#maybe this time next year i can dig her out

[o-batll3]

Please write part 2 of truths or just something really cute and sweet with lena oberdorf!

truths pt2 - l. oberdorf

warnings - make out

a/n - sorry i have been SLACKING in posting i’ve had a humongous break due to school work but hopefully i’m back!!

you don’t know when it started feeling different.

maybe it was the way she started looking at you—not like a friend, not like a teammate, but like you were something more. or maybe it was the way your heart started skipping when she did something as simple as slinging an arm around your shoulder, or flashing that stupid, cocky grin after beating you in a sprint.

whatever it was, it’s been building for a long time. and now, stuck in the same room for a week at camp, it’s getting unbearable.

—

by the third day, it’s ridiculous.

she’s everywhere. in your space, in your head, in your skin.

when you sit down at meals, she sits next to you without thinking, your knees bumping together under the table. when you finish a drill and reach for your water bottle, she already has it in her hand, passing it to you with a smirk like she knew you’d need it.

you train together like you’re connected, like you’ve been playing side by side forever. passes are effortless, movement instinctive, and she feels it too—you can tell by the way she grins when you pull off something perfect, by the way she watches you when she thinks you won’t notice.

but you always notice.

and it’s killing you.

—

by the fifth day, you’re losing your mind.

because it’s not just training anymore. it’s the little things. the way she leans against you when she’s tired, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. the way she lingers in the doorway when you’re alone in your room, like she’s waiting for you to do something. the way her gaze flickers to your lips when you talk, for just a second, but long enough to make you dizzy.

just tell her.

you repeat it to yourself every night before falling asleep, staring at the ceiling, listening to her breathe in the bed next to yours.

but you don’t.

—

the last night is the breaking point.

you’re the last two on the field after training, the floodlights buzzing overhead, the air thick and warm from the summer heat. you’re both exhausted, sweaty, sore, but neither of you moves. neither of you wants to move.

“you keep looking at me like you want to say something,” she murmurs, kicking the ball between her feet.

your stomach twists. you force a smirk. “so do you.”

she exhales sharply, shaking her head. “god, you’re impossible.”

“so are you.”

the ball rolls to a stop between you.

she looks up at you then, and it’s different this time. heavier. like she knows—like she’s finally, finally figured it out.

“tell me i’m wrong,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.

your heart pounds. “about what?”

“about this,” she murmurs. “about you and me. about what’s been happening this whole time.”

you should say something. you should stop this.

but you don’t.

instead, you take the last step forward, closing the distance between you, until she’s right there, until you can see every freckle, every fleck of gold in her eyes, until you can feel the heat radiating off her skin.

her breath hitches. her fingers twitch at her sides.

“tell me to stop,” she whispers.

but you don’t.

because you’ve spent years wanting this, years pretending you didn’t, years thinking you could ignore it.

and now she’s here, right in front of you, waiting.

so you grab her by the collar of her jersey, yank her forward, and kiss her.

and she kisses you back.

it’s not soft. it’s not slow. it’s desperate, reckless, all teeth and heat and years of frustration finally, finally breaking open. her hands are in your hair, her body pressing against yours, and it’s too much but also not enough.

she gasps against your lips, and you swallow the sound, pull her closer, dig your fingers into her waist like you’re terrified she’ll disappear.

she doesn’t.

she won’t.

because she’s wanted this just as much as you have.

and now, there’s no going back.

[brrdhouse]

how would gideon act around soos and wendy, and robbie by extension?

my baby is still a manipulative, coniving little freak, so he originally likes soos because it's a little kid he can boss around. at some point though, he does get pretty attached. he starts calling soos stan's son as a way to egg on his uncle, but he really does see soos as a lovable younger cousin.

he thinks wendy's a riot. i like the headcanon that stan babysat for the corduroys when wendy was younger, so gideon's gotten pretty used to her over the years. he was the one who showed her how to get to the roof and a bunch of other ways to be rebellious around the shack.

i don't think he'd like robbie very much at first just because gideon has enough sass for the men of the shack and he just didn't click well with robbie. he doesn't tell wendy to stop dating him or anything because he's not her dad, but he does give her a shoulder to cry on/complain to after boyz crazy. all in all, not his business, but he'll help her clean up because she's still a fun kid.

gnomes in episode 1 (+ everything up to ep4)

while i do love my boy and want to plaster him everywhere i possibly can, he'd get introduced in 'the hand that rocks the mabel' like he is in canon, only in a different way. instead of being a freak, he's a monster-of-the-week that drives dipper crazy while mabel's entranced by his vaguely-gay aura. there's no amulet to break so the episode would just end with dipper finding out that this telekinetic guy that's been tormenting him for days is just his cousin that's been out of town for a bit.

pacifica debut / 'double dipper'

i think this episode would be the first time the twins would see stan and gideon get along. like gideon would make stan a cup of coffee or run errands for him, just something simple and nice as a birthday gift even if stan doesn't want people to know that it's his birthday.

he would either love or hate pacifica, and i'm thinking it's more of a "he loves to hate her" situation. stan would set him up as a bouncer to his little party (🐦 <- buff adult gideon truther) and gideon would just sort of watch everything go down but not really be plot-relevant.

i think he'd be nicer to her after the kids get friendlier with her, but that's a long way off.

fiddleford and the society of the blind eye

☹️

he doesn't remember fiddleford as fiddleford that well, but he has a soft spot for old man mcgucket after he reads back through the first two journals. when fiddleford digs through their trash or shouts in his face on the street, gideon'll just walk him back to the junkyard and maybe bring over some food the next day. he doesn't know if the man his father loves so much is in there anymore, but he'll keep tending to him just incase.

he has sort of a one-sided discomfort around tate just because.. well, he can read. the mcguckets are mentioned very briefly in journal 2 (headcanon) so he can put the pieces together and realize that tate's going through something as bad as he is. only difference is that fiddleford's going crazy right in front of him, instead of being dead or insane in space somewhere.

shifty

gideon would've interacted very briefly with shifty, but not enough to really impact him. when gideon gets a hold of journal 3, he can see his own scribbles of the scientists, shifty, and himself and feel a sense of overwhelming sadness that he was the only "experiment" that got to be normal. my boy can fit a little empathy in him, however short-lived.

the mystery shack

for most of the year, gideon probably wouldn't even be in gravity falls. i like making older gids a nomad, sue me! it's fun!

but when the tourist season rolls in, he drives back up to help his uncle. when he was little, he was "li'l mystery" and stan paraded him around as his ""son."" (gids is only a little resentful for it. he was a really cute baby, after all.)

his job is mostly managerial. help a little in the gift shop, schedule new orders, make sure soos knows his tasks for the day, all that. in rare moments, he'll stop stan and fix his tie or lapels with a snippy comment before stomping off to chat with wendy and make sure no one's hassling her.

it's pretty much the same after the kids show up, only now he's also around to make sure they don't get themselves killed. just because he's also an anomaly doesn't mean he doesn't know how dangerous it can be out in the woods, so he keeps an eye on 'em. (probably by making them wear little spy pins like in canon)

dreamscaperers / bill

i'm really stuck on bill, i'll be honest.

i think it would be fun to have gideon be a bit of a villain, meddling with forces he doesn't quite understand because he thinks it'll help him get ford back, but i've been mulling it over for a bit and just can't make a version of gideon and bill's deal that would:

make sense in the au.

end up in the same situation of getting into stan's mindscape.

so i gave up on that and decided that gideon knows who bill is (hard not to when your dad's house is practically an altar to the guy) and hates the guy.

he still has scars from when bill used ford's body to terrorize him as a toddler. stan knows about bill vaguely, but just that he's a demon that tortured his brother and nephew and none of the specifics because gideon was too young to remember a lot of it.

when gideon catches wind of mabel and dipper's involvement with bill, he wouldn't outright confront them, but he'd get a little more watchful of where they're going and what they're doing. he'd tell stan, and they'd both work that much harder on the portal because if they can get ford back, he'll be able to stop it because he has to. no matter how old gideon gets, that's still his dad, and to stan, that's still his older brother (even if it's only by a bit), and he's invincible in their eyes.

silly au from twitter:

+context lol

[butchyena]

also, we got home from the convention yesterday and jasper, my bearded dragon, had passed away. we adopted her as an adult but our best guess for her age was 9-11 years. rest warmly you mean ass bitch.

[tonycries]

Something Stupid - G.S.

Synopsis. Five times the strongest would rather díe than tell you he loves you, and the one time he almost does. Almost.

Pairing. Gojo Satoru x Reader

Content. MDNI, fem! reader, friends-to-lóvers, canon fix-it, PINING, dry-húmping, face-sítting (fem receiving), creampíe, overstím, PÚSSYDRUNK GOJO, ríding him until he whínes, no smút until they’re adults obvs, slight ángst, manga spoilers, found family, THE HAPPY ENDING WE DESERVE, pet names, swearing.

Word count. 9.6k

A/N. Tumby lemme post this pwease? What canon? This is the only canon I know.

“Catch me if you-”

Sixteen-year-old Gojo Satoru doesn’t have the privilege of finishing his sentence - hell, he doesn’t even have the privilege of standing, apparently.

Because in the blink of an eye, his back is hitting the soft grass of Jujutsu Tech, followed very shortly by a bewildered you. Foreheads knocking together, your hands grabbing at his broad shoulders, his own wrapping around your waist for some sense of stability.

Years later, Gojo tells everyone that would listen - and anyone that won’t - that life became just a bit brighter ever since you crashed into his life that day - literally. 

But right now, he’s opening his mouth to spit an irritated, “Watch it!”

It’s the first words you ever say to him, a shrill - almost hysterical - “Huh? No, you watch it-”

“Nuh uh, you-” Head spinning, shades skewed, it takes Gojo a few seconds to screw his bleary eyes open to the sudden newcomer straddled on top of him. And a few more to register that no, he wasn’t in heaven and hey, that uniform looks familiar. And, unfortunately, not even a split-second longer to breathe out something stupid, “I…I think I love y-”

“You stupid, moronic- wait what?”

The next few words out of his mouth are just as bad as the last ones, if not worse. Because yes he knows - for once in his life - that maybe he should just stop talking. He knows that even a moment longer with you is gonna turn his mind into more of a melty, honeyed mess than Six Eyes ever could. 

Which is exactly what he blames when jumbling out a garbled, “Dinner tomorrow?” Wincing, Gojo swallows them back almost as quickly as he wished he was swallowed up by Geto’s rainbow dragon instead. 

To your credit, you look a lot less bumbling than the strongest currently pinned underneath you. That look of annoyance on your pretty features melts into something of concern. And before he can dig a deeper hole for himself, you’re raising the back of your hand to splay out across his forehead.

“I didn’t think you hit the ground that hard but-” you raise a brow, head tilting to the side. “-I think you’ve got a concussion.”

Oh, yeah he’s definitely in heaven - that or actually concussed. Maybe both.

A low whistle sounds from his right - and soon enough he’s staring at the shoes of the other first-year he’d met just today. Low bangs hanging over his face, jostling with light cackles, “Haven’t they told you not to confess your undying love until at least the second date, Gojo?”

Nevermind, he was in hell.

“Ieri!” Geto turns towards the other girl, who was busy typing away on her phone. But Gojo could’ve sworn he heard the shutter of a camera coming from her way. “He was flown out of bounds, that’s gotta count as one point for me, right? And another for the pretty girl. You keepin’ score?”

She only sighs, “No.”

What’s a first day at high school without a duel between two of the proudly self-proclaimed strongest? And, of course, you - the fourth addition to their little group, hastily scrambling off of Gojo’s lap at the jeering laughter from above. 

Dammit. 

Later, he might apologize for running headfirst into you - might. Ignoring the pointed giggles, and the burning rouge at the very tip of his ears, to find out your name. And to make up some stilted excuse about how that was completely the concussion talking and he totally wasn’t serious about having dinner so please, please, please don’t snitch to Yaga about the impromptu matches taking place on school grounds…unless? 

But for now, Gojo’s only lazily turning to look up at Geto, bringing a hand up to squint against the harsh sun beating down. Or, at least, that’s what it was meant to look like - “Technique amplification: Blue!”

He only hopes the property damage isn’t as high as what his poor heart had just gone through. Detention with Yaga be damned - and if by some grace of the universe he actually does end up escaping before he’s caught then, well, he’ll actually ask you out to dinner tomorrow. 

---

Gojo Satoru is almost eighteen when he thinks that not even the Gojo family’s most expensive insurance will cover whatever curse you’ve casted on his poor heart.

You’re both well into the second year, and by now he’d been to twelve different doctors, five shamans, and Principal Yaga himself before Geto smacked him upside the head. 

“Satoru, you complete imbecile-”

“Hey!” He fights out of his best friend’s grasp around the scruff of his uniform, crossing his arms over his chest with a whine, “I’ll have you know that I got the highest exam score last week, and I cheated only a little bit-”

Geto cuts him off with a sigh, wearily pinching the bridge of his nose, “No- you idiot. What do you mean you went to Yaga to girl-talk with him about your crush.” And when Gojo’s mouth falls slack, he’s smirking, “Oh- my bad, I meant your love-”

It’s said that Gojo’s gasp echoed all throughout the wooden corridors of the school - maybe even the entire grounds. Hotly, he’s sputtering out broken little excuses, “I don’t- what do you-” Before turning away to cool the burning of his sweetly rosy cheeks, “You’re the imbecile for spewing out such nonsense, Suguru.”

“Are you sure?” Geto turns to get a better look at the way those pretentiously expensive glasses fail to cover even the half of it. He’s never been able to, when it comes to you. “Because that’s quite literally the first thing you said to her-”

“I had a concussion!”

“After she touched you?” 

And for perhaps the first time in the years he’s been wreaking havoc on Earth, Gojo is speechless. A welcome change for Geto, who mulls over in the silence while they loiter - very much missing whatever mission was assigned right now. 

“I…” he starts, voice small. Pathetic, even. “...was concussed.” And before Geto can let out the same frustrated, dragged-out groan he often does whenever he’s around the two of you, Gojo’s plowing on, “But if I did lo- like her - hypothetically speaking - how would I even tell her?”

Usually, the other’s first reaction would be to tease his best friend. But at this moment he sounded so…young, painfully sincere in a way that was so disgustingly un-Gojo-like that he can’t help but cringe.

“Well, Satoru.” he muses, throwing a hand around his shoulder. “You just gotta…tell her my man. Preferably before that big mission coming up because I am not dragging your moping self around.”

He rolls his eyes, scoffing, “Gee, thanks. I’ll totally get on that tomorrow.”

“You’re welcome.”

BANG!

Yaga’s voice bellows, “Can you two stop doing this outside my office!”

And as much as Gojo hates to admit it, Geto was right - he usually was. 

Well - perhaps not about the love part, but subconsciously, he found himself seeking out every tiny moment with you. Every second by your side - ignoring the other two bothers - was a new opportunity to just tell you. To break that thick solitude inside your little bubble with those little words. Ones that would go and spoil it all. 

Not to be dramatic, but Gojo almost made a game out of it. Mouthing out the words whenever your back was turned - it started from “Dinner tomorrow?” to “I like you.” to something stupid that only gave Shoko aneurysms. 

And, expectedly, “tomorrow” doesn’t happen to be tomorrow. 

Tomorrow isn’t in your next class, or whatever mission Gojo tags along with you for “moral support.” Tomorrow isn’t the cozy little detention the two of you attend after catching Yaga’s interpretive dance routine - “that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen- even more than any curse.” you whisper fearfully to him, and he thinks he might just blurt it out right then and there.

Tomorrow isn’t when he’s just about to leave on some confidential mission with Geto, bidding you goodbye with a roll of his eyes and a hug he pretends he doesn’t like as much as he actually does. Tomorrow isn’t even when he’s baking in Okinawan sun, or strewn out bloodied and left for dead on the very grounds he met you on. 

But oh how he wishes it was.

In that moment, incapacitated by Toji Fushiguro, and wondering where it went wrong, he thinks of you. Gojo thinks he’ll always remember you in every moment, and especially when they’re his last.

The Star Plasma Vessel mission and its aftermath takes up most of his mind afterward, even when he didn’t want it to. And all he can remember about tomorrow comes only a few months later, when an ashen-faced Gojo Satoru slams open the rickety door to your dorm.

“G-Gojo?” you sputter, sitting up in your bed. But before you can even think of reaching him, he’s crossed your floor in a few long strides. “Are you ok- mmpf!”

In an instant, he’s splaying out on your mattress, legs dangling off the end, strong arms wrapped tightly around your waist. 

Your first instinct is to snap something snarky - but every tease at the very tip of your tongue vanishes when he buries his head into your lap. And you feel something wet, something drench though your skirt heatedly. 

“Is…” you’re gulping thickly. “Is everything okay, Satoru?”

Ah, his name sounds too perfect on your tongue. 

“Suguru…” Is all he shudders out wetly, jittery hands looping even more vice-like around your figure. “He-”

It’s just about the only thing he can get out, and it’s just about everything you need to hear before bringing his shivering body closer. Quiet. Steady. Rocking the strongest gently, while you hum a wordless melody. “S’alright. S’gonna be okay.”

Now, he thinks. Now now now now - tell her. Tell her. But when a tear of your own stains his shirt, he knows. Hauling you in even deeper to his chest, he prays you don’t hear his thundering heart. Perhaps tomorrow. 

---

Gojo is twenty-one by the time he’s dragging you hand-in-loveable-hand through the winding hallways of an apartment in the heart of Tokyo. Mumbling excited little mutters, and almost tripping over his own feet with how fast he was navigating the corridors. 

“Sato- S-Sato-” you’re squealing out, grimacing at the tugging burn of your hands in his. “Toru! Where are you- taking me?” 

Sheepishly, he looks at you over his shoulder, “Whoops, did I forget to tell you- I have kids!”

He doesn’t know what’s louder - your shocked shout of “What? When?...By who?” or the screeching of his own two shoes skidding to a halt in front of that familiar door. 

“Well, they’re not mine.” Gojo sighs ultimately, with a hand at the door. And that makes you quieten down just enough to hear his barely-audible little whisper. Determined. Reverent, almost. “But they’re mine.”

And when he finally opens the door, just one look at the tiny, black-haired little boy and his sharp scowl is all you need to understand. You’re whirling your eyes back to his beaming gaze, oh, Satoru.

Only mere moments later the two of you - accompanied by a very begrudging Megumi, and his sister - sit by the booth of one of your favorite cafés. Embarrassingly, he finds himself sighing while watching you crack jokes with the little girl. Turning to the server to order for her - it almost felt like a little family. Oh you’d make such a perfect mother. A completely objective observation, of course. Completely. Unless- 

“You’ll never do it.” a tug on his sleeve has him facing Megumi’s leveled stare. How the hell does a kid manage to look like he’s seen the monstrosities of the world already? Gojo blames the father.

Baring his teeth, “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Little did he know that all it took was watching him seethe whenever the waiter by your side was just a bit too talkative, a bit too lingering with his gaze. In his little reverie, Gojo had accidentally croaked out a low, “I-” before you’d turned those pretty eyes his way, only to choke back embarrassingly on every syllable. Gesturing at you to ignore his little mishap. 

“Tell her, I mean.” Megumi hums. Taking a wizened sip of his milkshake, “She’ll date that waiter before you if you don’t tell her.”

“That’s so…so stupid.” Gojo whispers back hotly. “I will tell her.”

“Will not.”

“Will too.”

“Will not.”

“Will-” 

“Boys!” Your scolding tone makes them both jump - mainly Gojo, however, caught off-guard. Who scratches behind his neck when you wag a finger admonishingly, “Stop arguing, we’re in public. Now, as for payment-” Before turning back politely to the waiter.

“See?” Megumi counters, back to appraising the last of his cupcake. “You’re such a loser.”

Gojo’s gaze, however, stray back your way, as he found them often doing these days. Only to find them already on him, scrunched into crescents with a smile and twinkling so bright that he could almost catch his idiotic gawking in them. 

Very pointedly he ignores the knowing roll of Megumi’s eyes, the exact type he’s seen too much with Shoko, and Nanami, and Utahime, and Yaga - and every single being to come into contact with his almost-tangibly hopeless feelings for you.

Instead, slamming that shiny new black card of his down in front of him - with enough fervor that the tabletop jostles, and you jolt out of your conversation with the waiter. 

“I’ll be the one paying for myself, and my two kids and-” His burning eyes drink in every shred of surprise on your features. “-my wife.”

Somewhere in the distance, Gojo can hear Tsumiki giggle, and Megumi smack a hand onto his forehead. But right now he’s too busy remembering the exact degree to which your lips curl up, the way you hold back a laugh at the waiter’s jaw dropping. Nevermind the fact that the two of you were way too young to have two kids of this age. 

“He was getting a bit pushy.” you’d conspire afterwards, now completely full and fatigued after a long day. “Thanks for that, Toru.”

Gojo sighs, flashing you a megawatt grin. If there were ever a time he thanks his Six Eyes for being able to memorize every little detail - every little feature in this picture - then it would be right now. He’s reveling in the bittersweet perfection. Yeah, he thinks, holding up a sleepy Megumi in his arms, maybe tomorrow.

---

There’s actually been about sixty different times over the years that Gojo knows you’d wanted to punch him straight in his face - and he’s sure, at the age of twenty-seven, that this is the very latest one. 

“How did you get hit, don’t you have limitless?”

He shoots a wink your way, “Maybe I wanted you to patch me up?”

You scoff, “You stupid, moronic-”

“-no-brained, glasses-wearing dumbass.” he finishes for you, flashing you a cocky smirk that wouldn’t have been endearing for anyone but him. Gojo makes himself more comfortable on the hard infirmary bed, “You know, you’ve really got to update your list of insults, sweetheart. I don’t even wear the shades that much anymore.”

It was new - as soon as you’d cackled at the idea of him being a teacher with perpetual sunglasses, he’d wrapped that blindfold around his head. It was a slight shame, frankly, he was always honest with his eyes - but what was more important was that change.

Sweetheart.

Sometime after you’d intertwined seamlessly into Gojo’s mishmashed little family, he’d taken to calling you syrupy sweet nicknames. It’d started out as a joke, you think - with “sugarplum” and “honeybuckets” and whatever grocery item he could think of, before turning into something very, very real. 

Though, they still made poor Megumi grimace in disgust just the same.

“Zoning out on me, babygirl?” 

Yeah, sometimes they made you grimace in disgust, too. 

“No-” you’re rolling your eyes, putting a little bit more force than necessary when you dab the warm napkin at those tiny specks of blood on his lip. “Just hoping you’d shut up.”

Gojo hisses, eyes crinkling at the edges - and you can’t help but think of how much older he looked than the disgruntled sixteen-year-old that swore at you on your first day. 

“What?” his snowy brows raise, catching the hints of your laughter. 

You take a moment longer to bask in the memories, before sighing. “Nothing. Just thinking about when we first met, s’been ten years already, hasn’t it?”

Of course, it has - it’s not like something the great Gojo Satoru could ever even think about forgetting. He remembers it in every cheesy selfie from high school you show him, he remembers in each and every one of your laughs at his overused jokes - the same ones he’d cracked way back then. 

“It has.” he’s settling on after a few rare beats of silence. The thick white sheets on the bed rustle as he grasps your hand in his, “And I think I remember that today more than any other.”

It was impossible not to, when you’d just met your best friend after ten years. When you’d just killed your best friend with your own two hands.

Your pretty eyes shine with all the tears you’d been hiding, “Yeah? Guess so, huh?” Without warning, you bend down to meet your forehead with his, gulping back heavily. You knew he didn’t just want to be patched up, you knew better. And you knew that even the strongest gets lonely. Especially the strongest. Your voice is strained, quiet. “Do you think he’s happier now, Toru?”

Truthfully, Gojo doesn’t know. 

But he whispers anyway, “I think so.”

To soothe you - and himself - if anything.

His eyes burn, and he’s scrunching them shut. A lump forming in his throat, Gojo can feel his entire being just rattle with the sudden wonder whether you’d feel it just the same when - if - he dies. Would you ask if he’s happy, too? Thinking he did and had everything he wanted in this life - not knowing he’s searching for you in every one? This life, and the next, and each one after.

“Sweetheart.” Gojo mumbles, eyes widening when you’re raising your head to look back at him, as if he didn’t even expect the words to fall from his lips. His jaw clenches, eyes flitting between your eyes and your lips like the rest of it was just threatening to wrench from his throat. “He- Suguru. Back in high school - before he…left- he told me-” 

“Gojo sensei, where is the- Oh!”

The two of you jump apart as if it burned, and for Gojo, the angry split on his lower lip hurts infinitely less than losing your touch. Holding back a silent whine, he turns towards the dark-haired boy fretting by the doorway, “Yuta? Something wrong?”

“Oh, you’ve done it, newbie.” Panda’s deep voice sounds from behind the doorway, and he peaks his large head in. “Gojo’s got his serious voice on, should’ve just spied silently like me. I told you not to interrupt him and his wife.”

“You’re married?!”

“We’re not married!”

“Tuna.”

The room erupts in far too many voices, and before long you’re clapping your hands in that strict teacherly manner that Gojo teases you always learned from Yaga himself. 

“Okay, that’s enough.” you call out, before turning to the newest first year. “Okkotsu, do you need help with anything? I’ll be right with you.” 

“I…I really didn’t mean to interrupt.” he’s bowing with apologies, ones that you only wave away with a chuckled-out, “It’s okay, Panda’s joking. We’re not married or anything anyway.”

And Gojo doesn’t know whether the look Yuta gives him is more akin to pity or understanding - he prefers it be neither, which is why he’s covering his head with the blanket. Groaning dramatically until you’re turning your attention back to him. 

You ruffle the amount of his hair peaking, and he has to screw his glassy eyes shut. “Toru, what is it that you wanted to say?”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s stupid.” His tone is unreadable, “I’ll tell you, hope- hopefully tomorrow.”

---

“Stay.”

“Sweetheart-”

“Stay.”

“Sweetheart.” 

You’re barely holding up the clingy mess that is a twenty-nine-year-old Gojo Satoru. Huffing and puffing in a way that makes his heart and his arms around you just squeeze, “It’s not an option. You know I have to do this.”

How he wished he didn’t.

How he wished he could grab your hand and run away from the fight with Sukuna, hide in the countryside of his hometown and build a new life with you.

It’s already been a hellish few weeks trying to get Gojo unsealed, and you can feel the last few months pounding at your temples. You let out a sigh, one that has him holding back a strangely giddy laugh. But before you can open your mouth to yell at him to not go - or more accurately, beg him until he doesn’t - there’s a tentative voice speaking up from behind you. 

“Um…sensei?” Yuji’s wide eyes sweep over his two teachers, being at Jujutsu Tech for a few months, he’s seen everything there is to see about the two of you. He saw the way you smacked the strongest when he got too mouthy, the way he let down limitless just so you could smack him. He saw the laughs, the looks, the way you’d flown into a frenzy when Gojo was sealed. 

Everyone saw.

It was like you were crazed, and right now, only a month after his return - you were gripping onto Gojo like he was the only thing keeping you anything but. 

So, it shouldn’t be new at this point. But he still can’t hold back the wonder in his voice, “I uh- wanted to ask about your robes for tomorrow- but maybe I can come back another time?”

“Yes yes, come back another time-”

“What robes?” 

You narrow your eyes at the man, and that sheepish little curl of his lips does everything but soothe your worries. He knew you saw right through him, you always did. 

Gojo’s exclaiming out loud, “Well- remember Toji-?” He waves his hands around, trying for a slightly softer way to say ‘the sorcerer killer and father of our honorary kid, who just-so-happens to be on a rampage right now’, before ultimately settling on, “-the worm guy? Well, I just figured I might as well take a page out of his book and dress like him, y’know since I’m fighting…Megumi after all.”

It takes a few seconds of stunned silence for you to find your voice, “You stupid-” 

“-moronic, no-brained, blindfold-wearing-”

“-dumbass! You remember what happened to him!” 

He bats his long, long lashes at you, “Why? Would you get this heated if I died just the same way he did?”

“No!” Your voice makes even Yuji flinch, which in turn has you reaching over to pat his head, “This is not on you, darling, of course. But your teacher here-” And it was comical, almost, the way the strongest stands up ramrod straight at just a leveled glare from you, “-will be getting it when he comes back from the fight.”

Comes back.

Oh, as much as Gojo throws his head back with chortles, he can’t help the way his heart twinges at the very thought of leaving you. 

And he can’t be sure of just how long.

“Ah, you talk too much, pretty. I’ll tell Megs how much you miss him.” You’re not given a second’s warning before you’re back in his embrace - more steady, this time. His arms securely around your waist, like they’d been twelve years ago and never wanted to leave since. Lips pressed up against the thundering pulse at your neck, Gojo’s voice dips just a bit lower than you’re used to. Breathing you in, “I will, too, y’know? Very much.”

Jittery, he could feel every slight tremor in your nervous fingers when you run them through his hair, dipping into the ends of his black blindfold. 

“Wh-what do you mean? S’only for a few hours, Toru.” you hum. “You better be back or so help me.”

“I know…” he heaves out, only pressing you close up against his broad frame. “But just in case- I-” Gojo’s voice cracks pathetically at the end, and he’s instantly too aware of Yuji’s keen eyes still watching. Edging up against the corner of the room like he wished he could have Gojo’s teleportation powers right about now. “-have something stupid to tell you. So I’ll hurry home anyways.”

You’re pulling back to quirk a brow, “Why not just tell me now?”

How he wished he could.

“Because it’s stupid.” 

Later, Gojo will find himself strewn across jujutsu hall with Yuji himself - the only one, other than you, he thinks, that can stand to be around a weapon like him right now. Listening to the hum of cursed energy in the air, he gets himself ready for the fight.

“Why didn’t you tell her? Especially now?” His student pipes up, suddenly, and Gojo remembers with a sigh just how uncomfortably in tune he is with everyone around him. Fearfully, so. “That you lov-”

“Because it’s stupid.” the older one grins. Such a sad, warmly smile - and for perhaps the first time, Yuji thinks that Gojo Satoru looks his age. “And I don’t think she’d want to hear it if I don’t make it to tomorrow.”

---

“Stupid.” you mutter, biting angrily at your nails. Hot tears burn behind your closed lids, and you can’t help but tighten your hand even more around his cold, cold ones. Limp. Like death. “You’re so, so stupid.”

There’s no response. No sing-song voice finishing off your insults, no large and ruffling your hair until you have to bat him away. 

Gojo Satoru was deathly still. 

Laid out on the cold mattress of his room, you’d bugged Shoko enough to let you move him here, knowing how much he hated the infirmary. 

“Being so reckless- having Yuta use your body-” in your fit of anger, you’re whirling your head up. Only for the pang of regret and grief to hit you tenfold all over again - because like this, he was too statuesque. A pretty mask of pale, what you’d give to have those eyes wink at you once more. “-if- when you wake up, I’m gonna kill you all over again.”

They told you he was dead - there was no point in waiting. In fact, you were sure there was a grave dug already, it was just a matter of how soon they could get to you. 

It was a strange thing, to be loved just enough to get a burial. In the end, it was lonely.

And so stupid. 

And at times, you felt that way, too. But all it took was one visit to where Geto’s grave was, a few long hours sat by his side, and you knew you couldn’t let Gojo escape you that easily. Not after everything, not after what he hasn’t told you, yet.

“Just wake up.” you sigh, the defeat bleeding into your every word. You run your thumb over the pronounced knuckles on his hand, calloused and scarred from his fight. “There’s so much to hear about. Higuruma’s alive, Nobara’s alive, pulling off that eyepatch. Like father, like daughter, huh? And Megumi- I saw Megumi laugh today. Yuji, too.”

Silence. Only stone-cold silence. He didn’t even move - not even the barest twitch of a finger.

“I just need you to wake up.” Your words are tumbling out a mile a minute, distantly, you wonder whether this was how Gojo felt when he first met you. How he couldn’t stop talking. Couldn’t stop wanting. “Shoko’s mad at you, y’know? But I know she misses you, no matter how much she pretends not to. I know that Jujutsu Tech can’t go any longer without Yaga, we- I need you. Didn’t even get to tell you-” 

It’s all croaked out into a deafening silence, at least if you were in the hospital room then maybe the pinging of the heart monitor might’ve accompanied you. But they’d pulled him off that, too. 

Unmistakable. 

“And I know that I…” You bury your face into the now-damp blankets, “I love you.”

“And I love you.”

There’s only the split-second you take to snap your head up before lips are crashing onto yours - plump, slightly-chapped but something so sweetly Satoru. Before you can even think about kissing back, however, he’s pulling away. 

Only to press hasty, chaste pecks again. And again. And again and again and-

Gojo kisses your wet eyelids, “I love you.” Your forehead, your cheeks, the corners of your lips. “I love you I love you I love you- and you beat me to it.” Those strained little words strike your very core - because it’s unmistakably Gojo. Sounding anything but, they’re broken and wrenching painfully out of his wracking chest. “So I just- I just had to-” Big, strong arms wrap around your middle - when did they even get there? It pangs somewhere in your hazy mind that you’re basically hoisted up on Gojo’s bed now, “-to do exactly what I’ve been wanting to since we were like this, thirteen years ago. Everything I’ve ever hoped for.”

“Everything?” you whisper.

“Everything. Even the strongest has dreams, y’know?” And he flashes you that smile you’ve missed so much, one you don’t think you’ve quite seen in years. “Even something stupid like ‘I love you.’”

That makes you cautiously glide over your palms onto the planes of his muscled chest, lightly pushing away to take in all of him. 

It was him. Alive. 

Really alive.

“Gojo…” you whimper, tears welling up behind your eyelids all over again.

“Ouch. Really?”

“Satoru.”

“Hmmm…”

“Toru.”

“That’s more like it.” The circled warmth around your waist crashes you even closer onto every ridge and divot of his hard chest, into the sweetest embrace - the kind you really couldn’t be mad about after your best friend had almost left you forever. “Told ya I’d come back, sweetheart.”

You could practically hear the sunshiney smile in his words, and his entire hulking body shook with emotion. 

“You’re back.” you breathe, dancing your arms upwards to wrap around his neck. “You’re here.” It takes only a second longer of being in his burning proximity, to catch that pearly white smile - tired, and infinitely harder than before - to have some semblance of rationality dipping into your mind. “-and- and we have to tell everyone!” you’re yelping. Moving to scramble off of his lap, “Oh- fuck, and they thought I was crazy. We have to- have to have Shoko give you a check-up and have Kusakabe finally ditch those funeral plans and-” 

You’re being shut up by Gojo’s lips on yours again, slow and sensual. It’s deeper this time, and he’s taking the time to part those candied lips of yours, sucking gently on the very tip of your hot tongue. 

“My funeral is the last thing I wanna think about right now.” he chuckles against your lips.

“But-”

“Tomorrow.” Gojo soothes, craning his weary neck to kiss your forehead. “We can do all that tomorrow. But right now, I just want to spend time with the love of my life.” His cerulean eyes just gleam with unshed tears and even more unspoken words, “Doesn’t have to be forever. Just right now.”

As promised, he’s petting up and down your body lazily. Kissing you until even smiling felt bruised and raw. But it’s only when the air grows thick, when the slight jostle of your body on top of his becomes hot, his own skin burning soon after that Gojo lets out a sullen hiss. 

“Toru-” you pull away panickedly, delicate strings of saliva snapping in the nonexistent air between you two. “We should really-”

“No- no no no no. Please wait-” Hastily, he’s bringing down a jittery hand to his hip, the buzz of reversed curse technique flowing through his thrumming veins. Meeting your uncertain gaze, “I’ve waited so long. Wontcha just let me worship you right now?”

As if to prove his point, he’s bucking upwards ever-so-slightly. The momentum teetering you precariously on his lap, dragging the heated core between your legs down in such a sloppy drag.

You’re gasping when the very outer edges of your panties rub up against something so hard, and rotund. Feeling the wet squelch of his angry tip gush out in a dripping wet wave at the friction. “A-are you sure?” you’re stammering, trying to hold back the way your greedy thighs were trying to rub together. Only achieving heavy, languid gyrations on top of the rock-hard outline of Gojo’s cock. “How about tomorrow? When you’re feeling better?”

It’s a slow, steady rhythm. There’s a ringing schwf! schwf! schwf! of sopping wet fabric, and it was driving him crazy. 

“Right now please- haaa-” Gojo’s tongue lolls out so sluttily to graze against your own, dazed blue irises rolling to the back of his head. His spine curves upwards, abs rippling with a harsh drag of your clothed pussy down his weepy shaft. “Whenever you’d have me.”

Almost tentatively, your hips roll forward. That flimsy excuse of your panties bunching up with each grazing rub, it’s all you can do to not just keen at the utterly delicious curve of his thick girth. Throbbing and twitchy under each of your motions. 

He’s hissing when your underwear snags on the very divot at his thick head, sitting up on two elbows, “S-sweetheart.”

“No, Toru.” your palms are back on his pecs, easily pinning the strongest down with a gentle push of your own. “Jus’ let me do all the work, m’kay?”

Gojo wasn’t all too happy - and the sullen pout jutting on his spit-glossed lips told you more than enough. But he wasn’t going down without a fight - that was for sure. 

“F-fine.” he grunts at a particularly harsh grind of your hips. Fuck, he felt like some animal, humping up into you like he was out of control. He could practically feel your puffed-up pussy lips through his pants, he could almost taste it. Two rough hands come to rest on your hips, grabbing and kneading a handful of your ass. “But then you’re not just hah- sitting there, pretty.” 

And, shit, even like this, you should’ve known better than to underestimate Gojo Satoru himself. Because whatever he wanted, he got. The one thing he didn’t was you - and now, since he had you, too, fuck- he might just be going insane. 

Not a moment’s wasted before you’re being so easily hauled up, up, up the entire expanse of Gojo’s body. Jittery body being balanced easily as if you were some type of toy, up from the slender curve of his toned hips, up around where his broad deltoids were spread, all the way until your cunt was hovering over his needy mouth. “Can’t believe I hngh- almost died without havin’ a taste of this pretty pussy.”

“Toru.”

“Sweetheart.” he mocks.

You shiver with each feverish puff of hot breath blown right onto your clothed cunt. And even more so when you’re feeling such a long, slender finger slide in through the translucent fabric. 

Fuck, Gojo swallows thickly, bunching up your skirt. You were so sopping wet he could almost see the outline of his index through your panties. He slides the back of it slowly up and down. Heavy balls squeezing painfully at the volume of your saturated slick collecting on his digit, just trailing glossily down to his deft wrist. 

Mesmerized, your jaw falls slack at the sight down below of Gojo - cloudy hair mussed, cheeks all pink and burning a blushing rouge, tongue darting out to catch each stray drop of your sweet sweet juices. Drip! Drip! Drip! 

“Oh- sh-shiiit-” he rasps, lowly, mulling over your honeyed taste. Sounding so awed, breath hitching when Gojo tugs your panties just enough to the side to catch a mere glimpse of your messy cunt. Glistening and winking down lewdly at him. “S’jus’ you n’ me right now, huh?”

You don’t know who exactly he’s talking to - and you don’t get to find out, because that’s all it takes for Gojo’s kiss-bitten lips to clash messily against your cunt - panties and all. 

A soft swipe of his tongue glides the fabric to the side, so depraved, so needy that for that split-second he’s tasting you, he can’t even think of removing it. One taste of your sweetened pussy and he can’t even bear the thought of breaking apart, licking up in long, languid stripes that wet the very front of your swollen folds. 

Just the taste of you had him palming desperately at the tent in his pants, rubbing up and down at a pace that matched his rummaging tongue.

The very edge of your tastebuds rub so deliciously in teasing circles around the corners of your dripping silt, your inner thighs. 

“S-s’toru-” you’re letting out such throaty, dragged-out groans that send every drop of blood in Gojo’s body thumping to his achy cock. “Don’t be such a- a tease.”

You’re locking your glassy eyes with him and he feels like he could pass out. Groaning and smacking into your cunt, “Tell me- fuck fuck fuck- tell me what you want, sweetheart. Anything.” Your entire body arches into his hot mouth like such a slut, when he bullies between your folds. Barely flicking against the sensitive nub of your clit. “Everything. Anything for you.”  

When you’re weaving your fingers deliriously through his silky soft strands, he babbles, “Oh fuck- yeah, pull on my hair.” One of his hands come down to grip onto your panties, pulling the fabric so that you revel in the filthy friction. “Use me while you ride m’face, okay?”

With that, his mouth is sagging open even further letting your thighs straddle the entirety of his face so easily. So close. So messy how he was carding his tongue from the very base of your pussy, up into your quivering entrance.

“Fuck–” you’re whining, grinding into his touch when he wraps his soft lips around your clit. Barely even easing you with syrupy, wet circles of his heated tongue before sucking. Harsh. Depraved. But so, so him. “Don’- don’ stop, feels too good–!”

You didn’t know if he heard you, fuck you didn’t even know if Gojo was even breathing. 

Even if he wanted to stop - he didn’t think he could. Because he was so ravenous between your legs, forcing your pliant body into such smooth gyrations on his tongue. Silken, soft, such sultry licks of his tongue on your clit. 

Electricity sparks behind your eyes when with a wet slurp! he smacks away from your pretty pussy, “You think- you think I can stop?” And he sounds so genuinely in disbelief, as if the very thought of it was appalling. Through heavy, lingering kisses and sucks onto your clit, Gojo’s managing to get out, “I can’t have enough. Fuck- please.” The very rounded pads of his fingers dig so bruisingly into the flesh of your ass, jiggling and kneading with every drag of your hips. He’s begging at this point, “Fuck yourself on my face. Rougher, faster, c’mon now. You can do it, my sweetheart.” 

He was so fucking desperate, big fat tears almost welling in his eyes while he whined underneath you. Groping so obscenely at his sweltering hot erection. How could you not listen?

“If you say so.”

Using the vice-like grip on his locks, you’re managing to leverage your motions even deeper. Rougher, like he’d wanted. Every protesting creak of the bedpost was accompanied by a synchronized whimpering of ah! ah! ah! coming from both your mouths. 

“S’it good?” he gasps, and all you could see was the flushed upper half of his features. And the lower half - fuck, though the peaks and cracks you could make out just how glisteningly wet it was with all of your messy cunt. His lips were just drenched, slick-soaked mouth making out harshly with your pussy through your panties. Trailing all the way down in a glossy sheen over the lower half of his face, dripping off his chin, fuck- up to his cheekbones- 

As if that wasn’t enough, the massive palm resting at your thigh comes dancing down to tease around your sopping wet entrance. 

If you were in the right state of mind, you could’ve sworn that you heard a sharp rip! coming from that poor tattered fabric of your underwear right then and there. 

“Tell me- fuck fuck fuck- use that pretty voice of yours please.” Still suckling lewdly on your clit, his cheeks hollow out . Entire body just jolting upwards, forcing you to press down harder with your motions. “Use me. Use me.”

“S-so–” you mewl when his slender fingers bully easily past that first ring of muscle. So many cold inches of his digits, feeling around determinedly inside your heated, gummy walls for those sweet spots that will make you whine. “So loud, Toru-” you’re spitting, meshing his mouth even harder with yours down below. And you can practically feel him smirk against your cunt. “For someone that wants this s-so hngh! bad you sure are-”

There.

Right there.

