#johnny’s voice lines for them are nice enough i guess ;-; the family thing is super sweet. thats my crumb……… | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

saebyeog-i · 4 years ago

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bitter brews (i) | syh

“Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.””

genre | not quite a coffeeshop!au, (mild)slow burn, this thought about being an adversaries to lovers fic for six minutes

rating/warnings | a stupid amount of exposition about coffee plants, catch me throwing in the random recipes that have been my go-to for cooking during quarantine, is this angsty?, discussions of mental health issues {see tags for details}, overall mature content/themes {foul language, alcohol consumption, references & discussion of masturbation, awkward boners, future smut}, some soft moments, and some good ol’ tooth rotting waxing poetic nonsense fluff. Don’t expect too much out of this I just got tired of editing this part so I’m finally posting it.

word count | 19.6k (I meant for this to be a super long one-shot but it’s turning into a story in parts for the sake of ratings w h o o p s)

pairing | Johnny Seo x fem reader

writing playlist | Egotistic - Mamamoo, Black Swan - BTS, Sober - HYO, I Blame On You - Taeyeon, Heartbeat - BTS, Close to Me (Red Velvet Remix) - Ellie Goulding feat. Red Velvet

—

“So, what you mean to say is… you’re not coming? Like, at all?”

The bright yellow plastic of the rotary phone was slightly cool against your overheating skin, which was constantly veiled in a thin layer of sweat whenever you stayed on the farm property instead of the main house on the opposite side of the island. It was the first week of May, which meant it was already humid again. If it wasn’t the time for the daily afternoon rain showers, it might as well have felt like it was raining with how saturated the air was.

“I’m sorry, Bean, I just can’t get on a plane right now. I thought it would be fine it we stretched out the time between flights, but all my doctors are saying I need to just stay here between now and the birth, so…”

Your sister’s voice trailed off and you had to wait for a moment to be sure it wasn’t the poor reception for the phone call running across the four thousand miles that separated you— the four thousand miles that would continue to separate you for the rest of the summer.

You exhaled and twirled the aged spiral phone cord that could barely hold its shape around your index finger, staring at the concrete floor and scrunching your toes. “Well, I’m already here, obviously… do you… you want me to stay here then? Take care of stuff?” You asked hesitantly, already having a feeling of what the answer would be.

A crackly sigh of relief came through the other line. “Little Bean, you are the best, Yunho was worried about asking you to stay and man the farm for the summer harvest but I knew you would just offer! You’re the best like that, you know?” You gritted your teeth and forced a smile through, even though no one was there to witness it. “Okay, so we’ll ship out the supplies in the next few days. Yunho is gonna email you a list of delivery dates of materials for the projects he had planned for the summer and a few contractor contacts…”

Her voice warbled on, and you could only nod your head and vocalize an ‘mhmm’ every so often, listening to her rattle off instructions and information that you knew would be sent in an email too. You’d been looking forward to spending the summer with her— you hadn’t gotten a proper chance to visit for more than a weekend since she and Yunho had gotten married about two years ago— but it turned out this wouldn’t be it. You couldn’t blame her though; she was approaching the third trimester of her pregnancy. You’d do anything for her, even this, even isolating yourself on a farm for four months. Alone.

Not exactly the leave of absence you’d been hoping for from work, but it would have to do.

✧ ✧ ✧

This was supposed to be a vacation. A break. Some much needed time off, away from your job, your career, and your “normal” life. You told yourself over and over again you were looking forward to it. And besides, it would all be worth it, because of all the time you’d get to spend with your sister after so long.

And then she had to betray you by going and getting fucking knocked up, with twins no less.

Fucking happily married couples with their god damn healthy ass sex lives and family planning and wanting to raise children. What the fuck was that all about?

It had been so long since your last vacation. Years, in fact. So long, you had over two months of paid time off accrued at work, and back at New Years you’d made the preliminary plans to spend a month on the farm in Hawaii with her, bonding and just relaxing. Sure, it would require some manual labor for the business here and there, but mostly just to rest.

What a joke that turned out to be.

The farm in Hawaii. You know, the coffee farm your brother in law bought four years ago on a dare from your sister, because he said he could totally pull it off as a side hustle, and she said he wouldn’t be able to? Yeah, that one. Fast forward to today and the side hustle became a full fledged passion that roped in a good amount of the family into the business. Siblings, cousins, parents, all involved in different aspects of package design, social media marketing, distribution and wholesale— everyone except you, who stuck with your soul sucking job in advertising, the same industry your brother in law had since left behind.

The farm and roasting wasn’t an overnight success by any means, but in the last year the brand had really taken off in the craft coffee scene. After all, Kona coffee was well sought after, and one could only claim the name ‘Kona’ if it was grown on the same two thousand or so acres of land on Hawaii’s big island. You know, the same area of land you were living on for the remainder of the summer?

Right. The whole summer.

It was just supposed to be the month of May. And then it turned into May and some of June, when you’d asked your sister to make more concrete plans, and she kept brushing it off. And then the week before you actually got off the plane, you hadn’t booked the return ticket, because you were still waiting for her answer. And then the phone call, and now, this was… indefinite? No, that was being too dramatic; if anything, it would be up through the birth. Based on the number of projects Yunho had planned for the farm, through the remainder of the summer was how long everything would take. Just you and a little over five acres of land and the summer heat. The thought of an extended isolation had your breath catching in your throat, but the last thing you wanted to do was complain or call for help. Stubborn and proud, you wouldn’t have made the offer to stay if you didn’t mean it, if you didn’t think you could handle it. There was no way you were backing out now.

When Yunho had first bought the farm, it had been a rough first few years of refining the coffee plants that had been on the land and uncared for for a number of years, but the last two summers had provided a steady increase in the harvest yield. There was a small farmhouse on the property, with two small bedrooms, a shower, and a small kitchen and living area. A few miles down the coast was the nicer, newer condo that the business had bought, a multi-bedroom unit with some better amenities for when more of your family wanted to visit. It felt weird spending time there— it was too nice, too clean, and quite frankly you had enough to keep yourself busy with on the farm property, you’d rather not have to spend time driving back and forth every day. So you opted to spend most of your nights sleeping here, even though it meant only ceiling fans and no air conditioning.

The farmhouse had very shitty, very limited wifi and a grand total of three electrical outlets outside of what was used to power the oven and refrigerator. One of those outlets was, of course, dedicated to an espresso machine on the kitchen counter, which you had gotten acquainted with over the last two weeks. It was an older model and a little temperamental (the one at the condo was much nicer), but it was still from a decent manufacturer, and you could still use it to pulled a decent shot.

Most of the time you worked in silence, and most of the time you were never too aware of how much time had passed, other than when the sun went down and it was suddenly dark out. You weren’t always this absent minded, you swore— maybe it was a byproduct of being alone for so long—

A loud, high pitched whine filled your ears, followed by some scratching at the door that lead to the lanai outside. You sighed, standing up from the kitchen table and walking over to face the monster that had made it.

“What? What do you want now?”

Staring back at you from the the other side of the screen door was what you’d affectionally referred to as The Thirty-Three Pound Menace— the medium sized stray dog that your brother-in-law so conveniently forgot to mention had been living on the farm for the last few months. It had been waiting outside the farmhouse when you first arrived, and you’d learned from the neighbors that Yunho had taken a liking to the stray and had arranged for them to feed it in his absence. But now that you were here, taking care of the dog was added to your list of daily chores. It seemed to not want to leave the farm property unless actively accompanied by you, with the assurance that you’d be bringing it back with you.

With a roll of your eyes you hip checked the door open just enough to let the dog inside the house. It circled you several times, sniffing at your knees before sitting and panting, staring up at you expectantly. In the two weeks you’d been here, the majority of your conversations were between you and this, a being that couldn’t talk back. Maybe you liked it that way. “What, dinner? Fine, fine,” you grumbled, shuffling to the cabinet and pulling out a can of wet food.

Your meals had consisted of relatively simple dishes, but today you were cranky at the confirmation that your summer was not going to go as planned. Tonight’s dinner featured a bowl of cereal and a coffee mug full of cold white wine.

You ate in silence. You drank in silence. The only noise came from the hum of the ceiling fan overhead, and the occasional sound of the dog, cleaning its paws and laying by your feet protectively. Why it seemed so determined to win over your affection, you had no idea.

After sitting in silence with only your thoughts and the now sleeping dog to keep you company for what felt like hours and downing a second mug full of wine, you found yourself letting out a loud yell, startling the dog and waking it. In a fury, you pulled out the laptop you had for the sole purpose of checking once a day for emails from Yunho and connected it to the shitty, sub-par wifi with just enough patience to navigate to an airline’s website and search flights back to the states. You were looking for the cheapest, most reasonable one you could find. After all of five minutes of research and a quick round on mental math, you clicked on a date and hit the ‘book now’ button before you could second guess yourself, slamming the computer shut once the payment went through and shoving it away from you across the table.

“September 10th,” you grumbled out loud for only you and the dog to hear. Standing from the chair, the legs scraping loudly against the floor, you crossed the room and stopped in front of the wall calendar your sister had put up the last time she’d visited the farm just after New Years. You lifted a few pages and flipped forward to the month of September. Red marker in hand, you found the date and circled it rather aggressively, several times over. You looked down at the dog, watching you patiently with its head tilted. “You got that? I’m getting off this fucking island on September 10th.”

✧ ✧ ✧

The day your life fell apart came twelve days later just before nine in the morning.

Mondays were the delivery day, that’s what Yunho had laid out in his instructional emails to you. Your only source of personal transportation was an older jeep, one you didn’t enjoy driving, given that it had no top and needed some mechanical work done. So you’d made arrangements and had your groceries delivered on Monday mornings, buying mostly direct from another farm on the other side of the island, and they were always kind enough to act as the courier for whatever additional miscellaneous supplies you’d request, regardless of where they’d have to go to procure them.

There was a winding driveway that lead up to the house from the main road, and a larger, wider drive up a less steep hillside for larger vehicles for delivery. You were fully expecting the truck that lumbered up the delivery road and came to a stop just outside the barn which housed the massive coffee roaster and stored most of the processed green beans from harvest. Even though it had only been three weeks, there was a routine that had slowly been settling into place: the sound of the truck coming to a stop riled up the dog, the dog came running from wherever and started barking, you’d get your groceries and any other assorted items, the dog would get a treat because your delivery boy had a soft spot for the creature, and you’d pay for your goods. “Hey Jin,” you called out over the barking from the front of the barn, hands currently full with a sack of processed coffee beans you’d hoisted over your shoulder. “You can just leave the groceries on the porch, I’ll put them inside in a few. Did you manage to get me the bags of fertilizer and some wood stakes?” A loud thud sounded as you dropped the bag to its resting place on the concrete floor.

“I mean, I can go put these inside if that’s easier. And yeah, there’s ten bags to get us started, we can have more delivered next week if you still need ‘em.”

You whipped around to face whoever had just spoken, because that voice was most certainly not Jin.

He was tall like Jin, had wide shoulders like Jin, and his hair was kept just a bit long and looked ridiculously shiny and soft and like you could run your fingers through it like Jin’s. It was a lighter brown with some honeyed highlights running through it, compared to the dark brown almost black of Jin’s. You tensed, seeing him carrying a brown paper bag with a loaf of bread and the leafy green tops of carrots sticking out the top. He wasn’t looking at you, rather, he was far too occupied with bending down slightly and scratching behind the ear of the dog who was currently whining and wagging its tail at his feet. Some guard dog it was.

Without a second thought, you reached for the first sharp object you could find, which happened to be the box cutter you used to cut open the burlap bags the beans came back from the processing plant in. “You’re not Jin,” you said tersely, holding the utility knife by your hip defensively.

“Chill out killer, he’s harmless,” a more familiar voice called. Seokjin, your regular delivery driver whose family owned the farm you bought directly from, came into view carrying another two bags of produce and a small pile of envelopes. “Picked up your mail on my way up, the box was practically overflowing. Do you ever check that thing?” You’d first met Jin two years ago when you’d come to visit your sister and Yunho for a long weekend. He’d become a good friend of Yunho’s and was one of the people who would take turns feeding the dog when no one else was here.

Ignoring the unknown man, you relaxed your shoulders slightly and placed the knife down on the table behind you. “Thanks,” you grumbled, taking the small pile of letters from him. Admittedly, you hadn’t checked the mailbox since the day after you’d arrived on the farm, mostly out of sloth and spite. You sifted through the letters— mostly junk mail, with a few bills and notices relating to the business. You put those in front so you could look through them later, when you’d finished the physical work for the day. You tore one envelope open in particular when you noticed it was addressed directly to you and had your sister and Yunho’s Illinois address in the upper corner. It was a letter postmarked from two weeks ago, which struck you as odd, because what the hell would he bother writing in a letter that he couldn’t just send you in an email or a text or a phone call? You started reading aloud softly to yourself.

“‘My Dearest Bean… First of all I want to apologize for the change in plans, but with your sister’s condition her doctors just don’t recommend her traveling,’ God, he’s so dramatic she’s not terminally ill she’s just pregnant. Blah blah blah, I don’t care, you’re full of absolute shite, Yunho,” you began skimming through his lengthy pre amble, looking for the purpose behind the note. Without reading the middle you flipped the stationary paper over to see his handwriting covered the entire back of the page, too. “God, he’s so long winded. Oh, here we go, the very end— ‘I promise we’ll make it up to you, thank you for running the farm and taking care of Puppy, please be nice to Johnny and treat him well, he seems like a good kid.” You stared at the words written on the paper and looked up at Jin. “Who the fuck is Johnny?”

The man next to him cleared his throat and held his hand up. “Johnny! I’m uh, that’s me. You must be _____— I’ve heard a lot about you from Yunho! I’m Johnny Seo, it’s nice to meet you,” he said with a smile, reaching a hand out.

You eyed it but made no move to reciprocate the action. “Cool. You know Yunho. Lots of people know Yunho, he’s a huge fucking flirt, social butterfly of the century, the man never shuts up. Why should I be nice to you?”

He shifted on his feet and his outstretched hand retreated. “Oh. Uh. I’m uh, here for the summer,” he explained, sounding almost confused. “Didn’t— didn’t Yunho tell you?”

Your eyes bugged out and you looked over to Jin. “Jin who the fuck is this and why is he on my farm?” You whispered.

Your friend laughed. “You read the end of Yunho’s letter. I’m sure if you read the whole thing it would explain more. This is Johnny, and he’s here for the summer. He’s gonna help you out! I know the list of all the projects you need to finish this summer is lengthy, and plus look at the guy, he’s jacked! You could use the muscle for manual labor. More work for him, less for you, right? And look, the poor dog you refuse to give a name to even likes him!” Jin gestured comically at Johnny. You looked over, sizing him up some— Jin wasn’t wrong. The stranger was muscular on top of being tall, and under the capped sleeves of his tee shirt you saw his arms that looked the size of your head. The dog was still circling him, sniffing and begging for attention.

Johnny tried smiling again. “Yunho mentioned there was a lot of construction type work to do. I uh, had nothing else planned so he said I could stay on the farm for the summer and work in exchange for food and a place to sleep. I take it he uh, didn’t run that by you first, did he?”

Your grip on the papers in hand tightened and you felt your jaw tense involuntarily. “No, he managed to not mention that once to me. How did you even get here?” You hissed back.

“I picked him up at the airport this morning,” Jin answered calmly, “Yunho gave me a buzz a few days ago to ask if I could bring him here with this week’s groceries.”

“So he managed to arrange for him to get on a plane and secure transportation to the farm but couldn’t be bothered to call me and let me know?”

Jin only laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I’m pretty sure he knows you well enough by now to know that this would have been your reaction whatever way he told you.” Despite the kinship you’d felt growing between the two of you, Jin was Yunho’s friend first, and it only made sense that his allegiance would be to him first. Of course he’d side with Yunho on this matter. “And yes, like Johnny said I did bring a bundle of plant stakes and ten bags of fertilizer— they’re in the back of the truck bed.”

“Oh, I could get those—” Johnny started, moving to step towards the truck.

You could barely think straight. First they bailed on you unexpectedly to spend the summer on the farm alone. That was fine— you’d gotten that through your head, and had come to terms with that. But suddenly springing a plus one on you, without your consent? Absolutely the fuck not.

“Yeah. Don’t need help. Thanks,” you spat, grabbing the bags of groceries from him and brushing past, stomping your way back to the farmhouse.

Johnny stood frozen for a moment before stammering, looking from Jin to your retreating figure and back again. “I should— I should talk to her, right? Or do I—”

“Whoa, don’t think too hard there handsome, I can smell wood burning. Don’t stress about it. She’s just a little… touchy. Let me talk to her,” Jin patted Johnny on the back before heading up the path to the farmhouse after you.

You’d stormed into the house and slammed the groceries down on the counter and let out a screech of rage before picking up the receiver of the yellow rotary phone and dialing. Tapping you foot incessantly, you waited as it rang.

“He-llo~?” The singsong voice that came through the other end was far too amused with itself, more so than usual, and that’s how you knew he knew why you were calling.

“Jung Yunho you better be thankful you knocked up my sister because if it weren’t for the babies in her womb I would fly myself across the Pacific and flay you alive,” you seethed through gritted teeth.

In true unbothered fashion, your brother in law only laughed at your threat. “Ah, so I take it your employee has arrived safely! I’ll have to thank Seokjin for getting him from the airport. Can you give the Kims a pound of the special medium roast as a token of my gratitude?”

“No!” You yelled back, “No! I will not! I’m already beyond frustrated that I’m on this island alone for the entire summer, I’m doing this as a favor because we’re family! I’m not your slave, Yunho! Where was my warning, huh? When were you going to ask if I was okay with you sending some stranger to live in the same house as me, huh?!”

The familiar ache in your chest started to swell, and breathing became difficult. ‘Not now,’ you thought bitterly, ‘Please not right now-’

You curled your free hand into a fist and pressed your nails into your palm, hard, grounding yourself. Yunho’s voice on the phone blurred out and by the time his words started making sense again, you’d already missed what he’d been saying. “I’m not saying you have to like the kid, just show him some hospitality, yeah? You just said it yourself, you didn’t want to be alone this summer, and now you won’t be. I know you’re a good cook so that’s why I told him food would be included. Don’t worry, I’ve already sent some pre-payments to the Kims, so your grocery orders are doubled for the rest of the summer.” His voice went quiet for a second. You rubbed at your temple in frustration, squinting your eyes shut and forcing the mere thought of tears deep back into the recesses of your brain. “Bean? You still there?”

“Don’t get all pretend concerned, Yunho. And stop using my childhood nickname any time you want something from me.” Your voice was quieter now, the intensity of your emotions subsiding, but the betrayal you felt still running strong. “Fine. I’ll tolerate him. But there better be a case of wine in next week’s groceries to make this bearable.”

“Done and done! You’re gonna love him Bean, he’s really great. He’ll be good company.” The continued use of your childhood nickname from anyone other than your sister always gave you pause.

“I said tolerate not befriend. There’s a difference,” you clarified quickly. A knock at the door startled you, and you jumped and looked to see Jin standing by the front door, a roll of wooden stakes under his arm. You rolled your eyes and waved your arm to shoo him away, pointing at the phone pressed to your ear. “Look, Yunho, I don’t know what you’re hoping to see me get out of this, but if he drives me insane I can’t promise that he’ll walk away from this unscathed.”

His laugh echoed through the receiver and reverberated against your skin. “I just think it would do you some good to have some human interaction, that’s all. Your sister too. She says hi, by the way,” he added softly, “And so do the little ones.”

You scoffed. Yunho always brought up your sister as a way of diffusing your temper. He knew it would always work. “They’re still in embryonic fluid, they can’t talk and they certainly don’t have cognitive function.” Sometimes you wondered if even Yunho had that with the wild ideas that went through his mind.

“Ever the romantic, you are. You know, soon they’ll be able to think! And they’ll be thinking of their favorite auntie, and how much they can’t wait to meet her! So she can’t be arrested for murder between now and when they’re born, because babies can’t go to prison!”

“I’m telling your sister you said that,” you challenged. With an exhale, you did your best to let go of the frustration and tension inside and politely ended the phone call. You were trying to clear your head and collect yourself before heading back outside when you heard a yell that sounded all too much like Jin’s voice.

“What fresh hell—” you started, shuffling back outside in the direction of the commotion where you saw Jin, somewhat struggling under the weight of two bags of fertilizer, and Johnny, now with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head, easily hoisting a stack of four bags without slouching.

Your eyebrow ticked up upon the realization that it was almost seventy pounds that he was slinging around like it was nothing. “Anywhere specific you want these?” He asked innocently, looking up at where you stood on the lanai just outside the door. You almost cursed him out when he blinked at you twice.

You pointed your left arm down the hill, the opposite direction of the way to the barn. “Shed. Next to the vegetable garden.” You wrinkled your nose at him. “And lose the hat. Or at least don’t wear it backwards. Makes you look like an ass.”

Johnny’s mouth hung open for a moment before he hummed and winked. “You got it, Boss! Come on handsome, if you can carry those good looks you can carry some dirt,” he called back to Jin, who was currently grumbling about how manual labor wasn’t a part of his delivery arrangement.

The hairs on your arm stood up on edge as you watched Johnny laugh deeply as he ambled his way in the direction you’d pointed. The thirty three pound menace next to you whined and wagged its tail, panting as it went from watching you to watching Johnny’s retreating figure. You looked down and made eye contact. “If I survive this, I’m going to kill Yunho.”

✧ ✧ ✧

There was no case of wine in the grocery deliveries the following week. The reasoning Yunho gave was that per Jin’s investigation, the liquor stores were all out of your favorite wine, so there was no point in sending you a sub par alternative. It was absolute crap, but you had better things to do than chew out your brother in law over the phone. Took way more energy than it was worth.

So far, Johnny was making good on his word and earning his keep. At first, you’d tried avoiding him as much as possible, intentionally waking up hours ahead of him and starting your day when the sun rose. You never made much noise in the mornings, the loudest thing you did was make coffee, and lately you’d opted for a pour over versus pulling shots of espresso. You weren’t personally one for breakfast, choosing just coffee and maybe a piece of fruit instead. This morning you felt a little hungrier than usual, so you thought you’d get yourself a bowl of cereal. Peering into your pantry, you saw that on the shelf where there had been a stash of cereal boxes, there was now nothing.

“Where the fuck are my cocoa pebbles?” You swore in shock, not realizing you weren’t alone in the kitchen.

“Shit sorry, I ate the last of those yesterday.”

You whirled around to see Johnny, still seemingly half asleep and with some gnarly bedhead, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. His lips were so perfectly pouty, one small part of your brain almost thought he looked cute like this.

But no, he wasn’t cute, he was a thief— he’d stolen all of your cereal stash. “Did you seriously eat through four boxes in a week?” You asked incredulously.

“It was three and a quarter! And yeah I don’t know, I’m always hungry and just one bowl of cereal isn’t filling enough, so I usually have two, or three...” He mumbled, voice trailing off as he rubbed a hand behind his head sheepishly.

You snorted. And then a thought came across you. “Johnny,” you said calmly, the feeling of his name on your tongue foreign and strange. Was this the first time you’d addressed him by name since his arrival? You couldn’t remember. “Do you not know how to cook?”

