter! Mommy needs flowers for her birthday!” Morgan shrilled in greeting, and Tony could feel his expression twist. She said it so simply, as if ‘Mommy’ was just at work or home and it made that familiar sinking weight in his chest grow. In front of them Peter’s nose scrunched when he smiled, and he set his hands on his hips in mock thought.

“Hm, that’s a good present for a birthday! Do you know what flowers Mommy likes best? Or her favourite colours?” The florist - Peter - was just as cheerful as Tony vaguely remembered him being the last time. Tony piped up before Morgan could talk again.

“Same as last time. Please. Colourful.”

Peter seemed to get it instantly. His cheerful smile took on the softest warmth for a moment, before it became vibrant and lively again as he looked down at Morgan. “I think we can manage that, hm? If your Daddy doesn’t mind you being my assistant for a few minutes?”

“Daddy doesn’t mind,” Morgan answered on his behalf, and Tony found he didn’t have the motivation to argue, standing back and watching and Peter let Morgan pull him all around the store, pointing out every bright and pretty flower she came across.

Against his own will, something fragile and new began to bloom in his chest. It felt horrifyingly like warmth, like something...Verging on fond.

And it wasn’t entirely for Morgan.

The florist was a natural with her. He didn’t talk to her like most people talked to young children, infantizing and almost condescending. He listened intently to every word she said and taught her little snippets about each flower she pointed out, letting her touch the petals and letting her tow him around without ever reaching for her first, mindful of the fact that she was not only her own person, but the young child of a stranger.

He allowed himself to briefly imagine what it would have been like if Pepper had lived. If they’d had a son before Morgan, so she could grow up with a doting older brother that would smile at her the same way and indulge her every whim. Another doting family member to wrap around her little her finger.

“And one for Daddy too!” brought him out of his twisted musings and he looked across the room. Peter stood with a little wicker basket full of orange and red flowers, and Morgan had what looked to be a tulip tucked behind one ear.

Peter was holding another in his hand, and when he looked up the teen tipped his head a little, arching a brow with a smile that said may I?

He grunted, and while Morgan busied herself with preening in a tiny mirror, Peter crossed the room towards him.

“She’s wonderful. I hope if I ever have children, they turn out like her,” the teen murmured as he reached out and carefully tucked the flower into the breast pocket of Tony’s jacket. This close he smelt like flowers and a refreshing undertone, like clean water.

There was flower pollen in his hair and his lips were bitten a rosy pink. Freckles dusted the bridge of his nose in the barest hint of colour.

“She takes after her Mother,” he said it before he could even think about the words, but Peter’s smile remained steady and warm, with none of the usual overly sweet pity he was often met with.

“She takes after you, too. The perfect mix, I imagine.” And was that... A touch of teasing, maybe? The slightest sparkle in those eyes? Tony shifted under the scrutiny and looked over Peter’s shoulder, back to his daughter.

He supposed it was true. Morgan had every bit her Mother’s personality, but looks wise she’d taken after him the most. Her dark hair, fair skin and shapely jaw were all his features.

“She’s better than I am,” he breathed after a moment. She had none of his bitterness, none of his cynical bones. Perhaps it was her youth, but not even losing her Mother had soured her outlook on life. When he looked back Peter was still staring at him, and Tony realised just how close they were still standing.

Evidently, he wasn’t the only one.

“Are you gonna kiss ‘im?” Morgan asked from a little way across the shop, and Tony jerked, looking at her in alarm, but Peter simply gave a light chuckle, turning away and moving back towards the counter.

“Your Daddy is very handsome, but I’ve got to organise these flowers for your Mommy! If I get started, do you think you’ll remember to come back in twenty minutes when they’re ready?”

Morgan solemnly promised to be back here in exactly, precisely twenty minutes, and immediately demanded that Tony took her to find some juice. Tony held her hand as they walked out of the store, and he frowned down at her.

“Don’t say things like that again, sweetheart. I’m not going to kiss random people. Especially not on Mommy’s birthday.” It came out perhaps a little sharper than he’d intended, and he bought her an extra juice to make up for the almost hurt way she’d looked up at him afterwards.

The flowers were just as beautiful as last time. He left Peter with another tip, and tried to ignore how Morgan spent ages telling Pepper’s tree all about the ‘pretty flower boy’ that was ‘her and Daddy’s new best friend’.

He didn’t have the heart to correct her, and he had the sneaking suspicion that the next time she came with him to get flowers for something, she’d drag him straight back to The Natural Gallery.

He was half right, as it turned out. Morgan’s apparent adoration for the florist had transferred into a love for flowers, which became a blatant excuse to visit Peter again when it became clear Tony didn’t know anything about plants beyond shoving seeds into the soil of their backyard and hoping for the best.

“Peter will know!” she announced, after five minutes of the two of them standing helplessly in the plant food aisle of their local gardening store, staring at no less than forty different brands and bottles of plant feed.

“Honey, he’s just a store florist, he might not know everything about actual horticulture,” Tony tried valiantly, but she would hear none of it, and first thing the next morning she woke him up by kicking him squarely in the middle of the spine and shouting PeterPeterPeter!

Thus, he found himself hobbling gingerly into The Natural Gallery barely an hour after its opening time, grimacing at the early morning sunshine and cradling his coffee, which he’d had to pour into a travel mug because the longer he’d taken to drink it, the darker Morgan’s stare had gotten.

“Hi! Welcome to-- Tony?” Peter came up short where he’d popped around the corner, looking surprised to see them. It had been less than three weeks since their last visit, and the teen looked the most put-together Tony had ever seen him, far too chipper for this hour.

Morgan greeted him with a wave that bordered on violent, and she promptly ditched Tony in the doorway to bound up to the counter.

“We want a pretty garden but Daddy is useless and doesn’t know anything about flowers, so you have to come to our house and help us!”

Tony shot upright then cringed and reached for his back like an old man.

“Now, hang on. We never said anything about him coming over,” he warned Morgan, casting Peter an apologetic glance as he forced himself to catch up to his runaway child, giving her a stern look when he finally leaned against the counter. Morgan, unperturbed, looked at him like he was a simpleton.

“How else is he gonna help us plant flowers? Duh, Daddy,” she huffed at him, before she looked back across at Peter.

“I want pretty flowers like the ones you have. Daddy bought all the seeds and everything but it still looks plain and boring.”

He was almost offended on behalf of his garden. He had a very nice lawn, thank you very much, and the few flowers that had somehow survived with Pepper being there to care for them still came doggedly back every year.

“Morgan. You know the rules about going to strange people’s houses and inviting strangers home,” he reminded her pointedly, mock flicking her between the eyes.

“But Peter is our friend, and you said friends are allowed home as long as I ask and you make sure its safe!” Morgan protested, and Peter cooed.

“Aw, I think you’d be a wonderful friend, Morgan, but your Daddy is right. But! How about I give you and your Daddy some tips to write down for getting a really nice garden, and maybe you can take pictures when it all blooms and come show me?” Peter’s looked up at Tony when he said it, and Tony found he couldn’t do anything except - somehow - smile.

God, Pepper would have loved this kid.

It took Peter offering Morgan a freshly bloomed pink lily for her to fully accept the fact that she couldn’t bring her new ‘friend’ home, but eventually she came around to the idea, and Tony found himself in a surprisingly spacious back area of the store, surrounded by various floristry supplies and flower off-cuts and Peter tapped around on a slightly beaten up laptop, showing them different plants that were generally ‘safe bets’ to have in a garden, fertiliser types and the most common downfalls many a hopeful gardener faced when starting out.

As Morgan leafed intently through one of the many flower-based magazines laying around, Tony forced himself to speak.

“Sorry. She gets ahead of herself.” He didn’t need to elaborate on what he was referring to, but Peter just cast him a broad, warm smile, and nudged their shoulders together lightly.

“Don’t apologise. She’s a delight. I almost wish I was her age again. I don’t mind when you guys come here. It makes the day a little bit brighter. Who knows, maybe one day I might even get to see you smile.”

And Peter more or less embodied the smiley face emoticon at the end of the sentence, grinning sunnily at Tony before Morgan thrust a magazine page in his face and demanded to know what flower was being shown in the picture.

They left with a stack of print-outs and magazines, and as Morgan sat in the car on the way home she looked across at him thoughtfully.

“Peter is very pretty.” She probably meant it as a question, but it came out so firmly it sounded like a statement. He let the car roll to a stop and side-eyed her warily.

Was this her first crush? No, it couldn’t be. She was six. Tony hadn’t had his first crush until... Okay, yeah, no. It could very well be her first crush.

“Do you think so?” he asked after a moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. She looked at him like he’d just asked her what 1+1 was, and rolled her eyes before she looked forwards again, apparently not dignifying him with a response.

The next morning she woke him up right at the strike of six, and not even an hour later he found himself on his knees in the dirt of the garden, diligently rooting around in the dirt to pluck out weeds, rocks and to replace no less than half of the dirt with fertiliser from a big, stinky bag while Morgan dutifully moved each and every critter they came across to safety.

It took him four hours, but eventually every border of the garden had been re-dug, replanted and soaked through with the garden hose. Tony schlepped off to the shower with a groan, almost regretting the outcome of raw dogging his wife, no matter how good it had felt at the time.

He lathered himself up thoroughly and felt somewhat more alive by the time he made his way downstairs for another well earned cup of coffee.

To his both his joy and his dismay, gardening with Morgan became A Thing. Twice a week if it didn’t rain they dragged the hose out of the garage and watered all the grass and tiny little green shoots and once every two weeks they both found themselves kneeling in the dirt to painstakingly weed the soil and make sure their little ‘baby flowers’ as Morgan called them were growing unhindered and healthy.

Perhaps worst of all, he found himself thinking about Peter each time he tended to the garden or watched Morgan chat excitedly to her teachers and friends about all her new flowers and the pretty flower boy who taught her and her Daddy how to have a nice garden.

He thought of that sunny smile and those bright eyes, the curls that permanently looked like the kid had just woken up and the random assortment of clothing he seemed to just roll out of bed and throw on.

He’d had one or two hook ups since Pepper had died. Had briefly tried dating before he’d found he hated the differences too much, hated the lingering cloud of Pepper over each potential relationship, hated the way other kisses tasted like betrayal. Yet here he was, thinking about the lips on a kid he’d met three times.

Almost three months had passed, and Morgan had dragged him back to the gardening store to see if they had any pretty ornaments they could put in the garden. He turned to ask her if she wanted to bunny or the fox when he realised with a jolt of cold panic that she was no longer at his side. He tried to calm himself and glanced up and down the aisle, but she wasn’t in sight either.

Alright. Calm. She was probably the next aisle over. She knew not to wander off without telling him, but maybe she’d been distracted or he just hadn’t heard her. He set the ornaments down and jogged to the end of the aisle, stepping around the other one. No Morgan. No Morgan in the one on the opposite end, either.

“Fuck!” he huffed, spinning on his heel. The checkout desks? Maybe she’d tried to find a toilet-

“Tony!”

He spun on his heels and stared as he spotted Peter trotting towards him, hand in hand with one Morgan Stark, who looked happy but a little meek, especially once she met his eye.