Gojo Satoru had just crashed into the spongy cavern of your g-spot - easily, at that. And there was such a crazed, sloppy sting to each of his movements. Smashing in over and over-

“Heh…tha’s how I l-like it.” he’s spying up at your trembly thighs, the way his overworked lips were being coated with a fresh wave of our honeyed slick with each passing second. “Good girl- gooood fuckin’ girl–” 

Hazily, you’re wondering whether it doesn’t hurt. Whether his weepy cock ached just as badly as it looked, how his tongue isn’t fucking cramping up by now. 

But he goes on - like he couldn’t stop, like he was out of control. A greedy little push and pull, dragging his tongue all over until you saw flashes of white. Until you could only scream out his name like a mantra. Until you were cumming. 

“Fuck- fuck fuck fuck- Toru!” your slurring out a mile a minute. Both of your hands now steadfast on his head, riding out your high all over Gojo’s pretty, pretty face. And he let you - fuck, he let you. “M’cumming- shit, feel so good. M’cumming-”

So good, so filthy that it made your toes curl, your hips stutter sloppily. Arching like such a slut, you could barely even see properly. Your breath was coming out in such labored heaves at this point, and Gojo wasn’t any better. 

It was like he couldn’t stop, happily drinking up every single, sticky drop your cunt had to offer. Pussydrunken eyes drooping shut, unable to let out anything but satisfied grunts. The muscle of his tongue is just frenzied in eager slips and slides along your cunt - absolutely no rhythm or method right now. Sucking, licking, biting anywhere he could possibly reach. 

“F-fuck–” you’re crying out tearily once the very peak of your orgasm fades, and all that’s left are a few overstimulated tingles being wrenched out by a greedy Gojo. “Toru, m’done.” You tug desperately on his hair - but even that doesn’t bate him the slightest bit. “S’getting too much- fuck-”

“Awww, too much for my girl?” he’s cooing, the words jumbling together in his drunken state. There’s a glossy mess of spit and slick drooling down the corners of his smirk. “Does this cute cunt of yours need a break?”

At your barely-lucid nod, it only grows wider. Smugger. “Too bad-” And Gojo’s just taunting you with a final, long lick up the very core of your pussy, “Because if I almost hah- died without her once, then you best believe m’gonna c-crawl back from death for ya each and every single time.”

It takes his strong arms - even bruised and battered through battle - only two whole seconds to plop you back down prettily onto his lap. Right over where his angry cock was just weeping for attention. And suddenly, it hurts without you. “So you’re not getting a break anytime soon. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Ha ha.” You’re rolling your eyes, “Very funny.”

“Mhm.” Gojo looks up at you through his white lashes, and you can only watch when he brings up his syrupy-sweet, glossy fingers up to his mouth. One by one. Sucking. Slowly, looking right into your eyes. It makes your mouth just salivate. “Got that right.”

The sheets billow behind you when you’re fumbling deftly with his shirt, all but ripping - tearing that stupid thing off of his form. Your skirt and top are soon to follow - his jaw clenches with the slight strain, leaving it in poor tatters on the floor.

“Shit- shit you’ve been-” his mouth just waters when your tits are released from your bra. Jiggling tantalizingly in his face in a way that makes him bury into it. “-been holding out on me.”

“Oh-” you let out, traitorously, at the first sight of each curve and divot along his milky sculpted body. Gojo Satoru was serious about dressing up like Toji, and no matter how much his t-shirt looked so sinfully painted on - actually seeing it was something else. “You’re so pretty, Toru.” You smooth your palms down his large shoulders, the faint scars between his pecs, his abs - that scar. Stark and large, Shoko had done her best work, but it still looked so painful. It must feel so, too, being sewn back together like some ragdoll. He catches the way your expression dampers - of course, he does. “Toru…”

Gojo winces when your fingers glide over that jagged scar. But if that was pain, then it was absolutely nothing compared to the pure, unadulterated fear when you abruptly pull your hands away. 

“S-sorry- I didn’t mean to-”

“No!” he cuts you off, wrapping his long fingers around your wrist. All but dragging it - right along with you - to his still-healing body. “Touch me. Hurts more when you don’t.”

You’re batting your lashes up at him in a way that makes his heart stutter, and his poor, angry cock twitch. “Hurts me when you lie.”

“M’not lying, see?” With a low nod of his head, he’s gesturing you to look down - where it was unmissable. 

Because straddled right in-between your pussy lips was Gojo’s erect cock - proud and so prominent, even through his pants. With the sheer girth bulging upwards you could feel your greedy pussy dampen over the cloth in anticipation. 

“Well…” He’s throwing his head back when you knead your palm over the very end of his print, “I can’t quite see-”

Gojo takes the hint - and you have to bite your lip from teasing that it was quite possibly the only hint you’d thrown his way that he’d actually understood. But it was so hard to - not when he was this eager. 

And, on those long, lonely nights, you’d imagined that your best friend would be suave, infinitely collected with things like this. 

But, no, he was fumbling and jittery with his movements. So needy to please you that it takes you to help him pull down his tight, sticky boxers over the curving muscle of his thighs. 

“O-oh fuck–” you breathe out, when he finally springs out. Sweeping up and down each and every long, thick inch of him - Gojo was as hard as if he was carved out of fucking diamond. Such a furious, rosy red at his leaky tip, glistening down, down, down into the most mouth-watering shade of creamy pink at his thick hilt. He was so big. Your thighs squeeze together in sultry need - with a slight tinge of fear. So unfairly pretty - even like this. “You’re- you’re so much bigger than I’d imagined, Toru.” 

No sooner are the words out of your mouth that you’re being flashed with his dark smirk once more, “You imagined this?” There’s a slight reverence to his voice, scared. 

It almost makes you shy - and Gojo can practically sense the waves of embarrassment rolling off of you. 

“Awww, come back to me, please, pretty- Please-” he purrs, cupping your cheeks. “I came hah- back, didn’t I?” You’re being jostled to and fro when he rests himself more comfortably on the bed, leaning back to admire you further. “And now-” Your breath hitches in your throat when he situates himself right in-between your thighs, the fat curve of his head so swelteringly kissing your folds. Drenching it in his thick precum, “-now m’never gonna let ya go.” 

Fuck, you know you should heave in a few gasps of hair, you know you should relax, maybe even stretch your legs wide open.

Because Gojo was so fucking big, it felt like he was splitting you from the inside out. Just the slight push of his tip bullying between your folds has you moaning - crying.  

“You- you’re so big-” Your nails dig into the plush of his pecs for stability, leaving neat crescent patterns that stand out redly. “S’like you’re reaching into my hngh- l-lungs-”

Just those words have him expanding even deeper, ruddying even more furiously. Gojo gets so much bigger that you just can’t help but sink yourself down his shaft, feeling your elastic walls contort so easily around his length. 

“H-heh– ohhh-” he breathes out - baritone voice lilting a few pitches higher than usual. The hands around your waist grab you even harsher, feeding you each inch by fucking inch of his fat, pulsing cock. “You got me- so–” His hips thrust upwards in mindless little jabs, “-fucked up, right now, sweetheart.”

And while all you can do is whine and moan around his unforgiving cock, Gojo babbles on, “B-better get ready ngh- because I’m gonna be riiiight-” His thick index draws and invisible line up, up, up to somewhere midway up your stomach. Before pressing down. Brandingly. “-here.”

The pressure is enough to have your hips just slamming down with a wet smack! all the way to his hilt. The slap of skin-on-skin rings through the heady air and into both your drunken brains, making him just throw his head back into the plush pillows. 

“Yes-” you’re keening, your fingers wrapping subconsciously around Gojo’s pretty throat to have him facing you once more. He was so gorgeous this way - blue eyes falling shut with pleasure, mouth bitten raw and parted into a soft oh! pale muscles twitching with each breath. So fucked-out already that it almost made you think the sight alone could have you cumming. “Look at me, Toru- hah- gonna make up for lost time, right? Gonna fuck me good?”

His answering nods are more than enough, but Gojo doesn’t just stop there - no, he’s putting in every bit of last strength he has to just hammer into you upwards. Meeting every one of your relentless bounces down on him, he just clashes into your ravaged g-spot.

“Oh yeah, my girl.” he spits, a twinkling trail of drool dripping down the side of his lips. Crushing you so tight to his hardened front, “Ride me- ride me jus’ like that. Fuck- thought I saw heaven on the battlefield but it might jus’ be this pussy-” Over and over.

The back of your hand ends up on his forehead, “I think you’ve got a concussion.” It was in every little touch - that “something stupid.”  

At your surprised giggles, he’s rummaging your insides even more ferociously. Smushing the very end of his thick head against your spongy cervix. It was so soft, so swelteringly hot having him inside you. Clashing in long, wet glides against every inch of your pussy. 

The stretch was dizzying - and if it hadn’t been for Gojo’s lips attacking yours, then you’d have let your head loll backwards. It’s like he was marking you from the inside out, bruising the plushy insides of your cunt to every ridge and thumping vein down his possessive cock. 

“Spit on me.” 

His sudden plea puffs out of his plump lips, startling you out of your cockdrunk little reverie. “Spit on me, please, pretty. Mmpf-”

Gojo whimpers - whimpers - when the thick wad of your saliva hits his pink tongue, and the action has him delving into you impossibly deeper. Planting two feet onto the mattress, he angles his hips into your tight channel even harsher. Grimacing at the slight twinge of pain, “Shit-”

“Toru–”

“Wait wait- please- let me-” Expectedly, he’s cutting you off frantically. Begging, pleading with everything he had before activating reversed curse technique more. “Wanna fuck this gorgeous cunt so bad- fuck fuck fuck-”

But you’re only grinding your hips down faster - all the way from the pretty pink tip of his cock, until your ass massages against his tight, cum-filled balls. Thwacking! against your skin deliciously, pushing you up to scratch your clit against his snowy pubes. 

A few more unapologetic kisses up against your sweet spots have you blinking back stars, “Toru–” Your swiveling motions have him so hypnotized, following every move where his massive cock was disappearing in and out of your snug hole. “Kiss me-”

Oh, you didn’t even have to ask.

It’s such a sloppy kiss - all teeth and lips and Gojo grunting gutturally into your mouth. Letting you just use him like your favorite toy, fucking him until the bed creaked with effort and Gojo’s balls just smacked! angrily.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he whispers. Drinking in your saccharine sweet gasps when he dips down one of his hands to your puffy clit, rolling the soft edge of his thumb in slow, methodical circles. “You’re gonna be the ah- d-death of me.”

Your hand around his throat tightens, making his eyes just roll back in ecstacy. “Better not die on me just y-yet, Toru. Not now, not tomorrow.”

For this, you’re being gifted with such a tight squeeze of his two fingers around your sensitive nub. Wracking your body forwards - exactly where he wanted you, exactly where he needed you to smash his sobbing tip into your g-spot. 

The stimulation is too much, and each of your pressurized slams down onto the sharp bones on Gojo’s v-line have him moaning. Bucking up helplessly whenever your heavenly walls drag sloppily up his shaft, like it hurt to not have each and every one of his heated inches buried inside. 

“Well- then-” You’re riding him now just as much as he was fucking up into you, leaving a damp puddle of slick and dredges of precum on the sheets below. Gojo’s punctuating each word with a harsh battering ram, “Better- cum f’me soon, huh? Because m’not gonna- fuck-” His nagging tip jolts into your sweet spots as if being zapped with white-hot electricity, in such a sloppy staccato with his feverish fingers. “-fuck I don’t think m’gonna last long.”

You’re nodding your head, clinging onto him like a second skin. “Mhm- m’so close, Toru.” Biting down wetly on his lower lip, “-gonna cum soon.”

Just the thought of it has him keening, stuttering up so messily. His precum coats your insides even more slippery slick, so heated in a way he thinks he might just explode. 

“I know, I know, sweetheart–” he’s simpering down in your tone, though his hips were anything but. Letting out some of the lewdest slurps that made your ears ring. “I got you. I got you, cum all over my cock, yeah?”

It only takes a few more mess strokes from both of your sweat-sheened bodies before you finally reach your high. Electricity thrums down your veins, your body arches so deeply into his. Bending into the perfect bow that has him spying down at your quivering folds, the way your gushing cunt expands and contracts through each and every one of your waves of pleasure. 

And he’s fucking you through it so filthy, fingers toying so erratically on your clit. Still reeling, still smashing the very divot of his cock into your bruised g-spot. Again and again.

“Ohh- fuuuck—” Gojo whines, eyes scrunching shut. Strained. Depraved. “Fuck fuck fuck me- please, please m’gonna-”

He doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before he’s stuffing your snug pussy full with ribbon after ribbon of thick, velvety cum. Potent seed coating your gummy walls in such a milky sweet gloss, the squelches from below are so loud. So soppingly wet. 

The hand at your waist moves down to where your poor cunt was just bulging with all inches of his spazzing cock. Gojo’s thumbing apart the corners of your slit just enough that his swelteringly hot cum oozes out of you in a slow trail. Sinful. 

“Oh my god-” he breathes, eyes unwavering. Hips thrusting upwards to push his cum up into you even deeper. It glistens opaquely down his length, forming a creamy ring at his thick base. “Oh my god love you- fuck!”

“Toru- m’so full-” you whine. A hand of yours coming up to press exactly where he had before, except now you could feel the nudging pace of his ruthless cock, the sloshing of Gojo’s seed all up inside you. “-really can feel you right here.”

“Tha’s the point, girl - my girl, should I say.” he’s pressing such a chaste kiss to your lips. And it would be swee - almost - if it wasn’t for the way Gojo’s greedy fingers soak themselves in the obscene mess from your cunt down below. Bringing them all the way up, up, up to his mouth. Suckling gently, “But…but you wanna hear something stupid?”

Your eyes widen, “Wh-what?”

And he only grins,  “I hope you know I love you, sweetheart. Because you sure as hell aren’t walking tomorrow.”

A/N. Can y’all tell I’ve been widowed not too long ago? Anyways, last post before kínktober! I tried posting this on Sunday but it refused to work so pray for me this time y’all *SOBS* <3

Plagiarism not authorized.

[giuliettagaltieri]

Not Her Man

Pairing: Rafe Cameron x Childhood friend!Reader

Chapter Synopsis: Feathers fall gracefully slow

Warning: Girlrotting

Word Count: 3193

Part 1 • Part 3

You were always scared to do drugs.  

You saw Rafe at his highs, you were with him, keeping him from doing anything stupid like when he was so sure he could backflip from Tanneyhill’s rooftop and land on the grass perfectly. 

But you also wondered how difficult it was for him to get clean.  To suffer from withdrawals.  And as you lie on your fur carpet, staring at the glimmering crystals of your chandelier, with your closet half emptied and scattered all around your room, along with rolling wine bottles on the polished hardwood floor of your bedroom, you think you might have understood just a little.

Blocking him was the hardest thing you have ever done in your life, especially when it was your routine to giggle over whatever interaction you had through text that day.  The itch to open his account for any update made you want to bind your hands together.

Your parents are out of the country, busy overseeing their business, forgetting to oversee their daughter.  Your maids were there for you, at least they try to be.  They bring you food on schedule, even sliding in a few scoops of ice cream every now and then in your room when your sobs start to echo around the halls.

Rafe tried to contact you multiple times.  First, through your phone, but you blocked him.  Next, he tried to throw pebbles at your window, but your seventy-six year old gardener fired a shotgun at him, thinking that he was a burglar.  Next, he tried a different approach, he was sending you gigantic bouquets of your favorite flowers, making the hallway leading to your room look like a wedding set up, the flowers perfumed the entire house too, drawing a concerning amount of bees.  One epipen to your chef’s thigh later, Rafe stops sending them.

He never really does anything right.  All he does is mess up, create more problems for himself.  You almost wanted to give in, but you remind yourself of the things he said.  Anger and hurt quickly replaces pity.

A familiar chime of your phone had you groaning.  Your friends are probably going to have another attempt of making you step out of your room, like inviting you to have your nails done or shop, just to get your mind off of Rafe.

You just let the ringtone end and you go back to staring at the chandelier, wondering if you’ll be quick enough to get out of the way if it somehow falls.  Before you can plan a strategic roll, your phone rings again.

Blindly reaching underneath the scattered pillows, you finally locate the buzzing device.  You answer without looking at the caller ID. 

“Y/N speaking.”  You mumble lazily.

“Hey, girlie.”  There goes the high-pitched voice of your friend.  “Sooo, the girls and I-hush!”  You hear a bunch of girls giggling behind the line and your brows crease together in annoyance.  “We’re going on a party tonight and we’re thinking that maybe you’d liketocomewithus?”

You play with the lace of your dress, eyes just following the patterns when you hear your name being called again over the phone.

“I’m not in the mood for parties.” 

“You are never in the mood for anything anymore.”  She whines behind the line.  Her tone prompts you to sit up to pick up the stale wine you left out in the open for too long.  Taking a sip and ignoring the thin coat of dust it caught after you ransacked your closet for something that made you look confident, only for you to end up squeezing in the dress that Rafe got you as a present for your 13th birthday.  He didn’t pick it out for you, of course, but it still made you all fizzy and bubbly and excited inside.

You put down the wine to scratch at the waistband that is digging on the skin of your under bust, the fabric being stretched beyond its capacity.

“I know.”  You tried to sound apologetic.  “I just can’t, okay?”

She sighs, making you let out a grateful sigh.  There’s still some ceiling viewing you had to get back to.

“I’m picking you up at seven.”  She speaks with finality and before you can answer, she continues.  “Please don’t let that awful man get the satisfaction of knowing that he has this much effect on you.”  You can hear her begging behind the phone.  She and the other girls are just looking out for you.

With an unwilling heart, you decide to get on your feet, your socked foot nearly slipping the moment it touches the wooden floor.  Cursing, you finally crouch on the piled up clothes you threw earlier. 

“Fine, I’ll come.”  You roll your eyes.  “Dresscode?”

You hear an airy chuckle and you can imagine her pinching your cheeks if you were within her reach.  “Party’s open to all, Kooks or Pogues.  In the community beach house.  You dress however you like.  I’ll match your vibe, if you’d like.”

This makes a smile creep on your lips.  She’s definitely on the top 10 list of the most annoying people you know but you thank God everyday for a friend like her.  “You know I love you, right?”

She snorts before bursting out in a fit of laughter.  “Duh.  I love you too.”

“See you later.”  You grin.  “Tell the girls I’m coming too.”

“Sure, see you!” 

You hang up and get started on searching for the right outfit.  Well, there’s the classic white flowy dresses, but everybody wears them.  You could wear a short and a cute top, show some belly?  Blech, you’re not exactly in one of your maneater moods.  But perhaps if you covered it with that oversized white pinstriped polo, it could work?  Yeah, something casual yet put together.  It’s not like you’re dressing to impress anybody, or somebody in particular, you’d prioritize comfort over fashion tonight.

A knock on your bedroom door pulls you from your thoughts.  With a shrug, you throw your chosen clothes on your bed.

“Coming.”  You call while trudging over to open the door.  There stood your maid, she was looking anxious, wringing her wrinkly hands.  “What is it?”

She glances at your odd choice of clothing before she looks away so as to not make you uncomfortable.  “Well, uhm, Sir Cameron is here again, miss.  He’s waiting for you downstairs, in the drawing room.”

You press your lips in a firm line.  “Tell him I’m not here.”

Your maid smiles apologetically.  “He…he saw you in your bedroom window before he came in, miss.”

Huffing, you tap your feet impatiently.  “Just tell him I’m busy.”

“He said you’ll say that.”  She mutters, amusement in her tone.  “And he asked us to tell you that he can wait.”

You close your eyes to keep them from rolling.  “Whatever, he can stay as long as he likes, but I’m not coming down to meet him.”  You push the door a little wider and your maid’s eyes widen at the state of your room.  “I’m sorry, I know you’re busy but can you help me clean up?”

The rest of the afternoon was spent tidying up your room. 

It was dark out, a couple of minutes past seven when your phone buzzed.  Knowing that it’s your girlfriends, you pick your bag, filled with the usual party necessities and head downstairs.  It’s a habit, assigning yourself as the responsible friend who stays sober to look after the others.

You are slipping in the pearl bracelet your grandmother got for you last Christmas when you hear your name being called and in instinct, you turn around.

“Oh, right.”  You say with a tone that is drier than the Sahara desert.  “You’re here.”

Rafe’s standing just outside your drawing room, his hands falling to his side.

“Yeah.”  He spoke awkwardly, his eyes glancing at your outfit, familiarity crossing them before he looked at your eyes again.  “I was waiting for you.”

You exhale softly and he just stood there, waiting for your reaction.

“I know.”  You say simply.  “Gotta go.”  You start walking again to your door.

“Wait, Y/N.” He easily catches up.  “You’re…you’re coming to the party, right?”  He asks hopefully.

“Yes.”  You respond without looking at him.

Rafe smiles but it quickly dissipates when he sees a different car waiting for you.  “Hold on, I can drive you there.”  He says quickly, his hand gripping yours just to get you to listen to him.  “I can drive you to the party.”  He says in an uncharacteristically sheepish way.

For a second, you look at him, really look at him.  His smile grows wide.  He missed having your eyes on him.  You’re his best friend, and he’s used to doing everything with you by his side.  He also liked how dependent you were on him too, always asking for his approval.  You have a bit of an overbearing attitude but he would be lying if he’ll say that he doesn’t miss you doting on him too.  Perhaps you’re not the only one who’s dependent on this odd friendship you both have.

“No, thank you.”  You say before pulling your hand away with a sharp look thrown his way.  He watches you walk away to greet your friends.  He’s still stuck there, staring, even after the car drives away.

He doesn’t understand it.

You’re the emotional one, why are you doing so well without him?  You never go to parties with other people, it was always him that you stick close to.  Clinging on him, pulling him to the dance floor when he’s about to do a line of coke, or accidentally knocking his cup when he’s had too much drinks.

Running a hand through his face, Rafe decides to hop on his car and follow you to the party.  You’ll be in the same space as him in the next few hours.  He’ll get another chance there.  He’s certain of it.

He didn’t get the chance.

With you by his side all the time, you memorized his set of activities at parties and you evaded him perfectly.  Rafe decided that it was best to stand by the punch table.  You’d get thirsty eventually, and he’ll be there waiting if you do.

On the other side of the house, farthest from Rafe, there you sit by the porch swing, admiring the push and pull of the waves.  The party was at its climax and everybody was cramped inside the house, dancing and drinking, or doing unholy activities.  You don’t know how you managed to slip away from your friends but you’re glad you did.  You needed the fresh air.

You’re just starting to get comfortable when a man stumbles out the door.  You watch him struggle to keep himself up.  He looked lost? Or just flat out drunk.  You watch in amusement as he scratches his blonde head, he must be having a whiplash from all the blinding neon lights inside and suddenly his vision switches to the bright light provided by the LEDs. 

His feet twist and he starts to fall to the side, your head tilting to follow his fall.  You wince when you hear the loud thud of his body hitting the floor, followed by his muffled but loud groaning.

“Motherfu-”  He sits on the floor, his legs sprawled out in front of him as he shakes his head like a dog.

“You alright, JJ?”  You chuckle.

He whips his head to you, cursing again when his vision spins.  “Y/N?”  He drawls out while rubbing his eyes.  “You saw everything?”

Still laughing, you get up to crouch next to him.  “I did.”  You smile when he groans out again.  “Are you okay?”

He props up a knee and rests an arm there, he looks buzzed, his eyes are heavily lidded as he stares off into the ocean.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”  He glances at you.  “Well, this is a strange sight.”

“What is?”  You mumble as you look away from him, deciding to play dumb.

He shrugs animatedly, hands gesturing to you and the entire space of the porch.  “Usually, wherever you are, your boyfriend is not that far behind.”  He points a thumb behind him.  “And if I wasn’t imagining it, I’m pretty sure I just saw him brooding over the drinks.”

You chuckle dryly as you bring your knees to your chest.  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

JJ looks at you with an unimpressed face.  “That’s all you heard.”

Playfully punching his shoulder, you sigh.  “We fought.”

He frowns, back straightening immediately.  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”  It’s kind of sweet how your words seemed to have sobered him really quick.

“No!  No, he didn’t.”  You reply right away.  “Well, at least not physically.”

You watch him grimace.  “Outside physical fights, I have little to no idea how to respond.”

“That’s okay, JJ.  I don’t wanna talk about it, anyway.”

He gives you a boyish grin, as if to reassure you before scratching at his jaw, your eyes mindlessly follow his movements and you see a scratch.

“You’re hurt.”  You tell him, pointing at your own jaw.

“Huh?”  He touches his jaw and winces.  “Ow!  Must’ve scratched myself when I…uhm.”

“When you decided to attack the floor.”  You finish for him and he clears his throat.  “You’ll have to disinfect it.”

“Pfft, it’s fine.”  He shakes his head.  “It’s just a scratch.”

But you are already grabbing your bag by the swing and you return with a small kit.

“I forgot to bring wipes.”  You mumble before crouching down in front of him.  He swallows at your close proximity.  “Come on, JJ.  It’s just antibacterial cream.”

He hesitantly shows you his face and you gently apply the cream, tutting when he dramatically pulls away.

You grab his face and tilt it slightly and JJ squeezes his eyes.

“It fucking stings.”  He nearly whines, making you roll your eyes.

“Don’t be a baby!”  You huff and he stays still for a second, allowing you to smear the cream evenly and he rolls away from you as soon as you’re done.

JJ was muttering about God knows what while you’re busy putting your stuff away.  When you sit next to him again, he’s much calmer, a lazy smile back on his face again.

“Thanks, Y/N.”

You throw him a playful glare.  “You’re welcome.”

He touches the scratch and you almost tell him off but he quickly pulls his hand away. 

“Why didn’t Cameron make you his girl?”

You blow out a big sigh.  “He doesn’t like me.”

“Bullshit.”  He laughs but he clears his throat when you look at him unamused.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”  You smile at him genuinely before averting your eyes.  “I wouldn’t blame him.  I mean, you saw how I can be.”  You chuckle this time but there’s no humor on JJ’s face, he’s looking at you rather sadly.  “I care too much and everybody suffocates around me.”

“I don’t.”  He says quickly.  “I was just being dramatic earlier.”  He rubs his nape.  “I’m not used to having people tend to me, I mostly just do it myself.”  He seeks your eyes and you finally look at him. 

You hear a creak behind you but before you can look, JJ cups your face to keep you from breaking your eye contact, making your breath hitch.

“I liked being taken care of like that.”  He whispers and your lips part slightly.

“JJ.”  You say breathlessly and he grins, his face leaning dangerously close to you.  “You’re drunk.”

He gently bites his bottom lip and you have to look away from his blatant flirting.  “I’m sober enough to kiss, I promise.”

This…this isn’t right.  

You gently push him away and his lips immediately form a pout.  “You’re such a kid, JJ.”

He clicks his tongue and angrily stoops as he glares at the ocean.  “You had no idea how long it took me to build the courage to do that.”

“Five minutes?”  You jokingly bump his shoulders, making his act break at the edges, a smile threatening to crack on his lips.  “Seriously, J, I can’t kiss drunk guys.  It’s unethical.”

He mimics you in a childish voice and buries his face on his palms harshly.  He turns to you again, with his hair disheveled and sticking to his forehead and red blotches appearing on some areas of his face.  “I’m not as drunk as you think I am.”  The way he glances at your lips had your throat drying up.  “I really wanted to kiss you.”  Aside from Rafe, you have little to no experience with the male attention and frankly, you don’t know what to do.

You place a hand on his shoulder and stiffly pat it twice.  “You’ll get over it.”

JJ looks at you exasperatedly.  “You’re taking this too lightly, this is my feelings we are talking about.”

You stifle a laughter.  “Oh, so you have feelings for me.”  You raise a brow at him and he nods his head enthusiastically.

“Every guy on this island has a thing for you.”  He says animatedly.  “If it wasn’t for your bodyguard, we would have made our move long ago.”

You are deeply flattered, you can’t resist the girlish smile from tugging on your lips, your cheeks slowly heating up.

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

He looks deeply offended and places a hand on his chest.

“You’re the ultimate dream girl, stupid!”  He dodges a punch from you.  “You’re like the total package.  You’re sweet, and smart, you’re also very pretty, you can be funny too when you let loose.”  He wiggles his eyebrows at you and this pulls a laughter from you, a real, genuine laughter that had your shoulders shaking.

“When are you gonna get serious, J?”  Wiping the tears from the corner of your eyes, you get up.  “Wait here, I’ll get us a drink.”

He gives you a two finger salute before lying smack down on the floor, with his arms spread out.  You shake your head, chuckling when you open the door.

And your hair stands on end.

There stood the very person you have been avoiding the entire night.

But for once, he isn’t wearing a scowl or a condescending cocky smile.

He was looking at you like a man defeated and broken.

“Rafe.”  You whisper as you reach for him but you stop yourself before your skin can touch.  He looks at your hand and then your eyes.  You don’t know if it’s the trick of light but you could have sworn his eyes are glassy.

“Hey, Y/N, everything alright?”  JJ calls.

Rafe glances at JJ and then back at you, he nods slowly as he takes a step back.  Your heart aches as you watch him take another step away from you but you will yourself not to follow.  He runs a hand on his mouth and he turns away from you.

You stare at his back as he leaves, torn between choosing your own pride or running after him.  For what seemed like hours, you stood there, frozen.  Still lost in the onslaught of emotions that surged through you.

Not Your Girl • His Girl

[choerrypuffs]

AITA for setting my cheating ex's car on fire? (and then falling for his cousin)

pairing: firefighter!haechan x reader

genre: fluff

word count: 8.6k

synopsis: revenge is best served cold―or on fire. literally.

author’s note: luvpuffcore is finally back!! ilysm cat and moon and thank you for another amazing year of friendship <333 i truly am the #1 most successful fan of all time 🤩 also special shoutout to cat for letting me use some of her creepy dms and moon for sharing her league knowledge yall are god's strongest soldiers fr !! happy new year, my loves ✨🎆💞

warning(s): mentions/threats of violence, sexual jokes, y/n commits arson but in a girly pop way (pls don't try this at home), character assassination of mark

playlist: get him back! by olivia rodrigo ― is it new years yet? sabrina carpenter ― drinks or coffee by rosé ― risk by gracie abrams ― mastermind by taylor swift

additional: check out a nonsense christmas: reddit edition collab!

r/AmITheAsshole

u/justgirlythings-arson119 • 3d

AITA for setting my cheating ex’s car on fire? (and then falling for his cousin)

I (24F) caught my boyfriend cheating on me with a discord kitten he met on League of Legends two days before our anniversary. I proceeded to have the biggest crash out ever known to man, bought a gallon of gasoline, went to his house in the middle of the night, and lit his car on fire. I had completely forgotten his cousin was a firefighter in the area, and he showed up at the scene, which hindered my masterful plan a little bit. Luckily, my ex didn’t press any charges though because no way in hell he’s going to admit he has a discord kitten in a court of law. Anyways, the next day, my ex groveled and begged me to go to his family’s Christmas party with him so that he could save face in front of his mommy. Long story short―let’s just say it didn’t go well. His cousin ended up driving me home, and I think maybe I’ve fallen for him? 

⥣ 9.8k ⥥ 1,439 Comments

mcballs-im-lovin-it0323 • 2d YTA for not crashing out even harder bc i woulda slept with his entire bloodline if he played in my face like that 🙂‍↕️

➥ Reply ⥣ 2.8k ⥥

picklepounder1010 • 1d would’ve had him calling me mama, papa, auntie, uncle, grandma, grandpa etc fr 😩 ➥ ⥣ 943 ⥥

god-of-donuts0423 • 1d YTA for dating a lol player

➥ Reply ⥣ 1.1k ⥥

goonknight1027 • 5h no way this post is about that twink lol streamer ➥ ⥣ 629 ⥥

part one | oh, i wanna key his car…or light it ablaze?

onyourmark 12/1/2024 3:03 PM heyyy u play lol too 😂

onyourmark 12/1/2024 3:05 PM im a yasuo main 😂

onyourmark 12/1/2024 3:10 PMwhat kinda asian are u

onyourmark 12/1/2024 3:10 PMwhatchu look like

onyourmark 12/1/2024 3:10 PMsorry was that too much 😂😂😂

Your best friend, Rosie, has to put your phone down and take a few deep breaths. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Keep going. You haven’t even seen the worst of it,” you respond through a mouthful of strawberry ice cream, completely deadpan. 

onyourmark 12/7/2024 6:21 AM ahh 😂😂

onyourmark 12/7/2024 6:22 PM *kisses you*

onyourmark 12/12/2024 5:39 PM can i tell U something weird :3 😂

onyourmark 12/12/2024 5:40 PM[Audio Message]

onyourmark 12/12/2024 5:39 PMi wrote this rap about my feelings for y baby girl

onyourmark 12/12/2024 5:39 PMbecause uve been such a good gril for me

onyourmark 12/12/2024 5:57 PM holy fck holy dcking fck that body of urs is absurd

Rosie covers her mouth with her hand, closing her eyes in a grimace. “No way he copied Adam Levine unironically.” 

“Keep going.”

onyourmark Yesterday at 1:20 AMwhen can i see u

onyourmark Yesterday at 1:20 AM ill be free after christmas

onyourmark Yesterday at 1:20 AM after annyign fam stuff 😂😂😂

Every message Rosie reads feels like another sucker punch in your gut and your ego, but you just dig your spoon into the tub of ice cream with even more force and let her keep going. Every time you blink, you feel dried up mascara flaking off your eyelashes and getting stuck in the dried tears and snot on your cheeks. 

“‘Annoying fam stuff?’ Is he talking about your anniversary?” Rosie demands.

Yes, your anniversary with your now ex-boyfriend, Mark Lee, is on Christmas. You used to think it was romantic. What a goddamn idiot you were. 

“At least he called me family,” you reply wryly, a hysterical laugh rattling in your chest like a wet cough. 

Rosie shakes her head and hands your phone back to you. “I can’t read any more of this. I’m going to be sick. I thought Discord mods and Discord kittens were just memes. I can’t believe people like him actually exist.” 

You just shrug.

“Where the hell is he now?” She crosses her arms. 

“Probably at his parents’ house. They’re on a ski trip, and they won’t be back until tomorrow,” you sigh, getting a headache thinking about how you were going to explain this to Mark’s parents. 

“Good. Change the locks on your door before he tries to come crawling back. He’s done mooching off you,” Rosie huffs. 

“You were right,” you state matter-of-factly, “That he was just a jobless bum loser who’s a momma’s boy.” 

She looks guilty, leaning over and giving you a hug. “I’m sorry, Y/N.” 

You think about the time you first met Mark, when the two of you were just starry-eyed freshmen in college together. He was so awkward and shy that it took almost an entire semester for him to finally look you in the eye. He followed you around like a sad puppy and would get flustered at any prolonged amount of attention you gave him. After about three years of him being hopelessly in love with you and unable to work up the courage to ask you out, you finally decided to give him a chance in your final year of college. It was a white Christmas, and you remember his trembling hands holding your face, freezing cold fingertips brushing your cheeks, and how red his nose was when he leaned in to kiss you. He looked at you as if you were a goddess that was put on this Earth purely for him to worship. 

Maybe that’s why you moved in together with him when the two of you graduated, even when he was unemployed and you supported him financially. Maybe that’s why you smiled and nodded when he told you he wanted to try being a Twitch streamer. Maybe that’s why you gifted him his first microphone for his setup, or baked him a cake when he finally got his first viewer (even though it was actually a secret account that you made in order to boost his confidence). Maybe that’s why you never complained when he started skipping out on dates (sometimes even your birthday) in favor of growing his audience, or when he bought you extravagant gifts like jewelry or designer clothes without any clue of your preference or size. Maybe that’s why you chose to ignore the churning feeling in the pit of your stomach when you noticed his eyes starting to drift towards anything but you.

Maybe you were always the one who worshipped him. 

It’s almost comical how easily almost a decade of your life has gone down the drain―and all it took was a couple of laughing emojis. In the end, the one who loves more is always the one who loses the most. 

You gave up your best years to Mark Lee, and yet you seemed to have run out of tears to cry for this man. 

Instead, all you have left now is pure, unbridled rage boiling inside of you. It’s the kind of anger that needs to simmer first―the kind that manifests first as a calm indifference before it finally bubbles over into a complete meltdown. But you’ll be damned before you set fire to your mental health and personal belongings that you worked tooth and nail for over a man who ruined your life. 

So, you’ve decided to set fire to something else. 

“Rosie,” you say softly, your voice chillingly serene. “I’m going to set his car on fire.” 

Rosie laughs. “Want me to be your getaway driver?” 

“No, I wouldn’t want to implicate you,” you respond smoothly. “Besides, I want him to know that I’m the one who did it.” 

She looks at you for a moment, trying to decide if you’re joking or not. “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

“Yes. I don’t have the energy to care about him anymore,” you answer―only a half lie. “You should go now. I know you have a late shift tonight.” 

Rosie gives you another tight squeeze. “Call me if you need anything, okay? I’m off this weekend, so we should go get drunk off our asses.” 

After she leaves, you slowly get up and make your way to the bathroom. You wash your face in the sink, scrubbing on the gunk off, and apply a fresh layer of makeup. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to make sure you look hot as hell (pun intended). Once you’re done, you make your way to the nearest gas station and purchase a gallon of gasoline before promptly driving to Mark’s parent’s house. 

By the time you get there, it’s already close to midnight, and not even the darkness can shroud Mark’s new Tesla Cybertruck. You remember when he bought it because you had to pay for half of his rent for the month because he was saving up for it―the smug grin on his face, as he announced it to his Twitch chat. You’re embarrassed at how happy you were for him, and you didn’t even have the heart to tell him how hideous you found it. The truck’s mirrored exterior reflects the moon in the starless night sky, and the full moon almost looks like a shiny, pretty bullseye calling out for you to destroy it. 

Without hesitation, you get out of your car and immediately start dumping gasoline all over and around the car. The scent of gasoline normally makes you nauseous, but the scent of revenge smells even sweeter. Before you take out your lighter, you pick up a large piece of broken concrete from his driveway. With all of the strength you can muster, you hurl the concrete into the driver side window of the truck and watch your reflection shatter along with the glass. 

The car alarm starts blaring, and you wait for the light in Mark’s room to blink on. You see his silhouette as he opens his blinds and peers out, just to lock eyes with you. He gawks at you like he’s just seen a ghost, and it doesn’t take long for him to make his way down to you. As he stumbles down the driveway, you take out your lighter and flick it on, letting it slowly slip from your fingertips. Your heart swells with a hysterical sense of glee as his eyes widen, the orange flames reflecting in his teary eyes. His Cybertruck is set ablaze with a Hollywood-esque level of perfection, and the fire gives your face a golden glow as if you were the starring actress. 

“Y/N! Are you fucking crazy?” Mark hollers over the crackle of the flames, voice breaking. 

“Oh, you bet I fucking am,” you laugh. 

“I’m gonna sue you―you bitch! Have you thrown in jail!” he screams, fishing his phone out of his pocket and punching in 911 on the keypad. “I’m calling the cops right now!” 

“Do it, you spineless piece of shit! I’m going to make sure everyone in this damn neighborhood and on the internet knows what a lying, cheating, soul-sucking little leech you are!” you yell back at him. “I’m going to ruin your fucking career first and then happily walk my ass down to the police station.”

That makes Mark stop in his tracks, his thumb hovering over the dial button. He can’t control the fear on his face. “No one is gonna believe you.” 

“Aw, you sure no one will believe me when I show everyone the screenshots of your DMs with uwukittenbb69?” you taunt. 

“I’ll say they’re fake!” he nearly screeches. 

“Let’s fucking go then! My word against yours. We’ll see who they believe,” you challenge. 

Mark falters and takes a small step forward. “W-Wait…” 

Unfortunately for him, he’s interrupted by the squealing sirens of a firetruck pulling up to the street. You and Mark exchange glances, and you silently dare him to report you, before both of you turn towards the firefighters exiting the truck. 

“Mark…and Y/N?” 

Your eyes widen at the sound of the approaching firefighter’s voice. You watch in horror as the firefighter removes his helmet, and you get a clearer look at his face. Tufts of wavy caramel-colored hair sticking out, a youthful and angelic face that doesn’t suit his occupation, and heart-shaped lips turned downwards in concern―it’s Mark’s cousin, Donghyuck. You’ve met him a decent amount of times at family gatherings, and he sometimes drops by you and Mark’s apartment to deliver homemade food from his mom. Donghyuck has always been kind to you, and you didn’t want him to see you like this.

Donghyuck’s confusion is short-lived before his attention falls back to the fire and how close you are to it. He quickly grabs your arm and pulls you away from the burning truck. 

“Be careful. Are you hurt?” he asks carefully, eyes scanning your face with precision. “And why aren’t you wearing a jacket? It’s freezing out here.” 

You open your mouth to try and fumble out an answer, but you flinch at the sound of Donghyuck’s colleagues blasting Mark’s car with water from the firetruck’s power hose. All that’s left of the Cybertruck is a deformed and blackened pile of scrap metal with a plume of smoke rising from it. You can’t help the sense of satisfaction you feel. 

“Don’t breathe in the smoke. It’s not good for you,” Donghyuck urges, gently sticking an arm in front of you and gesturing for you to step back even further. “Come with me. There’s blankets in the back of the truck.”

“I’m fine,” you finally manage to say, shaking your head. “I’m not cold.” 

It’s true; the fire you set has been more than enough to make your insides feel all warm and fuzzy. He doesn’t look like he believes you but doesn’t try to push any further. 

“Okay, so what the hell happened here? We got a call from the neighbors saying there was a blazing ball on fire in Mark’s driveway and that the two of you were in a screaming match.” 

“Ask Mark,” is all you say. 

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. 

“It was an accident.”

As if on cue, Mark suddenly materializes next to you and Donghyuck―a restless expression on his face. He probably thought you were telling Donghyuck what he did to you and rushed over. 

“What?” Donghyuck’s eyes nearly pop out of his head. “You’re saying that was an accident?”

“Yeah. I was just…messing around. Don’t worry about it. It was an accident,” Mark says through gritted teeth, sounding completely defeated. 

The corners of your mouth twitch when you chime in, “A senseless accident.” 

Donghyuck is completely speechless as he glances between the two of you. However, you look past him and watch the fireworks exploding in the dark sky. Pulling out your phone, you see that it’s midnight, meaning it’s officially the 25th of December. Glancing over at Mark, you see him trembling in the cold with a sniffly red nose and bloodshot eyes. He’s staring straight at the ground, fists clenched. 

You smile. 

part two | part two | wanna push him in the fireplace and watch him burn!

When you finally get home that night, you draw yourself a steaming hot bubble bath and even use the fancy bath bomb that Rosie bought you. After you get dressed, you make a charcuterie board and pour yourself a glass of wine as well before falling asleep to a Hallmark movie playing on your television. It’s probably the best sleep you’ve gotten over the past month. 

You wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, a certain five-foot-nine burden lifted from your shoulders, and text all of your friends and family your holiday greetings. Rosie invited you out to her family gathering because she didn’t want you to be alone on Christmas, but you declined. You decided to stay home and get some cleaning done. Of course, by cleaning, you mean boxing up all of Mark’s stuff and donating it to Goodwill. You initially wanted to burn everything, but you’ve committed enough arson already. 

Just as you’re getting ready to make a hearty breakfast in preparation for the mass Mark exodus, you hear the door to your apartment being opened, and your blood runs cold when you realize you haven’t changed the lock. Then your cold blood begins to boil at the audacity that Mark still must have in his pathetic little body to even dream of stepping foot in your home. 

