#pinches her little toe beans

[electric-ecclectic]

Hehe. Signya

[pocket-lad]

CH 8- A (Not So) Promising Start

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Adelaide was in Sarah’s hand. Sarah had grabbed her. She struggled against it on instinct (eight years of it was hard to suppress), uncomfortable in the dark, wet, muddy enclosure, but settled down when she heard Ian’s voice. They were going to get out of this. She just had to be patient, keep a low profile, and take deep breaths.

The men that just arrived had to be the other InGen team. There was nobody else on the island. At least as far as Adelaide knew. She didn’t think she’d be facing this many Humans, and she and Sarah seemed to agree that now wasn’t the time to introduce a tiny humanoid being into the already messy equation.

Sarah couldn’t find a good time to sneak Adelaide into a pocket with all these eyes trained on her, so she held Adelaide against her stomach. Ian looked at her, and Sarah nodded toward her occupied hand in response to his unspoken question. Adelaide was safe. Ian looked relieved. He had Kelly in his arms and Sarah and Adelaide close by. They survived.

Adelaide meanwhile felt stifled against Sarah’s stomach. Her body was coated head to toe in mud, and breathing was difficult. She felt Sarah stand up, and the Beans went on their way. All Adelaide could do was sit tight and try desperately not to think about Eddie’s last moments. It didn’t go so well.

She tried to keep her fidgeting to a minimum. Ian said it could tickle (which Adelaide took great offense to at the time), and she didn’t want to inadvertently reveal herself by causing Sarah to twitch.

Eventually they stopped moving and an accented voice started speaking. “Our communication equipment’s been destroyed. And if your radio and satellite phone were in those trailers, then we’re stuck here, ladies and gentlemen. And stuck together, thanks to you people.”

“Yeah, we came to watch,” Nick said offensively. “You came to strip mine the place. Back off.” The last bit seemed to be directed toward somebody else, but Adelaide had no way to tell.

“At least we came prepared,” Peter Ludlow, said. Great. Hammond's nephew was on the island.

“It’s a looter mentality,” Nick continued. “All you care about is what you can take. You have no right.”

“An extinct animal brought back to life has no rights. It exists because we made it. We patented it. We own it.”

Oh, that was it. Adelaide’s blood boiled. Typical Humans, deciding who did and did not have rights. These animals weren’t even genetically engineered! They had been living on the island for a while now and were likely offspring of those engineered animals. Ludlow would probably say she has no rights either just because he was big enough to do so.

Adelaide suddenly felt very cramped, her anger taking up most of the space in her small enclosure and leaving little room for her body. She shoved at Sarah’s hand, hoping to at least gain a little more breathing room. Or maybe stab Ludlow in the neck.

“Whatchu got there?” Yet another new voice, and not one that sounded friendly. Adelaide froze.

“Nothing,” Sarah said confidently. “I think I bruised my ribs.”

Adelaide admired Sarah’s lying capabilities, but she doubted it would do them any good. She felt the tension in the air and readied herself to attack, just in case.

Sarah’s hand was abruptly yanked away from her stomach and shaken around with sharp, jerky movements, threatening to make Adelaide throw up. She searched for a grip on anything that was available, which was, unfortunately, not much. She didn't have to worry about falling, though. Sarah's hand instinctively tightened to prevent this, squeezing Adelaide just a little too tightly. There was yelling coming from a bunch of different people, but Adelaide couldn’t differentiate any of the voices.

Sarah tried her best to wrestle her hand away, but she also didn’t want to hurt Adelaide or send her flying. In the end, Sarah’s hand was empty, numerous people stood on guard, and Adelaide was dangling from her shirt between the pinched fingers of Dieter Stark.

All of this was a blur for the borrower. She wouldn’t be able to gain her bearings until everyone stopped moving, but she made sure she had a grasp on the one thing that was important - her knife. When everything stilled, Adelaide found herself face to face with a new human. He sneered down his big nose at her.

Adelaide clenched her jaw. It was hard not to show fear when the only things keeping her from falling to the ground were the thumb and forefinger of an unknown, unpredictable, and unfriendly giant clasping the back of her T-shirt. The shirt dug into her neck and chest as she dangled there.

“What the hell am I supposed to be looking at?” the man smirked, and his hot, smelly breath engulfed Adelaide’s body. She coughed.

“Put her down. Now.” Ian’s voice was dangerously quiet. With how close the man held Adelaide, she couldn’t see anything past his face, but she desperately wanted to check out her surroundings.

“Or what?” the man said.

“Or I’ll claw your eyes out,” Adelaide threatened as she drew her knife from her belt.

“Ah, I’m really scared,” he laughed, pulling her away from his face and sending her spinning. She clutched onto her knife, afraid it would be thrown from her grip and lost to the mud below.

When she stopped spinning, Adelaide glanced around her. Ian, Nick, and Sarah stood defensively close, ready to make a move but afraid he’d drop her if they did. Four other men stared at her. She had to assume one was Ludlow and one was the accented guy who said they were stuck here. She didn’t know about the third or fourth.

Nick was the first one to try something. He stepped toward the man aggressively, but the man was quick. He pulled Adelaide up and away, far above his head. “Ah!” He held his hand up to Nick, indicating that if Nick didn’t back down, he’d let go.

Adelaide gasped. “Stop moving!” she shouted at her friends, annoyed. (Was ‘friends’ the right word? She wasn’t sure.) She knew they wanted to protect her, but they’d only make it worse by antagonizing him. Her shirt started to bunch around her shoulders. Not only was it embarrassing (both her shirt and the general situation), but it was cutting off circulation.

“Dieter,” the accented one said in a commanding voice. He wore a hat and was dressed in a way not dissimilar to Robert Muldoon. Like he was ready for a safari.

“What?” Deiter responded. He was clearly having fun riling everyone up.

“I’m not going to ask you twice,” Ian said. Adelaide tried to make eye contact with him to telepathically explain her plan, but he kept his eyes trained on the enemy.

Oh well. She’d do it on her own.

Adelaide slashed at Deiter’s finger with her knife. She couldn’t get a good angle to really dig in, but she was hoping it was enough to make him drop her so she could make an escape. She was also hoping somebody (preferably Ian) would think to catch her.

Deiter just winced and lifted Adelaide back up to his face, not to look at her, but to look at the wound she left behind. His blood dripped onto her head and down her face. She wiped at it with the back of her hand. Gross. His eyes flicked back to her and she forced herself to maintain eye contact if it was the last thing she did.

“Oh, you just got yourself-” he began.

“DEITER!” the accented man repeated, somehow even more forceful than the first time.

Dieter looked at the man, then back to Adelaide, then back to the man again. His thought process was completely opaque to everyone, especially Adelaide, but it became clear in the next few seconds.

“Whatever,” he complained as he carelessly tossed Adelaide upward. She spun rapidly in mid-air and scrambled for purchase on anything, but nothing was there. Her body reached its apex and began to fall, but Deiter caught her by the ankle between two pinched fingers.

The pain in her leg made Adelaide gasp. It felt like it had nearly been pulled out of its socket. And if he applied any more pressure, she was due for a sprained ankle at the very least. As it was now, it would definitely bruise.

This was nothing like when Ian dangled her by her legs that one time. She was still pissed at him for doing that, but it had only been for a second and, as always, he made sure not to pinch too hard. This guy didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

She squeezed her eyes shut as she swung back and forth, and even without sight, she could feel his presence directly in front of her face. And then he let go.

Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit, Adelaide thought as she hurtled toward the Earth. This was it. This was the end. The Beans weren’t fast enough.

At the last second, Adelaide landed in someone’s palm. Before she knew who it was but not taking any chances, she shot to her feet and held her knife out defensively.

It was Ian, breathing heavily. “Talk to me,” he said, trying to see if she was okay. He would have just asked if she was okay, but she would have said a simple ‘yes’, and that meant absolutely nothing.

“Let me at him,” Adelaide said darkly, ready for round two, but she was rubbing at her sore ankle.

Ian laughed, thankful that she was alright. He knew he was in for an earful later after everything he did and everything they went through, but he didn’t care. He cupped Adelaide to his chest in the approximation of a hug, despite her muffled protests.

“I’m serious!” Adelaide shoved against Ian’s chest as he pulled away. “I want a chunk of his skin.” She geared up to leap off his palm in the direction of Dieter, but Ian tilted his hand back toward his body to keep her from doing so.

“I know, I know. And I trust you’d get it, too. But generally people don’t take - don’t take chunks of other people’s…skin,” he said, trying to keep Adelaide in one place without wrapping his hand around her. “And it looks like Nick’s got you covered.”

Adelaide paused in her struggle against the ever-changing, ever-moving, steep incline of Ian’s hands. She looked out to see Nick picking a fight.

“You looking for a problem?” he yelled.

“I found you, didn’t I?” Dieter shot back.

Nick lost it and shoved Dieter, but didn’t stop there. He ran at the man, ready for a fight, but everyone else forced the two men apart, yelling at them to stop.

Adelaide winced, ever-impressed with the strength Human Beans possessed. It was like watching two mountains engage in a brawl, and it was very humbling.

“I know you,” the accented man with the hat said as he approached Nick. “You’re that ‘Earth first’ bastard.”

“What’s Earth First?” Ludlow asked.

“Professional saboteurs.”

“Environmentalists!” Nick corrected. He tried to lunge at the other group again, but two men held him back. How did Nick just keep getting cooler?

During the fray, Kelly silently walked up behind Ian. Adelaide felt a presence and turned around, nearly jumping out of her skin when she saw the girl.

“Are you okay?” Adelaide asked awkwardly, noting the blanket around her shoulders.

“Mhm,” Kelly nodded.

Adelaide waited for more but nothing came. “Good talk,” she muttered to herself as she turned forward.

“Knock it off!” Sarah yelled at everyone. “Listen to me. Moving the baby to our camp may have changed the adults’ perceived territory. We have to move. Now.”

Ludlow chimed in with some actually helpful information. “There’s a communication center here near the old operations building. Everything ran on geothermal power. It was never meant to need replenishing. If we can get there, we can send a radio call to the airlift. It’ll be a day’s walk, maybe more. But that’s not the problem.”

“What is? What is the problem?”

“Velociraptors.”

Adelaide froze, and she felt Ian do the same. The T-Rex was bad enough. Velociraptors were worse. There was no evading them.

“We could head back down to the lagoon,” Ian suggested.

“And sit out in the open, next to a heavily used water source and hope that your captain comes back? We head for the village,” the man with the hat said. “We might find shelter and we can call for help. Rex just fed, so he won’t stalk us for food.”

“Just fed? You mean Eddie? Show some respect. He saved our lives by giving his,” Ian said.

“Then his troubles are over. My point is predators don’t hunt when they’re not hungry.”

“No, only humans do,” Nick added.

“You’re breaking our heart,” the man said sarcastically.

“What is your problem?!” Adelaide blurted out. The reminder of Eddie’s gruesome death shot detailed memories straight back into her head and she actively had to force them out.

The man turned his attention to her and she suppressed a shiver. He walked closer but both Ian and Adelaide held their ground. When he stopped walking, Adelaide had to look way, way up at him from Ian’s cupped palm. She stood up.

“Ludlow, is this one of yours?” he called.

Peter Ludlow sauntered up shortly and Adelaide now found herself staring up at two giants. Even better. Between them and Ian, she started to feel claustrophobic.

Ludlow paused for a considerably long time, as if he had to think about it. “No, I can’t say it is,” he finally said.

“You don’t sound so sure about that,” Adelaide said.

“Quite sure, thank you,” he responded shortly.

“I have a name,” Adelaide said, glancing between them.

“Me too. Roland Tembo.”

“Adelaide,” Adelaide said hesitantly.

“Peter Ludl-”

“I know,” she interrupted, refusing to take her eyes off Roland.

Roland bent down to Adelaide’s level and Ian took a cautious step back. Roland’s eyes flickered briefly toward Ian’s but quickly returned to Adelaide’s. “I don’t have a problem, Miss Adelaide. Do you?”

It wasn’t exactly a threat, but Adelaide felt a menacing energy nonetheless. “Just your face,” she mumbled, realizing her mistake as soon as she said it. She really needed to stop antagonizing giants.

To Adelaide’s surprise, Roland just let out a good-natured laugh. “Right, then.” He shot to his feet, making Adelaide flinch and drawing the attention of everyone in the vicinity. “Saddle up! Let’s get this moveable feast underway.”

As everyone headed off in a direction, Ian just looked at Adelaide. “Why?” he asked.

“Cause,” she smirked, refusing to elaborate. He knew. He knew that Roland was a jerk and Dieter was a jerk and all of them were jerks and Adelaide didn’t like jerks.

“Did he do that?” Ian indicated Adelaide’s leg with a finger.

Adelaide glanced at her leg and the gash that was now covered in dried blood. She remembered the pencil that fell and took her out, but the pain was nearly gone now. It was replaced by new pain in her ankle from where Deiter’s fingers were, but that pain was also doable. As long as she could walk, she’d survive. She nudged Ian's finger to get it out of her space. “Oh, no. Something fell in the trailer, but I’m good now.”

Ian sighed. “You’re going to kill me one day. You know that?”

“Shoulder please?” She gave Ian her best smile, though she was sure she looked insane coated head to toe in dirt and blood.

And with that, everyone was off. Adelaide tried to keep her mind off of the dangers that passed and the dangers to come, but there was little else to think about, and she always found her mind wandering back to those awful thoughts. Not to mention, she kept herself alert to the people around her just in case. She could feel them staring.

Though the rain never really ceased, it did let up for a moment. Now, it was pouring harder than ever and everyone was soaked to the bone. Adelaide could hardly see, which is why, when Peter Ludlow suddenly appeared at their side, she shot to her feet in surprise.

Then, since everything was wet, she almost slipped off Ian’s shoulder. She couldn’t sit back down now though. No, she had to make that look intentional, so she held on as best she could.

Ian turned to Ludlow. “I didn’t wish you luck on your new venture. You’re off to a promising start.”

Adelaide unwillingly laughed.

Ludlow eyed them both. “My team is intact. I’m sorry for the loss of your man.” He didn’t sound very sorry to Adelaide.

“Do you even know his name?” she asked. She wasn’t sure what it was about this man, but he didn’t scare her in the slightest. He was all talk. No action. Ian could definitely take him in a fight if it came down to it, and she was even beginning to think she could too.

Ludlow looked at her, disgusted, as if she were some pest, as if he wasn’t sure why she was speaking to him. He ignored her. “It’s easy to criticize someone who generates an idea, assumes the risk.”

“His name was Eddie,” Adelaide pushed loudly. She wiped at her eyes, trying to clear the rainwater away in vain.

Ludlow paused as he was forced to acknowledge her. “Right,” he said. He studied her for a moment, his eyes gleaming, and then the moment passed. That was all Adelaide was going to get.

“Taking dinosaurs off this island is the worst idea in the long, sad, history of bad ideas. And we’ll be there when you learn that,” Ian said, and he walked a couple paces ahead, effectively ending the conversation. Thank God for long legs.

They hiked through the night and then some. Adelaide had always heard about how beautiful sunrises were, how the sky filled with brilliant pinks and oranges. She only ever saw them through a window, and back then her mind was focused on other things. Namely, borrowing.

Adelaide hardly recognized that the sun rose because there was no sign of color in the sky. It just transitioned from black to a light gray. She supposed that felt correct given their bleak circumstances. Still, a little color in the sky would have been much appreciated.

“Take a break! Five minutes!” Roland called out to the group. Everyone collapsed into a seated position, exhausted from walking hours on end. Adelaide felt Ian’s limp get worse as time went on, and she was glad he got to rest.

She, on the other hand, had the opposite problem. She needed to walk around and use her legs, shake out the stress.

Adelaide began her descent down Ian’s shirt, but paused when he spoke. “I’m gonna wash up. You wanna come?”

She wasn’t sure what exactly he meant by that, but she did feel completely disgusting. She thought the rain would wash away some of the grime, but now, instead of being just muddy and bloody, she was wet, muddy, and bloody. And the blood wasn’t even hers. Gross. “Yeah, sure,” she said.

Ian stood up. “Stay here,” he said to Kelly. “Sarah!”

Sarah looked up and Ian pointed to Kelly, indicating that he wanted her to watch her. Sarah nodded.

Adelaide’s arms trembled from holding herself up so long, so she let go of Ian’s shirt, assuming he would catch her. He did, obviously, but it caught him off guard and he scrambled to do so.

“Are you actively trying to give me a heart attack?” Ian asked.

“I’m trusting you,” Adelaide shrugged as she stared up at him.

Ian walked over to a small stream not too far away. At least, it was small to him. It was still within eyesight and earshot of the group, so they’d know when it was time to leave.

He set Adelaide on the ground next to the edge and knelt down next to her.

Adelaide stared at the stream. From up above, it looked so small, so doable. She’d walk in, wash off, walk out, and be done. Up close, it was massive. There was no gradual decline into the water. It was a straight dropoff into the murky depths, the current strong and the water so clouded that she couldn’t tell how deep it was. She couldn’t even be sure it was clean, but it had to be better than the five layers of grime her skin was currently coated in. If only she could swim.

Adelaide must have been standing there for a long time because Ian piped up again. “Della? Hello? Earth to Della?”

Adelaide whipped around to face Ian as if just now realizing he was there. She stammered, trying to figure out if she wanted to admit that she didn’t know how to swim. It was probably best to avoid the conversation altogether. Save them some time. Forget this ever happened.

“Actually, I’m good. I don’t want to,” Adelaide said quickly.

Ian furrowed his eyebrows and stared, trying to work her out. She shifted uncomfortably, and she was suddenly very aware she was on the ground. Like, the ground ground.

Adelaide could physically feel the silence. It needed to be filled. “It looks dirty, so um, so I don’t want to. And it’ll take too long and we only have five minutes, and I don’t think you should leave Kelly alone with-”

“No offense, but that stream looks - looks a lot cleaner than, um, you.” Ian continued to stare. He knew that none of those reasons were legitimate.

Adelaide couldn’t take it any longer. Her eyes bored into the ground at her feet as she sheepishly admitted, “I can’t swim.”

.

Next

[ru5t]

Curiosity and the Cat

  Treading lightly, Tech followed the invisible edge of her discovered dead zone. One step to the left, her signal was free and clear to do as it did, connect her to that wide web of voice and information. A step to the right, nothing got in, nothing went out. You could try all day, and no one would ever hear you speak- or even know you were there. By far the most interesting thing was that there, where Tech was standing, it flipped between the two at irregular intervals with almost no in between. Tech planted her feet and wobbled in place. The resulting dance of her measured signal --sky high and flat nothing back and forth-- made her giggle.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“You’re a weird little line, aren’t you?” she asked aloud.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤFor what had to be the hundredth time, she scanned her surroundings and the horizon. There were a few ridges to something that could be called her right, off in the distance the way that the ridges dotted through the flats always seemed to be, but everything else was, relatively speaking, flat and empty as it should be. Nothing but hard packed earth that supposedly used to lie at the floor of an ocean. There were no buildings to speak of, no structures built into the air that could, by any stretch of the imagination, cause this kind of interference. She had passed a sign or two on her way in, but they were only the usual stuff, or dummy signs meant to ward away the weak willed. The tracks, faint as they were, had told Tech that. There was some reason someone had for passing over this line directly into the thick of the big fat nothing.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤSo why cut yourself off?

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤWell, that was the question she hadn’t answered yet. She broke from her walk along the edge of the zone to collect her reading. It told her how many steps she’d taken, when she had lost connectability, what line it followed: in short, a guide to the section of it she had spent the last few minutes weaving in and out of. That was where her map, which was spread out across the hood of Jack’s truck -which had been borrowed (legitimately!) for her exploration- came into play. She marked her line in pencil, making note of the slight turn. It was a listing, more than anything else, a listing to the right. In. After a moment of thinking and being briefly distracted by one of the locations someone else had marked on the map, Tech made a speculative leap: she pulled her line out into a rough circle.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“What if,” she asked her cat, who was acting as a wind-weight for her map as he napped on top of the truck’s hood, “it’s not natural? Hmm? Could be a generator right at the center; makes a bubble. I don’t know what good it would do, though. They draw attention and- y’know, what’s a dead zone good for except stranding somebody, anyway?” The cat had no answer, only the noncommittal flick of a tail that may not have even been related to her speaking to him. Tech stowed the pencil behind her ear and reached across the hood to pinch her cat’s toe beans. “You’re a horrible lazy thing, y'know it?” He remained unperturbed, not even bothering to escape. Tech joined him on the hood of the truck to pose her theories and questions to the unrestricted airwaves.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“So,” she kicked off, taking it for granted anyone tuning in would know her voice well enough, “If you were to drive out and find, oh yknow, a big spot where anything that sends a wireless transmission doesn’t work, what’s your go-to on that? Desert phenomenon, or somebody being stupid about hiding?” Her question had barely begun to settle when the white noise warbled, and a voice broke through.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“A what?” Midnight's typical clipped words. Clear and sharp, like he was closer than usual.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Hmm,” Tech hummed and, though he couldn't see it, flapped her hand in the general direction of the bubble of bizarre, “dead zone. I know they’re common 'round some of the old places right? old tech or somethin' that just breaks stuff up, but there’s… nothing out here. So I’m tryin' to figure out if someone camping out here turned something on and can’t figure out how to turn it off, or if the desert’s just getting weirder by the day.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Where.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ “Hm..?” Tech blinked lightly at his tone. “Oh, um. Around here.” She fussed with her transmitter a bit, and pulled the coordinates to send across. “There’s those ridges, you know, they’re off over there. Not close enough to be doing anything, I don’t think? Not at this range, anyway. .. Although it does sort of… turn in, in that direction a bit? Not really a turn but… I don’t know. It’s all sort of… wibbly. I would say ‘weird weather’ but. I mean. It’s blue as fuck out here. Hot as, too.” She twisted around, shading her eyes against the glare from the windshield to peer into the cab of the truck. “Did I.. bring that umbrella? Or was I out of room? Shade would be nice.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“.. You’re—” Midnight cut off. Tech turned back toward her radio, brow scrunching together. It hadn't dropped out, had it? But then came the ruffling shuffling of moving-around on the other end of the line. “Don’t go any further in— You should- go–”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  She huffed sharply at him. “Well obviously I’m not gon– I’m not that dumb, thank you very much.  All I’ve got is the radio, could walk into a rattlesnake den and nobody’d ever know, not with that .. thing up like that.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  “That— Tech, I mean it, you should leave.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  “I will. In a bit.I have this- okay well the short version is ‘tool’ even though that’s less fun to say, but it’s been running basically since I got here and if I calibrated it right it should be able t'tell me whether or not the line -y’know like, the point where the interference is so strong signals stop sending?- has been movin'g' at all, line in or out or anything, and if it stays absolute, or if there are any breaks, like if it’s on unstable power or.. I guess it could be natural. Somehow. …Maybe.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  He did not answer her again. Tech pouted at the silence for a long minute, then stuck her tongue out at the speaker of her transmitter. That would show him. She pushed it aside and sprawled out on the hood of the truck, letting the warmth of the metal melt her bones.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤShe spent awhile that way, kicking her feet and postulating a few more scenarios to her cat: secret societies and magnetic fields and vast alien conspiracies. They weren’t the least bit plausible, but she had fun letting the concepts run on whatever train they pleased. She was a thousand miles down one of these when the distant growl of an engine carried ahead of the vehicle it powered. Tech sat up.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤShe half expected it to be Jack, for some reason. Why he would be gunning across the desert on a chomp-chewing motorcycle was a mystery almost less believable than her runaway alien-theory train. It took her a few moments of squinting, her hand hovering over her transmitter in case she decided to call someone about this, before she put together what she was looking at.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤOh boy.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤWhat had she done to warrant actually summoning Midnight driving faster than a dirt devil? Or was he on the same curiosity train? One way to find out.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech jumped down. She stretched, long and lazy, before settling in to put another little note on her map. ‘Ask Midnight about aliens. Face = priceless’. The engine cut off sharply as Midnight pulled up.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Desert’s full’a oddities,” Tech opened. Midnight didn’t give her the chance to elaborate- he immediately began collecting everything that she’d allowed to spread out on the hood as the morning had gone on. Piece by piece, he fed it into the truck through the open window. “Hey, Midnight?!” her protest was more baffled than irritated. Nevertheless, it was a decidedly displeased exclamation. “Wait that’s- I’m not- Stop!!” She pulled one of her smaller, jury-rigged machines from his hand, immediately checking it over. That was what got him to turn around and face her, the half-folded map still in his other hand. “It’s fragile.” She informed him with the indignant defensiveness of an investigator just scraping by on their own ingenuity. He squared up to her with a tense line pulling at the corners of his mouth; he wasn’t taking this lightly.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“You need to leave. Put all this in the truck and get out of here.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech shook her head, confused. “Wha- why? I just wanted t'see what-”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“There’s nothing out here worth investigating,” he interrupted brusquely.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech’s brow dipped into a frown. Nothing worth, not just ‘nothing’. “Whaddyou mean? How do you know?”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤMidnight seemed… unsettled? Tech wasn’t sure. He stalled for an answer by folding Tech’s map the rest of the way down, into a pocket-sized square.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“I will explain everything to you if you would just,” he turned half away, aiming a gesture meant to mean her at the truck’s cab, “get in the truck. I’ll-”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech opened her mouth to take her own turn at interrupting when she was accosted by a bizarre sensation, like someone had slipped up behind her and, without even a whistle of air as indication, cracked a two-by-four across her shoulder blades, forcing the air from her lungs but somehow without the pain. Just force. Tech's little machine dropped out of her hands. She pitched forward, arms outstretched. Midnight, with a grunt of surprise, caught her by the biceps. She closed her fingers over his dusty sleeves.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Tech, what- ?”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech shook her head. I don’t know? She took a breath. Her chest felt… shaken. Buzzing. Numb? A wave of heat started in the center of her chest and rolled out from there. She blinked at the scarlet blossom forming in the sand at her boots. One petal at a time… She straightened: Midnight’s expression crumpled. The pain that followed her next breath felt something like grabbing a handful of cactus that was still spined, if said cactus were the size of a building and said spine the size of her forearm, now running straight through her chest like a sewing needle through a bead. Her vision flared red, then white. She could still feel the grit of his sleeves under her hands; she gathered handfuls of the fabric.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“-Midnight?”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Pumpkin-” His grip on her arms tightened. “Hey, look at me.” What he didn’t say, though it somehow seemed implied: don’t look down.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThe universe tilted strangely, wobbling back and forth, her sense of gravity gone, until she felt the hard ground against her spine. Flat. When her sight came back she found herself looking at the empty sky, so blue and bright it burned her eyes. A clap like thunder rolled over the sands. The thought occurred to her: “I… Someone ...shot me?”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThe question felt dumb on her tongue. She would know, wouldn’t she? If someone had shot her just now, she would know. As her heart began to beat, catching up with the few it must have missed sometime earlier the burn became obvious. Each little leap sent a ripple of it out from her chest, dwindling to sparks at the edges of her torso. She reached for the center of the tide. She closed her fingers on fabric that was soaked. Another hand —Midnight’s, some whispery part of her acknowledged, and was unalarmed— pulled her hand away. A second later, she was being lifted into a sitting position. The pain lanced sharply. Tech cried out.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤMidnight had, with something (gauze? she couldn’t tell) grasped in hand, pressed one palm to her chest and the other to the back of her shoulder and pressed. Crushed, she’d even say. Tech grabbed Midnight’s shoulder. She tried to speak but couldn’t find words beyond the wildly insufficient “..ow.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤMidnight didn’t address her complaint, focused wholly on compressing what Tech could only assume was a hole in her chest. In her heart. She began to shake.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“What- what happens?” She’d never been shot before. She’d been clipped, certainly, grazed once or twice or maybe a few times by a standard Better Living Ray Gun, beaten down with fists and feet, acquainted with the unfriendly side of a knife so often it almost didn’t strike her as so unfriendly —never shot. Maybe it was another understatement, but the way every bit of her kept alternating hot then cold then hot again made her think it would be bad. He didn’t answered. Tech adjusted her grip, vying for either his acknowledgement or at least a sense of reality. Shot? By who? For what? ㅤㅤ“That. That was a bullet yeah? A real one? ‘Cause the, the ray ones, they don’t make that noise, they’re not that loud.” The sheer concussive blast. She wondered how someone could be holding the thing that made that noise and not be deaf forever after just one shot. “Is that- does it make it worse? Does it- do something?” Do something like what? It was already being shot: would a metal bullet change the facts? “Fuck,” she whispered, “I didn’t see anything I didn’t think that there was anything out here it was just a dead zone, I thought- I thought the ridges were doing something or maybe there was a weird reflection but it’s just more desert.” She might have turned to look at said surrounding desert, but she didn’t even make her head turn halfway before something snagged her focus, there on the sand just past her feet. His duffel. “That’s like what yours is isn’t it? That case- it’s because it’s made to shoot that far? I- you can’t even see it but it might mean whoever did it is high up, right? And you can’t even see it because it’s so far away, there’s no warning I- oh god can they still see us?” Would the next shot be for him? “You shouldn’t stay, you should- I’ll- ’m already- but if they haveta reload or they just can’t shoot, you go before they can I don’t- I don’t want- nn-”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤMidnight had first interrupted with a gentle ‘Hey’ somewhere around the mention of the dead zone, but Tech didn’t hear it, not on a level that gave her a way to stop or answer. Twice more, ‘Hey. Hey.’ each more insistent. In the end, she was reached by the pressure against her chest doubling. The dull, radial pain sharpened, stabbed. She exhaled in a faint whimper. When she finally focused on Midnight’s face, her eyes overflowed with tears and hysteria.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Wide open spaces,” she quoted him, newly understanding, “wide open spaces sit funny.” If he recognized his own words, it didn’t show.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“First, I'm gonna need you to take a deep breath for me.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech nodded. It took a moment, a handful of shallow puffs in preparation, but she managed. Long, slow pull; shuddering but measured release.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“What happens now is you breathe, and you keep looking at me, and you don't fall asleep on me.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤFall asleep? She was a fork in an electric socket; everything was alight. Nevertheless, she nodded again and tried to take another breath where the air actually sank into her lungs. If he was concerned about it, it was a possibility.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“I'm going to pick you up and get you in the car, and we're gonna go back to the Haven, and we're gonna get you through this.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThe way he said it was so certain. We’re gonna get you through this. A fact, he said it like a fact. Through it? She almost asked him how but didn’t want to put him in the position to have to attempt to explain the impossible. Tech squeezed her eyes closed, trying to stop the flow of her tears if for no other reason than that they didn’t change anything. A person didn’t get through being- being— there was a word for it, she knew, for being shot somewhere vital from far away. She couldn’t find it, but knew it was a synonym for killed. This was how she got killed. Years down the road, if anyone ever asked Jack about her, he would say she had been killed.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤMidnight put arm around her back, the other under her knees. He lifted her easily. Despite the sudden wave of nausea that came with leaving the ground, Tech found the hold comforting. Despite the glimpse she caught of a cherry red stain in the sand, she was eased away from being terrified. By the time Midnight set her in the passenger seat of Jack’s truck, the tears had slowed, almost stopped. Her breathing hadn’t quite hit a pace that deserved to be called stable, but it wasn’t a struggle to speak.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Gear shift sticks unless you push it a little to the right first.” Midnight shot her a sideways look. He pulled the driver’s side door closed.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Need you to keep pressure on that. Hard as you can. Don’t let up if you don’t have to,” was his only offered return, but he took her advice as he started the truck and set its tires to turning.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech did as she was told.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤShe wondered privately whether any amount of pressure could postpone this, never mind the minimal amount she was capable of inflicting on herself. It was a unique sensation: her hand was cold, fingertips slightly numb, and yet it was also doused in warmth. Heavy warmth. Warmth that seeped out from underneath her palm. And still, cold. And it didn’t even seem like it was slowed: when her heart thumped, vying for another beat, it just pushed up between the creases of her fingers, re-dousing the whole of her hand in warmth that could not warm. Tech blinked at the sight of the ground flying past beyond the window. She was tempted, as she watched the ridges disappear, to simply… let go.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤBut Midnight was there.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤHe was staring, hard-eyed, through the windshield. His face seemed pale. He kept adjusting his grip on the steering wheel; his hands were covered in blood. Tech watched him with a growing sense of dread that did not seem to belong to her. The blood. The speed at which they were traveling. These were distant facts. She was immersed in the familiar rumble of the engine and the smooth feel of the worn leather.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤWith effort, she pushed herself away from the passenger side and invited herself instead to sit in the jump seat. She gathered her feet onto the seat with her and tucked herself, neatly, to Midnight’s side, borrowing (or perhaps lending?) calm. She rested her head against his shoulder.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤIt was a shame that they didn’t have any music. The radio only fizzled and whined quietly. “‘s stuck on one station,” she told Midnight, gesturing at the number frozen on the display, “has been… forever. He won’t let me fix it. …. Says he’ll get around to it.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤIt was a shame that they didn’t have any music. Without it, there was nothing to hear but the creak of the truck’s ancient suspension and the irregular ping and clatter of rocks against the underside of the chassis: the sounds of monotony on a journey across any piece of the desert. It was normally the kind of thing that felt like it took forever, but Tech blinked and truck was dragging to a rough stop inside the Haven’s front fence.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤAlready?