“Hey, Mr. Stark. I’m so sorry, I was here buying seeds and I turned around and she was right there. She said she was here with you and she saw me walking and wanted to say hello. We came straight back to you, didn’t we, Miss. Stark?” Peter asked, looking down at where Morgan hung off his arm like a guilty koala.

“Uh huh. Because walking off from Daddy without saying isn’t good and makes him sad.” She evidently repeated from something Peter had said, looking up at the florist before she let go of his hand and bounded across to Tony, clinging to him when he lifted her up.

“Sorry Daddy. I didn’t want to make you said. I just wanted to see Pretty Peter,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

Peter’s cheeks were pink when Tony looked across at him again, and there was soil under his pink fingernails and dusted on his shoulders.

He took in a breath.

“Well... Maybe I can give Pretty Peter my number. Just so next time you run off because he’s better looking than me, he can call me so I don’t get sad, huh, bug?” he ran a soothing hand down her back when she pulled away to grin and him, and Peter’s cheeks looked like hot coals by the time Tony hesitantly glanced up at him.

“I’d like that,” the florist beamed at him, shuffling sweetly on the spot. “And, for the record... I think you’re plenty good looking.”

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cirquecarte · 3 years ago

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01. techo kaigi 2022

wanna try out actually blogging on my blog!! chatty post under the cut. it’s about journals for next year and how i use them!

for a while now, i keep on joking that i’ll drop everything and become a stationery youtuber. in reality i’m too shy, self-conscious of my voice, and my desk setup is too messy for my liking to take a video of LOL... but i’m still fairly interested in the journaling community and people’s thoughts about planners. i’m a big lurker, but i really enjoy talking about things i like! so i kinda want to try using tumblr to talk about my interests! twitter is a pretty social platform, but there’s only so many tweets i can thread before feeling like “now i’m really talking too much” and then i stop LOL

anyways, i thought that a good first stationery blog post would be about my planner lineup for 2022!

🐤 hobonichi a6 - crane cover (from sakurahandcraft on etsy)

my main journal for memory keeping and scrapbooking! i’ve been using a hobonichi since 2019 and i think it’s been really helpful for me. i didn’t vibe with the a6 hobonichi covers this year so i went with a cover from an indie shop! people are super creative with designs. i really liked this cover because i felt like it’d look nice with the hobonichi weeks cover (also..... mail bird...... oc content.....)! i’ve been matching my a6 and weeks covers for the past few years so i feel like i can’t get out of it haha.

the way i use hobonichi is pretty straightforward - i try to incorporate a little bit of journaling every day, so the one page a day works really well for me. i’m comfortable with the smaller a6 size, the empty space isn’t as intimidating to me. prior to hobonichi, i tried bullet journaling, but i realize... i HATED having to write the date every day LMAOOO so i feel more ready to just jump right into journaling.

some other things i use the a6 for: habit tracking! i track things like going to bed early, drinking a certain amount of water, etc. i like using rainbow highlighters because it’s satisfying to see a full row filled up!!

(plant stickers by @/itskleine, washi by me)

admittingly i slacked off on doing these monthly doodles because i wasn’t feeling well (i think... this is the only month i had completely filled out 😔✊), but i rly enjoy seeing these filled! i want to try and do better next year on these because it’s cool seeing a month in review.

sometimes i miss pages, or i don’t really know what to write on some days, and that’s ok! when i’m at a loss, i tend to write out quotes, stuff that resonates with me, or horoscopes lol. (the above acnh image is actually a shop promo image, so i use my empty pages accordingly LOL)

🌱 hobonichi weeks - dandelion pappus

(stamp washi by @/blueludebar, boat washi by @/anguiculus on twt)

i’ve been enjoying hobo weeks the past few years, but not sure if i’ll use it moving forward since i started a new job! regardless i still got one because i like using it for both work/art-related things and other miniscule tasks.

(egg sticker by @/kaiami, washi by me)

as you can see i keep the exact same layout every week LOL, which i think is fine! it works for me! i put general goals for the week on the blank page so that i can remember what i want to get done over the course of the week. i also like separating the columns and pages for personal stuff and for art stuff.

for monthly pages in the weeks, i put in events or outings. i used to indicate my spending but now i use notion for that!

🍋 leuchtturm1917 a5

(stickers by @/missdurianne, @/kinwamonster, @/karakanani on ig, @/superaenbow on twt)

this is something new i’m trying out! admittingly blank right now but i’m hoping to put art i’ve made in there and also log achievements/nice things that people say to me bc... my brain fogs and i don’t remember good stuff as much as i do the bad 😔😔 i’m hoping that it’ll be a positive notebook when i have a bad day!

🐶 midori pocket diary b6 - dog

i’ve been using the midori diaries to track my health (both physical and mental). it’s really helpful for me because my memory has been very bad (esp with pandemic etc etc), and it’s very useful for whenever i have doctors appointments. the inside pages are already decorated, so i don’t have to focus too much on it looking nice, which i really like.

🐱 chococat blank notebook

admittingly i don’t know the specs of this notebook because..... it’s from 2005 LMAOOO?? this is my “morning pages” / stream-of-consciousness notebook. it’s a habit i’ve been doing for a few years! yumi sakugawa made a good post explaining morning pages here. whenever i write, i try and pick a notebook that isn’t too expensive or an old notebook i never used. it doesn’t super matter because it’s just a space for me to write unfiltered thoughts, so it really doesn’t have to be pretty haha. i don’t really want it to be because it’s a vent notebook!!! tbh i don’t really look back on this notebook, but it’s very helpful for me to have a space where i can let out thoughts without being judged - i like doing this in the morning so i can start the day with a clear head!

...and that’s it!! (i say, as i write a long post HAHA) if anyone is also journaling or buying planners for next year, i always love to hear what other setups are out there! i always get a little melancholy and existential at the end of the year, but planners and stationery helps cheer me up so that i can look forward to the new year, a clean slate.

#blog post #journaling #coco talks

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calumcest · 4 years ago

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i know we’re gonna uncover what’s sleeping in our soul

[ao3]

so! my fic exchange fic for the absolutely lovely @lifewasradical who had the most brilliant reader profile i have to say you are truly so big brain in your preferences (perhaps because they overlap with mine no i am not biased). thank you so much to @allsassnoclass for hosting this you are wonderful and i adore you

thank you to bella and ainslee for listening to me chat shit about this fic and to my anonymous friend for also patiently listening and encouraging me and also telling me to stop fucking writing i need to hear that shit

The most exciting thing about Luke’s twenty-first birthday is the same as everyone else’s.

On a person’s twenty-first birthday, they get access to their soulmate.

The most exciting thing about Luke’s twenty-first birthday is the same as everyone else’s.

On a person’s twenty-first birthday, they get access to their soulmate. At least, in theory. In practice, it’s a little more complicated - most people’s soulmates aren’t exactly the same age as them, so some people have to wait a few years, and some people find out they haven’t got a soulmate, and a small handful of people find out their soulmate has already passed away. It’s a complicated process that’s built up over generations - when Luke’s grandparents were younger, it was still the norm for governments to inform people of the identity of their soulmate on their twenty-first birthday, but privacy and mental health concerns in recent years following a few nasty high-profile situations where people discovered their soulmates were serious criminals led to the passing of international legislation restricting access to the information. Now, the only way a person can find their soulmate is by writing to them, or the dreaded letter that arrives the day after their twenty-first birthday informing them that their soulmate has predeceased them.

Luke’s sort of the baby in his circle, so he’s the last to find out. His brothers are both older and so by the time Luke really understood the system they’d already found their soulmates; Alex and Jack had already known they were soulmates when Luke had met them, also being a few years older; and when Calum had woken up on his twenty-first birthday to see it best be you, dickhead scrawled on his arm in Michael’s messy handwriting it had only really been a formality, confirming what everyone already knew.

Luke, though, has no idea who his soulmate could be. There’s no one he’s ever felt that alleged special affinity with, no matter how hard he’s tried to force it. He’s never felt entirely safe with someone, the way that Ben describes it, never felt at home with someone, the way that Michael describes it, never felt at peace, like, deep in your soul, like the universe is balanced just right around you the way that Calum describes it. He has felt the desire to punch people in the throat before, as Alex and Jack both describe it, but he thinks that’s probably more of a them problem than it is a universal experience.

And it’s not that Luke’s particularly unusual in that - the vast majority of people don’t know who their soulmate is before their birthdays. Ben and Jack both had to fly to different countries to meet theirs, and Alex and Jack had been on opposite sides of the USA, and the way Michael talks about it, Quakers Hill would seem to be on a different continent to Mount Druitt. It’s what Luke tells himself every time he looks in the mirror at four in the morning, alcohol and often something else swimming through his veins, and sees the fear of what if I’ll be one of the lonely ones? etched into the cloudy blue of his eyes. You’ll be fine. Almost no one knows their soulmate before their twenty-first birthday. Lots of people don’t even know them then. You’re not even twenty-one yet; just be patient.

Except, now he is twenty-one.

It’s two minutes past midnight, and Luke’s sat on his bed, already a little buzzed, Michael and Calum flanking him, pen poised over his inner forearm. This is how it works - as soon as the clock ticks over to midnight on a person’s twenty-first birthday, their soulmate (if they’re already over twenty-one) is accessible. And the way to communicate is by writing to them. Luke still isn’t quite sure how it works, because it just does, so he’s never questioned it, but what one soulmate writes on their skin appears on the other’s, like a temporary tattoo. It fades after a few hours, but it’s usually there long enough for the person to notice; after all, who wouldn’t spot a new hi, hello, or the odd grocery shopping list appearing on their hand or arm?

“What do I say?” Luke says, a little nervously.

“Just say hi,” Calum suggests, and Michael scoffs. “What?” Calum says, turning to Michael and raising an eyebrow. “You got a better idea?”

“Well, it’s not very original, is it?” Michael says haughtily.

“It doesn’t have to be original, Mike, it just has to work,” Calum says.

“Okay, but what if it doesn’t work because it’s not original?” Michael says. Luke’s grip on the pen tightens.

“Who’s going to reject their soulmate because they said ‘hi’?” Calum points out. Michael crosses his arms, and shrugs.

“I would’ve,” he says.

“Only because you knew it was me.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Guys,” Luke says, anxiety leaking into the edges of his tone, and the two of them start a little, like they’ve just remembered he’s there.

“Just say hello,” Calum says.

“Hello?” Michael echoes. “What is he, some eighteenth century English lord? Say ‘hi’, Luke, or ‘hey’.”

“What, you can’t say ‘hello’ now?” Calum demands. “Anyway, it’s the principle, alright? Just greet them. It doesn’t have to be the best introduction in the world.” Yeah, Luke thinks. Yeah, that makes sense, right? It doesn’t have to be stellar; it’s just got to be something. So he nods, takes a deep breath, and lets the pen touch his skin.

Hi.

The word sits on his skin like everything he’s ever written on it before, doesn’t sink in or dissolve or do a little jig. Luke hadn’t been expecting it to - after all, he’s seen enough soulmates write things to their partners - but it looks just like when he used to hastily jot down his homework for the day because he’d forgotten his planner again, and it’s oddly underwhelming. It doesn’t look - or feel - like something he’s been anticipating for years is happening, despite the butterflies in his stomach. It looks a little lonesome.

“Well?” Michael asks impatiently.