He hummed thoughtfully for a second. “No-pe!” He popped the p sound in the word. How was he this cheerful, even first thing in the morning? “I mean, I can like, boil water and cook pasta and stuff like that. I think I successfully grilled pork belly once, though it was probably doused in too much oil and too many spices. My college experience was funded almost exclusively on instant dinners and takeout for two years, and then for the second half one of my roommates was an actual chef, so, no one was allowed in the kitchen ‘cept for him.”

“Honestly, I am shocked that you haven’t perished in some tragically strange idiotic accident yet,” you sighed and shuffled to the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs and a pack of bacon. You grabbed a frying pan from the cabinet under the stove and clicked the burner on, reaching for the oil bottle that lived on the counter top and drizzling some in the pan.

Johnny shuffled closer to inspect what you were doing and let out a gasp of appreciation. “You’re making me eggs and bacon?”

“I’m making me eggs and bacon,” you corrected, “But I guess I’ll make enough for you too,” you said as you peeled the strips off the packaging and placed them into the pan with a sizzle. You reached for a few eggs and cracked four into the pan directly, cocked your head at the amount of food, and then grabbed two more eggs and added them in before taking a fork and scrambling them all together, adding salt and white pepper to the bubbling liquid. You glanced up at Johnny, still watching you, slightly curious. “I don’t trust you. You say you’re an adult but you eat like a teenage boy still. There’s never any leftovers.” After a few minutes you flipped the strips of bacon over and then quickly chopped up a green onion and scraped it onto the scramble just before the eggs finished cooking.

Johnny watched you the whole time, and you felt only slightly uneasy under his gaze. When you turned off the stove after plated your food and stepping away to pour yourself some coffee and he didn’t move, you gestured at the pan in a fashion as if to silently ask him ‘What?’

“Oh!” He gasped out lightly, springing into action and plating the food for himself. You hadn’t bothered to sit down at the table, instead holding the plate in front of you as you leaned against the counter and ate. Johnny followed your lead, taking a bite and groaning audibly in enjoyment at he chewed. He smiled and his eyes shone, almost sparkling. You watched him curiously for a moment before he mumbled out “Your cooking is really good! It uh, reminds me of my mom’s. She’s a great cook.”

You kept your lips tightly shut at the apparent compliment. “It’s just eggs, you weirdo. Finish up and do the dishes. When you’re done meet me by the shed. Today you’re stripping off the old paint and removing any of the rotting boards and disposing of them,” you instructed while placing your empty plate in the sink. His tasks for the day were the next phase in slowly rebuilding the dilapidated shed on the west side of the property to make it useful for storage of all the tools you used to tend to the fruit trees and vegetable garden nearby.

He flashed a smile at you and gave a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain, I am at your service.”

“Oh shut up,” you grumbled, downing more of your coffee before trudging off.

It was going to be a long summer.

✧ ✧ ✧

“I’m telling you Wendy, I’m going to need an alibi, I really am going to murder my brother in law.”

“What, for giving you live-in eye candy for the summer and hinting that he thinks you need to get laid?”

“Ugh, no, that’s not— hold up, you don’t agree with him, do you?”

The sound of your best friend’s laughter through the phone had you dragging your hands over your face and pulling down at your eyelids dramatically, as if she could see your reaction.

On Thursdays, you finished up your work for the day around 4pm so you could pull up a chair next to the rotary phone and make time for the weekly scheduled phone call with Wendy. She’d insisted on the arrangement after you went six days without texting her, which you’d insisted was because service was spotty, but she’d accurately called you out on being cranky and stewing by yourself.

You and Wendy had met during your freshman year of college. By graduation, you’d lived together for three years, and made a vow to move to the same city together post grad, hence why she was still your roommate now— or was, seeing as you were on the island instead of back in the two bedroom apartment you shared. There was a five hour timezone difference between Hawaii and Chicago, so you’d figured out a schedule that worked for both of you. The calls had a tendency to last for several hours, and depending on how much wine you’d drink while on the phone with her would include bathroom breaks and you inevitably swearing at whatever you were cooking for dinner than night.

“Honey, please. I love you. Dearly, and against all other advice, you’re my best friend— but you need to get laid. You haven’t been this tense since our last finals week of senior year. And clearly you’re not opposed to the idea of Eye Candy banging your brains out, otherwise you wouldn’t have described him as, and I quote, ‘dumb hot and stupidly ripped’. When are you gonna send me a photo so I have something better to work with?”

“Okay but are you sure you’re not the sexually frustrated one here and you’re just trying to live vicariously through me?”

Wendy’s hum sounded through the line. “I mean, can’t we both be desperately horny and in need of getting some? It’s not ideal but it is possible. Plus, I’m not the one that didn’t pack her vibrator—”

You let out a whine interrupting her as you leaned back in your chair, swirling the wine in your glass a few times as you held the phone to your ear with your shoulder. “Shut up stop reminding me! I regret it but no I’m not letting you send me a new one, especially not with a guy living with me. Come on, my stories are boring, it’s the same thing every day. I wake up, I feed the dog, I tell him what to do and then I hide away doing my own chores. When are you gonna tell me more about that girl you were seeing— what was her name, Joo-something?”

“Nice try, we’re not changing the subject with my dating life. Seriously, babe, you should just think about it.”

“And what, make it awkward for the rest of the summer? No thanks,” you shot her idea down quickly.

“I’m willing to bet money you’ll cave before the end of the summer. Plus, who doesn’t love a good ol’ summer fling? And who says you ever have to see him again once it’s all over?”

As much as you’d loathe to admit it, Wendy had a bit of a point there. “Cute, but you and I both know I’m too high strung for a temporary fling. Plus, I’m not in the mood to catch feelings right now.”

“If I find a way to replenish your wine supply, would that help?”

You groaned dramatically once more. “Not with the sexual frustration, but with my overall wellbeing, yes, yes it would.”

Wendy squealed on the other end of the phone. “Ha! So you admit it, you are sexually frustrated!”

“Woman, when in the years that you’ve known me have I not been at least some kind of frustrated?” You acknowledged.

Your best friend laughed in agreement, understanding she wasn’t going to get much more out of you about Johnny, and began a lengthy and detailed story about her last three dates with a girl she’d met through a friend of a friend. As you listened to how her voice held a dreamlike quality to it when she talked about her, you couldn’t help the pang of jealousy you felt and a sinking feeling in your gut that you’d been lying through your teeth earlier, and that maybe, subconsciously, you did want to catch feelings.

Maybe.

✧ ✧ ✧

“So… is there a story or a reason why you’re here instead of Yunho?”

You lifted your head from your focused task of sorting out the peaberry beans from the regular beans. It was tedious, time consuming, annoying as all hell, and made you want a drink stiffer than the coffee that you were certain made up more of your body fluids than blood or water did at this point. “Yes,” you said curtly after studying his face for a minute, not providing any further explanation. Johnny had his hands in his pockets and pursed his lips, nodding for a moment where he stood in the entrance to the barn.

You had set up your mad scientist level organization for the process all across the concrete floor of the refinished barn. Over the last week, Johnny had finished replacing the boards on the siding of the shed, stained the wood, and sealed it with a protective coat. He even managed to remove all the broken glass from the windows without sustaining any injuries, which you hadn’t thought possible for him. This morning you had him weed the vegetable garden, prune back the hedges along the back side of the house, and clean the deck of the lanai. How did he possibly still have any energy left? He was definitely a harder worker than you’d first given him credit for— you shook your head, not wanting to continue a spiral on Johnny and any detailed thoughts about him.

Back to your task at hand.

The harvest had been divided into several metal basins of five pounds of beans each, and in front of each basin you’d placed two dishes on either side. The point was to be able to weigh how many beans ended up being peaberry from each five pounds of harvest, and to see if you could leverage a steady average from the yield and better plan for how many pounds of the limited roast you could advertise for and set the price per pound accordingly. You wore a face mask and nylon disposable gloves while sorting, and despite being an annoying task, after a while it became a way for you to zone out and let the hours pass by. When the dishes were empty and you first started sorting them, there was a distinct echo of the small beans hitting the metal dish over and over again, until enough beans were lining the bottom that it started to dull the noise.

“Sigh.”

A slight puff of air washed over you. Did he just say the word ‘sigh’ out loud? And was he hovering over your shoulder?

“Can I help you?” You asked, pausing your sorting for only a moment.

“Isn’t it my job to ask you that question? I’m not some layabout, I am trying to earn my keep, you know,” Johnny said in response, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the basin of beans in front of him. You were almost inclined to hand it to him. Over the last four weeks, you’d gotten a lot of decent work out of him, even if you did feel somewhat micro-manage-y half the time with the tasks you did give him. “Okay, how does this work?”

You groaned exaggeratedly and excessively, rolling your eyes. When you didn’t answer, he reached forward and plucked a single coffee bean from the basin and examined it closely. “Hey, this one’s funny looking!”

“Don’t touch them with your bare hands, that’s just going to waste them.” You swatted the bean out of his hand and then looked at your own gloves and sighed. “If you’re insisting on helping, fine. But you need sanitary gear to handle them. Go wash your hands, there’s masks and gloves by the sink,” you grumbled, standing up and taking off your own gloves to dispose of them and replace them with a fresh pair.

Johnny followed obediently, trailing behind you a little too innocently for someone of his size. “Yes, the beans still need to be roasted and that’ll kill any bacteria, but I just like to be extra cautious, okay? Because it’s a mutation there’s no rule to how much of a yield I’ll get with each harvest so I don’t like wasting even a single bean,” you reasoned, settling back down and folding your legs back at the now half-sorted metal bowl.

“So, we’re just sorting the weird ones from the normal ones?” He asked while picking up another peaberry bean, this time with gloved hands and a mask over his mouth and nose.

You took a quick glance and nodded to confirm that yes, the bean in his hand was one of the weird ones he should be looking for. “They’re called peaberry. Normally, a coffee cherry has two seeds in it, or beans. Those two seeds mature in the center of the cherry and you get one flat side and one side touching it. Sometimes people call them ‘flat beans’ but those are the ‘normal’ beans, as you said,” you explained, sifting through your bowl rather quickly. “But the peaberry ones only have one bean inside. The bean is round, so that’s where the name ‘peaberry’ comes from, because—“

“Because it’s round so it looks like a pea, oh I get it! That’s funny,” he laughed, examining the rounded bean in front of him. “Okay, got it, so we’re sorting the peaberry from the flat beans?”

“You proud of your new vocab words?” You snorted, listening for the well known tink of a bean hitting the empty metal bowls. He giggled in acknowledgement.

You worked in relative silence, a small rhythm growing between the two of you. Johnny worked at about half the speed you did, but you couldn’t knock him for it, as it had taken you a while to pick up the pace when you first started hand sorting like this.

“How do you even know Yunho?” You finally asked. Four weeks since he’d arrived, and you’d never bothered to get to know him well enough to listen to the full story of how he’d ended up here.

Johnny shifted in his seated position, clearly a little taken aback that you’d bothered to ask him anything, given your track record. “Oh. Met him in Chicago when I was home visiting. At a local coffee shop, where my buddy Jaehyun is the manager. I went to go bother Jaehyun at work and he was just, shootin’ the shit with one of his coffee suppliers who was doing a visit. That supplier was Yunho. Started talking about how he owned the farm where the beans were grown, and that he wasn’t going to be able to spend the summer out there like he’d planned, so he was looking for some reliable help to uh, take care of things. Mentioned someone else would be on site and in charge, but offered the whole ‘room and board in exchange for copious amounts of physical labor’.”

“And you said yes? Just like that, no questions asked?” It seemed a little too easy, but then again, Johnny had proved to be a little too easygoing.

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. That’s kinda the point of my whole year. Just, go with the flow.” You glanced over, but Johnny was looking down, focused on the task at hand.

You nodded and hummed and turned back to your own basin to continue sorting. A few beats passed by before you couldn’t help yourself— “You’ve said that before. ‘Go with the flow’, or that you ‘had nothing else going on’. What do you mean by that?”

Out of the corner of your eye you saw Johnny’s ears perk up, followed by movement of his cheeks implying the curve of a slight smile. “I’m on a gap year, I guess is what the kids would say. Or maybe sabbatical? Though it’s not like I have any tenure enough to qualify for the real meaning of the term. But yeah, anyways— year off from work. Not getting paid or anything, but, when it’s over if I want it, my old job is waiting for me.”

“How come? That seems so—”

“Impulsive?”

You frowned. “Yeah, exactly.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he repeated, but not in a mocking manner— it was in agreement. “I guess the best way to explain it is this: I was a huge workaholic. I’ve only had my one job post grad after studying business, and I woke up one morning a month before my twenty-fifth birthday and realized it was sucking the soul out of me. It was all I ate, slept, breathed, and it wasn’t even what I wanted to be doing with my life, I realized.”

His pain started sounding all too familiar. “What is it you wanted to do instead, then?”

Even under the mask covering the lower half of his face, his smile reached his eyes. “Photography. I got into an art school when I was applying to colleges, but it just seemed so… risky. I would’ve had to take out loans and instead I got almost a full ride for a bigger university, so I went for that instead. Studied business, managed to grind through undergrad and grad school in four years and walked out with a combined BS and MBA. Took classes every summer to make it happen. I think after graduation, I went back to my parents house and passed out and slept for twenty-three hours straight,” he laughed, clearly recalling a specific memory. “I felt really accomplished when it was over, and even had the job offer already lined up. But I wish I had had more courage to study what I was truly passionate about.

“So after an almost three year long stint at the company and a vested 401k, I decided to take a year off to just, travel the world a bit. I grinded so hard through college I never got the chance to do study abroad, so I guess I wanted to make up for that? I never used to act on impulse or follow my heart, so, that was the goal for this year. To do only that.”

His words struck you differently. This was a whole new side to Johnny that you really weren’t expecting— not that you had a particularly three dimensional view of him to begin with. “And your heart lead you here… to my brother-in-law’s coffee farm?”

He laughed again, trying to hide just how thrilled he was that you were actually engaging in a full on conversation with him. “Well, sort of. My year off started back in February, day before my birthday. Got on a plane and did a few months backpack trip around Asia. I had no clue what would be next, thought maybe Australia, maybe Europe, but when I got off the plane in Chicago to see my mom and regroup on my packing, I decided to go straight from the airport to surprise and bother Jaehyun at his coffee shop. That day I met Yunho. That was a little over six weeks ago. And now I’m here, with you.”

There was something about the way he said that that didn’t sit well in your stomach— with you, like it was a good thing, like he liked it. You didn’t deign him with a response to the end of his story. Like an extension of the current state of your mind, your hands were reaching, feeling around for something, but you were only met with the flat surface of the bottom of the basin.

You looked down to see the last of the metal bowls was empty. Somehow, you’d managed to sort through all twenty pounds of coffee beans. You pulled the face mask down under your chin as you stared at the metal surface for a moment before standing abruptly and turning on your heels.

Confused, Johnny called your name out after you questioningly. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry. You uh, bag up the peaberry and set it aside and then wash out all the metal trays,” you gave him his next set of tasks quickly to make your escape back to the farmhouse to put some distance between the two of you.

A little over an hour later, you’d put together a curry on the stove with some stew meat and a base that included apples, carrots, potatoes, and melted dark chocolate for a more mellow sweet taste to balance it out. You thought about the first time Johnny complimented your cooking when it was just eggs, and how he’d continued to compliment it with every new meal you’d make. You wouldn’t call yourself a chef by any means, thinking that enjoying your go-to recipes would be a more acquired taste, and were in the midst of serving yourself when Johnny came inside with the dog trailing behind him. You didn’t bother saying much, you never did when you’d finished cooking a meal; just a grunt acknowledging his presence and a head nod at the food before you took your bowl and went through the door to go sit on the lanai by yourself. Absent-mindedly, you whistled for the dog to follow you.

Johnny kept to himself that night, eating at the kitchen table, content with looking up out the bay window to see you hand feeding small chunks of meat from your bowl to the dog, even going so far as to pet its head. He shook his head to himself thinking about how you pretended to be so opposed to the dog, and how you still hadn’t given it a name, and smiled as he took another bite.

✧ ✧ ✧

At five weeks, you stopped watching Johnny like a hawk, and started giving him more lengthy tasks that you, quite frankly, just didn’t want to do yourself. Though, if you were being honest, every task you gave him was one you didn’t want to do yourself.

Such as his current one, which was to prep the ground for a new row of sapling fruit trees. You’d walked down from the farmhouse over the hill to the open area next to a row of lemon and guava trees where you’d set him to the task of digging a row of four foot wide, four foot deep holes. The week after next, Jin’s delivery would be a much larger one, and include a number of sapling fruit trees from his family’s farm— rambutans, limes, and mangos, to name a few. You wanted to make sure the holes got dug and the irrigation system set in place properly well in advance.

When you came to a stop at the end of the row of freshly dug holes in the ground you blinked once. Twice. A third time. The sight before you was impossible to comprehend. Because not only was Johnny finishing digging the last of ten massive holes having taken less than three hours to do so, but he had been digging them shirtless.

“What. What?” You asked, staring, eyes wide and brow furrowed.

“Huh?” He asked, looking up from the bottom of the last hole and swishing his head to get his bangs, matted with sweat against his forehead, out of his face. The sun had crested over to this side of the hill now and it was blisteringly hot out. Standing in direct sunlight, doing physical labor, obviously he’d worked up a sweat.

You had to tear your eyes away from the shine on his torso and return them to just his face. “Where the fuck is your shirt?”

He pointed to where a lump of fabric was off to the side next to a water bottle. “It’s fucking hot out, I was dying,” he reasoned.

“You’re hot,” you mumbled under your breath, turning on your heel to give yourself reprieve from the onslaught that was Johnny’s unexpected number of defined abdominal muscles that were usually covered by cotton t shirts.

“What was that?” He called, squinting up into the sun from the bottom of the hole.

“I said, put a god damn shirt on before you come back in my house,” you called back, already wrapping your arms around yourself and heading back to the farmhouse. “And dinner’ll be ready in twenty, so finish up,” you added, trudging off before he could respond.

What you would have seen if you’d turned back around was an open mouthed smile curl across his face, as Johnny hummed to himself at the joy he felt for this, the first time you’d bothered to warn him when dinner would be ready.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ever since you’d seen Johnny shirtless, you’d be restless.

Well, restless was the polite word. The word to better describe what you’d been feeling was… frustrated?

Distracted? Peeved? Worked up?

Horny.

The word you were avoiding was horny.

Wendy had been the one to get you to admit it during your last weekly phone call. You told her about the shirtless incident and the first thing she asked was if you had plans to throw out the washing machine and instead start doing your laundry on Johnny’s abs, which did not help your predicament any further. It was also Wendy who had pointed out that you’d been alone on this farm for almost two months with a dog and a man too pretty for his own good, and despite how he represented everything you were annoyed at in life at the moment, after seeing his half naked figure, it would only be natural for you to have been a little turned on. And a little turned on was exactly where you were— for the last week, you had been going on runs every night to release the excess pent up energy you suddenly had.

The last time you exercised this much you were still in college. Back then you went on hour long runs through the city with your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ because it was the only way you weren’t constantly bombarded with an on onslaught of messages from classmates, friends, family, or your on campus job that took up way too much of your time. And now, you found yourself returning to old habits, this time because what, you were too proud to just rub one out like the rest of humanity? (That phrasing, too, was courtesy of your best friend, when she again reminded you of your failure to pack your vibrator.)

After another eight miles up and down the road outside the farm that ran along the island’s coast your legs felt like absolute jello when you finished, but your head was empty enough that you were able to return to the property and exist near Johnny in peace. You walked by the barn on your way up to the farmhouse, sticking your head inside briefly to look for him. You didn’t hear any noise, and didn’t find him at first glance, but didn’t think much of it as you went back inside.

The dog was already in the kitchen, so that should have been your first clue. You opened the fridge and peered inside, pulling out a number of assorted ingredients to make a lemon cream sauce for pasta with chicken.

You set a pot of water to boil, turned the oven on to preheat, and began melting butter, garlic, oil, and a variety of herbs in a sauce pan. That plus the low hum of the overhead fan meant just enough noise that you couldn’t hear the water running from the small shower on the other side of the house, and you didn’t think twice as the heat cast off by the appliances made you feel even stuffier post-run, and you peeled your shirt off your body and rolled the waistband of your shorts down an inch, pressing your bare feet flat against the hardwood flooring to try and get some semblance of cooling relief.

It was only a few moments later, with the water boiling and pasta cooking inside and the chicken already seasoned and in the oven, when you peered over the bubbling sauce pan and dipped the edge of your pinky into the mixture to bring just a taste up to your mouth. Just like you’d hoped, it was light and had a kick of citrus to it from the lemon, but not so much that it was overpowering. You closed your eyes and hummed in appreciation as you licked the sauce off, which, in retrospect, probably sounded far too much like a moan for your own good.

“Jesus fuck—”

And suddenly, you realized you weren’t alone inside the house.

You screamed at first from the shock of being startled by the noise, and then again when it registered in your brain that Johnny was standing in the kitchen, hair dripping wet, chest bare and abdominal muscles just as defined as the last time you’d seen them, face flushed in some sort of embarrassment with a bath towel wrapped around his hips.

Johnny was fresh out of the shower, nearly naked in your kitchen, clutching his clothes balled up in his left hand.

You scream again.

“What are you doing?!” You shrieked out, raising your voice over the dog’s excited barking at the commotion the two of you had begun making.

He stammered for a moment, clearly frozen in place. “I was just! You were gone, and I was done for the day, so I took a shower but I— I forgot my change of clothes in my room and these towels are small and just— Jesus why are you wearing so little clothing?!”

Your fury returned full force at the comment. “Why am I wearing so little clothing? You’re in a towel for fuck’s sake! This is my house, I live here! I should be the one asking you where your clothes are!”

“They’re here, in my hand!” He yelled back, waving the bundle around frantically. “I just said I forgot them when I went to shower!”

Your eyes bugged out of you head as your gaze traveled down, taking in the entirety of the figure before you and— oh.

“Are you… are you hard right now?” You asked in bewilderment.

The way the color drained out of Johnny’s face and the speed with which he moved the bundle of clothing to hold it over the space between his legs answered your question.

“Oh, my god.” Exasperated, you slammed your eyes shut and held your hands up by your sides. “What the fuck, John.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— fuck, shit I made it weird— please don’t get mad, I can totally fix this,” he started spewing apologies, and you heard him take two steps closer to you. “Wait, were you looking at my dick?”

“Ah!” You spat out, turning away from him. His question was valid but you had no intention of acknowledging it. “Out! Get out of my house, go… somewhere else until that goes away or you can, I don’t know, take care of it!” You instantly thought of the implication of your words and then yelled again. “No— don’t— fuck, don’t do that! Jesus for the love of god don’t take care of it while I’m standing here—” you were stammering and beyond flustered. How the fuck were you supposed to talk to someone who had just gotten a fucking boner by looking at you, sweaty in a sports bra, while sucking a cream colored substance off the tip of your pinky?