Gripping your frying pan tightly, you march out of the kitchen to greet him. Mark at least has the sense to shrivel back when he sees you approach him. To your delight, he looks absolutely terrible. It’s obvious he didn’t get any sleep nor did he feel the need to change out of his pajamas. 

“I know you’re mad,” he says quickly, holding his hands out as if ready to block a punch.

“If you actually knew that, you wouldn’t have stepped foot in my apartment,” you say nonchalantly. “You have ten seconds to give my key back to me and get the hell out before you have to call the cops again.”

“Chill, chill,” he mutters, “I’m just here for my stuff―”

“Don’t tell me to chill. I’ve always hated it when you tell me that. It makes you sound like a patronizing douchebag, which you are, of course,” you snap. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to let you just waltz in here and casually get your stuff. Most of which I paid for, by the way.”

“Y/N, come on,” he sighs. “at least let me get my PC setup.”

That makes you burst out laughing. “Holy shit. You really have the gall to ask me for your PC setup? Are you on actual crack? Get the fuck out!”

“Okay, okay, okay. I’m sorry, okay? Just one more thing―”

“Don’t make me swear to Jesus on his birthday―” 

“My mom wants you to come to the Christmas party this afternoon,” he blurts out, squeezing his eyes shut. “I…haven’t told her yet. I wanted us to tell her, um, together, after the party.”

He doesn’t need to say it for you to understand what he’s implying. He wants to make it seem like the breakup was mutual to save his reputation and because he knows his mom will lose her mind. He’s pretended to be her perfect little boy his entire life, a momma’s boy to the very core, so he can’t ever let her know what a bottomfeeder he is. 

“Is this some sort of social experiment to see how far you can push my limits before I finally snap? Again?” you ask incredulously. 

“Please, Y/N. I’ll do anything. I won’t ask for my stuff anymore. I won’t tell anyone about the car thing. I promise you that you won’t ever see me again if you do me this favor,” Mark sputters.

You hate that you still hesitate, despite how much you’re disgusted by him. It makes you feel like you haven’t completely axed the part of you that was in love with him, and that sickens you. However, Mrs. Lee has always been like a second mother to you, and it doesn’t feel right to just cut her off without a proper goodbye just because her son is a cretin. You suppose this could be good closure for such an ill-fated relationship. 

“You swear on your life that you’ll leave me alone forever after this?” you ask, crossing your arms.

Mark nods profusely.

“Fine. I’m only staying for an hour, and I don’t care if the party isn’t over yet. We’re going to tell her within that period or else,” you state. 

“Thank you. Thank you so much, Y/N.” Mark opens his arms to hug you, and it takes every fiber in your being not to whack him across the head with your frying pan. 

“Do not touch me,” you warn, “Now get out.” 

To his credit, he promptly hightails it out of your apartment (perhaps he finally noticed the murderous glint in your eye). You almost immediately regret agreeing, but you tell yourself that today is the last day that you’ll ever have to deal with the likes of Mark Lee again. Putting a hold on cleaning, you get ready for the party instead, donning a cute holiday fit that you had prepared especially for today since it was supposed to be your anniversary. Now, it makes for a great revenge dress. 

Mark had texted you to let you know to bring a gift since there would be a white elephant gift exchange, and half of you wants to call him and scream at him for not letting you know sooner and the other half is screaming at yourself for forgetting to block him. Not having enough time to go out and buy a gift, you decide to wrap up the scarf that you knitted for Mark. You stayed up all night after you got off work to make it for him, and it looks a bit wonky, but you thought he would appreciate it. You feel bad for whoever receives it, but there has to be a few duds in the mix or it’s not a true white elephant experience. Maybe they can use the scarf to wipe up their dog’s piss or something.

When you drive back to Mark’s parents’ house, it’s an ironic clash of atmospheres. The place is decked out with Christmas decorations, an amalgamation of rainbow lights, inflatable snowmen, and wreaths on every door and window. Yet, you can also see remnants of the dark burn marks in their driveway. Mark must have managed to call a tow to take his Cybertruck away just in the nick of time. You do wonder how he managed to explain the burn marks, though. 

Taking in a deep breath, you hype yourself up in your car visor mirror before stepping out and walking to the front door. Before you can even knock, Mrs. Lee opens the door and envelops you in a bear hug. She smells like sugar cookies, and it occurs to you how much you’ll miss her. 

“Oh, sweetie! I’m so glad you’re here,” she coos, cupping your face. She then ushers you into the living room, linking her arm through yours. “I was so worried because I thought the two of you got into a fight while we were on our trip.”

You just smile uncomfortably. “O-Oh.” 

“A mother’s intuition is always right, you know,” she says, winking, “Plus, I knew something was off when Mark told us he’d be staying at our place for a couple nights. Poor boy was a mess, you know. He somehow managed to total his car in the driveway! Can you believe it? He really needs you around to whip him into shape!” 

You hope she can’t see you holding in a laugh. As you’re walking, you scan the room for Mark, but he’s nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t surprise you one bit that you’re being treated as fodder so he can hide in his room. 

“Anyways, say hi to everyone!” She leads you directly into a circle of Mark’s aunt and uncles. You give them all an awkward hello and try to slink away while they all converse, but one of Mark’s aunts turns towards you. 

“So, how long have you and Mark been together, honey?” she asks. 

“Um, about four years―”

“Oh, but they’ve known each other for much longer than that. Seven years! Mark had the biggest crush on her, you know,” Mrs. Lee interjects. 

“My goodness, does that mean we’ll be hearing wedding bells soon?” Mark’s aunt teases. The rest of the circle oohs and ahhs, and you want to strangle yourself with a garland. 

“I mean, what is he waiting for anyway? He’s making loads of money on the Internet now, isn’t he?” she continues. 

“Exactly. I want grandchildren, you know,” Mrs. Lee huffs. 

Unable to bite back your words anymore, you clear your throat loudly. “I have something I need to―” 

“Oh, Y/N! I’ve been looking for you,” another voice chimes in. 

All of you turn around, and a gasp nearly escapes you when you see Donghyuck standing in front of you. He’s in a white cable knit sweater, and his wavy hair looks so fluffy that you almost want to reach out and touch it. His cheeks are a bit flushed, probably because he’s in such thick clothing (or Mrs. Lee’s famous spiked eggnog). Without his uniform on, he looks much softer, dreamier. 

“You…have?” you ask, bewildered. 

“Yup! Come on, I gotta ask you something,” he answers cheerfully, gesturing for you to follow him. 

You’re a bit wary of what he’s scheming, but you’d rather risk it than have to deal with any more marriage talk, so you gladly let him whisk you away from the crowd. Donghyuck leads you to a less crowded part of the room, swiping a piece of chocolate cake when he walks past the dessert table, and tucks himself into a corner that’s concealed by a giant Christmas tree. 

“Here we go. I introduce to you my super covert corner that I stand in when I want to avoid nosy relatives,” he says in a sing-song voice before offering you the cake in his hand. “Would you like some German chocolate cake made by yours truly? It’s pretty damn average, if I do say so myself.” 

You pause, only just now realizing that Donghyuck helped you out. You suppose you have nothing to lose, so you accept the cake. “Oh. Thank you. So, you didn’t have anything you wanted to ask me?” 

“Well, actually, I do,” he hums, giving you a sheepish grin. “You set Mark’s car on fire last night, didn’t you?”

Part of you already expected this question coming, so you manage to keep your expression neutral. “Are you accusing me?” 

“Why, I wouldn’t dare. Besides, I don’t need to. I know you did,” he says casually, shrugging.

Even though you should feel panicked, you don’t. In fact, Donghyuck almost seems to find it amusing. 

“Do you have proof?”

“Mark told me,” he states sweetly.

You sigh loudly, immediately giving up the ruse. “I knew that damn lowlife would yap.” 

“So, what did he do?” 

“Of course, he told you what I did but didn’t tell you what he did,” you snort. 

“What, he cheat or something?” 

“Worse.” 

You pull out your phone and show Donghyuck Mark’s Discord DMs and watch his expression morph into disgust as you indulge in the cake he gave you. The dessert is perfectly average as he said, but there’s something charming about it. In that way, the cake is quite similar to its maker. 

“As a government employee and resident fighter of fires, nothing justifies arson,” he states after a brief moment to collect his thoughts, “but this comes pretty damn close.” 

You give him a smug I-told-you-so look.

“But seriously, what you did was really dangerous, Y/N. You could have injured yourself badly. That jackass is not worth getting third-degree burns over. There are better ways to get revenge, you know,” he lectures.

“Like what?” You raise an eyebrow.

“I don’t know, like TP or egg his car or something. Slash his tires?” 

“God, are you from a 90s movie or something? That’s lame as hell,” you snort, taking another bite of cake.

“Dig your key into the side of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive? Carve your name into his leather seats? Take a Louisville slugger to both headlights? Slash a hole in all four tires?” He wriggles his eyebrows. 

“Are you quoting Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood?” you ask incredulously.

“Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats…” Donghyuck sings, purposefully off-key. 

You can’t fight that smile that spreads across your face, and it eventually turns into a full-on belly laugh when he continues to sing. It’s the first genuine laugh, the first moment of brief happiness and relief, that you’ve felt in a long time. You thought you had it when you set Mark’s car on fire, but something still coiled in the pit of your stomach like simmering, black smoke. In this tiny little corner that smells of pine needles and chocolate cake, you feel free like a clear sky after a long winter storm.

“For the record,” Donghyuck says, voice gently dipping, “you’ve always been too good for him, and everyone knows it―including him. He’ll regret what he did to you for the rest of his life. That’s your revenge.” 

Your breath staccatos in your chest at his words. You tell yourself that he has always been a smooth talker, but he looks at you with such honesty and warmth that you want to believe him. 

“Have you always been this sweet?” You meant for the words to come out in a teasing manner, but your voice is tinged with breathlessness. 

Donghyuck grins, and his lips remind you of the heart-shaped lollipops that you see in the store during Valentine’s Day. “The sweetest.” 

A part of you wonders what would happen if you craned your neck and kissed him right here and now. Not because you’re romantically interested in him, of course. Rather, it would be a spectacular way to get revenge on Mark. Most girls go for the brother or the best friend―maybe even the dad if one is particularly ambitious―but the cousin is an untapped (pun NOT intended) medium for revenge. 

You wonder if Donghyuck tastes like cookies or wine-filled chocolates or spiked eggnog or even fruitcake. You really hate fruitcake, but you suppose you wouldn’t mind for the sake of revenge. 

But you would never do that to him. He’s much too kind of a person to be involved in you and Mark’s mess. The fact that you’re able to confide in him and he actually takes your side is something that you truly appreciate. As much as you want to torment Mark, it’s best to just end it here. 

“You can use me too, you know,” Donghyuck adds.

“Huh?” You blink.

“For your revenge,” he clarifies. “Use me. To make him jealous, to bully him, whatever you want.” 

For a moment, you almost believe he somehow read your mind. 

“Just wanted to let you know,” he says, shrugging, “since you probably think it would be too mean. Plus, I think you would need my help anyways.”

That makes you feel greatly offended. “What is that supposed to mean? You say that like I didn’t set a car on fire.” 

“You’re too naive in your thinking. Revenge doesn’t always have to be loud and in your face like that. It’s a lot more fun when you break them down psychologically in more subtle ways,” he explains.

“So, you―as a government employee―can’t approve of me committing arson because I got cheated on, but you―as a government employee―can casually and openly discuss waging psychological warfare on another civilian. On said person who cheated on me, who also happens to be your cousin because you seemed to have forgotten that, ” you point out sardonically. 

Donghyuck just smiles before slightly leaning in, eyes flickering down to your lips. You open your mouth to retort but your words instantly die in your throat, softly gasping when his hand brushes your chin as he reaches over and swipes a bit of chocolate frosting from your bottom lip with his thumb. 

“Sure I can,” he answers smoothly, “because, unlike a certain someone, I won’t get caught.” 

“I didn’t―”

“And by the way, Mark didn’t tell me you set his car on fire.” 

You gawk at him as he walks past you with a content grin on his face. “Now come on, I hear my aunt calling for us.” 

Maybe you need to take back your earlier statement of Donghyuck being too kind. He might actually have more screws loose than you.

.

.

.

You almost completely forget about Mark until he finally comes downstairs for the white elephant exchange. You’re in such a daze from your earlier interaction with Donghyuck that you barely recoil when Mark takes a seat beside you on the couch, especially since Donghyuck is sitting in the rocking chair directly across from you. 

The gift exchange begins once everyone has drawn a number, and you honestly just dissociate for the first half of it. Keeping your gaze trained on the piece of paper that has 26 scribbled on it, you don’t look up until you feel Mark get up beside you and pick a gift from the pile. You’re praying to both Jesus and Santa that he doesn’t pick yours, but you suppose you've been deemed a sinner and also put on the Naughty List (maybe for setting your cheating ex’s care on fire?) because Mark somehow manages to find yours in the pile of presents. 

When he opens it, you can tell by the way he quickly glances at you that he knows it’s yours. After all, he saw you practicing your knitting throughout the week. He happily wraps it around his neck and beams proudly. “I love it.”

The way he carefully looks back at you makes you want to smack him into the new year. You know he’s trying to get on your good side, and you make it clear with your scowl that it isn’t working. 

You’re actually grateful that it’s your turn next so that you’re able to get up and walk away from him. Wanting to get this entire situation over with, you haphazardly grab one from the top of the pile. Your heart sinks when you take out the stuffing paper from the bag and realize that it’s Mark’s gift. You contemplate putting the paper back in and not opening it at all, but you cave under the pressure of all the expectant pairs of eyes on you. 

In typical Mark fashion, his gift is a signed T-shirt of his own merch. It’s an obnoxious yellow color with his Twitch username and a giant screen printed image of his face plastered across it. He’s written his signature right over his forehead, so it makes him look like he has random chicken scratch on his face. 

“Oh, it must be destiny!” Mrs. Lee exclaims, clapping her hands together. 

You force a smile before returning to your seat, doing everything in your power to ignore Mark’s stupid giddy expression. Shoving the shirt back into the bag, you casually kick it away from you. 

A couple more people take their turns, and you’re counting down the seconds to when this is finally over so you can go home. Eventually, it’s Donghyuck’s turn, and he saunters towards you and holds his hand out. 

“Gimme.”

You blink at him.

“Your gift. I’m stealing it,” he explains, wiggling his fingers. 

“You want…this?” you ask, completely baffled. 

“Well, duh. It’s going to sell for a lot of money, you know.” He winks. 

You can’t help but laugh when you realize he’s helping you out again. “This has to be unethical. Aren’t you a government employee?” 

“Government employees need to make money too,” he replies, sighing. 

“Well, if you really want it, I guess I have no choice,” you huff, faking exasperation before handing him the bag. 

You’re smiling when he takes it and walks back to his chair, and you hear Mark grumble something under his breath. Turning to him, you raise an eyebrow, snippily asking, “What?”

“I said,” he repeats so loudly that it reverberates throughout the room, “when did the two of you get so friendly?” 

A silence falls over everyone, and the two of you are now center stage. 

“Are you really going to do this now?” you hiss. 

“I noticed that the two of you were getting awfully cozy behind the Christmas tree earlier,” Mark retorts, shrugging. 

Donghyuck gets up to intervene, but he doesn’t have time to even react before you grab a pillow from the couch and chuck it in Mark’s face. 

“You’ve got some nerve. Was this your plan all along? To make me look like the bad guy in front of your family?” you demand, feeling your face grow hotter and hotter from rage. “You and uwukittenbb69 were getting awfully cozy too, don’t you think? I’d say snug as a bug in a goddamn rug even.” 

Mark stands up in a flash, his eyes frantically glancing at his mom before pointing his finger at you. “Baby, I told you she was just a friend.” 

You nearly choke on air when you hear him call you that. Making a beeline towards the pile of presents, you begin to toss them at Mark with each question you add. “You absolute lunatic. Do friends beg each other for pictures of their tits? Do friends write raps confessing their love for one another? Do friends blow off their anniversary with their girlfriend so that they can meet up for a quick booty call? And yes, I’m saying quick because you and I both know it’ll be a speedy endeavor.”

“What on Earth is going on?” Mrs. Lee cries out as Mark tries his best to swat away the presents being hurled at him. 

“You’re a psycho bitch,” Mark yells. “It’s not like I actually slept with her. We were just messing around online. You got jealous over nothing. And you set my car on fire!” 

“You wanna see psycho?” you snap, throwing the present in your hands down onto the floor and marching towards him with your bare fists before you suddenly stop and take in your surroundings. You see the horror and shock on everyone’s faces, the way they’re looking at you, and then perhaps most clear of all―Mark’s expression. He’s angry just like you, but there’s a glimmer of victory in his eyes. As if he’s bested you in some manner. 

And he has. You’re the villain now.

Taking in a deep breath, you will yourself to walk over to Mark in a calm manner, looking him directly in the eye. 

“You’re nothing except a liar and a cheater, Mark Lee. That will never change that no matter how much you try to spin it in front of your family. You built your success off my back, and I hope that haunts you for the rest of your life. May you receive everything that you’ve done to me tenfold. That’s all I want to say—” You pause. “Oh, and I’ve always thought your Cybertruck was fucking ugly.” 

You reach over and snatch the scarf from his neck before turning and walking out of the door, feeling like you finally managed to cut off the ball and chain around your ankle. Just as you’re about to reach your car, you hear someone calling after you. 

“I’ll drive you home,” Donghyuck says once he catches up to you. 

“I’m not so distraught that I’ll become a hazard on the road,” you say wryly

“Well, when it comes to being around a car, you’ve certainly proved that you’re not exactly at your most dangerous when you’re behind the wheel,” he jokes. 

“You may have a point,” you acknowledge, giving him a small smile.

“Let me drive you home, Y/N. I’m worried about you,” he insists again, much quieter this time. 

“How are you going to get back then?” You raise an eyebrow. 

“I’ll call an Uber or something.” 

“That would be such a waste of money,” you snort.

“Not if it’s for you,” he says almost instantly. His normally brown eyes almost look auburn when under the golden glow of the sunset. 

There’s such determination, such assurance, such warmth in his gaze that you let yourself be surrounded with, no longer having the energy to resist him, and it feels like falling onto a soft cloud after a long, winding journey. For once, you just want someone to take care of you, even if it’s just for a moment. 

“Fine. Do as you please,” you relent, tossing him your car keys before walking around to the passenger side and climbing in. 

Donghyuck looks relieved, beaming when he situates himself in the driver’s seat. You try not to be impressed with the way he easily backs out of the driveway with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the headrest behind you, maneuvering the wheel with a deftness you’ve never seen before. Then again, he does drive a massive fire truck on the daily, so your Toyota probably isn’t much of a challenge for him. 

He drives with his eyes staring straight down the road―almost too focused―because you know he’s trying not to look at you. Probably because you’re making it abundantly clear that you don’t want him to look at you, leaning your head against the window and away from him. It doesn’t mean that you don’t see his wandering eyes, almost as if it were second nature, drift back to you in the reflection of the window.

“Pathetic, right?” you finally say, feeling suffocated by the heavy silence.

“What’s pathetic?” 

“Me.” 

“Why would you be pathetic?” Donghyuck grips the steering wheel tightly, knuckles turning white as the leather creaks under the force of his hold.

“Mark was right. I talked a big game in front of him, but in the end, I was just the psycho ex-girlfriend. I told myself that I would never let him hold my emotions hostage anymore. That I would erase any care I had for him left in me. Because indifference means that I’m truly free. But I couldn’t do it. I really hate him, to my very core, and that means he still has power over me. I hate that most of all. I want him to feel the same pain I did, and I want to exact revenge on him, but at the same time, I want to move on with my life. I’m like a dog chasing my own tail; it’s pathetic.” 

You wanted to sound more lighthearted about this, turn it into a joke, but Donghyuck seems to draw out a vulnerability within you that makes you want to tell him everything you’ve been trying to desperately ignore. 

“Y/N, you’re dealing with the end of a long-term relationship. It’s only natural that you have confusing and conflicting feelings about everything. You’re not pathetic; you’re human. Mark stole your girlhood and your youth, and it’s going to take time for you to heal from that. It’s impossible to immediately get back on your feet after what he did to you. None of this is your fault, so don’t ever berate yourself,” Donghyuck’s voice trembles as he speaks. “I promise you that one day, you’re going to wake up and you’ll realize that you don’t remember what Mark's favorite food is. His favorite movie. His favorite color. Then you’ll realize that you can barely even remember what his face looks like when he’s sad, happy, angry. Eventually, you’ll forget about him entirely, and all the pain he caused you will just be seconds of your life that evaporates from your mind completely.”

When he speaks to you like there’s nothing he’s more sure of in this world, it makes you want to believe him. You want to be his promise. 

“Thank you, Donghyuck,” you whisper, placing your hand on top of his for just a moment before pulling away. Your touch is feather light, but you hope he didn’t notice the way your fingertips lingered a second longer. 

The two of you fall quiet again, but this time, the silence is much more comfortable now. You’re almost disappointed when he pulls into your apartment complex, unsure of how to say goodbye to him. 

“Would you like some hot cocoa or something?” you blurt out when he parks. “I think I have some in my apartment.”

You don’t realize how suggestive your offer sounds until it’s too late. Donghyuck hesitates for a moment, and you can tell he’s debating on if he should tease you about it or not. To your surprise, he doesn’t.

“Nah, it’s okay. It’s getting dark soon, so I should head back.” He pulls out his phone and starts ordering an Uber. 

“Want me to wait with you then?” You’re not sure why you keep insisting on staying with him, but this day has been so batshit insane that you almost feel like a passenger in your own body. 

“Probably not a good idea,” he chuckles.

Now, you feel both confused and slightly offended again.

“And why is that? I know I’ve been a bit of a menace today, but still…” you trail off awkwardly. 

Donghyuck pauses for a moment as he stares at you; his face is closer to yours than it’s ever been because you’re sitting right next to him. You can tell he’s thinking very carefully about his next words. It occurs to you that, for a guy as seemingly flippant as him, he is actually quite thoughtful.

“You know, I’ve been compared to Mark my entire life,” he begins, musing. 

“Sooo…you didn’t want me to wait with you because you’re gearing up for a trauma dump?” You raise an eyebrow. 

Donghyuck holds his hand up in front of you, shushing you. “Shh, let me have my big moment.” 

“Sorry. Please proceed.” 

“Ahem. As I was saying, I was but a poor, innocent wee boy living in the shadow of the golden child in our family. Mark was always the more athletic, the funnier, the more charming one. His grades were ass, but he always managed to get out of trouble because he was the favorite. When I got my job as a firefighter and he was unemployed, my family barely congratulated me or even acknowledged it at all because they were afraid they would upset Mark. You see, I’ve actually lived quite a tragic life,” Donghyuck sniffles, wiping away a fake tear. 

“What a shame that they can’t see how wonderful you are,” you chime in, a smile in your voice. 

Your honesty in response to his joke visibly catches him off guard, and he blinks a couple of times before your words finally register. 

“Right?” he huffs dramatically, but he can’t seem to meet your eyes completely as a light flush dustes his face and ears. “But fret not, I didn’t particularly mind. It was nice not having to live up to any expectations. Besides, I was happy for Mark when he finally got successful as a streamer. We were raised like brothers, and I always admired him. I was proud of him.” 

“Ha, little did you know—”

“All this to say that, growing up, I’ve never been once jealous of Mark,” Donghyuck states proudly. 

Then he slowly looks over at you with longing eyes, almost as if his body turning itself towards you is a natural reflex. His expression is so soft and affectionate that it nearly takes your breath away. 

“That is, until he met you.” 

So, this is what Donghyuck looks like when he’s in love. You wonder if it would ever be possible for you to wake up one day and not remember it. 

But you aren’t sure if you return his feelings in the same way. Just like you couldn’t bring yourself to use him for your revenge, you can’t bring yourself to ask him to wait for you while you figure out the mess of your current emotional state. The one who loves more always loses, and you don’t want to lose Donghyuck. 

“I just wanted to tell you that,” he continues, “I’m not expecting a response. It’s for the better you don’t respond right now anyways. If you want to pretend like this conversation was all a bad dream conjured up by sleep paralysis and never want to talk about it again, I’m okay with that too.” 

You smile. 

“But…if you’re able to, just look my way sometimes. I’ll do everything in my power to keep your attention, even if I have to get on a unicycle with a clown nose and juggle. And, if one day, you find yourself looking for me on your own, let me know. Then, I’ll ask for an answer,” Donghyuck promises.  

True to your word, you don’t give him an answer. Instead, you take the scarf that’s been laying across your lap—the scarf with a few holes thanks to missing yarn and sections where you accidentally knitted the pattern in the wrong direction. Now it’s a bit stretched out due to you snatching it off Mark. 

But this scarf, as average (maybe even less) as it may be, is charming in its own way. 

Leaning forward, you wrap the scarf around Donghyuck’s neck. He watches you in complete awe, in a trance, as if he were in a dream and any movement would wake him up. 

“I should head inside now,” you say quietly, trying not to giggle at his stupefied expression.

He only nods dazedly, and you’re certain that would have been his reaction regardless of what you said. It takes a few more beats for your words to actually click before he clears his throat loudly. “Right. Yes. You should.” 

He hands you your keys back before stepping out of the car and opening your door for you. “I’ll wait down here until you get inside, and then I’ll go meet my Uber.” 

“Thanks for driving me,” you say, realizing you never thanked him. 

“You’re welcome. Good night, Y/N.” Donghyuck puts his hands in his pockets and tucks his chin into the scarf as he watches you go.

As your hand hovers over the doorknob, you know you should just open the door and walk inside so you don’t keep him waiting in the cold. You really shouldn’t look back because it would mean that you wanted to. Not because he asked you to. 

But you do. You look back—

only to meet his eyes, the two of you exchanging knowing smiles.

extra | is it me? am i the drama? i don’t think i’m the drama…

r/AmITheAsshole

u/justgirlythings-arson119 • 9h

(UPDATE) AITA for setting my cheating ex’s car on fire? (and then falling for his cousin)

So, it turns out my cheating ex got catfished. His supposed Discord kitten was actually some random guy and his friend who were dicking around. They ended up leaking the DMs so they’re all public now for those who would like to read them (by now, I’m sure you all know who my cheating ex is). I would highly advise against listening to the rap confession though. Godspeed if you choose to. I am also selling his expensive PC setup on Facebook Marketplace if anyone’s interested. Happy New Year!

P.S. I ended up inviting the cousin over for hot cocoa. He’s very sweet. 

⥣ 11.3k ⥥ 2,293 Comments

pissrevolver1122 • 8h rip bozo got catfished by me n bro for some robux 

➥ Reply ⥣ 3.8k ⥥

pooprevolver0205 • 8h can’t believe bro actually jacked off to a pic of knees LMAO ➥ ⥣ 1.9k ⥥

piss-k1nk0219 • 2h yall are about to have the awkwardest family get togethers ever lmao

➥ Reply ⥣ 910 ⥥

bigsnowballs0813 • 4h $5 and an iced coffee for the pc take it or leave it

➥ Reply ⥣ 748 ⥥

femboyluvr0701 • 1h are u gonna set the cousin's car on fire too

➥ Reply ⥣ 639 ⥥

justgirlythings-arson119 • 1h probably not he’s very good at putting out fires :(  ➥ ⥣ 482 ⥥

[joemama-2]

velvet lies

pairing: gojo x fem reader synopsis: crippling debt and possible evictions have ruined you. working two jobs with no downtime, and a five-year-old son, you really don't know the meaning of taking a break. after continuous questions about his father, you have decided to finally let your son meet his dad. only thing is, he has no idea said son exists. and to top it off, you have not a single clue about what kinds of things will transpire from this sudden revelation. wc: 7.4k (shorter chap woop) tags/warnings: 18+ MDNI, smut, fluff, romance, alcohol, classism, mom! reader, lying, abuse, MAJOR angst, slow burn, exes to lovers, (mentions of) cheating, scandals, death, blood, drugs, drama, family drama, miscommunication, blackmail, unhealthy coping mechanisms , depression, manipulation series masterlist < previous chapter < next chapter

Year: Early 2018

He hasn’t been answering your phone calls. Or your texts. A growing sense of anxiety and worry forms in your gut. You've trained yourself to push down the more insidious thoughts that threaten your already deteriorating relationship. It’s been a long day for you. From work, to your annoying mother, and now to your M.I.A boyfriend. You wanted to relax at home with a movie and soothing music, maybe even food. However, it’s been hard to eat for the past few weeks. 

The last place you wanted to be was at some house party with snobby people who probably never have realized the true meaning of a dollar. The music is loud and the blue lights do nothing but further annoy you, reminding you of just how much you hate parties. Pushing through the throngs of people, either too drunk to high to give your rudeness a huff. 

It’s not hard to spot him, but the sight makes you dig your nails into your palms. Feeling bile rise in your throat when a girl—one you’ve never seen before—is getting too close and personal with your man. And worst of all? He’s not even pushing her away. He’s obviously drunk. Still, you assumed he would have that much decency to push back flirting advances from random girls. He always did.  

But things have been changing recently, slowly but surely. Ever since that happened. 

Your feet work quickly, forcing yourself to stay determined and not break down and cry right now. You’ve been doing too much of that. “Satoru.” You call out, voice loud and firm enough that he swivels his head to meet your eyes on just the first try. The girl does so also, head tilting in a scrutinizing way that you hate. “Are you drunk?”

The tint on his cheeks is proof enough. But so is his lazy grin. “What do you think?”

The girl giggles, leaning into your boyfriend’s arm. Watching her do so sends a wave of fury down your spine. You would have stepped in if it weren’t for Satoru finally being a decent man and pulling away from her. “Sorry, you gotta go.”

“Excuse me?” The girl huffs, scowling in disgust. “For what? I thought we were having a good time.”

So, they were together the whole night, huh? They probably would have stayed together if you didn’t make an appearance. What if they would have taken things further? What if Satoru imitated something? You can already feel the familiar tingle at the back of your throat, turning around and heading back for the door. He follows, grabbing your arm in an attempt to stop you. “Y/N—“

“Don’t.” You grit, yanking your arm away and pushing your way back out to the front of the large house, ignoring some of a drunken couple’s protests as you ruin their make-out session. When you make your way onto the sidewalk, you feel a more insistent tug at your wrist that causes you to face him fully. Meeting his glazed-over eyes with your own teary pair, biting down on your quivering lip. “Why didn’t you answer your phone? Why are you ignoring me?”

He sighs, running a hand down his face when he lets go of you. “I’m not ignoring you, Y/N. I’m sorry, I should have told you I’d be out. But it was last minute.”

A scoff falls from your lips. “Last minute, huh? Is that what you call it? Hanging around some random girl and acting like you don’t have a worried girlfriend waiting for you?”

“Y/N—“

“Did you cheat on me?” You ask, voice cracking. Your tears now flow freely down your face, eyes red. The expression you adorn does nothing but break his heart. He hates seeing you cry, he always has. And the small, sober part of him is cursing at himself for being such a jackass tonight. But the dominant, drunk side wants no part of an argument tonight. 

“No, I didn’t. I’d never.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Y/N.”

“I want you to be a good boyfriend for once!” You croak out, pushing him back by his shoulders. “Y-you know what I’m going through, you know how hard it’s been. And what do you do? You go out and party, you don’t tell me, and I find some random girl all up on you. And then you smiled like it was funny. D-do you know how much you’re hurting me even more, Satoru?” The trembling of your voice pokes at his heartstrings. 

Satoru stares at you, his expression faltering. For a moment, you think you see guilt flicker across his face, but it’s quickly replaced by something colder—defensiveness. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, alright? I was just...blowing off steam.”

“Blowing off steam?” you repeat, your voice rising as fresh anger bubbles in your chest. “You call this blowing off steam? Ignoring me? Letting some girl throw herself all over you? You’re unbelievable.”

He rakes a hand through his hair, frustration clear in his movements. “What do you want me to do, Y/N? Stay at home and sulk all the time? I can’t—” He stops himself, biting his lip, but you know what he was going to say. 

“You can’t what, Satoru?” Your voice cracks again, but this time it’s laced with more rage than sorrow. “You can’t deal with me? With everything I’m going through? You promised you’d be there for me. You said we’d get through this together.”

“I am here for you!” he snaps, but the slight slur in his voice takes the edge off his words. “But you’re acting like I can’t breathe without you questioning every little thing I do. I’ve been going through shit too, Y/N.”

You suck in a shaky breath. “That’s not fair,” you whisper, your fists clenching at your sides. “You know it’s not. If I didn’t care—if I didn’t love you—I wouldn’t be here, trying to fix this.”

He exhales heavily, his shoulders slumping. “I didn’t cheat on you, Y/N. I swear I didn’t. But I—” He hesitates, his gaze dropping to the ground. “I don’t know how to handle all of this, okay? It’s a lot.”

Your breath hitches, his words cut deeper than he probably intended. “You think this isn’t a lot for me too?” you ask, your voice trembling. “I’ve been trying so hard, Satoru. To hold on. To be strong. For both of us. But you’re slipping away, and I don’t know how to bring you back. I know how to handle things just as much as you do.”

He looks up then, his blue eyes clearer now, filled with something that looks almost like regret. For a brief second, you think he might apologize—might say the words you so desperately need to hear. But instead, he shakes his head and says, “Maybe we just need some space.”

The world tilts beneath you. His words echo in your mind, louder than the music still blaring from the house behind you. “Space?” you repeat, barely able to say the word. “You want to take a break?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, his voice quiet, almost defeated. “I just...I think we’re both hurting each other more than we’re helping.”

You laugh bitterly, wiping at the tears streaming down your face. “No, Satoru. You’re hurting me. You’re the one who stopped trying. You’re the one who’s giving up.” He flinches at your words, but he doesn’t argue. And somehow, that hurts even more. You shake your head, stepping back from him. “If space is what you want, then fine. But don’t expect me to be here waiting when you figure yourself out.”

You turn and walk away, your heart shattering with every step. This isn’t how you imagined the night would go. It isn’t how you imagined your relationship would go. But as you leave him standing there on the sidewalk, you can’t help but wonder if this was inevitable all along.

The same song begins to play. Because soon,  his arms are wrapping around you before you even know it, shoving his face into the side of your neck. “No, no, I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m drunk, okay? Please don’t leave, please. L-let’s just go home, my parents aren’t there. Please, Y/N. I’m sorry.”

And like a broken record, you give in. Because the broken part of you still craves him. His touch, his comforting hugs, his words. His everything. You feel like a puzzle with pieces too big or small to fit, some pieces lost. But with Satoru, he makes them fit. He finds those pieces of you; the ones you can’t find yourself. In a way, you know things are failing and falling apart. 

But you’re laying back in his bed, feeling the constant vibration of your phone. Texts from your mother and you have no doubt she’s blowing up your phone about the way you snuck out and demanding to know where you are. It’s interesting, you’re twenty-one but she treats you like a kid. All because you still live with her. 

Your heart feels heavy, your stomach twisting with nausea and you’re not even the drunk one. His hands hold your teary cheeks, meeting your gaze with watery ones of his own. Combined tears wet his pillow until there’s no more to give out. He’s been crying with you, but sometimes it feels fake. 

“Did you cheat on me?” You ask again, whispering in a shaky tone. 

His lips purse and he shakes his head. “���no, I didn’t. I told you, I’d never.”

You search his face, looking for cracks in the foundation of his words. His sorrowful eyes, flushed cheeks, and trembling hands—all of it feels sincere, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Not so much anymore. “You’re sure?” you whisper, your voice barely audible over the pounding of your heart. 

“I’m sure,” he says, his voice soft but firm. “I swear to you, Y/N. I’d never do that to you. Never.” His thumb brushes away a stray tear on your cheek, and for a moment, the warmth of his touch almost convinces you.

Almost.

You close your eyes, exhaling shakily as his hands cradle your face. You want to believe him. You need to believe him. But the doubt lingers like a shadow, clawing at the edges of your mind. “Then why do I feel like I’m losing you?” you ask, your voice breaking.

Satoru flinches, his hands momentarily faltering before steadying again. “You’re not losing me,” he says quickly, almost desperately. “I know I’ve been...different lately, but it’s not because I don’t care. I just—” He pauses, his gaze dropping as if searching for the right words. “I don’t know how to handle this, Y/N. I don’t know how to be what you need right now. There’s so much and I…” his voice trails off, fearing he’s saying too much and it’ll only make you feel worse. Make himself feel worse. 

Your chest tightens, his confession cutting deeper than you expected. “I don’t need you to have all the answers, Satoru. I just need you to try. To be honest with me. To stop shutting me out. You…you’re the only one—you’re all I have right now.”

“I’m trying,” he insists, his voice cracking under the weight of his emotions. “I swear I’m trying. But it feels like...like no matter what I do, it’s not enough. And I hate it. I hate that I’m hurting you.”

The rawness in his voice pulls at something in you, making it harder to keep the walls around your heart intact. You open your eyes, meeting his gaze. For a moment, the vulnerability in his expression mirrors your own. “I don’t want to lose you, Satoru,” you say softly. “But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep feeling like I’m the only one fighting for us.”

“You’re not,” he whispers, his hands tightening slightly on your face as if afraid you’ll slip away. “You’re not, Y/N. I know I’ve messed up, but I’ll do better. I promise. Just...don’t give up on me. Please.”

The plea in his voice, the tears in his eyes—they’re enough to make the broken pieces of your heart shift, trying to fit back together even if they don’t quite align. Against your better judgment, you nod, letting out a shaky breath. “Okay,” you whisper. “But this is your last chance, Satoru. I mean it.”

“I know,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “I won’t mess this up. I promise.” But Satoru isn’t the best at promises. He’s only good at making them for others, not keeping them for himself. 

As he pulls you into his arms, holding you as if you might vanish, you can’t help but wonder how many more promises you’ll let him break before there’s nothing left of you to give. But for now, you let yourself sink into his embrace, hoping—maybe foolishly—that this time will be different. Because he’s all you have. All you know. He knows you inside and out—the way your voice wavers when you’re holding back tears, the way your hands fidget when you’re nervous, the way you laugh like it’s the only thing keeping you from breaking. And you know him just as deeply. Every freckle on his skin, every scar that tells a story, every mole you’ve discovered in moments of intimacy. You’ve memorized him like a favorite book, reading him over and over until the lines blur but still feel familiar.

You two are like each other’s canvases—painted with touches, kisses, and shared memories, even the messy ones. Every fight, every tear-streaked night, every whispered “I’m sorry” adds another layer to the masterpiece that is you and him. But lately, it feels like the colors are running, bleeding into one another until the picture is unrecognizable. And you don’t know if you can fix it, or if you even should. Never did you think that things would change so much, and all because of one failed situation. 

What a weak body you have, what a weak person you are. 

He holds you tighter, his fingers threading through your hair as if grounding himself in your presence. “You’re everything to me, Y/N,” he murmurs, his voice so quiet you almost don’t catch it. “I know I’ve been a mess, but I swear I’ll fix this. I’ll fix us.”

But his promises feel like paint on a waterlogged canvas—fading, smudged, and far too fragile. Still, you nod, letting the comfort of his warmth lull you into silence. Because no matter how fractured you feel, no matter how much the doubt weighs on your chest, he’s all you have. You can’t handle the thought of facing everything alone now, can’t handle the thought of not having someone to hug you when you burst down in tears. 

You hate the way things are now, but you’ve sunk too deep into him. And him the same. Over time, you feel like he will retract his hold from you before you do so yourself. You can almost feel it coming, one way or another. It’s why you’re holding him tighter, pressing your body deeper into his. Because you know you wouldn’t be able to do it yourself. Awaiting the inevitable hurts so bad. Knowing that no matter what, your end is visible. You can see the finish line just a few yards away. It’s like a race, and you’re letting Satoru win. Envisioning him running his long legs to the checkered line with a smile on his face like he’s happy—relieved. You don’t want to hold him, that’s the last thing you want to do. However, you’re being as selfish as you can be right now. Before every privilege is stripped from you in a cold manner that will leave you shivering for warmth. But his presence is something. And for now, that’s enough to keep you here and sane. 

Little did you know, you'd win that race before he did. You just needed that little push. He's the hare, and you're the tortoise.

You stay in his arms, the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek a constant reminder of the closeness you’ve always shared. It feels almost like an illusion, the peace between you both. But underneath, there’s a tension that hasn’t quite loosened, a thread pulled tight between the two of you, holding you close but threatening to snap at the slightest tug. His grip tightens, his fingers threading into your hair, pulling you closer as if trying to fuse your two worlds together. The quiet hum of the room feels almost suffocating now. Your phone continues to buzz with your mother’s increasingly frantic texts, but you can’t bring yourself to care about that right now. Not with Satoru’s breath warm on your neck and his hands gently caressing your skin. Not when it’s easier to let him hold you in this fragile moment of peace. 

You close your eyes, your fingers curling around the fabric of his shirt. The quietness stays for a long moment, But when he speaks, it’s almost a whisper, like he’s afraid of the truth that might spill out.

“I’ll try. I’ll be here for you, Y/N. I swear it.”

You wonder if you can truly believe him this time. If you can let yourself hope that things might really change. But the doubt is a familiar companion, lingering in the shadows, waiting to remind you of the cracks in his promises. Still, for tonight, you let it go. You let yourself sink into him, giving into the small piece of comfort he offers, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time will be different.

You wake up in a cold sweat, dried tears staining your cheeks. Your stomach feels sensitive, nails already digging into your palms so hard that the skin is growing red and prickly. Every emotion you felt from that dream—nightmare—whatever it was feels ten times more real. You don’t know why you’re having these weird dreams about something from years ago. 

But it still hurts all the same, nonetheless. 

You still feel hollow, drowned, and ready to pour your heart out into your pillow. But it’s morning and time to get up for bed. Christmas Eve is in three days and you’re just counting down until when you won’t have to go into work.  Going through your routine, getting Koji ready for the day, opening the door for Sana. Leaving your place of solitude, it feels like you barely even lived through this morning. 

The chill of the morning air hits your skin as you step outside, tugging your coat tighter around you. The weight of your dream lingers, like a fog that refuses to lift. You keep telling yourself it was just a dream, just a memory from a time you’ve tried so hard to bury. But it clings to you like a ghost, whispering doubts into your ear, even as you force yourself to move through the motions. you can’t help but glance up at the sky, the gray clouds reflecting the heaviness in your chest. Christmas Eve is in three days, and you can’t wait to take a break from not just work—from everything.

If only escaping your past was as easy as flipping the calendar to a new year.

Satoru texts you around the 2-hour mark that he’ll be going over to your place soon to see Koji and bring the gifts he got. You let Sana know of the change, she replies back with a simple ‘okay!’

You sigh, willing yourself to forget about the drama your life entails, and focus on your work. 

However, another thought is creeping in through the door, and this time—it’s not such a bad one. You feel a fluttering sensation in your gut, holding back a peal of stifled laughter as the memory of last night makes its presence known. After the whole shirt incident, Suguru stayed. He kept his word about not making anything weird, and you two ended with a simple chat and a movie. It felt nice.

Of course, there were hints of lingering peeks, that strange tension tossed up in the air that neither of you fully addressed. But it’s fine, it didn’t mean anything at the end of the day. Although, when it was time for him to leave, you did have a second of hesitation about whether you should hug him or simply say goodbye. He decided for you when he carefully opened his arms up, you followed suit. 