“It’s been thirty fucking seconds, Mike, Jesus Christ,” Calum says, swigging from his beer.

“So?” Michael says, craning his neck to look at Luke’s arm. “Punctuality is an important quality in a partner, you know.” Calum scoffs incredulously, and Michael scowls. “Except if your partner is me. I have enough incredible traits to make up for it.” Calum just throws him a slightly-fond-but-mostly-exasperated look, and turns back to Luke, who’s still staring at his arm.

“Maybe they live in a different timezone,” Calum suggests. “Or maybe they’re younger than you.”

“Maybe,” Luke allows, and puts his arm back down on his lap, but doesn’t stop staring at it. “Maybe they’re busy.”

“Maybe,” Calum agrees.

“Maybe we should finish these fucking beers,” Michael says pointedly, and Luke finally tears his gaze away from his arm and over to Michael, who’s gesturing at the crate they’d lugged upstairs (‘they’ being Calum and Michael, because Luke refuses to lift anything heavier than a book). He’s got a point - it’s Luke’s birthday, and there’s a slim chance of his soulmate replying immediately, so he might as well enjoy himself.

“Alright,” Luke says, reaching for another bottle. “But don’t you fucking pussy out on me at two in the morning again.”

“What the fuck?” Michael demands indignantly, also reaching for a bottle. “When have we ever done that?”

-------

At two a.m., when Calum and Michael have stumbled blearily into bed together, Michael curling around Calum as they drifted off to sleep, Luke’s sat up in bed, staring at his arm. It still only says hi, and Luke’s trying to focus his alcohol-addled mind as much he can to will it to say more, to say hey, I’ve been waiting for you underneath Luke’s writing, but nothing changes.

And logically, Luke knows there are countless explanations as to why he hasn’t heard anything from his soulmate yet, least of which is that it’s only been a couple of hours. There’s a high chance his soulmate is younger than him, or asleep, or just busy, and a slim chance that they could be- well. Luke doesn’t want to think about that. It’s just- Luke’s been wanting this for years, always daydreamed about his soulmate, about the colour of their eyes and the sound of their laugh and the warmth of their touch. He’s conjured fantasy after fantasy in his mind about how his twenty-first birthday would go, about how he’d meet his soulmate and immediately fall in love, about the comfort and safety and fulfilment he would feel. Because that’s the whole thing about soulmates; they’re made for you, made to fill in the gaps in your soul that you can’t even see, and as Luke blinks at the single word written on his arm, a word that feels like it needs completing somehow, he realises he might want that more than he’d realised.

After a good ten minutes of staring and trying to engage any telepathy he may have, Luke decides that if his soulmate isn’t going to add anything, Luke’s going to have to do it himself. So he reaches for a pen, thinks for the briefest of seconds before a slightly-drunken thought tells him just introduce yourself, tell them about yourself, and he writes:

My name is Luke. It’s my twenty-first birthday today. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I have two brothers and a dog. What’s your name?

It reads like one of his French oral exams at school that he barely passed, but Luke’s satisfied with it, capping the pen and setting it aside. It’s good to give a bit more information, right? Surely his soulmate will appreciate more than just a hi, will be more likely to reply if they know a little more about him. Plus, he’s asked a question, and it’s only polite to respond to a question, isn’t it? They’ll be trapped into responding by social etiquette, if they’re of age.

Yeah, he thinks, satisfied, as he rolls over on his side and lets his heavy eyes fall shut. If his soulmate is old enough, he’ll have heard back by the morning.

-------

When Luke wakes up to the sun streaming through his window - fuck, they forgot to shut the curtains last night - he momentarily forgets what day it is, too focused on swearing under his breath and squeezing his eyes shut, debating whether it’s worth getting up to shut the curtains or not. He decides it is, and heaves himself out of bed, and as he’s padding over to the curtains, arms already outstretched, he sees two lines of text on his arm.

Luke had written more than two lines. He’d written a few, all bunched together in a long paragraph. And this handwriting is bigger than Luke’s, more confident, more assertive.

It’s his soulmate.

Luke stops dead, twisting his arm around so fast he thinks he might have given himself a Chinese burn, heart beating so fast that it’s all he can hear, and reads.

I’m sorry. I don’t want to be your soulmate.

And then, like an afterthought added reluctantly in a smaller script underneath: Happy birthday.

Luke stares at the words, reading them over and over, each hastily scribbled scratch of the pen like a tiny needle in his heart; not quite enough to tear it apart entirely, but enough to make it ache and leak.

So he has a soulmate. A soulmate who doesn’t want him back.

It doesn’t make sense, he thinks, a little disoriented, stumbling back towards his bed and reaching for the pen he’d left on his bedside table almost on autopilot. Luke’s soulmate doesn’t even know him. How can they not want to be his soulmate? What did he do wrong? How can he have ruined something that’s predestined, something that’s fated to happen?

What? he writes back. The ink is harsh black on his pale skin, dug too deep into the flesh of his arm, sitting on top of his skin rather than underneath it like the words from his soulmate - some kind of sick symbolism, maybe, Luke thinks dazedly. An impenetrable layer between them, and it’s his own skin and bone. He’s heard of people not wanting their soulmates, but only after meeting them, or finding out that they’ve committed some horrible crime, or something of the sort. He doesn’t know of anyone who doesn’t want their soulmate before meeting them.

“Hey,” Calum says suddenly and sleepily, clearing his throat and making Michael groan, stirring in his arms. “Did they write back yet?” Luke blinks, swallowing around a dry mouth.

He could lie. He could pull his sleeve down and say nah, not yet, and Calum would hum noncommittally and say sorry, mate, keep trying, I guess, and that would be it. He could keep it to himself, wouldn’t have to admit to those around him that somehow, he’s managed to turn his soulmate away from him before they even know him, that while they’re all in happy relationship with their soulmates, he’s managed to fuck his up before it began.

But on the other hand, he doesn’t know how long he could keep up that lie, because people would keep asking from time to time, and keeping it to himself feels like it would slowly eat at him from the inside out, teeth digging into the fabric of his soul and tearing it into even smaller pieces, and so he swallows, and says: “Yeah.” His voice is thick and wobbly, and it makes Calum’s brow crease, makes him struggle to sit upright leaning on his elbows, ignoring Michael’s noises of protest.

“What?” Calum asks, sounding concerned. “What’s wrong?” Luke wants to cry.

“I-” he starts, and then stops. He doesn’t think he can say the words aloud. Instead, he holds out his arm, sleeve still rolled up, and watches as Calum’s eyes flit over the words, then looks away quickly as he sees Calum’s expression shift from concern to pity.

“Oh, Luke,” he says softly, and now Luke doesn’t want to cry but can’t stop it, can’t help the tears that are pricking at his eyes, forcing him to swipe at them hastily before they can fall.

“I don’t get it,” Luke says, a little numbly. “I- how can they not- they don’t even know me.”

“I know,” Calum says, shoving Michael off him and swinging his legs out of the bed they’re sharing. “Oh, Luke. I’m so sorry.” But Luke doesn’t want Calum to be sorry. He wants his soulmate to want him back. Was it the stilted introduction? Maybe Michael was right; maybe Luke should have thought of a more striking opener, should have mentioned some interesting facts about himself, come up with something flirtatious and witty and suave. Maybe his soulmate took one look at Luke’s nervous, awkward introduction and thought nah, fuck that, I’d rather be alone than have this guy as my soulmate.

“I should’ve said something better,” Luke says quietly, letting himself be pulled into Calum as he sits down next to him and puts a warm, strong arm around Luke’s shoulder. “Michael was right.”

“Oh, fuck Michael,” Calum says, with feeling, and Michael opens one eye a crack.

“Wha’ve I done?” Michael mumbles, and then, like he’s just remembered what day it is, he shoots bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and excited. “Oh, fuck, did they reply, Luke? Did they say something? What did they say, was it-”

“Mike,” Calum says warningly, and shoots Michael a look that Luke doesn’t need to be his soulmate to understand - shut the fuck up, Jesus, read the fucking room. Michael falters, and then frowns.

“What happened?” he says, a little fiercely. “Are they a dickhead?”

“Yeah,” Calum says. “A proper cunt.”

“Hey,” Luke protests weakly, and Calum’s arm around him tightens.

“What did they say?” Michael asks. Luke hesitates, swallows, and then holds his arm out.

“Hang on, I need my-” Michael says, fumbling around on the bedside table for his glasses, and then swears when he realises they’re covered in fingerprints, wiping them hastily on his t-shirt before shoving them on his nose and squinting at the writing on Luke’s arm. He reads the words at least three times, going from a frown to a clenched jaw, and then looks up at the two of them, green eyes ablaze behind his glasses.

“What the fuck?” he demands, and whips his glasses off. “What the fuck?”

“I know,” Calum agrees, stroking Luke’s bicep. “It’s fucked up.”

“They don’t even know you. All you said was ‘hi’.” Luke bites his lip.

“I wrote a bit more,” he says. “After you went to bed. I just- just introduced myself. Said it was my birthday, I live in Sydney, have two brothers and a dog.”

“Alright, so all you did was fucking introduce yourself,” Michael corrects, leaning into his anger. “What the fuck sort of reason could they have for saying that?”

“Mike,” Calum says gently, and Michael’s gaze turns to him for a moment and then softens in understanding.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I just- fuck. I’m sorry, Luke.” He sets his glasses aside, gets up and sits on Luke’s other side, wrapping his arm around Luke’s waist, and that’s too much for Luke - he starts crying in earnest, big, ugly sobs that come from the frayed patches of his soul that feel like they’ll never be stitched together because the needle doesn’t want to play ball. Michael and Calum just cradle him through it, whispering soothing words, humming quietly, pressing soft kisses to his shoulders and temples and forehead as they rub gentle circles on his skin. It’s enough to stave off some of the desperate longing leaking from the pinpricks in his heart, enough to give him a little splutter of a spark in his veins that reminds him hey, you still have people who love you. It’s not enough enough, and Luke vaguely thinks it never quite will be, but it’s enough to stem the flow of tears, to make him sniff and ask for a tissue through a thick throat, to make him clear his throat and try on a watery smile.

“D’you want us to tell your parents?” Calum asks quietly, taking Luke’s snotty, tear-stained tissue from him and setting it on the bedside table. Fuck, Luke thinks, as a fresh wave of tears brim in his eyes. He’s got to tell everyone else, now, too. Over and over, telling person after person yeah, my soulmate doesn’t want me. My soulmate doesn’t want me.

“No,” Luke says, even though he does want Michael and Calum to tell his parents. “I- I should tell them.”

“Okay,” Calum says gently.

“Can you-” Luke cuts himself off, biting his lip. Michael and Calum just wait, though, so Luke bids the scraps of his dignity farewell, and mumbles: “Can you tell Alex and Jack, though?” He feels both Calum’s and Michael’s arms tighten around him, feels Michael pressing a kiss to Luke’s shoulder as Calum says yeah, mate, of course we can. Of course.

(Happy birthday, the words underneath the line etched into Luke’s skin telling him I don’t want you say, now wet with the tears dripping from Luke’s cheeks onto his sleeves. Yeah, Luke thinks bitterly. Happy fucking birthday to him.)

-------

Telling everybody is exactly as painful as Luke had anticipated.

