#liam gallagher x you

[biblical-chronicles]

Desperation

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where the reader and Liam celebrate him going solo (and she really wants to be taken for a ride but he's in a rather teasing mood).

[18+] (!!)

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The flat was a proper state by now as the two of you celebrated As You Were finally being out in the world. You were both a bit too drunk, sprawled out on the couch, laughing at each other over nonsense only the two of you would find funny.

Liam was lounging, his legs stretched out on the coffee table, head tilted lazily against the couch. His hair was a mess, and his t-shirt was rumpled, but he looked so damn good. You’d been sneaking glances at him all night, your chest swelling with pride over everything he’d accomplished.

You sighed, a bit louder than you intended. He turned his head to look at you, a knowing smirk already on his lips.

“What’s that for, then?” he asked.

You hesitated, the alcohol in your system making your tongue a bit too loose. “Just… proud of you, that’s all.”

His smirk softened into a grin, and he tipped his beer bottle toward you. “Cheers, love. Couldn’t have done it without ya, you know.”

You hummed, not trusting yourself to say more. But the longer you sat there, watching him take another swig of his drink, the harder it became to ignore the thoughts swirling in your head. He wasn’t just talented, determined, and sharp-witted—he was beautiful. Absolutely bloody beautiful.

And the alcohol wasn’t helping your restraint.

Before you could overthink it, you set your drink down and shuffled over to him on the couch, clumsily straddling his lap. His eyebrows shot up as he let out a startled laugh.

“Oi! What’s this about, then?”

You grabbed his face, leaning in close enough that your noses almost touched. “You’re too fit for your own good, Gallagher.”

He grinned, his hands instinctively going to your hips to steady you. “Yeah? Took you this long to notice?”

You rolled your eyes, your fingers brushing through his hair. “Shut up.”

“Make me.”

You leaned in to kiss him, but he turned his head at the last second, your lips landing on his cheek instead. You pulled back, glaring at him as he laughed, his shoulders shaking beneath you.

“Liam,” you whined, grabbing the front of his t-shirt. “Stop being an idiot.”

“Can’t help it, love,” he teased, his eyes glinting with mischief. “You’re makin’ it too fun.”

You huffed, trying to kiss him again, but he dodged you, leaning back against the couch with a cocky grin. “Not so fast. You’ve got to work for it.”

“Work for it?” you sputtered, your cheeks flushing. “You’re unbelievable.”

“And yet,” he said, smirking, “here you are, throwin’ yourself at me.”

Your frustration boiled over, and in your drunken determination, you shoved his shoulders back, making him topple slightly against the armrest of the couch. He let out an exaggerated oof, laughing as you finally managed to capture his lips in a kiss.

It was messy and uncoordinated, your teeth grazing his bottom lip at one point. You could feel his smirk against your mouth as he finally started kissing you back, his hands tightening on your hips.

“‘Bout time,” he muttered against your lips, his voice still teasing.

“Oh, give over,” you mumbled, trying to keep up with his relentless teasing, but the way his hands slid up your back had your words trailing off into a sigh.

“Look at you,” he murmured, pulling back just enough to catch his breath. “All worked up. Proper desperate for me, aren’t ya?”

You glared at him, your cheeks burning as you tried to retort, but he leaned in, nipping playfully at your jawline, effectively cutting you off.

“Admit it,” he murmured, his breath hot against your ear. “You can’t resist me.”

“You’re such a tosser,” you managed, but your voice lacked conviction as his lips trailed down to your neck.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, chuckling. “But you love it.”

You couldn’t argue with that, not when his hands were sliding under the hem of your shirt.

Your fingers fumbled with the hem of his t-shirt, the alcohol making your coordination less than stellar. You tugged at the fabric clumsily, desperate to feel more of him, your frustration bubbling up when he only chuckled at your attempts.

“Christ, love,” he teased, tilting his head to look at you, his grin infuriatingly smug. “In a bit of a rush, are we?”

“Liam,” you whined, your voice thick with want and exasperation. “You’re impossible.”

“Am I?” he said, arching a brow, his hands still lazily brushing along your sides as if he had all the time in the world.

You groaned, giving up on his shirt for the moment and instead pressing yourself closer to him. His thigh was firm beneath you, and the sudden friction sent a shiver through your body. You bit your lip, your cheeks heating up as you instinctively started to move, rolling your hips clumsily against him in an attempt to find some relief.

Liam’s hands froze for a moment, and you caught the slight hitch in his breath before he smirked again, his grip on your hips tightening.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly tone. “You’re not messin’ about, are ya?”

“No, I’m not,” you shot back, the alcohol giving you just enough courage to glare at him. “And if you don’t stop taking the piss, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” he interrupted, his grin widening as he tilted his head, his eyes practically glowing with amusement.

You didn’t answer, too focused on the sensation of his thigh beneath you, the way his hands guided your movements even as he teased you mercilessly. You felt clumsy and desperate, but you didn’t care. The heat pooling in your stomach was impossible to ignore, and Liam’s refusal to just give in was driving you mad.

“Liam,” you groaned, your voice coming out more like a plea than you intended.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“Please,” you murmured, your forehead dropping to his shoulder as you continued your movements, your breath hitching with every pass.

He hummed, the low sound vibrating through you, and you felt his lips brush against your temple. “What’s the matter, love? Thought you were in charge here.”

You pulled back, glaring at him through narrowed eyes.

“Why do you have to be such a pain?” you shot back, your voice a little shaky, though whether it was from the alcohol or the way his hands gripped your waist, you couldn’t tell.

“Me? A pain?” He tilted his head, mock innocence dripping from his tone. “You’re the one grindin’ on me like it’s your last night on Earth.”

You swatted his arm, your cheeks flushing hotter than they already were. “You’re impossible.”

“Impossible?” He clicked his tongue, shifting slightly beneath you just to watch your breath hitch. “Not what you were sayin’ a minute ago, was it?”

You groaned, throwing your head back dramatically. “Why do I even put up with you?”

Liam leaned closer, his lips brushing just below your ear. “’Cause you can’t resist me, and you know it.”

“Ugh,” you huffed, your frustration spilling over as you tugged at his shirt again. This time, it was less clumsy, more determined, but he still didn’t budge, his hands catching yours mid-motion.

“Easy, tiger,” he teased, holding your wrists gently but firmly. “What’s the rush? We’ve got all night.”

“Liam Gallagher, if you don’t—”

But he cut you off with a laugh, leaning back into the couch as if this was all a game to him. “Go on, then. What’re you gonna do?”

Your reply caught in your throat, your brain too foggy to come up with a decent retort. Instead, you let out a frustrated growl, your movements against him becoming a little more frantic, desperate for any semblance of control.

Liam’s grip on your waist tightened, his teasing smirk faltering just slightly as his breathing grew heavier. “Careful, love,” he murmured, his voice low and gravelly. “You’re gonna wear yourself out.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d stop being such a—”

“Such a what?” he interrupted, his lips brushing against yours, so close but not nearly enough. “Go on, say it.”

“Such a bastard,” you finished, your voice shaky as you met his gaze.

He chuckled again, his forehead resting against yours. “Maybe,” he admitted, his hands sliding down to your hips to guide your movements just enough to make you gasp.

Liam's hands on your hips were steady now as you rocked against his thigh. You could feel it building, that tight coil in your stomach, your body responding to the rhythm you’d created. The alcohol coursing through you only made it more intense.

You let out a shaky breath, your forehead dropping to his as you whispered his name, your voice trembling with need. “Liam...”

He was watching you closely now, his eyes dark and focused, the smirk still tugging at the corners of his mouth. He shifted his thigh just slightly, enough to make your head fall back with a small, helpless moan.

“Christ, look at you,” he murmured, his voice low and thick with amusement. “You’re so close, aren’t ya?”

You nodded, your hands gripping the fabric of his shirt for support as you kept moving, your breaths growing shorter.

But just as the edge started to blur, just as you felt yourself tipping over, Liam’s hands tightened on your waist and he pulled you down from his thigh.

“Liam!” you gasped, blinking up at him in disbelief, your cheeks burning as small tears prickled in the corners of your eyes.

He laughed softly, clearly pleased with himself. “Bloody hell, look at you,” he said, brushing a thumb under your eye to catch a stray tear that had escaped. “Worked up over nearly nothin’, eh?”

You glared at him, your frustration boiling over. “It wasn’t nothin’, and you know it,” you snapped, though your voice wavered.

He tilted his head, his grin widening. “Oh, I know, love. Believe me, I know. But you’re actin’ like I’ve denied you oxygen or summat.”

“Because you have!” you shot back, your hands pushing at his chest weakly before falling back to your sides.

“Have I now?” he teased, his hands sliding up your thighs to rest on your hips. “Didn’t realize I had that much power over ya.”

“You’re infuriating,” you hissed, your frustration palpable as you squirmed in his hold.

“And you’re bloody gorgeous when you’re like this,” he countered, leaning in close enough that his breath fanned across your lips. “Proper addictive, you are.”

You let out a shaky breath, your tears now more from pent-up tension than frustration, as you whispered, “Then stop messing with me, Liam.”

His grin softened just slightly “Oh, love,” he said, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “I’ll stop when you’re beggin’ me for it.”

You groaned, hiding your face in your hands.

Liam’s teasing smirk lingered, but his resolve seemed to falter when you went on to straddle him again, your head falling against his shoulder.

“Oh, alright, love,” he murmured, his tone still playful. “Can’t have you cryin’ over me, can I?”

Before you could process his words, his hands moved, firm and deliberate, pulling you flush against him. His lips crashed into yours with urgency, the kiss messy and uncoordinated thanks to the alcohol.

You let out a muffled moan against his mouth, your hands tangling in his hair as you melted into him, the earlier frustration dissolving into pure want. His teeth grazed your bottom lip, and you gasped, the sound swallowed by his kiss as his hands slid under your shirt, rough fingertips brushing the bare skin of your back.

“Thought you were gonna make me beg,” you managed to mumble breathlessly between kisses, your voice trembling with equal parts need and triumph.

He chuckled against your lips. “You already did, darlin’,” he teased, his hands gripping your waist as he shifted you closer. “Didn’t even know it.”

You groaned, your nails digging lightly into his scalp in retaliation, earning a sharp inhale from him. “You’re insufferable,” you whispered, though the way your lips chased his told an entirely different story.

“And you’re drunk,” he shot back, his grin breaking the kiss for a moment, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke. “Clumsy as hell, too.”

“Shut up,” you muttered, trying to reclaim his mouth, but he tilted his head just out of reach, his smirk maddening.

“Alright, alright,” he teased, his voice thick with amusement. “No need to get violent, love.”

You groaned, half out of exasperation, half out of desperation, your hands gripping the collar of his shirt as you yanked him closer. “Liam,” you hissed, your tone a warning now.

His smirk faltered as he let you close the gap this time, his lips crashing into yours with a force that sent your head spinning. You moaned into his mouth, your fingers fumbling at his shirt, tugging it up but not managing to get it off entirely.

“Christ, yer keen,” he muttered, his voice muffled against your lips as his hands slid under your top, rough palms skimming up your sides.

“Don’t you dare start again,” you shot back, your words muffled. You shifted in his lap, your thighs clenching around him, which was enough to draw a sharp inhale from him.

“Bloody hell,” he rasped, his grip tightening on your hips as his lips left yours to trail down your jaw, to your neck, biting and kissing with a hunger that matched your own.

Your top was shoved up but not off, and neither of you cared. His hands found every inch of exposed skin they could, and you were just as desperate, tugging his shirt further up his chest, though it remained caught around his shoulders.

“You’re impossible,” you panted, your head falling back as his teeth grazed the sensitive spot just below your ear.

“Yeah look who’s talking.” he shot back, the smirk audible in his voice even as his mouth continued its way down your neck.

You didn’t dignify that with a response, instead grinding down against him, the friction sending a bolt of electricity through you both. His head fell back against the couch, a low groan escaping him as his hands gripped your waist tightly.

“God, Liam,” you breathed, your fingers tangling in his hair as you kissed him again, your lips colliding with his in a mess of teeth and desperation.

“Slow down, love,” he murmured against your mouth, though his hands betrayed him, sliding up your thighs to grip at the curve of your hips. “We’ve got time.”

“Not enough,” you countered, your voice trembling, your fingers digging into his shoulders for balance.

His laugh was rough and low, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke. “You’re mad, y’know that?”

“Shut up and touch me,” you demanded, your hands sliding down his chest, taking in the warmth of his skin through the gaps where his shirt hung open.

His response was immediate, his hands finding the hem of your shorts and tugging just enough to make you gasp.

His hands fumbled with the button of your shorts, his fingers clumsy from the alcohol but determined, his frustration evident in the quiet curses that escaped his lips. You couldn’t help but laugh softly at his struggle, your own hands moving to help him, though it only seemed to tangle you both up further.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, his voice rough as he finally managed to undo the button, pushing the fabric down just enough to make room for his wandering hands.

Your laugh turned into a breathy moan as his fingers brushed against your skin. You leaned forward, your lips capturing his again in a kiss that was all teeth and urgency, your hands tugging at his shirt in a futile attempt to get it off completely.

“Leave it,” he rasped against your mouth, his hands gripping your hips as he shifted beneath you, trying to maneuver you into a better position as he kissed you again.

“Liam,” you whined, your voice barely above a whisper as you broke the kiss, your forehead resting against his. “Please, just—”

“Impatient, aren’t ya?” he cut you off, his smirk returning as he leaned back slightly, his hands still firmly on your hips, holding you just where he wanted.

You didn’t bother answering instead your fingers quickly found their way to the waistband of his joggers, clumsily tugging them down as Liam shifted beneath you to help, his grin still there. “In a hurry, are we?”

“Shut up,” you muttered, focusing on your task as best as you could, though the alcohol made your movements less than graceful. The material bunched awkwardly, and you cursed under your breath, making him laugh.

“Need a hand, love?” he asked, one brow quirked.

“I’ve got it,” you snapped, though your laugh betrayed your frustration. You finally managed to slide his joggers down enough to reveal the hard line of him pressing against the fabric of his boxers. The sight made your breath hitch, and Liam caught the look in your eyes, his smirk softening lightly.

“Go on, then,” he murmured, his hands settling on your hips, encouraging but still letting you take the lead.

You swallowed hard, the warmth of his hands grounding you as you slid the last barrier away, your fingers brushing against his skin and making him suck in a sharp breath.

Liam’s hands tightened on your hips, his touch searing as you shifted to position yourself over him. His eyes locked on yours, dark and brimming with a hunger that made your chest tighten.

“You sure about this, love?” he asked, his voice rough but sincere.

You nodded, your lips parting as you whispered, “Absolutely.”

“Good.” he muttered, his hands guiding you as you slowly sank down onto him, the stretch stealing your breath. His head fell back against the couch, a sharp exhale escaping him as you both adjusted, the connection overwhelming.

For a moment, neither of you moved, the air filled just with your shared breaths. His hands roamed up and down your thighs, grounding you as you slowly began to rock your hips. The immediate sensation was dizzying, each movement sending sparks through your body.

“Bloody hell,” Liam groaned, his hands gripping your hips to steady you. “You feel… fuckin’ perfect, you do.”

The praise made your cheeks flush, your hands bracing against his chest as you picked up the pace, your movements clumsy but eager. Liam’s fingers dug into your skin, guiding your rhythm as he met you halfway, his low groans and whispered curses spurring you on.

The couch creaked beneath you, the sound mingling with your gasps and moans as the tension built between you. His lips found your neck again, his teeth grazing your skin before he kissed and sucked at the spot, messy and wet, leaving a trail of spit behind before finally getting to your lips again.

The kiss was all tongues and teeth, his spit mixing with yours as you clung to him. He licked into your mouth, his grip on your hips tightening as you whimpered against his lips, completely undone by how fervent he was.

“Look at you,” he murmured, his breath hot against your spit-slicked lips. “So desperate, yeah? Can’t get enough, can ya?”

“Shut up,” you panted, your voice trembling, though your words carried no weight. Your movements grew more frantic, the slick slide of your bodies driving you closer and closer to the edge.

He laughed as his lips caught yours again, the kiss even messier this time. Your spit dripped down your chin but Liam didn’t seem to care, his hands gripping you like he couldn’t bear to let go. His tongue swept over yours, his teeth nipping at your lower lip as you gasped into his mouth.

You whimpered, your nails raking down his chest as you clung to him, unable to keep up with the pace he was setting. His cock filled you perfectly, each thrust sending shocks of pleasure straight to your core, and you couldn’t stop the broken sounds spilling from your lips.

“God, Liam,” you cried, your voice trembling as you pressed your forehead against his, your hips grinding against him desperately.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he groaned, his teeth catching your jawline before dragging his tongue over the damp skin. “So good for me, love. So fuckin’ good.”

Your body trembled as the tension built higher, your legs shaking from the effort, your breaths coming out in sharp gasps. The wet sounds of your bodies moving together were borderline obscene, your slick coating him and making each thrust even filthier.

