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moonlightndaydreams · 6 months

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Hometown

Pairing: au Han jisung x fem reader // friends to lovers back to friends and then lovers.

Synopsis: Jisung moves back to his small hometown to find that you’ve just moved back too. But what happens when he finds out you have a kid and he’s the father?

Word Count: 7.8k

A/n: the idea for this story came to when listening to this Taylor Swift song while I was driving the other day.

I put a lot of thought and care into this story, but i couldn’t convey it as in depth as I wanted. I would have loved to have made this a 60k word story but I just don’t have it in me. I hope you enjoy this story nonetheless, and can see where I was trying to go with it.

NSFVV // MDNI CW under the cut

CW: unprotected p in v sex, accidental cumming inside, fingering, fantasising, emotional hurt, comfort, mention of paternity tests, mention of oral sex, happy ending.

Jisung felt a tug in his chest whenever he came back to his hometown. The place reminded him of you. His childhood best friend. The person whom he shared all his secrets with from being scared of the dark and the nightmares it caused him when he was six, to when he had his first wet dream as a teenager.

You both were each other’s first kiss too. A sloppy, messy attempt behind the boat shed, so that you wouldn’t be the last kids in the year to not have kissed a boy or girl. He later found out most of the kids had been lying about having kissed anyone.

You were each other’s date to your graduation dinner, both of your mums fussing and taking photos, giggling about how you would grow up and get married.

Well that didn’t happen.

You did have one night of intimacy though, before Jisung moved away for work and you stayed in your small town. Well he thought you’d stayed. The first time he came back, eager to see you and catch up, you weren’t there. You’d moved to the city. It wasn’t the same without you. He’d always find himself looking out for you everywhere he went. Just in case. The grocery store. The little cafe. The fucking library even.

But you weren’t there. You were never there.

This was how it felt for Jisung for four years whenever he returned to his hometown.

And here he was again. For the fifth year in a row. But this time he wasn’t just visiting. He was moving back for good to start his own Physiotherapy clinic and to be closer to his family.

The first thing he did was drop his bags off at his parent’s house and go for a walk by the lake to stretch his legs from the long drive.

This place still reminded him of you. He missed you. As he walked along the shoreline he let his imagination take hold. In his mind you were walking beside him hand in hand. You’d throw stones into the lake and laugh about life.

He plopped down on a patch of grass and thought about what he always thought about when he was here.

That night you made love.

The softness of your body. The warmth radiating from you when he kissed your skin. The way you tasted when he went down on you. The pretty sounds you’d made as he fucked you slow and deep. He’d felt like he was drowning and he didn’t want to be saved. Fuck. He’d even said he loved you.

Jisung ran his hands through his hair. Alright Jisung. You gotta get over her. He told himself.

He walked up to the town center to grab a burger from the town’s “famous” burger shop. It was the only burger shop and Jisung was pretty sure it wasn’t famous. But the food tasted good. He placed his order, paid with his card, and was about to turn around and take a seat.

That’s when he heard it.

“Ji?”

He knew that voice. But no. It couldn’t be. Could it?

He slowly turned around. You. Beautiful with a big beaming smile.

“Y/n?” Jisung’s heart skipped a beat. “What are doing here? Are you visiting?”

You shook your head, grinning. “No… no. I’ve moved back here.”

“Really? Me to-”

“Mummy Mummy.” A little girl about four or five years old ran up and pulled on your hand and looked up at Jisung with big round eyes.

His heart stopped beating.

You bit your lip. “So…This is my daughter, Livi.” you said, nervousness creeping into your voice.

—————

Jisung was like he was in a trance, sitting frozen in his seat as he watched you and your daughter across the table. He’d barely touched his burger and coffee, his appetite gone. You had a kid. A million questions ran through his brain simultaneously. The loudest one being, was this his little girl? Followed quickly by, why didn’t you tell him?

“Liv, sweetheart, you’re covered in sauce.” you said as you wiped her little chin with a napkin. The girl grinned at Jisung like it was the funniest thing in the world to fluster you, then on her next bite of her mini burger, smeared sauce all over her chin again. Jisung gave a silent chuckle to himself, thinking of how full your hands must be. “Oh, Liv.” you sighed, giving up on trying to keep her face clean.

Eventually, your attention turned to Jisung, and he tore his eyes from the child to meet yours. Fuck. He wasn’t sure he was ready for whatever you were about to say. Either this little girl was his, or she was someone else’s. Jisung wasn’t even sure which option he wanted to hear either. The thought of you keeping something this big from him upset him. But the thought of you being in love with another man and having a family with him, well, that made him jealous.

“Ji,” No one could say his name the way you did. He tried hard not to show you how it still affected him, even after all this time. “I suppose you have a lot of questions?” you said softly.

Jisung remained silent. Of course he had a lot of questions, but he didn’t know where to begin and he couldn’t seem to make his voice work. He sighed heavily and nodded.

“Well,” you started nervously. “I guess I’ll start with the obvious then. So… Livi…well… you see…” you hesitated.

But Jisung knew. He knew what you were going to say just from the way you took a deep breath and looked up to the ceiling as though you were trying to gather all your courage. He knew by how you were wringing your hands together on the table, and the way you swallowed a lump in your throat. He had always known when you were scared to say something. You’d just never been scared to talk to him before.

“She’s mine isn’t she?” he said. He said it so you didn’t have to.

Your eyes darted to his “Yes, Ji.” you eventually whispered. “She is.” Tears started to well up in your eyes, but you fought them back.

Jisung nodded slowly in understanding, but said nothing, playing with the coffee cup in his hand.

“Ji, please don’t be angry.” you plead. “I have so much to exp-”

“Holy shit! Jisung…y/n!” a loud voice bellowed across the cafe. It was Binnie, one of you mutual childhood friends. “What the flying fu-” his voice trailed off as he approached your table and saw the little girl sitting next to you.

“Wow.” he said, taking in the three of you. “Channie, look who’s here!” he called out to another childhood friend who was putting in an order at the counter. Chan turned around, his face lighting up when he saw both Jisung and you at the table. He quickly made his order and came to sit down next to Binnie at your table. “The gang's back together.” Binnie announced boisterously.

Great. This was the last thing Jisung needed. He had just been told the most life altering news of his life and now he had to socialise? Panic brewed in his chest. He was a father. A father to a preschool kid. He needed time to process this, not have a catch up with friends.

“The whole gang, plus… a mini y/n.” Chan nodded to your daughter, waving at the little girl. “So cute. What’s your name, princess?” He asked.

“Livi.” She replied proudly, and smiled a gummy little smile and looked back at Chan with wide brown eyes. For a second Jisung thought he saw a flicker of realisation cross his friend’s face, but it was gone in an instant.

He watched as you made small talk with your friends. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He wanted to be alone to think, and probably cry, but he didn’t want to just get up and leave. So he sat quietly, nodding when he needed to, making it look like he was listening.

Jisung’s gaze kept landing on Livi, and his mind went back to that night. The only night that you and Jisung had slept together. He remembered it vividly. He remembered pulling out and cumming all over your stomach.

But he also remembered he might not have been quick enough. He obviously wasn’t quick enough. You’d felt so good around him he wanted it to last forever. He hadn’t told you he thought he might have spilled the smallest amount inside you. He thought it would have been okay. He was certain you would have told him if you had fallen pregnant from that night. That you’d work through it together.

It was now evident that you hadn’t told him you’d gotten pregnant, and also, that you hadn’t wanted to work through it together either. It hurt.

“I have to go.” Jisung announced all of a sudden, standing up abruptly and bumping the table. All eyes turned to him, including Livi’s. “I said I’d help my Dad with something.” he lied, feeling like everyone could see right through him.

“Okay, man. Catch up for a beer later?” Chan asked, standing to take him in a hug. “If you wanna talk, yeah?” he whispered so only Jisung could hear.

“Talk to you later, Ji?” you asked with hopeful eyes.

“Um, yeah. Of course.” he said quickly and hurried out of the cafe.

————-

Jisung found himself sitting by the lake again, his thoughts racing. He’d walked around the entire town for the past two hours and ended up back here. The place he always ended up.

He’d fucking made a baby with you? Why hadn’t you told him? He couldn’t get his head around it. He felt so angry, hurt, confused. He’d never felt anger towards you and he hated it. He shook his head. He had so many questions, and no answers. Except the kid was his. He closed his eyes, wondering what on earth he was going to do..

“Thought you’d be here, buddy.” Jisung opened his eyes to find Chan approaching, and plopping down beside him on the grass. He offered a can of beer to Jisung.

“You know we’re not meant to drink in public places, right?” Jisung grumbled taking the drink.

“Since when has anyone ever cared?” Chan replied, popping his own can open and taking a sip. “Anyway, you look like you need it.”

Jisung rolled his eyes. “You don’t say?” He took a long drink of his beer and looked out over the water.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“About what?” Jisung snapped.

“I dunno, maybe about y/n being moving back to town, or that you have a kid?” Chan shrugged.

“She told you?” Jisung turned to Chan, bewildered.

Chan shook his head. “No, man. It was just…obvious.”

“Fuck.” Jisung grumbled and took another swig of beer.

The two friends sat in silence for a long while. Chan didn’t push for Jisung to talk about it, and Jisung was grateful. He couldn’t find his words even if he wanted to talk. He felt like he was going to explode with emotions, and at the same time his body felt completely numb. Was this what shock felt like?

The sun was low in the sky and the air had become cooler. Jisung pulled his jacket tight around him. This was not how he’d expected his first day back to be like.

He sighed and closed his eyes, and when he opened them he started to sob. “Why didn’t she tell me?” He cried looking to Chan. “Why would she keep this from me?”

He completely broke down then, crying loud and uncontrollably. He leaned against Chan who wrapped his arm around him and stroked his back.

“I know. I know.” His friend soothed.

“I’m a fucking father! I don’t even know what that means, or what I am supposed to do… or how I’m meant to feel. It’s so sudden.” He wailed.

“Listen, Ji. I think we should get you home. It’s cold and late, and maybe in the morning when your head’s clearer you can think about all of this. It’s pretty big news, it’s probably gonna take time.”

Chan drove Jisung home in silence, and when he pulled up outside his house Jisung turned to him. “She still makes my heart race.” he whispered. “Even with this… I don’t know what you’d call it, betrayal? Lie? She still gets to me.”

Chan looked at his friend empathetically. “Go inside, mate. Get some rest. Call me if you need me, yeah?” Chan squeezed Jisung’s shoulder reassuringly, before Jisung got out of the car and headed into his childhood home.

Jisung couldn’t sleep. Images of you and Livi at the cafe ran through his mind on repeat. Your smile when he’d first turned around. Your scared expression when you wanted to tell him she was his. The cheeky grin on the kid’s face when you tried to wipe her chin.

He tossed and turned in his bed. The same bed you and him made her in.

———————

Jisung tried to avoid you at all costs while he got his thoughts in order. He knew it was cruel to avoid you, but he just couldn’t face the situation. Not yet anyway.

He told his parents, looking for guidance. But in the course of a two hour deep and meaningful with them, their comments ranged from “I thought we taught you about protection, son” and “the pull out method doesn’t work,” to “we’d always thought you’d make a cute kid.”

None of these remarks were particularly helpful, but they didn’t have a bad word to say about you, and they weren’t disappointed in him. They really believed the two of you could work something out, and he was pretty sure they were secretly excited about being grandparents.

Three days had passed since you’d told him about Livi, and although he still wasn’t ready to talk, he knew he had to say something to you soon otherwise he’d look like a coward. He felt like a coward. He knew where you lived. Your parents house two streets away, you used to walk to school together. But he just couldn't physically take himself over there. He didn't know what to say. He was anxious about seeing your parents. He was nervous about seeing Livi again. Most of all he was terrified of hearing what your reasons were from hiding this from him.

He was scared.

Yep. He was a coward.

———-

A week later, Jisung stood in front of his almost ready to be opened Physiotherapy clinic, and admired the new signage on the front window. He’d secured the lease for the premises before he moved back, and had even organised the fit out-out to be complete beforehand as well. He’d spent the past week hiding inside painting the walls and getting his equipment ready. If he was busy in there, he wouldn’t run into you.

Happy with how his sign looked, Jisung unlocked the front door and slipped inside. The front area was to be the waiting area for clients and reception desk, and a doorway led from the reception area to the main studio. The studio was a large space where he’d set up a treadmill, exercise bike and smaller equipment like hand weights and bosu balls. To the right was a private room for appointments with clients.

He felt proud of his new set up and he couldn’t wait to officially open his doors. He’d even had some home visits this week, although they were his parent’s friends. But still, a client was a client, and that made him happy.

He settled into his chair at the reception desk to check his schedule for the next few days, and then he was going to try and set up the new accounting software he’d been avoiding almost as much as he’d been avoiding you. While he was waiting for the extra slow internet to connect his eyes wandered absentmindedly to the big window that looked out onto the main street of town.

It was a sunny autumn day, the temperature perfect for short sleeves and pants. He enjoyed this time of year with the days warm, and the nights cool. His guilty pleasure was to snuggle in his blanket and beanie and watch anime.

There were quite a number of people going about their day, but no one was in a hurry. Not like in the city, where everyone was in a rush.

Here, people were chatting on the footpath, others were casually doing their laundry at the laundromat while they sat out the front reading a book. The old ice cream shop was busy as usual. It'd been there for as long as Jisung could remember. He and you used to take your little bag of coins down to buy your favourite ice creams after school. The row of ice cream flavours were the perfect height for kids to squish their faces against the glass and say “that one please!”, and then have to reach up so high to pay over the counter.

The signage and colour scheme hadn’t been updated in a thousand years, and the paint was peeling and the store name faded. He wondered if the same family owned the place.

Then he saw you coming out of the door, little Livi in tow. Jisung’s heart jumped out of his chest, and he slid lower in his chair even though you wouldn’t be able to see him through the tinted glass window. He still hadn’t spoken to you.

You were dressed in tight jeans, a plain green top with your long hair in a messy bun. You always looked beautiful even when you weren’t trying. That familiar feeling stirred inside of him. It was a feeling of yearning and heartache. Even though he’d felt it often over the years, it was a feeling he’d never got used to.

His gaze moved down to Livi. She was adorable. Her long dark hair was in two braids, and she had the cutest round cheeks. Her big Bambi-like eyes were fixed on the ice cream cone in her tiny hands. She looked so excited, going in for a bite and… splat! The entire ice cream fell off its cone onto her pink top. Her little face fell and she began to cry as though the world had ended.

Jisung didn’t think, he just acted. He was out of the clinic and across the street in a heartbeat.

“Juice-suuunnn!” Livi wailed when he approached. He was surprised she recognised him. “I lost my ice cream!” Startled, you turned to see Jisung kneeling beside you, ready to help.

“It’s okay, angel. Juice-sun’s” was that what she’d called him? “here to help.” He turned to you. “I’ve got a spare shirt over the road, if you want to change her?” He nodded his head towards his clinic.

“Thank you, but it’s fine, Ji. We can just go home and get changed. It’s no big deal. I wouldn’t want to be a bother.” You assured, trying to peel chunks of ice cream off her top.

“But you said we could go to the park!” Livi protested, and you looked at your daughter apologetically.

“It’s really okay.” Jisung said softly. “She should go to the park.”

“Yes, Mummy please! I’m okay to wear Juice-sun’s shirt! I just want to play and eat ice cream.” She blinked her eyes at you and then at Jisung. God that was cute.

He gave her a wink and you rolled your eyes. “Joining forces, I see.” She playfully patted Livi’s head.

Jisung ushered you and Livi across the road and into the clinic, and pulled out the clean tee shirt he was going to wear later for a workout. “If you just want to change her in the side room there.” He directed you to the private appointment room. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Jisung ran back across the street, ordered a new chocolate ice cream, apparently the place was still family owned, and returned to the clinic to find you and Livi waiting in the studio. You were sitting on a chair in the corner, and Livi had found a ball and was throwing it up in the air and trying to catch it. His tee shirt fit her like a giant dress, or more accurately, a tent.

“I hope you like chocolate flavour?” He announced with a big smile. “I know it’s my favourite.” He chuckled.

“Juice-Sun!” Her face lit up when she saw him with a fresh ice cream. She ran up to him, the ball instantly abandoned, and carefully took it from him with her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth in concentration.

“Juice-sun?” He raised an eyebrow at you.

“Yeah, she’s insisting that’s how you pronounce your name.” you blushed, trying to hide a giggle.

“What about just Ji? That’s what you call me?” He said, sitting on a chair next to you.

“I tried, but she says she likes Juice-sun because it’s like juice and she likes apple juice. Can’t argue with a four year old.” You shrugged.

“I guess not.” He smiled. You both laughed.

“Thank you, Ji.” you said sincerely, giving him a small smile.

“It’s the least I can do.” He shrugged. You nodded and looked at the floor.

“So?”

“So?” You both said at the same time.

This was awkward. Really fucking awkward.

“Can we go play at the park now, Mummy?” Livi asked, and Jisung was grateful for the interruption.

“Maybe eat your ice cream first. If that’s okay with you?” You turned to Jisung.

Jisung nodded. “Of course.”

Livi went and plonked herself on a foam mat on the floor, still holding her ice cream extra carefully. “Juice-sun. Come sit with meee.” She called.

Jisung was taken back by the child’s eagerness to make friends with him, especially since she’d only met him once. But he wandered over and sat himself cross legged next to her on the mat and smiled down a the kid.

“This is a really good set up you’ve got here.” you said looking around the studio. “When is the official opening? I saw on the front window it’s soon.”

“Next week. I’ve started seeing clients on home visits, so technically I’m in business already. That’s if my Mum’s friend from trivia night counts as a client?” he snorted.

“I’d take it as a client. I’m so proud of you.” You said sincerely, and Jisung felt himself blush at the compliment.

“Oh shit, Ji.. “ your hands came up to your mouth horrified. “I.. I’m not asking all this to know about your finances. You know I’m not after money, right?”

“I know. Don’t worry.” he cut you off, and he could see by the way you were biting your lip that you were silently berating yourself. He knew you so well, yet he felt like he knew nothing.

“I’m full.” Livi held the half eaten cone in Jisung’s face.

“Livi, honey. I’m not sure Jisung wants your leftovers. God, I’m so sorry.” You coverered your face in embarrassment.

Jisung chuckled. “It’s really fine. I love chocolate ice cream.” He took it from her sticky little fingers, and bit into it. “Mmm. Yum!” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm.

“Juice-Sun?” She asked, standing up and delicately pushing his fluffy hair out of his eyes and staring at him. Her small hand lingered in his hair while she gazed at him.

Jisung was frozen in place as he looked into the eyes of his daughter. His daughter. He was starstruck, captivated by her cute little features, and the way she was so comfortable talking to him, touching him, stirred something inside of him. She was absolutely perfect. He’d made her. He’d never made anything so precious in his entire life. He made her with you, his favourite person in the world.

“Do you know what Mummy’s favourite flavour is?” She whispered like she was about to share a secret.

“Yes I do.” He whispered back. It’s raspberry.”

Livi looked at Jisung like he was a magician. “How’d you know?” She gushed, amazed.

“Well, your Mum and I have known each other since we were as little as you.” His eyes met yours. “And we used to go to the ice cream shop a lot.” he added, keeping his gaze on you.

He could tell you were remembering it. Remembering your childhood together. The ‘inseparable pair’ as some people called you. But there was more than just nostalgia in your expression. There was sadness too. He could see it. You were hurting. He could feel it.

It was time to talk.

——————

The three of you walked to the park with Livi walking in the middle, holding onto both yours and Jisung’s hands. He had felt rather privileged when she grabbed onto him like she’d known him forever, and he held her tiny hand in his as they made their way down the footpath. Several people gave them curious looks as they passed. More fuel for the gossipers. But Jisung didn’t care.

There were already rumours about you and your daughter spreading around town. Specifically, whispers about how she was the “love child” of you and Jisung. Apparently, everyone could see the resemblance. Jisung was getting odd looks when he was in the grocery store the other day, but no one actually asked him if any of the stories were true.

The park was only a minute walk from Jisung’s clinic, and it wasn’t long before Livi was running over to the play equipment and you and Jisung found a park bench to supervise her from.

“She’s a cute kid.” He said, breaking the silence.

“She is.” You replied.

Jisung sighed. “Almost five years, y/n. Why didn't you tell me? In all this time, why haven’t you said anything?” Jisung’s voice cracked and a tear slipped from his eye and rolled down his cheek. He swiped it away, hoping he could hold himself together.

“I didn’t know you were her father.” you said in a quiet voice. Jisung looked at you confused. That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. How could you not know he was the father and then all of a sudden know that he was?

“I didn’t know. I promise.” you took in a deep breath. “Look, Ji. Just before you left I got a job offer interstate. I moved away the same week as you. I…I met someone there. Like really quickly.” you sighed and continued. “It all happened so fast, and I wanted to… to try and move on from you.” you looked up at Jisung. “I found out I was pregnant not long after meeting him.”

“Didn’t it occur to you she could’ve been mine?” Jisung asked, surprised at how much hurt was evident in his voice.

“You pulled out when we were… and he didn’t so…” you shrugged like it was an obvious conclusion.

Guilt and regret seeped through Jisung’s veins. He should have told you he hadn’t pulled out quick enough. He cleared his throat, pushing those thoughts aside. Coward, he thought to himself.

“So why all of a sudden are you saying she’s mine. How do you know? What changed?” It wasn’t an accusation, he was genuinely perplexed, bewildered even.

“When I told him I was pregnant, he stayed by my side. We made it work, sort of. I thought he loved me but…he kept having affairs.” You hung your head and Jisung felt anger flair inside his body. How could someone hurt you like that? “Earlier this year he told me he was leaving me for someone else.” you sniffled.

Jisung cautiously moved closer to your side and put his arm around your shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” he soothed. He was absolutely livid at this guy. He wanted to punch him in the face, hurt him. Then wrap you up and look after you. He wished he could’ve been there for you.

“I said something about child support, and he scoffed and told me he wanted to do a paternity test, because ‘fucked if I’m paying for someone else’s kid’.

“I laughed in his face. I was certain she was his, but part of me hoped that somehow she wasn’t. An asshole like that doesn’t deserve to be Livi’s dad. Anyway, the paternity test came back negative, which means he isn’t her father. You’re the only other person I’d slept with, Ji.”

You looked at him and waited. A heavy silence hung in the air as Jisung tried to figure out what to say.

“I shot a bit of cum in you.” He blurted out. Fuck, why’d he say it like that? “I’m so fucking sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything when it happened. I thought… I hoped, I was quick enough.” he gulped and sucked his lip.

“I’m glad it happened.” you whispered. Your eyes locked. Jisung couldn’t breath. “We wouldn’t have Liv. I was so relieved to find out she’s yours.” you pulled your eyes away from him to watch Livi playing in the sandpit, while your fingers fiddled with the hem of your top.

“I moved back here as soon as I could to be with Mum and Dad, you know, ‘cos it ‘takes a village’ and all. I didn’t know you’d be back here as well. I’d planned to get in touch with you once we’d settled in. But you were already here.” You laughed dryly.

“Don’t you hate me for not telling you?” Jisung pressed, his brain was still stuck at his admission about cumming inside you.

You looked up at him again. “What? That you’re pull-out game’s shit?” you teased, your face softening into a warm smile. Not a hint of anger laced your voice. “Look. Jisung. If you had told me, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. I’m not sure what you’d have done? You were moving away.”

“But If I had told you. Things might’ve been different.” He said solemnly. You might have found him sooner and not have to have been with a cunt for a boyfriend for four years. He might’ve known his daughter, sooner.

You took his hand in yours. “There’s no point thinking about what if’s. The past is the past. I don’t want you to regret anything. I’m not expecting anything from you. I’m just glad she’s ‘part’ you. You’re the best person I have ever known, Jisung, and I want her to grow up as kind as you. But,” you choked. “If you ever do want to be part of her life, I think she’d like that very much. I’d like that very much.”

Jisung’s heart melted. Now that he understood the whole picture, how could he really be angry at you? Neither of you knew he was Livi’s father. But there was still hurt, and sadness. He’d missed so much of her life.

“Juice-sun! Come play on the slide.” Livi ran up to Jisung, breaking his thoughts and tugging on his arm to pull him towards the playground.

The three of you played on the equipment the rest of the afternoon. The slide was by far Livi’s favourite, followed by him holding her up on the flying fox. Jisung tried to let go of the thoughts that kept creeping into his mind. He could deal with them later. For now he wanted to simply be in the present moment and give all of his attention to you both.

Afterwards, he walked you home to your parents. It felt like old times walking you home. When he said goodbye he felt the urge to hold you in a hug, but he wasn’t sure If that was appropriate. So he didn’t. He just stood there awkwardly.

You both looked at each other for a long minute, before Livi threw her arms around his waist and looked up at him.

“Do you want to thank Jisung for your ice cream?” You prompted her.

“Thank you Juice-Sun!” She smiled brightly and ran inside the house.

Jisung rubbed his hands nervously on his pants. “Y/n, I’m sorry I completely ghosted you this past week. I was in shock. I needed to get my head around…everything. But I should’ve spoken to you. It was fucking rude of me.” He hung his head.

“It’s okay. I understand. It was huge news.” You said with understanding. You were always so understanding.

“Well… um…maybe we could hang out again?” He scratched his head nervously and looked up at you sheepishly. Fuck, why was he feeling so flustered?

“I’d really like that.” You said softly.

“You would?” His head snapped up. “What about tomorrow afternoon?” He said eagerly.

The corner of your mouth lifted and then turned into a proper smile. “Tomorrow would be great.”

————-

Over the following month or so, Jisung’s business was in full swing. It was incredible how many people needed a phsyio. His client’s were mostly teenagers and people with sporting injuries, with some people making an appointment merely to see if he’d spill the tea about his and your relationship status. It was an expensive way for them to find out that you were just friends.

Jisung found himself spending more and more time with you and Livi. Most of the time it was buying ice creams and playing at the park, but sometimes it was having dinner at either of your parent’s houses. Jisung’s parents loved getting to know their grandchild, doting on her and spoiling her. They even tried to send you and Jisung out on a date, even though you were just friends, so they can do the whole ‘minding the grandkid’ thing.

The more time Jisung spent with Livi, the more he wanted to have a role in her life. If she ever wanted to call him ‘daddy’ at some point, he’d be over the moon. The thought of her running up to him calling out “daddy, daddy!” made him feel gooey inside. But he wasn’t going to push that. He’d let her move at her own pace, plus he was quite content with ‘Juice-sun’ for now. Even that made him feel gooey inside.

He was absolutely smitten, and everyone could tell.

He’d started printing out photos he’d taken of her doing random things that four year olds did. He bought little frames to put them in and sat them on his desk at work and bedside table, alongside a few photos you’d given him of Livi when she was smaller.

Although it pained him that he missed out on her early years, he told himself that it’s what he does moving forward that counts. He promised himself he’d be the best father he could be, and that he would always be there for her.

Things were falling into a comfortable place with you again too. You’d both caught each other up on the past few years about your time living in the big city, and how country town life felt so much better. You’d pop over to each other’s houses and watch your favourite kids movies with Livi sitting between the two of you, like a little family. You’d laugh and joke and reminisce. It felt good. You’d even started hugging him goodbye at the end of the day.

But he found himself wanting more. He still wanted you. It had always been you. He thought about all those times he’d been back here hoping you'd be in town, playing out a thousand scenarios of what might’ve happened if you had been here. Most of them were of him ending up making love to you in his childhood bed. None of them were you turning up with a kid and telling him he was a father.

But for some reason he wouldn’t trade this with any of the scenarios he’d made up in his imagination. Even if it meant he couldn’t tell you how he felt about you. You’d come back into his life, hopefully permanently, and things were really good between you. He couldn’t risk fucking this up talking about love, or pressuring you into something you might not be ready for, or even want.

He’d think about you though. In his bed. Sometimes he’d imagine obscene things. Like if you were watching a movie with him in his family’s living room and you would climb on top of him in a little skirt. He’d pull your underwear to the side and you’d sink down onto his cock and ride him until you screamed his name and made a mess all over him.

Or he’d take you against his bedroom door. Holding you up against it, your legs wrapped around his waist, his cock reaching the deepest parts of you until your legs shook.

Most of the time, though, he’d think about laying you down on his bed and kissing your neck while he slowly undressed you. He’d worship you. He’d give every inch of your body attention. He’d say your name over and over like a mantra, and then he’d squeeze inside your warmth and fuck so slowly you begged him to either stop or go faster.

No matter the scenario, it always ended with him cumming in his hand and your name on his lips.

Gradually, you and Jisung started to spend time together without Livi, and Jisung noticed you were becoming more and more comfortable with being physically close to him. The hugs were becoming more frequent, you lingered more when saying goodbye, and when Jisung sat closer to you on the couch during a ‘grown up movie night’, you leaned into him and rested your head on his shoulder. He’d grown hard in his pants and he’d hoped you hadn’t noticed. He swore he saw your eyes linger on his lips too sometimes, and when he asked you to go on a stargazing picnic and you said yes, a glimmer of hope swirled around in his stomach.

————-

“Do you wanna know what the coolest thing about the moon is?” Jisung asked, looking up at the night sky.

You were both in the back of his Dad’s utility truck laying on a stack of exercise mats from the physio clinic. It was Spring now, and the nights were starting to be less cold, but it was still cool enough to need sweatpants, hoodies and a nest of blankets to keep snug.

You were laying next to him, snuggled under a blanket.

“What was that, Ji?” you hummed.

“Do you know what the coolest thing about the moon is?” He repeated.

You shook your head. “No. I don’t know.”

“That you hung it.” He whispered.

“Oh Ji!” You squealed and nudged his arm. “That was-”

“The corniest shit you’ve ever heard?” Jisung laughed but inside he was dying from cringe and his cheeks burned.

“I was going to say romantic, but corny works too.” You laughed.

He turned to look at you and found you gazing at him.

“Romantic? Huh?” He looked at you curiously.

“Yeah. In your own unique way.” You turned back to look at the sky and Jisung felt your fingers brush against his under the blanket. Bravely, Jisung threaded his fingers through yours. He was sure you could hear his heart beating. You sighed and nestled yourself against his side.

“Baby—” Fuck. “I mean, y/n. Sorry. Shit.” He hadn’t called you baby in years.

“It’s okay, Ji.” You soothed.

“Yeah?” He choked.

“Yeah.” You whispered.

He rolled onto his side propping himself up on his forearm and gazed down at you. You didn’t move. You just looked back up at him. You really did hang the moon.

“Say this is okay.” He whispered.

“That what’s okay, ji?” You purred.

“This.” He cupped your cheek and leaned down and captured your lips in a kiss. He started so very slowly, and when he felt you melt into the kiss, he teased your lips with his tongue, seeking permission to deepen the kiss further. Your tongues danced together tenderly. The way your lips felt against his own, sent a rush of desire through his body. He brought his hand from your cheek to hold your waist and press his hardness against your leg. He wanted you to feel how much he burned for you. How badly he needed you.

You whimpered when you felt his erection and hooked your leg around him to bring his leg between yours, and you wrapped your arm around the back of his neck, pulling him closer to you.

His hand snuck under your hoodie and shirt. Your skin was so soft and warm to the touch. “Is this still okay, baby.” He said with a raspy tone.

You answered with a grinding of your core against his leg, and a cute little whimper.

“You need to tell me what I’m allowed to do.”