He manages to tell his family in one go, because they ask over his birthday dinner, and he almost manages not to cry into the stunned silence as he says it, only breaking when Ben sighs sadly and pulls Luke into his chest for a tight hug. Alex and Jack call around four to ask him whether he’s finally going to get laid (what, Lex, that’s literally how you wish someone a happy twenty-first birthday, what’s your fucking problem), and Luke makes big, wide eyes at Calum, who throws a quick glance at Michael, who snatches the phone out of Luke’s hands and hastily walks out of the room, whispering something fiercely with a knitted brow and his hand cupped over the receiver. When he comes back in and hands the phone back to Luke, Alex and Jack have switched tack completely, all attempts at normalcy and breeziness mitigated by the oddly gentle, hesitant tones to their voices. Luke hates it, hates the pity and the microscope he feels like he’s under, the fact that he’s done the whole thing wrong somehow before even starting it, so he mumbles his excuses and hangs up on them as soon as he can, lying back on the sofa and staring blankly up at the ceiling.

The first few weeks are almost equally bad - Luke just wants to forget about it all, pretend that everything is normal outside of his own head, make-believe that his world hasn’t had a harsh spotlight shone on it showing the cracks in the façade he’s been admiring as though it were worthy of the Louvre, but everyone’s walking on eggshells around him, whispering whenever he leaves a room and stopping abruptly as soon as he comes in, or throwing him concerned and pitying looks. He hates it, hates that his mum will come into his room every evening and ask him too-casually how his day’s been, hates that Calum and Alex will ask him how he’s doing and look too sad when he says he’s fine, hates that Jack and Michael will bluntly tell him fuck someone else, forget about them. He just wants things to be normal again, doesn’t want the constant reminder that even the person made for him doesn’t want him swelling up in his lungs and choking him day in, day out.

He does a lot of research in those first few weeks. The majority of the results are about soulmate pairings where one person has moral qualms with the other, and a smaller group are about pairings where one partner only sees a platonic future where the other wants a romantic future - those are rare, though, as the system is designed to take these preferences into account - and it’s only on Luke’s second week of searching that he finds something, a tiny footnote at the bottom of an article about being soulmates with a serial killer. Choosing love, it says, and when Luke clicks on the link it opens up an ancient-looking website that says Choosing love: soulmates and the autonomous self.

It’s not a long article, and it’s riddled with spelling mistakes, but the gist of it seems to be that the author thinks the soulmate system is fucked up in principle, not in practice - they readily acknowledge that their soulmate is perfect for them, but resent the idea of having love assigned to them. It brings in ideas of free will raised by such authors as- and then Luke stops understanding, eyes glazing over as he reads metaphysical libertarianism and fatalism and compatibilism. So maybe this is what Luke’s soulmate’s problem is, Luke thinks, rereading the first few paragraphs that he actually understood. But it doesn’t make any fucking sense - why would someone try and choose someone that might not be right for them, when the right person is at their fingertips?

(He asks one night, after a few too many hours alone with his thoughts. Why don’t you want to be my soulmate? But it, like everything he’s written over the past month since his birthday, goes unanswered.)

Luke tries to reach out a few more times over the next few weeks, with varying degrees of success. His soulmate is completely unresponsive when Luke asks where they live, or how old they are, or what they do for a living, or what they look like.

Can you at least tell me your name? he asks once. No response.

Okay, what about your initials? he asks the next day. Again, no response.

One initial? he tries, the day after that. Please. Just your first initial. Maybe it’s the ‘please’ that does it, or maybe Luke’s soulmate is just sick of being asked the same question three days in a row and doesn’t want to get half a letter? Write it in code? tomorrow, but when Luke wakes up the next morning there’s a tiny, slightly-smudged A written underneath where he’d asked for the initial.

That’s the last Luke hears from his soulmate.

For a while, he writes a few times a day, tries to say something witty or something clever or something interesting. He tells A about his job, tells them about how frustrating it is to have Jack as his co-worker and Alex as his boss (because seriously, Jack should be fired at least four times an hour, and he’s fairly sure your boss being your soulmate violates a fair few codes of conflict of interest), tells them about Michael and Calum and how he sort of wishes he’d gone to university like they did. A never responds, and so after a while Luke gets self-conscious and stops writing so often, just checks in once a day in the evening to give A a roundup of the previous twenty-four hours. Luke figures the person doesn’t care, probably won’t read it, but it’s like a more cathartic version of a diary, one that has the possibility of being read and talking back, however slim the probability may be. Every evening, just before he goes to bed, he rounds up his day, vents to A about Jack breaking a bass in the shop again, laments that he doesn’t get to see Michael and Calum as often as he’d like to, talks about the regulars who come in like clockwork for their guitar strings, muses about whether he should get up early and get a coffee on the way to work tomorrow or whether he should get as much precious sleep as he can. He fills his arm from left to right, twisting it all the way around until he has to hold the pen at such a strange angle that he can barely control it, getting out all his thoughts and grievances and little things he’s observed that day, and when he wakes up in the morning, his arm is completely empty again. A never writes back, never even indicates that they’ve seen or read Luke’s ramblings, but they never tell him to stop it, either. And while that probably doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t not mean anything, either, and that’s as good as Luke figures it’s going to get for him. Plus, it becomes so ingrained in Luke’s daily routine that he barely even notices he’s doing it, and he sort of thinks getting a response might throw him off a bit.

(One night, so drunk he can barely stand, Luke scrawls I wish you wanted me. I wish I didn’t have to be alone. It’s gone when he wakes up the next morning, but there’s a tiny pen marking underneath where it had been, like A had gone to write something and then thought better of it.)

A week or so after that incident, Luke’s just taking out his earphones, still humming along to the song he’d been listening to as he shoulders the door to the shop open, when Jack appears right in front of his face, making him jump and drop his phone.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke mutters, picking his phone up from the floor and inspecting it for damage he can sue Jack for.

“Glad you noticed,” Jack says. “Come to the back room.” Luke stops, and narrows his eyes.

“What for?” he says suspiciously.

“What do you mean, what for?” Jack says, sounding a little affronted. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.”

“Well, we need to fix that. We should do a team bonding day,” Jack says, just as Alex walks around the corner. “Hey, Lex, d’you think me and Luke can do a team bonding day?”

“A team bonding day?” Alex echoes, raising an eyebrow. “I thought torture was illegal in Australia.”

“That’s true,” Jack agrees placidly. “I’m not sure I can spend a whole day with Luke.” Luke scowls, aiming a kick at Jack’s ankle, just as Alex passes by and says: “I was talking about you, idiot.”

“I’m a fucking pleasure to spend time with,” Jack says, voice rising as Alex walks away. “You spend all your time with me.”

“For legal purposes,” Alex calls over his shoulder. Jack frowns.

“Legal purposes?” he says.

“Yeah,” Alex shouts. “The life insurance papers have to look convincing.” It’s Jack’s turn to scowl, yelling fuck you at Alex’s retreating figure and getting a you can’t afford my fees in return.

“Not on the fucking salary you pay me,” Jack shouts, and then turns to Luke. “Come to the back room.” Luke eyes him warily.

“No,” he says. Jack scowls again.

“Aren’t I your manager?” he says. “Come to the back room.”

“I think I’m your manager at the moment,” Luke says, because who’s manager is dependent on the whims of a certain Alex Gaskarth and Jack breaking another bass last week had outdone Luke accidentally selling an Epiphone for half its retail price. Jack, though, just waves a hand dismissively, then grabs Luke’s wrist and starts tugging him towards the back room.

“Hey,” Luke protests, trying to plant his feet and failing miserably - Jesus, Jack’s stronger than he looks. “This is kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping?” Jack says. “You know where you’re going.”

“But I don’t want to be,” Luke says, grabbing onto the desk as he’s pulled past and scrabbling to hold onto it. Jack just yanks harder, dislodging Luke’s grip, and forces him into the back room.

“What?” Luke asks warily, when Jack finally lets go, glancing around at the cardboard boxes filling their shelving units up to the ceiling full of new bass and electric guitars that Luke was meant to unbox two days ago but didn’t. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Jack protests, and then kicks the door shut behind them and grins. “It’s what I’m going to do.” Luke groans, tipping his head back, and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, taking a step back and holding his hands up. “Nope. I’m not getting involved in this.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I know it’s something I don’t want to be involved in.”

“No you don’t,” Jack says.

“I do.”

“How?”

“Because it’s something you’re planning.” Jack pouts.

“Listen-” he starts, taking a step forward towards Luke, who instinctively takes another step back, and that’s all Luke hears because then his heel is hitting a cardboard box hard, forcing it back against the wall, and the box on top of that is wobbling and making the box on top of that one wobble even more, and Luke says shit and flings his arms out to steady himself, catching the metal of the shelving unit and pulling it towards him, making all of the heavy, heavy fucking guitars in it come crashing down on top of him. A few land next to him with ugly crunching sounds and accompanying twangs, and a few hit his legs and force him to the ground, and then a few are hitting his stomach and chest and crushing his organs, making him gasp for breath, and then a few are hitting his head, making him momentarily unable to see as his vision swims so much it almost disappears entirely, and then Luke must lose consciousness because the next thing he hears is a distant voice shouting, sounding incredibly worried.

“Luke?” they’re yelling. “Luke? Fuck. Oh, fuck. Shit. Luke, Luke, are you okay? Are you- fuck, fuck, Lex, help me, help me move- no, not that, you fucking idiot, that’s going to-” and then Jack’s face comes into view, uncharacteristic concern etched on his features.

“Huh,” Luke says weakly. “You look funny when you care about me.” And then he passes out again.

-------

When Luke wakes up again, he’s in hospital.

At first, it sends a jolt of fear running through him when he wakes up in an all-white, clinical-looking environment, but his brain supplies a helpful hey, remember when all those guitars fell on you? That was pretty wack, and then it sort of makes sense.

“Oh, hey!” someone says, and Luke’s head snaps to the left to find the source of the voice. It’s a pretty - very fucking pretty, oh God - man, standing next to a bunch of machines, some of which are bleeping, some of which are blinking. “You’re up.”

“I’m up,” Luke says, and finds that his throat is dry and raspy. He coughs, and tries again. “Uh. Who are you?”

“I’m Ashton,” the guy says. “I’m your nurse. Well, until my shift ends.”

“Oh,” Luke says. “Hi. I’m Luke.” Ashton grins, hazel eyes lighting up in amusement, and steps back from the machines he’s been fiddling with.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh,” Luke says, and looks down at himself. His right arm is bound in a cast, and when he tries to wriggle his toes he finds his left foot in a cast too, and winces when he takes a deep breath. “My body hurts.” Ashton huffs out a laugh, and moves to the foot of Luke’s bed to pick up a tablet.

“Yeah,” he says. “You had a bunch of guitars fall on you. You’re lucky you came out of it with just a few broken bones and a concussion.”

“And probably a huge bill for damages, if my boss is anything to go by,” Luke adds, and Ashton looks up from the tablet with a small smile.

“Nightmare boss?” he says, and then frowns. “Hang on, you’ve had a visitor claiming to be your boss. American guy?”

“Not the one with skunk hair?” Luke asks in trepidation, because the last thing he wants to deal with is Jack Barakat in a hospital environment, and Ashton shakes his head.