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤShe had to admit, she hadn’t thought she’d make it this far. Her shirt was stuck to her torso, hugging her ribs even when she tried to shift it loose. It stuck to the seat, too, peeling away with a wet zip when Midnight lifted her out through the driver’s side door. He swung around and stomped straight into the Haven without stopping to close the truck’s door or wait on whoever that was Tech had spotted climbing down out of the watch tower.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“The right,” Tech told him, wondering if he remembered from being hauled in there, “Tox.. 's on the right.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“MADDY?” a yell to shake the heavens.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech did her best to show Jack she was -for one more minute- okay, lifting her head to look at him over Midnight’s shoulder, raising her hand in a weak flutter of fingers. She couldn’t look at him for very long. It was difficult.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤHe followed at an unhealthy distance, pestering not with questions but with presence. He would have, Tech knew without doubt, demanded a transfer of arms if not for the fact that they had already reached their destination just inside the doors. In just a handful of seconds, Tech was set down on the long silver table that was the closest thing to actual medical equipment in the whole of the Haven. Even with a layer between her and it, the steel was achingly cold. ㅤㅤ(She never understood how that worked- even in the desert, the metal was always cold.) Someone pressed down on her shoulder again, drawing a groan out of her. She made a vague attempt to escape it, twisting in place. Jack cradled her face in his hands.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Mads?”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“…..Did some'n’ stupid.” Tech tried, for his sake, to sound teasing.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Stupid,” Jack didn’t disagree, “but you came back. You keep coming back.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech closed her eyes against the fresh wave of tears. She nodded. Kept coming back. She wanted that on any memorial anyone gave her, kept coming back. Ran but never away. Was here. “Toldja… there was somethin’ weird….. out there.” Turned out to be a weird thing that was trigger happy. Who knew? Well, everyone here did, now. Good. Better that they know and stay away, then.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤJack said something. Tech could hear him talking but couldn’t tell what the sounds were supposed to be. Her head seemed heavy; her thoughts sagged. Her eyelids fluttered, but only just, as she battled the strange urge not to open them again.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Tech? Hey, Tech, c’mon.” She didn’t know when it had happened, but the person hovering over her, holding her head, was no longer Jack. “Come on, come on back.” Tox. He propped her up slightly, the rhythmic squeeze of his fingers at the back of her neck somehow drawing her back in a seat of awareness. Tech blinked.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTox was easier to look at than Jack, and it had nothing to do with the slow response of her eyes’ focus. Looking at Jack just now, as she had been swept through the Haven, had been like looking at a car crash, a raw nerve. Everything was pain, forward and untempered. That was always the way he looked when she was in trouble, and the only time he ever looked like that. Tox was the opposite. His worry was there, concern unhidden, but whatever pain was causing it couldn’t be read like a magazine headline. It was tucked away somewhere, neatly, so that he could still offer Tech a faint smile.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Hey, there you are. I need to ask you something. You in there enough for that?” His hand felt uncommonly warm on the back of her neck. For some reason it made her feel more awake. She nodded. Tox mimicked the gesture, an echo of agreement. “I thought so.” He adjusted in place; took a breath. “Alright, listen. They missed your heart- crazy, I know, I’ll tell you about it some time, just listen for a second. The bullet missed your heart, but it damaged an artery. You’re cold and tired, your fingers might be numb? That’s why.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“…Bleedin’ too mush,” she murmured. He nodded again.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Bleeding too much. If we want to stop it for real, I have to get in there and close the tear.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤA sick chill pulsed down her arms. Tech shivered. Get in there. Tox’s mouth became a flat, pressed line. Yeah, get in there.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Listen,” Tox insisted again, “… I don’t have a good way to get you unconscious. If we do this-”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤA sudden, wordless protest. Jack was still in the door, and he surged forward.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“What do you mean ‘IF’, Tox? Just-”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTox silenced him with an uncommonly severe look.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Jack,” he barked, “I need you out of here five minutes ago.” Tech got the impression Tox would have backed his statement up physically if not for the fact that he was still carefully holding her up. “You too.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThere was a beat of resistance. Jack remained a shape in Tech’s peripheral for a handful of seconds. She could tell he was looking at her. Probably waiting for her to disagree, let him stay. For that reason, she kept her eyes glued on Tox’s profile. Jack swore though his teeth and retreated into the hall- at least one other person went with him, but Tech couldn’t see or think who it was. Tox focused back in, gently squeezing the back of her neck again to double check he still had her attention.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“If we do this,” he began again, “…we do this with you awake. You’ll probably pass out before I’m done, but it’s not a guarantee. It’s your choice. You gotta pick quick, but …your choice.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech was often someone waylaid at choices by misgivings; second thoughts; indecision.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThis was not one of those times.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThe people she loved — who loved her had the right to try to stop this.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“Do it.”

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTox smiled. “ 'Attagirl.” He planted a kiss on her forehead.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤThe next steps weren’t for Tech: Tox had to do his best to have sterile tools and hands. Lith had to make sure anything they might need would be within reach. Tech’s shirt had to be cut away. Then Tox had her tuck her left hand under her back and slide her right hand into Lith’s to hold on to. Lith was also responsible, in no uncertain terms, for keeping Tech’s shoulders pressed as flat to the table as humanly possible- as still as humanly possible.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤHe started in with minimal warning.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤIf it had been a hot poker before, it was the entire set of fireplace tools now. Tech screamed. There was no other word for it.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤ“I’ve got you,” Lith was quiet if only by comparison.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤTech had told herself she wasn’t going scream. It wasn’t something anyone was trying to draw out of her: it wasn’t Tox’s fault that there was no other way to do this. The least she thought she could do for him was make it seem less cruel. But that was an option denied to her. Overridden, the worst burning- the worst feeling she had ever known left her to scream until the world melted away completely. The last thing to go was the fire, which took a final few bites of her heart before everything was black and cold and endless as an empty night sky.

ㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤㅤ‎‎‎⁤  ㅤㅤㅤ‎‎‎⁤ Ｉ̜͘ '̠͝ ｖ̧̥̱́ ｅ̧̙̝͘ ｇ̷̨̱̩̗̱͠͠ ｏ̴̷̴̯͈͔͎̖͜͝ ｔ̀̕͏͚̤̞͉̪̕͢ ｙ̷̕͘͘͝͠͏͔̱̜̬̘̯ͅ ｏ̵̡͟͜҉͟͏̝̜̞̹̼͚͈ ｕ̶̡̨̨̯̹̣͕͚͈͚̦́͟͢͜.̶̀͘͢͜͡҉͏̼̻̯͉̘̹̮̯

[everafterkeiji]

Can we get hcs with Mikey and his s/o younger sister ? She is as old as Mana and Luna. She loves playing with Mikey hair and styling him in different cute ways. She would even put on his face few stickers. Like unicorns, rainbows, flowers, stars, fruits, cartoons etc. She would even save her money (coins 😆) to buy motorbikes stickers for him. But its all over his face and arms 😂 she even wants stick some motorbikes stickers on his bike along with her name too (but all in stickers not really writing her name). She wants it like that (Mikey X sis name). And imagine he agrees but toman see that and draken has a talk with him about cheeting or baji trys to kick his ass 😂😹😹 she even dares to propose for him on public infront of mikey close friends (I will give you 10 big doriakiy stickers and my favourite cake if you will marry me when i get older). She is literally fond of him 🥺❤. Basically a small bean is stealing your bf 😂.

THIS REQ XNSMFKW HAS MY ENTIRE HEARTT i love mikey sm this fits him perfectly 😭 the best in law goes to him but wow thank u so much for requesting this cuz this added like 10 yrs to my life span, have a fantastic day, prettyy!!! also i hope it's okay that i gave her a name (i actually don't know how old Luna and mana are bye)

𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑

PAIRINGS: Mikey x gn!reader

GENRE: ABSOLUTE FLUFFFF

♡ 𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐘's been with siblings and a conniving best friend since he was little so you can say he was a master at it alike Mitsuya but maybe this was the worst yet cutest scenario he's encountered.

"Is that you?" Your boyfriend asks, pointing to the baby in the picture frame, holding it closer so he can awe at how you looked, pinching your cheeks with a smile.

"That's my little sister."

"Oh."

"What about me, huh?" Your sister pouted, crossed arms to her chest, looking at your boyfriend from head to toe but when Mikey stared back at this girl, you could've sworn her act has disappeared and her mouth is wide open.

"Why hello there." Mikey greeted, crouching down to meet her level with a winning smile as she shifts her gaze to you.

"Mikey this is Yui, Yui this is Mikey, my boyfriend." You said as the blonde extends his arm out for the little one to take and she feels like she's been betrayed by her older sibling.

"Boyfriend?! He looks like a prince!" She shouted, making him laugh before gladly shaking his hand, smiling too brightly. "Can I be your princess?" He turns to you chuckling.

"We'll see, okay?"

Then the chaos and rivalry begins.

- Whenever he doesn't stop by, she'd tug on you asking where he's gone until you tell her he has prince stuff to do and she's already nodding by saying, "That's right! A prince must do his duties for his kingdom so I should do the same!"

- You thought it was a good idea to buy crowns for the three of you but specifically for the two of them because you can tell how she really wanted to spend time with him.

- The next time he visits and he greets you with a kiss to your cheek and Yui sees this interaction—best believe at 4 years old, she's already gotten her heart broken.

Mikey sees the pout on her lips so he chuckles and lifts her before bestowing a kiss to her cheek making her squeal and throw her tiny arms to his neck.

"My first kiss with a prince!"

"Don't get too lucky, kid."

- The minute you give her a tiara, she's thanking you and all that but at the sight of Mikey draped in a blanket used as a cape with a blue crown, you swore she fell in love twice.

- You tried to reason how she wasn't typically like that but alas, he loves it anyway and even volunteers to take care of her while you prepare her dinner.

"That looks cool." Mikey said pointing to the glittery star covered shark sticker and her eyes twinkle as an idea sparks to her mind. Sticking the sticker he pointed to, she places it on his cheek and his eyes widen.

"Now you're extra cooler!" She says, clapping her hands at how perfect it looked and Mikey just lets her be.

By the time you've readied the table, your once clear face boyfriend came into the kitchen carrying Yui looking like Olivia Rodrigo in her Sour album cover photo.

"Mikey—can I take a photo of you and send it to Draken?"

"NO."

- Sometimes, if she's a bit late to school, the only solution there is to hop onto his CB250T and drive to her elementary.

"That's so.. wow. Oh! Is that our carriage?" She asks, hugging her backpack while you and Mikey share a look before he answers.

"Something like that, Yui."

- Let's just say her experience in that ride was unforgettable. You carried her in your lap making her set between you and the blonde. During it, all you could hear was "WHEEE!" and "SOO COOL!" Not smiling at her was a difficulty especially when she was holding onto Mikey, with closed happy eyes.

But, what the actual challenge was trying to get her off of the bike.

"I don't wanna go to school! Let me go one more pleasee!"

"Yui, you have to go to class or you're gonna miss out."

"No! Pleasee, Y/N. Just for today. " She said with big sad eyes like those of the ones in a movie with a very big pout to her lips, her hands as if they were praying. To think that it would be Mikey to be the first one to give in, it turns out to be the opposite when you sighed in defeat.

"Just one day, Yui." You can hear the joy in her voice when she hugs you making Mikey shake his head.

"You're supposed to be a good sibling you know."

"You don't even finish a week in school, babe."

- You spent the day on his motorcycle, not needing a destination because what mattered to her was that it was moving and it was going fast like a prince on his horse.

- When you do get home, she's dozing off and Mikey feels like he finally has some time to be with you.

"Ahh, don't get me wrong I love Yui but she's got to stop stealing me from you." He mutters while you sat on his lap, agreeing to his word.

- The next day, Mikey isn't around for some business with Toman and lately, she's been bugging you if you can bake some cookies which you do during Saturdays. Then suddenly, she comes home with wallet in hand counting bills like a grown up and you noticed how one of her stuff toys that she usually brings was gone.

"Yui? Did you forget your bear at school? We can get it if you want."

"No need, I sold it!"

"You what-"

- She begins to tell you her strategy to save up some money, determination in her voice to the point she's even grabbing her whiteboard and discussing like a teacher.

"What are you planning to buy, hun? A doll house?"

"I'm buying stickers for Mikey's motorcycle!"

"Yui, you should've just asked some money from."

It is pretty entertaining to watch her like this. You laughed at how she sold your brownies at a high price because she reminded them that they were made by some magical fairy and knowing kids, they believed it and it sold out.

To make up for her efforts, you take her to the Sano household where Draken was and you lead her to the garage and she instantly hugs Mikey. You cross your arms to your chest and once Draken stood up from his chair, Yui is awestruck at his height and shares a look to you.

"Are you the other boyfriend?"

To where Mikey is rolling his eyes, making his best friend laugh but with this opportunity, she doesn't miss to take it.

"So Mikey-kun is with me now!"

"Yeah, Yui because Ken-chin likes Y/N." Your bitter boyfriend lifts your sister and sets her on the bike, huffing while you and Draken laugh.

Still, you came from behind to sling your arms over his shoulder and give an endearing peck to his cheek, making him blush.

"So, I'm with Draken now?"

"Absolutely not."

- Mikey felt like he was gonna burst out of cuteness when Yui sat on his lap as he places her newly bought stickers to the motorcycle, Draken just watches them.

"Yui, did you know that Mikey is more of a king than a prince?" You said, caressing her hair and your lover seems to smile at your words before pulling you to him, kissing your forehead.

"Let's have a coronation and wedding then!" She suggests, raising her hands in excitement. "Kenchin can come too and the pretty girl from earlier!"

"..Mikey, I told you to stop calling me that in public." Draken argued but insisted, "Fine. I'll call Emma."

-The next thing you know, Yui is putting clips on the so-called king, tying it in tiny ponytails as well as still putting sticker to his face but it's more minimal compared to the first time. He was just actually wearing his Toman uniform with his hair gelled back, props to Emma which was a different get up than the usual half up ponytail but you can still see butterfly clips at the top.

Forced to look nice, you really did your best trying not to feel silly at how you looked with the crown but you just went through it.

- It feels more like a wedding than a coronation and you figured it was just your sister being married to Mikey so you sat beside Emma.

- What surprises you though is that Yui is grabbing you by the wrist, so you're stood in front of Mikey and you both look at her.

"Wait, Yui—I thought you were the one whose going to get married to him?"

She sighs and places her hand on her hip.

"He loves you more and I can't steal a king from someone else."

To which the two other audience awes and Mikey chuckles before pulling you close by the waist with a smile.

"You heard her, Y/N. So do I get my kiss now?"

"Not even any vows, Mikey? "

"No need, you know I love you already. "

TOKYO REV : @strawberrieas @kwrg @raya-sano @kimrena-stuff

OVERALL: @stesphy

[jawllines]

He’s too far in thought, he realizes, when Ellie comes and waves her hand in his face, “Are you okay?” She asks quietly, eyes wide as saucers, “Maisey said you look like her aunt when she zones out and she’s depressed.” 

Harry huffs out a laugh, one that expels the air from his lungs as he nods, “Yes, Ellie, I’m okay. What’ve you painted, hm? Can I see it?” She grins, her cheeks pudgy and rosy as she runs back to her seat and picks up the canvas she’d been working on. It’s a sun and a moon, both with rather cryptic looking faces on them, and Harry had never so perfectly had to manage his poker face, “Whoa!” 

“I think that might just be the coolest thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” Y/N appears behind him, Oliver more or less clung to her pant leg as she’s reaching over his body to set a box of juice down on the oak table for him to disperse among his campers, while holding her hand out for the canvas, “May I see it, Miss. Ellie Bellie?” 

Ellie smiles shyly at her — she always got so shy around Y/N, but never in the way where you would think she’s nervous. No, she gets shy the way you might when meeting an older sibling’s friend and wanting to desperately try to impress them. Harry knew as much, considering he would attempt to perform for each and every single one of his sister’s friends growing up (and each time, Gemma would make a few colorful threats to deter him). No matter how quiet Ellie gets with her though, she’s always the first to ask if they got to play with Y/N that day. 

or

Harry still doesn’t like the other camp counsellors but Y/N’s an exception 

part 1

(tw: mentions of suicide) 

ii.

Psst. 

Harry was typically a heavy sleeper. When he was younger his mum used to joke that he could sleep through an earthquake-induced tsunami if someone allowed him to. An alarm would have to be pretty loud to stir him from his slumber, and unless he was on edge, a mere call of his name would not drag him from whatever dreamland he’d submerged himself within.

Psst. 

There had only been two things before that could notably wake him. His mum, who was the sweetest person on this planet yet managed to be the cruelest being on earth when he needed to be up for something, and his childhood cat Molly, who sits on his chest and makes it hard to breathe (which, from what he’s learned, encourages his brain to panic and wake him up so he could fix it). Other than that, he was blissfully unaware of the world for hours at a time. 

Yet, there was something stirring him now.  A low sound that puzzles him as he toes the line between consciousness and his dreams, aware of the blankets that cover him but still dancing on a stage with his limbs thrashing wildly and people shouting his name. 

Psst. 

Was it an insect? Maybe he was performing outside then -- a crowd of thousands in an outdoor field to see him for... .what was it that he did again?

Psst. 

Oh, he’s dreaming, isn’t he? How deep in his dream is he? He thinks this is the first time he’s ever been asleep and realized that he was asleep...he could probably conjure something up, right? Manifest something that he’s always wanted, try his hand in lucid dreaming. If only he could focus apart from the insect zipping past his eardrum. 

Harry, please wake up, we’re being haunted -- or murdered, or something. 

Harry’s eyelids flutter like swallowtail wings, his gaze blurry and unfocused as he comes to. He’s confused, piecing together the puzzle that always presents to him when he’s just woken up and has to readjust to the world around him. The whole process of it took nothing more than 10 seconds, maybe 15 if he’s really out of it, but that’s only because thoughts run through his mind at a hundred miles a minute. 

 What time is it? The room around him his pitch-black apart from a very small amount of light illuminating beneath the curtain covering the window he’s beneath, so it couldn’t be morning. Potentially early morning, but he would say that would be 3-4 AM. Did he need to be up? He didn’t think so, actually, because there’s no alarm buzzing him awake and as far as he’s concerned, he hadn’t signed up for any early morning shifts at the bookstore as of late. The last time he went in at 5 to open up shop while the owner was on vacation and Harry was more or less ran down by a mother raccoon when he’d stumbled upon her babies after getting out of his car -- Harry had been reluctant to go before sunrise since. 

Where was he? He knows he’s not at home, that’s for sure. The sheets smell like him but not him enough to be at his own place -- and the bedding isn’t as soft either. He knows he hasn’t passed out at someone’s house because he only does that if the person is close enough to him that he would recognize their scent, or if he was too drunk to get home, but that was usually accompanied by a wicked headache and a sour stomach. No, where he was smelled like wood and generic fabric softener. There was an air conditioning unit that rattled and rumbled from where it was fixed to the wall, he felt a tension in his neck that he only experienced at one place and, yeah, he was at the camp. 

He was at camp, in a cabin with Y/N, who slept with the lamp on because she hated the dark, was the owner of the voice that had woken him up in the inky black room. 

“Hm?” He hums, brows pinching as he lets his eyes shut again, only to open them a few seconds later, “Wha’s wrong? Why is your light off?” 

“I don’t know,” her voice is still just a bit over a whisper, and Harry wonders why she doesn’t just speak up now that she knows he’s awake, “I woke up a little bit ago and thought maybe there was a storm that knocked the power out or something, but I checked the weather and it’s been clear skies all night. I think our power line was cut which is like -- straight out of a horror film.” 

Harry sighs, a bit of him regretting the number of horror movies they’ve been watching once they finally got to watch Midsommar (in three days, they’d sifted through six different movies -- two movies a night and each one managed to horrify Y/N more than the last). He begins to press himself from the bed, his eyes adjusting to the dark around them, making out slivers of shadows, “I’ll go check --” 

“No! Are you crazy?” He hears her bed frameshift with her as she moves, “That’s just asking for a maniac to come for us. Plus I keep hearing noises and I can’t tell if it’s like...like little raccoon feet or a one-armed hook man.” 

“Alright, then go back to bed.” Harry begins to lower back down to the mattress but a sharp whine leaves her throat, “It’s dark when you close your eyes.” It’s silent for a moment, but then Harry feels a bead of guilt dribble through his body. He sighs, reaching up and wiping his hand down his face, “What do you want to do, yeah? If you don’t want me to go out there. Do you want to stay up?” 

She’s quiet, Harry is straying further and further from the state he would’ve been in to fall right back into his dreams but he tries to wipe away the irritation the best he could. What he reminds himself is that four days prior, Y/N had trekked out in the forest toward a lake despite her unremitting distaste for the woods in the dark and slapped Jack clean across the face because he was being rude to him. And he was going to ignore her? Fall asleep while she’s frightened? Harry could be a prick, but he wasn’t the bleeding antichrist. 

“I...um, well, I don’t want us to stay up, no, we’ll be so cranky tomorrow,” she shuffles in the sheets, “I dunno’, I’m sorry, you can go back to bed, I’ll be okay.” 

Harry isn’t sure what to do but in his half-awake state, the next few words that leave his mouth seem like just the temporary fix necessary for them to get the last few hours of sleep that they can, “Do you want me to read you a story or summat?” 

She giggles quietly, “No, it’s okay, really, go back to sleep, okay?” 

What Harry could have said was I can’t now, knowing that you’re awake and scared, but instead he utters a simple, “No.” He sits back up, patting blindly for his phone in his sheets, slipping his fingers around it, and tapping it awake. His screen blinds him with its brightness, so he lowers it before finding the flashlight. It lights up the floor at his feet and subsequently at its edges, he can make out Y/N’s shadowy figure. She’s sat up, curled in her blanket, wrapped around her head, and giving her a pseudo-nun appearance. She waves at him lamely and he struggles not to roll his eyes, “Maniac be damned, I’m gonna go out there and look for the breaker. Maybe the arseholes broke their vow of integrity.” 

He wouldn’t be surprised if Jack or one of the others came around and switched the breaker off, just to be inconvenient for the morning. They’d left them alone for four days sure, but Harry figures that it’s not so much four days of silent reflection and questioning why they feel the need to be such pricks to him, and more so four days for their anger to fester and brew. If not for the fact that Y/N slapped him then made him find laundry detergent and commanded the others to go get his clothes, then for the way she acted like nothing had happened the day prior. Jack’s cheek was still a stingy, red splotch, Oliver and Brandon were straight-faced looking irritated, and Y/N -- well, Y/N had never been more content with her day. She was having a blast with her kids playing bean bag toss, they did their little dance when one of them got it in the hole of the board, and when they were all getting drinks, Y/N offered to grab Harry his. He watched as she went to the cooler around the same time Jack did, they both reached for the last Dr. Pepper, and Y/N plucked it up and handed it to him before grabbing both her, Harry, and Mitch’s lemonades. 

He thinks it’s the sincerity that she holds, that would aggravate him had he been in their shoes. Y/N was completely unbothered by the night prior and Harry could tell, just like when he doesn’t reciprocate their maleficent tendencies towards them -- it was digging under their skin.

(She makes Harry laugh when she comes back with their lemonades, handing him one and uttering, “I let the prick have the last Dr. Pepper, and I’m regretting it.”) 

And while he’s hoping that they haven’t turned their target to her out of spite, he wouldn’t change what had happened for the world. It had made the two of them that much closer, and in the following day’s Harry had poked and prodded Y/N’s brain a bit more. Especially after what he’d seen on her page, he was intrigued by her. Intrigued by how she saw life, why she came at things the way she did, what built her up to be the person that she was in these very moments that he’s speaking to her. Harry hasn’t asked her about her old college roommate and he doesn’t plan on it either -- he doesn’t feel like he could, or he should. 

Harry has lost people before and he thinks the worst thing someone could do was to bring it up unprompted. He knows that it’s probably always on her mind but even then, maybe it isn’t at the forefront of it. Maybe she’s just trying to have a good few weeks, separate herself from the real world for a while, and he would be cruel to dig up something that she may not be ready to just up and chat about. No matter how curious he is about the whole situation, and no matter how much he wonders if she treats him the way she does because of what happened. If the topic was brought up by her he would openly and freely discuss it as long as she was comfortable, but he wouldn’t give her the third degree. 

So he minds his business and focuses on trying to get to know her better instead. 

He can’t say that it doesn’t change how he treats her a bit though. Harry is much. . .gentler, than he had been. He tries to be less critical of her unwavering optimism and seeks to understand where it was coming from instead. If he’s in the right mood he’ll attempt to match it, which makes for a good day with their groups, who he finds -- despite the small age gap -- have begun to kindle very close friendships. Mrs. Graham had even commented on it one of the days after they had a riveting game of balloon tennis. 

“You two make a good team -- putting all these other counselors to shame. And to think you were pouty about having to share a cabin.” 

It was true, they did make a good team. Harry thinks that them sparking a friendship had made the whole experience much more enjoyable for everyone involved. 

All of this together gives insight into why Harry is willing to stuff on his shoes at 3 AM and go out in the dark, muggy night to check and potentially fix a breaker. And no matter the number of times he assures her she does not have to come out there with him, she keeps hold of her ‘no man left behind’ mentality, pulls on a pair of flip flops, and pads out after him. 

Had they been in any other cabin, finding the breaker would have been much easier. They’re typically on the backside in the upper right corner, surrounded by a little cage with a lock similar to that of an animal crate. The struggle with their cabin was that the backside was basically in the woods, so he had to dodge low hanging branches and tangles of ivy to get even remotely near it. He hands Y/N his phone and she shines the light over the metal box, her hand steady despite how she looks back and forth and all around them like she’s making sure there are no red eyes glowing at them. The world around them is silent apart from the chirp and groan of insects, the scutter of an animal somewhere in the far distance makes Y/N huff a weary sigh but otherwise, nothing comes out to attack them. Harry restarts the breaker, they go back inside, and the lamp on its dimmest setting is switched on how they had fallen asleep with it. 

They both breath out in relief, Y/N dives back into her bed and Harry flops down atop of his covers, giving himself a second to feel the cool air from the conditioner fan over him. 

“Theoretically,” Y/N begins as Harry lets his eyes fall shut, “If there were some creature in the forest --”

“There’s no creature in the forest.” 

“I know, but theoretically --” She continues again, but Harry is quick to cut her off once more. 

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he tells her, “Go to sleep.”  

Once more, Y/N falls silent, but a quiet, “Thank you,” was the only thing to leave her mouth. 

                                                      .                               .                              .

A summer thunderstorm wasn’t abnormal during camp, which is why the recreation center and the art building are beneficial. It keeps everyone preoccupied and entertained with well-insulated walls to mute whatever carnage is taking place outside, which makes for less frightened children and an easier time for everyone involved. Harry liked being active and running around with his campers, sure, but he also really enjoyed a nice, calm, relaxing day trying his hand at DIY projects and abstract paintings. Plus it gave him the chance to wear the camp hoodie that he had spent a pretty penny purchasing, which was made of the softest fabric he’s ever felt and was far more comfortable than the t-shirts that they normally wear.

Y/N had also bought the hoodie, Harry saw as she stepped out in it after her shower this morning, and she seemed to be drowning in it but in the best way. The fabric pools off of her, but she looks cozy, and well-rested despite them waking in the middle of the night. He thinks she looks pretty cute, but he kept the thought to himself and instead asked her if she wanted his extra granola bar for breakfast. 

They alternate throughout the day, between the rec center and art building, and on the schedule, it appears that most the day he would be with Y/N’s group (which he prefers) and a few times he’s even with Mitch as well, which is nice. Mitch doesn’t grow to like many people, but he liked Y/N well enough -- he thought she was oddly entertaining (or so he’s told, Harry) and good for a chat. The only times he and Y/N were not with each other were when the activities were age-specific, but even then, it wasn’t like anyone was in a different room. They were all just at different stations within a big room in the art building and the recreation center was more or less free for all. 

Harry wondered when he started basing whether or not a day was going to be good by whether or not he and Y/N were able to be around each other, but he decided not to think about it too much. Lately, he’d been a little more on edge with whether they were together, simply because of Jack and the others. He didn’t want them fucking with her, and even though she’d proven that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, he still worried, especially knowing he would be the cause of it. 

Y/N doesn’t seem the least bit distressed about it, or as far as she was letting on -- she’d not expressed any thoughts or concerns that they would be spiteful towards her. Hell, the only thing she had told him the night after was that she hoped she didn’t make things worse for him. For him. Why was she so willing to defend him? What did she get out of being so kind? 

He’s too far in thought, he realizes, when Ellie comes and waves her hand in his face, “Are you okay?” She asks quietly, eyes wide as saucers, “Maisey said you look like her aunt when she zones out and she’s depressed.” 

Harry huffs out a laugh, one that expels the air from his lungs as he nods, “Yes, Ellie, I’m okay. What’ve you painted, hm? Can I see it?” She grins, her cheeks pudgy and rosy as she runs back to her seat and picks up the canvas she’d been working on. It’s a sun and a moon, both with rather cryptic looking faces on them, and Harry had never so perfectly had to manage his poker face, “Whoa!” 

“I think that might just be the coolest thing I’ve seen in my entire life,” Y/N appears behind him, Oliver more or less clung to her pant leg as she’s reaching over his body to set a box of juice down on the oak table for him to disperse among his campers, while holding her hand out for the canvas, “May I see it, Miss. Ellie Bellie?” 

Ellie smiles shyly at her — she always got so shy around Y/N, but never in the way where you would think she’s nervous. No, she gets shy the way you might when meeting an older sibling’s friend and wanting to desperately try to impress them. Harry knew as much, considering he would attempt to perform for each and every single one of his sister’s friends growing up (and each time, Gemma would make a few colorful threats to deter him). No matter how quiet Ellie gets with her though, she’s always the first to ask if they got to play with Y/N that day. 

“I especially like how multidimensional it is — purple and pink stars? Beautiful, I love those two colors together,” she places her hand on Oliver’s head, and it’s then that Harry notices he’s holding something, “Harry, Oliver here wanted you to see the flower he drew because I told him how much you like lilies.” As bashful as he always is, he holds out the paper toward Harry. It was cute — a singular, yellow lily and he could tell that Y/N helped him draw it, but the paint and crayon marks all over the page suggested she left the color duties up to him. 