You took his hand that was on your waist and pushed it to your waistband and hooked his fingers on it. “Absolutely anything you want.” You whispered. “I’m yours, Ji.”

“I wanna make love to you. Be inside you. But…”

“I’m on birth control.” You stated. “You know, just in case something happened… between us. So we don’t have an accident.”

Jisung pulled away and looked deep in your eyes. “I hope you know that I’ve never considered Livi to be an accident.” He said sincerely. “A Surprise? Yes.” He grinned “But never an accident.”

You beamed up at him in the way that always tugged on his heart. “I’m glad, because she’s the best thing we ever did together.”

“She is.” He agreed.

Jisung slowly peeled off your sweatpants and underwear and pulled the blanket up around you both as he began to kiss you again. His hand made its way to your inner thigh and you let out another pretty little sound. He gradually made his way up your leg and then slid a finger through your wetness. You were already so wet he could hardly believe it. His dick hardened even more than it already was, and it was absolutely throbbing to be inside you. He needed to bury himself inside your warm walls and soon, or he was going to cum untouched.

“Ji, please. I wanna feel you.” You reached for his waistband, and tugging it down enough to grasp his cock in your hand.

Jisung hissed through his teeth. “Baby, your hand… feels so good.” His eyes rolled back into his head.

“So does yours… oh—” you arched your back into him as he slid a finger inside you. “Ji…yes.” You pulled his face down to kiss him as he slowly fucked you with his fingers and you pumped his cock with your hand.

He peppered kisses down the side of your neck, and eventually he slowly withdrew his fingers, while you let go of his cock. You parted your legs to allow him to settle in between them.

“I love you, y/n. I’ve always loved you.” He declared. “I said it last time, do you remember?”

You nodded. “I remember.”

“I meant it then, and I still mean it now.”

“I love you too, Jisung. I have for as long as I can remember.” You said gripping his bicep and squeezing.

Jisung took hold of his cock and ran the tip through your lips several times and then pushed inside. You both groaned in relief.

“Is this okay, baby?” He moaned, pulling out and pushing back in. He felt like he was so deep inside you, your warm walls holding him tight while he made love to you the way he imagined so many times.

He hooked an arm under one of your legs to get an even deeper angle. “Ji… you feel…this feels…so good.” You cried, holding onto him tighter as he picked up the pace. “Please don’t stop.”

“I’m not going anywhere, baby. I’m gonna fuck you like this every single day.” He promised.

You were soaking his cock, and as he continued to make love to you the noises coming from where you were both connected were becoming louder. You both had a sheen of sweat covering you foreheads. Jisung’s breath was becoming laboured as he neared his orgasm, but he wanted to make sure you came first. He slipped his hand between you to rub your swollen clit the way he remembered you showing him you how you liked it. You responded instantly, mumbling incoherently as you tensed up around him.

“Ji…I’m close… I’m so…I’m gonna…”

“Please cum for me. I’m so close too, baby.” He really didn’t know if you could even last another moment.

He felt you tense up, gripping his cock like a vice and then slowly pulsed around him. He watched your face as you came, thankful that he’ll be able to see you like this all the time from now on. He meant it. He was going to fuck you every day.

It was all too much seeing you come undone. “Fuck…I’m gonna cum, baby…where… wh—“

“In me, Ji…in me, please.” You cried.

That’s all Jisung needed to hear and he was filling you up, letting out a long growl as he emptied himself inside of you. Tears spilled from his eyes as he collapsed on top of you panting.

“Baby…I fucking love you so much. Please say you wanna be with me. Say you wanna give this a try? Be a family?” He looked at you hopefully.

“Yes. Yes, Ji. I want that so much.”

———

Jisung stopped at the lake to stretch his legs after a long day’s work.

This place always reminded him of you. As he walked along the shoreline he let his imagination take hold. In his mind you were walking beside him hand in hand, little Livi running ahead. He’d teach her to throw stones into the lake and he’d tell her all about what you and him were like as kids.

He’d bring her camping, and he’d bring you here for lunchtime picnics.

But it wasn’t just a fantasy. These were his plans.

He plopped down on a patch of grass and thought about what he always thought about when he was here.

The night he made love to you under the stars and you said you wanted to be a family.

Ask: livi calls Jisung “daddy”

a/n: please, if you enjoyed this consider leaving a comment, reblog, or tag someone you think will like this. x. Sorsha

@channieandhisgoonsquad @noellllslut @itshannjisung @weareapackofstrays @bethanysnow @jisunglyricist @newhope8 @chansbabyg @itshannjisung

#han jisung smut #han jiusng fanfic #skz fic #han jisung is a dad #sorshas fic

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f1haaland · 1 year

Note

Hello, first, I love you Fernando Alonso imagine, second, could you do a Fernando one where it's your birthday and have no race during the week and takes advantage of this to spoil you during the week and ends with having sex on his yacht after a candlelight dinner

𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 / 𝑭𝑨𝟏𝟒

pairing: sugar daddy!fernando alonso x fem!reader

word count: 1.4k

author's note: i wasn't going to write this one now bc i have a couple of requests to write still, but it's my birthday week so it felt appropriate. happy birthday to me!

warnings: significant age gap (reader is 23, fernando is 41), pure filth, no plot just sex, unprotected sex btw, oral sex (female receiving), p in v, boat sex i guess but not really, NOT MEANT FOR MINORS

reblogs, feedbacks and likes are appreciated. support your content creators!! 🫶🏽

➜ 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚 𝟏 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

this is a spin-off to this oneshot

· ┈┈┈┈┈┈ · ༓  ༓ · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·

After 1 year together, things were working out amazing for you and Fernando. Surprisingly, not many people were judging your relationship, and the internet considered you his "controversial young girlfriend".

Your studies were doing great, your relationship couldn't be better, and you were living the life of your dreams.

Fernando had brought you to Monaco with him to celebrate your 23rd birthday. Of course, he had a home there, but you optioned to spend your special night with him on his brand-new yacht.

You had made him one simple request to him: "Do not buy me gifts." Fernando didn't took that very well, offended that he couldn't spoil the love of his life, but he did as you ordered. He had already planned a dinner for tonight, and in the morning you woke up to lots of different flowers in your room. He gets you new stuff all the time. You thought you don't an extra expensive souvenir just because you became a year older.

You wore a red dress and a ponytail, simple but chic, and just the way he liked. There wasn't a need to dress up for something made just for the two of you, but he enjoyed it when you made an effort to look nice just for him.

Blindfolded, he took you to the dock, where he had set a table dinner to candlelight for you. The dinner wasn't a surprise of course, but he had set the table all for himself just for you.

Dinner was going great, until...

"Shit!" You got startled by the loud sounds of explosions.

You turned your head to look behind you, as fireworks painted the skies in your favorite colors. You watched as hundreds of lights in drones flew over the sea, forming in different designs until they turned into the shape of a heart with your initials next to it. Fernando admired your surprised face with a huge grin on his own.

"Wait... is this for me?" You gasped at the realization, "Nano, you did this for me?"

"Everything I do is for you, mi amor" Fernando declared.

That was the biggest love gesture he has ever done for you. The first letter of your name was so big and bright in the sky you could bet the whole Monaco could see it. You hoped they could see just how much your man loved and worshiped you.

You never felt so turned on in your whole life.

You immediately forgot about the candlelight dinner. You got up and jumped in his lap. Fernando's hands gripped on your waist with his life, as your tongue battled with his in a wet and messy kiss. You bit his bottom lip and pulled between your teeth, making him groan hoarsely.

You worked your hips on top of his lap, moving forward and backwards, feeling his excitement start to grow beneath you. His palms slid down through your form until they reached your ass, grabbing it with such strength.

Fernando murmured against your skin, "What has gotten into you, corazón?"

He stood up, holding you to him. It didn't take long until you felt your body being tossed to the deck sofa.

"Don't ask, just fuck me" You begged, breathlessly.

You could have taken your dress, but the eagerness to be fucked screamed louder.

Fernando helped you out of your panties, opening your legs wide open so he could get a perfect view of your glistening wet cunt. His digits slightly brushed over it, teasing you. He planted sensual kisses all over your neck until he found an extra sensitive zone behind your ear lobe and focused on it. You gasped and whined helplessly.

"Look at you, so wet for me..." He taunted, leaving gentle bites on the curve of your neck.

You moaned as your small hand worked on top of the growing bulge inside his trousers. His shorts felt impossibly tight, and uncomfortably moist where the head of his cock was leaking.

Fernando proceeded to spread your slick arousal over your sensitive clit and rub you from side to side. You felt his erection get harder and harder under your palm. It was soon rock hard, but he didn’t seem to lose his composure. You, on the other hand, were a wreck.

His fingers were the most experienced you had ever had before. Even your own touch couldn’t compare.

"Is this what the birthday girl wants?" Fernando kissed your ear, drawing out a pleasured moan from you, "Beg me to fuck you, princess"

"Please nano, please" You tried to stifle your moaning when his knuckles disappeared into you.

He mocked, "Aren't you the cutest?"

Fernando got onto his knees in front of you, hiking up your dress to your stomach.

"Let me taste how desperate you are"

He didn't let you have time to process the sudden change of position, Fernando's mouth now worked where once his fingers were buried. Your fingers gripped his scalp, desperately needing to touch him. He brushed his thumb over your clit, circling that little bundle of nerves until you became a whimpering mess for him.

You tried to keep your moans and purring quiet. It was no easy task considering how damn good his wet tongue felt, moving in different ways on your warm core.

"Ah-ah, don't silence yourself, princesa. I want to hear your pretty noises." He taunted, flicking his tongue over your clit just to watch you squirm, "C'mon, be a good girl and do it again."

His voice sounding stern and seductive sent you into bliss, and erotic moans ripped your throat open just because he asked you to. Because just like the other way around, you'd do anything for him.

"Fuck, I'm so close!" You whispered out loud.

You bucked your hips towards him, fucking yourself on his finger and mouth. His hands held yours steady on your stomach, under the silky red fabric of your dress.

He slowed to a stop and removed his pleasurable fingers. You whined.

"Fernan–"

Hopping on top of you, Fernando grabbed your face between his hand and attacked your lips, silencing you with his own. He got in between your legs, and you felt something hard and velvety against your slit. Your heart pounded with the quick realization that it was his cock.

He rubbed his cockhead against your gushing slit while he whispered in your ear, "Make a wish, birthday girl"

"Fuck me, please"

He slowly thrust inside you, letting you savor every second of the pleasurable intrusion. You gasped. He filled you so perfectly.

Fernando groaned as he felt his dick ripping your walls open.

"Fuck, Nando!" You bit your lip hard, eyes turning to the back of your head.

You felt his hard length rubbing against every pleasurable spot inside you. The very walls of your pussy were alight with your once again approaching orgasm in a way you had never experienced before. Usually, it had to be your clit bringing you this much pleasure. This was even better.

"Fuck, you feel so good" He groaned against the crook of your neck, "like this pussy was made jus' for me. You were made jus' for me."

He growled with excitement and forcibly held your hands down on either side of your head, palms glued to each other, fingers entwined to his own. Even for his age, his stamina was relentless. You kept moaning and begging, and although you were incapable of any coherent thoughts, you kept eye contact, staring deep into those brown chocolate eyes that you so loved.

"Yes, sweetie, jus' like that. You're such a good girl" He murmured, his praisings driving you insane, "Come on my cock, love. Let it out for me."

Fernando's cock kept punching into you just right, reaching a fiery spot deep inside you. Your mind went blank. You felt a sweet, mind-blowing release spilling over. Your pussy simply gushed around him. His cock twitched inside you. A moment later he was moaning loudly in your ear. He thrust his cock a few more slow, firm times as you felt him come undone deep inside you.

He held himself deep but still inside you for a moment while he caught his breath. You were even more breathless than he was. Your every muscle relaxed into the sofa. You smiled like you couldn't help it.

Fernando kissed your ear. "Happy birthday, corazón."

liked by fernandoalo_official and 721,908 others

yourusername birthday dump. feeling 23.

#fernando alonso x reader #fernando alonso imagines #fernando alonso x yn #fernando alonso x you #fernando alonso #formula 1 x reader #f1 x you #formula 1 x you

717 notes · View notes

he-goes-down · 9 months

Note

vampire izzy. pleasd i need him

Ur a whore like me (POSITIVE)

Lullaby

Masterlist

Pairing: Izzy Stradlin(Vampire) x reader

Warnings: vampire? Bit of a blood kink cus vampire. Smut!!! Unprotected p in v. Less dialogue more descriptionWORST SMUT TRANSITION EVER

Second person POV:

“Who are you?”

A low voice echoed throughout the cathedral like manor, scaring you making you jump. You thought the place was abandoned as you tried to look for shelter out of the rain and cold dark night. You looked around the shadow filled room, your eyes trailing up the grey walls and pillars, not expecting to find anyone up there. But, a dark shadow fell down fast from the unlit ceiling. You stood still. Glistening hazel eyes glared at you from a far, you couldn’t make out the rest of the face as an arm was in front of it. The figure soon speed far left from you, far back, then far right and immensely fast inhumane speeds. Didn’t even looked like the feet moved and inch off the ground. The figure soon flash past your eyes and stopped right in front of you. Those eyes. The moonbeams reflected of his iris showing glowing brown and green colours, but then a flash of red covered them and flashed back to normal.

You shivered, your skin chilling and making goosebumps while you stood paralyzed as the figure moved closer. Now seeing his features in the moon light. Dark jet black shoulder length hair, pale white skin, straight big nose, pink lips. Fangs. He drew closer, you were still stood still as you couldn’t mover, actually paralysed. His hand clutched onto your face harshly, his fingertips digging into your cheeks. “You never answered the question doll.” He said. You couldn’t speak, not because of fear, and terror, but because you physically couldn’t. With a snap of his fingers you mouth was freed for the invisible lock. Your lips parted trying to form a sentence for this stranger. Not just any stranger a vampire. The vampire inspected your face, last landing on your lips, your mouth still slightly a gape. Realizing you had no fangs. He could have taken you right then an there for dinner, but he didn’t. “Answer it.” He commanded. “I’m sorry- I’m no one, I just needed a place to take cover from the rain.” You sputtered out.He looked at you up and down, analyzing. Letting go of your face. Taking off your now damp hood, caressing his thumb on your temple as his hand clawed around to the back if your head, holding you. Gently.

“Come with me. I’ll keep you warm.” He said, his eyes turning red then back to normal again, turning on his heel. Your body now unparalysed. You didn’t even know his man but you were entranced by his gorgeous features. ‘Shit he’s a vampire though he could kill you.’ You internal dialogue began. ‘Yeah, but i’d let him.’ ‘Hmm, true he is so so fine.’ The angel on your shoulder agreed with the devil on the right. ‘And get this, if he bites us we could be vampires too.’ ‘Omg you’re so fucking smart.’ Sometimes your internal dialogue weren’t the most logical of the bunch.

You followed the man, upstairs, downstairs, through windy corridors, never ending corridors. Until finally coming to a wooden door. He opened it revealing a very nice kept up bedroom, no dust, a canopy bed with black and white lacing bedding. Everything you’d find on gothic vampire pinterest board. You really expected for him to sleep in a coffin but I guess the black out curtains were enough for him. You were entranced by the room but got snapped out of it by his voice. “Get undressed.” Straight forward to the point. You look at him for a second in utter shock. “Huh?” You responded after a pause. “I apologise… I haven’t had visitors in, well a while. Let alone, a human…” He told you. Then explaining that he had extra clothes you could borrow so you would have to be in the wet clothes you were in now. You agreed feeling a bit stupid, but you were both in the same boat. Whilst you got dressed he set up the fire on the other end on the room, and you did get to know each others name, his was Izzy. Once you finish buttoning the second last button from the top of the white oversized blouse, your hair moved from your neck, exposing it. A deep quiet sniff was heard from him, and a grunt, almost sexual.

You looked back to him, crouching down by the fire place, he was in middle of setting it a lit but now his eyes were boring into the floor, holding his mouth, biting on his finger. “Are you okay?” You began to slowly walk towards him, He waved his hand at you telling you it’s fine and you could stay were you were. He did glance at you, and back to the floorboards trying to collect himself but he did a double take. You in his blouse, neck and partly exposed. The fabric only going little past your hips onto your thigh, your legs all the way exposed as you just had your panties on. A softer incoherent grunt cane out his mouth this time, eyeing you from your sexy legs to your delectable neck and your pretty face. You looked at him confused as he got up, the fire place still not lit. He looked at you through his brows, lust and bloodlust coursing through his veins. Another flash of red in his eyes and a flash of his. Inhumane speed. Standing right behind you.

“There’s another way I can warm you up…”

He spoke softly into your ear, you could hear the sound of his fangs like a knife being sharpened. Shit. Your mind was racing, there was two different meanings to this. Being made into a vampire, or a vampire being in you. Both of those options tickled your secret fanatasies

“What do you mean…?” You asked stampering

“Both.” His face lowered to your neck

It was like he knew you mind, like he could read it.

“ I can.” He answered to your internal monologue. You looked at him with surprise, “Oh, but I cant stop if you want.” He said as he retracted his hands that was about to snake around your waste. His eyes flashed red again and back to normal. He wasn’t spying on your brain anymore. But he already knows what you want, deeply. “But… can I?” He paused and stammered want to put his arms around you, and the things that you were thinking of. You nodded but he just kissed your neck and groaned softly. “Use your words precious angel…” He told you. You squeaked out a needy yes, his hands traveling to hold you, arms around you from behind, fingers fiddling with the fabric of the shirt. You heard a few groans from him as his nose and mouth were right there on your neck, but he tried to control himself to not go wild. Your delicious scent, tender and soft skin made him weak and practically drooling. His hands found his way under the shirt, caressing up to your waist where he held you. Your cheeks were set a flame, burning red hot, so was the rest of your body. His mouth opened slightly on your neck, his hands travelling down again to your hips, his fangs grazing over your supple skin. His breath making your whole body shiver and tingle.

His fingers began to tap on your hips, looping his fingers under on the ends of your panties. Hie kissed your neck when his hand went under your panties and slowly made it to your aching core. After one kiss he couldn’t get enough. Kisses getting more aggressive and hungry after each taste of your skin. “Fuck…” You cursed as his finger began to work circles on your clit. He kept sighing and moaning as your un pierced skin teased his fangs. Wanting to take this new found virginity of yours. “Shit.” He hissed, nearly bitting into you. He didn’t have plans to stop, he had plans to get more comfortable. He turned you around with one quick motion and pushed you onto the bed. You shifted back so your whole body was lying on the bed, arms perching up your torso. Izzy crawling over you, and with a snap of his fingers the dark, red and black lace curtains fell from their restrains and perfectly placed themselves closed. Izzy effortlessly moved your body, your head now on the soft satin pillows. Him in between your legs, his eyes scanning every single crevice of your body, the best scene he’s seen in over hundred years of living.

He unbuttoned the shirt with ease, seeing you in only your panties. His hard on very visible against his pants. “Perfect.” He said, seeing your nearly naked body. Another snap of his fingers and all his clothes except his underwear was still on. His dick even more visible. You could foam at the mouth seeing how enormous he is. With another swift movement he took off your panties and his boxers soon after. Now his dripping tip against your wet heat. Looking st you with a desperate and pleading look. You agreed. His tip digging into your slowly, his mouth now back on your neck. Kisses over kisses, getting sloppier as he went further deeper into you and as he began to lose self control, and the blood pumping in you veins right below him teased ever sense in his body. You moaned, wriggling under him trying to get comfortable as he completely stretched out your sweet cunt. Moaning and whining as he bottomed out into you. Slight sweat dripping dien his face and body, panting and sighing as you clenched around him tightly.

One of your sweet moans turned into a scream as your felt his fangs graze over your skin then violently inject into your neck. Blood came drizzling out the two formed holes, Izzy sucked most of it away into his mouth before it dripped down further. Except for a few drops snd trails that went dien to your breasts and even down your stomach. Izzy watched the scene hearing your painful yet moans that were laced with a sick pleasure, sucking on your neck and draining your veins. Your mind and his became foggy, his covered by sick lust and yours by loosing blood. Your neck became to sting and ache less as Izzy began to thrust is huge cock in and out of you. “My good little - fucking-…” He couldn’t finished his sentence as he moaned whilst ramming his cock onto your g spot, making your even feel it in your throat. It made your head spin as he called you ‘his’, clenching around his dick as he spoke in groans into your ear whilst he was still fang deep into you.

Your hips slammed together again and again, the whole manor was filled with moans and the sound of skin against skin. You were about to pass out right before Izzy gained some self control and retracted his fangs from your body. You whined as his thrusts became slower and as your neck ached like a thousand bruises would show up tomorrow on it. Izzy watched as the blood streamed from your neck, tainted your breasts and red colour, traveling down to your stomach and getting lost from sight as it traveled beyond your pleasure bound hips. Izzy moaned again, needing to keep his mouth occupied and not suck you to death. He was now going deathly slow trying to control himself. “Izzy- please… harder-” You moaned out as your tried to get some friction. The last of your whines were muffled as his mouth passionately met yours, lips crashing as his dick pounded into you violently. The bed shaking and squeaking, Izzys perfect dark hair getting messy as he fucked you with inhumane strength. His tongue found its way into your mouth, swirling around as you tasted the metallic taste of your own blood from his mouth. You moaned in pleasure as he continued fucking you like an animal, his hands now getting your arms away from clawing and leaving deep scratches on his back only to then use on hand and handcuffs and pin your arms and hands above your head. The other hand went to one of your thighs, lifting it and pushing it a bit to the side. Digging his nails into your skin as this new angle could make him fuck deeper into you. “Oh fuck-“ you moaned against Izzy’s mouth, feeling your orgasm bubbled in the pits of your stomach, swallowing and sighing hard, feeling the ache in your neck as your body began to shake lightly. “Cum on me sunshine.” He said. ‘Sunshine’ his only weakness in the world, and it was you, your tasty blood, your precious lips, everything.

Your legs shook as he pounded into you harder and harder making your orgasm burst like a flame, you moaned and sighed as your juices spilt over his dick as you clenched tightly, some of the juiced leaking from your filled pussy and mixing with the blood that ran down your inner thigh. A few more thrusts snd Izzy was holding your wrists tighter and his dick twitched inside you. “Fuck- good girl… take my cum.” He told you lowly as his thrusts became more sloppy and desperate. He moaned and cursed away from your mouth now and back to muffling noises against your blood soaked neck. He came inside of you, coating your walls white, the warm sensation making you whine, some of it leaking out aswell to mix with the other liquids on your inner thighs.

He pulled out letting his cum and your juices spill from you. Soon after watching the erotic scene if your blood and his cum mix, he got up to get bandages and a small biscuit. He bandaged your neck, gave you the biscuit before kissing your forehead. He wiped up the mess the two of your made, and came to lie next to you. Him moving your body with effortlessness again, now for him to make you lie on top of him. Holding and cuddling you in his silk and satin bed.

“You’re mine now sunshine.”

#guns n roses #izzy stradlin #duff mckagan #axl rose #slash #steven adler #duff gnr #izzy gnr #slash gnr #steven gnr #axl gnr #izzy stradlin x reader #izzy stradlin smut #vampire #vampire smut #jeffery dean isbell

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jazzthatonewriterchick · 3 months

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Rock The Boat 🛳️(Bartender!Toji x Black!Fem!Reader 18+ One Shot)

Pairing: Toji Fushigiro x Black!Fem!Reader (Strangers to Lovers)

Synopsis: You go on a cruise vacation after your boyfriend cheats on you and meets Toji, the fine-ass bartender & divorcee. You're invited to a white party that he’s working at and while there, you find yourself flirting with him thanks to the liquid courage. After slipping him a note with room number, you wait for him that night. At first, you believe that he isn’t coming and feel rejected, but when he does, you realize that this vacation is just what you need to get over your heartbreak.

Warnings: Smutty Smut; 18+ (MINORS GTFO); Black-coded!Reader; Flirting; Alcohol Consumption; Dom!Toji/sub!Reader; Drunk Sex; Oral (Giving & Receiving); Spitting; Toji Drinks Patron Off Your Tits & P*ssy; Daddy Kink; Spanking; Mild Choking; Backshots On Balcony; Exhibitionism; Missionary; Doggystyle; Unprotected Sex; Raw Creampie; Aftercare; Mild Yuki x Choso

Writer’s Note: I’ve had this idea for a minute now & wanted to write it cuz I’m a whore for balcony sex. Also, I just started my college courses so my writing updates may slow down a bit, BUT I’ll still be writing as much as I can. -Jazz

*********

You sit next to the lonely soul with the horrible comb-over at the pool bar, your cheek in your hand and your brain taking you to places other than here with him.

Like in the pool of appetizingly blue water with the rest of the cruisers or at the spa getting a massage and a mud mask done.

“I just don’t think women realize how much they can hurt men by treating them like sex objects, y’know? Like, yes, I understand that men can do it too, but I believe that’s only because men are testing women! They want to weed out the real women and the quote-on-quote “whores”. I thought my ex-wife was a real woman, but…”

To anyone watching, it’d look like you’re intently listening to the man (a divorced investment banker, as he told you) discuss his extremely sexist, incel-like views and ideologies, but your eyes are about a second away from rolling out of your skull.

Your eyes flit to where you left Yuki, your bestie and partner in crime, at the poolside only to find her flirting with the cute guy you met yesterday standing in line to get dinner at the buffet. He has a black mullet, inked muscles, and a lip piercing that no doubt is getting Yuki interested. You believe his name is Choso.

Yuki lays back on her pool chair in her black bikini and sunglasses, flashing Choso a smile that makes him blush and sheepishly rub the back of his neck.

You curse your friend for having such an easy time flirting with cute guys while you’re stuck sitting in the middle of this middle-aged divorcee’s tirade of ignorant thoughts that you no doubt know his people refuse to listen to, so that’s why he’s telling you about them.

“Most women are gold diggers nowadays and only seem to focus on the outside instead of the inside,” he laments into his vodka spritzer. “That’s why I’m so glad you’re not like that. As nice-looking as you are, you’re still sitting here talking to me.” He gives you a smile that makes you feel bad because he is 100% wrong.

Not that you’re a gold digger, but you absolutely would want to talk to someone you classify as ‘eye candy’, like Choso. Especially someone who doesn’t make you want to take a gun to your forehead. But you return the smile, forcing it as much as you can. The divorcee turns to the bar and waves his hand. “A third, please!” He calls.

With him distracted, you take a sip of your tequila sunrise, wanting desperately to get another. You curse Yuki even more for encouraging you to flirt even though this is what a singles’ cruise is supposed to be about: flirting, romancing, and fucking people that you’ll never see again.

Yuki had come up with the idea for you two to vacay on the water for seven days on a boat about five months ago when you were still healing from your boyfriend’s betrayal. After three years of dating and hoping to live together to begin your lives, you discovered that he had been cheating on you after a random chick contacted you over IG with photos of him asleep in her bed.

“I don’t want to keep him,” she told you. “I just wanted you to know what was going on.” Apparently, he had met her at a club and things took off from there. Of course, he denied it until you showed him photos. Then it was the waterworks, the “I’m so sorry”s, and then empty promises of never doing it again.

But of course, dogs will be dogs. As soon as you broke it off, you found him posted up in a strip club between two dancers’ fat asses. You blocked him with the quickness, permanently taking him out of your life, but that didn’t stop the heartbreak, the betrayal, and the lonely nights when you desperately wanted to call.

Tired of seeing you moping around your shared apartment all gloom and doom, Yuki found the perfect solution: “Let’s go on a singles’ cruise!” She bellowed to you over coffee one morning. “It’s for seven days, we dock at Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and St. Martin, and all that is on the boat are hot singles wanting to meet other hot singles like us!”

You thought it was a stupid plan. You haven’t been away from home since your teens when you flew to Mexico for a family vacay. But then again, it would be nice to get out of the city and see new sights. And maybe the water and hot guys would help cure your heartbreak. So you agreed, split the payment with Yuki, packed your cutest swimsuits and sundresses, and now here you are!

Here you are trying to think of a good way to tell this drunk divorcee that it was nice chatting with him, but you’re due for a dip in the pool curiosity of the skimpy, cut-out one-piece that Yuki made you buy for the thong and deep V-neck that makes your breasts look immaculate.

You sip your drink for liquid courage, but you’re stopped when a deep, silky yet raspy voice comes from behind the bar: “Apologies for this, sir,” he says, “but you’ve reached your limit on your drink card. I can’t serve you anymore till you get that taken care of.” Both you and the divorcee turn to stare in shock at the bartender standing behind the tiki bar…and he’s by far the finest man you’ve ever seen.

He’s tall, he’s buff, and he’s got eyes and a voice that would make any woman cream her panties. Standing about 6-foot something, he towers over you as you sit on your barstool. His toned body fills out his Hawaiian shirt and khakis, his thick thighs and pecs pushing up against the fabric. You see yourself running your fingers through his black hair or the scar running over the corner of his lips. Veins run up and down his arms and big, calloused hands that pass the drink card back to the divorcee who looks red in the face.

“W-What?!” the divorcee stammers. “But that’s impossible! I specifically ordered a card for unlimited drinks!” The bartender shrugs, not looking the least bit apologetic or sympathetic. “Well, ya may not remember, but I had warned you at the casino bar to be careful orderin’ all of those drinks, especially since you only docked the boat yesterday.”

The divorcee opens his mouth to say more and the buff bartender raises an eyebrow, waiting for a rebuttal. Instead, the divorced banker snatches his card up, downs the rest of his drink, and scurries off back to the pool. You turn to the bartender who shakes his head disappointedly. “Don’t worry ‘bout him,” he says, turning to you. “He’s just a lonely, drunk soul. All he does is bother the single girls.”

He pauses, picking up a shaker and vigorously shaking it as he speaks. “I’m assumin’ you’re single?” He questions, obviously fishing for a conversation. You raise an eyebrow at him, wondering what he’s getting at. “I am,” you reply. “Why? You interested?”

The bartender stifles a chuckle as he opens the shaker and pours some orange liquid into a frosted daiquiri glass. “That would be overstepping, wouldn’t it?” He rhetorically asks. “I mean, you’re a customer and this is my job. It wouldn’t be…” He pauses, passing you another tequila sunrise. “Proper.”

He gives you a smirk, the very tiny movement making your insides flutter. He’s just too damn fine! “My treat,” he says. “No payment required.” Hesitantly, you take the new glass while he takes your old one and passes it off to get washed. ”What is this?” You chuckle. “You buyin’ me a drink?”

“Makin’ one, actually,” he corrects you as he passes two people some club sodas. “And to make you feel better after that guy got on ya nerves.” He ticks his intensely brown eyes up to yours. “You looked like ya needed a hand.”

You titter into your glass, already feeling the tequila taking its toll, making you talk shit. “A hand?” You parrot. “I was actually handling that, thank you very much.”

The bartender, who you realize is still a stranger to you, laughs at this. The deep, sexy rumble of the sound makes you feel hot in your swimsuit. “Oh, yeah, ‘cause you were doing such a great job,” he sarcastically replies. “That man would’ve talked you to death.”