“No, but he was with him,” he says. “I think they’re both still here, actually. They were insistent that they wanted to be here when you woke up, but I can tell them to leave, if you’d like.” Luke hesitates.

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “The boss thing was, uh. A joke. Well. Kind of. He is a shitty boss. But. Not like that.” He swallows. Fuck. He should not be allowed to interact with hot men, honestly. Maybe Ashton will just think these incredibly lacking social skills are a part of the concussion and not just Luke’s main failing as a person.

“It’s still visiting hours, so if you want they can come in, but I’ll get the doctor to check you over first, since you’re awake now,” Ashton says, and Luke nods. Yeah. He should probably get checked over. Seems like the kind of thing you do in a hospital, right?

“Sure,” he says, and Ashton throws him one final grin before heading out of the room. Luke exhales shakily, lying back on the pillow and staring up at the ceiling.

Fuck. He hopes he’s sick enough to stay in hospital forever, and that Ashton’s on shift tomorrow, too, and the day after that, and the day after that. However long it takes for Luke to become socially adept, really.

-------

The doctor tells him something about broken leg and fractured wrist and broken ribs and bruised internally, but all Luke hears is will take a few months to heal fully but no lasting damage, and we’re just going to keep you in for today and tomorrow and monitor your situation, since you had a fairly nasty concussion. Jack and Alex come bursting in as soon as the doctor gives Luke the all-clear for visitors, rushing to his side and telling him how fucking stupid he is, what the fuck, why would he grab onto the fucking shelving unit to steady himself, but their eyes are shining with worry and their faces are a little red and puffy, and it makes Luke’s heart lurch in his chest in an oddly pleasant way. Alex tells Luke he’ll give him a pay raise if he doesn’t sue for workplace injury, and Luke laughs and then immediately groans in pain and says don’t make me laugh, I’ve broken my ribs.

(“Don’t worry,” Jack assures him, “Michael and Cal are coming in after us. You're safe on the laughing front.”)

Michael and Calum do visit after Alex and Jack, but only get to stay for five minutes before Ashton’s sticking his head in the door and saying Luke, your parents are here, and they’re not happy that everyone’s seen you before they have.

(“He’s your type, isn’t he?” Michael says loudly, before the door’s even closed behind Ashton, and Luke wants to die. He wonders whether he can force one of his broken ribs to puncture his lungs, or something.)

By the time his parents have finished fussing over him, his mum plumping up his pillows and his dad clapping a hand on his broken leg that makes Luke let out a choked scream of pain, Luke’s so exhausted that he just falls straight asleep, only waking up when he hears some shuffling around his bed.

“Mm?” he mumbles, blinking blearily, and finds Ashton smiling apologetically at him.

“Sorry,” he stage-whispers. “I’m not great at being quiet.”

“No, no, ‘s all good,” Luke says, swallowing like it’s going to get the horrible taste out of his mouth.

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks, and you?” Luke answers automatically, and then belatedly realises he’s lying in a hospital bed with an IV in and a few broken bones. “Uh. I mean-” he says hastily, but Ashton just laughs, gentle and amused. It sends a shiver down Luke’s spine, although that might just be whatever Ashton’s just pressed on the machine blinking next to Luke’s head.

“Do you ever get a good answer to that?” Luke asks, turning his head to look at Ashton.

“To what?”

“To asking people how they are in a hospital.” Ashton smiles down at the tube he’s fiddling with, and Luke tries not to think about the fact that the other end of the tube is inside him, tries not to let his stomach turn. It’s probably not very sexy to throw up in front of Hot Ashton.

“Not really,” Ashton says. “But it’s free to care, right?” Oh, God. Hot Ashton is also Caring Ashton. Fuck. Luke is not in the right state of mind to deal with this.

“I guess,” Luke says.

“So, how are you?” Ashton asks, smile still playing at his lips.

“Uh,” Luke says. “Tired. My body still hurts.”

“You should rest,” Ashton advises him. “Pretty much the best thing you can do for your body right now.”

“Yeah,” Luke says, and then without thinking, adds: “I mean, I was resting, until…” he trails off, rational part of his brain kicking in and screaming what the fuck, Luke, that’s your fucking nurse, that’s so rude, that’s so unprofessional, you’re going to get kicked out of hospital and forced to try and heal your broken bones on your own (okay, maybe not so rational), but Ashton just laughs, bright and amused.

“Point taken,” he says, but he’s still grinning, so Luke figures he’s safe. “Sorry for disturbing your beauty sleep.”

“I’ll send my botox bill your way,” Luke says, and Ashton arches an eyebrow, stepping back from the machines at Luke’s side.

“I’m not sure that’ll hold up in court,” he says.

“Guess we’ll have to find out,” Luke says, eyes following Ashton as he crosses the room over to the door. Ashton huffs out a laugh, looking over at Luke as he pulls the door open and lets light spill from the bright hallway into the room, making him glow softly like some kind of weird, scrubs-clad angel.

“Sleep well, Luke,” he says, and then the light is gone.

-------

Luke does sleep well.

He sleeps for most of the next day, only waking up for a very groggy talk with a new doctor of which he takes absolutely nothing in, then for a very painful walk to the bathroom with a brisk nurse who tugs on his elbow too hard, and then when Alex, Jack, Michael and Calum all pile into his room as soon as visiting hours begin. He’s kind of glad they’re all there, because it means they can entertain each other rather than him having to partake in the conversation, so he can just lie back, exhausted, and watch them bicker over whether or not Luke would notice if they stole his hospital food. Wait, hang on-

“Hey,” Luke says, frowning. “No one’s stealing my hospital food. I need to heal.”

“But it’s salmon tonight,” Michael protests. “You don’t even like salmon.” Luke pulls a face. He really doesn’t like salmon.

“So, what, I should starve?” he says indignantly, even though he probably would rather starve than eat salmon.

“We can sneak you food,” Jack says earnestly. “Mike and I were thinking-”

“I told you, Jack,” Alex says exasperatedly. “Visiting hours are once a day. Luke needs to eat more than that.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Michael says. “Not if we bring him enough food.”

“He can space it out,” Jack suggests.

“Yeah, I’m sure Luke would fucking love to eat cold and soggy chicken nuggets,” Calum says sarcastically, and Alex nods and points at him, all thank God, finally someone speaking some sense.

“They’re not going to get soggy,” Michael protests.

“Yeah, do you know how many preservatives they put in those things?” Jack adds.

“And you think that’s what Luke should be eating to mend his broken bones?” Alex asks dryly.

“He’s fine,” Michael says breezily. “He’s twenty-one. His body’s been managing a poor diet so far.” Luke scowls.

“My diet’s fucking fine,” he says. “What’s wrong with my diet?” All four of them round on him in disbelief.

“Are you fucking serious?” Calum demands, at the same time that Michael says: “What isn’t wrong with your diet?” and Alex says: “When was the last time you even looked in the general direction of a vegetable?” and Jack says: “No, y’know, the man’s got a point. His diet could be worse.”

“Just because it could be worse doesn’t mean it isn’t bad,” Calum points out.

“Credit where credit is due,” Jack says solemnly, “he’s doing a better job than he could be.”

“The only way Luke’s diet could be worse is if he went all Monsieur Mangetout,” Alex says, and the four of them blink at him. “What?” he says defensively. “C’mon, Monsieur Mangetout? You know Monsieur Mangetout.”

“You wanna flex your French pronunciation skills one more time?” Michael asks, raising an eyebrow. “The floor is yours, mate.” Alex rolls his eyes.

“Fuck off,” he says. “My point is-” but they don’t get to find out what his point is, because then the door’s opening and Ashton’s sticking his head in. Luke wishes he’d been able to shower this morning - he’s sure his hair is sticking up all over the place, and that half the curls are flattened and frizzy, and he sort of wants to say sorry, Ashton, I swear I’m at least a little hotter than this most of the time.

“Visiting hours are over, guys, I’m sorry,” Ashton says apologetically, and all four of Luke’s friends groan. “Sorry, sorry, I know,” Ashton says, and then throws Luke a smile before closing the door as they start gathering their things together, the sound of chairs scraping filling the room.

“He’s hot, isn’t he?” Jack says to Luke, nodding at the door Ashton’s just closed.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “He’s also my nurse, so. Very illegal.” Michael pulls a face.

“Is it?” he asks. Calum and Alex both throw him hard looks.

“Yes,” they chorus.

“Fucking hell,” Jack grumbles, pulling his coat on. “Laws are really fucking boring.” In this case, Luke can’t help but heartily agree.

“Well, hurry up with the healing, and then he won’t be your nurse anymore,” Michael suggests.

“Pretty sure it’s still illegal,” Alex notes.

“So?”

“Jesus Christ, Jack,” Alex mutters, and pushes him towards the door. “We’ll come back tomorrow if you’re still here, Luke.”

“Us too,” Calum says, shepherding Michael in the direction of the door too. “Bye, Luke. Be safe.”

“Be safe?” Luke echoes. “What sort of fucking danger am I in at a hospital?”

“Falling in love, apparently,” Calum says, and then the door swings shut behind him.

Well, Luke thinks. He’s not exactly wrong.

-------

Ashton comes back at around seven p.m. with Luke’s dinner, although I don’t usually serve dinner, it’s not a nurse’s job, but Jenna’s just had to go home for a family emergency and I was the closest person at hand. It’s salmon, and Luke pulls a face when he sees it that makes Ashton laugh.

“You don’t like salmon?” he says. “We have veggie options too, if you want that.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Luke says hastily, not wanting to come across like the fussy eater he is, for some reason. “Salmon’s good. I like salmon. It’s, uh, a good fish.” Ashton blinks at him for a moment, and then snorts.

“Sure,” he says, and sets the tray down on Luke’s lap carefully. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Luke says, which isn’t really a lie this time. “Everything still hurts, but.” He shrugs. “It’s alright.”

“You’re a trooper,” Ashton says, grinning. Luke nods solemnly, using his unbroken left hand to slot the knife into his right hand.

“It’s the top level care I’m receiving,” he says, and Ashton laughs again.

“Flattery will get you places,” he says, and Luke pauses, glancing over at Ashton.

“What places?” he asks, and Ashton winks, and sets a slice of chocolate cake down on the tray balanced on Luke’s legs. Luke looks down at it, and then back up at Ashton.

“That was on the menu,” he says. “You were going to give that to me anyway.” Ashton just grins, and heads back to the door.

“I would’ve withheld it if you hadn’t complimented my exemplary nursing skills,” he says, as he pulls the door open.

“I thought you said dinner service wasn’t part of the job description?”

“I might fight for it to be now,” Ashton says, pulling the door open. “Everyone needs to play God from time to time.” Luke snorts.

“That’s a completely non-alarming sentence to come out of your nurse’s mouth,” he says. “I think I’ll check my IV myself tonight.” Ashton’s lips hitch up in an amused smile.

“Enjoy your dinner,” he says, and then he’s gone.

-------

The next day, Luke is told that he can be discharged after a series of tests have been carried out, which are booked in for five p.m. - right in the middle of visiting hours, so he texts everybody not to come - and then get delayed until nine p.m. By ten, Luke’s still waiting for someone to come round as promised, and is getting incredibly restless, so turns to reach for his phone again - and stops dead.

There’s writing on his arm.