You exhaled deeply, eyes still closed. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go to your room. I am going to finish cooking my dinner. You will be absolutely silent until you hear me leave. I will be staying at the condo for the next week. You will either ration the leftovers or fend for yourself, I do not care. Got it?” You signed out again, eyes flicking open. Johnny held his bundle of clothes in front of his legs and nodded his head once, not bothering with any comeback before he shuffled to the guest room and shut the door quietly.

It took another twenty minutes for the meat to finish cooking and the dish to be full prepared. How you managed to keep your head empty and shut off your internal monologue during that time, you’ll never know, but you were thankful for it nonetheless. You packed two servings into a Tupperware container for yourself before shoving some clothes in a duffle bag and grabbing the keys to the jeep you hated driving. It was only about ten minutes down the road to the condo, but it was almost fifteen miles, so you figured this was the lesser of two evils. You whistled for the dog to follow you, and it was all too excited to jump in the passenger seat of the car. The farmhouse was now dry of liquor, what with Yunho not making good on his promise a month ago and your weekly wine dates with Wendy, but you knew the condo definitely had some spirits stashed somewhere in a cabinet. You were going to need that and a nice hot bath to destress after that encounter.

Meanwhile, Johnny sunk down on to the floor inside the guest room, his back pressed against the door. When he heard the sound of the jeep’s engine turning over, he sighed in relief and ran a hand through his hair. There were no better words to describe it: he was truly and utterly fucked.

✧ ✧ ✧

You stayed at the condo only for three days, and did little other than sleep, binge watch some TV since there was better electricity and internet here, and eat your way through slightly stale bags of chips and frost bitten freezer dinners that were months old. Because you couldn’t just open the door and let the dog out to run through the property for whatever exercise or bathroom needs it had, you had to actually walk it with a leash and everything. You paid less attention to how domestic the action of clipping the leash on to the collar you’d found in an unopened delivery package on the kitchen table was, and thought more about how slothful you’d felt over the last 60-odd hours of self isolation, especially after two months of working outdoors every day.

It was childish to keep hiding from Johnny. It’s not like you could prove that he’d gotten hard looking at you, and really, shouldn’t you take it as sort of a compliment? (Well, maybe you wouldn’t go that far.)

It was Monday when you returned to the farm, parking the jeep back by the barn and hip checking the door shut after the dog went running off in search of Johnny. It found him carrying pruned branches of trees down to the area where you burned excess brush, and you could hear the excited sound of his voice at the return of the creature as you walked slowly down the hill towards him.

“I missed you! It’s been so lonely without you, but I guess I’m glad your mommy had you with her, huh?” He cooed at the dog, rubbing its face in his hands after dropping the bundle of branches and flopping its ears from side to side. Hearing Johnny refer to you as a mother, even of the animal, had you grimacing.

“Ew,” you said, making your presence known. He stood up suddenly, possibly just a little embarrassed.

“Oh! You’re uh, you’re back.” You nodded, lips pressed together in a flat line. Your hands were full, carrying two takeout coffees from a shop down near the condo you’d stopped at on the way back. You’d forgotten how much the farm felt like a different planet, a different space in time almost, because of how isolated it felt. The act of ordering a coffee to go rather than making it yourself in the morning was equal parts bewildering and soothing.

You had no idea what compelled you to order an iced americano along with the cortado you’d gotten for yourself. You didn’t really know much about Johnny beyond the one conversation you’d had about how he ended up meeting your brother in law and crashing on the farm with you in the first place. But somehow, ordering the drink had felt right, and you thought of it as a potential peace offering to cut the tension.

“This is yours,” you said plainly after some thought, trying to remove any and all emotion from your tone.

He blinked a few times before taking three steps towards you and reaching his hand out to take the drink. He mumbled a soft thank you and sipped without bothering to ask what was inside.

“You’re just going to take the drink a stranger offers you, no questions asked?”

“Ooh!” His eyes perked up when he tasted the coffee. “I mean, I’ve never questioned any of the food you’ve made me so far, why start now? Besides,” he shrugged, taking another sip, “I trust you.”

You snorted. “That’s a stupid thing to do.”

Johnny laughed again, eyes crinkling at the sides. Your mind wandered briefly to a half formed thought about how endearing that was. “Maybe so, but despite your efforts to make me an enemy, I think you’re actually a really good person. You even guessed my favorite coffee drink, so that has to count for something.” He nodded to the paper cup in your hand. “What’s your poison?”

“Cortado,” responded curtly, ignoring his comments that were cutting a bit too deep for ten in the morning.

“Ah, a strong espresso pull with a balance of steam milk and a touch of foam. Nice choice. I can definitely appreciate one, but I’m a little too impatient and drink them too quickly— I think that’s why I love americanos so much, because it lasts a little longer.”

You tilted you head to the side, puzzled. “Wait. You… actually know things about coffee?”

“I mean, yeah,” he laughed, “What do you think I spent three hours talking with Yunho about the day we met? I did my time as a barista in college. Free coffee every shift was hard to pass up when you’re doing almost a double course load every other semester. I’ve always been curious about the growing and roasting process, and I know a lot of people do home roasting as a hobby but I just never made the time to explore it.”

Well, duh, you thought, that actually made sense. “Oh god, and here I’ve been making my lame ass bitter pour over all summer— you know how to pull a shot of espresso then I take it? You’ve seen the La Marzocco on the counter, how come you’ve never used it?”

He pouted his lips out in a flat line and shrugged comically. “Dunno. I mean, I’m a guest and a worker first, and it’s not mine, so, I didn’t wanna make any assumptions. But if this is an open invitation to use it, I’m more than happy to accept.”

You chewed on the inside of your mouth for a moment. You could feel it in the air as the hairs on your arms stood up slightly, goosebumps running down your skin. You hoped in wasn’t too noticeable. Maybe this was it— maybe it really was time to extend an olive branch and have more than half a conversation with him every four days. “It’s a little older and sort of temperamental, but it’s still a good machine. I’ll… show you the quirks tomorrow morning, or whenever you want something to drink,” you offered.

It was then that you discovered this: Johnny was not a great actor. He wore his heart on his sleeve. You figured this to be true because he could barely contain the smile that spread across his face, and the energetic nod he gave, and the mild soft exhale (squeal?) of excitement. You rolled your eyes gently and turned away, drink in hand. “When it cools down later after dinner, I’m roasting tonight. You’re welcome to join.”

You gave him the benefit of not bearing witness to the fist pump he made as you walked away.

Dinner that night was stir fried ground pork with carrots and zucchini from the garden served over rice. It was one of your comfort dishes, easy to make and easy to clean up after, since it used only two pans. As soon as you’d finished eating, this time sitting at the table together with Johnny, he’d cleared the dishes and got to cleaning up right away. You stretched your arms overhead and leaned back in your chair far enough to crack your back slightly with a loud pop.

“Oof, that sounded like it felt good,” he laughed from the sink. You hummed in agreement. “So what’d you do before this? Desk job hunched over a computer like the rest of us?”

“Mmm something like that. You may have been bored out of your mind in business, but I sold my soul years ago to work in advertising.”

“Why does that like, fit?” He asked, turning the water off and drying the pan you’d used for cooking by hand.

“You saying I have no soul?” You challenged.

He shrugged. “Hey, you said it, not me. We’re both just cogs in the machine that is late stage capitalism, I guess.”

You didn’t know how deeply you wanted to get into it with Johnny just yet. Maybe eventually, but, not right now. “Yeah, well, I was just a Project Manager, not like a Copywriter or anything. Did you know Yunho was a staff Art Director before he switched to the coffee business full time? We used to work at the same agency a few years back.”

Johnny snapped his fingers and pointed at you. “Ah, that’s right! I remember him saying something about that, made the same jokes about having no soul. You two are a lot alike for not being related by blood.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong; sometimes you wondered if you’d become closer with Yunho that you were with your sister at this point. “Enough about that. If you’re done follow me, it’s probably cool enough to fire up the roaster. I just want to do a test batch of like, five pounds with the regular beans to see how this year’s harvest takes to our standard roast,” you explained, heading to the door and slipping on your sneakers. “Don’t let the dog out, it gets scared from the loud noises and I don’t need it freaking out.”

Johnny dried his hands and followed after you to the barn. You flicked on the lights and went straight for the sink to pull your hair out of your face, wash your hands, and put on a pair of gloves and a mask. Johnny followed your lead, even going so far as to tie up the top layer of his hair on top of his head. “Hey look! It’s like an apple,” he bobbed his head from side to side to make the tiny ponytail move back and forth, and you couldn’t help but snort as you tried to suppress your laughter.

“Dork,” was all you said. You went to the storage racks to pick up one of the sorted burlap bags of beans and hoisted it over your shoulder to carry it to a metal prep table where you carefully opened it and began scooping out the green beans and pouring them into a bowl on a metal scale that had been zeroed out. “So obviously you know that coffee is counted by weight in pounds. That monstrosity,” you jerked your head in the direction of the massive eight foot tall machine in the corner of the room, “Can handle up to twenty-five pounds of beans in the barrel at a time. Because it’s so big, it’s best to not do super small batches, otherwise you risk burning the beans. Since I’m going for five pounds, it’ll be okay, but if I was doing any less I’d use one of the table top roasters, since they have a smaller barrel.” You finished weighing out five pounds and handed the container to him to carry.

You continued explaining the full process of roasting and science behind it as you flipped switches, checked that the exhaust was hooked up properly, and set the dials for the heat and time on the industrial roaster before pulling the door to the funnel open and having Johnny slowly pour the beans inside. “God you’re a fucking giant, I always need a step stool to reach that high,” you commented as he made the reach with ease.

You weren’t kidding when you said the roaster was loud when it was running. Thankfully with the size of the machine and this batch, it was only eleven minutes of the two of you standing just a few feet away in case anything went wrong and you had to hit the emergency stop, holding your hands over your ears to block the sound. Johnny began jokingly exaggerating mouthing something out, and you felt almost like friends as you laughed at his antics. You were never the best at reading lips. Especially not Johnny’s, they were too full and distracting on their own for you to make sense of the mouth shapes. When the machine came to a grinding halt and the noise suddenly stopped, he was still shouting words and his voice echoed around the space in the absence of the noise, “I said, I think you’re— oh, wow, that was fast,” he quickly diverted, catching himself from finishing whatever it was he was about to say.

Your heart skipped a beat at the thought of trying to pry out of him what he was in the process of saying under the protection of the loud noises. You shook it off mentally and showed him how to remove the beans from the roasting chamber. “So you take them out like this, and then they’re still going to be warm for a while, so it’s best to let them rest for a bit. If you were to brew them right away, the flavor might not be what you’re expecting, so if you wait for them to sit for a few days, you’ll notice a considerable difference in the flavor profile—”

You stopped suddenly, a sound in the distance suddenly registering to you. You left Johnny standing there with the roasted coffee in hand and trailed to the edge of the barn and then you heard it more clearly— the sound of the old rotary phone ringing. “Oh, shit,” you swore and took off running back up to the house. The only person who had the number for the landline other than Wendy were Yunho and your sister. Wendy didn’t call you outside of your Thursday night appointments. You did the math in your head— it was the end of June, your sister’s due date wasn’t til the end of August, but early labor was always something you’d heard about, especially with more than one baby.

Hands shaking, you got to the phone on what could have been the last ring and panted out a greeting of Yunho’s name, already knowing it was him.

“Oh thank god you answered, I’ve been calling for the last twenty minutes, where were you?” He chastised immediately. You felt uneasy at the tone in his voice.

You stammered in response. “I— we were in the barn, I was roasting so I couldn’t hear the phone— what’s wrong? Is she okay?”

Yunho sighed out heavily and was quiet. “She’s going to be okay, but there was a… scare,” you could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “I don’t want to freak you out, but I don’t want to not tell you either. She slipped getting out of the shower, landed on her hip. Started having lower abdominal pain right after. We thought maybe it was going to be now, but, she’s fine. The doctors think they were phantom contractions? Whatever they were they’re gone now. The babies are fine, but she’ll most likely be in the hospital until the due date. If she starts experiencing any kind of contractions between now and then, though, they’ll want to induce labor.” You could tell he was still stressed and worried, but you nodded and listened as he explained some of the medical details a bit further. “Anyways, all this to say, the next time I call, it could be to tell you that you’re an auntie.”

From the moment you heard the phone ringing this late at night and calculated that it was almost two in the morning in Chicago, the tightness in your chest had been building. Listening to Yunho speak delicately about your sister’s condition was one thing— you thought it was a sigh of relief when he said that everything was fine, but then it was most certainly not fine when the gravity of his last words really hit you.

“Little Bean are you listening? Is the signal bad? I know the connection isn’t always great—”

You inhaled sharply as the pressure inside came to a head. “Yunho I gotta go,” you gasped out, barely able to make sense of thoughts to get the words out.

Before you could hear his rebuttal you slammed the phone on to the receiver to end the call and covered your face with your hands still in their nylon gloves. Despite standing in an open space, you suddenly felt like the room was spinning and the walls were closing in on you. Out, out, you had to get out—

“Hey, everything okay in here?”

Fuck.

Johnny was standing in the door, a look of concern on his face. You heaved into your hands and choked out a sob, feeling the wetness in your eyes building. No no no, everything was most certainly not okay in here. You shouldn’t have made eye contact, you should have known better, because looking at his face, his stupid perfect face and his genuine care for your wellbeing, it set you free falling over the precipice.

You were spiraling, and hard, and needed to land. It was instinctual, the way you cried out and ran pushing past him before breaking into an all out sprint down the hill to the fruit trees. Your legs barely kept up with the velocity of running at a decline, stopping short of tumbling and falling forward. The only thing that you knew to help this, the thing that had worked for you in the past, and you raced through the grove of trees for the larger one at the very end. It was one of the older trees, well mature and established with its root system, so you could always expect it to produce fruit.

But you’d harvested a large amount of the fruit in the last few weeks from the lower branches, and the only remaining fruit that would be ripe enough for your purposes was on the higher branches just out of reach. Over the sound of your pained sobs, you couldn’t hear Johnny’s approach or him asking what was wrong, your one track mind just trying desperately to jump and reach, fingertips barely brushing on the fruit you were reaching for.

“Hey hey, calm down, what are you—” he started.

“Shut up! Just shut— don’t tell— don’t tell me calm— calm—” you couldn’t make the words make sense, in your head you were screaming don’t tell me to calm down, but the act of translating that into words on your tongue was downright Herculean right now, it just wasn’t happening. Your knees began wobbling and standing too started feeling impossible. The tightness in your chest had expanded to reach your back, and though you were clearly still getting air by the fact that you hadn’t passed out yet, you felt like you weren’t breathing at all. You were crying outright now, tears wet and hot and painful as the sobs escaped your throat.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that you were trying to reach a fruit on a branch just above your wingspan. Johnny placed one large hand against your back gently and reached all the way up, fingers wrapping around what he assumed was the object of your fixation, before twisting and pulling to release it from the tree. “Hey,” he said softly, “This what you need?”

As soon as you made sense of the object in front of you you seized it from his hands, biting directly through the rind of the lemon. A muffled sob came out as your knees buckled and you sank to the ground. The bitter rush of citrus did part of its job, and brought your consciousness back down to earth. But your breathing didn’t steady, and your heart was still pounding, and the tears were still falling.

It wasn’t working, your grounding technique; not like it had the previous times, like the night you’d first gotten the phone call from Yunho saying they weren’t coming, and not like the time you bit into a lemon in the kitchen at work after first getting the phone call that your sister was pregnant, and even the time before that when she told you she and Yunho were moving, or when Yunho had asked you if he could marry your sister. If you were more with it, you would have thought for a moment longer about how all of your largest panic attacks of the last several years seemed to be linked to things about Yunho and your sister. Biting into a whole lemon had been your go-to for years, and suddenly, it wasn’t working.

“Fuck!” You cried out, spitting the lemon into your palms, “Fuck fuck fuck! Why isn’t it— why isn’t it working?!” Your words were absolutely frantic, and you were yelling at yourself more than your companion who, quite frankly, you’d forgotten was even there.

Until you felt a shadow pass over you in the moonlight and a pair of arms enveloping you in an embrace.

The top of your head was pressed against his chest and his hands found their way to the planes of your back and began rubbing soft circles. Softly he tutted out a shushing noise, voice barely above a whisper, steady. “Come on, let it out, I’m right here. I’ve got you, you’re not alone,” he said calmly, “You’re gonna get through it. Try to take a deep breath, that’s good now hold it as long as you can— okay, that’s okay, try again, try to hold on to it and let it out slowly this time.”

You’d never had anyone physically with you and help you through a panic attack before. You’d had them around people in the past, but no one had ever made a move to help you through it— not like this, not like him, not like he was doing right now by attempting to guide your breathing. The one time you had one in front on Wendy, you’d locked yourself in the bathroom and refused to answer her while you came down, and she never pressed you about it afterwards.

You had no idea how much time passed as Johnny held you in his arms, keeping a steady rhythm of his palms on your back and letting you cry it out into the fabric of his shirt, your hands wringing the material so strongly you thought you’d tear holes where your nails were.

One hand traveled to the back of your head and he stroked that too. “I’ve got you, I’m right here,” he said again.

After a longer period of silence, your ears stopped ringing and you could finally make out the chirping of the crickets in the night. You sniffled and rubbed the last of the trails the tears had left on your cheeks into his shirt, mumbling an apology into it.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly, keeping his voice low, almost as if he was afraid he’d scare you off if he raised it any higher. “I mean— haha, don’t apologize. It’s okay, whatever it is, it’ll wash out. If it doesn’t, it’s just a tee shirt, I can always buy another.” His tone was even paced and calm, and in pressing your ear against his chest you could hear the reverberations as he spoke.

The humid summer air was heavy as usual, even this late at night. You don’t know how long you sat there in silence, wrapped in Johnny’s arms listening to his heartbeat, but eventually you acknowledged that your heart was beating in time with his. Whether you liked it or not, he had been the thing to ground you, and not a stupid fucking lemon.

You shifted slightly, making a move to stand, but Johnny stopped you. “Whoa whoa, hang on lemme get ready— okay, hold on to my shoulders, that’s it.” Your fingers dug into his arms as he adjusted his legs and hooked one arm under your knees and the other around your back and stood up, taking you with him.

“Shit,” you mumbled out, head rushing at the quick movement and the realization that your legs were still bent over his arm, and Johnny was now carrying you. “Hey, heavy,” your words were still soft.

“Mmm, nah, nothing I can’t handle,” his response was easy, dismissive of your complaint, but not in a bad way. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to but— anxiety? Panic attack?” You sucked in a breath at the word. You hated that word. That word made you feel weak, even if it was exactly what this was. You dug your nails into his skin slightly on a reflex of bracing yourself, not with this intention of inflicting damage. “Got it. I get it,” he had approached the house and walked to the door, reaching for the handle with the hand under your knees. “I’ve had a few myself. Not recently, but back in college, maybe two or three? Don’t think they were ever as strong as that, though. I tried the lemon trick once, it actually worked pretty well for me. Didn’t make the next time I did a tequila shot all that fun though, couldn’t enjoy citrus for at least a month after that.” His soft laughter shook his chest and you leaned in further. Listening to his voice was comforting. It was keeping you steady. It made you feel safe, and in this moment, you were too tired to think about how you probably should have hated that. “Think you could swallow some water? Rehydrating is important.”

Your head nodded. “Okay, I’m gonna put you down now.” He used his foot to push one of the chairs away from the table and set you down on to the seat gently. The dog was immediately at your knees, whining lowly and attempting to give as many kisses as you’d accept. “Here,” he said gently, crouching down in front of you and holding a glass out. “Drink what can, but not too fast. There you go, that’s it,” his large hand clasped over your knee, thumb rubbing circles on the side. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” you rasped out, voice raw from all the crying earlier.

Johnny smiled softly. “Good, that’s good. Okay, I think you need to get to bed, yeah? Or do you wanna take a shower or something first?” You shook your head. “Okay, just washed your face then?” You nodded. Your conscious monologue was returning, but bringing words from your mind to your mouth was still proving difficult. Johnny didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he offered you his hand. “Need help getting up?”

You answered by gripping on to his hand and using his shoulders to help you stand up. Johnny walked you to your room, holding his arm out for you as a guide. You were able to bear weight on your feet now, and though your steps were slow, you made it to the bathroom to wash your face and and change into sleepwear. Johnny waited by the door, averting his eyes for privacy for you, and returned to your side to help you into bed.

When he leaned over you to pull the sheets up, you reached for his wrist and asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

His face went blank before it softened into a smile. “Because. I told you earlier, didn’t I? You’re a good person. Should be simple as that, yeah?”

You didn’t have a response for him, only shifting deeper into the pillows. He turned off the light and retreated to the door frame. “Try and get some rest. Call me if you need me, okay?”

Your head managed a nod, and Johnny finally left, leaving the door to your room slightly ajar. You listened for the sounds of him milling about the house, his footsteps softly shuffling against the floorboards, a few mumbled words to the dog that followed at his heels, until you finally fell asleep.

When you dreamed that night, you dreamt of him, the sound of his voice, and the way your blood felt on fire whenever he looked at you and smiled.

✧ ✧ ✧

Johnny never asked you about the panic attack.

He didn’t bring it up, he didn’t ask what caused it, he didn’t even allude to it in any conversation over the next week. The next day he was just a little bit more gentle with you with the tone and volume of his speaking voice, but when you showed no signs of still be affected from the previous night, he let it go and didn’t bother you about it.

You couldn’t tell if you loved him or hated him for it.

Confusion on your feelings aside, as June came to a close and the morning of July 3rd came, you woke up to the sound of the espresso machine running. Johnny had very quickly proven that he was worth his salt as a barista, even though it had been several years, and had a very nice shot pull. He even figured out the steamer, which was the most finicky part of the machine, and had been making you cortados every morning. That’s what you were sipping now from a metal camper mug, as you walked with him to the shed.

“I think that all that’s left is nailing down that last sheet of roofing and then we’re done,” he hummed cheerfully, inspecting the building. It looked brand new, a marked improvement from the broken windows and bleached paint job it had sported two months ago.

Two months. Was that really how long he’d been here? You didn’t want to think too much about it, about how those two months gone meant you had reached the half way point, and that there were about two months left.

Two months…

“We should celebrate,” he said suddenly, and you looked up puzzled.

“We?”

“Sure!” He exclaimed, “I had no idea what I was doing. I just did what you told me to. This was one of the biggest projects for the summer, right? And plus, not that I care too much for the holiday, but won’t there be fireworks and stuff for the Fourth? Come on, this house has been dry for weeks, let’s go get some booze and live a little, huh?” He prodded your side with his elbow and began needling at you, saying huh, huh, huh over and over until you groaned and relented.

“Fiiiiiine, let’s go before the stores get crowded when everyone realizes everything’s gonna be closed tomorrow.”

The dog was less than pleased that you’d sent it back into the house when you picked up the keys to the jeep. Usually you took it with you, but this time you decided against it, since you weren’t sure how the liquor store would feel with you bringing the stray dog off leash into the store with you.

“All you, big guy,” you said to Johnny as you tossed the car keys at him.

“Aren’t you gonna ask if I know how to drive first?” He quipped back quickly while walking to the driver’s side.