“You’re close, aren’t ya?” he muttered, his lips brushing against your ear, his breath hot and ragged. “I can feel it—fuck, you’re squeezing me so tight.”

You could only nod, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from the overwhelming sensation. “Please” you whimpered, not even sure what you were begging for anymore, your body trembling as you chased the edge.

“Go on, then,” he urged, his voice soft but insistent. “Let me feel you.”

The words were your undoing. The tension snapped, pleasure crashing over you in a wave that left you crying out, your nails digging into his shoulders. Your body shook as you came, your movements faltering as he held you steady, riding you through it.

“That’s it, love,” he murmured, his voice low and wrecked, his lips brushing against your temple as he chased his own release. A few more rough thrusts and he groaned, his body tensing beneath you as he spilled into you, his grip on your hips slackening as the last of his strength left him.

The room was filled with the sound of your heavy breaths, the scent of sweat hanging in the air as you both came down from the high. Liam’s hands moved to your back, his touch surprisingly tender as he stroked your damp skin.

“Reckon we’ve done in the couch,” he said, his grin wide and teasing despite the flush on his cheeks.

You laughed, your head still resting on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve wrecked a piece of furniture, would it?”

“Oi, cheeky,” he shot back, though his arms tightened around you, holding you close.

As the haze of alcohol and adrenaline began to fade, you couldn’t help but smile against his skin, your fingers tracing lazy patterns on his chest. “Liam,” you murmured softly, “I’m so proud of you.”

He went quiet for a moment, his lips brushing against your hair. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you said, lifting your head to meet his gaze. “You deserve this—everything.”

His grin softened, and for a moment, he looked at you like you’d just handed him the world. “Guess I’ve got everything I need right here.”

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really hope the slight wait for this was worth it ya lot, tried steppin’ me game up a bit, can’t wait for the feedback xx

need more dilf Liam appreciation on here, also hope the pair of ya whose requests I mashed together here are happy with this, love ya!

[leaawrites]

I can’t tell you the way I feel

Liam Gallagher x fem!reader

Summary: when Liam takes on a dare from his friends, he doesn't believe of finding himself making the biggest mistake in his life.

Warnings: suggestive content, allusions to sex, angst, Liam being a dumb cunt

Wordcount: 1.6k

Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Masterlist

Waking before Liam did meant she had all of his peace to herself. No thought in his mind disturbing them, nobody around that could harm them. It was just their two bodies, tangled in love and sheets.

Reluctantly she began tracing the outline of his face. Her finger moving over his jaw, his lips, down his adam’s apple and over his collarbone. Softly tracing the bone that was stretching his skin towards her, calling for her.

Focused on her finger and how it found it’s way so effortlessly over his body, she didn’t notice Liam’s eyes opening. Confused at first, though softening when seeing her by his side. His arm tightening around her waist, pulling her closer. The sheet covering her chest falling down, exposing her cold skin to his warm one.

“Morning, love,” he greeted her, leaving a soft kiss on her lips. His voice raspy and still lower than she’d ever heard it before.

“Morning,” she answered back, a slight heat rising up her neck and rushing to her cheeks the longer he looked at her. His eyes never wavering from her own gaze, fixated on him.

Drawing small circles on her hips, he smiled as she took his other hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. Slowly leaving a trail of kisses up his arm, over his chest and on his neck, he let out a soft groan in reaction. His nose pressed against her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her bare skin.

Her soft lips gently sucked against the flesh under his ear. Giggling against his skin when she felt his arms around her waist tighten. His hands squeezing her hips.

Two bare chests pressed against each other, falling and rising in sync. Breathing as one.

“Wait, love. Stop.” His voice sounded desperate, like she hurt him. Soft, gentle kisses pierced a dagger through his heart, every single one a mark now on his skin. A reminder of his sin.

Bagging away slightly, she draped the sheet over her chest again. Looking at him with wide eyes, fear soothing through her that she’d done something wrong. Was it too much? Was it not good enough?

Seeing the look in her eyes, thoughts clearly spiraling through her head, he couldn’t form a good excuse. What seemed so easy with everyone else felt like a burden with her. Normally he’d say something like, ‘I promised my mum to be home already’ or ‘I should go, not that your parents find out’. But now, lying seemed to be too harmful.

“I need to -” he started talking, his finger pointing outside the window.

“You need to go?” Finishing his sentence for him, he nodded his head, shameful looking down, not catching the eye roll and sarcastic grin on her face before it disappeared again just as quickly as the realization came. Of course it was all just for a quick laugh with his friends. It was Liam Gallagher, for fucks sake. “I hope I’m not keeping you from going.”

Picking up her shirt and underwear from the floor, she quickly put them on, before walking over to the other side of the room and taking his clothes as well, throwing it his way before walking out the door.

A, “Wouldn’t dare to,” falling from her lips as she slammed the door shut behind her.

Still leaning on his elbows, Liam stayed like this as if he was frozen. The shower went off in the other room and that was when it hit him. He fucked it up completely. Throwing his head into the soft pillow he let out a groan. How could he not even find a good excuse to make it less shameful to walk out of her house?

He deserved it though, he decided ultimately as he found himself back out on the street, walking with his head low. He totally deserved it.

Unlike her.

Head leant against the door of the bathroom, she waited until she could hear the front door close before turning off the shower and letting the water from her eyes flow down her face. Of course he didn’t mean anything he said. Why did she even let him invite her to the gig anyway? Why did she have to go too?

When his body rushed towards her the night before, eyes lighting up as he found her and excitement being written all over his face, she believed that - maybe, somehow - Liam Gallagher wasn’t as much of a twat as she always assumed he was.

Though female intuition is barely ever wrong and that’s what she should’ve been listening to. Not the hammering of her heart or the lovesick thoughts in her brain for finally being seen by someone as more than just another face. It was her own fault.

Noel sat in the living room, feet propped up on the coffee table, eyes fixated on the telly, though he noticed when Liam walked in, the heavy stomp of his feet being too familiar.

Falling down in the seat next to him, a beer now in his hand, he popped open the can and starred at the people talking too. Neither acknowledging each other more than with their mind.

Until Noel spoke, “You weren’t too shite.”

“Thanks.” Taking another large sip, he tried ignoring his brother as much as he could.

“Though the songs sound like they’re written by a toddler. Did you write them then?” Noel was sure Liam would throw the telly at him as he said that with his sour mood, though he only chuffed, sinking further into the cushion. Trying to escape from this conversation. He knew where it would lead to.

“Not everything that’s shite in your mind is from me, alright? Cunt.”

Noel’s brows furrowed, why wasn’t he trying to strangle him yet?

“I’m not too opposed to the idea of joining anymore,” he tried it differently, trying to make his mood lighten.

“Cheers, mate. Gonna tell the others then.” His voice staying monotone and unwavering. Nothing could be a worse conversation topic at the moment in his opinion.

“Your bird’s fit.”

Jinx.

“She’s not my bird,” Liam tried, his voice growing defensive. Molding in the same tone that he had when talking to ehr the first time.

“So, she’s free?” Noel asked back, quite enjoying how deep in denial his brother was. Finally, Liam’s eyes snapped over to him, filled with horror and disgust.

“If you even try something, I swear-” before he could talk further, Peggy came in, a grocery bag in each hand.

“Would you boys stop fighting for once and help your mum carrying in the groceries?” she said, to which Noel immediately jumped up and went outside. Liam following him shortly after. The thoughts still running through his mind. He didn’t actually think she was fit, did he? Well, she was, but who was he to think that?

Later that night, when Liam was already laying in bed, cigarette in between his lips, Noel came walking in. He noticed how off his brother was for the whole day, of course he did. There was barely any talking done at the table, when normally Liam couldn’t shut up even if you’d sew his mouth shut. That night he was simply staring down at his food, not even eating it all. The worrying glance which Peggy sent Noel’s way after seeing her son this abnormal wasn’t easing his nerves.

“What’s got you so twisted?” He asked, sitting down on his own bed.

Liam leaned over, blowing the smoke from his mouth out of the window. “Nothing.”

“It’s about that girl, right? You fancy her and she didn’t want to hear any of it, because she knows you’re a cunt and rejected you, or what?” He asked further, remembering how defensive he got the first time Noel asked about her.

“I don’t fancy her,” was all he got as an answer.

“Sure.” Noel rolled his eyes, laying down himself. “She seemed nice though.”

“She is,” Liam agreed, making his brother’s head turn at the soft tone of his voice. “She’s too nice.”

“How so?”

Closing his eyes for a second, he knew he’d regret telling him what happened, nonetheless he did it. “I took her out because of a dare, and when she realized in the morning she didn’t even try to slap me or summat. She just-” his mind went back to her face, how she looked so distant yet like reality came back to her in the moment she realized. “She just walked out as if she should be ashamed.”

“You dumb cunt,” Noel groaned when Liam finished the story. He talked to her once, but from how she talked about Liam and defended him when Noel said that he had no trust in his brother’s abilities and interest in music, it made him feel proud in a way. Proud that Liam actually got somethin together for once in his life, he should’ve seen the downfall coming. And he did, just not that soon.

“You don’t just disrespect girls like tha’, especially no girls like her, alrigh’?” Noel threw his pillow across the room in Liam’s face, who only threw it back after complaining. “You make her feel seen and then you just push her off, that’s shite.”

“As if I’d listen to your advise,” Liam scoffed, taking another drag of his cigarette. Looking out of their window and down the street to where her house stood, he knew that Noel was right. Of course he was. You don’t just treat girls like that, especially not girls like her.

“Then don’t,” Noel shrugged. “But at least remember what Mum taught us.”

[putmeinmoviebaby]

I spot the man in front of me; he was drinking a bottle of beer. The pub was completely empty. It was a cold Friday, and the weather outside was simply dreadful. The man had light eyes, a striking blue, paired with thick eyebrows. His face was something memorable to look at.

I barely noticed when his eyes caught me looking. His face was now fixed on mine, and the feeling of embarrassment quickly overwhelmed me, making me look away. This caused him to let out a soft laugh and return to talking around the table.

As I listened to the conversation in front of me, I tried to join in, attempting to forget what had just happened. Feeling the presence of the waiter approaching, I was startled to see him arrive with a bottle of beer in his arms.

"Miss, that man sitting at the table to your right asked me to give this to you." After hearing the man say this, I looked again at the table where the blue-eyed man was. He was looking in my direction, raised his bottle, and smiled at me.

Feeling a bit out of place, I just gave him a smile and thanked the waiter, who quickly left. I took a sip of the beer in front of me and returned to the conversation.

"That guy at the table won't stop staring at you," I heard my colleague in front of me say.

I gave a discreet smile before looking back at the table, where the man was laughing at something being said. "I'm going outside to smoke, I'll be right back," I said before heading to the back of the bar. Taking a pack of cigarettes from my jacket pocket, I lit one.

Before exhaling the smoke and observing the weather—the strong wind and the cold—I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket. I was startled to look to the side and see a pair of eyes watching me. His body was leaning against the wall, with a serene expression on his face.

"Could you lend me your lighter?" I heard his raspy voice say near my face.

Taking the lighter from my pocket and bringing it closer to his face, I noticed that he now had a pack of cigarettes in his mouth. His lips, full and enticing, reminded me of cherries. As he lit his cigarette, I saw the smoke slowly drift away from his face, giving me a clear view of his beautiful eyes fixed on mine.

"Do you live around here?" I heard his voice ask.

"Actually, no, I'm just passing through visiting a friend."

"Alright, because I've never seen you around here before, and I would remember if I had seen a beautiful woman like you."

Upon hearing the man's words, I laughed and rolled my eyes, his face still showing a mischievous smile.

"By the way, my name is Liam." I saw the man extend his hand to me, which I took.

“I’m Y/N,” I said with a charismatic smile.

"Nice name for a beautiful woman, makes sense," Liam said, making me want to roll my eyes again.

"Are you always like this?" I asked, looking at his face.

"Like what? Handsome, perfect and talented?"

Upon hearing his words, I laughed and gave him a light pat on the shoulder. "Obviously not, I meant vain and self-centered."

"Oh, I'm funnier, prettier, and so much more. Don't you think, darling?"

"I don't know, I need to think about it. I can't come to a conclusion right now," I said, pretending to think about it while placing my hand on my chin.

"Don’t make that face, you know the truth; just accept it."

"Alright, Liam, handsome, talented, and funny," I saw him roll his eyes and laugh at my comment.

"Liam, man, I'm leaving. Guigsy is still inside. I'll see you at home." I heard the voice of the man who had exited through the bar door. He was short, his eyes were very similar to Liam's, and he wore a denim jacket.

Seeing me next to Liam, he smiled and winked in my direction. Liam turned his face towards him and began talking frantically, but the man's gaze remained on me, which made Liam hit his arm, causing him to turn his attention back to him.

"And who is this beautiful girl next to you?" I heard the man's voice turn his attention to me.

"Hey, I'm Y/N, and who would you be?" I asked, looking in the direction of the man.

"I'm the brother of this idiot here," I heard him say while patting Liam's shoulder. "I'm Noel, darling, and it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Don’t listen to this idiot. Aren't you leaving?" I saw Liam give his brother, Noel, a disapproving look, which Noel simply shrugged off, looked at him with an ironic gaze, put his arms in his jacket, and turned towards me.

"Darling, don't waste your time with him. You deserve something better," I saw him say to me, which made me laugh at the look Liam had when he heard his brother's words.

As I watched Noel's figure disappear down the street, I turned my attention back to Liam, who was leaning against the wall, with his hands in his hair due to the wind. His dark hair was blowing across his face, and for a moment, I envied the wind for being so close to his face.

"Would you like to come see my band's show this weekend?"

"You have a band?"

"Yes, I sing, my brother plays, along with some friends of mine. We play here on weekends," I heard his raspy voice say.

"I might try, I won't promise anything," I said, shrugging.

"You won’t regret it, darling." I saw his body moving closer to mine, his face remaining serene, with his eyes fixed on mine. "I'll be waiting for you."

"Will you be able to see me in the middle of the crowd?"

I laughed and looked back at his face, running my hand over his cheek. I saw his breath hitch for a few seconds, and his gaze followed my movements as my hand rested on his cold cheek.

"I can see those eyes from miles away, my darling." I saw a smile appear at the corner of his lips.

I let out a laugh and turn my eyes back to his face, running my hand over his cheek. I see his breath hitch for a few seconds, and his gaze follows my movements as my hand rests on his cold cheek.

"Let’s see, handsome," I say, locking my gaze onto his face, which now bears an ironic smile.

Before I could release my breath, I feel his soft lips on mine, kissing me like a sweet dream. His lips seemed to melt into mine, making me daydream.

His cold hands on my face sent shivers down my body, as if a wave of cold was sweeping across every inch of my skin, intensifying the sensation of closeness and the heat of the moment.

With the warmth and cold intertwined, it felt as if time had stopped, each second stretching and filled with an intensity that only the two of us could understand.

The End

[valkierrie]

𝐿Ꭵ𝒌𝔢 α 𝝂𝙞r𝔤iո

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

Warning(s): Smut(Filthy Liam Gallagher Smut for consumption). Oh, and also cursing.

Plot: Y/N, Is finally ready share an intimate moment with her boyfriend.

Word count: 2.3K

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

Tonight was the night. 

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, taking in my appearance in the lacy black lingerie I had bought a week prior. 

The lingerie was my best friend, Sam’s, idea. She’d been surprised when I confessed that I hadn’t yet done the deed with Liam. Sam told me that she wasn’t sure which was more surprising, Liam’s self-control or that Liam hadn’t dumped me sooner. 

The furthest we had ever gone was giving each other hickeys here and there. I could always tell that Liam was holding back and it was eating at me that I couldn’t grow a pair and just shag my boyfriend. 

Tonight was going to be different.  

I pulled on my silky bathrobe above the set, with one last look in the mirror, I stepped out of the bathroom. The time was a quarter past nine, there was only a couple minutes until Liam would be home. I busied myself with a mag that laid haphazardly on the kitchen island. I sat on one of the stools, reading the latest story. It was a rubbish gossip column about some model rumored to be indulging in cocaine and heroin. It did nothing to ease my nerves and it didn’t take long for them to crescendo into overdrive when I heard the jiggle of the doorknob. The door opened and shut a few seconds later, it was followed by the sound of shuffling, likely Liam removing his shoes and jacket. 

“Love!” Liam called out, his familiar accented voice booming in the flat. 

“In here!” I responded, quickly adjusting the bathrobe as well as my hair.  

There he was. Liam found me in the kitchen-dining hybrid area. He had a soft grin on his face. He looked every bit like the handsome bloke I had fallen hard for. I was at a loss for words, as I normally was when I was around him. He didn’t have to do anything. He could be breathing, and it’d be the sexiest thing. 

He placed a semi-rough kiss onto my warm lips. He was alcohol-scented and had the taste of cigarettes at the tip of his tongue.  