Writing that he, with his broken right hand, did not put there.

He yanks his arm close to him, then turns to fumble with the light above his bed because he can’t fucking see, and squints at the writing.

It’s just three words, small and scribbled like they had to be written fast or A would have lost the nerve to say them, but they make Luke’s heart thud against his ribcage like it’s trying to break a few more of his ribs.

Are you okay?

What?

Luke’s reaching for the pen in his drawer before he’s even thought about it, a million responses racing through his mind. What the fuck, being one, I thought you didn’t want to be my soulmate another, why are you talking to me now? What changed? in there somewhere too, but mostly: why?

It’s a good thing it’s only why, too, because writing the letters takes a fucking age and when he’s done, it sort of looks like something he would have produced when he was four years old. The reply is instantaneous, though, and Luke can barely believe it, feels like he’s hallucinating the way the letters are appearing one by one on his arm. He’s too scared to blink, like it’ll break the spell somehow, like looking away will make A think well, he’s replied, that’s good enough, but another sentence appears, letter by letter.

You haven’t complained about Jack in a few days.

So they have been reading Luke’s quasi-diary-entries.

Fuck.

Shit. Luke has no idea what to say. Should he tell the truth? Should he try and take a mile from the inch A is giving him, ask what the fuck is going on, press the question of why A doesn’t want to be his soulmate? No, that’ll make them clam up again. Maybe he just shouldn’t reply at all. After all, it’s not like A’s ever given Luke anything when he’s been pouring his heart out in the early hours of the night, is it? Maybe Luke should give them a taste of their own medicine.

He only considers that for a total of half a second before the pen is back on his skin, writing underneath A’s handwriting - God, it’s fucking surreal.

I’m in hospital. Broke a bunch of bones. There’s a longer pause this time, and when a few minutes of Luke staring intently down at his arm have passed with no further reply and he’s thinking fuck, that’s it with a sinking heart, a few more words appear.

I’m sorry to hear that. Get well soon.

Luke’s just about to put the pen back down to his arm, to write a quick thanks, because it’s about all he can manage to write legibly with the weird way he has to hold his pen with the cast on, when more scribbles start appearing.

How are you doing? Luke bites his lip.

Fine, he says. You?

I’m not the one in hospital.

True, Luke writes. My body aches.

You should rest. Best thing you can do for your body. Luke huffs out a laugh.

You sound like my nurse.

Your nurse knows what they’re talking about.

I’d be concerned if he didn’t. The reply takes a little longer to come this time, but after a few minutes more words are appearing.

Touché. Luke’s just staring down at the word, racking his brain to think of something to say to keep the conversation going because fuck, fuck, he’s talking to his fucking soulmate, when a few more words appear.

Goodnight, Luke. Get some rest.

I’d like to, but I’m waiting for more tests, Luke writes. He waits, and he waits, but no response comes.

Fuck, he thinks, rereading the entire conversation over and over, and over just for good measure. Fuck. He’s spoken to his soulmate. He’s spoken to A. He’s spoken to his fucking soulmate.

He reaches over for his phone, turns his arm this way and that and takes a photo, and sends it to his group chat with Michael and Calum. He sees Michael’s typing bubble pop up before the second picture has even sent, but then the door is opening and Doctor Nichols is striding in, and Luke hastily puts his phone down and nods along to the list of tests she’s rattling off that need doing before he can be discharged, mind covered in an impervious sheen of soulmate soulmate soulmate that stops any of it going in.

Fuck, Luke thinks, as he’s getting a bright light shone in his eyes and trying his hardest not to blink or look over at his phone, which is buzzing incessantly on his bedside table. Fuck.

-------

Michael and Calum agree that this is a positive step.

(Are you fucking kidding me? Calum says, when Luke voices hesitancy. They checked in on you. They fucking care.

rt, Michael says.)

Luke’s not so certain, though. The thought of it is sending delicious sparks dancing from his heart to his fingertips and down to his abdomen (or maybe that’s the medication, he’s not entirely sure), but he doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions, given A’s hard stance and silence for the past few months. But A would have received a letter if Luke had died, and the government are usually pretty quick to send those out, so maybe there is something to be said for the fact that they only waited three nights before asking after Luke.

Luke’s body is too exhausted to let him stay up psyching himself out over it, though, forcing him into a deep sleep as soon as Doctor Nichols has told him he’s free to leave the next morning and left him be, and when he wakes up the next morning it’s to someone opening his curtains.

“Hey,” they say, as Luke’s eyelids try to fight the fucking sun, and Luke shields his eyes with his hand to see Ashton silhouetted by the window.

“Weren’t you on shift last night?” he asks, and Ashton smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Life of a nurse,” he says tiredly. “Sorry for the light, by the way. Figured it would be a nicer way to wake you up than ripping your IV out.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Luke says, squinting and scrunching his face up, and Ashton huffs out a small laugh as he makes his way over to Luke’s side.

“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” he warns.

“That’s a shame,” Luke says. “I always thought having needles ripped out of me would be an enjoyable experience.” Ashton smiles again, and there are a few crinkles around his eyes. God, he really is fucking pretty.

“Are you looking forward to going home?” he asks.

“I’m looking forward to not having to eat salmon anymore,” Luke says.

“Hey, I offered you the veggie option,” Ashton says, and Luke winces as he feels the needle and whatever the fuck else being pulled out of his vein.

“I didn’t want to be a nuisance,” Luke says.

“Hold this,” Ashton instructs, and Luke reaches over to hold the gauze on his arm as Ashton reaches for a clear plaster. “You wouldn’t have been a nuisance. You’ve been an exemplary patient.”

“Is that a compliment?” Luke says. “I’m good at lying around being useless?” Ashton grins.

“You’re not useless,” he says. “Patients keep me in a job.” Luke grins back.

“I’ll try my best to get seriously injured again, then,” he says, and as Ashton turns away to the trolley he’s put Luke’s cannula on he catches the tail end of a small smile playing at his lips.

“Legally and professionally, I can’t encourage that,” he says, and Luke snorts.

“But personally?”

“No comment.”

“So you want me to hurt myself?”

“Is that what ‘no comment’ means these days?” Ashton says, throwing Luke a glance over his shoulder as he pushes his trolley over to the door, eyes twinkling. “Get some rest, Luke.”

“Wait,” Luke blurts, and Ashton stops. Luke blinks, like he's waiting for Ashton to say something, even though he's the one who'd asked him to stop, because shit, he hasn't thought this through. Something in his brain just said stop, ask him out, ask him out. And really, he thinks, why not, because if he embarrasses himself he'll never have to see Ashton again, and he's no longer Ashton's patient, so he takes a deep breath, says fuck it, and mumbles: “Uh. Look. Would you- would you want to go out? With me? Not- not now, obviously. Some other time. But- y’know. Would you?” Jesus Christ. Ashton hesitates for a moment, and then throws Luke a slightly sad, kind smile.

“I’d love to, Luke,” he says, and Luke’s heart soars for a moment, flying higher than it’s ever gone before “but I can’t.” Fuck. Luke’s heart should have read Icarus.

“Why not?” Luke says. “I’m not your patient anymore.” Ashton shakes his head.

“Still not allowed,” he says. “Only exception is if you find out you’re soulmates.” Well, fuck.

“Oh,” Luke says, and hopes the wobble in his voice isn’t as audible to Ashton as it is to him. “Okay.”

“I really- fuck. Sorry. I just- I’m sorry, Luke.” Ashton smiles at him again, barely more than a twitch of his lips, and then he’s gone.

Luke leans back against his pillows and stares up at the ceiling, heart pounding.

Maybe he’s just not meant to be with people whose names start with the letter A.

-------

Luke sits around at home for a week before he decides he’s so bored and so sick of being fussed over by his parents that he insists on coming back to work. Alex, in turn, insists on picking him up and dropping him off every evening, like he’s doing a fucking school run, and Jack insists on Luke doing nothing besides working the till so he can sit down. It’s fucking boring, because all the fun parts of the job are helping little kids buy their first guitars or talking to seasoned professionals about the ins and outs of the instruments, not smiling politely and waiting while they swipe their cards. He has nothing to do between people paying, so he spends most of his time on his phone, swiping through his various social media apps and wishing his hand weren’t in a cast so he could at least play guitar. It’s not exactly the worst way to spend his time, though, especially now that he’s found that forum of people pretending to be middle-class Dads which is oddly relatable and funnier to him than it probably is to anyone else. He’s in the middle of scrolling through it in a particularly quiet lull on a Thursday afternoon, screenshotting the best ones to send to Ben and Jack, when the shadow of a person looms over him.

“Hey, I- oh,” they say, and Luke looks up from his phone hastily to find-

“Ashton?” he says, surprised.

“Hi,” Ashton says. God, he looks good; he’s wearing a leather jacket over a faded grey Guns ‘N’ Roses t-shirt and black jeans, and his hair is falling into his eyes a little, and Luke sort of wants to kiss him and sort of wants to die.

“Uh, hi,” Luke says. “Sorry. I just, um. Wasn’t expecting to see you here. How can I help you?” Ashton blinks at him, and then smiles.

“I need some new strings for my Strat,” he says, and Luke nods. Of course Ashton plays guitar. Hopefully he doesn’t play, like, fucking drums, or something. That would probably be too much for Luke’s little heart to handle.

“Sure,” he says, turning to the selection of strings behind him. “Ernie Ball Regular Slinky alright?”

“Sounds good,” Ashton says, and Luke pulls a pack down and sets them on the desk in front of him, busying himself with adding up the cost like he doesn’t know it off by heart.

“How are you doing?” Ashton asks as Luke furiously types in numbers to avoid looking at Ashton, making Luke pause and glance up at him.

“You’re not on the job right now,” he says, and Ashton huffs out a laugh, raking a hand through his curls.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t care,” he says. “So?”

“I’m alright,” Luke says. “Bored, mostly. Kind of shit not being able to use my hand.” Ashton makes a small noise of sympathy, and Luke dramatically presses a button on the till and announces: “That’s fourteen dollars, please.”

“You won’t have to have the cast on for long,” Ashton says, digging around in his pocket for his wallet. Luke tries not to watch the way the movement exposes a sliver of his stomach. Thank fuck the scrubs had made Ashton entirely shapeless, because Jesus Christ.

“I feel like I’ll have to relearn how to use my hand normally when it comes off,” Luke admits, accepting the twenty Ashton hands him and fumbling with the till for a five and a one.

“That’s pretty normal,” Ashton says, accepting the change. Luke’s fingers brush against Ashton’s palm, and he tries not to let them twitch at the contact. “You’ll be used to it after a day or two.”

“Maybe I’ll grow attached to it, though,” Luke says, and Ashton snorts. “I mean, everyone has to be nice to me now.” Ashton looks down at the cast, which has Luke sucks big dicks written on it in huge, black letters courtesy of Jack, and then back up at Luke pointedly, who sighs. “That’s just Jack,” he says, and right on cue, Jack pops his head out of the back room.

“What’s me?” he says, and then brightens. “Hey, Nurse Irwin!”

“Hi, Mr Barakat,” Ashton says.

“Hey, idiot, Luke’s sexy nurse is here,” Jack shouts, and Alex’s head appears out of the office.

“What?” he says. “Oh, hey, Nurse Irwin.”