“Nah,” you shrugged comically, hoisting yourself up by the frame of the car. You buckled yourself in and watched as he did the same and adjusted the mirrors for his height. “Besides,” you looked down to inspect your fingernails as if they were the most fascinating thing on the planet, “I trust you, or whatever.”

“Bit of a stupid thing to do, but alright,” he smiled, echoing your words back at you. “Kidding, I’m an excellent driver. Alright, co-pilot! You have the most sacred duty bestowed upon you—”

“Navigation?”

“No, music selection, duh,” he scoffed and handed you the aux cord and pulled out a cell phone you’d never seen him hold before. You stared at the device as he unlocked it and pulled up his music library. Johnny noticed your surprised expression out of the corner of his eye. “What, it’s not like I have a use for it out here. Your wifi sucks and I’m not about to rack up a huge cell phone bill, so it stays off in my duffle bag most of the time. Anyways, this is a test! Pick whatever your heart desires.” The smirk on his face was beyond mischievous as he handed it to you.

You sighed and settled into the seat and began scrolling. What to pick, what to pick…

Surprisingly, there was a decent number of songs you recognized, and one album in particular you were a fan of. You scrolled down the track listing to about the half way point and pressed play.

The sounds of The Killers and the familiar guitar chords that were practically sewn into your DNA began to filter through the speakers. Johnny smiled and started clapping as the car reached the bottom of the driveway and he flipped on the turn signal. “Oh my god, Mr. Brightside, excellent choice! Okay, you passed the first test. But do you know the words?” He teased.

You gasped in feigned offense as the lyrics came to the chorus, and as he accelerated up to speed you began to belt the words out as loud as you could manage. For once you weren’t thinking about how you hated that the jeep had no top while the wind whipped past you on all sides as Johnny sped down the highway. As the song played, the magic high of belting the words to something fifteen years old that were still imprinted in your brain didn’t seem to wear off like you’d expected it to.

“Alright, chop chop what’s next maestro!” He called over the sound of the wind as the song came to a close. You already had something queued up, something a little more recent, and you smiled as the words to the next song began filtering through the speakers, letting the music carry the drive and not belting along with it this time. You tried to not think too deeply about the lyrics of the chorus as it played.

'Cause you're the last of a dying breed Write our names in the wet concrete I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me? I'm here in search of your glory There's been a million before me That ultra-kind of love You never walk away from You're just the last of the real ones

As the bridge played and you neared your destination, Johnny tilted his head towards you while keeping his eyes on the road. “Growing up, it was like, a badge of honor as a Chicago kid to have gone to a Fall Out Boy show when they still played the smaller clubs. I snuck into one when I was 16— it was an 18 and over show— felt like I was hot shit when I got away with it.”

“Don’t know why, but you don’t strike me as a Fall Out Boy fan,” you admitted. From your scroll through his music library, you saw most of their discography saved to his phone.

“Hey, I had my embarrassing wannabe emo phase too.”

“Had?” You couldn’t stop yourself from teasing. Johnny didn’t give a response to that one, and as another Fall Out Boy song played through the speakers you let yourself rest in a comfortable lack of conversation, instead sharing the music with him as he drove. It only took to the end of that third song to reach your destination and based on how he handled the drive and parking, true to his word Johnny was an excellent driver.

Johnny followed you closely once inside, his eyes scanning up and down the shelves of the tiny liquor store before he reaches and picks up a six pack of pilsner. “You ever try this one?”

Your nose wrinkles in disgust. “I don’t do beer.”

Johnny blinks twice in response and plops the six pack back down on the shelf. “Noted. What do you drink?”

“If I’m picking?” He nods. “I’m a slut for rosé or champagne. Any sparkling wine, really, it makes me feel fancy and you get to turn basic days into little celebrations.” You follow him as he walks down the aisle to where the selection of wine was shelved and starts looking through the options. “Hang on, you’re not gonna grill me about the beer thing?”

“You say that like your friends usually give you shit for it.”

You crossed your arms and shuffle your feet underneath you. “Well, yeah. Usually.”

“Then I would say,” he trails off for a moment, bending and squatting to see a label on a lower shelf before picking up two bottles of the same brand, “You need new friends. Or that your current ones need to learn boundaries, take your pick. How’s this look for one option? Since this is a celebration and all,�� he says with a wink.

Leaning forward, you study the label on the bottle for a moment before nodding in approval. You agree to his point that since they were 15% off if you bought six or more bottles, it only made sense to buy more, and besides, “It’s not like you won’t drink them eventually when you’re on the phone with Wendy.”

Your eyebrows shot up at that. “How do you know her name?”

“I’m quiet not deaf, and you’re louder than you think you are,” he says matter-of-factly before heading to the cashier to pay for your selection. You bite your tongue then, hoping to whatever deity was watching you (and probably laughing) that he’d overheard one of the conversations that wasn’t about Wendy insisting you should bone him.

Johnny picks the music on the way back, opting for some Bleachers and Paramore now that he knew at least part of your music taste and how it aligned with his.

Your new selection of wine goes into the fridge as soon as you get home, and Johnny heads to the shed with a ladder in hand to climb on top and finish nailing down the roofing. You opt to help with this task, spotting from the ground and continuously yelling for him to ‘be careful’ and ‘you better not fall and break your neck while I’m watching’. It takes a little over an hour, and it’s late afternoon when he finishes, but when you climb the ladder yourself as he holds it steady from the ground to inspect his handiwork you have to say you’re impressed.

“You sure you never did construction work before? You’ve got shockingly good craftsmanship for a newbie.”

“My dad’s pretty self sufficient so he was always doing the handiwork around the house. Picked stuff up here and there from him growing up, but anything I didn’t know I could just look up on the internet.” You shoot him a pointed look. “What! I said your wifi was shitty not that I didn’t use it every now and again. There’s a YouTube tutorial for everything these days.”

Johnny insisted on cleaning up the last of the debris on his own while you worked on dinner— another pasta dish, orecchiette broccoli rabe, and while that was cooking you boil a pint of blackberries with water and sugar to make a flavored simple syrup. Since you were celebrating tonight, it only felt right to put in a little extra effort even to the drinks of choice. Kir Royales were typically made with a blackcurrant liquor, but it was a niche product you hadn’t found in the store, so the syrup and a slice of lemon for garnish would have to do.

While you waited for Johnny to finish up and take his shower (after the last time, you gave him plenty of space out of an abundance of caution whenever he showered), you started rummaging through the pantry cabinets and making sense of the dry ingredients you had on hand. You had time to kill, why not make a dessert with it?

You hadn’t talked about it much with Johnny, but you actually did enjoy cooking and baking. Something about spending time and energy making something and having someone consume it and tell you they liked made you feel good. You still remember the first time you made breakfast for a hungover Wendy in college and she raved about it for days, though you were pretty sure back then it was because the carbs soaked up the remaining alcohol in her system and stopped her from puking.

Dinner was finished when Johnny finally came out of the shower, this time fully clothed and his hair more dry. You explained that you’d gotten bored and made cookie dough but the oven hadn’t finished pre-heating yet so nothing was baked.

“Fuck it, cookie dough is always better than the cookies themselves,” he shrugged.

“But salmonella—”

Johnny held up a hand jokingly as he stopped your interjection and turned off the oven. “Still convinced that’s a myth parents made up to stop kids from actually enjoying childhood. Plus it’s hot as balls, chill the dough while we eat and then it’ll be even better after. Plus, you haven’t poisoned either of us yet, I think your track record is pretty good so far.” (There he went again, referring to you and him as an ‘us’.)

So you did just that, putting the cookie dough into the fridge and taking your dinner outside with the cocktails you’d made. You didn’t have any wine glasses here at the farm house— after breaking one stemmed glass during your first phone call with Wendy you’d moved the rest to the condo and replaced the drink ware with mason jars because the clean up was too annoying. Plus, you didn’t want to risk the dog stepping on stray shards of thin glass and getting them stuck in the pads of its paws. (You were still decidedly apathetic towards it, but that didn’t mean you were cruel).

So it was in the wide mouth Kerr jars that you poured your blackberry syrup and a half a bottle of champagne, after a comical exchange of Johnny insisting he wasn’t scared of the pop! that corks made coming out of pressurized bottles and the yelp he let out anyways when it happened as expected. The lemon slice garnish was more of an aesthetic touch than anything but you liked it nonetheless.When Johnny pulls out his phone for the second time that day and insists on playing music and making a dramatic toast before you could drink, you could only laugh and agree.

“To the best Boss I’ve ever had,” he said with a raised glass, “Even though you used me for cheap labor and to do all the hard shit.”

“Rude! I cook every day, look at all the chances I’ve had to poison you and how many times have I done it? Absolutely none because I am a saint and you know it.”

You weren’t sure if it was the alcohol, the music, the low hum of crickets, the starry night sky, or the summer heat that did it, but time flowed so easily, and so did the conversation and teasing banter. Over the course of one meal you’d exchanged more words with Johnny than you had in the whole two months you’d known each other. Two hours later and you’d finished all the dinner (of course there were no leftovers, Johnny was still Johnny, but the amount of manual labor he did in a day made sense of how much he usually ate, you’d come to realize). The bowl of cookie dough was now sitting on the step of the lanai and you and Johnny were side by side on the deck, looking out over the farm and taking the occasional spoonful of dough into your mouths. He was right— the dough did taste better than the baked cookies probably would have, especially after it had chilled for a bit. With the way the stars and moon were hung in the cloudless sky, you could see the soft glow of their reflection in the water beyond the highway and the cliff leading to the beach.

“You ever go down to the shore?” He asks suddenly, and it feels out of nowhere and like he’s inside your head because how else would he have known you were just thinking about the ocean? But then you register that Andrew McMahon’s voice has just crooned something about Venice Beach and the California summer in the music that had still been playing through the speakers of Johnny’s phone.

You hummed for a moment before answering. “Not really. I should make more time for it, but I rarely ever leave the farm, as you probably noticed. I know this place is paradise for so many people, the vacation destination on a lot of bucket lists, but I think my… circumstances made me bitter towards the island, conceptually speaking anyways.” You watched the water with a bit more focus as a few waves crested, but you couldn’t see enough of the shore to see them actually crash. “I know I don’t talk about it much but, I needed a break from my work too. That’s… part of the reason I’m here, why I was waiting for my sister and Yunho to come out. It’s a much less interesting story than yours, so I won’t bore you with the details,” you wanted to reroute the subject before any questions started getting asked, but deep down you knew Johnny wasn’t going to press you for anything you weren’t ready to share. He’d figured that much out about you anyways.

“Anyways, maybe you’re on to something, Seo. Maybe I should take some time to actually relax a bit, seeing as now that I’ve tricked you into finishing the most difficult and time consuming of the summer projects Yunho had planned,” you stuck your tongue out between your teeth jokingly in an effort to mask the vulnerability you’d briefly shown.

Johnny took the hint and changed the subject. “The Killers, Bleachers, Paramore, Fall Out Boy… not saying I don’t like your taste in music, but I’m surprised it’s your picks were so astoundingly pop-punk-rock. Woulda taken you for a—”

“If you finish that sentence by saying ‘country kinda girl’ I’m locking you out tonight and taking the cookie dough with me,” you warned.

He laughed and shook his head. “No, you strike me as too high strung to enjoy country. Like it’s typically too slow for your tastes, or something like that.”

“Oh I’m obnoxious about my taste in media, if you couldn’t already tell. I’ve listened to mostly the same artists for the last ten years. In high school I was that kid that thought making it known that I ‘didn’t listen to the radio pop main stream’ was a personality trait, whatever that meant.”

“Oooh, so edgy and mysterious, did she used to cut her own bangs too?” He giggled into his mason jar, taking another sip.

“Nooo, that was only one time and I swear it was on a dare and not because of a break up!” You jokingly wailed out, throwing your head back in exaggeration. “Although I do regularly trim Wendy’s bangs for her because she can’t be trusted with sharp objects. Knives, needles, scissors, none of it, girl’s a total klutz,” you took another sip and uncorked the bottle again to refill your jar. You held the remainder up for Johnny to see, silently asking if he wanted a top off to finish the last of the second bottle you’d opened.

Johnny was a big guy— tall and muscular, you were sure it would take him a bit more than a bottle or two of shared champagne to get him tipsy. That’s why you didn’t think too much of it as he stared into the reinvigorated fizzing bubbles as he quietly said, “I’d like to meet her someday. Wendy, I mean— you talk about her so fondly, she seems like a great person. Like she’s good for you in your life.”

Why did you feel a little uneasy at the way he spoke about Wendy? He had no idea what she looked like, it was only from the stories you’d been telling that he knew anything about her. And it wasn’t even the real her, it was just her as she existed to you, so what was there to be uneasy about? You were overthinking again, so you had to come up with an answer to fill the silence you’d created— “Yeah well, Wendy’s sick of dick, she’s very bisexual and I’m pretty sure she’s head over heels in love with this Joohyun she started seeing recently, she’s just too much of a chicken shit to tell her how she feels,” you hid behind you glass and drank deeply, not minding as the floating slice of alcohol soaked lemon rested against your nose.

“Sounds familiar,” Johnny said quietly. “I… can relate, I think,” he mumbled out, and you glanced over in time to see him place his now-empty cup on the wood beside him. “Sometimes you just feel the way you do and you don’t really have a reason for why, but you can’t even put it to words to the person it matters to.”

This time when your breath caught in your throat, it wasn’t because of a mounting attack, but in anticipation of what Johnny would do next. The space between you had slowly waned as you’d been drinking, your bodies inching closer to each other without you even realizing it, almost like the way the moon pulled the tide to the shore over and over again. When your eyes traveled from where his hand was pressed into the deck flooring up to meet his hooded gaze, you don’t really know what you were expecting, but Johnny’s parted lips shining slightly (probably from that last drink of wine) was not it.

You knew this feeling. This was when you were supposed to lean in, right? That’s how this usually went. Your hand shifted closer towards his for a moment and then pulled back, and the end joint of Johnny’s fingers flexed as he pressed his fingertips into the deck.

You didn’t lean in. Your heart was hammering in your chest far too loud for you to be able to do so; instead, you look away, his eye and his lips and his face and his everything suddenly too much, and your turned your cheek to him instead.

Instead, he leaned in, and for just a brief moment the crickets stopped chirping, the distant ocean stopped moving, the music stopped playing, and your heart stopped beating as Johnny’s perfectly pouty lips pressed against your cheek, and then your temple, and then your throat. And then his head tilted down and his nose brushed against your skin delicately, leaving a trial of burning in its wake, and time didn’t start turning again until the snort of his laughter broke the silence and he fell into your shoulder in a giggle fit.

It took all of your patience and self control to make your lungs continue to function as you listened to Johnny giggle so much he stopped making sounds until he was spewing out between fits of laughter ‘The bubbles make everything funny, why is everything funny with bubbles?’

‘Why indeed’, you wondered silently, letting the clearly tipsy Johnny rest his head on your shoulder as he continued his giggle fits, stroking the palm of your hand against his back as he’d first done for you under far different circumstances, trying to not think about how much faster your heart was beating while doing so, and how if your accelerated heart rate was from his proximity to you, you didn’t mind.

How long did you stay like that, in such a familiar embrace with Johnny? Long enough, it seemed, for the playlist on his phone to come to an end and for him to start dozing off while resting against you, his light snores the thing that finally made you disturb him so you could go back inside. It was late anyways, nearing midnight you said softly and you tried to wake him gently—

A surprisingly loud boom shook the sky followed by a burst of light and color. Immediately the dog inside woke up and started barking, and Johnny bolted upright, eyes darting around in search of the source of the noise that had disturbed his snoozing.

“Fireworks,” you breathed out, more to yourself than to him. “Guess it’s midnight already.” Johnny didn’t say much, but his eyes twinkled as he watched in earnest as a few more went off before you tugged on his sleeve and insisted that he needed to make his way to bed and sleep. There were sure to be more tomorrow, and he could watch them then.

You didn’t sleep for hours that night. After helping the mildly intoxicated Johnny to his bed, you sat on the floor of your room, knees pulled into your chest and a hand laying flat against your cheek where he’d planted his trail of kisses. “He was just drunk, he’s just a flirty drunk, that didn’t mean anything,” you repeated to yourself over and over again.

But something about the way Johnny’s lips felt against the apples of your cheek and the hollow of your throat when he’d been nuzzling against you stayed with you all night long, sending a shiver down your spine and igniting a flame where your heart lived. You pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes and inhaled deeply, breath shuddering on the exhale.

Against all your hopes and intensions, Johnny Seo had slowly chipped his way through your armor and into your heart.

You had to get him out. Fast.

tbc.

—

author’s note | Me: this first part is gonna be like, I dunno, 5k? 6k? Also me: writes 19,000 words. We call this ✨processing your own trauma through writing as an outlet✨ Originally this was going to be one really long one shot and then I decided to split it up for ratings purposes because I am a thirsty whore for Youngho. The ending is rushed but honestly I was so sick of editing and overthinking this lmaooo. No I have not spent a summer living in Kona working on a coffee farm. Most of my coffee knowledge is second hand from the time my brother in law bought a coffee farm and started a roasting business because my sister dared him to by saying “do it you won’t” (an exact quote I shit you not). There’s more to this story and uh I dunno I’ll maybe post it eventually if people don’t hate this one *shrugs*

#Johnny x Reader #Johnny Seo #Johnny Seo x Reader #Johnny Seo fanfic #NCT fanfic #NCT Fluff #NCT Angst #kinda lmao i dunno leave me alone #panic attack tw #mental health issues tw #anxiety tw #idk if i'm even happy with this or if I'm gonna go back and edit that last 5k i wrote tongiht w/e #shrugs this is fine #johnny: bitter brews #swamp witch writes

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cakelanguage · 4 years ago

Text

A very self-indulgent fluffy piece for RiVer. I just want these two to have a happy ending so I’m giving it to them! I hope you like this :)

You can also read this on AO3

It wasn’t even noon when V got a ping on her Agent from River. A small smile graced her face despite being in the middle of taking out another gonk for Wakako. The gig wasn’t hard - a simple in-and-out retrieval of some intel that’d fallen into the wrong hands, but even simple jobs sometimes involved taken out a guy or two. This one was harmless, not even worth the street cred it might get her for taking him out so she simply knocked him out and stuffed him in one of the bins conveniently posted outside the room.

Really it was like they were asking for people to just dump bodies in them. Actually, that was probably exactly what they wanted to happen. Fewer cleanups for the police to have to deal with and all.

Pocketing the shard that’d been on the desk, she pulled up River’s text.

Hey babe, you busy?

She grinned and quickly sent a negative to him. She barely found time to hang out with River, what with all the Arasaka and Johnny bullshit she’d been dealing with the past few months. Now that she wasn’t in imminent death from the Relic she honestly just wanted to spend some time with her boyfriend. Fuck if she wasn’t going to take advantage of River and her not being busy.

You available to call?

For you? Always. xoxo

She could almost hear Johnny groaning at her being mushy. She felt a pang of loss as she thought about the rockerboy and placed a kiss on her fist before she raised it to the sky. She hoped Johnny was out there somewhere giving the corpos hell from the deepest levels of cyberspace.

The call popped up and she quickly answered as she walked toward the drop-off point.

“Hey River,” V chirped, quickly taking in his appearance in the little window in the upper corner of her vision.

“V, hey yourself,” River said, a lop-sided grin settling easily on his face. “How’ve you been?”

She hummed noncommittally. “Can’t complain too much, definitely been missing morning cuddles though.” And perfect cups of coffee. And the polarity of temperatures between River’s cybernetic hand and the warmth of his skin. And kisses.

She felt needy, missing him so much and all the little things he did. But maybe needy wasn't so bad.

“I’ve missed them too.”

“Think we can change that then?”

“Yeah, case is closed and I’ll be back by this evening.”

If V could’ve purred with delight she would have. “Mm, I’m a lucky girl.”

River laughed, shaking his head. “I’m the lucky one.”

Warmth flooded her cheeks and she didn’t even try to hide her pleased grin. “As much as I’d love to just talk about how lucky we are to have each other, something tells me this isn’t strictly a pleasure call.”

Her boyfriend gave her an abashed smile. “You caught me,” he admitted.

She laughed. “Well go on, let’s hear it,” V teased. “What do you need? A contact? A lead? Someone, to do some super sleuthing?”

“No, no, nothing like that, it’s uh- it’s actually kind of a favor for me and Joss.”

Since she’d met River she’d steadily been getting closer and closer with Joss. It was nice to have another girlfriend, though with Judy and Panam, not to mention Misty and Rogue (if she could count Rogue), she wasn’t exactly lacking in them.

But Joss was different. She was a single mom who busted her ass to provide for her family. It reminded her starkly of her older sister back when the Bakkers were still around. And though Joss sometimes brought up painful memories for her, she loved the woman.

“I don’t mind helping you two out,” V reassured, finally dropping off the shard. She’d get the eddies within the next half hour and if need be she could split her earnings to give to the family. “Anything you need, I’m your girl.”

A husky chuckle echoes over the coms. "Anything, huh?"

"I helped take down one of the leading corpos in the world with an engram of a rockstar slowly taking over my brain - I'm open to just about anything at this point."

"Fair enough." River let out a breath of air. "Joss asked me if I'd meet her this afternoon at Heywood General Hospital to pick up Randy."

V's eyes widened. "He's been cleared for release?" She hadn't thought Randy would be released for another few weeks. It'd been touch-and-go at the beginning and although he'd come a long way since the farm, he still had plenty of recovering to do.

"Yeah, I was shocked too, but I've been visiting him and he's doing a lot better than he was."

Anything would've been better than the drug-induced catatonia that he'd been in when River and V had found him in that barn. She was still haunted by the half-lidded eyes and slack jaw that had been behind that plastic mask. "That's great," her shoulders relaxed from their previous position, "I'm glad he's doing better."

"Me too, and Joss is happy she gets to bring him home."

"He gonna be in his trailer again?"

River made a noncommittal noise. "That's up to him really. We don't know how he'll feel about being alone now but we've decided to let Randy feel his way through this one."

Made the most sense to V. "Alright so you and Joss are going to pick up Randy and you want me too…?" V asked, shifting their conversation back to the favor River and Joss wanted.

"Oh uh right yeah," River scratched the back of his neck. V wanted nothing more than to ease the man's nerves about whatever he was going to ask. "Since Joss and I are going to be getting Randy, we need someone to watch Dorian and Monique." He didn't pause to let her get a word in edgewise. "Usually one of the neighbors can watch them but most of them are busy and then I might've suggested that we could ask you." He scratched at his cheek and shifted his gaze to the side. "You can say of course, but I figured-"

"Babysitting the little rugrats?" V asked with a grin, interrupting her boyfriend's spiel. "You trust me to watch 'em?"

"V," River had that tone to his voice that was part scolding and part fond, "you're their 'Auntie V,' they'll be cheering when they find out you're watching them."

"I don't know, you did joke that I was the one who needed a babysitter."

He snorted and raised a meaningful brow. "And sometimes you do, but I have total faith in you on this. As does Joss."

"Well I guess I can trust Joss' judgment," V teased. "I can be there in twenty."

River's shoulders sagged at her acceptance. "Thanks, babe."