“I missed you.” His tone was gentle, and he looked at me with those beautiful baby blues.  

“Long day?” I asked, intertwining his hands in mine. 

“That doesn’t even begin to cover it.” He sighed heavily, wrapping his arms around me. “Right now, all I want right now, is to be with you.” 

I smiled tenderly, pulling him by the collar into an embrace that had my lips begging for more. I could feel his hands rising to cup my face. My hands fell onto his waist, holding it. Strangely, it was my favorite place to hold him during moments like these.  

Liam pulled away, staring at my face with a loving gaze before his eyes fell onto my attire. I wasn’t in my usual pajamas. By pajamas I mean, one of Liam’s oversized sweaters and my knickers.  

His brows furrowed. “What’s with the robe? You about to shower or summat?” 

“I—uh—um,” I stuttered, clearing my throat. My hands felt clammy and moist, my cheeks heating up. “I wanted to try something with you tonight.” My voice was quiet, almost whisper-like and my eyes averted his gaze. My heart was palpitating, and it was only going faster. 

“What did you wanna try?” 

I didn’t answer, instead, I untied my robe and let it fall to the floor. There was silence, my eyes flew back at Liam’s stature. He was frozen, like a statue. His mouth was ajar, his ears slowly going red.  

“Fuckin’ hell.” 

The insecurity crept in, he wasn’t doing anything, he just stood there. Was I that sexually appalling that he couldn’t bare to come near me or even touch me? 

I bent down and picked up the robe, my cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “But we don’t have to...” 

Liam was dazed, unable to pry his eyes off of me. “I think I’d die if we don’t.” 

He moved closer to me, taking my hands in his, removing the robe from my hands, letting it fall to the floor once more. He pulled me close, giving me an intense kiss. I felt my lips swell at the ferocity of it all. It wasn’t like we hadn’t ever kissed like this before, but something about the way he was doing it at the moment made me feel a type of way. My hands gripped his shirt, pulling him closer and closer despite there being no more space. 

I pulled away, panting heavily. “I wanna do this with you—I want you, right now.” 

Liam grinned, his nose rubbing against mine. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” I reaffirmed, my lips finding his once more. 

As we kissed, Liam gently lifted me up, his lips never separating from mine. My legs wrapped around his waist. Liam led us to the living room, and in true Liam Gallagher fashion it wasn’t done without bumping into things and him almost dropping me. A soft giggle escaped my lips as Liam laid me on a sofa, slowly mounting above me. For a moment Liam didn’t do anything, he just stared at me.  

“What?” 

“Nowt. You’re just—you’re so beautiful.” His hands cradled my face, almost as if I were a delicate porcelain doll. 

My heart ached, but it was in the best way. The way he looked at me, the way his eyes racked over my body, not in an odd way, but in an endearing manner, as if I were the Mona Lisa.  

Liam peppered wet kisses on my shoulder, scavenging for that familiar spot that made me squirm as he slowly removed the lace undergarments. My breath hitched when his lips made contact with that spot. The intimate throbbing feeling I had felt between my legs all those other times had returned with a vengeance, as if it were getting revenge on me for ignoring my needs.  

As the lingerie went lower and lower, so did Liam. His lips attached to my breast as he nipped and sucked. Despite the pleasure, my body quivered. Liam’s hand went behind my back, holding me in place. I whimpered at the sensation of his mouth at my nerves. My hand flew to his dark hair, trying to tell him to keep going. I wouldn’t have used my voice if it wasn’t subdued by me biting my lips in an effort to prevent myself from being too loud. 

“So fuckin’ fit.” Liam muttered, turning his attention to my other tit.  

The feeling I felt was truly something that couldn’t be put into words. I could feel his hand slowly inching towards that spot between my legs. Liam tore his attention from my chest and brought it back to my face. 

“Can I touch you here?” 

I shuttered, nodding. “Yeah.” 

Liam smiled and tied his lips back onto mine. His hand reached my mound, and his fingers rubbed, releasing a chorus of moans and whines. My hips bucked up, yearning for more of his touch.   

“Someone’s eager.” Liam teased. 

When his finger plunged in, I was sure I saw stars. 

“Liam... so good.” I moaned, my eyes fluttering shut. 

“Feels good, yeah?” I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that he had a cocky grin on his face.  

“Mhm.” I nodded, unable to form coherent words. 

Another string of moans escaped my lips as his chubby fingers went in and out of my folds. With each plunge, he went deeper and deeper until he was knuckle-deep. My legs were trembling from the overwhelming sensation, my mind was empty, and I was sure I had lost the ability to speak at that moment. My breathing was sharp. Then it happened. The intense sensation and pressure that had been building up was finally released. With a final cry and moan of his name, I came into Liam’s hand. For a few seconds I was lost in the sensation. 

My rapid breathing had calmed down and was back to normal. Liam placed a chassed kiss on my forehead.  

“You alright?” he asked, his voice laced with concern. 

I nodded, smiling at his caring manner. 

“Your turn.” I felt my confidence increasing and after what Liam had done, I wanted to give him something in return.  

Before Liam could say anything, I flipped him over, placing myself over him as I straddled him. I pulled his shirt over his head, throwing it on the ground. My lips found his collarbone. Liam released a soft groan as I grinded my hips forward against a growing bulge. 

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, but Liam’s sounds were encouraging. I caught his lips into an embrace that left me breathless. My hands flew to his trousers, pulling them down. I got off of him, kneeling before him and pulling his trousers down all of the way. His bulge pressed against his boxers, an inviting dark patch making my cheeks redder than they had been. I kissed his hips, slowly pulling down his boxers, wanting the moment to last as long as possible. Liam groaned in pleasure.  

“Bloody tease.” He muttered.  

I was met with his shaft, and was a bit intimidated by the size, but the thought of making Liam feel as great as he made me feel. I took the length in my mouth, feeling Liam twitch slightly upon contact. A low gutted groan escaped his lips. “Fuck.” 

 I started off slow, applying a steady pace and pressure, unfortunately, my hair kept falling in my face and getting in my way. Liam took hold of it, pulling it back. My head bopped up and down as I tried, desperately, to take more and more of him, but my Pharyngeal reflex made it impossible. I gagged when his length hit the back of my throat, my eyes growing wet. I felt a slight tug at my hair.  

“So impatient,” Liam taunted, smirking down at me. “slow down.” 

His attempts to further tease me were squashed when I slurped some more and sucked harder, stroking his sensitive skin. I could feel his thighs stiffen beside either side of me, his breathing had gone rapid and erratic. I was excited, excited to make his feel good—an immense and satisfying amount of gratification. Dismayingly, he stopped me, pulling away. 

“Stop.” He said, trying and failing to catch his breath, pulling away. 

A look of confusion etched itself on my face. “What happened? Did I do something?” 

“No.” Liam panted, shaking his head.  

He took my hands, pulling up to sit beside him on the couch. “I want you.” 

“You have me.” 

“No. I mean I want you inside—I want us to... y’know.” His eyes drifted downwards to my nude form. 

His implication wasn’t lost on me. My cheeks flushed crimson. 

“Is that okay?” Liam asked, his voice delicate—in a way few were ever permitted to see. His eyes gave way for seriousness, as if my answer for something life changing. 

This was what I wanted and there was no way in hell I was going to deny myself this opportunity like before. 

“Yeah, absolutely.” I smiled, grasping his face in my hands. 

Liam pushed me down on the couch, scaling up my body. He nipped at my collarbone and upper breast before he aligned himself to my womanhood. Simultaneous gasps and moans escaped out lips. The stretch was sensual but also excruciating. My face contorted to that of one in pain. I was certain that Liam took notice, he had stopped moving.  

“You okay?” He asked. 

“Yeah...just wait a minute.” 

It took a few seconds to adjust and get used to the extension, when I figured he could move, I didn’t waste a single moment in telling him.  

“Okay, I’m okay now.” 

“Are you sure?” 

I nodded, pulling him down for a wet, sloppy and filthy kiss. Liam took that opportunity to thrust himself, going deeper and deeper when he went back in.  

“Fuck, love.” Liam moaned in my mouth. “Bloody fucking brilliant, you are.”  

The praise made me groan, adding to the pleasure that had overtaken the pain. A feeling of anticipation was building up between my legs, I could see those stars again. 

“Don’t stop, Liam. D-don't...stop.” I panted. 

Liam’s pace was increasing and growing sporadically, hitting a spot that made my eyes roll to the back of my head with each thrust. I could feel myself growing tighter and tighter, my legs encircling his waist. I could feel Liam’s member twitch from inside me as he chased his bliss. My moans were growing louder and louder as the anticipatory feeling was getting closer and closer. Liam’s few final thrusts went in harder, hitting my pubic bone. 

“F-fuck. I fuckin’ love you.” 

The moment those three words left his lips; I was caught off guard. Before I could say anything or ponder on it some more, my orgasm hit. The feeling hit harder than the earlier one. For a moment, our rapid breathing rhythms were coordinated. I could feel his phallus soften from inside my glans. When Liam caught his breath, he pulled out, lying beside me. He left a soft kiss on my forehead. When my mind had finally allowed me to process it, I was taken back to what Liam had said.  

“I love you too.” I told him. 

“What?” Liam queried. 

“You told me you loved me...I love you too.” 

Liam offered me a tender grin, placing his arms around my waist and pulling me close. There was a moment of silence between us. It wasn’t awkward or anything. It was one of those moments when words didn’t need to be said in order to express how we felt. 

It only took two seconds, per usual, for Liam to break that silence.  

“So, what brought this on, then?” 

“I was ready and I couldn’t think of anyone else to do this with.” 

Liam gave me a gently smile, kissing my forehead. 

“The lingerie was Sam’s idea.” 

“Sam, eh?” Liam rose a brow. “That same Sam that you told me burned water last week?” 

I shrugged. “Sam’s an enigma. She’s like a broken clock, offers truth once in a while.” 

“Be sure to thank her this once for me.” 

[pparacxosm]

sigh like a chime

(postcanon!patrick zweig x infant halfsister’s au pair!reader; idk either man; came to me in a dream; title from the sound of music let’s all act shocked; major tw for suicide talk; tw depressive behaviour; tw disordered thoughts about eating; tw vague implication of alcoholic dependency; patrick zweig is generally not doing so hot; like at all; tw strained father son dynamics; tw grown adults projecting childhood trauma onto a baby; warning you now: this is a long one !! ; make a day of it; atp coexisting; lily donaldson being a weird little girl ™; tw airports during holiday season; whoever came up with the headcanon that patrick was late for his circumcision and it got cancelled i owe you a kidney; so cw smut obviously; cw religious ((Christianity, specifically Catholicism + Judaism briefly)) motifs; tw splicing of said motifs with the aforementioned smut; tw vomit)

“It’s not that I’m not happy for him,” Patrick tells Tashi, “I really am, you know I mean that.”

He paces her kitchen impatiently, running fingers through dark, dishevelled hair.

At such times, he still looks like the boy wonder sprinting carelessly across electric blue asphalt, eyes shimmering, as if he were part of that riot of colour. Some of his athletic maturity is replaced with the facetious, callow mannerisms of a hungry novice who wants to skip the necessary steps. Who wants to swallow experience and spit out the bones.

Tashi straddles a stool at the vast marbletop island. She’s pattering away like bulletquick rainfall on her MacBook. She doesn’t even spare him a glance.

Patrick makes an effort to rein in his temper. He drops into one of the stools. He swivels left and right and cranes his neck, staring up at the coffered ceiling moulding.

“It’s almost Christmas, Patrick. Go home.”

I am home, he wants to say, but that would be revolting and stupid and he doesn’t even really mean it. Art and Tashi aren’t home for him. Nothing is. And he likes that, he likes being a nomad.

Lily clicks in like a pony. Lily—well, Lili, Lieselotte—is also the name of his little sister. He likes the coincidence. The trick of the mind he can perform, imagining an alternative family. 

Family is just being nomads together.

“Hey, I told you no tap shoes inside,” Tashi says, eyes still swimming through the pixelmire of her computer screen.

Perhaps Patrick ought to feel flattered by her attention at all. His familial woes are just as perturbing to Tashi as Lily fucking up the flooring with her ball changes.

Patrick’s still quashing his irritation. She doesn’t even fuck him, anymore. He actually doesn’t fuck much of anything at all, of late. What with how tired he is all the time, how his flesh and bones deplete with each exertion. In a way, that’s her fucking him. But it’s also just the scorn of getting older.

It gets harder to shoulder things. His patience corrodes quicker. He should lean forward, take that laptop, and lob it across the room. She’s not even wearing those stupid bluelight glasses she’s supposed to be wearing.

“Do you just not care about anything?” It’s a petulant attempt at stoking her, but it’s too meandering and abstract to really matter, let alone take effect.

She doesn’t respond for a whole five seconds, still typing, and when she does, it’s a distracted whisper of, “What?”

Her power over him is such that she can afford to be so blindly condescending. But it still stings.

He groans into the air, and it’s such a thundering sort of noise that Lily spares him a weirded out scowl on her way to the pantry. “Do you really want me in Germany? I’ll sit on my ass and start drinking beer again all day, Coach.”

Three years into their partnership, he often uses her title to signal his annoyance.

Tashi sighs like she’s disappointed. Not disappointed that he’s trying, but the fact that he’s making such meaningless, childish stabs at it. Instead of just going for it. As in, yes, smashing her MacBook over his knee and yelling pay attention to me! She’d respect that more and he knows it.

But, anyway, she lowers the screen halfmast and looks at him. “Are you jeal—”

“I’m not jealous of the baby.”

“Okay…”

“But he’s sixtyfive, Tashi! It’s ridiculous.”

Tashi does something between a scoff and a laugh, shaking her head. She rolls up the sleeves of her sweater and narrows her eyes at him. “And how old did you say the new wife was?”

“Thirtytwo, Tashi.”

Tashi laughs properly now, dropping her head and dragging her thumb and forefinger over her lashes. Patrick smiles at her amusement, albeit at his expense.

“That is pretty ridiculous.” She looks up at him again, clearing her throat, “Don’t try to bullshit me and pretend you don’t still drink beer.”

He wants to contradict her, but he decides he wants to make her laugh more. “He met her because she was his masseuse for a hot stone treatment.”

Tashi sputters, her giggles spilling everywhere, and she’s waving her hands like she’s calling timeout.

“And then he calls me,” Patrick continues, before miming a phone to his ear and straightening and dragging his voice down like an anchor with an affected distinguished rumble, “And goes, Son, I am moving back to Germany. I have love again.”

“I have love again!” Tashi wheezes, her elbows thunking on the marble and her face falling into her hands. Her shoulders are shaking with laughter.

“Like it’s a fucking disease.”

“It is.” Art’s voice still manages to quaver delivering a glib oneliner. Maybe because he doesn’t mean it. Patrick’s willing to chalk it up to his brisk stride as he enters the kitchen. Always a fucking pep in his step these days, the fucking asshole.

Patrick doesn’t turn his head. He feels a sharp instance of vertigo when Art’s hand lands on his shoulder. But both the touch and nausea are gone as soon as they arrive, and he passes off the motion of his own hand going to grab Art’s fingers as a scratch to his nose. Tashi’s too busy wiping her tears away to have noticed that, thank God.

“Oh my God, please tell him,” Tashi cackles, still gathering lost breath as Art slides her bluelight eyeglasses onto her face and enswathes her body with his, caressing her arms with his knuckles.

“He knows,” Patrick says dismissively, even though that’s a lie. He hasn’t told him.

“What do I know?”

Tashi recounts the story with the engaging enthusiasm of what Patrick is beginning to recognise as schadenfreude. But even that is still a salve, and he feels a little foolish for forgetting its effect. Not just the laughter, but all of this. He wishes they would just throw him a bone and let him stay for Christmas. He feels like a dying dog made to live too long. He offered to dress up as Santa, but Lily herself informed him that she’s far outgrown such folly and resents his assumption otherwise. She’d kicked him in the shin with the metal plate of her tap shoe. He’d let her.

Art’s smile quirks up at the image. Mean old Mr Zweig laid nude across a spa bed, cock jumping for the meek masseuse.

“Bet he slipped her eight grand to fold the towel a little lower,” Art mumbles into Tashi’s hair, the strands buttery against his lips.

She makes a face at this. She raises her hand to swat his arm reproachfully.

But Patrick only chuckles. Spares a glance over his shoulder to where Lily is sprawled on the couch, gripping the handles of her shockproof iPad case with the focus of a pilot at the yoke of a plane, her little head swallowed by a pair of AirPod maxes. Turns back and looks up at Art with a conspiratorial smirk.

“Probably had her stroke his dick with two hot stones,” he murmurs.

Tashi thinks that’s even less funny. But Art thinks it’s even more funny.

He laughs very loudly and does a less than polite impression of an old German bloke wincing and coming.

“Ah—” he hisses, “The next one up my bumhole, yes?”