“Oh my goodness,” Harry gasps, looking at the painting, flipping it to Oliver and pointing at it, “You did this?” Oliver nodded excitedly, “It’s gorgeous.” 

“I think our groups are the best artists,” Y/N motions to her table, only a meter away from them all working diligently on their projects, “Charlotte is over there doing an artistic interpretation of the both of us, we are not allowed to see it until she’s finished. Mikey is doing his own rendition of Disney world, I see Maisey is creating a beautiful tree  -- Noah is that a cowboy you’re drawing?” 

Noah barely looks up from his paper, very carefully dragging the tip of the marker in a circle, “Yes.” 

“And Noah is drawing a cowboy! Modern-day Van Gogh’s, all of them.” Harry smiles as Y/N drags a stool up beside him, positioning it in a way so that she could watch both her kids and speak with him, “I heard they’re having one of them party things tonight, I didn’t know if you wanted to go or not.” 

“Hm, I dunno,” his brows knit together as he lightly scratches a mosquito bite on the inside of his forearm, “Do you feel comfortable with going after what happened last time?” 

She suckles her bottom lip into her mouth, gnawing on it as she nods her head, “Mhm,” she looks around them for a second, making sure that none of the kids are paying attention to them before she lowers her voice, “Mitch said that you used to go to all of them last year, and would like -- have a good time. I hope that I’m not ruining that for you.” 

“How would you be ruining it for me?” It’s true, Harry hasn’t gone to any of the parties that they’ve been doing since the very first one he’d escorted Y/N away from. Not for any other reason apart from he was just spending time and hanging out with Y/N, or he’d be too knackered to even think about leaving the nice, cool setting of their cabin to be in the muggy heat with drunk college students. He had much more fun not attending, and other nights Mitch would come around and chill with them too. . .he had all he needed then. Didn’t need the booze for a good time. 

“I don’t know, I just didn’t know if you weren’t going ‘cos of what happened the first time and you felt like you couldn’t leave me out or. . or something like that.” 

Harry shook his head, “No,” he answers, “We can go tonight if you would like, but it’s unnecessary for me. I’m good either way.” 

Although Y/N appears unconvinced, they have little time to go further into the topic because Charlotte is running up to them, a big grin on her face, “I finished!” 

“Well give it here,” Harry holds out his hand, waving her over, “Let’s see it.” 

On the paper are stick figure versions of he and Y/N, with big grins and 12 other little stick figures surrounding them. Above Harry’s stick figure, there’s a pink arrow and a very five-year-old esque writing of HUSBAD (Harry presumes it’s supposed to be husband), and above Y/N’s in the same fashion, she’s written WYFE. It’s then Harry realizes that Y/N’s figure has a veil on and Harry’s has a bowtie, “This is for you twos wedding! So thens when they take pictures you can has this one.” Charlotte chirps brightly and Y/N and Harry both cast each other a disbelieving glance. 

“Whoaaaaa,” Y/N is the first to break their silence, a smile pulling at her lips, “This is really good Charlotte! I didn’t know Harry and I were getting married, though.” 

Charlotte nods quickly, still grinning at them, her bottom canine missing as she gleams, “Me n’ Mikey thinks you should!” 

Y/N turns toward him, nodding toward Charlotte, “Well, the god’s have spoken. Where’s my ring?”

Harry coughs on a laugh as he hands the paper back to Charlotte, “This is really good, Bug. Why don’t you and Oliver go help Josie finish her coloring pages, hm?” 

The both of them head the short way back to their table, hiking up on the small stools and Harry makes sure they’re all settled before he turned back to face Y/N, who was biting down on a grin, “Don’t start --” he began but she’s already started, shaking her head. 

“Listen, it’s okay to be in love with me, but you should really try to tone it down. . .the kids are starting to notice.” 

Harry scoffs before he proceeds to tease her,, “How d’ya know they aren’t basing it off your actions, huh? Giving me love eyes every couple minutes like nobody would see.” 

Y/N mocks offense to his words and he tries to keep up the facade, but his sheer delight for getting in a teasing match with her overcomes him and he can’t help his smile. Harry loved teasing people -- loved making them flustered or reducing them to a bashful mess by his words alone. Y/N, however, was much less into flustered gazes and sheepish tendencies, and more so ready and willing to give him it right back. He’d met his match -- if he teases her she’s teasing right back (if she hadn’t started it in the first place), and both of them found mutual pleasure in it. 

“You can’t use my love eyes against me, I can’t help but give them to everyone I’ve ever met” she tells him, feigning sincerity before an additional anecdote, “You know my college roomie always told me they’d get me in trouble one day, and she had never been more right, ‘cos they did once at a party. She wouldn’t shut up about it weeks after it’d happened.” 

Harry feels his body tense just a bit at the mention of her, and he tries not to let it show on his face that he’s surprised how she so casually brought her up, “Yeah? What’s the story?” 

“The little ears around us suggest that I tell that story later,” she checks her watch, before looking back up at him, “Oi, we’ve got five minutes until we’re in the rec center. You get to pick what we all do since I picked the last rotation.” 

                                                             .                           .                          .

This time when they’re on their way to the party, Harry lets Y/N walk in front of him as he directs where she was to go. Opposed to when they had first made this journey together, Harry feels far more protective of her than he originally had. Plus, he’d seen how clumsy she could be and after the earlier storm, the softened dirt and broken off tree branches from the billows of wind made for a much harder terrain to navigate, so he felt more comfortable being able to reach out to catch her if need be. 

Harry was wary of going to the party tonight but Y/N had been borderline insistent that they attend, “Mitch says he misses you at these things and Niall told me he could only stand Shaun theorizing about the universe and us not being the only life form so many times before he snaps. I say we’re needed.” Harry never minded free drinks, and a potential fuck at the end of the night, so he wasn’t all too worried that he would be having a good time. He just hoped that the others would allow Y/N to have a good time. And he knows he’s being paranoid, because they hadn’t necessarily targeted her for anything prior to or after the lake incident, but he still worries. . .he can’t help but worry.  

But he wouldn’t hover. Once they got to the clearing, he helped Y/N get her drink and she sought off after Niall while Harry went over to Mitch, the two of them promising to meet up again in a little bit. He didn’t hover, but he did watch semi-closely, eyeballing Jack and the others, making sure they were staying away from her. Apart from a few less than friendly looks thrown in his direction though, they seemed to be keeping to themselves which Harry was ultimately very thankful for. 

The night goes by as these nights usually do -- he and Mitch drank, had a laugh, gabbed about music for a while, some of the drama going on around the camp (Y/N had an ear for gossip and eyes that could make anyone tell her anything, so Harry’s had a door to all the melodramatic events happening throughout the counsellors). It was a bit weird when Stacey -- one of the counsellors he’d only ever briefly spoken to --  had come up to them, and a little weirder when she borderline propositioned him for something more than a chat in the woods, but Harry politely declined. Told her that he was pretty exhausted after a long day and was probably just going to have a few more beers and retreat back to his cabin. 

He passes it off as a fluke. . .maybe he’d been making eyes at her and hadn’t realized it. But then Mia makes her way toward him and Mitch, and this time Harry’s brows furrow when she starts chatting him up. This one he entertains for a little while before eventually ebbs away from the conversation, because he and Mia had a fling once, but Jack convinced her and the free world that he was a prick, so she called it off. He didn’t necessarily understand why she would want to start that up again, or what “little birdie” put a bug in her ear that he still thought about her (as she said one did). 

It was after Cara had finally left after coming around to chat with him, that Mitch began to chuckle lowly at his side, shaking his head slowly, “Jesus Christ,” he tilts the nozzle of his beer against his mouth, and when he pulls it away, his lips are shiny from the liquid, “She really is working hard.” 

“Huh?” Harry feels desperate for an explanation as to why three times he felt as if he were being propositioned for a romp in the woods when he was not actively pursuing one. He had a feeling that it was the others trying to get him alone so they could enact some sort of piss poor attempt at fucking with him without Y/N spotting and tearing them a new one over it, “Are you in on something that I’m not, ‘cos m’feeling pretty fucking lost here, man.” 

Mitch nods his head, and Harry follows his gaze to Y/N, who is speaking with her brows dipped inward to Cara, “A few days ago she’d been asking me and Niall what you were like last year, and we told her just the same, jus’ a lot more ‘fornication’ is how Niall put it,” he smirks softly with a shake of his head, “And she seemed all concerned, asking us if we thought she was holdin’ you back or something. Personally, I told her if you wanted to sleep with someone you would have whether she were around or not but she didn’t seem very convinced.” A snort leaves him as he motions towards her again, still as amused by her ideas as he had been when she’d first explained them,  “Guess she’s trying to set you up.” 

“Oh fuck me,”  he exhales so forcefully, it whips the delicate plumes of smoke from Mitch’s cigarette into a misshapen huff. Why was she so concerned with it? Harry hadn’t once expressed any avidity in needing to spend time with someone in that manner -- he could go without sex for three weeks. . .did she not think he could? Was he exuding nymphomaniac tendencies? He surely hadn’t thought he was -- a few quick handies in his nightly showers typically tide him over just nicely for a bit of a dry spell. And what was her business that he hadn’t slept with anyone since they’ve gotten here? Why was she speaking about him with the others what she could as easily ask him? What she had as easily spoken with him about, albeit leaving out a pretty large portion of it. 

For the first time since they had begun getting along, Harry was irritated with her. He’d never been one to brood, however. He liked things to be up front and honest as soon as possible if the situation allowed for it, to stop his mind from taking an idea and running away with it. He held little interest in playing mind games with people. 

Which is why he hands Mitch the rest of his drink, fixes his heavy cardigan around his shoulder, and sets off in her direction. He dodges many bodies, avoids an empty cup on the ground beside what he could only presume to be a sticky puddle of liquor, and narrowly makes it past a playful fight between Oliver and Brandon who were wrestling one another. Y/N doesn’t realize that he’s making his way to her until he’s just a meter or so away, when Niall catches a glimpse of him and attempts to be inconspicuous in the way he pinches her side. She gasps from the way his nails had accidentally bit into her skin, flinching from the pain before her gaze had settled on him, “Harry!” She cheered but his face doesn’t soften as it usually does when they see one another, which alerts her to his disapproving gaze, “Oh, what’s wrong?” 

“Can I speak with you for a moment?” He inquires, motioning out past the trees. Enough trust had been built into the foundation of their friendship for her to not question him. Instead, she passes her drink off to Niall and follows Harry into the woods -- he wouldn’t go so far that they wouldn’t be able to see one another from beneath the curtain of leaves shielding away the moon, but just far enough that nobody would be eavesdropping. In any other situation he might wait to bring this up until they’ve made it back to the cabin, but Y/N’s intentions had been clear that the person he was taking home tonight wasn't supposed to be her. 

She pauses with him at a particularly thick tree trunk, and places the arch of her foot against one of the jagged roots that carved its way through the earth, “Is everything okay?” She balances herself with a hand against the bark, wincing when it jabs into her skin, “I was keeping an eye on Jack n’ them I thought so they wouldn’t try messing with you, but did they say something?” 

That does melt him some, Harry was strong enough to admit that. Just as he had been concerned with her wellbeing, she was just as much concerned for him, and he appreciated that. And while it does threaten to soften him down to his core, he still had questions that needed answers, and he wouldn’t let up until she responded to them. 

“Why are you sending girls over to me?” 

Her brows raise, but less in shock of learning the information, and more so with wonder how he’d found out she was the one sending them their way. The surprise dissolves into embarrassment quickly, her shoulders slump and she casts her gaze deeper into the forest, “Dammit,” she doesn’t hide her disappointment from being caught, or even feign confusion to try and pass the blame off coincidence that every girl who had come up to him had subsequently talked to her prior, “I was hoping you would be less observant.” 

“Y/N.” He says her name sternly, and her shoulders drop dramatically further as she steps down from the tree root. 

“Listen, in my defense I just felt awful!” She admits, waving her hand toward the party, “Jack had tried telling me a few times about how you just fuck people and leave them, blah, blah, blah, right? And I wasn’t paying any attention to him, but it made me curious to what you were like last year, so I asked Mitch and Niall. You came to these things all the time and you had fun -- then I come ‘round, ruin the first one, and you’ve been hanging out with me since. I just. . . I wanted you to be able to have fun and not feel like you have to worry about me, y’know?” 

A ‘v’ sits between Harry’s brows, “What is it your business what I’m doing, hm?” He fixes his cardigan from where it slumps off his shoulder once more, “If I wanted to sleep with someone then I would. Do you think I can’t set something up myself?” 

“No, of course not, I just thought --” 

“You didn’t think,” he cuts her off, and Y/N’s arms curl over herself instinctively when a cold brush of air rolls past them, “You should have just came to speak with me about it, I could have told you that I didn’t need anything like that, and that would have been that. Don’t go behind my back trying to orchestrate things for me, okay?” 

He wanted to say it -- he needed to say it, because Harry wasn’t some sex driven lecher that everyone at this camp tried to make him out as. He thought Y/N had known that too, but he guesses he was wrong. 

But he wasn’t expecting her to look so fucking defeated by it. A guilt weighs on his being when she nods, tipping her head down, “Okay, yes, I won’t anymore. I’m sorry,” her fingers dig into her bicep, as she breathes out, a shiver rattles through her that she tries to be inconspicuous about it, “I wasn’t thinking -- I wasn’t thinking how it would look.” 

Harry sighs, peeling his cardigan off of his arms, revealing his bare arms to the chill but he ignores it in favor of holding it out to her, “Put this on,” he wiggles it some, “I know you’re cold.” She takes it from him carefully, looking up, brows raised slightly as if to ask if he’s sure, “Go ahead.” 

“I really am sorry,” she tells him, pulling the patchwork cardigan over her arms, it hangs off of her, and Harry swallowed thickly. She’s. . .cute -- Harry had always been able to admit that. Her face is sweet, her eyes exudes nothing but understanding, kindness, and such a soft glow that Harry couldn’t quite explain. He finds that those eyes give him great comfort and warmth, because now when they’re tinged with the contrition she feels and Harry feels cold. 

“I know,” he murmurs, he holds out his hand for her, and very carefully Y/N slides her hand into his own, “Do you want to go get pudding?” 

A small smile pulls at her mouth. 

“Yes please.” 

                                                          .                          .                         .

Niall lets them use the key after a few dozen promises to be careful with it. They trek the familiar way, mindless chatter fills the air around them until they get to the cafeteria and their voices quiet in case the security guard is looping around. Y/N reveals her hand from the shield of his cardigan sleeve, Harry watches as the fabric pools around her arm, toward her elbow, and produces the key (that Niall only trusted her with). They creeped into the kitchen, pulled open the large refrigerator door, and the pudding sat in rows on the bottom shelf. 

They both choose vanilla this time, having tired themselves out on chocolate, and they sit at the spot they had last time, across from one another. He can tell, despite his peace offering, that Y/N still feels upset about what had happened earlier and it sullies his mood. She’s still chatting but not with as much heart as she typically has, and Harry couldn’t stand it. He just wanted her to giggle as she teases him again, without feeling like she’s tip toeing on eggshells around him. 

“Hey,” Harry starts, dragging her attention towards him where it had previously been scooping the sides of her pudding container, “Would you stop being so. . .tense? Is this about earlier?” 

Y/N clears her throat, opening her mouth and furrowing her brows like she was about to deny it, but she relents, shoulders dropping, “A little. I still feel bad about everything,” she shakes her head, dragging the edge of the spoon around the plastic, “About everything, not just that you aren’t able to sleep with someone. I came in late, ruined you having your own cabin, woke you up with my alarm, made you get out of bed ‘cos I’m afraid of the dark and -- I just feel like this massive burden. I feel like this massive burden on everyone.” 

Harry is alarmed by this sudden confession, but his body ultimately rejects the notion that she could ever be a bother, “How are you a burden to anyone?” He inquires, shaking his head, “You’re such a ball of light that just swarms through rooms. The thought of you being a burden is akin to the thought of Satan being a saint. . .it doesn’t sound right.” Harry sets his pudding down, though he keeps his hands fixed around the cup and the spoon, “Don’t know what gave you that idea, but the last thing you are is a burden. Who gave you the impression that you were?” 

She wipes tiredly at her eyes, “Nobody in particular, it's just,” she shakes her head, “Even now, I wanted to make your night good, and then I fucked it, and now you’re here with me instead of having fun at the party. I just feel silly.” 

“Don’t.” Harry tells her simply, “I like to spend time with you, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.” 

The tension in her shoulder releases, “Thank you for this, I’m sorry m’just saying the same thing again and again. Back at home it feels like everyone is just. . .so hyper aware of me -- they’re always being so careful, or overly concerned and I always wonder if it feels like a heavy weight on their shoulders, like I’m forcing a piggyback ride.” She shrugs her own, reaching for the second pudding cup, “It’s just shit, so I overthink everything all the time to try not to be a burden, but I keep making it worse. Or at least that’s how it feels.” 

Harry tilts his head to the side some. He’s not usually someone who pries and probes people for information, but he’s never been more curious about Y/N than in this moment. When he thinks of Y/N at home, he thinks of sunshine pooling in the hallways through casement windows, her spinning around the kitchen in a dainty floral dress that billows around her as she stirs homemade jam. Harry imagines her amongst woodland creatures who coax her to the forest with songs, escorting her there as she gambols freely. 

He could not imagine her going home and feeling like a burden. Hell, he would have thought that she considered everyone else a burden -- that maybe it was draining to be the absolute light of everyone’s life. Yet here she stood, seeming worn, and broken. 

“If you don’t mind me asking, why is everyone hyper aware of you at home? You don’t have to answer if you’re uncomfortable.” He says it delicately -- he means it. . .if she didn’t want to share this with him, then he wouldn’t force her, but he wants to open up the possibility. He wants her to know that he’s an open ear if she so chose to utilize him. 

“Um,” her gaze does shift downward -- she suddenly appears so small, “Are you sure?” 

Harry nods. 

“I just -- it's not that I don’t like bringing it up, I just don’t want you to treat me any differently than you would knowing it, yeah? I think that’s what I hate the most.” She notes, “So do you promise that you won’t -- you won’t start tiptoeing around me?” 

“You’ve got my word.” Harry vows, but he has a feeling he knows what she is to say.

The sleeve of his cardigan covers her hand as she brushes the hair from her face, “In freshman year of UNI, my roommate was Mrs. Graham’s daughter, Penelope.” She straightens out in her seat, “We didn’t like each other much at first but we had grown very close -- um, once she threw away my fruit snacks and so I dunked her toothbrush in the toilet, but I felt guilty and went out to buy her a new toothbrush,” a laugh leaves her at the memory, as she rolls her eyes at herself, “That was what we had going for a while, but a late night heart to heart kind of made us closer. She told me things that. . .she’d been through a lot that nobody should have to go through, you know? She was bullied a lot growing up—in high school it was bad, people used to always gang up on her over stupid shit.” Harry hums, encouraging her to continue, and she stirs the pudding around mindlessly, “And we were just close after that. We had a flat together sophomore year and most of junior year, she’s my best friend,” she swallows thickly, “I didn’t realize how sad she was. . .I didn’t realize what she was still holding onto, and she -- we went home for Christmas break, and she never came back.” 

Harry feels his stomach sour as her eyes bead with unshed tears, “Oh, Y/N,” 

“It’s alright. I’m okay, I’m fine as I can be --  I’ve -- I’m mourning and I miss her, but I’m trying to be strong. Most days I am, but everyone at home just expects me to be this fragile thing, y’know? The days I’m happy, and chatty, they think I’m faking it. And some days I do, yeah, but. . .it’s just disheartening when everyone pretends to know what’s going on in my head.” She plants the pudding directly in the center, leaving it there and retreating her hands to her lap, “Mrs. Graham told me she felt the same. That’s why I came in last minute -- I’ve got all my volunteer hours settled and everything but she said it might be nice to get away.” A slow, easy sigh leaves her lips as she blinks the tears away, not one drop trickled down her cheek, “It is nice, but I still worry that I’m a strain on people around me, even if not for the reason I am at home. And I’m sorry to like, info dump all this on you,” she laughs a little in spite of herself, “You can’t ask me things, unless you want an hour long explanation.”

Harry reaches out his hand for her, for the second time that night, and once again she slowly slips their fingers together, “Thank you for sharing that with me, I know it must have been hard,” he squeezes her hand, “But I understand you a bit more now. I’ll keep my promise, I won’t treat you any differently, but before that --” she blinks at him, waiting, “I think you might just be one of the kindest, strongest, most caring people that I have ever meant. I know you would never do anything to intentionally hurt me or add stress onto my life, so you don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to try with me. We can just exist together, yeah? We’ll exist without burdens and without worry.”

The look in her eyes, was one that Harry had never seen before. One that makes him melt in her touch. 

“I would like that.” 

                                                             .                                    .                                  .

 “I can’t swim.” 

Harry was crouched down to Maisey’s height, fixing purple mermaid floaties around her arms. The day was not unusually muggy, but there was an additional itch to jump belly first into the cool watered lake. He had woken with a revitalized need to pry a star from the morning sky as it shifted from an inky purple to an early, dusky morning blue -- and give it to Y/N. He had decided after their conversation last night -- after they’d gone to bed and Y/N fell asleep cuddled in his cardigan -- he had an overwhelming, and an all encompassing want to hold her. 

Which made it hard to part ways this morning, but he managed. And maybe he played out an image in his head where he pressed a kiss to Y/N’s cheek before they went to wake their respective cabins, or maybe he didn’t (but if he did that’s his own problem). He is quick to convince himself it was because she’d shared a piece of herself with him that he doesn’t think she lets many people see, and Harry always develops a bit of a platonic crush on his friends at some point or another. He questioned whether or not he was in love with Mitch for a solid four days once. . .sometimes he just let his heart get carried away. 

He had been enmeshed in these thoughts as he got his campers ready for their time in the lake. At first glance, a ton of children in the lake seemed like a horrible, and faulty idea, but they took precautions so that everyone was safe. Every child wore floaties and/or life jackets no matter how proficient their swimming abilities. There was netting about ten meters out so that the children and counsellors couldn’t float out toward the middle, and they worked it so that only three children could be in per counsellor at a time, so that they could keep an eye on everyone. Harry wasn’t so nervous because he was a strong swimmer, and his kids were a little older, but he could tell Y/N had been a little jittery about it. It’s why Harry told her that while she was out in the lake with her little ones to let him know, he would come out with her to bring her some additional comfort that even the floaties could not provide. 

Harry had been pretty sure all of his kids were excited to go to the lake and he was grateful for that, until he looked up to see the nervous, large blue eyes of Jackson, downcast after he had spoken the words. The unprompted admittance confused him as he turned to face him, “That’s okay, buddy, we’ve got floaties for that.” 

Jackson did not seem convinced, shaking his head fiercely, “No, I -- I can’t swim.” 

“J.J. is afraid of the water,” Noah exposes the truth just as easy as he takes a sip from his juice box, equipped with his own blue arm floaties, “He didn’t want to say though ‘cos --” 

“Noah!” Jackson cuts him off, betrayal laced within his features. 

“--’cos he didn’t want to seem like a wimp, but he almost drowned when he was little.” 

Jackson looked as if he could cry, and Harry shook his head quickly, “Hey, hey, hey, c’mere buddy,” he motions him over, and he comes easily, stepping before Harry who had not bothered to leave his already crouched position, “Explain to me what’s going on, yeah?” 

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, a frown prevalent on his mouth, even as he speaks, “When I was little little, my big brother pushed me into the pool and I went under the water and my mom had to come in and get me because I can’t swim good.” 

Harry pulls his lips back, reaching out to squeeze Jackson’s shoulder, “I’m sorry to hear that buddy. I won’t force you to get in the water if you don’t want to, but I do want to tell you that if you feel more comfortable, we could try a life jacket instead of the floaties? It’ll keep you more buoyant -- more bouncy in the water.” 

“Aren’t those for little kids?” Jackson inquires, brows pinched, but Harry shakes his head and points toward Y/N, never more glad in that moment that she had the age group she did, along with her views on not making them do, wear, or say anything that she wouldn’t herself. She’s got the life jacket swung around her arm as she clips Oliver into his own. 

“Y/N’s going to wear one too, and she’s not a little kid. I’ll wear one as well if you’d like.” He promised him. Albeit looking reserved, Jackson nods softly with his hands in little fists, worrying his lip between his teeth. The poor thing, Harry thinks -- he used to be afraid of water too. Nobody wants to conquer that fear suddenly, let alone with a group of people that may or may not poke fun because they’re kids and kids are jerks sometimes. 

Harry finds him a life jacket -- a cute one with a shark on it, that he helps him clip on, and fits it to his body with the straps. Next, he needed to find one for himself, but he wasn’t entirely sure where they kept the counsellor life jackets, so he called for Y/N where she’d been a few meters away and she popped her head up from where she was like a meerkat. Her eyes softened when she realized who had called her, and a gentle smile pulled at her mouth, “Hey hubby,” she greets him, much to the delight of Charlotte, who claps giddily, “What d’ya need?” 

“A life jacket, please. Where’d you get yours?” Harry tries to be decent -- tries desperately to keep his eyes to himself, but he finds that this is surprisingly difficult when Y/N is in her swimsuit. It wasn’t obscene in any sense of the word -- in the pamphlet they get when they sign up, it is very clear that speedos and bikinis were not appropriate, and therefore not allowed. If a child couldn’t wear it, then you shouldn’t bring it -- was the apothegm that they chose to live by in reference to dress code. 

This, however, doesn’t mean that Y/N’s swimsuit didn’t suit her well. It was fitted in a way that wasn’t too tight, yet wasn’t too loose -- like it might have just been made with her in mind. A simple one piece of nylon and lycra colored a powder blue, that barely showed off that much more of what she wears to bed, and yet his mind still flutters elsewhere. To unwise places, that he drags himself from before clearing his throat and forcing himself to look around the lake so it appeared his eyes were just scanning everything. 

“You’re in luck,” Y/N jogged the short way from where they stood, back to where her kids were all gathered, playing happily in the sand. Beneath what Harry had assumed was just a cluster of towels, another life jacket was hidden beneath the fabric. She hands it toward him with a triumphant grin, “This was the last one. I grabbed it for you in case you just wanted to float rather than keep your legs kicking -- you had a big lunch, didn’t want you to get a cramp.” 

Harry hates how his heart balloons in his chest. There was no reason to be a melt because she had thought of him -- that she had him in mind, so she snatched the last life jacket, and hid it beneath towels so nobody else could have it. No reason to feel all mushy from the way that she unfolds it for him, a silent prompt that she’s going to help him pull it on. And there was certainly, absolutely no good reason for how stupidly affectionate he feels when she strokes her finger along the heart tattoo on his forearm mindlessly, before murmuring, “You make me wanna get covered in them. Maybe I’ll just go and get all of yours.” She looks down at the ground, “Maybe not the toe, my feet are ticklish -- think I would kick the artist.” 

He recruits Y/N for the process of easing Jackson into the water -- Noah and Elinor are floating and bobbing about happily at their sides, while Charlotte and Mikey playfully kick and float close to their older counterparts (if not practically on top of them). There was a chill bite to the water when they had first stepped in, but as they walked out further and sunk a bit deeper, the cold eases up. The cool air soothes them from the sharp bite of the scorching sun, Jackson holds his hand so tightly Harry thinks his fingers may go numb, and he figures Y/N is feeling the same way, if her soft, “Loosen your grip up a bit, Sweetheart, you’re gonna take off my hand.” 

Eventually, Jackson relaxes. He finally understands that the life jacket will keep him afloat and holding onto Y/N and Harry wasn’t a necessity. Once the idea of this settles in his brain, he is more willing to let go and enjoy himself. It feels wonderful to see that he’s having fun, and even better when he sees the smile on Y/N’s face from this small victory. Last year, he hadn’t felt this parental over the children last summer, but something had changed. . .something that made him feel like he was a bit of a parent. 

It has to be Y/N. There was something about her that just oozes mother figure for these kids, even if she wasn’t intending to do so. She kissed the bandages over their wounds to take away the hurt, she praised the ground they walked on, picked them up if they asked, danced with them, encouraged them, treated every single child as if they were her own. Harry believes she’ll be a beautiful mother one day, if that’s what she’d like, and whoever the father or mother was she had chosen to spend her life with, they were unbelievably lucky. He just hoped they would understand that. 

Y/N floats into his line of sight, “Are you okay? Ellie said you look like Maisey’s aunt again, whatever that means.” 

Harry snorts, before nodding, “Yeah, I’m fine. A bit tired.” 

An understanding gleam overtakes her, “Y’know, I did think you seemed a bit snoozy,” she reaches out for him, squeezing his shoulder softly, “D’ya want to have a sneaky nap? I could watch the kids.” 

“But I like having you both,” Jackson whined, shaking his head quickly, finding their hands once more, reassuring that his grip was tight as ever, “Please stay.” 

“Yeah,” Noah splashes over to them, sliding his arms around Harry’s neck, wetting his hair with the water clinging to his life jacket, “You two are fun together! We always have so much fun -- Brittany said her counsellor always yells at them when they ask her to play with them.” 

Elinor was quick to add, “And Ro’s counsellor falls asleep during art days! He doesn’t even help them stay in the lines, and they’re little like Oli, and Charlotte.” 

Y/N’s bottom lip juts out in the prettiest little pout -- Harry finds himself wanting to pluck it with the pad of his thumb, “That’s silly, isn’t it? I have so much fun with you guys, I couldn’t imagine not playing. Right Harry?” 

Nodding his assent, he reaches up, settling his hands around Noah’s arms and bring him along with him as he kicks them closer to Y/N and the other three, “It is silly. Some people just aren’t as fun as Y/N and I, Bug, it’s proven fact. They did the scientific method and everything.” 

Oliver gleefully pushes himself up on Y/N’s shoulders, flopping back into the water and bobbing, “I love yous!” He chirped brightly, “Yous guys are my favorites! I love yous.” 

The sight is adorable, especially as Y/N wriggles around and holds her arms out so they could hug, which Oliver happily accepts, “I love yous too, button.” 

They have fun -- for hours, as they switch out which kids are in the water, spend time on the beach with all of them, making sandcastles, burying one another, chatting and playing. It was very freeing; Harry could easily tell that he and the others were having far more fun than any of the other groups were -- Mitch and Niall had gravitated their groups closer to them when Y/N and the kids began to pour sand over the top of him. Even Cassidy came around with her kids after they had heard them all giggling and laughing and wanted to know what was going on. Harry was having fun, and maybe he was just mushy, but he credited it to the joy Y/N was exuding. It was hard not to be in a good mood when he was around her. 

By the time the sun sat a little lower in the sky, casting the shadows of trees over the sand and cooling them to the point of chilling. The kids washed their feet and hands beneath the rush of water from a yard hydrant, wrapped up in towels, and headed toward the dining hall for their dinner. There was a taco bar today, and Harry found that Y/N and he had a mutual love of tacos as a whole. She showed him how she adds feta crumbles, even let him have a bite of hers to see if he would like it so he could decide whether or not to put it on his own (it was delicious, she was right). 

Once dinner was finished, everyone was exhausted. They all gathered around the campfire, one of the counsellors strummed a song on his guitar, they all had s'mores and then they dispersed. Not even the rush of sugar from the chocolate and marshmallow gave any of the children an umph in their step; they were all so sluggish and slow, dragging their feet through the dirt on their way to their cabins. Harry’s group barely kept their eyes open as they stalked to the showers, washing off the lake water and sand that had been clinging to their bodies. After they brushed their teeth, they all but face planted in their beds and snores soon filled the quiet air of the cabin. They only made him realize how exhausted he was from the day spent baking in the sun, floating and kicking in the water. 