That mushy feeling returned with vengeance and V was sure she had some stupid look on her face. “Want me to make something for dinner?”

Her boyfriend whistled. “Got myself a lady who can kick ass and offer to make dinner.”

“Riv, come on,” she rolled her eyes trying to appear stern, “Dinner a yes or no?”

“Dinner would be great, to be honest. Joss and I were planning on picking something up on the way home.”

That wouldn’t do at all.

“Uh-uh, nope, no way am I letting Randy’s first meal out of the hospital to be some fast food soy protein that’s no much better than the shit you can get with a kibble card.”

“Hey, I’ve seen you eat that crap before,” River argued, though he looked more amused than anything.

“Details, details,” V waved a dismissive hand, “Randy have any food restrictions or favorite foods?”

Food had been a big part of V’s life growing up with the Bakker’s. Food didn’t just mean fueling the body, but feeding the soul. Her mother had once told her that a good meal could heal the body just as well as medicine. Looking back, V knew her mother had been exaggerating but she’d taken the statement to heart because a good meal showed someone you cared for their wellbeing.

Her boyfriend pondered her question as she pinged Jackie’s bike to meet her so she could leave.

“Well, he liked my jambalaya when I snuck some in for him to try last week.”

“Hot or mild?”

“Believe it or not, spicy.” His smile took on a bittersweet edge. “Told me it was the first thing he’d been able to taste since everything went down.”

“Then it’s good he got to taste something delicious,” V said.

River’s smile lost that edge and regained the softness he only showed when he was talking about his family or V herself. “Feel free to keep stroking my ego.”

V shook her head with a snort. “Maybe later,” she offered while mentally going through the repertoire of recipes she still remembered. Something spicy, strong flavors that the whole family would like. “Think he’d eat gumbo?”

“Gumbo?”

“Yeah, learned to make it back when my family was still together...”

She remembered the crowded prep stations, her underfoot as she helped as much as she could under her mother and sister’s tutelage. She remembered her uncle sneaking bits from the cutting boards and popping them in his mouth, sending her a wink and an exaggerated shushing motion to not say anything.

River didn’t interrupt her musing, instead, he waited patiently as she sorted her thoughts. He understood that if he interrupted V she wouldn’t finish talking about her past.

“Mealtime was one of the few times we all tried to be together and pause from our other duties,” V explained. “We made all kinds of stuff depending on who was in charge of dinner, but I know gumbo was my favorite and it’s similar to jambalaya.”

“A family recipe and your favorite, huh?” River commented, “I look forward to trying it.”

It didn’t matter that V hadn’t made gumbo in two years. She wanted to do something for her new family. "It’ll probably take me a little longer to get home since I’ll stop and get them on the way.” She revved the engine and patted the side of the bike. “See you, River, tell Randy we'll be waiting for him at home."

The silence stretched over the line and V had to make sure her Agent hadn't malfunctioned and dropped the call. But River was still connected, just stared at her with this shocked look. "You okay?" V asked.

Her question shook River from his stupor and he gave her a besotted look. "Yeah I'm fine," he reassured, "see you at home after Joss and I pick up Randy."

"Preem."

She snagged the veggies from an Aldaecado who sold some of their crops at the Sunset Motel and picked up some synthetic meat that didn’t look too bad and set course for the trailer park. The ride was as peaceful as ever and V cranked Jackie's bike to the max speed down the straightaways, shaving off five minutes from her ride. The Badlands were some of the best places to go full-throttle without having to worry about a bunch of traffic.

Joss stood on the porch while Monique and Dorian listened to whatever she told them, playfully jostling each other as much as they could get away with. As soon as they spotted V though, they dashed towards her with the exuberance that was only ever found in children. V knelt down with a laugh and opened her arms in invitation.

"Auntie V!" Monique cheered, reaching her first and throwing herself into V's waiting arms, scooping the little girl up into a full-body embrace.

V had quickly discovered how much the two kids liked their hugs and who was V to deny them that?

Dorian quickly followed, wrapping his arms around her legs. "Mom told us you're gonna watch us while she and Uncle River bring Randy home," Dorian said. "Which means we can play together again!"

V laughed and shifted Monique to her hip so she could ruffle Dorian's hair. "Only if you're willing to take this rookie under your wings," V said.

The two giggled and reassured her that they'd show her the ropes, both puffing up with pride.

She managed to slowly walk towards Joss with the two limpets clinging to her laughing and cheering. She saw the poorly hidden laughter that Joss was trying to cover up as just a smile. V was glad she could make the crow’s feet on the women's face crinkle instead of deepening the worry lines that were far too prominent on her friend's face.

“Hey Joss,” V greeted, shifting Monique enough so that she could pull Joss into an awkward one-armed hug.

“Hey, V,” Joss replied, pulling out of the hug. “Thank you so much for being willing to watch the kids.”

“Willing? I’m more than happy to watch them, you know that.”

V and the kids got along like a house fire and she cherished all the little games they’d play together. It gave V an excuse to check-out of adult stuff and focus on entertaining River’s niece and nephew. It had done wonders for her mental health.

Joss smiled and reached out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Monique’s ear. “Still, I know it’s last minute. Neither River nor I were expecting them to give Randy the okay to leave the hospital.”

“And Randy’s probably been chomping at the bit to leave that place, right?”

The woman scoffed, shaking her head. “If he could’ve, I’m sure he would’ve broken out of there after the first five days.”

“A boy after my own heart.”

Despite going to a number of ripperdocs, regular hospitals, and trauma centers left her nervous and itching to leave ASAP. River practically had to drag her to the hospital just to get a full brain scan after the Relic incident.

Joss rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “We shouldn’t be more than a few hours at most. Pretty sure it’ll mostly be paperwork and finding out any home care we need to know about for Randy’s recovery.”

As usual, Joss was fairly matter-of-fact about the whole thing but she couldn’t hide her worry. V figured she’d be just as worried if her baby had gone through what Randy had. It didn’t help that her relationship with her son had been strained before and no matter how much they’d talked since the incident there was still the unknown of how their relationship would go once he was home again.

“He’ll be excited to see you,” V said, setting down the girl in her arms.

Monique tugged at Dorian’s shirt and the two were off chasing after each other.

Joss remained silent but her shoulders relaxed some. Finally, she seemed to shake herself out of her thoughts. “If the kids get hungry-”

“Feed ‘em something that won’t give them a sugar rush,” V dutifully replied. “I know, Joss don’t worry, I can handle these two just fine.”

Joss sighed. “I know you can, but a mother can’t help but worry,” she managed to give V a sly smile. “You’ll understand when you and River have a kid.”

V made a choking noise as her face flushed. “J-Joss, we-we haven’t even talked about marriage yet.”

“Hop to it, V,” Joss joked with a clap. “Need you to make an honest man out of my gonk of a brother and I want to be an aunt at some point in the near future.”

It was a nice thought, getting married and starting a family with River. It sounded terribly domestic and kind of wonderful if she was being honest.

But her and River could talk about that later.

Much later.

“Go on, get going,” V shooed, “Randy’s waiting.”

“Alright, alright, we can talk about giving me nieces and nephews later,” Joss relented. ‘If you want to get takeout, I have a few menus in the kitchen with Dorian and Monique’s favorites circled.”

“Actually I was gonna make gumbo,” Seeing Joss’ surprise she continued. “It’s a family recipe and I haven’t made it in a while but River said that Randy liked his jambalaya so I figured he’d probably like gumbo too since it also has a strong flavor. But uh if they won’t like it-”

“V,” Joss interrupted with a grin.

“Hm?”

“I really hope River does marry you.”

V blushed and returned her grin. “Yeah me too.”

She’d managed to make the roux for the gumbo while Monique and Dorian were playing tag and now she just had to let the gumbo simmer which meant she was completely free to play. The two were more than ready for her to join them, bouncing around her as she quickly donned the AR set.

The blue tint to ‘Trouble in Heywood’ flooded her vision and she took in the kids’ game personas: Captain Joan McClane and Lieutenant Henry Callahan. It still made her laugh when she saw them, the two rough officers that looked like they were ex-Militech before joining the force. It didn’t help that the backstories they’d given them were so serious.

“Didn’t know if you’d come back, rookie,” Captain Joan, Monique said, her arms crossed and her face stern behind her shades. “Thought what you’d seen when we took down El Chamuco Endiablado was still clinging onto ya’.”

Lieutenant Henry Callahan, Dorian scoffed. “Nah, the two rookies we worked with for the takedown were good, and that’s coming from me,” he argued.

“Sounds like we might’ve grown on you two lone wolves, huh?” V teased, cocking her hip as she checked her gun.

“Don’t get cute with me, rookie,” Captain Joan said.

V raised her hands. “Fine, fine,” she bounced her eyes back and forth between the two. “What’s the situation today?”

“With El Chamuco Endiablado gone, we created a power vacuum and the force is flaggin’ under the pushback,” Captain Joan explained.

“Which is why they’ve called us in,” Lieutenant Henry added, “Regular force just won’t cut it, gotta call in the best of the precinct to take these goons down.”

“We called you in for backup, rookie. All you gotta do is keep up and watch our backs, we can handle the rest.”

“No doubt about that,” V said, “But y’know, I gotta make it home to my partner, promised him I’d make it back.”

“The other rookie?” Lieutenant Henry asked.

“The one and only.”

Captain Joan shook her head and cocked her gun. “Battlefield’s no place for emotion, rookie,” she advised. “We need to dedicate ourselves to taking this filth out.”

V nodded her head and squared her shoulders. “Yes, ma’am,” she saluted, “Are we ready to start?”

Lieutenant Henry gave her a wild grin. “Those bad guys can’t escape justice.”

They ended up playing three different rounds of ‘Trouble in Heywood,’ each round further expanding the narrative. In the last game, Lieutenant Henry had gone rogue to zero José Luis, a Valentino who’d gotten away with murder because the NCPD “didn’t have enough evidence to convict him.” According to Captain Joan, Lieutenant Henry had been harboring secret feelings for the murder victim and he was out for blood.

Honestly, V wasn’t sure where the kids pulled these plots from, but they were endlessly entertaining.

She looked up from the pot she was stirring and made sure the kids were still sitting at the table she'd sat them at with a snack. It didn't look good to her, but Monique and Dorian cheered at the sight of it so at least they liked it.

She tapped her spoon against the rim of her pot and set it to the side. "What do you two wanna do now?" V asked, taking a seat beside Dorian.

"Mom usually makes us practice our reading and math," Dorian grumbled, his eyebrows scrunching together. "We aren't even going to school yet, it's like lightyears away."

"Lightyears, huh?" V mused, propping her chin against her hand. "That's a pretty long time."

"I know!" Dorian threw his hands up. "She says she wants us to be ready and stuff but it's so boring."

"The worst," Monique agreed. "But maybe since Mom isn't here…" She trailed off and gave her puppy dog eyes.

Yeah, that wasn't going to work on her. "Oh no-"

"Please, V?" Dorian begged.

Then it became a cacophony of pleading words and promises to work harder tomorrow. Taking them on one-at-a-time, but both of them at once? Not even worth considering arguing.

"If I let you skip this lesson time," she started, the kids already whooping beside her. "I said if. "

The two nodded seriously, “We’ll do it,” they promised readily.

V shook her head, squinting at them with a skeptical look. “I haven’t even said what you have to do if you skip your lessons.” Monique and Dorian traded confused looks before turning back to her. “The first rule of any kinda deal,” she held up one finger, “you gotta listen to the whole deal, otherwise you might be signing yourself up for something worse.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Dorian insisted.

“How can you be sure?”

“Cause you’re nice,” Monique said. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe not to you guys, but I’ve conned my fair share of gonks.” Their faith in her left a warm feeling in her chest. “Alright, but back to the deal. I let you guys skip, but you guys have to help me make a welcome home sign for Randy.”

Two pairs of wide eyes stared at her, mouths agape. “We’re gonna make a billboard?” They asked.

V bit her lip and shook her head. “Not a billboard, little short on time and really out of our budget.” She rifled through her pockets and pulled out a small device. “Had this bad boy for a while now, usually I use it to pull up my schematics or tweak one of my daemons, but I’ve got an app that’ll just let us create a design we wanna display.” She fiddled with her Agent and turned the phone towards them. “I’ve got the words, but I need two experts to really make it shine, figured you two would be perfect for the job.”

“Really?” Dorian whispered.

“Really really.” She leaned back, her smile relaxed and open. “I can do some graffiti or graphic style stuff, but you guys know Randy best.”

Monique kicked her legs back and forth and stared at the screen with a frown. “Last time we saw Randy, he didn’t want to hang out with us and said we were annoying him,” she mumbled just loud enough for V to hear.

Her heart sunk at the solemn tone of the girl’s voice. That was when Randy had been in Peter Pan’s grasp when he was being gaslighted with promises of understanding and promises of help.

You can tell a kid that their sibling loves them and what they were going through, but it didn’t erase the hurt that kid felt. And they didn’t fully understand.

Even so, reassurance was better than nothing.

“When Randy last talked to you,” V stated, making both kids look at her. “He was going through some tough times.” She picked at her nail as she tried to find the right words. How much did they know about what happened to Randy? “Do you know what happened with Randy?”

Dorian hesitantly shook his head. “We knew he went missing, and Mom said that you and Uncle River found him and brought him back,” he said.

“And he’s been at the hospital because he was hurt when you guys found him,” Monique added.

V nodded her head. “That’s the gist of it,” V admitted. She hesitated before continuing. “Randy thought he had a… friend, but when he went to meet this friend, he turned out to be a bad guy.”

“Like… the bad guys in our game?” Dorian asked.

V fought a grimace. “Worse.” When her statement was met with silence she continued. “Randy was captured and was hurt real bad while he was held captive.”

She’d never get the image of those kids gassed up and comatose, hooked up to those fucking machines out of her head. No matter what she did, she still remembers the frantic way her hands shook as she checked pulses on cool bodies and tugged out crusted IVs from limp arms.

“According to your Uncle River, Randy’s doing much better,” she reassured, trying to assuage some of their unease. “But he’s gonna need you two to help him, even if he’s grumpy and being mean.” She playfully punched her palm. “Sometimes you just gotta break through their defenses and make them understand. Which is why,” V gestured to her Agent, “We’re making him a special welcome sign.”

“And… it’ll help Randy?” Dorian asked.

“Showing him you care and are happy to see him can sometimes be exactly what a person needs.”

Monique and Dorian turned to each other and nodded before turning back to V. “You can count on us!”

V clapped her hands. “That’s what I like to hear!”

#RiVer #river ward #female v #v x river #river x v #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk 2077 fic #my fic

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aflyingcontradiction · 3 years ago

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The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 111 - Family Business

Julia: It’s not a… Trevor doesn’t like using the book. I don’t either. Makes me feel off. Dead should stay dead.

"Dead should stay dead" is a very apt statement for an avatar of the-process-of-methodically-making-things-dead but also I can't say that I disagree, exactly.

Gerard: Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then?

Jon should perhaps have at some point gone "Huh." about the mysterious lighter, shouldn't he? But then again, neither did I.

Gerard: Yeah, the world changes in horrible ways. For you. I’m a book.

This seems perfectly fair, you know!

Gerard: She travelled light. Left things behind.

Oh, ouch, the tone he says that in makes me want to give him a hug, even if he is currently a book. Yeah, she left "things" behind for sure.

Gerard: Well, Fairchild’s just a name, they’re not really family. The Lukases, though, yeah. Thing is, it’s harder than it looks. What’s out there… doesn’t care about blood. Jon: Well, I-I mean, except for the vampires…

I want to say "Oh, Jon" but I can't guarantee I wouldn't have made the exact same dumb comment.

But mum didn’t need the help, and after me she wasn’t able to have kids again, so she killed him in his sleep to practice her bookbinding. I guess she failed. I always thought he was in here, but when I eventually got hold of it, there wasn’t a page in there. - Gerard

That's because Gertrude did for him what Jon later does for Gerard. Weird sort of parallel, that, the father and son, both rescued from undeath by the Archivist of their time.

We met with things that almost made me throw up, I was so afraid, and she’d talk to them like old friends. It was awful, but I suppose in many ways, it worked. Whenever I tried to run away the ‘real’ world seemed so… ignorant I could never be a part of it. So I did my best to find my place within my mum’s world.

God, he was just so fucked up from the start, his whole life tied to the Entities - his death, too - even though he tried so hard to make his own choices.

And honestly, there was a part of me which thought a life in prison was an alright price for freedom.

Damn, that's a gut punch of a line.

Gerard: And if you’re having an omelette for lunch, not every moment is spent eating the omelette. Some things take preparation. Especially if, you know, your spatula has a bit of free will.

I love this run-away metaphor, I really do. Especially the spatula with free will.

Gerard: A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works.

It's kind of funny in an almost-too-perfect way that this is the example that Gerard picks because colours are one of THE go-to examples people always go to for unexpected cultural-linguistic differences and the way they change how we perceive the world. The blue thing, for instance: Russian actually DOES have two entirely separate words for dark blue and light blue (maybe other languages do too, I just happen to know some Russian). I wonder if Johnny knew that when he was writing these lines and this was perhaps deliberate.

Gerard: O-Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like – Jon: An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once. Gerard: Now you’re getting it. Jon: Like colours, but if colours hated me.

If I add a "Favourite quotes" segment to an episode it's mostly for things that need very little context to feel like pieces of poignant writing and this needs a lot of context but if it weren't for that, the description of "Like colours, but if colours hated me" would DEFINITELY go into the favourite quotes segment!

Gerard: Needing to know, even if your discoveries might destroy you.

An explanation of an almighty terrifying fear Entity. Also an explanation of the reason I try and mostly fail to keep out of the comment section.

Jon: Which is… spiders a-and control. Your, your will not being your own.

I've said this before but the Web always struck me as a bit funny in that way. There's that deep existential fear of being manipulated and controlled from the outside ... and also spiders. Someone needs to make one of those Marge Simpson "I just think they're neat" memes except with the labels "The Web" and "Spiders".

Jon: Yeah, I-I mean, are we really so afraid of being… eaten? Of our bodies being all twisted up, i-i-is that… I mean, some people sure, but… how is it one of the fourteen great fears? Gerard: What? You think people are so special it’s only our fear that counts?

Oh my god, the revelation that some of the fears originate from animals just left me open-mouthed when I first heard it. I'd never even considered it and it's SUCH A GENIUS IDEA! IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE! It's an animal fear and it gets extra-super-weird when it hits humans!

Jon: I suppose. And again, when an animalistic fear touches a human… Gerard: You get the Predator’s granddad out there.

Pffft. I love it. Trevor "The Predator's Granddad" Herbert.

Gerard: They… kind of ‘shift’ the world, just enough for the Power to come through. Merge with reality. Some say, or well, they guess, that it could bring other entities through with them.

Oh god, I didn't realise they seeded this idea THIS EARLY ON!

Gerard: Well, think of it this way: right now all the entities have to act like a hunter, they pick off the weak ones around the edges, the ones that wander too close, and the rest of the time they have to just graze on whatever fear we all passively give away. Jon: And if one of the rituals succeeds? Gerard: The world becomes a factory farm.

... gotta hand it to Gerard, his analogies WORK. Perhaps a little too well, that image really hits the target.

Gerard: Said she thought she’d found him. I tracked him down, but it… well, it wasn’t him. (...) It was just some pathetic old man. Couldn’t have been him.

How on earth does Jon maintain enough of a pokerface to not make Gerard suspicious right then. I mean, this is amazing. Gerard kicked the shit out ouf ACTUAL LEITNER ("Three years ago, I made the mistake of spending a full night outside my safehouses. I was almost beaten to death by an angry goth.") and concluded that he couldn't possibly be Leitner because the man responsible for filling so much of his life with fear and misery surely had to be IMPRESSIVE and POWERFUL, not just some whiny old jerk.

My impression of this episode

This episode is very info-dumpy, but somehow it bothered me a lot less than the other info-dump episode (the Leitner episode). Perhaps it's just because I enjoyed Gerard's voice (again expressed personality rather than voice-voice, I feel the need to clarify this every time because it gets confusing when you're talking about a podcast rather than a book) more and also because learning about the fear categories was genuinely a fun revelation. I mean, give me categories to play with and I will absolutely play with the categories! (Me and most of the rest of the fandom...) All in all, it was a fairly skillful info-dump actually, even though it was very clearly a bit dumpy. Aside from the infodump there's also a lot of plot development, though, and Gerard's statement is genuinely interesting. Damn, I feel bad for Gerard, he was just so fucked from the start.

#tma relisten #the magnus archives

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pillowfluffs · 5 years ago

Text

You Not Wanting Kids | NCT 127

Pairing: NCT 127 X Reader (female)

Genre: fluffyyyy

Author’s Note: Thanks for requesting, anon! Hope this is okay since I’ve never written a reaction with them... This was actually quite hard cause I kept thinking “they would all be chill about it, although some would be more bummed than others...”

Warnings: suggestive with johnny and Jaehyun 👀

Taeil:

Snowflakes slowly fell from the night sky, layering a thick blanket of snow over the buildings, houses, and streets

the weather felt like it was slowly getting worse as it got colder in the night

a few of the members were in their rooms, doing their own things, and a few others were all about, somewhere in the dorms

you were a regular guest in their dorms so there was no surprise on their end if they walked into the living room to find you and taeil together

Taeil and everyone else had to stay indoors to stay safe from a cold spreading around but also the weather

You laid your head on his chest and your body in between his legs with one hand resting on your back while the other was behind his head, propping it up

He put on a romantic movie and cherished this time during the holidays he got off with you

Seeing the kids bounce in joy on the screen sparked a thought in his head

“Do you want kids?” He nudged/ rubbed your back, curious

“Mmm, not really. I can’t really see myself as a mom...” you spoke. “I don’t do well with others being sick or throwing up near or on me.”

It was a thought you had as a kid and it stuck with you as you grew up

You didn’t really want kids

You didn’t want to deal with the financial parts behind it, the late nights where you could barely sleep

Which you heard from your coworkers

It sounded so miserable even though babies were cute

You just didn’t really want to go through it

He nodded, curious about your reasons but didn’t push further

Johnny:

The two of you ordered some take out for dinner

Fine wines to go with them too

The two of you sat at the living room table and just watched whatever was on tv

And then it became more of a question game

You two had been together for a while

A couple months but there were still things about you that Johnny didn’t know about like you not knowing everything about Johnny

Though he was mostly an open book

You asked him some questions

Pretty generic, not too deep just yet

But then as the night went on, the two of you found yourself talking longer about your pasts, the future

Talks about dreams and aspiration, what he wanted to do in life, what you wanted to do

Things he wanted in life, things you wanted

“Do you want kids?”

“Uh, not really?” Your voice went higher as the words fell

You knew for your age, after getting to work, couples your age would usually get married and settle down and have kids

But you honestly didn’t really want any

You’ve heard enough from your family when they asked you if you sre gonna marry soon and settle down

They really wanted grandchildren

Johnny was super chill and accepting of it

I’m sure all of them would be and respect your decision of course

He went on to the next question like nothing because it wasn’t that big of a deal

But he did wink at you

“If you ever change your mind, you know my number ;)”

Yuta:

the music from the stereos echoed around the dance studio as he moved with rhythm

he moved so easily, he was so eye catching with the way he moved

he gave you a smirk or a smile depending on the music playing whenever his eyes met yours through his reflection on the mirror wall

he looked so good

he slid down the wall and plopped down beside you as you handed him a cool water bottle from a little cooler and draped a towel around his shoulders

the two of you had been together for almost a year now and you felt like you needed to say this

“I don’t kids,” you said bluntly

he practically choked on his water since this literally came out of nowhere

“okay?”