It sounds like a botched Hitler lampoon, and it’s ostensibly a caricature he’s done many times before. Sometimes, they spend whole days just wading through their ancient morass of shared memories and inside references and running gags. Sometimes, even now, it's just easier that way.

Patrick laughs so hard he falls out of his chair.

They do let him stay for dinner.

It feels like they’re mocking him, but he’s hungry. So he stares into the middle distance and listens to Lily spiritedly declaim facts about deep sea turtles. She keeps surreptitiously slipping Brussels sprouts from her plate onto his. It wouldn’t be his place to mention it. And, for her part, she quaffs down her mashed potatoes like an endurance test. He tells her they’re not going anywhere. She kicks his shin again and he’s pretty sure she should have taken those shoes off by now.

He watches every gentle graze of Art and Tashi’s limbs and shoulders.

He sighs and chews his sprouts until his jaw aches.

There are worse things in his head to beat himself up with than wishful thinking.

“What’d Sassy say?” Art asks as he uncorks a Montrachet.

The corner of Patrick’s mouth quirks up almost imperceptibly. Like the reflexive twitch of a bad muscle. But he can tell Art discerns it by the way he starts to chuckle preemptively. That grin that spreads across his face like fire on dry grass.

Patrick huffs. “She said she hopes the baby chokes and dies.”

“You’re killing me, Sas.”

It’s December eighteenth at JFK. Patrick feels like a fucking sardine. Everyone is everywhere. The emetic odour of tarmac and jet fuel embues him. His fingers are red and stiff and so tightly coiled around the stainless steel handrail of the escalator that he thinks they may just pop off like caps. There’s an acetous chill to the nighttime air, and he probably should’ve worn more layers, but the sweat on his back is already soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt. He doesn’t mind. It’s better than being late.

Patrick’s dad used to enforce punctuality like a jailhouse warden. Saskia knows that.

He has his phone tucked to his ear against one shoulder.

His sister’s voice across the receiver sounds warped and liminal. His stomach is grumbling.

“You’re fucking me, Sas, you’re fucking me right over,” Patrick says. “What’s in Brazil?”

“Well, warmth, for one.”

“What about me?”

Saskia laughs. That loud, tocsin laugh she used to do when he’d wet the bed. “You boycotted the christening, Brutus.”

“Why would I fly to Germany to watch a baby take a bath?”

“Why are you flying to Germany now?”

Patrick’s teeth are on edge as he schleps his weighty duffel toward the terminal. He fishes a cigarette out of his windbreaker pocket and shoves it through his lips. He wants to spark it, even though Tashi’s psychologically tortured him into quitting, and he’d get thrown out for sure. There’s a line of security guards at every corner, and he’s seen the German Shepherd sniffer dogs.

He chews on the cigarette instead. Grinds the tip between his molars to get that stark jounce of nicotine even if it’s mostly tobacco and paper.

Saskia is saying something in his ear, and he’s only halfpretending to listen. His eyes are fastened straight ahead, singeing holes into the back of a woman’s head. Her hair is pulled into an absurdly tight ponytail. And he is so taken by the movement of the strands as it bobs with each step that he is only dragged back to reality when Saskia says his name loud enough to stab his eardrums.

He blinks. “What, bitch?”

“Paddy, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I don’t wanna throttle the little shit. I’m pushing forty and I cried because he bought it a fucking babysize tiara.”

Patrick closes his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. He swallows a bit of that tobacco wad on his tongue. He nearly gags. He belatedly catches that a couple of security guards are looking at him with some suspicion. He holds up a finger as if to say, sorry, and turns around to walk away.

Saskia’s still on the line, and she starts singing something, though he doesn’t understand why. He has to hold the phone a good foot away until she shuts up.

“Wh—” he scoffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Hey, maybe you’ll get along with it.”

“Unlikely.”

“Maybe you’ll get along with dad.”

“Un—fucking—likely,” he retorts.

He ducks into a corner of the empty terminal and drops inelegantly onto a hard plastic seat. He is hyperaware of the sweat fumes under his arms, the way his track pants cling too snugly to his thighs.

“Actually, hey,” Saskia says, and he can hear her perking up. He imagines her in a hammock in Rio. She’ll burn so bad. No earthly SPF could ever keep her from shedding like a crimson serpent. “She has this au pair.”

Patrick glances up at the TV monitor over his head.

Departures to Berlin 23 30, it reads, flashing jarringly in red LED lettering, accompanied by a blinking graphic of an airplane taking off.

He makes a noncommittal grunt. “That tracks,” he mumbles.

“I’m saying you don’t have to be lonely,” says Sassy, “Make friends! She’s nice. Bit young.”

“Reckon dad’ll try to knock her up next?”

Saskia laughs herself to piggish snorting. The bigeared little boy within him, tugging at the pantleg of his sister’s pyjamas for attention, is vaguely mollified by that laughter. Albeit at his expense.

He should spend the flight feeling guilty for not getting a gift for the baby, but he listens to a true crime podcast instead.

They’re talking about a young girl who was found unconscious by the side of a road. The truck driver who spotted her was a little drunk at the time, and he was afraid that if he called the cops he’d lose his job, so he just moved her body further up the road where someone else could find her.

Apparently, she was still alive, but the truck driver thought she was already dead.

It’s not certain if she would have made it, had he done The Right Thing, but maybe it would've made a difference.

“He should’ve just called the cops and driven away,” one of the hosts says.

“If you’re reporting an accident, you can’t just remove yourself from the premises,” the other one replies.

“Well no, but if you report a homicide—“

“Same thing. Also, how can you just leave a person bleeding by the side of the road?”

“Was she visibly bleeding?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Patrick closes his eyes and leans his head back. The clouds roll by like lambhide.

He can picture it clearly, driving away from this fucking mess, leaving a body by the side of the road. He’d do it if he could. But he thinks he’s the body.

He shudders with a pang of cold. He doesn’t know why this image sticks. It’s like ghosts, floating in between the clouds.

Saskia texts him. Suffocate the baby with a pillow. Also delete that text. And that one.

And he, the body by the side of the road, doesn't say anything.

The plane jostles a little in a patch of turbulence. They descend into Berlin at eight in the morning.

His knees hurt from keeping them bent at an angle for so long, his ass is going numb. He should feel sorry for himself, being alone like this.

As he deplanes, a few fellow passengers glance in his direction, their noses wrinkling. He can’t tell if it’s the bitter rot of cigarette between his teeth or his sudor stench or his mouldering heart.

People converge in the baggageclaim like a throng of cattle. Patrick shoulders through. Swallowed up and spat out and alone again.

No one pays anyone any attention. Everyone is hurrying to make this flight or get to the next. When Patrick finds a men’s room, he realises he should be glad for that. In the reflection of the large mirror above a long stretch of white porcelain sinks, he can see shadows like cosmic abysses under his eyes. Some of the veins in his arms—which are sticking out from under his sleeves like pythons—are slightly swollen and purple.

His duffle bag bangs against his hip as he shuffles onto the tarmac and joins the taxi queue.

Berlin greets him with an onslaught of sleet.

His bones rattle like clicking spoons in the cold. He’s cursing under his breath and trying to remember the last time he was sincerely back in Germany.

Not just a brief cut across for a match, a layover, a hamfisted excuse to see his sister.

He was probably nine.

Patrick lumbers up the walkway to his father’s home. It looks like it’s been shoveled already today but has endured several hours of snowfall since. That and—well—he guesses his dad’s playing humble now.

Sas had dubbed it a latelife crisis. But it’s not shabby. In fact, it’s nice. It’s no limestone portico. Far cry from the august Georgian Revival mausoleum he and Sas gleaned their nascent wounds in.

Lili gets a Hallmark ass two story colonial, strung with Christmas lights. Deep green door, ornate bronze knocker, festooned with a wreath. The doorbell echoes through his empty bones like a deathknell.

His teeth chinkle like coins as he waits.

When the door opens, he releases a protracted, puerile whine. “Fuck.”

You’ve never been cause of such overt disappointment.

It’s almost flattering.

But your smile quickly metamorphoses into a grimace.

His shoulders are drooping and he looks liable to topple facefirst to the snowswathed gravel at any moment. His eyelids keep fluttering, like he’s fighting a losing battle against the urge to just shut down.

“Is this the right house?” he groans, pained and shivering.

You’re marginally certain this is your boss’ son and not a homeless vagrant.

Either way, you’re nodding emphatically. “Of course it is.”

In the kitchen, he stands in the corner like a newly housed stray. Hands tucked into his armpits and chin touching his chest as he watches you spark up the cooktop through snowdappled lashes.

The powdered creamer, as you pour it into the teacup, reminds him, too, of snowfall. You keep flicking him conspicuously concerned glances.

“So you’re Patrick…” you say, spooning sugar.

He clears his throat and hums in a way that says, yeah, I’m not too thrilled about it either. His head is bowed, his eyes fallen shut, and he’s swaying vaguely on his feet. He looks like he’s making devotions. The kettle sings.

His fingers are bonetight around the cup and saucer. He lifts the cup and presses it to his cheek, like leaching the warmth from the ceramic. When he sips, you’re reminded of cats lapping milk.

There’s a moment of silence, and it’s awkward. And then he sneezes—once, twice. His throat clicks.

“Uh… tennis,” you try, folding closed the box of Five Roses.

The steam plumes up and curls around Patrick’s face, flushed and sallow. He clears his throat again, his eyes unfocused. He glances toward you and knows he should reply, but the only thing that comes out is a damp, congested sniff.

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Tennis,” he repeats, the word muffled by the cup still pressed to his lips.

You nod slowly, rapping your knuckles rhythmically against the counter. “Wimbledon,” you say then.

Patrick scrunches up his face as if he’s in pain. He’s trying to force some simulacrum of synapse action in the conversational skills faculty of his brain.

“Yeah,” he manages. He takes another gulp of tea and tries to clear his throat again. It hurts. Everything hurts. He hurts.

You nod some more. You can’t help but think that this feels a bit like a tennis game. You and he, volleying oneword utterances back and forth. “Impressive,” you offer, cocking your brows at him.

“Thanks,” Patrick mutters.

He does actually want to be witty. And he does actually want to be charming. And he wants to make a good first impression. But right now he wants to sleep, preferably through a few decades. Certainly, the last few of his father’s life. Which, speaking of,

“Hey, where is the bastard?”

He glances around, as if to see his father lurking in a crevice somewhere. You raise a brow. Could it be an affectionate nickname? Perhaps. But you’re starting to connect some dots.

You smile like you’re trying not to provoke a sabertoothed creature. But Patrick can see in your eyes that he’s amusing you, which he doesn’t mind. Of course he doesn’t mind.

There’s a vast window above the counter, pictureframing an expansive, snowshrouded back garden that, knowing his dad, is probably a rigorously manicured viridescent green in the warmer months. How warm do things get in Germany these days?

He squints against the luminous white splay as you point beyond the glass. There’s a distant brown pinprick that lets him know this property is larger than it seems. Larger than it needs to be. But the kid needs frolicking room, he guesses.

“He’s in the den,” you say.

Patrick throws the rest of his tea back like a shot, placing his cup and saucer onto the counter with a twinkling thunk.

“Alright, then let’s go.”

“My balls are gonna freeze off before we even get there,” Patrick hisses.

Every step forward sends his feet an inch deeper into the snow, and you watch him shake out his running shoes with displeasedness. You laugh at him, and he turns back to face you, and he makes this face that could either be a smirk or an indication of great turmoil. You are struck by his ability to wear that lopsided grin in his current circumstances, to look at you like that. Well, like what? You don’t know.

It’s just that the scarf and wool peacoat you’re wearing make you look like a well-loved heirloom doll. He can see the faintest wisps of your breath in the bitter air. Your smile is so kind and so warm, he thinks, smiling wider.

He appreciates you joining him on his doormat pilgrimage. A better guy would tell you that, but he just turns around and keeps footslogging.

Together, you trudge forward across the sprawling, sleety landscape.

The door to the den is unlocked.

Patrick casts a glance back at you before he pushes it all the way open, hitting the opposite wall with a hollow bang.

It creaks a little on its hinges as it opens into a long corridor. He takes a step in first.

“Hello?” Patrick yells, his voice lilting. “Armed robbery. I have guns and knives and… bombs. Got your pretty nanny.”

You feel the little smile on your face quavering with amusement as you close the door shut behind you.

The floors are clad in dark oak panels. The walls are lined with copper sconces. There’s an ostensibly hideous and probably hilariously expensive rug in the middle of the floor and Patrick makes a show of wiping his shoes clean on it. 

“Sure as fuck not taking this thing,” he mumbles, digging his hands into his pant pockets. 

He glances toward a long sideboard on the side of the corridor. It’s laden with antique trinkets and mahoganyframed pictures, and he reaches out to prod at an ivory figurine sitting at the edge.

You stay in silence for a few moments, looking at him. 

Then, the faint creak of footsteps comes from upstairs, and you both look up at the ceiling. Seconds later, it fades to your right, and, soon enough, there appears Rupert Zweig. Cashmere jumper, tapered joggers.

There is no denying the family resemblance. And if the way Patrick’s eyes narrow as his father descends the staircase is anything to go by, he is not gonna wanna meet—

“There you are,” says Rupert, corners of his eyes crinkling. He stops at the end of the hall, hands in his pockets. The two regard each other like snipers. You have the sharp sensation you shouldn’t be here, but where would you go?

Patrick clicks his teeth wryly. “Here I am.” His hands are also in his pockets. Their deportments are uncannily kindred.

You think Patrick shouldn’t be so putout by that. Rupert Zweig is a handsome sixtyfive. Tall and broad and still in trim, despite most his days being ornamented by cognac and cigars. His silvery hair sheens like tinsel, and has not thinned much to speak of, if at all.

You figure maybe they’ll hug, as Rupert approaches. You know Rupert to be a hugger. But he only claps Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick’s bones look like they’ve been swapped for concrete, and he watches his father give him a once over, like surveying an old car.

“I hope things are well with you,” Rupert says. Which isn’t strange paternal commentary. But his voice is tinctured with a concerned edge at the overall impression that his only son has been dragged along the pavement by the tail of a motorbike and then beaten with sticks to boot. I thought things were better, now, he’s really saying.

You think it’s concern, anyway. You, too, know Rupert to be quite concerned, and caring. But Patrick takes it as scorn.

He wears a bitter smile. “Things are peachy, Pa.”

His nostrils flare, he shifts his shoulders. Like he wants to shrug his father's hand off, but is keeping still for the sake of seeming mature.

And then it happens. A pule from the ether like the resounding stroke of a viola.

You perk up. “Oh! I’ll go—“

“Yes, dear, she’s with Giselle in the drawing room.” Rupert’s eyes crinkle, a kind brush of his fingers to your elbow.

Patrick—you glimpse, as you shuffle past him and out the passage—looks furious. And a bit queasy.

In the drawing room, Patrick stares at Giselle’s hands. She’s twisting her emerald engagement ring around her finger. The stone is big as a pebble, its facets winking.

He doesn’t let himself look to where you are. On an ivorycoloured foam playmat on the ground, doing something that is causing the baby to squeal and giggle like a strident string of bells and clap her pudgy hands together. He can hear the yarn of drool gurgling from her gummy mouth.

An angeltopped pine tree scintillates with fairy lights in the corner.

Giselle is slender porcelain. White sweater, skinny jeans, milkblonde hair. She crosses her legs at the ankles, knees to the side, like she’s the fucking queen of England. She is polite to varying degrees of genuineness.

“Lili is so happy to see her big brother.”

Patrick’s knee shudders violently. Cut the shit, Giselle, he wants to spit.

But he knows he won’t. He doesn’t feel he can. Maybe it’d be easier, if she really was just some nympho naif. Then he could call his dad a perv and move on.

But no. Giselle is three years his junior but tenfold his put-togetherness. There are two infants in the room, and neither are her.

The room is so warm and well lit. There are bookshelves teeming with hardcover tomes whose rapiersharp corners look ostensibly untouched. A globe of the world, a framed Picasso original. Baroque vases and potted ivies and the permeating waft of jasmine and rose and leather.

It’s an intimate microcosm of his father and Giselle’s interwoven lives. Their very fumes amalgamate. And then there’s that puny thing, gossamer flesh, babbling like a brook. He doesn’t look. He can’t.

When his dad walks back in, Patrick is on his feet like a springing coil.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” says his dad, handing Patrick a set of keys.

Patrick shakes his head and feigns remorse. “Nah, Sas asked me to water her plants, so.”

Rupert looks like he’s going to say something, but decides against it.

“Right,” he nods and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a slim silver case. He flips open the lid, revealing a neat row of hand rolls. He plucks one between his long fingers. Patrick would say no, if he offered, but resents his father’s lack thereof enough to head for the door.

You think he’ll say bye to you, or maybe offer just a parting wave, but he doesn’t.

You hear him and his dad at odds like a cobra and a mongoose in the hall. You daub tender kisses onto the fleshy pink soles of Lili’s feet. You discern misty fragments of Patrick’s scathing whispers.