He trudges back to his cabin, where he finds Y/N had already showered off. She was face down in her pillow, her back slowly rising and falling with each gentle breath she took. She hadn’t covered in her blankets -- no, instead she used his cardigan as a makeshift cover over her body, and Harry thinks it might just be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. The patchwork swallows a good portion of her body, the sleeve flopped limply by her head. . .he could imagine her crawling into bed. Could imagine her putting her knee up first, dragging the cardigan that had been lying limply over the post with her and just letting it drape over her body. She probably wasn’t thinking she would fall asleep. . .probably thought she would just lay there for a minute before gathering the strength to get beneath her covers. 

It’s adorable -- Harry hates how adorable he finds it, actually. If he could crawl in beside her he would, but instead he ambles to the bathroom, starts up the shower, and climbs in. 

The water his hot -- boiling drops pelt his skin, washing away the grime and sweat that felt as if it’d been caked onto his skin. It felt good; to cleanse and scrub himself free of the lake, massage shampoo into his scalp, soften his curls with the conditioner, and just allow himself to revel in the feeling. Showers feel wonderful - a renewal that he deemed necessary by the end of the day. And when he gets the temperature just right, it soothes the aches and soreness in his bones, turning his muscles to softened jello. By the time he slipped out of the shower, he was practically boneless and thought he’d be lucky if he made it to his bed before dropping to the floor and falling asleep. 

He expects Y/N to still be asleep when he leaves the bathroom, but he’s surprised to find her sat up in her bed, his cardigan pooled around her body and a deep frown on her face. 

“Oh!” He’s started some -- he really thought she was out for the night, “Good morning, sleepyhead.” 

“It’s morning?” Her face further turns to that of distress and Harry bites down hard on a chuckle. 

“No,” he responds, “It’s not morning. Only about 10PM, so you’ve got plenty of time to rest still.” She looks around groggily, rubbing at her cheek with one hand while she fisted his cardigan in the other, pulling it closer around her body, “Why don’t you get beneath the covers, Babe?” He asks her, and she’s quiet for a little while. The only inkling Harry receives that she even heard him was how she tries to shuffle and wriggle the covers down with her still stretched out on the bed, stuffing her legs into the blankets first, then sliding the rest of the way smoothly. All the while she clings to the cardigan, holding it tightly, resting her cheek on it. Harry doesn’t know if Y/N’s just far more affectionate than he had even thought prior, or if she was just half awake and doing things she wouldn’t do if she was fully conscious. Vaguely does he remember her saying something about typically cuddling with a teddy at night -- how she stuffs her face against it because it always smells like her fabric softener. 

He wonders if that’s why she snuggles with it -- he wonders if she likes the smell of him, so she buries her nose in the fabric and breathes it in as she rests. 

Harry hates this. He hates how inconceivably soft he’s been feeling, but he can’t help it. Y/N had found him worthy enough to poke inside her brain -- she opened up to him in a way she expressed she’d not been opening up to many people about.  It made him feel closer to her.

But he told her he wouldn’t treat her any differently after finding out. And if he suddenly started expressing more affection, he fears she would think he was only doing it because of what she told him. He just wants to be. . .he just wants to be gentle with her. Doesn’t want her to ever think that she’s a burden to him, because the anecdote had made him question and second guess how he’d been treating her their entire time here. Of course, he was never intentionally cruel, but some of the situations he thinks about the two of them in, and how he responded, makes him cringe. 

He switches off the overhead light, her dimmed bedside lamp and muscle memory guide him to his bed. Harry climbs in, shivers as he adjusts to the warmth beneath his covers, and breathes a soft sigh of relief to have finished with the day. 

“Harry?” Y/N’s voice startles his eyes open, which he’d not been aware he’d closed. 

“Hm?” He hums -- he had thought she’d fallen back asleep already. 

“You’re okay?” 

A soft smile plays at his mouth -- she asks him every night before bed, he’s noticed. 

“Yes, I’m okay. Are you okay?” 

She nods, “You did really good today,” her voice is muffled from her cheek mushed against his cardigan, “The kids had a lot of fun, they were telling me. I had a lot of fun too.” 

“Yeah? Me too,” he reaches to thumb the hairs of his eyebrow down, “And thank you. You always do really well with the kids.” 

She’s quiet for a minute, and once more, Harry thinks she must have fallen asleep, but the shift of the mattress tells him she’s changing position and Harry notices once more that his eyes have closed, “I’m glad you’re my roomie.” 

Harry utters the words, that two weeks ago he thinks he would have spit at. 

“Yeah, I’m glad you’re my roomie too.” 

                                                     .                                   .                              .

Harry was drunk. 

Typically, he didn’t allow himself to get very drunk at these little parties. He trusted the others so little, he had no doubt in his mind that any moment he was slightly impaired in some way they would take it upon themselves to prey on his weakness. This means he only ever gets mildly tipsy -- drinks enough to feel good but caps himself when he thinks he might start stumbling. 

But he just didn’t cap himself today. Not for any reason in particular -- their day hadn’t been difficult. They helped their kids through a mildly strenuous obstacle course throughout the morning, cooled down with them drinking juice boxes and eating popsicles and by 2PM they were inside doing little DIY projects. Harry burned his finger with some hot glue, but otherwise it was a pretty easy smooth kind of day that they didn’t get often. He and Y/N hadn’t gotten to spend much time together, which he wouldn’t admit loudly was a disappointment, but he and his kids had all agreed that they missed her. 

(And when they had seen her and her group walking into the art room, the lot of them had erupted in cheers, Noah, Eli, Maisey being the loudest of them.) 

They had a pasta dinner that was surprisingly filling, they told “spooky” campfire stories and ate s’mores, he got his kids ready for bed and he went off to the cabin. He and Y/N were going to one of the parties tonight, not because they had such spectacular luck with a good time before, but because they were coming up on some of their last nights here at camp. It was a bittersweet feeling -- Harry remembered being more than ready to flee last year, counting down each day, each hour dragging on longer than the last. This time, it felt like it was coming too quick. He would miss the kids, he would miss the busy days some. . .and sure, he was happy to go home and take a shower that stays hot longer than five minutes and rest on his soft, cozy bed, but he would miss not having Y/N right across from him. 

That was what he was having the most trouble coming to terms with, he thinks. The idea of them not having to spend every moment of every day with one another after doing it for three weeks almost sounds wrong. It's the same feeling he gets when  he knew he and Mitch wouldn’t have such easy access to one another once they went back home. Being at this camp sort of felt like being stuck in a time loop where the outside world doesn’t exist, so it’s very easy to forget that they all have lives outside of here. They all go to class, go to work, go home, study, eat and sleep. 

He and Y/N live relatively close to one another -- only about a ten minute drive up the street with only one turn and it's into her apartment building -- but he wonders if they’ll utilize it. He wonders if their friendship is tied to this camp and if that’s where it will remain, or if she even wants to be friendly with him after. Harry hadn’t considered that maybe she was only putting up with him because they had to live together and she didn’t want it to be miserable. Had he questioned if he was even enjoyable to be around? How does he ask her that without sounding entirely too desperate or needy?                   

So partially, he drinks to ease some of the worry in his mind. Harry doesn’t think he would “break down” or something like it if they weren’t able to continue being friends -- like a forgotten summer love that he might think about throughout the fall, and message her to see how she was doing -- but he certainly wouldn’t be delighted if that’s how it ended up. Harry thinks there’s so much more to Y/N that he would like to see, and know, and hear. Three weeks isn’t enough time, Harry decided, but in the same breath he wondered if she had thought it was more than enough. 

Harry knows she cares for him, at least a little bit. He knows that he cares for her and her wellbeing; he was fond of her. From what he knew of who she was fundamentally, down to her core, Harry knew she was selfless and kind -- it was hard to find people like that, who were that, without it being cakey or clouded by something else. She was transparent in who she was and her feelings regarding most things, and Harry valued her honesty. 

And she was just so damn fun. Every moment with her he spent, the air filled with laughter; she brought a slice of sun in her pocket wherever she went and Harry was consistently being warmed beneath it. 

The fact of the matter is, Harry doesn’t know how he could meet someone like Y/N, and get used to the idea of her not being in his life after three weeks. If he could refuse it he would, but what was he going to do? Kidnap her and take her home with him? 

He’s sat on the tree root, opposed to standing beside it like he usually is, with his back pressed against the bark of the tree and he ignores the jagged, uneven trunk against his skin. Mitch was beside him, leaning lower than he was with his jacket bundled up and stuffed behind his head, his legs kicked out as far as they would go and because of this, his foot rested against Niall’s lap. Niall was pleasantly gone himself, a bit louder than normal but also zoning out every so often. 

He was a good guy, Niall -- he had good opinions, and he chatted him and Mitch up about guitars often (he was typically the camp’s go to for an acoustic guy if they ever wanted campfire songs). Harry thinks they could probably be really good friends, if not for the fact that Niall was so barefaced in his crush on Y/N. 

It was obvious, Harry thought. He’d thought it was obvious from the first moment he spent a prolonged period of time with both he and Y/N -- his cheeks got rosy when she touched him, he stuttered over his gratitude if she complimented him, and if she went out of her way to do something (like when she’d stuffed her hand into a thorn-bush for his guitar pick that had flung from his fingers, and subsequently got all scratched up), he would look at her how someone might stargaze. 

Harry doesn’t know why he doesn’t just ask her out, if he likes her so much. It almost irritates him how skittish Niall seems to get at the prospect of it; to run away from those warm, nice feelings that she provides is silly. It reminds him entirely too much of himself and he loathes it. 

Tonight had been no different, only Y/N was dancing back and forth between them and a few other counsellors (Harry only recognized one of them , who was called Rosie and had been in his first year maths). Harry watched her most of the night, in the least obnoxious and creepy way he could, just because. . .well, she was nice to look at. He liked how her body animated as she spoke, or how she nodded her head as someone was speaking to her -- it was an encouraging nod, and her eyes locked onto theirs like they might be telling her where the fountain of youth might be located, or the secrets to the universe. 

She was cozy today -- it was cooler out than most of the nights that they had experienced, with a chill breeze that had even stirred goosebumps on Harry’s arms (and he was all but swaddled in his hoodie). Y/N had a light fitted sweater that she sometimes slept in -- not heavy enough to shield her from the icy terrain that winter would provide, but enough to fight past the harsh summer night breeze that threatened to help a storm roll in within the next few hours. Loosely, he let the images of her cuddled close to him invade his brain. What it might feel like, how the knit would brush against his skin, if she would hide her face in his neck or spider around him as the big spoon and burrow against his hair. Y/N struck him as someone who liked to do more of the cuddling than being cuddled herself.

He would miss her when they had to leave. Harry worried who would just exist with her, like they had been doing. He worried about her going back to a place where she felt like a burden -- he would be around, wouldn’t he? If she allowed him to, he could be there for her, but he doesn’t want to seem pushy. By all definitions, they had really just met -- Harry had known Y/N for approximately 17 days, but it felt like so much longer. He wonders if he had known her in a past life, or if it was the fact that they spent almost every day all day with one another for at least 15 of those 17 day -- he finally understands how everyone in the Love Island villa always goes on about how a day in the outside world feels like a week where they are. 

It’s not like he’s professing his love to her, for fuck sake. He just likes her -- whether it be platonic or not, Harry thinks Y/N is just delightful. 

“Your little girlfriend’s not with you?” 

Harry had forgotten how Jack’s voice sounded how grating nails against iron pipes might make someone feel, mostly because they hadn’t spoken in quite a while. After Y/N had slapped him, he had kept to himself, resorting more to disgruntled glares and probably pissy comments he was murmuring to his mates about him. If someone asked Harry, he would say that him and his friends were afraid of Y/N -- she posed a good threat to them. Sure, they hadn’t understood the extent of her words that night (like how and why she knew Miss. Graham), but they were enough to rattle them. No matter being in university, or within the range of 20-23 years old, nobody wanted to be scolded by a woman in her 40s, nor did they want to be kicked out of a camp counsellor position, or to have their volunteer hours revoked. 

So they had left him alone, which Harry thinks may have been such a strain for them he would be surprised if they hadn’t popped a blood vessel. Even if they wanted to, he was always with Y/N -- they never really had the chance, and if they did, they didn’t really take it. 

Which is why he is both surprised and incredibly annoyed with Jack’s sudden appearance. 

“Piss off.” Harry responds, nursing his beer bottle closer to him. 

“You’re always so ill-tempered,” Jack leans up against the tree, “Just wanted to have a chat. Like why Cassidy suddenly wants to break things off after chatting with you and Y/N. Got any ideas?” 

Harry’s brows dipped in confusion, “What? What are you on about?” 

“Don’t act like you don’t fucking know,” Jack rolls his eyes, “Cassidy and I are doing just fucking fine for six months, but we come here, she starts chatting with you and now all the sudden she’s ready to break up. What the fuck did you say, hm?” He nudged Harry’s side with his foot, “Fucking Y/N wasn’t enough, you had to fuck Cassidy too?” He kicked him this time, harder than before.

Harry, who did not take too kindly to being kicked, rolled his eyes and pushed himself to a stand, “Dunno why you’re so fucking insecure that you think me being around has anything to do with Cassidy finally seeing what a prick you are, but this needs to stop,” he handed his bottle to Mitch who took it wordlessly, “I’m not fucking Cassidy, I’ve never fucked Cassidy, so if you could just grow the fuck up and recognize that maybe she broke up with you, because you’re awful to be around, that would be great.”            

Jack, which Harry had expected, took more of a physical approach, giving a shove to Harry’s shoulders, and Harry’s back slams against the tree behind him, “Fuck you,” he spit, “You all holier than thou ‘cos you’re dipping your dick in Miss. Rainbow Bright? What do you know about me, hm? You’re just a dumb fuck who has to be here because you’re a no good druggy fuck with anger issues. How does it feel knowing you’ll amount to nothing after UNI?” 

There isn’t a lot that could get under Harry’s skin. A lot of people could say a lot of shit that he brushes off and lets go, but there are two things that he really just can’t. One of them is when people try to speak poorly of his mum, and the other, was when someone pretends to know his situation when they don’t have a fucking clue. Who was this trust fund bastard to tell him he was a druggy fuck? That he would amount to nothing after UNI? Harry worked two jobs to set himself through school and keep himself fed, with a roof over his head, just so that he could live the life he wanted to after university. 

Maybe it was silly to punch him, but it felt good to. Harry reared back his fist and it collided with his jaw, making Jack stumble backward, his hand flying to his face, “You fucking --” he swung in return, only he catches Harry’s shoulder because Harry moved out of the way in anticipation. Niall narrowly dodged being caught in the crossfire as he rolled out of the way. 

The fight didn’t get too far, however, because when Jack was gearing up to swing again, Y/N appeared and easily wormed her way in between them, “Are you serious right now?” Her brows were furrowed -- she looked legitimately pissed off, and, well. . .it made Harry take a step back at least, “Thought we had a chat about this, hm? You were going to leave him the fuck alone -- no, look at me, not him,” she grabbed at his collar, giving a sharp tug when his angry gaze had flittered back toward Harry, “I’m not an angry person, Jack, I don’t like being mean, or cruel like you seem to be so fond of, but I can and will be if I need to and I promise you that. Don’t you ever speak to someone like that again, yeah? What you were saying was just awful.” She lets go of his collar, taking a step back and sighing in a sharp huff, “I can’t speak for Cassidy, but if I had to guess she probably cut things off because you’re a jealous bastard who questions every interaction with another person and try this alpha male persona to scare other people away. It must be exhausting.” 

Jack shook his head, “We were fine --”

“You thought you were fine. Things aren’t always what they look like, alright? The sooner you understand that, the easier your life will be.” She nods toward the center of the clearing they were in,  “Go get some ice from the cooler, and go the hell back to your cabin. You’re not a fun drunk.” 

Albeit reluctantly, Jack follows her orders and slinks his way to the cooler. The others around them had grown quiet as they had watched the confrontation unfold, but they soon all lost interest once they realized nothing more would happen. Y/N turned to face Harry, the anger on her face immediately dissolving, as she shakes her head, “What a dick. I’m so sorry he spoke to you like that,” she takes ahold of his wrist, the hand that he had punched Jack with, running her thumbs over his reddened knuckles, “I told him -- after the lake, I told him that he needed to leave you alone or I’d do something about it. Dunno what I was gonna do, but I was going to do something -- I will --” 

“Hey, hey,” he cuts her off, “It’s okay -- it’s okay, come on, let’s. . .let’s go to the cabin, yeah? Should we go back to the cabin?” 

Y/N looks at him like he was batty, “No shit we’re going back to the cabin! I’ve got to give you like a full medical look over. He slammed you into the tree, and honestly, you bruise like a peach.” 

They make the trek back to the cabin, relatively quiet, Harry still attempting to process what had happened and what Y/N had said. Had she really spoken to Jack after the fact and threatened him if he messed with Harry again? The softest, probably sweetest person he knows, had taken Jack off to the side and told him if he didn’t leave Harry alone she was going to do something about it. Not only that, she grabbed him by his collar and told him off in front of everyone. It made his heart race, the thought of it, and his cock twitches in his pants at the moment on repeat in his mind. 

Once they get back to the cabin, Y/N has him take his hoodie off with her in the bathroom so she could visualize his back and shoulder. Jack may be short-tempered and smaller than Harry, but his punches still packed a great deal, so a nice, reddening bruise was forming quickly around his shoulder. On his back there were scrapes from the tree bark, Y/N tells him, and a ton of little bruises that had begun to form as well. She makes him stay still as she retrieves the first aid kit from their medicine cabinet. 

“Y/N,” he started, and she hummed to encourage him to continue, “When did you speak with Jack privately?” 

She clears her throat, plopping the first aid kit down on the sink counter and unclipping it open, “The morning after the lake,” she answers without hesitation, “I wasn’t trying to like, fight your battles or anything, but I needed him to know I wasn’t bluffing when I told them I would rat them out, and worse if the situation allowed it. I hate bullies,” she pulls out a small tube of bacitracin, tutting her tongue as she squeezes it out on the tip of her finger, “And I hate how they treat you. I’m sorry if I overstepped.” 

“You didn’t at all,” Harry remarks softly, jolting when her fingers very carefully graze over one of the tender areas on his back, “Thank you, actually, for sticking up for me again.” 

“You don’t have to thank me. I think I’m pretty scrappy when I need to be,” she giggles to herself, “Like, if need be, I would take on the Queen for you. Might be an uneven match though, she’s pushing 100.” 

Harry spins around to face her though, “Y/N, I mean it,” he tells her seriously, their gazes locking, “Thank you for everything. For dealing with my attitude, for sticking up for me, for helping with the kids, for making this experience bearable, for being such a positive light,” he sighs, “You’re amazing, you deserve amazing things.” 

Y/N looks taken by his words -- he wonders if she’s as lost in his eyes as he is in hers. Her mouth falls open gently, like she may be searching for what to say back to him but can’t come up with anything. He worries that he’d said too much -- that he freaked her out or something. He wasn’t trying to, he was just so grateful for her, he didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to express it. 

He is about to apologize for being too forward, when Y/N pushes the short distance and connects their lips together. 

Harry’s confused for a moment as his brain registers what’s happening, but when he feels that she might pull away, his body finally seems to wake up. His hands find her face, cradling her jaw in his hands as he reaffirms the kiss and lets the butterflies in his body take over in hoards. He’d given thought to kissing Y/N, sure, but he’d never thought it would happen. Not only that, he’d never thought it would feel this nice. She tastes like the pineapple wine coolers she’d been sipping on that night, her lips still a bit sticky from the residue of the alcohol on her soft lips.

She’s gentle in how she kisses, like Harry would have guessed -- careful too, and cautious with how her lips parted from him only to fix back together. A pool of heat had formed in Harry’s lower belly and rose to his chest, stirring his heart in flutters when her tongue slid into his mouth and met her own. Harry hadn’t realized just how badly he wanted to kiss her until their tongues are sliding against one another, and his hands are slipping down from her jaw,  caressing the delicate skin of her throat, skating down her chest to her hips. He squeezes her sides and pulls her closer to him, feeling the knit of her top rub against his bare torso. It was as soft as he’d imagined it’d be. 

Had she been wanting to kiss him for as long as he wanted to kiss her? Normally, Harry could tell how badly someone wanted to kiss him by the act alone, but with Y/N he was so caught up he couldn’t focus. She was calm and soft, but the longer they kissed, the more ardent she became. It was the tiny moan that had left from her mouth into his own, that made him lightheaded. He had to pull away to breathe but his forehead pressed against hers as he breathed in, “Harry?” Her voice is low, she says his name like a secret, “Was that okay?” 

His response is to press their lips back together, but this time only for a moment, before he withdraws. Harry loops his fingers around her wrist and brings her with him back into the main room, flopping onto her bed since it was the closest and urging her to climb into his lap. She straddles him, and just as soon as she’s within reach, he slides his fingers at the nape of her neck and pulls her back to his mouth. 

It was good -- it felt so fucking good, Harry couldn’t begin to describe it. He held her close, and tried as he might to stave off his cock from ruining the moment, the longer they kissed the harder he got. How she was positioned at first made it so she couldn’t really feel him, but when she tried to get closer to him, she scooted her hips forward and rubbed up right against him. A gasp leaves her as she parts from him, looking down, having lifted her hips, “I’m sorry,” she apologizes and Harry gives a startled laugh. 

“I’ve got a stiffy, and you’re apologizing?” He chuckles with a shake of his head, “I’m sorry, Sweetheart. I’ve got a pretty girl in my lap kissing me, s’kind of hard not to get hard. We can stop if you want.” 

“I don’t want to stop,” she answers with no delay nor doubt, as she lowers back down, resting her front on his prick and with this she gives an experimental roll of her hips. Harry hisses in a breath as she does it again, her own little moan slipping from her mouth. She was only in a thin little pair of shorts, and Harry had chosen sweatpants for the night, so there was little fabric truly separating them. Harry was thankful for it as she continued to roll her hips against him, sponging kisses from his mouth, down his jawline, to the curve of his throat. She fixed her lips there, lulling her tongue over the skin before she started suckling at him and Harry’s hands danced along her back, stroking up and down it, feeling her, holding her closer. Each roll of her hips made him harder, and he was desperate to know if she was wet. If he pushed his fingers into her shorts, would they come back slick from her arousal? Would she watch him as he slid them into his mouth to taste her? Would she let him split her thighs and lick straight from the source. 

His mind was overcome with filth, smutty images entangle once innocent thoughts as she brought the blood to the surface of his skin. When one of his hands left where it had latched onto her hip and slowly maneuvered around to her front, she paused, but left her face dipped in his throat, “Are you wet for me?” He asks her quietly and she nods through a little shiver, “Yeah? Bet you soaked through your little panties,” he murmurs as he slides his fingers past the elastic bands of her shorts and underwear, but left his fingers just past them, “Answer me.” 

“Yes,” her voice trembles, she swallows thickly and the muscles in her abdomen contract beneath his fingers. 

Harry hums low, slipping his fingers down further and he dips between her slick folds, “Oh, Sweetheart,” he presses a chaste kiss to the side of her head, “Is this your first time getting wet for me?” She shakes her head, “Hm, really? So you’re like this often? Do you take care of it?” 

“I -- yeah,” she stutters over a moan as the pads of his fingers roll over her swollen clit slowly, feeling it flick beneath them, “At night, sometimes I will in the shower if I can’t. . .if I can’t wait anymore.” 

He feigns a gasp, “Oh my goodness,” he speeds up the slow lull of his fingers, “Your showers are always so fast, doll, you’re really that quick to cum?” 

Harry may not be able to see her face, but he can hear the pout clear in her voice, “It usually isn’t that fast! Just with you, it is -- when I think of you, it’s always quick.” 

He thought it would be impossible for his cock to be harder than it already was, but her words make pre-cum bubble at the tip, and when he dips his fingers back into her slick little hole, he gets even harder. Gliding his fingers from her panties, he draws them up to his mouth and presses them past his lips as he’d wanted to. Y/N has withdrawn from his throat, watching him do it with glassy eyes, her hands resting on his shoulders, digging her fingers into grape sized dents at the muscle. Her mouth falls open as he sucks her juices away, his eyes fluttering and a groan torn from his throat. 

“Get on the bed,” he instructed and Y/N followed without question, crawling from his lap and lying her head on her pillow as Harry stood, and repositioned himself. He takes a hold of shorts and drags them down her legs, wriggling them off her ankle and tossing them elsewhere. His lips finds her ankle first, before he’s peppering and sponging kisses down her leg, the parts that he had tended to throw over his shoulder. When he gets to her thighs, he makes the kisses slower, softer -- he suckles and nips at the supple skin until he’s right before her center, only to switch to her other thigh and push kisses up and down the length of it. 

Y/N’s whole body trembles with each shaky breath she gives. She’d spoken no words until he was positioned right in front of her core, looping his fingers in the waistband of the little cotton pair she had on, pulling them up toward her hips so the fabric stretched out over her. He could see her pussy beneath it, made out the outline of her swollen lips and engorged clit -- it made his mouth water. 

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want,” she tells him, and his gaze is pulled back up to her -- she looks apprehensive. 

“What?” 

She shrugs, “I know some guys don’t really like to so --” 

“Do you want me to eat your pussy?” Harry asks her bluntly, and he revels in the way her eyes widen, and how bashful her face turns as she looks away, “It’s a yes or no question, honey, if you don’t want me to, I can come back up and kiss you while I make you feel good with my fingers. If you do want me to, I’m g’na pull those panties to the side and make you cum on my tongue -- either I’m good with.” 

“I -- yes,” she answers, her voice meek, “Yes I want you to.” 

Harry smiles softly, “Poor thing, How many stupid boys were refusing to eat this sweet little peach?” He runs his thumb up and down her slit, visualizing where the wet spot had grown and soaked her panties so that the fabric thinned. Leaning in, he nosed at her clit and she inhales, “God, I’m so excited — you’re okay with this? You’re okay with me eating this little pussy out? Need you to let me know because once I start sweet girl, I’ll be in heaven.”

“Yes, please, please lick me.”

“So polite,” he suckles a kiss at the very innermost part of her thigh, before licking one, long stripe up her center through the fabric. She moans, pushing her hips down toward his mouth as he drags his tongue over it again, and again, and again. He soaks it with his spit, teasing her — he wanted to pull her panties to the side and suckle and slurp between her lips until she came — but he wants her to beg for him. Wants to hear that she wants him just as much as he wants her. 

He smiles against her as he hears her getting impatient, little huffs between each moan. She whines, her hips bucking up against his tongue — he looks up to her, watching as her chest rises and falls quickly. The fingers of one hand are dug into the sheets beside her, while the others rest between her teeth. Her brows were tilted, lips pouted, whimpers come more frequently the longer he suckles and laps on the fabric, drenching it. 

“Harry,” she finally works out, shivering when he pauses just over her clit and flickers his tongue over the top of it, “Oh, please just -- please.”

“Hm?” He hums against her, jolts, inhaling sharply, “What is it, baby? You’ve got to use your words.” 

“Please stop teasing me,” she tells him, “Please take them off.” 

And Harry may love to tease, but he wasn’t cruel. Wasn’t a bloody monster, was he? So he slides his index and middle finger in between the fabric and her core and tugs them over to the side -- he didn’t want to waste any time wiggling them down her legs. No, instead he dips his tongue in between her lips and slides it flat and straight up to her swollen clit. The groan that leaves her is sinful -- it makes his cock twitch in his pants, his heart slamming against his sternum as he suckles and her fingers find his curls. She digs her fingers within the strands, rocking her hips up to meet his mouth, and for a moment, Harry just leaves his tongue out and flat for her to grind against. Harry thinks, if he could spend the day just strapped to Y/N’s bed, willing, ready, and waiting for her to come use his mouth how she pleased -- he would be inconceivable happy. 

Eventually he wiggles his face back into her, sliding his tongue back and forth before he latches his lips back around her silky folds. The swollen little button crying desperately for his attention was where he spent most of his time, lapping, or lulling his tongue in circles around it. She keens, her heel digs into the mattress and begins to slide down but Harry grabs a hold of her thighs and pushes both of them up, so her knees are to her chest. The new position makes her cry out his name raggedly, and Harry was teeming with carnal desire, and so horny he thinks he would barely have to hump against the mattress to cum. 

“I’m close,” she warns him, mewling, “I’m g’na cum, I’m -- oh, please don’t stop, please don’t stop.” 

Harry doesn’t think he’d stop if he was paid to do it. He doubles his efforts, sucking harder, sliding down to tongue at her hole while his fingers wrapped around and spun little circles into her clit. His other hand he reaches up with and slides his thumb into her mouth and she accepts it graciously, as it muted her moans that grew louder and louder the closer she got. 

When she cums, it’s beautiful -- Harry wishes he would be able to see it on repeat, how her back arched upward and her hips bucked loosely as she pulsated around his tongue. Her mouth hangs open around his thumb, her eyes squeezed shut, the fingers in his hair tighten and her other hand wraps around his wrists and holds him tightly. The initial lurch of it subsides and she melts into the mattress, trying to catch her breath, her chest heaving beneath her sweater. 

After he thoroughly cleans her (until she’s twitching and jumping away from his tongue), he crawls up her body, pushing her sweater up over her breasts, “Can I fuck you, Darling?” He asks her, a small smile on his mouth when she leans her chest closer to him so he can reach behind her and unclip her bra. Tugging the cups away, he grabs them carefully, thumbing over her nipple, “If you don’t want to, that’s okay, don’t feel bad about it, just let me know.” 

“I want you to,” she rushes to tell him, nodding, “Do you have a condom?” 

He dips his head against her chest, breathing out a sigh, “Fuck me,” he utters, shaking his head, “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.” 

He usually does -- Harry always keeps a few on him, but he remembers very vividly he and Y/N had blown his last one up just a few nights prior and drawn a face on it. For a moment he feels hopeless, a sad pit forming in his stomach because the thought of fucking Y/N sounded like paradise and he only brought one bloody condom that he wasted. 

“It’s okay, we’ll do it next time then,” she tells him, and Harry feels a joyful spike in his overall demeanor. Next time -- she wanted there to be a next time? And if she wanted there to be a next time, then they would have to see each other after the camp. . .they would spend time together, Harry could learn what she was like in her normal day to day. He was eager and delighted, and not even just at the prospect of pushing into her (which he was also pretty damn excited for), “I mean, if you wanted to do this again, then, yeah -- right? We’ll hang out after camp is through?”

A smile threatens to split his cheeks, “Of course we will,” he tells her, nosing at her jawline, “And not just ‘cos you promised to let me fuck you. I was hoping we would see each other still but was worried that you might be sick of me.” 

Her brows pinch, “Sick of you? Dummy, I thought you would be sick of me!” She shakes her head, rolling her eyes at the both of them, “We’re so stupid, we ought’a communicate better.” Y/N presses at his abdomen, “C’mon then, I’ll spin around and you can fuck between my thighs. I did it once with a boy -- I just shaved in the shower last night too so it should be soft.” 

Y/N flips over, scooting her bum in the air for him as she cuddles a pillow to her face, her ankles locked in place and her thighs squeezed together. Harry wiggles out of his pants and boxers before he lets a glob of spit fall onto his stiff cock that had soundly slapped up against his stomach, slicking it up nice and wet so the glide between her thighs wouldn’t be too dry. One hand he lays palm flat to her bum, stroking the skin there with his thumb while the other hand navigates his prick, tipping it down and fitting it between her warm, soft thighs. 