Inhaling his scent felt heavenly. Manly, but also feminine at the same time. An earthly scent that felt like hints of incense. The memory of his embrace lingers like the faintest trace of his cologne, warm and comforting. It wasn’t just the way he held you—it was the way he made you feel. Secure. Understood. Like you weren’t just surviving, but living, even if just for that moment.  

You haven't hugged a man in so long. You forgot how good they hug. 

You shake your head, a small smile pulling at your lips despite yourself. It wasn’t anything. It shouldn’t be anything. Suguru’s always been like that—gentle, kind, and just a little too perceptive for his own good. He knew exactly when to stay and exactly what you needed without you even having to say it. Still, you can’t ignore the way your heartbeat picked up when his arms wrapped around you, the way your cheek brushed against his shoulder, and how your fingers had almost lingered a little too long against his back. It felt natural, but also entirely new. 

Suguru’s presence was so easy, so effortless. It felt like slipping into an old favorite sweater, soft and familiar but with a spark of something you couldn’t quite place. You’d been so wrapped up in keeping everything together, in pushing through every day for Koji’s sake, that you’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be seen.  

You wonder if Satoru holds the same longing you do. 

You shake the thought away as quickly as it comes. Don’t think about him. There’s no point in overthinking any of this.  

“Hello, you must be Koji’s father.” Sana greets Satoru who stands in the doorway. With him, two armfuls of gifts. Even more on the floor next to his feet. 

Simply nodding and looking over her shoulder to see Koji eating his lunch. “And you’re the babysitter.” Without much else, he carefully pushes past her, bringing in the gifts. “Mind getting the rest? Thanks.”

She nods, grabbing what was left on the floor before bringing it in, closing and locking the door. When she turns back around, Koji is in his father’s embrace. She smiles at the scene. “Ms. Y/N told me you’d be coming. He’s been good so far, he’s just eating his lunch now.”

“That’s good to hear,” Satoru replies, pulling away from his son. Doing a quick scan of the place before his eyes land back on the young woman. “How long have you been watching my son again?”

“A couple of years.”

He hums, walking closer to her. “And you’re how old?”

Sana blinks, surprised by the question. "I'm twenty," she says cautiously, her polite smile wavering slightly under his scrutiny.  

Satoru raises an eyebrow, his gaze sharp but unreadable. "Twenty, huh? Pretty young to be taking care of kids."  

“I’ve been babysitting since I was sixteen,” she replies, straightening her posture. “I’m studying early childhood education, so it’s not just a job to me. I care about Koji.”  

His expression softens a fraction, and he glances back at his son, who’s happily munching away at his sandwich. “He does seem to like you,” Satoru admits, his tone less probing now.  

“He’s a great kid,” Sana says warmly. “Very smart, just like his mother.”  

That earns her a faint smile. “Yeah, just like his mother.” He crosses his arms, leaning casually against the counter. “So, Y/N told you I’d be stopping by today?”  

“Yes, she mentioned it when I got here this morning.” 

Satoru nods, tapping his fingers against his forearm thoughtfully. “Good. Thanks for helping out today. I know it’s probably not easy juggling school and babysitting.”  

“It’s manageable,” Sana replies, sensing a subtle change in his demeanor. “Koji makes it worth it.”  

Satoru’s gaze lingers on her for a moment longer before he straightens up. “I’ll take over from here. You can go ahead and clock out early if you want.”  

“Oh, are you sure?”  

“Yeah,” he says, waving her off. “Enjoy the rest of your day. I’ve got this.”  

Sana hesitates briefly, glancing at Koji, who’s still blissfully unaware of the conversation. “Alright then. Have a good evening, Mr. Gojo.”  

As she gathers her things and heads for the door, she feels his eyes on her. It’s not hostile, but it’s assessing. Like he’s trying to gauge something about her. She doesn’t dwell on it, though—whatever it is, it’s not her place to question. “Oh!” She turns around as if she just remembered something. “Ms. Y/N leaves a list. It’s taped to the—”

“I don’t need a list to take care of my son.” He cuts her off smoothly, his one eyebrow raising. “Thanks again, have a good day.”

She falters, once again caught a little off guard. This is her first time meeting him, and while she’s of course seen the articles and comments about the drama surrounding the small family, she has no bias. In fact, she sympathizes greatly with you for going through all this alone. As she’s leaving the apartment, she can’t help the small opinion of Satoru that he’s already given her. 

He’s so intimidating!

After she leaves, Satoru focuses back on his son—this shitty apartment. He hasn’t explicitly voiced his opinions out to you—of course you already know what they are. And as you said before, it’s all you could afford, and Koji’s happy. However, he can’t stop himself from grimacing at the so-called ‘decorations’. This place needs some serious revamping. 

“Hey, buddy?”

Koji looks over, wiping his mouth. “Yes, Papa?”

“When you’re done eating, want to help me with something?” And Koji doesn’t need to be told anymore. He loves helping—especially his mother and father. So he nods excitedly, practically scarfing down the rest of his sandwich. Bubbling with giddiness only a child could have. 

Satoru chuckles at his son’s behavior, heart warming. This is the first time he’s doing something festive with Koji. The bitter part of him tells him that he could’ve had more chances to do so if it weren’t for your cowardness. But he shoves that away, focusing on the jolly joy the holidays can bring. 

Today was more tiring than usual, with the cafe gaining more attention, there’s been rush after rush after rush. You can handle it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t wear you down by the time you clock out. And your day isn’t even done yet. Slugging your way to your front door, lazily opening it with your key. Tossing your coat on the nearby rack, your bag with it. 

“I’m ba—”

You sniffle. One. Twice. 

A pinecone-y scent fills your nostrils. Which is strange because you know you have no candles that house that aroma. Confusion, but wariness takes over your senses. Following the sound of laughter down the hall until you’re standing in the living room. 

The sight you see is more than startling. 

Your eyes dart around in a frenzy, landing on one new thing after the next. The small, simple Christmas tree you’d put up last week? Replaced by a towering, impeccably decorated monstrosity with shimmering lights and a star that looks like it came straight out of a luxury catalog. It barely even fits in the room. Luckily, the small picture ornament of you and Koji is still there. But it looks so out of place.

The garlands you’d strung across the walls? Gone, swapped for lush, sparkling ones adorned with oversized ornaments. Even your modest stockings have been replaced with personalized velvet ones embroidered with gold thread, hanging perfectly above a faux fireplace setup that definitely wasn’t there this morning.

It’s like a winter wonderland exploded in your living room, and you’re not sure whether to laugh or scream.

Koji is sitting on the couch, giggling as Satoru playfully pretends to tangle himself in a string of fairy lights. Your son’s laughter is contagious, but you can’t shake the growing irritation bubbling inside you. When Koji notices you, his eyes brighten even more. Gaping and rushing over to your leg, hugging it. “Mama! Mama! Look what Papa and I did! It’s so pretty and there are so many presents!”

There is. There’s a lot of presents. Practically stacking on top of one another under your refurbished tree. Hidden somewhere in the splurge are the gifts Suguru got for you and Koji. 

Gulping, you feel your throat tighten. You feel nothing but overwhelmed. But in the face of your son, you can’t exactly show that. You force a smile as you ruffle Koji’s hair, trying to push down the irritation clawing its way to the surface. “Wow, it’s… definitely something,” you say, your voice strained but managing to sound somewhat amused for Koji’s sake.

Satoru, now untangled from the lights, looks up from the couch with that boyish grin of his. “Do you love it or do you love it?” he asks, gesturing to the extravagant decor like he’s unveiling a masterpiece. 

You blink at him, incredulous—but still attempting to keep yourself calm.  “What… what happened to the decorations we already had?”

“Oh, those?” He waves a dismissive hand. “Let’s just say they weren’t really up to par. I mean, come on, Y/N. That tree you had? It was like something out of a Charlie Brown Christmas special. I couldn’t let Koji’s holiday spirit suffer like that.”

Your jaw tightens, the forced smile threatening to slip. “So, you just… decided to replace everything? Without asking me?”

He stands, brushing off invisible dust from his jeans as if the weight of his decision is nothing. “You were busy, and I figured you’d appreciate coming home to something nice for once. Besides, look at Koji—he’s thrilled!”

Koji tugs at your sleeve, his wide-eyed excitement piercing through your annoyance. “It’s so cool, Mama! Look at all the shiny ornaments! And Papa let me pick out the star!” Your son runs over to show off a few of the many, many presents he has. Showing extra excitement for the heavier and larger ones. “Papa says it’s magical. I want to have a magical Christmas every time, Mama.”

The words, innocent but heavy, almost make you physically kneel down. You feel your chest tighten, your throat closing up even more. The lump that forms is difficult to swallow down. The implication of Satoru’s and your son's words feels a bit degrading. And you don’t blame it on Koji, he means nothing malicious. But for some reason, being faced with the physical line of difference between you and Satoru, watching your son’s face light up in a way that you’ve never seen before…

It reminds you that your enough has never been enough. Each Christmas, it’s dull. Your Christmases aren’t magical.  Your life isn’t. 

You feel the weight of it all crashing down like the oversized star on the new tree is pressing on your chest. Satoru's extravagance, Koji's innocent excitement, and your own feelings of inadequacy swirl together into a storm you’re barely holding back.  

Your forced smile falters, but you quickly kneel to Koji's level, brushing his hair away from his glowing face. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart,” you say softly, voice trembling but steady enough to reassure him. “I’m glad you had fun with Papa.”  

Koji beams, and for a moment, his joy is a balm to your frayed nerves. “It’s pretty, isn’t it, Mama?”  

You bite the inside of your cheek. “So pretty.” Standing slowly, your hand lingers on Koji’s shoulder. “Really pretty,” you repeat quietly, not committing to anything. You can feel Satoru watching you, his casual demeanor only adding to your irritation. The worst part of it all is that it seems like he genuinely has no idea what he did wrong. 

In hindsight, maybe he didn’t. It wasn’t his intention to make you feel like a shitty mother, but Satoru is good at pointing out the differences in his own ways. 

When Koji bounds back to the pile of gifts, you finally let yourself meet Satoru’s gaze. “You really didn’t think to talk to me about this?”  

His grin fades just a fraction, replaced by a look of confusion. “What’s there to talk about? I wanted to do something special for Koji. And let’s be honest, Y/N—this is special.”  

“It’s not about the decorations, Satoru,” you snap, your voice low but sharp. “It’s about you making decisions without considering how I might feel about it. Again.”  

He tilts his head, the glower returning, though it feels sharper now. “You’re overthinking this. It’s just Christmas decorations, Y/N. Look at Koji—he’s happy. Isn’t that what matters?”  

You clench your fists, the tightness in your chest threatening to spill over into something you can’t control. “You don’t get it, do you? This isn’t just about the decorations. It’s about you coming in here and acting like everything I do is subpar. Like I’m not enough.”  

The words hang heavy in the air, and for a moment, Satoru’s expression falters. But he recovers quickly, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning against the arm of the couch. “Y/N, no one’s saying that. You’re reading too much into this. I just wanted to make things nice for Koji, that’s all.”  

Your laugh is bitter, and it catches even you off guard. “Right. Because your version of nice is always the right one. I’m just the placeholder until you decide to step in and fix everything, aren’t I?”  

Satoru’s eyes narrow slightly, the playful spark he had with Kojidimming. “That’s not fair.”  

“Isn’t it?” you counter, your voice breaking despite your effort to stay calm. “You swoop in with all your money and your grand gestures, and I’m supposed to just smile and be grateful. But do you even realize how hard I’ve worked to give Koji a Christmas he’ll enjoy? How much I’ve sacrificed just to keep things normal?”  

His silence stings more than any retort could.  

Koji’s laughter in the background feels distant now, muffled by the sound of your own heartbeat pounding in your ears. He’s too distracted with the tree, his presents, everything. You inhale deeply, trying to steady yourself, before forcing a calmness you don’t feel.  You won’t fight in front of him. 

“I’m going to get changed,” you mutter, not waiting for a response.  

As you leave the room, Satoru calls after you, his voice softer but no less exasperated. “Y/N, come on. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it is.”  

But to you, it already feels like a chasm. One that grows wider with every passing second.

You shut your door, leaning against it with your forehead. Breaths coming in short, hands trembling slightly. Biting your quivering lip, you maneuver your body to change into your uniform. All the while, tears are getting on your hands and clothes. Accidentally, you let out a small, broken whimper. 

 Quickly, you place a palm to your mouth, stifling and quieting your soft cries. Once you’re done changing, you fall back onto the bed. Curled up with knees drawn to your chest, as the burden of your own self-consciousness rains down on you. The room feels suffocatingly small, your emotions clawing at your throat, demanding to be let out.

The tears come harder now, soaking into the fabric of your uniform as you press your hands to your face, muffling the quiet sobs. You hate this—how easily Satoru gets under your skin, how he makes you feel insignificant without even trying. You thought you were past this. Past him. But somehow, he always finds a way to remind you of all the ways you’ve fallen short. Or at least, all the ways he makes you feel like you have.

There’s a soft knock on the door.

“Y/N?” His voice is muffled through the wood, quieter than usual as if he’s trying not to disturb you. “Are you okay?”

You don’t answer, biting down on your lip to keep from making another sound.

“Look,” he continues, his tone hesitant. “I know I upset you. I didn’t mean to. Can we just… talk?”

For a moment, you consider staying silent, letting him stew in his own discomfort. But the tension is too thick, and you know Koji is just down the hall. With a shaky breath, you push yourself to your feet, wiping at your face in a futile attempt to erase the evidence of your tears. Wiping your face and straightening your clothes, you open the door. “I have work.” You mutter, expertly enforcing a placid emotion. “Will you watch him?”

Without waiting for a response, you walk past him. But he grabs at your wrist, instinctively you pull away. “Stop, just stop, okay? Let’s not fight. We’re adults, we can talk this out. I don’t mean to make you feel less than, I just wanted to make Koji happy.”

“And do you think he’s not happy with me?” You snap back, looking up at him. Feeling your vision already beginning to blur. “Do you? Do you think he’ll be happy with you? I-Is that it?”

Satoru’s eyes widen slightly at your outburst, and for a moment, he doesn’t respond. The air between you feels like it could snap under the weight of everything left unsaid. His hand hovers near his side, as if he wants to reach out again but knows better now. “No,” he says softly, his voice steady but lined with regret. “That’s not what I meant. Koji is happy with you. He loves you more than anything.”

“Then why do you keep acting like what I do isn’t enough?” you whisper, your voice trembling as you maintain eye contact with him. “I’ve been doing this alone, Satoru. Every scraped knee, every fever, every night when he cries because he’s scared of the dark—I’m there. Not you. Me. So don’t you dare come in here, throw your money around, and act like you can just fix everything with some… Christmas wonderland.”

“But you didn’t let me come in sooner, Y/N.” He replies, exasperation in his voice. 

“I know that, and I’m sorry. I know I fucked up…”

“Then stop getting mad at little things.”

Your fists ball up, your expression growing firmer by the second. But so is the need to cry again. He’s right, everything he says is right. It’s your own fault that you’ve been forced to handle everything alone. But, don’t your feelings matter just a little bit in this situation? Is he allowed to just come in and fix up everything you have? What he thinks is a mess, it’s something that holds significance to you. What he thinks is a little thing, it’s a big one in your eyes. 

So while this scenario is blowing up into something bigger, your decorations are something you have control of. You only have control over so many things in your life. 

He exhales slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not trying to take anything away from you, Y/N. I swear. I just… I wanted to give him something special. Something I never had growing up.”

It makes you feel even more guilty. You can’t find it in you to say anything else, turning back around and walking to the living room. “Goodbye, Koji. Mama will see you later.” Giving him a brief hug and kiss, you hurriedly grab your coat and purse, exiting your apartment just as fast as you came. 

Unbeknownst to you, Koji is left staring at the closed door. His head tilting in curiosity, while a frown pulling at the corner of his lips. He looks up at his father when he enters the living room again, the two owning matching guises. “Why’d Mama leave so fast? I wanted to show her the drawing we did.” The white paper in his hands pictures three figures. Each one smiling, the smaller boy in the middle holding hands with his two parents on either side of him. He even drew blue snowflakes. 

There’s a red heart around them with the words My family! at the top. 

Satoru stands there, staring at the door you just closed, feeling the weight of Koji’s innocent question settle on his shoulders. He sighs, running a hand through his hair as he glances down at his son, whose big, curious eyes are filled with disappointment.

“She’s just tired, buddy,” Satoru replies, crouching down to Koji’s level. His tone is softer now, more measured, as he tries to mask the turmoil bubbling under his calm façade. “She’s been working really hard, you know? Grown-up stuff.”

Koji’s frown deepens, his little brows furrowing. “But we worked hard too! We did the tree and the presents and everything!” His tiny hands gesture to the decorated room, his frustration clear. “Mama’s s’posed to be happy.”

Satoru feels his chest tighten at the words. He places a hand on Koji’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “She is happy, Koji. She just… needs some time, that’s all. Grown-ups can be funny like that.”

Koji looks down, fiddling with his fingers before glancing back up. “Is it my fault?”

Satoru’s heart aches at the question, and he immediately shakes his head, pulling Koji into a firm hug. “No, not even a little bit. You didn’t do anything wrong, Koji. Don’t ever think that, okay?”

Koji nods slowly against his father’s shoulder but remains quiet. Satoru pulls back, cupping his son’s face in his hands. “Mama loves you so much, Koji. More than anything in the world. Don’t ever forget that.”

“Okay…” Koji mumbles, still not entirely convinced. He inhaled deeply, then spoke again. “Do…does Mama love you too?”

The question catches him off guard, putting an even bigger weight on Satoru’s shoulders. He should’ve expected it, Koji is a curious kid who still doesn’t completely grasp the complexities of his parents’ relationship. Satoru smiles faintly, kissing Koji’s cheek. “Mama has a lot of love.”

The answer satisfies Koji. For now. 

Satoru ruffles his son’s hair. “How about we finish that drawing? We’ll save it for her when she gets back.”

Koji perks up slightly, nodding. “Okay! But you gotta color inside the lines this time, Papa.”

Satoru chuckles, relieved to see even a small smile return to Koji’s face. “Deal. But only if you promise not to make fun of me if I mess up. I’m sensitive.”

Koji giggles, taking his father’s hand to lead him back to the small table. As they sit down to continue their drawing, Satoru steals a glance at the door again, his smile faltering for just a second.

He’s trying—he really is. But he wonders if it’ll ever be enough. It’s like no matter what he does, you don’t like it; and vice versa. He’s being as understanding and nice as someone in his situation can be. At times, he feels he’s being even too nice to you. He knew things wouldn’t be easy, but he wants to spend time with his son. Make up for all the lost time, and even the littlest moments. It’s almost a little bit unfair of you to throw the fact that he has money and you don’t in his face like that. He didn’t ask to be born rich. Just like you didn’t ask to be born…like that. You’re the adults in this situation, there’s a kid involved. So truly, he wishes he could just have a single conversation with you that doesn’t feel anger-surged or bitter. Of course, it’s hard because of what has happened before, but there’s a time and a place, is there not? 

Whatever. He’s more than happy to color with Koji and do whatever the little boy asks while you have your own moment. Satoru knows best of everyone else you like having space. And while many years have passed and his feelings for you have grown less than savory, he stills wants to respect your wishes after an argument with him.

He can’t help but think the obvious, though. Is it even worth attempting to mend whatever little shards of semblance there is left with you?

Probably not. Because after all, he’s here only for Koji. 

Right?

taglist is now closed

taglist: @celestialforce @theclassbookworm @tbzzluvr @uhenivid @ofkilljoysandslytherins

@sadmonke @bunheadusa @shartnart1 @lady-of-blossoms @itsinherited

@duooy @ari-sa @dakotali @mew4-ever18 @iv-vee

@devils-blackrose @a-girl-with-thoughts @bitchycloudstrawberry @tiffyisme3760 @iheartshopping

@chiara-hotel @uriahs-barn @celloccino @roronoazorosbxtchh @pseudophyllus

@ratedrrrr @m1gota @tojideckmuncher @yigaclvn @sukunaslve

@eiizabeth-torres @cherrythiccums0 @satorustorm @zoeyflower @username23345

@i0313z @gourdlorddgubes @partypoison00 @quinnyundertow @sorilyae

@redzscare @aldebrana @nycmagi @s4ikooo1 @dreaming-lis @gigiiiiislife

@boothillglazer @miss-dior @miakxn @rjreins

[moon-child-goddess]

Oblivious

Mattheo Riddle X Hufflepuff reader

Summery: Mattheo is in love with someone, and the reader navigates their way through it. Also Mattheo cant keep his hands to himself.

Warnings: Out of character maybe, Cursing, Friends to lovers, Language, some angst, This is long, fluff

Word count is just under 6k oops.

“There’s the little badger.” Mattheo greeted as I sat in my usual spot right next to him.

I scrunched my nose up at the nickname he had given to me in our second year, a moniker that had yet to die. He bestowed it upon me after I refused to divulge my name in the first month of knowing him. So he cycled through various nick names before settling on my house’s animal.

“Hi Matty.” I spoke in a sing-song voice.

His lips quirked up as he rolled his eyes. He always acted like he hated the name, but I knew he secretly loved it. Instead of responding, he reached up and straightened out my tie that I had haphazardly thrown on. I was late this morning, which was no surprise. Being late was the hallmark of my personality.

“We should get you a green one, since you are an honorary Slytherin at this point.”  He said in a sarcastic tone, but his brown eyes sparkled with warmth.

“I could just take yours.” I whispered winking at him.

Mattheo froze for a moment, then let out a cough. His long fingers tugged my collar back down. Blaise made a stupid joke to Draco, Complete with an exaggerated kissy face. A small blush rose to my cheeks.

“Thanks. You are the best” I said, interrupting the awkward tension.

He responded with a genuine smile, one that lingered for nearly twenty seconds before reverting to his usual scowl. Mattheo nudged a plate of food towards me. It was loaded with my favorite things, including a bowl of fruit topped with a generous pile of whipped cream—just the way I liked it. My smile widened until it hurt.

I wasted no time in digging into the fruit. The sweetness of the whipped cream mingled with the tartness of the berries reminding me why it was the best. As soon as I took my first bite Mattheo wrapped an arm over my shoulders turning back to his conversation with his friends.

“What do you want to do this weekend?” Blaise asked, looking at everyone.

“I am going to Hogsmeade with Ron and Harry. They just asked me in the hall.” Mattheo glowered as I spoke, his arm falling down to my lower back.

“Ditching us for the golden trio. That’s low Y/N.” Theo spoke through a mouthful of food.

“I have other friends, you know.” 

Everyone exchanged dubious glances, I spent about 95 percent of my time with the Slytherin boys, but I did have other friends. They just seemed to forget it. Draco scoffed. I took another bite of my food hiding my smile. My friends were jealous though they would never admit it.

“What if we meet-“ My words trailed off as Mattheo used his finger to wipe away some cream on the corner of my mouth. His touch lingered a moment longer than necessary, awakening butterflies in my stomach.

“Hey Mattheo.”  A female voice said from behind us. We both turned to face her, moving as one.

It was a pretty Ravenclaw girl a year below us. She and Mattheo talked occasionally in classes and the hallway; she had even tutored him for a few months last year. The girl started to fiddle with her blue sweater, shuffling on her feet.

“I was wondering if you wanted to hang out on Saturday?”

Everyone at our table fell silent. Did she just ask him out on a date? I froze. We had all suspected she liked him, but we never knew how Mattheo felt about her. He was a man of few words when it came to feelings.

Mattheo looked right at me, his mouth opening and closing, words failing him. I giggled nervously—did he like her after all? Was he nervous?

“He is free. Let’s all meet in the Courtyard at 9? We can all head out together.” She nodded.

As she walked away, Mattheo squeezed my hand, mumbling something under his breath. I couldn’t make out a single word he was saying.

I think I just got him a date, and it wasn’t me. I pushed him in to another girls’ arms. Merlin, I was dumb.

It was the end of the day, and it had passed by in a blur. I was making my way to the library so Mattheo and I could work on an essay for herbology together. The events of this morning were still raw in my mind, playing over and over. My heart hurt, and I wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Is he ever going to tell her how he feels?” Theo’s voice echoed down the hall loud and clear.

“I mean it’s obvious. Mattheo is fooling no one.” Blaise added.

I gasped as I rounded the corner, my footsteps faltering. It felt like there was another crack added to my heart today. Why, though? I always knew there was going to eventually be a girl that wasn’t just a casual hook up.

“Mattheo is in love with someone?” I whispered, disbelief washing through me like a cold wave.

“No, he just really likes this girl. She is-” Blaise smacked Theo, cutting off whatever else he was going to say. 

“Ow” Theo rubbed his arm and glared at Blaise. Ever the dramatic one.

Mattheo never told me about liking anyone. I thought we were closer than that. And Merlin, I agreed to a date for him. What if it was the wrong girl and I just made things complicated? He could have just been looking for a way out of it. Maybe that was why he was tense all day.

“It is not our place to say anything” Blaise bit out bitterly.

“Oh.”

“Why does it look like you two have offended my little badger?” Mattheo appeared; his eyebrow arched in curiosity as he looked at the two of them.

“Uhmm- They. We.” I couldn’t come up with a lie. My brain was trying to comprehend that Mattheo didn’t tell me he liked someone.

He gently grabbed my hands, his touch warm and reassuring, making me face him. His dark eyes bore into mine, searching for an answer. 

“Darling? Are you ok?” his tone was soft and filled with concern.

“Yeah, yes. They were talking about sex.” I cringed internally. I wasn’t that innocent, but what else could I say that would end the conversation?

I was getting secondhand embarrassment from myself if that was even possible.

He let out a loud laugh, which startled me to my core. I wasn’t prepared for that reaction.

“I thought I was going to have to fight my best friends for you.” His tone held amusement, a playful glint in his eyes.

Blaise flipped him off, and Theo let out a protest. Mattheo’s hands moved from mine, pulling me into his embrace. His chest shook as he laughed some more. I buried my face into his chest, trying to hide my embarrassment. He smelled of cologne and rain.

“Let’s get to the library; we have an essay to write.” He took my bag from me, slinging it on his shoulder and held my hand as we walked to the library.

As we walked, I couldn’t help but replay the conversation I had overheard. Mattheo liked someone- no, loved someone. My mind was becoming a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Every glance, every touch we shared had felt loaded with unspoken words. Was I reading into it?

When we finally arrived at the library, the familiar scent of books and the quiet ambiance did little to calm my racing thoughts. Mattheo led us to a secluded table, away from the prying eyes of the other students. He set my bag down and pulled out a chair for me, a small gesture that made my heart flutter despite everything.

As we worked, I found myself stealing glances at him, wondering what secrets he was hiding behind that stupid charming smile of his.

We were in the middle of our work... Well, he was. I was reading the same page over and over, my eyes glazing over the words. I was still focused on trying to figure out who the girl he liked was. He hardly talked to anyone when he was with me, which was pretty much all day.

I let out a gasp dropping the book on the table with a thud. The librarian shushed me from her desk, eyes narrowed in disapproval. Mattheo’s hand instinctively reached out and rubbed circles on my back as if it was second nature to comfort me.

Was I in the way? The reason he couldn’t get the girl.

No, he would tell me. Mattheo was blunt like that… but he didn’t tell me he liked someone.

“I can tell you are overthinking little badger.” His thumb smoothed out the worry lines on my forehead. His touch was soft and comforting.

Gods, why did my heart hurt so much?

“Oh, you know I just realized my outline was wrong. I need to start over.” I lied to him, something I never did. And I have done It twice in one day.

Mattheo knew I was lying too. He shook his head, looking back at his paper, his warm hand squeezing my knee, sending me silent words of comfort and understanding. His touch lingered, grounding me, yet making my thoughts spiral even more. The connection between us felt so real, so tangible, but was it just in my head? The uncertainty gnawed at me, making it hard to focus.

As the minutes ticked by the silence between us filled the space. I could feel his gaze flicker to me, trying to decipher my emotions and thoughts. The library's quiet ambiance seemed to mock my inner turmoil, each second stretching painfully.

As the evening drew on, Mattheo set his quill down, his gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that made my breath hitch. “Darling, you're not yourself tonight. What's really going on?”

I swallowed hard, avoiding getting any answers I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear. I forced a smile. “Just tired, I guess. It's been a long day.”

He didn’t seem convinced, his eyes searching mine. With a sigh, he gathered our things, his movements slow and deliberate. “Let’s call it a night. We can finish this another time.”

As we walked out of the library, the cool air hit us, a welcome relief. Mattheo’s hand found mine again, his fingers lacing through mine with an ease that made my heart ache. Could I bear to lose this connection if he moved on?

 I awoke with a gasp sitting straight up in my bed. My breathing was shallow, and I was drenched in a cold sweat. Tears fell slowly, tracing icy paths down my cheeks. I haven’t had that nightmare in a while. Mattheo was fighting in the war, and I watched him die as I held on to him, begging him to stay with me. It always felt too real.

A wave of panic surged through me as I stood up grabbing my slippers. The torches casted an eerie glow on the paintings that were sleeping as I hurried down the silent corridor. I needed to get to the Slytherin common room. I needed to see him with my own eyes.

I knocked on Mattheos door very gently, my knuckles barely made a sound against the wood. This was stupid. I shouldn’t be waking him up. It was selfish, but I needed to see him breathing.

My vision was still blurry from the tears, heart pounding a mile a minute. The door cracked open very slowly.

“Darling?” he mumbled, sleep thick in his voice reaching out for me. “What’s wrong?”

I launched into his arms holding on to him tightly. His arms caught me snaking around my waist holding me close. Mattheo nuzzled his face in my neck. I pressed my ear to his chest listening to his steady heartbeat.

He was ok. It was a dream. I let out a soft sob. Mattheo shushed me, pulling us into his room. As a perfect he got his room to himself, so I didn’t have to worry about waking any roommates.

“What happened darling?” He asked again, running his finger through my hair untangling any knots they found.

“I- I had a nightmare.” Mattheo raised an eyebrow.

“Again?” I nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No” I mumbled into his chest. “Can I stay with you?”

He didn’t respond, just pulled us to his bed lifting the covers, guiding me in. Once he was settled in, he pulled me to him, tucking my head under his chin. I could feel his lips press a lingering kiss on to the top of my head. He rubbed soothing circles on my back. His warmth enveloped me, chasing away the remnants of the nightmare. I grew tired, and that was how I fell asleep. In his arms, ear pressed to his chest, the steady thump of his heart a lullaby. A reminder he is alive.

My eyes fluttered open as the memory of last night clung to my consciousness. I wiggled around trying to bring feeling back into my leg, a heavy arm still on my waist. Mattheo’s hold tightened, pulling me in closer. The warmth of his body against mine was a nice contrast to the cold dread I felt last night.

I was safe.

Mattheo groaned, a low rumble that sent shivers down my spine.

“Sorry for waking you,” I whispered, my voice hoarse.

He cracked an eye open, a sleepy smile playing on his lips. “It's okay.”

“Stay in bed with me a little longer.” His request was gentle, almost a warm plea against my skin.

“We must get ready for Hogsmeade. And you have a date,” I reminded him the word bitter on my tongue.

His eyes darkened briefly before he rolled them, pulling me impossibly closer. He whispered something incoherent, a blend of frustration and longing that I couldn’t quite decipher.

“Stay with me a little longer,” he repeated, one of his hands pushing my hair back exposing more of my face to him.

“Okay. Just for ten minutes,” I complied, my resolve crumbling under the weight of his touch. It wasn’t hard to give in to him. This seemed to make him happy. He said nothing more, moving his hands from my hair down to my hip squeezing gently.

We lay there in silence, the early morning light filtering through the curtains, casting a soft glow on his floor. My chin rested on his chest as I studied his features. The way his dark lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, the faint stubble on his jaw, the curve of his lips. I wanted to memorize every detail, hold onto this moment.

As the minutes passed, I felt calm. A calmness I only ever felt in his presence.

“Matty,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, scared to ruin the moment. “Thank you.”

He tilted his head down to look at me, his eyes soft and full of something I couldn’t quite name. “For what, darling?”

“For being here. For making me feel safe,” I replied, my heart pounding.

His lips brushed very gently against my forehead, a feather-light kiss that sent another wave of tingles down my spine. “Always, little badger. Always.”

We stayed like that, wrapped in each other’s arms, until the world outside demanded our attention. But for those precious moments, nothing else mattered to me. Harry and Ron could wait.

Ron, Harry, and Hermione had packed our day with activities. It was a nice break from my overthinking. They made me laugh till my sides hurt. A nice break indeed.

Currently, I was standing outside Honeydukes waiting for Ron and Harry. There were so many people inside that you could barely walk through it. It was overwhelming. Between the cacophony of excited chatter and the scent of various sweets was too much for me. I pulled my coat over my lips, trying to warm myself up as the cold wind nipped at my face My nose began to run.

Warm hands wrapped around me from behind, and I let out a surprised squeak. A head rested on my shoulder.

“Hello little badger.” Was whispered in my ear.

Mattheo.

I smiled, turning to face him. I leaned back into his arms that circled around me and looked up at him. He gave me a quick smile. If anyone else saw it, they would miss it, but I knew Mattheo.

“What are you doing alone in the cold?” he seemed annoyed at the thought, his warm breath clouding up in the cold.

“There were too many people in there, and I told Ron I would wait.” I pointed at the window behind me, proving my point.

“Hmmm. I see.”

He did not see. His eyes never left mine.

“What happened to your date?” The word once again bitter on my tongue.

“Not my date.” He bit out. “And she ran off with some boy she wanted to make jealous.”

That look I couldn’t decipher flashed through his eyes again. This was good. Now he had an opportunity to make a move on the other girl.

“Oh.” I bit down on my bottom lip.

“Yeah, so I came to kidnap my girl. Did you eat?”

My heart skipped at his words—his girl. If only.

“Hang out with us. We were about to go get drinks. Plus, I really want hot cocoa.” I pleaded.

He was pulling his scarf around my neck, eyebrows furrowed, contemplating his options. It smelled like him, overwhelming my senses with a mix of his cologne and something distinctly Mattheo. I pushed my nose into it, inhaling for a quick second, seeking comfort in his scent.

“I will make you one, and we can go to the astronomy tower like we always do.”

It was tradition. We spent Saturday nights looking at the stars and reading from a book to each other.

“Matty, I can’t just leave without saying anything to my friends.”

“I will go in and tell them.”

He was not going to take no for an answer.

“Ok.” I caved.

His smile returned, and he pulled my hair out from the scarf before making his way inside. I watched him through the window, anxiety coursing through me. I hoped he was nice to them. It was no secret they hated each other.

He moved through the crowd so effortlessly, his presence commanding attention. Before I knew it, he was back outside in front of me.

“They’re all set. Let’s get out of here,” he said, taking my hand in his. His grip was firm, reassuring, and I squeezed back, feeling a sense of security wash over me.

When I walked into potions Mattheo was sitting at our usual table. Only my spot was taken by another girl who was letting out an obnoxious giggle. I rolled my eyes, making my way to my chair, but then I halted, Theos words echoing in the back of my mind.

Was this the girl?

I didn’t know how much more I could take of this guess-who game. My heart hurt more than I thought it ever could. Seeing him happy with someone else was more than I could bear. I was in love with him. I tried so hard to deny it, to hide it. But I was in love with my best friend, and this pain was getting to be too much.

 I needed space.

Another giggle from her solidified my decision to keep my distance. I took the seat next to another Hufflepuff, who raised both their eyebrows up to their hairline, taking a second look to make sure they weren’t hallucinating.

Mattheo spun in his seat and sent me a what-the-hell look. He cocked his head to the side, using his head to point at my chair. The girl still sat there, getting comfortable. I waved and looked down at my textbook, repeating to myself that this was the right thing to do, trying to convince myself.

That’s how it continued for a while. I would sit with my house or walk the other way. My peers began to look at me like I had lost it. I was never at their table or on their side of the room, and here I was for the last few weeks actively being a Hufflepuff.

I showed up to class early to avoid him.

Mattheo kept my spot open and would stare at me from where he sat, whether that was in the dining hall or classrooms. The first few days he wore a questioning look. It slowly faded into one of hurt and confusion. The shine in his brown eyes was dulling.

I needed time. How much time exactly, I wasn’t sure.

Various friends became worried when I stopped taking care of my appearance. My hair was in disarray, my tie was lopsided, and my skirt was wrinkled. I felt queasy most of the time and wasn’t eating as much. The once neatly arranged notes and textbooks in my bag had become a chaotic mess.  I stopped turning in homework.

Mattheo knew that I wasn’t eating enough because one afternoon in the library he dropped a sack of food in front of me, giving me a cold stare before walking off. There was a note in there that just said, “Eat.”

My roommates came into the room laughing loudly. From the sounds of it, Slytherin won the Quidditch game. Mattheo would be happy about that. I didn’t move, just stared at the blank stone wall in front of me, feeling the coldness seep into my bones.

Someone landed on the corner of my bed, their hand gripping my calf.

“Alright, no more being sad. We are going to the party tonight,” my friend stated, leaving no room to argue.

I turned my head to look at her.

But I was stubborn. “The Slytherin one? Yeah, no thank you. I am staying in.” Mattheo would be there. If one is avoiding someone, they don’t show up to their house party.

“Please? You need it.” Her bottom lip jutted out hands in a payer motion begging.

“I have stuff I need to do.”

Like stare at the wall till I fell asleep.

“Please? You won’t even have to do anything. I will do your hair and get you ready.”

She gave me puppy dog eyes. I honestly was convinced she would cry if I said no. Everyone would be there, and Mattheo and the boys always stayed in the corner. I just needed to stay on the opposite side. I should get out and find a new normal.

“You must stay with me, never leave my side.” I spoke sternly leaving no room for negotiations.

She squealed, agreeing with my condition.

I was in the thick of the people dancing and singing off-key. The room was a blur of colors and sounds, the music pounding in my ears. I hadn’t seen Mattheo or Theo all night. Theo wouldn’t keep his mouth shut if he saw me. I ran into Blaise on the way in—that was over an hour ago, so I don’t think he said anything to any of the gang. My friend had said they were all in their usual corner drinking about ten minutes ago. My guard was down.

I had a slight buzz from the one too many shots of firewhisky I took when we got here. Unfamiliar hands were on my waist, dancing with me. I didn’t push them off, just continued. My brain was too hazy to care. My friend made eye contact with me, wiggling her brows. I turned, facing the person behind me. It was some blonde from Slytherin I never talked to before.

We drunkenly smiled at each other, my arms going around his neck. As we danced, we grew closer. His forehead on mine. Kissing him would probably be a bad idea. But I didn’t really care. I wanted to feel something. Just as I was about to kiss him, my body was yanked away harshly.

“What the fuck, Y/N?” Mattheo growled, my name coming out like a curse. There was a dark look in his eyes, and his lips were pressed into a thin line.

Oh, I was in trouble. He never used my name. My heart rate picked up.

“Go away, Matty,” I slurred, pushing my way past someone. The moment was now dead.

In the next second, I was thrown over his shoulder and carried through the crowd. One of his hands held my dress down, keeping me modest. He shoved people out of the way. It wasn’t a hard feat—most of the people here were wasted anyway.

“Put me down.” I smacked his back, but it didn’t even phase him.

“No,” he hissed. “You are drunk.”

“I am not drunk.”

“We both know you are, so stop lying. It makes things easier on both of us.”

I sent a pleading look to Theo as we passed by. He laughed. Of course, he would think this was funny. No one made an attempt to save me. My friend was lost in the crowd, so I was on my own.

He kicked open a door, and once we entered, my nose was met with a very familiar smell. His room. I yelped as I was thrown down onto his bed. It was a little harsher than I think he intended, because he cursed and backed away. I sat up on my arms, glaring at him. Blowing the hair out of my face.

He paced in front of me, looking up at the ceiling, frustration etched in every line of his face.

“I am going back to my room,” I stated moving to stand up.

His head snapped to me, softening his gaze. “You are not leaving till you sober up.” There was tension in his tone, like he was trying to hold himself back.

I glared at his words. “I am fine. I can sober up in my room.”

His jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared. It was a little scary to be on the receiving side of his anger. I almost stood up to ease the anger like I normally would.

He thrust a cup in my face, hissing the word “Drink.”

I complied, not wanting to further his anger. His fingers dug through his curls, tugging them out of place.

“Fuck, you look so good.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Darling, where have you been?”

I squeezed my eyes shut at the nickname. A knock on the door interrupted any response I was going to give.

He made no move to answer it. We stared at each other, neither one of us blinking. His jaw set. We were playing an awful round of the staring game.

The door creaked open. I didn’t take my eyes off Mattheo, and his stayed on me.

“Matty, come back down,” a feminine voice spoke in a baby tone behind me.

Merlin. That was the girl, wasn’t it? I was now sobered up. My heartache was back, one hundred times worse than it was before. Now that she was there, and behind me.

Mattheo paid her no attention. I dropped the cup on the floor.

“That is my cue to leave. Goodbye, Mattheo.”

This time I meant it. Goodbye forever. I think he knew it too. He scrambled to catch my hand before I left, breathing hard, eyes wide. He tried to pull me back, but I didn’t budge.

“Y/N,” he said softly, as if my name was a prayer leaving his lips.

The girl behind us scoffed. I looked at him, really took him in. There were bags under his eyes and pain hidden in those beautiful brown pools.

My eyes burned I was doing this to him. I fought the urge to take care of him and take away any pain. But that would mean I would hurt all the time. It was something I couldn’t do. Call me selfish, but I just couldn’t.

“No. No, we are not doing this.” I yanked my hand away and ran as fast as I could.

There was a frantic banging on my room’s door. I didn’t move. My limbs felt like lead, and I had been staring at the wall in front of me since I left the party two days ago. I hadn’t left my room or moved. My friends had brought me food, but it remained for the most part untouched. I was not hungry. I missed my friend. I wanted to run back to him.

When I didn’t answer, the knocking didn’t stop; it just grew louder. I didn’t understand who it could have been. My roommates had all gone out to enjoy their weekend after I convinced them I was okay.

It wouldn’t stop, and the longer it went, the louder it got. Whoever it was, was not going to give up.

“Go away.” I yelled out still not moving from my bed.

It stopped.

“No,” a male voice growled out muffled by the door.

The knocking began again. A groan escaped me. The door was unlocked; they could just enter.

I kicked my sheets off me, cursing under my breath.

Mattheo stood there, clenching and unclenching his fists. His hair was messy, the curls out of place. He looked into the dark room behind me, staring into the shadows. When he looked back down, his eyes hardened with resolve.

When his hands reached out, I backed away. I didn’t miss the flash of pain on his face.

“What do you want, Mattheo?” I sighed; my voice heavy with exhaustion.

“Are you okay? Why are you avoiding me? What did I do?” He asked rapidly one question after the other not taking a breath.  

“I am fine. Let me sleep.”

His eyes narrowed into slits. He was just as stubborn as I was. The air in the room grew thick, and we were on the cusp of a fight. He wanted to yell at me, and I wanted to yell at him.

“You are not fine. What’s going on?” He spat the words out. I flinched.

“Stop. Please just leave me alone!” I cried out, wrapping my arms around myself, trying to protect my fragile heart.

Mattheo reached out again hands shaking before he let them fall to his side.

“Why are you being so dramatic?”  his tone was laced with frustration.

“Fuck you. I am going to shower. When I get back, be gone” I slammed the door my breathing was ragged. I was seeing red.