“... newage, hippie bullshit... nice guy act... fucking sweatpants... —christen the baby! What the fuck are you doing christening the baby? You never even took us to temple!”

However Rupert responds, on the other hand, is vaguely inaudible. It’s just a deep, cautiously placating rumble of syllables. 

You hear a bit more mumbled venom before the door creaks open and slams shut.

“He thinks he’s got everyone fooled, but I’m fucking onto hi— where is your alcohol?”

Patrick’s disembowelling every cabinet in his sister’s kitchen. On all fours like a hound rooting in the snow. He can hear the hot waft of tropical winds from Saskia’s end of the receiver. Crash of surf. Squawking birds. The staticky tempo of Brazilian phonk in the background.

“Ugh, Paddy,” Saskia mumbles like she’s disappointed.

He tears the fridge door open so fervently, the cord comes loose from the socket. There’s nothing there but bottled water, yoghurt, and salad dressing. He makes a strangled noise of agony into the ear piece.

“Saskia May,” Patrick groans with a sonnet’s desperation, resting his head against the icy fridgeshelf, between the organic grassfed butter and the handcrafted balsamic glaze, “I know you may be in a fucking beachside cabana right now, dipping Portuguese cock into your piña colada with the little umbrella in it and then sucking it off, but it is late here, and it is winter, and I am dying.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see the baby?” she asks.

“No, well, I saw her, just…” Patrick’s withdrawing all her earthenware now, “I just didn’t look.”

“What, like the fucking Basilisk?”

“Sassy, for the love of God, tell me you’ve left even a drop of liquor in your home.”

Saskia laughs, and he can hear the chime of ice. “Did you meet the au pair?”

Patrick stumbles back to the stillopen, halfway gutted fridge. He identifies with it. He sticks his head back in. “She thinks I’m a mess.”

“Wow, what a stupid whore,” his sister laughs. As everything, it is at his expense. He’s in emotional arrears, but it’s okay. It’s all okay.

He hears Saskia’s inbreathe. Marijuana? Probably. He doesn’t mind her lungs. He doesn’t mind that she’s always been more beautiful than him. He doesn’t mind that she’s warm in Rio. He knows it’s harder for her. She never got to be Rupert’s little princess. He wants to protect her in that asinine way baby brothers think they can protect their sisters. In that asinine way Patrick Zweig thinks he can protect everyone.

“Have pity on me, Sas.”

She directs him blindly like a game of Marco Polo. He wades through the ransacked bombsite he’s made of her kitchen. Avocados rolling across the slate floor. Spilled milk, which feels symbolic.

He unearths the bottle of Gordon’s dry gin from under the sink. Holds it aloft like a holy grail.

Patrick can’t remember the last time he set foot in a church, if such a time has ever occurred. Part of him expects the parishioners to take one look at him and know he doesn’t belong, for them to demand he leave.

For the things he has done, the things he has felt, the things he has wanted. Certainly for the things he cannot bring himself to believe.

He is struck by the towering stonework of the cathedral. The wooden cross in the apse is immense. Behind it, stained glass windows paint the icedover morning in vivisected coloursplays. Soft motes of sunlight waft in shafts from the ceiling.

He never thought he’d see the day—the Zweigs done up in their Sunday best. His mother would laugh herself to tears.

Rupert’s broad shoulders are ramrod straight, his argent hair slicked back handsomely. Giselle is wearing a ribbed knit dress in eggshell. Princess Lieselotte—finally, a worthy heir—is wearing a knit tunic dress embroidered with blooms, a scallopcollared ivory shirt underneath, and a crocheted woollen baby bonnet.

They look like an affiche for Norman Rockwell.

At first, he’s still trying not to meet the Basilisk’s gaze, but then he gets this disarming glimpse. The peonypink hue of her. Her comically outjutting little ears. Gibbous blue eyes, lapping up the world through cornyellow lashes. Those are Giselle’s. But the rest…

Unlucky little shit, Patrick tells her telepathically. And now he is looking straight at her, like the spell has been broken. He needs to let her know he’s onto her, and her bullshit doting father. You look like dad.

But what that means is she looks like Patrick, too.

He watches you hold her in your arms, rubbing your nose against hers.

Giselle had had you press Patrick’s shirt—his father’s shirt; of course he didn’t pack a buttonup—for him this morning. He was only kind of embarrassed. But he sat carefully in the car, leery of creasing your hard work. 

The linen of your skirt reaches your ankles. You’re wearing this creamcoloured slouchy knit turtleneck, and you’ve got a little lacy chiffon infinity veil halfway canopying your hair. Patrick is pleasantly amused by all this fabric. All the things he cannot see. Because of God, or the cold, or God and the cold.

The Zweigs find their pews, stopping frequently to greet their fellow churchgoers, and whisper inquiries after names Patrick doesn’t know. He shakes half a dozen hands if he shakes one, introduces himself as ‘Rupert’s son’ more times than he can count.

You, too, are pleasantly amused. Because Patrick is notably discomfited. You fish your little pewter cross necklace from beneath your collar. You hold it between your fingers and out toward him like an exorcist.

“He can smell your fear,” you whispergrowl, fauxominous. Lili giggles all saliva in your arms. That’s the voice you use when you pretend to be the babyeating ogre. She takes the cross between her tiny teeth. Patrick watches. You smile. “And so can she.”

Patrick looks at you for a moment, feigning indifference. “They’re both smelling how little they matter to me.”

Your smile widens.

Patrick—who has never endured a mass—takes his cues from the brush of your shoulder on when to stand, when to sit, and when to supplicate himself. The priest oscillates from English to Latin and back again. Seemingly on a whim. When Patrick fumbles trying to find the right page for the hymn, you tilt your book slightly so he can read along. 

He thinks the rosary looks good where it dangles from your lithe, supple fingers. Looping and weaving through your pretty knuckles like drops of blood. 

You are flawless in your devotion.

You slip to your knees with a fluidity that makes his tummy fasten.

You sing quietly and sweetly and when you turn to Patrick to wish peace upon him, your grin is so sweet and earnest it takes a moment for him to contend with that blessing.

Everyone falls down to the hassock again and Patrick is beginning to find the rhythm of the whole affair. At least enough to let his thoughts maunder and his body be at mercy to the motions.

It’s soothing, in its way. He can almost understand it. What blessed relief in lifting your human pains to be scoured clean.

The priest closes out the sermon with a few nice words about Jesus. Guy’s birthday’s coming up, after all.

Patrick leans forward a bit to glance at his father’s fingers, tapping on the dry leather of the psalmbook.

In the photo, little Lili is wearing a white linen nightgown that mantles her whole, like a tiny tarp. His dad cradles her, and everyone’s standing around a marble pool. He can see Saskia off to the side, hosting a very conspicuous hangover behind her mask. You’re in the picture, too. Apparently, you had been Giselle’s doula, in the beginning, and you just ended up sticking around. Which he finds more than a little strange. Patrick often sees life as a series of measures to get further away from his family.

On the edge of the photo, he can see the broad back of a becloaked man, plashing his fingers the water.

Patrick feels an inkling of discomfort at the sight of that man.

“She still sleeps in that dress, actually,” you say, rocking the babe.

The wallpaper of Lili’s room is printed with pale pink linework of woodland creatures. He’s straddling the vintage nursery rocker—a plush weathered lamb; it used to be his and Saskia’s—and his knees are hiked comically high on either side of him, his slacks riding up his ankles.

Patrick stares at the baby girl in this framed photograph. She looks too small—almost tenuous—underneath the white shift. Her eyes are flushed and still wombswollen.

“What’s the point?” he asks, trying to imagine that man softly slooshing water over her boneless head.

You smile. “It’s to protect her.”

“Protect her from what?”

You lower Lili into her French Provençal style woodcarved bassinet.

You look up at him, eyes flitting over his face. “Shame, I guess.”

It doesn’t quite make sense. A fullimmersion baptism means commitment. You have pledged yourself to God. You are bound to follow His laws. Shame is essential to these laws. Isn’t it?

You don’t know why he’s still here. Giselle is taking her Sunday nap, and Rupert’s playing solitaire or reading Guy Sajer or something in the den. Lili, too, is dead to the world. You need to do the laundry. The laundry room is too strait for him to be lingering, leaning against the doorframe, interrogating you. He likes watching the linen of your skirt gather at your feet as you crouch to the floor, depositing the armfuls of bedding into the mouth of the washing machine. All that fabric.

“It’s a different kind of shame,” you try to explain. “I can be ashamed of myself, of my body.”

“Why are you ashamed?”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t know. I’m alive.”

“Alright. And this helps?”

“A little, yeah. It takes you out of your body. Then returns you to it. And you feel brand new. Like you belong to Jesus.”

You laugh a little at the concept, but he can tell you treasure this belonging, deep down.

He walks toward you, taking the empty wicker hamper from your hands and setting it aside. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed in the first place.”

You shrug, noting his proximity. “It’s probably good to feel shame from time to time.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

He doesn’t ask you if you feel ashamed right now. Face smushed against the top of the palpitating washing machine. If you said yes, he’d be unhappy. If you said no, he’d be unhappy.

He’s happy, now, hiking your skirt up around your waist, shucking your gauzy tights halfway down your thighs. Best not to ruin it.

So he doesn’t ask if you’re ashamed. He doesn’t ask if you’re a virgin. He does ask if you’re on birth control, and furrows his brows as his strong hands caress the flesh of your ass.

“Why not?” he laughs, dragging the beige skin down his rigid cock, rubbing the deep blush head against your hirsute pussy and bending over you. “Isn’t that shit free here?”

He burrows his head beneath your sweater, kissing your back through the cotton of your longsleeve. He doesn’t search for more bare skin, just keeps a good grip on that which he has, fingertips digging into the flesh of your hips.

He fucks into you and feels your body shudder around him with the jostle of the machine.

He doesn’t ask of shame or chastity or how long Giselle and Lili usually nap for, how far his dad is into The Forgotten Soldier. He does, however, feel it necessary to ask,

“Feels good, right?” Even though you’re drooling against the zinc and your hoarse groans are rivalling the churning noises. You roll your eyes but they stay there, your lashes fluttering.

“Yes,” you pant, clutching the edge of the machine. “It feels good.”

He bends over you, pinning you, elbow to elbow, his chin resting on your clothed shoulder. Your veil slips off your head and drapes around your neck. He quickens his pace. “It’s fucking big, isn’t it?”

You turn your head to look at him. His eyes look like they want to fuck your eyes. His mouth hovers over your drooling mouth as if to kiss you. The shaggy hair of his crotch abrades your tailbone.

“Verdict’s still out,” you say, voice quavering, and you let him lave your tongue sloppily with his.

His sister has a guestroom, but he sleeps in her bed. Reads her Audre Lorde and Laurie Colwin. Uses her toothbrush. God, she’d kill him. But he likes the transgression of violating her space. He doesn’t use her vibrator, or anything. He finds it, but he doesn’t use it.

He has his few ways of having people. So he’s always taking what he can get.

That’s why he fucks the nanny in the laundry room, and lets Art’s kid bruise him with her tap shoe, and sits on the kitchen tile drinking Saskia’s gin.

He has to hold on to the granite countertop, as he straightens from his haunches. His back is a wreck, but the ache is nothing compared to the relief and vindication and victory he feels. He can’t say for sure what the prize is. Maybe it really was just your pussy, and that’s where this all starts and ends, which is fine. The feeling of winning is so rare and precious and precious and rare and, as he unscrews the cap and raises the bottle to his lips, it’s as if he’s just slain a mighty monster.

He places the little tiara he’d filched from Lili’s room on Saskia’s mantel.

He’s less than compos mentis come Christmas Eve.

He lays in Saskia's bed for a bit, inhaling lime and ambergris, trying to figure out what to do with himself. He checks his phone: No Service.

He sighs and tumbles out the sheets like a rockslide. He figures he might as well go for a run before the blizzard clocks in since there’s nothing else to do. His feet already feel numb and damp. Everything has felt numb and damp the whole time he’s been here.

Running buzzed probably isn’t his smartest idea, but it doesn’t feel like his worst one either.

Patrick frenetically tugs two pairs of thermal leggings on. The radiotor whirrs but the house is still arrestingly gelid. He pulls on his sister’s comically inflated neon orange down jacket.

He looks at himself in the mirror.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” he whispers.

He loots and pilfers some mittens, goggles, and a neck gaiter from Saskia’s closet. She could never take to professional athleticism, but she’s a reasonably devout runner, and is partial to a halfmarathon or two most years. Which means free activegear for Paddy. He walks to the front door and slips on his dank shoes.

He steps outside once he feels decently covered head to toe, a skill he’s found refining itself as the week has shouldered past him.

Patrick strides the roadside briskly for almost a mile. His legs feel halfway atrophied, so he gives them time to warm up. The neighborhood seeps into copses of snowdusted forestry. He feels the beauty of the landscape flicker through him like a spark.

He starts jogging.

He has no mapped course, no mile time to hit. He just wants to move forward. For once. His goggles fog up with entrapped bodyheat crowning the cold air but he doesn’t fix them. The compressed insulation of his clothes, the whirring thump of his shoes to the tar—it engenders a strangely hypnotic effect. He realises, only after miles have elapsed, that he's forgotten to turn any music on. He doesn’t need it now.

He comes upon a clearing in the trees that discloses a river he hadn’t recalled.

He abates to a walk before stopping completely and removing his goggles. 

He knows a breathtaking scene when he sees one. That was never his problem, the discernment of the good thing. It was never even the obtaining of it. It’s that—well—if Sas actually had left plants for him to nurture, they’d be dead by now.

But anyway. The river.

Snowfall has burgeoned somewhat, but light is still breaking through. The sun reflects tenderly off the surface of the frozen water as if it’s all being illuminated from beneath the ice.

Patrick swears he can see evidence of a current still rushing below, but he can’t be sure that’s all too possible at these temperatures.

He tries to take a picture for posterity (or Lily; she’s ‘into vistas’ lately), but all the light is so strange and coruscating. Hardly anything can be captured in earnest.

Patrick takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

He pulls his gaiter down and doffs his hat. Allows his florid skin a few moments to feel the glacial squall, the moist sting of melting snow. He thinks he’s missed this weather, harsh as it may be.

He takes the opportunity to check his watch, vaguely hoping the GPS tracker’s been running. And hope seems to count for something here.

4.7 MILES

A surge of accomplishment and anticipation shimmers through him. He grins, breathless, at the thought of being able to tell Tashi that he’d done a cool ten miles. And the prospect of being able to eat a guiltless meal is emerging as an actual possibility. 

Patrick gears back up and begins to walk again in the direction he came. He takes advantage—always taking advantage, always taking what he can get—of the trodden path he’d made in the road. The surer grip of his shoes.

His head starts feeling strange as he’s walking. As though it’s sloshy inside, like the dirty snow he sees on the curb. But he pushes forward and chalks it up to temperature. Picks up the pace again. 

He finds himself less mesmerised by his own footfalls now and slips his AirPods in. Slips inside the eye of his mind. His sister used to have a ‘(What's The Story) Morning Glory?’ CD. Patrick’d scratched it, probably. He hopes Oasis can get back together some day. It's not so hard to reconcile. Mostly, anyway.

About a mile into the returning trek, Patrick feels his legs suddenly get heavier. He’s felt as much before. He assumes he’s just hitting the wall. It’s a little early for him, at such moderate mileage, but he knows inclemency and altitude can do things to a body.

He’s deliberate with his strides as he proceeds. He wants to be sure that his torpid legs are parting with the ground. 

It’s around the two mile mark that his spine rattles with an odd enough sensation—sharp, like an incision down the length of it—to bring him to a stumbling halt.

Patrick’s clumsily reaching around and groping at his neck and back the best he can through his layers. It feels almost like someone has poured water on his skin. Soused him like a baptism.

He tells himself he needs a second to breathe. Starts walking again. Eventually feels very marginally centred enough to pick up the pace. His knees feel like cinderbricks. Dense and angular. But he should be capable of making it home. Or at least determined enough to do so. He’s seeing houses again. He can’t be more than a mile out.

He’s thinking of raiding Saskia’s toiletries and snorting her cornucopia of bathsalts when a billow of abject nausea rolls through him. He’s stumbling again.

He moans vaguely with turnsickness. The trees are blurring together.

He sways.

Sidesteps jerkily over the curb into a stark white alloy of fresh and shoveled snow.

Doubles over.

Dissolves to his knees, bracing himself on his palms. All fours again.

He maintains this position for several minutes. He’s heaving in and out forcefully with his eyes screwed shut. It feels a bit prayerful. He’s praying to be made to vomit. Just wants to feel better and move on and he’ll never touch his dick again, he prays. Which isn’t true, but need it be?

Things go sloshy again, and warm, this time. Overwhelmingly warm, actually. He flounders in the wet, rips off his gear, and uses his bare hands to grab handfuls of snow off the ground and push it onto his face. The heat feels like bloodshed.