It felt good; Harry groans wantonly as he pulls out and sinks back in, watching himself disappear between them. She wiggles her bum at him and Harry playfully swats it, chuckling when she squeals and giggles, “You’re so fucking cute,” he coos before bending over, stretching himself over her so his chest was pressed to her back as he started steadily fucking in between her thighs. One hand he uses to cup her breast and tweak at her nipple while the other he slides down to her pussy, finding her swollen little button and rubbing it. 

Harry’s skin prickles as she moans, her legs falling open just slightly but he tuts his tongue, “Keep them nice and tight for me, baby,” he murmurs, and she nods, tightening the channel for him once more. He won’t last long, he knows it -- he can feel that pool of heat crackling in his lower belly. His blood buzzes in his ears as he fucks his hips forward, their skin slapping together sound in their little cabin. Her breasts bounce with each thrust he gives, she’s beginning to cum again from the ministration of his fingers, and Harry’s nearing the end of his rope. 

“You feel so fucking good,” he’s just a breath away from her ear, “You’re gonna make me cum.” 

He nibbles at the shell of her ear and lets his eyes flutter closed, his senses on overload. All he can hear, and taste, and smell, and feel is her. Dizzy and overwhelmed, Harry feels as if he may burst at the seams. 

“Cum,” she murmurs, “Please, I want you to feel good -- I want you to cum.” 

That’s all it takes -- the little push of her words has his hips stuttering as he cums, spurting long stripes between her thighs, some catching her skin, some landing on her sheets below them. His world fizzles out, static splinters through his body as warmth rushes through his veins, and his toes curl hard enough to lock up. As he comes back to, he giggles, the last of his orgasm drooling from the tip as he pushes a kiss to the back of Y/N’s head, “Stay still, lemme go get us a rag.” 

His legs feel like jelly when he stands, fleeing arse naked to the bathroom and returning moments later with warm, wet rags. He cleans her first, careful in how he works her underwear down her legs before he pats gently around her thighs and at her center. She’s sensitive, so a few times she twitches and flinches from him but eventually relaxes as she holds tightly to the pillow. He wipes himself off a bit haphazardly, more concerned with getting Y/N somewhere to lie down as he gently tugs on her arms, “C’mere, poor thing, I came all over your bed.” 

“Yeah, you jerk,” she says puckishly, letting him guide her over to his bed, climbing in and immediately snuggling beneath his covers. Harry is not too far behind her, and at first she snuggles up close to him, she hisses and squeals before trying to shuffle away, “Why are your feet like ice?” She asks him, her words accusing, like he’d come in the bed with intent to freeze her. 

Harry shrugs, “I dunno’ I usually wear socks to bed to keep them warm.” 

“Socks? To sleep?” She slowly wiggles her way closer to him, despite the words that follow, “I don’t think we can share a bed, you’re batty.” 

“Guess you’ll have to go sleep on the jizzy bed then.” 

Y/N laughs, and Harry feels it vibrate through his body as he holds her close to his chest, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. They’re quiet for a moment, as they both settle, taking deep, slow breaths, allowing themselves to slip towards sleep. 

Before Harry could get there, Y/N murmured his name. 

“Thanks for being my camp ‘husbad’.” 

Harry smiled to himself, and held her a little closer before he teased her. 

“You can say thank you next time with an 18 carat diamond.”  

[muffindaddystyles]

Please write more of Dove and Harry ? You’d earlier written in ne where she gets lost and Harry can’t find her…. Please some more like that. I really like reading protective Harry for his kids especially daughters!

HARRY HATES A CERATIN PINK BICYCLE BUT DOVE THINKS OTHERWISE :D

Harry has never been this stingy towards things. You don’t hold a beef with stuff round you, right? You hold beefs with actual hell of people who're mighty pests in the name of human being.

But, this. Oh damn this. Four wheeler little pink bicycle, that have sparkling pom-poms around it’s handles, a cute yellow basket corked to it's front and rainbow coloured cups hanging from the back of it’s seat that cackles whenever the wheels roll.

It’s the most obnoxious transporting vehicle, Harry had seen in his whole life. He's kind of grousing in the corner that why out of trillion of toys auntie Gemma had to prove herself the best aunt in the whole world alive and chose this hideous gaggingly pink bicycle.

It just doesn’t makes sense to gift it to a three years old! And when that three years old’s a headstrong little thing, with wilfulness of her daddy and the marbles of kitten in replacement of those eyes.

“Daddy we’ll ‘ve fun, promise!” Her ‘r' vanishes into a whistle since she’s still wary onto speaking huge words, babbling her daddy’s ears off with random shite doesn’t count.

Sometimes Harry thinks; that his 50 years old mum's prisoned and captured into a dainty body of three years old -- and his time has come to get bossed around and scolded for his own good sake.

His mommy in the guise of his little dove.

“How’s tha’ missy!?” Harry squints down at her with his hands fisted on his hips. His fake scowl breaks into a fluttery smile when dove with her grubby pudgy hands pushed the bicycle around, her boot clad feet stomping against the hardwood floor, “Like this daddy!” Her chest heaved from getting tired of pushing it around in circles.

“Y'gonna put y’old man to labour?” When she sees her dad’s strictness resolving into contemplating the idea she squeals out giggles making Harry flinch and cover his ears, He’s sure he’ll end up deaf in his fifties.

Harry feels his chest warm and gooey with fond when she jumps on her tippy toes and wraps herself around Harry’s calves.

“Kay, teddy bear enough of butterin’ dada up.” Harry grunted through his nose ducking down to scoop her up in his embrace and she instantly loops her arms around his neck, her button rosy nose twitching with happiness as she patted his cheek with a toothy grin.

Harry shook his head at her brains, his eyes closed and lips thinned while he tries to announce it to her in the most dramatic way.

“Why’re you the way you’re dovie? He sighs and her response doesn’t baffles him any, “’Cos you.” She whispers into his ear as if it’s the most secretive thing in the world getting his cheek and earlobe wet with her drool.

“Yeah, cos' ‘m your inventor. My bad.”

.

That’s how they ended up here in the living room since Harry’s still hesitant and scared to let her ride the bicycle outside.

She makes sweet and loud kissy noises dangling her feet in a rhythm messing the already bombed up curls of Harry while he puts protection pads around her knees, he leaned more onto his shins adjusting the strap of her helmet and pinched her chin to make her look at him.

“Hello baby –..,” He opened his mouth to give her instructions when she cut him off with a cute whiny huff and the fold of her arms round her small body, “Daddy ‘m no baby.” Harry rolls his eyes towards the ceiling and bats his lashes.

“F'me you’re.” He tuts with a coo and took her wrist gently to help her slide down the sofa before she could possibly terrorise him more, sometimes Harry has this aching urge to laugh at her statements but it’s not right to his lil bean so he does it when he’s alone to not to hurt her feelings.

She refused any kind of guidance from him with just a single gesture of her palm (he doesn't know how she manages to behave like a 30 at her 3) and he ended up helping her wiggle her bum up the seat anyhow, “Hmm. Y'already know the deal dovlin'.” He knocks on her pink helmet which has tiny cows on it.

She bobbed her head and puckered her lips, Harry being her best telepathic communicator gets the sign and forwards his cheek for her to kiss it.

“Love y'daddy.” Her affection for her dad muffling against his stubble and in droopy voice he mimics her with bright teasing eyes, “wuveee you daddy.”

“Back to work!” Harry commanded moving towards the end of cycle and squeezed her neck tenderly before pushing her around and giggles happily when she squealed out in utter thrill.

“Weeeeeeoiiii!!” Harry joins her putting aside the fact he was very against it moments ago, but the little fun does no harm, right? He did think so.

It has always happened to him in this particular order whenever the things gets into their happy track a downfall is always written for them, just like the time when dove got sick and wouldn’t get any better taking her to hospital got crucial only for them to come back to their family being there for them her grandma and auntie Gems were their to get her recover but she got sick again.

“Alone!” She grumbles trying to move Harry’s hands away but he grips it tighter, “’M big!” She complains feet reaching for the paddles that took a swing.

“Hands on handles!” Not in a mood for her to throw a tantrum after such exhilarating moment Harry dismissed her off with a bit of frown, “Hands on handles! Hands —--,” He shouts anxiously heartbeat racing painfully against his ribs and he feels time slowing down as he watches dove losing her balance – but – puffs out in relief when she thumps against the sofa.

“Shit!” He cries out when the cycle tumbles along dove and falls on her, the poor baby didn’t even got time to process what's happening before the metal basket hits her bottom lip and her elbow hard.

Harry’s fear reeling infront of him, deafening him for a moment.

Immediately, He throws it away from over her half assed about where it lands and bunched her in his arms protectively. Cradling his sweet baby’s face in his palm and his eyes watered up at the bleeding lip and more abrasions on her elbow.

He sucks in a whimper when she tries even not to sniffle being a brave girl for her dad and goes to wipe his tears with her trembling lil hands, “It’s otay daddy.” Harry hiccups into her wrist smacking kisses upon kisses into her palm.

“’M sorry me lil dovlin'.” He sulked wiping his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie and kissed her forehead.

It physically pains him to see his Dovie hurt, it makes him sad till long hours.

Call him sensitive but with Dove he’ll never able to hold his tears back, she pulls onto his heart strings the most agonisingly, she comes before anyone else and her safety too.

“No cry.” She pushed him away and pouted leaning to peck his lips and Harry giggles when she wipes the subtle blood stain she got on his mouth with a sheepish smile, “Lets fix your boo boos honey pot.” Harry gave her a weepy smile and pet her head taking them to his room.

He’s really surprised and well very proud that she was so brave for him, in times like these Harry realises if nobody got him his daughter’s gonna be there for him always.

“’M really reallyyyy proud of you sweet pea.” After putting Dove's favourite rapunzel bandages on her gashes Harry showers her in kisses that are loud and exaggerated but full of pride and love for her, making sure to do ‘mwah!’ at each one.

.

Harry made her chicken nuggies and let her drink orange juice (even though it gives her an achy throat) she’s such a good little briber.

She’s all snuggled in his bed, her face hidden in his chest out of shyness as Anne asks about her accident with a sad pouty smile.

“You gotta be careful next time okay sweetie?” Anne told her. Harry groans when her head perked up with gleam in her eyes, “There’s no next time!” He quips making his point clear.

“Gran’ma you wan’ see?” She blubbers excitedly crawling out from under the covers but carefully Harry catches her ankle and tugs her back towards him which causes the phone to fall from her hands onto the floor.

The clumsy cutie.

“Oh Grandma, you otay????” Her curly head pops from over the mattress and the room fills with laughter at her innocence and dumbness, she's just three, you prick.

“My silly little bear.” Harry’s laugh fades into giggles while he settles her bum on his chest and cuddles her tightly into his neck despite of her whiny protests and squiggles to let her free.

[hirako5hinji]

[ UNPROMPTED | ALWAYS ACCEPTING ] 

@viciousvizard​ asked:

OP!AU// The tiny zoan type sand cat has just started to knead at his chest and pads her toe beans up and down his torso. Her little warm head is now rubbing against his neck and scratching at him with affection. She has to let him know she is his person. Her small nose sniffs his neck and blinks with her feline eyes as she eyes him. Her little arms and legs and tail curl around his face now. A small,  satisfactory meow is all he will hear from her as she closes her eyes to sleep. He is her person..

          He wakes up fighting for breath, because she is sitting on his face and not in the fun way, either. His nostrils and mouth are blocked by a warm, furry weight; grunting, he flails about drowsily before the post-nap situational awareness quickly kicks in - it is just Hiyori, trying to surreptitiously murder him with love, again.

          The lithe, lanky man relaxes, faint exasperation flowing through his being as one large, narrow hand moves towards his face, long fingers pinching the scruff of the tiny thing determinedly attached to his mien and plucking her off. His blurry vision soon clears as does his blocked airway, bits of cat hair floating every which way while he snorts to displace fur from his mouth. Dangling innocuously in his grasp like a kitten being held in its mother’s mouth, she remains fast asleep, purring vigorously like a little love engine that will never stop. Hiyori’s language has always been blatantly simple and all too easy to read...and by his side is where she is the happiest. 

               “ ...Yer lucky yer cute. ” Grumbling under his breath, he rolls onto his side and brings the tiny zoan back into his embrace, this time tucking her safely up against his heart. Curling around the small feline, he presses a sleepy kiss between her furry ears, fingers lazily stroking her small, warm body, until the sound of her familiar, pleasing purrs lulls him back into slumber once again. 

          Sometimes, a good life is just like this. 

          Softness. Hazy contentment. This mundane, comforting domesticity. A little woman with her fierce eyes, wrapped around him with her deadly claws carefully sheathed, her heart frantically singing ‘I love you. I love you. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou-’ with every rise of her chest-

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Aqua, windchimes, ovenmitt. For the lovely little Mina. - 🐉

CW: Child of whumpee, vague references to trauma, whumpee with long-term ptsd, referenced chronic pain

There are days, when the winter brings down heavy snow that piles up against the house, that Mina’s daddy gets a little bit lost inside his head. Her dad shoveled the sidewalk this morning, forcing good and bad hands to work together before he left to teach, but her daddy doesn’t go outside when it’s snowy unless she asks him to.

Mostly she doesn’t.

The snow and cold make his back hurt, and if she wants to build a snowman he’ll help her, but then he’ll live on the couch all afternoon and she’ll bring him his heating pad to lay across the scar just to one side of his spine. She likes to count his freckles, but he asks her not to, on his bad back days.

Last night the wind blew hard around the house, making it creak and groan, sending her climbing up in between her dad and daddy for warmth and reassurance, Toto curled into a ball behind her knees. Daddy’s arms around her are safe, and Mina had fallen back asleep to the sound of the windchimes ringing at the back of the house.

If she looks out the back windows in the dining room, she can see one blew down, pretty silver tubes scattered on the back steps, mostly covered now by snow but glinting a little when the sun hits just right.

The snow is perfect today and the wind has stopped blowing so hard, but she doesn’t want to hurt her daddy, so she doesn’t ask about the snowman. Instead, Mina colors at the kitchen table, legs swinging inches above the ground, concentrating on the Disney princess coloring and activity book they got last time Daddy took her shopping. She carefully colors Tiana’s dress in, not green but a color that goes A-Q-U-A-M-A-R-I-N-E, says the label on the side of the crayon.

Aquamarine, Daddy said when she asked what the letters spelled. His voice was soft and faded. It’s, um, a kind of blue, Mina-bean.

He’s soft and faded on cold days, her daddy. He holds her in his arms and lunch is her favorite thing, dinosaur chicken nuggets and french fries and cookies after he baked and pulled out of the oven with oven mitts covering his hands and making them look like puppets, but he doesn’t talk all that much. He just listens to her, and looks out the window at the snow.

She looks up from her coloring page and asks him what he’s thinking.

He glances over at her, face pinched with an old ache, his red marks all over him darker than normal when the light from the snow outside makes his skin even paler. 

Just remembering, He says, low and soft.

Remembering what?

He’s quiet, for a second, and cradles a steaming mug of coffee in both hands, hunched a little bit, not as tall as he normally is. Even without going outside, she thinks, he’ll be on the couch before Dad gets home. That’s okay. He’s still fun, even on bad back days. They just have different games they play then.

Daddy?

He blinks, shaken out of his thoughts. Yeah?

I said what are you remembering, Daddy. Did you hear me?

Yeah, um, I did. I did. Just... His eyes are back on the window, looking at the snow piled up outside, firewood stacked by a shed not too far from the house.

Mina sets her crayon down and moves to pick up another, watching his face.

He smiles, faint and sad. Just remembering when I lived... um... when I lived somewhere colder than this.

----

@whump-it, @bleeding-demon-teeth, @finder-of-rings, @burtlederp, @astrobly @whumpywhumper, @18-toe-beans, @pumpkinthefangirl, @special-spicy-chicken, @swordkallya, @moose-teeth, @whumpiary,  @lave-whump @raigash @whump-tr0pes, @wildfaewhump

[kitty0boy]

So it’s like 2 am rn and I’m tired but can’t sleep so I wrote this down quickly. It’s a little Marichat fic that probably won’t be very good because I’m running on like 5 hours of sleep. I’ll probably fix spelling mistakes tomorrow or even just delete this but for now, enjoy.

—————————

The class decided to have a picnic to celebrate their last year at Francois DuPont high school. They were about 17 now, some were 18. Everyone lounged around, eating pastries, talking about their first day back from summer and just genuinely having a good time. Unfortunately Adrien’s father had instructed him to go home so while he packed his belongings, he listened to his friends conversations. That was when he saw a younger girl run up to Lila.

Now Adrien knew he had a lot of fans, as Chat and as himself. The older and more, how you say, well defined he became, the more fans he acquired. Though when it came to Chat, being a fangirl was much more dangerous. At one point it got so bad that Ladybug had to schedule an interview with the Ladyblog telling them to stay away during akuma attacks. They would quite literally, chase after Chat while he was being chased after by an akuma. He even saw one of them pretend to be hurt so he would swoop in and save them. Yeah very dangerous stuff. Which is why it was quite a scared to hear that Lila was a fan.

“Of course I’m a fan of his, in fact, I’m quite close with one of Paris’s superheroes.” She spoke, hiding the lying tone to her voice. As irritating as she was, he had to admit she was good. “Really?” The girl squealed. She was on the younger side, maybe 13 or 14, about his age when he first got his Miraculous. “Oh leaving so soon Adrien?” She said in a sickeningly sweet voice. “Yeah, my father again.” He replied, trying to sound friendly. “I can walk you home if you like! I wanted to speak with Mr. Agreste anyways. About our up coming photo shoot.” Damn it, he’d almost forgotten about that. He hated shoots with Lila. Adrien had always liked physical affection, but with her it was almost unbearable. “No that’s ok, I can walk him.” Marinette offered, stepping in to shield him from the object of his discomfort. And what a beautiful shield she was.

Her days of pigtails were over, instead she would wear her hair in different styles everyday. Today was a half up half down style with space buns, very reminiscent of her fight as Multimouse. She has also settled for a mint green t-shirt and a black skirt which clearly paid homage to his superhero self. It was nearly impossible to wipe the Cheshire grin off his face as she strode over, picnic basket in hand. He was visiting her while she finished the little paw prints along the hem of the skirt, but of course she wouldn’t know that. “Wow miss, I really like your outfit! Where’d you get it?” The girl squeaked rushing over. Her eyes shining with pure joy. “Oh why thank you, I actually made it myself.” She curtsied, very adorably in his opinion. “Wow that’s so cool! Could you make me one?” If she got anymore excited she would float into space. “You know, I can get Chat to stop by if you wanted.” Lila chimed in, drawing the girls attention back to her. “Really?” She turned and ran towards her new favourite person. “Of course I can, my boyfriend always seems to find me.” She faked a gasp and quickly covered her mouth with her hand. “Whoops.” She exhaled. The class gasped. That was what she was looking for.

“You’re dating Chat Noir Lila?” Marinette snickered, silencing them. It was clear that Lila had more influence over the class now. As much as they all loved Marinette, Lila had successfully made herself more interesting. “Yes I am, but I wasn’t supposed to say that. Oh no, I’m going to get into so much trouble.” She delicately placed her fists over her chest for added effect. Marinette burst out laughing and that’s when Adrien slowly started to back away unnoticed by his friends.

He ran and ducked into an alley way making sure he wasn’t followed. “Oh come on kid, I didn’t even get anything from the picnic. You should have at least slipped me something.” Plagg groaned. “I will after I go sort this mess out, it’s dangerous if people think Lila is dating me, she could be targeted by Hawkmoth.” He rationalized. “Big deal, if she gets akumatized we can just purify her no problem.” “Uh yeah Plagg it is a big deal. What if Hawkmoth kidnaps her instead, as much as I don’t like her I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.” “Well kid if she gets kidnapped because she lied about dating you it’s not your fault is it? Now can I at least finished eating?” He sighed, Plagg was right. If she got kidnapped now she only had herself to blame. An idea did pop into his head. Maybe if she was proven wrong, she might stop saying things like that, and he knew the purrfect purrincess to help him achieve his goal. “Later, Plagg Claws Out!” A flash of green later and there’s stood Chat Noir, in all his leather-clad glory. Hopping onto the roof, he made to move towards them when the sound of shouting caught his attention.

“Do you realized how dangerous it is to even say things like that!” Marinette squeaked, really living up to her super identity and the mysterious multimouse. “You can’t just tell people you’re dating superheroes for attention Lila, you’re safety could be at risk.” She pointed, Lila seemed to be unphased but there was something about her posture that showed she was guilty and ticked off. “I already told you I didn’t mean to let it slip, I have a rare condition c-“ “called Liars Luny or something like that right?” Marinette interrupted. He had to hold back a laugh at her clever remark. “Marinette that was incredibly rude.” Rose intervened, and one by one everyone turned their faces to Marinette, a glared placed on almost all of them. All but Nino and Alya, who had long discovered Lila’s manipulative ways. Though they were still afraid to say anything about it, they didn’t want her to get akumatized after all.

“Look Marinette, if you’re jealous just say so, I won’t be mad. I’m sure a lot of other women would love to get their hands on my sweet kitten. I mean, considering your outfit it’s pretty obvious you have a crush on him.” You know, for a compulsive liar, Lila seemed to be good at getting the truth out of others. Marinette’s face turned pink and her fists began to clench. Her back stiffened up too, was she really jealous? Or was it just his imagination. Maybe he hoped she was, he had fancied her for a while now but he never made a move. Suddenly his classmates were surrounding her and she looked like she was on the verge of tears.

His anger from earlier started to rise to his chest as he let out a low growl and leapt off the roof. Thankfully, his years as a model made him a fairly decent actor as well.

“Fancy seeing you here my purrincess.” He purred walking over to the group. “You look radiant as always.” Lila stiffened but quickly tried to look relaxed as she confidently strode towards him. “It’s nice to see you here too kitten, couldn’t stay away from me I see.” She smiled, it almost looked genuine. It didn’t take long for her possi of classmates to follow behind, leaving Marinette standing there clearly distraught, he growled again as a tear slid down her cheek. Keeping it cool, he cooked up a response. “Umm, I’m sorry but do I know you?” He said in mock confusion. The class gasped slightly, “Of course you know me, didn’t you just call me your princess?” Lila chimed, placing a hand on his shoulder. “No. I have no idea who you are, I was talking to the lovely lady in green and black. She is radiant isn’t she, and she looks fantastic in my colours.” He replied cooly. Before anyone had time to react he ran through the crowd and picked up Marinette, twirling her in a circle. She giggled slightly, her throat a little strained. She placed her forearms on his shoulders, intertwining her fingers behind his head as he slowly lowered her to the ground. “What’s wrong love?” He reached up, gently brushing a tear from her cheek. She got the hint to play along. “Nothing I’m all good kitty.” She smiled genuinely and he smiled back. Ignoring the eyes of everyone around them. He held up his arm and gestures to her skirt. “Do you see all of these little paw prints? She sewed them all herself! It took her 4 hours too, I almost couldn’t draw her attention away from the stitching.” She blushed and buried her face in his shoulder, oh mon dieu she was so cute. “And these shoes,” he scooped her up bridal style and she laughed. “See the little toe beans, how adorable.” The girls squealed and ran over to admire her craftsman ship while the boys kept glaring daggers at Ms. Lie-la. “Ok now stand back everyone! We have to show you how it spins.” Marinette cocked and eyebrow at him. “How it spins? Excuse me sir but my pronouns are she/her.” He chuckled before pinching the black fabric of her skirt. “No I mean this, you did wear shorts today did you not?” “I did.” She confirmed. “Good,” he subtly winked at her before continuing, a little louder than necessary, “Wouldn’t want everyone else seeing what’s mine now would we.” Before she could register his words he held a hand above her head and gave her a little twirl, her skirt flowing beautifully in the wind. “See what’d I tell you? Absolutely beautiful.” He turned and smiled down at her, she blushed back up at him. Dieu, he could happily die drowning in her eyes. The two of them seemed to be in a world of their own, just looking at each other.

Until a voice snapped them back to reality. “I can’t believe you! You filthy cheater!” As well as a liar, Lila was a good actor. Tears streaming down her cheeks, arms straighten and hands curled into fists. He rolled his eyes before forcing them to look at a more revolting sight. “Like I said miss, I have no idea who-“ he paused “Oh wait I remember you! You were the liar that nearly got Marinette expelled weren’t you! The one who tried to intervene when Onii-chan was akumatized just because you disliked Ladybug.” He didn’t mean to get so angry but he couldn’t hide it anymore. His hand gripped Marinette’s shoulder a little more tightly than he would have liked but she wasn’t hurt by it. Everyone gasped on cue and turned to Lila who stood there pale. Karma is a bitch isn’t it? In his fury he barely registered Marinette’s hand on his arms. “Come on Chat, let’s get out of here.” She whispered. Coaxing him back to the present. “Yeah ok, I’m sure your friends will deal with her.” She smiled at her classmates who had turned towards Lila with furious looks on their faces. “Did you have a place in mind mousinette.” She giggled at that. “Well there’s always that spot you took me to the first time you came to visit, remember where it is?” She smiled. “I don’t think I would forget that.” He turned towards the crowd. “Welp, me and the princess will be taking our leave now, though I did enjoy seeing you all again.” Then he stooped down to pick her up bridal style as she giggled. For good measure he placed a light kiss to her temple before racing off towards that lovely spot they had just discussed.

“WHAT THE F***.” The fangirl screamed after all the confusion.

———————————

So it’s been a month or two since I first posted this and I decided to clean it up a bit and add a few more details to it. Not that this is suddenly going to blow up but I do like the impurrovement (hehe I have puns for days). So yes, if by some miracle you are reading this, I hope you enjoyed!

[thedistrictsleepsalonetonight]

Your mess is mine

Sue may only be a math major, but she knows this much about telling a story: it needs to have a beginning, middle, and an end.  

If she were to sit down and write one, here is where it would start — Emily laughs and she falls in love. It doesn’t matter the year, the month, or the minute; when Emily laughs, she falls in love. Sue’s a little slow when these things are concerned, love doesn’t come to her as quickly or as easily as it has historically come to Emily. I saw you in the coffee shop and I knew you were the one, she’s fond of telling Sue, usually during fights. It’s highly annoying that Emily thinks it’d work on her. Even more annoying is the fact that it does. 

Alright, does she have moments of intense déjà vu sometimes? Like when they’re lying in bed, after one of Austin’s house parties, and Sue curls up into Emily’s soft shoulders, plays with her pretty, pretty hands? Or when she catches Emily conked out in front of her laptop in a corner table at the café on her break and gently wakes her up? Sure. But isn’t that what love is? The same five gestures repeated in infinite ways, creating a well of infinite affection. So if walking the steps with Emily settles deep into her bones without flinching, as if they’ve done this before, she’s convinced that it’s because they’re well and truly perfect together. 

(Definitely not because — and this is something that has been occurring to her more and more lately — they were star-crossed lovers in a past life a century ago.) 

(That would be crazy.) 

(Right?) 

***** 

Falling in love aside, Emily can be really, infuriatingly, secretive about the worst of things. Sometimes it is charming, watching her having to pick her way through multiple explanations, create long-winded detours just to attempt to confuse Sue into getting exasperated enough to drop the subject altogether. But that’s at the very end, when it turns out that she was going to all this trouble to make sure Sue wasn’t going to find out she’d gotten her that one Hawaiian shirt Sue had off-handedly admired once, aeons ago. Or that she’s been holed up in their room all day because she’s been setting up lights in honor of it being exactly six months since they first hugged. Which is why she is more resigned that surprised when Lavinia sits down in front of her, leans in, and asks her what she’s doing for Emily’s birthday next week. 

Sue sneaks a look at Emily who is currently chatting with an old lady who usually comes in on the weekends. Her girlfriend happens to be one of those baristas who is beloved by the elderly, God only knows why. All the older ladies will hang back at the counter and tell her all about their grandkids’ schools and ballet recitals. In return, Emily will rant to them about college and apparently, Sue as well, which was something she discovered one day when she walked in and two old ladies gave her teasing yet approving smiles from their table. 

(And then took her aside to whisper — Showing a little skin wouldn’t do any harm and would keep your girl on her toes — which near about killed her)  

The entire situation is hilarious. Also the most adorable thing she has ever seen. 

“Why haven’t you guys discussed your birthdays yet?” 

“It’s just never,” Sue muses, “come up, I guess.” 

Austin rollerblades past, swivels to a stop and bends so he’s approximately level with their faces. “Are we talking about,” he says, lowering his voice to a comical whisper, “Emily’s birthday?” 

Lavinia pulls him down, so he’s sitting on the spare chair. “And Sue’s, apparently. Did you know her birthday falls, like, nine days after Emily’s?” 

Austin stares at her, wide-eyed. “That means it’s on the.... 19th? 

Sue nods. 

“The 19th of December? After Emily’s birthday, on the 10th of December?” 

“Y....es?” 

He swipes at his phone, taps a couple of buttons, and then looks up with a smug smile. “I knew I remembered something. Look.” 

Lavinia has to angle her whole body to see, but it registers for both of them at the same time. A certain poet and her muse, who also apparently shared the same birthday as her and Emily. 

“Huh,” Lavinia says. “Maybe there is something to Emily’s theory after all.” 

“You mean Emily’s theory that we’re the reincarnations of those two?” she asks, hearing her own voice get progressively more hysterical by the word. She clears her throat, takes a deep breath, adds it to the list of rapidly growing coincidences in her head that she’s never going to give a closer look to, because that would be crazy. 

“Really the only part of this I’m genuinely shocked by,” Lavinia says after a long pause, in which Sue is struggling to reason with the logical part of her brain, “is that Austin remembers Emily Dickinson’s birthday.” 

Austin smiles proudly, and the thought is so funny that it drives potential insanity out of her mind eventually. 

***** 

“Why didn’t you tell me your birthday’s tomorrow?” 

Emily startles from where she’s staring out the window of the car, and Sue has about a moment to regret blurting it out before they’re looking at each other. She’d spent the entire week setting up the entire thing for Emily and now it probably won’t even be a surprise, but she’s insanely curious. No better time for it, either way. She’d planned everything perfectly, from picking up Emily at the café in the classy car she’d borrowed from Austin, to making sure it wasn’t too late after dinner. And yet, here they were, surrounded by cars and honking people because traffic was a fickle bitch. 

“Is that why we’re taking this trip?” she asks, wide-eyed. 

Sue extends a hand towards her, ruffles up her hair, feeling fond. Trust her idiot girlfriend to not have figured it out yet. She moves her hand to Emily’s cheek, and feels Emily cover it with her own. Feels a soft kiss pressed against her palm. 

“What did you think it was, dumdum?” 

“Well, it is the three month anniversary of—” Sue’s alarm is probably showing on her face, so she backtracks quickly. “Kidding. Kidding. There’s nothing tomorrow.” 

Sue pinches at her cheek. “Except your birthday. Speaking of which—” 

“Eh,” Emily shakes her head, shuffles around on her seat awkwardly, “it’s.... uh, complicated.” 

“Is the complication that you happen to share a birthday with a poet from long ago?” she’s only half-joking.  

Emily laughs at that. “Caught on, did you? Did you also check—” 

“E-yup.” 

“That your birthday is also—” 

“E-yup,” she says. Then turns to look at Emily. “Wait. How do you know when my birthday is?” 

Emily opens her mouth, but before she can say anything Sue hurriedly cuts in. “And you’re not allowed to say you have your ways.” 

Years ago, when Sue was fourteen, one day her dad and her mom came home with the same vegetable. Same quantity. It was beans, and she could vividly remember all three of them staring down in mock dismay at the two separate huge bundles of beans that now took up most of the space on the table. Then they started comparing prices. Turns out her mother’s bundle had cost a couple cents lesser than her father’s. But it’s not the same , her mother had insisted, holding up both the bundles. See, yours weighs more. I think the grocer I bought it from took some off . 