“you’re not upset about that?”

“not too much since I have a feeling our kids would be so beautiful, but it’s your body.”

He respected your decision very much

and he still had his intentions on being with you in the future

it was a weight off for you since you knew this was a dealbreaker for your past relationships

they wanted kids and you didn’t and it just didn’t work out

but you met yuta

and in this moment, it felt like a weight was lifted off of you

and maybe just maybe, you would even change your decision

Taeyong:

the sun was shining beautifully

clouds rolled by in the sky as the two of you sat on a blanket, enjoying a picnic together in a public park

there were other couples spread out, doing their own thing

he brought the foods for the two of you while you brought some activities like little games but so far you two had been here all day and the games were over

be brought fruits and veggies with dips, cute little drinks

but he also brought kimbap, mandoo (dumplings), milks and cute sodas

the weather was perfect and so was this date

after playing the games you brought a couple times, the two of you ended up playing this last one you brought

it was a box that you found at the mall that sold party games and such

each person took a turn to draw a card and everyone went around to answer the question on the card

there were cards that asked about favorite foods, books, movies, hobbies

as the sun began to set, the deeper and closer the two of you bonded sharing interests and opinions

then your question came up: do you want kids?

“I would like some, they’re so cute.” Taeyong was amazing with kids. “how about you?”

from what you were able to see when they were teachers for the day

you knew he would make a great father to his kids

other too

but you had your doubts yourself about being a parent.

“I don’t think I would make a good parent so I don’t really want any,” you said to which he nodded

but he also reassured you that from what he knew about your personality, he thought contrary to your belief

Doyoung:

During a road trip, the two of you played a questionnaire game

more or less like 21 questions

as he drove, the two of you took turns asking questions about one another or about anything

you looked through on your phone, struggling to find some yourself yet Doyoung was able to think of so many questions so easily off the top of his head

he wanted you to take you into the country side to take a breather from your busy work and the buzzing city life

the country side was beautiful from all the shows and dramas you watched and he saw the way you were amazed

so today was the day he was bringing you out to spend in the country side for a few days in an airbnb

As he drove on the long, empty road, his question appeared

“Do you want kids?”

“No, not really.”

Doyoung was confused as to why you didn’t want any

he was also pretty bummed because he was a really great family guy

he wanted to start one with you and to have kids of his own that he could raise to be great people in this world

“How come?” he asked, wanting to know more

“I’m not the best with kids... So I don’t really want any of my own.”

His mind was suddenly buzzing with questions and retorts

but he had to filter himself

he knew he couldn’t force you to have kids and also force you to do things you didn’t want to do

but throughout the rest of the car ride, he persisted carefully on this topic as if he was persuading you/ tempting you to change your mind

in the best way possible because he wanted to have kids with you

Jaehyun:

the afternoon sun shone in through the skylight in your bedroom, making everything seem very pretty since your room had a white aesthetic

it was very photo worthy if you had a photoshoot

you slowly woke up as Jaehyun stirred in his sleep beside you, your bare bodies beside each other

clothes discarded on the ground

it was a very.. fun... night in simple terms

Jaehyun took in the lovely sight of your skin exposed in the bright afternoon sun, how ethereal it made you look with your upper half pressed into the mattress and your lower half hidden beneath the blanket

of course he looked the same way from your perspective

his muscles were sculpted and toned very nicely, the sun shining on his body, showing all the shadows in his muscles

He laid with you in his arms, your head rested on his chest as he stroked your hair, tucking strands of your hair behind your ear

thinking about last night’s activities, he thought about the future

and like the hypothetical scenario of you getting pregnant and having kids with you

“what if we had kids?”

“Mmm, why?”

“I was just thinking about last night and like what if we had some?”

“Oh, I don’t really want any,” you said

“Oh, how come,” he asked as he tucked another hair behind your ear. “You would be a great mom. We would be great parents,” he curled his lips, showing off his dimple

“Mmm, maybe, but I just don’t really want any.” You said, pressing your cheek to his chest, drawing light lines on his skin

“Mmhm.”

Jaehyun was kind of bummed since he, like Taeyong, thought kids were adorable and he was actually quite good with them

he hoped in the future, your stance would change and the two of you could perhaps one day start a family together

Winwin:

The room was dark as he laid on his bed as he texted you while it was just morning for you

he guessed you were probably about to start work soon considering the hour it was back home

the two of you talked about random things, mostly about the foods he’s eating, the things he’s seeing

he sent multiple pictures that yuta took for him

he talked about how different things were and how they worked compared to asia

everything felt so different and he really liked it

but he was pretty nervous about the language barrier

eventually, the group at the end of the day played around by the pool at their hotel and yuta and winwin and taeil took some pictures at this little playground for kids

there were a few kids with their families

one family, this teenage daughter recognized the three of them and asked for a picture and he even got a copy of it and sent it to you

it was the three of them, the teenage girl, and her baby brother

“the little boy was so cute” he said with cute emojis

“Do you want kids one day?”

You agreed with him how adorable the kids were but you didn’t really want kids

there wasn’t any particular reason, you didn’t hate or dislike them in any way

you actually did like them

but you just didn’t really want any

when he asked why and you gave him no particular reason, he just went on talking about the trip but it was like a recurring thought for him

he was curious as to why but he wasn’t upset or anything by your decision

Jungwoo:

this mans was your kid

you spent some time with him in his dorm as he was on hiatus

the two of you spent some time in the empty dorms to yourselves

going out for food sometimes but also ordering take out, even making things like ramen with special additions of meat and such

you guys went around town, going to the malls with of course concealing your identities from anyone cough dispatch

you even played a little game where at some point, one would buy something they think the other would like but it has to be a complete surprise

so the two of you had to be sneaky on your own

it was actually pretty fun

the two of you couldn’t decide on just a single thing so it became three things

and then you two would exchange and go over why you picked your things and he picked yours back at the dorms

but also of course there was a price limit so nothing would be too expensive

You picked out a little character dispenser for wipes because you liked how he liked to stay clean, a cute keychain with a cute dog on it that he could also put his ID in, and finally a little snack that he could enjoy later

mans loves to eat

he picked out a little stuffed animal, a little pouch with one of your favorite characters on it, and a little toy that was usually for children but he thought you would like it

you did and it’s the thought that counts

the two of you ended uop laughing over how childlike these items were and out of curiosity, he asked: do you want kids?

“personally, not really. I don’t want to go through that pain and finance in the future.”

He nodded as he listened intently, understanding the financial part but he could only imagine the pain it was for women to have kids

but he did want kids one day though, so this bummed him out only a tad bit, but not entirely

Mark:

Mark was a very very busy person

thanks sm for not letting him rest >:(

so of course this meant he didn’t have too much free time to spend time with you or other friends

even the dreamies who had removed him from their group chats a couple times only to add him back and then this cycle continued

so of course the two days he was finally free from his schedule before he was about to debut again in SuperM, he took the chance to spend time with people

he spent almost all day with the dreamies, drinking bubble tea and sodas with them, playing video games and pubg as a group on their phones

then at night, he spent some time with you after dinner

he picked you up from your house and from there, the two of you just wandered around the neighborhood

he made sure you were safe of course

it had been a spell of time since he was able to formally hang out with you and it was much overdue

he held your hand in his as the two of you walked under the clear night sky, the street illuminated from the bright full moon and the twinkling stars thousands and thousands of miles away

the two of you sat at your elementary school playground, sitting on the aged swings, the same exact ones the two of you used to sit together in as kids

now that you guys were older and you guys had been together for quite some time now, he was curious

“do you want kids?”

“Nope,” you said straight forward, feeling weightless as you said this. “Of course we’re still too young to even think about parenthood but in general, I don’t think I would want any. I for sure don’t want any now.”

he nodded surprised since most girls often talked about finding the right person to get together and have a family with

“Do you want kids?” you asked which made him blush

the thought of having kids was nice but you were right, it was way too early to even think about having kids

maybe one day though

Haechan:

The day was long and hectic for Haechan

he spent his day rehearsing for NCT Dream’s upcoming comeback, practicing the choreo, working out, recording for future events that were unknown

everything felt so busy around him

he needed a breather

so he called you when he finally got the chance

he was one of the few left in the studio and he didnt want to go back just yet

you were at home, taking care of your neighbor’s baby while they were out at a dinner with their coworkers

babies were hard and you learned that it was pretty tough

Haechan facetime called you so you could hold the baby and he could also see them too

when you answered, the first thing he saw was them sitting in your lap

it was so cute, he let out a playful squeal, trying to get the their attention on the phone

but you were about to put them to bed soon so you sat holding your phone in the rocking chair your neighbors had set up in the nursery beside the crib

it was actually very comfortable, it made you yawn which made him yawn

but you seemed so natural despite the messages you sent him throughout the day about the baby doing gross things

“Do you want kids in the future?” he asked out of the blue as you carefully put the cooing baby down into its crib

“after today and how tired I feel, no, not at all.” you spoke softly and laughed as you went back to the rocking chair, making sure it fell asleep before you went back downstairs

“they threw up on me like twice today and im- ugh,” you gagged, making him laugh. “but even in the future, I don’t think so,” to which he nodded as he listened