Patrick tears off his jacket. Patrick lays his entire body facedown in the snow. Everything is numb and damp.

“Oh my goodness, Patrick?”

One imagines the voice of God to be a little less frantic.

He’s confused by how weak his muscles feel when he tries to push himself up. How he only sees lucent whiteness when his eyes flicker open. Shit, is this it? He thought for sure he’d end up at the other place.

“Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead!”

Oh, alright. So not yet. Not yet, and certainly not Heaven. Close, though, with how relieved you sound. He is the body on the side of the road, and you’ve stopped to triage him instead of driving off. He squints up at you. Floral puffer. Scarf and muffs. You look like a fairytale illustration.

His blood’s gone cold in his extremities, and he’s mumbling, “Sorry.”

“You’re a mess.”

There it is.

For your part, you don’t sound malicious, or anything. You say it like a forgone conclusion, a fact of the matter. The way a person in an Ionesco absurdist play would say, oh, it looks like I’m wearing pants right now.

He tries to make a stab at indignity. Like maybe if he denies that he’s a mess, that should suddenly make him clean. What blessed relief. But all he manages is a whimpered grunt of protest.

“What happened? Were you attacked?”

Patrick shakes his head, suddenly aware of just how wet he is.

“Patrick, tell me.” You sound concerned, but not in pieces. He knows this is all coincidence. That you simply happened to be driving by. But the fact that you’ve found him prone in the snow, the fact that you knew to call his name, knew it was him who’d ambled to the woods and buried himself in the ground like a coldblooded mountain climber, like a defiant zealot, staring into Earth, his back to God, taunting you with his dickish solipsism—he thinks all this should terrify you. He isn’t dead. Not yet. But maybe he’d already made up his mind. Perhaps you’re just picturing him as another baby. Something small and soothable. “What happened? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Patrick shakes his head again and takes your assistance in getting up. All his things are gathered in your arms.

“You’re soaked, Patrick. What were you doing in the snow?”

He looks around and feebly brushes some of the debris off of his leggings and thermal pullover.

“I... I don’t know? I’m pretty sure I started feeling sick, and then I got hot, so I took all my shit off,” he explains. He’s all nonchalant about it, too.

At first, he won’t tell you where his sister’s house is. You’re going all Nuremberg on him, like he really is a baby who will drop the knife if you tell him no sternly enough. But he soaks through the polyester of your passenger seat and grins and defies you. It’s like he’s challenging you to take him back to his dad’s. Like he’s a kid acting up in school for attention.

It takes a while. You circle the block twice. Then he sees the way his fingernails tinge cobalt, and thinks of how disappointed his father’d be. Concerned, you allege, but he doesn’t buy that.

Still, he confesses like a sinner.

He asks you—as you stand on the concrete steps to the quaint, Tudorstyle home, and he holds his cap in his teeth and fishes the keys from his pocket—not to hold the state of the place against Saskia. He says there’s a lot of damage he can do in a week. He’s always making a mess. Messing things up. Has he messed you up? He doesn’t ask, but has he?

He’s even sorry for fucking you. He doesn’t tell you that, either. And he’s about to do it again. But he is sorry. That has to count for something.

You stink. Not in a really bad way, not in a noticeable way, but the stale perfume and deodorant have turned into a cool film against your skin, trapping your sweat and guilt and other gross things which you’re too tired to name. You’ve been out buying gifts all day. You’re always so last minute. You feel like you might fall asleep on Saskia’s couch.

News says blizzard’s on its way. News is all choppy static pixel kaleidoscope, too. Even if you left right now, you wouldn’t make it home before the roads got dangerous.

You’ve heard enough hypothermia horror stories to know he should be taking a shower right now, warming himself up in increments. And you’ve heard enough suicide horror stories to know you’d be wrong to leave him anyway, after how you’ve just discovered him.

Was she visibly bleeding?

He doesn’t look like he’s about to call it quits.

On the contrary, he looks relaxed, calm, selfpossessed, sitting on the arm of the couch, one knee drawn up, cigarette dangling between fingers. Also his cock is out. He’s naked.

Has he already made up his mind?

How many times has he lain like that, in the snow, lucid about his slide into the abyss? 

He finishes his cig and takes a knee by your feet. Your bare feet. You shouldn’t have taken off your shoes. They stink.

You try to tuck your feet under you, but he reaches out and grabs your ankle and tugs like you’re the baby.

“What happened to your leg?” you croak, your voice a little fraught.

His thumb keeps brushing up and down the arch of your foot, like trying to ease your tension. He leans back and looks down, past the leavening weight of his dick, to the navy bruise bloomed through the hairs just below his knee.

You watch that Cheshire cat smirk spread his mouth apart. “Violent tap dancer.”

You do kind of wish he wouldn’t do the whole slapping your pussy and calling you a good girl thing. It feels weird and Freudian and it even makes you feel kind of guilty.

Not because of his stupid uncut Jewish cock all swollen against his thigh, nor the virgin’s innards mangled in a manger at this very moment two thousand years ago. You know that’s not how you measure innocence. There’s something idiotic about that, something primeval and pathetic, something no one should be proud or ashamed of.

It’s just that he doesn’t seem fully committed to the pastiche.

He spits a thin globe of saliva right onto your clit. His fingers sweep through your coarsehaired folds. Slow, methodical, like a cartographer mapping the world with his compass and pen.

Then, he raises his fingers and strikes them down against you. You flinch, you whimper. He groans straight into you.

“Good girl. Good girl.”

And it's hot, sure, but he could stand to be crueler.

You’re this nice twentysomething with no real bearing on his life. You pray. You care. You wipe his sister's shit. He suspects he didn’t take your virginity, but he could easily imagine he did, if he wanted to. That he’s teaching you something. This could all be a lot more plastic and pornographic.

But it isn’t. Not really.

He climbs over you, all over you. He’s all over you like the flu. He wants to crawl inside of you, burrow and fester. His knee is pressed between your thighs and he’s breathing into your neck, his head tucked under your chin. His nose is the colour of raspberry syrup and he drags the cold tip of it up the column of your neck.

He smells like smoke and snow. Like sweat and musk and something stale and dry.

You crane your neck with a piercing cry when he bottoms out. He cracks your hips open like a lobster claw. You feel his fevered heartbeat thumping through your body. He seems to think the heat of your flesh is enough to warm and cure him.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” you slaver into his hair.

“I don’t get sick,” he assures you, puffing throatily. “I never get sick.”

He licks Saskia’s bathsalts from the swollen underside of your tits. You gather palmfuls of warm water and pour them over his freckled skin, watching it bloom florid. Are you clean now? Are you shameless? Has the stink gone? Sort of.

Maybe, for a second there.

But Christmas day seeps in like another reek. You feel bad when you catch whiff. You feel the stroke of midnight in your bones, and you think you can hear Carol of the Bells. You feel especially bad, because you’re holding onto his shoulders and fucking yourself on his unhewn cock, the bathwater swashing tepid around you. And he licks the silver crucifix in the dewy valley of your breasts into his mouth, and sucks on it, and looks at you like he’s trying to make a point. He sees you frown.

The pendant glints between his teeth as he says, “Don’t worry, He’s not paying attention. It’s His birthday.”

And you duck your head to laugh.

The water ripples. He wraps his arms around you in a halfway embrace, halfway detainment. You can tell he is worried you will find your morals and leave him cold.

But you won’t.

He’s big enough that he won’t just slip out of you, even in the water. You’re all steamdizzy, eyes halfmast. You watch rivulets of condensation dance down the tiling.

Are you really about to fall asleep on this man’s cock in his sister’s bathtub? Perhaps. There is something grounding about his heavy presence in all four corners of you. You feel that mollifying pressure in your head. Your hands scrabble and slip all over the skin of his shoulders. You kiss all these droplets off his skin.

“I think I’m about to throw up,” he whispers in your ear.

You pull back and sigh. He does look quite waxen and wheyfaced. You feel bad. You were starting to think that you alone could break the fever.

Your knee knocks against the tub. He has to tug himself out of you. He clambers out of the water, puddles splashing everywhere. He slumps to the ground like marmalade, his arms drape the toiletseat, his head in the bowl. Runnels drip off him and sop the bathmat. He spits and heaves. Then he retches. There is nothing solid to the bile. When was the last time he ate something? His viscera slops out of him and into the water. The gin scalds twice as sore on the way up. He sounds horrifying. His lips drip with mucus.

He feels your soft, moist flesh against his back. Your arms around his toned middle. You feel his ribcage tremble against you.

He feels the bone of your chin against the crown of his head.

Patrick knows this is all very repulsive. He's not sure why you're holding him. Maybe you're picturing a baby again.

“What would you get me for Christmas?” he murmurs, his heavy breath echoing around the toilet bowl.

You can smell his puke.

“Um— well... you know, Giselle actually—”

“No,” he grunts stubbornly. “I mean, if you could get me anything, what would you get me?”

“I don’t know,” you say, pressing your wet breasts against his wet back. The humidity is starting to disperse, the trickles cooling off. You do get sick. You get sick quite frequently, actually. This will definitely make you sick. He’ll be gone soon enough, and that’s probably for the best, but who will hold you in your ailing?

“Come on, babe.”

You drag your fingertips down the hair on his abs until you reach the thatch between his legs. “I don’t know… A hot stone massage?”

And it’s cruel and stupid and funny—it’s something only a few people would ever understand. He and Art and Sas and Tash and you. Maybe Lili, one day.

You and Patrick burst into laughter at the same time. He chuckles until he’s wheezing. The sound of it catches in his throat like a fishbone. This is what constitutes a happy moment for him.

“That’s perfect,” he mumbles into the shitter.

[bredforloyalty]

go let it out - top of the pops, 2000

[imaginesbymonika]

Futile Devices | Part 1

Pairing: Noel Gallagher x childhood-best friend!reader

Plot: There’s nothing quite like realizing your feelings once it’s too late. But what would life be without a speck of hope?

(1985)

You gaze at the ceiling, while soft guitar music fills the atmosphere. Outside you could hear people yell at one another, and perhaps Noel heard it too because his singing voice abruptly became a bit louder: “You’re my Coney Island Baby, you’re so precious, so sweet…” At the sound of someone slamming the door shut you involuntarily lift your head. “You’re my lucky star, that’s what you are.”

His voice is soft, or at least he attempts to sound smoother than he’s capable of being. Just last week, he managed to catch a vicious throat infection somehow. You kidded about how he got it from some girl down the block, but when he didn’t laugh about it you felt stupid. “How’s your throat?”, you ask, turning your head to get a better look at him. Noel shrugs:” You tell me.”

You nod before letting your head fall back down on the mattress. Outside the window, thick grey clouds have covered the once-blue sky, and a few tiny raindrops roll down the glass. “I hate September.”, you whisper and he quits playing. His eyes are burning holes into the top of your head:” I know. You say that every year.” “But only because every year, September manages to disappoint me.”

He chuckles before clearing his throat. He winces at the slight ache.

“Have you written anything new, yet?”, you ask, counting the small cracks in the ceiling. Three, five- eight. “Hmm, maybe.”, he replies, his fingers are tapping on the instrument. “Can I hear it?” “When it’s finished, sure.” A silence falls upon you both before Noel speaks up:” By the way, why- what did Tommy say to you?”

You quickly roll over onto your stomach:” Tommy? You mean when we stood in front of Ben’s Pub?” Noel nods, his fingers have stopped moving. It was the same bar where you and Noel kissed one another for the first time, a couple of years ago. Both of you happened to be extremely drunk that night, nevertheless not drunk enough for you to forget about it -you wondered if he had.

“He asked me for my number.”

“Oh, did he?”, a soft scoff escapes his lips, while he stares outside into the afternoon:” Did you give it to him?” There’s a newfound harshness to his voice, but it quickly disappears when he clears his throat once more. “No.”, you simply answer:” He’s not my type, anyway.”

Noel nods:” Yeah, right.” He slightly raises his guitar, until it’s back upright in his lap:” You’re my Coney Island Baby, you mean so much to me. You’re my pretty little lady.” A faded sigh escapes you before you move back onto your back. Ten, twelve, thirteen.

“Did you call Stacy back?”

He hums in response. “You know, that bird from school. Gave you her number on a cigarette.” You loathed how cool that was. And after a few moments of silence, Noel shakes his head:” Not my type, you know.”

Your eyes move down to your fingers, while they play with the corner of his beige bedsheets:” Well, what’s your type anyway?” The regret forms itself quickly in your abdomen and you swallow thickly. However, Noel merely chuckles:” I think, I need to know someone before I-, well, you know.” And you do.

“Yeah. Me too.”

[deedala]

Colorwheel Timestamp Roulette ⇆ 10x11: Location, Location, Location ↳Sage + 11 for @too-schoolforcool

[burninface]

Hi Face, my video game loving friend!

Do you have any thoughts about the Gallaghers and Milkoviches playing Mario Kart? What do you think their go to characters would be?

Hi Sarah!! Thanks for the ask and omg I finally answered your ask! Sorry for the super delay…>< here I am!!

And yes I always have lots of thoughts about their gaming characters! But I only played mario kart on wii back when I was still in primary school and had played mario kart 8 on my bestie’s switch once or twice, and I don’t know the most of game terms in English, so I watched some videos and checked up wiki for reference. Hope I didn’t get anything wrong😵!

Ok so first, I tend to think that the first mario kart game for milkoviches will be Mario Kart: Super Circuit, cause teen Jaime or Colin would steal a GBA for fun (which was soon pawned by Terry, the younger siblings only got to watch them play). But for the Gallaghers it is more likely to be Mario Kart Wii, when Lip and Ian became teenagers and they got one from some dead people’s house. And of course they’ll play mario kart 8 for family entertainment after season11 hehe

And for their go to characters and in game personalities, here’s my thoughts:

Fiona: I don’t think she was very interested in video games nor she had time to play? But she’d join her siblings occasionally. She usually just picked a random character and played it as a driving game, using items once she got them and just vaguely knew what can they do.

Lip: He is definitely the kind of player who plays to win. And he’s also the only one who will change vehicles depends on the maps and pay attention to the stats of characters and vehicles. He knows a lot of game tricks and shortcuts, and will change his strategy to better counter his siblings (and later mickey, but at the time he would be too busy to deal with parenting and had no time to study the game like he used to do). His favorite character would be Donkey Kong, because he’s kinda meta in both mkw and mk8 (ok, I’m actually not very sure about this). And later for mk8 he liked Waluigi too, for the same reason. And sure, he prefers bikes than karts (his favorite bike is Flame Runner).

Debbie: She didn’t play video games much but different from Fiona, Debs has a gift in gaming. She figured out the best combo of characters and vehicles naturally, and found the playing tricks without playing much. She even won Lip sometimes, but her permanent enemy number one is Carl. Her game skills were better than him, but not her luck on items, especially when she was countering Carl. They keep recording the score between them from mkw to mk8 (it’s really close). Debbie’s favorite characters are Peach and Toadette, after Franny was born, she started to like Baby Daisy too, ‘cause she looks exactly like her baby girl.

Franny: Her favorite character is Dry Bones (She thinks they are cute), Yoshi (just like her uncle) and Inkling Girl (she plays Splatoon too!). And after watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie, she thought Peach is really cool too. Her uncle Mickey suggested she choose Tanooki Mario (raccoon suit Mario) to chase her uncle Ian once, they giggled together the whole game.

Carl: When Carl was younger, he thought Mario Kart was a game about speeding and crashing, so his to go character was Bowser. He liked to crash his siblings’ karts but soon found that he couldn’t touch them if he always fell behind. So, in order to crash more karts, he began to study how to drive faster. Then he found many shortcuts to facilitate him to chase up, and also found the fun of using items to attack others. And his favorite character became Wario and King Boo. Dry Bowser was cool to him, too. Carl’s a lucky player who always got nice items, but his game skill was not that good (he is more like a fps/fighting game player to me). And yes he seems Debbie as his biggest enemy in Mario Kart as well. Carl was also the best Gallagher in the ballon battle mode.

Liam: Liam is the one who always deliberately falls behind at first to get better items and prevent clashes, but suddenly boosts up at the last round and becomes one of the top 3. Just when you see the finish line and think you are winning, Liam will come from behind and silently drive past you. Liam is also the only one who will search for gaming tips as reference (Lip was too proud to do that). He always chooses Toad as character but his favorite one is Shy Guy, sometimes he uses his mii character too. He plays splatoon too!