“Hi, Mr Gaskarth,” Ashton says politely. “How’re you?”

“Great, thanks,” Alex says. “Better now that you’ve patched my best employee up.”

“Hey,” Jack says, affronted. “Aren’t I your best employee?”

“Did Nurse Irwin patch you up?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe you’ll be my best employee after that, then.”

“Good to know my nursing skills are what keep your business running,” Ashton puts in, and Alex grins.

“Think it’s more than just your nursing skills,” he says cryptically, and then disappears back into his office.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke mutters under his breath, feeling his cheeks heat up. “Uh. I’m sorry. Here. Um. Have fun?” Ashton smiles, a little teasing, a little amused.

“Will do,” he says. “Look after that arm for me.” Luke’s heart skips a beat. For me.

“Well, I was planning on smashing it up a bit more, but now that you’ve said that…” he says, and Ashton laughs, eyes twinkling.

“See you around, Luke,” he says, pocketing his strings and heading for the door. Luke watches him go, and then groans and puts his head in his hands.

“What the fuck?” Jack says. “Why didn’t you ask him out?”

“I did,” Luke mumbles into his palms. “The day I got discharged. He said no.”

“What?” Alex pipes up, sticking his head out of his office again, because apparently he’s still listening too. “Why? Does he already have a soulmate?” Luke’s stomach flips. He’s been trying not to think about that possibility. But surely Ashton would have said that, right? It’s the kindest way to let someone down. And he had said he would have loved to, however much out of politeness that may have been.

“Apparently it’s still not allowed, unless you’re soulmates.”

“Well, you could be-” Jack starts, but immediately falls silent upon a stern look from Alex. “Fine. Well, since you’ve got nothing better to do in your spare time now, you can start by reorganising those CDs you fucked up the other day.” He nods at the cardboard box that’s been sitting behind Luke for a few days now, and Luke rolls his eyes, and bends down to pick it up with a dramatic sigh.

“Fuck you,” Luke says sullenly, and gets to work.

-------

Nine days after Luke’s discharged from the hospital, another message appears on his arm.

How are you doing?

Luke’s heart skips a beat, and he reaches for a pen with fumbling fingers, slotting it into his hand as best as he can manage.

Better, Luke writes. I’m out of hospital.

I’m glad to hear that.

Why do you ask? Luke decides to chance it. Fuck it, he thinks. Why not?

You still haven’t been writing. Luke swallows.

My writing hand is in a cast.

Oh. Luke frowns.

Could you not tell from my handwriting?

Honestly? No. Luke scowls.

My handwriting isn’t that bad.

Isn’t it? Luke’s scowl deepens. A is fucking rude. Before he can come up with a suitably haughty response, though, they’re writing something else.

Can you just write me something in the evenings to let me know you’re okay?

Luke stares at it for a moment, something bitter rising in his throat. He doesn’t owe A that. A’s done next to nothing but ignore him, and now they’re demanding something from him?

You never let me know you’re okay, he writes back, a little petulantly. There’s a longer pause this time, like A’s really thinking about the answer, because when the words come they’re written like they’ve been rehearsed prior to pen touching skin.

Do you want me to?

Luke hesitates. Does he? Of course he does, it’s his fucking soulmate, but they don’t want him, and it might make him more attached to them and make it hurt more when they inevitably reject him again.

(Oh, who is he fucking kidding.)

Yes.

Okay. That’s it, they don’t say anything else, and Luke doesn’t want to chase them, so he puts the pen down and stares at the conversation.

Okay. So they’re- so they’re sort of talking now. That’s something, right? Maybe they can at least be friends.

(He pushes away the that’s going to hurt too much, Luke, that’s going to hurt far too fucking much that flashes like a neon warning sign in his head, rolls over and goes to sleep.)

-------

After that, he falls into a sort of routine.

He goes to work, plays on his phone, jumps whenever the door opens in case it’s Ashton, like his strings are going to break within a week or two, then goes home or goes to Michael and Calum’s to watch them play videogames (he’d discovered fairly early on Xbox controllers and casts don’t mix), then gets ready for bed and writes A a quick I’m okay message. Sometimes it’s just that, just I’m okay, and sometimes it’s I’m okay, had a good day at work, or I’m good, really tired, or I’m okay, Jack broke another bass guitar today, I don’t know what he has against those things. A always replies with Thanks, I’m okay, but it’s something. It’s almost enough, and Luke can make do with that.

Six and a half weeks after getting out of the hospital, Luke gets his arm cast taken off. His leg still has a few weeks to go, and he’s told his ribs are healing nicely, congratulations on refraining from strenuous exercise (Luke almost laughs in the doctor’s face), but Luke’s not really thinking about that. Logically, he knows the chances are next to nothing, but he can’t help but look out for Ashton, just in case. He doesn’t see him, of course, but when he half-jokingly mentions it to Calum and Michael that night, Michael makes an offhand comment that sticks in Luke’s mind.

“Looks like Ashton’s helping you get over A,” he says, eyes glazed over as he stares at the screen in front of them.

“What do you mean?” Luke says.

“He’s all you fucking think about despite only meeting him, like, four times,” Michael says, and then swears loudly as Calum shoots him. “You cunt.”

“Should’ve been paying attention,” Calum says, with a shrug.

Luke’s thinking about that remark as he’s getting ready for bed that night, staring at himself in the mirror as his right hand tries to remember how to use a toothbrush. Maybe Michael’s right. Maybe Ashton is the antidote to A. Or, at the very least, he’s proof that Luke can like people that aren’t his soulmate. The thought makes him smile around his toothbrush, a warm feeling blossoming in his chest. Yeah, his soulmate might not want him, but maybe he’s not doomed to be alone, after all.

He spits and rinses, and then wanders into his room, picking up his pen to write his daily I’m okay message to A. A millimetre before the pen touches his skin, though, he hesitates. He might as well ask the question he’s asked a hundred times before, now that A actually speaks to him, even if it’s only to say the same three words every night. The worst that can happen is he gets ignored again.

I’m okay, he writes, and then, why don’t you want to be my soulmate?

Thanks, I’m okay. The response comes immediately, like A’s been waiting for Luke to check in, but nothing else follows it. Luke watches his arm for a few moments, waiting for more to show up, and then sighs, turns his light off, rolls over and falls asleep.

-------

When he wakes up the next morning, he hobbles into the bathroom, yawning and stretching, and as he’s reaching for his toothbrush he happens to glance in the mirror - and stops dead.

There’s something new on his arm.

He looks down so fast he thinks he might have snapped his own neck, heart skipping a beat.

I want to choose who I love.

So it is that, Luke thinks, testing the weight of the words on his heart. They aren’t as heavy as he’d expected them to be. In fact, he thinks, as an image of Ashton flashes through his head, he sort of respects it. A can have their chosen love. Luke can find someone else.

(Another image of Ashton flashes through his head.)

He hobbles back to his room and sits down on his bed, picking up the pen and thinking. Fair enough sounds a little passive aggressive, as does that’s fair, but Luke can’t think of anything else to say, so he settles for that’s fair and adds a little smiley to try and mitigate any potential hostility that might come across in the words. He blinks at the phrase for a moment, half-hoping for a response, but it’s eight in the morning and the words must have come at around four or five for them to still be there, so A’s probably asleep. So Luke shakes himself out of it, reaches for his toothbrush, and forgets about it.

-------

A week after that, Ashton comes back into the shop.

“Hi, Luke,” he says, waving and grinning as he closes the door behind him, because of course he’s a fucking gentleman who doesn’t let the door swing shut heavily like almost everyone else who comes in. “You sell drums, right?” Oh, Jesus. He’s not a drummer. He is not.

“Uh,” Luke says intelligently, like there aren’t two drum kits set up opposite him. “Yes?”

“Sweet,” Ashton says, ambling over with his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing short sleeves today, because it’s November and the weather’s starting to really warm up, and Luke can’t help but thank whatever deity may exist that he lives in the southern hemisphere, because Jesus Christ, Ashton’s arms are a fucking sight to behold. “I need a new snare.”

“Sure,” Luke says, tucking the pen he’s been holding behind his ear. “For- for you? Or- like, as a gift?” Ashton throws him an amused look.

“Who gifts snare drums?” he asks, and Luke shrugs, trying not to think about Ashton drumming. Good fucking God.

“People have gifted stranger things,” he says, and waves a hand at the drums opposite.

“Oh, hey, you got your cast off!” Ashton says brightly. “How is it?”

“It’s fine,” Luke says. “Still feels a bit weak.”

“I’m sure you know how to strengthen it,” Ashton says solemnly. Luke blinks at him. Is he- surely he’s not- is he- “Oh my God,” Ashton mutters, cheeks a little pink, like he’s just realised what he’s said. “I meant- I meant that the doctor should have given you a few exercises. Fuck. I did not mean- I’m not- fuck.” Luke can’t help but burst out laughing, warmth curling in the pit of his stomach as Ashton throws him a sheepish smile. God, he’s fucking cute. Luke is far too far gone on this man.

“Yeah, I forgot them,” he admits, because I didn’t take them in because I was too busy looking at every nurse that walked past in case they were you sounds insanely creepy. Ashton throws him a slightly exasperated look.

“Luke,” he says admonishingly, and Luke rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling.

“What was that you said about me being an exemplary patient?” he reminds Ashton, who shakes his head, grinning.

“I should have reserved judgement,” he says, making his way over to the drum kits Luke had pointed out. “Hey, do you have any sticks for these?”

“Oh, shit, yeah,” Luke says, hobbling out from behind his desk to the basket that stores test sticks and then over to Ashton, ignoring his protests of you shouldn’t be putting weight on that foot, Luke, let me get them, tell me where they are.

“It’s fine,” Luke says. “It’s getting taken off next week.” Ashton throws him a look.

“Yeah, next week,” he says. “These things have specific healing times for a reason.” Luke just waves his hand dismissively.

“I have another foot,” he says, and Ashton tuts, but a small smile is tugging at his lips.

“Hey, Luke?” a voice shouts - Jack, whose head pops out of the back room. “Oh, hey, Nurse Irwin. Luke, can you make a note that we need to order more of the Dunlop Hendrix Wahs, the SolidGoldFX NU-33s, the-” shit, Luke thinks, looking around him wildly; there’s no fucking paper, and Luke’s got a broken foot, so he can’t get back to the desk before Jack’s finished rattling this list off. As he’s spinning on the spot, the pen he’d tucked behind his ear dislodges itself and threatens to fly out, and he slaps a hand up to stop it before realising hey, pen, I have skin, I’ll just write it on my arm and write it on paper later.

“The Hendrix Wahs, the NU-33s, and what?” he calls, scribbling on his arm.

“The Hydra Stereo and Reverbs, and the Boss Pocket Processors.” Luke nods, frowning as he notes it all down, and then looks back up at Jack.

“Got it,” he says, and Jack gives him a thumbs up and disappears back into the back room. “Sorry-” he starts, turning back to Ashton, and then drinks in his ashen face, and frowns. “Are you okay?” Then he notices in the corner of his eye some writing on Ashton’s arm, and thinks huh, that’s weird, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there when he came in - in fact, I’m certain that wasn’t there when he came in, because I made a mental map of every inch of his body, and looks down, trying to surreptitiously read it.