You purse your lips at him, wondering if you should send the drink back or toss it in his face. “And who are you?” You sharply ask. It’s more rhetorical, but he answers anyway: “Toji Fushigiro.” He reaches one of his big hands out across the bar towards you. “Pleasure to meet you, uh…” He trails off, allowing you to fill the space with your name. You hesitantly eye his hand before tentatively reaching out to shake it. “Y/N,” you say, ignoring the zing of electricity zipping through your arm at his rough palm and firm grip. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Mmm, I’m sure,” Toji replies and you quirk a questionable brow at him. “I make the best drinks on this boat,” he explains with a shrug as he retracts his hand. You suddenly feel cold despite the hot sun beaming down on you. “You’ll be even happier you’ve met me once you get a taste of the cocktails I can whip up.”

You scoff, rolling your eyes. “Oh, really? You talk such big game that I almost don’t believe you.” You take a sip of your drink, aware that he made it and it’s the best damn tequila sunrise you’ve ever had. It puts the one you had earlier made by another bartender to shame.

A spark suddenly appears behind Toji’s eyes. One of…interest? Mirth? Curiosity? Whatever it is, it makes you feel exposed despite your bathing suit and cover-up. “It ain’t ‘big game’, Y/N,” he says, your name sounding like a sin coming off of his tongue. “When I talk, it ain’t shit. It’s all real and from experience.”

You watch his hands quickly fix another drink, grabbing, whisking, mixing, etc. He is obviously a pro at this. You can’t imagine what his fingers could do to you in the darkness of a bedroom. Realizing where your thoughts are headed, you mentally kick yourself. He’s a whole stranger and you’re thinking about fucking him!

‘Get it together,’ you think. You still haven’t even read him or his intentions yet. Though he’s undeniably hot with hands that you’d love to feel wrapped around your neck, a body you want on top of yours, and a voice that you know has delicious moans, you don’t know how you feel about sleeping with a guy you barely know. You at least want to get to know more about him.

So you play along, twirling your straw around your glass. “Oh, really?” you ask, a purr in your voice. “I’d say prove it, but you already fixed me a drink and you look kinda busy.”

To slowly take the straw into your mouth, wrapping your plump, glossy lips around it. Toji watches, not so subtly staring dead at your mouth. His eyes tick back up to yours as if he just realized that he’s working and he smirks. “Not enough for you,” he replies.

Before he can do absolutely anything though, his phone rings in his back pocket. He looks visibly frustrated, his brows narrowing and the corner of his mouth that is scarred twitching. “Shit,” he sighs. “Duty calls, I’m afraid.”

You find yourself feeling disappointed that he’s leaving too. “But listen,” he continues, passing you a white card from behind the bar. You take it and read it, realizing that it’s an invitation. “I’m gonna be workin’ at an all-white party later tonight, adults only. It’ll start at 8 PM, but I suggest comin’ around 10 if you want the best drinks. That’s when my shift starts.”

His smirk, sparked with playfulness and mischief, widens. You contemplate your decision for a bit before you give him a smile. “Alright then,” you agree. “I’ll see you then, Toji.” You take a final sip of your drink and pass it to him. As he reaches for it and grabs it, your fingers brush against each other. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but you believe you see him inhale sharply through his nostrils as if your touch has burned him.

I’ll be lookin’ forward to it,” he murmurs. “Enjoy the drink and the pool, Y/N.” He gives you a wink before he heads off to clean your glasses, leaving you feeling lightheaded and tingly all over.

When you meet up with Yuki by the pool, you feel like you need to take a dip to cool yourself off. She sits up in her chair, putting her sunglasses on her head. “Whatcha get?” she asks. “A number from that hot bartender, I hope.” She grins at you, signaling that she’d been watching you the whole time.

With a secretive smile, you silently pass her the invite and her eyes go wide.m“A party invite?!” she gasps, grinning up at you. “Girl, he wants you! Now we have to go! You brought a white dress with you, right?”

And so Yuki drags you to the nearest shop on the boat to get the perfect outfit for tonight.

***********

As soon as you arrive at the all-white party with Yuki, you want to go back to your room and sleep almost immediately.

Number one it’s because the music is waaay too loud. While you’re a fan of rolling your windows down and blasting your music in your car, it’s not enough to blow out your eardrums. But this music is. And number two, the pool is waaaay too crowded. There has to be about one hundred guests here tonight all dressed in their finest white outfits under the strobe lights. They surround the pool and the tiki bar where the bartenders must be working overtime.

You look towards the bar, hoping to at least see a glimpse of Toji. Admittedly, he was the only reason you decided to buy the dress Yuki pressed you into trying on before you came down here with Yuki after filling your stomachs at supper.

Before the party, you and Yuki attended a delicious lobster dinner and pre-gamed with cocktails before going upstairs to get dressed. She’s decked out in a flowing white dress that hugs her toned body oh-so nicely and strappy sandals, her flowing, blonde hair cascading down her back in soft curls. She looks damn good.

You feel like you do too. Standing in the bathroom mirror in your cabin, you slid your hands down your sides in your mini white halter dress with a chiffon skater skirt that stops mid-thigh and ties around your neck in a cute bow. The V-neck leaves a silver of cleavage that eyes are drawn to (unbeknownst to you) because of the long gold chain you added to match your hoop earrings and strappy heels.

After applying some Fenty Glossbomb to make your lips look plump and juicy, some shimmer oil to make your brown skin pop, and piling your braids into a bun at the top of your head, you felt sexy. Goddess-like. Good enough to eat. But even now, despite still looking hot, you don’t quite feel it. You can already feel yourself becoming overstimulated by the crowd and disappointed at not seeing Toji. “Well, it’s 10:02 and he’s not here,” you announce, checking your phone.

Yuki pets your shoulder like you’re a cat, intending to comfort you. “He’s probably just late,” she assures you, looking around for someone in particular before pouting. “Choso isn’t here yet either. C’mon, let’s get a drink.”

She drags you over to the tiki bar, scouting out two stools at the end of the bar. You anxiously tap your finger against your knee, your anxiety rising along with the sound of the music and miscellaneous conversations as people get drunker. Suddenly, the idea of meeting Toji with the intention of flirting and possibly having casual sex doesn’t feel like a good idea.

“Yuki, I don’t know about this,” you sigh, leaning in towards her ear. “I haven’t dated or slept with anyone since the breakup.” Your friend furrows her blonde brows at you, her eyes soft. “And that’s okay!” she replies. “All it takes is a little push. Bartender, a round of tequila over here, please!”

She waves one manicured hand at a pixie of a bartender and she nods, running to get your order. She then turns to you, cocking her head to the side. “That Toji guy looked like he’s exactly what you need, but you need to give him a try, Y/N! Besides, even if he doesn’t show, you’ve got plenty of dudes in here who will gladly spend the night with you as fine as you look!”

She motions her hand up and down your legs; thighs; boobs; face; even your feet. “What have you got to lose?” She asks and the question stumps you. Really, nothing. You already lost your relationship. And maybe a trip filled with hot sex would be just the trick to help you out of your slump of heartbreak.

But even so, the anxious, paranoid part of you still lingers on the ‘what ifs’. What if he isn’t interested? What if he turns out to be a creep? What if he tosses you over the balcony into the shark-infested waters? ….Okay, maybe that’s just your ID Channel obsession talking, but still!

Even now, your lips wobble, prepared to protest against Yuki’s encouraging speech. “But—“

“Hey there, can I buy you two pretty ladies some drinks?” A mildly familiar, sexy, deep voice suddenly asks near your ear. You turn around, prepared to either agree, say no, or jump down the man’s throat, but your words die in your throat when you see Toji leaning against the bar behind you.

And he looks yummier than he did earlier. He decided to wear white too—the shirt he wears is short-sleeved and halfway unbuttoned to show the sliver of his chest and a name tattoo that you can’t read on his right pec paired with khaki shorts and white Vans. The gold jewelry—a chain around his neck, a watch, and an anklet on one of his ankles—add to this deliciously masculine summertime fit. You’ve been waiting for him to arrive, but now that he’s here, all the flirty bite you had in you earlier disappears.

You let out an embarrassing croak which he humorously smiles at. His smile is a killer, all white teeth and goddamn dimples. Damn him. He knows his powers.

“I thought you were making the drinks,” Yuki says, talking for you since you suddenly cannot. “Though we’re not complaining, shouldn’t you be behind that bar?”

“Not till 10:30,” Toji answers with a wink. “We’re fully booked with bartenders till then, so I’ve got a little break, but I can make a few exceptions for you two.” He looks at the bar, finding the tray of tequila shots sitting there. “Or not,” he chuckles. “Looks like you girls have already started.”

He takes a seat next to you, practically filling up the space beside you with how big he is. “Uh, this is my friend Yuki,” you say, quickly snapping back to reality. “She’s my cruise buddy.” The blonde smiles at the bartender, putting an arm around you. “And the best person in her life,” she giggles.

Toji offers his hand across you for a handshake. “Toji. Nice to meet you.” Yuki’s phone suddenly flashes and she quickly digs into her purse for it. She smiles at the mystery message on her phone and gives you a wink. “You two go on ahead and enjoy yourselves. My guest just arrived.” Meaning Choso is here and you’ll be left alone.

Yuki downs a tequila shot, gives you a sticky kiss on the cheek, and leans down to whisper to you. “Have fun,” she says. “Call me if you need me.” And then, before you can even stop her or beg her to stay, she is gone.

Now you’re left alone with the hot bartender. You become acutely aware of how close he's sitting next to you, his knee almost brushing yours. He clears his throat to ebb away the awkwardness, ”So you decided to come,” he states, smiling at you.

You turn away, staring at your nails instead. You’re afraid to look at him too much or else you’ll melt. “I said I would, didn’t I?” you reply, picking up a shot glass. “So here I am.” You take a swig and swallow it whole before sucking on a lemon to ease the strong taste and burn in your throat.

“I’d say you look good, but that isn’t goin’ to sweeten you up, is it?” Toji asks. He says it jokingly, but you can tell he’s noticed how hostile you seem. “What, party scene ain’t your thing?”

You turn him, expecting him to be laughing at you, but you see none of that. Now you feel like a bitch. “Ah…no, I’m just a little seasick,” you lie. “Sorry. I’m just not used to cruises.” You sound as lame as you feel. “Why’d you decide to come then?” he wonders aloud. “Other than the pool and trips.”

You allow yourself to chuckle, liking that he’s trying to ease your nerves. So you decide to tell him. “A breakup.” You watch Toji’s face fall. “I was with someone for three years, hoping that they’d ask me to move in with them or even propose, but that didn’t happen ‘cause they cheated on me, and for the last five months, I’ve been…”

You pause, realizing that you’ve been talking for far too long. “Shit,” you sheepishly laugh. “Why didn’t you stop me from rambling?”

Toji reaches across you for a shot glass and you realize just how big his arm is. He could put you in a chokehold if he wanted to and you’d enjoy it. ‘Cause I thought it was cute,” he simply replies as he downs the shot in one gulp. “But seriously: your ex sounds like a fuckin’ idiot. Barely a man.”

You crack a small smile at his attempt at comforting you. “Yeah,” you sigh. “Thanks.”

Silence descends upon you again, but this time, it’s less awkward or tense. “You ain’t the only one with a breakup on their back,” he somberly says. “My ex-wife and I divorced two years ago, but she recently got engaged to a new man. Can’t say I didn’t face that blow.” He heaves a heavy sigh, looking down from the memory.

“Well, what happened?” You blurt and then cover your mouth, horrified at your prying. What is wrong with you tonight? “I-I’m sorry, you don’t have to—“

“Money problems,” he interrupts. “Plus, we married young when we had my son and started growin’ apart. That’s the name I’ve got on my chest that you were starin’ at: my son’s name.” He peels back a bit of his shirt to show you his tattoo. “Megumi”, it reads.

“Yes, I saw you starin’ at it earlier,” he sniggers, his eyes filled with mirth. “You’re not as discreet as you think, darlin’.” You scowl at him, happy to be Black so he doesn’t see you blushing. “You jerk,” you scoff while he cackles at your dispense. “Fine. Then what about me starin’ dead at my boobs?”

Toji looks like a kid caught in a cookie jar now. “It’s actually the necklace I was starin’ at—“

“Liar!” You laugh, lightly punching him in the arm. “You sound like one of my school kids’ lyin’ to my face after I told them not to do something.” Interest appears on his face. “School kids? You’re a teacher?”

You nod, picking up another shot. Your second one of the night. “Yep, for about five years now.” You love your teaching job and your students. It feels good to be able to be such an important figure in their little lives.

Toji whistles to himself. “Shit, my kid would definitely pay attention in school if he had a teacher that looked like you.” You criticize yourself for folding so easily. How does this man have so much game? But then again, he was married, so you suppose he knows how to flirt.

He reaches for another shot and holds it up. “Cheers to work, new experiences, and a summer to remember.” You smile and raise your glass as well. “Cheers,” you parrot before you both down your shots in one gulp.

Your second shot turns into a third. Then a fourth. And soon, it becomes easier to talk to Toji and not feel so awkward. You feel loose, but not enough to come out of your clothes or fall over chairs. The liquid courage gives you just enough confidence to stop being so closed off and start talking. Really talking. You converse with Toji the whole time about everything: your job, why he decided to bartend, where you’re both from (you’re from the US while he was born in Japan), relationships, food, etc.

You find that you love talking to Toji. It could be the tequila shots, but you find yourself hanging onto all of his answers, jokes, and little quips. You giggle at his attempts at flirting with you and you flirt back, slamming your attraction down on the bar. “Y’know, you’re a really good listener,” you drunkenly admit. “Definitely not like my ex-dick.” He laughs, sucking on a lime. “It’s the magic of a bartender,” he chuckles. “I get that a lot, but you make it easy to listen.”

His hooded eyes stare deeply into yours, making you turn into a puddle on the bar stool. You feel absolutely delicious and untouchable being in his presence, especially under his gaze. He can’t keep his eyes off of you. However, his magic is broken when a timer on his phone goes off.

“Well, duty calls,” he sighs, stretching his big arms over his head. “Now I can show you all my tricks.”

You giggle as he slides off of his stool and lifts up the bar to get to his post. “You mean that big game you were talkin’ earlier?” you snigger, crossing your legs over each other as you turn to face him. “Ah-ah, sweetie,” he tuts. “I told you: it’s all real. Lemme prove it to you.”

‘I’d let you prove anything to me,’ you think, completely and totally wet over this man. How can you not be? Every word out of his mouth sounds like an innuendo or a promise better suited for the bedroom. You try to quell your horny thoughts as you watch him lean over the bar, giving you that playful smile. “What would you like?” he asks. “A mango daiquiri? Piña colada? Pick your poison.”

You take a moment to think, tapping one nail against your chin. “Hmmm…how ‘bout a mai tai?”

Toji’s smile falls. “Seriously?” he asks. “All the fancy drinks I’ve been namin’ and you pick a mai tai? C’mon, darlin’, give me somethin’ bettter!”

You stick your tongue out at him. “I want what I want,” you boldly say. “Now are you gonna give it to me or do I have to find it with another bartender?” You cock your head to the side, sizing him up. Toji, on the same type of time as you, smirks and begins to whip up your order.

You watch his big arms and skillful hands whisk; pour; grab; shake. You imagine his hands all over you, one wrapped around your neck while the other is between your thighs, his thick fingers curled in your p–

“Somethin’ here you like, miss?” he teasingly asks, his brown eyes fixed on you. You’ve been caught. “No,” you cough, feigning embarrassment. “Just wonderin’ what the hell is takin’ so long.” A twinkle appears in Toji’s eyes, attracted to your ability to keep up with his quips, as he finally pushes the finished drink your way.

He watches you as you take a sip. You moan softly at the taste, falling in love with it. “Mmm!” you hum. “Okay, fine, I’ll bite. This is amazing.” Toji smiles, pleased. “I’m so glad I could please you,” he responds in that silky voice. “Looks like dude over there wants to please you too.” He nods down at the bar.

You look to where he’s looking and notice another admirer with so much hair gel that it makes his hair stick together in clumps. He gives you a smile that looks more like a grimace and raises his glass your way. “Mmmm,” you hum, but not in a seductive, pleased way. You’re disgusted. “Not your type?” Toji asks, stifling his laughter as he wipes down the bar.

You give the stranger a small smile before turning away and sipping your drink as if he isn’t there. “Let’s just say I don’t like hair gel.” Toji suddenly stops cleaning, interested in you now. “Then what is your type?” he boldly asks.

You. You pout pretending to think. A lady never tells her secrets this early, but there’s something about the bartender that makes you want to throw all caution to the wind. You want him to know you’re feeling him. “Well….I like men who are tall…and can make me laugh…and are good with their hands.” You trail your eyes down to his big, strong hands. He notices.

“What about you? What’s your type of girl?” You take a sip of your drink to cool yourself down, feeling hot all over. But then Toji fixes you with a look over the bar that makes you feel like you’ve stepped foot in a boiling volcano. “The kind that like mai tais,” he answers. His phone rings then, dropping whatever was about to happen from happening. “That’s my boss. Hang on a sec.”

When he leaves, you finally feel like you can breathe, but your pussy has had it by now. She knows what she wants and she will get it. So you quickly take two more sips of your mai tai and fish $10 out of your purse along with a pen that you use to scribble down a message on a napkin:

Toji, I left cuz I was overstimulated from the party. I loved talking to you & would like to do more up in my cabin. If you’re interested, come to the top floor at 210. I’ll see you then. - Y/N

You fold the $20 into the napkin and leave it under your drink before leaving. When you text Yuki that you’re heading upstairs but to stay at the party, she catches on immediately. You don’t have to tell her that Toji will possibly be upstairs with you. “Just be careful, tell me everything later, and make sure he eats pussy,” she texts you back.

After an hour he doesn’t show up. After two, he still doesn’t show up. When three hours go by, you’ve finished your glass of wine and have dozed off on the couch. When you wake up alone in your cabin with no Toji, you feel disappointment and embarrassment flare inside of you. You feel stupid.

While it occurs to you that you never specifically asked him when his shift ends tonight, the party is over! It said it ended at midnight on the invitation. Plus, if you had asked when he’d be done with work, you would’ve exposed yourself for wanting to spend the night with him. You were supposed to be a creature of mystery AND seduction.

But…maybe you should’ve just told him. Maybe you should’ve been real about your intentions from the start like Yuki encouraged you to be. You think about your lovely best friend leaving the party with Choso on her arm and going up to his room. The thought makes you sick.

You thought for sure that you’d be in the same boat as her tonight, but you were sadly mistaken. Now here you are, sitting alone in your pretty sundress, slightly sober from the nap and not wanting to be. Viciously swiping away a lone tear that drips down your cheek, you pour yourself another glass of wine. What you need right now is a hot bubble bath.

But as you walk towards the bathroom with every intention of drawing yourself a relaxing bath, stripping off your stupid dress, sipping your wine, and washing away tonight, you hear a sudden loud knock on the door.

You startle, nearly dropping your wine goblet. You stare at the door, perplexed and scared. Yuki has her own key, so she won’t be knocking. So who in the hell is knocking on your door at this time of night? “Yes?” You call, your voice stern despite the wobble in it. “Y/N?” Toji’s deep voice drifts through the door. “It’s Toji. It’s late, I know, but I got your note and—“

You’re walking across the room and flinging the door open before he can finish. There he is standing before you. This isn’t a drunken hallucination or a mirage. He is right here at your door, still as sexy as the moment you saw him at the party tonight. He leans against the doorframe, looking like a big, hulking Adonis.

“Sorry,” you breathlessly say. “I couldn’t really hear you.” “Can I come in?” he asks, his dark eyes hopeful. You nod and step aside for him to enter the empty cabin. ”Sorry for the mess.”

“S’cool,” he chuckles. “I was sayin’ I got your note, but I got held up at the party. I was put on cleanin’ duty, but after that, I shot out of there as fast as I could.” He turns to you now and takes your smaller hands in his bigger ones, gently stroking your knuckles with his thumbs. His touch sends electricity shooting throughout your body.

“I’m sorry to ask,” he says, his voice soft, “but is your offer still on the table?” His gaze is not intense but it is hot. It tells you that he still wants whatever you want to happen to happen. You now know he feels the same attraction to you that you do to him.

Throwing all caution, insecurities, and doubt to the wind, you take your hands out of his, place them on his broad shoulders, and stand on your toes to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to his lips. Toji moans into the kiss, his lips moving in tandem with yours. He tastes of mint gum and the tequila you consumed before, his tongue slowly chasing yours.

When you pull away, there is a string of spit that attaches itself to your bottom lip. Toji’s gaze is dark and heated, burning you on the spot. “Don’t apologize,” you murmur against his lips. “Just fuck me. Please.”

Toji grins down at you and instantly grabs your ass over your dress. “That’s all I needed to hear, baby,” he exhales before swooping in to take you into another sloppy, open-mouthed kiss that results in a make-out session. His pillowy-soft lips and stubble rubbing against your chin instantly make you wet. You can’t remember the last time a man’s kiss made you feel so aroused.

His hands and body too. As his fingers and big palms glide up and down your thighs and ass beneath your dress, your hands indulge in his lusciously hard muscles. His biceps, pectorals, and abs all seduce you, making your inner thighs clench together in excitement. You can’t help but moan and whimper into his mouth, your bodies pressed against each other, hands all over each other’s bodies.

Finally fed up, Toji tears himself away from you, panting heavily. “Turn around and let me take this off of you,” he demands, his hands gliding down your sides. “As good as you look in this dress, I need to see it on the floor.”

You do as he says and shiver as his fingers brush your skin while he toys with the bow holding your dress up. He only has to pull on one of the ties to make it slide off your body, exposing your brown skin, naked breasts, and thong to him. He runs a hand down his face as he gapes at you. “Shit,” he hisses. “Now why the fuck would anyone cheat on you? Your ex is officially a dickhead.”

He moves towards you and swoops you up in his arms, wrapping them around your front. You bite your lip, instantly falling back into him. “You’re fuckin’ perfect,” he whispers, his teeth nibbling at your ear. “Lemme show you how much. Just tell me what you like.”

As he kisses up and down your neck, gently sucks and nibbles on your hard nipples, and massages your ass with those big hands, you tell him every naughty, nasty thing you love. You tell him your kinks. Your fantasies. How you want to be touched and used. Toji’s smile grows wider and his cock grows harder with every secret that you tell him.

Somehow, that all results in you getting spread eagle on your twin-sized bed while Toji is between your thighs, slurping at your pussy and fingerfucking you. You gasp and writhe on the mattress, one hand gripping the comforter while the other is laced in Toji’s black locks. “God, Toji, yes!” You whine, your voice bouncing off of the room’s walls.

You don’t care if your neighbors hear you. Anyone would be as loud as you if they could feel Toji’s tongue swirling against your clit and his long, skilled fingers curling up inside of you. The wet squelching of his digits fucking your cunt make you even wetter much to his enjoyment. He eagerly slurps and licks up all that you give him, his tongue sliding down to your asscrack and then up again to your slit.

“You taste so fuckin’ good, mama,” he moans, pressing a kiss to your quivering inner thighs. “But I know what’ll make ya taste even better.” He gives you a mischievous rin that both excites and scares you. He slowly slides his fingers out of you and sucks on them, looking you in your eyes as he does.

“Stay here,” he orders even though you’re not going anywhere. You watch him walk over to the mini fridge in your cabin and retrieve the complimentary mini bottle of Patron that was given to you and Yuki yesterday as a welcome gift. You got that along with the bottle of wine you just consumed, a fruit plate, and a bag of chocolates that you both shared while sitting on the balcony last night.

Though Toji is only gone for two minutes, it’s enough to make your throbbing, aching pussy feel desperate and impatient. When he returns, you whimper, sliding your hand down to play with yourself. “Toji, please,” you whisper, gasping when he smacks your hand away. “Uh-uh,” he sternly says. “That’s my pussy tonight. No touchin’ what’s mine.”

The idea of that turns you on more than you can express. You helplessly watch as he pops open the Patron and takes a swig before pouring a few droplets onto your hard, brown nipples. He swoops down and sucks on both, causing shocks of pleasure to soar through you. “Mmm,” you hum, eyes rolling back at the pleasure.

Toji pulls away, his eyes intense. “Open your mouth,” he demands and you do. He takes a swig of the tequila before he leans in and presses his mouth to yours, spitting the Patron in it. You have no choice but to swallow it, your cunt throbbing from the act.

“Like that, baby?” He asks, smirking down at you. Chuckling when you nod, he hovers over you and pours some Patron on your pussy lips. You gasp as the cool liquid hits your sensitive, heated skin, but the chill doesn’t last for long when Toji swoops in to engulf your cunt in his mouth and tongue.

“Oh, Toji!” You gasp, your back arching off the bed. His fingers slip inside of you again as he hungrily laps at your pussy, slurping up your juices and the tequila. “Shit,” you hiss. “Right there! Oooh, yes, right there!”

The bartender chuckles against your clit, keeping the same tempo and pressure as he fingers you, causing more juices to slip down your asscrack and onto the bed. It doesn’t take long for that knot in your core to tighten, threatening to snap the more Toji plays with your clit and your pussy. You grip his hair and shoulder for dear life, digging your nails into his skin and scalp.

“T-Toji,” you stammer. “I-I’m close! You’re gonna…gonna make me cum.” The sexy man between your thighs mumbles in agreement against your cunt, demanding your orgasm with his fingers and tongue. “Cum for me, you little slut,” he growls. “Do it. Give it to me, baby.”

You don’t even have a chance to warn him before your orgasm rolls out of you and hits you like a tidal wave that rocks you to your core. A loud scream-like moan escapes you as you gush all over Toji’s face, coating his chin and mouth in your cum along with his fingers. They become sticky with you and he loves every second of it. He continues to do this even as your body squirms beneath him and you try to push him away.

“T-Toji,” you whimper. “W-Wait, oh, fuck, wait, i-it’s too much!” You’ve become overstimulated, your clit throbbing in protest to his tongue bath. Finally, he pulls away and hovers over you, his fingers and mouth coated in your cum. He then puts his fingers above your mouth. “Taste yourself,” he orders.

Like a puppet pulled on strings, you sit up and suck your cum off of his fingers, staring deep into his eyes as you do. He then tears his digits out of your mouth like you just bit him and jumps up to strip. You watch with eager eyes as he takes off his shirt, pants, and then finally his briefs. Your eyes roam down his big, squeezable pecs, his washboard abs where a delicious happy trail lies, right down to his long, thick third arm swinging between his thick thighs and dripping in precum.

“You’re perfect,” you whisper before you can stop yourself. Toji chuckles, pleased with your reaction to his physique. “Glad you like what you see, mama,” he says, giving his cock a little sway that has you hypnotized. “I do too.” He comes over to the edge of the bed and gets on top of you, straddling your chest.

Your eyes widen at the cock in your face gently probing your chin. “Open your mouth, baby,” he coaxes. “Don’t I deserve some fun too?” He pushes his hips forward, gently prying your lips apart. You allow him to slide into your mouth and stretch your jaw to accommodate his girth. He is all length and thickness, stretching out your cheeks and immediately causing spit to gather in your mouth which makes it easier for him to fuck it.

“Shit, baby,” he groans, watching you take his cock deeper. “You must’ve needed this too.” Through his hooded gaze, he is enchanted by the way you gag and slobber on his cock…with no hands. You bob your head up and down, your moans causing vibrations along his shaft that travel all the way to his balls.

His hand grabs the back of your head as he begins to roll his hips against your mouth, making you take more and more of him down your throat. You begin to gag as he hits the back of your throat, but you don’t pull away. He chuckles, caressing your scalp. “I like that noise,” he hums. “Keep gaggin’ on that shit for me.”

Like a good girl, you do, breathing through your nostrils as you do. You look up into his eyes, spit copious amounts of saliva onto his dick, and suck that shit like it’s your profession. His moans and swears egg you on, making your pussy throb and gush excitedly at the sexy sounds escaping his mouth. Even with the spit dripping down your mouth and your mascara ruined, you’ve never felt sexier being used like a toy for Toji’s pleasure.

Having had enough, Toji finally slides out of your mouth with a moan and quickly jumps off of you. He stands at the end of the bed between your thighs and slides his dick once, twice, thrice against your slit before finally sliding home inside of the wet depths of your pussy. You both gasp in unison at the contact, the bliss hitting you both instantly.

He yanks on your ankles, pulling you closer to the edge of the bed, and begins slowly rocking his hips into you. The act causes your clit to glide against his pelvis and more wetness to gather in your pussy that gushes around him. It makes it much easier for Toji to fuck you, so he places his hands on either side of your head and deepens his strokes. Your mouth falls agape, the stretching sensation and pleasure you feel otherworldly. “Ah!” you gasp, grabbing his shoulders.

Toji is feeling the same, unable to stop his hips from moving and moans from escaping his lips. “God, you’re so fuckin’ tight,” he grunts. “You feel so good, darlin’.” He pants and groans in your ear, making your pussy throb excitedly at the sounds. The pleasure is so immense that you can feel tears gently pushing past your eyes. You can’t remember the last time you felt this good. You can’t get enough of him. You need all of him.

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him closer. When he leans up to look down at you, you hold his gaze with yours. “Fuck me, Toji,” you beg through teary eyes. “Just take what you need.”

Toji takes your wrists in his hands and pins them above your head, causing your heart to leap. “No…I’m gonna give you what you need,” he softly growls and captures your mouth in a sloppy kiss. And then he proceeds to grab your hips and piston into you until you see stars. You can’t stop the moans and gasps that escape you as his cock strokes your insides, causing lewd squelches and bouncing bedsprings to create a symphony of sex in the cabin.

To anyone walking by your room, they’d absolutely know what’s up. You’re so loud that, of course, they’d hear your incoherent words mushed together from the pleasure and deep dick you’re being given. “Fuck, Toji, yes!” you babble. “Fuck me just like that! Just. Like. That!”

Toji grins above you, proud of the way you’re submitting to him with every roll of his hips. Your body looks so good beneath him, pinned down to the bed with no way to go. You have no choice but to take all the dick he’s giving you. He loves the way your tits jiggle with every thrust of his hips, giving him something to watch other than your pretty face.

He wonders what else he can make jiggle. Suddenly getting an idea, he pauses in his fucking and places his hands under your ass. Without pulling out, he picks you up and begins walking with you away from the bed. “W-Where are we going?” you softly ask, tightening your limbs around him. Toji just smirks at you as he uses one hand to unlock the balcony. “To get some air.”

When you suddenly feel the cool air tinged with the smell of sea salt on your skin, you feel your heart leap and your stomach flip. What is he planning? With a soft moan, Toji pulls out of you and places you onto your feet. His eyes, filled with lust, are illuminated by the big, silver moon that hangs above the dark sea below.

“Bend over,” he demands. Your eyes widen at him. “W-What?” you squeak. “But someone could see us!” There are plenty of people down below and on either side of you in their own cabins. Anyone could look up or over at you getting slutted out on the balcony.

Toji firmly grasps your chin and squeezes your cheeks together, his expression almost feral. “I don’t give a fuck,” he growls. “They can look all the way. Regardless, I’m makin’ you cum and then fillin’ you up. Now bend the fuck over.” With his other hand, he gives your ass a smack. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

With your ass stinging and your pussy weeping, how can you deny him? You turn around and slowly bend over the balcony, grasping the bar as you do. You moan as he slides his cock up against your slit, nudging your clit, before sliding in again. Your moans grow embarrassingly louder as he begins to fuck you, his cock sinking deeper inside of you at this angle. “Fuuuck, you got wetter, mama,” he cackles, gripping your hips. “What, does my little slut like gettin’ backshots in public?”