To this day, she defines love as the way her mother’s hand fell over his, combined with the way her dad looked at her next — like a child who had just been told that the blanket fort he’d spent hours constructing, wasn’t going to be torn down. Like someone had just handed a piece of the world to him, and told him to make of it whatever he wanted.  

Sue recognizes it in the way Emily looks at her. Like she’s saying — Of course. Of course, you know me well enough to guess the next stupid thing that comes out of her mouth. 

(She’s not very good at love, but she hopes Emily can read the answer in her eyes just the same) 

“Birthdays are complicated,” Emily says, slowly. “I’ve had some very good ones and then some very bad ones.” First girlfriend who she asked out on her 20th birthday, and second girlfriend who she broke up with a week before her 23rd; Sue fills in the blanks as she talks. “So I guess I try not to tell people so I myself don’t expect anything out of it. Neutral birthdays are better than euphoric ones or sad ones, because at least they don’t haunt me forever.” 

“Baby,” she says, and then trails off. Sometimes she likes calling Emily endearments, or just say her name out loud, randomly, even if there’s no statement attached to it. The sentiment’s always the same, however. I’m glad you exist. I’m glad you found me. I like your name. I love you.  

(Emily’s fallen asleep by the time she’s driven to the top of the grassy knoll, by the time the clock hits midnight. Sue lets her sleep through it. There will be time to sit on top of the blanket and watch a sleepy Emily blow out the candles on a tiny cake that looks like a typewriter, to stare at the stars all night long while they listen to soft, slow songs on a pair of shared earphones. For now, Sue watches Emily sleep, head tilted against the glass and decides to hold off on telling her she loves her until the day after her birthday. It’s a perfectly neutral birthday. No use in spoiling it.) 

(Emily says it back though, in case anyone was wondering) 

***** 

Sometimes, when Sue sees Emily cooking for her, she loses her breath. 

(And sometimes, it’s not even due to the smoke from a burned dish) 

But there’s something peaceful about watching Emily cook, especially if she hasn’t yet cottoned onto the fact that Sue’s watching her. She’s one of those annoying people who always has their headphones on, so most of her cooking in the kitchen involves perfectly timing the beats with the swipes of her spatula. Sometimes she spins around in the middle of a pancake flip to see if she can catch it in midair. Juvenile shenanigans aside, what really gets Sue, even after almost a year of having watched Emily dance around in the kitchen is the care with which she handles food that they will eat. It’s so different to the kind of food she cooks when she’s just cooking for herself. Sue’s seen her slap on two days expired cheese on top of a tortilla and call it lunch. And yet. 

And yet. Sue will have the best of things. Lasagna that’s still steaming. A sandwich filled with the most delicious ingredients. Waffles topped with cream that Emily will get up early in the morning to get for her. Food enhanced with care, made better with love. 

Why don’t you make those nice things for yourself, she’s asked on multiple occasions, to which Emily’s always shrugged. It’s just me. I can have almost anything. 

(Emily deserves the best. Sue will make sure she has it) 

There are flowers on the table, an assortment of daffodils and lilies arranged on a vase. Right in between two shiny plates laid out with napkins folded carefully beside them. Sue slides into one of the chairs quietly, rests her elbows on the table and waits for Emily to finally turn around. 

There is a panicked scream when she does. Sue doesn’t want to be that girlfriend, but this is definitely going on the list of stories she’ll tell their future kids when they’ve grown. 

(Another day she would worry about how the term — Their kids — moves around in her chest comfortably like a sip of hot cocoa. Today, exactly one year to the day Emily told her she liked her, she shrugs it off) 

“You weren’t supposed to wake up for another half an hour at least.” 

Sue hums. “You did tire me out last night, that is true.” 

“Sue!” Emily says, scandalized, face rapidly turning red. “I — that’s highly — okay wait, first things first....” 

She walks over to the table, and bends to kiss Sue.  

“Happy anniversary.” 

Sue closes her eyes, kisses both her cheeks in response. “Happy anniversary, my love.” 

Emily grins back, then stands again. “Either way,” she says, as she ladles soup onto a bowl, and gathers multiple plates on a tray to subsequently bring to the table, “brunch! Courtesy of your beautiful girlfriend who finally managed to figure out how to make the perfect chicken pot pie without burning down the house, or worse, giving you salmonella.” 

Sue inspects what lies in front of her. “Babe, this looks amazing.” 

Emily looks proud, as she sits on the other chair. “And that’s not all, okay? This is just the start. Today evening I have gotten us both tickets to—” 

“Move in with me.” 

When Emily blinks, Sue startles. The words that had just come out of her mouth definitely weren’t well-thought-out, but now she was thinking about it and it seemed like all she ever wanted in life. To go to sleep with Emily, and wake her up in time for her morning classes, to be able to see her all the time, and not have to watch her go. 

“That wasn’t my gift, by the way,” she adds, speaking fast, thinking of the limited-edition original copies of a book she’d driven five hours to the next town to get. “But it’s what I want. Us. Living together. I love you. We should.... uh, live together so — uh, okay Emily make me stop talking please.” 

Emily shuts her up with a kiss. When they separate, she stays close to Sue, looking right into her eyes with that soft, soft expression.  

“Are you sure?” she asks. 

Sue takes in a deep breath. Nods. “Yeah.” 

Emily considers that for a moment. Then says with a teasing smile — “I thought this violated your relationship rules.” 

“What ae you—” 

“No kissing before the second date. No celebrating six-month anniversaries because that’s for dummies. No moving in before at least two years of dating—” 

“And if you remember correctly,” Sue cuts in, smoothly, “I kissed you two days before our first date. And serenaded you with a Taylor Swift song at the café on our six-month anniversary.” 

“You did do that,” Emily says, quietly. 

“And as long as we’re on the subject, I hate staying up past 11, or listening to sad girl music in the car, or watching that horrendous show about those two annoying men fake-dating,” Sue tells her, “but — it is my greatest honor that I get to do that for you. And with you. Emily, if you haven’t figured it out already, you’re kinda the exception to every single one of my rules.” 

Sue reads Emily’s answer in the kiss she receives next. 

***** 

The middle, the middle, everything boils down to the middle. It’s what Sue sometimes hears Emily muttering to herself in the middle of the night when she has an assignment due the next day. Sue will blink, look over to the desk where Emily is planted with her nightlight on, hands in her hair. Sometimes Sue will keep blinking slowly, taking in the sight of Emily typing until she falls asleep. Sometimes Emily will notice that she’s up, walk over to the bed, and hum snippets of songs until she’s drifting off again.  

And for all the beauty of the beginning, of first kisses and first dates and first times, there’s something to be said about the fifteenth time Emily plays her something on the ukulele, warning her beforehand that her voice might crack. Or the sixtieth burger she runs across the campus to hand over to Emily when she knows she’s got back-to-back classes scheduled. About the hundredth time she falls into bed, and scooches over, eyes closed, until Emily’s wriggling body is aligned against hers. There’s peace in knowing that a first time will inevitably lead to a second time, and then countless others.  

(There’s peace in knowing the middle lasts the longest)   

***** 

She knows she’s in trouble. Has known she’s in trouble the minute she came out of the store and discovered that there was a pileup on the highway. And then when Lavinia called her panicking because their house-warming slash house party was getting out of control because of a lack of beer and a general overabundance of Austin. And then when her phone died in the middle of her conversation with Emily.  

(So much trouble) 

She’s exhausted by the time she makes it back to her apartment (their apartment , she corrects herself, smiling at the thought) and makes her way up the stairs, hearing the volume of the music increase with every step. Opens the door and is assailed with extremes — the tiny sparkling mirror ball someone’s managed to hook up to the ceiling, the dancing crowd in their living room, and a very loud and weirdly on-point Austin making guitar noises on the karaoke microphone. 

“Lavinia!” Sue calls out in relief, when she catches sight of her. “Where’s Emily?” 

Lavinia excuses herself from a group of frat boys hanging onto her every word and walks over. “Sue! Emily!” 

“Yeah, I know! Tell me where she is!” 

Sue points towards the ceiling, and in the same smooth motion, grabs the crate of beer from her hands. 

Sue’s out of there before the first cry of “Beer” permeates the air. She climbs another two floors, and then the metallic ladder to find Emily sitting there, wrapped in her blanket, glaring up at her. 

“You promised,” she says, flatly. 

Sue drops onto her knees and takes Emily’s cold hands in hers. “I know.” 

“No, you,” Emily repeats, then pauses, looking like she’s struggling, “you promised you were gonna be here, okay? I agreed to the housewarming thing only because you told me there wouldn’t be many people and you’d stay with me the whole time—” 

“—baby....” 

“No, don’t baby me. Let me finish.” Emily waits until Sue nods. “And then you went off to the store.” 

“We ran out of beer,” Sue says, feeling sheepish. 

“I know — I know that, okay?” Emily says. “I know there’s a reason, and probably a valid one but I’m mad, okay? You promised me something and then bailed. That’s not cool.” 

Sue adjusts so she’s properly sitting down right in front of Emily. “I’m sorry,” she says, and means it. “It was inexcusable.” 

Emily sighs, and seems to relax a little. “Okay. Thank you for saying that.” 

Sue nods. “Some party, huh?” she says, after a while. 

Emily smiles a little, then. “Did you see Austin? He was performing the High School Musical songs when I left.” 

She laughs. “When I came in, I think he was doing the guitar riff to Bohemian Rhapsody.” 

“Hey,” Emily says, after they’re done giggling at that. “I never asked. What took you so long? I thought you just went to get beer.” 

“Uh,” Sue says, “I’d rather not tell you.” 

“What? Why not?” 

“Because I don’t wanna charm my way out of you being mad at me.” 

“Oh,” Emily draws the sound out, teasingly. “It can’t possibly be that charming.” 

If she wanted to play it this way, then okay. 

“I stopped at an animal shelter on the way home. There’s a young cat there I thought we could adopt. Consider her a housewarming present.” 

“Oh,” Emily says, then in an undertone. “Damn it.” 

“Charmed?” 

“Ugh, fuck, okay,” Emily admits, then pulls at their joined hands till Sue gets on top of her lap. “I hate you. I love you, but I hate you.” 

Sue kisses her in return, settles in more comfortably. 

“Tell me about her?” Emily asks, softly, in the quiet. 

“Well, she chased the light reflected off my watch round and round so it’s safe to say she’s not the brightest.” 

“I love her already,” Emily assures her. 

***** 

On her eve of her 25th birthday, Sue walks into her apartment and finds Emily, Lavinia and Austin panicking over how to fit the last half of her last name onto limited space on a handmade banner. She says hi to Juggers and Iguana, their two cats, then picks up their two-month-old puppy Rooney, all before one of the three already present humans in the room realizes she’s there. 

“Sue, I’m so sorry,” Emily says, walking over to her and looking at her with a slightly desperate look in her eyes. “We tried baking cake, but it’s half burnt, but we can’t decide what to get and all we have are balloons but then Austin’s going crazy trying to keep Juggers from bursting them, because guess what? The cat is the devil—” 

“—babe—” 

“—no, I tried to make it a good birthday, I really did!” 

She puts her hands on either side of Emily’s face, which forces her to quiet down. Then she looks over at the others.  

“Have you guys been here the entire time I was taking classes?” 

They nod. 

She feels a little overwhelmed. “Guys, I — thank you so much,” she says, then takes stock of the situation. “Can you order pizza? We’ll ring in my birthday with pizza tonight.” 

Lavinia side-hugs her on their way out to the couch, and then they’re alone in the kitchen. She kisses Emily on the forehead, then on both cheeks, trying to drive away the frown. 

“What?” 

“I just wanted you to have a good birthday,” Emily says, despondent. 

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Sue says. “And so are our friends, who sat and worked this hard for hours trying to make me happy. And we’ll have pizza! We like pizza.” 

“You’re just saying that.” 

“No, you idiot” Sue explains, fondly. “I mean it. We’ll have burned cake, and we’ll fight over the pizza, and even if the animals are outnumbered, we’ll probably lose to them. And then we’ll probably watch a movie, and somehow all fall asleep on the carpet because Austin always claims the whole couch. Either way, it’ll be a good birthday, because I’m happy. And you know why I’m happy?” 

Emily’s still pouting. 

“Emily, why am I happy?” 

“Because we’re together,” Emily completes, in a small voice, and then finally, finally smiles. 

(It’s the messiest birthday Sue has ever had. Also the best) 

***** 

Here’s the thing about endings: everyone who writes stories knows they don’t really exist.  

A famous author once said that they weren’t really the end of the story, just where you chose to stop it. Well, Sue agrees. Which is why this story in her head never ends. The imaginary typewriter in her head will keep typing long after, filling pages with anniversaries and birthdays and emergency dog adoptions. Maybe the next page talks about the day Sue breaks her arm, and Emily proposes to her with an onion ring she gets out of the hospital vending machine. Or the day Lavinia loses Rooney, walks around the entire block with Austin to find him and finally discovers he’s hanging out at the old café they used to work at. 

So. Yes. This is where she decides to leave it. Finish it. There will be more stories to write later.

The end. 

(Wink wink. Nudge nudge.) 

[echoghost1]

Cast Into Obsidian

Word Count: 2530

For: @lexiepiper and @sapphireswimming

Summary: The accident sent Danny to the hospital due to the damage to his eyes.

You can read on AO3 or down below the cut

Danny idly moved his hand back and forth over the blanket on his lap. He was trying not to be impatient, but he really wanted the doctor to hurry up already.

“Okay Danny, I’m going to take the blindfold off now. I’m going to need you to lean forward just a little bit, okay?” he asked and Danny complied, eager to be freed from his prison of gauze and darkness.

As the gauze made its final orbit, Danny took a steadying breath before opening his eyes.

He only found more darkness.

“Are the lights off?” he asked, hoping it was that or maybe his eyes were taking a bit to adjust.

“Yes, we didn’t want to overstimulate you.”

He hummed in acknowledgment and leaned back against the pillows. “I was kind of looking forward to seeing something.”

“Is it too dark?” the doctor asked. Something about his tone seemed off. It seemed almost worried.

“Yeah. Is there a way to turn on one light or something?”

He heard something being written down, “We can try that. Just a moment.”

Danny heard the doctor walk away so he turned in the general direction and waited for the click of the switch.

“This light is on a dimmer and I’m going to gradually turn it up. Just let me know if it’s too much and I’ll turn it back down.”

“Okay,” Danny nodded.

He waited for the light to come on.

He waited.

Waited.

Why was it taking so long?

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I don’t know? Maybe turn the light on and I can tell you?”

There was the click of several switches and Danny could hear the buzz of fluorescent lights above him.

But there was nothing but darkness.

“I’m so sorry.”

That’s not something he wanted his doctor to say.

He thought it was bad enough that a stupid accident in his parent’s lab had him in the hospital overnight.

But this? It was so much worse.

“But I can’t be blind.” His voice hitched as he tried to keep his composure, “I want to be an astronaut. You got to get your pilot’s license first. I can’t be blind. I can’t!”

He couldn’t keep it together any longer so he asked the doctor to go away. He didn’t want to cry in front of them.

Why did his future have to rely so heavily on sight? You can’t touch stars. You can’t hear them either.

Why did the thing he loved the most have to go away?

He was only trying to be helpful and now it felt like his whole life was over.

He felt so stupid for crying about this. He wasn’t dead. He should just be thankful he wasn’t dead.

There were tons of people in the world who were blind and they got along just fine. This was just something he’d have to get used to. Something new to learn.

He thought he had it all out of his system but he lost it all over again when his parents found out. The second he heard his mom sniffle he was back at it with the waterworks.

The best the doctors could figure, and there were definitely multiple doctors that had come to poke and prod him once they figured out what happened, was that the light from the machine his parents made was just so bright it fried his eyes.

They all agreed that it was permanent.

Part of him hoped they were wrong about that. Part of him wondered if maybe it was just temporary. Maybe his vision would come back, but not all at once? Maybe he’d have to wear glasses like Tucker for a while. Heck, maybe they’d have the same prescription.

He wasn’t really sure how glasses worked, but he wouldn’t mind finding out if it would get him out of the dark.

He didn’t like how he had to stay in the hospital to relearn how to walk. He knew he was clumsy before, but without his eyes, he was even worse.

They got him a cane so he could waggle that around instead of flailing his arms. He hadn’t realized that it was so obvious.

He also had to get used to people just suddenly being nearby. Sometimes he’d just be sitting and zoning out and someone would just start talking to him, or worse, touch him, and he’d freak out because he didn’t know they were there.

Thankfully, his family learned pretty quickly not to scare him like that. His Dad sometimes forgot to announce himself, but he made so much noise just existing that it didn’t really matter. His mom sometimes forgot to say hello, but she always made sure to warn him before touching him. Jazz was the best at it.

At first, she sometimes went a little overboard by announcing literally everything, even the movement of others, but he did appreciate it.

===============================================

It was his last day in the hospital that his friends were finally able to visit him.

“Now remember you have to tell him where you are or if you want to touch him before you do it.” Jazz whispered to someone at the doorway.

“Jazz you’re supposed to say hello first.” he teased knowing she was just about to.

“I was!” she pouted with a little huff. “Anyway, Hello Danny.”

He stuck his tongue out in her general direction as he waved.

“No fair! I can’t stick my tongue out at you.”

“Sure you can! Just make a lot of noise when you do it!” he gave his best example by humming loudly with his tongue out.

Jazz snorted.

Or maybe that wasn’t her?

“Who’s here?” he asked and wondered why he didn’t just wait for her to introduce them before he teased her.

“Sam and Tucker,” she answered. “You can go sit in the chairs over there if you want,” she said to his friends who were still awfully quiet.

“You know you can talk to me right?” he said once he heard them take their seats. “I’m blind, not deaf.”

“You’re taking this rather well,” Sam said, sounding oddly timid.

“I have had a week to deal with it. Plus you know me? I don’t like being bummed out.”

“No one likes being bummed out, Danny.” she retorted sounding more like her usual self.

“Says the goth.” He teased right back.

Something hit him in the arm and he tensed.

“Oh shoot! I’m sorry! I forgot!” Sam quickly apologized.

“You forgot?! Dude, we’ve been in here for barely a minute!” Tucker yelled through what sounded like clenched teeth.

“Guys!” He really didn’t want them fighting. Not now. And definitely not over him. “I’m fine. She just surprised me, is all. Plus, I did kind of deserve it, so there’s that.” he shrugged it off with a smile and just hoped they relaxed.

It was quiet for a few moments.

Then a couple more.

“Could you let me know if we’re good or not? I am literally in the dark over here.”

Both his friends quickly reassured him that they were fine.

Then Tucker snickered, “Wait, did you just make a pun?”

“Of course!” Danny laughed. He was even happier when they laughed along with him.

With the tension finally broken the trio slipped back into their normal rhythm. It was easy for Danny to imagine that they were just hanging out in his room at home.

There was a knock on the door and Danny turned to the sound, “Who is it?”

“Dude, who are you talking to?” Tucker asked.

“Someone knocked on the door.”

“Who did?”

Danny sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “I don’t know, Tucker, that’s why I asked, who is it.”

“Well, I didn’t hear a knock.” Tucker retorted.

“Boys!” Sam interrupted, “Danny do you want me to go check?”

“Yes! Thank you.”

Danny heard the creak of the chair as Sam got up and he followed the sound of her boots as they made their way to the door.

The door opened.

After a few moments, it closed again before Sam made her way back over to Danny’s bedside. “I didn’t see anyone. Maybe you just mistook one of the nurse carts rolling past.”

Danny furrowed his eyebrows in frustration, “I know what a cart sounds like and that wasn’t a cart!”

“Geez sorry.” Sam apologized sarcastically as she dropped back into her chair.

Danny sighed, “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

He pulled his knees in and just hoped he didn’t piss off one of his only two friends. It’s not like making new friends was going to happen.

He was only frustrated because that wasn’t the first time that had happened. He’d been hearing knocks at his door only for no one to be there all week. It was just often enough to be annoying but not so frequent for him to ignore it.

He thought about telling them about it. Or maybe even ask them to leave the door open in case it really was the cart sounding odd when it passed.

He almost did.

But the knock came again.

“That’s it!” Danny got off his bed in a huff and walked straight to the door, or the general approximation of where he was thinking the door was, anyway. He hadn’t exactly memorized the room yet.

His hip bumped the tray next to his bed, but it was on wheels so it rolled out of the way as he course-corrected.

His friends called for him, both to come back and to be careful, but he didn’t care right now. He needed to find out who was at the door. To prove that he wasn’t hearing things.

He hit the door a bit sooner than he was expecting and it took him a moment of feeling around to find the door handle, but he did it. He took a step back as he opened it to make sure he didn’t bean himself with the thing.

Then he just stopped and stared because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Mostly it was because he was seeing.

Everything was still dark, like he existed in a void with no discernable up or down, but now there was something else. A woman.

Something about her was off, besides the fact that he shouldn’t be able to see her. At first, he thought she was standing on her toes, but then he realized she didn’t actually have feet. Her legs just sort of morphed together into a long wispy tail as it tapered down towards the ground. He looked back up and noticed her short red hair that defied gravity along with the rest of her. He also couldn’t help but notice that the edges of her seemed blurry like she wasn’t really there.

She wasn’t facing him so he had no idea what her face looked like. She was currently knocking on the door across the hall from his.

He slowly closed his door and leaned against it.

There was a soft rhythmic tapping on the door behind him. Like someone was drumming their fingers against it one at a time.

“I knew you could hear me,” whispered a voice from the other side of the door. “Poor little thing. All alone in the dark.” her sugary-sweet voice sent shivers up his spine. “I could help you, you know? All you have to do is let me in.”

His legs shook so bad he slid down the door until he was sitting. Somehow he just knew she wasn’t asking permission to enter the room. She could come in anytime she wanted, he wouldn’t even need to open the door.

No, she was asking for entry into something else. Something much more important.

This was the sort of thing his parents had warned him about all his life.

For once something they taught him was finally paying off.

He clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes tight. He had to be firm. He couldn’t let her, it, trick him into agreeing. “No.” he opened his eyes and the darkness didn’t seem so dark now, “I don’t need you.”

She hissed and scratched at the door. “You can’t get rid of me that easily!”

“Go away!”

The door rattled in its frame in response to his outburst and he frantically crawled away from it.

He bumped his head into something and he screamed because everything was just too much.

“Danny! Danny! It’s just me! Sam! I got you!” Sam pulled him into her arms and he clung to her as he shook.

“Hey, I’m coming over too, man,” Tucker said as he came next to Danny and hugged him too.

The trio sat on the floor huddled together until Danny finally stopped shaking and could breathe regularly.

He relaxed his death grip and leaned back with a sigh.

“What the heck was that?” Tucker braved and Danny could hear the click of his phone being unlocked. “I mean, I already didn’t trust this place, but that was something else.”

“Wait,” Danny turned towards Tucker and tilted his head in confusion, “What was that like for you?”

“Well at first I thought you were about to flip out over nothing.”

“Gee thanks.”

“So I pulled out my phone to see if I could catch something funny.”

“You recorded that?!”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t going to send it to anybody.”

Danny crossed his arms and huffed in annoyance, “Well?”

“It’s just that once you started talking, things got weird.”

“Weird how?”

Danny heard his own voice through the tiny speakers of Tucker’s phone, but Tucker just talked over it, “Well I thought I was seeing things at first, but I could have sworn your eyes changed color.”

“You saw it too?” Sam asked as she shifted, presumably to get closer to Tucker and watch the video. “Yeah, right there! Pause it!”

Tucker tapped the screen right as past Danny was yelling at the ghost to go away. “Whoa, they just turned green.”

“And they are glowing,” Sam added.

Which to Danny, her addition was a tad more alarming than a slight hue shift, “Glowing?”

“Who were you talking to anyway?” Sam asked, ignoring Danny’s worry.

“I don’t know.” Danny stammered, “There was this woman. I think it was a ghost.”

“Why do you think it was a ghost?” Tucker asked as he set his phone on the floor.

“Because she was floating?”

“You saw her?” Sam asked in awe.

Danny nodded.

“That’s crazy,” Tucker whispered just as awestruck.

That only made Danny more self-conscious. Did they not believe him? Did they think he was nuts now? Had they always thought he was crazy?

“I can’t believe you can see ghosts! That’s so cool! What’d she look like?” Sam asked eagerly as her hands slapped onto the tile and he assumed she must be leaning towards him.

“You believe me?”

“Of course we do!” She answered quickly, “isn’t that right?”

The sound of something, or someone, nudging into someone else was followed by a grunt from Tucker, “Yeah.”

He was so lucky to have such good friends.

[chillassimagines]

New Experiences (CNCO Smut Preference)

(REQUESTED)

[ calling the boys d a d d y and s q u i r t i n g for the first time ]

JOEL:

“Come here!” You jumped up from the sofa and ran at Joel. Running into his arms made you feel a happiness you’ve only felt when he returns to you.

“I’ve missed you so much, Y/N.” He spoke softly in your ear while swaying your bodies back and forth.

“I’ve missed you too and I love you so much.” You pulled your head from on top of his chest to lean up and kiss him.

“And I love you...but don’t think I forgot about that photo you sent.” He gingerly grabbed your chin in his hand to maintain eye contact with you. Before he got on his flight to come home, you sent a very racy photo his way. Joel recalled being slightly rude to the Uber driver about hurrying up, which he hated that he did it, but he needed you.

“It was a little motivation to come home to me...as soon as possible.” You gave him a huge grin as you laughed mischievously.

“Well, I’m here, Mami.” He leaned down to press kisses onto your neck.

“And I’m ready, Daddy.” You bit your lip, praying he would react well. You wanted to try it when he returned, hoping the photo would smooth it over well. You heard a sharp inhale of breath right next to your ear.

“Well, after that, I don’t think you really are ready.”

-

“Fuck, Joel, please! Let me cum!” You begged him as he thrust his fingers inside of you once more, hitting you right where you needed it.

“Who?”

“Daddy, please, let me cum. I’ll do anything.” You whimpered as your eyes rolled into the back of your head. At that, he pulled his thick digits away from you.

“Anything?” Joel asked, before suckling at his soaked fingers. You moaned softly while watching him and nodded.

“Yes, daddy.” He reached down and grabbed your wrists to move them above your head.

“Don’t move your hands and I’ll let you cum, okay?” You nodded quickly in agreement, making him chuckle softly. His lips lowered to your naked abdomen, slowly kissing down to where you were throbbing and aching for a release.

“Please hurry.” You cried softly, feeling his cold cross necklace slide against your slit.

“I will, baby.” He pressed a wet kiss right against your slit before opening his mouth to delve his tongue in between your folds. His torture was slow and deliberate, making your hips buck up. Joel seemed to enjoy it as he grabbed the undersides of your thighs to press his face further into your heat. His tongue began its fast pace and there was no going back.

“That’s it, fuck!” You grabbed fistfuls of your own hair, wishing it was his, as your hips wildly followed their own accord in humping Joel’s face. He hummed loudly as he suckled on your clit. “Ah! I’m cumming, yes, daddy!” You damn near screeched as your high hit you like a truck. You felt an odd sensation in between your thighs, but the orgasm was too strong for you to focus on it. You arched your back up so high you thought you’d break it.

You suddenly felt Joel’s hands grab your breasts, making your attention switch to the man between your thighs. His curls hid his actions, but he appeared to be enamored with licking away every last drop of you. The hypersensitivity made your legs shake around his head at every movement.

“Joel, I can’t, you have to-fuck!” You gasped and your toes curled up so hard as he kitten licked your clit while looking up at you. You reached a hand down into his mess of curls and tugged. He never ceased his stare down as you threw your head back.

“Mami...you just squirted all over my face.” Joel spoke in a happy teasing tone. He kissed up in between your breasts to soon hover over you and look at you with a smile.

“That was the best thing I’ve ever experienced.”

ERICK:

“She is uh, my best friend, my “partner in crime”, y-I mean and, I can’t wait for you all to see her in the video.” Erick spoke at his laptop. You smiled at him in the corner of the living room. You had situated yourself onto a bean bag while Erick did his online interview during quarantine. You were beyond thrilled that the music video had been filmed before all this mess and that their second single to the new album would be released on time.

He glanced at you momentarily and you gave him two thumbs up with a smile. He returned the smile before looking back at his computer. Erick never thought he’d fall in love with someone whose first language was English and they had minimal experience with Spanish. However, you two make it work. Granted, his English skills are superior to your Spanish, and he’s only getting better with latin music inter grating into the United States charts. He does more English interviews and you’re always there to support and help him.

“Thank you! ¡Adiós!” Erick waved at his screen for a few seconds before completely shutting it. He sighed and looked over at you. You grinned and made your way over to him. You stood between his legs and ran your fingers through his hair.

“You did so well, bebé.” Erick’s hands made their way to your behind so he could pull you onto his lap.

“Gracias mi amorcito.” Your lips met, but Erick took it to a passionate level. “Te quiero.” He whispered against your lips and you smiled, knowing you had felt him harden underneath you.

“Really? I can’t tell.” You teased, brushing your nose against his.

“I can show you then.” He squeezed your ass and brought you to grind against his hard on. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders.

“Mmm, what do you want, Papi?” You brought one hand down to slide right underneath the waistband of his boxers. He grunted lowly.

“You.” He commanded, making you waste no time in undoing his pants and sliding them down his thighs. “Alto.” He demanded as you reached down to remove your light blue dress. You raised a brow.

“You wanna fuck me with my dress on, Papi?” You teased. He nodded and gripped the back of your neck to kiss you once more. You peeled back his boxers enough so he was free. Your underwear was non existent today, which Erick noticed after you lifted up your dress.

“Ándale, amor.” He ordered, bringing his hands down to your ass again. It was his favorite place for his hands to be. You slowly lowered yourself onto his length with a sweet sigh.

“So big, Papi.” You moaned right against his ear and bit down lightly on his neck. He grunted again before thrusting up into you, prompting you to move. You gripped the back of his head as you bounced up and down on top of him. His hands urged your fast pace on your ass.

“C’mon amor, puedes ir más rápido.” He reached under your dress and slapped your bare ass. You gasped in shock as it had pleasured you and made you even more excited.

“I’m close!” You whimpered reaching up with one hand to lower the neckline of your dress. No bra either. Erick was quick to wrap his lips around your nipple as you continued riding him like there was no tomorrow. “I’m gonna cum, Papi.”

“Not. Yet.” Your eyes widened. Erick immediately slowed your pace down with his grip on your backside. It was more of a heavy grind now.

“¿Por qué?” You whined. One hand of his came down in between your bodies and his thumb pressed right against your clit.

“Cause I said.” He challenged you with his eyes, but you wouldn’t dare. His lips returned to your nipple and softly licked it while resting his head on your other breast. His thumb however, sped up to an unforgiving pace.

“Oh fuck.” You moaned breathily. You had a deadly grip on the back of his neck as you fought your urge to cum. You had unconsciously begun to bounce up and down again, making Erick moan deeply against your breast, sending it straight to your core. “Please Papi, no más.” You pleaded, ready to cum all over him.

“No.” He simply stated. You whined and threw your head back, as he pinched your clit.

“Holy shit.” You gasped, loving the feeling of it. He smirked and scooted to the side before laying you down on the sofa. Your eyes widened as much as they could through your sex haze as he took your thighs and wrapped them around his waist. He thrust into you harshly and never let up after that. “Papi!” You cried which made him grab your hands and intertwine them against the arm of the sofa.

“You wanna cum, huh?” He asked. You nodded quickly. He smirked and let go of one hand, bringing his thumb back down to your clit. “Cum then, bebé.” You cried as he showed no mercy in his thrusts or his finger movements. You took your free hand to grip his neck and press his mouth to yours while you felt liquid gushing out of you. Erick pulled his swollen mouth back from yours quickly to look down in between you two. He groaned as he felt himself release inside of you, but he was so distracted by the fact that everything was glistening.