He was still there when I got back from the shower. My hair was wet and dripping on the floor.  He sat on my bed head down and hands in his lap.  I ran the brush through my locks.

“Why are you avoiding me little badger?” Mattheo whispered not looking up at me.

“I-I just need time.” I stuttered.  Placing my brush on my desk.

“Time?” He questioned confusion showing on his face. He stood up taking slow steps watching me and waiting for me to run.

“Don’t make me say it please.” I whispered, the anguish seeping into my tone.

His hands were on me cupping my face wiping the tears that came.

“I don’t get it. I thought we were- I thought we were closer than this.” 

He bent his head, so we were eye level, not letting me escape this time.

“We are Mattheo. I just have a lot going on up here.” I taped the side of my head. His hand grabbed mine clutching on to it.  It wasn’t a lie. I did have a lot on my mind.

“Let me in. Let me fix it please.”  His words cracked at the end; eyes glassy.

“Matty I will be ok. I just need to get over the fact you are in love with someone. I-“

He didn’t let me finish his words coming out in a hurry.

“I am not in love with just anyone. I am in love with you. I want you.”

“But Theo said-“

“My beautiful oblivious girl.” His hands moved to my neck. His forehead resting on mine. “Theo is an idiot.

“oblivious?” I scoffed.

“Yes, oblivious baby. I have been in love with you since we met. I can’t keep my hands off you, because touching you satiates the need to kiss you.”

I gasped.

“Which if you can’t tell is all the fucking time. The last two and half weeks has been hell.”

It was silent. We were breathing each other in his nose nudged mine.

I stood on the tip of my toes, closing the gap between us. At first, he didn’t respond or move. As I pulled away, he used the hand on my neck to pull me back. His lips moved slowly at first before moving in a frenzy. My feet were suddenly off the ground, and he nibbled down on my bottom lip. Mattheo had me in his hands, setting me on the desk behind us. My legs hooked around his waist keeping him close. He now had his fingers in my hair pulling gently angling my face to deepen the kiss.

I was putty in his hands. My fingers tangled in his soft hair ruining the curls even more. The taste of him was intoxicating something I would never get over. I was addicted. When we parted, I was panting for air. Mattheo moved his lips down my neck trailing to my shoulder. He bit down. I moaned before I could stop it. His lips moved in a smile against my skin moving his lips back up landing on mine again.

“Fuck little badger, I don’t ever want to stop.” He mumbled against my lips.

“Then don’t.” I pecked him once, twice, three times. My heart rate wasn’t coming down anytime soon.

He pulled my face back looking at me. The smile I loved plastered on his.

“You should smile more. I like it.” I whispered drunk off the kiss.

He didn’t say anything but placed a quick kiss.

“Theo and Blaise are going to be unbearable once they find out you are officially mine.”  His smile widened.

“Oh yours?” I giggled pressing my face into his shoulder.

“You are mine, baby, and I am yours,” he promised in my ear kissing the shell of it.

“I love you Matty.” I whispered back.

Mattheo pulled my face up

“I’ve waited so long to hear you say that” he murmured, his eyes searching mine for any hint of hesitation.

When he saw none, he kissed me again, this time slower, with a tenderness that made my heart ache. His hands moved gently, reverently, as if he were afraid, I might disappear. We stayed like that, wrapped in each other’s arms, losing ourselves in the connection we had longed for.

[covenofagatha]

Hii can you please write athlete-student fem reader x Professor Agatha, where she is her favorite student and they have a close connection despite Agatha's cold demeanor. So one day y/n comes limping to Agatha's class bcuz she got injured during the practice and her coach kept pushing her, without letting to rest, so the injury got worse and now y/n can barely step on her leg. Agatha takes notice of that and asks y/n to stay after the lecture, where Agatha discovers the truth about abusive coach. So Agatha helps Y/N to her car and takes her home, where Agatha takes care of her and they finally kiss or maybe even smut if you are good with it please. Kinda like hurt/comfort with possesive Agatha

Thank you for all your amazing writing💜

As a former swimmer with a coach that was fired for emotional/verbal abuse I fucking loved this request so thank you and I hope you like!

Swimming into her arms

You hurt your leg during practice and your coach makes it worse, so Professor Agatha has to take care of you

Word count: 3400

Warnings: hurt/comfort, slight possessiveness, oral sex, soft

“Coach, can I talk with you for a second before we get in?” You ask, stepping gingerly over to him. He barely even glances at you, just waves his hand to tell you to get on with it. “I just hurt my knee during weights and the trainer said that I shouldn’t kick that much until I can go see a doctor.” 

Now he looks at you, displeasure written all over his face. Your swim coach is not known for being nice and you inwardly wince to brace yourself. “What did you do?” 

“We were doing band jumps from the pullup bars and I landed weirdly and there was a pop from my knee. It hurts to walk and I’m really not sure I should swim.” 

He scoffs and straightens up against the fence where he was leaning. You cross your arms over your chest, wishing you were standing in more than just your swimsuit. You should’ve worn clothes to come talk to him, but deep down you knew how this was going to go. 

“We have a meet this weekend and you’re our best backstroker somehow, despite your awful underwater kicks. You’re swimming.” 

The dig about your underwaters doesn’t even phase you now, having heard it enough times already. But the thought of bending your knee like that makes you brave enough to protest. “Can I just pull for today? I’ll try to get to the doctor this afternoon.” 

You feel your stomach sink as he rolls his eyes. “I don’t need damaged goods on this team so if you’re not going to get in the pool and you’re going to be weak, then just get off the deck and come back next week. Don’t expect to be put in any more meets though.” 

You have to bite the inside of your cheeks to keep your jaw from dropping. You nod and turn around to hide the tears stinging in your eyes and put your cap on. You’re on a scholarship at the university for swimming, so if you quit or he lets you go, you’ll most likely have to drop out.

“That’s what I thought,” you hear your coach huff quietly behind you. “Let’s go. You’re five minutes late getting in.”

The moment you jump into the pool and push off the wall for warm up, you know you’ve made a mistake. Your leg is screaming. Every kick is pure agony and you try your absolute best to not move it more than you have to. But each flip turn makes you want to cry. You barely make it through the warm up and your heart drops when you see the main set that your coach wrote on the board. 

You wouldn’t be surprised if he changed it up and made it harder just to mess with you.

Your lanemate asks if you want to go first and all you can do is shake your head. If you speak, you’re afraid you’re going to fall apart. You refuse to take your goggles off because your eyes are red and teary. 

One round in, your coach stops you on the wall. “Are you even trying?” He demands. 

“My knee,” is all you can get out before your voice wavers. 

He squats down so he’s closer to you. “I’m 55 years old. My knees hurt every day and you don’t see me whining about it. Now either do the set right, or you’re off the relay.” 

This time, when you push off the wall, you kick with both legs. By the end of the 25, you’re already sobbing into the water, choking on gasps when you turn your head to breathe. You’ve never felt pain like this before in your life and you are convinced that something is really wrong. 

At one point, you think you almost black out. 

You fall behind in the set because you physically can’t kick fast enough to make the interval so your coach makes you stay behind late to finish it, despite you telling him that you have to get to class. 

When he finally lets you out of the pool, there’s twenty minutes until your class starts and you still have to shower, get dressed, and somehow walk across campus. 

Some of your professors would be chill if you walked in late. Hell, most of them were happy if 75% of the class actually showed up. 

But not Professor Agatha Harkness. She was feared by everyone on campus, even those who weren’t in her class, for her stony cold demeanor. There were rumors that she made students cry just by looking at them. 

Although, she wasn’t like that with you. While she was still tough, there was a softness in her eyes when she looked at you, a certain fondness in her smile. You weren’t sure what it was about you that made her like that, but you and Agatha had grown quite close over the past semester. You would go bother her during her office hours and she would patiently answer all your questions and help you with her assignments. You knew you could talk to her about anything, and you often did. Friend drama, other classes, swimming, you name it. The way she made you feel heard and seen, plus with how hot she was, had you falling for her. 

The only thing you hadn’t really opened up on was how mean your coach could be. 

But just because of your relationship with her didn’t mean she would allow you to be late to her class. 

For now though, your task was to get out of the pool without screaming. Your coach would throw a fit if you didn’t “get out like an athlete” by putting your knee in the gutter instead of your foot, but you weren’t sure you could do either. You maneuver yourself up using the handles on the starting blocks so you’re sitting and then push yourself up. You try to put weight on your hurt leg and you gasp loudly. 

That’s not going to happen. 

Your coach walks over to you and you think that he might offer some sort of help or an apology or anything, but all he says is, “See you tomorrow.” 

Your head falls back in frustration and you experiment with some different movements to see which is the best for your knee. You can slide it a little on the wet ground for now to get to the locker room, but when you go outside with shoes on, you’re going to have to figure out something new. 

You shower in record time while still getting all your tears out and throw on sweatpants and a t-shirt, putting moisturizer on your face while your hair is twisted up in your towel. The warm water did a little to help your leg so you’re able to put the tiniest bit of weight on it now. However, it doesn’t hide the evidence that you were clearly crying. 

Still, your class starts in five minutes. The building her lecture is in is four minutes away with a good leg. 

Hobbling while whimpering every step takes eight. 

You try to open the door as quietly as possible, and you succeed, but your bag swings and clangs onto the metal trash can that is right in the doorway. Because of course it is. 

Silence falls through the room as the sound echoes, and Agatha looks up from her place at the front of the room. You offer a shaky smile and limp down the aisle to your spot in the second row. Going down the slanted floor is a new type of pain that has you grabbing onto chairs. 

“Stay after class so I can hear your excuse about why you’re late,” Agatha says coldly once you’ve sat in your usual seat, sighing when the burn in your knee dies down to a dull ache. Your heart squeezes but you do see some concern in her eyes. You realize that her tough exterior just now was an act. You nod, not able to look at her for fear that she’ll see right through you, and you dig in your backpack for paper and a pen for notes. 

The hour lecture goes so slowly, your knee now starting to throb from sitting. You’re not really sure what you’re supposed to do to get it to stop hurting. 

Finally, Agatha releases everyone but you stay seated. While you’re in pain sitting, you know it’s much worse if you stand up. She doesn’t seem to mind, just comes to stand on the other side of her podium and lean against it. 

“What’s wrong?” She asks, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it before and you just start hysterically crying. She looks more taken-aback than you’ve ever seen her and walks over to crouch next to you and rub a hand comfortingly up and down your arm. “Sweetheart?” 

Your breath catches at the pet name and you hiccup. You swipe furiously at your eyes, embarrassed to show this much emotion in front of the older woman. When you open your mouth to start talking though, you can’t stop. “I hurt my leg in weights and I tried to tell my coach that the trainer said I shouldn’t swim and that it hurts but he made me get in anyways because we have a meet coming up and told me I wasn’t doing good enough and I had to stay late to finish the set and my knee hurts so fucking much I can barely walk.” You don’t even have it in you to apologize for the swearing and Agatha doesn’t care either. 

She cups your tear-stained cheek, thumbing at it, and you meet her eyes with your watery ones. You’re a little surprised to see pure anger in them.

“That is not okay,” she says seriously. “He should be fired for doing that. He deliberately put you in a situation where you’re only going to be more injured and now look at you. This is unbelievable. I’m going to talk to the athletic director, someone needs to know about this.”

You shake your head quickly. “No, Professor, you really don’t have to, it’s not–” 

“It is a big deal,” she cuts you off firmly. “There need to be consequences. He fucking hurt you and he’s going to pay!” Your heart skips a beat at how protective she’s being and she seems to realize what she said because she immediately changes gears. “Do you need help?” 

It’s the first time anyone has asked you that all day. Even the trainer or your weight’s coach didn’t offer. It almost makes you start crying again. 

“Yes, please,” you say and she holds out your hands, pulling you up out of the chair. You put your hurt leg on the floor and buckle into Agatha’s arms. “M’ so sorry, oh my god,” you stammer as she’s practically holding you now. 

She uses her strength to get you standing straight again, and without saying anything, slings your backpack over her shoulder and puts her other arm under yours so she can act as a crutch for you. 

“I’m sorry about your coach,” she finally says as she’s working on steering you out of the building. 

You wince going down the steps and shrug. “He’s not a bad coach. Like his sets are good and stuff and I’ve gotten faster for him. Just not a great…person. Where are we going?” You’ve finally realized that she’s not helping you back to the dorms. 

“My car,” she says matter-of-factly. Your heart skips a beat and you crane your head to look up at her. She has a variety of emotions struggling on her face and you’ve never felt so taken care of. 

“Why did you park so far away?” You groan and she chuckles. It feels like you’ve been limping for a mile. Luckily, there’s not too many other people outside right now to see Agatha helping you like this, but you do find it oddly touching that she would risk her heartless reputation for you. 

At last, you get to the lot where the professors park and she basically drops you into the passenger seat, sliding into the driver’s side once she puts your bag in the back. 

“Thank you for helping me,” you say quietly once she’s reversing out of her spot. She pauses for a second to look at you, a new expression on her face that you’ve never seen before. 

“Of course, sweetheart.” 

Once again, she goes in an unfamiliar direction. Maybe she’s taking you to a doctor? 

Nope. 

You’re still confused, even when Agatha turns into a quaint suburban neighborhood, but you think you figure it out when she stops in front of a house. 

You turn to gape at your professor. “Is this yours?” She gives you a look that says obviously and then gets out of the car quickly so she can come get you out. She doesn’t grab your bag from the back but you don’t need it. She helps you hobble inside and brings you over to the couch so you can lay down on it. You swing the bad leg up and then the good one and she hands you a pillow to put under the hurting knee. 

The elevation helps a little and while Agatha walks out of the living room, your eyes close, head resting on the back of the couch. It feels like you have been drained of all your energy from weights, practice, and then your knee. 

You think you might doze off just a bit because you startle when you hear Agatha entering. She’s carrying a bag of ice in one hand and a plate with a sandwich and raspberries in the other. You scooch into an upright position and graciously accept the food, instantly taking a huge bite. You moan at the taste and then notice that Agatha is standing next to you, bag of ice in hand, looking at your sweatpant-clad legs. 

Her eyes dart to yours and then back down. “Do you think you can take these off?” She asks, tapping your leg and your cheeks turn almost as red as hers. 

“Um, oh, sure,” you answer, mouth full of food. You set the plate down on the coffee table and raise your hips so you can get your pants off. You refuse to look at her as you basically undress in front of her. 

And then you begin to struggle. You can bend one leg just fine, but you don’t even want to risk moving your right knee in the slightest. The problem is, you’re nowhere near flexible enough to take your pants off while keeping one leg straight. 

Thankfully, Agatha completely understands without you having to ask, saving you from that embarrassment. She reaches across your body and gently slides the sweatpants off your bad leg. And then your entire bottom half is naked except for your underwear. 

You know why you’re blushing, but why is Agatha? 

She clears her throat and arranges the bag of ice on your knee, but it won’t stay because your leg is slanted up on the pillow. 

“Um, can you…” she trails off like she’s trying to figure out how to word it. You also understand what she needs, so you move your left leg so it hangs off the couch and she can sit in-between your legs and hold the ice to your knee. 

“Are you okay?” You ask after the two of you have been sitting in silence for a little bit. It’s comfortable, but you can still see the outline of grimace on Agatha’s face. 

She sighs heavily and runs a hand through her hair. “It’s just hard,” she admits. “Seeing you in pain like this.” 

“Why?” You dare to ask, the question barely louder than a whisper. She looks at you and then back to the ice. 

“I care about you a lot,” she says, like it pains her. It feels like all the air has left your lungs. 

“I care about you, too,” you reply, hoping more than anything that she means it the same way as you. 

She shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts. “Is there anything else I can do to help?” 

“A kiss?” It’s meant to be a joke, like when your mom would kiss a paper cut or a scrap just to make it feel better. And then you inwardly kick yourself because you know you did not just ask stone-cold Agatha Harkness to kiss your knee. 

But she smirks and then you realize that you never specified which part of your body you wanted her to kiss. 

She leans in, hand grabbing onto the arm of the sofa next to you to hold herself up and she brushes her lips against yours. It’s barely anything, easily written off, but when she pulls back, her eyes are dilated. 

“Did that make your knee feel better?” She asks playfully. 

You pretend to think about it for a second and then you tilt your head. “You know what? It did. Better do it again so it helps even more.” 

This time, her tongue parts your lips and licks into your mouth. Her other hand slides under your shirt to feel your stomach and heat starts to course through you. You moan into her mouth and wrap your arms around her so pull her even closer. She shifts and accidentally bumps your knee and you hiss in pain. 

“Fuck, sorry!” She exclaims, jerking back like she was burned. 

“No, you’re okay,” you groan. “I just don’t know if this is the best way to do this.” You pout because you want to keep kissing her, you need to feel her. 

A sly smile spreads onto her face. “I know something else that might help.” You raise your eyebrows in question and inhale sharply as she carefully moves down your body so her head is right by your underwear. She toys with the waistband, checking to make sure it’s okay. You nod more eagerly than you ever have in your life. “If it hurts your knee, let me know.” 

“Okay,” you breathe and you shiver when she pulls your wet underwear to the side and the cold air hits your pussy. 

And then she lazily licks through your folds, swirling her tongue on your clit and your back arches off the couch. 

“Fuck,” you moan, one hand tangling in her hair and the other grabbing the side of the couch. She continues softly lapping at you, fingers digging into your hips to keep them still so you don’t accidentally hurt yourself by moving. Agatha takes her time tasting you, making a noise every and then that makes your head fall back. 

Your pleasure slowly builds from her hot, careful mouth on you, but Agatha doesn’t seem to mind. She alternates dipping her tongue into your pussy and then sucking your clit and back again. She gets more enthusiastic about it once she feels confident that she’s not hurting you and begins to be a little rougher. 

“I’m getting close, Agatha,” you whimper and it’s the first time you’ve ever called her by her first name. She must realize it too because she groans into your pussy and sucks hard on your clit, sending you over the edge. Sounds fall out of your mouth as you cum, hips trying but failing to buck against her tight grip to ride it out. 

“Is your knee okay?” is the first thing she asks when she stops licking at you. You laugh at the timing of the question. 

“Yes, it feels totally fine.” 

Agatha leans down to peck your lips. “Okay, good. Still, I’m going to make an appointment at my doctor this afternoon. I’ll take you.” 

Even though she just ate you out, this is the sexiest you’ve ever seen her. So caring, so protective. Your heart yearns for more of this woman. 

“You don’t have to do all that,” you protest though, not wanting to ask for more than she’s already given you. She waves her hand to shush you. 

“Nonsense. I’m going to take care of you because apparently no one else can. And I want to.”

You smile fondly at her and tug at hair to bring her in for a deeper kiss this time. “I want you to as well.” 

And she does.

[verstappenverse]

From P17 to You

Request by anon: “Could you maybe write something about the win in Brazil?? I'd love to se something like friend to lovers, maybe even Max confessing he's got feelings for her 🥰”

Pairing: Max Verstappen x Reader

Summary: After a legendary drive through the rain in Brazil Max realises that some things are worth risking, and this time he’s ready to risk it all.

Author’s note: Been working to get this out before Vegas so hopefully you're all still riding that Brazil high! Hope you enjoy anon 🫶🏼

1.9k words / Masterlist

The thunderous roar of the crowd echoed around the paddock, the energy still electric. You could barely keep up with Max as he wove through the sea of people, his hair damp, sticking to his forehead, his fireproofs and suit clinging to him like a second skin. He looked invincible—untouchable, even. The entire race had been nothing short of miraculous, the kind of drive that people would tell stories about for years. No one could quite believe what had just unfolded at Interlagos.

It was a win that would go down in history as one of the most legendary drives Formula 1 had ever seen. Starting from P17 and managing a breathtaking, near-miraculous climb to P1 in rain that hadn’t let up once, silencing every critic in one afternoon. Max had won against all odds, and not just won—he had dominated.

You’d been there, every lap, every heart-stopping turn, watching from the pit wall with your fingers practically digging into the table. When he finally crossed the line, pulling a lead that had almost made you laugh in disbelief the paddock erupted. And so did you.

Max Verstappen was a force to be reckoned with. You’d known him long enough to see that. From his early days in karting, to the whirlwind of his rise through Formula 1, and through it all the two of you had been inseparable. You were more than just friends - you were each others constant in a world that never stayed still.

The roar of the crowd still echoed in your ears inside the motorhome. The team was in a frenzy of celebration, and you couldn’t wait to congratulate him. Finally, the doors swung open and Max appeared, drenched in champagne his eyes lighting up in that way that always seemed to make everything else fade into the background. He looked wild and alive, hair still wet and tousled, his suit clinging to him, adrenaline still pumping through him like an uncontained storm. His eyes caught yours almost instantly, softening from the adrenaline-fueled excitement to something more private, a kind of warmth he reserved just for you.

“There you are,” he said, his voice hoarse from exertion, he was laughing as he wiped his face. “Did you see that?” he asked, as if you might have somehow missed his generational drive.

“Max,” you said, breathless. “That was insane. You were incredible out there. I—I don’t even know what to say.”

He grinned, the same boyish grin you always loved. “I was just doing what I do best,” he teased.

In one swift movement, he pulled you into a tight hug. You could feel the dampness of his suit against your skin, but that wasn’t what made you shiver. You could feel his heartbeat thundering through his chest as he held you close, his hand lingering on the small of your back, and when he pulled back there was something in his eyes, a kind of restless energy that had you rooted to the spot.

You shove at his shoulder, “You’re unbelievable, Max. Do you have any idea how many heart attacks you gave me?”

He chuckled softly, shaking his head. “What can I say? I don’t like to lose.”

There's an energy between you that you can’t quite shake off, a tension that’s lingered for months, maybe longer. The air feels thick between you, and your heart races as you search for something, anything, to say that will defuse this tension. Before you can one of the Red Bull crew sweeps him up again, pulling him back towards the crowd.

You spend the next hour caught up in the celebration, in the noise, the laughter, the congratulations that echo around the garage. The afterparty spills over into one of the hotels, with everyone recounting Max's drive from their own perspectives. The energy is high, and the drinks are flowing freely. Max, for his part, looks like he’s on top of the world surrounded by friends, his smile relaxed, his energy magnetic.

But you can’t help but notice the way his gaze keeps flicking back to you, even as he laughs and talks with everyone else. Each time your eyes meet, there’s that pull, that spark that’s been simmering for what feels like forever.

Eventually he finds you, catching you by the arm and tugging you into a quieter corner of the party. The background noise dims and it’s just the two of you sitting together in the soft, golden glow of the dim light.

“Enjoying yourself?” you ask, a grin teasing at your lips as you tilt your head to look at him.

Max chuckles, his eyes crinkling in that familiar way you’ve always loved. “Trying too. My adrenaline’s still through the roof.”

“You deserve it,” you say, and there’s no teasing in your tone this time—just sincerity.

He glances at you, his grin softening. “It’s been a crazy day…but it’s not just about the win you know?”

You raise an eyebrow, caught off guard by the shift in his voice. “What do you mean?”

Max shrugs, his gaze dropping to the floor for a moment before he looks back at you. “I guess… I had something to prove today. To everyone. To myself.”

“Max…” You paused, unsure of where to go with that. “Today wasn’t about proving anything to anyone. You’ve already done that.”

“Yeah, maybe…but I- ” His voice was lower now, more serious, his gaze locked onto you. “I had to prove it to myself. And—” He hesitated, the corners of his mouth twitching as if he were deciding how much to say. “And maybe to you, too.”

The intensity of his gaze made your heart pound as if you were the one who’d just raced through that rain-soaked track.

“Max, you don’t have to prove anything to me. I hope you know that." Your voice came out softer than you intended. “You mean more to me than you probably realise.” The words slipped out before you could stop them, and your heart twisted with vulnerability. “You’ve always been completely yourself, Max. That’s what makes you… you. That’s why people love you. Why I—why I’m so proud of you.”

He looked at you for a long moment, as if really trying to understand what you’d said. And then he took a deep breath, reaching out to brush his fingers against yours, tentative at first.

“You have no idea what it meant to me to see you there today. To know you were watching. That you’re always watching.”

“Of course, I’m always watching,” you say, swallowing hard. “You’re a lot more than just a driver Max. You’re… you’re my best friend.”

A flicker of something crossed his face, something you couldn’t quite read. “Best friend,” he echoed softly, as if tasting the words, considering them. There was a faint, bittersweet curve to his lips.

The quiet stretched between you, heavy with unsaid words. You were about to laugh it off, make a joke, say anything to fill the silence, but then he spoke again.

“I’ve never really thanked you for that. For everything.”

You shook your head. “You don’t have to thank me. You know I’d do anything for you.”

Max’s lips curled into a half-smile. “Maybe. But sometimes…” His voice faltered, and he took a deep breath before continuing, “Sometimes I think I should have said something earlier. Said thank you in a way that actually meant something.”

You looked at him, your eyes meeting his. “What do you mean?”

His hand moved to your waist, his touch now bold, yet gentle. “I think I’m saying this all wrong.” He let out a small, nervous laugh, his thumb brushing the sliver of exposed skin at your waist. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. You know, after the race. And I couldn’t focus on anything else. Just you.”

He looked down at you. “I didn’t want to tell you before because I thought it might mess things up. But… I’m done waiting.” he said, his voice lower. “I’ve tried to say it a hundred times, but every time, I just… I couldn’t.”

“Max, are you—”

“Yeah,” he interrupts, his gaze intense. “I am. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, but every time I thought I might, I… well, I was scared I’d lose you if it didn’t work out. But today, I thought if I can pull off something I thought was impossible, then maybe…maybe, I can tell you how I feel too.”

Max let out a low, almost frustrated laugh. “I think about you all the time, This—us. I’ve never felt like this with anyone else. It’s always been you. I know we’re friends, best friends, and I never wanted to ruin that. But I… I think about you all the time. I can’t help it. And today made me realise that I don’t want to keep waiting. You’re worth taking the risk. I want more. I want everything…with you.”

The world seems to tilt. You’re left speechless, his words tumbling over you, breaking down every carefully built defence you’ve put up. And it feels terrifying, this openness, this risk, but it feels exhilarating too, like stepping off a cliff and hoping someone will be there to catch you.

So you take a deep breath, steadying yourself as you reach for his hand. “Max… you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that,” you admitted, your voice raw.

He lets out a slow breath, his expression shifting to one of pure relief, a grin spreading across his face. “So we’ve been two idiots, both waiting for the other to say something?”

You laugh, and it feels freeing, like a weight lifting off your shoulders. “Yeah, two idiots. But now we’re here so… what are we going to do about it?”

Max’s smirks, his thumb brushing lightly over your cheek. His lips brush against yours, soft and tentative, as if he is giving you one last chance to pull away. But you don't. Instead you lean into him, pouring every unspoken feeling, every hidden moment of longing into the kiss.

His hands are on you in an instant, gripping your waist, pulling you closer as his lips move against yours with an urgency that makes your head spin. Soft yet insistent, his hands framing your face. The kiss is slow and desperate, holding you like he can't bear to let go.

When you finally break apart, breathless and aching for more, Max leans his forehead against yours, his hands still resting on your waist.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he mutters, his voice hoarse.

The space between you is still charged. “You’ve been waiting for me, huh?” you tease, your hand moving to rest on his chest,

Max’s gaze drops back to your lips, his chest rising and falling with each breath, “You have no idea.”

His hand slides up to your neck, pulling you in for another kiss. Your body feels like it's on fire as he kisses you harder

He pulls back again, just enough to look at you. “I can’t believe winning wasn’t even the best part of today,” he murmurs.

You laugh softly, running your fingers through his messy hair. “If you’re not careful Verstappen you’re going to make me fall in love with you.”

He smiles, that boyish, confident smile that always managed to knock the wind out of you. “Good. Because I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

[babydollmarauders]

PHASES — LUKE HUGHES

luke hughes x fem!reader

summary: in which luke is pining for the girl he knows he’s destined to be with

notes: 4.3k words. this is a new style of writing for me and i truthfully don’t know about it but it felt right for this fic.

Luke Hughes knows a lot of things.

he knows hockey. he knows history. and he knows that in this moment, drunk on cheap beer and lip locked with the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, she and he are destined to be together.

but life and love are never simple. drunken hookups between best friends don’t just automatically make them a couple. and no matter how badly he wants to scream that she should be with him, he knows he has to wait it out; give her time to come to the same realization that he did two years ago.

her back digs into the armrest of the battered couch, her legs draped across Luke’s own as his fingertips grip her upper thigh. their faces are drawn together, her hands tangled beautifully in his curls, pulling him closer toward her vodka soaked lips.

“Lukey,” his name rolls off her tongue like a whispered prayer, causing a singular beat to skip in his heart.

“what do you need, doll?”

“you.”

and her singular word is the driving force that brings Luke to his feet, her hand laced with his as he leads her to his bedroom. the people in his apartment cast away from his mind, only one person occupying that space.

her.

surely, Jack can handle the party that he threw, no one would miss Luke.

and that thought is what leads them to his room, their bodies pressed together in mere minutes. the next few hours spent tangled between cotton sheets. his feverish touch making her body shake, and her soft sounds causing an intense sensation of need within him.

hot breath mingles, their lips rarely straying from each others. sweat coated skin sticking together as they christen his bed for the umpteenth time. neither mind clear, they find solace and pleasure with her legs wrapped around his waist and his sloppy thrusts bringing them to the highest points.

and when they call it a night, Luke’s hand slamming the car door shut after she falls into the backseat of an uber, he falls back into the same spot he started the night.

waiting for fate to bring her home to him for the final time.

***

the restaurant feels suffocating, her dress itchy, causing her to wiggle uncomfortably in her chair.

her date doesn’t even seem to notice, rambling on once more about how cool it is that she works for the New Jersey Devils.

“i mean, you must get to be around the players all the time, right? how did you even get that job?” what was this one’s name? Carter? Carson? it started with a C, right?

“i went to University of Michigan. graduated a year early with a degree in sport management, and after working with the hockey team there, i was able to secure a spot working for the Devils.” she smiles, a weak timid thing that barely even reaches her cheeks, “but yeah, i do spend a lot of time around the players. kinda my job to get content of them, ya know?”

maybe-Carter chuckles, nodding his head, “so are you like, friends with any of them?”

‘oh, here we go’ she thinks.

“i went to school with Luke Hughes, he’s kind of my best friend.” it was an instinct really, an involuntary reaction; for a smile to creep across her lips when she talks about Luke, “but i can’t really say much about him or the guys, they’re people too and they deserve their privacy.”

“right, totally respect that,” he nods, his lips falling into a tight line, and she can’t help but notice that they aren’t as pillowy as Luke’s.

his lips don’t nearly look as comforting to kiss. and his curls; they don’t… curl the way Luke’s do. rather he has a head of tighter curls, unlike Luke’s unruly mess of loose curls and waves mingling together. his eyes aren’t the right color either, erring on the side of a blue closer to Jack’s; which makes a shiver run down her spine, discomfort settling within her.

“are you cold?” he asks, catching sight of the goosebumps that spread across her skin. he huffs a condescendingly toned laugh before continuing, “maybe you should’ve brought a jacket, restaurants run cold.”

that was where she drew the line. with his obnoxious attitude combined with his interest, which only peaked when discussing her job, y/n was surprised she lasted as long as she did.

and if the fact that he wasn’t similar enough to her best friend played a small part in her leaving? well, could she really be blamed?

after all, it was Luke’s fault.

it was Luke who made the first move his freshman year of college, both of them tipsy on drinks made by Dylan and his heavy hand with rum. it was Luke who made the sophomore girl fall for him two years ago. it was Luke who drunkenly tells her he loves her as he buries himself inside of her, knowing exactly what to do to tip her over the edge. and it was Luke who has her going on at least five dates a month, trying to force the Devils rookie out of her heart.

or at least, she blames it on Luke; because she couldn’t allow herself to admit that she fell in love with him of her own accord. she can’t allow herself to confess how quickly their drunken hookups turned into something more for her. and she certainly can’t dwell on the fact that she hasn’t put a stop to them. how could she? those are the only moments that she can let herself believe, even for a moment, that she could be his.

because despite how badly she wanted it, she could never be Luke’s. not in the way she wants to be. no matter how hard she tries, she can never find the words to express how much he means to her. how much she loves him.

*

Luke laid on the couch, the springs digging into his back uncomfortably.

“dude, we really need a new couch.” he huffs, “and why am i laying like this? i don’t think people actually lay down in therapy outside of tv shows.”

“shut up, i’m taking notes.” Luke’s eyes drift to his older brother, who occupies the space of the living room chair.

“notes on what? i haven’t even said anything!”

“you don’t need to. i’ve listened to you bitch and moan about y/n for two years, i’m writing what i can remember.” Jack explains, his brows furrowed in focus as his pen scribbles messily across the notepad on his lap.

“why did i let you talk me into this?” Luke rolls his eyes at his brothers antics.

“because you’re pussy-whipped and you’re playing like shit.” Jack looks up from the notepad, straightening his posture and settling his focus on Luke.

“is that a medical diagnosis?” Luke jokes, his brow raising as he chuckles.

“no, that’s brotherly criticism. you get that for free, courtesy of the nine months we each spent in mom’s womb.” Luke cringes at his brothers words, shaking his head.

“don’t talk about mom’s womb.”

“just speak, dude. what’s going on in that curly head of yours?”

Luke sighs, his eyes drifting towards the ceiling. his hands fiddle with the cellphone that lays on his stomach, impatiently waiting for the text that he knows will come through.

it’s 10pm on an off day, he knows she’s got a date tonight. he also knows how her date will end; soon enough she’ll be texting him a long paragraph about how men suck and asking him to remind her why she can’t become a nun.

“well, i told you, i know she and i are meant to be together. i can feel it.” Luke starts, quickly cut off by the familiar grating voice he’s known his entire life.

“yeah, yeah, you’re a simp. move on.”

“has anyone ever told you that you’d make a horrible therapist?” Luke questions, head turning once more toward his brother.

“i can’t say anyone has, no.”

“yeah? well then, i’ll be the first.” he glares, “stick to hockey.”

“just keep talking, Lukey.”

“i think it’s getting harder to wait for her.” Luke confesses, and it feels like a small weight has been lifted off his chest; progress.

“so you wanna move on?” Jack asks, his pen scrawling along the paper again.

“no!” Luke huffs, sitting up on the couch to turn towards his brother, who quickly strikes out whatever he just wrote down, “i’m just saying that- that this whole waiting game is fucking with my head. Phil said i had to wait it out. he told me not to pressure her. practice my patience and let her come to the realization on her own.

“but, what if it goes on too long? she’s always going on dates, what if she meets someone else? what if it takes her ten years to realize what i realized like a month after we met?! what if she gets married before she realizes?”

“too many ‘what if’s’, dude. you’re hurting my brain.” Jack groans, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Luke, already in an emotional spiral, rolls his eyes, “what brain?”

“hey! i’m trying to help you here! don’t insult me!” Jack stands up, notepad falling to the floor and his hands drawing to his hips as he glares at the rookie defenseman.

“well you’re not much help.”

“you want my advice? either keep waiting and playing like shit and making easily avoidable mistakes, or say fuck it to your friends advice and tell her how you feel.”

“i’m going to bed.” Luke grumbles, pushing past the shorter man to go to his room.

“don’t forget, no morning skate tomorrow!” Jack calls out as Luke’s door clicks shut.

as Luke strips down to his boxers, his phone lights up on his bed, vibrating amongst the cotton sheets. and as he sees her name flashing on the screen, butterflies flutter in his core, making him swallow harshly in attempt to stop them.

he doesn’t even get a word out after accepting the call, her voice filtering through the speaker, “men suck.”

“oh yeah?” Luke can’t help but laugh at the repetitive cycle, “tell me more. how do we suck?”

“you just do, okay?” her tone is biting before she takes a sobering breath, “all he wanted to talk about was the team. i could practically see the walls shut down around him once i told him i couldn’t dish out the hot goss on players.”

“i’m sorry, y/n.” he’s not sorry. not even a little.

“remind me why i can’t be a nun?” her voice is distant as she takes the phone away from her ear so that she can unlock her apartment door.

“no tiktok and no sex.” Luke echoes for what feels like the hundredth time.

“right.” she kicks off her shoes, bumping the door shut behind her as her cat darts around between her legs, rubbing against her nylon tights, “you ready for the game tomorrow?”

“yeah.” no.

“good. i’m gonna go eat my weight in ice cream and scroll tiktok. goodnight, Lukey. thanks for the reminder and for listening to me rant.”

“any time. goodnight.”

as Luke lays in bed, he falls asleep with Jack’s advice echoing in his head.

keep waiting and playing like shit and making easily avoidable mistakes, or say fuck it to your friends advice and tell her how you feel.

meanwhile, y/n slumps on her sofa, a pint of ben & jerry’s in her hand as she looks down at the little ball of black fur that’s taken up residence by her feet.

“have you ever been in love, Sir Nightingale?”

the cat blinks back at her, patiently waiting for her attention. which comes in the form of her fingernails scratching lazily under his chin.

“i have.” she continues the one sided conversation, “it fucking sucks. never fall in love.”

***

the game was an absolute shit show.

Luke had taken a shoddy penalty in the first period; for delay of game, out of all things. which lead to a power play goal by the opposing team and leaving the Devils down by two.

it was only about five minutes later that Luke got an assist on a goal of Jack’s, but ultimately, the game still ended six to two, not in the Devils favor. not only did the team get yelled at for their lack of adequate effort, but Luke was singled out for at least two turned over pucks, which lead to opposing team goals.

and to make a bad night even worse, when all was said and done and Luke was finally showered and ready to just go home and wallow in the loss, he left the locker room to find y/n chatting with one of the equipment managers, Ben.

her hair twirled around her finger as she laughed at something Ben said, a red flush on her cheeks. Luke felt deflated, to say the least.

it was always someone else.

never him. never Luke.

he felt overlooked, and perhaps even unnoticed. it was like she never even saw him as an option, only ever the object of her desires when they were both tipsy and horny and already together.

and yet the feeling was still there. settled low within his gut, he still knew; he’s the one for her. he knows. he’s fairly certain that deep down, she knows it too.

is it his age? it’s only a year’s difference, surely it doesn’t matter, right? it was something else. it had to be, but he truly didn’t know what.

“y/n.” his voice carries through the hallway, settling in her ears and catching her attention.

turning towards him with wide doe eyes and parted lips, she smiles, “hey!”

“am i still giving you a ride home?” Luke’s expression is stony, giving nothing of his feelings away. though, he can’t help the way his eyes gravitate to the man behind her, Luke’s blank stare making the man cower just slightly.

and Luke almost felt proud of that. almost.

“actually, i think Ben and i are gonna go for some drinks. i’ll catch up with you tomorrow, yeah?”

his shoulders slump, his posture crumpling the same way his heart did in his chest.

“yeah, see you tomorrow.”

Luke barely gets two steps closer to the arena exit before her voice calls out, stopping him in his tracks. her heels click against the floor as fast as she could move, before she pops up in his vision.

“you played good. a few mistakes are normal, it’s your first full season, the most games you’ve ever played,” her voice is gentle, her eyes peering up at him softly through her wispy lashes, “i’m proud of you. don’t be too hard on yourself, alright?”

her arms wrap around his torso before he can even respond, her face buried in the chest of his suit. and before his heart can reach a normal pace again, before he can wrap his arms around her in return, she’s pulling away.

with a wave of her hand and a small but awe-strikingly beautiful smile playing upon her lips, she’s walking away. back to Ben, who waits for her by the arena exit now.

and once more, Jack’s voice is back inside Luke’s head. driving him absolutely insane as he watches the love of his life walk out of the building, giggling at something another man said.

keep waiting and playing like shit and making easily avoidable mistakes, or say fuck it to your friends advice and tell her how you feel.

*

keep waiting and playing like shit and making easily avoidable mistakes, or say fuck it to your friends advice and tell her how you feel.

tell her how you feel.

tell her how you feel.

tell her how you feel.

“tell her how you feel.” Luke wakes with a startle, his head knocking against his brother’s, who was leaning over him.

Jack curses, hissing in pain as he holds a hand his forehead.

“what the fuck are you doing in my room?” Luke groans, voice groggy as he takes in his surroundings.

“i got up to take a piss and i could hear your phone blowing up all the way from the bathroom,” Jack explains, “shit, you have a bony ass head.”

“it’s called a skull. i know yours doesn’t house anything inside of it, but even i assumed you’d know what it is.”

Jack huffs, rolling his eyes. “ya know what? just for that, i take back my advice. fuck off and die alone, what do i care?”

“why were you giving me advice at-” Luke slides his phone off his nightstand, checking the time, “two in the morning?”

“she’s blowing up your phone.” Jack scowls, “something something men suck something something maybe being a nun is worth the no tiktok?”

Luke feels an odd sense of relief as he looks at his recent texts, finding exactly what Jack had described.

well, without the ‘something something’s.

“pretty sure you were saying her name in your sleep too,” Jack smirks, backing away towards the bedroom door, “tell her how you feel, dickhead. put you both out of your misery so i can get some sleep and not listen to your incessant whining.”

with that, Jack leaves, the wooden door clicking shut in its frame behind him.

reading through the texts, Luke gathers that she and Ben didn’t get very far into the night together, seeing as her messages were still legible, something drunk her could never accomplish.

the thought brings him an unnecessary amount of joy. but then he’s hit with an overwhelming sense of annoyance, remembering he’ll have to go through this process all over again soon.

truthfully, he doesn’t know how much more he can take. he’s not giving up on her, on the contrary, maybe Jack is right. maybe Phil couldn’t give advice for all women and maybe Luke should just stop waiting.

she wasn’t coming to a realization quick enough and honestly, Luke is fucking tired. tired of drunken hookups. tired of listening to her rant about failed dates and sucky guys. tired of being overlooked as an option. tired of his feelings going unnoticed.

the dial tone was ringing in his ear before Luke even realized that he had made a decision, like his hands were working on autopilot. like his heart knew what he would decide before his brain did.

“hey! did i wake you?” her words weren’t slurred, Luke noted. that’s good, she doesn’t even sound tipsy. she’s in a sound state of mind for his confession.

“no,” he shook his head, despite knowing she could see him, “well, yes but no? you didn’t wake me up but Jack did, he could hear my phone buzzing.”

“oh shit, i’m sorry! we can talk tomorrow if you wanna go back to sleep, i’m just about to-”

“i love you,” immediately, Luke is regretting this decision; the silence on the other end of the phone making him bite his lip in anxiety.

“what?” her voice cracks as she giggles, “Luke, are you drunk? did you drink before you went to bed?”

“no,” he groans out, his head dropping back in frustration, “i swear, i haven’t touched any alcohol tonight. just listen to me.”

“i’m always listening to you, Lukey.” her eyes widen as she sits on the edge of her plush bed, “i just don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“i love you,” he repeats, rolling his shoulders in attempt to psych himself back up before he takes a deep breath.