Slowly, he lifts up one of your legs, not enough to hurt you but enough to make you feel even more of him. His heavy balls slap against your clit as he thrusts a little faster than before, paying close attention to how you respond. T-Toji, no!” you whine. “Someone’s gonna see!”

You can see people walking about on the lower deck, unaware of the woman getting backshots above them, Smack! He gives your asscheek another harsh smack that echoes across the water. “Didn’t I tell you I don’t give a fuck?” he grunts. “Let ‘em see this pussy gettin’ filled up. I’m givin’ you more pleasure than they’ll ever have in their lives, baby.”

He grabs one of your tits with one hand, massaging it while he presses his face into your hair. You can feel him everywhere. Your senses are filled with nothing but him. Getting fucked by him in the summer breeze and moonlight is the most erotic thing that has ever happened to you. You can feel your pussy tightening around him, your peak nearing.

As if sensing it, Toji turns your face to meet his as he continues to piston his cock into you, though he slows his pace in favor of agonizingly slow strokes. “Look at me, you little slut,” he demands. “Watch me fuck you.” His handsome face is flushed, sweat sticking to his forehead. “Tell me it feels good. Tell me you love this fuckin’ cock.”

You feel delirious from the pleasure, like another woman who lives off of getting fucked and slutted out for the rest of her days has crawled into your body. “I love it!” you whine. “I fucking love it the way you fuck me, Daddy!” That’s the magic word for Toji.

He grips you to him and proceeds to fuck you faster, harder, giving you exactly East you need. You wrap your arm around his head to bring him closer, sharing a sloppy kiss as his thrusts quickly bring you over the edge. You don’t care if people see you. You don’t care if they hear you. All that matters is right now. All that matters is that you cum. “God, Toji!” you shout, your voice carried among the waves. “You’re gonna make me cum!”

Toji loops a hand around your neck and squeezes, making you gasp at the pressure. “Try again, mama.”

Realizing your mistake, you quickly correct yourself, needing to cum. “Daddy, please,” you sob. “Please keep going! I need you to make me cum!” Toji smiles against your cheek, supremely satisfied with your compliance. “Good girl,” he grunts. “M’close too. Want you to cum on this dick while I fill you up.”

There is no more talking. Only desperate moans, grunts, and gasps as he takes you to the land of bliss with his cock. You get yourself there quicker by rubbing your clit in time with his thrusts and finally, that knot inside of your core snaps. “I’m cumming, I’m cumming!” you babble.

Toji doesn’t need to warn you. His desperate, sloppy thrusts tell you that he’s close and when he grips you tighter than a vice, your body flush against his, you know that he’s cumming you. As your pussy gushes around him, his cock explodes and floods you with his cum. You both moan in unison as your orgasms take you through the stars and above, beyond the sea and beyond that. It’s blissful. It’s a high you’ve never experienced before.

When it fades, Toji pulls his cock, wet with your cum, out of you and wraps his hand around it, pumping it as he gives you a heated look. “On your knees. I’m not done with you yet.” On wobbly legs, you kneel down in front of him, watching him lazily stroke his cock in front of you. “Clean yourself off of me,” he demands. “You made the mess, so you need to clean it up.”

You open your mouth and lazily lick his cock, cleaning yourself off of him. He softly moans as you do, caressing your hair. “Good girl,” he sighs. “Now did I make it up to you or what?”

You lean your head against his thigh, too exhausted to reply. “Aw, poor thing got fucked too good,” he chuckles. “C’mon, let’s get you inside.

Suddenly, you’re lifted off of the floor and carried into the cabin. You feel the cool comforter underneath you as Toji lays you down on the bed and then his warm, hard body curls next to yours. You lean your head on his chest as he tests his hand on your ass, comfortable and content.

“So I’m guessin’ they’ll be a next time for this while you’re on your trip?” he asks.

You can only nod in response as sleep comes like a wave and sweeps you out to sea with him.

THE END.

#black fanfic writer #smutty smut #black coded reader #my fic shit #my one shots #jjk smut #toji x black y/n #daddy toji #toji x black!reader #toji x you #toji x black reader #toji smut

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writingsfromhome · 10 months

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If you Love Something II

A/N: okayy I’m finally going to stop overthinking and just post this one. Please note the tw in part 1. Thank you all SO much for the comments and love on the original…hope this one meets ur expectations. It’s definitely more focused on the lost daughter relationship rather than you and Harry so p dense but...here it is 🫣

——————————————

Age 36:

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Harry informs me over the phone. “I went with chicken noodle soup.”

“Mmm,” I close my eyes. “I could use something hot and hearty right now. I’m freezing my ass off.”

“I didn’t need to make dinner for that.”

“So come here, warm me up,” I crane my neck to the left again. “Stupid delays.”

“I can come get you."

I’d mapped it out before calling Harry, it would take him too long to get here. “That’s alright. Doesn’t make a difference.”

The screen on the platform showed 6 minutes…for the past 15 minutes.

“I’ve either been living in the longest minute of my fucking life,” I mutter. “Or this line is taking the piss out of all of us.”

Two dozen of us had gotten off the last train when it announced it was out of service. Now the number on the platform had tripled waiting for the next one.

“Patience,” Harry says. “Is a virtue.”

“Easy for you to say in the warm flat with the chicken noodle soup.”

“It’ll be yours soon.”

Soon. I sigh and try to release the anxious energy with it. “Thank you for taking care of dinner.”

“Of course.” He replies. Like it was that simple. But being with Harry was like that nowadays.

Despite all the catching up we had to do with the 17 years we had lived separate lives, emotionally it’s like we picked up where we last left off.

I’d be lying if I said it was smooth sailing the whole year we’d been together. There had been a hard few first months where both of us felt unnerved by the peacefulness of the relationship. We weren’t used to such an easy quiet.

I’d tried to self-sabotage first by going awol and working longer hours than I needed to. I think I was scared Harry would wake up one day and realize too much time had passed and he didn’t like who I’d become so I minimized our time together. Until Harry called me out for it.

But then he went off the rails, and for a few weeks I’d been an even bigger ball of anxiety. Ultimately I had to give him the hard truth even though the last thing I ever wanted was to convince someone to stay with an ultimatum. But I’d told him, he had to at least attempt sobriety if he wanted us to work.

There were a few sleepless nights, I didn’t know if we were going to make it. But one morning he asked me to go to an aa meeting with him.

Going together, being in the same boat as a group of people gathered in the back room of a dusty church finally gelled us together. For good. He’d been sober since.

We moved in together 7 months ago. Even though it doubled my commute time—tripled with delays, I had never been more sure that I was exactly where I needed to be.

We held space for each other. Even the heavier bits; we knew what they were. What it was like to hold them on our own. We always joked about how our loads had halved despite taking on half of the other’s. Because just like our venn diagram of love, our venn diagram of hurting was the same.

“Oh god, I better not be hallucinating.” I nearly jump up and down when the twin headlights of the next train peek in the distance. The platform board still says 6 minutes.

“You’re cutting up what?”

“Nothing! Train’s here!”

“I’ll pick you up from the station.” Harry says before I hang up.

I spend the remaining 15 minute ride going over the lecture I’d given tonight.

3 years ago when I applied to be a lecturer I didn’t actually think I’d get it. But in the 10 years of my career I had collected, I had done exceptionally well. It was ironic with all the bullshit life threw at me, I had somehow channeled it into a determined work ethic. After failing many math tests in high school I had found a love for it in uni—it made me work hard, get out of my head with its constant thoughts. Harry now took to calling me a masochist for teaching something mathematical.

In reality it wasn’t that mathematical. I taught Management Econ which was a snorefest on paper but I tried to be engaging and include a whole host of ways to teach—I knew not everyone excelled with a textbook.

It had made the course popular, it went from being offered once a semester to 3 times this year because the waitlist spoke for itself. It was one of my proudest accomplishment—getting students motivated and interested. And because it was mostly first and second year students, they were still eager and not jaded by the uni system.

That was how I spent my evenings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Otherwise I worked for the city the same hours Harry worked his creative exec job at a major firm in the city. Sometimes we met up for lunch. It was the little things like that, making time to see each other in the middle of the day even though we woke up and fell asleep to each other, that made this relationship feel so secure.

It felt like coming home each time I caught sight of his face, and knew his smile was just for me.

My thoughts drift to our daughter. She would have celebrated her 18th birthday a few weeks ago. I always lit a birthday candle for her, this year Harry and I bought a cake and a symbolic drink for her. Our baby was old enough to drink.

“Do you think she takes after her parents?” Harry had asked.

“I think she grew up alright.” I always imagined her to have. “I hope she has no reason to drink herself silly.”

“Being 18 is reason enough.”

We talk about her often. She slips into conversation as easily as inhaling. It keeps her with us.

When I spot Harry’s car at the station I nearly weep.

“Your cheeks are so cold,” Harry says after a peck hello. He holds them both in his heated hands and plants exaggerated kisses on each cheek.

“Please sir,” I kiss his mouth and continue in what Harry called my Oliver Twist accent. “Take me to the chicken noodle soup. I hunger.”

Harry responds in the same accent (although it wasn’t as good as mine) and pretty soon I’m forgetting the 20 minute delay, the lecture with 100 technical difficulties, and anything in between.

After dinner and completing my 20 step night time routine I crawl into bed beside a cozy-looking Harry.

“Whatcha reading?” I peek at his book. I can’t believe he was the reading-before-bed type. In a way it was so different from the 17 year old guy I knew. It was also a reminder that even though we knew each other through and through, there were still so many habits and stories and quirks to discover.

“It’s a boring as hell sci-fi novel, don’t ask.”

“Then why are you reading it?”

“I accidentally joined a book club at work!?”

He tells me the story of how he told some people he enjoyed reading, and then being unable to say no when they bought this month’s book for him and presented it to him a week later.

“I bet you that’s their ponze scheme. It’s like an MLM, the latest recruit has to guilt the next joinee. You’ll be doing it soon.”

Harry laughs and holds his book out to me. “That actually brings me to my next question with this very generous gift, do you like reading?”

“Nope.” I push the book away. “I also don’t like book clubs.”

He tosses the book down lightly. “Damnit!”

We laugh. I cuddle into his side and lay my head on his chest as he finishes his chapter. His heart beat is steady, like the life he’s helped me create as we committed to each other. I listen to it as it lulls me to a calmer place.

“So how was work? How’s your students this semester?”

“Work’s good. Same old right now. Teaching was interesting. It’s the second week of classes so still seeing a lot of people come and go. You start to see the regulars by week 3.”

“Full class?”

“Almost,” I tell him. “A few empty seats. There was one girl who was obviously watching tv the whole time, another guy that fell asleep halfway, and this other kid kept looking at the door like he was physically trying to decide whether he would stay. Weird lot.”

“They won’t be there next week.”

“Nope.”

“You think she’s starting uni? I wonder what she’s decided to study.”

“Mmm, I always think it’s something creative like you.”

Harry squeezes his arm around me. “I think she’s a masochist like you.”

We talk more about her, about the upcoming weekend, and as sleep visits we drift away still intertwined like most nights.

***

“Does anyone know why?” I ask the lecture hall. Just like I predicted, most of the people I knew wouldn’t make it were gone. Now there were just under 60 students in total. What had surprised me was the guy who looked nervous the second week stayed. He’d been joined by two friends who only showed up in week 4. He was probably the designated note taker.

A girl to the left puts her hand up and I point to her. “The growing gap between upper and middle classes?”

“Yes.” I give her a reassuring smile. Until I started teaching, I forgot that most answers they gave were questions. “Anyone else?”

The girl beside nervous guy puts her hand up. “The ageing population, it skews the demographic from what was initially projected?”

“Exactly,” I try not to show favourites but that was beautifully said. Maybe she didn’t need to come to all the classes.

“That would also affect the workforce,” a guy sitting in the front pipes in. I smile, pleased that a discussion was forming.

A few others join in and I nod at each point. I loved this job.

After class is over I always got a few stragglers asking questions. The nervous guy comes up to me.

“Um professor,” he hitches his backpack and glances back at his friends. “For the assignment due next week, can groups of 3 be okay?”

I glance at his friends, it was supposed to be in pairs but what the hell. “Sure. But I’ll need extra stuffing in the assignment to make up for it.”

I say it with a joking tone but he’s so wound up that he takes me seriously.

“Of course. We’ll increase the citations and make sure to include more research-“

“Philippe,” one of the girls is suddenly a few feet away.

“Thank you.” He says, finally meeting my eye. I smile and he relaxes. I turn to his friends, to acknowledge them but they stare at me like I’d grown a second head. One of the other students asks her questions and I turn my attention away—weird.

***

“Mid-terms?” Harry asks. I’m reading a textbook while I stand over the simmering pot. We had accidentally ordered 4 times the tomatoes on our online order last week and with three still left I’d decided to batch make spaghetti sauce. It had been a long time since I made it from scratch.

“Kind of.” I push the book aside. “Someone in the department wants to update the textbooks and they left notes in the old one for what needs updating. They asked me to take a look.”

“That’s cool,” Harry walks over to me. He smelled like cologne and outside, the way he usually did right after he came home on chillier days. “That he wants your opinion?”

“She actually,” I poke him. “And it is! I can’t believe I get paid to lecture about one of my passions.”

“Economics,” Harry makes a face like he smelled something bad.

“Makes the world go round,” I smile sweetly.

“Remember when you liked things that were cool like Harry Potter and Coldplay-“

“I still like them! If I recall you’re the one who motivated me to do well in maths.”

“I did?” Harry looks off into the distance but his slow smirk is evident that he was remembering. He tilts my chin up and brushes my lips. “You’re right. So how about now? Would that still work?”

“Do you want me to stroke your ego right now?”

“Amongst other things,” he muses, his hands drop down to my hips and then lower, giving my bum a squeeze.

“Cut it out,” I scold him but it’s cancelled by the smile on my face. I shake my head and go back to the simmering pot.

“Is that tomato soup?” Harry’s suddenly distracted by the pot. We’d been having a lot of it this week because…well tomatoes.

“Nope, I’m making spaghetti sauce. From scratch.”

“Hey, didn’t you make that one time? When we were kids.”

“Hm,” I think back. It felt like so long ago but something niggles at me. “I think? I used to help my mum—it’s her recipe. Maybe you had dinner on a night we made it?”

“Yes. Dinner at your place, around Easter.”

I remember that Easter clearly but not for dinner. It was a night Harry and I had talked our lives all out.

“Aw. We were so young then.” I wrap my arms around Harry.

“I’m still young,” Harry says. “I’m in my prime.”

I pat his cheek. “Of course you are love.”

***

“Taylor I can’t really do this right now!” I tell my sister as she whines to me. No matter how old we got we were always somehow 17 and 12.

“C’mon just call mom! Tell her you met him and he’s really awesome.”

“I’m not lying to mom so you can invite your newest loser boyfriend to dinner. Anyway I can’t talk. I have to get to class!”

“I know.” She says weirdly. And I understand why when I walk into class and see her sitting in the front row. Ugh she knew I would try to blow her off!

My sister had somehow taken up the bad habit ever since her mid-20s of having a string of shitty boyfriends. We all blamed it on her longterm bloke breaking it off around her 26th. I don’t think she ever fully let herself heal from that.

After two separate guys were invited to two separate family dinners and both ended in mum or dad exploding over something, they were banned. This new guy, as she insists, was different. Mature. He deserved an invite.

She holds up 9 fingers and mouths, 9 months! That’s a long time!

I shake my head and start setting up my laptop.

“Hiya,” one of the students, Kim, walks up to me as I do so. “Sorry I was just wondering when we’re getting our assignments back? Will it be before midterms?”

Midterms were in 2 weeks for this class. The assignments were in my bag, marked and ready. I tell her and watch the relief spread through her.

I spend the next hour teaching, and before we break at the hour I announce I’d return assignments. As I call them out student walks down to me and pick them up, leaving with a smile or a frown.

“Philippe?” He had stuck to his word and his group had gone above and beyond. It was a beautiful paper, albeit overly-sourced. But I appreciated it.

“He’s not in,” one of his friends comes down to get it. She looks at me in that same way again, with just as much fear as curiosity. It’s odd.

“C’mon then,” I shake the paper I was holding out. “I don’t bite.”

“Oh sorry,” she grabs it from me in a rush I nearly get a papercut. She doesn’t even look at the grade, turning quickly away before halting, pivoting halfway, changing her mind, and running back up the steps to her seat. That group of kids were weird. Maybe they were on drugs.

I catch eyes with Taylor and she raises her brow. I shrug and continue handing out the papers.

I don’t expect the girl to come up to me after class. Her friend stays hovering behind, close to my sister who I know must be desperate to have sat here the whole lecture.

“Um ‘scuse me. Professor?”

“Yes?” She was the last person in the small line that had formed after class.

“I had a question about the assignment? You um, you said we missed the equations for our answers but they’re um-“ her hands are shaking as she flips the pages to the last page. “They’re on the bottom here.”

“Oh,” I did remember they were missing it but my pen marks were all over the back of it. “I must have missed that, bloody hell sorry about that!”

“Yeah um, do we get the extra points?”

“Of course but I-“ I glance back at Taylor. She’s talking to the friend. I had to get her out of here before she said something ridiculous. “I have office hours after my Monday class. I’ll have it remarked by then and you can pick it up?”

“Um, okay?”

I quickly shut my things down and grab my sister, getting her out as quick as possible.

“I’m a professional,” she reminds me. “Jeez. Anyway Y/n listen it’s the longest I’ve been in a relationship since, well y’know. 9 months! It’s different with this guy. He works like you! A cushy office job. He’s serious. Please!?”

I hadn’t seen Taylor since last month’s dinner when she had tried to convince me to get on board with this guy. She’d been pleading for a month. “Fine.”

“Oh I love you!” She squeezes my arm. “Text me when mom gives the okay.”

I sigh. I’d really got myself in the middle again.

I retell this to Harry when I get home.

“She’s persistent. But 9 months is a new record.”

“I know!” Harry knew all about her string of boys, I’d caught him up months ago. “Anyway I can’t believe she sat through the whole lecture.”

“Maybe this is the guy. The One.”

“You don’t believe in that do you?”

“Yeah?” He squints at me. “Of course I do?”

“So I’m The One?”

“Baby do I even need to say yes? I knew it as soon as I saw you when we were 14. You confirmed it when you kissed me on the roof that day.”

“I can’t believe I did that. I had my first drink that day by the way so I might’ve been drunk.”

“You were not drunk when you kissed me,” Harry points his fork at me.

“Look at you getting all worked up,” I tease.

“I’ll get you all worked up,” he mutters into his plate. I grin as I stretch my leg out under the table and run it up his leg. He grips my ankle when it gets too high and the look he gives me across the table sends my heart racing.

“Oops,” I drop my foot and go back to eating.

We put on a movie after, something we can zone out to. It doesn’t take Harry long to get bored and nuzzle into me, and it doesn’t take much longer after that before the movie is just for show and we’re tangled in our sheets.

There were 17 years of experience Harry showed up with now, and it was another one of those things that made catching up on lost time all the better.

***

In the first half hour of my office hours, the girl walks in. I should remember her name but I just associated her group with Philippe. I was surprised he wasn’t here actually. He seemed to be their spokesperson.

“Hi come in!” I wave her into the tiny cubicle-like room I borrowed for a few hours every Monday. “I’ve got your assignment here all done.”

“Thank you,” she hovers over my desk and I hand it over. Her fingers fidget with the strings of her hoodie and I seriously consider the drug angle. Or maybe her and her friends had serious anxiety issues. I didn’t miss that part about being a teen.

“You wanna flip through one more time? I try not to make mistakes twice but…”

She sits down tentatively and buries her head in the paper as she flips through.

“It’s alright,” she says. Her expression is so serious it nearly makes me laugh. She had pretty hair—blunt cut bangs that I remember rocking in my early 20s, but on her they hide the expression in her eyebrows. Maybe that’s why she always looked so sullen. Her lips are painted a pretty mauve colour and it complimented her green eyes.

“I really um…your class is really interesting.”

Kids saying that was like injecting pure joy right into my veins.

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,” I smile at her. But it still doesn’t crack a smile on her end. “It’s dense material but that’s nice to hear.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know if I was gonna keep the class.” It’s subtle but she inches back in the seat. The more she talks the more she relaxes back. “But I heard it was worth taking. And people were right.”

“Are you in your first or second year?” I ask.

“First,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s covered in piercings.

“How are you liking uni so far?”

She meets my eyes for a second before they shift away. “Yeah it’s nice? I’ve never lived away from home but I have some friends here that I’ve known since before so it helps. It’s really different, less structure but I like the freedom.”

Wow, she really spoke a lot more when she was comfortable. But I find it endearing.

“That’s really nice. It’s good to have a support system, especially with such big change.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. Her eyes dart around the desk as she goes silent. I wait for her to get up and go but a minute passes and the room starts to feel even smaller.

I could ask her if she needed anything else, or maybe continue the conversation? Did she want me to ask about her? No, that would be weird.

“So um, was that your sister in class last week?”

Okay, didn’t see that coming.

“It was! My baby sister, although she’s not really a baby. Did she tell your friend that?”

She nods again. “She was talking to her.”

“You have any siblings?”

“An older sister yeah.”

“So you get it,” I say. “You love them, they get under your skin, you’d do anything for them, and the cycle continues.”

For the first time she smiles and my breath catches. For a moment…no. No, I was imagining things.

“Yeah. My sister and I were close growing up, but she’s the one person that really knows how to get under my skin. I swear she does it on purpose sometimes.”

“Probably,” I want to say something funny again. I just want to see her smile.

Back off, my inner voice says. Don’t do this again.

Some years back, when I was still in the throes of alcohol, I had followed a girl at the mall for nearly an hour. She had looked so much like my sister but with brown curly hair. I could have sworn it was her—my daughter. But after an hour of drunk stalking she had met up with her mum, a direct clone of her.

I couldn’t be obsessive again. Nobody knew about that phase. Not even Harry.

“D’you have any kids?” She asks. I don’t expect the question and it throws me off what with the thoughts looping in my head. She watches me, waiting for an answer.

“Um,” I usually answered no. To anyone who had asked in the last 18 years. But for some reason I nod today. “Yeah. One.”

I imagine it, I must have. Her face draws in for a second before she looks down. “Does she ever come to your lectures?”

“Oh no,” I feel the prick of tears and try to blink them away without being too obvious. “I’m not sure she’d find them interesting.”

“Oh.” She finally stands. “Maybe when she’s older…but I’ll see you on Thursday I guess?”

“Yeah,” I watch her go and realize she’d forgotten something. “Don’t forget your paper hon!”

She stiffens by the door before coming to get it.

“Sorry, it probably makes me a bad prof but there were two female names on the paper. Which one’s yours?”

“Bridget,” her voice cracks.

“Bridget,” I try to match the name to her face. It fit. “That’s lovely.”

She scurries out and I hear someone say “well!?” Outside followed by a “shh!”

I shake my head and try to focus back on my work, my heart racing an unusual amount.

***

It takes a couple days but I confess to Harry. He’d decided to meet up with me after class on Wednesday to eat out. We didn’t go far from the uni, a pub a few roads down. I actually spotted a couple former students there and they’d waved at me warmly.

“You’re not crazy,” Harry holds my hand on the table. “A few years ago I realized the volunteer interns we took on from the nearby school? They were the same age as her, teens? And I used to check up on them all the time, make sure they were feeling comfortable, until one of the guys on the team told me to quit being so weird and find someone my own age. I don’t know if it came across that way but…I got lost in that.”

“Oh Harry,” I squeeze his hand. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve never told anyone.”

“Me too,” I pop another chip into my mouth. “But really I’d kind of pushed those memories out of my head until the other day. I can’t explain it, when she smiled it just felt like I knew her.”

“Yeah. Maybe she just looks like Taylor?”

We finish dinner while Harry tells me about a story about some friends of his I knew. We reminisce about our old friends as we wrap up and head out into the brisk November air.

We’re near the station when I gasp and clutch Harry’s arm. Standing outside one of the nearby pubs, smoking with her friends, was Bridget.

“Harry! That’s her!”

“What? Who?” He’s so oblivious as he whips his head around.

“Hushhh!” I nod towards the northwest side. His eyes scan the group. “Red beanie. We have to walk past just look at her okay? Tell me if you see it.”

Harry laughs to himself, “This feels like we’re in high school walking past a crush.”

“Is that how you walked past me?” I tease.

“I did.” He looks at me in that way that still gives me butterflies. It never got old.

“Stop making me want to jump your bones out here. I have a reputation to uphold!”

“Hey I’ll still have a job to support us,” he whispers as we near closer to the group. “Feel free to do whatever you feel.”

“You’re a bad influence.” I whisper back. By now we’re a few feet away and I sense Harry slow down beside me.

Bridget’s nodding to whatever her friend is saying. Philippe is waving his drink around as he responds. We almost pass by unnoticed when someone completely different calls my name.

“Hey professor! Can we buy you a drink?”

I turn and spot a group of students I taught last semester. They were all friends, always battling out their wits during group discussions. It made my class lively, even distracting at times. But I tried going with the flow of whatever group of students I got.

“Hey kids!” I say. Then I have no choice but to acknowledge Bridget and her friends. “And more kids! Is this the new spot to be at?”

I sounded so lame but shite! We weren’t supposed to get caught.

“It’s always been popular,” one of my old students says. “Can we pick your brain? Buy you a drink? We can buy one for your friend too.”

“I uh,” I glance at Harry but he’s frozen solid. I look to what he’s looking at and it’s Bridget. They’re locked in some silent conversation and her friends eye each other. “Harry?”

“Huh?” He focuses on me, flushed and just as confused as I had looked on Monday.

“We’ve gotta get him home,” I pat Harry’s arm. “Our alcohol metabolizes differently at our age.”

“You’re not that old,” Bridget says. She seems to be surprised she said it at all and her eyes widen. “I just mean you look younger than my parents.”

“We’ll take that as a compliment.” I smile up at Harry who still looks a little lost.

“Miss aren’t you going to introduce your male friend?” One of my old student goads.

“Don’t assume,” the other chides.

“Aren’t you a nosy lot after a few drinks.” I missed dishing it back in class with them.

“Oops!” They laugh.

“Anyway. This is Harry.”

“You can call me Mr. Professor,” Harry jokes and it’s a crowd pleaser. God they were drunk. Harry leans into me, “I can see why you like teaching. They’re an ego-booster.”

“Not in a 6pm lecture on a Thursday night.” I whisper back. He hides his laugh.

“Are you guys heading home?” Now it’s Philippe. I’m surprised he was getting involved in the conversation. He was usually the quiet nervous type.

“We are. Need a good night’s rest so I’m not falling asleep in your lecture tomorrow.”

“We wouldn’t mind,” Philippe goes for joker but his face flushes. It’s cute.

“Philippe you take way too many notes during class for me to believe that.”

His two friends, Bridget and the other girl, look at each other wide-eyed before losing it. And I watch Bridget’s face transform again and I get the same feeling. I look up at Harry and he’s transfixed.

I tug his sleeve and he looks at me, swallowing like he was parched.

“Weird right?”

“Yeah,” he whispers but his mouth turns down ever so slightly.

The girls are too busy cajoling Philippe to say goodbye to so we make our exit quietly. We don’t talk much on the train ride home but Harry simple holds his hand out on my thigh, palm up, and I lock my fingers into his. Even when we didn’t have words, we never stopped staying in touch.

***

It’s exam and holiday season before I know it.

I was actually looking forward to Christmas this year. It was the first that Harry was going to join with my family. Taylor’s bloke was also showing. He had been a hit with my parents and even I could admit he was the better of all the guys she’s every brought over.

It’s the last 30 minutes of the last exam I was facilitating this year. I announce the time left to the group. There were only about 15 kids left.

Bridget is one of them. I watch her tuck her hair behind her ear and bite her lip. She’d been pretty quiet the remainder of the semester, and I tried not to let my eyes wander to her too much.

After that night, bumping into her with Harry, we hadn’t spoken much about it. The hope that was initially so buoyant turned crushing as we faced the reality that the odds were slim to none. That our wishes were just pennies tossed in a fountain, sinking to the bottom of the pool.

Dreary winter days pass by and Harry and I try to keep the seasonal depression away with regular outdoor dates, cozy nights in bed, and seeing friends as often as we could.

On Christmas we go to my parents’. It’s a loud affair as my grandparents and a few cousins join us. After dinner I go up to my childhood bedroom, it’s now a guest room but some of my things still lay around. I open the window, it was cold so I drag a blanket out and sit outside. The street is quiet, I see families in a few open windows and I watch the festivities through them. I feel a mix of nostalgia and an ache that goes even beyond that, like I was missing something.

“Y/n?” Of course Harry would find me even though I’d left the door closed and the window tilted.

“Here,” I say.

“Ah,” he struggles to hoist himself out. “Some things never change.”

“You need help?” I watch him climb on all fours.

“I’m steady,” he grins as he crawls to me. I open the blanket and he gets in.

We sit in silence for a bit.

“It was getting really loud downstairs wasn’t it?” I ask.

“I think your grandma’s in love with Taylor’s guy.” Harry says so bluntly that I burst out laughing. He joins in.

“I feel like old people get to flirt with whoever they want because it’s always harmless.”

“Maybe that’s the case with older women,” Harry grimaces. “Can’t say the same thing about old men now can we?”

“Jesus!” I laugh and then laugh even harder when Harry says: “it is his day.”

By the time I wipe my tears Harry’s gazing down at me.

“Sorry,” I lean my head against his shoulder. “You have to stop being so funny.”

“Nah,” he kisses my head. “Have I never told you how much I like your laugh?”

He had. On a night many years ago on a roof like this.

I go to remind him but he’s pulling away. I watch as he shifts to face my slowly. He pulls something out from behind him and my brain only connects the dots as he starts talking.

“Y/N, this is something I wish I could have done 18 years ago but only feels incredibly right to do now. Especially out here.”

“Harry,” I gasp. When did he get the ring? When had he planned this?

“We somehow found our way back to each other again y/n, and you know I love you more than ever before.” He clears his throat as it clouds with emotion. “Some 18 years ago I told you I knew you, because the first time I ever laid eyes on you my heart knew. You were something special. And I never ever want to spend another moment apart again. So Y/N Y/L/N, will you do me the honour and finally be mine? Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” If I wasn’t sitting on a roof I would launch myself at Harry. I settle for pulling his face down to mine and kissing it. “I’ve always been yours Harry. But yes, of course yes!”

He slides the ring on and it fits perfectly.

It was perfect.

When we go back down my mum knows right away, and if it was loud before it’s absolute chaos as everyone descends on me and demands to know how he proposed and how the ring looks.

“On the roof? When there’s a perfectly pretty tree here?” My grandma asks. Harry and I exchange a look then, trying not to laugh all over again.

We ring in the New Year with friends, as fiancés. I can hardly believe it. Apparently most of our friends knew Harry was going to propose and they all toast to us and our happiness.

Somewhere in mid-January, I drop by my parents’ house to drop off some groceries. That’s when my dad hands me a letter that had been mailed home.

“It came for you, I dunno who thinks you still live here but it looks handwritten.”

I take it from my dad as I say one last goodbye. I barely make it to the tube with wobbly legs. Because somewhere inside I know.

It’s a long and agonizing 2 hours that I wait for Harry to come home. He finds me sitting in the dark; the sun had set while I waited, and I’d been too busy staring at the feminine scrawl on the front of the letter to turn on the lights.