“Papi, you know what that is?” You asked breathlessly. He shook his head.

“It’s called squirting.”

CHRIS:

“Guess what day it is?” Chris asked in a sing song voice while wrapping his hands around your waist.

“I know what day it is, Christopher.” You laughed and cupped his face in your hands.

“The day we make my niño.” He grinned happily and you shook your head.

“What are you gonna do if it’s a niña?” You asked teasingly. He bounced his head side to side in faux thought, then shrugged.

“Tendré dos princesas.” You smiled with him and pressed a long kiss to his lips.

“You’ll be a daddy.” He raised a brow.

“I definitely already am.” You dropped your jaw.

“¿Cariño, tu piensas que no se? I saw your messages with Naomi.” You and your best friend, Naomi, may have talked about kinks you wanted to try on a few different occasions. None you’d ever been brave enough to bring up to Chris. You specifically remembered ‘Daddy’ being a frequent topic, because that’s the aura you received from Chris 9/10 times.

He was firm with what he wanted in the bedroom, but his aftercare, and when he wants to pleasure you? That’s a real daddy right there. His aftercare would always be inticing to you, because he’d find away to keep the sexual tension going, and sometimes that ended in another orgasm. When I say sometimes, I mean. Every. Single. Time. He loved to deny you orgasms, or give you so many you were jello.

“Chris, I-”

“No cariño, dime.” You gaped at him in awe for a minute. He wanted to go down this road and he was driving quite well. He definitely brought the bedroom voice out.

“Daddy...I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Didn’t know how you’d react.” You cupped his face in your hands, while he wrapped his arms around your waist.

“You will be sorry.” He grabbed your hand from his face and used it to pin your body against the wall. His free hand unzipped your leggings so he could press his fingers against you through your panties.

“Do something...please, daddy.” He hummed and began rubbing soft slow circles onto your bud. You whimpered. “Más, por favor, Papi.”

“Me gustarlo.” He released your hand so his other could assist in pulling down your pants and panties. Chris got down on his knees and began kissing your thighs. “Bebé...eso es emoncionado.” He gripped the skin of your thighs in various places hard enough to create multiple hickeys.

“More?” You whispered out, hoping he would give you what you desired. He shrugged.

“I don’t know who you’re talking to.” He ran his pointer finger down your slit once. You shivered from his touch and whined.

“Daddy, I need more.”

“Good girl.” His lips wrapped around your clit, making juicy and wet noises he produced with his mouth. You fucking loved it.

“Oh my god, yes. Oh god, I love you. Yes, right there, right there!” You cried out and gripped his hair with a deadly force. His eyes were closed, but it made it feel so much more passionate. He didn’t need his vision to know how to make you feel.

“You want more?” He paused and asked, taking a breather.

“Please daddy.” He placed his thumbs on both your folds to spread them apart. His tongue slid into the middle and began flicking your clit back and forth. “I’m cumming, right here, right now!” You cried as you released. You took a deep breath, but Chris was already on his feet, grabbing your hand, and leading you back into your bedroom for the rest of the night.

“No listos, cariño.” He removed his top and you felt the need to do the same. He also removed his pants and boxers in one go. You loved to be naked in front of each other, it fueled the sexual desire for you both.

“Cómo?” You gestured to the bed. Chris took both of your hands in his.

“On your back. Legs wide for me, mamita.” Chris would call you every name in the book to get you worked up. He turned you around so your back faced the bed. You sat down on it and Christopher let go of your hands as you situated yourself. His eyes never strayed from your body. “We’re making a baby tonight.” He spoke confidently and crawled on top of you.

“Please daddy.” You felt ready for another round with the way his eyes ate you up.

“You want me?” He asked, trailing his fingers down your thigh and hooked his hand underneath it.

“Yes, so bad. I need you inside of me...cumming inside of me.” You brought a hand up to cup his face while his other hand followed his previous actions. You felt his member press right up against you.

“Mmm, I guess that can be arranged.” He slowly pushed himself all the way inside of you, making you both let out long simultaneous groans of pleasure. He began rocking back and forth inside of you, using your legs for more leverage for deep thrusts.

“Oh fuck!” You whimpered out, digging your nails into his chest. He hissed through his teeth.

“Not so hard, mami.” He spoke firmly. You immediately let up, not wanting a prolonged orgasm.

“You just, you fuck me so well, Daddy. It feels, so good!” You cried at the end as he hit your favorite spot.

“Mmm, mami, right there, huh?” He grunted as he purposefully hit it again, making you beg for more.

“Yes! Faster, Daddy, please!” Chris did not disappoint. The sound of skin slapping together at a harsh pace soon followed your request. He hit it. Every. Time.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum, Y/N.” He panted out to you. You nodded and brought his face down to yours with both of your hands.

“C’mon, Daddy. Baby, cum.” You cooed to him, nearly closing your eyes at the intense pleasure. With two more harsh smacks of his skin against your own, he stilled deep inside of you.

“Shit.” He whispered, pressing his wet forehead against yours as you felt the pressure of his cum spread inside of you. You felt Chris lift your legs while staying inside you. You smiled, knowing he’s read one or two things about conception. “Te amo.” He whispered to you.

“Te amo, Chris.” You leaned up slightly to press your lips to his softly. The delicate kiss turned naughty when Chris’ lips suckled on your bottom lip. You moaned, prompting Chris to slowly thrust inside of you.

“I need more, mami.” He whispered against your lips. You smiled once more, knowing Chris’ stamina was not a short one.

“Take it, Daddy.” You nipped at his upper lip teasingly. He grunted in response to you and lifted your legs even higher to rest on his shoulders. You crossed them behind his neck, making sure he couldn’t lean back up away from you.

“I will.” His hands dipped under your back and made his hands grip your shoulders. He began rocking your bodies back and forth together. The temperature increased due to your close proximity and it made it so much more intimate. Sadly, you felt your orgasm coming so soon.

“I’m gonna cum, Chris.” One of his hands abandoned your shoulder and reached down between your hot bodies. “Fuuuck.” You sighed, your eyes rolling into your head while his thumb attacked your clit mercilessly.

“Cum for me, mamita.” His lips latched onto your neck, no doubt creating a bruise. You gasped, feeling like you couldn’t breathe as you began your release. You scratched at his back, making him thrust quickly into you. You kept trying to find air to inhale, but it felt like there wasn’t any. “Mami!” He hissed, but you ignored him and everything, not being able to open your eyes from their current state.

You felt him pull out of you, making your release your nails from his skin, and your legs falling limp on the bed. You finally felt yourself being able to control your eyes and opened them. Chris was staring in between your legs and at his hand.

“Chris?” You called for him, still trying to recover from an unforgettable orgasm.

“Y/N, you came, like everywhere.” You looked down between your legs and observed his glistening hand.

“Oops?” He chuckled and licked his hand.

“I’ll run the bath for us, huh?” You nodded with a lazy smile, unconsciously resting your hand on your stomach.

ZABDIEL:

“¿Hey, tú quieres comida, bebé?” You asked Zabdiel while he was laid on the sofa in his boxers and a tank top, watching a telenovela.

“¿Cómo qué?” He looked up at you, abandoning his eyes from the screen. You always appreciated that about Zabdiel. If he was talking to you, 99% of the time he’d dedicate his attention to you.

“No sé.” You laughed and he joined you. “Pero, puedo hacer algo.” He hummed and reached out his hand for you to take. You placed your hand in his and he led you around to the front of the couch. He pulled you on top of him and you chuckled in confusion at his odd actions.

“No sabemos que queremos, amor.” You hummed, mocking him, and leaned your head down on his chest.

“We can just cuddle then till we decide.” You began adjusting yourself till Zabdiel’s hands shot down to grip your waist.

“Alto, bebé.” Your eyes widened when you realized Zabdiel was growing hard under you.

“Oh shit, my-“

“We can do something besides cuddle, amor.” His hand ran over your hair softly. You looked up at him to find a little grin on his face.

“Zab, I’m hungry.” You whined.

“So am I.” He winked and stuck his tongue out. If your eyes could get bigger, they would have.

“¿Tú quieres...?” You trailed off, unsure. One of his hands lowered to your ass and gave it a little pinch, making you jump.

“Mucho.” Zabdiel had never, ever eaten you out. It was just something that hadn’t been prompted yet in the bedroom. “Pero...aquí, mi amor.” On the couch?!

“We can go to the bedroom-"

“No quiero. Ahora, bebé.” He gestured to you, and you knew he meant business. You began unbuttoning your jeans and stood up to be able to pull them down. Zabdiel didn’t move an inch which made you very confused.

“Zab, I need to lay back.” You spoke, slightly timid. You were nervous, truth be told. He shook his head and pointed to his lips.

“Right here.” He wanted you to sit on his face?!

“O-Oh.” You slowly peeled off your panties to join your jeans. You stepped closer to the couch and Zabdiel shook his head.

“Top. Off.” He ordered. You bit your lip and removed your top, revealing your bare breasts. “Hmm, no bra?” You felt very cheeky in that very moment.

“¿Te gusta, Papi?” You winked playfully, expecting Zabdiel to laugh. However, his eyes narrowed slightly.

“Get up here, Y/N.” You nearly passed out at his dominance. Your shaky leg hooked over past his shoulder on the fairly wide couch, allowing your other knee to rest on the opposite side.

“Say it again, amor.” His hands came down to your hips and rubbed soft circles into your skin.

“You want me to say...Papi?” You questioned. He nodded and pulled you up to his lips. He looked up at you expectantly. “Papi, please.” You spoke softly, bring your hand down to run your hand through his blonde hair.

“Así, amor.” You watched his tongue exit his mouth and connect with your heat. You inhaled quickly at the sensation. Your hand instinctively gripped at his hair as he continued exploring you. It’s one thing to do it with his fingers or even just his member, but it’s another when he uses his tongue and his eyes up close and personal.

“Papi, más por favor.” You whimpered, tilting your head up towards the ceiling. One of Zabdiel’s hands landed with a harsh smack on your ass, making you jump.

“Look down here, mi amor.” You followed his order and maintained eye contact with him. It made the ordeal so much more intense and dare you say, naughty. His lips latched onto your sensitive nub and proceeding to nibble softly with his lips, making you moan like a porn star.

“Papi, I’m close! Fuck, just like that, Papi. Yes!” Your hips began gyrating against his face and he seemed to bask in it. His moans caused vibrations to go right towards your pending orgasm. His dark eyes never left yours and when you found yourself wiggling your head around his never faltered.

“Don’t cum.” Your jaw dropped in simultaneous pleasure and shock.

“Papi, please, I-” Zabdiel plunged his wet tongue into your even wetter hole. You cried out as he thrust his tongue quickly. Your hands released his hair and gripped the arm of the sofa. “Zabdiel, I’m gonna-” And just like that you found yourself laying on your back.

“What did you just say?” Zabdiel asked in a dark tone. Your eyes were wide but also the sensations he left on your core were still going, so you weren’t all there.

“I was, I was going to cum.” You mumbled, making him reach up to your nipples.

“Papi, doesn’t want you to cum yet.” He pinched both of your nipples making you gasp.

“Okay, okay! I won’t till you say!” He leaned down to softly suckle at each of your nipples, relieving the pain.

“Niña buena.” He pressed a soft kiss to your lips to which you responded eagerly. He pulled away a little too soon for your liking.

“Papi.” You whined, making him chuckle.

“¿Tú quieres más?” He leaned his forehead on yours, but not yet allowing your lips to meet.

“Si, Papi. Por favor.” You leaned up and a Zabdiel met you halfway. His kisses were to die for and they made you melt like dulces carmellos. You moaned into the kiss as Zabdiel began grinding his hips against your bare core. He of course was covered by his boxers, but his bulge made it damn near impossible to tell.

“You wanna cum, amor?” He asked before bringing his kisses to your neck. You allowed your hands to wrap around his back and your legs followed suit.

“Yes, faster Papi.” You gasped as he immediately obliged, pressing right against your clit everytime he moved.

“Dámelo amor.” Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as his words prompted your orgasm.

“Fuck!” You cried as the orgasm felt so much more intense than ever before. Zabdiel pulled back from your neck and rose up, still sat on his knees to stare at his soaked boxers. He peeled them down his thick thighs to release his member.

“I don’t know what you just did, amor, but I’m about to cum inside of you.” With that he slid right into you.

RICHARD: (the moment you’ve all been waiting for and if you weren’t waiting for the best one idk why you thought daddy richard wasn’t EVERYTHING)

“It looks good, mami.” Richard ran his thumb over the skin next to your latest tattoo. Richard had been away during the healing process of your latest body art, so he was excited to get a real life close up of it. It was placed from mid thigh to your lower stomach. It was red line work of a dragon

“Gracias.” You leaned down and placed a kiss on his forehead. Richard was lying down at the end of the bed while he was observing. His hand was holding up your shorts higher so he could examine the tattoo.

“No panties bebé?” He casually didn’t look at you and kept his focus on the body art. Your eyes widened slightly, totally forgetting you were ready for bed when Richard came home early to surprise you.

“I wasn’t expecting you.” You attempted to say just as casually.

“So if you did you would have put panties on?” His thumb trailed up your dragon in swirls and lines of the design.

“Uh, no, I mean, I don’t know. I would have kept my day clothes on, I just got dressed in this to sleep. It gets hot.” You rambled. You hated when you were awkward.

“You get hot down here, mami?” He looked up at you as his hand grasped at your inner thigh.

“Richard!” You whisper shouted. You had no reason to whisper, you just felt caught off guard. You should have expected him to be horny coming home, just not so witty about it.

“Say Daddy, mami.” His thumb rubbed your lower lips and you gasped quietly at his demand.

“You want me to call you Daddy...or Papi?” You bit your lip softly, looking up at him as he moved to hover over you.

“Daddy, bebé. If you call me Papi I won’t be able to stop.” He spoke before pressing his lips hastily to yours. You moaned against his lips as he submerged his thumb in between your lower lips to rub on your clit.

“Daddy, don’t stop.” Your jaw fell open as his thumb went faster. His lips moved down to assault your neck with kisses and purple splotches. His opposite hand went to the back of your head and pulled down on your hair. “I have a surprise.” You moaned, feeling your orgasm near you.

“What, mami?” He asked before nipping at your jugular.

“I’m on birth control now.” Richard stopped everything. He had begged and begged for a year for you to get on birth control. He was okay with waiting, but he still teased you about it. One time you let him do it without and it felt heavenly, thank god his pull out game was good. You swore that unless you went on birth control, which you were in no rush to do, that it couldn’t happen again. Sometimes while having sex he’d whisper to you,

“Remember how good it felt to have just me, inside of you mami?”

and you’d almost cave. But never since that day has he gone raw inside of you.

“Don’t lie to get your way, princesa.” He whispered lowly.

“I’m not, I promise.” Your hands reached to caress his face and tilt his head up so you could see his face. His lips were swollen and his nose was slightly blushed. He was an absolute passionate latin lover right out of the books and it showed.

“The best welcome home gift ever.” He said as he pulled your shorts off of your body. You laughed a little at his reaction and pulled his shirt off.

“Get naked, Daddy.” You teased him and proceeded to pull your tank top off. You were completely bare underneath everything and that seemed to motivate Richard to move faster.

“Did I ever mention how much I love you?” Richard spoke lowly, running his hands along your body.

“Eh. Maybe once or twice.” You smiled at him and he smiled back before giving you a kiss. “And I love you.”

“Wanna turn around for me, princesa?” Richard asked, running his nose along your navel. You turned over onto all fours and looked back at your man.

“I need you.” He hummed got adjusted on his knees.

“Louder, mami.” His hands squeezed around your thighs.

“I need you.” You spoke a bit louder. It didn’t seem to satisfy Richard though.

“You can do better.” You took an inhale of breath.

“I need you, Daddy, please cum inside me!” You cried out as he wasted no time in pistoning himself inside you. “Fuuuck.” You whined as a finger went to your clit while his hand remained gripping your thigh for leverage.

“You miss this like me, mami? This feeling of me fucking you how you like it?” Your eyes rolled up as the dirty talk turned you on like no other.

“Yes, daddy. I missed your cock.” Richard prompted filthy words to exit your mouth every time you two had sex. He made you feel so sexually liberated and wanted you to let him know how to please you. He dominated you with the purpose of being your only outlet of sexual necessity.

“You miss feeling all of it? While you throw yourself back onto me? No more fucking condoms.” He grunted loudly over the sounds of your skin clapping. Your grip grew tighter on the sheets as your clit was throbbing and your core was fluttering around Richard. You knew he could feel you contracting around him repeatedly. The noises exiting his mouth made it clear for you.

“I’m gonna cum, Daddy. Please let me cum.” You knees grew tired of helping you move back onto Richard, but he moved his hand from your thigh to your hair to pull back on it.

“Cum for me, mami. I want it all.” He kicked your thighs further apart with his own and rubbed at your clit with his palm making you scream in pleasure.

“Fuck! Papi!” You didn’t even comprehend that you allowed that to come out of your mouth, but when you said it Richard slammed his hips against yours agressively, making your ass seem like it was getting slapped repeatedly.

“Mami, fuck, look at that. You’ve made a mess now, bebé.” Richard moaned as his hand movements caused liquid to literally squirt out of you. Your vision went starry as your eyes most likely crossed so hard at this intense pleasure. You couldn’t even respond to him at this point. “Look at my messy girl, I love making you a mess, mami.” His hand gripped the front of your neck and moved his chest to cover your back.

“Papi...” You whimpered, feeling your entrance contract uncontrollably, triggering your sensitivity.

“Wait.” He demanded. His teeth grazed against your shoulder making you quiver. He moaned deeply in response. “Do it again, mami.” You felt a second orgasm assault your body and simultaneously felt the pressure of Richard’s cum coating your insides. “Shit.” He whispered harshly, squeezing a bit tightly around your neck.

[avengerscompound]

The Tower: Family - 13

The Tower: Family An Avengers Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Pairing:  Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 1986

Warnings:  Pregnancy

Synopsis: With new powers, Thor now living on Earth full time, a wedding to plan, and Natasha and Wanda expecting, a lot is changing for Elly and her large and rather unconventional family.  When Elise’s parents try to reestablish connections, Elly questions what being a family actually means.

Chapter 13: Balancing the Numbers

I didn’t hear from any of my biological family anytime soon after that, and I just went back to my regular day-to-day life.  The twins would be starting preschool soon and we were all taking the time to appreciate them being around, just as we were also planning to enjoy the time when they first started.  I spent my time between them and the lab and I tried to put everything else behind me.

Wanda had well and truly started showing, while Natasha had just a very small baby bump.  They were both extreme ends of what pregnant women could be too.  Wanda had that glow everyone always spoke about.  Her hair was rich and full, and her skin was clear and beautiful.  She was tired a lot but she would take regular naps and she was loving being pregnant.  Most of the time you found her wearing long flowing clothes that showed off her baby bump.  Natasha on the other hand was irritable and moody.  Her skin and hair were on the greasy side.  She had a weirdly high amount of energy and kept freaking out about all the things we needed to do before the babies came and her sex drive went from 0 to 100 at the drop of a hat.  She also was in sweats all the time and usually, the sweatshirt she wore was one of the guys so she was swimming in it.

It wasn’t long after I met with my parents that we had a group ultrasound appointment.  Natasha and Wanda were at sixteen weeks and doing the glucose test and were hoping they might be able to find out the sexes too, though it was at the very earliest they’d be able to tell.  I was at eight weeks and it would be the first time we got to see this baby at all.  Everyone was very excited and wanted to be there for it.  Especially the guys who missed a lot of the first pregnancy.  However, the examination room was only so big, and there were also the twins to worry about.  So, a decision was made that the biological parents would be in the room while everyone else got to watch the ultrasound via a video in the living room.  The others would get to come for future ultrasounds so everyone got a chance to be there too.  For right now, Sam, Tony, Bucky, Natasha, Wanda, and I all sat in Doctor Schroeder’s office going through questions and concerns.  Wanda and Natasha had done their fasting tests and everyone was just excited to see the babies.

“Alright,” Doctor Schroeder said when everyone was done with their questions. “Who’s going first.”

“Let’s go with El,” Wanda suggested.  “We’ve seen the other three babies.  We haven’t seen this one yet.”

“Alright, Elise,” Doctor Schroeder said.   “Underwear off and up onto the table, please.”

I did as I was told, stepping behind a screen and taking off my panties before climbing up on the table.  Tony quickly swooped in and took my hand as Doctor Schroeder prepped the wand.

“Alright,” she said, nudging my legs a little further apart.  “You’re all going to be pros at this by the time these babies start arriving.  Little pinch.”

She inserted the wand and I flinched as it pinched and then she pushed it around trying to find the little embryo growing inside me.  Tony kept tapping his fingers nervously on my hand.

“It’s alright,” I soothed as she kept moving the wand around.  “Everything is going to be okay.”

He didn’t say anything and his hand tightened in mine.  I saw the little peanut shape with its tiny fluttering heart appear on the screen and smiled.  “And there’s your baby,” doctor Schroeder said, circling the little shape on the screen.

“That’s them?”  Tony asked, staring at the screen.

“Looks like a jelly bean, doesn’t it, Tones?”  Sam said.

“It’s about the size of a bean too,” doctor Schroeder added.

“Wow,” Tony said.  “Our little bean.  They’re okay, aren’t they?”

Doctor Schroeder had moved on to doing measurements and she didn’t answer right away.  Tony’s hand got tighter and tighter in mine the longer she waited, and he began to tap his feet.  “The baby is the right size, the heartbeat is strong.  Everything looks fine,” she said and Tony let out a breath.  “Honesty, of all three pregnancies this is the one I’m least worried about.  Elise has already had one successful pregnancy.  Twins where one wasn’t even fully human.  With you as the father and the fact you said Thor used his god powers to help conceive, I’m sure it’s going to go just fine.  We’ll keep an eye on everything of course and I expect you to follow all the rules regarding diet and exercise, but I’m not concerned.”

“Oh good,” Tony said, and leaned over, kissing my temple.

“Can we hear the heartbeat?”  I asked.

Tony perked up and doctor Schroeder flicked a switch so that the woosh-woosh-woosh sound of the heartbeat filled the room.  All six of us smiled as we listened.  “That’s our baby,” Wanda said.  “Can you believe it, Tony?”

He shook his head and watched the screen.  “Alright, printouts I’m guessing,” doctor Schroeder said and pressed another button.  The machine whirred as it began to print out a picture of the baby and Doctor Schroeder pulled the wand from me and handed me some wipes.  “Okay,” she said as she began cleaning up.  “Who’s next.”

“Oh, me please,” Wanda said.

I cleaned myself up and got off the table and there was a small flurry of activity as the protective paper was taken off, it was sprayed down and some fresh paper was put on.  I redressed and Tony and I sat with Bucky and Natasha.  Natasha put her arm around me and we watched on as Wanda got up on the table and the waistband of her skirt was pulled down to reveal the swell of her stomach.

“I’ve warmed the gel up for you,” doctor Shroeder said as she squirted it on Wanda’s stomach.  She grabbed the ultrasound paddle and pressed it against her stomach.  Almost immediately the image of two babies showed up on the screen, side-by-side.  Wanda squeaked and squeezed Sam’s hand

“Oh wow,” Tony said.  “They look like actual babies.”

“Yep, a lot happens between eight and sixteen weeks,” doctor Schroeder agreed.  She pointed out all the different parts on them, hearts, spines, arms, and legs, fingers, and toes.  We all watched on entranced by the little babies on the screen as she took her measurements.  She played the sound of their heartbeats for us and Sam leaned in and nuzzled at Wanda’s cheek.  We were told that both babies were the same size, which was a very good sign.  That their heartbeats were strong and healthy and that so far everything looked as perfect as we could hope for.  “Okay,” she said finally.  “Are we going to attempt to find out the sexes?”

“If you can,” Wanda said.

That seemed to be a bit harder to do.  The twins did not want to play along and every time doctor Schroeder thought she had a good angle on one, they’d move or put their feet in the way.  Eventually, she seemed to get one of them at an okay angle.  “Now, I could be wrong, so we can check again later, but it looks like we have a girl.  And as they’re identical…”

“Girls,” Wanda squeaked.  “Two girls.”

“Oh wow,” I said, with a hum. “We’re closer to getting balanced.”

“For sure.  There’s too much testosterone in this household,” Natasha agreed.

“Pictures?” doctor Schroeder asked.

“Of course,” Tony said.

She pressed a button and printed out a side-by-side shot of them.  “Alright,” she said, taking the paddle off and wiping Wanda’s stomach clean.  “Ms. Romanoff, you’re up.”

Wanda got off the table and once again there was a little activity as the table was cleaned off and the wand was cleaned.  Natasha climbed up and pushed her sweats down to her hips, exposing her stomach and her ultrasound started.  Doctor Schroeder squeezed the warm gel onto her stomach and pressed the paddle against it.

“And there’s the fourth baby,” she said, as the clear baby shape popped up onto the screen.

“Please can I hear the heartbeat?”  Natasha said with a slight shake in her voice.  Sixteen weeks was when she lost her first baby, so her anxiety about this one was extremely high right now.  Bucky took her hand and gently caressed the back of it as the doctor flicked on the sound.  The woosh-woosh-woosh of the heartbeat filled the room and Natasha instantly started crying as her whole body relaxed.

“Oh god, don’t look at me,” she said, covering her face.

“Tasha, it’s okay,” Bucky assured her.

“El,” Natasha said.  “I need you.”

I got up quickly and moved to her side, Bucky making room for me.  I wrapped my arms around her and she hugged me, hiding her face in my neck.  “I thought for sure…” she whispered.

“I know,” I said softly, rubbing her back.  “It’s okay.  Our baby is okay.”

“Are they?”  Natasha said looking up from me at the screen.  “Is the baby okay?”

“I just need to take my measurements, but that heartbeat is very strong and healthy,” Doctor Schroeder answered.

“Right,” Natasha said, lying back and looking at the ceiling like she wasn’t even able to look at the image until she knew for sure it was okay in case she got too attached.  Bucky stood behind her and stroked her hair.

“Everything looks fine.  A very strong baby,” doctor Schroeder said.  “Did you want to know the sex too?”

Natasha looked at Bucky and he smiled and pressed a kiss to Natasha’s head.  “Up to you, Tasha.”

“Yes, please,” she said.

Doctor Schroeder moved the paddle around so the image showed the underneath of the baby.  “It’s another girl.”

“Holy hell,” Sam said.  “Three girls.  We’re gonna be outnumbered.”

“We’d have to have a lot more girls than that to outnumber all of you,” Wanda teased.

“A little girl, Tasha,” Bucky said.  “You’re having a little girl.”

Natasha nodded and buried her face in my neck again. “I’ve got you,” I said, rubbing her back.  “You’re okay.”

Doctor Schroeder printed off another image and gave it to Bucky and then cleaned off Natasha’s stomach.  Were there any other questions?”

“I think we’re all fine,” Wanda said.

“Alright, Wanda I’d like to see you in a couple of weeks just for a check-up.  And I’ll see you all again in four weeks,” the doctors said.

“Thanks, Doc,” Tony said.  “We’ll call if anything comes up.”

The six of us went to the elevator and rode it up, Natasha wiped her eyes and took a deep breath.  “Three girls,” Sam said.

“I wonder what you’re having, Elly,” Wanda said.

“It’d have to be a boy, right?”  Tony answered.  “Statistically speaking.”

“You know statistics mean nothing when it comes to individual cases, Tones,” I teased.

The elevator opened to everyone standing right there waiting for us.

“Three girls?”  Clint said.

“We dot more sisders?”  Pietro asked.

Sam picked him up and tossed him in the air before cuddling him.  “You sure do buddy.”

Everyone moved in for a hug, Bruce wrapping his large arms around the whole group and holding us tight.  The twins giggled as they were pressed in against everyone, but I melted into the comforting pressure of the embrace.

“We’re all going to have to agree on three girls’ names, you realize?”  Steve said.

Everyone started laughing and pulled back.  “Way to ruin a moment, Cap,” Tony teased, heading to the bar.  “I think we might have a champagne moment, what do we think?  Time to celebrate?”

Steve chuckled.  “I can’t think of any better reason to celebrate than this.”

// NEXT

[vannahfanfics]

If Love Was A Color

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Characters: Katsuki Bakugo, Ochako Uraraka

Additional Tags: Quirkless AU, Soulmate AU

Katsuki’s red eyes zeroed in on the word outlined in the fine print stretching across the six-inch-thick book in front of him. While many of the students congregating in the library would find the massive treatise daunting— especially considering its contents were as dull as the lightbulbs flickering in their dumb heads— Katsuki absorbed every syllable. Committing laws to memory was no easy task, but he embraced the challenge. After all, one day, he would be Japan’s most renowned prosecutor. 

Katsuki’s eyebrows twitched as the loud giggling of girls disrupted his concentration. He glanced over his shoulder with lidded eyes to watch two first-year students clutching coffee cups stroll by.

“So you met your soulmate in Introduction to Biology?” one asked, a pretentious-looking girl whose ponytail looked tight enough to rip off her scalp. 

“Yes! He’s so handsome and so dreamy! He wants to be a doctor; I can’t believe I lucked out with someone so smart and driven!” the other squealed as she pressed a hand to her flushing face. Her cheeks darkened as her friend joked that she should just drop out and marry him since he’ll be so rich; the girl laughed and insisted no, she couldn’t, how improper… But Katsuki could see the wheels turning in her head. He scowled as they disappeared behind some shelves, but their giggles floated behind them, clouding Katsuki’s study sanctuary with obnoxiousness. 

Katsuki hated the concept of soulmates— or really, love in general. First of all, it was so fucked that there was some predetermined person you were miraculously just supposed to commit to spending your life with. What if they were a bitch, like that girl who would rather slide right into a rich man’s pockets and had no work ethic? What if they were some bum who lived in their mother’s basement? It burned Katsuki up inside, the fact that he was supposed to just accept someone without them earning his approval first. There was no way in hell he would let someone ride his coattails off the pretense of love. He had way too much to worry about anyway, as a college senior. 

Still… Sometimes he had to admit that having monochromatic vision was a problem. Although the world adapted to the fact that people were colorblind until they met their soulmates, most people actively sought them— so by Katsuki’s age, most assumed that you had colored vision. He had to continually nag his professors for including color-coded charts and the like in their lectures because how the fuck was he going to differentiate? Still, that problem could be solved just by making waves— and Katsuki was damn good at that. 

Ugh. I have a headache now, listening to those two bimbos prattle, he scowled, rubbing his temples as a dull pounding made a home in his skull. He pushed away from the table, leaving the open books and notes behind to walk the short distance to the coffee shop that adjoined the university’s four-story library. As he stood in line to order himself a plain black coffee, silently reciting the laws he’d just memorized in his head, he didn’t notice the door slam open and someone flurry into the small shop— that is, until they plowed into a chair, tripped over it, and slammed right into Katsuki’s back. 

“Uwahhhhh!” they screeched. With a surprised yelp, Katsuki reflexively arched his back as their face crashed right between his shoulder blades. Crimson eyes wide in confused, he whirled around to face the clumsy stranger— 

and then recoiled because color exploded into his world. He groaned as he staggered back into the display, eyes twitching as his previously inactive rods and cones sprang into life to fill his vision with a million different hues. He held his hand over his eyes, trying to adjust to the thin slivers of color peeking out through his fingers, and watched as a short, round-faced girl with a bob cut slowly straightened up while rubbing her nose. 