“i’m in love with you. i have been since freshman year. i think that somewhere deep down, you know just as much as i do, that you’re meant to be mine. and i’ve waited two years for you to realize it. i’ve been patient, i’ve held back, i’ve waited on the sidelines while you go out on dates and i’ve listened to you rant about men. and that’s no problem; when i’m done, if you decide you’re still not ready, i’ll continue to wait for you. because even if you’re not mine, i’m yours, y/n. but, i need to get this off my chest and i need you to know that i’m in love with you. my life isn’t complete without yours. and when you’re ready, i’ll be here waiting for you. i’ll always be here. when you’re ready for the drunk hookups to turn into sober love, i’m gonna be right here. because i think that’s our fate. i think that we were destined to find each other and i think we were meant to have this storyline in our love story, and i know that one day you’ll realize it too. you can tell me i’m insane, you can tell me you don’t feel the same, you can even tell me to fuck off, if that’s what you wanna do. i’ll back off, i won’t say another word, but i’ll still be waiting.”

y/n is silent, her hands shaking as she breathes through the tears that roll down her cheeks. in return, Luke is quiet too, patiently waiting for her to digest everything he just confessed. every built up feeling that he just let slip out of him.

“i love you too.” it feels like all the weight she’s been shouldering has been listed off of her with the utterance of those four simple words.

“you do?” he feels like he can’t breathe, like he’s just been knocked against the boards and his lungs forgot how to take in oxygen.

“yes. Luke, why do you think i go on those dates? have you not noticed that almost every guy i go out with resembles you? i didn’t know if you felt the same way, i didn’t know how to tell you how i felt without risking our entire friendship going up in flames. Luke, i’m so fucking in love with you and it hurt. for two years, i’ve reveled in our drunken moments because i thought that was all i’d ever get. i dreaded the day that you would meet someone and tell me it has to stop. i fell for you so hard and it was so scary and i just- i had to try and move on. i had to try and meet someone before ultimately, you did. because i knew that if you told me you met someone, and i was still in love with you? i would never recover from that, Luke. i wouldn’t. and now you’re saying this and i, god i feel so fucking stupidly in love with you. you don’t have to wait anymore, because i realized i love you a long time ago.”

Luke pushes out of his bed, any interest in sleep lost to him. pulling on a hoodie and an abandoned pair of sweatpants from his bedroom floor, he doesn’t even bother telling Jack that he’s leaving.

“god, i need to kiss you.” he slips on his nike slides, his fingers nimbly plucking his keys off the hook by the front door, and as quickly as he could manage, he was out of there.

“you can kiss me tomorrow, Lukey.” she smiles, finally rising from her bed to finish her nightly routine.

that is, until she hears a key turn in her front door. her eyebrows pull together as she wonders out of her room, greeted by sight of a disheveled Luke in her apartment doorway, who looks like he just ran down the stairs to get there.

hanging up the phone, she grins back at the tall boy.

“or i can kiss you now.” a playful smirk pulls at the corner of his lips as he taking wide glides over to her.

his hands find her cheeks, his thumbs wiping gently over the supple, tear stained skin. the apartment is silent, their heartbeats racing as she gazes up at his beautiful eyes.

“or you can kiss me now.” she echoes, her words mumbled and low.

that’s the final straw, the confirmation Luke desperately needed, and finally, he allows his head to dip down. her lips were warm and soft, tasting faintly of mint ice cream, and warmth spreads across his body, starting at his chest and almost blossoming across his body. Luke feels at home.

her hands desperately cling to his hoodie, as though he’ll disappear if she lets go, and his slide back to cup the nape of her neck. she has no desire to pull away, but her lungs spread with fire until she’s forced apart by the need to breathe.

“i love you.” she whispers, eyes closed as she rests her forehead against his own, teeth digging into her bottom lip as she bites back a lovelorn smile.

“i love you, sweet girl.”

“please don’t go back home. spend the night?” she finally opens her eyes, her head tipping back as he straightens up.

a pink hue glows upon his cheeks, and she can’t resist letting the backs of her fingers gently graze over the heated skin.

“not going anywhere, baby. staying right here.” his lips brush against her forehead, leaving a fleeting kiss in their wake and making her heartbeat flutter within her rib cage.

it feels right, the way they go about a new bed time routine. luke’s arms wrapped around her waist as she brushes her teeth, his eyes boring into her reflection. her head on his chest as they fall asleep, his alarm on for them to wake up for morning skate, together.

and if they were holding hands when they walked into the rink, if they were a cheesy couple who kissed before he entered the locker room, if his smile was a bit too wide in the tiktok she filmed for the Devils socials, if she chose the question ‘do you believe in fate?’ solely because of him, could they really be blamed?

[milfsloverblog]

Hello author ! I have a request for Larrisa. Reader is a prostitute and Larissa goes to her to forget Morticia. May I ask for shifted cock ? Thank you keep up the good work 🥳

Unraveled Illusions (NSFW)

Larissa Weems x prostitute!reader

A/N: Slowly going through my request list. I loved this idea, wrote this tonight instead of preparing my lessons for next week (work can wait). I hope you’ll enjoy what I did with your request!!

tw: shapeshifted cock

You thought when your latest client picked you, it was for your body. After all, that's what most people are paying for. They weren’t looking for conversation or connection—just the fantasy of intimacy.

Over the years, you’d learned to read them: the ones who worshipped breasts, ass, legs, as well as many other common—and uncommon—things. Larissa seemed like a hair woman, judging by the way her fingers twisted through your locks, keeping you bent over the bed.

She hadn’t touched you beyond that, though. One hand was locked around your hair, the other... Well, she was stroking herself, seemingly content to maintain the distance between your bodies. It was unusual. Clients usually tried to consume you, to use you until there was nothing left. But Larissa, this woman with her piercing gaze and sharp cheekbones, seemed more like a collector.

You could hear her laboured breathing behind you. But it wasn’t pleasure—at least not entirely. There was something raw in it. Frustration, maybe. Longing.

You turned your head, curious to catch her expression, but her grip tightened, and she guided your face back toward the headboard.

"Stay."

Her voice was low, almost commanding, but there was something fragile underneath it. Something you’d seen before in others: a woman who wasn’t really here with you.

It always came down to projection, didn’t it? You weren’t yourself in these moments—you were the canvas they painted on. Larissa, too, was searching for someone else.

"What's her name?" you asked, breaking the silence.

Larissa's movements faltered.

“Don’t talk.”

You didn’t listen.

“Her name,” you repeated, turning your face enough to glimpse her. "The one you’re thinking of."

She scoffed, shaking her head, but didn’t deny it.

“Not everything has to be spelt out,” she muttered, but the way her shoulders stiffened told you everything you needed to know.

This woman—this ghost—haunted her.

“You know you’ll feel better if you say it,” you pushed gently, straightening enough to sit back on your knees. Larissa stilled, her hand falling away.

She sat heavily on the edge of the bed, pinching the bridge of her nose. For a long moment, she didn’t speak, and you weren’t sure if she was trying to gather herself or find an escape. Finally, she muttered one word.

“Morticia.”

Her lips barely moved when she said it, like she was afraid of summoning something painful.

"Good." You let the name sit between you, an offering of sorts. “Now, was that so hard?”

Her icy blue eyes snapped to yours, narrowing.

“Do you always try to psychoanalyze your clients?”

“Only when they make it this easy.” You smiled, softening the edges of the dig.

For the first time since she’d walked into the room, Larissa smiled back. It wasn’t warm—not yet—but there was something wry in it, something almost playful.

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

“A little.”

She exhaled a short laugh, running a hand through her hair. The updo she’d tried to keep intact earlier was half undone now, strands curling rebelliously around her face. You thought she looked beautiful like this—dishevelled and human.

You didn’t often allow yourself to feel for clients. It was dangerous, after all. But something about Larissa's loneliness, the way it clung to her like a second skin, called to you.

“You miss her,” you said softly, not a question.

Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t deny it.

“Do you want to tell me about her?”

“No.” The word was sharp, cutting through the air like a blade. But the way her fingers trembled slightly as she worked to rebutton her blouse betrayed her.

She stood abruptly, reaching down for her pants that she quickly put back on.

“I should go,” she muttered.

“Larissa,” you said, her name falling from your lips without thought.

She froze, her hand on the door handle. Slowly, she turned, her eyes searching yours.

"Say that again," she murmured.

“Larissa.”

There was a flicker of something in her gaze, something raw and unguarded.

“You almost sound like her,” she said softly. Her voice wavered, but her expression was steel.

You crossed the room, closing the space between you, emboldened by her hesitation. When you reached her, you lifted a hand, letting your fingers hover near her temple. “Do you want me to be her?”

She swallowed hard. “You can’t.”

“No,” you agreed. “I can’t. Because in what world would she ever want to be with someone like you?”

The words were cruel, but you’d seen what women like her responded to. Pain. It was familiar to them. Comforting, even. You held your breath, waiting for her reaction.

Her eyes flared, something igniting in their depths.

She stepped forward, her presence filling the air between you, heavy and electric. It took everything you had not to retreat—not to give her the satisfaction of seeing you falter. She was close now, too close, her icy blue eyes locking onto yours, turbulent and searching. They flickered like a storm barely held in check, and you wondered if she was about to lash out or leave altogether.

Your heart raced, an unpredictable rhythm, and you weren’t sure if it was fear or desire that caused it. Maybe both. Then, before you could steel yourself, she closed the distance.

Her lips crashed against yours, a punishing press of mouth on mouth. It was rough and demanding, all sharp edges and no finesse, but you met her fervour head-on, refusing to let her dominate entirely. You pushed back, kissing her with just as much bite as she gave.

It was the right move. A low growl escaped her throat as her hands found your hips, gripping tightly. She pulled you against her, guiding you down onto the bed without breaking the kiss. The mattress dipped beneath your combined weight as she covered you, her lips relentless.

The kiss was messy, a heady mix of clashing teeth and lingering wine. Her perfume lingered faintly on her skin, a floral note beneath the heat of the moment. It was intoxicating, but not enough to distract you.

Your hands worked quickly, curling around the collar of her blouse and tugging her closer. The buttons she had so meticulously fastened earlier came undone with ease under your fingers, and when you finally managed to peel the fabric off her shoulders, she hovered above you, breathless and dishevelled.

“You’re an idiot,” she growled, and you knew she wasn’t talking to you but rather herself.

“You’re a cunt,” you shot back, breathless but smiling.

She pulled back just far enough to smirk, the expression sharp and self-assured. “You are what you eat,” she quipped before diving back in.

A laugh bubbled out of you, unexpected but genuine. The sound didn’t seem to bother her; if anything, it spurred her on. She buried her face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply as if trying to anchor herself.

Her weight pressed down on you, solid and comforting in its intensity. Your hands roamed to her biceps, gripping them, feeling the tension in her muscles as they shifted and flexed beneath your touch. She moved with purpose, her hands sliding over your body, down to your hips, then lower still.

Your legs moved instinctively, wrapping around her waist, pulling her closer. The fabric of her pants rubbed against your skin, and when her hardened length brushed against your core through the layers, you couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped you.

She hummed softly, rolling her hips against yours.

"Larissa, please," you begged, the words tumbling out more earnestly than you'd intended.

Her movement stilled. Rising to her feet, she left you sprawled on the bed as you propped yourself up on your elbows, watching as she reached for the zipper of her pants. Hooking her thumbs into the waistband, she slid them and her panties down in one fluid motion. Your eyes stayed locked on her face, unblinking, even as she stepped out of the fabric and crawled back toward you, her movements deliberate.

Your arms stretched toward her as she closed the space between you. Without breaking eye contact, you reached into your discarded purse beside you, your fingers quickly finding a condom and tearing it open with practised ease.

The other hand drifted down her body, brushing over the curve of her breasts, the smooth line of her navel, and lower. When you felt the soft hair below her belly button, your fingers ventured further, wrapping around her cock, heavy and hot in your palm.

The first experimental tug earned you a soft groan. The second, a deeper growl. By the third, her forehead came to rest against yours, her breathing laboured as you carefully rolled the condom over her length. Satisfied, you lifted your eyes to hers, offering a small nod of readiness.

She crushed her lips to yours in a fierce kiss, pushing you back onto the bed. The kiss was rough, more teeth than softness, and you moaned against her mouth, your breath hitching when her fingers finally found you. They slipped through your folds with practised precision, circling your clit with just the right pressure to make you gasp. Her teeth nipped at your bottom lip, her control maddeningly exact.

Sweat slicked your skin as your breaths mingled, and more than once, she brought you right to the edge of release only to pull back, leaving you teetering on the brink. By the third time, you shot her an exasperated glare.

“I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry in the slightest,” she said, her grin equal parts smug and infuriating.

Your response caught in your throat when she finally positioned herself at your entrance. With a deliberate push of her hips, she filled you, the stretch overwhelming in the best way. You whimpered, unable—or unwilling—to hold back the sound.

"Larissa," you gasped, your voice barely above a whisper.

She buried her face against your neck, her breath hot against your skin as she groaned. It almost sounded like a name—Morticia, perhaps—but before you could linger on the thought, she thrust again, hitting a spot deep inside you that made you cry out.

Your arms wrapped around her shoulders as her pace quickened, each movement precise and powerful. Her hands roamed your body, squeezing, gripping, and claiming. For a fleeting moment, you let yourself believe she wanted you—not whoever haunted her mind. But you quickly dismissed the thought. This was just a transaction, nothing more.

Her pace grew erratic, her body trembling as she neared her climax. To your surprise, you felt your own release building, an unfamiliar sensation creeping over you. You rarely let yourself enjoy these moments with clients, but something about Larissa’s focus, the weight of her presence, unravelled you.

The wave of pleasure hit suddenly, your cry sharp and unrestrained. At almost the same moment, Larissa thrust deep one final time, her body going taut as she groaned through her release. The condom dulled the sensation, but you swore you could still feel the faint pulse of her inside you.

For a moment, neither of you moved, the room filled only with the sound of your ragged breaths. Then, with a grunt, she pulled away, disposing of the condom in the bin before beginning to redress in silence.

“Dinner?” she asked casually, buttoning her blouse without looking at you.

You laughed, reaching back to zip up your dress. “I don’t have dinner with clients.”

Sliding onto a nearby stool, you bent down to clasp your heels.

“Even if they pay you?” she asked from the doorway, her tone light but curious.

Looking up, you caught her gaze, noticing the brief flick of her eyes to your cleavage before they returned to your face. A smirk tugged at your lips, mirrored instantly by hers.

“Good night, Larissa,” you said, your voice soft but firm.

She chuckled, a low sound that lingered even as she turned to leave.

“Good night.”

————————————————————————

taglist: @weemssapphic , @im-a-carnivorous-plant , @dingdongthetail , @azu-zu , @gwensfz , @erablaise-blog , @rainbow-hedgehog , @renravens , @kaymariesworld , @niceminipotato , @witchesmortuary , @notmeellaannyy , @weemswife , @m-0-mmy-l-0-ver33 , @redkarine , @women-are-so-ethereal , @opheliauniverse , @willisnotmental , @raspburrythief , @fictionalized-lesbian , @ness029 , @geekyarmorel , @h-doodles , @cxndlelightx , @m1lflov3rrr , @winterfireblond , @nocteangelus15 , @aemilia19 @spacetoaim22 @vendocrap8008 @jkregal @gela123 @lilfartbox1 @xuukoo @bellatrixsbrat @sadsapphic-rose @dumbasslesbi @larissaoftarthweems @larissalover3 @friskyfisher @fliesinmymouth @imprincipalweemspet @forwhichidream11 @amateurwritescm @imlike-so-gaydude @sugipla @lvinhs @http-sam @gweninred @a-queen-and-her-throne

[katsu28]

connection

pairing: max verstappen x reader

summary: when a holiday gala that neither you nor max want to be at brings two people from vastly different worlds together, you find out that you might have more in common with the four time world champion than you think you do. (3.6k)

warnings: swearing, creepy men (not max don’t worry)

a/n: day three with max :) somewhere along the way this became less of a holiday fic and more of me projecting onto my characters but fuck it we ball! 

You don’t want to be here. 

Truthfully, toting around trays of champagne flutes and painfully tiny hors d'oeuvres to fancy rich people is the last place you want to be on a Saturday night, but your friend had roped you into working this event with her and you need the extra money a holiday event pays, so here you are. 

You’re not even sure what exactly it is either. All you know is that it’s some gala for folks in a totally different tax bracket than you, and you need to be on your best behavior—which, you’ll admit, isn’t your strong suit.

Your loved ones would say your headstrong, take-no-shit personality is one of your admirable qualities, but you know they only say that because they know the real you. 

These people don’t. They don’t need to. All they need from you is whatever you’ve got on the silver platter you’re holding. 

You glide through the crowd like a woman on a mission, turning up the charm to an eleven to get rid of these beef tartare crostinis as fast as you can. 

It’s part of the job description, but apparently some of these old men think you’re throwing yourself at them. The amount of ass patting bordering on groping, and sleazy comments about how you’re young enough to be their daughters you’ve had to endure in the last few hours is astonishing, and not in a good way. 

What you want to do is slam them upside the head with your tray, but you can’t. So you grin and bear it, redirecting their leering as best you can without causing a scene. What a way to start the festive season…not. 

Soon enough you’re out of food and you’re glad for it, because it grants you even just a little reprieve when you return to the kitchen. 

“I swear to god, I’m gonna punch one of those old fucks,” You fume, having just pushed through the adjoining door leading from the ballroom. 

Your friend offers an amused snort from where she’s waiting on a refill of stuffed figs. “Yeah, don’t do that, probably.” 

“They’re disgusting.” 

“They’re entitled.” 

“Okay, so they’re disgusting and entitled. God, the nerve!” 

“Y’know what, maybe you should take your break now? Cool off a little bit before you rip someone's throat out and get us both fired?” She tips her chin towards your hands, and when you look down, your fists are clenched. You’ve got them clenched so tight your nails are starting to dig crescent shaped divots in your palm. Any tighter and you’re sure to draw blood. 

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s—I’m gonna go,” You mutter. You can’t afford to be dismissed from the event and lose out on the payday. The best thing to do is find somewhere quiet, somewhere you can be alone and settle your temper. 

-------

Max doesn’t want to be here. 

Truthfully, milling around shaking hands and making small talk with these people is the last thing he wants to be doing on a Saturday night, but he has obligations to fulfill, appearances he needs to make to cast Red Bull in an admirable light in this season of giving, so here he is. 

His suit is expensive but itchy, the starched collar of his crisp button up pulled too tight around his neck. What he wants to do is rip it off and go home to his cats, but he can’t.

So he grins and bears it, summoning all his years of PR training to get through the next few hours as best he can. 

“Max, there you are!” His press officer materializes right next to him, clamping a hand down on his arm. He bristles a bit at the sudden touch, but it soon dissipates as he realizes it just means he has yet another hand to shake and conversation to make. “There’s some people you should meet with. They’re from one of our smaller sponsors, but important nonetheless. Think you should have a conversation, find some common ground.” 

“Do I have to?” The question is a moot point, but Max feels the need to ask anyway. Just in case the answer has changed since the last time he asked. When all they do is fix him to the spot with a deadpan look, he sighs. “Yeah, heard. Lead the way.” 

Small talk comes easily to him at this point, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t mind numbingly boring listening to the two middle aged men go on and on about something Max couldn’t care less about. 

To the untrained eye, it would appear that he’s listening intently, feeding into their words with every carefully timed nod of the head. A chuckle here, a smile there. All the while, he’s itching to get away. The itch grows and grows and grows until Max can’t take it anymore.

He has to go somewhere. Anywhere other than here. 

Before he can second guess his gut feeling, he excuses himself quickly and expertly, making his way carefully through the crowd and towards the nearest exit. Another glass of champagne couldn’t hurt, so he snags one off a tray on his way out, sipping on it leisurely as he searches for a place to be alone. 

That’s how he finds himself outside in this open area looking over the water, somewhere completely empty and quiet, save for the slight breeze sending tiny waves splashing against the rocks below. 

Max sheds his jacket, undoes the first few buttons of his pressed shirt so he doesn’t feel like he’s being choked anymore. His chin tips towards the sky, eyes scanning the sky above. 

The moon is out in full swing tonight, hanging big and bright in the sky, illuminating the beautiful architecture around him. Max has always liked the moon. It represents success and fulfillment and power, but also has an element of mystery to it. He thinks that, in a way, the moon is kind of like him. 

He doesn’t know how long he stays here, just knows that he doesn’t want to go back inside. Finds himself dreading it, actually. Knows that inevitably he’ll have to make his return, but he’ll delay it as long as he can before someone comes looking for him.  

The sound of a heavy door creaking open draws his attention a little while later, and it makes him sigh. Looks like his time hiding out here is over. He pushes off the pillar he’s leaning on, ready to spin some half assed excuse, but then he hears it.

“Fuck!” You bite out, letting the door slam behind you. The empty area provides an echo to your dramatics. 

Max peers wide eyed around at the sudden expletive, spotting you across the way. So…definitely not his press officer. You’re already pacing back and forth, hands on your hips as you shake your head. 

He should say something, right? Announce his presence? 

He’s about to, but then you start muttering to yourself, something about old rich men thinking they can do whatever they want just because they have money. Colored by a plethora of choice swear words, you look and sound entirely pissed off. 

Probably best to leave you alone for the time being. He doesn’t know you, but he knows anger, and yours has a fire that almost rivals his. You’re also very pretty, but he pushes that thought aside for the time being. 

For the first time tonight, Max’s interest is piqued. Even so, he feels like he’s encroaching on something too personal, too private for anyone else’s ears. 

Maybe he can sneak away undetected? 

He doesn’t remember the champagne glass he’d set down until his foot hits it, and then it’s too late. Thankfully it doesn’t shatter, but the clinking against the cobblestones as it rolls away gives him up automatically. Your head snaps towards his general vicinity, eyes going wide with fear. 

Max imagines it’s probably scary for you to think you’re alone and realize that you’re not, and he’s not a monster. He has no choice but to step out from the shadows, raising a hand in awkward greeting. “...Hi.” 

“Jesus. Shit. Uh, I didn’t know anyone was out here,” You breathe, already slipping back into that carefully practiced professionality. Embarrassment and a little bit of shame runs through you at the same time as realization blooms of who this man is. Everyone knows Max Verstappen is, and you just cussed out his colleagues big time. Oh, you’re so getting fired. “Sorry you had to see that, Mr. Verstappen.” 

Max waves a hand in the air with a shake of his head. “Please, we don’t have to do that. Call me Max.”

It feels a little wrong to do so, but you oblige. “Right. Well, sorry you had to witness that, Max.” 

“Oh, that was nothing. Plus, god knows I’ve done worse.” Somehow, that doesn’t make you feel any better. Max steps out a little further into the light, stooping down to grab the rolling glass before it gets too far. “Is everything alright? If you don’t mind me asking.” 

“Does it look like everything is alright?” You shoot back, throwing your hands up into the air. Then you remember just who the fuck you’re talking to and you freeze. “Sorry! I am so sorry, I—” You take a deep breath, squeezing your eyes shut for a moment. Max isn’t who you’re mad at. This has nothing to do with him at all. “You didn’t do anything, I shouldn’t be taking my anger out on you. I apologize. Again.” 

Max feels his lips quirk into a smile. He doesn’t remember the last time someone had spoken back at him like that. It’s actually quite refreshing. “No need. Probably very warranted too. I’ve been told I’m quite a good listener, if you need to let things out.” 

“I shouldn’t,” You sigh, pressing your lips together. Max raises a questioning brow. “It would be extremely unprofessional.” 

“You’ve just caught me out here hiding from doing my job. I think we’re past professionalism at this point,” He snorts. He takes a seat on one end of the concrete bench nearest, tipping his head towards the empty space next to him. “The floor is yours.” 

You explain your situation as best you can without getting too heated again, half expecting Max to grow defensive of his acquaintances—they always do. 

It’s a pleasant surprise when he does nothing of the sort. Instead he calls them all assholes, along with some other choice words you won’t dare repeat. He apologizes for them, says he’ll do his best to remedy the situation, but you’re sure all it’ll do is make things worse if he gets involved. 

“So…that’s why I’m out here. What’s your excuse?” You finish, letting your shoulders drop. It feels nice to get all of that off your chest for once, and to someone who actually gives a shit. 

Max sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. It probably makes it stick up at all odd angles, but he can’t bring himself to care. “I don’t really like these things. Talking to people, making small talk—between you and me, it’s the worst part of the job. Not my thing.” 

“You like to do your talking on the track,” You supply. 

Max lets out a sharp exhale, leaning back against his palms to regard you with careful amusement. “You watch?” 

“No, but I think I’d have to be living under a rock not to know a little bit about it. About you.” 

“And…what do you think you know about me?” He tilts his chin up almost in challenge, as if he’s daring you to analyze him. 

Challenge accepted. 

“I think you’re lonely.” 

A surprised laugh escapes from his mouth. He certainly wasn't expecting it, but quite enjoys your forwardness. “Well, that was unexpected. Why do you think that?” 

“You’re untouchable. A four time champion, I’ve heard.” 

“World champion,” Max corrects, but not obnoxiously. It seems like a habit to add that distinction, years and years of hard work and dedication and training for the recognition. 

“World champion, my bad.” You nod. “Congrats on that, by the way.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Like I said, untouchable. You’re the best of the best, and I’d assume even though it’s nice to be regarded as so, it’s hard for you to know when people actually want to know you, or if they just want something from you. Hence…why you’re out here.” 

“Whoa. Didn’t know this was going to turn into a therapy session.” 

“Am I wrong, though?” 

“No. You’re right on the nose, actually.” He shouldn’t be admitting this. He’s supposed to maintain the image that he has going for him, but something about you makes him feel like he can trust you with his true self. 

You’ve drifted closer together without realizing throughout your conversation, shoulders brushing, knees bumping. Max’s pinky moves to brush over yours. You let it happen. 

He’s got really pretty eyes, you notice, steel blue staring right back at you. Piercing the careful facade you have to put up when working these events. Some people are charming, and you’ve learned to keep yourself a closed book to keep yourself safe. But Max feels different. Max’s interest seems genuine. 

It only intrigues you even more. You don’t know him, but you want to. 

Max clears his throat suddenly. “I should go,” He says. 

You wait for him to back away, to put some space between the two of you, but he doesn’t. If anything, he looks like the last thing he wants to do is leave. 

Part of you wants him to stay, but you know he shouldn’t. The same is true for you. He needs to get back to his job, and you need to get back to yours. 

“Me too,” You reply, taking careful notice to keep your tone from sounding too dejected. “Thanks for listening to me rant. I feel a little better now.” 

“I’m glad I could help.” 

You force yourself to climb to your feet, putting that distance between Max and yourself up before you have the urge to do something rash. A flash of your mouth on his zips through your mind for a split second. 

No. You can't do that. 

“Bye, Max. It was nice meeting you.” 

“Yeah. Nice meeting you too.” 

Now is the time for you to leave—one foot in front of the other, away from him, back to reality. 

“Wait!” He calls before you can get far. You turn on your heel like you were expecting him to say something else, waiting for him to reach you. He catches your elbow, squeezing gently. “What are you doing after this is over?” 

“Honestly? I was going to go home and pass out on my couch.” Max’s eyebrows pinch in the middle. “But I could be persuaded otherwise. Why?” 

“Would you want to get a drink? With me.” 

“Not really helping the lonely allegations,” You tease, smiling warmly despite your ribbing. Max rolls his eyes goodnaturedly.  “Yeah, I’d love to grab a drink. But I don’t get off until late, so it might be a while.” 

“I’ll wait.” His answer is immediate. Firm. 

“Okay. Okay, cool,” You say, fighting a smile. “I’ll find you after everything is over.” 

“I’m counting on it.”

The night flies by faster now that you’ve got Max to look forward to by the end of it. By the time you’re freed from the shackles of customer service, you don’t feel as drained as you normally do. You’re strangely excited to get to know him some more. 

You find Max waiting for you just outside the coat check, pretty eyes searching the dwindling gala goers until he spots you approaching. He smiles, nods his head in greeting.

“Hi. Everything alright?” 

“It’ll be better the sooner we get out of here.” 

“Let’s go, then.” 

Instead of a bar, he brings you back to his place. It catches you by surprise when he asks, but he assures you it’s more for privacy purposes than anything else, strictly two new friends sharing a drink and some more conversation. 

You’re not sure what you were expecting for a man of his financial standing, but a massive penthouse overlooking Monte Carlo makes sense. You do your best to tame your reaction, but it really is impressive. 

His living room is probably the size of your whole apartment, and that’s just what you can see right now. A pristine white couch sits in the middle of the room on an even whiter carpet in front of a sleek, top of the line entertainment unit, and there’s some sort of sim racing setup with a fancy chair nestled in the far corner near a wall of floor to ceiling windows. Surrounding the rig are a handful of trophies and racing helmets, each of them polished to perfection. 

Over in the far corner is a huge evergreen tree, decorated with twinkling lights and silver baubles. It looks extremely professional, almost staged, and the more you look at it, the more you’re sure he hadn’t been the one to put it up.

“What do you like to drink? I’ll make you something.” Max’s voice pulls you out of your gawking at his home. Your eyes snap over to him hovering next to a bar cart stocked with liquor, sweeping a hand along the bottles. Twisting your lips to the side in contemplation, you tell him your drink of choice and he smiles. “Nice one. I’m more of a gin and tonic kind of guy, but hey, to each their own.” 

You find your way to one end of the giant sofa not long later, aforementioned gin and tonic in his hand, your drink nestled in yours. “I did you, now you do me.” 

Max nearly chokes on his drink, brows flying high at your bluntness. “Sorry, what?” 

You look unphased. “What do you think you know about me?” 

Oh. Of course that’s what you meant. 

He takes a few beats to ponder your question, eyes squinting in thought. Then he fixes you to the spot with a decisive look. 

“I think you have big dreams. Changing the world, making it a better place—but you haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet,” He says, tilting his head. Your chest tightens at his words, because they’re true. “You’re going in circles, not able to figure out that one thing that’ll break the cycle you’re stuck in. I think once you do figure it out, you’re going to do great things. Big things.” 

Like before, somehow the space between the two of you has dwindled into nearly nothing as he looks at you so intently with those piercing eyes of his. You’re a little surprised by how on the nose he is about you, but it also makes sense. Max seems very observant. Perhaps it comes from being on the lookout all the time. 

“If the racing doesn’t work out, you might want to consider psychology,” You manage to say. 

He chuckles, nose scrunching. “Sure, I’ll think about it. Though I think it’s going pretty well at the moment.” 

-------

“When can I see you again?” He asks a while later, head lolling to face you lazily.

His hand has somehow found its way spread over your knee, nimble fingers tap tap tapping mindlessly. The first few buttons of his shirt have been undone, hair mussed from how often he'd been dragging his fingers through it.

Your drinks have worn off ages ago, but you still feel warm and fuzzy. Though you suspect it’s more from the man you’re with rather than the residual alcohol talking. 

You’ve been getting to know each other as the night goes on, swapping stories about your lives until you feel like you haven’t just met him a few hours ago. His are by far much more entertaining than yours, but Max seems to enjoy the mundane of yours. 

Part of you is surprised by his question. In your mind, you were expecting this to just be a one time thing. An easy way to fill a boring night, never to be thought about again. But Max does want to see you again. You don’t let it phase you. Instead, you raise an amused brow. 

“Why? You planning on kicking me out anytime soon?” You joke. Max’s fingers twitch, and he shakes his head. 

“No, I just—I’d like to see you again, is that so wrong?” 

“Not at all. I’d like that too.” You smile at him. “Though it is getting late, so I should probably head out anyways.” 

Max doesn’t push for you to stay, just nods understandingly. “You’re sure you’re okay to make it home on your own? Let me order you an Uber,” He says, digging his phone out of his pocket. 

“Yes, Max, I’m fine. And I can get my own Uber, thank you very much.” 

“Please, let me. I asked you here, the least I can do is pay for your ride home.” He seems like a very insistent person, so you sigh goodnaturedly, waving a hand for him to go ahead. When he’s done and a car is on its way, he turns to you, propping his chin up in the palm of his hand. “I had a nice time tonight.”

You scoff lightly, raising a brow. “I recall you saying something about how company galas are the worst part of your job.” 

“I dunno, this one wasn’t that bad.” Max shrugs, a fond smile playing at his lips. “I met you, didn’t I?” 

“Best night of your life then, huh?” You tease, winking at him. 

“It’s definitely up there.” 

“Too bad it’s ending soon.” 

“Too bad,” He echoes. He tilts his head, rubs at the smooth fabric of the sofa cushion just so he has something to do with his hand. “Looks like we’ll have to see each other again soon.” 

You have all the time in the world to unravel the mystery that is Max Verstappen, if he’ll let you. And judging by the way his hand inches towards yours until your fingers intertwine while you’re waiting for your Uber to come, he will.

follow @katsu-library to be notified when i post new writing :)

[myokk]

clumsy

pairing: Sebastian Sallow x f!MC

word count: 9,1k

summary: sebastian is clumsy

cw: fluff, mutual pining, idiots in love, two really stubborn idiots in love to be exact, sir cadogan guest appearance, anne and imelda are the gremlin best friends every girl needs, smut (18+ ONLY), oral (f. recieving)

a/n: or: two stubborn brats make things more difficult than they have to be. I've been working on this for a MONTH more or less, ever since I drew the sketch that inspired it🫶 (I'm the world's slowest writer)

The first time Sebastian Sallow interacted with her after the fateful events of their fifth year, he fell for her.

Quite literally.

Maybe fell on her is more aptly put - Sebastian Sallow is not one to mince his words or say what he doesn't mean, after all. But, in the years to come, he always insists that he fell in love in that moment.

It was inexplicable. One moment, he was walking around, perfectly content with his loveless, boring life, and the next, his every waking moment was painful. Nobody had ever told Sebastian that being in love would physically pain or consume him so.

It all started like this: one moment, he's walking (well, striding) to Crossed Wands. Fine, he's running. Running late already, for the first meet-up of his last year. But - he isn't to blame for being late. He needed to check on something in the library - during his Transfiguration lesson, he had a hunch about something Professor Weasley had said in passing, and of course he had to go and check to see if he was right before he could even think about besting Leander in the inaugural duel of the Crossed Wands season but now, with how late he is - how many minutes ago had it started? - oh, Merlin, it's already been ten whole minutes and what if they've started without him (not that he can blame them) and -

Sebastian is abruptly pulled out of his thoughts when he collides with a strange obstruction in his way. He was just checking his father's old pocket watch, had only looked away for a split second and he could have sworn that, unless he was mistaken (which he never is), there wasn't a statue in the middle of the suspension bridge. And yet, he has run headfirst into something or someone, and now they are both flying through the air, books whirling around them in a flurry of pages and Sebastian unconsciously puts his arms out to grab her before they hit the ground and now he's holding her tight against him and they land with a loud, ungraceful thud, but at least she's not hurt.

Sebastian shakes his head to clear it after the impact that - miraculously - doesn't seem to have been as bad as it could have been, all things considered, and -

He freezes.

What has he done?

He's pressed up against the most impossibly lovely person he has ever seen quite possibly in his life, holding her tightly in his arms as she glares up at him in indignation, a faint flush spreading across her cheeks, making her face glow. Is this what the muggles mean when they say that they were struck by Cupid's arrow? Her hands scrabble uselessly at his chest as she tries to extricate herself from his grip. It's useless. Sebastian is completely frozen in place as he stares down at her, and he can feel his own face heating up at his inability to get off her. What's wrong with him?

"Sebastian," she repeats, and this time her voice registers in his brain. He realizes she has been talking to him this whole time, and as he stares at her face without comprehending - he couldn't have a coherent thought right now even if he wanted to - he sees her eyes dart quickly down, looking at where their bodies meet before she brings them back to his face, a deeper blush coming over her. "You -"

Oh, Merlin. It's her. He blinks and it's like the fog has cleared from his mind - almost, but-not-quite - and he realizes who he has unceremoniously crashed to the ground with him. The spines of the textbooks they are lying on top of dig into the arm that's pinned under her body and his other hand...he realizes (to his almost-horror) that to any students or professors walking by, it would seem as if they were caught up in quite the scandalous extra-curricular activity because his other hand is actively caressing her breast. Well, that's how it would look to any passerby, anyways.

Because there is no way he would be caught dead in such a compromising position with her.

The two of them haven't spoken since the events of their fifth year - the Year-That-Shall-Not-Be-Remembered-or-Acknowledged - and he had been perfectly content with his plan to continue this strange sort of ignoring that they had played all last year. Both of them pretending that they hadn't become impossibly close after only knowing each other for a few months - a closeness that he had gone and ruined by not knowing when to quit. All he had known to do back then was push push push because why couldn't she see things the way he had? The betrayal he had felt when she had gone behind his back to find her own way to cure his sister, and that one stupid word uttered in the heat of the moment, had caused an irreparable rift in their relationship and he would not allow himself to think about how much he missed her. Still misses her.

Just like he will not think about the fact that she is pressed beneath him in a compromising position, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she glares up at him in indignation. He continues to stare at her. Maybe his mouth is agape. She's stopped trying to get out of his grip and is resting her hands on his chest, seemingly waiting for an opportunity to push him off of her.

"Sebastian. Your hand," she repeats. "You're -"

Finally his idiot brain decides to wake up and Sebastian realizes with horror just how aroused he is at the moment and how did he never see her like this before? He gets up in a flash, pushing her back against the pile of books they're lying on top of, wondering if he can subtly adjust his robes without her realizing and then he makes the very grave mistake of looking down at her and she's still very much red-faced, propping herself up by her elbows and she looks so disheveled and lovely lying on top of the pile of books.

His idiot brain has now woken up completely, and how is it possible for one hormonal, eighteen-year-old wizard to be so embarrassed? He knocked her to the ground, pushed her further back in the books in his desperate attempt to get away from her, and now all he can think about is how to hide his arousal. Shameful, really. Sebastian quickly crouches down to help her pick up all of the books but she shoves him away and glares at him with an annoyance that he's never seen before.

"I can do it myself, thank you very much," she says with a huff, gathering everything they spilled up into her arms. She grabs the book Sebastian is holding out of his hands and he inhales sharply at the touch of her fingers grazing his.

Did someone - Garreth, maybe - spike his pumpkin juice with Amortentia during lunch? It's the only explanation he can think of as he stares blankly down at her. How else would he find her so beautiful, so breathtaking, when the last time they had interacted, Ominis and Anne had had to act as intermediaries for the two of them?

"Well," she says finally, slinging her school bag over her shoulder once all of her books have been unceremoniously shoved inside of it, "it's been...nice seeing you again, Sallow. I hope you had a good summer holiday."

And with that, she quickly turns and walks away in the direction she had been coming from, leaving a very confused Sebastian behind. He watches her as she walks away and her long, swishing braid is the last thing he sees before the door closes behind her at the far end of the bridge.

Eventually, he gathers his wits and wanders away.

He does not go to the first Crossed Wands meeting that afternoon after all.

She has not had a full-night's sleep since he somehow cursed her mind and her thoughts a week ago, and she can feel herself slowly slipping into insanity. A curse is the only answer that makes sense, the only thing that gives a conceivable answer to all the wicked dreams she has been having since that moment, dreams that cause her to wake up sweaty and breathless and needing him in the middle of the night in a way she has never felt before. She has been an absolute mess, a disastrous version of her normally quite put-together self, and she is not happy about it.

He's sitting next to her now - they were partnered up by the evil Professor Onai in their first NEWT Divination class of the year - and she's holding herself rigidly, arms tight across her chest, in an attempt to not accidentally touch him. Lately, every single time they make fleeting eye contact across the table during breakfast, or when they pass each other in the hallways, a shiver runs down her spine at the unfamiliar look in his eyes and she has to avert her eyes before it's too much.

Divination has never been a favorite subject of hers - too impermeable for her tastes. She is only taking it at the NEWT level because, during her career counseling with Professor Ronen at the end of her fifth year, he had said that if she wanted to be an Unspeakable she couldn't just work with logic (a preposterous thought, but as a sixteen-year-old she hadn't seen any recourse in arguing with the Ministry's requirements). She supposedly needs to get comfortable with the intangible as well. It doesn't mean she has to enjoy it, though: she doesn't, and never will. The Divination classroom is dark and stuffy, tucked away in one of the highest towers of the castle, and the nauseating smell of incense always coats her nasal cavities long after the class has finished. She finds her thoughts getting muddled in the haze of candle smoke and swirling orbs on the shelves around her - magic somehow always feels thicker up here - and the presence of a certain someone whose knees keep brushing hers under the tiny table they're sharing, a certain someone who has - improbably, inconceivably, impossibly - hit a growth spurt that summer and now towers over her and had encompassed her completely when he knocked her to the ground, isn't helping her concentration at -

"This week, we are going to review everything we learned together last year," Professor Onai says, after the class had rearranged itself based on her instructions. Sebastian shoots a look at her as she shakes her head in an attempt to clear it and sits up straighter. She hopes that Onai's lecture will help her concentrate and clear her mind a bit. If she has something to focus on, to try and think of and remember, it will be better than him. Anything would be better than Sebastian. Onai gives an appraising look to each table before continuing her speech. "As your NEWTs are at the end of the year, we need to make sure you are as prepared as possible. Open your books to page two-hundred and thirty. Today we're going to review the art of palmistry. I should hope that you do not need the aid of your textbook to help interpret the lines in your partner's palm but in the case that you do -"

She chances a glance at Sebastian before getting out her copy of Divining the Undivinable from her bag and wishes she hadn't. He looks uncomfortably big sitting on the tiny tea chair across from her, barely any hints of the boy who had completely swept her away two years ago visible on the sharper planes of his face. When had he - had they - grown up?

Sebastian Sallow was - is - charming, and that had been her downfall. She had successfully avoided his charms the year before, and she wasn't going to let that happen this year, no matter how much her body rebelled against her mind and resolve. Because, as she reminds herself, Sebastian Sallow is also manipulative, and cold-hearted, and selfish.

"Well," she says archly, opening her book. She will not look at him. "I suppose I am still quite ignorant of the practice of Divination, so do forgive me if I have to double-check my readings in the textbook."

He says her name as she opens the book, and she ignores him. He says her name again. She continues to ignore him. He grabs the book from her hands and puts it the correct way for her. She was looking at it upside-down. Her cheeks heat up and she continues flipping through the pages, as if nothing has happened. She finds page two-hundred and thirty. She pretends to be interested in what she sees.

(Divination is unfortunately not interesting.)

Oh, fine.

"Do you want to start, or should I?"

These are the first words she has voluntarily spoken to him - not including the events of last week, which do not count as they were most decidedly not voluntary - since he called her ignorant a year and a half ago. He somehow looks surprised to see that she has addressed him, and for some reason this fills her with rage and a strange sort of confidence. Why shouldn't she be able to talk to him?

"Here," she says, putting her hand out towards him, palm up, ignoring the strange fluttering feeling in her chest when he gently grabs it with one of his. Sebastian looks up at her, waiting for her to continue speaking, and were she not looking at him so intently she would have easily missed the bob of his throat as he swallows nervously. "Show me how it's done."

Her breath catches in her throat at the small, mischievous smirk he shoots to her before he bends over her hand and gently starts tracing the lines on her palm with the fingers of the hand that's not holding hers in place. His touch is feather-light and somehow soft, despite the roughness of his fingers as they drag over her palm. Every nerve in her body seems to have moved to wherever he touches and all of the bravado and anger she had just felt is quickly melting away. When she finally finds her voice, she hates how soft and breathy it sounds. She can't look away from the sight of his larger hands caressing hers.

"Well? What do you see? Do you remember the different lines? Because I -"

She falters. The murmurs of their classmates blend together in the background and the dim lights of the candles...the hazy, thick atmosphere and his proximity and the barely there touches of his rough fingertips on her sensitive palm are altogether too overwhelming and she needs to get out of there. She's supposed to be angry with him. Furious, even. Holding this grudge has been the only way she has been able to have any sort of power over him this past year, and yet...all she can think about at the moment are the sinful dreams she's been having lately where he presses her against a wall, desperately kissing her lips, her neck - even she knows that there has to be more to it - but what?