“Hello-y/n, what are you doing in the dark?”

Harry drops his things where they are when I look at him. “Y/n are you alright? Say something.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I just push the letter forward.

He walks towards it. It’s like he hits a brick wall when he puts the pieces together, he halts a foot away.

“What is that?”

“Is was…” I try to swallow so my voice doesn’t sound so hoarse. “My dad gave it to me. It was sent to the house.”

“Is it…”

“I was waiting for you.”

Suddenly he’s in motion. He puffs his cheeks out and lets out a noisy sigh. Then he paces the floor one, two, three, four times before standing in front of the couch.

“We should read it.” I say.

“Yeah,” he deflates into the couch. I want to join him but it feels like my arse has been glued to the chair.

I inch it towards me and Harry nods. He wanted me to read it.

My mouth is parched. I can barely make out any sounds as I open it up. It’s three pages folded in two, the paper itself isn’t anything very special, it’s typed up so it’s literally just ink on paper. And yet it’s worth a whole goldmine.

“Y/n and Harry,” I read before my voice breaks and I bury my face in my hands. Our baby girl had written to us. She had reached out.

“C’mon love,” Harry’s suddenly beside me and his hand squeezes my neck. The touch gives me enough strength to stand with him. He sets me down where he just sat and leaves again, returning with water and the letter.

“Can you read it?” I ask.

He settles in beside me, we touch along every edge of us. The letter sits in between us like our love, our hurting—it’s where it belongs. He begins to read in his soothing voice.

“Y/n and Harry,

I hope it’s okay I’m calling you that. I don’t know if it’s proper but ever since I found out about you two last year that’s what I’ve been calling you.”

Harry lets out a shaky breath and I intertwine my arm through his. He kisses my temple and continues.

“When I turned 15, I asked my mum about you. I started to wonder where I came from. I knew I was adopted for as long as I could remember but it didn’t mean much to me for a long time—I had a mother, a father, and a sister. I had a family so why did I need to know where I came from?

But over the last few years it’s been like an itch I couldn’t get to. See when I was 15, what set it off is that my sister decided to look into her birth parents. They were separated, her father lived in Tokyo and her mother lived in Wales. It took her a year to convince our parents to go to Wales. I went with and I found myself in the home of a woman who looked just like the girl I grew up with. The whole time it ate away at me. I wanted this ending too.

I asked my mum and dad when I turned 15 but they were weird and evasive. I turned my skills to the internet but I didn’t really know where to start.

I felt the missing part more and more as I turned 16. I used to fall asleep thinking about you two, if you were alive, what you looked like, where you were, what you did.

I love my parents. They’re wonderful and amazing, they are supportive and never made us feel like we were anything but theirs. But I wanted to know my background.

On my 17th birthday my parents gave me a letter like the one I write today.” Harry stops reading and takes in a deep shuddering breath. “She got the letter.”

His shoulder shake and he pinches the bridge of his nose. I clench my teeth so I wouldn’t cry too. I wanted to finish this letter. I wrap my arms around him and hold him.

This was unbelievable, what we’d dreamed of. Her words, in our hands.

“Here.” I take the letter from him and continue. “Let me read it.”

Harry stays hunched over, so with my hand on his back I continue, “in it you told me how much you loved me. How much you loved each other, your families, where I came from. And Why you had to give me up. For a better life. I saw the picture of you, and I felt broken and complete at the same time. I realized I was the same age as you in the photo, I had to meet you but I was terrified. And I didn’t know how.

I spent a year agonizing and looking through every google page I could find about you. I learned a lot! But I needed to meet you.

I don’t know how to do this. I’ve made decisions that may not have been the best but I’ve left my number and a picture of me when I was 5 in the envelope.

I hope you call.”

With shaking hands I turn to the third page that has one of those polaroids taped to it and a phone number in the same handwriting as the envelope.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry says while tears continue streaming down his face. I can’t even hide mine anymore.

She was beautiful indeed. She had his eyes, and her curly locks in a deep brown frame her chubby face. She had my nose, she looked a little like my sister as a baby. A scatter of freckles over her cheeks confirm it. She was ours. Our baby had reached out. We knew what she looked like.

“We need to call her,” I say. “We need to meet.”

“Yeah,” Harry wipes his face. “We…we need to do this carefully. It’s delicate right?”

I wanted to call her right now but what would I do but cry into the phone? No, I had to wrap my head around this. Harry was right. “Right.”

“She’s out there,” Harry turns to me. “She wants to know us. Y/n she wants to meet us! She saw the picture I-“

“I can’t believe it,” I whisper. “Our daughter wants to—did she leave her name?”

We open the letter and flip over every piece of it but her name is nowhere.

“Maybe she didn’t want us looking her up?” Harry offers.

“Maybe she has an awful digital footprint.”

Something about it makes us laugh and we can’t stop. But pretty soon it shifts back into tears and we’re left holding each other on the couch, tender and content and anxious.

Our daughter had made contact. Would she like us? Would she be mad at us? What did this mean for us?

The thoughts continue to spiral the rest of the evening. We don’t make much of an effort, we reread the letter and try to get dinner in us. We face each other as we try to fall asleep, whispering questions into the darkness. The darkness doesn’t answer, it grows heavier as does the night, and we fall asleep for the first time in our lives knowing the weight of a decision so long ago was a tiny bit lighter.

***

It’s a few days later. All I’d been thinking about was the letter, when I woke up, at work, during my commute, during breaks, when I went to bed.

It sits on our dining table, we glance at it as we pass by. It becomes part of the decor, three pieces of paper and an envelope. It’s so much weightier than that.

I come home from my lecture on Wednesday, a slight buzz of anxiety humming in the background. It wasn’t unusual for Harry and I to get busy at work and not talk the whole day but today Harry had been radio silent. He hadn’t answered my texts or phone calls in a very un-Harry way.

I walk in to Harry sitting on the couch in the dark, staring at the coffee table. On it sits the letter.

“Hey,” I don’t even take off my jacket. I slide next to him. “Is everything alright?”

“Hey,” he whispers. He stays frozen sitting forward, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hand.

I wait for him to speak, to say something about what was going on. I rub my hand over his back and he glances up. I tip forward until our foreheads touch. “What’s going on in that brain of yours? Let me help you.”

“It’s a lot,” he whispers. It tears me in two.

“Hey,” I remind him. “Just one day at a time. Let’s just talk about today.”

“I want to call her so bad,” he leans away and buries his head in his hands. I wanted to call her too, I’d been waiting for Harry to give the cue since I knew I could be rash and impulsive about something like this. But something was going on with him.

“We will.”

“We gave her up. What if she hates us?”

“She wouldn’t have written us that beautiful letter, or sent a photo, or left her number if she did.”

Harry sniffles and then asks what he really wanted to, “what if she hates me.”

“Harry look at me,” He unfolds slowly and I make sure he’s looking at me. “You’re her father, you’ve carried her with you for the last 18 years. You love her. She wants to know you. Why would she hate you?”

“I’ve fucked up so much!”

“You’re not your mistakes.” I remind him. I get teary eyed as I feel the echoes of his insecurities. I’ve thought about it too: what if I didn’t meet her expectations? “She’s not going to see you and see every good and bad decisions you’ve ever made. She’s just going to see her father—her biological father, and see where she got her eyes from and her hair from and every other quirk she has.”

“You’re not worried?” He asks, looking at me with grief.

“Of course I am,” I confess, tears leaking out of my eyes damnit. “I’m so fucking worried. But my curiosity overtakes that, my love for her is what I’m focusing on.”

“I love her,” he says.

“That’s all that matters.” I cup his face and press a reassuring kiss to his lips. “That’s all she’ll care about.”

Harry untangles himself from me and my heart sinks. He paces the length of our living room a few times, running his hand through his hair.

“We really should talk about the letter,” he says.

“Yeah. I know. I want to call. Badly.”

He pauses. It’s like all the anxious energy drains out of him at once. He sits back down beside me.

“What do we do?” I ask

“How about Saturday? She’s probably going to be home then right? No school—if she’s in school.”

Two days. Two more days of agonizing over the letter.

At this point the letter is memorized, seared into my brain like I had an exam on it. I want to know the person behind it.

When we wake on Saturday it’s a cloudy day. I don’t take it as a bad omen.

We sit with our phones out after breakfast, just staring at everything before us.

“You should do the talking,” I tell Harry. “I’m too nervous.”

“I think you should.” Harry says. “She sent the letter to you.”

“Only because that’s the address my mum gave…gave her mum.”

It hits me again in another wave I try not to drown in. She was eighteen, she’d lived a whole life with a whole family. There was everything of her we’d missed out on.

“Please Harry?” I was already overwhelmed with the realization. I just couldn’t.

He watches me, must hear the desperation in my voice, and slowly pulls his phone forward.

It rings, and rings a few more times. When it goes to voicemail he turns it off.

“I didn’t think that was an option,” Harry says and we laugh. It feels good.

“It’s only 10 maybe she’s asleep. Try one more time?”

He pulls my phone and tries again but it still goes to voicemail.

We sit there, unsure of what to do. We agree to try again later, in the afternoon.

But around half past 12, while Harry’s working in our spare room and I’m scrolling through my phone, it rings. I don’t think much of it and pick it up automatically.

“Hello?” It’s silent on the other end. “Hello?”

I wait, but as I do it dawns on me. Who called me?

I check my phone screen and swipe through as I say hello again. I match the number. It was her.

I run to Harry but the phone is still silent. I wave the paper with the number saying hello again.

“Is this…well you never gave us your name. But we got your letter. We’re so gl-“

The line goes dead and so does my heart.

“You called her again?” Harry whispers, his brows furrowing as he stares at the phone.

“She called.” I think about calling her back but that was pushy. She was backing out of this.

All of a sudden I feel myself giving out. I catch myself against the wall and slide down.

“She’s backing out. It must be…too much for her.”

Harry stares at a spot on the ground, a million thoughts flickering through. Finally it settles on acceptance. He sighs.

“We can’t force her to talk to us,” he says softly what I already know. But his words are like a saw to my resolve and I just start crying. He gathers me in his arms but the grief feels endless. It felt like she was slipping away again; I’d lost so much and I lost her again. She had been so close. How could she do this? Why did she reach out if she wasn’t ready?

Questions without answers. More of them piled on top of the lifetime of questions I’d built for her.

I know Harry feels the weight of them too. We carry them together. That’s the only reason I hadn’t broken yet.

But I come close to it that day. We don’t hear back from her. And we don’t try to call her back. It didn’t feel right.

It killed me she was so close. And something changes inside.

For weeks I feel like I’m on autopilot. It’s like my first semester of uni all over again.

Harry tries his best to keep me together but he struggles too. It makes me feel worse I was taking the bigger hit, not being there for him as much as I wanted. But life feels like a a million blankets covering me.

I try to keep my usual momentum for my classes, but I’m always exhausted after. It pulls me deeper into my sadness, something I loved made me so tried.

It’s a Thursday at the end of the semester and I’m marking exams during my study hours when there’s a light knock on the door.

I’m surprised to see an old student.

“Bridget,” I wave her in. “Come in, what can I do you for?”

“Hi professor-“

“Call me y/n, I’m not teaching you anymore am I?”

“No,” she says with a stiff smile. The last time I saw her was in February, I’d spotted her with Philippe and a few other friends at a local coffee shop. She had been explaining something to one of her friends from a textbook.

Now her hair was short and more pronounced with waves. I wonder if she styled it, her longer hair had been pin straight.

“I had a question?”

You already asked it, I want to joke. But she was usually wound up so I knew it wouldn’t land well.

“What’s that?”

“Um, well.” She perches on the chair and I wait patiently for her to continue. “Are you taking any applications for TA next year?”

I wasn’t expecting that. She always found a way to take me by surprise. I stare at her for a few seconds, trying to remember what year she was in.

“Aren’t you in first year? If I do TAs they’re usually 3rd or above.”

“I know,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. “But seeing that one of my majors is in econ and my gpa is really high, and I did well in your class, I wondered if you would consider me?”

I hadn’t done TAs since my first year of teaching. I found I liked the work because it got me more familiar with the class.

“What’s your other major?” She had said one of them was econ.

“Sociology, I’m pre-law.”

Ambitious. “Why TA for my class?”

She balks as she meets my gaze. There’s something that flits through her face that I can’t quite read before she drops eye contact.

“Um, I really enjoyed it. I did really well. I think you’re super smart and would learn a lot by TA-ing for you.”

“I don’t give special lessons to my TA,” I let her know. “You’d typically attend some of the classes, mark assignments, and maybe teach exam tutorials, and have office hours of your own for students.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Why should I pick you?”

She pushes her shoulders back, “I’m responsible, dependable, I submit all my assignments on time and have experience teaching.”

“Teaching?”

“I used to tutor when I was in high school. I didn’t really get an allowance so I found a way to support my hobbies.”

“What are your hobbies?”

She blushes a little, was she still nervous? “I love reading, books are expensive.”

I nod. For Harry’s birthday I’d told him he could get any books from Waterstones and it had been over £100 for 3 only.

“I also enjoy cooking. And um, it’s been a while but my friends and I sometimes go to like. Do you know comic con?”

“Yes,” I’d seen things online.

“Yeah we liked to dress up for that sort of thing. We used to make our own outfits and usually the cost varies depending on what you’re making and how realistic you want it and…” she trails off as I smile. She was really enthusiastic about it. I couldn’t help it.

“Tell you what. Leave your number with me and I’ll think about it. I haven’t had a TA for the last few semesters but I am going to take this into consideration.”

“Really?!”

I laugh. “Yes. Really.”

“Um…” she starts to fidget again. “Can I leave my email? I’m getting a new phone soon so I-“

“Sure. Anywhere I can reach you.”

I expect her to get out a pen but she says it verbally and I type it out.

“Um, are you alright?” She asks out of the blue after I type in the last letter.

“Alright?” I raise my brow.

“I mean, you seem…I just heard, um.” She tries to backtrack but I ask her again and she spills. “Some people just said your last few classes seem scattered. Not that people don’t like you. I just…that’s what they were saying. And I don’t know if having a TA would help? And I just wanted to ask if you’re okay sorry I shouldn’t…it’s none of my business.”

God, this girl was so awkward. But she was sweet for caring, I think. “You’re not applying for the role because you feel bad that I seem…scattered right?”

She blushes. “Sorry. I think I said too much.”

I want to laugh but it strikes me that my students had noticed. I’d let it affect their learning. It didn’t feel very good.

“Life’s hitting me hard recently,” I tell her simply. “But I’m alright. Thank you for reaching out Bridget.”

As I finish up the semester I think about her. It wouldn’t hurt to have her TA for one of my lectures, see how she does. I didn’t care for TAs as a lecturer but something about her is compelling and I find myself emailing her in the middle of the night in June. She responds back a few minutes later,

Thank you!!! You’re the best. I’ll do whatever you need just tell me I can do anythingggh

Sent from iphone.

I laugh to myself as I put my phone away and go back to bed. My guesses were she was drunk at a party.

Harry’s asleep beside me and I reach out to touch his back but think better of it. He’d been busy at work with a project nearing its deadline and I didn’t want to accidentally wake him.

I turn around and try to drift off, thinking about my daughter, about how Harry and I hadn’t really talked much in the last two weeks, about my teaching, and my new TA.

Age 38:

It’s a depressing summer. The air of dashed hopes still hangs around Harry and I. It’s less thunder clouds and more of a fog.

One weekend morning, it’s one of those mornings that start off heavy. I can’t get out of bed, but I hear Harry pattering about doing his weekend morning thing. I hear the dishwasher turn on, and soon after he walks in with our laundry folded in a basket. I feel awful as I normally do, but not awful enough to get up and do anything about it. I think I’d have to feel less awful, to do that.

I don’t expect him to get in beside me once he’s finished putting everything away. He smells like laundry and shampoo, I must smell like rot and decay.

“Y/n,” he says gingerly. I just look at him in response. I felt too heavy to even reply. He sits up and calls my name again.

“Mm,” I say.

He sighs. Despite months of this Harry’s been nothing but understanding but this morning seems different.

Suddenly I’m being pulled up by my shoulders and I find myself sitting up in bed.

“Y/N,” Harry says again. I fold my arms as the duvet slips down and the cool air raises goosebumps. “I love you, which is why it’s so hard seeing you like this. You have to get on, my love. We have to move forward. It’s been months.”

All I could remember after our daughter hung the phone up on us was when I almost got to hold her. Right after she was born, I almost got to hold her but they took her away. And that piece of me that followed after her was nearly returned. It was that almost that was a death blow.

“It’s hard,” I feel myself tear up. It was hard not to these days.

“I know baby,” Harry scoops me into him. “I know. It’s hard for me too but we have to get better. We have to live our lives. She’ll come back to us, I just know it. She’s scared, we’re hopeful. Fear’s gonna keep her away. Hope keeps us patient.”

I cry into his shirt and he rocks me.

“I’m sorry,” I say into his shirt.

“It’s alright,” he grips the back of my neck.

So for Harry, for us, I try to get back to myself. I start to pick up my outdoor hobbies, I try to keep conversations going with Harry, I reintroduce my multi-step night routine. I look forward and re-light the candle of hope, even though I ache to blow it out before it can burn down to its wick.

My wounds inside stay tender.

We had booked our wedding for November and as the days approach we find ourselves with one thing on our mind.

Harry and I finally talk about it.

“I always thought she’d be there at the wedding once she reached out.”

We’re sat in an outdoor space near King’s Cross, coffees in hand as we people watch. We’d just come back from a cake tasting and neither of us felt like going home with such a glorious August day. Kids splash in the water sprinklers and couples sit around arm in arm. I touch shoulders with Harry unconsciously.

“Me too. I think that’s what’s kept me from mentally committing to the fact that the date is coming closer.”

“It can’t be forever,” Harry says. “She reached out. She just needs time. She’ll call again one day and we’ll meet her.”

“I know.” I lean my head on his shoulder. This was a realization I’d also been slowly digesting. I’d waited 18 years, what was a few more months, another year? Her baby picture lived on our fridge, at least we were one step closer.

And the love, I had to remind myself in these moments. Hold onto the love.

***

“I can’t stay for this class,” Bridget tells me. It’s the second week of classes and there were still 10 minutes until it officially started.

“Is everything alright?”

“Not really,” that’s when I notice her nose is red and her eyes are too. “My um, my parents had to put my dog down. She…she wasn’t feeling well yesterday and the-they found cancer? And she was in a lot of pain but she never showed it? And-“

I put my hand on Briget’s shoulder and lead her to the exit. There was no reason for the whole class to see this.

“Sorry. I’m-“

“Don’t apologize.” I rub her shoulder. “I understand. Take the time you need I have this covered.”

True to her word, Bridget had been a loyal TA over the summer. I considered it a trial run not expecting much but she had shown up, aced marking, and I’d gotten good feedback from the students at the end of the semester.

I’d also taken to her. She’d join me during my 2 hours every Monday and when no students would come she would loosen up. She’d told me all about the dog she grew up with, she showed me costumes her friends and her made, I’d asked her about the books she was reading and the classes she was taking. It was like having a younger sister again, except I was mature enough to appreciate her.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Bridget says and this statements seems to be the breaking point. She curls in on herself, shoulders shaking. I don’t even think, I just pull her into me like I would for Harry, for Taylor, for any of my friends.

“You have a lifetime of memories with her,” I hold her. At first she stiffens up and I almost let her go but she only breaks down further and wraps her arms around me. Tighter than I expected.

“I wish I said goodbye,” she says into my shoulder.

“I know hon,” I squeeze her against me, something maternal washing over me. “I know.”

After a minute or so she regains her composure, wiping her face with her sleeve. When she looks at me she looks so much younger, her face grief-stricken and regretful.

“I’m sorry-“

“Don’t be.”

She seems to want to say something more but whatever it is, she swallows it and takes a step away.

I don’t see her for two weeks and I miss her.

When she walks into the lecture the first week of October I try not to rush her but I’m overjoyed seeing her face. It had become so familiar to me.

She smiles shyly when she walks up to me and I pull her into a hug. This time she doesn’t stiffen.

“How are you?” I whisper. Students were still trickling in so I use the time to catch up.

“Okay. Better than that day I cried all over you sorry again. I went home last week, thanks for letting me take it off.”

“Of course. You forget I’ve been doing this without a TA before you. I can hold down the fort.”

She cracks a smile, her dimple making a rare appearance.

“By the way, week 10’s lecture is supposed to be cancelled.” I tell her later during office hours. “But I wondered if you wanted to hold a tutorial that week for some of the material?”

“Really?” A light comes on in her eye. It’s fiery and bright with excitement.

“Yeah! You know the material! I’ll leave you with slides and you can go about teaching them.”

“I’d love to!” She grips her laptop close to her. “Wait why is it cancelled?”

“I’m getting married that week!”

The light dims. Or maybe I imagine it.

“Oh! I thought you were married already?”

“No,” I’d referred to Harry as my partner any time he was brought up. “We’re getting married in November. You’ve met him actually, kind of, that night we ran into you and some students at the pub. Last year?”

“Oh yeah I remember,” she says but her eyes are somewhere else. “So you’re getting married?”

“Yes Bridget,” I laugh. “Married. Tying the knot. You alright?”

“Yeah,” she blinks and she’s back. “You never mentioned the wedding. Do you have a dress?”

“Yeah! Just finalized the tailoring last week. Most things are ready, we’re just finalizing the rings!”

“Cool!” She fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “Is it in London?”

“Yeah, it’s not too big but we didn’t want people travelling too far. This is where Harry and I were born and raised so this is where we want to marry too.”

“Wow,” she seems lost in thought and she stays pretty quiet the rest of the time. I didn’t realize my news was that surprising.

Maybe I still didn’t have Bridget completely figured out.

***

“Harry I can’t pick them up! I need to get home and then head back out to class!”

“Y/n it’s on your way home!”

“Not really! It’s a 30 minute detour. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because you can still get to him right before he closes. I won’t be done here until after he closes. I’m sorry love!”

“Agh and why can’t he do tomorrow?”

“He’s off until Saturday! We need it today.”

It’s the Wednesday before we marry and our rings are still at the jeweller’s. He’d finished them last weekend but we’d been so busy with other things we hadn’t had time to pick it up. And now it was either today and be late for class, or the day of the wedding.

I had gotten delayed at work and missed Harry’s texts explaining the situation. I’d only responded while on the tube, but going out of my way for 30 minutes meant I’d be 30 minutes late to get back to class. And since I’d left marked assignments at home that the kids needed for next week’s tutorial, I had no choice but to head back.

The idea hits me at once.

I hang up on Harry and ring Bridget. She picks up right away.

“Bridget, I’m on a crazy tight schedule. I’m going to be late to class by half hour at least.”

“Oh no. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah it’s just wedding thing but can you do something crazy? And feel free to say no okay?”

“Okay?”

I explain to her that if she rode to my flat, Harry would be there by then and she could pick up marked assignment. She can delay class by taking them up.

She’s silent but eventually I get a yes. “Okay. Can you text me your address?”

“Yes! Yes. Thank you Bridget. I owe you your trip fare and lunch or something. I’ll text you now, leave as soon as you can!”

I call Harry again and confirm he’d be home by the time she arrived. Everything works out.

I get the rings, and have to head home so Harry can try his on. The jeweller was expecting both of us, and let me know he couldn’t do adjustments if I didn’t text him by today. Just my luck!

When I get to the flat I tell Harry not to read his inscription but to try it on and thankfully it fits.

“Hey,” Harry calls out as I try to rush back out the door.

“What?” I was out of breath and frantic.

“Slow down,” he pulls me into a lingering kiss and despite being breathless before, I get some air into my lungs when we part.

“Sorry, so hectic.”

“I know I’m sorry,” he strokes my cheek. “I would have gone if I could make it. Also don’t be mad.”

“Be mad?” I let go of the door handle. “What did you do?”

“Your TA stopped by, Bridget. I forgot she was coming so I didn’t have your papers ready. I invited her in and she was in the living room looking at our pictures and she stopped in front of the baby picture. Of our daughter.”

“Okay,” did Harry tell her our history? I get antsy. “And?”

“Well she asked if that was our daughter. And I didn’t know what to say, if you’ve said anything to her? I panicked?” Harry runs his hand through his hair. “I just changed the subject.”

“Okay, that’s not bad. What’s the bad part I don’t get it?”

“Well. I changed the subject and told her she should come to the wedding.”

My jaw drops. “Harry.”

“I know! I know I’m sorry! I know she technically works for you, she was a student, all that! You’re so fond of her though maybe it’s not a bad thing?”

“Harry that’s…she was my student! I’m a prof at that school I…is that even allowed?”

“Yes? I panicked and googled it.”

I groan, “I swear you’re getting worse the closer we get to the wedding.”

The other week he had tried to buy out a whole bakery in case there wasn’t enough cake for our guests.

“You can tell her we have a full guest list? I don’t know what came over me! She just looked at me with those puppy eyes and she asked about the picture and I tried to talk about something else but the only thing on my mind-“

I kiss him. Just to shut him up. I was getting really late.

“This is like that book club you were tricked into joining all over again-“

“Hey I really like that book club now! It might be a good thing!”

“We’ll talk later.” I shake my head at him. “It’s fine, it’s not a big deal. It’s weird but what’s one more guest?”

“I also said plus one.”

I let out a long exhale and then kiss Harry again. I didn’t want him spiralling while I was gone.

“Baby don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m fine with it. We’ll talk when I get home?”

I mull over it on the ride to uni. But I can’t find a way to uninvite her without it being awful. I text our wedding planner if we could squeeze in two more seats and she gives me the thumbs up.

I did have a soft spot for Bridget, and technically I’ve known her for over a year now.

During office hours, we get a few people in for the first half hour. Then we’re back to just the two of us.

“Thanks for taking over today,” I tell her. “I really appreciate it.”

“That’s alright. Happy to help out.”

An awkward silence slithers in.

“So my partner invited you to our wedding.”

“Yeah! I didn’t know if that was serious am I…?”

She looked so hopeful I couldn’t shoot her down. “Yes! I have a couple people from the faculty coming. And some colleagues from my day job. You’ll probably have to sit with them but?”

“That’s fine!” She’s chirpy Bridget again. “I’d love to. That would mean a lot.”

I watch her as the smile stays on and she gets out her phone, typing away. Maybe her friends, her plus one.

I realize I’m not entirely against it. It had happened, and I was okay.

***

I stare at myself in the mirror, smoothing down my dress in a nervous habit. I never thought I’d get married twice, I always thought after Tatum I was done with marriage, but Harry would always be the exception.

I feel a flutter of nerves thinking about him. Walking down the aisle to him. We started talking on a rooftop one day, we had just been two kids.

“You better not cry,” Taylor threatens as she walks into the room. She had gone to fetch lash glue after my teary eyes loosened an edge.

“I’m not,” I say weakly.

She stands beside me in the mirror, “They’re all waiting downstairs.”

Just 30 minutes ago this room had been a chaotic mess. From my mum, to my friends, to the wedding planner. I’m kind of glad my lash came loose, I’m able to ground myself in these few minutes of silence.

Taylor talks about our family downstairs as she fixes my face. I get up with her help and she beams, but her eyes look misty.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing!”

“Why do you look sad what happened?”

“Oh my god calm down, I just can’t believe you and Harry are getting your happy ending! I’m just…emotional.”

“Aww,” I cup her face even though I want to squeeze my baby sister against me. But my white dress, although not entirely traditional, would be ruined for the ceremony.

A ping on her phone—mum. We rush out. It feels like getting caught when we were younger and quickly getting away from the scene of the crime. I grip my sister’s hand until I stand in front of the doors leading down the aisle.

I don’t remember walking, it felt more like floating. Even if there was a chimpanzee and a talking dog in the pews I wouldn’t have noticed. My eyes are locked on Harry’s teary ones, they anchor me as I glide towards the man I’ve never stopped loving. Who always saw all of me.

When he reaches for my hand I grasp it and I know I made the right decisions. Even the painful ones. After all, I wanted to be nowhere but here.

“Y/N,” Harry reads his vows to me and I try not to cry as he sweeps me away with his delicate words about our love story.

“To be so deeply known by another, without even saying a word, shouldn’t make sense and yet with us we have a language that goes beyond words. A brush of your hand or a look in my direction, it can be enough to unload whatever burden I’d just been carrying. I promise to do the same for you, and to never end this dialogue between us. To love you and to cherish you forever.”

Harry couldn’t keep the tears in and they slide down his cheeks as he reads his words out to me. I reach out instinctively and brush his tear away and he laughs because I was doing it again.

“You’re can’t make me cry in my makeup,” I tell him and our guests laugh.

I had sat and thought so hard about my own vows. In the end after 50 versions, I’d settled on short and sweet.

“Harry, when we first spoke on the rooftop of that party in high school,” I say at my turn. “You told me everything you wanted. One of them was to make the world a better place. And I don’t know if you still want those things as much now as you did then, but one thing is true. You’re made my world a better place. I can’t imagine doing life without you. I love you with all of my heart, there’s no equation that could calculate how much.”

Harry grins at me and my breath catches. My man, he was my Harry.

We finish our vows with a kiss and a lot of noise from the crowd. When we turn to everyone I’m struck by how lucky we were.

The absence of our daughter was tough but when it came to love we had an abundance of it. I see it in every smiling and shiny face in the crowd. It’s like photographing a sunny day with one of those old school films, the sun is covered by a dark spot but the rays still wash everything in gold.

Harry squeezes my hand and I look up to him. He’s already looking at me.

He holds his hand up and lets out a whoop before he pulls my face towards him again for an even longer and borderline inappropriate kiss. I feel myself start to blush in front of the crowd.

We start down the aisle and this time I beam at every guest I catch eyes with.

My mum and Harry’s wave with tear-streaked faces. My friends from high school shout out, always the biggest supporters of our relationship. I catch eyes with Bridget, forgetting for a second she was here. Philippe is beside her, but what’s surprising is her blotchy face. I didn’t take her for someone who got emotional at weddings. I throw her a wave and she smiles through the tears.

Whoever ordered weddings to have a small break between the ceremony and the reception deserved a billion dollars. Harry and I spend the quiet moment doing our outfit change but afterwards we hold each other and let the moment sink in. The day sink in.

“We’re married,” Harry whispers when I tell him we should get going so we weren’t late.

“We took the long way to get here didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” he tucks me under his chin again and even though we would be late we just sway together for a little while. Our own private first dance, before the one for our family and friends.

“We did it all quite backwards actually.” I look up to him.

“Yeah, but we were never ordinary.”

“No, and I don’t think anything we’ve ever done is either.”

“Including our kid. I really wish she were here.”

“We’ll tell her all about it one day,” I promise him. His face eases into a loving smile, the fact that we’d made it to a place again where I can comfort him about this said a lot. Said we’d make it through everything, despite.

“I don’t want to do life with anyone else y/n, I have everything I need right here.”

“Remember that day at Whole Foods?” I remind him. “The first time we bumped into each other.”

“It’s a core memory,” Harry remembers. “I feel like the sun never set on that day. Getting to see you after all those years…it’s cheesy but it felt like coming home.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Me too. I recognized you by the back of your head did I ever tell you that?”

“Stared at it enough in maths, of course you did.”

“That’s probably why I did so poorly that year remember,” I laugh. “Just staring at the back of your head.”

“That’s why I never sat anywhere but in front of you.” He swipes lightly down my nose and I smile. “Now I get to see every angle of you whenever I want.”