“Ow, ow, ow,” she whined pitifully before cracking an eye open. Katsuki gawked at the dark, warm hue that filled her irises, the same color as the tables’ rich wood— brown? Was that brown? Her hair was the same color, so if she was a brunette, it would make sense. Slowly, he lowered his hand from his eyes, squinting as the pain ebbed. She raised her head, mouth opening to apologize— and then she inhaled sharply. 

“Wow. Your eyes are such a beautiful color.” 

Katsuki could feel the heat rush from his toes to the crown of his head. His mother had always told him he’d had crimson eyes like rubies. The girl continued to pore over them, a serene smile blooming on her face before it dawned on her. 

“Wait, wait, wait, I— color? But that means we—! You’re my—! Oh gosh!” she spluttered. Katsuki winced as she slapped her hands hard to her cheeks, causing the skin to bloom pink there— pink, yes, that was the color of blushing. She continued to squirm wildly, entirely overwhelmed by the situation, before she managed to squeak out a sentence. “I’m Ochako Uraraka! It’s very nice to meet you, um, soulmate— Oh, that sounds so creepy!” she wailed and tugged at her chestnut tresses of hair. She looked apologetically at him. Her face turned a deep burning red. “Let me try this again… Your name, what’s your name?” 

“Katsuki Bakugo.”

The barista called him to take his order, so he turned on his heel and did. As he was handing a few bills over the counter, Ochako scampered up behind him to peek over his shoulder. 

“A plain black coffee, huh? You see the type!” she chirped. “I like sweet things— iced coffees with lots of cream, sugar, and flavored syrups are delicious! My favorite flavor is Irish cream— hey, where are you going?” she whined as Katsuki ignored her prattling to take his coffee and begin walking to the exit of the store. He grimaced as she followed after him, swinging her arms and hips a little so that the little planet glitter charm— it was dark, could that be purple?— on her bookbag swung back and forth. “We’re soulmates, right? We should get to know each other, don’tcha think?” 

“Sorry,” Katsuki huffed as he pushed the door open. “I don’t do the whole soulmate thing.” 

He tried not to think of the pitifully sad look on Ochako’s face as he closed the door right in it— but he found that it stuck in his memory for the next three days until he came to the library again. 

She had some determination; he would give her that. She found him in his little nook, leaning his chair back on two legs as he pored over another law book— one that had a blue binding, Eijirou had told him. He didn’t even notice her approaching until he heard the soft tap of a cup, and he looked up to see her standing there, smiling pleasantly as she slid a black coffee towards him. 

“You’re a diligent student, I see. Studying pre-law?” she observed with a point at the book cover. Katsuki snorted, half-debating ignoring her again and rejecting the coffee, but he was running on empty. Why refuse free caffeine? Though he loathed small talk, he supposed he could entertain her for a few minutes, as thanks.

“Yeah,” he answered as he picked up the cup and sipped at the steaming hot beverage. The tension melted from his shoulders as the robust flavor of the roasted beans hit his tongue; it wasn’t long after that the caffeine kicked in, giving his dulled senses and attention a nice buzz. He noticed Ochako slip into the seat opposite him, continuing to smile with those big brown eyes of hers sparkling. He saw the purple planet charm— Saturn, he realized— sitting atop her backpack, so he pointed to it. 

“Astronomy?” 

“Aerospace engineering.” 

Katsuki released an appreciative whistle. He hadn’t expected that of the bubbly girl, and despite his reservations, he had to respect her challenging curriculum. She puffed out her chest with a prideful grin and continued, “I want to design rockets!” 

“A space case for a rocket scientist. That’s perfect,” he snorted with laughter, making Ochako puff out her cheeks in defiance. Now that he noticed, they looked so soft and round… He almost had the urge to pinch them and feel how squishy they were. Almost. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a little spacey, but it doesn’t matter as long as I can solve the equations, does it?” she retorted haughtily. Katsuki shook his head, muttering a “Guess not,” and she reclined in her seat with a satisfied smirk. Katsuki’s crimson eyes fell back to the law book he was osmosing, and he could see her watching him intently above the tops of the thick pages. “What do you want to do?” she asked slowly. She seemed to be getting the hint that he didn’t want to be bothered for long, but there was a stubborn glint in her eyes. 

“Prosecute,” he quipped, not looking up at her. 

“Wow! That’s an ambitious goal. It takes a lot to be a government prosecutor.” 

“Yeah, it does— a lot of studying, which, if you don’t mind, I would like to get back to,” he huffed with more venom than he meant. A strange sinking feeling washed over him as he watched the girl sink a little into her chair and her smile fold down at the edges. Silently, she got up and slipped her backpack on, mumbling a half-hearted “see you later.” As she began to leave, he cleared his throat. 

“Thanks for the coffee,” he added with a frustrating heat rising to his cheeks. Ochako glanced at the half-empty cup, then back to him— and her smile returned a little sliver. 

The next time they ran into each other, he was in line to get coffee again. She came in afluster, face scrunched as she pored over a notebook scrawled with mathematical equations; she was so absorbed in her calculations that she didn’t notice Katsuki standing in front of her, nor that he ordered an Irish cream and hazelnut coffee with extra cream in sugar. As he turned around, she shuffled forward thinking he had exited the line and bumped right into his chest. Her round cheeks pinkened and she looked up to squeak out an apology, but it died in her throat when she noticed it was him. 

Wordlessly, he held out the coffee to her. 

“To pay you back for the other day,” he explained as she took it, looking at him like he’d given her a ring instead of an iced coffee. She hid her bashful smile behind the white lid, slowly turning her body from side-to-side. As they moved out of line, he gestured to the messy array of numbers and letters on the pages. “What’s that? Looks intense.” 

“It’s an extra credit assignment. If we solve this equation, we get ten bonus points on midterms… But it’s presenting quite a challenge,” she groaned as she scratched at her scalp with the end of her pencil. Smiling, Katsuki pulled out a chair for her and she automatically sank down, her brown eyes never leaving the paper. It was kind of cute, the way her eyebrows scrunched together and her lips poked out in a thoughtful pout. Katsuki found himself softening as he gazed at her; though it definitely looked like a challenging problem, the sparkle in her eyes indicated that she was rather enjoying it. 

He liked that. 

Wait a minute, he realized, his train of thought derailing and veering off a canyonside. The gears turning in his brain threatened to overheat and spin out of control as he considered what he had just actually thought. Him, liking Ochako? No. No, no, no. That wasn’t possible. Katsuki didn’t do love, he didn’t do dating, he didn’t do soulmates. 

“Good luck with your problem. I gotta go,” he blurted, using his hand to hide the blush creeping onto his face. Ochako looked up with a confused gasp, but he was already marching out the door. Dimly, he could hear her meekly call, “Thanks for the coffee…” 

As he stalked down the sidewalk, oblivious to the cloudy gray sky and the pattering rain beginning to sprinkle down from the heavens to dye the white sidewalk a deep slate, Katsuki’s mind was whirling. He tugged at his ash-blond strands of hair with a deep, guttural growl. He couldn’t like Ochako. He wouldn’t like Ochako. He’d always sworn that he’d never fall into that trap; he’d never take stock into that soulmate bullshit. It was just his subconscious; it had to be! He didn’t have a crush on her. It was just the internalization of all that soulmate propaganda trying to trick him into thinking he had to like her. 

Right? He didn’t like Ochako. He didn’t like her sweet soft voice, or her warm brown eyes, or her big broad toothy smile her rosy round cheeks complimented so well. He didn’t find that little purple Saturn charm endearing, nor the way she pushed her fingers together when she was nervous, nor her little thoughtful pout and scrunched brows. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. 

Katsuki stopped walking. He tipped his head up to stare defeatedly up at the cloudy gray sky. Gray. He hated that color now. It reminded him of a time when the world was just that— gray and lifeless and dull. Just Katsuki and his law books, all in monochrome. 

Now the sky was blue, and so were the bluebirds nesting in the eaves of his dorm. Now the grass was green, as were the leaves that rustled in the trees lining the walking track by the gym. Now the sun was yellow, like the buttercups growing in front of the library. Katsuki’s eyes were red, like Eijirou’s spiky red hair and the apples he insisted on crunching on every morning though Katsuki hated the sound. Now grapes were purple, like Ochako’s glittery Saturn planet charm. 

Now hearts were pink, just like Ochako’s warm, squishable, cute little cheeks. If Katsuki had to pick what color love was, it would be pink. 

He dropped his head down with a sardonic chuckle. The water dripped down from his drenched hair to run down his face in rivulets. Pink, like Katsuki’s face every time he clapped on eyes on that clumsy, space case, chubby-cheeked cutie who happened to be his soulmate. 

Damn it. He was in love with Ochako. 

The slick sidewalk squeaked under his tennis shoe as he whirled on his heel to sprint back to the library. He surprised Ochako as she was walking through the double doors, making her compulsively chuck the notebook forward. She gasped and reached out as it spiraled out into the rain; if it landed in a puddle, the black ink on the pages would bleed into incomprehensible smudges, and she’d never get that extra credit she was working so hard to earn. Katsuki caught it as it sailed over his head, slowly bringing it to his chest to shield it with his body. 

“K-Katsuki?” Ochako asked uncertainly, looking him up and down. He probably looked a sight, clothes and hair soaked from the rain and his chest heaving from the feverish sprint. 

“You wanna know something? The first time I saw you, I couldn’t help but think that your eyes were the most beautiful color,” he whispered. It’s true, he loved the pink shade her cheeks turned— but nothing compared to that warm chocolatey brown that sucked him in and embraced him in warmth. 

“I… I thought you didn’t do soulmates,” she swallowed, pushing her fingers together. Katsuki walked forward with a soft smile, holding out the notebook to her. 

“I changed my mind,” he said while reaching up to brush a strand of her soft brown hair out of her face. He then grinned devilishly and pinched her cheek, making her squeak in protest. “Can’t resist ya, Cheeks.” 

“What happened to Space Case?” 

“You’ve been upgraded. Congratulations.” 

Ochako blinked at him, then began laughing. She took the notebook back and hugged it to her chest, airy giggles making her shoulders shake a little. Now that he heard them from Ochako, he supposed those girly giggles weren’t that bad. 

This soulmate thing… He could get used to it.

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

[doctors-star]

16 for cowboys??

“Look, I care about you, alright? Quite a bit, I’m afraid.”

Johnny flops on his back, head slightly downhill of his feet in a way which makes the blood in his skull rush and whirl bewilderingly and his eyes pressed closed against the burning-bright sun, as yet undimmed by the afternoon. Someone drops a hat on his stomach and he flinches as though it had been a cannonball, sticking his tongue out and playing at being injured like the hognose snake Will had found in the shade under the general store’s porch - he’d rescued it from being killed as a copperhead, scooped it up in his hat, and brought it round to Ainsel’s back window to show the kids, thoroughly derailing all schooling for the day, as they all crowded around the hat to watch the creature resolutely turn on its back and stick its tongue out in repeatedly feigned death.

He stretches massively on the grass, smiling at the gentle laughter and the feeling of someone sitting near him and reaching across to give him two firm pats on the flank like a well-behaved horse. It’s been a long day, and it started early, but Johnny does like the big drives and hay harvests - all Danser collected together for one purpose, to help their neighbours and be rewarded in turn. Before dawn, he’d been drummed awake by fists on his door and had dressed quickly in the dark to stumble out into the street and go about mustering up others in turn. Of their little gang, he’d been first out of doors, followed by Will - looking bleary but drawn out by the other men staying in the saloon - then Ainsel, who seems to think they might be more use in bed than on horseback every time they see their own horse, then Tommy and Finn looking respectively disgustingly bright and alert, and still mostly asleep. Will, with his extremely biddable broad-chested nearly-a-draught horse, is quickly co-opted into driving one of the carts out of town and along the dusty prairie roads, uphill to the Wilder ranch to deliver tin pails of food and heavy stoneware bottles of drink and the very young and the very old, so that all of Danser may equally participate in the drive. Johnny, Finn, Ainsel and Tommy saddle up and cut north through the prairie, up the steeper side of the hill where the road can’t run; there, Diaz, Wilder, and Wilder’s eldest lad are calling instructions over the heads of the crowd and pointing in disparate directions to where the cows oughtta be, and where the cows oughtta go. A further crowd of skirts and fine hats - for today the town congregates, and it had better be in full finery and Sunday best - has collected around Mrs Wilder and Mrs Diaz to make tea and grits and beans cooked with salt pork in molasses, the scent sticky and inviting on the air even now, with hours of cooking left. Johnny tilts his nose into the air and breathes deeply, shooting a wink at Jody Masham when she passes near and earning a delightfully saucy grin for it. Her ma notices, of course, and gives him the evil eye, but Jody lets her fingers trail down his thigh from hip to knee on the pretense of admiring his horse and looks up at him through her lashes and he could perish on the spot for love of her, so what does he care anyhow.

She passes up chunks of soda bread, steaming in the dawning light and golden with butter, and he tosses them to his fellow riders - dinner will be late today, what with the distance the herd might have gone. And then they’re away, riding nearly the full complement of the town’s horses across the plains to where the herd stands, sedate and well-fed on the last of their summer grazing and ready to be collected up, split once more between Wilder and Diaz, and stowed in smaller paddocks with good solid barns over winter.

There ain’t no point in racing, really. There’s no advantage to getting there ahead of any other person. Johnny grins up at the sky, remembering the wind in his hair, hat brim in his teeth, crouching low over his horse to eke out those crucial inches that keep his horse’s nose ahead of Finn’s as they hoot and holler with the freedom of the run.

“Aww,” Finn says in a tone of very mocking gentleness as he nudges Johnny’s knee with the toe of his boot. Johnny cracks an eye open in preparation to glare at him for the inevitable teasing; against the bright and sunny sky, Finn’s hat is like a halo though his face is dark in the shade. “Didya go too fast today? You ain’t got no endurance, Johnny.”

Johnny allows the glare to settle, but before he can retort, someone on his blind side snorts. “No endurance - how many girlfriends has he got, again?”

Johnny chokes on startled laughter. Finn is wide-eyed in delight as he stares across Johnny’s prone form. “William,” he says, sounding scandalised.

Johnny props himself up on his elbows and sticks his hat back on his head so’s he can watch Will spread his hands defensively. “What,” he says, “I can’t be crude sometimes?”

Finn gestures at his own cheeks. “Naw, sure ya can, only it makes your face go so red that I get worried about ya.”

“That’s just the sunburn,” Tommy says cheerfully, clapping Will on the shoulder hard enough to make him sway and dropping to the grass next to Johnny. As promised, Will’s fair skin is flushed with embarrassment and striped with an angry red across his angular nose and cheekbones, the skin already starting to peel from a day under the sun. He huffs and folds to the floor, knees up to his chest and sleeves shoved up to his elbows to display a bar of red down his forearms too.

“I hope you weren’t teachin’ my kids that kind of joke,” Ainsel says, an enormous black umbrella hooked under forearm and over shoulder to shield them from the sun as they carry a wicker basket in two hands packed with tin pails, bread, biscuits, and bottles over to their little circle. The rest of the town is ranged likewise on the hill overlooking the town and, beyond that, the desert; the horses are tacked out near the farmhouse; the kids themselves are enjoying the freedom and sunshine having been released from hay harvest duties and are tearing up and down the hill, weaving in between groups and only occasionally stopping by their families to grab more food before haring off again.

“I have done no such thing,” Will objects crossly, but Ainsel gives him first choice from the basket and tucks him under the umbrella and out of the sun when they sit beside him so it’s quickly forgiven.

“He was exceeding useful,” Noel pronounces, kneeling by the big enamel dish which represents their share of the molasses and beans and salt pork, and wielding a large spoon like a sword. Johnny gathers that she had appeared some time after dawn, to the disparaging muttering of many of the elder town ladies, but had done so with such a quantity of fine bread and pickles and preserves that her critics had been forced to quiet down to faces of pinched displeasure while Noel held court, knowing that it was not a competition and that she had, regardless, won. She had then gone about supervising the hay harvest, keeping the younger kids in line and occupied while those trusted with scythes cut the hay and Will, on horseback, ran the new hay tedder up and down the field, and then releasing them to stack the hay under her exacting eye. Jody and Peggy had been amongst the scythers and had told Johnny with mouths full of giggles how Will had been left “in charge,” and then done every single thing Noel told him to without complaint or thought of defiance - but the harvest had been done, and Danser is too fond of Will to mock him for being hen-pecked by a woman he hasn’t even married.

Johnny reaches across to ruffle Will’s hair, but he ducks away like a feral cat. “Aww,” he laughs, “you’re useful.”

“Wish the rest of you were,” Will grouses, folding sulkily around his plate.

Tommy catches Johnny’s eye and grins wickedly. He beams in reply; Noel sighs in advance. “It’s true,” Johnny says, assuming a woebegone expression and trying not to snigger when Tommy looks similarly sorry for himself. “We ain’t good for anything whatever. Wholly useless, and you don’t love us.”

Will sniffs, mouth turned down comically in disdain. “You’d be mad to do otherwise,” he tells them sternly, in his finest clipped tones - brought out for special occasions, and their amusement.

“Why, Mister Williams, that don’t reflect very well on me at all,” comes a voice behind Johnny’s left shoulder, light and familiar fingers coming to rest there in accompaniment. Distantly, Johnny is aware of Finn choking on laughter and cornbread, and of Will straightening awkwardly with an air of panic, and of Tommy smirking and kicking at the sole of Johnny’s boot in a teasing, vaguely encouraging fashion - but mostly Johnny is aware of those five delicate points of gentle contact over the ball of his shoulder, and the swishing press of skirts against his side, and how if he tilts his head right back and left he can see all up the willowy line of Jody Masham, hip to hair, her blue eyes and golden curls like a field of cornflowers. There’s a little compressed mischief at Will’s expense tucked into her smile, and Johnny wants to kiss at it until she shares it with him; and there’s a loose, frizzy loop of hair that has escaped from the large bonnet that keeps her pale skin free of the sun, and become darkened with sweat and flyaway in the heat, and Johnny wants to press his nose to it, smooth it between his fingers, tuck it carefully away with pins so that she needn’t mind it - he could do that, he thinks, could give up on all other professions but following Jody around to tidy her hair and carry her basket on one arm, shielding her with a parasol with the other hand.

“Um,” Will says guiltily. “I - well-”

“Don’t you dare say you didn’t mean it,” Ainsel says sternly. Jody is smiling fully now; she is so beautiful Johnny could burst.

“I’m not going to lie to the lady,” Will replies, relaxing out of his tense, guilty stance to be indignant at the idea that he might. She is rubbing little circles into his upper arm with her thumb now: Johnny could not tell you for love nor money what Will just said.

“Well,” Jody says, a laugh bubbling in her voice, “how ‘bout you lend me this young man in recompense an’ we’ll call it quits? I’d like a word.”

Johnny is already scrambling to his feet, pressed up on his toes in eagerness to follow her away. Her hand slides down his arm, shoulder to elbow, and the press of it leaves hot lines in its wake that make him shiver. “Ma’am,” Finn says politely, not without amusement, “you keep him.”

Jody curls her fingers around his elbow joint and guides him gently a ways away from everyone else. Once done, he scoops her hands up in his own and holds them carefully like something immeasurably precious. She smiles indulgently and nods at the basket on her other arm, which he’d barely noticed. “Present for you,” she says.

Johnny juggles her fingers into just one hand, freeing up the other to push aside the flannel cover and fetch out a thin, steaming disk of fried batter. “Johnny-cakes,” he says, delighted.

“Couldn’t resist.” He takes a bite, savouring the salty cornmeal cut through with sticky maple syrup, and grins broadly at Jody. She laughs at his enthusiasm and allows him to feed her the other half without letting her hands go, chasing the syrup from his sticky fingers with her tongue until he can barely breathe.

“So, what’s the word?” he manages, biting the tip of his thumb to keep from kissing her, here where her ma is almost certainly watching.

“The word.” Jody bites her lip, huffs a big breath, and looks away - and a solid feeling of dread settles in his stomach. He’s had it good for so long - with Jody, and Cathy, and even Peggy and Anne-Marie, in a way - and he’s always known it wouldn’t last, and that it would ruin him, and-

“The word is baby,” Jody says eventually, tilting her head to one side and pinning him with her gaze, eyes narrowed in consideration. All thoughts leave Johnny’s head in a moment, to be replaced with vague, foggy panic. “Not-” she squeezes his hand until it relaxes a little and ceases crushing hers, “not right now, Johnny, jesus. Come back.”

The fog recedes and he musters up a gentle pat of her fingers in apology for squashing them in his paw. His hands are so much bigger and stronger than hers, tanned and weatherbeaten where hers are pale and delicate with flour worked into the nailbeds, and he oughtta be more careful with them. With her, and with - with the word, if there is to be one.

He can’t tell how he feels about that, in the moment.

“Sorry,” he says ruefully, offering her a clumsy, lopsided smile. “I weren’t - anyway. You go on.”

Jody takes a deep breath and nods firmly, gaze fixed at some point on his left shoulder. “Alright, I will. Johnny, I’ve spent the day cutting hay with a whole herd of the town’s kids, an’ it’s occurred to me, I want one.”

“I’ll get you one,” Johnny says on instinct, like he does with everything Jody says she wants however unrealistic, from hair ribbons to haywains to the entire Union Pacific Railroad. And then she raises an eyebrow at him, and he remembers how that’s what they’re talking about, actually, and to deflect from this he nods his head at one of the kids pelting past on little chubby legs. “That one’ll do - will he suit ya?”

Jody’s face relaxes into amusement and she huffs, leaning forward to press her forehead into his sternum. He must stink of sweat, and wants to tell her to shift in case he does, but he doesn’t want her to move like he doesn’t want to lose his right arm and she doesn’t seem to care. “Sweetheart,” she says into his shirt, “you ain’t never gonna be friends with my ma if you go about giving her grandchildren by stealin’ em.”

“Not even a little one?” Johnny says, tilting his head to catch her eye and watch her giggle. “‘Sides,” he says, considering it with a slight frown, “not sure she’s over fond on my givin’ her grandkids the other way, neither.”

Jody leans back, smiling. “Only ‘cause we ain’t married,” she corrects brightly, and then falters back into seriousness, biting her lip. Johnny squeezes her hands in careful encouragement, for he feels (fears) they have reached the crux of the matter. “Johnny, I - I wanna have kids. Not today, or tomorrow, or maybe even a year or two yet, but I want ‘em. An’ - I know we’ve not ever been traditional, but my ma - my ma really is gonna disown me if I ain’t married when I have ‘em, so.” She shrugs, fingers tapping in agitation against his palm and her gaze fixed back over his shoulder. “I’m not saying now, but I am sayin’ someday, and if that don’t fit with you someday then - I gotta find someone else. An’ I don’t know how that someday fits with you and Cathy, or Peggy and Anne-Marie, or - or I guess just with you, but I’m sayin’... I don’t mind, I guess, so long as you do right by the kids, and we’re…” She trails off.

“Miss Jody Masham,” Johnny says solemnly, raising her hands between his own, “are you askin’ me to marry you someday?”

She meets his gaze at last, frowning shrewdly at him. “Depends,” she says shortly. “Are you gonna say yes?”

Jody hasn’t never said she loves him. Johnny doesn’t need her to: he knows she does, on account of how she smiles at him and teases him and trounces him at cards to win kisses five nights in seven on lamplit nights where her ma can’t see them. And he bandies about words of love to everyone and everything, enough for the both of them, and they’re well-settled into the kind of long-standing devotion that doesn’t need professing very much. She’s told him before that she’s no good at romancing others (though personally Johnny reckons she’s not bad) ‘cause of how she can’t be sentimental with them; she loves them, and they gotta figure that out, or they ain’t trying hard enough.

Johnny told her he loved her on their second meeting, but then, he’s like that. Always has been. And it doesn’t mean he loves her any less, or any more, than she does him; he’s just got an awful lot of love to share, and she doesn’t mind him sharing it.

He could be married, he thinks. He and Jody could do it, and do it well, and marriage was always waiting for him somewhere - now that he’s not looking at it down the barrel of some angry pa’s shotgun, and without the threat of that too, it looks mighty appealing. They’ll have to get a house, of course; somehow stop renting, and own outright, but how hard can that be? He’ll get her fine printed calico, and build a table for her sewing machine, and Ainsel will school the kids. Finn and Tommy can teach them to ride and make great pets of them, and this time years from now Noel will have them harvesting hay neatly under her stern eye, and Will can bring them hognoses cradled gently in a hat.

He could live in that future, and live long and well.

Johnny pretends to think about it, but lets his grin slip through so’s she knows he’s teasing. “Well, you ain’t hardly romancin’ me.”

She purses her lips against a real smile and uses their hand grip to punch him gently in the chest. “I brought you johnny-cakes, special,” she objects, and he laughs. “Look,” she says firmly, “I - care about you, alright? Quite a bit, actually, and so you’re just - gonna have to deal with that.”

Johnny ducks in close and presses his forehead to hers, beaming. “An’ I love you too,” he croons to make her blush, and then ducks under her bonnet and kisses her softly. He can do that, now - here before the town, on the day of the hay harvest and cattle drive, for they are, someday, to be married.

Jody pulls back, smiling secretly in the corners of her eyes, and strokes a hand through his hair. “I always forget,” she says absently, eyes on her fingers as they comb and tangle in his curls, “how nice your hair is without your hat on.”

Johnny frowns, puts a hand up to his own head. “Where is my hat?”

“It fell off when you leaned back to see me,” Jody supplies. “You didn’t seem to notice.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t remember that.

Jody smiles with resigned amusement. “Lord help me,” she sighs, “for I’m marryin’ a moron.”

Johnny puffs up in indignation. “You don’t have to.” Of course she doesn’t - Jody Masham is the prettiest girl in the county - the west - the world - and could have any man she pleases.

“Naw,” she says, rubbing her thumb along his chin. “I’m gonna.”

[torikawa]

Sakusa Kiyoomi x Reader Part #2

Happy Ending

Fluff

Sakusa being Sakusa

Very cute scenarios

NSFW Scenes

Explicit Words

Comedy

Reader has pink colored orbs

Strangers to Lovers

Friends to Lovers

Reader is a Second Year

[F/N] = First Name

[F/C] = Favourite Color

[O/F/C] = Other Favourite Color

Your Last Name in this Fan Fic is...'Sakura'

Sakusa would occasionally glace at your direction, obviously trying his best to not make it obvious. But ofcourse it was, he had never felt this way before. And it was confusing the Fuck out of Him. Nevertheless, Komori quickly caught on what was happening with the Ace of the Team.

"Hey, are you okay? You're acting kind of weird" Komori asked in a more hushed but concerned tone, though he thinks he knew what the answer was already. His eyes transfixed at your energetic figure who's currently hyping Oikawa up.

"Nothing." Kiyoomi refused to admit how he felt, he was just confused. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Go Tōru! Beat their asses!" Was all you shouted as your eyes trained on the brunette. A huge goofy smile appeared on his face as soon as your mouth opened.

It caused Sakusa to grimace, were you already Taken? Wait, why was he even worrying? He has nothing to do with it so why should he care. Kiyoomi shook it off his shoulders and concentrated on the game that's currently unfolding before his eyes.

Oikawa quickly tossed the ball in the air just a few feet away from him, stepping a few steps forward to land his hand perfectly against the ball. It immediately shot over the net, where it landed on the other side of the court. Only for it to be counted as 'Out'

"Don't mind, don't mind" You screamed out as you gave Oikawa a quick thumbs up, which he returned with a small wave.

Something in Sakusa clicked when he saw you and Oikawa. [Little did he know, you two were actually Relatives.] When it was time for their team to serve, it was Sakusa's turn. He brought the ball close to his face before glaring straight into Oikawa's eyes from the other side of the court. It caused the setter to grow both confused and irritated but he never showed it.

He knew he saw those innocent big ol' Pink eyes of yours before. How could he not? When you were the first person to ever open up to him.

Little Sakusa was alone in the corner of the lunch area, glaring daggers into anybody whenever they walked or moved pass him. Komori was absent today, meaning he was left alone-- atleast, not until a girl approached him with a big goofy smile on her face.

"Hey! I always see you alone, do you have any Friends?" The girl with bright pink eyes questioned him, paying no mind that he was a huge Germaphobe. She sat across from him, pulling out her adorable Lunch Kit.

"I do, they're just not here today." Kiyoomi dead panned.

"I could be your friend for today!" Little [F/N] happily requested to the small Omi.

"Now why would I ever wanna be frie-"

"Hold on! You have some rice on your cheek, stay still!" Lil' Sakura quickly took her neatly folded handkerchief out of her Lunch Kit and whiped the rice stain from his cheek.

It caused the black haired bean to widen his eyes and short cut. He approved. 'She has a Handkerchief of her own? And it's neatly folded in her Lunch Kit? I guess.. she's not as bad as I thought'

"You can keep it, I have thousands of other handkerchiefs!"

"Why would I wanna keep something that's yours, it probably has your Germs all over it" Was all he said, hiding how he hid her handkerchief in his left pocket.

"Well, you could always throw it away! I'm Sakura [F/N] by the way!"

His serves were a lot more fierce and precise, coincidentally always landing near Oikawa. Was he really aiming for the setter just because you two were close? Yes, yes he was. And he has no shame, it was obvious what he was trying to do after his second serve.

Meanwhile, you were just shocked. The way he served the ball was so elegant, the way his wrist twisted as soon his palm slammed against the ball. It kind of excited you from seeing it.

He glanced over to you after every serve, seeing the way your eyes sparkle. It boosted both his ego and confidence.

Until suddenly the Libero of Aobajohsai's team was able to receive it, causing the ball to fly up in the air.

"Chance ball, Chance ball!"

Sakusa didn't hesitate to run forward, his form perfect, every step was perfect, up until he jumped and hit the ball with every force in his body. He didn't give the chance for the setter of their team nor anybody else to properly set it up. As long as the balls in the air he could spike it no doubt.

Both Itachiyama and Aobajohsai's team were left shocked as soon as the ball hit the ground, earning Itachiyama a point. Let's just say that they weren't expecting Sakusa to go all out.

"Sakusa..-" Komori suddenly whispered out, causing the Ace to growl and return to his spot. Of course he was gonna get scolded for his reckless action, it didn't matter whether or not he got a point. [Well kind of] After all, it had a 50/50 chance of working.

Suddenly, you broke the silence that the spike brought upon. "EHHH- That was amazing!"

Caught off guard, Kiyoomi looked over to your direction. Your arms were lifted up in the air as a big grin scattered across your face. "That was probably the best spike I've seen y-"

Iwaizumi didn't hesitate to glare at the you, it caused you to gulp awkwardly and turn away snickering.

"Ehh? But [F/N]-Chan I thought you preferred your Cuzzy wuzzy's sets and spikes more!" Oikawa said out loud, earning a 'Huff' after.

'Cousins..' [Sakusa]

For the rest of the game, Sakusa was more calm and collected. He didn't seem irritated, nor did he seem stressed. He was his usual self.

When the Practice finally came to an end, you didn't hesitate to run over to the Team. Happily handing each and every one of them the Water bottles you refilled earlier.

"You guys did amazing, especially you~! You're so adowable when you block the ball" [F/N] said in a baby voice, going on the tip of her toes to pinch Kunimi's cheeks that were fully flushed.

"Sakura-Senpai.. please stop treating me as if I'm a child.." [Kunimi]

"Well your my child now so hahahah!" She quickly wrapped her arm around Kunimi's neck, brining him down to press his cheek against hers.

He let out a small 'Huff' the blush on his cheeks very evident. You were so busy chatting with the boys that you don't even notice the way how Sakusa kept his eyes glued on you.

"You're staring" [Komori]

"Am not." [Sakusa]

"Yes you are, just go talk to her if you want to! She seems approachable" [Komori]

"Whatever." Sakusa turned on his heel and took out his own Water Bottle.

"Why do you have to be so difficult sometimesssss" [Komori]