Ian: idk why but my first impression is Ian will always move his whole body when playing video games, so for mkw, he always keeps tilt controls on while playing games and tilt his upper trunk sharply every time his kart drift. His favorite character is Yoshi, cause the cute dinosaur seems friendly and is easy to play. And later for mk8, he likes to use Villager (‘cause he seems like an Animal Crossing player) and mii with Mickey’s appearance (by pie @gallapiech) too. He knows the common tricks of the game and some of the shortcuts (learned from Lip) by experiences. Somehow Ian was always attacked by others unexpectedly (mainly by Carl and Mickey, sometimes Debbie when they trying to crash the other player, and by everyone when they use items trying to take down another player). His favorite item is Bullet Bill and every time he falls behind, he’ll keep praying for one in low voice (and he’s kinda jealous that Carl always got one). He is also the only one who will slow down a little to safely dodge all the obstacles on the track (that’s how he found that his crush and later his boyfriend and ex and husband looks exactly like a goomba).

It's another story when he plays against with Mickey though. They’ll physically harass each other, and since Mickey will always find him among all the players and use items on him deliberately, Ian has to become more aggressive to fight back. They always got place 11th and 12th in multiplayers game due to it (they still like to compete for the 11th tho, and winning the other one def feels better than be the winner of the game). Not only once Ian said they better play separately but the family love when gallavich play as a duo because that means easy win to them.

Mickey: Mickey’s favorite character would be Wario and Dry Bowser, because duh, he loves being a big bad guy (and Bowser looks a little dumb in his opinion). And later when he found out that Ian isn’t good with raccoon, he liked to use Tanooki Mario too. From all the Gallaghers and Milkoviches, Mickey is the best at using items. He was good at aiming other players, prejudging their movement, as well as calculating when to use boosting items to make the best use of them. He was also good at remembering shortcuts and mastered stealing others’ items (he mastered stealing in Ballon Battle too). But compared to winning the whole game, Mickey was always focusing at winning one people. Just, not letting someone to win is more fun to him.

While playing against Ian, his favorite things to do is waiting for him in front of items and driving sideways to eat all items up when Ian arrives, and bumping into him from time to time (in game and out game). He’ll use all the items on Ian (and he always accidently steps on the banana he set before because he is too focus on his lover). But every time when Lip is in game too, the highest priority will become “not letting Lip win” (and if Ian wins Lip, "that counts my win too ‘cause we are fuckin’ husbands").

Mandy: When Mandy was younger, she’s a Toadette/Daisy player, but later her favorite character had changed to Mario and Luigi (‘cause they are man with big nose?). Mandy’s gaming skills are quite alike to Ian, which makes them a perfect gaming duo. Her favorite item is super star (since all his brothers like to use items on others). She like to use physical harassment while gaming just like all the Milkoviches. Later for mk8, she got her love for Daisy back because she’s comfy to use. She also likes Link (“yeah he’s def the most handsome one”) and Isabelle (she plays Animal Crossing too, but not much as Ian, they often visit each other’s island).

Iggy: Surprisingly, unlike on other things, Iggy really have brain for video games, even Mickey had learned tricks from him. Iggy is the kind of player who can’t explain why he’s this good at the game, but he’s just good. He’s also lucky in game (and he believes the unluckier he was irl the luckier he will be in games), always gets the good items and dodges the attack from others. His to go character must be Waluigi, and he was one of the members who voted Waluigi to appear in the Super Smash Bros. He also loved Rosalina, she’s his first video game crush. But he’s too afraid to let Terry found out he’s using female characters in game so he never played as her back then (and he’s still confused about how’s that ”faggy” if you like a female character so you play as her just to gaib her more screem time). After mk8 came out, his favorite character became to Iggy (“Yo losers, none of you can play as yourself in game except me”).

And a little bonus about Sandy: I think she’s kinda like Debbie, has a gift for Mario Kart but not really interested in this kind of game, and unfortunately, she had never played against with Debbie in games (they didn't have time to). She likes to play fps games better and duos with Mickey sometimes (they play fps irl too lol).

Another bonus: young Milkoviches playing Mario Kart Wii!! (yeah I know mkw was released in 2008. But I just want chibi Milkoviches to play together🥺

Bonus after bonus that kinda digress: while I was writing the answer, Mario Kart Toys were back at McDonald's. I ordered happy meals for the toys and then started to think… Mickey is likely to be one who order happy if the toy in it is really cool to him. But he doesn’t want others to know he orders happy meal (even when he was kid) and he really doesn’t like the milk in it (other things are okay), so he always found another one to order happy meal for him and to steal their coke…

At last… sorry for let you waiting for so long Sarah…! Thanks for the ask again and hope you like the answer<3 I really love to imagine them playing video games🥰

[thelipgallagher]

Fuck you, your fucking fuck 🖕

[biblical-chronicles]

Don't be a stranger

___________________________________________________________

where the reader shows up at Liam's house to finish a university project with Lennon but as it turns out he will be running a bit late. Naturally, Liam helps the reader pass the time leaving some evidence along the way.

___________________________________________________________

The late afternoon sun was low in the sky as you walked down the quiet, leafy street. You double-checked the address Lennon had sent earlier, wondering again why on earth you'd agreed to meet him at his gaff instead of the library or some café. Still, Lennon was one of your few decent options for this group project, and since he was actually pulling his weight (a rarity in university group assignments), you didn’t want to complain. You approached the door and gave it a few quick knocks, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other.

When the door opened, you were prepared to see Lennon’s slightly aloof expression, but instead, you were greeted by Liam.

He stood there in the doorway, hair a bit messy like he hadn’t bothered to run a comb through it, a fitted jacket over a plain shirt, and an expression tainted with a bit of bemusement and self-assurance.

“Alright, love?” he said, leaning casually against the doorframe.

You blinked, feeling suddenly off balance. “Uh, hi. I’m here for Lennon?”

“I know who you’re here for,” Liam replied, crossing his arms. His voice was rich with that slight rasp you recognized from countless interviews and songs. “He’s not in yet. Just texted, said he’s sorry and that he's been held up at uni. Some...what was it? Extra seminar or summat.”

“Oh,” you said, feeling a mix of confusion and discomfort. “Right, well, I can just come back another time. I don’t want to—”

“Don’t be daft,” Liam interrupted, gesturing for you to come in. “You’re here now. No point leggin’ it, he won’t be long, I reckon. You can wait inside.”

It wasn’t so much an invitation more so an order, and before you could come up with an excuse, you found yourself stepping inside. The house smelled faintly of ash and coffee, giving it a little more of a cozy lived-in feel.

“Fancy a drink?” Liam asked as he closed the door behind you.

“Um, just water is fine.”

“Water? Proper boring, that,” he teased, shooting you a smirk before heading toward the kitchen. “Make yourself at home.”

You cautiously settled onto the couch, the soft cushions sinking beneath you. Despite your nervousness, you couldn’t help but glance around, finding many framed photos and bits of music memorabilia on the walls.

Liam returned a few moments later, carrying two glasses of water. He set them on the coffee table and dropped down onto the couch beside you, the movement causing the cushions to shift and tilt you slightly toward him.

“So,” he said, leaning back and stretching his arm along the back of the couch. “What’s this big uni project, then? Summat boring, I bet.”

You laughed nervously, fiddling with the strap of your bag. “Uh, yeah, just a group presentation on media influence. Lennon’s been really helpful, though.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “Lennon? Helpful? You sure we’re talkin’ about the same lad?”

“Yeah, he’s actually really on top of things,” you said, smiling. “He’s focused.”

“Focused?” Liam repeated, pretending to be affronted. “Sounds like a bloody insult in this house.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, relaxing slightly as his humor eased your nerves. “I mean it in a good way. He’s just a bit more stoic than you.”

“Stoic, eh?” Liam said, smirking. “That’s posh for ‘boring,’ innit?”

“No, it’s not!” you protested, laughing.

Liam leaned forward, his eyes narrowing playfully. “Alright then, who’s better—me or him?” he asks playfully not necessarily expecting any answer.

The question caught you off guard, and before you could think, you blurted out, “oh definitely you.”

The word hung in the air for a second too long, and your face heated up as you realized how quickly you’d answered.

Liam’s smirk widened into a full grin. “Oh, aye? Didn’t take you for a Gallagher fangirl.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” you said, trying to backtrack, though your flustered tone only made him laugh.

“Course you didn’t,” he teased, nudging your knee with his. “Don’t worry, love. Happens all the time, can’t help bein’ irresistible, can I?”

You rolled your eyes, though you couldn’t stop the smile tugging at your lips. “You’re so full of it.”

He leaned closer, his voice dropping slightly. “Yeah, but you love it.”

The playful banter melted some of the awkwardness, and the two of you settled into an easy rhythm, chatting and joking for what felt like hours. You talked about music, films, life in Manchester—discovering along the way that you shared a surprising number of opinions.

At some point, you noticed just how close the two of you had become. His knee was almost brushing yours, and the arm he’d slung across the back of the couch was now just inches from your shoulder. The air between you felt heavier, charged with something unspoken.

Liam broke the silence, his tone light but his gaze intent. “So, Lennon’s actually useful, yeah? Didn’t think he had it in him.”

You laughed softly, grateful for the shift in tone. “He’s great. You can definitely see the physical resemblance too.”

“Yeah?” Liam said, tilting his head. “Who’s better lookin’, then? Be honest.”

“Oh my god,” you said, covering your face with your hands as you laughed "not again Gallagher".

“I’m serious!” he said, grinning.

You lowered your hands, meeting his gaze with a mix of exasperation and amusement. “You.”

This time, the word didn’t come out as flustered or rushed—it was softer, more deliberate. Liam’s grin faltered for a moment, replaced by something more thoughtful.

“Yeah?” he said quietly.

You nodded, your heart pounding as the teasing edge in his tone disappeared.

Liam leaned in slightly, his eyes flicking from yours to your lips. “You gonna kiss me, or am I gonna have to make the first move?”

Your breath caught, and before you could answer, he closed the distance. This kiss was intense, his hands roaming up to cup your face, holding you firmly as his tongue brushed against your lips. You parted your lips for him without thinking, and in an instant, his kiss deepened, pulling you into something entirely different. His mouth moved with a kind of urgency that made your head spin, but even in his intensity, there was something tender about it.

Liam shifted, gently guiding you even closer beside him. He didn’t break the kiss as he moved, his hands trailing down your body, making your skin tingle where his fingers touched. You could feel the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat against your chest, only making you want to be closer. You shifted to straddle him, your hands gripping the sides of his face as the kiss grew more heated.

Liam’s hands quickly slid under your shirt lightly tracing your bra as his lips trailed along your neck, there was no room for anything else but him. He rose his head slightly placing his lips close to your ear.

“Tell me what you want, love,” Liam murmured, his lips barely touching your ear as he spoke. “You’ve got to ask for it if you want it, yeah?”

You felt a rush of warmth flood your chest, and without thinking, you whispered, “I... I want you to give me a hickey. Please.”

Liam’s eyes flicked up to meet yours, his face lit with amusement. He smirked, clearly enjoying your shy request. "A proper one, eh?" he asked, his voice teasing but with that underlying promise that he was going to deliver.

You nodded, suddenly feeling more exposed than you had ever felt, but it didn’t matter. The way Liam looked at you made everything else fade away.

"Alright then," he said softly, before lowering his lips to your neck again, his mouth finding the sensitive spot just below your jaw. His teeth grazed your skin before he sucked on it gently, marking you, leaving a dark spot on your skin that would surely stay for a few days.

You gasped softly at the sensation, a mixture of pleasure and excitement flooding your veins. You felt his lips forming into a grin against your skin as he proceeded to slowly leave open mouth kisses down to your collarbones, his hands gripping your waist as he gently pulled you even closer.

The sensation of his lips on your skin was almost intoxicating, and as he finished the little spectacle, he pulled back with a satisfied grin. “There you go, love,” he said with a wink.

You didn't have the time to answer as the moment was soon interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and Lennon’s voice calling out, “I’m back!”

You scrambled away from Liam, your hand flying to your neck to cover the mark. Liam, meanwhile, leaned back against the couch, laughing at your flustered state a bit too much.

“You’re a mess, love,” he said, his voice warm but teasing. “You can’t hide that.”

You shot him a pleading look just as Lennon walked into the room, his eyes flicking between you and his dad. Liam just smiled nonchalantly, as if nothing unusual was happening at all.

“What’s goin’ on in here?” Lennon said, stepping into the room and raising an eyebrow at the scene before him.

“Nothing,” you said quickly, your voice an octave higher than usual.

“Absolutely nowt,” Liam added, smirking as he shot you a knowing look.

You glared at him, your cheeks burning, still not exactly having processed all the things that have happened. At this point just happy that you managed to adjust your collar in time.

Soon, you were brought back to your rather boring reality of having to put together the project with Lennon.

You sat there in his room trying to focus on your work, but your mind just wouldn’t settle—still stuck on the events from earlier.

After a while the door creaked open revealing Liam with two drinks in hand. He set one down in front of you with a quick, knowing look before turning to walk back toward Lennon. As he did, you caught a glimpse of his hand, raised in a casual, subtle gesture, making an unmistakable "call me" motion.

Your cheeks went hot for what it seemed like the 100th time today as your eyes fell on the bottle in front of you and saw that the label had a phone number written on it, with “don’t be a stranger” scrawled beside it.

You fought to keep your cool, but the smile tugging at your lips was hard to ignore. Liam shot you one last smirk before disappearing out of the room.

You glanced back at the small numbers on the bottle and sighed, your heart racing. There was no denying it now—this wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

________________________________________________________

finally some Liam appreciation on the blog xx

let me know how you lot liked it. Also, don’t worry about that other Liam request I posted about, I’m on it, just had to scribble this down first.

(as a fun fact this was all written during an intro to jurisprudence lecture, so yeah, it’s clear where me true devotion lies - lawmaking and uni obviously)

[leaawrites]

Could you please write a fic where the girl was best friends with the Gallaghers when she was younger but then moved away and ended up becoming friends with Damon. Fast forward to the award show where she’s Damon plus one and ultimately runs into the Gallagher again, where they’re all over her/happy to see her again/don’t want to leave her alone. But Damon really confused bc she’s never mentioned that she knew them and they’re all jealous over her. It could be a x reader for anybody but maybe have her end up with one of the brothers? Thank you!! Also sorry it’s a long request

idiots

Liam Gallagher x fem!reader

Summary: In which, they find back to each other and finally confess.

Warnings: fluff, angst, jealousy, harsh language

Wordcount: 1.8k

Masterlist

Slouching on the couch of one of her best friends, Y/n stares at the telly and the faces on them. Two people she used to know like the back of her hand, until she didn’t anymore.

Moving away from your home town was one of the worst scenarios for a teenager like her. She’d always been bad at making friends or becoming comfortable enough around other people to truly show them who she was, not just the pretty girl with not much to say.

When Damon met her the first time, backstage at one of their earlier gigs, he couldn’t believe the two different people he met that night. First he caught her eye from across the room, a shy smile playing on her lips as she crossed his gaze, before looking away rather quickly again. Then, after a few sentences spoken and hours passed, they stumbled out the bar together, his arm thrown over her shoulder as she tried guiding him home safely. They shared a kiss when stumbling into his apartment, though ultimately decided that they would never be more than friends.

He was still on her mind.

She never actively thought about him, except when he was on TV. It was more like an always lingering memory of their time that she couldn’t let go of even if she tried. He wouldn’t let her live in peace even after she left them.

“What ya staring at?” Damon asked, walking into the living room and flopping on the couch next to her. “Ya fancy one of those bellends?”

“Don’t go mental now,” she laughed, seeing his scrunched up face as Oasis performed their new song on Top Of The Pops.

It was good, she had to admit, Noel had always been a great writer. Though it wouldn’t be the same without him. Liam made it all seem so effortlessly. He made it look so cool. Even when it was playback and not live, she’d heard them perform live more than enough times to be a fair judge.

Sneaking away from Damon’s side at festivals or watching a show with them late at night while she tried not to wake one of the boys, she never forgot to keep her promise she made when she left.

‘I promise that I will watch everything you do, I’ll follow you still, Liam. Don’t worry about me forgetting you, I couldn’t.’

“What I wanted to ask,” Damon started talking away, tearing part of her attention from the screen, but not all. “There’s this award show coming up, nothing worth mentioning. Wanna come with me?”

“Me?” she asked, now fully turning towards the boy. “Why would you want me to accompany you to such thing?”

He shrugged, but she knew that he had an answer already ready for every single one of her question.

“All those other people there are boring. You’re the only fun one.” Pulling his puppy eyes and pouting his lips, she looked at him bored for a moment before ultimately giving in.

“Fine,” she agrees, making him gleam in joy. “But.” Holding her finger up at him. “If anyone starts some stupid dating rumour again, I’m never going anywhere with you again.”

Walking into the big venue, she spotted the pair she tried her hardest to avoid that night, almost immediately. Sitting at a table near their own, chattering and laughing and drinking. Shaking hands occasionally.

Through out the first half of the show, Y/n couldn’t keep her eyes away from him. From her seat, she had the best view on his profile. she could see his jaw tighten whenever someone won he didn’t want to win, or how the grip on his beer would loosen whenever someone won he wanted to, a small smile forming on his face whenever that happened. One forming on her own almost identically.