“Oi,” I slap his chest. “Save it for tonight.”

He brushes my cheek. Under his gaze I’m stripped naked. There was nothing to hide with him, ever.

“I understand how long it took you to get ready,” he says in his deep silky voice. My stomach flips. “So I can’t do anything right now. But y/n, our wedding night will turn into a wedding dawn, and then to day again. I promise you.”

I tip-toe, even in my heels, and brush my lips along his cheek. In his ear I whisper, “I don’t expect anything less.”

I step away, feeling unravelled by the look of desire in his eyes. I’m sure I had the same look of want. But before we can give in to what we wanted to do, I open the door to our suite and embrace the gust of cool air.

“You should get some air too,” I say and he laughs, following me behind.

***

“Bitch!” Taylor comes up to me on the dance floor later that night. We had dinner, Harry and I had our first dance, there’d been toasts and tears in between. I was finally letting loose as the wedding party crowds the dance floor. We had been taking pictures all night, after this next glass of champagne I was going to call it quits on photos lest anyone captures anything that’s not an elegant bride.

“What?” I turn away from Harry to face Taylor. She’d been running around all day making sure my wedding day was perfect and seeing her just warms me with love. I squeeze her against me despite her protests. “I love you Taylor. Thank you for everything!”

“Ugh c’mon,” she wriggles out. She’d never been very affectionate.

“Where’s your bloke?” I look out for him.

“He taking a call. Anyway don’t change the fucking subject!”

“What subject!?” I ask as someone dances past me, fluttering their fingers in my direction. I blow them a kiss.

“C’mere,” she’s annoyed I’m distracted. She drags me off to the side and I hold a finger up to Harry as he watches us. “When the fuck were you going to tell us about her? And you invite her to your wedding and everything and nobody knows anything!?”

“What?” I was drunker than I thought or Taylor was making no sense. “Wha?”

“The girl you just took a photo with? Don’t act stupid Y/N jeez I can’t believe it. You hid it from me when it happened but why are you still hiding…”

My sister grows more upset as she talks, I realize it was serious. Taylor rarely allowed herself to get this worked up in public.

I put my hand on her shoulder but she shakes it off. I think hard about who she was talking about. Who had I just taken photos with?

Some of Harry’s friends took a picture lifting us up, then there was a photo with my cousin but that can’t be who Taylor was talking about. There was Andie, a few other friends and their partners, then Bridget and Bridget and Philippe.

Bridget.

“Wait what are…who do you think that is? Taylor I work-“

“Your daughter! Why are you still acting fucking clueless!”

“What’s happening?” Harry walks in mid-way into the conversation.

“God you too!” Taylor turns to him and hits the back of her hand on his chest. He rubs the spot and stares at her like she’d gone crazy.

“Me too what?”

“Harry?” His mum walks up to us, her brows pulled together the same way Harry’s does when he’s confused.

“Yeah?”

“Who’s that girl? With the brown hair? Purple dress?”

She’s eyeing Bridget who’s laughing with Philippe.

“Bridget?” Harry glances at me and Taylor grows more pink.

“Bridget? That’s her name?” Taylor blinks away tears. “Really y/n? I get when it happened I was a child, you and mom kept it from me. But she’s, you invite her to you-“

“Invite who?!” I shout. What the hell did Taylor think.

“Y/n,” Harry puts his hand on my lower back in warning.

“Your daughter?” Taylor says with teary eyes and a look of betrayal on her face. “That’s your daughter isn’t it? She looks just like…”

“Jesus I thought the same thing,” Anne looks at all of us. “Harry?”

“That’s not-“ he stops talking and we all look over at her. I had to say, right now she really could be. With her hair curled and wearing what she’s wearing. She could be family.

“She’s my TA. I’ve known her for a couple years guys I’ve bloody taught her. That’s not our daughter. She wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight? Harry invited her last minute.”

They all turn to look at me. Taylor looks miffed, she bites her lip as she looks at her one last time.

“That’s weird. Nevermind.”

She leaves like she didn’t just make a big scene. Anne covers her hand with her mouth and shakes her head. “I’m sorry loves, I didn’t mean to upset anyone-“

“You didn’t do anything,” I reassure her. Taylor did. And she couldn’t even say sorry.

“Don’t worry mum,” Harry pays her arm. She fades into the crowd and Harry stands in front of me so all I see is him. “She’ll get air, she’ll be fine.”

“But how could she just cause such a big scene like I’d hide something like that from her? On my wedding day! And then leave without even apologizing ugh! She is still such a brat sometimes!”

“I know, she’ll apologize later just let her be.” He knew Taylor enough. He knew her at 13 and he knew her now. That’s exactly what she would do. “We’re getting you a shot.”

“That’s the last thing I need! I’m already kinda tipsy Har.”

“This won’t tip you over c’mon. Shake it off.”

He leads me to the bar and we take a shot. I nearly spill half of it, it was awful whatever it was. I lose Harry as we get back to the dancing and end up behind Bridget instead. Philippe noticed me first and slows his dancing, which signals Bridget to turn around.

“Y/n!” Her smile is so bright it hurts to look at. It dims as I just stare at her.

It would be crazy. It was a big fat coincidence. She had a mum, a dad, a sister, she told me all about them. Her childhood dog and the time she twisted her ankle playing football in year 4. She wasn’t who we wanted her to be.

“Are you alright?” I read her lips. There’s only ringing in my ears. “Hey! Y/n!”

Philippe is suddenly on my other side and I’m being led to a chair. He disappears and Bridget pulls a chair beside me.

“What’s,” my voice sticks and I clear my throat. “What’s going on between you two? He’s your date?”

“Philippe?” Bridget’s brows draw together and I can’t stop looking at where they meet. I knew her. I didn’t know her. I was too afraid to ask. “No just friends.”

“That’s not the way he’s looking at you.”

“What?” She tucks her hair back. “No we’ve been friends since high school. It’s not like that?”

“What would you do if he got a girlfriend?” It was a random conversation to have, here and right now but it helps me from tumbling anywhere else. Especially into a pool of what-ifs.

“I’d,” she shrugs but a flicker passes through her face, for a second her jaw clenches. “Be happy for him.”

“Liar!”

“I’m not! Why are you asking?”

“You two like each other. I see the way he looks at you when you’re not looking. Why did you invite him tonight?”

She shrugs, picking at something on her arm. “I dunno. He’s good at being a plus one. He always supports me? He’s always been there for me.”

“Sorry,” he shows up with a glass of water. “I swear the guy behind the bar was ignoring me.”

“Thank you Philippe,” by now I didn’t really need the water but I hold the icy glass in my hands. “Let’s see the pictures you took. I want them in my inbox or something soon. We don’t get our official photos for months.”

“Oh yeah here,” Phillipe hands over his phone after opening the photo. There are a couple of all of us, and then a few with just Bridget standing between Harry and I smiling.

I look between all three of us and feel something in my gut. But it’s too scary and big to unpack right now. I shove it away. I couldn’t do this. Not today, not tonight.

“You look beautiful Bridget,” I touch a lock of her hair. “Did I already say that?”

“Yeah,” she smiles awkwardly. “You said that before the photo.”

“You do. And so do you Philippe. Thank you for attending my wedding.”

“Thanks for inviting us,” Bridget looks at me wide-eyed, like she’s about to say something but when Philippe’s hand lands on her shoulder she looks down.

“What?” I ask anyway. Her eyes dart like prey to me, to Philippe, and down to her hands. I grab her hand and force her to look at me, like I could read something in her eyes. Like I would know. “Bridget.”

She looks up and her eyes well with tears as we look into each other’s eyes. My throat feels tight like I was having an allergic reaction, it travels down to my chest, I inadvertently feel myself squeezing her hand.

“I’m so-“

“Bridget,” Philippe’s voice cuts through whatever Bridget was going to apologize for. I look up at him and he’s burning a hole staring at her that hard. Over his head I see Harry.

“Oh look I see my husband,” Harry’s spots me too, relief in his features. His eyes stay on my face as he walks towards me and his eyes keep my steady. I want to tell him something, but everything that just happened was so non-verbal and unreal that I think I made it all up. I must be because this was insane and there was no explanation other than I was drunk, and sadder than I realized. “Gotta go kids. Have fun. I think I need another shot.”

I remember the rest of the night in snapshots. I forget myself later, giving myself up to Harry after that. We actually make it to dawn in a mixture of love and declarations, filthy words and I love yous, laughter and deeper conversations. It’s everything we were. It’s just like he promised.

***

Life moves on and I don’t bring anything up to Harry. I couldn’t, either I’m wrong and get his hopes up, or he thinks I’d gone insane in my sadness.

I feel like Bridget avoids me the week after, I return to class and she sits there, even takes questions after class, but she makes an excuse of studying during office hours and I barely get a few words with her. The week after she has an exam and she skips out after class.

I’m antsy. I want to know more about her; from her. I’m tempted to find a way to access her profile, get more info via the school. But I wait.

Harry notices, as we prep for our honeymoon booked over the holidays, he continues to ask if I was alright. And I try to convince us both I was.

About 3 weeks after the wedding, it’s a Saturday afternoon. Harry’s making lunch and I’m sitting in a pile of our books trying to decide what can be donated.

“Can you get that?” Harry asks.

“Hm?”

“The door?” He says just as there’s another knock. I’d been so entranced in the book I’d randomly started reading a passage of I hadn’t even heard.

I scramble to get it before the next knock and nearly stumble back when I find Bridget at the door.

“Hiya,” she says with an awkward wave.

“Hi…Bridget. What…come in what’s going on?”

“Sorry? Now that I’m here I should have called first.” She comes in and I go further in, waiting for her to follow. She hesitates before peeling her wet boots off.

“Harry? We have a guest,” I announce as I take her further into the home. I guess she’d already been here once before. “Bridget what can we do you for? Did you need something?”

“Bridget!” Harry pops out of the kitchen into the adjoined living room when we get closer. “Nice to see you again! I’m nearly done lunch, did you want to stay?”

What was it with Harry randomly inviting Bridget to things that were not pre-discussed.

“Um, I no. I probably shouldn’t. I just, came by to talk?”

“Sure,” I lead her to our dining table. “Is it about school? Did something happen?”

I sit across from her and Harry mumbles something, turning the dials down on the stovetop before sitting beside me.

Bridget’s eyes dart everywhere, from me to Harry, to the pictures on the wall, the kitchen, the books all over the floor.

“I was just doing a clearout,” I say to fill the silence. “Hey you like books right? Look through that pile there later if you want any of ‘em.”

“Actually,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. I feel Harry tense beside me. “I have a book for you.”

She leans down to where her tote rests and pulls something out. She lays it on her lap first, where we can’t see it. When she looks up to us she has tears in her eyes and her chin quivers.

“Please,” she whispers before pausing. My stomach drops as I take her in. Her face is blotchy and her hair hangs around her face, hiding half of it. She’s definitely cried before coming here, and I almost feel like deja vu as she places the book on the table. “Please don’t hate me.”

She slides it across to us. It’s just a simple leather hardcover, about 30cm by 30cm. The thing in my gut, the suspicion or the intuition, it turns into a cackling ball of energy and moves up to my sternum. I put my hand over it, and then move it to Harry’s leg. He’s frozen like a statue, staring at the book.

“Please open it?” Bridget says with tears streaking her face.

When Harry doesn’t make a move I pull it the rest of the way towards us. I open the first page to a few baby pictures.

I’d never held her in my hands, never even saw her. I’d pushed her out into this world, into another’s arms. But somehow I know who this is.

“Bridget,” I don’t even look at her. I start to frantically flip through the pages. The baby grows, 2 months, 6 months, 1 years old. Another girl joins in some photos, she always has an arm around the other child. I flip and flip and flip and even though I’m expecting it the photo stops my breathing.

I stare at the clone, or the original, of the photo on my fridge.

I’m frozen until another photo is slid towards us. It comes into view: two teenagers on Halloween night. The guy is dressed like the girl, the girl is dressed like the guy.

I throw my chair back and in the time it takes to walk to Bridget she stands too.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs but I just do what I wanted to do the second she was born.

I hug her. I hold her to my chest the way I never got to over 19 years ago. She belonged here. She never got to be here.

She was finally home. My daughter.

“Bridget,” I cry into her hair. Harry’s hair. She had Harry’s hair, his eyes. She got my nose and everything else. I was holding my daughter. She was in my arms, finally.

She really did look like Taylor as a baby.

“I’m sorry,” she cries again. “I was so scared and I screwed up and-“

“No.” I say fiercely. I push her out of the hug so I can grab her face. I wipe her tears and I nearly cry again. How many tears had I missed? Over skinned knees, playground taunts, first crushes and friendship breakups. How many tears had I missed? “Don’t say that. You’re here. You’re—Harry!”

I turn to him, why wasn’t he here?

He’s sat exactly where he was before. Frozen, staring at a spot between the picture of us and Bridget.

I let go of Bridget and move back to him.

“Baby,” I touch his arm and he springs up. Tears coat his lashes.

“‘Scuse me,” he brushes past me and heads out into the hall. Away from us. I want to go after him but I don’t want to leave Bridget—our daughter, alone.

“I’m sorry I knew I would ruin things I-“

“Please,” I want to go after him so bad but I go to Bridget and pull her into a gentler hug. When we part I keep hold of her shoulders. I never wanted to let her go. “He’s just processing it. He’s fine. He’s not mad at you I promise. Promise.”

She bites her lip, it reminds me of Taylor. She was a bit of everyone I knew and loved. She was the love that Harry and I always had. She was ours.

“I just got so scared when I tried to reach…I didn’t mean to deceive you. I didn’t. I felt terrible every day.”

“It’s okay,” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “There’s nothing to be sorry about-“

“But I saw you,” she cuts me off. “After I finally called you back and then just like, ghosted you. And every time I saw you at school it was like…I knew I was to blame. And it made me want to tell you even more but I got more scared any time I came close to it. I almost said it at your wedding—it would have been so stupid. Philippe stopped me.”

“I understand,” I did. I also didn’t care about any of it. She was here. That’s all I cared about. I wanted to know everything about her, I needed Harry here though. “Look Harry…your…Harry. I’m just going to check on him. You stay here and just…”

I trail off and leave. I had to be sure he was okay.

He’s not in the bedroom, or the office. I try the door to the toilet and it opens, he’s sitting on the edge of the tub with his head in his hands.

“She leave?” He asks in a hoarse voice.

“Oh baby,” I crouch in front of him. “No. She’s still here but I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m pathetic,” he buries his hands in his hair. “I’ve been waiting my whole adult life for this and all I do is freeze. Her first impression is of her dad just freezing and then running away.”

I try not to laugh at his dramatic retelling. “Har you know that’s not true. She’s known you before this. It was a shock-“

“You were fine.”

“You know I…always suspected. Especially after the wedding.”

He looks up at that, finally. “You never said.”

“Harry, I felt crazy. Saying it out loud would have forced me to check myself into the psych ward. We all react differently, it doesn’t matter though. Our baby girl is here. The day we talked about!”

He takes a deep breath, and then another one. I guide him to stand and he looks so limp and sad that I squeeze him in a hug. “She doesn’t care how you reacted. She just wants to know you.”

Harry sighs again, he splashes his face with water and we walk out. I was nervous for him.

We walk back into the living room and my heart sinks when Bridget isn’t there. But her things are?

A few steps further and she’s at the stovetop, stirring a pot.

“Oh sorry,” she steps back and nearly throws the spatula into the pot. “It was boiling a lot and-“

“Bridget,” Harry ignores most of what she’s saying and she freezes at the sound of her name. He’s a foot away from her now. I watch him raise a hand to her face and then drop it. His face is a cross between heartbreak and awe as they drink each other in. I wait in anticipation.

“Hi,” she finally says shyly. But it breaks the ice. Harry pulls her into a hug and she returns it tenfold from the looks of it. I can’t tell who’s crying, but I give them their moment as I turn the dials off on the stovetop.

It was just a regular Saturday, except it wasn’t. Our worlds exploded with our past and was putting itself back together again, all the old broken pieces were being mended back together with love. My chest drowns in it, I can barely breathe. In Harry’s arms, there’s no denying she’s ours.

***

“Thank you,” Bridget says as we tuck into dinner. Harry’s lunch prep had gone cold as we’d all sat down and talked about how Bridget found us (looking me up, finding out I was teaching a course she was interested in, forcing her friend Philippe to take it to see if I was who she thought I was), and going through her album. I found out more about her sister Louisa and her parents. It was weird seeing pictures of them, in my mind they were the people that took my baby as their own and for Bridget they were mum and dad.

We finally decide to do something about food when our stomachs rumble. Harry goes back to cooking, showing Bridget what he’s doing until she leaves to take a call. I recognize Philippe on the caller ID.

I take Bridget’s place but I’m more of an extra weight tied to Harry’s back as I hug hun from behind. We don’t even have words on what this all means to us. For now, just touching each other keeps us grounded, it keeps is in what was happening together.

Bridget comes back from the call when we’re nearly done.

“I just want to say I am sorry—and I know you said not to be,” Bridget says quickly before I can get a word in. “But I never meant to deceive the both of you. My plan was to take your class, leave the letter and then talk. I Googled you so much it felt like I knew you. Yet when we spoke in your office that day, you felt familiar but In a different way than the person I studied. I just liked you so much, and I wanted you to like me. I was scared maybe you wouldn’t. So I just screwed the plan and messed up everything.”

“Hey,” Harry hands her a tissue and she takes it. Under the table he squeezes my hand. “It’s in the past.”

“I know. Still made me feel awful. And I couldn’t tell you but I also couldn’t stay away. I applied for TA and, it felt like having a friend and a sister and a mentor all in one. And I…I screwed up. I took it too far. And then you invited me to your wedding—I got to attend my parents’ wedding! It was so absurd. I couldn’t stop crying.”

Sounded like me. But I don’t say anything. We listen to her attentively.

“I only told my sister. I wanted to tell you two before I told my parents.”

I think about my parents. Harry’s. I didn’t want to overwhelm her but I couldn’t wait to introduce her to everyone that already loved her.

“I just hope…no, I know I hurt you two a lot. I didn’t mean to. I am really sorry about it all.”

“Bridget,” Harry’s hand comes down on hers. “What’s done is over. There are so many things we wish we did differently but ultimately it’s all done. All that matters is you’re here, now. You’re our daughter we never got to meet and you’re finally here.”

Harry’s voice cracks on the last word and he sits back and laughs away the tears. “Sorry. I’m a mess today aren’t I? Your first impression of me is a crying mess.”

“That’s not my first impression,” Bridget laughs but her eyes also fill with tears. “That night at the pub. When I saw you two together I nearly bloody fainted! When I looked you up y/n, there’d been an old wedding registry with another bloke. But then seeing you two together?! I just couldn’t believe it—I thought I dreamed it. And then I nearly cried because my bio parents were somehow together?? And the way you just stared into my soul it felt like you knew who I was.”

I laugh, remembering but also knowing exactly what look Bridget was talking about. “He does have a piercing look doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. It could gut someone!”

“That makes it sound awful!” Harry laughs. “Don’t say that.”

“It nearly gutted me! I really thought oh shite—“ Bridget freezes and looks between us like we were gonna scold her for swearing and I nearly leap across the table to hug her again then. “I uhm, I thought you knew who I was.”

“We thought it then,” I let my eyes roam over her. I realize I’d always been a mother, despite not having my daughter. Holding her earlier had awoken an instinct in me and now every time I look at her I feel a rush of love and something fierce. I wonder if Harry felt it too. “But we thought we were mental!”

Her phone chimes as we laugh. She flips it around and then tucks it into her purse.

“You need to take that?” Harry asks.

“No it’s just Philippe. He was at the wedding? I was just talking to him, I hadn’t texted him in a while he wanted to know how it went.”

“Philippe,” I say with a knowing smile. Bridget blushes and Harry asks what he’s missing out on so I fill him in.

“He sounds like a good lad,” Harry comments.

“A good lad?” I repeat. “Are you hearing him?”

Bridget laughs behind her hand and I can’t stop staring at her. I have to force myself to go back to eating.

“He is. I might have told him about how I felt?”

“Wow,” I put my fork down. “You’re confessing an awful lot lately.”

She blushes even deeper. And suddenly I’m grateful of the weird and layered way she’d come into our lives. Despite hiding the truth, it had allowed us to get to know each other as people first. Without any baggage or give me any inclination to fit who I thought she should be onto who was in front of me.

I got to know her for the young woman she was first, so did Harry in a way. And I would be forever grateful for that despite all the pain in between.

“Sorry,” I get up. The affection was overflowing from my cup. “I’m going to give you another hug because I just can’t believe all this.”

“Ohh,” Bridget stands to meet me and we wrap our arms around each other. Here was a girl I already knew, here was my daughter waiting to be known.

“God, she really is our daughter.” Harry quips from his side of the table. He explains when Bridget looks over at him, “y/n is known to be a big touchy person, I’m kinda like that too.”

“Oh my god,” she smiles at us. “I’m like that too! My sister hates hugs. My dad’s 2 pats on the back man, 3 if he’s feeling a lot. I always wondered if…”

She trails off. It seems to hit all of us all over again every so often. For me it’s when she talks about her mum and dad and it’s not Harry and I. The reminder that she went 19 years becoming her own person that we now were catching up on.

For her, it seems it was realizing all the parts of us that were in her.

“You got Harry’s hair, and eyes.” I comment.

“I did! I realized that as soon as I saw a photo online. But I do look a bit like you.”

“You do! I should show you some younger pictures of us and our families. You’ll see more similarities.”

“Wow. So you have a younger sister. How about you Harry?”

“Older sister. Seems we all have sisters.”

Bridget and I make eye contact, remembering a conversation we had what feels like ages ago about having sisters.

We continue our dinner, swapping stories and filling her in on anything she wants to know. She leaves after, claiming to have to get back home, she had an exam on Monday to study for.

When she leaves Harry and I can’t stop talking about her. Or gushing would be more accurate.

“Did you see the way she laughs?” I’d tell him. “Pure you!”

“The way she tucks her hair back,” he would retaliate. “Just like you. You did that especially back in secondary.”

We talk until we’re exhausted, crawling into bed just staring in wonder. There were still so many details to figure out, so many things to cover, it could drown a person thinking of it all.

But like an anchor in the sea, Harry and I fall asleep with hand clasped together. We keep each other buoyed amidst it all.

It was going to take time for this all to sink in but all I’ve ever had was time, and questions. I think I was finally getting time and answers.

Age 39:

Harry’s pov: Having our daughter in our lives is simple and complicated at the same time. At first there were a lot of things to untangle but as time went on, the knots loosened until our lives became their own knots, tangled into each other.

Meeting her parents, the people I met once many years ago, was likely the strangest part. They already felt so familiar as soon as they greeted us in a warm embrace, as if we were there own children. I guess the last time they saw us we were.

“Oh look at you,” Bridget’s mum had squeezed us tight. Her dad had pat us three times and we took it to mean as much as a hug.

In my mind they were always the age they had been then. They were probably around the age we are now. Seeing them sport greys and fine lines, it was like stepping into a time portal.

Lou, Bridget’s sister, eyes us for the first little while before warming up and sharing all kinds of stories—especially the embarrassing kind with us.

When Bridget meets Y/n’s family, I can tell they’re loud and overwhelming at first but we’re all surprised when Taylor embraces Bridget and takes to her immediately.

She brings out old pictures they had of Y/N and I, but every time she says, “your mum and dad…” when she talks about us through the pictures, I notice y/n protesting less and less.

It makes me feel funny, I keep thinking I was going to wake up and find out it had all been a dream.

“This feels very full circle to me,” y/n’s mum says. She’s watching Taylor talk about her baby bump—she was 3 months along. “I saw Bridget as a wee baby when they handed her over to her parents. I remember running late to hospital and making it to the room just in time to see it. I blinked and now she’s in my living room!”

“Sometimes I feel the same way,” I confess.

My family is slightly quietier but they all fuss over our daughter. They ask a million questions and when it’s all over we take Bridget for ice cream. It’s a pseudo-recreation of a life we never had.

Bridget eases into it too. At first she had bouts of disappearing on us. No more than a couple days. But we give her space, understanding it was overwhelming.

Every time I see her, I see her mum—y/n. I was never there when y/n gave birth. We had to drive up from London when we got the news and by the time I got there the dust had settled.

I never even had the potential of seeing her. I’d always been more sympathetic of y/n; her loss had been physical, mine was slightly more abstract.

Even though I’d spent every year since regretting that I wasn’t there to at least glimpse her, I’m glad now I hadn’t been there to see her. If I had to live the last 18 years with this feeling in my chest I don’t think I could have lasted that long. I don’t know how y/n did it. It’s a concoction of deep unconditional love, and tenderness, and recognition, wrapped in a shell of protectiveness. It took me a while to sort through it all but I had a conversation with my parents one night at dinner Y/n and I had visited. And they’d laughed because they had told me that was simply what being a parent was.

“Maybe she regrets it,” I had said the second time she ghosted us. Really it had just been over a day where she hadn’t gotten back to us. But I couldn’t help the overthinking, being tuned into any potential of loss with our daughter.

Somehow, y/n was the cool headed between us two in these moments. Maybe it was being a mum, maybe it was knowing Bridget beforehand, but she was very in sync with her.

“She needs space. The last thing we want her to be is overwhelmed too. Now don’t overwhelm yourself love, at least she’s in our lives.” She’d say.

It takes us the start of the summer and all those meets later for Bridget to finally feel at ease.

We invite her on a road trip, we were renting a place in the Cotswold for a few days and told her to bring Philippe. When she doesn’t even hesitate to say yes Y/n tells me we’d done it: she was finally more comfortable than overwhelmed.

“Y/N made me a better man,” I say after a couple drinks. We’re all sat around a fire outside the house. Despite it being a warm day of hiking the night had cooled significantly and we’d decided that boozy hot cocoas was the way to go. “I’ve lost my ways a lot of times as an adult. But she’s always been my north star. Even when we got back together she led me to being sober and getting my shite together.”

“Oh…” Philippe looks down at his drink. “Are you…”

“No,” I laugh, Philippe was the most-conscientious teen I’d ever met. “I got sober to get my life in order. But…it’s in order now. I haven’t done anything crazy for over a year now.”

A little before our wedding I decided I wanted to end my sobriety. It had been a thought for months, and I had waited before giving in. But I really felt more in control of my life. I faced my life decisions head on, I confronted my past with y/n’s help, and I didn’t think I’d lose control again. It had been a shaky first week but I was right. It was a proud moment for me.

“You two really have something special,” Bridget comments.

“They do,” Philippe adds. “I can’t believe you got your happy ending after so many years!”

“Yeah,” y/n says as I lay my hand on her thigh, palm up. “Y’know what they say about loving someone and letting them go.”

“I guess you did that with me,” Bridget says so quietly we almost don’t hear her. But out here in the countryside we do.

“We didn’t want to,” I remind her.

“No I know.” She smiles, it’s a bit sad. Philippe tugs her closer. I could see how much he cared for her in that small gesture. “I’m not saying it like that. I hear your story and I just imagine how different my life would have been if I was raised by my, by you two. I wouldn’t have this life. And I really like this life.”

She looks at Philippe and I feel y/n squeeze my hand. She often said they reminded her of us when we were younger; the kind of love you’d do anything for.

“But you two loved me enough to let me go. To let each other go. It’s fucking sad but it’s beautiful. Life’s weird.”

“Here here,” Y/N raises her nearly empty cup of hot cocoa. “Life’s weird, sad, beautiful, but lately my life’s been full of so much love. I wish I could sell all the excess, I think I could solve a lot of world problems with it.”

“Wow,” I lean over and kiss the top of her head. “That’s one hell of a speech.”

“I have a speech,” Philippe stands, a little tipsy, and clears his throat. Bridget rolls her eyes but they shine for him. “Bridget you’re the love of my life. Since we were 13. But Harry and Y/N, I think I love you too. Ever since we were 15, I’ve watched Bridge struggle for answers about her past. And you two have given her all the answers, welcomed her—and me actually, into your lovely life. I’ve watched her become old Bridge but even more confident. I’m falling harder for her these days. And I can’t thank you guys enough.”

“Aw Philippe come here,” y/n lets of my hand to walk around and give him a hug. How quickly strangers became family.

Bridget grumbles about being left out and joins the hug. Soon I join in too. I want to create a mold of this moment, I think as I squeeze them against me, I’d make it out of plaster and let it dry. Any time we wanted, we could always find our way back to this moment here.

Age 40:

Y/N and I watch our daughter cross the stage. Beside us are our parents and in front of us sits Bridget’s parents and her sister. She has a whole army cheering for her. This was the first milestone event we could all really show up for, and show up we did.

“I can’t believe this,” I was so proud of her. I know the kudos went to her parents, and herself, but I beam with pride. Honestly Bridget could spin in a circle in front of me and I would be a proud dad.

“We need to get photos,” mum leans over and says so seriously, as if we hadn’t planned on getting a million already.

We have a framed picture in our hall, Y/N and I on our wedding day, our daughter in between us. Her graduation photo is definitely making it. She makes fun of this wall, calls it the Styles hall of fame, and I never mention it but she always lingers a few second longer in front of the photo of the three of us.

I do too.

“It makes me so sad you won’t be so close to me anymore,” my mum tells Bridget later. We’re all piled in our flat, drinks and celebratory cake in everyone’s hands.

It reminds me of mine and y/n’s 40th birthday, we had gathered our family and friends here and it was some of their first times meeting our daughter. Today is more intimate, and focused on Bridget.

“I know it makes me sad too, but I’ll be here often, visiting Philippe.”

“Only visiting Philippe?” I raise a brow.

“Is there someone else I’m supposed to be visiting?” She mirrors my raised brow.

As Bridget’s gotten more comfortable, me and her could banter for hours if you let us, it’s one of those things that brought us closer together—having the same sense of humour. It’s allowed us to have just as deep heart-to-hearts, a handy joke always close to the surface.

Y/N always says seeing me like that, thoughtful and silly, reminds her of the boy she fell for. I can’t deny that I’ve been feeling closer to my 20 year old self than my 40 year old self lately.

“She’s too cheeky,” Bridget’s mum says. “But I have to say I’ll be glad to have her back.”

Lou, Bridget’s sister, was moving to Wales. Apparently she wanted to know more about her background, and take a trip with her bio mum to visit her bio dad.

I think Bridget was moving back to Coventry to keep her parents’ loneliness away; she said she would commute to Birmingham for school. Even though she got accepted into law schools in London, going to a uni close to her parents just showed me how close she was to her parents. It was a bittersweet feeling.

“I’ll have somebody to watch cricket with again,” her dad says.

“Ohh,” Bridget throws her sister a side-eye. “I love cricket…”

We all laugh at her complete lack of concealing her true feelings.

Later that night, it’s just Bridget’s parents and us. The kids are on the balcony talking.

“I know we’ve said it before,” I say after a long silence. We’d just been watching the kids talk and laugh outside. “But I want to say thank you again.”

Bridget’s dad shakes his head. “It was the greatest pleasure of our lives getting to raise those two girls.”

He looks over at his wife and they smile at one another. Seeing them interact, I’m grateful that somehow fate had led us to them. While Y/N and I were figuring life out, while I fucked up a lot of things, she was raised on a steady and stable foundation.

“She’s incredible,” I murmur. “She’s gonna be a lawyer. She’s going to change the world.”