but he strongly thought you would make such a fun parent like he would

Overall, I think they would, of course, respect your decision since it’s your body.

~~~~~ Masterlist for more! Thank you for reading!

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headoverhiddles · 5 years ago

Text

Matrimony - Pope x Reader (Let Me Make You A Martyr) [Part I]

Synopsis: You and a skilled hitman are forced to work together to take out a mutual ‘friend’ through teamwork. But together is the opposite of how Pope works, and he already despises you.

Aka the super filthy, depraved fake marriage au no one asked for :)

Notes: this will be a three parter, with updates every three days! Enjoy!

Tagging: (ask to be added) @peachynun

PART II

PART III

Pope barely lets the guy finish speaking—he’s already rejected the terms, regardless of the pay.

“I haven’t even told you the haul yet,” the man who had come to him, Jack Redman, chuckles. Pope does not share his amusement, which he makes clear through a scathing glare. Pope’s glares had the ability to convey a particular type of anger, so intensely that nobody usually challenged him any further… but it meant Redman’s ass if he returned without a yes.

The two were sitting in Pope’s cabin, devoid mostly of decoration, only the necessities surrounding them. The kitchen table they sat at was low, homemade out of rain-bleached wood from around the area. On their plates, the two had almost finished cuts of red deer meat Pope had offered. It was rare enough for Redman to pick at it, and Pope to devour it.

The propositioner sighs. “She’s a peach. Trust me. Easy on the eyes, all that.”

Despite the bloody mess on his plate, Pope cuts his food with the manners of a King, lifting his fork to his mouth delicately. “She’s a drug runner. I don’t work with drug runners, I kill drug runners.” He has an underlying southern drawl to his voice, a false comfort that eases his targets. Fear always spoiled the hit, just like hunting.

Redman pushes his plate away in exasperation. “She’s a drug runner who has potential. She wants to help you. This could be an opportunity to--"

“I work alone. That’s final.” Pope gets up from the kitchen table, ending the conversation. Redman shakes his head, chasing after the tall, bullheaded hitman.

“Fuckin’… stubborn piece of shit… listen, Pope!”

“I ain’t listening to anything you have to say,” Pope turns, face calm and stern. “I’m done listening. And you’re done talking.” Redman eyes Pope’s rack of guns which he is standing in front of, and swallows.

“Look. My boss is prepared to give you a big fucking bag of dough for this.”

“How big is fucking big?” Pope asks, taking a pistol off the rack and beginning to clean it. Redman keeps his eyes on the weapon warily.

“It’s a lot, man. At least a million dollars is in this for you if you just test the waters, and finish the job.”

Pope purses his lips. “Half for me, half for this slut I’m supposed to carry around?”

“Each,” Redman replies. Pope sets the gun down, and the rag with it. He takes his glasses off, polishes them with his shirt, then puts them back on.

“Three days. That’s all it’ll take. We'll see what happens.”

---

You tuck your gun in your back pocket. You’d never had any real reason to use it thus far, since your job, while dangerous, thankfully never got that physical.

Drug dealing seemed a natural path for you to take. Your parents had both been in the business of the black market, your mother an illegal arms dealer and your father working for your mother. Growing up in a family with a “small business”, it had led you to a code of morals that are currently getting in the way.

Morals that say Daegland Pierce, notorious dealer, needs to die.

Since you and your boss both knew you couldn’t carry it out alone, you had been eager to find someone who could carry out the job with you. Your boss got to talking, and as it turns out, there’s some kind of agreement that’s been made. You’re in the dark about the whole thing with him, but all you really need to know is your role in all of it.

“His name’s Pope.”

“Any file on him?” you ask, crossing your arms. Lane swirls his drink around.

“There’s no file for this guy anywhere. He just… is.”

“How do you know what kind of killer he is?”

“Word of mouth. Everybody knows Pope, and nobody knows him.”

“I’m one of the nobodies, would you mind giving me a little more insight, so I know the guy I’m going to be working with?”

Lane shakes his head. “Ask him yourself. You’re meeting him at the rendezvous point, by Exit 19 on the Tollcross back road. Nothing but farmland out there, ‘til you reach the woods Pierce has shacked up in.”

“These the coordinates?” you ask, tapping a map that had been placed in front of you.

"Wrapped up inside. Quit asking questions, will ya? Go do the job, don’t run your mouth at this guy or he’ll shoot it off, and come back richer for the experience." You go to get up, but Lane stops you. "(y/n). I know you think you're real tough, kay? You ain't shit compared to this guy. He'll rip your spleen out if you get on his bad side. So just lay low, do you gotta do, and don't piss him off."

"What makes you think I would?" you ask. Lane sighs, shaking his head.

"There's gonna be two corpses out there by Friday, I swear to god."

You drive a crappy throwaway VW bug up a grassy back road, studying the map closely. There's an x marked where you're supposed to meet Pope, and you're coming up on it now. You toss the map to the passenger seat, and crane your neck to see from the sunken seat. There's a black car up ahead, with a man leaning against it.

You park the bug, grab the map, and toss a match in, burning the thing out. You walk up to him, and take a look as you approach. He's tall, got glasses, and has cropped black hair. He's got a few tattoos, maybe more, you notice as he lifts a cigarette up, but most are covered by long black sleeves. How he could wear long sleeves in this heat is beyond you, but you're not here to question his attire. He's actually pretty well dressed, if you'd go so far as to admit it. He's not bad looking either, for a man in his early to mid forties.

The bug blows up behind you, and you smirk.

"(y/n)," you say, sticking out your hand. His dark eyes move over to you boredly, taking you in with a vertical sweep. He finally puts his cigarette between his lips, which are curiously dainty, and shakes your hand. Whatever elegance his features hold are balanced out by the roughness of his hands-- his skin is like leather, and his nails are chipped and dirty.

"You know who I am," he says simply, in a buried genteel southern accent.

You take a spot next to him, leaning against the car as well. He glances sideways at you, but doesn't say anything. He just smokes in silence. You wonder if it'll be like one of those miraculous bonding moments, where he'd offer you a drag, and it would be like some unspoken code of respect had passed between you two.

You lose hope for that as Pope continues to do his best to ignore you. You eventually clear your throat.

"So. I've got a plan."

"No. I've got a plan. This ain’t your show, kid."

You frown. "Don't call me kid."

"Okay, sweetheart."

"Don't call me sweetheart!"

"What do you want me to call you then? Cause I've got a few ideas."

You scoff. What a fucking asshole! Still, your boss' warning is present in your mind, so you shut your mouth, and get in the car. Pope drops his butt, snuffs it out carefully with his shoe, and gets in the driver's side.

"I heard we're going to be taking the cabin next to his," you bring up. "Must be nice to live out in the woods. Plus, I bet the asshole's place is nice and furnished. He's loaded to hell." You purse your lips. "Is it a long drive to the cabin?"

Pope doesn't answer. Instead, he turns up the stereo, which is just finishing up Johnny B Goode. Then, an old country song that sounds like a bloodhound wailing to the tune of a two string banjo comes on. It's got some lyrics about preaching the gospel, and you sigh, resting your head against the window.

"This is fucking terrible."

Pope looks ahead. "Mhm."

"You seem like a rock kind of guy, not this."

"'Mhm."

“Not even classic rock?”

"Mmm."

With a huff, you turn to look out the window and let the grumpy older hitman, who apparently only knew how to communiticate by varying grunts, enjoy his lovesick religious whining on the radio.

Eventually, you make it down a dirt path, leaves and branches hitting the sides of the car.

“Welcome home,” Pope says, pulling up at the cabin the two of you would be staying at. You get out, looking around. It’s pretty remote.

"Where's his place?"

"Just down the way a little," Pope replies, unloading some things from the car, "Before you ask, no, we are not going over right now. We're setting our rooms up-- far away from one another-- and settling in for the night."

"And lemme guess, you're gonna pour some whiskey sour and spin 'Solitary Man' on vinyl while scraping your boots on the porch?"

He can't even be bothered enough to muster up a glare. He simply gives you a bored look through those wire rimmed glasses, and walks toward the house. You look around, and when you think you hear a cracked twig, follow him quickly.

---

Pope sets a lantern on the table, and pushes you your plate of food.

"Thank you," you say. It was genuinely nice of him to prepare food for the both of you, something you hadn't expected him to do.

"Uh huh." You eat in silence for a bit, the crickets outside the window your only accompaniment to dinner. It's a nice cabin, in a pretty nice little thicket of forest. You can certainly see the appeal of living out here-- especially as someone in Pierce's line of work.

Pope finally speaks. "So what kind of drugs do you sell?"

"Why? You interested?" You already know the answer, but so far, it’s been fun teasing him. He tents his fingers.

"I don't fuck with drugs. They dull the wits, and I need those to not die."

"Depends on the drug," you grin. He miraculously cracks a small smile, and you go on. "Just homegrown shit. I don't bother with trying to sell party drugs. That scene just gets the cops all over your business." Pope nods. "You ever get cops on you?"

He cocks his head. "Around here? The three good, upstanding police officers who actually care enough to know what's going on beneath their noses are on my payroll. Any marshals or anything are easily deterred."

"You just use your charm and good looks?"

"Believe it or not, I'm pretty good with people," he says. You scoff.

"That's a good one."

He spends a long time staring at you. You can feel his gaze on you as you eat, and it prickles your skin. You can't tell if you like it or not. You wonder if you should say something else. Eventually, he gets up, taking his plate to the cabin's quaint kitchen. You missed your chance.

He cleans his plate, and stops by the stairs. "Why'd you want to come out here to put two people on a one man job?"

"I wanted to see it get done. I guess I... didn't trust you."

"Do you now?"

"What?"

He looks at you over his glasses. "Do you trust me now?"

You sit forward. "I don’t trust anyone but myself."

He nods. "You don’t trust me cause you haven’t seen me do what I do."

You chew on your bottom lip. You hadn't gotten the chance to tell him your plan, and by all accounts, you know he's not going to like it. These three days may be more difficult than you thought.

After slowly finishing the rest of your dinner, you head upstairs to find the remaining bedroom. As you're passing the doors, you catch a glimpse of one partially open. Inside, Pope is lying awake, staring up at the ceiling. You quickly hurry past, hoping he didn't see you, and find the empty bedroom at the end of the hall. Finding it furnished with a few old blankets, you toss a pillow down. You slip out of your clothes to your bra and panties, and get into bed.

You don’t know what to make of the man in the other room. Until you do, you’d better keep him at arm’s length.

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staticscreenwriting · 5 years ago

Text

All you have to be is here - Part 12

Synopsis: Billy has fucked up and has to do 60 days of community service at a home for troubled kids and youth. Working with the kids there makes him learn a lot about himself. Also there’s a girl there his age who has a phenomenal smile and who is way too nice to him.I guess I should mention there’s a lot of angst in this. Talk of substance abuse later on, physical abuse, emotional abuse. All that kind of gnarly real life stuff. It deals with kids and teens struggling with a a shitty family life so be aware of that.

Part 12 of ? (Slight mention of smut)

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6 // Part 7 // Part 8 // Part 9 // Part 10 //

Please help a girl out by reblogging. Thank you

♥Attention ! If you wanna be tagged pls send me a message or an ask it’s easier and faster for me than going through the tags of each part every time. Thank you :)

[additional note: I am German. Sometimes I get the tense wrong or make mistakes. I am useless when it comes to punctuation. Go easy on me, please.]

I never really ever felt so adored before Never really ever felt this type of vulnerable Don’t have to hide, don’t have to fear All you have to be is here Never really ever felt so adored before And I said I wanna feel like this forever Even if forever’s just for now We’re on fire, let us burn As the outside world, it turns We are here and alive In our corner of time Forevermore

There’s a crying kid on the airplane two rows behind him and a woman loudly bickering to her seat neighbour, right across. It’s loud and stuffy and the seats are well small.

None of it matters though, because Billy relishes in this moment. He’s finally on his way home. Even if it’s just for a few days, his heart already feels much lighter from just the thought of it.

The ever present anger coursing through his system, is but a mere memory in the back of his head, as the plane starts to move.

“ Are you excited ? “ (Y/N) asks from beside him. His initial reaction is an overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. What a silly question. He’s been looking forward to this day from the moment his dad had first told him about their plans to move to Hawkins. California is home. It’s bright suns and soft mornings and piano melodies carried by the wind all the way from the living room down to the beach.

It’s scuffed up knees and sweat and waves so big they made young Billy speechless as he watched them crash against the shore, a look of curious fascination on his face.

Billy really wants to roll his eyes at the question, throw her some sarcastic comment and make that the end of it. He knows it comes from a good place though, a place of care and worry and — unfiltered joy.

She’s genuinely excited for him. No one’s ever been excited for him. Not to this extend.

It also comes from a place of anxiety. It’s hidden and if you don’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t realize it. Billy knows though. She’s told him before, casually slipped it into a conversation. “ Yeah, I’ve never flown before but, no big deal.”

But it is a big deal. It’s a huge deal.

So taking that all into consideration, he doesn’t roll his eyes at her. Instead he takes her hand in his, placed a kiss on her forehead and grants her a smile. It’s a “yes” without having to say a word. It’s a “everything’s gonna be alright.”

And he believes it. He truly believes it himself.

His eyes wander back towards the window as the airplane lifts up into the air. The world down below gets further and further away with every second, every blink of an eye. Houses that towered tall above his head just moments ago are now but tiny tiny dots.

Billy has expected to feel some kind of way once they’re up in the clouds. Insignificant. Like one small dot in an ocean of shapes. One dot that makes no difference to the whole picture whether he’s there or not.

He expected to feel small. Instead, it all feels weirdly liberating. To see how much world there is to discover. How much life there is yet to be lived. To see that Hawkins, too, is just a dot. There’s so much more out there, he doesn’t have to be confined to this shitty little town that makes him feel like he’s stuck in a perpetual state of anger and frustration.

The world is, literally, at his feet right now. And now, he’s no idiot. He knows the world ain’t his fucing oyster. There’s things he’ll never get to do. But it’s nice to let yourself dream every once in a while. And what better time than while up in the damn clouds.

______________________

Driving along the Californian roads he knows so well is a strange feeling. The car is different and, to a certain extend, the boy driving it is different too. The roads are the same though. They feel so familiar.

Yes there’s a mix of emotions swirling around inside of him. It feels like he’s hardly been gone and yet it feels like a lifetime has gone by since he’s last driven along these roads.

There’s a sparkle in (Y/N) eyes, he notices as he glances over towards her. She looks gorgeous as the sun falls through the window and onto her skin. Like a scene straight from a postcard. Perfect. Flawless.

“ So you said, we’re going to stay at a beach cabin. Isn’t that like, super expensive ? “ she asks, leaning back in her seat and swaying along to the music ever so slightly.

“ Ah I got a good deal. “

H doesn’t tell her that this good deal comes from knowing the woman who rents out these beach cabins. That she once found him crying by the beach, blackeye and nosebleed perfectly on display. She told him then, after giving him cookies and cleaning him up, that he would always have a place to stay whenever he needs it.

She’s keeping her word.

There’s some traumas you don’t have to share, and maybe he should, but he doesn’t want to. Some traumas you just live with. You grin and bear and hope that one day when things get better, they won’t weigh so heavy on you anymore. That one day they turn into dusty memories that only flatter around your head every once in a blue moon.

So this one he’s keeping to himself for now. Because right this moment, though it still feels heavy on his chest, it doesn’t really matter. He’s home, driving along familiar roads with a girl that makes his heart do silly things.

_____________________

The beach cabin is small compared to the other ones lining the coast but to Billy and (Y/N) it is more than enough. There’s a living room with a little porch connected to it, looking straight out onto the beach. A small kitchen, a bathroom with a shower and a big bathtub. Billy would be lying is he says he hasn’t thought of all the things they might be doing in that tub.

The bedroom though, is the most breathtaking of all the rooms. It’s all softy blues and whites and light grays. Like the ocean on a peaceful sunday morning captured in the confines of one small beach cabin. There’s huge windows that allow you to look straight at the sea as you lay in bed. He can’t wait to wake up to this view. Can’t wait to wake up to it with (Y/N) in his arms.

“ This is insane. I absolutely love this ! “ (Y/N) exclaims as she throws herself onto the bed with enthusiasm. “ I wish we could go out explore, like right now. But I am so exhausted. “

They’d been up all night, packing the last of their stuff and taking a taxi to the airport. It’s only once she mentions it, that Billy realises just how tired he is. Though he knows there’s no sleep coming for him anytime soon. All his senses, all his emotions are running on overdrive right now. It’s an abundance of memories clashing with so many ideas of what these next few days might hold. His head is too loud to even think about sleep right now.

“ How about you go take a nap and I’ll go get us something to eat. How’s that sound ? “

“ So domestic. What a gentleman “ (Y/N) jokes, coming over to wrap one arm around Billy’s neck and absentmindedly play with a button of his shirt with the other.

“ Gentleman, huh ? I’ll show you how much of a gentleman I can be later “ Billy replies then lowers his head to level his lips with her ears, softly breathing against her skin, making goosebumps appear. “ when I fuck you into this very mattress. We can even watch the waves while we do it. “

“ So romantic “ she quips but there’s a very prominent red hue coloring her cheeks.

“ Jesus, did I make you blush. “

“ No. “

Lies.

“ Alright. Whatever you say, babe. Go have a nap. “ he says and stirs her towards the bed, giving her ass a little tap “ you’ll need the energy later. “

____________________

Some upbeat spanish music is playing from the overhead stereo as Billy browses the isle of some tiny bodega in one of the many side streets away from the more touristy areas.

There’s two sandwiches in the little plastic bag hanging from his arm, but that’s only enough to keep them fed until dinner. He knows he’s gonna stock up on at least a bit of food. He also knows his girl needs her coffee in the morning.

His eyes move along the shelves stocked with all kinds of foods and drinks, as a voice speaks up from beside him.

“ Hargrove ? “

It’s a voice he hasn’t heard since the day his family left for Hawkins. He remembers the last words this voice ever said to him. They’ve been flowing through his head many many times. They were usually followed by so many questions. The loudest of them all, all but screaming at him. “Why don’t any of them call ? Why don’t any of them care ? Why doesn’t he care ? “

Johnny Foster stands as lanky and tall as he always did. His shaggy brown hair falls into his face with every move he makes and his shirts seems to swallow his narrow frame. There’s a baseball cap on his head in an attempt to keep his unruly hair in place, and the pair of beat up sneakers still have Billy’s name scribbled onto them, alongside those of all their other friends.

Johnny hasn’t changed a thing since they day the Hargroves left. Billy doesn’t know if this is comforting.

“ Hargrove ! It’s you. Hey man. “

Before he can even say a word, he’s wrapped into a big hug. Johnny is the human equivalent of some over excited golden retriever puppy. He smells like ocean air and pot.

“ Man. I didn’t know you were gonna be home. You should’ve called !”

It’s then, that Billy is shaken from his thoughts. He should’ve called ? They should’ve ! Johnny and Dylan and all the others. None of them did though. So why should he.

“ You didn’t. “

“ Didn’t what ? “

“ Call. “

Johnny’s face screws up in confusion. “ Yeah I did. I talked to your dad and you stepmom a few times. You were never home. “

It’s like cold ice water running down his spine, as Johnny throws those words at him. He did call and he did care. Everything he thought he had come to terms with, is now but a lie. An intricate web of deception, woven to keep him isolated from the few happy things in his past.

God, he fucking hates Neil. And Susan.

“ I take it you didn’t know that. Hey man, I’m sorry. “

“ Not your fault. “

“ So you’re home ! Are you back permanently ? “

Yeah. He’s home. And it feels like it. The pressure, the weight, te sadness. It’s all dulled and muted here. There’s been hurt and pain here too, lots of it. But the cause of most of those things is now so many miles away.

“ Not for now. Just for a few days. It’s my girl’s birthday. “

Johnny takes a double take, eyes wide in surprise “ Your girl, huh ? Like an actual committed girlfriend, kinda girl. “

“ Mmh. “

“ Damn, Billy Hargrove has a girlfriend. Indiana changed you, man. “

He says it not with malice though, not even with mock judgement. It’s a fact. One that’s undeniable and unshakable. Billy doesn’t think Johnny knows even the smallest amount of how much Indiana has changed him. Or maybe not the state itself. Maybe it’s what came with it. The people. The girl. The feelings.

“ Guess so. “

“ She cool ? “

It’s such a Johnny think to ask. Some of his other friends from California probably would’ve asked if she was hot. Maybe even more crass things. Not Johnny. Johnny doesn’t care about superficial things. Johnny cares about people in the way a dog does, or a little kid. Are they nice? Are they fun? And most importantly, are they cool ?

“ Yeah, Johnny. She’s real cool. “

“ Bring her around, dude ! Let me call the others and set up a bonfire down by the beach. Like old times. “

“ I don’t know. “

It’s not that he doesn’t want to. It’s just a lot. Seeing his old friends again. Some of which aren’t the way Johnny is. Aren’t forgiving and sweet and goofy.

“ C’mon, Billy. I wanna meet your girl. I’m your best friend I should get to meet her while you’re here. And I know the others want to see you too. We missed you, man. “

And maybe that’s all it takes. To know he was being missed. By the same people he spend month believing had just forgotten about him.

“ Alright, yeah. Let’s do it. “

As Johnny smiles his goofy, little boy smile. Billy thinks maybe he missed his friends too.

_____________________________

(Y/N) lets out a passionate moan of absolute satisfaction. Sex with her, it’s just different. Especially here. With the ocean and the beach as a backdrop to her bouncing on his dick like her life depends on it.

Her skin is soft, so fucking soft. And she feels so warm around him. The light from outside casts an ethereal glow around her. She looks like a goddamn angel as she rides him.

Her breasts bounce as she moves in a steady rhythm, fast, rough, hard. In a way that seems almost pornorgraphy if it wasn’t for the innocent smile of pleasure on her face. She’s a fucking goddess. In all ways possible.

The way her body shakes and twitches let’s him know he’s doing a good job. That he’s bringing her close. Closer. Always closer. She places a sloppy kiss on his lips as she comes undone around him, squeezing him in the most delicious ways. And how can he possibly hold it together at that. His moves are sloppy and uncontrolled but he's so desperate to chase the high, to follow her over the edge. And when he does, god — he’s straight to heaven.

Their sweaty bodies stick to each other, as (Y/N) slumps down on the bed next to him and places lazy kisses up and down his neck, actively killing him little by little. If this girl knows just how big her power over him is, he’s positively screwed.

Than again, getting screwed by her really isn’t the worst case scenario now, is it ?

“ Why are you smiling so big, huh ? “ her voice comes out husky and rough.

Billy hasn’t even realised he’s smiling. Not actively. But really, what is there not to smile about. He’s home, with his girl, giving and receiving great orgasms, while the waves crash against the shore in a peaceful rhythm.

“ Because I’m happy. “

And it’s not a fleeting moment then, like it usually is. His happy moments in Hawkins are few and far between. Not here. It’s been a constant state of bliss since they got off the plane.

“ Good. That’s all I ever want you to be “

“ Are you happy ? “ Billy asks her and pulls her closer to his body, if that is even possible.

“ I’ve never been happier. “

That is all he ever wants her to be.

__________________________

The bonfire casts a glow of gold an red across the beach. There’s people mingling everywhere and most of them have stopped by Billy over the course of the night, catching him up on their lives and asking about his.

Some of them, he is indifferent about and some of them he’s missed so dearly. (Y/N) stands by his side, smiling and laughing and cracking jokes. And then Johnny comes up to them, with his usually slagging walk. Like his legs are too long for his body.

“ Hey, guys. “ he slurs, obviously having had a cup or two of the punch already.

“ (Y/N), that’s Johnny, my best friend. “

It’s not really a lie. He’s his best friend. The thing is, (Y/N) is his best friend too. And they’re both important for many different things. He loves them both for completely different reasons.

It’s also kinda cheesy to say his girlfriend is his best friend, so he keeps that to himself. He doesn’t have to say it for her to know. It’s a mutual feeling.

“ Johnny, this is (Y/N). My girlfriend. “ It feels great to introduce her this way. Not weird as he had expected. It feels — right. More right than anything has felt in a while.

“ Aw, man. You’re gorgeous. You sure you wanna stick it with this screwball ? I mean, yeah he’s got a great ass but, the hair ? the mustache ? You sure ? “

Johnny is the only person that gets to say there things about Billy without having to fear any repercussions. Because they don’t come from a place of hostility or ill will. That’s just what friends do. It’s loving banter. It’s friendship.

“ Ah, you know. He’s being really good so far. I think I’ll keep him around for a while. “ (Y/N) replies and then the two of them fall into a joking conversation full of laughter and smiles and drunken hiccups from Johnny.

Billy, then, thinks that this is what his life should’ve been from the start. Going to a party by the beach. Watching his girlfriend and his best friend joking around. Smiling. Laughing. Happy.

There’s a warm feeling spreading through his chest. One of complete and utter content. If moments where photographs, he would take a million pictures of this one. To hold it close forever as the moment his life truly begins.

____________________________

It’s many, many hours later as Billy walks along the beach by himself, plopping down onto the sand a small distance from the bonfire. The party is winding down a little further up the shore but most of the people are either asleep on the floor, in their cars or have already left a while ago.

The world feels peaceful around him. Quiet and serene. Bad things happening, pain and hurt and anger — It all seems to far away here. As if this is a bubble he gets to live in for a few short days. A bubble showing him how good a life can be.

He knows that soon the night is giving in to the blinding light of a rising sun and with a day gone, the inevitable pop of the bubble gets closer and closer. But he’s positively tipsy right now on punch and love and life. And he doesn’t wanna think about Hawkins. About Neil. About what might happen with his mom.

He just wants to be. For one moment he just wants to be alive without having to worry about anything else.

A soft touch shakes him from his daydream, as (Y/N) drops down into the sand next to him. Their eyes are on the horizon but their hearts are with each other. Always.

“ I like your friends. “

“ Yeah ? That’s good. I think they like you too. “

Really, how could anyone not like her? She’s phenomenal in every aspect.

“ You know what else I like. No — what I love ? “ she continues.

“ What’s that ? “

“ The way you are, since we arrived. So — light. You smile more and you laugh more and you’re goofy and fun and I haven’t seen you scowl. Not even once. “

Billy hasn’t expect her to notice. He noticed a change in himself, sure. But he thought it was more of an inside change. For a second it makes him feel uneasy. Vulnerable. Showing your emotions to other people can be dangerous.

But then it sets in, that this isn’t Hawkins and this isn’t Neil and he can be vulnerable and he can show emotions. There’s no shame in it and there’s no fear of any consequences.

The only consequence coming from it might be (Y/N) showering him with even more love in return, and that he can surely live with.

“ I love you, (Y/N). “

It’s still strange to say it but some things mean so much, they’re worth saying even if it’s scary.

“ I love you too. “

See ? Totally worth it.

The sun slowly rises in the east behind them, it throws hues of blues and pinks across the city, across the buildings and palm trees and streets of people waking up. California mornings are spectacular for they feels soft and magical. And maybe it’s a memory clouded in pure and utter nostalgia, but that’s how they always felt to Billy.

It still feels this way now. Though magic comes from many places these days. His friends. His girl. His home.

“ Hey, baby ? “

“ Hmm ? “

“ I think I wanna go see my mom the day after your birthday. I think I want her to meet you. “

(Y/N) kisses his cheek, then his lips, then smiles “ Okay. I’m with you every step of the way. “

The morning sunshine makes her shimmer in a golden glow and Billy wonders how his heart is ever going to hold together when the time comes for them to leave ?

__________________

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unfolded73 · 4 years ago

Note

love this director's cut idea! ⭐for any section you want to talk about!

I decided to do a director’s commentary on “The Things We Don’t Speak Aloud” because I have a lot of thoughts about Marcy and Clint Brewer. Below the cut for length:

Ask me for a director’s commentary of one of my fics or a section of a fic

Marcy looked around at the motel room she’d just stepped into while Clint muscled his suitcase over the threshold and closed the door. The decorations were… unique, that was probably the kindest thing she could say about them. Hopelessly out of date to be sure, but perhaps people liked the kitsch, she thought charitably. Perhaps that was why nothing appeared to have been updated in decades. She lifted her small suitcase onto the bed and went to unzip it, her mind already focusing on how she wanted to arrange her things in the drawers.

“Are we going to talk about what just happened?” Clint asked, making no similar moves toward unpacking.

She felt a spike of anxiety go through her, making her palms sweat. “Clint, until we know for sure what they were talking about, I don’t know if it’s fair to—”

So I super identify with the Brewer family and their apparent willingness to avoid difficult subjects. I was raised the same way, unfortunately. It was an open secret that my uncle was gay, and despite supporting him (somewhat; my mom’s attitudes on homosexuality were ok but not great), my mother never spoke to him about it. Ever. For 50 years. So I understand how Patrick could go more than a year without telling his parents about being gay / about David. And I figure he probably learned that avoidance from his parents.

“It seemed pretty clear what they were talking about, Marcy,” Clint said. “He literally said, ‘a business relationship and a romantic relationship.’ What else could he have meant?”

She dropped the sweater she’d been refolding and met her husband’s eyes. “So Patrick and… and David…”

“I guess so.”

“But if they’re a couple, why wouldn’t Patrick say anything? We aren’t homophobic.” She picked up the sweater again. “Maybe David’s father is confused. Or jumping to conclusions because they spend a lot of time together working at the store.”

Clint squinted at her. “He lives here and probably sees his son all the time. I don’t think he would have said it that way if they weren’t a couple.”

“But Patrick dated Rachel for years!” She paused, thinking it through while she went over and put the sweater in one of the dresser drawers. “I guess he could be bisexual.”