Liam could feel a pair of eyes burning in the back of his head, occasionally turning around to try and catch his predator. All he found though, was Damon Albarn staring at him with confused eyes.

He’d noticed his friend’s gaze far away from where it should be, somewhere in the crowd of people, focused on one in particular. Catching Liam Gallagher’s gaze, he was taken back to the night he asked her to accompany him. Being aware of the crush she formed on ‘the enemy’ he couldn’t help but not not take her.

The moment the first half was over and a break was called through the speakers installed in the walls, Damon excused himself, walking out and to the bar. Getting them a new drink, that they ‘couldn’t survive this without’. Laughing at his wording, Y/n let him walk away. Looking around the room, her eyes were drawn to his seat again.

Liam was watching Damon walk away, his gaze now finally free to see the man’s guest. Looking at the table, his eyes widen in shock. Hitting Noel’s arm repeatedly, he couldn’t keep his focus from lingering. His eyes still focused on her, though his mind was far away. It was back in Manchester, back with her. The two bodies of theirs laying close together as The Stone Roses played in the background of their silence.

‘I don’t want you to go.’ He would’ve never admitted back then what he knew already for years.

His heart skipped a beat when their eyes locked, their souls intertwining again after years left torn apart. Healing as he held her face in his mind.

“What?” Noel snapped annoyed. Turning to his little brother sharply and pushing his hand away from his arm.

Liam didn’t answer, only pointing in her direction. Noel’s eyes widen in shock now too.

“What ya doing here, love?” A voice boomed behind her, the familiarity of it seeping through her spine, making her sit up straighter.

“Liam,” she breathed out before turning towards him. The room watching the two of them. “Hey.”

Pulling her into a hug, he inhaled the scent on her hair and neck. It was richer now, but still the same summery feeling he only smelt around her. Noel came after, not leaving her a lot of space to breath.

“Hey, kid,” he greeted her, smiling brightly.

“Can’t believe you’ve stolen my date now, Gallagher.” Damon came walking back, two drinks in his hands.

Putting them down a smirk appeared on his face, making Liam’s blood boil up in anger. His fist clenching at the thought of them being here together. She had to know about the war they partaking in, why was she on his side now?

Y/n could sense the tension, as could Noel, who quickly led Liam away from the scene, saying they should go back before it gets to late and the lights would dim. Sitting down, they both still held their gaze, urging he other to look away first, but neither would dare to.

The lights dimmed again, though one brighter one appeared on the other side of the room. Liam walked out through one of the back doors. Noel sat with his head in his hands at their table, praying he hadn’t had to explain what just happened between them.

Looking at Damon, he told her to go after him. Silently creeping through the dark, she hoped for no cameras to catch her body escaping. Walking out into the lights and fresh air, she could breath for the first time in an hour. Outside the building, Liam was perched up against a wall with a cigarette hanging from his lips. Standing next to him, her arms crossed over her chest, they kept in silence. The only sound being the shuffling of Liam’s body as he took his jacket from his body and wrapped it around hers, without acknowledging her presence more than that.

“Saw you two on a front page a few weeks back, never thought I’d see you again. Even less with someone like him,” he broke the silence after a couple of minutes passing.

“Damon can be pretty nice if you get to know him better. He’s just cold at first, not like you’re any different,” she defended her friend, making him roll his eyes.

“How would you know? We couldn’t even talk when we met.”

“It took me four months to get you to even look at me. You were just always ignoring me.” They both laughed at the memories ans endless stories their mothers used to share about the two of them.

“Wasn’t even doing it on purpose, love.” Raising her eyebrows at him, he reconsidered. “You were just too pretty to look at,” he tried once more. Tilting her head, the smirk on his face disappeared. “In my defence, you were pretty violent in your attempts to get my attention. Seemed pretty desperate too.”

Gaping at him with her mouth wide open, she slapped in his arm, making him wince a little in fake hurt. “I wasn’t desperate. Though you seemed kinda intimidated once I could talk earlier than you, big mouth. Seemed to be a sign of God, that you would only talk bullshit anyway, so he threatened giving you a vocabulary.”

“Would it still be bullshit if I said, that seeing you together made me jealous?”

The words hung in the air between them, the confession lingering a little longer on both their racing hearts.

“Yes,” she answered, making his face drop. He was so sure that there was more to them than friendship, now it seemed that he even destroyed that. “Utter bullshit,” she continued talking. Continued stabbing a sword into his already breaking heart. “Because there was never a reason for you to be jealous.”

Crushing the cigarette beneath his shoes, he was ready to hear the last words he expected her to mutter to him. Letting him suffer in silence out of embarrassment and shame instead of screaming it at him with laughter. ‘We were always just friends, why would you be jealous? You’re still my best friend.’

“Liam,” she whispered, seeing the distant look in his eyes. “Can you please look at me?”

Snapping his eyes up to her, they looked almost angry with something. The soft blue now a storming sea.

“What?” He spat at her.

“I’ve always loved you, I just wanted you to know that.”

It couldn’t be true, could it? Laughing it off quietly, he nodded his head in mockery. “Yeah, sure. A great friend I am.”

“Not just in a friendly way.”

His heart stopped in his chest at her words, sinking down his chest and into his stomach, making him feel sick. The weight of it pulling him down, his shoulders falling into his body.

“What?” he quietly asked, not believing her words. It was all in his imagination, right?

Sacking her body, she couldn’t believe him. Typical Liam, she though. Smiling at him sweetly, her eyes sparkling under the street lights before pulling him in by his collar and connecting their lips. They had kissed before, but this was different. This one was real. His hands on her waist gripping tight to make her stay so close to him forever. He wouldn’t ever let go of her again.

[putmeinmoviebaby]

Many times in my life, I felt used, used by everyone around me. I wanted them not to see me as a "little girl"; I wanted them to see me with more maturity.

Despite my efforts to show this maturity and ability, it seemed like no one noticed. At that exact moment, hopping from party to party in Hollywood, I only felt emptier inside.

"Miss Y/n, would you like another glass of wine?" – I hear the waiter’s voice, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"Yes, please," I say, extending the glass in his direction.

Being an actress has its good and bad moments; having to attend all kinds of parties to bring publicity to your name is one of them.

People around don’t care much about whether you're polite, hard-working, or intelligent. The only thing that matters to them is beauty; if you’re beautiful in their eyes, you’ve already won.

Right then, I found myself at one of these parties, in an expensive dress, trying to look perfect. I had to laugh at the men’s jokes and run my hand through my hair, trying to play the doll.

Tired of that whole atmosphere, I was sitting on a sofa in the back of the room, with glasses scattered on the table and a lit cigarette between my fingers.

Looking to the side, I see a tall man with blue eyes and mature skin, short hair. He was walking toward the empty spot beside me.

"Would you mind if I sat here?" – I hear the man’s husky voice, close to my face.

I turn to look at his face and shrug, signaling for him to sit. He settles beside me, holding a pack of cigarettes in one hand. His long fingers place a cigarette in his mouth.

"Could you lend me your lighter, darling?"

I take the lighter from my pocket and bring it to his face to light the cigarette. His face was striking, with thick eyebrows and intense blue eyes. He cupped his hands around the flame, lighting the cigarette between his lips.

I see his eyes scan my face, observing every detail – lips, eyes – tracing over my entire face.

I felt a chill run through me, the wind brushing against me on that cold and cloudy night.

"Aren’t you cold? It’s freezing here, dear." – I hear his husky voice, speaking close to my face.

I feel a warm, soft touch on my shoulders and realize he had placed his jacket over me.

"You didn’t have to, I was fine." – I say, avoiding his eyes.

"You were shivering all over, love." Hearing his words, I feel my face heat up, growing embarrassed.

"Do I know you? Are you a model by chance? Maybe you know my son, Lennon; he’s a model," – I hear the man’s voice as I see smoke leave his lips. "Talented kid, takes after his father, obviously," – he says with a laugh.

"Actually, no, I’m an actress. I’m currently working on a project with Tarantino," – I reply, looking at his face. "Although I have seen Lennon walk the runway once."

"So you’re Liam Gallagher?"

"Yes, the one and only." He laughs as he says this.

I didn’t recognize you; you look different from the last time I remember." – I say, looking into his eyes.

"Yeah, age catches up more and more each day, I’d say."

"You look great; you seem young," – I reply, looking at him, seeing those eyes watching me intently.

"Thank you, darling. You look beautiful tonight."

Liam leaned closer, and the smile on his lips showed he noticed the way I looked at him. His blue eyes examined me intently, a direct and unhurried gaze that seemed to see beyond the surface.

"So," he said with a slight smile, his eyes never leaving mine, "you don’t really seem like someone who feels comfortable at parties like this. Or am I wrong?"

I gave a slight smile, tossing my hair to the side and holding his gaze firmly. "Let’s say this party doesn’t have much to offer me, besides a few glasses of wine and… some interesting conversations."

He leaned in slightly, resting his elbow on the sofa and moving a little closer. "Interesting?" – his voice was low, husky, as if challenging me to continue. "And how am I doing so far?"

I studied him, holding his gaze with a confidence that seemed to surprise him. "I’d say you’re still in the testing phase, Gallagher. But I have to admit, you’re piquing my curiosity."

He smiled, the kind of smile only someone accustomed to attention would give – confident, but with a touch of mystery. "Well, I’m glad to know I’ve at least earned your curiosity," he replied, keeping his voice soft and his gaze fixed on me. "But I didn’t come to parties like this just to be tested."

I leaned in his direction, feeling the tension between us grow. "Oh, really? Then tell me, what do you hope to find here?"

Liam kept his intense gaze, as if carefully weighing each word. "I hoped to find something... out of the ordinary. Someone who, like me, sees beyond appearances and all the theatrics."

I let out a light laugh. "So, you’re looking for authenticity in the most superficial place in Los Angeles?" – I teased, still holding his gaze, not backing down.

He shrugged, with a smile of someone who loves a good challenge. "Believe it or not, sometimes the most unlikely places hold interesting surprises." He leaned a little closer, his blue eyes fixed on mine, and I felt the atmosphere around us change, as if the party noise gradually disappeared. "And you, what are you looking for, then?"

I crossed my legs and settled into the sofa, savoring the moment, unhurried. "Something similar, maybe. I’m tired of living the same kind of night, with the same people, the same conversations." I paused, seeing the gleam in his eyes intensify, and added, "I guess I’m also looking for something out of the ordinary."

Liam nodded slightly, a satisfied glint in his eye. "Interesting... Seems this tedious party had a surprise in store for me, after all." He leaned a little closer, his face just inches from mine. He exuded a mature confidence, as if he understood the game between us but wasn’t rushing the next move.

"The luck is all yours, then," I replied, in a light tone but with a challenging smile. "Not everyone here is ready for a conversation that goes beyond the surface."

He laughed, with that easy smile that seemed to carry stories that didn’t need words. "I’ll take that luck. But, who knows, maybe I can do something to prolong it a bit," he said, while keeping his gaze locked on mine, not looking away. "Want to go for a walk? I think we both deserve something different from what this party has to offer."

I analyzed him, still feeling the intensity of his gaze on me. "Tempting proposal, Gallagher," I said, letting a smile slip. "Maybe that’s exactly what I need."

He smiled and stood up from the sofa, making me follow him. As we approached the exit, I felt his hands on my waist, pulling me closer to his chest.

Reaching the exit of the large mansion where the party was happening, Liam asked the valet to call a cab.

"Would you like to go to my apartment? It’s not far from here," I say near his ear.

"You decide, darling," I hear his voice as he runs his fingers along my cheek.

The cab stopped in front of us, and Liam opened the door, gesturing for me to enter first. I got in, and he followed, settling next to me. The small space between us in the back seat felt intense.

As the cab drove along the road, the silence was comfortable but charged with expectation. Liam put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me slightly closer to him. I felt his presence, his distinct scent, and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to capture that feeling.

We arrived at my apartment. I got out of the car, and when I looked back, he was already beside me, so close I felt his breath as he leaned in slightly, as if the air around us was filled with possibilities.

We went up to my floor, and when I opened the door, the calm of the apartment seemed to envelop us. Liam took a few steps inside, observing the place, while I left my purse on the entry table. The tension that had existed between us since the party seemed to grow with each second.

He turned to me, approaching slowly, until we were face to face. His hand found my face, sliding through my hair as his eyes watched me with a silent intensity.

"So, this is where you hide from the world?" – he asked, with a slight smile on his lips.

"This is where I try to be myself," I replied in a low voice.

Liam moved closer, his fingers tracing a gentle line along my face, moving down my shoulders and lightly pulling me toward him.

He leaned his face toward my neck, and his lips trailed repeatedly along my shoulder, drawing sighs from me that traveled through every fiber of my being.

He slid his fingers over my face and, without saying a word, moved closer once more, his lips brushing against mine, in a light, slow touch, as if wanting to make that moment last forever.

As he pulled back slightly, his eyes held an intensity that seemed to promise something beyond that moment. "You realize we’re just beginning, don’t you, love?" – he said, with a smile on his lips.

I smiled back, letting myself dive into that feeling, not worrying about what would come next. "Maybe that’s exactly what I was looking for without knowing it," I replied, letting my gaze express what words couldn’t.

He laughed softly, with that confidence that intrigued me so much. "Then let’s see where this takes us, darling," he murmured, his fingers still entwined with mine.

The End

[dearpyramus]

a different side of you: a lip gallagher x reader oneshot

while working on a school project, you catch a glimpse of a different side of lip gallagher

warnings: none! (for once), 628 words

a/n: apologizies this is so short i kinda rushed but its been hard finding motivation lately. hope that's ok. some rivals to lovers (or as least as much as I could fit in)

(fic btc)

It was a long fucking afternoon.

You had the misfortune of being paired up with Lip Gallagher, of all people, for an important school project. It took too long for you both to find time to work on it, who knows what Lip was doing with his time. It took even longer for you to agree on how you wanted to execute it.

You wanted to scream. God, he was insufferable.

The patter of the rain from outside was the only thing keeping you calm. You always found serenity in storms. The chaos of it all was relaxing in a way.

Maybe that’s why you were secretly enjoying your time in the Gallagher house today. You didn’t want to think of it.

A flash of lighting followed by a roar of thunder allowed you to settle a bit. This was quickly interrupted by the soft sound of a whine. You furrowed your brows in confusion, clearly it wasn’t coming from Lip.

Almost in sync, you and Lip turned your head to the source of the noise. By the doorway of the latter’s bedroom stood Liam Gallagher, Lip’s baby brother. Your eyes couldn’t help but dart to Lip’s, who was sporting a soft frown.

“What’s wrong, bud?”

This was a stark contrast to his usual demeanor and it nearly caused you to do a double take. You never heard Lip speak in this voice; so soft it was almost a coo. You didn’t know what to think at first. You didn’t want to think about how it made your heart flip.

Liam’s was about to reply when another crackle of thunder boomed throughout the night sky. This earned another whine from the tiny kid, who was nervously grasping the hem of his Blues Clues pajamas.

You could have sworn you heard him let out an “awww.” You weren’t quite sure, though.

Before you could register any movement, Lip got up and gently scooped his kid brother in his arms. You didn’t miss the way Liam clung onto him, as if he was an anchor amidst the storm. You wanted to look away; it was too fucking precious. Who know Lip Gallagher could pull at your heartstrings like that?

“Awww ya scared of the storm? Is that it?”

At Lip’s words, Liam nodded against his chest. His tiny body trembled, causing Lip’s brows to furrow.

“Hey hey—shhhh. It alright, buddy. The storm can’t hurt you. You’re okay,” he murmured, slowly beginning to rock Liam back and forth.

You tried to pay attention to your portion of the project but your eyes were constantly drawn to the scene in-front of you. Obviously, you knew Lip wouldn’t be mean to his brother, yet you didn’t expect this. Any chance of getting anything done at that moment was momentarily abandoned.

Why was this so heartwarming to you? You couldn’t stand Lip.

“Just relax. I’m here, I’m here. Just focus on me, okay?”

Lip continued to comfort Liam as if you weren’t there. Either he didn’t catch you staring or just ignored you, too occupied with his distressed brother. He rubbed circles into his tiny back and shushed him during each thunder strike. Eventually, you noticed he began to hum an incoherent tune. It was too much.

“That’s it, I gotcha…big brother’s here. Big brothers right here,” he soothed, voice so soft you could just barely make out the words. Liam seemed to visibly relax as Lip resumed his comforts.

“Nothing will happen to you, I promise”

God, you hated how much it was affecting you. Never did you except loud-mouthed Lip Gallagher to be so soft spoken. You wanted to cry at the sight. You secretly wished you would see this side of Lip more often, maybe you would tolerate him more. Maybe.

tagged for: @maggiesarchives @mouseymilkovich @golden-hoax @its-rach-writes

dividers

[calummss]

shameless

cameron monaghan

being in a relationship with cameron monaghan headcanon

gallavich

gallavich as girl!dads

[bredforloyalty]

peculiar creature