“She sure will,” her mum says. “We should be thanking you two. For giving us Bridget. I know it wasn’t easy, you told me you thought about her nearly every day. But we can’t imagine our lives without her.”

We sit in a comfortable silence, looking out at the kids until they notice and start to ask questions through the glass.

“She’s happier,” her mum says smiling at Bridget and Lou exaggerating their words through the glass. “She stopped being like this before she left for uni. We thought we lost her but…I think everything worked out for the best.”

Y/N glances at me. Her eyes crinkle when she finds me looking at her first, her eyes steady me as she says what I was thinking, “I think so too.”

Age 45

Your pov: “When did she say she would be here?”

“6?” Harry says for the tenth time.

“It’s 6:20 do you think something happened? She hasn’t texted has she?”

“My love,” Harry puts down the cutlery he was arranging on the table and holds my face in his hands. “They’re driving from Coventry, they probably hit some traffic.”

“Maybe I should call her?”

Harry sighs and squishes my face.

“Don’t! You’ll make more wrinkles.” I warn.

“I love your wrinkles,” Harry kisses my forehead right where the pesky wrinkles had been growing deeper over the last few years despite the additions to my night routine.

Harry always said our wrinkles were just the stories of our lives showing through. I told him to get himself undereye cream.

“You don’t think I’m aging handsomely?” He strokes the moustache he started growing last year. At this age, even I couldn’t deny it made him even more attractive.

“Well it’s no good if you’re ageing handsomely and I age like a troll.”

“I will love you if you age into a troll.”

“But will you love me if I turn into a worm?”

“Do you even have to ask? I’d buy you the best soil and keep you in a beautiful pot.”

“You wouldn’t take me fishing?” I ask. He sighs. Last year while we were taking a trip up north for Lou’s wedding, we’d gotten into a fight and when I asked him the question while he was still stewing he said he’d take me fishing. It had, ironically, broken the iciness of his anger and we’d laughed about it so hard he’d nearly had to pull over.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he wraps me into his chest nearly suffocating me.

I’d spent half my life with a lot of difficulties, but life now felt easy compared to it. I had the privilege of getting older with the man I adored, got to watch my daughter flourish as an adult and a lawyer, watch her get married to the love of her life, and all the while live comfortably in the heart of this city I called home.

When Bruno starts barking though, I gasp and push myself off of Harry, “that’s them!”

Bruno continues to bark as I rush to the door. We’d got him a couple years ago as a pup and I can’t believe it had taken us that long to get a dog. He filled our lives with laughter and long walks. We loved him.

“Down.” I say to him. I open the door and hold my hands out while Bruno runs in circles beside me.

“Ahhh sorry we’re late!” Bridget steps into my hug and I tug Philippe’s hood so he can join. Bruno goes for Philippe when they walk in, he’d gotten obsessed with him after Philippe took care of him while Harry and I took an anniversary trip last year.

“Where are my hellos!?” Bridget says to Bruno and he barks, standing on his back legs to paw at her leg.

I hadn’t seen the two of them since March, that was 6 months ago. It had been their wedding, and they’d gone on a month long honeymoon after that, after which Harry and I had taken time off to road trip around Europe with Bruno, and then time had just zipped by.

After a hearty dinner, Harry and I carry out the birthday cake we’d been hiding.

“You didn’t have to do this!” Bridget fans her face but we treat it like we do any special occasion, plus making up for all the ones we’d missed. We get photos and exchange presents, she cries reading the cards and the whole time she says she had a present for us.

It’s a small bag, Harry and I guess that it was something for Bruno but when we take out a box it doesn’t sound like much when we shake it.

“Is this a prank gift? There’s nothing in it?” Harry asks.

“Open it!” He was making me antsy.

“You open it,” he hands me the box. Bridget and Philippe stare intently at my hands.

I undo the bow and slowly open the box. There’s a small square of tissue paper, and then a piece of paper. I remove both but something catches my eye.

I flip the paper over and stop breathing.

“Is that-“ Harry stops talking too. We stare at the piece of paper in our hands. It looks so much like one I had held 28 years ago. But it’s not.

“Bridge,” I look up at the couple. The parents-to-be.

“We’re having a baby,” Bridget says. Philippe and her are gripping hands and I throw everything off of me to launch myself at her.

“A baby!” I hear Harry say and joining us. “You’re having a baby! Y/n!”

“I never thought we’d be grandparents,” I look up at Harry.

“Those wrinkles were coming in for a reason,” he teases.

We never did have any other kids. Quite frankly, neither of us wanted any. When we first got together we were just starting to get comfortable with the reminder that we had a daughter out there and we could talk about her freely with each other. It felt like having a third person in our little family.

After Harry proposed, while we planned our wedding, we talked about it but we never thought it felt right. We both had first marriages where a lack of conceiving had just put a strain on the relationship we didn’t think we needed. We’d also felt like it was betraying something, before we met our first child.

When Bridget did reach out, it became about catching up on lost time. And then with her in our lives we knew what we suspected all along. We had each other, and that was enough. Bridge was our bonus. And getting to be aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews it was enough. It was a full enough life.

We never even dreamed in our 20s we’d get to be parents and now we would get to be grandparents! I never realized until this moment that I wanted this. Really wanted it.

“Do you know the gender?” Harry asks.

“No,” Philippe answers. “We were thinking of doing one of those reveal parties? But not for a couple months.”

“Wow,” my hands drift down to Bridget’s belly and I remember I had something. I leap away from the group and find the box in my closet, it’s painted pink with random collages from old magazines. It hosts old diaries, photos, a hospital bracelet, and an ultrasound.

“This was you once,” I show her the picture when I get back. “I carried you like that once upon a time.”

She takes it with teary eyes, holding it close to her face to make out the shape of her. She hands it to Philippe and grabs my hands.

“I’ve thought about it before, but when I got pregnant I couldn’t wait to tell you-“

“She kept telling me I had to make a trip out to London just so she could give you the news.” Philippe interrupts, eyes scanning the ultrasound still.

“No really,” Bridget laughs. “I did. It’s like I got this new perspective.”

She puts my hands on her belly and covers mine with hers. I feel everything at once then, all the heartbreak I ever went through to get here.

“I can’t imagine giving this baby up. And it’s barely 3 months. What you were willing to do to give me a better life-“

She breaks off and Philippe squeezes her shoulder. I watch my daughter try to gain control of her emotions. I remember when I was pregnant with her, anything would set me off.

“It must not have been easy. After carrying me like this for 9 whole months. Thank you-“ she looks up to where Harry’s standing. I barely register his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you as my mum and dad, for making the hardest decision I can imagine ever making, so I could have something you knew you couldn’t provide.”

I reel my tears in, save them for later that night in bed while Harry holds me tight against him.

Right now I kiss my daughter and tell her what a good mother she will make. I tell her and Philippe how proud I was of them, how excited, how wonderful this was.

Age 46

The day we meet our granddaughter is seared into my brain. We get the call at 8:35pm, Harry and I were staying in a B&B in Coventry despite Bridget’s mum insisting we stay with her. We’d been here all weekend, booked it all week, not wanting to miss Bridget’s delivery date.

“Y/N she’s here,” her mum whispers into the phone. Her voice is filled with joy and giddiness. “She’s here.”

“We’re coming,” I say. Harry’s already at the door and we rush out into the night to see our granddaughter.

She has the perfect little face, and when she finally wakes up I gasp when I see Harry’s eyes looking back at me. I turn to him, to see if he noticed, but he’s teary-eyed and gazing at the baby in awe. I soak it in for a second, imagining this exact look if we’d kept our baby so many years ago.

Bridget’s parents had given us the room, to give us a moment alone, and I can’t be more grateful. Bridget encourages us to hold her and as her soft body is pressed into my body I let out a sob and hand her over to Harry. I excuse myself and step outside the room.

Lou’s kids sit on the floor outside, playing with whatever toys are spilling out of a miniature backpack. I focus on the flashy colours, trying to calm down, counting the number of toys falling out.

My life was a 180 from 10 years ago. This moment would go down in our history books as one of the best days of our lives.

But I can’t deny the bittersweet. The experience threatens to push me into the bitter past of not even getting to hold Baby Bridget. But with it comes an undeniable sweetness of getting to experience this now.

I take a deep breath and walk back in. Harry and Bridget stop mid-sentence and turn to me. Bridget’s face is streaked with tears, Harry’s looks concerned but I smile. He sits with the pink bundle to his chest and I ache.

“Don’t look so obvious you were talking about me,” I try a joke.

“Are you alright?” Bridget asks.

“May I hold her?” I ask in return.

I sit on the edge of the bed and she’s placed in my arms; she’s perfect. Just as perfect as Bridget must have been.

“She’s got Philippe’s hair,” I gently stroke the wispy blonde strands.

“She’s got my eyes, her grandpa’s eyes.”

I look at Harry. And he catches the stricken look on my face when Bridget tips forward and whispers to her baby.

“Look baby, this is your mumma’s mum, and your mumma’s dad. You’ve got his beautiful eyes. Say hi to grandma!”

My throat tightens. “Bridge.”

She leans away, her eyes dart between us. “I know I call you Y/N and Harry. It made it easier at first but…you are my mum and dad. Even though I have another pair. You are my mum and dad. And I want her to know you like that.”

“Oh love,” Harry leans down and kisses the top of our daughter’s head. She keeps her green eyes trained on me, grasping my hand that’s wrapped under her baby’s.

I mouth a thank you, my voice couldn’t pass through the block in my throat. She squeezes my hand and it sets the baby off. Remembering when my nephews were this young, I just hand her back to Bridget knowing she only wanted her mum.

Harry and I stay in the waiting room. We couldn’t go home, even though we had spent our allotted time we had inside the room, we stay there.

We watch Lou’s kids as Bridget’s family gathers in her room. We stay as they fall asleep, draped over us. I remember when Taylor’s kids were this small, they would fall asleep anywhere.

We talk in whispers, I don’t remember what about exactly. Mostly how excited we were. How there was so much to look forward to. How different our lives looked a decade ago.

“One day we’ll tell our grandkids,” I remember Harry saying. “We’ll tell them all about us, how we met, how our love burned so bright it shone in the sky. We lost each other but our love was always there to guide us back home.”

“We’ll see them grow up, all the memories we missed.”

“We’ll change diapers.”

“We’ll change diapers,” I giggle, half-delirious by the lack of sleep. It was probably 2am and I was tired.

When I gaze up at Harry I remember him holding our granddaughter. I replace her with Bridget. For a minute I allow myself to imagine how that would have been.

“I think you would have made an amazing mum if we did things differently,” Harry whispers into my hair.

“You too.” I whisper back.

“An amazing mum? You think?” The edge of his lips tug upwards.

“Harry,” I warn. We had kids sleeping on us we were trying not to wake.

“I love you.” He says in response. “To the stars and back.”

On our drive home I can’t stop looking at him. I always wondered how it would be like to grow old with someone; when I was younger and watch my own parents celebrate anniversaries. And then when I was older and my first marriage was so rocky.

But thinking about it now is like a simple mathematical equation. You take two lives, two individuals, and you bracket them in love. You add an exponent—the decision to continue choosing each other. And you get a lifelong commitment. No matter the situation, no matter the challenges or the changes, you choose to choose each other.

His side profile lights up by an oncoming car. For a second he’s the same boy I feel in love with, a few more gray hairs, a few more wrinkles, and a moustache. But he’d always be the boy I followed out to the roof, who held my hand in our high school hallway, the one who turned an I into a we when I got pregnant, I see the man I had coffee with after a run-in at the Whole Foods, I see the broken heart from a harsh life sitting on the steps of a church, I see a bookworm, I see a father, a husband, and now a grandfather. I see the one person who knows me like the back of his hand. The one I am home with always.

“What is it?” Harry asks as we pull into our b&b. “Have you been asleep this whole ride or have you been staring at me?”

“Staring at you?” I ask. “You think I was staring at you the whole ride?”

“Well you were really silent. And facing me

“I was thinking.”

“About me?”

“Why are you so desparate!? Do I not show you enough love regularly?”

“I could always use more,” Harry looks half asleep as we reach our door.

“The people are right: you give someone a hand and watch as they take the whole arm,” I tease.

“When you gave me your hand, I made you a wife.” Harry retorts.

“Ooh,” I poke him. “I have to say that’s a good comeback for being half-asleep.”

Harry grins back. “You keep me sharp.”

“And you keep me happy. Now open the door so I can stop freezing out here!”

We walk into the warmth of our b&b.

For so much of our lives, our past decisions haunted us. We let so much go. Now life was repaying us, returning it all back, with interest.

***

In a small b&b in the middle of a town called Coventry, two lovers crawl into bed. They’d just become grandparents and they carry an exhausted buzz about them as they try to fall asleep. They’re both thinking of the other, of their daughter, of the tiny bundle they held in their arms today.

Some 20 minutes away their daughter lays in a hospital bed, an exhausted buzz putting her to sleep. She dreams of her mother who gave her up, how she had found her parents in the end, and dreams about the kind of mother she’ll be.

A few doors down lay her newborn daughter, she doesn’t dream of much, not yet, but she’s in for a lifetime of love.

Most of life is what we made it. Y/N and Harry loved deeply enough to make it.

———————————————

TAGLIST: @quinnwritezz @unknownnbihh @dilfhrrys @umadirectioner @hermionelove @anonymous-91 @meganxfddf

#harry styles fic #harry styles x reader #writingsfromhome #harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #fic #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles series #if you love something #dad!harry #its not my fave but I was getting tired of tweaking it #to shorten it #theres just so much to catch up on #kinda nervous #but also kinda done

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lunarw0rks · 1 year

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hi hiii, I hope ur having a good day<3 I'm rewatching 365 days rn and I was wondering if you could do 141 + graves and Alejandro watching it with us? nsfw would be amazing but it's completely up to you, this is really random im sorry 😭 i just thought of it out of nowhere, and no rush ofc<3

Have a nice day/night/afternoon<3

A/N: If you can't tell I hate this movie. I fell asleep not even halfway through when I watched it. BUT IT'S AN ENTERTAINING REQUEST, SO ENJOY<3

Summary: How they would react to watching 365 Days with you.

Warning(s): suggestive content/language (18+), established relationship, GN!Reader, no use of y/n

Word Count: 1.5k

꒦꒷ MAIN MASTERLIST ꒷꒦ 141 MASTERLIST // have a request? ⋆ ⚘ 🕊 ˚✧ ₊˚ʚ ao3 ver.

365 Days | 141 Headcanons (+ Ale/Graves)

Price

As much as he loved movie nights with you, sometimes he had to join late. Though you insisted that you would wait on him to start it, that you wanted to start from the beginning—he put his foot down. He can come back, halfway through the movie, guess what’s going on, and still enjoy it with you, right? At least, that was his logic.

Tonight was playing out like usual; dinner finished, and he had some paperwork that needed tending to first. So, you’re sat on the sofa, already several minutes through this… questionable movie. Why you had chosen it, you weren’t sure, but it was something to keep you entertained.

He strolled into the living room, a heavy groan when he was finally able to relax. ❝What are you watching, Sweetheart?❞ John’s arm found its way to the back of the couch, a not-so-subtle way to wrap his arm around you. ❝Oh, they’re on a boat. Is this some sort of adventure—❞

❝Oh.❞

As good as he was at keeping his composure, the sudden cut to the explicit boat scene, stunned him to near silence. It was quite humorous, the mortified look on his face as you sat there watching it nonchalantly. But the scene continued, cut-to-cut, at least two minutes of the smutty montage.

❝Are you trying to tell me something?❞ He asks with a stern look, dripping with playfulness, though he found the movie downright unrealistic and cringe-worthy; not at all how he views romance or sex. He’d kidnapped her, tried to make her infatuated, seduced her… he found it downright strange. It definitely didn’t get him in the mood, he spent most of it with a look of contempt on his face—unless he was staring at you.

Simon

He would always let you pick the movies, no matter what. There was no arguing, no bickering over action v. romance, he truly didn’t mind. Movie night often started with Simon silently handing you the remote, eyes glaring until you give up on being polite and just pick the damn film.

You clicked on the Netflix icon, scrolling through the array of films you two hadn’t watched yet. Finally, you hovered over an… interesting choice. One you had seen talked about across social media since its release. Surely, it’ll at least be amusing, right? Even if it's awful?

❝Looks stupid.❞ The intro to the film began to play, his broodiness ever-persistent. But you could take what he dished out because no matter how tough he acted, he cherished evenings like these—no matter what you picked to watch. Throughout the film, he maintained that same stillness he always did; legs spread with one hand in his lap, the other draped over the back of the couch, even during the most heated of scenes.

There were plenty of those, for sure. ❝Can’t believe I’m watchin’ this shit…❞ He grumbled, but was he going to shut it off? Nope. The longer it played, your flushed expression would amuse him—whether it was because you were embarrassed by all the explicit scenes, or because the movie was simply p^rn with little plot. Either way, he spent more time with his eyes on you than the screen. If he did feel himself start getting heated, he’s not going to outright ask, either. He’d rather suffer for an hour and a half, and tease you about the film choice, something might happen ;)

Soap

It wasn’t that you were hiding the fact that you picked this movie, but you didn’t exactly want it to be one you watched together. Your fingers were practically crossed under the blanket, hoping he would at least walk in during one of the semi-normal scenes.

His voice startled you because he had come in so suddenly, and of course during one of the many explicit scenes the movie was littered with. ❝Steamin’ Jesus, bonnie, if you wanted to watch p^rn I could’ve sent you some.❞ His arms crossed over his chest as he watched the screen, but his look was one of awe. Why the hell were you watching this? But most of all, why was he standing here doing the same? You had no doubts about what he said, either. He probably would if you were desperate enough, and it wasn’t exactly a secret how much of a dirty mind he had.

His weight settled on the couch next to you, in the typical cuddling position he put you in during movie night; forcing your head into his lap or against his heart. To this day you’re convinced he only does this so you’ll play with his hair if you were being honest. ❝Didn’t know you liked movies like this…❞ Soap was only trying to be casual, to act nonchalant about what was on screen. But, his mind did wander—doing what he always did when he watched things like that; imagining you in it.

(Let’s just say… he had to do that thing where guys readjust themselves, shifting their hips against the cushion…)

Gaz

Strangely enough, he probably saw the memes about it and decided to give it a try on movie night. So, he got all the favorite snacks, drinks, and most of all you—huddled next to him under layers of blankets. He was expecting something like Fifty Shades—how the both of you spent the entire time cracking jokes and giggling at the outlandish nature of it—or at least, he did. This movie made Fifty Shades look like nothing.

He flashed a side-eye, one to see your expression during such a movie. Explicit scenes; whatever. But this? It was… unsavory for him.

If you wanted to finish it, so be it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be there. Gaz just found sex scenes like this (overly aggressive/no plot-driving ones) obnoxious. “You sure you want to finish this, babe? I’d rather watch Gray Shades, or whatever the hell it was called, again.” He sounded uncomfortable as if he was watching the scene with his parents looking over his shoulder.

But then again, some of the acting was like a car wreck—so horrific you couldn’t tear your eyes from it. ❝I could beat his ass.❞ Gaz eventually resorted to fierce disdain for the male protagonist about halfway through the film, sizing him up through the screen. Partially to make you laugh, partially because he disliked the character so much, and the film itself. It was humorous for you to watch, to say the least.

Alejandro

Alejandro wouldn’t have chosen the movie. He prefers older movies, nostalgic films, and classic romance movies with plots, not… that. But you wanted to watch it, so he gave it a shot. All else fails, he’ll fall asleep beside you until it’s over, and then get to pick something better once the credits roll.

That’s exactly what happened; him snoring beside you from sheer boredom. Unbeknownst to him, he’d fallen asleep before any of the action happened, so he was in for a literally rude awakening. An awakening you were itching for, to say the least. His head perked up, eyes adjusting to the light from the screen. As usual, he had to wake up from his power nap at the absolute worst moment.

❝They’ve been going this whole time, Mi Amor?❞ Alejandro groans, brows in their natural state—furrowed and focused.

Though it's unfortunate that he wasn’t wrong. The scenes were one after the other, and they barely held weight with the plot. You expected him to be more grumbly about it, hell, even judgmental towards the male character’s form or something. But he merely snickered, eyes turning to yours, ❝I’m nicer to you than that, que no?❞ He says while the female protagonist is being intimidated by her captor, unrealistically aroused while it’s happening. He was, managing to both satisfy you and keep you on your toes simultaneously.

Graves

Graves doesn’t watch movies with you often, both because of his workload, and because he doesn’t sit still long enough to do so. He spends most of his time standing behind the sofa, making snide comments towards something that’s inaccurate in the film, or what a character should’ve done. Tonight, he hadn’t been seen at all, despite knowing you were watching something.

You expected it when you read the description of the movie, it’s sexual nature. You knew he would stroll into the living room at the absolute worst moment. That’s exactly what happened, and it made your eyes roll the second you heard the small chuckle from behind your head. ❝Christ, Sweetheart, you could’ve just asked.❞ Indeed, he had his arms folded across his chest, lips formed into a slight smirk when you turned your head. His smugness was like a parasite—latched and hard to get rid of.

Graves was surprisingly quiet in the moments following, watching the movie in a nonchalant stance. By the shake of his head, you could tell he was going to begin his routine of constant commentary, constant knit-picking. ❝She supposed to be a captive, or somethin’? Should’ve gone that way instead. Now look at her.❞ A smug sneer returned when he sensed your embarrassment as he commented on the explicit scene playing out. It was entertaining for him, to say the least—and it wouldn't be the last you’d hear of it, surely.

#mw2 #mw2 fanfic #call of duty #task force 141 #task force 141 x reader #simon riley #ghost mw2 #alejandro vargas #captain john price #john price #kyle gaz garrick #kyle garrick #soap mctavish #philip graves #phillip graves

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darthannie · 11 months

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day twenty-four: age difference with jim

pairing: Jim x f!reader word count: 1,500 warnings: age gap relationship, almost sugar daddy! Jim (will have to look into that, it’s making me think things), fingering, unprotected p in v a/n: This one took longer and work stopped me from writting but HERE WE ARE. I need him so terribly it's not fair. kinktober masterlist

Dating apps were tricky. Your friend convinced you to up the age settings in the multiple apps that you used. She really didn’t have to say much. She simply showed you all the men that showed up on her app and you knew you had to follow suit. They weren’t all winners, but some of them stood out. Day in and day out you received multiple matches. One in particular seemed to be going somewhere. You matched with a man named Jim. He was about nineteen years older than you and he was gorgeous. You didn’t understand how a man like that could be single, but you guessed you’d find out soon enough.

You had always thought about being with an older man but didn’t think you’d go through with it. The hushed conversations at three in the morning proved that you were more than willing to follow through. You were opening up to each other even before your first meeting. You found out he was recently divorced. He confessed that he cheated on her, which took you aback. But, that answered your question. That’s why he was single. But, you grew to understand. It wasn’t like you didn’t have your skeletons.

You both were in the same boat though. You were not looking for anything serious and you both needed something new. You were becoming his something new. It took a couple of weeks before the conversation turned sexual. His messages made you blush and yearn for him. Sexting was not something you’d done much in the past. But, for Jim, you sent anything he asked for. It was thrilling to have an attractive older man lust for you. He sent you money to buy lingerie in his favorite color. You smiled as you remembered the soft purple fabric you hid away for a special occasion.

He invited you out to dinner, wanting to take you out first before going further. You were surprised this was his version of “nothing serious”. The restaurant was upscale and the menu prices reflected that. Your eyes almost bulged out of your head when you saw how much a pasta dish cost. He chuckled, “Don’t worry about the cost. I’m taking care of the bill. Get whatever you think looks good, love.”

One thing you weren’t expecting was getting weird looks from some of the wait staff. You were insecure about it, but whenever you looked back at Jim you felt just fine. Things felt easy with him. In such a short time, you were already attached to him. You knew catching feelings for a man much older than you would bring forth questions from friends and family, especially if you ended up together. For now, he was your best kept secret.

Dinner went by too quickly. You both didn’t want the night to end, so you ended up at his apartment. It was nice. Modern. Better than what you had going on at your apartment. You tossed your purse on the couch and sat next to it. Your dress rode up, exposing more of your thighs. He took notice as he sat down next to you. You stretched as he got comfortable. He was watching your every move. You made eye contact for a few moments and sat in an awkward silence.

“What?”, you chuckled.

“Nothing,” he smiled, “you’re just so beautiful. I can’t help but stare.”

Your heart swelled in your chest and you kissed him before your brain could tell you not to. He was ready for it, kissing you back feverishly, placing his hand on the side of your face to pull you even closer. You straddled him on the couch and put your hands on his chest, kissing down to his neck. His hands rested on your waist, gripping your hips and pulling you down. You bucked your hips, seeking any bit of friction you could. His head leaned back as he closed his eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of your lips on his neck. When he opened his eyes, you were looking back at him.

“I need you, Jim. Really bad.” Your voice was desperate.

“A young woman like you being with an old man like me. Are you sure?”, he asked.

You laughed, “More than sure. Plus, you’re not that old.” Now it was his turn to laugh. He was painfully aware of how this looked, but he didn’t care. He was in awe of you. He felt lucky that you were even in his home, let alone on his lap asking him to fuck you.

“Come,” he said. He led you to his bedroom and you threw yourself on his bed, rolling over to lay on your back and nuzzling the pillows. He stood over the bed, smiling down at you. You made a “come here” motion with your pointer finger and he rolled his eyes before crawling over you. He planted kisses all over you, starting with your face and moving to your neck and shoulders. You scrunched up your dress and he followed your lead, pulling it over your head, leaving you in just your bra and panties. He took off his shirt and undid his pants, pulling them down. He admired your figure underneath him, wearing his favorite color.

You couldn’t believe this was happening. The feeling of his body against yours, his hands working on your bra, and finally his hand cupping you over your panties was overwhelming. “Is this for me?”, he said patting over the fabric. A giggle escaped your lips, “Yes, all yours.” He grinned and used his fingers to pull them aside. His fingers slipped right inside you, earning him a whimper. All it took was that one sound to make him addicted to you. His goal for the foreseeable future was to have you make those sounds as much as possible. He watched you as you looked down, jaw dropped at the feeling of his fingers working inside you. You wanted to skip all the formalities. No more foreplay. You just needed him inside of you. The sight of him, almost naked, turned you on even more.

You ran your fingers through his greying hair. He looked very good for his age. Images of the two of you together swirled around your brain. Going on long walks, going out to dinner, moving in together. Maybe this was just a one-time thing, but you’d be damned if it was. His weight shifted on the bed, pulling you out of your daydream. He pulled down his underwear and you got a good look at him. Your mouth watered. He stroked himself a couple of times before reaching over to grab a condom.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t wait any longer.” He sounded needy.

You put out your hand as he reached for the bedside table. “Do we have to use one?”

He raised an eyebrow as he spoke, “Do you not want to use one?”

“I don’t. I want to feel you. All of you.” He moved his hand away from the nightstand and cupped your cheek, ardently kissing your lips. He used his other hand to line himself up at your entrance, teasing you with the tip. Grunts and moans filled the room when he finally sank into you. You grabbed his head and pulled him into a sloppy kiss as he started moving in and out of you. His pace was moderate; it was clear he was trying to savor the moment. It wasn’t every day he was able to be with someone half his age, but he desperately wanted this to be an everyday affair. He stared into your eyes and his mouth fell open as he moaned. He leaned down and kissed your neck as he said your name before you moaned his.

He pulled back and his pace quickened. The eye contact was making you weak. You thought about asking him to finish inside you and he thought the same, but that was off the table. You both knew better than to risk anything. Your orgasm hit you first and his followed soon after. He pulled out and came on your stomach. You watched as he made a mess of you. When you both caught your breath he quickly slipped out of the room saying, “Wait right there.” You exhaled with a smile, wondering where else you’d be going at that moment.

He returned with a warm cloth and cleaned you off. He got back in bed and gestured for you to cuddle up against him. You looked up at him, admiring the faint lines on his face. He took your hand and placed his palm against yours. He looked down at you as he interlaced his fingers with yours. He kissed the top of your hand.

He was hopeful when he asked “Would you like to stay the night? I wouldn’t mind the company.”

You hid your excited smile and collected yourself before looking back at him. “I’d love to.”

Taglist:

@devotedlyshadowytheorist, @dxnger-dxys, @tommyshelbywhore, @quinnlilias,@madnessandobsession, @mvpr-moon, @nela-cutie, @faebirdie, @charmed-asylum, @anasanthology, @ilikefictionalmen, @akanne-aka, @no-fooking-fighting,@queenofstresss, @flwrs4aust, @mrkdvidal1989, @00hsv, @laylasbunbunny

#kinktober ‘23 #annie writes #jim delinquent season x reader #jim the delinquent season x reader #jim the delinquent season #jim delinquent season #cillian murphy #cillian murphy x reader #cillian murphy fic #cillian murphy smut #cillian x reader #jim is my baby fr

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gayforanthonyjcrowley · 3 months

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So, I have this writing idea, but I might need some help from you guys.

I have this idea where Crowley and Aziraphale go on abc dates, but I need some ideas. This is the list I have so far:

A: alpha Centauri, amusement park, arcade, aquarium, …

B: baking, boat ride, botanical garden, berry picking, backyard camping, bowling, …

C: cooking, circus, concert, craft night, chocolate fondue, …

D: dinner order, drag show, drive-in movie, …

E: eventing, eating escargo, Everest, estate sales, escape room ( no miracles ), enchilada date, elephant back riding, Easter egg hunt, Eden garden, …

F: fishing, filharmony, fruit picking, firework show, …

G: gaming, getting matching tattoos, goat yoga, …

H: hair tutorial remaking, hiking, horseback riding, historical museum, …

I: ice cream, ice skating, ikea shopping, …

J: jazz club, jogging, jacuzzi, jigsaw puzzle, …

K: kayaking, Karaoke, …

L: live music, Lego building, …

M: movie night, museum, mini golf, magic show, …

N: national park, Nintendo game night, …

O: oven baked cookies, opera, open mic night, origami class, …

P: pancakes, planetarium, pottery, painting, picnic, …

Q: Queen concert, quiz night ( triple date ), …

R: roller skating, Ritz, …

S: swimming, sushi, stargazing, …

T: tour with the Bentley, thrifting, trampoline park, train ride, …

U: ugly sweater party ( triple date ), …

V: vintage car rally, vinyl record shopping, vineyard experience, volunteering, Venice trip, Venus, …

W: wildlife sanctuary, wine tasting, waltz lesson, …

X: Xylophone concert, Xylophone lessons, Xerox, X-Rays, Xbox gaming, xtreme sports, xylophone, …

Y: yacht ride, YouTube marathon, yoga, …

Z: zurich mini break, zero-proof cocktail making class, Zumba class, Z A Rob Zombie concert, zen garden, zoo, …

So let me know if you have another fun idea! I’ll post a poll on my tumblr, so you guys can decide what they are going to do on their date! ( If no one votes, I’ll choose myself, but I hope I’ll get at least some votes )

I’ll be posting this story on my AO3 account, same as my tumblr, GayForAnthonyJCrowley.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #david tennant #michael sheen #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #anthony j crowley #crowley x aziraphale #ao3

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gracieheartspedro · 1 year

Text

Cool About It

it's here. the third and final part!

joel miller x fem! reader

Description: it's been over a year with joel and some things have just fallen apart. you miss him, more than you'd like to admit. after some time apart, you find yourself at tommy's christmas party. your recent endeavours catch up with you, and joel doesn't like the way it's looking.