Hendrix Wahs, NU-33s, Hydra S&R, Bass Pocket Processors.

Luke’s list. Luke’s list, in Luke’s handwriting, has just appeared on Ashton’s arm. That doesn’t make any sense.

“Wait,” Luke says slowly, and looks back up at Ashton’s stricken face. “Wait. You- hang on. How did my list just appear on your arm?”

“How do you think?” Ashton says quietly. Luke blinks.

“I don’t know,” he says. Ashton stares at him.

“I- what? What do you mean?” he says. Luke frowns.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he says. “How did my list appear on your arm?”

“Jesus Christ, Luke,” Ashton whispers, and then grabs the pen out of Luke’s hand and scrawls hi on his own arm. It sits there next to Luke’s list, looking oddly harmonious for two things that are completely unrelated, and Luke stares at it for a moment before looking down at his own arm.

There, right next to the messy scribble of his list, is one new word.

Hi.

Oh, fuck.

“Oh, fuck,” Luke says faintly, and steadies himself against a nearby keyboard. “Oh my God. You’re- you’re A?”

“You’re Luke?” Ashton sounds just as faint as Luke.

“I- yes? Fucking- how did you not- you met all of my friends? Michael, Calum, Jack, Alex? At the hospital?”

“I only knew them by surname,” Ashton says. “I- fuck. You’re Luke.”

“You’re A,” Luke says, and then a thought occurs to him and he swallows, and grits his teeth. “Fuck. You’re A.” The words come out harder this time, tinged with bitterness, and it makes Ashton’s eyes snap up to him, big and wide and so pretty it would take Luke’s breath away if he had any left to give.

“What?”

“You- you don’t want this.” Luke gestures a little feebly, not wanting to be too specific, but Ashton just looks at him like he doesn’t quite get it. “Y’know. This. Us.” He swallows. “Me.” Ashton’s gaze softens.

“Oh, Luke,” he says. “I- fuck. I do. I want you. I just didn’t- I didn’t want Luke. But I want you.”

“But I am Luke.”

“I didn’t know that, though,” Ashton says. “I- oh, fuck. You’re my soulmate.” The word sends a chill down Luke’s spine. Jesus. He’d sort of almost come to terms with the fact he’d never meet his soulmate, never have a soulmate, never hear those words out loud, and now here he is, standing with one foot in a cast at work, talking to the hot nurse he’s not been able to get off his mind for two months who just so happens to be his fucking soulmate who had semi-torn Luke’s heart out from its resting place on his birthday.

And now, he’s not sure how he feels about it.

“You didn’t want me,” he says, more than a little accusingly. “And now you do.” He doesn’t ask anything in particular, but Ashton seems to know what he’s pointing at anyway, because he bites his lip.

“Look,” he says. “I- I just didn’t want to fall for someone because it was assigned to me, or whatever. I wanted it to be a choice, not something I was forced into. And then I did fall for you, without knowing you were my soulmate, but obviously I- I couldn’t, because you were a patient - or a former patient - so I just- I thought that was it, but. Fuck. I fell for you on my own, and it turns out you’re my fucking soulmate.” Luke swallows. When he puts it like that, it makes a lot more sense. Luke can kind of get that. And the fact that Ashton’s saying he fell for Luke but just couldn’t act on it is definitely helping matters - Luke’s easily buttered up by an ego stroke.

“You broke my heart,” he says, matter-of-fact, and Ashton swallows.

“I hoped I hadn’t,” he says, like that makes it any better.

“You could’ve at least waited ‘til it wasn’t my birthday anymore,” Luke says. “Or explained yourself. I thought it was me.”

“You thought what was you?”

“I thought- I thought I’d put you off, somehow. That I was the problem.” Ashton’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head.

“God, no. Jesus. No, no. I just- I wanted to be clear, and I thought the less I engaged the better, y’know? Like, the less you’d have to latch onto, the easier you’d forget about me.” He hesitates. “I shouldn’t’ve done it on your birthday, though,” he says. “I’m sorry. And- I’m sorry for everything else, too. It was never you.”

And, okay. Luke’s the type to hold grudges. He’s petty and he’s childish, and he doesn’t forget shit like this. But he’s also an adult and he’s (to some degree, at least) capable of rational thought, so he shoves away his first instinct that says spite him, go on, make him hurt like he hurt you and thinks about it. Yeah, Ashton fucked up. He should’ve waited until it wasn’t Luke’s birthday, and he should’ve explained himself, and he just should’ve been a lot more communicative from the beginning. But the past week or two, Luke’s actually been okay with the idea that A doesn’t want him, so he can’t really hold that against Ashton anymore, not when his heart has patched itself up the past five months and shrugs off the idea of not having his soulmate in the way he’d always wanted. And he does understand Ashton’s reasoning, even if he doesn’t agree with it, so he clears his throat, and, just to make sure, says:

“So- so you do want it now?”

“Fuck, I- well, I want to see where it can go,” Ashton says. “I- I don’t want to make any promises. But I’d like to try.” Luke blinks at him.

Ashton wants to try. Ashton, who is Luke’s fucking soulmate, wants to try the two of them on for size.

“Okay,” Luke says. “Okay. Yeah. We can try.”

“Yeah?” Ashton says, a little nervously.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “I mean, I’ve been sort of infatuated with you from a distance since meeting you, anyway, so.” He shrugs, and Ashton grins and opens his mouth to say something, and then there’s a yell from behind them.

“Hey, Luke,” Alex says. “Oh, hey, Nurse Irwin. Luke, can you call our accountant? I need the books going over by- uh. Why are you both smiling like you’ve committed a crime? You’ve not committed a crime on these premises, have you?”

“What?” Luke says. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What’s wrong with you two?” Alex says suspiciously. Luke glances over at Ashton, who shrugs, tiny and imperceptible, like sure, go on. Fuck.

“Uh,” Luke says, and swallows. “Turns out Ashton is, um. Kind of my soulmate?” Alex blinks at him.

“Who’s Ashton?” Luke blinks back, and then points at Ashton. “That’s- that’s your soulmate? Ashton’s the dickhead?” The back room door opens.

“Who’s a dickhead?” Jack asks, intrigued.

“Ashton,” Alex says.

“Who’s Ashton?”

“Nurse Irwin.”

“Oh. Hey again, Nurse Irwin. Why are you a dickhead?”

“He’s Luke’s soulmate.” Jack looks at Alex, and then at Luke, and then back again.

“No, he isn’t,” he says calmly.

“He is,” Luke says.

“Fucking hell,” Jack says, and then goes back into the back room and closes the door.

“Hey,” Alex shouts, frowning. “Get back out here. Luke’s just found his fucking soulmate.”

“I’m not dealing with this mess,” Jack yells back, muffled by the door.

“What mess?” Ashton asks, bewildered. Alex whips around to stare at him.

“The mess you made,” he says. “Y’know. When you broke little Luke’s heart on his twenty-first birthday.” Ashton has the good grace to look embarrassed, and even winces slightly. Good, Luke thinks, a little childishly. Public humiliation probably makes them even for Luke’s birthday being ruined, isn’t it?

“I didn’t mean to,” Ashton says, sounding very much like a five-year-old.

“I don’t care,” Alex says. “You two sort shit out between yourselves.” Ashton blinks at him.

“Right,” he says, and turns to Luke. “So. Uh. I feel like now is the time to ask you on a date.”

“What, with my chaperone watching?” Luke says, throwing Alex a pointed glance, and Alex throws his hands up in exasperation and heads back into his office. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ashton says, with a small smile. “It’s sweet how protective they are of you.” Which, yeah, but like, fuck, because if Ashton thinks this is protective, he’s got another thing coming when he meets Michael and Calum. Luke bites his lip.

“Wait ‘til you meet Michael and Calum,” he says, a little warningly, a little gleefully.

“So is that a yes?”

“A yes to what?”

“Me asking you out.” Luke blinks.

“Ashton, I asked you out, like, two months ago,” he says. “And you’re my soulmate. Obviously it’s a yes.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Ashton says, a little defensively. “It’s good to check.”

“What, so now you’re the king of communicating?” Ashton throws him a slightly hard look, but it softens when he sees the smile on Luke’s lips.

“I sort of deserve that,” he admits, and Luke grins.

“Part and parcel of going on a date with me,” he says, and Ashton grins back.

“At least I to go on a date with you,” he says. “Softens the blow.”

Yeah. Luke could get used to the way his heart is trying to communicate with him through the medium of interpretive dance.

(It’s a good thing his soulmate’s a nurse.)

-------

Hurry up, Luke scribbles on his arm as quickly as possible. I didn’t pay for parking.

Jesus, Luke, comes back almost immediately. I’m on my way back.

I can tell by your handwriting.

You’re one to talk.

Fuck off.

xxx

Luke puts the pen back in the glove compartment and taps his fingers on the gear stick, peering at the revolving doors to try and spot his boyfriend. It only takes about thirty more seconds before he sees him walking out, looking around for a moment until he sees Luke parked badly and illegally and jogs over, shaking his head fondly.

“Idiot,” he says, when he gets in the car. “If we get a fine, you’re paying it.”

“You’ll have to bargain with Alex to give me a raise, then,” Luke says, throwing the car into reverse without bothering to look over his shoulder.

“Jesus, Luke, look where you’re fucking going,” Ashton says, even though there’s no one there. Luke shrugs, puts the car into first, and pulls out of the spot he’d been parked in.

“What?” he says. “We’re right outside a hospital. It’s fine.”

“Fucking hell,” Ashton mutters, but when Luke glances over he’s smiling.

“So?” Luke prompts. “What did they say?”

“It was fine,” Ashton says. “There are procedures in place for this sort of thing, y’know. They had the government papers confirming you’re my soulmate, and the ethical review was fine, because you just broke a few bones so I barely looked after you.” Luke scoffs.

“Just broke a few bones?” he echoes, a little indignantly. “I broke half my fucking body.”

“Well, you did toss about fifty guitars onto yourself,” Ashton says, fumbling in the glove compartment as Luke pulls out onto the main road.

“That was to get out of whatever Jack was trying to force me to do,” Luke says. “And it worked.”

“Was it really worth it?” Ashton says, pulling the pen out of the glove compartment and raising his eyebrows.

“Of course it was,” Luke says immediately. “I didn’t have to do whatever dumb shit Jack had in mind.” Out of the corner of his eye, Luke sees Ashton roll his eyes.

“That was a perfect set-up to say of course, Ash, I wouldn’t have met you otherwise,” Ashton tells him, and Luke grins.

“Would’ve said that if I meant it,” he says, and Ashton sighs, but he’s grinning.

“I don’t know why I bother with you,” he says, and Luke grins back.

“Because I’m your soulmate,” he says. “And worse than that, you chose to be stuck with me. This is all your own fucking doing.”

“Fucking hell,” Ashton mumbles again, but he’s scribbling something on his arm, and when Luke glances down he sees a slightly shaky heart drawn right where his wrist meets the back of his hand, and smiles out at the road.

“Love you too.”

#lashton #malum #5sos fic #5sos fanfic #5sos slash #jalex #YES I KEPT IT UNDER 15K #sorry i am literally going to crow about my achievement on that front #no one come for me for the title #IT WORKED OK...its not just my addiction rearing its ugly head agian

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