Sebastian blinks as she snatches her hand away like it's been burned and - oh, Merlin - she shoves the textbook back into her schoolbag and almost knocks the candle on the table over and wouldn't it be awful if she had started a fire? But she can't think about any of that now in her haste to just get out of the claustrophobic Divination tower.

Vaguely, she can hear Professor Onai asking her if everything is fine and she's not sure but she thinks she mumbles something about needing to go to the Hospital Wing - that's a good enough excuse to leave, isn't it? - but then she hears his voice, deep and cutting through the fog in her mind -

"Don't worry, I'll take her and make sure she gets there fine." A muffled response from their professor and then his voice, just as clear as before. "No, I don't know what happened..."

She hears him calling her name as she flees down the spiral staircase, almost tripping over her feet in her rush to get away from him, but he catches up quickly, reaching out to grab her arm in an attempt to slow her down. She stops running immediately - she supposes her traitorous body wants to see what he has to say, or maybe it just wants to bask in his intoxicating proximity. He crowds her space, and she sees that unfamiliar look in his eyes again. So very different from the cold disdain she had seen the last time she had been this close to him, during the argument that had ended their friendship.

"Let go of me," she whispers, but there's no conviction in her voice as she gazes into his deep, brown eyes. He can tell she doesn't mean it and doesn't make any move to listen to her. Why can't she hold on to the rage? A muggle quote about anger floats through her mind: Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. What a sweet poison her anger at Sebastian had been, while it lasted. She tries telling herself that he must still feel the same as the evening he had called her ignorant (ignoring the small voice in her head that reminded her of the letters of apology he had sent (that she had burned without reading), the times he had tried to get Anne or Ominis involved and apologize for him) - because why couldn't he just tell her himself? Maybe she had shut down any and all attempts he had made to repair the rift that he had caused in the first place, but she had been right to be so angry with him.

But oh, Merlin, he's getting closer to her, and she can now clearly see the freckles dusting his cheeks and nose and forehead and then before she knows it, his hand is sliding up her arm, leaving goosebumps everywhere he touches and then he's caressing her jaw with his rough thumb and he pauses. Her eyelids flutter closed as her head tilts towards him - she couldn't stop herself even if she wanted to (what does she want?). She can feel his warm breath ghosting over her lips and she has the improbable, ridiculous thought - how is he remembering to breathe? - before he speaks. His lips brush against hers with every soft word and a deep shiver runs through her body.

"I," she hears him say, his voice so, so low, "haven't been able to think since last week."

That's all she needs to hear, the brush of his bottom lip against hers all she needs to feel, to push her into closing what minuscule distance there is between them and then his lips are on hers and it's better than anything she's been imagining. His mouth is soft against hers, insistent, and her hands go up to grip the collar of his plaid jacket to make sure he doesn't go away or disappear on her.

She knows she's behaving wantonly, snogging Sebastian Sallow in the middle of the hallway where anyone could come across them, but third period has only just started and besides, she has had a week of restless nights being tortured by thoughts of him. A week of a few hours of sleep found here and there. Just one kiss should be enough to help her get over these strange feelings, right? She only feels like this because having him lie on top of her after he crashed into her - that satisfying weight of him - the friction of his thumb brushing against her nipple - had made her realize just how stupid she had been, holding this grudge against him for -

She whimpers in protest but it quickly turns into a moan as his mouth moves away from hers and down to her neck. He pulls at her tight collar desperately - she hears some seams ripping - to give him better access to it, and she finds herself arching her back and pushing her body closer to his as he nuzzles her neck with his nose before giving it open, sloppy kisses. When he hears her, he moves back to kissing her, greedily capturing every breathy moan that comes out of her mouth, but the noises coming from him are matching hers, and at the sound she feels an unfamiliar clenching deep in her stomach. Her fingers come up to his hair, going through the silky curls over and over - how are they as soft as his lips? - and he slowly pushes her back until she's sandwiched between his warm body and the cold stone of the wall behind her.

He lets out a low, frantic growl as a hand goes to grip the back of her head, holding her in place as he slants his mouth over hers. He tastes like cinnamon and...like something forbidden. What has gotten into her? She hates him, and yet...

They have abandoned any pretense of propriety - had they ever even been trying? - by this point. His tongue swipes across her lips and then she is completely lost to him, to every sensation of his mouth, and tongue, on hers. His large hands - the wicked hands that had been caressing her palm and had caused this whole mess in the first place - have moved to her waist and are pulling her even closer to him. When he pulls away briefly, she whines in protest, opening her eyes to glare at him. The sight of him, flushed and breathless, his eyes wide and pupils dilated - must match her own appearance because she sees the same hunger she feels in his eyes. She has never seen Sebastian Sallow so disheveled, but she finds she quite likes it and tugs on his curls with a whine. He obliges eagerly, bringing his mouth back to hers.

She's pressed as tightly against him as she can possibly be, and yet it still isn't enough. Her back arches once again, trying to find something, and then he slots one of his knees between her legs. She moans at the friction caused by his movements, can feel an unfamiliar slickness forming at the juncture between her legs, and this seems to spur him on further as his kisses get more desperate and sloppy. She moves against his leg, trying to relieve some of her discomfort, gasping into his mouth, when -

They freeze. Even if they are fully, completely, absorbed by...whatever this is, they can't ignore the strange, metallic clanking sound coming from their left. Sebastian pulls his head back from her slowly, reluctantly, breathing heavily, and looks over to see what the noise is. She wants to, but all of a sudden the horrifying reality of what they've been doing sinks in and oh god what if the noise is a person? Someone who has now seen her in what might possibly be the most mortifying moment of her life - desperately snogging Sebastian Sallow - and she finds she can't look over. She tucks her head into his neck to hide her face as she listens.

"I demand that you get away from her at once, you knave! Cease your attack!"

The voice sounds vaguely familiar, but she's certain that it doesn't belong to any of her classmates. He almost sounds...medieval, but -

"I made haste when I heard sounds of distress coming from down the hallway," the voice continues, "and it appears I have arrived not a moment too soon!"

She brings her head away from Sebastian's shoulder but still refuses to look over at whoever is speaking, instead choosing to stare at Sebastian's face. He's still deliciously flushed from their snogging, still breathing heavily, but now he looks terribly confused. His brows are furrowed, mouth opening and closing as he tries to come up with a response to the outrage currently being directed at him.

The unknown man is continuing his diatribe, almost not even stopping to breathe as he gets more and more worked up, and she hears some more clanking as he reaches a particularly exciting moment in his rant. Sebastian looks increasingly confused, but still shields her with his body, not moving away from her at all despite the accusations.

Her curiosity gets the better of her and she peeks over to see who it is.

The man who has been reprimanding Sebastian so boldly is none other than Sir Cadogan. Although she's never interacted with him directly, she often hears him yelling at his pony as she passes his portrait on her way to Divination. The knight is standing between two witches having tea, who are glaring at him quite angrily as he gesticulates wildly - every movement of his sword comes dangerously close to their display of cakes and sandwiches and it looks like he has already broken some plates. His armor is ill-fitting and loose on him, which explains the terrible noise.

"You rascally knave! I assure you that you do not want to find out what will happen to you if you do not unhand the fair maiden."

He brandishes his sword again, and the woman closest to him quickly snatches her tea cup away to save it from being broken as well. "Come now, Sir Cadogan," she says, exasperated. "Can't you see that these two are in love?"

The other woman joins her protests, nodding vigorously. "Yes, exactly that. Leave them be!"

"Nonsense," he exclaims. "I too have succumbed to my baser instincts on occasion and I can assure you that this is decidedly not what is occurring."

As Sir Cadogan continues to alternate between lecturing her and Sebastian, and directing his two attention to the ladies who are defending them, she looks back to the boy in question. Sebastian is looking down at her, a bemused smile on his lips and she feels a twinge in her chest. His face is still so close to hers that if she wants to, they could be snogging again with barely any effort and her eyes briefly flicker down to his tempting mouth before going back to his eyes, but...

What had gotten into her? What is she doing?

He had somehow managed to manipulate her again, because there is no way that this situation could have happened otherwise. All of a sudden, the anger she's been feeling for the past year and a half - that had left for a brief, blissful moment - surges again, and she pushes Sebastian away from her with as much force as she can muster. She almost feels bad as the happiness in his face turns to confusion, then frustration as he realizes she's getting away from him.

"Stay away from me," she hisses, picking up her discarded schoolbag from its spot on the ground. As she stalks down the hall, she can hear Sir Cadogan cheering on her bravery over the ringing in her ears.

She has a lot of thinking to do.

Sebastian Sallow's List of Priorities (in no particular order):

Figure out what the hell I'm going to do when I graduate;

Figure out how the hell I'm going to finish this bloody Charms essay before tomorrow; and

Figure out what the hell is going on between us

Sebastian sits in an undisturbed corner of the library - nobody ever comes to this table because it's tucked away between shelves of incredibly dense magical theory books - and is twirling his quill in his fingers, watching the ink splatter on the list he spent his precious time writing instead of the Charms essay he should be working on. He's far away from the first-years who like to congregate by the windows and watch the leaves fall softly to the ground rather than study for their classes. He's made especially sure that he is far, far away from her.

It's not his choice, mind you, but he needs to be a gentleman about these things. If she needs some time and space to figure out that she's as crazy for him as he is her, fine. But even Sebastian Sallow's patience runs thin, and he's not sure how much longer he can give her to come to her senses before he snaps and takes matters into his own hands. If things were up to him, the two of them would be sitting far too close together now in this secluded corner, and maybe he would need to put a hand over her mouth to ensure her complete silence as he runs a hand up her thigh.

Now that he knows what delicious sounds can come out of her mouth - sounds that he caused - he's been having a hard time concentrating on, well, anything. Sebastian surreptitiously glances across the library to where she's sitting and studying with his sister and Imelda. Ever since the events after their Divination class, Sir Cadogan has taken it upon himself to follow Sebastian around the halls of the castle, tripping through frames and disrupting their inhabitants as he lectures Sebastian on love. The tea party women had managed to convince the knight that he had disrupted an amorous exchange, and Sebastian fervently wishes they hadn't.

The whole school is abuzz with rumors about who it could be. Nobody has even come close so far with their guesses, but Anne and Imelda are having too much fun teasing him about it. Somehow, she has managed to avoid suspicion - he wonders how this is even possible, since she's never been able to hide what she's thinking. He makes eye contact with her - has she been staring at him this whole time? - and she flushes before looking over to Imelda, who's laughing too loudly at something Anne's just said. Sebastian can't tear his eyes away from her profile, his eyes following the curve of her eyebrow, the slight upturn of her lips as she smiles at her friends, her eyes as they dart back to him, her cheeks as she turns an even darker shade of red as she realizes he's still watching her. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and rests her chin on her hand as she tries to look absorbed in what Anne is saying to her.

Sebastian wonders if she's thought about him as much as he's thought about her. Judging by how she had snogged him back, he's positive that she feels the same way, but then he remembers how she had looked at him before she fled, and he's not so sure. He sighs as he looks back to his list, bringing his quill back to the third item and ripping the paper as he crosses it out again. His mind has been going in circles since that moment and he doesn't know what to think. He slowly puts everything into his schoolbag before heading out of the library for yet another freezing cold shower that hopefully tempers his now-permanent state of arousal whenever she's around.

He doesn't notice her eyes following him as he walks out of the library.

He doesn't hear her hurried excuse to Anne and Imelda as she shoves her things into her bag and rushes to follow him.

He doesn't hear her light footsteps as she gets closer to him.

When she puts a hand out to touch his arm as he waits for the moving staircase to stop, with a soft, "Sebastian" accompanying it, he nearly jumps out of his skin. He was so absorbed with thoughts of her, that to see her standing at his side, closer than she had been since they kissed was almost his snapping point.

"Can we talk?" she asks, looking almost embarrassed as she avoids his eyes. She instead looks determinedly at his collar. He thinks she probably notices that he swallows nervously before acquiescing, but she says nothing as she turns and starts hurrying away from him without waiting to see if he follows her.

She must know that he would follow her anywhere at this point.

They weave through hallways - Sebastian vaguely wonders where exactly they're going - before reaching a little alcove, hidden by a suit of armor. She looks around before pulling him into it. It's almost curfew and the halls are never that busy when the weather is as beautiful as it has been these days - the end of September seems to be clinging on to the summer for as long as possible.

Her lips are on his before he can even ask her what she needed to talk with him about, hungry and desperate. Sebastian is too stunned to pull away - not that he would actually want to. Her arms wrap around his neck, keeping Sebastian close, slender fingers sliding through his hair.

"What," she says breathlessly between kisses - almost not even moving her mouth away from his enough to be able to enunciate properly, "are you doing to me? I haven't been able to think for the last month."

Sebastian smiles into her mouth, wondering if she knows that she's repeating the very thing he told her two weeks ago. Maybe she has been thinking of him all this time - he almost hopes that she's been suffering as much as he has. Instead of responding, he moves a hand to cup her jaw, deepening the kiss. His other hand moves to her waist, gripping it tightly, pulling her flush against his body and she gasps into his mouth. He slowly moves her closer to the window alcove behind them, snogging her senseless the whole time. She moans into his mouth which just spurs him on further - her skirt rides up to her hips as Sebastian trails a hand up her stockinged thigh and they both gasp when his hand reaches skin. Her skin is so, so soft and her breathing gets faster as he continues to caress her inner thigh, closer to the bend between her thigh and her center. Sebastian wonders if she's ever been touched there before by someone else and jealousy flares up inside of him at the thought.

In one swift move, he scoops her up and places her so that she's sitting on the window-ledge, the dusky light of the sunset illuminating her from behind and making her wispy flyaway hairs a golden halo around her. Sebastian's breath catches in his throat - has he ever seen anything so beautiful as her in that moment? - she's staring up at him, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, her breathing shallow and anticipation in her eyes. "You're," he starts saying and his throat goes dry. He brings a hand up to tuck the errant lock of hair - the one she had tucked earlier in the library - behind her ear and she leans her head into his touch, closing her eyes briefly before looking up at him again with wide eyes. "You're perfect."

She smiles faintly and pulls his head back down towards hers and now she's brushing her lips against his, teasing him, before it's too much and he grips the back of her head, holding her in place as he crushes his mouth against hers in a bruising kiss. Her knees are on either side of his waist, and she desperately grinds her core against his throbbing erection and they both groan at the friction. Sebastian moves his hands down to her thighs again as he kisses her, slowly caressing his way up and pushing her skirt up further until it's completely bunched around her waist. She gasps into his mouth at his first tentative touch after he pushes aside her undergarments. Sebastian swipes a finger up her slit, through the slick that coats it, and then he starts circling her clit with slow, even strokes. She shivers against him - at his touch - clinging tightly to his shoulders and gasping into his mouth as he continues.

Every little noise coming out of her mouth, feeling how wet she is, how the slickness keeps growing growing growing makes Sebastian hungry for more - it isn't enough -

Slowly - so slowly - he wants to savor this moment - he lowers himself until he's kneeling between her legs and he looks up at her. Her face is deliciously flushed, all swollen lips and hair in a wild cloud around her face and all she can do is stare down at him. Her chest is heaving and she tries to close her legs - hide what is exposed to him - but he holds her thighs firmly in place on either side of his head. He turns his head and kisses her inner thigh, maintaining eye contact as he swipes his tongue across where he's just kissed, moving closer towards her slick center.

"Oh," she breathes, not-quite-a-word, not-quite-a-gasp, when his mouth reaches her center and hovers over it, lips slowly teasing her the way she had just teased him. Sebastian tentatively runs his tongue up her slit; the loud moan she lets out when he reaches her clit makes him stay there, applying light and not-so-light pressure in equal measure.

Her hands are scrabbling at his hair, digging into his scalp, ruining his earlier attempts to make it look presentable, hopefully attractive, for her these days. She's pushing his head deeper into the space between her legs, starting to rock herself slightly on his mouth, and Sebastian is happy to oblige. He eagerly laps up her slit, and the obscene wet noises as he continues combined with her whimpers and barely-spoken profanities "oh-yes-fuck-yes-there-please-" are making him hard beyond belief. He's straining against his trousers, begging to be let free. Without moving his face from her, he unbuttons his trousers and starts palming himself, using the slickness weeping out of the tip as lubrication.

She's abandoned all control at this point, grinding herself into his face as he laps her up, and it's driving him wild - knowing that he's doing this to her - causing her to be so undone. Normally she's so poised and aloof, never letting any real emotion flicker across her face, so to see her so desperate and needy and wanting him so -

Sebastian's gasping into her, tongue deep inside of her, "ohmygod" he hears her whisper, her hips driving into his face when she shudders and goes still, pulsing around the tongue that's deep inside of it. He slows down, smiling as he continues to run his tongue up her slit until she's responsive again. He kisses her inner thigh and hears her moan before getting up, caressing a finger down her love-struck face and leaning his head down to kiss her deeply. With his other hand he's still touching himself - the thought that she can taste herself on his tongue driving him crazy - and he starts rubbing its blunt head against her swollen clit. She takes it out of his hand- he groans at the feeling of her soft hands (the hands he had held a week ago in Divination and pictured doing this exact thing) tentatively caressing his length before she begins to slide it up and down her slit, coating it in her wetness.

Sebastian has surrendered all control to her - resting his hands on either side of her hips on the windowsill, tucking his head into the crook of her neck and thrusting with her movements as he loses himself in the sensation of sliding through her slick folds. He can feel his release building building building, and when he finally comes, all over her perfect, pink center, it feels like a finally.

Sebastian feels so, so heavy as he pulls his head away from her shoulder, as if he could fall into a blissful sleep right there, in the little window alcove where they've hidden themselves away. The sun has now set completely and they're in shadow as they stare at each other, the sound of their ragged breathing filling the tiny space.

"Sebastian, I..."

She's staring at him with an unfathomable expression on her face, still holding him in her hand, her other hand playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. They look down and he feels his face heat up even more at the mess he's made - he quickly pulls out his wand and cleans her up, before looking back at her, giving her a wry smile as he buttons up his pants and helps her off the ledge. "What did you want to talk to me about, again?"

She gives a slight shake of her head and looks away, but she can't hide the small smile that's growing on her face just like she can't help her eyes that keep wandering over to his. He knows the growing smile on his face matches hers - did that really just happen? She reaches over to lace her fingers through his as they walk around the suit of armor. "I - it's not important."

"Come on," he says, not being able to resist the opportunity to tease her - he's somehow managed to break through the barriers she's set up around her, and he's not about to let the opportunity slide. "Surely that's not what you had in mind when you..."

Sebastian trails off as he sees the expression in her face turn to one of horror - he didn't think his teasing was that bad, was it? - but she's also pulling her hand out of his like she's been burned and -

He follows her gaze, to where it's fixed at the end of the hallway and he knows that once again his face mimics hers. He will never live this down.

Standing at the end of the hallway and looking like two cats who've just found a huge dish of milk, are his sister and Imelda.

Misery.

Complete and utter misery are what she's feeling, if she has to put it into words, which she does. Writing things down always helps her out, helps her organize her thoughts into some sort of order. Except...this time around, it's not really helping. She can't seem to make any sense of her feelings for Sebastian.

She looks over the muddled mess of words she's written down - stream of consciousness, incomprehensible babble - and sighs. She's been dreaming of falling in love since she was a young girl - Jane Austen will do that to you - and can't believe that now that she's had her opportunity, it has to go and be with Sebastian Sallow. Because it has to be love, hasn't it?

There can be no other explanation for the painful way her stomach twists itself up whenever she catches a glimpse of him these days, the way he's consuming her every thought - even when she's dreaming she can't escape him. She can't get the sight of his tousled curls between her legs, his mischievous, warm brown eyes looking up at her as she had the most mind-numbing, toe-curling orgasm of her life - none of the times she's touched herself have ever come close to the sensations he managed to evoke.

Every time she's walking through the hallways between classes and hears his loud voice as he jokes with Garreth, or Ominis, about quidditch or Merlin-knows-what her eyes snap to his face as if he were the sun, and she a sunflower searching for its warmth. And he is most decidedly not the sun. He has the tendency to snort when he laughs, and he laughs too much, especially at his own jokes. Sometimes he talks while he eats. He always twirls his quill between his long fingers in the most annoying way, splattering ink onto any parchment unfortunate to be caught underneath. But he also...

He also always goes out of his way to prepare Ominis's Potions ingredients (why Ominis decided to take and was accepted into NEWT level is a mystery to everyone), occasionally stops to play a round of gobstones with Zenobia when he has the time. Sebastian can often be found in his favorite armchair in the Slytherin common room, resting his face on his hand as he idly flips through the pages of some book, looking altogether too handsome as he does so. And when he stretches and yawns at the end of every Arithmancy lesson - like he is now - his shirt lifts up a bit and she can see a tan sliver of his stomach and -

Snapping in front of her: she blinks and looks over: when she sees it's Imelda her face immediately turns beet red and she grabs the paper she's been doodling on and rips it to shreds as fast as she can.

"Are you fantasizing about a certain annoying someone?" Imelda asks with a wicked grin, dramatically looking over her shoulder at the certain someone in question. He's still stretching, blinking sleepily; when he notices the two girls watching him he flushes deeply. Her stomach twinges again at the sight of him noticing her - has he thought about her since that moment as much as she has? What would she do if he had? Or...if he hadn't? - and she focuses instead on the paper she is currently destroying.

"Imelda," she hisses, glaring at her best friend, "stop."

Imelda does not stop.

Imelda doesn't stop during their walk to Herbology, and she does not stop as they set up their planting stations, and she most certainly does not stop as they mutter charms over their plants.

Ever since she experienced the most wonderful moment in her whole life, followed by the most mortifying, Anne and Imelda have not stopped pestering her about it. They've finally solved the 'Sir Cadogan Puzzle' - I knew it was you all along, claims Anne - but if they truly knew what had happened between her and Sebastian, she's afraid the two of them would simply combust. She loves them dearly, but they never know when to stop, and they've been pushing and poking and prodding her for more information the whole week. She has managed to remain tight-lipped and, she hopes, mysterious about the whole thing, but she's getting tired of the teasing.

"Really," Anne says, wiping her forehead and leaving a trail of dirt behind, "if you would only talk to him, I would stop bothering you. Promise."

"Yes," chimes in Imelda, on her other side, wrestling the leaves of her own plant into submission. "You know, after we saw the two of you holding hands and looking at each other with stars in your eyes, I'm really starting to doubt that you hate him as much as you claim."

"Were the two of you snogging in secret all of last year too? Because, I'm starting to get annoyed thinking of all the times I had to talk to my brother for you because of your stubborn pride."

Does she still hate him? She certainly thinks she should, but then her thoughts get terribly confusing as she continues to think about him, and she realizes all of her old hatred has long since faded. Anne has forgiven her brother, Ominis has forgiven him, and all that remains is her.

They should talk, but she doesn't know what to say.

She's afraid that maybe the man she's been inventing in her mind this past month is simply a figment of her imagination - a fictitious being created by an accumulation of stolen glances when he doesn't know she's watching, someone who all of their classmates seem to like, someone who is very different from the fifteen-year-old boy she had that terrible argument with all that time ago. Maybe he doesn't actually exist.

She would be crushed if he's hiding the fact that he still holds on to that desperate darkness that had driven him to save Anne by any means necessary.

And so she keeps her space. She watches him from afar, feeling the hatred slowly melt off of her, falling more in love every day, but too cowardly to make the next move.

Anne and Imelda continue bantering on either side of her, not noticing - or, more likely, not caring - that she isn't participating.

Sebastian's hands are sweating. He wipes them on the inside of his robes as he glances at the girl next to him. She's holding herself rigidly, but she did this to herself, sitting next to him at dinner as she had.

Well, sitting next to him hadn't been completely her idea if he's being honest. He'd been having dinner with Anne, and the two of them were dying of laughter as she recounted seeing Duncan Hobhouse get tormented by Peeves earlier that day. One moment, Anne had been demonstrating what she had seen using her potatoes and green beans as props, and the next, a particularly evil grin had lit up her face as she pushed her plate away with gusto and jumped to her feet, calling her over.

"It would be such a shame for these potatoes to go to waste, seeing as I have a very important meeting to attend," Anne had said, after pushing her friend into the very tight space at Sebastian's side. "Never mind the mess, I can assure you I didn't actually eat the food..."

And with that, Anne had flounced away, Imelda on her arm, the two girls cackling to each other as they snuck wicked glances over their shoulders at the couple.

A couple who is now steadfastly avoiding each other and trying their hardest not to even brush elbows. Sebastian is altogether too aware of her presence, has been for the better part of a month, and his patience is dangerously close to snapping. He keeps getting maddeningly close to finally getting her to open up to him - had actually achieved it for a few blissful moments - just to have it be taken away again. It's almost embarrassing how many times he's thought about their encounter. She had been everything he'd been dreaming about and more - soft, responsive, just as desperate as him - so why has she been avoiding him so thoroughly?

Yes, he's caught her staring at him more times than he can count, with that same unfathomable expression she had before, almost dreamy - wistful - could it be love? But he knows that it's preposterous, wishful thinking on his part. If it were love - if she felt the same crazy, tumultuous emotions that he was feeling constantly - she wouldn't be so cold towards him. Even if she was staring at him more than ever before.

He doesn't notice as she slips a folded paper into the book sitting next to his plate, but he does notice that she sits next to him for barely five minutes, not even touching the food that Anne has so graciously left her, before she gets up and slips away without so much as speaking a single word to him, or even looking in his direction at all.

Sebastian's sitting in a nearly empty common room after curfew, flipping through his book as he normally does this time of day, when she sees him pause.

Although she's been waiting for this moment, watching him from the corner she's tucked herself away in, she feels ready to pass out from nerves. Her heart's ready to burst out of her chest as she watches him curiously pick up the letter she slipped in his book earlier, brow furrowed. She wrings her hands nervously as she watches him read the letter and flip over the page to see if there's more, and then he goes back to read it again from the beginning.

She wasn't expecting him to read it a second time, let alone a third time, still with an inscrutable expression on his face. Maybe she should have positioned herself closer so she could see every emotion flickering through his face as he reads - she's too far away to see anything and she curses her lack of foresight. If she moves now, he'll see her, and she doesn't even know what she was thinking when she wrote the letter, when she managed to convince Anne to help her get close to Sebastian earlier that night during supper, when she moved herself to sit in this corner just so she could watch him find and read the -

"Hello."

She nearly jumps out of her skin with a muffled shriek at the sound of his voice so close to her. Why does she feel almost guilty when she looks up at him? She's so, so afraid.

Emotions have never come easily to her. Showing them is something she's not sure will ever come naturally - Anne and Imelda can laugh and shout without a care in the world, but she always holds herself back. Hides a small part of herself away, that only she knows about. Baring herself completely to Sebastian in the letter she feverishly wrote the day before was like ripping out a part of her soul and giving it to him to keep. Once the words were written down, there was no way to take them back, not that she wants to.

But what if he rejects her?

Her eyes get hot and tears cloud her vision as she stares up at him, still wringing her hands together over and over, feeling like she's positively going to burst with the force of the emotions roiling around inside of her. Why did she think this would be a good idea?

Now he's kneeling in front of her, holding her hands in his bigger, rougher ones - reminiscent of that fateful day so long ago in Divination when he had flustered her so - and a thumb is gently wiping away the big, fat tears she didn't even realize were rolling down her cheeks and she lifts her face from watching their intertwined hands and gazes tremulously into his eyes.

They are so, so gentle and warm and full of love, but the emotions are still too much for her and she can't stop crying for some unfathomable reason, so the kiss they share is wet and lovely and full of incredulous laughter.

"I love you too," he whispers between kisses, over and over again, until the words almost lose meaning - but these words could never lose their meaning when they come from him.

  In the years to come, they always bicker about who was the first to say it. Sebastian says that writing doesn't count - that his words are the ones that decide who is the victor in this small argument - but she always just smiles at his insistence, knowing that he's kept her letter tucked inside whatever book he's reading since it first fell onto his lap.

[keeksandgigz]

somewhere we can be alone

stage manager!eddie munson x theatre kid!fem!reader

a collab with @reidsbtch- mariah is literally the best person to collab with, it's like our brains were making out the whole time we were writing this. thank u for letting me collab with you to write this absolutely not self indulgent, way too long fic together <3

summary: Now on the tail end of graduating, Eddie Munson is required to take part in an extracurricular activity. He's assigned as stage manager for the school's production of Romeo and Juliet. You, the star of the show, aren't too happy to have your senior performance sabotaged by one long- haired metalhead.

word count: 7.7k words

warnings: no y/n, no physical description of reader, swearing, oral (m & f receiving), enemies to fuck buddies to lovers, mentions of queer!reader, it's actually just fucking smut, fingering, unprotected piv (wrap it up), cream pie, use of nicknames (baby, sweets, sweetheart etc), eddie being a stupid lovable idiot

This and all of mine and mariah's works are 18+ minors do NOT interact

He’s been slumped in the guidance counselor’s office for thirty minutes, the wooden chair digging into his bones, growing uncomfortable as he listens to her, hardly believing he’s so close to leaving this fucking school himself.

“You’re keeping up your grades and maintaining regular attendance, Eddie. You’re just missing one last thing to be able to graduate.”

He rubs his face, maybe from the lack of sleep, or the restlessness of finally being able to leave the office he spent way too much time in during the past six years, as long as he keeps showing up to school for the next two months. He groans regardless.

“What would this ‘last thing’ be? Am I gonna be sent on a quest to slay a fucking dragon? Is that what’s gonna take me to graduate?” He snaps, the lack of sleep has finally gotten to him– school doesn’t really appeal to his late bird nature.

The counselor gasps at the crudeness of the profanity “Language!” She exclaims, like he’s never heard that before, daring to swear in front of students, staff and faculty alike, but the blonde lady with the ridiculously coiffed and teased and sprayed hair composes herself again, jutting a look down to his student folder again.

He imagines it to be full of red pen marks, every single one of those a proof of his own failure. He’ll steal it the day he graduates– and set it on fire. Hell, he’ll even roast marshmallows on it.

“Anyways,” she explains in a way that really shows the massive stick up her ass that makes her think Eddie should just stop bothering with school altogether. “You have to partake in an extracurricular activity.”

And he chortles. He was thinking something dreadful like picking trash up at the park or feeding and bathing the old people at the retirement home.

“Something funny, Mr. Munson?” Her nostrils are flared, she can’t wait ‘til he leaves her office.

“So like- like drama club and shit?” His tone is incredulous, he can deal with a couple lines to memorize. He’s had to do way worse for his Dungeon Master role, and even then, Miss George likes him– she’s let him and the club play DnD in her room for the past two years. Should be easy.

The counselor takes her glasses off her pointy nose, letting them hang with a tacky pink, flowery chain around her neck. “Well, yes– that’s one of the options. Unfortunately, your GPA is not high enough for you to partake in the school play, per se, so I can only place you in the backstage crew– building sets and moving things around. We’ll put that brain of yours to work.” She chuckles as she hands him a slip of paper to give to Miss George.

Eddie picks up his bag, “Real funny, huh.” He shrugs his shoulders and heads to the school auditorium. Last time he was there he’d gotten caught by a custodian while Terry Richardson’s face was stuck in between his legs, trousers pulled down halfway down his thighs as she gave him a toothy blowjob. He got suspended for a week.

He sees Miss George sat in the audience, scribbling notes onto a notepad as you recite the famous balcony monologue from Romeo and Juliet. He knows you, he’s seen you around– you’re by no means in the popular crowd, but you stand out, in the way that your clothes always seem to border the fine line of what's socially acceptable and outrageously eccentric.

Even if you’re not part of the popular crowd, there’s no denying that, like the rest of the school, you avoid him like the plague, cute as he is. You interrupt your monologue as you see him smirk down the central aisle of chairs. Miss George turns around at the sudden interruption. Eddie just hands her the slip.

“Oh my goodness!” she coos, “We have a stage manager.” And he wishes he could have photographed the look on your face. “Stage manager?! Miss George, you can’t be serious!” You exclaim as Eddie takes a seat next to her, kicking his boots up on the back of the chair in front of him.

A smirk ever present on his face as he crosses his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow at you. “He doesn’t have any experience.” You continue, not about to have your senior year performance ruined by Eddie Munson of all people. “Shouldn't be that hard to keep a diva like yourself in line, hmm?”

Eddie answers before Miss George has a chance to, the theater now going quiet except for a few snickers from the tech crew. “Alright, that’s enough from the both of you. Eddie, I’ll have our ASM get you up to speed. Now, please continue with the monologue.” The male only grins wider as you glare back, before looking back down at your script with a sigh.

He ventures backstage– not sure what ASM stands for and maybe too embarrassed to ask as he sees kids dressed in black moving wooden planks onto the stage, carrying cans of paints and brushes.

He taps a kid on his shoulder, arranging a prop table, he looks at Eddie like he’s seen a ghost.

“I was looking for the ASM?” The kid is looking side to side, still wondering why Eddie Munson is talking to him.

“Uhhh, she’s in the booth.” He mutters, before turning around and going back to his props. What the fuck is a booth?

Eddie just plainly decides to look for it himself, since nobody’s any fucking help in this school. He opens door after door- a storage closet, a closet just for wood, a bathroom. Arrived at the last door, he isn’t exactly sure he’s ever going to find this stupid ASM- and he still doesn’t know what that stands for.

The noise of a door opening startles you, as you try to put on your dress as quickly as you can to avoid flashing someone. It’s only when you see who it is that you start screaming, and with you, Eddie just pops a hand in front of his eyes, screaming a string of sorries, and that he hasn’t seen anything.

“I was just looking for the booth! Stop screaming!” he screeches, worried he’s gonna get himself in trouble with Miss George if she hears you screaming like you’re getting skinned alive. Thankfully, you stop, as Eddie looks away, aware of your exposed back peeking through the zipper. You clutch the fabric against you, struggling to zip up the back of your dress one-handed.

Eddie makes a whistling sound, distracting himself from the way you seem to be teetering between asking for his help and telling him to fuck off.

“The door to the booth is in the audience, by the way. Off to the side, there’s some stairs.” You huff, slightly getting your zipper up. He goes to turn around, but you stop him. He cocks an eyebrow.

You roll your eyes, lips in a thin line as you keep the door open with one hand.

“Can you make yourself useful and help me with my zipper?”

With an annoyed huff he steps fully into the dressing room, shutting the door behind him as you turn your back towards him once more. Carefully clutching the dress, your eyes meeting his in the long row of vanity mirrors in front of you. You can feel his warm breath on your neck as he steps closer, carefully lifting your hair over your shoulder.

Eddie’s fingers follow the seam of the unzipped garment, barely tracing the bare skin of your back. You try to hold off the shiver from passing through you as he slowly begins zipping it up. A hint of a smirk on his mouth as he notices the goosebumps breaking out across your skin. “Anything else princess? Or am I free to go?”

His fingers now fall away from you, clearing your throat as you try to shake off the arousal that was now coursing through your veins. You wouldn’t let him have the satisfaction of knowing how frazzled he had just made you.

Instead of answering, you just groan, eyes lifted up, going past him and clocking him in the shoulder as you headed back on stage. God you were fucking insufferable.

Eddie finds out that ASM means Assistant Stage Manager and that said ASM was none other than Max Mayfield, roped into doing theatre tech for extra credit. And that the booth was where they tampered with the lights and shit. All he had to do as Stage Manager for that rehearsal was oversee the light cues, which proved to be a little more complicated than he initially expected.

He messes up most of the cues in the first act before he finally seems to have gotten a grasp of it. All the while you’re tossing glares his way, using the light cues as an excuse for the harsh looks. But really it’s due to your annoyance at how the mere brush of his fingertips left you wanting more. Wanting more of him, despite your better judgment– you were not about to have him ruin your senior show.

And in spite of that, you closely follow Eddie’s actions. In a lull between scenes he stands up, you follow him with your eyes as he enters back into the auditorium, beelining backstage.

Eddie’s not totally sure what shit designer built the theatre, because he might as well have pissed himself on the way between the booth and the only bathroom in the auditorium. Not only that, but he kept missing cue after cue, followed by the dirtiest looks known to man, straight into his eyes. After the encounter you had in the dressing room– fingers caressing the soft skin of your back, feeling you shiver under his touch, he knew he had some kind of leverage over you.

So when he’s done taking a leak and looks down at the door, he’s sure you’re behind it, slipping a little piece of paper in the crack.

Meet me in the booth after rehearsal. XX

Eddie wouldn’t say he was nervous, his curiosity was piqued more than anything. However, he’s antsy the last half of the show, leg bouncing as he tries to listen and follow Max’s instructions. The girl gives him an annoyed lecture in between cues. But his mind’s a little preoccupied, trying to figure out what exactly you want from him.

So when he re-enters the dark light booth once everyone else has left, he doesn’t expect you to shove him up against the door, locking it with a swift click. His breath hitches in his throat, both in confusion, and at the fact that you’re fumbling with his belt, despite the dirty looks you’ve been giving him the whole afternoon.

“What uh- what are you doing?” His tone is alarmed, stammering as he tries to grab onto the door handle for purchase. You’re too busy getting his jeans down to bother.

“Sucking you off. That okay?” You look at him for a reassurance that comes almost immediately with a violent nod of his head.

He’s confused, but he’s not going to turn you down. After all, he felt the way you tensed under his touch while he was pulling up your zipper, “Shit, fine by me.” He shrugs, acting like he isn’t busting at the seams waiting for you to pull down his pants.

Eddie’s belt makes a clinking sound, along with his wallet chain while you pull his pants down to his thighs. You move his trembling body away from the door, against the table with the light console. His knuckles turn white as he grabs the edges on the table for support.

Gripping the hem of his checkered boxers, freeing his hardened length. Your eyes widening slightly at the sight of it, he’s big— a lot bigger than you expected. Even in the dim lighting he notices your shocked expression.

“Ya gonna just stare at it all night sweetheart?” He asks, a smug smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he looks down at you. You shoot another glare his way, before grasping the base of his cock in your fist, licking a long stripe up the shaft. Feeling satisfied as you hear his shaky intake of breath. Eagerly you take him past your lips, as a low groan leaves his own.

“Shit,” he curses as your warm mouth envelops him fully, ringed fingers knotting themselves in your hair. You open your mouth as wide as you can, taking him deeper. Gagging slightly as he hits the back of your throat, tears brimming in the corner of your eyes as you try to adjust to his size. He’s by far the biggest one you’ve had.

“Talked such a big game with that mouth of yours sweetness, am I too much for you?” Your fingers dig into the skin of his thighs, his cock slipping from your lips as you pull back.

“Do you ever shut the fuck up Munson?” You huff, but before he can reply with another snarky remark your tongue is swirling around the tip of his cock. Silencing him for a moment as you take him back into your mouth.

Another string of curses falls from his lips, as his hips begin thrusting into your mouth with an abandon you haven’t seen before. Your cheeks are hollowed and he can feel himself getting embarrassingly close.

“F-fuck where- where’d you learn all of this?” It comes out in broken pants, and he can feel a smirk forming on your lips as you take him out a second time.

“One thing about theatre people is that we’re all gonna fuck each other. You should see how I eat pussy,” you shrug, putting him back in your mouth, and Eddie swears he’s about to bust in less than a minute.

“I’m gonna- fuck.” But he doesn’t get to finish that sentence, as you take him out of your mouth and stand back up.

Eddie’s bewildered expression is easy to read as he looks at you like you shot his dog. But you get close, dangerously close to his lips, your nose almost bumping his.

“That’s for fucking up my light cue, idiot,” it’s a feeble whisper against his lips before you’re gone into the darkness of the theatre. Too shocked to react, Eddie’s left with his pants pulled down for a good two minutes before registering what happened.

So he’s left blue balled in that stupid light booth, fuming and confused. There was no way in hell he would let you treat him like that and walk away the way you did.

Eddie had been scheming all week between rehearsals, attempting to find a good time to get you alone. He wasn’t about to let you get away with leaving him like that, but you were actively avoiding him.

But an opportunity fell into his lap without any effort on his part, Miss George asking you to stay behind to work on some blocking with her. As the stage manager he was required to stay behind too, his mind already reeling with possibilities.

So when you duck behind the curtain to change out of your costume, Eddie is quick to swoop in. Offering to shut down the lights and lock up, and Miss George is more than willing to let him.

By the time you get back on stage the theater is dark, the ghost light shining brightly center stage. “Eddie? Miss George?” You call out into the darkness, getting complete silence in return.

“Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding.” You groan, clutching the strap of your book bag tightly. Of course he’d leave you in the dark theater to fend for yourself. “Asshole.” You mumble under your breath, reaching your hand out in front of you as you make your way across the dark stage.

You’ve bumped into multiple set pieces at this point, as you attempted to find the stairs leading down to the audience in complete darkness. Your frustration grows with each passing minute, that is until you hear the shuffling of feet.

“Hello?” You call out again, squinting as if it would help you see any better. Fear stirs in your gut as the theater is silent once more, shadows seeming to come to life in the corner of your eyes.

Once you finally reach the edge of the stage, you grip onto the railing tightly as you fumble your way down the stairs. Sighing in relief as you feel the carpet beneath your feet.

You only make it a few steps further before you feel a hand snaking around your waist, pulling you back into a hard chest. The other hand cupping itself over your mouth to muffle the scream that leaves your lips.

“Screaming for me already sweets? Haven’t even touched you yet.” His voice is mocking, his warm breath fanning across your neck as he laughs. You quickly squirm out of his grasp, a flashlight clicking on to illuminate his stupidly gorgeous features.

“You fucking psychopath! What were you thinking?” you shove him on the shoulder, he laughs as he zeroes in the flashlight on you, red in the face and furious.

“Had to get back at you for how much of a little tease you were the other day,” he croons. You purse your lips together, a deep blush spreading across your cheeks as you try to stabilize your still quickly beating heart.

“Whatever. Fuck you, Eddie.” You spit, but he’s quick to grab your arm and push it behind your back, the flashlight hitting the ground and rolling under one of the seats. His chest is pressed against your shoulder blades as you shudder in his arms.

“You’re not getting away so easily, sweetness.” He breathes against your earlobe as you keen into the warmth of his chest, his nose buried in the crook of your neck as his free hand goes to your waist.

“This okay?” he murmurs, and you nod. A sharp nip to your earlobe makes you hiss.

“I can’t fucking see you nod, can I?” You can tell he’s having too much fun torturing you, feeling his hand travel all across your torso and chest.

“N-No,” you whimper.

“Exactly. Try that again,” his hand rests against the waistband of your jeans, awaiting an answer, teasing the skin behind the fabric. The tips of his fingers brush the skin there, making you whimper in response.

“This is okay.” you breathe out, and it’s the only answer he needs to slip his hand past your jeans, unbuttoning the offending material to push his hand further down into your pants.

“That’s a good girl,” he whispers against your ear as his hand cups your clothed core. You waste no time grinding against the heel of his palm, letting small, breathy moans escape you. Afraid to get caught in the dead of night getting touched and fondled by the town pariah.

“You sound so pretty singing for me, don’t you sweets?” he whispers smugly. His hand feels a little too good against you, your hips grinding back and forth following the rhythm he was creating, “Hmm, but I think you can be a little louder.”