Part 3/3

Links for Part 1 Part 2

Word count: 6.8k

Warnings: MINORS DNI! this is 18+, post!outbreak joel, very angsty, age gap, joel being very protective, use of homophobic slang, guy being creepy towards reader, very smutty, unprotected p in v, fingering, oral (f and m receiving), overstimulation, dirty talk, multiple orgasms, orgasm denial, pet names

Author's Note: I'm so happy to bring this final part to you beautiful people. I've loved writing this series so much! Thank you for your patience and kindness. please leave feedback, I love hearing from you guys.

Once, I took your medication to know what it's like

And now I have to act like I can't read your mind

I ask you how you're doing and I let you lie

But we don't have to talk about it

I can walk you home and practice method acting

I'll pretend being with you doesn't feel like drowning

Tellin' you it's nice to see how good you're doing

Even though we know it isn't true

“So are you and Joel going to work it out?”

It was a question bearing on your mind for months. You really didn’t want to hear it from Ellie.

You and Joel had officially been broken up for three months after seeing each other for over a year. It was never a concrete thing, the foundation of your relationship was cracked due to some unresolved trauma from both of your pasts. Joel was in the same boat as you when it came to not being able to cope with his grief. His daughter being taken from him so young, the horrors he went through trying to survive the end of the world, and of course the deep and complex relationship he had with Ellie. You had a lot of unsettled trauma from losing your entire family and being alone for most of your life. You also always had this sinking feeling that he was not telling you the full story about the last couple years. He seemed hesitant to discuss how he found Ellie in the first place. You could tell there was some awkward tension and unresolved issues between the two of them. You just wanted to help.

He started drinking a whole lot towards the tail end of the relationship and you weren’t sure why. He’d stumble back home drunk, not even able to kiss you goodnight.

It was getting complicated. He was terrible about communicating his feelings and you were too stubborn to accept you were ever wrong.

Of course, there were good times. Like all of the Saturday nights going out dancing with Tommy and Maria. The game nights with Ellie. Sitting outside on his front porch with nothing but his guitar, making you sing songs only your father would know.

You missed him terribly. But you knew it was for the better. It has to be for the better.

Ellie sits next to you at the annual Christmas party which was hosted by Maria and Tommy. They usually did it at their house, but with a toddler, it just didn’t seem realistic there anymore. So instead, they had it at the large food hall and invited all of Jackson.

You glance over at her, your eyes glazed over from all the alcohol you’d been consuming.

That was another thing. You couldn’t stop drinking, now. It was the only way you could get to sleep at night. You had even started going to the Tipsy Bison every night to get wasted and on some rare occasions, have a guy take you home.

You were almost positive Joel was sleeping with one of the other patrol leaders too, a girl named Kelly. She had made eyes at him before you two got together. You’d seen them around a couple times, just talking and getting close. The first time you saw them, you got wasted at the Bison and threw up your entire breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It only made you want to get over him faster, so having those guys take you home was a distraction. But you’d never fully admit that.

“I don’t know, kid,” Is all you could think to say to Ellie. Your mind was muddled with stupid emotions and disgusting whiskey.

“He’s nicer when you’re around. Now, he’s just… angry.”

You felt bad. But you couldn’t fall back into that routine with Joel. Fight, makeup, fight again. There was an extreme disconnect in communication. It was exhausting.

You stand up on wobbly legs, “I’m gonna go grab ‘nother drink. You want somethin’?”

Ellie was technically underage but you knew she drank with her friends sometimes. She looked at you with a bit of contempt.

“No, thanks.”

You shrug, sauntering back over to the bar.

You notice a familiar silhouette at the end of the bar, but don’t bother glancing that direction. You knew he was watching you and Ellie talking a second ago, his eyes always trailing you. You didn’t want to look over and see Kelly beside him, so you act like he isn’t even there.

“Another whiskey, pleaseeee,” You beg the bartender standing nearby. He doesn’t look too happy about serving you more, but you had lost all sense of self control about an hour ago and he knew that by the look on your face. He pours you some more dark liquor and sends you on your way.

As soon as you turn to walk away, you spot another familiar face walking directly towards you.

Josh Hall.

He was one of the guys you slept with. He was a nice guy, kinda. He was a know it all, shallow, and a bit arrogant. So maybe not a nice guy.

You slept with him twice, both times when you were drunk. From what you could remember, he didn’t make you cum.

He was only a bit taller than you, blonde hair and blue eyes. He was cute enough to get into your pants. But every time you thought about any other man, you reminded yourself that it wasn’t Joel.

“Hey there,” You try not to slur, “How are ya?”

“Hi beautiful,” He grabs your hand, pulling you in for what you assume is a kiss. You wince, directing his lips to your cheek. He presses his chapped lips against your skin.

“What are you doing?” You ask, trying to avoid the gazes of the people around you. You could feel his eyes on you even from 50 feet away.

“Thought you’d wanna come dance with me,” He has his hand slipping around your waist. You feel a sinking feeling in your stomach. He knew you were drinking, your glass swaying right in front of his face.

Your red flags are raising quickly. Josh never approached you any other times of the day. Never during patrols, never just around town. He only showed interest when you had a glass of liquor in your hand.

“I am actually bringing this drink to someone, so please get off of me,” You lie, trying to get him away.

You had to be patient with a guy like Josh. He could be pushy sometimes, so you had to be firm but sweet. You wouldn’t want to start a stir at a party with a bunch of families, right?

But he wasn’t letting go.

His eyes were piercing into yours. You could tell he was drinking, his eyes a bit glassy like yours. You hadn’t even seen him come into the party. It’s like he just appeared to make you mad.

“Just have one dance with me,” His breath stunk of alcohol and unbrushed plaque. You wanted to vomit.

“No, I need to bring this drink to someone.”

His grip is getting progressively tighter and he’s walking you backward.

“Who? Who’s drink is it? New boyfriend?”

You swallow hard, not knowing who to say.

“It’s for Ellie.”

He smirks, “You givin’ an underage dyke a drink? Don’t think her daddy would like that.”

Something in you flips. Rage. Pure unadulterated rage. Your body doesn’t even give your brain a moment to mull over your next move. You throw the drink on the ground, the glass shattering all over the floor. You step back, finally breaking away from him.

“What did you just fuckin’ say?!”

He releases you, backing up. He had this offended look on his face, like you had kicked a puppy.

Liar.

It made you even more mad.

“What did you say, Josh?” You emphasize his name, never breaking eye contact, “You fuckin’ call her that again I’ll fucking kill you.”

You stomp forward, your hands reaching up to him. You had never snapped so quickly in your life. Something about him saying negative about Ellie made your protective maternal instinct go into overdrive. Ellie meant a lot to you, especially after spending the last year with her and Joel.

Your fingers wrap around his scrawny little throat. He was trying to back away, but a table stopped all his movements. He was pinned.

“You fuckin’ dare talk about her or anyone I fuckin’ know, I will make sure you never utter another wor-“ You feel hands around your waist, pulling you back from possibly choking him out. It almost takes the wind out of you. Your hands let go of his neck, but not without digging your fingernails into his skin.

You are so blindsided, you don’t even know who has a grip on you.

“Hey, hey, stop!” His voice is familiar. Almost Joel’s, but not.

No, because Joel is instead grabbing Josh from the spot you pinned him to. You look back and see Tommy, his face panicked and confused.

You watch as Joel grabs Josh by the shirt, throwing him towards the middle of the dance floor. A bunch of people are standing around watching Josh stumble, trying to gain his composure. The music completely stops, bringing the hall to complete silence. Joel doesn’t give him enough time to stand up straight. You try to push Tommy off of you, but he’s got an iron grip on you.

“What did he say?” Joel yells towards you, gesturing towards Josh. Everyone has completely stopped what they are doing to watch the scene unfold.

You look towards where Ellie is, her face twisted in horror. Jesse stands next to her, his face serious. You know this is probably embarrassing for her, so all the anger leaves your body, replaced with guilt and shame.

“Joel,” You warn, “Please.”

Joel was extremely protective when you two were together. Ever since you two split, he has tried his very hardest to not snap. Once he sees a man’s hands on you, though, he can’t help but let fury fill his entire being. Tonight was no exception except this time, you got violent before he could. Which only meant you had no other choice. You usually keep a calm exterior, trying not to step on anyone’s toes. When you drink, you’re actually sweeter and more complacent.

“What did he say?”

Instead of you saying anything, Maria steps in. She wedges herself between Joel and Josh, making sure neither one of them takes another step.

“Cool it!” She yells, her eyes flying over to you being held back by Tommy.

“He better get his ass out of this tow-“

“Shut it, Joel,” She warns, reaching out for his arm, “Let’s take a walk.”

“‘m not going anywhere,” His voice is booming which sends a chill down your spine, “Get this fucker out of here and away from her.”

He looks towards you, Tommy slowly loosening his grip on your upper body. You wiggle out, trying to steady your breathing. You didn’t even realize that you were panting like a dog.

You’ve completely sobered up. The dizziness you feel is just from adrenaline.

Maria guides Josh to the door, listening to him rant about his side of the story. You look back at Tommy, who’s obviously taken aback by the way you snapped. He’s never seen you so mad.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Tommy. He just said something about Ellie,” You whisper it, trying to ensure Joel didn’t hear. You know well enough that if he found out the words Josh uttered, he would have a pistol between the poor guy’s eyes.

“I think you need to go home and cool down,” Tommy suggests, “This is not the place for that.”

You felt horrible. Everyone’s eyes were still on you. You nod, understanding Tommy’s reasonings for practically kicking you out of the party. He gestures Joel over, grabbing him by the shoulder.

“I’m gonna have someone walk her home,” He nods to you, “Would you be willin’ to or should I ask Jesse?”

Joel shakes his head, “I’ll get her home.”

“I can get home myself,” You retort, trying to regain some sort of control over the situation. You didn’t want Jesse or Joel walking you home, it felt like a walk of shame times a million.

“Get her home safe, Joel,” Tommy remarks, tapping you on the shoulder. He wasn’t giving you an option.

You step over the shattered glass, while Joel guides you to the door. You felt so humiliated, not knowing what face to make at the people who were scowling you. So you keep your head down, grabbing your coat from the chair beside Ellie. Joel is trailing behind you. You look up for a second, meeting Ellie’s brown eyes.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” You mumble, “For everything.”

She shakes her head, her lips thin, “It’s okay. Get home safe.”

Joel taps your shoulder, nodding his head towards the door. You put your winter coat on, pulling out your hair that’s stuck between it and your thermal.

It was snowing, soft pillows of white ice covering all of Jackson. You breathe out a loud sigh when you get outside, while Joel shuts the dinner hall door.

You didn’t know what to say to him, really. You felt like he shouldn’t have stepped in, but deep down you were glad he did because it probably put the fear of God into Josh. Maybe he won’t ever speak to you again.

When you start on your journey home, you and Joel are silent. You hadn’t spoken much since your separation. You two got into a huge blowout fight in which the both of you said some pretty terrible things to each other. It was the first and last time you yelled at Joel.

“Why can’t I just make my own decisions?”

“You almost got yourself killed! You almost got Ellie killed. How the fuck am I supposed to react? Just let you two back on patrol like nothin’ happened!? No fuckin’ way. You’re not going back out unless I’m with you.”

Your heart was going to beat out of your chest, “I had it under fucking control, Joel! You always find ways to blame me for something! I brought her home. I did. You weren’t fucking there because you were too fucked up to even get up this morning,” You knew that stung, the way his face twisted in disgust, “You’re the last person on Earth to make decisions for me or Ellie.”

You struck a nerve, you could tell by the deadly serious look on his face.

“You don’t know what’s good for, Ellie. Stop actin’ like you fuckin’ do. You have manipulated her to believe she knows what’s good for her. She doesn’t, okay?”

He couldn’t be serious.

“You’re not even her real father, Joel. She is going to remember all the times you shut her down and made her feel like she didn’t have a choice. Is it really worth your pride?”

He slams his fist on the table, “Get the fuck out!”

You accept that as the end of the conversation and the relationship.

You start to walk through the slush, knowing you had a good 15 minute walk home. You felt sick with anxiety.

“How have you been doin’?”

You laugh, “Fuckin’ fantastic, Joel.”

“Yeah me too,” He lies. He clears his throat before continuing, “So, what did he say?”

“Drop it Joel,” You warn, a hiccup coming up your throat, “Let’s just not talk about it ever again.”

“I’ll get it out of ya one day,” He comments, zipping up his jacket some more. You shake your head, chuckling a bit at the absurdity.

“You didn’t have to step in,” You add, “I had it handled. Like I always do.”

His pace picks up, matching yours.

“Wrapping your hands around ‘nother guys throat is not very you, darlin’,” He says, grabbing your arm to halt your next step, “He had to of said something pretty bad for you to throw your drink and choke him out in front of a bunch of people.”

You knew what he was trying to do. He wanted to lure it out of you, but you weren’t caving. He was good at making it seem like there was no choice other than tell him what happened.

“Guess you’ll never know, Miller,” You tug your arm away, “Tommy said you’d walk me home, not interrogate me.”

He huffs, “You are so stubborn.”

You stop mid step, turning to look him in the eye. You couldn’t believe your ears.

“You’re the one to talk, Joel.”

“And you need to quit the drinkin’. Makes you sloppy.”

His tone was condescending and for him to call you out on drinking? No fucking way.

“You sure were sloppy the last couple times I saw you drinkin’. Remember the four patrol shifts you had last summer you couldn’t get to cause you were too fucked up the night before? Or how about a couple weeks ago when you tried to fight that guy at the Bison?”

He takes note of your aggressive tone. You weren’t just going to cower your head and take his shit.

Maybe you were using the drinking to not think about the fact that you missed his stupid ass. Maybe it was to medicate the anxiety that rattled your bones every time he slipped your mind. Either way, he was such a hypocrite for trying to use that against you. Make it seem like he wasn’t doing that same thing when you were still together.

“I’ve quit all the drinkin’… and hey, he called you a name,” He mumbles, “Had to put him in his place.”

You furrow your eyebrows at his statement, “What do you mean he called me a name?”

He continues to walk, almost trying to physically dodge the question. But if he was going to be persistent, you were going to be, too.

“Joel-“

“Garrett said you were whoring yourself out to him and a couple of the other guys. Called you a slut,” He confesses, not looking towards you at all.

You felt sick to your stomach. Garrett was a guy you had patrolled with, a guy who seemed really nice to your face. The same guy Joel gave a black eye to.

“I’ve only slept with like, two other people.”

You could tell it rattled him a bit. It was a statement he couldn’t be mad at, really. He was a man with needs, too.

“Well, the word’s gettin’ around. He said you told him he had the best dick you’ve ever had,” He laughed as the words slipped his tongue, “God knows that’s ain’t true.”

You push your hands into your pockets, “I never slept with him. It’s only been Josh and…”

You stop yourself, instantly feeling sick to your stomach at the next name that almost came out your mouth. It was something you regretted so deeply in every fiber of your being. Something you tried to forget the very second the interaction.

“Who else?”

“No one,” You say, trying to steady your voice, “None of your business.”

“It was Jesse, wasn’t it?”

Caught.

You cough, clearing your throat. You never wanted to talk about this to anyone, let alone Joel. You were desperate and no other guys really made you feel appreciated.

The wind picks up, which causes the snow to billow towards your face and take your breath away.

“Can we just,” You shake your head, trying to get the hair out of your face, “Can we just discuss this when we get to my house?”

He leads the way, moving quickly. You follow close behind, almost using his body as a shield from the snowstorm. When you finally see your house through your frosted lashes, you feel some sense of relief.

Joel walks up to your front porch, gesturing to you to lead the way. You knew you’d have to light a fire in the living room and warm up the small abode, so once you open the door, you rush to your fireplace. You stack wood, not taking much mind to Joel who’s kicking off his shoes and removing his coat.

You didn’t want to do this with him. You didn’t want to discuss anything, explain yourself, or hash out any unresolved bullshit. After the night you had, you wanted to carry yourself straight to bed.

“Want help?”

You crouch down, flicking a match into the pit, igniting the old coals.

“No, I got it, Joel.”

He huffs, sitting down on your slouchy red couch. Nothing in your house was particularly nice, but you kept it clean and tidy. Everything had a spot, except for the man taking up space before you.

“So,” He slaps his hands on his knees, “You want to explain or?”

“No Joel,” You respond, “I don't feel like I owe you an explanation, truthfully. I honestly don’t wanna rehash all this shit with you.”

His lips tighten into a half smirk, “Okay, that’s fine.”

Silence fills the room again. You were shocked he didn’t press it further, but a bit relieved.

“Just wanna ask one thing,” He grumbles. You stand up straight, shimmying your coat down your arms.

“What?”

“Was his dick the best one you’ve ever had?”

You feel like all the air has left your body.

“What?”

“Jesse. Josh. Were they the best you’ve ever had?”

Hearing their names made you cringe. You knew your answer, but you wonder if you should indulge him in the truth.

He knew it already, but he wanted to hear it from your lips. The haze and exhaustion from the crazy evening makes the confession slip from your lips.

“Joel,” You whisper, “You know damn well they aren’t shit compared to you.”

It’s like you blinked and he’s on you. His hands slide up your waist, grabbing your hips and pulling you into a bruising kiss. You don’t pull away because this is what you’ve been wanting.

The sex with Joel was like nothing else. Maybe your relationship was rocky. Maybe you hated the way he spoke to you sometimes. Maybe you hated the way he tried to control every little thing.

But the sex made it all worth it.

The way his hands molded around your body. His lips trailing up and down from your neck to your calves. He knew your body better than you probably knew it yourself. He never walked away from an encounter without making you cum several times. He could play you like his guitar.

You two are falling all over your furniture to make it to the couch. He sits down, holding you close while you straddle his thighs. He’s not letting up, his kisses feverish and hurried.

You pull away to catch your breath. His pupils are huge and his lips are already swollen.

“What are we doing?” You whisper, using your thumb to brush across his pink lips.

“This is what we do, baby,” He grabs your ass, pulling you flush with his crouch, “We fight and fuck. That’s all we do.”

You lean up, grinding down on his growing bulge.

“I shouldn’t want to, but fuck,” You throw your head back, trying to ease the throbbing you feel, “I always want you, Joel.”

“I always want you too, sweetheart,” His hand finds the back of your neck, rubbing circles into the sides while you grind yourself on his lap, “I don’t want any other pussy but yours. No one else compares.”

You smile in sick pleasure, “We are so fuckin’ toxic, Joel Miller.”

He laughs, pulling your head forward. Your eyes meet his and it’s a sudden realization that you two are just actually insane. That after all the bullshit you put each other through, your horniness always wins. He wants you just as much as you want him, and yet you two can never figure out how to work problems out like actual adults.

“Tell me you don’t fuckin’ like it that way,” He trails a kiss up your neck to earlobe, “And I’ll stop right now. Leave you alone forever. Keep your dirty little secret that you like to fuck guys half your age.”

The rise Joel Miller can get out of you should be studied. He knows exactly how to push every button you’ve ever had, even the one’s you didn’t know existed. The idea of people knowing you fucked Jesse makes your stomach twist, especially since he was Ellie’s friend.

You and Joel’s age gap never really bothered you. Maybe it was because he was older than you, but he didn’t feel that much older than you. You felt ancient with Jesse and even Josh. Joel made you feel like you were on the same level with a man.

You stop grinding on him, grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling him back to meet your gaze. He’s smiling a shit eating grin, knowing you’re pissed.

“You’re the guy who’s fucking people half your age,” You lift yourself a bit, looking down at him with half lidded eyes, “And you flaunt it. You love having me as your little play thing. Y-”

“And you fuckin’ love it.”

“I’m talking,” You shush him, “You are going to let me talk.”

You grab his belt undoing it like you used to almost every night, “You’re going to sit back like a good boy, and let me remind you why this is the only pussy you want to fuck.”

Joel has never seen you like this. It’s like the distance between you two gave you time to gain more confidence. You tested him now, and he kind of liked it. He’d never say but he loved when you were bratty to him. Sure, before you were a little smart ass, but you were practically dominating him. It was a good change of pace.

“Talk ‘bout toxic, baby girl,” He groans, “You know I can’t sit back and be a good boy.”

You use one hand to reach into his pants and grab his hard on.

“You’re going to learn today,” You smile, “Because if you don’t, you’ll walk home with blue balls and you can call Kelly over to fuck you.”

He chuckles a bit, “Sounds like you’re jealous.”

You stop your actions, looking at his smug fucking face.

“You literally just interrogated me about how I fucked half of Jackson,” You spit, “I can continue adding to the tallies. Have you watch me whore myself out to all of your patrol partners.”

“You ain-”

“Maybe I’ll get even bolder,” You continue, “Maybe I’ll even try to fuck the other Miller boy.”

You were completely fibbing. You’d never cross that line. You loved Maria and you respected her more than any other person in Jackson. You just really wanted to get under Joel’s skin.

And you quickly realize you did.

He flips you on your back and cages you under his arms.

“You’re a fuckin’ dirty slut,” He is grabbing at your pants, yanking them down. Your jeans were skin tight and wet, but it took no time at all for him to tear them off your body, “You ain’t in charge here.”

“Let me up,” You demand, pushing at his chest. He wasn’t budging, he was on a mission. He tears off your underwear, exposing your wet slit. You didn’t even realize how dripping you were for him.

“Look at you,” He teases, “Fuckin’ pathetic. Tryin’ to say you’d fuck my brother?”

He shakes his head, using his fingers to trace up and down your slit. You wanted to scream out, but your mind goes blank. You were quaking with anticipation. You surrender to him pinning you against the couch. You’d get him back eventually.

“He’d never fuck a slut like you,” He continues, “No, he doesn’t know how to handle someone like you.”

“And you do?”

“I’ve been at it for awhile,” He sticks a single finger in you, making a squelching sound as he does, “Think ‘m gettin’ pretty good at ruinin’ you. Puttin’ you in your place.”

You finally moan out in pleasure, which makes his face twist in satisfaction.

“Fuckin’ Christ, I’ve missed how tight you are,” He groans, “Squeezin’ my fingers and cock so good.”

You’re practically soaking the couch with how wet you are already. All the build up and smack talk really put you in bind, his fingers driving you absolutely wild.

He eases out of you, tracing your body to begin lifting off your shirt. He throws your shirt across the room, noticing you were actually wearing a padded bra. You smile at his realization.

“Found one of these,” You gesture, toying with the straps, “Bet you’d never see the day.”

You had gotten used to never wearing a bra and Joel usually enjoyed it that way. You could never find a comfortable one and all your old ones were ragged and gross. On a recent patrol, you found a red bra in your size in an abandoned home. You stole it, tucking it carefully in your backpack to try on back home. Lucky enough, it fit and made your boobs sit better than they ever have.

“Jesus Christ,” He mutters, lining the bra with his fingers, “As pretty as it is, it needs to go.”

You reach around your back, undoing it without another word. As soon as it is off, his fingers make work at pebbling your nipples. He smacked one with a gentle open hand. You squeak at the impact, watching Joel’s eyes revel at your bare body. He loved seeing you like this, crumbling under his touch.

He props himself up on his knee which is wedged between your thighs. He pulls his shirt over his head, discarding it on the coffee table next to him. His buttons are already undone after you found yourself with your hands down his pants, earlier. He pulls those down too, letting them pool around his ankles.

“For being a brat,” He nudges you, making you move your legs and plant them on the ground. You sit up, his hand ripping you off of your spot on the couch. He positions you between his legs, his cock standing up waiting for you. You sit back on your heels, enjoying the view.

“You’re gonna try to be a good girl and suck me off.”

You smile eagerily, slowly running your hands up his thighs and to the base of his cock. Instead of getting straight to it, you bring the head of his cock to your lips and kiss it softly. You toy with the idea of completely ignoring his demands, but you come to the conclusion that you’d probably get nothing if you did that. And you wanted him so bad. You thought about this moment for so long.

“Stop playin’,” He groans, watching you with his arms laying across the back of your couch. He looked like one of those statues you saw in old textbooks when you were a teenager. The ones you’d see at an old art museum scuplted from marble. The ones with the small dicks. That’s truly the only thing that differentiated the two. Joel was massive.

“I’m not playing,” You disagree, “Shush.”

Before you can continue your tease, he grabs the top of your head. He is usually pretty assertive, but good God, he was not letting you get away with anything. You widen your lips, taking his cock into your mouth. Instead of progressing down his shaft slowly, he makes you take it fully down your throat. It causes you to gag a bit. You pull back, only for him to push you down again.

You grip onto his thighs, digging your nails in a bit. You knew you would probably leave marks with how hard you were pressing into his skin. He winces, but continues to practically face fuck you.

“You don’t tell me to shush, little girl,” He moans, watching your saliva drench his cock. He finally lets you pull up off him, holding your face in the process, “You hear me? You take this cock like a good girl.”

“Yes,” You manage to say, your throat already hurting from taking him in.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, now come sit on my face.”

You oblige, standing up to let him reposition himself.

You two have done this maybe twice. Each time you practically suffocated him, but he fucking loved every second of lapping you up. You knew that you were in for a ride with the way he was toying with you.

He lays on his back, his hands keen on pulling your legs up to his shoulders. Your ass is positioned on his chest, his face between your thighs. You look down at him, sitting up straight before you ease down, letting your pussy take up the bottom half of his face.

He dives in instantly, his mouth hungrily devouring your pussy. You scream out, letting your body relax against him. His facial hair brushes across your folds and inner thighs while his tongue begins tracing your insides. He stops at your clit, flattening his tongue and pressing forward. You couldn’t control yourself, sinking yourself down further onto him. His nose nudges your folds before he runs his mouth down your slit again, so his nose is now pressed against your clit. He moans into you, the vibrations sending you into ecstasy.

You cum, your juices flowing down his face and your legs. He is moaning so loud, mewling at the fact that you never warned him you were about to cum.

He taps your thighs, advising you to get off of him. You shakingly remove yourself from his face, standing up to look down at him. He was so hard and his lips and beard were soaked with your cum.

“You fuckin’ squirted on me,” He laughs, sitting up. You felt kind of embarrassed, like you couldn’t even contain yourself for more than 2 minutes. “I’ll forgive you since it was hot. No cummin’ without permission.”

“Okay, sorry.”

Even though you weren’t sorry.

Your legs were practically numb and still quaking from your orgasm. You’re breathing heavily, trying to regain your composure. He notices your quivering and starts pulling you into his lap. You widen your legs, mounting his thick thighs. You look down at his cock, it sliding so perfectly between your pussy lips. He was a fucking dream.

He doesn’t even say anything, just watching you try to catch your breath.

“Relax baby,” He mumbles, “We haven’t even gotten started, yet.”

He grabs his cock, stroking it a bit before having you lift off of his thighs. He eases you up and onto the head of his dick. He spits into his hand, coating his shaft with it.

One thing about Joel, is he’s still the biggest you’ve ever had. No one ever got close to him.

The stretch makes you moan out in pure euphoria. You missed it so much. It was something you craved almost every night.

“Fuck,” You whimper, “Never gets old.”

He laughs at your admission, “Likewise.”

He snaps his hips against yours, settling into a slower pace. He was dragging it out, letting your walls become accustomed to him again. After a minute of slow strokes, he picks up his pace. He repositions, kneeling with his one leg extended out to the floor. You’re lifted up in the air partially, grinding down as he meets your motions with his strokes. Your hands are wrapped around his neck, your fingers finding his hair. His hands and grappling at your sides while you two moan in unison.

You two were finally on the same page, not bickering, just fucking out your feelings. You felt the aggression, resentment, and fear dwindling away from you as you sweat out the brutal pace he’s bringing to the table.

“I don’t want anyone else,” He sighs in between his cock hitting you at the perfect angle, “I only want this.”

You don’t think to hard about it, whimpering your response.

“Please let me cum. Please.”

“So pretty when you beg.”

He’s drilling into you at this point, your tits bouncing right into his face. You lazily throw your head back, letting him take one of your nipples into his mouth. You’re so overly sensitive, you don’t know what to say other than beg him to let you release.

“Fuck Joel, I’m gonna cum. Please, let me cum.”

He releases your tit with a pop, “Cum for me, baby.”

After two more strokes, you’re falling apart in his arms. He wraps himself around you, fucking you through the second orgasm.

He’s a whimpering mess, chasing his own release.

“Fuck, baby, fuck.”

“Cum for me, Joel. Moan out for me.”

His deep and guttral moan sends shockwaves through your body. You could feel his cum release inside you, while his arms grow tighter around you. After he finishes, he lays you back onto the arm of the couch. His cock still rests inside you, twitching at every little movement your hips made.

He swipes his forehead for sweat, marveling at you. He looks so endearing, like he didn’t just fuck your brains out and call you a bunch of names. The thought makes you giggle.

“What?”

You shake your head, touching his chest with your fingers, “You’re just handsome.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

You swat him while he slowly eases out of you. You whine a bit, letting the heat from the fireplace warm your body as oppose to Joel’s body heat.

He stands up, abandoning you on the couch as he picks up his discarded clothes. You prop yourself up, trying to sit up but your body feels like jello.

Your really didn’t want to watch him go.

“You should stay.”

His back is turned away from you. He freezes as he grabs his shirt from the coffee table where it landed.

He clears his throat, “Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to leave.”

It was true. You wanted to figure it out. You wanted so badly for this to change everything. But it was just sex. Exactly how this trainwreck started.

He starts to get dressed. You didn’t want to take that as his answer, but deep down you knew this is how things worked. You’d been through it with Joel before. You just had to wait for Ellie to come in and call you his “lady friend” and have him demand you “go get dressed”. It was the same thing every time. You thought it meant something but it really didn’t.

Once he slips his shirt over his head, he walks back to sit next to your naked frame. He brings his hand up to trace your leg, which is perfectly nudged up against him.

You really don’t want to believe all the things running through your mind. You craved an explanation.

“You said you only wanted this, Joel,” You grab a blanket from the back of the couch to cover yourself. You could tell he was at war with his thoughts, “Why can’t we start again? Do I seriously not mean anything to you?”

He realizes you’re pleading with him. He felt so guilty and it was written all over his face.

“Of course you mean somethin’ to me,” He acknowledges, “But we can’t keep doin’ what we were doin’. We always end up screamin’ bout somethin’ stupid. I don’t want to make you unhappy. You deserve to be happy.”

You contemplate for a moment, unsure how to respond.

“If being with you means screamin’ about something stupid and fighting over patrols and drinking too much and bickering over Ellie’s future,” You huff out, trying to not let the hitch in your throat become obvious, “Then I want it. I want it all. All the shit, all the fights. I want it because it’s with you.”

He doesn’t say anything immediately. The silence was deafening.

“We can try,” He mutters, “But we gotta stop tryin’ to fix everythin’ with sex. We gotta like… talk about things.”

You laugh out loud, noting his seriousness. You two were seriously thinking the same things.

“Can we talk about our problems, like, during the sex?”

You were completely joking. You wait for his response, but it comes with him shaking his head. You wrap your arm around his shoulders, pulling him in. Your boobs press against his now clothed chest. You feel his hands slide up and down your sides. You groan in pleasure, his touch sending chills down your spine. You wanted it like this. Forever.

He clears his throat, “Well if I’m sticking around… round two?”

THE END.

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