Bisexual erasure, particularly for men, is real. I think about it a lot more now that my own son identifies as bi. So I struggle when I write scenes like this because, on the one hand, no, Patrick doesn’t seem to be bi. We can assume that since David says he’s gay in MTP, that’s probably how Patrick himself identifies, and it’s consistent with him saying he didn’t know before David what right was supposed to feel like. But he could be bi/pan, as far as his parents know at this point, and I don’t want it to seem like I as the author wouldn’t consider that if I had only the info the Brewers have. But also, I figure the Brewers would assume he was gay because that seems more in-line with who they are. And it happens to be true. So I did give Marcy the thought here that, ok, maybe he’s bi. And then had Clint say, maybe, but also he did break up with Rachel a lot and run away. I wrote it similarly in My Heartbeat Shows the Fear.

“That’s possible. Or it’s possible that he was trying very hard not to be gay, and that’s why ultimately things didn’t work out with Rachel. It would explain a lot. They way they kept breaking up. The way he ran away to start a new life somewhere else.” He sat down on the bed.

Marcy shook her head, a hand coming up to her mouth to hold in… she didn’t know what. “No, that’s… surely he would have talked to us if he was feeling that way. And he was happy with Rachel for a long time.”

“Was he?”

Marcy began unpacking more quickly, needing to accomplish a task, needing to move. “Yes, of course he was happy.”

“Not happy enough, though. Maybe he’s happier with David.”

She slumped her shoulders, suddenly exhausted. They’d gotten up before dawn to make this drive and the long hours on the road were taking their toll. “Should we maybe take a nap?”

Marcy does not want to talk about this anymore. Using sleep to avoid things is another thing I do.

Her husband nodded, recognizing the request for what it was — a plea not to talk about this anymore. “Good idea. I don’t think I’m going to be able to stay awake for a party if I don’t have a little rest.”

She put her suitcase aside and took off her shoes and stretched out next to her husband on top of the bedspread. Clint reached out for her hand, and she squeezed his fingers in return.

Marcy thought about the conversations she’d had with David on the phone. The way he talked about the store and the way he talked about Patrick. The way he talked about how smart Patrick was about the business. It hadn’t escaped her notice the way David spoke — the cadence and timbre of his voice, the uptilt of it on certain phrases, his encyclopedic knowledge of skin care products — yes, she’d assumed David was gay when she bothered to think about it at all. She’d mostly just thought that David seemed nice, based on his unfailing politeness with her.

Another tough one, because David isn’t gay, he’s pan. But most people probably assume he’s gay, based on stereotypes, and I figured Marcy would too.

Meanwhile, she’d gotten used to a certain amount of distance from her son. He’d barely spoken to them at all for the first couple of months after he left town, other than to say he was safe and that he needed a fresh start. Then came news of the business he was starting with David, and Patrick had begun to sound excited on the phone, talking about David’s vision for the store. He’d had a lot to say about what a good idea it was that David had, and how skilled he was with vendors and customers. She began to sift her memory of those glowing compliments through this new filter, where maybe her son had romantic feelings for his business partner. It made a certain kind of sense, now that she thought about it. It explained why any mention of Rachel caused him to shut down.

I do like imagining Patrick being unable to keep from bringing the topic of David up, even though he couldn’t bring himself to say they were a couple. Maybe hoping his parents guessed.

It perhaps explained, she realized with a sick feeling in her stomach, why any time she asked if he was dating anyone, he denied it and quickly changed the subject.

She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but Marcy did doze off briefly. She awoke after about a half hour to Clint puttering around with the tea kettle. Sitting up, she put her feet on the floor, her stomach still queasy with anxiety.

“So why didn’t he want to tell us?”

“Maybe… maybe they aren’t telling other people at all?” Clint posited.

“Mr. Rose knows. That weird Roland person knows. Both of them assumed we knew!” Then it hit her. “David assumed we knew. Right? If they’re out to people here, and he invited us to Patrick’s party…” She thought again about how warm David always was with her on the phone, taking time out of his day to ask after her health or make small talk with her when she called the store. The way he spoke about Patrick, which she never questioned because of course they knew each other well — they ran a business together. “What do we do now?”

Clint’s eyes widened. “I have no idea.”

There was a knock on the door.

Marcy went over and opened it, revealing Johnny Rose’s worried face and expressive eyebrows on the other side.

“Hi, Marcy. Mind if I come in to chat?”

“Johnny… yes, of course,” she said, widening the opening to admit him.

So this was the seed idea of this fic. In canon, David gets there first and Johnny shortly thereafter. I thought it would be interesting to switch it and see what happened.

He clasped his hands together, eyes darting around the room. “I wanted to apologize to you both for speaking out of turn earlier. And saying… things that I assumed you… but it seems I was, er, that is, that I jumped to conclusions about…”

I enjoy writing Johnny when he’s flustered.

Marcy tried to rescue him. “You assumed we knew that Patrick and David are dating.”

Johnny cleared his throat. “Yes. And I just wanted to say, as a parent myself, that the important thing is that they’re happy. That’s all that matters. Who our kids love doesn’t matter.”

I figured he’d say essentially the same thing he did in canon here. That the important thing was that their kids were happy.

“Johnny, we don’t have a problem with Patrick being gay.” She looked over at Clint, who shook his head.

“No,” he said in agreement.

Johnny’s whole demeanor changed, his shoulders dropping as he smiled with relief. “Oh! Good, that’s good!”

They all smiled at each other for a second, unsure what to say next.

“Yes, anyway, we love Patrick,” Johnny said, rocking on his heels. “I probably should have said earlier, I was only skeptical about him and David at first. It’s been obvious for a while that they’re good for each other. Patrick’s become like a member of the family.”

I wish we had gotten to see Johnny’s skepticism about juggling a romantic and a business relationship on the show. That does seem in-character for him, and I would have liked to have seen him trying to talk to David about it, about guarding his heart and his parts and his business. I’m sure it would have been a disaster of a conversation but I would have enjoyed it.

“How, um, how long have they been together?” Marcy asked.

“Since not long after the store opened, as I recall.” Johnny said.

Heart pounding, Marcy dropped onto the bed next to where her husband was sitting. “Oh.”

“That’s a long time,” Clint said.

Johnny’s face fell as he probably realized that he’d once again delivered cataclysmic news to Patrick’s parents. It wasn’t just that he’d kept his sexual identity and his relationship with David a secret. He’d kept it a secret for over a year.

Ugh, the timeline. In 5x14, David says “two years ago”. But there seems to have only been one Christmas since they started dating. So I just figure David was severely rounding up when he said 2 years and that it’s really been more like a year and a half at that point, idk. Jeremy Bearimy.

“You know, it can be a hard thing for kids to talk about with their parents,” Johnny said. “Goodness knows David and I haven’t always talked about what was going on in his life.”

Marcy latched onto that. Perhaps she had an expert here, someone who’d been through what they were going through. “Was it hard for David to come out to you and your wife?”

Johnny pulled over one of the chairs and sat down. “Well, it was different with David. Moira assumed he was gay from a fairly young age.” He threw up his hands. “I wasn’t sure, myself, but I figured he’d tell us when he was ready. Then when he was eighteen, he told us he was bisexual. Then later, he amended it to ‘pansexual’.” Marcy looked at Clint and saw that he looked just as confused as she felt. “The labels can be confusing,” Johnny continued, “and I know I said some things I shouldn’t have, at first. Asked him if it wouldn’t be easier if he picked a gender. Which I realize wasn’t… helpful. Or fair of me. I just wanted him to be happy. And he is now! So.” He shrugged, laughing awkwardly.

I tend to just go with the fanon that when David came out as pansexual to his parents, it was probably a surprise to them that he wasn’t gay.

“But you always knew he wasn’t… straight,” Marcy said, disappointed that the Roses’ experience didn’t really mirror theirs that closely after all.

“Yes, I suppose we did know that. Moira knew, at least. She’s always understood David better than… anyway.” A shadow flitted across his face that looked a lot like guilt. “But I’m not sure it matters when we know. It only matters that we support our kids.”

It’s also fanon that Moira was quicker to support David than Johnny was, but that’s based on the pretty solid evidence of her very firm “It’s not a phase” to Johnny in S1. Not that I think Johnny ever rejected David outright, but he clearly has struggled with David’s identity on some level, based on his convo with Roland in S1.

Marcy nodded. “We do support him, of course we do. Of course we do,” she repeated, a lump rising in her throat. She felt Clint’s hand take hers, and she was afraid to look at him lest she start to cry in earnest.

“The thought that he didn’t think he could talk to us about this,” Clint said.

“When David’s obviously so important to him,” Marcy added.

Johnny looked at them with sympathy, and clearly with no idea what to say.

The shape of their failure as parents was starting to coalesce in her mind. The fact that while they’d never said anything bad about gay people in Patrick’s presence, they’d probably never said anything good either. The fact that ‘girlfriend’ and ‘wife’ were always the words they used when talking to young Patrick about what might happen when he grew up. The way she’d always encouraged him to try to patch things up with Rachel.

So here’s where I struggle with the concept of the Brewers as these lovely, accepting parents, because while I suspect that by 201(whatever year this is in the show), their feelings about queer people are positive, I don’t think they were necessarily that way when Patrick was growing up. I raised my kids with no particular expectations as to the gender of people they might want to date, and I doubt the Brewers were like that. I also think (and I used my own mother as a model for this) that when they talked about tolerance of gay people, it was with an air of “well, it’s not a choice, they can’t help it, so we need to love them.” The thing that communicated to me as a kid was that being gay was gross and icky and on some level, bad. But I’m sure if you’d have asked my mom, she would have patted herself on the back for her acceptance and “tolerance.” But people evolve, and gay marriage has been around now for long enough (especially in Canada) that a lot of minds have changed, and I count the Brewers among that number. They stepped up when they had to, and they were beaming and proud at the wedding. They also could have done things differently and perhaps made Patrick’s journey easier. But then he wouldn’t be with David, so.

“Is Patrick happy?” she asked Johnny, embarrassed that she didn’t know and that this near-stranger likely did. But she had to ask. She was desperate to know.

Johnny hesitated, perhaps realizing what a complicated question that was to ask about anyone. “He certainly seems happy. But you can ask him yourself tonight, right?”

There was another knock at the door.

Marcy opened it to a tall man with dark hair and Johnny Rose’s expressive eyebrows. He was clutching a gift basket to his chest and looking apprehensive. It could only be one person. “David?” she asked.

“Mrs. Brewer, Mr. Brewer, hi. I’m—”

“David!” his father said, standing. “Come on in. The Brewers and I were just having a nice chat.”

David looked even more apprehensive at that as he shuffled into the room, eyeing his father with suspicion. “Why?”

Marcy took the gift basket from David, letting his hurried explanation about its contents drift by without paying it any attention. “David?” She still felt like she was on the verge of tears, even more so now that she was faced with the man that her son had apparently fallen in love with. “Can I give you a hug?”

#fic commentary #fishyspots #ask box game

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tinyavenuesailor · 5 years ago

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Missed Opportunities

This is the beginning of a Spideytorch week series

Day 1 - Identity Porn

Peter was allowed to pity himself.

He was!

To hell with all of these inspirational quotes and speeches, or what they say about the darkness of self-pity. They haven’t met Peter Parker. Try having a superhero gig in a crazy place like New York City, where the villains’ favourite hobby is throwing you into a brick wall. Or having the media paint every single good deed you do as a mess you created. Constantly giving excuses because no one knows you’re saving the world in your spare time- and did he mention the lack of a love life? Oh and here is the newest misery in his life. How about having your best friend getting knocked into a coma for two weeks. TWO WEEKS! And when they wake up, the first thing they do is avoid you. Can’t even look you in the eye! Not like you haven’t been sitting by his side every moment you can spare, or having sleepless nights filled with worry, or feeling a constant sense of dread that you may never see that blonde idiot smile again.

He’s had a shitty couple of weeks and right now his native asshole New Yorker was dialed to a hundred.

He thought he could finally catch one peaceful hour (he’s Spider-Man, he wasn’t going to push the luxury time of a break, no matter how short), in a small cafe when his best friend stepped through the door of the cafe. He had on shades and a hat to hide his most prominent features, but after knowing the guy, Peter was able to recognize Johnny under any disguise. Especially such a terrible one. And just as the Parker Luck had it, Johnny turned his head and spotted Peter. Johnny's mouth gaped open at Peter for what seemed like an eternity. It took Peter a while to realize that Johnny was willingly making his way over to him. Hestopped in front of his table and held a small awkward smile, “Sw- P-Peter Parker.” This was officially weird. Let’s refresh.

Johnny Storm was his best friend but not Peter Parker’s best friend: Spider-Man’s best friend. Peter Parker, the person sitting in front of Johnny, was a loudmouth, smart-ass photographer whose main goal was to ruin his life (Johnny’s words not his). In other words, Johnny Storm did not associate with Peter Parker unless his picture was being taken for the front page of the Bugle.

Peter sat there in silence unable to come up with any reply to Johnny. He was still dazed at the fact Johnny even initiated a conversation. He was more used to the poorly executed insults and warnings to stay out of his life. The basics of his relationship with Johnny hasn’t changed though, with Johnny always misinterpreting Peter’s actions. For example, understanding Peter’s silence to be an invitation to sit. “Hey,” Johnny dipped his head and whispered. He lifted his shades up revealing those soft blue eyes. “It’s me.”

The poor misguided idiot he calls his best friend. “I know,” Peter folded his arms. “Sunglasses and a hat ain’t going to cut it as a disguise with those designer clothes, hot stuff.” Peter aimed particularly at the red leather jacket, a signature look for their native hot head.

Johnny's eyes went wide before dropping down his glasses and sinking into his seat. If he was trying to hide any eye-catching materials on him it wasn’t going to work. Johnny didn’t have to try to grab attention, despite his natural flamboyant personality. When Johnny stepped in, it was hard for your eyes not to gravitate towards him. Whether the attention was good or bad was all dependent on how obnoxious Johnny was feeling for the day. Johnny pulled the hat down making sure to tuck as much blond as he could away, “I’m sorry, I don’t have a line of ugly t-shirts to wear. Wanna lend me yours?”

And there were the insults, “I like this shirt.”

“Of course, you do,” Johnny smirked. Peter almost missed the small chuckle under Johnny’s lips.

“Are you just here to insult me or do you have an actual reason as to why you have graced me with your presence,” Peter raised an eyebrow.

“Just wanted to talk,” Johnny looked down at his fingers.

“Sureeeee,” Peter said with a straight voice, “but seriously what do you want?”

“To talk.”

Peter blinked, waiting for Johnny to burst out into laughter and throw another insult at him, but the man held a straight face, “Wait you’re serious?”

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Johnny shrugged. “Maybe we could be friends.” Okay, wow. Johnny was serious. Peter was definitely going to have to call Reed later to have Johnny scanned for brain trauma. The doubt on Peter’s face was blatant and Johnny rolled his eyes and groaned, “I’m being serious here.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical,” Peter took a sip of his coffee. “You haven’t exactly been the ‘friendliest’ to me.”

“I’m being friendly now right.” Peter furrowed his eyebrows and Johnny's shoulders fell, not able to break past an inch of Peter’s suspicion. He leaned closer and ducked his head down, “Look, I don’t really have a lot of friends. And after thinking it over for some time, I don’t see why we can’t be friends. It’ll be nice having someone to talk to.” Peter in normal circumstances would have been sympathetic and would have even let his guard down. except his alter-ego Spider-Man was Johnny’s best friend.

“What about our mutual friend?” Peter clenched his teeth.

“Spidey?” Johnny tipped his head. “What about him?”

“You can’t talk to him?”

“I-t It’s not really the same,” Johnny’s voice went soft.

“What’s wrong with Spider-Man?” Peter narrowed his eyes down at Johnny.

“Nothing is wrong with Spider-Man, okay,” Johnny groaned, “he’s a cool guy and why are we talking about him anyway?”

“Because the guy has spent the past few weeks worried about your ass and you don’t really seem to give a damn,” Peter got out of his seat and grabbed his bag. “Is it really so hard to just tell him you’re okay? He’s supposed to be your friend after all! If that’s how you treat all your friends I don’t want to be one!” Peter stormed out of the building eyes raging red without giving Johnny a chance to talk.

Peter was so over self-pity. He should have listened to all those inspirational speakers they are famous for a reason. Now he was pacing back on forth on the statue of liberty drowning in regret. Dark, feel-like-shit regret. He’s better off sticking to his self deprecating ways. Sure it upset him that Johnny would obviously not meet with his masked face but he didn’t mean to blow a fuse. The one opportunity Peter Parker gets to be genuine friends with Johnny Storm and he blows it. Screams in the guy’s face and storms off. It would be great to see his friend outside of spandex and not get an eye glare.

He needed to apologize, wanted to so badly but how was regular old Peter Parker going to get a hold of Johnny Storm. It was rare enough seeing Johnny walking among the civilians; when the city wasn’t hosting a battle between the Fantastic Four and the supervillain of the month. Even those times were far and few in between. He’s surprised Johnny was even able to remember him. His smart-ass attitude must have really made quite an impression.

There was always the solution to all his problems by finally telling Johnny the truth. Peter has known Johnny since they were teenagers. The young flamehead used to be curious about the face under the mask asking every question he could think of. As time went by the questions decreased until the matter of his secret identity was non-existent between them. If Johnny was dying to know, he never voiced it and respected his friend’s wishes.

If someone was to ask the masked vigilante why he wouldn’t tell his super pal the Human Torch his identity, he couldn’t give you an answer. His mind would draw a blank. Trust wasn’t the problem, Peter trusted Johnny with more than his life. He treated him like family. Johnny was an important person in his life. The excuses that Peter made to himself at this point were null, yet something held him back. The fear that things might change or the disappointment he may see in Johnny’s eyes when he finally discovers the truth.

“Glad you got my message!” Peter’s view shot up at the sound of Johnny’s voice from above. It was really hard to not see a flaming message in the sky saying ‘Meet at the usual place’. If he ignored that then he would just be a hypocrite and Peter already had enough guilt weighing on him. Johnny flew down and landed with a box of pizza in his hand. “Okay so I realize that I may have been an asshole this past week.” Johnny shot him with the most apologetic sparkling blue eyes Peter has ever seen. If Johnny had hit him with that from their meeting in the cafe he would have forgiven him on the spot.

Peter looked down at the pizza in Johnny’s hands, “Does the pizza come with the apology?”

“Yes, a whole box of Ray’s pizza.”

“Is it the real Ray’s pizza?”

“Uhhhh, I guess.”

Peter took the box with a sigh and took a seat, “I refuse to acknowledge you as a real New Yorker but I accept your apology.” Peter lifted his mask above his nose and bit into a slice. It was real Ray’s pizza. Maybe Johnny is a New Yorker after all.

Johnny to a seat next to him and released a heavy breath, “I really am sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“Completely avoid me and ignore every attempt I made to contact you,” Johnny flinched at the blunt words. He apologized again with a softer undertone.

“If it makes you feel better I didn’t just avoid you,” Johnny turned to smile like he could brighten the mood. “Although avoiding people you live with is pretty impossible.” It doesn’t make him feel better, rather it left him very concerned.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Johnny froze and a pained expression flashed over his face. “I- I can’t really talk much about it.”

“Johnny, you were in a coma,” The Spidey mask scrunched to show Peter’s perplexed expression.

“Well my body was here but my mind,” Johnny sighed. “I had narrowed it down to time travel or alternate universe, but now I’m a hundred percent sure it was an alternate universe.”

“You went to an alternate universe?!”

“Yeah got to live as another me for a few weeks,” Johnny's shoulders slumped down.

“Did something happen?”

“It’s not what you think,” Johnny shook his head. “It was perfect. Just so perfect. Like, there is another version of me living the best life with an amazing family and the perfect husband and the most lovable kid. And to kick it off he had both my dream kitchen and workshop! not one, both!” Johnny threw his arms up into the air. “And those weren’t even the best parts.”

“Oh.” Peter was at a loss of what to say.

“And then I came back and,” Johnny ran his fingers through his hair, “ and I don’t know what. I couldn’t help but miss it.” He slumped down to his knees. “Sorry, Spidey, when I woke up, I was just expecting someone else.”

Peter's heart clenched and he kept his eyes away from Johnny and onto the horizon. He remembered that night. Johnny turning in the bed, arms reaching out to his side searching for someone and groaning when he couldn’t find them. Peter had thought at the moment that Johnny was disoriented and trying to ground himself. He reached his hands out to Johnny. When their hands met a smile bright enough to melt an iceberg grew on Johnny’s lips. He intertwined his fingers with Peter’s and gave them a squeeze. Peter was too shocked at the gesture to think too deeply into it, but looking back at it those soft chuckles and finger rubs were meant for someone else. “Come back so we can cudd-” Johnny opened his eyes and his smile fell quicker than an anchor to the sea floor. He snatched his hand away and Peter watched as disappointment filled Johnny’s eyes. The rest was history.

“I’ve been spending the past week jealous of another me I guess,” Johnny laughed bitterly to himself.

“Johnny,” Peter started unable to watch his best friend do this to himself.

“I know,” Johnny shrugged, “it’s not my life but i doesn’t mean I didn’t wish it was.”

“Yeah, I guess I understand.” It made him a little jealous too knowing in some distant universe there was a version of him that did everything right, where Uncle Ben was alive and he didn’t mess up every good relationship he had.

“Don’t worry I’ll be back to my old self soon,” Johnny knocked his shoulders. “On the bright side no matter which universe I still have you as my bestie.”

“I was?” As his friend. Just a friend. Peter isn’t sure why that doesn’t sit right with him.

“Yeah, you weren’t really different, still just as annoying.”

“Well, thank god,” Peter blew out in relief. “Who else is going to drive you insane?” Peter and Johnny both burst out into laughter until they settled down into a comfortable silence and chewed on their pizza.

“Sooo,” Johnny broke the silence, “You go to Parker to talk about your problems now.”

“Had to go to somebody when you were gone,” Peter shrugged. He’s glad Johnny came up with his own decent explanation for Peter Parker knowing Spider-Man’s dark thoughts.

“I guess you two are close then.”

“A little.”

Johnny tucked a couple strands behind his ear, “Can you confirm something?”

“What?” Peter asked with a mouth stuffed with pizza.

“Does Peter hate me?”

Peter nearly choked on his pizza at the question. “No! No, he doesn’t hate you! Peter can come off as an asshole but trust me he doesn’t hate you.”

“Okay,” Johnny gave a small smile, “that’s good.” He took up another slice and continued in their previous silence.

Peter honestly didn’t know what he was doing. The first time he stepped into this cafe was on a complete whim on getting some relaxation into his system. Now he was hoping to have another fateful run-in with Johnny. Key word hoping. This may or may not have been his third or fourth time standing in front of the menu while the barista glared him down. Studying the menu for thirty minutes and ordering a single black coffee apparently gets on baristas’ nerves.

He’s never observed the options on the menu. He actually uses the time to think of what he’ll say to Johnny if he ever saw him. An apology for starters followed by a joke to lighten the mood between them and then an invite to drink coffee with him. Peter should be able to wing a conversation after that. He’s been winging it his entire life. His thirty minutes were up and he walked up to the barista ready to order. “Uhh, can I get a …”

“Black coffee?” The female barista raised an eyebrow at him. “We can give suggestions if you have trouble choosing.”

“I like your coffee.”

“Yeah, most of our enthusiast order the specials.”

“Count me in the minority.”

The barista held a cold glare as she took up a cup and started writing his name, “Sure thing, Peta.”

“No, its…”

“Peter?”

Peter turned around expecting to see Johnny, but instead met with a young man with striking blue eyes and raven black hair. If he wasn’t so disappointed at the lack of a Johnny Storm he would have been stoked to have a beautiful boy talk to him.

“Sorry, do I know you?” Sure the boy was beautiful but he’s never met him. He wouldn’t forget a face like that.

The boy blinked for a few seconds before sitting back into his heels. “No, uhh I’m umm a big fan of yours.”

“A fan?” He had fans?

“You’re a photographer at the Bugle, right?” Apparently, he had fans.

“Yeah,” Peter scratched his head. “I just didn’t know I had fans.”

“You are the one who takes the best Superhero photos in the city,” the boy tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. Was cute guy flirting with him? This felt like flirting, which Peter was very open to.

“Excuse me,” the barista interrupted. “Could you please pay?”

“Oh,” Peter pulled out a wallet and handed her a five. She quickly took the five and made the transaction. As she was handing Peter his change, she peered behind him to the boy, “I’ll be careful around this one he left his last boyfriend in tears here.”

“He was crying?!” The devastation hit Peter imaging Johnny in tears alone after he stormed off. He didn’t mean to make him …. Wait. “He’s not my boyfriend!” Then another pause. “Was he really crying?”

“Guy looked heartbroken to me.” Peter didn’t have much time for questions with a line he was holding up and a call for a black coffee for ‘Peta’.

No wonder he hasn’t seen Johnny, if he really did leave here in a sullen state then he probably wouldn’t want to come back to the cafe. “So the famous Peter Parker is a heartbreaker?” Peter spun around to see the same cute guy interested in keeping the conversation going.

“Don’t get your hopes up, you would think my facebook status was stuck on single,” Did that really just leave his mouth?

The cute boy thought it was funny anyway and laughed along, “So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

“Vanilla Latte for Spencer,” The barista placed down a cup.

“Is that you?” Peter pointed towards the steaming beverage.

“What?”

“Spencer?”

The boy furrowed his eyebrows until he saw the steaming cup, “Oh yes, yeah that’s me Spencer.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“Well duh its umm Jones.”

“Spencer Jones?”

“Yeah, I’m new in the city,” he took a giant cup of the boiling latte. “Do you...umm,wanna grab a seat?” Spence pointed towards the empty seats. Peter thought against it at once knowing his primary objective for being there was for Johnny but those blue eyes were so tempting, he couldn’t resist.

“Yeah sure, I’ll tell you all the crazy stories about the big Apple.”

Okay, Peter may have turned into a regular at the hipster coffee shop. He’s given up on any chance of seeing Johnny. If the Human Torch did visit this coffee shop often, Peter always missed him. He now stops in to meet up with his new cute friend Spencer. He’s formed a habit over meeting his friend every morning. Friend. Friend. Maybe more than a friend.

“How could you stand working for him Peter,�� Spencer threw his phone down with the Bugle’s latest published article on their favorite menace, Spider-Man being displayed. The headline, ‘Spiderman’s Reign of Terror’ and a photograph of Spiderman brawl with the Rhino taken by yours truly. “He’s obviously protecting citizens and he can do nothing but mention the damage and call him a menace!” Peter had learned so far that Spencer is a big fan of Spider-man. It got him feeling giddy inside. “Like what’s Jameson’s problem? What Spidey ever do to him?” The way he jumps to defend Spider-Man is also quite pleasing to Peter’s ears. “He probably has a job and another life to balance with all that superheroing, and he’s doing a pretty good job! Why can’t they just give Spidey a break?” He was going to cry. He had to hold back the tears. Is this was appreciation felt like?

“Spider-Man would love you, if he ever heard you say that,” Peter masked the fact that he was choking up inside.

“I am pretty lovable,” Spencer shrugged.

“Are you?”

“I mean look at me,” Spencer held his head up, “I’m gorgeous, who could resist loving this face.”

He was beautiful. “You should really get that narcissism checked out.” There was a sudden kick to his shin and Peter jumped in his seat, “Ow, you kicked me!”

“You deserved it,” Spencer stuck his tongue out. “What does it take for you to agree with me?”

“Then it’ll be too easy.”

Spencer rolled his eyes and drank his latte, “You are so difficult.”

“Yet, here you are every morning seeking my company.”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“That you enjoy my company,” Peter smirked and Spencer covered his mouth to hide his laugh.

“Now who’s the narcissist.”

“Still you,” Peter replied without hesitation.

Spencer rolled his eyes over Peter and shrugged, “You’re right, you can’t love yourself wearing a shirt like that.”

“I like this shirt,” he really just grabbed it off a sale rack when MJ demanded he go shopping for new clothes. He got a great deal.

“Do yourself a favor and never wear it again. In fact, give it to me I’ll have it burned.” Peter wasn’t doubting Spencer on that. The boy was very serious towards the hatred of his t-shirts. Spencer continued to drink his latte at an alarmingly fast rate despite it still being hot. Peter was still waiting for his coffee to cool down. Spencer put down his cup and his eyes flicked up to Peter, a question obviously weighing on his mind. “Peter?”

“Yeah,” Peter straightened in his seat.

“I’m not assuming wrong about this, right?” Spencer placed a hand over his and stared right into Peter’s eyes.

Peter’s heartbeat loud in his ears, screaming to be heard as he interlaced his fingers with Spencer's and took the jump, “No.” He really hoped he wasn’t falling as fast as he felt he was, but with a smile that could brighten your whole world like Spencer’s- it was hard not to. He could stay staring into those blue eyes forever until his phone alarm went off ruining the moment. He snagged his hand away and quickly grabbed it up. “Shit,” Looks like Vulture was on the prowl… again.

“Peter?”

“Spencer, sorry I have to cut this short but I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you,” Spencer drew his hand back into his lap. Shit he was not about to leave another gorgeous boy sad in this cafe. He already gets enough death glares from the baristas as it is. Peter took a leap of faith and dropped his head down to press a kiss to Spencer’s cheeks. Spencer yelped,not in a bad way, but in a surprised-good way. “I - I’m looking forward to it.” Peter had to rush out after that. Not only because he has a mad guy flying the skies and harassing the peace of New York, but because he’s falling harder and faster than he would like to admit.

Spencer watched Peter run out and waited a few minutes before deciding to leave himself. He walked two blocks up from the cafe before he stepped into a back alley. He did a double-take to make sure no one was watching before tapping his wrist, revealing a watch fading out of a camouflage mode. He pressed a button on the watch and Spencer’s black hair melted into blond and his face became slightly smaller and slender. The only constant feature on him were his blue eyes, a very well known trait of the famous Storm family. Spencer was now revealed to be Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. His hand drifted over to his cheek still able to feel the sensation where Peter kissed him. Johnny took a deep breath and fell back onto the wall behind him. “I’m fucked.”

#spideytorch week 2019 #spideytorch #spideytorchweek

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