You gasp as he slips his hand inside your panties, his calloused fingers encircling your swollen clit. Your head falls back onto his shoulder, your hand gripping onto his thigh. His digits dip lower, teasing your entrance before slipping one inside and curling them up.

You can’t stop the shaky cry from leaving your lips, the sound now filling the auditorium. A smirk tugs at his mouth, using the heel of his palm to press against your clit. “Listen to that… you’ve got such a pretty voice don’t you?”

You dig your nails into the denim covering his thigh, a low groan sounding in his throat. “Wonder what it sounds like when you beg,” he easily adds another finger inside your wet cunt, thrusting them deeper. “N-Never gonna happen Munson.”

Eddie laughs, pulling another moan from you as his other hand drifts up under your shirt to cup your breast. “We’ll see about that.”

His breath is fanning hot and humid against your neck as you reach around to bring his head closer, needing him to be closer.

Nothing he’s saying is registering in your brain, as his fingers pump in and out of you with a torturous pace, feeling his wolfish grin plastered against the skin of your cheek.

He’s watching your every move, your every breath and whimper, biting his lip at the way your eyes roll to the back of your head every time his fingers curl up in a certain manner. You don’t think you have much time left before you release yourself all over his hand, and he knows it.

From the way you keep twitching and tightening around his fingers, he feels you’re getting close, but much like you did that night in the booth, he won’t let you get it that easily.

“Y’close sweets?” he groans, his own hips now grinding against the swell of your ass.

“Uh-huh,” is all you can manage to say, brain scrambled from his words and ministrations.

“You know what you gotta do now, don’t you, pretty?” he bites at the hinge of your jaw, as you cry out, the noise echoing in the empty theatre.

“You gotta beg for it.” And he hears you gasp at that, a dry chuckle leaves his lips. “You didn’t think I was gonna make you cum that easy did you?”

“Mmm- fuck you, Munson.” you struggle against your brain’s desire to one up him and your body’s desire for release.

“C’mon, don’t you want to cum? I bet you’re so pent up from a whole day of staring at me building sets, aren’t you?” and he’s right, your eyes did wander to his arms in his tight fitting t-shirt, with his hair tied up in a low bun as he hammered nails into wooden boards.

His fingers speed up and you can feel it, you’re so, so close.

“Please, let me,” you whine into his arm, biting at the muscle there. You’re getting so loud.

“That’s right, keep begging for me– good girl gettin’ nice and loud for me,” it’s a growl at this point, a string of please please please follow it. Tears pricking at your eyes with how intensely good he’s making you feel.

So close, so close–

He removes his fingers, jerking you out of that hazy state you were previously in. The male now removes himself from you, retrieving the flashlight from under the seat. Your chest is heaving as you turn to face him, anger now coursing through you as he grins devilishly down at you.

“How cute, you thought I was actually gonna let you cum with how you left me the other day?” Eddie’s laughter fills the theater as he steps closer to you. Your bodies almost touching, lifting his fingers that were just inside you up to your lips.

The brunette carefully drummed the digits against your mouth, “Now, be a good girl and clean up the mess you made.” You glare as you let his fingers slip into your mouth, swirling your tongue around them in a teasing manner.

You noticed how his breath hitches, his cock straining uncomfortably in his jeans. But there’s no way that you’re helping him out with his little problem now. You playfully bite his fingers that are still in your mouth, as he utters an annoyed ‘ouch’ before taking them back out.

His fingers make their way to your scalp– yanking at the hair, making you hiss. “You think you’re fucking cute? I’ll see you tomorrow after rehearsal,” his tone makes you tremble, as he takes his hand out of your hair and disappears into the darkness of the theatre, leaving you once again in the dark.

You stumble down the side stairs of the stage and get out of the side door, quickly making your way home.

And it becomes a regular thing, you and Eddie blue balling each other to the point of frustration, like it’s a sick and twisted power game you both play. After rehearsal he offers to lock up for Miss George and you wait for him in one of the dressing rooms, or in the dimly lit booth. He’s become irritable, and you have as well.

If you were insufferable before, now you’re downright hateful as you yell at the light crew to stop messing up your spotlight moment, or that your costume felt too constricting or your prop too flimsy.

Everything has you on edge, but you don’t hesitate to meet Eddie every night that week after rehearsal. Maybe he’ll let you cum this time.

You wait for him backstage, sitting on one of the set pieces, a throne. There’s a dim overhead light shining on you. Eddie’s lip is caught between his teeth as he looks at you on his Dungeon Master throne.

“Get up.” he commands. The shirt he’s wearing is tight, it makes his shoulders look more prominent. You squeeze your legs together.

“Why should I? My legs are tired from being on my feet all rehearsal,” you give him a fake pout as he inches towards you.

“Because that’s my Dungeon Master throne,” it sounds funny coming out of his mouth, voice low and gravelly “It’s mine.”

You chuckle a bit at that, how is this man being territorial over a set piece?

“And what if I said no?” a smile trapped in between your teeth, looking up at him through your lashes.

A dry laugh escapes him as he crosses his arms, “You’re so spoiled huh? Think you can always get your way? Last time I checked, this week it’s been the total opposite, hasn’t it?” and he’s not wrong, he’s given you all but what you want.

“This is my theatre, Munson. I believe you’re on my turf.” and he laughs at that, like you’ve said some kind of joke.

“You do theatre, sweetheart, c’mon you can’t be serious.” he kneels in front of you, grabbing your thighs and moving them apart with ease.

“Don’t be a bitch, Munson.” you hiss, as you feel his lips on your exposed thighs, kissing the skin there.

He whistles, low and sardonic. A wicked smile on his lips “That’s rich coming from you, you’ve had that nasty little attitude this whole week.” he continues with his kisses, while his hand ghosts over your inner thigh. Your breath hitches in your throat.

“I wouldn’t have this nasty little attitude as you call it if you would just let me- fuck.” his free hand ghosts over your panties. Your skin is sensitive, your brain is sensitive. Another touch and you might explode.

“Hmmm, what was that?” he bites at the flesh of your thigh, a high pitched whimper falling from your lips “Need me fuck that little attitude out of you sweetheart?”

And you’ve been wound up so tight for the past week that it doesn’t take you long to rid yourself of your panties. He takes advantage of you standing up, plopping down to take his rightful seat on the throne.

That cocky smirk is adorning his features, but you wanted to smack it off. “As cute as you think you look in this seat… it’s always been my throne sweets.”

Before Eddie has time to mutter another snarky remark you’re climbing into his lap, crashing your mouth against his. You’ve learned throughout the past week that it’s really the only way to shut him up.

His ringed fingers dig into the curve of your hips, eagerly grinding yourself against the bulge in his pants. Eddie moans into your mouth, his tongue licking your lower lip. You part your lips, allowing him entry as your tongues fight for dominance.

He tastes like Twizzlers and cigarettes, a combination you shouldn’t find as delicious as you do. But it only seems to make you needier, the denim becoming damp as you continue to grind yourself onto him.

“Look at you making a fucking mess on my jeans,” he mumbles against your mouth, nipping at your lower lip which causes you to whine as he pulls away. His chest rumbles as he chuckles, grabbing your cheeks in his hand— forcing you to look at him.

“But I’d rather you make a mess on my cock sweetheart.” His words have your head reeling, the male now gripping behind your knees and lifting you up. You squeal in surprise, clutching onto his shoulders to steady yourself. “Eddie, put me down.”

He carefully lets you slide down his front until your feet touch the ground, spinning you around before bending you over the armrest of his throne. His hands travel up your bare thighs, taking his time to appreciate your soft skin.

“Are you going to fuck me or not Munson?” You huff, the male now flipping up your skirt and landing a harsh smack on your ass. “So goddamn impatient aren’t you?”

You hear the sound of his belt clinking open, the zipper being tugged down. It makes you clench your thighs together, something Eddie didn’t miss. His fingers dipping between your legs, teasing you further.

“Trained you well didn’t I baby?” You can’t stop your eyes from rolling, despite how your stomach flipped at the word baby.

And you can feel him then, carefully lining himself at your entrance as you try to grind back into him. A firm hand against your hips stops you. “Ready? I’m gonna go slow,” he mutters, and there’s a gentleness in his words, despite his meanness in how he’s handling you.

You hum in approval and brace yourself. There’s a loud groan coming from behind you as he slips inside your warm heat, reveling in how you almost suck him in, a small gasp leaving you from the stretch.

“Big stretch, huh?” he coos in a cocky lilt, and you almost wanna reach around and punch him, but this idiot has your eyes rolling back from the fullness, and he’s not even all the way in yet.

So you nod, followed by a needy little whine that makes him chuckle low in his chest– you need him that much?

He goes deeper, spurred on by your noises, by how much you need him to fill you up. A sardonic smile on his lips as he bottoms out and slams all the way in, causing you to shriek.

Eddie sets a fast pace, not really giving you any time to adjust, but he’s already nudging that spot deep within you, making you see stars.

You hear him groan, “So fuckin’ tight, aren’t you sweets?” and it’s a rhetorical question, because your tongue feels too big for your mouth and there’s nothing coming out of it besides unintelligible whines and moans as you hold on to the armrest across from you.

Your noises only encourage him to go faster, and it’s almost too much the way he’s hitting that sweet spot inside you. You try to distance yourself from him, just enough to catch your breath, but he grabs your shoulders, using them as leverage to ram deeper into you.

He leans over, his clothed chest against your back, lips ghosting over the shell of your ear.

“Goin’ somewhere, baby? Thought you could handle me.” He bites at your earlobe, and there’s just so much going on in your brain that you can’t possibly muster any response to whatever he’s telling you.

“Oh I said that, didn’t I? When we first met. I said I could handle a spoiled little diva like you, and look at that,” he laughs, and you’re sure you’re about to combust. Your fingers reach to grip the cushioned seat of the throne, as another wail leaves your lips.

“Singin’ my praises now aren’t you baby?” The wood of his throne digs into your hips and stomach as he pushes you further into it, a feline movement as he drapes himself off and over you, his hands now gripping the armrest opposite of you for purchase.

Your legs begin to give out, as you beg God or whatever entity up there that he won’t give into his sick little game. That he’ll let you cum this time.

“Shit, sweets, you’re gripping me so tight.” he grunts, a boyish grin on his face as small uh uh uhs fill the room.

“Should we let you cum tonight? We can’t have you being a bitch tomorrow, it’s the end of hell week,” he jokes, and it almost feels humiliating, how he can make fun of you like this and you’re just going to keep fucking yourself back onto him.

“God- Fuck- Please!” you beg, with all the strength you can muster, and he can’t help but let a satisfactory grunt leave his lips.

“Look at you begging, don’t even have to ask now, do I?” and you can feel him twitch inside you. He’s also getting close.

“Ready?” he huffs, with the last little bit of stamina he has, and you can’t brace yourself enough for the wave of pleasure that washes over you with the last few snaps of Eddie’s hips as you come undone with a loud cry, echoing through the dark halls of the theatre.

“Fuck, okay, where should I–” he begins, he’s at his wits end.

“In…side,” is all you can say before he stills himself inside of you, letting his release take over him with a loud groan. His warm cum painting your inner walls, leaving you feeling satiated.

Eddie stabilizes his breath, forehead leaning against your shoulders, days on days of pent up frustration hanging like mist in the air. You’re both able to think clearly for the first time in what felt like forever.

“Jesus Christ,” he huffs, lifting himself off of you as he slowly slips his cock out. You can feel his cum beginning to drip down your thighs, your legs wobble as you attempt to stand. Knees buckling as you try and find your discarded panties.

“Whoa there, I got ya,” he wraps his arm around your waist, holding you against his warm chest. It felt good, leaning against him like that. But you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, “I’m fine Eddie.”

You push yourself off only to nearly fall once more, an annoyed grumble leaving his lips, “Are you always so stubborn?” He reaches down for your panties, guiding you to sit on the edge of the throne so he could help pull them up your thighs.

It was an unusually tender action, and not one that you expected from him. “Thought you didn’t want me sitting here?” You tease, his brown eyes glancing up as he’s kneeling before you.

“I’ll let it slide this one time,” he chuckles, the corner of his mouth lifting in a grin. A dimple you had never noticed before indenting his cheek, another feature that now found annoyingly attractive.

You roll your eyes at him and stand up, “Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow after rehearsal.” You quip, as you try to wobble off the stage, he runs after you.

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you walk home like this,” and there’s a tender look in his eyes, something close to genuine concern. “My van is out front, I can drive you.” He points in a general direction behind him, and you want to say no so badly.

But you don’t, and now you find yourself being driven home by Eddie. His dingy van smells like cigarettes and weed and it squeaks every time he goes over a bump. There’s loud music blaring through the stereo speakers and an uncomfortable silence between the two of you.

“So uh, you excited for next week?” Eddie’s the first to break the silence, briefly turning towards you.

“I’m actually kinda nervous,” you admit, sinking into the seat. “It’s a big role, big shoes to fill. I guess I’m just scared I’m not gonna be any good.” You chuckle, almost embarrassed at your admission.

“You? Not good? I’ve seen you, y’know? I’m not just staring at your tits during rehearsal. You’re pretty darn good.” He gives you a half smile at that, pulling up next to your house.

You’re a bit flustered by his compliments, finding yourself not wanting to leave his company just yet.

“Thanks, Eddie. I appreciate it,” you smile at him.

“And hey, if you still feel nervous opening night come find me— I’ll help you,” he winks at you and you can’t help but laugh, as you see him looking at you with a big grin on his face.

You look at him back, and God, maybe it’s the streetlights or the moon, but he’s never been more beautiful. In a leap of courage you lean over the dashboard and peck him on the lips.

As you detach from him and reach for the door handle, he pulls you back in deeper, searing and intense, one of those kisses that have your tummy flipping. Except it’s not in the comfort of the theatre, and without an underlying motive behind it.

Just you and him. In his van.

You let your lips part, give him access to your mouth, but he stops you.

“It’s midnight,” he whispers against your lips. “Dress rehearsal tomorrow, you need to rest.” He smiles as you place another peck on his lips. Pouting as you reach for the door handle. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you until you’re inside, seeing the light of your room turn on.

Once he knows you’re safe, he starts his van back up and pulls away from your house with the cheesiest grin on his face.

Opening night. It’s finally here.

You should feel excited, and yet all you want to do is lock yourself in one of the broom closets and hide. You’ve never felt so nervous before, thinking of all the different outcomes that could occur. What if you forget all your lines? Or you have an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction during a quick change?

Your mind is reeling as you enter the dressing room, the rest of the cast buzzing excitedly around you. You fake a smile and sit at your station, noticing the bouquet of lilies resting on the counter top. You can feel yourself flushing, opening the card that came with it.

Break a leg Juliet xx.

You ask around the rest of the cast but no one knows who left them, and while you hoped they came from a certain metalhead… you couldn’t be so sure. Your little cat and mouse game had suddenly turned into something very real, and part of you was afraid it would be over once the curtains closed.

You get ready for the show in a daze, now staring at yourself in the dressing room mirror as nerves rage through your insides. The rest of the cast had dissipated, leaving you alone with your racing thoughts.

“There’s the leading lady,” Eddie’s voice snaps you out of your haze, meeting his eyes in the mirror’s reflection. He must have noticed the look of panic across your features, as he rushes to your side.

You give him a weak smile in return, letting a heavy exhale escape past your lips.

“So uhhh, did you like the flowers?” He asks, and he can see your eyes light up in the mirror, momentarily forgetting nerves, fear and anxiety.

“So it was you,” he coaxes you to face him, kneeling next to you with a large grin.

“T’was I, fair maiden.” He does a half bow from his kneeling position, making you giggle.

“So you’re in love with me now?” You tease, as Eddie’s hands come to rest on your thighs, spreading them as much as he can in your dress before moving in between them.

“I’m literally going to die from nerves, what if I mess up my lines?” you begin, but Eddie seems to have much different plans.

“There she is….” he murmurs, more to himself.

You feel the heat pool in your middle at his words, squirming a little in your seat. Eddie reaches to cup your chin, tilting it down so you meet his gaze. His brown eyes sparkling with mischief, “You know, my offer still stands Lady Capulet.”

“Here? The doors are literally opening in fifteen minutes, don’t you have stage manager things to take care of?” your tone is alarmed, rather, a mix of alarm and excitement.

“My job as stage manager right now is to make sure Juliet feels comfortable enough to go on stage,” he grins, peppering kisses over your hand and wrist.

“But what if we get caught? Or you make me cum so hard I forget my lines?” The nerves make you ramble, as his chin rests on one of your thighs.

“As good as I am at eating you out sweetheart, I doubt that’ll happen.” He bunches the fabric of your costume up your thighs, beginning to give sweet caresses on the skin of your legs.

You seem unconvinced, still.

“Look, I’ll sweeten the deal. If you get all your lines right, which I don’t doubt you will, I’ll take you out on a date.” His lips are pursed in a coy smile.

Your eyes widen, “Like a date date? You and me?” and your heartbeat picks up.

“Who else, idiot?” Eddie laughs, which makes you smile, “Now,” he begins.

“Do you want me to do something about those jangled nerves of yours?” And you can’t help but bite your lip and nod.

His lips begin trailing up your thighs, a shiver running through you from his tender actions. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” He pauses, shifting closer as he switches sides, now leaving open mouth kisses along your opposite thigh. “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.”

You feel your breath hitch in your throat as he works his way to your clothed center, his eyes flicking up to look at you. “Arise, fair sun and kill the envious moon… and whatever the fuck else Romeo says.” Eddie chuckles before eagerly pressing his mouth against your clothed pussy, his tongue lapping at the wet spot on the cotton.

A gasp bubbles deep in your throat at the sensation, feeling the bliss of his tongue through the cotton barrier, your body easing up from its nervous state.

He looks up at you, “Good, huh?” He hums through the fabric, and you’re wound up so tight you’re already panting.

He taps the side of your thigh to get you to lift your hips, removing your panties in the process.

A low whistle escapes him as you spread your legs for him again, “Talk about eating in costume, baby, jeez.” He chuckles, and the joke makes you laugh too.

A short lived laugh at that, turning into a breathless gasp when his tongue makes contact as he begins to lap up the length of your pussy.

Your hand immediately goes to tug at his curls, not caring that they’re tied up and out of his face to be able to see the cue sheets. The delicious pull at his scalp makes his eyes roll to the back of his head.

A low moan falls out of your lips, catching yourself, hand flying to your mouth as you hear the rest of the cast clamoring outside.

“Gotta be quiet, Lady Capulet,” he snickers as he goes back to burying his face between your legs. His tongue darting in and out of you as a hand reaches for your mouth, wetting two of his fingers.

You don’t hesitate to open up your mouth for him, a bite at the juncture between your pelvis and your thigh, “Atta girl.” He mumbles against the wet skin, popping his fingers out of your mouth to tease at your entrance.

“That’s it baby, focus on me.” A whine escapes you as you’re now grinding on his tongue, his fingers enter you slowly, head thrown back in pleasure.

“You nervous, baby?” He asks, a cocky smile on his face. His fingers curl upward, your eyes squeeze at the overwhelming sensation.

You shake your head, still sentient. Not too far gone yet.

“You gonna use me to get off, my lady?” His fingers are pumping faster, feeling tears brimming on your waterline, hoping to not spill all over your face, your stage makeup seems to be in precarious conditions.

A familiar warmth, deep in the pool of your tummy, “Don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop” You know how much he likes to hear you sing for him. His spare hand grabs onto your thigh, rings biting the soft skin there, feeling yourself teetering on the edge.

“Thaaaat’s it, you’re doing so well,” he whispers. One more pump of his fingers and you cum with a silent cry, biting onto your hand, feeling yourself pulsate around his fingers.

Without much warning he slips them out, sucking on his own fingers, tasting your own delicious essence.

“Places!” You hear Miss George say backstage, as Eddie retrieves your panties for you and slips them up your legs.

Eddie fixes his hair in the mirror, tying them back. He places a kiss on your cheek with a hurried, “Good luck— uh fuck I meant break a leg.” Then he furtively leaves the dressing room.

You feel a blush spreading across your body, finally relaxed and ready to begin the show.

You leave the dressing room, joining the rest of the cast, full of excitement. You know all your love monologues are going to be directed towards a certain metalhead tonight.

The show goes smoothly and you don’t forget a single line, you’re surrounded by family and friends, ready to do it all again the day after.

You go back into the dressing rooms to grab your stuff and change, but a long mop of curly hair occupies your chair.

“Eddie, you can’t be here!” you whisper, as he turns around with the biggest smile plastered on his face.

“Just wanted to tell my girl congratulations in private. You smashed it tonight,” you blush at the nickname.

“Since when am I your girl?” you ask, not letting him see how much it affected you.

“Since you kissed me in my van when I dropped you off, gorgeous.” He flirts, bottom lip trapped in between his teeth.

“So, how about that date?”

thank you for reading! comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

tagging: @thornsnvultures, @xxhellfirebunnyxx, @duuhrayliegh, @ali-r3n, @sunnythevampireslayer, @bimbobaggins69, @jamdoughnutmagician, @eiightysixbaby, @aphrogeneias, @daisy-munson, @gravedigginbbydoll, @s6raphic, @take-everything-you-can, @strangerstilinski

[hischierhoney]

OFF LIMITS

nico hischier x hughes sister!reader

part 2: I Know available now!

It’s not the first time they’ve run into you on a night out, and Nico’s pretty sure it won’t be the last. You live in New York, close enough that your paths overlap quite often. It is, however, the first time he’s seen you this drunk. On top of that, it’s the first time Nico’s run into you without your brothers with him.

Jack may be younger than you, but what he lacks in age he makes up for in overprotectiveness. When they run into you at a bar, Nico rarely gets a chance to even say a word to you before Jack is questioning how much you’ve had to drink or why you’re even out in the first place.

But Jack is in Toronto, for the All Stars game, and Luke’s still too young to be out at a bar and is also out of town, and you’re there, standing under a neon sign, leaning up against the wall. You look hazy. Out of it. There’s a guy standing nearly over you, arm next to your head on the wall. Nico’s stomach twists.

“Isn’t that Hughes’ sister?” Someone asks.

Nico nods, juts his chin at the scene unfolding. “Does she look uncomfortable to you?”

His teammate lets out a snort. “Was wondering the same thing.”

Nico keeps a watchful eye on the situation for just a moment. He doesn’t want to overstep, but something feels off. When you put your hand on the guy’s shoulder and try to push him away, and he stays put, caging you in farther, the switch flips. He’s gone from concerned friend to overprotective captain within a second. He passes his beer off to someone and makes his way across the bar in a few short steps.

“Hey man. Back off.” He snaps.

The guy turns with a glare. Nico stands his ground. Your eyes meet his, and he watches relief wash over your face. He knows then that he’s made the right choice.

“I saw her first,” the guy sneers.

Nico really didn’t want to get in a fight tonight. He was supposed to have a chill night out with the guys, maybe talk to a couple girls, get his mind off of… things. But now he’s here.

“Nico,” you say, softly, and he watches the guy’s face drop as he realizes you know Nico.

“Hi,” he says, kindly and quietly to you. He juts his chin at the guy and shoves his shoulder firmly. “Get lost.”

The man melts away into the crowd. Nico watches him go. Then he turns back to you, to where you’re leaning against the wall, doe eyed and drunk as hell as you stare up at him. His breath gets caught in his throat for just a moment- if your brothers knew the things he thought about when you looked at him like that, they’d have his head. Jack and Luke are a bit oblivious, he thinks. He’s lucky he’s not around you and Quinn at the same time very often. There was that game last year, in Vancouver- you in your Devils jersey, elbowing him lightly, and Quinn’s glare trained on him, one raised brow, like he was just waiting for Nico to take a wrong step.

“My hero,” you say, reaching out to tug on his wrist.

Your words are extremely slurred, and when he gets a closer look he realizes you’re probably close to blacking out. The light is gone from your eyes. He winces.

“Okay, schatz,” he says. He ruffles your hair just to get you to stop staring up at him through your eyelashes, afraid of the way it makes his heart jump. “Can I call someone to come get you?”

You shrug. “Where’s Jacky? Or Lukey?”

Nico groans. “Toronto, and who knows. Not here, though.”

You purse your lips. “Right.” You dig in your pocket for your phone, find it, and Nico watches you try and turn the screen on with no luck- it’s dead. “Huh. That’s not good.”

And… Nico could call one of your brothers. Could ask for some sort of phone number- a roommate or a friend or anyone. But as you stare up at him, you lean away from the wall and fall into his chest, and he knows he needs to act quickly. Preferably before you pass out at the bar.

…..

You don’t remember the walk out of the bar, or the car ride, or the elevator up to the apartment that you’re sure you must’ve taken. Your world zaps back into focus on the entryway of Nico’s apartment. You’ve been here twice- both for parties. It’s different when it’s not full of people. Feels more like Nico.

You toe your shoes off in the doorway. Nico swipes them to the side with his foot and then reaches out to catch you when you stumble. You lean into his shoulder and laugh- he smells good, like honey and whiskey. You want to breathe him in. He laughs, too- you can tell by the way his broad shoulders shake.

He leads you out of the entryway and into the kitchen. He grabs you by your hips to maneuver you, and you nearly squeal at the feeling of his fingers splayed against your body. Instead, when he moves you to lean against the counter, you sigh. You brace yourself, elbows on the granite, and stare up at him as he moves through the room.

“Stop staring at me like that,” he says in a warning tone.

“Like what?” You ask, innocently.

If he’d look at you, you’d bat your eyelashes at him. But he’s not looking, and you’re not going to waste your energy. He has his head in the fridge, an empty glass in his hand. He returns with a pitcher of water and pours it into the glass before sliding it over to you.

He never clarifies what he means by staring like that. You want to circle back to it, but you’re getting really tired, and the water is cool and refreshing. You laugh when you spill a little bit, the water running down your chin and neck. Nico just groans and rolls his eyes.

“You’re drunk,” he states, like you both didn’t already know it.

You nod. “I had a lotta tequila.”

He gives you a look of exasperation mixed with affection. “Trying to forget?”

You shrug. “Something like that.”

Once you’ve finished the glass, he starts maneuvering you again, hands on your shoulders this time as he walks you down the hallway. You wonder what it would be like to have him do this all the time- maybe when you’re not drunk. Does he manhandle his girlfriends, his dates, like this? Maybe manhandle isn’t the right word. You don’t feel handled, you feel… taken care of. Like he’s making sure you’re exactly where you should be. It’s sweet. It makes you shiver just a little bit.

He mistakes the movement for a chill, and he rubs his hands up and down your shoulders. You sigh. The two of you step into the bathroom, and he digs through the drawer until he finds a new toothbrush and toothpaste, and he hands them both to you.

You stumble your way towards the bedroom five minutes later, his hands on your hips again. He pushes open the door to his bedroom and leads you to the bed, having you sit down on the edge while he heads for the dresser. You look around. You’ve been to his place, but never here. It’s… calm. Quiet. The sheets and duvet beneath you are soft, and the lamp next to the bed casts a warm glow over everything. He has trophies taking up space on his desk. The bed is unmade, blankets rumpled and messy.

“Always wondered what your room looked like,” you say.

His shoulders tense, though he shakes it out a few moments after. “Yeah?”

You nod, forgetting he isn’t looking at you, and then supplement with words. “Can learn a lot about a person from their bedroom.”

He laughs and looks over his shoulder at you. “What have you learned, then?”

You shrug and cast your eyes to the ceiling. He goes back to rifling through the drawers. You flop backwards onto the end, laughing lightly at the way it bounces beneath you.

Something lands on your stomach- a large t-shirt and a pair of shorts. You pick them up and hold them above your head.

“Get changed,” he says. When you lean up to look at him, the whole room spins. He sighs, like he can tell. “I’ll be back in a second, okay?”

…..

Nico nearly panics five minutes later, because he knocks on the door to ask if you’re decent and you don’t answer. He’s torn between worry about seeing something he shouldn’t, and worry about you dying- one of them trumps the other, so he shoves his way into the room frantically.

You’re laid out on the bed, swallowed up by his t-shirt, the drawstring of the shorts pulled tight around your waist. Your lips are just barely parted, soft sighs escaping with each rise and fall of your chest. You’re asleep. He could leave you, but right now you’re asleep on your back, and very drunk, and he’s worried you’re going to throw up and- they warned him about that, years ago, when he first started going to parties. Friends don’t let friends sleep on their backs.

He crawls up onto the bed and tucks you into the blankets. Then he rolls you onto your side, and sighs when you immediately try to roll back onto your back. He repeats the process, and this time you groan loudly in response. Without really thinking about it, he sits down on the bed behind you and props his leg against your back. That seems to keep you in place- you lean into the warmth but you don’t try to roll over again.

So. That’s great, except, now he’s stuck. Realistically, he was going to stay anyways. If he was the last person to see you and something awful happened, he’d never forgive himself, and neither would your brothers. So it’s fine, really, that you’re leaning against him, but… you’re warm, and breathing softly, and your hair is strewn all over the pillowcase, and god, he hates the way it all makes him blush.

He can’t do anything about it, especially not now, with the state you’re in. So he just sits and watches you sleep, the way he’s sort of always dreamed about.

Hours later, Nico’s woken from a half asleep state by a loud noise- it’s his cell phone, ringing on the nightstand. He scrambles to pick up, blinking blearily at the screen. 4:53 am, and Jack is calling him. He wouldn’t normally answer, but it’s Jack, and by now he’s probably heard about you, so he swipes to take the call.

“It’s not even 5am, Jack,” he says softly.

“Hischier.” A voice returns- it’s not Jack.

“Quinn.” He replies, carefully.

He keeps his voice low. His gaze flickers down to you. You’re asleep -on your side, thank god- one arm wrapped around his leg. He swallows tightly and carefully brushes a stray piece of hair from your face. You don’t stir.

“It’s not even 5am,” he repeats.

Quinn scoffs. “I know. Woke up to go do some early morning training, and imagine my surprise when I see about ten texts from various people telling me you took my baby sister home with you last night.”

Right. Everybody knows everybody in the NHL. Nico rolls his eyes. You’re older than both Jack and Luke- you’re not a baby. He refrains from saying that, though- knowing it’ll only upset Quinn more. He may sound relatively calm now, but Nico can sense the undercurrent of tension.

“It’s not like that,” Nico says.

“Right. And you’re just whispering for the fun of it, then? Not because you’re afraid to wake her?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “She was wasted. I brought her back here to keep an eye on her. Did they tell you about how I nearly punched a guy to get him to leave her alone?”

He hears Quinn falter whatever he was going to say next. Then he speaks up again. “Doesn’t explain why you’re close enough to her right now that you’d need to be whispering.”

“I was worried she was going to choke on her own vomit,” Nico says curtly. “So I stayed up most of the night making sure she stayed on her side.”

“Right, sure, by what- curling up with her?” Quinn sneers.

Nico slumps down against the headboard. “Jesus, Hughes. You trusted me to take care of your brothers. You said that yourself. You can’t trust me with this?”

“It’s a bit different and we both know it,” Quinn says.

Nico figures that’s fair. If it was his sister… he understands. He just wishes Quinn would give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Look, man. Nothing happened. I swear to you, I wouldn’t ever do anything to harm her, alright? We ran into her at a bar, she was wasted and by herself and trying to push some guy away and he wasn’t letting up. So I put a stop to it, and we couldn’t call any of her friends because her phone was dead. And not sure if you’ve noticed, but your brothers are out of town. I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

He hears Quinn sigh. “You just happened to be there to save the day?”

Nico groans, this time a bit too loudly. You shift next to him, and suddenly you’re awake, blinking up at him with soft eyes. His heart catches in his chest. You wrinkle your nose, likely in confusion at the sight of him on the phone at 5am. He mouths your brother’s name, and your confusion only grows. You gesture for the phone.

“Quinn,” you say, sleepily. “It’s 5am. Why the fuck are you calling?”

Nico can’t hear what your brother is saying anymore- a welcome reprieve, really. You roll your eyes and he holds back a laugh. When he meets your gaze, you’re fighting a laugh, too, he thinks.

“So you called because you were checking on me, right?” You ask, blinking up at Nico. “Not to harass my friend, right? Because that would be a rude thing to do at 5am, you know.”

You’re quiet for a few more moments. Then you yawn and roll your eyes again. “Okay. Well. I’m fine. I’m going back to bed. Goodnight.”

You hang up on him. Nico’s torn between laughter and panic, wondering if Quinn’s going to call again. The phone stays silent in your hand, though. He takes it from you, sets it down on the nightstand carefully. Your arm wraps back around his leg, and he tries not to let it make him sigh in relief.

“Sorry about him,” you say, quietly. “He’s like a guard dog. But one of those little yappy ones.”

Nico laughs. “Ankle biter.”

You nod and laugh, too. “Why’d you even answer?”

Nico drags a hand down his face. “He called from Jack’s phone.”

“Sneaky little bitch,” you scoff.

He shrugs. “To be fair, I probably should’ve at least let someone know where you were. If I’d woken up to a message about my sister like the one Quinn probably got…” he scrubs at the hair on his jaw. “Not sure I’d have reacted differently.”

You huff- your warm breath washes over his leg. “You hockey players are a bunch of gossips, you know that?”

He grumbles at that, not even giving it a real response. He slumps down further against the headboard, eyes feeling heavy, head feeling even heavier. You pat your hand against his knee and sigh.

“You should lay down,” you mumble.

He sighs. “Yeah. If you’re feeling okay I can go to the couch. Didn’t want to leave you alone, I was scared you’d throw up.”

You stare up at him. He stares right back. Pretty eyes. God, your brothers would kill him.

“No, like, just- lay down,” you tell him, patting the bed next to you. “It’s your bed.”

His heart does a somersault. His stomach follows suit. He shouldn’t. Jack will punch him, Luke will deliver the final blow, and then Quinn will fly down from Canada to stomp on his grave. But he’s exhausted, and the bed is comfy, and you… you’re there, like he’s always dreamed. He won’t touch you. He’ll just lay down right next to you, barely under the blankets, plenty of space between the two of you in his big bed. It’ll be fine.

…..

You wake up hours later with a raging headache and your head against Nico’s chest. You nearly panic until you remember who he is. Then you worry he’ll think it’s weird, having you pressed against him like this, but you realize his arm is wrapped tightly around your waist. He’s strong. You know that, but it’s different to feel it for yourself, the way the thick muscle presses against your back. His cheek is resting on top of your head, too, and he’s just barely snoring, soft sounds through his lips.

You’d stay right there forever if your head didn’t hurt so bad.

When you try to wiggle free, he holds on tighter, groaning softly. You try to pry his arm off your waist and he grunts this time. When he finally wakes up enough to be somewhat coherent, he doesn’t let go.

“Whatimesit?” He asks groggily, lips brushing against your forehead.

“Dunno,” you admit. “Head hurts. S’there ibuprofen in your cupboard?”

He groans softly and then peels his arm away. Before you can make a move, he rolls out of bed and stumbles towards the bathroom. You watch him go and try to pretend you don’t shiver at the roll of his back muscles beneath his t-shirt. He comes back with a glass of water and pills in his hands.

You fight a laugh at the sight of him, sleep rumpled and groggy, brows furrowed tightly. You push yourself up to sit up, leaning on your left hand and rubbing your eyes sleepily with your right. He hands over the water and the pills. You take them eagerly.

You blink up at him after you down the whole glass and cock your head. “Did I dream that Quinn called?”

Nico snorts and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Nope. That was real life.”

You roll your eyes. “Overprotective asshole.”

Nico laughs at that, eyes slipping closed. “Like I said. If I were him, I’d have had the same reaction.”

You let yourself fall back down to the bed. “Right, like you’d ever…” you cut yourself off with a laugh. “I mean, he and Jack and Luke are always so worried about teammates being into me or something. It’s ridiculous.”

Nico laughs, but it sounds hollow. You lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling. You’re already planning how you’re going to chew Quinn out for this one.

“I don’t blame him,” Nico says, quieter this time. “Just wish he wouldn’t have called so early.”

You close your eyes. “He’s annoying. Why’s he worried? Like… none of you guys have ever shown any interest in me, so. ”

Your lack of dating hockey players is not for lack of trying. There’d been Quinn’s teammates in college, and Jack’s from the other teams, too. You’ve had crushes that you’ve eventually let fizzle out after getting nothing in return. Nico’s the only crush that’s stuck around this long. Because despite the fact that you can barely even call him your friend, sometimes he pulls shit like this- taking you back to his place and staying up late to take care of you, fielding phone calls from your protective older brother. Nico’s a giant human teddy bear. You think at this point it’s gone beyond a crush.

“Why d’you think that is?” Nico asks, breaking you from your train of thought.

“Why do I think what is?” You reply.

You swear you feel his hand brush against your wrist.

“That none of us ever show any interest?” He says.

He’s quiet. Quieter, at least. More tentative. Softer. You pry one eye open and look up at him, and you swear he’s blushing. Hm.

“Because…you’re not- nobody’s interested?” You say, softer than even him.

He tilts his head. Your mouth feels dry.

“You remember the first Devils game you came to?” He asks. You nod, and he continues. “Before the game, in the locker room, Jack mentioned his sister was going to be there, and, well, you know how hockey players are. Couple people made comments about wanting to meet you, asked if you’d be at the afterparty. Jack made it pretty clear you were off limits. And, you know. Guys do that shit all the time, get overprotective over their sisters, and it’s never been, you know, an issue. Half the time I don’t even meet the guys’ family, you know?”

He trails off and scrubs his hand through his hair. You watch him closely.

“But that night, after the game, I was leaving and I saw… this girl. This beautiful girl. And she was wearing a Hughes jersey, and I was…” he laughs and closes his eyes. “I was coming up with all these stupid pick up lines, about how I was better than him, and I was walking towards her, and I swear I looked away for a second and then Jack was there. Hugging you, and glaring at me over your shoulder. I got the message.”

You reach up and pinch the bridge of your nose. “I hate my brothers.”

Nico laughs. “In Luke’s defense…”

“Don’t defend any of them, Luke’s the worst of them, he’s just quiet about it,” you scoff. “He chased my college boyfriend out of my dorm with a hockey stick.”

Nico laughs. You laugh, too, but you shake your head. He nudges his knee against yours. When his thumb brushes against your wrist this time, you open your eyes. That blush is there, soft and rosy on his cheeks.

“So you get it, then,” he says, head tilted as he blinks down at you. His hair is falling over his forehead messily. “Why I’ve never made a move.”

You’re so busy trying to process all the information of the day that you almost miss it. Why I’ve never made a move. It could’ve been a fleeting moment, just a quick crush when he saw you the first time, but something about this tells you it’s not. He presses his thumb to your pulse point on your wrist, and the warmth of his hand on your skin makes you shiver slightly. You stare up at him and chew on your lower lip.

“I think you should ask me about my limits,” you say, quietly. “They’re a lot different than my brothers’, you know.”

The grin on Nico’s face grows wider. “S’that so?”

You nod eagerly. He lets out a low, slow breath, like he’s bracing for impact. Something in your chest aches. He plants a hand next to your head and leans towards you, and your heart leaps in your throat.

“What’re your limits on kissing hockey players?” He asks. His other hand comes up and cups the side of your face. He brushes his thumb against your Cupid’s bow. “Y’know. If the opportunity were to come up.”

You shrug. “Would depend on the player, I suppose.”

He nods in understanding, pursing his lips. “How about… hm. 6’1”, brown hair, brown eyes. Team captain. Nice guy, I guess. Would definitely make sure you got home safe from the bar.”

You reach up and draw a hesitant line on his jaw with your fingertip. “Team captain, huh? I do like a man in charge.”

He nods. You nod back. For a moment, the two of you sit in limbo.

In the end, you’re the one to wrap your arms around his neck and pull yourself up to kiss him. When you do, though, he responds eagerly. He cages you in with both arms, and as you melt for him, he does the same for you. It’s a sweet kiss, one full of hope and excitement. You’re surrounded by him, by his arms and his touch and the smell of him on the sheets. You’ve never been more happy you ran into him at a bar than in that very moment.

…..

You’re back in that same bar from weeks ago, standing under the very same neon light. Except this time, there’s no guy hovering over you, and this time, you and Nico both know the other is going to be there. He’s at the bar, pretending he’s just noticed you, smiling and waving as he orders. You shake your empty cup at him, and he nods.

He wanders over a few minutes later, drinks in hand. He leans against the wall next to you and hands you the cup. The neon light glows bright on his dark hair. You sip your drink and smile up at him. Politely. Friendly. Nothing more. He’s a polite, friendly distance away. There’s space between the two of you.

“If we’re gonna make this believable, you’re going to have to come say hello to the rest of the team,” he says.

You nod. “In a minute.”

Across the bar, one of his teammates is yelling about a game on the screen. For now, you want just a minute with Nico. A moment for just the two of you. One where he’s not your brothers’ team captain, but your boyfriend instead.

The word feels new in your brain, would feel even newer on your lips if you said it. So far, you’ve only tried it out a couple times- when he asked the question, and then after that in the bathroom mirror, a wide grin on your face. You haven’t told anyone else. Nico’s worried about Jack and Luke’s reactions, and the season’s almost done- he wants to wait to tell them afterwards, when the results of a game won’t rest so heavily on how they take the news. It’s been a lot of staying in dates, movie nights at home on his couch, which both of you are partial to anyways. And lots of this, too- seemingly chance meetings at local bars, quick texts from him telling you where he’s headed with his friends and you showing up, purely coincidental to anyone other than him.

Eventually, you follow him through the crowd of people to a secluded corner full of hockey players. You spot your brothers, blissfully unaware, nursing matching beers. Just before everyone catches sight of the two of you, Nico sneaks a hand back and squeezes yours. You smile brightly.

“Look who I found!” Nico calls out.

He moves his grip on your hand to your wrist, raises your arm like you’ve won a fight. You laugh and shake your arm free of his hold. You’re met with cheers from the team, loudest of all from your brothers. You can wait to tell them. For now, the way he smiles at you is more than enough.

…..

“Should we just tell them we know they’re… a thing?” Luke asks.

Jack shakes his head, watching you and Nico. “Nah. Let ‘em sweat. She’ll slip up eventually, or he’ll start to freak out.” He sees Nico reach to grab your hip, then pull back at the last second like he’s been burned. A mix of disgust and amusement passes through him- you’re his sister, after all. “Jesus, dunno why they think they’re fooling anyone.”

Jack’s known since the day he got back and saw you at lunch. You’d been overly happy but basically refused to talk about your impromptu stay at Nico’s. Then, he’d seen Nico at practice, and he’d been much the same. By the time the team had gone out to a bar and you mysteriously happened to show up, he’d had his suspicions and had relayed them to Luke. They’d watched you and Nico leave the bar together one night when you thought nobody was looking.

Luke laughs. “Okay, but, when do we tell Quinn?”

Jack turns to him with wide eyes. “We don’t! D’you want our captain to die?”

Luke directs his gaze back towards you and the aforementioned captain. Jack follows suit and tries not to roll his eyes. The two of you aren’t touching, but the smiles on your faces say it all.

“I mean,” Luke starts quietly. “They’re kind of cute. And we want them to be happy, right?”

“Don’t even start,” Jack says firmly.

He’ll let it go for now, in the interest of finishing out the season on a good note. But after that, all bets are off. Definitely. Probably. Jack’s the one who set the rules, who declared you off limits, and he’ll stick to his word.

No matter how much the two of you together are starting to grow on him.

Part 2: I Know

if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! i hope you’ve enjoyed